Morning Prayer -- Frederick Buechner, Theology of Space

“Pay mind to your own life, your own health, and wholeness. A bleeding heart is of no help to anyone if it bleeds to death.”

"Holistic medicine is not a new concept. Socrates knew that it was important to treat the body as a whole when he wrote, “For the part can never be well unless the whole is well.” An old Indian saying states that the body is like a house with four rooms: a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual room. To be a whole person, one must spend at least a little bit of time in each of these four rooms every day. For example, food and rest satisfy our physical needs; learning about the world and using what we learn enriches our minds; and validating and coping with our feelings meets our emotional needs. Our spiritual needs must also be addressed."
From here.

This Morning I'm

• listening to the Cellist of Sarajevo (Vedran Smajlovic) over the Airport Express.
• getting ready for busy day -- meetings, dentist, violin lessons.
• trying to keep up with sending packages (eBay and Amazon).
• getting a cold on top of it all. Bleh.

Morning Prayer -- Frederick Buechner -- The Odd Silence

Everybody prays whether he thinks of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else’s pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else’s joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way. These are all spoken not just to yourself but to something even more familiar than yourself and even more strange than the world.

Easily Amused

I purchased an Airport Express this week and installed it last night. I am easily amused -- I can now print from where ever I am in the house from my favorite printer and play my 'tunes from the speakers in the kitchen. I'm bidding on another to put near the real stereo so that I can have my 'tunes playing in the living room as well. I'm playing Yo-Yo Ma this morning (cello music, of course!)

Chaos needs a 'real' cello teacher. I'm looking around and we have a tryout with one of the best (if not THE best) in Atlanta. It's going to be $240 a month (gulp!) I'm having a little bit of sticker shock. I suppose we can cut down on meat ... and gasoline ... and books ... and renting movies. I am seriously conflicted. She really needs an instructor -- but that's a lot of money. As a comparison, her piano lesson are about $90 a month and Entropy's violin lessons are about $80.

So I am going to have to up the selling of household stuff. More eBay, more listing of books on Amazon Marketplace. I can't find books because I just have too many. I'm going to try to list at least a third of my books (which comes to about 1400 to 1700 books.) Some are very easy to let go of -- some are slightly more difficult. I make a stack to sell and end up pulling about 1 of 10 to put back on the shelf.

I'm going to do the Cafe Press thing. I think I'll call it "Chaos' Cello Lessons" and list lots and lots of cello shirts. I may branch out and do all of the string instruments...

Morning Prayer -- Frederick Buechner -- When you remember me

“When you remember me, it means that you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.
For as long as you remember me, I am never entirely lost. When I'm feeling most ghost-like, it is your remembering me that helps remind me that I actually exist. When I'm feeling sad, it's my consolation. When I'm feeling happy, it's part of why I feel that way.

If you forget me, one of the ways I remember who I am will be gone. If you forget, part of who I am will be gone. "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." the good thief said from his cross (Luke 23:42). There are perhaps no more human words in all of Scripture, no prayer we can pray so well. ”

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Santa visited this week ... or is it an impostor?

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Also on Amazon...

Is this wonderful land tank.

I love the customer reviews. Is this a real product? Who knows?

Getting a real giggle out of it. Found it under the "also viewed" while looking at the rabbit. Hey! You can put it on your baby registry!

For John the Rabbit-lover

I found this on Amazon.
Ugh! (Chaos has now decided to be a vegetarian.)

But then check out the user pictures. The user pictures did indeed make me giggle. I must have a sick sense of humor...

UPDATE ON CELLO SHIRTS
Yes, I think I will place the on CafePress for general consumption. Great idea, Bets! Thanks for the vote of confidence. Stay tuned for more updates....

And I'm doing OK on eBay and Amazon. I've linked my eBay store in the sidebar (just in case you want to buy my junk =o) ) and I think I'll post a link to my Amazon store, as well. So far I've turned about 32 pieces of random "stuff" (like outgrown, barely worn jeans, old baby stuff, muslin bags, books and whatnot) into a Carbon Fiber Bass Bow, an Airport Express, some transfer paper, a First Class Scouting badge for my 1970's era GS sash (earned, never purchased) and a tee-shirt.

This is all related to my theology of space -- I'm cleaning my physical house and by extension and effort also cleaning my inner spaces as well. Each time something leaves the house to be used/loved by someone else, I feel a little lighter....

Got Cello? Tee Shirt

Because I liked the compliments... Klingon Cello Tee-Shirt

New Cello Tee Shirt Idea

Beauty by Sr. Wendy Beckett -- The Theology of Space

"Art is beauty and God is beauty. If you can get people to look at art; you are bringing them closer to Him, even if they don't know His name."

"My own definition of beauty is that which perpetually satisfies us. You look at it again and again and there is more of it to satisfy us. I would say that beauty is very much an attribute of God - He is essential beauty. But only those of us who have been fortunate enough to have faith know where beauty comes from. For the others, they are responding to beauty and responding to Him, though they mightn't be aware of that - they are responding to the pure, free, strong, loving spirit of God."

-- Sister Wendy Beckett here.


At the point that Art (in the larger sense) ceases to describe our experiences of God, I wonder what it describes?

I wonder if there is something inherent in the "being of a human" that always is searching for that spark of what we call divine -- that the search for beauty is the search for God, but disguised. Maybe it is in the searching for beauty and in the finding that we can re-discover the divine even in secular Art.

All artists feel that pull -- that indescribable state of being where you dwell in a place outside of self. Here a Christian will understand that he/she is participating an act that makes God God -- the act of creation. Here will we really find Imago Dei -- the artist participating in Divine Creation.

I have long believed that this is a neglected area of theology.

Morning Prayer -- Augustine Confessions X, 27

I have learned to love You late,
Beauty at once so ancient and so new.
I have learned to love You late.
You were with me/ within me,
and I was in the world

outside myself.

I searched for You outside myself and,
disfigured as I was,
I fell upon the lovely things of Your creation.

You were with me but ...

I was not with You.

The beautiful things of this world
kept me from You and yet,
if they had not been in You,
they would have no being at all.

You called me;
You cried aloud to me;
You broke the barrier of my deafness.
I tasted You and now
I hunger and thirst for You.

You touched me and I am inflamed,
inflamed with love of Your peace.

Augustine, Confessions X, 27

Welty and Stickley on Searching for the Root -- Theology of Space

It is through place that we put our roots, wherever birth, chances, fate or our own traveling selves set us down; but where these roots reach toward ... is the deep and running vein.
--Eudora Welty found at the Cornell University website here.

So, advancing from instance to instance, we reach the conclusion that any art worthy of the name must strike its roots deep into the life of the people, and must produce as freely and naturally as does the plant in summer.
--Gustav Stickley found in the first issue of The Craftsman, October 1901, "Style and It's Requisites"

From our place -- our context or space or whatever you want to call it -- that place in which we dwell, we set down roots, seeking for that deep and running vein (the wellspring). Where that place is, according to Welty, would be dependent on birth, chances, fate or our own selves. For me that would be more of the grace and providence of God.

Stickley speaks of art putting forth roots to seek that wellspring, as well -- and he found it in the "life of the people." (In this same issue he speaks of William Morris' socialism -- an idea that Stickley seems to embrace as well.) Again, I would place this wellspring within the presence and being of God.

Both speak of inspiration being somewhere beyond self and beyond "art." An intuitive looking for that which inspires?

Other thoughts:
Dwelling -- we call our houses dwelling. Compare how the word "dwelling" is used for God in the Bible.
The building of the tabernacle and the temple in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Bullets for Thursday

• It's still hot -- but there is some relief -- it's at least 5 degrees cooler this morning than it was yesterday morning.
• It was still 98 degrees at 11:00 pm last night when I went to the store. (Cathy is in the midst of this too.)
• Kitty is doing OK in this heat -- I'm keeping her well "watered" (via sub-q fluids) and nice and quiet inside. She's laying on the bathroom floor a lot too.
  
• We did karate in the hot dark again last night -- Entropy kept hitting herself with the Nunchuck. Our Sensei gave us MORE things to buy for Wednesday night class (does it ever end?)
• Chaos is auditioning for the Gwinnett County Honors Orchestra for 8th grade on Saturday (Dear, where is the audition? Uhm, it's at some middle school somewhere, mommy. How very specific!) -- it's called the Kendall Orchestra. She's the only cello player from her school auditioning and she's nervous.
• Entropy is now at the Middle School -- and she's carrying too many bags. (Bookbag, gym bag, pocketbook, violin case and laptop bag (yes, she gets to use a laptop)). I teased her about getting her a shopping cart -- so she can be a real bag lady, but I'm now thinking it wouldn't be such a bad idea... I'm going to have to help her thin down her stuff. It's funny looking at this slender little girl carrying so much stuff. Poor baby.
• I'm doing OK on ebay. It's more time-consuming than I thought it would be, but I'm learning how to use USPS Click'n'ship (so cool!) and use the internet to tell my carrier to come pick up the packages (so I don't have to schlep them to the Post office.) I've turned several pairs of jeans, some knick-knacks, some electronics bits and pieces and several dozen muslin bags into an Airport Express (which will be so useful) and a carbon fiber Bass Bow (French NOT German.) This is appealing to me: I'm getting rid of clutter and cleaning up my space, getting some pocket money for it and turning it into things we need. Cool beans.
• It's too hot to use the computer. I've been reading blogs, but just don't have the with-its to comment. I'm avoiding all things that put off heat...
• OH! And John Wesley was attacked by a mad woman with a pair of scissors. Look here. I KNEW JW must have been more interesting than I thought. It seems that Charles got in trouble with these two women, there were reports that Charles visited one of them at inappropriate times of the night and they confessed of fornication with Oglethorpe to Charles -- they made Charles' life a living nightmare. When he left, he left John a letter in which he told ALL, they demanded to see the letter; one of them attacked him verbally and the other attacked him with a pair of scissors, a pistol and then ripped off his sleeve with her teeth. What excitement! Maybe the life of JW could indeed make a good movie.
  
• We need rain.

Record Highs (Again) Today

We are expecting the heat index to be 110 again today. Record highs are expected again tomorrow. The heat is getting to me. It's so hot that there is a nuclear power plant that has closed -- because the water from the river to cool the core is too hot and wouldn't cool the power plant. Which means that there is less electricity to be had during the highest demand period ever in Georgia. We've experienced a couple of brownouts; I've had a couple of friends to loose their electricity. As it is, our air conditioning units can't really keep up.

Because of the lack of rain, we also have really bad air -- the rain hasn't been able to wash the pollutants out and so there are a lot of people suffering asthma like symptoms.

At the Karate studio, the kids take regular water breaks because the air conditioning unit can't keep up -- the Sensei has turned the lights off to make it cooler. It becomes karate in the hot dark.

The only place I find relief is the floor of the downstairs bathroom.

John Piper on Imagination -- Theology of Space

Imagination may be the hardest work of the human mind. And perhaps the most God-like. It is the closest we get to creation out of nothing. When we speak of beautiful truth, we must think of a pattern of words, perhaps a poem. We must conceive something that has never existed before and does not now exist in any human mind. We must think of an analogy or metaphor or illustration which has no existence. The imagination must exert itself to see it in our mind, when it is not there. We must create word combinations and music that have never existed before. All of this we do, because we are like God and because he is infinitely worthy of ever-new words and songs.
-- John Piper, "God is not Boring," found here.

Adam's first act was an act of creation -- naming the animals. God left something undone in creation; the animals were not named. God created humankind and gave us a co-creative place -- God gave us the task of naming. The act of creation is necessary to become Christ-like. Creation is the calling forth of order from chaos -- the ordering of space (and by extension, time.) To live continually in chaos is not what God would will for us.

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Well, Monday is washday, isn't it?

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My pictures most recently are sort of boring. I've been reducing my personal chaos by putting things on Ebay and Amazon Marketplace. Here's a FASCINATING photo of some crystal oscillators. Any one interested?