Author: rkcdlitt

A New Day – A New You

 The following is a mediation on David Whyte’s poem, “What to Remember Upon Waking.”

We waken each morning, a new creation of God, a newborn crying for attention, carrying all the stresses from prior ages, prior thoughts.

This new creation opens our thoughts to our desires to be something we are not, or truly, deep down, do not want to be.

At one point in our lives our grandparents, then our parents, our spouses and loved ones, and then our children and grandchildren advise us with well-thought ideas, planning our lives for us, how to live according to these plans. We are judged by our loved ones, and by our deeds, based on such mundane concepts of productivity, earnings, or status. What we are born into, what others prepare for us, or what we accomplish means little, a very small outlook when we awaken with the limitations placed on us by others. It is no wonder that our lives are filled with stress, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction with these products of our being.

Our lives seem to be infinitely smaller that the tiniest grain of sand, trampled by hurried feet on the shores of life.

There is, however, another path to walk. Imagine shedding your clothing, your outer shell, walking naked down a forest path, noticing smells you never did before, hearing the cacophony of noises in the trees, and noticing the beauty of the forest all around. We can awaken to this new world, a new sunlight permeating our existence, absorbing what God places before us. This new creation opens us in a world of the beauty of God’s gifts.

What we see, hear, and touch passes from God into our inner core, our hearts, to enjoy in every, everlasting way. The love that God shares, as we awaken, can seep into our pores, offering a newly-created world filled with love, a love that surpasses the well-expressed intentions of our loved ones. We are newly created on these mornings each time the Sun rises, expressing a newness through an unharnessed expression of love, turning the tables on these thoughtful loved ones.

This gift of life, this opening of love, glorifies God and all of God’s creation, allowing us to share the brilliance of a new-rising Sun that welcomes all to the newness of a loving life.

Let Your Inner Light Shine

I remember a line from a prayer I heard, and I paraphrase: It is the simplest thing to comprehend, love your neighbor as you love yourself and discover how everything else will fall in line with what is real and true.

Along with this thought is the realization that we, as mortals, are not the final answer; there is a power greater than us that watches over us, not wanting to interfere in our abilities to do what is right to assure fraternal love and life. It is this love that allows us to venture into areas that are on thin ice. We want what is good for us and for what is good for the world; or should I way what God’s will is for both.

In a story written by Plato, Socrates says that in order for us to be healthy, in mind and body, we must first assure that the soul, or in my words, the spirit, is healthy. It’s that simple. We must settle ourselves in love, the love that God offers us, the love between us and God, the love between us and us. Without this love, this breakdown of antagonism between us and them, we cannot cure the spirit, or cure the soul, as Plato writes.

We may think that it would be a great deal easier to believe that if the world erupted around us, some savior will come down and offer, as evidence, the bloody scars in his side; and then set everything right again. This will not happen; we have free will as God proclaimed, and we must cure our own, before society can be re-aligned. We are strengthened by the presence of God on our side, but we must make the effort to strengthen our own spiritual selves to then strengthen society. We must give of ourselves, and then, give of ourselves, and then, give ourselves. We do not own the world; we all own the world. Until we realize that we are all equal in God’s eyes, and we are all blessed by His love, we will not have eternal peace.

We sometimes doubt that we can do this; but doubt is just a lack of faith, faith in ourselves, faith in others. Without this faith, we are not truly alive, not completely alive. The faith that is within us is strong; we must allow this faith to rise to the surface to live the way God wants us to live. We must allow our inner strengths to shine. As Jesus says in Matthew 5: we must let our inner light shine before all men, allowing them to see our good works, which glorifies our Father in heaven, our Father within ourselves.

Who knows how bright the light will be, if we allow our spiritual selves to shine.

God bless all my friends.

Love and Sharing Myself

It is days like to day that convince me that I was made in God’s image of love and gracious charity. I am fortunate to be in a country where it is still free to live as I want, does as I want, and love as I want. This is a risky time for us, but I am sure that God will win the day. I had lunch today with a group of friends who are vegetarian in some way or another. I knew several people there, but I was welcomed as a beloved family member by all.

It is no wonder that I know that I, and all others, are created by a loving God who wants the best for all his children. I am one of those children, as are you. I love you, I respect you. I care not what religion you are, what political party you are, or what nationality you are. You are part of my family; this is all that matters. God took a great risk when he formed mankind. I must take a similar risk by loving all mankind.

I live for being in the kingdom of God. And, what is this Kingdom but the feeling inside us that we all belong to Him. We are family; we are loved; we love. Amen.

If we look; if we have the patience to examine the lives around us, we cannot help to see that all that separates us is evil; all that separates us causes suffering and darkness in our lives and can be and will overcome, but only if we succumb to the rule of Love; God’s Love.

I have recently become friends with several of the friends I went through high school with, while living in New Jersey. We do not agree on much; there are times when I read their posts on Facebook when I want to attack them with violent words; but I cannot do that. They have their thoughts and beliefs; I am mine. We must love and respect our differences. It is what family does.

I know that when God is in my heart, I am standing in a garden of love and beauty.

I stand with my friends; those I know, those I have yet to meet.

Have a beautiful beloved day – you deserve it.

I often wonder if I am the only person who is tired of only hearing bad news on the news programs. The cable channels are obsessed with what the latest Trump tragedy is, and the local stations are obsessed with how many people have killed others in DC.

I am convinced that we, as a people, are ready for some good news. We have to remember that our lives and the fullness of them is by keeping our eternal union with God. We want to wake up in the morning and see all people as human beings; we are not of different races; God does not care what religion we practice; She also doesn’t care what gender we are; She sees us only as her children, equal in all respects. I also think that God wants us to see each other the same way.

In the Good Samaritan story, Jesus asks who proves to be the better neighbor. I try to be that neighbor, as we all should.

There is a lot of pressure in the news for us to turn back the clock and view people as Black, as alien, as queer (and I hate that word). These horrible memories and terms are meant to separate us, where God’s words unite us. God wants us to look toward the future and join hands in praise of Her and in praise of us. We are Her legacy: let’s not disappoint Her.

I received an email with a statement by Wangari Maathai, in which he wrote that the challenge (in our lifetime) is to restore the home to the tadpoles, giving the beauty of the world back to our children. We owe this to them. This means that we must control our waste, preserving natural beauty, and be respectful of those who live at the lower edges of our society. And, by respect, we cannot, must not, force them to do what they have rejected or been rejected by.

Some have been forced from society by those who think they do not conform, or, experiences, such as war, have left them empty, psychologically. Others have selected to reject society, because they cannot stomach what society is today.

In either case, we must respect their feelings, their experiences, and their desires: we must invite them to join, or rejoin, our renewed society. We cannot offer them a Garden of Eden (even if we could), but we can offer them the chance to be part of the greater family of humanity, just as God wants us to do. This, I feel, is the message of the Good Samaritan. The parable may be 2000+ years old, but its relevance is everlasting.

I pray that we join together, accept the word of God, and open a better world for the future.

Have a good day, friends – those I know and those I have yet to meet.

God bless!

Respect

Love and respect go together; you cannot have one without the other. To respect, you must love; to love, you must respect.

I was a great fan of Aretha Franklin when I was young, and as with all things, I drifted away to other interests. I am now listening to more classical music that the soul voices, such as Aretha, Nina Simone, Etta James. I was thinking about powerful women for the last few weeks as I am reading Uppity Women, by Vicki León. (Just a note, I am reading this little by little to absorb the image and strength of these women).

Franklin wrote, we all require and want respect, man or woman, black or white. It’s our basic human right. As we think about words, such as these, we must accept that when God create man and woman, He created them as equals; according to the Bible, Adam and then Eve were created; I read and study the Bible, but I take many stories such as this as symbolic metaphors that we can learn from. . .with an open mind.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T. All I’m askin for is a little respect. What a powerful lyric of few words but monumental significance and importance. As a white male, I cannot complain about the life given me by God. However, there were times that I felt that I was not given the respect that I thought was missing. I almost used the word mine instead of missing, but that would have been too egotistical, and egotism must be addressed as a curse on society. It is what causes much of the stress and troubles in the world.

Even though I was in leadership positions many times, I felt diminished by those who should have been my peers. As an officer of the merchants’ division of the local chamber of commerce, when I was the owner of a photography store, I was ignored by larger, more wealthy storeowners, even though I was elected by them as a leader, sort of a servant leader, a puppet, because the other merchants did not want to do the day-to-day chores of leadership. When I was elected to my church executive council, I lacked a voice because I was only a retailer, not a banker or lawyer. When I returned to school and earned a Masters’ Degree in European history, which allowed me to be a teacher, my peers on the executive council still did not accept me as an equal. Maybe I was not rich enough for them; I don’t know. There were, however, one or two who did accept me, and together we forged ahead, especially when it came to helping and feeding the homeless. So, it was not all a lost program.

When I moved to a new home in Virginia, from New Jersey, I was met as a professional, a professor at a local college. I then felt the respect that a Doctor of Literature should have. I earned it, even though I was then 66 years old. Jesus said in the Bible that a prophet is not respected in his home village; that’s because people remember as just a carpenter, or me as just a small-time retailer. First impressions and first images are impossible to forget.

I know that this has been about my self-imposed image, but I am getting to the point of this meditation. As a white male, I had to fight for every atom of respect. But, as a white male, people were able to see me for what I had attained.

In the case of a woman, or a person of color, o a person who looks different that the dominant, white-male society, the image never changes; you are always viewed as a woman, or a person of color. Something different, something to be questioned, or to be looked down upon. I feel shame for being a part of a society that is so narrow-minded, even though I have always opened my heart to all people.

This is why Aretha, Nina, and Etta are important voices. They let us know that our society is not a wonderful Cinderella dream; it is a violent, closed, bigoted society that does not allow for others to be equal. This is shameful; this is not what God intended. In God’s eyes we are equal; in God’s eyes we are all his children, equal in every respect. This means that we are all brothers and sisters to each other, sharing the same Love give us by god. Sharing the same R-E-S-P-E-C-T. given by God. All She (God) is askin for is a little respect.

I love you all, my brothers and sisters, and I pray that your day is as blessed as mine.

The Value of Life

I ask myself what parts of life are the most valuable. Of course, I have to put my love of God and my love of family on the top of the list. But I also love all my friends, those I have met and those I have yet to meet. To me, there is nothing more important in this life than the lives and welfare of the people I share this planet with. We all deserve to live as we see fit, pray as we want, and marry as we want. Unfortunately, there are those in the world who want to exercise their own wishes over others. These are the powerful and the rich, who think that just because they are wealthy, they can decide our fates.

 Only God decides our fates. She is with us always and takes care of us when we most need it, not when we think we want it. There is a significant difference in these meanings. As I look around me, is see that the most precious things of life are near at hand, without money and without price. Each of us has the whole wealth of the universe at our very doors.… This wealth is our family, friends, and others we love.

 How we choose to react to this is nothing that we can avoid. We must try to help others; we must try to bring love and comfort into lives that are very dissimilar to our own. How we help others, we are also helping ourselves. I am lucky enough to be relatively comfortable. I am not rich by any means; I sometimes wish I could win the lottery, but money is not important. It’s how I feel about myself that in the long run is what counts.

 I do not remain silent on these issues because if we are silent we are ultimately powerless. I try to use my position to assist others. I pray that I can be one of those people who selflessly give my gifts to others. I am a prayer minister at my church. I know that there are people that devalue prayer, but I can feel the difference in people when they know that they are prayed for by someone. I share my gifts as I can, because I believe in life. People who are suffering at the hands of others are lacking a life of freedom and security. I pray that we as humans will look at others and raise our voices and lend our hands to help raise the level of our neighbors.

 There are those who have little and give it all; I am reminded of the woman in the Bible who gave only two cents, but that is all she had. She is a believer in life and the bounty of life, and her coffer is never empty, because her heart is always full.

 I pray that I can be as worthy.

Self-built Boxes

 Boxes; we are consistently building boxes that limit our thinking, our meditations, and the way we accept others. When we think we know exactly what we are doing, who we love, who will love us, why we are here, what our ultimate mission is, and, more importantly, we ignore our personal angel. Yes, I believe we all have a personal angel. Some may call this the Holy Spirit of the living Christ. I call this entity an angel of the Lord, one who guides us in our lives and supports us in our travails. My angel is a part of God.

 My angel has been with me, whether I have recognized her presence or not. She is always with me. As a messenger from God, she stretches out her arms, embracing me, giving me hope, giving me promise. She is God asking me to stretch out to Him, or Her, if you prefer. Because she is with me always, I know that I am loved, and I know that because I am loves, I can offer my love to all whom I meet throughout my days, regardless of who they are or what they look like. I try to recognize the angel that is within them; I know she is there, even if the person I meet is not aware of her.

 With this angel, I am able to allow God’s love to be the pattern for my life. I try to avoid, even though I am not always successful, to rid my self of self-love, which is the cause of all evil in the world, an evil that suffocates all good in the world. With God’s love, I can afford to love with extravagance. I can see the love in others, even if they are having what we call a miserable day. And, believe me, I do have had those miserable days, which causes me to lose the love-perspective of my life. I am not a saint, but I can use a saint as a role model.

 I pray that all of my friends, those I know, and those I have yet to meet, can allow God’s love, through their personal angels, to be a pattern for their lives.

 Have a blessed day.

 Lame Deer, a Sioux medicine man, once wrote, “A man’s life is short. Make yours a worthy one.”

 Russ

When we look into our hearts, can we find our story? Do we have a story?

I ask myself this often. God made me in His image and likeness; this is according to what the Bible says. I am also loved by God, as I love him. He has given me life, and He has given me a story. Do I know what this story is?

I began my working life by joining the family business. This was a small retail odds and ends store that had a camera department. I joined this because when I received my discharge from the Marines, my parents had just bought the store and the head of the camera department quit; he thought that he should have been given the opportunity to buy, instead of my parents.

I worked in this store for twenty-seven years, beginning as a novelty gift shop to a full-fledged camera store, and finally to a photo lab and photo studio. It was never really profitable. Due to bad luck when the building that the store was in was bought by a person who did not share the view of the building that the previous owner had. A photo store did not please him. Over the next twenty years, we were forced to move three times, costing us customers, and costing us money that should have been profits. I finally closed the store in the early 1990s and returned to college to become a teacher, which was not such a big change, since as a photo guru, I taught many people how to use their cameras and how to take good pictures. Teaching was a big part of my photo career.

When I became a teacher, several of my former mentors came to mean and said something such as it’s about time, or you finally woke up to what you should be doing.

When I became a teacher and then a college professor, I was never happier. I knew from my first day as a teacher, which was to be a long-term substitute for a teacher who was having a baby, I knew that I had found what my story was. I was fifty-one years old, when I began teaching; and, I was seventy-five years old when I retired.

I know that I touched many lives; I know that because there are many former students who are my friends and we are in contact with each other on a regular basis.

When I became a college professor, the counsellors directed many veterans to my classes; these veterans all had faced difficult times, while serving in the Middle East. Today, these are a few of my closets and dearest memories, vying with first place status with the first group of students I had in the eighth-grade substitute year, who then followed me, or I followed them, into high school, where some were in my classes for a total of four different courses, ranging from United States History I, to AP European History, to AP Economics.

My story, the won given by God, was to be a mentor to all of my students. One even carved a cane for me that I still use today. People comment on the cane and I tell them the story of my mentoring this student. My story is one of mentoring. Even though I am now retired from teaching, I continue to mentor people through prayer leadership at my church. The people I speak with are seeking help from God; I cannot give them this help, but I can help them understand how much they are lived by God, and how much God is in their lives. In other words, I am teaching them to believe in themselves and their relations with God.

This is my story. It is the reason that I can look into the heart of a person, the flower that has come for God’s assistance. When id o this, I see the universe blossoming before me. I see the reason we have such a bountiful earth, providing us with God’s sustenance. This allows me to see that the formation of molecules that make us humans comes from God and is comforted by God in every step of our lives.

All we must do is recognize and accept what our story is, or what our stories are.

I pray that all of my friends, those I know, and those I don’t know, will have a very blessed day today. Hug your family, hug your friends, hug those whom you do not know. This is one of God’s greatest gifts – the hug.

The Mustard Seed.

Unfortunately, separateness is the chosen stance of most of us, which makes it difficult for us to live in unity and love with the each other. Our small selves take one side or the other to feel secure. It frames reality in a two-fold way: for me or against me, totally right or totally wrong, my group’s opinion or another group’s. All these keep us apart, forever unable to unite as one. This is the best our small egotistical selves can do; it is so far from adequate that we can no longer recognize how far apart we are. We call this intelligence, but it is not wisdom. Wisdom is something we are sorely lacking in our lonely, separate lives. 

How can we truly believe that we are complete, or compleat, people? Until we can recognize the fact that as long as there are people who are starved for food, housing, love, and a myriad of other basic human needs, we cannot say that we are happy. There has been a great uproar over our border policies and the separation of children. Yet, there is no uproar at the number of families begging for a few dollars at an intersection into mall. These families are just as in need as those on the borders. They may not be separated, but they are being punished for being poor and in need. As many of us give them a dollar or two, what they really need is more substantial that we as individuals can give. We must as a society work to eliminate this blight on our human existence.

I am an ardent reader; I read great literature, cheap mystery novels, books on meditation, spiritual development, great and not so great poetry; and, I read the Bible, mainly the four gospels. From each of these, I try to glean something that will enlighten me (except for the cheap mystery; those are for fun). I try to dig a little deeper each time I read something to try to understand what the author is saying. This is particularly true when reading Jesus’s parables. I learned the parables when I was a boy growing up in East Orange, New Jersey. I studied them more in Sunday School in Summit, New Jersey.

Each time, my teachers boiled the stories down to simple basic life lessons, as do most of the ministers I hear when preaching about these from the pulpits. None of these parables are easily understood. Jesus was constantly berating his disciples because they did not understand. But what did he expect; they were simple folk, fisherman and the like. They probably had very little formal education and what Bible learning they had came verbally from the local rabbi, who probable did not have much more education than they did.

Jesus’s stories beg us to interpret them for ourselves. We are no longer first century Jews living under Roman Rule; but we are twenty-first century humans living under our own forms of oppressive governments. And if you don’t believe this, try walking down the center of your town naked! Not that I’m a nudist, but you get my point; our society is filled with just as many petty laws as the Roman governed Jewish communities is Jesus’s time.

Consider the parable of the mustard seed. I see so many ways to interpret this, as an educator, as a concerned citizen who observes the homeless, and as a member of a society that allows our government to separate children from their families. There are many lessons to be learned from these parables.

Try reading one; associate it with what your life is like; then apply it to those around you; then broaden that to include all in your sphere, whatever that might be. If you see a problem that could be solved by your understanding of it, then maybe it’s time to stand up, make known the issue, and try to correct this. My wonderful wife and two of her friends did this by beginning a market-style food table for those in our community who are not as fortunate as we are. Look on Facebook for The Table at St George’s and see what a few people have done with the story of the mustard seed.

I’ve done preaching for the day. Bless you all; have a glorious day.

Times of Rest

 Linda and I drove to Duck, North Carolina yesterday; we were joined by Linda’s brother, Karl, and our son, Cordis. Our daughter, Megan, and her husband, Joe, will join us on Tuesday.

It is a time for rest and relaxation. Presently, I am sitting in a dining nook, overlooking the bay. Being on the top floor, we can see quite a distance. It is a beautiful morning, but a little muggy. I had the chance at midnight to go out on the deck and be totally floored by the vista that stood before me. I looked up and saw stars, stars, and stars. I was reminded of the scene in Roots when Kunta Kinte was born; his father took him from the hut, offered the child up to the heavens, and said, “Behold, the only thing greater than you.”

I was completely in awe of the pageantry of the skies. I was reminded that in the known, or unknown, universe there are 600 billion trillion stars. Each star is a sun, perhaps similar to the one we recognize when we arise each morning. Six hundred billion trillion, I cannot perceive the size of the universe. What I am sure of is that we are probably under-counting the number. That is one of the limitations that as humans we are prone to suffer.

Six hundred billion trillions suns, each the center of a constellation, perhaps just like ours, with a planet int hat constellation called Earth.

Are they all inhabited by humans? There may be life forms similar, or completely different than what we know as living, intelligent beings. (I will not comment on our intelligence!)

That’s a lot of brothers and sisters in God’s universe!

As I am looking at the serenity of the waters in the bay, I remind myself that life does not have to be as violent as it is. And, I am not talking of gun or street violent. I am thinking about how upset our lives can be because we place obstacles in front of us no matter what we do. Most of these are man made and can be avoided, but only if we take the time to reason what is best, not what is more convenient.

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. How true to our lives this is. We tend to follow this wind aimlessly without thinking. I ask if our lives are as frivolous as these esoteric breezes. Where do we come from; where are we going? These are questions that we refuse to acknowledge. Do we know where we are going? I do not mean up the corporate ladder or seeking some political or non-political office. Why do we allow our impatience to govern our lives?

I am retired, but I still have the where am I going pressures that seem to invade my thoughts every day. What do I want to accomplish? What can I do to help others? What is God asking of me? This last one is the reason why I think we need more time to rest. Everyone who is born is a child of God. It is only in my time of rest that I can meditate on this truth.

As Linda and I were lying in bed this morning, thinking of the day ahead. She asked what are we going to do all week. How can we last a whole week on Duck without doing anything? I said that we could always leave early. We don’t have to stay the entire week. We can return to Fredericksburg and rejoin the convoluted days of pressure and dissatisfaction. We can reload the pressures on us to perform.

But no; we must find it in ourselves to truly relax, to truly take this time of rest for regeneration. None of us know what lies ahead. Just as with the wind, we really do not know where we will be one year from now, or ten years from now. We must place our very beings into that which created us. We have free will to do what we want, but we must recognize the paths laid before us.

Can we rest? Truly rest?

God bless you all and have a restful day this first Saturday in August.