Finally managed to take a few pics on Sunday. Listened to the Sermon online to allow for rest after a full week. Home 10pm from Volleyball Thursday evening. Haarsmas came over for a visit Saturday evening and Sunday we all watched Kennedy's first ice show. Too cute!!
Getting back in to 'Present over Perfect' and learned this... when you pray, imagine a bottle of oil and vinegar dressing, a cruet like you'd find on the table of an old-school Italian restaurant, with a plastic red and white checkered tablecloth and a shaker of hot pepper flakes. The vinegar, probably red wine vinegar, rests on top of the olive oil, softly red, flecked with oregano. The green-yellow oil is at the bottom of the bottle, rich and flavorful. When you begin to pray, pour out the vinegar first - the acid, whatever's troubling you, whatever hurt you, whatever is harsh and jangling your nerves or spirit You pour that out first. Pour out all the vinegar until it's gone. Then what you find underneath is the oil, glistening and thick: We're going to be fine. God is real and good and present and working. This is the grounding truth of life with God, that we're connected, that we're not alone, that life is not all vinegar - puckery and acidic. It is also oil, luscious, thick, heavy with history and flavor. But you have to start with the vinegar or you'll never experience the oil. God who loves me isn't just looking for apologies and report cards. He wants me to bring the vinegar so that I can taste the oil. He has all the time in the world to sit with me and sift through my fears and feelings and failings. That's what prayer is. That's what love is.
So if I remember this when things get going this week, perhaps it'll end up being one filled with flavor. Nieguist suggests starting with Silence... you can't outrun anything. All you can do is show up in the stillness. When you begin to carry God's love and true peace deep within your actual soul like a treasure chest, you realize that you don't have to fling yourself around the planet searching for those things outside yourself. You only have to go back into the stillness to locate it. That treasure you've been searching for - for so long- was there all the time. (:
