November 16, 2011

Here's a wonderfully earthy poem for Thanksgiving by Scott Cairns.  Grateful blessings to you all!

"Imperative"

The thing to remember is how

tentative all of this really is.

You could wake up dead.

Or the woman you love

could decide you're ugly.

Maybe she'll finally give up

trying to ignore the way

you floss your teeth as

you watch television.  All I'm saying

is that there are no sure things here.

I mean, you'll probably wake up alive,

and she'll probably keep putting off

any actual decision about your looks.

Could be she'll be glad your teeth

are so clean.  The morning might be

full of all the love and kindness

you need.  Just don't go thinking

you deserve any of it.

October 18, 2011

Steve Jobs’ life and death have captured much attention.  Jobs (and here I have to quote because I sure can’t explain the incredible things he did!) discovered ingenious ways “to code information so that connected computers can find each other and share information across these connections.”  His inventions have touched almost every aspect of communication, learning and organizing.

 I’ve been trying to listen closely to those who expound on the wonders of these inventions, and to realize and give thanks for how I am a beneficiary, even an unwitting one, of the blessings that have come from Jobs’ genuine creativity.

 In return, I’ve been trying to remember and speak the never-grow-old wisdom and insight of our faith. One of those insights is that in every circumstance in life, we can expect to find both the power of death at work and the power of God at work.  Our death and new life in Christ bestow the gift of discerning which is which, and we need to be exercising that spiritual gift constantly.

 So while giving thanks for every connection of life provided by the amazing network of social media, I share the warnings of a couple of fellow pilgrims. They call us to remember that to “be still and know that I am God” is now, always has been and always will be the deepest context of communication.

 There is a price to be paid for fabricating around us a society which is as artificial and as mechanized as our own, and this is that we exist in it only on condition that we adapt ourselves to it.  This is our punishment (Phillip Sherrard, 1995).

 For we too have sojourned too long in the dusty city of external relationships.  We have gazed so fixedly and persistently upon the pageantry of passing things that they have become our only reality.  We have lived so deeply in the lives of our neighbors and our community – and in the mere shell of their lives at that – that we have lost track of that mysterious ‘buried life’ of ours which is the only real life we possess.  Our very religion has become little more than a vigorous effort to be sociable and communicative.  Impulses which should breed resolution in our souls are exhausted in resolutions on paper, and thoughts that should condense to strong purpose evaporate in a moist vapor of small talk.  And, as a result, silence of any kind has become difficult.  The moment the noise about us stops, we become disquieted and ill at ease.  Accustomed to commune with anyone and everyone, we have lost the art of communing with our own spirits, and the prospect of such self-communing does not inspire us with confidence”  (Emily Herman, 1901).