Learning to sort

2 Chron. 20:15b

Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God's.

Today I am holding three prayers next to each other, one being an entreaty that Jesus makes of us, and two being entreaties that we make of Jesus:

• Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.... For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Mt 11:29-30)
  
  
• Let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you. (From the Methodist Covenant Prayer)
  
  
• God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. (From the Serenity Prayer)

What is mine to do today? What is not mine to do today?

Jesus, please help me to see more clearly those things you are calling me to do; give me the will and the courage and the energy to do those things; help me to let go of false guilt about things that are not mine to do.

Help me to learn from you.

A good book

Romans 12:9

Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good.
(The Message)

I just finished a book that is good in two senses of the word. First, it is excellent; of high quality. But it is also good in the sense of being the opposite of evil—or at least that's what my experience was in reading it. If evil has a kind of metaphysical bad smell to it, Candlelight, by Susan Phillips, is a bouquet of mixed spring flowers. It is filled with stories of God's benevolence, and I find this encouraging and, well ... "good."

In my review of Candlelight on Amazon, I go into more detail about exactly why I like this book so much....

Flowers like flames

Acts 2:1–4

The flames separated and settled on each of them....

Ten years ago at this time I was on a retreat at Our Lady of Solitude in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.

During most of my three and a half weeks at OLS, the only other retreatant was an abbess on sabbatical from her convent in India. She and I spent much of each day together in silence in the chapel. One day she looked at me knowingly and pointed to the now flowering ocotillo plant outside the chapel window. "It's almost Pentecost," she said. "Those flowers remind me of flames."

The anticipation of Pentecost in the middle of one of the hardest years of my life. Spring in the desert during an El Niño year. Flowers like flames.

The director of OLS when I was there, Sister Therese Sedlock, has since passed away, and OLS is now the home of five warmly dressed Poor Clares, four cats, and two puppies.

I wish I could return to OLS. I sent an email to ask about the possibility, and one of the sisters replied that they now offer retreat space only to Catholic priests.

But in my heart, I'm there. I found a lovely photo of an ocotillo plant, on a lovely blog. Worth visiting. Do click.

(Especially appropriate because Sr. Therese loved Cardinals, and she knew the individual birds that visited her bird feeder. She also had a special relationship with some members of the Arizona Cardinals football team and would fax them prayers and messages of encouragement before their games.)

Surprises

Acts 1:9–11
Jesus rose from the dead (Easter), appeared to various people over the course of forty-plus days (the Easter season), ascended into heaven (Ascension), then sent the Holy Spirit to those he had left behind (Pentecost)—a series of terrifying, beautiful surprises.

Today is the sixth Saturday of Easter; Thursday was Ascension Day; Pentecost is in eight days. We're in the middle of all this crazy new life. The bulbs I planted in December put up a few flowers and are now reduced to drooping green stalks, but ... the wild irises outside my office window are rioting. There are six flowers out there this morning. Go figure.