Last week was filled with holy work. I have written before in these pages about how much I enjoy receiving, reading and then assembling the submissions to both our Advent and Lenten devotionals. The writings are mostly original, created by those in the church community. If not original, they are words that have been held onto because they have inspired or challenged. I imagine them tucked into the pages of Bibles and books, kept safe for ‘just when I need it’ or when the right opportunity arises to gift them to someone else. This week was the time I gather with two other readers for the creation of this booklet which will help guide people’s walk through the 40 days of Lent. The reflections are words to accompany people on the way to Easter.

Every time I go through this process, I know it for what it is. Sacred work. But this year’s theme seemed to make the reading and the assembling even more so. The theme is “Breaking” and it provided the opportunity for people to share stories of their own breaking. The reflections are remarkable in their vulnerability and candor. Some are heart wrenching. Others are funny. All are honest and courageous. I was filled with humility at the willingness of people to share their deep hurts and despair. I was inspired by their amazing hope and faith. As we read and created an order for these writings, it felt like we were assembling the shards of stories into a beautiful mosaic, a stained glass window of pieces that individually are broken but when placed together create something more, a community that has chosen to strive together toward healing and wholeness.

Leonard Cohen has written a song he calls simply ‘Anthem’. In the lyrics are these lines: ‘Ring the bells that still can ring.Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’ Yesterday, with the stories of breaking still floating in my heart, I walked into our chapel for worship late in the morning. I was met by the sight of a few of the regular members of the community who had arrived early walking closer to the stained glass windows looking at the images created by colored glass. You see, the sun was shining brightly, a rarity in these winter days. These people who had sat in the seats in this chapel with great regularity were drawn in by the light shining through the broken pieces of glass in a way they must have missed before. The cracks…..that are in everything….were letting the light shine through. This creative act of taking pieces of broken glass and telling the stories of the parables had once again found a way to amaze.  It was as if they were seeing them for the first time.

I thought of all the brokenness in our world. I thought of the people I know who are right now walking around with broken hearts and broken spirits. I thought of the many places where families and communities, whole countries are broken by war and hate. And all the places where the brokenness of injustice and greed and oppression are the rule. I thought about the brokenness in our Creation, places were the water is no longer drinkable, the air filled with harm, the ground saturated with toxins that will create more brokenness. Going down this path can be overwhelming and certainly depressing.

But then I remember the words of those who offered their life stories to us as we created this devotional. Yes, there is a crack in everything, all the time. But that is how the light gets through. The light of the sun making ancient stories dance with new beauty and meaning in a space that had grown familiar. The light of peace offered between people and countries. The light of hope held out to those living on the margins. The light of action as legislators are called to accountability. The light of love as time is shared and relationships are mended.

Today could be a day to take whatever is broken in our lives and hold them before the Light of the One who birthed the sun and everything under it. It might help us see something new, something healing, something life-changing in all those broken pieces.

Last Friday, while on a retreat at Koinonia Retreat Center, I made my way down to the shores of Lake Sylvia. I walked slowly out onto the frozen lake aware that the colorful ice houses normally dotting the scene were absent. The winter has simply been too mild to risk setting up housekeeping in the middle of the lake. Far out on the frozen water, two lonely ice fishermen stood, auger in hand, having just drilled a hole in the ice to wet their lines. Brave souls. The temperatures were mild, the scene a blanket of white.

That’s when I noticed it. The sound, or lack of sound, that has been missing in this less than wintery winter. Normally, when the snow falls and covers everything around in its thick, sound-muffling blanket, there are the moments when you can become aware of what I always think of as ‘the sound of sheer silence.’ This phrase comes to me from the experience of God that the prophet Elijah has on Mount Horeb: ‘The angel said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before God, for the Holy One is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before God but God was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but God was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.’ It was in this sound of sheer silence that Elijah experienced God.

Certainly over the years many people have come to know the presence of the Holy in the sounds of silence. It is a rare thing these days, silence. We are surrounded by sounds, chosen or otherwise, wherever we go. Many of us cannot stand to be in a room that is completely silent. We have the television or radio or our computers playing some kind of sound, music or voices, to keep us from walking completely into the silence. Some of this is simple personality type. We extroverts like to have the sense that we are surrounded by at least the sounds of people all the the time. It brings us energy. Our introverted brothers and sisters are often much better with silence.

So here are some questions: When was the last time you experienced silence? How did it feel? Was it comforting or anxiety producing? Did it highlight aloneness or make you pleased to be spending time with yourself? Are you good company?

The mystics of years gone by and of today know the gift of silence. It is in these times of an absence of sound in which we come to connect with the movement of our own breath, the rising and falling of our chest as it signals our aliveness. In silence we can come to know the beating of our heart, remember its rhythm, find a walking pace that tunes us to an awareness of other beings and landscapes that travel with us on a daily basis. Silence can offer the gift of being awake to observing the Holy’s movement in Creation. It is the leveler of distractions.

And on certain days, silence becomes the entry point to an experience of the Sacred. Standing on a frozen lake, waters alive with a spring that is yet to be moving unseen beneath my feet, I had just such an experience. On my drive to this retreat, there had been the sounds of cars whizzing by on the freeway, but God was not found for me in their automated chugs and whirrs; and from the sounds of the radio,music pleasing enough and news blaring its terror, but God was not present to me in the airwaves full of things to amuse or produce fear; there were my plans and notebooks and hopeful intentions for the retreat that was to follow, but God did not at that moment show up even in these.

Instead it was the gift of no sound at all, the enveloping of the sound of sheer silence that wrapped me in a cloak of comfort and knowing, a deep knowing, that I am, we all are, a part of something immense. This Something does not need to always dazzle or shout out our name. Sometimes, in fact most often, we are reminded of this Presence in the silence.

An invitation this day is to find yourself some silence. Rest in it. Allow it to have its way with you. Like Elijah, allow your life to be changed. And be grateful.

“He giveth snow like wool; he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes.”
~Psalm 147:15-17 

As I have mentioned before in these writings, some weeks are just fuller than others. Do find that to be true in your own life? I am finding myself knee deep in a couple of those very full weeks. This is not a complaint but an observation. I am blessed to be able to do all I am doing. It just all happened to fall at the same time. Many extra meetings in addition to the ones I attend on a regular basis. Two retreats in two weeks which are more working meetings with an overnight thrown in than true retreats. All good stuff. Just a lot of it.

This past weekend I was blessed to drive west of the Cities to our church’s retreat center near Annandale. I had given myself plenty of time for the drive that takes little over an hour. I was driving in the middle of the day, not at rush hour, so I was privileged to take in the ways in which the city quickly rolls into suburbs and finally to farmland with lakes thrown in for good measure. Of course, there is little if any snow so the normal February landscape seems jarring, out of place somehow, as if, like Rip Van Winkle, we have fallen asleep and missed a season or two.

But Friday’s drive and, indeed, the whole weekend did not disappoint. While the snow was absent from the fields, the trees and bushes along the roads made up for it. All the trees, evergreens or otherwise, were decked out in white crystals suspended against the gray skies. The phenomenon known as hoar frost covered everything for as far as the eye could see. I was thankful to be able to mosey along at a slower pace while looking out the window like an alien dropped into a Doctor Zhivago set. Such beauty!

At the retreat, this white covered world became the topic that united us. “How does it work?” “Why does it happen?” “Look how it is starting to melt and drop on that side of the tree but not on the other.” “What does the name mean anyway?” “ Watch how the light shines through the crystals!” “It looks like the trees have grown white hair.” And on and on.

Of course the work we were engaged in was important. We met. We sang. We prayed. We made decisions and asked more questions. Friendships were formed and old ones renewed. We created plans and rolled out hopes for our work together. All good things.

But as we left the retreat late on Saturday afternoon, the sun had finally broken through the clouds that had held us for days. The sky was turning lavender as we drove through fields still visible with nubs of corn from fall’s harvest. The lavender glinted off the white trees creating shadows worthy of an Impressionistic artist.  At one point overhead, a flock of large, white birds flew in ragged formation. Snow geese? I didn’t know. They just seemed to fit right into whatever picture was being painted in the moment, as if the director of some large production had said’ “Now. Cue the big, white birds. Fly right there. Go.”

Their flight and the entire scene seemed to be meant to stun, to amaze, to fill us with awe. And it worked. My breath left my chest and I knew that I was, I am, a part of something huge and wonderful and beautiful.

And it took the tiny, white, glistening crystals of the hoar frost to remind me.

Several days a week I gather with others for lunch in the church’s library. We sit around a table and take a break from whatever it is we’ve been doing all morning and open our lunch bags of leftovers and sandwiches. I often station myself so I can peer out the window that looks onto Hennepin and Lyndale Avenues. With great regularity I see the preschool class from a church down the street on their after lunch – before nap – walk. They move with a methodical pace, each holding onto a rubber ring that is attached to a rope. The adult caregivers flank them, one at the head of the line, another at the end, and one stationed right in the middle, guiding their little line up the street. It is such a sweet, comforting sight.

The warm winter we have had has given this little band a varied look and rhythm. One day they were moving along in tiny colorful sweaters and tennis shoes, the sun shining like it was springtime. They walked rather quickly for being tethered to a rope. Just a few days later, snow had fallen and the path had become icy. Now they moved like little robots, snowsuits causing a stiff-legged march up Douglas Avenue. I imagined the swishing sound of the waterproof material making sand block rhythms as they moved. Each kept pace with the nearest child as they moved along held safe and secure by the length of rope that connected them.

Rope. I have thought about that rope many times over the last few days. I have been thinking about the times when it would feel awfully good to be walking along holding onto a rope, safe and visibly connected to the nearest breathing human in sight. There are many people I know right now who would do well being able to reach out and hold onto just such a rope. The knowledge that they are held together, not alone, with another human being would bring such comfort. As I have been remembering this band of rainbow children, I have wished a precious rope for these dear ones.

Some time ago I read a book by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner called Invisible Lines of Connection: Sacred Stories of the Ordinary. It was a wonderful compilation of the ways in which we are held together on a daily basis by unseen connections with the Holy and one another. It is a book whose intention was, I believe, to remind us that we are always connected whether we choose to remember or not. Connected to those we know and those we don’t. Connected to the movements and seasons of this amazing Creation. Connected to the One who dreamed us and breathed us into being.

Perhaps today is a day when you are feeling particularly alone. It could be a day when life threatens to overwhelm. Or it may be a day when you are aware of someone else who is in this very place of believing that they are moving along life’s path untethered to anyone or anything that can bring hope and comfort. Wherever you are on your journey this day, I invite you to imagine the small tribe of brightly clothed children as they walk along holding the rope. If you need to hold on, reach out. If you can offer a helping hand, make room in the slow moving band for just one more.

In the end, I believe, this is our real work.

A friend gave me a beautiful calendar over the holidays. It was created by the Sisters of St. Joseph and is filled with not only beautiful artwork but equally beautiful poetry. Each day contains a thought or affirmation to take with you as you go about your walk in the world. Here is just a sample: ‘Examine your life-are you loving it?’ ‘Work from your heart.’ ‘Work like God – no task too humble. No scheme too grand.’(R. Doughty)’ Commit to a daily meditation practice.’ ‘ Embrace courage like the Magi.’

I have this calendar in a place where it is present to my morning ritual of getting out the door. As I make lunch, eat breakfast, brush my teeth, and comb my hair, this calendar of invitations is never far away. I am happy to say that most mornings I have the good sense to read the wisdom that is written in the tiny inch-square space that makes up an outline of a month. A month of my life. Thirty or more days that are pure gift and never to be lived again.

Somedays when I look at the little box filled with words I am amazed at how much I needed the message that was right there for the taking. As I walk away from the calendar I tuck that little seed into my mind for germination. Truth be told sometimes I never think of the exact words again but the seed is there just the same. Work from my heart? Gotcha. Embrace courage like the Magi. I’m on it. Am I loving my life? Well,am I? (Are you?)

Having these little post-its clinging to me all day can counteract the other lint that can get stuck to my body on a normal day. If I have had the radio on in my car I can have all manner of negativity riding on my clothes, trying to seep in to find a place on my skin. Messages of greed and scarcity and never enough.  Advertisements for all the things I need to be ‘my best’, ‘most beautiful’, ‘successful’ self. Coarse and angry words flung from one person to another without thought for the damage they produce. Even if the words were not aimed at me, I have now been privy to them and they live in my psyche. Before I know it they could creep into my heart. What then?

Have you ever thought about all the words and messages that come your way in any given day? Are they messages that build up or tear down? Are they words that call you to your best self or do they allow you to align yourself with all the angry messages so often spoken? Are the phrases that cling to your coat ones that help bring about the common good?

I am thankful for this calendar which reminds me that I have a choice as to what guides my daily walk. I can choose to work like God and be a humble mover in the world. I can also make a choice to try to create a grand scheme to dismantle the harsh and hurtful words that can make up our public discourse.

In these final days of January, before I turn the calendar’s pages to see what February holds, I am going for the Grand Scheme. I invite you to join me…….

In keeping with our upcoming theme for Lent of ‘Breaking’, I have been scouring books of poetry and prayers. I have been searching for the words that can define the brokenness that is a part of what it means to be human. I have also been collecting words that speak about the ways in which the breaking that inevitably happens in individuals and communities, is also the place where transformation and light shines through.

This afternoon I opened a book by biblical scholar and theologian Walter Brueggeman entitled Prayers for a Privileged People. It was a book that had been passed on to me some time ago and I had not had a chance to look through it yet. The first page I turned to was a prayer called “The State of the Union”.  How odd is it that I turned to this prayer the night after the president delivered this message? All day long as I had been driving from one place to another, I had heard the speech replayed and also took in some of the many commentaries. Some, of course, thought the speech brilliant while others found it contemptible. Such is the nature of our public discourse lately.

I won’t quote the whole prayer here but will just refer to one line that reached out from the page and grabbed me by the throat: “We will embrace the buoyancy of the speech with gladness and with great dis-ease, because we know better. We know better because our Lord has told us about the lame and the blind, the hungry, the homeless, the poor, the prisoners, the ones who thirst. And we are in touch, by our baptism, with them.” 

Over the years I have done a fair amount of thinking and reflecting upon baptism. Probably even too much time trying to make sense of the words we have attached to this sacrament held tightly by many, loosely by others, not at all by some. Seeing the reference to baptism in a prayer about the state of the union address was just so surprising. Certainly, not all those who are a part of this great nation practice this ritual or recognize its significance to those of us who do.. While most faith traditions have some form of welcoming people in or even absolving them of past wrong doings, baptism specifically is held by those in the Christian household. The phrase in the prayer continued to nag at me.

Later in the evening, I was thinking about what it is that I have come to hold most prominently about baptism. In this act of community, we affirm that what makes up most of our physical being, our bodies, is water. We are 60-80% water, depending upon which statistics you read. We all know that we can survive a long time without food but a very short time without water. We need to constantly be returning to our earth ‘home’ its most significant element: water. We all also entered this world after swimming in the water of our mother’s womb. In baptism, we can claim that the Holy One affirms this essential element that is our form, our sustenance and our being and delights in our birth and presence in the world. In baptism, we affirm that we are a ‘yes’ of God in the world.

And so, as we continue to grapple with what it means to be a nation with such differing ideas of who we are, one thing that can truthfully be said is that we are connected by the fact that we are all people made up of the same elements. Our skin may look different. We speak different languages. Our life experience has caused us to have a world view that defines the way we articulate our political, social and economic views. We call what we believe to be the ‘More’ in different ways or not at all.

But the water that flows through our veins and muscles, that feeds our thirst and keeps our bodies going is the state of our union. Whether we name the ways we honor this as baptism or something else, or whether we think of it seriously or not, is in some ways moot. The water that flows through me, water I see as a gift from God, is the same as that which flows through the homeless man standing at the corner,sign in hand, and the executive looking out from his penthouse view on the city at his feet. The water that flows in our rivers and oceans and is absent from those in countries sick with drought unites us all in need and want and abundance. Each time another new one slips from the waters of birth into the world, another brother or sister joins the union.

And now the question becomes how will we honor and hold in trust this state of union to which we are all a part? Whether we choose to be or not?

It is a sobering and exhilarating thought.

On my daily drive to work, I pass by a church whose message sign sits in a prominent, very visible place along a winding and scenic drive. It also is poised right at a crossroads of stop signs. It is ‘prime real estate’ for advertising what is going on in the life of this church. Many churches would be envious of such a good spot for attracting people, for telling their story. This particular church sign does not have any of those catchy and sometimes controversial messages meant to stick in your brain all day. It simply advertises the time of the worship service and education hour. It also has the message that its ‘Thanksgiving Service’ will be at 10:30 a.m. It has had this message since November.

Now I realize to admit that this has been driving me crazy says so much more about me than it does about this church. I am reminded of all the times in my own church when events or services have been listed incorrectly. There is always someone…..usually more than one….who calls or emails to let me know about it. And then my mind also goes to the idea that they have been missing telling people about all the other things that have been going on SINCE Thanksgiving Day. I want to know who is in charge. See. This clearly is about me and my control issues!

Last week as I once again passed the sign for Thanksgiving worship, a thought crossed my mind. What if instead of allowing this to bug me, I would see it as an opportunity to think of everyday as Thanksgiving Day? And at 10:30 a.m., or at least when I passed the sign, I would offer a prayer of gratitude? This would help me create an order and intention out of what is, in my opinion, a neglected opportunity.

I began to think of all the things that happen each day for which I am grateful. The first steaming cup of coffee. Oatmeal smothered in brown sugar and those enormous blackberries I happened upon at the market last week. The laughter and playfulness of the children standing at the bus stop outside our house. The snow covered nose of the big black dog that shares our home. A warm car. The luxury of seat heaters. Smart wool socks. The smile of the person who is stopped at the same red light and happened to catch my eye. Trees that stand strong and tall against the rising, winter sun. The colors of the morning sky……black, blue, pink, violet, gold. My own two legs that move me through my day. The presence of my family moving in their own distinctive ways through the house in the morning.

All this gratitude and I have barely moved into the first hours of a day. A day that promises to be full of things I have planned and those that will surprise me. It made me think of one of my favorite songs by Minnesota singer/songwriter Ann Reed whose final lyrics are:

“A day that’s remembered
In a small, sacred space
Walking toward balance
Praying for grace.
Gather my blessings
Like the gifts that they are
Place them quite gently in my grateful heart.”

Which of course is what the seemingly neglected church sign had caused me to do. I had created a Thanksgiving Service in my grateful heart. It wasn’t November. Or the designated fourth Thursday of that month ‘set aside’ to give thanks. It was an ordinary day like any other. But my heart was overflowing.

Makes you wonder doesn’t it? Maybe that church is not being neglectful at all. Just sneaky. Maybe they are trying to help people see every day as Thanksgiving Day.

Well, they got me.

The cold has finally descended on Minnesota. There is not much snow to speak of but the temperatures have conspired to remind us where we live and what we are made of. This morning as I walked out to roll the garbage can to the curb for its pickup later today, I had that feeling of my airways freezing that I have yet to experience this winter. I smiled as much as my frozen cheek muscles would allow. So, I suppose it is time to settle in and remember the gifts of cold, frosty winter life.

Yesterday morning at our house we were offered just such a gift. As we were busy getting ready for a full day ahead, my husband paused on the landing of our upstairs hallway. “Did you see this?”, he asked. Unsure of what he was talking about I walked the few steps into the hallway to catch a glimpse. He was standing by the window that is directly at the top of the stairs. The window glass, itself a kind of victim of winter’s harsh winds, was swathed in what at first glance looked like lace. It was so incredibly beautiful and intricate we both just stood there taking in this gift of winter. Its patterns seemed impossible. How could something so beautiful be created without intention?

Now there was a question to carry around for the day! I have no idea how ice crystals or patterns form. Whatever Science class I took back in the day that explained this probably went right over my head. I was busy anticipating English class or choir. Yesterday morning I regretted my single mindedness wishing I understood how the combination of water, condensation, cold air and sun could create such an amazing pattern, such a work of art.

You see, the pattern not only looked like lace but also like a tree. A tree in the forest of the Winter Queen. The patterns had formed as if painted on the glass with some unseen hand who knew just what we needed to wake us up on a frigid morning. Just what we needed to send us out into the world with praise on our lips and awe in our hearts. Just what we needed to remind us that there is a creative Hand in the world that is not ours.

Later in the day I thought of all the other patterns in this wide and wonderful world that may seem to be without intention. The center of a tulip for instance as it breaks forth in fireworks or a newborn’s feathery eyelashes. The way in which the sun can reflect off one of the cut glass ornaments I keep hanging on a curtain in our living room, creating tiny rainbows all over the walls just as the sun is setting each day. The rivulets of water that spin and then spiral over the rocks in a stream.

It is easy for me to get caught up in the things I can understand and make sense of in some ordered way. But every now and then it is good to have a wake up call that reminds me of all the wonders I cannot, and will never be able to understand. That is where awe walks in to take up residence and I am once again reminded of being a tiny part of a Universe that continues to expand and amaze. In that instant I am reminded of my work here: To stay awake. To notice. To be amazed. To tell the story. To be filled with gratitude.

There are many experiences that can remind us of the treasures of winter. For those of you reading this who are also experiencing the first, true rush of freezing temperatures, my hope and prayer is that you are offered a gift of winter this day. Keep your eyes and heart open for the lace that is being spun all around. If we have eyes to see.

“Waking up this morning I smile,
Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment
And to look at all things with eyes of compassion.”
~Thich Nhat Hanh

Sitting at my desk this late afternoon, I read this prayer. I did so with a certain sense of loss. Perhaps I smiled when I woke up this morning. I can’t remember. I am certain that my feet hit the ground running. The list that was spread out before me this day already having its way with me. Did I take note of the fact that this day, these twenty-four hours were new, were before me, were pure gift? Did I make a covenant with the day to live fully? I know I meant to do so. I know in my heart I meant to look at all things with eyes of compassion. But as I think back about the day that will quickly come to an end, I can think of the many times I did not do so. Reading this prayer, with so much of the day behind me, made me aware of all that may have escaped my notice and care this day.

The afternoon sun is setting and the winter clouds have been moving in. The parking lot outside my office window has few cars and I can see that the cars driving by now have their lights on. Another day has nearly passed, never to be received again. I am reflecting on what I have to show for my living this day. I have accomplished some tasks and met with some wonderful people. We have made some decisions and created some plans. It has been a normal, somewhat uneventful,day.

Over the last few days I have been thinking of the gift of each day. Nearly eighteen years ago now, I had a brush with cancer. This is the time of year when I always go for a yearly physical and for the few days after, while I wait for test results, I walk with my feet in two worlds. The world of ‘normal’ and the world of fear. Over the years I have gotten better at walking this path but there is still that moment when opening an envelope is accompanied by a pounding heart. Yesterday was such a day. Yesterday ‘normal’ was a welcomed word.

When I think back to the days after that diagnosis, I always remember how beautiful the world seemed to me. How each day was so precious, so full of beautiful people and miraculous moments. I remember thinking that it was probably impossible to walk around with such intense awe for the world. It seemed to me a fine line we walk between such outright love for living and a kind of madness.

In the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s prayer, there is not the intensity I experienced nearly two decades ago. Instead there is the quiet appreciation of the unique gift that is ours with the beginning of each day. The invitation is to a commitment of being present and knowing that we walk the path with a gathering of people and beings whose vulnerabilities are immense. So compassion becomes our words and actions just as we hope to have that mirror of compassion reflected back at us. This can become the vow we make with ourselves, our families, our co-workers and the countless strangers we pass by.

Today some will receive the message of ‘normal’. Others will begin another journey. My prayers go with them…….

“Lord! when you sell a man a book you don’t sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue – you sell him a whole new life.  Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night – there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”
  ~Christopher Morley 

Over the weekend I finished a novel I had been reading. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks is the intricately woven story of one particular book, the haggadah which is the story told at the seder meal, and the many lives that had touched it over time. It was a valuable book. A beautiful, illuminated book. A book that had taken on a life of its own over time. Throughout the more than 600 years of its life it had come to mean many different things to  wide variety of people. Many people had protected it with their lives. Others had tried to destroy it. The central theme of the book was a search for the path this book had traveled. It was a fascinating read and I commend it to you.

Because I am a book lover extraordinaire, I loved this story on so many levels. I was taken with the number of people, the various hands into which the book had fallen. It caused me to stop and think about the library books I have read over the years. I remember so vividly the old ‘check out’ system of the library. The one where there was a paper card at the back of the book with other people’s names written who had read the book. As a child and teenager, on my visits to our library(which were numerous), I loved looking at who had read a book before me. It was always a treasure to find that someone I thought of as ‘smart’ or ‘cool’ had taken out the same book that I had. Do you remember this now by-gone system? As I think about it now, I miss this connection with the others whose hands have held a book. Being able to see those names was a kind of literary voyeurism.

Of course, I am very entwined with a book that has had a similar journey as the one told about in this novel. The Bible. Its words and pages are ones we attempt to explore every Sunday in worship. Some Sundays we do a better job than others. Like the haggadah in Brooks’ story, it is a book that means many different things to a wide variety of people. It is certainly one which people continue to delve into with joy or skepticism, with hope or mistrust.  It is a book that has caused wars and also helped to bring about peace. It has been illuminated by artists and shunned by those who find its contents false and fanciful. People have also chosen to die for this book or at least what they believe it represents.

On this past Sunday I had the privilege of meeting with a group of people for a look at one particular story from the Bible. We were following a process that is meant to, not only study the scriptures, but also build community through that reading and conversation. It is a wonderful give and take of telling and listening, of being open to hearing the places a particular word or phrase connects with one person and not with another. The process invites people to be open to listening deeply for how they hear the voice of the Holy in the ancient words.

As we were engaging in this process, I was struck once again with the gift of these ancient words. Words not trapped in time but having the ability to jump off the page and nag or comfort. Words that connect us with all the other people who have wrestled in ways similar and very different. For me this is what we mean when we talk about the ‘living word’. These phrases and syllables are not held in a vacuum but are offered to those who want to ‘check out’ the book and see what it might have to say to a single life. Or a communal life. In a particular time and place.

We are shaped by many books, by many stories. If we are careful we continue to carry the words of these books within us so we can call on them at the needed time. Some are simple stories, ones we have known since childhood. Others are complex and rich, tales that create the on-going myths that define our humanity.  What are the books you have held that continue to hold you? What stories are etched on your palms and heart?

In these snowless, winter days, what better time to take stock of all the phrases that have contributed to our life stories, that still fill us with living words?