What We Need When Life is a Blurr

 Sometimes we move through life on autopilot seeing only what we expect to see. Then something holds our gaze long enough for our brains to tune in to the moment. Part of living fully in the present is to be more aware of our surroundings and grateful for unacknowledged gifts. I find that such an attentiveness helps me daily.

But I do not always do it well...

 

Was that you, Lord, in the lady with the purple coat?


She wore purple with a red cap shielding her from the rain. Robed in purple, topped with crimson: a royal image, I recalled.

She hobbled clutching her cane in her right hand, pushing a three-wheeled cart with her left, wobbling upright with each step, with her bag swinging as a pendulum from the elbow. She looked right at home leaving the bus station or making her way through an airport terminal but not here—not in my part of town. I waited at the light as she crossed.

We say we are mindful of your Presence among us, Lord, but are we really? We usually see what we expect to see while on our way to work on a busy morning.  Predictable routines leave little time for unexpected sightings of glory.

Then again, you show up at unexpected places. I heard myself ask aloud to no one present, “Was that you, Lord?”

She caught my eye, but did I stop to see if I could help? No. She was a stranger, and I was on my way to somewhere else.

Aren't we always on the way to somewhere else when you break through our day and beckon for our attention? We need you to make it clear, Lord, if we are to step aside and see a great sight. I have this rule, you see, a rule that I do not pick up strangers. I'm afraid of taking them into my car for some perfectly good reasons you would understand. But sometimes we need to set aside our closely-held rules, else we just go on about our business, living by our own rules--kind of like I just did today when I saw her brown skin glistening wet from the morning rain on her purple coat.

This mental conversation filled the space of a glimpse, just the time it takes for the light to glow red then green. But a glimpse is all we have sometimes, is it not?

 Just a brush with glory. 

A brief visitation. 

A few seconds should be enough when we walk closely enough with you to recognize when you have a task for us to relieve suffering, to lighten another's load. But we can be so encumbered with our own cares as I was this morning that we cannot see another's.

We may miss the message.

We may not see you when you show up at times and places we are not expecting.

And I was strongly impressed with the reminder to look for you in the faces of the hurting, the aged, the lonely, the foreigner among us. The glimpse turned me inside out. My little morning sadness about other concerns vanished in a breath--the breath that I took in as I asked aloud, “Was that you, Lord?"

You give us our next breath, and you take it away. You take it away with beauty, nature and music, and you take it away with pain. And in that split second when we inhale silently and take in the sight before us, you remind us you are present. God with us.

So, yes, perhaps that was you, Lord, not transfigured at all but mysteriously present in the realigning of my thoughts and the shuffling of my priorities so that I might see more fully those around me.

Later my friend told me of an auto accident near the highway. An ambulance’s blue lights held waiting cars at bay while an upturned cart sat spinning silently at the edge of the road. I wondered if I had seen her earlier, but I was on my way to somewhere else.

On the way to somewhere else: that’s where much of life happens.

 Lord, speak to our hearts. Interrupt our days of ordinary sights and sounds so that we do not miss an opportunity to serve.

To you O Lord, I lift my soul. Show me your paths and teach me to follow;

guide me by your truth and instruct me.

Psalm 25: 1, 4

As The World Turns

When I was a young girl, Japan and China and Egypt were exotic countries and foreign cultures depicted in our Weekly Reader on newsprint, or in glossy National Geographic magazines in my grandfather's collection. I once thought their citizens - whether dressed in red silks or finely embroidered obis or white linen - were as different from the folks I saw every day as the traditional dress of the Dutch girl in wooden shoes and white winged hat. People of the world seemed to fit neatly into color-coded countries on an aged globe. They were on their side of the world, and we were on ours. If asked, I would have said we were more different than alike. I have changed my mind.

Two things we often discover as we get older: our parents get smarter, and the world gets smaller. While my parents have been smarter for a long time, lately I realize that our world has been shrinking. The globe is morphing into something that more nearly resembles Pangea with a unified land mass of related though conflicted people groups. There are many influences stimulating our willingness to see our world in a new way. I heard Thomas L. Friedman make a convincing case pitching the idea among others in The World is Flat years ago. And perhaps the best teacher is personal experience.

Our access to information is instantaneous and voluminous. Even my trusty little relic of a phone will call anywhere in the world with the push of a button. And I remember waiting in line to use a WATS line to call long distance once a week in college; to call it a land line would be redundant. The world is at our fingertips now.

Instant digital feed of gripping images from Japan this week shows the heartache of sons and daughters, mothers and fathers on the other side of the world fleeing rising water and searching for survivors. There was no ceremonial traditional dress or neighborhood of paper houses with raked gardens in these photos and footage - none of the things that might distinguish 'them' from 'us.' There was only destruction and loss and fear and anguish. The photos could have been you and me. And one day soon it just may be you and me. The human condition is common to us all. Disaster is the great equalizer.

Earthquakes in China, riots in Egypt, flooding, wars and rumors of wars abound. As long as we draw clear lines between them and us, it seems easier to block out the painful images or to temper the sharpness of their loss. But, as my friend, James Loftin, reminds us in http://jamesloftin.com/, when we submit our lives to Christ, we can expect "an increased sensitivity to the suffering of others" and to be transformed. James and Carolyn know something about moving from Mississippi to the other side of the world in their commitment to mission and ministry.

Transformation is not window dressing...not a buff and polish...nor a cosmetic nip and tuck; transformation is a process of becoming a new creation. Our hearts no longer break only for people who are just like us, but for the human family. As long as we see ourselves front-and-center of the universe, and everyone else on the back side or merely waiting in the wings while we - whomever we believe 'we' to be - take the chief role, we live life through a distorted map. If the map is sufficiently cropped, we can put ourselves in the center of any picture, and block out all others as extraneous.

And what does 'people who look like us' really mean? Do not the searing images of this week's natural disasters and international violence reveal tears streaming from anguished faces to be the same? The heart-wrenching losses we can see in Japan or China or Egypt are common to the human family; the joy of unexpected reunion, likewise, we celebrate together.

My little childhood world was rather homogeneous. My son's school photo this week shows friends and gifted, accomplished medical graduates who, while many are Americans, are also Indian, Korean, Chinese, Syrian, among many others we met. They reveal a variety of cultures with distinct individual differences which I do not diminish or gloss over with a "We Are the World" soundtrack playing, but also a shared humanity and vulnerability. I have also come to know and love friends who share a different cultural heritage. Are we not collectively enriched - not threatened - when we weave friendships across the lines that could so easily divide?

Another book title comes to mind, Same Kind of Different as Me, as we think of drawing clear lines of them and us. We shortchange ourselves when we draw the circle too closely around ourselves and keep others out. We may make far too many judgments and conclusions drawn from appearances alone. That fact, too, may be a shared human condition.

Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. I Samuel 16:7

The challenge to me is to live wisely with healthy respect and deep patriotism for our nation while viewing the world's inhabitants not as bad or good, or as enemy or friend, but as God's children too. Yes, it is idealistic. And it is also realistic.

May the ideals that guide our lives enlarge our view so that we see ourselves and others as they really are and not as we once thought.

May we not turn a blind eye to what may be a new reality for us, a new way of understanding, no matter how threatening it may be.

When necessary, may we shed the skin that no longer contains us as we grow and mature, no matter our physical age.

The Invisible Made Visible

Someone wrote who had just seen the Hubble/NASA IMAX show over the weekend and said it was fascinating. It is worth a drive to see it if you can. The show is a film of the space shuttle voyage to repair a critical part of the Hubble space telescope and includes dialog of the astronauts living and working together on the vastly larger-than-life screen.

Among the most memorable to me is a segment on the star nursery, * a place where stars are born. Beginning with a bright star in the night sky that we might see from Earth, the film moves in for closer and closer shots, zooming in as only Hubble can do. Breathtaking camera work and never-before-seen photos fill the expansive screen as they drive the camera deeper into the nebula to let us, too, discover this place beyond our sight. Through this lens, we have the means to view this heretofore invisible world--a world completely unlike the the one we inhabit on Earth, but real just the same. We just cannot see it with our eyes, unaided.

How like the things of the Spirit this is! I stand amazed at this reminder. We are indeed blind to so much that exists in our world, both physically and spiritually. Through the lens of Hubble, we have the means to view a small portion of the majesty of this physical world that otherwise eludes us. God allows us glimpses of a spiritual reality as well that exists beyond the capacity of our sense of sight . Such glimpses of God's Presence transcend our physical senses. Is this other reality a function of our heart or mind or soul? Some profess an easy answer, but I cannot pinpoint precisely where this vision is processed. I only know that it happens.

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, I pray - imploring God to grant a vision far beyond our own limitations.

This star shot is described as the “largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood.” The image, taken in ultraviolet, visible, and red light by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, spans about 100 light-years.
According to experts, this group of stars is called the R136, which is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula. This Nebula is a “turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.” The 30 Doradus Nebula is the largest and most prolific star-forming region in our galaxy.
Many of what we see as diamond-like icy blue stars are massive constellations that can only be seen in the 30 Doradus Nebula since it is the only nebula that can house such amazingly large group of stars. These “hefty stars,” are believed to transform as supernovas in the coming years.
This shot of the R136 were taken between October 20 and 27 this year by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. The blue lights are from the hottest and biggest stars, the green lights are from oxygen and the red lights are from hydrogen. Hubble /NASA photos are in the public domain.