the weight of the world

Christopher and I were sitting in a bagel shop downtown the other morning, having shuffled our children off for the weekend so we could enjoy some alone time together, when our conversation came around to the weightier issues of the world and what we're supposed to do about them. It ocurred to me that, while the world is a mighty big place full of mighty big problems, it shouldn't really be that hard to 'spread the love', so to speak, and start making a dent in the suffering experienced around the world.

On our own, it's easy to think that our small contributions to humanity can't possibly make any difference. Christopher turned to me at one point in our conversation and queried me about whether we needed to be doing more about the homelessness problem in Colorado Springs, and it suddenly felt as if we were neglecting the needs of our fellow man completely. But I asked him, "What would it take for us to feel like we're doing enough?" And that question didn't have an easy answer until we began to consider how easy it would be to solve a great many problems if we all just did a little.

What if each of us supported just one other person in some way? What if, for each child in the United States who has been blessed with an economically stable home, there was a poor child in a third-world country being supported financially, educationally, spiritually, and medically? What if a family with enough sponsored a family without enough? What if a pregnant woman in the United States helped provide prenatal support for a pregnant woman in Afghanistan? What if a single adult in America sponsored a single adult in Haiti?

Then the weight of the world would be on all of our shoulders, where it belongs, where we carry each other, where we are carried by each other, and where we all carry the world forward.
--Teri.

confessions of a reluctant jesus freak

Jesus lives in me. There-- I said it. That hurt.

I was challenged at church on Sunday morning to resist the urge to pandyfoot around my religion and to start being more up-front about what I believe. I didn't think that would be too much of a problem--until the speaker challenged the crowd to use the words. At that moment, a quote I learned in childhood popped into my head: "If you tell people you talk to God, they say you're religious. If you tell them that God talks to you, they say you're crazy." For me to say 'Jesus lives in me' is even crazier-sounding than 'God talks to me', and yet it's pretty much the core of my belief as a Jesus-freak.

So what does it mean?

Good question. Maybe I haven't spent enough time thinking about that. If we're talking about a manifestation of an actual spirit, that's awefully hard for me to get my head around. What's easier to think about is the essence of Jesus' teaching and ethos living on in my heart and mind. Then again, maybe I'm tempted to limit the power of the supernatural, and maybe there is some sort of mystical possession taking place. And I guess I'm okay with that, though it's a lot harder to explain and feels pretty woo-woo to write or speak about. I do know that when I have moments of extreme clarity or above-and-beyond patience or understanding, it doesn't feel like it comes from me, but Someone higher granting much-needed grace in the middle of my lack-of-wisdomness.

Maybe faith is like skin, strong and yet tenuous, and I've never felt completely comfortable within either one, but I've never been able to do without the essential nature of either one, either. So somewhere inside of my faith and inside of my skin, Jesus lives in some fashion, and I hope He understands the relationship better than I do and that He's comfortable here.
--Teri.