Writing Prompt #2 What is your spiritual creed?

 I read the paper every day. Yes, the real paper newspaper, that smells like a Sunday morning

and leaves ink on my fingertips. This, for me, is a ritual. The cup of tea steaming by my right

arm, my dog at my toes, and the world explained to me all its ugliness and goodness.

Sometimes, if you read through to the very end of an article, the journalist slips in some poetry.

This morning I discovered these sentences tucked into the last paragraph of an article about the

terrible earthquake in Turkey…

“These trees are older than my children,” Eylem Sahutoglu said.

h They fried potatoes in a blackened pan on burning wood and sat around a plastic table.

Breakfast included black olives they had retrieved from the rubble.

“We were born here,” Sahutoglu said, “We have grown up here. We will die here.”

This is his truth. His creed.

My truth centers around a tie to land as well. My faith is grounded in my ancestors who came to

this country from Germany and settled in the hills and farming region of eastern Pennsylvania.

Today it’s known as “Amish Country.”

When I feel the inevitable anxiety, when I’m questioning and feel hopeless and lost, it’s the

voices of the strong women who came before me, who speak to me. They show me the truth.

Some of these women read the bible, strong in their Lutheran and Mennonite faith, tracing each

verse with their fingertips. And some bent over their fields, and grasped horses' reigns with

calloused fingers, too tired to read, with no time to linger over a cup of steaming tea.

These women, my ancestors, tell me to stay strong, be kind and compassionate, love family and

friends and trust in yourself. This is a simple creed, but it grounds me.

Unlike the man who lives on the ground where he draws his conviction, I live across the country

from my hometown. But, on a day when I have the freedom to sit and read the paper, I am very

clearly able to hear my grandmother’s voice over my shoulder. When she was alive, she mailed

me articles she thought I would enjoy. She carefully cut my hometown newspaper, and folded

the articles into an envelope.

I’m heading to the drawer now, to find my scissors…

~TC

Spiritual Creed

My Dad had an angel figurine on his desk that he got – I think from when he was a youth pastor in the 70’s.

It was dressed like a hippie, with wings sticking out of the back and at the base it says,

“Do thine own thing”

I’ve always felt that.

Be the “you” that God created you to be, even it if is weird or awkward

Some of Jesus’ favorite disciples were that way as well

Some of the main characters in the Old Testament

Peter: over-eager for everything and couldn’t regulate his excitement

Mary: wrong gender to be heard or taken seriously

Martha and Thomas: constantly unable to grasp the assignment and needing it to be spelled out to them

Jonah: so full of spite that he would rather sit in a whale than go and do what God wanted,

Moses: claimed that his stutter was the reason he couldn’t be god’s messenger, but god assigned him his brother Aaron to be his buddy and help out

There are so many people to look up to

So many misfits

God needs all our unique voices to bring about a better world

A promise

Of a puzzle that we can put together

But we need all the pieces to make it work. 

~RH