Morning Meditation

 

What stories have you been noticing, hearing, telling, and sharing over the last few weeks?  The beautiful part of this prayer practice is that it takes time to explore and evolve.  The more you return and review the chapter titles of your life, the deeper you can dive into listening to your life.  The more you look at the lists you have of top ten moments; the more you lean in, remember and recall a once-forgotten-detail.  It is like a sacred spiral that takes you deeper.  Or as Rabbi Abraham Heschel said, “Words create worlds.”  And the more you inhabit and investigate the world of your words, the more material it will create.  Stories are generative.  They tend to feed and fuel more stories.  Keep listening to your life.  Keep tuning in to the words you speak.  To do this, I will add a wonderful practice from Ian Morgan Cron.  He says that before he says a word in a conversation, he asks three questions:

~ Does this need to be said? 

~ Does this need to be said by me?

~ Does this need to be said by me right now?

 

First, asking these three questions will slow you down.  You can’t quickly respond.  To be sure you may lose that witty come back that would have gone down in history as the greatest one liner ever.  And you may even lose some of the initial emotion (anger or euphoria) in the moment.  The trade off is that these questions can help you find a deeper place within you from which to speak.  Second, don’t feel like you always must use these questions.  If a person is taking your order and asks you about your preferred side dish is, go with your gut.  But in conversations that matter, even in causal conversations with friends, these questions might provide new insights for you in the great art project called, “Your Life”. 

 

A few thoughts on the questions.  The first, does this need to be said?  I encourage you to pay attention not only to your response to that question (yes or no), but also the passion with which you are thinking/answering.  If I am annoyed that a family member didn’t do something I asked him/her to do and am about to go give said family member a piece of my mind - but having read this insightful post today - pause and ponder, “Does this need to be said?”  In response, my brain thinks, “Darn tooting it needs to be said.  In fact, it has been said by me so many times that you’d think by now it would have sunk in!!!”  I might also notice that I am quite stirred up at the moment.  This leads to the second question, “Does this need to be said by me?”  In the story of our life, we are the s/hero and lead character – of course we want the most lines.  Of course, we think we move the plot along.  Of course, we believe our unique voice and insights will bless, heal, and help the world.  However, if we return to the above example of frustration with a family member, it seems like I have said something similar before and didn’t really make a huge difference and dent.  Or in a meeting, I have found that if I wait just a moment (asking these three questions), it gives time for someone else to say a similar thought.  The diversity of voices is part of the symphony of God.  Finally, I love the last question, “Does this need to be said right now?”  In a world of Twitter, texting, emails, constant communication, we have sped up responses to an unsustainable and unhealthy pace.  We don’t have to return to long-form letter writing transported by the Pony Express, but a bit of space (a few minutes or hours) can be helpful in editing the story we are telling ourselves. 

 

Now is your chance to go out into the world and try to let this prayer practice of questioning how you are sharing your words and wisdom.  May you take a breath and pause before speaking today.  I pray you find moments when these questions help you, guide you, and lead you to share God’s love in more profound ways.  With God’s love to you all ~     

Friday Prayer

 

Please pray with me. God of every day and each week, thank you for this month of June.  Thank you for the experiences and encounters so far that have been a blessing.  Thank you for moments when I can grow, continue to learn, listen, and know that You are not finished with me.  Thank you for times of new insights, ideas, renewed energy, and sensing Your presence.  Thank you for music, soundtracks, in my life.  Thank you for the titles of music I can connect to the chapters of my life.  Thank you for moments when I can pause, breathe, rest in You.  Thank you even for the moments that perplex me, remind me of my own limitations, and that I don’t know everything.  In the words of the great hymn, “I need Thee, O God, every hour, in joy and pain. Come quickly and abide or life is in vain.”  Abide with me every moment today.  I pray for You, O precious Lord, to take my hand, lead me on, and help me stand.  May Your summons echo true when You but call my name, let me turn and follow You and never be the same.  All this I pray in the name of the One who is the composer and conductor of the symphony of life.  Amen.  

Just because I love this anthem so much right now...listen again to "O Love"...

Thursday Pause

 

Today, I invite you to pause, breathe and be.

 

Breathe in melody of music that brings smiles to your face, peace to your heart…breathe out times of dissonance and discord this week. 

Breathe in the love that will not let you go…breathe out all the ways we tell ourselves a story that we have to “earn” love or grace (which are always, always freely given by God).

Breathe in the editing the words of your story…breathe out any sense that your life is being graded.

Breathe in new ways you can tell your story…breathe out the voices that want you to strive or struggle for that which is not life.

Breathe in this moment right now…with all its beauty and brokenness…breathe out our pain, hurt, and harm that too often holds the editorial pen of the stories we tell ourselves.

 

May you sense God’s peace and presence that surpasses understanding, grounds you in a grace, fills you with joy, and holds you with a love that will not let you go.

Adding Music to Our Chapters

 

This week you are prayerfully pondering the chapter titles of life, the stories you tell yourself, along side the meaningful moments that have left an impression. Yesterday we added a soundtrack.  Because every good story needs some music. 

 

(Insert, “Celebrate Good Time” by Kool and the Gang here…I know I am showing my 80s roots!)

 

Today, I want you to focus on the moments in life that overflowed with joy…those “celebrations of good times”.  If you have not included and incorporated moments of holy hilarity, times when the tears came from laughing so hard your side ached, when joy was what fed and fueled your life, please receive this invitation as a way to continue to revise/review the chapters of your life.

 

As I’ve confessed, I was schooled in the lesson that life was a struggle rather than an adventure.  One of the ways we can re-write our story, is to hold times of joy – as we heard on Sunday.  One of the ways we can honor the adventure of life is to name moments you tasted heaven while still on earth.  To shine a light on your heart being so full you thought it might burst.

 

One joyful moment from my childhood is a photograph of me on Christmas morning vacuuming the carpet of tiny pieces of wrapping paper after opening presents.  Because apparently, I’ve always had some OCD with cleanliness.  That makes me smile.

Or I think of our band trip in high school to California, being peer pressured into riding Space Mountain, spending the whole ride shouting, “Make it stop!”  Good times.

Or my wedding day and wearing a hole in the carpet of the narthex pacing back and forth before the ceremony with nervousness until I saw Gina turn down the aisle.

Or the time I preached my first sermon here at our church (it was on John 1:35-42).

 

Is there room in the story you are telling yourself for joy, goodness, grace, and laughter?  I pray you will hear and hold this invitation to listen and lean into God’s presence.  Our minds can be like Velcro for the bad and Teflon for the good.  We need to exercise the muscle of laughter’s healing art.  Not because it is some magical spell that makes everything better.  Not because we all need to be eternal optimists.  But if we never take time to hold the grace and goodness, we miss one of the ways God shows up in our lives.

 

I can’t wait to hear all the holy hilarity of YOUR life.  I pray that you will let this part of your story loose so the joyful moments and memories can edit the words you choose for chapter titles and top lists.  May there be a holy melody of God’s love that will not let you go surrounding each moment.

Editing Our Life - Adding Music!!

 

How is co-authoring your story with the Sacred going?  Are there new insights that stirred and swirled when you went back to revise and rework what you had written from last week?

 

Now, I wonder, if there is a soundtrack that you are hearing?  It could be a song from years past or a hymn that you find yourself humming or a melody that stirs your soul.  Or you could go back to the chapter titles and consider a piece of music that would accompany/amplify the theme.  This could be music from popular culture or hymns or BOTH.

 

One of the pieces of music that saving my life, stirring in my soul right now is “O Love” by Elaine Hagenberg.  This anthem was inspired by the words of a Scottish minister, George Matheson.  He was blinded at age of 19.  If that wasn’t bad enough, his fiancé called off their engagement.  Ouch.  That makes my soul ache.  Think about the kinds of words Matheson might have used to describe and define that time in his life, the chapter titles he would have chosen.  Then, on the eve of his sister’s wedding, he penned these words:

 

O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thy ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

​

O Joy that seeks me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

 

I find such profound power in these words knowing a bit of the back story and what was happening in Matheson’s life.  How might you and I be open to the Holy Love that never lets us go?  How can we rest in the Eternal’s embrace?  The invitation to let go of clinging to control in life so we would be so caught up in the current of our Creator.  The invitation to be open to the rich fullness of God.  Hold that second verse about “joy that seeks me through the pain.”  How often do I close my heart to God in the times of pain?  Do I focus so much on the rain drops drenching that I miss the promise, presence, and possibility of God? 

 

I admit that I cannot listen to this anthem without tears in my eyes.  You can click on YouTube video above so you can listen to this anthem sing to your soul.  May God’s love that never lets you go embrace and enfold you every moment.  With great love and creativity and peace!

Editing our Life

 

Last week, I invited you to consider and come up with words on how you would title the chapters of your life.  This is never a one and down exercise.  I hope in the weeks to come, you will continue to let God, our co-author, help you edit how you describe and define the decades of your life.  The words you select are important because they shine a light on the story you are telling yourself about your life.  For example, last week, I suggested that I could title the chapter of my 30s as, “White-knuckling life.”  There is truth to that.  I could also title those years as, “Awaking up to my passion and purpose.”  It was in my 30s that I began to sense how meaningful writing and preaching sermons are to me.  God planted a seed in the soil of my soul in those years that God continues to tend.  As the roots of that seed reached down, the holy nudged me to search (like the pearl merchant from the parable yesterday) for a doctorate program where I might learn more and hone this love of mine.  The seed of preaching, teaching, and writing continues to be part of the garden God is cultivating and curating in my story today.  YOU, each of you, who read and respond to these morning mediations, YOU are helping me.  When I look at my 30s that way, a different story can be told than the struggling and striving – white knuckling my life.  Alternatively, I could title my 30s, “Discovering a true treasure”.  Which is true – white knuckling life or treasuring?  Both are.  Both were part of who I was, still am, and seeking to be.  Both shine a light on what was going on in me and around me. 

 

You can go back and edit your chapter title to the story called, “Your Life.”  Perhaps as you edit, with God’s grace and love, new stories (that were always there, just hidden beneath the surface – like a treasure in a field) start to emerge.  These stories are seeds…or fish we’ve caught in our net and didn’t realize were there. 

 

I encourage you to engage the spiritual prayer practice of authoring your story.  You can also return and revise the ten top lists of your life.  Those moments that have left meaning in your heart, shaped your soul, and are part of the story you tell yourself. 

 

Please remember, I would love to see the chapter titles and top ten lists you are coming up with in these summer days.  May God, who edits not with a red pen, but with a love that will not let us go help you find new words and ways to tell your story in these days.  With great love and creativity and peace to you all!

Prayer

 

So we wrap up and wind down another week of telling the story of you.  Have you, along with God, found ways to define and describe the chapters of your life?  Have you played with top ten lists of your life?  What are you sensing is important and significant?  What would you say you was an insight from this last week you want to carry forward?  Are there things/experiences/encounters you need to lay down so as not to let that hurt so define what you do?  Are there celebrations that can still bring a smile to your face? 

 

Reflect and review with God the good, the not so great, and the “Oh my word” moments of this last week.  Reflect and review with God the beautiful ordinary and the hard/holy work.  Reflect and review the God all that was and is…and what might be as this day unfolds.

 

God, You are our help in ages past and our hope for this day to come.  You are the One who shelters us amid the stormy blasts.  To be sure, we still get soaked from the rain and we can get so caught up in ruminating on what is wrong with others, projecting our pain, and feeling immobilized by our wounds.  We can long for a faith that can move mountains, but right now we are not even sure we can gather enough strength to go to the grocery store.  We want to be good soil for the seeds of Your love, but the rough and rocky places in our life are hard to break through.  We need You every hour to abide.  Bring Your gardening tools, O God, to till and tend our lives.  Bring Your editing pen to help us re-write our lives as testimonies and testaments to a love that will not let us go.  Meet us in this moment and every moment this day.  In the name of the One who we follow, Jesus the Christ. Amen.