O dove
O fire
O breath
O tide
O wave
O water like laughter Continue reading “O Spirit Come”
“One Small Step in the Direction of Love”
As I come to the conclusion of a year in which I chose to let go of those things by which I might most easily recognize myself, and be recognized: my life in pastoral leadership with a congregation, my attendance at Sunday worship, my familiar spiritual practices, I pause on the threshold to look back. Today I glimpse the soft trail of the spiral’s ending just as it casts off into beginning again. And I find this question, rising up to the surface once more. “What would it look like, in this moment, to take one small step in the direction of Love?”
This reflection too is a spiral. It holds, at the centre of its curving, the seed of an earlier post. It holds the question posed me by a wise woman. It wasn’t an asked question. It was truly given. I have carried it with me in the place that is the last to close up in fear or anger, in fatigue or frustration, in the pressure of near impossible
choices, in the moment when I have nearly lost myself.
What would it look like to take one small step in the direction of Love?
It’s sometimes possible to make this almost imperceptible of movements when everything else feels too much to ask of yourself, when everyone else’s good suggestions have become a burden. Deep in the folds of your heart this small question rests.
What would it mean, in a nearly imprisoned moment, or in an expanse of fearsome freedom to take one small step in the direction of Love?
This question led me into the year just past, accompanied me, and now breathes me into the choices of the year to come. I long to answer each possibility before me with this question, What would it look like . . . ?
What would it look like? This tiny step, fragile as dew on the grass; soft and holy as sun on the shoulder of the day.
What would it look like, again and again and again?
Broken-open community
As I reflected on the heft of my heart, sitting in a room with so many others, each of us on our own journey, our paths mingling and diverging, I felt the strength of brokenness. Continue reading “Broken-open community”
Resurrection Riff
Resurrection – say it softly, as one must after the softening notes go wherever notes go when they no longer sound.
The day has gone by for me
carrying the Word
and the cello’s intensity
Resurrection
It doesn’t come from nothing
It has a past. Continue reading “Resurrection Riff”
Holy Friday
Holy Wednesday
Wednesday of Holy Week seems one of the days orphaned from its ritual parents. Swung soundlessly between the arms of Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday it feels unmarked in my community. I understand the text of anointing with spikenard is often associated with this day in the liturgy and the negotiations of Judas Iscariot with the Sanhedrin. So, following my earlier post of the I offer again these words to breathe as Christ breathes, to touch the world’s joys and betrayals.
Sorrowing and Creating One,
You know
There has been so much taking
Of life
Of trust
Of sparkle
Of hands touching
Of dignity.
There has been so much injury
Of body
Of words
Of love
Of home
Of hope.
There have been so many images
Fast and slow
Vivid and grainy
Repetitious
and static
and terrible
And so much closing
Of minds
Of hearts
Of borders
Of doors
Of eyes.
So, we are here
For You
still
Holy
in the midst of us
We touch
in a heart beat
as we are touched.
We breathe
healing we are graced to grace with
we receive
and carry
gently as a warm egg
into these days.
The Skin and Heart of It
It’s the day after the vivid day of palms; and I stand on the edge of emptiness, in the aftermath that is also preparation. I hold what keeps me tethered to the movement that will free me. I turn, as I so often do in this time, to a text I can feel in my fingertips, in the palms of my hands and in my heart. I turn to a story of the woman anointing Jesus (Mark 14: 3-9)
I turn today holding the sight of fragile bodies attacked by gas, or guns, people walking over borders in snow, single suitcases carrying a lifetime. I turn holding the sight of women spare as cursive, curved over their beloved starving children. I can feel this text too in my fingertips.
I enter this week when the fragile, broken body of the Compassionate One will bend over the beloved world, the skin and heart of it, and I enter it through this story.
This text we may read and pray is for me such a strong affirmation of our bodies and our beings and the gifts we bring to one another. An affirmation also of Love’s insistence that we listen to the holy depth within us, listen to know that particular part of ourselves we are called to pour out over the body of Christ and the skin of the world.
This is a text that describes such risk and audacity. Who would imagine that poured perfume would be the perfect gift for that particular moment of Love’s life? Who but you and the one to whom you give it can know the holiness of your gift?
We stand on the lip of Holy Week and I long for us to enter that week in response to Love’s call. Each of us will enter carrying our own jar. Each of us will pour it out on the worn skin of compassion in a particular way. We find the way that allows us to stay close. We search the offering that knows and soaks each holy day in a way that may transform it.
We find some small audacious or quiet way to honour the One who will suffer, suffer not to grimly pay some debt, to complete some awful transaction, but to be in our bodies and consciousness the fullest experience of a life lived, of Love, in joy and in anguish.
You can read Mark 14: 3 – 9 here http://bible.oremus.org
You may enter it more deeply through the following meditation.
