Archive for the ‘U2 Lyrics as Message’ Category

Dealing With The Total Eclipse of Our Hearts (On the Day of The Eclipse 2017)

Posted: August 21, 2017 in Bono, Eclipse, Faith, God, Hope, Inspiration, Life in the Moment, Light, U2, U2 Lyrics as Message, Uncategorized
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 It’s here.  Eclipse Day 2017!

If I didn’t know better and only watched the news today, I’d think all of humanity had finally reconciled in a bi-partisan effort to enjoy the temporary blocking out of the sun.

Darkness has a funny way of uniting us humans.

Today, on this rare beautiful day, we will be as one,  in our excitement to watch this solar event.

There’s something special happening here; we can’t quite name it or put a finger on it, but you know it for sure.  You can feel it. 

 For a solid minute, possibly as long as two minutes and 41 seconds in some places, we are going to forget that we are white or black or any other color people with so many grievances with those others.   We’re not going to be focused on our pasts.  We’re not going to be looking down at screens or looking within ourselves, replaying our tired soundtracks of our hopelessness–our perpetual victimhood to the circumstances we surely don’t have anything to do with, right?

No.  In this glorious moment, we are going to break with tradition and be looking outward and upward.  We will see human faces, not glass screens.  Instead of eyes on screens of glass, we will put screens of blackness over our eyes simply to protect them from the sheer beautiful brilliance of light and solar coronas.

We feel it.  Our hearts tingle in anticipation.  Our ‘to do’ lists will wait.  For many of us, even our jobs will wait.  Our hunger pains and base desires and anger—it will all wait.

For a single moment in time, our divided humanity will be united, as we witness this rarest of rare beauties.

We’ll be Staring at the Sun.  “Hoping we won’t go blind.”

Bono sings it best in this amazing song by U2.

“Intransigence is all around”

What is intransigence?  The inability to change one’s views or come to agreement.

That’s us, my friends.

Watch the news on any given night.  We are divided on everything!!   TOTALLY!

 Bonnie Tyler was more prophet then love-abandoned when she wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart”.   In her loneliness, she really magnified the problem of the human heart:

It’s a heart of darkness.  On any given day it’s a dark nasty, empty void waiting to be filled with something.  It seems to be an endless gaping hole that can’t be satisfied, no matter what it’s filled with.  And boy can it ignore those whom we love and exact revenge on those whom we don’t understand.

TOTALITY

 

 Totality is the whole of something.  Some of us have allowed the whole of our hearts, or close to it, to be eclipsed by things like:

  • Anger
  • Close-mindedness
  • Hatred
  • Revenge
  • Hopelessness
  • Despair
  • Self-centeredness

Can I tell you the truth about something?

This is not who you are!

Deep down, you know it.  At least I hope you do.

What if division of people because of their colors, beliefs and preferences, and heaven forbid, their thinking and ideas was actually just true diversity?!  

Even despicable thoughts can and do die a natural death….IF:

We don’t feed them.

That’s powerful truth friends!

Next time you feel compelled to change somebody’s mind by shaming them on social media or arguing your point to the bitter end because it is “clearly the right one”, what if you simply listened?  Try listening for the same amount of time an eclipse at it’s longest would last.  Just ponder for a moment.  You don’t have to agree.

Maybe you don’t have to be the prosecutor of their truth or the defender of yours. 

“Yes, but!!!!!” I can hear you say.  “WE HAVE TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST EVIL!”

This is true, but take a breath.  Ask yourself, “Is this true evil or do I just disagree?”  If and when we do speak against true evil (and we must), we must take great strides to make sure we don’t behave the same as, or worse become that which we are calling out as evil.

This special moment in time today during the eclipse will never repeat again.

Even if you are blessed to live to see another eclipse, this moment will not repeat.

Just like all our moments.  They are each rare diamonds in a universe of stars.  And yet we cast them out like garbage all the time, with the things we say, the resentments we harbor, and the things we do or worse–things we fail to do.  Things like gestures of kindness.  Words like saying “I’m sorry.”  Moments of love we do not live and miss in real time, because we our so engrossed online or stewing in our own darkness.

We must look up, not down.

We must look out, not in.

Because after the light that has always been there is totally eclipsed by pure darkness, the miracle moment that we are taking on faith WILL happen:

THE LIGHT WILL BE UNVEILED!

 

We are taking on faith that this darkness won’t last forever.

Our proof that restoration of ourselves, others, and the earth is possible will be revealed today.

Because even with our darkened hearts, bloody and bruised from past hurts and disappointments, the part of our heart that beats and sustains our very lives, still hopes.

It hopes, despite……

Despite all that holds you back

Despite all who’ve hurt you,

Despite…well, just all of it.

Eclipsed.

It’s such a miraculous thing.

May love and light fill every space of who you are on this most magnificent of days.

May you choose to see today.  May you choose to let go.  And live!   U2areloved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Song for Someone

Posted: September 23, 2014 in Beauty, Life's Storms, U2 Lyrics as Message
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Song for Someone

This poem is inspired by the song “A Song for Someone” — U2 — Songs of Innocence CD Jacket

I have a song for someone.

I hope they will hear it.

It’s a song for the broken, and sometimes the brokenhearted.

It’s a song for someone I love now.

It’s also for a song for someone I loved long ago.

You may feel forgotten. I’m telling you, I remember.

You may feel insignificant. I’m telling you, you are the light in an all too dark world.

You may have thought you were invisible when people walked right past you.

But I saw you. I know your name. I know every lie and the truest truth about you.

Strangers pass you every day unaware they are in the presence of an angel.

I saw you smile through your tears. No one is a hopeless case.

I saw you when you kept going. I know the storms and the roads that are still ahead.

I only see you as beautiful. I only see you as whole. I envision you as well.

I see you everywhere you go.

I’m closer than your shadow.

I’m the whisper in the winds of memory of all you know that is true.

I’m the blue sky of infinite possibility.

I am the song of joy that plays in your head.

I am the tear-laced prayers you whisper alone in your bed.

Oh how I cried for you. For you know not what you sometimes do.

But I do. That’s why I gave it all away for you.

If you have days left to spend, create them to be beautiful.

See. Hear. Feel. Do.

And let your light shine with all of your soul

Because you were always loved.

I’ll be your song. Because you were always my someone.

 

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15:12-13

Staring at the Sun

Posted: January 14, 2014 in Facebook Addiction, U2 Lyrics as Message, Wisdom
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Staring at the SunI’m not the only one
Staring at the sun
Afraid of what you’d find
If you took a look inside

“Staring at the Sun” – U2

          It used to be that without my glasses I couldn’t see.  Then I got contacs.  Both helped my vision, but 20/20 sight doesn’t guarantee clarity.

We live in a really busy world.  We know this is true because we spend the majority of our day learning about the news and one another because we watch it on a screen.  Our phones, our laptops—we’re everywhere in hi-def and in real time baby. 

Yet we’re blind to some of our real defects:  Pride—an intransigent intelligence that’s always right.  Fear—standing still because we’re  too afraid we’ll fail or don’t know if we possess the disciplined changes success actually requires.   Apathy—Our permanent chair of comfort and convenience reserved for those of us who refuse to contemplate improving our lives or those around us.

 Can you even name your blindness?  This not knowing, or worse: not wanting to know.   Maybe there is something more than what lies between both your ears and behind your eyes.    What is it you choose not to see?

We are all like the books some of us used to read.  Some of us are titled with names so noble or we’re wrapped in colorful jackets so beautiful, we nearly fall into the laps of those begging to slather us with attention.  Others are like nineteenth century secret tomes with thick, dusty matte covers filled with ancient wisdom and epic adventures lived, but never imagined by others.   And yet each of us still have blank pages left that have the potential to be filled with characters, and events the mind can’t even conceive.

In our endless attempt to know more, we’ve become less.  Our lives don’t tell our stories.  Our Facebook pages and Tweets and Pinterests do.  We’re Linked In but we’re tuned out.  Tuned out of what?

Relating.

Living.

A lot of things…..….

I know.  I’m one of them.  I want to be a writer.  And possibly a photographer.  It’s hard, dare I say impossible to get your name and/or work out there without wall-papering the web with your work coupled with a few prayers.  Noticed is what we aim for. 

We spend hours of our lives now, staring at screens of alternating distractions, hoping to produce something of lasting or intrinsic value.

Always looking out, all eighteen inches of it, but never digging deep, we’ve fallen into a state of perpetual sleep walkers.  No wonder Zombies are in when it comes to entertainment.   These high-definition pasty, distorted, pie-eyed  brain-dead creatures mirror us more than we know.

We’re all staring at the sun.  This never-ending bright sunshine of glass and buzz and liquid crystal colors mesmerizing us with news and trivia and useless information.   It’s crack, and we don’t know it.  Or worse, we do but we grow peacefully comfortable as we slowly succumb to the blissful addiction of avoiding reality.

Try to break free if you can–if you dare.   Find out who you are. To really look inside yourself, you have to step out of that comfort zone!  Turn off the computer and write your bucket list today.  Because sometimes later never comes.   Especially when we’re all so incredibly busy.  Busy, staring at the sun.

Three Little Words (for New Year’s Day)

Posted: December 31, 2013 in Christian message, Love, New Year's Resolution, Resolution, U2 Lyrics as Message
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Autumn Floral Heart

And we can break through,
though torn in two we can be one.
I will begin again, I will begin again.  – “New Year’s Day” – U2

      A friend of mine recently told me she chucked her tradition of stating New Year’s resolutions and instead decided on a new tradition of focusing on a “themed” word for the New Year.   It’s hard keeping resolutions.  Perhaps because such lofty sentences feel —well like a sentence.

So she decided to pick a theme for the year such as MINDFULNESS, or RISK-TAKING, or FORGIVENESS.  You get the idea.  She’d purposely focus on a character trait she wished to see magnified in herself.

I like the idea so much I’ve decided to adopt the idea of my own.   Three words keep floating up in my stream of consciousness.  I don’t feel like I picked them.  They picked me.  Which is another reason to abandon the “make a resolution” concept, it’s just one more thing for me to attempt to control when in reality, none of us have as much control as we wish to have or think we might.

These are MY THREE LITTLE WORDS for 2014:

RECONNECT:  2013 was the most difficult year of my life, but it was also a year of miracles.  It’s ironic that God always plants the miracles in the middle of your deepest sorrows, hardest storms, and silent suffering.  But seeds of hope always yield good fruits when sewn in tears and watered in love.  I had the privilege of both suffering and miracles this year, but in the process I’ve pulled away from people who I know love me.   I want to find my way back.  I may not be who I was, but my heart is unchanged.  It’s stronger than ever and ready to reconnect with those I love and who love me.

Who do you need to reconnect with this year?  Do you have relationships that need mending?  It’s hard to humble yourself sometimes or go first in reaching out.   Do it anyway my inner spirit cries, even though it is so hard for you.

CHERISH:  I am trying to spend more time praying that God will prioritize my priorities rather than me setting the agenda.  I want to cherish real people not just cyber connections limited to Facebook.  That’s a hard one.  Sometimes it’s easier to just tap out a facsimile of a relationship than to actually flesh out a real one.  Real ones are bumpy, annoying sometimes, hurtful, and well—just very real.  It’s easy to want to retreat to our collective shared diary and catch the news and pics of those we don’t know that well and distract ourselves from taking time to know better the flesh and blood under our own rooftop and in our own neighborhood and even extended family.

This year also taught me that time is actually the most valuable commodity we have.  We can’t hoard it or hold on to memories; for nothing good nor bad lasts forever.  Time:  Will we choose to waste it, spend it, or invest it?  When we invest it in people, we are showing love.  We are giving the gift of being cherished, one of our heart’s most often neglected desires.   Whatever I feel I may lack, I pray God grants me the courage to give what little of it I do have away– be it time, energy, or resources.

       SPIRIT-LEAD:  “Not my will, but thy will”. That whole control thing in life is a hard thing to shake.  After all God helps those that help themselves, right?  Not exactly.  I do feel called to work, give, serve, pray, love.  But 2013 taught me this much, if nothing else:  Let it go.  Let God.  Which means sometimes we need to sit still.  Rest.  Trust.

Our own sanity is like a rope.  And you know what?  Circumstances beyond your control, coupled with your default emotional thermostat can be a deadly cocktail and you can reach the end of that rope very quickly.  Without something bigger than YOU, when you find yourself in a pit, or feeling misunderstood , or unloved,  or undervalued– well that can be a lonely place.  Trials across time has proved beyond the shadow of a doubt to me that God indeed exists, is good, and above all is in control.

      On that thought, I pray that if or when I am tested, I can continue to hold onto that last strand when hanging over a cliff with flames licking at my feet.

Yes, I want to be spirit-lead and worry less about the future, finances, circumstances, or the biggest demon of all:   What if?

          My head knows that fear is not of God, but my heart forgets sometimes.  I love too much sometimes.  I don’t love enough.   You’re probably the same.  And so it goes and so we sometimes suffer.

The secret is not to waste it.  Choose your suffering a wise pastor taught me.

      Reconnect.  Cherish.  Be spirit lead.  These are my New Year’s resolutions, my small humble prayers I shall utter each day, my big ideas—all planted in three little words.

Blessings in 2014 to you.    You too are loved.