I'm Thinking About...

I’m thinking about an upcoming anniversary. Saturday marks three years since the day my depression was healed. Three years since God stepped into my life in a crazy way, and brought hope where there’d been only despair. I’m still working on plans to celebrate, but I know there will be a Mexican dinner with my roommates (a joint celebration of my anniversary and one of their birthday’s) and an evening of watching Anne of Green Gables.

I’m thinking about plans to pray tonight with my roommates. To pray over each other and our house. About how I’ve needed us to do this together, but haven’t known how to broach the subject, and how it’s come together naturally, after a week in which we have each individually experienced disturbing nightmares.

I’m thinking about hamburger chop suey – which is the only dish (other than hamburgers) I can think of that contains ground beef that I actually enjoy. I think years of eating A LOT of ground beef as a child (it was affordable when we couldn’t afford much) created a strong aversion to it.

I’m thinking about how delighted I am that I’ve scheduled a phone conversation with my best friend, currently working on the other side of the world in a hospital in Pakistan, for Sunday morning.

I’m thinking about my desperate need to shorten a pair of pants I bought a few months ago, so that I have at least two pairs of pants that are suitable for work.

I’m thinking about how nice it is to be loved.

I’m thinking about how healing the hugs of a child are.

I’m thinking about a little boy who struggles a bit with language fingering a medallion on a bracelet I wear – a picture of Jesus – and telling me “This God. This God. I know Him.”

I’m thinking about another friend, much older, who held that same bracelet in his hands the other night, looking at it as I told him the story of my little friend’s confidence in knowing God, and commenting that he liked the bracelet, that it “felt good” in his hand. That there was a sort of strength to it.

I’m thinking about pearls. About a string of them that were a gift from a friend, and about a pearl ring sitting in a box in my dresser drawer, that perhaps needs to be unearthed and worn a little more often. About the caution I was given when I purchased that ring – that pearls were beautiful, but notoriously soft and delicate, easily shattered and broken, thus making them somewhat more valueable. And about some lines from the Anne of Green Gables books years ago. Anne commenting on the fact that she’d been criticized for wearing a tiny circlet of pearls as her engagement/wedding band because pearls represented tears, and essentially saying that it was the many tears it had taken to come to this place of commitment that made the commitment, and thus the symbolism of the circlet of pearls far more dear to her than any diamond.

Church - Again...

A few more thoughts on church from Henri Nouwen.

One Body with Many Parts

The Church is one body. Paul writes, "We were baptised into one body in a single Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:13). But this one body has many parts. As Paul says, "If they were all the same part, how could it be a body? As it is, the parts are many but the body is one" (1 Corinthians 12:19). Not everyone can be everything. Often we expect one member of the body to fulfill a task that belongs to others. But the hand cannot be asked to see nor the eye to hear.

Together we are Christ's body, each of us with a part to play in the whole (see 1 Corinthians 12:27). Let's be grateful for our limited but real part in the body.

The Weakest in the Center

The most honored parts of the body are not the head or the hands, which lead and control. The most important parts are the least presentable parts. That's the mystery of the Church. As a people called out of oppression to freedom, we must recognize that it is the weakest among us - the elderly, the small children, the handicapped, the mentally ill, the hungry and sick - who form the real center. Paul says, "It is the parts of the body which we consider least dignified, that we surround with the greatest dignity" (1 Corinthians 12:23).

The Church as the people of God can truly embody of the living Christ among us only when the poor remain its most treasured part. Care for the poor, therefore, is much more than Christian charity. It is the essence of being the body of Christ.

Evening

At the setting of the sun,
to you, unfailing Light, I turn.
I thank you for the day now fading,
and pray you give
an evening of quiet to my spirit.
Let me rest in you that I may know
refreshment of soul, and peace of heart.
Silent and still, attentive to you alone,
let my soul breathe
no other breath than you, O Holy Spirit.

(Sanctifying the Day: Evening, from "Devotions to the Holy Spirit" by Brian Moore, SJ)

Between the Dreaming and the Coming True

I just finished reading an absolutely beautiful book, and it deserves a much longer post than I have time to write at the moment, but I wanted to share the closing lines of the book with you, because they grabbed at me and spoke deeply.

The journey between the dreaming and the coming true is a journey made on holy ground. It is a journey made through silence and longing where, if we will listen, we can hear the whisper of the Dreamer echoing deep within us, calling us to become what the Dreamer sees when our names were first whispered: saints who believe in and pay attention for and recognize the Voice; saints who live our lives in joy and confidence and hope rather than judgement and anxiety and desperation; saints whose hours and days and lives are spent carrying people to the Christ, lending each other a hand when one of us has fallen, slipping along the river that brings joy to to the heart of God, carrying God's peace and love and presence and life to those we meet along the way.

That is what we have been sent here to do. And we will. The Dreamer's dreams will always come true.

The book shares the same title as this post, and is by a man named Robert Benson, and you should all go out and pick it up and read it. It's skinny, and an easy read. But so beautifully written and deeply profound. Definitely a new favorite for me.

Praying

This headline caught my attention as soon as I woke and looked at the news this morning:
Scores Dead in Pakistan Quake.

I'm praying again for Pakistan. The quake doesn't seem to be near where my best friend is nursing, but just for a moment, my heart caught as I hurried to the article, hunting for a map. I'll be writing her shortly, to confirm that she's okay, as she's recently moved hospitals for a while, and I'm not sure precisely where the new hospital is located.

And I'm praying for clarity and guidance for some dear friends.

I'm praying for a 2.5 month old infant who's been sick all night, and for his mother, waiting with him in the hospital.

I'm praying for a smooth day at the office.

And I'm letting my heart simply talk with Jesus.

It's morning. Here we go.