For Such a Time as This?

 Pretentious title? Maybe. Many have used that phrase recently to sound an alarm. Why do I use it, then? Because I'm reading the book of Esther in the Bible, and even though I've read it many times and heard the phrase many times recently, it rings loudly still.

Why are you here? For what time were you put on the planet? I ask myself these questions almost daily. The world changes occurring now come only after my own titanic shifts in what was once a happily settled life. Or at least, happily on the surface. So I've experienced what everyone is going through in the country now on a personal level already. I asked myself more times than I can say, and hurled the question at God even recently, "Why am I here?!!"

Can it be, that from the wreckage of a personal life can come wisdom for the age of drastic change? Only God knows. God, who is above all things good. God, to whom I've entrusted my existence all my life, and who has never failed me. God, who holds the planets in balance and places the stars in the black night sky to light our darkness.

I've been nurturing a few summer flowers on my little balcony, outside my sliding door. They've brought me joy with their spots of color in the brown/grey world in my apartment view, looking on the parking lot as it does. Last week a raccoon climbed up and ravaged some of the pots. I have no idea what he could have been looking for in my pots, but dirst was pulled out all around the pots, as deep as the halfway mark or more. It feels like a rape, by a wild animal.

I think the country is feeling that way right now about our present political climate. At least 2/3 of us, anyway, according to the polls, if not more. We cry, "How long, oh Lord?!" over and over again in our prayers. We don't recognize the country our parents gave their life blood to save once upon a time, and taught us respect and love ourselves. 

I found myself weeping after listening to the news on public radio - where has my country gone? It breaks my heart. Someone has climbed up to the heights of our beautiful pedestal in Washington and ravaged all that was good and loving and kind there, and it's spreading far and wide. What is going on in Heaven?? How can God allow it?? What is to be done by decent, everyday, citizens buried already under our own survival efforts??

Then I read in Esther, "...who knows if perhaps you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Can it be coincidence that these words fall upon my consciousness at just this moment by accident? No one has brought me to any "kingdom", that's for sure! Yet still, the words ring loudly, like a call to arms from the Liberty Bell itself.

But am I writing for the sake of political victory, political gain, or any political motive? No. My motivation is love and charity, compassion and empathy - the qualities modeled by Jesus and so disdained by people bearing His Name today in positions of power. Because I also bear that Name, and I seek to follow where He called me so very many years ago now. And everyone who has left home and family for the sake of Christ's calling feels the same. If not, it's not Christ's call they've heard and followed.

We feel embattled, alone in our houses watching and reading the news these days, or out in the public square, seeing and hearing enemies of our faith taking our Lord's name in vain, working for those things Jesus decried and died fighting against, working to down His Name and squash everyone different from themselves. We, who heard the call of God to "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you," etc., don't even recognize the ones in power using our beliefs as a tool to gain more power as brothers and sisters in the faith - their lives do not bear witness, as Jesus said, "you shall know them by their fruits." [Matthew 7]

For such a time as this were we trained to recognize Christ's fruit? For we see so clearly today what is good fruit and bad fruit in our public places, and "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven." 

But far be it from me to assume God has made me His mouthpiece. Go read it for yourself and pray about what it might be saying to you. I am in no position to judge you. I only call out bad fruit I am seeing.

Soli Deo Gloria

 

What I Would Say to You This Saturday of Covid-19

(This post is for Kathryn Elise Rose Farrell McDonald O’Conaill – though the initial verse is for another. But after the verse, my words are only for one pair of hazel eyes.)

Comments are not needed, though a communication from the one this is for is prayed for every day.

“…but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries… Your dream and the visions that passed through your mind as you were lying in bed…”
-The Bible, The Book of Daniel, Chapter 2

No matter what, I remain your mother. And a mother’s love is forever and ever, and only grows with time. Don’t ever forget that. No matter how we erred, love was the reason. That we didn’t know how to show it does not really matter, in the long run. Love never dies. There will never be another human being on this earth who will love you as much as your mom and dad. And don’t forget you have a brother, who wants to love you, if you’ll only let him.

You are beautiful, and I don’t wish for you ever to have been anyone but who you are. Know that, believe it, and remember it for always. Always. I have vastly changed since I tried, without enough wisdom, to raise you in my faith. And mostly it is due to finding you, your real you, and loving you more than myself still, falling on my face before God all through Lent one year ago in repentance, waiting to be forgiven, and being lifted up by Grace to go on, working on learning the things I had blocked from my so frightened, fundamentalist-raised mind. I see what I had missed in my fear. Too late, I know, but anytime is better than never at all. Know this, because it’s true. “Perfect Love casteth out fear.” In the words of the old song, “I’ve found it so; I’ve found it so.”

I pray for you to believe in the wide, vast, all-encompassing Love of the Great Creator Spirit, whom I will always call my Father God, but you may call by another name, even not a god-like name, something from another faith tradition, no faith, whatever, it doesn’t matter. I’ve tried life without faith, and it simply does not work. Anyone who says they have survived this life totally and completely alone is lying to you. It doesn’t matter what anyone else calls God, or what name you want to give the Life-sustainer, but He/She/It/They is there, keeping humanity in existence in spite of ourselves. I choose to worship Him as a Holy Father, because all God’s promises, that I took to be for me, have always proven true. God never leaves us nor forsakes us. God with us, Immanuel, is here. And God is Love. And Love knows no bounds, and the darkness has never overcome It.

The One I know as God is beyond all language anyhow, and also infinitessimally tiny, as tiny as a Cell, a Zygote, a Fetus, a Baby, as large as a Man on a cross for no crimes, a God up from the grave leading prisoners of lies, a Vision in the great, great cloud of witnesses…. and beyond. My prayer is that you will remember God, and know that you are enfolded in the center of the Being that we know as Love personified, and hold close the certain knowledge that that God is with you, will never leave you, sticks closer than breathing, is the breath of your life forever, will never ever let you fall, has kept you your whole life through and brought you even to this very point in time together with Them.

When you want to disbelieve, or your mind can’t grasp the right side (or the left side…?) of itself long enough to believe, or however you want to think of it – when you can’t believe, just know God is greater even than your disbelief, look at your life and how on earth you have come to survive this long and think what for? Maybe that will help. It has helped me to survive this far, split in pieces by my three other family members, striving to pull myself back together in some shape, hoping always beyond hope to live into healing for not myself, but you and your brother, and even your father.

But only God can say if that is the plan. I just know it’s the only plan worth living for, and so I live. Healing, forgiveness, and love are the only reasons I exist now.

You hold that in your hands, and I hold you in my heart for always, always. When I am gone, as perhaps may happen in this curren crisis, you can look here and see, and know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you are loved, held, forgiven if there be anything to forgive, prayed for even from heaven, where the God of all prepares a place for you as He has me and your brother, and even your dad. And one day we will be reunited with all our warts washed clean off with only the shining joy remaining.

Shalom to you now, shalom, my beloved one,
May God’s full mercies bless you, my dear one,
In all your living, and through your loving,
Christ be your Shalom, Christ be your Shalom.*

Until we meet again, here or in heaven, and all your life through, may God hold you in the palm of God’s hand.

Hide me in the shadow of your wings
Keep me as the apple of your eye
In the shadow of your wings I sing for joy
Who can harm me if you are for me?
Blessed be your name forever!

All around me the waves grew high
The sea was violent with the sound of many waters
The ocean, raging, came at me at midnight
Who will save me from these powerful foes?

The Lord is my rock and strong deliverer.

Hide me in the shadow of your wings
Keep me as the apple of your eye
In the shadow of your wings I sing for joy
Who can harm me if you are for me?
Blessed be your name forever,
And ever!

Amen!

(Psalmodish, 2011)

Psalmodish, Brown’s Ferry Park, Tualatin, OR

*(Song of Shalom, Mexico/Elise Eslinger, Alt.)

On My Face

This is just what I do, and I'm told I do it well. I write emotions. Sigh... Oh well. Though no one who can pay money really seems to want to pay money for writing emotions, it's what I do, so I'll do that.
Emotions aren't always appreciated by others, though. Self-focus is perceived by many as self-centeredness. This is tragic, at times, because it separates people and keeps them from understanding each other.

And why do I remain so self-focused in my writings? If I were really mature, as I well ought to be by this age, I'd be focusing on others in my writings, not on myself, right?
But no one can clearly see others if the log isn't first taken out of their own eye. And my self-focus has this purpose, only for a time, only to finally clear the huge, redwood-tree log out of my way, to clearly see all the people around me. See them for real, in truth, in compassionate acceptance for the people they truly are.

That's it. That's my purpose. That's my focus. For that reason.
So I share emotions, because they are the feedback of our souls, and I find I am not alone in this journey of self-understanding for the purpose of living strongly in the world with clear other-understanding.

Clear away the motes and the logs and the bricks and the walls I've put up between myself and those that I fear, because I don't understand them, because the Bible condemned them, because my parents reject them, because my own self is averse to their existence due to all the above. Clear it away! Have nothing between the me and the them, the me and the you.

Nothing, that is, except a cross, which beam connects with God, which arms connect me to you.
If that One came to be lifted up across the walls we raise between each other and a ladder to God on High, how can we turn our backs on Him, on His sacrifice, on His Way, the Way of the Cross of our own walls and motes and logs.

On my knees.

On my face.

On my face and on my knees before God, before you, I humbly offer my sacrifice: walls and logs and motes of tradition and rules and judgment and alienation and ostracizing and aversions.

And my apologies - such a weak word for what I feel, but what other is there? - for my blind part and my conscious part in your lifelong struggles.

Love is Lord of heaven and earth; how can I keep from singing it to you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRhujopTr9k&start_radio=1&list=RDBRhujopTr9k

I am debating taking this blog down.

I am not who I was when I began it, I am not even who I was when I changed it, nor even who I was last week, or even yesterday.

It is full of innocence and ignorance. Life is never simple. Never.

I will take the writings off, and save the images, and perhaps refer to them in the future. But they are not who I want to present to the world, ravings of someone who thought she knew something about life, about God, about love.

So I'm going to take them out of the world as far as I can, and save them only to remind myself how blind I've been.

I only know this: God is good. All the time.

Simply repentant - no, not "simply", not ever again, for nothing is simple, ever again.

Patty

https://www.jwpepper.com/sheet-music/media-player.jsp?&type=audio&productID=10607033

Faith in the Night

January 28, 2015 at 7:11am

You thought your family was the safest thing to put your trust in; the surest, the most solid foundation, the best bet. You poured all your love and sweat and tears into these two or three monsters, enjoying most of it - even the dirty bits, because you knew they would grow up and be gone one day. You knew they would become loving adults, eventually, giving back some at least of what you were draining yourself of to raise them in the most healthy way possible, given the circumstances. Family - it's what's touted all around this country now as the one thing that trumps all others, and what will keep you going when it's rough, and what will pull you up when you fall, and what it's all worth it for. Family.

Until they rise up and don't call you blessed.

No, they don't always bless their mother, or their father. Sometimes for no apparent reason they demand their share of the inheritance and ride off into the sunset, cursing your name.

Or just dissolve into a heap of brain sickness.

Or both.

So then you have to wonder, whence does my help come? If Family is not the solid thing I thought it was, what or who or Who is? 

Its all well and good to preach about trusting in the Solid Rock of our God, but when He is less solid than your family, and they vanish from under you, what then?

I put my entire faith and everything I am in my children, my husband, my home. I didn't even know I did it. It's just what we do here in America, even we who call ourselves Christians. While preaching and teaching and believing that we ourselves put our faith wholly in the One True God, follow His Son Jesus' teachings, and pray listening for the Spirit daily, we actually take our security and serenity from our families, careers, retirement packages, etc.

I know I did, without realizing it, until they weren't there anymore to bolster my feelings for me. Then bye-bye comfort, bye-bye any feeling of accomplishment, bye-bye that cozy feeling of being surrounded by people who understand you, bye-bye security. Nothing left to cling to. So sorry. But you'll have to put your faith where you mouth is from now on.

Remember that? Faith? Faith.... 

"Faith is the essence of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" - or so you'd been taught long ago, and you'd always said you believed it. But you never really knew what you were talking about, and neither do most other people you come in contact with in your safe, comfortable, middle-class life. You just don't. Oh, you can't be blamed, really, because you've had no reason to learn what faith really is about. You may have been saved at some point from your own guilt through faith in Christ's cleansing blood, or some other denominational preference from the Gospels. But you've never had the chance to really test and prove that faith.

Till now. Till you lie awake and bereft at 2:00am and wonder, "Whence does my help come?" You're the only one who can do this; the only one who can walk by the side of the loved one, pay the bills, unstop the drain, keep the wolf from the door, keep the children from the evils of the world they are not ready for yet.... And you are not enough.

This is where faith comes in. Real faith. The real deal faith. The kind of faith the folks in South America and Africa, and Russia, and Iraq, etc. are practicing every moment of every day, or so I've heard. Faith that we Americans only sing about but never really have to learn of first hand.

Where do they get this faith, those beleaguered folks far away? Where did our forefathers get theirs? We're told their world was much harder than ours here in the good ol' US of A in the 21st century. Is that where they got their solid faith? 

I asked for a chance to prove my loyalty to God, years ago when I was a rash, young thing. I was going to be true, I was. I was ready to do and dare, and be a Daniel. I was just itching for the chance to trust God to the death, like the Christians in the lion arenas. 

But I wasn't in 1st century Jerusalem or Greece or wherever those first Christians proved our faith. So I waited in vain for a chance to prove mine, not seeing the chances in front of my face, of course. I worked on blending in with the culture around me, because more than anything I craved inclusion, acceptance, and a happy circle of friends to which I truly belonged.

Only I didn't belong anywhere until I went to college and found my music family in the choir at Chapman. I wonder if this was how my daughter felt before and when she found Willowbrook.... I knew who I was then and evermore.... Until I had children. Then I REALLY knew who I was forevermore.... Until they started growing up. 

Then I had nothing.

"Faith is the essence of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

My faith apparently had become nonexistant, one of those things not seen and only hoped for. Three long years I toiled to remember who I was, Whose I was, and why I thought I was here. But my poor brain, creative as it is, cannot conjur the presence of God. He remains on His own terms hidden in the shadows and springing forth in the bright sun, lurking behind the clouds and buried in the ground with a loved one. He is not subject to conjuring, nor to anything else. But His own Love for us.

This is why we venerate the family; it mirrors God's love for us, for the Church. In the middle of the night, if I am not to die of a heart attack brought on by the stress of carrying my son and my daughter in my mind constantly, I must remember the faith I grew at the age of 10, 11, 12..... and through my high school years. I must recall the innocence of that trust, a very child-like thing, not seeking to reason or to find explanations, only accepting. 

Because to tell the truth, that's the only thing there is to do at 2:00am when you lie awake and bereft wondering who's going to replace the light bulb you can't reach, or decide where your brain sick son will live, or make the connection with your daughter that she'll finally understand....

"Remember," Luke Skywalker mouthed in the fighter jet, as the voice of Alec Guinness shut out the sounds of the world-altering battle around him.

Remember... "I AM with you always, even unto the end of the world."

Faith. That's all there is to it.

Simply in faith,
Patty