WAKE Up WORLd

 Well, awake at four (that's am folks). Did my morning routine, got my pain meds, tossed in an Aleeve for  good measure. (dear undear tablet just because your word list  doesn't include what I just typed doesn't  mean it doesn't exist) looked outside and decided I might as well start the exercise routine. Watched color come in as the sky turned from indigo to pearly white. There was a quail calling in the courtyard and a jay calling the tree as the leaves turned from dark gray to green to gold as the rose higher. The finches and chickadees are telling the that they are awake too. 

This time of year the sun shines right into my eyes for over an hour. Yes, I could put down the blind. But I would miss the world waking up. Two twenty minute stepper sets and a total of about twenty minutes getting used to the elliptical routine. If we weren't on daylight savings time the sky would be getting light at 3:15 not 4:15.  On that note I believe I will squeeze. In a short snooze before breakfast.      

THE WIND

It's spring east of the mountains and the wind is blowing. Blew through the tree outside last night, Sounded like the ocean. Someplace I'm not like to see again. At least in this life. I can do the short things here/ No one really knows I'm here. 

THE BEGINNING, MAYBE

 I have taken this one private. Entries form the other pages will end  up here too, And I make take off the privacy protections in the future. Once I figure out where the hell I am heading. Right now I have about half of my big toe in the ocean. If I can get to my whole foot in I may be making some progress. Funny thing is I feel like I've gotten to the parthy when it's half over and I don't know which way to turn. Much less how to type. I am way out of practice. 

NOT SURE WHERE THIS IS GOING

 

NOT SURE WHERE I"M HEADING

but I can't wait to get there. 

 I pulled this up from an old entry from 2011. It's odd. I was raised, sort of, Methodist. Working on the family tree I discovered several branches of Quakers. Exploring them I discovered their beliefs echoed mine. Quakers are, or were, mystics. Probably why there are so few of them after all these years and probably why the families were some form of Methodist by the time we hit Oregon. 

I have to admit there are damn few mystics in any branch of the tree. I may be jumpimg to conclusions but I believe that most mystics are born mystics who didn't run scared the first time the universe, or whatever is out there, tapped them on the shoulder and invited them to join the dance. It's scary and inviting and a whole list of words I don't even know. Yet. 

"f they ever take away our radio, suspend our newspaper, silence us, put to death all of us priests-bishop included, and you are left alone-a people without priests-then each of you will have to be God's microphone. Each of you will have to be a messenger, a prophet. The church will always live as long as one baptized person is left alive."

Oscar Romero, quoted in Messengers to the Kingdom by Jon Sobrino S.J.

I begin to understand by Romero scared the bejeesus out of some of the Vatican Curia in the three years he was archbishop of San Salvador. And I wonder how closely Morris West, author of the Clowns of God, followed the persecution of the church in Central America. Because he echoes that message in the novel. When the time comes, the little people, the lay people will have to carry on the work and the sacraments of the church whether they are ordained or not. Imagine how well that went over with old men who had spent their lives climbing the ladders of power.

This is probably true of most of the major denominations that seem more concerned with following the fules than caring for their people. So, in seventies I am basically starting from almost the beginning. I would apprecitae feed back if anyone cares to comment. You don't have to agree with me. In fact I was so surprised when I ran across Evangelical Quakers hired minister and all the trappings.

If this entry seems a little, or a lo,t mildly crazy that's pretty much where I am right now. Mildly crazy. 

AS LONG AS ONE IS LEFT

"If they ever take away our radio, suspend our newspaper, silence us, put to death all of us priests-bishop included, and you are left alone-a people without priests-then each of you will have to be God's microphone. Each of you will have to be a messenger, a prophet. The church will always live as long as one baptized person is left alive."

Oscar Romero, quoted in Messengers to the Kingdom by Jon Sobrino S.J.

I begin to understand by Romero scared the bejeesus out of some of the Vatican Curia in the three years he was archbishop of San Salvador. And I wonder how closely Morris West, author of the Clowns of God, followed the persecution of the church in Central America. Because he echoes that message in the novel. When the time comes, the little people, the lay people will have to carry on the work and the sacraments of the church whether they are ordained or not. Imagine how well that went over with old men who had spent their lives climbing the ladders of power.

CROWDING OUT THE GOOD NEWS

"Nor are the tidings of great joy announced in the crowded inn. In the massed crowd there are always new tiding of joy and disaster. Where each new announcement is the greatest of announcements. Where every day’s disaster is beyond compare, every day’s danger demands the ultimate sacrifice, all news and all judgment is reduced to zero. News becomes merely a new noise in the mind, briefly replacing the noise that went before it and yielding to the noise that comes after it, so that eventually everything blends into the same monotonous and meaningless rumor. News? There is so much news that there is no room left for the true tidings, the “good News,” the Great Joy." Thomas Merton written for the Advent season in 1967

I can't imagine what Merton would make of our 24/7 news cycle and "reality" programming.

WHAT IS FAITH

This was written by Thomas Merton, a Cistercian monk, social critic and prolific author, as a preface to his collection of essays in Faith and Violence. He wrote it for the Advent season of 1967. His last as it happens, before his death in Thailand in 1968. Merton was writing at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and the beginnings of the opposition to the Viet Nam war. Now we’re faced with the one percent vs the ninety nine percent, occupy Wall Street, the war on terrorism; doesn’t seem that much has changed in the forty odd years since Merton wrote this essay. “The Hassidic rabbi Baal She Tov, once told the following story. Two men were traveling through a forest. One was drunk and the other was sober. As they went, they were attacked by robbers, beaten, robbed of all they had including their clothing. When they emerged, people asked them if they got through the woods without trouble. The drunken man said: “Everything was fine;; nothing went wrong; we had no trouble at all.” They said: “How does it happen that you are naked and covered with blood?” He did not have an answer. The sober man said: “Do not believe him he is drunk. It was a disaster. Robbers beat us without mercy and took everything we had. Be warned by what happened to us, and look out for yourselves.” For some “faithful”-and for some unbelievers too-“faith” seems to be a kind of drunkenness, an anesthetic, that keeps you from realizing and believing that anything can every go wrong. Such faith can be immersed in a world of violence and make no objection: the violence is perfectly all right. It is quite normal-unless of course it happens to be exercised by Negroes. Then it must be immediately put down instantly be superior force. The drunkenness of this kind of faith-whether in a religious message of in a political ideology-enables us to go to life without seeing our own violence is a disaster and that overwhelming force by which we seek to assert ourselves and our own self interest may well be our ruin. Is faith a narcotic dream in a world of heavily armed robbers, or is it an awakening? Is faith a convenient nightmare in which we are attacked and obliged to destroy our attackers? What if we awaken to discover that we are the robbers, and our destruction comes from the root of hate in ourselves?” Abbey of Gethsemane Advent 1967 I read this for the first time several years ago. Rereading this tied to my own searching it really shook me this time.