Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action rises by itself?
~Tao Te Ching

This week our community is coming to the end of its study of Wayne Muller’s book Sabbath. It has been interesting to hear the many insights people have had while reading this book and discussing it with others. Since this is probably my fifth reading of the book, I am so happy to have shared it. Clearly, I am still working on this sabbath thing because I find something completely new with each reading.

Which is why I find myself captivated with a reading from the Buddhist tradition…..in Holy Week, no less. This writing from the Tao comes at the end of a chapter entitled ‘Be Still and Know’. Maybe it was the ‘mud’ reference that grabbed me first given the amount of mud that has begun to appear near every walkway this week. But it was also the urging to ‘remain unmoving’ that sealed the deal for me. I also liked the idea of ‘your’ mud, ‘my’ mud because I know I certainly have a lot of it!

Mud, my mud, is all the stuff that keeps me from seeing clearly, keeps me struggling against this or that, and mostly against myself. Most often I push against this mud with every muscle in my body, lifting, hefting, pushing, prodding. Rarely, so rarely, do I have the patience to wait until the water clears itself. Now I don’t claim to know much about mud but I do remember enough from some science class to know that if mud is left alone, it will settle to the bottom and the water will clear itself. It might not become crystal clear but it will not be the consistency of darkness. This is the nature of both mud and water.

The purpose of this image in Muller’s book was to point out the wisdom of simply being present in a situation, with a person. Most of the time we need do very little in the face of struggle, grief, crisis, illness, even death. Our wisest action is often no action. To simply be present until the gifts within each person, each intention, make themselves known is most often what is called for. However, it takes a very disciplined and grounded person to choose this path.

On this Thursday of Holy Week, I am thinking about and preparing for our evening worship service in which we will read the scriptures that tell the story of Jesus’ meeting with those he called his disciples on the night before he was to go to certain death. These friends had traveled the long road to this moment in his life with him. It could have been a time of crisis, certainly of great grief and unimaginable fear. This was a time of it mud.

Instead of fighting against the mud, Jesus chose to be present, to practice patience and humility and to move little as the mud settled around them. He offered to wash the dust of the journey from his friend’s feet. He shared a sabbath meal with them. He blessed them and patiently watched them, in their extreme humanness, jockey for the best position.

What he didn’t do was push or panic or try preach a sermon they would always remember. Instead he practiced the presence of God which had guided him to this pivotal moment, waited for his mud to settle, the water to clear, unmoving.

It may not seem to us like this all led to the right action. But wisdom is often illusive for those of us still trying to stir up our mud.

I am writing this as I sit near the north end of Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis. I am looking out on the fullness of a day in March. There is a blend of mud and snow, mostly shaded with the dust and dirt of a winter that has gone on a long time. Puddles line both sidewalks and roadway. Melting is a visible practice if one has the eyes and the patience to see. Gray clouds hug a horizon that is trying desperately to burn blue into the world. The light posts of the now gone skating rink look like de-branched trees in a sea of other leafless sentinels. In many ways the scene tells a story of winter on the outer edge.

The humans who walk and ride this lake’s path tell a different story. Only one cross country skier is making his way bravely across the frozen lake holding onto the gift of ice. The others who walk and run have the shape of spring in them. Gloves that served them a few minutes earlier are now held in sweating hands. Some runners still are in long pants. Others have switched to shorts, some with tights, others with legs bare for all to see. No one is walking with the familiar stance of shoulders hugging their ears. There is a lightness in the steps of most that says they are a people about to see something new. It might just be right around the corner. Or at least in the glow of a new day.

Perhaps not everyone is having the same experience of this landscape that I am. Perhaps others would not see the lift(is it joy?) in the walk of the people getting their daily exercise. But it is Holy Week and I have been steeped in the stories of this faith into which I was birthed. A faith whose message each year brings with it new and different insights. I am, as is everyone, a different person than this time last year. The experiences of this past year have made it so. It seems only right that I spend time wrestling once again with these life-shaping messages.

And so, as I watch the scene before me, I do so with eyes that long to see how the telling of this Easter story is also told in the sights and sounds of this day, this week, this life I am blessed to live. Of course, the Easter story is told through the lens of this one we call Jesus. But the perhaps even deeper message of the gift of birth, life, death and rebirth moves among us all the time. As those in the Christian household, we may view things through the life of this one life but it is at his urging that we live our own lives with the same passion and compassion for the lifetime that is ours, for the world that is our home.

In the email inspiration that comes to me each day, the words of preacher N. Gordon Crosby speak to me: “The whole created order has been brought into being by a loving God in order that we might enter into a covenant relationship with God. The creation is intentionally incomplete in order that we might know the awesome honor of participating with God in its completion. One day it will end. One day we will end. Creation’s potential–and ours–is being brought to a great finale of love. Jesus’ life was all about the passionate reckless abandon of being a co-creator with God.”

Watching my fellow co-creators make their way around the kidney-shape of this lake, I am heartened by the sweet, gentle voice of master calling to a frolicking dog. A mother’s song speaks to a young child being propelled at warp speed in a jogging stroller. Young people run with intention and commitment. The spray of water, once ice, washes the dirt from a curb. The yellow gold of a weeping willow tree blazes forth its own brand of glory. The clouds are still winning but the blue of a day’s end is brilliant and beautiful.

Some place in it all, there is Holy in this week.

“As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life. “
~ The Buddha

A friend told me about an app I could get for my phone that would provide a mindfulness bell which would ring at different times of the day to call me to the present moment. Given our community study of the book Sabbath by Wayne Muller which encourages such attention, it seemed a good thing to do. After downloading it, I anticipated the first chime and my Pavlovian response of stopping, breathing, being in the gift of the present moment. The first time it rang, I joyfully ceased my activity, breathed in a good cleansing breath, looked around me, made note of what I was doing and where I was. I was off to a good mindfulness start.

But as the last few days played out and the chimes have continued, I have learned some things about myself and about those with whom I walk this path. The first thing I learned was that I walk around much of the time holding my body tense. This was a surprise to me. What I learned was that when the sweet sound of the chime rang out, I almost always had to intentionally loosen the muscles in my shoulders and face as I was taking a deep breath. Where was this tension coming from? Mostly, I was surprised and clueless.

The next thing I learned was how completely NOT in the present moment I often find myself. I knew this because many times when the chime sounded its gentle tone, I jumped. This very quiet sound had startled me! After the startle wore off, I realized I had not at all been focused on what I was doing or where I was but was someplace in the future or mired in the past. Even though I was literally doing something in the present.

Perhaps the most surprising to me was the reaction or better put, lack of reaction, of those around me when the bell chimed. For the most part I did turn it off when I was in meetings believing it unfair to pull others into my evolving practice. But a few times and in my home I did not mute my phone. It was surprising to me how many people either did not hear the tone or continued to talk right over it. I guess we are so inundated with extraneous sound that a pure, clear tone at some random time is nothing to pay attention to. This seemed curious to me and not just a little sad.

Last year while touring Ireland, I found myself at Kylemore Abbey. This once family castle-home has since become the residence of an order of Benedictine nuns. Walking around the amazingly beautiful grounds, I heard the Angelus bells ring out from the tiny chapel on the estate. Just ahead of me, coming out of a door, a Benedictine sister was walking in the morning sunshine. At the sound of the bell, she stopped mid-stride and stood in a gentle, quiet stance. She bowed her head only momentarily and was in the present moment we both shared. I wondered at her prayers. I longed for a practice that would bring me to such stillness, such presence.

I am not sure what will happen with this new-found phone app. My hope is that it will help me learn more about my own breath, my own walk. Perhaps it will even help me relax the muscles that move this body through the world. This can only be a positive thing, right? If the only thing it does is to remind me of the gift of this present moment, that might be enough. And for that I can be grateful.

“What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.”
? Mother Teresa

Today I am thinking about family. Night before last I woke in the night and for whatever reason began to think, not so much about my biological family, but the families we create, the families I have been a part of creating. The truth as I see it is that we are always a part of multiple families. Sometimes this happens out of necessity and sometimes out of sheer desire. Each of us arrives in the world and into a family through no effort of our own. We inherit the color of eyes, hair, skin, mannerisms of this DNA family. Some on these things we rejoice over, others maybe not so much. But this is the family that birthed us and it is a fact.

We also create families. Those people with whom we share more than casual relationships. Those with whom we celebrate holidays and life events. Many times these are created families of people we choose or who, through circumstance choose us. The examples of these are too numerous to mention and too creative to try to define. These created families are made up of people with whom we often share deep values and a shared worldview. Sometimes this shared understanding of living comes to us through illness, parenting, education, employment and other circles that draw people into a deep experience of living.

Many people find in their place of worship another kind of family. We refer to ‘our church family’ and truly mean it. Like biological families, church families share all the diversity and dissension of what it means to be human. While learning to live under the same roof, we can often learn not only about another way of seeing the world but find the opportunity to further define our own view. This is a good thing. Again, like families who share the same genetics, we don’t always agree, aren’t always our best selves with one another. In this setting, wearing the coat of grace is constant. Spring, summer, fall and winter, in all kinds of weather, we are always reaching for the coat that will soften our words, make our spirits nimble, remind us why we are hanging out together in the first place.

In my own life, in addition to my family that birthed me and still loves me in spite of all my shortcomings, I have several other families. I have my Minnesota family, those folks with whom I celebrate holidays, life events, joys, sorrows, illness, births, deaths. I have my book club family, women and their families who have traveled life’s path wrapped in words and stories and a shared sense of friendship that goes bone deep. I have a family of sorts in a group of other clergy I have met with for years. In this family it is safe to ask big questions, struggle in our work, and tell the truth. And there is my church family, a community with whom I have shared so much of life and who never cease to amaze me as they seek to be faithful people in a spinning world.

Perhaps I woke the other evening thinking of family because I knew that members from one of my families was traveling across the country and would act as kin to our Seattle Son. I knew that this connection was an extension of an umbilical cord that only reaches so far. It is a gift to know that those we love are surrounded by many arms, many hearts. While families are often complicated and messy, most of us would not choose another way to walk the earth. When our DNA families can’t be there for us, we seek out stand-ins. Friends. Neighbors. Church community. This tug to be in relationship is built into us.

What about you? What circles of family hold you? How do you make an intention to connect with these varied and yet important family groups? Today may be a good day to put on your grace coat and reach out.

At first I thought it was just me. But yesterday I received an email from a friend who wished me greetings in this ‘longest Lent’. In a regularly scheduled Monday meeting I remarked to my colleagues that this Lent has seemed longer than its 40 days. And we still have nearly two weeks to go before Easter. For me, this particular Lent has brought with it the feeling of moving through mud. Except the mud is ice. And snow. And cold. And there does not seem to be any end in sight.

The word Lent itself is derived from the Anglo-Saxon words lencten, meaning “Spring,” and lenctentid, which means not only “Springtide” but also was the word for “March,” the month in which the majority of Lent falls. Like most of our seasons and holy days in the church, they were layered over the rituals and celebrations of people who lived more closely to the earth than we now do. The early church fathers, and they were, found it easier to layer Christian meaning and intentions over these already long-held days of importance to the people. The hope was that over time the less prescribed celebrations would fall away and purely Christian understanding as defined by the church would be what people remembered.

For the most part that has been true. It is only when someone asks the question: “Why is Easter celebrated on a different date every year?” that we move into these muddy….or icy…waters. It was the Council of Nicaea in 325 A. D. that set the date of Easter as the Sunday following the paschal full moon, which is the full moon that falls on or after the vernal (spring) equinox. The full moon of March, if you have checked, falls next Wednesday the 27th and today is the spring equinox. This makes the celebration of Easter fall on March 31st. Got it?

I have thought all week about how we in the Christian household somehow live in both the world created for us as the church and with the ancient memory of those who came before. Both were, are, filled with a sense of the Mystery we have formed into a faith tradition and story. As we live the days of Lent, following in the path-story of Jesus, we also are living at some level the deep longing for the season we call spring. Both stories tell of the new life that comes out of the places that are dead. They are the stories that combine to make our spiritual DNA.

So in that case, it has been the longest Lent. While we are about to open once again the triumphant story of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem this Sunday, signs of the long awaited spring are no where in sight. We will wave our palm fronds but that will be the only green that graces our worldview. It is a pretty good bet that come Easter Sunday snow will still be covering any ground where colorful eggs might be hidden.

I am reminded of the Natalie Sleeth song that has become a favorite to many:

“In the bulb there is a flower, in the seed, an apple tree,
In cocoons, a hidden promise, butterflies will soon be free!
In the cold and snow of winter, there’s a spring that waits to be,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.”</strong>