Without Middle Ground

So many are without a middle ground and seem to settle for the least acceptable side, unable or perhaps unwilling to seek or accept as an entitlement the more favorable aspect.  This binary way of life, the forcing of a choice between extremes, allows no moderation, no growth or progress.  The highs are too high and the lows, where most seem to settle, are far too low.  There is no way to merit the one extreme and no way to overcome the other.  Without a middle, the payments on life become terribly expensive.

Decision-Making Made Easy

Having one suit makes it an easy decision what to wear.  Having one set of rules simplifies how we act.  Ethical behavior also eliminates the need to explain to ourselves and to anyone who would ask why we do what we do.

Stop Seeking

Stop seeking and you will truly find.

Contemplation

Where opposites meet, where they begin almost to go beyond themselves and the light is ready to enter into being dark, is that where we want to be?  Is that the goal of contemplation?

Being Healed

Not being cured is still all right.  It does not mean you have not been healed.  The miracle is not in the elimination of your illness but in the achieving of unity with yourself and with God, and yet those who have prayed over you seem so very disappointed and sometimes angry at what they may see as your resistance.  They took it all so personally.  Too bad.

Not Herzog

Like Herzog, we all write letters.  I am, however, getting ready to send mine.

Two Miracles

There are in this story two miracles.  The more obvious one is Jesus giving life to Lazarus.  The more important one is Jesus giving life to God.  By his love for this man, his sadness at his death, the sharing of what his family has felt, Jesus allows God to come alive in truly human ways so that he is no longer recognizable only outside what is or in only in spectacular ways.

Simple Solutions

Simple solutions are not bad, but they are sometimes too simple.

Lacking Conviction

Lacking conviction can sometimes make flexibility that much easier.

Brothers

If you would be your brother's keeper, do not keep too well lest you steal from him his individuality and the value to him of whatever may happen.  Better perhaps to be his caretaker, to care for him and recognize that part of that care is trust that he will be able to keep, and cherish, himself.

Figuring It Out

When you think you have figured it out is when you have missed it all together.

Thomas Wanted to Understand

Thomas could believe, but he also wanted to understand.  Sometimes, and maybe most times, understanding is unavailable and if it were it might only get in the way.

Not A Visit

So impressed were they by what he had done.  God, they said, had visited his people.  It was, however, no visit.  He was here to stay.  We can all tolerate visits.  Whether they are from people we are delighted to see or those whose coming we may have dreaded.  Be they good or bad, visits end.  This was something else and when they realized that, you might wonder what they then thought.

What should we say to whom, and whatever should we do if they answer

Jesus and Crowds

When the crowds appeared Jesus went away, either up into the mountain or out onto the lake.  What about the crowd was so frightening?  Perhaps that he might welcome them for being a crowd, for their crowd's response to a message each must ratify as an individual; maybe it was fear that he might someday be seeking them, judging what he would offer by the size of the crowd who might cheer.  Maybe he went away because he did not know what to say to crowds and could speak only to those who had already followed.  Maybe Jesus needed to be apart from them so that he could listen, rather than always have to speak.

Crowds are only crowds, no matter their size or enthusiasm.  They have a single need or curiosity, and asked to shout, sing, or cry out with one voice they will gladly do so.  But then they go home.  When they do -- when they stop being a crowd -- they have greater value.  Maybe then they could listen, and hear.  It is maybe then that Jesus will begin seeking them.

Standard Questions

If people wanted standard answers, they would ask only standard questions.

Call It Sickness

Call it sickness and it becomes sick.  Say it is yours to cure and you will take it from the person to whom it belongs.  Were you to call it distress or sadness, would you treat it differently?  And if you allowed it to remain with the person whose experience it is, would it change more readily?

Authority

If the question was whether appeals to authority are a final solution, it is not answered by appealing to authority.

Delivering the Junk Mail

What is it like to be that postal worker going miles to deliver that junk mail, knowing it may be in the garbage even before he is off the street?  Its value is not only in its being read.  His role is not to insure the information has been received.  He is the deliverer, the person making possible the choice.  He may not agree with the choice presented and when the same mail comes to his own house he may rush it to the incinerator, but for those he would serve the offer is the issue.

What God Does

God does not lend.  He gives.

A Disarming Message

Bringing their swords and clubs, they hid their fear in one another and shouted what alone they would never say.  They reinforced the importance of being armed against the threat of his message. They made noise through which his truth could not seep.  Were they hoping he would resist, battle in their terms, find swords and shouting to meet their own?  They might have felt justified, but Jesus would not play.  His response did not change nor did his message.  If it were a contest he had won -- but it was more than that.

Unappreciated

Hey, you!  Stop yawning while I am inspiring you.

Choices

People saying they had no choice usually had a choice.

Inclusive Belief

There are some who would like to say that unless you can believe it all -- the essence and what seemed in some instances to derive from it -- then you are not allowed to have any, that you may call yourself something but not a member of this church  This would make belief exclusionary rather than inclusive, a closing-in or collapsing rather than an opening-out onto the world, and it implies more fear than trust, more insecurity than a believing community ought to embody.

It is fortunately only a thought or an opinion and may even modify in time, becoming less doubtful of the ability to share and more secure in its own faith.

The Search

Were you to look on them from outside their community and their faith, the Jews seemed aimless.  But they were wandering.  That was what they were supposed to be doing.  Arriving was not yet in the plan.

Seeing The Giftness

It is only a gift when received as such.  The "giftness" is in both the offer and in the receiving of it.  If I value what I present but it has no meaning or importance to the one to whom I present it, then it is only partially what it should be.  It is no less important, no less prized by me, but it would be unfair to give to someone who cannot see it for what it is to me.  To that person, I would better give something else, if I have it.

Measuring Time

Time is measured in the intervals we select, and days are more easily managed than are eternities.

Saving Jesus from Embarrassment

You could wonder if the groom of Cana knew the wine was running out, or had someone decided to ask in his stead, to save him the embarrassment of knowing he had not planned.  Maybe he did know but was reluctant to approach directly the uninvited guests, Jesus and his disciples, perhaps preferring to avoid embarrassing them.  Maybe going through the caterer and Mary was the least intrusive way of asking might they leave or drink less.

Conscious Choices

Mark overcame his stutter by slowing down his speech and concentrating on each sound, making each a conscious effort and so controlling its production.  It seems therapy should do the same for people, helping them slow down so they might focus on choices rather than feeling a debt to old and ineffective patterns.  It would be making chosen actions really our own, no matter what went before or how long the old pattern seemed to belong.  Then not only life would be mine, but also each event in it.

The Center of Time

He slips now more readily into remembrance, recalling those events somewhere at the center of time, the days happy and full enough to satisfy now.