Category Archives: Life

Small Blessings

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cream-into-coffee-e1266083402502 Today around 3 pm I noticed some dark clouds rolling into the neighborhood.  For a moment I thought we might have a thunderstorm, or at least some rain.  Instead, we got wind and lots of it.  The gusts were strong enough to knock the power out at the church for awhile, and they were also sufficient to bring the temperature down about ten degrees in less than a half hour.

It was a cold front, of course, that made its way through the area, and for this I am very grateful.  Once it gets over 80 degrees, I am too hot.  Give me days in 70s or even 60s over hot, muggy ones anytime.  Even now, at a little past midnight, I am enjoying the cool breeze blowing through my window and giving thanks that I will need no AC or fan tonight while I sleep.

It is a small blessing, but sometimes a small blessing is all we need to get through the day.  Sometimes a small blessing can even change our whole perspective on life.  The effect of a small blessing can, in fact, be anything but small.

My friend Jim knows one of my little weirdnesses that I also count as another small blessing when I can pull it off (I think he calls it a “small, good thing”).  You see, I drink my coffee with cream, or more specifically, fat free half and half.  What I love to do is to pour my coffee in the cup, get it swirling with a spoon, and then, when the moment is just right and speed of the swirl is just so, I pour in the cream.  If I have timed it well, the cream mixes with the coffee in such a way that I have a miniature hurricane on the surface of my drink . . . a veritable tempest in coffee cup, so to speak.  It just makes me smile to see my mini-storm of coffee and cream moving around, and for just a moment, or maybe two, all is right with the world.  I am sure I am not the only one who has ever done this, but if you haven’t, I encourage you to try it.  You will smile too.  I guarantee it.

Anyway, regardless of what they might be for you, I wish you a day filled with small blessings, or at least a couple of them, or even just one.  After all, just one might be enough.

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A Room Called Remember

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I have always considered Frederick Buechner one of my mentors in ministry even though I have never met him in person.  The reason for this is that Buechner’s writing touches something deep in my soul, and because of this I have read almost everything he has published.  The following quote called my name this morning.

"The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts….We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived."
— Frederick Buechner, from “A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces”

Rooted in God’s Love

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“Without deep roots we easily let others determine who we are. But as we cling to our popularity, we may lose our true sense of self. Our clinging to the opinion of others reveals how superficial we are. We have little to stand on. We have to be kept alive by adulation and praise. Those who are deeply rooted in the love of God can enjoy human praise without being attached to it.” – Henri Nouwen

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Not Made for Here

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Jim Reeves

Jim Reeves via last.fm

Back in my childhood (many, many years ago now), a song by Jim Reeves was very popular in my home church.  It spoke of how we, as followers of Jesus and members of the Church of God, Cleveland, TN – not sure which one was more important ;o), were truly pilgrims in a strange and foreign land.  The first verse and chorus goes like this:

This world is not my home I’m just a passing through
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue
The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore

Oh Lord you know I have no friend like you
If heaven’s not my home then Lord what will I do
The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore

Though I have left behind many of the beliefs and views of my childhood church, the feeling of “not being at home in this world” has never left me.  In fact, the idea of being a “wayfaring stranger” is still central to my theology.  I cannot leave behind the understanding that though I am in the world, I am not supposed to be a part of it.  In a way, I have often felt that this was just a vestigial remainder of my upbringing, so imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered that no one less than C. S. Lewis once expressed a similar feeling.

“If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy, I can only conclude that I was not made for here.”  — C.S. Lewis

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On My Way to Yes

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Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say holy
holy.
–Pesha Gertler, “The Healing Time”

Being Awake

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Cover of "Joe Versus the Volcano"

Cover of Joe Versus the Volcano

“My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.” – Patricia Graynamore

One of my favorite movies is “Joe Vs. the Volcano,” which stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan (with a cameo by none other than Abe Vigoda to boot!).  This sometimes silly movie has some great quotes and a deeper meaning than many perceive upon first viewing it.  One of my favorite quotes is printed above, and I think it was this quote that gave me the answer I often give when people ask me how I am.

When people ask, “How are you?”  I will say (about 90% of the time), “ I am awake.”  I mean this on two levels.  First, I am actually awake and not asleep.  But on a second and more important level, I also mean that I am trying to live my life in a state of awareness.  While originating from Buddhist teaching and practice, I also find it an appropriate way of trying to live as follower of Christ.  I want to be aware and awake to the world around me, especially when it comes to my fellow travelers on the journey of life.  Only then can I truly be Christ to those I encounter.

If only I could practice this as much as I say it.

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