Darkness

I am lost inside the gloom

of some nameless malaise.

One small light

casts shadows

across my shuttered soul.

I long for an incandescent life.

I crouch,

and I wait

for the darkness to end.

Heroes

I firmly believe that we each have god given talents....various and sundry gifts we could each use to make life better for those around us.

I'm not sure why more of us don't tap into our unique giftings to release God's transformative power into this hurting world; but those few of us who do, are heroes.

In the wilds of Utah, there is one artistic woman making a difference. She's feisty, she's blunt, she's tender and she's my kind of hero.

Watch the video here.

Love wins!

Somewhere in the world, a woman found a starving African lion cub.

She took the cub home, not expecting him to live. She loved him. She provided him nourishment; and miracle of miracles, the cub not only survived but thrived.

When the lion neared adulthood, the woman found him a home in an animal sanctuary in Columbia. Six years later, the woman visited the lion.

Watch this amazing video to see their reunion!

I know that the story represented in this video, the empty tomb of 2000 years ago and the Risen Lord seem to have very little in common; but I would submit that they each resound with same unspoken message.

Hope lives...

....and love wins!

Through it all, love wins!

Surprised?

N.T. Wright has published a new book.

It's called: Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

I can't help myself.

I want this book. I want it bad.

What can I say? I'm such a theology nerd.

Surprised?

Trust me, you can't be any more surprised than I.

Prom

Prom is a four letter word.

Ugh.

..and that's all I have to say about prom. (Obviously, I never went to prom.)

My oldest daughter, as some of you know, is a senior in high school.

Recently, oldest daughter was invited to the Senior prom.

Here's what happened.

Oldest daughter was completing a distance run for track practice, and as she came rounding onto the track field, her friends were lining the straightway with signs that read: *Oldest Daughter,* *will* *you* *go* *to* *Prom* *with* *me?*

The young man requesting our beautiful daughter as his Prom date was holding the last sign.

Oldest daughter was quite impressed by the sweetness of this invitation.

She said yes.

I think they will have a lovely time.

Stone me!

....please don't stone me, but doesn't worship sometimes resemble this YouTube video?

No?

Well, it sometimes does for me.

So, if you want to stone me, just stone me already....then watch the video. It's kind of funny.


All About ME!

Invitation

Not too long ago, I invited Barack Obama over to my house for coffee and crumpets.

I did this by filling out an online invitation form at Senator Obama's webite.

Here's what I said:

Event Organization: Private citizen, Mother of five, Wife to one, Friend to all
Event Title: Tea and Crumpets

Subject: Tea and Crumpets with Jerri
Description: Senator Obama, I would enjoy having you join me in my home for tea/coffee and crumpets while you are visiting the beautiful state of Oregon March 21, 2008. We are a working poor family, living in a poor neighborhood; and while our home may be humble, I can promise you the coffee will be strong and the conversation scintillating.

I am a 47 stay at home mother, wife of 25 years. I currently serve on our city's Social Services Advisory Board. Over the past two years, our CDBG dollars for Social Services have shriveled by nearly 20% and yet the need for crisis services in our community has grown by more than 25%.

I am an ordinary woman, trying to make a difference. Meet with me while you are in Oregon. Hear our stories. Help me believe that in the face of overwhelming odds, change truly is possible.

The coffee pot is on and the invitation is open.

*********

Not surprisingly, I haven't heard back from the Obama event coordinators.

...but Barack, if you are reading this, the pot is on and the invitation is open. Stop by anytime.

It's silly really. I know there isn't a snowball's chance in Hades that Mr. Obama will actually take me up on my offer.....but my 10 year old son is so psyched to think his mother has actually invited Barack Obama over for coffee.

In his eyes, I'm Super Mom. And do you know what? That's better than having coffee with Senator Obama anytime. (No offense, Senator, no offense; but when it comes to my children they outshine the best of us.)

Alone

Last night the Social Services Advisory Board I sit upon, approved its social services budget for both the CBGD (Community Block Grant Funds) and the General Fund monies

This year we experienced a 13.7% reduction in our CBGD funding and our General Fund was reduced by $75,000.

A procedural snafu resulted in an additional reduction of $88,000 in our CBGD dollars.

Suffice it to say, the board has had to refuse funding requests for many worthy programs and sadly, the programs we did approve will be funded at levels below last year's budgeted amounts.

In other words, these reductions in funding mean fewer persons will be served, as compared with last year.

My heart aches. The people accessing our food banks and crises services are not nameless, faceless statistics. They are people in my neighborhood. The people in need of our shelters, our public housing, emergency utility assistance, prescription assistance, are often families that attend my children's schools.

Doesn't anyone get it? Each and every social service program our city funds serves flesh and blood people. These men, women and children constitute more than a mere numerical statistic. They are my neighbors, my children's friends, people I know, care about and love.

Thus it is, that I find myself soul-raw and heart-sick....wishing to God that I didn't care so damn much.

I cannot help but feel that we have failed as a community and to some extent, as a board. As for myself, well I have failed on an individual level as well. I spoke harshly and treated our city liason staff in a way that was less than gracious. I grieve those moments where I failed to value and respect this other person and I am ashamed.

It was not my shining moment as a person and it sure as heck wasn't our shining moment as a city.

....and today, I just feel so freaking alone.

Alone in the shame of it all.

Unconscionable

I've spent the past week reading, analyzing and processing through funding requests from our community's social service providers.

Our city, like so many others, must begin to confront the growing disparity between dwindling public funding dollars and increased community need.

I am deeply frustrated and saddened by my city's shrinking social services budget. How do we care for families and individuals in crises if we lack the funding to provide emergency shelter, food, prescriptions, transportation, utility assistance, interim housing? What will happen to the abused child, the battered spouse, the runaway teen, the homeless veteran without crises intervention and case management?

I would not be surprised if the amount my fellow citizens spend on their favorite coffee drink and scone, just the one day's worth mind you, was enough to fund at least one vitally necessary social service funding request for an entire year.

This community has the resources required to feed, to shelter, and to help its citizenry in crises develop the skills necessary for self-sufficiency; but, we choose our own self-indulgent lifestyles over caring for one another.

...and I'm as guilty of this as the next person.

So now I have no choice but to make funding recommendations to my city council, knowing that social services will be cut and that the need in my community will continue to grow unassailed.

One word comes to my mind.

Unconscionable.

This situation is unconscionable.

Prayer Rooms

Don't ask me why, but my youngest daughter (age 7) decided she needed her own prayer room.

Given the limited availability of free space in our home, she resorted to utilizing the tiny, downstairs shower stall in our second bathroom.

As you can see, she has decorated using a Christmas paper tube cross and smaller white paper cut outs.

She also took a bedside table from my bedroom, covered it with a piece of pink fleece, added a small book featuring the New Testament, Proverbs and Psalms, flowers and a donation jar.

Voila! A prayer room.



There's a little note taped onto the Ball canning jar inviting donations, so that "we can be Jesus for others by providing for the needy".




Her attention to the small details was endearing. She is perhaps the sweetest, most God loving seven year old I've yet to meet.

....and yes, I prayed in her prayer room today.

We laughed, God and I.

We laughed with the sheer joy of knowing this beautiful seven year old child of mine.

It was a holy, albeit cramped moment between God and myself. A moment made possible by the makeshift prayer room of a seven year old child.

My child.

Oh, how I love her.

Priceless

I thought this was priceless...

As we took communion Sunday, my 9 year old whispered, "Daddy, Jesus' body tastes like cardboard."

"I know, honey," I thought, "He must've picked up the taste of the box we keep him in."

This charming father/child exchange was found at "Head First"!

I loved it!

Uprooted

Like the rest of this nation's infrastructure, our local roads and walkways are crumbling.

Our city has decided that it will provide one final round of publically funded sidewalk repair. Once such work is completed, it will become the individual home owner's responsiblity to maintain and repair the public sidewalks that run through their property.

.....but alas, this post is not a rant about sidewalk repair.

No dear Reader, this post is all about jackhammered concrete, the scarred earth and a tree's shattered roots.

For three days now, I've watched the same pair of day-glo orange suited city workers as they've rent, and torn, and ultimately repaired the sidewalk outside our dining room window. I've heard the shrill whine of concrete cutters, felt the heavy pounding of jackhammers, and I've watched as backhoes savaged the dark, wet earth, uprooting everything and sparing nothing.

Perhaps I'm just a hormonal mess, or maybe I am prone to reading more into events than I should, but I have become acutely aware of how desperately I resist this age old process of destruction and repair in my own life.

Suspend reality for moment and just imagine that my marital life is like a sidewalk. Everything my husband and I have done, the home we've established, the children we've raised, the love we've shared...just imagine that everything we are as husband and wife has been cemented together to form a literal, physical pathway that runs though the known world. This "marital sidewalk" functions to provide a safe and convenient path for my husband and I, for our children, and for our family and our friends to move back and forth between our personal and collective relationships.

...and sometimes our marital sidewalk, just like our neighborhood sidewalk, is subject to both the seen and the unseen forces that can erode, even destroy the pathway that we've so carefully established. Just like a regular sidewalk, a marital sidewalk can begin to buckle, to crack and to fall apart. When this happens (and it always does to some degree), the marital sidewalk becomes unsafe, so much so, that people begin to step around the marital sidewalk, and relationships suffer.

At some point, it becomes necessary to tear up the layers of a marital sidewalk. Cracked cement must be jackhammered away before the backhoes can move in to lift the broken concrete slabs. It's dirty work, as shattered roots emerge from the torn soil, leaving both marital partners feeling vulnerable and exposed.

Speaking from experience, it sucks to have a jackhammer and backhoe tear away the concrete of my own perceptions. It sucks to expose the shattered roots of my self-serving judgements and fears. And yet, as we all know, nothing lasts forever. Everything that isn't repaired or rebuilt, is simply thrown away.

I suppose that's why I'm in love with a God who's in the restoration business. In God's economy, nothing is thrown away because every living thing, every person, every relationship has value.

Ultimately, I think this is why I am willing to invest in the sidewalks of my life. Each person I know, every relationship I experience has value, immeasurable value. We are not throw-a-way people you and I. You are worthwhile. I am worthwhile. I choose to believe that our lives have meaning.

OK.

I think I'm done now.

Rant over.