I have to sit very still and think though this week. This is the week that brings to pass God’s promise in the Garden of Eden. He will provide means for a relationship with Him through love and redemption for all of mankind. Scholars write treatises to help us understand the nature of God’s will as He relates Himself to his creation. That’s theology. Then steps and changes lead to this day and many others. Another group has organized the year liturgically to keep reminding us of important happenings along the way in the story: a chosen time for Advent, a special focus for Lent, a chant about spring equinox and a full moon to pinpoint Easter, 50 days til Pentecost, a lot of Ordinary Time until Christ the King Sunday and back to Advent. For some reason more people pay attention to the once a year importance of Sundays in Advent and the celebratory service of Easter.

One of my favorite non-religious cartoons is Jesus on the counselor’s couch saying, “My most important day is taken over with bunnies and dyeing eggs.” The third word is allegory and I want to look at a children’s story effective to me from my childhood to eighth graders who have listened quietly and breathed “Whow!” at the end. However you can read The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes do so. Beyond the story notice these morals. The bunny manages her life so when she is chosen to be a helper, she is able to do so. Regardless of her rank among those chosen, she carries out her task as it demands. When the task of obedience seems more than she can manage, the grandfather bunny who sends out the helpers appears to support her and reminder her she has been wise, kind, swift, and brave.

I look forward to Palm Sunday and children marching in with palm branches that are collected up front before they turn into swords. Wednesday is usually a special review of the actions of Jesus during his last earthly week. Maudy Thursday is a catch my breath service as scripture is read and candles extinguished, and the cross carried out of the chapel until its triumphant return accompanied by glorious music on Easter morning. A week will pass and I will once again be in a Sunday service for a reminder that on a first day of the week, the tomb was empty. Stand up and sing!

Christ the Lord is Risen today! Hallelujah!

Christians of the world are approaching Palm Sunday leading into Holy Week and Easter, AND YET, one of the supposed faithful on Swift is choosing another topic this week. This is my one week of the year to lean into a not most important part of my life. In case you have missed it, which I somehow doubt, this is the time of March Madness, the ultimate college basketball championship of each year. Competation begins with the First Four: those fringers who almost make make it and have one last chance to be among the 62 teams that keep being divided by 2 until one champion is left standing. I don’t bet, don’t always (sometimes seldom) have my college in the running, often have to check the location of a school whose name doesn’t have the state, AND YET, for years I have chased down information and filled in winners in blanks.

Why this one consuming interest? I am not an athlete. I didn’t have a husband who bought season tickets to anything. AND YET I graduated from a high school of 72 students, most of whom I started first grade with. We managed to have a boys’ basketball team to attract a few young males and to provide a bonding activity. For four years fall to spring we traveled on Fridays or Saturdays up and down a long thin parish to cheer or moan as the day demanded. I learned the flow of the game, liked that it was always indoors, it mostly moved in a predictable time frame, and it provided boys tall enough for me to have a crush on.

Is your sport one of the different “balls?” It might be wrestling or even as sophisticated as polo or cricket. I am a part of the encouragers of this particular competition. I like the name Gonzaga because they just appeared as an unknown in 2014. This year I happened to watch the end of a game where the wise losing coach let all his bench have a chance to play on national television. I saw a freshman, his only second time all year on the court make a basket. His beaming face was pure happiness. I have always admired Kim Mulkey who comes from my Tangipahoa parish as a high school player, an Olympic team member, an outstanding coach, and a winner of awards. To be an encourager is important. I’m thankful for those who have watched me as I run a race I am called to participate in. It’s open to all and all can win a crown, not just for March, but for eternity.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, Hebrews 12:1

No, not Ides of March, though the day is almost correct and the assassination of a Roman emperor might fit in. Meterologists would have a more scientific explanation. My mother would have just called this week “the Easter snap.” One more weather change and the reason I could never have a frilly short sleeve dress for Easter. March is designated as the windy month and Houston has a semi-scientific reason. The sun is moving into our hemisphere, warming the ground. Rising heat leaves open space to invite gusts of strong winds. At times, like this week, those winds also open space for colder blasts providing one more 46 degree morning after our getting used to 68 at daybreak.

Somehow verbalizing thoughts about a contact with wind call up a visual response or the initiating of a bodily reaction. That wind may be a strong burst of air against your face or a symbolic disturbance that affects your movement through a day. To be “tossed by the wind” is not a settled place to be. Even landlubbers know sailing calls up wind comments as the wording of Oliver Wendell Holmes expresses: “To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.” At times walking uphill we “bend with the wind” though the climb is easier with ” the wind at our back.” People can be catogorized by the way they face adversity: “The pessimist complains, the optimist expects change, and the realist adjusts the sail.”

Wind from various directions is always listed as one of God’s creations. After Noah spends his time on the ark with the animals, God sends a wind to dry up the water. In Egypt a strong wind swept out the locust that were that day’s plague. A wind blew quail that had lost a sense of direction into a camp that had complained they had no meat in the wilderness. Mentions of wrecks and people at sea culminates with the grand storm that crashes on the rocks the ship bearing Paul to Rome. I feel I live in a day of new translations of old truths, of non-sought phone message blowing against a stance I thought chartered my life direction, and of groups wanted to re-define the course my life takes. Yet, I have found a safe harbor for my faith and hold this as an admonition to believe in the set of my sail.

We must stop acting like children. We must not let deceitful people trick us by their false teachings, which are like winds that toss us around from place to place.

Ephesians 4:14

The answer is like the chicken/egg question. Which did I like first? The color or the fruit. Dress me in a citrus hue and I feel truly elegant. Earliest memories are of the round fruits in that palate. Before the O’Miley line became just Miley some branch drifted down the east coast to become orange growers near Plant City, Florida. That’s all my knowledge about my granddad. That and the fact that my birth dad grew up on that farm as one of seven children and could peal an orange with the skill developed only by focused practice.

Oranges require an area that stays mostly warm during a growing season: California, Florida, and a such an area of South Louisiana. Before storing and shipping were perfected, they were a treat when there at a specific time. A Christmas memory is to dump out my stocking and find an orange lodged in the toe. The Louisiana oranges grow mainly at Belle Chasse in Plaqueimes parish, roll that carefully off your tongue. We made special trips down from Hammond to choose between Satsumas, Tangerines, and Mandarines which peel easily and the small Kumquats, an acquired taste. Seville oranges are harvested in March to June, rounding out the season. My wedding was in December. While my mother dealt with ceremony details, my daddy drove to get enough naval oranges to carefully hand one to each of seven new children joining the family, and to explain to them how grafting a tree does away with the need for seed. A fresh-squeezed glass of orange juice matches the sunrise to start a day.

Not many people rhapsodize over green beans on a stalk, yet each of you can speak of favorite fruit ripe for the gathering. The branches of an apple trees covered in red balls. Peaches that require a special tenderness not to bruise the pristine skin. Blackberries growing wild in a ditch or your being enclosed in a cage with a bucket to gather blueberries. Very Biblical fig trees with mocking birds squalking as they claim early morning picking rights. We cherish each kind and delight in the variety. We humans have a list of spirit fruit we need to cultivate individually that are just as enticing: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control. Choose what you are to grow for the harvest. Someone is waiting for your season.

By their fruit you will know them. Matthew 17:16

Not all is gloom and doom. My yardman, not really a landscaper, yet tends well, spent last week replenishing soil and mulching the beds. He doesn’t know to dig up and divide the daisies that make new clumps by growing under ground, so some areas are more crowded than I like. However, between his work and some new zinnias and a packet of spring seeds, I will have visits with Swift Blvd. walkers over the appearance of my yard as bloom time comes. Neighbors won’t even see the totally amazing volunteer bluebonnet trail I have outside the back porch from seeds blown over the fence. In a perfect world, more rain would be provided. That is out of my bailiwick, so the sprinkler needs to be on call.

I feel better and more hopeful considering what is right in my life. As last week progressed, I had to weed through what came on texts and e-mails and check the internet to make choices about voting in hopes that my actions would add some wisdom to governmental demands. A friend who is a visitor for our church for those in a hospital who need help spent time with a young woman sitting with a less than year old child with heart problems. I missed an eye doctor appointment today even after robot phone calls and answer STOP texts. I just didn’t read the date, only the time. And across an ocean and a continent, my “country ’tis of thee” began and is continuing an attack that has unknown consequences.

Humming the tune to “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen,” and remembering the lines to “the Assyrians came down like the wolf on the fold,” I picked up one of my to go to books. The bookmark was at a chapter called A Very Present Help. A favorite song proclaims Psalm 43:1 -3 in a rhythmic cadence that in my mind sounds like a camel driver urging his mount across the desert. Looking back there have always been troubles and we have even doubted that answers were possible. Sifting the outcomes, from somewhere has been provided a shield, a fortress, a rock, a tower, a stronghold. My dry dirt will yield the color of the coming season and my frightened heart will hear the promise of help.

The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever.

Psalm 121:8

One may have a destination in mind, but you’re not there yet. A slight difference in meaning counts. Meander around a mall before lunch checking what may turn up interesting. Wandering can have the connotation you really have no idea, yet if you take this turn something may feel familiar. When you feel lost then constraints of time, or daylight fading, or possible danger start the rise of a heart rate and the onset of panic and the unadult-like urge to call, “Mommy, where are you?” This season of ending February and moving to March creates a little of each for me. Pipes wrapped may need to stay that way through I really don’t expect another freeze. Papers for house taxes and the larger tax return get mixed with the wrong stack. I have an urge to order seeds for summer yet the right catalogue and page seem elusive and is now the right time? What gives the confirmation I am on the best path to move on with this year.

Some days I want to throw caution to the wind and “follow the yellow brick road.” Spring is usually like this and all will be well. However, it is nice to be next to that map with a red dot labeled You Are Here and the surroundings do look familiar. One big arrow gives encouragement unless it points up. Really, is fly away the solution? I’ve been in puzzled groups at a crossroads to have the loudest and bravest proclaim, “My gut says to go this way,” and march off sure that the rest of us will follow. The possibility of advice you can trust may be the solution unless it ends with the phrase, “You can’t miss it.” The most comforting journey is made like first graders leaving their classroom to go to the library. They travel in pairs and have a hand to hold.

It always amazes me that in this technological age, a source of rescuing may often include words like shepherd, rod, and staff for a generation that knows sheep only in a petting zoo. We do meander through parts of our lives, wander in a few wildernesses, and look around to realize we are lost. Then we don’t need a guardian angel as much as a caring, watchful shepherd who pulls us back from the edge of a crevice or fights off the lions of confusion that wait to attack. So February is short and March will blow strong winds toward Easter where we will hear those words again that guide our way.

 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—

John 10:14

If at once you don’t succeed, try again. Obviously even I master pronunciation, spelling correctly takes focused effort. Yet, my book of the week is 219 pages of research that proves the definition of that word. Some connections operating at the same time can control a variety of happenings in life, from meshing with that amazing best friend, to assuring a successful auction, to successfully directing the decision of a jury. How this happens is explained in variable degrees of understanding for me in Why W-E Click by Kate Murphy, a friend of a friend. Though the psychological terms for some research conducted over years to define interpersonal synchrony did not find a place in my vocabulary, around me were examples I truly understood.

An accolade of the time is to be a BFF, which all teenagers immediately translate and cherish. Not everyone enters this sacred portal. Evidently, within 30 seconds of meeting a person, one notices clues that affirm a special closeness will develop while in the same time you would leave a different person to refresh a drink you don’t need at the table across the room. A grown son has shared the tug to his heart as he has learned this week of the fatal illness of a 12 year canine companion. This particular dog has an affinity to recognize needs of those around her. When I visit, I am the oldest and weakest, and she always places herself between me and any possible harm.

One of the most amazing togetherness bonds develops when a group presents itself as one: a military unit or a dance group. However, even they can reach out beyond themselves. I was at a local chamber orchestra concert last week. Before the orchestra began the performance of Dvorak’s From the New World symphony, the conductor asked the orchestra to sing unaccompanied the theme from the Largo movement, a short melody that has been given the words “Going Home.” Then he turned and requested a re-singing of “Going Home” by all in the room. Age and training notwithstanding, a palatable feeling of we are one encompassed the concert hall. The above mentioned book has a summary on p. 15 defining this moment: “We are a species that has evolved to synchronize physiologically, emotionally, and behaviorally; and we find it immensely pleasurable when it occurs.”

Encourage one another. Build one another up. I Thessalonians 5:11

As my one true love used to say, “It’s like taking a drink from a fire hose.” I can’t ignore this day coming up even if I know zilch about St. Valentine without research. I checked enough to see celebrating love is expected to add $29.1 billion dollars to the economic income! I have sent two specific emails and five homemade cards, but the remainder is from candy, cards, jewelry, flowers, and the possibility of 6 million proposals. Love may be the ultimate of positive emotion and yet we use the word to cover everything from our feelings about the smells emitting from a fresh pizza, to a tear shed as a small child declares, “I wuv u,” to spiritual elation when we stand in a group as all proclaim, “God so loved the world!”

Etymologically. let’s start with four lower case letters that are used to identify most inanimate objects that give us pleasure. There is really no connection to that red heart shaped logo that isn’t a bit like the life pumping blood organ in our bodies. Those four letter just mean, “Gee, I like this,” and delight in whatever whenever that specific this gives one pleasure. Capitalize letter one and usually another person becomes envolved from a teenager carrying a torch and stumbling over his own feet in the presence of a giggly girl to developing a friendship that provides guarded conversations without fear of misunderstanding. The grand finale is all caps when a Roman Eros, forerunner of cherubimic Cupid, fires arrows and leaves a strong feeling for a person or commitment leading to the a heart racing moment daily in your life. That emotion paves the way for proposals, a caregiving situation, or the adoption of a faith as a foundation stone for decisions and actions.

Difficult as it may be at times, one can’t always live on the top of the mountain or at a pinnacle of experience. I will still love the pansies on my front porch that survived the freeze. My fifty year friend who seems to appear at scattered moments when needed deserves my Love. Some of my LOVE has been given to people in my past and is shared now with a close group. A LOVE choice for a tenant of faith in all caps has been given to me as a recipient and to replenish my supply. Specifics may vary, yet this is what each day requires.

Do everything in love. 1 Corinthians 16:14

For certain ones of us who have chosen Christian as our religious designation and, in their own interpretation for others, the theme of belonging somewhere gets a little muddy. My point of view thinks Eden was the only determined place until the situation got sticky and Adam and Eve went forth. Years later Abraham was sent to a land he knew not of and settling in took adjustments. A drought and survival involved moving a whole nation to Egypt until they had to move on again later. A slight religious connection was involved in the Mayflower landing in 1620 on soil that was already inhabited by a native race of people. That shipload fought and reorganized their space over 100 years till they had a new country that supposedly was theirs. My Kelly relatives fled the potato famine in the 1700’s to work their way down the east coast of that new county to be dirt farmers in Florida and grant me the right to claim citizenship.

Instead of dealing with a person in a headline today, these are individuals who made their own path to be citizens who impacted my life. One is a gracious young woman whom I taught in 7th grade when her mother had a green card. She herself is an impressive teacher, yet she wrote of applying for citizenship and the strain of waiting at that time, “that the form was filled out correctly and for someone to talk to her who saw her as a person.” A man who has cut my hair for 25 years and is the age of my elder son . His mother was a Vietnamese widow and he was #5 of 10 children she managed to send forth to become Americans before all here sent back for her. Over 80 members of that family gather from airline pilots to store owners. What would I do without my man of all trades whose grandmother brought him into Texas “to amount to something,” He learned English in a Barbara Bush school in the Heights, has raised two fine daughters with college educations, and dropped everything to come put grab bars in my bathroom when I brought an ailing husband home from the hospital.

As part of my education I learned the story of the Statue of Liberty rising against the skyline on Ellis Island. I have ridden a boat out and felt the relief of arriving and what might be possible from that moment on. I know the poem. Now, does that torch need to hold a handkerchief to wipe tears from her eyes? I go back to Eden. Yes, I am here with documentation of approved residence now, yet this space is not my final dwelling place. Two validations are true. In my faith, I sing a song, “I am a stranger here within a foreign land.” Second, while here, I am admonished to remember these words. They are a part of my journey.

When a foreigner lives with you in your land, don’t take advantage of him. Treat the foreigner the same as a native. Love him like one of your own. Remember that you were once foreigners in Egypt.

Leviticus 17:34 The Message

Don’t be disappointed. No freeze drama. Those of you who know where this originates know that Texas along with almost half America has just come through an unprecedented spell of cold weather with all the upsets and problems that go along with extreme low temperatures. If we sat in a circle in my living room, conversation would sound like a can you top this sharing of stories. Animals missed daily walks, pipes froze or water was cut off and not available, yards resembled real snow banks or approximated fake ones because of the coverings of white protection cloth. Maybe the most upsetting tales were leaving on a trip to have the plane be grounded in a strange place for two days. You may have been able to disembark, but your suitcase stayed on the runway. However, breathtaking and maybe expensive as those narratives are, I want to remember a different set of stories.

The support in the days of 9/11 was Mr. Rogers in his sweater quoting his mother, “Look for the helpers. There are always helpers.” With the first whiff of climate change, various groups from the utility companies to charity organizations sent suggestions from preparation (Pets, Protection, and People) to a list of free shelters if that was a needed option. I had one last social occasion on my calendar and a fellow attendee offered to transport. My family in town was the first to check on me with a son-in-law getting extra bonus points for coming to wrap faucets and to turn off a garage shower which had burst and flooded the last big freeze. A daughter helped with groceries on hand and promised to even bring a 4-wheel drive over icy road to rescue if electricity failed. Neighbors on either side called to check on my plans along with a friend half a subdivision away. I do a Zoom lunch with older friends. Wednesday last week every one had a back up offer in place, just in case. Forever gratitude has been held for years for the strangers who opened their house to rescue a branch of our family leaving Colorado late one night trying to outrun a storm.

By the time this is read, I hope you have weathered the storm, regrouped, and have taken time to offer thanks for warm bodies that helped the first of the week. They were part of God’s gift of survival promised in verses ahead of time. Someone may even be remembering your name with thanksgiving. “Two are better than one….for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow.” Ecclesiastes 4:9 -10. “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” Psalm 133:1,”Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.” 1Peter 4:9.

Biblical blessing through it all, to have heard or to have said. “You OK? Can I help?”