Category Archives: Meditation

Holy Holy Holy

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Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,

Heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is the one (he) who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest.

 

If it wasn’t followed by heaven and earth are full of your glory, I might think the power and might of God was more destructive than constructive. Lots of time, power and might refer to military strength or physical abilities that can overcome adversaries. But the rest of the sentence makes me rethink this reading. Heaven and earth are full of your glory reminds me of God’s creative act – the heavens and the earth were created when God spoke them into life. Looking into space or looking out the window, heaven and earth are so complex, so alive, that I’m filled with wonder for this creation and praise for its creator. Hosanna in the highest is just another way to say WOW.

This song doesn’t give the name of the one who comes in the name of the Lord. It could be Jesus, certainly, but it might mean another. I think anyone and everyone who comes to this broken, beautiful world and sees in it the hand of God is indeed blessed – to wake every day in a sacred creation, surrounded and embraced by God’s living world is to live a blessed life. To see in anyone and everyone a child of God, perhaps even when gazing into a mirror, is to live in joy. For this, Hosanna in the highest is just another way to say WOW.

(Wondering Where the Lions Are, Jimmy Buffet, originally by Bruce Cockburn)

underleaves

 

In Company

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And therefore we praise you, joining with the heavenly chorus, with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and with all those in every generation who have looked to you in hope, to proclaim with them your glory, in their unending hymn:

Solo singing is very different from choral singing. The musicians take cues from solo singers, bending their talents to fit the style of whoever happens to be singing. If a soloist loses the melody or forgets the lyrics, there isn’t much anyone else can do to help. Responsibility and credit rest on just the one singer.

Choral singing is something else altogether. Every singer bends his or her voice to fit with the other voices. Singers listen to each other to keep a balance between parts and to honor the piece of music being sung. As a group, singers can hold notes much longer than any solo artist – singers just stagger their breathing. There’s a fullness in the sound of choral singing that cannot be duplicated with single voice, and the many voices together create a depth of sound quite different from even the most talented single voice. Low voices and high voices sing together, and no one person has to be able to do it all.

I think prayer is as much like choral singing as it is a solo act. It may seem like we each pray alone, separated from all others. But there’s a whole host of faithful through time and place who pray with us. We may not be able to see them, but the rest of the heavenly choir is always with us. All those who have ever prayed, all those who pray now, and all those who will pray in the coming years belong to the same choir. My strength becomes theirs, their strength becomes mine. Without this heavenly chorus, would I have the strength to pray?

Healing Hurts

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By his blood, he reconciled us. By his wounds, we are healed.

It’s understandable, avoiding the people who’ve hurt us. Who wants to spend time with the ones who teased us, called us names, bruised our egos and perhaps our bodies? It’s why family and high school reunions are about staying disconnected from those who hurt us almost as much as they are about reconnecting with those who love us. Some of us are haunted by the hurts we’ve suffered over the years and have no interest in an encore performance.

But what about the ones we’ve hurt? More specifically, what about the ones I’ve hurt? Facing them is looking in the mirror and seeing my own pettiness and aggression. It’ not a pleasant experience and it takes a great deal of strength to do it willingly. I’d much rather see my good deeds and intentions without the darker aspects that are visible in my true reflection. If I don’t see the harm I’ve done, I can pretend there are no consequences and no reparations necessary. It’s a negative riff on the “ignorance is bliss” theme.

But avoiding and denying the damage I’ve done is a snare for my soul. I’m trapped, repeating the same hurtful mistakes over and over. Only by facing the hurt and the harm, only by admitting my part in it can release me. If I learn the painful lesson that I have done harm, I can choose another action in the future.

I think that’s why the cross is such a powerful truth: I have harmed someone and avoided seeing my own faults. When I see the cross, I can choose another way. But it’s more than that. When I see the Jesus who suffered, I see in him forgiveness I don’t deserve. It’s not just a lesson learned and a pattern broken, its the love of God gazing at me with compassion in his eyes.

Straying from the Path

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Again and again, you called us to return. Through prophets and sages you revealed your righteous Law. And in the fullness of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace.

 On the Heifer farm in Rutland, Massachusetts, I stood outside the barn with my arms spread wide, part of a human channel leading to the grassy meadow. Thirty of us formed the path to get the goats from barn to grassy meadow in the morning and meadow to sheltering barn in the evening. But there were always a good number of goats who darted off toward the rocks or pig barn. A few even headed for the visitor center, apparently seeing something on the steps or dirt driveway that looked better than a meadow full of grass to eat or a comfortable spot in the barn. Young and old, they strayed off the path that led to food and shelter; young and old, they ran toward things that could hurt them. But they weren’t left wandering into the unknown: they were gently nudged, sometimes even carried, back to green meadows and the rest of the herd.

People standing together, forming a path toward what feeds the soul and shelters the spirit – I think it’s a wonderful image for understanding the prophets and saints we find in scripture, tradition, and walking the earth with us. They give us direction and guidance, a path for God’s flock to walk. When we stray, they gently nudge us back home.

I am grateful.

[For full prayer, click Prayer C above.]

sagebush

United or Separate?

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From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another.

Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.

We begin as an egg and sperm, sourced from two different people. We are born unfinished and dependent, requiring others to love us and teach us how to be human. This brings the gift of memory, allowing us to learn when we do things the right way and when we don’t. This brings the gift of reason – something that must be fostered over many years, something that can be damaged or encouraged. This brings the gift of skill, the talent and ability to build and change the world in countless ways.

What happens when we forget that we cannot be who we are without others – and that others cannot be who they are without us? What happens when we decide that our survival and our gain is about getting rid of others rather than acknowledging that we are dependent on others? What happens when we make ourselves rulers of creation without remembering that a loving God made us? What happens when we forget that we are not self-created?

When we turn against others, thinking it will be to our advantage in some way, we damage ourselves as well as others in the process. Who we are will always be tied to everyone else. When we remember that we began in God’s embrace, just as all things did, we just might pause long enough to see in the face of another our own lives. We begin biologically in others, we grow with others, and we die into the great community of all living things. Returned to God, forgiven and embraced.

Have mercy on us, Lord. Help us remember our common creation, use our reason to honor and love others, and our skill to build a world where every living thing is treated as your precious child. We can’t do it without you. Amen.

Island Living

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At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.

By your will they were created and have their being.

It’s the cosmic view at the beginning, going smaller as the sentence progresses: every single thing in this created universe shrinks down to our off-the-beaten-path planet. This cosmic expanse keeps expanding, with everything around us moving out and away from the point where it all started. It’s impossible for us to see such movement  – the scale is beyond our perception, and we are in the thick of it. Some things are just too big to see, and our universe as a whole is one of them.

In some ways, our beloved earth is very much an island, a small dot in this vast expanse of interstellar space. It is a small home, taking up such a little piece of the galaxy that it hardly bears mentioning. But for us, for me and every other living being, it seems almost endlessly large. Perhaps this is why loneliness is something many of us experience- a vague sense of being unimportant and unnoticeable to the larger universe.

But our blue planet island isn’t really alone, and it isn’t disconnected from this immense universe. For the scientifically minded, we are connected to everything by gravity and strong and weak forces. For the poetically inclined, our common big bang origin makes us all kin. For the seekers of God, it’s our creator that binds all things together.

Years ago, Margaret Wise Brown wrote a lovely children’s book – The Little Island. A kitten visits a small island off the coast of Maine, separated from the main land by miles of ocean. But a fish tells him that at its roots, the island is part of the whole – not disconnected or alone at all, but a tiny part of this big world. Although he cannot see the connection, the kitten believes this wonderful truth.

I can’t see how my island home, my planet, is connected to everything deep down. But I am kitten enough to believe this truth, even if I can’t see it.

And it was good to be a little Island. A part of the world and a world of its own all surrounded by the bright blue sea. [Margaret Wise Brown, The Little Island, New York: Dell Dragonfly Books, 1973, last line. Originally published in 1946 by Doubleday & Company, inc]

Praiseworthy

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God of all power, Ruler of the Universe, you are worthy of glory and praise.

Glory to you for ever and ever.

I got an email from the town manager’s office yesterday. It was a reminder for submitting an annual report, and it came with an attachment to answer any questions that might come up. Since this was the first I’d ever heard of an annual report, and I had many questions, I opened the attachment right away. It wasn’t what I expected, and it wasn’t helpful. There were very specific directions for the form the report should take, along with precise directions on the acceptable format for tables and charts. There wasn’t a single mention of what the report should contain – no list of questions to answer, no sample of a report from a previous year, and no “for more help, contact ____” to find them. My first thought: all form and no content makes for a dull report and a poorly managed town.

But today’s prayer words are all about content: Who God is, what God has created, and who we are in the whole thing. We may say the same form of this prayer week in and week out – a familiar box for a gift that it cannot fully contain. No matter who prays the words, no matter where, no matter when, who God is will always be bigger than the words. All powerful, universe ruling, praiseworthy and glorious – there aren’t enough adjectives and there aren’t enough days in a lifetime to describe such a loving God. Such words are content in good form, but never fully contained.

Lord of the Universe, may my life be more than empty form. May the form my life takes be a vessel of your love. Amen.

 

[For complete prayer, click “Prayer C” above]

About Face

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Then, facing the table, the Celebrant proceeds

Rubrics – the little italicized lines that let everyone know what to do during the worship service. There aren’t many of them, but this is an important one. The woman or man leading the service has been facing the congregation – one part of the give and take, exhortation and response. Now she or he turns around, facing the same direction as everyone else. The point of this isn’t to show the back side of whatever robe is being worn. Something else entirely is going on, and it’s something we overlook or forget to our own diminishment.

The men and women who choose ordination, who choose to pray for and with any and all who enter the church (and travel to pray with and for those who don’t), hold a unique position among their congregants. Their vocations and education may set them apart to serve others in the name of Jesus, and they bear the responsibility of leadership. But when it comes to directing their hearts, minds, bodies, and souls to the Lord who made them, they are the same as everyone else. No higher, no lower, not facing another direction. This about face is a weekly reminder to clergy and congregation alike that everyone stands before God on equal footing.

Everyone comes before God a beloved child – no exceptions and no exclusions.

Word Change

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Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give (him/God/our) thanks and praise.

What we say depends on the church we are in. Some churches stick with the original him – either for reasons of tradition or for the comfort of the worshipers.

In other churches, the original him has been altered to a gender neutral God. God isn’t male or female, or God is both male and female, so using a proper noun instead of a gendered pronoun is one way of reflecting this truth. Another might be to alternate between saying him and her.

In still other congregations, the direct object of our thanks and praise disappears, replaced by an our to describe the thanks and praise. A genderless plural adjective reflects the worshipers; God as the object of our thanks and praise is implied from the sentence above.

The word change is important, but I don’t think it’s the heart of the exchange. For me, it’s the call to thank God and praise God every minute, every day, every week. There are no exceptions. It is right to thank God and praise God, regardless of our particular circumstances on any given day.

There’s a theological idea that says humanity’s special place in creation has nothing to do with our geographical or temporal location in the last few seconds of a billions of years old creation process. As self conscious and articulate creatures, it is our responsibility and privilege to be the universe’s self-awareness. We are the universe knowing itself as a beloved creation. There is no other response to this self-knowledge than humility; there is no other response to the God who created everything than praise and thanks.

For such a truth, perhaps It is right to give God our thanks and praise would be best…

Uplifting

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Lift up your hearts.

We lift them to the Lord.

At any graduation, baptism, sporting event, or concert you are likely to see them: parents lifting their children over their heads or onto their shoulders. Without a higher perch, most children would see only a collection of legs, wallets, belts, and shoes. There’s no way for them to see over the crowds without a willing, caring adult giving them a lift. The littlest and youngest of us would never see the diplomas handed out, the singer or actor, winning shot or the newly baptized baby without moving to a higher location.

I think the same is true with prayers and worship. If someone doesn’t remind me to lift up my heart, I doubt I’d ever see past the forest of liturgical words to catch sight of Jesus.