Month: March 2018

         Jesus emptied himself.
                  —Philippians 2.7

Give yourself away
       and be empty of all
              but God.

Lose your grip on your life
       and it becomes
              infinite.

Let go of it all,
       and you have at your disposal
              all of heaven.

Pour yourself out
       and God never stops
              pouring through you.

   —March 19, 2018

         Create in me a clean heart, O God,
         and put a new and right spirit within me.
                  —Psalm 51.10

In the beginning
your spirit broods over the waters of my soul.
You say, “Let there be light”
and you create in me a new heart.
You put a good new spirit within me.
With each breath I take you begin.

Your power to make me new,
your grace to make me faithful
is never diminished.

You mend me,
like light forgives darkness.

I behold the world you create in me,
the spirit you breathe into me,
and I am filled with wonder, awe and gratitude.

Beloved,
create in me.

   —March 16, 2018

Deep, heavy snow erased the land and rendered it in black and white. It clings to every branch and twig in marshmallowy fatness. There are no things now, no color, only white blobs. Every branch is burdened, bowed or broken. Some limbs, overloaded, crack and fall and sigh and settle back into snow’s old silence. The path is blocked by fallen trees and snow-bent boughs, stooped the way sorrows weigh you down. Every tree and hillock is disguised. Nothing looks the same. The way has vanished. I have to pick my way around these heaped up baskets of bent and fallen branches covering the trail. I lose my way. I could turn back—my fingers are cold, my feet are wet, I’m hungry for breakfast, and I’m not sure of the way. But I am as changed as the woods. I might stand here till I become a snowy mound, one with this sparking silence. Why wouldn’t I find a way for amazement? Why not endure hurt or hunger for gratitude? Isn’t beauty the way? Even in struggle, isn’t wonder the path?
 

   —March 15, 2018

         I will put my law within them,
         and I will write it on their hearts.
                       —Jeremiah 31.33
 

Write your love on my heart,
God of love,
write it in your own hand.
Make your love my heartbeat,
my instinct, my brainwave, my breath.
Soften the stone of my heart;
and sculpt it with love.
Inscribe your ways
on my bones,
your love in my heart of hearts.
Write your love on my heart, Love,
and seal it with a kiss.

   —March 14, 2018

        Unless a grain of wheat
         falls into the earth and dies,
         it remains just a single grain;
         but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
                  —John 12.24
               

I let my
self
go

in the soil
of you

I entrust myself
to the spring
of you

I let the
you
of me
break the husk
of the me of me

and life comes forth

I let my
self
spill out

This dying
is birthing

seed of me
buried
bearing fruit
of you

   —March 13, 2018

Fasting for a day or so:
at first the bite of hunger,
the urge,
the lack.

Then something more.
The beast curls up and sleeps
the less I feed it.

Beneath the ache,
the thrum of need,
a new vibration rises,
a freedom
from wanting and acquiring,
a peace,
a oneness
with your drawing-in,
a way that is a stillness,
closer to the darkness
at the core,
a way not of consuming
but of being.

Not hunger now,
but empty openness
to you.
Not my body now,
but yours,
our enormous joyful hunger
for each other.
 

   —March 12, 2018

          For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
                    so that everyone who believes in him
                    may not perish but may have eternal life.
          Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world
                    to condemn the world,
                    but in order that the world might be saved through him.
          Those who believe in him are not condemned;
                    but those who do not believe are condemned already,
                    because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
                         —John 3.16-18

Infinite Love, heart of all life,
you loved this word into being
with such love
as to birth yourself among us,
Love begotten as the Beloved.

Opening ourselves to your love
we live beyond our mortal selves
and join your eternal Oneness.

Your presence does not separate but unites;
love does not push away, but embraces;
you do not condemn, but save.

Trusting this we know
we are loved, never rejected.
When our trust fails we are doomed:
withdrawing into ourselves
we aren’t open to love,
the only source of life.

   —March 9, 2018

         Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
         so must the New Human be lifted up,
         that whoever trusts may have eternal life.
               —John 3.14-15

You have to look your evil in the face to be healed.
The snakes that plagued the Hebrews in the desert
were their betrayal come back to bite them,
their being Eden’s serpent.
The cure was to gaze at their sin.

So we gaze upon the Crucified One, our victim,
and look our awfulness in the eye
and only there grasp forgiveness,
and only then become truly alive.

On the cross is lifted up
our racism, our violence, our materialism,
our deep seated me-first-ism.
Posted there is our last text to God,
“I’ll let you know when I need you.”
We look at it, look at it hard,
to get free of the lie that we’re just fine,
the lie that keeps us from knowing
how deeply we are forgiven,
how vastly we are blessed,
how infinitely we are loved.

   March 8, 2018

Face it: you were dead. A zombie, well dressed.
Junked, addicted to your distrustful stupor,
sucked in and thrown away by the world’s lies,
self-shelled and painted with all the popular memes,
following the smell of anxiety you thought was good,
dancing, doomed, down a dead-end alley.
Fake happiness had its poison talons in you
the whole time, mummifying your heart.
That anger, that hollow despair we called toughness,
gold-medal swimming in quicksand—yeah, we all had it,
furious at our self-destruction, but looking good.

Then in that trash heap, with bricks for hearts,
in that graveyard we called life, Mercy itself
came with enormous love and grabbed us
and for no reason other than wanting to
just plain made us alive.
The Beloved, rising out of our garbage cans,
wrapped loving arms around us and ripped us out
into this life, this light, this being.

You’ve been salvaged.
Set up like a refugee in a place God fixed up for you
deep in God’s heart, where you always belonged.
This miracle we saw in the Beloved,
this infinite kindness, lasts forever.
It’s not about you—it happens to the worst of us—
you didn’t do it, deserve it, ask for it
or even know it was happening.
It’s pure gift, pure wonder, absolute mystery.

You are now what God created you—all of us—to be
from the very beginning:
pure goodness, alive.  Alive and for real.

Astonishing, huh?

   —March 7, 2018

         This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world,
         and people loved darkness rather than light
         because their deeds were evil.
         For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light,
         so that their deeds may not be exposed.
         But those who do what is true come to the light
         so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.
               —John 3.19-21

Beloved,
you whose love is pure light,
the beauty at the heart of all things,
the truth of What Is that gives being to all:
bring me into your light, that all I do may be in you.

So much in me hides in the night,
urges and feelings, fears, memories and desires
move in the dark, whisper in shadows.
Be light in my depths, be the full moon in my night,
the rising sun among my secrets.
Let your light come into me.

I sit in empty silence, your early dawn rising in me.
Your love illumines my inward darkness.
Secret thoughts are brought to light,
the shadows emerge and speak,
my wakened mind befriends the night creatures.

Permeate me with your light. Let shadows fall
only where you keep them. Open my eyes
to what you would have me see of my inner darkness.
O light, may I live in you, and all my deeds
be done in you.
 

   —March 6, 2018