poetry
The Moment
It isn’t the future
It isn’t the past
It isn’t the center
That I have taken to last
It isn’t the ideas
It isn’t the thought
It is what I Have been given
That is the moment I have.
Enjoy your moment.
LIFE: ISN’T THAT WONDERFUL
Life: Isn’t that wonderful.
I remember lots of people in my life as a result of the words or phrases they use in their life. I am sure there are many in your circle whose cherished words of thought stand out for a great many reasons. Today’s featured image is a picture of one of my treasured people. My Aunt Vera. It has been a long time now since I could talk to my Aunt Vera but I will never forget a saying that was the core of her spirit. “Isn’t That Wonderful?” There was never a bad day that she couldn’t find a sliver of Wonderful in her day. It is easy for a day to linger on with negative thoughts all day, or week, or years. I remember her comments about the poems I would send her that would find their way to her favorite magazine. “Isn’t that wonderful,” would be a comment. “Too much rain?” “Isn’t that wonderful?” Too little rain? “Look at that sun, Isn’t that wonderful?” It created in me a search for the wonderfuls.
I have the opportunity to talk to all kinds of people on a work day. I look at it as Job Security. The other day it was a Vietnam vet using a wheel chair. I watched his progress from outside the food court, and then in line, and then to a table. Then back to the line to grab the food and take it to the table. His Vietnam hat was his story that I am sure is remembered by so many. As he was getting ready to leave he was struggling to clean up the table and take his trash to the trash receptical. I reached out to help. “Do you need any help?” I asked.
“Legs don’t move as well now. I can handle it,” he said.
I went ahead and helped saying, “It is what I do.” When I cleaned off the table he responded with “Thank you”. I asked if he needed any more help.
He mentioned no, but he did begin a short conversation of his challenges.
The list of various surgeries and doctors visits, the loss of his wife this last year. Open heart this and that, the new pacemaker and more transpired over just a few minutes. What do you say after all of that?
“Have a good day?” I said.
“Yes: Thank you” was the reply. Appreciating another day irregardless of his challenges, was his attitude.
“How is your day going?” he asked of me.
“Life is. Isn’t that wonderful”. I said.
“You too”: he replied and he was gone in the crowd.
It would have been Aunt Vera’s reply. The automatic reply that is so set in my mind after hearing it so many times from my Aunt Vera it was most appropriate. GOD surrounds us with Aunt Vera’s for just these special times.
So Monday I will be off to a not so hard of a job. “Isn’t that wonderful”.
Have a wonderful day. Our CARES and PRAYERS will be with you all.
PRAY
It is a new year. It requires a new attitude.
Over the years I have posted a lot of things. I have taken many breaks and always come back. I have posted “On Politics”, to “Love One Another”. The responses I receive from readers follow a pattern.
The largest numbers of Likes to Unorthodox Christianity posts have dealt with posts that deal with Jesus and a loving GOD.
There are a great many of writers posting on all sorts of things. They have large groups of followers and impact thousands of people with help issues, ‘kick the cat’ commentaries, and simple stories.
Today I want to address Unorthodox Christianity.
Today I was just reading about the rapid deployment of thousands of troops from Fort Bragg to overseas. The story talked about the real world of instant change to a group of people for whom the future instantly became unknown. How to react overnight. How to change what were simple things to address the serious.
I think of an old song “What the world needs now is Love, sweet love. No not just for some but for everyone.” What can I do about that for them? For their families and friends? There will also be a great number of residents where they are off to who have just had their lives changed also. Who have no choice of where to live as a result of their own location. The innocents suffer to politics no matter where they are.
Life is hectic. We have our routines and get lost in them. Jesus had his routines. People came to him for help. Help because what the world was offering them did not solve their problems.
I ask a simple question quite often during a given day, as do many of us. “Good morning, how are you doing today?”
Often they tell me. They tell me their dog had just passed away. They tell me they just got diagnosed with some form of cancer. They mention a friend’s concerns. They say they simply are not feeling very well today. They say their world is changing.
I am just a simple guy. I am not a doctor, a scientist, a politician, or a well known anyone. But I do have a response to all of them. “ I can and I will pray for you, that may be all that I can do.” (And I do. I do not sit down and take a hand, though for some I may have, but I do pray for them in the course of human events.)
They thank me, and seem to appreciate the simple degree of help from someone they really do not know. Jesus, unfortunately isn’t coming down the street today, walking through town for them to run up to him and say “Please help me.” I was told once at a retreat that I may be the only Jesus that they may ever meet. I have learned over my life to take that seriously.
Today GOD will ask you to fill in for Jesus. I rarely mention Jesus to them. I never mention a church or a religion. For those who know of Jesus they will think of that. If they believe along other lines they appreciate the prayer from the context that help entails. Unorthodox Christianity is not about conversion, it is about help, and a simple form of Love One Another.
The world needs more prayer. Unorthodox Christianity is not about creating a mega church, it is about filling in. Today the prayer you offer is a simple reflection of love. It is a reflection of help. Any day, any news, anybody.
“I give you a new commandment: Love One Another.
Just as I have loved you, you also must love one another.
BY THIS LOVE YOU HAVE FOR ONE ANOTHER
EVERYONE WILL KNOW THAT YOU ARE MY DISCIPLES.” (JOHN 13.34 njb)
Pray
Simply Love One Another
Simply Love One Another
Dennis c Wheeler, 2006
Through years of storied prophets
In every religion known to man
The license of behavior draws
A craftiness of what you can.
The simpleness of love each other
Fights against the grain,
No matter what religion says
Instinct fights this bold refrain.
From early on the echo chills
The encounters of the soul,
Simply love one another
Stretches instinct to the bone…
Yet storied prophets tell the tales
Of the power held by love
And the foolishness of kingdoms lost
For the test of trusting guns…
So I will add my name to those
Who prophesied the dream,
That love one another
Is not such a complicated scheme…..
From me: Songs of Honour, Nobler House April 3, 2006
An Ode To Graying
from: 5-13-2008
I don’t much remember growing gray,
It just happened when I wasn’t paying enough attention.
But I don’t much care for graying.
Coloring the gray doesn’t change the aging
But the aging can color the attitude, and the attitude colors the living.
I think that the pinnacle of wisdom is when graying enhances ones attitude
Rather than darkens it.
The truth is that it should be one’s goal to spend as much time graying as possible.
The longer one is graying, the more life one is living.
The more time we spend in graying the more opportunity we are being given
To correct the courses of our journey.
A time to every season should celebrate every day that is spent in graying.
Every day that is spent in graying represents another day that we have been given to experience the adventure that is living.
Life and the living of its moments is the adventure and the purpose of our existence.
Who will cross my path today whom I can help?
Who will appreciate my smile and my laugh?
Who will achieve that goal that has been intertwined with mine within this dynamic called living?
And who will I meet today who will lend me another color to add to the palette of my painting?
Somewhere in the graying reside the building blocks of my life.
Each little stubble of gray houses the colors of my living that has brought me to this place in my life.
Those patches of gray that color my head and face are flashes of the Rainbows of my existence. Rather than being the absence of the color of my youth they are the inevitable trophies of the artistry of GOD.
It is merely my eyes that deceive.
As the graying presents its rainbow of wisdom my mind sees not the colors of a life that has been filled with adventure but rather a struggle that has consumed my resources.
That subtle transformation of graying is only the result of a mixing of the spectrum of colors of a life bred of challenges accepted and of choices born of faith and driven by a force within that refuses to give up. The graying of my life is not the absence of color but represents a palette of experiences in the spectrum of the universe.
Were one able to view inside the gray, the vividness of the colors there would blind the eyes and stir the soul. Inside the gray are the treasures beyond measure and gifts yet to be opened. It should be my desire that I have twice as many days of gray for the true joy of the graying has been the painting of the picture, and may the picture of my life be far from complete. May the chapters be many and may the miles ahead be as plentiful as the miles of the past.
You should hide your eyes, my friend, for the colors of my gray are bright indeed and the palette of my painting is only beginning to be populated. dw
Dancing Spirits
It seems so very natural
To spend my time with you
To take your hand and walk along
The pathway just us two
Living moments as if hours
Living months in single days
Spirits dancing now together
After lifetimes lived away.
You have come to share through others
And found the circumstance not right
And now it seems we’ve found a time
To turn darkness into light.
We have journeyed over lifetimes
And have finally found the one
That turns sorrows into gladness
And the mundane into fun…
Isn’t it wonderful…..
dw (from 2005)
Notes On My Recent Hip Surgery
Notes on My Hip Replacement Surgery
I sit and think with my mind at ease
To bring forth a rhyme as I wish to please
Those friends of mine who have made the day
A helpful and a caring one with encouragement and prayers to say.
The surgery went quickly and found many unaware,
But they found the phone and texted me from their concern to share
The challenges are common to many of them here
The told me of their challenges in conditions similar.
A hip or two or something else, a relative or a friend,
It all came out so very well and will do so in the end.
You will see me walking down the street and maybe stop and chat
The firm resolve to move ahead and take not one step back,
For their stories gave encouragement through frustration and some pain
That the choice I made to swap a part for a new one was not insane.
So I encourage any of you who have questions or some doubt,
Listen to those voices that GOD will direct to find your heart,
And before the days have much moved past the goal that you had set
You will tell the stories that becomes another’s encouragement.
Thanks to all of you and have a great day.