"It is when things go wrong, when the good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering winds when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly."
                                                            Madeline L’Engle

I was thumbing through some books yesterday preparing for a worship service for our United Methodist Women’s gathering on Saturday. This quote from Madeline L’Engle jumped out at me. It had nothing to do with the theme of the worship I was preparing. It simply spoke to me.

I suppose the words became important because I seem to know several people who are going through really difficult life situations right now. Terrible illness, job struggles, accidents that maim and change lives forever, children in dangerous and precarious life circumstances, the list goes on in somewhat "Job-like" fashion. I have found myself at a loss for words, instead simply listening to the compounded darkness of it all. Of course, I pray. But even that sometimes seems futile…or at least lost in the swirling storm.

So L’Engle’s words came as a reminder…….God’s presence is resting with us even in the deep pain and confusion of those times when life seems to be spinning out of control. I was reminded of how often I am quick to be filled with awe and wonder of that Presence in the beauty of Creation, the wonder of new life. Yet when things are the most difficult, I will try to rely on my own resources and tend to forget the One who breathed the fullness of all Life into being.

And so today, for all those who are walking the halls waiting for a sliver of good news….for all those who feel alone and without hope….for all those who feel unappreciated and undervalued in their work…..for all those who believe they have been abandoned….I offer a prayer.

May the One who has walked with you from your first breath hold you and those you love in a tender and loving embrace. You are not alone……..

In this morning’s paper there is an article about Studs Terkel. Today is his 95th birthday. I first ran into the writing of Studs Terkel in his book Working which is a collection of interviews he did with people about their work. I read it during my college years and was even more delighted when his book was turned into a musical. The book featured people from every walk of life….the teacher, the construction worker,the cook,even the young paperboy who loved how the paper sounded when it hit the porch or the bush nearby.

One of the stories that impressed me most was the jackhammer operator. The man spoke eloquently of  the force the jackhammer had on his body daily…of how even as he sat in his lounge chair after supper, watching television, his body never stopped moving internally, he was still being  jarred by the power of the tool he used to put food on his family’s table. That image…that experience…has stayed with me over all these years. I never pass by a worker using a jackhammer when I don’t think of Studs Terkel, his desire to know the life of this worker and his witness to this person’s seemingly ordinary life. Through his curiosity to learn about the work of this man, I have an appreciation for work I will never do, a feeling of awe for the life of this laborer.

Terkel speaks of always being curious, always being interested in people, their lives, what they do and what they care about. He satisfied his curiosity by being a great listener and then an accomplished storyteller. He seems to have done this by satisfying what I believe is perhaps one of the greatest needs of our time…..to be heard, to be able to tell another person who we are, what makes us tick, to have someone’s undivided attention if only for a few minutes. It is one of the greatest gifts we can give another person….to sit with them, to listen, to be present to their lives.

Unfortunately, our lives are lived at such a pace that we are often doing several things at the same time we have conversations. We are writing, watching TV, emailing, text messaging, eating, even answering our phone. Sometimes those actions are necessary given the situation. But I’ve come to believe that most often they are not….they are simply a way of avoiding the simple act of truly listening and the intimacy listening fosters.

Terkel has spent a long life being witness to the lives of others. Through his curiosity and his presence he has said to countless individuals that their lives are important, their work is important, they are important. His 95 years are a model for each of us……stay curious, ask questions, be present, listen, really listen, be a witness to the ordinary. What an extraordinary life and honorable practice!

"I have found a friend in Jesus, he’s everything to me, he’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul. He’s the Lily of the Valley, he’s the bright and Morning Star, he’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul."

I could only remember a snippet of this old hymn so I had to go searching for it  today. I remember singing it as a child, mostly at hymn sing gatherings on hot, humid, summer Sunday nights. The ceiling fans of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church turned lazily in the summer heat and we all fanned ourselves as we sang. We could work up quite a sweat singing those old hymns!

I’m not sure I understood the reference to Jesus as "lily of the valley" at the time but the song had a great tune and I liked singing it. I later learned that a legend says that, while standing at the cross, Mary, Jesus’ mother wept. As she did her tears fell and lilies of the valley sprang from the ground. That story must have been an inspiration for the hymn writer. I did like thinking of Jesus as this sweet, fragrant flower. After all, wasn’t lily of the valley May’s flower, my birthday flower?

Those dainty, bell-like flowers,surrounded by such out of proportion leaves, are showing themselves these days. Our side yard, which is shaded by large evergreens, produces more and more of them each year. A walk in our yard yields their very particular scent, simple and pure, a sure sign that summer is just around the corner.

The white flowers don’t last long, their season is short. If you get distracted or are busy doing other "May things" of which there are many,  you can miss them all together.  Perhaps their sweetness is intensified by their short life, their simplicity, their lack of ‘showiness’. After all, they are a hardy flower with deep roots that form extensive colonies by spreading underground.  They like to reach out and grow in places that other flowers don’t, can’t, won’t. They fight their way into the world through cold and ice,reaching toward the Sun. They could go unnoticed if a person’s eyes were looking the other way, if their heart was not open to them.

Jesus…….Lily of the Valley…….It has taken some years but maybe I get it now.

I have just spent several days driving across Ohio,Indiana,Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Nearly everyone I have spoken to says:"I just hate that drive! It is so boring." But I didn’t have that experience. Mile after mile, I was filled with awe, wonder…… hope. You see, I got to watch the fields be planted, got to glimpse the two inch tall corn working its way to ‘knee high by the 4th of July’.  Signature green and yellow John Deere tractors and large equipment I can’t even name moved in fields, kicking up dust, preparing the soil for planting. It seemed that at the center of each field stood a house, waiting with patience to be surrounded by the crop that will feed families, animals, provide a living for those who have placed their faith in this land.

I  wholeheartedly admit that I have and always have had a romantic notion of farm life. I know it is hard work, long hours, most of the time a very big gamble, often filled with disappointment and failure. I know that so many farmers live on the edge financially, always hanging on to "this year". I have read and seen enough reports about the decline and difficulty of the family farm to know my imagination is much rosier than the reality.

It is that understanding that made driving through those beautiful fields, watching the work, witnessing to the hope, such a rare gift.  You see, I have staked my life on words, relationships, hope, and the belief in a Presence and power larger than myself. These people have staked their lives on seed and soil, rain and sun,their relationship to all that…..and perhaps a Presence and power larger than themselves.

All along the miles I kept thinking of Wendell Berry, another favorite author of mine, who in addition to being a poet, a prophet and a novelist, is also a Kentucky farmer. He has staked his life on those same elements of the natural world and the Divine. He also writes beautifully about it all…..

The Man Born to Farming

The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,

whose hands reach into the ground and sprout

to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death

yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down

in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.

His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.

What miraculous seed has he swallowed

That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his
mouth

Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water

Descending in the dark?

I am sending this post from the newly renovated library of my hometown in southern Ohio.  It is a beautiful place, one this small town should be very proud of, one partially funded by a grant to provide libraries to communities that are less economically prosperous. I have wonderful childhood memories of the library. It is where I "hung out" as an adolescent. It is where I systematically read through all of the preteen biographies one summer and all the Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mystery series during other summers. Note: I still know that because of Trixie Belden I am prepared to react to anyone who is bitten by a snake. So, if you are ever in such a situation and I am around, call out!

The library was a place where I was at home, where I was known, where someone knew my reading preferences and held books for me. It was a place that allowed me to travel to far flung places, learn of the ways of the larger world, dream of what could be, of what I could become.

The librarian at the time,Miss Davis, was a guard…these were her books, her home, her domain, her universe. She was kind to those who treated her sanctuary with respect; she was stern and frightening to those who wanted to touch clean pages with dirty hands, turn down corners to mark a place. She was the first vegetarian I had ever met! In a world of chicken-fried-steak and sausage gravy over biscuits, this was not only odd, but exotic to me..

Of course, libraries have changed alot since those days. And so have librarians-their domain now includes tasks such asking me to sign a waiver that I will not do anything on this computer that violates their policy…and good taste.

But when I walked into this beautiful, well-cared for space, it is clear that it is still a place that has the potential to open the world to young minds, young hearts, longing to know a wider world. It is still the place that allows impressionable adolescents to learn how to treat a snake bite, to solve a mystery, to be inspired by the lives of wise and courageous people, travel to amazing places, planting seeds for their future.

Do you know a librarian? If so, thank them today….they do powerful and important work.

This weekend might be a good time to curl up with a good book…enjoy…and don’t forget to wash your hands and use a bookmark!

Sometimes it feels as if I spend my days as if they were structured like that game I played as a child. It was a plastic square with other little plastic squares inside. The object was to move the squares around until you formed the full picture you could only glimpse in the smaller pieces. It was a game that I must have played in the backseat of the car when we were driving places because that is the visceral memory that always comes when I remember the game. Playing the game and the movement of the car become one. Blur……

I remember it as a nearly impossible game….which probably says something about my learning style, my personality type. But that sense of needing to move one thing only to have all others move and never really getting to the "wholeness" says something to me about the need for sabbath time in my life. Wayne Muller says:"Sabbath dissolves the artifical urgency of our days, because it liberates us from the need to be finished."

"Sabbath requires surrender. If we only stop when we are finished with all our work, we will never stop-because our work is never completely done. With every accomplishment there arises a new responsibility. Every swept floor invites another sweeping, every child bathed invites another bathing. When all life moves in such cycles, what is ever finished? The sun goes round, the moon goes round, the tides and seaons go round, people are born and die, and when are we finished? If we refuse rest until we are finished, we will never rest until we die."

With those odds……I think I’ll rest today.

I don’t think much about what in our tradition we call "the end times". Some people I know like the Left Behind series of books that tells of the final days of humanity’s time on Earth. I don’t tend to see the world or the Holy in the way these books do.

But lately I’ve been thinking about those early Christians who had known Jesus or known about him. Their  expectations of what might happen after his death, "the end times", became a driving force in the creation of the early church and in how they lived their daily lives. I’ve been thinking about those folks more because I have been creating an online Bible reflection opportunity based on the Book of Acts. It will be called Acting Class and you are all invited to participate…..how’s that for shameless promotion? Watch the website for upcoming information.

Wayne Muller writes about these early Christians and their sense of time. They clearly believed  Jesus was returning to Earth in their lifetime and it caused them to live in a certain way, often with a certain sense of desperation.  We can take on that same kind of desperation in our living but we call it progress.…that time when all the lists will be accomplished, peak efficiency will be realized, and we will finally have time to sit back, rest, and do, what?.The pursuit of progress can lead us to over work and a path that is so focused on the future that we forget we are in the present.

"But we must ask this question:What if we are not going anywhere? What if we are simply living and growing within an ever-deepening cycle of rhythms, perhaps getting wiser, perhaps learning to be kind, and hopefully passing whatever we have learned to our children? What if our life, rough-hewn from the stuff of creation, orbits around a God who never ceases to create new beginnings? What if our life is simply a time when we are blessed with both sadness and joy, health and disease, courge and fear…and all the while we work,pray,and love, knowing that the promised land we seek is already present in the very gift of life itself, the inestimable privilege of a human birth? What if this single human life is itself the jewel in the lotus, the treasure hidden in the field, the pearl of great price? What if all the way to heaven is heaven?"

Muller believes Sabbath challenges the theology of progress by reminding us that we are already and always on sacred ground. His words help me to breathe deeply, pay attention and savor the grace held in the beauty of this day…………………….

At our Sacred Journey worship service in the Art Gallery, we begin each Sunday worship service with blessings. People who are having a birthday,anniversary, new job, any special life event come to the center of our circle and all those present extend their outstretched hands toward them and sing the words"God grant you many years." Adults and children alike are always anxious to come to the center and be blessed. My personal favorite is the blessing of those 5,6 & 7 year olds who have lost a tooth or those who have finally reached double digits!

Blessing….it is a powerful act for both those who bless and those who receive. In Sabbath, Wayne Muller  tells of the Sabbath practice, before the meal, of placing hands on the children present and giving them a blessing. He writes of his friend Ethan who says"The candles and the wine are sweet, but when I put my hand on my daughter’s head and bless her, and offer a prayer for her strength and happiness, I can feel all the generations of parents who have blessed their children, everyone who has come before, and everyone who will come after."

Have you blessed anyone today? You may not even know it, but someone may have blessed you. Many times as I drive along I see a car pulled over with an engine problem, I offer a blessing. I always offer a blessing over the lives of those vulnerable animals I see along the road. When I visit in the hospital, I offer silent blessings toward rooms where people keep watch over their loved ones.

I have a friend who used to tell hilarious stories of his mother blessing him with holy water she kept in old Avon bottles. Each morning as he left for school she would sprinkle him. Of course, at the time he really didn’t like it. As he remembers now, he may feel differently as he thinks about what she was really offering him……blessing, hope for protection, love.

Muller suggests that we can walk through our days offering blessing to our family, colleagues, friends, and even strangers. He says we can do this quietly, secretly. Walking by people on the street, in the hallway, on the bus, we can focus our attention toward someone and silently offer the words "May you be happy. May you be at peace."

Sounds like a good plan to me. Care to try?

Several times in these daily musings I have mentioned the book Sabbath:Finding Rest,Renewal and Delight in Our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller. It is one of the books that I return to over and over. Do you have a book or two that you periodically reread parts of because you are seeking to reclaim some feeling ,bit of wisdom,inspiration? This is a book that centers me and helps me remember what it means to be human…..and that I am not God. So I thought that over this week I would pull out some particular pieces that feed my soul and bring sanity to my days and share them with you. I hope you find these bits helpful and healing.

Muller is an ordained minister, therapist and founder of Bread for the Journey,an organization that supports the efforts of local people serving the needs of those in need in Mill Valley, California. He makes this statement is the opening paragraphs:"Our culture invariably supposes that action and accomplishment are better than rest, that doing something-anything-is better than doing nothing. Because we do not rest, we lose our way."

I have taken these words to heart so many times. I don’t know about you but even on my day off or on vacation it takes me hours, sometimes a full day to slow down enough to be fully present to the gift of rest.This busy-ness is a behavior that I have cultivated.Trust me, it is not genetic.  I come from a long line of folks who can sit endlessly on the front porch and glide,rock,sit in silence and watch the traffic pass. I am always blessed to be in their presence and to slow down to their pace.

"Without rest, we respond from a survival mode, where everything we meet assumes a terrifying prominence…..Every detail inflates in importance, everything seems more urgent than it really is, and we react with sloppy desperation."   Sound familiar?

The Creator placed within the Universe the rhythm of rest….Sabbath. Over the next several days, I invite you to consider the gifts of Sabbath….what they offer our world, our faith,our relationships, our communities, our lives.

As Gandhi said: There is more to life than merely increasing its speed.

One Protestant denomination uses the phrase "God is still speaking" on signs and banners outside their churches. It is a compelling statement, one meant to not only affirm a held belief but to tell those who see the words something about this particular church. What does that statement express to you?

When I see the banner at the entrance of any particular church, it tells me that this is a place that accepts that God is at work in our daily lives in ways that lift us above what can be the malaise of institutional religion. The statement declares the God that is as much "verb" as "noun". The statement tells me that this is a congregation that may be equally as comfortable with the questions of faith and life as with the answers. It implies relationship and movement, creativity and hope. It is bold in the affirmation of God’s presence in the nitty-gritty,often messy details of our lives.Not a silent, far off God but a walk-with-you-through-the wilderness God.

You can probably tell by my words that I like the statement. It reflects my own beliefs, my own experience. It expresses the way in which I love to read the scriptures….not so much as history but as an opening through the ancient text to  hear God’s word for today,for my messy life, for my inner-doubting Thomas.

How is God still speaking in our world? Have you seen it lately? Have you heard it? How is God still speaking in your life? Are you listening?

"Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking;if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you and you with me." Revelation 3:20

God is still speaking…….have a blessed weekend.