Be silent. Be still. Alone. Empty Before your God. Say nothing. Ask nothing. Be silent. Be still. Let your God look upon you. That is all. God knows. God understands. God loves you With an enormous love, And only wants To look upon you With that love. Quiet. Still. Be.
On a Sabbath day, I try to be still and silent but fail miserably in my attempts to rest. So much to do, so much to fix, so much to say.
I have forgotten the original reason for the seventh day.
God simply wanted to look down at what He made, declare it good and love it.
The least I can do is stop what I’m doing, look up, hold still and listen…
1 O love of God, how strong and true, eternal and yet ever new, uncomprehended and unbought, beyond all knowledge and all thought! O love of God, how deep and great, far deeper than man’s deepest hate; self-fed, self-kindled like the light, changeless, eternal, infinite.
2 O heav’nly love, how precious still, in days of weariness and ill, in nights of pain and helplessness, to heal, to comfort, and to bless! O wide-embracing, wondrous love! We read you in the sky above, we read you in the earth below, in seas that swell and streams that flow.
3 We read you best in him who came bearing for us the cross of shame; sent by the Father from on high, our life to live, our death to die. We read your pow’r to bless and save, e’en in the darkness of the grave; still more in resurrection light we read the fullness of your might.
4 O love of God, our shield and stay through all the perils of our way! Eternal love, in you we rest, forever safe, forever blest. We will exalt you, God and King, and we will ever praise your name; we will extol you ev’ry day, and evermore your praise proclaim. ~Horatius Bonar
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Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention… And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng’s clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, O Lord, Creator, Hallowed one, You still, hour by hour sustain it. ~Denise Levertov from “Primary Wonder” from Sands of the Well
Here is the mystery, the secret, one might almost say the cunning, of the deep love of God: that it is bound to draw upon itself the hatred and pain and shame and anger and bitterness and rejection of the world, but to draw all those things on to itself is precisely the means chosen from all eternity by the generous, loving God, by which to rid his world of the evils which have resulted from human abuse of God-given freedom. ~N.T. Wright from The Crown and The Fire
Inundated by constant bad news of the world, I must cling to the mystery of His magnetism for my own weaknesses, flaws and bitterness. He willingly pulls evil onto Himself, out of us. Hatred and pain and shame and anger disappear into the vortex of His love and beauty, the mucky corners of my heart vacuumed spotless.
We are let in on a secret: He is not sullied by absorbing the dirty messes of our lives.
Created in His image, sustained and loved, thus reflecting Him, it is no mystery we are washed forever clean.
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things… Ephesians 3:9
This Lenten season reflects on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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Some years ago, while sitting with my husband and young family high in the upper reaches of Seattle’s (then) Safeco Field watching the Mariners lose to the Cleveland (then) Indians, my attention diverted from the baseball game to the expansive view of the surrounding city.
In particular, I couldn’t help but place myself back inside the old Art Deco building that sits up on Beacon Hill (now known as the Pac Tower.) I had spent a hundreds of hours of my life in that building in the late 1970s; it was easy imagine my younger self in those hallways and rooms.
The 90 year old building had a number of different purposes since originally being constructed to provide hospital care for the region’s Merchant seamen. By 1999, it had become the home of a five year old business that had outgrown Jeff Bezos’ garage — Amazon.com.
I trained inside the walls of that Public Health Hospital, back in the days when it was the hospital in the region for not only Merchant Marines, but many of the indigenous people of the Pacific northwest and Alaska, in addition to local folks who needed affordable (as in free) health care. I had opportunity to work several clinical rotations in this building as a University of Washington medical student, and to think of it being Amazon’s first (but not last) major headquarters for Amazon made my brain do twists.
I remembered so much life and death happening inside those walls over the years.
I first walked into this building as a very green 24 year old med student beginning a surgical rotation in fall 1976, knowing only which end of the stethoscope to put in my ears and which end rests on the patient. On the first day I was shown how to put on a surgical gown, masks and sterile gloves without contaminating myself and the people around me. I never have forgotten that sequence of moves, even though my opportunity to go into an operating room (other than as a patient) became rare after my training days. My chief surgical resident was an exceptionally talented young man who worked himself and everyone working with him around the clock caring for his patients. This brilliant surgeon could only operate on patients while listening and singing to the music of Elvis Presley. I can’t hear any Elvis Presley songs to this day without smelling the odors of surgery–cauterized blood vessels and pus.
He was soon to become a leading trauma surgeon in a city known for its fine surgeons. The pressure was too much for him. He experienced a personal crisis for which he sought treatment. When he returned to medicine, he abandoned his incredible surgical skills to train as a psychiatrist and still remains an authority on helping impaired physicians, assisting other care providers to acknowledge and deal with addiction and mental health burnout before they harm a patient.
Those endless clinical rotation days and nights meant witnessing the misery of the most vulnerable of humanity in desperate need of healing, and sometimes we succeeded, but often we did not. I still have a recurring dream of running up and down the staircases of the Public Health Hospital, bringing pint after pint of blood to the OR from the lab as our team operated on an Alaskan indigenous patient bleeding from dilated esophageal varices, developed as a result of a damaged liver from chronic alcohol dependency. We did not save her, nor have I saved her even once in my dreams over the decades, though I keep trying to run faster. My response to her death was to spend 20 years of my clinical career working with patients in an alcohol and drug treatment program, hoping to prevent her fate in others.
Nor did we save a classmate of mine, on a rotation on a different service, the daughter of a beloved radiologist in this very hospital, who for reasons unknown, had a cardiac arrest while napping briefly during her 32 hour shift. Another medical student sleeping in the same room heard her odd breathing, found her unresponsive and all medical interventions were employed, to no avail. Even when all the right people, and the right equipment, and the right medicine is seconds away, death can still come, even to healthy people in their 20s. This was a shock to us all, and an extraordinarily humbling lesson to the pompous and overconfident among us. We might die, in our sleep, whenever it is our time. Years later, I still remember that in my evening prayers.
There was also the young surgical resident who was hospitalized there with jaundice and subsequently died of Hepatitis B, contracted from a blood exposure during his training. No vaccination was available in those days, but was in development. And it was in this and other hospitals in the city, we began to see unusual cases of gay men with severe wasting, rare skin cancers and difficult to treat pneumonias. Initially called GRID (gay-related immune deficiency), it was renamed AIDS as it began appearing in the general population as well, and for too long was a death sentence for anyone infected.
One on-call night in particular is memorable. It was Christmas Eve, and a heavy snowstorm had brought the city to a standstill. We had very little to do that night in the hospital as the elective surgeries were all postponed until after the holiday and no ambulance could easily make it up the steep drive to the ER, so they were being diverted to other hospitals. As a result, our patient load was light. I was in my tiny sleeping room, on the 14th floor of the tower, facing out north to the city of Seattle, able to enjoy the view of the city, everything blanketed under snow, so peaceful and very quiet. The freeway, ordinarily so busy day and night, was practically abandoned, and the lights of the city were brighter from the snowfall. It was an enchanting vision of a city forced to slow itself and be still, so anticipatory on a sacred and holy night.
I remember thinking about how young and inexperienced I was, and how very little I knew. My chief resident thought I’d make a good surgeon – I was a diligent worker and technically very good with my hands. My heart told me that I’d be better as a generalist/family doctor. The city held many attractions and excitement, but I longed to return to a farm and a someday family. It was a wistful bittersweet night and I slept very little, perched on that little bed overlooking the sleeping snowy city. I wondered where life might take me, as I reflected on who I was becoming and where I was meant to be.
Forty five years later, I still am reminded every day at how little I know, but I do realize this: for however long we’re on this earth, each day we have a distinct purpose and reason for being.
That day, my purpose was to be snowbound on that Christmas day at the old Public Health Hospital, unable to go home from my shift because my car was stuck in the parking lot. Instead, I covered for others who couldn’t make it in to work, singing Christmas carols for all the patients who had to stay put in their hospital beds.
Soon, my purpose was to meet the man I was to marry, eventually living with three beloved children on a little farm 100 miles to the north while practicing medicine in a variety of primary care roles for over forty years.
And perhaps, my purpose now in retirement is to share a few stories while reflecting on a life still in progress.
Only the Lord knows why He places us where He does.
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In science we have been reading only the notes to a poem: in Christianity we find the poem itself. ~C.S. Lewis from Miracles
Science doesn’t love us despite our weakness, nor grasp and console the hand and the heart of the dying, it won’t ever become sacrifice for our sin, nor offer us everlasting forgiveness and grace.
Science dips just below the surface to discover depths of a Word that formed all that exists. Science reaches out to the cosmos to comprehend our limits within the infinite.
We see only a shimmering reflection, a mere fermata in the opus of creation as we pause to consider the profundity of His ultimate Work in our souls.
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…whenever you mark a horse, or a dog, with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye, be sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant, tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries in man. No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses. They see through us at a glance. But there is a touch of divinity …. and a special halo about a horse… ~Herman Melville from Redburn: His First Voyage
There are some animals (and people) who will not look you in the eye. It may be a reluctance to appear too bold (as direct eye contact can imply), or it may be a reluctance to expose too much of their own inner world and feelings.
Because eyes don’t lie.
When you empty yourself into another being’s eyes and feel both understanding and understood, that is a touch of divinity at work.
The eye is a mirror, a gazing ball and a collecting pool to reveal, reflect and absorb. May we take the time and gather the courage to look deeply for the holy within one another.
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Imagine yourself in a big city in a crowd of people. What it would be like to see all the people in the crowd like Jesus does — an anonymous crowd with old ones and young ones, fat ones and thin ones, attractive ones and ugly ones— think what it would be like to love them.
If our faith is true, if there is a God, and if God loves, he loves each one of those. Try to see them as loved. And then try to see them, these faces, as loved by you. What would it be like to love these people, to love these faces — the lovable faces, the kind faces, gentle compassionate faces? That’s not so hard. But there are lots of other faces — disagreeable faces, frightening faces, frightened faces, cruel faces, closed faces. … they are all peculiar treasures. In Exodus, God said to Israel, “You shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.” God meant it for all of us. ~Frederick Buechner from The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life
t doesn’t take long for me to be overwhelmed by humanity when we have visited some of the world’s largest cities. Airports are a shock of weaving lines of weary people and crying children, commuter trains are packed with individuals standing like sardines for an hour or more twice a day, the stations are a sea of bobbing heads flowing out onto the streets where the crosswalks become a mass hive of activity whenever the light changes.
Yet I’ve been struck by the effort some locals make to help visitors who look lost, or who simply look different. There is outreach at times that is spontaneous, genuine and completely unexpected. Those are easy faces to love and we do. What is much much harder to is love those hundreds of thousands who rush past us on their way to work, to shop, to return home. How can I even begin to have the capacity?
Who greeted Jesus after he entered Jerusalem in the final week of His life? These were not all friendly faces. He loved them all any way, every single one of them were peculiar treasures to him, forgiven and redeemed by His walk to, and death on, the cross.
I realize much of the time I too feel rushed, not bothering to reach out and be helpful when needed. Even so, He loves me still, flaws and all, as His redeeming grace is meant for one such as me – a peculiar treasure.
Because of His love, I become the real thing and not just a distorted reflection of what I think I should be.
This year’s Lenten theme: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: 18
More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them.
It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems.
My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans, not to organize people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress.
But 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. ~Henri Nouwen from The Practice of the Presence of God
For too many years, I was wrapped up in the trappings of the “useful” life – meetings, committees, schedules, strategic priorities – and I forgot there is so much living usefully that I neglected to do.
There needs to be more potlucks, more “oh, by the way” conversations, more connections “just because,” more showing up when extra hands are needed.
If only I could invite you all over for breakfast. We’d have a wonderful chin wag…
Actually, now that I think of it — you ARE invited for breakfast – Sunday, April 9, 2023 at 7 AM. Dress warmly. Wear boots. Come hungry and thirsty for the Word and ready for hugs. Easter Sunrise on our hill.
This year’s Lenten theme: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4: 18
There is an arid Pleasure – As different from Joy – As Frost is different from Dew – Like Element – are they –
Yet one – rejoices Flowers – And one – the Flowers abhor – The finest Honey – curdled – Is worthless – to the Bee – ~Emily Dickinson
Remember the goodness of God in the frost of adversity. ~Charles Spurgeon
Even when hard times leave us frozen solid, completely immobilized and too cold to touch, there is hope and healing, in the warming immensity of the goodness of God.
Even when life’s chill leaves us aching, longing for relief, the coming thaw is real because God is good.
Even when we’re flattened, stepped on, broken into fragments — the pieces left are the beginning of who we will become, becoming whole again because God is good.
Frost lasts not forever. Sunlight makes us glisten and glitter as ice melts down to droplets. We are a reflection of the goodness of God: His eyes and ears, heart and soul, hands and feet. Even more so, we become His tears as God weeps in His goodness.
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What’s incomplete in me seeks refuge in blackberry bramble and beech trees, where creatures live without dogma and water moves in patterns more ancient than philosophy. I stand still, child eavesdropping on her elders. I don’t speak the language but my body translates best it can, wakening skin and gut, summoning the long kinship we share with everything. ~Laura Grace Weldon, “Common Ground” from Blackbird
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. ~Wendell Berry “The Peace of Wild Things”
Nearly thirty months of pandemic separation and I long to share our farm with our far-flung grandchildren who live across the ocean, to watch them discover the joys and sorrows of this place we inhabit. I will tell them there is light beyond this darkness, there is refuge amid the brambles, there is kinship with what surrounds us, there is peace amid the chaos, there is a smile behind the tears, there is stillness within the noisiness, there is rescue when all seems hopeless, there is grace as the old gives way to new.
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Just as the night was fading Into the dusk of morning When the air was cool as water When the town was quiet And I could hear the sea
I caught sight of the moon No higher than the roof-tops Our neighbor the moon
An hour before the sunrise She glowed with her own sunrise Gold in the grey of morning
World without town or forest Without wars or sorrows She paused between two trees
And it was as if in secret Not wanting to be seen She chose to visit us So early in the morning. ~Anne Porter, “Getting Up Early” from An All Together Different Language.
And who has seen the moon, who has not seen Her rise from out the chamber of the deep, Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw Confession of delight upon the wave, Littering the waves with her own superscription Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes towards us Spread out and known at last, and we are sure That beauty is a thing beyond the grave, That perfect, bright experience never falls To nothingness, and time will dim the moon Sooner than our full consummation here In this odd life will tarnish or pass away. ~D.H. Lawrence “Moonrise”
I could not sleep last night, tossing in turmoil while wrestling with my worries, concerned I’ve dropped the ball.
As a beacon of calm, the moon shone bright onto our bed covers before sunrise.
This glowing ball is never dropped, this holy sphere of the night remains aloft, sailing the skies, to rise again and again to light our darkest nights.
Its lambent reflection of His Love and Peace is balm; I am covered in its beauty.
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