The saddest people in life are those who stroll by the bridge and don’t even remember that their true home lies beyond it. They simply wander along without realizing that they are spurning their true home: the source of rebirth, the source of strength, the source of pollen; the place of the Holy Grail. They go down the road looking at houses other people have built and decorated; advertised as places of unconditional love, of attractive power and of creature comfort—bowers of bliss, of Soma, of forgetfulness. They learn to endure the emptiness of forgetting their homes.
Ah, the terrible unfilled ache—to turn away from your true home. Lest we forget thee, oh Jerusalem. Beloved God, we give home-age to you for keeping alive our yearning for our true Temple-Home. Dayenu—We are grateful. If you had done only this, it would have been enough.
Ben Leichtling
On This Day…
Christian Yule: Medieval Germanic/Scandinavian celebration which has been absorbed into Christianity. Originally it was the time for the Yule log, and entailed the need for a Yule goat (some old illustrations show Father Christmas riding a goat...) and 13 Yule Lads. These are Santa-ish beings who, in Iceland, went about for 13 days before Christmas, finding the shoes the children placed on their window sills and filling them with treats or rotten potatoes, depending upon the child's behavior during the past year.
Keep the star in your home—
And from our Home here
we look to our Home on high
where we join what we believe
with what has always loved us.
A Home not made with hands,
a place not found by looking.
We link our souls in caring
and build beyond this span of days.
Mystery of Home and Thanksgiving Service
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) born in 1835 in Florida, Missouri: novelist, journalist and humorist, writer of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, The Innocents Abroad, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Died 4-21-1910
Quotes: “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.” “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
Gordon Parks born in 1912 in Ft. Scott, Kansas: novelist, photographer, poet, film director, actor and pianist; author of A Choice of Weapons, The Learning Tree, and Half Past Autumn; movies The Learning Tree and Shaft. Died 3-7-06
Quotes: “And now I feel at 85, I really feel that I am just ready to start.” “The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and the unknown, who is unafraid of failure will succeed.”
I begin at home; I end at home. I set forth from my home and I return to my home; born into my home I will die into my home. God is my father and in my father—God is my mother and in my mother, I have come home.
William Boast
Louisa May Alcott born in 1832 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: novelist and poet warmly remembered for her Little Women and several sequels. Died 3-6- 1888
Quotes: "Love is a great beautifier." "Housekeeping ain't no joke." "Let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory if won."
Madeleine L'Engle born in 1918 in New York City: writer of young adult fiction (A Wrinkle in Time, The Wind At The Door) and for her Crosswicks Journals. Died 9-6-2007
Quotes: "The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been." "You have to write the book that wants to be written and if the book will be too difficult for grownups, you write it for children." "We can't take any credit for our talents - it's how we use them that counts.”
C.S.Lewis born in 1898 in Belfast, Ireland: novelist, lay theologian, broadcaster, literary critic and academician at both Oxford and Cambridge remembered for many writings including The Screwtape Letters, his Chronicles of Narnia series, and The Problem of Pain. Died 11-22-1963
Quotes: "I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." "God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."
Last summer, sitting in the garden, the smells of fifty different roses overwhelmed me, blasted my mind and senses to shards. I saw and felt at the same time, myself as ecstatic, dancing sparkles of light through every cell, in every molecule, at the root of every atom. Glowing, pulsing, vibrating points and strings. And the roses were also filled with dancing light, and the pebbles and even the bindweed. And the sparrows and the bread we left for them—all filled with ecstatic, vibrating, dancing, sparkling.
Ben Leichtling
William Blake born in 1757 in London, England: poet, painter, print maker and seminal figure in the history of poetry, writer and illustrator of The Book of Urizen, The Book of Thel and Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Died 8-12-1827
Alexander Blok born in 1880 in St. Petersburg, Russia: lyrical poet emphasizing political themes, often alternating between hope and despair. When he lost his hope for the revolution, he wrote no poetry for three years - "my faith in the wisdom of humanity had failed." Became ill but forbidden to leave Russia for treatment, he died 8-7-1921
Quotes: "Only a person in love has the right to be called human." "Sense prevails over reason, but not the mind." "Work is what is written on the red flag of revolution."
When I enter the sacred space of Christuman, I am home.
A place all within the all of the Spirit,
a place from where Credo is eternally spoken as breath.
Within that place of the spoken Credo, I stand in wonderment,
I find hope, wellsprings of living water.
For here I become at one with all that is human and with all that is Divine.
Here I am beloved and beloving,
here I am called and call by name,
here I find the sacred seed which was planted in humankind a very long time ago.
Here I may bury the least of me,
and here, in and by hope,
grows the soul, the best of me.
Here is the Christuman, you are the Christuman I all believe and all belove.
Teri Martin
