Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: Jesus

  • Hallelujah!

    Her friend, still hospitalized with complications following back surgery two weeks ago, was very much on her mind as she was getting out of her car to run into Dollar Tree. The song Hallelujah was being played in the parking lot. She had just texted the K.D. Lang version to her friend a couple of days earlier. Exiting Dollar Tree she realized that the beautiful music was not being piped into the parking lot — at the far side of the parking lot she could see a man playing a saxophone!

    She walked to Winn-Dixie at the opposite end of the strip mall, appreciating the music so much. As she was about to enter the store she stopped to speak to two women who were also hearing the music and trying to figure out where it was coming from. The younger woman was in a wheel chair. I gushed, “It is live music! You can see the guy way over there playing the horn. When I first got out of my car he was playing Hallelujah. I had just sent that song to my friend, Linda, who is in the hospital with complications following back surgery.”

    The older woman pushing the wheel chair said, “My name is Linda!”

    The younger woman in the wheel chair added, “My mother’s name in Linda!”

    We all felt something so holy…. They said in unison, “We will be praying for your friend, Linda.”

    When I got back in my car I drove to the far side of the parking lot where the man was playing. Rolling down my window and thanking him for the surprise of the beautiful music playing, I told him about having heard him playing Hallelujah, and about Linda. He said he would pray for Linda.

    He had a tip jar so I pulled a ten-dollar-bill out and handed it to him. As an after thought, I asked if I could take his photo. He grabbed his saxophone and posed!


    Earlier that morning when I had sent a text to my daughter updating her about Linda, my daughter texted back this beautiful prayer:

    Lord, there are times in our lives we do t even know what to pray for, but we know that you know our hearts. So for our sweet friend, Linda, we ask for healing and the absence of fear. For Fred and her friends we ask for peace, comfort, and for all we ask for hope. We beg for understanding as we struggle to surrender to your will. Comfort us dear Lord. We ask these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

    Looking at the photo later I read the minstrel’s sign: PLEASE HELP ME. I HAVE 3 KIDS. I DON’T HAVE MONEY FOR FOOD AND RENT. GOD BLESS YOU.

    And, I noticed his hat: FBI JESUS. Expanding the photo more, beneath the FBI in small print I read FIRM BELIEVER IN.

    Hallelujah!

  • Learn, Grow, and Change

    One of the most extraordinary aspects of our humanity
    is our capacity to learn, grow, and change.

    ~ Sheryl Chard (Gratefulness.org)

    One week ago today I got a call from the son of my long-time business partner, Joel Bowman, asking who in Kalamazoo could take his dad to the ER.

    Of course, I am in Florida. A former student, Deb Doerschler, is also still in the south-for-the-winter location. Joel’s wonderful friend, Bob Kipp, was at their place up north. I suggested a neighbor who has been part of the behind-the-scenes support for the past several years. Thankfully, she was able and willing.

    Joel was admitted to the hospital that evening.

    I was so angry a few days later when Joel’s son did not even let me know that Joel had been moved to a skilled nursing facility. Two of Joel’s friends had tried to visit him at the hospital, and were told he had been discharged.


    The anger has born fruit. (Uncomfortable emotions have a way of doing that.)

    Wednesday night, seeking some inner peace around the situation, I was led to watch “The Roots of Anger” by Thich Nhat Hanh on YouTube. Here are my notes:

      You don’t have the right to keep your anger to yourself alone more than 24 hours.

      You should tell him or her but in calm speech. If you cannot do it, you can write it down on a piece of paper.

      Sentence one:
      I suffer. I am angry, and I want you to know it.

      (I don’t know why you have done such a thing to me. I don’t know why you have said such a thing to me. I suffer very much. I’m angry. I want you to know.)

      Sentence two:
      I am doing my best.

      (I am practicing mindful breathing and mindful walking, generating the energy of mindfulness in order to take care of my anger, in order to bring relief, and then I will be looking deeply into my anger to see what the root of my anger is. That is to see whether it is my wrong perception that has created anger, maybe because of some of your unskillfulness.)

      Sentence three:
      Please help me. I need your help.

    Thursday afternoon as I was doing yoga, awareness visited me and opened my heart. I had total body memory of the first night my mom was at an adult foster care home. After dropping her off, I had my best night’s rest in months.

    Relief from my uncomfortable emotions because she was not in her own home totally hid from awareness her uncomfortable emotions because she was not in her own home.

    Compassion for all of us washed over past, present and future.

    When I was able to speak to Joel while he was in the hospital he told me he had been taken captive, was being held in some industrial compound, and some kind of experiment was being conducted on him. I said, “I understand totally that from your perspective Western medicine might feel like that, but you are in Bronson hospital. Nancy Anderson took you to the ER because you were very sick and could have died if you did not get treated immediately.”

    I encouraged him to look on the walls of the room. Could he see a white board with his name on it? Yes, he could. He told me it also had the date and the names of the doctor and nurses assigned to his care.

    “It isn’t aliens who are taking care of you,” I assured him.

    To which he replied, “In a way, we are all aliens….”

    Profound awareness.

    These past years I have often been angry at Joel’s son and daughter-in-law. I have been an alien to the roots of that anger. The roots of that anger had been guilt and pain over my lack of awareness for my mom’s emotional needs during that time.

    And for all of these years I had been an alien to the forgiveness and peace awareness brings.

    Awareness frees us.

    Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’

  • I Need a Hug

    Sacred Stories

    That afternoon she had watched a seminar with Kyle Gray about the importance of our asking angels for help. During dinner with friends, a string of text messages revealed amplification with the friend’s granddaughter.

    “Ask the angels for help,” she encouraged her friend, as she received such a strong sense that the maternal grandmother was there helping.

    Boom!

    “I need a hug,” wrote the granddaughter.

    The following morning more encouraging news came from the household.

    You will likely agree we have nothing to lose by asking the angels for help. We all have loved ones in spirit. And, after all, isn’t Jesus an angel? Buddha? Thich Nhat Hanh?

    Kyle says, “It’s not how big the miracle is, it is simply how much room you make for it.”


  • Nothing Left to Forgive – COVID

    Jesus came to teach many things, but forgiveness is chief among them.

    And yet with compassion there is nothing left to forgive.

    Forgiveness is only needed when there is something held against another, some kind of blame.

    When you see deeply into another, that judgment falls away and there is nothing left to forgive.

    ~ Aaron

    John and I are back from taking our PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test checking for Covid. The results should be back in about 20 hours, but the roller-coaster of symptoms leave very little doubt.

    On Wednesday, as we were traveling back from a fantastic visit with Stacey and her family in Tennessee, she sent word that she had a headache and was suspicious. We had plans for dinner with friends, Linda and Larry, so she would test before that. She had a positive home antigen test.

    John and I went into self-quarantine, and in about 24 hours, I began to have symptoms. John was about a day behind me.

    Deepest gratitude for EVERYTHING Linda and Larry have been doing to support our recovery, often anticipating our needs before or while we were not even able to articulate them.

    I bow down to each and EVERYONE who prayed, sent distant healing, held energy for our recovery. And kudos to my Dharma Sister, Doctor friend, and her endless text support. I told her I need to put her on retainer….

    After 12 hours of violent vomiting, during which I was unable to tolerate even water — and an UNRELENTING excruciating headache — a welcome whiff of relief came. I have never tasted anything more wonderful than the first sips of 7-Up that stayed down. I am still running a low-grade temperature, with mostly respiratory stuff now, like a bad summer cold. John reports feeling weak, tired, and we both have a very diminished appetite. And a diminished sense of smell.

    But today I put on my apron and made breakfast sausage for John. And I did a load of laundry.

    Such a tender heart for our daughter Stacey.

    She has had such a difficult time with our hyper vigilance, and then for our exposure and contracting Covid to be a result of our visit with her. The compassion has spawned MANY tears as she and I FaceTime during our mutual quarantine, checking up on one another.

    This morning I wrote in my journal: “This isn’t so bad if not for the need to be constantly vigilant that things may have taken a turn for the worse. I finally feel the need to write about all of this.”

    I assured Stacey I take full responsibility for having put myself at risk. Her, “I am so sorry…” led us both to the profound compassion Jesus taught that there is nothing left to forgive.

    This is the odd part.

    When we went to grandson, Brad’s, band concert, John and I stayed double masked. His band rocked the house, and we wore our Apache Jericho shirts proudly!


    Later that evening, it was such joy to watch our granddaughter, Courtney, and her Bride’s Tribe head out for an evening of country line dancing.

    It never entered my mind to consider lateral risk.

    I am sooooooooo grateful to Stacey for being vigilant and protecting Linda and Larry (and any others) from exposure through John and me.

    We were treated with such kindness today by the young woman who took our nasal swab. We went in together, sat in the same wide chair, and she called it a strange kind of date. She was so gentle with me, much more than I had been with myself when I administered the home antigen test.

    Compassion wells up in my heart and makes my eyes leak.

    Words cannot begin to express how thankful I am that Stacey had chosen to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for me while she was here in Michigan the first week of August. In fact, she received that shot 3 weeks to-the-day of her testing positive!

    As we are all still recovering, we are recognizing so many gifts in this, and that is likely to continue for some time.

    In addition to donating my “Covid-Created” long hair to Wigs For Kids at some point, Stacey mentioned donating convalescent plasma.

    Sounds like a very good way of making lemonade out of lemons….


  • Disappearance of Dogma

    If the definition of “dogma” is a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true then I wonder what we call the state of not seeing anything as incontrovertibly true? Perhaps that is the disappearance of dogma….

    I have been listening to Kelvin Chin, who was a test subject in the first medical studies on meditation in the U.S.— conducted by Boston cardiologist Herbert Benson, MD in 1971 (published in Scientific American, 1972). One of his teachings is about what happens when we die. What he teaches produces an effect on me. Until recently I had never heard of Kelvin. Now, I feel compelled pay attention to what he is saying.

    When our daughter, Stacey, was visiting us here in Michigan we watched Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Very adolescent, mildly offensive, the NASCAR superstar Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) must pull himself out of the depths of despair and restore his honor on the racetrack. We had heard a lot of the lines from the movie, but now we have heard Ricky Bobby praying to 8 pound baby Jesus.

    The time with Stacey was a lot of fun. She had a Michigan perfect weather-week. We rode bikes. We walked downtown at sunset. We ate. They drank. We laughed. We cried. The week was also a lot of work. Soul work.


    As Stacey and I were shoulder-to-shoulder for hours assembling two 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles, not all of our talk about Jesus was as laughable as Ricky Bobby’s 8 pound Baby Jesus. Both Stacey and her mom are obviously experiencing a spiritual crisis of sorts. Growing pains… As Stacey implored me to not take her faith away from her, I spoke the gospel truth, “I don’t want you to give up your faith. I would hope you will go MORE deeply into your faith, beyond the surface level where some are inside the circle and some are outside, to where your faith is an act of inclusion not exclusionary.”

    We discussed how mystics of different traditions describe a common “reality” that seems to be summed up as the mystic and all of reality are One. The purpose of our individual spiritual growth is to achieve that oneness in our everyday experience, to transcend limited identity and re-identify with the all that is.

    “Can you help me understand how a person who has never taken a flu shot, who teaches that germs don’t cause illness, that our own immune system is designed to keep us healthy came to the conclusion it is best to take the vaccine?” she queried.

    “You have to see my world view to understand that,” I responded. “I don’t experience myself as separate from anything. I don’t buy bottled waters because I see the miles of toxic waste poisoning the ocean. I saw the face of my friend, who is a doctor (she and her husband are both doctors) having to decide who gets treated and who does not. I felt the pain of family not being able to be with their loved one who are dying. For me, my heart was so filled with this collective pain, I could not even experience a “personal” point of view. I don’t want to get the virus, I don’t want to give the virus. I want to alleviate as much suffering as I can. Any small personal inconvenience or possible risk was nothing compared to what I experienced as the impact on the whole.”

    I went on to share that I had the benefit of personally knowing an epidemiologist who was intimately involved in all of this. He isolated. He masked. He and his wife got the vaccine as soon as possible. I had the experience of knowing a man whose son and daughter-in-law were living abroad working with an international team of scientists to develop a vaccine (knowing this sort of pandemic was inevitable). I had the benefit of the experience — if you would call it that — of losing a good friend and ministry colleague to Covid. She was in the hospital for pancreatitis in March when we went into lock-down. I heard her voice. I felt her fear. I know of the helplessness of her daughter, her grandson, and her husband as they were unable to be with her.

    My experience meant I could not make a choice to knowingly risk that suffering for another.

    You cannot un-know an experience. All of my experience shaped my choice.

    A day or so later, as she was getting ready for bed, Stacey asked me to give her again the Reader’s Digest version of how I arrived at my conclusion. I could feel her desire to go beyond the understanding of her own heart to the ability to articulate that world view to another.

    We talked about moving beyond our own effort and inviting nonphysical support in everything we do.

    We shared how vulnerable it can feel as you let go of beliefs that have supported us in the past.

    I told her if someone had been able to have this kind of conversation with me I may not have had to step outside of the Christianity I loved to continue to develop spiritually.

    Kelvin references the different types of near death experiences of individuals quite simply: “Everybody interprets it through their own belief system, their own filters.”

    My own near death experience occurred August 12, 1962. 59 years later, to-the-day, it seems I am still processing that all now.

    Kelvin says after we let go of our physical bodies we recognize not just loved ones from this life who have already physically died, but also identifiable energy beings (old friends) from previous lives. Many previous lives…. and many old friends….

    While out riding my bike I noticed how little “belief” I have access to at this stage of my experience. “I don’t know” could be an appropriate mantra. Maybe I would add, “And it does not matter,” but, of course, that might be a belief!

    Stacey decided she would welcome help from a “Santa” Jesus.

    I sent her this image to remind us both of the gifts of our disappearing dogma.


  • Warp and Weft

    This post begins with a reprint of a Sacred Story published December 23, 2017: “Husband’s Clothes:”

    As she stood in line at the grocery store the man in front of her looked so much like her late husband it almost took her breath away. The same height, the same built, even a similar style of movement.

    Without thinking she spoke, “My husband passed recently and you are of such a similar build I am wondering if you are open to receiving his clothing. Some people are funny about that. I have been wondering what to do with them. He even has jeans he’s never worn…”

    “Well, that is very kind,” he smiled softly.

    They also discovered he wore the same size shoes as her husband, so those went with him, too. As he was leaving with his treasures he thanked her and confessed, “I have a new job that I have to wear ‘good’ jeans for. I only had this one pair, and I have been washing them every night and wearing them again the next day.”

    She suddenly realized she had obviously truly been guided.

    Warp and weft refer to the orientation of woven fabric. The warp direction refers to the threads that run the length of the fabric. Warp yarns are finer and stronger than weft yarns.

    Life is comprised of warp and weft. But the greatest of these is warp….

    Larry, the now beloved husband of my dear friend, Linda, had lost his wife, Joyce. Soon after we met, Larry wondered aloud to Linda, asking if she thought I would be offended to be offered some of Joyce’s clothing. Many of the items still had tags hanging on them…

    Assured by Linda that I would be honored, the clothes were lovingly given and received. As my fingers glide across the keyboard right now, I am wearing one of Joyce’s dresses.

    One of my friends is in the process of “death cleaning.” In Swedish it is called döstädning—dö is “death” and städning is “cleaning.” The process is simply to get rid of unnecessary things, especially important as you age. You know you will eventually leave the planet, taking nothing tangible with you — we all will.

    While we take nothing, we leave everything.

    After their passing, the influence of our loved ones remains.

    Thich Nhat Hanh shared a beautiful story:

      A friend of mine has been taking care of her ninety-three-year-old mother. The doctors say that her mother will die any day. For more than a year, my friend has been teaching her mother meditation exercises that have been very helpful. She began by watering the seeds of happiness in her mother, and now her mother becomes very alive every time my friend comes around. Recently she told her mother, “This body is not exactly yours. Your body is much larger. You have nine children, dozens of grandchildren, and also great-grandchildren. We are all continuations of you, and we are very happy and healthy. You are quite alive in us.”

      Her mother was able to see that, and she smiled. My friend continued, “When you were young, you were able to teach many people how to cook and do many other things. You made people happy. Now we are doing the same thing; we are continuing the work you have begun. When you were young, you wrote poetry and sang, and now many of us write poems and sing beautifully. You are continuing in us. You are many beings at the same time.” This is a meditation on nonself. It helps her mother see that her body is just a small part of her true self. She understands that when her body departs, she will continue in many other forms.

    During the December 16, 2020, “Evening with Aaron,” I heard an amazing story about Nathaniel, a follower of Jesus. Nathaniel’s group had been brutalized, all of their ceremonial objects stolen, along with their food!

    When Jesus learned of this, he took Nathaniel with him and went to confront those responsible. Nathaniel was frightened they would be beaten again. Jesus admitted they might, they were outnumbered, but Jesus insisted that they must be willing to say, “No!”

    Confronted by the Divine Love in Jesus, the men stepped back.

    Imagine Jesus speaking about this:

      I would not have hurt them — how could I hurt them?

      But they had to hear this truth. “Where is that within you which is capable of love, which is capable of non-harm? Remember from whence you have come and cease to destroy. I ask this in the name of our Father and with love. Cease to do harm to each other and yourselves.”

      I motioned to Nathaniel to pick up the blanket and the candlesticks.

      He was a bit afraid, but I nodded to him, “Take them. They belong to our Father, not to this band.”

      “Keep the food,” I told the men. “If you are hungry, please eat. But these tokens of the Sabbath I bring back with me, lest you desecrate them.”

      No one stepped forth to stop us.

      I’m sure if Nathaniel were here in the body he would tell you he was trembling! And yet, his love, his deep commitment to service of all beings —

      Here I am, Lord.
      Is it I, Lord?
      I have heard you calling in the night.
      I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
      I will hold your people in my heart.

      The same commitment you all have.

      We took these candlesticks, rewrapped in the blanket, and simply walked off into the dark. We walked back to the village. These men never came to brutalize that village again.

      People can learn.

    The warp direction of our fabric is the Divine Love that runs the length of human existence. The warp of this Divine Love is finer and stronger than greed, hatred, brutality or any of the faces of fear. Just as the band of men who had stolen from Nathaniel were disarmed, every face of fear vanishes with the warp of love.

    Warp and weft. People can learn….

  • It Is Well

    She arrived at retreat with the deep awareness of letting go of worry and control. She would have no email, text, or phone access while on retreat for the next seven days. Her daughter and son-in-love were leaving dock the following day. They would be working their way to the Gulf of Mexico, then on to the Carribean, living on the 35-foot sailboat named after his late mother for the next year and a half.

    During introductions, one of the women at the retreat shared that she and her partner had left California and had for the past ten months been living aboard a sailboat! They were currently in the sea of Cortez. Wow….

    A few days into the retreat, the woman who was living on the sailboat was given this message from Jesus: “Humans have been sailing on the seas since time immemorial. The way to keep your self safe is to focus inside where the waters are always calm. You will be safe. Enjoy. Really look into the sunset. Really smell the salt air. Really be with this adventure. All will be well. And all manner of things will be well.”

    She fully recognized the message from Jesus was for her too.

    Home from the retreat, a text message to her daughter included the synchronicity about having been with a retreat attendee who was also currently sailing for life, along with the message that had come from Jesus.

    “I have been coloring this week,” her daughter quickly sent a text message back, along with this photo:


  • Jesus Loves Me!

    Twenty years ago, the Friday after Thanksgiving, I ended my formal relationship with the organized Christian church. It would be too simplistic to say that happened over the curriculum of the Sunday school class I was getting ready to teach. A contributing factor for sure was pain related to a friend’s death from AIDS, and the ongoing fighting about homosexuality within the denomination.

    For the most part, I did not miss being part of a church. I found community among wonderful, loving, spiritual people. I enjoyed the Friends of Silence meditation group. The interfaith experience nourished me deeply. I saw God everywhere. My ordination as a Minister of Reunion allowed me to be in ministry to many people who might have otherwise felt cut off from God/Source/Creator/the Universe. Not having a formal tie to a church was simply the next right step in my spiritual development.

    What to do about my relationship with Jesus was not quite as simple. The question would come up for me from time to time, and many mystical experiences resulted. Sitting at Stillwaters in meditation I once heard Jesus’ voice chastising me, “Debra, why do you hold me accountable for what people say I said. You know my heart.”

    My first time staying on Pine Island in Florida I was driving to a meditation off-island with the intention of making peace with my relationship with Jesus. In front of me was a car driven by a couple who were making out. They were barely driving 20 MPH, on the two lane road where safely passing is not very probable. Very frustrated about being stuck behind them and anxious about being late for the meditation, I totally missed my answer.

    It was only after arriving at the mediation, walking into the meditation hall, and seeing a life-size cardboard cutout of Jesus in the corner of the room that my mind flashed back to that car. In huge letters, spread across the back of that station wagon, were the words JESUS LOVES YOU, not just in English, but also in Spanish!
    snip-jesus-loves-you
    snip-jesus-loves-you-spanish

    That was the perfect answer to my question. My love for Jesus was born with the children singing Jesus Loves Me in church. I was five years old, and my two older sisters and I had gone to Sunday school. The children were already gathered and singing as we found our way. I knew instantly that song meant Jesus loved me, Debbie Smith. I drew comfort and strength and peace and wisdom from that truth. So making peace with this meaningful relationship was—well, meaningful.

    A few weeks after my encounter with the Jesus-loving make-out station wagon, my friend Pamela Chappell was singing at Unity of Fort Myers. I stayed out in the bookstore at the table where Pamela’s CDs were for sale, and she saved me a seat in the sanctuary. I ended up seated directly in front of this portrait of what some call the surfer Jesus. I mention some of that experience in a 2012 blog post: “How to Argue About Jesus“.
    jesus
    This past winter, I got another opportunity to receive the assurance of Jesus’ love from yet another evangelical vehicle:
    snip-van-jesus-loves-you
    While at Oakwood on retreat in October 2016, things finally came together! This is the message that came through:

    I will always walk with you. Don’t put me above you. Simply take my hand and say, “Jeshua, walk with me; walk by my side.” And in every moment, I am with you. How could I ever depart from you? For I love you so deeply, now and always. You are me, and I am you, and the heart must soften until you know this truth. Only then can you truly know your awakened nature and the service for which you came to this earth. You are love.

    I wrote a simple sentence in my journal: I want to celebrate Christmas!

    Later that day, I opened the book Presence, Kindness, & Freedom (p. 102-103) and read about habit patterns often being covered by a smokescreen. In a flash, I recognized the deep pain I had been covering up about having lost contact with my devotion to Jesus. I began to sing to myself, ‘Oh, Jesus, I have promised to love thee to the end…’

    I emailed the surfer Jesus photo to the retreat center. I knew it belonged in my collage.
    jesus-collage-2016

    Friday morning I was up early. It was still dark as I left the community building under the moon to walk to the meditation hall for the 6:30 am sitting. I was still searching in my bag for my flashlight when someone with a light came up behind me to my left. I had been holding the light for others all week long, so I had a moment of bliss fully receiving the gift I had been giving.

    With sweet appreciation, I picked up my pace and walked along with this person. Until we got to one of the two options to get to the bridge, I assumed it was Celeste, who had been at the dining hall with me moments earlier. As I slowed to see if she would turn, I got a view of this person in my peripheral vision. This person was not Celeste. Celeste was much taller.

    In that instant of realizing I had been walking with someone other than I thought, my heart lurched! My breath caught in my chest. My heart broke open with the full realization that for all of these years while I searched for peace with all of this, Jesus had continued to walk with me.

    Awash with emotion, I chose to follow this light bearer. I was living the symbolism. I surrendered completely.

    My guide did not turn where I expected, but I followed willingly, even expectantly.

    When we came to a ditch, I stopped. The light beam was sent down the ditch and up. I stood still, not quite understanding. Down, and up the beam went again.

    Finally, my patient light bearer gave a little flick, flick to the beam, as if saying, “Go ahead, it is safe.”

    In an altered state, my feet carried me down that ditch and I came up the other side. I found myself at the back of the meditation hall, but I had gotten there via a route I had no idea existed. This experience moved me to my core. The meaning washed over and over me.

    At the 6:30 am sitting I heard Jesus telling me, “If I need you to help someone I will call on you. If you don’t hear me calling you to action, relax and enjoy being present to the moment.”

    Jesus loves me! What a friend I have in Jesus!

  • The Gift of Distance


    I will love the light for it shows me the way,
    yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.
    ~ Og Mandino
     

     

    George loved doing woodworking in his shop. He had been in an assisted living facility for the past couple of years. Tuesday, when I attended his funeral, George’s sister, Betty, had brought some of the last items from his shop. She was offering friends to take something as a loving remembrance. I was delighted to select the last of his simple plaques, crafted brilliantly using the contrast of light and dark to create a very significant an optical illusion.

    snip-Jesus-close

    I had one of these years ago, but when someone in a challenging time of life greatly admired it, I gifted that person the plaque. Now that George is in spirit, having this one has even more significance in my heart.

    When you get some distance from the plaque, and you let your eyes relax, by paying attention to the light rather than looking at the dark, you can see the deeper message George created by gluing simple light wood strips on the dark wood background:

    Jesus-far

    What a powerful metaphor for all of life. We can get so tied up in our problems, we can miss the gifts hidden in plain view. A little distance, relaxation, and focus on the light brings resurrection!

     

  • Jesus Healed Me!

    Sacred Stories

    Her co-worker’s daughter was having routine surgery in another state when the call came through with shocking news. “We are losing her!”

    Feeling totally helpless to do anything for her daughter, the mother asked her co-worker to please pray.

    Seeking a quiet space, the co-worker centered herself, and began to send healing intention. Much to her surprise, she had a powerful image of Jesus pop into her mind. This was not a normal religious icon for her, and she watched with great interest as Jesus went to the side of the operating table and began to work with the patient.

    Moments later, another call affirmed what she had seen happening, “She made it!”

    Although the woman did not share the images she had seen that day as she prayed for her co-worker’s daughter, several years later, she had the opportunity to meet this daughter. The daughter spontaneously burst into a description of the experience she had with Jesus while she had been in surgery—detailed as it had been seen by the co-worker of her mother.

    Jesus
    She is not sure why Jesus chose to come to her, but she has continued to always call on Jesus when she is asked for healing intention.