Moving to the Whole

With me in them and you in me, may they be so perfected in unity that the world will recognize that it was you who sent me, and that you have loved them as you have loved me.  John 17:23

Because You Loved Me
by Celine Dion
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You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn't speak
you were my eyes when I couldn't see
you saw that the best there was in me
You lifted me up when I couldn' t reach
you gave me faith cuz you believed
in everything I am because you loved me

 You gave me wings and made me the fly
You touched my hand I could touch the sky
 I lost my faith, you gave it back to me
you said no star was out of reach
You stood by me and I stood tall
 I had your love I had it all
I' m grateful for each day you gave me
maybe I don't know that much
But I know that this much is true
I was blessed because I was loved by you

Through a life time of direct experiences, many of us will encounter both the beautiful, the unpleasant and the truly ugly. Some will learn it by travels to other parts of the world; some through missionary activities either at home or abroad. While we often recoil from what we perceive as ugly, the old saying, 'a face only a mother could love,' rings true here. Why only mothers? Don't many of us have the inclination and the capacity to face the ugliness of the world, to dig deep within our selves and see that our reactions, our notions about what we have witnessed are not sprung from true guilt or shame, but from false imagination?

Now confronted with what is real, what is suffering, poverty and absolute destitution, we no longer can take comfort in so called humanitarian initiatives on the Internet or the little bake sale fund raisers around home. Our enlarged horizon calls. Plumbing our own hearts first and foremost, we may discern gratefulness for what we have and become more grateful for what we can share and spare. Carefully questioning our needs and discerning them from our desires, many find previously unharnessed abundance. Some of us are  already engaged in the myriad aspects of humanitarian relief through our churches or place of worship; some through professional experience as social workers or teachers, for example. Don't feel sorry. You cannot help those you merely pity. Engage yourself in the wider world, their world.

Still awareness is only the first step, and discerning our feelings from what we may have imagined is the next. So now we know; we are more aware; must our next step be to jet off to another part of the world? Can we make a real difference in our communities, one step at a time? Can those of us already engaged in the helping professions deepen our commitments to fairness, equality and social justice? Each must consider the matter for themselves.

In my own community of Champaign-Urbana for example, there are a great many needs. While those here may not be destitute to the degree of those encountered on the streets of Calcutta, India or those within the African bush, their needs are palpable and real. Like persons every where, there is the need for access to clean water, good food; self help in the areas of acquiring food, housing and education. There is also spiritual poverty in equal proportion. Will you refuse to sit at the table with those whom some might consider lowly?  Was not the Christ born lowly, in a feed trough of a stable? Can you grow a vegetable garden and share produce with your neighbor through a food pantry? Many students young and old are locked out of education due to personal or intellectual barriers. Can you consider developing and/or participating in activities such as art, creative, self growth experiences, or reading recovery to help those achieve educational success, some for the first time? How about tutoring in the local GED program an hour or two a week?

There are many things each person can do in their own community to advance and better their neighbor. And the mutual rewards from positive, active contribution may be enormous. So consider your own heart, your talents and gifts, then get busy! Find out how and where to use them. It is your own gift.

Before We Were

I hope he's not like me. I hope he understands. That he can take this life And hold it by the hand. And he can greet the world with arms wide open..." -- Lyrics for Arms Wide Open by Creed

Arms Wide Open
By Creed
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Before we were the occupants of today, of this moment, who were we? Where did we come from? How were we brought into today? If there is principally the day, to-day in our lives, if this moment and each and every moment is what truly comprises our lives, then what does that day contain? May we, 'greet the world with arms wide open...?'
Always, so very often we rush about, scurrying here and there in the course of the day. As the days mount and as we meet each new day, the sun arises lighting the way; other days it is darkness, cold or gloom. Technology increasingly diverts us from our moorings, giving us an altered sense of time. Computing and communicating with others literally a world away, as though they have not traveled beyond a common realm; they have, and we can forget, or not reckon with the day that is without them in it because of the falseness of technology and its skewing of our senses.

Eons of existence, days upon days of living have made humankind the social, communicating animals that we are and continue to be. But it is ultimately the reckoning with time that we cannot escape. While others are sleeping, still others are awake and engaged in the active part of their day. Each day, as we grow older, is replete with experiences over-worn with other experiences. Experiences of all types and stripes; each imparting a message, some consciously retained, others less so. They are all lessons of one type or another.

This week I heeded an urge to 'play hooky' from my usual daily routine; it proved to be a tour of memory, a review of selected past, connecting me today. With the emergence of some very fine spring weather, I drove my usual East-West direction but by a different route. Spending some time by myself, it took most all afternoon. Despite my recollections of experiences past, some 20 or more years ago, I traveled parallel to the Interstate and saw so much new, adding to my previous memory. The old route in the days before the Interstate was the route.

There are towns, villages and farms along the way as there have been during my lifetime. The bigger towns, especially, may not have altered their boundaries, but their content continues to evolve with new buildings, new zoning, new populations, new attitudes reflected by their community environment. The country parts of the routes were perhaps the most geographically or visually stable, the farmsteads nearly consistent, a new barn or shed here or there. But the most surprising were those places no longer farming, their buildings in disrepair; their owners engaged in new functions, no longer attending them. The homes built upon former farm fields; the little country subdivisions sprung here and there. There are new windmills, buildings burnt and businesses closed.
Memories revised with new information.

But the most, for me, personally was to retrace the route of my 25th year and the paths it took me into a new family and a new life, a community life. The days, it seem, have traveled into a wink; they have been in the thousands but save for gray hairs on my head, I would not have known. It seems my beliefs and my feelings have withstood many of the other outward changes life has imposed upon me. My hopes, my future dreams, my energies placed at that moment towards the services of that 25th year, now in review, are wistful. Moments of choices taken and others rejected.

It was, on that breezy day, golden sun, an arrival. Not just a review but a clear view of where I sit now. Today. I arrive at my destination today with a fuller and greater sense of just this moment, and all the moments I have lived and survived to get here. Age does improve many things and many things grow into focus while others dim, their importance perhaps misplaced or even lost on a spring day.