Coffee Black

Coffee black
Wake up this morning

With a strong sense

Intact

Dew gleams

On my car so early

Heading to normalcy

So it seems

Sky mix

With swirls of blue & gray

No mood the beauty of Creation

Can't fix

Pray bold

And embrace a certain mileau

Void of careful prayers

So told

Book Notes

I was thinking about some of my favorite books, and how the enjoyment of them is not only in one reading, but in reading them again. Each time is different, as the season of my life may be presenting me with perspectives altered, where these writers' words have stretched my thoughts and awakened creativity and inspiration.
Rainer Maria Rilke sums it up succinctly when he writes of re-reading books:

The enjoyment of them and the gratitude only grows ever greater, and one's way of looking at things becomes somehow better and simpler, one's belief in life deeper and one's life more blessed and more significant. (Letters to a Young Poet, 1903)

What books do you re-read? Books that I find myself re-reading the most:

C.S. Lewis
The Great Divorce
The Screwtape Letters
The Seeing Eye (essays)
The Grand Miracle (essays)
The Four Loves

Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice

William Shakespeare
King Lear

Soren Kierkegaard
A Kierkegaard Anthology

Emily Brontë/ Charlotte Brontë
Poems and short stories

G.K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy
The Ball and the Cross

Madeleine L'Engle
Walking on Water

Lauren Winner
Girl Meets God
Mudhouse Sabbath

Tara Leigh Cobble
Here's to Hindsight
Crowded Skies
Orange Jumpsuit

Carolyn Weber
Surprised by Oxford

Emily Dickinson
Poems

The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse

Good News

Good news.
Does your heart flutter when you hear these words, knowing that something uplifting is about to be told?
Do we ever really think about what these words mean? Do we live out these words so others will see that there is something different? Do we share it with others?
What is good news to us? Good news is hearing that a loved one arrived safely to their destination. Good news is when a surgery is completely successful. Good news is getting that job.

What about the best news? How about what Jesus did for us?

On Ash Wednesday, we reflect on the fact that we came from dust and to dust we shall return. This reminds us of our own death. We hear the sounds of nails being hammered into a wooden cross, our sins, written on slips of paper. We walk up the aisle to have our foreheads marked with the sign of the cross in ashes. The line moves swiftly and before I know it, I receive the ashes smudged onto my forehead and am filled with emotion, that I am truly loved by the Maker of the Universe, and that Jesus took my place on the cross because of that love. 

Surely it wasn't reasonable of the Lord of the Universe to come and walk this earth with us and love us enough to die for us and then show us everlasting life? We will all grow old, and sooner or later we will die, like the old trees in the orchard. But we have been promised that this is not the end. We have been promised life.  -Madeleine L'Engle

I sat back down feeling clean and forgiven. I felt that love more fully than ever, as I realized in my tiny life how big Jesus' love for me is. This is, indeed, the best news of all.

Mini Lessons of the Day

A cup of Earl Grey Tea makes the day so much better. Even more so with a biscuit.

You can't erase the day, but you can start it over right now.

The road may be narrow, bumpy, and twisting, but keep on it and don't stray off, even if others try to persuade you it will be easier...

Stop. Pay attention to the beautiful moment around you.

Life is too short not to share how you feel. Let them know you love and care.

Windy Musing

The warm winds shuffle my hair
And the giant leaves tumble by me
Wishing for something different from my day
But cheering me now
Is this solitary moment away

Moving in slow motion so it seems
While everyone else is like these leaves
Or maybe it's all in my head
As I assume myself stuck
For I know there is meaning to this
So I focus on little moments of bliss

Darkness & Dust

Ash Wednesday
"Yet even now" declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart...
Joel 2.12

Darkness creeps into our lives by many avenues

We struggle, as we go against the grain to follow You

The dust that we are thinks ourselves to be true

But what we need is to become clean, like new

And with moods like midnight, when we can't see the blue

Or the green, yellow, red, only black is the hue

Of our sin and brokenness, we are crowded with a few

Desperate, we cry for one to be with us through

Savior, Lord, we pray this is what You will do

Photo: Tynemouth Priory and Castle, England.  Ruins from the 13th century.

Uncertain Certainty

Yesterday is History,
'Tis so far away

Yesterday is Poetry- 'tis Philosophy

Yesterday is mystery

Where it is Today

While we shrewdly speculate

Flutter both away

-Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson always soothes me when I feel like this. When everything seems so up-in-the-air and no clear landing strip is in sight. Her words sink into me. Her sense of wonder and uncertainty parallel how I feel. I read her poems and hear her words attach themselves to the wonder in my soul. She sums up, in very few words, something so true-

In this short life that only lasts and hour
How much- how little- is within our power 

The way she hides the identity of God, by not naming Him thus, but by naming Him another way. Someone who isn't looking for Christian inspiration may find themselves reading Dickinson and not even realize the hidden meaning she so cleverly disguises in her words- 

Of paradises' existence
All we know
Is the uncertain certainty-
But it's vicinity, infer,
By it's Bisecting Messenger-

While surrounded by uncertainty and poetical musings about a small life, I hold onto a hope inside me that sometimes is hard to explain, except perhaps by Dickinson's poem-

Hope is a strange invention-
A Patent of the Heart-
In unremitting action
Yet never wearing out- 

Of this electric adjunct
Not anything is known
But its unique momentum
Embellish all we own-

Emily Dickinson did not have a wild life. She mostly stayed in her house in Amherst, Massachusetts. There, she wrote about the human spirit, but how did she know so much while she rarely left the house? She had a small, quiet life, and yet her words are not tiny. They are thought-provoking and bold. She lived from 1830-1886, and wrote 1,789 poems. Amazing!

Wake Me

Clouds and fog wake me this morning
Grayish light cast through my windows

Waking from dreams, the scenes still play

On repeat over and over in my head

As I emerge from under my blankets

Back to reality with a crisp morning mind

As I pour a steaming cup of coffee
Good Morning

Mountain Top

Read Mark 9.2-10

...For a moment
Jesus' friends were seeing truly,
seeing him as he was,
seeing a human being as we all truly are,
shining with the whole glory of Creation,
stardust that we are.
They saw through the scruff and dirt
that this rough world leaves on us,
saw past the judgments and appearances,
the masks and costumes and shrouds
that we throw on each other:
they saw the heaven within a person,
the image of God.
If only they hadn't been so shocked
they would have noticed it in themselves.
Jesus had to tell them later:
"You are the light for the world."
God shines in you,
gleams with the splendid light of heaven.

-Transfiguration, Steve Garnaas-Holmes

The Transfiguration takes place just before the season of Lent begins. It is a literal mountain-top experience for Peter, James, and John as Jesus takes them up on the mountain. There, Jesus is suddenly transfigured before them. His appearance radiates and his clothes are intensely white. The disciples are scared and don't know what to make of it all. They see Elijah and Moses standing there talking with Jesus and they are terrified because they cannot explain it. Then the voice of God comes through the cloud that overshadows them, saying, "This is my beloved son, listen to Him."

The disciples are probably asking a thousand questions in their heads but are given no answers. Jesus actually tells them to keep silent about what they saw until the Son of Man is risen from the dead. So, now the disciples are even more confused because they don't know that Jesus means.

Peter, James, and John see the real Jesus with the glory of God shining from Him, but they don't comprehend until subsequent events occur the reason they were witnesses to such a sight. They are important in the sharing of the Gospel later, and they are shown something that they will understand at the proper time, when Jesus is raised and their ministry begins. Jesus is equipping them ahead of time, they just don't recognize it as such. Yet the experience sits on their hearts and as events unfold and all that Jesus told them occurs, they see the pieces fall into place.

Can't we all relate to Peter, James, and John? In our own lives, haven't we seen or experienced something that we don't fully understand but we know it is something important, something that will be a part of our future? And as events unfold we see pieces fall into place? Slowly, along the way, we learn, little by little, the importance of that initial occurrence and everything since then and how all of it could not possibly be orchestrated by you or anyone, except God. That is what I think of when I read about the Transfiguration. We may not understand what God is showing us, but in His time all the pieces will come to together and make sense to us.

My Safe

I would imagine that most people have a safe in their home, holding such important items as money, documents, special valuables, etc... My journals are my safe. They hold that which is so precious to me. Memories, stories, thoughts, prayers, musings....

Rather than a physical safe to hold items inside my home, I carry mine with me wherever I go, in my bag. I could never use a bag that doesn't hold my journal (so those tiny clutches will never work for me). It is filled with words and descriptions of things I do not want to forget. It also holds imaginative musings, dreams, and hopes for things that have not yet come to pass.

I write poems. I write lists and random ideas. I write down titles of books I want to find later. Once in a while there is a sketch or drawing by me, but I am a terrible artist. I copy quotes and Bible verses. I tape pictures or cutouts that inspire me and get my creativity awakened. I never know when I may want to suddenly write something down, or refer to something I have written already.

Even the Psalmist speaks of God's 'journal 'when he writes "You have kept count of my tossings, put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?" (Psalm 56.8) God keeps track of all our joys and sorrows, like someone who journals.

The hardest part is getting a new journal once my old one is full. Then I have to start fresh with a book full of blank pages. A few days ago, I started a new journal, so I am missing my old journal, full of familiar pages, poems, writings, and verses. I have some recipes written in there, too.  Now I just need to get busy filling my new book with verses, writings, and memories.

Fresh

What is God asking of you?
Will you pause to ponder

How He can use you now,

Or will you look straight through?

As if the plan were translucent glass

And the clear piece were pliable

If God is asking you to see it through

He will make sure it comes to pass

If a fork in the road is up ahead

And you're conflicted in the choice

Pray for a fresh outlook, then

"Have faith in God," Jesus said

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. -Mark 11.24

Love Stirs

We do not possess God. Yet our very lives, anywhere and at any moment, cannot fail to be the object of divine love.
-John W. Riggs

It is Valentine's Day. The day of love, right? Or is it the commercialized day of roses, red hearts, desserts, and chocolates? We all need more than one day of love. We need a love eternal and never-failing. So let's look beyond all that other sugary stuff for a moment...

God's love is a mystery. It stirs our souls. What have we ever done to deserve such divine love? Since our creation we have failed, time and again. Throughout the ages, stories in the Bible tell us of God's people turning away and sinning, forgetting about the love they once knew. Or giving up when the situation looked dire. Or following other gods.

What is our normal reaction when someone we love turns away or finds something else and follows it? Do we get angry and bitter toward that person, or do we view that person with kindness? Our normal reaction is the former, I would think.  
And yet with God it is not like that. God is always here, ready to love, already loving. All this time (and before our time) He has loved us. But He doesn't force it upon us.

True love is not forced. If it is forced, it is not true.

So we have a choice to receive the love God offers, or not. He already thinks of us before Himself. Proof of that is Jesus. The whole reason Jesus came among us was to die....so that we might live. Because He loved us. First. Always. It's a love full of divinity, selflessness, mystery, hope, promise, and joy. Isn't that what we all need?

Thousand Thousand Stars

With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,

With thousand thousand stars, that then appeared

Spangling the hemisphere.

-Paradise Lost, John Milton

This weekend I was in Gainesville hanging out with 2 of my brothers, sister-in-law, and another friend. We went to a Gator Basketball game, which isn't really my "thing", but I am always up for doing something fun and different. The group of us had tickets, but two of the tickets were court side tickets, row 2, right behind the opposing team's bench. For the first half of the game, I was sitting up near the very top of the dome. And for the second half, we swapped seats, and I was court side. What a dramatic spot to be! We were packed in like sardines on benches, right behind the super big & tall players. The coach was pacing back and forth and screaming to his players. Trash talking was going on all around us, from excited fans. We could see everyone's expressions, what players were saying, and we could see ourselves on the big screens as plays were happening right in front of us. We were no longer just looking onto a court from the nose-bleed section, we were right in the action, and I realized how possible it was that a runaway basketball could very well end up in my lap!

Later that night, back at my brother's house, the conditions were absolutely perfect for stargazing, so we got my little telescope out in the backyard, where the sky opened up to envelope us with twinkling stars, more than I have ever seen, and several planets. As we set the telescope on a table, I saw a shooting star off in the east. Venus was just going below the horizon. Jupiter was bright and bold, and later we noticed Mars glowing red. I could hear John Milton's words in my head "With thousand thousand stars, that then appeared..." Because it wasn't just a thousand stars visible, it was a thousand thousand stars. That second "thousand" makes all the difference. We shivered out there, as the temperature dropped into the 30s. We held mugs of hot chocolate in our hands to warm them. I cannot help but marvel at God's mysterious and beautiful creation. 

Reminder

Bemused and besotted as we are, we still dimly know at heart that nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality.
-C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

I smile to myself when I remember the line
You said to me at a discouraging time
Like a weather vane being flipped by the wind
You remind me what I need to hear again
That the next page is always better, and it will come
Just keep patience, have faith, and know where it rains down from

While a myriad of unknown lurks around each curve
We are known by the One who steers when we swerve
Still our hearts grow weak and suffer from despair
But it's in You we can find joy on each page, everywhere.

Doses of Encouragement

We catch light from one another; God models it. We're given the great privilege of helping ignite others lives.
-Natalie Hanson

This quote is from my devotional I read each morning, called Disciplines. It is a good reminder that we have power in our words to others. We can choose to use our light to encourage others so they they, in turn, choose to let their light shine.

Sometimes, someone just needs a little dose of encouragement to get going. That is how I am, certainly. I am pretty self-motivated and independent, but when someone close to me offers some unprovoked words of encouragement, it ignites my fire to take that next challenge or to keep on going through the darkness.

Words chosen carefully and thoughtfully are a treasure for both the giver and receiver of the words.

Prof. Miroslav Volf, Part 11

Here are a few more thoughts from the lecture in religion, held in the Hollis Room at Florida Southern College. Prof. Miroslav Volf was the lecturer from Yale Divinity School.

At the beginning of Prof. Volf's lecture, he talked about cheap grace. Cheap grace allows the sinner to keep on going same as usual, with everything remaining as it was before because we all sin. So, what is the point in changing, the sinner asks. There is no justification of the sinner, but only the sin. It's cheap.

I sat up a little straighter in my wooden chair because only a few nights before I had been reading The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His first chapter is all about cheap grace and how we are to be seeking costly grace, which is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because we don't deserve it and it is the only true life.

It was Christ who made it possible for the sin to be separate from the sinner. We are all both victims and perpetrators, so it is important to forgive others, even when they don't ask for it. The power of forgiveness is in the hands of the person who forgives. But then we are to ask ourselves, are we remorseful over the damage to ourselves? Or for the people we damaged?

We wrongly think, sometimes, that if we don't recognize a wrong doing, it's not real. That is far from the truth, of course. That is like saying stealing is okay just as long as nobody sees you do it.

Every untruthfulness is a form of injustice. We are doing wrong to someone by being untruthful. Isn't this something we learn as children? Yet, as adults we still need to remember being untruthful only hurts in the end.

Following his lecture, there was a question and answer session, where the audience got to ask some deep questions. I was impressed by the depth and difficulty of the questions asked. I watched Prof. Volf as the questions were being asked, and he stood in front of the lectern, listening thoughtfully. Before he began to speak, he paused, allowing his thoughts to coalesce. Then, he spoke slowly at first, building on each word as he constructed a tower of thought-provoking comments. I greatly admire one who thinks before speaking. What is spoken, then, becomes worthy of full attention.

These are just a few snippets of topics to chew on. Each one could easily be expanded upon as their own musing. The lecture was thoroughly enjoyable and I wanted to share a little bit of what I took from it. 

Prof. Miroslav Volf, Part 1

I couldn't resist going to the lecture in religion last week, held in the Hollis Room at Florida Southern College. The Hollis Room has always been my favorite room on campus, being one of the many buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. This room is circular, and the site of the original library on campus. It is also the perfect room for a lecture.

The room was full of students (I imagine most all of them were religion majors), the religion professors, and people from the community from the young (like me) to the elderly. I love that mixture of ages. People, no matter their age, were eager to listen to a highly respected theologian from Croatia, who is now a Professor of Theology at Yale University Divinity School.

Professor Miroslav Volf looks like a European and sounds like one too. Good thing he is European. He is tall, thin, with a shaved head. He wore black framed glasses and dressed neatly. As he started speaking with a Croatian accent, I liked him immediately. You can tell pretty quickly if someone has good humour when the microphone isn't working quite right. He made some jokes and got it positioned properly so everyone could hear him. He spoke slowly and thoughtfully, to allow the audience to chew on what he was saying. I greatly respect that. I was taking notes (of course I was), so I wanted to be able to listen and write quick bullet points as he expanded his ideas to us.

He spoke about memory and how we remember wrongs. As a quick summation, he stressed how we need to remember wrongs rightly. Meaning, it is important not only to remember the wrongs, but to remember them well, or correctly. For example, his family was greatly affected by WWII. Memory could be used as motivation to seek revenge, or it can be used to rebuild the community of love. The verse he referenced was 2 Corinthians 5.14 which says that one (Christ) died for all, therefore, all have died. The point of this is that Christ died for everyone, so we all died in Christ. The gift of salvation is indeed a gift, and in order for a gift to fulfill its purpose, it must be received. Not everyone will receive the gift given, but the point is that Christ died for all. The wrongdoings dissolve a community, but the goal of Christ's death and resurrection is to make one community of love.

Stay tuned for Part II tomorrow....

Think Books

Guess what? Another issue of Catapult Magazine is out!
What's the topic, you ask? My favorite thing- BOOKS!


Visit the online magazine here.

I wrote an article about, what else, Oxford!
I am excited to read all the other articles to find out what other people love about books. Enjoy!

Silly Prayers

If God had granted all the silly prayers I've made in my life, where should I be now?

High school- almost 10 years ago!

-C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

Do we ever think about prayer in that way? Being thankful for a prayer NOT answered? This is so true, though. I smile as I think back to my young and impressionable high school days where the things I prayed for were not always what would actually be best for me. But I didn't know that! I just knew what I wanted at the time, which didn't always align with what God had planned. Especially when it came to social situations and guys. Thank goodness God did not grant those silly prayers. And thank goodness I had friends who were good influences. We shared fun times.

Where would those answered prayers have gotten me? It would have, most assuredly, created trouble for me in some way. Maybe gotten me mixed up in situations that wouldn't have been good. I was young and naive enough to have trouble just due to growing up. No need to add to that with my silly requests being answered.

Now that we are all grown up, do we still have silly prayers? Of course we do. After reading this part of C.S. Lewis' letter, I am trying to remember that now, as I may pray for something that doesn't seem silly at the time, but down the road I may be thankful that prayer wasn't answered. Just another reminder that God always knows what is best for our lives. We don't always have that clarity.

Offering

Solitude is the garden for our hearts, which yearn for love. It is the place where our aloneness can bear fruit.

-Henri Nouwen

Solitude this morning shines

On a cool wind in troubled times

It may not work the way you think

Things can change before you blink

As we don't know what all this is

Could they be blessings, or curses?

Don't decide which, right away

There are still many parts in play

And you never know what the day will bring

When you give Jesus your life in offering