Faith – Page 2 – Jane Tawel

I Wonder If He Chose Fishermen Because….

I Wonder if He Chose Fishermen Because…

By Jane Tawel

March 26, 2025

I wonder if he chose fishermen because they knew how to be dependent on what and on Whom they could not control. Fishermen know in each bone and fiber of their being, how like the Ocean, God truly is. They didn’t so much believe in the Ocean as try to understand it so that they could live; so that they could make a Living. Fishermen already knew that we are but waves tossed sometimes, and resting peacefully sometimes, but always just a wave in The Ocean. Fishermen know the Ocean is both Shadow and Light, Depth and Height, Uncontrollable, Unknowable, but Bountiful and Giving. “And this is how you should pray, ‘Our Parent-Creator, Give us our daily bread and don’t lead us into bad waters’.”

I wonder if he chose fishermen because they knew how to suffer. It was not an easy life being a fisherman. Strong and steadfast fishermen would be the Rocks on which He would build. Hard to break, but the World would do its best. “In this world you will have suffering and tribulations”. “Take up your own crosses”. But he would teach them what they already knew a bit about — that by going through suffering, they would be stronger; that strength comes not from going around but going into the heart of suffering and in that way, “just like I have overcome the world, you will too.” Fishermen know a lot about storms, and they know enough to be afraid and cautious of them. But one day, these very fishermen would be in the worst, most dangerous kind of storm there is, and He would calm both the storm and their anxious, fearful hearts. One day he would show them that even when we are in the worst of Life’s Storms, if we keep our eyes above the crashing waves, going through, but not sinking under, we can rise above — we can walk on water. Now that was something even fishermen couldn’t anticipate.

I wonder if he chose fishermen because they knew how to keep moving. They weren’t connected to one place so much as connected to the Ebb and Flow. He needed people who didn’t mind having to follow a trail wherever it might lead; people who could trust that if they left everything behind, something better would be up ahead; people who knew that Faith is really just Trust in what you cannot see, cannot know, cannot control, but that with a bit, just a little tiny bit of Trust, there is going to be Enough; and not only Enough but sometimes, there will be a Great Harvest. “And look up from your downcast eyes on your empty nets — Look at the birds of the air. If the Father takes care of these little beings, how much more will He take care of you?”

I wonder if he chose fishermen because they knew the depths and they knew the heights. One day a good catch; the next day, nothing. Fishermen know you can be really, really great at what you do for a living and have lots of knowledge, but ultimately, having fish on your table, and money in your pocket comes down to a bit of luck and a lot of Grace. The wind can change direction just like the winds of Time. The fish just may not feel like biting that day — God knows why? Your line can break after years of useful loyalty. You might get sick or someone at home might and you can’t go out today. Life is like fishing, and you don’t have to tell a fisherman that. “And he couldn’t do many miracles there…” “This kind of healing takes a lot of prayer and faith, so tough luck on this one…” That’s the way it would go sometimes. Other times, “If you have the faith of an itty-bitty, little mustard seed, you can move a mountain.” Oh what a Guy for hyperbole! but then he lived within the Loving Hyperbole of His Hyperbolic Father.

I wonder if he chose fishermen because they had already learned the practice of contemplation. When you are out on a boat with just your brother, there is a lot of time to think. If you choose to think about stuff, that is. But you can also just sit and meditate and pray. And real prayer is best maybe when you aren’t exactly thinking. And you don’t need fancy words to pray when you are out at Sea. “Thank you”, will do. “Help!”, will also do. “Your faith has healed you.” “My God, My God, why have you deserted me?” Dealing with real emotions can lead one to contemplation on the Real.

I wonder if he chose fishermen because they knew how to listen. Oh, they didn’t know how to listen as well as He did, and He had to school them just like the school of wondering, wandering fish they all were. But fishermen better develop patience or they will starve and patience can lead to a wonderful ability to listen — to others, to the Ocean, to the Winds, and to the beating of one’s own heart and sound of one’s own breath. “Let them who have ears to hear, hear”. And they did.

I wonder if he chose fishermen because fishermen like a tall tale and a good joke. What a sense of humor He had. If you were in the right mood and had the stomach for a good joke, He sure could tell them. In fact for a couple of these fishermen, when He called them, he started out with a joke: “Leave your nets and stop catching fish with no legs, and I will make you fishers of two-legged ones.” How they wondered then and later must have remembered that first humorous invitation with a hearty guffaw. And talk about tall tales! Yowza! That Guy could tell some whoppers! One day, He acted out a whole improv joke much appreciated by the fishermen in the group, when he turned two small fish into baskets full of fish to feed thousands. That was a tall tale of “How Big the Fish Was” that has never been topped! And on this note of telling tall tales? Well, His whole life was one tall tale of Mythic proportions. “Anyone who follows my Way will know IAM as Truth, Life, and The Way.” “This is my body and my blood. Take both, eat and drink. I have given my life in Love for you.”

Yes, He had followers of all kinds, but I think in those first days, He realized that it might be good to Seed the Lake of His disciples with some fishermen.

Oh, that I might be reformed with the soul of a Fisherman.

And that’s just about enough said.

Selah.

One Step, One Brick

by Jane Tawel

In 2018, I posted a quote by that great “worker in the fields”, Dorothy Day:

The sense of futility is one of the greatest evils of the day.…People say, “What can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?” They cannot see that we can only lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment.

Reading this post of mine from a previous time of great and deep weltanschuaang (2018) and my quoting Dorothy Day back then, I remind myself that the feeling of futility or hopelessness is static and keeps one feeling incompetent to do the smallest things. And I am reminded that Mother Teresa said that not all of us can do great things but that even I can do small things with great love. And I believe that ultimately as Judeo-Christian wisdom teaches, “only three things will remain”: trust in Something bigger than ourselves; hope that, as that great Black Preacher, Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the universe bends toward justice; and Divine Love, available to all humans, Love that ignores ego and self-interest for that which lasts. And the greatest thing that shall remain, beyond nation, beyond “stuff”, and even beyond the self, and indeed, the only thing we can ever know of God, is Love. But even our deepest held belief is a fragile thing and it wavers with each storm, my friends. It can be very hard to see the light in the face of darkness, so each moment I will try to forget all the things I think I believe and I will simply walk forward, one step taken at a time, by the sheer will of a freeing Love. By going through suffering, not trying to get around it, we do find peace. One step. One moment. One small act of love. One hand reaching out. One at a time.

“Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. Every breath we take, every step we take, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step.

“My peace I offer you too. Not the peace this world offers, but a peace that will pass your wildest imaginings, a peace that passes your beliefs, a peace that passes your understanding.” — Jesus, The Christ,

I shall take my responsibility in this present moment seriously, but I shall not look at the fortress of hate and greed being built against the True Truth. I shall mourn but not hate those who tear down that which others have worked hard to build, not seeing through their foolishness and greed and hatred the Good things — things of justice, and open-mindedness, of sharing and acceptance and care and kindness. I shall lay down my one small brick at a time in my own back yard, not as a wall to keep people out, but as a wall to support the vines of love that I choose to plant and hope to grow. I shall plant one small seed at a time, and trust that the Mountain will move.

Never Regret Betting on Hope, Even if it Seems Your Horse Badly Lost the Race

by Jane Tawel

Never Regret Betting on Hope, Even if it Seems Your Horse Badly Lost the Race

By Jane Tawel

November 14, 2024

A couple days after the shockwaves of what America and many Americans have become was revealed on November 5, 2024, my husband turned to me and sadly said, “I want my money back”. He felt he had bet on the wrong “horse” in the race to save America.

A lot of people may feel that they took a chance, made a bet and somehow, they made a mistake because they lost a race (or several races as the case may be). I imagine there has been among the “losing horses” in our recent national and state races, as so often is the case, of what I think is called “fifth quarter quarterbacking” (I may have that idiom wrong as I am not an acolyte of the religion of football). But I have ignored all news since that day when America chose evil over good (yes, I will say it because it is obviously the case). I have never been a looky-loo and when I see a horrible accident on the side of the road, I purposely turn away. I did my part in trying to prevent the train-wreck that Americans seem to want to create and now, frankly, I need to focus on, what someone once wisely called “the things that shall remain” — faith, hope, and love. As Jesus advised, I will give “Caesar” what is “Caesar’s” and I will turn towards the things I can do both for the little world I actually inhabit, and the Earth that I need to do my part to save, but most importantly, I will turn inward and work on my Self, and Soul. More than ever before in my life, I will work on forgiving others, and take to heart, mind, and soul, the profound words of Jesus: “What does it profit anyone if they gain both houses and the White House — I mean — gain the World — but lose their own precious soul?”

And so, I said to my husband, “I understand your disappointment, but never regret placing a bet on hope.”

All races are temporal, but when you choose Hope, you are connecting with what is divine and of that which is eternal. Because when we are gone from this “mortal coil”, we have to believe that all the spiritual wise Ones were right — the things that are True, the things that are Noble, the things that are deeply and truly in us of faith, hope, Goodness, Righteousness, Nobility, Honesty, and above all what is in us of Love — will somehow, somewhere, in some way — Remain — eternally Being.

And I choose today to also forgive those who chose to place their bets on a horse that may have won, but that is full of literal and figurative disease and corruption. I am working on it, but I am more and more finding it in my heart to pity the “winners” who have no idea what they have actually lost. For what does it profit you if you win everything — the whole enchilada — but do so by losing hope, love, joy, kindness, truthfulness, and open-minded acceptance of others? Why would I ever want to live a life where I have no love for other people, who in their differences are really just like I? I choose to pity people who seem to have everything but don’t understand the words of Jesus — I pity them because I, too, have been just like them at times. And so, when I forgive them, I am on the path to forgiving myself. What does it profit you if you gain “stuff” — if you gain a false certainty about you, your ego and your beliefs and your “team”, but lose the One thing that matters — Love, The Oneness? I remind myself each day: Forgiveness and Pity — those are things I try to do for me and my soul, even if no one knows I forgive them. Even if they don’t think they need it. So, I encourage you to forgive. And to pity. For as Jesus said, “in the measure you forgive, you will find forgiveness.” Forgive the foolish ones. But also forgive the evil ones. Eva Kor, a survivor of the Holocaust, amazingly was able to say this: “Anger is a seed for war. Forgiveness is a seed for peace”; and “Forgive your worst enemy. It will heal your soul and set you free.” Plant the right seeds in your soul today. Seeds of love, hope, forgiveness, and peace. Bloom where you are planted — which is really just your “own back yard”.

So I am seeking freedom from my thoughts and feelings about the past, and freedom from my fears about the future of this nation, this species, this planet. I am focusing only on taking the one step that is the only step I can actually take in the “journey of a thousand steps”. And I am trusting, having faith, that whatever is Good in me and others, will remain, and that all else will burn as dross. I am trusting that the words of that great Shakespearean politician and someone later revealed to be a shyster and power-monger, Marc Antony, are not true, and that “the evil that men do actually does die with them and will be interred with their bones, but that the Good will live long after them.” If that is not true, then I have been long mistaken about what kind of God might be in charge of this Cosmos. Hold tight to what you know in your heart must be true about reality. After all, how many quotes do you remember by bad, evil people and how many do we live by or try to live by when they are spoken by good people? As Martin Luther King, Jr. encourages us, “We shall overcome, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward Justice.”

Races come and go. Nations come and go. And while it is tragic and horrible to watch a nation I was born in, lived in, and loved my whole life, die a horrible death by its own foolish, greedy, mistaken, and for some, downright evil hands — America was bound to die some day. All nations do. The Bible predicts it. So did George Orwell. And while I am heartbroken that America has decided to die by means of suicide — you know — it is just a nation after all. Just a place and time in history that like all temporal things, is impermanent. Unlike me. Unlike you. Unlike Hope. Unlike Love.

I am all for people still trying to save America. There has always been so much possibility here, so if that is still motivating you, keep your chin up and keep working at it. But at the same time, I do believe that as Jesus and much later, C.S. Lewis taught, we live in whatever “Kingdom” we long for Now — Today. Either you — personally, in your heart, mind and will — live in a kingdom of heaven or you live today in a kingdom of hell. Either you are working for and living in the Kingdom of God and Light — of our better angels and nirvana and Good — or you live — today — now — in a kingdom of “Satan” — darkness — pride, greed, fear, anger, prejudice, racism, and control-freakishness. Either you choose to live in the Light of The Now, when you are all you need to be and have to live — fully and richly and joyfully, as Christ and all great spiritual truth-tellers lived and taught — or you choose to try to live in a past that never existed, because only the Present has ever existed, but you choose to believe there was a time in the Past where you had more, were more, and that the way for you to get back to that place is to take things from other people or inflict your beliefs on other people by force. Your choice.

And just because over half of Americans have made the wrong choice for their lives and for our nation — don’t regret your choice to bet on Hope, to live by the Light of Truth, to seek to love others as you love yourself, never forcing them to believe as you do, but simply letting your Light shine. And never regret a single moment when you felt joy or a single moment when you turned the other cheek or a single moment when you rose above your fears or anger or sorrow and chose to truly Hope and to truly Love. Psalms 51:10 is my prayer today: “God, create a clean heart for me and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

Two mornings after the end of the latest race in the world’s history of races, and fights between Good and Evil, and warmongers winning over peace-makers — I was running the trail with my very early morning people, most of whom I don’t know by name, only by sight. I did meet Paige and her wife one time, when we were both donating blood at the Red Cross. I said to her as she lay on the table, giving her blood for the sake of others (allusion to Jesus intentional), “Aren’t you on the trail in the wee hours?” She said, “Yes! I’m Paige. Aren’t you “hey-hey Woman”?” (My Kentucky ancestors come out strong in the wee hours on my jogs.) Since that time, many moons ago, Paige and Jane have said “Good Morning (Paige)” or “Hey-ya” (Jane) as we bop along on the trail and pass each other. On November 5th, Paige passed me and gave me the thumbs up sign. I said, “Here’s hoping!” Two days after November 5th, I started to pass Paige, and I saw even in the dark before dawn, tears welling up in her eyes. I stopped, and meekly, tentatively went to her and just put my hand lightly on her shoulder and said, “Take care of yourself today. Take care of your people. Love yourself and love those in your life.” Paige nodded and we went our opposite ways.

And so, with deep humility, I say to you as well: Take care of yourself today. And by that, I mean, take care of your soul — that which is eternal. And take care of your people. They need you. And yes, it is always darkest before the Dawn, but never regret spending your money, your time, or your energies on Hope. Or Joy. Or Love. Always keep hoping to create Good in the place you live in and the people you live with. Remember the words of The Greats, who lived in a world exactly like ours but overcame the negative and eternally live on forever in word and deed, and in Spirit. Keep letting the eternal things motivate you. Forget the Past. Let Tomorrow take care of itself — it is not within your power to do anything about it today — except to keep your hope alive and to keep trusting in the Power of Good.

So, if you are finding yourself today still in a “mountain of despair”, believe as the great Black Preacher and Christ follower told us, in every mountain we must climb, there is a “stone of hope”. Believe as Jesus taught that it not through faith in any one else or anything else, it is Your Faith that will heal you. And believe as he did, that it is you and your soul that above all is a “pearl beyond all price”. You above everything are worth saving. You may not save this nation. You may not be able to save even those you love from making bad choices. And we may not still have time to save ourselves from the most immediate future of trials and tribulations. But we can save and hold fast and tight to those things that remain forever — faith, love, and hope.

Postscript:

My words are meager, but please remember the words of better folks than I who kept betting on hope, no matter what.

Remember the words of Saint Emily:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops — at all –

And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet — never — in Extremity,

It asked a crumb — of me.

Remember the words of the Healer (Doctor) Martin Luther King spoken two months before he gave his life for us by an assassin’s bullet, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope”.

Remember the words of the Psalms. Psalms 37, 51, 34, and so forth: Hope renews your strength.

And remember how you felt, probably like I did, when you had hope and joy and love. Claim them for yourself and your loved ones, right now. They are not a bad bet — they are your right and they will help you heal the world, heal the planet, and heal your soul.

Hold on to Doubt

by Jane Tawel

“Run wild, run free” by Images by John ‘K’ is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Hold on to Doubt

By Jane Tawel

April 22, 2023

“They are not allowed to judge you,” I tell myself. “Not anymore.”

“Not then, not now, not ever,” Truth says to me.

“I allow them to judge me because I had, I have, no faith,” I say to Truth.

With Her reply, Truth holds my breath, and I feel my heart has either stopped or is racing:

“No, you are wrong,” Truth says.

“You let them judge you because you had, you have, no doubt.”

“Doubt what they told you and what they tell you about the world, about what is real, and most of all, about yourself. But above all, do not believe what you yourself tell you about yourself.”

And now, the judges, the liars, those who meant well, and those who loved me most, they all appear within the hurricane of my thoughts, tossing judgements at me like cast-off clothes that no longer fit me.

Truth appears within the swirling thoughts and forces me to look only at what is right in front of me.

“What you do not realize,” Truth whispers, “is that their judgments, just like constricting, mismatched clothes, have never fit you. Neither are your judgements suitable for them or you. Do not follow the fashions of emperors in any clothes that mask the naked truth. Tear them off your body and be naked in the wonder of how you were wonderfully created. Remove the hat of lies that tightens around your head, constricting thoughts of freedom and truth. Step out of shoes not meant for walking long distances in comfort and let your toes and heels feel the earth and know that even what you think is solid ground, is just a symbol of what always moves below, above, and within your very heart, and soul, and mind.”

I felt the urge to free myself, but stopped once more, to turn to Truth and ask, “But how then can I ever know what is real?”

Truth receded from me but with a smile, She asked, “Are you sure you need to know?”

And so, I began to seek doubt. To let myself immerse myself in doubting all I thought I knew. And when my thoughts rose up against me, claiming their rights, claiming their importance, claiming that I needed them, I gently shook free of them. I pried myself free from the lies of knowing, the lies of judgement, the lies of fear; and from their grasping, gasping, gawking specters, I began to run, to float, to fly in the freedom of doubt. And in freeing myself into doubting all I thought I knew, I found a little inkling of what was always truly meant by faith.

“You are not real,” I tell my thoughts, my judgements, and my fears. “But I will take you, nonetheless, and make and mold of you something useful. I will take the lies and judgements and fears; I will take the thoughts and feelings and wisps and whispers, and all that I imagine to be real, but which are only symbols of The Real, and with them I will create only beautiful things. Beautiful things for others. Beautiful things for me. Beautiful things for Truth. Because that is what real human beings do.”

And now, let Us create something beautiful.

And Truth stepped aside in hope that Wisdom would stay awhile with me. And as Truth left me here, just here for a little time longer, She gently sung:

Only Love is real.

Dialogue, Example A: Between I and One: Listen

“Sunrise” by AdeRussell is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Dialogue, Example A: Between I and One

Listen

By Jane Tawel

October 30, 2022

I: I’m trying harder to catch what You are saying.

One: You aren’t really trying hard enough. You keep letting the flotsam and jetsam of this world, of your emotions and of your limiting of Time, clog the flow of the Stream. You say you want to hear Me but you are afraid, and so you put up blocks, and fill your ears with anesthetizing ear buds, and put blinders around the eyes of your Soul. You allow all of your scars and fears to interrupt the airwaves of Our communication to the deepest, truest you. And so, your mind is consumed with chatter and not communication. You let your mind keep talking. Just listen. Just try, for even just a moment, to listen.

I: No one loves me. Not even him. Not even her. Not all those whom I have done this and that and the other for. No one.

One: All love is fractured and fragmented, and comes to you in broken pieces, just as your love has been felt as incomplete shards in their hearts. Only We put all the pieces together, but you can not see the Whole now. What you must do is stop considering love piecemeal — “here today, gone tomorrow”… “he loves me for this but not for that”….. “she doesn’t really love me”… and so forth and so on. Love will never feel whole until you see that Love is not a reality from one individual or group or accomplishment, but all Love is from Us and Ours, through others, through you, through time and space and hands and feet and hugs and smiles. And while Love is seemingly imprisoned by the powerful frailty of words and actions, true Love is always free and freeing and if you let yourself love and be loved, Our Eternal Love will give you the freedom to see the reality of Our Universal Love in every little broken heart and mismanaged and awkward event and in every piecemeal, incomplete, unsatisfying and yet, truly noble action of love that humans try to share with other humans in their quest and desire to love and be loved. You will know you are loved. In him. In her. Yes, even in them. And then you will know how to love even that most difficult of all beings to love — yourself.

I: How can I feel and believe You love me, when I am not even sure that You exist? Are you real? Or are You All something each person creates out of the need of psyche and the crutches and clutches of culture?

One: You have done well to study and search, little child. You have done well to open your mind and heart to follow after Truth, wherever it may appear. You are braver than you once were. You have overcome much and fought a good fight against your weaker selves. But at the very center of your being is still the greatest foe of all — Fear. Please, remember you are and always will be just a little child in the ways of Truth and Reality. Because you are so small, We can not be all to you that Parents are to Each Other. You have much still to learn, that is true, but some times you need to put away your books and groups and meetings and even your very thoughts, and you will be assured that We Are and We Have Always Been and We Will Always Be… And there is nothing that can separate you from Us…… if you will simply…..

Listen.

The Owls Still Live

The Owls Still Live

By Jane Tawel

October 24, 2022

And as yet once again, and then again,

I lie, restless and unsleeping, yet not unafraid

in a bed not of roses, and while sometimes of thorns,

still a bed that holds me

in the sticky web of memories,

but no longer of any hopes.

And I don’t know why,

but all I know is that neither medication nor meditation

are the answer,

because the answer is no longer relevant.

An answer is only possible in the short-run,

and an answer is only as good as the Test-Maker,

and mine has showed His hand,

and I won’t be fooled again.

I hear the omen-call outside my window.

And myths say now it won’t be long,

won’t be long.

And yet my humanity,

so deeply entrenched since I was a child,

still listens to like calling like.

And my heart longs to believe that

even when the night is darkest,

that Like will once more call to me

as like unto Himself.

The canticle goes on and on,

a duet between two unseen flights of fancy.

And I can’t believe it, but it’s true,

for hours I lie awake and listen, and

the one never gives up,

no matter how long the other pauses or hesitates.

No, He never stops sending signals

of love-calls to her,

and no matter how dark the night,

like answers Like.

I don’t know anything anymore,

neither sleeping nor awake,

but only this –

just outside my bedroom window —

the owls still live.

Maybe It’s For the Best

“Tree” by @Doug88888 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Maybe It’s For the Best

By Jane Tawel

June 1, 2022

I haven’t lost my faith.

No, I’ve just lost my knowledge;

and maybe that’s the best, the very best place to be.

I haven’t lost my faith,

I’ve forfeited the facts.

And maybe that’s the best, the very best way to see.

I’ve given up my hope,

in something great, somewhere out there.

But now I’m seeking hope,

in little old you and me.

I’ve given up on hoping,

that there’s a god who’s for me.

And now I only cling to hope,

that I plus Christ make Three.

I don’t believe in love,

that’s never enough and never been free.

But with a seed of faith,

and just a finger-hold on hope,

I do believe that Love

abides forever with you and me.

Sometimes if feels so sad and scary,

not knowing what I believe.

But maybe it’s all for the best,

to give up my knowing and striving.

Yes, maybe it’s for the best,

to give up my fears of living and dying.

Yes, it must be all for The Best,

to seek only the Unknown I Am,

to be in the moment unknowing, but known,

in which all that remains —

just the faith, hope and love —

is this moment, — this Now —

This is where I find rest.

Seasons and Seeds

by Jane Tawel

February 17, 2020

soil-flora-food-plant-produce-turnip-vegetable-sprout-radish-fungus

Lent is fast upon us which for me, among other things, means a time of practicing the intentional spiritual discipline of silence, not to escape although that is healthful sometimes too, but to find more strength to translate faith into action. Faith does not grow without action and action can not sustain us without faith.

This quote from the poet Christian Wiman says it convinct-ingly and beautifully:

“Silence is the language of faith. Action – be it church or charity, politics or poetry – is the translation. As with any translation, action is a mere echo of its original, inevitably faded and distorted, especially as it moves farther from its source. There the comparison ends, though, for while it is true that action degrades that original silence, and your moments of meditative communion with God can seem a world away from the chaotic human encounters to which those moments compel you, it is also true that without these constant translations into action, that original, sustaining silence begins to be less powerful, and then less accessible, and then finally impossible.” (Christian Wiman in My Bright Abyss)

I am as in so many things, I guess, rather a weird, strange loner sort of “lent-practitioner”. Lent for me is not so much of a “church thing” as it is a life-thing.No one else in my family practices it and the people and friends I do have that may observe the season of Lent do so because it is their job to preach it or because they have done so all of their lives. I did not grow up practicing Lent, but I did grow up amongst the small farms intersected by straight rows of roads, farms that used to dot the Midwest of America like prayer books in pews. It was a place where people lived into Seasons. It was a place where people lived into the Seasons of their Protestant beliefs in the same way they lived into the seasons of the soil and the weather and their families.

The word “Lent”, means simply “Spring”. Spring, where I live today in SoCal, is not all that different than Fall or Winter. It is a little different than our hot, dry summers, but still, not so much. But just as it is everywhere on this wonderful globe, humans will celebrate (or groan about) seasons. And just as it is everywhere, Spring is a time when we feel a sense of anticipation. We are beings meant to be in tune with seasons. They are after all perfect metaphors for our very lives. Yoko Ono says of Life’s passing Seasons:

“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.”

Spring is that wonderful time when we feel innocent again, because the Winter has passed. Whether you find yourself in Southern California or Siberia or Paris or Kenya, Spring means youth, growth, planting, change, hope. Rainer Maria Rilke writes, “It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”

Spring is one of my favorite seasons because I love anticipation. I am one of those people who love the mysteries of the pregnant times. I am silently punishing of those who would reveal the ending before I have enjoyed all the chapters. I am “all in” during the preparation stages, and feel morosely depleted when it’s “all over”. Not everyone is like this, for instance my delightful mother never met a secret she wanted to keep or a gift she wanted to wait to open. We are, if embraced, a wonderful world of unique human beings. Remember when that thing went around where colors that you looked good in were assigned seasons? My age may say “Winter” but my heart is Spring.

Most of us lucky enough to live long enough miss the innocence of our youth. However, most of us also would admit that we don’t really want to stay children forever. To be the best human one can be, is to be purposeful, and that means to “grow-up” and grow-out. Just as the span of a person’s life is metaphorically marked by seasons, so too, is each year, and beyond that, for spiritually maturing adults, seasons are something we must determine, something internal and intentional. If I truly want to grow as a person with both sustaining faith and purposeful action, I can (and must) determine the seasons my soul needs consistently, perhaps daily, in order to expand, enlarge, and care for not only itself, but for others.

Growth means that we must continually go through all the seasons. The small farms of my youth or perhaps the plants now perking up your kitchen window provide the similes for how we were created to exist. Winter means dying to things that are useless and unhealthy. Spring means to anticipate, to nurture, to hope, to plan ahead. Summer is the time of reaping the harvest of one’s hope and faith. Autumn is the grateful sigh at the end of the hard work and when we share the bounty we have reaped.

We are growing some seeds in our kitchen right now. Today they lie in wait under faithfully wetted paper towels—little specks of dark brown that look like nothing more than useless dirt-freckles. But we know. We know what is possible with a little patience and a little faith in those small brownish seeds. We know because we have lived through Spring before. We have done the difficult work of digging at hard earth before. We have planted before. We have weeded before. We have watched in anticipation of small green shoots before. We have tasted the fruits of our work and waiting before. We have seen buds become bounty, before. Before it has been Spring and so we can, with hope, plant for what comes After.

Before, there is faith. After, there must be action. And then faith again. And then action again. As the poet-philosopher says truly, “to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose on this great planet, under the heavens.”

My practice of Lent is based on my own journey towards meaning. I have a particular and peculiar worldview that believes there is meaning beyond what I can see and taste today. I am a nobody, a little brownish dirt-freckle sitting hopefully on Life’s Counter, a human-seed still growing, but with barely enough faith to believe that somehow my small little self will be worth anything at all ever. But that is where my own kind of faith in the future and a germinating hope in the passing and renewing of Seasons comes in. One of the greatest humans who lived and a profound teacher on living, was one who said this about how we should live like seeds in a different way of understanding our world: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed planted in a field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of garden plants; it grows into a tree, and birds come and make nests in its branches.” ( Jesus in Matthew 13)

A person does not have to practice a religiously orchestrated season such as Lent, but all humans need to find the cleared paths through the fields, the tools to scythe the weeds, the seeds to nurture along and hide in the dark, rich earth; and the difficult but fulfilling work that can only be done by one’s own hands.

We all need to have faith that tomorrow, the seeds will grow into food or flowers. We all need to act on that faith. We may be the smallest of seeds, but as that great gardener of souls, Mother Teresa once said, “not all of us can do great things, but all of us can do small things with great love.”

As Christian Wiman says, faith untranslated into action, are like seeds that stay forever dormant. But action without faith, which is really just another word for Love, will never feed our own souls nor nourish the needy of this world.

If we are the seeds, then faith is the compost, hope is the water, and Love is the Sunshine.

We must create often and intentionally seasons of dormancy, with the anticipation and hope that the rains and sunshine and rich loam will be provided.

We are all different kinds of seeds, unique in our needs and our growth patterns. Just like plants, we all have different requirements, different looks, different attributes, different gifts to the world, and different ways of finding nourishment to grow. But we all have seasonal needs and, hopefully, we all can still find within our small selves, a desire to resist remaining dormant and to seek growth and enlarge our souls and give something meaningful to others. I may grow from a religiously orchestrated Lenten observance. You may grow from a hike up Mt. Kailesh or a sabbatical from your job. Some of us grow into flowers that, as love does, give beauty and solace to others; and some of us grow into broccoli or cabbage that can, as truth may do, purge some of the poop out of the world. But all of us need the same basic things in order to grow to maturity, We all need a little faith, a little hope, a little usefulness, and a whole lot of love.

What we need to grow and to act and to keep believing, will come from what as seeds, we already have within ourselves, and as plants, from what we must partake of from without ourselves. And just as the seasons turn round and round, all will come in due time. But to riff on that old idiom, if we are to bloom where we are planted, we must live with purpose and hope into all the seasons that this very day may take us.

For me, purposefully planting seasons of giving up and letting go within my soul, spiritual germination tactics, if you will, is like becoming a small mustard seed. Then, in hope, I wait for that which with a little sunshine and a little rain, a little faith and a little love, will grow into something large enough, something active enough, something as big as a tree enough, and something as nourishingly truthful and caringly loving enough, so that others may find room and love in which to nest.

Sun & rain

“Sun & rain” by sofimi is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Trust a Dance Move

by Jane Tawel

June 6, 2018

https://www.facebook.com/xochitl.dalton.9/videos/10206469354478362/?t=2

If we could see the World the way God sees it, we might see something like this dance concert. In it, three little girls, all who look quite different from each other, but who obviously have the same teacher, the same desire to dance, and hopefully, the same loving families in the audience; all try to follow the directions of their off-stage director. I am sure when these children got home to their respective families, they all thought they had done a marvelous job creating something beautiful, and that is as it should be, because children do create beautiful things just by their complete joy in the creative process. But when we grow up and lose our joy in the simple act of creating something for the mere pleasure of creating and sharing, we lose something basic and critical to our humanity, and more importantly to our God-image.

This video is a visual parable that I imagine Jesus would love. One little girl is so terrified she doesn’t dance at all. One little girl has her eyes on the off-stage director but eventually gets distracted looking at the dress of her neighbor and eventually is on the floor crawling around on the dusty stage. The other little girl, who is black, which in this world still means something, looks back and forth between the off -stage director and her loving father whom you can hear chuckling behind the video camera. If Jesus were telling stories today, He might substitute this dance parable for His own parable about the seeds sown in different kinds of ground.

We have an Off-Stage Director, too. And when we are children or young in our faith and our innocent hope is intact in our belief in a Director Who cares; we keep our eyes trustingly focused on the Director of the Dance. But eventually and tragically, most of us lose that childlike faith in the Off-Stage Director. We decide the applause really is because we are just so “all that” and fantastic. Or maybe the applause ends after a while and all we can hear is the critical and skeptical World judging us. So maybe we stop dancing all together and we figure that the Great Heavenly Director doesn’t think too much of our dancing abilities either.

I am truly – and I say this with much self-love – the world’s worst dancer. I am the world’s geekiest dancer and I have seen Bill Gates dance, so there you have it. My children long ago forbade me to dance, so as not to embarrass them, even in the privacy of our own home. I secretly wonder if this why my husband calls me “Chicken” because when I dance I look like a poorly plucked chicken trying to escape the frying pan – and this is not when I am in fact doing that old stand-by, “The Funky Chicken”, that great practical joke of a dance that Rufus Thomas played on unsuspecting “white boys and girls”. (I do happen to do the Funky Chicken pretty well.)

When I dance, I look like a cross between a scarecrow in a tornado and a sock puppet of Ichabod Crane on steroids. The only one who has ever enjoyed dancing with me is my dog, Jolie. And she scratches when she does the waltz so it is always a bit risky on my part to accept her as a partner. I came of age in the eighties, when music was such that you could pretty much dance like a geek and get away with it. Or so I thought. Add to that, the fact that I lived in a part of the world where dancing was still frowned on, with people believing that the Devil loved him some Disco for sure. Take my history into account and I really ought to be able to claim disability payments for what my dance moves have done to my psyche. Come to think of it, my children have probably already each claimed disability for the trauma that watching me dance has caused them.

But as I watch the video-taped children dance, I think about what dancing is really for. Whom is it really for? Last night my husband and I went to a local event that brought back some of the traditions and ideas of American Chautauqua. Many lovely moments were created but one was a time of group line and square dancing – no abilities required other than the desire to have fun dancing and the ability to follow the Caller’s directions. There was also a Chautauqua Campfire Sing-along. Being there made me realize how much we have lost in community to our individual pursuits and how much we have given up doing things just for the sheer enjoyment of doing them –no applause, no payment, no fame necessary.

What would it take to see each day as a chance to join in the great joy-filled community-based Dance of Life? No one was ever created to prefer dancing by oneself. What would it take to get back to being able and willing to listen to The Great Caller’s Directions in this Dance of Life? None of us was created to dance without loving Directions.

I think about what it would take for some people to get back on the stage and not dance for the applause but to dance for the praise of the Great Off-Stage Director. I think about my years of dancing for the applause that ultimately was never loud enough, never long enough, never enough; and then even more years of my hearing the figurative, metaphoric boos and hisses that my insecure soul feels about all my life’s work – the seeming lack of confirmation of anything well done, the losses, the fears, the mistakes, the egregious sins both large and small.

I think about how many times I have been the little girl standing off to the side, too afraid to start dancing in front of everyone. How many times, like the little girl in the middle, have I lost my balance twirling in this spinning Globe’s pathetic imitation of God’s Great Created Dance Moves? How many times have I been obsessed and taken my eyes off the Director to covet my neighbor’s stuff; how often have I fallen to the ground and not been able to stop worrying about things and get back into The Dance?

What would it take for me to embrace the fact that the way I see my dancing – even the way those I love see my dancing—even my most loving audience members – does not truly matter as long as I am dancing because I love to dance and because I love them and because ultimately, I want to honor my Director? Whether the gig of life is a long run or a short run, what ultimately matters is if I am following with attentive joy, my Life-Dance cues by The Director of The Dance. What matters is if I trust and obey. He, who Choreographed The Waltzing Stars, the Grooving Whales, the Gliding Worms, the Twirling Starlings, the Hip-Hopping Hippos, and all the dancing children of this world,– He can direct my moves.

I like to imagine that Heaven is a place where I will have endless time to learn things. I plan on learning the cello and playing it with Mozart directing. I will finally learn to draw from Vincent and Raphael, just for starters. And I plan on spending a few thousand years learning to dance – it will take at least that long. But truthfully, I imagine when, God willing, I am finally caught up in that Great Dance among the Heavens, that none of us will need to learn to dance and no one will be dancing for the applause. We will all be too eternally elated to be moving with The Great Director and Creator of The Dance, Who will no longer be Off-Stage, but dancing brilliantly and gloriously amongst us.

In the video with the children, the song they are dancing to includes this paraphrase of the words of Jesus’s instructions from when He came from Off-Stage to live among us On-Stage. As Bob Marley prophesies and admonishes: “Don’t worry. Every little thing is going to be alright.”

The Creator of the Dance, with a love for us despite our disabilities, fears, and missteps, assures us humans, “If I am watching over the smallest sparrow dance, surely I will watch over your dance moves.” Young MC, might not advise a geeky dancer like me to “bust a move”; but The Great Director whispers to my heart from Off-Stage, “Trust a Move”.

And so once upon another time, this geeky funky chicken gets up, adjusts her tutu, prays for Off-Stage guidance, and heads back out on that Dance Floor.

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by Jane Tawel

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