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.
Saturday, May 17, 2003
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
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
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
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
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.
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.
Monday, May 12, 2003
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.
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.
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