Stefano, smoking. Picture by Giovanni Dall’Orto, August 2, 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I can’t believe I’m still here, now it’s just me and God again, like it started out. People’s love grows cold. Jesus warned us about that, about the limited capacity of human love.

Today I was thinking about mercy’s light, about what color it is and how it smells. I think it’s the color of pearls, like cigarette smoke, and mercy is soft, like cigarette smoke. Sometimes it burns and chokes. But mercy is always soft and gentle, like rings of smoke and the way smoke is remote, and curls and drifts and then disappears into the atmosphere.

But maybe mercy is also like pale yellow roses, which I saw on the way over here today. They were beautiful pale yellow roses, sitting quietly.

(Picture by Giovanni Dall’ Orto, August 2, 2007).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TghnrrThUU

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Valentines heart (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My son told me sometimes life is a fire walk. I believe him.

But we have to keep walking, through the fire and through the flood, so to speak.

Now there are yellow daffodils blooming, and drooping from rain too.

And this week is Valentine’s Day, a time to keep caring for each other, as much as possible, walking through the fire and through the water.

When I walked in front of the library today, a woman thought I was Jessica. “Are you Jessica?” she asked. I told her no, but that I hope Jessica got there soon.

It breaks your heart, doesn’t it, the way people keep looking and waiting for each other? Sometimes we find each other.

When I called my first brother today, he picked up the phone. My brother thought I was important. He is important too.

We are all important, living and hoping and struggling. We are firewalking! Together now! All the way through!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfM6nRVBvGs

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Gentleness in Mosaic (Photo credit: Nutmeg Designs)

When I first wrote this piece, it was last year during the summer months. I told you about that kind dentist, who decided to help me with my teeth again, after a mishap. She said not to worry about money, which I thought was generous and kind and gentle of her.

Last summer, one day at lunchtime, we talked about good foods at lunchtime, including turnip greens and collard greens, if you like those. 

Ms. Hannah said it’s good to be thankful for what we have. Ms. Linda said she loves the color pink. Pink is a gentle color, isn’t it? (These are real people, but I give them fictitious names, to protect their privacy).

Here’s a peaceful Psalm…Psalm 18:35 New International Version: “You have given me the shield of Your salvation; Your right hand has held me up, Your gentleness has made me great.”

Isn’t that interesting, how King David wrote that Psalm, that God‘s gentleness made him great? God’s gentleness can make us great, able to love and serve Him, and other people.

It feels so peaceful when God (with time) helps edit out so much of the frightened anger and replaces it with His great gentleness, if we’ll let Him. He doesn’t force us, but He will help us get better and be better, if we let Him just sit with us and help us. A preacher I heard once said “God goes where He’s welcome.”

Back when I wrote this first, when it was still warm, I hoped to go to the gentle park with picnic tables and playful swings, nearby. I have walked over to see the beautiful water fountain on the way. At that fountain, you can just look in the clear water, where people have made all those gentle wishes, shining up.

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A reproduction of the elephant clock in the Ibn Battuta Mall, Dubai. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was browsing at Books-A-Million on one of the holidays, I found a book called “Incognito: “The Secret Lives of the Brain” by David Eagleman.

I read enough of the book to learn that even the financial meltdown of 2008 can be traced back to the human habit of taking instant gratification instead of waiting for delayed gratification. “Good things come to those who wait,” but we humans struggle so hard to wait, especially if we’re in some kind of pain.

Eagleman talks about all this, and the brain’s part in it. The author informs us that the idea to not suffer some ruins is to make a “Ulysses contract” with ourselves, for resisting temptation in advance. It’s a great and difficult battle, to resist temptation, but our brains can help us do this. It’s a mighty struggle, but our brains are capable of resisting temptation, Eagleman explains.

The German words for resisting temptation, he points out, are “innerer schweinehund” or “resisting the inner pigdog.”

Jesus said resistance to our inner pigdog leaves empty spaces, which we must learn to fill up with good things, which hopefully lead to good places and good practices and other people trying to do good things.

If we don’t fill our lonely emptiness with good, Jesus warns, worse things can happen, damaging our lives and the lives of others. So we must practice looking for the good things and practice doing good things and practice being with the people who are also trying to do good, like helping and disciplines and budgets and exercises and eating well and “first, do no harm” because we are all capable of being healers of humanity, in some little or big way.

We can help heal ourselves too, and God helps, if we ask. (And one step to healing ourselves must be to stop beating up on ourselves (it’s so hard!) for not knowing enough soon enough. “Be Sweet to Yourself,” like a McDonald’s cookie. It’s a good idea).

So, I signed up for more classes and also called the CSCC business office and planned a meeting, for planning something good. I’m here at the CSCC library again, hopefully about to check out what looks like a good book called “Faith Bass Darling’s Last Garage Sale” by Lynda Rutledge. The book flap says the book is about second chances and changes—and God.

At the top of the first page, there’s a fictional ad, about Faith Bass Darling’s garage sale. It says, “Louis IV Elephant Clock, signed by C. Balthazar.” Doesn’t that sound like a good story?

Isn’t it good, the way you can check out a good book at a good place, for nearly nothing, at a library? Libraries are such good news.

The holidays were really stressful and hurtful and lonely, mostly. I don’t have a printer at home and was afraid to write without one. It felt like trying to jump without a parachute, so I didn’t write.

But it’s good to be back. *Thank you* for waiting. 

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WordPress (Photo credit: Adriano Gasparri)

It’s been days since I’ve been here, because I changed the color theme and somehow locked myself out. I felt bad.

A writer is just a person who writes and it’s not too mysterious, or as uppity, as it might sound sometimes.

But a writer gets down when he or she can’t write, especially if she’s become comfortable with her sense of place, which for me is WordPress, which has been with me all along here, working so hard in the background, doing things I could not do by myself.

WordPress deserves lots of credit and lots of appreciation, for all that work, helping people create and share with each other, words and pictures and wisdom and many beautiful things.

People need to create things and they get depressed if they can’t try. I read that statement years ago and it’s true: “Impression Without Expression Equals Depression.”

People try to find ways to express their fire and ice. That’s why I don’t mind graffiti too much, because graffiti means somebody wants to express himself or herself (or themselves), to try to paint something colorful, or to say something, maybe to cry on concrete.

When you get locked out, or lock yourself out, it’s like trapping a wild beautiful thing, for no good purpose. It hurts.

It was such a wonderful (and scary) surprise to see today that someone named Deborah at WordPress was there, trying to help get this blog going again, like a person who reaches out to help someone, or something, that’s trapped. I read Deborah’s note in my in-box and felt great relief, but also disbelief, like could it really be true? Could this problem really be fixed?

When I looked and saw that things might be okay here again, I had to go outside, trying to calm down. I walked outside, trying to see the first beautiful thing. It was everything beautiful, like the precision-cut grass and autumn all around, and a pretty black metal round of benches for people to sit, with a tree right in the middle, and bright clear sunlight, with air just-right cool and crisp and free, so easy to breathe.

Today, everything is so beautifully clear instead of hazy.

Faith gets tried. Faith is hard, because you are trying to see what isn’t there, and believe it really is, through clouds and haze.

Faith can be a muddy business. But sometimes God lets us have precious clarity, like a quality and genuine diamond, multi-faceted, the beautiful miracle of fire and ice, which is the potential and worth of every human being. I don’t want anybody to die or get hurt for diamonds, but diamonds are so beautiful, like all the precious stones, and even the common ones, which look up at us from clear crystal streams, holding us in place.

It’s embarrassing to feel this way, to miss you so much and to know WordPress helps me so much and I took it all too much for granted. I’m sorry for ever taking anyone or anything for granted. I’ll try not to do that again.

So, I hope to see you Thursday. The late Christian writer Eugenia Price said, in her devotional book, that we can share our pleasant stones. Maybe sometime today, I’ll catch my breath again. Whew.

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Lebanese hummus, garnished with whole chickpeas, on a Yemeni serving dish (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So I got home from the center today feeling low. But I had to get ready for the rest of the day and change out of my bleach clothes.

Bleach clothes are the old clothes that don’t matter if I get bleach on them. Maybe I’ll buy some colorful scrubs, so any bleach incidents just blend in.

We have to use a little pure bleach in the rinse water and then a bleach solution to spray the tables down, because we have to be sure within an inch of our lives that we’ve exterminated as many germs as humanly possible, with bleach’s toxic help. I do not like bleach.

Even if you spill just a little bleach on your clothes, it’s good-bye outfit. My blue capris have permanent little bleach spots because a few drops of bleach solution splashed during cleaning.

Today I bought some hummus and pretzels in a container as a snack, to go with sweet iced tea from Dari-Kreme. I like hummus a lot.

Two other things made me happy today and that was finding a purple Henley shirt on sale at Kmart and also some Suave men’s hair paste, which is cheaper than the women’s hair paste, and hopefully softer.

Maybe the new hair paste won’t feel so much like glue. Glue and paste are just too much sometimes. Less is more. (Except for hummus!)

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Grace was said before the barbeque was served at the Pie Town, New Mexico Fair (LOC) (Photo credit: The Library of Congress)

We hope we never have an open sore on our leg only to get turned down at the doctor’s office  because we don’t have health insurance or we don’t have the right kind of health insurance. The doctor says no and sends us away.

We wish we never have to be so broke we can’t buy the cigarettes that help keep us calm and even if we don’t say it, we can’t imagine why anyone would pick up a cigarette butt off the street for a smoke with somebody else’s spit on it.

Maybe we can’t even imagine living in the projects or in a cardboard lean-to faraway and maybe we secretly hate those ugly cars with stuff piled up inside and the swooping old tan fabric hanging down inside.

Not me, no not me we think or hope or pray or assume or mostly fear. I gotta work hard and that way I won’t have to walk or take the city bus where people ride with cockroaches crawling out of their pockets, especially in winter.

We won’t ever get out late at night to go to Wal-Mart to desperately purchase phone minutes because that’s it, that’s the only connection.

Oh, please, we think or hope or pray or assume or fear, who are these people? Who are these people who don’t know where the rent’s comin’ from and who hang out in our community lookin’ so broken down? Not ever gonna be me, never let it be me, don’t ever let me rest my dirty feet on somebody else’s pretty lawn. Please don’t let that happen, no it can’t happen to me.

Oh no, not me, we say from the always unthinking unfeeling unimagining bed of roses. It can’t be me who can’t afford the dentist or the deodorant. It couldn’t be me who spilled the beans; stole the cash; ridiculed the weak; flirted in church; threw the cup; cut to the quick; lashed out the tongue; gossiped out the town or refused to give out the help.

No sirree it couldn’t be me I’m a fine church goin’ man. No not me I’m a fine church goin’ woman and don’t you remember all those self-protective casseroles and cakes I made? How did you miss it? I’m always one up and never one down. I can get the first place in line and make it look like a sacrifice.

But where did I read it? I think it was on a blog called “Grace is for Sinners,” which is one of the very best blogs if you want grace and truth.That blogger shared that the day we can’t imagine ourselves in a bad situation–the day we cannot imagine how so-and-so got that way–that is the day we cannot feel compassion. To feel compassion for people you have to at least be able to imagine being in that very same bad situation. That blog offered that up and that is some of the wisest and costliest writing that will ever be written.

So if you’re on a bed of tears right now, God can turn it into a bed of roses giving off the fragrance of mercy everywhere. Your bed of tears is your bed of roses and someday, you’ll be glad. Meanwhile, my friend Pamela Kay said hangin’ on is important. Just hang on.

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Firefighters (Photo credit: thomaswanhoff)

It’s not possible to go bravely all the time.  Sometimes we must go afraid. I read that phrase “go afraid” in a Guideposts magazine article many years ago.

The story was about a group of people trapped inside a burning building. Firefighters struggled valiantly to rescue the people so they wouldn’t die. The firefighters got the group to start moving to safety, but everyone had to cross a scary barrier. One woman balked.  The fire terrified her. 

“I’m afraid,” she cried to the fireman. 

“Then go afraid!” he shouted.  Still feeling frightened, the woman crossed what seemed an unsteady support.  But when she obeyed the expert, despite her fearful feelings, he was able to help her.

Our fears can be different types, with different levels of danger.  The writer Anne Tyler, in her book “Celestial Navigation,” described a character who carried herself like an over-filled teacup. That’s what it’s like to be overwhelmed, to feel exhausted or fragile. Or to feel afraid of something, like fear of criticism or rejection or ridicule. The fears, some more serious than others, multiply until we may say inside, “I can’t go. I’m afraid.”

But there’s something good to read about feeling fearful or being “Exhausted But Pursuing,” by Gary Wilkerson, in the February 6, 2012 World Challenge Pulpit Series.  The encouragement is at http://www.worldchallenge.org.

On the back of the newsletter are words from Isaiah 43:1-2: “Fear not…when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”

It’s so difficult to go afraid. But God promised. Somehow, God will help.

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