27. Live adventurously. When choices arise, do you take the way that offers the fullest opportunity for the use of your gifts in the service of God and the community? Let your life speak. When decisions have to be made, are you ready to join with others in seeking clearness, asking for God's guidance and offering counsel to one another?
Alison pregnant with Caitlin
carrying precious cargo
driving them around
both a privilege and a worry.
[A memory as i drove the three children to the woodland burial]
Psalm 121 (King James Version)
I will lift up
mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
My help cometh
from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.
He will not
suffer thy foot to be moved:
he that keepeth
thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that
keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is thy
keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not
smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord shall
preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
The
Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in
from
this time forth, and even for evermore.
I look up to the mountains
does my strength really come from those great heights?
No, indeed not. For my strength comes from God,
from the divine spark, that of God within me
within and around us all
co-Creator with us, Creator of us,
Creator for us.
[reflection during Meeting for Worship on The Message version of Psalm 121, verse one following on from the King James version being read at the graveside]
extract from "A Kite for Michael and Christopher" by Seamus Heaney
My friend says that the human soul
is about the weight of a snipe,
yet the soul at anchor there,
the string that sags and ascends,
weigh like a furrow assumed into the heavens.
Before the kite plunges down into the wood
and this line goes useless
take in your two hands, boys, and feel
the strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.
You were born fit for it.
Stand in here in front of me
and take the strain.
(thank you dear Iona for finding this for me)
cord-bearers
- take the strain
(let me fall)
release the cords
and she will fly
(but she is my anchor
who will hold me now?)
During the Memorial Meeting for Worship this was sung:
"How Can I Keep From Singing?"...Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear its music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?
Enfolded in the arms of girls i've known since before their births
comforted by those who once i gently soothed and rocked
and sung to by a girl of wisdom true, the Gean girls wild and free.
COURAGE
Courage has roots.
She sleeps on a futon on the floor and lives close to the ground.
Courage looks you straight in the eye.
She is not impressed by power trippers, and she knows first aid.
Courage is not afraid to weep and she is not afraid to pray,
even when she is not sure who she is praying to.
When Courage walks, it is clear that she has made the journey from loneliness to solitude.
The people who told me she was stern were not lying;
they just forgot to mention she is kind.
Courage is not afraid to weep and she is not afraid to pray,
even when she is not sure who she is praying to.
When Courage walks, it is clear that she has made the journey from loneliness to solitude.
The people who told me she was stern were not lying;
they just forgot to mention she is kind.
(from "The Book of Qualities" by J Ruth Gendler. Quoted in a card sent to me by Alison which has been of such great solace to me. So many cards and letters over so many years, each with precious messages of comfort, encouragement, love and spirit)
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