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”
Today doesn’t look like this for me. There is no great glory caught between the cupped hands of cloud and mountain. Still, even resistant, this body recognizes those wisps rising from something hidden; those breaths warmly exhaled in this day’s blue moment, sighing a soft, unavoidable grace in the sky of my heart.
Not long ago I shared with a gathering of others a way of governance birthed out of a commitment to vulnerable practice. I have been consciously immersed in the research of that practice for some time as I prepare to write my dissertation on its theological roots, its practices and the fullness of life it makes possible. I write particularly, but not exclusively, with a view to pastoral leadership. As I shared the governance practice I was asked whether I would offer some of the thoughts underlying it on my blog. This will be occasional. I welcome your voices, your comments, in the conversation. This is a beginning. Continue reading “Beginning”
O Spirit
O Silence
O Risen One
O Gate
O Garden
O Press of the Grass
O Call
O Healer
O Love Gone Before Us
O Breath
O Life
O Catcher of Tears
O Spirit
O Silence
O Risen One
Alleluia!
This morning we got up
went about our morning routines
came out into the drizzle
and sat in a gentle, ordinary space ~
We bear witness to the cosmic and heart-rending pain of Love’s dying
In the deepening darkness, we hold, like small wafers of light, Love.
We hold it between the pinched fingers of our hearts.
In the face of this death,
we know all the deaths of love
in our life
and in the life of the world.
Hold tight now. We are together and we hold, softly beating, hope for another day.
“For love is as strong as death.”
All week I’ve been writing, trying to capture the integration of my thoughts and my practice of the intersection of vulnerability and leadership. And now I want only to stand in that gently shining place we see among the trees. The place that seems as though it might be the milieu of wholeness; surely if we stood there we would be whole, vulnerable and shining in it; our fears and and envies disappearing in the unpretentious sunlight.
I didn’t i
ntend to post today. But I sat down to work with gathering up the worship for Sunday and began to recall conversations I’ve had over the last week about people and congregations that have become numb. It’s an important word and the state it describes spreads insidiously. A shot of numbness, when life is as sharp as a pulled tooth, is a good thing. But ongoing numbness is a tragic state.
I had a wonderful time last week at a gathering where I had opportunity to offer my research and my experience of vulnerable leadership; leadership inhabited with courage and creativity and compassion. Leadership that invites us to look at the truth of ourselves and live into it. We read together Oliver Jeffers’ book The Heart and the Bottle and I shared some excerpts from sermons that speak about vulnerable leadership. This week as I sit down to gather worship together I am inhabiting the now, imagining Sunday and recalling one of those sermons from Lent, The Eyes Have It.
I’m posting that sermon today as an invitation to the breath-taking possibility of vulnerable leadership and congregations that courageously face the thing they fear til they are healed.
Sometimes it’s scary,
Don’t be afraid.
We were made for this.
