Sunday, December 31, 2006

Happy New Year


Dont worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin: dont worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right!

Rise up this mornin,
Smiled with the risin sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin, (this is my message to you-ou-ou:)

Singin: dont worry bout a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin: dont worry (dont worry) bout a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right!

Rise up this mornin,
Smiled with the risin sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin, this is my message to you-ou-ou:

Singin: dont worry about a thing, worry about a thing, oh!
Every little thing gonna be all right. dont worry!
Singin: dont worry about a thing - I wont worry!
cause every little thing gonna be all right.

Singin: dont worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right - I wont worry!
Singin: dont worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin: dont worry about a thing, oh no!
cause every little thing gonna be all right!

Friday, December 29, 2006

Mon Soapbox


And this accomplished what?
Is one more American soldier coming home?
Does it feed or house even one more Iraqi child?
Will it bring stability to the region?
Will anyone rest better tonight knowing that a weak and powerless has-been dictator who was brought to power by the CIA is now dead?
Just what the world needs right now,
more meaningless bloodshed.
Right.

Searching for Me

A couple of years ago Hollywood released the movie "Traffic". I didn't see it. I had already seen the British version that it was based on. Over the holidays I rented it from Netflix and watched it again. It had been a long while. My babies were little the first time I saw it. Now they tower over me.

The series tells several interwoven stories of people whose lives are all affected by the heroin trade coming out of Pakistan. One particularly poignant story is of a government minister who's daughter becomes addicted to heroin. We watch as she and her family go through all of the typical stages of a family affected by drugs. Finally after she steals from the home and makes it look like a burglary the father puts her out and tells her, "You are not my daughter."

A while later, after dreaming that he is standing over his daughter's grave he begins to search for her. He does everything he can think of, including walking the streets at night. He finds a dealer who knows her and pays him a visit. After talking to him for a little while he gets ready to leave and the young man tells him, "I wish I had someone searching for me."The father finally finds his daughter passed out half dressed with a John standing over her demanding service for his money. The Father says, "That's my daughter." The John runs off and the father takes his daughter home. Once there he begins to talk to her. He tells her, " I love you. I love you unconditionally. You don't have to stop taking heroin. You don't have to stop anything. No matter what I will still love you."

How many of us, like the young dealer, are wistfully thinking, "I wish I had someone searching for me?". We spend so much of our lives it seems searching for love. How different our lives would be if we only woke up and realized that like the father desperately searching for his daughter to bring her safely home, love is searching for us. How would our lives and our feelings about ourselves change if we realized that His love is unconditional, we don't have to stop anything to receive it, we don't have to be anything to receive it, we can just BE.

You don't have to search for love.
Love is searching for you.
Love is searching for me.
Can't you hear him calling your name?

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

More Great Quotes

The instinct of nearly all societies
is to lock up
Anybody who is truly free.
First, society begins
by trying to beat you up.
If this fails,
they try to poison you.
If this fails too,
they finish
by loading honors on your head.
--Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
 
It is better to deserve honors
and not have them
than to have them
and not deserve them.
--Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
 
Dignity does not consist
in possessing honors,
but in deserving them.
--Aristotle

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Joyeux Noel!





Friday, December 22, 2006

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Pascal


“Dieu est une sphère infinie, dont le centre est partout et la circonfĂ©rence nulle part.”

God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere

and circumference is nowhere.

Blaise Pascal

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Its pretty cliche at this point to lament the commercialization of Christmas. Its the same old complaint usually voiced in pretty much the same way. And each and every year I have to confess, I make and break the same promise - to not wait until the last minute to shop, to avoid the crowds, to finish early and bunker down safe at home for the duration. This year as I was once again fulfilling my annual tradition of breaking said promise, I found a new irritant rankling away on my nerves. It wasn't the crowds, it wasn't the end cap loaded with the animated dancing Santa's playing the saxophone for $14.99, and it wasn't the much harangued sales clerks. This year is was the Christmas muzak.

As I walked through the aisles of the local department store it seemed almost insidious to me. But apart from some very poor recording choices on the part of some very well known vocalist, there was something else that was bothering me. I think it was that so much of the music had so little to do with the actual event of the birth of Christ. And perhaps also to hear an event that is so sacred to me trivialized with brainless diddies about sleds and reindeer. But the most irritating to me were the songs of recording artist talking about what Christmas "means to me."

Is Christmas really open to our individual interpretation?

I mean the message seems pretty clear to me, and it is backed by prophesy going all the way to the fall of man and God's promise that one day Eve's heel would crush satan's head. ( Sorry, English majors, he doesn't get capitalized.) It isn't that I don't enjoy family, and cranberry sauce, lights and mistletoe, depending on who is standing directly underneath it, but as we are rushing about in a mad dash for that perfect gift, fighting over that space at the mall, and fussing at the person who had the nerve to sojourn down the same aisle at the same time as us, perhaps we do need to stop and take a deep breath and ponder our own interpretation of Christmas.

What images and words immediately come to our minds when we think of Christmas?

Lights
Presents
trees
food?

What about

stranded
pain
blood
tears?

Usually we don't hear those words in the latest Christmas jingle. But any woman who has given birth can tell you, they were very much a part of the Christmas equation. He came through water and blood, pain and anguish, and He left in water and blood, pain and anguish.
And when he did he left us with a very clear message and he gave us the interpretation.

Salvation
Hope
Deliverance




Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Mon Secret


"What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince,
"is that somewhere it hides a well . . ."

Monday, December 18, 2006

Monday, December 11, 2006

quotes



Slartibartfast:...I'd much rather be happy than right any day.
Arthur Dent: And are you?
Slartibartfast: Ah, no. Well, that's where it all falls down, of course.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Friday, December 08, 2006

Where Grace Meets Truth

Sometimes when I am reading the Bible, some small seemingly innocuous little phrase will leap out at me and get a hook in my spirit. A little voice will tell me, "There is more there than meets the eye." And that one word, or small phrase will just rattle around in my spirit for days, weeks, and sometimes even months. Its been that way lately with the book of John. In the first chapter and the fourteenth verse John describes Jesus as being the One and Only who came from the Father full of grace and truth. That last bit of that phrase full of grace and truth has been nagging at me for months now, and I have found myself asking God over and over, "Where does grace meet truth?"

Recently, I rented a French movie titled Red. It was excellent. One of the main characters in the story is a retired French judge. Through an accident involving his dog he meets a young woman and they slowly develop a friendship. During the course of the friendship he challenges her to look deeper at the motivations for her own actions and that of others, and to question the true meaning of justice. At one point he speaks of the decisions he made as a judge and questions them. The young woman protest and tells him that his decisions were just. He responded by asking, "Were they? In every case that I have decided, had I been in the shoes of the defendant I would have done the exact same thing."

So I am asking the question, "Where does grace meet truth?" And I am thinking perhaps the answer is mercy.

Mercy made Jesus write in the dirt while rocks fell from condemning hands.
Mercy healed blinded eyes rather than judging them.
Mercy raised a widow's only son from a death bed.
Mercy lifted Peter from the swirling waves of a tempest tossed sea.
Mercy responded to a blind man crying out from the roadside whom everyone else was trying to shush.
Mercy cried out from a cross, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do."

Truth tells us the reality of our sinful situation. That none are righteous, and that in our sinful situation, we are without hope. Grace sees us there, in that place of destitution and touches those who are willing with the gift of divine salvation. If we are really walking in truth, we understand and are overwhelmed by how utterly undeserving we are of this precious gift of absolute forgiveness, and infinite love. And in that place where grace meets truth mercy is born, a mercy that causes us to go and do likewise - To forgive the seemingly unforgivable, to love the undeserving, to be generous to the ungrateful. Like the retired judge, we walk in a place of the constant knowledge of our own unworthiness and our master's boundless mercy. We understand that all of our righteousness is as filthy rags and the reality of the situation that we are all that thief on the cross, crying out to the Christ, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And rather than the judge, we reach out our hands in mercy and become living instruments of the healer.