Fly Forward

I've never had my hands in clay before the beginning of this year.  It's a fluke that it even started this year!  For my BFA, I have to have 8 classes of art electives on top of my concentration and minor.  The only class I could take that fit my schedule was a class called "Handbuilding"....what???  Is......That?????  O well; I signed up for it, having no idea what I'd be doing.  I was, quite frankly, scared of clay.  I think I must have attempted something in elementary school that must have bombed.  I don't remember anything like that in particular, but I seemed to have some sort of aversion to the material.  In fact, the first day of class, I didn't go to my clay class right off.  I decided to show up in the printmaking class and see if perhaps they had space for me.  They did not.  I showed up 5 minutes late to clay and luckily, she didn't give my space away.  I had no idea what was waiting for me.  The moment I got my hands in the clay, a new romance was born.  I fell in love; I was enamored with this earthy, elastic piece of heaven.  Each class period was three hours long, but it felt like 20 minutes.  For those three hours, I would lose myself in daydreams, thoughts, the way the clay felt in my hands.  I had all kinds of conversations with that clay.  I poured my frustrations, my passions, my affections and everything else into the process of making something with it.  In the process of being introduced to a new medium, I was also doing some Ignatian exercises in a group setting (Ignatius of Loyola, an ancient of the faith) with Renee Farkas who is a spiritual director here in Franklin who does wonderful work (check her out at Ambernest.com).  My experience with clay converged with this passage in the Ignatian work I was doing: Jeremiah 18:1-6 - "The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 'Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words.'  So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel.  And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.  Then the word of the Lord came to me: 'O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done?' declares the Lord.  'Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.'

I'd read that before, but having a new experience with clay, it caught my attention as it hadn't before.  Clay is unpredictable.  To work in clay, one must be patient and steady.  You can't have a finished piece overnight.  It is slow, steady and I was told early on not to get attached to any of my pieces.  Somewhere in the process, whether during the construction or the firing, you can easily lose the structure or it could turn into something completely different than planned.  I found this to be very true.  I found that if I could keep the process open as long as possible, there was space for more possibility.  Often, I'd throw something back into the slurry to reform and rework something.  Making things out of clay began to be something of a co-creation.  As I intuitively listened to what the clay wanted, we worked together to make it something it wanted to be.  I think that is a lot of what God hopes for us; that we co-create as we converse and walk together, mutually listening, as in any relationship.  Unlike me, God's artistry is perfect.  He doesn't make mistakes in His creative process.  He takes discarded, broken vessels marred by the Fall and reworks, rearranges and re-forms them back to something that is beautiful.  Working with clay facilitates my awareness of God's creative process in me, around me and in the world.  As much as I love the clay, I see that He loves being in my life, touching and whispering and fashioning beauty all around and in the midst of the chaos.  It has been a sacred place for me this semester; a new way to see God and a new way to draw near.  Ironically, after trying to bow out of my first clay class, I will minor in it.  The Fall starts throwing with the potter's wheel!!!  Yipppeeee!!!

Raku Clay Handbuilt Pinchpot (1 of 7)

What I've learned about resting I've learned through nature and the Word of God. I haven't learned through people the concept of resting. I don't think I know many people who are intentional about resting. It's not an easy thing to do, nor is it a cultural value. It almost seems counterintuitive to rest in our culture. Since ours is a culture driven by productivity, significance gained through accomplishment, and efficiency, it would almost seem a ludicrous idea to stop simply for the sake of resting.

Yet, there is a strong invitation in the the Word that would have us rest. It's woven all throughout scripture. It's woven all throughout our world. Life is seasonal. God has ordered His world in this way. No one season is more important than another. They all have a purpose to fulfill.

I see God in nature....especially trees....I love trees. If you'll notice with me, trees are not fruitful all year round. After a season of harvest or fruitfulness, the beauty springs forth in fullness of color through leaves in the fall. Leaves are at their prime beauty just before death. But, they are not finished yet. They fall to the ground in their death and nourish the soil for the next season of toil and production of beauty. This is the way God orders His natural world. Rest is required for renewal and restoration. Rest allows more beauty to come later. Rest is very active. This cycle of toil, beauty, fruit and rest is what God has said to be good. It is the creative process itself. In this painting the tree has ceased any work. There are no leaves or fruit. No toil. It is in a place of rest and dormancy. But you'll notice some dynamic things happening amidst the dormancy. Things around it are full of color and vibrancy and activity. Its roots seem to be moving into the deep. There are good things happening and not all that is visible. Some work of rest is done in subterraneous, dark places that can't be seen.

In my own experience of resting, I find it difficult to acquiese to ambiguity. Let me explain. Rest requires that we relinquish the demand for an answer to an open-ended question. It is , as my friend says, a lifestyle of "living in the question mark". If we deny ourselves rest until our questions are answered and our loose ends are tied up, we will never receive the gift of rest. The irony of it is that rest lends itself to working out the questions.

I was given an art assignment where I was to take ink to 3 different 4x4 squares and take 45 minutes a day for a week and spend time working on each square alternatively for 45 minutes so as to apply about 15 minutes to each square for each session. The point was to keep it as open-ended for as long as possible, leaving all parts of the composition incomplete until the last minute. I remember my teacher saying, give the composition lots of space and time for great things to happen. This can be applied to life as well. When we make a choice, we die to all other possibilities and have our answer. And that can be good. But, we tend to want the answer right away, and we don't leave room for other possibilities and allow space for God to work. Sometimes living in the question mark and forsaking a quick, tidy answer will make way for surprises! And, surprisingly, ambiguity leaves a spaciousness for rest. "Be prepared to be surprised" - Sondre Lerche

Who in the world does not doubt????  About our world, our life and, dare I say it, our God??  There is not one.  Doubt is the shadow cast by true faith; therefore, I count myself amidst those who doubt.  Those who don't doubt OUT LOUD have a faith that sits upon the surface because it is doubt and the exploration of it that builds our faith and fortifies the truth already there.  The tension of opposites must be present within us to underscore the beauty of faith.  Without that tension, we are only ghostlike shadows without substance and form.  So, without doubt, we wouldn't understand the gift of faith and the deep wrestle that comes with beautiful faith.  Faith is not gullible and simply a blind belief in something not investigated, turned over and over in our hands, felt, tasted, smelled.  Faith is something we have tested over and over again and it has tested us.  There is an exchange that takes place in our doubting.  When we doubt and investigate our doubt, we are given substance for shadow and when we've received the substance, we have passed the test that faith administered.  To pass the test of faith means to , as Ignatius pf Loyola puts it, be generous toward God in receiving His gifts.  Generosity toward God is simply receiving His presence where I am with expectation that He has something He deeply wants to give to me.  Generosity and faith work together to let us receive from God rather than the antithetical idea of bringing something to God in our generosity.  In our fleshly "generosity", we reject gifts He loves to give us in exchange for the desire to give Him something.....Chuck it!!!  Come with open, empty hands and expect to receive...true generosity understands that all is gift.  You've seen that kind of generosity in the eyes of a child at Christmas...they come to the tree with wild expectation and delight, waiting, waiting to receive.  If you're hungry for faith, mercy, life in your story, grace, beauty, goodness, come with nothing and be counted among His victories in bitter woundedness!!

I'm learning what it means to be seduced by God. He allures me with the beauty of a Lover, though, I tend to betray the Lover for the seduction. C.S Lewis says, "The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not IN them, it only came THROUGH them, and what came through them was longing. These things--the beauty, the memory of our own past--are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

How do we sort out the beauty of the seduction and allow the seduction to lead us to the worship of True Beauty....He holds 10,000 charms.....His charms are meant to lead me to Him, but I tend to hold to the charms themselves and settle for those. My heart breaks. I am scattered, divided, diverted. I know what I want to want, but I want something else.

"You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world (His country, in the experience of beauty). Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can.... It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret." - C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

There it is folks.....that's the inconsolable secret of my heart that Lewis so cleverly penned. I have been pining..... there is no relief. There is a nagging ache when I come up close to beauty. It is not a passing nagging and pining. It is a continual, persistent desire that will not be satiated.

As I work through the implications of this revelation, I found help in the words of Julian of Norwich and her thoughts on penance: "For God regards us so tenderly as to see all our living here (on earth) to be penance. For our natural longing for God is a lasting penance in us, which God brings about in us and mercifully helps us to bear. God's love makes God long for us, but God's wisdom and truth with divine justice make God allow us to stay here, so God sees this as penance for us. This penance never leaves us until we are fulfilled and will have God as our reward.

"But here our courteous Lord showed the moaning and mourning of the soul, explaining, 'I know well that you want to live for my love. But since you do not live without sin, you are heavy and sorrowful'...I love you and you love me and our love will never be broken in two. For your gain I suffer....I protect you most securely.' In falling and in rising we are always kept preciously in one love. For in beholding God we do not fall, and in beholding ourselves we do not stand. Both of these are true, as I see it, but beholding our Lord God is the higher truth. Then we are bound to God, which is what God wants in showing us this higher truth. I understood that while we are in this life, it is very beneficial to us that we see these both at once. For the higher beholding keeps us in spiritual joy and true rejoicing in God while the other, the lower beholding, keeps us in fear and makes us ashamed of ourselves." - Julian of Norwich, Encounter with God's Love

So, in the ache of wanting to possess beauty, open its mystery and dwell there, I am bound to God!...And, He is bound to me.

Zechariah 8:2 - "I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great wrath." You long, O God! You want passionately. You are not passive in your love...the burning, the ache, the longing - You're familiar with this unrest. You will have us for Yourself and we will live together in that fulfillment.....till then I am bound to You and You are bound to me.......

I watched a movie this weekend that I had never heard of in my life before.  Sometimes those are the best movies; those obsure, truly beautiful pieces of art that don't make it to the mass audience.  It is called Then She Found Me and stars Helen Hunt, Colin Firth, Bette Midler and Matthew Broderick (some of my favorites)!  It is a story between mothers and daughters and God and His daughters.  There is a scene towards the end of the movie that is so profound to me and full of beauty!  The mother and daughter are in a hospital room together and Helen Hunt, who plays the daughter, is so devastated and full of pain and she can't pray anymore.  She used to pray.  But her prayers cease as she feels abandoned and disappointed by God.  Bette Midler, who plays Helen Hunt's mother says something to her grieving daughter that is such a poignant revelation of God and who He is in our pain and disappointments.  Maybe I should tell you what she says, or maybe you should try and track down the movie.....what do you think????

Who coined the phrase "black and white"?  I'd love to know who did and what the thinking behind it was.  I've been thinking about the way God ordered things, the way life is and the way His scripture is and I don't think this idea has much to do with the way God works.  I have memories growing up in the Baptist church of phrases such as "black and white" and "gray areas" being used to determine drinking and dancing and quiet times and spiritual practice.  These phrases were law-oriented in their connotation.  If something was black and white, it was yes or no, right or wrong.  Most controversial, "big sin" items were listed under "black"......I don't know what the white things were; there was usually not a focus on the things one could do with freedom.  The phrase was usually accompanied with a large furrowed eyebrow, pursed lips and a few nods of the head from side to side.

The older I get, the more I realize that I don't know as much as I thought I did.  Life is FULL of mystery.  Life is FULL because of the mystery we encounter.  Early in life, I thought I knew everything and had fleshed out all mystery; at least, in my world, enough to be satisfied....I believe that's what I thought the Christian life was supposed to be.  We are taught that if we haven't figured out things about God and other mysterious things of life, then we don't really know God.  This is such a lie.  I think the more we get to know God and share a depth of intimacy with Him, the more full of questions we become, but getting the answers become secondary to the main objective.  For example:

I am walking on a stepping stone path and God is leading my way stone by stone, revealing one stepping stone at a time.  My next step is before me.  I look down to notice that the stepping stone is cracked.  I freeze in fear, unsure of what to do.  I stare.  The wooded path ahead of me is not illuminated.  I cannot see up ahead of me.  I don't know what kind of shape the future stepping stones are in.  I look behind me and see the beauty of the steps I've taken already.  I look beside me and see some clearing.  My two options are to step on the cracked stone or step off the path and take the side trip around it.

My usual orientation to this ordeal is to try and figure out what I'm supposed to do by devising different plans and possible actions and carry out what I feel is the best choice and pray too.  What if we have a third option to this perpetual question that can come up even daily??  What if we lived our lives like the Shunammite woman in the previous entry and chose to look up, stay in close to Jesus and wait for Him to order our steps?? 

Secondary in this story is the path that we walk.  We focus so much on the circumstances and the choices we are faced with and the fear that we may make a wrong decision or walk a wrong turn.  The fact is, we WILL make mistakes.  So the freak what!  Or, we'll perceive that we've made a mistake....we've chosen the black over the white, the wrong over the right.  This is simply not the truth.  Things in our lives are ALWAYS meant to draw us to Him; it may be a mercy in your life for you to make a perceived wrong choice.  After all, it's your perception that you made a wrong choice, but did you look up in the midst of that process and see Him??  The main objective for God for us, always, is for us to see Him and hear Him and commune with Him.  I believe that's precisely why God has us living in a waiting posture much of our lives.  The longer we wait on Him and move with His movement, the more we live in a posture of relationship, staying in close to Jesus and the less we focus on outward spiritual piety.  Life becomes extremely colorful and less dull in the black and white!

God has already fulfilled the law through Jesus and He is simply not consumed like we are in following its letter.  He is, however fiercely consumed with being together.  I think He's teaching us to look up and see Him rather than be consumed by the crack in that stepping stone.  He's asking us to live in the ambiguity of life and to look up right in the middle of mystery.  His face becomes bigger than the cracked stone.  The "black and white" model of living seems a lot simpler and safer and easier, but God has so much more for us than that.  Choosing the black and white is a lot like the way we do grape juice when we celebrate the eucharist.... Please don't hear me demonizing Ocean Spray or something.....grape juice is a fine choice for communion.  I do find it an interesting metaphor to contrast these two different perspectives on life.  With grape juice, you have a pleasant, sweet taste with no controversy or tension whatsoever.  It's white!  With wine, you have a bittersweet cup, not so pleasant always to the sensitive palette and there is tension; a bittersweetness to the experience.  But it is authentic.  Communion is a  bittersweet celebration that costs God deeply to gift to us.  There is a suffering that comes with it.  When we choose to live in the ambiguity and cease to demand answers, we suffer.  We suffer along with Jesus.  We share in His sufferings.  Grape juice, or living in the black and white with all your answers laid out for you has no bitterness, does not involve suffering and we don't have the same fellowship.  Trying to live life black and white is cheap grace.  It is just not that simple. It's easier to just try and figure out our steps rather than to look up and see the face of Jesus who holds all things together and assures us that whatever steps are taken are not the biggest deal in the world, but His face is!

I have a bit of good news......It's not up to you!!!  It's not up to you....does that comfort you?  This small phrase settles me.  Such simplicity; what does it mean, really??  Well, Sir Isaac Newton captured it well in his three laws of planetary motion.  As he studied the universe the first law he came up with became quite apparent.  It is this: "Every body continues what it is already doing unless compelled by an outside force."  This law governs the universe.  This is God's universe.  This is the way He has ordered it and today, that law brings me much comfort.  Something outside of my own will and my own "self" must act on my behalf to bring change.  This law reveals to me such a grand scheme.....the Grand Designer has set things in order so we could receive Jesus, an outside force that is needed to make of us something different.  Because of this Force, we move in a different direction, see things in a different light.  Love pulls me into something bigger and compels me to do something different. 

It is this external Force that makes everything possible.  Without it, I would not have a choice to cooperate or submit to anything that I would want to cooperate with or submit to.  If no outside force ever bumped up against me, I would naively and ignorantly continue to do what I am already doing.  But God is making all things new and bringing redemption into every corner of His world.  This Force, this commitment to redemption, pulls me, draws me in and I, in turn, cooperate with the tug and submit to the Compass as He leads me to another destination.  Trust tells me that the destination He has in mind is good and beautiful.  I find that I am most effective as I wait and listen and I am least effective when I choose to decide my own course.  If in doubt, wait and listen for His Force to gently and sometimes fiercely interfere with your orbit.  Either way, it's not up to you, but up to the external force; an External Force that is deeply in love with you.....

I'm seeing around me the evidence of a society that doesn't know how to grieve.  I was sitting in Panera the other day and was close to a group of old southern women who were discussing the recent flood event here in Middle Tennessee.  They were commiserating over the way people were unable to just "get over it".  They used words like "suck it up" and "stop the belly aching".  It's the old southern mindset of "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" outlook on life.  I've heard different people complaining that we haven't had the national attention that we should be having and others responding to that by saying things like, "We're Nashville - we take care of our own; we don't need help".  And, there is beauty in that!  I went over to a neighborhood the other day that we used to be a part of  that went underwater.  One of our friends' house exploded - literally.  The theory is that as the waters rose in the garage, the full gas containers floated on the water until they found the pilot light to the water heater.  There is nothing left of their house and 5-6 houses surrounding theirs were damaged in the blast.  In the 30 minutes while I was there, they had 3 offers of food, two offers of clothing and many neighbors coming to check on their status, offering prayers and goodwill.  There are countless stories of those not dramatically effected "flooding" in the spaces of those who are.  That is truely beautiful to see.

The reality of the situation, however, is traumatic.  Some lives will never be the same again.  Many have suffered profound losses.  This is not a "bootstrap" moment.  We need to ask for help.  How do we grieve such losses in the midst of a culture that doesn't allow for proper grief?  There is a strong current underlying whether said or not, to get on with life as usual as quickly as possible.  Who wants to sit and wallow in the loss?  Let's just "do" and move on.  But, if one doesn't properly sit in the pain of loss, then it comes out sideways in a myriad of ways, be it physical health or crippled relating with others or some other form of unrequited grief.  I think there must be an art to grieving.  I've seen people do it well and they are the most healthy and honest people I've ever encountered.  I've seen people do it not so well and they are those who simply gloss over life; they experience neither deep sorrow, nor deep joy.  They are intent on being disconnected and stoic in their approach to life.  This is a tradgedy.

If you are grieving, ask for help!  Those around you may not know how you're feeling or what your losses are.  You may not know yourself.   It may help just to say it out loud to someone.  One of the cultural lies that you might fight during a time of grief is that you are weak if you take time to feel your loss.  Why do you HAVE to be a superhero????  Why do you have to be a martyr???  That stupid song, "I Will Survive" probably has its origins in the south.....it's a banner of false strength.  Its message is, come hell or high water I will be strong.  This context for living life allows no room for grief.  I get this picture of a running back in a football game with 10 men grabbing him and hanging from him and he's still running for another yard or two, but it's futile and down he goes.  And he goes down hard.  And he goes down all by himself....there aren't any teammates around him because he's surrounded by the opposition.  In grief, we must lay down and ask for help in the deep pain that comes with loss.

Sometimes, I just need some good ole' down home consoling.  After the weekend we've just come through, I've been thinking about my orientation toward life.  It tends to be more of an earthly orientation than a spiritual one.  It costs Jesus more to declare me forgiven than it costs Him to keep my physical health, well-being and comfort.  I think I'd rather have the latter than the former simply because I am so unaware of my need for forgiveness.  When my comfort is compromised and I come up close to my mortality or the mortality of those that I love, I am shaken.  I want consolation.  I want comfort.  I want to be reassured that my earthly life is secured.  This underscores my orientation to life.  I have been declared forgiven and the declaration has been made at a high and lonely cost.  I feel sad that this gift is usually lost on me.  I must ask for more gratitude and more awareness.  When heaven and earth touch, something miraculous happens!  I can see momentarily that what Jesus paid is worth more than my earthly comfort.  The miracle is that I wear Spirit eyes, if ever so elusively.....

Tonight, when I hit the pillow, I will breathe a sigh of grateful relief mingled with exhaustion!  Today was full of foibles and crises and disasters to head off.  It started off ordinarily enough.  Rachel had to be at school early for her Solo and Ensemble competition (she plays the clarinette).  Ellie had a sleepover with a friend and her and her friend had come back to our house.  Ellie is part of a musical at school called "Castaways" and she had her last show today.  This is the show we had planned to see.  I had tickets in my pocketbook and everything!  In the midst of the pouring rain that was to be a pesky, yet persistent piece of our day, we carted everyone back and forth and to and fro.  While Ellie was at the school preparing for her last show, and James was picking up some roses for her, the rest of us were preparing to go see the show.  Maggie went out to the garage to feed the bunny and Rachel thought it would be a hilarious joke to lock Maggie out in the rain for a bit.  As she was running for the door to lock it, trying to beat Maggie to it, she reached for the door to push it shut.  She missed the wooden part of the door and struck the glass part of it instead.  The thud and following sound of glass shattering beckoned me to the scene where I saw two girls, mouths gaping open with a sort of "deer in the headlight" look about them.  It was a moment that sort of hung there.  I don't know how much time passed before time started to move again.  I looked down at Rachel's wrist and had my own "deer in the headlight" moment as I saw blood gushing from her wrist.  My heart began to race and everything started shaking.  My thought was to get her immediately to the hospital because I didn't know how close it was to the main artery in her wrist.  She was bleeding way too much for my motherly comfort.  In the meantime, Maggie started crying, as she figured out that she had been the on the other side of the glass, absorbing the shattered glass.  She looked like a vampire that had just been feeding.  Her mouth and face were splattered with blood.    I momentarily looked for my shoes, but when I was unsuccessful, I  just chucked the shoe idea and went barefoot.  I quickly shuffled everyone in the car to head toward the hospital.  Somewhere in all this, Bree, who is four, was reading all the panic, seeing all the blood and reacted by bursting into tears and crying out passionately the name of her oldest sister over and over and over again.  In between half-hearted reassurances to the children, I managed to pull out of the driveway and start toward the hospital.  We got to the hospital and finally talked to James on the phone.  He decided to come to the hospital and check on things.  He had a little time before the show started.  When he got to us, we were checked in and found out that Maggie looked a lot worse than she actually was.  She didn't need any medical attention at all; she just had a couple abrasions underneath all the blood.  Rachel, on the other hand, was going to need stitches.  Seeing that things were mostly in hand, James decided he would take everyone with him to see Ellie's show if they could still make it.  There was only one problem: there was a tornado warning in effect and no one was to leave the building.  We were all stuck at the hospital, not knowing what was happening with Ellie at the school and having no way to contact her.  We just had to sit tight.  The tornado warning was lifted some time later and James and the girls went to the show.  I sat with Rachel as she had some nasty numbing shots injected into the site and had nine stitches.  Luckily because of the tornado warning, the show was delayed and they were able to see all of it and Ellie knew nothing of our troubles until after the show.  Rachel, being brave to the end, took pictures of her new prize and grossed out all her friends by sending pics to them over the phone.  We ran to the van without shoes (it was still pouring down rain) and headed down the road toward home, so we could change, get shoes and go to the show.  Conditions outside were very surprising!  Everywhere we went, roads were impassible.  Water was rising quickly and it took us 30 minutes to get home when it usually takes about 10.  We finally pulled up to the house and both gasped as we looked in the backyard.  We have a creek that runs along the back of our house and it had swelled up over the banks and into the yard...far into the yard.  We parked and got out of the car, and walked past the broken glass into the kitchen and quickly changed and headed back out into the soggy mess.  When we pulled up to the school, all our hopes of seeing anything of the show were dashed as we saw people coming out of the school theatre.  We got there just in time to see the crowd leaving!  I found Ellie and gave her a great big hug and told her that I missed the whole thing and shared the story with her and she was fixed on every detail.  Her face showed kindness, empathy, concern and compassion rather than disappointment and anger.  Then, as promised, we went to celebrate Ellie's birthday, since I will be in Italy when she turns 11. 

I was reminded today several times of the fleetingness of our lives.  Rachel's quarter-sized cuts were about an inch away from a main artery.  I missed Ellie's show, but I didn't miss her heart and her giggles today.  We didn't lose a house in a flood today, like some people did.  Today, I was given the gift of seeing the ones I love in a new light; the frailty of human flesh, the nearness of those that we love, the nearness that can be swept away instantaneously.  This moment they are here; this moment is the moment I have to make an important human connection.   I heard a story this very week of a friend's son being in a car accident in which, by all evidence of the vehicle involved, both he and the driver should be dead or seriously injured, but both walked away without a scratch.  These are the stories that make our lives and give us pause to consider the great gifts of God and the mystery by which they are distributed.  I know how today could've gone, and I am grateful for the gift of remembrance in my life today, even as I grieve for those that had a day that played out the worst case scenarios.  Mystery.  Faith in the mystery....that's what I pray for us today.