With All Due Respect to Robert Indiana's Design, Our Take on Love

Original Lettering design by Robert Indiana
Adaptation and Letters by Wayne Stratz
Peachy background by Margaret Almon

L is for Love ~ the a to z of one word messages

Our First Love
was a fruit of the spirit
Lettering by Wayne Stratz
Background by Margaret Almon

Love. Lets get rid of all the extra words. One word suffices for now.

I Love You.

Our second Love
commissioned by my parents
Lettering by Wayne Stratz
Background by Margaret Almon

Our third commissioned love
celebrated a wedding anniversary
Lettering by Wayne Stratz
Background by Margaret Almon

This love is for sale
Lettering by Wayne Stratz
Background by Margaret Almon

A Few of My Favorite Things Begins

I have not been blogging or reading blogs much for the last ten days.  I was in a food court.  Students roaming about finding a lunch.  Big screen TV telling some breaking news.  That night my spirit group entered into the initial silence.  I thought it would last forever.  I thought that it would be just fine.  let us sit and imagine the horror.  Let us imagine the grief.  Let us imagine the healing.  Let us hope.  Since then I have read stories of men shouting ... if I can't have you none will ... as toddlers lose their mother just feet away from their crib.  I am told that I can only be safe in my classroom if I carry a gun.

and I want to rant. 

instead I tell my pain to Mosaic Woman and imagine blogging about my favorite things over my time off from teaching.  

I am blessed to have someone to share my life and that is my favorite thing for this day.

Mystical Mondays ~ Darkness causes a deep ache

Translations by Daniel Ladinsky

Here is to the light of God...

Otherwise The Darkness

I 
have a cause.
We need those don't we?
Otherwise the darkness and the cold gets in
and everything starts to ache.


My Soul has a purpose
to love;


if I
do not fulfill
my heart's vocation
I suffer.

Meister Eckhart

Mystical Mondays, say hello to Meister Eckhart

Translations by Daniel Ladinsky

Who has looked into your eyes this day?

                     ... Whose ears have you touched?

                                    ... Sit back and imagine God freeing you after a day of hard work and

                                        many worries with love that

                                                                makes you laugh.

Love Does That

All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
about things that bother only
burros.

And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labor.

Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a pear, but more
than that,

he looks into the burro’s eyes and touches her ears

and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh,

because love does
 that.

Love frees.

Meister Eckhart

Mystical Mondays ~ Rumi on humming and camels

Translations by Daniel Ladinsky

This is not the first statement I have come across on mindfulness that included flowing water, but the camel is new, as is the humming.  May the sound of a human humming forever bring us back to the present moment.  and I hope that we one day notice this humming, which emerges from those who are truly aware, flowing from our true selves.

THE CHANCE OF HUMMING

A

Man

standing on two logs in a river
might do all right floating with the current
while humming in the
now.

Though

if one log is tied to a camel,

who is also heading south along the bank –at the same pace-

all could still be well

with the

world

unless the camel

thinks he forgot something, and

abruptly turns upstream,then

uh-oh.

Most minds

do not live in the present

and can stick to a reasonable plan; most minds abruptly turn

and undermine the

chance

of

humming.

Rumi

Rumi also recommended that we practice looking at those we love who have uttered something nonsensical with eyes that make the speaker feel brilliant.  Good luck.  Margaret and I have been failing all week, but laughing along the way.

more Rabia on Mystical Mondays

on facebook this weekend I saw someone rant about how God was harshly greeting Joe Paterno, and it just doesn't match with my version of heaven, a place where we are met with amazing love and forgiveness.


so the question is, how did Joe respond, how will I respond?


I like what Rabia imagined the after life to be...

CHERISH MYSELF

I know how it will be when I die 

My beauty will be so extraordinary that God will worship me. 

He will not worship me from a distance, for our minds will have wed, 

Our souls will have flowed into each other. 

How to say this: God and I Will forever cherish myself. 

also from this past week, how the moon, which as Wisdom reflects the light of God, can brings us closer to our lovers:

THEY MIGHT HOLD HANDS

Maybe if I brought the moon a little closer

lovers would argue

less.

They might hold hands outside and point to

the heavens and say,

"I think God is up to

something

sweet!"

last week's Mystical Monday

unfolding through the iPod

Sunday morning at the retreat center, I was still craving silence. So after a breakfast conversation, I move to an empty table, take out my iPod and fill out the evaluation form.

I think some of the classic jazz standards speak volumes. This one showed me yet again that God's unfolding kingdom can come at us after being digitalized and shuffled.

Etta James steps backs from the blues to sing about a longing and love that is as deep as the ocean
How far would you travel? How far is this journey? and if this love was lost, how many tears would flow?

Thanks to Irving Berlin for wondering about love.

It all begins with words

If we say the words, things may happen. Truly we don't have the power of a creative God who is said to have spoken the world into creation, however......

I sat in church yesterday thinking of how true this is and one student came to mind. Last year she shined in biology, this year she floundered in self-doubts in physics. I heard she was complaining about the class being too hard so I spoke WORDS to her. I reminded her of how I selected her as the science student of the year for her work in Biology. I told her she was bright and intelligent and that she could succeed in physics. Her work has improved. She smiles these days, but still finds reasons to complain about my class.... I did say she was bright.

After church our minister's wife told me that mosaic woman was the most beautiful woman she has seen. I said that I had chosen well. Last night I repeated those WORDS to Mosaic woman as I hugged her.

Putting copper foil on stained glass as Red Garland plays solo piano, I am interrupted by the good news that Mosaic woman has got through her first medical appointment with good news.

I am in love..... is it Red playing “The Nearness of You” and “You Are Too Beautiful”???

I go back to foiling and I think of how I chose her. Tutoring at a community college I see her walk by. Later that night I tell my best friend that I saw an amazing woman. Did I say the WORDS.... I want to spend my life with her. I had never said anything like that before in my life. Powerful enough to overcome shyness, the desire to know her got me to speak. Six months later we kissed beneath a full moon.... now our April anniversary.... 21 years of relating coming up this spring.

She has a desire to know me which has given me the courage to find out who exactly I am. It is one reason why we both put up with me going away for 8 days of silence each summer. In the stillness with God, I find myself. I come home and share.

Thank God someone told Red Garland he had a talent for piano and that he played love songs, solo, and that someone posted about it, and that I read the post, and that we got a gift card, and that Amazon had the CD, and that I listened.

Life unfolds.

10, 20, 30, & 40

I have read some amazing reflections lately on what has happened in the lives of bloggers 10, 20 and 30 years ago. I am stretching it to 40...

10 years ago... I settled down and returned to church, and I just thought a job search had ended and that we were moving to Lansdale. After 30+ interviews I was hired at one. I am still there. After renting an apartment, then a house, and now buying a house we have been in this town ten years. Previous ten years had us living in PA, then MA, then OR, then IL, then back to PA. ten years later I am still at the school, but now I teach horticulture.

20 years ago.... under the full moon of April, I kissed my future and current wife for the first time. 5 months later I followed her to Massachusetts where I first became a special education teacher.

30 years ago... My parents and I went on a vacation by automobile... we saw the Badlands, Yellowstone, the Rockies, the Tetons, Devil's Tower, Canyonlands... my love of nature was sealed.

40 years ago... my urinary tract got infected again, and a urologist, using best practices of the day, told my parents what must be done. By the time I was ten I was an old pro having been through the treatment 20 times. My brain did what a brain does when traumatized, it erases memory. I can not tell you a single event from elementary school. I only know what I have written here because I read my medical history.

what huge events.... life keeps unfolding.

1o secs ago.... I find a package on our porch sent from Canada. M's best friend from her years growing up there,who we have not heard from but mentioned last night, has remembered Margaret.

100 secs ago... walking home, friends from church drive by honking waving and smiling.

1000 secs ago I was eating Chinese dumplings

10,000 secs ago ... I was buying locally grown veggies for which we will be thankful tomorrow.

I couldn't say this for most of my life, but I am grateful for the urologist who desired for me to be alive when I hit 44. Gratitude is far from what I have thought of for the past 40 years.