Rest as our Home Base

 

Fourteen months ago our non-stop world came to a screeching halt.  Instead of hurrying about our normal lives we were suddenly hunting for toilet paper and hand sanitizer and stockpiling dried beans.  The goals, activities and realities of life were just…canceled. 

Time changed.  The kids didn’t need to be up by a certain time in order to be out the door and waiting for the bus. Lunches didn’t have to be made the night before. There was an avalanche of phone calls, text messages, and emails announcing that our appointments with the doctor/dentist/chiropractor/hair stylist were canceled. Those events we had been looking forward to (or dreading) like weddings, birthday parties, vacations, concerts were postponed, postponed again, and then…

We found ourselves constructing new, make-shift lives on screens and behind masks. It was weird. On the phone and Facetime and Zoom and social media we compared notes on just how weird it was. Like a collective improv show, we set about trying to create new routines. We looked for stuff to do. We doom scrolled.

A few weeks into the pandemic my friend Peter provided a helpful lens.  An American who’d lived and worked abroad, he said, "When you go to another place for a short time you’re a tourist, a bit longer and you’re a temporary resident. If you stay long-term in a place that’s not native to you, you’re an expat, or permanently, you’re an immigrant.  In all of these scenarios, every day you are waking up, walking around, living, relating, figuring out money, food, time, and rules for interacting in a culture other than your native culture. It’s exhausting. Everything takes work. Everything involves translation, reading the situation, trying to figure out if you’re doing it correctly. Everything is a negotiation."

We are all in a different culture: COVID Culture, Pandemic World.  This place we’re inhabiting is not a stable, steady culture that gets easier to adjust to as we become more familiar with it.  It’s constantly shifting and changing. Just when we start to figure out how to live here, the rules change, the expectations change, and here comes more negotiating.  

So for fourteen months, our poor selves have been constantly buffering; we’re walking around with “the spinning wheel of death” on our screens.  We may not be accomplishing a whole lot, but our battery is draining precipitously.  And while we’re constantly adapting, the exhaustion is compounding.

We didn’t choose to go on this trip. And we’re all desperate to go home. But where we go after this will not be home. It will feel a bit like home, but also uncomfortably different. While we’ve been here work and life were radically disrupted and altered: our country plunged into a long overdue and deeply painful national racial reckoning; over half a million of our loved ones have died of COVID, (and nearly 3 million of our global siblings), not to mention all those people who died of other things, or moved away from neighborhoods, or lost their jobs. Favorite restaurants are gone, favorite shops have closed down, and patterns of activity we relied on can hardly even be remembered. A lot of what made home home is no longer there. We’ve had to adapt to things we didn’t choose, to settle into a life we never intended to be living.  And it’s been a life of waiting, of killing time, of biding time, of resenting the passing of time. We are time-sick.

When we “go back,” it won’t be back, it will be forward into something new and different, a new home. It will take imagination, energy, and stamina.  And we are going to feel pressure to go harder than ever, to make up for lost time.  

Even though we are exhausted, it will be more difficult than ever to rest. We will think we don’t deserve it. We will assume we’ve just spent a year “resting,” for Pete’s sake!  So we had better get out there and get going!  How dare we stop, how dare we play? How dare we say “No” to the invitation or experience we’ve been waiting for, or refuse the person or opportunity that has been waiting for us?  How dare we waste time or squander energy on anything other than making up for lost time fixing what’s broken in the world? 

Jesus calls us back to Sabbath when he says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Mt. 11:28)

The Bible often uses “the rest of God” as a synonym for “salvation.” Rest is what being saved feels like. Rest is being saved. Rest is returning to our deepest, most vulnerable selves, made in the image of a God who rests and who wove rest into the fabric of creation.  Rest is how we come back to our belonging to God and each other, it’s how we remember our own humanity and everyone else’s. One of God's main strategies for bringing us home is Sabbath.

God tells us to once a week power it all down, unplug and turn it off.  One day each week where we don’t seek anything, perform anything, produce anything, or prove anything. Just accept being accepted, receive God’s grace.  Sabbath is one day a week of practicing trust, trust that this world is held in God’s love. And God has to tell us to do it because left to our own devices, we wouldn’t rest. It’s a waste of time, we tell ourselves. Rest is earned, or claimed only by those who are sick, or selfish, or simply too exhausted to go on. So on we go, relentlessly, wearily, desperately.

But more important than our doing is our being. So to remember what is true, Sabbath says, we need to rest.  Rest lets us feel time, be in time, and be met by the One who is outside of time.  Rest is meant to be our home base.

Our relationship with time is so fraught. And yet, what if time were just one way to understand the gift that is life? What if we measured our days by presence instead of pressure?

For fourteen months we have been living as temporary residents in COVID World.  It has made us weary and wary, and it also has taught us some things and given us some unexpected gifts.  As we stamp our passports and set out to relocate our whole lives to the unmapped land called Post-Pandemic, what lessons have we gleaned? What souvenirs will we choose to carry with us? What will shape our lives going forward?

Sabbath invites us to shape our lives in a way that relishes abundance instead of grasping at scarcity.  As the restrictions from the pandemic lift, and life opens up again, maybe we can take this opportunity to rethink our relationship to time. Rather than trying to maximize time, we might chose to incorporate regular, preemptive, protected rest into our lives. We might begin to recognize time as the place we are met by God and held in love, rather than as a perpetually limited commodity that is either spent or wasted.  We may be ready to welcome the invitation to regularly return to God's rest as our home base.

(Updated from its original published form "Coming Home: An Invitation from the Pandemic" on Retreat Where You Are, a blog from Mt. Olivet Retreat Center).

Lament. Return. Remember. Rest.

Psalm 4

There’s a desperate vigilance and awful heaviness about the world at the moment. I think even if we aren’t paying super close attention many of us are still feeling it. A shared, psychic weight to the world. Even as we are hurriedly vaccinating people, the case numbers are rising toward a global highest point, and what, another mass shooting? Wasn’t there just one yesterday? The pressure feels audible, the tension palpable. So many people I know have commented on how utterly exhausted they feel. But at the same time our sleep is fraught and spotty. We are alert, restless and exhausted.

It feels like we’re given two options, and neither one is tenable. One is to watch every minute of the Derek Chauvin trial, read everything we can about little Adam Toledo, break apart the video of Daunte White’s killing, stay up late watching national guardsmen teargassing journalists a few miles away, track the vaccinations, stay on top of the politicians, check in on the suffering children at the border and the conflicts simmering all over the globe, worry about the threat of climate change, and compulsively wonder what more we should be doing. And if we are not out marching or speaking out then we are following those who are because we need to feel like we are doing something, like something is being done that can stop all this, or fix all this, and Lord, it’s all so awful how can we ignore even a moment of it? 

 

The other option we’re given is to go numb and limp, to shut it all off and block it all out and take in nothing but our own lives and desires, and maybe we occasionally feel a teeny bit guilty, but that’s better than helplessness and rage with no outlet. And sometimes we just bounce wildly back and forth between the two.

 

But there is a third way. And I think this Psalm gives it to us. 

 

It starts with lament. When the tears feel close and sorrow claws up the throat, and anger and rage are right here next to us we aim all of that right at God.  We moderns are pretty scared of lament in church, preferring the more palatable confession, but lament is in integral part of our faith. And this particular lament of David, we know, was sung all the voices crying out together, Answer me when I call to you God! How long will this go on?

 

There is a mystery word here that shows up 71 times in the psalms and twice in Habakkuk, Selah. Because it’s very close to the word for pause and also the word for praise, throughout the millennia it has come to be seen as a kind of mix of both - pause and praise God. Take a beat, and turn your attention back to God.

So built right into the song is a pause, everyone stopping, silent, shifting focus back to God. And then continuing on in unison.

 

So hear the Psalm again, in this paraphrase:

 

O God who knows me, answer me when I call!

When I have been confined in anxious misery before, 

you opened up expansive space for me to breathe, 

please hear me now, give me your grace again.

 

How long will our humanity be torn down? 

How long will lies be elevated, 

and people spread vitriol, delusion and exploitation?

 

Stop.

Take a beat. 

Turn your attention to God.

 

God has drawn us to God’s own being, 

those who seek God are claimed for God’s purposes.  

When you are worked up and distraught, 

don’t turn to division and blame; don’t tear down others.  

Instead, sit in it with God, 

be silent in a restful space. 

 

Stop.

Take a beat.

Turn your attention to God.

 

Lay everything before the Almighty in vulnerable honesty, 

and trust God with it. 

So many people say, “There is no goodness that we can see!” 

Oh Lord, let your love and truth shine on all of us!

You have filled me with deep joy, 

more happiness than when they have all the wealth 

and satisfaction they desire.

 

I won't stay up babysitting the world,

I will sleep soundly and deeply

because this your world, God, 

and my life is held in you.

 

 

Lament. Return to God. Then remember.  

This earth is heavy with sorrow and need. 

And at the same time this planet turns slowly in the utter silence of the vast cosmos, nestled amongst the great lights of burning stars, held in orbit to the sun. And within this planet, while one hemisphere is nestling down in winter hibernation, here the green shoots push up through the soil, and trees are awakening. And all over the planet new babies are born, and broken relationships are mended, and people are tending to each other, and there is laughter and joy, and tears of deep connection, and healing, and hope, and love remains the most powerful force in the universe, always at work, always, always, always.

 

But oh! We forget. So quickly, without realizing it, even when we’re trying to remember. 

This happened to me yesterday. I was remembering, and then I was completely derailed when I read in a commentary from 2012 (Shauna Hannan, Working Preacher) that in the first verse, where it says, you made space for me it originally alluded to “release from a tight noose at the neck,” the opposite of the word for when I was in distress, which is used for “a constricted larynx.”  And I stopped hearing the promise of God’s deliverance and the invitation to trust, and all I could see was that God did not make space for George Floyd when he was in distress, and how could I preach this text in the shadow of that? 

All day long I spun out, all day long I fixated on my words, the overwhelming sorrow and brokenness of this world, the pain of our city.  I did not lament, I obsessed. I did not take my anguish and sit silently before God, I logged onto the news and social media and started babysitting the world again. I did not come in honesty before the Almighty. I got caught up in blame and frustration in the country, and became controlling and edgy in my own house. 

And then I looked at the clock and realized it was time for evening prayers. So I sat down on zoom with those who meet together every evening.  

Stop. Take a beat. Turn your attention to God.

 

And suddenly there was joy, in sharing about a day spent with happy little cousins, and our delight and horror at a ridiculous amount of accidentally purchased bananas. Suddenly God was meeting us right there in our humanity, in our need, in our coming together. Then one of them repeated back to me that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and I was invited back into trust.

 

We are meant to stand with one another and for each other, to hold each other and fight for life for each other and us all, for this whole beautiful and broken world. We are made for love. God calls us into God’s purposes; we are drawn into God’s own being. We get to share in the love God is already, always bringing.

 

And then, at the end of the day, we sleep.  

To sleep is to yield to our most essential humanity – our creaturliness, our need, our soft, vulnerable, universal humanity, the warm breath, closed eyes, heavy limbs of us. 

Sleep is trust. It is pure being. Sleep is admitting we are not God. Sleep returns us to the humility of our own humanity. Only from here can we be fully in this life, with and for each other. 

 

We belong to God. This is God’s world. God made it. God came into it to bear our suffering and share our pain and take on our death so that death cannot, will not define us, will not have the last word, will not prevail. 

So stop. Take a beat. Turn your attention to God.

 

There is a poem by Pablo Neruda that I love, called Keeping Quiet. It goes like this:

 

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

 

For once on the face of the earth

let’s not speak in any language,

let’s stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

 

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines,

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

 

Fishermen in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt

would look at his hurt hands.

 

Those who prepare green wars,

wars with gas, wars with fire,

victory with no survivors,

would put on clean clothes

and walk about with their brothers

in the shade, doing nothing.

 

What I want should not be confused

with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about;

I want no truck with death.

 

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with 

death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead

and later proves to be alive.

 

Now I’ll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go.” 

 

Christ has risen. He is risen indeed. 

Death does not get the last word, 

and love is the most powerful force in the universe. 

May we join in fully. 

And may we sleep soundly.

Amen.

 

Exhaustion and What to Do (or Not Do) About It

 

Psalm 107:1-9, (or check out the whole psalm if you want), Matthew 11:28-30

This is the Sunday one year ago that we suddenly suspended in-person worship.  A year ago we were hunting for toilet paper and hand sanitizer and stockpiling dried beans.  A year ago my kids came home early Thursday and didn’t go back to school on Friday. A month later my daughter and I walked through the spooky empty halls to clean out her locker, glimpsing half-finished projects scattered in abandoned classrooms and discarded boots and mittens lying on shelves.  
 
Imagine if you could have told us then what we were in for. 

I feel exhausted, emotionally, psychologically.  Things take more mental effort, my memory feels a bit feeble, and I have energy for fewer things in a day.  This is what we talked about 10 months ago as visiting a new culture, pandemic culture, and how culture shock and adjusting to a new culture, always calculating and modifying, is so draining.  It’s like we’re buffering, or continuously searching for a wifi connection, with what in our house we call “the spinning wheel of death” on our screens.  We may not be accomplishing a whole lot, but our battery is draining precipitously.  And while we’re constantly adapting the exhaustion is compounding. For. A. Year.  I’ve had a year of thin-skinned irritability.
 
What is a good life and how do I live it when I am exhausted? 
Who is God and what is God up to when we are exhausted?
 
Our scriptures today say something about both of these.  
I love Psalm 107. This is just a small part of it. It’s made up of about six different vignettes that describe God’s salvation coming in just the way people need it, God coming in and saving them exactly how they need saving.  This is who God is and what is God up to, the Psalmist says.  Several years ago a few of us wrote our own versions – here are two of the LNPC vignettes:
 
Some were overwhelmed with grief for a brother’s loss of his son
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble 
and God delivered them from their distress
God quieted them to hear their brother, and clarified their need to be present for their brother.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
For God’s wonderful works to humankind.
            For God covers our time being with one another in suffering with grace and tears, joy and gratitude.
 
Some of them had confusion about their “call,” their vocation, and had trouble recognizing their own gifts and letting themselves be used by God 
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble 
and God delivered them from their distress
God comforted them through friends, and directed them through mentors, and gave them patience on the unfolding journey
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
For God’s wonderful works to humankind.
For God brings peace in the midst of the journey.
 
We cry out to God in our trouble and God delivers us from our distress. And we thank God for God’s steadfast love, and wonderful works to humankind.  That is who God is and what God does.  Like Theresa said last week with the dead bones who can’t reanimate themselves – they can’t even cry out or thank God like this Psalm, and still – God does this, God brings salvation, breathes life into our places of death. It’s what God does.
 
Come to me, Jesus said, all you who are weary. Come to me and I will give you rest. The Bible often uses “the rest of God” as a synonym for “salvation.” Rest is what being saved feels like.  Rest is being saved.  


Last year, in the middle of Lent when we were plunged into this pandemic we were talking about the way of fear, that asks “what if…” and the way of God, where hope answers, “even if…” 

Worry is practicing fear. Worry trains us to fear by saying over and over again, “What if… what if… what if…”  And this year has been serving us worry opportunities on a platter, daily, nearly moment to moment. We don’t have to search for what if’s… we’re drowning in chances to practice fear.  

But rest, rest is practicing trust. Rest trains us to trust by saying over and over again, “Even if… Even if… Even if…”  When we rest we step out of the vigilance, we put down the weird belief that our worry and our work can somehow guarantee our security, protect our future, ensure our own safety or stability. When we rest, we practice trusting God to do what God does. We turn back to God, who does the saving. 
 
The way of God is the way of rest. Taking Jesus’ yoke means joining Jesus, and carrying what he carries into the world: the embodiment of complete belonging to God and belonging to others.  It is a restful, easy way, because it is the way we are designed to live:
where "the other" is not threat, object or burden, but my sibling, my neighbor, my friend.  Where there is enough and it is meant to be shared.  Where love has the first and final word.  Where the end it is all heading toward is wholeness and connection.  

Whether we forget or not, God's redemption and love is already and always happening.  We trust this. We live always into, out of, and toward, this reality.  Rest reminds us whose we are and who we are.  
 
It’s is easy to think everything will be all right when we feel alright. And when we don't feel alright, when the things that felt foundational get taken away, it’s easy to feel like we won’t be ok. We won’t be ok, so how dare we rest until we are? How dare we stop, how dare we play? How dare we waste time, squander energy, on anything other than saving ourselves or fixing what’s broken in the world?
 
In this mostly stay at home life, we have so overruled rest with worry and work – or the worry that we should be working – that when this thing ends, (and it is ending, you guys), we are going to feel pressure to go harder than ever, to make up for lost time. It will be more difficult than ever to rest. We will think we don’t deserve it. We will assume we’ve just spent a year “resting,” for pete’s sake! So we had better get out there and get going!
 
We tell ourselves rest is reward to be bestowed on those who’ve earned it, or claimed by those who are sick, or selfish, or simply too exhausted to go on.
 
In truth rest is returning to our deepest, most vulnerable selves, made in the image of a God who rests and who wove rest into the fabric of creation.  A God who tells us in the top ten rules for life that resting, regularly, on purpose, no matter what, is essential.  That rest is how we come back to our belonging to God and each other. It’s how we practice trusting. It’s they way we remember whose are and who we are.  Sabbath says to us: you are accepted, just as you are. You belong already.  This world is held in God’s love.  So once a week power it all down, unplug and turn it off.  Don’t seek anything, perform anything, produce anything. Spend a day accepting being accepted. Receive God’s grace.
 
So we start now. Here.  We get back to practicing Sabbath, which is a way of saying, resting proactively, preemptively, intentionally and regularly. Even if, we stop.  No matter what, we stop.  In the midst of, despite, and nevertheless, we regularly, without excuse or worldly justification, stop.  Because more important than our doing is our being. 
 
We are called to join in God’s work of justice, healing and hope from our grounding in rest.  There will never not be work to do. But not by weary people strapped to a yoke of fear. Not from heavily burdened people, dragging a load of pressure to make up for lost time, caught up in cycles of worry and anxiety, guilt and shame for not doing enough, exhausted and utterly spent, but forcing themselves to rally anyway. We must turn off.  So that we can turn back on and tune back in.
 
We are being set free.  Always.  We are being saved. This world is being saved.  That’s what God does. This God always acts from despair to bring hope, from brokenness to bring wholeness, from impossibility to bring newness.  We get to be part of this.
 
And so perhaps our vignette today would be:
 
Some found themselves a year into a disorienting pandemic. A time filled with terror, worry, boredom and isolation. It took from them all normalcy, exposed to them the vast landscape of injustice and pain in their nation, opened up deep wells of grief, and left them suspended in ongoing unknown that went on, and on, and on.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble 
and God delivered them from their distress
God met them in their exhaustion with grace, and gave them the gift of rest, returning them to trust. Jesus invited them to live in his life, his love in and for the world that is claimed by God, a life that begins in rest.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
For God’s wonderful works to humankind.
For the One who made us for life, and joins us in this life, meets us in rest, and draws us ever more deeply into life. 
 
Amen.

Taking Turns (or Not)

 

Devotion for Being Apart -
August 19

This summer, I will share new devotions fromtime to time,

and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted here on this blog.

I shared this prayer from Nadia Bolz-Weber Tuesday in the announcements: 

Dear God,

We are going to just be taking turns for a while, if that’s ok.

Yesterday was mine. My turn to be depressed-as-hell about the closing of beloved, been-around-for-decades local businesses. My turn to be afraid because the wildfires are so bad that my eyes sting and the interstate is closed. My turn to be angry.  My turn to indulge in post-apocalyptic future-casting. (OK maybe I shouldn't have watched Mad Max this week.)

Please help me not feel bad when it’s my turn, Lord. And with your grace, may my turn to completely freak out not last one minute longer than necessary. But also may it last as long as needed in order to allow it to pass when it’s time to move on and just go make the salad for dinner.

And Lord, may I be a non-anxious presence to the next person whose turn it is. May I not fear their fear so much that I fail to listen well. When I have even the tiniest extra bit of hope may I offer it without fear of being judged for “not paying attention”. 

And may I remember that my terror is not a sign of your absence and my hope is not a sign of your presence. 

Because you never take turns. 

This spoke to me Monday because Monday felt like my turn.
Tuesday, it turned out I am not so good at taking turns. 

My family spent five days in a cabin way up the Gunflint Trail last week.  Surrounded by the sounds and sights of nature, with my phone and email off, it was a much-needed rest for which I am profoundly grateful.  We returned Saturday to a delightful outdoor baptism Saturday evening, and then a lovely zoom worship service on Sunday.  
And then the funk descended.  

I flailed on Monday.  Rattled around aimlessly, trying to out-walk, out-eat, out-read the hovering depression that threatened to descend from the moment I awoke to another ordinary day in COVID world.  By bedtime I was determined to be gentle with myself and the adjustment back to reality that was going to look, apparently, messier than I'd hoped.

Today I am back to making lists and taking things slowly, welcoming interruptions and trying to remember to take lots of slow, deep breaths.  It helps to notice things like the resting dog's inexplicably wagging tail, the squirrel in the tree off our deck that's been boisterously shouting to the neighborhood for five straight hours, the tiny, personal smile on the face of my kid who just walked by me, lost in thought. 

But yesterday, oof. Yesterday it was not my turn.  It was other people's in my house turn to be a mess, and I met them with impatience and irritation. I pointed out their illogic. I lost my temper at their temper tantrums.  I competed for pathetic points.  I rolled my eyes, and sighed, and withheld my empathy and attention. 

The problem is, sometimes we don't actually take turns.
Sometimes we are all feeling rotten at the same time.  
Then what?

Then God's grace holds us too.  
Then, I am invited to recognize that it's not all dependent on our feelings, and how well or poorly we are handling things, or whether we are there for each other in the ways we hope to be or utterly not.  Because, as I continue to cling to throughout this time, This is part of the story. This is not the whole story. The world belongs to God.

The roller coaster ride of emotions will be what it will be.  And even when we handle things regretfully with each other, and do a bad job of taking turns, that is not the final word. We have the next moment, and the moment after that, the next day, and the day after that. And even our breakdowns and break-ups and broken relating can be part of the larger story of being made closer, more with each other, more for each other.  Because we already and always belong to each other and to God, and that's not up to us to decide.  God has already done this.

Last night, when session met under the shade of the maple tree on the church patio, we read a paraphrase (by Nan C. Merrill) of the Psalm Theresa preached for us on Sunday, Psalm 13.

It says,
How long, my Beloved?
Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear this pain in my soul,
and lie with sorrow all the day?
How long will fear rule my life?

Notice my heart and answer me,
O my Beloved;
enlighten me, lest I walk as one dead to life;
Lest my ego fears say, "We have won the day;"
Lest they rejoice in their strength.

As I trust in your steadfast Love;
my heart will rejoice,
for in You is freedom.
I shall sing to the Beloved,
who has answered my prayers a thousand fold!
Come, O Beloved, make your home in my heart.

I felt myself praying this as I awoke today: 
How long will fear rule my life?
Notice my heart and answer me, God,
enlighten me lest I walk as one dead to life.
Come, Lord, make your home in my heart.

I will not walk as one dead to life.
And today I feel fortified.
It can be someone else's turn to melt down, I'm ready today.  I will pray to be for them the non-anxious presence and the speaker of hope.

And if I am not as steady as I thought I was, and their meltdown leads to my own, so what?  God can use that too.  We are all in this together. You. Me. God. The rest of the world. This story keeps going.

 
So come, Lord, make your home in our hearts.
We will trust in your steadfast love. For in you is freedom.
Amen.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

 

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Let's use the psalm to pray.
Read it through several times.
Let the phrases that reach for your heart nestle there.
Repeat them to yourself a few times and sit in silence. Let God speak to you through the words.
End by reading through the psalm one final time.

(Psalm 13, paraphrase by Nan C. Merrill in Psalms for Praying.)

How long, my Beloved?
Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear this pain in my soul,
and lie with sorrow all the day?
How long will fear rule my life?

Notice my heart and answer me,
O my Beloved;
enlighten me, lest I walk as one dead to life;
Lest my ego fears say, "We have won the day;"
Lest they rejoice in their strength.

As I trust in your steadfast Love;
my heart will rejoice,
for in You is freedom.
I shall sing to the Beloved,
who has answered my prayers a thousand fold!
Come, O Beloved, make your home in my heart.

What are you waiting for?

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 24

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.

As a pastor, I have the distinct and unique benefit of also being the proofreader and theological sounding board to a prolific theologian. The section of Andy's latest manuscript that we worked through today talked about waiting. I wrote about waiting in a devotion back in May.  It’s July, and we are still waiting.

Waiting, Andy discussed, is always waiting for something. There is no waiting that isn't directed at some end.  We wait for a bus, or for our food at a restaurant, or wait for an answer to our college application, job interview, or offer on a house.

Because waiting is for something, imagining being stuck waiting, with no end or goal, feels awful.  He uses the example of prison - where the only thing someone is waiting for is for the waiting to be over. 

Right now, as a whole country, we don’t have a for to be waiting for. Are we waiting the pandemic to “end”? (What would that even look like?) A vaccine to be found? (distributed widely?) School to start? (meaning what??) The economy to recover? (??)  Life to get back to “normal”-? We don’t know what the end of our waiting will look like, or when it might come.  We are pandemic prisoners, waiting for our waiting to be over.

And yet, as I said in May, the church's job is to wait. We're called to this.  And we do know what we’re waiting for.   Christian waiting is shaped by the recognition that at any moment God might break in and meet us right here.  We wait for encounter with God. We wait for the justice God is bringing, and the peace God is bringing, and we wait actively, by living those realities now, even as they are not yet fully here.  We sit in the places of suffering and despair, of injustice or emptiness, and we wait for God together, alongside each other. With the world. For the world. Our waiting is active, hopeful. We know God is coming, is always coming into our death experiences with resurrection and new life. We don’t know when or how God might come, might bring redemption in small or big ways to the situations in which we wait. But that is part of the wait too. We watch, we trust, we hope, we wait.

Sabbath prepares us for this. By regularly putting down our doing and purposely spending time in being we are cultivating our waiting. Sabbath is meant to help us step out of the way of fear long enough to recognize its emptiness and inability to fulfill us.  It’s meant to shift us back into a way of life that waits expectantly every day, every moment, for God to show up and do something.

Normally, we are always filling up our life with busyness, so we don't have to be still, and uncomfortable. Busyness buffers us from waiting and wonder what we’re waiting for, or whether what we’re waiting for is worth the wait.  Modern people have mistaken fullness for busyness, so we get busier and busier, and make our lives fuller and fuller, which only makes them feel more and more empty. Normally, we’re too busy to really be in our lives. We're so busy doing, we forget our being and our belonging.

Now we are not in our lives, as they were. But we are in a season of waiting. 

It may be helpful in this season, to reflect on what we are actually waiting for, and what we hope will come.  Perhaps we may need to face that what we're waiting for either won't arrive or won't satisfy us when it does.

Are we waiting to return to a way of life that kept us from living a full life because we packed it too full?

We are made for fullness of life, to live in our belonging, connected to God and each other. We pause and rest regularly in order to remember that and return to it, and hopefully take that awareness into the rest of our week, so that it might shape our lives.

Now we are paused indefinitely, and we are waiting.

But can we let this pause help us remember and return to our true belonging and life meaning? Can we live in the Christian waiting we are called too?  Can we wait trusting that God comes in, that God is already here, and that our lives, our world, our nation, our communities, can be and are the place God is bringing salvation, in small and big ways, even every day?  Can we watch in the despair and pain, in the suffering and the anxiety, for the activity of God?

 This pandemic wait is longer than anyone thought it would be, and it's going to go on a whole lot longer.  Waiting only for the waiting to end is torture.

But this Christian waiting lasts a lifetime.  And waiting for the inbreaking of God is active, and hopeful, and joins in the transformation the Spirit is always bringing into the world.

These words of T.S. Elliott, from Four Quartets, speak to me today:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

For more:

Here is May’s post about waiting.

Here is a podcast Andy did about these themes.

And here is a reflection on sabbath lessons for this pandemic time.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:


God, the waiting is so hard.
What am I waiting for, really?
I think I am waiting for...
because I am telling myself...


God help me wait for you.
Help me watch for you.
Help me sense your presence.
Help me follow your guidance.
Help me join in your Kingdom,
breaking in now,
all around me,
moving the whole story,
toward life and fullness.
Teach me to wait.
Make me someone who waits,
hopeful and brave.
Amen.

Looking more closely

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 23

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.

Last night Maisy called me into her room. She'd had a rough day,  feeling down and despondent for most of it.  But I could see when I entered her room that something had shifted.  Her eyes sparkled when she said, "Hey mom, I was just talking to my friend Greta, and I asked her how she is such a content and happy person so much of the time. She told me its gratitude. She tries every day to notice all the things she's thankful for. I just did it, and Mom, it really works!"

"That's great, honey!" I replied. Then, in typical Maisy-style, never letting me be a bystander but pulling me into life, she said, "You try it now. Just look around and name what you're thankful for in your head."
Then she watched me expectantly.

So I did it.

I looked around the room and felt thankful for the roof over our head and a strong sturdy house, and noted that I really am thankful for that. When I turned back my eyes fell on the dog, and then slid onto Maisy.  I was surprised to feel a heart-squeeze of deep gratitude. She nodded, smiling. I could see in her eyes that she knew I was thanking God for her and for Khaleesi.
I smiled at her and left her room, letting my mind go already to more things I felt grateful for.

Wouldn't you know it, Maisy was right. Suddenly being told to name what I was thankful for, and obeying for just 60 seconds, pulled me into a different headspace and heartspace for a moment. It changed how I prayed for her when I returned to kiss her goodnight and and put her to bed. It changed how I laid my tired self down put myself to bed. Just a little bit more aware, a tad bit more in touch with the mystery it is to be alive at all.

It's nice to be given a liturgy by a couple of 13 year olds. (That's Church!)  Also, we have this practice deeply embedded in our Christian faith. I think of Eva's favorite hymn, "Count your Blessings..." and of countless theologians and mystics before Eva who've turned to gratitude as a way to stay grounded in God's bigger picture.

Specifically, I love the work of Brother David Steindl-Rast on gratefulness, and I will send anyone who is interested a copy of his book, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer.  It's excellent. I'm serious that I will mail you one if tell me you want one.
(So tell me. Do it).

True gratitude doesn't deny what's in front of us, it looks more closely into what's in front of us and into ourselves, for the Kingdom of God. It assumes we can already taste the Kingdom of God, catch glimpses of it.  It assumes God made the world good and goodness is all around us.  To rejoice in the good doesn't deny the evil or the brokenness is there, it acknowledges all that is here, but that means we acknowledge the goodness too.  And we direct that acknowledgment at its source.  Gratitude is one of the shortcuts out of the Way of Fear and back to the Way of God. (False cheerfulness and platitudes are not).

In the meantime, here are some things I am grateful for this week, that I want to share with you.

This conversation with David Steindl-Rast, about gratefulness.

This Krysta Tippett interview with Pauline Boss about "Ambiguous Loss", which is loss without any promise of a resolution -  how that impacts us and how we can navigate it.  (I shared an introduction to it in the "prayer and poem" section of this week's announcements).

Finally Theresa Latini wrote this lovely reflection on masks, along with a blessing for masks that she uses with Eleanor whenever they leave the house with their masks.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Tonight, I will let Maisy direct us in prayer.
Simply stop wherever you are and look around.
Start naming the things you feel thankful for - they can be big or little, silly or deep, just start listing them.
Being still in place and noticing is simply the starting point - let your mind wander out of the room to other things you are thankful for too.

Don't just say, "I'm thankful for..." - thought that's a terrific start.  Try saying, "God, thank you for..." and speak right to the God who is present here with you.

. . .
When you are finished, listen in the silence for a response.
. . .

Amen.

Interdependence Day

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 3

This summer, we will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted at Pastor Kara's blog.

This 4th of July all the things that make tomorrow feel like a holiday will be absent. For going on 80 years there has been a parade down the main street in my neighborhood, featuring floats designed by local businesses, the elementary and middle school principals perched on convertibles, patriot essay contest winners waving out car windows, boy scouts on a giant structure, bands on flatbeds, and the bright red fire truck at the end, followed immediately by all the neighborhood kids who decked out their bikes with streamers and balloons pedaling furiously and ringing their bicycle bells. The whole parade folds in on itself as the spectators fill the street and flow down the hill into into the park.  There, amidst yard games and bands playing, speeches given on the bandstand and scattered tents and coolers, people set up and stay the whole day. That's what Independence Day looks like in my neighborhood.

But not this year.  No picnics. No fireworks. No parades.

So it made me think about the gift of this time. In stripping us of all the rituals we're accustomed to, we're given the chance to look closer, to reassess the meaning of the traditions we practice, to let that meaning meet us anew.

These phrases have been circling in my mind today.   "One nation under God" and "Liberty and justice for all."
Of all the ways human being group themselves, we've decided to group ourselves this way - as these united states - so we are building something together that takes all of us.  We do our part, each of us in this collective, by voting for our leaders, and by speaking out and working for change when our nation's behavior doesn't match our ideals.  We do our part by helping our neighbors and investing in our communities, and by reexamining our history and being purposeful about our future.  We do our part by welcoming each other no matter how different we may be, because our diversity is our strength.  Among the foundational principals of this nation are that we are stronger for our differences, and also that patriotism is loving your country so much you're willing to keep working to make your country what it can be.

In declaring independence from Britain, this new baby country was declaring Interdependence with each other. Our founders were daring to risk the idea of a democracy where everyone has a voice, every voice matters, and we all work to uphold the dignity and liberty of one another.  The premise is that we need one another, and for better and worse, we are in this with each other.  We are Americans - you are, and I am, and so are the people who are pretending there is no virus, and the people who are hoarding power, and the people in overlooked and underresourced communities, the wealthy and the poor, the sick and the well, the young and the old, strangers nearby and friends far away.  We are Americans together - brand new arrivals and people who can trace their origins back hundreds of years to ancestors brought as prisoners on slave ships, or to immigrants seeking a new life on pilgrim ships, or to conquerors arriving on explorer ships to stake a foreign monarch's claim, or people whose foremothers and fathers watched all these ships land on the shores of the place they belonged to already.  It's messy to be a nation, especially a democracy.  It's hard--and it never gets easier.

But our nation is set up to keep adapting, keep learning, keep changing.  The Declaration of Independence states,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. (Read the whole Declaration of Independence here).
This is an ongoing project, America. It's a daily choice.

Perhaps this 4th of July, in the vacuum of our typical traditions and distractions, we might spend a moment in prayer - gratitude for all the good this nation has been and can be, and grief for all the ways our nation has undermined its own goals, and failed to live up to its own ideals.

Then underneath both the gratitude and the grieving, perhaps there is a pause, a chance to remember that in belonging to God and each other, fundamentally as human beings, and faithfully as followers of Christ, we can live our identity as Americans from this deeper place.

We trust not in the strength of human will to do the right thing, or in the reliability of well-run systems of order, but in God who has made us in God's own image, all of us, and claims us for life with and for one another.  Being a person (partner, parent, child, friend, coworker, leader, member, neighbor, employee, American...) can come from a rootedness in and trust in that belonging to God and each other.  Did you know that the Declaration of Independence ends with these words? "...with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."  (Aka, we belong to God and we belong to each other).

Today Bishop Rob Wright of Alanta shared this excerpt from Langston Hughe's poem, "Let America Be America Again":

America

“Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love.
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!”

Happy Interdependence Day.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

God, help me see my place alongside my siblings in this country.
Help me recognize each person as sacred.

Release me from contempt.
Release me from pride and myopia.
Release me from fear and self-protection.

Free me for love.
Free me for repentance.
Free me for connection.
Free me for participation.
Free me for hope.

May I see myself within your Kingdom of belonging that transcends all.
May I see myself held in body of Christ,
empowered by your Spirit to join your way of love in all circumstances.

May I see myself within the communities I've chosen,
and the families I've come from, and created.

May I see myself within my nation,
and may I see with your gaze of love all others here with me,
alongside me, in these United States.
God bless America.
Amen.

Dear Diary...

Devotion for Being Apart -
July 2

This summer, I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.

Good morning!

While we have been on the topic of going gentle on ourselves because of what a weird time this is, I came across this yesterday on Facebook, the author is unknown. 

Dear Diary 2020 Edition,

In January, Australia caught on fire. I don’t even know if that fire was put out, because we straight up almost went to war with Iran. We might actually still be almost at war with them. I don’t know, because Jen Aniston and Brad Pitt spoke to one another at an awards show and everyone flipped the f--- out, but then there was thing happening in China, then Prince Harry and Megan peaced out of the Royal family, and there was the whole impeachment trial, and then corona virus showed up in the US “officially,” but then Kobe died and UK peaced out of the European Union.

In February, Iowa crapped itself with the caucus results and the president was acquitted and the Speaker of the House took ten years to rip up a speech, but then WHO decided to give this virus a name COVID-19, which confused some really important people in charge of, like, our lives, into thinking there were 18 other versions before it, but then Harvey Weinstein was found guilty, and Americans started asking if Corona beer was safe to drink, and everyone on Facebook became a doctor who just knew the flu like killed way more people than COVID 1 through 18.

In March, shit hit the fan. Warren dropped out of the presidential race and Sanders was like Bernie or bust, but then Italy shut its whole ass down, and then COVID Not 1 through 18 officially become what everyone already realized, a pandemic and then a nationwide state of emergency was declared in US, but it didn’t really change anything, so everyone was confused or thought it was still just a flu, but then COVID Not 18 was like ya’ll not taking me seriously? I’m gonna infect the one celebrity everyone loves and totally infected Tom Hanks, but then the DOW took a shit on itself, and most of us still don’t understand why the stock market is so important or even a thing (I still don’t), but then we were all introduced to Tiger King. (Carol totally killed her husband), and Netflix was like you’re welcome, and we all realized there was no way we were washing our hands enough in the first place because all of our hands are now dry and gross.

In April, Bernie finally busted himself out of the presidential race, but then NYC became the set of The Walking Dead and we learned that no one has face masks, ventilators, or toilet paper, or THE FREAKING SWIFFER WET JET LIQUID, but then Kim Jong-Un died, but then he came back to life… or did he? Who knows, because then the Pentagon released videos of UFOs and nobody cared, and we were like man, it’s only April….

In May, the biblical end times kicked off historical locust swarms and then we learned of murder hornets and realized that 2020 was the start of the Hunger Games but people forgot to let us know, but then people legit protested lockdown measures with AR-15s, and then sports events were cancelled everywhere. But then people all over America finally reached a breaking point with race issues and violence. There were protests in every city, but then people forgot about the pandemic called COVID Not One Through 18. Media struggled with how to focus on two important things at once, but then people in general struggle to focus on more than one important thing, and a dead whale was found in the middle of the Amazon rain forest after monkeys stole COVID 1 Through 19 from a lab and ran off with them, and either in May or April (no one is keeping track of time now) that a giant asteroid narrowly missed Earth.

In June, science and common sense just got thrown straight out the window and somehow wearing masks became a political thing, but then a whole lot of people realized the south was actually the most unpatriotic thing ever and actually lost the civil war, and there are a large amount of people who feel that statues they don’t even know the name of are needed for … history reasons..... but then everyone sort of remembered there was a pandemic, but then decided that not wearing a mask was somehow a God given right (still haven't found that part in the bible or even in the constitution), but then scientists announced they found a mysterious undiscovered mass at the center of the earth, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH IT, but then everyone took a pause to realize that people actually believed Gone With The Wind was like non-fiction, but then it was also announced that there is a strange radio signal coming from somewhere in the universe that repeats itself every so many days, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE ATTEMPT TO COMMUNICATE WITH IT, but then America reopened from the shut down that actually wasn’t even a shut down, and so far, things have gone spectacularly not that great, but everyone is on Facebook arguing that masks kill because no one knows how breathing works, but then Florida was like hold my beer and let me show you how we’re number one in all things, including new Not Corona Beer Corona Virus. Trump decides now is a good time to ask the Supreme Court to shut down Obama Care because what better time to do so than in the middle of a pandemic, but then we learned there was a massive dust cloud coming straight at us from the Sahara Desert, which is totally normal, but this is 2020, so the ghost mummy thing is most likely in that dust cloud, but then I learned of meth-gators, and I'm like that is so not on my f-ing 2020 Bingo card, but then we learned that the Congo's worse ever Ebola outbreak is over, and we were all like, there was an Ebola outbreak that was the worse ever?

In July…. Aliens? Zeus? Asteroids? Artificial Intelligence becomes self aware?

Maybe today is a good day for us to circle back for a booster dose of Rumi's Guest House -
(with painting: Jackson Pollock, “The Key,” 1946, shared today in this lovely form by Parker Palmer.)


 

---

CONNECTING RITUAL:

 

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Tonight let's recite scripture as our form of prayer.
The first is a blessing. Repeat several times until you feel yourself hear and receive it.
The second is a psalm. Let this prayer of the ancients be your prayer this night.

God has not given us a spirit of fear,
but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7
 

Psalm 4

Answer me when I call, O God, 
for you are the God of justice.

You set me free when I was hard-pressed: 
be gracious to me now and hear my prayers.

Men and women, 
how long will you turn my glory to my shame?
How long will you love what is worthless and run after lies?

Know that God has shown me such wonderful kindness: 
when I call out in prayer, God hears me.

Tremble, admit defeat, and sin no more. 
Look deep into your heart before you sleep and be still.

Bring your gifts, just as you are, and put your trust in God.
Many are asking, Who can make us content?

The light of your countenance has gone from us, O God. 
Yet you have given my heart more gladness
than those whose corn and wine and oil increase.

I lie down in peace and sleep comes at once, 
for in you alone, O God, do I dwell unafraid.