New Eyes and New Mantra

Yeah, yeah, I've been quiet lately. The church internet was down last week. Last week's church lesson? If you are rather dependent on internet and server access, don't plug the router directly into the wall because you might have an electricity surge. Turns out that surges are bad for routers.

Here is a story I would have shared last week. On Mondays in Lent, we have Eucharist at 11:30, and then we have soup and salad lunch, and someone reviews a book they read. Its really a nice hour and a half. We usually have a handful of people for service, mostly the retired crowd who can take the whole hour and a half. As we were saying the Creed, I was surveying the small gathered group, and right as we got to the line "of all this is, seen and unseen" when my eyes landed on "Kate", an older parishoner who is blind. Until that day, I have always thought of that line "seen and unseen" as parallel to "maker of heaven and earth" - that the unseen creation refers to spiritual and heavenly things. But, today, I started to remember that there are many many earthly things that are unseen. For Kate, it is everything - she hasn't seen books or flowers or mountains or the faces of her friends with her eyes, yet she knows that God created them and blessed them. What about those things - and people- that we do not see with our own eyes? Now, this is probably not what the good men of the Council of Nicea had in mind. But the idea that the Creed calls us to recognize our unseen neighbors as part of God's creation has crept into my head, and I hope it stays there for a long time.

In other news, I have a new mantra thanks to an IM conversation - As long as Christ rises, nothing else matters.I can use it like this: "What? I was supposed to mail those VBS registrations two months ago? Oh well. As long as Christ rises, nothing else matters."

I don't suppose it'll go over well all the time. Maybe it'll just be a mantra for my "inside voice".