I repeat...and I repeat.

I have said for many, many years now that one of the top ten things I love about God is that he repeats himself.  I'm slow, hard of hearing, and I need the reiteration:-).  I'll read something in scripture and then hear it in a hear a sermon or read it in a book or a friend brings it up or I see it on a billboard or listen to it on the radio....  However it gets repeated, it does, and I know that it's something God wants me to know, hear, attend to, embrace, pray about, something.  A writer named Margeret Feinburg calls it the Sacred Echo.  She says a lot of times in Christianity they say we should listen for God's still, small voice, because that's how God spoke to Moses, but she goes on to say what we should really listen for are the things that echo in our lives that tell us about God and tell us about ourselves.

  We went to church on Sunday and in the pamphlet that they give you to follow along--the order of worship, if you will, there on page 5 was a quote taken from St. Patrick's Breastplate.

And we read this out loud together as a church:

Christ with us and Christ before us
Christ behind us and Christ in us
Christ beneath us and Christ above us
Christ to our right and Christ to our left
Christ when we lie down and Christ when we rise
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of us
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of us
Christ in every eye that sees us
Christ in every ear that hears us
We arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation and the Trinity, through the belief of the Threeness, through a confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.

I had recently written this quote in the birthday cards of two different friends and then I read it in Sunday's bulletin.

Just as a side note: I do not look at this quote as an "us" vs. "them", because I really do believe God is in all of us, whether some acknowledge this or not.
   I do not know if I have the interpretation right (I love the image of it all the same) but I have heard in the cultures where you bow in your greetings to one another, this is a way of greeting the God in each one us.  It's a way of being reverent to each other as human beings.  I think this quote taken from St. Patrick's breastplate is this message in a broad, powerful way...a way of living in Christ and honoring Christ in each one of us.

And to God, I say, I hear ya'.  I hear ya'.
 

Something beautiful.

Whenever I crave something written with a whole lot of beauty, insightful-ness, and something to still me, my go to read is anything by Frederick Buechner.
  I have a book of his of daily meditations called Listening to Your Life.
This excerpt, found in his book of daily meditations, was taken from his novel The Final Beast--

  "Once in the rain.  She lays her hands on your head, and the prayer is really just her talking about you to him.  She could be talking to anybody, nothing fancy.  Once she even laughed because he already seemed to be doing what she was asking him to do, not a creepy laugh, but the way if a child does something especially clever.  She said it was amazing what God could do on his own sometimes.  What she asked for him to do for me was to walk back through my memory, as though it was a long hall.  She asked him to open all the closed doors, and to bless whatever he found inside."

It's a pretty fearless way to live/pray/be.  Trusting God to open those doors and bless whatever he finds inside.

Coffee Shop Talk

I was standing in line at a coffee shop, two ladies were in front of me ordering their drinks.  There were a lot of questions exchanged between the barista and the ladies..."Skim milk?  Whipped Cream? You said you wanted the large?"  It took a little while, but I was in no rush.  One of the women comes back to where I am standing.  She says, "Because you have been waiting so long for us to say our order, may I tell you a joke?"  I'm always down for situations such as these because they are random, funny, sometimes awkwardly funny.  I say, "Sure."  She then says,
  "What is the cheapest kind of meat you can buy?"
I say, I don't know.
  She say, "Deer balls, because they are under a buck."

I said I will be sure to use that one:-).  Here you go.  For free.