companionship along the way

Tonight we will have friends over for a simple dinner and a light-hearted game of dominoes.  It could seem superficial unless you believe that true spirituality can be found in the mundane, in the simplest of shared pleasures, good food and companionship.

I know enough, just enough, about their lives to know that it's an arduous journey, a journey that often leaves them isolated from others, a journey that takes it's toll financially and emotionally and psychologically.  In a great act of love, they embraced two little boys, brothers abandoned by a young member of their extended family who was caught in a web of self-destruction.  What came in the years that followed no one would have willingly chosen for themselves.

So maybe the most spiritual and meaningful act of love and mercy would be the simple act of sharing a meal and some laughter, a little companionship along the journey. 

show me the currents that carry the sea

As I grow older, I continue to face challenges to my thinking and to my faith.  I must continually ask myself when I feel intense anxiety over faith issues or life's disappointments, "Is God bigger than this?"  The challenges of my earlier years were very different...not less than...just very different.  The challenges of these later years are broader.  The questions seem to cover more ground.  The answers have to cover more ground too. Shallow answers do not suffice.  Answers that bubble on the surface are not enough.  Give me the rivers that well up from the depths.  Show me the currents that carry the sea.

strangers and friends

Thy will be done.

We sat in an Al-Anon meeting in a rented room at the Episcopalian church with strangers all sitting in folding metal chairs sharing their heartbreak and struggles. They had all had to let go of someone. One young man toward the end of the meeting shared that he was the one who had to be let go. His father sat beside him. He went on to say to us all that there is hope for us all because he was living proof. If God could turn his life around like He had, He could turn your loved one's life around too, he said.

When our allotted time for the evening was up, we all stood and held each others hands standing in a big circle, all of us strangers and friends at the same time. We stood their holding each others hands--touching each other--and we recited the Lord's Prayer together...Thy will be done. God, you get to be God in all Your indescribable power--this is beyond us to solve. And forgive us, give us, don't test us, deliver us-- without you we are nothing and can do nothing.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.  In me. In all of us who stand before You yearning for heaven and wholeness.

I felt like I had just been to church.