The path to Heaven

Of course! (T)he path to heaven

doesn’t lie down in flat miles.

It’s in the imagination

with which you perceive

this world,

and the gestures

with which you honor it.

 

Excerpt from “The Swan” by Mary Oliver.

Can you believe that God trusts us enough to let us use our imagination and gestures in this world as we progress towards Heaven?!?  How cool it is to be part of the creation as it unfolds.

A prayer in prison

McNeil Island Correctional Center, I:86

Hunched over hard white bread
and plastic soup bowl filled with gruel,
he looked like a stork, a silly angel,
all neck and bony shoulder-wings
and awkward beak.

His head lifted, then fell
in a slow deliberate dance,
three, four times, doughy-skinned
in a gray room sickened by yellow light.
He kept his eyes shut tight.

Outside the prison dining hall,
a turnkey slammed and locked
the heavy iron gate. The old man placed
his palms together softly, raised
them to his stubbled chin

crossed himself, and ate.

“Lifer” by Sam Hamill

i carry your heart

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e e cummings

We aren’t the message. We carry the message.

King Jesus

why did you choose

a lowly ass

to carry you

to ride in your parade?

Had you no friend

Who owned a horse

– a royal mount with spirit

fit for a king to ride?

Why choose an ass

small unassuming

beast of burden

trained to plow

not carry kings.

 

King Jesus

why did you choose

me

a lowly unimportant person

to bear you

in my world today?

I’m poor and unimportant

trained to work

not carry kings

– let alone the King of kings

and yet you’ve chosen me

to carry you in triumph

in this world’s parade.

King Jesus

keep me small

so all may see

how great you are

Keep me humble

so all may say

blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord

not what a great ass he rides.

“A Psalm for Palm Sunday” by Joseph Bayly

The Life of a Day

Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own personality quirks which can easily be seen if you look closely. But there are so few days as compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people. But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason we like to see days pass, even though most of us claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time. We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when we are convinced, our lives will start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted, as some days are, with the right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.

“The Life of a Day”

Tom Hennen

A Prayer- Photo Brings Somalia’s Famine To The Front Page

Photo Brings Somalia’s Famine To The Front Page

A background story behind a front page picture in the August 2, 2011 NY Times.

Bread of Life!  How does this happen?  Please protect your innocents.  Give courage to those journalistic prophets who give voices to the silent all over the world.  Bring justice to those who perpetuate evil which starves and destroys.  And show me my responsibility in Somalia’s famine.  Amen.

A Prayer for Somalia- Conflict Zone Slows Aid For Famine Victims

Conflict Zone Slows Aid For Somalia’s Famine Victims

Father, it seems like our arms are too short for the innocents in Somalia. May you give wisdom and diplomacy to your servants as they feed and care for those in a suffering part of Africa. Please keep the people and workers safe. Please keep those seeking good and aid from being leveraged by evil men. May the aid workers like Mercy Corp and the people of Somalia be filled with creativity and courage as they meet their needs in a desperate situation. Surely your arms are not to short to care for Somalia.

 

A Prayer for Somali Refugees

Flow Of Somali Refugees Puts Strain On Kenyan Town

Thousands of refugees continue to flee drought, famine and conflict in Somalia, seeking shelter and food in neighboring Kenya. But Kenya too is suffering from drought in the arid and semi-arid north of the country.

The northeastern Kenyan town of Dadaab is already home to more than 400,000 Somali refugees (Yikes, that’s a lot of extra people!!!). Many younger Somalis have never been to Somalia or have spent almost their entire lives in the refugee camps in Kenya.

Heavenly Father, please give Bernard Ole Kipury wisdom as he divides too little land, water, food and shelter for too many people.  Give him wisdom to determine who in the camps are present for safety concerns and who in the camps are present to be divisive.  Please protect families and individuals like Sadiya Kassim Mohamed as they flee danger.  Please keep them safe from thieves and people bent on doing harm.  Change the hearts of those seeking to do harm to travelers.  Pique the hearts of your followers to help aid their struggle.

Of Mice & Men- a few comments

I thought that there were other endings that could have been.  After reading “Of Mice & Men” in an afternoon, I had to pause when I turned the final page and ask, “What?  He did what?”  The ending left me short-sheeted.  Some of my short-sheetedness can probably be chalked up to wanting happy endings, resolutions that end predictably.  Neither Steinbeck book that I have read have ended with a period, or at least a period where I thought a period should be.

Lennie’s character seemed familiar.  I remember a Warner Bros’ cartoon character, The Abominable Snow Rabbit, usually with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck that reminded me of Lennie. His famous line was, “I will hug him and squeeze him and name him George.”  I believe that he also said, “Which way did he go, George? Which way did he go?”

In the end, the book is worth reading but there are many other books that should be read first.  There were a few images that were telling, however:

P. 2- On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.

P. 19- At about ten o’clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows, and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.

P. 37- He (Slim) was a jerkline skinner, the prince of the ranch, capable of driving ten, sixteen, even twenty mules with a single line to the leaders.  He was capable of killing a fly on the wheeler’s butt with a bull whip without touching the mule.  There was gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke… His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.  His hands, large and lean, we as delicate in their action as those of a temple dancer.

P. 88-89- An exchange between a black worker, Crooks, and the wife of the head rancher’s son: “Listen, n—–,” she said.  “You know what I can do to you if you open your trap?”  Crooks stared hopelessly at her, and then he sat down on his bunk and drew into himself.  She closed on him.  “You know what i could do?”  Crooks seemed to grow smaller, and he pressed himself against the wall.  “Yes, ma’am.”  “Well, you keep your place then, n—–.  I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny.  Crooks had reduced himself to nothing.  There was no personality, no ego- nothing to arouse either like or dislike.  He said, “Yes, ma’am, ” and his voice was toneless.

P. 101- As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment.  And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.  Then gradually time awakened again and moved sluggishly on.  The horses stamped on the other side of the feeding racks and the halter chains clinked.  Outside, the men’s voices became louder and clearer.

 

Six Word Stories #2

Below are a second installment of six word stories compiled by Dave Eggers in his 2007 book, The Best American Non-Required Reading.   The most famous six word story was written by Ernest Hemingway: For sale: baby shoes, never used.

Young, skinny, ridiculed.  Old, skinny, envied.

Lucky in love, unlucky in metabolism.

Hiding in apartment knitting against depression.

Near-death experiences are my forte.

Never really finished anything, except cake.

My ancestors were accented cow herders.

I managed not to destroy anything.