Taking a break

Sandhill cranes coming in at sunset

-- Pulaski Preserve, Indiana

Hello Dear Friends,

I'm taking off for a couple of weeks, and look forward to writing again the week of November 10th.

Until then remember that no matter how the US elections go, both candidates are good men, and whoever is elected will do his best.

And that man is going to need the support of the entire country. This is a time for uniting and getting the economy back on its feet.

Migrating cranes, geese, and ducks understand the need for flying together, as a unit, to support one another, to conserve their strength.

It's not that different in our country right now. In order to move in a healthy direction, we must work together, and that effort can be as beautiful and effective as a V-formation heading for a friendlier climate.

The crane in the driftwood

This carving adorns my friend, Nancy's, fireplace.

A Michigan craftsman finds driftwood and studies the pieces. In this piece he saw a graceful Sandhill crane.

Knife stroke by careful knife stroke, he skillfully removed from that dirty mass of old disfigured tree everything that was unlike the magnificent crane he saw in his mind.

A carver must keep that perfect model in his thought while carving and not be distracted by what everybody else sees as merely an old piece of wood.

What a great lesson! How many people have we met who have lost their beauty, their joy, their peace of mind, maybe even their purpose for living? Perhaps their lives have been storm-tossed for a long time.

Somehow our paths cross.

Sometimes exchanging a smile of blessing, we each continue on our own paths.

Other times, like the Michigan carver, we connect. We make the effort to look deep beyond the battered and weathered exterior to find something extraordinary, something unique that remains of what their Creator created.

Like that carver, we focus on the beauty and goodness that cannot be seen with the eye. The eye stops at the scraggly surface. We have to look past the surface for the spiritual identity. I like to call it the Christ in me seeking the Christ in another. It takes patience and a lot of love.

Holding to that vision, it’s surprising how often we find beauty and goodness coming to the surface to be recognized and appreciated. The Creator's love that brings inner goodness to the surface also transforms the life.

Like the crane, hidden so long in the gnarled wood, that now rises to soar in the sky.

"We must form perfect models in thought

and look at them continually,

or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives."

Mary Baker Eddy

Photo thanks to Nancy Fischer

Why we didn't go to the Arboretum

We went to the library instead

Tuesday the grandsons had no school. The parents both had to work, and my partner in grandmothering had just taken her turn, so it was mine.

Although I was available, and happy to help, I harbored some anxiety, because when the two are together they tend to bounce off each other – exponentially. My comfort zone is one boy at a time, and that has worked very well.

At the same time I prayed that God would show us our useful and constructive relationship together. This down-time from school didn’t need to be stressful for anyone. God's goodness fills each day, and it is our nature to participate in that goodness.

It promised to be one of the last gorgeous October days, and a great one for going to The Morton Arboretum – that wonderful living “tree and shrub museum” west of Chicago. I grab any excuse to go there, and the boys enjoy walking or running the trails.

So Tuesday came, and I arrived at their house. Their dad had already gone, and as their mom was leaving, she mentioned an Arboretum trip to them as a possibility.

The boys fixed breakfast – one preparing pancakes, the other scrambling eggs. This comes of having a dad who enjoys gourmet cooking as a hobby!

They had just created an original Lego village, and spent most of the morning engaged in Lego guy adventures.

Here is where I was pleased to see some progress, some good growing, on my part. An intuition said, "Let the boys chill." Intuitions, for me, are angel messages -- a little voice that gives us good advice. One way to tell that it's good advice is that it is usually unselfish and often blesses many rather than just one.

I'm learning that my day goes much smoother when I pay attention to these intuitions. So for once I didn’t push. The boys didn’t mention the Arboretum, so neither did I.

After lunch it seemed important to get out into the sunshine, so we walked to the library a mile away. We poked around the bookshelves and read awhile until the younger boy was ready to check out a football novel.

The lure of sunshine and the blue sky kept the boys outside the rest of the afternoon.

This day was different in a really good way. It was outstandingly simple and happy. Almost effortless. What a lesson for me in discovering the rewards of listening!

Nineteenth Century religious leader,Mary Baker Eddy, defined angels as

"God's thoughts passing to man;

spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect;

the inspiration of goodness, purity and immortality,

counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality."

Nail in the Fence Post

This email came along today, and its message of self-control is worth sharing.


There once was a little boy with a short temper and a wise and caring daddy.

So one day his Dad gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper he must hammer a nail deep into a 2x4 fence post. The first day the boy drove 37 nails into the post. He hit his thumb a few times too.

Over the next next few weeks he learned to control his anger, and the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled. He discovered it was pleasanter to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his dad about this achievement, and the father praised his success. Then he suggested that the boy now pull out one nail each day that he succeeded in not losing his temper.

This was not so easy to do, as some of the nails had gone in crooked or gotten bent over, or were pounded in so far it was difficult for the claw of the hammer to get a grip on the nailhead.

Months passed until the lad was finally able to tell his dad that all the nails had been removed. The dad praised him warmly. Then he took his son by the hand and they walked to the fence together.

They looked at the holes in the post. His dad said, "This fence post has a lot of holes in it. It will never be the same. When people say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this hole. Angry words can cut like a knife. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, someone has been wounded. A verbal wound can hurt as bad as a physical one.”

The book of Proverbs

confirms the value of self-control,

"He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty.

He who rules his temper is greater than a conqueror."

Geraldine's poems

My friend Geraldine wrote a book of poems. They speak from deep within her heart. Many people write poems, and some of them are heartfelt. What makes this little book different is that she wrote it while on Death Row.

In a travesty of justice she spent seven years on Death Row before the Illinois Supreme Court overturned her sentence due to corruption in the judicial system.

She says the only way she kept her sanity was to know who she was in Christ. And her poems speak primarily of this relationship and how it lifted her above discouragement and depression.

Geraldine learned early on that bitterness, anger, resentment had no place in her relationship with God, and she let them go.

She found a mission within prison, to introduce Christ to women who didn’t know Him. Other prisoners felt her spirituality. Geraldine writes,

“A lady I never knew
asked me who I was.
I turned and looked at her
And as our eyes met, she said,
‘You are here to help us.’

Another time young women thought the Bible was for old people. Geraldine told them that God uses young people because they relate to Him. She told them how:

· Jesus at twelve years astounded the scholars in the temple.
· David the young man slew the mighty Goliath.
· Joseph the teen-ager thrown into a pit became a leader of Egypt.
· She told them about young Queen Esther who risked her life for her people.
· And about the 12-year old girl Christ raised from death.
· About Mary, the young mother of Jesus
· About young Moses the prince, and young Samuel and many others.

Fast forward to 2008. Fortunately there was a support system in place for her when Geraldine was released from prison.

She now works long hours on behalf of her community, getting kids off the street and into school so they can become leaders, not just drifters. She gives them tough-love, and they trust her. When she can find them, she mentors their parents. She has hopes for a Senior Center and an After School safe place for the children to do their homework.

Truly, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” St. Paul

Geraldine found her spiritual freedom while still behind concrete walls. And she brought that freedom with her into her new life.

Elections and backing off

With national elections in the US looming, and mud-slinging increasing, it can be refreshing to back off and find a spiritual viewpoint.

Here’s one that might offer some good ideas to you, as it did me.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1008/p19s01-hfcs.html

The letter

I was part of a board meeting last night where a letter was read. The guy listed several things that were bothering him. What I heard was, “Here is what I am unhappy about: 1,2,3,4.” The letter sounded critical and negative, and I said so.

To my amazement, the other board members (all six of them) didn’t hear it that way. Their generous hearts heard, “Here are some issues that are concerning me: 1,2,3,4.” And they discussed those issues compassionately.

We all heard the same words. I was tremendously embarrassed to have been the only one who heard them negatively. I have committed my life to seeing God’s man through the turmoil, through the fog, to finding Christ in the other person. And I fell flat on my face last night.

I took a walk this morning to talk to God about this troubling event. My first choice would have been a walk in a forest or a field. It was instead down the sidewalk in my neighborhood where they are building a new firehouse and, in fact, the sidewalk is torn up in places.

But you know what? God doesn’t only speak to us in the quiet of the forests and the fields. God speaks to our hearts, even on city sidewalks. I wanted to come to terms with that letter and my reaction to it. And what I heard from God was so comforting, “Just love. You don’t have to judge.”

“Oh! That simple?” I asked.

“Yes, that simple!”

I realized I didn’t have to judge or react. If I stick with my life commitment, I can see past even criticism and negativity to find Christ, and I can be part of the solution instead of escalating the problem.

How important is it that "they" like us?

One Sunday morning, a mother went in to wake her son and tell him it was time to get ready for church, to which he replied, “I'm not going.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“I'll give you two good reasons,” he said. “One, they don't like me, and two, I don't like them.”

His mother replied, “I'll give YOU two good reasons why you SHOULD go to church: one, you're 59 years old, and two, you're the pastor!”

________________________

Have you ever felt the world didn’t like you, and you didn’t much like the world either?

The mom in the story is right. We all have something worthwhile to give, whether we feel inspired at any particular moment or not.

The reason is not in ourselves, but because we have been created by a very intelligent and infinitely wise Mind to support and encourage one another. It’s second nature – or maybe first nature.

Selfishness, greed, self-centeredness, fear – whatever would tempt us to withhold our caring, would have us not help someone when it is within our power to do so – isn’t our nature at all.

We all have had moments when we have listened to an intuition, gone out of our way to follow through on that intuition, and realized afterwards what a right idea that had been. While this could apply to business, in this context it applies to our relations with others.

Those intuitions are angel thoughts that come to us because somebody needs what we have to give: our cheer, a friendly word or helping hand.

There are two good reasons we can leap out of bed in the morning. One, God loves us unconditionally. Two, as we accept that love as real, here and now, we discover we can pass it along without being depleted. We can pay it forward, regardless of whether or not "they" like us!

Whither happiness?

The lottery winner screams with happiness. She is almost delirious. She has beaten the odds. However, at the winning moment she isn’t thinking about how family, neighbors, and others will suddenly jockey with each other to become her new best friends. Former lottery winners have found that their lives have indeed changed as a result, not always in the direction of carefree bliss they had expected.

The tendency is to assume that happiness comes from “things,” from getting what we want.

The advice to “Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it,” understands that happiness is not necessarily getting what we think we want. Getting what we think we want sometimes leads elsewhere.

True contentment, at least in my experience, comes from a quiet joy in our relationship to our Father-Mother God. If that Being is good, present, caring, and wholly Spirit, He/She is active and has no limitations. And that’s a rather interesting parentage.

Take Joseph, youngest son of Jacob, whose brothers were so jealous of him, they nearly killed him, but decided to turn a profit, and sold him into slavery instead. What gladness could possibly lie ahead? Suddenly there was no one who loved or cared about him, no parents to guide and protect him.

But wait. Is there a Father-Mother God guiding him, if Joseph just asks for that guiding?

The Bible story doesn’t specifically tell us Joseph was happy, but it shows him in a productive life of service in Egypt. First he served in Potiphar’s household in a position of trust and authority. Later he served Pharaoh in a position of even greater authority, saving Egypt and its neighbors from mass starvation.

Helping those less fortunate

The clue is “service.” When I worked in a nursing facility years ago, I discovered it was fun to be on duty on the holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc. It was totally satisfying to bring special joy and cheer to clients on these days when often they did not have family coming to see them.

Happiness isn’t selfish. Happiness is spiritual and it’s found in service. Selfishness may deceive us for awhile, but eventually we discover that self-serving is out of sync with the laws of the universe.

Some say we are hard-wired to be happy when we are able to contribute to making others happy, to feel that our lives are somehow making the world a better place.

It does seem to be human nature, hard-wired or otherwise, to discover meaning and purpose through unselfish caring.