Category Archives: observation

Daily Sustenance

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Give us this day our daily bread.

What’s the difference between a want and a need? What is necessary for a life well lived and loved? This question is all wrapped up in a request for daily bread – not daily five course dinner in a mansion, but what is necessary to sustain life and a roof over my head.

This is playing out in a larger sense at the moment, as I decide what to bring to a new (and temporary) home and what to leave behind. I want to bring what will make a fruitful, faithful life possible; I want to leave behind what distracts and hampers that life. I don’t want to waste this opportunity to let go of what is unnecessary and what doesn’t really matter.

Lord, help me discern what daily bread is, and what it is not. And help me pack accordingly. Amen

[For more on this, click Noonday Prayer Service above.]

Our

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Officiant and People: Our Father, who art in heaven

If you look through the New Testament, the word saints is only in its plural form – no singular saints, just a collective. This is different from the honorific Saint that is bestowed on a select few whose very human essence scattered the love of God like a prism flings light. Christianity, like its mother Judaism, is a communal affair rather than a singular pursuit.

The collective shows up again in the prayer Jesus left with us. Our father, not my father or your father. God isn’t the personal property of a single person, even one praying this prayer in solitude. God gives life to everyone, and everyone is claimed as a child of God’s love.

Our means I can’t exclude those I’d prefer to exclude, and they cannot exclude me. We are in this life together. We come before God together, even when we don’t, can’t, or won’t admit it.

What a powerful reminder, in the middle of whatever activities the day brings, that I am not alone – unique, beloved, but never alone.

That goes for you, too.

[For more on the Noonday Prayer service, click above.]

Have mercy

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Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Kyrie Eleison is the Greek form of this prayer for mercy. It’s often sung, which adds weight to the request. It’s a three-fer, guaranteeing that it can’t be skipped over as easily as a single plea might.

Have mercy, dear God, for my inability to love you, myself, or anyone else as well as I could or should. Think kindly of me when I don’t offer kind thoughts to others. Help me in my weakness and in the limits my humanity brings.

Have mercy as I pray. Have mercy when I cannot or choose not to pray. Grant that I may have mercy on others because you have so freely and often granted yours to me.

Amen.

It Could Have Been Otherwise

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People: Thanks be to God.

[An Order of Service for Noonday, BCP, p. 105]

For the first time in almost exactly twenty years, cardboard boxes are forming a wall inside the walls of my home. My husband and I are making lists of things to bring, things to leave, tasks that must be done before moving day, and tasks that must be done upon arrival at the town that will become our home. We are leaving many friends and two sons behind us, setting out on our own for the first time in almost a quarter century. For whatever reason, it’s time to leave the familiar and loved to embrace the unfamiliar and soon-to-be-loved.

It’s a time for saying goodbye, for saying thank you to so many people for being a part of our lives these past two decades. It’s time to tidy up the work we’ve done here, preparing as best we can for the ones who will bring their own gifts and ideas when we are gone. I’ll miss the rhythm of my daily life here, but it’s someone else’s turn – while no one can be replaced, someone else can take on the work and move things forward.

Thanks be to God for that.

Thanks be to God for my time in this very particular place with these particular people. Thanks be to God for the challenges and the joys native to this time and place. It was in this place, in this time, that God walked with me through twenty years of life. It could have been otherwise, had my husband and I made different decisions. But it wasn’t, because we made the decisions we made and lived our lives within the space they created.

Thanks be to God for everyone who welcomed us to this place, who loved our sons as they grew, who prayed with us and for us, for whom we have prayed. What a sacred privilege we’ve been given.

It could have been otherwise, had we made different decisions – and such an otherwise would have brought its own uniqueness. It could have been otherwise, but I’m glad it wasn’t.

Thanks be to God.

It’s Always Pouring

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The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. Romans 5:5

It’s been a summer of drought. High humidity and temperatures, but not a drop of water to bring this parched land life-giving relief. Many afternoons, the air has been so saturated that it seemed impossible that the rain wouldn’t come down. But with a couple of welcome exceptions, the life-giving raindrops never made it to the ground.

Spiritual droughts have come to my inner landscape more than once, when my spirit was straw more than a green and growing vine. At such times, I choked on these words because they felt something like an aspiration more than a statement of the obvious and true. When I most needed to pray, when quieting my inner voices to be in God’s presence was most necessary – that’s when I was least able to do either. I turned away from the very sources that offered my soul refreshment and life. When desert times came, I chose to remain in that dry place when I could have moved into a greener, life-giving place.

But true these words remain. God pours love into us, and remains with us in the Spirit. When my own small reservoir of love is inadequate, I am filled again and again from the infinite sea of God’s own love. If I fully accept these words as truth, I could offer love to every living thing and never worry about running out.

Psalmlight

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Your word is a lantern unto my feet, and a light upon my path.

I have sworn and am determined to keep your righteous judgments.

I am deeply troubled; preserve my life, O Lord, according to your word.

Accept, O Lord, the willing tribute of my lips, and teach me your judgments.

My life is always in my hand, yet I do not forget your law.

The wicked have set a trap for me, but I have not strayed from your commandments.

Your decrees are my inheritance for ever; truly, they are the joy of my heart.

I have applied my heart to fulfill your statutes for ever and to the end.

Psalm 119, BCP

When the seminary library was doubled in size by a new addition, many of the existing sidewalks were removed or rerouted to connect the new indoor spaces to the outer campus. Most of the sidewalk lights were taken out during construction, so new lighting was needed for old and new walkways. Unfortunately, the tall bright lights that were originally proposed couldn’t be installed – a town light ordinance banned bright lights in order to preserve its historic charm, even at the expense of safety. The seminary had no choice but to comply. Still wanting enough lighting to keep the paths illuminated, designers went in a new direction: footlights. Two feet off the ground, with caps to keep the light directed downward, the new fixtures illuminated the paths without adding light to the surrounding airspace. The town was happy, and everyone could see where to direct their feet even in the darkest of nights.

I think of those paths when I read this psalm. Scripture doesn’t turn the darkness into daylight – my own limitations keep me blind to much of reality. But scripture offers enough illumination for me to keep my feet on the right path. I may not be able to see where the path is going to take me, but I trust that it leads to God, making my life a holy walk.

Alleluia

It comes after the Glory To‘s, and the So Be It/Make It So/Amen that is our affirmation that such glory is the right response to God’s graciousness and eternal presence.

But nothing in those words says we have to be happy about any of this. Nothing says giving God glory is a joy, an honor, a privilege, and something we love. The wonder and elation that we are blessed to offer God the glory is summed up in a word that is hard to define exactly, but is almost universally understood:

Alleluia

Perhaps the reason we don’t say it during Lent is to remind us that we can choose a joy-filled or a joyless life. It’s our call.

And

Officiant and People

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen. [Book of Common Prayer, p. 103]

And is usually a filler or a connecting word. When we are at a loss for words, trying to remember the seventh item on our never-written-down to-do list, or still in the process of figuring out exactly how many persons/places/things are involved, and leaves the end open. And means it isn’t quite nailed down, not quite finished yet.

And means there’s more to the story: not just an officiant, because no one worships God in solitude – even when alone, there’s the communion of saints that surrounds us all through space and time. And means God’s creative, loving presence wasn’t just a past reality: now and for all the nows to come, God will continue to hold us all in love.

And means that God comes to us in multiple forms, even while always being God: it means we recognize that our language is too small to offer more than a passing glimpse of God, even with a trinitarian understanding.

And means there will always be more to life than we can experience or grasp. If we kept this in mind every time we used or heard this most common of words, I doubt we’d be anything but amazed. And grateful.

Center

Where is the center of the sea? Why don’t the waves break there?

Donde esta el centro del mar? Por que no van allí las olas?

[Pablo Neruda (Sara Lisa Paulson, trans), Paloma Valdivia, illustrator; Book of Questions; New York: Enchanted Lion Books, 2022]

Ocean currents are amazing and mysterious. Surface movement in any direction is balanced out with deep currents going in the opposite direction – and all kinds of movement happens between. Since waves break upon shores, could there be a location where the deep currents are breaking – unseen by our human eyes, at depths beyond our reach?

In Orthodox theology, one of the images for God’s love and creative power is a procession; love and life begin in the Creator, flow through the Spirit and Christ, and out to the farthest reaches of creation. All things receive life and love from their center in God, like waves breaking on the shores of our very being.

If I stick with the wave metaphor, could it be that there is a deep, unseen current that returns even my tiniest offerings of love to the source of all things?

  • On the water