Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Cinnamon Clouds


Once when I was on one of the islands of the Midway Atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I dreamed I was flying through the sky populated by cinnamon-colored clouds kind of in the shape of un-sliced bread loaves.

I told Bill, a friend of mine who was a P-3 naval aviator, what I had seen in the dream, and he said that in all the hours he had ever flown over the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Arctic  -- or even in the Southern Hemisphere, he had never seen clouds like I was trying to describe.

Bill headed back to his home base several days before many of us who were involved in operations out of Midway were able to, and I didn't think I would see him again for a while.  But then there was the chaos created by the necessity of getting about three hundred people off the islands of the atoll and back to Oahu where each person could catch a flight back to his or her home airport.  We were flown from Naval Air Station Midway to Oahu on many different varieties of military aircraft.

Hickam Air Force Base and Honolulu Airport share a runway system, but the buildings for each organization are as far away as they could possibly be from each other on the large airfield.  So to help out, volunteers from some of the units we had worked with, who had already made it back to Hickam or to Barbers Point Naval Air Station, ferried people by car from the military side of the airfield to the passenger terminal at Honolulu Airport.

After arriving at the airport terminal, several friends of mine and I were walking down a long brightly sunlit  hallway during the bag drag phase of our journey to check into our flights.

I was struggling with my suitcases, my purse and my carry-ons in a very un-military way.  One of the first things I remember being taught at Air Force Officer Training School is that an officer should never be "encumbered".  It was explained to us that we always needed to have our right arms free to be able to salute a fellow military member, and that we needed both hands free to help anyone who needed help.

I involuntarily laughed out loud when I first heard this having just come from my life as a young mother where I always had at least a purse, over my shoulder, a child in my arms or in a back pack, another child by the hand or in a stroller and most likely shopping bags and/or diaper bags.

Anyway, I was not in the least unencumbered at that moment trying to get to the check-in desk.

One friend used to say that when you go somewhere remote, it doesn't matter how difficult it might be to bring everything you need.  You really only have to deal with it on the way there and on the way back.  If you left something at home that you needed you would be out of luck for a long time, or maybe for the total amount of time you spent in the remote location.

In order to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere with limited supplies for an indeterminate amount of time takes a lot of planning and some coping and survival skills that begin with your attitudes.  (And I had long since taken my Girl Scout training to "Be Prepared" to heart.)

So, again, there we were, walking down the long corridor when all of a sudden from the corner of an intersecting hallway, there was my P-3 naval aviator friend, Bill, coming straight towards us with a big grin on his face!

It was mid-January, but the weather on Hawaii was warm and beautiful.  I laughed when I first recognized Bill.  He was wearing a green plaid wool shirt/jacket, and I understood why the minute I saw him.

When we first met, we had found an easy friendship and we told each other long stories about our lives.  Perhaps it was kind of like when you talk about personal things to a stranger seated next to you on a long flight.  (Or maybe you don't do that, but I often do.)  I think it has something to do with and assumption that I will never see the person again.  Somehow I rely on a special intimacy encouraged by the sound and vibrations of the jet engines and the cocoon-like atmosphere of the close space in which I find myself during my travels.

At the time I met Bill, I had told very few people about the near-death experience I had had when I hemorrhaged and almost died right after my daughter was born.

Nevertheless, over the days we spent waiting for the activity we were on Midway to monitor, Bill and I walked down many pathways all over the island and spent time wandering on the beaches.  In the course of that period as we got to know one another, I told Bill everything I could remember about that traumatic but very life-changing encounter with my sub-conscious or the Divine, or whatever it was.

One of the visions I had in the near-death experience was that there was a tall man who had his arm around me as we gazed at a beautiful view of a river flowing alongside some craggy, steep mountains.  The man was tall enough so that when his right arm was draped over my shoulders, I was tucked under the warmth of his limb as he looked down into my up-turned face and we talked together.

As I remembered this scene, I felt enshrouded by a deep sense of peace and joy.

For some reason when I told Bill about this, he asked what the man was wearing.

"It was either a green or a red wool lumberjack shirt," I answered slowly, my mind drifting back to the retrieved image of what I could recall from that part of the near-death experience.

Bill came quickly towards us, and as he grabbed several bags I was carrying, he joked with my compatriots about how he didn't have anything better to do than help to make sure we got on our way back home without any delays.  When I yielded my burdens to him, he looked down at me and winked.  I laughed in return and looked mockingly surprised while giving a quick tug on his lumberjack shirt sleeve with a question in my eyes.

I didn't think that by wearing the green wool plaid lumberjack shirt, that he was trying to tell me that he thought he was the man in the near-death experience.

I was sure he was communicating that he believed in my vision, and that he knew what it had meant to me.  Bill was happy to remind me of the hopes bound up in the vision.  He wanted to encourage me to keep believing that I would one day have the kind of security and joy foreshadowed by the impressions I had trustingly relayed to him.

And maybe he was hinting that if he could be that man, it would be OK with him.  Or maybe not.  We talked about it several months later, but I am not sure I was ever able to fully communicate to him how much his gesture meant to me.

As Bill, my friends and I continued to scurry toward the check-in counter, he leaned down  to me and whispered, "I saw the cinnamon clouds, Kath!  We were flying from Diego Garcia to Barbers the other day, and about an hour before sunset we flew into a weather system with kind of chunky cumulo-nimbus spread out like white rounded bricks on a wall with thick blue mortar between them.  As we continued to head east while the sun began to set behind us, the clouds turned pink, then red, then they became just that cinnamon color you were telling me about.  And the mortar between then turned from blue to dark grey."

Bill was the first person ever to say, "Be gentle on your self," to me.  It's been many years since we have been in touch, but every time I am near military folks and one of them says he worked on P-3s in the Navy, I always ask if he or she knows Bill and six or seven other dear friends I only knew in that pressure cooker of the operations in the Broad Ocean Area of the Pacific, flying out of NAS Midway.

Only one former naval aviator I met in the years since my time on active duty had ever heard of Bill, though.  Strangely enough, he was the chair layperson on the Missionary Approval Committee of the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church. It's always interesting when my life in the Air Force and my life in ministry intersect somehow.  For me it goes beyond what is commonly said under those circumstances,

"It's a small world!"

Like so many other things that happen to me that maybe I shouldn't take personally, those encounters seem to me much more like serendipity.  By that I always mean that it was somehow divinely planned and executed for whatever reason God may have.  Another way to name it might be "God-incidence," rather than "coincidence," as I have mentioned earlier.

Well  . . .  I offer all this up to you without any further explanation, or justification.

Just memories and ruminations that come out of that time between sleeping and waking, especially when I am in a spiritual/emotional state like the one I have been living in lately because of grief and stress.

Thanks for being willing to entertain these musings, however strange they may sometimes seem.

Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?

Well, did you?


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Enchanted Geography

I posted something on FaceBook last night about how going through the grief of our Mom passing and all the ways life feels different was like traveling in some unfamiliar spiritual geography.

A friend wrote back to say that she understood that.

I keep trying to find familiar spiritual land marks, and of course there are some.  Just as certain pains might be associated with certain times of our lives, even in a new landscape there might be familiar flora and fauna in the spiritual landscape.

Sometimes something you "see" in your mind's eye, or in your dreams may hold the key to unlocking the mystery of the new place.

Karl Jung and Clarissa Pinkola Estes tell us that dreams and myths and stories always have the potential to teach us something about how to survive, endure and/or conquer one or more of life's little problems.  And maybe even the big problems.

So what are your favorite dreams, myths, stories, movies, books?

Do you identify with any of the characters?

Do you find yourself rejecting the plot and trying to change it the way we sometimes do when we become conscious of a dream we are dreaming in the Spiritual and psychological twilight between sleeping and waking>

For about two and a half years, I have been thinking about the opening line for a story.  It is something like this:

"By the time she realized it that putting a spell on Richard  by locking him up in spirit in the parallel world 'through the looking glass,' it was too late to do anything about it."

Let's play "The Next Line of the Story" game.

I'd love to see where this goes.

I think I already told you that I have no doubt read too many fairy tales, too many myths from cultures around the world, too much philosophy and definitely way too much theology.

So what do you think the next line of the story is?

True    


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com

The Eye of the Needle


Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.  [James 1:2-3, NLT]

KLOVE

When I was struggling with health issues because of living in a parsonage filled with a very virulent strain of mold, I was beside myself.  For about three weeks I "heard" the Holy Spirit saying, "Count it all joy. . . "  It was very irritating and I knew the verse sounded familiar but I couldn't get a handle on it and was really whining and fussing at the Lord a lot.

So I finally gave up and looked in  Bible concordance to see if I could find the verse.  The verse that fit was the one above and after I read it I was even more irritated and frustrated so that the Lord "said,"  I can't talk to you when you are so whiny and fussy.

And I said, "Well I'm not done!  I am so tired of being sick and tired."So then He "said, "OK, so I'll leave you alone, but I'll be right here when you are ready to listen."

I fumed and fussed for a while longer, and then I finally asked what He meant by the verse and I asked for peace to go through whatever it was  -- and for stamina and for some knowledge that I didn't think I had in order to try to deal with the parishioners, with my District Superintendent and with all the adjustments of living in a new place, trying to live up to my own expectations of how I was supposed to be in ministry, and trying not to feel like I had to make everybody happy.

A grand trial for someone who DID think I had to be a "people pleaser" to get my needs met.

So if you are down in the dumps and having a difficult time, try taking a deep breath and thinking about what way what you have been going through could possibly considered joy.

And look back on your life, if  you can manage it, and ask your self when you had also been through a lot, and try to remember if you thought that God had done anything to help you, and see if you have forgiven Him and your self if you still don't feel like any of it could be considered joy.

Sounds like a really dumb idea sometimes, I know . . . but so much of Life in the Spirit comes from doing things that don't make any sense "in the world."

And so much of the "modus operandi" of Life in the Spirit is paradoxical compared to how you have to think about things and do things in "real life."

It's like when Jesus is talking about if people are rich it is more difficult than going through the eye of a needle for them to come into the Kingdom of Heaven.  And almost everyone thinks that is a silly metaphor unless he or she understands about walled cities from the Bronze Age through the fall of the roman empire.

Cities had big heavy gates that were closed at night.  But if a caravan of camels and mules and horses, etc -- or whatever one of those, or whatever combination of those came to the walled city after dark and after the gate(s) had been closed, there was one doorway that was easily guarded and could be opened so that the caravan could come in without risking opening a large gate in the dark.

This small gate was called "The Eye of the Needle," and it was just big enough for a fully loaded camel to come through.  The camel driver had to have good aim and had to make sure that the load that the camel was carrying was the right height to go through the opening.

It wasn't impossible -- just difficult.

And plenty of rich people have been, are and will be citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.  God knows people's hearts.

So don't worry and don't be afraid.  Trust that the doors of the Kingdom will open as wide as you open your heart, accept the gift of faith and trust God -- and especially when you act out that knowledge of the love of God through acts of deliberate charity and because you put others before your self.

There is so much of the language of the Spirit that really doesn't translate into our worldly experiences.

That's why Jesus told stories and so often said things like, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like . . " and then also mentioned some allegories or metaphors that were better at giving people of how Life in the Spirit/Life in the Kingdom is lived.

Questions?

Just ask . . . I will try to share my understanding, or I will pray you will find the answer . . . not that I will necessarily know the answer, and not that I will always be right -- and not that I will even always understand the question, but I am willing to go with you on your Spiritual journey as long as you want me to do that, and as long as I am able to do that, with God's help.

Ciao, Bella!


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com


Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Another Pearl in the String


I had been working as a secretary and word processor in the Development Office at Wesley Theological Seminary (WTS) in Washington, D. C. for several months when I came into the outer office shared with the Admissions Director. As I glanced through the open door, I saw a blond-haired woman and a dark-haired guy who had donned a replica of a World War II bomber pilot jacket.

I could only see the face of the woman in profile.  Only the back and left shoulder of the man were visible. Puzzled and trying to remember who I thought they were, I went back to my office sure that the couple were old friends I had last seen in Alaska.

The next thing I knew, I got a call from the Admissions Director's receptionist asking me if I would come and give a tour of the Seminary to two people.

As I headed back into the hallway I saw the couple from the Admissions Director's Office. 

Lo and behold, they were indeed my friends from Alaska, John and Debbie, who I had last seen six years earlier.

John was one of the F-15 pilots I had worked with at the 21st Tactical Fighting Wing (TFW) of the Alaskan Air Command (AAC) from late January of 1983 until early February of 1986.



Most of the time I only saw pilots in the Squadron Building, on the Flight Line, or at the Officers' Club, but also a few of them lived in the same housing complex where Krista, Tommy and I resided for half our sojourn there . 

John also had an office in the Wing Headquarters (HQ) right down the hall from our Intelligence (Intel) Office. That is why I had gotten to know John better than most of the other pilots.

So I took John and Debbie on the Nickel Tour of the WTS buildings.  We had fun catching up.  They had moved from Anchorage earlier that we had, so it had been over six years since we had last seen one another.

It was Veterans Day of 1991.

In the following January I took my first Evangelism Course taught by Dr. James Logan (AKA "Mr Virginia Annual Conference").

Not only was John also in that class, but so was a friend of mine from the Foundry UMC Healing Prayer Ministry Group, David.

During one break from class I introduced Dr. Logan to those two friends of mine from two very different parts of my life. 

Dr. Logan seemed delighted and intrigued by John, the Air Force Academy grad, an aerospace engineering major; and by David, a lawyer who at that time was a senior staffer for a member of Congress. David was working on the bill that broke up the regional AT&T groups.

It was fun to watch and listen as Dr Logan, John, and David got to know one another a bit.

John became a pastor in the Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church a few years before Debbie did. And seventeen years later, Debbie and I enrolled in two different Doctorate of Ministry Tracks at WTS. 

 In May of 2011 Debbie and I both received our DMin degrees at the same Commencement Service at the National Cathedral.

2013 Wesley Theolgical Seminary Commencement at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC

David did not choose to switch from the Law to the Pulpit, but our friendship remains.

Strangely enough, John and I were also (among other courses) in an Ethics Class together during one of our last semesters while I was working on my MDiv/MTS.

As our semester project for that course taught by Rev. Dr. Alan Geyer, John and I made a presentation on the Just War Theory for our Ethics Class classmates.  


Dr Geyer later became Canon Ecumenist at the National Cathedral, the first non-Episcopalian to serve there as a Canon.

This is another in the "String of Pearls" series of my Living Waters devotionals. (The pearls being serendipitous encounters with friends and strangers . . .)

I hope you are sleeping well, Beloved. 

And I hope to see you in my dreams!


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com

Saturday, January 12, 2013

THERE IS LOVE


These are some thoughts that grew out of reading an "Upper Room" devotional at www.upperroom.org.

St. Paul wrote,  

"If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 

If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. 

It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." [1 Corinthians 13:1-7 (NRSV ]

1 Corinthians 13 was read at out parents' wedding ceremony, and I often used it when I was presiding at weddings. If you are feeling low, you can substitute "I" and first person pronouns or if you are praying for someone, you can put their name and personal pronouns -- e.g. 

"Michelle is patient and kind, she is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. She does not insist on her own way; she is not irritable or resentful; she does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. She bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." 
  
We are love, created by the Fullness of Love. The more we abide in that Love, the more we take on its characteristics and live and become more loving and more able to receive and share Love. 

I think that when St. Paul wrote what we have come to know as ! Corinthians 13, he was succinctly describing God in Christ as he had come to know and live in Him.

Sometimes when people believe the lies they have been told or live in order to survive the wounds from childhood -- neglect, abuse, abandonment, conditional "love" that is not Love . . . a grown-up who has been a child like that lives out of a manufactured false self and keeps doing the same things, saying the same things, projecting the same kind of false self that helped her or him to survive childhood.   

This is beautifully portrayed and discussed by a Swiss psychoanalyst, Alice Miller, in a series of books beginning with one called "The Drama of the Gifted Child."

The Drama of the Gifted Child

When Jesus says we need to die to our self and be born again, I believe this means that we have to cut off and no longer live out of the false self we manufactured without knowing it, in order to survive.

We regain our true selves, our true personalities when we are able to find inner healing.  The problems and woundedness that lead to addictions, symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), suicide, depression and all sorts of other anti-social ideations and behavior cannot be resolved in the present,  The causes are kept alive in our psyches and affect us spiritually, physically and emotionally because these are intertwined.

Inner Healing Prayer Circles are places where people can safely talk about the wounds of the past.  When we are able to trust people to share with us, pray eith us, help us to carry and then to put down our burdens, we can find release and healing.

The masks and costumes we have learned to put on to get our needs met are no longer necessary.  We can be free to be our true selves.

In the early days of the Charismatic Renewal Movement in the last century, President Jimmy Carter's sister, Ruth Carter Stapleton wrote some books about inner healing.

Ruth Carter Stapleton's Books

We are created by the Spirit of Love, or whatever you want to call the Divine Creator.  Our spirits exist in this eternal home and we come to be incarnate on this Earth . . . from infinity to this finite place.  One of the Tasks of this sojourn is so that our spirits and our incarnated bodies and experiences of life on Earth train up our souls to live eternally in that Fullness of Love.

As we find inner healing, we are able through the Healer to allow our true selves to be revealed.  We give up fear and anger, we find liberty from oppression and imprisonment, we embrace love and light.  We are able to truly live as we were intended to live -- be who we are created to be, in partnership with the Divine.

And there is Love for us.  There are people given to us, experiences made available to us . . . joys, sorrows, laughter, and tears.

Sometimes in order to survive we have had to freeze out memories and emotions.  But in this emotionally frozen state, we are not only cut off from pain, we are cut off from every other emotion as well.  Francis MacNutt writes about this in his books including one specifically about inner healing.

Francis MacNutt's "Inner Healing"

So today I would like to encourage you if you are feeling lost or helpless; if you are self-medicating; if you keep doing things that alienate friends and family members; if you just don't feel like your self.  

There is hope.  

There is help.  

There is new life.

You can begin it with a thought or a prayer.  Look inside your heart and you will find you are not alone.  

You will find that the Love that created you is more powerful than anyone or anything that has wounded you or keeps you in an emotional prison.

You will be led to people who can continue to help you.

The powers that have harassed you and kept you from being who you have been created to be will yield.

You are beloved.  Completely.  Absolutely.  Eternally.

Please just open your heart and ask for help.  Do it now.  Please.

THERE IS LOVE


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com

Monday, January 7, 2013

Neighbor-2-Neighbor

A friend posted a note on FaceBook about a missing daughter.  Breaks my heart.  And I got carried away as I am wont to do . . . but I am passionate about this.

Too sad . . . can you imagine what our nation would be like if ALL children were precious to everyone, if even babies and small children were not neglected, abused, abandoned.

We call ourselves civilized . . . and go on and on about our social programs while thousands of modular homes stay in lots and people are homeless . . . where motels and hotels and apartment buildings -- and houses stand empty and people are homeless . . . while people have so many homes, clothes, cars, foods and people are hungry and homeless -- not only all around the two-thirds world, but right down your street in a city -- in the parks . . . kicked out of shelters during the day . . .

God says in scripture --"I am so sick of your lip service to me and your silly ways of worship and your fasts.  The fast I want is for the homeless, orphaned, widowed, and strangers to be brought into your homes."

And please don't pray to God on behalf of someone when you can be the one who answeres your prayer.

We must find more ways to break our hearts of stone and relax our stiff necks.

All there needs to be is the will to help people and the action in love to follow through.

I'm not saying that a LOT of people aren't doing a LOT . . . but it is still not enough and we can do more together -- in our families . . . in our neighborhoods . . . in our towns and villages and countrysides  . . . in our counties and in our cities.

I am not talking about government programs or even NGO, faith-based and non-profit charities.  I am talking about people to people -- Neighbor-2-Neighbor.

Maybe we can help the people living in poverty find ways to help one another -- help them to realize that they can have support to stop the violence, stop the drop-outs, bring jobs back to their neighborhoods -- help them do what THEY have a vision to do -- and then we can share together.

No more fear . . . no more hunger . . . no more violence . . . just everyone with the opportunity to have a home and fulfill their dreams.

We can do it -- we can all do it together with God's help in whatever way each of us perceives God to be if it is loving and beyond non-violence to loving, shared activity.



Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Epiphany!


Been meaning to tell you off and on all day, Beloved, about being connected with faith-filled  people in Alaska, including the owner of a Christian radio station there in the '83-'86 era.  They had all been dreaming about and hearing in their Spirits about a wonderful exodus of Jewish people from the former Soviet Union.  They had all be told separately and then together in worship so that they would gather up food and household goods and funds to help people.

As the former Soviet Union started to break up, not only did more Jewish people come out, but many people from the multitudes of various ethnic groups became refugees in many parts of the world, including the US.

I saw some of these folks in Alaska when I was serving as A Christian Minister in the National Parks at Denali National Park in the summer of '99, and I had known about Jewish immigrants from the Soyuz since way back in the mid-70s in Champaign-Urbana, and then in the late '80s through the late 90s int he DC/NoVA/MD area, as well as in NYC.

I am not sure what made me remember the manifestation of some modern day prophecies, but I am sure the Lord has a good reason I was reminded of it.

(Also not sure what triggered the memory again when I saw this image, but of course it reminded me of Psalm 19 -- "The heavens declare the glory of God, the earth proclaims God's handiwork . . ")

Also "felt" the peace and happiness of my Mom when I was in worship at the church I attend here the most -- Trinity UMC in Bradenton.  I praise God for that reassurance and that Mom's Spirit is at home, in joy and in the fullness of God's Love in Christ Jesus.

Ah, Epiphany!!  <3 nbsp="">


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com

Waiting On the Lord

Sometimes it is very hard to wait on the Lord when we want so much for things to be different. This is what I learned and am still learning . . . and I shared it with a friend, but thought someone else might identify with it, too . . . and maybe I will be able to be more patient about things since I can be a witness to how God has helped me and come through for me in the past.

Don't think of this as time outside of your life like you are waiting for something to begin . . . it's just a waiting time. I know it can be hard.

The last year I was on Active Duty (AD) in the AF I was a mess and sooooo frustrated that things were taking so long once I decided to go off AD. I was champing at the bit and turning myself inside out and just driving everyone in my life crazy.

I had some recurring dreams. One was of a big ol' clock in a small German town. The kind where on the hour the bear and the dancing girl and the musicians all come out and dance and there is music. But inside the tower room there are all sorts of gears and flywheels and cogs and everything doesn't come out to dance and make music until the fly wheels have gone around hundreds of time and every cog is in the right place and every gear has made the right movements.

And the other dream was of a big hand reaching into a watch pocket of a vest and taking out a big watch . . . I interpreted it that a lot of things had to come around for everything to be int he right place at the right time. and the hand with the watch was God's hand . . . and He doesn't look at the watch much, because He ALWAYS knows what time it is . . . and He operates in the ETERNAL NOW, anyway.

Two favorite passages about this you probably already know --

 Jeremiah 29:11-13
New International Version (NIV)
11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 
Bible Gateway

And Isaiah 40:31 (21-31)

Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
23 He brings princes to naught
and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.
24 No sooner are they planted,
no sooner are they sown,
no sooner do they take root in the ground,
than he blows on them and they wither,
and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.
25 “To whom will you compare me?
Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.
27 Why do you complain, Jacob?
Why do you say, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord;
my cause is disregarded by my God”?
28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
They That Wait Upon the Lord

Isaiah 40:31


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Alienation and Reconciliation


Do you know Henri Nouwen's writings?

He has been very important in my spiritual journey and I was actually blessed to be able to meet him briefly once.  He was Dutch and a Roman Catholic priest who somehow found his way to the US.  He taught at Yale and Harvard and then felt led to live in a L'Arche community in Canada -- homes for mentally and physically handicapped adults.

I first encountered his writings in a book called "For Ministers and Other Servants," by Reuben Job, a United Methodist bishop who is a mystic, and Norman Shawchuk, who was an editor of the Methodist daily devotional, "The Upper Room."

The first book I read by Fr Nouwen was "The Wounded Healer."  But he also wrote a wonderful book called "The Life of the Beloved."  The Healing Prayer Ministry group I belonged to at my home church in DC, Foundry UMC, was given the opportunity to use the book for one of our annual retreats before it was published.

Nouwen had many friends who were not professing Christians and   he also had some who were "secular Jews," who were offended and turned off by "God-talk" and the American Christian way of talking about faith.  So he tried to talk about God's love and being in relationship with God-Who-Is-Love without the jargon they found so distasteful.

Unfortunately, as far as Fr Nouwen knew during his lifetime, they appreciated his efforts, but still could not come to believe in a God who would have a personal relationship with people (and other objections.

The L'Arche community of the Washington, DC area had a Christmas dinner using the Refectory (Dining Hall) at my seminary -- Wesley Theological Seminary on the edge of the campus of American University in NW DC, not far from the National Cathedral.  In the early years of the break-up of the Soviet Union, two women were consulting with the United Methodist Board of Global Ministry folks on how to help the people of the former Soviet Union.

One woman was the wife of the man who had been the CNN Bureau Chief in Moscow for nine years.  She lived next door to the Norweigian Embassy, which is right across the street from the main gate of the Naval Observatory grounds, where the Vice President's House is.  The other woman's mom knew the gen Sec'y of the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), since they were all originally from North Carolina (and the mother of the woman still lived there).  The woman had a degree in Finance and had also taken Russian in college.

In the early 70s when US companies started to have business relationships with the Soviet Union, this woman was working for Bank of America and was one of the people who helped the US gov't figure out how to deal with the value of the Soviet ruble vis-a-vis the US dollar.

Anyway, the Gen Secy of the GBGM asked this woman's mother if she might talk her daughter into consulting with the GBGM.  When US companies were first allow to trade with the former Soviets, there had to be a Russian organization or company that played host to the US entity.  So at first when the United Methodist Church was trying to offer aid, the Russian government required the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) to sponsor them.

It was very touchy and eventually the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy refused to deal with the UMC (lots of reasons, but primarily because they believe that if you are ethnically Russian you won't go to heaven unless you are baptized and communing with the ROC, and once the UMC appointed a bishop for the former Soviet Methodists, the ROc leadership rejected them).  Anyway, before that, the woman originally from NC wanted to get a Christmas present for the ROC priest who had been appointed by the Patriarch (like the Pope for ROC folks) to work with the UMC folks.

Somehow she asked me to help her find a present and we looked all over.  Nothing seemed right to her.  However, one of the other books by Fr Nouwen that means a lot to me is a meditation he wrote when contemplating Rembrandt's painting, "The Return of the Prodigal."  When it was still the Soviet era, Fr Nouwen had been allowed to sit in front of the painting for two weeks, right were it is displayed at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (which at the time was still Leningrad).

Rembrandt's "Return of the Prodigal Son" Painting

The book he wrote was lovely and I happened to have a copy -- and then I remembered seeing a flyer about Fr Nouwen speaking at the L'Arche Christmas Dinner in our Refectory.  The WTS students were invited to come to the reception after the dinner.

So I offered the woman who was working with the GBGM the book and we went to see if Fr Nouwen would sign it with a dedication to the ROC priest.

He did that, and I felt so blessed to meet him.

There is only one other person I have ever met who had as much peace in his eyes as Fr Nouwen had.

That was an ROC monk in his 90s who was one of four monks still living at a monastery near Spass Za Goriye, (The Savior of the Hills) when I was in Russia for the first time (during the last three days of 1993 and the first three weeks of 1994).

Here is a link to the book:

Henri Nouwen's Book -- Return of the Prodigal Son


The Father is always waiting for the son who is missing.  He also always understands where the son who has stayed home is coming from, and they both break the Father's heart.

At the same time, there is a third son -- the one who tells the story, the one who is and always was faithful, the one who takes our place when we have been lost in sin and convicted of our offenses -- Jesus, our Savior.

He is also the one who is willing to accompany us even when we "make our beds in Sheol," and are lost.

The story we call "The Return of the Prodigal," (Luke 15:11-32) is the third story about loss.  Jesus is describing the Kingdom of Heaven and how our Father in Heaven yearns for each one of us when we stray, and when we don't understand what forgiveness and reconciliation really is.

The first story is about the lost sheep, the second about how precious a lost coin is to a woman living in poverty.  And the third is about the lost son.

Luke 15 -- The Parables of the Lost

But the story is really more about the Father.  If you read it again with that in mind, does anything look different to you?

May the Lord continue to bless you and keep you as He draws closer to you in response to your ability and willingness to open your heart to Him.


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com

Keep Seeking . . . Keep Hoping


Over and over I think how sad it is that there are people who do not know the love of God.  Maybe it is because they have met hypocritical people -- or they just think that people are hypocritical.  Maybe they have been spiritually abused -- or abused in other ways and believe the lies implied or told to them out-right . . . that they are not wanted, not loved, not worth anything.

I am here to tell you that even if you think that NO ONE loves you, that you are not worth anything, or that there is no such thing as a loving God, all of that is a bunch of lies.  You were created to be loved in the most wonderful way possible.

If you think you have to earn love, let me tell you one other thing, please -- True love cannot be earned.  Anything that masquerades as love that has to be bought or earned IS NOT LOVE.

Love is a gift.  It only exists when it can be shared.  You are priceless.  Your life was given to you as a gift because all that is love wanted  and wants to share the fullness of love, the beauty of creation, the wonder of loving relationships, the joy of life with you.

Sometimes people are born into families with people who are wounded or who have chosen evil as a way of life because of some kind of twisted desire for power or domination.  When a child comes into the world under that kind oppression, it is very difficult for the child or the adult that child becomes to find freedom, peace, joy and love.

It's the same thing as a baby that is born in a prison dungeon.  How can that baby grow up to know how to escape that dungeon -- the only "reality" the child has ever known?

There must be a rescuer.  There must be a deliverer.  And the deliverer must know how to get to the child, how to get the child out and how to defeat the powers of evil that have imprisoned and oppressed the child.

But how can the child trust the deliverer?  What gives the child the courage to believe that there is some other reality?

I believe we are all born with the knowledge somewhere inside of us that love exists.  If the child or adult who has been the oppressed, battered and abused child is able to believe that love exists, there can be hope.  And hope can be like a candle in the darkness.

If you just believe that there is something different from anything you have experienced when you have been hurt, oppressed, abandoned, it is like there is a light, but you cannot see it because it is faint and you have your back to it.

But even the faintest glimmer of hope that the light and love is there will keep people going.

If you are down in a shaft that slants down to where you are, you will not be able to see the light that is coming into the opening of the shaft until you start to go up.  The light is there, but you have to have some kind of idea that it is and that you will see it when you get to the right place.

Please keep searching and don't give up.

Your deliverer knows where you are and is coming for you.

The lover of your soul will not rest until you are found and brought out of the darkness into the light.

Indeed.  Hold onto the hope and whatever ability you have to believe that you are loved.

There is no wall too thick to keep out Love.

There is nothing you have done or that has been done to you that will turn love away.

You are loved not because of anything you have ever done or not done.  You are loved because the One who created you did so in order to love you and to share the wonder of creation and the beauty of life on earth with you.

Even if you have never wanted to believe that before now, I am begging you to open your heart just a little bit to the possibility that what I am writing is true.

Please.


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com