Tossed to and fro

Tossed to and fro

            In the last months I have been tossed to and fro, betwixt old and new ideas, old and new faces, as if having been called upon to live in the no man’s land at Verdun, while smelling the putrid air of the Somme or caught like a dog between machines and artillery and rifles at Kursk.  I have been tossed to and fro and the experience has left me shaken and changed, angry and yet hopefully more kind, and surely never able to return to whence I came.  I am tossed on to an island but am contradicted for before I have read that there are no islands, that no man can be an island or on an island.  We are connected one to another beneath the heavens and cannot be separated but by an act of the one who is the shepherd who separates the flocks with his divining rod and takes the sheep to one side and the goats to another.  So I stand alone on an island as if I were an island.  The contradiction with all I have thought to be true worries me, and I wonder if I have wandered astray from the shepherd’s flock.

            I slowly stand with a broken thought.

            I have heard “Judge not!”  Have I understood you who are in the heavens as to what this means?

            Does it mean that I am not to condemn another?

            Does it also mean that I am not the one to justify another?

            Does it mean I am not the one to condemn myself?

            Does it mean I am no more the one to defend and justify myself?

            Does it mean I am to be silent when your word speaks regarding my actions?

            Does it mean that when I am called to give account I will be silent?

            Does it mean that unless he who speaks is called upon to speak from the right hand of God that all, yes every word is vain and is but the empty words of men without knowledge trying to decipher the meaning as if they could discover meaning when they jingle the coins in their pocket?

            My silence is followed by my touching of my head, of my heart, one shoulder and then the other.  I speak only to say “Lord Jesus be merciful to me the sinner.”  I repeat these words and continue repeating them.  They seem to have no meaning but I repeat them, mumbling them over as if to say to him in heaven let these words fill my heart, consume my soul, and become my strength.

I slowly take notice that I am not on an island at all, but on a vast continent.  The sun shines, the birds chirp, the waters have fish and fishes.  The land is covered with plants of green, at least they will be green come spring, and there are trees rising from the ground to give shade even if dormant in winter’s gray.  There are before me small creatures barely capable of being seen, multitudes more that must be unseen, four legged animals some that must be some child’s pet, some child whether eight or eighty.   I see people walking about.  I have hardly seen before how beautiful and how weary and often times how lonely these faces are.  Mine must look much the same.  Mine must be plain for mine reflects me.  But there is something different and exotic in every other face I see, a face of someone other than me.  I thank the heavens for someone besides me.  I begin to faintly smile for it is not so bad to be placed in the midst of ideas old and new, betwixt people old and new; not on an island but on a continent beneath the heavens, here on this earth that you have made for yourself.  Yes for yourself and also for the creatures whom you have created to live and whom you delight to see play before your eyes.  Yes and for me and for humanity for which you gave your life.  And so if thy judgment is swallowed up in your mercy so shall mine be swallowed up in your mercy.

Epiphany Meditation 1

Meditations on the Season of Epiphany

What is the Season of Epiphany?

            In the church calendar used by many of the most ancient traditions in Christendom, there is a season following Christmas known as Epiphany.  Epiphany is taken from a Greek word which means to reveal or make manifest.  In the progression of the liturgical focus in the church calendar the season of Epiphany leads us to consider how God led people in growing numbers and various ways to see Christ as one who has come into this world as a unique person, one who is God made manifest or revealed in the flesh.  Yet this uniqueness of the one who came into the flesh, into humanity and into human society does not separate him or place him above our lives, but rather serves to bring his life and the life of God into our human experience.  Christ who is uniquely fully God and fully man has come into human society so that each of us in our own unique individual lives, and all of us together being gathered into one humanity may be drawn together through this one whom God is making manifest in the human experience.

            I have lately been reading the latest work by N.T. Wright, massive and scholarly, and sometimes a bit too much to take in all at once.  But one point he makes is that the people who waited for Messiah to come were people who saw themselves as part of the story of Scriptures.  The Scriptures were to them not only the history of a people or a tradition, but a living story incorporating those born after the time mentioned in the stories of the Holy Scriptures.  Modern Judaism retains this in the practice of Passover wherein Israel’s children are to see themselves in Egypt, surviving the plagues, crossing the Red Sea on dry land, entering the wilderness, waiting in the wilderness, and entering the land.  They are not to see themselves as outsiders looking through history to a story, but as insiders made a part of the story by God who has made the story of the Scriptures for us.

This was likely the mindset of the early Church when it came to Epiphany.  We remember how Christ was made manifest to humanity in various ways and we are meant to be a part of the story.  The story of Epiphany did not end when the Magi went home by a way that bypassed Jerusalem.  For what was made manifest to them, that a great king and more than a king, one to be worshipped had been born to Israel; is what is revealed to us through its inclusion in the Gospel’s account.  This is true of each of the different stories of manifestation contemplated in the Gospel accounts during the season of Epiphany.

My church uses the 1662/1928 Book of Common Prayer observance of Epiphany, which at points may be slightly different in the Scriptural passages used in the observance of the weeks of Epiphany from some other traditions.  Hopefully for others of you, who do not normally follow a strict church calendar, you will enjoy visiting these pages as we develop a theme of Christ being manifested in Scripture passages that you have long loved and enjoyed even as we do even if we do or not like liturgy.

In some years Epiphany which is celebrated on January 6 is followed by as many as six Sundays in the Epiphany season.  Some years are less than six because Easter is a moving holy day, and if Easter is early there will be fewer Sundays allotted to the season of Epiphany.  But when there are a full six seasons in the observation of the season of Epiphany there is an interesting progression showing how we are part of the story of Epiphany, of God making himself manifest to us.

On January 6 we celebrate Epiphany remembering the coming of the Magi, the wise men bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh as they came to view Israel’s king and offer him worship.  Upon seeing them they worshipped him.  This is the general meaning of Epiphany.  Christ is made manifest and we are drawn to worship him.

In the following Sundays we see Christ as a twelve year-old in the Temple, being baptized by John the Baptist in the waters of the Jordan, turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana, healing a leper by touch and a centurion’s servant from a distance, then in the parable of the wheat growing among the tares; and finally there is the Gospel promise how we shall yet see him when his glory is revealed when he shall appear like lightning out of the east.

Of these manifestations, most are connected to events in the past.  But these events are for us as much as they were for the ancients who were there, for in the Gospel we are invited to see these stories and to be present in spirit, and to have them impressed upon our lives so that what has been made manifest may actually become a life inspiring epiphany within our own understanding of faith.  That we are part of the story of Epiphany is brought home to us in the parable of the wheat growing among the tares in the next to last Sunday of a full Epiphany season.  That is where we are all living in the faith.  Finally the story of Epiphany is not a story only of the past with present considerations, for we are part of the story of Epiphany in that we await the great revelation and manifestation of the Son of God who shall appear in glory as the lightning flashes from the eastern sky.

Epiphany is the story of Christ being made manifest.  This story involves us.  We are in this story looking for its glorious conclusion.

For those interested I have written a poem, it’s not a great poem, do manage to force an ABBA rhyme scheme into it, but I try to tell the story of Epiphany in the poem.  You can read it here.

A Poem for the Season of Epiphany

Manifestations and Epiphanies

                    

Exotic wise men see a star manifest in the sky

Gold bring as if expecting to see a king’s rod

Frankincense an aroma worthy to worship a God

But also myrrh a fragrance for one born to die

A child staying not left behind in the temple

Parents’ discovery and their sudden terror

What is his thinking that explains his error

What – my Father’s business – it is that simple.

Honey, locusts, camel hairs but what is this

What need has this one for Jordan’s waters

Or is this for Israel’s sons and daughters

A dove, a heavenly voice, signs not to miss

From the beginning, a man and a bride

No wine, cheap family dishonors guests

My son can you do anything for this mess

Water to wine  for love I will provide

A broken leper wishes to be made clean

This requires the touch of a kind and gentle hand

A soldier says you needn’t leave where you stand

And left his miracle done even when unseen

A garden with the good seed hidden in weeds

The gardener sees his seed so fragile and weak

says Let my seed the sun and rain seek

At harvest good seed will be seen in good deeds

Manifestations we have seen so to him we do now refer

Others with lesser signs like vultures will pluck and take

Sun and moon Joseph’s dream heaven’s order to shake

So we await one more Epiphany our hearts to stir

 

A poem of sorts based on the Gospel readings of Epiphany and the six weeks of Epiphany in the Book of Common Prayer, 1662 and 1928 versions

Hope

HOPE

HOPE :

Having Optimistic Patterns Expectations

Seeing darkness expecting the dawn

Seeing evil expecting redemption

Feeling resistance expecting triumph

Having sinned expecting to overcome

HOPELESSNESS:

Hope lost forgotten despairing

Living in the moment without a future

Falling in air grasping at wind

Struggling with burdens without relief

seeing in every sight a catastrophe fomenting

RESOLUTION:

Sin is but hopeless grasping

A mad striving sown in despair

Holiness results from a sight

Of the Divine by a living expectation

LESSON REMEMBERED:

As Don Quixote battled windmills

So have I attacked a neighbor’s sins

And I have flayed at mine without success

For holiness is hatched from hope

while evil springs as surely from despair

So I must battle in hope for the spread of hope

Christian Love . . . Where we don't become like God

Christian Love . . . Where we don’t become like God?

Written by Dan McDonald 

            If you ever wonder where I get my ideas for writing a blog, I usually just steal them.  I get a lot of them from people on Twitter.  They tweet things, sometimes ideas, platitudes, confessions, stuff that moves and overwhelms them.  Pretty soon I’m thinking about what they were saying and I start to feel a desire to interact.  Hopefully I’m not too out of line doing this.  To be honest, I’ve hardly met any of the people that I’m on Twitter with.  But a lot of times that is how Twitter works.  You meet one person and then another, in that virtual world, a world on one hand where you often really don’t know people who you are dealing, but in another sense you do get to know some people in this way.  Wow stuff sure could be written about that, and oh it has been written about that, probably some PhD work has been done on that.

            Well someone on Twitter posted a tweet about what she was learning about love.  She tweeted:  “I have spent my entire life trying to learn how to give love & come to realize I’ve never learned how to actually receive it.”  Later she tweeted a follow-up saying:  “We are taught in Christian culture that relationships are to be completely selfless & no one ever teaches us to ask for what we need.”

            Her words resonate with me.  For me, I won’t say I’m a master at learning how to escape this sort of dilemma, but for me my Christian life began growing in dimensions I could never have imagined, because C.S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves began to show me that this desire to be selfless in our love was something that was not true to our humanity.

            In fact Lewis describes in his introduction how he imagined when he began to write The Four Loves how he would show that the highest form of love was the selfless “agape” love that alone could truly be called Christian love.  But by the time his book was ready for publication he had come to a very different conclusion.  He had learned that love is multi-dimensional because of our being human.  Especially he had come to appreciate that we as created beings have been created with needs as well as gifts.  We have both needs and gifts and so our loves, to be fully human must involve loving as needy persons as much as loving because we are gifted persons.

            Lewis traces in every chapter he writes how human beings love both as ones with needs and ones with gifts and graces.  To try to deny our needs as part of our love is to deny a vitally human element, our being creatures created with needs.  Consider our love for God.  We were taught to pray for something as mundane as “Give us this day our daily bread.”  We cannot as human beings love God completely selflessly.  Lewis suggests that to try to do so is to fall into the temptation that Adam and Eve succumbed to when they sought to become like God, when they sought to be gods and goddesses in their own persons.  Or as St. John so wonderfully says it “We love him, because he first loved us.”  We respond to his grace as needy creatures yearning to show love to one who has loved us.

            There is actually a danger in imagining that we can love without any sense of our needs.  Why do we want to completely selfless?  Is that what God has called us to, to be persons without needs who can be there for everyone else while we somehow live above this world where we have needs so much that if we go just a few minutes without air we die.  We have needs and God created us with those needs and he is pleased to show us his love in providing for us on a daily basis.  This is what it means that as Christians we belong to the body of Christ who lives in each of us and lives in us as the body of Christ, the Living Church.  We each have our needs and our gifts and we are meant for love, we are meant to love and to be loved.

            It was through this book by C.S. Lewis that I began to learn that to become Christian was to be granted a pathway to becoming truly and fully human.  When this truth about who we are as human beings with needs and gifts sinks in; it sort of makes this Christian life a little bit easier.  I don’t need to feel that I have to be the one who meets everybody’s needs.  Now that doesn’t mean we have a license to be selfish.  Believe me I don’t think the woman who tweeted the words about not knowing how to receive love has any real desire to live selfishly.  But I do think she maybe has a need to realize that when God called her to follow Christ, he called her to feel fully her humanity her needs as well as her gifts.  Perhaps we need to remember that our Lord Jesus got thirsty and asked a Samaritan woman for a drink.  He lived a life where he had needs and he knows that each of us has needs, and he felt his needs enough that when the judgment day comes perhaps the chief way he will determine whose faith was real and whose faith was faulty is who it was who gave him a drink of water, when they gave that drink of water to the least of these.  So here’s the deal.  Christ has called us to follow him, to be gracious and loving, but he also knows you have needs and when someone comes into your life meant to give you something you need give thanks to God and rejoice in thanksgiving for the love you receive both from God and from his very human agent that may actually be performing a deed originated in love.

            Ever since I’ve read The Four Loves I have sort of realized that what Christ came to do when he became fully human on our behalf was to help us learn also how to once more live life in the fullness of our humanity.  When we learn to live life in the fullness of our humanity we shall unwittingly reflect in our own beings the image of God, for this is what humanity has always been about, setting forth the image of God not because we become somehow exactly like God but because God always has meant to show forth his glory and his image in the weakness of human flesh.

Our Father and His Three Sons

Our Father and His Three Sons

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            There are times when a person who likes to write feels wholly drained, and there is a feeling that maybe this time you will never have another thought in your head about which to write.  Perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad thing since to the making of books and the writing of blogs there is no end.  (Ecclesiastes 12:12 sort of)  Sometimes I think maybe I might never write anything again.  But then I read something or think something and suddenly I feel the compulsion to throw my two cents into the hopper of human opinion and find myself writing a new blog.  On this occasion it was the reading of a tweet by Christena Cleveland that got me thinking.  She wrote:  “Everybody has a story that’s worth listening to, even oppressors.  The moment we lose compassion for the oppressors, we oppress ourselves.”

            I can imagine someone disagreeing with that statement and coming up with some good reasons why they disagree.  But what I am going to write about is how this insight helps me to see more deeply the message of one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, which would be the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke.  In the context, Jesus’ preaching is drawing all sorts of people to hear him, but some of Israel’s religious leaders are critical that this is leading him to be too closely associated with sinners and tax collectors.  Jesus tries to answer his critics by telling three stories, a story of the shepherd who seeks out the one lost sheep, of a woman who seeks for her lost coin, and for the prodigal son who is embraced by his father when he comes home after wasting all his inheritance.  I am sure this is one of many people’s favorite chapters in the Bible.

            We perhaps don’t think of Jesus as associating with oppressors, but a lot of Judeans in Jesus’ day did think of tax collectors as oppressors or at least as quislings who cooperated with Rome against the Jewish people.  Tax collecting in the Roman Empire wasn’t exactly a benign fairly operated work of good government.  The Romans tried to keep their bureaucracies to a minimum.  In the work of tax collecting they did that by farming out the responsibilities of gathering taxes.  The system tended to be corrupt.  Rome wanted its taxes, and those who collected taxes for Rome could charge a fee to help them make a profit.  Rome tended to look the other way if some tax collectors charged large fees or used brutal ways to get the necessary tax payments.  Rome wanted its taxes and tributes, to not be bothered with collecting taxes, and to have no open rebellion.  It was sort of the equivalent to a modern nation known for having corrupt police.  The story goes in one country about a policeman complaining about his low wages.  The story goes like this:  “A policeman was recruited from a province far from the capital.  He was told how much he would get paid in the capital city and took the offer at once.  But then he discovered that the raise he had received in income was more than covered by the increase in expenses, as the nation’s capital was a notoriously expensive place to live.  So the policeman told his police commander that he couldn’t live on his income in the new city job.  The commander looked at him and said, “What is wrong with you?  We give you a badge and a gun and you can’t earn enough to live on?”  That is what one sort of thinks being a tax collector was like in the Roman Empire.  Corruption seemed written into the system, charging people lots of money for the taxes to be sent to Rome so Rome could rule over Judea was something few Judeans wished to see continue.  It was especially frustrating to see people willing to be tax collectors for the Roman government which continued to oppress Judea.  That was how a lot of Judeans saw it.  That was how the Pharisees saw it.  But Jesus saw them as people needing redemption.

            On the other hand as sinners and tax collectors and others who had little standing in Israel came to believe on Christ and seek him in order to receive God’s work of redemption, those like the Pharisees who rejected Jesus’ ministry out of hand then became oppressors of the people seeking God’s redemption in Christ.

            It seems to me that Christ is showing that he came to redeem sinners, whether they were sinners that everyone saw as sinners, or respectable people that people viewed less as sinners.  He came also to show that God’s desire for sinners was to show mercy to them and to bring them to a dynamic redemption in Jesus Christ.

            It is interesting how both groups distrusted the other and how in both groups were people who were oppressive against those whom Christ had come to save.  Jesus was speaking to tax collectors and teaching them to take only what was actually coming to them.  Zacchaeus was a rich tax collector described in Luke 19.  He demonstrated his understanding of redemption by repaying those he had wronged and throwing in a punitive damages award.  He had heard Jesus and had been moved to accept Christ’s redemption on Christ’s terms.  The Pharisees had to learn that when they objected to Jesus’ offer of mercy and redemption to someone, that they were more misunderstanding the ideas of God’s justice and mercy than they were serving them.  Our Lord wanted to show them mercy and was seeking to explain to men how they could receive mercy.  But because the Pharisees believed the tax collectors were oppressors outside the mercy of God, they were blinding themselves about God’s mercy.  Therefore they were failing to believe that God was desirous of forgiving sinners.  They viewed God as one who had to be convinced to forgive sinners.

            There was an element in Jesus’ teaching to the Pharisees about the brothers in the Prodigal son parable that must have gotten the Pharisees’ attention.  Jesus described the parable with an older brother and a younger brother.  The younger brother had wanted his inheritance, had taken it, and had wasted it in riotous living.  But when the younger brother came back to the homestead, their father raced out to meet him, killed the fatted calf and threw a party like the younger son had never done anything wrong.  The older brother, who had remained loyal grew upset at the younger brother and became angry with both God and his younger brother.

            Do you know of another story like this told in the Bible?  I suspect the mention of an older and younger brother might have reminded these men who knew their Bibles of an Old Testament story.  The older brother became upset when his younger brother’s sacrifice unto God was accepted and his was rejected.  God explained to the older brother was sin was trying to take control of him and to drive a wedge between him and his younger brother.  God told the older brother that he needed to master sin before it mastered him.  Instead the elder son just got angrier.  He went out and killed the younger brother and hid his body in a field.  Of course the older brother was Cain whose sacrifice was rejected for he did not gain control over his wrath and anger towards the younger brother, and so he killed Abel.  I suspect when Jesus finished telling his parable recorded in Luke 15, these Jewish leaders understood that he was telling them they could not use their place as elder brother to limit and minimize God’s mercy to others.  They could not let their enmity with the tax gatherers as oppressors keep them from seeing these tax gatherers as persons whom God loved and desired to know his mercy and grace.

            We are accustomed to thinking of the Prodigal son story as having two brothers.  But in reality there is a third brother who was speaking to the other two brothers.  He was the elder brother in all the ways that the elder brother of the story of the prodigal son was not.  He wanted to see his younger brothers redeemed, however much they were described when he came to them as sinner, oppressor, religious bigot, tax-collector, or Pharisee.  He wanted them to embrace the ministry of reconciliation he came to bring into the world.  He was willing to suffer and die on our behalf to accomplish this redemption.  It is said of this elder brother that he is not ashamed to call us his brethren.  (Hebrews 2:11)  This is why there is so much truth in what Christena Cleveland said for when we lose compassion for the oppressors, we oppress ourselves.”  Either we make our journey in Christ’s redemption on our behalf or we oppose him as he shows mercy to those we think do not deserve his mercy.

Looking Forward to 2014

Looking Forward to this New Year of 2014

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            I suppose we all sort of set goals as one year morphs into another year, as we learn to write a different number in the slot for year on forms or checks upon which we write.  Some create elaborate resolutions for a new year, some don’t make any resolutions, and yet I suspect that most of us even when we don’t make resolutions think some thoughts about what we would like to do differently this year than last year.

            I hope whether you make formal resolutions or simply think a thought about how you would like to face this year a bit differently from last year that you meet with some success in turning such hopes and resolutions into pieces of reality that add fullness to your life.  So to that end I’ll write with some hesitancy about my desires for this year.

            Last year I wrote an article about how I need to be better connected with this world in which I live.  Not everyone has the opportunity to travel and see natural marvels or different portions of this world in which we live.  In fact, if one does get to do that it may be a thing of privilege to be able to do that.  But sometimes many people have the ability to do so but never do.  This year I want to make sure that I take the opportunity to make a trek to see a marvel I have not yet seen.  My goal , for the year, is to  go where I can put my fingers on the bark of a Giant Sequoya.  I have never seen that natural marvel, to behold it, and to look heavenward as I experience seeing these great marvels of nature.  I believe to do so would make broader and deeper my appreciation of life.  I spend too much time in my house or on my job.  This trek would be a privilege that some will never have the opportunity to do.  But sometimes one of the ways to honor someone who is not privileged is to make the most of the privilege we are given.

            Do you understand what I am saying?  I know that some of the people who will glance at my blog are themselves writers and bloggers, and are also avid readers.  Many of you described in this last sentence are privileged, even if you don't think of yourself as privileged.  You might have grown up in a family where you had parents and siblings that wanted you to learn to read, write, and explore the nooks and crannies of what can be learned about life and the universe around you.  You had the opportunity to study whether in a public, parochial, or home school environment.  I know a Mexican, now an American citizen, one who became a citizen through the Reagan administration’s amnesty program.  He tells of how he was the first one in his family who ever went to school.  He tells this, not about going to a university, but to a basic primary school where children learn their alphabet and how to read the words of their own spoken language.  Those of us who had the opportunity to become literate are privileged.  How do we, who have been given a privilege, honor those who don’t have the same privilege?  We don’t honor them by refusing to make use of the privileges we have been granted.  We honor those who never had the opportunity by first making use of the privilege we were given, and then by making use of our privilege so as to give a blessing and benefit to those who have never had such a privilege.  We honor those without privilege by first of all realizing a sort of noblesse oblige (an obligation of nobility) that comes upon us who have been granted privilege.  The first responsibility of privilege is not to feel guilty that we have been granted something that has not been given to every one, but to take the privilege we have been granted to be turned into a benefit for those around us.  There is no honor in someone who has been given food to refuse to eat because some people are without food; rather the goal spoken of by the Gospel is for those who have been given food to share with those who have none, so that whether privileged or impoverished all may eat.  So instead of denying we have privilege or refusing to live life fully in the privileges we have been granted, our goal ought to be to take advantage of the privileges we have been given that more people might be given a share of what we have been granted to experience and reap which has not been granted to so many others.

            I will continue to blog in 2014 and I have been learning how to do this in 2013.  I have read other blogs and have had opportunity to read things that I love and things I disagree with, and to realize I needed both sorts of readings to confront and transform me.  But in that process I have learned that beneath our labels that describe what we believe, are human beings.  We are, each of us and all of us, on varied spiritual journeys through life.  We are: whether conservative, liberal, progressive, patriarchal, feminist, egalitarian, or whatever label we choose to wear, first and foremost mortal human beings who never see more than a sliver of reality.  We take that speck of reality we see from our finite spot of locality in a universe beyond our comprehension, and then we boldly build a worldview and philosophy of life from that glimpse.  From that small local spot in a huge universe we declare to one another what we believe.  We must, if we understand this, see ourselves as humble finite persons whose views are those of souls journeying through a maze that we haven't fully comprehended.  So it is best if when you have discourse with another human being that you remember the advice once placed on rental VHS tapes, if you can remember back to those days, when the label said “Be kind – rewind.”  You and I should learn to say the things we believe in such a way that another may take what we say and use it joyfully for their lives.  I want that to be a goal in my writing this year.  We ought to speak firmly of what we believe, but our speaking firmly should be in honor of our fellow travelers on the journey of life.  We have each seen and experienced differing things and can hardly expect to agree on everything and sometimes we should not expect to agree on much of anything.  But when we speak of what we understand or believe, it should be with respect and honor to our fellow traveler in the journey of life.  Let me learn, O Lord, how to write in a way that acknowledges to you the privilege I have been granted; and let me learn O' Lord in humility to share with those fellow-travelers whom you have created and loved the blessings of the fruit of those privileges.  For are not all things from thee, in thee, and unto thee forevermore?

            That leads me to my final point of focus for me in 2014.  I will write.  I love to write.  I want to write with integrity.  There are times I don’t write things because I think people will quit reading me if I am honest with what I believe.  That doesn’t mean I should write everything that pops into my head simply because I believe something.  There are times when I don’t write things because I am afraid that people will stop reading me, when what I need to be thinking is that I shouldn’t write those things because I haven’t been given the wisdom to address such a matter with enough wisdom to be loving and helpful in what I write.  But sometimes I should write something I believe that I know will not be popular, because if we are not honest in dialogue with others then the value of our dialogue is cheapened and minimized.  There are difficult matters that need to be spoken of rather than ignored.  So I will write, hopefully with honor and integrity, hopefully in respect of my readers, and hopefully in honor of the one who has created me, sustains me, and is my hope.

          I’d love to hear something of your vision for this year, and something of the privilege you think you have been given.  I want you to not flee from that privilege you have been given, but grow in it that you might from your abundance share with those whom you have opportunity to bless.  I would love to hear from you that you understand a part of your life that is a privilege you have been granted that might be transformed into a blessing for others because you have been granted such a blessing.