This morning I was perusing some bookshelves in our house searching for book I thought I may have moved to another shelf upstairs. Over the holidays we have been moving books around to areas of the house that may make more sense. Since I have taken over a spare bedroom as an office space I wasn’t sure whether or not I had moved this particular book upstairs or not. While my eyes were traveling down the row of much thumbed through pages, I reached for a book i have only barely paged through.I lifted off the shelf. Stretching Lessons:The Daring That Starts from Within  by Sue Bender found its way into my hands.

This was not the book I was searching for but perhaps it is the one I needed to find. Over my steaming bowl of oatmeal topped with blackberries and walnuts, I opened to the first short essay. Here are just a few of the lines that jumped off the page at me: “PRACTICE ENJOYING. DON’T PRACTICE STRUGGLING.” “ Unlearn the habit of trying. It’s not about trying-it’s about allowing.” “Listen to the whispers.” “There’s a different between hard work and unnecessary suffering.” “I want to learn about ease.” All this and more in the span of three short pages.

The book is a collection of short essays, more reflections really, on the author’s working habits, writing habits and her desire to live more fully, more joyfully. Like most of us she had learned the lesson well that work must be hard. That to truly be successful at what you do, suffering, long hours, extreme self-sacrifice is involved. At the age of sixty-six, she set about exploring whether or not that is really true, really necessary. Any of this sound familiar to you?

As I said, this book jumped off the shelf at me, I was not looking for it. As I began to read and take in its message, an encounter I had yesterday came flashing to mind. I was speaking to a trusted confidant about some of the challenges and opportunities that are happening in my work and my life right now. As usual my hands were flying around as I spoke. When I had finished my impassioned monologue, the patient listener quietly said,   “Maybe you need to stop struggling so against all this. Maybe you need to open yourself to what might be the gift in it all.”

She then showed me the movements I had been making with my hands as I spoke. My arms had been outstretched and stiff, my hands up, palms facing out. The perfect stance of the traffic cop who wants to stop traffic in its tracks. No one, nothing was getting past that stance. She then suggested that I soften my arms, round and extend them a bit and place my palms up as if to received the gift of whatever may come my way. How different my body felt. How different my mind and spirit felt when I realized that I had been the greatest contributor to the struggle and stress I was feeling.

So, as I begin this day, I am walking into the world with my arms outstretched, ready to receive what comes my way. When challenges arrive, I pray to keep my arms and hands in this same, soft position, if not literally then spiritually, so I may be ready to receive……and then offer the gifts I have for the work that needs to be done. If you, too, are struggling against obstacles that are bruising your spirit, stealing your joy, I offer this suggestion for a new way of moving in the world.

Enjoy…..allow…..listen to the whispers.

Last week the magazine from our Seattle son’s university showed up in our mailbox. It is always a lovely periodical and I enjoy reading it. It is a combination of alumni news, current activities at the school and a subtle pitch at fundraising. It always seem well balanced and reading it provides me one of those umbilical cord moments mothers need when their children are living far from home. Reading it I somehow feel closer to the life he is creating.

One of the events they were publicizing was an event featuring poet Mary Oliver. Those of you who have read these pages know that I am a hopeless M.O. fan. The event is called ‘The Search for Meaning: Pacific Northwest Spirituality Book Festival.’ Can you hear me drooling?

Reading about the event further I saw that the planners defined the event as ‘attempting to create an annual gathering place for all people of good will to discuss their values, the ways they create meaning in their lives and the dreams they have for a world of greater kindness, peace and justice.’ Going on, the reporter explained that the creation of this event ‘is a good indication of how many of us believe we can have profound differences yet talk and learn from each other, while finding new ways to build a common life for us and our children.’ Something in these words went right to my heart, in a good way. I breathed a deep, calming breath that people would come together around such a wonderful and noble goal. It piqued every cell of hope within me.

Perhaps I was so ready to receive this message because I had earlier been listening to a bit of the debates between some of those who hope to be president. President of a country that was founded on the bold notion that we are a nation of people with profound differences and that is not a weakness, as the debaters implied, but actually our great strength. And the strength of this is in listening,learning and creating ways to build a common life for all children that is founded on kindness, peace and justice in ways none of us in our single mindedness could envision alone.

As I write this, I have just finished worship planning for this Sunday, a day when we will once again remember the work and words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We will combine the hopes and dreams of his words, ones we now know so well we sometimes forget to really hear them and the impact they had at the time they were spoken. His message was one that called all of us to embrace the diversity of this nation and all the goodness that might come to  birth through it. The scripture for the day will be Psalm 139, one of my favorites:

O God, you have searched me and known me,
You know when I sit down and when I rise up…….
Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?…….
For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Each time I read this beautiful, ancient poetry, I am reminded that these words have come to express the Holy’s movement in the lives of all humans. Those who look like me or you, believe as we might, see the world and all it holds in a similar way. But it also applies to those who are very different, who name God differently or don’t claim a God at all, those whose lives have taken them down roads we can not imagine, roads we might not have the courage or strength to endure. The psalmist and Dr. King both offer to us a way of embracing the gifts of each individual as we come together to build what he named beloved community.

As we go forward into this week and this year, may we each remember that we are, indeed, fearfully and wonderfully. And so are all those we pass on the street. May we remember and listen and learn from the diverse voices and lives of our world as we continue to find ways to build new ways for a common life for us, our children and our children’s children.

Blessed be.

“If you could see
the journey whole
you might never
undertake it;
might never dare
the first step
that propels you
from the place
you have known
toward the place
you know not.

Call it
one of the mercies
of the road:
that we see it
only by stages
as it opens
before us,
as it comes into
our keeping
step by
single step.”
~Jan L. Richardson, from The Painted Prayerbook

Today I am marking a very special anniversary. Special to me at least. It is on that MIT have slipped by me if our web designer and tech guru had not made me aware of it. A few weeks ago he walked into my office with a funny smile on his face. “On January 5th you will have been writing Pause for five years. That’s more than a thousand posts, you know.” We both looked at one another with a surprised and puzzled look.

Since that time I have been thinking about how this daily reflection began as a daily Advent post which simply invited people to stop in the midst of some of the busiest days of the year to check in with their spiritual life. It was aimed at the church community I serve and no doubt reflected whatever theme we had chosen for that particular season. I fully intended to stop writing it when Christmas rolled around and the dark days of Advent were over.

But what happened for me during those days and weeks was amazing. I found that I had discovered another way to pray. By staying awake, as the Advent scriptures urge us to do, I had glimpsed the multitude of ways the Holy shows up in the everyday experiences we call our lives. Not only had I glimpsed it but I had been transformed by these encounters. Transformed in ways I could not have imagined and still have little language to describe. It was then that I realized I could not stop writing. I could not stop inviting people to press ‘pause’ for a few minutes of nearly every weekday with the hope of setting aside at least those few moments to check in with themselves and with however they choose to name the More. After years of trying to contrive a daily practice of prayer, that practice found me. It was as if the Spirit said, ” Now you’ve got it!”

And so five years, a thousand posts and one book later, here I am celebrating and feeling such gratitude to those of you who have taken the time out of your days to read and often respond to things I have written. I thank you for reading and for, in a sense, praying with me. I thank you for the stories you’ve shared and the questions you’ve posed. They have made my life richer.

A person never knows what will happen when they take the first step on any new endeavor, on any new journey. It is wonderful that this celebration which I hold today falls on Epiphany, the day on which those in the Christian household honor the long journey of the Wise Ones whose travels took them places they never imagined. As I begin the sixth year of this journey of staying awake, I invite you to join me. Join me as a reader, as a watcher, as one who welcomes the twists and turns of their own sacred journey. But also feel free to respond or send your ideas of what you’d like to see in these pages. I welcome you input, your insights, your own encounters with the Holy.

Thank you for praying with me……..

“I settle into your stillness
searching
seeking
trusting your joy.

You wrestle with me
question me
take me seriously
I bless the honesty of your love.”
~Ruth Burgess

The last several days have been odd ones. In addition to contracting the terrible hacking and phlegm producing illness that is traveling from person to person, I have found that the irregularity of a consistent schedule as we moved into the new year has got me discombobulated. I have this sense of moving from one action to another without ever accomplishing any of them. In addition to all the already present disorder, I got a new computer and am now being presented with all kinds of learning and problem solving that, under normal circumstances, would not be so bad. But given the short circuits that have made up my daily life, it all seems like a big mess!

Instead of trying to take control of all this, which is my normal way of doing things, I have made the choice to simply be present to the lack of order, to the chaos. It has not been easy. However, I feel I am in the process of learning some good lessons. While staying present in the moment, I am trusting that things will work themselves out in the end. It could be delusional but I don’t think so. In fact, I think this is the place where real creativity shows up. It is where the Spirit enters to remind us of the inner power with which we are all blessed.

Yesterday I was in a meeting in which we began to speak about ‘chaos theory.’ Now I don’t claim to be able to quote much factual information about this mathematical theory that is used to describe how order comes out of chaos in what often seems like random ways. But I was struck with the idea that as a people of faith, we have been birthed and nurtured in the stories of chaos theory. Our beginning story told in the Book of Genesis, sets the tone for how with a chosen and powerful Breath, night and day, darkness and light rolled out of what appeared to be chaos. Over and over again in the scriptures, the people who longed for the Holy walked into situations of wilderness, hoping beyond hope, that order would emerge from the seemingly random experiences of walking down unfamiliar roads. Rivers where crossed. Mountains were climbed. Lives were changed. These experiences of chaos were and are the foundations of the Hebrew and Christian households.

Like our ancestors, we can be reminded that the real learnings of the chaotic moments in our lives most often come when we can “settle into stillness” and allow ourselves to be “wrapped around in wonder and grace.” In these moments we come to know that we do not travel any of this journey alone. Through order and chaos we are taken seriously by a Love that will not let us go. For better or worse.

May we each walk with trust and hope this day through whatever comes our way, blessed by the creative Spirit within.

“God beyond borders,
may I wander
with wanting enough
to unlearn my path,
with wonder enough
to receive the secrets of each place,
with wisdom enough
to allow them to whisper me
home a different way.”
~ Jan L. Richardson

And so we have walked into a new year. Its gifts and challenges are yet to be discovered. What we learned in the last year may be helpful. Or not. All we can be sure of is that the page has turned, the new calendars are in place, we are once again in single digits, at the beginning of something. We must now remember to write 2012 and not its predecessor on all the documents that require such a date. Like everything new, it will take time and practice to get it right. Whatever that means.

This morning I sat, over coffee, with two dear friends. I don’t remember who asked the question but it went something like, “So, how are you doing?” It was asked not in the casual, passing the time, politeness way we so often ask such a question but in the deep way old friends can. In other words, the question demanded the truth.

So each of us began spinning out our own truth about the questions, fears, hopes and challenges of what this year might hold. Honesty prevailed which was satisfying especially since there seems to be so few times when real honesty is offered. Too many times we want to say what we believe others want to hear or what will make us appear really ‘together’ and in control. Other times it is easy to retreat to the place of protecting feelings, those of others and our own, so too much emotion doesn’t escape its intricately created shell. In the end, I believe, the three of us felt better for having said what needed to said, for having shared in a way that matters.

In many ways it is easy to forget that Christmas just happened a week ago. Most of us have nearly completed the clean sweep of our homes to put all evidence of the celebration away. Ornaments are tucked back into boxes. Lights have gone dark. The tree, if it had been alive once, is at the curb ready to be carried off for compost. While our living spaces may seem roomier and certainly tidier, we shouldn’t forget that we still have to celebrate Epiphany in this first week of January.

The celebration of Epiphany is meant to remind us of the three magi who visited the Christ Child, those desert riding, astrologers who had traveled a long distance in search of a deep wanting. It is meant to remind us that being awake to the movement of the Holy in the world is not just a one time or even once a year experience. It is a challenge and opportunity offered every day for the transformation of our lives and the healing of the world. To celebrate Epiphany we have to be ready, like the wise ones from the East, to pay attention to the brilliant and dim lights that beckon us. We have to be willing to ‘unlearn’ our path and trust a deeper truth we hear echoing within us from some long forgotten voice of wisdom. We have to open ourselves to not only a new year but a new way of being in the world. A way that may lead us home by a different way.

What paths have you traveled this year that need to be continued? Which ones no longer serve you? What deep wanting within is waiting to be satisfied and nurtured? What truths do you need to tell? What paths are begging to be unlearned so you can find your way?

The good news is that to find our way into 2012 no camel riding is involved for most of us. There is just the simple, faithful act of awakening to the Light that has been beckoning each of us for a lifetime. A Light that guides and draws us ever toward home.

While doing some writing preparation, I picked up a book of prayers that had been created for the turning of the new millennium. Remember? The year 2000? It was a time of much anticipation, much anxiety. The doomsayers and pessimists had created messages that spread fear and many of us, in fact most of us, fell into their grip. We filled our bathtubs with water and had backup plans for the ‘what ifs’ that might happen. At this moment, I can’t really remember what was supposed to have happened even though it is really only a little more than a decade ago that we walked into this new age.

Looking through this lovely book of wisdom and prayers, I was struck with the different ways in which people chose to express their hope for the turning of the new one thousand years. The sections of the book expressed ‘Opening Our Hearts’ and ‘Creating Communities of Peace’. A special section was dedicated ‘For the Children’ and ‘This Moment In Time’. There were ‘Prayers of Solidarity and Justice’ and ‘Parables of Our Time’. In the last eleven years I have gone to this book for inspiration and words to hold onto in times of deep despair and of amazing hope. I have, I know, quoted many of the prayers in this space.

Two of the writings stand out for me and continue to be ones I return to over and over. again. The first because it makes me laugh with its truth. The second because it presents such a holy challenge. The words of Coleman Barks, best known for translating the poetry of Rumi, writes a poem called ‘The Railing’: ” A child stood on his seat in a restaurant, holding the railing of the chairback as though to address a courtroom, ‘Nobody knows what’s going to happen next.’ Then his turning-slide back down to his food, relieved and proud to say the truth, as were we to hear it.”

I laugh each time I read these words and have used them in meetings and other settings. They are such a brilliant reminder that, despite our planning and illusion of control, there is always a force at work over which we have little or no control and we, indeed, rarely know what is going to happen next. In fact, it has been my experience that those surprises or unexpected moments are the ones in which the greatest transformation, the most promising creativity occurs. It is at these moments that we are most at one with the Spirit that moves with us and through us at all times.

The second comes from Jay McDaniel, a professor of religion at Hendrix College:

“In this century and in any century,
Our deepest hope, our most tender prayer,
Is that we learn to listen.
May we listen to one another in openness and mercy
May we listen to plants and animals in wonder and respect
May we listen to our own hearts in love and forgiveness
May we listen to God in quietness and awe.
And in this listening,
Which is boundless in its beauty
May we find wisdom to cooperate
With a healing spirit, a divine spirit,
Who beckons us into peace and community and creativity.
We do not ask for a perfect world.
But we do ask for a better world.
We ask for deep listening.”

This poem/prayer is one that digs a spade around all the cracks and crevices of the walls I find myself erecting and see others build in an effort to prove all kinds of things. It challenges me to put my ego aside, to stop my need to speak at every turn, and instead be a presence for peace, for mercy, for healing, for listening with holy ears. These are words to carry at all times.

And so, while these words were created for the turning of a thousand years, I believe they carry wisdom for the turning of this year. I offer them to you if they are helpful in your own walk into 2012 with the knowledge that this year will hold many unplanned for experiences. Some we will welcome while others we will want to rail against. I trust that all will bring their own kind of transformation.

Especially if we approach them with deep, deep listening.

This week in-between Christmas and New Year’s creates a strange feeling of being in suspended animation. The fact that both holidays fall on a Sunday creates, at least for me, an even stranger experience of hovering, not quite able to settle in to the fullness of vacation mode or work mode. Unlike the days of childhood, when the weeks between opening gifts and all the Christmas festivities and the determination to stay awake to watch the new year arrive, this week has had me jumping from one thing to another without a sense of committing to anything. It is mostly an unsatisfying experience.

Of course, the fact that there is no snow on the ground and people are playing golf in Minnesota in December should be enough to create an uneasiness, an inability to focus. Things simply are not the way they are ‘supposed to be.’ The other day my son and I discussed whether or not, once it does snow (please!) it will feel as if we need to have a Christmas do-over. While, of course, this will not happen, my hope is that it simply feels like a cake that had been left without frosting for a while.

Perhaps this strangeness is actually a good way to experience the final week of any year. As we look back at all the things that have happened over the last months, we can find ourselves reliving celebrations and grieving losses. We can marvel at the ways in which, as a nation and as a world, people have risen to amazing feats of courage and strength. We can also be dumbfounded at the pain and suffering humans can inflict on others and this blessed Creation.

As I reflect on this last year, I think my overall experience has been watching people I know and those I read or hear about who have overcome great odds, who have grabbed hope by the horns and ridden it like a bronco rider. I have seen this in those who have dealt with incredible health issues and those who have lost loved ones too soon, which is almost always, isn’t it? I have seen it as person after person rises like a phoenix out of the ashes of unemployment to reach a new place where the light once again beams from their useful, productive eyes. I have watched children learn new things and stand taller and stronger with confidence. And I know others who are battling for their lives.

Each year holds all these experiences and more. Perhaps that is the reason, in this final week, for this state of suspension. We need these days to allow our skin, our brain, our being to move slowly into the fullness of transformation. Like a snake shedding last year’s skin, we gently crawl into the new one which will hold us, protect us, house us for the gifts and challenges of what is yet to be. Charles Lamb, author and essayist, once wrote: “No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.” And I would respectively add, our common Eve.

So, if you have also been having a similar suspended experience in these final days of 2011, I invite you to simply rest. Rest and reflect, take stock of what has happened in the last twelve months of your precious life. Let go of what is no longer helpful and all of what is hurtful. Hold on dearly to all that makes you smile, that fills your heart with love and joy. Rub this goodness all over yourself as you prepare for the new skin, the new year that is only a few days away. Say a prayer over all the losses and offer gratitude for all there is to celebrate. Allow yourself to hover within the transformation that is yours and yours alone.

We have no way of knowing what the new year will bring. No matter, may we all know we are held by a Gracious Hand.

“Not only is hearing in the church to bear a relationship to hearing in the world, the former needs actually to be guided by the latter. The mystery of God was being communicated in the world, through creation and in the lives of men and women, long before religion came into being. In fact it was the hearing of God in the world that gave rise to religion. In the Christian tradition we may claim a two-thousand-year tradition of hearing God in the mysteries of word and sacrament. It needs always, however, to be set in the context of the fifteen-billion-year tradition of God speaking in creation.”
~J. Philip Newell, Promptings from Paradise

Each of us has a dominant way of receiving the information that comes our way every day. Some people do this visually, others in an auditory way. Still others take in the information and make sense of it through what is known as a kinesthetic way, through touch and our other senses. These are often known as ‘hands on’ learners. I am sure there are those who take things in in a purely intellectual way or through the various ways in which our brains make order in a linear way, those who may excel at math or even science.

I know myself to be primarily a visual learner. I am always looking and taking things in, making sense of the world by the way it ‘looks’ to me. In this dominant way, I create stories and understand the way things work by how I see them. Which is why the words above of John Philip Newell, so jumped out and grabbed me as I read them yesterday. I had to stew over them, even try to ‘translate’ them into my own visual language.

Particularly at this time of the church year, we read the prologue to the Gospel of John about the ‘Word’ coming into the world. This Word refers to Jesus. This scripture is often read as an affirmation of this presence of God whose coming into the world we celebrate at Christmas. However, too often we equate the Word and word, as in scripture words, as the same. But this is not the case.

Yesterday, I thought a lot about Newell’s assertion that it was the hearing of God in the world that gave rise to religion. I would also assert that it is in the seeing and the sensing, the smelling and the tasting that we know the mystery of God in the world. That these experiences also inform what we came to create as religion(s). It is just that in many religions we sometimes forget the context of Creation in an effort to make our faith story and practice all about humanity. This says more about us than, perhaps, about God. Have you had this experience?

Christmas, and its celebration, tends to focus us so squarely on the human aspect of the Holy, that it is easy to forget that our story as people of faith, as people who walk the earth for that matter, has a much longer history than the story of the birth of Jesus. It is easy to be so fixated on the telling of Emmanuel, God-With-Us, that we lose sight of the story in which God has been with us since the beginning of any time we conscious ones can remember and repeat. Sometimes in flesh and blood experiences and sometimes in the encounter with bushes full of fire, waters that part, in mountains that stand strong and tall. Or other times in bread that falls from the sky, in stars that guide the way, in sheep and cattle that quietly stand watch, and in the total silence that engulfs a landscape and a wandering people.

All these are ways in which those with eyes and ears and noses and skin, came to know the brush of Mystery in their every day living, and continue to have those experiences today. It is the way in which I also imagine Jesus came to know the movement of the Sacred in his life. I imagine it is why he told stories of sheep that graze and fish that swim, of birds that fly and flowers that grow. In the telling he connected Word and word……for hearing, for seeing, for smelling, tasting and touching.

After all, it takes the fullness of being human to experience the fullness of a Creator who formed and breathed the whole of Creation into this beautiful life, this holy living.

This Advent I have used a devotional written by Thom Shuman which came to me through some of the writings of the Iona Community in Scotland that I visited two years ago. Its title is ‘Gobsmacked’. Today as I read the entry for Christmas Eve, the writer finally used the word in speaking of the birth of the Christ Child.: “You came a tiny vulnerable baby, lungs screaming for life, fingers grasping for something to hold on to, your whole being completely depending on us (!)to feed you, change you, clothe you, protect you, love you, and we were gobsmacked.”

Until I read those words, my curiosity had not been piqued enough to even search out what the word meant. But after reading it in this context I googled it to find that it is a slang term used in Scotland and other parts of Great Britain, meaning gob(mouth) and smacked. Its full meaning is ‘to be taken unawares, completely astounded, to be made utterly speechless’.

I have now been thinking of this season of Advent when we wait and prepare for the Christmas. Have I been gobsmacked during these days? Have there been moments of being astounded, of being taken by surprise by the movement of the Holy in the world? Have there been times when I have been left speechless? How about you? It does us well, I believe, to reflect in preparation for this Christmas Eve and all it may hold.

In just a few hours I will get ready and make my way to our Christmas eve services, all lovingly prepared for by countless people. It has been my blessing for years now to be a part of two distinctly different worship experiences. One will happen mid-afternoon in our Art Gallery. It will be quiet, contemplative, using poetry and a few select instruments. Piano, guitar, cello, flute. Candles will surround our labyrinth and those who come to the service will walk their Christmas prayers to the sounds of music, poetry and silence. It is a beautiful dance of meditation, for some a welcome respite from the bustle of the outside world. Every year this service holds more and more delight.

The other service later in the day, will hold all our children and youth choirs. I have often referred to this service as having the quality on an ant hill! This year twenty four three-year-old cherubs in angel wings and halos will sing Away in a Manger. The Holy Family will arrive with one of our newest to the world taking the honored place of the Baby Jesus. Well rehearsed children will read the Christmas Story and parents of all, from the youngest to the oldest, will look on in pride and wonder. I can imagine that many IPhones will be delicately placed to snap an image that will be posted for all to see within moments of the service’s ending.

And ah, the ending. As the sanctuary rests in darkness, the candlelight will slowly be passed from hand to hand as individual lights are lit. Faces, young and old, will be illumined with the beauty of candlelight, that light in which all humans look their best, as we once again affirm that, indeed, we stand in the Light of the One who walked the earth much as we do but who reflected God’s presence in a way that continues to call us to do likewise.

As I stand to offer a Christmas blessing of words, I will receive the real blessing. I will look out at the beautiful faces, the hope and longing reflected in their eyes. I will see those I have known since infancy and those I have only met. I will see faces I have not seen in a long while and will be astounded at the changes. And once again, I will be reminded that the message of the Christmas story is ours to live out each and every day, not just when we are bathed in soft candlelight but also in the pure, often harsh, light of day. I will wonder at the Holy One’s confidence in us to do so.

And I will be gobsmacked.

A blessed Christmas to you all……..