Advent from the Underside: 4th Sunday, Hope Amid the Scattered Thoughts and Aching, Proud Hearts

Advent from the Underside: I met the hope of the world this morning in worship on this 4th Sunday of Advent, the day we set aside to wait in hope. (It was not DT.)

In part, the Luke reading went like this: “And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

When I asked for prayer requests, the lowly and the least among us prayed: “For the refugee’s please Lord. They are lost and afraid, the separated from family and friends, the familiar and friendly. So am I. I would offer them a home, Lord, a place to live. I know what it’s like. Let them come. May they find peace, and hope, safety and a new home, Lord.” And, I would add, and so may you. Amen.

Perhaps it is a good time for we as individuals, and as a nation, to open our hearts to the truth of our need of God’s forgiveness and salvific grace. Surely, we are living days when the thoughts of the proud are scattered and, more and more, we know the aching danger of living among empty, prideful hearts….

First Week of Advent from the Underside: How Will You Prepare?

If you live in the US, you celebrate Christmas, even if you aren’t religious, or a Jewish or are Buddhist or are Whatever. Given our national obsession with making money at of the Birth of Jesus, even if you cover at work so your Christian friends can be with their families or eat Chinese food and go to the movies, your life here in the US is different in some way on the 25^th of December.

We are currently in the season of preparation for Christmas. If you follow the recommendations of the merchants, you are making shopping and gift lists and checking them twice and probably not caring a whit who’s been naughty or nice.

In the Christian Church this season of preparation and waiting for Christmas is called the Advent Season. During the four weeks preceding Christmas, Christians wait in hopeful expectation, prepare spiritually for the birth of Jesus. It is common for Christians to mark the days with spiritual practices intended to help them open their hearts and minds in new ways to receive the gifts of new life, hope, and salvation born into the world in the Holy Child of Bethlehem.

Whether or not you self-identify as religious or claim Christianity as your own,  you can still spend some time in this season of preparation for Christmas to prepare spiritually for the celebration on the 25^th.

 The birth of Jesus celebrates hope, love and joy born anew into the world.                                                           

                                                           

Preparing for Love: Identify and act on a concrete way you can increase love in your life this week. Or, perhaps you can reconnect with  friend you haven’t talked with in a while, give an extra dollar in the Salvation Army kettle, or try to be understanding in a relationship where you feel not all that understood….

Preparing for hope: Think back over your life to a time when you were faced with overwhelming odds that you overcame over time. What did you learn about own strength and resilience that you hadn’t know before. Now, spend some time  thinking about a difficulty you’re currently facing, recommit to that struggle with renewed hope in the reaffirmation of the depths and grace of your own resilience.  

Preparing for salvation: Think about the Holy, the Divine, God as you have come to know the Sacred in your life. Call to your mind’s eye an image that speaks to you of this reality. And, breathe. Relax into the Presence of grace and compassion, safety and peace. Breathe. Relax. Feel at home and be grateful. Be grateful for your day, for the big and little thing, for the people and pets, for the blessing of the good and the wisdom gained from the bad. Think about the Holy, the Divine, God as you have come to know the Sacred in your life. Be grateful and say, Amen.

The End is Always Near

                                                                                                

First Sunday of Advent 2015, from the Underside

Kintsugi Meditations for a Broken World 

Luke 21: 25-28:  “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

This is not an easy passage to preach, especially, when those in the pew are still recovering from a weekend of turkey coma, Black Friday shopping, initial Christmas decorating  and surviving annual visits with extended family. Hope is the liturgical theme for the first Sunday of Advent, but picture of hope here in Luke’s gospel is in the midst of distressing times filled with bleak struggle and fear. Not kind of thing we want bouncing around in our minds when we’re trying to pick out the fullest and most symmetrical White Pine on Boy Scout Troop 108’s lot before we head home to football on the couch….

But they are powerful words of hope for these days. Even on the couch in our own living rooms, we cannot avoid the intrusion of violence, and death, refugees and protests, a nation divided over race and power, privilege and the absence of hope. Human life is always filled with destruction and violence, Luke and, our difficult times lived early in the digital-age of perpetual news cycle sources all around us, simply call a reality, most of us do our best to avoid, into sharp focus. Luke’s assurance, is exactly what  we are needing to hear: when things seem the most hopeless, our redemption, our hope, is drawing near.

What can we do? The passage makes it clear, we are not to turn away, of faith with fear and foreboding. We are to raise up, to take a stand, to open our hears and lives to the hope that is our faith, to seek to draw near to our Redeemer even as he is drawing near to us.

What will you do this Advent to draw closer to our Redeemer, to be the light of Hope in the darkness of our world?  

Kintsugi Meditation for the First Sunday of Advent:

Invite Jesus, our Redeemer, to be present with you. Call to your mind’s eye an image that speaks to you of Jesus’ love and protection, grace and hope.

Focus on your breath, sit silently, allow Jesus’ love and protection, grace and hope to fill you. 

Relax. Relax. Relax. Pray the Holy Spirit guide you and open your heart to the Still Small Voice during this sacred time.   

Pray Jesus keep you safe, well, happy and peaceful.

Ask Jesus to keep you safe, to keep your heart safely within his own heart, to keep your mind safely within his wisdom. Pray that Jesus keep you safe.

Pausing….. Focus on your breath.

Pray Jesus keep you well. That he would keep you from times of trial, from the despairs of suffering and grief, from the grasping for false idols in anxiety and fear. May Jesus keep me well.  

Pausing….. Focus on your breath.

Pray Jesus open you to happiness, that he open your heart and mind to the truth of your own divine wonder and awe, knit into you in the womb of your mother. Ask that you know the joy of living your birthright, the authenticity of the blessed beauty of who you were created to be.

Pausing….. Focus on your breath.

Pray that Jesus grant you the peace that surpasses all human understanding, that your heart and mind, that your entire being is so joined with his love and forgiveness that you are not dependent on the things or situations of this word for peace, hope and joy, but on Him.

Pausing….. Focus on your breath.

A brief prayer of gratitude for this time…. Our Father…. Amen. 

Advent from the Underside: Symbols of Compassion

A rosary ? Why, yes. Despite my deep Protestant roots, literally centuries deep, decades of chaplain training have made certain I always have a few in the glove box in the car. 

 What exactly does a Menorah look like? Let me google it on my phone and we can look at a picture together.... Half an hour or so and several sheets of construction paper later- an almost perfect representation if the Wikipedia pic. 

The hope of divine compassion real in human life. Light overcoming darkness. The comfort of familiar ritual- centuries proved. Human suffering knows no bounds, cares not for doctrine or belief. It seeks only the blessing of relief, the strength beyond strength of hope amid overwhelming grief, suffering and unrelenting pain. 

At a shelter for the homeless, unmedicated mentally ill: Advent from the underside. Come Emmanuel, come soon.  

 

Day 14

 

Gather.

Daily, compassionate hands gather to offer hope and healing to any who would come.

When 2 or 3...

Day 12.

Hope

The number of inpt behavior health beds declining. People literally wait for days for a bed. Pts are hoping to have their names added to this list.

Bound

#rethinkchurch

Advent dawns holding tender promises before

the ice and cold settleing upon our shores.



Christ is King of the Underside:


If Christ were not King I could not do my job. Every time I see the carnage that some parents wreak in the lives of their children who continue to love them, still. Every time I stand with my arm around the weeping wife of someone dead to alcohol’s seductive betrayals. Every time I see the records of the birth of some young one as I enter notes about their death—from things that different choices would have saved…

Every time, I rely on Christ the King. Living on the underside means living into death in the hope of new life. It means that I have hope and faith that as I die a thousand deaths in each of these encounters, our risen Lord is holding me as I struggle to hold the pain and grief and fear and sorrow of those who come to us for care; feelings of hopelessness and helplessness that are far, far too much for any of us to know alone.

When all is lost. Strength is spent. No direction is before us. When we have died. And, died. And, died. Again. There is only grace. The grace of the infant Jesus who Mary held as every young mother does, cradling all the hopes and dreams of the coming of new life. The grace of Jesus who suffers with us, coming desperate and despairing to his knees at prayer all alone before his death , those who were to accompany him fallen away to sleep. The grace of the Christ raised and walking in the garden, whose very words held Mary’s grieving, hopeless heart turning its sorrow into joy, it’s grieving into fresh hope and expectation.

If Christ the King did not hold my heart, it would be broken, everyday, beyond repair. But Christ is King. A King whose true reign is not hi up upon a throne lording over all, but down on the underside, a place we will all visit if we are human and we live, Christ’s true reign holding those hearts most in need of grace and hope, of faith and the promises of some new life for the living of these days. Amen.



There is a great danger lurking about—the combination of isolation and easy access to information. Combined, they seem to be undergirding a pernicious despair that seems rampant among folks I see. We seem to be moving farther and farther away from truly connecting with one another min deeply meaningful and, ultimately, healthy ways, despite our ongoing anxious anticipation of the number of Notifications or Inbox pm’s on our Face Book Home pages and our eager attunement to the incoming text ringtone from our smart phones. Not an observation new to me, but combine that with easy internet access to a universe of world religious beliefs and philosophies from most ancient to post-postmodern, and, to my observation across several years of facilitating spirituality group in both in and out patient behavioral health settings, we have a unique opportunity for deep and pernicious despair becoming well integrated deeply in the psyches of already hurting, grieving, traumatized people.


Obviously, anyone can believe anything they want but, it pains me deeply and challenges me as both a pastor and a clinician to hear over and over again things like this gross oversimplification: “I believe in Karma. I was Ivan the Terrible in a previous life.” Using this as a rational and well reasoned explanation for ones many sufferings and misdeeds in this life; all the while, negating any belief in potential for enlightenment within oneself or life. No dharma, no Buddha nature. Despair. No potential to transcend ones pain.

Or this: “I read my bible, I always have. It’s given me great comfort over the years. I just simply ran out of faith;” from someone who has not ever attended church and who has clung to their bible through decades of an abusive home life.

We are designed from community, for deep and meaningful connection. Both emerging (and some established) science and the historic faiths and philosophies tell us that. We are meaning making creatures in deep need and longing for our sister and brother meaning makers. With them we can find new hop and new meaning for our daily living.

They hold the other half or The Story, they hold the other half our story. St Paul said it, “…faith, hope and love.” Love is the greatest. We cannot love ourselves or anyone else deeply all alone.

We cannot end our suffering sitting alone under a tree, even a very lovely tree. Buddha only attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree after seeing great the suffering of others in the world and realizing that he too would one day suffer. After enlightenment he waded back out to into the suffering of others.

The Desert Mothers and Fathers of the early Christian tradition, lived and meditated alone, except for the time they spent in relationship with the monastic community of which they were a part.

We cannot heal from whatever ails us without deep meaningful connection to the faith, hope and love of those who hold and embody the other side of our rational and well reasoned explanations. Amen.

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:19b, 20).


I am grateful for the presence of the Christ who has walked hand and hand with me as I have lived into a future which has seemed more and more uncertain, as I have learned, not only to live, but to enjoy a life that no one would choose.

Jesus and Paul were intimately familiar with the tender balance of the Lament Psalms, the gentle holding of the deepest throws of human grief and sorrow in intimate connection with our only true hope, witnessing the gracious Presence who does not hide from us in our times of trouble though it is often easier for us to trust the reality of our pain (Psalm 10:1). I am grateful for the Presence I could often see only by its dim reflection and the patient offering of the delicacies of a grace I am only poorly coming to comprehend. Amen.

It’s my 57th Birthday! I talked with my biological mother this year for the first time, shortly before Mother’s day. Now, for the first time in my life, I’m celebrating another year of living knowing the story of how and where I was conceived and the story of my birth… that against all the misguided 1950’s wisdom and rules about “what’s best for theses mother and their babies,” she insisted on holding me before surrendered me to the care of unmet strangers with the benediction, “I love you.”

In those first blessed and fragile movements of this life, where grief and love mingled in all tenderness and hope, the course of my living was set. This past half-century-plus, I’ve surrendered time and time, a thousand times again, to moments as heavy laden as my first. I have been called time and time again to learn that, faith and hope are all that abide, and that there is no stronger force, none in life or in death, greater than the arms of that same Love which, long awaited, held me for what could never be time enough, relinquishing me, in all sadness and uncertainty to all the precariousness that is living.

Faith, hope and that same Love have nurtured me into a heart of grace for the patients that we serve: My birthday wish for year 57 is prayer and meaningful action. Too many times, we must surrender lives struggling with addiction, mental and physical illnesses to a society’s system (healthcare, mental health, social services) were no real help is available. We cannot say things like, “go here and they will help you try to end your unrelenting physical or emotional pain, or with a place to live, or food to eat, money for car insurance or gas so you can know the simple human dignity of paying for those thing with money you earn from the job that small bridge of financial assistance afforded.” Or things like, “go here and you will be able to get the best possible treatment for your normal human reaction to growing up in a family where those who ought to have cared for you betrayed that sacred trust.”

A kind PCB friend said to me, not all that long ago, “you could have chosen to do horses or anything, but you chose this (things religious).” What she didn’t know is that, I could not, cannot, choose anything less than living the Love of my mother’s benediction of my life; to pray and try to live as if the Word has a bit of flesh on it and to pray and try to act Compassion’s love in the world…

Please spend some time today praying and acting for a more just, compassionate system for the least among us….

Rob Blagojevich and Preaching Good News to the Poor

I’m angry tonight: “I’m sorry, I know you want treatment but you don’t have funding and the wait lists for those beds is 3 to 4 months. And, I know you are homeless, but the shelters are over filled and have no beds. Yes, frustrating, scary, overwhelming,” I can see it in their eyes. I can see it much more often now. Sometimes several times a day.


Meanwhile, the Trib reports:“Blagojevich left the house this morning dressed in a turquoise knit shirt, tan shorts and blue running shoes. He held Annie's hand and carried her backpack as they walked down the front steps of his Ravenswood Manor home…”

I wonder sometimes: What is the good news for these poor ones who eyes are looking deeply into mine, longing for some frail shred of hope? Where is the risen Lord in the midst of their suffering? How and where will they meet Jesus along the road of their despair? I am grateful though, tonight, as well, for if I hadn’t known the grace of glimpsing Jesus in the sorrow that is my own, or stumbled upon him upon occasion along my own darkest road, I could never find the courage to meet their pleading gazes, nor could I hold it in some frail act of hope for them when knowing mine is all that they can  bear.

From the Disappointments of Living, Pray Infinite Hope

Philip Perold Photography

(Psalm 42: 5-6)

“Why are you cast down, O, my soul, why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall praise him, my help and my God.”

“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let us come in study and in prayer this week. Let us bring our hearts, filled as they are with all the disappointments of our living; the sadness’s and the losses, the broken promises and the faded dreams. Let our poor hearts bring them all, leaving nothing back. Let them come thus for in so doing is their only real hope. Let them come humbly before the Infinite with all the limits of our beings. Let them pray there in confidence for wholeness and peace, healing and courage. Let them pray there in faith for these graces to be made real in our living so that all other hearts brought to their knees by the finitude of our existence may know the Infinite Hope in which they live; the gracious God who in their living they offer praise. Amen.

Late Summer Prayer

A fall breeze
leaves blowing across
the gravel
~ lao xian

May we offer in prayer this week
late summer’s gifts. May we open
our hearts there to the blessings
of what has been, seek the hope
of what will come and entrust the
living of our days to the coming
Breeze of Fall.
Amen.

Prayer for Hope, Faith & Love

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our life time; therefore we must be saved by hope.

“Nothing that is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

“Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.” Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History

If, in the coming days, we begin to feel that what we are doing makes little difference, may we pray for hope and a heart that is content with the long view; when we have difficulty seeing the truth or beauty or good in our lives, may we pray for theses and for the faith to believe that we are always a part of something Bigger than that which we can see; and may we pray for the reassurance that in all we do we are never alone: may we pray to know that we are loved. Amen

Easter Hope

Grace and peace on this Easter afternoon:

I don't know why I mourned so deeply, not only my three Dear Little Ones today, but also my parents -- gone so long -- and so very much of myself which was lost with them all. Somewhere deep within, Jesus still seems deeply in the grave, despite the “Halleluiahs!” and shouts of “Christ is risen!” which surround.

So many years on grief's journey now, I doubt that anyone noticed when I attended Church or when I proclaimed the Resurrection in the worship service I led for our psychiatric inpatients, (it was a wonderful service), how very sad I am, how deeply my heart grieves, and how badly I need the victory over suffering and death to be made real in my own life. All I can do, in Resurrection hope, is bring my suffering and grief, sorrow and pain and loss to Jesus—dead and buried in the grave and pray for strength and willingness to linger there with him in whatever hope, he dying, found to give himself over to the only One who could have saved him but allowed him to die. Somehow from this horror, hope was born and new life and love were made real in the lives of women and men so long ago. How I yearn for the Resurrection to be made real in my life.

Looking for words of hope and encouragement, I came to a favorite blog writer of mine, the Velveteen Rabbi, and found a link to the lovely and hopeful collection of poems on miscarriage, Through. Longing for some Word of God’s victory in my heart on this day, I found it here in the tradition of Judaism: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback_book/through/6133670. The download is free. If you find it of value in your griefs journey, I commend it to you.

Wishing all gentle days.
Ol’Hound

Listening in Prayer

Migration

This year Marie drives back and forth
from the hospital room of her dying friendto the office of the adoption agency.

I bet sometimes she doesn't knowWhat threshold she is waiting at—

the hand of her sick friend, hot with fever;the theoretical baby just a lot of paperwork so far.

But next year she might be standing by a grave,wearing black with a splash ofbanana vomit on it,the little girl just starting to say Sesame Streetand Cappuccino latte grand Mommy.The future ours for a while to hold, with its heaviness—

and hope moving from one location to anotherlike the holy ghost that it is.

Migration" by Tony Hoagland from What Narcissism Means To Me © Graywolf Press, 2003

At the many thresholds of our future, may our prayers this week seek Help in holding all the heaviness of our deepest griefs and longings. May we find there the Holy hope to we need to keep moving from this place to the next. Amen.

Blessed Return to the Water and Land

I was honored last Sunday to preside at the internment of cremains of a couple married over sixty years who never had a fight that their family can remember. She died about five years ago and he just in April. Their middle son combined their cremains and we gathered to interr them in the rock garden he built overlooking the pond on his property, just as his father requested.

On a beautiful, sun-filled summer day the family gathered—sons and their wives and partners, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, cousins and in-laws of every sort. The golden retriever came carrying a big stick in his mouth chasing the yellow lab in and out of the pond. They shared memories and tended babies, cried and swapped stories about their aging parents. Everything was as it should be to honor the loves and lives which had passed from their midst.

We read some scripture too and prayed a bit…

"The days of man are but as grass; he flourishes like the flower of the field;. When the wind goes over it, it is gone: and its place will know it no more. But the merciful goodness of the Lord endures for ever and ever toward those that fear him. "
(Ps 103:15--17)

"As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" ….Deep calls to deep… By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life. " (Ps. 42:1-3, 7a, 8)

Almighty God, Creator and Sustainer of all that life, we come this beautiful day, in this gentle place of your creation, amid the warm embrace of family and friends to give you thanks, to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of A and to commit him and his beloved B to this earth of yours and to your eternal and tender care. It is at times like these and in places and gatherings like this that we feel strongly how small and fragile are lives truly are; but a hand full of dust and nothing more. But we come knowing that you love us even in our fragility, and in that love we rest secure.

Eternal One, you alone can alone can bring the sorrow and pain of our frail and fading hearts into beauty and compassion—flowering with new life. In these hours, turn hurting hearts once again toward you. In your Word may we know the beauty of this place, among the bonds of love shared here, before the awe and silence of death, speak to each heart gathered, the words of new life for which they long. In the face of death, re-kindle hope and love and bonds of family into the promise of new life. Lift us above all our distress into the beauty and joy and hope of your presence.

In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection and its promise of Living Water through Jesus Christ our Lord, in this place of water and earth, we give back to our God who created them, and us all from the dust of the earth, A and B. We give them back to the elements from which they were formed—ashes to ashes, dust to dust and trust them to the Living Water, entrusting them for all eternity to their Creator’s tender care. Today A and B rest from their labors. There good works follow them to the glory of God and in the lives and loves of all they leave behind. Amen.