Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Scenery

Scenery

It is as round as a quarter when rolled up in a ball. When it walks across the road it is the length of a broken in half Crayola crayon.

It is black and furry. Yes, furry with lots of little legs. These tiny limbs move it slowly, traveling ever so diligently in the direction only it knows.

Like us, when someone new approaches, they curl up, protecting themselves. You can hold them, but they won’t emerge right away. It takes time.

Weightless they feel, alive though they are and reminders to us to slow down, take the long road, and enjoy the scenery. It embodies patience and wisdom.

If it survives the dangerous journey, the end is a beautiful display of color. Not only color, but wings, which will stretch wide, allowing it to fly high.

The uncertainty is allegory for creativity. If you seek to be beautiful, if you seek to be transformed, if you seek to be yourself—we must go walking.

We can learn from the silence with which it walks. Though the body’s busy, the softness remains loud. It walks not only with body, but also with being.

It walks gently. It walks tenderly, reverently, while preserving the passage of time. Despite its hair-raising appearance, it walks joyfully through the day.

To this furry friend, understanding comes not in the conclusion but during the walking. Speed is not a priority. To walk on the earth is to see into the life of things.

This is a process. At times it may feel as if we know not where we are going. Other times, we see the destination in sight. We, like the caterpillar, are undergoing a transformation. What we have received is life, a gift from God. This breath is an energy that cannot be destroyed, but only altered or confined.

With this breath, like the wiggles in a caterpillar, we embark on a quest, to evolve throughout a cosmic twine. “Angelic horses, body and soul is chariot; Larvae and insects, keep planets in balance; Butterflies evolves into eternal art, and that humble caterpillar becomes infinity's canvas.”

And when it all becomes too much, when you feel as if you can’t go on:  remember this:  just when the caterpillar thought “I am incapable of moving,” it became a butterfly.

Of course, this transformation, this liberation, can’t occur unless we uncurl from our hesitations and stretch our legs, and walk, or crawl, with faith, toward hope…

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Super

Super

Behind me, to the north, the bells chyme.

An indication that the sun has set.

The big hand and the little hand for a straight line, 6:00 PM.

There were tasks completed.

Some tasks were left undone.

...

And that is okay.

We can't get to everything.  No matter how hard we try.

Despite what you may think,

you aren't super-woman.

And you aren't super-man.

...

So breathe in the weekend.

A week complete, days off to enjoy.

Festivities with friends await.

Find that slower pace.  Walk with it with a sweet embrace.

You need it.  Welcome the rest.  Live into its invitation.

...

Watch a leaf fall.

Notice the season changing.

Feel the breeze become more crisp.

Hear autumn whisper her goodbye.

Drink hot cider by a fire.

...

Have fun with the chores you have in store.

Rake the leaves that will fall for the next week.

Then, jump in them.

Be a kid, the one who is inside you.

Lie on your back, see the white clouds the sky, so blue.

...

You are radiant, like the leaves.

You are strong, like the trees.

You are beautiful, like autumn.

You are loved, like words to a poem.

You are enough.

...

To the south migration happens.

Prepare your heart for its own patterns.

Sit with yourself a while.

Then, friend, smile.  In the end, all will be well.

You, tonight, now, are exactly, where you need to be.

...

The half hour bells chyme.

The day moves on.

The darkness casts its shadow wider.

The colors disappear into the night.

Wisdom knocks on your door.  She is rest.

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Speaking

Speaking

To do the work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself to God’s will in my work.  In this way I become [God’s] instrument….Unnatural, frantic, anxious work, work done under pressure of greed or fear or any other inordinate passion, cannot properly speaking be dedicated to God, because God never wills such work directly.” ~Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation.

         “What is it that you do?”  A question I get often.  Usually before I can answer they’ll continue with, “You like, preach, right?  Is that it?”  I’ll then respond by affirming the task of preaching as part of my job but also how being a pastor is more than just being a preacher.  I am a pray-er, a writer, a teacher, and a learner.  Of course the list could go on.  But what I like to hold up for those who ask this question is that, whether we are a preacher or a teacher, a pharmacist or a retiree, all of that which we do with our hands is sacred, it is a form of practicing our spirituality.

         Essentially, a spirituality of work draws us out of ourselves and, at the same time, makes us more of what we are meant to be.  My work develops myself.  I become what I practice in life.  When we embrace our work as truly a sacred call, we will begin to see that we, with God’s help, become creators of a new universe.  We are co-creators in God’s reign.

So, what is it that you do? 

Do you do it slowly or frantically? 

Remember, what you do, matters.  

Practice it, sacramentally.  

It’ll come more naturally.

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Somewhere

Somewhere

Psalm 55.16-19

I call to God;

    God will help me.

At dusk, dawn, and noon I sigh

    deep sighs—God hears, God rescues.

My life is well and whole, secure

    in the middle of danger

Even while thousands

    are lined up against me.

God hears it all…

The train sounds off in the distance, a little after 7.

Across the street the neighbor’s door shuts.

The golden dogs begin to stir and shake, jingling their collars.

Somewhere behind the clouds, the sun is up.

Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, said, “Let nothing disturb you, nothing dismay you. All things are passing. God never changes. Patient endurance attains all things. God alone suffices.”

 

A promise to hold onto as the morning mist evaporates into the heavens.

Upon the morning’s arrival, birds descend from their nest and sing and dance.

Outside, the clip-clap of a runners pace disrupts the neighborhood’s slow pace.

The windows rumble as the ‘traffic’ picks up down the boulevard.

The world grows louder, but also the promise grows more and more definite…

We look up at the morning star:  in all the this God takes God’s joy, and in us also, since we are God’s creation and God’s children, God’s redeemed, and members of God’s Christ. Sorrow at the fabulous confusion and violence of this world, which does not understand God’s love—yet we are called not to interpret or condemn this misunderstanding, only to return the love which is the final and ultimate truth of everything, and which seeks all humanity’s awakening and response.

The sun is slow to rise some days perhaps a way to slow us down. To go out to walk slowly in this world—this is a more important and significant means to understanding, at the moment, than a lot of analysis and a lot of reporting on the things “of the spirit.”

Don’t over-analyze.

Don’t over think.

Don’t over Christianize.

Just.

Love.

God will help you.

God will help me.

God will help us.

Lest we forget, God hears it all…