Friday Five

One of the online communities I belong to asks questions for reflection on Friday's called the Friday Five. This week we were asked: As you look back over 2011 share 5 blessings, they can be as grand or as simple as you like,if you year has been like mine they are probably a mixture!

As you look towards 2012 share 5 hopes- again, anything goes!

Pictures and songs welcome!

Blessings:

1. My family, especially the birth of my newest grand daughter, Charlotte.

2. Amazing friends, both online and live.

3. A congregation that is vibrant and loving.

4. My self-defense instructor.

5. Mocha and Chloe- a huge labradoodle and tiny schnoodle.

Hopes for 2012:

1. To put my keys and purse in the same place every day.

2. To be responsible for the energy I bring into a room. I heard that on an interview with Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard brain scientist who suffered a stroke. During her recovery she was aware of people's energy in a very palpable way. There are some people who really do suck our energy and leave us feeling drained. I want to be aware of my energy and what I bring into a room as I enter it.

3. To stay away from people who have toxic energy as much as possible.

4. To find a new living situation for my 35 year old disabled son. I need to find a counselor who can help him deal with agoraphobia and begin to engage in life with the limitations he has.

5. To sleep at least 7 hours a night.

Advent Christmas and new life

It was a quieter Christmas than most. There were only a few around the dinner table. We normally have tables linked together that wind all throughout the house. This year we all sat at one table. I normally love the chaos and confusion and nieces and nephews and children running all over, but this year was nice in its own way. I needed a more quiet time.

I woke up feeling rested yesterday. It was the first time I woke up feeling that way in a long time. I haven't had a nightmare in 4 days. I am settling into a routine with prayer, exercise, sleep, errands, napping, cooking and did I mention sleeping and napping? I am also continuing with self-defense training and counseling. One of my Canadian friends just e-mailed me a portion of the psalms he read this morning from Psalm 144 which sounds like a motto for self-defense training; "Blessed is God, who traineth my hands to war and my fingers to fight."

I miss my congregation and work at the church, but know that this is still a time to unplug and re-set my body and soul.

There is a story about an old Cherokee goes like this:

“One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that was going on inside him self. He said, "My son, it is between 2 wolves. One is evil:

anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment,

inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego... The other is good: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith..." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather,

"Which wolf wins?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one I feed."

On another note: I am reading, for the millioneth time, a book called Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas by Jan Richardson. It’s a beautiful book with her art work and reflections. The reflection for today is titled Working On It and is accompanied by a paper collage. You should all go out and get her book so you can see the art work too. The reflection is this:

And so let me let you hold me

when I have come to the place beyond the willingness to labor

beyond anything but the longing for rest.

Let my emptiness be emptiness till it reveals to me your face,

and let my weariness be weariness till it prompts me to your rest.

Then may I know the healing of slumber

and the possibility of dreams;

then may I greet the dawn and take up my work again.

Families, friends and conflict

Today we remember the lives of Orthodox Saints. Today's example is sadly a story that is too ordinary; friends and family members involved in a dispute that leads to division and hardness of heart. My daughter called yesterday to say that one of her friends' brother was killed in an accident. The two siblings got in an argument four days ago and weren't speaking. When I heard that and then read this mornings story about St. Nicephoros I thought of something that a friend of mine, a Methodist pastor, recently sent the following to me. I include it here fyi. I found the photo on the website of the Daily Word - and I'm including it just because I like it! May you bring peace to others today- Rev Deb

Nicephoros

In third century Antioch, Syria, Nicephoros was a layman and Saprikios was a presbyter , and they were friends. However, once after a disagreement, they refused to speak to each other. With humility, Nicephoros later tried to accept the blame, but the Saprikios was unmoved.

Saprikios was later arrested during a persecution and sentenced to die. Nicephoros waited along the path to the execution and begged for Saprikios' forgiveness, but Saprikios' heart was hardened. Finally Nicephoros told the executioner that he would take the Saprikios' place, and Nicephoros was beheaded.

Peacemaking is not avoiding conflict or running from problems…that is cowardice. Peacemaking is courageous. Also, Peacemaking is not appeasement or simply letting the other person have their

way…that is passivity. Peacemaking is active. Jesus was never a doormat. Jesus stood his ground and made things happen.

Second, some truths about unresolved conflict. Unresolved conflict blocks your fellowship with God. I John 4:20 "For anyone

who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." I Peter 3:7 "Husbands …be considerate with your wives and treat them with respect…so

that nothing will hinder your prayers." ...Check out your relationships. Unresolved conflict hinders your happiness. Job 18:4 "You tear yourself to pieces in your anger." Resentment is consuming…it

monopolizes your attention, thoughts, and feelings. We all need to learn to be at peace…then learn how to become makers of peace.

PLAN a Peace conference. P.E.A.C.E. Matthew 5:24 "If you remember your brother has something against you go at once to make peace."

YOU take the initiative…”you go”. Don't wait for them to make the first move. It doesn't matter if you're the offended or the offender;

it is always your move. Why? Because Jesus said so. And because you are more mature. Schedule a face to face. (not via e-mail!) Conflict is not

resolved accidentally. You must intentionally deal with it. When? "...at once ..." Don't avoid or delay, it only grows worse.

EMPATHIZE with their feelings. * Philippians 2:4 "None of you should think only of his own affairs, but consider other people's interests also."

Pay attention to their needs. When you're upset, who are you thinking about? Yourself, your needs, your hurts. God says reverse

that. When you hold your peace conference, step into their shoes and think about them for a moment. What you are thinking and feeling is important, but you need to empathize with them as well.

Parents of children, adult children of parents, spouses, friends - all know they have to listen, be sensitive, and empathize with what

going on with the other person. One of the values of conflict is when you solve it, it usually leads to greater closeness because you understand them better. You've been listening and caring.

ATTACK the problem not the person. * Ephesians 4:29 "Do not use harmful words, but only helpful words, the kind that build up and provide what is needed." Don't go criticizing, condemning, and comparing. Say things that build people up, not put them down. You can't focus on fixing the problem and fixing the blame at the same time. It's impossible. If you meet planning to blame the other person, then forget it. Proverbs 15:1 "A gentle answer quiets anger but a harsh one stirs it up." Engage your mind before you engage your mouth. Be sincere, not sarcastic. You don't get the point across by being cross. Attack the problem not the person.

COOPERATE as much as possible. * Romans 12:18 "Do everything possible on your part, to live at peace with all men."

The hallmark of a Christian ought to be our ability to get along with other people. However, for all of us, some people are a

challenge. “Do everything possible.” Peace has a price…always. It costs your self-centeredness. “We” is the goal, not “me”.

Maybe they are right…or a legitimate gripe…or maybe they do know what they're talking about. Learn to say: "I was wrong" and "I'm

sorry".

James 3:17 says "Peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of goodness." Whatever you sow is what

you're going to reap. If you want people to cooperate with you, you have to cooperate. If you want people to be nice to you, you've

got to be nice to them. Whatever you're dishing out is what you're getting back. So you look and say, "What can I do? What seeds

am I planting?" If you are always planting seeds of griping, complaining, arguing, hassling, and putting down others guess what

you're going to reap. Start planting seeds of peace and cooperation.

EMPHASIZE reconciliation not resolution. * 2 Corinthians 5:18 "God has reconciled us to Himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation."

Jesus models what God wants us to do. A synonym for peacemaker is reconciler -- one who brings people together. God sent

Jesus Christ to bring us to Him so we could have peace with God. God is the original peacemaker…Jesus is the Prince of Peace.

What Jesus has modeled God now wants us to do with other people. “Reconcile” means “to reestablish a relationship.” It does not

mean you resolve all the problems. A lot of times there are some legitimate, honest differences. Reconciliation means you bury the

hatchet, not the issue. You can disagree, agreeably. You can walk arm in arm without seeing eye to eye. Reconciliation focuses on

the relationship. When you help restore relationships you're doing what God would do. When God looks down on you and you are

taking the initiative to restore harmony in that marriage or in that office or with that parent or child - God looks down on you and says,

"That's my girl!" or "That's my boy!" That person is a child of God.

Who can be a peacemaker? Anybody. But first you must have peace on the inside of you. You can't spread peace if you're at war

on the inside. Only what you have can you offer to others.

A poem from the Panhala website
Why Regret?

Didn't you like the way the ants help
the peony globes open by eating the glue off?
Weren't you cheered to see the ironworkers
sitting on an I-beam dangling from a cable,
in a row, like starlings, eating lunch, maybe
baloney on white with fluorescent mustard?
Wasn't it a revelation to waggle
from the estuary all the way up the river,
the kill, the pirle, the run, the rent, the beck,
the sike barely trickling, to the shock of a spring?
Didn't you almost shiver, hearing book lice
clicking their sexual dissonance inside an old
Webster's New International, perhaps having just
eaten of it izle, xyster, and thalassacon?
Forget about becoming emaciated. Think of the wren
and how little flesh is needed to make a song.
Didn't it seem somehow familiar when the nymph
split open and the mayfly struggled free
and flew and perched and then its own back
broke open and the imago, the true adult,
somersaulted out and took flight, seeking
the swarm, mouth-parts vestigial,
alimentary canal come to a stop,
a day or hour left to find the desired one?
Or when Casanova took up the platter
of linguine in squid's ink and slid the stuff
out the window, telling his startled companion,
"The perfected lover does not eat."
Didn't you glimpse in the monarchs
what seemed your own inner blazonry
flapping and gliding, in desire, in the middle air?
Weren't you reassured to think these flimsy
hinged beings, and then their offspring,
and then their offspring's offspring, could
navigate, working in shifts, all the way to Mexico,
to the exact plot, perhaps the very tree,
by tracing the flair of the bodies of ancestors
who fell in this same migration a year ago?
Doesn't it outdo the pleasure of the brilliant concert
to wake in the night and find ourselves
holding hands in our sleep?

~ Galway Kinnell ~

(Strong Is Your Hold)

gossip

The story about gossip that I used in my sermon on Sunday came from the movie Doubt. When I did some research on the story I discovered that John Patrick Shanley, the writer/director of the movie heard the story preached in a sermon when he was a boy attending St. Anthony's in the  Bronx. He said:  “Gossip and cutting the pillow was a sermon I had heard. The Cure of Ars (St. John Vianney) used that sermon in the Middle Ages. And before that it’s Jewish in origin.  The story told in the sermon has a priest reproaching a woman for gossiping by telling her to cut open a pillow on the roof of her apartment building and shake out the feathers. When the woman tells the priest she’s done so, he then tells her to pick up each feather — a near-impossibility, like stopping the spread of gossip once started. “To me as a kid, gossip meant nothing,” Shanley added. “It was (imagining) the pillow and the feathers and all that.”

I thought about cutting a pillow during my sermon to add a visual effect, but thought I better try it at home first. Robert and Maria had a great time throwing feathers around the yard. I decided not to use the feathers in church though. They got everywhere, in everything and spread all across the neighborhood. Since I am of the belief that if I make a mess then I clean it up and I didn't want to clean up a million down feathers from the red carpet. 

I chose the New Testament reading, instead of the one from the Old Testament, from the Daily Office. I like the phrase "today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." The poem comes from Linda Hogan (which I get from Panhala.net) 

So, today if you hear the voice of God, harden not your hearts. 

Hebrews 3:1-11 (NRSV)

Therefore, brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling, consider that Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses also “was faithful in all God’s house.” Yet Jesus is worthy of more glory than Moses, just as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that would be spoken later. Christ, however, was faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope.

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors put me to the test, though they had seen my works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘They always go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways.’ As in my anger I swore, ‘They will not enter my rest.’”

The Radiant

 

In night,
at the dark limits of earth
where land ends and water begins,
at the elemental border
where you can go no further
without one entering the other,
the green light goes on.
It's not the man who fishes here,
not the light of human making
because we are the ones who measure light
and because light was created before us
from blood of flesh and sea
like this animal light of the manta ray
traveling the latitudes of night
and longitudes of darkness
knowing the blue unfathomable shifts
and dark ranges of the world beneath water.

 

It travels a rich sea away from us,
its light falling on plankton,
bringing food and fish toward it,
as if it is moonlight
opening across water,
it passes over the fished-out places
beyond the reef where coral is dying,
out past the point where the British captain was killed
by those who first thought he was a shining god.

 

It moves steadily out into darkness
to where the colder darkness begins to well up
from the sea depths that have no bottom,
the place where I have feared the pale face of a shark
with its deadly touch
against my naked legs.

 

The ray travels over the many
other lives that have light
and below them is the blindness
of fish who need no sight,
and out toward the place where sun left the sky,
to where the larger creatures live,
where fishermen once found their boat cast in shadow
and looking up, saw what kind of cloud it was,
the manta ray risen out of water, a leap
so large it darkened the sky.
The men returned haunted by
everything that was larger than they were,
more beautiful and bearing its own light.

 

Tonight on this dark shore,
watching the animal light go over the horizon,
I long to be in water heading for open sea,
for no other power,
no other light.

 

~ Linda Hogan ~

 

(Rounding the Human Corners)

 

 

 

 

 

morning thoughs

i've been using a great blog site to get the readings from the Daily Office (dailyoffice.wordpress.com) each day and will include one of the readings here, along with a poem from another site (Panhala)

The Daily Office website had the following caption and photo on its page. Lent is a good time to ask ourselves what are the idols in our lives. They could be material or they could even be things like the prayer book or hymnal. We need to distinguish what we use as tools to help our experience of God from God. peace, Rev Deb

"Interior of Anglican church on Gangwha Island, South Korea—so that we don’t make an idol of our own familiar architecture and furnishings."

The poem is called The Apple Orchard. 

The Apple Orchard

 

Come let us watch the sun go down
and walk in twilight through the orchard's green.
Does it not seem as if we had for long
collected, saved and harbored within us
old memories? To find releases and seek
new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys,
mingled with darkness coming from within,
as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud
wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees
reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches
which, bent under the fully ripened fruit,
wait patiently, trying to outlast, to
serve another season's hundred days of toil,
straining, uncomplaining, by not breaking
but succeeding, even though the burden
should at times seem almost past endurance.
Not to falter! Not to be found wanting!

 

Thus must it be, when willingly you strive
throughout a long and uncomplaining life,
committed to one goal: to give yourself!
And silently to grow and to bear fruit.

 

 

 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

 

 

(Rainer Maria Rilke: Selected Poems, trans. by Albert Ernest Flemming)

hard times

Dear ones,

Good morning everyone. I have chosen the canticle from Morning Prayer for today's selection. It has a verse that kept me going during a time that was quite difficult (quite difficult... that's my polite English side keeping my wilder Irish side from using other adjectives).  It seems like a story I read about rather than one I lived. When I was 21 years old, an undergrad in Michigan,  I was the victim of an attempted rape and murder. I escaped, but was badly badly beaten. The perp, although known (he was my Abnormal Psychology professor, Dr. Henry Orloff) was never put behind bars. I used to meditate on the verse from today's scripture "Violence will no more be heard in your land, ruin or destruction within your borders." Meditating on that verse helped me turn the corner (eventually)   from continuing to live in fear to tip toeing  into life again.   God is present, even in violence. God is present, even when destruction comes. God is present, always, to carry us through those times. Peace.  

Canticle 11 The Third Song of Isaiah  Surge, illuminare Isaiah 60:1-3, 11a, 14c, 18-19

Arise, shine, for your light has come, *
and the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you.

For behold, darkness covers the land; *
deep gloom enshrouds the peoples.

But over you the Lord will rise, *
and his glory will appear upon you.

Nations will stream to your light, *
and kings to the brightness of your dawning.

Your gates will always be open; *
by day or night they will never be shut.

They will call you, The City of the Lord, *
The Zion of the Holy One of Israel.

Violence will no more be heard in your land, *
ruin or destruction within your borders.

You will call your walls, Salvation, *
and all your portals, Praise.

The sun will no more be your light by day; *
by night you will not need the brightness of the moon.

The Lord will be your everlasting light, *
and your God will be your glory.