Reflections

  ~ we admitted we were powerless and that our lives had become unmanageable  (Step One, Twelve Steps) There is a turning point in the life of every person which involves an admission of powerlessness. After all, nobody escapes the human experience without loss of power somewhere along the way. We lose youth, we lose people, sometimes we lose our hopes and dreams and, eventually, we lose life itself. We tend to mask this painful reality and pretend to be masters of our own destiny. This is called denial, and it is fed by the need to feel in control, by the ego. The stronger our ego is, the more denial we need.  The most perillous and pathetic exhibition of this is addiction. Addicts deny powerlessness over an impulse even when it threatens to consume them and anything else that gets in the way. Unchecked, denial of addiction almost always ends in jail, institution or death. What is one to do? Admit defeat. In the famous story of David and Bathsheba, David had everyt...

~What comes out of the mouth comes from the heart;  Matthew 15:18 Today is the first day of Lent, which comes form the Old Dutch, lentin , meaning spring season . Traditionally, Christians honor this day with prayer and fasting, marking their foreheads with ashes in the shape of a cross to remember Jesus' 40 days of fasting in the desert.  This year, the first day of Lent also falls on the first day of the month of adar in the Hebrew calendar. According to Jewish custom, it was on this day that the plague of darkness covered Egypt before the great Exodus toward the Promised Land. In six weeks, Jews will observe Passover and Christians Easter, a celebration of passing from darkness into light and experiencing the magnificent rebirth of life known as Spring.  Lent is a time of temptation resisted, a wilderness experience or  midbar... If we focus on   deprivation, it can seem  long*  with the days getting longer but not fast enough. But i...

Truth without love has no decency; it's just brutality. On the other hand, love without truth has no character; it's just hypocrisy ~ John F. MacArthur It's been one of those weeks! If I wasn't being confronted, I was the one doing the confronting; either getting hurt, or doing the hurting.  I have yet to learn that , just because something's true, it doesn't mean I have to say it. Conversely, just because I love you, it doesn't mean I have to protect you from a painful truth. T ruth and love, head and heart, need to be in balance!   And I need to consider your head and heart as well; the state you are in to receive the truth I want to share (or withhold).  Finally, there's the productive factor. I can offer a painful truth lovingly but, g enerally speaking, for it to be kind and constructive to you , it also needs to be something you (or I) can do something about. Otherwise, it's just a criticism.  So much to consider before opening my m...

Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan  filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and withhold some of the proceeds from the land?" ( Acts 5:3) Set in the midst of a male-dominated financial district in London, Expansion  ( right ) was intended by the sculptor to portray the internal power of "feminine energy".  The streaming light, she says, is like the soul pouring out from the cracks of human vulnerability. I recognize the kundalini aspect in the electrical currents. But, quite frankly, they look to me like self-deception short-circuiting clear thinking. If that sounds harsh, bear with me.  I have been attracted to energy practices as a way to transcend my own brokenness and human condition. I'd hoped they were a way to heal and better myself. But they did not deliver. Sitting cross-legged, baring my soul (though not my breasts) and deep breathing, all I got was more energy. And this should not have surprised me because energy does not conver...

It's trying to go up but it's having a hard time fighting the current ~ Marie-Ève Muller, Quebec Marine Mammal Emergency Yesterday a humpback whale died off the shores of Montreal from, I suspect, spending too much time in fresh water. This struck a chord in me, perhaps because I saw it as symbolic of the solitude, isolation and lostness in our world, a world sorely lacking in salt. I happened to be researching the word "salt". It started by looking into the meaning of the word Salem (root of the word Jerusalem), wondering if, because it started with sal , it was derived from the word for  salt,  and had the same root as the word "salvation".   As a preservative, a spice, a cleansing agent, salt was highly valued for its life-preserving, healing as well seasoning properties. It was traded between Italy and Rome, and offered with sacrifices to priests and kings. Indeed, in the Torah, sacrifices offered with salt were referred to as "covenants of...

I can't breathe ~ George Floyd Resistance means " to take a stand against, oppose ".  In physics, it is a drag force (air resistance) or opposition to the current flow (electrical resitance). Effective resistance requires power. It doesn't just protest what is happening. The person pictured to the right, for example, is protesting but, standing in front of tanks, he is at the mercy of the guys driving them. Brave perhaps, but futile if they decide to run him over. Protest and resistance are both forms of opposition. But only resistance wins wars. Now it could be argued that protest is powerful in that it exerts moral pressure.  This may be so, but it has to come from within the ranks. There is no way, if men don't take a stand against the denigration of women, that women will get very far by protesting it themselves. There is no way, if bystanders don't confront bullies, that victims will be able to stop harassment. There is no way, if white fol...

Light seeking light, doth light of light beguile ~Shakespeare, Love's Labours Lost We are seekers of the light!  For guidance, warmth, purpose and direction, we long for the light and are attracted to it. But sometimes, for lack of vision, we cannot see the very thing dividing us from it. Like the poor fly illustrated here, we can get stuck on a window and die there, headed for freedom but never leaving our self-made prison. This is denial.  Like an  inivisible wall (or window) separating us from what we seek, we are drawn to the light without seeing what is literally right in front of our faces. We refuse to try another route, get away, go around... exhausting ourselves by ignoring what our pain sensors are telling us.  It doesn't work. Then there is false light, artifical sources of light that throw lightbeams in every direction, confusing those of us who are phototaxic, that is, who are oriented to light, which would be all of us.  We become like tho...