When the body fails the person
What are we doing, what are we witnessing, when a dear one’s body fails?
Today we ended our cat Shadow’s life.
Since January he had been struggling
…Tag: faith
It is the women
going to care for
the body
in the tomb
who find him risen.
The men
cannot believe.
There is a grave error in the penitential notion of “mortifying the body.”
It replicates the false dualism of “spirit versus matter ” that crept into and overwhelmed the Jewish faith and practice of Jesus as his followers spread out through the Greco-Roman world.
A truer practice is to “affirm the body,” to affirm it as a mortal yet sacred part of the divine whole.
When I allow myself to suffer the large or small sufferings of my body,
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan (1995)
…
Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.
I have
Never mind the endless cycling
of what we call news
ensorcelling tales of political theater,
social distress, and un-
natural disasters
things happening
elsewhere.
We are in the salutary midst
of the fall.
What is close
is real.
Think of children
now
Occasionally people wonder where I got the totem name Bright Crow that I use in my email address. Here’s the story I wrote to explain it in the voice of Walhydra’s amanuensis in 2008.
Walhydra likes to tease her amanuensis about a typo he makes occasionally with his totem name, Bright Crow.
Since he’s been typing for forty years, often to earn a living, he just shrugs and laughs. Nonetheless, she thinks the question
…
In “Loss of shared space: the second pandemic” (4/17/2020), I wrote:
…Our brains are hardwired so that the mere sight of a face [online] in real time minimally satisfies the need for a sense of presence with each other. But, our brains are in bodies in the material world. And our bodies need more than that minimal sight on a screen in order to feel—to know in the blood—that we are really in the midst of other people.
A reading from today’s Global Meeting for Worship
1st Century – 1 John 2:27 (New New Testament version)
“But for you the anointing that you received from the Christ abides in you, and you are not in need of anyone to teach you; but since his anointing teaches you about everything, and since it is a real anointing, and no lie, then, as it has taught you, maintain your union with him.”
I saw, also, that there was an ocean
of darkness and death;
but an infinite ocean of light and love,
which flowed over
the ocean of darkness.
In that also I saw
the infinite love of God,
and I had great openings.
… 
As the pastor began to speak the absolution,
I stood up and
interrupted the liturgy.
“Anyone who looks into their hearts
and acknowledges what they find there
also finds the power
to forgive
themselves.”
To the woman on my right
I said,
“You can still make love
…
