Is this my conversation?

Kids =

creativity and...

wisdom

An old hymn offers a prayer for help in speaking only kind and right words:
"Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee…”

– And keep them closed the rest of the time!
The third line is my personal addition.

One of the graces that blesses relationships is knowing when to speak and when to keep silent. Recently my third-grade grandson helped me figure this out.

He and I were working at one end of the kitchen. At the other end of the room, his brother and his other grandmother were doing homework. Voices rose, and I chimed in, all the way across the room, with an opinion.

My grandson, standing beside me, quietly pointed out, “Grandma, that isn’t your conversation.”

My know-it-all comment jolted to a halt. “You’re right!” I said to the little guy. “What you just said is so helpful!”

I have since been pondering what is my conversation and what is not. I realized the answer to this question has to do with respect. Respecting others’ conversations means not jumping in uninvited. How totally simple.

In fact it’s so easy, I think I can do it. Apparently what’s required is breaking an old habit.

I like what Mary Baker Eddy says about struggling to do the right thing – that it’s a prayer in action. “The habitual struggle to be always good is unceasing prayer.”

I’m sure I will have plenty of opportunity this coming week to live that prayer!

Fact of relationships

In the Sierras

just north of Echo Lake

Life is an echo;

What you send out, comes back.

Chinese Proverb

An investment in identity

Jose Antonio Abreu -- he's been called a saint, an angel. He is a humble man of action with a heart for caring.

Thirty some years ago, Mr. Abreu had a vision for helping the poorest children in Venezuela’s slums find hope, identity, and a way out of poverty.

He says he realized one of the most efficient ways to fight poverty was to introduce excluded children to a musical education. To give them a way into music that they didn’t have before. To turn their families and communities into allies.

At his first rehearsal, 11 children showed up. He had a choice of whether to give up or persevere. Happily, he listened to his intuition, and millions of children have been blessed.

This video clip tells part of the story. It’s worth the ten minutes.

This month Mr. Abreu received the prestigious TED award, given to people whose caring has made a difference. If you care about children or music, and want to hear more of his story, Click Here.

“The devotion of thought to an honest achievement
makes the achievement possible.”
Mary Baker Eddy

Dependable shock absorbers

Someone shared a great idea recently:

Patience and forgiveness are the springs and shock absorbers that carry us safely over the potholes along the highways and byways of life.

A complete makeover?

The French prince underestimated King Henry

when he sent him a chest of tennis balls!

My friend and I went to see HENRY V last night at a local community college. The Acting Company/Guthrie Theater had just arrived from St. Louis, and we were privileged to attend an extremely informative and well-attended “chat” session by one of the staff directors an hour beforehand.

One neat thing about Prince Hal is how he arrived at his kingship as such an unlikely prospect. As he walked into his responsibilities as King Henry, he walked away from the rowdy and irresponsible choices of his youth. He became thoughtful and wise in matters of state, slow to anger, quick to forgive, fair in administering justice.

The Dauphin of France, one of Henry’s companions in former times, refused to take Henry as a serious foe. (Bad mistake.) He underscored his contempt by sending Henry a chest of tennis balls. (Yes, it’s true! They had tennis balls even in those days.)

But Henry’s character had changed 180 degrees. He and his troops defeated the superior French army, and Henry married the French princess.

An earlier example of a 180 degree change is St. Paul who, as Saul the Pharisee, persecuted Jesus’ followers even to death.

While Henry needed a complete makeover, it’s been pointed out that God didn’t change a thing about Paul’s character. He didn’t’ change his zeal to do good, his perseverance, or his commitment to a cause. What God changed was his direction – from destroyer of the practice of Christianity to the builder up of that idea.

These examples give hope to my prayers for everyone who has a deep down yearning to make a difference for good – that they will find the answer to that longing; will find the courage to set out on a fresh and perhaps unfamiliar path; that they be willing to lean on a wisdom and intelligence outside themselves as they chart a new course.

Stopping the procession

Artist's sketch of

Nain funeral procession

(public domain)

“Jesus stopped the procession.” (See Luke 7:11-17)

Someone mentioned this today. What great food for thought!

The reference was, in fact, to a funeral in the ancient city of Nain. After a word of hope to the widowed mother, Jesus stepped among the mourners, and touched the bier, or coffin. Most Jews avoided touching the dead unless they had to, as it rendered them ritually unclean. So it is not surprising that Jesus’ action stopped the group in its tracks.

He quickly restored the young man to life. We can imagine his mother’s great joy. Her status moments before had been one of a severely dismal financial outlook, compounded by the grief of losing her son. Suddenly she had not only her loved one back, but a promise of income and stability.

When Christ halts a procession, good things are going to happen.

Ever found yourself rehearsing difficult conversations, perhaps arguments, which have left you feeling emotionally unsettled? Christ can reverse these negative thought processions as well.

I had such a difficult conversation recently. Expecting to be included in a serious family discussion, I was told over the phone (nicely) that I wasn’t needed. This was not on my list of possible ways the conversation might go, and came as a bit of a jolt.

As I struggled to adjust to this wrinkle in the day, Christ quickly stopped the parade called “Being Left Out,” ready to march through my thinking,

The message I heard was, “You are exactly where you need to be. This is not about you, Sandi dear. This is about what divine Love is doing. This is about good unfolding. You don't have to be there. In fact you can support it best from home through your prayers. God, not somebody else, is placing you where you need to be. At home praying. Let it (the conversation) go.”

One of the great joys of spiritual journeys is moments like these, when the message of how to go forward spiritually is loud and clear. And the peace of that moment comes from yielding totally to the message. And the parade of spiritually dead thinking is dispersed.

So we can, with authority from Christ, break up any procession that is marching without a permit through our mental territory.

Two outstanding teens

Greely High School in Cumberland, Maine, boasts two outstanding basketball players. For eight or nine years Patrick Thibodeau, a Greely senior with Downs Syndrome, has practiced with the basketball team in the summer, and managed the drills during the season. He has kept the water bottles full. Yet he had never played in a game.

Patrick is one hero, and he rose to the occasion magnificently with two three-pointers!

The other outstanding teen in this story was in the starting line-up. Sam Thompson stepped aside to offer Patrick his spot. Interviewed after the game he said simply that Patrick came to every practice, worked hard, and deserved this opportunity.

Would that the media would bring to the world the many other seventeen year-olds who are also caring and generous.

The families in the bleachers also illustrated Greely's team spirit. After Patrick’s first basket, he was back on the bench with his teammates when, in the final moments, the fans – on both sides! – began clapping and calling his name. The coach put him in, and Patrick managed to deliver his second 3-pointer – at the buzzer. The fans were wild with happiness.

It was so much more than winning. That evening people were celebrating courage and unselfish caring. The media picked up on Patrick’s faithful service to the team all those years and also on Sam’s generosity.

Patrick had reached for the stars and touched them; everyone rejoiced with him. Sam Thompson had found something equally precious and a little more private – the gold in his own character.

There is no limit to the good unselfishness can do because it originates in the Mind of the universe, the infinite Love that reveals mankind’s innate goodness.

Here's something to ponder about unselfishness:
“Whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed love, receives directly the divine power.” (Mary Baker Eddy)

If you are really into basketball, a YouTube of Patrick’s highlights follows. Patrick's baskets are at the 1:46 and 3:47 marks. Patrick is Number 3.

Music and healing

Talents. Gifts. We all have them. I see our ability to share with one another, to support and encourage and bring out the best in each other as gifts from our Maker.

In the car earlier today, I was listening to beautiful music on Chicago's classical station. So incredibly pure were the strains from the violin that I wondered who the soloist was.

Turned out to be Rachel Barton Pine, a Chicago area woman who has had to prove her commitment to excellence after a tragic accident some years ago. She also played at the Chicago Annual Prayer Breakfast in December, and her performance was a pleasant surprise to me at that time.

Does music have power to heal? David played on his harp to soothe King Saul when the king was mentally deranged. Rachel's faith and her devotion to musical excellence sends a healing message to the whole world. I honor her perseverance and success.

Here is Rachel telling her faith story. CLICK HERE

Best friend

From the movie, "Castaway"

I recently watched “Castaway,” with Tom Hanks, a movie released nine years ago. He plays a Fed-Ex systems engineer who abruptly finds himself alone on a small island after a traumatic plane crash.

He adapts and survives for four years, before building a raft, leaving the island, and eventually being rescued at sea.

Soon after landing on the island, he opens some Fed-Ex packages that have washed ashore, including one containing a Wilson volley ball. He paints a face on the ball and names it . . . Wilson.

Wilson is the only company he has for the entire four years, so it isn’t too surprising that he begins talking to the volley ball, converses, even argues with it. Wilson becomes his best, and only, friend. When he leaves the island, he carefully ties the ball to the raft.

After some days when the ball’s tether weakens, and it falls off the raft and drifts away, Hank’s character is in anguish. When he isn’t able to retrieve Wilson, he lets his improvised oars drift away and just gives up.

Here is a metaphor: we all need friends – other people, pets – someone to love and be loved by. The song, “No man is an island,” recognizes that need.

While most of us won’t face isolation on a deserted island, we all have, or may yet, find ourselves feeling bereft, friendless. Can we do better than talking to a volley ball?

Religious author Mary Baker Eddy had been through it all. Trusted friends turned against her, slanderers launched vicious verbal attacks. She could look back on such difficult times and refer to them as hours “of development.” Right where she was tempted to feel totally alone, she found divine Love comforting and guiding her.

Here’s what she wrote next to the marginal heading “Uses of adversity.”

“Would existence without personal friends be to you a blank? Then the time will come when you will be solitary, left without sympathy; but this seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love. When this hour of development comes, even if you cling to a sense of personal joys, spiritual Love will force you to accept what best promotes your growth.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures)

That’s a promise worth keeping in mind. We always have a best friend in our creator – who cares about each of His/Her children, and communicates by giving us good ideas.

Kindness of strangers

This expert skier did not fall.

She was giving a lesson in how to get back up.

We skied Camp Sagawau today. Ever since his brother came back from a weekend with Grandma where they cross-country skied, the other brother has been eager to try.

If he fell down once today, he fell 20 times. And each time, with a grin as broad as a new moon, he bounced back to his feet.

A woman in yellow-accented ski clothing saw my grandson at his one unhappy moment when the glove lining wouldn’t go back into the finger places. While I worked on his glove, he sat on the snow surrounded by skis and poles.

She sized up the situation and assumed he didn’t know how to get up. Striking up a friendly conversation, she offered to show him how to get up. She grabbed his full attention when she flopped down face first in the snow, “Whoops, I fell.” She then proceeded to show him step by step how to get back up, “Like a puppy, use all four feet!”

When she turned around to see how he was taking all this instruction, he had forgotten his annoyance with the glove, was already standing upright on his skis and grinning widely.

“Oh, look at that!” She exclaimed good naturedly at his quick success. “I’m outta here!”

Later a woman sprawled helplessly across a small upgrade. A young man below her was quietly offering good advice on how to get back up. Eventually she got her skis off and walked up – with a smile. The guy greeted me by name. It was Ben, a member of my Interfaith group!

This woman was a stranger -- not just blocking the hill, but in need; and Ben followed through, waiting till she had her skis back on at the top. We chatted briefly and he glided on ahead. About half an hour later, he was helping a mom and her small daughter get into their bindings at the trailhead. What a sweet guy!

These strangers, to the people they helped, were angels in cross-country ski garb. They saw a need and were there to help. I am continually grateful to the woman who befriended my grandson; and I will certainly think of Ben with new respect for how he lives his faith.

“We see eye to eye and know as we are known,
reciprocate kindness and work wisely,
in proportion as we love.”
Mary Baker Eddy