I was sitting in church holding my three week old child, starring into that tiny sweet face and feeling absolutely dotty and smitten. Here was this creature I simply ADORED in ways that I didn't know you could love. A being I had fallen madly in love with simply for her virtue of existing. And then holy lightening struck my mind with a dizzying flash. This is how God sees me. The realization devastated me. I started to cry, flooded with feelings of thanksgiving, awe, and humility. I have never recovered from that moment.
It took me a little more spiritual maturity to realize that this is also how God sees everyone else--including people I don't know, people I don' t like, and people who I don't understand.
Holy God of Love: I praise your limitless and eternal compassion. Thank you for the love that pours from you to give movement to the smallest atoms and the biggest stars. Thank you for patiently teaching me more and more about divine love. Please grow my heart into better and better alignment with yours. Please bust the edges of my tiny compassion. Mold me into a vehicle for your will in the world. Amen.
25 February 2008
18 February 2008
Divine Pardoxes
"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30)
What an invitation! This is the voice of the God of Incarnation. Jesus the Christ who knows first hand about human weariness and burden. His offer is rest. Ah! This is a practical Lord! But the offer is also for a relationship--to become a student, to become a worker in God's fields. The promise of this invitation is a paradox. That by taking up the role of servant to Jesus we will be given rest. That shouldn't work at all! It's absurd. But paradox and absurdity is the territory of the inconceivable God of the Universe.
When spirituality is too logical, it bears the imprint of humanity not divinity!
What an invitation! This is the voice of the God of Incarnation. Jesus the Christ who knows first hand about human weariness and burden. His offer is rest. Ah! This is a practical Lord! But the offer is also for a relationship--to become a student, to become a worker in God's fields. The promise of this invitation is a paradox. That by taking up the role of servant to Jesus we will be given rest. That shouldn't work at all! It's absurd. But paradox and absurdity is the territory of the inconceivable God of the Universe.
When spirituality is too logical, it bears the imprint of humanity not divinity!
17 February 2008
About the Three Carrots
I have been marveling at the three carrots on a brick wall for, saints preserve me, twenty years.
It was Spring and I was walking through the old neighborhoods that surrounded my undergraduate school, weaving aimlessly around quiet streets and thinking my young person's thoughts. I was very good at this. I worried and sighed. I felt in a hurry to know things and to experience life and to grow wise.
As I walked, my hand traced a thick brick wall that lined one yard. The bricks were old and worn, but sturdy. As I turned the corner, my fingers still on the bricks, an unexpected sight met me. There on the wall, a few feet ahead of me, sat three fat carrots. They looked home grown and freshly picked, the greens still attached and only a little wilted.
There was no sign of their purpose on that wall. No one was nearby working. There was no note to explain their placement ("Marge: here are those carrots I was telling you about.") They were too big to be left out for the squirrels, and too high up to be food for the rabbits. The carrots seemed pointless, and yet there were so deliberately placed.
For a reason I still can't explain, the sight of these three carrots sent my mind reeling. Why are they there? What is their puprose? Who has placed these carrots? I wanted to know all the answers immediately. I felt anxious--even panicky--about the my inability to make sense of the sight. My intellectual powerlessness frightened me.
And then a calmness floated in through the transom of my mind. It was the still small voice of perspective that I suddenly heard in my heart, and it told me to be still. I heard myself saying, "Someone knows why there are three carrots on a brick wall, but it is not me."
In a rush, I realized that three carrots on a brick wall were not my business to solve. I could see them, acknowledge my lack of knowledge, and keep walking. The carrots did not need my understanding to exist.
My little experiences do not give meaning to the world.
The peace I had at the moment of realization, when I finally understood my point of view in the big universe, was profound. So profound that I continue to mark it as the end of my child mind and the start of my wisdom...such as it is.
That is when I learned to allow things to be unclear to me without anxiety and without dispair. This is helpful in human interactions, relationships, but most especially in subjects of Faith.
Like the three carrots on a brick wall, there are thousands of things that I currently do not understand about how human's practice religion, about the meaning of our lives, about what happens when we die. But I do not despair at my lack of understanding. And I do not mark these points of confusion as shortcomings of the Creator.
Gracious God: I seek holy perspective on the world. Be near me when I become anxious about the limits of my knowledge. Give me Your patience and peace. Nourish my abilty to trust in You and not myself. Amen.
It was Spring and I was walking through the old neighborhoods that surrounded my undergraduate school, weaving aimlessly around quiet streets and thinking my young person's thoughts. I was very good at this. I worried and sighed. I felt in a hurry to know things and to experience life and to grow wise.
As I walked, my hand traced a thick brick wall that lined one yard. The bricks were old and worn, but sturdy. As I turned the corner, my fingers still on the bricks, an unexpected sight met me. There on the wall, a few feet ahead of me, sat three fat carrots. They looked home grown and freshly picked, the greens still attached and only a little wilted.
There was no sign of their purpose on that wall. No one was nearby working. There was no note to explain their placement ("Marge: here are those carrots I was telling you about.") They were too big to be left out for the squirrels, and too high up to be food for the rabbits. The carrots seemed pointless, and yet there were so deliberately placed.
For a reason I still can't explain, the sight of these three carrots sent my mind reeling. Why are they there? What is their puprose? Who has placed these carrots? I wanted to know all the answers immediately. I felt anxious--even panicky--about the my inability to make sense of the sight. My intellectual powerlessness frightened me.
And then a calmness floated in through the transom of my mind. It was the still small voice of perspective that I suddenly heard in my heart, and it told me to be still. I heard myself saying, "Someone knows why there are three carrots on a brick wall, but it is not me."
In a rush, I realized that three carrots on a brick wall were not my business to solve. I could see them, acknowledge my lack of knowledge, and keep walking. The carrots did not need my understanding to exist.
My little experiences do not give meaning to the world.
The peace I had at the moment of realization, when I finally understood my point of view in the big universe, was profound. So profound that I continue to mark it as the end of my child mind and the start of my wisdom...such as it is.
That is when I learned to allow things to be unclear to me without anxiety and without dispair. This is helpful in human interactions, relationships, but most especially in subjects of Faith.
Like the three carrots on a brick wall, there are thousands of things that I currently do not understand about how human's practice religion, about the meaning of our lives, about what happens when we die. But I do not despair at my lack of understanding. And I do not mark these points of confusion as shortcomings of the Creator.
Gracious God: I seek holy perspective on the world. Be near me when I become anxious about the limits of my knowledge. Give me Your patience and peace. Nourish my abilty to trust in You and not myself. Amen.
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