God empties himself into the earth like a cloud. God takes the substance, contours of a man, and keeps them, dying, rising, walking, and still walking wherever there is motion. Annie Dillard from “Feast Days” in Tickets for a Prayer Wheel
Soon we will enter the season of Advent, an opportunity to reflect on a God who “takes the substance, contours of a man”, as He “empties himself into the earth like a cloud.”
Like drought-stricken parched ground, we prepare to respond to the drenching of the Spirit through the Son, and be ready to spring up with renewed growth.
He walked among us before His dying and subsequent rising up. He walked among us again, appearing where least expected, sharing a meal, causing our hearts to burn within us, inviting us to touch and know Him.
His invitation remains open-ended, His heart preparing us for our eternal home.
I think of that every time the clouds gather, open up, and empty. He freely falls to earth, soaking us completely, through and through and through.
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Forfeit their Paradise by their pride. ~George Herbert “The Flower”
Our small church has several gracious and kind gardeners who share the produce from their yards each week to provide a fresh bouquet to sit on the table in front of our humble wooden pulpit.
It is a treat to walk into church and see what has been brought to the altar on Sunday morning. I have started to keep a photo album of these very special Sunday “pulpit posies.”
Why are these special? After all, almost every church displays a floral arrangement every Sunday.
These are special as most of these flowers are seeded, watered, fertilized and nurtured by one of our own, grown with love and caring, just as God cares for each of His children.
These are special as some are considered simple weeds, and are picked from ditches and hedges. They are still part of God’s creation and have a wild beauty that can be as breathtaking as a hothouse orchid.
These are special because they often go home with a congregant or visitor who will enjoy their loveliness for many more days, as if they represent the manifestation of God’s Word itself.
Some of us are dahlias, zinnias and roses. Some of us are rare gardenias and orchids. Most of us are dandelions, sagebrush, fireweed, burdock, and daisies populating the ditches.
No matter which roots we sprout from, or where, we are the wonders of this gardening God of love.
As we age, we bud afresh for Him.
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The old church leans awry and looks quite odd, But it is beautiful to us, and God. ~Stephen Paulus “The Old Church”
A little aside from the main road, becalmed in a last-century greyness, there is the chapel, ugly, without the appeal to the tourist to stop his car and visit it. The traffic goes by, and the river goes by, and quick shadows of clouds, too, and the chapel settles a little deeper into the grass.
But here once on an evening like this, in the darkness that was about his hearers, a preacher caught fire and burned steadily before them with a strange light, so that they saw the splendour of the barren mountains about them and sang their amens fiercely, narrow but saved in a way that men are not now. ~R.S. Thomas “The Chapel”
It’s just a boarded-up shack with a tower Under the blazing summer sky On a back road seldom traveled Where the shadows of tall trees Graze peacefully like a row of gallows…
The congregation may still be at prayer. Farm folk from flyspecked photos Standing in rows with their heads bowed As if listening to your approaching steps. So slow they are, you must be asking yourself How come we are here one minute And in the very next gone forever? Try the locked door, then knock once.
High above you, there is the leaning spire Still feeling the blow of the last storm. And then the silence of the afternoon . . . Even the unbeliever must feel its force. ~Charles Simic, from “Wooden Church” from The Voice at 3:00 A.M.
The church knelt heavy above us as we attended Sunday School, circled by age group and hunkered on little wood folding chairs where we gave our nickels, said our verses, heard the stories, sang the solid, swinging songs.
It could have been God above in the pews, His restless love sifting with dust from the joists. We little seeds swelled in the stone cellar, bursting to grow toward the light.
Maybe it was that I liked how, upstairs, outside, an avid sun stormed down, burning the sharp- edged shadows back to their buildings, or how the winter air knifed after the dreamy basement.
Maybe the day we learned whatever would have kept me believing I was just watching light poke from the high, small window and tilt to the floor where I could make it a gold strap on my shoe, wrap my ankle, embrace any part of me. ~Maureen Ash “Church Basement”
Mom, You raised your hands while we sang this morning like I’ve never known you to, but I guess until recently I’ve never really known you in a church that let you feel alive.
There is so much wrong with churches overall, comprised as they are of fallen people with broken wings and fractured faith. We who look odd and lean awry, so keen to find flaws in one another when we are already cracked open and spilling with our own.
Yet what is right with the church is Who we pray to, why we sing and absorb the Word- we are visible people joined together as a body so bloodied, so bruised, yet being healed despite our thoroughly motley messiness.
Our Lord of Heaven and Earth rains down His restless love upon our heads no matter how humble a building we worship in, or how we look or feel today.
We are simply grateful to be alive, eating a meal together, mourning those we have lost, coming together to raise our hands, to kneel and bow in a humble house God calls His very own.
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The old church leans nearby a well-worn road, Upon a hill that has no grass or tree, The winds from off the prairie now unload The dust they bring around it fitfully.
The path that leads up to the open door Is worn and grayed by many toiling feet Of us who listen to the Bible lore And once again the old-time hymns repeat.
And ev’ry Sabbath morning we are still Returning to the altar waiting there. A hush, a prayer, a pause, and voices fill The Master’s House with a triumphant air.
The old church leans awry and looks quite odd, But it is beautiful to us and God. ~Stephen Paulus
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A gang of crows was chasing off a hawk. The little stream was laughing and shushing itself. The hawk’s reflection briefly blurred a pool of water and then the pool went back to waiting for nothing or the next reflection. The maple trees were yellow and red, but redder farther up the stream. I wanted especially to share the cloud of redder leaves upstream with the little girl I had with me, but she was sleeping. Walking home, I thought the willow trees around the pond were standing up like brooms to sweep the sky. That was the voice in my head describing the willow trees as brooms, a thought to stop the world for a moment’s moment. She might have thought the willows looked like lashes winking around a deep-green eye, but as I say, she was asleep for this excursion in the world. And she hasn’t told me yet about the voice inside her head. For the moment that voice is learning how to listen to its own mysterious silence. I expect it’s like a sanctuary in there with a candle glowing at the back of the room and violets dotting the grass outside. ~Maurice Manning “Violets in the Fall” from Snakedoctor
My internal voice remains a mystery.
Although I know the silent words I perceive are my own thoughts, there are times when I wonder it that voice is coming from a place deeper than my own brain’s meanderings. Mostly it feels like running commentary about what is happening around me.
I can be surprised though.
A word I seldom use will pop up in my thoughts, with wonder or puzzlement – where did that come from and why now? Perhaps my voice is not just mine alone…
I do aim for an expectant inner stillness. without being asleep to the world. Quieting a busy brain isn’t easy. We need to retreat often to an internal sanctuary of calm, with gentleness and self-kindness, and just enough illumination to light the way to a bit of insight and a wisp of wisdom.
I’ll keep the candle glowing in the back.
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Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities— his eternal power and divine nature— have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. Romans 1:20
We weren’t conceived by random happenstance – not even the unwelcomed millions wished or washed away before ever taking a breath.
We are here because we were earnestly needed and wanted, by a power and divinity with a capacity for love and compassion beyond anything we are capable of.
We aren’t a cosmic joke, or random couplings of DNA. We aren’t pawns in the universe’s chess game.
We have the capacity to see the image of God in one another, and in the mirror, yet we ignore it.
God won’t be ignored nor does He accept feeble excuses.
We are invited by Christ Himself to “come and see.” (John 1:39)
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Opening the book at a bright window above a wide pasture after five years I find I am still standing on a stone bridge looking down with my mother at dusk into a river hearing the current as hers in her lifetime
now it comes to me that that was the day she told me of seeing my father alive for the last time and he waved her back from the door as she was leaving took her hand for a while and said nothing
at some signal in a band of sunlight all the black cows flow down the pasture together to turn uphill and stand as the dark rain touches them. ~W.S. Merwin “Sun and Rain” from Flower & Hand.
All day the stars watch from long ago my mother said I am going now when you are alone you will be all right whether or not you know you will know look at the old house in the dawn rain all the flowers are forms of water the sun reminds them through a white cloud touches the patchwork spread on the hill the washed colors of the afterlife that lived there long before you were born see how they wake without a question even though the whole world is burning ~W. S. Merwin “Rain Light”from The Shadow of Sirius
We want so much to leave a legacy for our children that will carry them through their lives, long after we are gone. Then they pass that on to their children, and on and on, like the strands of DNA we leave behind in our descendants.
But words and rituals of faith and covenant can be lost so quickly from one generation to the next. Our DNA passed down is a given, but nothing surpasses the teaching about the eternal love of God and His purpose for His people.
This day, three of our young grandsons are baptized by their church, ushering them into a life in fulfillment of God’s promise within them. As children, they may not yet fully understand how this manifests in their lives, but with the love and guidance of their church, parents, extended family and godparents, they will know His Love as they witness it in His people.
The washing with water from God’s creation, like rain from heaven, gives me hope for the future.
Though the world may be burning, Jesus is right alongside us through it all – I know our children and grandchildren will be all right.
I rise today in the power’s strength, invoking the Trinity believing in threeness, confessing the oneness, of creation’s Creator.
I rise today in heaven’s might, in sun’s brightness, in moon’s radiance, in fire’s glory, in lightning’s quickness, in wind’s swiftness, in sea’s depth, in earth’s stability, in rock’s fixity.
I rise today with the power of God to pilot me, God’s strength to sustain me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to look ahead for me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for me, God’s hand to protect me, God’s way before me, God’s shield to defend me, God’s host to deliver me, from snares of devils, from evil temptations, from nature’s failings, from all who wish to harm me, far or near, alone and in a crowd.
Around me I gather today all these powers against every cruel and merciless force to attack my body and soul.
May Christ protect me today against poison and burning, against drowning and wounding, so that I may have abundant reward; Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me; Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me; Christ to the right of me, Christ to the left of me; Christ in my lying, Christ in my sitting, Christ in my rising; Christ in the heart of all who think of me, Christ on the tongue of all who speak to me, Christ in the eye of all who see me, Christ in the ear of all who hear me.
For to the Lord belongs salvation, and to the Lord belongs salvation and to Christ belongs salvation. May your salvation, Lord, be with us always.
—”Saint Patrick’s Breastplate,” Old Irish, eighth-century prayer.
Six years a slave, and then you slipped the yoke, Till Christ recalled you, through your captors cries! Patrick, you had the courage to turn back, With open love to your old enemies, Serving them now in Christ, not in their chains, Bringing the freedom He gave you to share. You heard the voice of Ireland, in your veins Her passion and compassion burned like fire.
Now you rejoice amidst the three-in-one, Refreshed in love and blessing all you knew, Look back on us and bless us, Ireland’s son, And plant the staff of prayer in all we do: A gospel seed that flowers in belief, A greening glory, coming into leaf. ~Malcolm Guite — A St. Patrick Sonnet
St. Patrick is little remembered for his selfless missionary work in Ireland in the fifth century, but rather has become a caricature of all the drunken silliness of this day. Visiting his grave in Downpatrick, Ireland, just a humble stone on a hill top overlooking the sea, I wondered what he would make of the modern March 17.
He would advise us to be still and know.
He would plant his staff in us and all we do; we would respond by flowering up from the green.
Be still, and know that I am God… Psalm 46:10
Be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am. Be still and know. Be still. Be.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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Rain. An excuse to stand at the window And listen, watch, wait. Listen: to the hush Of the house as still as a dark burrow Where an animal hides. Listen: the rush Of occasional gusts, then the stillness.
Watch: the wrens hopping from stem to wet stem Their happy bearing in contrast to titmice Who always seem afraid. Watch: the mayhem That strikes when the grumpy bluejay, twice As big as the rest, frumps onto a branch.
Wait: for what? For the steady rain to cease. Wait: for the fair sunlight to avalanche Down from space and remake the world again. Then let my steps be fearless, like the wren. ~Andrew Peterson “Lenten Sonnet”
I’m the child of rainy Sundays. I watched time crawl Like an injured fly Over the wet windowpane. Or waited for a branch On a tree to stop shaking, While Grandmother knitted Making a ball of yarn Roll over like a kitten at her feet. I knew every clock in the house Had stopped ticking And that this day will last forever. ~Charles Simic “To Boredom”
I’m never bored on a quiet rainy Sunday.
My list of to-do’s and want-to-do’s and hope-to-do’s and someday-maybe-if-I’m-lucky-to-do’s is longer than the days still left to me.
I cherish these Sabbaths when the clock stops, and “to-do’s” will wait. Time suspends itself above me, ~dangling~ and the day lasts forever.
Sunday evening scaries in anticipation of Monday are prayed away.
On a drizzly day of rest and gratitude, the world is remade, eternity moves a little closer, my steps become more fearless and the new week is yet another part of the journey.
Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew? Job 38:28
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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Suddenly I knew, when we stood in a circle holding hands; suddenly I knew, that because of the circle, because of friendship, because of love— yes, and because of the brokenness, and the need— I have been in heaven all my life. ~Carol Bialock “I Used to Think Heaven was Future” from Coral Castles
The church, I think, is God’s way of saying, “What I have in the pot is yours, and what I have is a group of misfits whom you need more than you know and who need you more than they know.”
“Take, and eat,” he says, “and take, and eat, until the day, and it is coming, that you knock on my door. I will open it, and you will see me face to face.”
He is preparing a table. He will welcome us in. Jesus will be there, smiling and holy, holding out a green bean casserole. And at that moment, what we say, what we think, and what we believe will be the same: “I didn’t know how badly I needed this.” ~Jeremy Clive Huggins from “The Church Potluck”
…when I experienced the warm, unpretentious reception of those who have nothing to boast about, and experienced a loving embrace from people who didn’t ask any questions, I began to discover that a true spiritual homecoming means a return to the poor in spirit to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs. ~Henri Nouwen from The Return of the Prodigal Son
The journey begins when Christians leave their homes and beds. They leave, indeed, their life in this present and concrete world, and whether they have to drive 15 miles or walk a few blocks, a sacramental act is already taking place…
For they are now on their way to constitute the Church, or to be more exact, to be transformed into the Church of God. They have been individuals, some white, some black, some poor, some rich, they have been the ‘natural’ world and a natural community. And now they have been called to “come together in one place,” to bring their lives, their very world with them and to be more than what they were: a new community with a new life.
We are already far beyond the categories of common worship and prayer. The purpose of this ‘coming together’ is not simply to add a religious dimension to the natural community, to make it ‘better’ – more responsible, more Christian. The purpose is to fulfill the Church, and that means to make present the One in whom all things are at their end, and all things are at their beginning. ~ Father Alexander Schmemann from For the Life of the World
We’ve been through fire, we’ve been through pain We’ve been refined by the power of Your name We’ve fallen deeper in love with You You’ve burned the truth on our lips
Rise up church with broken wings Fill this place with songs again Of our God who reigns on high By his grace again we’ll fly ~Robin Mark from “Shout to the North and the South”
photo by Barb Hoelle
There is so much wrong with the modern church, comprised as it is of fallen people with broken wings determined to find flaws in each other in doctrine, tradition, beliefs.
What is right with the church today, is when it offers a taste of heaven for hopeful people who come together in sanctuary, barn and field, eucharist table and potluck, to hold each other up in prayer and to sing in worship to the Three in One, who is why we sing, whose body we are part of and who, in our need, loves and forgives us despite our motley messiness: Our Lord of Heaven and Earth.
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. 1 Corinthians 1:9-10
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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Twice Christ took the bread apart with his human hands that he used for such tasks, once with fish and once with wine, the grain a pattern of tribute, distribute, as he worked the division of himself into feeding others with his body, taken but not taken, there but not there, it was two times two times two. Ever body got some body who will feed them even when there seem hardly enough to go round. When I hungered the word fed me. Even so, so many others hungered he needed a hundred more human hands. That was when I said here take mine. ~D.A. Powell “The Miracle of Giving”
I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but truly love them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. ~Henri Nouwen from The Practice of the Presence of God
The church, I think, is God’s way of saying, “What I have in the pot is yours, and what I have is a group of misfits whom you need more than you know and who need you more than they know.”
“Take, and eat,” he says, “and take, and eat, until the day, and it is coming, that you knock on my door. I will open it, and you will see me face to face.”
He is preparing a table. He will welcome us in. Jesus will be there, smiling and holy, holding out a green bean casserole. And at that moment, what we say, what we think, and what we believe will be the same: “I didn’t know how badly I needed this.” ~Jeremy Clive Huggins from “The Church Potluck”
Every Sunday evening, After meeting for prayer and hymns and the Word, Our church people move to the back building to share a meal: A potlatch, a potluck, a communion of comfort food.
What to bring? What soothes stomach and heart?
Macaroni and cheese Beef stew chuck-a-block with vegetables Buckets of fried chicken Potato salad Greenbean casserole Watermelon slices, apples and bananas Meat loaf topped with ketchup Tossed Caesar salad Jello and ham buns
Home made bread, steaming, soft Whole chocolate milk And ice cream sundaes
Nothing unpronounceable Or extravagant Or expensive.
A fitting ending to a Sabbath day, When times get tough, when we feel all alone, When we drown in discouragement, We gather together to become the cross itself.
This is time for congregation becoming community, For inviting neighbors to come eat together, For huddling against life’s storminess Forgetting our worries for a time To share God’s comfort food, all together, misfits that we are, Smiling to know — we all badly needed this.
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