Month: April 2012

The Believer’s Cross

On By Charis PsalloIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

“The believer’s cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension, the bearing of which is demanded. The believer’s cross is, like that of Jesus, the price of social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not, like Luther’s cross, an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come.” John Howard Yoder in The Politics of Jesus

When facts get in the way of truth

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Trees and forests5 Comments

Fisher Peak from Environmental office ch rs

I love the valley we live in. Snow, clouds, and sun continually change the texture and colour of the mountains. I drove my old Saskatchewan farmer uncle up to a viewpoint expecting him to admire the vista as much as I do.

“It’s okay,” he grunted, ” but those mountains kinda block the view.”

To him beauty was a thin band of waving wheat domed by an enormous sky. I suppose mountains could look like giant rocks that would impede the progress of a plow. His eyes feasted on open space.

My eyes feast on rivers, lakes, trees and mountains.  I particularly like being surprised by the mountains. The other day they suddenly emerged after hiding in a moody dark cloak of cloud all week. A fresh fall of snow glowed in the morning sun. The beauty kind of took my breath away and I pointed them out to another person in the parking lot.

“Too bad the telephone wires ruin the view,” he said.

I was so enthralled with the light I hadn’t noticed the poles and wires. Nothing was “ruined” for me. If I was taking a photo I probably would have moved to change my perspective -maybe to a spot right under the wires. At that moment I was not focusing on telephone poles. I could still see beauty.

Facts can be like annoying telephone wires that keep us from seeing a bigger truth. Have you ever been in the middle of sharing a really good anecdote to illustrate your point when someone interrupts with facts?

“No. It was a Thursday and she was the niece of the Schufflemeier boy with the plate in his head, not his cousin.”

Clouds sailing to Alberta on the high westerly winds sometimes look like they snag on the Rockies on the way to the waving wheat fields. They can stay there for hours. I think some people’s minds snag on facts like the clouds snag on the craggy peaks and they miss the beauty of both the mountains and the prairies.

My stories are not always accurate for detail -although I am trying to be more respectful of  those who need documentation. Fiction can speak truth more plainly than court evidence. And honestly? A lot of my photos are photoshopped because I am trying to communicate the truth I see. I take out the telephone wires -unless it’s a comment on the shape of sunlit frosted wire garlands, which can be kind of cool. So you can correct me if you were there and remember it differently, but I’ll probably ignore you like I ignore the telephone wires.

Save

Subject to change

On By Charis PsalloIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Sometimes I read things I wrote with such passion years ago –and cringe.

I’m not the same person I was then, or even a week ago. I am changing.

Being aware that written words flung into space have an indefinite life-span, I am wary of attaching my name to any opinion that ends with a click. Jesus did mention that someday words spoken in secret would be made public. The recent Wiki leaks poignantly remind us that words typed, spoken or signed may all be piling up in some cosmic file somewhere where there are no passwords, avatars or pen names.

So I’m wondering, given the weight of this responsibility, what I should write. Or not write. I’ve uttered some pretty stupid stuff in my time. Every once in a while, though, I’ve passed on a useful tidbit to another sojourner on the road -but only  because it’s a patch of road I’ve already been down -sometimes several times. Some trips worked out well and others…

Sometimes I am merrily dancing down this road when I catch the gleeful possibility of a new rabbit trail in my peripheral vision (where most creative stuff happens.) Sometimes I come out ahead. Sometimes I emerge, scratched, bug-bitten and humbled ten miles back from where I was distracted. Then I get to experience the same lesson all over again.

Sometimes I am merrily dancing down the center of the road when I am attracted by a pretty new idea blossoming on a bush on the verge. After a time, when the thorns from that bush clutch at my mental, spiritual, or intellectual  freedom I pull away so hard that I land in the soggy boot-snatching mud in the ditch on the other side of the road.

It may take a while to find the center again.

Then again, I have noticed a tendency in people who constantly worry about being in the center to make the road much narrower than God does; it’s hard to dance on a tightrope. I intend to make use of the whole road and dance, plod, saunter and holy roll (if I feel so led) into my God-given destiny. Tiny “c” conservative is not a compliment if it means burying your one talent in the ground for fear of making a bad investment, nor will making a grand ta-dah dismount from the balance beam of life, after decades of clinging to it with all fours, impress the judge all that much.

I have not arrived, and as the Bible says, “It does not yet appear what we shall be.” I have not arrived, but I would like to leave some bright ribbon trail markers from time to time, if it will help followers conserve shoe leather and take them farther than I have gone.

So, I am subject to change, by the grace Jesus Christ pours on me, because sometimes I’m wrong -and I’m learning to admit it- and he gives me more chances to get it right. I am subject to change because God has created me to be something I haven’t fully realized yet, although he does realize it and probably is not nearly as discouraged by my flubs as I am since he is not limited by the constraints of living on a timeline. He knows the end from the beginning. I am subject to change, because thing one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind I press on to the mark of the high calling of God, and the more I get to know him, the more I love him, and the more I want to change.

It’s a process.

My Psalm

On By Charis PsalloIn Poetry, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Like a child standing on tip-toe,

unable to reach the light switch,

like a girl groping cellar walls,

unable to find the stairs

I waited in the dark.

The drone of traffic in the streets

in rising and lowering songless pitch

neared my heart

then passed me by,

hope deferred yet once again.

I cried, “Oh God! Where are you?”

Pouring my effort into limp flowers

potted in dessicated soil

I watched as it seeped through again and again

staining the white tablecloth beneath.

“I can never be good enough,” I whimpered.

But you,

Abba

Papa

Father

said, “Come.”

You placed your strong arms under mine

and lifted me up.

You tossed me high

into the sunlight

and caught me with your grace

stronger than any fear of failure.

You held me in your lap wide as a green orchard

and fed me words from your mouth.

Abba, you are my light in the hall.

Papa, you are hope like the door left ajar.

Father, I hear you in the kitchen preparing a feast for me.

You are my strength, my light, my hope, my joy.

I love you.

We Bring the Sacrifice of Shrubbery

On By Charis PsalloIn Uncategorized3 Comments

cedar in the rain ch rs 004

Palm trees don’t grow in this part of the world.

This profound thought came to mind this morning as I was preparing to go to church for Palm Sunday. In past years we were supplied with palm fronds from some distant place when we entered the building in preparation for the annual Palm Sunday praise march. The march is the yearly event when most of our decently-and-in-order introverted type congregation shuffles out of the pews and follows the children in a sort of reverse Pied Piper conga line for the rhythmically impaired out the emergency exit, once around the parking lot, back in the hall doors, through the nursery, past the washrooms, to return to the sanctuary. By this time the straggling solitary voices singing choruses are usually not only out of breath and out of sync with the organ, but are probably not even singing the same song.

Still and all it’s quite exciting, bandying our fronds about and coming perilously close to dancing in the aisles. For those of you who worship by waving colourful giant silk flags and unself-consciously dancing unshod in the aisles, please understand that for people in whose culture shifting weight from one foot to another is considered frenetic activity the praise march is pushing the boundaries of decorum. Sometimes it prompts quiet mutterings about reverence –but it’s part of the children’s story time, so all is well.

But budget restrictions, you know. We’ve not been able to afford to have the palm branches flown in since our resident florist went out of business and we can’t get them wholesale. Last year we substituted hand-made flags (small enough to tape to drinking straws -we’re not about to go overboard) and plastic miniature greenery found in a box of stage props from Christmases past. A while back someone donated a bag of cheerleader pompoms. The little girls and young moms get those.

So this morning I was thinking about the tradition of waving palm branches in a country where palms do not grow. It dawned on me that Jerusalem is not exactly a lush jungle either. Cutting down branches may have been a sacrifice of prized landscaping ornamentation for them. Throwing down coats in the path of the Master on the donkey would probably have been more of a sacrifice for them than for us as well. It’s unlikely the common people in those days needed to include his’n’hers walk-in-closets in their home design plans. Jesus talked about giving a cloak away if a person had two. Two? Our mud room alone has an avalanche of three seasons worth of jackets, sweaters and parkas sliding off the hooks onto the floor.

I posted a photo I took yesterday of raindrops on a cedar branch. They reminded me of little jewels. The cedar bush, which I’ve been trying to coax into some sort of shape for years, is the only green thing in the garden right now -except for the tip of some crocus leaves and a bit of incorrigible crab grass by the foundation wall. I felt like the Lord was saying to me, “It’s easy to sacrifice palm branches from some far-away third world country. If you want to do this, get your own branch, from you own yard.”

So I did. I cut out a branch from the center of the shrub I photographed yesterday –the same branch as a matter of fact– as my sacrifice of praise. And I waved it all through the parking lot, the meeting hall, the nursery, the hallway and the sanctuary, because the King is coming.

It was a good morning.