Clumping up the stairs of life

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us. Psalm 90:15

So yesterday I got tangled up in the complexities and cares of the world.

Rat a tat tat all day long. But I rode my bike to work to make darn sure that I would be happy at least a few moments in what was promising to be a tottering tower of blocks.

And when I escaped the craziness of the day and the District and mind-boggling onslaught of minutiae at last and slid out of Bonillas Traditional Elementary Magnet School and unlocked my bicycle from the doorstep, I found that it had a flat flat flat, as in rhyming with rat a tat tat, tire. So flat that even I the eternal optimist knew I could not ride it home.

I tried hunting up a ball pump at school, but anyone the slightest bit helpful had either left or was in yet another meeting, so I started walking home, feeling just a little more than sorry for myself. And feeling alone, very alone.

But the crosswalk guard who always salutes me with a cheery, “Que le vaya bien, maestro,” at least agreed with me that no way could I ride my bike home, and the best thing would be to take the bus and it is very important to be exactly at the bus stop. So I stood there in the sun. For a pretty long while. Sigh.

I gotta admit, though, the bus driver was kind and helped me load up my bike on the front rack, and even though I couldn’t get a transfer slip, he thought the next driver might let me slide. And then later he called me up, and said if I wasn’t in a hurry he would be driving this bus downtown at 4:30, and I wouldn’t have to transfer at all. But, no, I was hosting a gathering of Intake folks at San Augustin Market in less than 30 minutes and needed to be on my way, but thank you. But the next bus driver said no, I really needed to have a GoPass card, but that was okay. I always have lots of single dollar bills in my wallet, in case someone asks me for money. So, no problem. Really, I was slowly gaining a little perspective.

I looked around. I don’t do much bus travel. Actually, the last time I rode the bus was when I had jury duty and I didn’t want to mess around with downtown parking. That was a long time ago. Most everybody was looking at their phones, except the very tired old man slumped across from me. His socks and shoes were so very clean and bright I wondered about them, where he got them from, like from Salvation Army or Northminster Clothing Bank.

And then another very weary couple pulled themselves up onto the bus. And she was old and heavy and with a walker cart in the hot sun, and I pretty much snapped out of my pity party at this point. Man, at least I didn’t have to drag myself up and down awkward steps all day long with a cart full of bags.

And then she smiled at me. ”Having a hard day?” She adjusted her swollen feet. “Don’t worry. We will get through things, one step at a time. That’s what they say.” And she smiled encouragingly once more at me.

Alone? No way.

Man, It is so easy to forget the kindness and grace of God’s children. The meek, the humble and those paddling amongst the flotsam and jetsam.

Thank You, Jesus, for reminding me of Your Presence. Your Presence in each image bearer.

And peace.

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.

The will to obey.

Deep calls to deep

    at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
    have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands His steadfast love,
    and at night His song is with me,
    a prayer to the God of my life. Psalm 42:7-8

Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus 
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free 
Rolling as a mighty ocean 
In its fullness over me.

Lord, we pray not to get lost in the reality of our own depravity, but rather to find ourselves morning by morning in the light of Your mercy and redemption. Amen

New every morning, great is Thy faithfulness.

I shall not want, when I taste Your goodness.

When I am bowed down with sorrow I will lift up Your name

And the foxes in the vineyard will not steal my joy,

For You are good to me, good to me,

And I lift my eyes to the hills from where my heart is from

Your goodness and Your mercy shall follow me all of my life

I trust in Your goodness,

I trust in Your promise.

You liberate me from my own noise and my own chaos

From the chains of a lesser law You set me free

In the silence of the heart You speak

And it there that I will know You and You know me

You satisfy me till I am quiet and confident

In the work of the Spirit I cannot see.

In the silence of the heart You speak.

So yesterday momma and I helped out at the Interfaith Packathon, two hundredish people at the Muslim Community Center measuring exactly 388-390 grams of rice and beans dried vegetables and vitamins and spices into then sealed bags, 50,000 meals. And the event began with prayer, and there was a break for the two o’clock prayers as well.

And the heart-piercingly beautiful call to worship brought back so many memories of dusty skies over wide rivers.

And as the men knelt down on spread out carpets, I joined them in their prayer: Dear LORD God of heaven and earth, please reveal Yourself.  And may we have eyes to see and ears to hear.  And the will to obey. 

Dear LORD God of heaven and earth, here I am once again.

And I find myself much like Meg and Jo in Little Women, murmuring about once again shouldering the daily burdens after the holidays, “Oh, dear, how hard it does seem to take up our packs and go on,” sighed Meg the morning after the party, for now the holidays were over, the week of merrymaking did not fit her for going on easily with the tasks of every day life.

And me, huh. I had two weeks of beyond-imagination merrymaking, full of dinner parties and bouquets by my bedside from my beautiful sister, and parties and a lovely drive home and reading and resting and not working, because washing dishes is not work.

But of course, good old Marmee spoke truth into the story, “We are never too old for this, my dear, because it is a play we are playing all the time in one way or another. Our burdens are here, our road is before us, and the longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us through many troubles and mistakes to the peace which is a true Celestial City.”

The will to obey.

Audrey Assad has sung truth into my morning as well.

You dwell in the songs that we are singing,
Rising to the Heavens, rising to Your heart, Your heart.
Our praises filling up the spaces
In between our frailty and everything You are
You are the keeper of my heart

And I'm restless, I'm restless
'Til I rest in You, 'til I rest in You
I am restless, I'm restless
'Til I rest in You, 'til I rest in You
Oh God, I wanna rest in You

The peace.

And because momma and I are a little crazy, we start off Sundays eating breakfast together over the both the New York Times and The Arizona Daily Star, and then we go on over to Trinity Presbyterian for the breaking of the bread and the passing of the peace, before we head off to our other places of worship.

The peace.

May it be so.

He anoints my thoughts with oil.

He revives my soul, and guides me along right pathways for His name’s sake. Psalm 23:3

A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, “I can’t prove a thing, but there’s something about His eyes and His voice. There’s something about the way He carries His head, His hands, the way He carries His cross–the way He carries me. –Frederick Buechner

Overlooking the bay in Pacifica, in peace.

In His peace, He who has carried me thus far, His tenderness and grace, His lovingkindness. “Standing in the shadows of love” is pulsing in the background, part of Andrew Jones’ Motown soundtrack while he works on Nicole’s website, MyTrueStory.net. And Andrew also replaced my windshield wipers and checked the car oil and air pressure. Lovingkindness. 

And just a few days ago, Jenny was commenting to me that at dawn, shadows are created by the rising sun, a visible image of light taking over the darkness.

And each morning as we face the still-shadowed path of His love, what is true is that I this path is Known. For His name’s sake.

And one cannot even make up the past few days of connections across the years and miles yet woven tightly together in the Spirit.

Who knows?

He knows.

And Carla, Nicole’s team partner in Bali is at this very moment being admitted to the local hospital with dengue fever. And I know how much fun that can be, three days of absolutely mind-blasting pain. The folks at the Clinica de Alamos had handed me a brown paper bag of morphine shots and told me to wait it out. But I didn't have to pop those needles into my own thigh because Dr. John Shaw was visiting that week, running a clinic in Osobaumpo. And with each whack of each needle into my thigh, Dr. John sadly shook his head and said, "It's not supposed to be like this."

And Carla’s WhatsApp texts affirm the embracing arms of Christ, full of His peace and laughing emoj’s, plotting yet another chapter in the sometimes quite even humorous blog of His faithfulness.

And in just a bit I will pop into faithful Rabbit and head over to the Sacramento airport and pick up Clay Pell and begin the journey home. I look forward to even more stories of Knowness, albeit through dark valleys. More oil dribbled down over my soul.

The healing powers of oil are fresh in my body and spirit, since Vivian gifted me with an ever-so-deep tissue massage, so profoundly deep that Joyce’s strong fingers even reached my aching soul.

Restoration.

Be about the Father’s business.

For His name’s sake.

And tomorrow, LW, when the bestickered and now quite bedraggled VW pulls into her new parking space in front of 911 N Sixth Avenue, may my soul rejoice in today’s slightly modified prayer for the journey:

May the peace of the Lord Christ be with me, wherever He may send me.

May He guide me through the long dry wilderness of droughted California desert, protecting through whatever dust storms and traffic jams may await me.

May He bring me home rejoicing, at the wonders He has shown me.

May He bring me home rejoicing, once again into the doors.