Tomorrow is Easter.  What Easter means to you or to me is as unique as each one of us is. Think of the world of individuals – every being, every solitary thought, every experience, every action. Uniquely perceived and perceiving.  Easter has just that many meanings!  That we are able to come to any sense of agreement or harmony about any thing is miraculous and hints at our capacity to transcend our limitations – to die to one way of being, to arise to a new way.  To surrender, to let go, to start over; to go beyond our boundaries to our possibilities. We reach to one another again and again, reaching past our hurt and suffering and fear. Each time we reach, we discover love.  We grow astonishingly beautiful, love-ly. We re-enact our Easter in each unfolding moment of time, all the days that we are given. We are the verb "Easter."

 From “The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, we hear these Easter words:

Love people even in their sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth.  Love all of God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

May your Easter be one of new life, new love, loving action ....

Easter is approaching and with its annual return come so many memories.  When I was about 5 years old, my parents got a movie camera for recording on film all the memorable moments in the life of our family - birthdays, Christmas, Easter, family vacations, school events.  One Easter after another was captured for all time – brightly colored eggs and egg hunts, chocolate bunnies, baskets full of jelly beans and yellow marshmallow chicks. After finding all the eggs and lining up our baskets on a table, my brother and I danced around our living room in our bathrobes, singing to our new fuzzy stuffed rabbits.  Nearly the same the next year –  baskets, colored eggs, chocolate bunnies, new bathrobes, dancing and singing, and with mom's help, our baby brother toddling along with us.

Our family carried these traditions over year after year.  When we married, my brother and I incorporated them into our own families, creating new memories with our children.  One year our friend, Wendy, gave my daughters a beautifully illustrated copy of “The Velveteen Rabbit” and reading this story together became part of our Easter rituals.  The story is as well loved as is the velveteen rabbit himself.  The truths of the story still make me tear up; the simple words are profound.  When the Velveteen Rabbit asks the Skin Horse, “what is real?” the Skin Horse’s answer conveys a message of grace, reflective of the grace-filled Easter message. 

       “Real isn’t how you are made. It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real…..It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand…..Once you are real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

For me this is the story of our own transformation. It is the annual good news that we celebrate at Easter. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, we don't know who we are. Over time, we learn and become more than our mere humanness. We become Real. At the Easter of Jesus, the human being died and rose to life as the Christ; in his own being, through his own experience, showing us the way. We die to the limitations of our humanness and rise to the truth of our divine nature, created in the image of God. It is not something that either is or is not, nor is it something that happens at the end of life, it is a becoming happening through all of life’s events and situations. Sometimes it takes a long time to see it as it is unfolding. But once we see it and know it, it can never be taken from us. While we live in human form, and we come to know how much we are loved by God and how much we are Love, we become more Real, more Christ-like, more Love in expression, more congruent with our eternal nature.

Blessed Easter!

Saturday was my birthday. Outside it was very cold and snow fell all day. Inside we were cozy warm, watching the snowfall, while my daughter prepared a delicious meal. Friends and family called or stopped by or sent cards. I thought of celebrations past – birthdays, Christmases, graduations, weddings, family reunions – with gratitude, some sadness, many smiles. 

 
One very treasured memory is set just before Christmas when I was 11 years old.  In St. Louis, the downtown Lutheran Mission provided after school care, food and clothing for inner city children.  My parents were regular contributors and Dad often stopped by to visit with the children and Anna, the very old and sweet director of the program.  This particular year, Dad was to be gone on a business trip for a week.  A few weeks before he left, Dad had gotten from Anna, the first names and ages of every child enrolled at the Mission, and had sworn Anna to secrecy.  Mom and Dad bought gloves for the older children, mittens for the little ones.  We spread them all out on our dining room table.  While Dad was away my brothers and I made gift cards that we thought each child would like, from old greeting cards. We cut out shapes of trees and stars and angels and put each name on a card.  We wrapped every pair of gloves and mittens, attached the cards.  We were filled with wondering about each child.  What would they look like, would they be like, where did they live, who else was in their family?

By the time Dad got back home, we were ready.  Every gift was wrapped and labeled and overflowing a large box. On the appointed night we piled into the car and headed for the riverfront section of town. With crumbling warehouses and tenements, empty buildings, small grocery stores, streetcars and buses, it was a scary place. Here was the Mission. A single wooden door led into a small darkened room lighted only by a tall fragrant tree covered with decorations and tinsel. The children stood in front of the tree, waiting. Anna welcomed us and told us that the children had prepared a surprise for us.  And then they began. Every child sang softly, angelically. An older boy read the story of the birth of Jesus. Together we all sang more beautiful Christmas hymns and secular songs. Tears were streaming down my cheeks and the room seemed magically warm and bright and lovely. They had baked cookies for us and brought out tall pitchers of milk. I was overcome with so many feelings – connection and oneness, joy, humbleness. Our gift was greeted with so much love which seemed a far greater gift than a pair of mittens.  I was immensely touched.  Years later I understood the enormity of the gift my parents gave to my brothers and me. From the idea to its conclusion Mom and Dad were teaching us how to see.  How to meet another being right where he or she is.  Not only how to give but how to be equal.  How to be given to from a generous heart, how to receive from a grateful one.  For me, I think this was the best Christmas ever.

The birthday project is my way of remembering. Long before the day of my birth and long after I’m gone, there was and there will be, someone else having a birthday.  Someone will be happy, someone will grieve. Someone will have a cozy home and family, someone will be alone.  Someone will be hungry.  Someone will be lost.  Someone will have a great need.  Someone will be afraid.  When I remember how to see, how to be equal, how to be one, I will know how to respond.  Today I'm seeing with gratitude.  I’m thankful for my Mom and Dad who gave me life and taught me to see.  I’m grateful for another day to practice the birthday project.
                                  *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Only a few more days to plan, shop, surprise your loved one. If only it were that simple! And why confine expressive loving to one special day? Is not love magic everywhere, everyday? Ask and you shall receive a range of answers fitting one's age and perception. 




Tune into most any current movie, lovesong, TV show and you will find abundant passion, lust, crazy love, unrequited love and lots of drama!  This week's episode of The Bachelor was recorded in the Black Hills, the Badlands and Deadwood, SD.  It epitomizes and exaggerates the actions of young people on the prowl for a mate.  Hopefully it is not a universal representation of everyone in this phase of life.  I like to believe that most of us have some well founded values, some sensibilities, some means of choosing that are genuine and that lead beyond infatuation to lasting love.  

Do you remember yourself at this age and stage? So young, so intense, so certain, so believing happily ever after with this one soulmate.  And so uniformed and inexperienced in real love that is not eg0-centric. 
Sammy Cahn tells us in the lyrics of "The Second Time Around" that - love like youth is wasted on the young.  But if the flirtation, the infatuation, the physical intimacy did not contain some truth and an awakening of possibilities, our species would be extinct! Young love is a requirement in our life cycle.

In "Fiddler on a Roof" Tevye asks - and persists in asking - his wife of 25 years, Golde: "Do you love me?" Golde replies with a list of all that she has done to prove she must love him: cooked his food, cleaned his house, gave him children, milked his cows, washed his clothes. And still he asks, "But do you love me?"
At last, in this stage of loving, he is asking all the right questions! This is the turning point, the mid-life crisis. What does all of this mean? How do you feel? The emphasis clearly is shifting from me to you to us. Here the road branches, the answers determine the way forward. This stage is also required in our love life cycle.

Rufus Wainright adds some lines to Leonard Cohen's original song "Hallelujah": love is not a victory march, it's a cold and a broken hallelujah.  Truly the real work of love entails brokenness.  We come to see ourselves and our beloved as the flawed and broken beings that we are.  At the same time, we come to know the valiant attempts we each make to be more than our broken selves.  To draw on strength that we didn't know we had. To be wounded and to heal. To wait when we don't know why or what the outcome will be. To stop keeping score. To be kind. Our human love is always conditional; unconditional love is God's gift, not ours.  But we strive to attain it in our living with one another.  It helps us begin another day .... and another.  

As we surrender to our humanness and frailty, our rawness, our selves that we hide from, we may grow into the beauty of deep, mature love. We may discover the true purpose of love, relationships, all the essential cycles of our love life: 

           "in streams of light I clearly saw the dust you seldom see,
            out of which the Nameless makes a Name for one like me.....
                     when I came back from where I'd been, my room it looked the same, 
                     but there was nothing left between the Nameless and the Name."
                                                       -L. Cohen, Love Itself

These days between Christmas and the first day of the new year – the two big events of the season - are special in their own right.  What could we call them?  Today we are suspended midway between.  I’m calling these days the thread of Epiphany.

Here on the northern plains it is cold and still. Snow covers the landscape, stars twinkle in clear skies, a sliver of a moon makes its way along its unseen path. All is as it has been since the beginning of time.  As in our own individual lives, seasons, years, decades all begin and come to a close. No matter the number of years we have been here, we are each part of the ebb and flow, the beginnings and endings. Many of the aspects of these eternal movements are obvious and predictable; other, more subtle, are felt rather than seen and may not seem so consistent.

Today I’m remembering all those I have known. As each person and every experience comes to mind, I recognize that each and every has shown me a facet of Love’s Presence. From our very first breath to our final one, we exist because of Love.  We receive love, we give love, we seek love, we misunderstand love.  Sometimes love seems mysterious, full and magnificent, all-in-all. At other times it seems absent, hurtful, difficult, non-existent. No matter our perception of it, Love’s Presence inhabits the world, keeps it going, never gives up nor goes away. Love’s Presence embraces us, sustains us, guides us. We, every one of us along with the Holy Child, embody Love.  It is the reason we are here.

This is the common thread found in these days between, in every season and cycle, in every breath, in every life. Perhaps here in the stillness of the between times, we may recapture the glory of Love, find it’s ever present thread, and celebrate our Epiphany.


                                            O O O O O O O O O O O O

Behold, the Light cometh

Advent begins and Christians around the world wait.  Hanukkah arrives and Jews practice ancient rituals of prayer and song and remembering. Buddhists turn to mindful silence. Muslims bow in reverence.  All over the globe humans turn to sustaining practices to make sense of life, to find meaning in chaos, to have a reason to continue when all around is violence and pain. Darkness threatens and, hungrily, we seek a shred of Light. When we find the Light, we repent, which means to turn around, from the darkness. We embody the Light, we share the Light, we become the Light.

We are not comfortable living in darkness.  We are afraid and lonely. Without the Light, we grow sick and weak and very sad.  The Light compels all creatures, all plants and animals, every living thing to Live!  To renew, to reproduce, to give life to others.  To share hope, abundance, kindness, fortitude.  To repair, rebuild, to welcome. To reach beyond our smallness and sustain the Life in which all the days of our single lives abide.

Behold the Light has come.  Let it Be…..

 
                                          O    O    O    O    O    O    O    O    O

Honey Winds

I really loved folk music of the 60’s and 70’s – still do. Often a phrase or melody from a favorite artist will come creeping, then insisting its way into my head, and I try to remember the entire song.  Thanks to Pandora radio, it’s easy to go back in time to rediscover my favorite music. The Brothers Four with their impeccable chording and timing, their mellow harmonies, gave us “The Honey Wind Blows.”

                             The honey wind blows and the warm days dwindle
                             the butterfly spins a silk cocoon on a silvery spindle
                             the petals fall from the last red rose, the last red rose
                             when the honey wind blows....
                                  The petals fall and the summer goes, the summer goes
                             when the honey wind blows….

                                          The honey wind blows and the days grow colder
                                          somehow the world and I have grown just a little bit older
                                          I sit alone where the fire glows, the fire glows
                                          and the honey wind blows….
                                                I sit alone and the good Lord knows, I miss you so
                                          when the honey wind blows….

The honey winds of autumn are blowing across the prairies and in the Black Hills.  My garden is still producing chard, lettuce, parsley and strawberries. The roses still bloom along with bee balm, Echinacea, black eyed susans, Russian sage, lupine, yarrow, marigolds, and cosmos. 

Green leaves still rise from the bulbs of hyacinths, lilies, iris and star of Bethlehem reminding me that they will bloom again next spring. Ground covers are turning from green to rusty red.  I’m proud of all this color and variety since just a year ago, my yard was grass and weeds and overgrown shrubs.  I met many new neighbors as I dug and planted and mulched all spring and summer. Some gave me plants and gardening stories; some helped trim the shrubs and haul away the brush; others stopped to meet and greet.  I’m resting from all that work now, enjoying the fruits of my labor and anticipating the exponential increase in abundance that will appear next spring.

Now the honey winds are urging me to freeze produce, to bake breads and make soups.  Flannel sheets and wool blankets are on the beds, some of the windows are washed, Sophie and I walk a little faster in the chilly air. Dry leaves blow down the streets, trees are a riot of glorious color! I love autumn and yet, the anticipation of what is to come that urges the flurry of preparation, also brings melancholy about all that is ending.  Autumn is a turning inward time. A quietness is descending. Autumn is a pause. It is filled with as much love and life as is spring with its newness and summer with its abundance.  Having given away its fullness, autumn is an empty basket, waiting.
                     
                        May you welcome the empty basket of autumn so that you may be filled!


© 5 october 2014