The Story of YOU

 

Every single day you are working on a wonderful art project entitled, “Your life.”  Every single moment is a sentence; every single hour is a page; every single experience and encounter is part of the narrative God is co-authoring with you. 

 

Looking back over the last few weeks, what sticks and stands out for you?  What moments have left a lasting/lingering impression on your heart?  When has the ordinary been saturated and soaked with the holy?

 

Pause for a moment with me, get out a piece of paper, and respond to the above questions.  By the way, this is an open calendar quiz, you can look back at your paper calendar or app on your phone to remind you of where you have been and what has filled your days.  I encourage you to do this now.  It’s okay, I’ll wait.

 

When I look back some of what rises to the top is: celebrating Gina’s birthday, Ethan’s graduation, Sunday morning worship, laughing so hard at the last session of Artful Prayer tears came streaming down my face, family dinners, hard and holy Sacred Conversations on Race, Bible Study, and the session on “The Story of You” in May.  There is so much more.

 

Here is my invitation for June: Look back over your life as a story and name the chapters.  You might look at your childhood.  I would name my growing up in Iowa, “Just a city boy born amid corn fields”.  Look at your teenage years.  I might name that chapter, “Marching with the Drum Major God,” which combines my love of band and church as a teenager.  I might name the chapter of my early twenties, “Wait…I’m a Pastor…and a parent…and an adult…Gulp.”  I might name the chapter of my thirties, “White knuckling life,” as I tried to prove that I knew what I was doing.

 

Hopefully you get the point.  Rewind and review the art project of “Your Life” and come up with descriptions that capture some of the Spirit for you. 

 

And I invite you to please share these with me.  Email me or come in and talk to me.  This summer I want to HEAR your story and celebrate the ways God is moving in your midst.  I can’t wait to hear what you come up with.  Ready?  Set?  Go!  With great love!

Friday Prayer

God of new days and holy ways; God of moments of sacred play; meet me in this moment I pray.  I need Your presence when I start to fray (and fret and sway); I need Your grace amid the fears and hurts that weigh; I need Your light to guide me when I stray. 

Enter in, awaken my soul, surround the words I say; allow Your presence to shine through me like a ray; give me moments to pause and safety from prey; the hurts I carry too long of betray; for there is another way to life rather than dismay; so grant me wisdom, courage, and love along this walkway; for your presence sweetens my life like a sorbet; that somehow, in some way, I might find serenity through this wordplay.  May the love of God dance and delight you in marvelous and mysterious way. 

 

I pray you continue to find ways to be open to our planting, watching, watering, waiting, harvesting, sorting, and resting God.  May the God who dances in our midst awaken you to join in the holy movement of today. Amen. 

 

Morning Meditation

 

Return with me this morning to the Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...courage to change the things I can…and Wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as the pathway to peace. taking, as Christ did, this sinful (read: broken, bruised, gone astray) world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that God will make all things right if I surrender to God’s will. That I may be reasonably happy in this life, And supremely happy with God forever in the next. Amen.  

 

This is the third time this week we have said this prayer.  Is there something new you heard?  A word that caught your attention or a phrase that unsettled you?  You can pray the same prayer every day for your whole life and never tire of it, because words create worlds each time we speak them.  Each time I say, “I love you” to my family, those words recreate a world.  Yes, the same words can be repetitive or go on autopilot.  Or words can fashion and form new things.  This is why gratitude is endless new each day.  Today I am thanking that I woke up.  I am breathing.  The sun is shining and a bird just whistled a tune.  The mystery that our bodies are constantly shedding skin, recreating/resurrecting, and we look in the mirror and we are able to still recognize ourselves!  The mystery of relationships.  The joy of laughter and music and love that fills our hearts.  The world is alive with God.  Do we notice?  Do we let the holy hovering in our lives get a word in edgewise?  This is the endless source of thanksgiving.

 

May the beauty of living the questions today so enliven your heart and soul, making all the difference.  Alleluia and Amen.

Widening Circle of Gratitude

 

 

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others ~ Cicero

 

As we enter the month of June, I invite you to reclaim gratitude as a source of the Sacred.  In many ways this builds upon the Easter Sunday invitation of completing the sentence, “I have seen the Lord…” every day.  This continues to build upon the invitation to examine and explore what is being caught in the net of your life.  When we only focus on what is missing, incomplete, not enough, the tangled/twist tears in the net of life, we will end up seeing only what is lacking.  We can end up seeing ourselves as missing, incomplete, and not enough.  In some ways it is a chicken and an egg issue.  Do we project our own feelings of “less than” on the world, finding more than enough evidence by just scanning the headlines?  Or does the daily encounter with the world, which is so hurting and full of harm, cause our souls to ache?  Or is it both?

 

Gratitude can be a prayer practice and posture to see deeper.  For those who already feel like your mind is raising objections to practicing thanksgiving, there is good science behind gratitude.  Go ahead, Google that…you will find scientific research that noticing and naming the good is healthy and healing.  The daily practice of finding “reasonably happy” is a holy way to live.  We need to be careful not to be tripped up or trapped by either/or thinking.  Even things that are amazing (example: ice cream) have a downside (ice cream headaches or extra calories if I eat too much).  But on a humid Florida day when I feel the cool refreshing Cookie Two-Step ice cream on the tip of my tongue ~ well I taste heaven while still on earth. 

 

For each of us to name and claim gratitude for the people and places that fill our hearts, even when it would be hard for us to give a rationale for why this person or place is so meaningful.  Why does preaching on Sunday morning make my soul sing?  Why does listening to “O Love” by Elaine Hagenberg bring joyful tears to my eyes?  Why does laughing feel like a holy act of rebellion in the world today?

 

Yes, I could answer those questions with more words.  OR I could invite you to join me in sharing your gratitudes and thanksgivings.  To do that, would fill me with gratitude and would be a way to see the Lord as we prepare for Pentecost this coming Sunday.  May you feel the singing swell of thanksgiving filling your hearts during these summer months.  Amen.

Circles of Concern Two

 

Yesterday, I shared with you the ancient prayer for peace within.  Join your voice with mine in praying these words: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...courage to change the things I can…and Wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as the pathway to peace. taking, as Christ did, this sinful (read: broken, bruised, gone astray) world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that God will make all things right if I surrender to God’s will. That I may be reasonably happy in this life, And supremely happy with God forever in the next. Amen.  

 

Part of what I love about the extended version of this prayer is that phrase, “reasonably happy”.  What a great invitation and invokes the question, “what is reasonable?”  We probably all have a different definition of reasonably happy.  For some people, reasonably happy means material things and vacations to exotic places; for another it might mean basic needs of food and shelter; and for still another just a new pair of flip flops!  I offer you this question to let rummage and roam around your life.  What does reasonably happy mean to you?  Are you willing to leave space that reasonable people can have different perspectives?  That one person’s understanding might seem foolish to another.

 

When I hear that phrase, “reasonably happy” I think of things like: eating my vegetables which always make me feel better, choosing kindness (even when I don’t wanna), and being open to God in the ordinary and every day.  What would it mean understanding that I don’t control everything, but I can control my reactions and responses.  It makes me think of Victor Frankl, who endured concentration camp during World War 2 and saw his family killed, Frankl wrote, “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”  Sit with that for a moment.  Re-read it.  Frankl also wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”  Go back, rewind, and re-read those two quotes. 

 

Your agency is found when we accept that within our control are words and actions; within our control is to be awake and aware of what is feeding and fueling life (is it fear or fascination); and that what we offer this world can be a peace, serenity, and wholeness.  To take this world with its brokenness and seek God’s prayerful will.  This is the prayer of my heart and hope for my life this day and this week. Amen.    

Circles of Life

 

The best way to live life is to act on the advice we give to others ~ Author Unknown

 

Within each of us, there is a deep desire to be heard.  Within each of us, there is a teacher, preacher, and sage who longs to impact and influence others.  Within each of us, there is a prayer that we might leave our corner of the world better ~ clear out the cobwebs or clutter of where we find ourselves. 

 

And, one of the tensions we experience/encounter is that our circle of concern is larger than our circle of control.  A personal example is my children.  They are definitely in my circle of concern.  I want the best for them.  I would prefer that they learn life’s lessons the easiest, most pain-free way possible (unfortunately we usually learn more by doing it wrong than by getting it right).  I want them to be safe, happy, not get hurt by others, and know they are always loved.  These are my heartfelt concerns.  What of that list can I control?  Very little. I can’t constantly hover and hang around their lives to defend them when someone says something that hurts or harms them.  I can’t intercede or interrupt or interject every single second trying to avert disaster or remove potential pitfalls of pain.  What is in my control are the words I share, the energy I give, and showing up with love in their lives.  Do you start to sense how much larger my circle of concern is than what I can control?  You could draw this by making a big circle listing all your concerns, then circle the things that you have full control over within that wider circle. 

 

If this is true in my small corner of the world, when I extend and expand beyond the four walls of my home, you start to sense one source of the fuel that feeds the anger, anguish, anxiety in the world today.  I am concerned about shootings at schools, racism, sexism, discrimination against LGBTQ, clean water and earth, poverty, hunger, the war in Ukraine, polarization, and the circle of concern enlarges every time I scroll my newsfeed.  But, what can I do?  Where does my control begin and end? 

 

This is usually where we want to say that you are more powerful than you know, you have agency, you can make a difference.  And, our circle of control usually isn’t as large as we’d like.  I wonder if we, as a culture, were able to talk more about this, if it would help?  I wonder if we were willing to hold the beautiful tension between concern and control what might happen?

 

Of course, none of this is new.  It is echoed in the Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...courage to change the things I can…and Wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as the pathway to peace. taking, as Christ did, this sinful (read: broken, bruised, gone astray) world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that God will make all things right if I surrender to God’s will. That I may be reasonably happy in this life, And supremely happy with God forever in the next. Amen.        

 

Today, I invite you to read this prayer several times.  Let it simmer and soak and sing to your soul.  Let the truths found within these words interrupt the stories we tell ourselves.  May the Serenity of the Sacred; the Peace of the Holy Presence; and the Lingering Love of God be found as we embrace and embody this prayer today.  Amen.

Prayer Part Three

 

Authoring God, as I wind down and wrap up this week, I know You are faithfully and loving helping me write the stories I tell ~ about myself, others, the world and Your presence. Honestly, God, I often miss the plot points. I can get caught up in whether the punctuation is correct or whether the verb tenses agree. I get stuck in the negativity and don't see the possibility. Sometimes the pain and ache of the story can overwhelm me. The grief for the shooting at the elementary school this week, the lives of young children extinguished...this following so close on the shooting in Buffalo that was fueled by racism. I wonder, where is this story going? I wonder about the bigger story of humanity and creation. I wonder how I, as a featherless biped, through social media posts, sermons, and being a pastor can help? Enter the story of each of our lives O God afresh and anew. Enter the story we are telling in our hearts. I pray for You to interrupt the story with creativity that spurs hope. I pray for You to edit the story with new words of imagination.

I pray for you to re-write the story with fresh new lines of faith to trace for these days. Open my heart, O God, to hear the story of Your love being found in moments when morning has broken, like this morning. Open my ears, O God, to hear the story of Your presence in family and friends whose support feeds my life. Open my soul, O God, with courage to share that today is like a fresh piece of paper placed in a typewriter (Okay, that metaphor might be a bit dated, but go with me.) Help us hear and live that great hymn as our soundtrack: "I love to tell the story of Jesus endless love." May those words set my soul surging and help keep me open to You, O God, whose wisdom can guide all of us through the wilderness of these days. Amen.