Month: April 2024

Ten Positive Commandments

vabutsy Paraphrases, ponderings

After a quiet time today (a time that bore some passing resemblance to centering prayer 😁), I was struck by how negative and restrictive what many of us know as the 10 Commandments are. So, undaunted by generations of scholars, interpreters, and translators who have tackled the challenge with far greater qualifications than I have, I used an English Protestant translation of the 10 Commandments that I was taught God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, to write my own 10 Positive Commandments. (Phew! that turned into quite a sentence.)

Thou shalt:

  1. First and foremost, honor the divine wherever you find it.
  2. Live in truth and wisdom
  3. Speak gently
  4. Step outside of chronos time to practice kairos time regularly
  5. Honor your ancestors and wisdom teachers
  6. Nourish life
  7. Guard the sacredness of life commitments
  8. Be satisfied with your own possessions
  9. Be truthful and generous when speaking of others
  10. Be satisfied with your own self

The Amazing In-Between

vabutsy poems 
Right now Woody and I live in-between
The start and finish of our renovation
Each day we complete something
Or change something
Or, when necessary, undo something

And so, what had once been our bedroom
Is now in-between a bedroom and craft room
What had once been our woodworking room
Is now well on its way to being our new bedroom
And what had once been a huge disorganized storage room
Is now a walk-in closet and a smaller potentially well-organized storage room

The worst part is that our beautiful half-sunken back porch
With the four rocking chairs and bordering herb garden
With the small pond where our favorite pieces of broken pottery reside
Looking interesting – or at least funky - amid the rocks and shallow water
Bordered by ferns and tradescantia

The worst part, as I was going to say
Before I got caught in the in-between 
Of my back porch thought
The worst part is that our much-loved back porch
Is our temporary storage and sorting area
Filled with a couple of old filing cabinets
Several bookcases
Miscellaneous baskets and boxes of memories
Old and new flooring, tools and cleaning supplies

But at least it gives us incentive
To keep sorting
Keep working
Keep believing that we can make a difference
For the better

And so we can
During this last part of our lives
In-between the almost forgotten start and the only partially envisioned end
In between birth and death
In-between the prosaic and the profound
In-between now and eternity