Life Exploring

I am at the pinnacle of something important, breathing words of reverence, of honesty, of self-care and challenge. I long to enter the song of soulfulness and there reveal the timbre of the drone, playing underneath it all...

Wonder

I am struck by the wonder of raw emotion-- when we uncover deep truth in the performance of rite. Sitting as a participant and member at Erin's wedding today, I was reminded of this very fact: of the gentle, marvelous beauty of love.... of knowing another person so deeply that you are willing to let your soul be known... In all the many defenses that we have in this society--- resorting to the games of busyness, blame, and bureaucacy-- still there remains, in spite of the noise and voices offering otherwise, the deep knowingness that all one truly desires is to be loved. OH, to feel such love! Wonder.

Listening...

A few times this past week, my heart showed up--- echoing its longing and speaking its mighty language-- and I had to listen. Stop. Pause. And this is so important. As I am in this time called "seminary formation," I find it so easy to revert into one of the many habitual patterns of ministry and attend to all the needs of those around me.... but in doing so, it can be a never-ending fountain, and sometimes all one truly desires is to give simply-- Just give. And know that this giving is enough. Receiving is also important. It is so important. And in as far as it is possible to express this unselfishly, I desire to have the opportunity to do more receiving the next months... this Advent... and therein discover the gift to which I have been called. But now, it is time to listen!

Wisdom

If I want to learn about wisdom, I feel like I had better take the time to walk in another's shoes for awhile-- I would prefer to follow the footsteps of a 80 year-old man. That is one thing I have discovered today.

Photograph Prompt: The Sandwich

I wrote this tiny reflection from a writing prompt at our SFTS "Writing Colony" meeting.... I found the opportunity to write that evening incredibly therapeutic. I did not know what I would write, except that I was given this photo that touched something very deep within--- A woman was in between two walls.... At first thought, I thought I knew what I was writing about... But then I realize that something more profound was twinged. This is what I wrote:

Sometimes this is me, sandwiching myself between two abstractions-- the bridge--- sometimes I am there for important reasons- redemptive reasons, positive reasons, reasons traditionally worth writing about or, at the very least, celebrating. But, other times, sometimes, at these times the abstractions become paralyzing firm towers that resist, quantifiably and definitionally, moving. Then, although I tend to be a bridge, instead I feel like some hard piece of steel that lacks ligament and lightness. Then, I am trapped by perspective; perspectively-speaking. Then I look at the photo once more and realize that what I am seeing is not only, in fact, as I see it. If I take one or two steps back or forward, I am no longer in bondage. But how to meet the place where boundaries are to be blurred and still maintain some solidity and yet refuse to become dogmatic categories that prove mathematical equations but will never figure in anyone's life?

How do I allow myself to step into the natural flow of life that is both black and white and gray at the same time and live graciously with this discovery? I am something of a life explorer and something my pondering gets me in trouble; but, although thinking deeply is risking business, the refusal NOT to do it at all is even riskier. And so you might not ever agree with me, and I may never agree with you-- or more, correctly stated: They may never agree with "them" and "them" with "them" likewise-- But why feel brutalized by these senseless demands: The thems squared, whether in fact algebraically the same or not, are simply and complicatedly people. And so are you. And perhaps it is time to spend some time celebrating and pondering what this person thinks!

FREEDOM

Recently, in my Religion & Literature class, I found myself untangling a very difficult subject: "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter from Dostoyevsky's "Brothers Karamazov." I have wanted to read this book ever since I first heard about it-- and I cannot even recall when that was... Perhaps when I read "Walking on Water" during my semester abroad in 2003... At any rate, here, six years later, Dostoyesky is with me again-- as well as "Walking on Water." Both authors tell us to consider anew the NOTION OF FREEDOM-- and the meat of the subject, theologically, is that the freedom Christ offers us is everything. Now, when we are talking about freedom, we don't mean the kind of freedom that is often spoke of-- the freedom of individual rights, etc., etc. This freedom is more monastic-- like the innate heart-freedom of responding to God's call... Christ gave up the ability to take our freedom... We even have the freedom not to respond to him. This is sooo much more gutsy than I have ever seen or known.


Dear God, give us the courage and grace to live out from what we have learned and been told. Amen.

The Incarnation

Words from Madeleine L'Engle, "Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art":

"Perhaps for the Christian the Incarnation is the best example of that magnificent 'probable impossible.' It has been called the 'scandal of the particular,' for to many people it is scandalous that the Lord of the universe should condescend to come to his people as an ordinary man, with every human restriction. Why would ultimate power choose to limit itself in such a humiliating way? Is this really what love is about? The answer to this question has challenged artists throughout the centuries. How can this probable impossible be real?"


The second photo is entitled "Kenosis" and a photograph image of a work of art by my friend, Peter B. Daniel

I do not like you.. but I will use what I "don't like" to judge you

People ask me, after finding out that I am a Christian: Are you conservative or liberal? To that question, I offer a number of responses... Yet, regardless of what I say, I continue to have the same dissatisfaction. The thing is, whether conservative or liberal, members of both sides seem to be very eager to say how the other has failed to grasp the Kingdom, how the other should be excluded-- somehow... how the other needs to be more loving or more orthodox. This I find very dissatisfying. I desire to begin the hard work of changing myself and encouraging those around me to do the same-- rather than merely pointing to another as the object of my dissatisfaction. And yet, I am doing that just with these words.... Oh, the depth to which we can be moved and learn!

A hope...

To live with harmony with each person... to believe in the potential of all..... to meet violence with a more beautiful & powerful strength........... May we all be carriers of such passion!

A Photo that Makes me Smile

Fragmentary Thoughts on Love

"Whenever you speak / A word of love to me / It turns into a star / And ripples in my heart."

Claudia Hae In Lee

A Beautiful Prayer

"O Christ, You ask us, first of all, to live in the Spirit of childhood. In putting our trust in You, we accept to be vulnerable, and we can live from your love in all simplicity, close to those who have no protection, close to the very littlest. Enable us to welcome the Kingdom of God: Your presence amongst us."

Prayer from the Community of Taize

Dostoyevsky Resonates with My Sermon

About Ivan & The Grand Inquisitor in "Brothers Karamazov": “Both of them understand the mystery of the Gospel as the mystery of divine/human freedom, yet they cannot accept it. They are in bondage. In rejecting the deliverance offered to them in the God-man they have chosen to be the man-God; the man who rules the Tower of Babel, or any tyranny in any time and in any place. . . . For the sake of his idea, he condemns Jesus who is the Word become flesh.” (The Bruderhof, The Gospel in Dostoyevsky, 7)

Galatians 5:1 “ For freedom, Christ set us free.”

"This is not just an idea invented by scholars. It is the costly action of God in his freedom. This freedom has awful consequences. We have the freedom to defy the living God who has created us. What we term the Fall is an act of freedom. It is a negative freedom, however; it is that of rebellion" (7)

This past Sunday I preached about how can we encounter the LIVING God-- and not just keep God, at a distance, as an idea............

Empathy...

One of the hardest things for me, not to do, is to be empathic... And yet I feel like I have been giving myself a bit of a break-- and that there is always more that I could be empathic about (in the right circumstances).... And yet, in order to enter this wide and new realm, I feel that I need some great canvas of compassion to wrap around me--- I need a safe space to land, where I can say whatever is on my mind... and heart... and soul. And yet, the time to make excuses or to bargain is over... and sometimes it is simply about plunging and diving into this new space. God, teach me to continue to learn. I have been on many mountaintops and valley-places, and in many ways I have found a settled rest-- But encourage me to continue digging, to delve into something new, and see if in my delving I discover the delicacy of home....

A New Impulse to Write

Someone shared something with me the other day that convinced me that I need to write again... or perhaps it wasn't so much, even, the sharing of someone... but I, in fact, remembered-- moved by the impulse of something beyond human-- that it was time to stop messing around and share something of my heart on these pages again.

Part of the title of the blog entertains the very essential question: What is home? Is it something that someone can find or discover? When I think about the specific place and geography of where I am from--- Upstate, NY--- still a lot of idealism stays with me: This is the land where you can see the leaves fall and the hills change colors with the autumn. This is a place where the landscape is not yet fully ruined by the plastic, box-line architecture of modern suburbia... This is a place where children can still be involved in play and not so fully scheduled that they have forgotten the definition of fun.

Then too: What about home am I searching for? Well, the answer has nothing, really, to do with Upstate, NY-- although I miss the place--> I think, tonight, home for me is more about being in a space of connection & unity--- where I am in touch with the truest love there is..........