Tag: inspiration

Perplexed

On By Charis PsalloIn Animals, Photography17 Comments

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I’ve been going through a bit of a molt lately. I think we all do that once in a while. It involves the shedding of  parts of ourselves which were once effective, and perhaps even attractive, if I may say so myself, but now this time of examining which ideas to keep and which to shed has left me in a somewhat frazzled state. I feel a lot like this goose I met in the park the other day. The other geese seemed to have it all together, but this one seemed just a little, well, perplexed…

Yeah. Perplexed. Not where I thought I would be as the next season approaches. But I am here anyway – disheveled, unfashionable, decidedly non-trendy and not at all prepared to fly in formation.

Pardon my appearance. Molting (or going through a spiritual “ponfar” -Trekkie reference) can be a little embarrassing. I’m apt to “lose it” at the most inconvenient times, and frankly I don’t even know if I agree with myself half the time.

But change is like that. Sometimes the hardest part is having grace for ourselves when our own inconsistencies and partially formed concepts frazzle our own nerves, let alone the people around us.

Thanks for your patience. You are very gracious, my friends.

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But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.  We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;  persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed… (2 Corinthians 4:7-9)

 

Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Photography3 Comments

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But you, God, shield me on all sides;
You ground my feet, you lift my head high;
With all my might I shout up to God,
His answers thunder from the holy mountain.
(Psalm 3:2,4 The Message)

The Pains and Joys of the Here and Now

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Photography, Trees and forestsLeave a comment

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The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now.

– Henri Nouwen

Holy Discontent

On By Charis PsalloIn SkyLeave a comment

IMG_7459 clouds over Mt. Baker

Today is All Saints Day and Reformation Day and I’m thinking about those who have gone before (not that there aren’t some pretty magnificent saints living among us now). When I think about it, the saints I most admire did not live pretty, tidy lives. Many of them had major struggles -fightings within, and fears without, as the song “Just As I Am” says. I think it is this very trait of willingness to contend with personal weaknesses and to contend with reality of a fallen world in the light of vision of the Kingdom of God that impresses me. What can I call it? Perhaps a satisfaction with the Saviour, but a holy discontent with status quo?

Sir Francis Drake understood this when he wrote:

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

 

You Raise Me Up

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography, Trees and forests6 Comments

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I heard crying from the room my two little grandchildren shared whilst on vacation. They were supposed to be sleeping. When I opened the door to see what was going on the little guy immediately gave his defense:

“She hit my head really hard, like this!” Then he thumped his head dramatically with a closed fist.

“But honey, now you have hit your own head,” I said.

“Yeah, but she started it!”

Today the Lord has reminded me how I have perpetuated some of the attacks on my own head long after insensitive, wounded, well-meaning-but-mistaken, or even downright nasty people have hurt me with words. I remember word variations of the shame-on-you theme of my childhood and thump my own head with them sometimes. When someone calls me on it, I give an explanation of why I am not at rest. This is my history; this is where the idea came from that I am not smart enough, not pretty enough, not hard working enough, not ________ enough. I rehearse the injury and end up hurting myself yet again.

Abba says, “Who told you that?” (He asked a similar question of Adam and Eve who hid in shame, “Who told you you’re naked?”)

Guilt says “I did something wrong” and can lead to the kind of sorrow that makes us want to change. Shame says “I am something wrong,” for which there is no recourse but to hide -or perhaps blame. Shame tells me I will not be okay until the world changes -until the territorial big sisters of the world are no longer a threat.

God’s solution (if I don’t hide from him)  is to raise me up to his perspective, and tell me who he sees when he looks at me. He tells me I am of great worth to him and that he loves me so much he freely provided a way for all that shame to be lifted off -by bearing the shame himself on the cross.

He didn’t start it, but he ended it when he proclaimed, “It is finished.”

Thank you, Lord. You  give me wings to fly. You raise me up to all that I can be .

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In the Quiet Misty Morning

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography, Trees and forests, Water11 Comments

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As I walked beside the still water in the quiet misty morning a thought came to mind. If I am capable of worrying I am capable of meditating on the goodness of God. It’s just a matter of changing the subject. Remembering what I have seen of God’s promises is much more satisfying than speculating about those things that are still mystifying.

 

Finally, brothers and sisters, fill your minds with beauty and truth. Meditate on whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is good, whatever is virtuous and praiseworthy. (Philippians 4:8)

The Burmis Tree

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Man made, Mountains, Photography, Trees and forests15 Comments

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I’ve driven past the Burmis tree too many times to count but I have never stopped to photograph it before. Apparently it is the most photographed tree in Alberta. There are always vehicles pulled over near it and locals watch in amusement as tourists try to push their doors open and steady their cameras in winds that can almost knock you off your feet sometimes. I’ve never stopped or taken my camera out – just because so many other people do, and I  have to be different I guess. But this week the light was perfect, and nobody was watching, so…

Experts (who knows which ones) say it is a 600 to 750-year old limber pine. That means it could have been a sapling during the time of the last Crusades or the Black Death. It could have been bending in that wind when Kublai Khan came to power, when Dante and Chaucer were writing, when William Wallace was painting his face blue, or Marco Polo eating noodles in a Chinese take-out for the first time, or Wycliffe had just lost his teaching position for ticking off the University establishment with the crazy notion that if you are going to tell people to follow the teachings of the Bible they should at least be able to read it for themselves. I suppose the tree is worthy of attention simply for standing from then until now.

Except that it sort of blew over that time in the nineties, after it was pronounced officially dead about twenty years before. The thing is the Burmis tree is just about the only thing that the town of Burmis still has going for it, so some stalwart citizens discretely employed rods and brackets and raised it back up again. When annoying vandals (sans Huns) broke off an iconic branch they glued it back on and supported it with a rod, Jeremy Bentham-style.

Most photographers, including me, edit it back out.

Don’t get me wrong, I love history, I really do. I almost passed out from excitement when I saw the gates of Ninevah and the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles at the British museum. No beach vacation on earth could ever compare to walking the pavement of Jerusalem or hearing the crunch of pottery shards underfoot in Shiloh. But there is something about this sad-looking dead tree, reminiscent of a Dr. Seuss illustration, gathering tourists’ attention on the side of a blustery highway that makes me want to ask, “So, little tree, what have you done lately?” The tree’s claim to fame was that it had lived for such a long time. An amazingly long time actually, but now it is no longer living and I wonder if it is an homage to life or to death and its inevitability, even if one had the strength to stand strong through a thousand winter gales.

I suppose though, that all these historic figures I admire are just as dead as the Burmis tree. Well, deader actually, because they popped off their mortal coils long before the tree gave in. So many women and men of the past have demonstrated greatness and taught us profound truths, but they are gone now too. Perhaps the lesson of the tree is to simply be an example of standing in the gales of adversity, and having done all one can, to stand some more.

I pondered. Then I read this quote by E.M. Bounds (who demonstrated some standing ability himself):

“The past has not exhausted the possibilities nor the demands for doing great things for God. The church that is dependent on its past history for its miracles of power and grace is a fallen church....”

Hmmm… Perhaps that’s why the Lord drew my attention to the Burmis tree this week. The greats were not great when they started. There was a time when they were as weak as saplings. But when we look to the deep thinkers and devoted people of the past and the institutions they started more than we look to the God who longs to be active in our present, we tend to cease to see, or even believe in miracles of power and grace in our own day – or when we do we dismiss them as coincidences or “unexplained” events too good to be true.

Further down the road the fire-ravaged shell of the old Mohawk tipple in Burmis stands as a symbol of the loss of prosperity and hope in a town of people who ran out of resources. There are some vacation homes in the area, but not much else is happening in downtown Burmis these days.

The thought strikes me that it is so easy to forget Who our source is and to try to resurrect dead monuments to the past instead of pursue active encounters with God.

 

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St. Paul, the intellectual who changed his opinion about Jesus Christ so drastically he went from killing his followers to risking his own life to bring the good news of the kingdom of God, had this to say to folks in Corinth: “When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.  I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.  My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,  so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.”