Week One, Day Two Hope

I invite you into the prayer practice of Visio Divina by beginning to breathe in the count of three...exhale to the count of six or seven.

Breathe in the One who Creates, Redeems, Sustains you right here and now...exhale those voices, places, and spaces that are too cynical or critical.

Breathe in a single flower blooming in the desert...breathe out the parts of you that seem to suggest that such a sight is simply a mere mirage.

Look at the image and let your eyes stay with the very first thing that you see. Keep your attention on that one part of the image that first catches your eye. Try to keep your eyes from wandering to other parts of the picture. Breathe deeply and let yourself gaze at that part of the image for a minute or so. Then, you may want to make a list of everything you see.  Or you may want to name just one or two things you notice and ask yourself why you are focusing there?

Go to the very edge of the photo, try to peer into what is just beyond the edge of the frame. See the whole photo and reflect on the image for a minute or so.

Consider the following questions:

What emotions does this image evoke in you?

What does the image stir up in you, bring forth in you?

Does this image lead you into an attitude of prayer? If so, let these prayers take form in you. Write them down if you desire.

Reflection...

Now, this is more like it.  

This conforms to our constructed container of what a desert should be!

Just a few blades of grass trying to survive the struggle of finding enough water.

There are a couple of barren twigs poking tentatively and shyly out of the ground.

It is all well and good to talk about hope, but some days hope feels like (to borrow the phrase from Frederick Buechner), 'wishful thinking'.  Pie-in-the-sky.  Hope doesn't always feel grounded in the raw reality of today.  The ways we speak of hope can sound too removed from the grit and grime we encounter in our lives and the news we hear on television.

We tend to gravitate toward that which reinforces our way of perceiving the world.

A desert is supposed to be a wilderness place!  Wild means that it is unpredictable, where our flight, fight, flee, freeze, or flock part of our reptilian brain says, “It’s showtime!”.

Yet, so often, our dualistic minds want to compartmentalize and categorize everything into the containers we've constructed.  This thing/event/person, we doth declareth, is good.  This other thing/event/person is bad.  Yet, what do we do when just a few small blades of grass are deviant and poke their heads out of the sand where they shouldn't be?  Do we shrug it off as an anomaly?  Do we ignore them?

The same can be true of our lives.

In the slog that can sometimes be life, wandering in the wilderness looking for an oasis to rest, we don't always take in the complexity of each moment.

Yes, there is deep pain when the pink slip comes.

Yes, there is an honest, raw, real disappointment when we hear the doctor's diagnosis.

Yes, family's comments can cause lasting wounds that won't heal easily.

The desert is real.

Hope doesn't try to diminish or deny the harsh barrenness of the wilderness landscape in life; at least not true hope anyway.  Hope doesn't puff out its chest to say, "I am superwoman and will save the day!"  Hope acknowledges the harsh hardness of the desert.  And hope is also wonderfully creative at looking, deeply gazing, for a single blade of grass even in the struggle or suffering.

It isn't a paradoxical puzzle to solve, it is a trace of grace - both the sand and grass together.  A trace of grace when God’s grand entry is a stable this Advent season.  A trace of grace as God roams around our lives today persistently and patiently in waiting for you and me to notice and respond to the blades of hope around us.

Blessings ~~