The Short Run, a Requiem

"Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" -- St. Matthew 9:11

Love's Divine

Performed by Seal

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Then the rainstorm came, over me
And I felt my spirit break
I had lost all of my belief, you see
And realize my mistake
But time through a prayer, to me
And all around me, became still

I need love, love's divine
Please forgive me now I see that I've been blind
Give me love, love is what I need to help me know my name

Through the rainstorm came, sanctuary
And I felt my spirit fly
I had felt, all of my, reality
I realize what it takes

Cause I need love, love's divine
Please forgive me now I see that I've been blind
Give me love, love is what I need to help me know my name

Oh, I don't bend, don't break,
Show me how to live and promise me you won't forsake
Cause love can help me know my name

Well, I try to say there's nothing wrong
But inside, I felt it lying all along
But the message here was plain to see
Believe in me
Cause I need love, love's divine
Please forgive me now I see that I've been blind
Give me love, love is what I need to help me know my name

Oh I, don't bend, don't break,
Show me how to live and promise me you won't forsake
Cause love can help me know my name

Love can help me know my name.

 Love indeed helps us to know our name; it was ultimately an untimely end. The beginning seemed like any other -- the birth, the growing, the troubles, the training, and the boy became a man. For one young man, he was born and died in exactly the same place, almost 30 years apart. His end a shock, so utterly unexpected.

There is no dress rehearsal for life, no practice sessions; just a lot of chances for "do-overs" when we screw up. Reckoning the mistake(s) from the first attempt, often we conclude it's worth a second try to do it better, to do it right. So we try again, and many times it is better, and so right. Finally we succeed and recognize our successes and accomplishments; death is the exception, always final, a result.

Like all lives, there is little in the way of 'perfect' and many, like he did, suffer from less than perfect families, less than perfect parents. Parents often negligent or indulgent, sometimes so simply pre-occupied with their own life, they hardly notice the life of their child unfolding beneath their own noses. 

The child grows up restless, wild; in grade school the police enter the picture. They call parents down to the station to pick up this child. Again and again it happens. He learns to smoke and drink, becoming now a 'wild child.'

 As he enters high school, his often pre-occupied parents, become entangled with the police due to problems of their own. They're convicted, both for the same offense. A child with the merest conscience feels embarrassed. His family is in the newspaper; what do the neighbors, his school, his friends think? 
He cares for them all and hopes, needs their acknowledgement, their friendship. Yet these events drive him to secretiveness. He wants to hold his head, to maintain others' esteem.

...your teacher eats with tax collectors and sinners-- is written in the bible in the way of explanation for who was the person of the Christ.  He was, as it's written, one who endeavored to love his neighbor as himself, to forgo absolute judgement and to forgive those who trespass against us and others. 

With disappointments and betrayal come bitter anger, a desire to harm another. Most of us think, we could never do that... never do another bodily harm. When some one we know, care for or love comes under violent attack, even death, it's easy to think that the perpetrator is somehow so very different from ones' self. 
And yet we're human, each and every one of us. It's one of life's challenges to come to grips with this fact.

Secretiveness however, very often becomes a poison, eating away at ones' youth and early manhood. This young man continues to try and still doesn't often succeed. There are to be more contacts with the police; a wild child is trying but not winning the very thing he most wants: to know who he is and what is to be his purpose in life. With high school graduation behind him the world waits... and waits... He's not ready, doesn't know what to do.

Some how, some way he finds a path to further education, to people who support him, to the positive teacher who will inspire him; he begins little by little to believe, to unfold his protective shell. 
To believe that he can succeed, he believes more and more in himself, his natural talents and the will to gain more skills. Acquiring more companions on the way, a community to claim for his own, this young man is now moving forward with some answers to the questions that nag us all. 
A 'eureka' moment gives him the drive to try a business on his own. Wonderful.

But life, whether long or short, has its ups and downs, and tragedy. So sad-- this tragedy, a life so full, so young, so hopeful; a family destroyed now, each and every one of them. The culprit waits for his day, in jail. We mourn a young man's death. Our grief is apparent.

Cooks In Kitchens

Adia

by Sarah Machlaughlin

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...There's no one here to blame
There's no one left to talk to, honey
And there ain't no one to buy our innocence

'Cause we are born innocent
Believe me Adia, we are still innocent
It's easy, we all falter
Does it matter?

Adia I thought that we could make it
But I know I can't change the way you feel
I leave you with your misery
A friend who won't betray
I pull you from your tower
I take away your pain
And show you all the beauty you possess
If you'd only let yourself believe that

We are born innocent
Believe me Adia, we are still innocent
It's easy, we all falter, does it matter?...

Sometimes cooking together is very messy, and sometimes things burn; other times the food is tasty and we are so glad. There are days that the sight of the 'kitchen' is terrifying! Without courage to experiment, at times we turn away; it just seems so hot in there. The kitchen may be a metaphor for one's life.
 Boiling water, burnt fingers, we imagine our self unappreciated.
But truly we are innocent. Innocence in the sense of a good gift given and received; innocent that we are free of guile or cunning; innocent that we are honest in dealing with one another. Innocent in the Simple way. Powerfully innocent in divinity.

What  happens in the kitchen, that central place in our daily life? Mostly good. It came to me over time, that a person may simply be a gift. An amazing gift to me by the Holy Spirit. How else could it be?
How could I refuse such a gift? While not perfect, we are very lovable. This proves a great help to me. It's my hope I am mostly a help in return, if a clumsy one. And like all gifts, those freely given and freely received, may be freely withdrawn, the 'free will' thing. The Spirit does not force anything; it can be surrendered.

This gift given me, cannot be shamed. Some may not understand; some may be jealous, but owing to the Original Giver, we cannot be shamed. Truly we are innocents.
The light of the Spirit is all knowing and I have, often in extreme anxiety, followed its lead, honoring  and respecting what I cannot always know or understand.

Among the things I have always discerned is the gift of love, sometimes soft, sometimes tough. It gives courage to go on and on. I could not have had instances of more beauty and wonder in my life without such great gifts as these.
The Bible tells a bit about the gifts of the Spirit, about the light to the world. Keep your courage, engage patience when in darkness, follow the light in your life, as did the disciple Mark 10:14: "Let the little children come to me."

Carrying the Load

The Band

The Weight 

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I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin' about half past dead;
I just need some place where I can lay my head.
"Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand, "No!", was all he said.

Take a load off Annie, take a load for free;
Take a load off Annie, And (and) (and) you can put the load right on me.

I picked up my bag, I went lookin' for a place to hide;
When I saw Carmen and the Devil walkin' side by side.
I said, "Hey, Carmen, come on, let's go downtown."
She said, "I gotta go, but m'friend can stick around."

Go down, Miss Moses, there's nothin' you can say
It's just ol' Luke, and Luke's waitin' on the Judgement Day.
"Well, Luke, my friend, what about young Anna Lee?"
He said, "Do me a favor, son, woncha stay an' keep Anna Lee company?"

Crazy Chester followed me, and he caught me in the fog.
He said, "I will fix your rack, if you'll take Jack, my dog."
I said, "Wait a minute, Chester, you know I'm a peaceful man."
He said, "That's okay, boy, won't you feed him when you can."

Catch a cannon ball now, t'take me down the line
My bag is sinkin' low and I do believe it's time.
To get back to Miss Fanny, you know she's the only one.
Who sent me here with her regards for everyone.


A woman had a dream that she was carrying a tote bag around. She set it down and not long after, she picked it up again. It was so heavy! She wondered why this was so, but she assumed it was hers, so she carried it--and she didn't look into the bag.

Later she returned home, set the bag down again and looked into it. It was filled with books, heavy books. She didn't recognize them. They didn't belong to her. And they didn't leave her bag. She asked some friends of hers to help carry the load; the bag was heavy. And they obliged.

Many times we find ourselves carrying loads. Sometimes they are ours and sometimes not. Some loads are meant to be shared; for if they are not, they become a burden, often too heavy to carry. Asking our friend or another person to share the load, to carry it a distance, to take their portion, is part of the human experience and part of what makes life livable. We are not meant to carry the loads of others, and our own without ceasing.

Hitting the Skids

In some places the skids means to be in an unenviable place, as in one step forward, two steps backward. Does it have to be like that? Does that one step back place one on the skids, like a hamster on a wheel? The unenviable turning of the wheel, why?--when just recently there seemed to have come a place of calm, a peaceable and livable state where we might all prosper. Ouch!  People generally don't like what they don't know, what they don't understand or half-understand. Even if there is not direct, immediate conflict between individuals, then there is conflict elsewhere. And where dignity is lacking, respect is absent too.

That brings conflict to you and me. (We're Only Human After All) I've seen this picture before... and suddenly the new made good is punctured by those around who would be the critics. And what the hell am I talking about, you ask? Well, in the short of it, it's about that much used term dignity. Many like that term; they like what it means. The UN likes that term; they use it as part of their human rights doctrine. Do they extend themselves to others?

The Church uses that term too. She really likes that term; matter of fact, she likes it so well, she teaches it every day. Hmm. The dignity of a human person is what primarily distinguishes it from others. All are deserving of their dignity. The sidebar of this blog even has it on there-- affirm the force and value of a person. Each deserves respect...respect them in the place they are... so as to create a more unified and harmonious world. Some of this may require patience. And yes, it works, this more harmonious world. And very well when we all sing the same song. Does that make sense? Can we talk?

Diane Rizzetto writes in her book, Waking Up To What You Do, a story about a Peace Corps worker in the chapter, Taking Only What is  Freely Given:  After pedaling miles and miles with a passenger upon his bicycle in rural Africa on a very hot day, they arrived at her destination. He had gone out of his way to take her. "He was exhausted. I was giddy and in awe of him." It was, she says, an act of dana, giving freely and generously. It is not the simple act of giving help, writes Rizzetto.
Instead practicing dana over time teaches openness; this can be profound in working our way through to a more open heart, a heart that sees past anger, jealousy, fear or rejection.

 The woman on the bike recounts that looking back to that day, moments before the man offered her a ride on his bike, she felt stranded. But still a part of her was calm because she knew where she was in that place, and then the stranger came and offered her his help. She accepted in the spirit of dana. We can learn.
John, the disciple of the Christ writes:

See what love the Father has bestowed on us

that we may be called the children of God.

Yet so we are.

The reason the world does not know us

is that it did not know him.

1John3:1-2