On Being Broken Hearted
Good morning... “My custom has always been to ponder grief; that is, to follow it through ventricle and aorta to find out its lurking places," writes Marilynne Robinson in the novel Gilead. "That old weight in the chest, telling me there is something I must dwell on, because I know more than I know and must learn it from myself. … I have never found another way to be as honest with myself [...]
How To Process Our Pain
Good morning... I spent the weekend processing our class trip to Montgomery, Alabama to visit the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, beautiful facilities offering experiential opportunities to teach the story of slavery, lynching, racial injustice in our country. I thought, "These memorials remind me of Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center." We visited the sobering site in Israel this spring. It is so hard to fathom real [...]
My Pile Of Dirty Laundry
Good morning... After experiencing the Legacy Museum and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, I am haunted by the inhumanity, the ugly pain inflicted on millions and millions of black skinned people over the centuries, and the way my privileged, comfortable life has really, really bloody roots. I feel compelled to deal with my own pile of dirty laundry. How am I complicate? How do I still contribute to [...]
Our Pile Of Problems
Good morning... We cannot solve the world's pile of problems, but we can discern the next loving thing that is ours to do. Yesterday, "mine to do" was to pass out some of the little pots of pansies I had created in the middle of the night when our internet was out and I was unable to blog. With one pot of pansies I hand wrote a note. "I am praying for a [...]
We All Fall And Bleed
Good morning... With our internet still out, I come to Starbucks to get service for the third day in a row. I pull out the brochure from our trip to Montgomery, Alabama and snap the photo above. I am struck by the fact that among all the informative words and haunting images, I am holding the pamphlet with a loose bandaid on my left thumb. It harkens me back to a lasting line [...]
Pass Out The Pansies
Good morning... Four thousand neighbors and me, we still have no internet. So, once again, no blogging in the middle of the night. Still stirred awake in the wee hours, I was drawn to another form of creativity. Accessing the healing power of pansies! Yesterday, I had cut some pansies from our neighborhood's dying patch before they are ripped up and replaced. We did the same thing last Wednesday with the PAWkids kids. [...]
4,000 Neighbors And Me
Good morning... Four thousand neighbors struggle with me through an internet outage. We have been without service for about thirty-six hours, thus no blog post this morning. No internet also means no TV, no email, none of the normal communications I usually take for granted. An insight sparks as I sit at Starbucks at 8:30 pm, writing. Our final scripture verse in our last blog was this: On a good day, enjoy yourself; [...]
When It Came Time To Leave
Good morning... Thoroughly enjoying our final Monday class, we read aloud some of our favorite passages from The Other Side of Chaos by Margaret Silf. The fourteenth chapter is entitled Yesterday Is Already Ours. This enduring truth - yesterday is already ours - is embedded in us as we walk away from a transformative season together. Now let's remember the deep wisdom we all hold most dear. ****** Excerpt from The Other Side [...]
We Can Never Go Back
Good morning... Sometimes there is a "before," and then there's an "after." Developmentally, our magical thinking evaporates around at around age ten, replaced by concrete perception and object permanency. There is no recovering what is lost. Good-bye peek-a-boo, magic elves doing mischief in the middle of the night, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and make-believe worlds. We can never go back to un-know what we start to know. Once our tiny eyes are [...]
Just Like Bath Water
Good morning... Over the past twenty-four hours, I have reminded myself repeatedly, "Be a reservoir." When I was tempted to talk too much . . . then decided to listen instead, "Be a reservoir." When I crafted a long confusing text . . . before deleting it, "Be a reservoir." When I felt sucked into the middle of things . . . and instead stood still, "Be a reservoir." When I was invited [...]
Live Like A Reservoir
Good morning... We meet monthly as a small group of spiritual directors, learning to listen keenly for the movement of God. Practicing a new-to-me way of focusing our attention, yesterday I said, "I would need to repeat this way of listening, regularly, by myself, processing my own experiences and gradually building up my inner resources, before I would ever feel comfortable guiding another person in this way." One friend said, "I get it. [...]
This One Thing
Good morning... She texted me the photo above after enjoying yesterday's post, Power Drained Out Of Me. Having gone with her church to the Holy Land the day after our group returned from our trip in March, she wondered, "Did you guys go to this church (please don't ask me where) in Israel with this painting of the woman touching Jesus and the power going out of him? It was beautiful and powerful." [...]