Surroundings

​We have a rather remarkable capacity to work on our surroundings, to make them more precise...and more comfortable. It can be a problem, however, when we are no longer able to see or interact with much of anything outside our surroundings and become so insulated that we are of no real use to anyone but ourselves...and our surroundings.

I Used To Think: Change Us

​I used to think...of difficult and painful things as things to just get away from. Now I know that they are designed to change us for the better...not to simply return us to the way we were.

More

Faster is not
always better,
Slower can be
deeper.
Just like
More is often
less
and Less
is actually more,
true satisfaction
does not end
with just wanting
more.
I receive more Less
when I give more
deeply,
patiently.

Costs Everything

Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people -- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.

-- Oswald Chambers


For the joy set before him he endured the cross...

-- Hebrews 12:2

Easter: Joy & Love

Easter must be the most joyful of all joys, this side of Heaven.  Our hopes have not been dashed, they have been exceeded!

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die..."

-- John 11:25

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

-- Romans 8:31-39

Sacrifice & Liturgy

​

Photo by Rebecca Boyd

We are often caught wondering if sacrifice is worth it.  It was worth it to God...and it is for me, even if I know this only as feebly as I do.

Sacrifice is always about something more.

...this reading seems helpful to me today, especially these observations regarding violence and the role of liturgy in calling us to something different than what our culture so often offers:

This anti-liturgy is met in the true liturgy of the Eucharist, where the body of the victim makes possible the creation of a new body which lives by resurrection hope and loves by a power not of its own making.

As Lent moves toward its conclusion and its purpose, Christians journey toward resurrection where we will enact the liturgy of hope not fear, of embrace not exclusion. This liturgy is "political" in the truest sense of the word: the gathered community, the polis, enacting a counter-story to the world's politics.

If our deepest Easter metaphors have mostly to do with butterflies, we will miss this. The Easter proclamation, as Fleming Rutledge has noted, "is not a cheerful message about longer hours of sunshine. It is a world-overturning announcement about the reorientation of our entire existence."

-- Debra Dean Murphy

This is why sacrifice was worth it then and remains worth it now...because sacrifice is more about what is gained, than what is lost.

Violence

It seems appropriate to consider violence on Good Friday:

Violence is what happens when we don't know what else to do with our suffering.

This is a more profound statement than it at first appears....

But suffering, held in a supple heart, can break the heart open to compassion instead of breaking it down into cruelty. When we live with broken-open hearts, our suffering leads us to love life more, not less. Then we can become light-bearers and life-givers in a world of too much darkness and death. 

-- Parker Palmer

The miracle of Good Friday is that God was doing something about everything, even when we were still clueless...even hating.

Holy Week & Fascism

The context parallels of Holy Week and the ideals of fascism, then and now, are strikingly disturbing.  We think we need something, other than what we need, so we look in the wrong direction, to the wrong thing.  Lord, save us...save me from my own complicity.

The ultimate conversation-stopper is not the word “fascism” but fascism itself, which aims at shutting down the dialogue of differences that characterizes democracy at its creative best.

That base is aroused when would-be leaders appeal to those fearful, angry, and resentful parts in us — in all of us — that yearn for an authoritarian “fix” for our problems and a “strong man” to administer it. Lest we forget the hard-won lessons of bloody history, here are three traits of a fascist leader in the making...continue.

-- Parker Palmer

Maundy Thursday:

Here is the source of every sacrament,
The all-transforming presence of the Lord,
Replenishing our every element
Remaking us in his creative Word.
For here the earth herself gives bread and wine,
The air delights to bear his Spirit’s speech,
The fire dances where the candles shine,
The waters cleanse us with His gentle touch.
And here He shows the full extent of love
To us whose love is always incomplete,
In vain we search the heavens high above,
The God of love is kneeling at our feet.
Though we betray Him, though it is the night.
He meets us here and loves us into light.

-- Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons

I Have Noticed: More Critical

​I have noticed...that I tend to become more easily critical, when I'm less directly involved in the lives of others.

...more Graces of Lent.

Worse Than You Think

Because we live in a society that regularly peddles the notion that things are 'not that bad', it's worse than you think.

Be Human In An Inhuman Age

You are not big enough to accuse the whole age effectively, but let us say you are in dissent. You are in no position to issue commands, but you can speak words of hope. Shall this be the substance of your message? Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.

--Thomas Merton

Palm Sunday

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "Palm Sunday":

Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,
The seething holy city of my heart,
The saviour comes. But will I welcome him?
Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;
They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,
And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find
The challenge, the reversal he is bringing
Changes their tune. I know what lies behind
The surface flourish that so quickly fades;
Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,
The hardness of the heart, its barricades,
And at the core, the dreadful emptiness
Of a perverted temple. Jesus come
Break my resistance and make me your home.

-- Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons

...thanks, Jim, for passing this 'sonnet' along.

Miss Watson

Renewal, Wisdom, Wonder, and Giving

I wish I could go back and tell myself that not only is there no trade-off between living a well-rounded life and high performance, performance is actually improved when our lives include time for renewal, wisdom, wonder and giving. That would have saved me a lot of unnecessary stress, burnout and exhaustion.

-- Arianna Huffington

Decide

​You do have to decide how you want to be, as a person. And, recognize that our ability to do this is largely contingent on what we choose to believe.

I Used To Think: Farther

I used to think...that I could only go so far. Now I know that with desire, commitment and training, I can go much farther.

Unpleasantness

​We can carry the unpleasantness of each other as part of the way we help preserve the beauty of each other. After all, we are grateful when others do this for us.

Passage

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "Passage":

A dark sail,
Like a wild-goose wing,
Where the sunset was.
The moon soon will silver its sinewy flight
Thro the night watches,
And the far flight
Of those immortal migrants,
The ever-returning stars.

-- Cale Young Rice

...did we ever see the moon and stars last week!

Ask

You just have to be willing to ask.

God is always waiting for us, even inviting us...to ask.

Arizona Hiking, 2016 - Grand Canyon & Sedona

Grand Canyon (pics)...to the bottom and back up. Unparalleled beauty!

Sedona (pics)...Devil's Bridge.

...some 35+ miles altogether.  A delightful time in nature and with family.

Here are some of our reflections:

• I LOVE each of you very much and can't imagine these adventures and doing life without you. Grateful for all of the time God has given us as a family and that we (Ryan, Conner, Kenzie) have parents that sacrifice to make these amazing memories and trips happen.
• As I was hiking down, in between, and up I kept thanking God that, we are all able physically to do that kind of activity. When I got back I told my friends that I also was so grateful that this was the kind of trip my family wanted to take. #cactioverpalmtrees 
• I experience God in a really real way when I'm out in nature and traveling with you all. It breathes life into me. Even though it was an exhausting trip, it refreshed me. So thanks mum and dud for making this happen and for putting much thought into it. I also think about the idea of waiting. We've wanted to do this for three years and it made the time that much more sweet. 
• I'm grateful for Conner hiking up with me. I don't think I would've wanted to do that alone and I was grateful for the time just to be with him during that rough 5 hours too. 
• I loved being together....
• I was very grateful to see Dad standing at the top and to see him walk down and meet us. Reminded me of all the times he (and you too mom) have come alongside me during my life, met me where I am at, and walked with me.
• I was reminded that sometimes we are asked to just take one step at a time, even if we don't know what is ahead or how long  God is going to take to get us where we are going.  Each step is a courageous step towards something even if we don't know what that "thing" is. 
• I loved being together.  You are my favorite people.
• The idea that we all have our own pace/journey to walk.  Don't require/compare others to be on the same pace.
• Keep walking (just keeping on, moving long enough will get you a long way)
• We can do more than we think we can (walk farther / deeper)
• It is good to acknowledge fear (falling); it keep us focused

Keep Walking

If you want to get there, you have to keep walking.

...true in a number of respects -- physically and metaphorically.

Beauty Demands

Beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past — whether he admits it or not — can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.

-- Hans Urs von Balthasar

...a piercing description of the intimate relationship prayer and love have with beauty, a favorite of mine.

I Have Noticed: Do More

​I have noticed...that I can always do more.

...and, that it is good for me to ask these questions:

• Should I?
• Why?
• Whom am I serving?

Different Speeds

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.

-- William James

The Answer

My 'poem selection' for the week -- "The Answer":

You have spoken the answer.
A child searches far sometimes
Into the red dust
                          On a dark rose leaf
And so you have gone far
                         For the answer is:
                                                 Silence.

   In the republic
Of the winking stars
                          and spent cataclysms
Sure we are it is off there the answer is hidden and folded over,
Sleeping in the sun, careless whether it is Sunday or any other day
       of the week,

Knowing silence will bring all one way or another.

Have we not seen
Purple of the pansy
                   out of the mulch
                   and mold
                   crawl
                   into a dusk
                   of velvet?
                   blur of yellow?
Almost we thought from nowhere but it was the silence,
                   the future,
                   working.

-- Carl Sandburg

Intention

​God has great intention to surprise us!

Steals Inward

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Never Exposed

Jim Sphorer, computer scientist at IBM's university partnerships, said that he likes to hire people from start-ups rather than right out of universities because they have experienced failure and learned from it.

Students rarely see good models of failure in their daily lives to emulate because parents and teachers often hide their mistakes. Students are never exposed, for instance, to the feedback process that is the hallmark of most jobs today.  Continue here....

-- Jeff Selingo

Too Close

Standing right next to a big building one night, I looked at the windows next to me to see if the lights were on. I couldn't tell, however, how many other windows had lights shining from them. They were at an angle from which I couldn't see; I was too close to the building.

From the middle of the park across the street, I could see all the windows, and the light coming from each of them. Distance helped me see what was really going on, when I was otherwise too close to tell.

I Used To Think: What I Do

I used to think...that what I do is important. Now I know this is perhaps not half as important as what I do after I've done it.

When I mess up, it's what I do next that probably makes the most difference.  When I do something really good, it's what I do next that is probably most significant.

In other words, it may be how I think about what I've done that most prepares me for what is next.  Am I proud?  A I humble? Am I wallowing in self-pity?  Do I get up again?  Do I understand why I do these things?

First Of All

I must see another person, first of all, as human...and all that being human really means.