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Compassion

“Compassion is an unstable emotion, it needs to be translated into action or it withers.”

It wasn’t until I wrote the tag line for this morning’s musing that I realized how many of us these days are confusing posting to FaceBook with standing for the right. It’s a lovely, but wrongheaded notion…

There is no substitute for doing the kind deed or offering the kind word.

And the world is in need of kindness…

Susan Sontag, you wonderful woman, thank you for your words of wisdom throughout the years. I miss your voice.

 

 

Your Place of Peace

As a minister, you’d think I would have a regular schedule of retreat and pilgrimage, wouldn’t you? But instead, like the rest of us, I spend my time hurrying from place to place, meeting to meeting, event to event. I don’t remember the last time I sat on a rock in a stream. Particularly on the rock in my steam. or when I waded along the ocean for hours in the morning, running in and out of the waves, simply because I could.

I have the unbelievable luxury in my job of time off in the summer. Time to write and think, of course, because that’s my delight. But also, time to rest and renew and revisit the places that remind me of creation’s beauty and strength.

And maybe if I spend a month practicing the art of appreciation, it will be habit I cannot let go come the beginning of of my work year.

In the meantime it’s pretty beautiful on my porch this morning…

Where do you go, that’s not so very far, to fill up your soul?

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Scents and Memory

It’s been so hot here and when i went out to the garden to get some herbs, I brushed against the tomato plant… mmmmmmmmm. right back to my youth.

I have read that we remember things better when they lodge in more than one place in our brain. Songs stick, because there are words, rhyme, meter and tune which all help. And scent of the ocean and and and…

If, when we meet people, we would remember that each of us has joys and memories buried deep within, and tried to evoke that, we would find many more things in common. Peace like memory is built on many levels.

p.s. Reading the poem again today was frustrating… I work so fast sometimes that I don’t fully develop an idea or an image… the challenge in pushing out a daily poem… which will change as I edit it for the book…

The Challenges Don’t Stop

It’s not that anything particular has happened recently. But I’ve been thinking about the fact that challenges of all sorts do not necessarily keep company with the seasons rhythms. You can lose a job or receive a difficult diagnosis in the midst of the season of bounty as easily as any other season. I don’t know that I’ve ever really thought about this before, but perhaps it’s that the seasons and rhythms of our lives trump the year’s turnings…

When this happens, the disconnect between what’s going on outside and what’s going on inside can be great. Whether the challenge is ours or that of a beloved, our job is to remain open and present. Not everyone can do that. It does catch me off guard when people gradually withdraw from a relationship because a partner/friend/colleague has encountered one of life’s great roadblock. Not everyone who’s offered the challenge can stay present in it either.

But, because they’re challenges, they keep offering other opportunities to be the best we can be and to do the best we can. Because in the end, that’s all we can do.

The Sacred Journey

There are trips you take (sometimes just in your soul) which set you on the path you will walk throughout your life. It’s a stripped down life. You don’t bring along most your possessions to weigh you down. Often it’s hot. The big thermos jug of water (tea, lemonade) in the back of your vehicle keeps you hydrated. You carry your foodstuff’s along and eat by rushing creeks, under the shade of trees, or overlooking the desert. The days are long and you settle in to the rhythm of landscape. On such journeys there is both the time and the quiet required to reassemble your soul without all the distractions. Every once in a while you need to go on a trip long enough to leave you delighted in the stillness.

The journey leaves every day. The path is nearby…

Kindness

We are so easily sarcastic and cutting. I’m not pointing any fingers here, there have been times it’s been an artform in my life. And that irony was meant to amuse. And it always amuses the artist, and often the audience… and it frequently wounds the object of the biting, so-called witty repartee.

And yet, we the witty, are aghast at bullies. And not all sarcasm is bullying… but it can be an easy edge from one to the next.

Words are unbelievably powerful. Choosing words of kindness can build up a world rather than destroy it. If we’re going to work to stop bullying, and we must, then we must learn the art of kindness… not that awful saccharine, glib stuff… but real and heartfelt sweetness that makes space for everyone…

I’m working on it… and on finding a way to make observations funny, but not wounding…

Working Together

My church has a huge, no really huge, yard sale. Three wonderful people plot and plan and price to set it up. But what makes it work is the community. We have to donate. We have to tote and carry. And then we have to sell.

We need the yard sale, it makes a lot of money and our budget is dependent upon it. If we did it only for the money, it would be a pretty remarkable thing.

But more and more, I begin to believe that what’s best about this sale is not the money, but the community it builds. Last year 70 percent of us helped in some way. Last Sunday, we stacked chairs (and moved them outside, and eventually into the trailer.) We moved tables into position (carefully marked on the floor). We hauled boxes (inside and stacked them under the tables, carefully matching labels of box and table). We emptied the boxes (arranging the merchandise.)

The organizers had jobs for everyone, even the 7 year old.

That’s what makes great society, when everyone participates and has a role, regardless of abilities and age.

What are you doing that you might allow people to help you with and, thus, engage? You really don’t have to do everything yourself. It’s not good for you. It’s not good for your spouse, your family or your community. Share! It’ll be hard the first time… and then it will be a good time.

The World’s Hunger, Our Joy

There’s an aged Presbyterian Theologian (born in 1926) who keeps popping up in my consciousness as a gift from the outside world. Despite having started out a Presbyterian, I never encountered him… not in church that I remember, not in seminary.

Part of what I like about his writing is that it’s about service. Nothing of his that I’ve encountered speaks to the rewards of belief, instead I hear about the privilege of response. The quote from today about God calling us to “the place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meets” is a wonderful acknowledgement of our deep resources and equally profound responsibilities.

When we know about something, we are called to care for it. We can see what needs to be cared for because we have the gifts to respond. Oh we are mighty creations. And so we must care for world. Ah Frederick Buechner what a gift you are. I’m grateful for all the cracks your words ooze through to encourage us…

Finding Rhythm

I am not particularly good at finding rhythm and structure in my life. (unless of course, you look at life over a verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry long arc!) But it’s so good for our lives, to work and then to rest, perhaps even reward ourselves for our work. Building up the repetition for doing our jobs and our Work.

But we work better when we pause to refresh. And refreshment means something when we’ve worked. Intellectually, I’ve got this one nailed down. I’m not so great with the reality.

Maybe i need a timer!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Create

When I was in college I became enamored with the concept of liminality.  Liminality is an anthropological and folkloric concept that helps us understand the importance of ritual and transitional space.  A wedding is a liminal event because it facilitates the transition from two separate individuals to one unified household; a beach is liminal because it is the border place between water and land; midnight is liminal because it is that spot between one day and the next.  Since a liminal space or event is by definition neither one set thing or another, it holds a vast amount of potential–anything can happen during the witching hour, and who wants to step inside a fairy ring and take a chance on what happens?

And so I’m looking more at the metaphor–and, esoterically, the process–of “create”.  I took this picture while vacationing at an adorable cabin on Keuka Lake.  We had kind of terrible weather for most of the trip; it was rainy and grey, not a good time for novice canoers like my boyfriend and I to get into the boat that came with the rental, but it was a great time to completely slow down and look at what was around.  When we could, we wandered down the hill and onto our dock.  When I snapped this picture I thought it was kind of cool, when I saw how it turned out I was struck by how liminally symbolic it is.  There’s George, at the edge of the dock (a border space), looking into the fog (which is inherently liminal; is it air or water?).

For me, this image captures what you do before you create something–you stand at the vast edge of your imagination, wide open and full of potential, and determine which way to go next.  Do you dive in?  If so, then whatever happens?  Happens.

Check out the other participants in the Weekly Photo Challenge here.

And below are some of my particular favorites, thus far:

http://joycannis.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/weekly-photo-challenge-create/

http://marantophotography.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/weekly-photo-challenge-create/

http://annarashbrook.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/weekly-photo-challenge-create/

http://justfletcher.wordpress.com/

http://iaggelidaki.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/weekly-photo-challenge-make-art/

http://disorderlychickadee.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/weekly-photo-challenge-create/

http://beeblu.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/weekly-photo-challenge-create/

http://berkshireviews.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/weekly-photo-challenge-create-2/

http://seraphim6.me/2012/06/24/weekly-photo-challenge-create/

http://cocomino.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/weekly-photo-challenge-create-making-bamboo-chopsticks/

You can check out more of my writing at http://beyondpaisley.net/