Purple painted fingers

Purple painted fingers
picking black berries
in the orange patch of the sun's rays
yellow leaves pause at the summer's end
until blown from heaven to earth.
Nature tucks a decaying blanket
up to her chin and settles
in for the winter
Sweet berries
Crisp breeze
Warm sun
Crunching leaves
I seek solace on Good Friday
from the death of dreams.

EH
March 2013

Resurection

Future Tense

Future Tense

In the waiting room
   I sit.
In the not yet here,
   can´t do anything to rush it.
Want to do something
   meaningful
Want to look back
   from ahead
and nod; it was a worthwhile
   life.

Eh May 2009

Reconciliation

Reconciliation

The vision statement of the Shalom Center declares that the purpose of this project is to is to create a space for the strengthening of relationships between people and God, themselves, others and nature. “Today, doctors, philosophers, theologians, and scientists are exploring the frontiers of a world where relationship, instead of isolation, is the key to understanding reality.  From the perspective of ecology, systems thinking, and the new physics, the universe is a dynamic community of interconnected energy events in which every unique being emerges from the influence of the entire universe... Love, instead of alienation, is essential for reality, according to the growing world vision be it from the perspective of metaphysics, theology, or science. (Epperly 109).”

[EH1]             The objectives of the Shalom Center seek to establish transformative relationships in three essential areas: in the person or individual, in the community, and in the environment.  To reach the restoration of a relationship, it is indispensable first to pass through a reconciliation process.  According to John Paul Lederach in his book Building Peace, the restoration of relationships at all levels of a society is essential to achieve sustainable peace.  The restoration of relationships and the reconciliation between God and people, people with each other, and people with nature is accomplished through the delicate and paradoxical balance between truth and mercy, between justice and peace.  Both paradoxes create the necessary energy to maintain the equilibrium along the path toward restoration, reconciliation, and the restructure of relationships. (30) 

To open this space for reconciliation, we must create programs and organizational structures that are in harmony with the values and the established objectives. To be in harmony means to seek to maintain the balance between the truth with its transparency and recognition and with mercy with its acceptance, forgiveness, compassion and healing.  It is to balance between the rights, restitution and equality of justice, and the unity, respect, and well-being of peace.  There cannot be neither mercy without truth nor peace without justice. (Lederach, Building 30-31) The challenge of the Shalom Center is to explore the paths of this dynamic balance through which one reaches the holy ground of reconciliation.

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 [EH1]

Courageous Compassion

Compassion Ripples

With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need. Acts 4:33-35

An elderly widow is cutting coupons and saving every extra penny for a special offering to be held at church.  With her husband and her children gone, she has to make every cent count.  She is not a “sweet little old church lady,” but one of those crotchety complainers who doesn’t want any changes to come to her congregation or her community; and yet, she is saving the pennies from each coupon she uses at the store for the offering she will give to help build a Blessing Cabin in Chile on the other side of the world.

He travelled overseas with a church group when he was fifteen years old.  He sang, worked, and made friends with teenagers who spoke a different language but worshipped the same God.  When he heard the news, he knew he had to do something to help.  So, he designed and made t-shirts imprinted with a drawing of a small house.  Now he is selling the t-shirts to raise money to help build Blessing Cabins for the people he learned to love in Chile, that faraway country on the other side of the world.

Eighty men and a few women gather at dusk after a long workday.  They are building Blessing Cabins to shelter to as many brothers and sisters as they can before the winter rains begin.  They work until late, night after night, week after week, volunteering after hours at their regular jobs, continuing all day on Saturdays, and stopping only for church services on Sunday afternoons.  Though small, the Blessing Cabins, now taking take form in the skilled hands of these volunteer carpenters and master builders, are not only dry and warm, but pretty and worthy of the families who will inhabit them. The resources for the building materials have come from offerings given in churches on the other side of the world.

Richard has been watching closely over the small congregation in his care for several weeks, scrambling to scrounge up food, water, clothing, and tents.  After the first devastating dawn, the full moon filled him with hope even when the sun disappeared each day and still there was no electricity or running water. But then, his concern grew as the moon began to wane and the days shortened signalling the rapid passing of the summer and the arrival of the first winter rains.  The first three Blessing Cabins arrived just in time, small but sturdy defences against the bitter winds, put together by the efforts of sisters and brothers nearby and on the other side of the world.

Valentina went to bed Friday night thinking about having fun on the last weekend before the start her senior year of high school.  She awoke at 3:34 in the morning to a thundering roar in the pitch-blackness.  Everything in her room began to fall, crashing to the floor as the earth itself convulsed.  Her mother screamed. The roof caved in. Then, after two minutes and forty-five seconds of terror, came the silence. In the first trembling light of dawn, neighbours pulled Valentina unhurt from the rubble.  Her father and pregnant mother died when they ran back inside the house to rescue her. When Valentina lost her parents and her home, her church family embraced her with tender care, and within two weeks, Richard and the volunteer builders had her settled, with her sister, into a new Blessing Cabin.  Valentina started back to school as soon as it reopened with a new determination to graduate and to be the first in her family to finish high school.  She dares to dream again of college and a career. Valentina, whose name is derived from the word for “courage” in Spanish, experienced the ripples of compassion spreading throughout Chile and arriving from around the world after the February 27^th, 2010 earthquake. 

Courageous compassion is throwing a stone in a pool of water, watching it disappear, and believing that the ripples will spread out beyond the scope of the initial action. From the “daring to do something for others” act, whether it be as simple as snipping coupons or selling t-shirts or as sacrificial as caring for a community during a national emergency, or running back inside a falling house to save a daughter’s life, spring invisible wavelets encircling people who may never know who threw the first pebble into the water.  Either as individuals or as communities of faith, whether we are able to witness the effects or not, we are called to send compassion ripples around the world by giving of ourselves to those in need.

January 2011

Step into Shalom

In the whispers of the dawn

We have heard the voice of grace

Stepping out into Shalom

We walk in faith.

Chorus:

Take my hand, brother

Let us stand, sister

We will step together into shalom

As we learn to listen

With hearts drawn open

We will step together into shalom.

We have dared to dream God’s dream

Justice, mercy, truth and peace

Called into a sacred space

We seek God’s face.

In each other we have found

Community freely bound

By our covenant shared in Christ

We stand for life.

Words by Elena Huegel

Music by Adam Bergeron

To listen to the tune of this song, listen on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz1TC2CRInE

I went on a personal retreat to the Shalom Center today and enjoyed reading, painting, and taking pictures.  It was good to be reminded of simplicity as a part of shalom.

Darkness versus Light

 

The burst of sparks

high in the night sky

booming against the

clock chimes and church bells

call out “midnight”

to the warmth

and humidity of the

southern summer’s

New Year’s eve.

When the fireworks finish falling,

and the clock’s chime checks out twelve,

and the church bells clanging fade away,

all that is left is the

frightening silence of the

black sky

the pinpoint stars

and a heart beat.

The aftermath of midnight

is the glistening teeth

and red tongue just before

the swallow down the

slippery throat to despair.

The black hole stretches to

engulf and squelch

the last rays of Peace

Love,

Hope,

Dreams.

Then it is there and in a wink,

it is gone.

A firefly’s light

remnant of the sun

blinks against the emptiness

and shifts the focus from:

dark sky to a billion stars

dungeon hole to eternal freedom

stagnated selfishness to dancing harmony

loneliness to synchronized solitude

helplessness to hopefulness.

In an instant the lens rotates

perspectives sharpen.

A tiny turn

to choose tonight to see the

darkness of the sky

or the light of the stars.

Elena Huegel, January 1^st , 2001