Sunrises

"I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen. Not because I see it, but because by it, I can see everything else."

~ C.S. Lewis

"what's a motto?"

Remember that line from the Lion King? Well, I was just thinking today about how sometimes inmylife it seems like I am running a loser's race or fighting a losing battle and I remembered the words of the Special Olympics motto.
I used to have a tee shirt when I was in 4th or 5th grade that had these words printed on it that my grandma had bought for me at one of my brother's Special Olympic competitions. I have a poster in my classroom from 2 years ago when we learned about the Olympics when they were in Greece. It has this motto and an olive wreath hanging next to it. Sometimes we just have to recognize that some battles we will lose but that doesn't mean we have to give up our courage or our ability to enjoy the experience. We might (no, we WILL) lose a few, or find ourselves down or behind, maybe so far that we can't even see the person ahead of us, but we never have to allow defeat. There is victory in merely finishing, even if we finish dead last!

An undeserved and priceless gift

Titus 3:3-7 Words of Paul to Titus

3- For we ourselves were also sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.
4- But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
5- Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
6- Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;
7- That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

why?

I know that the Lord's purposes are wise and I don't expect to understand them. But I just wish I could understand why some of His children feel so alone and hopeless to the point where they feel there is no other choice than to take their own life. We had a family friend who reached this breaking point on Thursday. I don't know any details of what kinds of things he was dealing with but I hope he is feeling better now. Sometimes I wonder, though, how much regret you might suffer seeing your family and children dealing with such a loss. I am not judging, I have certainly entertained the thoughts, as I am sure most of us have at some time, but I just wonder. I hope our friend is free of his pain and knows how much he is missed and loved.

More on the meaning of suffering

Facebook friends will have seen my recent update with the quote from Viktor Frankl on the meaning of suffering. "Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of sacrifice. . . ‎In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end. In other words, life's meaning is an unconditional one, for It even includes the potential meaning of suffering." -Viktor Frankl (Holocaust survivor and author of Man's Search for Meaning). When I read this, considering all the crap I have had to deal with the past 4 months, or so, I just started to bawl. This was a man that suffered in Auschwitz saying this, and here I am suffering in my own little "garden" (which I am not minimizing at all, but it is not a concentration camp, after all), expressing such courage and strength about pain and challenges. I am on this search for meaning. (That sounds so chivalrous! "a quest for the meaning of suffering...my suffering.")
In thinking about all of this, I am reminded of a quote that a friend sent me when all this first started. Hopefully, I will someday reach this point where I can recognize the growth I have made and look back on all of it and say, "Wow, that really wasn't that bad after all! Look at me now!!!"
"No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God....and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulations, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven...." ~Orson F. Whitney

Someday....

"Let It Be" The story behind the lyrics

"I was going through a really difficult time around the autumn of 1968. It was late in the Beatles' career and we had begun making a new album, a follow-up to the "White Album." As a group we were starting to have problems. I think I was sensing the Beatles were breaking up, so I was staying up late at night, drinking, doing drugs, clubbing, the way a lot of people were at the time. I was really living and playing hard.


The other guys were all living out in the country with their partners, but I was still a bachelor in London with my own house in St. John's Wood. And that was kind of at the back of my mind also, that maybe it was about time I found someone, because it was before I got together with Linda.


So, I was exhausted! Some nights I'd go to bed and my head would just flop on the pillow; and when I'd wake up I'd have difficulty pulling it off, thinking, "Good job I woke up just then or I might have suffocated." Then one night, somewhere between deep sleep and insomnia, I had the most comforting dream about my mother, who died when I was only 14. She had been a nurse, my mum, and very hardworking, because she wanted the best for us. We weren't a well-off family- we didn't have a car, we just about had a television – so both of my parents went out to work, and Mum contributed a good half to the family income. At night when she came home, she would cook, so we didn't have a lot of time with each other. But she was just a very comforting presence in my life. And when she died, one of the difficulties I had, as the years went by, was that I couldn't recall her face so easily. That's how it is for everyone, I think. As each day goes by, you just can't bring their face into your mind, you have to use photographs and reminders like that.

So in this dream twelve years later, my mother appeared, and there was her face, completely clear, particularly her eyes, and she said to me very gently, very reassuringly: "Let it be." It was lovely. I woke up with a great feeling. It was really like she had visited me at this very difficult point in my life and gave me this message: Be gentle, don't fight things, just try and go with the flow and it will all work out.


So, being a musician, I went right over to the piano and started writing a song: "When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me"... Mary was my mother's name... "Speaking words of wisdom, let it be." There will be an answer, let it be." It didn't take long. I wrote the main body of it in one go, and then the subsequent verses developed from there: "When all the broken-hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be." I thought it was special, so I played it to the guys and 'round alot of people, and later it also became the title of the album, because it had so much value to me, and because it just seemed definitive, those three little syllables. Plus, when something happens like that, as if by magic, I think it has a resonance that other people notice too.


Not very long after the dream, I got together with Linda, which was the saving of me. And it was as if my mum had sent her, you could say. The song is also one of the first things Linda and I ever did together musically. We went over to Abbey Road Studios one day, where the recording sessions were in place. I lived nearby and often used to just drop in when I knew an engineer would be there and do little bits on my own. And I just thought, "Oh it would be good to try harmony in mind, and although Linda wasn't a professional singer, I'd heard her sing around the house, and knew she could hold a note and sing that high. So she tried it, and it worked and it stayed on the record. You can hear it to this day.


These days, the song has become almost like a hymn. We sang it at Linda's memorial service. And after September 11 the radio played it alot, which made it the obvious choice for me to sing when I did the benefit concert in New York City. Even before September 11th, people used to lean out of cars and trucks and say, "Yo, Paul, let it be."


So those words are really very special to me, because not only did my mum come to me in a dream and reassure me with them at a very difficult time in my life – and sure enough, things did get better after that – but also, in putting them into a song, and recording it with the Beatles, it became a comforting, healing statement for other people too."
- Paul McCartney

Feeling better on so many levels

Today I started to feel better. I think I may have sneezed a total of three times although I am still coughing and my back still hurts. I was able to go see Erin in the hospital and I asked for a face mask, but I am the world's worst claustrophobe and it didn't work so well. I hate to have my nose covered with anything; a blanket, a sleeping bag, a face mask... so I really didn't use it correctly, but I tried. She is doing a lot better and the doctor told her that she could maybe even go home tomorrow. He also said he had never seen such a seperation heal so quickly. We all know why though, don't we? Thanks for the prayers and remembering our whole family. She has felt the strength of all your prayers and blessings.
SPRING BREAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CS Lewis on Prayer

I got an awesome book for Christmas, The Quotable Lewis, which I have been wanting for a super long time. I have been having a hard time with prayer lately and so I decided to read some stuff from different authors and church leaders. I looked in this book and found some awesome, awesome, AWESOME!!! thoughts from him.

"Take not, oh Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in Thy great,
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate."
-Poems, "Footnote to All Prayers" (1933) p. 129

"The prayer preceding all prayers is 'May it be the real I that speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.' . . . Emotional intensity is in itself no proof of spiritual depth. If we pray in terror we shall pray earnestly; it only proves that terror is an earnest emotion. Only God Himself can let the bucket down to the depths in us. . . The most blessed result of prayer would be to rise thinking 'But I never knew before, I never dreamed . . . ' I suppose it was such a moment that Thomas Aquinas said of all his theology, 'It reminds me of straw.' "
- Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, chap. 15, para. 15-17, pp. 81-82

"We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us."
- Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, chap. 4, para. 15, p. 22

Better Days

And you asked me what I want this year
and I try to make this kind and clear
just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
'cause I don't need boxes wrapped in strings
and designer love and empty things
just a chance that maybe we'll find better days

So take these words and sing out loud
'cause everyone is forgiven now
'cause tonight's the night the world begins again

I need some place simple where we could live
and something only you can give
and that's faith and trust and peace while we're alive
and the one poor child who saved this world
and there's ten million more who probably could
if we all just stopped and said a prayer for them

So take these words and sing out loud
'cause everyone is forgiven now
'cause tonight's the night the world begins again

I wish everyone was loved tonight
and somehow stop this endless fight
just a chance that maybe we'll find better days

So take these words and sing out loud
'cause everyone is forgiven now
'cause tonight's the night the world begins again

'cause tonight's the night the world begins again

The House by C.S. Lewis

Okay, so a friend was asking me for this quote and I could not, (of course, who could) remember exactly how it went. I found it finally in my collection of "quotes and stuff." Awesome, awesome, aweeeeeeeeesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love Mr. C.S. Lewis... someday I want to talk to him.

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on. You knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently, he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of- throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage, but he is making you into a palace."