Where have all the prophets gone away? Surely they have not differentiated themselves into complete non-existence apart from the flock. Though numbers have dwindled, lost to the ragged and ravenous wolf of matrix and machine down in the meadow, we will take a new look and see beyond the monotonous and noisome bleating, clamoring, berating, demanding and consuming. The banal message will not pacify us. Remember, the snake offered something new. Look what happened when life came to us disguised as a fruit in our hands. A blessing or a moment of condemnation? Something that forever made the moment unique.
Grounded
People do not want conflict. They want peace. Bring on the peacemaker, then. And only then. Pacify and peace dance together. Each comes from the same root where all breath comes from. Curious that you have been sent to us. Listen to what grows out of the silence. Hearing and seeing, using all the senses, make the strangeness recede behind the cacophony stored in a separate room apart from all that is vital to life. Though the spirit works and moves best in a synthesis of differences we must learn to strengthen the cords that keep us on the ground.
Being anxious
Consider the infinite and the finite. Finite moments compose the infinite. Enter the dance whose steps create any covenant made in love to the thousandth generation. The particular reaches the eternal. The Word spans infinity forevermore whereas anxiety scrambles possibility. Be not anxious. Or, at least, do not show it. The songbirds will return.
The tempter came and said to him… – Matthew 4:3
Ruling Word, Guiding Word, Tantalizing Word, may we keep your word ever before us as other words sneak up behind us attempting to pull us away into the life we would live without you. Amen.
Or worse?
Chaos is not a mess. Look how the numbers of today order themselves into primal states of energy waiting to be interpreted into peace. Along the walls in long, well-arranged, wooden pews sit the straight-backed, strangely bemused, thinking, "Here we go again." Disestablish now. Redemption is at work in the tumult. Our forebears sowed the seeds for the harvest we now reap with our own bleeding hands. The goal of this moment becomes the burden of the next. This, a dream? A blessing? Or worse, a curse?
Enlarge This Place
The mystery of the fringe looks inward to sense the changing soul slipping into a God-breath stirring the whirling dances of conversation in barnyard, wilderness and ballroom. Out of the stirred dust created by fast-moving feet arises shimmering waves in the air. Dancers reach out to touch what they have made only to step on their neighbor's toe. A cry is uttered sending the human creation into chaos crashing down upon the tiles that once glimmered in the dark. Angry faces. Sad faces. A jeer and a cheer. Each to their own. O barren one, enlarge this place!
The Barren Ones
A week after love the balance between preparation and inspiration remains folded in all possible outcomes. The parade of elephants may perhaps begin today but it is sure to come with one yelling from the balcony about the unfairness of time. We do not begin each year of life deciding how many more years to go before pushing the covers aside and getting on with the day. Will we survive this moment? Will the mountains built to house our sweet dreams come down with the next shake of the earth? We must ask the barren ones to sing, to enlarge the places of our hearts, to lengthen the ties that bind and to strengthen what holds us together.
Good News
A divine child was born just up the road. A neighbor spent the good part of a morning pondering what all of the signs meant. Unseen stars in the sky. The sun rising a few minutes earlier than the day before. Temperature above normal. And a crow sitting in a nearby branch overlooking the front door as if keeping some sort of watch like a preacher from a pulpit waiting to share some good news about what this all may mean.
And when they raised their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. – Matthew 17:8
God of the prophets of old, God of the giver of the law, we lose you when we look away from the sun and from the earth. We look up and there before us is the beating of our own hearts, not arrayed in dazzling white, nor washed in the blood of suffering, but present as if you never left. The details of the fine print confuse us. Translate the love of now for all to see what their hearts desire standing alone before them. Amen.
Migration
The ground beneath the birdfeeder is just a stop for the gray junco on its pilgrimage from north to south and back again when the weather returns. I ask, How far north do they come from? How far south will they go? Is my domicile acting as a rest area in the middle of their journey from home to home? I try not to ask the same questions of myself. I may feel the migratory itch and, like Abraham, set off into the unfamiliar in search of a new land of promise.
A Thread You Follow 