I was at my youngest granddaughter’s dedication a few weeks back. A real treat for me and a real symbolic intent by her parents and the church, but I ask what? I ask what does this earth or the church have to add to this gift?
I dare mention, we might remind the earth and the church where this life started and stay in “awe”.
Carry on
The first green beans of the season are special, they can talk. They ” sermonize ” the garden by saying, “that’s right we are here, get us while you can, summer is soon, winter a little later-we are a sign for the coming and we are as real as it will get”.
Amen
The new puppy and the old barn cat (with a brain issue,circles to the right for hours) have come to relate. They are the oddest bed fellows around the place with the best example of getting along with what you got. They have capitalized on their differences, the cat follows the puppy to water and feed more often than not. The cat lets the puppy maul it while whipping all the other farm dogs.
Afflicted or not, no one messes with the “odd cat”, except the puppy-Erasmus!
The interphase, the edge waters, the buffer zone-places where new things can come, even ones never expected. This place where two eco-systems converge is usually unpredictable and may not look like much, but it’s the richest place in life.
Without this “mixing it up”, stagnation is the rule. This small pond by the main barn looks rather “funky”, but the warm temperatures have it busting at the seams growing slimy things, weedy floaters, deep bottom algae-the water meets the land and something beyond them both comes about.
Welcome turbulence at the “edge water”.
This is my mothers “cotton hoe”. I asked my dad for it before he died-it’s my best inheritance piece, it’s worn out by use, not existence time.If I had a garden full of social media platforms, I would weed some out-the first being Facebook. Yes ou can’t truly communicate deep issues like friendship without a “body”. If more is communicated via “presence”, stands to reason language alone ,via the channel this is on, is anemic.
“Let the weeds grow up with the wheat, and when it’s time-you can separate.”
Happy chopping!
“There is place beyond right and wrong, I’ll meet you there”.
There is a Process in play, we came into it by no work of our own and we will leave by no work of our own. One is an inhale and the next natural act is to exhale.Wouldn’t they both be considered sacred? My primary work seems to be awake between breaths-there I find It, meaning.
There are many methods of Process Avoiding, underneath all of them, there is something desiring understanding and compassion. Once judgment is left behind you are left with Now, Process, Kingdom within, the “no longer I that live”.
Maybe it is time to take a stand in the least likely of places. In this country we promote groups, herds in some cases, but every now and then, a stand is needed in a “stand up” way. Maybe, the call comes from inside not from “out there”-the call to intent.
The very idea, the call for a brief stay in a harsh land. Oh my, what if a difference is not made in this brief time? Who are we to judge? Break up the landscape, pull out into boredom where your daily coordinates are to be found, learn you aren’t unique, there have been those before, and there are those are on the way. To exist is hard to preach, but is at the core of the Life Process-change will be evidenced. The outcome of process can’t be pre-determined, but here is the incubator of hope, a necessary and innate ingregient in the mix.
There is no ordinary in the everyday, but there is radical evidence for “something” going on here that request our Presence. If I can be where I am, with who I am, I can recognize my gift of moments-one at a time.
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
Confucius
Thanks be.
Whether we are there are not, there is a flow forward about life. Like birthdays, we can welcome them as leading to something bigger, or we can fight them, either way-we are in it.
Well, is control-the control we imagine-found in nature? I shudder in awe here, other places I just think.
I didn’t get it as a child, where do they go when they leave?
The answers were not sufficient for the love -it hurt, it burned.
The expected order came, grands then parents, now my generation.
They say Mike died-the gentle man, the one who shook his head a lot and defined kind.
Mike would get in your face in a most engaging way, he was a pleasant soul for our time, he was an Aggie, the kind from the Brazos river bottom.
The mystery of death is overtaken by the mystery of love or there is no need for human effort, Mike made an effort that made a better world.
Goodbye Mike.
Spiritual Formation 