I'll vote for "Daddy"

Blessed!

 School Days 2016 

and "Matman"

 Jana

 Tasty mistake...

 Debsi

 Night Blooms

Vincent's view from his deck in Boulder...

 Boy-Keeping...

 Cracks me up!

 Elmo

 SpongeBob

 What?  Telly-Tubbies!

 "Golden Boy"

Rise Up Like Rooted Trees

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world. 

Each thing—
each stone, blossom, child—
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left [God].

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

—Rainer Maria Rilke [1]

Reference Point

Meaty spirituality must first of all teach us freedom from the self, from my own self as a reference point for everything or anything. This is the necessary Copernican Revolution wherein we change reference points. Copernicus discovered that Earth is not the center of the universe. Now we have to discover that we are not the center of any universe either. We are not finally a meaningful reference point. Although we do have to start with self at the center to build a necessary “ego structure,” we then must move beyond it. The big and full world does not circle around me or you. Yet so many refuse to undergo this foundational enlightenment.  ~R. Rohr

And on a lighter note...

Welcoming Prayer

From Richard Rohr:

I’d like to offer you a form of contemplation—a practice of accepting paradox and holding the tension of contradictions—called The Welcoming Prayer.

First, identify a hurt or an offense in your life. Remember the feelings you first experienced with this hurt and feel them the way you first felt them. Notice how this shows up in your body. Paying attention to your body’s sensations keeps you from jumping into the mind and its dualistic games of good-guy/bad-guy, win/lose, either/or.

After you can identify the hurt and feel it in your body, welcome it. Stop fighting it. Stop splitting and blaming. Welcome the grief. Welcome the anger. It’s hard to do, but for some reason, when we name it, feel it, and welcome it, transformation can begin.

Don’t lose presence to the moment. Any kind of analysis will lead you back into attachment to your ego self. The reason a bird sitting on a hot wire is not electrocuted is quite simply because it does not touch the ground to give the electricity a pathway. Hold the creative tension, but don’t ground it by thinking about it, critiquing it, or analyzing it.

When you’re able to welcome your own pain, you will in some way feel the pain of the whole world. This is what it means to be human—and also what it means to be divine. You can hold this immense pain because you too are being held by the very One who went through this process on the Cross. Jesus was holding all the pain of the world, at least symbolically or archetypally; though the world had come to hate him, he refused to hate it back.

Now hand all of this pain—yours and the world’s—over to God. Let it go. Ask for the grace of forgiveness for the person who hurt you, for the event that offended you, for the reality of suffering in each life.

I can’t promise the pain will leave easily or quickly. To forgive is not to forget. But letting go frees up a great amount of soul-energy that liberates a level of life you didn’t know existed. It leads you to your True Self.

Gateway to Silence:
Welcome what is.

Fresh Eyes~ R. Rohr

Cynthia Bourgeault shares how Jesus brings third force [fresh eyes] to the situation of the woman caught in adultery. When presented with the polarities of stoning the woman or freeing her, Jesus says, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). Bourgeault writes: “He finds the thing that will put the terrible two binaries in a completely new relationship and creates a new kingdom . . . called compassion, forgiveness.” She goes on to say:

The manifestation of love is there in the situation, but you need to find it. . . . Third force is there because the Trinity is real, and if you are alert to it, you will be able to find it. . . . The problem is that most of the world is third force blind. . . . The capacity to midwife third force or hold the reconciling is for me the most powerful fruit of a contemplative spiritual practice. Without a contemplative practice, midwifing third force [seeing with fresh eyes] is virtually impossible. . . .

But with a spiritual practice you will be better and better equipped

to get into the dance which will allow you to see how

to deliver third force in any given situation. [2] 

Rohr's meditation today is heavy, heady stuff...and yet--I think it is at the heart of Christianity. It is what Jesus, the forgiving victim, modeled--a third way, beyond the realm of simple black/white, right/wrong, good/bad, true/false, beautiful/ugly, either/or thinking.  It appears that this third way of seeing and responding to the world takes practice--the spiritual practice of prayer and meditation, the quieting of my either/or mind so that my eyes, ears, mouth, and heart can be illumined.

Remember this song?

Open my eyes, that I may see Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me; Place in my hands the wonderful key That shall unclasp and set me free. Silently now I wait for Thee, Ready my God, Thy will to see, Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine! Open my ears, that I may hear Voices of truth Thou sendest clear; And while the wave notes fall on my ear, Everything false will disappear. Open my mouth, and let me bear, Gladly the warm truth everywhere; Open my heart and let me prepare Love with Thy children thus to share.

KUBO

Wonderful movie!
Then we came back to the apartment and made the banjo.
(Note Sawyer's one-eyed effect.)

I was there...

This beautiful photograph appeared on my screen saver

when I opened my computer this morning.

I immediately thought--

I would love to visit that place.

And then, I realized I had!

When I checked the source, sure enough,

I was there, a year ago,

walking West Bow Street in Edinburgh, Scotland.

West Bow, a street in Edinburgh, Scotland, oddly enough, marks the east side of the historic shopping district known as Grassmarket in Edinburgh’s Old Town. The Grassmarket square still functions as a public marketplace, just as it has for centuries. Shops line the sidewalks and mobile vendors offer their wares in the greenspace between the streets. Narrow alleys called “closes” offer easy passage in and out of Grassmarket. But beware. Edinburgh’s closes are part of both its charm and its haunted reputation.

Paradox - The Third Way

The third way acknowledges:

“That is true and that is true, too,

and I’ve got to learn to coexist with both of them.”

It’s not fully a third position,

but a holding tank where you recognize the truth that’s in both positions

without trying to dismiss either one of them.

That’s not easy. You see why this takes such discernment. First, the two must be honestly named before you can remake them into a new kind of one!

Contradictions are not impediments to the spiritual life; rather, they are an integral part of the spiritual life. Every highly conscious person I have met has struggled with more than one deep contradiction. Contradictions don’t encourage you to abandon your critical faculties, but to sharpen them.

...hold the truth of both positions and take some degree of responsibility for both positions.

Let’s bring this to our contemporary scene. Can you be willing to honestly help carry the shame that has been projected onto our black brothers and sisters and to sincerely carry the responsibility that police officers feel, knowing there are good and bad people on both sides? ~R. Rohr

For Susan, with love...

Lightly my darling...

"It's dark because you are trying too hard. 

Lightly child, lightly.

Learn to do everything lightly. 

Yes, feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply. 

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. 

I was so preposterously serious in those days...

Lightly, lightly--it's the best advice ever given me...

to throw away your baggage and go forward. 

There are quick sands all about you, sucking at your feet,

trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. 

That's why you must walk so lightly. 

Lightly my darling..."

~Aldous Huxley, Island

My precious sister Susan sent me this months ago,

and as I read it today,

it is once again right on time.

I love you, Susu ~ Sister

JOY!

View More: Sunday Morning Nature News|Live News|More News Videos

Love hurts...and heals

View More: Sunday Morning Nature News|Live News|More News Videos

Emmy-Time

~Photo by Sawyer~

Choosing to stay...

I love The Sun...and I read it from cover to cover.
Thanks again, Donna!

Marriage is an institution that brings together two people
"under the influence of the most violent, most insane,
most delusive and most transient of passions. 
They are required to swear that they will remain
in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition
continuously
until death do them part."
~George Bernard Shaw

There have been times when I've been so angry

or so hurt that I thought my love would never recover. 

And then, in the midst of near despair,

something has happened beneath the surface. 

A bright little flashing fish of hope has flicked silver fins

and the water is bright

and suddenly I am returned to a state of love again

--till next time. 

~Madeleine L'Engle

There are always those perfect times

with the people we love,

those moments of joy and equality that sustain us later on...

These moments are the foundation upon which

we build the house that will shelter us into our final years,

so that when love calls out,

"How far would you go for me?"

you can look it in the eye and say truthfully,

"Farther than you would ever have thought was possible."

~Ann Patchett

A Marriage

You are holding up a ceiling

with both arms. It is very heavy,

but you must hold it up, or else

it will fall down on you. Your arms

are tired, terribly tired,

and, as the day goes on, it feels

as if either your arms or the ceiling

will soon collapse.

But then,

unexpectedly,

something wonderful happens:

Someone,

a man or a woman,

walks into the room

and holds their arms up

to the ceiling beside you.

So you finally get

to take down your arms.

You feel the relief of respite,

the blood flowing back

to your fingers and arms.

And when your partner's arms tire,

you hold up your own

to relieve him again.

And it can go on like this

for many years

without the house falling.

~Michael Blumenthal

The hard good news...

Practice: Loving Your Enemy

One of the hardest things to understand with the dualistic mind is Jesus’ command to love your enemy. I’m often asked, “How can we love Al-Qaeda or ISIS (Islamic State or Da’esh) or the Westboro Baptists from my own hometown?”

First, I want to point out that violent, fundamentalist religious groups use God-talk constantly: “God is great. This is for God. I’m a martyr for God. I’m on God’s good side, but you’re going to hell.” Their words and behavior are rooted in dualistic thinking where everything is clear-cut black and white, good and bad. This is religion at its worst, entirely lacking in inner experience. And so we can imagine how someone might say, “God is great!” and pull out a gun to shoot thirty people or shout hate speech, having not experienced God as infinite and inclusive love.

I want to be honest and up-front about this. We’re dealing with a lot of low-level, dualistic thinking—in Christianity, in Islam, and in every religion at its immature levels. People use religion to cover their own malevolence, hatefulness, fear, and anger. It’s not just Islam. Christianity has been doing this for centuries. But we’ve got to do better.

How can we do better? To begin, we might put ourselves in the other’s shoes and imagine why someone is so hateful. While working in the Albuquerque jail for over a decade, I met many men who had been raised in a punitive, authoritarian, absolutist way, often with an absent or abusive father. Understanding another’s story can teach me compassion. It doesn’t mean I let someone take advantage of me. But it does open my heart and help me recognize that they are victims, too. They’ve been wounded, too. Yet they are still objectively an image of God, created in God’s image.

As you’re able to open your heart to your “enemy,” allow God’s love to flow through you to them. Picture their face and hold them in contemplative, silent prayer—a spacious place of loving Presence. Revisit the Loving Kindness Meditation I introduced a few weeks ago to intentionally practice loving everyone, yes, even ISIS.  ~R. Rohr.

Serendipity & Good News!

“I try to be good enough,

But I am not.

In fact, sometimes I am even bad.

So what.

I am loved.”

~Ted Dotts

I am continually grateful for all of the "next right people"
who keep showing up in my life.

My new friend Jana is one of those gifts.

Here is an article she wrote for "L Style G Style" (6.19.14)

about  Rev. Ted Dotts.

Both meeting Jana and getting to know Ted

 have come to me at just the perfect time--as always.

(Jana also makes me laugh!)

Activism through Love

The most mild-mannered rebel you’ll ever meet is Ted Dotts.

It’s easy to recognize the stanza of spunk in his note-sized musician wife, Betty, who plays the organ like she lives life: full-bodied, fast-moving, bold. Her friendly brown eyes glint and West-Texas drawl strengthens when provoked by injustice.

But Ted disguises his emotions with kind, spectacled eyes and smile wrinkles that flank his mouth. His wisdom and gentle grace draw people to him like an orphan to a hot meal, filling their souls with warmth, acceptance, and hope. His soft voice and sensible, heartfelt words keeps listeners focused, wanting to digest every morsel.

And yet controversy seems to have stalked him like a corn field, which is no small feat considering the abundance of roles he’s filled in his 79 years: preacher, district superintendent, counselor, radio host, janitor, ethicist, carpet layer, scholar, and corporal, to name a few.

He’s worn more hats than a grandstand of Kentucky Derby spectators, but the one that seems to be tattooed to his and Betty’s heads is that of activist.

You won’t see them spewing propaganda on television, though Ted hosts the weekly radio show, “Faith Matters,” on KTTZ-FM, and the couple have been oft-quoted by media.

You won’t find them shaking their fists in anger at a protest. In fact, Betty mentored Lubbockites to offset the strident Fred Phelps followers with smiles in 2003, making the “Christians” appear less “Christ-like” than the “sinners.”

You won’t hear them arguing with their dissidents. Ted prefers to listen generously, speak thoughtfully, and allow for uncomfortable silence.

Instead, Ted and Betty prefer to change the world with love. In every role, they live out the Jesus’ teaching of love, grace, and service to those on the cusp of society. And they manage to lead others toward those principles, whether the followers realize it or not.

Ted learned great lessons in leadership while serving two years in the Army. His initial impression was that soldiers followed orders automatically because they were trained. But he soon learned there was much more to it.

“You must lead, not order, or they will find a way to resist,” the former squad leader said. “I learned that a leader should never get too far out in front. You want to be with the people helping them to move—not out by yourself, removed from them.”

He began applying those lessons at his first appointment as a Methodist preacher in Ropesville, Texas, in 1964. The farming community depended on migrant labor, who lived in 10×10 rooms packed in long, tin barracks. Every room had a gas jet, but every two rooms had to share an outdoor water spout. The entire family worked, the husband at the gin and the wife and kids in the cotton fields.

“I started visiting in the gin camp,” he recalled. “The children were being punished at the public school because they spoke Spanish and when they came without shoes. So we collected money at church for shoes. It made the farmers uncomfortable. They felt guilty because they weren’t paying their workers enough to buy shoes for their children. Betty enlisted some of the women to teach the children social manners. They washed their hair for lice. Tension was building between the Dotts and the community.”

But by Christmas, the congregation purchased gifts and had a party at the community center for the several dozen migrant children. “The meanest guy in town was Santa!” Ted said, still thrilled with the members’ growth.

So Ted led them a little further. The next Christmas they held the party at the church building.

“The congregants weren’t too happy about the ‘dirty Mexicans’ being in the church. It was a slow movement.”

Yet tears flowed when the Dotts were assigned to St. James Methodist Church in Abilene two years later by the bishop, who had an inkling they would fit well with the group wanting a more progressive church.

It was 1966, just after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, before the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and in the midst of the Vietnam War. Ted nudged them, too, out of their comfort zone. He had the audacity of inviting a Catholic priest to speak at their worship. He questioned the Vietnam War. And, as Methodist clergy are called to do, he visited the jails.

“Now, often when a pastor visits, it elicits hostility from the jailors—it’s the us against them mentality. The sheriff happened to be a member of our church. To get me corrected, he showed me the huge supply of riot gear he had purchased with county funds. He was expecting a riot by the blacks in Abilene. I thought, ‘My gracious! I have to do something!’ So I got the pastors of the three black Methodist churches and one Hispanic church to agree to meet together once a month on Sunday evening.”

The worship service quickly became a safe place for the blacks and Hispanics to tell stories about the cruelty they’d endured because of racism, which lessened the tension and eased the pain.

Ted’s appointment as superintendent of the Northwest Texas Conference in 1970 created a stir. For one thing, at 34 years old he was the youngest one they’d known in a position that usually was filled by a man at least two decades older. For another, the pastors at the 37 churches he oversaw were jealous they’d been passed over. Finally, his predilection to minister to and accept those the overwhelmingly white, middle-class congregations tended to ignore was sure to cause some squirming in the pews.

“The district was laced with fundamentalism,” Ted explained. “The bishop appointed me so there would be representation of another view. He thought my appointment would create a sliver a change.”

Race, gender, and scandal also figured into the storm.

“The segmented sore was getting worse. We had a drive to integrate. There were few blacks in the northern panhandle, but from [the outcry], you would have thought there were many.”

The ordination of women as pastors was just over a decade old and was slow to gain positive traction. And Ted and the bishop exposed a very popular preacher who had embezzled $80,000.

But for all the hot buttons Ted and Betty lovingly pushed, nothing tore apart a church like the issue of same-sex relationships at St. John’s UMC in Lubbock, which Ted pastored for 17 years. The church sat across the street from Texas Tech University and naturally attracted professors and students. Politicians and wealthy Lubbockites also attended the large, thriving congregation.

As Ted visited with struggling congregants and desperate citizens in turmoil about being gay or having a gay family member, he began to notice contradiction.

“I was raised in a pretty conservative culture regarding same-sex love,” he said. “The conventional [thinking]—‘All gays are this way’—said there must be something terribly wrong with gay people, and it had to do with sex. They must be working a scheme to be wildly permissive sexually. But when they came, how could you be upset with them? Some of them were sterling characters. I could name 6, 7, 10 who are not that way. So I began to develop a sense that something must be wrong with the conventional. Then you have to oppose the conventional.”

As Ted’s impression of gays began to change, he immediately went to the Scriptures.

“I had studied Hebrew and Greek, so I knew the original tongues the Scriptures were written in,” he said. “The more I studied them, I realized the Bible doesn’t say a single word about it. People mention six Scriptures, but those Scriptures aren’t talking about homosexuality any more than they are talking about electric lights. What they were talking about is how we love one another, and that is basic to the Bible.”

Ted left St. John’s when he was appointed medical ethicist at Methodist Hospital in 1992. In his final sermon—still leading, still advancing social injustices—he expressed hope that St. John’s would be coming a reconciling church, a program in which local churches declare their support for the concerns of lesbians and gay men. The current iteration of the movement is the Reconciling Ministries Network, which boasts more than 500 congregations in 2014.

A national PFLAG leader asked the Dotts to start a chapter in Lubbock, which they did in early 1993 to much opposition. Local media would not carry the public service announcements. Ted and Betty faced opposition from ministerial peers, long-time friends, and the community at large—not surprising, considering that Lubbock has ranked as high as the third most conservative city in the nation based on voting records.

Betty’s view of God ever since she was a young child, the daughter of a Methodist minister, no doubt played a role in her ability to accept all people.

“I was very committed early on,” she said. “At 6 years old, I told Mom I wanted to join the church. Life centered around church, but not in a negative or bad way. At the center of the idea was, this is a loving God, not judgmental. Never ‘You better behave or God’s gonna get you, or you’re going to hell.’ But He was a loving God—you are loved—so there is a great expectation to do your best, to dedicate yourself, sacrifice time and money.”

Bobby McMillan, St. John’s next pastor who was on his own journey toward reconciling, allowed the group to meet at the church building. By the time the church overwhelmingly voted—by an 85% majority of those present and voting—in 1998 to become reconciling after four years of deliberate discussion, the richest members and politicians had left.

“That changed the character of the church,” Ted said. “People were leaving, not coming. There were fewer people at worship, much less money, plus the pain of people leaving. They were usually not up front—they would slink out—which probably made it more hurtful.”

In the end, St. John’s stabilized into a thriving, socially conscious congregation that feeds the hungry, helps the poor, clothes the cold, houses the homeless, encourages the downtrodden, and actively welcomes and supports the persecuted.

You’d think, with all of the contention Ted has encountered, he’d be immune to its effects. But his humanity—and humility—indicate otherwise.

“Controversy shrivels me up, because with it I am up against disapproval,” he said. “Disapproval is probably the most powerful weapon as long as we’re susceptible to it. So I shrivel up, back off, quit. It happened more often when I was younger than it does when I’m older, but I can still get caught in it.

“Ideally, you use someone—I use Jesus—so that disapproval can’t have the last word. It’s a constant struggle for all of us. It’s our temptation to freak out in the face of disapproval.”

Doesn’t sound too much like a bold insurgent but rather a person who works every day to live out his ideals. In the end, however, the result is much better.