Up the Sunbeam

-- I love words. Words are gifts and God-full and made for beauty. But how is it that words can be so ugly? How is it that mouths that sing words of praise and speak words of loving God can, in the next breath, be making racial jokes? What in the world am I supposed to DO with that? I sit, open-mouthed, heart filling with fumes and toxic smoke, and everything in me wants to get up and call to task, or storm out in a showy and conspicuous exit . . . or unhear what I've heard. Have we made so little progress in my lifetime?  Have we moved so little from where we started?  In some ways I'm afraid we're further out than where began. It distresses me that racism is such a common theme that runs through secular places like schools (honestly in Christian schools too)--my children could tell you stories!  It infuriates me when people cry "RACISM" where there is none!  But racist talk breaks my heart when it comes from the mouths of people who are in positions of Ch

-- From the moment God put language in our mouths and made us people of words--created by and in the image of the pre-existent Logos, the Word --He made us people of symbols too.  For what are words but symbols?  Words represent, either audibly when spoken, or visually when written, an object, an idea or a piece of information. We use other things as symbols too--as for me, I have a little collection of frogs I'd like you to meet! This note I received from my parents several years ago is tacked up next to my computer monitor where I write: When I am tempted to get discouraged, my eyes are drawn to these amazingly affirming words, symbols in ink of a love I can only begin to fathom because I am a mother of two whom I also love to encourage!  My parents' words of encouragement accompanied one of the frogs in my collection--one of a number they have sent me over the years. I'll bet you're wondering, So Shaunie, what's the deal with the f rogs? And frog spit???

-- I hear them murmuring against You Lord. They wonder why You let it happen . . . why You let the plates of earth grind and scrape in their underwater hiding place, changing the very face of the earth, changing the angle of earth's tilt on her axis. They wonder why You let the waters of the Pacific leave their boundaries to march like an army of black dread over the face of northern Japan, stripping away whole lifetimes, whole worlds, our hearts with them. They wonder why You let the danger pile higher and higher on these already beleaguered people with the looming threat of nuclear disaster. When they pry their horrified eyes away from the trials of the nation of Japan, 24/7 news takes them to the Middle East, where violence is boiling like a witch's cauldron in some kind of twisted fairy tale where evil always wins in the end.  They wonder why despots live so long.  They wonder why it's so easy to spark the wrath of the mob.  They wonder if there is any hope for

-- After decades of not getting it, (I mean completely obtuse, dumb-as-a-post not getting it), finally the combination is entered, the tumblers have rotated into alignment and the lock is open!! Welcome to my epiphany! I have been asking God for most of my adult life to give me a way to understand trials and suffering in the lives of His children that would allow me to really, actually, truthfully, from-the-inside-out, see them in a positive light.  I just could never get all the way there. I always believed that God brings good out of things the enemy intends for evil, but I NEVER EVER could FEEL anything but dread and sadness and fear when it came to facing trials.   Worry and   fear of what God might allow in order to teach me something have been my long-standing battle. I have learned and wrestled with the truth and I have chosen trust instead of fear, but it has been hard every time.  What I longed for was the kind of understanding that is so integrated into my thinking that

-- Hero Husband and I have something of a City Mouse-Country Mouse dynamic to our relationship and because of the difference in our backgrounds, we have learned to give each other room for our differing needs and preferences. Several years ago on a trip to Lake Tahoe, what my city boy most needed was quiet relaxation in the hotel, and what I desperately needed was mountain air and unhurried time with my camera. Selfless love enabled us each to give the other what they needed--I happily wished him a good time as he rested and relaxed in the hotel, and he gave me the freedom to go to the mountains for the day. I know he wasn't completely thrilled with the idea of me out traipsing around in the wilderness by myself, but he understood my deep need to replenish my reserves of serenity that can get so depleted by living in the city (well, the suburbs, but it feels like city by comparison to where I grew up). I took my camera and left early, excited to explore some nearby trails and wa