Encountering Wolves

 

Italians have a phrase for the upending of life ~ lupus in fabula ~ Fabula means fairy tale ~ or the idealized version of life.  Fabula means those times when everything is going well.  Lupus is wolf or trouble or conflict.  There is always a wolf in the fairy tale~ might be an actual wolf or that time when we get lost in the woods and can’t see our way out.  If you avoid/deny the wolf, you also avoid/deny/diminish your own agency.  When you reviewed the high points, low points, and turning points of your life yesterday, where did you discover wolves or times you got lost or stuck?  One of the realities of the world today is that the wolves may not be literal, but many still feel their warm breath on the back of their necks.  For our ancestors, the human brain needed a radar to be on alert for wolves or lions or bears…oh my!!  But where I live in FL, in my HOA, I don’t worry too much about encountering a bear, an alligator maybe, but bear or wolf not so much.  So, the wolves become metaphorical.  I can worry about discrimination and violence and pain that humans cause each other.  I can worry about the wolves of challenges that my children will face as they set out into the world.  I can worry about the wolves of our church that challenge us to be faithful in these days.  And when anxiety feeds and fuels my life, I can end up over functioning and overthinking everything.  If I just do one more thing, then I might feel in control.  If we just have one more meeting, we might come up with a better plan to attract more people.  This can create a gap in our lives, where what we preach about God (nothing separates us from God’s love) but we may act as if grace is all up to us…or we judge who deserves grace…or we are not sure grace can be trusted. 

This week, as you take on the role of a lifestorian, what wolves have you encountered in life?  What wolves do you fear are lurking around the corner?  These could be physical/health or relational or communal or emotional or spiritual or all the above.  Let your life speak honestly to you…and may you hold the truth that God’s love holds you with an embrace this day.  Amen.  

Listening to Your Life

 

Recently, I read a book by Bruce Feiler, who describes and defines himself as a lifestorian ~ a person who dives deep into life.  One of my deep beliefs is that God shows up disguised as my/your life.  There is no “spiritual” separate from “real” life…because all life is spiritual, we cannot compartmentalize or categorize our life.  All is interconnected.  It is like the difference between waffles (with their separate distinct squares) and spaghetti where everything is mixed and mingled together – we don’t know where one noodle ends, and another begins.  The more we see life as threads woven together in a tapestry, the more we might notice God the seamstress sewing in our lives.

Feiler writes about the story you were told as a child.  From a young age, you were given a family narrative.  This story can be ascending ~ we came from nothing, we worked hard, now we are something/somebody.  Or at the other end, the story could be descending ~ we used to have it all, but we lost everything.  Or the story could be an oscillating one ~ we’ve had ups and downs in our family, there have blessings and brokenness along the way.  I do think Feiler missed that sometimes we are given a story where everyone is against us which is why we struggle.  This is a story where if it wasn’t for bad luck, we wouldn’t have any luck at all.  There can be a family story that is hidden in the shadow, where we don’t talk about it, rather there is a chilly silence.  What was the story you heard as a child growing up? 

Feiler asked people to tell him about their life in fifteen minutes ~ to focus on the high points, low points, and turning points.  Many of us may not be able to do this off the cuff, we would need time to reflect on the path that brought us to this present moment.  Perhaps this invitation sparks/stirs something within you.  Could you tell your story of life in fifteen minutes?  By the way, many of Feiler’s interviews went way beyond 15 minutes.  It isn’t easy to give the Cliff notes version of life.  As you look back on your life do you discern a central theme like named in the paragraph above?

William James said, life is lived in the transition ~ we cannot ignore/wish/will away the changes.  We accept, name, share, and embrace them into the narratives we tell.  We are always in transition, which is poignant for me with our daughter about to move into college in a few weeks. I invite you to take Feiler’s suggestion to heart.  Find a piece of paper and pen to reflect on your life path – high points, low points, and turning points - that have brought you this far.  May you sense the sacred sustaining you, especially in the unexpected twists and turns that happen to us all.  I would love for you to share your timeline with me.  May God, who is the co-author of our story, who edits our lives with love, sit beside you as you let these words simmer in your soul.  Amen.

Borrowing Words Part 5

 

So, here we are at the end of another week.  We look back at all that has filled our days this first full week of June.  We notice the people in whom God showed up disguised as our life.  Like Abraham and Sarah, sometimes we entertain angels unaware in our lives or at we bump into God’s saints without that being on our calendars.  We look back at moments of laughter and times of frustration and moments when we were on cruise control ~ just putting one foot in front of the other.  And we know God was there.  We pray for God to open our ears, eyes, minds, imaginations, and life so God might get a word in edgewise.  We pray for holy pauses and deep breaths before we go offer preaching and pontificating convinced that we know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  We realize that we see in a mirror dimly, we don’t always have life all figured out.  But we want to, because others seem to have been given the owner’s manual, and we missed that day in school.  May God remind us that everyone is trying to paint the moving train of life.  That in a world of constant change that rearranges our carefully planned and plotted lives, God’s love is the ground of our being and God shelter us in the storms of life.  So take my life today, and let it be a blessing to those I meet.  Take this moment and this day, let me get caught up in praise.  May I realize that it is in You I stand and stay.  Let God’s love have the first, middle, and last word this day. Amen.  

Borrowing Words Part 4

 

A blessing for being human by Kate Bowler

Blessed are we, living in this small space,
in these bodies we now inhabit,
within the walls of circumstance,
in these short years and finite strength,
and with these eyes that see only so far.

We are fragile, contingent beings.

Yet blessed are we,
recognizing that it is our limits as well as our gifts
that can shape the natural contours of what is possible,
that guide us to what is ours to do.

Blessed are we when it is not our greatness that speaks, but our littleness.
For it is our vulnerability that is the truest thing about us,
the place where mutual connection is possible,
where competition ends and community begins.

And oh how blessed are we in our fragility and dependence and brokenness,
knowing that You, O God, hold all things together.

There is no cure for being human…but for each other, we are all good medicine.

Borrowing Words Part 3

 

God of Wednesday when we are in the messy middle of a week.

Our good intentions and plans from Monday morning were thwarted by interruptions and we had to throw them out the window.

Our re-start of Tuesday, new day/new me attitude from yesterday got turned upside down because of the words were heard and the moment we opened the newspaper.

So, here we are on this hump day, middle of the week.

Here we are with this mixture of moments when things went awry, and…and we know that somethings have also gone alright this week.

We celebrate that lunch from Monday with a friend.

We felt Your nearness, O God, as we took a deep breath on Tuesday.

And here we are with You right now on this Wednesday.

Remind us, O God, that we can always return and re-tune the instrument of our life to You.

Remind us, O God, that just as the sower in the Bible who scattered seeds willy-nilly and some of them actually took root, so maybe You are not asking us for a bumper crop of love every day from my life.

Remind us, O God, that sometimes reasonably happy is a good goal, perhaps even a holy one.

So may the prayers of our cluttered hearts this day be offered to You.

Untangle and untwist our random thoughts and scattered souls and emotions we are not sure we can really share, to find a moment of stillness with You.

Be thou our vision in this moment and every moment.  Surround and sustain us with a love divine all love’s excelling that comes unconditionally from You.  Let our lives sing out with joyful noise in adoration that You are with us and nothing separates us from Your presence.  Please, God, we are really counting on this to be true today.  Amen.

Borrowing Words Part 2

 

Although the author is unknown, and the prayer below has become associated with Alcoholics Anonymous, the Serenity Prayer has something to teach and tell each of us.  Slowly read these words savoring each syllable.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference,

living one day at a time;

enjoying one moment at a time;

taking this world as it is and not as I would have it;

trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will;

so that I may be reasonably happy in this life

and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.    

I love the opening three lines offer us a way to encounter and experience this beautiful and broken world.  That in every moment there are things we can change, things we cannot control, and we need the wisdom to know the difference.  In a recent podcast, a person said in every situation there are things that are mine, things that belong to another person (who I cannot change), and things that are God’s.  What is mine, theirs, and God’s.  Those are three good categories, because often what frustrates and flummoxes us is that we cannot change another person.  I am not in charge or control what the other person does or says or believes.  I can respond to what s/he says, but I cannot open that person’s head and re-wire their brain.  Or as Edwin Friedman wrote, “The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change.” 

What can we do?

That is where the second, less well-known, part of the prayer comes in ~ we take one day at a time, enjoy (note that word ~ enjoy ~ in the less-than-perfectness of this moment ~ don’t delay or defer your joy OR let your joy depend on someone or something else) your world today.  We receive the world as it is ~ to be an instrument of God’s peace to combine with the prayer from yesterday.  Finally, I love that phrase, “reasonably happy”.  What a GREAT invitation.  This isn’t about having the best…DAY…EVER!!!  Today is about being reasonably happy.  I don’t know who wrote this prayer, but I am going to say it was a wise person who knew that if you string together a few reasonably happy days, you get some pretty good weeks, and some pretty good weeks can add up to a more-than-acceptable months which can point you to an above average year which can be a wonderful blessing moment-by-reasonably-good-moment. 

May these words today open You to God whose supreme love will never let you go. Amen. 

Borrowing Words Part 1

 

Last week, we stepped into the stillness and silence ~ as God’s first language.  We explored and experienced and experimented with what it would mean to move beyond words.  This week, I want us to ground ourselves in the words of others.  Some of the prayers I will share this week have been shared over centuries…some are contemporary…a few are my own.  We begin with the prayer of St. Francis:

Peace Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

Now, go back and re-read this prayer with a pause after each line to let theords sink in and sing to your soul.  Let there be silent space within you after each petition to ponder.  What does it mean to be an instrument of God’s peace today?  What would that look like, sound like, taste and be like?  Be as specific as possible.  Being an instrument of God’s peace looks like being understanding and speaking carefully at the meeting today.  Being an instrument of God peace means that I don’t let the mountain of despair stop me from hewing a stone of hope (to quote Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.).  Being an instrument of God’s peace means laughing because there is goodness in this world.

What does it mean to sow God’s love specifically for you today ~ be concrete ~ and with whom?  Who are people you anticipate meeting today with whom you can plant a seed of love in the soil of their souls?  Name the people aloud, even if you are not sure how you might sow love with that person, because that person always shows up in all our lives with wonderfully creative ways to annoy us.  Where can you forgive?  Where might you let go of the white-knuckle grasp on anger you have been clinging to and fanning the flames of frustration each day because that person’s existence infuriates you?  Can you say today, “I prayerfully release my anger and pray for pardon in this brokenness”?  Where can you share and shine the light of faith and hope and let loose your smile with reckless abandonment?  The more specific you can find ways to embody and embrace this prayer ~ the better.  May the melody of instruments known as our lives come together in the symphony of God’s still composing and conducting ways today. Amen.