Women-Men’s Issues – Page 2

Light, Death, Love and Life

It is amazing to wake up and be loved and be able to love one who will receive love.
It is painful … to remember what has died, to relive the black hole of being not.
And to know all that will be mimicked, as if authentic.
And it will all be manipulated, and ….
What is this life for, without the light of Trust, Love, Hope?
Without Grace are we anything at all?

Here the light is simple.

And here the light is simple.

And here

But what happens without light?

Or what happens when the light is spectacular? Or specular?

The Darkness makes the Light more obvious, more spectacular.

Only by Grace are we able to come out of the dark, breath and live in the light.
Chose Life. Chose Love.

Be Grace!

Looking and Seeing and Wondering

It did not take much until I needed to get a photo … of myself.

And the fact that I’d forgotten the one camera I have left didn’t matter.

So out came the phone-camera and the selfie practice

was a bit horrifying

Difficult to get right

Confusing for one used to shooting through a viewfinder.

But I got it to work.

The next time I was out in the cold

I had not forgotten my tripod and camera.

So this I shot.

Cool.

And warmed it up a bit.

To everyone’s joy.

Stay Warm!

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.

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.

Colour Blindness and Darkness

There is little that’s heard
and so much to say.
The radio reports a male’s voice about his mother
being beaten by his father, and verbally abused continually, only when he was drunk.
Horrendous … and we meet this with numerous efforts … still hardly enough.
But there is little to nothing said or believed about how
women too often manipulate, control, deride, blame and verbally abuse
the men closest to them in their lives.
And when the woman owns the house, is the sole guardian of the children, and is the boss at work …
the opportunities to manipulate, control, deride, blame and verbally abuse multiply out of control.

And the justice system, well focused at protecting women from violent men,
is so blind to the women that bring false complaints about their men being violent, when this is just yet another lie, a manipulation, a power trip, a derision, a blaming, and real life abuse of their men.
The justice system takes these men, and judges them, convicts them, punishes them (tossing them out of their home, cutting them off from the abusive women and their own children that rely on them) and intimidates them (actively disrupting the process of justice that would serve them well and bring them a voice, a fair hearing) … convicted and condemned without a trial.

The light of truth is obliterated by the deadwood of lies, the colour of the life cycle which could be a delight is hidden beyond the darkness of death.

The signs are everywhere, of God’s gifts of beauty, streaming to us in real life through the huge bandwidth of our eyes and brains.

Even the leaves are weeping at the injustices, even the leaves are weeping at the misplaced condemnations, even the leaves are dancing with colour promising, though the darkness will set in, new life will emerge, new life will emerge!

Among the maze of life turning towards the winter cold, the small birds still sing and seek and dance with joy.

Where are you?

Do you seek to give every abused victim a voice?

Can you tell the difference between a real complaint of male violence against women, and the complaint that is further abuse?

How can you see behind the curtain?

How can you see past the deadness of manipulative abuse, to see the light of hope and love?

Where is your joy today?

Love Trumps Everything, as the determiner of life, of our perspective on everything

Love is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing in life, it is the key.
Our success in love is rarely determined by who we are with,
it is always determined by the person we are with the other.
(Unless our other is a narcissist and/or abusive –
or if our other is physically beating us up –
not some concocted story of violence, but our getting actually hit!),

And there is always a way to love the person we are with,
it’s called DOING forgiveness.
(even the narcissist, abuser, or beater,
though they just hurt us back!
Don’t I know! though I’m committed to forgiving for a year,
so is it worth it in the end?)

It’s too easy to feel trapped in but cut off from love.

It’s easier to run wild

look in the sky for answers

or lose oneself in busyness and work

But when beauty sets into one’s eyes

Then one sees clearly

How delightful God created us to be with each other.
How spectacular God created us to be, giving to each other.
A patch here, a foolishness there, a clowning for healing there.
Here’s a chocolate for you, a touch of humour for you,
a word of kindness for you, a helping hand for you and you,
forgiveness for your betrayal and lies for you,
a gentle touch of encouragement for you,
a word of hope for you,
an honest word of your company’s debauchery for you
and your company’s dishonesty for you,
a call to move beyond triangulation for you,
an invitation for you,
a word of profound thanks and gratitude for all you who respond with honest purity, kindness, and grace.

And we end up being specular light for each other,
the light that is all bent out of shape because it’s God’s light,
sent through each of us, to light up the world for others,
but as it passes through us it cannot be but scrambled and bent and diffused,
which is exactly why it turns everything it lights up, into precious golden gems.
Which is exactly what chosen, planned, worked at with discipline, and achieved and experienced love does for us all day long,
it turns everything into golden precious gems.

But how can spectural light be stolen?
Who would step on God’s parade of forgiveness and new life,
of transforming death into life,
of specular light’s delight,
and rip it from mid air and place the light in detention?
Afraid the light could hurt us?
Afraid the light would expose the darkness. Yes!
But there is no reason for fear,
for though forgiveness requires confession, confession
after unconditional forgiveness is already promised and exercised without reserve –
confession prepares one for new life!
and for all the delights of specular light!

By Grace trust can grow.
And the darkness will be overcome, replaced and dissolved with forgiveness, the basis of love.