Trapped

 

As we continue to pray the antiphons each day, during the hours of the day, today I offer one from Psalm 25,

“Release my trapped heart”. 

 

What is trapped in your heart today?  What is lingering on and on in your mind/heart/body right now?  Is there an emotion that keeps fueling and feeding your life?  What are you returning to and why?  These are not easy questions as we spend a lot of our life on autopilot. 

 

Or maybe ask, who holds the key to the locked door of what you are holding?  Often we think others do, but there is a choice we make in continuing to give the power to feel trapped to another person, to let loose of our own agency.  To be sure, I don’t hold the keys to every locked door in my life, but I do hold several of them. 

 

These four words, “release my trapped heart”, hold so much possibility and promise of the Holy entering.  God is One of liberating love.  God is One who brings us out of tight, confining spaces and places into a sacred spaciousness where we can breathe.  Too often we stay trapped in corners because that is where we feel safe.  Connect this to yesterday where we prayed the antiphon about being hidden.  Yes, we need bench time away and we need to let loose our own wings to fly.  I remember the college orientation for our kids and the phrase that stuck with me is, “You gotta let them go so they can grow.”  My kids were not going to grow if I locked them in their room and tried to stop time.  They needed to step out, knowing that we were there, to test out their wings.  Too often, I blame others for keeping me trapped, when it is really my own fears and not wanting to fail.  What and where do I feel trapped, and who told me that I needed to stay there?  Are there other voices encouraging and inviting you to part-take in God’s liberating love?  Hold this antiphon as a prayer for the rest of this day and year, for I believe these four words can be some of the most powerful and profound in our lives today.  Amen.

Shadow

 

This week we are exploring antiphons, short – one sentence – prayers usually drawn from scripture that can provoke and evoke a whole world.  Abraham Heschel once said that words create worlds.  Because we hear so many words from politicians, pundits, preachers, and people posting on social media, we are exhausted by trying to live in so many worlds at once.  It can be holy to sit and stay in one world formed and fashioned by a sentence in scripture.  Hold this verse from Psalm 17:8

 

“Hide me in the shadow of your wings”.

 

I love the image of God with wings, God who hovers around us, God who swoops and soars, God who touches the sky and gracefully descends to perch on our soul. 

 

What do you want to hide from today?  Is there is a situation/setting/individual or group that you want to run away from leaving skid marks on the ground?  Note, this may be similar or the same to your thoughts from yesterday about what/where/from whom you wanted refuge! 

 

We do hide from others, and we hide from ourselves.  During Halloween week I used the image of a mask to remind us that we are a mystery to ourselves.  Hiding is not always a bad thing, sometimes it is a coping strategy amid a world that is too broken and bruised, amid our souls too exhausted and overwhelmed by it all.  Yes, we do need to step from the sidelines of life bravely at times and we also need refuge/rest to hide away from being “on” all the time.  Yes, we need to step into and out of the spotlight.  Recently, I have incorporated what I call “bench time” into my life.  I think about athletes who rest on the bench or go out for a few plays.  Bench time isn’t about being productive.  It is sitting still and letting the sacred catch up to my often too frantic pace of life.  In those moments, I can take a phrase like, “Hide me in the shadow of your wings”, returning to those words time and time again, twisting and turning this sentence in my mind like a Rubik cube to see what new patterns arise. 

 

The beauty of antiphons is you can carry the short sentence with you ~ write on a post it or your note app.  When stopped at a light, pray, “Hide me in the shadow of your wings”.  In the doctor’s office, in the grocery store, in church, before meetings, during meetings, when you feel that tiny vein in your neck pulse with anxiety because of what another person said, when you are bored, when you are tired, when you eat lunch, these words become a companion and commentary for your life this day.

 

May you take the words, “Hide me in the shadow of your wings” and my you find moments to draw close to the comforting warmth of God’s wings where you sense your belovedness this day. Amen.

Refuge

 

One of the professional hazards of being a preacher is needing to fill fifteen minutes every Sunday with words.  That is almost eight hundred minutes a year.  Over twenty-three years of ministry, that means, I have filled almost 18,000 minutes or twelve days.  So, it is good to slow down and savor just a few words, rather than drone on and on and on with more words trying to fill space and time, offer just one phrase for you to sit with each syllable.  This is an ancient prayer practice called, “antiphons”.  These are short sentences, usually taken from scripture.  Today, I invite you to sit with this one verse from Psalm 7:1

 

“O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.”

 

What do those nine words initially evoke and provoke for you?  What are the images that come to mind?

 

What, where, and from whom do you need to take refuge?  Maybe from a chaotic situation that feels like it is spinning out of control.  Or maybe from feeling like you have to save everyone from everything right now.  Maybe from a relationship, politics, family, friends, volunteering, or running/racing around.  What, where, and from whom do you need refuge?

 

What would it feel like to take refuge?  What would you do in that space?  How would you feel?  How long would you stay?

 

You may want to get out a piece of paper to draw the refuge or describe/define through words. 

 

What would it mean today, in this imperfect and grace-filled moment, to be in the refuge of God’s sheltering love?  To breathe and be with God right now.

 

You may want to close your eyes and repeat this sentence several times.  You may want to pause on each word letting that word sink and sing and settled into your soul ~ pay attention to what that word awakens in your awareness.  You may want to pray this sentence slowly like this:

 

O Lord, my God, in you I take refuge.

O Lord, my God, in you.

O Lord, my God.

O Lord.

 

I pray you take this sentence with you out into the world today and these words would be for you a holy structure of stability in such a time as this.  Amen.

Friday Prayer

 

Serendipitous Sacred One, You show up in ways that delight my soul.  You evoke and provoke within me new stories.  You deconstruct my defenses and long to sing a new gospel for me to live my life with others and with all Your creation.  Grant me wisdom and strength to continue to be open to You.  Grant me a discerning detective heart that I don’t know everything, I don’t see down the block and around the corner, that my five-year plan is not as brilliant as I think it is (nor is my five-day-plan).  Yet, O God, You love to move in our hearts and lives with Your presence.  You continually show up and sing out to us.  Help us be open to You.  Help us delight in discovering Your fingerprints in our lives.  Help us when we get caught in narratives that define us, confine us, and confuse Your gospel with our own agenda.  Help us break out of systems that hurt and harm ourselves and others.  Grant us energy, for the hard holy work of being human in these days.  Let our imaginations roam to new places, let our lives magnify You like Mary, and let our interactions with others be a source of grace.  Guide and ground us this day and every day in the coming weeks.  Amen. 

Detectives of the Divine

 

At some point, in being a detective of the Divine, we must pause, step back, and look at the clues that have congregated together.  Today is a good day to examine the evidence you’ve collected.  What are the ways you have noticed God show up this week?  What is your soul magnifying over the last few days?  And how did a person surprise you yesterday?  Is there a thread or theme in all this evidence?  Sometimes the answer is “Yes” and sometimes, we are baffled and bewildered.  We don’t always get to the “Aha” moment quickly or on our timetable.  I find it helpful to write down, because I can’t keep everything abstractly in my mind.  I am a visual learner.  Plus, the act of writing things down activates kinesthetic learning, where our mind and body celebrate their interconnectedness.  One of my favorite quotes is that your mind is designed to have ideas not hold ideas.  Your mind is designed to be generative, not just some repository of data like a computer.  Plus, we know that when we retrieve moments from the past from our minds, it is soaked and saturated by emotions and experiences that shade the encounter in certain ways.  An experience I had ten years ago has been influenced and impacted by experiences I had ten days ago in ways I can’t always unpack or understand or untangle.  Write down the detective work you’ve done this week.  Then, let God sit beside you as you prayerfully ponder what the sacred might be up to in your life.  To be sure, it might not be crystal clear.  The life of faith is to follow this pattern of gathering the glimpses of grace and then seeking to let God help us make meaning of what we have noticed and name.  May this invitation awaken you to God’s grace and love this day.  Amen.

Detectives of the Divine

 

Yesterday, I invited you to listen to the words that fall from your lips, the stories you tell and share.  We shape our stories which in turn shape us.  Today, I want to invite you to pay attention to how you are being shaped by others.  We are not isolated individuals who live in a vacuum.  Our interactions, encounters, and experiences with fellow featherless bi-peds do impact us ~ both in good and in not so great/grand ways.  Rather than trying to do this with everyone you meet or greet today, which even for my extroverted friends would be a lot.  Choose three interactions that happen today.  This could be a phone call you have with a friend or with the store clerk or a meeting you have on the calendar.  As you are present in the moment with the beloved of God in front of you, be aware of what is happening within you.  Or, you can even be proactive and examine what assumptions you bring with you before you even enter the room or pick up the phone.  Much of what passes for interaction today falls into a broken script that keeps getting replayed and rehearsed.  If I think, “There is that person who always annoys me.”  I will probably be annoyed even if it is only by the person breathing.  Or if I say, “Here is someone I love.”  Chances are good that I will look for ways that person is a blessing, even if that person is mean or angry or is having a no good rotten day and takes it out on me.  Part of what makes the detective work of the Divine in our lives so hard is that the threads are twisted and tangled like a strand of Christmas lights, so we don’t see as clearly as we think we do.  Trying to unravel what is happening in us and what is happening between us takes a lot of energy, effort, and thought.  Honestly, sometimes we just don’t want to do it.  We’d rather go through life on autopilot where the systems are perfectly designed to give us what we expect.  Today, note one way you were surprised by another person.  Maybe you went into a meeting with that person, and she said something nice.  Or maybe it was the phone call where you thought the person was going to tell you again that story you’ve heard a thousand times, only there was one new subtle nuance you might have missed previously.   I pray God surprises you in beautiful ways today.  Amen. 

Detectives of the Divine

 

And Mary said (sang), “My soul magnifies the Lord” (Luke 1:46-47)

 

All great detectives have a magnifying glass. Okay, maybe it is just Sherlock Holmes who has that, but still it is cool.  I don’t know why that became a toy in the toybox of this profession.  Perhaps it was so the detective could spy with her little eye the subtle clues that were small ~ the piece of thread from the coat of the murderer or a smudge of a fingerprint.  For me, our faith is a magnifying glass. 

 

The truth is that we magnify all sorts of things in our words and actions.  A few weeks ago, I put that as, “What we venerate, we emulate”.  Or we are all living out of a gospel.  The stories we share shape us as we retell them.  One of the ways to wield the magnifying glass in your life is to listen to what you are saying and sharing.  Do you share only the good or only the bad?  Do you try to dissuade others that yes, the sky is falling or no, everything will be fine.  Do you dismiss and discount the evidence the magnifying glass of your life picks up that doesn’t conform or contort to your conclusion you’ve already reached? 

 

When we notice that our stories are magnifying glasses, we wake up and become aware of what is happening within us.  Listen to the stories you tell friends; notice the words you say and what is reflected back to you.  Finally, this is not done with judgement, blame or shame, but an openness to follow the thread of the holy in our lives as we become detectives of the Divine.  As you stay open to the stories you are sharing, where is God showing up in beautifully disruptive ways?  May this invitation awaken you to God’s grace and love this day and this week.  Amen.