on hiatus til October

Having been involved in a very long drawn out move, I am on hiatus until October.
DHA

Just the One of Us

I got to travel a lot this month. I like that. Not only do I have wanderlust, I have culturelust and peoplelust too. I love to see what is happening simultaneously in the world. Right this very moment, hours ahead, people on the other side of the world are rising when I am beginning to rest. Mothers and Fathers all over the world are caring for children. Mean people are being mean to other people. Nuns and Priests and Rabbis and Elders and Imams are walking in an intentional relationship with God. Families who have just experienced a death are grieving. Women who have just given birth are in another world staring at the face of the person who grew inside them. Children in school are carving new grooves in their brains. People earning a living are coping.

Shouldn't it be easier with Youtube and Facebook and all those other transparent digital communities that indicate our similarities? Is there a greater chance for world peace because we have easier access to each other?

Ah me. There is one thing we all have in common that stands in the way of unity. It is our relationship to our personal pain. How do we carry our baggage?

In times of crisis we all draw together. In times of peace, or the ordinary, we live with the internal remnants of hurts and disappointments, betrayals and losses. The invisible fence between us is the unspoken relationships we have with our Stchuff. See in a crisis, we are all in pain and fear and that draws us together. In the mundane we stuff the Stchuff and lose the connection.

Take a moment today and sit with your Stchuff in a loving and open way. You can do it. You can love the pain into a form that others will warm to. It's a God thing. Open yourself up to your own truth so God can wash it and clean it and set healing in motion.

It will not kill you. It will bring about world peace. Or at the very least, a piece of peace to the person standing next to you.
Love
Deborah

West Side Wisdom

I belong to a community chorale. We've been blessed, actually we made a choice, with a wonderful low key, knowledgable conductor/music director who has brought out the best in eighty well meaning voices.

This Spring he challenged us with the Chichester Psalms.

At the last minute, I wrote in the translation of the Hebrew under Leonard Bernstein's beautiful text so I would know what I was singing. It was so deeply theologically, truthfully meaningful, the first time I sang knowing what I was singing, I was completely distracted.

My favourite part was the mid section of the section movement when the sopranos and altos are singing with instructions to represent 'blissfully unaware' the 23rd Psalm against the tenors and basses who are singing intensely about the nations raging and establishing themselves as the rulers of the world.

From henceforth, when I take note of the raging nations I will recall the instruction and beauty of being blissfully unaware.

What can you surrender today so God can fill you with peace?
Love
Deborah

Just One Conversation

What a whirlwind month. I'm getting up to speed on the digital and the textual. I've thought about pictures and little twirly things or colourful splashes of technological this 'n that. I've mused about eye catchy and fast and faster.

I keep coming back to this. On the Island where I live, there is a coffee shop and a tea shop. The one has some sofas that are without skeletons. Nothing holds you up when you sit in them. The other has chairs that encourage long talks because there is so much room in their seats to shift one's weight, legs, torso as the minutes scroll by of an afternoon.

I'll do this. I'll blog and I'll web and I'll write words out into the unknown, but my heart will always long for one conversation at a time in a comfy chair or a sinking couch with a hot drink that lingers in my cup and facial expressions that explain the underlining theme of whatever words going in my ears and things to look at as I turn my head this way and that to think of exactly the right word to say to the person opposite me.

I read somewhere that when we are talking we look away because we are lost in the inner vision of our focus of conversation. When we listen, we look directly at the person because we are deciphering the intent and reason for that which we are hearing.

I'm in the process of launching these and somewhere in my non digital heart, I am praying that if there is not an inclination to respond to this post within you, it causes you to pick up the phone and ask a friend to tea or coffee, or decaf chai , or diet somethingorother and you will alternately look away and gaze intently in the most precious encouragement we have. Face to face conversation. That is a moment worth savouring.

Love
Deborah

For the First Time: When Hope is Gone and Faith is Not Enough

Having put off writing this post for months now, it's time to bite the bullet and begin. It's interesting to be a mid boomer in this day and age. I remember when the world was shocked by the Newlywed Game because , as comedian David Steinberg noted in one of his routines at the time, a couple was willing to tell their innermost secrets on national television for a set of Samsonite Luggage.



Yet here we are in the age of reality TV choosing between The Bachelor or the Amazing Race. And I , having to confess on the webernet I fully intend to watch both of them to their conclusion and am embarrassed to have gotten caught up in it all.



Thus it is, I'm torn between the desire to offer people real encouragement in these difficult times via the no-boundaries, techno-communication dynasty, or keeping my privacy. But these are hard times. And even one voice more to offer Hope is needed in a time when so many are clinging to the days by a thread that feels like it is breaking twine by twine.



I just want to tell you... there's always Hope. You just have to believe it. Maybe you are going through a terrible medical, financial or family crisis right now.



I've been there. And I can tell you for sure, it's never as bad as it seems and it always turns out better than you think it will.



There's always Hope.



Maybe you've just lost a job or a loved one or your home or a pet or all of it at the same time.

I've been there. I can tell you time will pass and the pain will become more dull and you will function better. There is always Hope.

Cling to the fantasy of something better. Losses are lived around, or in spite, of or through whatever or whoever is not there anymore. Maybe the hole doesn't close. If it's someone you love that you lost, maybe the hole isn't supposed to close. If it's a thing or an experience, maybe it's gone forever.



But there is always Hope.



Just keep going through the motions of life as best you can. Just keep dreaming of what things would look like if you were in a better situation. Just keep working hard at all you can do as much as you can do.



There is always Hope. Breath that truth in. Hope is telling the odds to go take a hike.



Be there for yourself.



And Hope. Yes, it may be all you have. And it is enough to hold you up until the tide turns.

Blessings and Cheer

Love

Deborah