Shining Spirit

My Dear Friend,

What a remarkable gift I have received from you.
It is so infrequent that the gift given
matches so beautifully the need
of the moment.
Yours did.

The pathway for several months has been ill-defined,
so few signposts along the way.  My roadmap
blew away with the strong winds of
disappointment and doubt.  The
brilliant blue skies of the past
turned to muddy, gray
blankets of suffocation.
No rain.  No washing.
No relief.

It is so difficult to breathe in the darkest caverns of desperation.

And then you came to my door.  You smiled.
And as we sat in conversation, no, as we
sat in communion, I felt the first hint
of a breeze, the sweet smell of wet
meadow grass after a night
of spring rain.
You unwrapped the gift without
ritual or pretense.  You
blessed my weary soul
and my worried mind
as you placed the
offering before
me,
and I knew a Sacred Breath has passed
through the room.  Light began to
change from a resistant dullness
to warm, soft rays of sunshine.
How will I ever thank you
for this remarkable
gift?

You listened.
You heard my heart,
not just my words.
You responded to my spirit,
not  to the circumstances
of my despair.

You listened.

For that gift, I am ever grateful.

Most Sincerely,

But the sea is so big
and I am so
small

I’ve never…
What if…

Do I dare?

I’m betting that today will be the best day of all
28,510 days I have lived on the planet.
Something today will remind me to:
Deal gently with all who hurt
Say a kind word that is not expected
Create something with my hands or my brain
Offer a hand to someone who needs to hold on
Laugh
Love
Forgive
Hum a tune
Smile
Be genuine
I hope to look back from 28,511 and say
“Yes, sir.  That was the day.”
So far.

Meet my Portland pal, Sal.
So gentle, so calm, so docile.
So wrong.
Inside that fur is a calculating canine whose sole purpose
in life is to rid the earth of all edible substances.
It doesn’t even have to be food.

She almost burned the house down once when trying
to get to a slice of pizza on the kitchen stove.  Who
knew that a dog’s paw could turn the burner knob
to the “High” setting?
The firemen said “that is one determined dog”, especially
when Sal tried to lick the cutting board the firefighter had thrown
out into the back yard.  It was still burning.

Sal has big, pleading eyes.  Don’t all dogs?
She tries the famous “stare down” technique
at meal time.  I’m never quite sure if she’s
looking at me or the hamburger in my hand.
Sal is intense.  Do dogs blink?

So, here’s to  my pal, Sal.  May Beagle heaven be
made up of burgers and bagels. In the meantime,
if you’re ever in Portland and you see a bouncy,
little Beagle approaching,
don’t turn your back on your hotdog!

Ah, these wonderful animal
companions.  Don’t they make life sweet?
And expensive.

I thought about leaning over the fence to catch sight of this “strange” dog, but I thought better of it.  He is strange, you know!  And the sign clearly says: “Warning”.  Still, I would like to know how and why he is strange.  Does he walk on his front legs, or does he have four ears, or maybe he knows how to tap dance?

It does occur to me that the poor thing is labeled for life.  “There goes old Charlie’s dog…he’s strange.  That dog is mighty strange, too.”  I wonder what people in the neighborhood would think of Charlie’s dog if the word was changed to “unique” or “one-of-a-kind”, or even “special”?  What if strange, in this case, meant “exceptional”?  Old Charlie’s dog can recite the alphabet!

Well, I’ll never know because I took the “warning” part seriously and I didn’t have the backbone to discover the dog’s “strangeness.”  As I walked away from the sign on the wire fence, I thought to myself “Isn’t it a shame the way we label people these days.  WARNING! she’s strange because she speaks a funny language, or she doesn’t believe in my religion.  Her skin is so dark.”  I guess the next thing we’ll do is hang a warning sign about her neck so everyone can be suspicious.  Come to think of it, we did that once with a Star of David less than a century ago.

I’m going to believe that the dog behind the wire fence, the one I’m warned about because he strange, is, in fact, exceptional…of value and merits the same respect and care given to little “FooFoo”, the pampered Pekinese who lives next door.  Now, there’s a strange dog!

But, I suppose, in some ways, we’re all a little strange, aren’t we?

When I am tired, take me to the water.
Lay me down on warm sand
where I can rediscover the texture of who I am
from times before time.
Hold my hand as I feel the frothing
surf in mine, washing me,
embrace after embrace, with wisdom that
comes from the deepest places of creation.
I would become once again the embryonic
energy that emerges into the warm Sunlight
of the first day.
And when the Moon calls and reclaims all surf
to the sea, help me stand in sincere gratitude
as one washed in limitless love
and blessed for the
new journey.

Roger Pierce  September 2, 2019

My imagination is sparked when I look at this picture.
I see a horse-drawn wagon approaching from the
distant side of the stream.  I hear hoofs clomping
on the wooden base, and I watch a young man as
he shifts the reins into one hand and lifts the other
in a big, friendly wave.

I’ve driven a lot of miles in the last few weeks,
and I’ve crossed a lot of bridges.  Some of them are
functionally common while others, mix-masters
they’re called, are works of engineering art.  How
anyone can design and construct one of those things
is a marvel and a puzzle.

In my hometown, a new bridge was built recently
over a very busy interstate highway.  It took more
than a year to put the pieces together, and a work
crew of skilled people…hundreds of them.  I like
the bridge but it doesn’t excite my imagination
like the old red covered-bridge.

History reminds me that covered-bridges were
built by communities, not companies.  Farmers
left their plows in the fields, gathered at the
stream bed with hammers, nails and wood from
an old barn that had been torn down.
And they built a bridge.
When they got tired, they stretched out on the bank of
the stream in the shade of friendly trees.  Their laughter
and the sound of hammers striking nails can be
heard to this day when the wind passes by.
They built a bridge.

May I make two suggestions?
Figuratively, we need to build some bridges.
There are a lot of metaphorical, raging rivers
that need to be spanned.  I can name them,
but you know them.   And, it wouldn’t be a
bad idea intentionally to create community
so that our common needs can be shared and
something done to address them.  Community
does not mean partisan factions.

Maybe bridges and community might help us
out of the mess we’ve created.

Who does it?
Not the anonymous “them”.
We do it.

Sitting together just on the edge of wonder,
she said to him: “What if this is the last time
we will see this startling beauty?
What if there is not a next time?”

Moments passed before he leaned closer to her
and smiled:  “Then we will have had this moment,
and no one else can claim it.  It belongs
only to us.”

This moment, detached from yesterday,
not anticipating tomorrow, is the
raw reality of life.
It is the one-act play repeated again and
again.  Lines change.  Costumes vary,
the audience applauds or sits in bewildered silence.
And all that really matters is that I have filled the
moment with the fullness of myself, not for
the sake of self, but to honor that slender span
of life that is validated not by yesterday nor
by tomorrow’s headlines, but by the
experience of a profound engagement
with the present.

If we never sit on this bench again,
if the sun never falls across your shoulders
again like it did today,
if there is no next time,
I will forever be grateful for this one moment
when life happened, really happened,
and we knew it.

I admire beautiful birds in flight.
Such graceful power.
I would love to rise in the wind as they do.

Someone told me a long time ago:  “Son, if
God wanted humans to fly, he would have
given us wings!”
If I could find that old wise man, I would tell
him:  “Well, God did…and I can fly!”
And today I intend to do just that.
I will watch for the fresh breeze of the Spirit
and I will catch the current and be lifted by that
source of strength.
I may not have wings, but I will not be limited by
that minor technicality.  I have a relationship with the
wind and the sky and the One who created it all and
who awakened the desire in me to soar in the Spirit.

My only problem is that I need a flying partner.
It’s a big sky…lots of room for everyone.
So, how about flapping your wings today
and feeling the lift of the Spirit?
I’ll look for you!
We’ll do cartwheels through the clouds!

The beautiful water appears smooth
and serene in the distance,
but when it encounters an obstacle,
something challenging its way,
serene turns to savage.

It is the nature of power, when used
only for self-interest, to set
principles aside and seek
out its prey.
Power, unleashed from ethical values,
is a voracious animal.

I know this to be true because I feel
the churning in myself sometimes.
Simple differences are magnified into
boulders that block my way, and the
challenge is to move them aside with slight
regard for ethical or moral values.
Misused power doesn’t persuade,
it pounces.

I pray today for wisdom to recognize the
the warning signs of my need to
control or dominate,
and for the courage to control those urges
by remembering and reliving the
Way of Jesus.

And I pray for the nation and nations of
the world in this time of
troubling turbulence.
May power honor peace,
not personal pride.

May it be so.  Amen.