24/09/2013

Four Directions..


Do you ever feel like the guy on the table?  The one who has been hit with a rock and it has not only knocked you out but knocked some sense into you?  I feel this way often since being catapulted from Ontario to British Columbia so quickly.  I have now been here three months, that is 12 Sundays there-abouts.  Listening, watching and re-acting.  Hearing, seeing and advancing.  Some days it is painful and others it is glorious.  Much of my learning is steeped in First Nation's teachings and I am very aware of the "four directions".
This morning I looked out my office window and there it was.  The most beautiful rainbow .. So I ran and got my phone and started snapping pictures. It was so beautiful and seemed to glow right there. The end of it seemed to be focused on the church; the pot of gold is in the church.   I know that but how do I uncover the treasure that is here?  I am not sure. As I looked around I thought of the four directions and how each gives me a different view.  The mystery of the divine is so much like that.  Looks different every time you turn it over and see it from a different direction.

 It is here in these mountains I can see the mystery and hear her voice.  The spirit calls me to be faithful and true.  To look and see what is really there.  Peel back the layers and unveil the treasure there is to behold.  Buried deep under pain and scarring is the face of the child, that baby that comes to us each year in the manger.  A reminder that a baby changes everything.

Wham!  There is that rock, knocking me off my "know-it-all" pedestal.  Slamming me to the earth skinning my knees and breaking the soft skin of my hands.  But as I am there, on my knees looking up at this beauty I am reminded the sun will come out and I will see the way, if I just humble myself to watch and wait for it.  I turn a different direction and see the dark cloudy rain.  I turn once again and there is white fog and blue sky and it is then I turn back to the rainbow.  There it is, the promise of life yet to come, a pot of gold holding the treasures of divine love, a reminder that no matter what I am loved.


The old song from Annie, the sun will come out tomorrow is one that I will take with me into the winter of my existence.  The promise is that tomorrow is another day and if we have faith, hope and trust in something beyond us that creates rainbows and sunshine then there is always a reason to smile.

"Life does and will go on whether I fail at geometry or not" Anne of Green Gables.  It is our choice whether we welcome this life with all its warts or choose to reject it.  I choose to live and I choose to be happy and I choose to be faithful.  I also choose to look at the divine from all directions because some days one direction is easier to take than others.  That is what makes it so great.  We have choices...

Blessings my friends blessings ...


05/09/2013

torn between two worlds...

As I prepare for my morning walk, reading and surfing a little, I look at my favorite writers and bloggers.  It is here I find this:

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me
         cannot be my disciple.
         None of you can become my disciple
         if you do not give up all your possessions. 

                  —Luke 14. 27, 33

I am torn between two worlds.  The material, human world in which I live and work and the spiritual world in which I seek to be part of.  In adhering to this passage to those who claim to be disciples and followers and those who live in the material world I am a misfit.  I have given up all my possessions. I do not possess a need to cling to this human life.  I have moved into a spirit place where I live here but know there is more than we see. 

Being steeped so much in death that is not directly connected to me it gives me the opportunity to see from a distance.  I can see the grief and the lack of true spiritual trust.  When we trust this is only a temporary place then how can we be in despair when those we love move on?  Should we not be joyous on their behalf.  I have heard it said, "I am so sad for {the deceased}!"  How can we be sad for the dead?  

Giving up my possessions has freed me from this world, but not without a cost.  It is this cost I work with every day in order to do effective work.