March 13, 2023 by cindigale

Buried Alive

We all know people who don’t want to face the world on a given day. They are tired of being stepped on, and generally sick of the crap of life. Some are overwhelmed by the state of society—”The world is evil; there’s no point; evil is winning”—while some are direct targets of crushing injustice.

In either case, we hear it in their anger. It is evident in their depression. It has become personal. They’re buried under it.

To all those in a state of defeat, worry, frustration, reactive anger, or agony, know that hope is alive somewhere under the rubble. Love is in there too. Faith is recoverable beneath your personal landslide. We hear its life, its breath, its cry for mercy.

It’s true that corruption and oppression are real, powerful, suffocating, and sometimes deadly. But it hasn’t won. You’re not done breathing. You’re not done with faith, hope, and love. Those three have not flat-lined.

For all those not presently buried, help those who are. It was us yesterday; it could be us tomorrow. Dig to rescue those who are struggling for breath. Shovel the weighty debris off their backs. Get on hands and knees, and push aside the dirt and clay until victims have access to air, to faith, to hope, to love.

Together, let’s resuscitate faith, hope, and love. Those three do remain in people as individuals, and among humanity collectively.

1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

March 21, 2017 by cindigale

Harbingers of Spring

On this first full day of spring, I pray your hope is revived by harbingers of God’s goodness and faithfulness.

Definition of harbinger

1archaic: a person sent ahead to provide lodgings
2a: one that initiates a major change : a person or thing that originates or helps open up a new activity, method, or technology : pioneer the great legal harbinger of the New Deal revolution — Timea harbinger of nanotechnologythe harbingers of peace to a hitherto distracted … people — David Livingstoneb: something that foreshadows a future event : something that gives an anticipatory sign of what is to come robins, crocuses, and other harbingers of spring

In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly. Psalm 5:3

February 9, 2016 by cindigale

Ocean, What Ocean?

“I’ve long felt it necessary to be sufficiently hard-nosed in order to survive psychologically through life but something inside tells me that sensitivity is just as important. Without it, without empathy, the world would be an impossibly harsh place. ” – Paul Fischer

Paul is a Londoner now living in Croatia. I am a lifelong American. You, as a reader of this blog, join others from a hundred countries on six continents. At a glance it seems the greater our geographical and cultural divide, the less likely any of us would relate. But life, and how we cope with it, is often a challenge for us all. Supposing there are others in varied states of misery who might like some company, Paul and I are letting you eavesdrop on our recent exchange of emails:

Hi Cindi,

Yesterday, destiny decreed that I should carry a sick kitten to the local vet. It had arrived at a friend’s house and was clearly in trouble. The vet tried all he could but found it had eaten rat poison and, despite all the drips, medicines and medical paraphernalia, the kitten suffered an agonising death on the vet’s table. I guess the person who put down the poison in a residential area cared little for local cats. I was upset, teary eyed and not a little angry.

This kitten’s plight got through my outer protective shield and rattled my erstwhile comfortable existence. This was a surprise to me. Like most, I’d developed a hide sufficiently tough to withstand the regular barrage of negative influences to which we are all subjected. So why now? Why this cat? What was so different about this event that my self-preserving armour was pierced so easily? It’s not as if I hadn’t seen or read far worse. Was this the straw to break the camel’s back? This made me think about the volume, regularity and severity of other recent events to confront me. I started a mental list, yes, that’s boring, but what else could I do? Within five minutes and without thinking about it deeply, I found I was able to regurgitate these, all from the past week or so …

ISIL had set fire to a building and burnt to death dozens of people trapped inside, normal village people. Thirty seven people had drowned off the Greek coast having paid a lot of money to ‘agents’ to ship them in unsuitable boats across an unforgiving sea. Saudi executed a few dozen people for, in many cases, saying things the rulers didn’t like. Boko Haram had killed dozens of people in villages in east Africa and enslaved goodness knows how many others. Black rhinos are now gone, poached to extinction. A new disease (Zika) has appeared which threatens to flood parts of the world with damaged babies. The nutjobs of North Korea want to send a rocket up. Syria, Afghanistan Libya are at various stages of tearing themselves apart with the usual accompanying death and suffering. Zimbabwe and Eritrea are in the grip of a drought and we all know what will follow soon. Schengen is probably dead.

There are any number of on-going situations which cause me grief. There’s a semi-submerged island of trash in the Pacific, mostly plastic, bigger than Texas. The Black sea is effectively dead due to chemicals from European farms. Japan hunts whales for scientific research. VW was caught cheating about the noxious gases their cars pump into the atmosphere and, I suspect, all the others are doing something similar. Billions of pigs, chickens and cattle live their lives in cramped cages without a single day of reprieve. Billions of animals are killed in a savage and inhuman manner because of some rules written by men hundreds of years ago. The world’s wildlife population is diminishing rapidly due to human activity unless there is a profit to be had. There are more coal and oil power stations now than ever before. 95% (my guess) of countries are run by people interested only in their own interests. Slavery and the exploitation of women and children thrive as ever they did in primitive times.

This is not a thesis, I don’t have the intention to make a definitive list of the world’s ills. However, I’m starting to conclude that I must learn to harden my heart because the world is mostly a very bad place and not-at-all how I’d hoped it would be, or hide myself away and engage only in a delusional fluffy bunny existence filled with candy and ice cream. Oh, and healthy happy kittens.

Dear Paul,

You nailed it, with eloquence. I was at a friend’s home yesterday for his help with a project, and we talked over lunch afterward. Of all the troubles that are overwhelming him — terrible, life-changing troubles — he was most bothered yesterday by the recent discovery of a pile of pheasants on an acquaintance’s property. “He calls himself a hunter, and that’s okay if he used what he killed for food, but … beautiful pheasants … killed for what?”

It really bothered him. And me. My response was, “People. If we could only get rid of people it wouldn’t be so bad here,” and we laughed but we were half-serious.

When I was very young, I assumed the world was a bigger version of my little one: happy, secure and safe. TV burst my bubble one day with a commercial showing starving children in Africa — you know, the ones with flies on their faces and distended bellies. I sat cross-legged in front of the image, and thought, “That could be me. I could have been born there. Why do I have food and safety and they have that?” Compounding my little revelation of the real world, was that nobody seemed to care about the babies with flies on their faces and distended bellies. What was this unfair world?

Of course it only got worse the longer I lived. I’ve had my “fight” knocked down like you experienced today, and holed up afterward in what I call a marshmallow-and-pudding existence. But not for long. Even when I don’t want it to, the little fighter in me bounces back and starts tackling that big bad world I so often despise. With each rebound I’m less willing to waste my efforts in the wrong places, and only want to relate with the world where it’s on the “building up” end of things, never on the “tearing down” end. Who knows, maybe if enough of us do that we can regain ground from those hell-bend on destruction.

Thank you, Cindi. I knew our kindred spirits are close enough that you would instantly understand.

You are an irreplaceable friend, Paul. And an excellent writer. I think your words should be shared with as many people as possible; surely many people would identify and feel less alone, knowing someone out there feels the same.

Maybe our emails would fit nicely into your blog, one wounded heart comforted by another – across the oceans and across the widest of theological divides.

So we did just that, as evidence that coping with life is a universal challenge. Though it may not seem so, you’re not the only one with the thoughts or emotions you have — someone somewhere is experiencing the same. I propose that when you’ve sufficiently recovered from whatever has knocked you down, you get back out there in this world we share and overcome evil with good — one day at a time, one deed at a time, one soul at a time — across the oceans and widest of divides.

January 29, 2016 by cindigale

Spring Is Coming

When your memories are greater than your dreams, you’ve already begun to die. – Eugene May

A mindset doesn’t happen accidentally. It takes a conscious effort to view today as temporal, and stay hopeful for tomorrow.

The present can be overwhelming, a metaphorical season of drought, harsh winter, or severe flooding. You might find yourself hampered by frustrating or debilitating conditions.

Or, maybe you were overcome by your yesterdays. Cumulative trauma, failures, tragedies, or injustices had an affect on your outlook. Bad events outnumbered the good, enough to induce an expectation of more bad ahead. Sometime during all that hardship, your dreams were buried.

It’s understandable that people surrender dreams and default to memories to fill the void. There are few things more excruciating than rallying to try again, to hope again, to end the vicious cycle, only to be met with more disappointment. When dreams cause pain, memories offer solace.

But, When your memories are greater than your dreams, you’ve already begun to die.

The American pioneers plowed land for a purpose: for food, for survival. It was hard work to break the sod, plant a crop, and keep the plot from reverting to prairie. As long as they worked the land, they improved their odds for an ample harvest. If they quit, the surrounding indigenous plants encroached until the farmed plot succumbed.

It takes work to maintain a healthy mindset, too. If you don’t keep your dreams and hopes for a good future alive, your mind can be overtaken by your past. Instead of forging the best possible future, you can cause your own stagnancy. Instead of being a plowed field able to support a healthy crop, yours can revert to weeds.

Genesis 8:22 (ESV) “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

Keep expecting, so when your drought, flooding, or winter ends — as they always do — your sod is already broken, inertia is overcome, and your momentum is forward.

Keep expecting, so when your spring arrives, you are primed and ready to fully engage in it.

¹¹See! The winter is past;
    the rains are over and gone.
¹²Flowers appear on the earth;
    the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
    is heard in our land.
¹³The fig tree forms its early fruit;
    the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.
Arise, come, my darling;
    my beautiful one, come with me.

(Song of Songs, 2:11-13, NIV)

July 1, 2015 by cindigale

Silver Lining

First Aid Kit perform ‘My Silver Lining’, the first single off their album ‘Stay Gold’ on the London Southbank for 2014 Latitude in the City.

Lyrics

I don’t want to wait anymore I’m tired of looking for answers
Take me some place where there’s music and there’s laughter
I don’t know if I’m scared of dying but I’m scared of living too fast, too slow
Regret, remorse, hold on, oh no I’ve got to go
There’s no starting over, no new beginnings, time races on
And you’ve just gotta keep on keeping on
Gotta keep on going, looking straight out on the road
Can’t worry ’bout what’s behind you or what’s coming for you further up the road
I try not to hold on to what is gone, I try to do right what is wrong
I try to keep on keeping on
Yeah I just keep on keeping on

I hear a voice calling
Calling out for me
These shackles I’ve made in an attempt to be free
Be it for reason, be it for love
I won’t take the easy road

I’ve woken up in a hotel room, my worries as big as the moon
Having no idea who or what or where I am
Something good comes with the bad
A song’s never just sad
There’s hope, there’s a silver lining
Show me my silver lining
Show me my silver lining

I hear a voice calling
Calling out for me
These shackles I’ve made in an attempt to be free
Be it for reason, be it for love
I won’t take the easy road

I won’t take the easy road
The easy road, the easy road

Show me my silver lining, I try to keep on keeping on
Show me my silver lining, I try to keep on keeping on
Show me my silver lining, I try to keep on keeping on
Show me my silver lining, I try to keep on keeping on

To learn more about this talented sister duo from Stockholm, or to purchase their music: http://www.thisisfirstaidkit.com/

April 10, 2015 by cindigale

Why Try?

Someone I know has had an agonizing time trying to get a family member out of a foreign country. The specifics must be withheld, for good reason. Just know it has been a grueling, potentially life-and-death ordeal based on politics and power.

It’s a case of individuals imploring national government, the small guys rebuffed by powers that be, living conditions prime for contracting diseases, a divide of thousands of miles, travel restrictions, and complicated laws. Add to that finite personal resources of time and finances, and it’s been two long years of herculean efforts going nowhere.

Meanwhile, life must go on, including caring for other family and responsibilities, and when able, attending the same vocation-related meeting I do. Yesterday we were mid-discussion when someone rounded the basement stairway to join us. We looked up to see our friend had arrived.

But it was not just one person standing there …

The wonderful, impossible, beautiful, astonishing, too-good-to-be-true TRUTH of it sank in slowly …

The aforementioned family member caught up in international politics was there, too. At our meeting. They were together. A two-year nightmare was over.

Every second of that realization was unforgettable — they were settled into the empty space next to me long before I absorbed it all. They were living (and touchable!) proof that situations appearing hopeless can change for the good in an instant. And when they do, unspeakable joy is the result. That joy is contagious, too — I sure caught it. I can attest that it is a privilege to know enough of the struggle to appreciate the victory.

Their reunion represented all things right in a world too often wrong. They were examples of why we should all cling to hope, fight for justice and life, ask for help in the difficult battles, and never give up.

Dramatic turnarounds do happen. I witnessed one yesterday, and oh, was it good.

March 18, 2015 by cindigale

Peace and Hope

Romans 5 (NIV)

5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. ³Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

⁶You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

⁹Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! ¹⁰For if, while we were God’s enemies,we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! ¹¹Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

June 19, 2014 by cindigale

Keep Dreaming

When your memories are greater than your dreams, you’ve already begun to die. – Eugene May

A mindset doesn’t happen accidentally. It takes a conscious effort to view today as temporal, and stay hopeful for tomorrow.

The present can be overwhelming, a metaphorical season of drought, harsh winter, or severe flooding. You might find yourself hampered by frustrating or debilitating conditions.

But, When your memories are greater than your dreams, you’ve already begun to die.

Genesis 8:22 (ESV) “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

Keep dreaming, so when your drought, flooding, or winter ends — as they always do — your sod is already broken, inertia is overcome, and your momentum is forward.

Keep dreaming, so when your spring arrives, you are primed and ready to fully engage in it.

From Song of Solomon:

11 See! The winter is past;
    the rains are over and gone.
12 Flowers appear on the earth;
    the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
    is heard in our land.

March 14, 2014 by cindigale

Personal Landslide