Wednesday, February 28, 2007 |
What would you ask if you had just one question? |
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This was last Sunday's service at church for which I was responsible:
Joy and Sorrows Children's Story: King Solomon as remembered by a very young Rosie My dictionary told me that roots are the parts of plants that grow underground and deliver life-sustaining necessities; the parts of hair and teeth that hold them in place; or that which is the source of something. I like to think of our Unitarian Universalist living tradition as all of these things: life-sustaining, holding us in place like an anchor, and a source. Our tradition draws from many sources – our own experiences, the words and deeds of very wise people, the ideas of other religions and spiritualities, Jewish and Christian teachings that call for us to love one another as we love ourselves, and humanist teachings that ask us to use our heads as much as our hearts. This month, our children and their teachers explored some of the stories of our Jewish and Christian roots. I would like to share with you what they learned.
Call and response reading of this page…….150 from Special Times Tim and Tom read back and forth It is said that God wrote the 10 commandments, or Decalogue, into stone tablets with a finger. Moses took that tablets to the Jewish people, but they had grown tired waiting for him to return with them and had melted their gold into an image of a cow and were praying around the cow. This angered Moses and God and they tablets were thrown to the ground and broken. After a while the people felt sad about ha they had done and God forgave them, and made a new set of stone tablets with t he commandments, or rules, written on them. The first four rules are about how people should relate to god – whom they called Yahweh in their language, and the next 6 had to do with how they would behave with each other. Much later, when Jesus was going around preaching about how Yahweh wanted people to live kindly and lovingly, he added a commandment, sometimes called the Great Commandment. HE said that that people should love Yahweh with their hearts and souls, but that they should also love their neighbors as themselves. The teachings of Jesus were the focus of their second lesson. A moment ago I asked you think about how many of the 10 Commandments you could name. They are (read list). The kids had a good time coming up with more commandments that they would add to the list. I invite you to share with us your own additions to the 10 Commandments. Just shout them out and I will repeat them into the mic. People offered up great rules such as “thou shalt listen and speak carefully” and “though shalt be open and honest about one’s beliefs”.
Words to Spirit of Life go like this: Spirit of Life, come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. Blow in the wind, rise in the sea, move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice. Roots hold me close, wings set me free; Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me. Let us love another because love is from God. Whoever does not love God, does not know God, for God is love. No one has ever seen God; if we love another God lives in us. God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God abides in them. There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear. Those who say “I love God” and then hate their brothers and sisters are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seem. No one has ever seen God; if we love another, God lives in us. 1 John 4 Joan asks in her song, what if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home. What if God had a name – would you use it? What if God had a face – would you look into it if it meant you would have to believe? What would you ask if you had just one question? You may not know this about me but I have taken more chemistry than I probably really need to get thru life. I returned to KU to take undergrad classes years after I had already completed a bacherlors degree in Latin American Studies and found myself in the first semester of basic chemistry again. I remember having a talk with my professor about how chemistry is taught. Without going into the details, I remember her talking about how students are not presented with the entire story of how atoms function up front, but rather a simple metaphor is used at first to describe the placement of all the little tiny parts of atoms. Later, the metaphor changed to something else, and I asked what has happened to the old one. “well, you weren’t ready for that one back then so we kind of lie until you’re ready to understand it more fully” was sort of the answer I got. How annoying was that!? I was just supposed to forget the other way I had learned it and suddenly embrace this new metaphor with gusto. I needed time to process this new metaphor, but also the concept of how chemistry teachers thought we learned. I wanted the real story, the second one, up front. I didn’t want to replace my old idea with something else, that I was not familiar with and that also was not comforting. I also didn’t like feeling that I had been tricked!
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posted by Rosie @ 2/28/2007 09:19:00 AM | 0 comments |
Thursday, February 22, 2007 |
Ocean Beach, CA |
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This is me hanging 10, while watching the surfers.
Enough said.
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posted by Rosie @ 2/22/2007 08:53:00 AM | 4 comments |
Sunday, February 18, 2007 |
I'm going to California and I'm taking a..... |
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Remember that game where you had to go thru the alphabet saying what things you were taking with you on a trip to California, until at the end you were repeating 26 things in order that you were taking with you... Well, I am taking: attitude - a very bad one that I hope to change while there, bathing suit - to help get rid of the attitude, not that I love my body fishbelly white and 3/4 nekkid, but some sand in my asscrack might help remind me of what is important, comb - to detangle my beach-blown hair, drained spirit - it has been a long Winter earrings - one pair that I will leave in the entire trip, friendship - going with a dear friend, seeing others from across the U.S., and making new ones, good will - something that there is never enough of, hymnal - I have to plan a church service while I am on "vacation", irony - it's actually going to be as warm or warmer in Kansas than in SoCal, jaded self - cynical and worn out, kansas - I reek of it, and I am OK with that, liver - my own; there will be some imbibing with old friends but I'll try to rest the liver, mandate - from Hubby; to relax and have some fun, non-fiction book for non-fiction book club, Radical Hospitality, open mind - I am there to have fun but also to learn, phone - gotta stay in touch with home, quick smile - not enough smiles in airports, raincoat - rain is predicted, shoes - but not too many as I always overpack, tampons - yay got my period right before vacation, umbrella - again with the rain, vibrator - just kidding, Lucile, work - sadly, yes, I will have to do work, but on the beach is better than the office, xenophilia - because differences are good, yours truly - duh, zest - something that I think I have deep inside me still, although it has been buried. So there it is. My list of things to take with me on my working vacation with my pal Lucile. I hope to bring back a recharged, less shriveled and exhausted person that resembles the current Rosie but feels less like a person who feelss like Winter will never end.
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posted by Rosie @ 2/18/2007 04:44:00 PM | 2 comments |
Thursday, February 15, 2007 |
?- February 15, 2007 |
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Rest in peace, Walker. We will miss you.
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posted by Rosie @ 2/15/2007 10:40:00 AM | 7 comments |
Tuesday, February 13, 2007 |
Winter blahs |
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I hate Winter. Bring on the 95 degrees and 80% humidity and I'll be ever so happy. I am waiting for Spring, I am waiting for Walker to die. Every time I am convinced he is gonna go, he perks up a little and wags his tail in that helicopter-ey way that announces his hounddogginess. I am curled up with him tonight in front of the fireplace. He is in his ratty blanket, shivering or twitching, I can't tell which. My sleeves are wet from the snot and tears I have wiped all over them because I couldn't reach the facial tissues ( I wrote that just for you Amy in Texas, not kleenexes). A pleasant distraction is an unexpected addition, that came with the other new additions. It seems that the new goats came with baggage - at least 2 of them are knocked up. One of them has already blessed us with Nibbler, our housegoat. Nibbler is a baby pygmy goat, which is about the size of a teenage cat. I keep expecting him to purr as he rides around tucked in my overall bib, reaching up to bang his head into my chin. I learned tonight from Wendy the Goat Lady (who has provided milk for Nibbler so that we didn't starve him - his trashy mother abandoned him already) that this banging against that which feeds him is an instinct that actually makes his mama's milk letdown so he can tug at her more and stuff his fat little belly. I keep thinking that goat milk might be some sort of miracle moisturizer for my skin, so I'll have the softest, youngest looking double chin in all of Douglas County. I also was thinking that it was kinda gross to have this baby goat smearing goat milk all over my face, but then I realized I have had worse things on my chin. Banging me in my leche-swollen teats would not have made my body crank out food any faster for the Kiddo. Goats are weird. I am looking forward to joining Lucille in San Diego next week. I need some sun and to not have to drive everyone else everywhere for a few days. Cabs. What a great idea. Someone else driving me around for a bit. I like the sound of that.
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posted by Rosie @ 2/13/2007 10:56:00 PM | 6 comments |
Friday, February 09, 2007 |
Ain't Nothin but a Hound Dog |
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Walker is dying. He has been experiencing kidney failure for a couple of months, and has gone downhill, losing his chubbiness and morphing into skin and bones, rather quickly. We know he will die soon, but that knowledge doesn't make it any easier. Oh how I wish it did. I bought him a sweater last Sunday since he is so thin and he shivers all the time. Gypsy said I was for sure trying to kill him by making him wear the thing in front of the other dogs. The humiliation! He went outside Wednesday night and didn't come home. Hubby was up until 1:30 looking for him, calling him home. Thursday morning we were convinced that he had gone off to die alone, as dogs are programmed to do. Bundled up against the 20 degree cold and the light wind, we followed Mandy as she acted Sacagawea, leading us on their many trails worn into the fields that are part of the vigilant routine of protecting their humans. After looking in and under everything and an hour of the chill creeping into our bones, we gave up. Tears streaming down our faces, we knew we would have to wait until the turkey vultures and Spring told us where he had gone. And as I was driving to school to get the Princess from kindergarten, who do I see staggering up through the front pasture, but the ghost of Walker's old self - old skin and bones meandering toward the house in his ridiculous turtleneck sweater that makes him look like some old, stodgy, pipe-smoking professor. He has been resting comfortably in a blanket or two since then. He slept with us last night, and I fell asleep with tears and snot puddling on my pillow. This morning he had a little chicken and rice soup, which I had heated for too long in my morning distraction and had to cool with ice cubes so he could lap it up. He is stretched out on the carpet, waiting for a sunbeam to warm his too thin body, but I don't think they will come along today to help him out. It looks really gray and cold, and I feel really gray and cold. Walker dying with all this time to "prepare" gives our family a chance to love on him, hug him, and tell him goodbye. None of us had that opportunity when my father and hubby's uncle died, and I think we are both dealing with some of those feelings of regret surrounding the circumstances of their deaths. I thought it was very strange when Gracia Burnham, the Kansas Missionary whose husband died in a raid to free them from the Philippine captors who held them hostage, said of her husband "He died a good death." I am not sure I understand what she was trying to say, but I guess that is all we can hope for - a good death.
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posted by Rosie @ 2/09/2007 09:08:00 AM | 3 comments |