Oneness in freedom and joy.

This became known both to all Jews and Greeks dwelling in Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified. Acts 19:17

The context of this verse reveals that it is a dreadful thing indeed to claim the name of Jesus to cover for your own agenda and purpose and glory. God used this rather dramatic story, that of the demon leaping up and overpowering the seven sons of the high priest until they fled the house, beaten and naked. The LORD Jesus is magnified through repentance (the believers confessing their sins, rejecting the powers of the world more interested in protecting their wealth and the way things have always been, burning their books) and living wholeheartedly with a single purpose.

Father, we ask you that You would purify us. That we might in humility and truth repent of “the books” in which we have placed our trust.  May we burn them, with freedom and joy and follow You unbound by fear and tradition to proclaim Your power and love, Your kingdom come.

I have joined together with a group of others, committed to oneness during this Lenten Season, forty days of repentance and purification. And freedom and joy. And oddly enough, a story of one who ran lightly on his toes in this great race of life bubbled up through the internet, the story of my daddy.

Unbound.

Yes LORD.

Good News

Life is both a precious, unfathomably beautiful gift, and it’s impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It’s been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive. It’s so hard and weird that we sometimes wonder if we’re being punked. It’s filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together. I don’t think it’s an ideal system. -Anne Lamott

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Mark 1:14

In these days, God taught me as a schoolteacher teaches a pupil. -Saint Ignatius

Repent. In Biblical Hebrew, the idea of repentance is represented by two verbs: שוב shuv (to return) and נחם nacham (to feel sorrow). In the New Testament, the word translated as ‘repentance’ is the Greek word μετάνοια (metanoia), “after/behind one’s mind”, which is a compound word of the preposition ‘meta’ (after, with), and the verb ‘noeo’ (to perceive, to think, the result of perceiving or observing). In this compound word, the preposition combines the two meanings of time and change, which may be denoted by ‘after’ and ‘different’; so that the whole compound means: ‘to think differently after’. Metanoia is therefore primarily an after-thought, different from the former thought; a change of mind and change of conduct, “change of mind and heart”, or, “change of consciousness”. metanoia: change of mind, repentance Original Word: μετάνοια, ας, ἡ Part of Speech: Noun, Feminine Transliteration: metanoia Phonetic Spelling: (met-an’-oy-ah) Short Definition: repentance, a change of mind Definition: repentance, a change of mind, change in the inner being.

I remind myself that there are things God has to teach me yet, and ask for the grace to hear them and let them change my mind, change my inner being.

And I was all prepared this morning to write a sweet piece about sleepovers at Mimi’s, and snuggling with Simone and Rosie in the bed boat in front of the fire while Everette slept, and our conversation about purring, and how that was the most perfect purring moment, at complete rest and trust and contentment imaginable.

But instead I have been thinking about breakfast tacos and resolutions with Dre, and about Adam stepping into writing, and about soup and quesadillas with Scott last night, and his quiet questions, and an article I read now five times by Anne Lamont about what is true about life now that she is old and wise, and it’s like she was wandering among my thoughts and she put them into the exact words, except for the bit about dark chocolate, and then, when I read today’s scripture I remembered all of the sermons I have heard about the word “repent,” about how it means to change one’s thinking… and that is what God is doing in me these days, changing my mind, my inner being.

And it’s a good thing and it can be full of joy and freedom and embracing. If one sticks to it, and doesn’t turn back home to look over the new oxen or say goodbye to how it’s always been.

Remember Jesus always calls this repenting stuff “Good news.”

And he burned the plowing equipment and then set off.

August 27, 2017

Peace be within your walls, and quietness within your towers. Psalm 122: 7

But most of us return to the garden by a more arduous route. In his poem Four quarters, T.S. Elliot called it the path of “observance, discipline, thought, and action. The hint half guessed, the gift half understood.” This ordinary path back to Paradise is the blood, guts and ecstasy of the whole biblical text: usually three steps forward and two steps backward, just like our lives. –Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

Sunday mornings are drop dead still in Italian vineyards.

Except for the distant church bells.

A call to worship.

Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives.

Today is the day that the Church honors the life of Augustine, one who left the craziness and listened in the stillness: Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence, Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it.

August 29, 2017

Me: I can’t believe after all these years I haven’t learned to pour coffee without spilling it.

Dustin: Slowly and with the lid off.

Let the morning bring me word of Your unfailing love,
    for I have put my trust in You.
Show me the way I should go,
    for to You I entrust my life. Psalm 143:8

Come ye needy, come, and welcome

God’s free bounty glorify;

True belief and true repentance,

Every grace that brings you nigh.

Come, ye weary, heavy laden,

Bruised and broken by the fall;

If you tarry ‘til you’re better,

You will not come at all.

Not the righteous, not the righteous,

Sinners Jesus came to call.

It is harvest season in Lugo, Italy. And what is striking is not so much to big beautiful multicolored grape orbs hanging down from every vine, but rather the vast flat fields of wheat and corn chaff left behind. And two days ago-ish we watched great big trucks chop it all down, every bit of it, and shoot it into other great big trucks, chopped to smithereens. Dry and worthless; so much energy and water invested for naught, except for perhaps cow bedding or mulch for garden beds.

I was talking to a friend who was reflecting on back on life thus far, and all of the big messy projects and shouting crowds and long complicated to do lists and seeming victories that swirled up into so much smoke.  And yet, where was the fruit in all of this?

Elijah came to this moment: he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life.”

And the angel of the Lord met him in a dream, and led him for forty days into the wilderness, far, far away from it all, all of the stuff.  

What are you doing here, Elijah?

I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty.

And the LORD God Almighty said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.

And The LORD God met him there. And He didn’t speak to him in the great, powerful wind that tore mountains apart and shattered the rocks, nor was He in the earthquake, nor was he in the roaring fire. But the LORD God came to him in a gentle whisper.

What are you doing here, Elijah?

I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty.

Lots of people have been, and are and will be very zealous for the LORD God Almighty.

And at the end of the season, the time of harvest they will stand in front of Him and say, “Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?

And He will tell them plainly, I never knew you.

All of this zealous busyness, the stuff, the lists, the stacks of dishes, the metaphorical whirlwinds and earthquakes and fires, where was He?

And at the end of the season, the time of harvest, the fruit will be gathered into the barns, and the tares sown by the enemy will be gathered up and burned. And all will be made clear.

And in response to this quiet whisper, I will choose to say, just as Elijah did, before he returned the way he came,

 “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life.”

And so I set off for Assisi and a quiet long walk in Stillness.

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.