Basic Missions

(Mojo and Duncan dying eggs last year)

I was so thrilled we all were able to have a full and happy Easter.  I have meant to get this chapter updated for the whole week and have been so busy with the daily work of the mission and needs that come in, that the writing and updating have been on hold.  Thank goodness God allowed me to build into this program days until Pentecost Sunday and the celebration of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  This study as we have talked about was never meant to end on Easter.  Easter is however the most important day of the Christian year.  The resurrection of Christ is an indescribleable event in all of our hearts each year.  Understanding the limits we as human beings hold onto in this life is part of the Easter experience.  Jesus rose from the dead then left us to handle all the messiness of being human with gifts.  But, there is nothing easy about the conversion of a people nor about the living of the good news.

How wonderful it is to spend time study and sacrificing time to share with God.  Because in the end the sacrifice becomes our own special gift to ourselves.  The lessons and practices change our life.  I have had a year of change.  I began this year with full knowledge of illness and a battle to wage against more cancer. I was given a gift that hinged on accepting the challenge of making my life over.  In this rebuilding I was charged with changing my entire life.  Work habits to eating habits.  And none of it came easy. Here I sit with a new life and a new year to engage and enjoy cancer free.  Was it easy, no.  Was there anyone here to urge me to continue the work, of course.  As always God sent angels with the message and a whole host of folks ready to encourage send me help and not allow me to fail.  But in the end, it was on my shoulders to meditate each day, eat in a way that would kill my cancer and keep my health in an upward spiral.  Duncan and I, had to take Saatchi to the park and commit to walking those five painful miles each day rain or shine, epidurals or regular day, workday or weekend.  So we did it.  The reason I am talking about this today is because in each change of life we are asked: to make a commitment, then remake that same commitment daily.  If we do not keep the structure we will allow life to fall back into the same unhealthy patterns that got us in the mess to begin with.  Maybe if we take our spiritual practice and make it a commitment that we begin each day measuring it in years not days we can understand that our journeys will inhabit all moods and struggles.

I am always inspired by the life of the disciples.  Imagine for a short period of your life you are exposed to this amazing man.  Then he dies.  You see a miracle in his resurrection then poof……………….. you are alone to blaze the path.  It is like reading a letter about Lewis and Clark heading off to walk from one shore of the United States to another with a backpack that included a knife, a few food supplies that would run out, a machette to cut threw the underbrush, a map, and protection: such as a jacket, a gun in those days and a book that points out deadly plants and berries.  So you feel equiped until the end of the first day when you took those first ten miles of the journey and were far from familiar territory and knew you had thousands of miles to go. Do you turn back or work to make it to see the Grand Canyon and the Pacific Ocean?  The courage it takes not to turn back means that there will be days of hell ahead.  But there will also be days of such immense of shocking beauty it will take your breath away. 

That explains the spiritual journey we as new disciples  are on.  We are armed and ready, we have our map we have celebrated the fact that we KNOW it can be done. We have our backpack full.  The idea of the remainder of these days is to take time and see if we are following the map.  Are will living out the lives we were destined to live.  Some of us find our paths thru websites, college, the death of a loved one.  When we find the path we alone have to blaze that little honey.

Now, since we are studying the very human side of Easter it is nice to acknowledge that the family and religious celebration of Easter was glorious. Although we still have work to do. Many people of a religious bent feel as though Christians are saved.  Well what is saved anyway.  I was taught that being saved meant that you were washed free of sin by accepting Christ’s sacrifice and then you were heaven bound.  Do I believe that?  Well, somewhat.  I belive that for those of us called to be Christians, Jesus is the way to the goal.  Do I feel that the one encompassing moment will set us for life?  No. I feel that if we are saved then we are being saved each day and Paul and all the great writers left a few things out. I don’t want to lose you here. This is my ideas, so I mean no offience. First of all “Saved” is both a noun and a verb.  I think we forget the verbage.  That we are a participant in each day of our salvation.  That Christ asks us to teach, follow, work, live and arrange our lives in a manner that preaching a lesson is not needed.  You will be known by your life. Now having said that I want us all to understand that being saved is a blessed and wonderful thing. I belive that we have to work daily to bring that action into our lives.  I am not keen on the mega-church tele-evangelist life of one act one moment changes all.  The Bible depending on which one you pick up have thousands of pages.  We have translations yet to be made from scrolls still being translated.  I belive that each of us has a book to add to the story of our salvation.  Daily I meet people who have found thier own road to God and are living it more fully than any religious could.  I have met homeless men and women who do unto others, have faith and move mountains.  One such man participates in boards across the country and works to make life better for others with his particular mental illness all the while living under an overpass and spending his days in pursiut of spreading the love that Christ taught.  He cannot however make the same difference for himself and is content in his life.  I have also met men and women who may only have contact with five others souls on the planet for years at a time. However those few people are changed forever by the generosity of spirit of a man that has not been out of a hospital bed in a 300 square foot apartment for 20 years. Therefore, I belive that we all have a great and powerful lot of work to muster up and do to be saved daily.  Did Christ make the ultimate sacrifice and rise, YES, and the gift is ours to pick up and work with. 

Years ago I spent a week learning from a priest named Father Jack from Badass, Michigan.  Yes, there is a place.  He taught us all that we were saved, were being saved and were in the process of saving others each day.  In that one week proceeding Easter I learned more about my own personal power, that is a gift of salvation, then I did from twenty years of college. Father Jack explained to us all that growth in the Easter experience was our chance to make a solid commentment to ourselves.  Seeing as the Kingdom of Heaven is within then we are in turn making a commitment to God.  God was waiting for us to work with him.  Not wait around for some overwhelming miraculous sign of grace.  God sends signs daily you have the option to either pick up the hammer, the juicer, the book and change.  You can accept the miracle or not.  Most often we do no look at the common things in our lives as miracles.  We find life mundane and explainable. If we were to take off the glasses of taught thought then we could look at a common walk as a miracle. If you make a trip to gather you mail and an old feeble fellow on a walker stops and talks to you and you learn his life story in ten minutes.  You have just given away a miracle.  The older man was most likely lonely, tired, feeling valueless and depressed. Now you  have just left him with a sense that his life was of interest, he was not alone, and his step may be a bit faster leaving the mail station.  Have you ever taken a minute to help someone load thier groceries or catch a purse being left in a cart.  You were the angel on the end of the miracle.  Have you gotten a test result with bad news.  Belive it or not that too is a miracle. Unknowingly God has given you the chance to not only change your life receive healing, he has put modern medicene and a wealth of knowledge at your feet to help you heal.  Cure is not the same thing as heal. But a healing is a miracle.  In the proper light life is a series of one miracle after another.  And a life well lived is a new book in the bible filed under “Acts”.  The acts of the apostles are our lives today just as they are the account of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul and Timothy.  You can add all the names here Leenda, Chris, Deric, Duncan, Jennifer, Debbie, Bookie, Stephanie, and all the rest.  The rest of the story is up to us.  Are you up to the challenge. Tomorrow will being the new ACTS, each day when we begin the day with prayful meditation, writing, task prayer and yoga we can add the act of living to the prayer of our day.  We begin now to see the fruit of our labor is the resurrection of our humanity and spirit.

Our exercise for the day is to write a short list of ten things you wish to do to change you life today. Be as broad and as wishful as you like and be specific.  We also want to write ten things we would like to give away to others as our act of being a disciple of Christ.  We have good news.. life is changeable, nothing is impossible, Christ is the way, the truth and the light, and we have the map so lets see those list. Pull out the flashlight in your backpack and scribble away. Wish upon a star the universe is listening and Christ only asks us to ask and we shall receive. Give and it shall be given unto us.

I will draw my list up and share it here tomorrow.  I look forward to our days until pentecost and the amazing year.  Next Easter we will have so much to share from this incredible year. 

Let me hear from you and how your doing.  We have special prayers for my dearest Leenda who has some test tomorrow and is sure to have the best results but we want to share some peace with her and send her good vibrations, lots of our friends here at basic are traveling and working this week so many blessings to them.  Some very special CSC friends are making thier way to Austin, Texas for an incredible weekend of learning and communion.  So many blessing to you all and may Kris, Brian, Beth and Terry have a wonderful retreat. I wish I was there with them and cannot wait to be one of the participants in a retreat done by this extra ordinary team.  Today starts a week of catch up hear at basicmissions and I pray for all of us to make a new week and a new start after so much field work. And many friends are suffering today from fear in all its nasty forms.  Blessings.  Ok.  A prayful beginning to a new week of Easter.  Thank you all for hanging in here with me. 

Love and Veggies,

Callie

It was pointed out to me that today is the day Christ was crucified.  Unreal the history behind this one day.  This day is like no other in history. But to me this day stands out because it is the day that shows  without a doubt that fear is universal. That all greatness in this life is faced with obstacles that are huge. That as we begin to believe in something greater than ourselves we begin to understand there will be a price for those beliefs, it will come, one day.  Are we willing to be afraid, off  balance and unsure.  Human nature calls us into this day, as a stand out day in time. A defining moment that caused twelve me and two women to change the course of history. 

The disciples all ran in fear today.  Many would hide and pray that the Roman soliders did not come to jail and kill them. Men who would later be cruicified upside down, imprisioned and persecuted with grace, I might add, ran like rats off a burning ship.  We are all human we all run from time to time. In our very ordinary lives, Easter can reprpsent so many stages of “our” lives. We are frightened. We are emboldened, and we are shook to our cores at times.  We know the very eyes of fear. Fear has different names for all of us. Cancer, Sin, loneliness, money problems, drug problems.  We all have those very dark nights of the soul.

I love Peter. I love that he is always the first to raise his hand in a challenge!  I also loved that he is  a very human man: the first to fail.  But Peter is not a pompass man.  He seems to be the kind of man that shakes off his fears and understands the base of his emotions  then he picks himself up dust himself off and rises to the occasions that Christ has put in his life.  Peter build my church isn’t that the call Jesus had for Peter.  He did, Peter he built the church.  It is said in church circles that we either follow Peter or follow Paul. I always choose the humaness of Peter. Paul always seems to angry for me and too ready to condemn. Poor Peter he is solid.  He may have feet of clay but he will hang those feet over the side of the boat to dry them the sun. He works his whole life to become Christ’s rock. Failing then getting up and trying again.  A lifetime of service.

Tonight is not only the night Jesus died it was the night Peter denied Christ three times.  Just like God is always in the details, He knew Peter would recoil in fear.  He knew the denial was coming. It was ok.  Ok for the greatest of apostles to make mistakes just as it is ok for us to fall.  We just have to remember that to be a “rock of christ” we must find it within ourselves to pull ourselves out of the shame and self-condemnation and move forward one step at a time. Sucess is found on the other side of fear.  Just as Peter gathered himself up and steadied himself to build the church he was rewared with the love of Christ and being able to see the resurection and it’s results.  Imagine, having sinned so despartely and having Jesus appear and tell you.  I told you on the night of passover you would fail. You cannot always be right in all things, Peter. I know your heart……..and your heart is why I chose you. Just as your heart is why the almightly spirit of all things has chosen YOU! TAG!   You are it.  On this rock, on you ……..YOU… I build the church. One soul and one heart at a time. In and out of church. Inside the love of the Lord no mistake is eternal. 

Isn’t that wonderful news.  No sin can keep you from accomplishing the task of your life. Nothing can separate you from the love of God. Nothing can change you path to peace.  God is coming and he doesn’t care you are not perfect he made you, he loves what he made, and he adores……….. you……………..period.

Peter was a simple fisherman.  He was not a learned man. He did not go to Princeton, or study with the greats.  He was confounded and confused by Jesus.  Like many of us he just knew that he loved him. That his message was true and that he was the Messiah.  All the lofty and ceremonious words that were said never rang true with Peter.  All he knew was that Jesus was the man and the god head he would follow to the end of his days. As Jesus tried to get he apostles to understand what was about to happen to him. Peter repeatly asked. Lord cannot I not follow you now.  I go where you go I love you above all things.  When Jesus explained to Peter that he would not only not be able to follow him throughout the path Peter was confused. He was ready willing and able. In Peters hurry to follow his call he had missed one very important idea. That he would have to be tested.  Faith is active. It is the act of being asked a simple questions that requires that we respond in a very complicated way.  If you answer to anything be it an act of faith or a simple change of diet. NO idea is as easy and the Yes that begins the path.  The difficult part comes when you are asked day in and day out to make choices that are difficult.  Peter had walked away from the simple path.  He had not yet begun to realize that all things come in time.  All commitments come at a price. ON the day he was asked to put down his net and follow Christ inspiration had poured into him and he had left behind his family and his routine. Now when the going got rough the apostles had choices to make just as we do. How do we take everything we have learned. All the lessons, practices, and peace and then put it on the line in real time.  Not in suspended animation  of the internet or in a prayerful morning.  How do we as the heirs to peters call take up our ideals and love for others and desire for a new world and follow Christ. Do we accept our humaness or our mistakes as part of the game of life and roll with it or do we get knocked down so low that we cannot crawl back up onto our feet and admit our frailty and humaness.  Peter thankfully understood that now only was he not ready for the ideas christ was imparting in him. He would come to learn that he was humbled and reached the bottom of his tool box on this journey. Spiritual awakenings take us to the depths of despair and disappointment and the the height of joy.  Easter is the coming around of the new. It gives us a new start. But if we haven’t got the  Easter  idea and the idea of death and rebirth into our souls when we make mistakes,  we will fall or fall short of our own expectations we will never be able to get past being jump started into a new journey of life. 

I have waited for some to ask. Why do you have this lenten study entitled forty days to a new you and then today is lesson 24.  The answer is not as easy and yes there are 40 days to lent, but we have to survive and resurrect our Easter for a lifetime to understand the call of Christ. SO our study will continue after the resurrection into our very own Acts……These are the quiet and contemplative days of this study. I have given you so much information, exercises, prayers and practices. That today through Sunday I want us to concentrate on the final act. The sacrifice. The apostles being very real men with very real problems of hunger, making living, spreading the word of God, hiding from the law and making a stand. What had they gotten into? And what commitments are you ready to make? 

Today we are the apostles will we run, deny, flee?  Of course we will.  We will  also  be able to take note that we know as humans we will make mistakes, settle out accounts, apologize, reboot and restart. Will we have the strength to take the ride of a lifetime?  Just like you the apostles were asked everyday to give more than they could, make a change where ever they could and keep going.  Just like you they got overwhelmned, overworked, and had challenges.  But we have a choice.  Do we make this a defining moment of sucess in our lives? Do we take the good and the bad?  DO we take a minute each day and re-boot and keep going even when it seems the world is against us.  And will we be ready to take the reward.  Take the sucess, love, abundance and treasure of friends and peace that God will send your way.  We have a job to do.  Are we ready. Today Christ carried his cross and died on it, 72 years later Peter would ask to be crucified upside down, as not to be held in the same esteem as christ. But he died for his belief in him.  Are we ready for the blood of Christ to make us new and the good and bad that will bring.  Steady yourself for the new life.  For three days Jesus was dead.  Three days the apostles hid and feared and waiting trying to remember every word and all the ramifacations of thier actions. Three days until the glorified Jesus was raised from the dead and showed the men that death had no hold  on them here any longer.  We could face the rest;  because we would live in glory with God in all eternity.  The kingdom of heaven is within.  Behold……the Christ.  Christ had died……..Peter had denied……Human nature is played out. And in the midst there is love. Love that beats doubt and fear and death and denial. Love that calls all things to it. Love that makes life pure and whole and free. Love that makes you whole.  You have choosen it.  Remember today it is the beginning.

I love you. Callie Broussard-Wheeler

Once Dante wrote that God is the love that stills the sun and set the stars in the sky. 

I adore that.  What did God do with You?  Have you ever wondered what he is asking of you?  I believe in my life he has asked several things.  Many were optional. Many were ideas where free, and I had the free will to say yes or no to that path in life. But, then again, God has given me one true and undeniable charge.  Tell the people you touch you love them and to stand.  TELL THEM TO STAND? I get the I love you part.  And I do by the way, love you all!  It was the “stand” part I couldn’t understand for so long.  I had to learn what it meant to “stand” first.  Then after I did it I could learn to teach it. 

Stand. Stand through the trials and tribulations and the joy and intense pleasure God will be sending our way. Stand when a loved one is ill, stand through the storms that will come.  Stand through illness and abundance. Stand. It is the single  most important gift we can give ourselves is prepare and learn, to stand. Prepare to take you cross and carry it or stand with it.  The season of lent causes us to reflect on the idea that in all our joy there will come days that crash like waves across the shoreline. The only answer we will have when those storms and rip tides come in, is to stand.

When I approach Palm Sunday, I have this feeling of great respect, horror,of dread and fear.  I feel so small and unbelivably unworthy of the gift of both Mary the Mother of Jesus and Jesus himself.  In the days that Jesus was in the desert readying himself for his journey from ‘King~ to Sacrifice ~to Resurrection’.  What was his mother doing? We watch as the world of christianity asks (what would jesus do) and we rarely think of his mother.  What did she do?  She stood she :stood. I am sure she was nailed  straight through from heart to the rock under her feet.  This boy who’s toes she kissed and counted, and who’s body she washed and fed: walked out into the desert to ready himself for the next two weeks. The last two weeks of his life.  She knew the plan. She new the day he was presented in the temple in Jerusaluem, as a baby, that he would be crowned  by the people the savoir they had been waiting for, then condemned by a nation and tortured then nailed to a cross to die.  Could she have possibly understood what that sacrifice would mean! Could she have understood that resurrection was complete and physical? How could she no one has risen from the dead, before or since.  Heaven only knows the fear and faith that precious woman must have felt.  I cannot imagine how it must have felt everyday of a childs life the knowing. The thought of knowing you gave birth to him only to have him die, for others. To count the mintues and the hours and the days. I have had a son. I have seen him die.  I know I would not have the faith this woman had, would you?

Many of my Protestant friends asks me, “Why do Catholics pray to Mary?”  Well, that is not an entirely true statment.  We as Catholics, (and remember the buddhist, catholic, presbyterian statement I am all three) ask Mary as a saint and the mother of our Lord to pray with us and for us. Asking God and her Son to intercede for us and with us.  The reason being, there is nothing that she as a living woman and mother that she did not experience in her lifetime. Nothing.

She was the Mother to the King of Salvation. The Mother to a death row inmate, a disciple, a believer and a pregant teenager. She was tormented with religous truths that she couldn’t understand. And she accepted her fate and call from God with grace and poise, not to mention courage.  She was also a woman who with great faith who decided  when asked to STAND that she would.  She would  accept God’s will and live her chosen life.  She did not run from her duty. She was present. She was the great inspiration for all Mothers to come after her. She was even at the foot of the cross the day her son died, dressed his body and waited for his resurrection.  She stood.  Can you wrap your mind around that.

And today would be her Sabbath. Her last meal she could prepare for her boy.  Her final memory to impart in him.  Her final Friday of peace before her son went out and announced his mission to the world.  She must have cried a million tears and riveted herself just  to make the sabbath meal glorious,  and tend to her boy.  We are not told if Jeus came home before he went out into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  But we know that he was with his Mother and dispciples. So I am sure he spent the day with her, among many.  History does not say, but being together as Mother and Son I am sure was a priority. They likely talked about what was to come.  I can imagine her cold fearful hand, and her knees locked in desperation!  I can imagine tears of hot salty pride, in knowing she had done what God asked and Her son was ready……..but then the coming storm would have killed a normal person. Imagine……..twenty-four hours now..         Her son would  become a man who is not only the sacrifice for all mankind  and is arrested,condemend, humilated, beaten, crowned in thorns, and killed in the worst possible way………in her mind she must have been dying herself.  No matter your faith you can identify with a mother and her son.  He was her son! Her only gift was to Stand.

She stood as my mother always has, in times of joy and in times of fear, in times of cancer and strain and when I rejoice.  She is shedding tears now reading this devotional. Shaking in pride, joy and fear for me. 

I am sure Mary stood to make sure Jesus could see her eyes and give him courage when the pain came and the weakness came.  I am sure she walked along side him entering on the donkey being heralded as a king, and stood in front of the crowds of people yelling for his death. I bet she stood up as silently as my own Momma would while he was beaten and he looked at her and she did not blink.

Stand son, I taught you how, I have shown you, I will stand for you now, Look at me!  I will be your strength, look into my eyes just as you did when fed from my body, look into my eyes now for comfort and strength.  My eyes will carry you. I will not leave you. And as He died she stood for him at the foot of the cross. It is o.k. I am here sweet son.  Watching for his last breath.  Waiting to hear that Voice that called her 46 years ago to her and sent an angel to her.   Waiting for the moment when God opened the skies and said,  ”This is my Son and I am well pleased” and then Jesus died.  I am sure she was the one who took him down and washed him and prepared his body for burial. She had it all ready to cradle her son.  She was waiting. She stood.  Then she stood in faith waiting for him to rise from the dead.  Waiting at the tomb. She stood.

So in our lives we are asked to stand for many reason.  Can you?  Can you stand for you son who is sick, your daughter who is in the military?  Can you stand for the weak and the poor.  The hungry and the tired. Can you stand for you dear ones? Can you be stronger than steel and do anything asked. Can you live you best life.  The entrance is coming.  And this sacrifice was given so you could say YES.  I can stand.  I have the Kingdom of God, within me. I can do what I have too and what I must and what I rejoice in that stand everyday.

Stand.  This is the contemplation tonight.  Palm Sunday is coming our Holy Week is almost here.  Tonight was his Sabbath.  Thank his Mother and yours.   The lesson tonight is to find the places in your life where you are asked to be glorified and stand, and to be hurt and stand.  We as humans face these decisions daily. Where are you after 23 days.  Are you ready to stand with your mantel and lead yourself to joy.  Pay the price and do the work?

I am.  I have been inspired.  I have so many of you out there who have stood this week.  Jennifer and Leenda, Bonnie and Deborah and Debbie, and Chris and Sue, Dee and her family.  What is the saying ” there is no fool like an old fool who thinks he is immune to the human condition”  we are all going to be asked to stand.  Each day situations arise that call for strength of heart.  I have faith that we can!  Lets get ready to ride into the life we were destined to live and STAND.

The Hail Mary

Hail Mary Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee.  Blessed are Thee amoung women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.  Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen