Graceful Sunflowers

My interest in grace and the law began this blog.  I hope that it continues to drive it into the future.  While I have spent more of my life these past few months in a garden, I also spend time teaching my blended English courses and find that the balance of technology and nature is quite like the law and grace.

It seems that everything can be used against other people in every way possible.  Technology is meant to aid our lives.  It is meant to be assistive and not master.  It is meant to empower and not enslave.  The law is meant to do the same.  The law is meant to empower and not enslave as well; it is to be balanced with grace.

Grace is just given.  Whether we ask for it or not, grace is there.  God gives more to us than any of us will ever be able to say or understand whether or not be know it or care.  Grace is grace.  It is because of the contract that God has written on all of our hearts to belong as a part of creation in balance with creation that we know the law without even studying it.  It is through studying the law that we understand how much grace we have.

God Shine on Us.  It seems that we need the light of God more than anything else in the world that we live in.  It is such and because we need the light of God that I love Son-Flowers.  I think sunflowers are beautiful; they are a balance of masculine and feminine while unapologetic for being so.  They are as God intended.  Strong, beautiful, bountiful, and lovely in the sun.

Sunflowers grow quickly and slowly.  Mine have been growing for a few months now.  They are waist high.  I have noticed that my favorite sunflower in the garden follows the sun.  In the morning, the head of the sunflower in flat towards the sky.  By the end of the day, it nearly directly faces the sunset.  It follows the sun all day and begins again in the morning.

Sister Sunflower teaches us to follow the light; Brother Sunflower teaches us to praise upright towards the stars.  How graceful the sunflowers are as they look always to the light!  Even when they are not in bloom, they know to follow.  They are created to do so just as we are.  It is written inside of them as their own contract with God.  Their covenant is to teach us all to stand tall, take nourishment in the light, and feed God's creation in the harvest.

While it is forming a bloom, I may move.  I don't know how far away the bloom is from showing how God has created my sunflower to shine.  It is the sharp edge of the law to move before the harvest.  Grace will come to my garden and my life when I do again.  I will have peace once more.

When I think of the song, All Creatures of Our God and King, I think about plants.  Plants grow like animals, yet we don't think of them as necessarily a part of us.  Mine have become a part me just as much as my beloved schnauzer, Rumi, and cat, Lyric.

In a duet, both musicians accompany one another.  Rumi and Lyric, grace and the law, and technology and nature have to balance one another and have one another to fully thrive.  There is no real soloist except the light. 

Conversations: Building Community

As I have been reflecting on the past week, I have thought about the phrase "building community" because I don't allow people in my home.  The reason I don't allow people in my home is that I have been to too many churches whom won't allow people to be in the congregation or join one without a tour of that person's house.

Ultimately, they don't build community.  These tours are for shopping and class purposes.  Further, I currently have a home that requires a person to walk through my bedroom to get to the only bathroom.  I am a single adult; therefore, no one else should be in my bedroom.  The amount of privacy that is violated when someone else enters into another person's home to see what that person has, usually under the guise of building community and getting to know one another, is completely volatile to me.  Even trying to come into my house is volatile to me when I have known the person for a long time.   

If it is about including me in community, then it shouldn't be about what I own.  If placement in a community is about a person, then getting to know that person can be done by being around that person.  There's a reason why we all have different houses.  It would be for me to invite someone to my home and not a requirement to have someone in my home.  It's just like illegal search and seizure.

It follows under the same understanding that when I have a relationship with someone that I don't have any physical contact with that person.  I am at an age when I get to choose whom I would be with for the rest of my life.  I am the only person to choose that person.  I am also happy that I have decided that I don't want a member of the clergy to even be there should I get married.  I believe in the separation of church and state that much.  Clergy members shouldn't be signing for tax deductions.  Even then, I wouldn't necessarily want a marriage license since I believe that matrimony is about a prayerful commitment.  I think that people should have to get a license for marriage, and if the couple wants it, they can then have a blessing ceremony with a member of the clergy.  It's an individual's right in this country to have the separation of church and state in that person's life.

Building community can be done far better in conversations.  Having activities that people volunteer to be there are the best way to build community, especially when they are finding ways to serve others at the same time.  Being a person who doesn't have contact with a lot of my relatives, because I actively choose not to have toxic people in my life, I believe that community building has to be founded in honesty.

The number one thing I can think of that has happened in my life that is an immediate violation of honesty and trust to me is when I have an appointment to meet with someone, for example, at a coffee shop or an IHop and that person also makes an appointment with another person who sits at another table.  Usually, that person will chime in part of the way through the conversation that, from my point of view, isn't actually part of the conversation.  If I am not aware that other people are going to be a part of the conversation, then that person won't exist to me.  I will completely ignore that person.  It's a power game for people to play against other people to demand one person has to be in the same place with another one.  It happens because of ego.  It's a game to remove the unknowing person's freedom of choice to make it appear like everything is okay when it isn't.

One of the definitions of morality that Bishop Spong has given me, that I am very grateful for as it clarified the issue, is that morality builds up and immorality tears down.  A lack of honesty and the removal of another person's freedom of choice tears down the dignity, maturity, and humanity of that person.  When everyone has the choice to be a certain place, then the conversation can be holy and intimate.  Other than that it is a power game for appearance and political purposes.

It's the same thing that happens when a person adds criteria for outreach in certain ministries.  When people become hospital chaplains, the criterion is for education and internship experience in hospitals (CPEs).  The criteria for socializing at someone's home is made up.  Having to give gifts to a congregation is made up.  The criteria to go on a retreat without the about ability to choose whom would be in that person's bedroom is made up and completely unsafe.  Lots of churches even expect that person to sell half of what that person owns in order to give money away in the name of God.  Except, then it really isn't a donation.  It's a fee that ultimately causes more poverty.  People have all of these different self imposed criterion on other people in order to make sure that they are living an expectation that is not his or her own.

I just don't allow people in my house.  My place is mine.  It is my sanctuary.  So, I get to choose that.  It's about healthy boundaries.