Dry souls

For what is life but reaching for an answer?

And what is death but a refusal to grow

                                    Mary Oliver, “Magellan”

New and Selected Poem Vol 1 p238

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God is a God of new things

Always, always, things are changing, growing emerging

New pathways

New understandings

New directions

New rules

It’s the way God rolls

Out of God’s imagination the world was born

The expression of all things Sacred

Something new, amazing, creative

And the world is constantly being reborn

And is constantly being reborn

As are we

Each moment the Sacred offers us something new

All we have to do is say yes

As Abraham said “yes”

And Moses

And Samuel, Saul, David

As the disciples said “yes’

Yes to what is new, and emerging

But we cannot grab hold of the new

While hanging desperately on to the old

It is fear, perhaps that keeps us fused to the comfortable

To those old patterns of seeing and believing

It is that deep desire we have for safety

For comfort, that stops our questioning

And stops our questing

That closes us off

From God’s new thing

But God is not safe

And neither is God’s way

And our refusal to let God take us to new places

Our refusal to ask the tough questions

Is surely a kind of death

We hide behind formulas and platitudes

And slowly die to growth

Die to openness

Die to generosity, and acceptance

But above all we die to love

We die to the ability to see the other with God’s eyes

To feel for others with God’s heart

To find in them Sacred Presence

We lose the ability to sit with others

In their pain

And in their questions

We spout judgements and answers

Formulas and certitudes

And in the end

Our souls

Wither and dry up

So lets hear it for the questions

And the uncertainties

Let’s celebrate what we don’t know

And the fact that our God is simply to big

To be put in a box

And walk that unknown path

With our partially known God

Always seeking

Always growing