Before you send the heartbreak away – before you process it, dissolve it into space, convert it to joy, and spin away from it in shame and blame – turn toward it and see. Go slow. Breathe into it. Provide safe passage for the heartbroken one that has been looking for you for so long.

Perhaps at a much earlier time, with a star or a tree or the water as your witness, you made a prayer of wholeness. The response to that prayer has come, but not in the way you expected. It has arrived by way of the shattering of an old dream, the dream of how you thought it would all turn out. While this dream is painful, it is alive, sacred, and holy.

No, heartbreak and disappointment are not easy. As two of the fierce emanations of integration, they will throw you off at times…

Religion begins with personal spirituality. Spirituality begins with the question: Is there meaning to life? If so, what is it? How does that play out in my own life? And is this life all there is? In seeking meaning in life, inevitably we come to the question of the reason for suffering. No religion seems to have come up with an easy answer to that, but many including Buddhism and Christianity have come up with similar ways for dealing with suffering. The core spiritual response to personal suffering seems to be acceptance in the sense of embracing it. Much of the time we are unable to bail out of the actual situation that causes us pain, but we can and often do seek the means to dull the pain or at least pass it on to those around us. A few of these escape attempts are emotional denial, depression, addictions…

This morning I woke up to find that I had been invaded. Violated. I turned on my tablet to be greeted by a cheerful message informing me that my blog was doing rather nicely. This seemed a little strange, since I haven’t been a particularly diligent blogger of late. I logged on to see what was up. This. This was up.

I had apparently posted it yesterday. Twice. Which would have been a curious thing to do. If you had to ask someone who knows me to sum me up as quickly and efficiently as possible, they would show you that image and say “Do you see this? He is the exact opposite of every single thing you can see right here.”

So what was it doing there? Twice? Well, thereby hangs a tale. Let’s start with lions, shall we…

If you spend any time out in the…

A fart
like a burglar
dropping the silver
shocking the night silence
and creating its own pin drop quiet
freezing everyone’s natural responses
leaving all innocent by-standers pregnant
with explosive tension nervously repressed.
No one can think of any appropriate action to take.

With some hesitation, I am entering the fray started recently by someone’s criticism of an overweight television personality.

A couple of years ago, I lost about twelve pounds, because of knee problems, surgery, and a slow recovery due to my pain being prolonged by Fibromyalgia.  The simple fact was, I was bed-ridden, sleeping a lot, and couldn’t get to the refrigerator on my own.  Encouraged by this, I went on the Adkins diet and lost thirty-three more pounds.  I looked so much better that some people didn’t recognize me.  I felt so much better that my whole pattern of life changed.

But I’m still addicted to food.  It’s just that since I like meat, fish, eggs, cheese, leafy green vegetables, and nuts, I can now pretty much eat all the time and gain weight slowly enough to have some control over it. (However, my husband dislikes most meat and all…

Spirituality is personal faith based on an ongoing, growing relationship with the source of life and love.

Religion is faith shared by a group. Unless religion is based on spirituality, it becomes a  country club, or worse, a desire for power over others, rather than the power to love others.

Jesus wept for his people, the Jews, because they could not hear the Good News of being loved, because they feared the cost of loving.

I think now, he weeps for those who gather in his name.

And I weep for Jesus, this awesome God filled, human expression of God’s Love for all creation, who the Scripture’s tell us grew in truth and holiness.

I weep for Jesus, who was even able to allow the lowest members of his society to challenge him to see that his mission was to share the Love of God with the whole world, not just one…

If I tell you that I was surprised to see
one ferret out of her cage
when I got home from shopping,
to find her strolling into the kitchen
to greet me, shoulder to shoulder
with the usually disdainful cat,
all because I’d left her cage partially open
by accident after filling her food bowl
an hour before, I will also have to tell you

of my complete lack of surprise when,
upon catching her and returning her
to the cage and latching it more securely,
I discovered her cage mate still sound asleep
in her hammock, apparently unaware 
both of her botched chance of an adventure
and of her sister’s wild hour on the loose
with the cat who, when all was done,
simply returned to her usual spot 
on top of the fridge and also
went to sleep. 

Somewhere in here is a metaphor 
and a moral and a meaning

Not long ago, one of my friends mentioned that she no longer had fingerprints. They had worn off. So, several others of us in our late seventies and early nineties checked, and discovered that ours had all pretty much worn off also. The thought that we could turn to a life of crime now tickled our fancy.
As we speculated about this, mental pictures of us attempting to rob a bank had us laughing helplessly.
Our scenarios varied from the image of us making our getaway on our walkers at a snail’s pace, to attempting to escape with one of us waving a water gun around, another holding the money bag, while the third struggled and had to ask the guard to open the door.
Another possibility got us howling. Since I’m the only one of us able to drive anymore, but am also known for distractibility and erratic short…

Four days after my son was attacked and left in a coma in a hospital over a hundred miles away, we had a major water leak. It was our second trip home to bathe, change and comfort the rest of the family, and the leak was the last thing we needed. I had all but screamed down the phone to get help, desperate to get away, back on the road south. By the time there was a knock on the door, I was wound as tight as a spring.

The plumber was huge, a veritable giant of a man… a Rastafarian, who seemed to fill the entire doorway. He came in and set to work lifting floorboards. It would not be a quick job. I sat at the computer, trying to update everyone who was seeking news…and there were many. Messages, prayers and kindness were pouring in from all over…

Had an interesting dream last night. I discovered that I had a new baby. At seventy-five this would not necessarily be good news. But this baby was simply awesome. He could talk and had eyes that sparkled with intelligence and love. All he seemed to need was some food, so the baby and I set off to find food for him.

When I remembered the dream today, I thought maybe the baby represented a new part of me that needed nourishing.  I couldn’t figure out what in me needed nourishing, until I was looking at my Nativity Scene, debating whether to put it away.  The figure of the baby Jesus resembled the infant in my dream.

I love Advent when I spend each day praying, “Come, Lord Jesus, Come” and watching for glimpses of God’s love and grace in each day.  This hope and expectation suit my personality perfectly. And I am seldom…