Translating a World on the Edge

This is a repost from last July. I’m posting it again because I’ll be on vacation beneath this very same sunset until March 11, 2014. I will miss you, but stay tuned! And Happy Birthday to my daughter, Sheila! You are so Beautiful!

A logo is a graphic  mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition. In the nearly twenty years I spent running an advertising agency, I created many logos for businesses. Some of those logos are still around, on billboards, trucks, and some television ads. That’s either because the business they represented is still around, too, or because the logo worked well for the business.

If you were interested in promoting yourself and what you stand for–what would your personal logo look like? Would it be bold and brazen, or sedate and sentimental? What would the colors be, the text style, the graphic if there was one? What is it about you that lets other people know who you are?

Logos is a Greek word which means rational thought or reason. In the Bible, it is translated to mean ‘word’ or another name for Jesus.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ^]He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.–John 1:1-4

I would say the longest running logo, and most successful logo by far, is the Christian Cross.  Can you imagine how many times it has been inscribed into stone, or imprinted? How many pieces of jewelry have used it? How many books? How many T-shirts?

But a Christian does not need  to walk around in a T-shirt imprinted with a cross  in order for people to know who we are. Being  Christian  isn’t just a word that we apply to ourselves. Being a Christian requires actions, the actions that love promotes.

1 John 3:16-20, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”

We can apply many other emblems to ourselves because we are unique and there are many words that might describe us as individuals. But together we are one. We are Christians. And Love is our logo.

Are you a control freak? Do you like to be in charge of processes, endings, and outcomes? Well, I do.

As young children, we don’t have much control of what happens to us. Decisions are made by our parents, and we go along, or else. Of course, we’re likely to throw tantrums–because even young children like to have their own ‘dog’ in the fight.

And when we grow up, some of us leash that dog and yank him along with us. We become control freaks.

I’ve always had the suspicion that I might be this sort of person, but until I began editing my short story collection with the wonderful Joshua Hren of Wiseblood Books, I didn’t know the extent of my malady.

I like happy endings. I like things ‘tied up with a neat little bow.’ I can handle the problems, the sufferings, the excruciating decisions of my characters, but in the end I want all of those happenings to work out—and work out happily.

So am I hopeless, or what? When I write about life, between the lines is the presence of God. And God is goodness. So, why can’t my characters not only experience that goodness, but in the end, also find it themselves? In fact, why can’t every person find their happy ending on earth. Could it be because life on earth is not our true ending at all, but only a path or journey to genuine fullness?

Even as I write, I realize I’m being a ‘Pollyanna.’ Realistically, life doesn’t always proceed like that, and since I write about life, I have to accept the fact that no one has the ability to understand the marvelous, infinite mind of God or His intricate plan for each of us. God’s plan is one that takes into consideration far more than our earthly existence here. And when I try to control every little thing, when I put a choke-hold on the worst in an attempt to keep it from happening, or line my path with glitter from a man-made can, there is something very un-genuine occurring. I’m trying to control, instead of trusting God to control.

A few years ago, there was a popular saying: Let Go and Let God. In other words, take your hands off the wheel and let God drive. What this requires is Trust. And why not trust in God? After all, no one loves us more than He does.

Saint Valentine’s Day is a wonderful opportunity for us to show how much we care about those we love.

Children especially enjoy the holiday–cut out hearts, candy, school parties.

I remember when my mother was a “home room mother,” and she presented a word game for our class: How many other words can you make out of the letters in VALENTINE? The prize was a big chocolate heart wrapped in red cellophane paper–to me, it was beautiful and I wanted it–bad! I wanted to give it to my Daddy.

So I crunched down in my desk with pencil in hand. I made fifteen words from those letters, just one more than Ed, another seven year old. But when my mother saw that I had the most words, she whispered in my ear. “Sugar, Will you let Ed win?”

Ed was a quiet, skinny child being raised by his very old grandmother, whom he loved very much. She was the only family he had. No one knew where Ed’s parents were. He and his grandmother lived–as they said back then, on the ‘other side of the tracks.’ And they didn’t have much. He wore the same pair of pants everyday and only an occasional change of his shirt. Still, he was by far the smartest child in the class, almost always 100’s on his papers.

But give up the heart for Ed? Oh, what a decision! And my mother knew I didn’t want to make it. Then, my mother whispered, “He wants it for his grandmother, sugar.” Okay. Well, I wanted it for my daddy.  “And I do have another heart just like it at home, and it will be yours.” The deal-clincher.

So I watched Ed light up like a Fourth of July sparkler when it was announced that he won the prize. On the way home from school, my mother smiled at me and said I’d done just what Saint Valentine would have wanted me to do. Of course, I was out nothing, really–another heart waited for me at home. That night, after I gave the beautiful red cellophane wrapped gift to my Daddy, I pictured Ed and his old grandmother eating the other chocolate heart, the heart I’d won. And I thought a little bit about what loving someone really means.

Here’s a little history on St. Valentine.

We really don’t know how many St. Valentines there were. One opinion is that he was a Roman martyred for refusing to give up his Christian faith. Other historians hold that St. Valentine was a temple priest jailed for defiance during the reign of Claudius. Whoever he was, Valentine really existed because archaeologists have unearthed a Roman catacomb and an ancient church dedicated to Saint Valentine. In 496 AD Pope Gelasius marked February 14th as a celebration in honor of his martyrdom. (Catholic Online)

Although the mid-February holiday celebrating love and lovers remains wildly popular, the confusion over its origins led the Catholic Church, in 1969, to drop St. Valentine’s Day from the Roman calendar of official, worldwide Catholic feasts. (Those highly sought-after days are reserved for saints with more clear historical record. After all, the saints are real individuals for us to imitate.) Some parishes, however, observe the feast of St. Valentine. (americancatholic.org)

Happy Valentine to all those I love–especially, Pat, my son-in-law , whose birthday is today. And to  ‘Ed,’ who grew up to be a fine Jazz musician.

We all know something about creating, whether it be a meal, a flower garden, a painting, a book, or a ceramic vase. When we begin our creation of these things, they never appear as they will when they are finished.

The meal is at first just a bunch of ingredients on the countertop. The flower garden begins as a patch of grass or weeds that we must dig up in order to plant. The painting starts off as a canvas without color. The book is only an idea. The vase, a lump of clay.

We go through a lot of work putting these things into the form that we want them to be. We use our minds, our hearts, our hands–and it can be a struggle. But if we’re committed, we don’t give up. We keep our eyes on the end results, the beauty of our finished creation.

The is the way God works, too. We begin as a thought in the mind of God. He brings us into being, and tends us, never separating from us—though we can, and often do, separate from Him. He molds us by His hand, through the joyful and sorrowful events of our lives, into the loving people we are meant to be.

The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will announce My words to you.” Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make.

Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, “Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand…Jeremiah 18:1-6

At times in our lives, the hands of God do not seem gentle, and we are in mental or physical pain–i.e we are suffering. And we don’t want to suffer–who does? But God does allow suffering. He doesn’t cause it, but He allows it to be used for some purpose in our life. Some purpose we may know nothing about at the time.

One way to get through painful times is to picture ourselves, as Jeremiah did, as clay in the hands of the potter. And, just as we do when we create something ourselves, to keep our thoughts on the end results.