...yawning at home before the fire of life
This is one corner of a soul collage, or soul card, that I made last week. One eye stays clear, in spite of trouble revealed from within and distortions layered on top. (I’d like to find a generic term for this process: SoulCollage® is copyrighted, and “soul card” can refer to tarot, but this video is not either of those things. Any suggestions?)
This hippocampus lives inside building 46 at Google in Mountain View. I walk past her* often, and I always stop. She is a dream trapped in a latex room. Most of the time she has nothing but electrical gadgets, event notices, and a couple of office plants to gaze at. Surprised (every time!) to see her, I stand by her head and let her gaze at me … and I’m reminded that I have forgotten something important, but what? What is it? Has even she forgotten, dry-docked as she is? For photos that do justice to the hippocampus, please visit the artist’s website (http://www.mardistorm.com/). * Is she a her? I don’t know. To me she is.
Isaiah 45:15a You are a God who hides yourself. I boarded the shuttle to work last Monday with a cloud over my head. A lot’s been going on. The bus was almost full. I sat in the second row behind the driver, next to a young woman whose laptop was open on her knees, its screen touching the back of the seat in front of her. I crammed my work backpack next to hers, under my feet. I made room for her elbow so that she could type, then lost myself in my phone’s browser. About 45 minutes into the ride, she began to rummage on the floor, as if surprised. Did she lose something? I looked down. To my astonishment, a Golden Lab was resting his head on my left foot. He was very quiet. He moved nothing but his big brown eyes, looking from one to the other […]
When someone is sick, people start talking about God’s will. Thy will be done. What does it mean? I’ve heard it used several ways: “Thy will be done” as a magical prayer. It’s easy to fall into the belief that if I say this special prayer before a frightening, uncertain event, then the outcome is God’s will—even if the outcome is terrible. I knew a woman who broke her neck in an accident. Just before the accident she had prayed for God’s will to be done, and so she believed that it was God’s will for her to break her neck. She lost her faith over it. This interpretation of “Thy will be done” imagines us having a lot more power than we do. If I say the magic words, then everything will happen exactly according to God’s will? No. My words and thoughts do not control the universe. “Thy […]
I spent three nights last month at Mercy Center in Burlingame, California. The Mercy Center has several walking paths that were created years ago by Father Thomas Hand, S.J. One of the paths, called the Water Way, leads you down a slope and into an area shadowed by trees, then along a dark creek that is criss-crossed with fallen branches and tree trunks. This depiction of the Tenth Station of the Cross is nailed to a post at one end of the Water Way. At this point in the story, Christ’s clothes are taken from him: one last humiliation before death. I am struck by the sadness in each man’s face, and by the way in which Christ is clasping the man’s hand. I don’t believe that redemptive violence is part of the Christian story.* Instead, I believe that God willingly entered into our suffering to be with us, because […]
Psalm 18:16-19 But me he caught—reached all the way from sky to sea; he pulled me out Of that ocean of hate, that enemy chaos, the void in which I was drowning. They hit me when I was down, but God stuck by me. He stood me up on a wide-open field; I stood there saved—surprised to be loved! In Addiction & Grace, Gerald May writes about how we often substitute one addiction for another. We are compelled to fill our life’s emptiness: the void. When people are delivered from addiction, he writes, it’s because grace enables them to tolerate spaciousness, at least to some degree. Grace transforms the void in which we were dying, and we find ourselves in a wide-open field. A void and a wide-open field are both spacious, but in a very different sense. The void that meant loneliness is transformed into space that means freedom. […]
Matt. 26:38b Then he said to them, “….Stay here and keep watch with me.” My friend Sue Ann works as a chaplain with SpiritCare Ministry to Seniors. She conducts lovely, gentle worship services at long-term care centers, plus she does visitation and pastoral counseling. SpiritCare recruits volunteers to do things like play the piano, help with communion, and spend time with residents. I’ve helped Sue Ann at three homes now, and helping turned out to be simpler and less scary than I’d feared. I can help just by singing loudly, or just by slowing down to really look at and see the beauty of the person I am speaking to. These things don’t cost me much—in fact, they bring me joy. I’m grateful for the structure that Sue Ann’s ministry provides, because it makes it easy and possible for me to do what would otherwise be too much for me. […]
The Methodist covenant prayer I am no longer my own but yours. Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you, exalted for you, or brought low for you; let me be full, let me be empty, let me have all things, let me have nothing: I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal. And now, glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, You are mine and I am yours. So little depends on me, really. What a relief. If I were nothing, had nothing, produced nothing, God’s great dream might be just as well (or better) served as if I were full and productive. It’s a relief to think that it’s okay for me to be what I am: Limited.
Psalm 63:7 I sing in the shadow of your wings. Sometimes it’s done in a shadow, in obscurity. Not standing on a box in the middle of downtown. Heh – I love that.
Psalm 63:2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Where? Where do you see God? Where are you when you get those fleeting glimpses of the real thing? Outdoors? Tucking a child into bed? Whispering a prayer of gratitude? Reading a great book? Petting a dog? Singing in church? Find those symbols and observances and savor them. Call them what they are. We need all the refilling we can get. Last weekend, probably very early in the morning on Holy Saturday, a doe gave birth to twin fawns outside our livingroom window. Here she is with one of them.