Category: Faith

Faith

Sabbath Sharing

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

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Fallen leaves gather on cobbled pavement. Swirling together. Making scraping sounds. Tiny melodies clobbered by footfalls. Saturday revelers dressed in school colors walking bar to bar. Bodies listing like sails in fall’s wind. Voices shouting slurred words. Blurry eyes focusing on nothing as day moves into dusk.

My steps among this crowd ring quiet by contrast. Hastily taken strides marking prayers for young strangers. Echoing unspoken truths. My internal petitions weaving in and out of beer and cigarette smells. Rising like incense with gusts of blustery wind. Hoping this blowing is Spirit.

Around the corner children play, run, giggle, shriek. On a playground next to the public library. Young children wrapped in sweaters and light jackets. Covered for safety against dropping temperatures. Many topped with yarmulkes pinned down. Parents relaxing on nearby park benches. Enjoying Sabbath, Saturday evening, and the ability to keep little ones somewhat safe.

Sounds of playing children join party noises. Follow me through an unlocked glass door at the corner. Into a small-business incubator space. Warm and quiet. Modern. Hip. Large windows overlooking playground, pedestrian mall, and hotel. Street’s song closing one Sabbath as my tiny Christian community readies for another. Setting up chairs. Covering kitchen table in gently used cloths. Tuning a saxophone.

Today is not Sunday, the first day of the week. A new week begun in morning praise and thanksgiving to God. Instead today is the end of the week, the very end. Last crumbs of what just passed by us. Lived with sorrows both large and small. Moments of joy. Maybe a bit of pleasure or even delight. Mixed with worries circulating in and out of a week’s dreams. No, this evening is not traditional Christian Sabbath. But it is something. Whatever this evening is, it clashes with the outside world.

Those of us gathered, chat. Welcome new people. Forget each other’s names. Find seats on sofas, stools, and chairs. Help pastors fuss with clergy wear. Show wandering, drunk people where the bathroom is. Then we quiet. Singing bowl’s ringing calling us in. Into worship. Further into God’s mystery. Into Sabbath. Breathing sacred in. Stillness accessing our hearts. Street noises harmonizing. Playing prelude with our quiet.

We begin. Our cry for God’s mercy falls over empty chairs, desks, the young entrepreneur still working at his station, his partner helping himself to coffee behind our table set with God’s meal of grace, the drunk man in the bathroom.

“Kyrie eleison,”

In our midst, a person stands. Reads God’s Word. We share our thoughts. Scripture’s words jumping out at us. Making us think and wonder.

“Thanks be to God,”

Hear Jan or Sarah preach. Surrounding us with more thoughts. Some shared. Some tucked safely within our hearts. Sing in response to God’s Word illuminated. Pray for those outside our borrowed walls. Share peace with everyone in the room. Sometimes more than once. No one wanting to miss one soul in our small group.

“Peace be with you,”

Peace sending us on a pilgrimage toward offering. Our basket set at the table. Hands ducking deeply into its depth giving and blessing. Staying at the table. Hearing old and new words of welcome here. Serving one another Holy food as if washing one another’s feet.

“Given for you,”

Night wafts in through the window as God’s blessing readies us once again for the world. But first we return to the table eating and drinking what is left of our meal together. Adding some cheese to the mix. Maybe a plate of cookies. Over food and drink, meeting new friends. Catching up with old ones. Somehow our faces glowing more than when we arrived an hour or so ago.

“The Lord bless, keep, and shine on you,”

Filled, we clean up. Blow out candles. Return chairs to the conference room. Strip the table as if it is Holy Week. Wash, dry, and stack dishes. Empty the baptismal bowl. Set it on a shelf in a shared closet. Place the cross there as well.

Then having broken our Sabbath fast, we open the door. Step over the threshold. Reenter the street scene still moving outside.  Notice a few changes. Children and parents gone home. Eating dinner or readying for bedtime stories.  Partiers winding down. Slumped in nearby diners eating starchy food.

“Go beloveds, fed and nourished,”

We stand on the sidewalk breathing in the world’s hurts. Breathing out Sabbath solace. Our breathe this night acknowledging our human and collective mess. Lift our palms up into night’s sky, sharing our restored peace. Sending Sabbath back into the world. Allowing night breezes to take Sabbath from us. Surround college students into the wee hours of morning. Land on church buildings’ doorsteps. Keep company with sleeping homeless men.

Sabbath entering churches the next morning. Not stopping, quieting, or staying still until last candles blown out after Sunday evening worship services. Last doors closed and locked. Sabbath hovering one silent second before flowing back into the world having shared God’s sacredness with all who hunger and thirst. Sabbath nudging us as it goes to be God’s peace in the world.

“Shabbat shalom, Shabbat shalom.”

Essay written in response to and with love for the community called JustChurch in Iowa City, Iowa. 

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Photos courtesy of Pixabay. 

 

 

 

 

Advent, Christmas, Faith, Uncategorized

Adoration

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

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O come, let us adore him, O come, let us adore him,

O come, let us adore him, Christ the LORD!

 

Hymn sung each Christmas Eve in our worship tradition. Words riding on melody soaring into rafter beams. Organ pulling out celebratory stops. Chords supporting voices in singing as one voice, one body. Some standing in this knowledge. Others in ignorance. All in hope for some inexpressible need.

Together chanting lyrics verse after verse. Calling for some sort of congregational effort. Text expressing felt want to be near the child. Not only in singing. Walking word by word toward him. Yet as we do, discovering a thin infant. Just having slid through the birth canal. Tiny, discolored, sticky with blood. Face screwed up. Smelling of birth. Hope draining out. Adore this one? Why?

Newborn’s family visiting Bethlehem only under governmental orders. Parents finding no place in homes and hearts of those with doors this night. Citizens blind, but not really, to Mary’s bulging belly. Man at each door saying “no,” while behind him cowers a woman. Scrubbing a pot. Mending a tunic. Silently asking for mercy with each stitch and scour.

Perhaps it is an old crone in the corner at the last door who risks nothing this night. Her  aged bones aching. Sight fading. Fingers gnarling. Tired of justifying the food it takes to keep her alive each day. Her heart in those five tiny graves below the hill. Perhaps it is she Joseph hears behind the last door’s keeper. In the hanging quiet between ask and answer. After nervously begging for the seemingly small necessity of shelter. Having come this far in an unwanted journey. Far from home. Far from normal. Joseph scared into defying culture by an angelic, winged, fearsome messenger in the night. Now scared for Mary, himself, and an unknown future. Barely hearing the words uttered from within this place. Delivered in a gravely, high-pitched voice. The old mother making one last admonishment.  “Well go on. Give them the barn at least. Better than digging another grave at dawn.”

Further fear and embarrassment for Joseph serving as mid-wife just a few hours later.  Relieved when the wife of the place sneaks out with somewhat fresh water and a few rags. Because she can’t sleep after the first birth pangs ring through crystal, clear night. Resonating off her hollow womb while her husband snores, blissfully ignorant of this night’s worth.  Finding Mary moaning. Her hormones surging. Regretting saying “yes,” to that crazy angel. The wife nodding. Understanding the anger of birth pains. Squeezing her hand. Murmuring words of support before hurrying back. Not wanting to be discovered absent from her place.

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Night’s wind seeping in through doorless openings and cracks. Snorts, smells, and stars accompanying birthing howls. Surroundings ringing dissonance into the night. After a final push when all seems so terribly lost, a slim-shouldered, hairy neonate slides to the floor below crouching mother.  Amidst dirty hay and dried animal feces. No harmonic overtones reverberating with cries of new life. The crone at inn’s hearth muttering, “he’ll be cold by morning if we don’t get the mother some broth.”

Waking the oldest girl sleeping nearby. “Take this bowl to the mother,” she orders. Girl obeying. Also curious about the strangers. Thankful for this adventure breaking in on her pre-determined monotony.

It’s the girl who holds the babe while Mary sips. The third to stare at him in awe. Joseph off on hill’s ledge staring into stars. Overwhelmed by what happened. Even though it did not happen to his body. His life never in peril. Remembering Abraham. Knowing he, Joseph, is no patriarch. Feeling more like a pawn.

The girl passing babe back to Mary. Watching him suckle. Then sleep. Creeping back to her pallet. Assuring grandmother all is well this night. Not questioning why this little being should be adored. Her mother having taught her to listen to the wisdom of the body.

Not like us now. Adore him? For what? So we can now fully adore the dirty man sitting on the sidewalk asking for money? And the youths punching each other out in high school hallway? Adore the family climbing into a life raft and the soldiers pursuing them. Adore the “me too” survivor and her predator. Adore the family member, neighbor, friend whose politics send us spinning? Adore every one in the squad car? Adore the beautiful soul hidden under depths of substance addiction and her dealer? Adore the dirty, the violent, the undesirable, and all our culture’s un-adorable?

Easier as we exchange presents, trim trees, and gobble up holiday treats to not adore him or anyone. Whirl around in our busyness, forgetting. Leaving this baby under the tree fending for himself. Or placing him in another room where we cannot hear his cries for food. Bury our modern-mixed-with-age-old knowledge of human infant needs under distilled spirits, bigger screens, and business. Blocking out that article we read online recently about how infants experience hunger as true pain. And soiled diapers left unchanged infuse their little bodies with worthlessness. Crying it out teaches lonely individualism not relational well-being.  Prolonged separation from parents creates trauma’s breeding ground for current and future pain. Lack of human interaction causes an all body shut-down called failure-to-thrive.

Maybe this infant is just too much work. Deciding right after the big day while still off work or stuffed with too much merriment to return this child whose reality smacks us in the face. Wrap him in swaddling clothes and lie him in an Amazon Prime box. Affix a preprinted label, and drop him off at the post office. Ask to exchange him for something or someone more to our liking. A gift asking nothing of us. One in which our own internal wrappings stay tightly wound around our souls. Our truths never exposed even to us. Shunning the messenger’s words, “do not be afraid.”

Words heard by Mary long ago. Embraced and in doing so risking her life and future of her unborn child. Holding her heart full with all sorts of thoughts and feelings. Not all comfort and joy. Praising God when really what else can she do? Running away meaning life on the street. Begging for food. Using her disassociated body for survival.  In saying “yes” making a choice to stay. Clasping fear to swelling breasts. Uttering words of praise, “my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

“Do not be afraid,” heard also by lonely, smelly shepherds staying in fields. Probably because no one else in their little, little, world welcomed them into village or home. Undesirables ostracized into hills. Trusted with necessary function of tending sheep. But out of sight. Out of mind. Found in their hiding by God’s messengers with an invitation into awe. Risking their livelihoods for a chance to adore another human. When so often denied any exchange of humanly love.

We try to ignore these words, “do not be afraid.”  Thinking they cannot possibly be meant for us now. Part of a quaint story told each Advent and Christmastide from long ago. But this hungry, cold, pooping, spitting up, sort-of un-adorable baby somehow breaks through our internal walls anyway. Not with words. But with wails cutting into inner workings of bodies. Dwelling in our hearts. Causing agitation in our nervous systems. Our empty breasts to ache. Our stiff arms fill with yearning.  We must pick up him up. Keep him at arm’s length. Until his small body melds into ours. We sway. Feeling fully alive. Cherishing the moment. Washed with felt love. And his sweet baby smell. Existing together, almost as one. Not fully. Yet needing the other. For different reasons. Need though none-the-less.

What if we were to adore the un-adorable? What then for us? For them? What if we heard their wails, unsounded, emanating from deep within their hearts? What if we understood our need for them. Perhaps greater than their need for us? Would we then leave our sheep, our only way of life, like the shepherds did? Or give up the right to abandon or kill like Joseph? Bring a family to shelter. Sneak food to them in the night? Give them basic human supplies defying cultural expectations?

Our singing this night of all nights is not static. We do not perform a yearly empty ritual before going home to egg nog, a fire, and our annual viewing of Elf or It’s a Wonderful Life. These words call us to action.  The lyricist is poetic. But he commands in imperative, “get going!” Go and adore the Christ child alive in all of us and in all others now. Leave wants behind the inn door next to the old crone.  Sing in a choir of earthly messengers to a deaf world.  Answer the cries of the child now with our arms. Feed the child now as if our breasts are about to leak milk or our own child’s life depends on it. Support the mother and father now as if we were once penniless. Give shelter to the family now as if we know homelessness. Adore the child now with trembling fear and courage like Mary. And in doing so, see God face-to-face, “now in flesh appearing.”

 

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All photos courtesy of Pixabay.

O Come, All Ye Faithful, text and music attributed to John Francis Wade.

Scripture quoted from Luke 1:30; 46-47, and Luke 2:10. (NRSV)

Scripture referred to from Matthew 1:19-21 and Luke, 1-2.

 

Faith, Grief, Healing, Uncategorized

Wide Water

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

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Heart heavy again. New wounds and disappointments added to still simmering old ones. Hard to see all the healing I’ve done through my sad haze. Cry for an entire hour on my therapist’s couch. Marit, my clinician, tilting her head a bit to one side. Her eyes teary wet as well. Offering me phone access during her upcoming vacation. Having lived twenty years on the other side of being on-call, hating to intrude. Feeling empathy towards her vacationing family members. “Maybe you could try Reiki,” she suggests.

My head lifts in recognition. Percolating ideas swirling in my thinking of late. “I’ve always wanted to try healing touch,” I reply.

“Excellent!”

Marit showing relief. No more words uttered but I know. Because we’ve been together almost weekly for two and a half years. Since before Tony died. Beginning when my sons were so sick with mysterious illnesses. Me living in caretaker burnout. Marit’s  thinking now, “Jen needs a substitute while I’m away.”

Leave her couch with a plan. Make a healing touch appointment for the following week. Travel to the next city. To a retreat center run by nuns nestled in reclaimed prairie and forest. Ushered into calming silence. Sister Bethel greeting me with gentle tones. My nun experience almost non-existent. Except for Tony’s aunt. The one who reveals all the family stories. Tales no one else speaks of.  Family salt mixing with humored love. This sister today, eighty years on this earth. Looking about sixty.

Enter Sister Bethel’s small, windowless room. Stuffed and stuffed again with angel figurines. On multiple oak shelves hanging from four panels of drywall. Angels collected  over decades in ministry. Repulsed by the crowded assemblage. Muse over what I might be forced to collect once ordained in ministry.

Lie down on the massage table. Harp music playing. Water bubbling from unknown origin. Maybe from behind a shelf of angels. Or perhaps only in my imagination. Cool hands hold my head. Their strength beautiful, reassuring. “Healing hands,” the term healers use. As more than a complement. As recognition of an awe-filled skill. Part mystery, part talent, part practice.

Relax into Sister’s hands. Trust them. Listen to her pray in words punctuated by silences. Words flowing from her lips floating above me before gently raining down. Absorbed through skin into soul.

She shifts on her stool. I hear her say, “Jennifer, you are loved. Deeply, deeply loved.”

Tears fall from beneath closed eyelids. Slide off face into hair. Like a stream flooding my banks. Sister rises. Waving the air over me. Movements sensed not seen. Music swelling time forward. Into the melody of the old Scottish folk tune, “O Waly, Waly.” Text remembered from high school choir. Mind repeating.

 

“The water is wide, I cannot get o’er,

And neither have I wings to fly,

Give me a boat that will carry two,

And both shall row, my love and I.”

 

Woe erupting from toes traveling up legs disseminating throughout my body in recognition, in revelation. What I could not do the day Tony died. Fly across the water separating us. Carry us both in a boat. One with two oars.

And I see Tony’s face in my mind’s eye. Through tears and body tremors. Large. Smiling. Reassuring. Coming toward me. Speaking to my eternal regret. Sadness. Complete upending of life. His love recognizing my truth. What I would have done if possible. Fly. Lift Tony out of the water. Hold him. Save him. A vision floating here in this room full of dusty angels. Carrying forgiveness laced love from my lost one.

Sister Bethel hears more words. Sees more images. Fleeting pictures and oddly strung together words. A rope with many knots. Reminiscent of the Filipino veil and cord wedding ritual. A ritual we participating in during our wedding ceremony. Binding us together in love and hope. An image reassuring me of Tony’s ongoing love  and his push and desire for me to continuing living and loving. And as Sister Bethel repeats again and again, “have some fun,” followed by “whatever that means to you.”

Rise from the table feeling free. Centered. Grounded. Amazed. Lighter. Loved. Uplifted in my deep fears and strong abilities. My call to ministry recognized by another called one. “Your openness to the divine,” Sister Bethel tells me, “is huge.”

I laugh. Thinking I should ask her to share her thoughts with my Bishop and seminary professors.  Instead say, “Thank you for affirming my call to ministry.”

“You will be a powerful healer in ministry,” she replies in words knocking me over internally. Echoing something similar to what both my therapists have said to me in recent months.

Following days bring new calm. I eat again, hungry for the first time in a month. Catch myself smiling. Discover I want to reclaim bits of my old life. Slowly, intentionally, and with care.  A restaurant, a family member, water.

A few days later my daily walk takes me to the Iowa River. On the walking bridge I stop. Watch wild water crashing over the dam. Not avoiding river’s presence by walking quickly by. Like I have for twenty-five months. But gazing at its bubbling, swirling, violent, beautiful flow. Realizing I want to hike its banks, paddle its ways, embrace its beauty once again. Maybe never the Wisconsin River. But this river and all other rivers. Converse once again with wet molecules without my stomach clenching or my mind flashing back to the day Tony died. I want to continue dissipating my trauma by breathing into water’s swelling spirit.

“I keep hearing ‘changed, not changed,'” Sister Bethel told a few days ago during my session. “I wonder what that means?”

Most days think I know.  Losing Tony a formidable change. His love then and now never changed. Me, changed through loss, grief, trauma, and healing. But not changed. Still me, internally resilient. Brimming with life. Always hopeful. Never hiding from challenges for too long. Open to new adventures. Living having been loved. Full of love to give and receive.

My healing pain flowing toward and into joy. Tony leaving a boat of sorts for me to row toward the other side of trauma and grief. Constructed of his love mixed with all the healing methods he professionally practiced or knew about for over two decades. Rowing my boat together although not together. Me here on earth. He with me in spirit. Changed but not changed. Reclaiming wide waters.

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Faith, Grief, Uncategorized

Easter Understanding

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

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Sitting in a church pew Easter Sunday. Seats at a premium this morning. Finding space third row from the Baptismal font.  On the right almost under the organ pipes.

Swarms surround us. Decked out in Spring’s cold glory. Small limbs buzzing from early morning chocolate bunnies. Syrupy smells poured over church-basement pancakes wafting up sanctuary stairwell.  Scents floating off potted lilies celebrating this day. Distracting our noses.

Me, quietly book-ended by sons. Lanky height towering over shrinking self. Our hearts cradling family variants. Arriving on time for once. Not participating in today’s service. Missing one person in body, spirit, love. Forced imbalances creating new holiday traditions. Because of loss. Because of illness. Because human essence demands continual, dynamic change. Life ever flowing somewhere. Living in all directions. Forward one of many routes. Options include straight back and up above. Existence following verticals and sub-verticals as well like feeds and streams.

During Lent this year understanding the movement of Lot’s wife. Looking back froze her future. Into crumbling salt. Comprehending this can happen to us. So far doesn’t. Ongoing therapy eradicates salt. Revisiting the past orients us into living. Discovering alternatives. Lot’s wife perhaps wanting choice too. Deciding to resist orders. Ones requiring forced obligation in ancient womanhood. A constricted soul experiencing momentary freedom. Salt worth its weight. Me, not so interested in salt. Embracing all directions.

Sitting this Easter day surrounded by young men I once birthed. Now generating warmth and whispering commentary. Feeling in my heart truth inherent in hymn’s text, “Death hath lost its sting!”* 

Where life is after death, still unclear about. Not important to me. Clasping today’s truth: there is life following death. On earth and whatever and where ever after is. Tony, there. Smiling. Laughing. Eyes bright with delight. Wonder. Love.

He, also living among us. Enclosed in sons’ DNA. One wearing his clothing. The other donning his smile. Both purporting his people wisdom. Our loved one existing within memory, healed clients, love-infused family, and friends. In every-man, proverbial sayings. Some framed, sitting on my nightstand. Others remembered at odd moments. Memory creating a chuckle, smile, or sigh.

“That’s goodness”

“What just happened here?”

“How’s that working for you?”

“Get in the pit”

“Write a new narrative”

“Do you want to be seen or do you want to be noticed?”

“Don’t forget your toolbox!”

“That’s your humanity”

 

Tony uniting fully in Emmanuel–God with us. Joining clouds of witnessing saints billowing on before us. We on earth walking on foot. As human. Not salt. Not yet vapor.  Bound with all condensed water masses. Together in one, big, holy, mystery. Called the body of Christ. Perhaps we finding home on earthly knee-caps. Tony residing on a cheek. Near the smile. Head in the clouds.

Down below rejoicing today in life. Tony’s on earth. His life now. Ours then. Ours now. Embracing what we do not know. Accepting God’s command to love one another during this time. Gradually opening out. Accepting all directions. Leading into the world loving friends and family again. Love wafting like flower’s scent. Replacing trauma’s reactions and sorrow’s emotions.

Holding grief near still. Naming it as love of another form. One creating salty, healing tears. Sliding down cheeks this bright, vibrant day. Love resurrecting life.

 

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*Quote from the hymn, Thine is the Glory. Text by Edmond Budry. Tune by George F. Handel, adapted.

**Photo found on http://www.pixabay.com

 

 

 

 

Faith, Grief, Uncategorized

Love

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

wheel-1684264_1280When it came time for our oldest son to attend Sunday School, I balked. My late husband was no help. The concept of Sunday School, a foreign affair. Tony being a product of parochial school. In his mind, we simply attended worship on Sunday. Religious education taken over by nuns during the week. Except there were no nuns at the private Montessori school Ricky attended.

At the time the trappings surrounding God, Christianity, Jesus, and what seemed to me the veneration of Jesus’ violent death made me uncomfortable. My other reservations pressed harder on my heart though. The Sunday school teacher was functionally illiterate and used inappropriate-for-young-children theology.

My mother calmly clarified things for me one day. “All young children need to learn is God is love. The rest can come later.”

A seemingly simple statement at first. Yet one centering me through many years of my own questioning and parenting the budding spiritual explorations of our children.

I think a lot about life, faith, and God since Tony died. Sudden death forces the living to recalibrate every moment of every day especially in the beginning months of loss. At first, I lived in trauma’s shock. Forced to make decisions as my mind struggled to form even the slightest neural connection. My body shook for any number of reasons—left over adrenalin, fatigue, and lack of food being the most common. Our children felt neglected or in losing their father they also lost the me they once knew.

Early one morning during the first fall of our grief I hid once again in our bed. A place rendered only mine now. In a few harrowing minutes on an otherwise bucolic day. Seeking refuge beneath the warm covers from all the overwhelming post-death tasks. The weight of blankets keeping me tethered to the earth when nothing else seemed to.

Curled up, I remembered a few things. Bits of wisdom lost for months in trauma’s chaos. What I knew from my years as an early child development specialist claiming some  brain space once more. Along with hearing Tony speak of his clinical work for over two decades. And from learning about and from God. A sense of clarity permeated my thinking for once in these otherwise arduous days as time ticked in internal and external tumult.

My job now, as I saw it, was to love. Love our sons Ricky and Paul first and foremost. Love myself. And in loving the three of us through this unbelievable time, loving God as well. Sort of like the well-known verse from the Gospel of Mark known as the “Greatest Commandment.” Only in my reality used in tandem instead of in a linear line of love.

Love looked at first like me re-teaching my mind and hands how to cook. Because we were all hungry. And the food coming in from church, friends, and neighbors didn’t always fit our collective, complicated, food sensitivities and allergies. And because my sons needed the reassurance of my presence in the kitchen every evening. Like before.  And we all needed cooking smells filling, what seemed to us, an empty home.

And slowly all the wonderful works of attachment theorists, Bowlby and Ainsworth, once embraced crept back into my thoughts. Combined with this quirky need to read Tony’s professional library. Particularly his book Facing Heartbreak along with texts on love, relationships, and trauma. Once again awed by how modern human development theory, research, and healing protocols mirror God’s message through scripture.

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Now, after twenty-one years of marriage, twenty years of parenting, and eighteen months into grief and trauma recovery, I know love sustains me. Through four simple words formed into two directives. Reminded of each time I open our refrigerator, a well-worn magnet catching my eye. Beautiful words centering me as a woman, parent, child development specialist, writer, widow, seminarian, and human being. Words I see every time I drive Interstate 35 near Lakeville, on the outskirts of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. Wearing this road thin because of seminary, work, family, and doctor’s appointments. Words right there on the West side of the road. On a simple billboard as if stating the obvious.

“Love God. Love Others.”

Words holding my heart each time. An abiding command anchoring me here on earth when I so often want to fly away or hide under the covers. Weaving my life with others through relationships. Some old, some new, and some yet to be born. Centering my soul like a plumb line in the ongoing restructuring and rebuilding of human existence.

30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these (Mark 12:30-31).” NRSV

 

“Wheel” courtesy of Pixabay.