A Word for 2015



Some who love birds are called birders,
so are ones who love words known as worders?

(Just wondering--b)

I'm happy to be a member of a small covenant group.  We've each decided to choose a special word of her own to carry throughout 2015, and to share it with the rest of us.  

I've been brain-storming, stacking words up in my journal. They each present me with meaning and challenges, but I'm looking for one that resonates deeply with my life right now.  And that's rather hard to pinpoint--I ought to know it when I hear it, right?

It needs to maintain its relevance all year, and also be a word that draws me forward, because I definitely plan to progress on my spiritual journey.
 

Yahweh, please guide me through life and, when I pause in dark places, remind me that your will is not done in a state of stagnation nor of fear.

Lately I've heard and read on blogs about others who use this focus-word practice, and prefer it over making resolutions.  One of my sisters, doing this for the first time, has chosen "mindful." A friend's daughter chose "dare."  I love hearing the words, why they've been selected, and how they'll be used during the year. 

Anyway, I may have found my word now.  I've studied it awhile through a "prism" of sorts, allowing the facets of prayer and contemplation to reveal its many colors. It seems to be a good word for me, but  rather than share it now, I think I'll hold it, wear it, and live it a day or two. Then I'll let you know.
 

The Little Haiku that Couldn't...and then Could

 

On a totally different note about words, I don't think it's a rare thing for people to  occasionally awaken with prophetic or poetic words firmly planted in their minds, words begging to be part of something.  One morning last week, the phrase "warm shoulders of earth" was in my head when I woke up. It seem like great bones for the beginning of a haiku, so I grabbed a scrap of paper off my bedside table, and scribbled and tweaked syllables till it was done. I thought it was pretty, but a bit too vague (as in "what's she talking about?).  

As I carried my little scrap from upstairs bedroom to downstairs office, I stopped along the way to make coffee, find something to munch on, and attend to various other distractions.  Yes, I lost my haiku. I never saw it again, and suspect that I accidentally tucked it into the pile of newspapers headed to the recycle bins down the street. My temporary frustration over this small loss was pretty silly, considering the mediocrity of the poem. I only needed to sit down and write a better haiku!

Still inspired by the words I woke with, here's the better haiku along with a photo of our backyard river.

 

 

river never sleeps

within earth's warm embrace

her soft breath rises

B

p.s. I just realized there is a moral for me in this story.  No, it's nothing to do with senior moments, or disorganization, or even about poetry. The moral for me is that when God sends inspiration through dreams, words, nature, and people of all sorts--it's not always the sight, literal word, or person that is his message. Many times it's just the invisible inspiration itself, to be breathed in and then used to his glory in some way.

 

The Drama of the Atacama






In October of 2006 I traveled to northern Chile on a mission trip. My friend Ann was living there for a year, serving in mission through the United Methodist Church. She was based in the coastal city of Iquique, on the edge of the Atacama Desert, and had set up a project for us at the Insituto Agricola Kusayapu, located in Pachica. She took our small team to the school to live and work for a week. We traveled in a large van by way of one of the most perilous roads I've had the excitement of traveling.

 

The desert is vast, and said to have never received rainfall in some areas. It's like no other place I've ever been. I've spent most of my life within a day's drive of the verdant Rocky Mountains with their 12,000-14,000-foot peaks of stone and snow. I lived a short while in southwest New Mexico, and am well-acquainted with the vibrance of the Tucson, Arizona deserts. But the Atacama? I was awestruck by this desert's monochromatic, rounded mountains of dirt and copper. Rocks and boulders lie about. Some stones are stacked into cairns, standing alone miles beyond any other sign of civilization.   

I loved the other-worldliness of it, even (perhaps especially) in the dark night when starlight makes its soil glow like the moon. When I came back to Kansas, it began to sink in that I had sensed something sacred in the Atacama. 

 

And now, so very far away from it, I'm still moved by that feeling when I think about it just being there, unseen by most of the world. I can't touch it, or hear it, or see it except in my memory, imagination, and in my growing knowledge of the Creator.  

 

I simply can't explain how the Atacama has affected me. It's as though I've seen a long-ago earth in the making, bare yet revealing the handprint and heartbeat of God for any who seek to know Him. As though forever waiting, it lies silent beneath glowing stars and blazing sun. The desert is so fertile it would surely bloom into a profusion of flowers and food, an Eden, were rains to bless it.  Meanwhile, its soil carries the bones of ancient and modern people, as well as the tracks of those living good yet hard lives. 

 

 

 





A woman walks along the desert road--photo by BonnieB

 

 

An Incredibly Dark and Sacred Hour

I lie on bare earth that is the Atacama.

With God we are moving, Atacama and I, unheard and unseen.

No wisps of grass nor leafy trees grow here to rustle in the breeze.

It’s four a.m.

I stare into a moonless sky draped in sorrow-less black.

No grief can exist amid so many stars!

I long for, belong to, the mystery above.

A brilliance beyond starlight beckons soulkind to soar;

This soul, my soul, joyfully responds.

Surely I’m floating, detached from the world.

I am one with the Source and with all of creation

in this hour long before the desert sun rises--

when the heavens will have shifted

and a dozen satellites will have silently slid by.

Bonnie Hamilton Beuning 

©March 9, 2013

 

 

 

 

 



 



Right now I'm thinking of pets past.  Pets Passed.  Blessings to you who've provided comfy, happy, loving homes for animals who needed you. 

Zebu, the younger of my two Chinese Cresteds, died on June 19th of this year.  He was 12 and 1/2 years old.  I'm still working through the grief.  I know that sounds crazy to people without a great love for pets. 

Earlier in the year, my younger daughter's and son-in-law's cat Goliath died at an advanced age.  I grieve with them.  He was a giant among cats, and I'll miss sharing my ice cream with him when I'm in Orlando.  A few years ago he inspired me to write and illustrate some Haiku as I saw him lying next to the window, watching and dreaming of the hunt (though he was purely an indoor boy).

                                               


Merciful and kind are you who appreciate the wild ones, feed them when they need food, provide them with water, protect them, and concern yourselves over their ability to survive in a world increasingly unacquainted with the untamed.

Like many of you, I've also experienced the loss of some very important, beloved members of my extended human family this year. There have been eulogies, celebrations of their lives, and grieving which leave me nothing to say, except I miss them, love them, and always will.  

I believe we benefit from taking time to think through the comings and goings of lives intertwined with our own.  How have they, even the animals in our care, shaped us?

bb

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens...

Ecclesiastes 3:1

(New International Version IV)

It's bitter cold this morning.  A light snowfall persists, disproving the "no accumulation" prediction I just heard on the radio. I sweep a path across the patio from the back door to the yard, to make it less daunting for my hairless dog Zulu.  Even dressed in his little sweater, he backs away when he feels the cold air, so I'm carrying him outside.

There's something appropriate about the bitter cold arriving between Christmas and the new year. My sense of "being here" in the fullness of the present shivers and makes room for the past and future.

Seemingly random thoughts appear in front of me like the warm fog I breathe into the air while putting out seed for the birds. Words? Emotions? Pictures? Memories and Possibilities hang there in a nebulous cluster and dissipate with my next breath. I'm adrift, in a blizzard of wonder over what's happened in my life and what's yet to come.      

I love warmth and comfort, whether stretched out in a hammock beneath the summer shade trees or snuggled in a soft blanket in front of the fireplace watching the snow beyond the windows. Yet, when the startling wind of a brittle freeze stings my skin and burns my eyes, it can serve to shake me awake.  I'm reminded of the mystery and the magnificence of life from beginning to end. 

As the new year comes into view, I hope to spend time in meditation of all that I cherish, blessings I've received, people and situations I've learned from, sorrows experienced, mistakes I've made, and pain I've caused. (I'll strive to do this without self-hatred, for God loves his creation, and so must I.)  Resting into the presence of the Holy Spirit, I'll allow him to show me what He will of days to come.

I'm guarding against worry, praying for the world and all its creatures, and am filled with joy and gratitude. 

Oh, by the way, I'm not forgetting to pray for all those who are working outside or struggling in unheated conditions during these frigid days!  The winter cold, polar vortex, arctic front, or whatever we're calling it this time is way beyond metaphor for them.

--BB


                                               

On the Evening of Her 92nd Birthday

My mother is passing.

I watch her try, half-spirited, to stay awake, present in the room.
Her heartbeat is conspicuously visible on the side of her neck.
I stroke her white hair.
She can keep her eyes open for only a moment, and even then, I suspect she’s asleep.
Her face is still, with no sign of dreams.  Perhaps she experiences something deeper and fuller than dreams:
something that doesn't require intellectual strength or knowledge of any sort known to us;
something that comforts;
something that confirms to her inner self what it’s known forever;
something she won’t remember upon waking, but will not be forgotten;
something that eases her detachment as she steps away from us and toward Other, unknowingly content.
 
I don’t believe God pulls her away. In His unfailing love which we cannot fathom, He simply accompanies her as He always has.

Surely it's only death that can finally remove the veil separating earthbound creation from complete knowledge of Creator...yet, I ponder the fabric of the veil.  Something speaks to me of a veil of many layers. Whether it be an instant or gradual death, will we begin to glimpse with our spirit-selves the incomprehensible mystery while becoming part of it? Because this mystery is inconceivable to the human brain, does our consciousness remain confounded to the last?  Does our brain through its miraculous design grapple with the unknown and begin to dance with the Holy Spirit in a lovely choreography of Here and There?  Is there an intensifying of the Light we've known here? Are there precious visions of those who are there?

 Our souls must fill to the point of bursting with what they learn through the Spirit’s counsel and love as we step into eternal awareness.

 

--bb
*I don't mean to alarm--my mother was indeed only sleeping, if a bit differently to my eye.  She is passing, but has been leaving us for some time now and none of us know how long the good bye will continue.  Every moment is dear to us, as I'm sure it is for you and those you love.

Now

Despite everything

because of everything

I’m here. 

Not merely here, but present in this moment

intentionally present in each as it comes

leaving the last one where it is

and moving on

into now. 

 

Now is where I find contentment and joy. 

Life is most sacred here and God most apparent. 

Unlike my joy, happiness doesn’t dwell here, nor does sorrow. 

They pass through, are passed through, leaving their marks and memories-- 

and all of these,

my realities,

are ingredients of my being. 

Today and every today.

 

Being here is sacred work.

 

bb