Trust part 2

 

Yesterday we explored one Hebrew word for trust, chasah, which was a physical support, like when you lean on a person for support.  You trust that person because you can feel her physical presence helping you.  When have you felt that kind of support?  Another word for trust in Hebrew is, betach.  This kind of trust is one of clinging to ~ like a melon clings to the vine.  Wait, you might think, how is this different from yesterday’s word for trust?

I am so glad you asked.

When you think of a fruit clinging to a vine ~ the vine is small (frail even) and the melon or bunch of grapes is large.  Also, the vine does more than offer support or strength, this is a kind of trust that nourishes us.  Yesterday, chasah was a trust in time of need, to get us through a moment.  Betach is a kind of trust that supports the slow ripening of our lives. 

Prayerfully ponder as we begin the second week of October, where you have grown this past year?  Don’t wait until December 31^st to investigate and reflect in the rearview mirror of life.  Begin to listen to your life and learn the curriculum of the last nine months ~ don’t worry there is no test.  As you look back, what is growing in you?  The invitation of trust is to keep growing and going toward what God is awakening in you.  The Psalmist says it this way, In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me. (Ps 56:4)

Note those first two words, “In God,” that is where we are grounded and guided.  “In God” is what stirs our souls.  This is a kind of trust that moves us in a particular direction and purpose.  Elijah had this kind of trust when he moved his tent from the stream to a foreign land.  The widow of Zarephath had this kind of trust when she rolled up her sleeves and started mixing the last bit of meal and oil.  I wonder if she immediately saw that though she thought she had used all the flour, when she set down the jar there was more?  Did she empty it into the bowl, set it on the counter, look over to see that suddenly the amount of meal had not decreased? Trust is not abstract, our Hebrew brothers and sisters teach and tell us, there are traces of God’s grace around us.  But as the Psalmist says, there are plenty of voices telling us to fear, especially that person over there.  We have never quite outgrown our five-year-old self who thinks there are monsters under our bed and there are so many voices committed to fanning those flames of fear today.  To trust, betach, is to cling, like a bunch of grapes to the vine, to God’s generous and generative love that feeds us in real ways these days.  Amen.

Trust

 

Over the last few weeks in church, we have listened to and leaned into the narrative of Elijah.  How he trusted God to pitch his tent by the stream and let an unclean/forbidden bird of the raven bring him a trampled turtle for breakfast.  How he crossed over barriers and boundaries into a foreign place when God told him to go to Zarephath.  And there he talked to a widow who taught Elijah about trust, because God had also appeared to her.  The thread and theme of trust is woven throughout scripture.  According to one scholar the word "trust" appears 134 times in the King James Version of the Bible.  Trust is one of those words that sounds great but can be hard to practice.  We all have a story of our adolescent self who told a friend that we liked someone, only to have that person spread gossip behind our back.  We all have a story of our working self who trusted a colleague, only to have that person tell our boss.  Trust, like its cousin “love”, can be fragile.  Trust when broken shatters into a thousand sharp shards that can leave us broken or bitter.  One of the beautiful parts of the Hebrew language is that there are several different words for trust.  And each of these words has a connection to something that is tactile and tangible.  For example, there is the Hebrew word, chasah ~ the image here is leaning on someone.  Insert Bill Withers singing, “Lean on me when you're not strong and I'll be your friend I'll help you carry on”. 

That is going to be stuck in your head all day long now…you are welcome. 

But the Hebrew word, chasah, is to physically lean on someone.  If you twist an ankle, you lean on someone for support and help with balance.  Or the kind of trust you feel in an embrace that aligns your emotional and physical self.  Trust is not abstract or obtuse here, trust is an experience in our life.  Listen to the ways the Psalmist describes and defines this kind of trust, “The LORD [is] my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust.” (Ps 18:2).  The great thing here is that invisible trust is made visible in a rock we can touch or a fortress where we can weather the storms of life or the strength of an arm to support.

When have you experienced and encountered this physical, tactile, touch of trust? 

How does that human moment point us to a way to live trusting God?

May our prayerful pondering today awaken us to God’s presence that supports us both literally and metaphorically ~ God who shows up physically, emotionally, spiritually, and relationally this day.  Amen.

Morning Meditation

 

Finally, today, I share a poem and prayer by Wendell Berry, How to Be a Poet ~ but the wonderful truth hidden in plain sight of this poem ~ is that it is an instruction manual for writing poetry but for living. Berry is telling and teaching us how to be in the wayless way in a world that we cannot control, where the facts of life are that we cannot change everything, and it is difficult to change anyone ~ especially ourselves.  Where we practice hospitality ~ welcoming the stranger to our door of life, even when the stranger is unexpected and unwanted.  That we do not know where we are going and find it difficult to be here/now, but we long to live our one wild and precious life with grace and love.  Please pray these words with me:

(to remind myself)

i   

Make a place to sit down.   

Sit down. Be quiet.   

You must depend upon   

affection, reading, knowledge,   

skill—more of each   

than you have—inspiration,   

work, growing older, patience,   

for patience joins time   

to eternity. Any readers   

who like your poems,   

doubt their judgment.   

 

ii   

Breathe with unconditional breath   

the unconditioned air.   

Shun electric wire.   

Communicate slowly. Live   

a three-dimensioned life;   

stay away from screens.   

Stay away from anything   

that obscures the place it is in.   

There are no unsacred places;   

there are only sacred places   

and desecrated places.   

 

iii   

Accept what comes from silence.   

Make the best you can of it.   

Of the little words that come   

out of the silence, like prayers   

prayed back to the one who prays,   

make a poem that does not disturb   

the silence from which it came.

I pray we will live these words each day.  Amen and Amen. 

Morning Meditation

 

Today, I share a wonderful poem by the poet and theologian Padraig O Tuama entitled The Facts of Life

That you were born
and you will die.

That you will sometimes love enough
and sometimes not.

That you will lie
if only to yourself.

That you will get tired.

That you will learn most from the situations
you did not choose.

That there will be some things that move you
more than you can say.

That you will live
that you must be loved.

That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of
your attention.

That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg
of two people who once were strangers
and may well still be.

That life isn’t fair.
That life is sometimes good
and sometimes even better than good.

That life is often not so good.

That life is real
and if you can survive it, well,
survive it well
with love
and art
and meaning given
where meaning’s scarce.

That you will learn to live with regret.
That you will learn to live with respect.

That the structures that constrict you
may not be permanently constricting.

That you will probably be okay.

That you must accept change
before you die
but you will die anyway.

So you might as well live
and you might as well love.
You might as well love.
You might as well love.

Morning Meditation

 

This morning we turn to a wonderful prayer by Father Thomas Keating called the welcoming prayer.  I invite you, first to read this prayer slowly, then I will make a few comments, then we will read it again together.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I welcome everything that comes to me today

because I know it's for my healing.

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons,

situations, and conditions.

I let go of my desire for power and control.

I let go of my desire for affection, esteem,

approval and pleasure.

I let go of my desire for survival and security.

I let go of my desire to change any situation,

condition, person or myself.

I open to the love and presence of God and

God's action within. Amen

The first time I heard this prayer, I thought, “Wait, what? I am going to welcome everything?  What about suffering or pain or anxiety or people’s words that hurt?  How in the world can that be for my healing?  How do you welcome other’s words that sting worse than a thousand paper cuts?”

Great questions!  I think part of the power of this prayer is how it moves from welcoming to letting go and creating room for God to be within us.  One way we welcome what comes is to let go of the notion that we are in control and in charge of everything.  One way we welcome what comes (the good, the bad, and the ugly/oh my word, why God! of life) is because it isn’t like we can perfectly plan for everything.  The COVID epidemic, the political unrest, the continued discrimination, the marginalization of God’s beloved, and creation continuing to cry out under the weight of our insistent demands ~ we are part of a web of life where we don’t get to direct the winds that cause ripples to rip through the thin silky threads that connect us.  This doesn’t sit well to our Americanized Christianity where we long to be in control and create five-year plans with step-by-step goals and agenda where we follow Robert and his rules of order.  When we come to realize and recognize that we are powerless (which by the way is the first step of any 12-step program) to our addiction of choice and control, then we need to find another way to life.  The three prayers/poems this week are trying to give voice to that wayless way.  Each give us some structure to ground and guide us.  Go back and re-read the prayer with an openness and letting go and letting God enter those places that are too often occupied by our own sense of self-assuredness and desire for survival and security.  May God, who is our shelter in the midst of the sun and storms guide you this first week of October. Amen.

Morning Meditation

 

Yesterday, I shared with you one of my favorite prayers by Thomas Merton.  Today, we turn to the poet Mary Oliver.  I heard her once talk about her prayer practice of walking and noticing what was around her.  As a matter of fact, the experience she describes in the poem prayer below happened, she fed that grasshopper!  Please slowly and prayerfully ponder these words with me.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

May you, my friend, be awed at the mystery of life ~ the grass slowly growing, the rain falling, the mystery of clouds sailing and the warmth of a smile ~ as you ponder with me the question, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?  Amen.

Morning Meditation

 

For the last several weeks of September we have been exploring the idea that your life is the curriculum, that what we have is here and now, that faith is a way-less way.  I know this is countercultural to a world of talking heads who claim to know exactly what is going to happen and platitudes marketed to you through pop up ads to purchase ~ each promising to take away your pain.  Honestly, the church has done this too.  Pastors have pounded pulpits telling you what to think and do, then we pass the plate asking for a contribution. 

 

I recognize and realize that in a world that is VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous), we want some place to stand amid the shifting sand.  So where does that leave us?  This week, I want to share a few poems and prayers I find meaningful and helpful to return to time and time again.  The first is a prayer by Thomas Merton.  I invite you to pray these words slowly and savor every syllable.  I encourage you to pause after each sentence, letting the sink into your soul.

 

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

 

May God, who is here and now, in the wayless way continue to guide you every minute as we enter this new month of October.  Amen.