“Almost daily meditations begun in the time of coronovirus and expanded into new life, new ideas, well...imagination! In this time of isolation when we are all more aware than ever before of the space between us, may this space offer opportunities for blessing. And as we return to life post COVID may we recognize the extraordinary in the ordinary, the sacramental in the daily, as we recognize, reorder, reprioritize and respond to the holy in our midst. “ Those are the words which introduce my blog BlessingImagination begun March 17, 2020. I decided to revisit them yesterday as I felt some disbelief that I was still writing !? and some disconnection from the mission. Two things struck me and caused me to return to purpose. First, while these were begun in the time of coronovirus they have been impassioned by the accompanying virus of systemic racism. Somehow multiple viruses have been energizing and depleting at the same time. Much of my meditation is spent balancing despair as it gro

  Thomas Merton said: “A tree gives glory to God by being a tree”. This simple and odd statement makes me smile. He goes on to say that it is because the tree doesn’t try to be anything other than what God has created it to be...”it consents to God’s creative love”. I often think we fail to give that consent which is so desired by God. We might say we are “only” human and yet Merton seems to be urging us to be aware of something more in our humanness. It might be the spark of the divine which is the spark, dust, ash, stardust, with which we are all imbued. The tree-like consent might then be to say yes to that which makes us the bearers of Kingdom glory, that which caused God to declare us good. Chiseling away at the false images which obscure this true identity is not easy, not clear. It is, however, a choice to take that road to glory and be our authentic selves and to learn from the trees...or the lilies of the field or the birds of the air.

  This was read at our poetry session yesterday and it struck a chord. "Great souls die and/our reality, bound to/ them, takes leave of us." There is a dialectic between what was and what is and these lines help me realize that this dialectic generates energy which shapes what will be. Our reality takes leave and then possibly returns 'wizened' to be... When Great Trees Fall

     by Maya Angelou When great trees fall,
 rocks on distant hills shudder,
 lions hunker down
 in tall grasses,
 and even elephants
 lumber after safety.

 When great trees fall
 in forests,
 small things recoil into silence,
 their senses
 eroded beyond fear.

 When great souls die,
 the air around us becomes
 light, rare, sterile.
 We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly,
 see with
 a hurtful clarity.
 Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
 examines,
 gnaws on kind words
 unsaid,
 promised walks
 never taken.
 Great souls die and
 our reality, bound to
 them, takes leave of us.
 Our souls,
 dependen

  Last Sunday I preached about undistinguished or undifferentiated grace, the grace which flows toward us without seeking anything in return and without evaluating the recipient’s merit or worth. This morning I sit with the mug which bears the image of a stained glass window through which light flows in the same manner transforming distinct images into blended color and one impression.   As I ponder this numinous notion and give thanks for it, I find myself thinking also, perhaps even more, about the cup itself and the story it tells. I carried this vessel to a very difficult meeting at EDS in the spring of 2014. It gave me or reminded me of truth and courage.   Again, this is testimony to the sacramental life wherein visible touchable things are imbued with meaning, invisible grace, if we but pause to connect and associate our lives with the articles which remind.   This is not about holding onto every object...I promise! It is about recognizing the significance of a few. It is about

  Yesterday’s post on my cup/mug of blessings prompted a deeper pondering of “blessings”.   Barbara Brown Taylor is my go-to on this topic. She says “anyone can bless” and affirms this power of recognition of the extraordinary in the ordinary with these words: “To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.”   (Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith ) All of us are capable of “bending, reaching, chopping and stirring

  “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Simone Weil Following closely on the heels of the quote above is something both Weil and Mary Oliver said and I paraphrase: Attention is the beginning of prayer. I have often transposed the word presence for attention and yet rarely think of generosity in the same place as prayer. I am rethinking this relationship. Generosity is related to generativity is related to genesis. God’s creative power is magnificent and magnanimous. We who are created in the image of God are graced with that capacity to generate, to give.   It seems to me that what Simone Weil and Mary Oliver were getting at is the particular fullness of our selves, our souls and our bodies, outwardly turned toward God and the other and creation. This very orientation which I know as presence and they as attention, emits generously: love, compassion, mercy, justice.   And that indeed may be prayer!

Below is a proem by Brian Doyle entitled Leap which he wrote about a couple who fell from the towers on 9/11 holding hands. I put it at the end because it is long and it is gruesome. Yet it is somehow beautiful in its hope, its vision of grace, and its naming not just of victims but of witnesses. I think of the great cloud of witnesses which formed that day and continue to form in the face of injustice, terror and oppression, not to mention death, disease and destruction. My absolute favorite line: I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love. I revisit this writing along with several others every year on 9/11 and am called into a great silence which is filled with tears, heart water. Through those tears, those sacramental indicators of love and compassion I hope, I   envision a great love. As Doyle indicates, perhaps the couple were lovers or co-workers, but i

To speak to you, the dead of September 11, I must not claim false intimacy or summon an overheated heart glazed just in time for a camera. I must be steady and I must be clear, knowing all the time that I have nothing to say--no words stronger than the steel that pressed you into itself; no scripture older or more elegant than the ancient atoms you   have become.   And I have nothing to give either--except this gesture, this thread thrown between your humanity and mine: excerpt from Toni Morrison on 9/11 I realize that today is 9/10 but as soon as 9/1 comes around, even in the midst of Labor Day picnics and back to school excitement, I am thinking of 9/11. Like the day JFK was shot where I was and what I felt is forever etched on my mind. Whenever a clear blue day occurs in September I give thanks and I grieve.   So Toni Morrison helps me with maintaining the genuineness of gesture and intimacy. Tomorrow especially, everyday really, is about that invisible thread whi

I have vivid memories of sitting on the beach at the Delaware shore as a young child and staring for what seemed like hours at the horizon. Gazing really. And wondering what lay beyond the hazy line? I “knew” if I concentrated my gaze would land on England! I “learned” I was gazing at Wonder! Occasionally a ship emerged from that line giving hope, first a dot, then a dash, then... I have been haunted my entire life by what lies beyond, beyond the horizon, beyond the obvious, beyond the perceptible.   Perhaps that is why I feel so comfortable with simply pondering this mystery of beyondness. I confess the nerd in me relates these mysteries to the tangents and limits and asymptotic aspects of calculus...but I diverge?! Beyondness is ironically for me proof of God. God is always more, always here and there and everywhere. Always beyond our knowing yet confirmed somehow in our letting go of information.   For children Buzz Lightyear may plant a seed of infinity and beyond, but

It was a beautiful sunset last evening and somehow when that happens on a Friday evening I think a little more deeply about Sabbath. The wonder envelopes and the relief settles. The beauty of the Sabbath reassures. This Sabbath the Gospel reminds us that when 2 or more gather in Christ’s name God will be in the midst of them. “Gather” has become a word employed differently in these times of social distancing and protest. Gathering oneself is something we often forget. This prayer by Ted Loder reorients me and us to Sabbath “gathering” with and for the One who reconciles all things into divine unity.                Gather me to be with you O God, gather me now to be with you as you are with me. Soothe my tiredness, quiet my fretfulness, curb my aimlessness, relieve my compulsiveness, let me be easy for a moment. O Lord, release me from the fears and guilts which grip me so tightly, from the expectations and opinions which I so tightly grip, that I may be open to recei

  I came across one of my favorite quotes yesterday as I was seeking wisdom about silence and Sabbath, two subjects which intrigue and draw me in. Like a long forgotten tucked away note falling out of an old book, these words called me up short: “The Bible is holiness in words...It is as if God took these Hebrew words and breathed into them of His power, and the words became a live wire charged with His spirit. To this very day they are hyphens between heaven and earth.” Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1955 With so much debate about actual meaning and literalness, with so much pain and oppression caused by lines drawn and power imposed, Heschel offers a living breathing creative option.   What happens at the hyphen? the often forgotten little line which may conjoin instead of separate. If we read onto the hyphens of life both-and instead of either-or, we change everything. Life and hope open. Possibilities prevail. The Bible becomes the living Word, never static, never fixed, ever evo

What I fear most is despair for the world and us: forever less of beauty, silence, open air, gratitude, unbidden happiness, affection, unegotistical desire Wendell Berry (Sabbath Poems) This by the same poet who offers the Peace of Wild Things and “when despair for the world grows in me”, simply and beautifully conveys what is also my greatest fear as well as my greatest hope. Berry wrote upon taking sabbath walks and using the stillness, silence and sabbath qualities of nature and pause to open his heart to the opposite of despair. In developmental terms the opposite to despair is Wisdom. Everyday we negotiate the balance or imbalance of these opposing emotions: despair and wisdom, grief and joy, inspiration and depression.   Berry seems to suggest that naming the fear or negative side of the equation initiates a process of moving toward or opening to the antidote. Beauty, Silence, Gratitude, Unegotistical Desire (just plucking a few) are always present in t

Our awareness of God is a syntax of the silence in which our souls mingle with the divine, in which the ineffable in us communes with the ineffable beyond us. It is the afterglow of years in which soul and sky are silent together, the out-growth of accumulated certainty of the abundant, never-ebbing presence of the divine. All we are called to do is to let the insight be able to listen to the soul's recessed certainty of its being a parenthesis in the immense script of God's eternal speech. Abraham Joshua Heschel Sometimes quotes about silence cause silence...there are not words. So I apologize for these few...Heschel, one of my heroes, wrote a book entitled I Asked For Wonder and the title itself causes me to pause and realize the answer which is always available. Wonder is always there, just as holy silence is.   In this quote from Heschel I am struck by the “syntax of silence” as though silence is a language, a dialogue of souls. Deep calls to deep. Ineffable to

There is a story about an ancient emperor whose extraordinarily beautiful, precious vase was shattered. He asks hundreds of artisans over many years to put the shattered pieces back together the same way to make it beautiful again. There was nothing but failure. Finally, after many attempts he found a Zen monk with an apprentice. The monk agreed to try. He collected the fragments and spent hours and hours in his workshop assembling the remains. Finally a beautiful vase was rendered and the apprentice was in awe. After meeting with approval and admiration from the emperor, the monk and apprentice returned to their cloister where the apprentice one day came upon the pieces of the shattered vase. Alarmed he came to the monk and asked what happened!?   “How did you make a vase as beautiful as the ancient one?” And the Zen master replied “If you do your work from a loving heart, you will always make something beautiful.”   I find this story encouraging and inspirational. What