Home is where the Heart is...

"Spiritual life seems to be about seeing and harvesting. Seeing the holy in the ordinary! Harvesting angels out of what appears to be the crumbs of daily existence! ...Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels, but this can only happen if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure." Macrina Wiederkehr's A Tree Full of Angels

"Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it again and again..." Ecclesiastes 11:1

She sits down, a little one barely walking upon her lap. My boys tumble past, in a dustball of boyhood ambition.

Barely-walking uses first words to love-name my whirlwind..."Baby! Baby!" She trumpets.

Mother speaks with cowered fear, "I am so sorry, ma'am! I am so sorry! She calls everyone a baby."

Gently moving forward, I churn the soil, "Well, those are my babies." Shoulders relax; her body opens. Yet, her eyes are still shadowed.

I bend down to my knees; bowing, this place to behold greatness. A shift in perspective creates opening; getting lower always precedes vision.

This beautiful mother living a stones throw away in a seemingly different world. Hers one of hardship and struggle; mine of ease and comfort. Worlds marked by the distinct polarization of haves and have-nots; both shadowlands to the soul.

The Light of the gospel is far brighter than the darkening confusion of this world.

A white-plastic barrett catches my eye...ANGEL. Mother allows me to soak in her Barely-walking.

Sitting at her feet, I shake this planting. "What is her name?"

Blooming with confidence. Her eyes full; she boldly unwraps. With a declaration of celebration, "Eden. Eden Zion."

She clings to Hope. She casts the grace-line ending the tug of war.

Tears choke. As if speaking to myself, I whisper, "Eden, where we came from. Zion, where we are going."

She nods. She recognizes. My heart full and longing.

"I cannot wait until we get there!"

She smiles, "Me too, sister! Me too!"

Could this be what washing of the feet is all about?

Sitting and listening, recognizing the Voice that you may walk a mile in another's shoes, seeing their trail to the Tree. The place where two worlds collide making all things new.

When I leave her, anxiety builds...as if I leave pieces of me behind. My heart recognized Home in this Marah-mother. She who wakes to bitter waters, and clings to the Branch; she who casts to make sweet. What if I never see her again...

The Light of the gospel is far brighter than the darkening confusion of this world.

Home is where the heart is, and we are not Home yet. Pieces are scattered throughout this world...sit, listen, recognize, wash, gather.

Where two or three are gathered...

I came to serve, but I received. I gave bread; she gave Presence. Two mothers in two worlds serving One. Two mothers in two worlds wanting the One thing that is everything for our children...the King of false polarities...Jesus.

We cling. We cast. We contend.

"in Him all things hold together." Colossians 1:17

Together. Gathered in Zion.

"Community cannot grow out of loneliness, but comes when the person who begins to recognize his or her belovedness greets the belovedness of the other. The God alive in me greets the God resident in you. When people can cease having to be for us everything, we can accept the fact they may still have a gift for us. They are partial reflections of the great love of God, but only once we give up requiring that person to be everything, to be God. We see him or her as limited expression of an unlimited love." Henri J. M. Nouwen's Turn My Mourning Into Dancing