I met a woman who, on a spiritual retreat, painted this image below. A few months later, the Japanese experienced the trauma of an earthquake, tsunami and resulting catastrophe of nuclear reactors. 

Perhaps you see a suggestion of that scene here, as I do, along with heavenly compassionate presence. Perhaps the image is just too small to see much. You may see it more clearly at her facebook page "Pat Sisca Pace."

My Mother doesn't have any friends in her assisted living facility. She is also struggling with dementia. She always sounds hopeless and broken-hearted when she talks about her loneliness. 

Mother identifies herself as a Christian. During our most recent phone call I reminded her that Jesus said if we ask our heavenly Father for bread, he will not give us a stone. My loose paraphrase. 

The teaching in context is this, "Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" (Matthew 7:9)

I could feel her spirit soften with encouragement. Did she sigh? So I continued, "Surely, God can provide a friend for you." So we talked about looking about for God's provision for her. If my Mother can form a friendship among the one hundred residents, I will rejoice. 

One of my favorite definitions of sin is blocking, denying, or destroying life-giving connections. This past week, I experienced blocking. 

Blocking happens when someone refuses to engage in finding a life-giving connection or two that can be unearthed or expanded with another person. 

I have an old friend who talks about being open to healing possibilities. He has taught his family to open their hands from a closed position as a physical demonstration of a spiritual action.

If I am open to you and you are open to me, at least an inch, to see if any healing can occur, something good may happen. But if, when we are called together, we sit examining one another rather than risking anything of ourselves, we will block life-giving connections from forming.

I find life-giving connections when I work as a member of a team. That is my bottom line. So I am choosing to remain in relationship with those with whom I feel respected, not punished. 

How about you? How do you recognize a healthy environment for your services? Photo credit: Molly Kunselman

Our son is marrying at the end of this month. As I consider this occasion, it comes to me that if we who are coming together to witness and celebrate this union open our hearts, we will be given nourishing gifts for this bride and this groom, even before they open any presents.

The image I see in this contemplation is that of one rose whose petals hold dew drops that will fall and soak into the stem of plant, refreshing the rose as it opens.

If we ask ourselves what we would like to give them, beyond the gifts we have chosen from their gift registry, we may find that we will each be able to name our spiritual gift, or gift of well-being, and thereby give it more effectively. For instance, my oldest sister recently sent a card on behalf of my Mother, siblings, and extended family member with the inscription, "May you have a life together full of happiness and laughter." Not bad. What a beautiful desire to select and give to a bride and groom.

In Tea With the Saints: Women who walk with me each day, Anne E. Grycz describes asking key women from the Gospels to talk over the things on her mind and in her heart. 

I recall Fredrick Buechner's discussion of time and healing (see my blog entry of May 2, 2011): "Maybe the most sacred function of memory is just that: to render the distinction between past, present, and future ultimately meaningless; to enable us at some level of our being to inhabit that same eternity which it is said that God himself inhabits." (Telling Secrets: 34-5) 

If the distinction between past, present, and future is meaningless, then I can pray for Mary, the mother of Jesus, when she is with her son dying on the cross. Suddenly, in her attention to Jesus, I see the great motivation that began my healing. 

When a parent sees a child suffering she may find herself willing to do anything she can possibly do to end that suffering. And when we begin this new work, we realize that we are making an even greater difference for the offspring of our children. To calm the suffering of those in our presence and to prevent another generation from even knowing this specific kind of suffering, we welcome the pain necessary for transformation. 

Of course Mary's presence to Jesus did not allow his suffering to end. He died in her presence. So Mary's and my journey differ there. I am seeing a slow and organic healing take place before my eyes. For Mary, I sense that the joy she experienced seeing her resurrected son matched her anguish at his dying. 

What possibilities are there if we pray about the people in the past as well as in the present and the future?

I am taking a look at the passages that I had marked in Fredrick Buechner’s Telling Secrets before I return the book to the library. In the second chapter Buechner writes, “I remember sitting parked by the roadside once, terribly depressed and afraid about our daughter’s illness and what was going on in our family, when out of nowhere a car came along down the highway with a license plate that bore on it the one word out of all the words in the dictionary that I needed most to see exactly then. The word was TRUST. What do you call a moment like that? Something to laugh off as the kind of joke life plays on us every once in a while? The word of God? I am willing to believe that maybe it was something of both, but for me it was an epiphany.” (49)

What do you do with signs? We don’t need to become superstitious, wanting a sign for every decision, yet sometimes God does give us signs to encourage or direct us. Karl Rahner says that transcendent experiences are unthematic, so are easily missed. We are moving through our day and come upon a slim moment of discovery or delight. What do we do when this kind of thing happens?

I suggest making a quick note of them. Like a dream that feels so real, so fresh, we are sure we will not forget it but do, transcendent moments are also easily forgotten. So pencil them down somewhere to return to at another time.

Today’s scripture reading at sacredspace.ie.com is from John 6. A crowd of thousands follow Jesus because “they saw the signs on those who were diseased.” Then Jesus said to Philip, ‘How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?’ This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, ‘Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’ One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, ‘There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?’"

Jesus is given the boy’s food and gives thanks. Then he distributes those fish and barley loaves. Finally Jesus tells the disciples to gather anything uneaten, so that nothing may be lost. When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!"

Let’s wake up to the signs of God with us.

I am looking over the paragraphs that I had marked in Fredrick Buechner’s book Telling Secrets. The following passage intrigues me. I have re-imagined events from my past, too. I think that being willing (or is it able?) to do that can help us integrate painful memories freeing energy that can now be used to live with more imagination for good.

Buechner describes a character that he created in his novel, The Wizard’s Tide. He tells us that this child represents the boy he was when he suffered in silence after his father’s suicide. The boy, Teddy, decides that he wants to talk about his father and so he does. Teddy just mentions his name, he doesn’t say anything about him.

“ . . . but as I wrote that story, I knew that was enough, it was enough to start a healing process for the children in the story that for me didn’t start until I was well into my fifties. Stranger still, it was enough also to start healing the child in me the way he might have been healed in 1936 if the real story had only turned out like the make-believe story in the book. By a kind of miracle, the make-believe story became the real story or vice versa. The unalterable past was in some extraordinary way altered. Maybe the most sacred function of memory is just that: to render the distinction between past, present, and future ultimately meaningless; to enable us at some level of our being to inhabit that same eternity which it is said that God himself inhabits." (Telling Secrets: 34-5)