Friends – Life's Prequel

Look

Look!

Look
At me, here among the many celebrating
Advent in the splendor of a perfect concert hall.
Songs and lessons and organ pieces that rock the hall decorations
of green wreaths, red ribbons and candles.
And me a guest of the sponsors.
With lights and acoustics that rival the best in the world.

Look

At me after being abused: so thoroughly demeaned, criticized and exiled as if there were something wrong with me! As if I were worthless, as if I could be expelled with the sewer.

Look

At those who worked with lies against me. What they said about and did to me says very little about me.
Though hardly perfect I am God’s child,
a saint by Grace alone,
fully worthy of unconditional love and joy.

Look

At all these others, like me,
also controlled, cut off, accused of our partner’s wrongs,
made out to be a monster of evil proportions,
held in captivity, bound by our own principles never to harm those we love, trusting the same of our beloved until it is too late:
and harm is too obvious to us;
and wholly captive we still sought every way to please,
and more to offer health and life to the one we loved.
And we offered our very breath to transform our life to death,
and our beloved’s death to life …
And even then even more was taken from us …
Until. …

And perhaps,
for some of us,
now freed
we still must navigate the landmines,
no
the heart-mines,
that populate our paths.

So we celebrate Advent, waiting
for our Lord to come
and set us free.

Look

What they said and did reflects who they are …
desperately needing the Light of the world to scour
their hearts and minds and souls clean …
the perfect forgiveness of Grace.

Would it be enough …
enough to cure their
disease
and
dis
integration?!

Look

And see the joy.

Look

At the angels,
the Emmanuel,
the Faithful,
the sweet Silent Night,
the manger,
the baby boy,
the wonders of his love.

God be with you all
until we meet again

at Jesus feet.

Thanksgiving

It is not often that one can eat so much that one wished one did not have so much to eat.

And even this year at Thanksgiving it was not so.

The wine was Mosel Riesling and I only wish we could find the Kabinett in a good year. But this was okay with the turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberries, peas, yam, and …

The meal was terrific, the company fabulous and the dessert … well pumpkin pie is my favourite. And these were homemade by yours truly, the easy way (pre-made crusts.) Not too sweet, not to bland, just spicy enough.

And with coffee …

Ice cream it is out of this world.

I hope yours was as well a celebration of life.

Appreciation

While the rest of the world may look cloudy or full of challenges, there is nothing quite like filling up one’s life with flowers.

And there is nothing better than giving flowers to someone who actually thanks you for them, profusely, without pretense or scheming to rob one’s life away.

The flowers are appreciated and celebrated.

She is definitely not getting them, and that is as good as it gets now.

So flowers are a great thing to give and to have them appreciated.

Simple. Colourful. Spectacular.

Forgiveness

It was a mystery me to me, but it is simple, as in simple on the far side of complexity!

I’m talking here about forgiving.

The steps are easy enough to list: Decide, Plan, Do, and then Experience Forgiveness.

Deciding is not as easy as it seems. You will probably need to come back to this again and again. And your spouse has to be number one in your life. It is not possible to forgive your spouse if you do not put them number one. It’s going to take so much more when keeping them in any lower level of priority.

Planning is complicated by the fact that you need to keep up whatever you do for the rest of your life. But you need to plan so that each gift will touch her heart.

Doing is easy at first, but it may get to be nearly, if not actually, impossible. And you will feel the cost of the accumulation of giving long before you feel the forgiveness, the wiping away of her offenses, leaving you seeing how wonderful a person she is.

And then you suddenly one day will look at her and only see how great she is. In spite of all the abuse she is continually doing to you.

And this is as wonderful as the day you fell in love with each other, but this is not a gift of hormones and nature; this is the result of REALLY tough work on your part. So enjoy the feeling. And to keep it up you will need to keep up the giving and forgiving.

Forgiveness is no longer a mystery; it’s just plain hard work!

Renewing

There is nothing quite like renewing friendships!

And this is a bit like going back in time and renewing one’s memory
of all that was, good and bad, out of the past.

The present becomes a new framework through which one is able to see all things mirrored back at you.

The risk is that the present overpowers all vision and leaves things blurry into the future.
But the beauty of the present is usually worthy of one’s attention, even if momentarily one can lose the focus on the future.

The visions of beauty are not surprising, it’s just without much preparation or connection with so many people, the places of celebration are often deserted, inviting, beautiful but empty of everything worthy of life’s purpose: people: friends and family.