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“Everywhere” – the third and final Poem in The Birthday Card Poems
Everywhere
Poem #3 in the Birthday Card Poems
By Jane Tawel
Everywhere, the Spirit rages
Through the world, and through the ages.
Blowing like the wind
Breath, like in and out,
Spirit of Imago-Dei,
Spirit of the heavenly way,
A whisper and a shout.
*
Spirit dressed in rags and riches,
In English halls, and Gaza ditches.
The Spirit loves the childless lady,
The wandering soul, the tiny baby,
the man of color, homeless girl,
and everyone throughout the world.
And everywhere, all humankind,
The Spirit of Love, can seek and find.
With just a spark of love and care,
the warmth of Love spreads everywhere.
*
Everywhere a soul is needy,
Everywhere a soul is greedy,
For the Spirit, not the prize,
Opening ears and using eyes,
To hear and see
To touch and be–
Why, that is where the Spirit of Love,
Can make a person worthy of,
A Christmas-sort-of-actuality,
Alive and well in you, and me.
*
The Spirit of true rhyme and reason,
Is not just for one single season.
For Truth and Love,
And Peace and Prayer,
Are ours for making,
Ours for taking,
Ours– always
And everywhere.
Wishing you and yours, and me and mine, a truer understanding of what the Spirit of the Christmas-type of love and joy can be for us each day in some small way, if only we “make it” and “take it”. Shalom, Jane
“There” — Poem #2 of the Birthday Card Poems
There
A Birthday Card Poem #2
By Jane Tawel
“Cold hands equal a warm heart,” Mama used to say.
I wonder if her hands feel as cold as mine do,
Nailed above my hanging head,
Bloodless.
I keep thinking about the beginning.
Oh! The stars!
The Star!
And I –almost human,
Barely just alive,
And all the people smiling, cooing, touching, weeping with joy.
Caught up in a contagion of hope and love, they were, back there
On that night.
*
Now, this day,
Now, only she weeps,
And not with joy.
And the rest of them laugh, or run away,
staying back as far as possible
From my almost corpse.
Afraid to be caught up in the contagion of death
As I hang here, barely still human.
*
The beginning was glorious.
They say babies can’t remember their birth,
But some of us can.
I do.
The wood of the stall where I began this life,
Felt nothing like this wood.
This wood, so unnaturally shaped (no tree could grow like this),
This wood, my arms and legs are splayed upon,
is splintered, rotting, rough;
Worth nothing but the fire after I hang here on it today.
Contaminated by death, it will be
No longer of any use to anyone, after this day.
Just as I will be, no longer useful,
After this day.
*
People think a baby isn’t born to be useful,
But I was.
I was born to be of Good use;
Like a tree planted by streams of water,
Yielding fruit in season.
*
There, in Bethlehem,
Exhausted as they were from days of rough travel
Anxiety and fear making Joseph sweat and Mary weep
In pain, from journeying by kings’ decrees.
In pain, as Jews have always been.
Will always be.
In pain as I am, here, on this cross.
By the time they arrived there
Was no room.
*
Oh, I remember.
Though now, I am blinded with agony
and delirious, perhaps from loss of blood,
I can see perfectly, in my mind’s eye,
My birth-day.
My birth had spent my mother—body and soul,
She was weak from loss of blood there,
As I am here,
Our loss of blood like two parentheses enfolding my life.
She was so tired…
So very, very tired we were sometimes….
Until she could barely hold me to her breast.
Joseph, with strong hands, made feeble by my birth,
gently snuggled me down into the hay.
Some babies do remember;
We really do.
*
Like a baby bird made safe in my new nest,
I looked for the first time upon this world,
A world of trees, and stars, and faces;
And all seemed, back there,
Exactly as it seems to me today at the end:
The world is all so very new and as very, very old
as all Newborns know
The world to be.
*
The wooden trough where my parents nestled my infant form,
was as soft as silk
From years of animal tongues, licking, honing, softening
Until not a splinter remained.
There, the wood was as lush and sweet-smelling and soft
As a king’s cradle.
My fledgling family baptized that wood
With my birth pangs.
That trough was anointed by shepherds and sheep
By kings and sages.
Who will anoint the cradle my body dies on today?
*
We had to flee that place,
Jews always do eventually.
But I like to imagine that wooden manger
Is still there today,
A cradle where I was first loved,
Where I first loved.
Wood, if properly cared for
Can be useful forever.
Trees, even in death, have long lives,
Eternal, one might say.
I know that as well
As any Master Carpenter should.
My earthly father, Joseph,
Taught me all about wood.
I think about that manger
there
feeding the sheep again.
*
And suddenly, dying here now
I feel I might join in
The laughter of the crowd below.
They would think me as more insane than they already do,
The crazy “King of the Jews”,
but I Am
Secretly thinking about the irony,
Of the parentheses of my life;
The parenthesis of two wooden instruments,
One of life,
One of death,
Bracketing my life
Like wooden signposts
Leading forward.
*
Yes, perhaps I have just enough faith to think that—
Just enough words to tell them all, that–
both the wood of my cradle
And the wood of this cross
Are useful tools,
Are instruments of life,
Are places where human babies are safe,
Are symbols
Of birth.
*
The strange parentheses of my cradle and cross,
Will have no end.
The wooden brackets that surround my name,
Will lead people forward.
( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( (
When I was There,
I was already Here,
Going like a lamb from
Trough to slaughter.
The final bracket remains unknown
On the other side, Over There.
*
But I am not laughing, No,
Yes, I am crying instead;
Not so much from the pain,
Though it is almost more than I can bear;
Not so much from looking at my mother’s face,
Ravaged with sorrow,
Or from gazing weakly
At the few unlikely friends weeping there,
Those few who risk their lives to
Watch me die.
*
I weep
for the wood
this earthly rood.
This tree I die on here,
Will never be useful again,
This tree too, dies with me today;
And it seems the whole world of creation,
Weeps with sorrow for the tree, once a sapling,
that dies here today; and for the
Son of Man
who dies
here on
the tree.
*
*
“My soul is consumed with sorrow, to the point of death!
Like a sheep before its shearers I am silent,
I cannot open my mouth.
My soul is offered up as guilt offering,
And I will never see my offspring,
I can no longer prolong my life,
It is finished.”
But almost as I end my life here,
the still small voice,
Of My Father,
who awaits me There,
Says,
“Oh, My Son, this tree, too
Will feed the sheep.
And You, My Child,
Will be with Me, Here,
forever,
Feeding Your offspring
At your own breast
As your mother once fed you.
You My Son,
Will live to have many babies,
Reborn because You
Cradled them here today.”
*
(So, because of my mother’s willingness to serve My Father
I, her child, was born.
And because of my willingness to serve My Father,
My own children will be re-born.)
*
I embrace this wooden cross,
In death,
As once that wooden cradle embraced me,
In life.
My first breath, began the struggle.
My final breath is a fight to give it all up.
I can just make out the words—
So faint—
Like whispers hovering over the void
Of the world–
Is it memory, dream or present reality?
The words I hear now,
as my mother and My Father coo me to sleep,
As my mother and My Father gently sing,
“There, there. There, there, my Child. There, there.”
“Here” a poem
Here
A Birthday Card Poem -1
By Jane Tawel
December 22, 2019
Here.
This early morn,
The world re-starts,
Yet all is torn
Apart.
Just as my heart,
Released, Reborn,
Ignites with Love
So True–
The whole world
Changes, Jesus,
because of You.
Check out my latest on Staying Alive, Please on Medium.com
A Christmas Letter Replay from 2015
It seemed like a good time for me, and maybe you, if you are reading this, to re-post the very first Christmas season post I wrote for this blog. Whatever you believe, this post is about being and being-ness and not doing and doing-ness. I am personally practicing more, different, and various forms of centering and breathing, of embracing the Now, and accepting who I am and the paths I have taken, as well as trying to understand who other people “are”, not so much what they “do”. I hope you might wrestle with me on some of the thoughts I posted in 2015 in light of all that has changed out there, and in me and maybe in you, in 2019.
A Christmas Letter on Being-ness
by Jane Tawel
December 24, 2015
A Christmas Letter is about all the stuff one and one’s family has done in the past year. It’s an accounting of achievements and that is as it should be since that is what satisfies the recipients’ curiosity. There is a saying people toss around when they are telling one not to stress– “We’re not called human doings, we’re called human beings“. As I age, I am distilling into more and more myself, which is (I’m often told) — impassioned and weird. So once again this season, I write my traditional odd and intense Christmas letter, not because that is what I do, but because that is what I am — odd and intense.
Sometimes you shouldn’t stake claim and insist on being what you naturally are — being is like writing– it is important to understand context and connotation. In writing as in life, know your context and if necessary dial down your weird and impassioned. I’m a bit spotty on successfully doing that, I admit. But I am learning that it is often okay to accept one’s particular self. Each of us is created in a unique way to reflect the image of our Creator God. I serve an odd and intense God — an impassioned God, a strange one-of-a-kind God, who unlike other gods did not tell us to worship Him for what He had done or would do, but told us to worship Him for what He is: “I Am”.
We “Beings” are the only created “Imago Dei” of that God — imago means “idealized concept” — which fittingly has nothing to do with “doing” but means “a better than in reality idea”. That’s what we will be again someday — our realized ideal self. Meantime, we work at it. This time of year we celebrate the fact that while we were formed from dust into God’s image, because we rejected that image, God chose to be created in our image–ad imaginem hominis. We were given the perfect Being to model — Jesus, the Christ. As the hymn goes: “Amazing love, how can it be that thou my God, should (be born) and die for me!”.
I get all my strange random thoughts out of my head in a blog where you can also find this letter (janetawel.wordpress.com). I am reading a lot of C.S. Lewis. One cannot spend time with C.S. Lewis and not become at least a wee bit changed. Lewis has such a high view of human beings –that is if humans choose to sacrifice completely the sense of self to the sense of imago dei– through relationship with the living God and in the manner of the Son of God. It is a fearful thing to ponder that one day we will become what we have always truly been judged to be, with no regard to what we have done. The bible calls it God’s view of the true heart of one’s soul.
We are easily confused and disoriented by the distorted mirrors reflecting what is truly “us”. There is none good but God and no goodness in us but our Godlikeness in Christ. One can live in a state of stunned awe reading a lot of the Bible and Lewis.
I learned more about reading and writing with my 15 Azusa Pacific University freshmen. One of the things you try to help students with is that when writing, stick to the same verb tense. The other thing is that it is easier to write consistently in present tense than in past tense. I think it is easier to LIVE consistently in present tense as well — easier than living in past achievements and problems or living in future dreams and worries. Occupare Momento!
With my “at least on paper grown-up” kiddos, I am failing but trying to transition from “doing mom” to “being mom”. This is the necessity if you want to be friends with your adult children — you will always “be” their mom, but you don’t “do” mom any more — at least I imagine you can’t until they become parents and then you can do “grand” mom. Being mom means you let them all be who they are becoming and you just be there for them. Whatever you do, don’t let on that you are still doing stuff for them. Except doing the occasional bill paying for them. That’s ok. This morning the best part of still being mom, is being with all my chicks and my hubby under one roof — even if only for a short amount of time. They all keep asking me what I want for Christmas — isn’t it obvious? — just to BE– together. There is a great old Peter Seller’s movie called, “Being There”. Chauncey Gardiner keeps saying, “I like to watch.” I “like to watch” my children and husband bloom and grow. So, I am watching my family being: Hard workers. Risk takers. Creators. Friends. Students. Travelers. Dreamers.
Christmas is a time of traditions. Traditions are not things one has merely done in the past but they become traditions because you keep doing them–in the present. We, as perhaps you, are in the midst of our many Christmas traditions, like fudge and cookie making, driving around to see the lights, singing carols, hiding gifts, and snuggling together watching Christmas movies. Our traditions are mostly about being present in the season.
Advent implores us to live fully in the present reality while anticipating the future reality. As Christians we lean our frail earthly weight into our calling to be “on earth as it is in heaven” – which will merely BE timeless present in God’s presence. Advent is about Christ with us, in us, and Christ to be. The church liturgy helps ground us in the present of Christ’s presence, not by having us think on what He did — “He was born”– but by celebrating what His Being continues to mean daily, in this very moment, in the present eternity of our souls –“He IS born.” “He IS Risen”. “He IS coming again”. He Is I Am.
This Christmas perhaps we First World human beings, are more aware of our frailty and transitory state as the Evil One rears in his death throes of ugliness, unnaturalness, violence, and hatred. Today increasingly seems to gain better odds at being my last day. While Eternity becomes a more present longing, it is yet good to be thankful for another hour to be present here.
We spend a lot of time doing good things that care for the body and mind. But what of that which is our innermost being? How shall we live to be Souls rather than Bucket Lists? We are called to improve and to love this created world and God’s created people– as our skills and callings and dreams allow. But the soul can only be bettered by the One who created it, so that the true self can be made into that thing which is all that will eternally remain –Faith, Hope and Love.
The soul is our being-ness. It is only in being known by our Creator, by knowing our Creator, and by allowing that humbling, undeserved but delightful relationship to God to inform all our human BEING relationships, that we truly become who we are meant to BE– Little Christs– poor imitations but striving imitators nonetheless, of Him of whom the angels sang, “Glory to Him in the Highest”. And by giving Christ glory, may peace on earth and good will be to all souls. Hoping that in the New Year that you and yours, may BE all that you are meant to be.
Jane — December 2015…. and……. Jane, December 2019. Shalom.
A Psalm for The Day
A Psalm for The Day
By Jane Tawel
December 9, 2019
God of mercy,
God of grace,
Help me God to seek Your Face.
God of judgement,
God of power,
Grant me hope in this dark hour.
God of Moses,
God of Christ,
Give us all
We need for Life.
Fill me, as I empty out,
All my pride, and all my doubt.
Empty me to do Thy Will,
Listening for Your Voice, so still.
God of Light,
And God of Love,
Thy Kingdom here as it is above.
God of Love,
And God of Light,
To be My God, I, You, invite.
Forgive me now,
And teach me how,
To walk, and do,
In worship of You.
Permissive Advent
Permissive Advent
by Jane Tawel
December 2, 2019
This I read today from Jorg Zink—”Take the path that leads inward through the days of Advent. Set aside for yourself, if it is possible, time to breathe in; time to stop feeling that you’re on the run or under stress. Allow something to happen inside you. Turn your thoughts and hopes to the things that count.. . . “We humans contribute to the world’s gloom, like dark shadows on a dark landscape.…But now this man from Nazareth comes to us and invites us to mirror God’s image, and shows us how. He says: you too can become light, as God is light. What is all around you is not hell, but rather a world waiting to be filled with hope and faith. This world is your home as surely as the God who created and wrought it is love. You may not believe it, but you can love this world. It is a place of God. It has a purpose. Its beauty is not a delusion. You can lead a meaningful life in it.”
From Doors to the Feast, by Jorg Zink
I am beginning this Season of Advent, by seeking better practices of listening. And to switch up St. Paul’s words, but I hope, not his intent, one way I hope to celebrate the onslaught of God’s Son living with us in this world, is to “set my mind on” the present Presence amongst us on earth, and not a wishful wannabe in a heavenly future. As Jorg Zink writes, I hope to “turn my hopes and thoughts toward the things that count”.
I have spent a lifetime communicating as a writer, teacher, parent, spouse, daughter, co-worker, and friend. But Advent is a good time to remember a man who was born as a baby and who excelled not only in communicating truth and love but in listening. To listen not only to other human beings, but to listen to the very Earth herself seems to me a life-practice I have too often missed-out on, and I have been sadly suspectful that “merely” listening is not something valuable, active, and meaningful.
Listening seems so passive, and of course, for some people it is. It took me years to realize that the reason I talk so much and have so much outer-moving energy is because I think (and fear) that if I am not verbally responding, physically engaging, facially and bodily moving, and passionately involved with others, then I am not giving. In other words, I am so afraid of taking and so anxious to connect in meaningful ways with any humans within reach, that I overdo the communicating bit. It took me years to understand why I am so depleted after work or social events or even just a car ride or dinner with a family member. It is because I was never really allowed to just be by myself or be quiet around others. I am the “cheerleader”, “stage-manager” who always just wanted to be what she was at heart, a nerdy introvert. So when I am with other people, I am caught-up in my own need to “give” of myself. This is not altruistic, I realize; it is rather more like a hidden, undiagnosed phobia or syndrome. And to make matters worse, as an empath, listening to others, for me, means feeling everything the other person is feeling, taking it in, and not having anywhere to put it but back out there to “solve” or “help”, or stored away smoldering and moldering inside my own mind and heart.
People who are like I am, end up with running tracks in their brains that often spill out their mouths. We pour out so much, that eventually there is a backwash. Eventually, our communications often morph and change from giving, caring, wannabehelpful and useful bodies of relational communication to unlivable, unsustainable towers of babble. Inside, we end up running along the lines that add tracks of worry to our faces, and fill us with secret fears and criticisms; and these can easily derail, leading off to side-tracks and runaway ramps of angst, anger, and hopelessness.
Advent is a time of permissions. It is a time when lowly, stinky, homeless people were given permission to hobnob with kingly Magi. It is a time when it was permitted to not just believe in angels, but to sing with them. Advent gives us permission to come into the light, and stand, kneel, or dance before God. Advent gives us permission to love the world as The Creator loves it. It gives us license to believe there was once a God-man who loved the world enough to be born into it, even though He already had a different and better home; a God-man who had so much hope for and faith in the world and other human beings, that He thought he had enough love to make a difference; and so God gave Jesus permission to live in the world with all of its darkness, and to care for all of its brokenness, and even to die for its future. Now, The Christ waits for our permission to open the door, to let him turn on the lights, and to listen to him teach us how to be like him.
What do you need to give yourself permission to do, or not do, this Advent Season? As you await, anticipate, engage with, and hope for what will born in and with you, what can you do now to prepare for what will give you more purpose and more joy in the journey? You may find the answer surprising, as I have. You may find that in not doing something you think you must do, there will be more meaning to not just this super-imposed upon us season, but more meaning to your life. For some it may mean, not buying, not going, not giving (just because it’s a Tuesday), not resisting standing out, or not staying silent but speaking up. For me, this Advent will begin with instructing my heart to not being afraid to wholly and holy be a listener. For me, I am giving myself permission to seek a heart of silent anticipation and to practice truly listening. I am giddy with anticipation of what I might hear. I am also a little afraid of what people might think or how I might feel (or not feel). Maybe you feel the same about finally speaking up or speaking out? Maybe you are afraid to put yourself out there? But we don’t need to fear each other or our own trials and errors in changing for the better, because as Jorg Zink says, this world is our home. We are safe here. We are together in this. We make the world have its meaning, and it in turn, the world we make gives meaning to our lives.
Did you know that because sound and light are both waves, they can conceivably be converted into the other? May my words become loving light and may your light be converted into the sounds of your truth. May the Light which we celebrate at Advent, give us all the sounds, both spoken and silent, sounding out and holding close, truth, hope, faith, joy, and love. And may those of us who need permission to shout, shout “Hosanna!”. And those of us who need permission to listen, may we be “still, and know that He is God”.
Jesus came to give us permission to be specifically who we were meant to be, just as he was and is. God is among us, granting us permission to live in a Truth that is available and unassailable because it is purely and divinely Love. Christ in us, is our permission to live, and to live fully and meaningfully.
Today, how will you share who you are giving yourself permission to be?
Illustrations by Julie Vivas, “The Nativity”
Learning Not to Be Thankful
Learning Not to Be Thankful
By Jane Tawel
November 25, 2019
I will do my yearly duty this week and be thankful while consuming too much food while sitting around in an over-warm dining room, swapping surface stories and easily paid-for thoughts and prayers. And I am as thankful as anyone, truly I am, for all the people and stuff I have been given. But this year, I can’t help but feel the weight of that last thing I said, “given”. It is after all the season of Thanks – “giving”. The thing is, that most of us living in Entitlement, forget that all that we have to be thankful for, has been given to us. Many of us believe we have been given these things by a God. Most of us come to believe we have been given these things by our own hard work, smarts, dreaming and planning, and “gumption”. Far fewer of us, would admit that much of what we have is ours through pure luck, the luck of the draw, the luck of where and when and to whom we were born, the luck of our skin-color or gender or school-grades. After all, how can one be thankful for something one does not really deserve any more than the next guy or gal? And it is the next guy and gal that make me queasy and eating not just pumpkin but humble pie. It is the next human being, one seat over, that makes me determined to be a bit more un-thankful this year.
In my particular country, we may still have our sense of tribe and team left, but many of us no longer have any sense of community. Oh, we think we do, but most of us have chosen a community to shore up who we are and give us satisfaction without guilt in all we have. The causes of our lack of true community are many and I will leave you to find those among the sociologists, psychologists, and economists. I will also leave to others the stories that I, too, could share about all the things I did last week or yesterday to help out the homeless people on the street-corner by the Starbucks I pass as I drive my Prius to work; or the students’ notes I packed away, telling me how great I was for believing in them and teaching them; or I could mention my hauling of garbage at the charity I volunteer at, or the garbage I pick up from the gutters where people’s gardeners blow it with their leaf-blowers. I could mention the churches and sports teams I have cheered for. I could tell you how proud I am of my children and how grateful I feel to still have them and my husband around my table this Thanksgiving. And you and I would get a bit teary and feel such a sense of thankfulness about it all. But in the end, it is all about what I have, isn’t it? What I have done, haven’t I? Who I am blessed to be, aren’t I?
So, I have to ask myself, “Why me?”. Why do I have all this and as some might believe, have heaven besides? Why aren’t the bombs falling on my neighborhood? Why didn’t I get caught and put in prison for what I did? Why did my kid survive that drive, that illness, that boyfriend? Why did my health insurance pay for that or my house survive the earthquake or fire or tornado? Why is my tap-water drinkable and why do I have so much food that I need a refrigerator and garbage disposal? Why didn’t I get that? Why did I get that? Why? Why me? And more importantly, why not him? Why not her? Why not them?
“Everett, Washington / USA – 10/27/2018 – Homeless person in the doorway of a church” by ShebleyCL is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Am I thankful? Yes, but with a caveat. I am thankful but I am also indebted. When someone or Someone gives you a gift, you are rightfully thankful, but if you are at all a good person, you also feel that you owe them something. A gift means at minimum you owe someone a thank-you note; at the most, you may owe someone your very life. Most gifts fall in the between note and life range. But always, a gift given, means a Thanks-given.
Sometimes you don’t like the feeling of owing someone for something they give you; it may make you feel uncomfortable. Sometimes, like when one of my children gives me an extravagant gift of love, I feel overwhelmed with a sense of not just gratitude, but unworthiness – how could someone love me that much? There is a type of happiness in being thankful for something that makes some people not only grateful, but determined to be the person who deserves that someone or something.
Whether you believe in a Good God or Good Luck and Good Fortune, or you chalk up what you have to Good Genes and Good Heredity, or a Good Work-ethic and a Good Brain; who you are and what you have is because of something or someone outside of yourself, beyond your own capabilities, something or Someone that is “Good”. There is an old proverb that says, “to whom much is given, much is required”. Good things happen to good people, but they also happen to bad people. The reverse is true as well, bad things do happen to good people, and we can read all the books and think all the thoughts on the subject and never figure out why. The only thing we possibly can figure out, is how to stop being merely thankful, and start being liable, responsible, humbled.
I can not be truly thankful this year when I think about Carl, and Donny, and Gloria, and the two men whose names I confess I have forgotten, who sit on the bench next to their purloined shopping carts, full of things they are grateful to have. I worry about my own wonderful children but I wake up at night obsessed with helpless worry over the children in Syria and Guatemala and Ethiopia. I feel a righteous anger against the rulers and the makers and shakers of my own country who immoral-ize others in their quest to immortalize themselves, but I am new to this game of helpless inadequacy of fighting against the powers that be, and I wonder how people in other parts of the world can go on believing, hoping, praying that things might someday change. And I just can not be thankful, give thanks, feel gratitude, when I know I do not deserve any of the many things and people that I have been given. Gifts are not deserved. Awards may be deserved, salaries may be deserved, justice may be deserved – but then again, they may not. Sometimes I have been just as grateful for NOT getting what I deserve, as I am grateful for getting what I think I deserve.
Given. Given. Give-in. Yes, I give-in. I give-up. I am so helplessly thankful and grateful and so I give-up feeling I have to hoard it, keep it, own it, praise it, accept it all for the way it is. No, I am thanks-Giving. I refuse to accept myself as somehow owed all the gifts I have been given – randomly, luckily, blessedly, however you want to call it. I am thankful for one thing this year. I am humbly thankful that I have one more day left to not be thankful, but to pay what I owe. I confess that I am so weary of the god some people believe in – a god to whom I owe nothing. I want a God that I owe much to, a God that I owe everything I have, everything I am, everyone I love. I am weary of feeling that I do not owe anything to the rest of the people in my nation, my city, my neighborhood. There but for the grace of God. There but for the good luck and good genes I lucked out with. There but for my skin-color, or my birthplace, or my skill-set. I want to believe that I owe those with so much less, something it costs me to give. I owe those people who have no one, I owe them my neighborliness, my love, my remembering their name at the very least. And most of all, I owe it to myself to learn how to truly share and sincerely, pro-actively care.
I owe the world my prayers,
the Earth my care,
and those who might scare me, I owe it to dare
to give and to live as if all that I own,
is not mine alone, but is theirs.
I have worked hard to learn to let go of things that cause me to be out of alignment with gratitude. That is a lesson I will continue to teach myself. But this week, as we put a price and a time-limit on Thanksgiving, I will try to teach myself how not to be thankful. I will try to understand how I am part of a community that has so little, has lost so much, and has far fewer things and people in their lives to be thankful for than I do. I will learn not to feel thankful, but to feel a deeper sense of what I owe it to others to pay forward, to share, to give-back, to give-up, to give-in. I will not just thank my God, I will question, “Why?” “Why me? Why not them?” I will not just thank my lucky stars, I will look at the stars and see the same bright lights up there that a hungry child sees tonight, and ask “Why?” I will lock my house door, and pray on my knees for those who go to bed in terror tonight. I will hug my child, and cry for those whose children did not live to see this day. I will finish my pie and ask, “Why did I get such a big slice of Fortune’s pie-chart, when someone else got crumbs”? And I won’t find any answers to my questions of “Why”, but I might find not only a more heartfelt sense of thankfulness, but a profound paradigm-shifting realization of unworthiness. And while thankfulness can change your heart, knowing you are unworthy can change your soul
A person who doesn’t deserve a gift, but gets one any way, is a truly grateful, indebted human being. And that is what grace is. That is where hope is found. That is what makes humans just a little lower than angels. Being unworthy, and being alive one more day to know it and do something about it, to give more to others out of all that I have been given; that is what I am thankful for this season. I am trying to learn to not be thankful, but to be worthy.
Happy Thanks-for-Giving.
“Thank You” by James Wickenden is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
When God Goes High, I Must Go Low
When God Goes High, I Must Go Low
by Jane Tawel
November 20, 2019
Now. This. From J. Heinrich Arnold:
“God’s love is like water: it seeks the lowest place. Yet we cannot make ourselves humble and lowly in our own strength. We can see ourselves for what we are only in the light of God’s omnipotence, love, purity, and truth.”
And so I ask myself, “Jane, how low can you go”? How low must I go, to see myself as God sees me, lowly but somehow still, loved? Not loved for who I am, which is but a being made of dust and blown in the wind, but loved because of Who God Is. And the answer comes as a still, small voice: “Jane, you must get lower.”
When God goes so High, I can go lower. I must go lower.
Remember playing limbo with your friends? It’s that game where you only win if you can bend over backwards and get down the lowest to the ground as you possibly can. That is how God says His Kingdom on earth is — the one who gets down to the lowest of the lows, the one who bends over backwards in order to move forwards, wins. In God’s upside-down Kingdom, the lowest of us will win. The humblest becomes the most praised; the weakest becomes the strongest; the first becomes the last.
How low does a human need to go, to truly understand how high above all things is The Lord God? We do not go low by suffering; all people suffer. We do not go low by thinking that we are “servant-leaders”; we are called not to let the “right hand know what the left hand is doing”. We do not go low through “thoughts and prayers”; for “without love, we are but sounding gongs”, and as the Son of God asks, “Why do you call on me, ‘Lord, Lord’, but do not do as I do?”.
We are called to fear God; to fear the trials and temptations; to fear our failures as human beings. And to somehow, despite our great fear, and low nothingness, to “love the Lord God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength”. It is only when we fall upon the mercy of God, that He can lift us from the muck and mire.
And here is what I am incrementally discovering after all these years. The less I think of myself, the more pure gratitude I am suddenly surprised by. The more I die to my self-centered-ness, the more love I feel for being alive as myself. The lower I go, the closer God Is.
We awake to another day, another opportunity, and we play God’s Great Game of Limbo, while waiting in this current Time’s limbo. We can play lots of games in this life, you see them being played out daily by those sad fools who think they are winning. But God is clear that The Game of Life is won only by losing; that God is found, not by our hiding but by our seeking; and that hate is conquered only by loving others in the way God loves us. We do not even “pass Go” if we are not caring for the Earth as if it were our own, when in fact it is Our Father’s.
We can only understand “how high, how wide, how deep Christ’s love is” by going as low as He did. We do it by loving those who drew the short straw, the lowest of the low in the world’s point of view, and by loving all those we come into contact with in the same way we want to be loved – with “God’s strength, love, purity, and truth”. We get down low and we get down and dirty. We seek the level of God’s water.
And so we are called to pray not “dear god, bless me”; but “Dear God, we bless Your Name! Save us from our selves. Save us from Evil. Glorify Yourself. Show us Your compassion, on earth as it is All-Places Out There.” And if you are at all like me, you will understand, when I simply pray, “Help! Help! Help us! Help me! I can’t go lower without You. Help me.”
Note to self: Today: Must go lower. Must go lower. Must go lower.
Psalm 103:11-19
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children’s children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.
The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,
and his kingdom rules over all.
Must. Go. Lower.
Photo “ijsje, de poolvos en de stormvogel houden een ijsbergrally” by De Vleermuis is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Jane Tawel 