Give Thanks

My curiosity was quickened after seeing Google's celebration of the 200th birthday of the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales. So I Googled Brothers Grimm and while reading about their lives, I was reminded of the great blessing we have of having enough to eat.


"Jacob (Grimm), who was still financially responsible for his mother, brother, and younger siblings, accepted a post in Paris as research assistant to von Savigny in 1805. On his return to Marburg he was forced to abandon his studies to support the family, whose poverty was so extreme that food was often scarce. Wilhelm (Grimm) wrote of their circumstances, "We five people eat only three portions and only once a day".

This morning, I knelt on the floor (it seemed appropriate) and thanked God for my cup of coffee, for the soil that grew the coffee bean tree, the nutrients in the soil, the rain that fell on the soil, the sun that grew the plant, the hands that tended to the plant, the governments that stayed sane long enough to allow people to work, the inventors that invented the machines that transported the beans, the business people that give us their gifts of management, and the people that serve us all along the way.

When my children were at home, we use to give thanks before every meal.

I miss that.

"Prepare Him Room"

So much of wisdom has to do with timing, not with the virtue or veracity of one's ideas. In the movie, "A Royal Affair", the physician, Count Johann Friedrich Struensee, had many good ideas, but he lacked wisdom in the area of timing and it resulted in his death. He had no understanding that people have to expand slowly.

Great blessings must be adjusted to, absorbed only slowly. When it happens quickly, the recipients are often destroyed. Intuitively, the recipients know this and resist reform until they are ready to absorb the responsibilities that come with blessings, that come with new ways of doing life.

Today, who would argue with "the abolition of torture, the abolition of unfree labor, the abolition of the censorship of the press, the abolition of the practice of preferring nobles for state offices, the abolition of noble privileges, the abolition of "undeserved" revenues for nobles, the abolition of state funding of unproductive manufacturers, the introduction of a tax on gambling and luxury horses to fund nursing of foundlings, the ban of slave trade in the Danish colonies, the rewarding only actual achievements with feudal titles and decorations, the criminalization and punishment of bribery, the re-organization of the judicial institutions to minimize corruption, the assignment of farmland to peasants" etc. - all things that the physician abruptly put into play in Denmark in 1770! The military, the noblemen and the peasants all resisted him and ultimately, his lack of wisdom concerning timing was his death.

God very slowly expands our souls to be able to absorb great Truths. We come into the Light slowly. We need time for our eyes to adjust to Light. We must prepare a place for Truth and that takes time. Without a context commensurate to its content, Truth will be vomited out.

Make Sense?

My 20 year old daughter and I went for coffee this morning at her request. The inevitable discussion about Sandy Hooks came up and we talked about this angle and that angle. She kept saying that it didn't make sense. I told her that it was impossible to make it make sense. I told her she could go there (trying to make sense of it all) but that in the end, she would get nothing back from the energy she had expended. She seemed to hear me and the conversation went on from there.

Then we drove home and we pulled in the driveway where a dusty-needing-repair car was parked with these letters smeared in the dust "EAVAME". As she was getting out of the car, she pointed to those letters and said (with much frustration), "I spend so much energy trying to make those letters make sense."

"That's what I was talking about," I said. "Don't spend your energy trying to make sense out of something that doesn't make sense."

Then she really heard me.

For God So Loved

For God so loved the world,
That He gave his only heart,
. . . that it might be broken.

To show us,
In the breaking,
That Life would come forth
. . . again.

To tell us,
In the breaking of our own hearts,
That Life will also come forth
. . . .again.

Amen

Why?

Asking the "why"  question is useless.

Go there is you'd like. Go there if you need an excuse to rant. Go there if you need to feel righteous. Go there if you need to relive every injustice that you've been the brunt of. Go there if it helps you not feel helpless. Go there if you need an excuse to hate. Go there if you need an excuse to bring forth your pet peeve (gun control, no support for the mentally ill, abortion, etc.). Go there if it is part of your grieving process.

And when you are done, consider this.

When a tragedy hits an individual, family, or community, they (and things) are changed forever. They (and things) will never be the way "they used to be". They (and things) will never "get back to normal". They will never not have emotional pain.

The rules are now different. The rules are now, how do I find life in the midst of death? Initially it will be, is there life after death? and then it will become, if so, how do I find life in the midst of death?

"I set before you this day, life and death, choose life (and death) that you may live." Choose to live with death, with pain and while you are doing that, find life.

Where is Left?

I was listening to a friend telling me how he was choosing life by being thankful. This friend tends to be morose. Hence my thoughts were . . . I hope you don't think that by cultivating thankfulness that that means a time will come when you are no longer morose.

I liken his reality to this. I have never been able to find my left hand without first going to my right hand. In order to find left .  . I have to find right and then go from there. I was lucky in 2 ways - the first was that I just happened to write with my right hand. And the second luck was that I only have 2 hands.

So when anyone says, Go left, I go to my right hand (the one I write with) and then I know that the other way (the other hand) is . . . left. (convoluted, right?)

All that to say, I also am morose by nature. I also have trained myself to be thankful. I also know that I will always go to morose first (my right hand) in order to find thankfulness (my left hand).

And there is no despair in the fact that transformation did not manifest itself in me . . .  by me not being morose; instead, it manifested itself in me . . . .by me being able to get to thankfulness.