Leten Blog Series - Gratitude

 The following blog entry is written by Carol Pooser:  

 

For me, acknowledgment and gratitude are the keys.  While I am in the waking up mode in the morning, I thank God for another day and affirm that the day is in his hands.  If I know that it is going to be an exceptionally stressful or busy day, I ask that I will be alert to the work of the Holy Spirit in my life that day.  During the day, I try to remember to thank God for whatever is happening at the time--sunshine or not, family or friends that I am in contact with, work that I am doing.  As I am falling asleep at night, I thank God for a time of rest and for being with me during the day.  Practicing these two attitudes not only draws me closer to God, but is the best medicine for stress and anxiety that I have found.

The Spirit of Everyday (Day 5)

I am rereading a book that I picked up overseas while on a trip about 12 yrs ago. The general idea behind the book is that it follows the first half of the life of Bluebear.  The book starts with baby Bluebear floating in a walnut shell in a storm on the sea alone.  This is a constant theme in the book as he comes across many different creatures but always seems to realize that he doesn't know exactly who he is.  As he goes through his adventures he can't find anyone quite like him, yet he realizes that just about everyone he meets has something to teach him, be it practical, artistic, or spiritual.  He forms life long friendships, discovers some people will hate him just because he's different, finds out more about how he is similar and different than others, and discovers the vast mysteries of the world he's part of.

Yet, it wasn't until this rereading that I really saw how Bluebear's story parallels ours as Christians.  We are in this world that doesn't always make sense to us, but we have to live day to day in it as things happen that affect us.  These things change us, help us discover who we are, and bring us into relationships with others who make us who we are.  Yet we know this world as we know it is not our home, we are seeking always to know more about what it means to be that which we have been created to be, and seeking to be with others who understand us in such a way to know what it is to be "us."  So we live in each moment, trying to do what is best, what we feel is right, true to ourselves and our beliefs, and move forward seeking meaning, seeking community, seeking God.  We, like Bluebear, know lots of truths from experience or from our studies, but there are also lots of things that are not quite as they seem and many experiences that will continue to shape us.  Our lives are not just a series of short stories, but the stories do make up our lives, they make and remake us moving us forward on life's road.

In the last life covered in the book, Bluebear discovers he's not alone, he finds different forms of community, but he also hints in his final narration that this is not the end of the stories. This is true of us as well even as we begin to feel at home with who we are and find those who love us as part of community.  It is not the end of the story, the stories continue, the seeking for a better understanding of what's true and real continues, the changes in us and the world continues, but we do not yet know the story we are writing here.

The Spirit of Everyday (Day 4)

"When you feel sad or under a curse" . . . whenever I hear those words it always picks me up a notch.  Yeah, I know that's odd, but Godspell's All for the Best is an odd song.  A song about how unfair life is to a catchy happy tune.  Not only is it about the unfairness of life, but also the seemingly ridiculous response Jesus gives to our realization of this. Who is it that is will be blessed in Matthew 5?

• The poor in spirit
• Those who mourn
• The meek
• Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness
• The merciful
• The pure in heart
• The peacemakers
• Those who are persecuted

These are not those who normally feel blessed.  I know I rarely feel blessed when I'm struggling with either my own stuff or with seeing the world as something less than God wishes it to be.  Yet, these are according to Jesus times of blessing, times when we can see somewhere out there a world that is as God would have it.  That is the tension of our faith, we both realize the problem of sin that keeps this world from being what God would have it be, but also are blessed with the knowledge that God does not mean for it to be this way.  We long for that world everyday because that is the basis of Faith(fulness).  The dichotomy of a life in Christ is that we today live both in the "now" and the "is to come."  Our blessing is found in the second half of that, we are already able to live that life, striving to see it more clearly every day.  Yet on Edgar Allen Poe's birthday we'd be remiss if we thought that the tension is easily resolved.  Much of Poe's great, albeit somewhat dark, work came from his experiences where he felt broke, betrayed, alone, and desperate. Likewise we see the struggles of this world and this life, and our laments of "God where are you?" are real. Though based in the same thought, these laments beg for the voice of one who loves us, who brings us peace, who will bring a new day, who never leaves us, and who makes things new.  Yet it doesn't change the cold we feel, or the darkness we experience and in this time we can do nothing but cling to that hope, that promise that we are not alone. 

Be it in sadness, hope, anger, faith or a sense of peace we all live in this world "in between." We know the good, we know the bad, and we know the One, who creates, redeems, and sustains all things.  May we feel protected, loved, hopeful, and most importantly blessed. 

(This song also inspired this post.)

The Spirit of Everyday Life (Day 2)

Today's post will once again include music, but it starts with a different sound. I woke up this morning to the sound of sirens outside my bedroom.  Not completely unusual, but 30 minutes later I heard them again going the other way.  And then as I left the house and drove to the church, I passed 3 more in different locations.  This at best was a little unnerving.  I have now been here long enough to realize that while I'm in "Charleston" that James Island is in some ways still a small town, That means even though it seems none of those ambulances were treating anyone directly related to the Church that chances are someone here or someone I know here was affected by them.  This is one of those things that just makes you a little uncomfortable, but also makes you pray for those unseen, unknown people who are part of our community who are experiencing some kind of sadness.  We all need support of a community and of God when we feel a loss or pain.  This is how God made us, and he made us all that way.  We so often in this society find ways to divide ourselves from others.  We discuss how an accident happened, what could have gone wrong, or more likely what someone did to cause it as we sit in traffic waiting and rubbernecking as we travel by.  We talk about how those of a different ideological bent are supposedly affecting our lives here in the country and wonder why they don't think like we do.  We connect quickly to those with shared experiences, but sometimes find it too hard to talk about things that are really important with those who see things differently than ourselves.  Yet, God calls us all, God created us all, God is part of us all as we are all made in God's image.  That spark of God is what connected me this morning to all those who I knew were affected by those ambulances, it was a spirit of community that was created along with our individual spirits.  God is larger than all of our differences, and calls us first to connect with that piece of God that is part of all of us, that binds us together in one mission, one world, one life before getting caught up in the differences.  Five for Fighting had a song a few years back called Slice that asked the question "How can you be as nice as me?  You're not from the same slice as me." I think as people of faith our starting point with others should always be a feeling of "Hello, my fellow child of God.  God loves you, and I do too."  If you want to hear all of "Slice" click here.

The Spirit of Everyday Life

We often search our worship experiences for those moments that touch us, change us, push us forward.  Often we find them in small places, sometimes in larger themes, but while we often seek these when we find ourselves in a worship service or church wide events we rarely seek them as much in our day to day lives, letting words, sounds, smells, and sights pass by like they had no spiritual significance.

Here is a one week challenge:  This week seek the spiritual in everyday and then tell others about what it is that you find.  Likewise you will find a series of blogs this week outlining what we found spiritual in the day prior.  So if you feel you don't even know where to look, start here.  We may spend the entire week just finding the spiritual in one thing, or we may find it in so many variations that we don't repeat the same thing twice.  Both are okay, but if we want to see the world change, we must first change how we see the world.

Today, we found the spiritual in the music we were listening to in the car, in this case Mumford and Sons.  You can find a version of the song that is stuck in our head here.   It is a simple song, and the lyrics certainly seem spiritual, but at the same time it's not inherently "Christian."  Yet it speaks to the soul, speaking of the things that connect us all to some greater vision, and the desire to better understand it while we are still here on this earth.  The most poignant moment for us was: "In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die.  Where you invest your love, you invest your life."  This one snippet challenges us to really think about what we put our "love" (passion, energy, spirit) into.  It very much fits a desire to be changed from the inside and touched the spirit and soul today.

Hopefully you will join in the week long journey together, and more so that this will help us all see the world just a little more through God's eyes.