Music for the Soul Part 1

Music moves us in many different ways.  We hear words that engage our intellect, as we seek and strive for understanding.  What is this combination of words seeking to convey, we ponder just beneath the surface?  As the words swirl and swim together, we seek meaning and whether this series of words might speak specifically to our lives.  But, beyond the words, there is a pulse, rhythm, or what is called the math of music.  What is the meter of the music...fast or slow?  Is it a series of short staccato notes or long ones that draw you in?  Of course, the ways the words and beat come together makes a difference.  And the mood we are in.  When I am feeling down, I really don't want to hear an 80s hair band...unless I do.  You see, music won't be confined or contained.  It moves, because there is a soul to music that speaks to our heads, hearts and core of being.  Over the next few posts, I want to share some music with you that is making a difference.  The first is by a band called, The Undeserving...which is perhaps a band we all feel like we might be part of on certain days.  The piece is called "Something to Hope For."  Each day, I think, each of us strives for something to hope for.  I sometimes wonder if people come to church out of hope...or out of habit...or maybe some mixture of both.

What are you hoping for today?

How might this song sing to your soul on this ordinary Tuesday?

I pray you find a trace of God's grace in this song.

Many blessings ~~

Friday Prayer

The mood in the house on Friday night is one of celebration.
The week has come to a close.
School will not come knocking for several days.
Work is complete, the computer is closed.
The air is thick with pizza and the promise of ice cream awaits us as stars shine down.
A movie is waiting patiently for us.

These times seem so simple, but profound.
I wonder if looking back which of these Friday nights will really linger and last?
Which ones will be so deeply written that they will form the backbone of a story?
And which ones will be forgotten.
Forgotten not because they didn't matter.
In the moment, life was fully.
But forgotten because our memories seem to be able to hold only so much.

My prayer is this Friday
Laughter will come easy and honesty.
Connections will be found after a busy week.
A communion moment because God loves even frozen pizza.
A holy moment of being present to each other incarnationally.

A simple prayer from my heart to your home.
Along with wishes that the traces of God's grace will strengthen and sustain you.

Many blessings ~~

Grace at a Band Concert

The plastic chair push on my back and bottom with such force, you'd swear it was angry I was there.  The lingering smell of lunch still can be found in the cafe-torium where my son is set to play.  The lights dim and the sound of music washes over me.  The melody is beautiful.  To be sure, there are a few wrong notes, but couldn't the same be said of our weekly lives?  Mostly, we are trying to the best of our ability to join in the song of our still singing God.  Mostly, we are trying to stay in rhythm and in tune.  But every day I miss notes and find myself in the wrong measure.

Most of the band is glued to the music so the director's motions seem to go mainly unnoticed.  Perhaps the same can be said of my awareness of God.  Trying to urge and help me, I stare intently at a screen or the musical composition of my to-do-lists.

Yet, our lives are not solos but symphonies.  I sense the sacred the most when I am aware that others are playing alongside me, offering their unique ways of singing God's love to the word.  When we are in harmony, life is full.  And even when I miss notes, others are their to fill in the gap in melody.  When there is dissonance, we search for the conductor to help us get back in tune and in rhythm.  Living our lives with one eye on the One whose love has written a great score of fully life and the other eye on our way of being part of something bigger than ourselves.

God's grace found in a band concert...even on a hard plastic chair.

Not bad for a Tuesday night.

May the traces of God's grace be found in the beauty and mystery of your life this week.

Many blessings.  

Grace in a Coffee Shop

Waiting in line for my morning coffee, the buzz of the small space alive with activity and fueled by caffeine.  There is a hum that comes from people clicking keys of lap tops, pouring over spreadsheets with a colleague, from workers behind the counter busily racing around filling paper cups and tiny bags crammed with bakery items.  There is a hum that smells like roast coffee beans and sweet sugary treats.  There is a hum that I feel vibrating as I lean up against the rail that helps keep the queue of people in order.

I look around at my fellow passengers waiting to fuel our lives.

Many stare down at the screens of phones lost worlds away and perhaps unaware of the world around them.  A few talk to the friend they had scheduled to meet there.  A couple in line studies the menu intently weighing the endless options of flavors and wondering why some words are written in Italian?  I keep glancing around, taking in the people who I will probably never see again. These are God's people with whole lives and stories that don’t involve me, and yet I often feel like I am the central actor in the story of my life.

Inch-by-inch; order-by-order; we slowly shuffle our way forward.  Sometimes when that progress is stopped a few folks sway side-to-side keeping the momentum flowing through them.  There is a groan when a person ahead pulls out a piece of paper, obviously sent by an office to collect coffee for everyone.  He rattles of concoctions both warm and cold like a little child on the lap of Santa.  He points at the glass case fully of various ways flour and sugar can be blended together.  The person behind the counter lets his fingers fly across the buttons of the computer capturing each item so that someone else can begin to pour, shake, blend, and prepare the items.  When I finally reach the glimmer steel counter I feel the cold metal against my fingers.  I order a simple coffee.  Something I could have gotten at any number of other places I passed by to come here.  Something so ubiquitous, it is boring.  The worker pauses just a moment as if thinking, “That can’t be all, look at that menu.”  But it is.  A simple cup of coffee.  No need to leave room for me to add cream or sugar.

The cup is warm when he hands it to me.  The brown sleeve invented to protect me does about as much good as sitting on your life vest as a cushion in a boat when it tips over.  The lid, without the slightest bit of irony, reads, “Caution: Contains May Be Hot”.  I hope so.  And I discover it is so the moment I remove the lid and steam escapes out.  I swear I can hear it saying, “Free at last!”  I feel the steam tickle my nose.  Tiny drops of water from steam condensing into liquid has clung to the lid and now fall onto my pant legs.   Few others in the small shop seem as interested in the beauty of this moment.  They are too wrapped up in other worlds to see the world contained in that cup.  We don’t always think about the hands of farmers who tend and harvest.  The trucks that transport.  The plants that process.  If every cup of coffee came with a travel log and list of people whose fingerprints helped put it in our hand, it might be more than our minds could comprehend.  The beauty is that this cup of coffee connects us.

In a few minutes my once overflowing cup now empty sitting beside me.  What a beautiful, indescribable blessing.  Elizabeth Browning said it better, “The world is crammed with God.”  But most of us only see a cup of coffee.  But it isn't lost on me right now.  A moment of thanksgiving for the ones who helped provide me with the cup of coffee.  A moment of gratitude for words that I type on the page.  A prayer that somehow in my fragmented sentences or the spaces in-between God’s grace and love might meet you dear reader.  And a hope that if God’s loving presence is found in a coffee shop, then maybe wherever you are right now, God might show up in such a way that your heart is strangely warmed.

May such traces of God's grace be found in your life this day and this week.
Many blessings ~~

Friday prayer

Just another Friday...
The to-do list for the weekend sits silently on my phone compiled in fits and starts as I noticed things around the house, but didn't have time to fix them right then and there.

Just another Friday...
Sure, there will be moments of rest and renew...relaxing and rejuvenating intermixed with the other items.

But what if Friday...this day right here...
Would open us to joy of the ordinary?
The video you watch that makes you laugh;
The lunch planned with a friend;
A clean floor that shines when the sun bounces off.
What if we didn't wait until Friday...
We don't need to postpone our joy.
We don't need to schedule our life around the beat the world tells us to dance;
We don't need to only "Thank God" for Friday...
Because I thank God for Mondays...when I dig in to a new week or read a story to our Preschool children.
I thank God for Tuesdays...when I gather with colleagues at staff meetings.
I thank God for Wednesdays...even when they are forgettable...and for people who study scripture with me.
I thank God for Thursdays...as sermons are finished and the rhythm of the copier producing bulletins fills the office.
I thank God for a slower pace of Fridays...
I thank God for Saturdays, when I can sit and simply be.
I thank God for Sundays...to worship fully.

And that list barely scratches the surface of what I pray I might notice as I move about my life.

So, God, on this Friday help me see it for its connections that have led me here.
Help me see this day in its uniqueness.
Help me enjoy the grace of this holy, ordinary day.

Let that be my prayer and may it b a living reality of Your presence.
Amen.  

Easter joy on an Ordinary Wednesday

'Joy is what we find on a hundred forgettable Wednesdays' ~ Tim Urban

When thinking about joy it is easy to gravitate toward the big moments in life, like our family's summer vacation.  Or to think about holidays...birthdays...anniversaries...the important moments when your iphone is posed in your hand ready to snap hundred pictures.  We twist and tie joy into what the world teaches us is "supposed" to lean toward that emotion.  There are two struggles we often face in following this rabbit down that hole.  First, the holidays ain't always what the Norman Rockwell painting promised them to be.  Family tensions (especially in an era of such divisive politics) hover and hang in the air.  Or we end up building up the moment so big that the slightest thing that goes awry...ruins everything.  I can't even remember how many burnt sweet potato casseroles threatened to bring down Thanksgiving.  Second, if we delay and defer our enjoyment until its appointed appropriate time...what does that do to the days in-between?  If I have to wait to be joyful until Memorial Day...which given that it is a holiday honoring men and women who died in combat...that might need to be postponed a bit more come to think about it.  So, the 4th of July!  But that is two months away!??  That is why I find the quote above so helpful in this season of Easter.  We need a joy that sneaks in serendipitous and then leaves by the backdoor as the trace of grace still lingers, lasts in the air.  We need a joy that is fleeting and fading.  Because for joy to be joy, it is always a surprise that catches us unaware and makes us laugh.  Joy connects us in ordinary ways.  Joy comes in a hundred forgettable Wednesdays.  Because the point isn't that we can capture the moment on our phone to preserve it on the screen...as some kind of evidence that we have found joy.  "Look," we say to a friend, "See us there at the Grand Canyon...that was amazing!"  But what about the joy of a delicious apple that drips juice down your chin?  What about the joy of watching a movie together?  What about the joy of a bowl of ice cream on a warm Florida day?  Joy need not only be fireworks in the sky or pumpkin pie or presents.  Joy is woven in the ordinary, which is why this word is forever inter-tangled with gratitude.  A deep sense of thanksgiving even with November is months away.  A deep sense of praise for this day, this moment.  In a world where we are always on alert and aware of the bad, the injustice, and the fact that nothing measures up...Easter says, sings, shouts..."Wait!"  What about this moment?  Isn't there something even here in this moment, no matter how imperfect, that might make your heart skip joyfully just a bit?  Recently, Adam Grant was on the radio talking about this kind of positive psychology...saying even in the face of death, we can be grateful.  That isn't to say we try to put frosting on the pain or brokenness cake we are being served.  But we also say, that brokenness is not the only word.  There is a both/and, a more than, we are always invited into.

So...on this Wednesday...what ordinary, everyday joy is dancing in your midst that you will forget by Friday?  What make you laugh even though life isn't exactly what it is supposed to be?  What brings you gratitude?  For me...it is you who read this blog.  For me...it is family sitting down to dinner.  For me...it is this breath and the one after this one...even when I forget what a gift this breath/family/others truly are.  Yet, they all remain blessing me hour after hour.

May the traces of God's grace stir and bless you on these ordinary May days.

Easter as Encounter

Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.  Luke 24:15-16

Jesus came near...there was an encounter with the risen Christ.  In what ways can we encounter Jesus?  Easter, these fifty days, as us to be open to the ways Jesus is moving in our midst.  Often times encounters make us think of two people.  There is an incarnational (in the flesh) meaning to encounter.  Yet, we can also encounter nature, animals, and even ourselves.

Maybe this season of Easter you need to do some internal work.  Process pain.  Let go of a good grudge.  Explore joy.  Experience laughter and grace.  Be open.  Breathe.

Maybe this season of Easter you long to reach out to someone whose words hurt/harmed.  Or maybe to rekindle a relationship.  Or maybe find a new connection to someone.

Maybe this season of Easter the encounter is with God.  Every Sunday in worship we describe that holy moment as a sacred encounter.  It comes in many forms and fashions for the People of God.  For many it is music...which is to pray twice.  For others it is nestled close in the pew to other people.  For others it is coffee hour afterwards catching up.  And for even a few it is the sermon.

Jesus came near and there was an encounter with the holy.  That is true not only then and there on the road to Emmaus...it is true here and now in our lives.

So far, we have explored...went to edges of the maps we've drawn.
We have experienced...realizing we may not always be in the driver's seat.
We have prayed Easter...went out for a walk.

And now, we encounter.
I pray you might sense the stirring of the sacred in these days in such a way that the encounter of the not-so-empty tomb warms your hearts and swirls in your soul in these days.

Grace and peace ~~