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Bookends of Hope

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  Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.   —Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History   I offer bookends of wisdom to brace me and hold me in a place of hope no matter the disorientation. May we remember this notion of time and salvation that we not feel resigned to accept defeat or fear; rather may we rekindle that hope which does not disappoint. I am trying to hold an orientation not measured by winning and losing but by sparks of love and grace.  So let me become attuned to Niebuhr’s reminder of the fallacy of imme
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One Monarch Butterfly

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  I was walking the property with our contractor when a beautiful monarch butterfly flitted between us, around us, then through us. I felt something amazing inside and stopped our conversation that we both might pause and notice.   Something so small and random had awakened two lives and caused us both to pay attention. He spoke of memories of a butterfly bush which his wife had tended. I heard affection. I remembered my three children’s enacting the butterfly migration in kindergarten. I remembered affection as well.   Both of us were called to wonder. About an hour later on the other side of the house as I walked the precious dog, the monarch showed up again. I observed the same dance and almost flitted myself but self consciousness took over. I was consoled however by the possibility that I might be participating in some kind of cosmic dance by being fully present, more fully awakened. To what?   I suppose the simplest way of concluding is to say I felt blessed, I felt some new emer
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call to worship...again and again

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  Call To Worship The possibility that the zero gave birth to the universe, that all our somethings come from nothing, the fear of being alone like that, children of chance, orphans down to our atoms, is mother to the idea of god. God is a dress we slip over solitude, a mask for oblivion to wear, a rule-giver in a world where no flower or bear cares that we are here or what we do. I prefer a theology of silence, the eschatology of the shrug, a religion of holding my wife’s hand for now. But, if the industry of the church is what it took to give me bells ringing Sunday mornings, to which crows sometimes rise and deer turn, I’m grateful for a sound that pulls me out of myself, lifts my head toward sun and clouds, into the up and all, the blue, the on and on of it, when I bend the only knee I have to bend, feel happily small, contingent, and held, by what I can’t say, short of everything. Bob Hicok This poem reminds me of a day many years ago when I sat in a pew waiting for our son’s bacc
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Mercy Becomes Us

  We do not attain anything by our own holiness but by ten thousand surrenders to mercy. A lifetime of received forgiveness allows us to  become  mercy. Mercy becomes our energy, our meaning. Perhaps we are finally enlightened and free when we can both receive mercy and give it away—without payment or punishment.  Richard Rohr I want mercy to become my energy, my meaning. I suppose I need to keep surrendering to mercy. It is difficult to lean into powerlessness, although perhaps it is like weightlessness. Perhaps there is a freedom in the surrendering. May mercy become who I am.
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The Wisdom of the Little Prince

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  I am following a thread and it is leading me to wondrous spaces! As I watch the Olympics, I am often met with the, wait-for-it, screen which offers a beautiful image of Paris. So I go back, too many years, to the summer before my senior year at Williams. Sitting on the Seine, exploring the galleries, feasting on salad and ice cream, and exploring gardens and palaces. The most wondrous experiences, the most formative, were wandering through Notre Dame and Chartres cathedrals. It was then I fell in love with religious sculpture and stained glass. It was then I began to fathom the time, the perseverance, the arduousness of art, the amazement of human creativity inspired by the Spirit. The stories the spaces told… And so with Paris prompting my pondering, I also remember The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I was so affected by that charming book that my roommate and I prepared a puppet show for a presentation in Drama class (drama was not my forte but pointing to beauty and in
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The Lake of Beauty

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  Image of Jordan Pond where everything can seem so clarifying and sacred. The Lake of Beauty by  Edward Carpenter Let your mind be quiet, realising the beauty of the world, and the immense, the boundless treasures that it holds in store. All that you have within you, all that your heart desires, all that your Nature so specially fits you for — that or the counterpart of it waits embedded in the great Whole, for you. It will surely come to you. Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed time will it come. All your crying and fever and reaching out of hands will make no difference. Therefore do not begin that game at all. Do not recklessly spill the waters of your mind in this direction and in that, lest you become like a spring lost and dissipated in the desert. But draw them together into a little compass, and hold them still, so still; And let them become clear, so clear — so limpid, so mirror-like; At last the mountains and the sky shall glass themselves in peaceful beau
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Just Be

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  “We don’t sit in meditation to be good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we will be more awake in our lives.” Pema Chodron During times of grief, like that which I am experiencing now after the death of my father, there is an almost constant voice crying out: Do Something!   And all my training, all my formation, all my experience whispers back: That is the wrong question.   Again the counter voice: Don’t just sit there, do something! And still small voice: Be still…be I often turn to Pema Chodron in times of anxiety and uncertainty even though her answer seems to be: learn to be in the anxiety, in the uncertainty. I have in the past wanted to reject that difficult prescription. And yet persistent events of loss, deaths, pandemics, broken relationships, violence and injustice continue , beyond my control. So I try to shift my perspective away from the How can I fix it mode, toward the how can I simply be in this situation mode. Seems passive at first and counter to my upbringi
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Awe Epilogue

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  "On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’   And they were filled with great awe   and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’" Mark 4:35-41 Awe is a very important word in Christianity. It is the human response to God’s divine acts; it is even God’s reaction to divine creativity; and as such it evokes and focuses human response ability. ‘And awe came upon them all
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And Then There Was Awe

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  Awe is a very important word in Christianity. It is the human response to God’s divine acts; it is even God’s reaction to divine creativity; and as such it evokes and focuses human response ability. ‘And awe came upon them all’ is the phrase which describes the response when the Holy Spirit breathed the Word of God upon all gathered after the resurrection on Pentecost. Specifically, the cacophony of tongues created a confusion which was also a cosmic witness to that which surrounded, inspired and bound all humanity.   And today in Mark’s gospel in the calming of the stormy sea, not a confusion of language so much as a chaos of survival dimensions was calmed by the Peace which passes understanding. And awe came upon everyone.   I am fascinated by awe. It strikes me as the response whenever even the tiniest sliver of holiness is revealed in the world shrouded in darkness and anxiety, violence and injustice.   Awe is the response to unexpected mercy, to beauty peeking through clouds, to
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