Recomendada

All James Thurber cartoons esp. currently this one: two people looking at a glassy- eyed maiden gathering flowers:  “She has the true Emily Dickinson spirit but she gets fed up sometimes.”  That’d be me… See “The Thurber Carnival” a truly great humor collection.

“Yellow and Pink” by another TNY great, William Stieg, who also created “Shrek.”  ( The original much better—and more gruesome—it grues on you.)  For the evolutionary establishment, a low blow from the children’s department; a telling parable of eternal significance.

Gary Chapman’s series on the 5 Love Languages, for thine convenience, the short list:

• Words of affirmation
• Quality time
• Receiving gifts
• Acts of service
• Physical touch  

Some of us are fortunate enough to have one person who does all 5 equally well—rare though that is—but the point is that love involves some measure of all five. 

Mark 1: 1-8

Reflecting on the old saw: “If you can’t please anyone else, you may as well please yourself.” (a corollary of the Gestalt prayer?)

Well, doesn’t that depend on who or what lives inside oneself?  Jesus’ parable of the man who tried to make himself moral is instructive negatively—he cleaned up his own act and cast one devil out, but never put anything in its place, so 7 devils, each worse than the first, came in and so all the reforming was only good for making the person 7x worse. ( I often tell a similar story to those trying to quit smoking—just quitting doesn’t always work unless something can come in and fill the needs once filled by nicotine—the “shark tranquilizer.”)

John is often remembered as a condemning prophet; but before he identified any broods of vipers, he offered something totally positive: Jesus; but not “Just Jesus” as some say but also/then the Holy Spirit.  Using Isaiah—and I’d add Joel et. al.—he stands in a long line of HS promises that start with Genesis 1.

Hence if we are true to magnitude of these gifts—on most days most of us are not hence our reputation as evil—then we are not here to please anyone but He/They Who live/s within us. Easy if we surrender, impossible if we don’t.  But if we do, the Psalms make sense: “What can man do to me?”

This of course changes nothing less than everything! And is an occasion for Pure Joy unless we drag along all our carnal past and current baggage.  Aye, there’s the rub!!!

Mea culpa de Nuevo!