Celebrate Someone Else’s Beauty

It takes a mature heart to truly celebrate someone else’s beauty.  For some reason we fear that there is only so much good- be it love, admiration or joy- to go around.  If we give too much away, there may not be enough left for us.

Paradoxically, the more good we give, the more we receive.  When our heart is open enough to celebrate the beauty in another, it is better able to take in more goodness for itself.

To celebrate another’s beauty, we have to take the focus off ourself and place it on another.  We have to honestly care about someone other than ourselves. We expend energy in celebration of their good fortune.  When that celebration is genuine, we lose awareness of our own petty desires.  Ironically, in that moment we have never been more beautiful.

TToT: European Sensibilities

Last night I attended the annual Holocaust Remembrance Service at our local temple. Afterwards, I went through old photographs I took during our visit to Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany.  I also ran across this Ten Things of Thankful post I wrote shortly after that visit and decided it was worth a second look.

Ten things the Europeans reminded me for which I am grateful…

SUVs and huge club-cab vehicles are a choice, not a necessity.

Water should be preserved.

(Run off from the mountain is captured in Salzburg, Austria.)

A person should walk—for his or her own good as well as the planet’s.

Beauty all around us improves life.

(Konstanz, Germany)

You make yourself rich, by keeping your needs few. (Apologies to Thoreau who said this better.)

             (Sweet little home amid multi-storied buildings in Lindau, Germany)

Honor those who have gone before you.

(Every grave we saw in Germany and Austria was immaculately kept no matter its age.)

Laugh much.

          (Top of a carousel at the Christmas market in Friedrichshaffen, Germany)

Celebrate what you have.

       (Scene on the famed Glockenspiel of Munich depicting a dance celebrating the     survival of those who made it through a dread disease that devastated the city.)

Do not let the past define you.

(Dachau, Germany Concentration Camp)

Make your faith known.

(Church in Liechtenstein)

Prayer from last night's memorial service...

Fully Compassionate God on high:

To our six million brothers and sisters murdered because they were Jews,

grant clear and certain rest with You

in the lofty heights of the sacred and pure

whose brightness shines like the very glow of heaven.

Source of mercy:

Forever enfold them in the embrace of Your wings;

secure their souls in eternity.

Adonai: they are Yours.  They will rest in peace.

Amen

TToT

The White Space

“White Space is where the world and all distraction falls away. Where the voice of the Divine can be heard. Where the Truth of who you are is found. Where miracles happen.”
― Valerie Rickel

I sit at the kitchen table in silence sipping tea and letting my eye travel over the simple shapes in the cupboard.  My mind begins to clear and my shoulders relax. I need these quiet moments.  I savor the stillness, though too often I forget to include it in my day.  Too often I feel guilty for sitting in stillness in a world that values busyness.

But the White Space is productive too. Only here can I hear myself think.  Hear the whisper of the small still voice that guides me and loves me and emanates from God.

I am better suited to face the world as I emerge from the stillness.  I think more clearly and forgive more readily.  I am more in tune with myself and my God.  I am renewed in the White Space.

Embedded in the prose are my Ten Things of Thankful

Silence 

Tea

Home

Calm

Security, Assurance

Uninterrupted Thoughts

The Voice of God

Restoration

Forgiveness

A Manuscript at Last

Book Review of Sorts

http://www.mamakatslosinit.com

Dreams spring forth from the hopeful heart, and the hopeful heart is a happy heart.  Dreams can only mature to reality once they've seen the light of day.  If I name my dream--type it here on the screen, there is no turning back; I will be committed to seeing it through.  At the very least, I will have to make a wholehearted attempt whether I fail or succeed.  My whole life I have avoided risks for fear of failing and looking foolish in other's eyes.  Yet, real failure comes not in trying and falling short, but in never trying at all.  Today I am screwing up my courage and naming the dream I am ready to pursue. I will write a daily devotional book featuring reflections I have written and shared at church as well as additional  essays I have never shared publicly before.  In naming my dream I've moved outside my comfort zone into the place where growth can happen.

With those words I made a New Year's resolution in 2013.  Five years later I am proud to say that I have completed a manuscript.  I have written 365 daily devotions which I hope people will find inspiring and useful in moving towards deeper spirituality.  

It feels so weighty as I hold it in my hands.  Partly, because it is three hundred ninety-three pages, partly because it represents nearly a decade of my life, it is a big deal to me.  This book has been a labor of love.  Because I see God in the everyday, the book is filled with stories about the people and places I love and the ways that God's presence influences all my experiences and relationships.

I have begun the process of editing and clean-up.  I have names of a couple of people to speak to for guidance about publishing; friends of friends, they will be hearing from me soon.  I am hopeful they will be willing to point me in the right direction to begin a process I know absolutely nothing about and find daunting.  But for today I will celebrate.  A dream I have had for long before I made it known to others, is coming true. Whatever, else happens I did what I set out to do.  I wrote a book.

Post Thanksgiving Routine

I move slowly this morning, body still tired from the preparations and celebration of the past week.  I am in no hurry as I begin the task of straightening the disarray that comes of having filled the house with company. As I go through the motions of restoring order, generations of my family feel close at hand. I gather tablecloths and head outside to shake errant crumbs of oyster dressing made from mom's recipe onto the lawn.  One bite of that dressing transports me to Hill City, Kansas and a far-too-small house full-to-bursting with our huge, rambunctious family.
Back inside I pull apart tables to remove leaves added to make room for my extended family.  I slide the scaled-down tables back into their usual places where they are disguised as end tables and accent pieces the rest of the year, and smile knowing their true purpose is to provide a gathering place for those I love. I slip the extra chairs I have collected through the years in order to provide adequate seating for all who return each Thanksgiving day into discrete spots throughout the house.
As I disassemble the Thanksgiving scene voices and laughter echo in my memory; some from yesterday, some from years ago.  I picture someone I love perched on each wooden seat as I return it to the place it will remain until November rolls around again. My heart is full as I send up a silent prayer.  It is only right that this diverse group of characters fills my house each year on Thanksgiving, because in truth they are the gift for which I am most thankful.

Mama Kat:  What seven people would you want to invite to Thanksgiving dinner?  The truth is the answer is always my family.  I have to cheat and  tweak the number to more like 27 than 7, but the answer stays my family.

Imperfect Perfection

Mama Kat

Inspired by Challenge

The women in my family are currently sharing the book Mistakes I Made at Work by Jessica Bacal.  It includes essays capturing interviews with twenty-five professional women who have accomplished much across a wide variety of fields.  My favorite section of the book is "Learning Resilience", and my favorite essay in this section is the interview with author and film-maker  Ruth Ozeki.  Each interview concludes with tips; Ozeki's second tip spoke to my heart:

The act of bringing anything into the world, of taking an idea and making it real means bringing it from the state of absolute perfection in your mind into a state of relative imperfection in reality.  Every novel or painting is like this: perfect in the maker's mind, but imperfectly realized.  You can look at this as a mistake or simply as an opportunity to engage--because it's through the making of mistakes that we are able to live creative lives.  

The parenting equivalent of the point Ozeki makes is the understanding that we learn more through our mistakes than we do from experiences that seem to go flawlessly.  Truth be told, we humans are rarely flawless at all, but times we come closest are when we are performing tasks or using skills we have already mastered.  Real growth does not occur here. Learning and stretching lie in the untested.  Handmade commands a higher price than machine made because there is beauty and interest in the imperfect, and there are so few among us willing to go the distance to create a thing of beauty or to risk sharing it with the world.  Don't be discouraged when things don't go exactly as you envisioned they would; your vision is limited by your imagination.  Take a risk and trust.  What may at first appear imperfect as it is unfolding, may evolve into the very plan God envisioned for you.  The plan that takes you beyond your wildest dreams.  

Shine

Today's Write Before Christmas @ Bigger Picture Blogs prompt is To Seek the Light...

My house is filled with light these days.  There are miles of Christmas lights, a fire in the fireplace and lots and lots of candles.

There is something very soothing about candle light.  It softens the rough edges. Everyone and everything looks better to me in the glow of candlelight as though painted with love.

The flame of a candle is like life itself.  Each require oxygen to survive; each have warmth and energy.  The light of a life well lived illuminates all it touches.

Our life like the flame can flicker and sputter in a wind or storm, in our challenges and burdens.  In the darkest of times all we can manage may be a flicker, but this may be the spark of hope that sustains us. Our flame can also burn brightly especially when we are living a life that glorifies God. When we live for His glory our life becomes brighter and more remarkable to those around us.

As I take in the array of candles burning in my home today I imagine them representing people in my life.  These people are my beacons, my source of guidance and inspiration. Their lives have made a difference in mine.  Some have gone before me and I miss them. Though I may no longer be able to see their brightness first hand, I can see their light still reflected in all that they touched.

We all light our candles off the original light, the one who's birth we celebrate in this season.  Even as the light spreads from one to many its original brightness is not diminished.  Our own light is not diminished when we shine it in the world.  In this same way my saints and beacons were able to shine their lights and share God's love without losing any of their own connection with God.  God's love has no limits.  When our light goes out here on earth, love remains.  It spreads and grows becoming more plentiful.

Let me never miss a chance to shine.   Let me be a part of the string of lights used to bring brightness into the dark, cold world.

2011

A Frosty Night's Journey

Day 2 of the Write Before Christmas...‘Brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel’

The coldest week of the year.  In the past forty-eight hours the temperatures had plummeted and the world had become dark and gray.  Distractedly she pulled together her bags and some blankets, food and supplies in case she encountered ice or became stranded on the highway.

She was surprisingly alert for such a wee hour.  She had been doing this same routine for the past eight weeks so perhaps she had grown accustomed to it.  She didn't question her routine for long.  It was simply what needed to be done.  She closed the door behind her bidding her husband and two sleeping children a silent goodbye.

At the other end of this road a young woman lay sleeping in a dorm room.  She would wake in a few hours having to face another appointment- a post-op check up or more therapy.  When she woke she would call her mother who would be somewhere between Kansas and Tennessee yet again. The sound of her groggy voice on the phone would make the mother smile and press on.

The dark highway stretched before the mother's eyes like a ribbon connecting the two women.  Apart from the moon, the night was black and silent.  Yet this frosty night held a lightness as well.  Had there been another living soul around the lightness might not have been visible to them.  But the mother saw it.  This night, the coldest night of the year, would dawn on the day that the mother would not make the return trip alone.

This time the daughter and the mother together would cross this very path in reverse.  It would feel to the mother that the frost had melted. They would head home to be with the others; and it would be Christmas.

During my oldest daughter's sophomore year she was dropped from a cheer stunt and sustained an injury which required surgery.  We had a very long semester: her with the medical stuff, me with trying to be supportive and present from three states away. These memories were on my mind because at 3 a.m. tomorrow morning I leave on a 10.5 hr journey to pick up daughter #2 for Christmas break.  But this time everybody is healthy!

2011

Serenity

A busy week has come to a close.  I immerse my self in warm water and feel the stress soak away from my weary body.  My mind relaxes, letting go of all that has left me tense and preoccupied. I sigh and think serenity.

I let my mind wander to other things that bring serenity.  Some people think money will bring peace of mind, but it has its own set of stresses.  It comes along with a trap; the more a person has, the more she worries about how to hang onto it.

I consider a get-away on a tropical isle; I see myself in a white woven hammock trailing a toe in the sand as I sway by the clear blue water.  As my imaginary hammock swings in rhythm  with the tide, I know I would be soothed by such a get-away.  But trips like these are temporary and the stresses left behind must be revisited soon.

This is the trouble with the serenity I seek.  It either is revealed to be false hope or it is real, but all too fleeting.  Mulling over the quest for serenity I refer to the definition of the word.  I am not surprised to find words like calm and tranquil in the dictionary's description.  It is only upon looking a second time that I discover a lesser known definition:

Serenity- 2. (usually initial capital letter)  a title of honor, respect or reverence, used in speaking of or to certain members of royalty (usually preceded by his, your, etc.)  Dictionary.com

Never have I heard the term Serenity used as a title for a king.  It is as if a light turned on and I understand perfectly.  I am most serene when I put my faith in Him.  God sent us Serenity in the form of a babe in a manger.  He is neither false hope or fleeting promise.

May you find Serenity this Christmas.

Rebirth of Self-Truth for The Write Before Christmas, Bigger Picture Blogs

Remaining Thankful While Fighting the Urge to Punch a Big Orange Pumpkin

When the prompts were announced last week, I thought I would write a piece for Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop that outlined eight things for which I feel thankful.  After all I make my weekly list for Ten Things of Thankful pretty faithfully.  And this was to be a history making week.  At that point I thought I would be oozing thankful by now.  Well, by golly, I am sticking with my plan.  My list looks different than I thought it would, but my heart is definitely every bit as full as I anticipated.

On Tuesday of this week, I had the opportunity to vote for the first woman on a US major party ticket for the Presidency of the United States.  As soon as I voted I uploaded this photo to Instagram.  Today I am still incredibly grateful to have had this opportunity--for the vote, for the long overdue chance for the person of my choosing to be a woman, for the sense of pride that my candidate sported the best resume in the history of presidential candidates making her the all time most qualified for the job.  I am thankful for the three young adults to whom I dedicated my historic vote, and for their father who did such a fine job helping me raise them.  And I am thankful that when the dust settled my candidate, the first woman chosen by a major party to run for the highest office in the land won the popular vote.

I tried to think of something from the campaign for which I was thankful.  I am thankful that at all three debates, the woman candidate showed up prepared, knowledgable of both policy and history, touting plans for future programs, self-possessed and graceful.  She was a credit to her gender every single time.

For a minute I was thankful that I had not once during this campaign heard the phrase, "People are trying to decide which of the candidates they would rather have a beer with." I have always found this to be the most inane measure of who to vote for, but it seems to come up every four years. Then I realized that I likely had not heard that because this time around it had been replaced by the simple statement, "People just don't find Hillary likable."  Who cares if the candidate is likable by the way?  We  are not looking for Buddy in Chief here.  If I had to say which president in history I think might be most fun to have a beer with, I suppose I would say President Obama.  But here's the thing---if I got to spend a few hours with this guy, it wouldn't be drinking beer.  I would want to keep both of us sharp for the 225 or so questions I would have about what it is like to be the leader of the free world.  Come on, I work in a middle school.  I want to create a Venn Diagram... Skills it takes to work with middle schoolers/Skills it takes to work with Congress.  I am thinking the overlap has got to be tremendous.  

As the shock wears off I am trying to be thankful that I am no longer ignorant of the level of division in this country.  Let me be clear, the division itself makes me feel physically ill.  However, at least now it is apparent, so maybe we can do something to address the divide.  We are one country split in half ideologically.  This frightens me.  Abraham Lincoln speaking about slavery proclaimed in the Illinois Statehouse, "A house divided against itself can not stand."  The house feels threatened, folks.  I believe the threat is more substantial than many, maybe most, of us realized.  It has been exposed, and I am thankful for the voices suggesting it is high time to mend the rifts.  

There's my list.  Did I come up with eight?  Ten?  Truth be told I didn't count.  Somehow this week I just don't have the heart to spend another minute attempting to count things that just don't seem to add up.

TToT

TToT: I Need a Break

We celebrated the birthday of America this week.  One of the things we did to mark the event was to tour the North Carolina State House.  When the kids were little, we stopped at every state capitol we passed on our epic road trips.  Somehow we missed Raleigh, but we have now rectified that.  Lawmakers no longer gather here so it mostly houses commemorative displays including some very old American flags.  Between the glass protection and bright lights behind and above, I struggled to get decent photos but figured I could jazz them up with Befunky photo editing later.  

Like nearly everyone else in the country I have grown weary of the violence and hatred that is so abundant right now.  I needed a break, and Monday provided it.

Looking at these antiquated flags reminded me that we Americans have a lot to be thankful for:

For people who had the courage to face the consequences of declaring our independence.

For a government that changes leadership in the highest office of the land every four to eight years without bloodshed or battle.

For unity that has stood the test of time and differences of opinion.

For the right to peacefully assemble

to express our deepest convictions

in what we are right to believe should be a manner free from bodily harm from someone attempting to stifle our voices.

For the fact that everyone--those I find brilliant and those I find buffoons--is expressly given the right of free speech.  It is not always easy, but it is never boring.

For a land of natural beauty from sea to shining sea

filled with people who possess basic goodness.  May we all work to get in touch with our own personal goodness again so that the whole country can benefit, because all this hatred and violence...we are better than that, and we all need a break.

At least ten reasons to be thankful.

Never boring

Light in the Darkness of Dachau

Spoiler alert:  If you hope to visit Dachau some day and want to experience the memorials without any preconceived expectations,  don't read further.  I share not only photos, but interpretations of the message conveyed in each memorial as I understood them.  After the heavy sadness and disbelief of what we had seen in the camp,  I was very moved to discover the strength and faith that was palpable in each of the memorials at the end of the tour.

As you walk to the end of the gravel road that ran between the rows of barracks that housed prisoners, you arrive at the gathering of memorials.  The first is a Catholic memorial: Church of the Mortal Agony of Christ.  Many of the prisoners at Dachau were Catholics from Poland, Italy and France imprisoned for their anti-Nazi stance and resistance efforts.  The structure is concrete covered both inside and out with rocks from a nearby river.  A metal sculpture depicting Christ's crown of thorns hangs overhead in the entrance, and a cross hangs over an altar inside the structure.

The Jewish memorial was my favorite, though at first it seemed foreboding.  It is built of basalt lava, giving it a dark almost dingy look.  The floor of the interior is six feet underground which made me wonder if it was meant to signify the grave.  Instead, the underground positioning is a reminder of those who attempted to find hiding places from the Nazis.  You descend a wide ramp into the memorial.  Overhead is a railing that provides a clear reminder of the barbed wire enclosing Dachau.

I went down the ramp into the memorial with some reluctance.  Once inside I immediately saw the shaft of light from the topmost point of the prayer room illuminating a pillar of marble.  It took my breath away as I understood what the architect was saying-- the Holocaust pulled us down into the deep pit, the darkest depths of despair, yet even then there was hope and the promise of salvation.

The Church of Reconciliation is a haphazard looking structure made of gravel and unfinished concrete.  It stands as a protest against the Nazi insistence on order and tradition.  It is the Protestant memorial at Dachau.  After all we had seen and heard that day, it provided a much needed chance to light a candle and pray.

The Russian Orthodox Chapel: Resurrection of Our Lord was built on the 50th Anniversary of the liberation of Dachau by American soldiers.  It sits atop a mound of soil brought in from the Soviet Union, and honors the roughly 6,000 Russian prisoners who died here.

Thoughts from the Service of Remembrance at Temple Beth Sholom Topeka, Ks  Friday, May 6, 2016

If we were to begin tonight counting off each second of time in honor of someone who was killed during the Holocaust, we would need to continue counting seconds until August of this year.

The good suffer and the best suffer most, because it is the just and the true and the righteous that take upon themselves the task of bringing justice and truth into the world.

As we recall their unanswered cries, we must pledge ourselves never again to be silent in the face of tyranny or injustice.  We must transform grief into compassion.  We must give evidence of our remembering them through acts of kindness and courage.  Thus will our actions serve as monuments of the spirit to those who perished.