She was as colorful a person as you would like to meet; my first piano teacher, Mrs. Beardsley.  With a smoker’s cough, low voice, and a pink living room (I especially remember the AMAZING aluminum Christmas tree with pink ornaments and rotating color wheel…this was the ’60’s) and a love for music, piano and her students that was unsurpassed.

When I first began taking lessons, the summer of my Kindergarten year, she would sit at a chair beside the piano bench.  Her manner never frightened or intimidated me, as she exhibited a free-spirited kind of love toward me and all her students in her manner.  Although I’m probably still suffering the effects of second-hand smoke, and scarred by the memory of her colorful pictures of motorcycle riding through California, and tales of she and her husband when they were young (which was, I have to admit, difficult to imagine…seeing the arthritically-crippled fingers and joints as I sat beside her at the piano) what has followed me through the years is her love, and the type of wisdom that a good teacher passes on; wisdom that goes deeper than the specifics of the lesson itself.

Although there are many stories and illustrations of care, teaching, music and love that I could tell (and have told), for the sake of today I am remembering the times I was learning specific pieces that she herself had played.  There was one particular Mozart piano piece that I was learning.  There was a certain passage which was exceptionally difficult, it seemed that week after week it never got any better.  Mrs. Beardsley, frustrated by her crooked, arthritic fingers and inability to adequately show me the fingering and technique used to play the passage, rose from her rose-pink Lazy-Boy (where she had moved in later years) and made her way to a hall closet where there were piles and piles of music, HER music books, from HER lessons as a child.  All the music was catalogued by composer and she quickly found “our” piece and brought it over.  She sat now beside me and placed her old copy of the piece at the piano.  Written in two hands, one; the fine pencil marks of HER teacher, and one the more childish writing of HER, as a child pianist, were notes, remarks, fingerings and exercises used for this piece.

And then she spoke the lesson I speak to you: “After playing this for so long, I’d forgotten how difficult it had been to learn.  A good teacher needs to remember being a student.”

The Spirit teaches us, through the Scripture and life, that our Jesus isn’t interested in remembering our sins.  (And just as a side-note here, remember that in English we have the one word, “sin”, but the Greeks had seven; everything from “forgetting”, “aiming-but-missing” to “out-and-out rebellion against God”…and all those different words are translated into our one word, “sin”).  Once we recognize, and ask forgiveness for, our debts, our mistakes, our defiance…Jesus is good to forgive AND forget.  But my belief is that WE should NEVER forget our mistakes, our bad choices, our sin.

Why?  Because, as Mrs. Beardsley taught me, and is now teaching you, “A good teacher needs to remember being a student.”  A forgiven Believer & Follower needs to remember when they weren’t a Believer and/or a Follower…or else they forget to feel for others and start down the slippery slope of “us and them” mentality.

If a care-giver forgets what it is like to be sick or incapacitated, their care becomes theoretical and academic.  If a minister forgets that he or she wasn’t always a minister, they cease being relevant, to say nothing of empathetic.  All of us who Believe & Follow have the tendency to become narrow in our acceptance and judgmental in our attitudes…that is obvious in everything we read and see on TV.  That comes, when we forget where our journey began.

When we, as Believers & Followers, forget that we used to NOT be Believers & Followers and the only reason we are now is because of who GOD is, and not because of who WE are…then we have no hope of ever reaching any other heart, of sharing any other burden, of holding any other hand in love.  When we lose our EMPATHY we cannot give SYMPATHY…when we forget our own struggle, we lose to tools needed to help anyone else in theirs.

And then we cease loving God…because the way we love HIM is by loving each other.  This Lenten season we could all afford to repeat again and again…”remember that you are dust”…not so much to remind us of our mortality, but to remind us that we were are ARE all “students” as well as “teachers”…the journey that someone else is on may be one we have already travelled, or visa versa.

My thanks, again, to Mrs. Beardsley and her legacy…none of us may ever know the wide circles our influence will travel.  Let us continue to learn, to love, to feel the pain and longing of others as if it were our own.

Ah, Autumn in Indiana – the crisp 94-degree air – the bugs which, because of the lack of cold, have grown to the size of German Shepherds.  I keep saying that Autumn is my favorite time of year in Indiana, but I’m going to need to change that to, “It’s my favorite day in Indiana.”

In any case, a few weeks back I stood at the grave of a friend at Anderson Memorial Park, close to I-69.  It actually was a brisk, early fall, day; clear, sunny, a bit chilly and beautiful.  At the end of my prayer for the family, a military service began and I stood listening to a bugle playing taps.  This was a real bugle, and not the “recorded” instruments that are used frequently these days (for lack of musicians who can play the bugle anymore).

As the simple melody played and I reveled in that moment, I looked over the heads of those there to the tops of the trees in the park.  They were already (even weeks ago) starting to change color.  Just the tops, as if a giant paint brush had just barely swept over the trees in that area.  I remembered then I was told, for some reason, the trees in Memorial Park often turn first.  No one is sure why.  Maybe it’s the cool breeze that seems to be present there, maybe it’s the type of trees that grow there.  For whatever reason, there it was: an orange-topped tree reminding me, as I listened to the bugle and stood in a cemetery, that it is often through stress, cold, “change of season”, and yes – death, that our true colors are revealed.

In winter, it takes a lot of energy for a tree to keep leaves green (making chlorophyll) AND on the tree.  Lack of sunshine and water during the cold months prods the tree to “make some choices” about what to keep and what to let go.  As the green pigment dissipates, other colors are suddenly revealed, before the leaf drops of completely…some say these are the tree’s TRUE COLORS. 

I’ll speak only for myself now.  I believe that we, like trees, are going to show our “true colors” when our seasons change, when stress/winter comes, when the things that have supported our life are suddenly, or little-by-little, gone – we become who we truly are.

There, in Memorial Park, it was easy to compare a life that had been housed in a fragile body to that of a tree that had been green all summer – but now, with the passing of body that LIFE was it’s real self because the body had died. 

Here, in my office, I’m thinking about what I learn and teach as an Advocate for God.  The Spirit, the words of Jesus, and the example of those wise men and women who have taught and written over the centuries are all saying, “to gain your life, you must lose it” and “to find yourself, you must die to self”.  These are difficult lessons to understand, much less practice – but I think they are necessary.  I believe there is so much of us that has been put on us since birth in this world, and so much struggle to maintain the shell of our bodies which surround our souls, that it is difficult for us to see what our Father originally designed us to be; our “true colors”. 

Jesus talks a lot about “giving up” to “gain”.  But what a person “gives up” isn’t theirs to begin with, and when Jesus compares our lives (and His) to a seed that must die in the ground to become a tree – isn’t that the entire purpose of the seed?  Isn’t it our purpose to be the essence of who we are designed to be, and not all the insecurities, influences, self-motivated injuries, and world-expectations we seem to collect and cover ourselves with?

What is MY “chlorophyll”?  It is my ego.  Ego isn’t always bad, it’s just not truly who I am…it is self-identity (which is false), a paradigm built up by what I’ve experienced (which is inaccurate) and a persona built by the voices of those around me and THEIR expectations of me (which is deceptive).  If I could get rid of all that, would my “true colors” – the colors I was painted when created – be revealed?

I think the answer is, “yes”.  We see it whenever a friend is at the “end of their rope”.  Suddenly some things just don’t matter anymore.  I see it on sick beds, I see it when someone has experienced a sudden and tragic loss.  I see it when everything is gone: house, home, finances, love…it seems that when stress (cold) and lack of vision (sunshine) are combined with a new chapter of life (season) a person’s TRUE COLORS are revealed.  Sometimes the colors aren’t so pretty.  Sometimes they are – it’s what we call “character”.

How then do I live?  I’ve found that each week and day I should assess what I cling to.  Is it a “thing” (souvenirs and knick-knacks that hold memories), a “belief” (a philosophy or teaching that may not be exactly true or healthy – OR WORSE, something that keeps me from re-examining what I believe is true), a “person” (I need all the friends I can get, and I want to be able to act-in-love to everyone – but to surround myself with, and listen to, certain people is like taking poison a little at a time – you know it’s true)?  Next, I remind myself that my worth is only defined by the fact that God loves me and calls me by name.

Yes, I have work to do.  Yes, I have things I probably need to hold on to – but these are the things, beliefs, and persons that help me let go; the outside influences that encourage me to be the original, immortal being God first imagined and designed

I don’t know exactly who that person is right now, but I’m learning.  The reason I assess and practice all this NOW is because I’d rather not wait until I come to the end of my rope to let go.  I’d rather not be hit with the cold wind and lack of sun that reveal my true colors.

As you can tell, I was a philosophy minor in college.  But I truly believe that most of what we do for Jesus is “peel back” and “uncover” and “let go”.  I believe our true selves, like the autumn colors in Anderson, start at the top, at the head and heart, and gradually reveal themselves throughout our entire beings – when we “die to self.” 

Maybe the trees in Memorial Park turn first because in that place God wants to remind us something.  My friend Dick, whose grave I stood beside as I listened to TAPS, is in that forever home now.  He is looking out at, what I believe, is the New Earth as it was originally designed and created.  Maybe it’s just me, but I believe the trees in that new place are dazzling gold, orange and red…I think that  place is eternally Autumn…

…because there, in the New Earth & Heaven – in the realized Kingdom – everything and everyone glows in their true colors.

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” JOHN LENNON

I’m a TAURUS (Birthday in May, by the way – I like bacon-themed gifts) and I’ve learned, through self-discovery and in speaking to other fellow Taureans (Taurulites?…Taurlettes?  Whatever.) that we of that Birth Sign are prone to want to have things in order, a clear agenda without change.  When things DO change, we sometimes get discombobulated and feel like our worlds are out of whack.  I, for one, have taken a long time to get comfortable with God’s agenda over mine.

Also as a QUOTE PERSON, besides the one at the front of this BLOG, one of my new favorites is this anonymously-written one:

“Life is a series of interruptions interrupted by interruptions.” 

My problem is that sometimes I don’t PLAN for interruptions, which means that (if John Lennon and Anon. are correct) I don’t “plan for LIFE”.

The word, “interruption” sometimes gets a negative spin…but artistically, in music and theatre especially, interruptions are what make art, music, and theatre interesting…when a musical pattern is established and then broken the listener’s mind is awakened and begins listening in a fresh way.  After all, isn’t that what life is about also?  And whose life is it anyway?  Should I be following MY agenda or my Father’s?

For those of us who attend business meetings regularly, we are somewhat familiar with ROBERT’S RULES OF ORDER; the pattern by which most business meetings run.  In the agenda set by THAT order, “new business” comes at the end of the meeting, after the agenda (set by the Chair) is checked off.  But I attended one large business meeting in which “new business” was inserted several times during the entire agenda.  The chairman of the meeting told us at the beginning of our session that this was because so many questions arose during the meeting that led to new ideas that he didn’t want to wait until the end of the meeting to hear them.  He also said (and I found this especially true) that the “interruption” of new business at various points of the agenda interrupted the flow enough to keep the meeting interesting without slowing it down…he was absolutely right, in that case at least.

Do you feel “put upon” when interrupted?  Do you feel that what YOU’RE doing at the time is important enough that you can’t stop for something else?  Perhaps you need a crisis in your life so that you can adjust your priorities and find out what TRULY is important…or, better yet make the adjustment yourself without having to experience a traumatic experience to get you to that place…that would be MY choice.

Jesus is still our model for behavior in this world and, from what I read, He had a full schedule.  And yet, one of the most moving stories of healing was an interruption.  When he was travelling from one place of ministry to the next a woman who had been suffering for 12 years with hemorrhaging “touched the fringe of His prayer shawl” (MATT 9:20) and Jesus stopped.  He was on His way to a very important man’s house…and surely, if anyone’s agenda is important it’s Jesus’ agenda.  But He knew what LIFE is, and life IS not necessarily “interruptions” but “connections of surprise”, “opportunities to love”, “God’s agenda”.

So, set your agenda…and plan for the unplanned.  What GOD has in mind may be far superior than your calendar.