Let the weeds and wheat grow together
         until the harvest.
                  —Matthew 13.30

Your difficulties belong.
What angers and seduces you,
what pains you or confounds you,
are pages of the book.
They are your teachers.
They are the rough desert
where your savior abides.

The story of grace
has many chapters,
and much suspense.
Read the whole book,
every page,
and keep in your heart
the gift of hope:
knowing there is wheat
among the weeds
the Faithful One
knows how to harvest,
knowing the story
isn’t over yet.

                           —July 21, 2017
 

         We are children of God.
         We have received a spirit of adoption.
         All of creation has been groaning in labor pains
         and we ourselves groan inwardly while we wait for adoption,
         the redemption of our bodies.
                  —Romans 8.15, 22-23

How wonderful of Paul to mash up these metaphors,
that we groan inwardly in giving birth,
and we are also ourselves natural born children of God,
and also that we await adoption as children,
and we have already received adoption:
natural issue of God, chosen by God,
like God giving birth, and newborn:
starting new, being changed,
and belonging in ways that can’t be changed.
All of that.
Children of God.

This is what everyone’s groans are.
This is what everyone you meet
is dying to know.
Treat them so.

                                                         ―July 20, 2017

The sun processes up the aisle
carrying the Gospel.
   
Birds speak of the other world
in their own Latin.

A child looks up at me
with those two big brown universes.

A voice stands up in me
that knows how to do this.

What is this, even in my sleep,
but you, touching your lips to mine?

                           —July 19, 2017
 

Beloved,
you are the newborn
who amazes me,
that you issue from me.

You are the baby I hold in my arms,
transfixed.

You are the little one
whose wonder delights me.

You are the child who walks
out of the house pulling my heart,
trailing a stream of my desire.

You board the school bus and all day
I am wondering about you.

I sit on the bed with you
and listen to your joys and woes
without answers.

You are the one I stand beside
as you pledge your faithful love to the world,
and even on sorrowful days
I am full of gratitude and hope.

I marvel as you accomplish
your great things.
On and on your story goes,
through me, and without me.

You have already outpaced me.
Outlive me, Beloved,
go on, go on.

                  —July 18, 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.

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Breath prayer: Receiving … you

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                           —July 10, 2017