Sunday, January 22, 2012

God comes to us disguised as our own life...Richard Rohr

I ordered roses for planting and immediately remembered my mothers  advice,
“Better start saving eggshells.”  Eggshells?

My daughter gave me a bird’s nest for Christmas with lovely blue speckled eggs
nestled within.  It’s shape and color greet me from the kitchen shelf where it rests in a basket.
I was captivated last spring by the eggs laid in nests in my garden, doves and hummingbirds.
And eggs for breakfast, soft boiled for our youngest who loves to crack the shell open and scoop out it’s creamy goodness.
Or the perfect shape and weight of an egg in the hand, before we crack it on the edge of a bowl and mix the dough.
We visit our friend and head out to the chicken coup to gather eggs there, warm and fresh for lunch.
Color eggs for Easter; symbol of the tomb, and the resurrection.
Visit the children’s zoo and you can’t miss the excitement of the crowd gathered around the incubator full of eggs, mystery hidden still in some, breaking out in others, and the baby chicks every hand reaches for.  Holding those loveliest of creatures thrills each, awestruck with wonder and delight. Little feet tickling our hands and softest down, golden yellow, gray, white...and that high persistent chirping that draws our heads close to hear.
All that from an egg.

But saving eggshells?
Eggshells are for the garbage; messy, stinky and sharp, no good.
Yet, they have sat, collecting in a bag on my counter and only as I shared this with my husband did he tell me how many times he nearly threw them out and wondered what I was up to (he thought maybe some craft project).

“Better start saving eggshells,” my mother taught.
“Crush them fine and put them in when you plant.
That’s how you get the sweetest smelling roses.”



I think of the things ‘long sitting on the counter’ in my life,
the things I am sometimes tempted to discard; messy, sharp and stinking, no good.
I carry them with me to mass
crush them as my meager offering,
plant them at the altar...
In their place I am given Christ,
crushed and buried too,
I swallow deep, taste the water with the wine
feel it seeping into the dark earth of me.

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them,
and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.
Isaiah 35:1

Friday, January 20, 2012

Silence resonating

From Scorsese's forward to a new edition of the book Silence by Shusako Endo...

How do you tell the story of Christian faith? The difficulty, the crisis, of believing?
How do you describe the struggle?
Shusaku Endo understood the conflict of faith,
the necessity of belief fighting the voice of experience.
The voice that always urges the faithful – the questioning faithful –
to adapt their beliefs to the world they inhabit, their culture...
That’s a paradox, and it can be an extremely painful one:
on the face of it, believing and questioning are antithetical.
Yet I believe that they go hand in hand. One nourishes the other.
Questioning may lead to great loneliness, but if it co-exists with faith
  – true faith, abiding faith –
it can end in the most joyful sense of communion.
It’s this painful, paradoxical passage
– from certainty to doubt to loneliness to communion –
that Endo understands so well, and renders so clearly,
carefully and beautifully in Silence.

And yes, a filming project is in the works!