on the loose

Spiritual resource to share: freedom

Micah and friends on the loose somewhere in Europe

"This is the best time of life" my mother would say whenever I would ask her what her favorite time of life was. No matter what decade it was, I always got the same answer.

Looking at my two sons and what they are experiencing, I'll bet they would say that now - this is the best time of life for them. With so much ahead and so much to experience right now - I am thrilled with their reminder that the world is large and full of opportunities.

One son is in Germany sometimes traveling, sometimes staying in one place, always learning, always growing. The other son has just come home from school, and in between camping, hiking and mountain bike trips and family reunions, he is helping us here home with some construction jobs.

The graduation speakers at this last son's school were provocative and moving. I'd like to share a song one teacher sung which sums up just where our boys are at right now in their lives - and others their age. Its simplicity and childlike joy and wonder hit just the right chord.

On The Loose*

Chorus: On the Loose to climb a mountain,
on the loose where I am free,
on the loose to live my life,
the way I think my life should be;
for I’ve only got a moment and the whole world left to see.
I’ll be searching for tomorrow on the loose...

Have you ever seen a sunrise turn the sky completely red?
Have you slept beneath the moon and stars with a pine bough for your bed?
Can you sit and talk with friends although a word is never said...
then you’re just like me and you’ve been on the loose...

Chorus: On the Loose to climb a mountain,
on the loose where I am free,
on the loose to live my life,
the way I think my life should be;
for I’ve only got a moment and the whole world left to see.
I’ll be searching for tomorrow on the loose...

There’s a trail that I’ve been hiking just to see where it might go...
many places left to visit, many people yet to know.
But in following my dream, I will live and I will grow...
on the trail that’s waiting out there on the loose...

Chorus: On the Loose to climb a mountain,
on the loose where I am free,
on the loose to live my life,
the way I think my life should be;
for I’ve only got a moment and the whole world left to see.
I’ll be searching for tomorrow on the loose...

So in search of love and laughter I’ll be traveling ‘cross this land.
Never sure of where I am going for I haven’t any plan.
But in time when you are ready come and join me take my hand...
and together we’ll explore life on the loose...

Chorus: On the Loose to climb a mountain,
on the loose where I am free,
on the loose to live my life,
the way I think my life should be;
for I’ve only got a moment and the whole world left to see.
I’ll be searching for tomorrow on the loose...


*written by Steve Schuch (thx Kate!)







To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

Our life as art

Spiritual resource to share: our calling

Cori (CB) and Regula and friend making books

We just had our second Science and Health discussion group meeting tonight. A question popped up about the necessity of problems - how they provide a necessary incentive to understand God more. One thought is that without problems, we would not want to take the time to explore what it means to be spiritual.

Although I wholeheartedly agree that problems have often catapulted me into understanding more about God, there was something about dignifying problems in this way that didn't sit right with me.

I think that there is something spiritually innate in us all, and that we are called to bring that forth in our lives. Ultimately, our purpose is not to overcome problems, but to glorify God. When problems show up, we get rid of them. The problem itself doesn't come because: we are not spiritual enough, we are being punished for bad thinking, or we need a boost to get us moving in the direction of God. A problem is a distraction from our calling and the whole purpose of the problem is to be corrected. It doesn't define us or confine us!

It is as if we have been given the full spectrum of colors on a palette and a blank canvas. We are free to create. If a bee comes by (aka the problem), we need to get rid of it, so that we can do what we were made to do.

I talked to my husband (an artist blacksmith) and a friend (a bookmaker) and saw how clear it was to them that they were called to do their work. They deal with whatever distractions may arise, but they have a clear focus on their calling and what their work is all about. They play with spiritual ideas and give them a tangible form. And there is great joy in this!

My husband shared: "Sometime in my late thirties, I did a little blacksmithing and the whole world opened up. It felt like I was coming home to something that just made sense. It is hard not to follow a path when it calls to you so strongly ---- and it is fun."

My friend Cori has been an artist of various mediums forever. She always stretches my ideas of things, like what it means to read a book. In her bookmaking work, she finds poems and prose and works with other artists to bring out the meaning of the words in a visual way and then makes the book become an interactive experience. Who would have thought that a book can be the vehicle - the context - for a poem?


It's easy to see that we are all called to be artists of sorts: of healing, of parenting, of planning, as well as of metal, of books and of color. I can see more clearly what Mary Baker Eddy says when she writes:
"Divine Love blesses its own ideas, and causes them to multiply, — to manifest His power. Man is not made to till the soil. His birthright is dominion, not subjection."

In answer to the question "What am I?" comes a response that could be true of all who are folowing their calling: "I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing."*

*First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany, p. 165
To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

Carving out our grand and noble lives

This is another reason why I love Christian Science: you work it. You pray, but you also demonstrate those very ideas that you are praying with. You learn to walk your talk. You heal. This is such an honest working out. One cannot harbor any sense of dishonesty, false pride or greed and still heal. The Science of it demands strict adherence to its rules.














My husband is an artist blacksmith. His work provides me with a great analogy to working in Christian Science. Mary Baker Eddy says it best when she likens our thoughts to that of the work of a sculptor. She writes:

The sculptor turns from the marble to his model in order to perfect his conception. We are all sculptors, working at various forms, moulding and chiseling thought. What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you reproducing it? Then you are haunted in your work by vicious sculptors and hideous forms. Do you not hear from all mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding it before your gaze continually. The result is that you are liable to follow those lower patterns, limit your life-work, and adopt into your experience the angular outline and deformity of matter models.

To remedy this, we must first turn our gaze in the right direction, and then walk that way. We must form perfect models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives. Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love--the kingdom of heaven--reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear.

Let us accept Science, relinquish all theories based on sense-testimony, give up imperfect models and illusive ideals; and so let us have one God, one Mind, and that one perfect, producing His own models of excellence.

Photo by Helmut Preller