Blueness

 



It is a stark and compelling contrast to think about the joy of Christmas and the sadness this time of year evokes. As I prepare to honor Blue Christmas as well as Christmas itself, I find it helpful to think about the color blue. When I think of blues I think of a Marc Chagall stained glass window. I invite you to ponder blueness.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Say My Name

Image
  Respect the dignity of every human being. It begins with their name. It honors who they are. It speaks their name lovingly. Say My Name by Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi ( A Torres Strait Islander and Tongan storyletter. They descend from the Zagareb and Dauareb tribes. ) My name was my name before I walked among the living before I could breathe before I had lungs to fill before my great grandmother passed and everyone was left to grieve My name was birthed from a dream A whisper from gods to a king A shout into the stars that produced another that shone as bright They held me without being burnt, humming lullabies in pidgin My name was passed down from my ancestors They acknowledged my roots grew in two places So, they ripped my name from the ocean and mixed it into the bloodlines of my totems My name has survived the destruction of worlds and the genocidal rebirthing of so-called ones It’s escaped the overwhelmed jaw of the death bringer Many a time It has survived the conflicts that r...
Read more

Tragic Optimism

Image
Tragic Optimism...there it is, another one of those paradoxical couplings! But it speaks to me somehow, resonates really, as our time of disorientation and disillusion continues in lengths for which we have no comparison. Except perhaps in history as in slavery or holocaust or the Bible as in the Exodus! Tragic optimism is a term coined by Victor Frankl which came to life after 9/11 when research on resilience found a strange and strong meaning in these words, a synergism in their inherent tension. While telling similar stories and confessing similar emotions that which separated the resilient from the not so resilient was a capacity to make tragically optimistic meaning of the horrific event, to acknowledge pain and tragedy while holding hope, the thing which does not disappoint, the thing with feathers! Tragic optimism then seems to be much like the Christian virtue which Jesus modeled of holding sorrow and love gently together. It is a healthier psychological framework of...
Read more

Be the Glue

Image
  Blessed be God who animates our lives and calls us to question and to understand radically subversive ways of leadership. AMEN The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. These critical words come at the height of Jesus’ conversation with/lecture to the disciples who are grappling with greatness, letting go of their own notions of such and embracing or living into God’s greatness offered. In fact if we take a larger view of the last few weeks this is the third time the disciples have grossly misunderstood holy greatness! Yet we are somewhat consoled because three is a magic number in the Bible. Jesus has been very patient with their continued misunderstandings. In this Gospel passage He challenges them in the face of their selfish requests to dig deeper and enter a new understanding of what following Jesus means, what the implications of going to the cross are, and whose ultimate leadership and authority is at issue: not theirs or ...
Read more