Category: Reflections

We love to pretend we’re Big People
who have managed well our fate.
But we are weak, frightened children,
saved by unearned generosity
or not saved at all.

Fearful of our tenderness,
believing most deeply in our on-our-own-ness,
we lash out against our shadows
stumbling across our border, our little ones
running for their lives.

They ought to master their destiny like us.
They ought to be abandoned like us.
This is no country for the meek,
the small,
the saved.
 

                  
You think you know the sprouts
in the garden of your life:
which are the heirloom vegetables
and which the cursed weeds.

You tromp through,
plucking all sorts of green things
from the seedbed of certainty.

I have seen impatient people
yank the loveliest of herbs
because they thought they knew.

But you don’t know.
You don’t know what nameless weeds
will bless and blossom,
bear unimagined fruit,
even among their thorns,
in a harvest beyond your reckoning.

You do not know whose weedy life
is, in the other world,
burgeoning with God’s glory.

Do not judge.
You are not the Gardener.
The fruits of heaven grow
on the shabbiest stalks.
Only later will you see the work
of the One Who Sows,
the One Who Gathers.

 

I’m a fool for the moon,
can’t keep myself
from rushing to the window.
I’m a patsy for wild geese flying,
stop and stare like it’s the popemobile.
I’m a pushover for little glints of sun,
slips of children’s songs, chocolate,
deep blue green, lichen.
What is it about lichen, anyway,
that gets me so?
Don’t know. I’m a fool,
and I don’t mind
being flat on my face a lot,
weak-kneed before the world
pretty much all the time.
And the greatest wonder of all,
most deeply bewildering?
The Glorious One,
on scabbed knees, the fool,
staring wildly at me.

 

Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
        Open my inner eye to see your presence.

Thinking him to be the gardener, she asked,
“Where have you taken him?”

         Help me see you in all people.

Jesus stood on the beach, but they did not know it was Jesus.

        Help me trust in your presence,
        even when I do not feel it.

Truly, God was in this place and I,
I did not know it.
 

        You have walked with me
        even when I did not know it.
        Grant me gratitude and trust.
        May I wonder at your presence
        and walk in faith.

[Genesis 28.16]

 

 

       
         Do not remember the sins of my youth
                  or my transgressions;
         according to your steadfast love
                  remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O Lord!
                         —Psalm 25.7

God does not see you according to your performance,
         according to how well you’ve done.
God sees you with pure love,
         with perfect compassion.

Throw away the dirty rags of your sin.
         Dry the tears of your shame.
There is only delight.
         There is only blessing.

Behold that love.
         Receive that compassion.
Rest in that embrace.
         Let it become you.
 

       The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
       has set you free from the law of sin and of death….
       God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do….
       The just requirement of the law is fulfilled in us,
       who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
                  —from Romans 8.2-4

God’s law is not a set of demands.
Demands could never make us love.
Concern about our righteousness
only makes us more self-centered.
God’s law is love, which lives in us,
and so makes us the fulfillment of God’s love.
We are free from “having to” do anything
to be fully, deeply loved and connected.

So we walk in that Love, that Spirit.
We let go of our anxieties
about the survival of our isolated self,
and let ourselves be included
in the infinite Life of God.

We rest in God’s love.
We let it transform us breath by breath.
We behold that love for and in everyone.
We let that love guide us.
We live in the Spirit.

 

         A sower went out to sow.
         Some seeds fell on the path…
                  and the birds came and ate them up.
         Other seeds fell on rocky ground…
                  and they withered away.
         Other seeds fell among thorns…
                  and the thorns grew up and choked them.

         Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain—
                  some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
                        —Matthew 13.3-8

Failure,
     failure,
          failure,
               grace.

God is the sower and you are the soil.
     The Word finds its fertile places,
          and grows in you.

God is the sower and you are the seed.
     You are given to the world.
          Though it may seem fruitless,
               there will be a rich harvest.

You are the sower and love is the seed.
     Though it seems wasted,
          love will bear fruit.

Be patient,
          and trust.

 

Jacob and Esau, you will fight.
Like Isaac and Ishmael before you
and Joseph and his brothers after,
you will contend. This is your lot.
It is our nature.

But it is not your fight.
You were born into it.
You are Isaac and Rebekah’s rivalry,
and they will entangle you in it.
You are two nations.
You are all people.

You “despise your birthright,”
deny your belovedness and belonging,
think you can steal it.
And you despise your brother,
think you can walk away from him,

escape your brotherhood.

But you can’t escape: you’re family.
All the hungry, all the un-belonging,
they are yours.

And why do you struggle?
To find yourself.
To set yourself off from those closest,
to be not-them,

yet bound.
It is to be reconciled, to achieve
that gift that cannot be purely given
but must be wrought, and then received.
You’re not trying to untangle the knot
but tie it tighter with that brother

who after all your wrestling
will fall on your neck,
and kiss you
and you will weep.

 

        Go and tell John what you hear and see:
         the blind receive their sight, the lame walk,
         the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised,
         and the poor have good news brought to them.
                  —Matthew 11.4-5

Healing works its grace within you, unseen.
Justice unfolds in this world, unknown.
Whatever happens, so does healing.
The Beloved is continually mending, mending.

Trust this mystery.
Hear and see with this confidence.

With this mind
you will know
the drawing near
of the Tender One.

 

         I do not understand my own actions.
         For I do not do what I want,
         but I do the very thing I hate.
                  —Romans 7.15

“Sin” is not that we’re bad people.
It’s that we don’t know how to love perfectly,
even when we try.

We’re playing hard for the home team
but keep accidentally scoring for the opponents.

In the war between good and evil
we’re on the right side,
but we keep shooting our own with friendly fire.

God understands, and forgives us.
God delivers us from the hopeless battle:
we are neither “good” nor “bad;”
we are beloved.

When we let that grace course through our veins,
let that love move through our bodies,
become the bodies of that spirit,
then it is God who lives in us,
who loves perfectly through us.