Spiritual Drought & Restoration
I have to be mindful of the baskets of flowers that hang below the eaves. Even though it has rained for four days, the eaves have sheltered the flowers from the rain. This means that though the road is washed out and water sits upon the ground with no where to go, even though the dock is below the lake’s surface and the warbler flycatchers have to hunt not in the air but up and down the hemlocks seeking mosquitoes for their chicks, even though I am living in a surfeit of good cold rain, the flowers might die from thirst.
Spiritually, this is also true. How many spiritual leaders and regular religious adherents have I met who are going through a tough spiritual drought while all around them is running lush and wet? When we’re in those spiritually dry times, everyone we meet and the world around us can seem tremendously fresh and full and juicy, making our own thirst worse, somehow crueler.
Watering these hanging baskets by hand, refreshing the water in the dog’s bowl, I stop to pour myself a glass of cold water, knowing that I can ignore my own thirst for a very long time. I’m busy attending the thirst of plants that cannot draw up their own water, or the thirst of a dog who remains puzzled as to why there are no paws-alone working taps in the house, or to the spiritual thirst of a seeker, a stranger, or a friend. That needs doing. I also need to drink a glass of water, too, stopping to refresh my body and stopping to refresh my soul.
I’ve been quieter than usual lately, largely due to the acuity of an illness I live with – and expect to live with for the rest of my life. I’ve been learning my new limitations, adapting to what has emerged as patterns. Adaptation is just what human beings do, and I believe spirituality is our biggest adaptive response. The Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church taught: “religion is the human response to being alive and having to die.” That may be so. I have found that spirituality is my response to the challenges of living. We innovate, we renovate, we create, and these are all forms of adaptation to change, to opportunity, to energy, to possibility. This season of my life has been a wet one, rich with opportunities to grow spiritually, full of change, most of which are not ones I would choose, welcome, or wish for someone else.
Yet, despite all these rainy blessings, I grew thirsty, inattentive to my spirit, my attention absorbed by other changes, by the needs of others, by loss and by the physical difficulty of each day. If one lets a basket of flowers dry out completely, a flood of water will wash off the top of the dry soil. One has to rehydrate the basket slowly, with sips, with gentle attention until the soil is full and spongy again. The same is true with our spirits. When we have gone through a drought or neglected to tend our spirits, we have to return with small, regular sips of life-giving blessings. As we do, our senses come back into balance, and we are more able to serve, more able to struggle well with what is needful, more able to laugh generously and to forgive, more able to fulfill our faithful promises and love this life sparkling in wonder and growing in hope.
Haunting Conversations
I moved away from Minneapolis to live in Boston and DC from 1989-2004, and then moved back. One thing I love about being back where I spent my young adult years is when I run into people I knew from the 1980’s.
Recently, I ran into a woman who looked dimly familiar. When I heard someone else call her Jean, I realized why and I asked, “Are you … Jean X…?’ Yes, she answered.
I said, “I think you took over the end of my lease in my apartment in a fourplex on 16th Street, back in 1982. It was a sweet little tiny apartment.” Yep, she indicated, that was correct.
“How long did you stay?” I asked. She answered, as I expected, “Oh, a couple of years.” Then , to my shock, she went on, “After that I moved upstairs and I’ve been there ever since.” I must have looked surprised, because she said, “I know it’s a small apartment, but I never got into the job, house, car thing. I bike where I need to go, work enough odd jobs to pay the rent, and mostly spend my time outside.” She nodded to the beautifully cared for community garden, where we stood, and I could see that she spent a great deal of time there, indeed!
This conversation has gone through my head a dozen times since we had it. This woman was still living exactly the way that I, and everyone I knew, lived in 1982! Before we got into the kid thing, before we got into the graduate school thing, before we got into the job, house, car thing.
It made me think of that Sufi story about the old fool, Mullah Nasrudin. As is often the case, Nasrudin is talking to someone much more prominent, successful, well-dressed, and self-important.
The rich man looks at Nasrudin’s house, shakes his head, and says, “You know, Nasrudin, if you could just get a job like mine then you wouldn’t have to live in this small shack and live on rice and beans!”
And Nasrudin looks back at him and says, “If you could just enjoy rice and beans and a simple shack, you wouldn’t have to work at a job like yours!”
Running into Jean made me think about these past 30 years. Am I happy about the changes I’ve made? Has the house, job, car thing worked for me?
Jean’s health and joy was apparent. Unlike most people I know, I’ll bet she does not wake up stressed about how to accomplish the day’s list. Is she living more the way humans are supposed to live?
I don’t know, and I won’t have time to think about it very long, for today anyway. I’ve got a house to clean, errands to run, a job to do! But our conversation keeps reinserting itself as I rush about, and I find myself planning rice and beans for supper.
Flower Communion
This year marks the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of what is known today as the Religious Society of Czech Unitarians. Its first minister, the Rev. Dr. Norbert Fabián Čapek, created a ritual that is celebrated by Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists all over the world, Flower Communion. Čapek described the ceremony in a 1923 letter to Samuel Atkins Eliot II, president of the American Unitarian Association:
We have made a new experiment in symbolizing our Liberty and Brotherhood in a service which was so powerful and impressive that I never experienced anything like it… On that very Sunday…everybody was supposed to bring with him a flower. In the middle of the big hall was a suitable table with a big vase where everybody put his flower…in my sermon I put emphasis on the individual character of each “member-flower,” on our liberty as a foundation of our fellowship. Then I emphasized our common cause, our belonging together as one spiritual community… And when they go home, each is to take one flower just as it comes without making any distinction where it came from and whom it represents, to confess that we accept each other as brothers and sisters without regard to class, race, or other distinction, acknowledging everybody as our friend who is a human and wants to be good.
The marvelous natural beauty of the flowers that are brought to these ceremonies is certainly inspiring, but it is of the utmost importance that we continue to learn the broader and deeper lesson this rite teaches. The idea that we should accept one another, with all our differences, and that we should even celebrate one another’s uniqueness, is a radical notion in any age, but in Europe in the 1920s it was downright dangerous; it became ever more so, of course, in the decades that followed, especially as Czechoslovakia found itself among the first nations to succumb to the opportunistic infection that was Nazism. The Nazis, of course, represent the polar opposite of Čapek’s ideals. Flower Communion is a defiant No! in the face of the brutal racism of Hitler and of the fascists’ craving to erect towering, horrific empires upon pediments of subjugation and terror, and it is a joyous Yes! to diversity, equality, and liberty.
As Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists all over the world celebrate Flower Communion, as so many of us to at this season of the year, we do well to consider what it is that we are saying No! to, and where our joyous Yes! is. Do we continue to defy the forces of intolerance that would seek to deny same-sex couples their civil right to marriage under the illusion of “defending” heterosexual marriages (like mine)? Do we stand together clutching bouquets of righteousness and justice in our hearts as we persevere in demanding compassion for immigrants, for laborers, and for the poor? Do we say Yes! to a future for our planet in which we will coexist with all life harmoniously?
Arrested by the Nazis for the “crime” of listening to foreign radio broadcasts, Čapek spent fourteen weeks at Dachau before being martyred in October of 1942 in the Nazi gas chamber at Schloss Hartheim. He is remembered around the world for how he died, but more so for what died for — and what he lived for.
Making Room for Silence
In his poem “Keeping Quiet” Pablo Neruda begins with this:
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
As I read it, I am thinking: The well is dry.
Have you had those times in your own life?
Those times when try as you might to find restoration within
there is nothing there
only parched, dry, places, yearning for a drop of something to
make it to the next moment.
It feels crusty doesn’t it?
The incessant rush of activity that pushes from behind
or pulls at us, tugging without ceasing.
“Without ceasing.”
Often, during our morning check-in, my spiritual companion
will set her intention for the day to “pray without ceasing”
borrowing from Annie Dillard.
I have often thought of that prayer as one with words,
whether they are spoken out loud or remain caught in my throat,
swirling in my mind, dancing in my heart…they were always words.
But. Dillard isn’t talking about words.
In fact, she says: “the silence is all there is”
she says “pray to the silence.”
And I think: move right into the silence. Parched and wanting respite from
a life of constant motion.
Recently, I read something that caught my attention:
“Cornelia is ninety-four years old. She is a beloved founding member
of the board of Bread for the Journey.
Every afternoon she rests – if she can, so busy is her daily
schedule of appointments – because when she rests things fall away,
she says, and come clearer.”
Every afternoon, in the midst of her busy daily schedule, she rests.
She pauses
She restores
She, in the silence, makes room for stresses to fall away.
For life to grow clearer.
That…working and resting every day is a recipe for
nourishing the soul…
Is a kind of praying without ceasing.
Using the hands and heart;
welcoming the stillness,
the silence.
Neruda, says it this way as he closes his poem:
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
Give It All Away! Wisdom of the plants
These days, as spring turns to summer, the garden is insistent with one message: Give it away, or lose it all.
Early in the development of a garden, it’s about procurement. Picking out plants, choosing a place for them, seeing how they do. With the kinds of perennials I tend to favor, that is both fun and highly interactive. Many of the flowers in my yard have stories that go along with them about who gave them to me, stories that make them that much more beautiful.
And now, as I go into the fifth or sixth summer of having turned my yard into flowers, herbs and vegetables, it is imperative that I give stuff away. If I don’t, if I try to hold onto all of the abundance for myself, the whole thing will die.
And so I join my local facebook group for perennial exchange and post regularly what I have to offer, “Bee balm. Rudbeckia. Strawberries. Grape thistle. Dig your own!” People come with shovels, apologetic about taking too much, and I want to tell them, there is no such thing as taking too much!
I go to farmers’ markets, see people paying $5 for rhubarb, $25 for a hanging basket full of morning glories, and though I want farmers to make a good living, still I want to whisper, “I’ll pay you to come to my house and take that same thing!” I refuse to allow a friend I am there with to buy morning glory plants, my voice so sternly admonishing, you would think she wanted to eat kittens. I convince a friend into native foods to try to eat Jerusalem artichokes; I happen to have hundreds. I offer plants to neighbors who walk by and stop to admire, to friends planting gardens at their kids’ schools. I plant lupines and ferns and hostas in pots from garage sales and sell them myself at a garage sale, to start others on their gardening journeys.
There is so much wisdom, so much life, in what the garden is teaching me about giving it away.
First, in order to give away what I can’t use myself, I need to be in constant relationship with many people. Weeding and throwing on the compost pile is the simplest way to say goodbye to too many lupines and kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate plants; it is tremendously more fun to give them to people who will love them! When someone I can’t remember ever talking to stops by and says, “We have been eating raspberries all week from the shoots you gave us,” it makes my day. It’s unlikely that a few people will want all I have to offer. I must diversify channels for the abundance to flow!
Second, it’s OK to change my garden, to simplify. The “tall garden” I loved turned out to block my neighbor’s view of the lake, so now I have a short garden I love, with the tall plants elsewhere in my yard, and the yards of others. The vine that promised beautiful flowers turned out to be so vigorous it scared me–dig that out and pass it on to someone who wants to cover an old barn!
And finally, the most beautiful flower becomes a weed if it’s growing someplace you don’t want it. Along with aphids, beetles, early frosts, flooding rains, and sudden frosts, I get to arbitrate life and death in the garden! I am the creator of this plant haven so I also am given the power to be the destroyer—to decide that vinca is, after all, not what I want, even though it is thriving in my yard, or that the fancy lilies simply get on my nerves with their showy blossoms; I prefer more humble snapdragons. For those of us who tend towards codependency and putting others before us, gardening is a great exercise in getting to put our own needs first!
There are hundreds more messages I receive from the plants on a regular basis; I will be sharing these as they arise. One of them is “To everything there is a season,” and today’s season is about sharing and relinquishing the abundance of life in order to treasure what is particularly yours to treasure.
Safe Harbor
Press power on the remote control, television on
and every moment of viewing we are confronted with images that shame us into wanting to reject parts of our being
turn our bodies and ourselves into slimmer, younger, lighter, leaner
smarter, whiter, wealthier, straighter versions of our selves.
Magazines tell us what not to wear
along with 7 surprising things that turn guys off
And what men want during the NFL halftime.
Messages crafted to ensure we remember that
who we are – at our core – is not good enough.
//
Would you harbor me?
Would I harbor you?
Asks the Sweet Honey in the Rock song and:
Would you harbor you?
Would I harbor me?
How much time do we spend attempting to do the impossible?
How much energy…how many of our resources do we expend running away
From our bodies
From our identities
Our histories
Our stories…from our very own selves?
How much time, energy, and resources do we spend
not loving our bodies
fearing ourselves because who we are, is not
who we see reflected back at us in “normative” socio-cultural stories and images?
Because we’re actively being conditioned to cling to a mythical norm?
A while back on National Coming Out Day
I decided to feed my facebook obsession
by checking out the page
Wiping Out Homophobia on Facebook
There, in the photo album, I found photo after photo of
same-sex couples laughing, smiling, holding each other
women, men – people – marrying, playing, loving and…
I also found this note from Paul…growing up in a world
in which his identity is continuously questioned and made wrong.
A world in which some who proclaim to speak on behalf of God
advocate death or caging LGBT individuals until we die off
Paul writes:
“I have to tell you that for the past few weeks, I have been pretty low and had pretty dark thoughts about my life and what to do. I had been bullied at school and things got so bad that I thought about doing something really bad.
Well, I talked to you and you told me to join local groups and online groups to get support from people in my age group who know what I was going through.
Well, I joined an LGBT group in the next town and about 8 online. I now have some great new friends in real life and some online who I’ll never met but who I talk to a lot.
I know this is what everyone says, but I don’t feel so alone now, I am not like the only one. …I just thought I’d keep you up to date as you were all so kind to me. Thanks to K. and L. for talking me round and to everyone who said positive things, they really did help.”
This broke my heart…and in some small way, it offered some hope.
In a culture that is slow to extend
safe harbor for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender
children, youth, adults – elders…
In a culture that supports heterosexism & homophobia
In a culture that promotes messages of same-sex deviance often enough,
many – especially youth – begin to
internalize that message.
Believe that message.
Begin to question their, my, your, our inherent worth and dignity
It is easy to feel other-ed. To understand others and sometimes oneself as strange, deviant…
It would be effortless to create a list of all the ways we – who are
queer – have contributed to society…have enhanced the world.
It would be easy to catalogue the gifts of all the LGBT “strangers” among us.
And. Here’s the power of affirming the inherent worth and dignity:
It’s inherent. It matters what we do, sure. And, it matters more that
we simply are.
We…any one of us…shouldn’t need to be any more special to be accepted. To be loved.
To be equal.
We only need to be here. To show up. To love…
That’s the nugget of wisdom in the first principle: inherent worth simply “is.”
To love ourselves is the equivalent of a tiny revolution
To love all those unchangeable innate beautiful truths that
make us who we are
and the imperfect pieces and parts that we argue with
That we shove away
That we suppress
That we pretend we feel okay about…
when we embrace all of those parts
and come to see them as holy
it is the equivalent of a tiny revolution.
In her book: All About Love: New Visions,
bell hooks writes:
“When we are taught that safety lies always with sameness,
then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat.
When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear –
against alienation and separation.
The choice to love is a choice to connect – to find ourselves in the other.”
When we’re taught that safety lies in sameness
when we’re taught that the only safe community is
a community of people who look like, dress like, think like we do
When we’re taught that only certain body types belong in the public sphere
When we’re taught that only people of certain heights or gender identity
or educational background or sexual orientation are capable of leadership
then we begin to fear everything in ourselves
and subsequently in others – that fail to fit what we’ve been
carefully taught.
We begin to fear everything that differs from the constructed “norm.”
And. What we fear, we seek to destroy.
But, when we – as individuals, as social systems with power,
as a community –
choose to love…move against fear…and connect
with difference, with that which appears to be strange – then
we make room for the Holy to thrive in and amongst us.
The tiny revolution in Paul’s story was just that.
A community that willingly created room for him – holy and inherently worthy –
to show up
Willing to extended safe harbor.
I want it to be true that we can create such harbors for
ourselves and for others.
What Kind of a Parent is God?
Women’s studies classes in college introduced me to the idea of feminine images of God/goddess. Frankly, I hadn’t really much thought about it up to that point. God was simply not an idea that I much related to, since God seemed to be distant, vague, and to alternate unpredictably between benevolent and judgmental. But a mother God, a God with a (metaphorical) lap to sit in, a God who was one with the earth and fertility and creativity, that kind of God started to sound like something I could relate to.
It wasn’t until much later, when I became a parent myself, that I realized that the whole Mother God/Father God split was patently unfair to men. The Father God I heard about from conservative Christians was a punitive, “wait ‘til your father gets home” kind of God, whose kindness was at a distance and whose judgment was close. It’s one version of being a father, and perhaps the version that is still popular amongst those who hold to this theology. But I know a whole lot of dads who are loving, nurturing, reliable and supportive. It turns out that the image of a Father God is less the problem for me than the kind of dictatorial father that that God is supposed to be. For what it’s worth, given that Jesus addressed God as “Abba,” the Aramaic equivalent of “Daddy,” it’s a pretty good bet that Jesus didn’t have a distant 1950’s God in mind either.
The Women’s Movement didn’t just give us the notion of a feminine image of the divine. It also gave us a revised understanding of what it means to be a parent. After years of recoiling from the notion of a Father God, maybe I’m ready to embrace the idea of a Father/Mother God who is the kind of parent that I aspire to be: a parent with ample love and reasonable limits, who tries to instill my values but knows that ultimately, my child will need to choose for herself, according to her own experience and view of the world. That kind of a God would value exploration and creativity above blindly following a narrow set of rules, and would ask “did you have fun?” rather than “did you win?” about my activities and endeavors. That kind of God would treasure my individual quirks, but encourage me to work through my failings to become more responsible, more compassionate, more aware of others and what I could do to improve life for those around me and the world as a whole.
That’s not the kind of God I see preached by people who disapprove of contraception and Gay people and a woman’s right to control her own body. But I look around at so many women and men I know who are terrific parents, and I think that maybe God is alive in the world after all.
Rev. Dr. Lynn Ungar is minister for lifespan learning of the Church of the Larger Fellowship. (www.QuestForMeaning.org)
The Exquisite Joy of Being Miserable
So I’m listening to Garbage’s Only Happy When It Rains, mindlessly singing along with Shirley Manson. Pour your misery down, pour your misery down on me.
I’m sure the song is mocking those Eeyores among us, the Debbie Downers, the ones who feel so good when they “feel so sad.” I mean, haven’t we known those types? The ones who excitedly call us up to tell us about the pitfalls of their newest romance, or are the first to post some sort of horrible national news on Facebook, the people at a party who leave us looking around frantically for an escape. My only comfort is the night gone black .
Of course, the song couldn’t be talking about me, right?
I mean, yeah, I’m a Gen Xer, so my whole generation takes pride in being cynical, dark. No Pollyanna idealistic Boomers here, no sirree. The first we knew of politics was hearing the grownups talking about Watergate. We grew up hearing dire predictions about the environment, about how we would be the first generation less successful than our parents, we were latchkey kids of divorce. I‘m only happy when it’s complicated …
But me? No, I’m hopeful. Optimistic.
Except for when I’m not.
I’m riding high upon a deep depression …
That’s the thing of it, isn’t it? That no one talks about. There is pleasure in being miserable. Feeling sorry for ourselves. I don’t mean a serious depression, from which you can’t seem to extricate yourself. No, I’m talking about those run-of-the-mill blues, ennui, moodiness. Remember the child’s rhyme? Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I’m gonna eat worms … Sometimes, we just have to wallow in our unhappiness, relishing the exquisite joy of being miserable.
When we can do that, when we can be honest, we are claiming our choice in the whole matter. Buddhists say that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Our society talks disparagingly about pity parties, but I think we all need one every once in a while. Like with all good parties, we need good food, good drink, good entertainment. Bring on the comfort food, the milkshakes, the sappy movies to cry over, whether it’s Steel Magnolias or Field of Dreams.
Ecclesiastes says to everything there is a season, and after the pity party, it’s time to clean up. Wash the dishes, dry the tears, change the soundtrack.
Misery can feel good, but happiness feels better.
Holy Curiosity
In the story of the Little Prince,
there is a compelling scene in which he
arrives on a new planet and encounters a businessman.
We know it’s a businessman because he is counting
he is too busy counting to lift his head in response
to the Little Prince’s greeting.
He is behind his desk working on a huge ledger,
counting, much like this:
“Three and two make five. Five and seven make twelve. Twelve and three make fifteen. Fifteen and seven make twenty-two. Twenty-two and six make twenty-eight. Twenty-six and five make thirty-one. Phew! Then that makes five-hundred-and-one-million, six-hundred-twenty-two thousand, seven-hundred-thirty-one.”
When he takes a breath, the Little Prince asks:
“Five hundred million what?”
It is such a simple question isn’t it?
But, the man, the one counting only responds
to the Little Prince in this way:
“Eh? Are you still there? Five-hundred-and-one million
I can’t stop…I have so much to do! I am concerned with matters of consequence.
I don’t amuse myself with balderdash. Two and five make seven…”
Matters of consequence.
There is he was, behind his desk counting without pause
counting a thing of beauty whose name he could not remember
“The little glittering objects in the sky” he called them.
Stars!
He was counting and recounting stars, gathering them up
by the millions, owning them, banking them in hopes of one day
being rich from selling them.
He was tending to matters of consequence.
The businessman in this story is by no means unique!
When invited into a moment of human connection
When invited to ponder the little glittering…the stars,
to notice and grow playfully curious about them
He declined. He would lose track of counting.
He would have to stop, break away from his ledger, look up
…take in and behold the “little glittering objects in the sky.”
The stuff of dreams…
To take them in would mean opening himself up to
learning more…
He declined because the matters of consequence to which
he was attending were far too important and could not wait.
All questions were interruptions…
All moments of being invited to engage were “balderdash”
he had no use for the person before him seeking
to be in relationship
So it is with all of us sometimes.
We are drawn into important tasks and forget
the whole world around us ready for our curious gaze.
What if we attended to each other….
To those ordinary encounters and conversations with
intrigue?
What if instead of clinging to certainty
we paused and made room for holy curiosity?
The poet Rumi writes:
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all, he says.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent
As a guide from beyond.
Every moment, every interruption, has something to offer
something to teach…
The beauty is in being able to greet each new or familiar arrival
with a learning mind rather than a knowing mind.
And, forgive ourselves when we are not able to…
What if you had one moment today in which you were
gently interrupted from “tending to matters of
consequence” or in which you encountered the unfamiliar
What if you paused and viewed that moment as a guest?
An unexpected visitor from whom you had much to learn.
What questions would you ask?
How would you listen?
How would you choose to be?
~ Rev Alicia R. Forde
Changing Your Wiper Blades
Last week I bought new windshield wipers for my car and I was amazed at how much better I could see! These new wipers were like a miracle – with just a few strokes they swiped the windshield clean, giving me a clear view of the road ahead. For weeks I had been driving with impaired vision without even realizing it. I just assumed that everyone looked out windshields like mine, through streaks and skips and stripes, straining to see in the sun’s glare. It’s hard to say exactly how long my sight had been compromised because it had deteriorated so slowly, over a long period of time. This got me wondering what else in our lives might be performing less than optimally without our noticing.
There is a theory that says if you drop a frog into a boiling pot of water it will immediately hop out, but if you were to put that same frog into a pot of cold water and slowly heat it up, the frog will stay put, not noticing the heat or the danger. Now, I’ve never tested this hypothesis – and I have some serious ethical questions for those who have – but I can see the truth in it. I think it’s natural to become so familiar with something that we don’t notice subtle, but ultimately substantial, changes. We think we’re doing just fine when, before we know it, the water is boiling beneath our feet. If we’re not careful, long-standing relationships can erode as patterns of behavior ingrain themselves, diminishing our view of those around us. Our beliefs and opinions – our faith – formulated in our distant past and clung to with unexamined, habitual resolve, can fall prey to this fate as well. So, what are we to do? How do we avoid a frog’s fate?
It’s mostly up to us to notice when our view is getting cloudy. We all need to change our wiper blades from time to time, and much more frequently than we may think. When we do, we’ll see the road more clearly, with all its attendant dangers and abundant opportunities. Sometimes, if we’re lucky enough, someone – a trusted friend or a family member – may point out that our view has somehow gotten murky. A child comments that we’re bringing too much work home from the office. A hymn at church unexpectedly brings tears to our eyes. Or our partner utters those ominous words: “We need to talk.” Such windshield-wiping moments can be challenging, but they can also show us how beautiful the journey can be when the view is unobstructed. They can remind us of the miracles that happen when we are in relationships with those who see us clearly, even when we’ve lost sight of ourselves.
This day and every day, I wish you peace.
Peter
