When one wanders about a foreign neighbourhood one finds all sort so possibilities.
The neighbours are enlightening.
The paths enlivening.
The fields inspiring.
The sky inviting.
Wandering
Category: Advent
Beauty of Truth; Beauty of Light
There is something about light.
It changes everything.
When the truth of one’s history is concealed by intent to obscure and accuse others, to blame others for ones own weaknesses,
There is not much that can be done,
Until the light shines in even a little bit.
And the marvelous stuff is this:
we know the beauty that is hidden without light,
the truth that will be exposed,
the hope that is all that can be.
And then when the light shines completely
What once was hidden will shine forth.
It is gorgeous in the right light.
And there is not a thing that is lost to truth, except the lie.
The Fire Within, the Joy Throughout, Freedom in Forgiveness
See the light
The concept is that if one fully trusts God’s grace one does not sin frivolously,
nor purposefully nor purposelessly;
rather if one sees no way forward other than to sin, then trust that forgiveness is already promised, move forward, without regret but full of humility, and trust also in this moment that God will forgive.
For no matter how well one lives, because one sins constantly even if one is not so aware, no matter how well one tries (all humans are in bondage to sin) –
No matter what, even one’s daily breath is a gift of forgiveness, one always needs God’s forgiveness.
Recognize the Fire that is one’s own
No matter what, one needs forgiveness every moment ….
Therefore this one sin does not change how dependent one is on forgiveness. And if God’s forgiveness is real, then trust also that God forgives even when one sees no other good choice and must consciously choose to sin.
So in all things, choose life, and trust God’s love and Grace.
And be that for each other.
The Luther quote:
“If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign.”
Letter 99, Paragraph 13. Erika Bullmann Flores, Tr. from: Dr. Martin Luther’s Saemmtliche SchriftenDr. Johann Georg Walch Ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, N.D.), Vol. 15, cols. 2585-2590. [12]
Light, Death, Love and Life
It is amazing to wake up and be loved and be able to love one who will receive love.
It is painful … to remember what has died, to relive the black hole of being not.
And to know all that will be mimicked, as if authentic.
And it will all be manipulated, and ….
What is this life for, without the light of Trust, Love, Hope?
Without Grace are we anything at all?
Here the light is simple.
And here the light is simple.
And here
But what happens without light?
Or what happens when the light is spectacular? Or specular?
The Darkness makes the Light more obvious, more spectacular.
Only by Grace are we able to come out of the dark, breath and live in the light.
Chose Life. Chose Love.
Be Grace!
Look
Look!
Look
At me, here among the many celebrating
Advent in the splendor of a perfect concert hall.
Songs and lessons and organ pieces that rock the hall decorations
of green wreaths, red ribbons and candles.
And me a guest of the sponsors.
With lights and acoustics that rival the best in the world.
Look
At me after being abused: so thoroughly demeaned, criticized and exiled as if there were something wrong with me! As if I were worthless, as if I could be expelled with the sewer.
Look
At those who worked with lies against me. What they said about and did to me says very little about me.
Though hardly perfect I am God’s child,
a saint by Grace alone,
fully worthy of unconditional love and joy.
Look
At all these others, like me,
also controlled, cut off, accused of our partner’s wrongs,
made out to be a monster of evil proportions,
held in captivity, bound by our own principles never to harm those we love, trusting the same of our beloved until it is too late:
and harm is too obvious to us;
and wholly captive we still sought every way to please,
and more to offer health and life to the one we loved.
And we offered our very breath to transform our life to death,
and our beloved’s death to life …
And even then even more was taken from us …
Until. …
And perhaps,
for some of us,
now freed
we still must navigate the landmines,
no
the heart-mines,
that populate our paths.
So we celebrate Advent, waiting
for our Lord to come
and set us free.
Look
What they said and did reflects who they are …
desperately needing the Light of the world to scour
their hearts and minds and souls clean …
the perfect forgiveness of Grace.
Would it be enough …
enough to cure their
disease
and
dis
integration?!
Look
And see the joy.
Look
At the angels,
the Emmanuel,
the Faithful,
the sweet Silent Night,
the manger,
the baby boy,
the wonders of his love.
God be with you all
until we meet again
at Jesus feet.
An End
Last evening as I drove home, a full sized four door white pickup truck followed me, and pulled up right behind me for the last mile or so, shining its lights in my mirrors, wanting to be intimidating? Well yes!
When I pulled into the parking lot and pulled up to back up, it drove right past me and out of the parking lot. So I drove the rest of the way to my own apartment.
There are some things that should not be made public, and others that show up people to be obnoxious and blatantly abusive. I’ve had enough of people taking advantage of me, and I am not going to be different each day: always trusting, always kind, always gracious, always hopeful, always seeing the best things possible for each person I meet. But I am done being taken advantage of, and I am taking a stand here.
Anyone who intimates that I am not an honourable person, anyone who takes advantage of me, anyone who decides to treat me unfairly … I am going to stand up and ensure that the truth of those people’s actions and words are made public, and I will consider all other options available to me.
I have never been violent against any other person, not mean, not degrading, not unjust … as far as I have been able. I have been a pacifist, but not absolutely. I hunted as a youth, and once since, to be responsible for the fact that I eat meat.
But there are ways, like Ghandi used, to bring to bear on people who are unethical, unjust, enough pressure that it is in their best interests to stop being unjust, to stop taking advantage of me, to stop trying to intimidate me.
And this blog, with photos most of the time, will serve to make public what people have done unjustly and unethically to me, and have persisted when I’ve given them an opportunity to mend their ways, to turn around with their behaviour and words toward me.
This sunset, then marks an end.
Its about time
An end that is beautiful.
An end that is long overdue!
All in a Night’s Work
There are times, too often, when I sleep not a wink between the hours of 2 and 4.
Last night was one of them.
And having arrived at 10, unloaded the truck until 12 and talked on the phone until 1, I had a few things to put in order.
This table, from IKEA, won my heart and I knew I would buy it
despite the fact I had plans to build my own table, had bought the wood, and hardware, and had the time planned to do it all.
So why? I had to ask myself, and it dawned on me before I picked it up and put in on my cart along with the two bookshelves I had gone there to get. Well I’d actually gone for one shelf, a Billy, blond, but the cost was $99 and these while were 2/3s the width, 7/8s the height, and slightly narrower, I decided two of them would be better than one Billy. So for $58 two shelves came home with me.
But the table. What was it?
I built a house a decade or so ago. And put in kitchen cupboards … from IKEA in Minneapolis, since they were from there 2/3 the cost of anywhere in Canada and it was too pricey to ship from California.
And after the dust settled, and I’d assembled and mounted the cabinets and finished the house, they were one of the huge success stories of those building years: they cost about $2k compared to other cupboard installs that would have cost anywhere from $4k to $9k, were easy to install correctly (comparatively) and they looked fabulous! and the design of the kitchen was terrific, big enough, with lots of drawers and doors in the right places!
And to fit with the rest of the house that had pine doors and pine trim I choose the pine cupboards.
This table has the same finish! As do my dressers!
And the pieces for the other table are here, ready for working into a table, assembly required!
And it should be quite the table too, with a leaf to insert to extend it from 48×32 to 48×48.
Already in place, the functional, pine, lovely kitchen table that has so many emotional connections with it already!
All in a nights work!
Colour Blindness and Darkness
There is little that’s heard
and so much to say.
The radio reports a male’s voice about his mother
being beaten by his father, and verbally abused continually, only when he was drunk.
Horrendous … and we meet this with numerous efforts … still hardly enough.
But there is little to nothing said or believed about how
women too often manipulate, control, deride, blame and verbally abuse
the men closest to them in their lives.
And when the woman owns the house, is the sole guardian of the children, and is the boss at work …
the opportunities to manipulate, control, deride, blame and verbally abuse multiply out of control.
And the justice system, well focused at protecting women from violent men,
is so blind to the women that bring false complaints about their men being violent, when this is just yet another lie, a manipulation, a power trip, a derision, a blaming, and real life abuse of their men.
The justice system takes these men, and judges them, convicts them, punishes them (tossing them out of their home, cutting them off from the abusive women and their own children that rely on them) and intimidates them (actively disrupting the process of justice that would serve them well and bring them a voice, a fair hearing) … convicted and condemned without a trial.
The light of truth is obliterated by the deadwood of lies, the colour of the life cycle which could be a delight is hidden beyond the darkness of death.
The signs are everywhere, of God’s gifts of beauty, streaming to us in real life through the huge bandwidth of our eyes and brains.
Even the leaves are weeping at the injustices, even the leaves are weeping at the misplaced condemnations, even the leaves are dancing with colour promising, though the darkness will set in, new life will emerge, new life will emerge!
Among the maze of life turning towards the winter cold, the small birds still sing and seek and dance with joy.
Where are you?
Do you seek to give every abused victim a voice?
Can you tell the difference between a real complaint of male violence against women, and the complaint that is further abuse?
How can you see behind the curtain?
How can you see past the deadness of manipulative abuse, to see the light of hope and love?
Where is your joy today?
Finding oneself in Work?
Love is foremost,
but meaningful labour is second most significant,
as the leaves turn in a night
and the clouds hang ready to empty their weight again
and the sun peaks out to shine a moment
as the stragglers for the oil field turn the corner
toward meaningful labour for their Monday.
But all our efforts in comparison to God’s display of beauty for us are
so small.