Deuteronomy 6:1-9
Proper 26 (31) - Year B
"The command for Israel to love God becomes one of Deuteronomy's most distinctive doctrines, acting as an important corrective to the emphasis upon awe and fear in worship." (NISB note on verse 5)
This is something worth telling to our kids and friends and others - Love trumps fear.
In recent days we have not done so well with this affirmation but have had to come at it from around the corner of "No Fear." I'll be glad when we can get back to the Love language.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/november2003.html
Why continue running in the same circle of people? Why leave for another circle?
Inasmuch as we have multiple options of where to be and with whom, these are on-going questions. We also have differing needs, some of which come to the fore for a time and some that wait for another occasion. Sometimes we respond with very practical considerations of income and retirement? Sometimes our emotional well-being overrides any other issue. There are times when an internal hope or conversation with G*D will move us past either or these or anything else we have previously used to decide. Always there is inertia or lack of imagination that can come into play.
Whether practical, emotional, hopeful, or habitual, we are responding to where we see the nearness of the “freedom” of G*D and whether we are a part of a freedom to invest in life, to love, here or there, this circumstance or that, these ones or those. The more basic our freedom, the easier it is to say “both” at the same time or sequentially.
- - - - - - -
moments of import
heighten all our senses
hearts hearing calls
mind’s eyes seeing options
ties that bind touch our souls
such moments
come one per lifetime
and several
are present right now
for amusement and signifying
in this moment
we honor our ancestresses
Orpah and Ruth
both doing their best
in their every-day days