Welcome to “Let It Flow!”
December 14, 2009
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be alway acceptable unto Thee
This is the place to let the mind’s meanderings be heard. Please join in!
The Spider’s Lesson
July 5, 2010
I am blessed to live with someone who loves to garden and has a talent for making beautiful places. My part is to do a little dead-heading, and offer ideas, and appreciate what he has done. What a deal!
Today I was eating my morning cereal while rocking gently on the lawn swing, listening to the water falling into the pond, gazing out from under wisteria vines across pink geraniums, nasturtiums, bright coleus, and pansies, all the way to the rose garden and the hydrangea, blooming periwinkle blue again this year. The roses have finished their first explosion of blossoms and are regathering for another colorful assault, and I noticed with pleasure that “Brandy” has a whole regiment of buds swelling. The sun glinted on something long and silvery stretched all the way across the path between the rose bush and the lemon tree, a good four feet. A spider’s suspension bridge. Such an enterprising spider! How did she construct this thing? I imagined her poised trembling at the very tip of a lemon leaf, waiting for just the right breeze, and then launching herself out over the void below, silk spraying behind like a jet stream as she floated gently to a perfect landing.
Ah! I see the message. Trust in God.
America
July 5, 2010
America! America! God shed His grace on thee! And He has, for decade after decade, through times of shame and times of heroism. He is with us, and He won’t let go! He told me so!
Love
July 5, 2010
I have an assignment to write a short story themed on “love.” What a huge topic! How can I say anything new about it? How can I come up with a story that is not smarmy and trite? The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that everything is love – we live in it, like fish swimming in the sea, so immersed that we notice it no more than a fish notices the water. Every bit of Creation was made for us, enfolds us, sustains us, delights us if we let it. Even each other – each of us a wondrous reflection of God, each of us a potential source of companionship and, yes, love. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live always with this awareness?
Solitude
June 4, 2010
Loneliness is part of the human condition. There is an intense loneliness that we all feel at times, and that, counter-intuitively, can only be remedied by solitude. It seems we can become so attuned to external stimuli that we lose contact with our own selves, and it is our own self for whom we are lonely.
Of course, we also need interaction with others to grow and develop as persons. But I suspect the threat we face in these times is the loneliness that comes from loss of self. It’s easy to become addicted to external stimuli (other people, computers, iPods, etc.) to the point that doing without them, even temporarily, causes panic. I think this is because the inner self has been forgotten and the person’s whole identity seems to be found in relation only to externals.
Re-discovering the inner self can only happen in solitude, and it requires courage. First one must trust that the inner self is there, where at first glance there is only a void. But even more courage is needed after the inner self is recognized, because we find that it carries every bruise and stain of all the days it has been ignored. Every hurt, every irritation, every fear, every blessing – every thought and experience leaves its residue of feeling. These need to be attended to on a daily basis, and if much time goes by without doing so, they become a loud, chaotic, confused tangle that is emotionally painful to experience.
And yet, experience them all we must, in order to let them transform, through forgiveness or repentance or thankfulness, into integral parts of ourselves, to clear and polish the image of God within, and be able to reflect that image out into the world.
And that brings us to the third reason for needing courage in solitude – because it is in solitude and in this process of self-recognition that solitude brings, that we meet God.
Puzzle Pieces
June 4, 2010
It is to me a marvel, the way seemingly disparate sources give us puzzle pieces that fit together into a unified whole. I seem to be developing a whole cosmology (or is the Spirit teaching me?) out of bits of various readings.
Awhile back, in N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian and Surprised by Hope, I found the startling (to me) claim that the Kingdom of Heaven is a separate, physical “place” that is nevertheless all around us. I picture something like a parallel universe with which we have very limited communication that appears to us, because of the limitations of our world, to come from disembodied spiritual beings. Wright tells us that God’s plan is to eventually unite the two universes, so that the “spiritual” and “physical” – what we perceive as embodied and disembodied – become one, and God can be all in all. This uniting has begun to happen as the two realities intersect at certain points, such as the Sacraments. Each believer also is a “new person,” a duality of the two kinds of being, “spirit” and “flesh,” gradually being transformed by the Holy Spirit into a unified, integrated whole. The mission of the Church, the body of believers, is to multiply in population and grow in perfection, manifesting this spiritual life more and more fully in the world.
I’ve been chewing on this perception for some time, and I find it offers a way to make sense of some of the perplexities of our faith.
Now more recently, I have been studying a training manual for the Healing Rooms ministry. In considering how and why miraculous healing happens, its claim is that healing is always God’s will, and his love/power/healing is always being poured out toward us. The healing we pray for is immediately granted; however, it requires a vehicle or conduit in order to reach its intended goal. And that conduit is the person of faith who is infused with the Spirit and whose will is submitted to and aligned with God’s will in the matter.
So here is the “how” of the matter, how the process of manifesting the Kingdom in the world works in the specific area of healing. Once again there is a dual reality: God is in his heaven, pouring out the requested healing – but the ill person is in the world, and the two realities are separate. Once again, the person of faith is the point of intersection between the two, the necessary vehicle by which God’s healing can manifest here.
Now the question comes: Why? Why would God make such a cumbersome, complicated system? Why would he require the cooperation of weak, fallible creatures like us to manifest his power? The answer to this, and other big questions, comes to me from Abraham Joshua Heschel, a foremost Jewish theologian of the 20th Century.
We are all aware that we need God. But according to Heschel, God needs us, too. Now that is stunning. But God’s need is not a result of any weakness or limitation, but of His overflowing love. It might be more accurate to say He desires us. In fact, it may be that the whole point of Creation has been to gain for himself a Beloved. A faithful Beloved, who returns His love, a perfect complement to His un-reproducible Self. How to go about that?
Well, first would be to create a being in His own image (something like “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone”). Set them in His garden, lavish them with all the wonders of His creative art, joy in fellowship with them. But wait. Something is still missing; the ultimate joy is not something He can give Himself. It is love, returned to Him freely. He must give them free will to make that return, and with it, the temptation to reject Him – which, inevitably, happens.
And so begins the long, painful process that is the only way to what God desires – a Bride suitable for Himself, to live with Him in His Kingdom. He woos, He pursues, she flirts, she is unfaithful, He rages, He punishes, she comes crawling back and He forgives, only to go through it all again and again. All along the way, each of us either accepts or rejects His advances, accepts or rejects the infusion of the Holy Spirit to work His transformation and make us ready.
As I stand back, I see that the whole, painful process of fall and redemption is necessary, a part and perhaps the last stage of Creation itself – the formation of a Beloved to share in the Kingdom. In the fullness of time, the “world” will be completely overcome by, and united to, the Kingdom. Here, now, we each have our small part to play in connecting the two; and in the hereafter, our membership in the Bride.
Skunks and Such
May 12, 2010
Driving over to church today, we passed a dead skunk by the side of the road. It occurred to me that skunks are really quite pretty animals, with their shiny black fur and crisp white stripes. Then, of course, I thought of their smell. As far as I know, there is no creature that likes, or even tolerates, the smell of a skunk. Dogs downright glory in the smell of poop – they will roll in it, cover themselves with it, even eat it. But they run from the smell of a skunk.
If there was something about me that nobody could tolerate, it would bother me. But it doesn’t seem to bother a skunk. In fact, one gets the impression they sort of revel in the power it gives them. And that is what happens to humans when nobody loves them. They turn to power instead. Then, the more power they get, the more their ability to love, even to receive love, wastes away. Maybe skunks are a sign to us, a warning, about the potential for human toxicity – that we, too, might be or become noxious to anyone who comes near.
What if some such human skunk began receiving love? Would the process work in reverse – the more love they receive, the more the need for power diminishes? Would others then begin to see and admire the beautiful jet coat with its crisp white stripes?
It sounds like pie in the sky, doesn’t it? But that seems to be God’s plan for each one of us.
Living With(out) Technology
April 2, 2010
I used to spend time just sitting and thinking. Did you? I’d get a cup of tea, and lounge on the sofa, and stare out the window. All kinds of thoughts would flow through my mind. Soon, I would notice something beautiful – the way light bounced around among leaves blown by a breeze; or the grain of something made of wood; or the graceful arc of a stem on a plant. Colors, patterns, lines.
Today, I did it again. It was hard, tearing myself away from the computer screen, the television, even books and magazines. Some synapse kept firing, sending the command to my body to reach for the remote, or get back to my desk, or at least pick up a book. It was a lot like the one that fires every time I walk past the snack drawer in our kitchen, urging me to have a piece of chocolate. To not respond to those tiny firings is actually painful, like being poked mentally with a pin. I start, and then have to purposefully – not resist, exactly – merely fail to obey.
After awhile a kind of peace began to fill me from my belly up. Eventually it reached my brain, and after that the inertia was all on the side of staying where I was. Certain colors of things became almost tactile, causing a responding warmth in my heart. The way my cat moved, the texture of her fur, mesmerized me. I was not just looking at things as objects outside of me, but receiving them, even in some sense going out to meet them. I felt that I was being nourished through my eyes.
Seeing by gadgets, and knowing the world through them, gives a severely attenuated vision, a thinned and weakened shadow of the wholeness of what is on offer, like seeing with half an eye.
Men
April 2, 2010
I’ve been thinking about men. No, not THAT way! Just wondering – in our day and age, how do boys learn to be men? How do we all understand what it means to be a man?
The last few decades have brought us considerable angst about women, and what is valuable in women, and what little girls should aim for in life. And there has been a lot of disparagement of men. But I hear very little about what makes an admirable man. In decades and centuries past, they wrote about “manly virtues” – honor, courage, loyalty, steadfastness, responsibility, even self-sacrifice. I don’t hear much about such things, any more, except in regard to our military. Do these ideals still define a “manly man” to us?
If you are a man, what and how did you learn about this? Books? Role models – father, teacher, boss, friend? Popular culture – movies, music, television? Are there conflicts among these sources? Are our boys and young men being offered these ideals, or others?
Green!
March 28, 2010
Driving Up-Valley today, I was struck afresh by the advent of spring. Everywhere were green grasses, green trees, green hedges, even green weeds. So much green! God must love that color, since he has made so many shades, and apportioned them so liberally over His earth, and planted that same love in the hearts of His children.
Each kind of plant has its own shape and shade, so that seeing a landscape of them is like looking at a symphony of greens, patterning together in brights and mutes, rounds and spikes. Each leaf and bladed is glowing with the light of life, seemingly longing to burst open and pour it out. Silently but to an open heart, they sing a mighty Alleluia Chorus all around us, praising the God who made them with every leaf and twig of their being.
These humble creatures far outstrip us in their constant and whole-hearted praise, and in their perfect obedience to the life ordained for them. And yet, we so easily see them, if at all, merely as the furniture of our own busy existence.
Update on Novels
March 11, 2010
For those of you who are interested, and keep asking me, I continue to wait with strained patience for word from my publisher, OakTara, about when my two novels will be published. My contract was signed in June 08, but like all publishers, it seems, they are utterly swamped with manuscripts to be read and other pressing business. I did hear from them in December that work on The Forest and The Wisdom of Ambrose would begin shortly after the first of the year, but to date, am still waiting. I have noticed that some other new authors who were signed about the same time have begun the process, so I have hope that I am near the front of the queue.
Thank you all for your continued interest and encouragement! I hope one of these days to have a more exciting announcement.
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