Lent 2 ~ Quotes for Lent

 

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.  Frederick Buechner

 

As you read the above quote, what is your response to what Buechner is saying?  Do you find your soul nodding, objecting, or confused?  Buechner juxtaposes the contradiction of faith ~ terrible things happen, and we are not alone.  But, our minds interject/interrupt/object that when terrible things happen, that is the exact moment we feel alone!  How can this be?  What questions do you have?  What experiences do you bring as evidence that might support what Buechner is saying and what stirs within you that challenges this quote? 

 

Read the quote a second time, thinking about the beautiful and terrible things that have happened in the first two months of this year.  Beautiful moments with family and friends, or celebrations, or a warm coffee on a cold day.  Terrible things in the world around us, from violence to famine to homelessness to hurt and harm to personal moments that have left scars on your soul.  Make a list of what has been beautiful and broken so far this year.

 

Third, read the quote, then just let it sit like a pot of soup simmering on the stove of your soul.  Maybe it is just one word or a thought that pulls up a chair at the table of your life for a few moments.

 

Fourth, read the quote again and let your soul receive God’s grace (that isn’t earned or deserved but given from God every second).  What would grace feel like, taste like, be like if grace were being poured into and from you every moment today? 

 

May the meditations of your mind and stirrings of your heart this day ground and guide you as you move your way through the wayless way.  Amen. 

Lent Week 2 ~ Quotes for the Soul

 

Pay attention to the things that bring a tear to your eye or a lump in your throat because they are signs that the Holy is drawing near.  Frederick Buechner

 

During Lent, we are welcoming the wisdom of others to sing, stir, and swirl in our souls.  This week, we will lean in and listen to Frederick Buechner.  Buechner was a Presbyterian minister, preacher, and author.  He wrote 39 books, including novels, memoirs, and theological works.  He enrolled at Princeton University, but his education was interrupted by – in Buechner’s words – “two years of very undistinguished service” during World War 2 serving all over the United States.  After the war, he graduated from Princeton and began his career as a writer.  He lived in New York City and attended Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, where George Buttrick was the minister.  It was in one of Buttrick’s sermons that Buechner was inspired to attend Union Theological Seminary.  After graduating, he was hired at Exeter in the religion department.  He eventually retired to a farmhouse in Vermont.

 

Each day, I will offer a different quote, and I invite you to engage in sacred reading. 

 

First, read the quote above slowly, and notice/name your response.  Let it tickle your imagination, let it roam around your heart, let the syllables of the words stumble around your soul.  Pay attention to your response to the quote.  Does the quote make you smile or feel like sandpaper to your soul?  Does the quote evoke or provoke a passionate reaction, or taste like bland bread without any salt?  Sit with the quote over a cup of tea/coffee for a few minutes.

 

Second, re-read the quote, this time letting the words/images/ideas intersect your life.  For example, with the quote above, think about what brought tears to your eyes last week.  Where was there a lump in your throat or a shiver down your spine or a sense that this world is more than we can comprehend and control?  Our Celtic friends call such moments “thin places,” where the line between heaven and earth blurs.  Or perhaps we could say that this is the moment when the heaven in you escapes your soul into the world.  (Remember the goal of religion is not to get you into heaven, but to get heaven out of you while on earth).

 

Third, re-read the quote, and sit silently with openness to what these words might mean to embrace and embody this day in you.

 

Finally, consider the quote: how might these words inform and inspire your living today and this week?  Try to set a concrete intention given what the quote evokes and provokes from you.

 

May you and I continue to pay attention to the lumps and bumps that leave us stumped, but are clearly moments that are traces of grace in the world today.  Amen.

Lent Week One ~ Quotes for the Soul

 

Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails.  Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor

 

As we wind down and wrap up the week with Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor, recall our four-step process with her wisdom.

 

First, read the quote above and name/notice your response.

Second, re-read the quote, letting the wisdom intersect your life ~ what truths have you gained this week by practicing God’s insight ~ both in ways that blessed you and broke you open?

Third, sit quietly with her words, letting them sink and settle into your soul.

Fourth, how might you live the wisdom you have encountered today?  Be practical and write down your thoughts.

Let us pray:

God of wisdom that is still at work in the world around us and the world within us.  Thank you for the words/work/wisdom of Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor.  Thank you for her ongoing prophetic and powerful voice in this world.  Help us, O God, let the quotes we have met this week marinate within us.  Let our morning meditations be like a river over the stone of our souls, smoothing our rough places and guiding us in the Holy Flow of You.  As we continue the season of Lent, may these days shape our faith, connecting us with You, others, and ourselves in new ways we need in the wayless way of today.  Amen.  

Lent Week One ~ Quotes for the Soul

 

Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.  Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor

 

Rather than more words from me today, I invite you to go outside and let God’s first testament, which is creation, sing and speak and surround you.

 

Let the wisdom of the trees, turtles, stars, and soil inform you.  You can go to your backyard, a park, the beach, or around the block.  Leave your phone at home, just you and creation which is how God communicates to us still today. 

 

What do you hear?

What do you see?

What do you feel on your skin?

What do you smell?

What taste dances on the tip of your tongue?

 

Let creation that is overflowing with the wonder, wisdom, and words of the Creator infuse and inspire your living today.  Amen.

Lent Week One ~ Quotes for the Soul

 

The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do.  Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor

 

Today is our third day of letting the prophetic, poetic, and powerful words of Pastor Barbara Brown Taylor guide us, teach us, and stretch us on the Lenten journey.  Yesterday, we heard her call us to account on the ways church and state can team up to hurt and harm others.  Today, we listen to the ways the church has its own issues. 

First, read the quote, and notice/name your response.  This reads my mail and makes me squirm.  Of course, I think God agrees with me!  Or as Anne Lamont once said, “Of course, I think my opinion is right!  Otherwise, I would get a new opinion!”  Yet, when I conflate, confuse, and convince myself that God is on my side, I make an idol of my own understanding.  God is beyond my comprehension.  In what ways do we as a church need saving?

 

Second, re-read the quote, this time letting the words/ideas/thoughts expressed above intersect your life.  I pray that every person in our church would take time to ponder prayerfully where we need saving.  As much as I love the algorithm that keeps spoon-feeding me more of the same ideas to keep me clicking, God doesn’t do that.  God’s unconditional and unceasing love finds me where I am, but doesn’t leave me there. 

 

Third, re-read the quote, and sit silently with Rev. Taylor’s wisdom.  Today, may we pray for God’s wisdom to be a light to our church, showing us where we’ve convinced ourselves that we are right while “those” people are wrong.

 

Finally, what might our church try differently because God is not finished with us yet?  How might God be refashioning, reforming, re-storying our church to align with our self-giving, suffering- embracing God?

 

May today’s wisdom work and wiggle and even bring us to the edge of where we feel confident and certain and in control ~ because at the end of our rope is often God’s address.  Amen.

Lent Week One ~ Quotes for the Soul

 

Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware of those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware of those who cannot tell God's will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff's office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar.  Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor

 

This Lent, we are opening our hearts, minds, and lives to the wisdom of fellow travelers in the Christian faith.  Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus who encounter Jesus, this Lent we are listening to fellow pilgrims who go beside, before, and have traveled this road to Calvary and the empty tomb a few times in the past.  Like a trail guide, these quotes have beautiful suggestions to teach and tell us.  This week, we are letting the wisdom of Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor be a light to our path.  Each day when I offer a quote, I invite you to a four-step process:

 

First, read the quote above, and notice/name your response.  Let it tickle your imagination, let it roam around your heart, let the words stumble around your soul.  Pay attention to your response to the quote.  Does the quote make you smile or feel like sandpaper to your soul?  Does the quote evoke or provoke a passionate reaction, or taste like bland bread without any salt?  Sit with the quote over a cup of tea/coffee for a few minutes.

 

Second, re-read the quote, this time letting the ideas and insights intersect your life.  For example, with the quote above, I feel chills down my spine.  I sense the hard, harsh truth of Taylor’s words ~ law and order allied with religion as a toxic, nauseous liquor that too often the church still gets addicted.  This Lent, we are offering a series of discussions on Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited (March 11 and 25 at 3 p.m.), where he offers a voice of caution to blending and bringing together of church and state.  When the line between faith and political power becomes blurred, that has historically been oppressive, hurtful, and harmful.  Yet, we keep returning to this recipe as if it is ordained by God.  Remember, in the Hebrew Scriptures, God never wanted to give the people a king.  God resisted until our human stubbornness and stiff-neckedness demanded we knew better than God.  And God is still rubbing her forehead in response.  Let this quote disrupt you and connect to a few weeks ago when Paul said to the Corinthians that we never, never can “understand all mysteries”.  We don’t know what we don’t know.

 

Third, re-read the quote, and sit silently with the wisdom, letting it stir and swirl within you.  This is your chance to quiet your mind and let these words work on you, rearrange the furniture of your mind, and even cause you to be agitated and antsy in beautiful ways. 

 

Finally, consider the quote: how might the world of these words inform and inspire your living today and this week?

 

May you and I find ways to let God’s peace and presence open our hearts from the demands and decrees of Caesar today.  Amen.

Lent Week One ~ Quotes for the Soul

 

The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.  Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor

 

During the season of Lent, I want us to lean in and listen to the wisdom of preachers who continue to inspire, inform, challenge, and change me.  This week, we will meditate and ruminate and let the wisdom of Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor sing to our souls.  Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest who served congregations in GA until she was called to join the faculty of Piedmont College (a UCC-founded college).  Over the course of her teaching, she has written numerous books, spoken at hundreds of conferences, but her favorite gig (according to her website) is being a full-time caretaker of a farm in the foothills of the Appalachians, where she lives with her husband, Ed, and many animals. 

 

Each day, when I offer a quote from Rev. Taylor, I invite you to engage in sacred reading.  Take a deep breath with me and slowly exhale. 

 

First, read the quote above, and notice/name your response.  Let it tickle your imagination, let it roam around your heart, let the syllables of the sentences stumble around your soul.  Pay attention to your response to the quote.  Does the quote make you smile or feel like sandpaper to your soul?  Does the quote evoke or provoke a passionate reaction, or taste like bland bread without any salt?  Sit with the quote over a cup of tea/coffee for a few minutes.

 

Second, re-read the quote, this time letting the intent of the words intersect your life.  For example, with the quote above, think about the other featherless bipeds you interacted with last week.  Did you try to use, change, fix, help, save, convince, or control?  I know I did.  How might someone that I meet today free me from the prison of myself?  What does that look like?  Pro tip: You may want to imagine a friend freeing you from the prison of yourself first, because immediately jumping to that person who makes your blood boil.  Just a thought.

 

Third, re-read the quote, and sit silently with the wisdom without trying to wrestle a meaning or a blessing.  As Rabbi Heschel once said, “Words create worlds.”  Enter the world of this quote with a curiosity and an openness that shape you.

 

Finally, consider how the world of these words could inform and inspire your living today and this week?  Try to set a practice to embrace and embody these words at a specific time and place today.

 

May the wisdom of fellow travelers on the road of faith give us strength during this season of Lent and during these wilderness-wander wayless way days.  Amen.