Naming or Named?

Myth, science fiction and fantasy – tales of wizards and magical beings are reflections of real truths. For example – a wizards is very careful about someone actually knowing his true name. To be named is to be controllable. Even the Old Testament God had an unpronounceable name — isn’t that what Yahweh  approximates? Trying to pronounce something that is fundamentally unpronounceable?

And so, I’m back at this point in my spiral of journey. Naming things. Identifying things. Grabbing a hold of something so I can let it go. Maybe forever this time. Can’t let go of something when I don’t know what it is. Peel another layer off the onion so I can see more clearly what has a grip on me and wriggle free… or may see more clearly what I am clinging too, and then be able to let go of it.

What do I name? I name those hurts that I carry along. I look deeper to see what the real hurt is. So often, the hurt that makes me start looking is a decoy – a mask – protection from seeing the real truth. Why does it upset me that my spouse can upset me? Why does my voice get shaky at work when I least want to be unsettled? Why does my child’s pain hurt more than my own?

When I am able to name the cause, I have the possiblity of laying it down. It’s the possibility of understanding fully that you can only truly forgive that which you remember. If you can’t really remember, you can’t name it, and then you can’t really completely let go… because you have to know what you are letting go of.

And so, finding myself facing the same things that I thought I had let go of brings me to the realization that I let go of only the part I could see at the time. This time I see a bit deeper, so I can let go of a bit more.

And the spiral continues… Amen.

Gift of Finest Wheat

A few months ago, we dropped cable TV and picked up Direct TV (satellite). In the process, the Food Network has provided a wonderland of entertainment. One of the more interesting types of shows are those such as Iron Chef America and Chopped! where the contestants/chefs are presented with specific foodstuff or odd-ball collection of foods and must create dishes “real fast now.” It can be quite interesting, to say the least.

This morning before mass (I’m on for 2 masses this weekend), my attention was drawn to an article in the NY Times – Finding Purpose in Serving the Needy, Not Just Haute Cuisine about trained chefs who work in homeless shelters. These shelters receive random shipments of donated food. The ultimate “challenge” in Food Network terminology. Hmmm… how to make dinner from 600 pounds of bologna and 20 flats of Orange Crush. Oh – and it has to be healthy and tasty.

More difficult, but not totally out of the arena of “what’s for dinner tonight?” when you haven’t been to the grocery store lately, or you have a neighbor who has an abundance of zucchini that has been left on your doorstep.  Or even how the creativity required at the end of the month to send a child off to school with a lunch and your have only a hotdog bun and peanut butter as starters, and no cash to buy his lunch or go to the store until tomorrow.

There are many lessons to be learned from these situations — not so easy, but so necessary for survival.

In the end, you discover that at least one of these Homeless Shelter chef’s (who left a life of cooking in a high level Napa Valley restaurant) sees a bit of the feast of Corpus Christi every day when his consumers sit at the table and share not only the physical food he has prepared, but the spiritual food that comes of the sharing, the faith, and the interaction at the table. Both types of food are essential, and both are comfort food.

…they were confused

Today, which is the feast of Pentecost, the first reading from Acts contains the line “…they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language.” I helped with music at mass last night, and again this morning, so I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on the readings, and only being confused.

At both masses, we were first asked “How many of you believe in the power of the Holy Spirit?” and then challenged to let the Spirit speak to us in the readings, and move us to speak during the homily time. It made for very interesting and varied reflections at the masses I attended.

Sometimes I am confused — I don’t expect God through the movement of the Holy Spirit to speak to me in my own tongue. I mean, really reach out to me right where I am. It’s almost confusing to try to grasp the fact that the Spirit comes to us right where we are — not when we accomplish something to make us worthy, or maybe only when we decide that we will go to a place and then be open. The Spirit is here and now. The Spirit is in the marvelous and the mundane. The Spirit is the power to that moves us to action, calls us to change and makes it possible to live fully.

I am so thankful that while the Spirit can “confuse” me by Her marvelous actions, She is also the power and presence that makes it possible for me to embrace the confusion and know that I am called, chosen and sent to make God’s love real in the world today.

Alleluia!

Friday Sunshine

Maybe Friday Sonshine?

Not so deep, but I am so glad to see the sun today… and to hear that we are expected to have sun and clear skies through the weekend. My ark was over half finished.

Gratitude sometimes requires reflection. And being grateful for the rain that we have had of late offered the opportunity to reflect and be grateful. We are no longer in a drought. Drought seems far away now as I wade through puddles and dodge raindrops.

So today I hum to myself a tune from my youth, with words from Ecclesiates: To every thing, there is a season… turn, turn, turn.

Framing

This weekend I’m answering a call that shouts out from deep inside me to create — more specifically, to work on something I can touch and feel and turn over and hold. Not something on a computer. And so, I’m “scrapping.” Rather, I’ve taken an empty scrapbook/photo album that has been languishing in the guest room and I’m filling it with my “photographs sans people.”

I frequently photograph flowers, trees, landscapes, squirrels, ducks and the dogs. I have images of ginger flowers and a great shot of a duck in Hawaii from the 1970’s (scanned from Kodachrome slides no less); I have plants I can name, and ones I can’t. I have a duck from Hawaii and a seagull from Montauk, NY. I have dogwood and azalea blossoms and crepe myrtle from summer and winter. There are pictures of daylilies from Alabama to Maine, and columbines where the seeds were brought from Maine and planted here in Alabama (beautiful flowers).

It started simple — put the pictures in a book and make a note about what, where and why – or something about what what going on at the time. But, it didn’t last that way. The impression is so much better if you frame the shot. You know — maybe a bit of cropping, or a bit of color around the edge. Follow that with something other than just centering the photo on the page. Group things that go together. Frame it!

Frame it. Not everything can be the most important all the time, all at the same time. Frame it so that there is a focus to the shot. Frame it to free up the observer to get the point. Pick up the proper colors. Use the best mat color and size. Frame it to make my point. And in the process, I begin to understand it all better myself. And I make it solid so I can go back and remember what I thought I learned.

In reading back over what I wrote above, it strikes me that in many ways Jesus is the image of God’s love… framed within the Gospel stories, framed in the shape of a human being, framed by the effect He had and continues to have on people. God’s Love made solid. Something we can touch and feel and at times hold.

[Note/Update: After posting this, I found that a friend had posted following link on Facebook: The Case for Working With Your Hands. Is there something in the air? I tell you, there are no coincidences. Or, maybe I’m just focussed on the same thing as Claire.]

What you say and read

Advertising is targeted — it’s really obvious if you pay any attention at all to the ads that show up in the sidebar of a google account or a Facebook page or have every bought anything from Amazon and get on their mailing lists. Some of our other utilities try to figure out what we will like – It seems that Tivo will try to figure out by the shows you record what it thinks you might like to watch and can record things for you. It seems that programs — just like people — can draw some very odd conclusions.

There’s a story about a guy who had a Tivo that thought he was gay. When he tried to make it change its mind, by recording lots of war movies (“guy stuff”) it decided he was a crazy who wanted to see everything about Nazi bigwigs. I have ordered books from Amazon so I get email because they want to sell me everything Mary Daley and Sue Monk Kidd have every written… and watches, fancy lotions and camera equipment. Facebook sure seems to think I want desparately to lose weight and get rid wrinkles while studying photography. And just this morning, as I read my email from The Daily Gospel I found ads for The American Monk (Accelerate your spiritual growth…), Speaking in tongues today, Dr. Oz’s Real Age Test (???) and the Gnostic Bookstore. But, the ones that intrigued me the most were the learn more about the Easter Bunny and Kindergarten Sightwords.

Kind of scary, huh? I find it to be a warning to me. As one human in a community of humans, I hope that I do better at seeing the whole, real person underneath these external expressions. But, I probably don’t. We all make two mistakes — we observe through the particular focus of our own eyes, and we so often see only the things that we are keyed in to see (keyword searching, anyone?). It might be all I CAN do — so just be aware: I’m only slightly better at judging you than Google Adsense… and therefore I shall attempt to leave that judgement to God.