The Garden of Your Life Part 3

 

Jesus often talked about gardening as a metaphor in his parables.  He spoke of workers who put in different hours and were all paid the same at the end of the day ~ oh that parable will push our fairness buttons every time.  He told stories about weeds and wheat and how those two can be twisted and tangled ~ grow together ~ just as they do in your life.  He told a story about a vineyard that was taken over by the labors who go all Lord of the Flies on the king’s son killing him ~ that story really takes an unexpected violent turn!  In Jesus’ day, people lived close to the land and knew the limits of our humanness ~ what we cannot control.  To be sure, I can help enrich the soil, but the soil also has its own life.  I can add water, but what is enough water for one seed might drown another.  I can pull the weeds around the tomato plant ~ so that the nourishing nutrients are not diverted to other things I don’t want to grow.  I might help or inadvertently end up hurting the roots.  I won’t and maybe don’t ever fully know.  Wait ~ don’t miss this ~ you won’t and maybe will never fully know all the mystery to the garden of your life. 

So, you might think, maybe we should do nothing, just sit back and think, “It is what it is.”  Or, we can do what we can, where we can, as prayerfully as we can ~ realizing that things don’t always work out exactly as we plot and plan.  Is there a place in the garden of your life you want to spend time?  This might be in relationships or having fun (play is a sacred practice) or connecting with God or serving ~ as you look at the drawing of your life, what corner calls out for you?  Maybe the whole garden plot is clamoring right now for your attention, and it feels overwhelming!  But know that you don’t need to make everything better instantly or immediately.  Chose one place and part to sink your fingers into the soil of your life, prayerfully asking and being open to God’s wisdom, and trusting that God longs to join you in cultivating and curating the garden of your life.  Amen.

The Garden of Your Life Part 2

 

Yesterday, I asked you to survey and scan the landscape that is growing within you ~ what we might call our soul-scape.  What is flourishing and what is wilting and what seeds might still be hidden in the earth that we are unsure whether a small shoot might burst and break forth.  Often, we cannot clearly see the roots that are hidden beneath the ground.  Roots that run in all directions may even be twisted and tangled with your children’s roots and your neighbors’ roots and what we are reading about in the news.  No matter how neat and tidy we try to make the rows of the garden of our life, plants have a life of their own.  I remember my parents would plant the seeds of the tomatoes side-by-side.  Two identical seeds, in the same soil, experienced the same weather conditions, tended, and cared for in the same way ~ but one tomato plant would yield an abundant harvest and the other barely eked out enough for a BLT sandwich.  This is a reminder that there is much in life that we don’t control and cannot comprehend or conclusively say why a “seed” of our life isn’t growing.  Yet, the cultural script contradicts what creation is telling/teaching us.  We are constantly taught and catch that if something fails, we must have done something wrong (blame) or we are something wrong (shame).  Or someone else is to blame and we can shame them!   Never mind that there are always forces at work in our life that we cannot capture or control ~ there are winds that whip and whirl around us that don’t ask my permission before swirling and stirring.  As you survey the garden of your life, are there places, people, plants/seeds that you are pouring energy that seem to be barely surviving, not thriving?  Before you blame or shame yourself or others, see if there are other conditions around you and within you.  What are the metaphorical weather conditions or winds or hungry bunnies are making it difficult for the seeds to grow in the garden of your life?  Can we realize and recognize that the garden where we are called to tend and till is also held in the hands of the original Gardening God?  That we didn’t create the seed or soil or send the rain?  That I am human size, which means, I don’t always get it right and won’t because my name isn’t “God”.  Continue to be in the garden of your life, connecting to the soil in your soul and stardust that there as well ~ surveying the sacred truth of interconnectedness/web of life.  Amen.

 

The Garden of Your Life

 

I can remember and recall the large garden my parents had growing up.  I believe this was legally required in Iowa and you could receive a fine if you did not try to grow corn!  Ironically, corn was the one crop that never quite seemed to produce as much as say the zucchini plant ~ which seemed to take God’s words about being fruitful and multiplying to heart.  It was as if the zucchini plant was the cheerleader to the other seeds saying, “Come on everyone, let’s grow!!”  I had enough zucchini growing up to last me a lifetime!  We also had green beans, tomatoes, pumpkin, squash, radishes, and beets ~ even though I tried to start a petition for my parents to not plant beets.  That effort was squelched when my parents reminded me the garden was not a democracy. 

 

Perhaps by now you are remembering the gardens of your childhood ~ the ones you helped your grandma tend or sugar peas you helped harvest or the nickel you got for pulling weeds. 

 

Gardening is the original profession and calling of God.  In Genesis 2:15 we are told that, “The Lord God took the human and put the being in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.”  We have soil in our souls, to tend the earth is in our very DNA and our holiest calling.  And while I do not grow any of the vegetables I eat, the metaphorical truth is that we are all still tending the garden called, “our life”.

 

What is growing in your soul this day?

If you had to draw a picture of garden plot of your life, what is there ~ according to your calendar and to do list?

What is flourishing and thriving in your garden?  This could be relationships, volunteering, prayer, connecting with creation, and your connection to our Creator.

Where does it look like there are weeds or is the garden overgrown with too much busyness or brokenness?

 

Take time today to get out colored pencils and paper to sketch the garden of your life.  Pay attention to other gardens that are nearby (friends and family) ~ because your garden is impacted by those around you.  Pay attention to how the garden of the world can encroach and take over the soil we are cultivating and curating with our still gardening God.  Pay attention to the soil in your soul and the earth where the soles of your feet touch and where the grass tickles your toes.  As always if you want to talk more about tending the garden of your soul, come and talk to me.  Blessings and love fellow green thumb-ers~

Bless the Questions

 

One of my favorite quotes is from Rainer Maria Rilke, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”  This week, perhaps you found yourself a bit frustrated or flummoxed because you could only think of times when you felt afraid or unloved.  To be sure, negative thoughts can stick and stay around like Velcro while positive thoughts slip away quickly like an egg off Teflon.  Plus, we live in a culture that craves and cultivates quick responses on social media.  We want easily consumable words and images that we can rally around.  Brian McLaren says that we often prefer a simple lie to an ambiguous/contradictory truth.  But to live the questions?  To live in uncertainty and ambiguity and contradiction?  We are all a mystery inhabiting this earth.  Why we do what we do when we do it, is not so easily understood or articulated, especially when we feel put on the spot.  So let us bless the questions we hold with shrugged shoulders whilst scratching our heads.  Let us bless the big questions that don’t get solved instantly or immediately but take time to unfold and as they unfold new wrinkles appear that change everything.  Let us bless the small questions that can baffle and bewilder us, because sometimes I don’t know which flavor of ice cream I want!  Let us bless the invitation to doubt, holding onto a faith that has doubt dancing with it, trusting that if we are 100 percent certain, why would we need faith?  Let us bless the impractical and inconvenient and moments it feels like it is two steps forward and twenty steps backwards!  Let us bless this moment it all its messy beautifulness and amazing awfulness that life is not a math equation to solve but a question and mystery that we live with God, each other, and the swirling spirit within.  Bless you with the questions today and the ones that visit you tomorrow, for in our prayerful ponderings (just as Mary did the night Jesus was born), we might discover the divine in the most unusual (a manger), unlikely (a stable), unconventional (with shepherds) places of our life.  May it be so for you and for me.  Amen.  

Questions for Our Lives Together

 

This week we are diving into and dwelling with the seven primal questions that Mike Foster writes about:

Am I safe?  Am I secure?  Am I loved?  Am I wanted?  Am I successful or filled with joy? Am I good enough?  Do I have purpose?

While we have focused on how these questions sit in us individually, these questions are also communally and collectively.  In some ways, as a country, we may have not felt safe and secure since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 or with COVID still lingering.  Someone may say he loves us, but we may not fully believe the words or feel the words or trust the words.  Someone may tell us we did a fantastic job, but our inner critic says, “She is just being nice.”  We know our families leave their fingerprints on our lives in good and sometimes not so great ways.  I know that growing up, I did not feel financially secure.  My parents struggled to make ends meet, we didn’t always have money for the latest and greatest fashions.  This continues to be a story that works unconsciously in my life.  Even when the balance in our bank account grows, I can still wonder if the safety net is big enough.  Or maybe you grew up being told that love was conditional or transactional, and that is how you understand God.  These questions exist within us and around us.  For the church, do we feel safe?  Do we express love?  Do we let loose God’s joy?  Do we encourage and equip people to try out gifts with grace ~ giving tons of permission to make mistakes and missteps?  In the coming months, the church will be discussing our Mission and Vision Statements ~ the words we will use give voice to our purpose ~ why we exist.  Why are we here, especially considering how many other churches also exist?  I wonder if our purpose as a church is to cultivate creativity and be a conduit for curiosity.  If we are a place where questions are welcome and there is plenty of room for doubt.  Remember that doubt is not the opposite of faith.  Rather the opposite of faith is certainty.  If we know 100 percent the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we leave little room for God to explore or evolve or expand.  As you hold these questions for yourself, how can we hold them together with our friends and family and fellow church members?  I pray we will continue to let these questions guide us on in the unfolding quests/journey of life we travel together.

Questions for Your Life Part 2

 

This week we are playing with the questions of safety, security, feeling loved, wanted, joyful, good, and sense of purpose.  Yesterday, I invited you to reflect on when you felt safe and who was with you?  Or when did you encounter and experience God’s love from another?  Today, I want to expand and encourage you to describe and define what each of these words would look like, feel like, taste or smell like?  The clearer we can be with what safety means for you, the more you may uncover and discover why you may not feel safe.  For example, if security means having more in the balance of my bank account, then I might not ever feel secure.  Or if feeling good enough comes only after people offer praise for something I did, then I might be constantly seeking other’s affirmation and approval.  I want to be clear; this takes time.  Initially, I may write down that my purpose is faithfulness - to grow in the image of God for the sake of the other.  But I will need to sit with that.  How do I grow in the image of God?  When or where?  Do I grow through reading or serving or holding someone’s hand?  Also, how am I growing in new or different ways?  The reality is that by June this year, maybe faithfulness is no longer my clear-cut number one purpose, perhaps feeling loved takes center stage.  I know when I first began in ministry success was a growing church ~ more people and more pledges.  But what if success in ministry is more about growing in ways that can’t be measured with numbers?  We constantly evolve and expand and explore new places and ways.  These seven questions are threads and themes woven into the garment of life.

Perhaps today you want to dive deeper into the same question from yesterday or want to move to another one of the questions to ponder prayerfully.  In some ways returning to these questions again and again is a wonderful prayer practice for the coming year.  Each week you could ask when and where and how did you feel safe and secure?  Who embodied love and made you feel wanted/heard/valued?  When did joy pay a serendipitous visit not because you earned or deserved the visit, but because joy arrives unannounced in many ways.  This may lead to moments when we feel good and when we feel our most authentic in life.  Note that purpose is living from your true sense of God-formed and fashioned self.  Purpose does change over time.  Purpose sometimes takes vacations.  The more you play with the questions, the more they start to influence and inspire one another.  I pray you will continue to hold these questions close to your heart this week.

Questions for Your Life

 

Recently, I heard author Mike Foster discuss his book, The Seven Primal Questions.  I invite you to slowly read these questions, pause after each.  The questions are:

 

Am I safe?

Am I secure?

Am I loved?

Am I wanted?

Am I successful or filled with joy?

Am I good enough?

Do I have purpose?

 

As I pondered these questions, I was struck that there is something foundational and formational that stirs as I hold these questions.  Foster says the questions influence and impact us both intentionally and unintentionally.  Moreover, Foster says that one of these questions will dictate and drive your life.  For example, if we live in a place where we fear for our life daily (as people in Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, and the Sudan do), that question takes center stage.  We may wonder if we are secure financially or perhaps a relationship that was once meaningful has cracked or crumbled because of words spoken or things left unsaid ~ which makes us feel unwanted.  Which leads us to love and maybe a rephrasing of Foster’s question is who embodies God’s unconditional love for you?  When was the last time you felt most completely and unconditionally loved?  Which leads us to feeling necessary or needed or helpful, which also may tie into a sense of purpose or good enough.  Suddenly, you start to see that the questions are twisted and tangled together like Christmas tree lights!

 

The truth is there is a cultural gospel about each of these.  Advertisers tap into these questions and try to sell us a prepackaged product delivered right to our doorstep.  Only, we install the Ring camera and may not feel safe and secure from all alarms.  We may constantly try to seek reassurance from others that we are loved and wanted.  Sometimes success can feel like a carrot on a stick that we never quite catch or grasp. 

 

Does one of the above questions leap off the page for you?  Or maybe it is some messy mixture of all the above questions that you have felt this first month of 2024.  Pay attention to what is stirring and swirling within us can be a holy, curious, creative moment.  Remember that in the beginning, Genesis 1, it was God and the chaos in cahoots with each other.  It is out of the chaos that God forms and fashions light and darkness, stars and sun, manatees and tadpoles.  The soupiness/messiness/chaotic climate doesn’t ever dissolve.  No where does the Bible declare that, “All the chaos disappeared forever and ever, and they all lived happily ever after.”  Nope, these questions continue to weave their way into scripture and the scripts of our life each year.   Today, I invite you to hold one of these questions close to your heart.  Invite the question to sit down for a cup of coffee and ponder not just do you feel safe or secure or loved, but when have you felt most fully loved during the month of January?  Who was part of bringing God’s love to life?  What is one moment in January that filled you with a sense of joy (I like that better than successful)?  How can you embrace your beautifully messy less-than-perfect stable-size life?  I pray these questions will percolate in your soul in these January days.  Please pray with me: God of questions that cause us to delight, draw near as our next breath today helping us take a journey to explore and experience Your love, enough-ness, peacefulness, joyfulness, and safe embrace this day.  Amen.

Saturday Prayer

 

O God, You call us to do justice, to show loving kindness, and to walk humbly with You.  We confess that there are many moments when this list seems too daunting and demanding.  Or we are too quick to turn this into a check list as in first we need to establish justice (usually according to our plotting and planning), and then only once we saved the world we will love others.  Eventually, we may get around to walking humbly.  But honestly, God, the world is a mess right now, so we will focus only on justice.  Help us, O God, see the three threads are intertangled, twisted, tethered forever together.  Help us hear what Dr. King taught and told us this week in the prayers, sermons, and quotes we have read.   Continue to challenge us to be Your people in such a time as this letting our light shine bravely and brightly and boldly, welcoming the light of others, even when another’s light is a different shade or hue or wattage.  Keep us every open to You we prayer.  In the name of the light of the world, Jesus the Christ. Amen. 

Wisdom of Dr. King Part 5 by Brenda Robinson

 

In a very powerful metaphor, he describes justice as water in a mighty river, that could drown out the weeds of racism, and turn those weeds into an oasis of freedom and justice for everyone. “We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream (from the book of Amos 5:24.” Studies show that many racially divided US cities experience disproportionately higher levels of pollution than less segregated communities. In these communities, the level of pollution affecting the minority population is so high that it bleeds over into the white population. Although white residents are “better off” than their neighbors of color in these segregated communities, they are still worse off compared to their white counterparts in integrated communities. According to the New York Times, “studies have found this relationship between segregation and air pollution, water pollution and even noise pollution.” Similarly, studies show that "unequal societies invest less in environmental policies, monitoring and research,” allowing these issues to perpetuate. This form of environmental racism – in which minority communities are statistically more likely to live nearby polluted sites and as a result be at a greater risk for asthma, heart disease, and other conditions – is a key target of the environmental justice movement. Environmental justice advocates seek to organize and advocate for minority communities who are taken advantage of by majority communities and governments. MLK did his share of blessings with water, many of his speeches referenced water, see the above quote from Amos. This was his dream, where justice would roll down like a river. Even in the desert state of Mississippi, Florida, and many others. When will we ever learn……that we can only be human together….?

Wisdom of Dr. King Part 4

 

We continue to lean in and listen to the wisdom of Dr. King this week.  Here are a few words of wisdom from Dr. King to slowly savor.  These come from Lois Wilkins and Felix and Nancy McElory:

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle."

 

Faith requires actions during our life’s journey. Silence is provocative. For me, change is a push/pull series of moments. Change is gonna come.

 

True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.

Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

 

I wonder, as those quotes mix and mingle in your soul, what directions does the cumulative and collective wisdom above turn you toward?  What is sparked or stirred with you as you let the words above slowly sink and settle into your life?  For me, I am reminded that I don’t know the full path to justice, but I keep on trudging.  That the path toward justice is not always smooth sailing, it is rough and rocky.  Along the way, I need to be mindful not to sink into bitterness or cynicism or think nothing is getting better.  Is hate of the other fueling my life or God’s baptismal love?  That question is never one and done, but a daily one (an hourly one!) to ask continually and prayerfully!

 

We close with three prayers from Dr. King:

 

O God, we thank you for the lives of great saints and prophets in the past, who have revealed to us that we can stand up amid the problems and difficulties and trials of life and not give in. We thank you for our foreparents, who’ve given us something in the midst of the darkness of exploitation and oppression to keep going. Grant that we will go on with the proper faith and the proper determination of will, so that we will be able to make a creative contribution to this world. In the name and spirit of Jesus we pray.

 

O God, make us willing to do your will, come what may. Increase the number of persons of good will and moral sensitivity. Give us renewed confidence in nonviolence and the way of love as taught by Christ. Amen. 

 

O Thou Eternal God, out of whose absolute power and infinite intelligence the whole universe has come into being, we humbly confess that we have not loved thee with our hearts, souls and minds, and we have not loved our neighbors as Christ loved us. We have all too often lived by our own selfish impulses rather than by the life of sacrificial love as revealed by Christ. We often give in order to receive. We love our friends and hate our enemies. We go the first mile but dare not travel the second. We forgive but dare not forget. And so as we look within ourselves, we are confronted with the appalling fact that the history of our lives is the history of an eternal revolt against you. But thou, O God, have mercy upon us. Forgive us for what we could have been but failed to be. Give us the intelligence to know your will. Give us the courage to do your will. Give us the devotion to love thy will. In the name and spirit of Jesus we pray. Amen.

Wisdom of Dr. King Part 3

 

One of Dr. King’s most profound and powerful letters was from Birmingham Jail ~ especially considering he wrote it in a prison cell ~ echoing the Apostle Paul who wrote many letters to the churches from jail.  The whole letter is worth considering.  But I want to spotlight one particular sentence:

 

“In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action.”

There is so much in this one sentence, more than any one morning meditation can full or faithfully explore.  It is important to name and notice that the collection of facts takes time.  Moreover, we live in a world where there are so many voices offering “facts” that some say we live in a post-truth world.  That is my truth is my truth and nothing you can say will sway me.  This is disheartening because it means if we can’t agree on the facts then we will struggle to prayerfully discern/decide if there is injustice.  Yet, that is exactly where we are today.  Each side of any debate claims injustice with facts they think back them up.  How can we creatively and curiously investigate experiences and encounters with others, especially those who don’t see or experience the moment in the same way?  This question is the challenge of our time!  Secondly, Dr. King encourages negotiations, each side talking to each other trying to find where there might be some agreement and where we are as distant as the rims of the Grand Canyon ~ perhaps agreeing on where we are distant and disconnected is a great place to start.  Third is the step that is the hardest for us, self-purification.  That is, I need to remember that there is always a twig or log in my own eye!  My point of view is a view from a point, as Richard Rohr brilliantly says.  This is vital because before I act, I need to acknowledge my own brokenness and humanness.  I am not a prophet appointed by God to right all wrongs and save the world.  I am a beloved of God called to work for the restoration, healing, and wholeness for all creation in my human size self.  I play one part, not all parts.  Too often I think we hear something want to rush and race to direct action ~ solve the problem instantly and immediately we cry out. 

Perhaps, you might think, Dr. King’s steps are antiquated or analog, that we need a new way of moving from prayer to action.  For me, prayer and action are forever a spiritual spiral.  I prayerfully ask God to guide my feet while I run this race.  Then, I try to take a step forward ~ often stumbling.  I act in some way.  Then, I return to prayer and seeking God.  We don’t just ask God to baptize our agenda once and for all…it is a continual call of faith, repentance (which means to change my mind), and to recommit to work with God. 

I pray you might ponder the interaction and intermingling of prayer and action in your life for this week and the year to come.  Amen.

Wisdom of Dr. King Part 2

 

Yesterday, we prayerfully pondered insightful quotes from Rev. Dr. King.  Today, we turn to a sermon from Dr. King that Peggye Mezile shared with me.  The sermon was entitled, “Our God is Marching On!”  If you want to Google and read the whole sermon.

 

Here is a quote:

Let us therefore continue our triumphant march to the realization of the American dream. (Yes, sir) Let us march on segregated housing (Yes, sir) until every ghetto or social and economic depression dissolves, and Negroes and whites live side by side in decent, safe, and sanitary housing. (Yes, sir) Let us march on segregated schools (Let us march, Tell it) until every vestige of segregated and inferior education becomes a thing of the past, and Negroes and whites study side-by-side in the socially-healing context of the classroom.

Let us march on poverty (Let us march) until no American parent has to skip a meal so that their children may eat. (Yes, sir) March on poverty (Let us march) until no starved man walks the streets of our cities and towns (Yes, sir) in search of jobs that do not exist. (Yes, sir) Let us march on poverty (Let us march) until wrinkled stomachs in Mississippi are filled, (That’s right) and the idle industries of Appalachia are realized and revitalized, and broken lives in sweltering ghettos are mended and remolded.

Let us march on ballot boxes, (Let’s march) march on ballot boxes until race-baiters disappear from the political arena.

Let us march on ballot boxes until the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs (Yes, sir) will be transformed into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens. (Speak, Doctor)

Let us march on ballot boxes (Let us march) until the Wallaces of our nation tremble away in silence.

Let us march on ballot boxes (Let us march) until we send to our city councils (Yes, sir), state legislatures, (Yes, sir) and the United States Congress, (Yes, sir) men who will not fear to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.

Let us march on ballot boxes (Let us march. March) until brotherhood becomes more than a meaningless word in an opening prayer, but the order of the day on every legislative agenda.

Let us march on ballot boxes (Yes) until all over Alabama God’s children will be able to walk the earth in decency and honor.

There is nothing wrong with marching in this sense. (Yes, sir) The Bible tells us that the mighty men of Joshua merely walked about the walled city of Jericho (Yes) and the barriers to freedom came tumbling down. 

 

Dr. King reminds us that we are marching every day through our actions and presence.  Dr. King spoke about being a Drum Major for God’s justice and called us to follow those who seek to do God’s work/will in the world.  Dr. King spoke about being maladjusted to the discrimination and hurt that too often becomes normalized in the world today.  Let us continue to follow our still marching God in the work of justice, peace, and love in the world today.  Amen.

Wisdom of Dr. King Part 1

 

On this Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we pause to lean in and listen to the words of Dr. King.  I encourage, and even implore you, to go beyond the I Have a Dream speech.  Dr. King wrote five books: Stride Toward Freedom, 1958; the story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the beginning of the Nonviolent Civil Rights Movement. Strength to Love, 1963. This is a collection of Dr. King’s most requested sermons.  The Trumpet of Conscience, 1968, this book is taken from the 1967 Massey Lectures which King gave through the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. King addresses issues including the Vietnam War, youth and civil disobedience and concludes with the “Christmas Sermon for Peace.”  Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967. An assessment of America’s priorities and a warning that they need to be re-ordered.  Why We Can’t Wait, 1963. The essential writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.  In addition, he preached thousands of sermons and countless lectures.  There is so much we can still learn from Dr. King, and this will take more than one day or one week or one month.

 

Today, I want to share with you a few quotes from Jim and Priscilla Crumel that they find meaningful from Dr. King.  I invite you slowly savor each quote, pause, and prayerfully ponder what the words mean to you personally, for our church, and for our community/country:

 

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. ~ Where have you encountered injustice in your life?  Where do you see injustice today?  How can our church stand with those who are oppressed today?

 

True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice. ~ Justice is one of our Core Values we seek to embrace and embody, but this needs to be active and intentional (please note that doesn’t mean we will get it always right, we will make mistakes in standing for justice).  What is one way this month we can engage in peace and justice?

 

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that, Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.  Or as Richard Rohr says, “The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the good.”  Note, these words will challenge us and others won’t understand/even criticize us or cynically try to convince us we are failing.  But yelling at each other, violence, hating and canceling each other doesn’t “work” either.  Christ’s life is a light to our lives and how can we light the Christ light shine in us and through us in these days?

 

We will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.  Today, I ask you to find a way you can do this through words, actions, conversations, learning, and letting your light shine.

 

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.  Amen!

 

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.  Is there a matter you are keeping silent about right now?  Is there a way you can begin to find your voice?  Please note this doesn’t mean you need to go buy a bullhorn and stand at the street corner.  There are so many ways you can let your voice be heard in the world today.  I encourage you to find those spaces for the world needs you now more than ever.  May these words today inspire and infuse you to be a light for justice in the world.  Amen.

The Step of Faith

 

As we celebrate Dr. King’s birthday this weekend one of my favorite quotes of his is, “take the first step in faith.  You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”  So often we want to know exactly what is going to happen in our lives.  So often the unexpected throws us off course and we get disappointed in our ability to be perfect right away.  To take the first step and then the next right step after that.  And beyond that, who knows where the staircase will go?  Who knows when you will need to take an exit ramp either intentionally or as a miscue.  Who knows what the weather will do as we make the way by walking or who might cross your path or when the creak of the staircase threatens to break beneath us.  Today, I invite you to breathe in and slowly exhale.  Again, breathe in and slowly exhale.  Now survey where you are at?  What is going on in your mind?  What is stirring in your heart?  What is the weather pattern in your soul?  As you prayerfully ponder your life, how God is at work in the rooms of your soul, may you remember God’s love and peace and presence is with you.  May your inner ally find you and hold you.  May you sense a grace in the place you call, “home”.  And you continue the wayless way that is your life trusting that you are not alone.  Grace, peace, healing, hope, joy, laughter, and love be with you this day. Amen.   

Faithfulness

 

It is not the place of people of faith to chastise the world for its lack of faith, as if the world could be scolded into coming to its senses.  It is, rather, the task of people of faith to be faithful, to live as those who belong the God we have met in Jesus Christ.  Tom Long

This week, we began with you blessing your house.  I pray the blessing lingers in the air offering you a safe space for rest and renew, a place of refuge amid a too chaotic world.  I invited you to bless the rooms in your home on Monday, the kitchen where you brew your coffee and the bedroom where you lay your head down to sleep and pray the lord your soul to keep.  On Tuesday, we moved on to exploring the spaciousness of your soul ~ that you have many rooms within you.  Some of these places within us are often left unacknowledged, to gather cobwebs or where we shove the “stuff” of our life we don’t want to deal with right now…we will totally get that…tomorrow or maybe next week or maybe never.  As you begin the risky exploration of your own life, we shined a light on your inner critic that will love to point out all the ways you will fumble, faulter and fail.  Yet, you also have an inner ally who is cheering you on and dusting you off when you fall.  Let’s face it, sometimes the critic isn’t just internal but out there.  People who believe that you are entitled to their opinion…and offer you feedback on how to fix or save or what to do with your one wild and precious life.  This can cause us to feel shame or blame or less than when others tell us what to do, think, or feel.  This is why I love Tom Long’s quote above about not scolding or canceling or cajoling or raining guilt on another person until they are drenched.  As people of faith, we are called to be faithful.  Faith, for me, is growing in the image of God for the sake of the other.  I continue to let God loose in my life, to rummage and roam around my mind, heart, soul, words, and actions to the sacred love shine a light on the good, holy, the broken, and less-than-perfectness.  I do this so that God’s light might shine brighter through me to others.  I don’t try to “fix” someone else, as though I am a spiritual mechanic who can diagnosis using some divine insight.  I am a human, created in God’s image and who is beautifully imperfect.  Part of the reason why I began a Wayless Way Book Club is because we all need to lean in and listen to our own life amid the noise of the world.  It is so much easier to externalize our hurt or woundedness, because truly people are broken.  But expecting you can change another person, convince them with enough wisdom or insight or charts does not usually work.  And so, of course, as Tom Long says, we turn to chastising or criticizing or cynicism or canceling.  Or, we could turn toward how we are showing up in the less-than-perfectness.  During this Epiphany season, remember God didn’t break and burst onto the scene of the earth and immediately get to work.  We know very, very little of Jesus’ growing up years.  We have no awkward photo from middle school or his report card from 9^th grade or how well he did at is bar mitzvah ~ if his voice cracked when reading the Psalms.  Life is always a process of growing in the image of God for the sake of another.  I pray you will listen to your words today, your comments and thoughts, and ways of interacting with others.  May God continue to rummage and roam around your life this day.  Amen.  

Keep Dancing in Doubt

 

Faith and Doubt, both are needed – not as antagonist but working side-by-side – to take us around the unknown curve ~ Lillian Smith

Yesterday, I invited you to search your soul for where you are curious in these early days of 2024.  What topics or themes cause you to perk up and where want to know more?  As you begin to explore new places and spaces in your soul ~ like taking up art or reading poetry or trying to walk outside in wonder ~ you might have an inner critic who suddenly appears and begins to babble with color commentary about how the dog you painted looks like a platypus.  Or maybe the inner critic fans to fames the frustration because you don’t quite “get” the poem.  Or you miss a few days of walking and your inner critic tells you to throw in the towel, it is no use. 

But in the stillness of your soul there is also your inner ally.  Your inner ally cheers you on and reminds you that three times a week walking outside listening to the birds is a habit and two days count as well, and one day is wonderful!  Your inner ally nudges you to read the poem again to see if there is one word that leaps off the page or a sentence that you linger over.  Your inner ally doesn’t worry about the mistakes or miscues because your inner ally knows that we usually do it wrong before we ever get it right.  Your inner ally knows that doubts are okay.  There is room in faith for the unknown and mystery and uncertainty.  We don’t see clearly down the corner and around the block ~ no one can unless you are Superman or Wonder Woman ~ we don’t have X-ray vision.  We do have God’s presence with us.  We do have God who delights in doubts, because those are questions, and when we curiously follow our questions they take us on quests or journeys.  Welcome the questions today.  Welcome the realization that it is risky to try something new knowing that you may not be the next Picaso, but if painting delights your heart and awakens your soul ~ God meets you there.  Welcome the frustrations and listen to why you feel a bit afraid, those are good insights into the rooms of your soul. 

This Epiphany, this year, continue to explore with enthusiasm God’s guidance, even when you come to a curve and don’t know what is on the other side of the bend, we do trust God’s love is already there up ahead waiting.  And hold close these words from Rob Bell, “Doubt is often a sign that your faith has a pulse, that it’s alive and well and exploring and searching.  Faith and doubt aren’t opposites, they are, it turns out excellent dance partners.”  Continue dancing, my friends!

Morning meditation

 

Whatever else Christian faith has been about, it has always included the proclamation of new possibility, an opening to a new reality that transcends the present limits of ourselves and our lives.  Margaret A. Farley

Yesterday, to mark the beginning of Epiphany I invited you to read a poem and prayer for your house ~ your physical house and the house of this year.  The wonderful invitation in Epiphany is to bless both our physical house, the roof over our heads, the windows that let in the sunlight, the refrigerator that keeps food cold, and the table where we eat.  We bless our homes because our homes bless us in many ways.  

Home is not just an external structure, there are many rooms in your soul.  There are rooms where you can rest because you feel comfortable.  There are cellars where cobwebs cling to the corners and you store all the stuff/cardboard boxes of emotional or relational or spiritual things you have forgotten are down there, until someone says something that blows the dust of that box bringing it back into your consciousness.  There are rooms you have not yet explored in your soul, because our souls continually evolve and expand ~ just as God’s love does.  My invitation for you this Tuesday is to ask, where are you curious?  The Wise Ones let their curiosity loose on a long journey.  What awakens your sacred imagination?  Please note this could be something practical ~ like learning a new language for a trip.  Or it could be something spiritual ~ like forgiving or reading scripture or prayer. 

I love the quote above from Margaret Farley because she reminds us, God is not finished with any of us yet.  As long as you have a breath within you, God continues to clear away the clutter.  On Christmas Eve we opened the door to the stable like places of our lives to make a manger-size place for God.  The invitation was to do this, not only when singing Silent Night drenched in candlelight, but every day.  So today, open your soul to God’s stirring to see what our still Composing, Cooking, Creating, Collaborating Creator is up to in your life.  May you uncover and discover a new reality ~ that might feel risky as it did when you were a kid going down to the basement to get the Valentine’s decorations.  But you had courage then and can have courage now to explore your evolving faith.  Please remember, you don’t need to start with the risky place where you are curious, you don’t have to start with skydiving or wrestling alligators.  Maybe it is reading one book of the Bible.  Maybe it is calling one person.  What is stirring in your heart?  Lean in and listen for there in the manger size place within us is where we find the holy.  With God’s love to you this Epiphany week. 

Prayer for Your Home

 

January 6 is known as the Feast of the Epiphany.  This ends the Twelve Days of Christmas and when the church celebrates the arrival of the Wise Ones to worship Jesus.  You can find the story in Matthew 2, how the Wise Ones travel a great distance following a star, note that we are not told exactly how many were in this caravan of people.  Many believe the Wise Ones started their journey on the day of Jesus birth, when they saw the star.  Because there was no Delta Airlines to hop on, it might have taken a long time to reach Jesus.  Some suggest Jesus may have been 2 years old before the Wise Ones finally knocked on the door of his house bringing gifts.  Imagine Mary and Joseph surprise when they open the door and find these people they have never met before, weary and worn out from travel.  Perhaps they remembered their own exhaustion before Christ’s birth.  The Wise Ones bring gifts of great value that the family could have sold to help put food on the table. 

On Epiphany, there is an ancient practice of blessing your own, just as the Wise Ones blessed Jesus’ abode.  Here is a wonderful prayer from Jan Richardson.

 

The Year as a House: A Blessing

Think of the year as a house: door flung wide in welcome,
threshold swept and waiting, a graced spaciousness
opening and offering itself to you.

Let it be blessed in every room.
Let it be hallowed in every corner.
Let every nook be a refuge
and every object set to holy use.

Let it be here that safety will rest.
Let it be here that health will make its home.
Let it be here that peace will show its face.
Let it be here that love will find its way.

Here let the weary come
let the aching come
let the lost come
let the sorrowing come.

Here let them find their rest
and let them find their soothing
and let them find their place
and let them find their delight.

And may it be in this house of a year
that the seasons will spin in beauty,
and may it be in these turning days
that time will spiral with joy.
And may it be that its rooms will fill
with ordinary grace
and light spill from every window
to welcome the stranger home.

Wherever you make your home, may it be blessed, and may you

enter this Epiphany and the coming year in peace.

Amen.

Today, I invite you to go room to room in your home offering prayers of thanksgiving.  For the bedroom where you rest, for the warmth of the shower, the food in the refrigerator and the kitchen table soaked with stories.  For the living room where you can sit in your favorite chair ~ and say a prayer for your favorite chair.  Wander around your house blessing the walls and wood work and spaces as a physical place where you might encounter God in the house call 2024.  Amen.