Advent4: Hope for the Ravaged

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

    because the Lord has anointed me;*

Can a baby-in-waiting be anointed?  Can greatness reside in a mother’s belly?  Where do babies come from?  The imaginations of their parents?  Or, rather, the imagination of God?  

he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,

    to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

    and release to the prisoners;

When Dr. King read Isaiah, he saw hope for the oppressor as well as the oppressed.  I wonder, do I?  Do I see hope for those who seem to have it all?  For the bad actor among us, within me?  And what of the prisoners who so richly deserve their captivity?  Are they released?  Is there liberty for them?  I do so surely hope, for in their captivity is mine; in their release is my liberty.

 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

    and the day of vengeance of our God;

    to comfort all who mourn;

 to provide for those who mourn in Zion—

    to give them a garland instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

    the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

The year of the Lord’s favor . . . oh, Lord, for but a day, an hour, a moment, resting in your favor, surely a king would render up a kingdom . . . surely we would render up all else . . . surely we would . . . wouldn’t we?  And yet I am still moved to ask where joy, where hope in the day of your vengeance?  It is not a prayer I, not oppressed, not captive, can pray, for who on the receiving end of your vengeance would seek it?  Not I.  Nay – my gladness must reside in your mercy, your tender forgiving side – there does my hope reside, for I have no right to claim your vengeance, I on the side of the oppressive ones, can find no comfort there.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

    the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

Oh to be of your garden, to stand fast as a tree planted by you, to point heavenward with my arms as my call – what wondrousness is this, the privilege of proclaiming your glory with my life – would that it were so.

 They shall build up the ancient ruins,

    they shall raise up the former devastations;

they shall repair the ruined cities,

    the devastations of many generations.

Here, then, the promise, the crop yield, the fruit plucked . . . glorying you do the weak ones, the captive ones, the oppressed ones, come into their own, these rebuilders of cities, these redeemers of the ravaged – themselves formerly the ravaged ones . . . and ruined cities and generations worth of devastating destruction will be not erased but repaired . . . 

and Chernobyl will be repeopled . . . and Zaporozhiya will be no threat . . . and Nagasaki and Hiroshima will flourish . . . and Dresden and London, Pompeii and Antigua, Lisbon and San Francisco, Baghdad and Berlin, Ferguson and Ninevah testify to the truth of your promise and former devastations and ancient ruins will resurrect

and the challenge will be, the challenge is, that we, your people, your creation, see your power in the works of our hands as well as yours . . . that we, your people, your creation, strive towards raising up, not tearing down . . . that we, your people, your creation, dare to dream your cities in the beauty of the nights of our own destruction. . . and hope.

Luke 4.16-21

________________

*Isaiah 61.1-4

To Be Confronted

To be confronted 
to have my failures named
to be blamed and shamed

it is a thing noble, perhaps,
in intent, but nonetheless is felt the sting

and hope and love and kindness, just
a cup, just a sip, the confrontation
does not bring in any way that
can be seen, measured, grabbed hold of

yet in the aftermath
an ash-like arisen thing
comes forth – not brave
it is small, this thing
that looks like it just
might become
hope
kindness
love

and somewhere amidst
the afterbirth of this
new rising, there does
reside a tiny mustard-seed
of a kernel of something
that just might be
the dawning of
the new day possibility of
the resplendent chance of

full thanks
and
recognition
and
acknowledgment
and
honor
and 
indebtedness
and 
grace



_______________
A lectio reading of Matthew 18.15-20, taking the position of the one confronted, the sinner in need of making recompense, all I could feel was the sting, the wounding, of the confrontation, which prompted this reflection on what just might come after, if I am very open, very willing and very lucky.

What Does Peace Look Like?

Like two enemies or ones who should be
sitting on the porch and talking about
things ordinary and extraordinary
finding understanding and even camaraderie

Like misunderstandings, ship-in-the-night
mishaps being worked out among friends
or those who might become friends simply
because they both decide trust is possible

Like hands held across the generations
as each looks at the other with fondness
and desire – desire to know and see and
learn just what makes this mysterious
other tick and tock its way through life

Like joy in the success of the other
with no thought or idea that what
is theirs should be mine or mine
theirs and happiness at the just
because of it all bursts forth

Like streets quiet not because of
guns and tear gas and batons and
threats or even exhaustion but
because one man dared to cross
the imaginary line and walk alongside

Like a family rent with grief made
public given the space and time to
merely grieve without incessant
chatter from those not in the know
about what should have or could
have or must have been

Like people on a mountaintop
starved and fear-ridden looking
skyward to find even the possibility
of rescue and believing once
again in hope, hoping once again
in normalcy and possibilities and life

Like big people with big guns
coming to their proverbial senses
and pulling back from the madness
we too small to resist would follow
them into not knowing what else
to do

Like ancient squabblers stopping
the incessant chant mine, mine, mine
and seeing in the other that there
is room even in a small land for
all and more when ‘mine’ and
‘not yours’ are left behind for
the dream that peace is possible

The Perfection of Moments

A man – young and old at once

walks side by side with his wee girl

she coming barely to his knees

raindrops on the grass sparkling their walk

she stops to park herself along the low rail

of the fence and the companionableness

of them is something you want to reach

out and touch with your hand, holding back

lest you burst the bubble of a moment of a memory

father and child lie side by side on the couch

she with that sprawl of innocence the young

carry with them in to their sleep making our

hearts break with the sheer goodness of them

the smell and the shape and the touch and the

breath of them taking our breath, our shape,

our touch in their wake and making us and

our problems petty and small in the presence

of such a big thing in such a small package –

and he, well he just lays there still in his love

present in the moment of the grace of her

and I know it will not last but in this moment

she . . . he . . . they . . . are perfect and to behold

this . . . this beauty . . . this perfect moment

is to be blessed beyond measure and maybe it’s

okay that it will not last and yet tears crowd

my eyes for I know that it is not okay 

may yet still be but it is not and why is this

perfect perfection not hers forever?  I so

want to know

***

and I in inner dialogue chastize self for its

insistence on seeing the perfection, the beauty,

knowing and well knowing all the else that 

lies around it like the detritus of what could have been

but why should I not see thus?  for is this not how 

God sees?  is this not how God knows?  

what is can be – we know this and yet fail

fail to cling 

fail to believe

and in our failing

the possibilities that perfect moment presents

fail to imagine what it – life – this – could be

so easily forgetting how it is

in the moments

the perfect moments

and there live my tears

in our forgetting

of what God sees

and sees through

Hope Unnecessary

Hope is necessary, but is not a sufficient starting point . . . worship and praise are our necessary starting point, reorienting us to God. – Jonathan Ytterock

As the young man preaches his ordination sermon before a veritable bevy of ministers and elders, I am stuck on and struck by his words about hope and its place within our worship and our lives.

Hope – that thing ineffable that the writer of Hebrews calls the object of our faith.

Well, if faith is the evidence of things not seen, perhaps hope is the evidence of things seen – seen and found wanting.

And so it was that in early 2006, listening to the stories of Iraqis fled to Amman, Jordan, juxtaposed with reports from home that I wrote:

My young woman friend’s engagement party was scheduled and rescheduled three times because of security concerns, each proposed location deemed unsafe.  Finally, the party was had at home.  Unfortunately, her family live near a police station and the morning of the party, there was a car bomb at the station.  In addition to the carnage there, all the windows were blown out of their apartment.  Tired of rescheduling, they elected to fix the glass and have the party anyway.  About half the guests stayed away.  Yet, when she remembers her engagement, she smiles.  Even the violence of the day did not drive her from Baghdad.

But later, her step-brother was kidnapped and beaten.  He was ultimately returned, after a large ransom was paid.  Her father initially tried to haggle over the original ransom demand (a common practice); but the kidnappers reacted by threatening to kill his wife and daughter.  The family then fled to Amman.  Her husband continues to work in Iraq, but manages to come to Amman to visit her as often as he can.  She tells us this matter-of-factly and even with some humor, especially about the engagement party.  But there is an ever-present sadness in her eyes.

As I listen to this beautiful, bright young woman tell about her life and marriage, I am reminded that President Bush or someone in his administration recently remarked that one of the signs of improvement in Iraq is the fact that people continue to get married, that marriage is a sign of hope; therefore, things must be getting better in Iraq.
I remember and I am furious at the facile statement.  Mr. Bush is a baby boomer himself; does he really not know what that means?  Does he really forget that his own creation was born in a time dominated by fear?  Can he really not know that our generation’s existence owes as much to desperation as to hope?  Does he really not understand that hope itself is about a wish for something not now true?  That hope does not reflect an existing improved reality, but rather the lack of one?

Hope is for people who need, not people who have.

Ah for the day of dreams fulfilled . . . peace found . . . hope unnecessary . . .

Disappearing the Dead

During my trip with CPT to Colombia in the summer of 2005, we hear about the displaced and the disappeared.  One of the things I notice time and again in lands torn apart by the violence of war is the absence of the men, especially the young ones.  In my prayer journal, I wrote at the time about that absence . . .

Where are all the men?  Dear God, where are all the men?  And what kind of a world have we made when a woman’s prayer of most hope is “let me die first”?  O God, forgive.

Esperanza?  Where is esperanza?  Where is hope?  Donde esta?

Fathers and brothers and husbands and sons killed and killed and killed until there are no more men and women are left to look for and bury their bones.  In this land of widows and orphans, men are literally an endangered species.

With a violent death, is there always frozen a moment, the last ordinary moment, the moment before?  Is it the moment you imagine could change it all if only it were changed?  Left instead of right?  Or is it only the frozen, beautiful moment of before?  The moment just before the moment when ordinary time ends?

Seven years later she still mourns and does not forget that no priest was permitted, no proper words allowed to be spoken, when her murdered husband was buried.  Cut off, under threat herself, she notices the absence; it is a part of the litany of her suffering, their abuse.

They even disappear the dead here.

Christmas Day

Smoke from my neighbors’ chimney sweeps horizontally across my window view, barely visible through the naked forsythia branches that all seasons filter my view of the world.  Here, then gone as perfidious wind changes direction merely because it can (I know there’s science and wind does not will, but grant me the imagining), and all I am left with are bare branches, bereft of the little birds that people their limbs most days in this time of winter.

It is Christmas.  Blessed Christmas.

So what if we do not know the exact birthday date?  So what if it’s a made up day?  So what if pagans had the day first?  It is a remembering . . . living . . . breathing . . . laughing . . . loving . . . contemplative . . . peering-through-branches kind of day worth keeping.

Why do I, born to modernity living into post-everything, cling to these old ways and observe these old days?

Because even my atheist father found joy in Christmas. . . because every Christmas carries with it the remembrance of people and places and times past as well as the promise of times yet to be, whether I inhabit them or not – no matter.

Because every baby carries promise and possibility.

Because I have caught around-the-corner glimpses of the peaceable kingdom and it is glorious.

Because that’s what I was made for.

That’s why I hold fast to Christmas.

How about you?

Cantos Musing Muse ’Mused

Life is my canto
this but a pause
in a moment
of a life as lived
too short to count
as canto, I find
I can’t surrender
the cant and it
doth make me smile

***

It is the moment-upon us
Christmas coming Advent
waiting almost over now
time, this Eve of Christ’s
Mass – body brought
of course it will be broken
it is the way of bodies
this deconstruction of the
certain thing, the finite thing –
it will not – for it cannot – last

***

Mary moves
          from girlhood to womanhood
          from naivete to wisdom
          from mother of a boy to mother of the world

Where, oh where, are the paintings of dancing Mary?

***

Image for depression – the sink hole –
we fill and fill and fill and is never,
because it cannot be, enough to fill
the hole, for the hole is endless . . .
what to do with that?  Is it really endless
or does it just seem so?  Does it matter
when we’re feeling, living in, the hole?
I suspect not.  But what to do?
I wish I knew
for there are many – too many –
so filled with sadness there seems
no room – like Motel 6 already
booked to the brim – for anything
else and the sadness of the sad
breaks my heart if not me

***

The depression of not having enough is one thing
of (the fear of) not being enough is quite another

***

Those living in the time of fulfillment
have no need of hope,
they are living the thing hoped for
Hope is for the needful
we think here on earthscape
it good to be full
but full of need?
Aren’t we breathing all
all in need of a next breath?
Who will provide that?
Hope

***

It is not cowardly to die,
but it is incredibly brave to live

***

Messiahs do not come in good times
for we have no need of saving
when things go well

***

Children are our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow . . .
and so it is the fervent prayer, spoken or unspoken . . .
known or unknown . . . of every parent of every child . . .
please, please, please, let my child outlive me . . .
born to die, please do not make me bear witness . . .

***

These, then, are the thoughts of an old woman
on a particular day of advent on a particular year
on a particular planet . . . oh, how lucky,
how blessed, are we, to bear witness to their birth,
these children of the world we abuse so easily . . .
how cursed are we that they too will die. . .
and in the meantime, blessed or cursed . . .
therein is the pilgrimage sometimes of our own making. . .
sometimes not . . . and its name is joy.

Pilgrimaging Towards Hope

To pilgrimage:  to travel with a particular God-destination in mind, always moving forward towards that end place, the journey itself an act of devotion.

The first Christians were ‘followers’, as in followers of The Way.  Jesus reminds them and us that their hope is not to be in the knowing of the details; their hope and ours lies in the certainty of a destination they and we cannot see which comes at a time they and we cannot know.

When the arrival happens is of no matter at all.  That it will happen is everything.  So Jesus’ instructions are simple and clear: be ready.  Always.  Live every day as if the end of the journey were today, for the day you meet your Lord is always today.  As Meister Eckhart said in the 13th century, Between us and God, there is no between.

Life is our pilgrim journey, the gracious spaciousness of God where we devote ourselves to worship and devotion – the giving of our whole effort towards following in God’s ways.

Yet there is knowing even in the not knowing.  That is faith – the hope of things not seen, the reliance upon the Not Known.  Out of this hope-living pilgrimaging comes a gladness which has as its center the house of the Lord – the place where God dwells.  For the Israelites in Jesus’ time and before, that place was the temple in Jerusalem.  For us, that place is wherever we are, for the coming promise of Jesus is that God will not only live and dwell among us, but will and does live and dwell within us.

And so it is that we walk, each and every moment of each and every day, towards a destination, the destination of our lives.  We were made a walking, moving people . . . a pilgrimaging people . . . sure of our destination but having absolutely no idea how long it will take or what it’ll be like along the way . . . but always knowing we move, together and apart, towards the God who has been walking alongside us the entire time . . .

Like the people of Jesus’ own time, we’re tempted to think of ourselves as passengers, as along for the ride, crying from the back seat, are we there yet?  

But we are not passengers along for the ride . . . we are sojourners – travelers . . . pilgrims with a purpose, carrying nothing but the hope given us in what awaits . . .

It’s the hope of parents awaiting the birth of their child . . . the anticipation of seeing what has been prayed for for so long . . . the preparing that happens in the waiting . . . that so invites us into the re-celebration of Jesus’ own arrival on earth as a baby in a manger pointing always towards the peaceable kingdom of God’s holy mountain where all shall live in the geography of spaciousness and peace . . . the spaciousness that knows no separation . . . the peace that holds no fear of conflict . . . the hope that holds no bounds.

My Hope for You

This reprise from November of 2011, My hope for you, contains my hopes for us all at the time.

Today, what would I add?

My hope for you . . .

that you believe in possibilities . . .

imagine a future of promise . . .

abandon despair . . .

leave the pain of a moment in that moment . . .

dance in step with the Dancer of the Universe . . .

believe in peace, for without your belief, it will not be . . . 

What Shall I Pray?

As people jump in with wildly differing points of view
claiming their own peculiar to be universal and universally
true

when it comes to things like the cessation of wars
when reason upon reason is put forth why it cannot be
thus, for it has always been so

when the lack of trustworthiness of the other becomes
the shaper of our character (for our actions are our character,
are they not?)

when we have somehow decided to write the script in advance
declaring an end to peace for war is, can be, the only way,
in my despair,

O Lord, what shall I pray?

Wisdom is the word that comes to me
but it is not enough – for we no longer
recognize Wisdom when she comes to
town as we substitute all sorts of sound
and fury signifying something far more
insidious, more dangerous, than Shakespeare’s
nothing

Humility runs close second – Lord let us
be humble in our pursuit of a better way
freed to recognize and receive the You
that is now and always The Better Way
but no – humility will not do, for in the
very act of declaring it found does it
disappear

I am right close to despair here, Lord.
Help.  Give me a word.
And maybe there it begins – give me . . .
a . . . word . . . just one . . . please . . .

And there it is . . . the word waiting
perhaps from before the beginning of
things . . . and it is . . . hope

In hope am I freed from judging,
condemning anger that so resembles
the despair and condemnation and
anger of those with whom I am so
angry . . . Lord, You are so much
the God of Irony I can scarce forego
the smile of recognition that surely
plays about You . . .

Hope . . . it is hope we seek (or must)
even in our not knowing . . . hope for
the lack of which our souls do starve

Babies bring hope like noone and
nothing else – isn’t it fitting, this
Advent exercise we followers of
The Way do do?

Ah Lord, irony again – a prayer
answered before uttered

and there was
and there is
and there will be

hope

Always There

On retreat, I study from outside in the darkness of a cold fall night the backlit by effect wooden carved plaque of the well-known scene – Jesus and his followers.

It too is night, although you wouldn’t know it from the carving.

It is the last night.  It’s supper time.

And there he is – unknown among the 12 – he is always there – Judas.

He is always there.

As I spy inward through the glass, that is the thought that lingers.

Judas is always there.

It is a present-tense thing, isn’t it?

Whenever we gather, there is the reminder of the perpetual presence of the saints, the communion that exceeds time and space and bids all enter, bids all welcome.

If he is always there, then is he not always here?

And if he is, is that not a sign of enormous hope?

I think so.

The God of the present tense stands, sits, reclines, into all our presents and bids us welcome and we are always there – there, at the beckoning place – present in The Presence.

It argues, I think, for grace possibilities beyond my imagining.

And I am awed.

He is always there.

Hands Aloft

One of the coolest parts of my pastor job is blessing – the language and posture of conveying God’s cherishing . . . bestowing . . . graceful and grace-full . . . God-Word of love and well-being.

Celebrating their wedding anniversary, I am reminded of my step-daughter’s wedding day, she and her husband-to-be-who-now-is side by side, facing each other with the setting sun behind – and there, in one photo, am I, lodged between sun and couple, hands uplifted and curved into the embrace that is blessing.

In that picture-captured moment lie all the best hopes and dreams we who surrounded them had and have for them.

I hope I remembered that day to bless them with the ability to fly. . . to soar above the every day now and again . . . to hold tightly and loosely all at once . . . to be able to see beyond the crisis or doldrums of the next moment into an infinity of love and grace . . . to know that together they can achieve heights neither could without the other . . .

Blessing.

Hope for the Future

It's easy to be optimistic about the future when sitting poolside on a summer's day in a land of peace and plenty.  It is easy then, or at least easier.  But maybe, just maybe, easy isn't always wrong.  Or Pollyanna.  Or simplistic.  Or naive. 

So I offer the wisdom and hope gathered pool side on a summer's day. . .

The changes wrought by technology (and they are many) combined with a new generation bring about the possibility of the elimination of the nation state as we know it and the birth of something entirely new, not before possible -- not globalization -- at least as we now use the term -- but something I don't even know how to name -- a sort of shifting tribalism.

I observe that folks my children's age move easily (at least more easily than I have and do) from group to group -- they're still tribal, these children of mine, but their tribes are not fixed constants -- rather, their tribes are fluid things that they leave and come back to and their contemporaries with them -- so that each time of return realizes a different tribe -- and that works for them.

Things are held more loosely.

Ideas are exchanged more freely.

Possibilities are envisioned differently.

Time is not wasted on what never was nor cannot be.

Authorities are shared based on competencies and vision.

Nothing is taken for granted.

If the world is to be changed, they believe that it is up to them to do it -- and they do it -- one person, one group, one tribe, at a time.

Children matter -- other people's children, as well as their own.

Families are made as well as born.

Needs are met simply because there are needs to be met.

Life continues.

I am hopeful for the future when I behold these people. 

I hope I live long enough to see them come into the fulness of their marvelous potential, for every generation has its place, its time and this, in all its nascent wonder, is theirs.

Life Rhapsody No. 1

At creation . . . or was it before –
does it matter?  – The question
(implied of course, for angels
never speak in the interrogative)
is posed – and time itself –newly
created infant that it was --
gasps at the audacity –

Angel’s They won’t thank you for it.
– their self-awareness;
the knowledge that they
will some day die.
They won’t thank you for it, You know.

God I know.

***

Friend Sarah’s ‘this too shall pass’
wisdom is wisdom indeed,
but when did wisdom ever breed gratitude?
Is it the wisdom that grants us the cheek
to hate our creator?
It is
but we hate God for that too, I think, I fear.

***

I’m an evangelist for sadness.
I do sad really well.
What that says about me,
I do not pretend to know.
But there it is.
Having a bad day?
I’m your gal.

***

Messing with the birds
I throw open the door and
the cacophony outside comes
full stop
I laugh with the glee of the
child uncaught
and shut the door
do a ten count
song resumes
throw open the door again
stops
Repeat and repeat and repeat
again – comfort & joy in playing
hide & seek with the birds –
who knew what great
playmates they are?

***

Tis the season 
all bright and wild, 
if Mary had been 
filled with reason, 
there would have been 
no room for the Child.
–Can’t Remember Who (wrote it)

***

The light in the wrong place
as I try to type the words
from the page
the light is always
in the wrong place
blinding – erasing out
the black on whiteness
of the painful words
why can’t I see them?

***

I find the Christmas poppers
in the trunk along with the
other gifts and baked treats
and am delighted – here is
the thing Mom (elevated
at that awkward never-seen-
in-the-created-world angle
reserved for hospital beds)
and I can share – we will
have a Christmas tomorrow –
it’s a thin thing, I know –
even before, Ben always
insisting that I am the only
one among us who enjoys
the poppers and they – the
rest – only go along to humor
me – but I know better –
humoring me is not something
this family does – and so I
am pleased beyond all
proportion, wondering if Mom
would want a picture in her
paper party hat tomorrow
or if the imagining will be
better – am betting the latter
– that hospital bed angle
really isn’t flattering to anyone

***

It is Christmas Eve
My mother lives
Survivor of wars and
family and cancer –
hers and others –
she will not be undone
by a little thing like
a car accident –
and she and I will spend
our Christmas together
at her bedside
and I will know that
I have received my
gift – no baby to me,
she, but a baby
nevertheless
in the created
scheme

***

Rhapsody

A(nother) New Day

I love the potential of a new day – opening its sunshine welcome through the curtains – the promise of possibility like an infinite blanket of hope – small things come to mind mostly – maybe today I’ll finish the ironing – I actually like to iron – it’s pleasing somehow to press out the wrinkles and the smell of clean linens a bonus to the senses – maybe I’ll finally begin repairing the quilt I made for Mom and Dad more than 30 years ago – I am old enough to have created something now time worn – how well I remember my own pride at the gift when given – satisfied with what I had made passed down through my grandmother’s hands – maybe I’ll start walking again – it’s been too long – I will mail a letter that needs sending – maybe I’ll actually schedule that long-overdue hair appointment – that will feel like progress – I will look upon the mountains and be refreshed – their presence my comfort – I will listen to cat’s purr and smile benediction upon her contentment – maybe I will tick a few things from the list – my perpetual write-down of the next indicated things – or not – I will read – glad that I finally can again – leaving behind the tens if not hundreds of books begun and set aside – it’s a perfect laundry day – my only regret that I have no laundry to hang – so many roads spread out before me at the beginning of this new day – it matters not much which I take – for now – in this moment – the promise – the possibility – is enough and more than enough – and I am grateful – it is tomorrow and I am begun again.

I Wish I Knew

From NASA's Mission to Geospace site

Heat & light
companions
the sun shines
gloriously
whether I
can see it
in the daytime
sky . . . or not

Is it faith to know this?
Or is it belief?
Is there a difference?
I wish I knew.

I read of young men
privileged in the 1880's
to live and work actually
inside ‘The Castle’ --
Smithsonian’s first
building –
and for an instant I dream
of that past life as if it were
my own – until I remember:
it couldn’t have been –
no girls, you see –
and the dream ends
on the trash heap of
impossibility –


The sun shines whether
I see it or not –
do the lights of the ignored
blaze forth whether we
acknowledge . . . encourage . . .
nurture . . . them – or not – ?
I wish I knew

it would give me hope

Kindergarten Day 1: A Sort of Prayer

We’re . . . Off to see the Wizard . . .
Click your heels three times . . .
There’s no place like home . . .
There’s no place like home . . .
There’s no place like home . . .

I imagine my grandson
off for his own trip to the Wizard --
Kindergarten
Day One

So much freight wrapped up
in such a very small package

And so I wonder and worry . . .
Did his shoes fit?
Did they pinch?
Did he take a lunch box?
Did he lose it?
Were there mud puddles
to splash his way home through?
Did he make friends?
Did the teacher like him?
Is there a bus in his future
with all the adventures
and traumas in the microcosm
that is ‘school’?

Did he want to click his
heels three times to return
magically to the place called
home?

Was he scared?
Did he know we were all
watching?  Waiting?  Wondering?

Does he sense how big a deal
this is?  How much we’re all
counting on him for the future
he holds in his paste-covered
nose-picking, paint-under-his-
fingernails hands?

Can he intuit that maybe he
met his wife today?  That he
is soaring into the world
without wings?

Ruby shoes or no, little one,
home is always there just
behind you . . . waiting,
watching, hoping, praying,
loving, laughing, singing,
soaring with you --
high above the clouds
where no wild things are.

Be well.
Be safe.
Fly.

Infinite Hope

"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope." --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Who do you know in need of some infinite hope today?

May your prayers
          be converted
                    by God's own Spirit
                              into whispers
                                       of hope
                                                 into their hearts
and yours

Leaping in Expectation

While uncertain, the word hope may have a connection to the word hop, as in leaping in expectation.

Isn’t that a wonderful vision of hope?

Think of Christmas mornings when you were a child or even better, the night before, when you could scarcely make yourself stand still, let alone lie down to sleep.

That kind of expectancy, the jump-up-and-down excitement of your small child self knowing that something good, no – something wonderful, lies beyond. . .  the hug-yourself-in-anticipation of what is coming and coming soon . . . that is the hope of the coming of the Messiah.

Zechariah’s hope for a Messiah wasn’t abstract . . . it was the sheer joy of a man waiting a lifetime for the gift of his own child.

Elizabeth’s hope literally leapt within her.

Simeon’s hope was so great that when it was realized, he could say that now he could happily pass from this world.

The point is that Messiah’s saving love and presence has a form and a shape and that form and shape is each of our own lives. . . for one, salvation looks like a child in the womb . . . for another, holding a baby long awaited . . . for another, a wife home from the hospital . . . for another, a call from a friend long missed . . .

What is the shape of the thing hoped for in your life?

This Advent season, may Messiah’s coming and coming again fill that longing, taking on the shape and form of your desires, your yearnings, your salvation.