Daddy’s Snow

On December 6, 1998 on a quiet morning, a pure, mystical snow fell. It covered the ground in serene, white completeness. As I watched it fall, my spirit was told to pay attention……this was no ordinary snow.

On that unique Sunday morning five years ago, my stepfather and only person I ever called, "Daddy," was dying. My sister and I had brought him to live with us from Pennsylvania after he reached out in peace following many years of estrangement. “Daddy,” had been for those years, a bad legacy of memories filled with profound alcoholism, gambling, mental, and verbal and at times, physical abuses. Sometimes, however, they were good. He gave the best piggyback rides, took us to fun places, and had a wonderful sense of humor; and now he was totally dependent on our help. The reconciliation was miraculous in itself, but the miracle was yet to unfold.

As the unlikely snow fell, a doctor called me from the hospital to say it would be in Daddy’s best interest to discontinue treatment to prolong his life.
I knew it was over too, and authorized the suggested medical assignments for him. I called my sister and we grieved, especially, because we were not comforted by his eternal destiny.

My sister spent the day with Daddy. As the evening wore on, he grew restless and uncommunicative, in and out of lucidness and hallucination. My sister, Lynn, grew more and more distraught. As she prepared to leave for the evening, a nursing assistant had been assigned to him because of his hallucinatory behavior. She was a small, feisty, black woman, named Bunny and could see that Lynn was upset. Lynn poured out Daddy’s story to her. Bunny took Lynn’s hands and prayed for my sister and Daddy. My sister went home with peace.

She was awakened Monday morning at 6am by a call from Bunny. She said in the middle of the night Daddy became lucid and they began talking. She said, “John you need to make peace with God.” and he said, “I know.” She said, “Lynn, I want you to know your father prayed with me and received Jesus.” She went on to say that after their prayer, he fell asleep and then suddenly awoke and in the darkness she heard him saying the Lord’s prayer and there was peace.

The following day, we admitted Daddy to hospice, still in and out of lucidity, he occasionally spoke to us. But the strange thing is as I left him, that night, he asked, “Can I walk on those steps?” What steps?” I asked. “Those,” he said, pointing to the ceiling of his room. “They look like ice, like crystal…they are beautiful.” Those are the last words I remember. From that day until the morning he died on thursday, he only spoke in his native Polish tongue; it was strange.

That Sunday, following his death, there was a guest speaker at church…and he was speaking about grace. He quoted Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson they shall be like wool." And it was then I realized the meaning of the out of the ordinary grace that was falling from the sky that Sunday prior. It was grace falling into Daddy’s life. With that snow came reconciliation, cleanness, utter peace and salvation. It was a Christmas gift to my sister and I beyond measure.

I think about Daddy often, especially at this time of year. I have, however, of late had troubled thoughts and doubts about my miracle those five years ago. Was daddy just delirious? Had Bunny lied? Was it true? I shared my doubts with my sister and confessed I had asked God in my “Heidi way” to reassure me about Daddy by letting it snow that same way again; a pretty frivolous and theologically scandalous request I admit. I told her after I had petitioned Him; I dreamt it snowed on Christmas. But, as we stood in her kitchen Christmas night , rain was the only thing falling from the sky. We drove home and I thanked God anyway for rain on Christmas.

On December 30,2003 at 2:41 am this morning a glow kept awakening me as it crept in through a slit in the drapes. I thought it was the sunrise but it was all wrong since that window faces south. Then I thought in my dozing mind, it looks like a glow from a fire…and then my cat, who is also my personal psyche nurse, began meowing incessantly. I got that feeling I get from the Lord when he says----”Pay attention I have something to say to you.” So I got out of bed to see where the orange glow was coming from. I pulled open the drapes and my backyard was completely blanketed in snow. The trees were bowing from the weight of the whiteness resting on them. It was eerie, mysterious and beautiful at the same time. It was Daddy’s Snow. It was calm, white and quiet. I was overwhelmed by the thought and presence of how good God is. I then remembered how earlier that day I was walking out of the gym and an old man was walking by and said to another man complaining of the cold that it looked like snow. I turned, looked at the old man and he smiled at me.

What peace and calm it was and I was awake and paying attention. I lay on my bed, spoke psalms wept and received the gift that I had asked from Him.
Merry Christmas from the hand of the one I am truly waiting for, the one who fulfills completely. As I write this that snow is melting. My sister said to me this morning how frivolous the love of God is to His children.....she was awakened at 3am by her dog and a glow as well.

I can’t explain this and I must confess that my flesh has tried to quench the gift that came for me in God’s own timing. I can only thank Him and continue to receive his gift of grace, his peace, his calm and to you reading this I want you to know ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE WITH GOD;PAY ATTENTION AND THOUGH IT TARRY, WAIT FOR IT.

...

Passages

I am going to my sister’s for Thanksgiving and all guests are requested to say what they are thankful for as they light a candle. I have been pondering what to say for some time and even though the standard niceties; my family; my health; abundance; a loving community etc., are what I should say, all that seems to come to mind is a sense of loss; I do not think this is necessarily ungrateful.

I feel that this year has been a series of losses, not only for me personally, but for people that I have come to know and care about. Loss is very painful and creates for each individual a unique cluster of bewildering emotions as well as undesired awarenesses of the might-have-beens and man’s lack of control over even the simplest of circumstances.

Suffering makes me aware that I stand on the edge of a passage and at times the only guides through are tears and wrenching grief. Many times on this journey God remains remote and sometimes he is vivid. Somehow I am compelled to light my candle and read something that Henri Nouwen wrote:

One of the most radical demands for you and me is the discovery of our lives as a series of movements or passages. Your whole life is filled with losses, endless losses. And every time there are losses there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression, and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper. The question is not how to avoid loss and make it not happen, but how to choose it as a passage, as an exodus to greater life and freedom.



And then I am going to say, I am thankful for the Love of God and Passages.

Legend: Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair

I realized as I sat listening to a string concert yesterday at Ham Hall, how long it had been since my soul had been nourished. The nourishment was pure worship in spirit and in truth for me. I do not intend to be offensive when I say not much of the music in contemporary church leads my soul to worship. For me, listening to Vivaldi’s: Stabat Mater or anything he wrote for that matter ;Beethoven’s 9th, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Bach , Mozart, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and hundreds of other dead guy’s music that no one reading this will know or be able to relate to, feeds something deep within.

A few years ago, during a counseling session for my mood disorder with Kevin Odor, I was told to surround myself with the things that bring nourishment to my soul. Kevin thought a great deal of my depression was a lack of balanced soul food. Sitting in the concert reminded me of how malnourished I had become.

As I heard and watched that group play a piece entitled, Legend: Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair; and the sum of the orchestra far surpassed its parts, a beautiful picture of God’s Glory came to me. I saw what the body of Christ was like as it relates to the Trinity. Through the music, I could envision how it is the work of each member to play his part to the best of his or her ability----not someone else’s part or instrument (that would be chaos), but the one given to him. I sensed what it might be like in heaven; a pure celebration of the divine romance of the Trinity. All glory going to them as we play our part, telling their story; the passion, tragedy and triumph of all they have endured. And yet, within that body of music makers, there are many stories of individuals with his or her own tale which uniquely glorifies the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; in particular, the story of one little girl; my little girl.

Caitlin went through grueling auditions to make it into this select group of musicians. She had no experience in an orchestra and sight read very little; but she could play her fiddle and practiced seriously. Midway into rehearsals and practicing two and sometimes three hours per day, she was told because she was homeschooled, she should not have been allowed in the group (it is a public school program). The orchestra chair person said she would be allowed to play this time, but asked her not to audition next year. She was hurt, but decided to continue on to the next hoop in this orchestral experience, the dreaded Re- seating auditions. This is a blind audition where the musicians play the most difficult parts of the pieces and are scored and placed according to their ability in the orchestra. Now, it is an honor to even be in this ensemble. That is why it is called, Honors Orchestra and sitting in any seat is to be cherished, even if it is in the last row.

The glory of God comes through her story when on Thursday night after over a week of wondering where her audition placed her; Caitlin went to rehearsal looking for her newly appointed seat. She was looking in the back because of her age, and lack of experience, (sixth graders are usually in the back). She could not find her name. We assumed she was out. She asked one of the teachers if she was on the list and he showed her where she was to sit. She had been judged and scored on the first stand, second chair of II Violins. Her stand was one of a group which forms an inner circle around the conductor. My little girl sat center stage, a breath away from the conductor.

What a glorious day! I watched and admired a little girl who had been through so much to sit in that place of honor, and ultimately, she played her part in harmony with the others and the Glory of God was revealed in the music as it sung my soul a Legend: Black is the Color of my True Love’s........(My Jesus’ )Hair.

Being Myself

I was thinking about, or rather, I was made aware of how careless I can be in my prayer life. I find myself praying the old standard: help me to be more like Jesus in my life……… yadah, yadah, yadah, you know how it goes. But, as I was in my location of a higher spiritual plane, that is, in the kitchen, washing dishes, a little small voice was challenging my perfunctory request. I was made aware of what a big thing it is to desire, request or attempt to be like Jesus.

Simply, (without revealing too many details of a complicated issue) I was asked why I was content to do one thing for one individual that I would not do for another with the same need. Both I and the Spirit knew the answer, but it needed to be asked; it was a timing thing. Also, the Spirit had a more detailed and expanded answer for me.

So, the answer was that I want to be like Jesus when it involves a sacrifice that benefits me or makes me appear better than I am. I love being like Jesus when it involves casting demons out; telling Pharisees where to go; healing the sick and feeding five thousand (all via the wave of a hand .) I especially love being like Jesus when it comes to being right in all things, of course!

But, when it comes to caring for another’s burden at a cost to my convenience, or being tolerant with someone who is treating me heinously, or shutting my mouth when my children make foolish, immature decisions; accepting criticism and rejection with grace; saying no to a material thing to allow a spiritual thing to bloom; being completely forgiving when all I want to do is to discuss how badly I have been offended and critical of behaviors I am in bondage to myself........when it comes to this......the Spirit said.........You love being yourself.

Sometimes one of the steps to a deeper relationship with your Teacher is to be shown and be convinced how totally other He is from you. Seems paradoxical that the best way to relate to God is to embrace the stark chasm between your natures and rather than become discouraged, you draw closer.

Father forgive me, for I do not know what I am doing.

And On and on she goes; random thoughts written over a period of time

When depressed people feel happiness, it is not wasted or taken for granted.

When I am stressed by a situation I can’t finish my thought or sentence.

Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I have a strange feeling that I don’t exist.

Sometimes I wish I could be an anorexic again…but an hour later , I say hmmmmmm????? Indian food sounds good tonight.

I get depressed about what gravity is doing to my body.

Sometimes my brain feels like a squashed pumpkin.

Sometimes I think Gregg deserved someone much better.

When I cry in bed at night my cat sits on my chest.

Sometimes it is just easier to believe a lie than the truth.

I know that my depression is going to leave when I dream I am flying over great areas especially the ocean.

I really love the song His banner over me is love.

I have a huge problem with anger.

I worry that my children may have inherited my illness.

Keanu Reeves has short legs and a long body…… whoa.

I have a crush on Ralph Fiennes.

If I was an actress I would want Kate Blanchette’s voice.........even if I wasn't....I would....I covet Kate's vocal cords, I think that is supposed to be bad.

Since I can remember I have read people’s personality by their hands, shape , size, nail beds and movement……….

Unchecked ambition can destroy relationships

My mother refers to her bipolar illness as Hay fever; she also thinks that if you have ever eaten meat you will lose your teeth and be punished.

After my mother's father( who also had hay fever) died of lung cancer, she thought he had come back as a bird so she feeds birds all the time

I love birds…but I don’t think they are any preexisting relatives.

I bore easily……..Gregg says there is no such thing as being bored.

The only two consistent things I do without fail is wear a watch and drink coffee each morning.

Are IQ and physical strength really inverse of each other…? Is Gregg right when he says, retard strength?

Is the complexity of a culture’s language an indication of their intelligence?

One day when I was in third grade my mother felt lonely and kept me home from school. She took me to the beach and we ate bread, cheese, chicken legs and lemon pudding. She let me sip her beer too. We stayed all day long. She was nice to me.

Will my mind ever become quiet?

Saying goodbye to my friend

I will miss Carolyn. She has moved away. I met her in housechurch. Through a series of unfortunate events, she left house church and so did I. In the midst of it all; we became close. We tread very familiar ground and we can speak of hard things without diminishing one another’s spirits. It has always been easy to be in her presence.

The people that have chosen to remain in my inner circle do so at great risk because of my frailties and thorns. She has been a true friend, tolerant of my manic; soapbox outbursts, abysmal listening skills, and reclusive lapses. I have learned so much from her, about unconditional love, perseverance, gentle speech, trust , mercy and honesty.

I know in my heart that her leaving is an important call from the Lord. I don’t know what it is God has for her and her family, but I know He will be good in all He does and will be her treasure alone.

Inspired

I watched Anne Lamott on C-SPAN’s Mid-West Writing Festival last night. She wrote Traveling Mercies, a book about her journey to God. It is one of the most beautifully honest and real descriptions of the spiritual life on life’s terms I have ever read. She is not your garden variety believer. To many mainstream evangelicals, she would be …….oh let’s see…..Out…… basically. She is a left wing activist…swears like a sailor and scandal of all scandals, often refers to God using feminine pronouns. But as you hear her speak, or read her books……you just know Jesus is all over her life. She is pushing 50, wacky, hippyish, tangential, extremely broken and profound at explaining the ineffable things of life through her writing.
I am reading her book, Bird by Bird about writing and it is hysterically funny. Her life screams authentic.

I was so inspired watching her talk about her Christianity, writing and life. She helped me momentarily be glad I was getting older and more gelatinous, that tangential-ness can almost look charming, that brokenness of mind could be a useful tool in writing and that God is the victor in the lives of the unlikely.

While I watched her, I had a fan crazed moment, I kind of mentally turned to Jesus as he lay there couch-potatoing next to me and said, “I’d love to have lunch with her some day.” He nodded in that, could- happen kinda gesture as he picked something out of his teeth with a toothpick.
I am considering taking her advice on writing:

1. Carry a pen and index card with you every where you go because you will never remember that thought you had standing in the grocery line again.
2. Write something everyday no matter how bad it is.
3. Don’t write for the purpose to succeed.

Read her books if you ever get a chance

A dream

This is a dream my sister shared with me a long time ago. I have been thinking about it lately. I am going to narrate the dream as if it were a scene from a movie to help me tell it better.

SCENE:
The camera pans through a crowded city of people numbly going about their business. In the midst of this city, there is a room. It is transparent, made, perhaps, of glass. From time to time, individuals compelled by something in the room, wander to it and momentarily stop doing what they are occupied with to distantly gaze at the scene inside. A monotone, emotionless voice can be heard saying, “Yes, there is the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world,” as it comes from an observer pressed against the glass. After the hollow acknowledgement, the individual returns to the activity of the city.

The camera now focuses on the space left by the observer. It closes in on a very old man within. As he hovers over a sacrifice on a massive stone altar, his tears fall on the body lying there. The ancient man’s sobs are anguished and mournful as he cries out to the crowds beyond his glass box……

“This is my child....... who will love my Son. Who will love my Jesus, slain from the foundation of the world?

Please....... love my Lamb.”

His grief is overwhelming……..the separation profound.


Today, I am thinking about how the veil was torn from top to bottom when Jesus breathed his last breath as the ultimate sacrifice. I was thinking about how the Holy of Holies which lies behind that curtain is passionately desired by His Father for us all. The experience is Jesus himself, overwhelming, breathtaking, intimate and raw………not his blessings or riches or perfect marriages, good kids, or successful ministry or personal fulfillment, but Himself alone.
But somehow, the veil has been replaced by another barrier, a barrier of knowledge, doctrinal correctness, attainment of godly things, worship of church, trying to make life work…..and the box gets bigger.



May I break the glass created by myself and others to keep God in a safe, reasonable place in order to keep my eye on Him as I go about my business. This is risky; I may be wounded in the process. Will I ever break through and fully comprehend the love of the Father for His child, the depths of what it really cost Him.

Somehow I intuit that the secret to a life of glorifying the Father lies in the simple act of cherishing, meditating on His offering and testimony about His Son. To enter into the scene only for the sake of being in His presence, to weep with Him……the Ancient One, and tell Him I love Him, I love His Son, His Baby, who was slain from the foundation of the world.


1 John 5:1:
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.

Slice of life

I am sitting here and surfing blogs and Bronwyn is cruising around the flood positioned funiture on her razor scooter and Gregg says,"Hey,did ya know Joe is directing the Christmas show?" "Maybe I'll audition".. .....I'll play a workaholic."

"No," says Bronwyn, " You should be the psycho Chritmas elf," as she scooters by.

A Grand Conversion

I finished reading my husband’s blog. I spotted a spelling error that struck me. I believe he intended to spell the word ‘conversation’ not conversion, when he said he had a “grand conversion with Bronwyn.” I think that the right word is there and should not be corrected.

It is in these things that I find Jesus and His sparrow moments. I think the beauty of Jesus was serendipitously articulated in that spelling error. Gregg really was undergoing a “Grand Conversion” with his six year old. Any time one can be pulled away from the lies of linearity, our own ability to right all things, the have- to’s and the urgent things, one is experiencing the breaking in of the Kingdom and is being converted towards Jesus. Our conversions are often catalyzed by the most unlikely vessels.

The authenticity of Jesus often remains imperceptible and a rare experience for me. Mainly because my attention is on the things, ideas or formulas that will never form Christ in me. They may make me look good to my Christian culture or convince me that I have it all together (even though everyone can see my cheese is falling off my cracker). They can fill me with spiritual pride and delusion of a better life, but never will help me fall in love with people or be caught up in the Trinitarian romance. They will never allow me to experience that God more often converts me through submission to things that require an exercise of my own intimacy with Him, myself and others. Life is so full of Burning-Bush-moments…...


I wrote this poem in my "private thoughts "book a year ago….

Earth’s crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries

Elizabeth Barret Browning

Today

Today is a difficult day. I am trying to keep all the plates spinning but most seem to never even get off to a wobble and the others are crashing in pieces to the floor.

Today is one of those days where I must accept that, sometimes, life just does not work.

I don’t want a solution I don’t want a miracle…….I would miss the lesson if I asked for it all to be fixed……

I just want Jesus.

As I sit in a puddle of my own tears, ignorance, rebellion, like a child after a tantrum; half dressed one shoe on, hair matted and a dozen plates strewn across the room in various broken pieces, I will reach out to the only One that makes sense to me.

A Tribute

I just finished reading my friend Kristine's most recent blog. Although she is not aware of some of the recent conversations and events related to my friends in Saga, and would be horrified that I am referencing her blog as well as posting a picture of her I love, I thought it particularly providential that she wrote the thoughts she did. They express, so well, what in my heart, I believe to be the actual reality of the non-linear pilgrimage of a true disciple of Jesus. I have known her for some years now and her journey to the depths of Jesus has profoundly blessed my life.

See Joe, you are not alone.

Grief

I am grieving for Jennifer Palmer. Her physical body died this morning and I am so grieved for this loss for her family and friends. She is a complete stranger to me but I was drawn to her story through the blogging community. I have been allowed to, in some small way, be a part of her story. Her husband Mark so graciously and courageously kept her journey documented as he shared her pain and trial as well as the outpouring of love and prayers from their community and other believers who did not know them.

When I gain my composure I would like to blog about some of the things that their story taught me.... and I am sure will continue to teach me.

The Wonder Of It All

I was reading to the girls today from a little nature manual about the nest building skills of the paper wasp and the mud wasp. I became fascinated with the architectural ability of the paper wasp to not only chew up bits of wood and with its own chemistry and anatomy turn it to paper, but then, to build, with no blueprint or permit, an architectural marvel of hundreds of cells in which to lay its progeny.

As it always does, my mind began to ponder how such complexity and efficiency can come from such a thing so small, unassuming and disconnected from my everyday existence: a thing, to my vain thinking, inconsequential, and a pest to avoid because of its venom. It is so easy to misunderstand man's position in creation.

The paper wasp is the perfect builder...a good example for Kingdom Life. She builds her nest in a safe place and then remains with her young, caring for them. When they grow up, they help her form a colony and build and clean the nest creating more room for new paper wasps. Winter comes as a time of testing. Some wasps grow cold and die and others leave to set off alone. They seek shelter and endure the cold until warm weather resumes and they emerge from their hiding places as new mothers building their own nest to start a new colony.....Nature has so much to teach me.

I think the paper wasp (and most of Gods non-human creatures) is a sobering example from the Creator. God has deposited the miraculous in the most unlikely places.........this fascinates me.........humbles me. The older I get the more I respect the small things and see my need to slow down and observe the wonder of the unnoticed. I am not talking about watching it on the discovery channel either….but to go out and intentionally hear the flutter of dove wings and wonder what unseen insect is causing the blades of grass to sway as it passes.

A quote:

"If you speak of a fly, a gnat, a bee, your conversation will be a sort of demonstration of His power whose hand formed them: for the wisdom of the workman is commonly perceived in that which is of little size. He who has stretched out the heavens, and dug out the bottom of the sea, is also He who has pierced a passage through the sting of the bee for the injection of its poison." Basil, Bishop of Caesarea

A girl

I got to be a bachelorette for over 48 hours and it was wonderful....now if I could have 48 more I would.......want 48 more and so on. I guess time alone, really alone; helps you realize how burnt out you are and……who you are. Now, according to life in this society, and the far from the center-like existence of my everyday life, I am JUST a stay at home mom who used to be a dancer for many years and did a short gig as an R.N. Better yet, a Christian-stay-at home-mom with the proverbs 31 woman and home schooling for Jesus banner imposed on my ambivilent identity. But I am none of that……..really.

Inside, I am still a girl.......a little girl who gets morosely sad when she sees a dead bird and when her mother won't give her a good-bye kiss before she goes to school. Little Heidi Page who still calls the Navy Base as often as she can to ask when her daddy's ship will come home....even though when it does come home, her daddy is emotionally as far away as when he was at sea, drinks too much and slaps his wife in the face a lot after a nice day at the zoo and black cherry ice cream.

The little girl with the over active imagination that requires her sister’s confidential clarification to the teachers that think we have a baby sister who is walking around with only one eyeball because of the tragic accident we don’t speak of. I am still the little girl who knocks on stranger's doors to use their bathroom because my mom has locked me out for the day to sleep away undiagnosed depression. A little girl who could, if she had a hankering for a Slurpee and a bag of penny candy from the 7-11, come up with the best scam to go door to door collecting money for some good cause of her imagination.

I am still the fiercely jealous tag-along-of-a sister who can't believe her only sister would want to play with anyone but her. The straw haired imp with freckles who dresses up in her mothers cocktail dresses when no one’s home and sings to her fans, Frank Sinatra’s, “I’ve got you under my skin,” smoking Kent cigarettes left by a meaty German woman who attended her mother's sad attempt at a Tupperware party.

I'm the nervous little girl who is sitting on her principal’s green leather sofa in a pink turtle neck because I've pushed another girl down to see what it would feel like, while all the teachers with coffee breath and Aqua Net hairdo's wring their hands and say….,
"Heidi is so intelligent……so capable if she would only apply herself and stop..... talking….talking......talking." I am still the girl who rolls up Bazooka Joe bubble gum and sticks it on her ears and tells everyone they ARE real earrings, twirling around so her dirndl dress will fly up and the boys can see her under wear ( especially Mitchell).

I am still her, walking around the many California summers barefoot, strolling her doll in an old buggy from Salvation Army until the late evening hours......... the little girl who had her innocence taken away by a stranger ……the little girl who is being redeemed by the Man on a cross she saw while sitting in a Sunday school class she was invited to .........the Man she thought was beautiful and really sad but good.

I guess I will never become who I am supposed to be until I accept and embrace who I still am.

Gift from a Dead Guy and Other Things: a summation of my birthday….. which was yesterday

This summer I have been listening to music by the 17th century court composer Henry Purcell. He wrote in the middle baroque era. His music includes odes, ballads, opera, chamber, theater (he wrote an opera for Shakespeare’s, Midsummer Nights Dream called the Fairy Queen). I love music from this epoch. Very few people reading this blog will relate to this type of music but I was raised in the arts and although I love all music, classical music is the vernacular of heaven in my opinion.

With that said, I was on my way to the gym and I began to sing along with Purcell's old lyrics written for a coronation somewhere in the1600’s.....

"To celebrate, to celebrate, this triumphant day"........

As I made my turn onto the 95 singing along half heartedly, God washed over me......and the tears began to flow. He brought to my heart that it was my birthday and he was celebrating with heaven, this triumphant day. He was a vision of the silly clapping parent at their child's first birthday helping her to blow out the candle. He was happy that I was alive.....truly alive.

It is a triumphant day for me. I have lived 43 years and God celebrates it. This is good because there were many voices in the formative times of those years which made it clear in word and action that they did not celebrate my birth or my life. And for many years, dark inner voices told me that it was a bad day when I was born and there was no reason to celebrate or be around for the next one.
But here I am, triumphant and joyful because the Holy One stands at my side clapping his hands foolishly singing words that he gave to Henry Purcell over 400 years ago. God is full of folly, song and wonder.
I wonder if Henry Purcell knows that God used his music as the best” Happy Birthday” ever sung to a soul……it kind of proves the point that:

” Art is how we locate ourselves in the human condition.” Calvin Miller

So on July 23, 1960, I entered the world on the Dark Continent and God thought it was good. I spent the day just holding on to that. I did not do anything out of the ordinary or festive…..I don’t usually like to. I was supposed to go to dinner but rehearsals went too late. Instead, I watched a bunch of funny, silly bohemians parody “All that Jazz.” This surpasses any culinary pleasures in my book.

There are also some other special things I received for my birthday:I got some books I really like from Gregg and the girls; my Father (whom I never knew growing up) sent me a neat book of historical fiction that took place at the time of my birth and called me; my dear precious friend began a blog; I am married to a very funny, good man; my children love to play dolls and Barbie’s with me and still think I am cool and pretty and celebrate me with unconditional love. So, I am thankful I am alive………To celebrate, to celebrate this Triumphant Day.

Bird by Bird

A quote from a book, titled " Bird by Bird," written by Anne Lamott ( Traveling Mercies) inspired me and sums up my present state at trying to blog after a bout with depression, busyness and allowing too much time to pass since my last entry. I read the quote, laughed out loud and thought about how true it is for me.....for so many of us. Tommorrow is my Birthday and I think I will go buy her book.

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table in tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, Bird by bird buddy. Just take it bird by bird."


So with Jesus at my side I will take it bird by Bird

Velveteen Rabbit

The children's story about a little rabbit who, through a boys love, becomes real, is a modern parable to me. I don't know if the writer was a believer, but the story is full of the gospel. I don't know how it came about, but the Lord used this humble little story ( among many other things) to bring some clarity during some time of uncertainty and disillusionment last Fall.
This story came to mind as I have been reading several Nouwen books along with Clowning in Rome, I like to read Nouwen in order to interpret Nouwen.

In one of his books ( a collection of his writing), he talks about the "Disicpline of Becoming." He says...." It is true that we are the beloved but we also have to become the beloved....we are children of God, but we must also become the children of God....We are brothers and sisters, but we must become brothers and sisters. He goes on to explain that the way this is accomplished is by letting that truth become en-fleshed in everything we say, think, and do.
My favorite part is when he says..." It entails a long and painful process of appropriation or, better, incarnation. As long as being the 'beloved' is little more than a beautiful thought or a lofty idea that hangs above my life to keep me from being depressed, nothing really changes. What is required is to BECOME the beloved in the common places of my daily existence and, bit by bit, to close the gap that exists between what I know myself to be and the countless specific realities of everyday life. Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about, and doing from hour to hour."--------Life of the Beloved.

For me this quote is the essence of that sweet little story of a rabbit who begins a journey of joy, pain, uncertainty, despair and finally becomes real as a result of spending time with someone who loved him.

May you be gentle with yourself and others as they are in the process of becoming "Real." And never settle for anything else but the path of the love of Our Father's little boy to accomplish it. If you have never had the pleasure of reading this childhood classic I have provided the link so you can enjoy it.

The Velveteen Rabbit

Tangential thoughts on first Chapter of Clowning in Rome.

I have attempted several times to post my insights on Nouwen but have deleted it all because they became too polemic. Though visceral and what I think are truthful, they would betray the intention of my blog so I have waited until what I believe I could write was edifying yet, still, honest and not so angry. Also, I am waiting for a dear friend to receive her copy of 'Clowning' in the mail........now I won't be the only female in the boat. I am hoping she will begin her blog soon.

Though long winded and probably redundant to past postings, here is an impression from reading Nouwen. I was continually struck by his discussion on solitude in that it locks into the theme that I believe is the one root of all human need and the key to a real life with God and one another. It all really boils down to the simple word, so frequently stated in Nouwen's work," Intimacy." We are all desperate for this mysterious encounter..... we are wired for it from birth and continue our whole lives in healthy and unhealthy ways to attempt to fill this primordial ache created in us. If the True One is never allowed to fit this space in the way HE desires, or we have been damaged by other's abuse of this need, the individual becomes a fragmented, irrelevant imposter trying to experience and accomplish spiritual things from a vacuum ( I speak from experience). Nouwen's message is basically, to be an authentic being, to be salt or light in a God starved world, you must experience authenticity....intimacy with self and Christ before you enter the world attempting to leave your footprint.

I believe that there are people in the church and they are good, well meaning people, but tragically, they have not seen a day of intimacy with Jesus let alone themselves.....despite their good intentions of mission, service, vision, and a Christian's personal holiness, they do little for the kingdom of God and can actually be detrimental to their fellow believers and the gospel message. There are far too many unexamined lives wreaking havoc on the body in Christendom. It is the privilege of every human that calls themselves a follower of Jesus to be intimately involved with Him..... that is the 'first things first' of any serious disciple, and I am thankful for people like Henri Nouwen, Brennan Manning, Oswald Chambers, Jeanne Guyon, Francois Fenelon and Calvin Miller who, through their struggles and pain, have had the honesty and courage to help me to see what this looks like.

I have learned to find the riches and depths of Christ through these virtual strangers. Why is that? I have been to a lot of church in its many forms and presentations and have heard little if none of what their writings emphasize. I see people sincerely try to do amazing things for the kingdom who have nothing to their depth save zealousness and a need to make an emergency bond. I am no different; I am so good at trying to have the riches of Christ without the work of intimacy wth Him. That is the lie of all lies in church today......join this group, do this study, model this form of church, serve in this ministry,and then..........and then, personal implosion and being grouped, in my opinion, with the goats in the end!!!

No, the way, as Jesus said and demonstrated is narrow, low tech, not a system, power point program, pamphlet or pseudo-community. It is work, not as I think or waste energy on, but an effort to prioritize quietness, and poverty, and personal honesty in Jesus. It is to persevere through the fear and existential separateness, which comes upon me when I am really alone with this Son of the Most High. It is to endure my wandering mind and cerebral conversations and arguments with friends and enemies as I attempt to settle down into the solitude that will create and renew. It is to be able to accept His truth and conviction,( which amazingly is vastly different from what I tend to think needs conviction and accountability in my life). To not grow discouraged with my vague sense of identity, but to trust in the One who is recreating it. It is a marriage, a vow, a commitment, to Him, of all the worst and best in myself. A place where he tells me I have belonged all along despite the hurts of others, my sins against them, spiritual perfectionism and self-hatred/rejection. It is a place to tell him I love Him for who He is.........A place where I learn to love His world as He does.

My anemic attempts at solitude have been so healing for the disordered emotions and thinking I suffer with. Meditating on scripture has become medicinal communication with the Holy Spirit and strength in dark moments.... dwelling on Jesus through imagination and Nature has brought so much joy and peace..... And the knowledge that I am passionately loved. It is just so wonderful to begin to know on such a miniscule scale what it really means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I am almost forty-three years old and accepted Jesus in my heart at fourteen and I am just beginning to understand what that means. I feel like I have met my first and true love...... much of my solitude and meditation on Jesus involves the Song of Solomon....He is my beloved and I am his, this is all I want to know anymore.
I think Oswald Chambers said it best in his message, Intimate With Jesus.

Please read this and be blessed.

Monday blessing
On Mondays I go to a bike class at 9am. I have to get there by 815 am to sign up and get a bike because it is so popular. So I spend the rest of the 45 min. and sit in the car. I usually read or pray etc. Today, I forgot the book I am reading so I turned on a CD I love to meditate on the Lord to and I was so overwhelmed by him all of a sudden...there are times when he does that...... he makes himself extremely vivid.
A memory of my visit to the ocean popped in my head of my girls and I looking for shells to bring back for friends and collages. I kept scolding my youngest daughter because she kept putting the broken shells in the bucket....."Only the pretty ones" I said, but she said, "I like the broken ones".
Then, I got this mind's eye, panoramic view of a beautiful field and all these broken pots in various stages of being cracked, broken and utterly shattered and I saw Jesus patiently walking among the pots holding the hem of his robe to form a pouch to place them in. This overwhelmed me so intensely I could not stop the tears.....I've never had an issue with crying;I think I have gone months and months without crying. Now, when I just think about the Lord, He reduces me to rubble. I went in to bike class with my sunglasses on, I was so self -conscious of my swollen eyes. This morning's solitude has left me with the impression of pure hope....don't give up, the Geat Tender Potter is not finished.

Praises to my precious Jehovah Shamah, the God who is there, the God who wants the broken ones.

Remembering Good and Noble things …….Philippians 3:8

I found this in a word document I had written the day I found out that Mr. Rogers died (I cried). I grew up glued to Mr. Rogers. I loved him ….my sister would say he bored her and he was probably too low tech for some kids (how sad is that?), but he was so gentle to me, a television fantasy father. I loved the make believe and he and Captain Kangaroo taught me to tie my shoes. I fell in love with him more when I found out he loved classical music and his wife was a concert pianist. I thought I would post this because it reminded me how important it is to live a gentle life of affirmation and deliberate love, to leave this world a melody that would remain in peoples hearts and minds….It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…..

Mr. Roger’s Sparrow song:

“We all have only one life to live on earth and through television we have the choice of encouraging others to demean this life or to cherish it in creative imaginative ways”. Fred Rogers

Things I learned from Mister Rogers:

I am the only one of me in the world
Everyone has something special about them
It is okay to be afraid or angry
Make believe is important
Hang up your sweater
Love and get to know your neighbor
Love yourself
Be gentle
Talk slower
There is a simple make-up song for all the things we experience
Listen
Be curious
Children have dignity

The Legend of the Thorn Bird

There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen and God in his heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of pain.......or so says the legend.

Thank you Jesus for the sweetest song that will be heard for eternity.

Clowning in Rome
I would like to join the reading club....I haven't read that one yet and would love to blog some thoughts, especially on Nouwen . I read Phil's Blog last night and wanted to say I look forward to him blogging more.

An Anniversary

It has been one year today that we moved from a 2500 square foot home to our 1488 square foot home. The differences in the mortgages is about as dramatic as the footage. We have done a lot to this little fixer upper. I am hoping our pool will be finished by my daughter's birthday in June. I think I will call it home for awhile and put more of my self and personality into it.

The anniversary brought back a memory when we were remodeling the kitchen . We basically had no where to put anything, there was no flooring in the whole house and Gregg, who cannot stand conflict, had to come out of his unflappable, easy going guy mode and go toe to toe with a slack jawed kitchen installer who was incompetent and had absolutely no integrity. After the confrontation, Gregg had to put in a full days work and the girls and I were left swimming through all the anger and profanity.

I was trying to come up with some creative way to put lunch together and I think I was standing in what might of been the general area of the potential kithchen pretty numb from the drama and my youngest daughter who was five at the time had been playing with her toy guitar and started singing this song she made up. I wrote it down because it was one of those moments when you know Jesus is breaking in ...simple and profound. I was humming it to myself today. In my opinion, 5 year olds are the best theologians ( she is six now and still pretty theologically brilliant).

You have to kinda sing the song to a little bit of a Mary Had a Lttle Lamb rhythm but not the melody.

God loves me more than Microwaves and eggs microwaves and eggs, microwaves and eggs
God loves me more than computers and rabbits computers and rabbits computers and rabbits
God loves me more than milk and crackers. I don't know why he just does

Do you love God for who he is, who he is, who he is, Do you love God for who he is ?
I don't know why I just do.


Thank you Lord for a roof over our heads, loving us and five year-olds

Contemplation: to view or consider with continued attention.

Contemplatives dwell on God. I think contemplation is communing, dare I say, having church with yourself. I am always drawn to read books about great Christian contemplatives. They learned how to live in the presence of God. They passed from "Christian Activity" to the higher call to be at home in the heart of God. This doesn't mean they just sat around all day contemplating their navels. It means they finally, through God's grace, were able to put the horse before the cart. They were able to genuinely serve their Lord because they fell in love with him in their prayer closets. Through celebrating him in their ordinary mundane lives, daily persevering through the distraction of self, intellect, vain thinking and religious dogma, they could receive him for who he was, not what he could do for them.

I have slowly come to realize I have often done church with people, but I have rarely done it with myself. I believe that God is requiring this discipline from me but I am avoiding it. I am not anti-communal or saying I should forsake meetings, but how can I share genuine community, when I can barely, on any consistent basis, sit alone quietly for five-ten minutes with Jesus without being distracted by my racing thoughts and vain thinking or sometimes becoming overwhelmingly fearful of confronting the vast chasm between him and me. How can I come together with my brethren offering a hymn or a teaching when I never really received it from the proper source to begin with.....I am just quoting some other person that did the time with God.....isn't that spiritual plagiarism?

Do I despise the meeting of the saints so much that I arrogantly neglect the necessary preparation done before the Holy Spirit on my face so that I may be of some true service to my brothers? I know we are to meet in simplicity with out pretense, but honestly, I have heard some of the most careless insensitive things said in community in the name of Jesus…..and regretfully they have often times come from my own lips.

When we authentically participate in the practice of the presence of Jesus, our lives mysteriously become a message to the world, to our brothers......to ourselves. We have spent so much time in that presence our "right being" instead of “right doing" becomes a well for the thirsty and a voice in the desert. Jesus Christ is so lifted up in our life that he draws men through our extraordinary, ordinary life. As it is, I am an expert in practicing the presence of me and the Christian imposter I have settled for.

My true battles are not with sin and suffering but with the self which tells me the cares of material life and Christian activity are priority... that I need to answer this special call on my life ……. I have NO special work to do; I have no special call!! The only call on my life is to Jesus Christ alone and total devotion to him. How many times have I left him hungry and thirsty right under my nose when I have been off doing the things that I thought were Christian? Why do I continue to jump on every spiritual/ideological bandwagon when Jesus is left standing alone at the altar in the tabernacle of my heart? He has something to say that is bread for me everyday ( Isaiah 30:15) but I will have no part of it. I continue to seek out those who would fill my cup. This is why I must stop. I must return to his temple and meet with him, persevere with him in the hard things he will say to me and melt in the pure love that I will find there. I must go to him before I go to my brothers or the world. I must seek him in his temple.

Lord Jesus, may I truly come to know what it means to love you with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength.

Vacations are good for the soul

I am back from my Mother’s day weekend in Carlsbad California. I absolutely love it there. I could live there and start my third career as a writer if I had 850,000 bucks for a 1300sq. ft, two bedroom on the ocean and had any actual talent for writing. Everything seems so much more alive there, me included…… I think this desert rose is fading and could use a transplant. But as it is, I don’t have the cash or talent, so I will make due by stealing little weekends with my family at the Hilton Hotel courtesy of Gregg’s frequent flyer miles, spending hours on the beach sandcastling, shell and rock collecting and watching sunsets, huddled together.

Vacations are good for the soul, mine in particular, they remove me from the things that steal my joy. Because I struggle with a mood disorder, I have made peace that I will rarely feel happy. But ironically, because of the thorn and my Jesus, I have learned much joy. It is important that believers seek to know the difference between the two….Jesus was a man of great sorrow but had abundant joy.

As of late, I could feel the little things stealing my joy and I was worried a little because the usual helps for this were not working; I just felt total despair. The worst thing about emotional and mental illness is that there is no tumor on the X-ray, no blood results or deformity, just the subjective feeling of pain and despair, it is lonely and disturbing. But the trip to the ocean seemed, and I hope for a length of time, to bring light. I had a great restoration of joy as I stood in the ocean repeating the second and third verses from the 23rd psalm….even though the waters were not that still, He restored my soul. I remembered who I was, a beloved daughter of Abba. Emotions, when they get out of balance, make you forget who you are.

I wrote a poem that started on my first sunset on the beach and ended with the last:

I went to the ocean and was lifted out of myself.
My soul’s heaviness, absorbed by the sounds of ancient water, receded like waves which build, crash and retreat back into deep calm

Of all ilk, the seabirds sailed the cool breezes, oblivious to the sandcastlers and activities below.
One old pelican nobly coasted on a lively current as time had taught him not to waste precious energy flapping about like his younger brothers.
He had sojourned long enough to learn not to strive against the wind but to glide along with it.

As the sun surrendered to the horizon, it danced like a golden bead upon the pale gray expanse casting its shimmering radiance across the evening sky.
It surrendered to me too.
It let me gaze fully upon it without searing eye and soul as it would if it were higher and earlier in the day.
I thankfully watched it in its vulnerable state as it slowly melted into another part of the world.

At the last sliver of orange, the old pelican, arrow like from his heights, dove vertically into the white caps, disappearing temporarily and then reappearing satisfied and bobbing with the rhythm of the tide until he flapped his great old wings and returned to the clouds.

I went to the ocean and was lifted out of myself to the sweet surrender of things greater than I,
which in their time and grace, will surrender to me.

Eva Regine Schubert

That is the name of my mother. Today is her birthday. She was born in 1936 in a very small but historical city outside of Dresden in Germany. Her formative years were spent in bomb shelters and missing most of school because she had Lymph tuberculosis. She was a teutonic beauty....Hitler's ideal child. Her father Rudolph, was a butcher from a rich family and some thought he was related to Franz Schubert the composer....He had bi-polar illness and my mother was his favorite person and he hers. Her mother Lydia was a a loving person. I met her once when I was 12 (1972) and we lived with her for three months behind the Berlin wall because my grandfather was dying of lung cancer and wanted to see my mother before he died. She had escaped to East Germany during the midnight riots in the 50's and was not allowed to go back until the 70's

My mother wanted to be a star. Her first English words were, I want to be Marilyn Monroe... but, she got pregnant and married an American Airforce officer and had two children, my sister and I. Over the next five years, she lived in west Germany and North Africa and eventually ended up in Las Vegas in the early 60's where she and my Father divorced. She could barely speak english and got a job as a cocktail waitress to the high rollers at the Golden Nugget during the heydey of Las Vegas.....her beauty and charm opened many doors for her. She worked hard had a maid for us and saved a huge amount of money. Then she met my second father....the Polish math genius ( she loved smart men) who made a living playing poker and 21 because he knew how to count the cards ...eventually, certain houses wouldn't let him play, he was winning too much. Before he realized his gambling genius, He was a navigator in the merchant marines during WWII. They became involved and lived together in an apartment off of Desert Inn road until he went on a gambling and drinking binge and lost all of my mother's savings.....she made him marry her and move us to San Francisco where he would go back on the ships and pay her back every penny.

While living in California my mother's bi-polar illness began to surface. She would sleep all day , the house was always badly kept and then she would say and do inappropriate things. When she was in the manic phase she would stay up late, drink Martinis and paint huge flowers on bamboo mats, she was a gifted artist. I knew when she was in her up mood because she would wear her blue velvet cocktail dress and would play Glen miller records. She would wear blood red listick that was called Tabu and her white skin and almost white hair made her look like a goddess to me and I was facsinated by her. At these times my step dad was out at sea carrying cargo during the Vietnam War. So, mother was alone most of the time living in her own world belonging to nobody.

Eventually My step-dad could not keep a handle on his drinking and gambling and again he devastated our family financially and he moved us back to Vegas where he and my mother divorced. My sister and I, while in California, had become ballet dancers, trained on scholarship in the San Francisco Ballet school and got a job working in a production show at the original MGM. We basically divorced our parents too and our own adventures began. Mother went on to marry a sweet Italian guy with ties to the mafia and he died in 1987 leaving my mother quite alone and now in a rather delusional state.

She lived with my husband and I until she qualified for Senior housing before she was a senior because of her devastaing illness and lives there reclusively today, not really wanting much to do with my sister and I. The last mother's day I spent with her she thought we were driving her out to the desert to kill her and called the cops on me because she thought there was no food in the fridge and my children were not in school ( I homeschool). She never answers her phone ,she just sends my children cards for their birthday and holidays and the only way I know she is alive is by calling the landlord to see how she is.

So today is her birthday and I will send her a card that will get there late. She will never acknowledge getting it. She does not want to belong to anybody. I hope I have not been dishonorable to her in writing her story. I still love her and grieve that I have never and will never be close to her because that is what mental illness, left untreated and misunderstood does to people and their families....their dreams die along with their personality and identity and they must choose to belong to nobody.

Lord Jesus please belong to my Mother

Welcome Greg Hubbard

Looking forward to hearing your soul breathe.

I find myself answering to the cross ( my life and its unique trials) that Jesus has asked me to carry while following him, in the same negative pattern. I can't seem to stop the familiar reaction to the "little foxes" in my path. It is like I am an addict . I speak in anger when I know I should not, I despair over temporal things when I know I should not, I React,React, React......I want the mind of Christ, I want the fruit of the Spirit, I want to RESPOND to my temptations based on truth, but today, I have chosen to be the strung out emotional addict to anger, bitterness, and frustration...I was okay this morning, but then I just shifted.......... started to believe the lies. This may be a rapid cycling day, nevertheless... I have become utterly disgusted with myself and I am going to lie down and have my daughter read her library book to me..........

Romans 7: 24-25 Wretched man that I am.......who will rescue me from this body of death? ( not my doctor, not my husband, not my church)..... Thanks be to Jesus Christ our Lord.


Lord forgive me, I am a sinner.
I thank you, because you do not love me as I should be, but as I am
I know you are Lord, even when I fail....be my victory, be my truth...help me replace the wallpaper of lies in my mind with your truth.

I'm doing a little redesigning of my blog....and Gregg said he will help with making it more cool, like my friend Joe's. Hey, Kelly, want to come over so Gregg can help make your blog cool, like Joe's???? I'm going for a simpler look. I want it to look more like a journal and I prefer the font.

I took the test

I have never seen or heard of the X-men but the test results said I was Jean Grey whoever she is. But I have always wanted to read minds......

Places of Honor

Luke 14:8: When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited.

I have always been fascinated with the dynamics and intricacies of group interaction. There seems to be a phenomenon that when people gather ,the collection takes on its own personality based on the individuals of that group. The stronger personalities primarily mold this group persona and are facilitated by the more passive ones that are vicariously energized by the dominate ones....yet still ,strong or passive, all personalities vie for that place of honor within the group. We all want some form of recognition, no matter our place. I think this idea runs across the sacred and profane. I am not saying this is good or bad....... it just is. Our egos demand attention whether in a prayer group or or bridge club.....selflessness is a rare bird.

But Jesus, as always, takes us out of what "just is" and makes us pay attention to our heart drives and ambitions ( a true teacher).

In Luke he is obviuosly saying humble yourself and you may be pleasantly surprised and avoid humiliation. But I always look for the between the line or the less obvious lesson.
What if he is saying hey, don't make the drive of your life a 'seat of honor' you may want to focus on the one who is more distinguished than you. This is where all the life is. Now we all know that God's idea of 'distinguished' vastly differs from our definition. There is often that one person in the group who may not be one of the beautiful people, exegetically swift, or the passive fan....they may be the one who is most wretched...in the most pain ( his favorites) and we will not recognize this one unless we are sitting in the 'lowest place' ( on a regular basis).

The Pharisees missed Messiah himself in his lowly state. So busy in the places of honor being the movers and the shakers, they couldn't see him because in his first journey, he came as a suffering wretched traveller and to the religious elite this is just another bum to put at the "kids" table.

How many times have we missed the distinguished of God in our "gatherings" no matter what their nature or purpose because we are so busy looking to be in the seat of honor or applauding the imposters in them? Was Jesus saying take the worst seat in the house so that he could have a following of severe, repressed ascetics who could live on a material and philosophical shoesting for some afterlife pie in the sky????? I don't think so. I think he wanted us to experience full life starting on this side of our true home and that taking the lowest place has the best view.... you'll never miss the distinguished of God and you may be pleasantly surprised ( not to mention have the ride of your life).

Lord forgive me for still coveting the place of honor in my heart. Teach me and take me to the 'lowest places' so that I won't miss one of your distinguished ones. Lord this is a dangerous prayer isn't it?

Little girl's and their Daddy's

My husband works too hard. He has three videos due for intel and two freelance accounts going. We are going on the third week of working the weekends and working late into the night during the week and it has finally caught up with Daddy's girls.

My youngest one is laying in her room crying for daddy. On this beautiful spring day she wants daddy to stay home and do their favorite things......jump on the trampoline, wrestle and do collage art, but he has to edit and this is one too many weekends without him. It breaks my heart. But Monday is the big event and he will finish up during the week with freelance and then we will go away to the beach and he will be ,daddy build a castle; daddy wrestle me; daddy look at the waves and sunset.......daddy hold me.....little girls love their daddy's

So I must go to my little one and hope that a mommy hug and a trip to the library and park will cheer her up. But every mom knows nothing can satisfy when we just need our daddy.

Jesus always be our ABBA

What I am going to do on my Summer vacation.

I homeschool my two daughters and today is our last day of school!!!!!!!!!!! Not that learning ever stops in the Stokes household but today I turn the last page of my teacher's manual and put down the textbooks. Before I rose to let the cat out, I lay in bed thinking of all the things I am going,or rather, want to do on my Summer vacation:

Take a creative writing class; get a certification to teach the New York City Ballet Workout; Study Greek and Hebrew theology; Go on vacation to the beach, mountains or camping...... whatever appeals; attend a homeschool convention ; workout like crazy ; read and read and read ( especially to the girls --this suffers in the school year) learn to cook some new recipes; spend more time with friends and family ;sew slip covers........wow i'm exhausted already ...If I do only three of these it will be a great summer.

I have butterflies in my stomach, I am elated to be off the treadmill......

Did I mention the Stokes are going to the ocean next weekend! It is our gift to each other. We are going to make sand castles, eat junk food sleep in a really expensive hotel ( we got a comp) and go antiquing.......yahooooooooooo! ( you can tell I don't get out much)

One of my favorite poets is W. B. Yeats . He was a true Irishman and bohemian and wrote some of the most imaginative poetry ever (The lake Isle of Innisfree, When you are Old, the Sorrow of Love). He wrote a lot about the wisdom and the fact of growing old and as of late I have been pondering the exchange of youth and all its angst, neuroses, identity confusion, and anger with the wisdom and peace of aging. It seems that all things of value relate to sacrifice . You must let go of the one to receive the necessary other. This is my favorite of Yeats on getting wisdom with time. I find it comforting.

The Coming of Wisdom with Time

Though the leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.

The poem says to me that there is one simple source ....one simple truth ...even though there is much superfluity that bombards us in the green years.
In line two the word "lying" can be seen as untruthful or recumbant but I think it means untruthful because of the word "truth" in the fourth line.
So it seems that youth or fruitfulnesss blinds us or distracts us from the 'ROOT" but inevitably we must let go and wither into it.

Lord let me wither gracefully into your truth

b>Transformation

This past weekend was one of those great 'hours' when I became pleasantly aware of the vivid work of the Holy Spirit. It is so easy to fall into believing that our spiritual journey is like a tedious trip through the desert by car on the way to a mountainlake vacation.....

nothing ...nothing ..more cactus and joshua trees ....road kill ....bugs on the wind shield.... nothing nothing..... someone flips you off for driving in the passing lane.... nothing nothing......ah! pine trees we must be getting close.....flowers.... more trees blocking the sun and then the great gray stones rising out of the earth suddenly narrowing our path and the big expanse of blue still water.......We're here now we can have fun!

We act as if the destination is the important thing ( will we ever get there)....this is not so. It is when we are seeing nothing that I believe that the great teacher, comforter, counselor, giver of truth and above all the transformer is bringing about the miraculous

I spent the weekend with someone from my past. And in the past, this meeting would have been very painful, angry and uneasy for me internally. The external would be polite, accomodating, superficial conversation with all the chaos and confusion of a hurricane interiorly. And then the meeting would be over for the next odd number of years.

But the faithful one in his wonderful sense of Kairos had been silently, patiently, cultivating a metamorphosis over a period of time changing turbulence and masked ammenities to utter peace and compassion towards this person. I did not seek, work for, or desire this metamorphosis..... it just came about, a bloom in a dry valley. As I was thinking on this, I was aware that over the past months before this meeting, there were some signs that my cocoon moment was near. I just had not put it together.
Transformation is the Spirit's great labor in the lives of believers and the heart of the gospel. Our transformation is to be regarded as Holy, mysterious and out of our realm.

However, many Christians like to reduce this transcendent act to a work of man through program and exercise or intentional calculated behaviors. I am not talking about the spiritual disciplines, the Lord himself modeled them for the purpose to be at one with his precious Father, the only true motivation for them. We say, " if I do this, I'll change that thing that is a poor example for Christ." WE decide, or worse, other people said to be our brother or sister in Christ, decide the path that needs to be repented of or taken....we try to force the bud open (read a great poem on this in Ragamuffin Gospel).
How dare we give our beloved sisters and brothers in Christ a pamphlet or a program with a list of questions and activities that will keep them in some pseudo-transformation so that they will appear changed, but in the eyes of God they are a tangled and fruitless vine...... because they seek change, mission and blessings as the end ,not Jesus himself ; they know him not. We continually release these 'workers' into the field only to see them damage the harvest and become bitter and disillusioned about themselves and God.

Three or four years ago the Lord gave a vision to me from Matthew 11:28. He so kindly in his piercing way told me.....you don't know me. This can be a shock to someone who had supposedly been walking with the Lord for many years . But there the words and truth were. I learned from Him deeply and personally through no group, no method, minute by minute what it was to know him ; to recieve and remain in the yoke meant only for me. To leave behind the phantom of belief in a belief and Christian ambitions( beware of these). I retuned to my first love. I learned how to Behold the Lord, to see that precious face and feel the sweetness that only his presence can bring......I learned to Abide. From this low-tech experience came great fecundity that may be more inward than outward. My only desire is Jesus and that I will drink him to the dregs. And perhaps he will ocaisionally use my carcass in HIS battle and purposes.

In closing, I believe that the blossom that bloomed for me this weekend was like the parable of the growing seed in Mark 4:26. It brings out the truth that it is God's responsibilty to transform us in to the new creation. Our resposibility is to drink his blood and eat his flesh and stop seeking our fecundity as the end----this is dishonoring to him, only pleases ourselves and man and will never bring authentic change. We will only continue to keep driving through the desert, numb to its signs and wonders, focused only on why aren't we there yet?

Jesus I thank you for your unfailing love and faithfulnesss. I thank you for the unexpected, effortless harvest you brought me this weekend. May I never assume anything and remain abandoned to you.

Amen

I just read Kelly Parker's blog so honestly and eloquently written about the battle of the Palmer family with cancer.
She titled her Blog "Blog Knots" due to her anxiety about remaining in unread -blog- limbo and boring people. If you read it, you will find her cares were for not!

And I say Amen to her thoughts and honesty.

Tears for a stranger

I read the blog of Mark Palmer. I have been praying for his wife and I mentioned her battle with stomach cancer in my last entry. When I got home from a meeting last night I checked in with his blog to see how the surgery to remove the cancer went. The prognosis is bad. They were unable to remove anything and have given her three months to live. I am heartbroken for them...But ,I know that Our Redeemer Liveth and has the last word on all things.

May the community of believers be praying for this young mother, her husband and friends and family.

Dark Night

I had a bad night last night, some call them dark nights of the soul I call them evil. I couldn't fall asleep so I began to pray for a woman undergoing surgery for ovarian cancer that has seeded to her stomach and another woman battling brain cancer. Their stories have touched my life and I was thinking of those who love them and asking the Lord to help them in these trials.

I finally fell asleep, I think, at about 2 am only to wake up at 3am in what I call one of my "episodes." They are really difficult physical and spiritual battles. It feels like there is an electrical current running through my body and I feel like my mind will snap and my thinking is very negative towards my self.

I tried to say the 23rd psalm but I could barely remember it and so, when it is that bad, I just pray, Have mercy on me Jesus. I eventually fell back asleep but had really bad dreams. And then I woke up at 7am.
Strangely enough, when I have bad nights and I finally am able to find refuge in sleep I am awakened by the early sunrise..it is very important for me to know the morning came after the dark night. I think it is similar to God's rainbow.

I have not had a bad night in such a long time and when it came I felt a little abandoned by the Lord. I was at a place where I thought that those nights would be behind me....... thy will be done......But here I am ; it is morning and I know that my Redeemer Liveth--

Those words kept pouring over my mind as I was praying for those women last night. One of them had said that during a time of worship the Lord had given her a vision into the deeper meaning her disease of cancer had for her family and community----I believe that this is the greatest miracle in our trials ...that the Lord himself is our vision and he is present----what a friend he is.

Though I walk ( and we all will walk) through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are WITH me; your rod and staff comfort me.

Jesus is called by God in Matthew; Immanuel...God with us. Though I don't like to be theological because I am so understudied, one teacher struck me when she said that Immanuel is a spiritual concept better described as the "with us of God." Jesus in his coming became and remains the very unique "with us-ness" of the Holy One, we can never be alone again....this concept hits the pavement when you are suffering. The greatest gift the Lord gives is his presence. It is also the greatest gift that people give to each other.

So, to the Great Shepherd I pray for those in the dark night that they will vividly sense in their hearts and minds the" WITH US "of God. Be our vision in all times sweet Jesus. Thank you for the things you choose to bring to us that cause us to see you and you alone.

I have a two part Blog today. I want to discuss a short story I read by Truman Capote. I then would lould like to offer an analysis and possible explanation of the phenomenon of blogging.

Truman Capote was one of the greatest American writers. I read his short story, "A Christmas Memory" and was blown away!! Forgive the hyperbole, but I would sell my soul to write like that. But of course, if you know anything about Truman Capote, he was a most tortured man ......most great writers have suffered very troubled lives.
But what i want to share is what a wonderful gift from God this literary rendevous was on one of my wobbly days.

I take my oldest daughter to group violin lessons every tuesday and they are held at the Las vegas Highschool Academy downtown. The lesson is held in what is probably an english/lit classroom and I often browse through the text books. SO, while all the little suzuki violin stars of tommorrow sawed their way through an Argentinian Tango, I curled up in the corner with a textbook on literature and began reading Capote. That story moved me, washed over me, took me away. A true sparrow moment!! God always brings this fragile mind the right medicine at the right time. It also amazed me that he places the most brilliant talent into the strangest and often most wretched vessels. I closed that book and was in awe of the mystery and transendence of how God comes through in the simple story of an intimacy of two individuals written by one of his most wayward creations. Please, if you have a chance and love good literature, read this story. And now this leads to my next thought on why blogging has crescendoed.

Have you ever noticed that a commonality with bloggers is that they begin their first blog with either the reason they are blogging or with the lack of knowing why they are.

The reasons are probably numerous but, I think the primary one is that reading the thoughts of another brings you to a focused intimacy with an individual more than if you were to hear their thoughts in a face to face conversation.....Too many distractions occur in this mode. You (or at least I do) find yourself looking at the tilt of their chin or notice they are beginning to develop bags under their eyes or worse yet, you think " are they seeing something in me they are repulsed by? Have I got something in my teeth?, my nose?, .....what's that smell ..... Oh my gosh my two year old just ate a cockroach!?. Needless to say, this puts a damper on hearing another's heart in any meaningful way.

And let's face it, the art of conversation is abyssmal in this society. We have become (since the television ) visual addicts not conversationalists, able to express thought in a meaningful way (read Neil Postman's" Amusing ourselves to death" or watch the movie "Avlaon)". The "individualistic--put the garage door--down --I been workin' all day--turn on my favorite sit-com" mentality has left us with not only a limited vocabulary but a communal lazziness. Thus, we may have developed a compensatory mechanism to this paucity of connectedness by blogging. We can focus on the individual that might intrigue and amuse us in a deliberate way and feel somehow that we have entered the sanctity of their life. Their thoughts can make us feel like we are not the only one with those ideas, fears or feelings. We can feel compassion, love, hate, or say," Yikes! I finally have discovered someone more screwed up than me!"

BUT, and I mean a big BUT , as my friend, Meghann, so truthfully expressed, and I believe she is a wise young girl with a healthy built in bullshi......detector, Why aren't we saying all these things to one another face to face---we know each other; hang out from time to time, what's the deal? We are talking but not on a deeper level. And I think she has a very important point. And this may be an answer:

When I was a dancer I wore a very small amount of fabric considered a costume and danced at times as close as two feet away from the audience. But it did not bother me because in show-biz there is "The Wall" that allows me to become someone else or remove a mask and reveal vicariously through a role, parts of my true self that may not go over too big at a Christian potluck. I think blogging provides this "Wall" for many. They have the time and privacy as well to formulate their thoughts/reactions at the end ,beginning or middle of their hurried-sick lives.

I also think blogging is a form of social foreplay and mental copulation---forgive me for the freudian observation but I think it is true. The greatest need of the human being is intimacy (to know and be known)---and all addictions and neuroses are caused by the dysfunctional and erroneous searches to fulfill this insatiable need created for only God to fill. So blogging is (i don't know if it is healthy but) a way of revealing things-----of saying, please know me, without the mask, in a deeper way and hey, I might even spell the word bullshit without suffering the scowl of my bible study leader......and if you reject me or disagree ,my "CyberWall" diffuses that sting.

----So there it is, altogehter too prolific and prosaic but an analysis of the possible blogging revolution ---or as one blogger has mentioned----It could be just a God thing.

I am feeling a little guilt now about the long- windedness, sexual connotations and expletive....I think I'll go play a board game with my girls. They have become louder as i have been writing--- a clear sign that I am indulging and they are not getting intimate attention from mommy. Kids are such great B.S detectors.

I have a mood disorder. It is a very mild form of bipolar disorder properly termed ,cyclothymia. I have had it since the sixth grade. I can even recall the moment when I became aware of it. My Mother has it; two of my aunts had it and my grandmother committed suicide. It is highly inherited and the stigma on people who suffer from it, is horrendous .....especially within the church. I think mental illness really frightens people and I can empathize with that. But, I also believe that mental illness, though a terrible thorn, can be the greatest blessing in diguise. It has become that for me. Jesus has proved his amazing sufficiency and revealed himself powerfully in some of the most dark hours. And paradoxically, having this mental weakness has made me more sane than most "normal" people I know. Things become very clear when you realize your mind is precariously perched on a thin wire and there is no safety net. You come to the serene conclusion that God is the catcher and your job is to close your eyes and reach out. I am so grateful for the compassion and creativity and mercy he has brought from it...I am much slower to judge and more obedient in prayer and trust.


I Am writing these thoughts down because I have, for the last three days, been feeling the pendulum swing from center (fairly normal for me) to the more active (manic) side. It usually begins with something in my sleeping. This time it has been intense dreaming. The dreams are always like movies...huge and the cinematography is incredible. The Lord has taught me how, through spiritual disciplines and professionals, to cope, learn and even be fruitful in this time. I try not to view it as an ABNORMAL state but I try to interpret through the eyes of the Lord and receive from him what he chooses to give. A very comforting thing I do when my mind becomes more active is to pray the 23rd psalm ceasleessly.

However, I was discouraged this a.m. because I reverted to fear instead when I woke up. I have not been praying and I was very verbally impatient with my family. I know when I lose control this way I tend to spiral into a very destructive thought pattern of guilt and despair. I remember so clearly what it was like to be mothered by a severe bi-polar and my greatest fear is to transfer that legacy to my family. The greatest challenge of someone with emotional illness is to be very aware of its effect on those you love. It can be devastating and without knowing it we may not only remain in the defeat of our thorn, but also teach others patterns of dysfunction. I was tempted to remain in emotional oblivion.

With the prodding of the Spirit ,I was able to pull it together enough to get to the gym; exercise has a medicinal effect on my moods. On the way home I watched a dove fly over and felt the familiar yearn I have, when this mood descends, to fly away..... to disappear from my suburban cage of domesticity and tameness. Just then, the sight of the mountains and the most beautiful mist over them came to view . In this picture, the quiet strength of God spoke to me. It made me long for Him and reminded me of Psalm 121:1-2. Today, I will endure.

I lift up my eyes to the hills---
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord
the Maker of heaven and earth.


To the Great Lover of my soul....all glory and honor to you, Jesus... may I fly to your bosom when you call.

Meine liebe schwester

I am reading a book called The Cry of Spiritual Mothers and Fathers---it is an easy read and expresses sound wisdom. It brings to mind the relationship I have with my sister. I spoke to her yesterday before church. I truly love her.

My sister and I are spiritual mothers, especially to one another. We have been through so much together that we know exactly what to say or not to say to each other. Oddly enough, we were never close until much later in our lives . It seemed the pain and tumultuousness of our childhood and young adult lives caused a great chasm between us and it took years for each of us to heal on our own in our true Father's presence. I came to Jesus in my early teen years and she came to Him in her thirties. She is one of the most spiritually deep people that I know----she is a true mystic. I mothered her early in her formative Christian years and now she is my spiritual mother..... how wonderful is that!? We are not twins but we do speak a secret language. God is very fond of us. When I spoke to her yesterday I felt complete. I had fellowshipped with someone who truly loves me and accepts me as I am--------and boy.... has she seen me at my best and worst. She made my Easter with a few simple words and encouragements.

That is what a Spiritual Mother and Father really is; one who will continue with you because they believe in the reality of what they see beneath it all. They have looked with the eyes of the heart and chosen to believe in what God has placed there and the Holy Spirit is developing. They trust the work of The Trinity in your life; don't get annoyed; impatient or repulsed by you..... they endure; ask the right questions; provoke healthy thinking and emotion.....they value and love above all.
I always know when I have been around one of these people. I feel renewed.....valued.

There are a handful of people that I am drawn to nurture and encourage in my circle of life....it is strange, but I see wonderful things in them that I want to tell them. But most of all, I feel more led to proclaim to the spiritual orphans of the world that there is a Father so sublime who desires to express in the most winsome and tenderest of ways his love for them.... I believe that this is the only true and worthy message of a spiritual parent

In my mother role to my children I often find my self refereering the petty quibbling that takes place between my daughters----I persistently remind them that they will know each other longer that me or their father and that they will be even closer one day.....My greatest prayer for them is that they will fall madly in love with Jesus and will spiritually nurture one another like their Mommy and Auntie Lynn ( meine liebe schwester).

I thank you Jesus that there is a comfort that you provide through the nurture and love of those who have gone ahead and searched with honesty and learned in the crucible of pain and suffering how glorious it is to feed your lambs.

It is Easter morning and I am not in a consecrated building singing "Up from the Grave He Arose or doing an Easter egg hunt with multitudes of children competing for symbols that will be forgotten as quickly as eaten, or trying to make small talk with their parents about the weather,or worse, trying to discuss the most mysterious, transcendant event as the resurrection in some contrived christian vernacular.

Instead, I am sitting here after washing dishes, making tea, reading e-mail and listening to my husband do art collages with my daughters ( their new found passion). I must admit, it does not sound very reverent or traditional and I feel a twinge of guilt that I am not dressed up watching Gregg sing his would be solo, having some celebration of food and drink with friends and family and wondering what clever spin the seeker church will try to put on this magnanimous expression of God's love for his Son and creation. And yet, my heart is full.

In the last three years I have been ruined by the love of Jesus. This destruction was necessary and as I look back on some moments so painful and terrible in which I truly thought it possible to die from a broken heart I see, though not fully, the purposes in it. Resurrection requires death. Most of my life I have been trying to survive..live. Looking for my place...identity, blessing, healing and freedom , I now see i have tried to obtain them through people, my own anemic efforts, and low sense of value...And in some weird subconscious way, hoping all the while that God would relent to my feeble displays and adolescent demands out of pity or just his good nature and I would squeeze by into his kingdom unnoticed living invisibly among others and He would from time to time visit me and require little. But, the Lord so lovingly has crucified me and my very low expectations. He has recently in the silence and solitude made clear his very forward intentions and though they continue to take away my breath and life, I desire them.

I Believe it brings pain to The Father of the Heaven's when his children live their whole lives avoiding their own death ( as I often continue to do). We try to find the right bible study, message, community, ministry ,code of morals and principles to build upon a christian identity that has been passed on to us by other non-dead vessels or we create it ourselves with our own self-actualization---happiness or Legacyof Jesus as the end.

On this Easter morning sitting in my suburban excess in a country naked with abundance , through the memories of these last painful years ,I imagine my self as a dead person lying on the lifeless slab of my false-self ,sins and holy efforts. I feel and smell the shroud of personal failures and the coldness of those who have hurt and abandon me in vulnerable moments.
And yet, I hear the singing of birds outside this solitude of death, the wind blowing through the new greenness of leaf and blosom and a voice speaks my name so tenderly and quietly. My eyes open to see my Beloved One.. my Resurrector. His eyes deep and full, hair dark and annointed with oil and the incense of my prayers.... and he says," Arise my lovely one Arise." And I am alive to Him and Him alone.

So I will end this day by going to a ritual in honor of Jesus created by very young beloved's. I will not put my hope or expectation in that vessel, but I will keep in my mind and heart the face and reason for my true life. I will look at the soft cheek of my children as thay fidget and wonder of their place in this world and my husband as he expresses his path of worship....... and I will surrender them to a Love that is gloriously ruinous and fiercely life giving .

You see a Sunday of candy eggs,flowers, family,hymns, a ham or lamb, sentiments and seeker services of a cross and a grave and new membership classes are not the expession of the reality of this profound event. And these symbolic efforts, though pleasant, will only keep us clinging to delusions, and break the Father's heart until you allow him, in the way He desires, to crucify you and your false images so that in the most intimate place, He may look deep into your soul and call you from the tomb to your true life. May you never look back.

John 11:25" I am the resurresction and the life".....

the word

I believe that God speaks not only through his written word but through the word of creation. One of my favorite creatures in this realm is the sparrow. My earliest God-memories begin with this lowly fowl. I was vagabonding about my neighborhood looking for the friend who would be allowed to come out and play when I caught sight of a dead sparrow. I don't know why, but it was such a profound moment for me. My home was not at all religious or God loving, rather, it was quite the opposite, yet in a deep six year-old way I thought of God and how terribly wrong this vision was. I had the theological revelation that this is not the way it is supposed to be. I examined that poor little body intensely. I could not stop, partly, because when do you ever really get to look at wild things up close.
Its feathers were missing on its breast and I marveled over its thin tender flesh. I studied the pattern and color in its humble plumage. It, though dead, was unique, complex in its form, even in this humiliated state. This bird was holy to me and turned my thoughts to God. In his mysterious way, the Abba of Jesus, was getting my attention or, as a character in the movie,"The Color Purple" says,"God was makin' a pass at me." I remember that It was very important to me to wrap this fallen one in a discarded tissue, to respect its dignity and place it in the sanctuary of earth. This is one of the many sacred moments that the Holy One has entrusted to me. A grace moment so lavish, it has remained intact in my memory. It would be one of the first footpints in my "sparrow's life" on her migration towards the the bosom of Jesus.

I have not begun this cyber-voyerism to express my thoughts on theology; post-modernism; modernism, big church; small church; doctrine; moral codes; Christian parenting; prayer in schools or other things that will never make it through the crucible. I want to share the "sparrow moments of life".....that most often, God shows up in the humblest, strangest places..... if we are really looking. He revealed, to a young child with no memory verses, or Sunday school, through a common sparrow, his redemption. Maybe this silent nestling's testimony was God's way of not allowing "one to fall without His knowing"-----he remembered and honored her suffering and death by revealing to a little lost girl, that it is not the final word...that there is a Father of the Heavens that has pierced this sin-faded world and continually sings His Sparrow Song.....listen!

"Arise my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me. See! The Winter is past the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear upon the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.
The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.
Arise, come my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.........The Kingdom of your true Father has suddenly come upon you. "

May you see the majesty and tenderness of Jesus in the humble and forgotten. In the least of these, let yourself be awakened to the ubiquitous messages of God's intimate love....the sole cry of your own sparrow heart.