I Adore Life . . .

"I adore Life. What do all the fools matter and all the stupidity. They do matter but somehow for me they cannot touch the body of Life. Life is marvellous. I want to be deeply rooted in it - to live - to expand - to breathe in it - to rejoice - to share it. To give and to be asked for Love."

-Katherine Mansfield in a Jan. 20 letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell

May we all be deeply rooted in life today and all the days to come . . .

Cowards

"To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men"
- Abraham Lincoln

Mockingbird

My friend Lane introduced me to the album Mockingbird by Derek Webb, former member of Caedmon's Call, on Lane's site The Fastlane. I just started listening to it, so I won't proclaim a bold support of the album yet. I like the lyrics to a few songs I've really heard so far, though. Check out Lane's site for a good review.

It seems that Mr. Webb is getting some backlash from his fans about this album. People are wondering why he's not preaching the Gospel in his album . . . why he's not boldly talking about salvation and passion of Christ, it seems. Interestingly, though, what I've heard addresses the passion of Jesus quite well. He talks about the passion of serving others, loving our neighbors, radically being people of Christ.

On his site, Webb has an interview with Infuzemag.com where he talks about the message of this album:

Because Jesus has kept the law on our behalf, because Jesus has loved the poor perfectly on our behalf, we are liberated. That was the message of the first record.

The message of this record is: it has liberated us unto what? Now that we are set free, now that we don’t have to do anything to earn God’s favor, how shall we live in light of that? And I think that looks very much like helping the poor. And maybe we need to look around us and see that an issue is that we are not around the poor. As Christians, we don’t live next to the poor, or those who are gay, or minorities or anyone who could be difficult for us to love. So now our neighbors are, of course, easy to love. They look like me, talk like me, make the same money and are interested in the same things. So this command has become way too easy.

In another section, he talks about the command to love our neighbor (Luke 10:27) is in the context of the good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:29-37). It's a radical call suggesting that our neighbor may be our enemy. What if we lived this way as followers of Christ, grasping to this great commandment in this radical way? What if we lived into the passion of our salvation that commands us to love our neighbors?

War no more

As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they went to another village.
~Luke 9:51-56



Here the Gospel of Luke shares with us just one of the many examples of Jesus choosing peace in the face of opposition. When using incredible power and force against the Samaritans made sense to James and John, Jesus rebuked James and John and radically walked away from the village, instead. We know Jesus as peacemaker because the Gospels share this radical side of Jesus with us.

In solidarity with the bishops of the United Methodist Church and the thousands who have already signed their statement for peace, I pray that we call our government into living what we know through this person called Jesus. I pray that we radically call for peace and work towards peace instead of continuing in a horrific war that has cost the lives of more than 2,000 brave U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens.

In his address Sunday, President Bush pleaded to the people of the U.S.: "I do not expect you to support everything I do, but tonight I have a request," the president said. "Do not give in to despair, and do not give up on this fight for freedom."

We are Easter people who know a different story of freedom through the radical peace of Jesus!

I do not have answers on how we can pull out of Iraq now. I know, however, that we have to challenge our leaders to be in the business of peace-planning because war-planning is not the way. If you'd like to join in solidarity with the bishops and ask our leaders to think of another way, please visit their statement and sign it.

A Word from Ferlinghetti

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you
-Lawrence Ferlinghetti

For the complete poem, click here.

Yellow . . .

I smiled listening to the Parachutes CD this morning as I drove to work against a white sky with no sign of yellow sun at all.

Yellow
Coldplay

Look at the stars
Look how they shine for you
And everything you do
Yeah, they were all yellow

I came along
I wrote a song for you
And all the things you do
And it was called, "Yellow."

So then I took my turn
Oh, what a thing to have done
And it was all yellow.

Your skin
Oh yeah, your skin and bones,
Turn into something beautiful
You know, you know I love you so
You know I love you so.

I swam across,
I jumped across for you,
Oh what a thing to do.

Cos you were all yellow,
I drew a line,
I drew a line for you,
Oh what a thing to do,
And it was all yellow.

Your skin,
Oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
And you know for you
I'd bleed myself dry for you,
I'd bleed myself dry.

It's true, look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine for,
Look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine.

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And all the things that you do.

(Lyrics found at coldplay.com)
===================

No greater love, eh?

All the Saints . . .

*

From Sacred Space website:

They are not the saints with haloes and floating bodies, but rather those who suffered and survived, who tried and sometimes failed, as Paddy Kavanagh wrote:

To be a poet and not know the trade,
To be a lover and repel all women;
Twin ironies by which great saints are made,
The agonising pincer-jaws of Heaven.

Feast with the saints in your story today!

*Photo of Warsaw, Poland's All Saint's Day.

Soul Tears

The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears.

-Native American proverb

*Art by Shelly Ritter: Soul's Rainbow. Check out her work here.

1913-2005

"The time had just come when I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed, I suppose. They placed me under arrest. And I wasn't afraid. I don't know why I wasn't, but I didn't feel afraid. I had decided that I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen, even in Montgomery, Alabama."

- Rosa Parks, 1913-2005: Parks, civil rights hero and catalyst for the Mongomery Bus Boycott, died Monday at age 92. (as quoted in SoJo mail)

My great-grandmother was born two years before Ms. Parks in 1911. 1911! She's lived so much of the history I read in books. And I know she lived them fiercely! I received a letter from my Granny today . . . she is lovely!

Ms. Parks . . . in her 92 years of living is hope for all. She reminds us that one strategic action by one "tiny" person can start a movement for change. I hope we all keep a bit of Ms. Parks in our hearts when we face "the back of the bus."

Zadie Smith on writing . . .

"The best, the only real (writing) training you can get is from reading other people's books. I spent three years in college and wrote three and a half stories but I read everything I could get my hands on. White Teeth is really the product of that time; it's like the regurgitation of the kind of beautiful, antiquated, left-side-of-the-brain liberal arts education which is dying a death even as I write this. Generally, an English Lit degree trains you to be a useless member of the modern world and that's what I'm being in the only way I know how." ~British author Zadie Smith (whose latest novel On Beauty is a New York Times Bestseller) in an interview for Bold Type online 'zine

My Becoming

"What is present to me is what has a hold on my becoming."

This is the first line of one reflection a few days ago at Sacred Space, a daily online devotional site of the Irish Jesuits.

I think of the things that were present to me today: doubts of my ability to do good news reporting, and luggage I carry from previous hurts. I read beautiful poetry today by Galway Kinnell. I rested for a few minutes in the thoughts that someone special in my life cares for me. I spent time with my sister at the Frothy Monkey. The things that stayed with me all day long, however, were my doubts and my baggage. I meditated on self-deprecation. What am I becoming today?

"I reflect on the presence of God always there in love, amidst the many things that have a hold on me. I pause and pray that I may let God affect my becoming in this precise moment."

"And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit." (2 Cor. 3:18)

On Writing

"being true to yourself really means being true to all the complexities of the human spirit. And as much as we'd like to give -- and we want to be perfect, well-rounded individuals -- all of us have our quirks. We all know we've had our foibles. And we've got these embarrassing moments in our lives, and things that we're ultimately ashamed of. What writing -- what I think all the arts do -- is to reveal. Let us see again and experience again, all the ambiguities that make up -- and the contradictions that make up -- a human being: the good and the bad and how they can exist in one person and make a complex individual. And to do that, that means being very honest. Being honest all the time." ~Rita Dove, online interview

Source: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dove/onlineinterviews.htm

Quotation: I'm a writer . . .

"I'm a writer. And I believe that the highest gift that man has is art. And I am audacious enough to think of myself as an artist. That there is both joy and beauty and illumination and communion between people to be acheived through the dissection of personality--that's what I want to do. I want to reach a little closer to the world, which is to say to people, and see if we can share some illuminations together about each other."

-Lorraine Hansberry

Jesus, You are Knocking

A man and his stench come asking for new clothes.
He has no family, no job, no help.
Jesus, you are knocking.
Let us open wide the gates.

A woman and two children escaped a harmful home.
They have no money, no shelter, no help.
Jesus, you are knocking.
Let us open wide the gates.

A man and his empty stomach come in need of warm soup.
He has no food, no hope, no help.
Jesus, you are knocking.
Let us open wide the gates

We wait for you to come again but ignore you when
you are clothed as the least of these.
Jesus, when you are knocking,
we want to open wide the gates.

"We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us." -Bonhoeffer
"Behold, I stand at the door . . . Open wide the gates!" -Psalm 24:7