Daily Dose (Feb 25 – 28)

TUESDAY FEB 25 —

I was so grateful to spend time with those who gathered at the Religious Education Congress in Anaheim. My topic: This little light of mine—making a difference in our world.
From the Gospel of Matthew, “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bushel. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
You are the light of the world. Not if. Not, when you get you act together. Not, you’d better get this right. The light is alive and well inside every single one of us.

And I told those gathered a story about Mr. Rogers and Yo-Yo Ma. Fred Rogers calls Yo-Yo Ma one of the “great appreciators of our world. It seems that people always walk taller after they’ve had an encounter with him. The only thing that’s larger than his talent is his heart.”
Mr. Rogers tells the story about a day he was privileged to sit in on one of Yo-Yo Ma’s master cello classes. “During that master class one young man was struggling with the tone of a certain cello passage. He played it over and over and Yo-Yo listened with obvious interest. Finally, Yo-Yo said, ‘Nobody else can make the sound you make.’ That young man looked at Yo-Yo Ma and beamed. What a gift those words were not only to that cellist, but to everyone who was there. Nobody else can make the sound you make.”
“Well, nobody else can live the life you live. And even though no human being is perfect, we always have the chance to bring what’s unique about us to live in a redeeming way.” Fred Rogers
With a few exceptions, I do my best to see those around me with Mr. Rogers’ lens: Inside of everyone a light shines.
Inside of everyone, there is a sound (music) that no one else can make.
Yes… A song that truly saves—soothes and heals—people.
So… this week, let us embrace the light—yes, the dancer—inside.

I write this from rainy Port Ludlow, WA. So, I’m back home. And the geese welcomed me back.

WEDNESDAY FEB 26 — “You are the light of the world,” Jesus reminds us.
When we get our act together? No.
When we have enough faith? No.
When we eliminate the hurdles? No.
“You are the light of the world… Let it (allow it to) shine.”

That light is in every single one of us. But I do know this, when the noise (from news or doubt or difficulties) derails me, I don’t honor the light inside.
I think that’s what Jesus meant by not putting the light under a bushel.
Here’s what I also know: it helps to hear the affirmation.
To let the words take root.
In the movie the Kingdom of Heaven, about the battle for Jerusalem in the Middle Ages, Balian of Ibelin began knighting ordinary men, making them understand that inside of them was a knight, something far greater than the limitations of their birth or fears or status.
The Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem (almost tearful): “Who do you think you are?  Will you alter the world? Does making a man a knight make him a better fighter?”
Balian of Ibelin: “Yes.”
“Look up at me,” Balian would say to each of these ordinary men, as he knighted them, “See in my eyes something more and far greater than you see and know, in your limitations.”

“People are like stained-glass windows.  They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

In our neck of the woods, many people are taking advantage of candle light, as a significant windstorm with heavy rain knocked out power to a large region. So it’s hunker down by the fireplace time. Savoring a good book. 

THURSDAY FEB 27 — “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”
Jean Houston tells the story of being befriended by the extraordinary French Jesuit, paleontologist, and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. She’d literally run into him in Central Park when she was 14 years old; following their collision, the two became friends, and walked together each week.
Jean writes, “The walks were magical and full of delight. Not only did Mr. Tayer seem to have absolutely no self-consciousness, but he was always being seized by wonder and astonishment over the simplest things. He was constantly and literally falling into love. I remember one time when he suddenly fell on his knees, his long Gallic nose raking the ground, and exclaimed to me, ‘Jeanne, look at the caterpillar. Ahhhh!’ I joined him on the ground to see what had evoked so profound a response that he was seized by the essence of caterpillar. ‘How beautiful it is’, he remarked, ‘this little green being with its wonderful funny little feet. Exquisite! Little furry body, little green feet on the road to metamorphosis.’ He then regarded me with equal delight. ‘Jeanne, can you feel yourself to be a caterpillar?’
‘Oh yes.’ I replied with the baleful knowing of a gangly, pimply faced teenager.
“Then think of your own metamorphosis.” he suggested. “What will you be when you become a butterfly, une papillon, eh? What is the butterfly of Jeanne?” (What a great question for a fourteen-year-old girl!)…
But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Mr. Tayer was the way that he would suddenly look at you. He looked at you with wonder and astonishment joined to unconditional love joined to a whimsical regarding of you as the cluttered house that hides the holy one. I felt myself primed to the depths by such seeing. I felt evolutionary forces wake up in me by such seeing, every cell and thought and potential palpably changed. I was yeasted, greened, awakened by such seeing, and the defeats and denigrations of adolescence redeemed. I would go home and tell my mother, who was a little skeptical about my walking with an old man in the park so often, ‘Mother, I was with my old man again, and when I am with him, I leave my littleness behind.’ That deeply moved her. You could not be stuck in littleness and be in the radiant field of Mr. Tayer.”

“It was extraordinary,” Jean writes. “Everything was sentient; everything was full of life. He looked at you as kind of a cluttered house that hid the Holy One—and you felt yourself looked at as if you were God in hiding, and you felt yourself so charged and greened with evolutionary possibilities.”
(From Mr. Tayer, by Jean Houston)

This journey begins—and continues each day—when we allow ourselves to fall into this grace. To hear the affirmation that we are indeed, a cluttered house that hides the Holy One. True, there are many times when we may not see the Holy One in ourselves, but it shouldn’t keep us from singing, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” 

FRIDAY FEB 28 — “In the beginning of creation, the light of the universe was shattered into a million million pieces, which lodged as shards inside everything and everyone. Our calling, as human beings, is to look for the light from where we stand, to call it out, to gather it up — and in so doing, to help repair the world.
The pragmatism and wisdom of her grandfather’s sacred story, Rachel Remen told me (Krista Tippett), is in how it calls each of us to help repair the part of the world that we can see and touch.
There, the very quality of our presence to others, moment to moment, is powerful — an ordinary power we scarcely appreciate to ‘make someone’s day’ with patience, kindness, generosity, gentle words. There too, in the places we can see and touch, we can cultivate the ‘proximity’ Bryan Stevenson counsels as key to meaningfully attend to the hardest chasms and wounds in our world.” (Thank you, Krista Tippett)

One of the ways we heal—and repair the world—is to see and affirm the light in those around us. Yes, with kindness, generosity and gentle words.
My hero—Mr. Rogers—did that faithfully.
And there were times I knew he was speaking directly to me. His timeless message of kindness and self-acceptance, and the affirmation that the light inside of me is real, even if, and when, I don’t see it, or believe it.
And today, I needed that.
And gratefully, from that affirmation, the light spills.

Mister Rogers Sings, It’s You I Like
It’s You I Like
It’s you I like,
It’s not the things you wear,
It’s not the way you do your hair
But it’s you I like
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys
They’re just beside you.
But it’s you I like
Every part of you.
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you’ll remember
Even when you’re feeling blue
That it’s you I like,
It’s you yourself
It’s you.
It’s you I like.
Written by Fred Rogers | © 1971, Fred M. Rogers

Prayer for our week…
God, lover of life, lover of these lives,
God, lover of our souls, lover of our bodies, lover of all that exists…
In fact, it is your love that keeps it all alive…
May we live in this love.
May we never doubt this love.
May we know that we are love,
That we were created for love,
That we are a reflection of you,
That you love yourself in us and therefore we are perfectly lovable.
May we never doubt this deep and abiding and perfect goodness.
We are because you are.
Center for Action and Contemplation

Photo… “Dear Terry, Crocus time. First signs of Spring after the snow melts,” Geri Hanley… Thank you Geri… I’m so grateful for your photos, please send them to tdh@terryhershey.com