blessings

You are an alleluia,

a special, unique,

unrepeatable human being.

There has never been anyone

like you and never will be.

You are the joy of God's creation.
— The Blessing Candles

I'm sharing my favorite birthday blessing as today is my daughter's 28th birthday - we will be celebrating it next week when she visits with her family.

In the meantime my heart aches for my friend Holly & the loss of her husband Roger in a tragic helicopter accident last Sunday. I believe this same blessing applies to him also:

Roger, you are an alleluia,
a special, unique,
unrepeatable human being.
There has never been anyone
like you and never will be.
You continue to be the joy of God's creation.

what is real

"Reality is like a face
reflected in the blade of a knife;
its properties depend on the
angle from which we view it."

Master Hsing Yun, Describing the Indescribable

I could not find a face reflected in a knife that was not macabre but i do like this photo of a cathedral reflected in an office building so much better! The photo is from a young couple's South American vacation blog from several years back, which has amazing pics of their fabulous adventure - ah, to be young! And this quote is so true - each of us decides what is real from our own point of view, though we often don't realize it.

3 Beers

An Irishman moves into a tiny hamlet in County Kerry, walks into the pub and promptly orders three beers. The bartender raises his eyebrows, but serves the man three beers, which he drinks quietly at a table, alone. An hour later, the man has finished the three beers and orders three more. This happens yet again. The next evening the man again orders and drinks three beers at a time, several times. Soon the entire town is whispering about the Man Who Orders Three Beers. Finally, a week later, the bartender broaches the subject on behalf of the town. 'I don't mean to pry, but folks around here are wondering why you always order three beers?'
'Tis odd, isn't it?' the man replies. 'You see, I have two brothers, and one went to America , and the other to Australia . We promised each other that we would always order an extra two beers whenever we drank as a way of keeping up the family bond.' The bartender and the whole town were pleased with this answer, and soon the Man Who Orders Three Beers became a local celebrity and source of pride to the hamlet, even to the extent that out-of-towners would come to watch him drink.
Then, one day, the man comes in and orders only two beers. The bartender pours them with a heavy heart. This continues for the rest of the evening. He orders only two beers. The word flies around town. Prayers are offered for the soul of one of the brothers.
The next day, the bartender says to the man, 'Folks around here, me first of all, want to offer condolences to you for the death of your brother. You know-the two beers and all. The man ponders this for a moment, then replies,' You'll be happy to hear that my two brothers are alive and well. It's just that I, meself, have decided to give up drinking for Lent.

from The Episcopal Bookstore blog

say "when"

“Once upon a time,” an ancient story tells, “the master had a visitor who came to inquire about Zen. But instead of listening, the visitor kept talking about his own concerns and giving his own thoughts. After a while, the master served tea. He poured tea into his visitor’s cup until it was full and then he kept on pouring. Finally the visitor could not bear it any longer. ‘Don’t you see that my cup is full?’ he said. ‘It’s not possible to get anymore in.’ ‘Just so,’ the master said, stopping at last. ‘And like this cup you are filled with your own ideas. How can you expect me to give you Zen unless you first empty your cup?’”

A monastic Lent is the process of emptying our cups. Lent is the time for trimming the soul and scraping the sludge off a life turned slipshod. Lent is about taking stock of time, even religious time. Lent is about exercising the control that enables us to say no to ourselves so that when life turns hard of its own accord we have the spiritual stamina to say yes to its twists and turns with faith and hope. . . . Lent is the time to make new efforts to be what we say we want to be."
From The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages by Joan Chittister (Crossroad, 1996).

taken from Episcopal Cafe

Three Very Wise Men

As I was emptying the trash basket in the guest bathroom this morning, I noticed the wise men I had placed on the windowsill having some sort of a conversation. I didn't mean to eavesdrop but I just couldn't help myself. It seems that they were concerned as to where they should be. The Creche they had visited on the other end of the windowsill had been removed weeks ago and they had noticed that all signs of the season of Epiphany had also disappeared. "Good grief," I heard one remark, "We must be in the Lenten Season." Another replied, "That will never do! I think it's time we made our way home."

A bit later I peeped in to see what had transpired. Two of them were engaged in a deep conversation while the 3rd was being completely excluded. I thought it best to shut the door quietly and let them work this out - after all, they don't call them the "wise men" for nothing, do they?

After lunch I ventured into the bathroom once again and was shocked to see that they weren't even talking to one another. Oh Dear! It's always difficult to come to some sort of agreement when there are 3 voices to be heard from, don't you think?

But everything seems to happen for a reason and while his back was turned toward his companions wise man #2 noticed the cover of Thomas Merton's "Thoughts in Solitude" that was also sitting on the windowsill. He wondered if it might contain some answers or at least send them in the right direction? So he opened it and soon the other wise men were reading over his shoulder. And here is what they read: "To love solitude and to seek it does not mean constantly travelling from one geographical location to another." Wow! Perhaps there was no need to travel at all? Perhaps they were meant to just "be" right where God had placed them. After all, it wasn't such a bad place. They had good light from the nearby window, excellent reading material, and a constant flow of "visitors". And it was only their thoughts about having to be somewhere else that were making them anxious.

And as they read on they came across this: "A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live." And that is what the 3 wise men decided to do. They, like us, have no idea what the future holds. I may eventually put them away in their Christmas/Epiphany box, where they will remain until next year, but until then I too will enjoy their company when I enter the guest bathroom, reminding myself that life comes not from what is stored inside my head but from what comes out of my heart. The End

Catch me in my scurrying

Catch me in my anxious scurrying, Lord,
and hold me in this Lenten season:
hold my feet to the fire of your grace
and make me attentive to my mortality
that I may begin to die now
to those things that keep me
from living with you
and with my neighbors on this earth;
to grudges and indifference,
to certainties that smother possibilities,
to my fascination with false securities,
to my addiction to sweatless dreams,
to my arrogant insistence on how it has to be;
to my corrosive fear of dying someday
which eats away the wonder of living this day,
and the adventure of losing my life
in order to find it in you.

Catch me in my aimless scurrying, Lord,
and hold me in this Lenten season:
hold my heart to the beat of your grace
and create in me a resting place,
a kneeling place,
a tip-toe place
where I can recover from the dis-ease of my grandiosities
which fill my mind and calendar with busy self-importance,
that I may become vulnerable enough
to dare intimacy with the familiar,
to listen cup-eared for your summons,
and to watch squint-eyed for your crooked finger
in the crying of a child,
in the hunger of the street people,
in the fear of the contagion of terrorism in all people,
in the rage of those oppressed because of sex or race,
in the smoldering resentments of exploited third world nations,
in the sullen apathy of the poor and ghetto-strangled people,
in my lonely doubt and limping ambivalence;
and somehow,
during this season of sacrifice
enable me to sacrifice time
and possessions
and securities,
to do something...
something about what I see,
something to turn the water of my words
into the wine of will and risk,
into the bread of blood and blisters
into the blessedness of deed,
of a cross picked up,
a saviour followed.

Catch me in my mindless scurrying, Lord,
and hold me in this Lenten season:
hold my spirit to the beacon of your grace
and grant me light enough to walk boldy,
to live passionately
to love aggressively;
grant me peace enough to want more,
to work for more
and to submit to nothing less,
and to fear only you...
only you!
Bequeath me not becalmed seas,
slack sails and premature benedictions,
but breathe into me a torment,
storm enough to make within myself
and from myself,
something...

something new,
something saving,
something true,

a gladness of heart,
a pitch for a song in the storm,
a word of praise lived,
a gratitude shared,
a cross dared,
a joy received.

Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace, Prayers for the Battle,
Augsburg Books, Copyright 1981, pp. 123-125

(photo: Selva Morales - St. James CathedraL - Seattle, Washington)

To Life!

"No matter how bad things get,
you got to go on living,
even if it kills you."

Sholem Aleichem
Yiddish author & humorist
who gave us Tevye, the milkman

So why is Mark Twain in the picture?