What are you carrying around ??

Philippians 3 

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Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Pebbles in the heart

There is a story about a long thin baker named Fouke—a righteous man, with a long thin chin and a long thin nose. Fouke was so upright that he seemed to spray righteousness from his thin lips over everyone who came near him; so the people of Faken preferred to stay away.  Fouke’s wife, Hilda, was short and round; her arms were round, her bosom was round, her rump was round. Hilda did not keep people at bay with righteousness; her soft roundness seemed to invite them to come close to her in order to share the warm cheer of her open heart.

Hilda respected her righteous husband, and loved him too, as much as he allowed her; but her heart ached for something more from him than his worthy righteousness.  And there, in the bed of her need, lay the seed of sadness.

One morning, having worked since dawn to knead his dough for the ovens, Fouke came home and found a stranger in his bedroom lying on Hilda’s round bosom. Hilda’s adventure soon became the talk of the tavern and the scandal of the congregation. Everyone assumed that Fouke would cast Hilda out of his house, so righteous was he. But he surprised everyone by keeping Hilda as his wife, saying that he forgave her as the Good Book said he should.

In his heart of hearts, however, Fouke could not forgive Hilda for bringing shame to his name. Whenever he thought about her, his feelings toward her were angry and hard; he despised her as if she were a common whore. When it came right down to it, he hated her for betraying him after he had been so good and so faithful a husband to her.  He only pretended to forgive Hilda so that he could punish her with his righteous mercy.  But Fouke’s fakery did not sit well in Heaven.

So each time that Fouke would feel his secret hate toward Hilda, an angel came to him and dropped a tiny pebble, hardly the size of a shirt button, into Fouke’s heart. Each time a pebble dropped, Fouke would feel a stab of pain like the pain he felt the moment he came on Hilda feeding her hungry heart from a stranger’s larder.  Thus he hated her the more; his hate brought him pain and his pain made him hate.

The pebbles multiplied. And Fouke’s heart grew very heavy with the weight of them, so heavy that the top half of his body bent forward so far that he had to strain his neck upward in order to see straight ahead. Weary with hurt, Fouke began to wish he were dead.  The angel who dropped the pebbles into his heart came to Fouke one night and told him how he could be healed of his hurt.

There was one remedy, he said, only one, for the hurt of a wounded heart. Fouke would need the miracle of the magic eyes. He would need eyes that could look back to the beginning of his hurt and see his Hilda, not as a wife who betrayed him, but as a loving woman who needed him. Only a new way of looking at things through the magic eyes could heal the hurt flowing from the wounds of yesterday.

“And how can I get your magic eyes?” pouted Fouke.  “Only ask, desiring as you ask, and they will be given you. And each time you see Hilda through your new eyes, one pebble will be lifted from your aching heart.”  Fouke could not ask at once, for he had grown to love his hatred. But the pain of his heart finally drove him to want and to ask for the magic eyes that the angel had promised. So he asked.  And the angel gave.

Soon Hilda began to change in front of Fouke’s eyes, wonderfully and mysteriously. He began to see her as a woman who loved him instead of a wicked woman who had betrayed him.

The angel kept his promise; he lifted the pebbles from Fouke’s heart, one by one, though it took a long time to take them all away. Fouke gradually felt his heart grow lighter; he began to walk straight again, and somehow his nose and his chin seemed less thin and sharp than before. He invited Hilda to come into his heart again, and she came, and together they began again a journey into their second season of humble joy.

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it is a lesson I learn every day

it is a wisdom which permeates

spiritual writings

be careful what you hang on to

choose carefully what you carry with you through life

what is it we carry in our souls?

are we dragging around failure, or hurt

fear and hate

is our mind full of worry and concern

of “what if’s” and “if only’s”?

so many wake up tired

and walk through the tired

so many have smiles that are slow to come

because the inner joy is smothered by

so much misery and pain

for me it is clear

for me it is obvious

when I can wake up

and look at the beauty outside my window

when I can see the mountain

and marvel at the way the sun kisses

the trees and fields with gold

and see the fawns playing

and hear the birds singing

 and not end up

with my feet a foot above the ground (spiritually speaking)

I am carrying too much

It is time to root through my heart

(or my spiritual backpack – my other favored image)

and figure out

what I need to just take out, put by the side of the road,

and leave behind

No

No no NOOOOO!

I do not get to dump those useless things to others

for them to carry

they have their own spiritual flotsam

(we can hand them to the Sacred

who knows full well what to do with them)

it is time to just lay down the fear

the worry

the old hurts

the old failures

and walk through the day

this day, each day

free

it is time to travel light!