The best cure for a hot head and a cold house

I've been collecting bits and pieces of wisdom for my son and soon-to-be daughter-in-law as they approach their January 2nd wedding date.  

Here's a stellar tidbit that combines marital advice in the cracking theme of this week's Autumn Daybook: 

"Always remember, the best cure for a hot head and a cold house: splitting wood. Do it as often as necessary." 

(from How to Build a Fire: and other handy things your grandfather knew )

Summer 2012, upstate NY

p.s., WEAR PROPER SHOES WHILE WIELDING AN AXE!

Love,

your Mom

Wednesday words & photo inspired by Wendell Berry in a pile of leaves

Leaf peeping in Texas is more like leaf hunting.  Which, it seems to me, makes this giant, Trinitarian-shaped leaf I found in our neighborhood park even more valuable!

from The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry [currently reading with the Liturgy of Life Reading Group]: 

"I have been walking in the woods, and have lain down on the ground to rest. It is the middle of October, and around me, all through the woods, the leaves are quietly sifting down. The newly fallen leaves make a dry, comfortable bed, and I lie easy, coming to rest within myself as I seem to do nowadays only when I am in the woods.  

And now a leaf, spiraling down in wild flight, lands on my shirt at about the third button below the collar. At first I am bemused and mystified by the coincidence -- that the leaf should have been so hung, weighted and shaped, so ready to fall, so nudged loose and slanted by the breeze, as to fall where I, by the same delicacy of circumstance, happened to be lying. The event, among all its ramifying causes and considerations, and finally its mysteries, begins to take on the magnitude of history. Portent begins to dwell in it. 

And suddenly I apprehend in it the dark proposals of the ground. Under the fallen leaf my breastbone burns with imminent decay. Other leaves fall. My body begins its long shudder into humus. I feel my substance escape me, carried into the mold by beetles and worms. Days, winds, seasons pass over me as I sink under the leaves. For a time only sight is left me, a passive awareness of the sky overhead, birds crossing, the mazed interreaching of the treetops, the leaves falling -- and then that, too, sinks away. It is acceptable to me, and I am at peace. 

When I move to go, it is as though I rise up out of the world."

(Wendell Berry, "A Native Hill", 1969) 

[currently reading with the Liturgy of Life Reading Group]

what Anne Lamott & Sara Zarr said about reading

Anne Lamott

"For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die."

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing & Life via *cino

SARA ZARR


"As for A House Like a Lotus, I'd forgotten many details of the story but still keenly remembered the emotional impact of it, how it left me in a daze, and I mean the good kind of daze only a story that has spoken to you deeply can. When you're finished reading, you stumble through life like someone who has had her eyes dilated. You're seeing the world in glorious, unforgiving brightness, painful new detail, expansive periphery."  

Book Like A Lotus via Image Journal blog

hiding with a good book in my friend Andy's tree house a couple of summers ago

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Before I go, I'd love to hear the last book you read that (in Sara Zarr's words) "left you in a daze...the good kind of daze only a story that has spoken to you deeply can"?

  Drop a comment and share with the rest of us!

i got saved today

Source: flickr.com via Benjamin on Pinterest 

God always entices us through love. 

Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change, is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change. If the mystics say that one way, they say it a thousand ways. But because most of our common religion has not been at the mystical level, we’ve been given an inferior message—that God loves you “when” you change (“moralism”). It puts it all back on you, which is the opposite of being "saved.” Moralism leads you back to “navel-gazing” and you can never succeed at that level. You are never holy enough, pure enough, refined enough, or loving enough. Whereas, when you fall into God’s mercy, when you fall into God’s great generosity, you find, seemingly from nowhere, this capacity to change. No one is more surprised than you are. You know it is a gift.

Adapted from Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate ...
Seeing God in All Things

old skin / new hope

Lizard Picture - Animal Wallpaper - National Geographic Photo of the Day

Photograph by Michael Walker, My Shot

This Month in Photo of the Day: Nature and Weather Photos

Spring is busting out all over southeast Texas. New leaves, flower buds, and a green anole busting out of its old skin and starting over. Shot on February 26, 2012.

Signposts of Hope

"With Easter, God's new creation is launched upon a surprised world, pointing ahead to the renewal, the redemption, the rebirth of the entire creation.... every act of love, every deed done in Christ and by the Spirit, every work of true creativity -- doing justice, making peace, healing families, resisting temptation, seeking and winning true freedom -- is an earthly event in a long history of things that implement Jesus's own resurrection and anticipate the final new creation and act as signposts of hope."

 -- N.T. Wright, Surprised By Hope

"The Bible is the loving heart of God made visible and plain...."

A sign at the conclusion of a prayerwalk during my silent retreat.

"The Bible is the loving heart of God made visible and plain. And receiving this message of exquisite love is the great privilege message of all who long for life with God. Reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating upon Scripture has always been the foundation of the Christian disciplines."

                                                                                --- Richard J. Foster
                                                                   

"... else you will be a trifler all your days"

It cannot be that the people should grow in grace unless they give themselves to reading. A reading people will always be a knowing people. A people who talk much will know little. Press this upon them with your might, and you will soon see the fruit of your labours.

...You can never be deep...without it any more than a thorough Christian. O begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises. You may acquire the taste which you have not; what is tedious at first will afterwards be pleasant. Whether you like it or not, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days...

--From The Message of the Wesleys. Compiled by Philip S. Watson

Two Mourning Stories: Lars and the Real Girl & Henri Nouwen

Lars and the Real Girl

Sewing Circle Lady 3 : Well that's how life is, Lars.
Mrs. Gruner: Everything at once.
Sewing Circle Lady 2 : We brought casseroles.
Lars Lindstrom: Thank you.
Lars Lindstrom: [Lars looks around the sewing circle. The three ladies are knitting and doing needlepoint] Um, is there something I should be doing right now?
Mrs. Gruner: No, dear. You eat.
Sewing Circle Lady 2 : We came over to sit.
Sewing Circle Lady 3 : That's what people do when tragedy strikes.
Sewing Circle Lady 2 : They come over, and sit.

Henri Nouwen's Latin American Journal:

"There is one more thing I want you to do," said Ann, when the people had left the church. "There is a lady here who lost her only son of sixteen years last month. His name was Walter. She wants you to go to the cemetery with her, pray with her, and bless the grave." I found the woman sitting on a bench in the village square. As I touched her, she started to cry bitterly. It was a sad story. Last month, Walter went to Cochabamba with a truck loaded with produce and people. As usual, the younger boys were standing on the running board of the truck holding onto the door. At one point, Walter lost his balance and fell from the truck without the driver noticing. He fell beneath the wheels and was crushed by the back tires of the truck. They took him in the truck in the hope of reaching the hospital in Cochabamba in time, but he died on the way. 

Ann and I drove with Walter's mother in the jeep to the small cemetery behind the hospital. There we found the little niche where Walter's body was laid. We prayed and I sprinkled the place with holy water and we cried. "He was my only son, and he was such a good boy," his mother said with tears in her eyes. Ann told me how helpful Walter had been in the parish and how everyone was shocked by his death.

I couldn't keep my eyes from the woman's face, a gentle and deep face that had known much suffering. She had given birth to eight children: seven girls and Walter. When I stood in front of the grave I had a feeling of powerlessness and strong desire to call Walter back to life. "Why can't I give Walter back to his mother?" I asked myself. But then I realized that my ministry lay  more in powerlessness than in power; I could give her only my tears."

--From Gracias! by Henri J. Nowen

Wednesday Words: Tim Chester

"Communion should be a feast of friends shared with laughter, tears, prayers, and stories. We celebrate the community life that God gives us through the cross and in the Spirit. We can't celebrate it with heads bowed and eyes closed, alone in our private thoughts and strangely solitary even as we're surrounded by other people.

When we recapture the Lord's Supper as a feast of friends, celebrated as a meal in the presence of the Spirit, then it will become something we earnestly desire. It will become the  high point of our life together as the people of God. In this sad and borken world, the Lord's Supper is a moment of joy, because it's a moment of the future."  

-- Tim Chester, A Meal With Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, & Mission around the Table

Wednesday Words & pictures: Come, Go

enjoying a sibling walk around Melody Lake

"Your own growth cannot take place without growth in others. You are part of a body. When you change, the whole body changes. It is very important for you to remain deeply connected with the larger community to which you belong.

It is also important that those who belong to the body of which you are part keep faith in your journey. You still have a way to go, and there will be times when your friends are puzzled or even disillusioned by what is happening to you. At certain moments things may seem more difficult for you than before; they may look worse than when you began. You still have to make the great passage, and that might not happen without a lot of new distress and fear. Through all of this, it is important for you to stay united with the larger body and know that your journey is made not just for yourself but for all who belong to the body.

Think about Jesus. He made his journey and asked his disciples to follow him even where they would rather not go. The journey you are choosing is Jesus' journey, and whether or not you are fully aware of it, you are also asking your brothers and sisters to follow you. Somewhere you already know that what you are living now will not leave the other members of the community untouched. Your choices also call your friends to make new choices."  

-- Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love

(bolded font is my own addition)

Wednesday Words & Pictures: Home

"For each home ground we need new maps, living maps, stories and poems, photographs and paintings, essays and songs. We need to know where we are, so that we may dwell in our place with a full heart."

 -- Scott Russell Sanders

Wednesday is for Words: Madeleine L'Engle

Annunciation
Phaedra Taylor

A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L'Engle

" ' Not everybody is able to see me,' he told her. 'I'm real, and most earthlings can bear very little reality. But if it will relieve your mind, I'll dematerialize.' he waved a few wings gracefully. 'It's really more comfortable for me not to be burdened with matter, but I thought it would be easier for you if you could converse with someone you could see.'

The cherubim was there in front of her, covering most of the star-watching rock, and then he was not there. She thought she saw a faint shimmer in the air, but it might have been the approach of dawn. She could feel him, however, moving within her mind. 'Are you feeling extremely brave Megling?'

'No.' A faint light defined the eastern horizon. The stars were dim, almost extinguished.

'I think we're going to have to be brave, earth child, but it will be easier because we're together. I wonder if the Teacher knows..'

'Knows what?' 

'That you've seen an Echthros.'

'Progo, I don't understand. What is an Ecthros?'

Abruptly, Proginoskes materialized, raised several wings, and gathered her in. 'Come, littleing. I'll take you some place...and show you.'...'...Come.' He drew her further in to him.

She found herself looking directly into one of his eyes, a great, amber cat's eye, the dark mandala of the pupil, opening, compelling, beckoning. She was drawn towards the oval, was pulled into it, was through it. Into the ultimate night on the other side. Then she felt a great, flaming wind, and knew that somehow she herself was part of that wind.

Then she felt a great shove, and she was standing on a bare stone mountaintop, and Proginoskes was blinking and winking at her. She thought she saw the oval, mandala-eye through which she had come, but she was not sure.

The cherubim raised a great wing to sketch the slow curve of sky above them. The warm rose and lavender of sunset faded, dimmed, was extinguished. The sky was drenched with green at the horizon, muting upwards into a deep, purply blue through which stars began to appear in totally unfamiliar constellations.

Meg asked, 'Where are we?'

'Never mind where. Watch.'

She stood beside him, looking at the brilliance of the stars. Then came a sound, a sound which was above sound, beyond sound, a violent, silent, electrical report, which made her press her hands in pain against her ears. Across the sky, where the stars were clustered as thickly as in the Milky Way, a crack shivered, slivered, became a line of nothingness.

If this kind of thing was happening in the universe, no matter how far away form earth and the Milky Way. ...

'Progo, what is it? What happened?'

'The Echthroi have Xed.'

'What?'

'Annihilated. Negated. Extinguished. Xed.'

Meg stared in horrible fascination at the rent in the sky. This was the most terrible thing she had ever seen...She pressed close to the cherubim, surrounding herself with wings and eyes and puffos smoke, but she could still see the rip in the sky.

She could not bear it."

Wednesday is for Words (& sometimes pictures)

*I've been enjoying these prayers for children from Everyday Liturgy.*

Call

God, as my children wander in the dangerous and stormy valley of the world, may they only receive joy and consolation in you. Travel with them and teach them the path for the journey, so that they may cry out: Praise be to God!

Response

Just as I desire to be your child, I place my children into your hands with humility and pray:

Raise my children to be watchful and alert that they may not be tempted.

Raise my children to be merciful so that their Father in heaven is also merciful to them.

Raise my children to be pure, for the kingdom of God belongs to those with a child like faith.

Raise my children to be the least of these, so that they may in turn be great.

Raise my children to fulfill the Word of God and enjoy the blessings you have set aside for them.

Raise my children to place their home in your kingdom.

Raise my children Andrew, Alexander, Kendra & Natalie, to be made worthy of the Kingdom and heirs of your coming kingdom.

Wednesday is for Words: Calvin Seerveld

8 minutes max @ Union Center, May 2011

A mature witness

God has set things up so that cultural endeavour is always a communal enterprise, done by trained men and women in concert, gripped by a spirit that is larger than each one individually and that pulls them together as they do their formative work. Should a stray Christian who is an artist make it in the big time, and like a christian who is a professional football or baseball player make a testimonial announcement for Jesus Christ, we may praise the Lord; but that is a baby action next to the grown-up witness of a christian work community of solid artists, identifiable as people of God, who are able to earn their living from the gifts God gave them. That would be a mature witness to the world of God's grace.

Calvin Seerveld
Rainbows for the Fallen World

*from the Daily Asterisk*

Wednesday is for Words: Kaley Ehret

Normally, the Wednesday posts include excerpts from fiction, non-fiction or poetry I'm enjoying.  Today I'm compelled to post an e-mail excerpt instead.  This is from my sister Kaley after I sent our family and praying friends a brief update on finding a job for Brian.  


I'm not going to take the time now to share anything from that email update, except to say that I was asking for prayer for our emotional wellness after a week of feeling the grief of letting go of something we'd both hoped would be God's provision. 


From Kaley's email: 

I found myself totally empathizing with you as I read your email.  The absolute hardest part of Wes's unemployment was getting our hopes up and then letting them come crashing down again.  It almost would have been easier not to let ourselves dream. ... And, of course, the not knowing what the future holds pretty much stinks.  

God DOES have GOOD plans for Brian and for you.  Of that I have no doubt.  So feel free to let us feel HOPE for you while you learn to let go...

Love you. Kaley

I'm reminded of the words of Catherine of Siena I posted yesterday, the words about the communal impact of the way we give and receive good and harm.  Perhaps, after reading Kaley's note we could amend Catherine's statement to include:  

"They are so joined together, in fact, that you cannot do good or evil for yourself without doing the same for your neighbors... [you can not hope or give up hope without doing the same for your neighbors] ...all of you together make up one common vineyard, the whole Christian assembly, and you are all united in the vineyard of the mystic body of holy Church from which you draw your life [and hope]."

My Sisters