Faithfulness

A little time this morning to be still, to be quiet and listen again. An impression. There’s a word I don’t hear an awful lot in the course of everyday life: faithfulness. And yet, anything that really matters, anything that’s worth pursuing—cherishing—requires faithfulness. Faithfulness is that strong, patient quality that enables you to keep going when the way seems too long, when the body and mind become weary, when your emotional fuel tank is running on fumes and you just feel like giving up. Faithfulness is what gets you through it all.

Faithfulness has an irrational quality to it. The person who remains faithful in the face of so much personal and circumstantial opposition often seems crazy to others, even to oneself. Faithfulness feels risky. Humility makes this possible; the faithful person keeps going despite what others may think. They care not for something so contingent as reputation. To be faithful is to stand on a rock in a world made of sand, to turn your face to the wind that changes direction from day-to-day and would change you with it. Paradoxically, this is how faithfulness changes you.

The greatest things in life come to us by the way of faithfulness: lasting relationships, reconciliation, societal change, personal livelihood, mental innovation and material invention. It is certain that in all these endeavors one will become weary, reach a crisis point, feel it is easier to just turn back. Given that, faithfulness proves to be nothing short of an everyday miracle hiding in plain sight. A tribute this morning, this day…to faithfulness.

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faithfulness

by troy cady

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*Photo by Ani Kalleshi via Unsplash. Creative Commons license.

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Memorial Day

a day to remember

when, in childhood,

guns were made of

thumbs and index fingers

and nothing more

when the neighbor I shot

got back up

when the game was over

a day to remember

how, growing up,

I learned to control

to fight for the upper hand

for something more

how my neighbor became my enemy

how I pushed them down

how love became a word game

a day to remember

why, in the days to come,

hope will have the final say

a world open-handed

hand-in-hand

and so much more

to savor mysteries like

when love had its last supper

but still nourishes

how love reconciles

why love plays and is playful

why life is more than just a game

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memorial day

by troy cady

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love, play and childhood

Photo by Blake Barlow via Unsplash. Creative Commons license

A life of significance is not found in what you accomplish, but in who you love. This is what children teach me. Never have I met a child who wants to have an account of my importance according to my resumé. Sadly, however, I have met some children who have been trained by accomplishment-driven adults to become accomplishment-driven themselves. I can see it in their eyes: the desire to please, to be regarded as special.

Nothing is more welcome to a child than to enjoy the presence of someone who wants to be with them not because of what they can do but just because of who they are. And the same is true for any person of any age. How liberating it is to be loved by someone who asks not “What have you done?” but rather asks in a pure, non-critical way, “How are you doing? Tell me honestly. I’m listening.”

This is really why I am passionate about play. Nothing communicates value quite like it for, in play, one is really saying: “I just want to be with you. I’m not here to get something out of you or to make you prove yourself to me. Let’s just enjoy being together.” Play makes space for love.

And this is how I think of God. Play makes space for God, because God makes space for love. And this is why I see God most clearly in children, and in people of any age who are well-practiced at living as a child-at-heart.

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when words fail

only so much

a word can do

I cannot take adequate notes

of these musical notes

straining, stretched out,

like Christ on the cross,

resolved to be unresolved

words cannot be wet

like sweat,

cannot run to get help,

cannot dwell with you

like Jesus at the well

when you feel like hell

I find words unequal

to grief,

they fall short

when I need relief,

the peace and quiet

of silent wonder,

an embrace,

a wry smile

and the graze of

her warm fingers

on my cold wrist,

the rising emotion

behind the quickening pulse,

hopscotch and crooked chalk lines

on the sidewalk,

the roar and press of a crowd,

winter’s brittle stalks

slender and snapping,

the old stone bench

across the way,

carved by rain,

backless and crooked,

the soul beloved,

trackless, knocked off-level

by childlike joy and sacred laughter,

the thick presence

of wild reverence

words could never match

the substance of

all life’s worth,

expressed in the fullness of silence

from which these words spring

and to which they gladly return

…………….

when words fail

by troy cady

Living Hospitably

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Living Hospitably

reflections by Troy Cady

Welcome can be so much more than a one-time, one-way event. It can become a perpetual openness to give and receive. Real welcome does not wait for the other to enter one’s space. A welcoming person moves outward towards another, curious, wanting to know the other. And the best welcomes are progressive. A kind word is a good beginning, but a listening ear, a happiness to waste time in the doorway of another’s space, and a willingness to be vulnerable…these are the postures that lead to fuller welcomes. Whether we realize it or not, every day is an invitation to extend welcome not only to strangers, but also to offer richer, deeper welcomes to those we already know.

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i think i should know you

i feel like i should know you.

Remind me.

Was that you i saw

working harder for

a smaller reward?

i might have been there

that morning

after the night-beating;

you were drinking black coffee,

circling job leads

in the paper’s classifieds,

willing to take any job you could get.

Surely a person of such

strength and enduring dignity,

a person such as yourself,

i could not forget.

i think that was you

i saw carry on,

disregarding those lewd words.

Were you put in your place?

How you appear to have risen,

still to rise much more.

i think i heard

your (out)cry once.

i recognize your voice,

but not as well as i would like.

You bring a certain

unmatched intelligence

that has been the subject

of my negligence.

i’m sorry; i think i should know you.

i think i should know you by now.

…………………………

i think i should know you

by troy cady

on International Women’s Day

Friendship

"Good Old School Friends" by Aman Shrivastaya on Unsplash. Creative Commons.

Friendship—what a gift! When you find a true friend, you find someone who will not judge you when you fail. A friend is someone who knows you well, someone who knows your little quirks, your strengths, your weaknesses, those moments you’ve risen to life’s challenges and those other times when you’ve felt so dog-tired you’ve only felt like saying, “Whatever; I don’t really care.”

If you haven’t connected with a friend like that in a while, we invite you today to reach out to them, just to let them know how much they mean to you. Do it today for you never know what tomorrow holds.

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