SIGNPOSTS

How do you know where you are? Where you’ve been? Where you’re going?

 

Like town and street signs on the freeway, brightly painted slashes on trees beside the walking trail, schedules and calendars --- we use them all to orient ourselves and navigate our journey.

 

Liturgical seasons are a major way I order my life.  

 

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent.  It's a season that always seems as if it should be spoken in a deep, somber voice and for some it can become intimidating. 

It is a serious season of introspection and looking into self and discovering who you are. 

Yet, it should also be one anticipated for the possibilities of becoming a better me.

 

I’m ready.....

I've selected the new book (THE MEAL THAT RECONNECTS) that I will read along with the Benedictine Sisters of Erie.

I've determined that I will establish and maintain a routine and seek much needed balance in my life....enough is the motto.

I set my intention to know that I can control how I respond to a person, a situation, a comment.

I will write DAILY and post to this blog three times a week (Wednesdays, Fridays, Sundays).

I will listen more. 

I will notice more.

I will trust more.

I will risk more.

Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner wrote, "In the crucible of heat and sand, Jesus was trying to figure out what it meant to be Jesus."  

This Lent in the clouds and warming temperatures, the rain and the greening, I will try to figure out what it means to be Sally.

Are you going on the journey?

Are you ready?

Hold to this....we do not journey alone.....blessed be.

....broken....

 

There are options in response to when something is broken --- fear, run away, anger, deny, blame someone else, hide out.  

 

As a nation, we seem to keep “taking it on the chin:” the pandemic, loss of jobs, not wanting to work, an attempted insurrection, deep divisions, the breaking down of long held institutions, an addiction to attention, drug deaths, an ever-widening gap between the very wealthy and everyone else, a frayed social safety net, a gun violence endemic and I haven’t even mentioned the abundance of “isms.” 

 

The ugliness that once was spoken in whispers is now shouted on social media and in toxic tweets.

Our political leaders choose power over principal, our faith leaders choose being popular over being prophetic, and we what we cannot or do not want to understand we seek to legislate with a pen instead of listening to person to person.

 

Our nation is broken.  Denial and finger pointing are not necessary.  We need to fix ourselves.

I asked a group of Gen Z-ers why they have such a fascination with Superheroes?  They answered, “We know none of the adults can fix it, they’re not even trying, so we soothe ourselves with the fantasy of Superheroes.”

 

In an early advocacy effort with the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) our rallying verse was from the book of Esther: “we have been called for such a time as this.”  

 

As is true with all the big issues and problems, our fractured communities, wobbly institutions and ever failing democracy, to fix these problems must be the cause of each one of us.  

We each have a lane that we journey, a lane in which we have influence. Know your lane and do your part to work together to solve the problem.  Are you in business, ponder what role and what part of healing the brokenness you can bring?  Is family and the home your expertise, how can you bring that experience and insight to weigh in?  Is the faith community your lane, how to be present and engaged in the conversations and working for the solutions?

To quote an often used line, which during theses times I really do believe, or perhaps need to believe as I am worried about how much more the nation can take ---- "we are the ones we've been waiting for."

 

 

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

 The heart can think of no devotion

Greater than being shore to the ocean;

Holding the curve of one position.

Counting an endless repetition

~ Robert Frost

 

This past week in Bible study and in my weekly “Spiritual Literacy Small Group” I had occasion to reflect on my grandmother and my mother. The phrase I used for both is they had a “deep river faith.” 

 

Many were blessed by these women, I, doubly so, because they raised me; both were constant, consistent, steady, weathering whatever season, sorrow or renewal.

 

One of my favorite images is sunlight on water, the liquid light glistening like jewels. The light shone in Gram and Mom, was reflected in their actions, they carried the light with them, bore light through the dark and scary places and taught others to do the same.   

 

The opening poem by Robert Frost was introduced to me this week during small group.  I was paused by the line “being shore to the ocean.”

Emma and Dorothy had and maintained the right perspective, a humility of service and self-awareness, knowing who they were, grounded, strong and in service to the faith they professed, blessed be, in how they lived.

 

There is a rhythm to the ocean, “an endless repetition.” Mothers have a routine of care and nurture, they set the schedules and the order of the home. My mum was  into her 80’s still cooking the holiday dinners that fed our brood, she taught Sunday School for 65 years (!!); Gram was in her 90’s still baking bread during winter and sitting on the glider in summer shelling beans. 

 

I think of both often and especially on this Mother’s Day.  After each school day when I’d come home and change into my play clothes, gram asked me, “Tell me, what did you learn in school today?” During the high school years, when awakening early was a hassle, mum would enter my room and say, “Come alive, Sally!” 

 

This day and ever onward I will trace the river’s flow within me, I will learn its rhythms, I will be constant, I will live boldly for I am Emma’s youngest granddaughter and Dorothy’s youngest child --- blessed to be a blessing.