Safe! Relaxed! Held!

Yesterday as I met with my spiritual director I experienced a profound movement of Divine Love. Surprisingly, as I explored and prayed the sadness of my dad's deteriorating health and nursing home experience, I felt deeply moved and held in God's care.





The nursing home attendants use a special lift to get my dad from the bed to the chair and the chair to the bed. As I watch this maneuver I see that it requires a significant amount of trust...trust in the machine AND the persons operating it. Literally, my dad moves through the air supported by a sling and is gently lowered and placed in bed or chair. I observe the terror on his face as he moves suspended in mid air. I lovingly and gently reassure him: "Daddy, just fold your arms across your chest. Relax. Let the sling move and hold you. YOU ARE SAFE!!! They know what they are doing. They won't drop you!!!"





In a moment of spiritual clarity and consolation I felt as though Divine Love was that "lift machine" for me!! I felt invited to trust the strong, tender "sling" of Love to hold me (and my family) at this time. I sensed the very words I speak to my dad given to me. "Just fold your arms; relax; let Me move and hold you; you are safe; you won't be dropped!!!"





I felt strengthened and my trust deepened. I renewed my desire to lean into hope-filled living. I don't want to avoid or turn away from this difficult life experience. I'll move through these days of uncertainty...safe...relaxed...held. This "graced reassurance" is for me, too!!!!!

Inspired by an obituary!

Have you ever loved a person you've not met by reading their obituary?! This morning at breakfast, while reading the obituaries (a practice steeped in my family of origin) I fell in love with the deceased woman. In fact, I thought about what was said about her life at numerous moments in my day.

"Her unselfconscious aptitude, quiet intelligence, playful sense of humor and earnest compassion won her friends around the world...She was blessed to do the work she loved...In all her professional and academic success, she never lost sight of the things that she loved and that made her happy...she loved to travel...she loved the sea...she also found solace in the west, especially the Grand Tetons--to paraphrase Wallace Stegner, the largeness and the clarity took the scales from her eyes...She loved animals. While she loved all of God's creatures, great and small, she had a special affinity for terriers. There were very few points in her life whe she did not have a funny, devoted and occassionally bizarre little dog as her companion...She was a voracious reader...She loved gadgets; from smart phones to e-readers and laptops, she never outgrew the simple joy of a new toy....Most of all she loved her family. She was their greatest advocate, supporter and friend. To the very end of her time on earth, she maintained a glowing sense of humor and an easy grace that many never achieve at the height of their health...she died while being held by her loved ones; her last words were "I love you."

I'll just mention that this woman was an Episcopal priest, a first woman president of the Warden College of Preachers at the Washington National Cathedral... and a lenghty list chronicled numerous other ways she served the world.

What a way to live!!What a BIG "yes" to life!!

Cairns

These are two of several cairns erected in my church sanctuary during Lent.

I recently created a cairn of my own for a class I teach. Several persons were unfamiliar with cairns.

A cairn is a mound of stones piled up as a memorial or a marker. I have most often seen them marking hiking trails. Several times I have created cairns to mark a place outdoors where something moved me profoundly and it seemed I encountered Holy Mystery. I consider my journal a place where I erect cairns of words that also "mark" small and large movements of Spirit in my life.

One dark night cairns marked the treacherous path across a black lava field. Small beams of light from my flashlight found the next cairn and the next cairn... and slowly the path revealed itself.

"Wise pilgrims we, as we bless the cairn

bless the sometimes broken

sometimes silken path

we call our lives..." (Jennifer Hoffman)

Build a cairn to mark a special moment!

Look for cairns guiding your life!

The Mango

The picture to go with the mango post!

Mangos...and Questions About Food

Today I bought fresh mangos! I sank my teeth into the most delicious, sweet, drippy mango...from Guatemala!!!!! I enjoyed every bit of the mango...but, I wondered IF the farmer had received her or his fair wage for all the work in raising the mango. I thought about all the fuel/energy used to get the mango to the Costco in Lancaster, PA, where I bought it. I wish I could grow mangos in my back yard...then, I wouldn't have to think about such things. Meanwhile, I'm really grateful for a ripe, juicy mango...and I think it's a good thing to wonder about the origin of our food!!!! (I looked it up - plural mango can be spelled two ways!)

Sticking my neck out!!

Today I'm sticking my neck out by posting my blogsite on facebook! Even as I type this I feel a tightening in my throat! Am I ready for this?!

I've been inspired by how much I love reading the blogs of others! So, I'll just add a few lines now and then and see what happens.

One Starfish At A Time!

I'm always moved by the story of the guy who very early in the morning before the townspeople got to the beach to gather starfish for commercial killing would walk the beach and gather one starfish at a time and hurl it back into the ocean as far as he could throw! The weather didn't matter. He faithfully executed his "mission of mercy" day after day! No action is too small or inconsequential. It matters for the one! Each one doing their small part contributes to the good of the whole. (By the way, I threw this one back into the Atlantic Ocean!...with a firm commitment to a "yes!!!" for hope-filled living!) I read this little starfish story again today in a book called The Promise of Paradox - A Celebration of Contradictions in the Christian Life by Parker Palmer.