Happy birthday, Mom! along with a poem and caring for others

Sunday, August 1, 2021

The vision board for August is a reminder of what I want to focus on. It comes to life during zoom calls, while I listen. Busying my hands with art and fillng my mouth with tea helps my heart to focus. This month's words are friendship, meditation, prayer, and service.

Beside my balcony desk, the plants draw me in for a closer look. Every leaf counted, every bug working, every day under God's watchful eye. How could we miss how much he cares for us ... but that we're not the center of the universe?

I've been reading poetry off and on and find this poem in Philip Yancey's book Prayer. I'm reminded that creation rests in the hands of God from day to day. After tragedy, earthquakes, fires, and floods pass, God renews the world. Can we rest in him and trust the same way, even during hard times?

I read the poem a few times, grateful for the confidence of nature that its Creator will sustain and intervene.

There's a new bloom on the bromeliad. Over the next month or two, it will turn from hot orange-red to Porsche-red with purple tips to burgundy.

Monday

It's Mom's 86th birthday. Being 14 hours ahead, I get to celebrate with her twice, first on the eve of her birthday (morning in our time zone). And then we chat on the day she celebrates in Canada. Thanks be to God for my beautiful mother, who prays over us every day and keeps us all connected. How I would love to sit with her and have a cup of tea in person.

It's been a tough week for some friends: emotionally, health-wise, and otherwise. I pause one day with a Rublev (Russian) icon of the Trinity in front of me. In it, I marvel at the friendship and community of God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

As I meditate, I gaze up at the clear sky with wonder. The atmosphere is so big. So blue. So infinite ... yet the sky's Creator calls us into his circle of love. God invites you and me to get to know him. Love him. Talk with him. Walk with him. It staggers my mind as I sit there. How little I understand.

The city is still locked down. Mostly, I work on the porch at home. One morning I make a quick sketch of what's in front of me.

Inside, we set and reset the table a few times this week. We carefully mask or stay socially distanced around the table. Food with friends is a welcome reprieve from loneliness.

Tuesday

W and I eat breakfast at Nara. It's our first date morning in over a month. We are the only clients in the outdoor park. Lockdown means you can eat out if a restaurant is open, but you can only stay 20 minutes. We place our order, loop our morning walk around the neighborhood, and come back to eat. It's fresh and serene this morning.

What's going on over there? At the end of the courtyard, a worker is scrubbing a huge tortoise with a brush in a large washbasin of water. Two other Testudines, already washed, lumber around the grounds until he puts them back in the long corral where they live.

"Do you do this every week?" I ask him. Setiap hari, he says. "Every day." They're still young - only 6 years old. Tortoises can live between 80-150 years so these may outlive us. At 2-3' long, they're substantial.

My routine when I get to the office starts with making tea. I lift a ceramic tile onto the tabletop for a desk and plop two pillows on the chair to pad the seat and back. After I set out my computer, phone, and notebooks, I pull the charging cable out the window within reach of the computer. It looks like this, most mornings.

Then I enjoy breakfast (banana bread today) with tea. I often journal or splash around some color on a page. After I book a few Focusmate sessions, it's time to get to work (7:00 or 8:00 a.m.) This week I sit across the screen from people working in Australia, Latvia, India, Korea, USA, Malaysia, Scotland, and Kenya.

This morning, I'm drinking Dammann tea, to which we were introduced at the conference in Bali last month. It's yummy, and a lasting memory of the #BaliMelia hotel.

Most our meetings are still online. We're planning. Learning. Connecting. There's hope and there's trauma. We deal with needs around the world. In small groups or one-on-one, we listen and pray for each other.

Over 5 days (last week and this), two pickers have taken many sacks of cloves from our two trees. The workers prune our mellinjo trees, too. Our yardman fell out of the tree and broke his wrist and hip last week. No one uses safety equipment: I find myself holding my breath when the pickers climb 40' into the clove trees without a harness.

The sembako (food parcels) that the young people packaged on Saturday are sent into the neighborhoods to help poor families.

Wednesday

Much of life is built on small insights and habits. But I've also been enriched by significant relationships over the decades. This morning, three sisters of the heart and I have an all-morning zoom call. We've met together since 1993. We pray and counsel and encourage each other as we have done since our children were small. Now we live in different cities but tech makes a morning meeting possible.

My mom is on the phone when the time comes to start. I hold the phone screen up so she can see the WPPRs and they can see her. She's the last of our mothers ... and is a role model for us all. BTW: If you don't have such heart-friends, why not ask God to help you find them?

Read more: 

(a grim warning and instructions from Isaiah 1:4-20) Woe to the sinful nation, a people whose guilt is great, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption! They have forsaken the Lord; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him.

Why should you be beaten anymore? Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness—only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with olive oil. ...

“The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me?” says the Lord. "I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts?

"Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong.

"Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. Come now, let us settle the matter," says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.

If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Prayer: Oh God, please help us to care for others as you care for us. Help us to see the needy and share our lives and our resources. In doing so, we love you as you love us - with our whole being and actions. We thank you for your warnings and your help. Amen.