Archives for April 2015

I was trying to place a plastic pot beside my son’s grave. Angela, his wife warned me that she had been cautioned not to place anything at the graveside that could be broken or stolen. Petty vandalism is often, unfortunately, part of the cemetery culture. But she liked the idea of spring flowers.

So I hauled myself into the garden center of the nearest big-box home-supply store, found a plastic pot that didn’t look too cheap, drilled a hole in the bottom of it, found a sturdy metal rod, plunged it through the hole, the idea being that I would use a hand mallet and secure all by pounding the rod through the pot and deep into the soil. With the rod wobbling with instability, I nevertheless filled one-third of the container with broken shards of clay pots, emptied a bag of potting soil up to the rim, planted pansies and budding narcissus, hauled all into the car and drove it a mile over to the West Chicago community cemetery.

Angela has chosen a beautiful black granite bench engraved with Jeremy’s name and life dates as a grave marker. Three little handprints in the stone with the names of their three children explain more than any paragraphs could: Eliana, Nehemiah, Anelise.

Because I don’t have full use of my right arm after last year’s surgery to repair the rotator cuff I tore after falling and dislocating my shoulder, I couldn’t lift the mallet high enough to pound the rod deeply enough in the ground to ensure that the pot could not be easily stolen. In fact, while lifting the hand mallet off the hook in the pegboard, it fell to the metal work table beneath. My lifting strength is certainly not what it used to be.

I proceeded, a little dirty from all the planting effort, onto the office as planned, finished some projects, then drove with David to pick up the larger plastic pot; one beside and behind the bench and one at the front corner of the bench would give good visual balance. After spring, we could fill them with summer flowers, fall branches, greens for winter. It felt like it would work.

David drove with me back to the cemetery to pound in the rod more securely and felt that it was striking against something under the ground, but I couldn’t explain to him not to lift the pot off the rod to move it because we wouldn’t be able to find the hole again beneath the pansies, beneath the filling soil, beneath the shards of broken clay. Words to explain escaped me. Somehow, he caught the meaning beneath my inarticulateness, and we slid the pot up the rod, not off it, dislodged the rod from the ground, moved it to the other side of the grave, and my husband pounded the mallet, and the rod grabbed deeply into the earth.

Suddenly, quite suddenly, the grief I’ve known has been lodged itself beneath my breastbone, ready to sear the absolute center of my psychological self, began to gush. Little things—a stupid rod in a pot, minor frustrations, fatigue from going day and night weakened my defenses. I realized with blazing, glaring clarity that we were pounding a rod through a pot full of soil and pansies into the grave soil of my dearest, most beloved, deeply cherished, beautiful and delightful child.

I heaved with sobs, the Good Friday sobs that had been pushing up in the Great Vigil services three days before. The Good Grief sobs that could fill a woman’s world with sorrow. The anguish that is like every suffering mother’s anguish.

Today, I will try to plant the larger pot. I will drill a hole in its bottom, yank another metal rod from the roadside garden, insert it, fill the bottom with broken clay shards, empty the two bags of potting soil I bought for this purpose, plant the top with pansies and miniature budding narcissi, load it somehow into our Mazda Protégé hatchback, drive the mile to the cemetery, set it, ask David to come and pound the rod into the graveside earth with the hand mallet when he has a moment.

This time I will make a little space for the grief. It doesn’t really ask us for permission. I’ll sit on the black granite bench marked with my little grandchildren’s names and handprints watch for the Vandal. I’ll think about broken things in cemeteries, about grave robbers and destruction, about loss. A grieving mother who will never really get over it. White-haired; 72 years of age; watching with curiosity the encroachment of my own physical diminishments. A hole in my soul.

So let it be. So let it be.

 

---

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Now that Easter is over, I can take a sigh of relief. I survived Good Friday.

Since I stepped on the garden rake decades ago—the kind with prongs, not sprongs—and went bleeding from three wounds in my right foot in order to get to the front door of our house in Oak Park (because son Jeremy, aged four, as a joke had locked the door and was giggling in prank hysteria on the inside back porch), I have been susceptible to Good Friday. At that time, I used my careless stigmata as a meditation on the sufferings of Christ. The backyard incident occurred as we were heading into the Easter weekend.

I don’t have words, really, for what happened. Simply stated, I entered into that suffering in a way that was more than a thoughtful meditation, and Good Friday has always been a dangerous day for me emotionally because I am apt to “lose it” somehow, someway.

I’ve had to leave Friday services due to sudden issues of blood (out of time and sequence); I go deeply into a despair that I know is not my own. It’s just there, waiting; and I am step into it, feeling overwhelmed.

So I was a little wary this Good Friday, two years after our son Jeremy’s death, wary of attending services. We had a car problem on the actual day—so the only family car went winging off driven by a visiting son to another church a few towns north of our house—without David and me, and I made compensatory plans to attend the Great Vigil ceremony at 12:00 the next day, Saturday.

The Great Vigil is also a dangerous place for me. The first one I attended, I got hit with meaning, tears spilled from my eyes, dripped on my lap as I was sitting and listening to the long reading of many Scriptures, and I was without any tissues. So I wiped with the back of my hand, sniffed and dripped and sniffed and dripped.

The Great Vigil, for those who are not part of liturgical churches, is passed down from the first generations of Christians. The Anglican Church we attend divided what is often an all-night vigil until sunrise on Easter Sunday into four parts: The Service of Light, The Service of Lessons, The Service of Baptism and The Service of Eucharist. The concept is to watch through the dark of the second night of the Triduum (the altar has been stripped on Maundy Thursday, the Paschal candle has been snuffed out. Scripturally and traditionally, this represents the period of time when Christ harried Hell. Together, as a people, we watch for Resurrection, which comes with the lighting of candles, the ringing of bells, the baptism of new believers into the church of Christ, the shouting of hallelujahs—quite a celebration. There was even dancing led by the bishop around the auditorium. We felt as though we had duly celebrated Resurrection.

I attended the Service of Lessons, which was musically and dramatically integrated with superb interpretive readings of Scriptures that start in the Old Testament and show forth the redemptive plan of God from Creation forward.

However, because I could not attend the Good Friday service does not mean I avoided the Good Friday susceptibility. Having lost an adult son, I got whammed with the reality of Mary, the Mother of Jesus enduring the torture, watching the humiliation, suffering as her Child suffered, witnessing Evil having its will—tearing, rending, ripping, jeering, abusing, buffeting, accusing, shaming, excoriating the One Being on earth she loved beyond all other beings.

Sorrow waited for me in the church auditorium. It pressed against my lungs, tightened in my soul. I bent my head into my arms, crossed them on the back of the empty chair in front of me and pushed against the power of grief that threatened to lay me flat on the floor. This grief is more than one woman’s grief; it is the grief of everywoman. That is all that I can say. That is all that I can say.

I moved down the few empty chairs in my aisle, trying not to shake with the spasms I could feel building within. A white-haired lady falling to the floor might cause a commotion in the middle of this carefully planned, beautiful delivered service. I just wanted to be near an exit in case I started gushing—in any way.

Perhaps it is just me, but I think the Scriptures that ask us (or explain to us) about entering into the sufferings of Christ (or his Mother, in my case, on this particular Easter week) have much more to do with feeling the depths of the world’s distress than it has to do with knowing about the world’s distress and being annoyed about it.

However, I’ve learned through some terrible personal journeys that I cannot avoid Good Friday. I think I could be on a cruise ship on some great sea, without a calendar to check the date, and Good Friday would hit me spontaneously, uninvited. Good grief would find me. And so it should. And so should I unaccountably be bowed beneath it. Bent under its weight. Folded toward the chair in front of me and toward the floor under my feet.

All suffering is His suffering. Discover this for yourself sometime, if you haven’t already. Don’t be afraid.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” —Romans 6:5-11.

 

---

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Pansies are the multi-colored flowers that look as though they have little faces. They are perfect for cool April days in the Chicago area, because they thrive here when the temperatures are low and the ground is beginning to warm for spring plantings.

I brought several flats from Home Depot, ran into a friend who works in the garden department, chatted a little, and she recommended I also pick up a dozen or so of the miniature narcissi that are just beginning to push green topknots out of their garden pots.

Growing things are just starting to push up from the ground, to form buds on the trees. David and I spent the Saturday morning before Easter Sunday, traditionally known as part of the Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday), clearing out the west driveway garden, resetting the low stone wall that the snowplow had dislodged, raking and clipping and burning the refuse.

Because nothing is blooming yet, it feels important to me to plant the pansies in the garden pots that will eventually be filled with bright red geraniums and brilliant bloomers come summer.

Pansies, for me right now, are a promise that spring is coming.

After our son died a year and a half ago from an acute and rare type of lymphoma, I had one of those low moments when I said to David something about seeing Jeremy again—this bedrock answer of the Christian to the dilemma of death—then strung on a discouraging disclaimer, “… if there is a heaven.” Moments of despair haunt the grieving through their healing process. They are normal, but I’m grateful that the lifelong practice of faith preempts the lingering of these dark thoughts that want to come and stay. But still … how do we prove that Heaven even exists? It is an unverified hope.

“Well,” said my husband, a man who spends hours per day in prayer and Scripture study, “that’s what the Resurrection proves—that Heaven is.”

I’ve faced death before, but never the death of a child. David’s words, however, struck a chord. Of course! (DUH!) Christ’s Resurrection proves that anything is possible. What a thought for a grieving mother, hit now and then by waves of unexpected pain. Proof is what the record of the Easter story is about. Enough people saw the risen Christ, heard His voice, dined with Him, walked the road; these are the eyewitnesses. That powerful reality stunned their lives, radically transformed their desires and set a movement of belief rolling out through history that has not been stopped either by the inadequacies of its proponents or the resistance of the Evil One or the persecution from other faiths or government authorities. What groups like ISIS don’t realize is this: The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.

The pansies I need to plant this afternoon are in some way witness to that—spring is coming as it always comes. Renewal is in the earth beneath our feet. The dead come alive. Resurrection is proof that something exists beyond our human capacities.

These small bright plants turn their faces toward the sun; as do we who have planted precious bodies beneath the soil. There is Something beyond us all that we cannot understand but that we know. Christ is risen!

… that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come…” —Ephesians 1:18b-21

 

---

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

David, my husband, shared this with me. I love it!

In his book Afraid No More, Norm Wright relates a fascinating custom of the Babemba tribe in Southern Africa.

Each person who acts irresponsibly or unjustly is taken alone to the center of the village. Everyone stops work and gathers in a large circle around the accused. Then everyone in the tribe—regardless of age—speaks to the individual, recounting aloud the good things he or she has done. All the positive incidents in a person’s life, plus strengths and kindnesses, are recalled with accuracy and detail. Not one word about the irresponsible or antisocial behavior is shared. Sometimes the ceremony lasts for several days and ends with the offender being welcomed back into the tribe.

How often the words are spoken, “I can’t think of one good thing to say about him/her.” In fact, in some individuals’ lives, nothing good is ever said to them or about them. Think about what happens when a whole village, children and all, takes days to speak goodness to someone. Now that will change a person, or a family, or a village, or a culture. We have much to learn.

 

---

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

A male hooded merganser

Birding with my son, Randall, is always a physically invigorating experience. Yesterday, we walked through a nearby preserve, Timber Ridge, which was saved from the developers some 15 years ago. (I’ve only walked there once before—more to my shame.) It is also a uniquely spiritual exercise.

“Why don’t we take a little walk after work? There’s water over there, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” answered his father. “Don’t you remember we drove our Pontiac Sunbird into the pond when you were in high school?” This was not an intentional choice, driving into the pond; rather, one Sunday night, coming home from church, we swerved to avoid three horses galloping directly on our side of the road, about 20 yards away. The little yellow car, the only sporty vehicle we have ever owned, sank to the bottom. I have memories of us opening our doors, wading waist-high toward the shore, with the car lights beaming eerily through the pond waters.

Randall is with us for a few weeks from his home in Phoenix. He is here meeting with clients for his Internet marketing business and making strategic plans for various publishing projects we are working on together.

I was eager to take our only car (shared three ways these days) and run to Goodwill. My coffee-bean grinder is broken, and a friend brought me two bags of coffee beans, necessitating a resale-store hunt for something secondhand (and cheap). Then I thought, How often do you have an amateur ornithologist invite you for a stroll through bird territory? … Oh, heck. Goodwill is open till 9:00. “Let’s go now,” I responded. “We’ll still have light for another couple of hours.”

Again, I was reminded of how a hunt, of any kind, is a metaphor for seeking God in our world, for intentionally finding the numinous, which seems to hide if we don’t go looking for it. And the more we hunt, the more we are enabled to find what we seek. “Seek and ye shall find.” I didn’t say it; Jesus did. But I testify to the veracity of the expression.

It was one of the first climate days of this slow spring. Randall’s keen eyes picked up turkey vultures circling above the preserved prairie, which had just undergone a prescribed burn. Nothing had greened up yet; nothing appeared to be budding. “There’s a tree swallow.” He pointed to the little darting figure in the sky and loaned me his binoculars to get a closer look. So went our half-mile, 45-minute walk. Here a bird, there a bird, everywhere a bird-bird. Randall’s eyes catch movement, identify wing form and underbellies, delineate the coloration; his ears hear and identify song and cry.

For me, it’s an extraordinary experience to go birding with my son. With him, the still-dun brushed world was vibrant with life. We walked down to the aforementioned pond. “Look! There’s a hooded merganser.” The big birds I can identify are Canada geese, swans, egrets, herons, turkeys and mallards. A great blue heron flew overhead, its long neck stretching to the sky. I actually could say, “Oh, look, a heron. Red-winged blackbird on the cattails.” Randall went on naming, ducks my eyes would never identify; he pointed out the log-like stick floating between two wood ducks. “Can you see that? It’s a muskrat. Oh, look! There’s a scaup. There’s a bufflehead.

The same seeing effect occurs when we take time to look for God in the world of our lives. I write down my God Hunt sightings every day in my prayer journal. I have done this for over forty years, and my life is richer, more spiritually replete because I live so intentionally in the transcendent. Yesterday, I jotted down 18 ways God had intervened in my everyday life. Try it and see.

I’m determined to go birding with Randall as much as I can while he is still here.

 

---

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

A busy, busy schedule forced me to run through Augustino’s Rock and Roll Deli drive-in window for a couple of roast-beef sandwiches, one large Diet Coke (for our son; we’ve gone off the poison!), and a large iced tea.

“That will be $19.33,” said the voice on the static-filled speaker. Gosh! I thought. Twenty bucks for two sandwiches and two drinks? That’s way too much.

An attractive young woman at the first drive-in window handed me a bag and two plastic fast-order glasses, and I drove away thinking, Change? Didn’t I give her a twenty-dollar bill? Being often math-challenged, particularly when I’m in a hurry, I thought maybe I’d given her two $20 bills. Because I was driving, I couldn’t stop to count the money wrapped in the receipt paper.

When I turned into our driveway and parked the car, I looked closely at the change I’d stuffed into my purse. It was $14.67! Obviously, the young woman had made a big mistake—I wasn’t the only person in the world who was math-challenged. Her name was on the bottom of the receipt beside the word “SERVER…”

Believe me, my first thought was, That was way too much money to pay for such a scanty meal. I’ve been given a gift! Keep it. Really.

However, I believe in the Scriptural principle: She who is faithful in little things will be trusted with responsibility for the larger things. (This is quite a broad Karen Mains’ paraphrase.) After a bit of struggle, I made a firm decision that the money and the receipt as a record of transaction needed to be returned to the restaurant.

Two weeks later—yesterday afternoon actually—I walked back into Augustino’s Rock and Roll Deli with the rolled receipt enclosing a wad of bills and some loose change (67 cents to be exact) in my hand. I explained the situation, apologized for not being able to get back sooner, and looked into the eyes of a stunned waitress. “Wait,” she said. “Let me call my manager.” The manager came; the explanation was given again. He acted like this never had happened before and he didn’t know what to do, so I joked, “Gee whiz. Don’t I get a free roast beef or something?” They all thanked me, trying to figure out the protocol. I said it was nothing and apologized again for my delay.

The truth is: These small acts of truthfulness do measure our basic concepts of morality. Is it any worse to lie, cheat or steal in the big matters than to lie, cheat or steal in the little ones? My father’s generation practiced a kind of Judeo-Christian morality about the “little sins.” If we were discovered stealing as children, we were marched back to the shopkeeper, where we returned our shoplifted contraband, confessed our crime, made an apology and returned the toy, or candy bar, or hair band.

By this observance of the letter of the law were we taught a basic morality (and perhaps kept from other grand thefts). Are we teaching the next generations the same kind of lessons? I wonder.

As I was getting into my car outside Augustino’s Rock and Roll Deli, the SERVER I had returned the money to, who in a kind of perplexity had called her manager, came to the restaurant door and motioned to me, “Can you wait just a moment. We want to give you a gift card.” So I waited and in a minute or two, she returned with a gift card of $10.

In these small actions, a social exchange was made. I returned money that was not rightfully mine; the restaurant thanked me for my honesty by giving me something in return. On these small exchanges—practicing integrity in the little things—is built the fabric of a whole society. Let us not consider them lightly.

 

---

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

On my side of the bed, in the corner beside the old armoire a friend sold me for $200 some 40 years ago, I’ve mounted a small assemblage including a cross made of nails, a shelf with a lovely figure copying Michelangelo’s Pietà, which is in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and a framed print of the Florentine Pietà in the Museum of the Duomo Cathedral. One final Pietà, the Rondanni Pietà, is in Milan, and is reputedly the last piece of marble Michelangelo worked on—some say six days before his death. I have as yet to find a representation of this that will complete my little devotional corner, the place where I rest my eyes first thing in the morning or before falling to sleep at night.

I’ve been to Rome and Florence and Milan and studied these works—sometimes weeping, sometimes amazed, sometimes intellectually perplexed—but mostly profoundly stunned by the artistry and the precision of chiseling spiritual realities into hard and sometimes, as in the case of the Duomo Pietà, uncooperative marble. I’ve written a book contemplating the Pietàs in life and in art, wanted badly to title it Holding the Broken Body of Christ, but the publishers prevailed, and, without consulting its author, named it Comforting One Another.

However, when David’s friend (as referred to in the previous blog post) took upon himself the complicated task of upgrading our Internet service, a wire was drilled through the wall into our bedroom above the baseboard beneath my Pietà Meditation corner. Not only did this connecting outlet intrude, but ugly, snaking black wires coiled on the floor beneath the cross of nails, and two boxes, one with flashing blue lights and the other with an eerie blue glow, hunkered down on this coiling snake-pit of technology. Though I admitted it was a rather fitting visual metaphor, the profane marring the sublime, I simply was not going to stand for my aesthetic and spiritual corner that has brought me so much solace—particularly since I also am a mother who has lost a son to death—to be overcome by technology. Certainly not in the two weeks before Easter!

So David’s friend was hauled back. He graciously pulled out the armoire from the wall, shifted the coiling black technology-snakes, the blinking blue light-box, the glowing eerie server (E.T. in miniature come to visit my bedroom), the power strip with all its plugs, behind the cabinet, plugged everything in, and all the technological devices were back online again—the phones, the PC, the iPad, Netflix in the basement TV room—all these modern devices that claim our time, clamor for attention, and rob us of meditative moments because sometimes our brains just become enthralled with all these bouncing demands.

Sometimes, get-things-done people are not always sensitive to the aesthetic mysteries, to the meanings beneath the meanings, to the numinous, to the sacramental or to mystery. Unfortunately, the artist and the technocrat often clash, their values and their worlds collide.

But not in my bedroom, not in the bed where I often spend mid-night waking hours in intercessory prayer or in heart-lifting praise. And not in my Pietà Corner.

 

---

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

“Gee, Mom, your Internet is really slow!” This has been the continual litany of all our middle-aged and married kids. But none of them has felt that it was so slow that something should be done about it. They were all just glad they didn’t have to put up with it.

However, we have a new friend. Or, rather, he is David’s friend, and he is a get-things-done-kind of guy. So this new friend, who owns the local cleaners, about a half mile from our house, has taken charge of the Internet Insufficiency that exists in our home on Hawthorne Lane.

As of this weekend, we have changed service providers, changed from DirecTV to Xfinity. This new friend also took on the project of upgrading our phones, teaching David how to use a smartphone, called and negotiated a high-definition function, took out old wires and boxes, put in new routers and servers, changed passwords, and marched David over to a nearby AT&T store to go over our phone bill, line by line, to see what charges are unnecessary and eliminate what is not needed. Not only do we now have a rapid-fire Wi-Fi service, the new cable connections have vastly more free streaming capacities, and we think this friend is saving us around $100 a month (times 12 equals $1,200 per year). Everyone should have a young, eager, take-charge friend who thinks it’s ridiculous to put up with inadequate service with hidden accumulating fees and who is determined to do something about it.

Yes, it does make me feel a little stupid. But then, take-charge people are not so aware of the human social dynamics as they are about getting the tasks checked off the lists.

And I am a little uncomfortable with a man, who is not my husband or a son, rummaging around in my bedroom (while I hide in the guest room in my pajamas) at 5:30 in the morning before running to open up his cleaning shop at 7:00 a.m.

Not only the above minor irritations, but I don’t understand a word he is saying. “Megabytes” and “gigabytes” just close down my pre-frontal orbital cortex. I shake my head and nod like I understand, but really I catch little of what is going on. I haven’t even read my copy of Windows for Dummies bought to get me past my Internet/computer/technology illiteracies; just the thought of that techno-lingo turns me into a mumbling, fumbling white-haired lady showing signs of early dementia.

Actually, in my ignorance, now that I think about it and it isn’t 5:30 in the morning, I had settled for less than what could possibly be. I’d become comfortable waiting five to ten minutes for the Google search engine to open, for my Facebook page to light up, for my new emails to download. Because I didn’t understand the potential of upgrading my creaky technology, I was living in a world of inadequate insufficiencies.

Probably, that’s where most of us settle when it comes to our spiritual lives. This morning, early, I read some devotional thoughts from Thomas Kelly’s A Testament of Devotion. He speaks of one of the indicators of maturing. Here is an area where I am working to have a highly functioning spiritual facility. I don’t want to be a little old white-haired woman who settles for less than what is possible.

There is a tendering of the soul toward everything in creation, from the sparrow’s fall to the slave under the lash. The hard lined face of a money-bitter financier is as deeply touching to the tendered soul as are the burnt-out eyes of miners’ children, removed and unseen victims of his so-called success. There is a sense in which, in this terrible tenderness, we become one with God and bear in our quivering souls the sins and burdens, the benightedness and the tragedy of the creatures of the whole world, and suffer in their suffering, and die in their death.”

Sometimes I get there, but then I find myself reacting negatively to the get-thing-done-types who interrupt my comfortable acceptance of insufficiency, and I realize I haven’t come as far as I think I have spiritually. I need people to intrude, rudely or efficiently, and shake me out of my own complacency regarding settling for inadequacy. (But not at 5:30 in the morning!)

 

---

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article