Perception.
Perceptive.
I have seen that some things seem true up close and others not so.... I have seen riddles solved at a distance or debacle at heights. The navigation requires time, the willingness to see, and the courage to make mistakes.
Perception.
Perspective.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
A Father's Day Poem
How Do We Forgive Our Fathers?
Dick Lourie*
How do we forgive our Fathers?
Maybe in a dream
Do we forgive our Fathers for leaving us too often or forever
when we were little?
Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.
Do we forgive our Fathers for marrying or not marrying our Mothers?
For Divorcing or not divorcing our Mothers?
And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness?
Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning
for shutting doors
for speaking through walls
or never speaking
or never being silent?
Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?
If we forgive our Fathers what is left?
Dick Lourie*
How do we forgive our Fathers?
Maybe in a dream
Do we forgive our Fathers for leaving us too often or forever
when we were little?
Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous
because there never seemed to be any rage there at all.
Do we forgive our Fathers for marrying or not marrying our Mothers?
For Divorcing or not divorcing our Mothers?
And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness?
Shall we forgive them for pushing or leaning
for shutting doors
for speaking through walls
or never speaking
or never being silent?
Do we forgive our Fathers in our age or in theirs
or their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it?
If we forgive our Fathers what is left?
Friday, June 18, 2010
Forgiveness
FORGIVENESS
To forgive somebody is to say one way or another, "You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you've done, and though we may both carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my friend."
To accept forgiveness means to admit that you've done something unspeakable that needs to be forgiven, and thus both parties must swallow the same thing: their pride.
This seems to explain what Jesus means when he says to God, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Jesus is not saying that God's forgiveness is conditional upon our forgiving others. In the first place, forgiveness that's conditional isn't really forgiveness at all, just fair warning; and in the second place, our forgiveness is among those things about us that we need to have God forgive us most. What Jesus apparently is saying is that the pride that keeps us from forgiving is the same pride that keeps us from accepting forgiveness, and will God please help us do something about it.
When somebody you've wronged forgives you, you're spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience.
When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you're spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride.
For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their own skins and to be glad in each other's presence."
Frederick Buechner
To forgive somebody is to say one way or another, "You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you've done, and though we may both carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my friend."
To accept forgiveness means to admit that you've done something unspeakable that needs to be forgiven, and thus both parties must swallow the same thing: their pride.
This seems to explain what Jesus means when he says to God, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Jesus is not saying that God's forgiveness is conditional upon our forgiving others. In the first place, forgiveness that's conditional isn't really forgiveness at all, just fair warning; and in the second place, our forgiveness is among those things about us that we need to have God forgive us most. What Jesus apparently is saying is that the pride that keeps us from forgiving is the same pride that keeps us from accepting forgiveness, and will God please help us do something about it.
When somebody you've wronged forgives you, you're spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience.
When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you're spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride.
For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their own skins and to be glad in each other's presence."
Frederick Buechner
Kindness Poem
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~
(Words From Under the Words: Selected Poems)
Something to Think About
"Jesus said that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Yet many in the Presbyterian Church persist on beginning with abstract notions of 'truth,' an approach long favored by Western Christendom. The Right insists on "Old Truth," linking a desire for certitude with tradition. The Left favors 'New Truth,' advocating for progress and freedom from constraints. But the Way mattered to Jesus. He would not take any shortcuts to the cross, or use any violence along the way, physical or emotional. For Jesus, the way of suffering, humility, passion, joy, and self-emptying were the ways that led to deeper truth, neither indulging the fetish of traditionalism nor the fetish of novelty, as was the case for the religious authorities of his day. Only equal faithfulness to the Way and the Truth leads to the fullness of Life [in Christ]. We cannot have two masters: Jesus and Machiavelli." Jin S Kim
Processing
Blogs. They are interesting. I haven't decided if they are the best form of processing... However, as I find myself enjoying the reality that I am a "processor," I suppose that this may be just a way to explore my thoughts.
Friends, this is the first thought. Somehow, I want life to slow down. It is going too fast, and I have been along aside it all the time, rushing it along by completing the lists of to-do's that follow my footsteps. This is good. This has been great. But as I just experienced the whirlwind of much travel-- setting foot in Chicago, good ole Weston Priory in Vermont, Upstate New York, North Carolina, and South Carolina-- I revisited so many important parts of myself... and now I feel like I am buzzing (mentally that is) trying to integrate all the pieces.
One of the most difficult challenges I am feeling is my sense that I somehow do not belong in my own culture, and yet I want to-- and I don't know what I would do if I were not in it. Strange. This is a strange feeling. But, perhaps this is just the reflection of a 27 year-old turned 87 year-old, but I am nostalgic-- Am I nostalgic for something that never existed? But today... somehow... so much of my culture seems to revolve around $$$$$ and busyness and convenience... and although I am afraid to give it up, I don't understand where the days of playing on playgrounds, dinner with the family, and all of this has gone. Is this adulthood? I hope not.
Friends, this is the first thought. Somehow, I want life to slow down. It is going too fast, and I have been along aside it all the time, rushing it along by completing the lists of to-do's that follow my footsteps. This is good. This has been great. But as I just experienced the whirlwind of much travel-- setting foot in Chicago, good ole Weston Priory in Vermont, Upstate New York, North Carolina, and South Carolina-- I revisited so many important parts of myself... and now I feel like I am buzzing (mentally that is) trying to integrate all the pieces.
One of the most difficult challenges I am feeling is my sense that I somehow do not belong in my own culture, and yet I want to-- and I don't know what I would do if I were not in it. Strange. This is a strange feeling. But, perhaps this is just the reflection of a 27 year-old turned 87 year-old, but I am nostalgic-- Am I nostalgic for something that never existed? But today... somehow... so much of my culture seems to revolve around $$$$$ and busyness and convenience... and although I am afraid to give it up, I don't understand where the days of playing on playgrounds, dinner with the family, and all of this has gone. Is this adulthood? I hope not.
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