Morning's Glories

Morning has broken like the first morning,

Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.

Praise for the singing, 

Praise for the morning,

Praise for them springing fresh from the world.

Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven,

Like the first dewfall on the first grass.

Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,

Sprung in completeness where his feet pass.

Mine is the sunlight, 

Mine is the morning,

Born of the one light Eden saw play.

Praise with elation, praise ev'ry morning,

God's recreation of the new day.

Morning has broken...


-Cat Stevens

Pleasures

We are magnetically drawn to life’s vast and gratifying pleasures.

Simple pleasures - like the unexplainable glories of nature and relationship - inspire wonder and gratitude for life as a sacred, bestowed gift.  May I always gratefully appreciate such earthly blessings.

On the other hand, pleasures-on-demand – sugarcoated extras and excesses – encourage heightened self-satisfaction and foster entitlement and addiction. They perpetuate recreational pleasure-seeking, demand sensual gratification, and shrink my desire for holiness.  May I be willing to resist them.

There are other kinds of pleasures, and yet also something greater than them all. With its own unique magnetism, spiritual healing corrects and restores, redeeming core abscesses caused by distance from God.  Such recovery is the only thing that matters when typical enjoyments fade in light of suffering.  This is what draws us higher, beyond what we know as pleasure.

An everyday lifestyle of worship promotes ongoing healing and recovery of the soul.  The ancients knew and practiced this, and yet their disciplines have been largely lost in our modern age of readily available pleasures. These people experienced God’s mercies flaming interiorly - reminiscent of Moses’ bush as it was consumed without being destroyed, only divinized. May I also seek His healing and restoration as the most needed satisfaction, the highest good that lies above and beyond all kinds of earthly pleasures.

The Gift of Kindness

Our brilliant, witty, active, big-hearted friend seems to be quickly fading from this life - challenged by Parkinson’s disease and cancer, and internal injuries sustained when his bicycle collided with a ditch at the bottom of a steep hill.

A few days ago I took his bony hand in mine and squatted in front of his wheelchair to meet him at eye level. He mumbled something unintelligible.

I apologized. “I’m sorry…my hearing...” 

He knew all about my hearing issues, having been a long-time supporter. For years he catered to my front-row needs when hosting social gatherings for groups of friends that generously included all-expense-paid trips to the theater.  A good listener, he heard beyond vocalized comments, all the way to my heart. His profound prayers rose on my behalf when I grew weary with auditory pressure and pain.

But on this day, he was severely diminished.  Did he recognize me? Were his words intelligible, or just random sounds?  I'd heard he'd become nonsensical at times.

He persisted, his thin lips trembling, the words flying into my face like dry feathers.  I still didn’t understand, and said so, apologetically.  Strike two.

Thankfully, he didn’t give up.  His shaky grip tightened, and his eyes blazed with gentle sincerity gone fierce with gallant effort.

“You look great.”

It was a slurred whisper, this frail but precious gift of affirmation.  As an emotional rock filled my throat, I leaned forward and touched my cheek to his, emulating his characteristic greeting of a holy kiss (II Corinthians 13:12 and I Thessalonians 5:26).

I spoke around the knotty blockage directly into his right ear, expressing a wealth of gratitude in just a few words: “Thank you Mike…for being so kind.”

The Teacher on the Wall

Yesterday we visited our favorite in-state college town (the true heart-throb being Purdue country, which is now out-of-state) - one full of appeal and interesting history.  Of course we stopped at our regular lunch spot, where I ordered a salad sampler.  The sampler is always unique, but this time it featured generous portions of chicken salad, kale salad with roasted sweet potatoes, and curried rice-and-bean salad that hit the spot with a saliva-inducing blend of spiciness and raisin-sweetness.  The kale salad especially intrigued me, with its mysterious dressing.  A beautiful place with beautiful, delicious food!  

As we were leaving, I again noted the artwork on the wall.  Evidently I’d overlooked a particular painting on previous visits. I wondered if perhaps this was sort of a self-portrait, or at least a statement about aging and identity.  The mature artist in the painting was busy creating a wide-eyed, colorful image on her canvas (perhaps reflecting the way she still saw herself), while a garish ring quietly gave away her continued attention to beautiful things.  I suspected her inner thoughts to be beautiful as well, and wondered what she might teach me if we could only meet one day.

Thoughts on Excess, and the Plentitude of Less

Greed is drunken desire gone mad, a cancer of the soul. It grows impulsively, steadily consuming its host, while fed by a superfluous overflow of material abundance and self-importance.

Voluntary restraint invites a diet of sacrifice and relinquishment that sheds excessive, self-centered weight, while also fostering mercy, humility, and compassion.  Spiritual disciplines encouraging deep, reverent emptiness are not punitive curses of deprivation, but gifts calling the mind to correct self-awareness.  They prompt a profound appetite (soul hunger) satisfied by the presence of our holy God.