Month: July 2017

Light and shadow
carve the stone of the cliff face
morning and evening.
The light is stronger than the stone.

Each day sun and wind
work their art on the sea,
a different masterpiece every day.

Creating God, I am your canvas.
Your light, your wind,
your grace raining down
paint your Word on me,
your self-portrait,
your living work.

                           —July 17, 2017

         A sower went out to sow. 
         Some seeds fell on the path…
         other seeds fell on rocky ground…
         other seeds fell among thorns…
                  —from Matthew 13.1-9

The candle doesn’t trouble itself
with the journey of light.
The bird doesn’t care who hears.

Beloved, you waste many seeds.
You offer kindness unnoticed.
You try seventy times to forgive, and fail,
and those you forgive don’t repent.
You love the undeserving and unappreciative.
You try and try to get close to me,
yet feel no closer.
Your prayers fall on rocky ground.

My child, how much of my grace,
do you suppose, falls among thorns?

Beloved, it is the mystery of your faith
that you can not know
the life of the seeds you sow,
how far away, how much later,
in whose unseen heart
your love bears fruit,
thirty, sixty, a hundred fold.

Do not measure; do not judge.
Sow light. Sow light.

                           —July 14, 2017

God of my breath,
may the leaves of your trees
in their billions
open in me.

The waves of the sea
eternally bowing in prayer
move in me.

The cry of the hawk
echoing in the canyon
resound in me.

The blessing rain
coming down like tears, like hair,
like a mother’s milk,
come down in me.

Your love, billowing like clouds,
flowing like a stream,
breathing like prairie air,
open in me this day,
move in me this day,
resound in me this day,
bless in me this day.

Amen.      

                           —July 13, 2017
 

         A sower went out to sow…
                  —Matthew 13.3

Sower God, what hard-worn paths of habit,
what packed-down roads drivennness
have I trod out across my life,
ruts that do not receive your seed?
Soften them.

What birds of desire
snatch up your seed
before it roots in me?
Calm them.

What shallow, rocky soil lies in my heart,
what refusal to open my depths and surrender?
Loosen me.

What thorns of bitterness choke your grace?
Let them wither, all of them.

And where is your lovely soil in me—
humble, human hummus—
thick with holy rot and death,
rich with all that has failed and fallen,
crawling with the secret worms of grace
that give life in the dark earth of me?

Find those places,
fall upon me,
sink in,
and flourish.

                                 ―July 12, 2017

OK, a little straight-out theology. God is Love. God is Mother, Heavenly Lover, source of all Being: “Father.” God’s love is infinite and eternal. When God’s love exists as pure energy we call it “Spirit.” When God’s love is embodied, made finite and mortal, we call it “Christ.” (Remember energy and matter are interchangeable. E=mc2.) Christ is not an individual but all of God’s embodied love, which is all of Creation: it’s all God’s embodiment of love, God’s energy appearing as matter, Word made flesh.

Jesus fully embodied the Christ of God. He was not just Jesus of Nazareth, he was Jesus of Christ. He was Christ appearing as Jesus. We too are finite instances of the infinite love of God, just as Jesus was. God’s spirit, which we see in him, is in all of us.

We don’t naturally trust that. We succumb to the illusion that our “self” is this little individual enclosed in our physical body (Paul says “the flesh”). We are not so limited: we are actually part of God, members of the cosmos, instances of the embodiment of God’s eternal and infinite love. Our “self” is actually part of Christ. We are the Body of Christ, and individually members of it.

Our ego is pretty sure we have to protect our little self and prove we deserve for God to approve of us, and earn our place in the world. (This is “sin.”) Our ego sees righteousness as being right, being good enough. But we are part of God; there is no such thing as being “good enough” or not. God gives us the righteousness of belonging to God. This grace sets us free from the hopeless, never-ending battle of trying to be good enough. We can let God’s goodness be our goodness: our goodness is our Godness. In this way God gives us “righteousness” that we can’t achieve on our own.

Christ appearing as Jesus comes to show us this. Christ Jesus occupies our sin: Christ occupies our distrust and alienation from God, and endures our judgment and suffering. In occupying our sin, God does not condemn us, but condemns and disarms our sin: God overcomes our distance from God by becoming the gap between us. Even though Jesus becomes our sin God still loves him, not because he is “good enough,” but because God is love, and because Jesus is God’s.

Christ Jesus occupies our whole life, even our death. And God raises Jesus from the dead because the eternal Spirit that is God is in him. And that same Spirit that was in Jesus is in us. Since God’s spirit is in us, that spirit also gives life to us and even raises us from the dead just like Jesus.

So: we let go of our little doomed flesh-contained “selves” (“deny yourselves”) and live in the Spirit, as part of the whole infinite Christ of God. We live “in Christ.” To set our minds on the flesh is to enslave ourselves to the survival of our egos, and restrict ourselves to the puny power of our fears and desires. This will always kill us. But to live in the Spirit is to allow God’s infinite power to live in us and give us life that is eternal. God’s power becomes our power. It’s the power to love as Jesus loved. It changes our lives, which changes the world.

This is what I have in mind when I read Romans 8.1-11:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending God’s own Beloved in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, God condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
 
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to God. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, God who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through God’s Spirit that dwells in you.

                           —July 11, 2017

            “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
            we wailed, and you did not mourn.”
                           —Matthew 11.17

            A sower went out to sow,
            and some seeds fell on the path…
                        —Mathew 13.3

Not my own song,
insistent in my head,
but yours
may I hear,
and harmonize.

Not my purposes
for which I’ve already laid out a path,
but your fruit
flourishing in me
may I receive
and let root.

You are singing.
You are sowing.

Help me listen.
Help me receive.

+

Breath prayer: Receiving … you

+
         
                           —July 10, 2017
 

The weather was changing. It was a regular day, neither ominous nor auspicious. He was playing in the surf, not far from his family lazily oblivious up on the sand. A good-sized wave of green, jovial as the others, reared above him. He tried floating over it but miscalculated: he was ahead of it, and it was closer to breaking than he thought. It lifted him up like a playful grandfather raising a child to his shoulder, then pitched him down into an explosion of foam.

An ocean’s wave is not a child’s wave. In the chaos and tumble of the spillout you have no control; there is no up or down. A roiling mass of seawater digests you until it is done. All you can do is wait.
 

This was not a huge wave; he’d been tossed by bigger ones than this. But it had its way with him for a few seconds. He thought of himself in that seething froth of water, a living being hidden in the chaos, a body not water. He was alive. And then it occurred to him─and he knew it was an odd thought─ that he could drown. He knew he was overreacting. But for one second something in him imagined he was near death, and he became desperate for air, for control, for time, for life. Something in him pulled at the sky, though he didn’t know where it was─and reached for earth, though that was lost to him, too. His helplessness infuriated him, then saddened him, then intrigued him.

Powerless over the force of the water jumbling him about, he was aware of an even greater force within him, also not under his power, reaching out for life. It was not his will; it was given. And unmistakably there was yet another force, another grasping, another desire, pulling at him, a yearning not his own, a mind that was in yet beyond the water, that came from wherever the sea comes from, reaching for him as if finally able to get at him here in this cataract. Never had he so deeply wanted life, or suspected that life so deeply wanted him. The two yearnings tugged at each other under the roiling water. Something like trust blossomed. He was amazed to feel an awe, a reverence for those clasped hands, that twinned yearning, and a desire for it even more than for air. He waited. The wave spit him up like Jonah.

He found himself rocked like a newborn in swirling seawater, washed. He almost wanted to go back, to go under, to go deeper, overwhelmed again, and touch that yearning. But all he could do was wait. In the water wasn’t where it would be now. It would be in him, as it always had been. It would be up there on the beach, back in the city, silently swirling in his days, the falling and rising, his reaching and the reaching for him through the chaos, under the unseen waves. He wouldn’t be able to explain it; that was another mastery he would not be given. It would have to change him. He would have to become innocent all over again, and again and again.

He wanted joy, he wanted sadness, he wanted it all. He walked up the sand. The weather was changing.

                           —July 7, 2017

God, you love me purely, but I don’t trust that.
I’ve been brainwashed by self-centered fear.
It’s an instinct, a reflex, an addiction. I can’t stop it.
It has taken over me. I’m not even in control.
I believe the right things, but I don’t live them.
I don’t do the good I mean to, I do the evil I hate.
I’m not even choosing; my fear is.
I’m on the right side in good versus evil,
but I keep scoring for the other team!
In my mind I think I’m faithful to your love,
but in reality I’m being controlled by my sin.
I’ve been kidnapped. My heart has been hijacked.
I can’t get out of this. Trying harder doesn’t work.
I’m trapped. I’m doomed.
What a wretched person I am! Who will rescue me?

         Come to me.
         You are weary and heavily burdened.
         I will give you rest.
         Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
         for I am gentle and humble in spirit,
         and you will find rest for your souls.
         For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Thanks be to God, through the Beloved, Jesus Christ.

            •
I admit I am powerless over my sin
            and my life has become unmanageable.
I believe a power greater than myself
            can restore me to wholeness.
I choose to turn my will and my life over to the care of God
            as I experience God.

            •
God, it is not my goodness,
but your goodness in me
that saves me.

            •
Breath prayer: Not my goodness … but yours

            +

[Romans 7.14-25; Matthew 11.28-30; The 12 Steps of AA]
         

                           —July 6, 2017
 

The Word at the center of our faith
is no secret knowledge,
no law or demand
that sets the righteous apart from the reprobate.
It is an invitation:
         “Come to me,
         you who are weary and heavily burdened,
         and I will give you rest.
         Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
         for I am gentle and humble in spirit,
         and you will find rest for your souls.
         For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

The giver of all life speaks to you,
one in whose presence your soul is at rest.

You are given rest
whether you feel it or not.
Set down your burdens.
Follow the voice.
This is faith, not that you believe,
but that you come.
Be with the One who Wants You.

Give in.
And if it seems too vain a hope
that there is actually anybody there,
just live as if it were true.
Try on the yoke of love,
and know that you are yoked.
Bear the burden of light,
and know it doesn’t come from you.
Watch for the One who learns beside you.
Seek whatever presence in the world
might say such words as these,
and you will meet the one who does.

[Matthew 11.28-30]

                           —July 5, 2017
 

God, I confess my idolatry:
the illusion of independence.         
On this day I declare my dependence.
I am free. I am capable, and responsible;
but I am dependent.

I am dependent on generations, on neighbors,
on peoples I can’t know, in many lands,
on nations and their peace,
on the earth and its fruits, its bees,
its invisible currents.
I am utterly dependent on you,
your grace, your guidance, your sustenance.

I am not independent, even of my enemies.
May I be mindful of my oneness
with all my human family,
with this whole umbilical Creation,
with you, who are my only freedom,
my life and my being.

         
                           —July 4, 2017