PROCRASTINATION
POSTPONEMENT
STALLING
Here’s how singer/songwriter KT Oslin put those traits to music:
“Come next Monday
I’m goin’ to bed early
I won’t talk dirty for a week or two
Goin’ on a diet
Just like sugar, honey
Come next Monday
I’m gonna give up on you! Read the rest of this entry »
Forgiveness is a spiritual work of mercy, but some people won’t do it. You can apologize to them for a wrong you may have done, you can bake them a cake, take them a meal, pay their bills, or keep their children. Oh yes, they’ll let you do all that. But they won’t forgive you. They don’t seem able to let go of the past.
Why?
Why is the past– especially one that’s not so rosy– important to them? What attracts them to the role of forever playing a victim? Like the elephant who never forgot an injury, they are tied past grievances. Read the rest of this entry »
A Threshold Conversation
I think I’m so fortunate to live where I do, in a place that often discusses God. There’s no ‘hush, hush’ about speaking the name of Jesus Christ, no hesitance to ‘give God the Glory,’—a phrase often used by local Protestants. I don’t mean in church either. I mean in the grocery store, the Mall, or the dentist’s office. If you want to talk about God, you just do it. If there’s a silence here, it doesn’t come from most Protestants.
However, many Protestants here still have reservations about Catholics, so in a Threshold Conversation with Protestants, a Catholic should stress the beliefs we agree on, not the beliefs in which we don’t agree.
In my local Catholic church, there are two basic groups of Catholics: those who have been transplanted here, and those who are native Southerners. The first group is varied within itself, because our parish is solidly multi-cultural with Asian, African American, Hispanic, and other parishioners from all over the USA. The second group, native Southerners, is now probably the minority. Read the rest of this entry »
One year in the Fall, my husband and I sat on our boat dock when the moon was at its fullest, its reflection floating on the dark surface of the lake like pieces of a silver puzzle.
On both ends of the dock, where posts held up the metal roof, were spider webs lit up by the moonlight. One of the webs was strong, but delicate-looking, and classically precise; an ever growing circle, attached symmetrically by what must have been a ‘craftsman’ spider. The web was beautiful, in fact, it was perfect.
The other was a ramshackle sort of web, attached in a haphazard way to the post, almost like the run-down house of a derelict drug dealer. Loose strands hung from it, and there was no discernible circle to the web at all. Read the rest of this entry »
We rarely pay attention to the plain and simple things in our world. We notice the flamboyant, the extravagant. Who would not notice a sunset such as this? “Wow! How beautiful!” we might say.
Yet the smallest of particles are responsible for the stunning sunset. You might say they are responsible for its performance. These tiny molecules change the direction of light, causing it to scatter, resulting in the brilliant show of color. The value of the sunset, like the value of a person, is found within. But when we look at either of them, we don’t consider what’s ‘behind the scene.’ Read the rest of this entry »
On my kitchen counter is a stone bowl on a stem–a fruit and vegetable compote that once belonged to my mother, and her mother before her. In it, I keep bananas and tomatoes, same as my mother did.
Some of the tomatoes are still green when I put them in the bowl, but that’s okay because the bananas have a way of ripening them. My mother likened it to friendship and love. “One ripens first and then helps the other along.”
And like her, I cannot waste the uneaten bananas. I simply cannot bring myself to discard a banana only because it’s past its prime for peeling and eating. I have to make something else out of it. Banana nut bread, muffins, cake—something!
Naturally, my children always liked this family quirk, when an aging fruit they might have discarded is changed into something fresh, new–and edible. Read the rest of this entry »
Sometimes we know a thing best when we understand its opposite. Joy and grief. Pleasure and pain. Serenity and anger.
Grief, pain and anger–we don’t search for those things.
Joy, pleasure and serenity–these are the things we want.
And we know that we want them because we’ve experienced their opposites. Because life is difficult. Life is a struggle for every human being. It comes with thorns.
We grieve over a loss. We feel pain in distress or disease. We are angry when someone betrays us. And we hate the loss, the distress, the betrayal. Because hatred is as much a part of humanity as is its opposite, love. Read the rest of this entry »
A three year old boy playing with matches accidentally lets a match fall near the hem of his mother’s living room drapery. But she’s calling him from the kitchen to come eat his dinner.
On his way out, the boy glances at the drapery and sees a tiny smoldering hole, growing wider. Still, mother is calling him to come, “Right now!”
And he’s thinking, “She told me not to play with matches. She’ll be mad.”
So he walks out of the living room, closing the door behind him as if that will get rid of the problem. Read the rest of this entry »
Openness
To open a thing implies some sort of effort. It may be a somewhat violent, forceful effort, such as opening a lock box when you can’t find the key, or even cracking a coconut with a hammer. Or it could be a gentle opening, such as the quiet pushing open of the door to a sleeping child’s room to check on him. Whether forceful or gentle, some result will be had from the effort, but that result will not be because of us. We need to be careful of seeing ourselves as that important. We need to know our limitations.
When it comes to Faith, I think only God, by His grace, does the opening. And I think it is sometimes a gentle opening, but often a forceful one. How many times do people ‘hit the bottom’ and then change and rise to the top. Could they have risen if they hadn’t first fallen? These sorts of things are in the hands of a loving God’s permissive will.
I do believe we can influence a person’s opening to Faith by our example, our presence, and our prayers. And these are heavy-weight things. When he or she is experiencing sorrow or joy, we can be alongside as conduits of God’s grace. But we should not think of ourselves as the ones ‘doing the opening.’
Be there for them? Yes! But ‘meet someone else’s spiritual needs’ and expect them to change because of it?’ Only God can do that.
In my foyer there is a Grandfather’s Clock dating from the mid eighteen hundreds. Its origin is German. Before it came to me, it belonged to my husband’s uncle, a chaplain and Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force. It is a beautiful clock, and temperamental, but if I keep it wound, its gong is clear and loud and steady with an echo that resounds for nearly a full minute throughout the house.
On top of a china cabinet in my dining room, there is an Arsonia Mantel Clock that belonged to my grandmother, also dating from the eighteen hundreds, and may have belonged to my great-grandmother. My grandparents had it when my mother was born in Savannah, GA, and it traveled with their family to Panama City Florida, and finally to Dothan, Al. I remember my grandmother’s daily ritual of winding it. I wasn’t allowed to touch it then, but today, I’m the performer of that ritual and the receiver of its chiming. Read the rest of this entry »
Translating a World on the Edge 