People Matter...

Really... they do. You would not believe this statement as you drive down the highway, stand in line at the market, read the news, or toil at work. The human is now a limiting factor in the equation of business, politics, warfare, and even religion.

I am continuously burdened at my work by the way that I am not treated like I matter. And, I am not trying to be selfish, or say that "hey, what about me." But you know what I am talking about. I even have the "privilege" (if you can call it that)of working for an organization that prides itself on caring for its people...and they do, it's just that their idea of caring for people is not based upon the reality of being human. And yes, this bothers me...I have a tough time with it...it makes me tired...all the time.

However, every now and then I get a glimpse of the Glorious eternity that God has in store for us...and that glimpse comes through community. Community comes in many forms, but what is especially meaningful to me is the community that I share with close friends. Electra and I have been blessed with an albeit small, but heavily concentrated community of phenomonal friends. These folks have become family and in doing so have opened themselves up to us in a way that exposes both themselves and us as well in a vulnerable manner. We laugh, cry, drink fine wine, and LIVE together.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his small, but influential book LIFE TOGETHER remarks that "Christ lived in the midst of HIs enemies. So the Christian too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life, but in the thick of foes." How I wish that I could live the cloistered life! But that is not where I am called to be right now...maybe later...But how important it is therefore to gather community around you! Bonhoeffer goes on to say that "Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship years, Christian community is only this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ." Isn't that freeing!

It is through the Covenant relationships that we have been blessed with that enables the sacrament of Communion becomes most real. The sharing of life through death has become real. As we bear one anothers burdens we die unto ourselves and recieve the life giving reality of freindship. Though we live in a fallen world, and all here is lost. It is the moments with close friends that are shared through good times and bad, great conversation, and babies crying that we are able to glimpse eternity and be reminded that yes...Virginia, people really do matter.

#1 Mistake

With the change of the sun's course this month, our rose bed dominated by an original holly bush has turned into a dungeon. Kermit noticed the new sun pattern last week. I got the first big, very pictoral book on "landscaping with roses" I could find in the library and discovered: yes, #1 priority is a minimum of 6 hours of full sun. So...they survived a hot summer root bound in a pot in teh back yard of the feed store only to be stuck in a damp, dark bed next to a nubian holly bush, waving their spotty leaves at me and crying "we're not (quite) dead yet!" Project Rescue the Ramblers ensues tomorrow.

Meanwhile, my boss at work has been in charge of catering a party of 200 for a well-respected elderly gentleman in the local community. The family hired a friend to do the planning, and because said friend needed to be out of town next week, she had all the plans laid for this Sunday. The dying man went off liquids; they say he'll go any day now. My boss wonders all Saturday: to cook or not to cook? What happens if he's not dead yet by Sunday afternoon? A funereal preception? Well, we might as well invite the dear man to his own funeral. How many of us will enjoy such an opportuity when we dare to importune others by clinging on to our nearly-dead frames?

Some Images of the History

From Capon's The Fingerprints Of God:

"Only the logic of the imagination can fathom the parables-or the Bible itself, for that matter. Think of it this way. The house of human discourse has many floors; but in our time, we live entirely in the basement of propositional logic. Down there, we're surrounded by TV commercials, talk shows, police procedurals, hospital dramas, situational comedies, newspapers, radio, magazines, and Internet chitchat- every one of which inundates us with cellar talk. To be sure, every now and then a novel or a poem may invite us upstairs to experience the sunlight of imagery. But that's too much brightness for us. Soon enough, we run back down to bask under the fifteen-watt bulb of literalism. Imagery isn't just hard for us to look at; the eyes of our mind are blind to it. And as a result, we're blind to Scripture as well, because, as I've said, it's the images of Scripture that make it whole. The Bible, if you will, lives in the upper rooms of the house of discourse. It has, of course, its propositional moments, its times in the basement of language where it hangs up the socks and underwear of revelation. But its major thread, the grand clothesline on which it displays the principle garments of salvation, lies exclusively in the realm of imagery".

meandering

The roses went into the ground yesterday! Our front-entry garden is taking shape and new character, with the addition of lavender, coreopsis, Japanese daisies, and some viney ground covers. One rose is a climber with wide-open, sweet-smelling blooms, Don Juan, and the other is a bushy, purply-leaved Mocking Bird in name and varigated pink in bloom. Thanks and ongoing dedication goes to Mama Linda for the adoption of these beauties into the garden family. I hope Don Juan climbs right on up the front railing next year, to droop a nodding head of welcome to guests of the little castle!