Compassion--worth watching!

Thank you to Choralgirl.

Let It Go

let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers - you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear

so comes love

~ e. e. cummings ~

(Complete Poems 1904-1962)

To subscribe to Panhala for such poems, send a blank email to
Panhala-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

How to help in the world we live in??

Father John Dear has an excellent column about nonviolence today.

"Dorothy Day concluded her biography of Thérèse by comparing the power of Thérèse's Little Way with the atomic bomb. "Is the atom a small thing? And yet what havoc it has wrought. Is her 'Little Way' a small contribution to the life of the Spirit? It has all the power of the Spirit of Christianity behind it. It is an explosive force that can transform our lives and the life of the world, once put into effect." According to Thérèse of Lisieux and Dorothy Day of New York, the smallest act of willing love, united to the God of love, is more powerful than the atomic bomb itself, more explosive than a nuclear weapon. It is a spiritual explosion of love that disarms, heals, transforms, and reconciles."

Dorothy Day by Robert Lentz, OFM

Go here to read the entire article!

Can't sleep!

I've read, tossed and turned, read some more, and here am on the computer, too tired to be very coherent. I have to be up early so that I can drive a friend to the airport. Then there is the Wisdom Class where we're discussing Rohr's The Naked Now, followed by three hours of EFM, my third year. I foresee sleepiness in the middle of EFM, around 3 o'clock.

Caesar's attributes

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said of all this:

"When the Western World accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered; and the received text of Western theology was edited by his lawyers. The brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly. The deep idolatry of the fashioning of God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian and Roman imperial rulers was retained. The church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar."

Brother Robert Lentz retreat

Brother Robert Lentz

I went to Houston this weekend for a short silent retreat with Brother Robert Lentz, who is famous for his contemporary icons. This was my first visit to the Cenacle House, which is run by six Cenacle Sisters. It was a wonderful experience in all respects, especially the speaker. I will write more about his talks in the coming week.

I went with four dear friends from Corpus Christi. We were part of a group of 15 who came for the silent retreat, with talks by the Franciscan Friar. The 4-hour rides to and from Houston were interesting and funny, with laughter throughout.

Dorothy Day by Robert Lentz, OFM

IRONY!

AE and KA gave husband CB a t-shirt with the chemical sign of iron. He likes to wear it to his chemistry class (chem. for nursing students) on the night of the first test. That was last night at the local community college.

CB says that on the first test he always has a question about Fe/Iron. The students rarely get that question correct, even though the answer is on their professor's shirt! (And last night's exam was no exception.)

I think it's cute. Too bad CB's students don't notice.

Prayer

”Prayer is thus the search for a relationship. ‘My God, if you insist, make me know you,’ exclaimed Pascal, and that will be our exclamation as our inner longing for God gradually wakens to the fact that without him we are nothing. When things get to this stage in prayer, instead of thinking that something might be wrong with our prayer, we should recognize in it a real sign of growth, stability, and maturity. It is a cause for great thanksgiving when we are prepared to make the leap of faith at the call of God into a way of praying that may seem dark and meaningless, but which, in reality, is an invitation of love to greater intimacy. This is the reality of the situation, though we ourselves may be aware of nothing except our inability to formulate our deepest longings. In this relationship we must be childlike, believing that God knows the inner secrets of our hearts and that there is no need for us to formulate them in words.” (6)

Mother Mary Clare SLG. Encountering the Depths: Prayers, Solitude, and Contemplation. Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1993

Wishing. . . .for LGBT rights

I wish that this could legally happen for my daughter and her partner:

From The Huffington Post

CB and I, plus our other children, love AE and KA very much and would love to celebrate their marriage.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AE and KA are registered as legal partners in WA State. However there is a referendum on the November state ballot that could outlaw this egalitarian provision of WA State. I wish I could vote in WA. However, CB and I could donate to the campaign and so can you!

To KEEP legal partners in WA Referendum 71 must be approved!

About Referendum 71:
"There are more than 12,000 people in Washington state registered in domestic partnerships. Gay and lesbian families need domestic partnership laws to provide essential protections for their families. Families with children need the protections provided by domestic partnership laws, especially when a parent dies. Seniors need the protections provided by domestic partnership laws. For seniors, domestic partnerships mean that their hard-earned social security, military or pension benefits are not put at risk. Police officers and firefighters who risk their lives to protect our communities need domestic partnership laws if they are hurt or killed in the line of duty, so that their families are taken care of by their pension or workers' compensation."

Remembering my parents' spirituality

I visited a dear friend out in Sandia, TX today, where she and her husband live on family land in a big ranch house. We are in the same spiritual directors' peer group and have become spiritual friends and sometime directors for each other.

As I was leaving, I happened to mention how my mother liked to visit psychics, and so LP said that must have been formative for me, because I always considered my youth as unchurched. With that interesting observation, I am thinking about my parents' spirituality (or not).

My parents did not go to church, but took me to Sunday School starting in third grade at Camp Pendleton, CA. One of them dropped me off and picked me up afterwards. This started a trend so that I joined a very small youth group (of about 4-6 junior high school kids) at my dad's next station--at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan. I just remember going to non-denominational churches on Marine and Navy bases, but that's only two bases, so maybe my memory is faulty as I may not really have been "unchurched." (I did not feel "churched.")

In my faith story, I relate how I attended Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in Bellingham, WA in 11th grade. Until now I thought that was my first church--it was the first time I regularly attended worship services, still without my parents.

But about my parents' spirituality:

• My father never talked about God or went to church. I know he was brought up as a Baptist in a tiny town in Arkansas during the Depression. The only story I remember about church is him telling how he and his friends paid some black kids nickels to fake conversions in their church. They watched, laughing, outside. That seemed to indicate his perspective of religion--fake. But he did not seem afraid to die in 2002.
  

• My mother taught me to sing "Away in the Manger" every Christmas when I was little and also how to say the Lord's Prayer. Her mother had been a Christian Scientist, and so my mother would talk about her mother's faith and how she read the Bible daily. My mother would tell me as she and I aged that "someday she would start going to church," but she never did. She enjoyed reading afterlife stories and about psychic's predictions. When we lived in Bellingham, we would go and have our tea leaves read in Vancouver, BC. And when I was in college and beyond, we would visit psychics every so often when I came back for visits.
  

I don't remember that much about psychic visits. The last time I went to one was when DC, our first child, was our only one, so that was before 1982. Several times I was told that I had a strong guardian angel. I still remember that, but don't know if I even believe in angels.

I know my mother believed in God and an afterlife; she also believed in ghosts. I don't know if she prayed though I do know that she practiced transcendental meditation. When she was dying of pancreatic cancer in 1992, she told me how she had felt surrounded by light and reassured that she would be all right after a time of meditation. She took that to mean she was not going to die, but I knew it was a message that she would live on after death.

It is true that each person has spirituality. It is good to acknowledge that in my parents.

Friday Five: Where on the Stairs?

Thinking of your childhood as a stairway, when did you feel (and how did you feel then)

1. at the bottom?
When I had to tell kids that I went to TWO years of kindergarten, because they always asked me if I'd FLUNKED! I didn't--I moved from WA State to VA after one year of kindergarten, and when I got to VA my birthday in October was too late for me to start first grade.

2. at the top?
When I was in second grade and could read the colored (Red, blue, etc.) fairy tale books on my own, because I was such a good reader. I loved reading and reading. (Still do.)

3. halfway?
The one semester I was in a 3/4 grades combination class before going into 5th grade was my halfway period between 3rd and 5th grades. A new elementary school had been built, so those of us living on Camp Pendleton, CA were sent there. That's where I was put into the 3/4 combination class; it was also where I was tested during various class periods to determine whether I could skip 4th grade, though I did not know that until later.

(So if you look at #1, you can see that I ended up where I would have been if I had not had to repeat kindergarten because of my age! Thus, I was 17 when I graduated from high school and started college.)

4. At this point in your life, where would you place yourself on your own stairway?
I keep moving, but never seem to get to the top. I like to think I'm where "it isn't up" and "it isn't down", though I can creep lower on the stairs when I criticize myself for not getting those papers done for my master's degree!

5. Identify a place for you that "isn't really anywhere" but "somewhere else instead."

That definitely occurs when I'm reading, especially books like Harry Potter! Sometimes when I am in prayer, time can be like that, too.

And here's the poem this Friday Five was based upon:

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up,
And isn't down.
it isn't in the nursery,
it isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!"

— A. A. Milne

Peace Planet prayers

Peace Planet: Light for Our World is a spiral book with short prayers written for each country of the world in alphabetical order. It was composed by Nan Merril (author of Psalms for Praying) and Barbara Taylor.

Here is the prayer for Bangladesh:

Prayer,
deeply rooted in silence,
with hearts open wide,
brings Light out of darkness
needed somewhere on Earth.

We are asking,
May
Light
flourish on Earth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you are interested in buying Peace Planet prayers, this is the only way I know to do it:

Mail a check for $15.00 to

Friends of Silence
Peace and Prayer Gift Shop
200 Rock Street
Hannibal, MO 63401

For information, email: FriendsOfSilence@sbcglobal.net

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Also posted for Thursday Prayer at RevGal Prayer Pals, where a different prayer is posted every day.

You loved us first

You have first loved us, O God, alas. We speak of it in terms of history, as if you have only loved us first but a single time, rather than that, without ceasing, you have loved us first many times and every day and our whole life through.

When we wake up in the morning and turn our soul to you, you are the first. You have loved us first; if I rise at dawn and at the same time turn my soul towards you in prayer, you are ahead of me; you have loved me first.

When I withdraw from the distractions of the day and turn my soul in thought towards you, you are the first and thus forever. And yet we always speak ungratefully as if you have loved us first only once.

~Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Seeds

Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution.
If you don't have any problems,
you don't get any seeds.

Norman Vincent Peale

I have nothing to write. It's even odd that I do not feel like writing handwritten notes or cards. Definitely no journaling. No original thought at all.

Public Option Explained

Friday Five: PJs

Sophia wrote this week's Friday Five for RevGalBlogPals:

1. What was your favorite sleeping attire as a child? And did you call them pjs, pajamas (to rhyme with llamas), pajamas (to sort of rhyme with bananas), jammies, or ???
I always liked nighties best, with baby-doll pajamas a highlight for awhile in elementary school.

2. Favorite sleepwear put on your own little ones, or perhaps those you babysat? (Bonus points if you made it).
My mother would make pajamas and nighties for my children. Otherwise, I usually bought Sears brand with Winnie the Pooh on them.

3. How about today-do you prefer nightgown, pajamas, undies, or au naturel?
I still like a nightgown, though it's probably a nightshirt.

4. Silky smooth or flannel-y cozy?
In the winter, I like flannel and remember fondly the flannel nightgowns my mother made me until she died in 1992. Being in TX, most of the year I wear cotton nightshirts.

5. Socks or bare feet?
Bare feet in TX.

Bonus: Funny story regarding sleepwear (or the lack thereof).
When my husband had an emergency appendectomy when we had two small children, I had to go and buy him pajamas to wear in the hospital. That was the first and last time he ever wore them.

New Book: CHRISTOPHANY

"Christophany, as I have said, is not a simple extension of christology that attempts to explain--and even understand--the 'fact' of Christ. Since it is more experiential, christophany concentrates its attention on the light in which Christ manifests himself to us. In this way we discover that not only do many of Jesus' statements create scandal by shaking our habits, but they seem to originate in a different vision of the world." (18)

Panikkar, Raimon. Christophany: The Fullness of Man. Tr. Alfred DiLascia. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004. (4th printing 2009)

I am so excited about this book. It is dense, slow, and beautiful. It is a nice accompaniment to Richard Rohr's newest book The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See.

SPAM

Since the weekend I have been deluged with SPAM email. This has not happened to me before to this extent. There are offers for employment, sex, dating, loans, money, free laptops, cell phones, anything you can think of. Most irritating.

I don't know who sold my email address. Blah.

So I am clicking the spam button repeatedly. It's working, because today I looked in the spam folder and there was a screen full of ridiculous messages. It gives me great pleasure to click on "EMPTY SPAM FOLDER."

Will they ever stop bothering me? Maybe I should change my email account name. . . .

Red Lipstick

Bright red lipstick. In fact, a new tube of red lipstick. That's what I immediately remembered when we were asked about our earliest memory in EFM today.

The story I have was told to me so many times that I am unsure about what I actually remember. It was the day I painted the bathroom with lipstick!

When I was 2-3 years old in Lubbock, TX, every Saturday my mother would go shopping and leave me at home with my father. My mother told me that on this particular day, I was dazzled by a brand new tube of red lipstick she used for the first time, before going out.

While I was supposedly napping, my father also took a snooze. Somehow I dragged a chair from the kitchen past him to the bathroom, so that I could reach into the medicine cabinet over the sink. When I found the lipstick, I used the entire tube up by painting the bathroom walls with it.

I don't remember my mother coming home, but she told me years later that she came back to find both my dad and me asleep. She was furious when she discovered the lurid bathroom, but she was angry with my father and not me. Maybe that's why I don't remember the conclusion to the episode.

It is only now, looking back, that I realize my dad slept through the clatter of the chair being pulled along the floor because he had probably been drinking beer before he fell asleep. He always drank a lot of beer; I did not realize he was an alcoholic until I had been away from him (and home) for decades. That seems clear now, but I never noticed it when the story was told to me--I never asked why he did not wake up.

Today I took a catnap.

Tuesday and today

Tomorrow is the start of school days for many children in the US and a continuation for others. For me, it is the beginning of two classes that meet on Tuesdays (10-12 and 1:30-4:30).

Tuesday morning is the Wisdom Class, which is a book study I facilitate. We are starting Richard Rohr's newest book The Naked Now. There are usually about six people who regularly come to this class, but the size will probably double with those interested in this new book. And our meditation (found here) for the beginning of the class is:

I can only fly freely
when I know there is a catcher to catch me.
If we are to take risks,
to be free,
in the air,
in life,
we have to know
that when we come down from it all,
we're going to be caught,
we're going to be safe.
The great hero is the least visible.
Trust the catcher.

— Henri Nouwen

Tuesday afternoon is EFM or Education for Ministry. This is my third year, which will be on church doctrine and history. That reminds me of the "Christian Believer" classes I led when I was at First Methodist. I always found that course invigorating, so this year of EFM should be very interesting.

MJ drove back to San Antonio today, but her older (24 year old) brother BJ (with his dog Troy) stayed on. Poor BJ started feeling sick when he was barbecuing chicken for me around noon. He felt nauseous and dreadful, even feverish. He was gradually feeling better tonight and ate some soup, but then admitted he was aching all over. So I called our doctor, and he is now taking Tamiflu. I hope he feels better soon, so he can return to Houston and his job. (Plus I hope the rest of us don't catch whatever he has. Since he's not coughing, I don't think it's swine flu.)

Change or else

Jim Winkler, General Secretary, General Board of Church & Society writes a column every week for Faith in Action, which shares "News and Views from the United Methodist Board of Church and Society."

This week he wrote about "The Other War."

"A lesson to be learned from these past eight years is that the church of Jesus Christ in the United States must devote itself to changing our intensely angry and violent society to a culture of peace before we destroy ourselves. Right now, destruction is exactly the path we are on."

I so feel he expresses what many of us feel is happening in the the United States. Go here to read the short article.

Bill Moyers Journal

From Bill Moyers' Journal, Sept. 4, 2009:

BILL MOYERS: The editors of THE ECONOMIST magazine say America's health care debate has become a touch delirious, with people accusing each other of being evil-mongers, dealers in death, and un-American.

Well, that's charitable.

I would say it's more deranged than delirious, and definitely not un-American.

Those crackpots on the right praying for Obama to die and be sent to hell — they're the warp and woof of home-grown nuttiness. So is the creature from the Second Amendment who showed up at the President's rally armed to the teeth. He's certainly one of us. Red, white, and blue kooks are as American as apple pie and conspiracy theories.

Bill Maher asked me on his show last week if America is still a great nation. I should have said it's the greatest show on earth. Forget what you learned in civics about the Founding Fathers — we're the children of Barnum and Bailey, our founding con men. Their freak show was the forerunner of today's talk radio.

Speaking of which: we've posted on our website an essay by the media scholar Henry Giroux. He describes the growing domination of hate radio as one of the crucial elements in a "culture of cruelty" increasingly marked by overt racism, hostility and disdain for others, coupled with a simmering threat of mob violence toward any political figure who believes health care reform is the most vital of safety nets, especially now that the central issue of life and politics is no longer about working to get ahead, but struggling simply to survive.

So here we are, wallowing in our dysfunction. Governed — if you listen to the rabble rousers — by a black nationalist from Kenya smuggled into the United States to kill Sarah Palin's baby. And yes, I could almost buy their belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, only I think he shipped them to Washington, where they've been recycled as lobbyists and trained in the alchemy of money laundering, which turns an old-fashioned bribe into a First Amendment right.

Only in a fantasy capital like Washington could Sunday morning talk shows become the high church of conventional wisdom, with partisan shills treated as holy men whose gospel of prosperity always seems to boil down to lower taxes for the rich.

Poor Obama. He came to town preaching the religion of nice. But every time he bows politely, the harder the Republicans kick him.

No one's ever conquered Washington politics by constantly saying "pretty please" to the guys trying to cut your throat.

Let's get on with it, Mr. President. We're up the proverbial creek with spaghetti as our paddle. This health care thing could have been the crossing of the Delaware, the turning point in the next American Revolution — the moment we put the mercenaries to rout, as General Washington did the Hessians at Trenton. We could have stamped our victory "Made in the USA." We could have said to the world, "Look what we did!" And we could have turned to each other and said, "Thank you."

As it is, we're about to get health care reform that measures human beings only in corporate terms of a cost-benefit analysis. I mean this is topsy-turvy — we should be treating health as a condition, not a commodity.

As we speak, Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker, has been fined a record $2.3 billion dollars as a civil and criminal — yes, that's criminal, as in fraud — penalty for promoting prescription drugs with the subtlety of the Russian mafia. It's the fourth time in a decade Pfizer's been called on the carpet. And these are the people into whose tender mercies Congress and the White House would deliver us?

Come on, Mr. President. Show us America is more than a circus or a market. Remind us of our greatness as a democracy. When you speak to Congress next week, just come out and say it. We thought we heard you say during the campaign last year that you want a government run insurance plan alongside private insurance — mostly premium-based, with subsidies for low-and-moderate income people. Open to all individuals and employees who want to join and with everyone free to choose the doctors we want. We thought you said Uncle Sam would sign on as our tough, cost-minded negotiator standing up to the cartel of drug and insurance companies and Wall Street investors whose only interest is a company's share price and profits.

Here's a suggestion, Mr. President: ask Josh Marshall to draft your speech. Josh is the founder of the website talkingpointsmemo.com. He's a journalist and historian, not a politician. He doesn't split things down the middle and call it a victory for the masses. He's offered the simplest and most accurate description yet of a public insurance plan — one that essentially asks people: would you like the option — the voluntary option — of buying into Medicare before you're 65? Check it out, Mr. President.

This health care thing is make or break for your leadership, but for us, it's life and death. No more Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. President. We need a fighter.

That's it for the Journal. I'm Bill Moyers. See you next time.

God and Evolution

"In a world in evolution is there purpose in the universe? The answer must certainly be: Never more so than now. Evolution is, in fact, a great spiritual teacher. We learn from the fossils of the ages that development is most often a slow and uncertain process, a precarious and breakneck experience that demands both time and trust in the future that is God, and in the God of the future. Evolution teaches us that movement from one stage of life to another is often both cumbersome and painful but that the pain is prelude to a better self.

"We learn that failure is a necessary part of life, not its misdoing. It is simply a holy invitation to become more than we are at present. Time is grace and trying is virtue. Struggle is a sign of new life, not a condemnation of this one.

"Evolution shows us that the God of becoming is a beckoning God who goes before us to invite us on, to sustain us on the way, rather than a judging God who measures us by a past we did not shape."

Go here to read the rest of the essay by Joan Chittister.

Irish Commercial

Thanks to my daughter AE.

Stop Genocide!

by Signe Wilkinson

Friday Five: Recharging ourselves

Sally at RevGalBlogPals writes:

A few weeks ago my lap-top battery died, suddenly I found myself looking at a blank screen and was rather relieved to find that it was only the battery and not the whole computer that had failed. This morning a new battery arrived in the post, and suddenly I am mobile again!

After a week with what feels like wall to wall meetings, and Synod looming on the horizon for tomorrow I find myself pondering my own need to recharge my batteries. This afternoon Tim and I are setting off to explore the countryside around our new home, I always find that walking in the fresh air away from phones and e-mails recharges me. But that is not the only thing that restores my soul, so do some people, books, pieces of music etc....

So I wonder what/ who gives you energy?

I need some right now as we are in a rush to drive to San Antonio, so this is quick:

1. Is there a person who encourages and uplifts you, whose company you seek when you are feeling low?

Friends and sometimes my children. Writing helps greatly.

2. How about a piece of music that either invigorates or relaxes you?

I should turn to music more often than I do.

3. Which book of the Bible do you most readily turn to for refreshment and encouragement? Is there a particular story that brings you hope?

Psalms, especially Nan Merrill's translations.

4. A bracing walk or a cosy fireside?

It's too hot right now in TX to think of either. I am learning that turning to God in a time of meditation helps greatly.

5. Are you feeling refreshed and restored at the moment or in need of recharging, write a prayer or a prayer request to finish this weeks Friday Five....

Surprisingly, the email service "Inward/Outward" had a most appropriate prayer this morning:

God rest us.
Rest that part of us which is tired.
Awaken that part of us which is asleep.
God awaken us and awake within us.
Amen

By Michael Leunig

5 Biggest Lies in the Health Care Debate

The latest issue of "Newsweek" has a young Teddy Kennedy on the cover and has an article by Sharon Begley about "The Five Biggest Lies in the Health Care Debate."

1. You'll have no choice in what health benefits you receive.
2. No chemo for older Medicare patients.
3. Illegal immigrants will get free health insurance.
4. Death panels will decide who lives.
5. The government will set doctors' wages.

Go here to read this interesting article.

Their August 14th issue has "Seven Falsehoods about Health Care."

Sept. 2 for different people

I was one of three friends giving a baby shower for the daughter of another friend today. Luckily, DT is a whiz at planning parties and getting things organized so PD and I were go-fers for her, so the party was all ready by 5 o'clock. It was fun, but lots of buzzing and chit-chat that after awhile got me hiding. So tonight I was glad to come home after we cleaned up, to be quiet.

Four hours of teaching, studying, or visiting with a few friends is much easier for me than four hours of "socializing." I'm glad I could be one of the hostesses, but am also pleased that I don't do this very often. It's much easier for me if we don't chit-chat and instead talk about something serious, which isn't exactly the topic for discussion at a baby shower.

Three years ago my son DC married AA. It's a happy memory for us. Today is also the anniversary of Josh, Gannet Girl's son, dying. Her pictures of him on her blog show a fun guy. Wishing his family to remember happy times with Josh and the joy he brought to their family.

Newest Richard Rohr book is out!

I got my copy this afternoon, but am still reading Beloved Dust by Robert Davis Hughes, which was reviewed here. I am very preoccupied by it, even though Rohr's new book is calling my name.

Next Tuesday our Wisdom Class starts again, and The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See by Richard Rohr will be our book to discuss for the next few months. I'll have to start reading it soon.

Gannet Girl asks us to light a candle

Gannet Girl asks us to light a candle--please do!

Light a candle at Gratefulness.Org