“Hard To Get”.  Rich Mullins & A Ragamuffin Band.  The Jesus Record.  Sony, 1998.

My Choice

By Bill McChesney

I want my breakfast served at eight
With ham and eggs upon the plate.
A well-broiled steak I’ll eat at one
And dine again when day is done.

I want an ultramodern home
And in each room a telephone;
Soft carpets, too, upon the floors
And pretty drapes to grace the doors.
A cozy place of lovely things,
Like easy chairs with inner springs,

And then, I’ll get a nice T.V.
- Of course, I’m careful what I see.

I want my wardrobe, too, to be
Of neatest, finest quality,
With latest style in suit and vest
Why should not Christians have the best?

But then the Master I can hear
In no uncertain voice, so clear:
“I bid you come and follow Me,
The lowly Man of Galilee.”

“Birds of the air have made their nest
And foxes in their holes find rest,
But I can offer you no bed;
No place have I to lay my head.”

In shame I hung my head and cried,
How could I spurn the Crucified?
Could I forget the way He went,
The sleepless nights in prayer He spent?

For forty days without a bite,
Alone He fasted day and night;
Despised, rejected - on He went,
and did not stop till veil He rent!

A man of sorrows and of grief
No earthly friend to bring relief;
“Smitten of God,” the prophet said
Mocked, beaten, bruised, His blood ran red.
If He be God, and died for me,
No sacrifice too great can be
For me; a mortal man, to make;
I’ll do it all for Jesus’ sake.

Yes, I will tread the path He trod,
No other way will please my God,
So, henceforth, this my choice shall be,
My choice for all eternity.

Mildred Petrushevsky

November 5, 1929 - October 16, 2009

If

By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

Oh My God

World Teacher's Day, 2009 →

To Ms. Beemer, Ms. Teliatnik, Ms. Tintner, Ms. Grossman, Mr. Sukram, Mr. McKinnis, Ms. Doosenberry & Professors Silano, Baird, Rose, Lesk, and Stokes: thank you.

An inventory of the invisible

I want to love, Lord,
I need to love.

All my being is desire;
My heart,
My body,
yearn in the night towards an unknown one to love.

My arms thrash about, and I can seize on no object for my love.
I am alone and want to be two.
I speak, and no one is there to listen.

I live, and no one is there to share my life.
Why be so rich and have no one to enrich?

Where does this love come from?
Where is it going?

I want to love, Lord,
I need to love.

Here, this evening, Lord, is all my love.

**********

Listen, son,
Stop,
and make, silently, a long pilgrimage to the bottom of your heart.

Walk by the side of your love so new, as one follows a brook to find its source, and, at the very end, deep within you, in the infinite mystery of your troubled soul, you will meet me.

For I call myself Love, son,
And from the beginning I have been nothing but Love,
And Love is in you.

It is I who made you to love,
To love eternally;
And your love will pass through another self of yours - it is she that you seek;
Set your mind at rest; she is on your way, on the way since the beginning, the way of my love.

You must wait for her coming.

She is approaching.

You are approaching.

You will recognize each other,
For I’ve made her body for you, I’ve made yours for her.
I’ve made your heart for her, I’ve made hers for you.

And you seek each other, in the night,
In ‘my night,’ which will become Light if you trust me.

Keep yourself for her, son,
As she is keeping herself for you.

I shall keep you for one another,
And, since you hunger for love, I’ve put on your way all your brothers to love.

Believe me, it’s a long apprenticeship, learning to love,
And there are not several kinds of love:

Loving is always leaving oneself to go towards others.

********

Lord, help me to forget myself for others, my brothers,
That in giving myself I may teach myself to love.

— Michel Quoist, “Prayers of Life”

Credo

The Prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me a channel of your peace;
where there is hatred let me bring your love, 
where there is injury, your pardon, 
where there is doubt, true faith in you; 
where there is despair in life let me bring hope, 
where there is darkness, only light, 
and where there is sadness, ever joy; 

O Master grant that I may never seek 
so much to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand, 
to be loved, as to love with all my soul.
For it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, 
in giving of ourselves that we receive, 
and in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

We don’t know actually know who penned this prayer, but it rings true in light of St. Francis’s life.  And that works for me.

Jensen Bush

was the name of the boy who lived next door to us just before we left Sri Lanka.  ’Jensen Bush’ actually was his first name (after George Bush Sr., no less), but everyone, mercifully, just called him Jensen.  And since he was the only boy my age who lived close by, we spent many Saturdays playing together.

Jensen was a little taller than me, had almost brown curly hair, and often wore a pair of light blue shorts and a matching button-up t-shirt when we would go out to play.  He had two older sisters and a mother and a father.  (I can’t recall his father at all though, since he was often overseas, working.)  The one other thing I remember, clearly, about Jensen was that he always seemed to be in trouble; someone in his family was always scolding him for this or that reason.  Mind you, considering that his idea of fun invariably involved tormenting his sisters or chasing the neighbourhood dogs, their frustration with him was often warranted.

Jensen’s family also owned a television.  Of the three memories I have of watching TV in Sri Lanka, the most vivid centres around a live-action episode of Spider-Man that I watched at Jensen’s.  I remember sitting on the cement floor of their living room, mesmerised as Spidey captured two thieves with his web and a sandwich.  (The sandwich was for bait, in case you’re wondering.  And yes, it’s all true.)  Aside from that, unfortunately, I have very few tangible memories of any personal interaction with Jensen.  We did have some more official interactions though, as a result of an agreement our parents made.

Given the political unrest in the country at the time, it was not unusual to be awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of shellfire.  Our two families agreed that it would be a good idea to build a bunker for protection during the raids, and decided on Jensen’s family’s yard as the place to build it.  So, one afternoon when I came home from school, I found everyone standing near a section of wall that separated our two houses, watching as one of my uncles and his friend tore a hole into the stone with pick axes.  The bunker was built in due course, and served to give our parents some much needed peace of mind.

I’m not sure how many times we used it.  One instance, however, does come to mind.  It was the middle of the night, and I was awakened by my mother who said that there was some heavy shelling nearby. We made our way to the bunker using torches [Read: flashlights.], and spent the rest of the night there.  It was a cold, dank place; really, just a hole in the ground, covered with wood and sandbags.  I remember looking at the wall nearest where I was sitting and noticing bugs crawling across the slick, brown surface.  Not exactly the most inviting place.  Once the sun came up, we made our way out and I was readied for school.  Life went back to normal.  As normal as it could be, at least.

When we immigrated to Canada, we lost contact with Jensen’s family, and until recently, whenever I thought of him, I’d also wonder if he was still alive.  A few months ago, however, we heard that Jensen’s oldest sister was getting married, and that the family, though still in Sri Lanka, was doing well.