Lent Week Four

 

Please pray this beautiful prayer/blessing from Kate Bowler with me:

 

a blessing when you can’t fake it (or make it?)

I have been propped up on my toes, peering over fences but mostly staring at the peeling paint.  Hoping has become longing.  Wanting has become needing. I can see love everywhere but here. There is a naturalness to the way other people experience their joys popping up like tender, spring grasses. The earth, it seems, is always warm and autumn seedlings break open and bring life, life, everywhere. And I chew on my lip as neighbors roll their eyes at relationships, children, plans—gifts I would tear open like a Christmas present. What riches. Scatter my heart like a dandelion, drifting high over these walls and setting down, gently, where good things grow. Contentment and wonder, surprise and new adventure, comfort in the hands of those who know love’s value and love’s cost. Envy will be blown away by another breeze and I rest here waiting, waiting for the blooms.

Lent Week Four ~ Delores Williams

 

Women’s History Month is a call to open our ears and hear voices that come from diverse perspectives.  Delores Williams is a Womanist Theologian.  She was an African American who wrote the brilliant book, “Sisters in the Wilderness”.  She built on the voices, like Sojourner Truths famous quote, “Ain’t I a Woman?” and helped to expand our understandings of faith with her insights.  Slowly read the following two quotes from Williams:

Faith has taught me to see the miraculous in everyday life: the miracle of ordinary black women resisting and rising about evil forces in society, where forces work to destroy and subvert the creative power and energy my mother and grandmother taught me God gave black women.”

 There is nothing divine in the blood of the cross ... As Christians, Black women cannot forget the cross, but neither can they glorify it. To do so is to glorify suffering and to render their exploitation sacred. To do so is to glorify the sin of defilement ...

 

What is your response to these two quotes?  What thoughts are evoked and provoked?  Do they stretch you?  Where are you seeing the miracle of the everyday, especially in the courage and conviction of our siblings on the margin?  How does Williams’ beautifully unique voice send you in a new direction?  I pray you will expand your list of female voices this month.  Read the voice of a new author, especially one who does NOT share your background.  Listen to the podcast of a female who comes from a different perspective.  Women’s History Month should invite us into a conversation with a multitude of beloved daughters of God who are still speaking and singing in the spirit of Sophia, or wisdom in the book of Proverbs.  Sophia, who sings to us, calling us back to God’s way in a time when so many voices want to pull us to consume and lash out at each other.  Stretch yourself today and listen to the voice of someone unfamiliar as a way for God to get a word in edgewise.  Amen.

Lent Week Four ~ Therese of Lisieux

 

Therese of Lisieux was born in 1873 and lived only until 1897.  In her short, sacred life she wrote, “The Little Flower of Jesus”.  You can find out more about her online or read her book.  For today, savor these quotes from her:

 

The value of life does not depend upon the place we occupy. It depends upon the way we occupy that place.

 

Perfect love means putting up with other people's shortcomings, feeling no surprise at their weaknesses, finding encouragement even in the slightest evidence of good qualities in them.

 

Jesus, help me to simplify my life by learning what you want me to be and becoming that person.

 

I recently heard that annoyance is the price of community.  We can frustrate and flummox each other.  We can push each other’s buttons.  And, this is true not only for others, but for you.  I annoy people ~ perhaps with my lame jokes or side comments or constant talking.  We base much of our lives on what we accomplish or achieve, rather than how we occupy and show up.  We judge based on numbers rather than character.  Ponder, how do you want to show up today?  How might you hold gently the weaknesses and foibles of others?  Let these quotes sing to your soul this day in ways that surprise and delight and stretch you.  Amen.

Lent Week Four ~ Women's History Quotes

 

I pray today you are continuing to remember women who have left fingerprints on your soul and inspired your life.  I pray your list is growing longer as you suddenly remember that 3^rd grade teacher who instilled in you a love of reading.  By the way, my 3^rd grade teacher was Mrs. Lord (no kidding!).  She was thoughtful, kind, and generous.  I still remember her giving me extra pretzel sticks when we were making a log cabin for Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in February.  Why, why would we glue a perfectly good (and delicious) pretzel stick on a piece of construction paper?  I don’t remember, but I think I ate more than I glued.  In the spirit of that, read slowly these quotes from Julian of Norwich.

 

The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything. God is the ground, the substance,
the teaching, the teacher, the purpose, and the reward for which every soul labors.

 

As truly as God is our Father, so truly God is our Mother. (note that Julian wrote in the 1300s!)

 

Between God and the soul there is no between.

 

What stirs and swirls in response to these quotes?  When have you experienced and encountered God’s mothering care?  When have you felt the distance between God and your soul evaporate in the blink of an eye?  What objections do you have to Julian, what questions?  Write down your responses.  Then, re-read the quotes and see if anything shifts or something new stirs within you.  May you and I feel God’s presence grazing our skin and entering our souls in these days.  Amen.

Lent Week Four ~ Women's History

 

We are in the middle of Women’s History Month.  As the History Channel’s website reminds us, we “dedicate (this) month to reflect on the often-overlooked contributions of women to U.S. history.  From Abigail Adams to Susan B Anthony, Sojourner Truth to Rosa Parks, (we study) the timeline of women’s history milestones stretching back to before the founding of the United States.  There is a great website:

https://www.history.com/articles/womens-history-us-timeline

that will give you an overview of women who have left fingerprints on the soul of our nation.

 

This is also a wonderful month to honor the current women shaping and sustaining your life.  Name aloud women in your life whose care and compassion make you who you are.  Name aloud your mother, aunt, next door neighbor growing up, Sunday School teachers, mentors, colleagues, friends who show you the sacred feminine through whom God’s image shimmers and shines.  Name aloud women in our church leading and lighting the way in these days.  Close your eyes and bring to your mind’s eye those whose presence is part of you always. 

 

This week, I will offer a few quotes from women who shape my faith.  To be sure, this doesn’t even begin to do justice to the voices who inform, inspire, and infuse my life.  Slowly savor this quote from St. Teresa of Calcutta: 

 

“It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home, for this is where our love for each other must start.”

 

Where does this quote stir your soul?  What does it stretch your imagination or your comfort?  What is your response?  Write down your reaction to this quote.  Then, re-read the words.  Did you notice something different this time?  Continue to let these words move, mingle, and mix in your life this day.  Amen. 

Lent Week Three

 

Today, I invite you to pray these words of Bishop Charleston with me.  Speak each word aloud slowly, letting the syllable slowly leap off your tongue, leaving behind a savory/spicy/sweet taste.  Pause at the end of each sentence to give what you just prayed aloud time to sing and sink into your soul.  Read and re-read, rinse and repeat, until these words have wedged their way into your heart and until God has been discovered in what you are praying.  These are God’s words to you:

 

Let me celebrate your outrageousness, your odd quirks, and your essential strangeness.  That’s what I like best about you; that is what I admire.  You not only move to the beat of a different drum, but you have a whole symphony.  You notice what many of us never see.  You find what the rest of us forgot we lost.  You have bypassed the need to be with the in-crowd and have created a community of dreamers.  I, for one, honor your weirdest vision and your most unconventional idea.  Without you, the world would be a bad movie.  So, from one oddball to another, thank you for being what you are not.  Steven Charleston

Lent Week 3 ~ Quote of the Day

 

I guess you could say I have a working-class spirituality.  I think you have to put a little sweat equity into what you believe.  You have to practice what you preach.  Justice does not just happen.  Compassion is not a spectator sport, but something I have to exercise as I roll up my sleeves to do my part in creating a better community.  I need to put in my hours as a volunteer.  I have to join the prayer crew and put my life on the line to make a difference.  The world will change not by wishes, but by the labor of love we call faith.  Spirituality is not a spa, but a construction site, where we build hope one heart at a time.  Steven Charleston

 

As you read the quote this morning, ponder, where are the calluses on your soul from having worked out your faith?  Paul says to the church in Philippi, “Work out your salvation/faith/life with fear (or awe or contemplation or openness) and trembling (or the beautiful uncertainty that we don’t know what we don’t know.  We all still are students in the class of Failure 101).  See Philippians 2:12.  We participate with God in building/remodeling our faith.  We participate in a Divine Dance where God infuses and inspires us.  God nudges us.  God works to escape through us, but our agendas and busyness make it difficult to sense the traces of grace.

 

Where have you had a working-class spirituality ~ sweat on the brow, callus on your hands, muscles strained and labored breathing kind of faith?  This might connect to the Morning Meditation from Tuesday, because my spirituality works hardest (perhaps too hard?) in times of difficulty.  In times of trouble, in times of ache when achievement won’t come, no matter how much I plot and plan, this is difficult.  In times of struggle and stress, working with God for justice, those can be the hardest moments.  When people keep choosing cruelty over compassion, hate over healing, bullying over vulnerable love.  When people keep skipping Failure 101, because they are perfect in their own minds.  Consider, who do you want to be with at a party?  Someone who has a bit of dust on their soul, ache in their voice, and laughter in their heart OR someone who continually says, “Well, I was born perfect and have achieved everything I ever wanted with barely breaking a sweat”?  Over-confident people have made gods of their own image and worship at the altar of the ego.  Too often, we are lured and led by such certainty as history rubs her forehead saying, “I am tired of repeating myself!!” 

 

I love Charleston, who says Spirituality, and the church/religion/faith, is not a day at the spa but a construction site.  So grab a hard hat, hammer, and roll up your sleeves today for the ongoing invitation of Micah to participate in God’s justice, to embody God’s love/kindness, and remember your human-size-ness each moment this day.  Amen.