Star Mother

Only chance made me come and find
my hen, stepping from her hidden
nest, in our kitchen garden.

In her clever secret place, her tenth
egg, still warm, had just been dropped.

Not sure of what to do, I picked up
every egg, counting them, then put them
down again. All were mine...
I blinked, I saw:
a mighty nest full of stars.

Excerpted from A Nest Full of Stars
by James Berry

Jesus was born and bundled up and put in a straw bed to keep warm.
So He came to nest with us like all the birds He once designed.
Straw sticking out of a manger and the King of Creation on top. Amazing.

Mary looked into the straw. Joseph looked and all the shepherds. What did they see? A baby? A poor child? The Father of the Stars?

The world sometimes looks into our nest and sells her contents short but Heaven looks and sees a mighty nest of stars and a mother who can spin straw into gold.



Proverbs 31:29 "Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all."

When He Needed Her

Prayer For a New Mother by Dorothy Parker

The things she knew, let her forget again-
The voices in the sky, the fear, the cold,
The gaping shepherds, and the queer old men
Piling their clumsy gifts of foreign gold.

Let her have laughter with her little one;
Teach her the endless, tuneless songs to sing,
Grant her her right to whisper to her son
The foolish names one dare not call a king.

Keep from her dreams the rumble of a crowd,
The smell of rough-cut wood, the trail of red,
The thick and chilly whiteness of the shroud
That wraps the strange new body of the dead.

Ah, let her go, kind Lord, where mothers go
And boast his pretty words and ways, and plan
The proud and happy years that they shall know
Together, when her son is grown a man.


...Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often. Luke 2:19

Sometimes the trusting way is the hard way of bare feet over sharp stones. Mary's poor, poor feet.

We know she was with Him, her boy, at the foot of His cross but what were their private moments like these two who were pea-pod likenesses? These two who would deny the Father nothing.

I think they laughed. Had private jokes. Insightful observations. I think they were fun, this mother and her son, and deep. I think they liked each other and respected each other and teased each other. I think neither one took no for an answer.

He was gone all too soon but when He needed her she was there and that is the most any mother wants said of her by way of praise.


-Kat

Dedicated to moms who show up.

Picture from Notre Musique

Holy Adventure from The Upper Room

"FREDERICK BUECHNER invites us to listen to our lives. According to Buechner, God calls you to “listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.”

Our lives are a holy adventure in which each moment provides new possibilities for Spirit-filled living. Take a moment to relax, breathing in God’s calm presence. In this quiet moment, remember the moments when your life most reflected God’s creativity. Experience the joy of being fully alive. Rejoice in those memories. Take some time to journal about these spiritual high points if you wish. Give thanks for God’s creative presence in your life."

-Bruce G. Epperly
Holy Adventure

From page 42 of Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living by Bruce G. Epperly. Copyright © 2008 by Bruce G. Epperly. All rights reserved.
http://bookstore.upperroom.org/cart/upperroom/p-16263.htm


I started to draw a nest for Mother's Day. My mini adventure. You are welcome to join me. An egg for each child? An egg for the hope of one? An egg that was you? You must have a pencil, a crayola, some paints at your house. Try a little something. If it turns out, go to Kinko's and reduce it and make a bookmark or put it in a really expensive frame for fun and hang it where it will remind you of the good time you had. (Remember to sign it when you finish. I am such an amateur. I signed it half way through.)

Remember how special the motherliness in you is to this world. It is you know. It is an essential gift. You have it.

I will finish this before Mother's Day.

I have pastel dust everywhere! Pastels are new for me. I am a colored pencil girl but remember those new things?

-Kat

Nests
http://iamcallingshotgun.blogspot.com/2011/04/nests.html

Uppercase HOPE

In Run with the Horses Eugene Peterson says that ..."much of our hoping is really little more than wishing but genuine biblical hope acts on the conviction that God will complete the work He has begun even when appearances, especially when appearances, oppose it...that hope-determined actions participate in the future God is bringing into being...that every situation in which we find ourselves must be included in the Kingdom that we are convinced God is bringing into being."

"Hope-determined actions" that sounds like a mighty thing to me.

I just completed my Mother's Day blog and I become thoughtful whenever I consider Mother's Day. There were good ones and horrible ones for me. The good ones speak for themselves. The bad ones, let's just say God and other mothers got me through them.

HOPE got me through as well. HOPE in uppercase. If there was such a thing as super-dooper, extreme uppercase HOPE, well, that was the HOPE that got me here. HOPE with a prayer life. HOPE with spiritual weapons. Hope that testified to goodness. HOPE with soothing reassurances and dog teeth. HOPE that stuck a fork into the rump roast of despair and said, "DONE!" That was my HOPE.

My HOPE had hands and feet and swords and pitchforks. My HOPE cried for a night then got pushy. My HOPE had friends and all of them were pushy. Maybe that should be "pushy" in capital letters as well. HOPE-filed prayer saved me. It saved my son.

The HOPE I was given was a participant in the future being dictated by the Kingdom of God, as Peterson describes.

Mothers are never bystanders. We may step aside to let our children run past us as they grow but we are always in our own race. We never lay aside our parental authority to pray, "Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done..." in the lives of our children.

I have friends I love beyond my ability to articulate just how much. There is no word picture that can do them justice. These women, mothers all, know how to burn a rump roast. They burned one of their own (I helped) and they helped me burn mine. The devil isn't eating so good this Mother's Day.

My son lives physically and spiritually.

This Mother's Day we will remember the victories won by prayer, friendship and Divine agreement...

...and by HOPE.

-Kat



Dedicated to The God of Hope. My Rock. My Friend. My Lord.

Try this for a HOPE-REWIND:
http://iamcallingshotgun.blogspot.com/2010/10/our-in-beginning-god.html

Prayer Bracelets

For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock. Psalm 27:5

If any man loves God, the same is known by him.
1 Corinthians 8:3

I came to these verses tonight adorning myself with them in prayer as bracelets on my left wrist and on the right. Hands raised, they catch the light and ring as Sanctus Bells at the presentation of the Eucharist, "Holy, Holy, Holy".

I am celebrating the life of a teacher, a son, a warrior. I am celebrating honesty and sacrifice and endurance. I am celebrating, before God, a soul I have no firsthand knowledge of. I see him through his mother's eyes and know him only as "K" the hero of many of the stories Marsha publishes and shares on her blog. Marsha who deserves a "V" for valor.

Women don't seem to need a lot of introductions. Two women on an elevator for a few floors emerge knowing all kinds of information about one another. Marsha opens the elevator doors and I get on. Sometimes we go up. Sometimes we go to the basement. I am always the better for the ride.

Marsha's son has some questions. His journey has been hard. He has been to war, health wise, and he has worn his armor a long time. The weight of it is exhausting. Mom isn't sending care packages long distance, she has been riding shotgun on the Hummer as machine gunner and medic. That too is wearying.

"K" has really been suffering (see link below) and, understandably, has voiced concerns that maybe God does not really know or care about his situation. He identifies with that "pelican in the wilderness". A state God understands and Jesus felt firsthand.

Comfort comes in those prayer bracelets. Those lovely, strengthening and revealing verses that describe God's relationship to us when we are beset.

With the bracelet on the right hand, God covers us in His sacred tent. The Greek informs us that His hiding of us, His covering, is what one does with treasure. He protects us and preserves us as having great worth to Him. He hides the treasure (us) in a tent that is in a conspicuous place, if I am reading the footnotes correctly.

He intends for our enemies to know He is hiding us! Hear the Lord calling to our distress, " I have precious treasure here. The dearest in all the world and you cannot get to his (her) heart. See this tent? See whose colors fly above it? Mine!" (I'm not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. John 17:15)

The bracelet on the left hand is the man (woman) who loves God being known by God. God is not telegraphing His love. This is face to face beholding the beloved. Help Notes puts it like this: The Greek, ginṓskō means to know, especially through personal experience (first-hand acquaintance). To "experientially know" is used for example in Luke 1:34, "And Mary [a virgin] said to the angel, 'How will this be since I do not know ginṓskō = sexual intimacy) a man?'"

We may have questions. We may have more doubts than answers. The word is reassuring, if we love God we will experience intimacy with God, first-hand. God wants this and even if all the answers don't come in this lifetime we can trust the love, trust that His heart towards us is good. Christ won't object to a hand in His side as more tangible proof.

So. Tonight I am not begging or pleading. I am approaching the Lord for Marsha's son the way the Lord had me approach Him for my own son in difficult circumstances, I am celebrating life and courage and relationship. I am freshening up the tapestries in the tent. Spreading fragrant rushes on the floor. Lighting welcoming candles. Sending prayers to rise as incense. Pouring honey into the wine. Smoothing the cushions for "K" and Marsha.

I am agreeing with another son's mother when she plants her faith between her family and despair and makes her boast in the Lord even as I can hear her heart breaking:

"Nevertheless, here is my real hope and my honest conviction. God is bigger than my son's doubts. He is stronger than my sorrow. He is greater than the sum of our fears and disappointments."

Join me. Agree with me for good for our family even if we have never met them. One bright day we shall, when the elevator goes all the way to the penthouse and the doors open to glory and we all cry, "Holy".

-Kat

Crash of tempest, roll of thunder,
lightning flash from pole to pole,
but the storm of love is stronger,
brighter flashes in the soul,
While the peace of Christ the Bridegroom
holds you still and keeps you whole.
From the Breviary

Read Marsha's heartfelt blog here and read a blessing.
http://spotsandwrinkles.blogspot.com/2012/05/honest-doubts.html

52 NEW

One
Two
Three
Go for it!

Today I did something I have never done. I enjoyed it at the time. I am still enjoying it as I write this and may enjoy it even more as the day unfolds. Part of the fun is keeping it to myself for the moment...well, except to tell you that I did something.

It is not a bucket list thing because I do plan to experience Eternity in the presence of One who would consider a mere bucket small potatoes. This is more my trading wishing for doing and doing it now.

There is a fund I have to go to France "someday" and I deposit money, a bit at a time, into it. This is not that. This is not me throwing caution to the wind and maxing out a credit card to get it NOW either.

This is me stretching and trying something new for myself. New in miniature. This is a different "new" than the newness God brings. We sometimes neglect ourselves or an awareness of the life around us.

The plan is for me to identify small, easy opportunities, tiny itches and then to scratch at least one a week. That would be 52 new things experienced over the next year. I invite you to join me and make a list of your own.

Opportunities could be by way of example: A restaurant never tried. A recipe never made. A spice explored. A vegetable never eaten. A charity never donated to. A hair color or style that has been tempting. A woodland trail never walked. A person never spoken to. A new author. A new position for love making. A daring nail color. A foreign film with subtitles. A planetarium show. Trying a new caliber bullet. A different guitar. Planting a kitchen spice garden. Collecting for the food bank. Writing a poem. Drawing a face. Riding a horse. Sharing your faith. Getting contacts. The possibilities are endless.

The criteria is that you have never done it before and it is moral, legal and affordable. (I am not suggesting pap smears and prostate checks be put on the list. Hopefully, that has already been taken care of. This is a fun list not a legalist's tally of bricks.)

There is a notebook I plan to keep to start a list then to keep track of each thing I tried and how it was. Along the way I expect I will discover people and experiences that will beg a permanence in my life and I will joyfully make room. Some new minutes may become vital. Somethings will be relegated to the "dustbin of history" having obtained a poor review.

No prayer time, family time or work time will be injured in the making of my time.

If truth be told, each of us probably does any number of new things each week. We do them accidentally, thoughtlessly and often not recognizing an opportunity for fanfare. I will anticipate, plan (small) and execute new things and then keep record of them to celebrate if they produces a celebration. No more same-old, same-old.

A wise woman once said, "What an interesting life I had. How I wish I had realized it sooner." (Colette)

Start today and the next time someone asks, "What's new?" you won't even have to think about it.

-Kat

(Hint: Keep the lovemaking discoveries between you and your spouse.)

How Good We Are

Promise me you'll remember
This love together today
We may not have tomorrow
It's not for us to say...

Whenever we're together
I feel time standing still
I only know I love you
And I always will

If we should lose each other
Somewhere inside the dark
Promise me you'll remember
How good we are...

Time isn't kind to lovers
It breaks the hardest hearts
Promise me you'll remember
How good we are

by John Bettis for The Godfather III

Up early. Kissed the back of John's sleeping head in my hasty exit, just so that in the event a tree should fall on one of us or or worse, there would have been some semblance of a tender parting. It was a long day. More work than time.

Tonight supper was simple in contrast to the day. Homemade vegetable soup and breadmaker bread. TV trays and a few minutes of an old movie we were watching in stages. The movie ended with a love song and our real day began.

There we were two old, married, working people, dancing in the living room to a movie theme as the credits scrolled by, surrounded by empty soup bowls and bread crumbs and love. "Promise me you'll remember how good we are." What a lyric. What a commitment.

We have had to make ourselves remember that goodness, that God-ordained fit, when lostness and darkness had a different and less glorious ending in mind for our story. Those times we called on the God of light to remember with us. The God in whom there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:15)

Maybe we can't buy everything we want to buy or go everywhere we want to go, do everything we want to do or know everyone we want to know but we can stop time. We can make it stand still, be still and remember.

We can always clean up the dishes tomorrow...if it comes.