“God comes to you disguised as your life. You can see how merely believing doctrines and practicing rituals is very often only a clever diversionary tactic to avoid actual life-to avoid the agenda that is right in front of me every day-which is always messy, always muddy, always mundane, always ordinary-all around me.”
~Richard Rohr

This week I received a newsletter I always look forward to finding in my mailbox. It is created by some good people at Westminster Presbyterian Church in downtown Minneapolis. It called Thin Places and is full of many opportunities,contemplative in nature, that happen around the country. On one of the pages, I read these words: God comes to you disguised as your life”.

It was a solar plexus pounding kind of moment. It is not that I had not thought of this concept. But the clear purity of the statement grabbed hold of me and shook my busy self into inaction. Which is just what I needed. I would even be so bold as to say it is an affirmation we all might do well saying upon waking every day. Imagine what impact these words might have on our daily living. On our work. In our relationships. In the encounters we have with strangers. In the ways we live care-fully in the world.

The reason I needed these words this week is that I, and all those around me, have been busy planning worship for this Sunday, September 11th, the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Depending on the time of a service, many will be sitting in church at the exact time the planes hit the Twin Towers ten years ago. From the weather reports I have seen it promises to be the same clear, brilliant autumn day many of us remember, a day so perfect, what could possibly go wrong?

In preparation for Sunday, I have been watching a Frontline program called “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero.” We will have the opportunity to see a segment of this powerful film which chronicles the lives of those who survived and family members who lost a loved one. The film will be followed by conversation around the implications of this event for our own faith lives, our own understanding of how God is present in the world. Those speaking in the film run the gamut from deep believers to atheists, from church professional leaders to those who had honed a faith built on what they had learned in Sunday School. Many faith traditions are represented. Each person who speaks is trying to make sense of the horrible human and psychic tragedy we experienced that day. It is a rich, deep telling of people struggling to make sense of what they had believed they believed in light of such a terrible act. I commend it to you.

As I previewed the program I came to some of my own conclusions. On that Tuesday morning ten years ago when we thought all would be ordinary and mundane,instead, our world shifted. Those of us who have made our life in the world of church or synagogue or mosque, came face to face with what we believed. For many the doctrines or rituals were empty vessels for the pain and confusion, the fear and anguish we felt. It became a pivotal moment redefining of long held truths for many.

For me, what was left was the God who had come disguised as our lives. In the horror we reached out and touched those we loved. We called friends and family, some we hadn’t talked to in some time, just to hear the beauty of their voice. We made meals that connected us with comfort we had known around a grandmother’s scarred dining table. We gathered in huddles of friends and talked in hushed tones,retelling stories that seeded our cultural identity so someone would know we lived. And we prayed. We walked into churches not our own, sat by perfect strangers whose hands were rough with work or manicured with privilege. We prayed prayers we had learned as children and found words for new longings in our collective heart. We sat in silence knowing we were enveloped in the Great Silence. We allowed our tears to baptize us once again into the family of things. We had the visceral experience of the connection we all share but forget daily. And we felt gratitude for the gentle rise and fall of our breath and the rhythm of our heartbeat in our chest.

God came disguised as our lives. I can’t imagine what it was like to be in any of those situations where terror was the goal of some for the destruction of many. But I do believe that God was in it with all those present, who started their days just as we had, believing the day would be ordinary and mundane.

As we remember and commemorate this weekend, may we remember with compassionate hearts and giving spirits. May our prayers be not only for those lost that day and the families whose lives were altered forever, but also for a new creation of hopeful, peaceful living by all. May we remember that God comes disguised not just as our life but the lives of all, regardless of what they believe, how they talk about those beliefs, the color of their skin or their country of origin.

And may we also remember in the messiness, the sometimes dark and horrible messiness, that the One who breathed us into being continues to give birth to hope through us. It is an awesome task but there is no one but us to carry this message forward. There never has been.

May your weekend be blessed with beauty…….