Thursday, February 15, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
 Stories from the heart
We didn’t go all out yesterday (like 65 million pounds of roses imported from Europe and 35 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate), but we did honor St. Valentine and each other. At Trader Joe’s Tuesday afternoon I found dark chocolate covered cherries, which Margaret missed at Christmas. Our morning kiss was just a little longer. We sang and prayed and read a devotion. We read a poem together:
Ash Valentine
Not a box of chocolates
or spray of roses,
but ash smudged on your forehead:
a reminder, dust,
that you shall some day blow away.
Dirt in the shape of a heart,
dust in the form of a life—
now, this life:
given, but so briefly,
like a breath,
cherished, with such sweet hope.
A Valentine from God’s own longing heart,
both praise and plea:
 Love you to death.
Won’t you be mine? – Steve Garnaas-Holmes
After cardiac rehab I hurried to St Matthew Episcopal for their noon Ash Wednesday service. The prayers were beautiful. The sermon reminded me that any fasting I might do in the next forty days would not impress God, but it would turn my heart and actions toward others poorer and weaker than myself. “Take on the fast that God chooses.” The Eucharist tasted wonderful on my tongue. And the ashes on my forehead were black and firmly placed.
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.
And here’s a joy. In conversation with my pew neighbor we discovered that we were both spiritual directors. We exchanged personal info and she told me about two labyrinths in our neighborhood, one inside St. Matt’s and another at First Presbyterian just down the street. I felt accompanied in a way I’d been hoping for in Austin. We have a community of spiritual directors in Illinois, but not here. My new friend and I may not see each other much in person, but it’s great to know she’s here.
Blessed are they who hope in the Lord. They are like trees planted near running water, which yield their fruit in due season and whose leaves never fade.
Later I talked with a friend in Illinois who is discovering how unpredictable and shallow the material goals he was told as a young man to pursue have actually turned out. His success does not taste sweet like honey from the honeycomb. He is reading a book by Richard Rohr about the second half of life. Just in time.
The Lord watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes.
I learned today that in Hebrew the word for “righteous” and “just” are the same word. In another conversation yesterday, this time with a college student angry over the unjust treatment of Palestinian refugees supposedly safe in Rafah, I remembered that “doing something” at least means NOT turning my eyes away because “there’s nothing I can do.” When I was in college I spent plenty of time in picket lines, demonstrating against the Vietnam War. I wrote fiery letters to the editor of our conservative Lincoln, Illinois newspaper. Those simple actions, multiplied by a million, were far from useless, even if the war continued for several more years. They were just the right thing to do.
This weekend I received an absentee ballot for the primary in Champaign County, Illinois. Part of me wants to throw it in the trash, but I won’t. Margaret and I have voted every time we’ve had the chance since we were 21. It’s the right thing to do. Moses had many things like this in mind when he spoke to the Israelites, just before his own death, as his people were about to cross the Jordan.
Today I have set before you
life and prosperity, death and doom.
If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God,
which I enjoin on you today,
loving him, and walking in his ways,
and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees,
you will live and grow numerous,
and the LORD, your God,
will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy.
You know how we used to give our friends and sweethearts candy hearts on Valentine’s Day? Remembering that stirs my stomach. I shiver and feel the goosebumps. How they said things like “Love you to death” and “Won’t you be mine?” and how when I got one of those from my friend Debbie for instance, I about fell over my desk in love?
Thanks God, for sending me one of those hearts today.
(Deuteronomy 30, Psalm 1, Matthew 4, Luke 9)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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