God Talk and Tea

Time is an investment in love's garden

In a town near mine, there is a home unique in this area of sandy soil. It hosts a lovely English cottage garden. I noticed it when I stopped in a store nearby. An elderly gentleman was wielding pruning shears, preparing the garden for the full bloom of summer, when he caught me admiring his little plot of beauty.  He smiled, I smiled and, in a flash he was standing at the fence eager to talk about his creation, as new parents are eager to talk about their child.

As he chatted, I noticed a weathered bronze sundial in the middle of the garden. It was something my father would have loved. On the top was a bronze dragonfly, a tribute to his wife, he said. She loved dragonflies. 

There was also a saying about time, of course, molded into the top:

Love makes time pass. Time makes love pass.

The words were a reminder to him, he acknowledged, to use the gift of time as an investment in the things he loved, whether it was his garden, his children or his wife, who was now terminally ill. He pointed to the house down the street, once a delightful beach cottage, which had been reclaimed by time and a lack of attention. Unruly vines had strangled the unidentifiable shrubs and pulled down the gutters. Wooden windows stripped of paint were swollen with water and bulging from their frames.

You’d think someone would at least sell it, rather than let it decay where it stood, he mused, but there’s no making sense of some people. Inevitably it will either fall down, or be torn down, and time will have won. A new house , or maybe some condos, will go up on the spot and time will have wiped the old house and its memories away.

We chatted a little more, he invited me to visit sometime when the roses were all in bloom, and asked me where I was off to. I smiled and told him I was going home to trim the ivy that was strangling our little pines trees, and maybe plant another flat of pansies.

Contributing to the sacred trust that is family

“Make yourself useful.”   

That was my father’s favorite phrase for reminding me that being part of a family carried responsibilities. Child or not, I could, and should, certainly contribute by setting and cleaning off the table, dusting the furniture, putting away groceries, and keeping my room at least clean enough that the health department wouldn’t condemn it.

 I see it now that, as long as my father felt a need to use that phrase, it was evidence of my immaturity. A child needs to be told, a mature person should not. But even as a college student, still sadly self-focused at times, I needed to be reminded of the selective vision that looked past weeds, unfolded laundry or the almost daily need to shovel from December to March.

Growing up and maturing do not always go hand in hand. One is a physical process, the other emotional, and I would add, spiritual. Children, we know, are all about “me,” the center of their own universe and full of needs and wants. Maturity nurtures gratitude, and a willingness to respond with the whole self, not just empty words.

 A truly grown-up person is also better able to balance their needs with the needs of others, and recognize that a family is a sacred trust, a covenant relationship of communion in which each person is recognized as a child of God—deserving of love and respect. When respect is divorced from love the family becomes a breeding ground for hurt, anger, and lots of drama. And who needs the drama??

 A happy family, even if not a perfect family, is a minor miracle and a reason to rejoice, as long as every member is committed to making themselves useful in planning the celebration!

 

Growth requires new ways of thinking and being

For a number of years, I worked with a boss who encouraged us often to think outside the box, a phrase that has, today, become so commonplace as to be ordinary. Still, whenever I hear the phrase I think of him and his desire for us to engage in extraordinary thinking.

While cleaning recently, I came across some remnants from a hamster cage, including the exercise wheel. As the image came to mind of our long-gone hamster running in the wheel within the cage, I thought again of the objective to “think outside the box.”

Life for our hamster was one of routine, engaging in the same behaviors day after day, getting the same results, including running in a wheel that went no where. Hamsters, it would seem, are not able to consider life outside the box as a possibility and then take the necessary action to make it happen.

If they were, our hamster might have piled up enough hamster litter around the wheel to make it stationary and then use the wheel to climb out of his cage. A simple wire mesh cover wouldn’t withstand for long the impassioned gnawing of hamster teeth, and voila, life outside the box!

Of course, such a life is fraught with danger and challenges, not the least of which is the need to be self-sufficient, to secure sustenance and shelter, to learn to navigate a new environment full of other creatures who may either hurt you or help you build a new community of like-minded hamsters. It is easy to see why some hamsters might eventually go running back to the safety of their cage and their wheel, while others never even consider life outside four walls. 

Obviously, hamsters, like other caged animals, are not endowed with the ability to consider the meaning of their lives. Reflective thinking is the domain of the human mind. Still, even with that gift, we are often unable to consider other options. We live in fear of the unknown and the uncertain, and retreat to the security of familiar behaviors even when the results make us miserable.

Sometimes the most confining of boxes are not the circumstances of our lives, but, rather, our attitudes and our decisions, serving as self-constructed walls which ultimately restrict our growth. And surely, we were meant to grow.  God’s creation is our model. Within the living realm of nature, there is fluidity and movement, folding and unfolding. There are no squares, no boxes, except those we construct ourselves.

All life is designed by God for growth and change, for becoming.  But growth is our choice. We can nurture it, or we can stop it dead in its tracks. God would tell us, as he directed Moses to tell the people of the Exodus, “Choose life!”

 

Learning a lesson from the black swan

As I pulled my car into the parking lot of the beach along the bay, I noticed a single white swan, its    silhouette bright against the misty grayness of water, sky and land.  She had the bay to herself, no ducks, no geese, not even a seagull entered the scene. Even in the rolling waters, with a storm brewing to the north, the swan seemed to glide effortlessly across the surface, confident, self-directed, unperturbed by the ever widening expanse of water she had travelled away from the shore. Soon she was out of sight, and I turned back to my book, but the image of her alone and secure in deep water was meaningful for me as the place I wish I could be in my life.

The next day, closer to sunset and parked in the same spot with the same book, my reading was  interrupted as I watched a lithe and strong young woman, dressed in a black wetsuit, carry a large white surfboard across the sand to the water. She was also carrying a long, slender oar.  She sat on the sand to stretch and struck a lotus pose for just a few minutes. Then she picked up the oar and slid the board into the water and stepped on to it. She dipped the oar into the water and began to glide across the dancing waves of an evening bay, confident, self-directed and seemingly unconcerned that the lavender hues of sunset warned of the quickly approaching darkness.

She was the black swan, and the image of her standing on that board as if on solid ground, moving further and further away from shore, was remarkable. I was envious, but I shouldn’t have been. She had obviously wanted something enough to go beyond wishing.

Choosing is a matter of blessing or curse

It’s not often that I get a chance to be immersed in an abundance of creative expressions of faith   meant to transform hearts and lives, but that’s exactly what will happen tomorrow at the Diocese of Trenton’s Re:Image Film Festival at the Algonquin Arts Theatre in Manasquan. Last year’s festival was a real testimony to the power of art and media to inspire a response in faith, so I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.

One of the music video winners from last year was Laurie Collins, whose video “Choose Life” won the Mission Excellence Award. The music and images were powerful reminders of the gift of choice, not only when it comes to the unborn child but in the difficult and painful experiences of life.

We read those same words, choose life, in the Book of Deuteronomy when Moses, who led a rebellious and complaining people through the desert for 40 years, reminds them of God’s commandment, saying, “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live …” (30:19).

Moses makes it clear that life is comprised of both the blessing and the curse, “life and prosperity, death and doom.” We have the opportunity to choose between them. This is not to say our lives will be free of suffering or hardship, or that we will not experience death in its many forms, but that in choosing to remain aware of the blessing instead of losing ourselves in the curse, we are choosing God over the many gods that entice us. Our choices begin when we open our eyes in the morning, and affect, says Moses, not only us but our families as well.

Today, Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 19, often ending with choose life, have become popular in motivational circles, but he has more to say about what choosing life really means:

“I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land which the LORD swore he would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20).

A new blog mixes faith and humor -- both necessary for life!

I love my occasional lunches with a writer friend of mine, Christina, who inevitably keeps me in  stitches  through the entire meal.  It's such a relief from the drama of life!

We were talking recently about the demands of our present work situations when she quipped, “Don’t you just love it when you get that call saying, 'Uh, yeah, we need you to build the Eiffel Tower by tomorrow, and, by the way, we’ll be sending you a check for $3.' ”

And since that, in a very funny nutshell, sums up the stress of writing for a living, I'm delighted that Christina now has her own blog, Prayaddhumorthenstir, through The Monitor, the newspaper of the Diocese of Trenton. Now I can retreat to her blog whenever I need an attitude adjustment, a good belly laugh or simply some good old-fashioned humor.

Be sure to check her out. She is also the first link on my blog under Places I Like.

 

Image link http://usa.stockfood.com/image-picture-Small-girl-licking-wooden-spoon-310257.html

Haughtiness is an unbecoming character trait

Normally, I’m a very patient person. I like people, as a whole, and make an effort to get along well with everyone I meet. But there are times when someone pushes your buttons, and you forget your good intentions, especially when their behavior hurts others.

Did you ever meet one of those people who gives you the not-so-subtle once over; the head-to-toe evaluation that makes you wonder, if only for a split second, whether you forgot to change out of your pajamas in the morning? My father would call them haughty. I call them arrogant.

This kind of in-your-face arrogance is usually accompanied by frequent verbal spills intended to show off how much they know, or how much they’ve accomplished (at least in their own mind), in a poor attempt to elevate themselves by knocking you to the floor.

I have to wonder why people who profess to know so much don’t know that their arrogance is a neon sign flashing a serious lack of self-confidence and over-inflated ego, supporting a sense of superiority that is truly just a flight of fancy.

My advice, passed down from my father, of course, is to ignore them. Nothing will burst an over-inflated ego faster than a lack of attention,  that is until they find someone else to buy in to their fantasy.

 “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.”   Romans 12:3

Link to image: http://www.fotosearch.com/IMZ005/pbu0127/

Refresh the happiness page of life

Being the founder and facilitator of an on-line network of intercessory pray-ers has had an    unexpected perk – outside of the privilege of praying for others. The payer network, and the daily requests of those who carry the cross of Christ, has the unique ability to keep me grounded in gratitude, encouraging me to refresh the happiness page of life when I  allow the ordinary challenges of being human to become extraordinary problems draining me of joy.

In any given day I may receive requests to pray for families whose children are suffering with cancer, or who have lost an infant or toddler to illness or accidents. Others may be grieving for loved ones who are missing, or who have committed suicide. Vibrant, healthy people are struck down in the prime of life by freak accidents or debilitating illness, while others have lost their jobs, their life savings and their homes, perhaps living in a shelter or relying on the generosity of family or friends.

Then there are those families who are struck again and again with one tragedy after another.  For them, especially, my heart breaks. At the same time, I am humbled by their continued strength and perseverance, something I have often lost in less trying times.

I have one such friend who will always be an inspiration to me. In the space of two months she lost her husband, her mom and dad, and her brother.  As I watched her move from one funeral Mass to the next, and in the months following, I marveled at her ability to carry on – and to smile whenever I saw her. I asked her how she was handling so much and she simply said, “If I didn’t have my faith, I wouldn’t have anything.”

Famed English poet and playwright, John Dryden once wrote, “We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”  It seems my friend’s faith has enabled her to make a habit of happiness, and that's the kind of habit that's worth cultivating.