Thanksgiving

This is Thanksgiving week, but we're already living it, thanks to my daughter and son-in-law, Brenda and Idal.

Their generosity in deed and spirit made it possible for us to visit them in Maryland; it is the finest gift we could ever have received.

Seeing how they have created a strong, faithful family with perseverance, hard work and love makes Barbara and me proud, humbled, and truly thankful.

Sharing time with our granddaughter and two grandsons, while they are still young children, has been a treat. The years ahead are anticipated as rich ones because of them.

Seeing my daughter always brings a flash of memory -- a little girl, her eyes peeking out from a cloud of windblown auburn hair, marveling over a plucked dandelion.

Now, she is a grown woman and mother.
A good one. A very good one.

My son-in-law works long and hard for his family, too. No complaints about that, but joy when he comes home to hug the kids and help his spouse with dinner, or chores that may have remained from a hectic day of chasing a toddler and caring for an infant, all while helping an 8-year-old girl with homework.

How rare is all this, in this time of absent fatherless and broken families? Rare.

Thankful?

Oh, yes.

This Pilgrim's progress, and yours

Saturday morning, I took the dogs for a walk along the Jordan River's back trails. 

Once I got past the abandoned shopping carts, one homeless man's well-established and, uncharacteristically clean campsite (and a few impromptu refuse dumps, it was beautiful. 

The trek was a John Bunyanesque metaphor AND, to a point a metaphor, for a spiritual journey. I walked into areas where the well-worn foot trails became hints in the brush and through the limbs of trees, raining down gold and red foliage with each sigh of breeze; into sunlight filtered through the canopy and reflected in the frost on a downed cottonwood, and glistening from the moss on rocks. Beyond, power-blue skies, and clouds of fluff.

I stepped out of the pain, the detritus of human shortcomings, the bitterness of some lives expressed with disdain for themselves, and nature, the cast off wreckage of dreams, even, and into beauty.
It was like going to a cathedral, quiet but for the sighs and whispered prayers of the private penitent, looking up and finding myself walking inside the sunlight of stained glass with saints and sinners, all of us forgiven.

It was, for a blessed, crystal clear moment, being caressed and absorbed in that deep, abiding Love. . . and being reminded, again, that He is with me, and with all who just pause to let go the offense, to forgive, and be aware, to be present.

This, my Lord, transcends mere human doctrines, buildings and their grasp at the out-of-context pieces of scriptures while willfully ignoring the whole.

And, finally, here is a truth I've discovered. If you say you are a Christian that "whole" calls upon us to judge OURSELVES. We, and often poorly and with failures too numerous to count, "sin" -- fall short of the mark, from the word's Latin roots.

Paul put it this way in 1st Corinthians 5:12-13: "For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges."

And from what I believe, that latter part is in Love and compassion beyond our imagining.

Thus ends the sermon. smile emoticon


If all, some or part of it resonates, I didn't waste my time, or yours.

Be blessed. It's up to you.