...man, you wouldn't believe what's up there!

God of Creation, all-powerful, all wise,

Lord of the universe rich with surprise,

Maker, Sustainer and Ruler of all,

we are your children -- you hear when we call.

---Margaret Clarkson, 1987

Back when I was young and could sleep on the ground, I often spent a weekend camping with friends in the mountains of north Georgia, enjoying scenes of rugged beauty around every bend and over every hill. Being carefree (I did mention that we were young, didn’t I?), we often knew only the general area we wanted to explore, and this led to lots of wondering. I don’t mean ‘wandering’; I mean ‘wondering’, as in, “I wonder where we are now?” One particular weekend we were more aimless than usual, and had gotten onto a one-and-a-half-lane road, headed almost straight up into the sky (no easy feat for a baby-blue Monte Carlo!). At a bend in the road, we met an oncoming van, and inched over as far as we dared to let it pass. As it did, the driver waved and greeted us; we asked what was up ahead. Now, what we meant was, “Is there a camping spot up ahead?” But he had a bigger answer in mind. “Man,’ he said earnestly, “you wouldn’t believe what’s up there! There’s trees, and mountains, and grass…”

That dude up on the mountain saw the world with a sense of wonder, with a delight I am usually too jaded to enjoy. In today’s hymn, Margaret Clarkson names the God of a creation ‘rich with surprise.’ As I meditate on the concept of a universe teeming with delight and overflowing with mind-blowing creativity, I think of eclipses, lightning storms, giraffes…and grace. Just what we need, and more, from a God who is always dreaming.

You wouldn’t believe what’s up there!

...like mothers do

The Lord is never far away, but through all grief distressing,

an ever-present help and stay, our peace and joy and blessing;

as with a mother’s tender hand he leads his own, his chosen band:

to God all praise and glory.

---Johann Jakob Schutz, 1675

The hardest place in the world to be. Is it stuck in a rip current? At the beginning of a final exam for which you have neglected to properly prepare? Sitting in the doctor’s office, where no one will meet your eye? At home watching the clock, waiting for a child out long past curfew, again?

In my experience, the hands-down hardest place in this world to be is alone. Almost anything I can think of can be faced down successfully with an ally beside you. And almost anything can seem insurmountable when you feel that you are facing it by yourself. Jesus himself seemed to understand the human craving for “with-ness”, for his promise recorded in John 14:18 is this: I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

In this text, hymnist Johann Schutz imagined God as ever-present and tenderly guiding as the mother of a toddler, continually offering a hand to steady, to guide, to reassure; never more than an instant away, so that the stresses and dangers of life, its hurts and heartaches, need not be faced alone, but in the loving presence of One who bore us and loves us fiercely. And tenderly. Like mothers do.

And won’t let us go it alone.

...in all life

To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small;

in all life Thou livest, the true life of all;

we blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,

and wither and perish – but naught changeth Thee.

---Walter Chalmers Smith, 1867

This mid 19^th century hymn of praise tackles a tough issue for many God-seekers of all eras: the unknow-ability of God. God, invisible, hidden, inaccessible. Over centuries, millennia, from the dawn of humankind, folk have been searching for a face for God; usually the one we come up with is an awful lot like our own. Having an invisible God doesn’t suit a human race that likes visibility. Thus, we erect statues. We paint icons and frescoes. We weave tapestries. We create stories full of personification and pronouns. We fall short. Every time. Our minds are too small for the vastness of God’s identity.

And that’s ok. Because with every rendering, parable, grasping simile, we stretch ourselves to glimpse a little more of the God-ness of God. In this hymn, Walter Chalmers Smith grasped just a bit, I think. God gives life to all, great and small. God lives a true life in all. God lives in all. …God lives in all? If God is present in all life, perhaps we need not look too far to catch a glimpse of God’s glory. Perhaps I need only look into your eyes, and you need only look into mine.

...befriended

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy works and defend thee;

Surely his goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.

Ponder anew what the Almighty can do,

If with his love he befriend thee.

---Joachim Neander, 1680, tr. Catherine Winkworth, 1863

This particular hymn text astounds me. Penned in 1680 (the translation made in 1868), this text deals with the nature of God’s power. What is amazing to me is the intimate nature of the relationship the writer envisions between the powerful God of the universe and everyday people like us (h/t to Sly and the Family Stone). I know I shouldn’t, but I tend to think of intimacy with God as a contemporary thought; this text brings me up short. This familiarity, this friendship, is nothing evolved with our relational thinking; this has been a part of the way many before you and me have experienced God’s care for God’s beloved. I am asked to ponder anew what friendship with God can mean to regular folk like me.

What does it mean to be friends with God? How does this new identity affect the way I view my worth, my potential, my value? And how would being God’s friend change the way I walk this earth, the way I relate to the rest of humanity? How would being God’s friend make me a more compassionate, more understanding, more tender friend to you? What kind of effect does that kind of friendship have?

With friends like that…would we have enemies?

...the best sorts of Mothering

Like a mother with her children You will comfort us each day,
giving guidance on our journey, as we seek to find our way.
When we walk through fiery trials, You will help us take a stand;
when we pass through troubled waters, You hold out Your tender hand.

—Jann Aldredge-Clanton 

My ideas of good mothering have matured along with me, being shaped by the act of mothering itself, moving from theory to practice and from toddling to dancing. Okay, okay...so, there  may  only be minutes that my mothering approaches the lithe grace of dancing, but you know what I mean. As my maturity as a mother has increased, I have grown to trust more in the preparedness, capability, and potential of my children, and to see my role as less of a rescuer. I’ve learned to provide more guidance and support  than unsolicited direction and dictation. And it is more and more evident to me that presence in the storms of life is to be desired over protection from any discomfort. Somehow I bet life is not through teaching me, either. 

When I look at the ways God loves me, I see the tender strength and steadfast presence of a Mother come through. Comfort, Guide, Courage, Presence—God embodies the best sorts of Mothering. And whether we had a mother who did for us, or not—imagine what it would feel like to know that we all have a God who mothers us so well.

Thanks be to our good God, whose love never fails. 

...if, then

God is calling through the voices of our neighbors’ urgent prayers:

Through their longing for redemption and for rescue from despair.

Place of hurt or face of needing; strident cry or silent pleading:

God is calling --- can you hear? God is calling --- can you hear?

---Mary Louise Bringle, 2003

“Oh, how I would like to hear God speak clearly!” “I’m just waiting on a sign from God.” “It would have been so much easier to live in Jesus’ time --- we could hear straight from his lips what he wanted from us!” If you have not been the speaker of one of these comments (or something similar), you have surely heard folk who have said these things. If only God would speak, and tell us exactly what we need to know!

In this very new hymn, Mel Bringle posits that God is speaking to us in our modern age. God is speaking through the natural beauty of the world, through music and art, through hymns and carols. She also states that God is speaking to us, pleading, in the voices of those with needs and hungers living among us. God speaks to us in the tragedies and injustices of the world in which we live.

Jesus even addressed this kind of God-speak in Matthew 25. The ‘church people’ asked him, incredulous, “When in this world did we ever hear your voice, Jesus, calling out to us in need or pain?” And Jesus said, “Anytime you heard the cry of your fellow humans, of basic needs, of care and concern, of human dignity, that voice was mine.”

God is calling.

...all nature sings

The earth is God’s flute, God’s cello and chime,

the wind draws the notes. The seasons keep time.

At dusk and at night, from the sunrise past noon

God’s playing and singing a ravishing tune.

--Thomas H. Troeger, 1985

Thou rushing wind that art so strong, ye clouds that sail in heaven along,

Thou rising morn, in praise rejoice; ye lights of evening, find a voice.

Thou flowing water, pure and clear, make music for thy Lord to hear;

Thou fire so masterful and bright, that givest us both warmth and light.

Alleluia!

--Francis of Assisi, 1225

Thinking tonight of evenings spent making music with folks who love it, too. Nights when we sat in a circle, and played and sang with, and for, each other. When we learned, and taught, suggested, improved, polished, sat back and enjoyed. Some of my favorite times are those I spend sitting with people who love songs like I do, making them come alive.

I spend a good bit of my free time with music. Listening to music, singing, playing, writing music---marrying text with tune to find the just-right expression that transcends both. The first hymn text above, from Thomas Troeger, asks us to imagine Creator God, sitting in a circle with all of creation, making sacred sound that becomes more beautiful as more, and more diverse, elements are added to its harmonies. Imagine sitting in that singing circle! After living with the charming Troeger text, my mind was drawn, repeatedly, back across centuries to the words of celebration and praise left us by Francis of Assisi. He so connected with Creator God through God’s creation; this text is praise to the Creator and thanksgiving for the music of creation.

Grab a drum or guitar, or warm up your pipes…God is gathering all creation for a music circle! Let’s not be late…I hear it will be epic.

...being enough

A confession? This time of year gives me an inferiority complex. I continually seem to come up short, run late, disappoint myself.

Advent beckons to me, to come away, to quiet myself, to slow my breathing, to wait in stillness for the world to turn upside down. And year after year, my already tumped-over world gets in the way of my good intentions. And year after year, my 'meant to's turn into 'should have's, and anticipation becomes regret.

Christmas beckons, with its glitter and sparkle, its jingle and laughter. And year after year, I run out of calendar on the way to making magic. Just-right gifts don't get bought, wrapping paper stays wrapped around the cardboard tube, carols remain unsung. What good is being a visionary, with these feet of clay?

I want to believe, though, that what I bring is enough. That this broke-down season, this cobbled together holiday, this Charlie Brown tree of a practice that is my attempt, despite my best intentions--that this offering is enough. Leonard Cohen wrote:
     Ring the bells that still can ring
     Forget your perfect offering
     There is a crack in everything
     That's how the light gets in.

Still trying. But I will be the one, bringing up the rear, toting my imperfect offering.
It's enough. Thanks be to God.

...fit our feet

     From the abundance of mercies of a tender God,
     the dawn we have yearned for will break at the horizon,
     to shed light on us who are turned around in darkness,
     weak with the fear that darkness brings,
     to fit our feet for the paths of peace.
               --Luke 1:78-79/para.laca.

When the world has you turned around. When your eyes strain to see for the shadows. When you need saving--from this life, from the hands of those who seek your harm, from the fear that keeps you bound to the same old ways that didn't work even when they were new, from the image that stares back at you in the mirror, from your own self in the silence. When you're out of ideas, and energy, and hope.

Then. Then, it might be time to fit your feet for paths of peace. Then, it might be time to walk in the ways of peace beside your Guide. Then, if might be time to doggedly pursue the peace that so often eludes you. Then, it might be time to rise up, and be a maker.

Peacemaker. Blessed are you...

...call for ya

Mary got an angelic visit with a life-changing message. Shepherds got a world premiere anthem from the sky with promises of peace (and quite possibly a light show). Wise, wise science guys from the East got sky charts that lined up just right.

<sigh> Things were so much clearer, back in Bible times...

Calling. Do you have one? Have you always? How did it come to you? Has it ever changed?

...what if you're wrong? 

One thing I am certain of: I always pictured myself, at 50-something, knowing. You know, knowing what the path was. What I should be doing. How I should be getting from A to B. What A and B even ARE. 

<facepalm> Things were so much clearer, back in Bible times...

And then I hear the voice of the prophet:
     "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord,
     "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, 
      plans to give you hope and a future."
               --Jeremiah 29:11
And I realize, from this side of 50, that those "plans" that God has for me, the ones that give me "hope and a future"--maybe, just maybe, those plans are less about doing specific things at specific times, and more about living with my face turned toward the light, walking in hope. Maybe, just maybe, life is the sign I've been waiting for.

...not saying I'd turn down a chat with an angel, though...

...righteous, dude

Righteous is a difficult concept in our supercool world. Being referred to as righteous might be right up there with holy, or pious...perhaps a step below goody-two-shoes, or even (*gasp*) community organizer.

When did it become so problematic to be called righteous? What IS righteous, anyway? The dictionary says that righteous is "morally right or justifiable" (which I would argue may be worlds apart), or "virtuous". Hmmm...somehow virtuous sounds a little better. As a working definition, I think Spike Lee's 1989 movie title, Do the Right Thing, will do.

Once we get past the problematic moniker, how does one go about, well, BEING righteous? Again, we'd get pretty far referring back to Spike Lee (*ahem*). Three passages of holy text always come to mind as I contemplate righteousness; I leave them here, some in paraphrase, for your consideration.

     What is it that holiness asks of me? Simply this--
     to pursue justice, 
     to act from compassion, 
     to walk the earth in humility, alongside my creator.
               --Micah 6:8/para. laca. 

     Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
     to loose the chains of injustice
     and untie the cords of the yoke,
     to set the oppressed free
     and break every yoke?
     Is it not to share your food with the hungry
     and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter--
     when you see the naked, to clothe them,
     and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
     then your light will break forth like the dawn,
     and your healing will quickly appear;
     then your righteousness will go before you,
     and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
               --Isaiah 58:6-8/NIV

     Jesus answered, "To love God with every part of your life,
     what shows and what only you know, 
     is the most vital element of a righteous life.
     Just as vital to righteousness is your love and regard
     for your neighbor and yourself,
     as dearly loved children of God's. 
     No law or prophecy contradicts these.
               --Matthew 22:37-40/para. laca.

In quietness and in confidence, let us reclaim righteousness as a virtue. This? This is a life I can get behind.

...all the time in the world

Is time the ultimate commodity in our too-busy, attention-starved, stretched-thin society? No? Then what would you give for another free hour per day, another free day in each week?

Okay...maybe so.

We even monetize the language we use around time.
We make time.
We take time.
We spend time, we waste it.
We save time, and invest it.
When we're in trouble, we buy time.
When we are slap out of luck, we run out of it.

When we're Cher, we wish to turn back time.
...who am I kidding?...when we're anyone, we wish to turn back time, every now and again.

Every appliance from the washing machine to the personal computer (to whatever is being dropped in its own IPO tomorrow) is marketed for the express purpose of saving time.

We are not so much slaves to the clock as we are slaves to the dream of mastering it. Is there a more hopeful thought than this--that there is enough time? There. is. enough. time.

Because there is One for whom time is measured differently. And we are embraced, for all time, by that One.
     A thousand ages in thy sight 
     are like an evening gone;
     short as the watch that ends the night
     before the rising sun.
                                      ---Isaac Watts

Go ahead, friend; take all the time you need. There's all the time in the world.

...tell one thing

For the harvests of the Spirit, thanks be to God.

For the good we all inherit, thanks be to God.

For the wonders that astound us, for the truths that still confound us,

most of all, that love has found us, thanks be to God.

---Fred Pratt Green, 1970

I know you’ve done it, and I know it has made you squirm, sigh, or roll your eyes (depending on your generation). Go around the circle --- the grownups’ table AND the kids’ table at your family Thanksgiving, the fellowship tables at church supper in November, the class seating arrangement in Sunday School --- and tell one thing you’re thankful for. Is there any exercise guaranteed to bring out the trite and repetitive in all of us? And yet, is there any chance most of us would stop to express gratitude for the richness of this life without going around the circle?

This hymn is a list of rich joys of the abundant life for which we can all be thankful; the list includes thanks for things I never thought of as rich until Fred Pratt Green brought them to my attention between the covers of our hymnal. No matter how world-wise and jaded we get, wonders still astound us, and (thank God) some truths still confound us. And best of all, love has found us.

There’s a place for us in the circle. Go around…thanks be to God.

...while we wait

O God in whom all life begins, who births the seed to fruit,

bestow Your blessing on our lives; here let Your love find root.

Bring forth in us the Spirit’s gifts of patience, joy, and peace;

deliver us from numbing fear, and grant our faith increase.

---Carl P. Daw, 1990

The more we learn about gestation and human growth, and germination and plant growth, the more similarities become apparent. So much of early growth happens silent, hidden—good, strong changes taking time and nourishment before new life is ever ready to make an appearance on the scene. And while I’ve never been a farmer, having to depend on invisible growth for the future, I have been a mom, waiting helpless for months on growth beyond my control for my arms to be full. And I know the numbing fear that comes with trusting unseen growth, especially what must be the farmer’s fear after a drought year. I know the mother’s waiting fear after still birth. The breath-held, afraid-to-hope, needing-to-trust, wanting-to-believe fear that growth is happening.

I think other parts of our lives are like that, too. So many characteristics of a faithful life grow unseen, tucked away, nurtured by time and steady attention. The Spirit’s gifts grow in us, perhaps unseen as they germinate, but growing all the same, ready to yield mature aspects of our character that will shape the world around us. Peace, love, joy—powerful forces for transforming life. And the patience to believe that unseen growth will yield a harvest.

May God deliver us from the chokehold of fear into the embrace of faith…while we wait.

...what feet are for

Oh, how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way, leaning on the everlasting arms;

oh, how bright the path grows from day to day, leaning on the everlasting arms.

---Elisha A. Hoffman, 1887

Path. Way. Journey. Through the years, these expressions of spiritual life have come to ring truest in my ear, and resonate most soundly in my soul. While I am not always positive about my destination, and my goals change, and sometimes finish lines seem frustratingly movable, feeling called to the journey is a constant. If day breaks, there is a path, and even when I may not be totally sold on the reason, my feet will be on it, because that is what feet, and paths, are for.

In this little bit of late-19^th cent. poetry, the hymnist speaks of the path growing bright from day to day. My mind travels to the memory verse from Bible Drill---“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” (Psalm 119:105) And the thing is, I’ve walked on some dark paths in my life (yep, literal and metaphorical), and I know how lights work. That flashlight? Even a good one, with the batteries you remembered to replace before you packed it up for the campout? It illuminates the path a few steps ahead.

God’s presence? Right there with us on the path, every step of the way. But that light it throws? It’s a flashlight, not a floodlight. We were always meant to walk leaning on God, steps at a time, waiting for the light to shine up ahead.

Wow. Light for the journey, and an arm to lean on. On the path with Jesus.

...welcome, every single one

All who hunger, never strangers, seeker, be a welcome guest.

Come from restlessness and roaming. Here in joy, we keep the feast.

We who once were lost and scattered in communion’s love have stood.

Taste and see the grace eternal. Taste and see that God is good.

---Sylvia Dunstan, 1990

Sylvia Dunstan, the writer of the hymn text for today’s meditation, spent the major portion of her cancer-shortened ministry as a prison chaplain. All along, until her death at 38, she wrote hymns of profound wisdom, celebrating the mystery of God and the welcome of God’s love. In this text, it seems evident that Dunstan’s decade in ministry to those imprisoned has informed her sense of the isolation and rootlessness experienced by so many on the fringes of society. Hungry, strangers, restless, roaming, lost, scattered (and in other verses wandering, empty, lonely, longing). Some in this population have alienated themselves from the mainstream of society, and others have been cast out by the mainstream. Obviously, Dunstan’s heart was for the castoff and cast out; there is pretty good evidence that God’s heart is, too.

If I’m honest today, the words Dunstan chose to relate the alienation from the ‘center’ are feelings I have felt from time to time. How about you? Who hasn’t wandered, felt empty, restless, lonely? Who hasn’t longed for…well, for something more than this?

Here, Dunstan says, here is the table, and we, all of us, all of them, are welcome. Every single one. And there is grace, starting now, overflowing and lasting forever. Enough for all of us, all of them. Everyone together.

Taste and see.

...my kind of river

Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace,

Over all victorious in it’s bright increase;

Perfect, yet it floweth fuller everyday,

Perfect, yet it groweth deeper all the way.

---Frances R. Havergal, 1874

I have never floated on the Mississippi River, but I’ve read Huckleberry Finn. There is a vivid description of the river that stays with me. Huck and Jim are floating on their raft down the river, intending to veer into the Ohio where it joins the Mississippi. Neither had ever seen the Ohio, or that part of the Mississippi; when they realized that the time for paddling hard upstream of the Ohio was nigh, it was obvious that the river was too wide, too deep, too inexorable to fight against.

I thought of this passage when I read the hymn text for today. This river of God’s peace? It’s no shallow, meandering, drought-sickened rivulet. This river, this peace, is a powerful force, growing ever deeper and fuller in its completeness. This peace is not a resigned, mousy resignation to the ‘true’  powers in the world. It is the force that is able to sustain life, overpowering the unrest, the injustice, the terror in the world with its current. This peace is the true force to be reckoned with.

That’s my kind of river.

...diamonds from ashes

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,

The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;

For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,

And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

---John Rippon, 1787

There are lots of ways to look at the rough patches and tragedies in our lives. Some folk choose to look at everything that happens as God’s distinct will, some look at bad stuff as karma or payback. I see the bad things that happen as part of the price of being truly human in this world. For me, this resonates with my observations, with history, with my own life experience, and with my belief in a loving God.

In today’s hymn, with its text from the 18^th century, the hymnist speaks from the viewpoint of a strong, caring God to a searching believer. We will be called, no choice about it, through our life experiences, to journey through deep waters; but we will not go alone. God goes with us through our troubles and distress, to bless and even to make holy those experiences that try us the most. To me this says that God can bring some worth out of even the most tragic, worthless, hurtful situation, diamonds from ashes.

What a hopeful thought from a loving God!

...God's geometry

The church of Christ cannot be bound by walls of wood or stone.

Where charity and love are found, there can the church be known.

---Adam M. L. Tice, 2005

When Sarah was a young child, she wore out a CD of kids’ Christian songs---knew every word on every track, and often sang them at the top of her lungs. Lucky for me, the music was fine (mostly) and the theology had some meat on its bones. One of the songs on the CD was ‘If You Tried to Put God in a Box’. The first little bit goes,

            If you tried to put God in a box, how big would the box have to be?

            How strong would you make it? How long would it last

            If you tried to put God in a box?

The answer to this child’s riddle, of course, is that God will not be boxed in by any construction of human hand or mind. The irony, of course, is that we, most of us, spend our lives trying mightily to build that box. And to get our version of a greatly diminished God to jump on in. How foolish, to strive and strive to remake our Maker over in our own image---to fit our box. Ah, but fear not. God has no intention of being confined to the space we can imagine.

Thank God.

And here’s the other thing. The Church? The Body of Christ? We were never meant to be bound by the geometry of the cube. What draws us inward is only to energize and strengthen us to burst every boundary that separates us from a weak and wounded world. What pulls us close is to prepare us to fling light into the shadows and shower love on disregard. Those were never walls---they were bridges, for God’s sake.

Thanks be to you, O God. You never met a box you didn’t break. Embolden your Church to live/love with the same reckless abandon.

...no escaping beauty

For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies,

for the love which from our birth over and around us lies:

Lord of all, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.

---Folloitt S. Pierpoint, 1864

No real reason for it. Serves no tangible purpose. Can’t be quantified, traded, saved, spent, stored. Wasteful, some have called it. Needless. Sinful, even. Beauty. That’s right, beauty. There have been periods in Christian history during which any sort of artistic expression was frowned upon, sometimes banned outright, its practitioners punished, ostracized.

Yet there it is. Open your eyes. Turn any corner. There is no escaping it. In a world created by God, beauty abundant is literally everywhere; warm light and velvet darkness, green forest and sere desert, pudgy baby knees and deep wisdom of old folk eyes. Beauty in cosmos and cell, in the physical world and the spiritual, natural beauty and human handiwork. We worship a God who flings beauty around like it will never run out. 

Praise the Lord for beauty, true good gift of God.