You don’t know me but I hear you are going through a tough time, and I would like to help you. I want to be open and honest with you, and let you know that happiness isn’t something just afforded to a special few. It can be yours, if you take the time to let it grow.
Being in a wheelchair and disabled, my wife Ann has had similar experiences of being prayer-bombed because of her disability. I think that the problem with #prayerbombing is a confluence of bad theology and bad manners. I have often said that folks wanting to #prayerbomb Ann should be asking her to pray for them.My first time here. I was prayer-bombed today because I'm crippled. I did not fight it. I chose to endure the spiritual abuse because I knew it would make him leave faster. I was right. Prayer & go. Didn't even take the time to get to know me at all.
Letiah @ Young Clergy Network
I'm surrounded by Christians who see me as a project right now. I just came to visit the new local coffee shop in my neighborhood. Perhaps if I was viewed as a human the quickie prayer might have focused on something else. I am not angry. This has happened too often in my life for anger to take up space about this. I am just naming the ignorance and ableism that is obviously present in our world and its systems.
Sadly, this is continued evidence that this narrative is widely lived into in the church. Why do people with disabilities widely refuse to attend church? Why do we have issues with our bodies and being? I would suggest because we don't like feeling like projects.
I would also suggest that many of us have accepted and even like the way our disabled bodies bear the image of God in our world. We are NOT here on earth to provide a source of inspiration or to be fixed. Our humanity has been blessed since the very beginning.
We are very good....crutches... and all.
Rant over.
BTW. The iced chocolate Chai is delicious and I'm still crippled. Just in case you were wondering.
I suggest that you read the entire piece here. I am encouraged knowing that these two were friends. Both of them have exhibited in their lives such a love for God and for the people He loves. I admire them both.Describing a 1957 meeting in New York City, Mr. Graham writes in his autobiography, "One night civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom I was pleased to count a friend, gave an eloquent opening prayer at the service; he also came at my invitation to one of our Team retreats during the Crusade to help us understand the racial situation in America more fully."
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King credited Mr. Graham with having a significant part in reducing the tension between whites and blacks in the South. In 1965, Mr. Graham canceled a tour of Europe to preach a series of crusades in Alabama, praying that the Gospel would tear down walls of division between the races and seeing the importance of his work alongside King’s.
King later said, “Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend, Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the civil rights movement would not have been as successful as it has been.”
During the civil rights movement, Mr. Graham preached, “Jesus was not a white man; He was not a black man. He came from that part of the world that touches Africa and Asia and Europe. Christianity is not a white man’s religion and don’t let anybody ever tell you that it’s white or black. Christ belongs to all people; He belongs to the whole world.”
Mr. Graham was in Australia at the time of King’s death. He remembers the moment someone approached him with news of King’s assassination, which was followed by journalists seeking a quote: “I was almost in a state of shock. Not only was I losing a friend through a vicious and senseless killing, but America was losing a social leader and a prophet, and I felt his death would be one of the greatest tragedies in our history."
As you look back on a year almost ended, recall the ways in which God has been inviting you to return, again and again, to Love which is the same as returning to God.
I love the sentiment of the saying in this image. It speaks to me of our need to enjoy life even when it is hard and difficult. Last year was a difficult one for me.. my first year of retirement and dealing with the death of a few of my dreams. Early in the year Susan Boyle made famous "I Dreamed a Dream".. her rendition of it still moves me.. I can so resonate with this last stanza:I had a dream my life would beI think that there is a mourning period when we realize that our dream has died and life is different than the one we imagined.. like most grief it is a healthy phase as long as it is not prolonged. Maybe it is just the onset of 2010 but, on a personal level, I feel that I am ready to dance the dance of life again. In celebration of that I give you these notable sayings:
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
Without music, life would be a mistake.... I would only believe in a God who knew how to dance. -NietzscheI don't know about you but I want to remember 2010 as the year I began to dance again!
In life as in dance: Grace glides on blistered feet. -Alice Abrams
Let us read and let us dance - two amusements that will never do any harm to the world. -Voltaire
Work like you don't need the money, love like your heart has never been broken,
and dance like no one is watching. -Aurora Greenway
Saw this image on Facebook today. It was posted by author Bronnie Ware. I so resonate with it. Last week I wrote this to a friend whose husband has been on a breathing machine for several months:On this Memorial Day weekend lets take a moment to honor, remember and pray for all of those (and their families) who have sacrificed and lost so much for the cause of freedom. We, who are free, are in their debt.An American bilateral above-the-knee amputee, occasional actor and motivational speaker. He has served in the U.S. Army for more than 20 years as a field artillery officer and on active service for; Desert Shield/Desert Storm (Kuwait), Operation Joint Forge, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is currently the director of the U.S. Army Fort Belvoir Garrison.
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On the night of May 7, 2007, while returning from a memorial service for two soldiers from his brigade, he lost both his legs and severley injured his right arm, to a roadside bomb in Baghdad. He became one of the first military personnel to use a next-generation powered prosthetic knee with technology to make it possible for amputees to walk with confidence and with a more natural gait.
I found Greg's post to be a short but powerful reminder about how we must live. You can read it in full here.If we take seriously the passages from the New Testament about voluntary suffering, it could be argued that the Church’s willingness to suffer cuts to the heart of what it means to manifest the kingdom of God.
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The willingness of God’s people to suffer out of love for others—including our enemies—rather than use coercive force against them must still be considered the ultimate expression of God’s love and the ultimate resistance against the patterns of this world.
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By removing the cross from the center of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, we eliminate the most fundamental distinction between these two kingdoms.
I recommend that you read Deborah Greene's whole letter here at the Washington Post website.After I hung up, I started to cry and scream as my whole body trembled. This just couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be happening. Only moments before, I had been going about my errands on a normal Monday morning. Only moments before, my life had felt intact. Overwhelmed with emotions, I fell to the floor, my knees buckling under the weight of what I had just learned. And you, kind strangers, you were there.
You could have kept on walking, ignoring my cries, but you didn’t. You could have simply stopped and stared at my primal display of pain, but you didn’t. No, instead you surrounded me as I yelled through my sobs, “My father killed himself. He killed himself. He’s dead.” And the question that has plagued me since that moment came to my lips in a scream, “Why?” I must have asked it over and over and over again.
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I never saw you after that. But I know this to be true, if it were not for all of you, I might have simply gotten in the car and tried to drive myself home. I wasn’t thinking straight, if I was thinking at all. If it were not for you, I don’t know what I would have done in those first raw moments of overwhelming shock, anguish and grief. But I thank God every day that I didn’t have to find out. Your kindness, your compassion, your willingness to help a stranger in need have stayed with me until this day. And no matter how many times my mind takes me back to that horrible life-altering moment, it is not all darkness. Because you reached out to help, you offered a ray of light in the bleakest moment I’ve ever endured. You may not remember it. You may not remember me. But I will never, ever forget you. And though you may never know it, I give thanks for your presence and humanity, each and every day.
My daughter gave me this wonderful picture a few years ago for Father's "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."Today I honor him, his legacy to our nation and his contributions to the kingdom of God by sharing these things that he said ... see if you can identify the theme.
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| Kelli Standish |
Kelli Standish is one of the most inspirational people that I know but have never met - some of you know what that means. Today she shared this on Facebook and she said it was okay to share here.I am a firm believer in doing opposite things. When a spine surgeon told me I might not be able to travel or even walk again, I went out that night and bought luggage. When a rheumatologist told me my pelvis was almost completely fused by disease, I scheduled a zip lining adventure in the jungles of Costa Rica. When a handyman told me I wasn't capable of dealing with my leaking toilet, I pulled the whole thing out, repaired the break in the line beneath it, and replaced it with a new one.Kelli does not blog much any more but you can find her posts at kellistandish.com.
So last night, when I was at one of my darkest moments in my life, feeling utterly forsaken by God and wishing for death due to all the rejection and emotional pain in my divorce, I decided another opposite thing was in order. Tonight I made myself get dressed up and go to church, and then I reached out to a work acquaintance and asked her if she'd like to get together.
The music and message at church was powerful and uplifting, and my work acquaintance said yes to dinner. We had a fantastic time, eating with our hands, sharing stories, and drinking cup after cup of glorious Ethiopian spiced tea.
So wherever you are in your life, whatever dark thing you're facing, do something opposite. You won't feel like it. You won't have the energy or time or money or bravery or health for it. Do it anyway. Opposite things make room for hope and fresh air and momentum. Opposite things disrupt darkness.
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| Letiah |
Does it dry up“A Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
