Friday, April 18, 2014

The Friday that is Good!







"He is the still point of the turning world."
T.S. Eliot 

I am haunted by Dali's Christ on the Cross.  I look down from this point to the Galilean Sea, into all ages, and can see God planting that cross in heart of life--giving Life away to all who would come to him.  Is there a greater good? 

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

The Key to All Doors

“Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self.” 

May Sarton, author and poet

 May Sarton was a prestigious Radcliff professor until it was revealed that she was lesbian.  She left the faculty to live in a New Hampshire home in the woods before moving to an Oceanside cottage in York, Maine.  Her novels, journals and poems were countless; she won occasional poetry prizes.  Most of all what impressed me about her was the series of journals, one in particular—“The Journal of Solitude”—in which she comes face to face with her loneliness, personal wounds and they become a source of inspiration for her.  Isaiah declares—“by his wounds we are healed”—which the New Testament understands as the work of Jesus on the cross.  The love given away comes from the One who authored our lives in the beginning—each individual, and it is May Sarton who stepped through that forbidden world and leads others through it as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, April 7, 2014

Carrying Your own Life in Lent



Lenten Poem

by Ann Weems

Lent is a time to take time to let the power
of our faith story take hold of us,
a time to let the events get up
and walk around in us,
a time to intensify our living unto Christ,
a time to hover over the thoughts of our hearts,
a time to place our feet in the streets of
Jerusalem or to walk along the sea and
listen to his Word,
a time to touch his robe
and feel the healing surge through us,
a time to ponder and a time to wonder….
Lent is a time to allow
a fresh new taste of God!
Perhaps we’re afraid to have time to think,
for thoughts come unbidden.
Perhaps we’re afraid to face our future
knowing our past.
Give us courage, O God,
to hear your Word
and to read our living into it.
Give us the trust to know we’re forgiven
and give us the faith
to take up our lives and walk.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Lent turns Boomer Esaison on his own Paternity Criticism

What in the world was Boomer Esaison thinking when he openly criticized the major league baseball player for missing a game when his son was born?  Of course, Daniel Murphy did not want anything to come between him and the birth of his son--but Easiason the announcer set the new standard that a big league player ought to hire a nurse.  The firestorm of rebuke proved him dead wrong and wrung from him the apology for creating such havoc right around the birth of their son.  Where do announcers get off setting such standards for others when the paternity leave is a given for big league players?  It certainly is not the first time!

But that's the modern world for us--so caught up in it that once again they miss the birth...and in the same way God still sneaks into our world.  If Lent is anything, it should change our routine and open our eyes to see God coming into the world in human flesh.  Then again, we did miss him the first time around in Bethlehem, didn't we! 

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Holy Saturday's Silence


 Holy Saturday Silence 2015

In silence he lies,
God's Silence upholds his Son,
until morning of mornings dawns,
when no tomb holds him,
now the womb of the world,
for new birth.



Waterfall of Life!

I love the image of a waterfall--even more so, its smell of algae, and oxygen and life!  As the water falls, it aerates and carries the life giving oxygen into the water.  Life falls into more life--the heart of the Lenten pilgrimage, this falling into life. 

But who could have guessed that Jesus was pierced on the cross to let loose the flow, the shower of life for all.  It goes against all we are--the very instinct of flight or flight to preserve ourselves.  I wonder, do you suppose that maybe life is just one of those ways that we loose life to find it?  A rehearsal for the final dying and rising? 

Friday, April 4, 2014

Ivan Lopez--Who Was this Shooter?

So now we are left with 4 dead, including Ivan Lopez the shooter.  Are we wondering, really asking who he is?  I wonder...don't we know but are afraid to say it out loud?  There is a point of view from John Donne and his classic poem, "No Man Is An Island"--we are all connected and each person's loss diminishes each one of us.  Easier to say with a poem?  Perhaps the truth is a bit much to bear that he was a victim also of circumstances that in the end he could not control.  PTSD, Iraq and the military is no place for me to be....  There is also the other point of view that others go through similar circumstances without taking the lives of others.  Nevertheless--he did. 

There is always one commandment we never think we could break--the one about killing.  Yet, as one commentator said, Lopez was dead before he pulled the trigger.  There is the third point of view--what does this matter to those who died and were critically wounded?  What response and obligation comes out of this event? 

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Washington's Mudslide

The Mudslide:  Before and After

The Before and After pictures of the mudslide tell all--complete and utter devastation, an entire ecosystem changed in an instant.  The loss of life in seconds...  The area had been warned of the highest risks possible for exactly this kind of avalanche--it is that unstable.  Yet something there is in us that ignores the warnings and goes about life anyway.  Until that is--we lose it.  No explanations or "they were warned" suffice in the enormity of such loss.  There's no covering up such agony of loss. 
"Teach us O Lord to number our days by your grace," writes the Psalmist--and writes of the only true foundation for life.  All of life is a high risk zone.  One enzyme gone awry, a blood clot, a texting driver, an asthma attack--and suddenly, life is gone.  Only when we realize that life itself was the absolute gift do we muster the words of thanksgiving that we have what we have and can shape our lives by the choice of living thankfully while we have it.  There is also a before and after picture of lives that never knew, then lived in grace.  It reverses the above...into new growth, life, Life is found! 

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

The last voice of taps....

I heard the voice of bugler sounding
through the trumpet,
and my head bowed to honor the dead.
I thought of the one who died,
but the sound was a roll call for those,
buried in sacred ground,
who stood for just a moment to salute,
one new life who joined them
a nation's gratitude then eternal rest.  

Monday, March 24, 2014

The Search for Flight 370

Malaysian Authorities at News Conference
Can we possibly overlook the dramatic contrast going on in our world--between the cooperation of nations to find the mission flight #370 and Putin's Land grab?  There is of course the noticeable lack of Russian support for the search, and after all, they busy gobbling up another country.  It is as if they see themselves back in a colonial period of entitlement to any nation where the Russian language is spoken.  Whereas the difference in languages does not hinder the multi-nation search 1500 miles off Australia.

For those on Lenten journeys, we recall Jesus' wilderness sojourn and his walk toward the cross.  The powers and principalities at his birth were just as nonchalant at the end of his life until the charge of sedition and Pilate's political expediency nailed him to the cross.  He was killed because of what others thought he threatened -- they could have ignored him.  Somehow, we are called to make our call--who was he and who is he now for us? 

Saturday, March 22, 2014

The Divine Breath

I was leaving Costco the other day, when a checkout lady said to me, "We are in for more snow next week--have you heard that?"  I said facetiously--"Oh the retail stores put out their own weather reports to boost sales!"  For some reason, that one off-handed comment really made her laugh.  And as I was leaving the store, she was repeating it again.  "Listen to what I just heard..." and off she went. 

It reminded me of the Buddhist first commitment to do no harm, which starts with what we put into the air for others to breathe.  That's right--do we harm others by what we say and put into the air? Can we possibly restrain ourselves from the crap we say--so that others do not have to breathe it? 

That same afternoon, I was visiting a friend in the hospital.  I pulled up to parking space while a person pulled out.  Another car approached from the other lane, a good bit after I had been waiting.  As I pulled into the spot, the other drive sat on her horn and then she yelled an obscenity as whizzed past.  Talk about polluting the air!  Then I had to work with that first commitment not to repeat that story over and over to "pollute me" and then the people I was visiting. 

Seems to me that the breath God gave us in the Creation Story is what we are called to breathe back into world and other people to renew them as the souls they were created to be.  It's like the light breaking through the darkness of clouds and remembering that we were created to be the children of the Light of Christ...and we can do that with our words. 

Friday, March 21, 2014

Finding the Kingdom





You can learn new things at any time in your life if you're willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.

Barbara Sher
American Author and Career Counselor





Jesus took a child, whom he put among them, 3and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5
                                                                                                  Matthew 18:2ff    

There is a huge irony that we spend our lives growing up only to learn that we have to reverse the process--and become like trusting children of God--without the illusion of a life's work to say that we are independent!  

Thursday, March 20, 2014

John Lennon Wisdom



When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.  When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I wrote down ‘happy’.  They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, 
and I told them they didn’t understand life.     –John Lennon

How many us truly understand the assignment we were given when we were born? Oh yeah, that was a very long time ago for some of us.  But to the very end, the assignment stays the same.  Buddha would say that happiness means letting go of resisting change in life which creates suffering, let go and go with the flow.  Jesus would say that happiness is to seek first the Kingdom of God when all things will then be given to you.  One appears to be the inward journey.  The other -- the outward journey.  What they have in common is stepping outside yourself and no longer making yourself the object of your life.  What a paradox!  You find your happiness when you let go of yourself.  By the way, notice how the quotation was written?  With "understand life" for its own line?  I think we only do that when we let go of our own life and walk into Life itself.  

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

The Real Hunger of Lent



A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
 
“Church Going,” last stanza—
Philip Larkin 
 
 Lent is all about journey—that takes us through the
wilderness sojourn to Jerusalem to outside the city gates and the cross.   
After that, well, you’re on your own!  It is a journey of faith, basic trust in the
God of Jesus Christ who seeks us out.   
 
Enter Philip Larkin and “Church Going.”  All of the preceding stanzas walk you through
the ruins of a church, or at least one that has aged in disrepair.  There is an inkling 
it is still used and that
he has been there before.  The presence of God moves under the appearance of things, invisible 
to those who visit it as
a museum.  The last stanza touches on the soul’s hunger for which only this place can satisfy—
at least for Larkin, he
realizes the hunger which is somehow satisfied only by the sheer holiness of
the place.  Such is the journey of Lent.  To awaken—wake up to!—the soul’s true hunger and food, 
the life of the resurrection now.  

The First and Last Word...


I shall be telling this story with much tender loving care....

A very good friend told me the story about his daughter's funeral....she was killed when she lost control of her car.  Fortunately, the older couple she hit did survive.  At the funeral, when he went to the communion rail, all he could say was--"Thank you for her life."  Imagine even getting that much out from a broken heart. 

The word "Eucharist" literally means "thanksgiving"--a profound thanks for the "gifts of God for the people of God," as we say in Episcopal service.  When we drink the death of the Son, we partake in his resurrection to Life that God gives.  Is it possible for us even to behold and receive such grace to mutter "thank you?"

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Still Looking for Flight 309....


The satellite images of the possible pieces of Malaysian Flight 309 as remarkable as they are--are even more so because they were released by the very closed and secretive China.  Perhaps it is because the majority of the passengers came from China.  But even still, the Chinese never, ever tip their hand to show the extent of their technology--and this is as remarkable a find as it is for it to be shared.

Sadly, this is not the wreckage...mostly  for the families of their loved ones who boarded that plane never to be seen again.  The journey of life is into places of death.  In Lent, we acknowledge the ashes which only God can spark into flames of new life.  Going into this wreckage, wherever it lies, is like walking into that tomb....where only Jesus Christ emerged to say death is not the end. 

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Priceless...the BMW Pricetag!



The great Western disease is, 'I'll be happy when... When I get the money. When I get a BMW. When I get this job.' Well, the reality is, you never get to when. The only way to find happiness is to understand that happiness is not out there. It's in here. And happiness is not next week. It's now.
Marshall Goldsmith
American Author

The Lenten journey is often misunderstood as a denial of the wealth of the world.  It is not.  Rather, the Lenten journey recognizes where true wealth lies and then sells everything to go after it.  It is never an arriving--it is only a growing in Christ. 
  
This life therefore is not righteousness 
but growth in righteousness.not health but healing 
not being but becoming not rest but exercise. 
We are not yet what we shall be but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished but is it going on. This is not the end but it is the road. All does not gleam in glory. but all is being purified.  Martin Luther
 

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Putin Power Grab

Kiev Mourns

"The strong do what they will,
                                        The weak do what they must...."
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

To think that I almost dropped a course in college history because it began with this book...and in those days, I was asking the "relevance question."  What difference will this book ever make for understanding the world.  It's been a second Bible.  The land grabs of the powerful over the weak recurs in history--and is it laughable that our leaders and others around the world can only reply in utter weakness--"Now, now...this is the 21st century and we don't act this way."  It was Thucydides who chronicled the human heart and mind that does not change over history--the powerful take what they want. 

Yet this Jesus moves into the wilderness sojourn we call Lent--utterly weaponless.  The temptations were all about power and his choosing to demonstrate it.  He chose to be human--the Son living to the Father, which made him the son.  St. Paul got it right when took a popular hymn and recorded it in his Letter to the Philippians, 2:5-11--who emptied himself and took the form of a human to be a servant.  Later, Paul would write--God's power is made perfect in weakness, leading by serving. 

It was Stalin who scoffed at this notion of power, laughing it off--"Tell me, how many divisions does the Pope have?"  Check out the status of Stalin now!  It seems that this world as conflicted as it is gives way to a Kingdom, therein....a world without end. 


Saturday, March 8, 2014

Plane Drops Out of the Sky.....

The plane was there one minute and gone the next--the Malaysia 777--one of the newest, most efficient aircrafts--just dropped out of the sky with 222 aboard.  Speculation abounds as to what happened--and if this is indeed the terrorism that TSA warned about in our nation--perhaps their trial run?  The human loss is staggering when you consider the generations who could have come from their lineage. 

Recently I flew first class to Chicago --which was cheaper than an economy ticket when you add in luggage costs.  How is that possible?  Frankly, I did not ask and just climbed aboard.  For the 5 day trip, it was the only relaxing time--just to kick back, ease off, and let the stress fall out of the sky. 

Perhaps we forget the slender thread that divides us from life and death and how very suddenly every that thread can break.  "Teach us O Lord to number our days by your grace," writes the Psalmist...that we have that same grace on both sides of the thread, of this mortal life and eternal life---we are are upheld by that grace which never breaks and ties itself to our souls no matter what happens in this life. 

Friday, March 7, 2014

Finding our Way Home



Prayer of One Who Feels Lost
by Joyce Rupp

Dear God,
why do I keep fighting you off?
One part of me wants you desperately,
another part of me unknowingly
pushes you back and runs away.
What is there in me that
so contradicts my desire for you?
These transition days, these passage ways,
are calling me to let go of old securities,
to give myself over into your hands.
Like Jesus who struggled with the pain
I, too, fight the “let it all be done.”
Loneliness, lostness, non-belonging,
all these hurts strike out at me,
leaving me pained with this present goodbye.
I want to be more but I fight the growing.
I want to be new but I hang unto the old.
I want to live but I won’t face the dying.
I want to be whole but cannot bear
to gather up the pieces into one.
Is it that I refuse to be out of control,
to let the tears take their humbling journey,
to allow my spirit to feel its depression,
to stay with the insecurity of “no home”?
Now is the time. You call to me,
begging me to let you have my life,
inviting me to taste the darkness
so I can be filled with the light,
allowing me to lose my direction
so that I will find my way home to you

Thursday, March 6, 2014

How to be found when you are lost...

There is a very special restaurant on Main Street in Rockland, ME called "The Brass Compass." The local folk gather there and ignore all the news from the Bobby Flay Thrown Down -- and owner Lyn Archer's win with her famous triple decker club lobster (called "lobstah") roll.  Sure, she won but they were not really so surprised at that.  What makes the place special goes beyond the cook'n to the groups that gather--spin their yarns, and find their way in the world through each other. 

I've sat in that place and overheard my share of conversations. It's the interaction that matters--the connection that forms, that leads them beyond themselves to new pathways. 

Paul talked relentlessly about "the body of Christ," the image for the followers of Jesus.  With each other, they made up far more than a group of individuals.  The whole was truly greater than the sum of the parts.  Each life broken in their living--found and formed a new wholeness with each other.  "Every day new" for Christians was the truth of their faith. Life was always more, far more than any individual--and yet, and yet! the individual was most profoundly herself/himself when in the Body.



Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Ash Wednesday

"Remember that you are dust 
and to dust you shall return."

What a day of paradox.  We claim our mortality and we find our eternity.  We acknowledge who we are as frail children, and we touch on our divinity in Christ.  And so the first shall be last and last first--and the meek shall inherit the earth at the same time that 5,000 are fed from a few fish and barley loaves.  The Good news.  We claim creation. We find the Creator.  Ashes marked on our foreheads burst into flame with the reality and identity that only God gives.  Somewhere, even in Lent, over in the corner of the nave as the faithful come forward for ashes--an angel hovers and whispers--alleluia. 




Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Mardi Gras Madness





For an evening, the Lord of Misrule reigns over Fat Tuesday--the peculiar custom to let sin run rampant so that grace may abound.  New Orleans continues as the capital for the hurrah of the day--the excuse for riotous living before the discipline of lent. Somewhere along the way, the day got mixed up with pancakes for some reason.  Why is it that before a season of sacrifice we justify the day of gluttony and things that ultimately glaze glum over spirits?  We do the same thing with All Hallow's Eve and the night of ghosts, goblins and demons--before the high feast day of All Saints that celebrates the very best of what God creates in us.  Like the two masks above--a roller coaster with the ups and downs of the human spirit.

Maybe we should recall the day before Lent begins that there is a thread of grace that runs through the best of times and the worst of times--the feast days and the days of discipline.  As St. Paul finally learned--how to rejoice in all matters of things because of the thread of grace that ties it all together. 

Monday, March 3, 2014

The Next Life

It is said that we only need two lives--not the nine of a cat!  There is the life that we practice with.  There is the life that we finally decide to live.  Where is the tipping point that moves us to the recognition of where we are?

Let me take the finality out of the choice. Can't we go from the practiced life to the next life and then step up from there?  Perhaps the biggest worry we may have is to stop that movement, to give up practicing, and forget the grace of starting again....from our knees, the place of prayer, where Holy Spirit touches human spirit and lifts us up. 

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Transfiguration!

How exactly do you depict what happened on the Mountain of Transfiguration?  The disciples saw Jesus for who he really IS (not was).  Or, God the Father through the Holy Spirit revealed the Son to the disciples.  In other words, the fullness of God came nearer to them--God showed himself, his glory in the face of his Son,.

The Gospel accounts say he was bright, bleached white--or could we say pure light, the Light of the World just as he said he was?  What they took away was the reality of that Light, the perception of divinity, the eyes to look into the heart of reality and know once and for all--our vision only looks on the appearance of things. God grants the light to see things as they really and truly are. 

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Off to the Wilderness





 


How much the wilderness desert looks like wilderness of snow!


I am off the Kalamazoo, MI and might as well be headed for the wilderness--except that it is covered with snow!  It is a far different world from where I am now--cold alright, but not the snow covered world, the umbrella over everything green with life stored underground.  Sometimes the best we can do is change the location, switch out the role, walk in a new way--with the assurance that the Spirit drives you there just as it did Jesus--out into the wilderness where we meet God.  The demons are only our resistance, of what we place between ourselves and God--and these in the wilderness of any kind, are self-made illusions that evaporate by the love of God we went there in the first place.

How much this world looks like the wilderness! 

Friday, February 28, 2014

The Bridge to Somewhere....





Oh my goodness...I was really surprised to discover this picture of the Capital Island (Maine) footbridge long before the bridge for cars was made.  I recall as a very young kid as my family parked on one side and we walked the bridge.  It took me to the world that was to be the way it always needed to be--with the pains, worries, fears, losses--of the world in which I was growing up. I was always a child at heart here--the place where walking the dirt roads (and still dirt to this day!)--I walked the footsteps of where my parents met, married and gave me life.  I still find life in all its forms in this place. 

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Finding your Way in the World

This sign not only exists in Maine...but it is accurate!  These are all Maine cities within this range of miles.  For years it has been a favorite postcard. 

CS Lewis said that when we are lost in the woods, the sight of any sign matters alot.  We stop.  Read. Get our sense of direction.  Then hit the road and try again.  It especially helps, he adds, when we know our destination! 

This prayer of discernment has always been special to me.  It says that God is the sign to look for in the world.  God is always at hand, right before our eyes when we truly seek him! 







Discernment Prayer (Sisters of Notre Dame
Walk with me, good and loving God, as I journey through life.
May I take Your hand and be led by Your Holy Spirit.
Fill me, inspire me, free me to respond generously to Your call.
For I believe You desire my deepest joy,
And it is only in Your company
That my soul will be satisfied
And my life will find its meaning and purpose.     Amen.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

The gift of forgiveness...

c. Michael Podesta Graphics


If I have harmed anyone in any way
either knowingly or unknowingly
through my own confusions
I ask their forgiveness.

If anyone has harmed me in any way
either knowingly or unknowingly
through their own confusions
I forgive them.

And for all the ways that I harm myself,
by judging or doubting or being unkind
through my own confusions
I forgive myself.


Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness 


I love both of these--the graphic image and the Buddhist Prayer!  The word "Alleluia" is connected in one circle and literally means "to God be praise."  It is an unending chorus that builds from within, moves into the world and connects others into the circle of prayer.  Now read the Buddhist Prayer.  It is circular as well...and that is the message of forgiveness--that it moves on all those levels and ultimately between all people.  In both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, the Great Commandment is to love God and your neighbor as yourself.  Isn't forgiveness a part of that circle? And never mind that little song about "Happiness runs in a circular motion!"  

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Farewell to Harold Ramis

How terribly sad to hear the news that Harold Ramis died, aka Egon amongst so many wonderful actors let alone the scripts that he gave us.  For me, it will always be Egon in Ghostbusters--the brain-child of the bunch who seemed to be the only one who really understood their far-out technology.  When all is said and done--and we look back at what we have done with our lives, I think the question is--have we enriched the lives of others, or dare to say that we have loved?  Harold Ramis made us laugh and with a sometimes serious character, we were able to let go and take ourselves a little more lightly.

There is a part of Jesus in all of that--how he enabled people who came in contact with him to take the opinions of others and made them righteous less seriously than the love of God given so freely.  And there was no acting in a life that lived to show us God's love and to give it away. 

Monday, February 24, 2014

Can You Take It With You?

You gotta love the oldie but goody movies!  I walked in on "You Can't Take It With You," the 1938 Frank Capra classic--and I immediately was struck by the fact that--somebody had to actually think through and develop an meaningful plot that made its point without being a smorgasbord of special effects.  The characters carry the day!  And how well the young Jimmy Stewart and the older Lionel Barrymore to name just a few really did just that.  As the audience, I had to watch the characters develop through their behavior rather than the manipulation of lighting, effects--and to make it rhyme--sex! 

Maybe the movie makes its point about the real values, the intangibles that cannot be bought.  Sure...I get it...after all, we can't take it with us.  But that only surfaces the real question of what truly matters.  At the heart of all human relationship lies the pearl of great price--the one Jesus spoke of--that once found, sell everything for it.  Through the human heart, no matter how crucified and scarred--we find our way into the Kingdom that God waits to give us. And, you CAN take it with you!

Friday, February 21, 2014

Snow Walk

This picture was posted at weather.com and shows a woman walking along the reflecting pool of the Lincoln Memorial in February.  The reflecting pool is frozen over, giving the ere reflection from the lights above.  Rather than a photographic critique, what I see is the stark loneliness of the woman as she walks along--yet bathed in the light from above.  Maybe it takes this kind of a very special day to see that light opening up the path in front of her--but nevertheless, it is there.  We all walk this world in all kinds of different weather, especially the weather of the heart.  There are those times of abject loneliness and the feeling of isolation.  We walk by ourselves--that's what we brought into this world and what we shall take out.  Yet however, there is this light and the woman is hardly alone if we catch a glimpse of the Light. 

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Sandra Bullock Revelation

I know what I heard her say and it is really worth repeating....

"I made a decision a long time ago to have a baby. I gave up so much in my career.  But it was nothing, nothing at all, to what I received.  Maybe a  baby breaks a mother's heart open to feel her way through the world in a new way."  

Sandra Bullock continued by saying...

"Now my life is rooted in joy.  I get up in the more and I look for joy in the world.,  What else is there?" 

Perhaps the revelation is that something this deep and enlightened came out of Hollywood.  For once, an actress who seems to know the difference between the stage, the camera set and real life.  Joy is not happiness.  It is not a Gospel of "don't worry--be happy."  Joy is what we find when our lives have been split open and we see what really means the most. 

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Celebrate the New Day!~



i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings
1894-1962

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Moonscape....

Take a walk in the evening when the snow has fallen and the moon rises above it.  The world is brand new with images not seen when the ground alone swallows moonlight.  Stick figures walk out of nowhere, alive as beings of the evening, reaching out their hands toward you. Let the imagination go to work and you land in Tolkien's world the the Ents--the walking, talking trees. 

It is said that the essence of living is to reenter your ordinary world where the routine is expected and be able to gain a whole new vision.  A new vision of the same world reveals the truth that life is always more than surface appearances and may change at any time.

We behold Jesus the man in his public ministry.  At what point and in what ways do we see something more--far greater than imagination and enduring than by the light cast by the moon on the world of snow. 

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Snow Sunrise!





This is the day that the Lord has made;
   let us rejoice and be glad in it.*

                                                         Psalm 118.24



Ever get up to watch a snow-sunrise? 

There’s just something magical and splendid about seeing the sun peek into the world in winter.  As soon as its rays touch the snow, they reflect out into a brilliant color that for a moment—fills the world in a wonderful way.  It teaches the eternal truth that we are created to reflect God’s light.  Annie Dillard writes about “the light uncreated.”  Now, imagine when that Light hits us and for sometimes only a moment—we see ourselves with something of the delight which God has for creation—and us.  We are part of that day that the Lord has created.  Is there ever enough joy to be glad in that gift? 


 

 






Saturday, February 15, 2014

Grief like the snow....

There's just something about this picture that tells me she has lived many years, seen a lot, and endured the loss of much.  Call it the inevitable sweep of time.  Maybe these bags hold the remainder of her life.  Without speculation--she is alone, very alone on the bench.  Such is the world of grief. 

Now that we have been deluged with snow--and it is reported that 49 of the states have snow on the ground--here's a classic Longfellow poem that relates the falling of snow to the world of grief, which like the weather, remains out of control. 



Snow-flakes


Out of the bosom of the Air,
      Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
      Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
            Silent, and soft, and slow
            Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
      Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
      In the white countenance confession,
            The troubled sky reveals
            The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
      Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
      Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
            Now whispered and revealed
            To wood and field.


Friday, February 14, 2014

The Real Valentine...


"To love another person is to see the face of God."
Les Miserables

The story behind Valentine's Day goes all the way back to High Middle Ages.  They took the mythological story of St. Valentius, who died leaving his girlfriend a note signed "St. Valentine," and turned it into a custom of leaving romantic notes and gifts.  Still, even in a myth, the literal facts of the story may not be true, but it still teaches a timeless truth.  God is love and those dwelling in love--and there are many kinds--can find themselves close to God.  Perhaps the difference with today's culture is this:  we give cards and gifts to persuade others that they are loved.  Jesus came to tell people God is love and loves them.  We are born to reflect and share that eternal fact of life.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Shutting Down the World

I love the way the snow shuts down the world,
as if Mother Nature has had just too much of
our running around with endless lists, forgetting
our place in the world, actually more humble
than most of us ever want to admit. 

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Where do the homeless go....

 A storm sweeps up the South with an icy broom,
As people huddle indoors after cleaning out the stores.
But I wonder to myself if the storm called catastrophic
Means anything to those who always live outdoors,
Homes under bridges, tents of cardboard, the weather
Meaningless when death can come and take them home...
At any time anyway. 

  And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ Matthew 8: 20

 

 

 

 

 


Tuesday, February 11, 2014

The Odds of "Broadway" Joe Namath

Joe Namath made the Fur Coat famous as a Jet and wore it to the Super Bowl
My goodness!  I saw that fur coat of Namath's and I knew it from my boyhood!  He made it famous as a NY Jet when the franchise was just beginning--and he made the coat stick because he had the stats and accomplishments to back it up. That's Broadway Joe alright--and he earned the right to wear it.

But hold on Joe--what happened with that coin toss?  You forgot to ask the Seahawks captain to call it--heads or tails!  So, th3e ref intercepted the coin and started it all over.  You got away with that one as well because of who you are.  Accomplishment needs no excuses!

So who are we?  And do we need excuses?  Maybe apologies...  but we are so very human after all --no matter how the odds work one way or another.  If you are children of the living God, you are clothed in righteousness that is indelible--there forever!  God clothes us with his life, of Jesus Christ, and we need no excuses, none whatsoever--just apologies that come from the riches of God's grace that forgives all. 

Monday, February 10, 2014

The Most Important Things....





Can you take a picture of the "the real things?" 
of what matters most in life?





The real things haven't changed. 
It is still best to be honest and truthful; 
to make the most of what we have; 
to be happy with simple pleasures; 
and have courage when things go wrong.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1867-1957
American Author, Teacher and Journalist

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Avoid Thy Neighbor?

This could have been me the other day, sitting alone in a McDonalds (hardly with table cloth!). The car was in the shop and I was across the street spending quiet time by reading and writing with nobody else there. I soon heard a woman over my shoulder speaking to the woman at the counter.  Something about being lost and where was the closet metro station.  I ignored her and her situation.  That is, until she came into my booth for the outlet to charge her phone--I was sitting in the only booth with an outlet!  Oh of course she apologized for crashing in, but her cell was dead and she had to get a connection somehow.

The woman was African American--hair shot back, large ear-rings--with such dominant eyes, black specks floating in pools of white that danced with the fervor with which she spoke.  She was lost, way lost alright.  She had been out on MLK Day and forgot the transit was on a holiday schedule.  "Don't worry," I said, "My car will be ready from that shop over there and I will get you to the metro." There is no way she could walk over those miles, and don't ask me how she got as far as she did!

Needless to say, waiting on the car was a "trip" in itself--hearing her story and how she came to DC from CA.  She was a teacher but her love was poetry.  Oh no--how is it that perfect strangers with these mutual interests bond so quickly?  Poets just know each other--even poor poets!

Short of the long story.  My car took another hour, so I packed her away in a cab and got the fare. She called me her friend just for being there for her.  "Hey lady...I was doing everything I could to avoid you...and you found me, or rather...God put us together so you could get home and I could taste the vitality of your soul.  A God-incident....