Lunch Hour

I was going to go to the bank and run other errands when my son called me at work and informed me that he had just locked his keys in his car. At first I felt irritated - driving 20 minutes to unlock a car, and 20 minutes back to work wasn't what I felt like doing during my break. And then I let it go. Accidents happen. I was grateful my irritation was so brief and fleeting.

When I made it up to the parking lot where my son's car sat parked, there was my son and a couple of his buddies, all of them in high spirits and full of energy, excitedly discussing the impending Guitar Hero III video game release. They were nice, polite, my son thanked me profusely, and I got back into my car to leave. And then I soaked in the moment in my rear view mirror. There stood a group of teenage boys talking and laughing on a beautiful Autumn day. How quickly these years fly by. How lovely to see them all so carefree. How glad I am that I could see the pricelessness in my brief encounter with joy in the form of teenage boys, feel filled with nostalgia for that moment in time, and see it all in love instead of thwarted lunch hour plans.

Forgive -- Or Else?

I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness. Deep down, I truly believe that God has forgiven all. I can accept this after years of believing that God has forgiven almost nothing and no one. The forgiveness of God is more for our sakes than God's -- as I see it. I don;t thank that we can't really offend God. Maybe that's offensive in light of all of the human atrocities we inflict upon one another.

Yet, I find it easier to accept God's forgiveness than to forgive. Just like I find it easier to accept that God love me and all than for me to love God by loving others.

Maybe I'm just rambling at this point, but forgiveness is hard business -- especially when that business is self forgiveness. How can we forgive others if we can't forgive ourselves? And I know all of the advice. Holding a grudge (even against yourself) only hurts you. Free yourself and forgive. That's fine and dandy, but the question for me is how?

I love the theory of forgiveness, but the practice is quite another matter.

prayer

I am trying to figure this out. Please write and tell me what you think.

Recently I have been reading a book titled, Awakening Into Oneness by Arjuna Ardagh. It is about people in India who are praying. They are praying constantly. They call it the Oneness Blessing, but it is actually the same as what Jesus taught us in the Lordś Prayer. The people in the book are letting God´s love flow through them in prayer to others. People are being transformed by the Oneness Blessing.

I really believe that Jesus was trying to teach us to do that . . . to pray powerful love prayers for each other.

The book says that in India, people receive the Oneness Blessing prayers for 21 days before they give it to others. I did not understand why at first. Now I believe that 21 days of experiencing prayer gives you strong faith to offer the prayer to others.

Please comment with your ideas! :)

The Hound of Heaven

"I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat -- and a voice beat
More instant than the Feet --
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
By Francis Thompson

Does God/Love pursue us? This is something that I feel. I blogged here on it once "who is pursuing who" back in August.

The odd thing to me is that even as I get closer and closer to Him, and my understanding of our relationship, I then begin to feel the vista somehow changes. I'm suddenly again in new and unfamiliar territory, and I'm not sure about it. He starts pursuing me further into the depths of my experiences and my heart and soul.

Here is a link to the entire poem. http://www.mcs.drexel.edu/~gbrandal/Illum_html/hound.html

Have a wonderful day.
Peace and Love
Keren


http://www.mcs.drexel.edu/~gbrandal/Illum_html/hound.html

Next-Wave Interview (Wide Open Spaces & TLIO)

here’s the interview if you’re interested. you'll see the conversation about Turn Love Inside out.

i’m headed to the bahamas for soularize; i’ll be back in nashvegas on october 31. yes, that’s halloween. scary!

(photo by zoo gal)

The Greatest

"And now abide faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love."

You know these words written by Paul so long ago. Even if you've never read 1Corinthians 13, you've been to a wedding. And I think it is a legal obligation that 1Corinthians 13 is read at every wedding.

Anyway...it's odd (at least curious) to me how backwards I've practiced this sacred triumvirate. Faith has often come first. Have faith. Just believe. Believe in Jesus. Believe in God. Believe the Bible. Justification by faith. Salvation by faith. Faith alone. Believe the gospel and you'll be saved.

Then, for me, hope has played a big part. Looking forward to the time when God will sort everything out (like things aren't sorted properly now). Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Thy kingdom come. I hope that they will accept Jesus.

Love has often taken the back seat to both of these. I'll love you if you have faith (the "right" faith at that). If you share my hope, then I'll love. Love just gets in the way of getting people to have faith in the right hope.

At least that's been my experience for a large portion of my life. Yours might be different. It's not to say that I didn't consider my faith and hope motivated by love. I did. But looking back, I can see that love never really entered the picture. Maybe a little, but not much. The greatest of these three was always faith...with a capital F.

That's what I preached from pulpits every week for nearly 2 decades. "Come forward and confess your faith." Never once did I invite anyone to come forward to show their love.

Now, after a long time and a lot of personal anguish, I can see how Love trumps faith and hope. It's not that faith and hope are insignificant. It's like ice cream. Strawberry and vanilla are great, but nothing beats chocolate!

But even now, I can take it one more step. As great as Love is when we love, how much greater is God's Love! The God who is Love. The God who is Love triumphs over our faithlessness, faithfulness, hopelessness, hopefulness, lovelessness, and love; because the greatest is Love.

Take Me With You Everywhere You Go

(Love/God speaking to us....)

Don't go anywhere without me. Let nothing happen in the sky apart from me, or on the ground, in this world or that world,without my being in its happening. Vision, see nothing I don't see. Language, say nothing. The way the night knows itself with the moon, be that with me. Be the rose nearest to the thorn that I am.

I want to feel myself in you when you taste food, in the arc of your mallet when you work, when you visit friends, when you go up on the roof by yourself at night.

(rumi/us to Love/God)

There's nothing worse than to walk out along the street without you. I don't know where I'm going. You're the road, and the knower of roads, more than maps, more than love.

******
"The Essential Rumi" Coleman Barks
******

I love me some Rumi!
(notes in pink and emphasis in turquoise by Keren)

once there was a man

a man once approached Jesus and said to him, “Sir, you have quite a reputation as a man who knows God and eternal things. So, tell me what must I do to get eternal life? I have all the world can offer now, but surely I will someday die, and I must be assured that a glorious afterlife is certain.”

Jesus responds to the man, and right off you discover Jesus has shifted the focus of the issue. the man is concerned about “getting eternal life” (read “heaven”); the man wants to cinch up his afterlife. Jesus, however, shifts the conversation to “life” - Jesus begins, “If you want to enter life…” in this subtlety, Jesus wants the man to see he is focused on the wrong end game. the man thinks it’s all about the security of heaven after you die; Jesus is wanting to invite the man into the present reality of “life,” which is more than human existence, but living in the present reality of God’s kingdom - a kingdom, according to Jesus, which is within us and the source of life (read peace, love, joy, freedom, and contentment). in the gospel of John, Jesus defines “eternal life” as “knowing God.” in other words it is a now reality.

the man is proud of his religiosity and is operating under the assumption that whatever God has to offer it can be attained through religious duty - being good, doing church, keeping a list of do’s and dont’s, observing the law, ordering your life around religious rule and ritual. Jesus goes with the man down this path of logic, and acknowledges his life of religious duty and discipline. Jesus isn’t busting on him; he is giving credit where credit is due; the man has worked very hard at what he has understood God expected of him.

in the process, the man comes to a place of profound self-realization. he says to Jesus, “What do I still lack?” despite his religious commitments, the man feels deep within himself that something is amiss. looking at him on the outside, he is living an impressive religious life that probably few can match. he is also a wealthy man, and so he is living a life of material security and abundance, and yet he feels a deep lack within him. he is now experiencing the “life” Jesus refers to earlier, and the pain is painfully aware of this emptiness within him.

so, Jesus tells the man that the answer to his lack is to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor. we would be mistaken in thinking that this is primarily a scripture about sacrificing for the poor or a call to social justice or a condemnation of material wealth. Jesus wants the man to experience the present reality of the kingdom of God (life), but what is standing in the man’s way is his misplaced dependencies. the man has depended on his material wealth as the source of his security, identity, and happiness. he has depended on his wealth and what it can do, as his source of life and wellbeing. but Jesus knows, just like the man’s religiosity, so also his misplaced dependency won’t work for the man.

so, Jesus invites the man to let go of his misplaced dependency so he can in fact experience life in God’s kingdom. some people thing they must wait until death in order to experience the fullness of life in God. others think they must separate from society and enter a life of blissful contemplation to experience any inkling of it. Jesus is essentially telling the man that the life of the kingdom is within the man, and the man can choose to let go of his misplaced dependency and instead depend upon the source of “life” (peace, contentment, joy, love, freedom) within him.

the man chose not to let go of his dependency. why? fear. it’s not that he “had” wealth and all that wealth brings. in his mind, the man was his wealth and all that wealth brings. like a;; misplaced dependencies, letting go of them is like dying to your self; as if there might not be any self at all if you let it go.

maybe this false self of misplaced dependencies must fall to the ground and die, so that the abundance of life in the kingdom can be experienced. we die in our old world, and our raised up in a new world of “life.” maybe this is the choice in every moment of our lives, which can be made regardless of our circumstances; a choice that allows us to walk in the present reality of God’s kingdom, which is not dependent upon any set of human circumstances.

(photo by annieA)

St Francis revisited

I was going back through some old blogs and discovered a comment on the St. Francis Feast Day Blog I didnt realize was there. It was interesting and beautiful. Change's comments were beautiful and made me realize there is alot more to St. Francis than loving animals, calling things brother and renouncing things of this world - which are wonderful things, but Francis's Love went much deeper than that.

Change gave us a link, below, to a wonderful art exhibit by Darren Waterston and Tyrus Miller, that was based somewhat on St. Francis.

If you look at the link, read the comments by the reviewer about the compassion of St Francis. Not something all of us are willing to embrace.

"...Saint Francis found the divine through the body. He did not find it by looking at the ideal beauty of the ancient Greeks but in the wounds of the lepers and the homeless that surrounded his home in Assisi. He embraced things that we would normally turn away from like the bleeding sores of those who are sick. He resisted the temptation to run away, transcended his natural feelings of self preservation, and cultivated compassion to discover the divine through the path of caring for those around us"

http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2007/09/darren_watersto_1.html

Thanks Change
Peace
Keren

The more I love

Next weekend a group of middle-school aged kids will be building a cardboard city and staying there overnight. I'll be stopping down with whatever donations I can contribute to their goal on giving warm clothing and items to a local mission. The mission's thrift store burned just recently, so they're in dire need of many things.

I'm also going to be involved in a mission to "spend less, love all" this December. We're going to try and not get sucked into the consumeristic holiday culture and instead create relational gifts, (poetry, photography, a trip to a ball game), and use the money we don't spend to help bring clean water to people in Africa. The joy that I've been feeling about being involved in reaching out to my neighbors has been showing me that the more I love, the more I love.

A Welcoming Place

Yesterday, a good friend told me, "Knowing that God is all-in-all makes the universe a welcoming place, not a frightening one."

I like that.

Not my will but Your will

In an earlier post, I told you about how I discovered that I was afraid of God´s will. I think that somewhere in my childhood I was led to believe that God would make me do things I did not want to do.

[For example: God would make me marry the boy who picked his nose - yikes! ]

This is how God answered my fears . . .

God said, ¨you are safe in my will.¨

Surrounded by safety, God has given me the ability to say, ¨not my will but Your will be done.¨

I am safe.

No Recall

Pardon me for going theological this morning. But I was reading in Romans this morning and 11:28-29 captured my attention.

"As regards the gospel they are enemies of God^* for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable."

I know this has a context and specific setting, but it seems like an eternal truth about God's love is lodged in these words. These "enemies of the gospel" were not excluded from the love of God. Even though they were "enemies" God continued to love them. They were beloved -- not for what they had done or failed to do. But God loved them for the sake of His promise.

God's overflows from God. It is not a reward for our obedience or disobedience to anything. Humanity is beloved -- and always will be -- because God's love is irrevocable.

If you start feeling bad about yourself or judgmental toward others, just remember this. God can't not love you. Unlike certain brands of toys with lead paint, God's love will never be recalled.

Love each fragment

Love all that has been created by God, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf and every ray of light. Love the beasts and the birds, love the plants, love every separate fragment. If you love each separate fragment, you will understand the mystery of the whole resting in God.

~Fyodor Dostoevsky

Photo credit: Ed Roth, Kalamazoo

love changes us

Graceful Gratitude

I've been thinking a lot about gratitude lately, and after reading Keren's most recent post it came to mind again.

Grateful. Graceful. Full of grace. I wonder, sometimes, how grateful God is. Maybe God is gratefulness becuase God is graceful, full of grace.

It's almost too much to imagine...God being grateful. God saying "thank you." Not that God needs to be grateful or owes us any word of thanks. It's just that God's overflow of grace (it seems to me) would abound with gratitude for our companionship, our friendship, our love. And just maybe God's gratitude is expressed through us as we express our gratitude gracefully.

It’s not how much you’ve got but what is done with what you have

Love Reflections on Luke 17:5-10

Consider this… Our God (who is Love) is a servant God, an exceptional Aide. What if the message is to expect more from our servant, more than status quo - be assured that God/Love can and wants to do more for us than just the minimum. That is called faith.

Faith starts with an expectation of more than the ordinary. Faith is a seminal force – an atom – a seed that when expressed to its potential, can break through to the power of God/Love inside us. Faith can take us places we have never been. The power of God to truly comfort, heal, support, and motivate us to withstand all sorts of difficulties, through and past the mundane to the extraordinary.

Imagine how much gratitude we would express to God if we really let Him do His thing in us.


Peace and Love
Keren

Saint Francis of Assisi

"Most high, glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart. Instill in me a correct faith, a certain hope and a perfect love; a sense and a knowledge, Lord, so that I may do your holy and true command." A Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Tomorrow, October 4th is the Feast Day of St. Francis. You will probably see a lot about him on the internet, and you may know all of this anyway. I just wanted to give him a little Love from the TLIO site also. St. Francis was joyfully in Love with God and all of God’s Creation. He embraced the connection and communion of all Creation and called everything in Creation (from people, birds, animals, the Sun, even Death) his Brother or Sister. He chose to live in poverty and purity; he gave assistance to the poor and sick; and basically lived in imitation of Jesus.

He is the patron saint of animals and animal welfare organizations among other things. Many churches have Blessing of Pets on October 4th or the closest Sunday to the 4th. Bailey and Loretta (a couple of nobody-cats who live with us) would have to go to work with me first to be able to go be blessed at my church tomorrow evening – not going to happen. I’ll have to bring some holy water home for them. Him and I get so much love and laughter from these two, they are blessings to us every day of the year.

People of the Love

As the day fades, I contemplate
the feeling of together I have found here.
No longer struggling to walk alone.
Maybe your hand will help me stand again,
maybe my shoulder will dry your eyes.
A friend I found, an arm to lean on
a heart of understanding and encouragement.
Once I felt as a stranger in a land which was not my home
a place where I followed strange rules meant to exclude.
Then one day I looked out a window, set foot out a door, mesmerized.
I saw another world existing outside the walls,
out among the people.
At first I was alone, then one stepped up, and two and more...
Now we stand side by side to face this future,
seeking a Place of Love long lost in history,
taking steps to move forward and beyond, embracing the other.
Some days that which we left behind will be hard to bear,
other days we will rejoice.
There is a Love here among us
in the winds that blow and embers that glow
and where the Spirit resides,
in us, rather than in a rulebook...
What I lost was so great, and yet
because I lost a place
I found my people.