Swept away

At first,

the way of Your Love seemed easy.

I thought I'd reach ...Your union with speed.

After taking a few steps,

I found the way

is an ocean.

When I stepped in, a wave swept me away. "

                                             Awhad al- Din Kirmani

___________________________________________

It seems simple enough

This whole spiritual thing

After all Jesus said it only involved two things

Well, maybe three

Loving Sacred

Loving self

Loving others

But what a mess we have made of the whole things

In the name of loving Sacred

We decimate the earth

We start wars

We kill others

In the name of serving others

We abuse children

And teach hate

And as to ourselves

We either hide behind the ramparts

Of righteousness

Or we debase ourselves

This is not easy

This Sacred way

We so struggle to find our place at the table

Sacred Children

Perhaps the problem is that we focus on

Written words

Instead of the living Word

We look to laws and precepts

Rather than empowering presence

And we pick what we like

That which eases or feeds our fear

Or which supports our prejudices and preferences

But we are called

To let it all go

To go “all in”

To consume sacred presence

The way we consume food

To allow the sacred to become part of us

Bound to our bones

Inescapable, inseparable

And thus

Be driven to accept,

To forgive

To give

To show compassion

To love

Not in safe ways

But in ways that are risky

Scary

Overwhelming

The way is an ocean

May we be willing

To be swept away

Pain Embraced

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense,

once hate is gone,

they will be forced to deal with pain.

                                             James Baldwin

______________________________________________________

What is down there

Deep down in your soul?

What is it that lurks in the dark corners,

Menacing

Hovering

Waiting to pounce?

What powerful force looms

Behind the fear, the greed,

The lust for power

Perhaps it is made up

of all the pain we have suffered in our lives

all the failures, all the rejection

all the abuse

all the trauma

Perhaps it is pain

The pain of not being nurtured by a parent

The pain of not being loved

The pain that comes from deep rooted poverty

The pain of violence

The pain of being dehumanized

For being a woman,

Or being a person of color

Or being poor

We don’t like pain

We do not want that creature to come into the light

And so we leave that pain

Hovering

Hiding in the corner

While we allow other things to pour forth

Distractions

Substituting things that cause pain for our pain

Hate, anger, greed

Control

Driving the monster deeper into the shadows, but feeding it

Feeding it

Until it fills our soul

Perhaps it is time

To walk into that dark corner

To walk into that place, with love, grace, and acceptance

Perhaps it is time to make that pain our friend

To embrace it

Welcome it

Explore it

Touch it

Pain loses its power when it is acknowledged

And accepted,

Perhaps shared

With another who can hold our pain gently

For pain embraced is softened

And as it is softened

So too our need to avoid

All our defenses can come crashing down

And we can find our humanity again

Homo divinus

Sacred Children

And so too we can once again se the humanity

And divinity of others

Then we can see the Face of God

Not only in the mirror

But in all we meet

Child of God

Successful dehumanizing…. Creates a moral exclusion.  Groups targeted on their identity – gender, ideology, skin color, ethnicity, religion, age – are depicted as “less than” or criminal or even evil. The targeted group eventually falls out of the scope of who is naturally protected by our moral code….

When we engage in dehumanizing rhetoric or promote dehumanizing images we diminish our own humanity in the process… humiliation and dehumanizing are not accountability or social justice tools, they’re emotional offloading at best, emotional self-indulgence at worst.  And if our faith asks us to find the face of God in everyone we meet, that should include the politicians, media and strangers on Twitter with whom we most violently disagree.  When we desecrate their divinity, we desecrate our own and we betray our faith.

                                                                                          Brene Brown, Braving the Wildnerness

_____________________________________________________

There are times when I look in the mirror

And wonder how much is left of my humanity

After Facebook conflicts and Twitter wars

Where I have been assailed,

And where I have assailed others

There are those calm moments of introspection where I realize

That something has been lost

I have taken a bite of forbidden fruit

And have been driven out of Eden

And now I stand in the wasteland

Of hate and greed

Anger and retribution

How have we found ourselves in this dry and barren land?

Because we have stopped seeing the face of God in others

We have forgotten that each person is fundamentally homo divinus

Created in the image of the Sacred

Participating in that reality that is Sacred

What we see is an enemy

Someone we fear

Someone we can use (or even abuse)

Someone who, perhaps, makes us feel uncomfortable

And so an African American woman becomes a “dog”

And so does Mr. Trump

Immigrants are rapists and murders

The poor are lazy moochers

Young black men are all violent and angry

The police are cold hearted people who abuse their power

The face of God is long gone

And every time we say something,

Do something

To dehumanize another

We open the door to terror

Not seeing the other as fully human

We can do most anything to them

They simply do not count

The rules do not apply

In those moments when their humanity is gone

We drop nuclear bombs

We set off backpacks filled with nails

We walk through malls randomly shooting people

We tear families apart at the border, and put children in cages

We remove services from people in need

We name call and attack on Facebook and Twitter

And the ultimate tragedy is

That as we strip others of their humanity

We strip ourselves of our own

I am guilty

I suspect we are all guilty

There is not easy answer to this

Being connected to the Sacred, to that bigger than ourselves is hard work

Letting the sacred rock and roll in our souls feels dangerous

Seeing the face of God in Donald Trump, or a Muslim terrorist,

Or a predatory Christian minister

Is not easy

I think I need a mantra

Something that I say, over and over and over again

As I look at the picture of those I want to despise

As my hand hovers over my key board

As I work on my sermon

I think it needs to be

Simply

Child of God, Child of God, Child of God

Otherwise I diminish others

And I diminish myself

The Blinds are Broken

“We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of humanity. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.”

                                                                                                         Martin Luther King

_______________________________________________________________

There is a place

Where all the power hungry

Greedy

Angry

Frightened souls are wrong

There is something missing

From the agenda of the far right

From the capitalist ideology of the very rich

From the frightened isolationism of the white nationalists

While they shout about excluding those who are not like them

And grasp resources to themselves

And use and misuse power for their own benefit

They forget that in the divine design

We all participate in something much vaster than ourselves

In something big

In a reality (I call it God), a force that is both unity and diversity

Power and love

We are bound together

And if one’s soul is awake at all

It cannot ignore, oppress, minimize, exclude,

Those other souls who inhabit this planet

We are bound together

I have powerful memories

Of trying to eat dinner in parts of the world

Where radical inequity exists

I can remember, picking at a meal

Because outside the window of the restaurant, destitute people

Lay crumpled on the ground

That sight hammered my soul

But many chatted, and sipped their wine

And simply didn’t care

The restaurant owner, seeing the distress of our small group

Had a solution

He pulled down the blind

We cannot pull down the blind

We cannot shutter our souls

To those hungry in our streets

To those feeling violence and oppression, coming to our borders, seeking help

To the people of color who walk the streets in fear

Of police violence against them

Of immigrant workers waiting to hear the echo of boot as ICE comes to arrest them

Of mentally ill people who struggle to stay rooted in this reality

Because we are bound together

And I cannot be who I ought to be, and can be

Until those around me are who they ought to be

And can be

Thus I pay my taxes without complaint

Thus I resist those who would rob others of their rights

Thus is struggle with my own greed

And my own need for power

Thus I try to be generous when I can

Kind when the opportunity presents

Loving, always

For me the blinds are broken

I can no longer hide

I can no longer shout America First

I can no longer simply ‘take care of number one”

And celebrate those things that help me but hurt others

It Is true, sadly

That sometimes I do act out of greed

I am protective

I do participate in that essential selfishness that is so much

A part of American culture

But the blinds are up

Mea Culpa

Kyrie Eleison

Auxilium me amare

step by step

If you can see you path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path.  Your own path you make with every step you take.  That’s why it’s your path.

                                                                                          Joseph Campbell

__________________________________________________________

Here I am, wandering into my 67 year

And I really have no idea where I am going

And that is a good thing

For too much of my life I have tried to lay out my path

I have counted my steps

Mapped out my future

I have been careful

Controlled

An old soul

I was going to be doctor, until I discovered that science and I hate each other

Than a super star pastor

So I set my path, and followed it

Pushing through the undergrowth of doubt and low self esteem

Until I climb to the top

And stepped off a cliff

There is nothing wrong with setting a direction for your life

To know what you value,

And live toward that value

I value service,

Being a help to others;

There is nothing wrong with living toward that compass point

I value lifting others up

And value compassion

And I can live toward those things every day

But I do not have to follow the path others have set for me

Or even the path I have set for myself

All I have to do is put one foot in front of the other

Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe

All I have to do is live in the moment

And notice what I am thinking, and accept what I am feeling

And do what I care about

Living in the moment the path unfolds before me as I go

I am not stuck with an agenda that may well be wrong

A goal that may well be unobtainable

I am not burdened by what has gone before

I just live

Love

Care

Give

Open to what is in front of me

Open to who is in front of me

Walking down

My path

Wherever it may lead

Privileges

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”

                                              Dwight D. Eisenhower

____________________________________________

People of privilege

Seldom know they are privileged

Whites

Christians

The Rich

All view the world from their bubble

Which protects them from the understanding

That their pathway is easier than others

I should know

I am a white

Male

Christian

Who was born to affluence

That affluence did not make me a success

But it made becoming a success easy

No issues with debt

A good college

Privilege

Privilege

Privilege

It is hard for me to understand how much more difficult the path is

For a person of color

A woman

A Muslim

And person who is poor

I just take for granted my advantages

It takes work to put one’s self in another’s shoes

It takes humility

And generosity

But mostly a willingness to say

Life is not fair

And to respect how difficult it is

To move up out of poverty

To deal with sexism

And racism

Every day

Every damn day

To have people shame you

Diminish you

Reject you

and the worst thing we can do

is hang on to our privileges

at the cost to other

for then we lose our souls

we become empty ciphers

when we value our privileges above out principles

we end up with border walls

children in cages

tax cuts for the rich

cuts to the safety net

marches to “unite the right” (white)

we end up with greed

racism

sexism

dominionism

and worse

we end up with petty cruelty

injustice

inequity

We who are privileged must be willing

To see our privilege

And let it go

For the cost of our privilege

Is simply too high

In the sacred economy, which is based on equity and love

What kind of God do you worship?

“when the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a man can be a Christian.”

                                                            Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

_____________________________________________________________

There is a place in scripture where we are told to be imitators of God

To, literally

Live in love

And give of ourselves

But somehow it often seems to go wrong

Perhaps it has to do with the God we imitate

For some people God is judgmental, stern, retributive, even angry

God is a God with conditional love

A God who demand and expects and puts all kinds of conditions on sacred love

And so, our imitation of God

Becomes a matter of “us” and “them”

“in and “out”

“Good” and “Bad”

“Blessed” or “cursed”

Having kind of an ugly God

We become kind of ugly people

But, if God is love

If God’s love is unconditional

If God sees the worth in all people

Then we move into a love that is generous

A love that does not shame the poor

Exclude those different from us

If you want to know what kind of God you worship

Really

Then look at how you view the person who is among the “least of these”

Then you will know

Then you will know

But just remember

In the end… God is love

love versus attachment

“Love wants the best for others. Attachment takes hostages.”

                                             Louise Penny, The Cruelest Month

__________________________________________________

Love is an amazing thing

Love sets us free from the self

And gives us an eye for the other

It gives us the wisdom

That joy is to be found most profoundly

In the act of giving others joy

Attachment is another matter

Attachment is the grim task of hanging on

To people

To values

To agendas

it moves us away from others

in a paradoxical way,

toward ourselves

and often becomes essential selfishness

A patriotism that is rigid and brutal

A “love” that is obsessive and manipulative

“Attachment takes hostages”

Children in cages on the border

Women who are abused

Children who are oppressed

Church members who are manipulated

Love is selfless

Attachment is selfish

Love is freeing

Attachment is controlling

Love enables growth

Attachment encumbers

Love is ego reducing

Attachment is ego boosting

Attachment can destroy love

Love will transcend attachment

No matter what the relationship

Between one and country

One and one’s job

One and another person (children, one’s love)

We want to love

Without an unhealthy attachment

I want to love my country

Not have an attachment to that causes me to support walls, and exclusion,

Not an attachment that makes me blind to where we could be better

And unwilling to change

I want to love the woman in my life

My children

My friends

The members of my church the same way

Because I want what is best for my country

My church

The people in the pews

For my family

And yes,

For you

A global view

“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.”

                                              Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House

________________________________________

Essential selfishness

It is the stuff that politicians sell

It the place from which comes

The darker angels

Hate

Greed

Lust of power

America First!

It’s all about us

The rest of the world is there to satisfy our rapacious hunger

And they should be happy

Happy

To feed us

This plays out at so many level

It is seen in the acts of Congress

In the “minster” who drives up to his megachurch in his $350,000 car

It is seen in the people “packing” in McDonalds

And in the super patriots who cheer the caging of children

It is seen in the desire to “remove” people who are different from our country

In the ability to neglect the vulnerable and the poor

It is seen in the angry faces, and crude gestures of people debasing the press

Some how we think all this power

All this anger

And this self focus

Will make us strong

Keep us safe

Get us what we need

It won’t

The odd economy of the Kingdom

Suggests that

We must think a different way

That is not about me, it is about we

It is about all of us

Who inhabit spaceship earth

Finding a way

To live together

Survive together

Flourish together

And the economy of God suggests

That if anyone is left behind

That is not good

It is not good for us

For they are us

And we have left part of ourselves behind

And we have become smaller

Perhaps that is the problem in America

We have become smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller

All in the name of seeking to be great

So it is time to change the question

Time to change the focus

From what is good for me?

What do I need?

To, what is good for us, for all the family of God?

And what can I do

To meet that need?

prayer

“The function of prayer is not to influence God,

but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

                                                            Søren Kierkegaard

_____________________________________________

When you pray, pray this way….

I have always struggled a bit with what we call prayer

Oh, I know the Lord’s prayer

Its nice, and it makes sense

Focus on God

Ask for the basics of Life

Ask to be forgiven, and for the capacity to forgive others,

And remember, well, that God is God

And I do pray
I have my own unique style

It is mostly a matter of muttering under my breath

As I go through my day

Things like

“help”

“oops”

“I’m sorry”

And of course, “thank you”

But sometimes one wonders

Does God listen?

Does God hear?

I am reminded of the journalist who lived in Jerusalem,

Close to what is known as the wailing wall

He would watch the people come and go from that sacred place,

And he could not help but notice one elderly man who came to the wall every day

One day he approached the man and said to him, “I cannot help but notice

That you come to the wall every day”  The man replied, yes, I have been coming to the wall every day for over 30 years.  And every day I pray to Yahweh, I pray for peace”

“What” responded the correspondent, “is it like to do that?”  “It is like talking to wall”, the old man replied.

What comes from prayer

I would have to say that the main benefit of prayer

Is the same benefit we get when we talk, really talk, with anyone

Connection

A sense of knowing and being known

A sense of loving, and being loved

As to outcomes?

Well, I think Kierkegaard was probably right

If we want to see what happens when we prayer,

We need not look to the world

Or to others

We simply need to look inside ourselves

What is happening in my heart, my soul

What has changed in the way I see other people

In the way I feel

In my relationship to adversity, or even success?

For the function of prayer is, perhaps above all else

A plea that God will work Sacred miracles of love

Inside us

And the hope of prayer, is that this inner work

Changes, in a profound way

Everything else

Even if it doesn’t

be yourself

You are only free when you realize you belong no place – you belong every place – no place at all. The price is high, the reward is great.

                                                            Maya Angelou

You will always belong anywhere you show up as yourself, and talk about yourself in a real way”

                                                            From Rene Brown

____________________________________________

I was the geeky kid who didn’t quite belong

Oh, I wasn’t “out”

And I had a good childhood

But there was this way, in which I didn’t belong

Or perhaps should more rightly say, in which I didn’t feel I belonged

And so I was always trying to earn accepting

Trying to figure out the magic word that would gain me entrance in

The “inner circle”

Being me just wasn’t an option

I am not sure things have changed a lot

Over the years I have been many things

Pastor, EMT, disaster relief worker, Assistant Professor in a medical school, mental health professional

And still I have felt that I had to

Manufacture a self

So that I would belong

A self for every place

And in the process, I somewhat lost my true self

Not completely perhaps, but in some profound ways

Now as I near 70, the thought occurs to me

Perhaps what I need to do, most of all, is show up as myself

To ground myself in who I really am,

I need to say to myself (Thanks again to Maya Angelou)

“I belong to myself (and by default the Sacred in which I participate), and

I like Stephen very much.  I like the humor and passion and creativity, very much.

And when I find myself not being, just me, then I have to deal with that.”

I belong to me

And I belong to the Sacred woven into my fabric

And if I am just me

I am where I belong

Whether it is comfortable or not

Whether I fit in or not

The price is high sometimes

Being who you really are, and not altering yourself for others

But the reward?

Is great

Choices

“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.”

                                                                           Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

____________________________________________

We all have choices

Some are easy, some are hard

Some are obvious, some are veiled

We make thousands of choices each day

From the mundane (do I get up, or sleep for five more minutes)

To the profound (am I going to exclude or include, forgive or seek revenge)

Wayne Muller says we only have one choice really

The next one

But of course that choice leads to the next one,

And the next one

And the next one

And our choices become

In a way, like the “breadcrumbs of God”

Our ultimate challenge?

To make the next choice the “right” choice

To make the choice that follows the prompting of the Sacred

We will of course make bad choices

We will wander off the path into the swamp

But God is the great innovator, and gently, or not so gently, nudges us back toward the path

Of course sometimes we get so far off the path, the only choice is to find a new path

Call it Plan B

I think I am on plan Z, perhaps even Z25

And still the choices come

We can choose to hate, chose to lie, choose to grasp, choose to bully, choose to use, choose to abuse

We can choose selfishness and cruelty as values

We can

But if we pay attention to the Sacred

To that presence within, perhaps, perhaps, our choices will be better

Perhaps we will choose love, generosity, compassion

Perhaps we will choose hope, and service

And it is good to remember

Our choices determine our direction

Are we marching toward Zion?

Or wandering into the city dump (otherwise known as Gehenna)

(sorry for those semi-obscure Biblical references, I could not help myself

I choose poorly)

Our choices do more than that

They determine who we are

enough

I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other's wounds; they repair the broken skin.”

― Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium

__________________________________

What makes life worth living?

Power?

Wealth

Ability to use and abuse

Ask those who have more than they need

And find it isn’t enough

’Why spend money on that which is not bread,

and your labor on that which does not satisfy?”

why?

How do we find what we seek

Which is closeness to the Sacred

Closeness to other people

We reach out

With compassion

Caring

And love

truth

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

 “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

― Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays 2, 1926-29

 “Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

______________________________________________________

Do we live in a post truth world?

Today, as I try to wade through the lies coming from almost every direction

The White House

Politicians on the stump

Websites

Memes

Even people I know,

I wonder about our relationship with the truth

I wonder about the power of truth

Right now it seems as if lies have more power than truth

And unlike Gandhi, I despair

I know the power of love and truth

Jesus was love and truth

But the tyrants, the greedy, the abusive

Right now they seem to be winning

And facts

Do they even matter any more

There are people out there who are angry and entrench because

They don’t bother with the facts

They choose a voice to trust, such as FOX, and that is the end of it

What is said becomes fact for them

And thus, as the Bible says, the good becomes evil and evil good

But mostly I worry because we all seem to be lying to ourselves

Those who follow the path to the far right lie, and say they don’t hate

They aren’t racists

They have compassion

Those who follow the path to the far left pretend they are more forgiving, more compassionate

Than those on the right, they aren’t

They are just a different flavor of angry, rigid and judgmental

And I

Dare I look in the mirror

In how many small ways do I ignore the facts

Pass on misconceptions and falsehoods

How many times do I pretend to be better than I am?

How dare I challenge the person who dehumanizes Muslims

Or is willing to throw immigrants to the wolves

When I have my own essential falshoods

What do I do, when immersed in many shades of gray

I lose my own grip on the truth

And thus lose my own fundamental ability

To speak the truth

And when I speak that truth

In love

close to God

I was in a Q&A session recently with a somewhat earnest, young seminarian whose hand popped up and said, Pastor Nadia, what do you do personally to get closer to God? And before I even realized I was saying it, I was like, what? Nothing. That sounds like a horrible idea to me.

When it comes down to it, my spirituality is most active not in meditation, but in the moments when I realize God may have gotten something beautiful done through me despite the fact that I'm an asshole.

                                                                                          Nadia Bolz-Weber

__________________________________________________________

When do I feel closest to God

It’s a good question

Do I even try to get  close to God, really

I mean seriously, the Sacred is scary stuff

Uncontrollable

Undefined

Powerful

Life changing

Irresistible

I have to admit I have never really found a “sense” of God

By reading the Bible

Ore even prayer

Although I pray all the time

I say “help” about 100 times a day

And “I’m sorry” about 100 more

I feel closest to God, when my dog gives me his lopsided grin

And when the sun comes up

I feel closest to God when suddenly

In the midst of all I am doing I stop, and realize that I have actually helped someone

It might be small, like opening a door for an older person

It might be stopping by the house of a “ranch widow” just to say “hi”

It might be when the light seems to come on in someone’s head and heart

In therapy

It might just be when I am silent, when I want to speak

Or speak when it would be easier to be silent

Getting close to God is about

Doing what is easy

Doing what is hard

Doing things intentionally

Doing things by accident

Doing things big and small

But doing them

While muttering under one’s breath

Always

Always

“help”

and

“I’m sorry”

and

“thank you”

And doing them in love

Never Quit

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief

Do justly now

Love mercy, now

Walk humbly, now

You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it

                                                            A “gathering” of statements from the Talmud

___________________________________________________________

The world is in pain

Evil people are in power

With no compassion, no sense of other

They are legislating and promoting cruelty and hate

The “enormity” of what is happening

To the poor, to minorities, to the earth

To all vulnerable creatures and all creation

Is unmeasurable

And those who see the earth

And see the poor

And see the young black man

And see the immigrant mother who has lost her child

And see the person with an addiction

And see the person with mental illness

Those who look into the eyes of the suffering and say

I see you

Sawubona,

Grieve

We grieve about the damage,

The minimization, marginalization, oppression

We grieve to see so many wounded

With hope stolen

But we cannot stop

We cannot quit

We cannot let these people win

Who seem to have lost their own souls

Who seem to have lost their humanity

The divine spark

The Sacred presence

These empty ciphers cannot be allow to define the future

They cannot be allow to dictate how things will be

And we cannot, by inaction (or collaboration)

Compromise our own inheritance as Sacred Children

So we must each day see what is in front of us

All the beauty, all the ugliness

All the joy, all the pain

And we must walk

Sometimes in the darkness, where we stumble

And fall

And feel pain

Sometimes in the light

Where the way is more clear

But we must walk

Living justice (where there is no justice)

Living mercy (where there is cruelty and shaming)

Living humility (where there is arrogance and power lust)

Letting the Spirit rock and roll in our souls

And living love

And we must never quit

Live with Courage

Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.  Only dead people don’t feel pain, sadness, worry.  We can’t embrace a “dead person” perspective… the process of developing emotional agility isn’t about ignoring difficult emotions and thoughts.  It’s about holding those emotions and thoughts loosely, facing them courageously and compassionately, and then moving past them to make big things happen in your life.

                                                                           Susan Davis

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Emotions are

They just are

We can’t avoid them

We can’t deny them

We can’t suppress them

Without committing ourselves to an ongoing task

That will rob us of life

Cause us to narrow down our living to almost nothing

No!

We do not have bad emotions

We just have emotions

They just are

Part of the human experience

So when things assail us our response must be

“Oh, I am having a human experience!”

And the we notice, let go

And choose to embrace life, and love

Simple, yes

Easy, no!

Live with courage my friends

Live with courage

lifting others up

"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult. —E. B. White"

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I’m conflicted

I admit it

Sometimes I just want to have fun

I want to engage in life playfully, and not worry about a thing

But then

There is that Mennonite heritage

Which says you must contribute

You must make a difference

In this dualistic world in which we live

Those are not easy value sets to wed

Life is difficult

Evil lives in high places

People are willfully ignorant

Nurturing their dark angels for the gods of power and wealth

There is so much to do

And so one grabs moments

A walk under the mountain

An adventure in a new place

A touch of music here

A good book there

And then one descends into the region of “ooze and slime and old decay” (CS Lewis)

To do the work of lifting others up (and one’s self as well)

Into the region of light

Where love lives

Where people care

Where healing happens

the bottom of the cup

“He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.”

                                                            P.G. Wodehouse

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What do we carry in our souls

Hate, greed?

Lust?

Compassion?

Hope?

Fear?

Anger?

Love?

We are burdened souls

Weighted down

Lifted up

And whatever is in there

Deep in our souls

At the central place

Where we are who we are….

Is etched in our face

Revealed in our bodies

There is a reason I look the way I do (tired and overwhelmed)

There is a reason Trump looks the way he looks

And you look the way you look

Whatever is happening

Oozes out through our eyes

Our mouth

Our chin

So look at that person in the mirror

What does your face reveal about you

The truth is out there

lift others up

“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change”

                                                                                                         Thich Nhat Hanh

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Why is it

That so often those with the capacity to truly help others, don’t?

Why is it that the people with the most wealth

Are often the least generous?

It seems as if they had turned shaming and blaming into a fine art

And find every reason they can think of

To make the poor responsible for their plight

Just get a job

You are lazy moochers

If you worked harder you would succeed

The message is clear

“You are directly responsible for your plight!”

It is true, at times, that people have made mistakes

True at times that they are working the system

But what I hear echoing back from the poor

Is a plaintive protest

“I am trying as hard as I can”

And they are!

But in America, because of our worship of power and wealth

The system is against them

Wages are too low

Health insurance is too high, or unavailable

House is out of reach

Education is astronomical

It is harder to work your way out of poverty now, than at any other time in American history

And studies show that under Trump and the GOP, things are getting worse.

Jesus talked about the “little ones” a lot

He meant children

But not just children

The phrase might just as easily be interpreted

The least of these

What we are really talking about, is vulnerability

People made vulnerable by violence, trauma

Addiction, mental illness, poverty, oppression, minimization, ignorance

It is an American past time, at least by the right (I will not call them conservatives,

That is an insult to conservatives.  They are right wing ideologues who love power and dominance)

To shame and blame these people

To hypocritically remove services from them (claiming they don’t want to ‘enable’ them)

And at the same time minimizing and oppressing them

This does not work

It creates smugness on one side

And anger on the other

“Blaming has no positive effect at all,

nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument....

No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding.

If you understand, and you show that you understand,

you can love, and the situation will change”

We are admonished by the Bible, to overcome evil with good

Maybe it is time we tried it

To love and understand those who are poor

Disenfranchised

To support, to nurture, to lift up

To curb out own desire to accumulate

For as someone said

“poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor

But because we cannot satisfy the rich”

To curb our need to exercise power over others

To build ourselves up, by putting others down

And find that spot within us, that is kind, and generous

And lifts others up

Food and housing

Healthcare and education

Without these no one can flourish

But it takes more

Sometimes what a person needs to soothe their soul and ease their burden is the loving hand of a friend gently touching their heart and lifting them towards love

Dare to lose

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to

succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.”

                               Abraham Lincoln

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We live in a world of flawed formulas

Work hard and you will succeed

If you live a good life you will be blessed

Those formulas were, at the very least,

Somewhat well intentioned

But we are now bombarded by values and beliefs that are not merely wrong

None of them are new

But they are newly embraced

And they are destructive

The end justifies the means

God loves and blesses us, but not them

People who are not like us have less value

Might makes right

If you have the power, you should be free to use it (without worrying about how it impacts others)

It is more important to be strong, than just, or compassionate

Its ok to scramble and fight to get what I want, even if it means others get left behind

We live in a world

More specifically in a nation

That is no longer “true”

And no longer living up the “what light” it has

We must respond

And grab hold of the truth

That we are in a win – lose culture

That is really a lose – lose culture

This must change.  To quote the words of Joseph Kennedy, as he spoke recently to spiritual leaders

“This moment demands more of us than we might feel capable of giving; more than we have traditionally done; more than we have ever expected.

But those of you in this room tonight — with your reservoirs of faith, of wisdom, of gentleness and justice and generosity – with the trust you have righteously earned from the people you serve — you are the ones to meet this moment.

Help us tell America an alternative story. Help us show our fractured, fearful country a different way.

Not a Democratic agenda or a Republican agenda – but a decent one.

“From the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”

Where you lead with strength and surety, a grateful nation will follow.”

We must lead

We must challenge the way that leads to lose – lose

We must live up to what light we have