Stormy Nights

the storm within the dark of my house

tossing on a sea of restless waves… or on a bed of quilted waves.   

restless indeed. disturbed.  about what?  I’m not so sure.  Though this storm seemed beyond me - literally.   Or maybe deep within me.   a storm, a fight for me? 

I sit up…  clammy, startled, unsettled.    My head banging.

with some sips of water, some deep breaths, I like back down. Closing my eyes I remember, I’m not drowning in this stormy night, I’m ok, I’m not in this boat alone.

the window is cracked, the world peeps in, the birds are singing, a gentle breeze rests over me, the sun is rising, my faithful four legged friend’s head resting on the side of the bed looking at me - waiting for me to open my eyes.

the calm after the storm.

is there any greater peace.

resting in that calm, all is well.   all shall be well.   I am well.

my teacher

This morning I remembered something.

I was watching Bugs go from the front window to the back window with a steady frequency.  And I realized that he’s no longer spends the morning curled up in a ball on one of his beds as he waits for me to ready myself and feed him.  Nope - he goes from window to window, tail wagging ceaselessly. 

I started thinking: I guess the season of hibernation is over.  Winter is past. Spring is here and life is busting out all over (including many little creatures hence Bugs excitement).   

But then I remembered.   If I would just pay more attention to my dog -I know, I know, I know - he gets so much attention already - so maybe it’s more if I would actually listen to him more - heed his teachings, maybe I wouldnt’ be so tired and maybe life would look a little more like it should.

He knows when we should be leaving the church - he knows when I’ve worked enough for one day.

He knows that when I get home, I need to rest and not always be on the phone.   Thefront door is his boundary and he has quite a way of reminding me that life at home should not be the same as life at work and phone conversations begun in the car should be concluded before crossing the threshhold

He knows when we’re up way too early - and way too late.

He knows when I need to stay home because I’ve been gone too much.

He knows that I spend enough time on a computer working already and as a result I don’t need to sit at home and do more (you should see the pawaction I get when I’m working on the couch - which I’ve learned according to my dog should be for relaxing not working).

And that’s just the beginning … he’s better with character assesment and chemistry, than I am.

He’s such a smart little guy who tries so hard to take care of his keeper.  I should mind him a little more. 

I can’t help but wonder if the secret of life - of being fully alive - isn’t paying attention … if it isn’t simply listening.

"I will listen to what the Lord God is speaking, for He is speaking peace to His people." - Ps 85:8

the song we know

Thursday I took a group of ladies from the church on a "little pilgrimage." 

We spent the day hanging out in Sewanee at St. Mary’s Convent with our new friends, Sister Elizabeth and Sister Margaret.   We sat together.  We had a picnic.   We sat alone.   We looked together.   We looked alone.   We prayed together.  We prayed alone.  We listened together.   We listened alone.   Something instinctive - something in our wiring - our essence - seemed to take over.   A natural rhythm.  Like the ebb and flow of the tide.   We’d ebb back to shore, together … then we’d flow back out to sea.   With next to no direction from me, either.   

We talked of how this movement of quiet and conversation, of community and solitude - this simplicity they had remembered - seemed more in tune with how life should ; not how life most often is.  So we drove back home, wondering how we might carry into our worlds what we found and remembered at the convent.   

So today is Saturday - the day on the mountain at the convent seems years ago — he fans are blowing; the windows are open; just did a bit of baking … It’s quiet.   I noticed the quiet this morning actually walking Bugs.   It’s calm.  It’s still.  Today there is peace.  And somehow the convent doesn’t seem so far away.

Unlike normal, I have no CD playing.   But the birds are chirping. And my wind chimes are ringing. Even my breathing and my heart beat seem to be moving in a different rhtyhm as if music is actually playing somewhere.   

An old song.  A familiar song.  The original song.  That’s what I hear today.

The song of creation.  the song that plays within us and all around us; the song we all know somehow, somewhere, someway.   The song that was played at the beginning, the song that has played ever since and the song that will play on forever. 

The song that usually gets drowned out by all the other music that plays in our worlds and in our minds. But still it is the song we know.

The same song who’s rhyme and rhythm matched the ebb and flow we found ourselves floating in at the convent.  The same song that the birds chirp, the trees sway and the wind blows to. The same music that today my every thought; my every breath; my every step; and even my heart seems to move ot.

Oh that I would more often be caught in this current. that I would move often find myself singing this song.

As it was.   As it is.     As it will be forever.

 

First Kiss

Guess who came over?

Guess who sat on the counter and ate bananas and strawberries? Guess who asked for more?

Guess who kept putting rocks in Bugs water bowl?

Guess who gave me a goodbye kiss? 

As Grandma would say, she’s champion!   

the senses

I walked Bugs today at lunch and I could smell spring.

I’d forgotten how much I love the smell of spring. 

who needs perfume when you have spring?

so I was thinking I could re-write one of my favorite Psalms for today …  smell and see that God is good. 

It makes breathing all the better - all the holier - when you breathe the smell of spring.  and to breathe is to pray according to the pioneers of the faith.

And it makes walking outside all the better - all the more calming and restorative - when you breathe the smell of spring.   Because it is in God that we live, we move, we have our being.   

I’m so glad that God knows how to get my attention - by making mass appeals to my senses. 

I confess though that it doesn’t hurt either that at every turn I seem to find another cherry blossom tree springing into life. (or at least what I think are cherry blossoms - I don’t always get my flowers; trees, blooms and bushes by the right name).   

miracles.

I’ve been doing this Lenten Study on the disciple John … you know the one in DaVinci’s  painting of the Last Supper that "could" be Mary Magdalene (according to the Code) …. 

Anyway  I came upon this great line in the study this week (yes I still procrastinate and leave things until the night before).  It came out of this story after Pentecost, about Peter and John and this crippled beggar.   Every day the beggar was brought to the temple gates where he begged for alms.   Peter and John had no alms but instead healed the man.

Quite often we spend so much time ‘begging’ God for what we want and then getting mad when we don’t get it.  What we want is a ‘holy enabler.’ (a God that will give us what we want when we want it so we can stay the same).  But God has so much more in mind for us.  What God wants is not to enable us but to heal us (make us all that He intends for us to be)

I thought it was pretty profound - not true to every person, every cry or every context.  But it made me think if at times what I seek is a "holy enabler" not the God who wants to heal me, make me whole, so that I can be fully alive, fully present and fully all that He has called me to be.   

Today I visited a very cool place — a place that brought all this alive actually.   A place that is seeking to be part of this healing not this enabling.  A place that is seeking to do so much more than write prescriptions and bandage wounds.   A place that is helping heal wholistically: body, soul, mind and spirit.  And it’s just around the corner from church, Mercy Children’s Clinic.   

The Glory of God is man fully alive said St. Iranaeus.   Fully alive.  Fully present.  Healing on all levels and Growing in all fronts.  Not stuck and enabling.   

Tonight I find myself so thankful that the miracles of healing didn’t stop with the deaths of the Jesus and the Apostles.   I find myself so thankful that Jesus didn’t just heal 2000 years ago but Jesus still heals today.    And in this, I find hope: hope for this world.  hope for those I love.  and hope for me.   

Know what else I hope?  I hope the Roman Catholic Church never stops canonizing Saints …  it takes 3 miracles to be made a saint in the RC church.   And I think we need all the reminders we can get in this mixed up world.  Not so much  the reminder that miracles still happen but more the reminder that Jesus does still indeed heal.

I wish He’d heal in my cold! I’m so over the stuffy nose, the tissues, the coughing, the medicine … I want to be well.   and by the way that’s not begging, that’s whining.

be careful what you say

or in my case what you write.

I write.  I post.  But I don’t really know who reads it.  who checks it.  I just write because it’s good for me to write.

And then every once in a while someone says something that reminds "oh yea people do read what I write."   

So remember back last weekend my desire to be a bit more like my brother when it comes to rest?  yeah … it kinda came back at me because someone read my blog.  So I’m haning out last week with a dear young friend and she goes (like only an 8th grader can) "so sally, did you rest this week?  have you rested?"   Talk about a kick in the rear.   Of course I hadn’t - I had work to do.   And then she goes on to say she had read my blog about my brother and how I needed to rest.   I laughed to myself.  Little did I know how prophetic my young friend would be.   

So, know what I did on Saturday — I had this cough and this cold that wouldn’t go away … so I literally spent the day watching movies.   The Brave Little Toaster; Friends with Money (wierd); One Night with the King (fabulous) and The Holiday (hopeful and healing).   I walked Bugs and I went out and bought cough stuff.    I, Sally Chambers, watched four movies in one day and did nothing off a "to-do" list - - granted I was sick and coughing up a lung … but still I RESTED.   

So I was telling my friend Cynthia yesterday about my Saturday — and she goes "you pulled a matthew."   (that would be my brother).   

HAH!!!!  People read my blog and connect it back to life … see writing is a good thing, in more ways than one.   

synchronized fishing

so I thought the fox that ran past my bedroom window this morning was good - untoppable.   which on the side, I’m beginning to wonder if maybe the reason I haven’t seen any rabbits in a long time is because I’m seeing a fox… ok let’s no go there, that’s not a happy thought. 

ok back to the post at hand and a happier thought: two geese performing sychronized fishing for me and Bugs as we watched from this bench at Radnor Lake … now that was GOOD!!  that was hysterical in fact.   Their little white bellies and brown tails sticking straight up in the air - and then their little feet pushing them round in circles — iN SYNC, I kid you not.  Up and down and round in circles in SYNC.The olympic synchronized swim teams have nothing on these guys!  I was so entertained.   so very entertained.   I wish I had a camera. 

This week a friend sat in my office and said that he wanted to know (not just think) that there was a God …  today on that bench watching those geese, I not only knew there was a God (in Radnor I’m surrounded by such knowledge) but I knew God, himself through his humor.

And this afternoon - we laughed our heads off at this crazy world!

My new thing

It’s funny - Mum never came here but I’m here again. 

I’m not even sure it was around when she was alive. 

But somehow the Frothy Monkey keeps her near. 

Maybe cause Cam and I walked here on her birrthday.

Maybe cause she loved a good latte (hers loaded with enormous amounts of brown sugar).

Maybe cause in her last year we spent so much time at Wild Oats, eating organic, trying anything natural that might help heal … and even the coffee here seems "good for you."   

Maybe cause they sell the "food juices" that we used to buy in hopes of increasing a decreasing caloric intake especially when the mouth sores were at their height.  

Maybe cause it’s eccentric and quaint.

Maybe cause I can sit at the table and look out at the trees and see them wave, like they did as we scattered her ashes.

Maybe cause I would bring her here.

Funny isn’t it?  You just never know when or where the gate to heaven will open, shrinking the space between us.

So this is my new thing … hanging out at Frothy Monkey.

It’s a healing thing. 

It’s a restorative thing. 

It’s a beautiful thing. 

Like the tulips that sit on the table … tulips perfectly shaded betwen pink and purple…   

maybe it’s not really a "new thing"  but it’s a "nice thing."

   

Bullets.

Veteran: you don’t know what it’s like to have something change you in your soul

Izzie: I do.  I wish I didn’t.  But I do.

Veteran:  don’t let it turn you. 

maybe our old wounds teach us something.  They remind us about where we’ve been and what we’ve overcome…

Grey’s Anatomy, ‘Scars and Souvenirs’