Love

"Life without love is meaningless and goodness without love is impossible."

- Greg Jurkiewicz, "The Neo-Reconstructionist Manifesto

I believe there is a great deal of misunderstanding in our culture about love. At the very least romantic love and physical love take precidence over the deeper more agape love. The love and salvation that comes from spiritual sister or brother. Because of this we often forget to lift up others in a loving way. In our hurried lives we forget the small kindnesses, the gentle words the precious gifts that don't cost a penny that lift us out of our dreary existence to the beauty of true family which we all need to be fully alive.

meditation

“We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.” - Alan Watts

I am off to a yoga/meditation retreat today. I admit I need this retreat in the midst of this chaos of winter- to get back to that place of non doing that nourishes my soul. There is something about February that makes me want to keep doing and keep plugging away until the frozen times are gone and the winter is over but I know that the only true liberation comes from staying in the journey long enough to know where we are still the discomfort of doing that in February when the winter has gone on too long is sometimes unbearable and so it is I am going away in order to find a presence I have lost.

Here is hoping that all of our meditations bring us to that place on non doing that liberates us to live life more fully- and may all of our leavings bring us right back to now.

Personality Test

“Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

So my best friend sent me this link for a personality test. It got me thinking how much a personality affects a life. And which came first? Did I make my life with my personality or did my personality make my life.
If you want take the quiz here it is.
Have fun.

“Fear no more the heat o'the sun, nor the furious winter's rages. Thou thy worldly task hast done, home art gone and taken thy wages.”

- William Shakespeare

Several of my parishioners are here helping me to look at winterizing issues to the Parsonage. While I do not fear the sun or the furious winter’s rages I do think this battle of heating a big old house in an efficient way seems almost as pointless as raking leaves that will fall again or shoveling snow that will fly again. I have not done a very good job with either this year but there is one thing I know for sure. The snow will eventually melt, the leaves will eventually biodegrade and the seasons will in fact change. While I seal the leaks and protect against the cold it will in fact get warm again. And someday my worldly task will be done this home will be gone and so will be my wages.

"Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain."

- Henry David Thoreau

Absent the endless raking of leaves this is a most glorious time of year. I sure hope you out inspecting your corner of the world.

GET OUT THE VOTE!!

"“As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing”
- Carl Rove

Can you think of any better reason to get to the polls today than to undo some of the crazy thinking that has prevailed over the past 8 years? If you aren't sure where your polling place is you may go to the following website (republican or democrat or independent) to find it. Find your Polling Place because it is only if we all get to the polls that we will have a true democracy.

"Once in a young lifetime one should be allowed to have as much sweetness as one can possibly want and hold." - Judith Olney

While watching the Today Show the other day I saw a woman outline how many calories and sugar and fat there were in different sized bags of Halloween Candy. For me there was something very wrong with that picture. Halloween comes but once a year. And if we are to ever really enjoy life we must at some points enjoy its sweetness with abandon.