Really, everything has changed.

Even as the sun

Arises, stars piece the dark

And sing of His love.

This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5

Where charity and love are, God is there.
Love of Christ has gathered us into one.
Let us rejoice in Him and be glad.
Let us fear, and let us love the living God.
And from a sincere heart let us love as one.

Our visible, created universe is not simply an object created by a wholly other God in order to manifest God’s love, but the created universe is that love itself—the very heart of God, fully expressive in the dimension of time and form. -Cynthia Bourgeault

The name in German for mercy was Barmherzigkeit—“warmheartedness.” Mercy is the holy element, the root energy out of which all else in the visible universe is made. The Mercy is “holy substantiality”—the innermost essence of being itself. It is that “river of God,” running like the sap through the tree of life. - Jacob Boehme (1575-1624)

So I did the brisk morning walk thing this morning down and back to Tucson’s river… as the Catalinas were just catching the rays of the new day’s sun. The full moon had already crossed the night sky and sunk behind the western hills, but the starlight gleamed, casting the now ancient waves of love.

He is light, and in Him there is no darkness.

My brother Tom just had a cataract cut off of his left eye. And only as he can, he articulates the power and beauty of sight:

Tracy and I walked down the dirt road, stars breaking out overhead; oncoming headlights approached.

 I closed my right eye and looked: Crisp, clear lights pierced silhouetted trees and highlighter grass stems along the roadside. 

I closed my left eye and looked with only the right: A milky-white refulgence diffused my field of vision. I hesitated in my step, afraid to step into the car’s path.

                 

                  this morning, looking into the mirror…

Wrinkles around my eyes; some sag along my mouth; swaths of missed, unshaven chin; sparsely-covered scalp, dotted with sunspots and freckles. Some rogue nose hairs clambered out from my left nostril.

I guess there’s a lot to consider from a single-eye cataract surgery. It’s the same swap as flat-earth to round-earth, geo-centric to helio-centric, Newtonian physics to Einsteinian relativity.

Really, nothing has changed.

Really, everything has changed.

We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing Him directly just as He knows us! -1 Corinthians 13:12

Who knew that the number one surgery in the United States was cutting out cataracts? Cataracts develop slowly, but eventually they interfere with our vision– not seeing people’s expressions clearly, making it difficult to read, to notice nature, making it even dangerous to make judgment calls.

Every year about three million people have their clouded lens that lie behind the iris and pupil removed and replaced.

Such is the state of man, clouded vision.

Mom said that after her surgery, “leaves on trees appeared as individual leaves not just a green clump.”

Jenny said that she was “totally mesmerized by the shadows underneath pieces of gravel for a long time.”

But, she added, “But it’s also true, it changes only my perceiving of things.”

Dear LORD God, wield Your truth. Slice away all that keeps me from truly seeing. Replace my cloudy lens with Your light.

May I truly see Your creation, and thus Your love.

For You are love.

The morning larks are already lifted high.

Make every effort to supplement your faith with excellence, and excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.  For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 2 Peter 1:5-10

First the fall, and then the recovery from the fall, and both are the mercy of God. —Julian of Norwich (c. 1343­­–c. 1416)

Lord our God, we thank You that You have given us an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We thank You that You have already begun to give us new vision, that already many things are being transformed, so that we may go gladly and confidently on our way with hope for whatever is still unsolved. May all this live in our hearts and fill us with thanks to You. We want to be courageous and keep in sight what still needs to be changed as we take our part as workers in Your vineyard. May the light You have given us continue to shine in us and burn ever more brightly, as You have promised. Amen.

I think that actually where we have landed outside of Lugo, Italy is an old warehouse for the vineyards that stretch out in tidy rows in every direction. There are several beautiful apartments now tucked inside its spacious rafters, but its simple rugged exterior proclaims its original purpose.

And one cannot help but thinking about workers and the harvest around here. Abundance hangs low on every branch. Yesterday even four-year-old Everette was able to pluck not only handfuls of every-colored grape and spit out the seeds with practiced confidence, she also ate two plums, three figs, a pear, an apple, two peaches, four tomatoes and homemade pesto.

And this big long list of virtues or excellence has nothing to do with earning our place in the already now eternal kingdom of God. Rather it is a long list of pruning and fertilizing and weeding in order to create the sturdy and full-of-fruit branches connected to the Vine.

Sometime way before dawn the engines started roaring outside. And I don't know whether they were mowers or hoers or shakers, but they were up and at ‘em early. And while this walk with Jesus is simple and straightforward on many levels, there are things that easily entangle us or long to jump up and pierce our thinking like the many stinging nettles that lurk in every pathway. And while there are the waxing eloquent metaphors describing how the branches’ job is simply to “be” while the vine does (or did, depending on the translation) all the heavy lifting, someone out there is rising up before the dark orange sun and kneeling into the backbreaking work.

This walk is not for the sloppy or weak of heart.

So we are saved by faith, that not of ourselves, lest any of us boast. And brokenness and death and falling to the ground dried up and spent are all part of the process.

But so are self-control and steadfastness as daily choices. As is love. Every hot sweating stinking day we have to choose to practice love, the acting out and doing of it. And sometimes love is great fun, like racing Everette down the white sandy beach as fast as you both can go, but mostly it’s a bit of a bear, and it’s loading six borrowed bikes or two borrowed beds into the back of your car or spending the afternoon visiting three shops to figure out which sim card to buy for the folks that just arrived from Spain, France and Germany.

Or noticing the blind beggar shaking his coin box. Or explaining yet again what it means to be greatest. Or preparing a fish breakfast by the side of a lake for a bunch of people who just abandoned you when things got rough. And they couldn’t even stay awake and pray for an hour.

 A lot of the new vision stuff is still walking silently along country roads, without even thoughts, and the transformation thing is so deep maybe that it is still seeds buried underground with just little green sprigs peeking out into the light, and bunches still feels unsolved.

Breathe in deeply.

Breath out.

Coming to an end of self. How does that happen?

But there is always what is right in front of me. Even if I am still working through what it means to love the Lord with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind and all my strength, there is always the neighbor right here.

One thing that I am being Spirit-prodded about is my edgy withdrawal from beggars on the street; even if I occasionally toss them a coin, I still look away. I am going to choose to pause, to kneel down, to look, and ask, “What do you need?”

How can I as a follower of Him not pause? He who paused for the unclean and marginalized again and again: the unclean bleeding woman, the woman caught in adultery, the tax collector, the demon-possessed naked man.

Come on. How did He answer the question “What must I do?” With a story about the religious people who looked away and the heathen who knelt down.

In excellence and knowledge and self-control and steadfastness and godliness and brotherly affection, and love. 

Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?

The human mind and heart are a mystery; but God will loose an arrow at them, and suddenly they will be wounded. Psalm 64:7

Jesus taught us, saying: ‘Watch yourselves, or your hearts will be coarsened by the cares of life…’ Luke 21:34

God takes his stand in the council of heaven; He gives judgment in the midst of the gods: “How long will you judge unjustly, and show favor to the wicked? Save the weak and the orphan; defend the humble and needy; Rescue the weak and the poor; deliver them from the power of the wicked. Psalm 82

I pray a lot for a shield of correct faith protecting me from the fiery darts of the Enemy, my Little Children’s Pilgrim’s Progress’ understanding of the lies and accusations that are flung incessantly. Which, as an aside says A LOT about reading chapter books to children at a very young age because I so remember those early piled-on-the-couch in-front-of-the-fireplace stories my dad and mom read to us each night before bed.

And one does not wish for the rotting damage that happens to one’s thinking and heart when a lie lodges deeply and spreads its poison, but there is a good sort of pain as well, a pain to press into.

The pain of confession.

Of the pause and considering.

Search me, O God, and know my heart.
    Try me and know my thoughts.
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139

And listening to Jesus through the Word and from allowing my heart to be pierced with the arrows of His truth, a grievous way that is found in me is that judging the other.

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

With the same mercy ye mete, shall be met unto you.

Forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me.

And perhaps one area of consideration are those weak and poor and needy. Because they are inconvenient and slow us down, and mess with our stuff and our time and our cares of the world.

Like for instance, the lady who smacked into my car Thursday when I paused at a stop sign and she did not. She was trying to light a cigarette and zip through the Sixth Avenue underpass at the same time. And she had to shuffle through a bunch of driver’s licenses to find one to hand me, which was a little strange, but I dutifully copied down all of the numbers, the insurance card, the make of her tattered car full of her cluttered life and the license plate. We were both in a hurry, she to her job at a school cafeteria and me to my eighth graders lined up outside of the science lab. And of course the dinked bumper would cost $690 to repair and the $500 deductible would not be waived because her insurance had expired, and the whole thing was a little inconvenient and my plate is squished even after I tried to unfold it. But in the big scheme of things, this is just a little thing.

And reading all of those childhood stories helps me understand the icy glare that I get from one eye because the other one is hidden behind pink-stained hair. “I don’t understand it when teachers talk to me.” And her mom was raped when she was fifteen. And her mom spent most of her life in and out of jail then in and out of rehab but now she is trying to have a relationship. And I get why correct MLA citations and there/they’re/their are helpful, but she doesn’t. But in the big scheme of things, this is just a little thing.

I think that one quiverful of arrows that we have been gifted with is the Humans of New York City series, story after story of not the outward appearance, but the heart of all of those people we push and shove past on a daily basis. And maybe they step in front of us onto the escalator or fiddle with something electronic rather than pop quickly out of a green light or cut ahead of me for the parking lot spot, But in the big scheme of things, this is just a little thing.

And the Monday night ladies were reading again last night about Jesus. He was led by His love for others into the world, to forget Himself in the needs of others, to sacrifice self once for all upon the altar of sympathy. Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world. And self-sacrifice will lead us, His followers, not away from, but into the midst of men. Wherever men suffer, there we will be to comfort, Wherever men strive, there will we be to help. Wherever men fail, there will we be to uplift. Wherever men succeed we will be there to rejoice…It means richness of development. It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives–binding ourselves to a thousand souls by the filaments of so loving a sympathy that their lives become ours. –B. B. Warfield

You simply can’t beat love. You can’t out-humble it. You can’t suppress it, because you are always free to love no matter how someone treats you. If others are putting nails through your hands, you can forgive them. If someone is shouting curses at you, you can silently receive them. Love is irrepressible. – Paul E. Miller

And so dear Lord Jesus, dear God-alongside-of-me, as I follow You into the harried crowd that presses and bumps and tugs on my sleeve all day long, may I be ever Yours and pause and look around and ask, “Who touched me?”

And Audry sang all the way to work, The Deep Deep Love of Jesus.

Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure; wash me, and I shall be clean indeed. Psalm 51:8

The way to arrive and remain within "the force field of the Holy Spirit", which is one way of describing consciousness--is both very simple and very hard: you've got to remain in love, with a foundational yes to every moment. You can't risk walking around with a negative, resentful, gossipy, critical mind, because then you won't be in the force field. You will not be a usable instrument. That's why Jesus commanded us to love. It's that urgent. It's that crucial. Richard Rohr, Transforming the World through Contemplative Prayer

I sort of really tried. Kind of.

So it is the end of the year, and middle school teachers just try to hang in there. They show a lot of movies. And they assign a lot of group projects. We are doing biome posters in Science and Immigration Stories in History. That will get a quick presentation next week following a rubric and end up in the big dumpster behind the kitchen.

My assignment was whispered to me just as the different lines of students were being formed after lunch for afternoon classes, things like capoeira, the Brazilian martial arts sort of dance class, art, yoga, glassblowing. And then there was a sort of motley-looking crew left over, shoving each other back and forth as they leaned up against the cafeteria wall.

The kids who had been uninvited from every single enrichment. You may not come back, ever. No where to go for the next hour and a half.

So I was handed a Monopoly game and pointed up to the Language Arts/History classroom. And with reflection, I almost did it. I was pretty cheerful and sturdy. And counted out lots of piles of money and let the kids draw two deeds apiece to speed things up. And I didn’t complain. And I wasn’t crabby.

And I had a lot of little memory moments of Miss Dorky Middle School Christy who spent two years in the basement of the big house on the wrong side of the railroad tracks in Dayton, Tennessee playing Monopoly with her brother Scottie. Every painful day after another painful day of middle school not fitting in at all angst. We taped all of the deeds to the blonde wood paneling, next to the pool table. And our little secret pride was that we memorized the rent on every single property. With houses.

In sharp contrast to this game, where I had to explain again and again the rent thing and rolling for utilities. The banker cashed in all of 500s and 100s and 50s into ones and fives so he could have this massive wad to shove into people’s faces. And one of the girls kept changing her dice after they rolled so she always got doubles and finally she landed on Free Parking. Another one of the girls asked if it would be okay if she did her homework. Yep.

So inside I might have been a little critical and resentful. And what could have turned into an actually brilliant idea of loving on some pretty discouraged angry kids turned into just moving the minute and hour hands around the clock. Nothing more.

And at the end Mr. Naughty Boy who is not coming back, even to the school that “Never Gives Up on a Child” tossed all of the money up into the air again and again and danced a crazy little dance. And Miss Doesn’t Always Think Before She Acts grabbed the houses and deeds and threw them up in the air. Then stomped on them. And kicked the little pieces under the chairs. And the afternoon spun down into even more glum consequences.

And I could have been light shining in a pretty dim spot. If I had taken the very simple and very hard path of remaining in His Spirit of Love.

I do not think even for a moment I was an instrument of His peace. I was just trying to control the situation with my own vaguely pleasant strength.

And I failed. Miserably.

And who knows what the outcome could have been, had I been a conduit of His grace, His joy and His lovingkindness?

And that’s really all I have left. Eight more days to pour His healing oil on these wounded little souls.

It’s that urgent. It’s that crucial.

Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure; wash me, and I shall be clean indeed. Psalm 51:8

Another day, another opportunity to let these kiddos see Jesus through me… a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.

As I understand the Reign of God, it includes the grace-driven, love-driven transformation of the self and the world. What's more, it recognizes that the transformation of the self and the world are directly connected to each other. . . Isn't it instructive that the spiritual formation of the original disciples happens with Jesus on the road? In effect, the disciples learn by doing. They grow into an understanding of this God of love, this God of compassion, this God who loves justice, this God who makes all things new, by participating as active observers and agents of compassion, justice, and newness. And, yes, necessarily, they pause with Jesus to reflect, ask questions (sometimes stupid questions), and pray. But the spiritual adventure described in the four Gospels does not happen in the sanctuary; it happens on the road, in the company of beggars, prostitutes, and lepers. Richard Rohr

May this be my whole heart prayer today: I love you, O LORD my strength, O LORD my stronghold, my crag, and my haven. Psalm 18:1

With a foundational yes to every moment.

 I believe. Help my unbelief.