To You I lift up my spirit, You, who are enthroned in every heart! For, as the young child holds tightly the hand of its parent, As those in the throes of disease look to one who brings comfort, So our spirits seek the Heart of love, that we might find mercy and forgiveness.
Have mercy on us, Compassionate One, have mercy, that we might turn from our blind and ignorant ways. Too long our souls have been veiled by fear; have mercy; lead us to the path of wholeness.
This beautiful prayer is Nan Merrill's recasting of the traditional wording of Psalm 123 into more contemporary language. It is found in a wonderful book, "Psalms for Praying", which contains all 150 Psalms recast in the same way. It is an excellent book for use in prayer devotions. The book was published by Continuum in 1996. I commend it to you for your daily devotions.
Surrounded by wire fencing, crowded by a thorny desert plant, they still bloom! It takes courage, sometimes, to be strong in the face of adversaries. Choose to bloom, the world needs it. "Consider the lilies of the field..."
A little pictorial interpretation: you are looking at the underside of an upside down duck diving for food in a local lake. Ah, the stuff of theological insight and food for thought. Let me state the conclusion and then work backwards. Conclusion: Life is not always pretty. Comes as no surprise, does it? I have met some people who devote their lives to not being embarrassed. And, of course, the harder they work at their life’s meaning, the more often they are embarrassed. There is something to be said for living your life within the parameters of good and bad, yes and no, right and wrong; that is, with some sense of balance, not punishing yourself for falling short of perfection. Win some, lose some.
A healthy spiritual life, according to Dr. Me, is one that exists somewhere between absolutes. It is living creatively and gratefully in the present moment, even if that moment is not one you’d write home about. We all succeed and we all fail, there are good days and bad days, highs and lows, joys and sadness and we pitch our tents somewhere in the middle of that. It is then, as we live authentically in this moment, that we pray our gratitude for insights gained, spiritual roots deepened, wisdom developed. Life is a great teacher, created and gifted to us, so that we can eventually find our way home to God.
So, let today be what it is. Enjoy it, learn from it, contribute something good to it, and then tonight be thankful for every moment. Sort out the best, let go of the worst. “And in all things, give thanks…” Who knows…as you take the day and make it meaningful, you might get your picture taken and appear on somebody’s website.
Well, I’ve seen it all. I’ve suspected for a while that Doves are not the smartest birds in the air. This nest warmer is in for a big surprise if the owner of that bike decides to go for a ride. No, that’s not my bike. I am now officially “bike-less”, but that’s another story for another time. Is there a life lesson from this strange picture? How about…life can be rather precarious, sometimes because of our own poor choices, sometimes because of nature’s rhythms, often in ways we cannot anticipate or understand. We worry about crossing bridges that are still in the future or those bridges we burned on the way to here. Sometimes we create our own precarious moments…like mother Dove who sits on a very unstable nest.
But in the unknown, and in the shaky moments, we press on with an inner assurance that while we can shape decisions and outcomes by our actions and choices, there is an Ultimate One whose dream is for every element of creation to live in harmony with the other parts, for there to be peaceful contentment in the human village, and for justice and mercy to be the standards by which we live our days. Mama Dove may have made a poor decision, by our human standards and knowledge, but, whether she knows it or not, she is loved as much as I am by the Architect of All Things, the God incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. And even when the house falls (or the nest) we are able to fly again because of that Force that lifts us.
Say a prayer today for Mama Bird, for all of us flapping our wings in work or play, and for those no longer able to fly on their own. We are loved deeply by the same Sustaining Source.
In case you haven’t noticed, there are some lovely wildflowers blooming along parts of Oracle Road. They’re scattered in patches, but the blue and yellow and pink colors certainly add to the joy (!) of driving on Oracle. Recently my wife and I pulled into the parking lot of a storage company on that same road, drove around to the back of the building, and slipped the car into a narrow parking spot. Getting out of the car, we glanced over a metal railing, down into a rocky ravine, a naturally wild piece of ground, and saw this. And more.
Now, this is not the most spectacular sight among the flowers growing along Oracle Road, but it stopped us for a “thought minute.” Look at this beautiful spot, we said at the same moment. It is unseen by drivers going up and down Oracle Road, completely out of sight. It is wild and unkept. It’s a “nowhere” place. And yet, it blooms. It’s as if the colorful wildflowers were saying: It doesn’t matter where we are. We are flowers and we are going to be flowers; we are going to bloom. What you see in the photograph is just one wild plant among many in that narrow, insignificant slice of earth. We counted five different kinds of plants, all doing what they are meant to do…bloom. And they did that very well in an anonymous place, without the intention of being admired. Anyone else pulling into that back parking lot and seeing us taking pictures down into a obscure ravine might have thought: “Poor senior citizens. They’ve lost it.” What they wouldn’t know is…we found it.
Lots of implications from this brief experience. Name a few for yourself. And while you’re doing that, don’t forget to bloom today. You were made for that.
A quick word of explanation: I’m having fun writing short responses to traditional life Proverbs, like “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” or “Don’t cry over spilt milk”. There are dozens of them. Like this one, a response to “As you sow, so shall you reap.”
I don’t understand; perhaps you can explain. Why am I treated with such disdain? Why do people go out of their way to ridicule me; O, the things they say. I’m a very straightforward, honest guy. I speak the truth; I never lie. I pull no punches; a fact is a fact. But you should see the way people act when I lay it all out, when it’s plain to see that they are not nearly as smart or as wise as me. And yet they get angry and call me names when all I’m doing is trying to explain why my way is right and the world is insane.
Well, friend, since you asked let me explain it this way: You offend your neighbors when they hear you say that you know it all; your way is right, they think you’re trying to pick a fight. You see “what you give is what you get” and I’ll speak the truth: from where I sit, you’re reaping exactly what you sow and maybe you need to let people know that you’re not an arrogant know-it-all after all.
The old proverb is true, just so you know: you do, indeed, reap what you sow.
In your meditation today, be particularly grateful for all things that teach us about grace and beauty. What have you encountered recently that causes you to pause in praise? What have you experienced that demonstrates the creative genius of the many forms of life? Look for one thing today that invites you to stop and admire the craftsmanship of God. May you be overwhelmed with too many choices!
You’ve heard the phrase: “…the tip of the iceberg”? A little bit of iceberg is visible, but if there’s a little bit, then you can be pretty sure there’s more that is unseen. Tips of icebergs don’t float around on their own without underlying support. The photo above is revealing. It helps me understand the concept of faith as 10% knowing and 90% trusting. I know a little; I trust a lot. Those percentages work for me like this: History, brief though it is, records the reality of a man named Yeshua and the things he did and said. He walked the earth and talked about an alternative way to live. He told people they could start living that new way immediately, not that they had to be good to get the reward at a later time. Here and now it is ours if we are willing to accept the 90%, to trust. You and I are already where we hope to be, we just can’t see the 90%, so we trust. Someone might say: Well, over time the 90% becomes knowing also. I hope not, because faith is based on Trust. I live with the cloud that defines and obscures at the same time. I know and I trust simultaneously. On those days when I demand to know beyond my capacity to understand, the cloud gets thicker, but when I Trust, when I live with the “maybe” and the “what if…”, that cloud thins out and I catch glimpses of the peak, glimpses that I’ve never seen before. It’s the sharp edge of faith that slices through the obscurity…and that’s Trust.
I love to look at the mountain, even when I can see only the peak rising through the cloud. If I can see the peak, then I Trust that there’s more unseen, more beauty and majesty. And that’s faith. And that’s enough. Food for thought in your journey. Press on.
A moment of mystery, life's puzzle in a picture. Beautiful bird flies because of wind's embrace, propelled by the unseen source. Wings and wind create wonder. No wind, no flight.
Waves, elegant power rushing and churning, magnificent mayhem that changes the shoreline, recreates with the repetition of current and tide. No wind, no wave.
Shining Spirit 
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