Good morning…
The images above, sent by a fun friend in North Carolina, help me as I try to process my heavy heart and my chaotic brain. Honestly, it feels like both are about to burst.
How can I joyfully be creating with a handful of you 100 Valentine’s Day gift bags for impoverished senior citizens while at the same time remain in such sorrowful solidarity with my dear friend whose daughter is enduring painful immunotherapy infusions to battle her cancer? How can I be savoring the obituary of a deeply loved man in our church family whose funeral will be held at 11:00 am while at the same time I am preparing to facilitate our class of fifteen at 10:30 am in our basement? How can I feel so deeply bonded with my longtime friend who traveled to Colorado to support her daughter and son-in-law as her grandson, born five weeks early, fights for life in the NICU while at the same time I am up in the middle of the night with God trying to discern fresh words for our everyday blog?
As I ponder the images above, I wonder with myself, “Why do these organic images help my heavy heart and chaotic brain?” Ah-ha, I sense. They visually whisper our deepest truth: “We are made to branch.”
As I sit in stilled silence, my joys and my sorrows flow mingled down, caught up in the gracious gravity of God. I am drawn back to the wisdom of Paula D’Arcy. Opening my copy of Sacred Threshold, I return again to a quote we read aloud last week.
“After the song ends I say out loud, ‘I am part of the human heart,’ writes Paula on page 13. “The image speaks to things that are foremost in my awareness today: the seeming singularity of our many lives, yet, truly, the oneness of humankind; the realization that there is a fullness waiting to emerge in us, a hidden grandeur in the depths of the atom, the stars; the truth that the immortal is our substance. And this immortal brilliance presses within us to awaken our sleeping souls, for the sake of the world, for the sake of the human heart – a heart ultimately capable of more than it yet imagines.”
As my heart and my brain take some deep breaths, in my innermost being I sense two truths.
- The immortal is our substance. In the path of righteousness is life — it is a path to immortality (Proverbs 12:28, TLV).
- We are made to branch. Each believer has received a gift that manifests the Spirit’s power and presence. That gift is given for the good of the whole community (1 Corinthians 12:7, VOICE).
Sifting through my heavy chaos, I come to rest upon our shared roots. We are designed by the Divine to branch with immortal brilliance, both now and forevermore.
…Sue…
