Mercy Quote

The pearl of justice is found in the heart of mercy.
- Catherine of Siena

Mercy and justice do go together, don't they?

Some would see justice more in their reading of scripture, other's, mercy. Me? ... I'm analyzing how pearls are made ... a speck of dust and then layers ...

Definition of pearl: a hard roundish object formed within a soft tissue of a mollusk shell...

Something as ordinary as dirt, intruding and irritating, becoming something rare, fine, and beautiful.

The Kingdom of Heaven was compared to a pearl of great price, by Jesus. "Casting pearls before swine"? When do we know someone is unappreciative of the value and beauty of the gospel? When do we 'give up' on someone, give up on mercy?

Veronica

Today is Veronica's day on the calendar. When I watched the movie "The Passion of Christ", I recognized her (as I saw so much other usage of history and art in the movie - like I loved the frozen scene reminding me of Michelangelo's 'Pieta').

The very name "Veronica" comes from "vera icon" meaning "true image".

Was there a Veronica as Jesus carried the load of His cross - dragging, stumbling, collapsing, sweating ...who wiped Jesus' face? It is claimed there is a cloth, a relic, which bears the image of Christ. I don't focus on whether there's a cloth with a miraculous face image of Jesus.

I like to believe there was a woman of compassion, who stepped out of the crowd of onlookers, and helped Jesus, by wiping the sweat from his eyes and face. My focus is given to the love and charity that prompted her action. This good deed became the sixth, in the fourteen Stations of the Cross, that so many Christians 'live' through every Good Friday.

I am glad for a day each year, in the busyness of life, to stop and ponder her action, that overflowed from a compassionate heart. Oh, that my heart be so full of overflowing love ...

Infovore

I've learned I am an infovore since I like to acquire, interpret, and understand information. A study shows that it actually triggers a chemical reaction, causing me to feel good, thus causing me to seek more - an opioid hit, making me a junky.

St Philip Neri

Philip Neri enjoyed his faith! He died today, the 26th, in 1595. Called the 'Apostle of Rome' since Philip took care of so many of Rome's sick and poor, including outcasts.

The Renaissance ended with a bang and Rome was ransacked and devastated by imperial troops. Philip would walk the streets seeking opportunities to engage people in conversation and offer them help. He'd stop people on the streets asking, "when shall we begin doing good?" and people would want to actually do good. Hospitals were founded and staffed - people joking and singing amongst the rooms and halls.

What he's most noted for is founding a society called 'the Congregation of the Oratory'. Evenings would find his band of disciples gathering to talk and pray and listen to scripture readings and music in a room they called their oratory. Originally the Oratory suffered through a period of "heretic" accusations since laypersons preached and the hymns sung were vernacular - of the ordinary dialect.

The Church itself was needing conversion and Philip's humble and gay personality converted many to personal holiness. Many, including 'important' people, sought his advice, and he was a spiritual director for many. Philip wanted people to become not less, but more human through their faith in God. His mission was the streets of Rome.

There was nothing gloomy about the sanctity he preached and practiced. Philip loved jokes and laughter; he would sometimes appear in public, perfectly deadpan, wearing his clothes inside out, or sniffing a bouquet of whisk brooms. He considered a cheerful temperament to be more Christian than a melancholy one.

"A cheerful heart is more easily made perfect than a downcast one." Philip Neri's autopsy revealed an extraordinarily large heart.

Palimpsest

I've been reading reviews of the new CS Lewis movie release, "Prince Caspian". I learned a new word - palimpsest. One reviewer suggested that rather than say the movie is 'based on the novel', say 'it's a palimpsest of the novel' - that it has traces of the novel.

I guess artistic license has created a good action film that's not really a family film - and that it's missing most of CS Lewis's core story value.

I read (listened - I listen to hundreds of audio books) Dumas's Man in the Iron Mask and found the movie's story line was gleaned from only one paragraph of the book. When we're looking for movies to be like the books, I think we usually feel disappointed. And there's times I think the movies are an improvement on the book, or a whole new story to still enjoy and maybe touched by.

I like a lot of the past few decades movies over the older movies. I think today great questions are being asked - lots more to ponder and even discuss.

Brendan

So the Irish Saved Civilization, but did they discover America? Irish monk Brendan, who's Feast Day is today, founded many monasteries and boldly traveled visiting Scotland, Wales, Brittany and Iceland. But no one knows whether the sagas told, written, and sung, of a voyage to North America are fiction or nonfiction. Could he have crossed the ocean in a curragh - a round, hide-covered boat, a glorified canoe? 

Brendan lived from around 484-577. A stamp was issued in 1994 picturing such a journey. This man called 'The Navigator' and 'The Voyager', is pictured in stained glass at the US Naval Academy in Maryland. Frederick Buechner tells his story in a book called Brendan. Ogham, Irish inscriptions written prior to the 800's, have been found in North America.

Even if a religious allegory, it reminds me of a word I learned: peregrinatio. It's a hard word to define. Our definition of 'pilgrimage' does not really fit this word because since the Middle Ages pilgrimages have plans and destinations and when the goal is accomplished, people return home. 

It's been told that three men were in such a skin boat without oars, and when found they said they were "on a pilgrimage, we care not where". It's a celtic word for a journey undertaken for the love of God - surprising and risky and not really having some end or goal in view. But it's not a restless wandering because there seems to be some sense of grounding, and 'at-homeness'.

Brendan's story reminds me that I too have an at-homeness in God, but am I willing to go wherever the Spirit desires me, into the unsafe and unfamiliar - both external and internal journeying?!

April's Fool?

No real facts on this day's history exist. Even Snopes.com mentions it (more than mentions it, it's rather long). I actually just wanted to post this picture I found.

There is a story of a day when a king would change places with a fool for the day. And I like this so-often-true thought:

"Fools were really wise men.
It was the role of Jesters
to put things in perspective
with humor."

The changing to the Gregorian calendar in the late 1500s is what you find the most out there in legend-land - which changed New Year, end of March, to January 1. But it doesn't really work as an explanation since the UK celebrated April Fools long before they adopted the Gregorian calendar in the 1700s.

I'll share a story from one of my British children's calendar book called All Year Round. It's of a baby Olaf sleeping in a cradle slung from the branch of a tree, while his mother mended fishing nets nearby. A large wave came upon the beach and took the baby leaving a fish in the cradle. She shrieked to her husband that the baby was gone. While her back was turned, a second wave miraculously returned her baby to the cradle and retrieved the fish. The husband came, looked, saw the baby, and berated his wife as a fool.

There has to be some fish connection, because in many countries they make fish shaped confections for this day and people slyly tape paper fish on people's backs. Maybe it has something to do with the zodiac sign of the fish around this time of year.

Some people hang a little cradle carrying a fish (like a half walnut shell with a cracker or carboard fish glued inside) around their neck or at their front door, as protection. Most practical jokers respect this code. But I don't think any of this exists in the USA.

Another thing I've read is that April's weather can be so fickle that it'll fool you into planting too early!

Fool phrases -
April Fool; Fool's Cap; Act the Fool; Fool's Errand; Fool's Gold; Fool's Paradise; Fool's Parsley; Playing the Fool; Tomfoolery; Trompe-l'oeil (A still-life painting, designed to give an illusion of reality. Literally 'deceives the eye'); Foolery; Foolhardy.

Maundy Thursday (Passover) - Seder

Some churches have Maundy Thursday services tonight. "Maundy" is Latin for "mandatum" or "commandment" because at the Last Supper Jesus said, "A new commandment I give you: Love one another ..." Because Jesus washed the disciples feet that night, some churches wash feet.

At this meal, the disciples were expecting it to be a traditional Passover ritual they grew up with. On Passover Jews eat history, remembering the Exodus story with a Seder ("ordered") meal. This Holy day was to awaken Israel's past into her present. Passover spoke powerfully of God rescuing His people.



The disciples had no clue Jesus was going to die. Jesus shared the meal with them, with special twists that would tell his story more powerfully than any other way. Jesus must have played the role of the father in the typical seder, but as he did with everything, he made the Passover become personal. Jesus' new Passover speaks even more powerfully of God rescuing His people in a new and complete way.

Many years I've done a seder meal at home. I have a Haggadah I can copy that is a script for the ordered meal. Sometimes our kids have had friends over, and they take advantage of the idea of reclining at the table, which we've heard the Jews typically did - with low tables. It truly is eating history.

Now that one of our pastor's is Jewish, this will be the second year in a row we'll have a seder meal at our church tonight. As Christians, there's so much more depth to the ritual. "...Every time you eat this bread and drink the cup..." we are actually announcing to the world around, to the principalities and powers that keep people enslaved and fearful and angry or not living to their full selves, that Jesus is Lord, and that his death has broken the power of sin and fear and sorrow and shame. This meal propels us out into the community in the confidence that God is at work.

The Passover meal became the Lord's Supper. The Passover Lamb becomes the Lamb of God. Instead of just remembering the slaughtered firstborn of Egypt - we remember that Abba Father slayed His firstborn. Instead of smeared blood protecting the firstborn - Abba protects those who drink from His firstborn's cup.

Jesus made himself the center of the Passover re-enactment. Jesus established the physical bread and wine so we will never forget his gracious act of love for us. It's a meal that speaks more volumes than any theory. We participate in his life (and death) for us. We physically remember. Jesus asks us to "taste, see, and know My presence".

locavore

Locavore is the new 2007 Oxford American Dictionary word of the year. I'm just reading about it.

It's all about the popular trend in using locally grown ingredients. It encourages people to buy from Farmer's Markets or even grow or pick their own food. As local and fresh as possible has got to be the best tasting and most nutritious!

Some groups are spelling it 'localvores'. (For further interesting comments along this vein and another dictionary word, check out my blog called Orthorexia.)

Hyperbole

Sometimes I think Jesus a bit harsh. I've just accepted some of these as his need for hyperbole - extreme exaggeration for a point. Like telling us to hate our mother and brother.

Like the man telling Jesus he wants to follow him, but "first let me go and bury my father". And Jesus said, "Let the dead bury their own dead".

I learned about the Jewish burial customs in Jesus' day. It took place in two stages. Immediately after death the body is placed in a casket in a tomb to decompose. The family sat shiva (mourned) for seven days (you can read about this mourning 'celebration' in Lauren Winner's book Mudhouse Sabbath). After about a year the bones are taken from the tomb and put in an ossuary (box for bones), and then reburied for good.

It's probably between these two burials that the man approached Jesus and maybe it couldn't be for a year before he could finally follow Jesus. So he's caught - should he follow Jesus or follow how he understands the Torah - which is the commandment to honor one's parents in respecting the burial customs.

These are the exaggerated extremes: Do we love God by following Jesus more than we love the Torah and our family?!

Lent Abstinence?

40 days of abstinence really originated from a Chaldean festival devoted to the pagan worship of Astarte, where our word "Easter" comes from.

Just for your info... hmmmmm.

Mantra - Shema

I have a new mantra I'm saying daily.

I like sitting and imagining, often putting myself in other's shoes. Well in Jesus' sandals I've already posted during Advent about Jesus growing up knowing his genealogy. Jesus heard, probably asking Mary to tell him the stories over and over, of Tamrah or Rahab or Ruth or Bathsheba ... And women weren't usually listed in genealogies, but throughout the Gospels you see Jesus living out the results of those stories.

And I visualize Jesus growing up watching his mother every Friday evening lighting the Sabbath candles just before sundown, saying a blessing, as did every woman of every Jewish household every Friday evening. And too, like every other good Jew, Jesus said the Shema two times a day.

When asked by an expert in the law the most important commandment Jesus shaped his own version of the Shema. Typically Jews quoted Deuteronomy 6:4-9 two times a day. Jesus summarized it and added a verse from Leviticus 19:18. So instead of a Love-God Shema, Jesus made it a Love-God-and-Others Shema. Making loving others a part of his own version of the Jewish creed shows that he sees loving others as central to our spiritual formation.

So my new daily mantra or Shema is the Jesus Creed:
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.

So as I sit, walk by the way, lie down, and especially when I rise, I will say to myself Jesus' Shema. As Jesus said, "There is no commandment greater than this".

Fat Tuesday-Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras

Lent begins tomorrow with Ash Wednesday. I didn't grow up with Lent, but I like these 40 day periods, like Advent too, to have a spiritual focus that can bring more meaning with anticipation to ordinary days. The word Lent comes from 'Lenten' meaning a 'lengthen'ing of days into Spring (yeah!).

Baptisms used to be done on Resurrection day in the early church and they'd have a 40 hour fast in readiness for the event. In 330 AD it was stretched from new converts to all Christians and for 40 days - believing it commemorated Jesus' 40 day desert fast. So the Tuesday before became a time for confession and repentance, and called Shrove Tuesday ('shiriving' means confession).

Prohibitions seem a thing for Lent, with giving up rich foods as the focus, which has turned Shrove Tuesday into Fat Tuesday. Since people were wanting to rid their homes of some ingredients, they started having meals of pancakes, becoming tradition. Meat is sometimes given up too. Mardi Gras has become a revelry, a 'carnival', which means 'farewell to meat (flesh)'. It seems the given up items are being worshiped, and the time of self-reflection has turned into a self-indulgence!

In the movie "Chocolate" we see what some people do in giving up things for Lent. In the book Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner (a good book), she gives up reading for Lent. Ugh, that would be a hard one. A couple years ago friends of mine wanted to wear a tasseled bracelet (Numbers 15)(which I made for everyone) for a reminder of something - for me it was to exercise everyday, Sunday's excluded (which I think I'll do again this year - without the bracelet).

Some people will use tonight as a carnival celebration of looking inside ones self. People need to haul up aspects of personality they choose to bury and tend to remask a persona. I have friends who one year came to such a party with masks representing their hidden self, and maybe ridiculing egos. When Adam and Eve lost innocence what did they do? they sought to cover themselves. Paul asked us to "put on the new self" to "put on Christ".

Because meat, cheese, cream, butter, milk and eggs were typically avoided, small breads began to be made. Germans named theirs "pretzels" - "little arms". They were visual reminders for the heart, since formed in the shape of arms crossed over the chest - like praying.

God looks at the intentions of the heart, the spirit in which we do things. It's not just a matter of ritual but a matter of the heart!

Liturgy

The word liturgy comes from the Greek leitourgia, which literally translates to ‘‘work of the people.’’

Hmmmm ...

Icons

Today is Pooh Day: AA Milne, author of Winnie the Pooh and other books, was born in London in 1882. I've always loved the Pooh books and always will.

As a kid I had a record of Pooh stories and loved the voices. If I find we still have that recording I'm going to have it put on CD since we're currently transferring albums or just some songs to CD.

I collected some of the earlier stuffed animals. I've put them on a shelf in our bedroom above the sliding glass door. They are the first things I see in the morning and I call them my "prayer buddies".

Icons are used as aids to devotion. I think of icons as windows showing views of truth. So to me, my Pooh animals are icons. When I see Pooh, I think of Heather - we often joked about the similarities. So I might pray for Heather. Dawson has always been a Tigger - so bouncy, bubbly and into everything. If I had Owl I'd name him Travis since we've always thought him creatively smart. I'm a mixture of Eeyore, Kanga, and Piglet.

Though their images may remind me to pray for our family, in reality, they visually bring me to God-consciousness and I often start my days, "Good morning God!" and go from there ...

Bloodless Martyrs

Yesterday's calendar date was the Feast of St Ant(h)ony: Anthony the Great, Anthony of Egypt, Hermit, Abbot, and the "father of monks". He died in 356 on January 17th, at the age of 105.

I'm reading Water from a Deep Well: Christian Spirituality from Early Martyrs to Modern Missionaries. I love using the calendar day stories to bring greater depth of living to my days, making ordinary days into the extra-ordinary. It was interesting that I was reading about the desert fathers around the days associated with some of the calendar's Desert Fathers.

Anthony is one of the earlier Desert Fathers and we know his story because his friend Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria (the one instrumental in Augustine's conversion) wrote his biography. It became popular and influential well into the Middle Ages and is still in print today.

Anthony heard the Gospel words, "Go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor ... and then follow me" and felt they were meant for him. Much of his story is like Jesus' temptation in the desert, because Athanasius wrote, the devil "who despises and envies good, could not bear seeing such purpose in a youth," and thus set to work to destroy him.

The Desert Saints were called "bloodless martyrs". Christianity was born in the hostile world of the Roman Empire, and for 300 years Christians periodically suffered persecution and deaths. Constantine in 313 granted Christianity legal status in the empire and it became popular and fashionable. So now, rather than an evil empire, those wanting to seek serious Christian discipleship were facing a worldly church.

Solitude did not remain solitude, when thousands of other Desert Saints followed. People became fascinated by stories about Anthony and admirers found him. Though begging them to leave him alone, he became an adviser to hundreds, exhorting them to die daily and take up the cross. (Years ago I read the desert disciple sayings in The Wisdom of the Desert. I also read From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians in the Middle East, where the author took earlier writings and journeyed, visiting many old sites. And then in the news, maybe last year, was the fear of the Muslims destroying some of these sites, including the monastery built around Anthony's place in the Egyptian desert.)

Anthony longed for martyrdom, hoping to identify with Christ, by exposing himself to danger, like ministering to those in prison and sometimes leaving the desert to combat Arianism. But he realized a person can die daily by serving Christ in ordinary ways with great love. Because he had given away all he had (and taken care of his sister), he wove mats to support his needs.

These Desert Saints call us to seek some solitude, which might separate us just enough from modern culture to allow us to recognize, expose and combat our vulnerability to seductive powers; to ruling appetites that seem to dominate our life.

"All good athletes train hard; they do it to attain a perishable award, but we're after an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly. I'm giving it everything I've got. I'm staying alert and in top condition, so that after telling others about it I don't miss out on it myself" I COR 9:25-27.

Anthony once said, "The man who abides in solitude and is quiet, is delivered from fighting three battles - to those of hearing, speech and sight. Then he will have but one battle to fight - the battle of the heart."

Process vs Product

I am really in the thick of reorganizing our home. I'm now tackling our bedroom where a lot of my sewing stuff and yarn has been stored. You know what I'm finding? A LOT of unfinished projects, many even going back to my college days - a lot of textile art done to a certain stage, but not a finished product. (That's why at quilt shows there can be so many fine, very old quilts - because someone finished the quilt top and tucked it away in a box, but never finished the quilt.)

I've researched it, talked on it, and written about it - so I'll ask you, "Are you a process person, or a product person?" I am a process person. I love learning about how things are made. I've done it with cooking too, which I've written about in my book Hearth & Home. Like how were things made before we had canned cream of mushroom soup and instant Jello and pudding and Bisquick?

So I have tried my hands at a lot of stuff. I know how to quilt. I know how to tat and do hardanger. I want to know how to make fine lace ... but now I know myself! I've read about the lace process and I could very easily start buying all the materials to do it - all the pretty bobbins (but oh, the choices!), the pillow, and patterns ...

The tools, the materials, the skills, the mechanics, the designing ... these are what attract me. I guess you could say they represent the process. I love the journey more than the destination. I think this idea is part of my attraction to Heirloom art - art done by hand. You can buy handmade items, but to make them yourself, for me, is a spiritual experience. I'm creating, and I feel a comradery with God's creative Spirit in me.

Anyway ... I've collected so much stuff! And I can do lots of stuff. But once I've done it, it doesn't mean I'll keep doing it. I've stuck with some things that I love to do the most, like knitting. I'll take periods of time where I'll do a lot of sewing. Having done my weaving again, I'll probably keep doing it.

What's best to do is take classes. Someone else will own the tools and provide the materials for you to learn the process and finish a product. AND THEN you'll better know whether it's something you want to invest time and money into.

Like I've always wanted to try making stained glass ...

Centenarian

An anonymous person left a comment for an earlier post of mine. I knew the word I used was wrong, but dictionaries don't help when you're in the dark!

Centurian (Centenarian)

I'm laughing! I just read a quote from George Burns -

"If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age."

I watched a program on TV about the growing population of centurians. (I don't know how to spell the word. Is it new and my computer dictionary isn't recognizing the word? I'm going off the root 'century'.) We were in a hotel and Dawson was switching the channel, but I told him I wanted to see what their quality of life was.

It was people who still had something they wanted to do, to wake up for. Like a scientist was still walking to the college campus he had worked at--them letting him still do lab work. An artist, saying she still had pictures in her imagination she wanted to paint. A cook still having recipes wanting to try.

It speaks loudly of what motivates us and fuels us throughout life. What is 'retirement'? Is that a time to sit in the rocker and check out on life? Do we desire to keep learning? try new things? maybe go new places?

Bible Study or Divine Reading?

How do we read the Bible, when today most of us read for information and entertainment? Have we lost the art of spiritual reading? The Bible is very much alive! It is a nonfiction storybook of God’s interaction with humans. Instead of interpreting it, we need to let it interpret us.

I don’t want to simply read scripture to find out how to get God into my life, or acquire facts about God, or develop principles to live by—nor to gather information and cover territory. There is a time and place for reading God’s word informationally, but life transformation happens when God’s Word is read formationally, as one awake, with reverence and a vulnerable heart. I want to read to be formed and transformed—hoping to be nourished by the richness hidden in the words. I read with an open heart, awaiting God’s touch, desiring to sit in His lap. I read with my entire life—my heart’s response. Scripture becomes interior to my life, overflowing in ways of love.

Scripture is God-breathed—and has power to breathe God’s spirit into us. Though it’s done being written, it’s not done writing—“for we are a letter of Christ written not with ink but with the Spirit of the Living God” (II Cor 3:3). It writes its truths on our hearts, speaking its words into new situations and our current times. But listening is the key.

“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).