Hey.
Yea?
We miss you.
Yea.
During the passing of the peace we’ve looked for you.
Yea?
Yes! I was even going to walk across the sanctuary to shake
your hand.
Yea!
Is everything okay?
Yea.
Things just don’t, you know, feel right when you’re not here.
Yea?
It’s like a puzzle with a missing piece. Though its
beautiful, it isn’t complete.
Yea.
You do know you can come back, right?
Yea.
You do know we love you, right?
Yea!
Did you know you are God’s beloved?
Yea?
Can I elaborate on this a bit?
Yea…
We all carry the seed of the Divine within us.
Yea?
Yea. Let me go on. Meister Eckhart said, “The seed of God is
in us….The seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, a hazel seed into a
hazel tree, a seed of God into God.”
Yea!...?
A tree doesn’t just grow, right? Rain, sunlight, oxygen, and
the earth help make a tree become a
tree.
Yea.
A tree is a tree because that is what a tree is supposed to
be.
…Yea?...
A tree doesn’t grow to be something else—a skyscraper or a
mountain. A tree is a tree because it is a tree. In being a tree it is free—as
God intended it to be.
Yea!
Yea?
Yea!.
We aren’t supposed to be a tree. That’s not what is being
said here. Instead, God—the work of our life—the working of salvation—what God
wants for me—is to be, well, me.
Yea?
Yes! And God loves me, like She loves you. How do we love
like God?
Yea.
Good question. Let me put it this way: we should love God mindlessly, that is, so
that our spirits are without our preconceived notions of who God is or isn’t.
As well as ridding ourselves of who we are…or aren’t.
?
Listen.
Yea?
No, like, listen. Truly listen. When we stop worrying about
whether or not we are smart enough, cute enough, funny enough, young enough;
when we stop imagining God as being up there or an old man with a white beard
or a white guy with blonde hair the and the prettiest blue eyes—when we give
all that up—that’s when we will see all the earth, and all people (even our
most bitterest of enemies…and those we love but could never agree with), all
beings are a burning bush.
Yea!
Right? One does not have to travel to Mount Sinai to
encounter the Divine in a burning bush—every bush is a burning bush, every
leaf, every stone, every fish, every bird, and every person.
Yea!!!!
But we have to sit with them and receive them. We have to
dare to listen…to them…and ourselves.
Yea.
Last thing about this.
Yea!
Prayer—contemplation, praying with our lives—is essentially
listening in silence, an expectancy. All of us—all of us—are words of God and revelations of God.
Yea!!!!!!!!!
You probably are wondering what this has to do with how this
started, huh? How we miss you. How church doesn’t feel the right without you.
Yea.
Well, simply put—we burn brighter…longer…warmer…when you’re
there.
Yea?
Yea.
Found
a quote, can I share it with you?
Yea!
Goes
along with what you said.
Yea?
Yea,
some guy named Merton said it. Goes something like this: “A tree gives glory to God by being a tree.
For in being what God means it to be it is obeying [God]. It “consents,” so to
speak, to [God's] creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and
which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates
God by being a tree.” (New Seeds of
Contemplation)
Yea!
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