ZACCHAEUS I AM COMING TO YOUR HOUSE --EVEN IN THE BUCKET

IN THAT MOMENT HE LOST EVERYTHING  AND HE FOUND EVERYTHING!

Who am I writing about?  I am thinking of Zacchaeus the wealthy tax collector to whose house Jesus invited Himself.(Luke 19:1-10)  And He does the same  for every single home everywhere.  Yes, into every home in the Bucket He would like to be invited for dinner. Stay with me now, please, Every  household  has several weeks now to get ready for His coming.

When I first heard this gospel as a child  it made me laugh out loud. To picture a  wealthy and corrupt tax collector so eager to see Jesus  but too short to see over the crowd that he had to climb a sycamore tree. And that is where  Jesus  spotted him and called him by name. 

That is a funny picture and it was Jesus who got the joke. Maybe He appreciated the eagerness and rewarded it. Jesus wanted to dine with him and He wants to dine with each of us wherever and whoever we are. He is always knocking at the door of our hearts.

"ZACCHAEUS, COME DOWN QUICKLY FOR TODAY I  MUST STOP AT YOUR HOUSE,"
Being called out by name delighted the tax-collector who was an object of scorn and hatred for most. And the kindness of Jesus immediately affected the tax man and without being asked  he turned to Jesus and made a quick promise: "Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I shall repay it four times over."

How did Jesus receive this indirect confession and  self-chosen penance?
"Today salvation has come to this house," the tax  man cleaned up his act. So should we. 
Aren't those the words that we want to hear?

Throughout the entire season of Advent, Jesus is calling us each out by name and wondering what we are doing wandering around shopping malls when He wants to be a guest in our home.
So we have the Season of  Advent to clean up our act and get the house of our  hearts ready to receive a BABY. 
What is more wonderful than the coming of a Baby into this world? 

THE DARK GLASS OF LATE NOVEMBER IN THE BUCKET

At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. —1 Corinthians 13:12

ARE WE EVER FULLY KNOWN? 

I remember  the  song that I liked when I was young 
"To Know Him is to Love him." 

To know know know him
Is to love love love him
Just to see that smile
Makes my life worthwhile

To know know know him
Is to love love love him
And I do
And I do
And I do

Oh I'll be good to him
I'll bring joy to him oh oh
Everyone says there'll come a day
When I'll walk alongside of him

To know know know him
Is to love love love him
And I do
I really do
And I do

Why can't he see?
How blind here he be?
Someday he'll see
That he was meant just for me, oh oh oh oh

To know know know him
Is to love love love him
Just to see that smile
Makes my life worthwhile

To know know know him
Is to love love love him
And I do
I really do
And I do\
Songwriters: Phil Spector

I do recall listening to it in 1958  and singing along and thinking that is the love we all want but we can never have. No one completely knows us, and if  anyone did he would not love us.  It was one of those strange insights that  came to me--the thought that  only God does that. He completely knows us and HE completely loves us. He  made us and He put a  bit of his Divinity into each and every one of us.

We spend our lives looking for a human  being to do that for us, but we are stymied by the mystery of the other. Their OTHERNESS stops us from enjoying complete unity.

But it does not stop GOD--as  HE advances He sees  Himself and all His Love reflected  back. IMAGO DEI--He made us in His Image and although  we may do many things that make that Image hard for other humans to see, God never  loses sight of it. That is why we have all those  images of God  pursuing  us. Like the GOOD SHEPHERD going after the Lost Sheep. 

Or as in that haunting poem  by Francis Thompson that I sometimes  find  myself reciting as I fall asleep late at night:

THE HOUND OF HEAVEN

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;    I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways    Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.              Up vistaed hopes I sped;              And shot, precipitated, Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,    From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.              But with unhurrying chase,              And unperturbèd pace,      Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,              They beat—and a Voice beat              More instant than the Feet—      'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me'.

.

With people we are always looking through a glass darkly but not with Jesus. 
He is like a  clear piece of glass showing us the  possibilities of our humanity and   presenting a window  here on earth to the love of Divinity.  Anytime now that I read  the New Testament I see how much he was  instructing us   Then I think of all the instances that are probably not recalled in the gospel selected to tell us his Infinite story of 33 years on earth  in  4 limited accounts. 

 How we long for accounts of his childhood told to us by Mary or Joseph. What did he  do as a teenager?  What about  all through his early manhood before he was  30 and began his  3 year journey to Golgotha?

All that will be shown to us when  the Angels lead us into Paradise.

PATRIOTS ADMIT BRADY HAS KNEE INJURY

YES, NOW IT CAN BE TOLD-- BUT YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST. ( See blog entry for 11 November on the game with the Titans).

I am not bragging--oh maybe I am-- but I had a visceral reaction to Tom's visceral reaction when he could not run with the ball lobbed to him in a trick play. That trickery turned into a trick knee and now he is on the injured list after a  by-week.  But if you watched the game that day and if you have had a physical injury, you will also see the way he  seems stunned by the reception. He has the ball but he cannot just turn and  run with it at high speed. He thinks he can--but he can't.
Those quick muscle reflexes are not firing and  instead he stumbles and falls without any help from the Titan Tackles. They took him out of that game and he has not played since. Let us see how he does this weekend,

LE BRON BACK IN CLEVELAND TONIGHT

Looking forward to seeing LeBron play his old team in Cleveland.

We somehow managed to miss the DUKE--GONZAGA GAME --I thought it would be in prime time.  Now we see that they lost to Gonzaga.  This year their style is fast and furious with fast breaks and racing to the  basket and taking many three point shots. No finesse just a recipe for disaster, injuries and collapse. 
 When I saw them win their game yesterday, I said  to Yash that they cannot keep that up. They  must have been exhausted today. But we missed the game--much gloom here now. Yash is  down in the dumps.

 NOW IT IS UP TO LEBRON TO REDEEM  THE DAY.
At first it looked like a romp for the Lakers but then the Cavs got into an offensive rhythm and they took the lead. They have a couple of new young players. So they are lively and light on their feet.All this talk that the Duke team could beat the CAVS is really just Duke fanaticism. 52 - 49 CAVS at half time. They need James to win this game for them. At least it is a game worth watching. 
Cleveland with zero turnovers. They are trading the lead back and forth. But Cleveland is not going away.71-68 CAVS near the end of the 3rd Quarter.They tied it up at the close of the 3rd.

NOW A MAJOR SHOOTOUT IN THE LAST QUARTER.
LA  cannot seem to regain the lead even with LeBron  on the court. We can see that the CAVS have a scrappy team. Vance and Osman and Hood and Thompson are charging and sinking their  baskets. Now with 2 minutes left they have tied it all at 99, now it is all in LeBron's hands.  Why does it always seem to come down to that?

VERY EXCITING LAST MINUTE
Ball back with 23 but he does not sink his 3 pointer. 22 seconds left. Comes down to LBJ at the free throw line. He misses one and gets the second one.  Now it looks like victory for LA
YES 109--105,  But it was in doubt--a great credit to the CAVS

Haiku are Back in the Bucket

AM I A HAIJIM IN TRAINING?


Haiku is a compelling form and it has drawn me back.  Since I announced in July that I was interested in Haiku I have continued to pursue that deceptively simple and difficult form.
I have been writing Haiku and keeping a special haiku log. I have  also submitted  more recently a group of new haiku to an editor who  has encouraged me in the past.  He came through again--he said that they showed  an advance in Haiku for me and then he recommended that I consult  some books of Haiku written by people writing contemporary Haiku.

One book he mentioned   BEAK OPEN FEET RELAXED presents the haiku of Priscilla Lignori. I can see the connection again between haiku and zen . She also details an apprenticeship with Clark Strand. That connection becomes even more evident when I also ordered THE ESSENTIAL HAIKU edited by Robert Hass and focusing on three of the greatest writers of Haiku--Basho, Buson, and Issa. What is most valuable here is that Hass leads off with a detailed and very helpful introduction.

I like the way he admits his own limitations---because  that is what haiku confronts us with:
"I know that for years I did not see how deeply personal these poems were or, to say it another way, how much they have the flavor--Basho might have said "the scent" -- of a particular human life, because I had been told and wanted to believe that haiku were never subjective...One returns to their mysteriousness anyway."

 One haiku at random from Basho:

Even in Kyoto --
hearing the  cuckoo's cry--
I long for Kyoto.

NOW FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE  NON-SUBLIME

I have been keeping up a daily practice of writing haIku.  Here are some of my efforts for the past few weeks:

DAILY HAIKU SAMPLER

Geraniums bloom--

outside ice frosts the window--

my mother's kitchen,.

Floating in water--

apples bob waiting for ghost,

witch, Wonder Woman.

Cough, sneeze, throat clearing--

harsh chorus welcomes winter--

dead leaves litter my porch floor.

Bird feeders spill seed--

a flock of red-winged blackbirds

fend off the squirrels.

When the blackbirds rise,

they flash rubies as they fly--

taking their treasure.

Late autumn bare trees

show us where  squirrels nested--

hidden in plain sight.

Neighbors died last year--

cut back trumpet vines regrow--

they want privacy.

Winter sleet inscribes

frost lace on windows weakens

autumns windy grasp.

The lemon tree sits--

safe from winter storms outside--

even snug leaves fall.

He is an open book--

blank pages where money writes.

Why would he hide that?

Rain darkens the sky--

at dawn's gray light furnace starts--

the oil man appears.

Mandarin Duck lands--

cheers birders in Central Park --

China is so far.

SOME QBS--BIG BEN-- GET BETTER WITH TIME

IS BIG BEN OF THE STEELERS JUST GETTING BETTER?

I raise that  question as I begin to watch the NFL meeting between the Steelers and Jaguars.
Then  I saw an energized Jaguar team and a totally inept Steelers for 3 quarters.  I even contemplated changing channel to watch the Bengals  --thank goodness I did not do that,
The 4th Quarter was a revelation. Ben took charge and his receivers actually caught the football. Soon it was clear that it was a new game. The extraordinary end of the game was the last 8 seconds in which Ben advanced the ball to  near the goal and in the last seconds of play he  hurled himself across the  goal line to victory. And that is a lot to HURL!

Yes, his touchdown was reviewed, and then it was confirmed.
So Ben's winning streak continues and the Jaguars  added another loss.
They were clearly shocked--both teams were amazed-- and
Ben was praying out loud and thanking the Almighty. 

GRACE OF THANKSGIVING IN THE BUCKET

  THE  GRACE THAT MADE OUR  THANKSGIVING POSSIBLE WAS A PERSON
MY AUNT GRACE JENCKES

Two days before Thanksgiving she would arrive.  Coming up the front stairs to our second floor tenement. I watched and was overcome with happiness. She brought bag after bag of groceries  into the  house and piled them on the table.  In the last bag was a large turkey. 

It was overwhelming going through the bags after she left. Aunt  Grace would hurry away as if she were a little embarrassed to see our need so clearly. My mother would acclaim each item as I took it from the bags or boxes. There would be  bags of apples and oranges and bags of potatoes and onions and carrots and celery and  turnip and squash. Enough for many meals. 

Some food items that we never saw except for the two holidays of THANKSGIVING and CHRISTMAS. Things like grapes and walnuts in the shell and dates.  Clearly Aunt Grace wanted us to enjoy a feast,  She saved the best for last-- a box with two pies that she had made for us and two bottles --wine for the table and Cream sherry for after dinner.

I find it very difficult to write about this scene. I realize that in all the years I have been recalling my childhood I never went near this event. WHY?  Because I have never in my life experienced a  soaring joy accompanied by a sense of scalding shame. I always wept when Grace started to come in with this parade of wonders.  My sisters Janie and Sheila would be shouting with excitement and they were sort of wild running in circles.  
I wept with joy and with shame--I m not sure which -- both--they were so combined. It was all very DICKENSIAN. 

AUNT GRACE did the same thing at Christmas, but  for some reason that felt  different. She would come with her husband Charlie Hartley to help carry, and my father would also go down to help bring the makings of a feast. Grace also brought  bags of  wrapped gifts.  But this time it felt  better because we had gifts wrapped to give back to her.
 She did not rush off, and she usually sat in the front parlor with the decorated tree and  had some eggnog with us all. It became a lovely social visit and  not just a one-sided amazing giving from Grace to us.
I understood later my Aunt Grace's insistence on sharing THANKSGIVING, when I heard a story from her childhood. Grace's young life was blighted when she was a child.  Within one week after Xmas in 1919  my Aunt Grace lost both her mother Ida Mowry and her grandmother whom they lived with, Polly Brown to the Flu epidemic that swept the globe.
She was  nine  years old and her brothers were younger when that tragedy struck them and altered their young lives. My young Aunt Grace was able to stay with her mother's family but very soon  her two brothers who were with their father Oscar Jenckes  were placed in  state care. The story goes that Little  Grace was aware of a neighbor girl whose family would have no THANKSGIVING feast. 
My Aunt Grace began her  GREAT REFUSAL. She would not eat a bit of her  food until all the  cooked food was divided and half of it was taken over to the family of her girlfriend.  She was so stubborn that her  family conceded and took food to the  other house and they shared all they had. 

That was the shaping of Aunt  Grace -- she was a woman who could not be thankful until she created a feast for others to be THANKFUL TOO.