Sentences to ponder

 

Yesterday, I invited you to let the lingering prayer of letting go of our anger, annoyance, and agitation at others because they are not as we wish them to be; because the truth is that you and I are not as we wish we were!  Often, we push our pain onto others.  I can get caught in thinking that if that person was as Enlightened as me, life would be better.  Too often we try to blame and shame them into changing.  Pause here, when was the last time someone blamed or shamed you, did that make a difference?  Did that technique motivate you to change?

 

Even when you demand someone keep pace with where you are, catch up and keep up, there is always someone further along the trail who could say the same of you.  More importantly, life isn’t a race.  Because a race toward what?!?  Death?  Enlightenment?  Some trophies?  Life is an experience and encounter ~ a relationship with less-than-perfect featherless bipeds who God says are to be companions.  Or if you want that more poetic, we cannot convince a rose to bloom faster than it will.  I can’t educate the grass to grow quicker in the dead spots of my lawn.  True, I can water and use earth healthy fertilizer, but I can’t cause the rain to come or shame the grass into flourishing.  I can offer what I can, but there is a lot that is beyond my control.  This leads me to the prayer sentence from Justin McRoberts and Scott Erikson for today:

 

May the reality that I cannot know the whole truth never keep me from bearing witness to what I can and do see.

 

Let these words marinate as you move and motivate you throughout the day.  Alleluia and Amen.

Morning Meditation

 

We are continuing to live our way without a map or turn-by-turn navigation through these Easter, April days.  We are continuing to fumble faithfully, praying that no one is looking at us or will try to offer helpful advice/suggestions on how we can improve.  We are holding, perhaps a bit too tightly with white knuckles, this invitation to be a foolish people…after all, these Morning Meditations just won’t quit with that theme!  So fine.  I’ll try, you think.  But it isn’t easy.  Have you been around other people lately?  We are not exactly the most forgiving people.  The Victorian Era dourness and dampness of life still sits in the corner of our souls, even though we are no longer wearing corsets or cufflinks and suitcoats with tails or top hats ~ thanks be to God for that.  The narrative we adopt and accept is that everything must be moving up and to the right ~ getting better and we need some quantifiable evidence of improvement.  We have been taught and caught that our one precious, fragile, fleeting life is constantly being graded.  Too often there seems to be a lot of red ink on the page of my life and I worry that the letter circled at the top is one big fat, “F”.  So, we seek out ways ~ politically, economically, socially, and religiously ~ to make ourselves feel better.  The dopamine of swiping the credit card or scoring some points on an imaginary score board or thinking our church has it all right keeps us running like a hamster on a wheel.  This week, I will share with you some prayer thoughts for a Holy Foolish Easter people.  These come from a book of prayers by Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson.  What I love about these prayers are they are one single sentence…not a whole page like some authors we know who will remain nameless but write Morning Meditations from Sarasota, Florida.  I invite you this week to let the words of each sentence prayer this week sit and simmer and soak into your soul all day long.  Come back to the words at noon time, dinner time, bedtime.  Ask yourself, where did the words shine a light on truth?  Or where did the sentence feel like sandpaper to your soul?  Or where did it taste like dry toast without butter?

 

Here is the sentence for today:

 

May I cease to be annoyed that others are not as I wish they were, since I am not as I wish I was. From Prayer by Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson.

 

Let these words marinate as you move throughout your day.  Alleluia and Amen.

Friday Prayer

 

God of acceptance that makes all the difference and at the same time can be like sandpaper to the rough parts of our souls, we don’t understand Your ways, even as we continue to live and explore the season of Easter.  Acceptance isn’t trending right now.  Fear and us versus them and making points on an imaginary score board ~ all of that seems to be gaining lots of followers in this world.  We struggle to love, because we have been taught that there is no such thing as a free lunch ~ so how can love be unconditional and grace unceasing?  We are too well schooled in might makes right and winning and ceasing the day.  We are too comfortable with the scripts that circle the wagons and clicks that keep feeding us more “evidence” that our opinions are the right opinions.  God, help us, for we cannot help ourselves.  The more the Easter light of mystery and bafflement shine down, the more all this seems like an idle tale.  The further away we move from the sugary sweet high of chocolate bunnies and savory ham sandwiches, the more other narratives start to forge deeper ruts in our neuro pathways.  Help us, O God, not lose track of mystery that we cannot explain.  Wonder leaves us speechless.  Help us stay open to humor that is holy this day and throughout the days to come.  In the name of the One who is with us on the detours and roadblocks and traffic jams that are part of an Eastering faith, Jesus the Christ.  Amen. 

Ruts in our mental roads

 

“I believe in Christ, like I believe in the sun – not because I can see it, but by it I can see everything else.”  C.S. Lewis

 

The foolishness of Easter changes our assumptions and presumptions and prejudices.  Suddenly life can feel too chaotic and we want to race and run back to what is known/comfortable.  Each of us have neuro pathways that fire in our brain throughout the day.  In some ways, these are good.  I like the ruts of routines that help me not overthink what to have for breakfast or the patterns and structures to my week that help me plan.  In addition, there can be pathways that are so well worn ~ it becomes like a dirt road in springtime.  Trying to respond differently when someone says something that hurts can be difficult because it is bumping a scar that may not have properly healed.  Trying to not get caught up in a sea of cynicism today can cause us to feel like salmon swimming upstream.  The question is, what is the Easter light revealing to you?  I continue to ponder prayerfully the spices of life.  I think about who is adding spice (good and bitter) to my life.  I continue to discern what ways I can life as an Easter person this year, especially since all the chocolate bunnies in my house are now finished!  As the sun rises on this new day, as morning has broken like the first morning, what ways is the good news of an empty tomb and emphatic “Yes” to life embodied in you, through you, for you, and to you?  That question, like a cave, can cause us to soul spelunk for days upon days.  May the exploration of the dance between our interior and exterior lives in community continue to lead us to live from the place that we are accepted and called to draw the circle wide for others.  May the light of this truth reveal for your life new insights and inspiration for this day.  Amen

Messy Middle of Easter

 

Christ turns all our sunsets into dawns ~ Clement of Alexandria

 

Part of endings is that there isn’t always an instant or immediate beginning.  Not every sunset suddenly becomes a sunrise ~ there is a transition time ~ a space between what was and what might be.  Such transitions are what the Easter season invites us into.  We have gone to the tomb that became a womb for new life.  We have listened to the testimony of the women telling us about angels and stones rolled away.  We have run with Peter to gaze inside the tomb that is empty except for the emphatic, “Yes” to life and love.  Between the sunset and dawn there is a moment that may last a few days or years or decades.

 

Is there an experience of a sunset recently for you?  Our church is living through one as our Minister of Music, Greg, is stepping away from the position.  This is bittersweet as we wished him well and showered him with love for the new chapter.  The truth is we miss him leading us in the days to come.  I am still trying to get used to life as an empty-nester.  I still struggle with trying to discern what is mine to do?  What about sunsets or dawns for you?  Are there new experiences waiting for you in the weeks to come?  We will welcome new folks at the organ bench in the coming weeks, we will have visitors and my kids will move back for summer break.  Perhaps this is another example of what we call the “Already” and “Not Yet”.  We know Easter and new life happened, but don’t feel the full effect, especially when we read the paper.  I pray you will play with endings, beginnings, and messy middles today for yourself, family or friends, our church and community.  Try to hold the beautiful tension between the good moments of change and the ones we resist with our fingers in a fist clinging to control and resistance.  May you discover renewed life even when things seem the same as yesterday.  May you know healing, peace, shalom, grace, health, wholeness, and love every hour this day.  Amen.

Easter Foolishness Continued

 

Yesterday, we continued to explore and experiment with what it means to be an Easter person, even when it is foolish.  We are turning to the help of a hymn, Help Us Accept Each Other.  Did you have any additional thoughts about what it means to live acceptance in your life from yesterday?  I thought about how people often don’t accept because they don’t feel accepted.  Or maybe think God doesn’t accept them.  The truth is we can create God in our image and with our opinions that can re-create us in that image.  One idea of sin is about projecting onto God all sorts of descriptions and definitions that say more about us then our words say about God.  This leads me to verses three and four of our hymn:

 

Let your acceptance change us, so that we may be moved in living situations to do the truth in love; To practice your acceptance, until we know by heart the table of forgiveness and laughter’s healing art.

 

God, for today’s encounters with all who are in need, who hunger for acceptance, for righteousness and bread, Bring us new eyes for seeing, new hands for holding on; renew us with your Spirit; God!  Free us, make us one!

 

Laughter’s healing art ~ what a beautiful image!  What a prayerful invitation.  Humor is holy and healing to our souls.  I also love how the first verse reminds us that this wayless way takes practice.  Acceptance is not some degree you earn and can hang on a wall; it is a day-by-day way of trying to be in the world today.  As Richard Rohr says, we often learn more by doing it wrong than getting it right (and I don’t always like that because I don’t like to be foolish

 

The second verse above reminds us that we will encounter bruised and broken people ~ the need may be physical or emotional or spiritual.  The poverty may come from someone who may have plenty of money in the bank or someone who has lost a job and eviction looms on the horizon.  We don’t always see each other as well as we think we do.  As someone who wears glasses, there are many moments when my vision is not close to 20/20.  And God help me if my glasses get knocked off or in the morning when I wake up and before I can put them on my face.  The world is blurry.  Maybe this is true in more ways than my vision.  I don’t and can’t possibly know everything.  I may think I have something figured out, but two years from now my understanding may seem as foolish as new life found empty tomb.

 

Often when someone talks about acceptance, immediately the defense attorney in our minds wants to object with the evidence of the worst person in history or that person who abused another.  We go to the extreme, because if we can find a loophole, then we are off the hook from listening to Uncle Gus’ rants at the family picnic this summer.  I am not saying you need to agree with Uncle Gus or that you should let him rant ~ acceptance (like love) is not one size fits all.  You can say, “That is not my understanding,” without throwing your paper plate of potato salad in someone’s face.  You can be curious, asking why and what from the past caused the person to come to that conclusion.  And this does take a lot of energy.  It is much easier to move slowly away and sidestep the confrontation.  Acceptance isn’t the only tool, but it is one that perhaps we can gain more comfort with through practice.  Who is one person (someone you truly do love, but also frustrates you) that you might try to embody acceptance for in one specific way today?  May that invitation evoke an experience of God’s strength ~ even if the interaction doesn’t go exactly according to the script (e.g. tears and hugs and symphonic strings magically playing in the background).  May the beautiful and foolish practice of acceptance continue to stir within you and be practiced by us all in these Easter days.

Easter foolish continued

 

We continue prayerfully to play with being an Easter people and how this can make us feel foolish or out of step with the world around us.  Afterall, the Easter candy is all gone from the shelves, except for a few bags of green plastic grass on the clearance table that honestly no one really wants.  The world has moved on, why do we continue to talk about Easter?  There is a beautiful balance between the season of Lent and the whole season of Easter.  Lent is the forty days (minus Sundays) leading up to Easter Sunday.  Between Easter and Pentecost (the Birthday of the Church), there are fifty days to open us to the mystery and marvel of this idle tale of new life from the dark womb of the tomb.  One of the reasons we might be skeptical of resurrection is that it doesn’t always happen ~ it isn’t predictable and doesn’t play by our plotting or planning.  Cancer isn’t always cured, prayer isn’t always answered, the pain can throb and rob us of our health ~ physically or emotionally or spiritually.  My inner teenager says, “Everyone else seems to cling to the script that we can hurt and harm and yell our way to peace and new life and God’s realm.  Why can’t I?!?”  I need some foundation or formation or focus in this wayless way of Easter faith.  I invite you to ponder the first two verses of Help Us Accept Each Other:

 

Help us accept each other as Christ accepted us; teach us as sister, brother, each person to embrace.  Be present, God, among us, and bring us to believe we are ourselves accepted and meant to love and live.

 

Teach us, O God, your lessons, as in our daily life we struggle to be human and search for hope and faith.  Teach us to care for people, for all, not just for some, to love them as we find them, or as they may become.

 

Was there a word or phrase that caught your attention?  Was there something in the above that felt like sandpaper to your soul?  For example, maybe you wonder if accepting people really does make any difference?  Or can that just continue to enable behavior?  Of course, most of us featherless bipeds need more affirmation and acceptance, not less.  For most people, even those who say hurtful things, do so from a place of lack and low self-worth ~ we pull others down as we try to prop ourselves up.  I am taken by the line, “Bring us to believe we are ourselves accepted”.  That is a riff on Jesus’ saying, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”.  There seems to be some intertangled web of relationships between us and others.  To build on what we heard on Easter, that it is not just the spices we bring with us ~ others contribute spices (sweet and bitter) to our lives and often do so without being asked!

 

I love that last bit about loving people as we find them or as the person may become.  The truth is that most people are evolving, but we don’t always share our transformation outwardly.  Maybe we are concerned about rejection or response of people we love.  Maybe we don’t want to look foolish.  Yet, Christ’s acceptance was expansive and elastic.  He could meet the disciples who denied and deserted him in the room without judgement.  He could call Zacchaeus ~ a chief tax collector and invite himself over.  He could tell parables of prodigal love that flowed from a Samaritan and from a Mothering Father that maybe didn’t magically make everything better, but such acceptance does shift something in our souls.  Pause ~ when was the last time you felt fully accepted?

 

I encourage you to read the two verses above a few times today, twist and turn them like a kaleidoscope seeing what new colors or shapes or designs might appear before you.  I pray we will do more than think about these words but find ways to live them in our lives this day and week. Amen.