Be a light

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Be a light in the darkness

Be a light

Be

 

If only I could

But it is not so easy to be the light

In a world that embraces darkness

 

It is not easy to be light

When people condemn you for shining light

In the dark places

 

And call you divisive

A hater

 

Gaslighting kills light

 

And so one sits in the darkness

Flickering

The light barely alive

 

While the darkness grows and grows

Gaining power through lies

And abusive power

And wealth

 

While darkness sits in the halls of power

In the courts of justice

While the greedy and abusive win

 

While the people of the lie (Scott Peck)

Call good evil, and evil good

And up down, and down up

 

The children of darkness abandon and vilify

The homeless

The immigrant

The poor

 

Those souls so foolish

As to not be rich, and powerful

 

One cannot help but remember the words of the prophets

Who also saw times like this

 

“Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds!

At morning’s light they carry it out because it is in their power to do it.

They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them.

They defraud people, rob them

Therefore, the Lord says:

I am planning disaster against this people”  (Micah)

 

Dare we believe that our helplessness is not definitive?

That their unchecked power is not definitive?

That there is a higher law

A deeper truth

 

That will turn the darkness against itself

Until it cracks

And once again, the light leaks in

 

Can we continue to be light until then

Can the light of love, and hope

Peace and joy keep burning

Through the long night

 

Perhaps I will never see

the time when light returns

Perhaps our world, our country

Will continue to slide into the abyss

 

It has happened so many times

Yes, resurrection has happened

A new thing has been birthed, time and time again,

 

But only after destruction

Only after all is gone

And nothing is left but rubble

 

But still

We can, perhaps hope

We can be people with soft fronts

Refusing to live in hate

 

We can be people with strong backs

Refusing to accept quietly

The lies, the hate, the injustice

Refusing to let people silence us

By making us the haters, when we call out hate

Making us divisive when we call out the lies

 

We are all too eager to let them

Gaslight us

And silence us

Because we care, it matters

We want to be fair. We have our doubts

We want to be people of grace

 

Is there still hope?

can we live in a way that keeps the light alive

Even as we die

Are silenced and suffocated

 

Perhaps we can keep burning

 

And perhaps

Even if our light goes out

We will have lit the flame in another

 

Perhaps

Perhaps we who are losing our will to burn

Can still be a light for others

 

Perhaps

But at this point?

I am no longer sure

Compassion is resistance

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“Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.”

              Walter Brueggemann

________________________

 

Ah Lord

May I call you that?

 

I am crushed, sickened.

I am soiled

As if I have trod through the ooze and slime

And old decay (CS Lewis)

 

Of human greed, and megalomania

Of anger turned to enmity

Worry turned to hopelessness

 

I feel like I no longer see a way forward

Through the dumpster fire of

Resentment, envy, and discontent

 

It feels like hate has won

Voted into power, dominating and retributive

 

As if the world is spinning apart

its heart breaking

the center, the core

Of decency, morality, truth,

disintegrating

 

Until good is evil, and evil is good

Truths are deemed lies, and lies are accepted as truths

Justice is deferred and denied

Equity is a joke, and

Equality is a threat to be assailed

 

We have handed ourselves over

To fools

To people who would manipulate, misinform, and destroy

 

Gloom permeates the air

Like a winter fog

 

I want to lash out

But how does one hit fog?

Blows are useless

 

I try to speak the truth in love

But the love seems to be missing

 

And my words, my passionate writings

My earnest pleas

My kind words, my angry words

My measured words, my bitter words

 

Do nothing (Good)

 

What can I do, Lord?

How do I resist?

 

Perhaps there is a lesson

To be learned from your quiet entry into the world

A lesson to be learned from your living

And your dying

 

Your refusal to answer hate with hate

Violence with violence

Domination with domination

 

Perhaps the answer is to found

In your compassion

For all people

No matter who they were, or what they had done

No matter what lies they had believed

Or choices they made

 

Even when they chose a thief, a killer

Over you

You remained compassionate

 

I think the lesson is there Lord

Compassion is resistance. 

Resistance to the darkness. 

Resistance to all the things that hurt, and divide. 

 

Compassion is a radical form of criticism,

It insists that hurt, in whatever form it comes

Is not acceptable

That greed and abuse are abnormal

That injustice must be taken seriously

 

But compassion is also a strategy

It is what leads us to feed the hungry,

clothe the naked,

fight for justice

protect the vulnerable

welcome the stranger

 

Lord

Wash the anger, confusion, and resentment

From my soul

Fill me with love and compassion

 

In your tender mercy, come like the rising sun

Shine on us, living in this darkness

In the shadow of death

 

And guide our feet into the path of peace  (Luke 1)

 

 

 

 

Lean in

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One must push deeper and deeper into Jesus, and let him illuminate deeper and deeper levels of reality within oneself… We are to feel ourselves transparent so that this light of the Source can shine through us… We simply open ourselves and let our whole awareness be of God’s life in and through us to whatever work or expression of divine beauty and goodness is.

              Beatrice Bruteau – Radical Optimism

____________________________________

 

Jesus was full of the Sacred

Stuffed with Love

 

We barely know how to talk about it

So we write creeds

Trying to put on paper that which cannot be contained

 

What we do know

Is that the love and power of God flowed through Jesus

And those who got near to him

Those who touched him

 

Were touched back

Like when woman on the road, barely touched his robe!

Jesus said, “Someone touched me. I know power has gone out of me.”

 

Jesus was

Transparent

All that is Holy shone in him, and through him

Into the world, and into those precious souls

Who gathered around him

 

And as he was preparing to go home

He prayed that those who love him

Might be with him where he is

 

That is not just about our homecoming

That is about our living

 

We are called to be people

Filled with the Sacred

Full of love

 

Not so we can hang onto that love

But so that it can flow through us

Into a hurting world

 

Flow from the heart of Jesus

To our heart

To the hearts of those whose lives touch ours

 

Jesus was an expression of God’s beauty and goodness

Us too

 

We are to “be Jesus”

The ongoing incarnation

 

We are to have the outlook of Jesus

We are to see with his eyes

And feel with this heart

 

And we are to practice radical compassion

Fierce love

 

We are to share his

“care, his concern, his will to heal” (Bruteau)

 

Our walk with God is not about dominating or controlling

Protecting or coercing

It is about compassion

And healing

 

In Advent we prepare for Christ’s coming

 

But Christ has already come

And Christ has never stopped arriving

As he incarnates in our hearts

And shines through our lives

 

May we fall deeper and deeper into Christ

May we lean back

Into that reality that is the Source

 

Drawing closer and closer to Jesus

Until we are consumed

Until we not only lean into Christ

But lean into each other

 

All of us

Meeting at the heart of Jesus

The same kind of motley transformed crowd

That met in a stable

Under the light of a star

Believe in the Light

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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

 

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

 

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.  He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.  He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.  Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

 

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

                             John

___________________________________________________________

 

It feels so heavy

this darkness which seems to creep

across this planet

 

It presses down upon me

Bowing my back

Pressing me down to my knees

Where I can only lament

 

Out of the darkness I hear the voices

Of those demonized and threatened

Those whom Empire has deemed less-than-human

 

Immigrants threatened with deportation

Queer people who are demonized and minimized

Trans people who are told they should not exist, who are deluged with hate,

and whose existence is threatened.

 

I hear the voices of the poor,

who are getting poorer as wealth trickles up

and of those for whom there is, no longer,

any justice

 

I hear what sounds like rain

But is perhaps

The tears of Jesus falling

 

As he weeps over this world

As he wept over Jerusalem

 

Weeping because we do not see

Do not hear

Do not love

Do not serve

 

Because we walk down the path toward domination and wealth,

Instead of the path to the heart of Jesus

To that place where compassion, and service,

generosity and mercy, humility and love

are embraced and lived.

 

It seems so dense, so pervasive

This darkness

Impenetrable, overwhelming

 

And yet

And yet

 

Jesus comes, and comes, and comes again

A light shining in the darkness,

 

And even as the darkness crushes us to the earth

and so much that is good, dies, and is buried,

we affirm that the darkness has not overcome the light

We affirm that it still shines

 

We confess that often we struggle to believe

And that all too often we choose poorly

 

We lament that we do not recognize Jesus when he comes

Embodied in the immigrant,

The poor and the elderly,

In all those we degrade and discard.

 

We admit that all too often we do not receive

The One who comes

And slide into our own darkness of anger and hate

despair and hloplessness

 

And yet

The light is not overcome

 

We must remember that good can indeed come into the darkness

And transform it

“...new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground,

a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.” (Barbara Brown Taylor)

 

In this dense darkness I can barely stand

My feet are heavy, and the way is hidden

 

But I believe in the light. 

I believe God when God says,

“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” (Isaiah 42:16)

 

I affirm the song of Zechariah,

“Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79)

 

The Word has come and has made his dwelling among us

The light, even now shines in the darkness

 

And when we hear, and see,

When we are awake to the presence

We become the children of God

 

Light bearers

Who live love and compassion, generosity and kindness

Who shine like stars in the world (Philippians 2)

 

Welcome to  Advent!