It occurs to me…

“Because the holy things we need for healing and sustenance are almost always the same as the ordinary things in front of us.”  Accidental Saints Nadia Bolz-Weber

This rings true to me.  Yet, as I say that, I recognize that much of life is spent looking for the next new thing that will make life complete.  Advertisement is of course built on that pitch.  The new car, the new phone, this product or that, this medication or that.  If only you had [fill in the blank] it could be you in this picture of the smiling family, the good looking significant other, the couple holding hands on a porch, each in separate tubs (really!) or walking on the beach in all white clothing (come on, who wears all white on the beach?)

Advertising and that voice inside my head aside, all I really need for healing and sustenance is always what is in front of me.  Which brings to mind this, apologies to the Stones.  You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you HAVE what you need.

Photo taken yesterday on Lady Bird Lake in Austin

I am grateful for insight.

Life rolls along pretty well with me just “knowing things.”  When I turn a faucet handle, water comes out.  When winter comes it gets colder.  It gets dark at night.  Mostly, golf balls I hit curve to the right.  These things I know to be true, but if I am honest, I have to admit I don’t really understand them.  I don’t know the “why” or I know it only in a very general sense.  There is a pump or water tower that creates pressure.  The relative position of the sun and earth.  A flawed swing.

But every now and then I am graced with insight – a knowing beyond the superficial, a knowing not only that something is, but also how or why it is, how it is designed, assembled – how it works.

Too much of this insight , of course, would make me difficult to get along with – God knows this in his infinite wisdom.  So individually, He gives me only limited insight, limited knowledge, lest I become intolerable (or even more so).  This, of course, seems unfair.  Why doesn’t he trust me with knowing it all!  (See the “intolerable” reference above.)  It occurs to me that perhaps, just perhaps, He sprinkles this knowledge around to keep us from being intolerable, yes, but also thinking that somehow we may pool our knowledge and insight to collectively figure things out.

A piece from Welcome Morning by Anne Sexton:

“All this is God, right here in my pea-green house each morning, and I mean, though often forget, to give thanks, to faint down by the kitchen table in a prayer of rejoicing as the holy birds at the kitchen window peck into their marriage or seeds.

So while I think of it, let me paint a thank-you on my palm for this God, this laughter in the morning, lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard, dies young.”

“Joy is what happens when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things are.”         Marianne Williamson

I love the subtlety of this quote.  Yes, joy happens (or can happen) when things are good, but the significant part of the quote to me is the “when we allow ourselves to recognize” part.  Stated another way, I often get tied up in this other side of the coin:

“Frustration happens when I fail to allow myself to recognize how bad things are.”

It is that inability, perhaps sometimes stubborn refusal, to see how good things are that creates anger, frustration, stress, and any other bad byproduct I want to name.  I am not channeling Pollyanna here.  At times bad things happen, but there is almost always a duality there, an “other side of the coin” that can emerge in the consciousness if I let it.

“Joy is what happens when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things are.”

Here’s to joy.

“Peace has her victories no less renowned than war.”  John Milton

This seems a ripe peach of a quote to bite into the day following MLK Jr. Day, given his lifelong fupport of peaceful protest.

Victory is generally perceived as something one achieves after a battle, and it is (though there must, necessarily be loss there, too), but the battle does not always involve armies and an arsenal of weapons, nor does it always involve sports teams or games.  Still, peace has, and it will continue to have, victories, but (apologies to Milton) they tend to be less renowned, or at least harder to identify, and less set in stone.

The march into Selma over the Edmund Pettus bridge was a victory, though it came on the heels of Bloody Sunday.  The elimination of “Colored” bathrooms and water fountains – victories.  Voting rights, housing rights, employment rights, all victories.  The election of an African American President (regardless of party affiliation) was a victory.  But still, there doesn’t seem to be a “renowned” VICTORY on the racial front.  There will be no signed document one can point to as a “peace treaty.”  (The Emancipation Proclamation doesn’t seem to have done the job.)  There will be no final score printed in the paper.  The battle goes on.  But as King Jr. noted, it is always the right time to do the right thing — renowned or not.

“No one comes into your life unless you reach out to them.”

Joan Chittister, Uncommon Gratitude

I breezed through this sentence on first reading, but the import of it caught up with me a sentence or two later, so I went back to it.  The sentence comes after Chittister describes several characters from her old neighborhood — the woman down the hall with diabetes, the deaf young man down the street, the man who sat on a stool in an alley….  Each is part of her past, but also part of her present, part of her future – part of what makes her what she is.

Some of these people she actually had a direct relationship with, while others were simply regularly observed.  It occurs to me that the “reaching out” noted above can occur in various ways.  Yes, it can occur directly, in the form of communication or interaction, but people we never meet or communicate directly with can also “come into our lives” in various ways – if we let them.

The guy on the street corner with the “will work for food” sign is certainly reaching out, but doesn’t really “come into my life” unless I pause a moment and contemplate him, his presence, his reality, and perhaps smile at him.  The child on the woman’s shoulder, facing me on the airport’s moving sidewalk “comes into my life” without a word and sends the message to slow down a bit and take a deep breath.  I have only “reached out” long enough to lock eyes and receive the message.  And of course there are those folks I will interact and communicate with, presenting ample opportunity to “reach out” and “come into my life.”

All of which I guess begs the questions: Of the people I encounter today, who will I reach out to?  Who will come into my life and become part of my present, past, and future?

“We are not stars of the show.  We are simply part of the cast extras called humanity.”  Joan Chittister, Uncommon Gratitude

I read this today in conjunction with Oswald Chambers’ discussion of Isaiah 6:8:

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’  And I said. ‘Here I am.  Send me.’”

As Chambers notes, it is easy to make two incorrect assumptions here.  It is easy to read into this that God was calling Isaiah specifically, and to think that what makes Isaiah special is that he stepped up and answered the call.  The first wrong assumption is dealt with by a more careful reading.  God did not call Isaiah specifically.  Rather, he tossed out an open invitation in a question —   “Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?”  Using Chittister’s terms, God was calling out to the “cast of extras” to see who would answer.  Isaiah did.  As to the second assumption, what makes Isaiah special is not that he answered the call but that he could hear the call in the first place.  God’s call is out there, is always out there, and is always calling.  The limitation is that I only hear it when I have put myself in a position to hear it.

I read this today in conjunction with Oswald Chambers’ discussion of Isaiah 6:8:

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’  And I said. ‘Here I am.  Send me.’”

As Chambers notes, it is easy to make two incorrect assumptions here.  It is easy to read into this that God was calling Isaiah specifically, and to think that what makes Isaiah special is that he stepped up and answered the call.  The first wrong assumption is dealt with by a more careful reading.  God did not call Isaiah specifically.  Rather, he tossed out an open invitation in a question —   “Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?”  Using Chittister’s terms, God was calling out to the “cast of extras” to see who would answer.  Isaiah did.  As to the second assumption, what makes Isaiah special is not that he answered the call but that he could hear the call in the first place.  God’s call is out there, is always out there, and is always calling.  The limitation is that I only hear it when I have put myself in a position to hear it.  As Chambers notes: If we let the Spirit of God bring us face to face with God, we too shall hear something aking to what Isaiah heard, the still small voice of God; and in perfect freedom will say, ‘Here am I; send me.’”

As Chambers notes: If we let the Spirit of God bring us face to face with God, we too shall hear something akin to what Isaiah heard, the still small voice of God; and in perfect freedom will say, ‘Here am I; send me.’”

Photo taken over (so my phone tells me) La Jara, Colorado on a flight headed to Portland.

Clouds

A recent flight gave me yet another opportunity to look at the clouds from above, somewhere over Oregon.  One can’t (at least I can’t) dwell on clouds long without Judy Collins’ voice coming in singing “Both Sides Now,” a classis song actually written by Joni Mitchell.  You know the line, so go ahead and sing it now so it will be in your head all day:

“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all”

But what stuck in my head today was the line just before that:

“So many things I would have done, but clouds got in my way”

I don’t know why, but it just stuck in my head – how many times do I let clouds get in my way?  Of course, a cloud has little substance, just some moisture you can fly through, even walk through.  And actual clouds never stop us from doing anything.  No one says: “No, I think I won’t go ______ today, its too cloudy.”  Still, I get Mitchell’s point – “so many things I would have done, but clouds got in my way.”  All of which leads me to the simple question: What clouds are in my way now, preventing me from doing____?  And can’t I just walk through them?