Sisters Know Best, One Instance of Girl Brain, and Letting Go

Sisters know best.  Anyway, mine does.  I knew that.  Briefly, I wondered if she might be wrong.  She was not.  :)  And I was set free by it.

Pentecost, Freedom, and Cooperation with the Holy Spirit

And they [devout men from every nation] were amazed and wondered, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?  And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? . . .  What does this mean?"  --Acts 2:5-6,12

It means God is enough to fill the needs of EVERY human heart.

It means the Infinite Mystery is beyond the limits of any specific human culture.

It means that God is stepping into human hystery - ha ha! providential typo - also human history :) again to reverse the sentence at Babel.

Those of Us Who Overextend Ourselves

I think some of us who have had challenging lives just need to give more back.

It's like we're more comfortable living under the same amount of stress we grew up with.  Or we try to fix in other people's lives what we couldn't fix in our own families.

The problem, of course, is that however many other lives we help, we still don't heal our family, our experiences, and the wounds remain.

Play to Win

The sheer volume of things I accomplish in a week as a turnaround teacher simply because I have to is amazing.  I have never been so efficient or productive in my life.  But that leaves little time for sanity and humanness.

My Wind Ensemble director in college, Steven J. Moore, was a University of Kentucky graduate, so he loved college basketball, and basketball strategy became musical strategy.

He would often tell us this.  When playing a challenging opponent, a team who has the lead may stop playing to win.  They start running the clock - just playing not to lose.  Precisely here, they play worse, and they begin to lose.  In Wind Ensemble, we were up against a worthy opponent in the challenge of the musical piece that was before us, and he charged us with playing not to lose.  We were losing.  He challenged us to the offense: get on top of it.  Be on the offense, not the defense.  Play to win.

Good Friday

Will the dust praise you?  Will it tell of your faithfulness?  - Psalm 30:10
The netherworld cannot thank you.  Death cannot praise you.  - Isaiah 38:18


Death is deeper than I know.  More total.  More final.

I arrived too late for the burial service, so I crept down into the chapel, so often filled with warmth,

Poem

Your memory creeps in around the edges again.
Time of year had foretold.

Those then new, sweet, happy longings
Briefly eclipse the fresh and old
     of what was, "what could have been", of never good enough.

Speaking your name cements
     That - which was happily forgotten.
     That - which once, for Freedom, was sold.

Return to Innocence

I have recently been allured by a new community, a new movement.  They smoke, drink, cuss, and let their attractions lead them to Jesus Christ.


Which is, of course, new for me.  But what allures me is the very tangible experience of companionship and freedom.  Of acceptance and belonging, already.  The first time I show up.