Tag: echo

Rekindled and Ignited

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At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
~Albert Schweitzer

One kind word can warm three winter months…
~Japanese Proverb

Charis always demands the answer of eucharistia.
Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth.
Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo.
Gratitude follows grace like thunder and lightning.

…we are speaking of the grace of the God who is God for man, and of the gratitude of man as his response to this grace…
~Karl Barth (1886-1968) in Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Reconciliation 

“Rekindling” happens without expectation. When I’m out of gas, spent and deflated, someone’s kind word, smile, gracious note or thank you makes all the difference. Suddenly I’m reignited and have fuel to spare. The spark plug comes alive once again and I’m up and running. I need to remember how this feels so I become the igniter and kindler for others.

I remember a moment in my work life in clinic as I was hurrying from one patient to another. A young woman stopped me as I was about to leave the exam room and said “Doctor, I am so grateful you were willing to see me so quickly today. I’ve been concerned about this for weeks, losing sleep with worry and now I feel so reassured it is nothing serious. Thank you!” 

I once received a hand written letter (something rare as hen’s teeth) from a patient I cared for years before. He wanted to tell me he was doing well and how he had appreciated my kindness to him. I was astonished that he remembered me; in his letter he was uncertain if I would remember him. Patients don’t always know how they dwell in their doctors’ consciousness, how they teach us and how much we learn. I surely did remember this patient, his struggles with drug dependency, his strong urge to kill himself, and his desperate search for a reason to keep on living.

He was alive, doing well. He remembered my caring about him. And I was wrapped in his comforting words through some chilly days.

So – I want to share this gift of grace with you,
as a recurring echo which follows a cry of joy,
a warm illumination pouring out on darkness,
through words and images that kindle hope each day.

I thunder loudly at the lightning spark from God,
an unending echo of thanks with my every breath.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaTIW8FZDfM
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Dawn on our Darkness: I See You, I Am Here

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Once I saw a fire
across the water
reaching high into the night.
So I lit my fire.
My fire was small
but it was enough to signal to the other,
I see you, and I am here.

Now, whenever I light fires, I wonder who’s watching –
the trees, the grass, the flowers, the fireflies, the moths, the birds,
the ocean, the clouds, the moon, the stars,
the very ground I rest upon?
Testing for echo, I send my calls of light into darkness.
Even when all I receive is the gift of silence,
I am comforted because
I see and I am here.
~John Paul Caponigro “Test for Echo”

“I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”
Luke 12:49

Unless the eye catch fire,
Then God will not be seen.
Unless the ear catch fire
Then God will not be heard.
Unless the tongue catch fire
Then God will not be named.
Unless the heart catch fire,
Then God will not be loved.
Unless the mind catch fire,
Then God will not be known.
~William Blake from “Pentecost”

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning from “Aurora Leigh”

I need to turn aside and look,
to truly see, as if for the first and last time,
this kindled fire that echoes from the hills,
illuminating even the darkest day and never dies away.

I am invited, by no less than God Himself,
through the burning bush never consumed,
to shed my shoes, walk barefoot and vulnerable,
to approach this bright and burning dawn,
even in the midst of darkest midnight,
as a babe in a manger is sent
to kindle a fire in each of us.

Then can I say, sending out my own echoed light:
“I see you! I am here! Consume me!”

This year’s Advent theme “Dawn on our Darkness” is taken from this 19th century Christmas hymn:

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid.
Star of the east, the horizon adorning,
guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.
~Reginald Heber -from “Brightest and Best”

Within our darkest night,
you kindle the fire
that never dies away,
that never dies away.
Within our darkest night,
you kindle the fire
that never dies away,
that never dies away.
~Taize

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Soundless Echo

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woods28

darkhedges2

rainbowfarm2

There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing.
There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest,
and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city.
There is silence after a rainstorm,
and before a rainstorm,
and these are not the same.
There is the silence of emptiness,
the silence of fear,
the silence of doubt.
There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object
as from a chair lately used,
or from a piano with old dust upon its keys,
or from anything that has answered to the need of a man,
for pleasure or for work.
This kind of silence can speak.
Its voice may be melancholy,
but it is not always so;
for the chair may have been left by a laughing child
or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay.
Whatever the mood or the circumstance,
the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows.
It is a soundless echo.
~Beryl Markham from West From the Night

________________

Silence shouts loud wherever I am,
so I capture it as best I can,
echoing what just has been,
what should have been
or could have been.
It is the sound of remembrance,
sometimes regret,
often reconciliation
that what once was
can be no longer.

20130630-213913

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