light wrapping

“maybe death

isn't darkness, after all,

but so much light

wrapping itself around us--”

― Mary Oliver, Owls and Other Fantasies

____________________________________________

I have thought a lot about death lately

It is hard not to

When death is everywhere

Big deaths, little deaths

Rachel Held Evans, dead at 37

A voice for grace and God,

Gone

Riley Howell

Kendrick Castillo

young men who attacked school shooters

saving classmates,

but dying themselves

Jean Vanier

who in the name of God

helped improve life for people with disabilities

Donna, my dear friend

and for many years my secretary

She of the goofy smile and laugh

Dead

There are other deaths too

The death of empathy

The death of truth

The death of justice

The death of democracy

So many things

Going

Going

Gone

But it is of course the deaths of those we care about

Friends, parents

Siblings, heroes

That hit us hardest.

And we wonder

What happens when people die?

Is there a Heaven?  A Hell?

Do people find their way to whatever is next “in an instant”,

Is there a “big sleep”

while we wait for

The Kingdom

Michael Quoist has prayer he wrote after seeing a funeral. 

“Leaving the cemetery some of the family were sobbing.  All is finished. 

Others were sniffling:  “Come, come, my dear courage: It’s finished!”

Some friends murmured:  “Poor man, that’s how we all finish.”

And others sighed in relief:  Well it is finished.

And I was thinking that everything was just beginning.

Yes, he had finished the last rehearsal, but the play was just beginning.  The years of training were over, but the eternal work was about to start.  He had just been born to life, the real life.  Life that’s going to last, life eternal.

As if there were dead people. 

There are no dead people Lord. 

There are only the living, on earth and beyond.”

What I believe,

and of course I might be wrong

But what I believe is that when we die

We return to that from which we came

Some call it God

Some call it heaven

Jesus suggested that dying was like going home (John 14)

But I like to think come from love

And we return to Love

After all, God is love

We all know the love passage from II Corinthians

But because God love, that passage describes not only love

But God

Revisit the passage and replace the word love with the word God

God is patient

God is kind

God is not easily angered

God keeps no record of wrongs

God always protects

God trusts

God always has hopes for us

God always hangs in there with us

God’s love never fails

The whole point of the Gospel

is that we live in the context of this love

We are connected to this love

embraced by this love

empowered by this love

filled by this love

That is why we can live love

Can be love, here on earth

This is why we can walk through our days

Following the way of the one who in-fleshed love, Jesus

Being generous, kind, compassionate, creative

Accepting, forgiving, giving

And loving

As those in whom the Sacred dwells

We are people who display our divine DNA

And that is why we do not have to fear death. 

For when we die, we return to the One from whom we came,

we return to love

As I often say…

We move from communion with the Sacred

back into complete union with the Sacred

Death does not separate us from the love of God,

it unites us (or re-unites us) with that love

And we are home, once again, no longer the wanderers

“… death isn't darkness, after all,

but so much light

wrapping itself around us--”

I am a cucumber

“I am calm. I’m cool. I’m a cucumber.”

 Saffron A. Kent, Medicine Man

________________________________________________

I am not calm

I am not cool

I am a hot mess

I once had a client say

That it was like he had 50 TV’s on in his head

Everyone on a different channel

Make that a hundred

I have what is called a busy brain

Or is that monkey brain

There are sermons to write

People to visit

Problems to solve

There are horses to be fed

(and dogs and cats and chickens too)

There are 5 acres to tend

And meals to cook

And then there is all the crap

Trump (you probably know I think he is awful)

The erosion of our democracy

The oppression of people who happen to be LGBTQI

The failure to welcome the “stranger”

The assault on the poor

And women

And……

And frankly

today

I am wrapped up in all the mess

Overwhelmed, in fact

This is one of those times I wish God was more proactive

In love God works with us from the inside out

In love God transforms us, one person at a time

In love God gives us the freedom to make our own mistakes

In love God works with us to lift us up out of the swamps of our making

In love God gifts us with the ability to have compassion, and live generously

But right now a little “smiting” would be welcomed

Except of course I know

That I deserve “smiting” as much as the next person

But when I see the damage inflicted

The loss of truth

The loss of empathy

The destruction of the planet

When I see people break down and cry

Because they feel so threatened, so vulnerable

Because they know that in the eyes of those with the power

And the money

They, as a poor person, a person with mental health issues, with addiction

They as a gay or lesbian or trasgender person

They as an immigrant

A Muslim

Have no value

And they know

They may lose their housing

Their health care

Their hope

And so I sit on a wonderful, beautiful afternoon

In a place so amazing it takes your breath away

And I am simply tired

And empty

And I long for hope

And justice

And equity

I long for love

For communion

For peace

Did I mention love?

Come Love Come

reconciling confrontation

“The old endless chain of love, tolerance, indifference, aversion and disgust”

― Samuel Beckett

____________________________________

At first I tried to love

After all if Jesus loves all, shouldn’t I?

But the lies continued

As did the abuse

As did the abandonment of the poor

As did the cruelty

And the Bully tactics

And the hate

But it is not Ok to judge, is it?

So I tried to be tolerant

I tried not to judge

And of course, those I challenged accused me of just that

And I bought it…

For a moment

And then it became too much

So I tried not to feel the pain when I watched children caged

When I watched freedoms take away

When I watched the poor abandoned

And then I became just a little sick in my mouth

As the lies continued, continued, continued

And as the poor were abandoned and shamed

And a protections for the poor were eroded

And the earth was assaulted

And violence was praised

And hate nurtured

And now I am just disgusted

Disgusted by the creature who feeds all of this

Disgusted by the hate

And the greed

And the cruelty

And the lies

And the cruelty

And I am disgusted that this is done in the name of one

Whose teachings are violated by all of this

And disgusted by those who

For whatever reason

Excuse all of this

Accept it

Cheer it

I am especially disgusted by those pastor

Those churches

Who buying into the way of domination

Support this evil

Or are so “careful” they allow people to support this evil

Unchallenged

I do not know what to do with this

I do not know how to respond to people who say

Rachel Held Evans is going to hell

Or those who chant “build the wall”

Or those who cheer when our President floats the idea of shooting refugees

Or those who demonized LGBTQI people

Or those who think guns are more important than children

Or those who think domination is OK

And

Servanthood is for libertards

Too strong for you?

I’m sorry

I guess that when John called people vipers they were offended too

And I guess that when Jesus said that the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law talked the talk, but didn’t walk the walk (obey everything they teach you, but don’t do as they do. After all, they say one thing and do something else).

They were offended too

Do I have the right to call others out

Probably not

I have my own stuff

My own ways where I am less that what I could be…

So Mea Culpa

Mea Maxima Culpa

But still

I struggle to know how to respond

And I know this

I cannot stay silent

I cannot abandon the poor and the vulnerable

Those who are minorities

Women

People who are LGBTQI

I cannot

And I will not

But Lord?!

Help me

To challenge in a way that leaves room for reconciliation

That does not demean

And minimize

Help me!

Please?

We need love

God is not a being among other beings, but rather the Ground of Being itself which then flows through all beings. As Paul says to the intellectuals in Athens, this God “is not far from us, but is the one in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27-28). The God whom Jesus reveals is presented as unhindered dialogue, a positive and inclusive flow, and a waterwheel of outpouring love that never stops! St. Bonaventure (c. 1221–1274) called God a “fountain fullness” of love.

                                                                                  Richard Rohr

________________________________________________________________________

I think God is having an identity crisis

Or rather, I think there is a  crisis in the way we see God

Today some of the cruelest, least empathic people I know

Are those who claim to be God’s people

The list of their cruelties, both petty and profound

Is exhaustive

They have chosen the way of abuse power

Of greed

Of bullying

Of violence

They have chosen to invoke the name of God

And the name of Jesus to justify all kinds of ills

Including injustice

They hide behind shallow versions of righteousness

Claiming to be pro-life because they are against abortion,

But at the same time dooming living children to lives of poverty and despair

Happily cheering legislation that ruins lives

They support a man who is so antithetical to the way of Jesus

as to be rightfully called antichrist (not The AntiChrist)….

and I think it is because of how they see God

The Bible offers us a tortured changing understanding of God to be sure

But when God, tired perhaps of all the ways we misunderstand,

finally chose to come among us, it became clear

God is love

If God is love, then love is that from which we all emerge

(created in God’s image)

The world we live in is, fundamentally, love

(although we treat it poorly, and so the earth is ill and showing the symptoms

 of that illness)

And each one of us

Every person created

Is fundamentally love

No matter the color, creed, culture, language, economic status, education level

No matter the political affiliation

We are love

But somewhere we lost this

And God became something other than love

God became separate

Looming

Powerful (to be sure)

But also  vindictive and retributive

God became tribal (My god)

And God became the excuse

For the abuse of power

For coercion

For hate

For violence

For cruelty (there we are again)

If we do not “live and breathe and have our being”

in the real God, in the God who is love

then we are simply free radicals

we are simply those

separated from Go (for all our rhetoric)

acting out all those aspects of our nature that are not God

This is the failure of American Evangelicals

But they are not alone

This has happened throughout history

Any time people have decided to merge faith with earthly power

Any time people have mixed faith with tribalism (what we call patriotism)

And it happens to all of us, from time to time.

Even to me

Event to you (I suspect)

What happens is God becomes a weapon

Used to control and manipulate

Used to justify prejudice and hate

Used to coerce

We need a new God

Or rather

We need the true God

We need that God who is love

The one who is with us

And in us

The one who cries with us

And mourns with us

The one who cares for the little ones

For the least of these

The one who hovers over us

We need the God who welcomes the immigrant (stranger) with open arms

Who cries with the mother who must abort an unviable fetus

Who hides with the child under her desk at school, as yet another gunman wanders the halls.

Who walks with the black youth through the fearful, deadly streets

Who cries with the parent who can’t afford medical care for their child

We need the God who lives inside us

And is an outpouring of love that never stops

That God who impels us to feed the hungry

Welcome the stranger

Fight for justice for all

Clothe the naked

House the homeless

The God who

Accepts and forgives

Who sees the potential in each person

And seeks to lift each person up

We need

The God who is love

One day I'll weep

“And with every step I took it became more impossible for me to turn back. And my mind was empty—or it was as though my mind had become one enormous, anesthetized wound. I thought only, One day I'll weep for this. One of these days I'll start to cry.”

 James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

___________________________________________

I sit and stare blankly at the screen

my mind is empty

my hands are still

I do not know how long I sit this way

My mind,

My heart

My soul

An anaesthetized wound

I am preoccupied

With children, hands on their heads, feeling another shooting

Their faces, stunned and empty

Are the faces of my grandchildren

My soul is assailed

By the evil

And greed

By the disregard for people

That leaps out of my computer

That flows from my television

Tearing at the very fabric of who I am

I move from anger, to disgust

From fear to (yes I admit it) hate

From shock to sadness to profound grief

It is bad enough that people in power abuse it

That people with privilege exploit it

It is bad enough that people do ungodly things

In the name of God

But what shatters me

Is that so many do not care

They do

Not

Care

About the poor

The vulnerable

The hurting

The aged

The ill

They simply do not care

As long as they believe (and it often is not fact)

That what is happening benefits them

Protects them

Empowers them

They don’t care if people are left behind

They don’t care if children get shot in school

They don’t care if children are separated from their parents

They don’t care if refugees are denies refuge

They don’t care if the earth is destroyed, bit by bit

They don’t care I millions of species are in danger of extinction

They don’t care that the Constitution is trampled

They don’t care that people born LGBTQI are demonized and oppressed

They don’t care about the life of an 11 year old rape victim

They don’t care about Native Americans who are systematical oppressed

They just don’t care

As long as they gain (even if it is only for a short while)

As long as they feel safe

Or powerful

And this makes my heart hurt

This is a wound that will not go away

and so I sit an stare

my soul numb

hoping it will all go away

hoping that people will wake up to the Sacred

hoping against hope

trying to follow the path of Father Abraham

fighting to believe

there are no easy answers

people will jump in with formula faith and insist I just need to have more faith

people will tell me to trust

people will insist I simply do not know the big picture

(and if I did I would be fine)

But I lament

As did the author of Lamentations

As did the Psalmist

As did almost every prophet (every real prophet), ever

As did Jesus in the Garden

As did Paul, persistently tormented

I sit, and

I lament

And then I walk

Left foot,

Right foot

Left foot breathe

I watch the sun set, and the skies turn golden

I watch young, curious calves,  gather to

Google at Finn the dog (who is after all just their size)

If feel the breeze

And smell the pines

And the numbness resolves

And I can feel again

Breathe again

My heart still hurt

My mind still rages

But there is a place

Deep in my soul

Where the Sacred lives

And against all hope

I believe

And so tomorrow I will travel to the State Capital

And Thursday I will chair meetings

And Friday I will return to a former church

And do the funeral of a friend

And Saturday I will try

To grab that people of hope

And write a sermon

About ironically, hearing the voice of Jesus

And so I will walk

And walk

And walk

On foot in front of the other

Out of the numbness

And back into life.

Confirming our bias

If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it. This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not "what does it say?", but "what am I looking for?"…  If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.”

                                                                        Rachel Held Evans

_______________________________________________________________________

At some level we are the Sacred clothed in flesh

Ah that Sacred presence

It guides us

Empowers us

It opens us up

Makes us generous

And hopefully kind

It fills us with love

But oh that humanity…

When we come to God

And to God’s word

The world clings to us

(like stick-tights to fleece)

And we carry with us our greed

Our fear

Our anger

Our hate

Our need to power

Anne Lamott once noted

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.”

We do create God in our own image

And we use an abuse the scriptures

For we approach God wanting God to change the world

And change our situations

Rather than wanting, hoping, that God changes us

We turn to God wanting a God of retributive power

Rather than a God sacrificial love

Who demands we follow in that way

And we turn to the scriptures

Looking for something, anything

We can use to confirm our bias

Rather than allowing the Word to

Infiltrate us

Permeate us

And bring us to a newness of understanding

It is indeed critical for us to ask

“What am I looking for?”

We know we will find it every time

I know no easy way to solve the problem

Instead of looking to confirm what we want

We went with a null hypothesis,

And tried to disprove, reject or nullify our bias

If our bias is that God is love

Can we prove that God is instead arbitrary, demanding, judgmental, and retributive?

If our bias is that God wants us to have a theology of service

Can we prove instead that God wants his people to dominate?

To control and coerce?

This is truly a difficult and dangerous task

For as Rachel so aptly noted, we can in fact prove anything

By using the scriptures

Anything

Even killing a child

So what do we do with this?

There are certainly warnings that being open to who God really is

And what God really wants of us is not something we do well

That we are in fact often pulled away from what is true

and chase after other priorities and agendas

In 2 Timothy (4) we read, “The time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths”

In Roman’s Paul suggested that many people “exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised”

So how do we escape confirmation bias?

Paul (again in Romans) suggests that “… the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”

So now we are back where we began

With the Spirit

With that cleaning fire

That powerful wind

With that troublesome presence

Even when clothed in flesh

Sacred Presence has the power

To make us new

Even when clothed in the flesh

If we are awake to the Spirit

It will lead us to truth

I do not know how to be sure how to differentiate between

Truth and falsehood

That is indeed a difficult task

Every one of us, when we think we have discovered God’s truth

Need to be willing to utter those profound words,

“but I might be wrong”

But I think there are some questions we can ask that will help

Is it consistent with the idea that God is love?

Is it about service rather than domination?

Will it create reconciliation rather than enmity?

Will it bend the world toward love?

I know of no greater challenge

Then to be honest about what I bring to God

And what I bring to God’s Word

I know of no greater challenge

Than to let God be God

And no greater reward

Life Happens, Love Happens

“People don't always get what they deserve in this world.”

― Lemony Snicket, The Blank Book

____________________________________________________

Perhaps it is not just a coincidence that tomorrow I begin leading a study

On the book of Job…

The day after a person who I believe was an authentic voice for God

Died

At age 37

Of complications stemming from a reaction to anti-biotics

Rest in Peace

Rachel Held Even

May your beloved husband be covered with love

And your children, ages 1 and 3, feel the love embrace them

Honestly

This angers me

I am not very happy with God right now

It is such an injustice,

That this loving, kind woman should die

When a narcissist who is slowly destroying not only our country

but the planet

for the sake of money

lives

Not only lives, flourishes

And is aided and abetted by people soaked in power and wealth

And adored by people who have chosen the way

Of hate and fear and domination

Over service and love

This angers me

Even though I know this is the way the world works

In Job it is very clear

The innocent suffer

And Jesus made it all too clear

The sun rises on the evil and on the good,

And the rain falls on the just and on the unjust.

It is just a fact

That there is no direct causality between a good life and prosperity

And an evil life and trial

Otherwise Rachel would be alive and with her children

And someone else would find their life in ruins

What kind of God is it, who watches such absurdity?

What kind of God allows such stuff to happen?

It raises the question, doesn’t it, about how God interacts with the world

Is God, as Jim Wallis suggests, “an active agent” in the world?

And if God is an active agent, why does such injustice exist?

I suspect it comes down to how God chooses to work

God always, it seems, in his actions in the world

Clothes himself/herself with humanity

God always works through people

God always resides in people

God always shows up in the flesh

Which is terribly “iffy” way to do things

And yet

It changes God from something up there out there

From something distant and immanent

To someone close and intimate

And there is a cost to that intimacy

Life happens

Greed happens

Hate happens

Compassion happens

Generosity happens

Evil people flourish

Good people die

But still God is present

I suspect that Rachel in her death

Moved from communion with God to union

And will be forever blessed

And I suspect that for some, living is ultimately more tragic

than is dying, as Rachael did,

surrounded by love, respected, and missed and mourned

and when arriving back from whence one came, the Sacred, being welcomed, and at home.

God was clothed in Rachel

And it showed

God is clothed in others

Who are not awake

And it does not show

But it does not change the reality of how God works

As Rachel told us….

“We could not become like God, so God became like us. God showed us how to heal instead of kill, how to mend instead of destroy, how to love instead of hate, how to live instead of longing for more. When we nailed God to a tree, God forgave. And when we buried God in the ground, God got up.”

As it was

So it is

Love wins

God is all about new

“There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.”

Robert F. Kennedy

 See, I am doing a new thing!

    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

    and streams in the wasteland.

                                                              Isaiah 43:19

________________________________________________________________________

God is all about new

New hope

New vitality

New starts

New life

That should not be surprising

from the creative power

that changed chaos into order

(in that slow amazing way revealed by science)

That should not be surprising from the Sacred

who chose to enter this world as a baby

and then chose to walk among us

teach among us

die among us

That should not be surprising from the one

who on Easter caused life to erupt from the tomb (Barbara Brown Taylor)

and moved creation a different direction

Love is always surprising

And nothing moves us

Changes us

Drives us

Like this power

What is surprising, perhaps

Is how newness comes when we least expect it

Surprise!

It always amazes me how newness breaks for

just when we think things have come to a poor end

Ask Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

who laughed and wrestled and bartered with God

Ask Joseph

who lay battered in a pit, abandoned

Ask Moses

who had to flee for his life

Ask Peter

Trice forgiven

And Paul

stricken down and lifted up

You can ask me too

for God has recreated me so many times

it is impossible to count

Forget Plan A, or B, even Z

Perhaps Z3

Out of seeming dead ends newness has come

doors have opened

Newness

God works best it seems

when we least expect it

It is not that we are helpful

Indeed people, especially those who consider themselves God’ people

Those chosen and blest

Are amazingly resistant to God’s new thing

We hang on with grim determination

to old ways

old hurts

old hates

old fears

this is the great tragedy of America today

As Robert Kennedy reminded us

“There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.”

This is the great tragedy of the world

There is too much fear

But the Sacred will not leave us alone

Love will not leave us unchanged

Some may resist

Some may take refuge in abusive power

Coercion

Lies

And hate

But always Love’s new thing

Emerges

Sometimes when we least want it

Sometimes when we least expect it

But always when we need it

Share the Feast

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted

sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’

                                                                        Luke 16:19 (NRSV)

_____________________________________________________________________________

What happens when we die?

There are a lot of ideas

I doubt very much if it has anything to do with heavenly mansions and streets of gold

I will be very much surprised if there is, as some on the right claim

a wall

or a gate

or any sort of test

What I do believe is that our being then will bear little resemblance to our being now

What I do believe is that the communion with the Sacred

Which we experienced here on earth

Will become union

“Our true nature is the nature of no birth and no death” Thich Nhat Hanh

  To put it another way, we come from God, and we return to God

All of us!

So what do we do with pesky parables such as this?

How do we think about the ramblings of Paul and his “third heaven”

I believe we all come from the Sacred

And I believe we all return

But I also think that while we are living

We can distance ourselves from the Sacred

We can ignore

We can lose touch

Or

Worst of all

We can actively deny the Sacred by the way we think

And the way we live

We can create such a distance

By our greed

Our lust for power

Our lies

Our cruelty

Our lack of compassion

Our failure to champion justice and equity

That we create an abyss

That blocks our reunion with the Sacred

As Jesus put it

A great chasm is fixed

A distance, a hardness

A blindness can be developed

That keeps people from returning

Keeps people from the eternal table

Keeps people form once again

Living the house of love

What it looks like to be in that place I do not know

But I do know this

I do not want to deny my heritage

I do not want to be apathetic about the Sacred Presence that is in me

I do not want to slowly fall away into a dark place

Where I am so far from God it is almost

Almost

Impossible to get back

I cannot bring myself to believe that it is impossible

There are those parables about lost coins

And lost sheep

And prodigal children

And I suspect there is always a way back

And I suspect if we do not find ourselves back in communion

It is not for lack of trying

On God’s part

I wonder what it will be like when

Those in power in America, finally die, and move on

Will they move on?

Or will they be stuck,

Not in eternal torment imposed by God

But a cold darkness they have chosen

It is interesting that in this parable Jesus suggests

That Lazarus might well have tried to find a way

To get to the Rich Man and bring him back

I love that

Part of me wants those I believe are so much like the rich man (often called Dives)

To pay the price

But a bigger part wants to believe that god never gives up

Never stops looking

Never stops trying….

But I suppose that is the point

We can choose the things of the earth

We can choose to distance

This is truly a parable for our time

It is one of those stories

That reminds us that this is all a mystery

And we do not understand

And will probably

Will never understand

This is one of those stories that reminds us of our limited

Capacity to understand God, and God’s way

And there really is only one response we can make

We can share the feast

We can live lives of generosity

And kindness and love

We can notice those in need around us

And offer more than crumbs

time to grow up

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable.  But to grow up is to accept vulnerability.

                                                              Madeline L’Engle

______________________________________________

Make no mistake

The most vulnerable people in the world are children

and they are easily damaged

I have held malnourished children in Kurdistan

Suffering from severe hypothermia

And watched them die

I saw children in Romania

throw away children

stuck in orphanages without nurture and love for years

rock back and forth with vacant eyes

I have seen children

dirty and sad

living in the dump in Mexico City

in cardboard huts in the middle of tons of garbage

I have watched them play with broken toys

and watch me with fearful eyes

I can imagine the immigrant children

separated from their parents

covered with a thermal blanket

lying on the floor

crying for their mother or father

Children take the brunt of

War, greed and hate

They are most impacted when tragedy strikes

With storms assail

But not only children are vulnerable

Adults too struggle with vulnerability

It is scary to be open

It is scary to put yourself out there

To bare your heart, your soul

It is terrifying to think of failure

And poverty

But adults, when they feel vulnerable

Have more choices

They can see vulnerability as the price of intimacy

Or understand that it is the gateway to courage

Even when it is hard, risky, costly, adults can choose vulnerability

They can choose to be open and caring, anyway

They can choose to be generous, anyway

They can choose to confront evil

Choose to put people in front of safety

They do this

Knowing they might be hurt

Knowing they might be taken advantage of

Know that they may end up with less

But people, in response to vulnerability

Can choose to respond in a way that denies or rejects vulnerability

Rather than embraces it

And when we reject vulnerability, it gets ugly

Bullies are people who are hiding from vulnerability

So are the greedy, who consume and horde, seeking

Always always always

To put themselves beyond threat (but they never really can)

So are those who judge

And reject

And exclude

The “Wall” is merely of a symbol of those who choose

Not to be vulnerable

So are guns

Even religion can be a coat of armor, shielding us from encountering

The difficult

The uncomfortable

The inconvenient

The costly (how ironic)

When one is not vulnerable

One is closed

Hard

And often cruel

Here is the hard truth

The only way to be truly human

The only way to be who we were created to be

The only way to follow Jesus

They only way to truly love

Is to be vulnerable

Which is perhaps why Jesus said….

“…unless you change and become like little children,

you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

Growing up means learning to choose vulnerability

O people of God

It is time to grow up!

God's got this

In Jesus' day, there were these emperors who've ruled for a certain number of years, and then they didn't. It's one reason I'm kind of obsessed with how the story of Jesus is set up. When the Bible says, in the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was ruler of Galilee-- and during the high priest of these dudes who were high priests, the word of God didn't come to a damn one of them. But during their reign, I imagined it also felt like they would always rule. Those whose power, at the time they were alive, felt so absolute are only a footnote to Jesus. Given that list of emperors and rulers, I wonder if he was preaching to an anxious people needing some hope in that context-- real hope not platitudes or cheerful sentiment. I say this because there are things happening in our world right now that make me and a lot of people I love very anxious. So maybe we can pray for the conversion of our anxiety. Because when anxiety is converted, you know what it becomes? It becomes hope. Which means if you have anxiety now, you are almost hopeful-- you're like super close. You remember that list of emperors and rulers at the beginning of the gospel, the ones who were so feared and powerful at the time. The only reason these tiny, so-called "powerful" men are even remembered at all 2000 years later is as a footnote. So here's my prayer for those of us who are so anxious that we're nearly hopeful. Let's all name every single thing and person that seems so powerful right now as to feel inescapable-- rulers, tyrants, societal forces, et cetera-- name them and then say footnote. Pontius Pilate-- footnote. Your depression-- footnote. Student loans-- footnote. The gun lobby-- footnote. Power hungry narcissists of every variety-- footnote.

                                                                                  Nadia Boz-Weber

_________________________________________________________________________________

I remember when I was young

and had two older sisters to contend with

I always tried to get the last word

Always, always, always the last word

No matter what the argument was about

No matter whether I was right or wrong

I wanted the last word

Not much has changed

I still have that stubborn streak that demands the last word

I want my point to be made

And I suspect that is true whether I really know what I am talking about

Or not

I have finally decided that God is also One who expects to have the last word

In me this trait is irritating

Just ask my sisters

In God it is comforting

When it comes to hate

And greed

When it comes to racism

And brutality

God will always have the last word

Even when it comes to death

Last word

And that is comforting

Because God’s last word is always love

Which is why those messengers of God

Who appear at unlikely times and in unlikely places

Always say the same thing

Be not afraid

Be not afraid

Be not afraid

God’s got this

That is not a call to sit back and watch

That is not an excuse for inaction

No, it is the critical truth that enables us to keep trying

There is no doubt that these are dark times

Bombings

Shootings

More shootings

Hate, enmity

The abuse of power

Lies and more lies

“power hunger narcissists of every variety”

There is no doubt

That some things seem so powerful right now as to feel inescapable—

But God has the last word

And these things, as oppressive and looming as they are

These people as evil as they are

This violence as profound as it is

Are Footnotes

All that would separate us from the love of God

Footnote

So be not afraid

And keep resisting

Keep giving

Keep accepting

Keep welcoming

Keep loving

God’s got this

courage

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”

 Franklin D. Roosevelt

___________________________________________________________________

There are, I suppose

A lot of things to fear

For myself, I fear failure

I fear being unloved

I fear being irrelevant

Ineffective

And I am deathly afraid of being a person

who because of ideology

out of passion

out of a need to be right

out of a need to convince or change,

judges

wounds

diminishes another

I look around me and I see lots of people caught up in fear

People fear minorities

They fear losing power

They fear people of other creeds

And this fear

Consumes, and destroys

Compassion

And generosity

And love

It kills empathy

An in the end

It kills people

It kills people in churches in Sri Lanka

In mosques in New Zealand

In Synagogues  in California

It kills justice

And equity

It kills morality

It kills the soul and shrivels the Spirit

We see fear

We feel it

Are crushed by it

Every time a lie is told

Every time someone is called name

Or Excluded

Every time power is abused

Every time justice and equity are lost

Every time a child is caged

And a black person treated with brutality

We are in the house of fear

Trump is a fearful man

So are the so called militants on the border

So are the legislators who turn a blind eye,

When the rule of law is violated

So are those will do anything to grab hold of and keep wealth

There is only one antidote

The realization that there are things much more important

Than money

And power

More important that so called “winning”

More important than dominance

There is only one antidote

The knowledge that when all is said and done,

So much more is important than fear

Compassion

Generosity

Welcome

Inclusion

Forgiveness

Kindness

These are all more important than fear

And people

Always

Always

People