Reflections – Page 353 – Unfolding Light

Ascension Day

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Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.

—Luke 24. 50-51

Today is Ascension Day, 40 days after the resurrection when Jesus ascended to heaven. Clearly he has left. Yet he said, “I am with you always.” How do we make sense of this? It must be that Christ is with us in another form, not the body of Jesus of Nazareth. On Pentecost we will see the new form of Christ’s incarnation, the Body of Christ: not a person at all, but a community.

Christ is present, here, now. God, in love, is bodily present with you. Look around you. Look within you. Look slowly, and carefully. Let your prayer be a deepening, widening awareness. The Beloved will appear in forms you do not expect. Remember Jacob and his dream, and the disciples on the road to Emmaus: it is often only afterward that we realize that God has been present in ways we did not know. Christ doesn’t always look like Jesus. God doesn’t always look like God. The best we can do is to continually open the eyes of our hearts to the indwelling, surrounding, unseen presence of the Loving One.

Keep the eyes of your heart open.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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How to live

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Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

When all is stripped away
what is left is not what you cling to
nor what you have accomplished,
but how you live.
This is what you are here to perfect.

Start with:
wonder, gratitude,
patience, humility,
courage and kindness.

Each moment, practice.

The more you do ,
the more you become
rich beyond measure.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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Depths

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Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

The songs of whales enchant,
though the words escape us.

He knows what she said
but he is only beginning to hear it.

The garden lies empty and still,
but beneath, it is neither.

She smiles, while within lies
an underground lake.

The crayon squiggles hung on the fridge
look festive, rough, and random.

No telling what it actually means
to the mom who stuck it there,

or to the boy who drew
that empty green shape

with the dot in it,
that drooping blue line.

As when peering into a narrow hole,
we always block our own light.

The artist conjures the surface of things
precisely to get beyond it.

From an open window, blues sung low,
something stretching farther down

than you can reach.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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Rain

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

Present moment
neither good nor ill

growth erosion
dreaded long awaited

good for the farmer
bad for the parade

why judge?
walk out in it

get soaked know it
this way alone

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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God, the single mom

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

The Mother will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, in my name…. Those who love me will keep my word, and my Mother will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them….

— John 14.26, 23

The Holy Trinity is a single parent family, right? And look— despite all the he-man talk, God is a mom. Aside from our sexist history, there’s really no reason to call God Father instead of Mother. God has no biology, no body parts, no x or y chromosomes. So the whole Mother/Father thing is all about social stereotypes. Well, doesn’t God fit the traditional stereotype of a mother? The one who births us, and nurses us with her own flesh, the one who taught us to walk. Not one who leaves home every day to work, but the one who stays with us to care for us. The one who feeds us, the one who talks with us, who weaves our relationships together, who tends us when we’re sick, who cries over us. Isn’t God more like the one who fusses over us rather than the one who taught us how to play football? As far as gender stereotypes go, God is way more like Mom.

Both our stereotypes and our theology need to change. But while dads learn to be more like what we’ve always expected of moms, God’s been doing it all along.

And she’s not only a homemaker, she’s a single mom. There’s a Son, and another (a daughter?)—but no other parent, no other authority, no one else for us to turn to or for her to fall back on. God is the resilient, resourceful, devoted single mom, the one who works hard to hold the family together, who balances work and family, who somehow pulls it all together. As we approach Mother’s Day I honor mothers, especially those who are single or functionally so, who give life and love, and who embody God’s grace.

In the name of the Mother, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Happy Mother’s Day.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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God running

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

I am running
and God is running in me.
God is breathing deep and steady,
down in the darkness secretly
changing the air into life in me.
God is thumping in my chest,
pulling life through me, all of me.
God is taking a pounding down there,
feet slapping the road over and over,
never complaining, slender ankles
faithfully taking all my weight.
God is my sweat, pouring out of me
like love, like light.
God, you are that miraculous alchemy,
that unchoreographable dance
of oxygen, nerve firings, glucose,
adrenaline, muscle memory and will.
You are my momentum,
my balance, my movement,
my stamina.
Even when I’m awkward or tired
you are graceful in me,
strong and elegant and unflagging.
You are the push up the hill,
and you are the hill.
When I am exhausted you are still
running in me, my body knowing
how to run, bearing me along gamely.
You are the sprint at the end,
the push from within, the rush,
the release.
And you are my tiredness,
my gasping for air, for life, for God.
You are running and resting,
my feet and my finish line.

All day cells will adapt, bones resolve,
metabolism change, muscles renew.
What is “fitness,” but God happening?

Now I am done running.
I am reading poetry.
And God is in me…

Deep Blessings,

Pastor Steve

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The fourth person of the Trinity

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

The Father will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, in my name….
Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them,
and we will come to them and make our home with them….
— John 14.26, 23

There are actually four persons in the Holy Trinity: you are always included. The essence of the Holy Trinity, the nature of God, is a loving community of persons who are deeply related and who include us, who make their home with us. God is not distant, but surrounding and indwelling. The Trinity is not a tightly closed molecule but a family at a table, your table, our table, always inherently relational and inclusive.

The aim of the spiritual life is not to believe the correct doctrines or understand all things or attain a certain attitude, but to participate in the life of the Holy Trinity, to be a part of the giving and receiving of love, to join in the gathering of all God’s Beloved at the table of life. Live today as if you, and everyone else, are the fourth person of the Holy Trinity, as if all of this life and its gifts and struggles, and all the human family, and all our adoration and our squabbles, are all part of this holy family gathering, the family that is God. Live this day as if you are called not to believe in God, but to live in God, to be part of God, to be the fourth person of the Trinity. It’s not hard to do, just hard to remember to do. But don’t worry about the difficulty: God will love you, and come to you and make her home with you.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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God the homemaker

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them…. The Father will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, in my name….
— John 14.23, 26

The image of the Holy Trinity invites us to imagine God as a homemaker, one who creates a loving home for us. God doesn’t sit there in some high-end real estate called “Heaven” and wait for us to die and come to God. She comes to us, makes a home—God’s home!—with us. And she surrounds us with family: Christ and the Holy Spirit are there for us and with us, like a big brother and sister. The Holy Trinity is loving community— a family. This is the true family to which you belong: not just a little family tree, not a church or denomination, not a culture or a race, but the family of God, the household of the Holy Trinity.

Just as we find it hard to wrap our minds around the infinite and eternal power and majesty of God, God’s unknowable transcendence and mighty sovereignty, so we find it hard to fathom God’s nearness, God’s intimate presence, God’s ordinary motherly love, the steady, warm embrace of God’s arm around us, with loved ones gathered, bread baking, a soft bed waiting, and a gentle blessing: “Welcome home, love.” God is, above all else, the One who comes to us and makes a home with us. To worship God is sometimes simply to sit in our favorite easy chair in God’s home and enjoy being there.

Welcome home, love.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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Getting something done

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

I need to get something done.
So many things need to get done.
I don’t know what sometimes, or why,
but I know I need to get something done.

So I walk in the woods
until I leave this insufficiency,
the nameless thing,
and the endless needing,

until I find my place
not in some thing, behind me,
but in being where I am,
neither past nor future, but present,

accomplishing this one
most difficult thing:
being here,
simply, fully and attentively.

Only then
am I ready
for whatever
is next.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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What carries us over

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

— Revelation 21.1

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
— John 13.34

The problem with a new heaven and a new earth is that sometimes it doesn’t feel so good. When old ways pass away and new things come we sometimes feel displaced, disoriented or even threatened by the new ways. We yearn for the way things used to be. When change comes, what can carry us over into the new world? What can help us to adapt to a new reality, to embrace change, to live with and even live for transformation?

Love will carry us over. To live in a new reality, a new haven and earth, Jesus gives us a new commandment: to love others as Christ has loved us. Jesus teaches us to set our hearts on the blessing and well-being of others rather than on our attachment to things being the way we want them. When we commit to such unconditional, self-giving love, “the way it used to be” is no longer our concern. Love sets us free. This new birth is not just an emergency procedure in the case of dramatic change; it happens with every moment. Every breath is an opportunity to let go of the past and enter into the new heaven and new earth of the present moment.

When things change and we feel lost or displaced, Jesus’ call to love can carry us over the abyss of our anxiety and into the new world—the new, living, present, vibrant heaven of this very life.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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