He comes to bring the light to a dark and broken world. We know at some time, some place we will all face that darkness, that brokenness, that fear... Knowing does not make it any easier to hear or speak out loud.
ButRemembering
He comes to bring the light to a dark and broken world. Over and over, again I bring my pain to the one who knows, who listens, who calms... His outstretched hands are a balm to my weary soul.
Whether your anxiety is from a diagnosis, the shape of the world, the upcoming election, a broken relationship, or simply the coming dark and cold… Call to mind his face. He brings light, and peace, and strength to face those very fears.
It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything in this space.
A year actually. A. Hard. Year.
And then August rolled around, and WordPress emailed me to let me know my site had been renewed for another year.
So I either spent a hundred bucks for nothing, or I’d better write something.
So for those of you who are tired of the media pretending that this upcoming election is normal and covering the republican candidate just as if he is a normal candidate, I present you with a Cute Cat Post, filled with funny cat pictures of our new stray cat, who has warmed our hearts and made us laugh when we really needed to laugh.
Introducing…
Mr. Tommy Orange
He showed up back in February as a streak of lightning dashing off the back porch and leaving the porch swing wildly crashing against the wall. I turned to Mr. H.C. and said, “I think there was just a cat sleeping on our porch swing.” About a week later we saw him again, curled up in a pile of leaves as close as he could get to the foundation.
We found him sleeping and hanging out in that same spot many times over the next week or two, so we decided we should probably give him some food.
Mr. H. C. put out some dry food nearby, and before long he was eating it regularly, and we were seeing him everyday. It took him several weeks but soon he would stay at the food bowl while we watched him from the porch. We both talked to him quietly, but Mr. H.C. was the one who really spent time just gently talking to him and whistling while they were outside together.
A few weeks later, he discovered how comfortable the porch furniture is. He would still run off when we opened the sliding glass doors. Until one day, he didn’t.
The first time he let someone pet him. The photo is dated April 8.
After he was letting us pet him on a regular basis, we decided we should probably take him to the vet to get all the cat shots necessary for a pet cat. His first appointment was cancelled because no one could get him into the cat carrier. We ended up with scratched hands and arms and a cat who had vanished into the woods. He came back though. And the next time we were prepared. We had gotten him his own brand new cat carrier that didn’t smell like THE OTHER CAT, and we moved his feeding bowl inside the carrier where he happily ate his food for several weeks. This is why humans are generally considered smarter than cats.
But he needed a name before he went to the vet. Mr. H.C’s mom, Clara, used to have a cat she called Little Orange. We tried that on him, but, well, he is not Little. I was reading the novel There There by native author, Tommy Orange. I looked at the book on my nightstand and said Tommy Orange! So his official name for the veterinarian is Tommy Orange. (I hope the real Tommy Orange is not offended.)
He has since been to the vet twice–once for his shots, and once for his gender reassignment surgery. And now? He is definitely ours. He follows Mr. H.C. around the yard. He comes when he’s whistled for. He leaves us dead mice on the porch almost every morning. He takes naps on our feet. He makes us laugh every day.
But there is a problem.
THE OTHER CAT hates him.
She has been the Queen for four years now, and she is not accepting applications for any other household occupants.
She hisses. She arches her back. She chases him from window to window. And if she gets outside, she chases him around the garage, and out of the yard. He has never tried to beat her up, though he certainly could. He seems to know that, yes, she IS the QUEEN.
We have occasionally closed the doors to our bedroom and let him inside. He has made himself quite at home.
So now we are arguing, discussing, brainstorming what we can do to keep THE QUEEN happy and Tommy Orange warm this winter. So far the plan is a Cat Door in the new window in the laundry room. But that’s another post…
In the meantime, he’s still very comfortable on the porch furniture.
…So I have just spent the last thirty days writing political posts on a blog that was never supposed to be political.
But these last three years have left me with something that needs to be more than a month-long rant. What unsettles me the most are the reasoned, thoughtful, pieces that discuss the loss of democracy through authoritarianism. Do you know how it happens? Good people like you and me simply tune out what is happening because: A) We can’t believe it has come to this; B) We simply zone out because of A; C) We don’t know what we can possibly do against something so BIG; or D) We don’t talk about it because our friends voted for the other party, and we know what discussing politics has done does to friends and families.
But this is important, friends: It is no longer Politics As Usual. We bury our heads in the sand at our country’s peril. (And believe me, I am a long-time ostrich…) And so I pulled my head out of the sand, blinked in the sunlight, and wrote some things here that might offend, but I have tried to write them in the most reasoned way I could. We do not need to add another screaming voice to this already polarized country.
No, it isn’t about building a wall. (Please read this post, if you need to hear my views on walls….) It is about being righteous, standing up for righteousness, for justice, for mercy, for love. Righteousness must be tempered by love, or else we have someone who is a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal; love must be tempered by righteousness or we have wantonness. Justice without mercy is cruelty; mercy on its own without justice makes us doormats. Love & Righteousness, Justice & Mercy–they belong on opposite sides of the same coin; one without the other is an imbalance, a lack of harmony, a breach…
These days the country is certainly imbalanced, harmony is hard to find, and perhaps the breach is miles wide, but what is democracy worth? For my entire lifetime, democracy has not needed to be fought for, and perhaps we have grown soft and complacent, thinking the United States of America was the founding of democracy, and we needn’t worry about it.
After all, don’t we have the Constitution?
Don’t we have three branches of government that balance each other?
Aren’t we all certain of our freedom and our voting rights?
Dictators and tyrants and authoritarian rulers are not our allies, are they?
If the events of the last few months have you wondering or worrying about these questions, I suggest that we remember that it wasn’t so long ago, we needed to fight for democracy. The odd thing about now is that it seems our democracy is deteriorating from within. And we can’t agree about who is doing the crumbling as the walls fall to pieces with people on either side shouting and throwing rocks.
What we need is courageous people to stand in the breach. Courageous people to say “Stop shouting.” “Stop Tweeting.” Put down the ugly sign in your hand, turn to the person next to you, and offer it to them.
I’ve been reading The Case for the Psalms by N.T. Wright and there is this beautiful quote toward the end. He writes about “…a people of praise who, out of their celebration of God’s goodness in creation and out of their eager anticipation of his coming in judgment at last, speak his word and his truth to those in power, reminding them that they are answerable to the God who will one day hold them accountable.”
Can we speak truth to those in power? Will we stand in the breach, or have we gone too soft after years of easy living? Will we offer our hands to those who are different from us? Are we willing to do the hard work of reconciliation or is it just easier to keep shouting and interrupting? Jesus stands in the gap for us, and calls us to do the same. How will you stand?
I’ve been reading The Case for the Psalms by N.T. Wright and there is this beautiful quote toward the end. He writes about “…a people of praise who, out of their celebration of God’s goodness in creation and out of their eager anticipation of his coming in judgment at last, speak his word and his truth to those in power, reminding them that they are answerable to the God who will one day hold them accountable.”
the circle of life 