Tag: vision

Easter 2019

If you wonder about Easter…
About what happened or didn’t happen.
About who?
What?
When?
And how?
If you wonder about Easter
And what it means
And why it matters
There is this.
From the writings of William Stringfellow.

“In the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst Babel, speak the truth. Confront the noise and verbiage and falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, define the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.” (from An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land)

In the end, Easter is about vision and courage.
Vision to see the world as God sees the world.
And courage to live that world into being.

The Real World

Are you old enough to remember the early days of personal computers and the acronym wysiwyg which stood for what you see is what you get and meant what you saw on your monitor would match the finished document when it was printed. I wonder if wysiwyg applies to more than old computer operating systems.

What does the real world look like to you?
Survival of the fittest?
Might makes right?
A giant conspiracy theory?
The version of the Golden Rule which says, “The one with the gold rules?”
Does the real world look like today’s headlines in the news?

I am not naive.
I know the world often looks like that and feels like that.
But…
What if the real world actually looks something like this?
More cooperation than competition?
More kindness and compassion than greed and violence?
More goodness than hatred?
More treating others the way they and we would like to be treated?
More beauty than ugliness?
More hope?
More peace?
More equality?
More justice?
What if that is the real world?
The world out there?
That world waiting for us to see it and name it and live in it.?
WYSIWYG

You Can Do This

I was young.
New to the job.
Trying my best to do my best and to make a good impression.
“I want to talk with you.” He said.
My boss.
I gulped.
And so we talked.
He laid out possibilities for me which I had never considered.
Never imagined.
He ended by saying, “You can do this. You need to do this.”
That conversation literally changed my life.
I am who I am today doing what I am doing today because he saw
a tomorrow for me that I could not see.
Not the specifics, but the direction.
The possibilities.

I still need voices like that.
Maybe now more than ever.
The voice of those who both see and know me and see beyond the edge of what is
and catch a glimpse of what might be.
And say to me with a certainty beyond what I know or feel at any given moment
“You CAN do this.”
“You can DO this.”
Because the world I imagine
The country I imagine
The neighborhood I imagine
Feels farther from my grasp today than it did yesterday.

So as we do our best to figure it out, here is the hard truth.
WE can do this!
We CAN do this!
We can DO this!
We can do THIS!

One Wish

What would I wish for you today
If I had a magic wand;
Or a wish to make upon a star;
Or one final wish to be made at my command?
What would I wish just for you?

Maybe this.
I would wish for you a vision;
A dream big enough and bold enough and brave enough
To match both your spirit
And the wonder and the complexity of the world as it is.
I would wish for room in your life for wonder and mystery.
I would wish for room in your life for beauty and grace.
I would wish for you to find your way
Through the sorrow and disappointment,
Which is sure to come,
To the life which awaits you on the other side.
I would wish for you a sense of gratitude,
Deep and ever deepening gratitude,
Which opens you up to the promise of life.

If I had a wand to wave or a wish to make
This would be my wish for you.

Advent – Vision

I think the meaning and message of Christmas represents God’s vision for your life and mine.
And for the world in which we live.
God with us.
All of us.
Every last one of us from the greatest to the least.
God with us.
Not on my side or your side.
But OUR side.
And, the moment we realize that.
And accept that.
And live that.
We turn in the direction of peace.

The Eye of an Artist

If I remember correctly (and even if I don’t), the story goes something like this.
A sculptor was asked how he could sculpt such a beautiful horse.
His response was something like this.
“I simply carve away anything that doesn’t look like a horse.”
The gift of the artist is that she sees the horse in the marble or the painting on the canvas or the figure in the wood before she ever begins. She knows it is there.
Her job…
Her calling…
Is simply to set it free.

Maybe that is our job, as well.
To see what is not yet.
To know what lies hidden in the craziness and the chaos and the confusion of today and to chip away at it, piece by piece, until what is hidden is set free.

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Several things I believe: