Sometimes your ankles itch and you can't do a single thing about it except to accept it and ignore it. As I sit here mildly mindful of an itchy ankle I realize how fortunate how I am for all the links in my life. Good morning gentle readers! Three links in particular have mattered the most to me in this last week.
FAITH
A rather expansive understanding of this link that joins me to God and to neighbor. I know many would say I am talking about love, but faith is the seedbed for fruitful and verdant love. One can love without faith, but your love ought to be experienced differently because of your faith. Faith opens love up to a more broad horizon of love, an expansive reality that awakens to a connection with God and others that is real and beyond just shared sentimentality (what the world typically substitutes for faith - the Gospel of this is what I feel and that is all that matters) and conceptual agreement which is the other half of shared sentimentality for those not into living a life of emotional obsession. It is shared agreement on statements of belief and of mutual and complimentary perspectives, a tad on the dry side of living.
Faith - to be aware of the subtle movements of God and others in my life. There is shared feelings, conceptual agreement and a deeper realization that there is something under it all joining us to God and to neighbor. Call it the Numinous, the Mysterium or the elusive truth that takes us to the threshold of appreciation but forbids entrance into complete knowledge so that don't tempt ourselves with desires to control. The Nameless will not bow to our will but rather invites us to trust Him as the deliverer from slavery and the provider of a promised land. Faith has been foundational these last few days, an awareness of God, a deep gratitude for so many neighbors and a trust yielding to the realities that shape my life. I am humbled by my body, probably in ways that I speak about too freely, and humbled by the faith that washes over me on a constant basis. It is one of those things that brings you to tears when you realize how overwhelming it all is. You feel unworthy in ways that are difficult to express. No pedestals for the living, but there is immense room if you accept your place among the lowly.
TECHNOLOGY
It is easy to malign technology because many substitute it for faith. We give much more time and self (something God is actually interested in receiving from us) to technology in the form of phones, computers and other devices that fill our lives. We invest so much emotional security in having it working and accessible all the time. I am thankful for the the phone that made my Sunday less frightening and the laptop that allows me to connect with my ordinary life. I am thankful for the medial technology that will help me return to a eventual normalcy in life. I would be contemplating my life as one bound to a wheelchair the rest of my life if the medical technology did not exist to fix my legs. Technology is a gift that exists to each age and is proper to each culture. I am so very thankful for the time and place I live that such amazing links are available in my life. I am thankful that my future hopes are far greater than they be fifty years ago. Technology is the fire that enlightens our days or burns our life, it is all in how it is used. I am thankful for the links it provides me on a daily basis.
CURBELL MEDICAL CALL DEVICE
I know this is a continuation of the above, but that device pictured below is my link to the life beyond my room. It is my one means to summon assistance in my situation. I can do nothing beyond the reach of where I lay or where I slept. This device prompted the content of this post because I could not find it on my bed at 3 AM this morning. It had slipped off my bed but the cord was within reach with a little stretching and panic. Those few seconds I couldn't find it made me wonder I would have to start yelling out for the nurse or tech in the hopes that someone would hear me. Not something I was looking to do in my limited condition. This device not only alerts the staff, it controls the lights and the TV (something I have turned on only once to see about lighting or music options). The call alerts and light are what matter most to me. Especially the light when it is in the middle of the night. I didn't have to cry out to the staff and the problem was avoided. Light is pretty fundamental when you are in a dark room and looking for stuff.
Thanks for reading and thanks for all the prayers and love. I am so very blessed in my life even as I discern what that looks like on a day to day basis.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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Good morning, digital neighbors! Hey there, all you Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants & Lurkers, PHAM & Misfits, Questioners and Critical Thinkers, ADD Irregulars, WSN Curators, Curmudgeons & Curmudgeonesses! Blessed Sabbath to all the children of Abraham, and happy Saturday to all. I hope you had a great week wherever life finds you. Other than the broiling weather, it was a very good week here in the Ozarks.
As I have grown older, I have found my life transitioning from that of a night owl—one who often kept the midnight hour—to a vigil-keeper rising well before dawn to greet the new day. I think the hard switch came when I started caring for Mom in 2006 and returned to lighter sleeping habits that have never left me. I do miss late nights with friends; some of the best conversations happen when the day is behind you. Alcohol was always a crapshoot. While it might ease conversation, it is too easy to drift into the dumbs, and the conversation becomes far less...
XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
