Texas: Too True

By Etta Hulme for Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Spiritually Literate New Year's Resolutions

Ellie at Meditation Matters posted about "Spiritually Literate Resolutions" at the site Spirituality and Practice. The resolutions are copied from there and are authored by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, with links in each one to spots on their website. These are good to ponder and to commit to.

1. I will live in the present moment. I will not obsess about the past or worry about the future.

2. I will cultivate the art of making connections. I will pay attention to how my life is intimately related to all life on the planet.

3. I will be thankful for all the blessings in my life. I will spell out my days with a grammar of gratitude.

4. I will practice hospitality in a world where too often strangers are feared, enemies are hated, and the "other" is shunned. I will welcome guests and alien ideas with graciousness.

5. I will seek liberty and justice for all. I will work for a free and a fair world.

6. I will add to the planet's fund of good will by practicing little acts of kindness, brief words of encouragement, and manifold expressions of courtesy.

7. I will cultivate the skill of deep listening. I will remember that all things in the world want to be heard, as do the many voices inside me.

8. I will practice reverence for life by seeing the sacred in, with, and under all things of the world.

9. I will give up trying to hide, deny, or escape from my imperfections. I will listen to what my shadow side has to say to me.

10. I will be willing to learn from the spiritual teachers all around me, however unlikely or unlike me they may be.

Bring the Light

Cards by Anne can be ordered from her website.

2007 Blogging Year in Review

Visiting Talking to Myself, I saw this idea of reviewing blog entries for the past year. Since I only started blogging in May, my "year" starts there. . . . But, if you try this, your year might even start in January 2007! These are the first sentences of the first post I did for each month in 2007 that I blogged.

May: When I went to the Shalem Regional Retreat in January 2006, I was mesmerized by the icon of the Virgin of Vladimir (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theotokos_of_Vladimir).

June: While writing my talk for the All Saints Episcopal Church women's luncheon, I kept seeing that I didn't see God, but God was in charge!

July: Avoiding walking away from the computer, here is a leap into the latest meme:

Four Jobs I've Had
elementary school teacher
pre-school teacher
typist
coffee shop cook/cashier

August: I love books, and not just Harry Potter books.

September: MJ and I returned from Austin late this afternoon, driving through sunshine, cloudy skies, and sometimes rain.

October: October 1st, and that's what I think I should be seeing--but no hills here on the coastal plain of south Texas and no autumn colors.

November: Thanks to my eldest daughter AE nudging me, here is the announcement that my youngest daughter completed her application to college today!

December: I love books!

This was an easy way "to look back" over the year--kind of a "review." Try it and see what you end up with, especially if you've been blogging for the entire 2007 year.

We're all together

Christmas reminds us that it is not enough to bring God into our hearts. When God comes, God never comes alone. Jesus asks us to take in his strange friends, his dispossessed and uprooted children, his unpopular causes and projects.

~~Doris Donnelly

Almost that time!

By Bob Erskine for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington

Little Prayers

“Any normal person can develop a habit of making every glance at another a gentle pressure of prayer, until, at last, the whole day is as full of little prayers as the sky is full of stars. There develops a sweet flowing into us from God, and an endless flowing out toward humanity. The quiet rhythm of heaven can be ours in the midst of a crowded, troubled, and desperate world. And the terrible world itself gradually changes around us when we live in His peace.”

Frank C. Laubach, Prayer: The Mightiest Force in the World, pp. 90-91

Let us pray that this may be so.

Seven Lies

Wyld tagged me for this game of lying or (more politely) of telling seven untrue things about me, which may be fun or not. . . .

1.
I have run and completed the Boston Marathon five times.

2. I have had to hide my ancestry, which comes from the same line as Werner Eiselen, the man who designed apartheid in South Africa.

3. I originally had the idea of selling sagebrush on the internet, but the idea was stolen from me by my sister's husband's girl friend's father, who lives in Alaska.

4. I wrote the book "Gazillions of Gnats," which was a flop because of

5. I have the second sight and have predicted such things as Elizabeth Taylor's many divorces, the rise of inflation, and Alaska becoming a state, but I never foresaw there being two Bushes in the White House--only an increase in rose bushes.

6.

Our house is made of tires and bottles, which I constructed in my spare time.

7. I teach skateboarding to mothers.

I tag anyone who wants to live in fantasy. . . .

Transformation

Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.
– Bhagavad Gita

"With infinite tenderness, the Lord lets it dawn on us only gradually that we are not separate, that we belong entirely to him. If this realization were to come overnight, ordinary people like you and me would not be able to withstand it; it would be more than our nervous systems could bear. That is why the Lord is so gentle with us; he spreads the transformation from separateness to unity out over many years so that all these changes in the mind and body can take place gradually. Often we are not even aware they are taking place until we look back and remember how we were some years before.

"We should not ask when illumination will come. We should have a patient impatience to reach the goal. Finally, after many years, no matter what our past has been, we will begin to live in the light that knows no night. The temple may have been dark for a thousand years, but once the lamp is lit, every corner will be ablaze with light. "

~~Eknath Easwaran

The Thought for the Day is today's entry from Eknath Easwaran's Words to Live By. (Copyright 1999 and 2005 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation.)

Try LookPink!

My daughter AE sent me a link to a new search engine that raises revenues to pay for free mammograms for women. I put a link to it to the top right.

The lookPink Search Engine was founded to help offer free mammograms to women in need - women for whom early detection would not otherwise be possible. It was officially launched in November 2006, and hopefully the site will establish itself as a leader in online activism and in the fight to prevent breast cancer deaths.

The lookPink Search Engine provides a feel-good way to help promote awareness and prevent breast cancer deaths every day. We provide top-class search results while contributing search revenues to support free mammograms for women in need.

The site uses the Yahoo search engine, so it's up to you to decide what to use. It just seems like a good idea to contribute to mammograms for underprivileged women.

Silence by Shusako Endo

If you have not read Silence, I urge you to do so. It is a profound, disturbing, and beautifully written book about a Portuguese priest in Japan in 1614 when the few Christian converts there were persecuted. He struggles throughout with the silence of God.


I was reminded of this book when I saw a link to an article "Japan's 'Hidden Christians' Face Extinction," which is about the few remaining descendants of those Christian converts from the 16th and 17th Centuries.


Amy Welborn writes about the author:

"Shusaku Endo (1923-1996) used these themes in his many novels and short stories. Endo, baptized at the age of eleven because his mother had turned to the faith in the wake of personal difficulties, described his Catholicism as “a kind of ready-made suit…I had to decide either to make this ready-made suit fit my body or get rid of it and find another suit that fitted…”

"As a Christian child in Japan, Endo was taunted by his peers for his religion. As a student come to France after World War II to study Catholic novelists, his faith was irrelevant to those who may have shared it, but who deplored him nonetheless because he was Japanese. It seemed, at that point, that it would have to be the suit that changed – it brought him nothing but suffering.

"But on the way back to Japan from Europe, Endo visited Palestine. In walking where Jesus himself had, he came to understand that the Christianity he had known was incomplete, for it had never revealed to him the Jesus who had lived, suffered and died for the outcast. It was this Jesus, he realized, who could reach beyond culture and connect with the Japanese soul."

~~~~~~

This is such a monumental book that I need to re-read it. It is not easy to read, but I highly recommend it. Here is a quote to give you a glimpse of the imagery Endo uses about harsh circumstances:

"As I pushed open the wet door, the song of the birds broke in from the trees like the rising of a fountain. Never before had I felt so deeply the sheer joy of being alive. We sat down near the hut and took off our kimonos. In the seams of the cloth the firmly entrenched lice looked just like white dust, and as I crushed them one by one with a stone I felt an inexpressible thrill of delight. Is this what the officials feel when they capture and kill Christians?"

Home Is Where Your Heart Is

The transition to adulthood for one's children is what parents desire. It is a revelation for me to see myself on the other side--as one of the parents to be visited and left behind. I see that my adult children come"home" for some holidays, like Christmas, and I also see that they are glad to return to their own homes, which are their own not their parents'. This is the way it should be, I think.

I remember feeling this way and wishing I hadn't stayed so long at my parents' home, especially after my mother had died and only my dad was left. My father was a difficult person to be around. Three days would have been an ideal visit, which did not seem feasible when spending all the money to fly from Texas to Washington State and back again. I knew we would have had easier visits if I had lived closer and could drop in and leave on the same day. That would have been much more comfortable for my dad, for me, and for my children.

Having one's nuclear family living nearby seems unlikely for us. I know one family that grew up here in Corpus Christi, and the parents and four children with their families live in a three-block radius of each other! That seems quite unusual. My husband's family has his parents and two siblings living in Bellingham, WA, with another living in Seattle, and CB way down here in Texas. I guess the pattern of staying together was broken with him moving away and with me coming from a military family that always was coming and going. Now our children are following in our footsteps.

CB and I are lucky that DC and wife AA live only four hours away--in Austin. And son BJ is in his trailer with his dog Troy about 1 1/2 hours east of us. That's pretty close compared to the distance CB and I have lived away from our families in WA State. Only daughter AE and KA live in Seattle, which makes them living in closer proximity to CB's family than he is!

This holiday season, I am seeing my children leave us and they are happy to do so. That's the way it should be, but it's harder for me to let go of them than I'd realized. With AE leaving for the Northwest tomorrow, I see her eagerly packing, but I notice that with a little pang of regret that she is happily going away. Still, I'm glad, because she's going home to be with her beloved KA. That is the way it ought to be.

"Home is where the heart is"--and that's where your special loved one is, too. I'm glad that two of my adult children have partners to love. At least, BJ has his puppy to love!

Light

"The stars have no voice, no way to herald the news of God, but they have something greater than words—they shine in darkness. And those who have eyes to see follow the light right into the presence of Jesus. Can you imagine how the world would be if more of us acted like stars pointing the way to God? If our spirits were so filled with light, that others could find their way to God simply by following our light?"

To read the rest of the article by Renee Miller, go here.

Forgiveness Is a Gift

"And ultimately forgiveness is a gift of grace rather than an act of will. I have to be willing to forgive, but I cannot will myself to forgive. I can forgive with my mind, but forgiveness is finally a matter of the heart. And the forgiveness of the heart comes from God, not from me. My part in it is to be willing to accept it. One test which indicates whether or not forgiveness has really taken place is to look at whatever it is that needs to be forgiven and see if it still hurts. If it does, forgiveness has not yet happened. But I have also learned, and I have learned it through pain, that I must be patient with myself. Just as my body is going to need more time to complete its healing from physical trauma of the accident, so my heart, my spirit, also need time, and I, ever impatient, must be patient with myself."

~~Madeleine L'Engle

I am grateful for Christmas

We were so lucky to have all our children home with us this Christmas. It had almost seemed like son BJ would have to work and be away from us, but he drove here today and left a little while ago to return home with his puppy Troy. AE made the long trip from Seattle to be with us, and I am glad she'll be with us for two more days. Son DC and his wife AA brought laughter to our home; they go back to their new house tomorrow. MJ will stay with us to start her high school varsity soccer practice on Friday.

We shared many gifts today, with great surprises galore. A sweet present from AE when she and partner KA went to Hurricane Ridge in WA State was a fragile, silver leaf for the tree:

December 25

We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all Eternity. . . . But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.
– Meister Eckhart

"The Lord of Love, immortal and infinite, comes as a divine incarnation in times of great crisis to rescue mankind from disaster. In age after age, whenever violence and hatred threaten the world, the Lord comes down to inspire and protect those who turn to him, who live in harmony with the law of unity. He comes to protect such people from the heavy odds ranged against them, and to reestablish peace on earth and good will among all.

"Yet there is another level on which this divine birth can take place. Every one of us has this choice: shall I prepare for the divine birth to take place in my consciousness by abolishing my own selfishness? It is up to you and me to keep our doors open, to put up a little sign, “Ready for receiving an incarnation.” But our house must not be cluttered up. It must be empty of selfishness and self-will. Only then can the blessed child be born in our humble hearts. "

The Thought for the Day is today's entry from Eknath Easwaran's Words to Live By.(Copyright 1999 and 2005 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation.)

What Love Is Born

Episcopal Church and Visual Arts

Blessed Christmas Wishes

The Risk of Birth, Christmas (1973--and now)

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war & hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honour & truth were trampled by scorn--
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn--
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

~~Madeleine L'Engle

Silence of the Holy Place

"What deadens us most to God's presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort, as the huge monk in cloth of gold put it, than being able from time to time to stop that chatter including the chatter of spoken prayer. If we choose to seek the silence of the holy place, or to open ourselves to its seeking, I think there is no surer way than by keeping silent.

"God knows I am no good at it, but I keep trying, and once or twice I have been lucky, graced. I have been conscious but not conscious of anything, not even of myself. I have been surrounded by the whiteness of snow. I have heard a stillness that encloses all sounds stilled the way whiteness encloses all colors stilled, the way wordlessness encloses all words stilled. I have sensed the presence of a presence. I have felt a promise promised.

"I like to believe that once or twice, at times like those, I have bumbled my way into at least the outermost suburbs of the Truth than can never be told but only come upon, that can never be proved but only lived for and loved."

~~Frederick Buechner

And sometimes I know this, like Buechner. There is a holiness that I cannot express but can sometimes know. What a grace to fall upon me.