What Would They Say

I've just returned from my brother-in-law's funeral. Even with the house full of people, I wanted to take a moment with my blog and jot this down.

I've often wondered what the deceased would say, if given one last chance to stand before the people they loved. If somewhere between the eulogy and the internment the dead could rise and say a final farewell, I believe they'd leave these words of love and encouragement.

To You Whom I Have Treasured
Adapted from the poem
A Psalm for the Dying
by Edward Hays

My last breath did not say goodbye,
for my love for you is timeless,
beyond the touch of death.

I leave myself to your memory with love.
I leave my thoughts, my laughter, my dreams,
to you whom I have treasured
beyond gold and precious gems.

I give you what no thief can steal,
the memories of our times together,
the tender, love-filled moments,
the successes we shared,
the hard times that often brought us closer,
and the roads we walked side by side.

I also leave you a solemn promise that
now that I am home in the bosom of God
I will still be present
whenever and wherever you call on me.
My energy will be drawn to you
by the magnet of our love.

Whenever you are in need, call me.
I will come to you
with my arms full of wisdom and light
to open your blocked paths,
to untangle your knots,
and to be your avenue to God.

All I take with me as I leave are
your love and the millions of memories
of all that we have shared.
And so I enter my new life
truly blessed for us having been together.
For this I say thank you.

Fear not, nor grieve too long at my departure,
you whom I have loved so very much,
for my roots and yours
are forever intertwined.

Friday Nights = Battlestar Galactica

Friday nights are now synonymous with Battlestar Galactica!

Here's to the sci-fi lovin' nerd alive and kicking in LightAndShadow.

Hey Psst...

You Know Who...

Come 'ere!

Here's to telling him - Whatever we had is DEAD! I don't know about you, but digging up the smelly carcass of a rotted out and completely lifeless relationship brings me no pleasure.

Here's to Erykah Badu siiingin'... See Ya Next Lifetime!

Quote from The Drawing of Three

"It was dead, but he meant to have his way with it all the same; he had never been so fundamentally hurt, and it had all been so unexpected."
Illustration by

Michael Whelan

In this quote from, The Drawing of Three, Stephen King is referring to a lobster. His character, The Gunslinger, was badly bitten by this lobstrosity losing a couple of fingers and a toe to the collie-sized nocturnal sea-monster.

The Gunslinger ended up killing the creature, but even after it was clearly dead he kept hitting and kicking it.

When I read this part of the story, I thought not of monsters, but of all the other already "dead" things in our lives that we keep fighting with. When hurt is so strong that it seeks retribution long past the hour of reckoning it is sad isn't it? Sad and wasteful.

Here's to ending our battle with what is already dead!

Sojourners, God's Politics and The Prayer of Jabez

Sometime last year I was hanging out at Borders and I ran across a book by Jim Wallis called God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

Since when did believing in God and having moral values make you pro-war, pro-rich, and pro-Republican? And since when did promoting and pursuing a progressive social agenda with a concern for economic security, health care, and educational opportunity mean you had to put faith in God aside?

God's Politics offers a clarion call to make both our religious communities and our government more accountable to key values of the prophetic religious tradition - that is, make them pro-justice, pro-peace, pro-environment, pro-equality, pro-consistent ethic of life(beyond single issue voting), and pro-family (without making scapegoats of single mothers or gays and lesbians). These are the values of love and justice, reconciliation, and community that Jesus taught and that are at the core of what many of us believe, Christian or not.

Needless to say, I abandoned my random book hopping and carried Wallis’ God’s Politics to the bookstore café and dove right in. Soon after, I did an Internet search to learn more about this man and his message. That’s how I found Sojourners – A ministry whose mission is to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice.

Currently the site features an article that is written in part to make us think about how God acts in response to the prayers of the faithful. So often we believe that if we have faith God will work miracles in our lives. We look for him… expect him to bless us. Some of us tie those blessing… not to God’s will, but to our own faith.

A couple of years ago, my mother and I went to a Christian Women’s Conference. Twenty Thousand women from all over the country were housed in hotels all around the city and transported via private coaches to the civic center. On one of those bus rides I sat next to a young woman from the east coast. She was friendly, animated and she and I got into a conversation about prosperity ministries that I’ve never forgotten.

She said, “People that preach prosperity are absolutely right. God wants us to prosper. He has it out there for us. We need only believe.“

I remember looking at her and saying, “But what about all the sick and starving people in the world? Do they suffer because they have no faith?”

She looked absolutely taken aback. I don’t think she’d ever considered the world outside her own little church community!

“You know,” I told her, “perhaps we can’t tie God’s mercy to material blessings. If we do, then what do we say to the vast majority of people that live without. Do we say… see, you don’t have a strong faith. Surely, they must. To continue to believe in God while you suffer takes great faith.”

Currently, there is an article on Sojourners that caught my attention. It is about The Prayer of Jabez… I’m sure your are at least familiar with the million seller by Bruce Wilkinson in which he wrote a short study of the following prayer:

"Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain." And God granted his request." 1 Cronicles 4:10

The Sojourner discusses the philosophy Bruce Wilkinson espouses in The Prayer of Jabez and how that philosophy played out when Wilkinson carried it into AIDS ridden Africa.

The article writer highlights a passage in Hebrews that encourages us to have "faith in things not yet seen," and offers models of individuals who tried to lead devoted lives that honor God, prayed, were heard, but thier prayers did not always bring them material riches or expanded territory.

The article ends with this thought:

But the weight of the biblical message balances heavily toward a prayer life that yields courage, love, and compassion to do the will of God. The expectation of material gain and miraculous blessings may even distract us on that pilgrimage. The passage in Hebrews calls us, based on past heroes of the faith, "to run the race in front of us," confident that devoting our lives to God's work is all the reward we will ever need.

I thought it was worth sharing!

The Prayer of Jabez falls short in Africa

Blue Says It’s Time For An Update

… and it is.

I’ve decided to leave a Word Doc open on my desktop and jot down a bunch of unrelated ramblings.

Rambling Number One – Nothing Could Have Been Done!

I should start by saying that my husband’s brother died on Saturday. The coroner said that he had a ruptured aortic aneurysm and bled out… those were his exact words… He Bled Out! His death was sudden and according to the calm, professional voice coming over the phone… “Nothing could have been done”.

I was glad I took the call and not my husband… the man’s report was so clinical. It was hard to hear. After Mr. Professional-I-Do-This-Ten-Times-A-Day-Coroner informed me that my brother-in-law’s chest cavity was full of blood, he asked me what he should do with the remains.

I called the funeral home and asked them to pick up the body. There. That was done. Now, all I had to do was wait for the rest of my husband’s brothers and sisters to arrive.

Today is Wednesday. The man died on Saturday. Still no brothers and sisters.

Rambling Number Two – In-Laws

The In-Law relationship has been difficult for me. I don’t fit in. I intentionally hang out on the edge, because there is no room for me in the center.

Rambling Number Three – Life to Life

I feel sorry for my husband. He’s lost both his parents and two siblings. All of them suddenly. Here one day… gone the next. Besides violent deaths, I think sudden ones are the worst. There’s no time to say goodbye… to get one last look… one last kiss on a still warm cheek. Yes, sudden deaths are hard… shocking… lonely.

I’ve been fortunate. I’ve lost people close to me, but I’ve had time. Time to say goodbye. For me, death has been a process. I’ve had the comfort of knowing that the loved ones I've lost were prepared to go. It is a strange kind of comfort, but it is comforting nonetheless.

I’ve stood by my beloved Grandmother and Aunt and watched them cross over from life to life. That’s how I see it… life to life. I’ve felt it happen, I’ve seen the beauty in the transition, and I am not afraid… at least not as afraid as I would be without those experiences.

Rambling Number Four - Looking Through Emails

As I was writing my “Life to Life Rambling” I got to thinking about my Aunt. The anniversary of her death is this month. Not too long ago, I wrote my Jedi an email that described me sitting by the side of her bed playing Jeff Major’s 23rd Psalm as she “went home to God!”

I wanted to re-read that email… maybe post some version of it here. Well, I was surprised to find that there are over 150 Jedi/Padawan emails that I’ve saved. I started going through them looking for that specific one and found myself re-reading some of the others. Wow! All I can say is… Wow! It’s so nice to have a record of our conversations… to be able to go back, re-think, re-view, re-member, re-live!

To Be Continued

Later that night...


Rambling Number Five - I'm Sooooo Tired

I'm home. I've been funeral shopping, and now I'm beat. I use to like to shop. Not anymore. It holds no appeal.

Rambling Number Six - Playin' On The Forum

This afternoon I spent a little while playin' on the forum. I so enjoy my little nutty e-daughters. It's nice to be able to have a good laugh every now and again.

All right. I've got nothing else. I'm going to kick back, watch some mindless TV, and prepare to do it all again tomorrow.

Here's to making it through a long day!