Good Friday Prayer

 

Hear these words from Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber:

Richard Rohr once wrote that “Holiness never feels like holiness, it just feels like you’re dying”.  Maybe this is what Lent is about. Not giving up chocolate, but giving up on the things that, let’s be honest, weren't working anyhow. Denying yourself might be as simple as letting yourself off the hook for having to be God.  So if you are faced with your own limitedness right now.  If you are exhausted by our achievement culture. If your me-based solutions to your me-based problems keep failing you. Christian, know this: there is no shame in that.  Not really.  I mean, not with the kind of God we have. Because as St Paul said, God’s strength is perfected in your weakness.  Denying yourself might be as simple as letting yourself off the hook for having to be God. Every time our me-based solutions to our me-based problems fail us, just know this: it is in the tombs of our self-manufactured darknesses that God always shines brightest.

 

God, we come to the cross today to lay down our solutions and our problems, individually and collectively.  There is so much to grieve this day, did you read the paper this morning, Holy One?  It causes our souls to break and hearts to ache and minds to short circuit.  It is easier to blame those people and believe that if we just elect the right person then everything will be chocolate rivers and pony rides.  God, help me lay down at the cross today my inner critic who loves to keep ruminating on the words of others, especially when that person touches a nerve of pain I have not process.  Help me lay down my three a.m. arguments that I have with people in my mind.  Help me lay down my need for perfection and busyness and proving that I am a good pastor.  Help me lay down my anger at the leaders, the Church, fellow featherless bipeds, and myself.  Help me lay down my grief at the constant, dizzying disorientating rate of change, with transitions happening in my family, at work, and in a world where no one wants me to be King (no matter how many times I post my opinion online).  Help me lay down my brokenness when I have spoken too quickly and held back love because I believed someone didn’t earn or deserve it.  Help me lay down my fears, failures, and humanness.  You are God and I am not.  I don’t need to solve every issue and cannot.  Like Moses I stutter, stammer, and stand silently today drenched in a love that will not ever let me go ~ even and especially when I am suffering.  Only a suffering God can save, let that truth undo the other gospels of the world and rewire my heart, head, and whole life not just this day but every day for the rest of 2024.  Amen.

Bread Crumb Prayer

 

Bread and wine and water, O God, You always seem to find the holiness in the ordinary.  Not us, O God, we like the special and spectacular.  We crave the Instagram worthy photo to post online, with a humble brag.  We long to feel needed and necessary.  We are not sure we want to wash another’s feet and feel uncomfortable having our feet washed.  Meet us, O God, in the messiness and less than perfectness where the communion bread broken leaves crumbles, just as brokenness leaves a trail in our lives.  Meet us, O God, in the cup of wholeness that we all seek but the wayless way of faith can feel frustratingly slow and lacks the marketability or branding of the waters we swim in.  Meet us, O God, in the wordless prayers because we don’t know what language to borrow and the words can’t capture what we long to say.  We live in a liminal space of Already and Not Yet.  We know Easter is coming, the candy is on sale, the eggs are ready to dye, and the ham ready to cook.  We know that death has lost its sting and yet it still hurts when we say, “Goodbye” at funerals.  We have been taught and caught that we can think our way through any problem, just form a committee, develop a plan, and hire someone to do the work.  And when that fails, we try again, thinking we just didn’t find the right fit on Indeed.com.  O God, meet us in our humanness with bread and juice tonight.  Wash us in the water we wade into, just as the Israelites found a way where there was no way.  Continue to guide us deeper into a week that is a mirror for how You are there from parades to meals to betrayal to death and to new life that are threads woven into the garments of our lives.  Amen.

Holy Week ~ Wednesday ~ Prayer

 

If we are struggling to seek God single-heartedly, to learn to weep the anger out of ourselves is a matter of self-respect. —Maggie Ross

God amid the rollercoaster called Holy Week, there are so many emotions that stir and swirl within us.  We sense the joy and hope of Palm Sunday and the anticipation of Easter morning.  We know the woundedness of denial, betrayal, and desertion of tomorrow and Friday that connect those words to our story.  We know the pain of death and the empty chair at the table.  We know the ambiguous loss when relationships end abruptly, and the hurt of words spoken quickly feel like a thousand paper cuts.  This week takes an entire lifetime to unpack and even then, we will never fully understand.  So, today rather than more words, help us be still and silent.  Lead us outside where the trees teach and tell us of weathering a thousand years of storms, blinding sun preaches of warm love, and beauty of all that is moves us to speechlessness.  Lead us outside where the snails teach us a different pace of life, beyond production and our self-improvement projects.  Lead us outside where we might stand beneath stars like Abraham and Sarah feeling our own smallness in the vastness of Your expanding and evolving universe.  Meet us, O God, on this day as breathe and be in Your presence and prepare our hearts to hear again of the Last Supper, praying in the Garden with Jesus, the pain of Friday that breaks our hearts and souls wide open.  May the coming hours help us see that You are not distant from any moment in our lives, but You are there in the lonesome valleys and a thousand Alleluias and every ordinary or odd moment in-between.  Amen.

Holy Week ~ Tuesday ~ Prayer

 

God of Tuesdays when there are no worship services to prepare, put on a tie, or attend.  Here we are amid a week that doesn’t make linear, logical since.  Why did You, O God, face the cross?  What is this gospel of worshipping, following, a suffering God??  How in the world is that going to trend on social media??  We like heroes and sheroes, people who succeed.  No wonder, O God, we turned Your suffering into a transaction.  No wonder we preach about a debt to be paid, that fits so neat and tidy into an economic model we can hold and control.  We are okay with transformation if someone else goes first.  We still hold our faint and fading, “Hosannas” vulnerably close.  The more that word sinks and settles in the cobweb corners of our souls, Hosanna can disrupt us.  Hosanna keeps blowing the dust-off boxes we crammed into corner hoping, O God, You wouldn’t notice or that we’d rather ignore.  On this Tuesday, we hold close our three covenants as a church.  For Your creation that we treat as a means to an end and our enjoyment.  We still see the sky, seas, trees, and land as resources to add to our wealth, rather than reflecting Your creativity.  For Your beautiful, bold crayon box of races, O God, that too often we treat others as less because of the color of their skin.  For the ways You call us beyond binary, either/or thinking, yet we are stuck and stymied by Victorian theology of sexuality and morality.  We are still trying to prove/earn Your love that is always prodigal and poured out regardless of who we love.  Help us, O God, as Your church that we would not just point out the places we fall short and falls flat.  We don’t want to just criticism and complain.  We prayerfully ask for our Hosannas to take flesh and skin and breath in us as You would guide.  We long for each of us to live our covenants in relationship with You, for the sake of the whole world You so love.  God guide us and keep us curious about how we can collaborate and conspire with You in the kitchen of life that is this day.  In the name of the One whose life is the recipe of faith, the wayless way, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.

Holy Week ~ Monday ~ Prayer

 

God as the “Hosannas” fade and the palm branches start to brown, we enter our holiest week.  We can’t quite wrap our heads or heart around Your gospel medicine of prodigal ways in this world.  We let the words and wisdom of yesterday sink and settle and sing to our souls.  How Jesus came in the back door of Jerusalem because the front door was a parade of propaganda and propping up Caesar.  What parades are we attending?  Do they protect our bubbles or burst them?   We ponder the oddity that Jesus rode on, rode on in majesty ~ not of military might or zealot revolution ~ but on a humble donkey where he had to keep his feet from getting stuck in the sand.  We join with the people crying, “Hosanna”, save us because we can’t save ourselves.  Yet, we know how quickly, those chants turned from prayerful pleas to angry mob spitting out the words, “Crucify him,” perhaps because the people got impatient and wanted Jesus to get moving already.  We crave a quick fix, the money back guarantee, the instant and immediate solution to our problem.  Our self-salvation projects continue, O God, now being offered with Zoom classes where for 49.99, we can listen to someone tell us how to have our best life now.  God, save us, because we cannot save ourselves.  We still fall for the same narratives, gospels, of domination, revenge, retribution, and winning on the imaginary score board of life.  We still blame others because the shame within our mind offers endless color commentary.  This week, help us name and notice where we need to take off our outer coats that shield and shelter us.  Help me release the cloaks of needing to be needed or seen as successful or “winning”.  Help me be open and honest about the “me” I hide because I am convinced that if anyone saw beneath the veneer I would be voted off the island, my torch extinguished, and the tribe spoken.  Hosanna, God, for the aches that sit on the shelves of my soul ~ physically, emotionally, relationally.  Hosanna, God, for the ways I let the gospels of the world be the tune I dance to rather than the music of Your prodigal love.  Hosanna, God, for this community where we ignore the homeless, the hungry, and hurting.  Hosanna, God, for legislation being passed that treat our LGBTQIA siblings as less than Your holy beloved.  Hosanna, God, for on-going racism and seeing Creation as a resource rather than Your creative testament.  Hosanna, God, for our church being drowned out amid all the preachers whose voices alienate and judge others.  Hosanna, God, for me in my own human woundedness that needs You to ride right into my soul and help me, save me, let Your shalom hold me every hour this week.  In the name the One who walks this valley with week us, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.

Friday Prayer

 

God of Prodigal Loving-kindness, we confess that Your ways are not our ways.  We can pass by on the other side too often, letting fear of the other and our overactive/over analyzing/ over thinking convince us that it is just too dangerous.  And we have moments when we reach out and help, not counting the cost or whether anyone is watching to help tell our story later.  We have moments when we wander away from faith, from You, from ourselves to explore and experience what we think we want.  We get lured by advertisements to live the good life which clearly can’t be found here where there is laundry and grocery shopping and don’t get me started on the doctor’s appointments!  We have moments when we disconnect and distance ourselves from others, even as we are sitting shoulder-to-shoulder.  We have moments of prayerful persistence.  Here we are, O God, a few days before we begin our Holiest Week, a week Palm Sunday Parades and broken bread/spilled wine and facing death of Friday and silence of Saturday to the promise of new life.  This isn’t just a story about Jesus, this is our story.  This isn’t just Jesus’ life, it is the wayless way of life with You.  Help us, heal us, hold us as we prepare to hear anew and afresh a story that can mold our lives in a cross-shape where at the center are the parables of Loving Kindness and Prodigal Faith that might linger for the rest of this year.  In the name of the One whose life is the light to every day, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

What to Choose

 

 

This week we are opening our hearts and whole lives to the truths of the choices we make ~ what we do today, what we eat, what we say.  To be sure, many choices don’t leave a lasting or lingering impression.  I don’t remember what I had for dinner on January 21 or last Thursday for that matter of fact.  But a few choices do matter and make a difference.  I want us to think about this list of choices that comes from the Greater Good Science Center in CA.  Slowly savor this beautiful litany/prayer. 

 

When you wake up in the morning…

Choose gratitude because life is filled with countless gifts.

Choose happiness because you can be a source of light for others.

Choose humility because you aren’t perfect, and you’ll never be.

Choose abundance because the world is filled with opportunity.

 

When you come to a crossroads…

Choose action, because you have the opportunity to make things better.

Choose your priorities/values, because you’ve only got one life to live.

Choose persistence, because life’s resistance will try to stop you.

Choose curiosity, because the world has endless wonders to discover.

Choose patience, because creating lasting positive change doesn’t happen overnight.

Choose courage, because doing the right thing usually isn’t comfortable.

Choose ownership, because you’re in the driver’s seat in life.

Above all else…

Choose awareness, because the biggest danger in life isn’t making the wrong choice, it’s not realizing you have a say in the matter.  You have a voice in the world.  You have energy that is yours to stewards and shepherd and share.

 

May the wisdom above open you to the ways God is showing up this day and feeding/fueling our life with loving-kindness, prayerful persistence, and a presence that makes all the difference.

How we choose what we choose

 

This week we are examining and exploring the thread that connects the Prodigal Family to the Loving-kindness of the Samaritan.  We named and noticed that one common theme is that of choices.  Yesterday, we looked at the decisions we made in life and the decisions that were made for us.  Moments we took the bull by the horns or felt trampled by the bull in the China shop of our soul.  Both are woven into our stories.  You may have studied what you studied in school because that was your parents’ expectation.  You may live where you live because that is what was acceptable, and you wanted to people please.  You may have what you have for breakfast because the doctor told you so.  Or you may say what you say online because if other people have a problem with that, you are just keeping it real, speaking the truth, being prophetic!  Freedom of choice is an American ideal that we worship daily.  We make so many choices each day, many without conscious thought (like breathing!  I don’t have to tell my brain to inhale and exhale, thankfully this just happens.  I don’t have to say, “Heart keep circulating blood”).   Researchers at Cornell University estimate we make 226.7 decisions each day on food alone ~ which feels like a lot ~ but have you seen some of the menus at restaurants!  It is estimated that the average adult makes about 35,000 conscious decisions each day. Each decision, of course, carries certain consequences with it that are both good and bad.

There are certain decision-making styles and strategies that guide the process: 

• Impulsiveness — Leverage the first option you are given and be done.
• Compliance — Choosing the most pleasing, comfortable, and popular option as it pertains to those impacted.
• Delegating — Not making the decision yourself but pushing it off to trusted others.
• Avoidance/deflection — Either avoiding or ignoring decisions in an effort to side step responsibility of their impact.
• Balancing — Weighing the factors involved, studying them, and then using the information to render the best decision in the moment.
• Prioritizing and Reflecting — Putting the most energy, thought, and effort into those decisions that will have the greatest impact.

Go back to the list you made yesterday of choices from your life ~ the major and mundane.  Which of the above styles and strategies might have been at play as you traveled the road you selected?  I eat what I eat due to balancing ~ weighing the health information while also trying to find what tastes good.  Right now, our church is prioritizing and reflecting as we prepare to search for our next Music Minister.  We are entrusting some of this work to a Search Team, just as we entrust money decisions to the Finance Team and Council.  I can avoid and deflect with the best of them, kick the can down the road, especially when it comes to planning and scheduling vacation.  To be sure, this only scratches the surface of strategies, maybe you can add to the above six.  Maybe family or peers or people pleasing are the motivating factors that moved your heart recently.  Maybe you felt a God nudge to go in a direction recently that was like a salmon swimming upstream.  I pray this framework helps shine the light on the ways we do what we do as we travel the paths of life today. Amen.

Gospel Medicine Part 2

 

One of the threads that is woven between the Parable of Loving-kindness (Good Samaritan) and Prodigal-ness of Faith (or the Prodigal Sons) is that of choice.  There are decisions being made in both stories that cause ripple effects to disrupt and disturb the water in the souls of the characters.  The Levite and Priest make a choice to stroll by on the other side, perhaps out of fear or glaring/gnawing distrust of others or just because of their own busyness that sees but doesn’t really see.  The Samaritan decides to gaze at his surroundings, stop, tend, and care.  The younger son chooses to run away from an ache or run toward a dream of seeing the world; the older son selects the option of staying at home and working his fingers to the bone (go back and read his speech/soliloquy in Luke 15:28-30, so much emotion packed into those verses that runs off the page).  The Mothering-Father makes a choice to be prodigal (lavish and outlandish) in mending and tending a relationship with the sons.  This week, I invite you to be awake and aware of the decisions you make. 

You may want to keep track of the choices ~ this could be the ordinary and everyday (food you eat or the roads you take) to major decisions (what to do or say in response to a tense situation) to moments you feel like you are backed into a corner and there is no choice. Pause with me to think about which channel/shows do you watch? What will you wear today? Which route do you take to get to volunteer? Do you “like” a friend's post on Facebook (if it is a Morning Meditation, the answer is always an empathic, “YES!)?

You can also look back over a longer period ~ choices you’ve made this year.  Look back at the mundane, major, and moments you felt powerless – forced to travel a path when you wanted to take the one less traveled.  The list doesn’t need to be exhaustive, a few examples of each will start to help shine a light on the story we tell ourselves about the narrative arc of our life.  I encourage you to step back ~ see the forest of your wilderness life ~ and the paths you have trudges, the turns you have taken, the moments that have landed you right here this day.  May God bless the beautiful twists and turns that we travel day-by-day and especially this day as we seek to follow God’s guidance.  Amen.

Gospel Medicine Part 1

 

For the last six weeks we have held close to our hearts two parables (the Good Samaritan or Loving-kindness Unleased) and the Prodigal Family.  These two parables are gospels within the gospels ~ they are succinct summaries of what it means to follow the Wayless Way of Jesus.  They are like sandpaper to the rough, rocky edges of my soul.  I want Jesus to give me a pass and a permission slip not to love those people who vote that way, post conspiracy theories online, or hurt and harm others.  I want to be clear that Jesus’s love is not anything goes.  You can have a strong back with a soft front, I can both show up and speak up while at the same time realizing that I am contradiction/complex featherless biped who two years from now might have a new understanding.  Love is elastic and dynamic, love does shine a light on the pain (doesn’t stick its head in the stand or fingers in its ears start singing, “La, la, la.  I can’t hear you!).  We have let our binary, either/or thinking suggest that love and anger/accountability can’t co-exist.  But that is not true!  I love my family more than words can say, but I also have had moments when I sought to speak the truth in love and times when I’ve had hard/holy conversations.  I wish we had Part 2 of both these parables.  Maybe the priest and the Levite don’t pass by on the other side the next time.  Maybe seeing the wounded beloved of God in the ditch haunted their dreams like an un-holy ghost that changed them (see the classic, A Christmas Carol).  Transformation doesn’t always happen at Mount Everest of our smashing successes when we get it right every time.  Nope.  Sometimes what sticks and stays with us, guides future choices, is when we mess up, say something we immediately want to grasp the invisible words from thin air and shove them back in our mouth!  Likewise, we have no idea what the morning after the party in the Prodigal household looked like.  The reality is that our souls like the status quo.  It is easier to travel down the ruts in our brains and relationships as they are, than forge new pathways internally or externally.  Did the younger brother have a heart-to-heart with the older brother?  Did the homeostasis of their relationship of a cold silence continue to be the norm?  I am reminded of Dr. King who said that far too many in an unjust society were merely thermometers measuring the temperature of society rather than thermostats turning up the heat to make a cold-hearted world a warmer place to live. 

I invite you to ponder what has been stirring in your heart from the last six weeks?  What new insight or idea is roaming around?  What is this gospel medicine that can be a balm in Gilead to our wounded souls that too often we run away from (like the younger son) or cynically grit our teeth at (like the older son)?  How might love be more than passive and permissive, but passionately calling us to be God’s people in these days?  May these questions evoke and provoke words and actions and a way of showing up/speaking up in these Lenten days and beyond. Amen.

Praying Our Prodigal-ness

 

As we wind down and wrap up our time with the Prodigal Family, I invite you to reflect on what you gleaned from the last three weeks?  Maybe you can see your story in each of the characters, maybe you have noticed some of the assumptions you brought to this narrative ~ how your family story was inserted into the spaces and blank backstory of this parable.  Maybe you have begun to see that no family is perfect ~ our relationships always put the ‘fun’ in dysfunction.  Maybe you still have so many questions about this parable ~ I do!!  A few weeks ago, I offered that the Parable of the Good Samaritan/Loving Kindness and the Parable of the Prodigal Family are gospels within the gospel.  Only Luke tells these two stories.  But, for me, they both summarize what Jesus is trying to teach and preach about God and human life and the messiness of humanness.  Both these parables can be read and re-read and read again because we will never exhaust or fully explore all that is in-between the words on the page and in the margins ~ how all that meets us in our lives.  We keep bringing our life to these two parables, because they meet us where they are ~ they can disorient us in beautiful (albeit dizzying and frustrating) ways.  They can sing to our souls with new songs we need to hear.  Please don’t leave behind what has been planted and growing in your soul over the last six weeks, continue to water the truths of glancing, glaring, gawking, and gazing at the world.  Continue to ponder how you pass by or stand on the sidelines, how you try to help, and how you are sometimes the one in the ditch!  Continue to ponder with God how you have sought to risk it all in the name of a great adventure or been afraid to take a leap of faith or how you have tried to let a prodigal love be the story you live day-by-day.  May these two parables continue to find ways to be woven into the unfolding story of your life.  May you know healing, hope, shalom, and love this day.  Amen. 

Praying Our Prodigal-ness

 

God of all seasons of life and stories that swirl within us.  God of moments when we wander away as well as the moments we are too afraid to leave.  God of times we make mistakes that cost us financially, relationally, emotionally, spiritually, and within our families.  God of times we slam shut and lock doors of our heart and soul to family and friends even as we stay in close proximity to them.  God of watching for some sign of hope, like the Mothering-Father at the window.  God of times of elation and enthusiasm, even during Lent!!  God of parties, because Sundays are not including in Lent, but are festive times because we know in our heart the truth of Easter and new life.  And we need to live the truth of Easter and new life in these days.  God of times we get frustrated and let loose with anger onto another, especially with those closest to us.  God when the words fail to fall from the tips of our tongues or our prepared speeches or prayers tastes like soda that has lost its carbonation to our tongues, You are here.  Here we are with You in the mystery of this day, this halfway point in the month of March.  Fill us with Your prodigal love, grant us Your wisdom, hold us with Your strength that gathers all the loose threads of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation that are part of this unfolding art project of life we are trying to quilt each day with the patchwork of pieces.  For this moment when we can be and breathe together.

I invite you to sit quietly with God this morning…trusting that you don’t need eloquent words or well thought out dissertations…just breathe and be…breathe and be…breathe and be.  And may you know healing, wholeness, shalom, peace, and unceasing love on this day.  Amen.

Praying Our Prodigal-ness

 

God of all seasons and stories that stir within and around us.  We name with You places right now where there is a holy rhythm and routine that is working, a holy orientation.  This could be around our breakfast that we enjoy every day to a relationship that is filling us to petting our dog that calms us.  This could be in the holy rhythm of Sunday worship, Bible Study, and fellowship times.  This could be in our connection to neighbors.  We give thanks for those places, however fleeting and fragile, that are stable right now.

And God, we name with You our dizzying disorientations.  Where we can’t see two inches in front of us amid the foggiest and unawareness, where the world is messy and blurry and feels too chaotic.  This could be not only what swirls within us through the news, but also what we hear from friends and family ~ illnesses or grief or pain that we don’t have a magic wand to make disappear and we may feel like what we said is making it worse!  Meet us in the whirlwinds of life of disorientation, just as You met Job there.

God, we offer to You the faint outlines of what appears on the horizon.  Those new tiny fragile shoots of greenery springing forth from the soil of our souls.  This could be new volunteer opportunities, new relationships, new ways of seeking to enter a life-changing loving relationship with You. 

And for those parts of our story that don’t fit neat and tidy into one of these boxes, we offer that to You too, O God.  Surround our prodigal-ness with Your persistent patience and presence that loves us as we are and as we are becoming.  God You are like a great chef in the kitchen mixing and stirring the stew of all that is within us and around us.  In the name of the One who is still cooking alongside us the recipe of our life in the kitchens of our souls.  Amen. 

Praying our Prodigal-ness

 

As we pray our way through the Prodigal Family this week ~ I want to remind you of the framework Richard Rohr lays out as a way to see our story.  He talks about life being a spiral of orientation to disorientation to reorientation.  One of the challenges of any parable, particularly this one of Prodigal-ness, is that it rushes us through these stages at a dizzying pace.  Rohr says we start with an orientation, this is a framework of how the world is supposed to work.  This is what we are taught and caught in school, from family, friends, media, television shops and 80s sitcoms about families, and all the forces of the world that whip and whirl around us.  Moreover, you have these competing stories within you.  You have an economic story of our country that says, “I spent, therefore I am” ~ we love to swipe our credit card to affirm and express our identity.  You have a family story your parents told you ~ maybe about hard work leading to success or that people are out to get you so be afraid or that you used to have so much and someone took it away.  We have a family origin story.  We have a geographical story.  I was taught and told as a Midwesterner not to get a big ego – too big for my britches, to keep my head down.  You have a religious story ~ for good or not that great or probably both.  You have a friendship story.  All of these try to weave together in your mind, heart, and soul into some kind of cohesive patchwork quilt.  This is our orientation narrative.  Pause today to think about the forces of formation and orientation that help you tell your story.

 

But…and there is always a but…then something happens.  Your dad loses that good paying job.  You move.  Someone you love dies.  Someone new enters the narrative and upsets the entire cart of all the perfectly polished apples you stacked so carefully!  We all have dizzying disorienting moments in our life.  My kids right now are living through one ~ it’s called college.  Trying to make decisions for themselves, deciding what to eat (I am sure there are very few brussels sprouts being consumed by my kids right now), and navigating relationships.  Or it can be a new job.  Or someone leaves a job.  Our church is amid this as we prepare to say, “Thank you” with our heartfelt love to our music minister.  These moments are not easy.  And sometimes we want to race back to what was or end up idealizing the past.  Sometimes we charge forward, embracing an idealized future.  To live during the whirlwind of change is not easy.

 

Day-by-day, we do, and we begin (often slowly and with lots of mistakes and missteps) to find new ways.  This is a reorientation ~ a new direction or path or way of being. 

 

This framework is at play in the Prodigal family.  They have an orientation ~ a status quo ~ a family system of being together.  We don’t have a full description or definition of this in the passage ~ this is that Grand Canyon of mystery that we fill in with our assumptions between verse 11 (A man had two sons) and verse 12 (the younger asking for his inheritance).  We don’t know the dynamics or dysfunction or disagreements that fill that small spaces on the page between those two verses ~ but our minds are all too glad to fill it in with our beliefs.  Then, there is a disorientation ~ the younger son leaves.  Now, there is an empty chair at the table.  Now, there is heart break and soul ache of the Mothering-Father.  Now there is all this frustration fuming in the older son.  Now there is a way of life that causes the younger son to lose everything and end up in the pigsty of his own decisions in life. 

 

And there is that great verse ~ the younger son came to his senses (verse 17).  The younger son has a reorientation or awakening to a new awareness.  As he returns, the older son is still stuck and stymied, maybe in the original orientation or a disorientation or just in his own story that his life is not what it might have been.  The clash between the older and younger son with the Mothering-Father between can be seen as through this lens ~ each character is living in a different realm and from a different story.  I dare say so many of our human problems ~ crisis ~ have this truth as one of the roots.  Some in our country want to return to an orientation that has passed.  Some in our country/church/family ~ benefit from staying in disorientation ~ because there is fame and fortune to be made in fanning to flame fears.  And some want to move on to a new reorientation and reordering.  Where is this true for your own story?  Where are you today in an organized and orderly place of orientation?  Where are you in disorientation?  And where is a new orientation appearing on the horizon like the younger son coming home that you want to run to?  May these questions percolate and provoke new awarenesses on this day. 

Praying our Prodigal-ness

 

Waiting, watching, wondering God, like the Prodigal Mothering-Father, You constantly survey our souls, longing for us to open just an fraction of an inch so that You might race and run to embrace and enfold us.  God, You fling wide open Your arms, but like both sons, we have speeches prepared, evidence ready to present that we think You need to know about ~ never mind the fact that You are…God.  Like the younger prodigal son, we see ourselves as unworthy, we know our boneheaded mistakes and the messy mud pigsty we’ve created by our decisions.  Like the older prodigal son, we can constantly compare ourselves to others.  We can view the world through the narrow lens of sacristy rather than the abundance of Your love that holds us eternally.  God meet us this morning in our prodigal-ness.  Help us be honest that we have moments when we wander away.  Help us be open when we are self-righteous ~ rating and ranking ourselves above others because this is the script of the world.  Help us when we have those moments, like the Mothering Father, and cannot help but let Your lavish love loose through us to another featherless biped human-size being ~ and to all Your creation.  Ground us, guide us, infuse and inspire us each day this week.  In the strong name of Your re-orienting (and disorienting) love.  Amen.

Friday Prayer

 

Mothering, Fathering, prayerfully persistent Presence meeting us where we are this morning.  Every person reading this prayer has disappointments, moments that did not go according to plan despite our effort and energy.  We all have moments when the ache is too much and we want to get away praying the Pina Colada on the sandy beach will heal or help or that if we just try harder, work more, do more somehow, we can repair the brokenness.  We are both the younger and older siblings.  We are Your beloved.  We need Your prayerful persistence to meet us, slow us down, hold and heal us with shalom (wholeness and God-centeredness).  God continue to guide us through this season of Lent with a wisdom that meets us where we are and invites us to join the party You want us to participate fully in every day.  In the name of the One whose light and love is our path, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.

Dealing with Disappointments ~ Mothering Father

 

We have spent time diving into and dwelling in the disappointments that may have caused the younger son to run away ~ oh that has been my story.  We held close to our hearts the disappointments in life that may have caused us to grind and grit our teeth, just work harder to gain control over the situation like the older son ~ oh that has been my story too.  And now, we arrive at the ache of the Mothering-Father.  I see the Mothering-Father dealing with the disappointments with prayerful persistence, vulnerability, openness, and love.  When the younger son asks for his share of the inheritance, which is like saying to dear old dad, “I wish you were dead.”  The Mothering-Father agrees!  Talk about being prodigal!!  This is lavish to the extreme of outlandish and wasteful.  The “correct” answer in Jesus’ day (and in our own day) to such a request to be the money train for our adult children is something akin to, “You ungrateful brat!”  But no, the Mothering-Father, cashes in the CDs and IRAs and gives the younger son what he asks for. 

Wait…ever heard that cliché, “Be careful what you ask for”?  We don’t always see as clearly as we think we do.  Sometimes we think we have it all figured out, only to go a few more paces down life’s road and suddenly want to rewind time and have a mulligan in a choice we made. 

When the younger son says, “See ya” to dear old dad, the Mothering-Father lets him go.  In theological terms this is called “free will”.  God is not a puppeteer controlling every move I make.  God doesn’t dictate or direct or demand or decree compliance (that is Ceasar and the human powers!).  God gave us brains to make decisions, to chart our own course, and to do things that can help or harm.  We may say, “The devil made me do it,” when I say something cruel or lose my temper or feel anger boil over, but the truth is I have free will to leave God even when God doesn’t ever leave me.  Many of my disappointments come from me saying to God, “That’s great, God, I’ll take it from here.  Don’t worry I have a plan!” 

The Mothering-Father waits, watches, prayerfully persists for the younger son…and perhaps the older son too.  I wonder what dinner was like at the household while the younger son was away being the life of the party.  Maybe the Mothering-Father tried to connect with the older son, but the older son was distant or disconnected or too ‘busy’ to connect.  I wonder if the younger son left physically and the older son left emotionally, both relationally?  We don’t know.  I like the term, ‘prayerful persistent’, because it invites me as I wait to keep seeking out God’s wisdom.  I stay grounded in what God would have me do and what the next faithful step is, trusting that even when I misstep ~ go right when left might have been better ~ God is still there. 

Notice the Mothering-Father goes out to hold both sons ~ offers both unconditional love.  This is not the easy way.  I am much more likely to deal with disappointments by denial or digging deeper into the illusion of control.  I am much more likely to deal with ache by running away or racing around, but the Mothering-Father deals with pain by prayerfully and lovingly looking it right in the eyes.  I don’t have a seven-step formula for doing this.  But I do know that Jesus’ whole life he embodied this.  I keep reading the Gospels because Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection sought to show this wayless way.  I commit my life to finding ways to let the gospel medicine of loving kindness, a prodigal-ness of lavish wastefulness in love, be the theme music that sets my life dancing especially in the face of disappointments.  May you and I continue to explore and experiment with what this looks like these days.  Amen.

Dealing with Disappointments ~ Older Son

 

Yesterday we pondered moments we run away from disappointments and pain, times we numb the ache with shopping, alcohol, scrolling on social media, or binge-watching Netflix whilst eating ice cream right from the container.  The younger son ran away from disappointment, the older son wallowed in it.  The older son dealt with disappointment with that British cliché of a stiff upper lip, keep calm and carry on.  Or maybe he even told himself the story that he had to work harder because that good for nothing younger son of his father ran off.  Sometimes our addiction of choice is workaholism, which is unfortunately not only accepted in our society but admired and rewarded!  We love to be needed and necessary.  We love to have people comment on how “busy” we are.  Sometimes we are busy as a way to dull the ache within us.  I am not sure what is in the cobwebbed corners of the older son’s soul any more than I know what caused the younger son to run off to see the world, but I do think both stem from not dealing with disappointments.  Maybe the older son told himself a story that he couldn’t leave because someone had to look after dear old dad.  Maybe the older son told himself a story that he was faithful while the younger son was irresponsible.  Maybe the older son held the chain of tradition that was so heavy, wore a mask of wanting to be seen in a certain light, or pushed down his own dreams by working his fingers to the bones.

Whatever ingredients went into the stew that was simmering in the older son’s soul, by the time his brother returns, it is boiling over.  The older son can’t even say his brother’s name or claim the relationship.  He practically spits out the painful words to his Mothering-Father, “This son of…yours!”  There is more disappointment, pain, ache, brokenness and hurt in those words than I could exhaust in a year of morning meditations.  Sometimes we run from pain, other times we push it down.  Sometimes we deal with disappointments by fleeing ~ other times by forcing it into a box that says, “Fine, everything is just fine.”  You have to say that last sentence with clinched teeth, tight jaw, and stress sitting on your shoulders pushing you into the ground.

 

Yesterday, I wondered whether the younger son was a 7 on the Enneagram.  I wonder if the older son was a 2?  Twos want to help, they are self-sacrificing, put other’s needs ahead of their own, are well-meaning, flattering, people-pleasers who can have problems with possessiveness and with naming their own needs.  At best they are unconditional in their love because they want to be loved, but they fear being unwanted and unworthy of being loved.  Go and read Luke 15:28-30, the older son’s speech to the Mothering-Father.  There is so much disappointment that drips from those words that I feel in my heart.  And there are times we feel unappreciated and thus, unseen!  The older son felt like he couldn’t even have a goat party with his friends…even though the older son owned the goat!!  Don’t miss this because the older son misses the blessings amid the brokenness/less-than-perfectness of his life.  Remember the Mothering-Father has already given away his whole life to both sons.  When has one of the sentences above fallen from your lips or ruminated around your mind endlessly?  May the Mothering-Father hold these moments of disappointment with a healing grace that sees you, loves you, and longs for you to live from that place.  Amen.

Dealing with Disappointments ~ the Younger Son

 

Yesterday, we named and claimed that disappointment was a thread woven into the story of each person in the Parable of Prodigal-ness (which remember means lavishness or outlandishness bordering on wastefulness).  I see disappointment embodied in each character. 

For the younger son that ache causes him to cash in and run away. I know I’ve tried to run away from my failures and frailty ~ but no matter how far or fast I run away, that disappointment always winds up in the emotional luggage I carry with me.  My guess is that no matter how many lavish parties the younger son attended, no matter how much the façade of living his best life ever, no matter how much he tried escape what he left behind on the farm, it was still right there sipping a cocktail next to him at the party.  You can leave the farm, but the farm doesn’t leave you.  This is an echo of Exodus where the liberating love of God sets God’s people free.  But after only two weeks of wandering in the wilderness the Israelites start longing to go back to Egypt…you know…where they were enslaved!  They start to talk about the glory days of working all day and night, their fingers to the bones, to sit exhausted by a pot of stew with just enough caloric intake to get up and do it all again the next day.  It is amazing how our disappointments can lead us to romanticize a past that never existed, or trying to escape a present we cannot control, or chasing some idealized future that we think will be amazing.

Each of us have a time orientation in our souls.  Do you find yourself looking backwards, around, or forwards more often than not?  Are you trying to recapture and recreate the past, trying to get the most out of the present, or delaying/deferring for a future?  This question is grounded in how we understand happiness.  Is happiness back then, right now, or some future day? 

The younger son grasps hold of a happiness he is trying to create and cultivate.  I wonder if the younger son was a 7 on the Enneagram.  7s are extroverted, optimistic, spontaneous, playful, high-spirited, and practical.  They have FOMO (fear of missing out) and don’t want to deal with pain.  They want to be fulfilled, maintain freedom.  7s are wonderful to be around.  They make us laugh, come up with great ideas for adventures, and see the good in others and in any situation.   Yet, as I said yesterday, every life has disappointments, and you cannot run/party/laugh your way out of all of them.    

When was a moment you ran from your disappointments ~ after all avoidance is a pathway to travel in life.  When did you try to escape to get away from the ache?  Hold this part of your story as connecting to the younger son’s story.  May the healing love of the Mothering-Father wrap around you as you explore this part of who you are.