Sigh

My heart is heavy,
but it does not break.

It would break, for all that needs doing that I cannot do.
It may not be mine to do,
but I would still do it.

Fix, fix, fix.
I want to fix it. I want to mend it. I want to make it right.

Deep, deep, deep.
Deep are the connections we have, though we seem to miss it.

I breathe. I breathe.
I sigh.
I squeeze my eyes shut
and I pray.

It's all I can do.
Surprise, surprise.

I pray.

prayer today from Sojourners

Break our hearts, Lord, break our hearts. For the lives lost in Haiti, each one loved by you, break our hearts. For those who have lost family members -- sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers -- break our hearts. For those who have lost homes and belongings, who sleep on the streets, break our hearts. For the crippling poverty that afflicts millions of Haitians, break our hearts. For our complicity in the sinful structures and systems that lead to oppression and injustice, break our hearts. For the state of your creation -- groaning for redemption and restoration -- break our hearts. And then put us back together so that with peace, humility, and your perspective, we might work toward seeing your kingdom on earth. Amen.

gratitude for teachers

I am grateful for those who help me learn, understand and interpret the world, history and my faith tradition. I am currently on retreat with other women and the retreat is being led by Edwina Gately. What an amazing storyteller. Her book of poetry called Soul Sisters, along with her own telling of these women's scriptural stories, creates a powerful living image of them.

I am also currently reading, reflecting on really, You Will Be My Witnesses: Saints, Prophets and Martyrs by John Dear. He, along with Dorothy Day, has made the life of St. Therese of Lisieux more accessible and meaningful for me. So I will share a bit of John Dear's teaching about Therese:

Therese appeared to live an ordinary life, but appearances can be deceptive. Life in a monastery is difficult. She dedicated herself to the daily practice of sacrificial love toward those around her, perfecting the art of responding to coldness, rudeness, gossip, and insults with active loving kindness and inner compassion. She aimed these small acts of unconditional love at Christ in the other person and for the redemption of the human race--a spirituality she called her "little way." She wanted to remain like a child, as Jesus instructed when he said that we must become like children if we want to enter the reign of God. She understood this spirituality not as childishness, but as a profound trust in God through confidence in God's love, not just despite our littleness, poverty, weakness, and brokeness, but precisely because of them.

Every day is an anniversary

The world is full of events, good and bad, and anniversaries, good and bad. Today we remember that women are still so frequently victims of violence. Today I heard that it is the anniversary of the demolition of  a mosque in Babri, India. A reminder to broaden my prayer horizons.

Prayer

What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?

Thomas Merton
Thoughts in Solitude

Hope & Love

There is so much to do and pray for, so many to pray for and with. Our friend and inspiration Aldona is suffering a setback in her cancer treatment/recovery.

Ronnie & I had a scary moment about 9:40pm.
Too excited after greeting the pugs walking across the street, she was not impressed by the man on his bike on our sidewalk. Towing her around him as she barked, she slipped out of her collar and circled him, barking. He got angry (I'm sure he was feeling threatened) but she really didn't get that close to him. She was in the street, barking at him, and then he got aggressive towards her and started pursuing her. My throat is sore from how I screamed at her to come to me. Which she didn't do. Instead she bolted down the street to the other end. I wasn't sure that she wasn't scared of ME by this time so I followed her, fearful of how far I might have to go. But she came back, clearly understanding how angry I was, she was subdued and scared (I've never screamed like that before - I was fearful for both our safety). Fortunately, we were on our own street. It's nice to be reassured that she'd probably defend me if need be. She probably would have won that fight, but in the end we'd have lost because dogs that bite aren't popular. It's too bad the guy got so aggressive. I didn't even bother trying to say that she got away accidentally and that she would leave him alone if he ignored her and stopped yelling at us. I didn't want to interact with him in the dark.

On to love.
I've been reading "The Four Loves" by C.S. Lewis. I wanted to read it because an excerpt from it was quoted in a daily Sojourners email recently. Of course finding the particular section was a challenge. I wasn't sure I wanted to read the whole thing (so many books, so little time) but I started at the beginning, as my anal self will often do. I forgot how enjoyable and quirky C.S. Lewis is. I got about halfway through and then skipped ahead. Sure enough, the section I was looking for is very near the end. So much of it is good, I'm going to quote a bunch from the last chapter.

The four loves under discussion are affection, friendship, eros and charity. He also talks about need-love and gift-love. He writes about the loves in a sort of hierarchical sense, but in the end when writing about charity which is the love associated with God, he strongly asserts that it cannot stand alone at the expense of the "natural" loves.

There is one method of dissuading us from inordinate love of the fellow-creature which I find myself forced to reject at the very outset. I do so with trembling, for it met me in the pages of a great saint and a great thinker to whom my own glad debts are incalculable.

In words which can still bring tears to the eyes, St Augustine describes the desolation in which the death of his friend Nebridius plunged him (Confessions IV, 10). Then he draws a moral. This is what comes, he says, of giving one's heart to anything but God. All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away.

Of course this is excellent sense. Don't put your goods in a leaky vessel. Don't spend too much on a house you may be turned out of. And there is no man alive who responds more naturally than I to such canny maxims. I am a safety-first creature. Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as 'Careful! This might lead you to suffering.'

To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities. I doubt whether there is anything in me that pleases Him less.

And here is the part that I had previously read and led me to reading the book in the first place:

There is no escape along the lines St Augustine suggests. Nor along any other lines. There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell

So much of love is human, scary, messy, hard, tiresome, unappreciated, flawed and painful. It is also necessary, beautiful, creative, uplifting, inspiring, dramatic, nurturing, comforting and hopeful.