“We find by losing.  We hold fast by letting go.  We become something new by ceasing to be something old.  This seems to be close to the heart of … mystery.  I know no more now than I ever did about the far side of death as the last letting-go of all, but I begin to know that I do not need to know and that I do not need to be afraid of not knowing.  God knows.  That is all that matters….Out of Nothing He creates Something.  Out of the End He creates the Beginning.  Out of selfness we grow, by His grace, toward selflessness, and out of that final selflessness, which is the loss of self altogether, ‘eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man” what new marvels He will bring to pass next.’  All’s lost.  All’s found….  Out of each old self that dies some precious essence is preserved for the new self that is born; and within the child-self that is part of us all, there is perhaps nothing more precious than the fathomless capacity to trust.”

                                        Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember

Chalet L’Abri, May 2006…Measuring My Days…acg

        Here deckside at Chalet L’Abri arrival of spring resurrects brother’s trillium given me four years ago, now standing tall and proclaiming to the world Holy, Holy, Holy!  Backside of the chalet, an adorable chipmunk wakened from a long winter’s nap, scampers for scraps with the squirrels beneath from the bird feeder.  Every day or so now five deer, traveling in tandem, meander through my premises, their ears at attention for any menace, their liquid eyes full of grace and beauty.  April’s beneficial rain has turned our valley to Irish green.  Robins hop on the lawn. 

A brief essay in the March issue of Our Daily Bread tells of an invention called  “Clocky”, the genius of a MIT student.  It is a foam-covered alarm clock with wheels that runs away and hides before you can hit the snooze button.  A circuit board programs the clock to end up in a new place every time the alarm goes off.  You have to get out of bed to turn it off.  It gives new meaning to the phrase, “time runs away”.  The life lesson of the essay is that a daily reminder of life’s brevity can encourage our trust in our Creator God.  Ergo, the caption for my journals taken from Psalm 39:4:  “Lord, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am.” 

        For the past month I have been savoring a book of essays by Frederick Buechner entitled A Room Called Remember, (See quotes here and attached.)  The themes are trust and faith.  Who of us do not need both?

“We are to come to Him even though the world calls us in a hundred different directions.  We are to be fools for His sake.  We are to take risks for Him and be merry for Him.  We are to work for peace and pray for miracles.  We are to go places and do things and speak words that, without Him, we wouldn’t even dare dream of.  We know so much more than we ever let on about what He would have each of us do in our own lives  -- what door to open, what hand to take.  We have within us, each one, so much more of His power than we ever spend – such misers of miracle we are, such pinchpenny guardians of grace….”  Buechner