But the path of the just is like the shining sun,
That shines ever brighter unto the perfect day.
(Proverbs 4:18)
Brighter
Tag: inspiration
I Was Nominated for an Award! or How to Encourage the Entire World in Seven Steps
Photo: Bouquet
When I received my first blogging award nomination my reaction was kind of like this –if you can imagine a very plump middle age woman in the place of this talented child. Well, perhaps this is not the best visual, but still:
I didn’t post it right away because I was just so humble (ahem) and also because I couldn’t figure out how to get the pasty link thing to work. So I dropped it to contemplate the gravity of the honour. Then there were some more very flattering nominations, which I truly appreciated.
Then I read the rules on some of them. Pass the award on to 15 other bloggers? As I often say to my husband, I said, “Husband, I am an English major. You do the math.” So he did. He figured that if everyone receiving an award passed that award on to 15 other people the very next day and they did the same, in little more than a week we could pretty much encourage the entire world –at least several billion of them.
This relates to my post On Being a Descendent of Royalty. Just because the designers of rules for receiving blogging awards were exceedingly generous doesn’t mean that they are not of value and that some kind people out there took the time to read my blog and nominate me for an award. I am truly grateful. I thank you. I am honoured.
So to catch up on some inexcusably overdue acknowledgements I would like to thank the following bloggers for their generosity and kind words:
Admin at Pure Gory
Deborah at “Ye shall know me by my fruits”
Victoria at Made for Victory
Melody at Meanwhile Melody Muses
Gracie at Frames and Focus
I highly recommend their sites.
Now, the obligatory seven things about myself list:
1. When I was in grade three I rode my imaginary horse, Ginger, home from school every day. The neighbours thought I was seriously gimped.
2. I’m usually in the process of reading at least six books at the same time and I often start in the middle.
3. I can’t dance or remember the 7 times table, but I always have music in my head. It can be annoying.
4. Between my husband, my children and their spouses and myself we have about 49 1/2 years of university education (so far). Some of it is paid for. I’ve done umpteen year’s worth of courses in music, education, theology, art, and English, but I don’t have a degree.
5. My parents were told I was dead. Mom had a caesarean section to deliver a stillborn, but some friends gathered all night to pray for this young couple and their baby. God must have heard, because I am here. Still.
6. I am seriously in love with Jesus Christ. So is my husband. It’s a magnificent threesome.
7. I published my first poetry at 12, sang in my first opera at 14, performed in a nightclub when I was too young to get in, dated a politician when I was too young to vote, learned to fly a kite at 45, went through adolescent rebellion at 39 and started splashing right through the middle of puddles at 55. It’s not just that I have a tendency to be ahead of the curve or behind the curve — the curve and I have never met.
The point of awards is, I think, to bring attention to worthwhile blogs, so rather than contribute to the devaluation of awards I choose to bypass the whole system and get to the point of saying check out these blogs. I shall try to do this on a more regular basis. The following bloggers may consider themselves winners of Charis’ very own first I LIKE YOU award (if I could figure out how to make an icon I would):
Check out these blogs:
(Edited to add: after 25 edits on this post I think this is as good as it’s going to get. Click on the URL and not the name of the blog and you should get there. sigh.)
Admin at Pure Glory http://pureglory.net –prophets Gabriel and Hazel bring strong words of encouragement
Deborah at Ye Shall Know Me by My Fruits http://girlwiththepen1118.wordpress.com/ incredibly talented poet who writes the most evocative sensuous real stuff. She really should be famous. Seriously.
Victoria at Made for Victory– http://madeforvictory.com/an over-comer of epic proportion
Melody at Meanwhile Melody Muses– http://melodylowes.com/ fellow lover of words, flowers and hope who is not afraid to pump up the colour
Gracie at Frames and Focus–http://graciebinoya.com/ a sensitive, talented photographer with a gift of holy discontent that keeps her striving to be even better
And some others that have really touched my heart:
Quilla at Ruach333 http://ruach333.wordpress.com/–photography and poetry from a quiet but deep, deep man of faith
Disciple Gideon at Disciple Gideon http://disciplegideon.wordpress.com/ -an honest humble man with a listening heart and a gift for being profound
Janelle at My Men and Me http://mymenandme.wordpress.com–a pure soul who loves the Lord, loves her family, loves her farm, and loves her readers
Stephanie at The Potter’s Hand – http://thepottershand2011.com -a worshipping Singaporean who sees the glory of God all around her and captures it with her camera
Trina and Micheline at Whimsical Publishing http://whimsicalpublishingblog.wordpress.com–a writer of children’s books and an illustrator/artist/photographer team who are much too lively and fun to stay in a box
Mirjam at Mirjam Aldolphi Photography http://mirisphotos.org -in Ukraine -a woman whose love for needy children needs no translation
There are other blogs I enjoy, of course. I’m just starting in order of when I first started reading them. If I forgot an award, please remind me, so I can make an excuse, and then acknowledge it.
Blessings on you all. You have enriched my life!!
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Hope: Vision-led endurance
Photo: I waited all through a dark, dreary, rainy day to be able to go out for a walk. Finally, in the early evening, the sun broke through.
This is going to sound weird because, well, it is weird.
About 4 ½ years ago we had a particularly difficult week in our family. We received three bits of bad news, any one of which meant a change in lifestyle –and all of them negative. Two were diagnoses of incurable degenerative diseases and one was about a business my husband put a lot of effort and time into, which literally went south.
Then I had a strange experience. I awoke hearing a voice with a BBC accent saying, “Follow 228 ban our tires.” It sounded like a commercial that adds a voice-over saying, “For further information go to www dot…”
It was so clear I grabbed a pen and pad and wrote it down, like it was a phone message.
In the morning I looked at it and felt rather silly. What an odd thing to write down. I never told anyone, but secretly, later in the day I googled it.
Nothing. I put the experience down to stress.
The next day I was thinking about the strange note to self when I remembered the voice had a British accent and in the UK tires is spelled tyres.
I googled it again using the “proper” spelling.
This time I followed the trail to a British bicycle shop site selling tyres which were featured in a click-able box at the top. On the side of the page was a box with an advertisement for Ray Ban glasses. Featured in the center was a photo and description of a head lamp for a racing bike. It must have been for very serious bikers because it cost 228 pounds.
Here’s the odd thing. The lamp was an LED Vision lamp made by the Hope company and called the Endurance model. What jumped out at me when I looked at the page was this:
Hope: Vision-LED Endurance.
As a person who suffered from depression for many years I know that living without a sense of hope is hell, but I wasn’t sure what hope really was. I knew it didn’t mean “a dream is a wish your heart makes” or “any dream will do”. I believe God was giving me a puzzle to solve in which the answer was a definition of hope, “vision-led endurance.” The Bible says without a vision (I believe the word there is a God-given active rhema word) the people perish. Hope means endurance that is attached to a promise from God. Hope gives a reason to live and a purpose with which to fight discouragement.
God is faithful. Those three problems which loomed so large that week are no longer big problems. One was healed out-right, quite miraculously, shortly afterward; one became less threatening when God had an unusual creative solution and is much improved, (hubs is not wheel-chair bound, in fact, he jogs six kilometres nearly every day); and the project is back on the rails –with much more reliable partners this time.
Jesus never ceases to amaze me.
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The three note symphony
Photo: The sun breaks through the rain
Dream:
I’m in a television studio watching the recording of a talk show. The hostess is a youngish woman whose usual topics I consider to be, well, a bit shallow. The person she is interviewing this time is a composer and conductor. I don’t recognize him, but she seems a bit out of her depth.
She starts the interview by admitting she knows very little about music, but always wished she had some talent in that area, especially that she could sing.
The composer tells her anyone can have a part in making great music. He demonstrates three simple notes for her to sing (do, so, mi) and gets her to sing along with him …do, so, mi…do, so,mi…do,so,mi…
He tells her not to stop, then picks up a clarinet and starts weaving a tune around her three notes as she concentrates on singing.
A classical guitar joins them. The music I hear in my dream is soft and gentle and quite pretty.
Gradually more instruments join in –a cello playing continuo, a violin, a French horn, each adding to the melody making it more complex but still very lovely.
As I listen I close my eyes and the sounds become ribbons of colours winding around each other to weave a three-dimensional tapestry. The tension and drama in the music rise to a crescendo that blasts a trombone fanfare of thunder. Staccato flutes and harps and pizzicato violins ping like raindrops gathering into rivulets, streams and a mighty river. I see waves of sound surging through the valleys like floods in the desert. I see trees on the hillsides growing and producing ripe fruit as soon as the blossoms and leaves emerge. I see fields of ripe wheat waving in rhythm and sunlight piercing through dark blue-grey bruised banks of cloud. I fly over the earth like I am riding on the wings of an eagle.
I am carried away by the sound of the most marvellously beautiful symphonic music I have ever heard. In the dream it seems to last for hours. I ride on the wings of song played by a thousand instruments. I’m sailing over mountains and coastlands, forests and oceans, gliding through waterfalls and mists over mossy green islands.
Gradually the instruments drop out one at a time, like the droplets in a heavy downpour diminuendo from summer downpour, to shower, to sprinkles. I have been so immersed in the music, trying so hard to remember the themes that I have completely forgotten about the woman in the TV studio. As the music simplifies I hear the violin fade out, the guitar stop and I am again in the studio. The composer is left performing a duet with the woman who has her eyes shut in concentration. Her mouth is still open. She is still singing the three notes, catching up to composer’s rhythm after taking a deep breath every once in a while.
The entire symphony was composed and played around her three notes.
He ends the song gently, quietly, sweetly, and she opens her eyes in amazement.
He smiles.
The woman and I both gasp. We recognize him. It is the Master Composer. The great conductor. The Creator of all things. He turns and looks at me kindly. He disappears.
I wake up.
I rush for a pencil and manuscript paper but when I sit at the piano to write the music down, it disappears like a vapour of memory.
For hours I want only to go back to sleep so I can enter the dream again, but both sleep and the dream elude me. I pace around my house in frustration.
Later I call my friend and tell her about it.
“Do you think the woman represented me? If that was me what are my three notes?”
I no longer have the voice I once had. I know the great arias, I sing them in my head, but when I open my mouth the sound I expect to hear is not there anymore. I used to be a coloratura soprano. Nothing was too high or too ornate. I had great reviews, ovations, attention, “so much potential.” I thought my voice was my ticket to earning a place of respect in this world; it made me feel strong; it made me feel like there was some little piece of beauty in an otherwise plain person from a poor family. I studied for years –then my health failed, and my voice failed with it. Now…it’s better after people prayed for me, but, it’s just not the same. It hurts to think about singing in public, or even in private sometimes. Letting go of my identity as a singer took years of mourning.
I said to her, “Tell me, if I have only small range left what do you think my three notes are?”
She didn’t hesitate. “He has shown you, O woman, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” ( a paraphrase of Micah 6:8)
I know she is right.
Jesus Christ is the great composer. He takes what we can give and multiplies it into something way beyond our imagination.
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Height and depth
Photo: On the Banff Jasper Parkway
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:14-19)
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You who sometimes were brought so low, rise up!
Photo: from my deck
It’s too hot to sleep so I got up and edited some photos I took from my deck yesterday. The music playing on my earphones is from The Odes Project which are modern settings of the oldest hymns we have found. They were written in Aramaic around 100 A.D. by someone who was known only as Solomon -perhaps an Essene convert to Christianity. I love this album. Tonight Ode 8 struck me as particularly fitting for this picture. As someone who has been healed after many years of severe depression I praise Abba Father for raising me up from the pit of despair and putting a new song in my mouth. God has been so very good to me.
These are the lyrics to the adapted version:
You who sometimes were brought so low, Rise up, RISE UP
You who were in silence: now raise your voice , Rise up, RISE UP
You that were despised be lifted up, Rise up, RISE UP
For the right hand of the Lord is with you right now Rise up, RISE UP
Open your hearts, All you who are saved, IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER
Through all generations, abiding in His love, IN THE NAME OF THE SON
Now and forever, Let your love abound, IN THE NAME OF THE SPIRIT
For the right hand of the Lord is with you right now Rise up, RISE UP
Chorus:
Christ in us, this wondrous mystery
Christ in us, from age to age
Christ in us, the hope of glory
For You have sealed us in your name
You who sometimes were brought so low, stand tall, RISE UP
You who were in silence: may you shout for joy, RISE UP
You who were despised may you be lifted up, RISE UP
For the right hand of the Lord is with you right now Rise up, RISE UP
This is a translation of the longer hymn:
Ode 8
Open, open your hearts to the exultation of the Lord, and let your love abound
from the heart to the lips.
In order to bring forth fruits to the Lord, a holy life; and to talk with watchfulness in His light.
Rise up and stand erect, you who sometimes were brought low.
You who were in silence, speak, for your mouth has been opened.
You who were despised, from henceforth be lifted up, for your Righteousness has been lifted up;
For the right hand of the Lord is with you, and He will be your Helper.
And peace was prepared for you, before what may be your war.
Hear the word of truth, and receive the knowledge of the Most High.
Your flesh may not understand that which I am about to say to you; nor your garment that which I am about to show
you.
Keep my mystery, you who are kept by it; keep my faith, you who are kept by it.
And understand my knowledge, you who know me in truth; love me with affection, you who love;
For I turn not my face from my own, because I know them.
And before they had existed, I recognized them; and imprinted a seal on their faces.
I fashioned their members, and my own breasts I prepared for them, that they
might drink my holy milk and live by it.
I am pleased by them, and am not ashamed by them.
For my workmanship are they, and the strength of my thoughts.
Therefore who can stand against my work? Or who is not subject to them?
I willed and fashioned mind and heart, and they are my own. And upon my right
hand I have set my elect ones.
And my righteousness goes before them, and they shall not be deprived of my
name; for it is with them.
Pray and increase, and abide in the love of the Lord;
And you who were loved in the Beloved, and you who are kept in Him who lives,
and you who are saved in Him who was saved.
And you shall be found incorrupt in all ages, on account of the name of your
Father.
Hallelujah.
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Clean, fresh air; cool, clear water
Photo: Pond near 100 Mile House
All I need is the air that I breathe and to love You.
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Serious Business
Painting: Play is children’s work
“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.” -C.S. Lewis
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It just gets better
Peggy Lee’s song from the 60’s, “Is that all there is?” came to mind this week when I saw many of my young friends post pictures of graduation and the prom on Facebook. A former grad admitted to me that the whole thing was a little disappointing. After looking forward to it her entire school career as a magical night of glamour and celebration (and possible romance) in the end it was the same old people standing around in expensive, uncomfortable clothes saying and doing the same dorky things they said and did last week –and the week before, and the year before.
Dare we admit that some of the moments we were told would be the highlights of our lives were not all that brilliant? I came away from my high school grad party thinking like Peggy, “Is that all there is?” (Mom worked so hard to put together the perfect evening, but I was not permitted to go to the prom dance and since my dress was a gift, I never got to choose it. The guy I had just broken up with turned up with his fiancée and the last minute substitute escort was called home by his mother because she needed help getting his drunk uncle out of the bath tub.) Even if everything had turned out as planned I think I would have been disappointed.
The problem: I have an imagination.
Sometimes I feel like asking people not to give rave reviews to a movie or book or performance –or even a cleaning product that sounds like heaven by way of a sparkling shower door. I almost wish people hadn’t told me how wonderful life experiences like a wedding or childbirth and breastfeeding or a vacation in Mexico or a standing ovation after a performance were because although there were wonderful moments in all of them, secretly my imagination took liberties went a step further than reality. As great as many experiences have been there was usually a bit of “Is that all there is?” when they were over.
Solomon said it first in the book of Ecclesiastes, the book that epitomizes is-that-all-there-is disappointment and the limits of human’s wisdom and logic. He wrote, “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” and “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” (He ends the book of his experiences with this: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.”)
Peggy’s song repeats Solomon’s observation of vanity:
If that’s all there is my friend, then let’s keep dancing.
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that’s all there is.
Peggy’s song also dared to address fear of the final disappointment:
I know what you must be saying to yourselves.
If that’s the way she feels about it why doesn’t she just end it all?
Oh, no. Not me. I’m in no hurry for that final disappointment.
For I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you,
when that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath, I’ll be saying to myself,
Is that all there is?
Perhaps disappointment is our greatest fear. Perhaps this is what motivates so many sermons and pop theology books. They are less about hope and faith than the pragmatic guarding of our hearts against the possibility of disappointment. Like King Saul before his first battle we take things into our own hands when it looks like God may not show up in time to make our party a success.
I think the best moments in my life have been surprises:
-coming around a corner on a logging road to see an entire hidden valley of golden tamarack aglow in low evening sun,
-my wee little grandson this week, bringing me a grocery store flyer and pointing to a photo of watermelon to show me what he wanted when he is too young to have the words (Yes, I gave him some.)
-my “barren” daughter announcing her pregnancy
-my precious son, held prisoner in a dark basement of depression, coming up the stairs into the light saying he wanted to be baptized
-my four-year old grandson telling me he had a dream of sitting on Jesus’ lap and being hugged and hugged and hugged
-my husband covering my desk with Lindt chocolates on our fortieth Valentines Day together
-hearing a voice say “Run!” when I was up in the woods praying, then discovering that when I dared to attempt it the asthma and arthritis that had crippled me for so long were gone
-my mother with a broad smile and look of recognition on her face toward someone we could not see as she stepped into eternity from her hospital bed
-and so many more.
I believe this is not all there is. I believe God gives us promises that will not be disappointments. I believe that my imagination will not spoil the surprises he has for me because I am not capable of going a step beyond the greater reality. My imagination is no match for his.
“Is that all there is?”
No! Not by a long shot!
Now to him who by his power within us is able to do far more than we ever dare to ask or imagine—to him be glory in the Church through Jesus Christ for ever and ever, amen! (Ephesians 3:21, 22)
Oh, dear children of mine (forgive the affection of an old man!), have you realised it? Here and now we are God’s children. We don’t know what we shall become in the future. We only know that, if reality were to break through, we should reflect his likeness, for we should see him as he really is! (1 John 1:3)
Charis: Subject to Change 