Grace-period

Here it is Christmas, again.  And, like every year, I am foolishly hopeful.  About what?  That there will be a crazy Hallmark festive gathering with my kids, with my family, and with peace on earth. Yeah, even I am shaking my head at this point.  Again, the family is not together.  Again, the kids are going to her family's and ours seems like an after thought.  Again, work has thrown all my plans up in the air like a pizza that is sure to land on my head. Why do I do this every year?  Typically I come to a point in Advent when I am accepting the fact that nothing is going to go as I would like and it is ok...that Christmas is a time to meditate on the birth of my Savior, not some sort of mystical transformation from dysfunctional bunch of loons to a Norman Rockwell painting. Perhaps I watched too many versions of Dicken's Christmas Carol this year.  I love the one from the 30s.  'Course the one with Jean Luc Picard is...

The news today was just sad. Barely able to wrap my head around the event, I could only whisper a prayer as tears fell. There is no way to rationalize tragedy. It doesn't matter if the loss is following a "good long life" or "slipping away in sleep." It doesn't matter if "a window opens every time a door closes". The pain seems to be the only reality at that moment. How to breathe, how to get through those first numb days, those are the things that take energy. In light of today's tragedy, some have said God couldn't possible exist. I can understand that. If we think God is good, how could he allow such horror to happen, and to children nonetheless? But there is a lot of horror in this world. Three men were burnt, one severely, at a local factory. A father was shot and now brain dead because he went to bring his son out of a drug dealer's house. Lovely women get cancer. Jobs are lost or restructured causing economic insecurity. T...

Disclaimer: Sacred Scraps is not meant to be scholarly but simply me, gleaning meaningful scraps of the Sacred.   I think it is natural for humans to compare ourselves.  I do it,  perhaps too much, but I think it is a pretty natural thing.   I wish I were someone who could easily come up with decorating ideas and make my home beautiful.   Or, I really want to be published, to call myself a "real" writer.   Or be one of those cooks who taste something and can determine what is missing easily to adjust their recipe so it is perfect.   Or I would really like to sing well.   Or, I wish I could….   Same thing when I was in school.  I was tall and thin, well, too tall and too thin.  I played the violin from 2nd grade until just before high school.  Because we moved almost every two years, most of my friendships were short term.  I was never comfortable around those "happy, normal" people.  ...

Imagine a time when God spoke.  He spoke through prophets and priests, through holy men and women.  There was no question about what He wanted or how we were to act, respond, choose.  There was a connection with the Divine. And then, there was silence. Where did God go?  Did He die?  Was He never real in the first place?  Were those prophets and priests just charlatans?  Did the people upset God and He went away? The last words that God spoke were:   “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.  He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.” What does that mean?  How long will it take?  Will things be set right or will there be destruction? The people couldn't know.  There was only silence.  An echo of the past words of God ru...