I've got a brand new adornment!

This is an idea 5 years in the making, long deliberated over and recently with the help of Rachel K. has been put first onto paper, and then onto my skin.  :)  It's far from finished, but the outline is now complete.  We'll do all the shading over the next 2 months and when it's all done I'll post a good finished picture. For now you can just envision the whole project in your minds.      

Amy Robertson Griffin, thanks for being my snap shot taker and my moral support!  And for not laughing at my whining and wincing.  I'll be there with you when you get yours!

All things come full circle

Pertinent observations in these transitional days (and what days aren't?):

1. Today's date, March 15th, marks spring planting here in this southern temperate zone.
2. All frost, in reasonable hypothesis, is waiting now until November.
3. The organic material remnants from last year's abundant harvest now enrich the earth in their decay. (Death smells so sweet when it is of plant life. Go for a walk in the woods, dig about 1/2 an inch below the surface debris to the first soft soil and tiny bits of leaves and scoop some up. Then smell it with your eyes closed. )
4. Growth has crept in so gradually and now I anticipate it's inevitable bursting forth upon God's ready ground.

A friend reminded me so gracefully in a recent time of painful self-discovery and spiritual development, that all things have their season.

Now I further that message of truth and hope:

For everything there is a season,
a time for every activity under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant and a time to harvest.
A time to kill and a time to heal.
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to cry and a time to laugh.
A time to grieve and a time to dance.
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
A time to search and a time to quit searching.
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear and a time to mend.
A time to be quiet and a time to speak.

All you saints, Shalom.

rummaging and ransacking

Since then it's been a book you read in reverse so you understand less as the pages turn;

or a movie so crass and awkwardly cast

...even I could be the star.

I have had some manifold emotional/spiritual/relational struggles in which, by grace, tiny seeds have been planted. I know there's opportunity for tremendous growth.

We're all so damn wounded. Our pasts are littered with the deep subconscious wreckage of life with other wounded humans. And this wreckage in our histories is made manifest in our present. In a desperate need to please, in insecurity, in fear, in megalomania, in defensiveness, in the need to control, in dishonesty, in depression, in a quick temper, in self-loathing we see evidence that we're wretchedly damaged, impossible people. We have each incurred a fatal wound and we reel and stagger about disfigured, trying to keep all our insides from falling out, and as we slip and stumble all over one another we perpetuate the terrible mess we're in. Yet it's not all our fault. All this is the natural outcome for one born to insecure, controlling, dishonest, depressed, quick-tempered, self-loathing, megalomaniac parents- for one born into a wounded world filled with other wounded individuals. ...Some call it "fallen."

And we're hurt and therefore we hurt others. We're sinful, so we sin.

Personally, I get so tired of my seemingly hopeless self and all my tendencies of destruction and all my efforts at becoming something better. And lately it has seemed like an exercise in futility.

But--oh, what an important preposition! --we are loved, and so we too are capable of love. I am of the opinion that it is by the continual, painstaking process of realizing that we are loved, of believing it, understanding it, and coming to trust that Love, that we will be continually and painstakingly healed. Healed and free to become healers and lovers. And I call this sanctification.




Octember.

Shalom.

Hosanna

Oh victorious One


You lead lead me to waters and pastures so green

and life bursts forth

With wonder and fear you knit me together

May God be gracious to us

and make His ways known upon His fields so green


lets sing for joy



No I will not be in want.

settling

a few things:

this week I have had:

• crazy dreams (in an odd continuing sequence)
• work- very hard, dirty, meaningful work.
• an [accidental] custard pie (which was delicious)
• lots and lots of shit (goat, chicken, cow, rabbit, turkey, human...)
• an overture to [self] illumination
• thoughts on new body artwork.

I've had lessons in:

• keeping things out of babies' mouths
• humility
  
• heartache
  
• receiving comfort from the One who loves
• material for sacrifice (matters of the heart and spirit)
  
• living with myself
• living with silence
• what great simplicity it is to live the Christian life. (complications)
  

|DBLyoo| {ayCH} [Awre] (ayie)

"I will provide a homeland for my people, planting them in a secure place..."

So, this is it.

specultaion

"I am afflicted by all Your waves," "be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted," "Your hand of affliction was heavy upon me," ... humble your servant."

Spreading its fingers throughout the pages of Hebrew songs is the ever present cry to God concerning one's affliction and the dual request that one be made more humble. This word, this terrible Hebrew word, is the same word. I've spent all morning searching it out in the songs and poetry of the Old Testament. When David and others ask, "Yahweh, humble me," it is request for affliction from the Lord. Why would the psalmists desire this?

I have one speculation-

When the affliction you receive is from the Lord, you are safe. You have nothing to fear. If I ask for God to give me humility, to bring upon me His affliction, I will endure. I can then look at anything that the world might bring my way, whatever Satan may try me with, and fearlessly, scoffingly, say, "bring it on."

"In God I have put my trust; I will not be afraid. What can mere man do to me?"

The 30th Day of Lent

Communion

Bread and Wine, Body and Blood.

Christ's passion begins in the garden.

Here, for the first time, He does not want to be alone with God and seeks protection among his friends. Protection from whom? "Remove this cup from me," spare me this suffering- what suffering? His passion begins here where His request is not heard, His prayer not answered but by divine silence. There, alone, while his friends sleep, He begins His suffering- suffering from God.

Of course there was the simple human fear of pain, but I believe a quite different fear also laid hold of His soul: the fear that He, the only begotten, could be "forsaken" and "rejected" by the Father. He was not afraid for his life, he was afraid for God. The real torment in Christ's passion, the cup which He was not spared, is the godforsakenness, beginning with the terrible silence in response to his prayer in the garden. And His friends were protected from it by a profound sleep.

He departs with the despairing cry, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?" At the center of the Christian faith is the history of Christ's passion. At the center of this passion is the experience of the godforsaken, God cursed Christ. We shall never get used to this fact, that at the center of all we hear this cry of the godforsaken Christ for God.

Is this the end of all human and religious hope? Or is it the beginning of the true hope which is born again and can no longer be shaken? For me, true hope. Here lies the beginning of life which has death behind it and, therefore, for which death can no longer be feared. At the point where we lose hope and can do nothing more, the lonely, assailed and forsaken Christ waits for us and gives us a share in his holy passion. Our disappointments, our loneliness, our defeats do not separate us from Him; they draw us more deeply into communion with Him. What joy, what hope! Out of our tears, our waiting, our agonized darkness, out of our weeping and wondering, out of our cry, "Why, my God? Why?" He enters, giving us Himself. Not a placebo or good advice, but Himself. Would we rather have our own dry eyes, or His tear-filled ones?

It is here, in our own Gethsemane of spiritual and emotional darkness, where we find the deepest communion with Christ, for it is here where we share in His sufferings, where we must partake of the holy broken body and spilled out blood of Christ. He, only He, can suffice our need. When we join in His death cry, we await with Him our own resurrection. And it is then that we can use our own brokenness as nourishment for others. We are, after all, the body of Christ. This is our true communion for which there is great reason to hope.

shalom

paooc vs. cartoc

peaceful acceptance of ones circumstances
versus
complacency and resignation to ones circumstances

this is my battle today and tomorrow.
While at starbucks (man I wish we had some other option for decent coffee and pleasant atmosphere) our Father led me to join in conversation with a young American preacher and some of his flock. They were beautiful people of peace and love. In them I found the beginnings of an answer to my question about war and peace in the scriptures of the old covenant. Thanks, You. (I'll take comments on this one, please)

Now listen here, y'all: let the prophet tell you a little sumthin 'bout the gray days-
Gray days are a gift. A gift to prepare you for your future. You must learn to say 'thank you' in these gray days, for they are for your training. If the 'thank you' is not spoken and the lesson is not learned, then it must be repeated. Not for everyone is it so. A careful training is necessary only for those who wish to serve Him well. Remember, He is with you.
Oh, yes.

resolve, resilience.

Have you ever smelled a compost pile? When I was a kid we had a vegetable garden and I started one last year, too. The compost pile is grass and leaves, a little sand and dirt, and all the egg shells, vegetable peelings, and "organic matter" you have to throw in. toss in handful of earth worms and let it rot, and you've got compost. After the sun has beat down on that stuff it turns pretty much into a reeking and steaming gunk pile. it's very disgusting but it makes the richest, most fertile, carbon filled soil, the perfect environment for new growth or to enrich and fortify the plants that have been growing.
I wont be so cheesy as to say when life gives you crap, compost it...I just think that God is bringing me to some sort of peace with where I am, and more importantly with who I am and who He is. I struggled seriously today, but He reminds me now that not only is it worth it, but I am worth it.
and you are too.

shalom.