Defiant Gratitude and William Bradford's "Epitapheum Meum"

William Bradford, perhaps the most well knows of all the English separatists to make the crazy trip across the Atlantic on the Mayflower in 1620, lives on at our Thanksgiving table every year.  Part of our tradition is to recite his poem, "Epitaphium Meum".  At one point the verse simply says:

"In fears and wants, through weal and woe, 

As pilgrim passed I to and fro..."

(Weal is an old English word for prosperity, happiness and well being.)

Pilgrimage is a theme that has captured my heart for a lifetime.  This idea of leaving behind an old life, venturing out on the uncharted, seeking a fit homeland for the breadth of one's deepest desires - and despising the pains and troubles to get there- this is the stuff of every great story.

Most people know about the hardships the first puritans endured to find a home wide enough to hold their greatest treasure: an unfettered relationship with Jesus Christ  These folks were tough.  They were weird by our modern cultural norms, but deeper and stronger that just about any American alive today.  They had something I keep thinking about, a rare and beautiful quality that makes these sojourners stand out in the dark landscape of history:

Defiant Gratitude. 

You've likely known a few of these types of folks in your lifetime.  They have not had easy lives.  The wilderness they have travelled - through addiction, loss, betrayal, heartache and a thousand other snares- has not suffered them to be resentful or bitter, but winsome and grateful.  Here in 2020, (a kind of crappy year by most modern standards), I long to leave my complaining behind and get a little closer to the attitude of my long-dead puritan brothers and sisters.  They, who in their first winter lost half their company to pestilence.  They, who were separated by an ocean (with no modern communication) from beloved family and friends in England and the Netherlands.  They, who despite all of those troubles and many more practiced defiant gratitude.

What are some simple ways defiant gratitude can play out?  

When self pity comes because this holiday season does not meet our expectations, we can blast the music and dance anyway while making the stuffing (my plan for tonite!)  

Write down 3 blessings in your life and rejoice over them.  

Tell someone you're thankful for them and why.

For my fellow pilgrims, followers of the One and Only, for us I pray a deep humility that will cause us to make gratitude a way of life.  We are always looking for God's will for us. Here it is in black and white:

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

For any of my dear friends who are not followers of Christ who may read these words, I pray heartily: be reconciled to God.  He is the Captain of  your Mayflower, ready to take you on a great pilgrimage to Himself - a land so broad and beautiful that it is impossible to put into puny words.  You only need step aboard the ship.  Nothing would fill my heart with more gratitude than to share this wild trek with you on the narrow road to the blessed heavenly homeland. Sinners like me, saved by grace, walk gratefully through the mountains and the valleys of this temporary territory.

Happiest of Thanksgivings! May it be will with your souls!  I've included the William Bradford's poem in its entirety below.  

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

LS

Epitaphium Meum

by William Bradford

From my years young in dayes of Youth,
God did make known to me his Truth,
And call'd me from my Native place
For to enjoy the Means of Grace.
In Wilderness he did me guide,
And in strange Lands for me provide.
In Fears and Wants, through Weal and Woe,
As Pilgrim past I to and fro:
Oft left of them whom I did trust;
How vain it is to rest on Dust!
A man of Sorrows I have been,
And many Changes I have seen.
Wars, Wants, Peace, Plenty have I known;
And some advanc'd, others thrown down.
The humble, poor, cheerful and glad;
Rich, discontent, sower and sad:
When Fears with Sorrows have been mixt,
Consolations came betwixt.
Faint not, poor Soul, in God still trust,
Fear not the things thou suffer must;
For, whom he loves he doth chastise,
And then all Tears wipes from their eyes.
Farewell, dear Children, whom I love,
Your better Father is above:
When I am gone, he can supply;
To him I leave you when I dye.
Fear him in Truth, walk in his Wayes,
And he will bless you all your dayes.
My dayes are spent, Old Age is come,
My Strength it fails, my Glass near run:
Now I will wait when work is done,
Untill my happy Change shall come,
When from my labours I shall rest
With Christ above for to be blest.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow...Finding the Truth in the Hot Minute

 “For what is your life?  It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”

~ James 4:14

In the vernacular, “you are here for a hot minute.”

If you’re 20, you don’t believe this, not really.  If you’re 60, you can sing Joni Mitchell’s The Circle Game song with earnestness.  “It won’t be long now, till you drag your feet just to slow the circles down...”

Partly because of the brief nature of human existence, it is impossible to get a larger view of life without outside help. People everywhere are grasping for some small bit of happiness in their minuscule time span.  Meaning and purpose are elusive when you look for them within your drop of mist, a drop that’s ironically on fire with rage, fear, violence and selfishness.  (The old fashioned, offensive word for all of this is Sin).  And when you look within yourself, the droplet within the drop, things are no better.

It is unpopular in this particular droplet of time to look to something ancient or large or most un-vapor like as a possible source of wisdom and practical help for the freaking mess we are in.  But many, many before us, those pre-modern, unsophisticated folks who managed to get far enough to keep the world populated, thought it wise to look outside of their mist bubble.  And though “we didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the world’s been turning” to quote Billy Joel, the majority of people in those unsophisticated times believed in something larger than themselves.  They attributed the ordered world to something or someone that was NOT them. And maybe because hauling water and chopping wood and manually editing a book with a pen made room for undistracted thought, it was easier for people to transcend their droplet and get a view of the wide wonder of it all.

Whatever the reason, the further we moderns seem to get away from validating anything thought or written before the 20th century, the worse our interior lives become.  There have always been sad people, suicidal people, anxious people, angry people.  But just look up the suicide rate graphs by year on the internet, and I’ll rest my case.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I am a follower of Jesus Christ, although a stumbling, bumbling one with a great deal of forgiven sin in my rear view mirror, including from this morning.  So you already know where I’m going with this.  We need something solid.  Something non-misty, something like a rock and refuge and lighthouse at the same time to navigate and understand our place in this long running story of here today, gone tomorrow. Or, better said, someONE.  It is absolutely critical that we put down our phones and go chop some wood or haul some water, or whatever it takes to stop being distracted long enough to grab hold of what’s true and lasting. We’re not meant to be spectators in the mist, tossed about in a meaningless fog until we die.  

When God in a jaw dropping display of humility sent Jesus to this sorry planet, just about every human being on earth believed in something bigger than themselves.  And knew something was wrong with the world. And with themselves.  They mostly feared some kind of god, because they saw the bigness and scariness and sublime beauty of the world they lived in.  Jesus shocked (and appalled) the people of 1st century Palestine by saying that he was indeed God, the exact representation of the Father, and that he cares about all the misty little creatures he thought up and created, and in fact loves them.  And He said there’s a solid place to stand, and He’s the solid place.  And then he proved His love by dying and taking all the sin of the misty world on Himself.  He actually became a mist.  But then the mist got back up out of the tomb.  And the world has never been the same hopeless place because hope became Someone solid if we would only believe it.

This truth has been relegated to fairy tales by many clever modern people. In the 21st century, education is the answer, funding is the answer, the answer is to be found in the midst of the mist. And we are free to believe the words of whosoever we choose in a vaporous world.  Freedom is the great gift of course, because without it love is impossible. And the whole point of this affair from God’s point of view is to love a people, and have that people love Him in return.  But that’s another post...

When Jesus rose from the dead, Thomas the disciple wasn’t there at His first appearance. But later, Jesus appeared again to His followers. And Thomas, who doubted the reality of the resurrection, was met with something solid, something outside himself, someONE made of flesh and blood that did not ultimately succumb to here today, gone tomorrow.  Christian tradition has it that Thomas was eventually martyred for his faith.  But not before he and a small group of others started a fire of love that is still changing mists like me thousands of years later. 

Find out what’s true in your hot minute.  It matters more than anything else.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

LS

A Call to the Banquet - Full Capacity Seating

We finally celebrated our daughter’s 25th birthday dinner last night.  Being born in April didn’t set her up well for a good time in 2020.  But steaks, salmon and special drinks were on the menu, along with wonderful conversation and sibling jabs.  It was strange though, and a little bit sad, not to have the place packed - not hearing the sounds of many voices delighting in the good food, delighting in one another, making the warm atmosphere of the room bright and bursting with the beautiful color of human celebration.  Restaurants are stuck at half capacity rules right now.

This morning I read the familiar parable Jesus told at a dinner party with some well to do religious folks, who as usual were watching him closely to catch him in a religious error.  He relayed the story of a man giving a large banquet.  He invited people who he knew - likely friends and relations in his wide circle.  One by one the folks gave excuses for not coming.  In today’s culture, the equivalent reasons might boil down to “I’ve got too much other stuff to do right now.   Let’s be practical, maybe when things slow down in my work/relationships/daily distractions.”  The man was miffed.  Imagine, you are putting on an extravaganza at no small expense, for people you know and love, and the invitation is met with a big fat NO.  “You’re not that important to me.  I’m not stopping my routine to celebrate with you.”

This man in the parable was exploding with generosity.  He was so anxious to share his abundance, that he had his servant go out to the streets and alleys of the city and invite every manner of person.  The “respectable, intelligent, elite” people turned him down.  So he opened the doors to the poor, blind, maimed, and crippled.  He invited the prostitutes, tax collectors, dingbats, swindlers, deadbeats and goofballs of every sort. He wanted to fill that elaborate ballroom with people.  He wanted to see people eat, drink, be merry, and generally flourish in every way.  And he wanted that banquet hall full of the rejoicing of people loved and forgiven who knew they didn’t deserve it.  He crammed them in, serving no doubt the best wine and the finest food, playing the best music and clothing them as they came in with clothes that would make the famous movie costumer Edith Head blush.

Jesus told parables to get at the truth.  He’s no respecter of persons.  The spiritual banquet of life with  Christ is offered to all.  Sadly, many turn Him down.  But His banquet hall is still filling up, despite what this “world with devil’s filled” (as Martin Luther penned), says or thinks. The penitent man greets the invitation with great gladness of heart.  And why wouldn’t he?  The invitation to have the rot of sin removed from our souls, to be promised the difficult but satisfying climb of sanctification in this life, and to share a relationship with the dearest, kindest and best the world has ever known... A man would have to be mad to refuse.

As for the Master, He is determined to fill his room, his LARGE room, with many. “Go out into the highways and hedges and make them come in, that my house may be filled.” (Luke 14:23).

Covid19, a world in unspeakable pain, the ugliest lies and divisions - none of these can stop the love of God.  He will have His beautiful banquet, and the restaurant will be at full capacity.  Bursting at the seams with life and joy.  No masks, no closed salad bars, no lack of any good thing.

The question is - the biggest question you’ll ever have to answer - is how will I respond to the invitation.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

LS

The Cosmic Tragedy of Social Distancing

“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got til’ it’s gone..” ~ Joni Mitchell

Its only been a few weeks for most of us.  Weeks without a chat over coffee with a friend, participation in a Sunday worship service with voices both angelic and creaky, Friday night tacos with our besties.  Being the resourceful creatures human beings are, we’ve come up with work-arounds for our isolation.  Face Time, Zoom, Webex - these have all helped, and I’m grateful for them.  I’ve spent the last 4 days using Bomgar to train hospital employees remotely, and I thank God for that.

But there is no substitute for presence.

Nothing takes the place of looking into the eyes of another soul and seeing the one-of-a-kind strokes of the Artist who made them.  There is no substitute for the live and in person voice of the quirky guy at the gym or the warm embrace of the folks at a support group, or the thousands of other simple daily vignettes of social intercourse.

I’ve learned very quickly how much I’ve taken presence for granted.  I myself am quarantined because of contact with a person testing positive for Covid19.  I’m no hard luck case for sure.  I live with family members, I can work from home.  I’m blessed.  But I miss the physical presence of others.  And it hasn’t even been a couple of weeks.

This strange time we’re living in has me thinking and praying in ways I haven’t before.  I look at Abraham in the bible, whittling away at God in a conversation about his nephew Lot, as he presses to see just how deep the mercy of God will actually go. Abraham is right in God’s face, boldly stepping closer with each question:  “Will you spare the city for the sake of 40 righteous people…30…20…10”.   Abraham didn’t stand stoically before a cold, distant deity, observing all the proprieties of servant and king.  Abraham boldly pleaded for his kinsmen, and the scriptures actually call him “a friend of God”.  The wicked city fell, but not before Lot and his family were ushered out of there in the most hurried move in history.  

Abraham did not practice social distancing with his God.  Neither did David, Isaiah, Daniel, and a whole host of lesser known saints sited in the pages of the wild and powerful word of life.  

The greatest tragedy of all, far more deadly than any foul microbe, is a life lived in isolation from the One who created us for Himself.  Here is God’s great sorrow.  He has made us for true presence with Him, and we have run from Him.  Or ignored Him. Or hated Him.  

In a herculean move of self abasement, this High King of all so desired our presence that He actually shed His kingly garments in exchange for the soiled robes of men. He himself took on our weakness.  And He did what only He could do: He destroyed the pestilence that keeps us apart.  He himself became the remedy and antidote for the killer with a 100% death rate.  Sin.  

The Gospel is the beautiful breakthrough that saves the world from the disease which none of us can escape.  The heart of God is broken.  He seeks for people who will talk to him, listen to Him, come to Him for life and deliverance.  There is no substitute for life with our Father.  

The Covid19 pandemic has become for me a metaphor and a grace.  It has forced me to look at my own spiritual complacency, made me far more grateful, and caused me to become a little bit more like Abraham.  Every day I desperately need the intimacy with my Father that I was born for.  And what’s more, I can approach Him without shame despite my sin and weakness.  Because I’ve taken the cure - faith in the death and resurrection of the Son of God, who “loved us, and gave Himself for us.”

I am praying that brilliant and resourceful people will find a way through this twilight zone we are living in.  I look forward to baseball, dinner in a restaurant and getting my hair cut again.  But my greatest prayer is that this social distancing will cause the world to seek the One whose heart longs for fellowship with us - and not from a distance.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

A Painful Awakening...

The recently passed abortion expansion law in the great state of New York has become a resounding wake up call to the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

In our drowsy fog of living just like the rest of the world, we have missed a gigantic swarm of locusts that came through and looted our homeland.  The lives of the children of our legacy, and the hearts and souls of their mothers have been summarily stripped of worth, breath and dignity.  And we were caught with our pants down.

So now, what do we do?  Shall we keep quiet and hunker down fearfully as the majority did in 20th century Germany while 6 million people cried out  for their neighbors to come and rescue them?  Shall we be complicit by thinking it’s enough that we are not directly involved in the sin, like free northerners in pre civil war America, who ignored the curse of slavery that existed south of their back yard? Shall we say as Cain did to the Almighty, “Am I my brothers keeper?”

The Reproductive Health Act, despite it’s euphemistic name, allows for a human fetus to be destroyed at the will of their mother and at the hands of those sworn only to heal, up to the very day they could be born.  The law allows for the termination of a pregnancy up to the ninth month of gestation if the health of the mother is at risk - including her mental health.  The law is written so broadly, that in the recent case of a pregnant woman murdered by her boyfriend in New York City, the attorney could not find any legal statute to allow for a second count of murder for the life of the unborn child.

I have searched my own heart, and stand convicted of cowardice.  I have feared the opinion of man.  Many intelligent, educated and sophisticated people look on pro-life folks as ignorant, back-woods meddlers who need to mind their own business and keep their hands off the rights of women.  I don’t want to be thought of as a stupid.  I don’t want to be viewed as opposing freedom.  So I shuffle around on the sides of the issue, and sit on the sidelines, to my shame and regret.

Now too, I have met and talked with several women who have had abortions.  The exceedingly painful wounds they bear are held in the shadows of their hearts.  The deception of the promise that abortion would be a clean, easy way to solve a big problem has left them decimated and traumatized.  There is no reversal option, no going back to make the decision differently.  Having had the right to terminate their pregnancy does not solve the problem of a lifetime of emotional pain.

Though few people will read these words, they are written for my brothers and sisters in Christ.  We are the ones who must act, in whatever way the Spirit of the Living God calls us.  For some, it will mean prayer walks at abortion clinics.  For some, adoption or foster care.  For others, meeting the tangible needs of a single mother. Some will weep with and bring the good news of the beautiful gospel of forgiveness to women who have had abortions. Those with great wealth or influence can levy those gifts to open the eyes of a nation.  Whatever we are called to do, it must be done in faith, and with relentless prayer and the right heart.  

I wavered over publishing this blog, because in general I don’t believe social media is the place to change hearts and minds.  In this case, it’s more about me coming out of the shadows of my own pride, and asking the church to do the same.  Those who disagree with us are also made in the image of God, and should be treated with dignity and kindness.  But stand we must, and be willing to be thought of as fools.  

Your friend on the pilgrim road, 

Loriann Smith

Why Social Media is the Drive-By Killer of Reasoned Discourse

True: Social Media is an excellent forum for expressing your opinion in 30 second sound bites.

False: Social media provides a sound platform for intelligent, thoughtful discourse to impact the hearts and minds of those who engage there.

I wasted a significant amount of time during my brief sojourn here on planet earth last night.  Unfocused and tired, I made the mistake of scrolling through my Facebook account.  The onslaught of what I saw later disturbed my already rocky middle aged sleep.  

Most people would consider me a social media amateur.  (I’m still trying to figure out my iPhone for crying out loud).  It is rare that I post anything at all on Facebook, and even more rare that I would post my opinion on politics.  So my insights here, for what they are worth, are coming from a place of observation of a world to which I confess l have limited understanding.

Last week, another terrible, heart shattering tragedy pummeled the American soul.  The darkness of a fragile, fallen world once again came out from under the thin veneer of civilization and tore and brutalized the flesh and bone of our corporate body as people sharing a nation.

Instead of inspiring words of comfort and shared sorrow and even thoughtful disagreement on causes and cures, this reckless evil has spread its tentacles to foster some really hateful and barbaric speech by way of social media.  My poor choice to scroll through the projection of our cultural climate left me drained and discouraged.  And not one bit more enlightened in one way or another on gun control, mental illness or political solutions.  

I am blessed to have friends of many political persuasions, people I know, like and even hold dear.  Reading the vitriolic language of some of their Facebook posts (from both conservative and liberal bents) got me to consider.  I know these folks.  It would be impossible to paint them with a single brush.  While perhaps disagreeing with them on some important issues, these are people who would buy me a sandwich, or who I would share a laugh with about some stupid thing my cat did, or whose loved one’s funeral I would attend.  These are real, multifaceted, made-in-the-image-God folks…My life is better for knowing them.

But here, in the techno created bubble of social media, if these folks didn’t know me personally, they would be expressing words of hatred toward me.  I would be lumped into a category (into which I don’t fit for either side).  

I am unashamedly Pro Life.  But does anyone who knows me really think that I “care more about children in the womb than those already born?”  

I am also Pro Gun-Control.  But does anyone who knows me think I want to take away all of their constitutional rights?  

At the same time when I read the vitriolic words from some, I find myself saying, “They can’t possibly mean to say it like that…I know these people.”

God Lord, it’s a mess out there.  The single brush stroke is wrecking civility, kindness, and any hope of understanding one another and actually listening to what other people have to say.  Martin Luther King Jr. put it well:

“Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.” 

The last thing I’m trying to say here is that people should not have and communicate the force of their convictions.  I’d go to the mat for the things I think really matter.  But my point breaks out into two parts:

• Social media is hardly ever the appropriate place, at least not as it is today, for thoughtful dialogue on important matters where a change of heart is sought.  (There are rare exceptions, like the case of Megan Phelps-Roper.  Her engagement with caring, thoughtful people through Twitter eventually resulted in her brave departure from the Westboro Baptist Church.)

• No one will ever change their mind about anything unless they feel heard and respected by those with whom they debate.  Assuming a person is your enemy, and that they are a bad person because they don’t share your opinion will not bring about what we are all hoping for: A culture of civility and tolerance, understanding and reasoned disagreement.

What I learned last night was to quit phone scrolling on Facebook for 2 reasons: It’s a waste of time, and I’m not up to the assault.

Social media is the drive-by killer of reasoned social discourse.

I do, however, love the posts with kittens, puppies and babies.

Your friend on the pilgrim road.

LS

The Power of the One

An overarching theme revealed itself on the last night of a week of prayer at my beloved little church in the suburbs.  Emerging there, in the pile of our own repentance, in the  intercession for sick people, sad people, lost people, nations at war, and restoration from the vast wreckage of the fallout of sin came the simple truth of the power of the One.

I’m betting that most folks are like me in feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of need in our own cities and towns, let alone the wide world.  Between the distraction of never ending “noise” from the technology that is drowning us, and the pressure on our time to simply do the everyday things that sustain us, we’re about at max capacity.  Looking at the needs “out there” can lead to practical paralysis.  

But with the truth of the power of the One engaged, things can be different. They are different.  Here are 2 components of this truth that build on one another:

1. The One begins with Jesus Christ.  He is the example of this power at work, and the source of the power itself.  The Gospel (Good news, best news EVER) was and is preached to the many, but is given for the one.  Jesus is not like a pagan God, looking for the masses to hop-to and behave.  He is a Savior of each soul, a comforter to the one man, hearing the voice of a little girl in an impoverished home in India, and also the cry of the middle aged millionaire dogged and empty from an impoverished soul. Jesus looked into the eyes of the short man in the tree and said “Zacchaeus, I’m coming to your house today.”  Jesus sees us not as a mass of humanity, but each person as a unique, valued, priceless creation.  

        2.  Our callings are ultimately to the one.  Mother Theresa said this:

            “ Never worry about numbers.  Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.”

Mother Theresa ended up impacting millions, from the beggars on the streets of Bangladesh to leaders in the loftiest positions       in the world.  But her focus was never on the many, but the one.  Maybe you can’t provide for the refugee you see on TV behind a Turkish fence.  But maybe you can pay for the groceries in the cart of someone at Walmart who you know is struggling.  Maybe it’s in your wheelhouse to buy a homeless man a cup of coffee, and share a little conversation with him.  Perhaps you can’t stop the riots in Baltimore, but can you write a note of encouragement to a coworker who is struggling with her kids?   As Mother Theresa also said, “Do small things with great love.”

I cannot solve the problem of the age old racial divides conceived in the womb of America by the disgraceful sin of slavery.  But I can listen and try to understand a black person’s view of the world, as I did recently over snacks after a meeting I attended.  I can hear the one, even if the crushing sound of the many is too much for my limited soul.

I cannot cure the heartbreak of homelessness, nor the plagues of mental illness and addiction that often go with it.  But I can work the overnight at the code blue shelter, and sit on the cot while Erica tells me about her 2 beloved children, and my fellow volunteer bakes a warm banana bread in the oven for the ladies on a cold night.

There are thousands of things we cannot do: Cure government corruption, save every orphan, stop the railroading of distraction that is stealing the best of our young people.  

We are not God.  

He will one day wrap this thing up, fixing the ills that the mixed blessing of free will has made possible, turning every wrong right in one explosive healing that will rock all of heaven and earth.  He will do this, in the perfection of time.  

But for now, he calls us to Himself first, as the One.  Then, He calls us to show His mercy and grace to the one.

He has uniquely designed each person for this ministry to the one.  Frederick Buechner says it so much better than I ever could:

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

It may take you out of your comfort zone, but you may be shocked at the deep gladness you will find when you reach out to the one out of a heart of love.

My friend Katrina found this deep gladness, and she impacted the one…and beyond.

Her neighbor was severely injured in a rugby game, and became paralyzed  from the neck down.  His wife and then baby daughter were destined to visiting him for the rest of his life in a nursing home, since their small home was ill equipped for the great needs of a quadriplegic.  But Katrina wasn’t having it.  She approached a contractor to see if he might donate time and materials to build on a room in her neighbor’s home to accommodate his handicap.  He agreed, provided she would act as “boss”, getting other donations for electrical, plumbing, siding, materials etc…, and that she would run the job from start to finish.

Thus began the odyssey of a middle aged housewife and the power of the one.  With the grace of God as her fuel, this rather shy, unassuming woman lit the engine of the power of lots of ones to be the hands and feet of Christ on earth. Today, her neighbor has a special ceiling lift to move him around the brand new fully accommodating addition on his home.  He lives with his wife and daughter.  And though Katrina could not solve all the problems in this world, or even all the problems of her neighbor, she grabbed hold of the joy and work and victory that comes when the power of the one is harnessed.  

One word of warning:  Guilt is the wrong motivation for reaching out to the one.  Only love will do.  The apostle Paul said it - “If I give all I possess to the poor, and offer my body to be burned in the flames, but have not love, it profits me nothing…”  

Keep it simple and do it in love, or you risk becoming a self righteous, self oriented prig.  

But acts performed in simple love do stretch far beyond our limitations and really do change the world.

I recently attended a wedding where the bride waxed poetically about the many ones who had a part in making her who she is.  I close with a quote from her simple but profound speech…

“I grew up in a church that talked a lot about changing the world, being a “world changer”. At some point I started resenting that kind of pressure.  The truth is that most of us scraggly humans on the face of this planet are not Martin Luther’s or Mother Theresa’s.  We have a limited circle of influence constructed by propinquity and scattershot occurrences, so our world-changing, at the end of the day, consists of how well and how hard we loved those people standing with us or crossing our paths for these minute slices of time.  It’s like that story about the little boy picking up and throwing starfish stranded on the sand back into the ocean as the tide goes in.  A man says to him, “You’re not making a difference” and the boy replies, “I’m making a difference to this one”.

~ Micaela Martinez 

Be the one, to the one, for the glory of The One.

Your friend on the pilgrim road.

2016: Another Year of Meaningful Mist in the Books

January of 2016 rolled out of its fresh hay much differently than December of that same year tucked itself away forever to sleep, the stuff of memories alone.  Just goes to highlight the ancient truth: 

James 4:14  “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

In the life of this middle aged woman, the wind blew warm from the south as the year 2016 began, never letting on that there would be a hurricane lasting from spring to fall, followed by the uncertainty of an unforcastable winter.  Surely, living is fraught with unforeseeable outcomes.  And the very fact that I used the word “fraught” uncovers the pessimist in me, that girl with the half empty glass.  One man’s “unforseeable outcome” is another man’s wild adventure.  As much as I would love to be the metaphorical  Magellan of the baby boom generation, alas I admit to being more the “bundled up in a blanket with a good book” sort, a reluctant pilgrim with the love of Christ pressing me onward through the fray.

If the wind hadn’t blow hard, I fear I would have become a spiritual couch potato, too easily satisfied, puffy with superficial religion.  I don’t like storms, but they batter the rocky coasts of our lazy, half conscious souls.  They wake us up (harshly, but with the kindness of a shot of narcan to a heroin addict).  Each year has a story to tell.  We wish for easy ones, God crafts good ones.  Good, as He defines good.  Lasting good.  Good that takes patience.

Adventure (if you want to call it that), challenge, an unpredictable road - these I have known well across the waters of 2016.  If I’ve learned anything from this 365 days “at sea”, it’s simply been more of what has been abundantly clear for a long time now - I’m not in control, God is, and best policy is to sidle close to Him as we roll over the waves of our days.  

I don’t think New Year’s resolutions are a bad idea, it’s just that they’ve never worked for me.  I gave up resolving  years ago.  Precisely because if I’ve gleaned anything from the fickle nature of our pass across the human landscape it is this: flexibility has to be maintained so the boat doesn’t break apart in the storm.  The only rule that applies (admittedly a 2 part rule) is to hear the voice of God and do it.  Some days He says “Be still and know that I am God.”  Other days he says “Run with endurance the race marked out for you”.  Both are true, all the time…but in the practical day to day of a year's orbit around the sun, it takes listening and doing to find our way.

So if I had “resolutions” for the new year, I guess they would be listen and live it.  Listening comes first, and should be emphasized more.  Most of us followers of The Way get ourselves bolloxed up with doing this and that “for God” without really knowing Him for himself, and what the heck He wants us to do after all.  And really, what He most wants are not our works, but our selves.  That’s the whole point of the years and days and seasons we’re living anyway.  This cosmic relationship thing is the point of it all.  Every calm, every storm, every providential happening in the life of one of His own is a funnel to The Great Heart of Love.  All the unpredictability is completely predictable to Him, who “works all things together for the good of those who love Him…”

So if 2016 was a whirlwind, look at it in the light of eternity and give thanks.  Not for the pain, but for the process.  Perhaps 2017 will be a mild year.  Then again, maybe not.  Regardless, before you know it it will be one for the books.  Listen and live it.  Most of all, love like there’s no tomorrow. Because you “are a mist that appears for a little while…”  

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

A Happy, Broken Heart: The Balanced Life

"Rejoice with those who rejoice…sorrow with those who sorrow." Romans12:15

He told the story of his alcoholic son, clean and sober in this present, this gift of now, playing with his beloved granddaughter.  The pleasure of watching his child and his child’s child share a bowl of cereal filled W.’s eyes with tears of joy.  He had lived years of hell while alcoholism chipped away at his son’s life, but not today.  Today his recovering son was in relationship, and not with a bottle.  I could barely contain the lump in my throat, so great was the joy in my heart as I listened to this man in his 70’s spill his happy words.  I rejoiced with one who rejoiced.  This was a gift.  A gladness not linked to my own current circumstantial pain, but a true, deep down joy.  I was experiencing something outside myself, a pure emotion of happiness that surprised me, delighted me, made me want more…

Social media is bubbling over right now with bittersweet photos of fresh, young college students packing bags, hugging parents, and setting out for school and dreams and a future.  Mom’s post their happy/sad pictures of kids waving goodbye, playing one last game of cards, packing their cars.  I crack a little, counting losses that I have experienced, missing the rejoicing that can be mine.  Self pity begs entry, looking for a way to keep me from the balanced life of Romans 12:15.  Today, I refuse to let the monster in.

I think of my dear friend who lost her first-born son at the tender age of 13.  Another with a disabled child who will never wave goodbye for a dorm, but to whom she must wave goodbye for a special supervised group home for the severely disabled.  My own daughter bends under the affliction of a traumatic brain injury, and the ripple effect of battling her own demons.  Making it through another day is newsworthy. But we don’t post these things on Facebook.  Some are not buying books, but buying time, sick with cancer, sick with addiction, sick of mind, sick in body, sick and tired.  The tentacles of grief threaten.  I pray for strength  to comfort, to console, to lament in a healthy way.  To hurt but also to heal.  

It seems strange, these bedfellows of rejoicing and sorrowing, both alive in my happy, broken heart.  

The beautiful, the hard, the ugly and the sweet, all these are part of the landscape of a whole life.  Jesus loved a good meal with His friends, and agonized under the burden of the rejection of all His friends.  He rejoiced at a wedding and wept at a grave.  He experienced the full range of human emotion, unfiltered and full on.  He did not turn to chemicals, people, food, sex, tv, video games, gambling, or the ten thousand other distractions, numbing agents or addictions to dull the pain or artificially increase the pleasures of life.  He lived in perfect balance, rejoicing with those who rejoiced, sorrowing with those who sorrow.

He still does so today.  How glad must His heart be to watch as a proud Father when a young man or woman strides into their future, full of hope and promise?  How glad I can find myself, rejoicing for my friends whose children are blessed with such possibilities!  What a terrible loss, if hell can hold heaven hostage because we cannot sing in the choir of another’s happy day.

And how too must we remember in our rejoicing the sad ones among us.  To send flowers,remembering one lost…to call with a memory…to bring a joke with a pie: to be like St. Francis who prayed: “grant that I may not seek so much to be consoled as to console”. 

The balanced life of Christ is the example.  As usual, His great word lays out the simple but difficult path for a life of love.  A trail marked with both light and shadow.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

The Right Orbit

What is the center of your life...the gravitational pull, the object of your affections, the Sun of your orbit?

It's a tooth and nail fight not to close ranks and duck and cover in an often cold and unmanageable world.  Billy Joel once lyricized: "I've found that just surviving is a noble fight."  Most of us spend a great deal of our time trying to stay zipped up, put together and armored to go through our days in one psychological piece.  The self-centeredness of the human condition in general has collided with an age of unprecedented self orientation. A phenomenal host of technologies assist mankind in the quest to keep itself isolated from pain.  (I am, of course, exhibit A...binge watching Netflix in utter avoidance of actually facing down the  Spector of my own fears.)

Self must be protected at all costs.  Hence the palpable misery of a human race in orbit around itself.

Jesus, in His typical, humble way, demonstrates the way to joy, a way radically at odds with a cultural  constellation of self.

At the aptly named Last Supper, the last one He would ever celebrate on the Earth He formed, the One and Only does the unthinkable.  Knowing he'll soon be dead, (and getting to death in the worst possible way), Jesus is looking down the barrel at being separated from everyone and everything dear to Him.  It is then He blows our minds with this counter cultural attitude and action:  He turns His gaze outward.

He holds the flat bread in his hands, food born of the wheat and water He created with a word, and breaks it apart to share.  In a stroke of profound and baffling symbolism, Jesus breaks the bread and says "This is my body...".

Nobody got it.  Lots of us still don't really get it in a "sophisticated" modern world.

Nobody understood as He served them the broken pieces of the staff of life that this symbol in this moment was about the ultimate breaking; the cosmic opposite of self centeredness - a most beautiful example of humility and grace.

This man was about to give it all, not only to the motley crew at his first century table, but to every lost an broken soul the world had ever known or would ever know. Everyone, everywhere, in every time.

This example of selflessness is the GPS coordinate for the change that brings fulfillment and life.  It is not without pain, an it doesn't enhance profit.  It's costly.  But it does deliver on its promise to satisfy our surly, self orbiting souls. To live is to follow the simple commandment, the 2 for the price of 1 that brings balance and right orientation: Love the Lord our God (the center) with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.  And to love our neighbor as ourself.

I'm praying to find my way, one day at a time, to the kind of outward orientation that produces true gain.  There's only One Savior, and only His great breaking brings salvation.  But we as His current "motley crew" of followers are indeed called to lives of outward orientation and joy.  Just surviving may indeed be a noble fight, but it's not enough for the People of The Way.  If we're healthy, we long for an abundant life, marked by small, consistent, purposeful, daily acts and attitudes of sacrificial love.

Planets orbit around the Sun: large, powerful, greatly beyond themselves.  They circle a star that provides life, light, warmth and the perfect gravitational orientation.  They don't take their orbit around each other, or a satellite, or a meteor.

Neither ought we.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann