Less burdens, not more?

I haven't quoted the Bible yet on this blog, but as I was doing my morning meditations I was reading and meditating on Matt 11:28. Jesus says if we are burdened and carrying heavy loads, he will give us rest. What's astonishing, though, is he goes on to say how this will happen. Not by him taking over for us, but the contrary. We have to shoulder HIS yoke.

This antique language doesn't mean much to most of us, but a yoke is a large piece of old timey farm equipment, from the days of horse or oxen-drawn plows. Stepping in and picking up the burden of a yoke is a big deal. Yokes are not normally made for people power.

Jesus says, if you're overburdened, I will give you a YOKE and you will be less burdened. Because, he says, his burden is LIGHT.

I wonder.

Is his burden light? Or does he really pull far more than his share?

The Invention of Lying

First of all, don't waste your money going to see this movie. The best parts of the movie are on the trailer, and then you can spend your time doing something else more important and fun, like cleaning out your closets or edging the lawn! The movie was a great disappointment. They could have done major humor with this clever idea, but they weren't clever enough!

The film has some interesting subthemes, one of which mocks faith and the transcendant. The main character learns he can "lie" to people, and he tells his dying mother of a glorious afterlife, clearly patterned after the Christian images of heaven. This, we are led to believe, is a lie.

The problem is others hear about this and demand he tell them more of what he knows about "what happens to us after we die" and so he is confronted with constructing this alternate "reality". In a scene clearly intended to evoke Moses coming down off the mountain (only in the movie our protagonist writes the 10 things I know about the "Man in the Sky" on two pizza boxes), he describes the afterlife and what people are supposed to do to "earn" it.

It both a distortion of the Christian message and a mocking of it. We are led to believe these things are either outright lies or a fantasy.

Or are they?

Shopping!

Ever since we went to Holden Village this summer I have been trying to cut down on my shopping. Actually I have gone even further than that. Now this is not super hard because I don't have time to shop and I don't even like to shop that much.

I am trying to not buy new stuff for a year. What this means is: if I can purchase the item used, or on ebay, or through craigslist, or at a consignment store, fine. If I cannot, then I don't get it.

There will be a few things that I cannot purchase used (toilet paper doesn't count!) and I will purchase those. But it's amazing how much less you buy when you actually have to locate it, and it's also amazing how much cool stuff there is for pennies at consignment stores.

Last week I bought a pair of Cole Hahn dress shoes, very stylish and in great condition, for $4.

Front Porch Neighborhood

I live in Lake Highlands in a front porch neighborhood. Not that everyone has a front porch, but that's the kind of neighbors we have, and that's the kind of neighbors we try to be to others.

We get out there in the front yard, with our dogs and our kids or just our cup of coffee and we sometimes just pass the time a while, catch up, catch our breath, slow down.

We are so very blessed.

Grieving Lindsay

Today I wear Lindsay's necklace and earrings and I grieve some more the loss of this beautiful young girl taken from us six months ago. It can't possibly be six months---half a year. It's too painful, even for me, and I am not her momma or daddy.

Anne Lamott helped me last night. She said, "Only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it. Only by experiencing that ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way that we come to be healed."

Traveling without signposts

Last week we were following our Google map directions to get us to Wenatchee, WA. It was growing dark. We were both pretty tired because our biological clocks said it was 10:30 p.m. We'd been traveling since 11:00 a.m. and we still had a ways to go. Neither one of us knew where were going. We were driving down this new two lane highway. The map said we needed to go about 45 miles. Mountains and tall pine trees surrounded us. That was about it. No houses, no signs, no crossroads, no markers. It was VERY dark.

When you're tired and you don't know where you're going, and you don't know what to look for, you really need some sort of a sign. Zero. We were in the boonies. After an hour I concluded we were lost. I began to wonder if we'd have to sleep in the car.

Then! A sign! We weren't lost after all.

Even with a map, we still need signs to tell us we're on the right track.