POWERFUL

I am because we are.

I cannot be a human being alone; like John Donne says no man is an island.  I need to be willing to listen to advice and to find healing in relationship with others.  Perhaps are deepest fear is that we are alone, unneeded and unwanted.
In Hawaii, it has become common to use the word aloha as an expression of greeting as though it simply means hello.  But the word’s cultural roots grew from something more elaborate.  In the past, when two natives greeted one another they would '”come together” (alo) touch their foreheads together and then breath in one another’s spirit or life force (ha means breath or life)  So in the original form aloha means coming together to take in another person’s spirit or breath or life.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu says something similar in describing the word ubuntu meaning a person is a person through another person.In the African culture people say that you can know and feel when someone is carrying ubuntu inside them-when someone is living life in the spirit.  All have been given life by the “Beloved”.

We are drawn together to share our stories, our happiness, our fears and our worries.  Funerals allow moments to breath life once again by telling stories of the deceased so that they live on.
Like Thomas Merton we can look around us in a crowd of people and be overwhelmed by love for them . . . “I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person (the soul) that each one is in God’s eyes."  If only we could see ourselves as we really are.

On my walk I meet my Japanese angels who greets me with a big smile and even bigger hug.  We say words that we understand only by the way they are said and the love behind them.

True community encourages everyone to clarify their own values without having to agree with the group.  We bring God with us when we enter a church.

Dad and I enjoyed our visit with Carol last evening.  Sandra even picked us up and took us there on a wet miserable day.  The rain was just pouring down.   It was good to catch up on what is happening in their lives and also to listen to dad tell his stories.   And to have a visit with Panteli by Skype.
    

And yes we turned our clock back!
And yes we are going to church!