Before …
and After …
Meditations 4 Misfits
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Author Archives: Fred
What a Week
What a week … on Monday my beloved ex-wife Cyndi died after a long struggle with a terrible illness … she was peaceful and surrounded by loved ones …
Then on Tuesday, our home and everything we own was taken by wildfire … we (Nancy and I) have our cars, the clothes we’re wearing, our phones, computers, and Shanti the wonder dog … and we are safe at a friend’s home. Elijah is safe as well …
Feels like the last 24 hours have been an experience of Biblical proportions … but again we are safe and deeply grateful to many good friends … so many around us are displaced and in great need … it is truly unbelievable …
Feeling a little anxious about what this day may bring … but in the midst of it all so grateful for my wife, my son, peace in my heart, and the love of so many good friends … more to come I’m sure …
Hide and Seek
Hide and Seek? podcast #13
What if there are simply seasons in our lives when God withdraws for a time to urge us into deeper intimacy?
A Prayer For Healing
Recently a dear friend had become seriously ill and she asked me to come and pray for her. In preparation for our time together I stumbled across this beautiful blessing / poem by the wonderful John O’Donohue. As I was reading it to her, it struck me how the words flowing from O’Donohue’s soul were so appropriate for our nation right now. It seems to me that as a country we are suffering from a deep and festering soul sickness. It matters not to me what side of the political line you may be on, I think it is clear we are all hurting. You know the issues. Fear, anger, and shaming are rampant.
So if you are sick, you love someone who is sick, or you agree with me that our culture is not well … may the following prayer bring you comfort as it did for my friend and myself. And may it even sow the seeds of healing.
A Blessing for a Friend on the Arrival of Illness
by John O’Donohue
Now is the time of dark invitation
Beyond a frontier that you did not expect.
Abruptly your old life seems distant.
You barely noticed how each day opened
A path through fields never questioned
Yet expected deep down to hold treasure.
Now your time on earth becomes full of threat.
Before your eyes your future shrinks.
You lived absorbed in the day-to-day,
So continuous with everything around you,
That you could forget you were separate.
Now this dark companion has come between you.
Distances have opened in your eyes.
You feel that against your will
A stranger has married your heart.
Nothing before has made you
Feel so isolated and lost.
When the reverberations of shock subside in you,
May grace come to restore you to balance.
May it shape a new space in your heart
To embrace this illness as a teacher
Who has come to open your life to new worlds.
May you find in yourself
A courageous hospitality
Towards what is difficult,
Painful and unknown.
May you use this illness
As a lantern to illuminate
The new qualities that will emerge in you.
May your fragile harvesting of this slow light
Help you release whatever has become false in you.
May you trust this light to clear a path
Through all the fog of old unease and anxiety
Until you feel a rising within you, a tranquility
Profound enough to call the storm to stillness.
May you find the wisdom to listen to your illness,
Ask it why it came. Why it chose your friendship.
Where it wants to take you. What it wants you to know.
What quality of space it wants to create in you.
What you need to learn to become more fully yourself,
That your presence may shine in the world.
May you keep faith with your body,
Learning to see it as a holy sanctuary
Which can bring this night wound gradually
Towards the healing and freedom of dawn.
May you be granted the courage and vision
To work through passivity and self-pity,
To see the beauty you can harvest
From the riches of this dark invitation.
May you learn to receive it graciously,
And promise to learn swiftly
That it may leave you newborn
Willing to dedicate your time to birth.
Grace
May grace guide you, peace surround you, and joy surprise you today. Blessings, Fred
Lost & Found
Lost & Found? podcast #12
“I once was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see.” – John Newton
recorded on 08/29/2020
The Blessing
Imogene had been a hospice patient for several months and lived with her daughter Bonnie in a very small travel trailer. She slept on a little cot in the midst of a forest of unread paperback books and magazines. Bonnie slept next to her mother on another cot.
Less than five feet tall and weighing less than 80 pounds, Imogene was still a very intimidating personality. She was very precise in what she liked and didn’t and let everyone know it. Normally on my visits, Imogene talked non-stop (with great bravado), recounting familiar stories of her broken marriages, her two children, her years of unfulfilling work, her in-your-face life philosophy, her unrealized dreams, and her indomitable spirit. Her son lived out of the area and out of Imogene’s life, so Bonnie was left to faithfully provide the constant care Imogene now required.
Maybe it was the cramped quarters. Maybe it was the pain of Imogene’s cancer. Or maybe it was just too many years of toiling at tedious, unrewarding work—but in the months I had known Imogene, I had seen how she and Bonnie could get on each other’s nerves.
On one of my visits Bonnie was out running some errands, so I was alone with Imogene. Uncharacteristically, Imogene shared in a vulnerable manner the underside of her life narrative. She told me how as an unmarried teenager, pregnant with Bonnie, she had to drop out of school and was never able to formally complete her education. This was a defining experience in Imogene’s life. Believing she was exceptionally gifted intellectually, but unable to gain the formal recognition, she had to settle for a less-than life. Was this why she occasionally made little digs about Bonnie’s weight?
That’s the backstory.
I honestly don’t know how or why, but on a subsequent visit with these women at the stuffed little travel trailer I was witness to a miracle.
Everything started off as usual. I asked if Imogene was in any pain. “No more than usual,” she said, then added, “But I know I’m getting close to the end…and it’s OK.” The bravado was absent as she began to tenderly recount the same stories I had heard on so many previous meetings. The bitterness and frustration over unfulfilled opportunities was mysteriously gone. I was even more amazed as Imogene began to praise Bonnie, who was sitting next to her. “You know, I love my son…but Bonnie’s the one who really loves me and has come to care for me when I needed her. She’s a great daughter—and I’m so proud of her.”
And then Bonnie chimed in, “Mom, I’m so proud of you. I’m proud of the way you never stopped learning. You couldn’t go back to school, but you never stopped learning…and you’ve taught all of us the importance of education. You didn’t let anything stop you. You got us all through.”
I remained in hushed silence as for more than an hour these two beautiful broken souls spoke words of love and acceptance to each other, expressing deep words of appreciation for what is so special and unique in the other. It was a miracle. When wounded souls bless each other, it always is.
A Macro View
These days, it’s so easy to get “sucked in” by the bad news of the day. One counter measure we can employ to help protect our souls during times like these is to take a more macro view of our lives. The following portion of a prayer by Oscar Romero, a Catholic Bishop in El Salvador who was martyred in 1980, is a great example of considering the longer view.
It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
May peace surround you, grace guide you, and joy surprise you today as you work to help make our world a better place to live in.
Blessings, Fred
Demons
As I survey my own life, I am aware that much of my ugliest behavior towards others occurred when I was sure I was in the right.
I’ve learned firsthand what demons certainty can make of us.
Heaven and Hell
There’s a tale from the Jewish tradition that speaks of heaven and hell.
One night an old rabbi had a vision of hell. He saw a beautiful banquet table filled with the most sumptuous of foods. But all of the guests were starving … they had no elbows … therefore they couldn’t get the delicious food to their mouths. They tried in vain to eat but were unable. They suffered terribly just looking at all of the delicious food and being unable to enjoy any of it.
The next night the rabbi had a vision of heaven. To his surprise, it was the exact same image … the same sumptuous banquet table and the people with no elbows. But in this image the people were eating and happy and celebrating. The difference? Without elbows, they discovered they could feed each other.
May you discover the joy of feeding others today. Blessings, Fred