Shadows: Dust to Dust

 

It's happened twice now -  not that we remember a place but that the place remembers us. It may be only a shred, or a wisp that remains of a step we made on the grass of a song we sang while wandering there, or the contrast we made on a landscape that could be seen from far off like a flag. What might a place remember of me? 

The sidewalk on 53rd St. might remember the swift run and quick, gentle ascent of flight no one (except maybe granddaughter Autumn) believes I made. The same place might remember shadows cast under streetlights by mounded teens playing cards, pretending to be ten years older.

I'm pretty sure Oak Knoll Drive wouldn't remember much of me. I was a lodger there, not a full-fledged occupant, awkward and temporary, but after that, the farm might still fume because of what I tried to make of it. The decapitated saplings, though long ceased bleeding, may have resurrected themselves in the way of stubborn plants, knowing they always belonged even when I thought they did not, understanding the irrelevance of subduction. It may be that deer would have wandered through the back lawn, looking for me lounging in my usual chair, but the time is coming when any deer that might have thus remembered will lie blanched in a field or have been dragged home by a hunter. The dogs and the chickens I knew there were all dead before I could abandon them, but the cats might recall the winter nest I  made for them as a retreat on bitter days.

Regardless, the shadows of all these places will have changed - grown taller or shorter - and the farm's great oak and globular maple might still stand far enough to observe, but never accessible enough to be threatened except by lightning, the only thing bold enough to challenge them. I surely was not.

We are just passing through in the end. If we leave any memory at all, it is only a whisper shared in ever-deepening layers of dirt or in tree rings long secreted by newer seasons. And that is probably as it should be. We are only dust, after all, gathered by greater hands and blown into life in a way no one quite understands, only to return to the same dust after our seasons of strutting and fretting.

We won't be remembered long, but I am content with that. It no longer matters so much. There have been many good days and I am satisfied with them.

Images: Kinder Institute for Urban Research and Planting Tree

Be Careful What You Pray For

 

My husband died in 2016. Later that same year, a Christian movie called Miracles from Heaven was released. It was supposed to be an inspiring story of faith and restoration based on true events and my closest friends, thinking that seeing it would refresh my sad heart, convinced me to go. It didn't work. 

I should have known that it wouldn't when I saw the theater vestibule full of women fingering tissues, anticipating the tears they expected would come. They may have found a measure of joy in weeping, but I did not. My weeping came all too easily and from a more intimate core. But for my friends' sake, I stayed and watched the movie. It was worse than I expected.

Its centerpiece was the against-all-odds rescue of a daughter from illness and accident, a rescue that resulted in the renewal of her mother's faith in God. For almost everyone there, this was supposed to be a happy ending. Not for me. 

If there is such a thing as prayer abuse, this is it. 

First, from my point of view at the time, it was easy to see the woman's answer to prayer as a betrayal. Sure, her daughter was healed, but overwhelmingly, desperately sick people do not get healed; they die. Dead people do not rise; they stay dead. I knew this from personal experience. As these women wept for joy and hope for someone they never knew, my husband stayed dead. That, of course, is the selfish view. 

More generally, though, prayer - any prayer that asks for God to manipulate circumstances He put in motion - works against itself. If we ask God (an attitude that dares to suppose we know something is needed and He doesn't) for something in our material world to change, it might happen, but whether it does or not, all we'll get is a change in our material world. Our spiritual world will not enlarge, it will shrink.

That is why the gate to God is narrow. 

Prayer for healing, prayer for relief from suffering, prayer for happiness and ease, prayer for good fortune, prayer for safety and peace - they demonstrate lack of confidence that God knows what He is doing. Almost all prayer operates from a place of broad, shallow faith. Letting God have His way and knowing it is the best way, even when (maybe especially when) it results in something unpleasant, drives faith narrow and deep. It is the faith of the one who does not see, but still believes.

We rarely remember that this whole life adventure only ends one way. We all die sooner or later. Delaying that or assuming we know better than God when that is supposed to happen negates the faith we say we have in Him. 

I would have liked to ask the moviemakers about the nature of this mother's faith. Would she have had it if her daughter died? If her faith was based on her daughter's rescue, it is small indeed. 

The same principles apply to determining whether we have circumstance-based faith or whether our faith is based on knowing the real presence of God, the God who lives and makes His temple in our very bodies, who tells us we will never be free difficulty and suffering while we live but that He makes Himself available through it all. 

The goal is worship God because we believe no matter what, not to believe because we worship God for all the good He has brought. 

This is how we figure out who we are. Once we realize that God truly does reside in us by His own design, what happens in our lives becomes a kind of partnership. God does what He does and we trust Him to do it. God is not apart from us, changing the world around us because we plead with Him like  child next to the candy rack in the checkout line. 

There are those that say prayer changes us, but what we really want is for it to change the circumstances around us. Trust, the knowledge that the best is already happening, supersedes prayer and then we become more what we are meant to be.

One - Not the date but the world and more

 

Time and the passing of it.  Hours turning into days and years. We think it's an inevitable part of life, but it's only an idea. Time is a construct, a framework we use to order the eternity into which we were born. In fact, when we start thinking about existence more as one whole thing rather than a collection of separate pieces, a lot of interesting things happen.

One Power

Evil is not a power and therefore does not need to be overcome because it is not eternal. Nothing that is not eternal has power over that which is eternal. The only power is God and His grace. Neither good nor evil, which only exist as worldly judgements, can alter God's perfection. 

Nothing we pray for (ask for) other than God's grace is grantable. God need not give what He has already given. Our job is merely to follow in the way He has shown us, to change ourselves and thus the world around us as we yield to Him

One Consciousness

In order to achieve God's highest, we have to let go of all people and places we love more than God. In the process, harm may come to them and to us, the this harm's purpose is to make us lean into God more and more, to know the Son of God already in us and to yield to it, to let what we love in the flesh fall apart around us, even to let our own flesh fall apart while we watch, knowing that both are opportunities to sink into the Son of God in us.

One Existence

There is no hope for this world in the sensory way we've come to think about it - that of good and bad, pleasure and pain. The temporal can never be perfected. Only God is perfect and we will find no peace or health except to the extent we yield to the eternal. 

Do not pray for more of God. Do not pray for anything. Just yield to what is already there. Do what is given to us to do and keep our mind on Him. 

Time doesn't matter. We are already safe in all the things that last. He is omnipotent. 

Image from istock

Looking for Bethlehem - Why to take your shoes off

 

Bethlehem. The star, the shepherds, the cows and the manger, that whole Christmas scene. It feels good. The nativity display in front of the church with Mary and Joseph and the sweet baby laying in the hay reminds us what Christmas is all about. 

Or does it?

In reality, that's not what Bethlehem looked like - not then, not now. When Jesus was born, the barn was more likely a cave and it took months, maybe years, for the three Kings (if they were kings, and if there where three of them) to show up. Today Bethlehem is a tourist destination that is home to about 25,000 people and pilgrims come to the Church of the Nativity where Christ was not born to remember that He was. 

It all sounds a little silly, more like Disney than a holy place, but its existence reminds us that many of us are looking for a place where we can connect our lives, our human lives, with God. Someplace where we are confident that He extends his finger to meet ours like He does in Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling.  And we think Bethlehem might be one of those this places where the veil between the physical and metaphysical is thin, one of those places where we can touch the finger of God.

This all reminds me of the trips I made to Italy in 2018 and 2025 and why I made them. I went to Italy thinking that Florence, seat of the Renaissance and home a prodigious collection of the Western world's most brilliant talents, might be one of those places. How could Dante, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, da Vinci, Galileo, and all their compatriots looking to express the glory of God have been able to do what they did if they didn't have a bead on some kind of divinity? They had to have a connection and I wanted to find our what it was. 

I was wrong, of course. 

Florence has no more connection to God than does Bethlehem. No place on Earth, no place, can help me find God. When we look to earthly places and things to find God, we don't find Him there. We just find more earthly places and things. In our rush to find easy access to Jesus, we forget what He told us. 

The kingdom of God is within you. - Luke 17:21.

Within you. We carry access to God around in us. We don't need to go looking for Him anywhere else. That's the reason He came in the first place - to show us what life in communion with God looks like. Not perfect. Not trouble-free, but always accessible if we're looking in the right place and following it.

That's why we take our shoes off when we meet God. Not because He is in the dirt or floor under our feet but because He is in the union of what He put in us and the rest of His creation. 

The Lord our God, the Lord is One - Deuteronomy 6:4

We are part of the One that is God - temple of the Holy Spirit (1Cor 3:16, 6:19), the hope of glory (Col 1:27). Bethlehem is sweet, but we don't need it anymore. We have Him. 

Photo credit: James Larkin

The Bark Before the Bite

 

Dogs are loud sometimes, and I suppose they were made that way for a reason - warning and protection - but when I'm walking in my neighborhood and a dog who I didn't see suddenly runs from the shelter of its yard right at me and starts barking, I am taken aback, startled. And the barking appears to be sinister. I am automatically afraid. I am the target and I don't like it.

Most of the time, though, the dog doesn't mean to threaten. I've run into this particular dog before and it does not appear to be mean. After all, it's often wagging its tail at the same time as it's making noise. That's what happened this morning. 

I was just walking along, minding my own business and my neighbor's dog, (unleashed) came running towards me, barking up a storm. The first thing I noticed was the noise - loud, harsh, and unrelenting. The second thing I noticed was that he was not connected to any restraint. Together, these things made me very cautious and I intentionally avoided eye contact with it because I'd heard somewhere that dogs are threatened by a human stare and I for sure did not want to do that.

The next things I noticed, surreptitiously, from the corner of my eye, was that the dog was little more than a puppy, a cute little guy, and that his tail was wagging. Hardly sinister.

That got me to thinking.

Thinking about the difference between how we say things and how others hear them. Instruction, Warning, Advice, Opinion. All of them can be shared in love and with an intent to constructive improvement, but I know without doubt that they are not always received that way. They are too often received as Judgement, Criticism, and Dismissal. The bark without any awareness of the desire to play. 

The thing with a dog is that their bark is pretty much one-dimensional. It's one bark, the only one they have. We should be able to do better. In our encounters, we have available many voices, many kinds of words. We have smiles to temper them, help to soften them, and gentle touches to emphasize them. And we don't always take the time to use them or even to take the time to think of them. We also have silence and patience, more powerful and helpful tools than we usually give them credit for.

It doesn't matter what we say if it's not heard they way it was meant. 

Like the dog this morning. I still don't know whether he wanted to play or would have bit me had I reached down to pet him. I suspect it was more the former than the latter, but I'll never know because I wasn't willing to risk the bite. The same is true, I think, of anyone I talk to. If they think I'm going to bite them, they'll turn around and keep walking. Not the result I'm looking for in any conversation I have. 

Now all I have to do when I get ready to open my mouth is remember the dog. 

Early Morning Reflection: Fragility and Reliance on the Precise Wording of Scripture

 

Early mornings have their own breath, before any birds sing or dogs bark or, in my neighborhood, before the neighbors fire up their Harleys to go to work. It's the space between the inhale of full night and the exhale of a new day. Soft and fragile, it comes when the sky turns velvet with the promise of a pink sunrise that hasn't yet come. 

Photos can't capture it because it comes only by feel, so still that its first motion comes from a mosquito that hovers near, not on, my skin. A breeze so insignificant that it gets absorbed into motion of the turning earth at any other time. 

And then it comes. The exhale. That subtle drop in temperature that starts every new day. The ambient movement that precedes first light, creating the slightest of cool breezes, the only one we will get on a day that promises to huddle with humidity and sizzle with sun. A shiver almost comes, but not quite. More a premonition that summer days aren't all beaches and state fairs, that nothing lasts forever, that footing isn't always as sure as it seems. 

And I think of Jerome. Poor, dear Jerome and his Latin Vulgate. 

It took him more than twenty years during the late fourth century and early fifth to translate both the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament into the learned language of his day, Latin. The result, his Latin Vulgate translation, has been considered the gold standard by many churches ever since. In many ways, Jerome's translation has become our Bible, the one we have trusted all our lives.

And then comes the day when we understand the extent to which Jerome was just a man, inspired by God and prompted by devotion, but hampered by prejudices and the potential for error from misjudgment, illness, and just plain weariness. 

Then comes the day when we come to grips with examples of what effect the fragility of his humanity has on what we are so sure of. The Bible. Our Bible. What we take for granted as true beyond any capacity for doubt. 

Then comes the day when we learn that not every word of the Bible may be what it seems. 

Take Isaiah 7:14.

You most likely know it by heart:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

The Hebrew word used here is almah, a word that was commonly used for a young woman or maiden, a unmarried woman. Jerome knew, of course, that this verse is ideologically paired with Matthew 1:23 and undoubtedly wanted to make sure we made the connection, too:

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel.

So Jerome in his zeal to clarify doctrine, substituted almah, a word meant to describe an unmarried woman with a word meant to describe a virgin instead. Not a terrible stretch, to be sure, but a stretch nonetheless. By Jerome's deft hand, the prophecy declared in Isaiah is fulfilled precisely in Matthew in a single language we couldn't mistake. Proof of Mary's virginity. Partial proof of Christ's divinity. Perfect. 

But not quite. 

While not quite a blatant mistranslation, it is an interpretation. A well-meaning one, but an interpretation even so. 

And that's the rub.

This doesn't mean that Mary, the mother of Christ, wasn't a virgin, of course. She probably was. Otherwise, what would have been all the fuss? It only means that the Bible, while an inspired document, isn't a word-for-word perfect document, especially in the English we probably all read. Not an infallible Guide for Living but signpost pointing to the God it tries to explain, intended to grow in us a desire for God that even His words will not satisfy.

The Bible is an invaluable guide and companion to a faith based not on its specific words but on God Himself. 

The Bible is a fragile connection to God sometimes, but it is a connection. Like our image in the mirror is not our complete self but a faithful representation, it still tells me valuable information about what I look like. Like the almost indetectable breeze from a mosquito's early morning wings tells me he's there, so does the Bible hover faithfully near to remind me where to look for the breath of God so that I long to turn to Him full-face so as to behold His glory. 

The Bible showcases the way. It points to the path. 

The goal is not the Bible. The goal is God.

 

Mosquito image: Dreamstime

Horizon Image: From my window at Castello di Solfagnano, Perugia, Umbria, Italy, May, 2025

Jerome image: Ascension Press

Gateway image: Entrance from chapel courtyard to garden, Castello de Solfagnano

Ben Franklin on what happens when you sweep your doorstep

Ben Franklin is well known for his respect for the industrious. His Poor Richard alter ego is responsible for familiar advice like "No pain, no gain", "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise", and even "God helps those who help themselves" (No, it's not in the Bible). I just finished his autobiography and realized that tomorrow is the 4th of July, so I thought another of his observations and the actions it prompted might make a good subject for discussion.

When Ben lived in Philadelphia as a youngish man who had already started a flourishing printing business, it was still a very young city, just getting started on what was to become a notable future, the same as the man himself. One might say they grew up together. One might even say they helped one another along and one way they did so began pretty humbly - by Ben observing a woman sweeping the street in front of her house.

In those days, none of Philly's streets were paved and it takes little imagination to understand what happened when it rained. Carriages and horses made the dirt streets a quagmire through which not only they, but men and women, had to trudge, all dragging through clinging mud, towing it with them wherever they went. 

One day, Ben observed a woman sweeping away the loose dirt in front of her house and asked why she did that. When she told him that it kept the mud down there when it rained, he, because he was Ben Franklin, had an idea. What if they paved the streets with bricks? It sounded like a fine idea and as things turned out, Ben got it done. But the way he got it done was what impressed me. He found the bricks, and found the people to do the work, then got the immediate neighbors to pitch in a little bit, just a few pennies each, to finance the work done in front of their house. Just their house, the part from which they would directly benefit. 

And something happened.

Actually, two somethings.

First, the street got paved. The mud abated. When it rained, everybody looked at their improved circumstances and took pleasure in the results. A good thing for everyone.

Also, however, something else happened. Now, Ben didn't write about this, but I got to thinking. When Philadelphians looked at their lovely paved streets, they had to be thinking, "Look what we did." Emphasis on the WE. Everyone who benefited from the project, from the residents to the bricklayers, realized not only a practical benefit from it, but could see their own participation in it. Every day, when they swept the newly laid bricks outside of their own homes. 

And that happened, I believe, because the project was accomplished not through taxes by some amorphous THEY but by people they talked to. People who had a recognizable face and with whom they'd had conversation. Neighbors. Friends. Strangers who helped each other. They'd built something. Together. And they enjoyed the fruits of their labors together. 

And they celebrated every day by sweeping.

Don't think people sweep their sidewalks anymore? You're wrong. The first time I went to Italy, on my first morning in Rome, we were staying in an Airbnb on a quiet street and I woke to singing. When I opened the shutters, I looked down. There, in front of the shop below our apartment, the shopkeeper was sweeping the sidewalk outside of his store, singing some pleasant little ditty I couldn't understand, and happy. Happy to be sweeping. Happy to have a sidewalk to sweep. Happy. 

And he was beautiful. Like Ben. Like working together for the common good with people we can embrace when the work is done. Projects that have human faces. 

I smile to think what might still be possible. Happy Fourth.

First Photo credit: Wisconsin Historical Society

Second Photo credit: Alamy