Lord, teach me. . . .

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates Love. --Lao Tzu Hey, what’d ya get? Remember the old Charlie Brown Halloween special, when all the kids went out trick or treating? When they looked in their bags, each child would announce what they got:                          I got a giant candy bar!                          I got three pencils! And some jelly beans!                          I got peanut butter kisses—my favorite! And at every single house, Charlie Brown got the same thing:                          I got—a rock . Makes you wonder how he fared at Christmas, doesn’t it? We have come off a record-breaking holiday spending season. Estimates are, we spent around one trillion dollars on gifts this year! (That's $1,000,000,000,000.) And you know what’s really sad? Of those gifts, chosen just for us , nearly $280 billion worth are returned! Wow. . . . Christma

Eyes Wide with Wonder This week, pause. Open your heart and your eyes to the wondrous beauty and mystery and magic of the Christmas miracle and the true Gift of the season. Wander and ponder through “ Sharon’s Christmas Prayer ,” by John Shea. Merry Christmas! Monday  “She was sure of the facts, and recited them with slow solemnity, convinced every word was revelation.” Isaiah 9:6-7 Tuesday    “She said they were so poor they only had peanut butter and jelly to eat, and they went a long way from home without getting lost.” Luke 2:1-4 Wednesday  “The lady rode a donkey, the man walked, and the baby was inside the lady. They had to stay in a stable with an ox and an ass ( hee hee ).” Matthew 5:3-10 Thursday  “But the Three Rich Men found them because a star lited the roof.” Matthew 2:1-12 Friday  “Shepherds came and you could pet the sheep but not feed them.” Luke 2:8-12 Saturday  “Then the baby was borned. And do you know who he was? Her quarter eyes

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about,  nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived. --Soren Kierkegaard Pretty ugly. Last summer, I found this amazing Christmas sweater on clearance. It was $7. It’s green and has trees and snowflakes and so much more . After I got it home, I saw a couple of places where the knitting had come unstitched, so I went to the local craft store and picked up some appliqués to hide the holes, thus making my special sweater even more special! It’s pretty ugly. It really is. When I wore it recently, someone I care deeply about told me, seriously, how much they really liked the sweater. It was so colorful, and happy—and that cat appliqué made it just perfect. They went away smiling, and so did I. Life can be like that. Someone, or some thing that looks ordinary, at best (or ugly, at worst), through a different lens takes on unexpected beauty. We laugh at warthogs and cuttlefish, sha

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. –Maya Angelou I really enjoy music. I play no instrument except a choral voice (no solos, thanks), but I have come to deeply appreciate many different styles of music. Most of the time, it’s the music, not the lyrics, that draws me in. The gift of tying notes together to produce such wonderful rhythms and harmonies is one I do not possess. To paraphrase Will Rogers: We can’t all be musicians, for somebody needs to be in the audience to applaud and cheer them on . We marvel at the flying fingers of a jazz pianist; we clap as the trumpeter hits impossibly high notes. But what we don’t often pause to appreciate, in music or in life, is the silence. The resting points between the notes. Sometimes the rest might be only a quick gasp for air; other times, the instrumentalist might actually have several whole measures to breathe and prepare for the next entrance. As u

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. –John F. Kennedy We are entering an interesting, sometimes challenging season as followers of the Christ. It probably shouldn’t be as difficult as we make it every year, but the tug of the Lord and the frenzy of the world can point us in starkly different directions if we allow. On one hand, we are beginning our Advent journey, tiptoeing quietly ever closer to the cradle every Sunday, seeking God’s presence in our lives and in our hearts. We light candles. Many of us dedicate ourselves deliberately to a discipline of daily prayer or meditation. Maybe you have an Advent calendar with doors to open or treats to share. Christ our Savior is born! Let heaven and nature sing! And then there’s this other season, the one that begins on Black Friday and continues through Cyber Monday. The markets and malls try to convince us there is a more important kind