adventures across the way.

I really have not been mia just been on the Pilgrim’s Way across the big pond.   Wanna know what we’ve been up to …  try the other blog i keep with help:  www.stepoutofthetraffic.com  

and now another adventure begins … another pilgrimage.   Off to Grandma’s | go.

the tide turns.

I do believe it’s fair to say that the tide did indeed turn this morning and outwardly focused am I!   Sunday mornings will do that too me –  It’s time to quit working on everything and get organzied and ready to go.    So hah – I’m not just back to being focused outward but I even have an orientation and coordinates that hold my focus:  Manchester UK to begin with.  And then off to the north we shall go.  

so the countdown began this morning as the tide turned!  let’s pray I don’t get washed away

unwritten

so I think it’s fair to say that I’ve written a blog every day for the past month.    everyday something has caught my attention.   contemplation never seems to be far away.   my eyes wide observing the world around me.  

clearly though none of them were translated outwardly through the tapping of my fingers onto the keyboard.    These days I’ve written more with a pen in my little book sitting on my chair in the morning.   

I hadn’t really thought about the direction of my prose  recently until this evening when I made myself click “new post.”    At some point in the last month or so, I’ve reoriented myself inwardly.    Observing more.   Thinking more.   Listening more.  Writing more – not as a way of outward expression and articulation but as an inward way of prayer and conversation with my Restorer.   

Interesting to me that Wednesday I move outward again – literally – as we begin the yearly pilgrimage through Great Britain.   But I guess that’s what is different about the way of a pilgrim — every step outward?  is really a step inward.  

s0 maybe this journey before me — maybe it will tie it all back together: the inward and the outward.     so maybe the best is still unwritten.

you’re not hearing me.

If I’m honest I want to say it far more often than those words actually roll out of my mouth.   I think what I’m getting at  is that you may be hearing the words I’m saying but you’re not really hearing what the words mean to me.   

Sure we could say that it’s my personality (INFP — it’s never about what’s on the surface.)  But I’ve been thinking that actually it’s probably far more common than INFP’s.   Because listening (which would be what is necessary to really hear what someone is saying) is one of the hardest things for us to do.    We like to talk too much.  We like what we have to say too much.     We like to think too much.   All of which put a damper on listening.  

Seriously, how often do we just abstract our favorite  or maddening bits from stories, movies, articles, speeches, sermons, prayers, books so that we can propell our take, our story, our motives.   

I’m in the listening business.  But although I really try to practice  listening – “active listening” for all you psycho-therapy nuts like me -  it’s still hard.   It’s still amazing to me how many times someone can say something to me and I dismiss it before I really hear what they’re saying.    I suppose in part that’s because  so much is shared standing in an office door or on the way out of a room as opposed to sitting across a table with a cup of coffee.  

Listening is a holy endeavor.  All to often I find that moments of real listening coincide with moments of real prayer.   So maybe listening does take us through the wardrobe and into the parts of life that cannot be seen with the naked eye.   Maybe listening is actually a way of seeing through this world and each other.  

Maybe listening is one of the best kept secrets.   Because maybe listening leads us onto the path of life.   Maybe it’s through listening (actually hearing ) each other that we’re able to hear the pulse that beats through the heart of all life.    Maybe if we were to actually hear each other, we’d be so much closer to actually hearing the God who continues to pursue us and call us back home.  

Speak, please. I’m listening.

an open window.

I love open windows.   I love spring and fall in middles tennessee because my windows can be open.   My doctor and sinuses might disagree with this love of mine but what is life, if we have to be quaranteened and closed off to the world?

Romance comes to me through open windows.    The breeze.  The birds (what better alarm clock could there be?).  The sound of rustling leaves.    I am more connected to the changing light of the rising sun and the little bunny hopping about yards from the window. 

I have been romanced this morning.   I’m still resting in it.   It soon will end and the busyness of this time of year will creep back in.  My to-do list will face me and work will return much sooner than I’d like.  

But the window will stay open so that Romance might pursue me  –  if only for a few minutes at  a time.  

I’m wondering what other windows I could open in my day, in my work, in my world so that when moments of rest and beauty seem so few and far between, the odds are greater that Romance might find me.    And that all shall be made well again.  

choices.

stress will creep in,  I will repel it and chose to trust.
work will hem me in, I will repel it and choose to trust.
anxiety will fester within,  I will repel it and choose to trust.
to-do lists will fill my mind and desk, I will repel it and choose to trust.  
tiredness will encompass me, I will repel it and choose to trust.
how will it all be done presses hard against me,  I will repel it and choose to trust.
busyness will burn like wild fire, I will repel it and choose to trust.

I choose to trust.  
to live in trust.
to live from trust.
to live with trust.  

so that I might keep singing this strange song in this strange land. 

In the name of God I choose life.

sorry.

“When we get it right, sorry can mean redemption.” 
-Meredith Grey,  Grey’s Anatomy.

It’s amazing though how many times we don’t get it right – we don’t get sorry right.   

I read recently that the two most difficult things in life to get straight are God and Love  (Eugene Peterson).   That must be why it’s so hard to get “sorry” right as well.  Since “sorry” is the necessary bridge to both.   

But how sweet redemption can taste, when that bridge is crossed.

out of the mouth of babes.

We had a big big saturday!!!  My neice was baptized.   It was a great day – a beautiful day.   Despite our holes – the empty places that should have been filled with grandparents- we are learning how to be family.  And saturday was a great practice at being just that: family.    Family not defined by blood but by love.   

Brenda was trying to explain to Janey what was going to happen as she was baptized and what it meant.   Given that most adults struggle to articulate what baptism actually means and why we still do it after all these years, this was not the easiest to explain to a 3 year old.  

Brenda likened it to becoming clean like what happens in the bath.   But this is more about the inside.   And Janey blurted out, “so I’m new then.”  

I think she got it.   I think about all the books and pages and words that have been offered to try and understand the mystery of the sacrament of baptism and she at 3 years old got it – in a nut shell.   My brother calls Janey, their “Jesus-girl.”

She was born two weeks after dad died and since then,  she has led us into the “new” life that comes through death whether we wanted to go there or not.  

and saturday she reminded us that it’s not just Janey that is being made new but as we  renewed our baptismal vows, we are all being made new again - just as if we were 3 years old.

Blackberry Season.

Well it’s almost backberry season in middle tennessee. By the price of blackberries in the produce section last night? it must be already blackberry season somewhere.

Earth’s crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes -
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I want to go berry picking this summer: blackberries, strawberries and blueberries!!!!  I wonder if I could take of my shoes to do it?   Maybe not such a good idea.  But that’s ok cause I have a hunch that for me picking berries?  it would be just like every bush is afire with the goodness and sweetness of God -f lip flops or not. 

Yippee for the coming of berry season!!!!!!!!!!!!  Taste and see.   Taste and see, God is good.

hearts.

I had the honor this afternoon of sitting with wounded hearts in two different places.   

My heart ached for those I sat with. 

My heart wept with the tears that welled.

My heart remembered my wounds.   

My heart became thankful for my wounds that allow me to be so present with wounded others.  

Driving home, my heart kept asking what has become of us?  what has become of our world?  where is the hope for so many wounded hearts?

“Let my heart be broken by things that break your heart, O God.”
Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision.  

Let my heart continue to be broken by those things that break yours because perhaps then through the cracks of our hearts and the cracks in our lives, you might break through.   Because maybe through those holes, your hope and healing and restoration might come.  

And my Lord we need it.