paravanes:meditations

Failure. Loss. Short end of the stick. Fruitless endeavor. Heartbreaking. Hurt. Pain. These are some of the thoughts and emotions associated with parental alienation . Gather those feelings and multiply them by ten or twenty. You will then know how it feels to accept a “failed reunion” with your child after having battled parental alienation. If you are looking for a formula to help you determine if your reunion with your child has failed, I have no formula to offer you. Only you know when to declare the reunion a failure. Some parents may refuse to ever declare the reunion a failure. These parents may accept mistreatment, financial and other types of abuse, or visible disrespect for an indefinite period of time. They have convinced themselves if they tolerate whatever happens in the relationship with their child, a reunion of sorts has occurred and healing is underway I don’t think that is a very healthy perspective. I have some personal experience with reun...

"Once upon a time, a visitor came to the monastery looking for the purpose and meaning of life. The Teacher said to the visitor, 'If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else.' 'I know', said the visitor. 'To find Truth, I must have an overwhelming passion for it.' 'No", said the Teacher. 'In order to find Truth, you must have an unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong.' "----from Wisdom Distilled From the Daily , by Joan Chittister photo from Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement Why was it so difficult for the southern, white church to acknowledge segregation was wrong? For some, this question may pose another question: why was it so difficult for southern white culture to acknowledge segregation was wrong? My original question is based upon the assumption that the church does not accept without question or challenge the values and mores of the larger society. In this case, the churc...

Ladies, when you look in the mirror, what do you see?  If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, your answer can be “I see a beautiful reflection of God when I look in the mirror.” Why is it so difficult for so many of us to easily and honestly give that answer? Perhaps no one has ever told us we are beautiful reflections of God. Reflections of God must be nothing less than beautiful, if we believe God to be beautiful. If our God is beautiful, surely we must share at least a sliver of that beauty in our physical selves. We can see it every day and acknowledge it with gratitude and grace. Do we let the world tell us what is beautiful? Did some of us get mixed up and lost at that point?  Basically, the world tells all of us that only a very tiny number of us are (or ever can be) truly beautiful and the rest of us must spend some of our spare time imitating, adoring, watching, and obsessing over “the beautiful.” When we are finished with the obsessing and ...

Ascension Sunday has fallen into obscurity and neglect in many denominations. I’ve posted about this previously, but I am still saddened by the trend. I am beginning to create a small, at-home worship ritual celebrating the Ascension and based on meditative readings of Acts chapter one and Revelation chapters one and twenty-two. The Ascension is important because it answers an important question: what happened to Jesus after his resurrection? The answer matters. The passage from Acts explains many things. One of them is this: Jesus is a supernatural person who arrived in an extraordinary manner and left in an extraordinary manner. Jesus will return in the same, extraordinary manner in which he left. Also, Jesus told his disciples to wait before rushing off into “the next great thing.” He told them some things were not for them to know at that moment. Jesus did, however, give them a glimpse of their futures. Jesus told his disciples they would receive po...

I got flowers today! It wasn’t my birthday or any other special day. We had our first argument last night. And he said a lot of cruel things that really hurt. I know he is sorry and didn’t mean to say the things he said, Because he sent me flowers today. I got flowers today! It wasn’t our anniversary or any other special day. Last night he threw me into a wall and then started choking me. It seemed like a nightmare, But you wake up from nightmares to find they aren’t real.   I got flowers today! It wasn’t Valentine’s Day or any other special day. Make- up and long sleeves didn’t hide the cuts and bruises this time. I know he’s sorry because he sent me flowers today. I got flowers today! And it wasn’t Mother’s Day or any other special day. Last night he beat me again, and it was much worse than all the other times. If I leave him now, what will I do? How will I take care of the kids? What abo...

A thought for the time after Easter:   "When our hope is in something that transcends our circumstances, our circumstances cannot take away our hope." --Gregory Spencer in Awakening the Quieter Virtues , Inter-Varsity Press, 2010.

Several Sundays ago, we had a last minute emergency regarding a guest minister and I was asked to preach if the guest was unable to make it. I agreed, and began to think about what I would say to the congregation. I meditated on what is the most important reminder the church universal needs regarding who we are and why we are here.  I was led to this passage from 2 Timothy 1:12: “…I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.” Here are the words of a man facing execution, a man  who has been abandoned by his associates and betrayed by those who thought he could rely upon. This man, Paul the apostle, is facing death because of his testimony for and about Jesus Christ. Paul, a man who was widely regarded as a powerhouse intellectual in his day and time, had been cajoled and laughed at for believing in fairy tales and false truths as he traveled, taught, and...