What God is not saying

Somewhere, somehow God is connecting everything --
can you hear the music?
even right now.

God is not saying: tell it, tell it, tell it
the words he speaks are heard
even if we are mute or sleeping

or stupid as usual.
Does the snow wait for you to fall?

Slumber, or get up to achieve
with something to show them all on paper,
prize your dust if you like

The big finish is already finished
enjoy, sing along
put on your headphones
and turn it up
you never wrote this song

Rejoice.

1001 Sanctuary Dreams

We bring in the college gospel choir, a few hundred strong -- faces shining like Mary on her big night -- like Moses on his way back down the mountain, irrevocably aglow, kids like 19, like 20, calling us into the harmony, into that voice that speaks it into being, draws us up and in younger and younger... and wow I can't believe what I'm hearing

We call in the dance crew -- their electric limbs, lightning-flash fast and flowing up and down the aisles all over the floor until it's pulsing through your own veins... the rooms full of peks and shoulders and stomachs and arms hands fingers feet thumping blood through your dreary, weary stone... let out a moan... from the heart you have not known... let them fly great fleshy distances, let life rush, radiant God all a - flush, oh what have I done, O beautiful for spacious skies and hips and thighs... boo-hoo for you if you miss this chance to be shaking with God inside the pants of the new creation... let all God's people say what on earth?

And please let me be the DJ... turn it up loud Capt. okay Bono will do until it's blaring... until no one can stand to sit any longer, until their all dancing, all looking and seeing there is no ceiling, there is no ground beneath their feet... there are no walls, there never ever were... let the open mouth of Eden sing... glory ring... dear God let me live only as a worshiping thing... there among the throng, inside your song... crying til we laugh how long how long how long...

Epiphany

An epiphany is... An appearance or manifestation of a deity -- God showing up out of nowhere.

A sudden, intuitive perception or insight into reality or the essential meaning of something usually initiated by some simple, commonplace occurrence -- something seemingly ordinary happens and then... pow!... you're never the same again.

A day -- January 6, 1929 - when Mother Teresa, a young compassionate nurse answers "a call," arrives in Calcutta to begin her work among India's poorest people.

A time when Magi, lovers of the stars, people whose wisdom consisted in their willingness to search, to follow their longings as far as they would lead them... Magi were led, known and found and given a light to pursue... the outsiders made their way in to show the insiders who and how to worship... they surrendered their careful thinking, fell on their knees, poured out extravagance and in the deep silence knew what could never be understood.

Epiphany is an opportunity for you, a searcher, my dear one, to rediscover the revelation that you are to this world... ordinary and magical... a chance to share the rarest, finest prize -- insert name here... to open the gift of the silent present... and See.

Sight and Silence, Randy

The Palomino Stallion -- Alden Nowlan

Though the barn is so warm
that the oats in his manger,
the straw in his bed
seem to give off smoke —

though the wind is so cold,
the snow in the pasture
so deep he'd fall down
and freeze in an hour —

the eleven-month-old palomino stallion
has gone almost crazy
fighting and pleading
to be let out.

Lioness

I found the perfect picture for my desktop. For the longest time it had been a brightly lit shot of a stream trickling through a snowy forest. I kept losing the icons among the frosted twine of twigs. It was at first rather soothing, an invitation to peace. But after a while I found that spring running contrary to so much transpiring.

But this one right here... She's a beauty looking out over the muted horizon... a vision of waiting, hunger, contentment, natural equanimity? It is one of those black and whites that is in no way black or white and all of it so soft and unassuming, the vast African prairie bone-dry-field far as far away... brushed near and drab and seamless in sky and cloud and sunray, soft as her fur, soft and nondescript enough to be real.

Whether at peace or starving, at rest or aching to the core, facing dawn or days ending, the approaching light of East, surrendered to the West, I do not know. Nor does she.

Alive as the indiscernible hum that animates the screen, she lives silently in front of me, a lioness.

For now, ready to pounce in the next moment or pine on for another 1000 years, stalking or stalked, shot sharp to the marrow of a vital kill or soothed to stay long again and still, for now this one will do... this creature, this vision, that is, until, until...

Prepare Him Room...

It came back to me this morning... just on the heels of telling Jill how, despite the delicious energy boost I get from morning coffee, it does pose a challenge at times. Before I "know it" I'm flying down the mental highway, completely in my thoughts, strapped in to the vehicle of an idea, a scenario... sometimes I love where these take me and then other times I find myself working ahead or obsessive about some potential problem or difficulty. The more clearly my mind paints the picture , the more I feel the pain, frustration, fear... Then, gratefully, I snap "out of it"... or back into the present. I shake it off wondering if we really need to have Starbucks every day of the week.
Well, anyway... it came back to me this morning, this invitation from Eckhart Tolle -- inviting me to listen to the quiet. The suggestion was to enter the present more fully by listening to silence, considering how despite its no-thingness... silence is a kind of fullness, a spaciousness that gives all other sound and stirring -- a place to be. To turn our attention into the depths of silence is to reach out for the presence of God -- the one whose present presence... envelops us, embraces us, offers a home in which to live.
What came back to me was this mantra... Silence without, stillness within.... each time I allow it to return me to the open spaces, it feels like a gift. I thought about that this morning and immediately felt like sharing it.
So, this Christmas -- to people like us and all those mired in the fears and frenzies of daily living, I commend this little mantra: Silence without, stillness within.... Silence without, stillness within.... may it help to create space for you, a place for peace and new life to be born.
I bless you all... with the kiss of Christ.
Merry Christmas

painful and glorious

How glorious it is - and also how painful - to be an exception.

--Alfred de Musset

"Prayer is dreaming in league with God..."

Thank you Heschel