Monday, December 24, 2018

Presence.


December 24, 2018
#peace

Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:9-11

One of the things about Jenny and Tim’s house is the heaps and heaps of books piled high on every shelf, every table, indeed every possible horizontal plane. And of course, I momentarily long to read each and every one of them, the old friends whom I haven’t visited in ever so many years, the whispered about neighbors who have been on my forever to read list, as well as brand new, never considered conversations with strangers.

But in the now famous “No way!” chant of Simone the Intrepid, no way am I ever going to sink up to my nostrils into all of those words. Just ain’t gonna happen.

And as I wander through Jenny and Tim’s life, there are also heaps and heaps of conversations with real live people stacked up, in every corner, fondling ever so many cups of coffee, leaning in with two elbows on the table, waiting. Oddly enough, I noted that actually, by way of their dug down deeply roots, the folks mingling in the atrium of this neighborhood church know me better and have a longer history with me than most of the folks at either of the two churches I have hung out in these past two years. Yep. Something to consider.

But back to the conversations.

And I wade around the edges.  Flipping through the forewords or scanning The Atlantic or New York Times headlines.  A quick smile and brief hug before traipsing into the kitchen with an armload of dishes or paper plates and crumpled napkins.

Skittering like a water bug.

And I started off this meditation thinking that I was going to end up on the last page, skipping ahead to see how it ends, They end, the long, convoluted stories full of complications and shifting settings moods and tones and rising and falling action. And somehow tie that together with the advent word of the day: peace.

But actually, no.

It’s not about skipping ahead.
Skittering like a water bug.

The flickering candles on the back porch watching for sunrise have led me elsewhere. Peace has already been given. It is not the end of the story, it is now.

Not as the world gives, the sort of things wrapped in green and red bows heaped up on the dining room table, but rather Presence.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

So yesterday afternoon we drove down to Colorado Springs for the Sherman Street celebration, folks celebrating almost forty years of relationship and then the kiddos and grandkiddos down to a bundled six-week-old who willingly lay in the shoebox manger during the nativity story.

And grandpop was there as well, in his wheelchair. And such was the nature of conversations, I hung out with him a lot. And again and again he repeated, “So tell me more about yourself.” And I stretched and groaned and told him that I was born in Sacramento and grew up in the San Bernardino mountains and related that to Santa Cruz where he lived, and his kids went to Sabino High School and I went to Sahuaro, and he was a mining engineer in Ajo, and I was in Ajo a few weeks ago with the Samaritans, and it probably hasn’t changed much. A conversation or two or three or five.

But the walkaway was his peace. This was a guy who permeated peace. His hands quivered, his feet curled oddly, yet his every word was one of gratitude and grace. And one who didn’t flip pages, bur reread paragraphs, and paused and considered.

And there was a pretty long reading of every single Christmas verse in Luke and Matthew, with the exception of the genealogies, from Zechariah all the way through the Revelation of John, with a dozen carols thrown in besides. But I was sitting right next to Thomas, and there could be no more wholehearted amening imaginable, even considering my African American Methodist Episcopalian background.

Mr. Thomas gets it.

Peace.

And the truth that the bowing knees and confessing tongues is not the end of the story.

It is the beginning.

The old rolled away, and the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

The Isaiah passage from the morning sermon.

As we considered corporately the Common Prayer of Confession: We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us.

The pastor left us with a bunch of questions to ponder as we prepare a straight highway to receive our triumphant King.

What stupid thing am I doing to mess up my life or hurt someone else?
What am I withholding from others that is hurting our relationship?

Skittering. Like a water bug.

And good old Richard Rohr wrote about image bearers and all creation, using words like “deeply” and “fully,” and reflecting His light, “impartially, equally, effortlessly, spontaneously, and endlessly.

Presence.

Peace.

Advent.

May it be so.

Come Lord Jesus, come.

Friday, December 7, 2018

Advent word for the day: Sprout


Trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Take delight in the Lord,
and He will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:3-4

We are called to faithfully sow seeds that will take root and sprout in the promised days that are surely coming. So be curious and watch for those sprouts of hope and be alert to the wonders that abound today. May your marvelment inspire you to keep on sowing. -K. C. Robertson

Last night, like every Thursday night, is Mimi night with the girls.

And there are lots of little routines that have developed over the years, If we are having a sleepover at Mimi’s, the first thing that happens is that we light the fire and the two green candles, and Simone marches over to the bookcase and gets her special books, a tiny boxed collection of Maurice Sendek’s: One Was Johnny, Chicken Soup with Rice, Alligators all Around and of course, I don’t care Pierre. This little set is tucked under one arm and the snuggly bear under the other the whole night long.

We make pasta, putting a little bit of milk in it, just like the Italians do. And we eat berries. The most important thing about dinner is the tea served in the small Iraqi engraved glass teacups with saucers, and the tinkling sound that the spoon makes when we stir in the tiniest bit of honey.

Then we play a BINGO game that involves E. reading the sight words on the cards and then matching them to our cards and shouting BINGO as soon as we get three in a row. After the cards are all neatly stacked back into the box, each girl gets to pick out three books. Well, Simone has her four and we pile them onto the bed before we brush our teeth, use the toilet or get our diaper changed. Sometimes there is time for a bath in the clawed-foot tub, but sometimes not. Sometimes Maria the housemate is there, and she is always fun, but sometimes not.






Now at Mimi’s, E insists that the very last book is always Tolstoy’s Papa Panov’s Christmas about when a lonely Russian shoemaker drinks his soup and coffee and waits for Jesus to visit as He promised, but the only ones who comes through his door is the poor street sweeper and an unmarried mother with her infant, and still he waited. Did he miss Him as he served them soup and gave away a small pair of perfect shoes?

When we are at Momma’s and Daddy’s the routine is pretty much the same, except the books are always a fresh lot from the weekly trip to the library.

Last night we read a book about Mrs. Maple, a woman so small that she rode a bluebird on her journeys. Her life was all about seeds. She traveled the world gathering lonely, abandoned seeds and carried them back to her very cool treehouse. She stored them all winter long in her tiny cozy home, waiting for the darkness to pass. And just as the light of spring dawned, she sent her seeds floating in the air, sailing down the streams and digging deep into the damp forest soil. Then her job was over.

Her job was the seeking and noticing and gathering and nourishing.

The sprouting wasn’t her job.

That belongs to Him.

May I be alert to the wonders that abound today.