Love's Peanut Butter

Love's Peanut Butter

It was a lovely Friday evening at the park with Meeka, my dog. On the walk back to the car, I noticed something on her paws. It was sticky pine sap--on all four paws! She wanted to remove it herself, but I could not let her. Licking and ingesting the sap, and the pebbles and twigs stuck in the sap, was not an option. I needed to help her, but how? She would not let me touch her paws.

The troublesome sap hardened like glue between her paw pads before I could get at it. Eventually I borrowed a muzzle from her veterinarian, then off we went to a do-it-yourself pet bathing station where an angel appeared—aka a groomer. She told me, “Peanut butter will get out the sap—not warm soapy water” (as I had previously been told).

A Season of Letting Go

A Season of Letting Go

In Matthew chapter 10, Jesus is preparing his disciples for ministry amongst their fellow Israelites. A new message is being given. The old has passed away and the new has come, the new being profoundly known in Jesus’ ministry. The Kingdom of Heaven has begun in the life and death of Christ. The words in Matthew’s gospel are confounding. Jesus says, ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth, I have not come to bring peace, but a sword’ (Matt. 10:34).

Jesus goes on to explain that within family circles there will be division about who God is. There will be misunderstanding and a desire to be right. How can this be? There are more questions than answers in this passage for me, but I am aware of a sense of the radical nature of what Christ came to do. It required a radical alignment with Him in order that the world would be saved. Is this not what we are living right now? And it is what it means to “let go” of one’s own preferences in order to align with love.

Daring to Let Go

Daring to Let Go

I spent my late teens and early twenties teaching swim lessons. Some of my favorite people to teach were adults who had not yet learned to swim. It was so inspiring to witness their bravery as they let themselves be a beginner and step into the pool, often overcoming years of fearing the water.

Place

Place

Two Australian shepherds live in my home. They lie on the kitchen floor like random throw rugs scattered underfoot when we are cooking. For everyone’s good, we are training them to stay in their “place” when instructed. They are reluctant but content once they surrender. I am being likewise trained.

By age fifteen, my family and I had lived in as many homes. I have always thought I was made for hotels and airports. So, it was an adjustment when my young husband, who travelled weekly for work before marriage, said, “I like to be home!” I had little understanding of “place.”

The Core of My Faith . . . Beloved

The Core of My Faith . . . Beloved

It was over ten years ago that I first watched Henri Nouwen’s “Life of the Beloved” YouTube video. It resonated with me deeply as it has for many people.  It has become a spiritual practice to watch it several times a year.  I have parts of it almost memorized and yet, I keep watching. It seems I need to hear again and again that I am the Beloved child of God. 

Via Dolorosa

Via Dolorosa

As I walked the cobble stone streets of Old Jerusalem in 1972, I noticed a number of plaques high up on the walls of ancient buildings. Some said Via Dolorosa and others identified where certain events happened as the battered Jesus headed toward Calvary and his crucifixion. Up to that point in my young life I had never heard of The Stations of the Cross. That is no longer the case.

Varnish

Varnish

I brought Lectio Divina into my home school Lit classes this week.  The students picked a “word to the wiser” from their stories and essays they’d read, and I walked them through a modified version of the ancient practice. Each class went in a different direction, but it was the group around my table that afternoon who left my heart the softest.

This group of Muslim girls picked a quote from a John Green essay entitled “The Yips” that said, “How can you regain confidence when you know that confidence is just a varnish painted atop human frailty?” Once I established that “varnish” is not the same as “garnish”—by pointing at my worn kitchen table—they dug in.

Beginning In Silence

Beginning In Silence

Starting the year afresh brings thoughts of beginning...again. This month, we revisit a blog post from March 2020 reminding us that “silence is God’s first language.” (Keating). 

The morning light begins to illumine the eastern sky. I can hear the waves of the Strait of Juan de Fuca pounding upon Dungeness Spit and then off in the distance is the haunting call of an eagle. This morning there is only a slit through the gray clouds allowing the yellow and golden colors of the morning sun to shine forth. Other mornings, the sky is alive with color, with beauty, with grandeur. Off in the distance is the baritone voice of a seal and the squawking of seagulls playing in the wind.

Stuck, Or Held?

Stuck, Or Held?

God, Divine Love, is everywhere, in all things, and always pouring out all that is needed in every moment.  I have seen it was God in my seeming “stuck-ness and indecision.”  I have seen Divine Love behind in my “forgetting.”  I have even seen God at work in my seemingly “casual decisions.”

Each incident: feeling stuck and indecisive; forgetting to respond; a casual decision made to do something different one morning, is just a part of normal daily life.  However, God helped me become aware after the fact that there was more happening than I realized.