A Shoot Will Grow Up

A Shoot Will Grow Up

I am one who loves Christmas and contemplates “how early is too early to start with the music and decorations?” I also don’t want to crowd out Thanksgiving celebrations with too much too soon!  What has emerged over the years to honor both desires, is a genre of music I call “pre-Christmas music,” and just one “pre-Christmas” decoration. This decoration comes out well before Advent. It is a plain gray stump that I set on my counter along with Thanksgiving pumpkins. 

 This stump leads to my pre-Christmas meditation based on Isaiah 11:1:

       A shoot will grow up from the stump of Jesse; a branch will sprout from his roots. 

Being the Beloved

Being the Beloved

“Being the Beloved” is a familiar saying in the Christian tradition and especially among those of us who are spiritual directors.  Yet while I was recently sick with Covid 19--my mind was still clear and not totally jumbled, I did some reading.  In the book Spiritual Direction by Henri Nouwen, Henri used a guided meditation composed by Arthur LeClair.  In a brief form it goes like this:

 

For ten minutes say the words Jesus, You are the Beloved

For another ten minutes say the words, Jesus, I am the Beloved

Finally, say the words, Jesus, we (all) are the Beloved.

A Lavish, Loving God

A Lavish, Loving God

Fall has fallen—earlier sunsets, layered clothing, cooler nights. This evening, I am sitting where a breeze carries a pleasant pine scent through an open window, and motorcycles hum around curves in the county road nearby. The TV is off tonight while my husband and I each work out a Sudoku puzzle. Our Australian Shepherds lie near our feet like throw rugs. An owl makes its clicking sound as it glides past outside hunting rabbits, moles, mice. This brings to mind being startled by a covey of quail erupting from the dogwood hedge beside the sprawling cantaloupe I was watering today. And dinner. Everything but the salmon was from our garden. I notice myself accidentally smiling. Contentment.

Love's Peanut Butter

Love's Peanut Butter

It was a lovely Friday evening at the park with Meeka, my dog. On the walk back to the car, I noticed something on her paws. It was sticky pine sap--on all four paws! She wanted to remove it herself, but I could not let her. Licking and ingesting the sap, and the pebbles and twigs stuck in the sap, was not an option. I needed to help her, but how? She would not let me touch her paws.

The troublesome sap hardened like glue between her paw pads before I could get at it. Eventually I borrowed a muzzle from her veterinarian, then off we went to a do-it-yourself pet bathing station where an angel appeared—aka a groomer. She told me, “Peanut butter will get out the sap—not warm soapy water” (as I had previously been told).

A Season of Letting Go

A Season of Letting Go

In Matthew chapter 10, Jesus is preparing his disciples for ministry amongst their fellow Israelites. A new message is being given. The old has passed away and the new has come, the new being profoundly known in Jesus’ ministry. The Kingdom of Heaven has begun in the life and death of Christ. The words in Matthew’s gospel are confounding. Jesus says, ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth, I have not come to bring peace, but a sword’ (Matt. 10:34).

Jesus goes on to explain that within family circles there will be division about who God is. There will be misunderstanding and a desire to be right. How can this be? There are more questions than answers in this passage for me, but I am aware of a sense of the radical nature of what Christ came to do. It required a radical alignment with Him in order that the world would be saved. Is this not what we are living right now? And it is what it means to “let go” of one’s own preferences in order to align with love.

Daring to Let Go

Daring to Let Go

I spent my late teens and early twenties teaching swim lessons. Some of my favorite people to teach were adults who had not yet learned to swim. It was so inspiring to witness their bravery as they let themselves be a beginner and step into the pool, often overcoming years of fearing the water.

Place

Place

Two Australian shepherds live in my home. They lie on the kitchen floor like random throw rugs scattered underfoot when we are cooking. For everyone’s good, we are training them to stay in their “place” when instructed. They are reluctant but content once they surrender. I am being likewise trained.

By age fifteen, my family and I had lived in as many homes. I have always thought I was made for hotels and airports. So, it was an adjustment when my young husband, who travelled weekly for work before marriage, said, “I like to be home!” I had little understanding of “place.”

The Core of My Faith . . . Beloved

The Core of My Faith . . . Beloved

It was over ten years ago that I first watched Henri Nouwen’s “Life of the Beloved” YouTube video. It resonated with me deeply as it has for many people.  It has become a spiritual practice to watch it several times a year.  I have parts of it almost memorized and yet, I keep watching. It seems I need to hear again and again that I am the Beloved child of God. 

Via Dolorosa

Via Dolorosa

As I walked the cobble stone streets of Old Jerusalem in 1972, I noticed a number of plaques high up on the walls of ancient buildings. Some said Via Dolorosa and others identified where certain events happened as the battered Jesus headed toward Calvary and his crucifixion. Up to that point in my young life I had never heard of The Stations of the Cross. That is no longer the case.

Varnish

Varnish

I brought Lectio Divina into my home school Lit classes this week.  The students picked a “word to the wiser” from their stories and essays they’d read, and I walked them through a modified version of the ancient practice. Each class went in a different direction, but it was the group around my table that afternoon who left my heart the softest.

This group of Muslim girls picked a quote from a John Green essay entitled “The Yips” that said, “How can you regain confidence when you know that confidence is just a varnish painted atop human frailty?” Once I established that “varnish” is not the same as “garnish”—by pointing at my worn kitchen table—they dug in.