I wonder if Jesus' bowels let go as he carried His Cross up the Via Dolorosa.
I wonder if He felt the excrement that He couldn't clean away drying, and then chafing.
I wonder if His face burned with that one more humiliation, as those near enough to see mocked Him. (The FMF prompt this week is near.)
And then I realize...of course.
Yes to all of it, otherwise how could He be with me today?
To be His Father's glory, Jesus had to live my ugly.
And that is as far as I can go...and, I think, as far as I need to.
Musical accompaniment is from Manafest, with Every Time Your Run.
Please pardon my slow response to comments. I'm doing my best, and your comments are really precious to me.
I'm really not doing well at all.
Still hoping to get the new and improved version of Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart up and running in the near future. Just haven't had the energy to do it yet...but if you would like to read it, please say so in your comment and I'd be glad to send you a PDF (which should fit your Kindle).
I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.
Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.
WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!
And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
There's too much pain, and it's gone on for far too long.
But it's even harder to stop, because I have to believe that I can still do some good. There can still be worthwhile moments.
I have to believe that, and that belief has to be refreshed daily.
There isn't going to be some miraculous change in fortune; all of my efforts will not make me whole again, and my legacy of writing will not be pulled from my weakening hands and placed on Oprah's desk.
Wouldn't mind visiting Chicago again, though. It's my favourite city...well, second-favourite. Tegucigalpa's got more action.
All I can do is give each minute my best, in the hope that it will give someone, somewhere, something of value.
Though I certainly don't feel the spirit of the music today, I'll leave you with Mandisa's Stronger. And I'll keep hoping.
Please pardon my slow response to comments. I'm doing my best, and your comments are really precious to me.
I'm really not doing well at all.
Still hoping to get the new and improved version of Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart up and running in the near future. Just haven't had the energy to do it yet...but if you would like to read it, please say so in your comment and I'd be glad to send you a PDF (which should fit your Kindle).
I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.
Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.
WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!
And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
There are things we can justifiably hate, and we're enjoined to love but can do so in excess...and thus we find a necessity of balance. This is the final part of a three-part series beginning with The Hate and The Love.
I can hate what's happening to my body, and to my life...if the premise that illness entered Creation through the Fall of Man, and original Sin, it's certainly justifiable. God hates it too. I'm in good company.
And I can love the parts of my life that make life bearable...my wife and dogs, the many friends whom I will never meet, and the fragments of my old life that remain intact. nothing wrong with this, except for one thing...I have noticed, in my heart, that they can tie me, rather desperately, to the world.
Case in point: I am writing these words a coupe of hours after watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and found the experience...well, depressing. For one thing, I felt very out of step with the reflection of popular culture, being, in a way, let on shore while the River of Life flows on...but perhaps more profoundly, the transience of ife really came through to me, that what's an object of love and joy today will tomorrow be cast aside. Not just consumer products, but beloved animals, and even people.
That's the world, and its loves.
So we need something more, I think, to keep from spinning off the rails, and the only more that we can have is a grounding in the transcendent.
The things we hate with justification can only be contained withing a framework of justice, and that's something we can't find within ourselves; it has to come from without, else it simply becomes personal preference or worse, something that slyly caters to our advantage.
Likewise, the object of love has to have something innate, something to make it worth loving beyond personal affection. There are thousands of people that claim to ';love' movies or television programmes, for instance, that hold nihilism as their object. The affection and fascination are real, but the object's not worthy. (As an example, take a show I like, Star Trek: Voyager. It's well-acted, well-made, and has an unfortunate undercurrent of hostility to religion, if not to the transcendent. It's a bit inconsistent; sometimes I wonder if there might not have been a deist among the writers, but I digress.)
So we need more.
And that more is God.
We're forever subordinate to a Creator; it's very true (and can be, for the 'freethinker', uncomfortable) that in Him we live and move and have your being.
Nowhere else.
If we hate alongside Him, and love within His pastured fields, we are fulfilling our purpose...but if we stray from these, we can become lost indeed. He can't go off on our own; we have to stay with the familiar, HIS familiar. (Familiar is the Five Minute Friday prompt this week.)
We can wander far astray, left to our own devices, and there may be no way back.
Musical accompaniment is from AJ Michalka, with All I've Ever Needed, from the film Grace Unplugged.
lease pardon my slow response to comments. I'm doing my best, and your comments are really precious to me.
Still hoping to get the new and improved version of Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart up and running in the near future. Just haven't had the energy to do it yet...but if you would like to read it, please say so in your comment and I'd be glad to send you a PDF (which should fit your Kindle).
I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.
Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.
WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!
And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
Hate mate sometimes be justifiable...certainly it felt so today, with very bad chest pain and shortness of breath. I hated what was happening; truly loathed it.
(Not angina, I think...it's swelling in the area of my pancreas, pressing on my diaphragm, heart, and lungs. Or something.)
But understandable or not, we can't let hate block love; at best, hate's a narrow path along a ridge, with an unclimbable abyss on both sides.
And it's so easy to slip into the depths of bitterness.
So concentrate, dear caregiver (and dear patient...and dear everyone) on the love in your life.
I have love, and when I think of it the anger goes away?
I have Barbara.
I have the dogs.
I have a whole host of friends I will not meet in this life, whose support has carried me across more miles than I can count.
I have love received, and more important, far more important, love that I can give.
How can life be better?
And what better music to go with this than the Fab Four, with All You Need Is Love?
Please pardon my slow response to comments. I'm doing my best, and your comments are really precious to me.
Still hoping to get the new and improved version of Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart up and running in the near future. Just haven't had the energy to do it yet...but if you would like to read it, please say so in your comment and I'd be glad to send you a PDF (which should fit your Kindle).
I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.
Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.
WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!
And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
I don't resent being terminal, but I do hate what it's doing to me.
I hate the pain in my chest, centered under my arms, that makes typing this, right now, so very had. I have to keep my elbows out, and occasionally turn away to take a few deep and painful breaths.
I hate the pain in my upper abdomen that throws off my balance; I walk tilted to the right, dragging my feet, and yesterday that caused a bad fall in which I landed on something solid...right over the pancreas. You can bet that hurt, and still does. Collected a nice bruise, too.
I hate bruising easily, now, like an over-ripe banana.
I hate incontinence, both bowel and bladder, and I really hate the black blood that I pass. It's a sign, and not a good one.
I hate puking; the heaves really, really hurt, and bleach is my friend. The blood that passes is red.
I hate the systemic pain that makes it an ordeal to hug Barbara. The best I can do is an A-frame hug, and a pat on the back. For her, that is; it hurts too much for her to pat me on the back.
I hate that I can provide Barbara with so little help. I've been able to maintain upper-body strength through a vicious exercise programme (during which I routinely pass out, and puke blood, and it's made me able to take up the slack when Barb's back (hurt in a 2005 car wreck) gives out. I can still carry her, literally. But I can't drive to the store, or go with her to the holiday social functions to which she's been invited. I do make sure that she goes; she needs it.
I can bench-press a Buick, but I can't go to Wal-Mart to get cold medicine for my wife. There is some kind of meaningful irony there, but I'm so tired of meaningful ironies.
I hate the cynicism I feel when I watch The Voice, and hear young people talking about this being the last chance for their dreams. My dream is to function as well tomorrow as I did today, and I now I won't, and I have little patience for those who weep about the possibility that they may not become superstars. And that's wrong; they have a right to their dreams; they don't walk in my boots, and I should not,mentally, force them to do so.
I'm tempted to say, "All this hate...it's poison, and I should just accept the circumstances as God's will, something that I don't yet have the perspective to understand."
Balls.
God hates sin, and illness was brought into the world by Original Sin.
And God hates that. and its effects, right by my side.
Musical accompaniment comes from Creedence, with Bad Moon Rising. Listen, and come along with me. Please.
Please pardon my slow response to comments. I'm doing my best, and your comments are really precious to me.
Still hoping to get the new and improved version of Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart up and running in the near future. Just haven't had the energy to do it yet...but if you would like to read it, please say so in your comment and I'd be glad to send you a PDF (which should fit your Kindle).
I have another blog, "Starting The Day With Grace". The focus is a grace quote from someone you might not expect (like, say Mick Jagger) and a short commentary. I hope you'll join me.
Marley update... been moved to a sanctuary, and Bay County will revise their 'dangerous dog' codes.
WE MADE A DIFFERENCE!
And marley has a Facebook page! Please drop by to see how happy he is today.
If you can, please do leave a comment. I am trying to answer all, and I am failing, but please know this - I read and treasure each one.
Below are my recent releases on Kindle -please excuse their presence in the body of the blog. I haven't the energy to get them up as 'buttons' in the sidebar. You can click on the covers to go to the Amazon links.
