Last week I heard Paul Douglas, local meteorologist make the statement that November is the ‘gloomiest’ month of the year. I am not sure I had noticed this before. I would have put my money on March somehow. But, given that it is his job to know such things, I am taking his word for it. I am not sure if it was the power of suggestion but I am now noticing how gray it has been the last weeks.During the day the sky seems to be holding back something, like there is a big sheet that needs a good washing covering up what can’t be seen. Rather like the coverings thrown over furniture in rooms that are seldom used. With eyes squinting,people walk out into day after day of sameness…gray,gray and just a little more gray. Yesterday, today…tomorrow?

Is there any wonder we are so anxious to put up Christmas lights, to festoon our houses and yards with any color we can conjure up? Ruby red Santas, air-filled snowmen wearing bright blue scarves, shiny brown reindeer with glowing red noses, golden stars, bows of any color will do. They stand, somewhat sadly, on green lawns, an antidote to what hangs above. All this, to break up the gray of the daytime sky.

But nighttime is a different story all together. Steel gray-blue begins to move in at vesper time, slowly moving toward the deep, dark velvet blue of the nighttime. The dirty gray sheet is ripped away by unseen hands and ‘Ta-da!’ the kind of night sky dreams are made of. Stars glimmer, Venus and Mars are both visible against the rich, dark background. And the Moon….how can we describe the Moon?

Saturday night the full Moon shown so brightly it woke me up. Looking out I saw the hazy ring around its shining orb. Shooting out north, south, east and west, the rays formed the Celtic cross right there in the night sky. I imagined my ancestors seeing such a sight and heading to their cave to preserve its beauty on cold stone walls. Sunday night as we traveled across the Mississippi River the Moon, now golden yellow in its harvest fullness rose majestically above the horizon. There were no words to match its magnificence.

November days may draw us into a narrow eyed place……but that only leaves more room for the "AHHH!" of November nights.

"And God said, "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs of seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth. And it was so. God made the two great lights-the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night- and the stars. And God saw that it was good." Genesis 1:14-17

"There is within all things, a hidden wholeness"  Thomas Merton

In my daily reading I read an account by Reuben Job, one of United Methodist’s great leaders, recounting an ordination service that took place in the 1960s. For those who don’t know, one of the historic questions asked those coming for ordination in the United Methodist Church is "Are you going on to perfection?" It is the second question of seventeen that are asked those who have heeded a call to ministry in this denomination. The story goes that one ordinand, when asked the question by the the presiding bishop, answered with a loud and resounding "NO!" The bishop then asked the person, "Then, where are you going?"

I don’t know if this story is legend or true. But the story does nudge me. "Where are you going?" Where am I going? I am certain that "perfection" had a different connotation in John Wesley’s day than it does now. And even if I am able to wade through the ideas of the many ways our culture tries to achieve perfection….nip this, tuck that, eat this, don’t eat that, climb this ladder, buy this,borrow that…it is a difficult word, perfection. I am sure we have all been privy to the playground(high school hallways, boardroom) chide of "Well, if it isn’t Ms.(Mr.) Perfect!" In this instance none of us want to be going on to receive that kind of remark aimed at us.

A more apt question might be:"Are you going on to wholeness?" Am I moving toward a relationship with the Holy, others, Creation and myself that is one of wholeness,one that is undivided? It is a question we might ask ourselves with each new day. Make no mistake, it is not an easy question…to ask, to answer, to live. But we all might agree that in the end, it is an eternally important one. How might you answer?

Perhaps it is the gray days of November that have me wondering about where my life is moving. Perhaps it is my age or the state of the world or this time in my career or the future of the church. I don’t know its source but the question is nagging me. Oh, wait…maybe I do know its Source.

"The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each  will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread.Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life."  Derek Wolcott

I did not make it to the computer yesterday. It is an unusual day when that happens. But yesterday was filled with simple acts of setting the table, washing dishes, mashing potatoes, talking and laughing, playing games…..all things enjoyed without the benefit of technology. Last night as I melted into a chair to think back over the day, I was struck with the fact that, though the traditions varied from house to house, church to church, apartment to apartment, shelter to shelter, we were all engaged in very similar acts. They were the simple acts of gathering as people,eating together and in some way claiming a sense of gratitude. No matter how complicated our lives have become, there are still these simple acts that unite us.

At our home as we gathered around our table for grace, it was not lost on a single person there that we were, indeed, privileged people. Many of the prayers offered reflected our blessings but also the clear understanding that there were others who did not share in the privileged life we presented. We were the people of ‘more-than-enough’, those who did not struggle to bring the food to the table. We were the people who belonged, to one another, to families, to friendships honed over years, grounded in a deep love and shared history. We were not the ones who live on the margins, who do not know whom they can trust, who their true friends are, those who have lost contact with family.

And so as the following prayer was offered, we stood fully in our place of privilege, knowing that, as my mother often said to me…….. ‘to whom much has been given, much will be required.’ In our thanksgiving was also the commitment to hold gently what we have and to reach out.

At Thanksgiving: A Franciscan Benediction

May you be blessed with discomfort at easy answers, half truths,and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart. May you be blessed with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. May you be blessed with tears to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them. May you be blessed with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done: to bring justice and kindness to all.

I never knew my maternal grandmother Elizabeth. She died in childbirth, giving birth to my Uncle Charles, when my mother was five years old. So it is logical that I have no real memories of her, only those stories passed on by my mother, memories that are filled with the sweetness of a young child. Grandma Elizabeth will always be sepia-toned to me, trapped forever in the aging photos I have gleaned from boxes that my mother has saved. Her small frame clothed in the drab colors of the ’20’s, she wears an apron over her clothes, her long hair(so I am told) pulled back in a bun at the nape of her neck. She stands in the yard of their home in a hollow near Hitchens, Kentucky, a row house built by the coal mines to house the worker’s families.

I think of Grandma Elizabeth at this time of year because the one thing I have that belonged to her was her rolling pin. Last night as I was getting ready to bake the Thanksgiving pies, I pulled it from a drawer. It is glass and was meant to have a stopper at one end where you could fill the cylinder with cold water so it wouldn’t stick to the dough as you rolled it out. Pies aren’t baked as often in our house as they were when I was growing up so the rolling pin only comes out once or twice a year. This probably adds to the visceral experience I have when I begin rolling….my hands, my Mother’s hands, my Grandmother’s hands…..who can tell the difference?

As I roll the dough using my Mother’s recipe, I think of my Grandmother’s life. She was poor, very poor, but she loved her children passionately and worked to create the best life possible for them. She loved music and taught her children to sing when they were very little. This rolling pin was used to create food to nourish her family, to hopefully provide them with a much needed treat now and then.

Today as I bake pies to be enjoyed by my family, I give thanks for a rolling pin. I give thanks that it is a tangible thing that connects me through time with this woman I never knew but whose blood courses through my veins. It is a simple,ordinary item, used to make simple, ordinary food. But to me, it is so very much more.

"Finding myself in the end is finding you & if you are lost in the folds of your silence then I find only to lose with you those years…..There’s no love so pure it can thrive without its incarnations. I would like to know you once again over your chipped cups brimming with tea. (from Poem to My Grandmother in Her Death by Michele Murray)

"Whatever is foreseen in joy must be lived out from day to day. Vision held open in the dark by our ten thousand days of work. Harvest will fill the barn;for that the hand must ache, the face must sweat. And yet no leaf or grain is filled by work of ours; the field is tilled and left to grace. That we may reap, great work is done while we’re asleep. When we work well, a Sabbath mood rests on our day, and finds it good." Wendell Berry

We have begun the slow march toward Thanksgiving. Preparations intricate and simple are happening in homes across the land. Restaurants are gearing up to provide a traditional Thanksgiving feast for those who want to spare the fuss, or stress, of all the fixings. The travel report on television this morning predicted a staggering number of people taking to air to get home for this Thursday. I’ve heard more than one person exclaim that they are "so excited", that they "can’t wait" for Thanksgiving. Many college students are home or will travel for the long weekend to sit around the table with family and friends, eating food that hasn’t been mass-produced.

In some ways it is an odd holiday. If people think at all about the ‘original’ Thanksgiving, Pilgrims, Native Americans, turkey, etc., it is only a brief, passing thought. Instead the focus is the food…so many favorites..and the gathering. In this instance, the holiday has very little to do with the American experience and everything to do with how we live a life of gratitude. It is that set-aside time for remembering all the gifts that come our way through nothing we actually do to receive them.For people of faith it is the set-aside time, a Sabbath time, to remember that we are the created of the Creator, and to offer our thanks.

"And yet no leaf or grain is filled by work of ours; the field is tilled and left to grace." writes poet and farmer Wendell Berry. How much of our Thanksgiving meal will find its way to our table through our own work? For most of us, very little. The food which we look forward to will have been planted, nurtured, harvested, packed, shipped, unloaded, sold, and bagged by countless laborers who work at fair or possibly unjust wages. Their jobs depend on sun and rain, climate and weather, blue sky, storms….all things over which they have no control.

So, you see, this Thursday we will be welcomed to the table by all those hands who labored on our behalf. As we offer our prayers, they will stand invisibly with us. They have given the hours and days of their lives to make our celebration possible. As we offer our prayers, the elements…Earth, Air, Fire, Water….live within the food which will nourish our bodies, another sacrifice.As we offer our prayers, the Creator binds us all together in a sacred act of grace……and communion……and finds it good.   

People become a part of a faith community, I believe, for a variety of reasons. For some it is to express their specific beliefs and to join in with others who do the same. Others join a church because it has been a long standing family tradition. Still others join because they want to engage in ways that make a difference in the world, to tell the gospel story through their actions. There are some who join because they think they ‘should’ and still others who do so because they think others think they should….their mother, their wife, their boss, the college they might apply to someday. I make no criticism or judgment about any of these reasons because I also truly believe that, if a person becomes actively engaged in a faith community, they will be transformed in significant ways. That is the work of the Spirit.

One of the things a church can offer people is ‘being known’. We exist in a culture where it is quite easy to be invisible if you want to, to live through whole days where no one calls you by name. I have often said that what the majority of people want when they come into a church community is the same thing Norm received when he walked into the bar at Cheers. People want someone to call out their name:"Norm!", to be known, to be visible in an important way.

I thought of this yesterday as our third graders received the gift of their Bible from the church. Being a third-grader is to be in the middle of the pack, so to speak. You do not have the cute factor of being a kindergartner or the cool factor of being a sixth grader, i.e. an ‘almost teenager’. So to be called out from this valley of ages to be recognized, to be known, is a great gift from a community of mostly adults. Many dressed up for the occasion, families joined them, even grandmas and grandpas if they lived near. Pictures were snapped and cake was served in their honor. As each student was handed this small black book(with print fit for their young eyes), I saw them look at the gold letters of their name printed on the cover. To have your name imprinted on the cover of a book is impressive at any age.

My sense is that they will forget the cake they ate. They may even forget what they wore. Over the next few years they may even misplace that Bible, though I hope not. I hope they can read those stories and connect it with their own experience of God, or find an answer to a question they have been pondering, or comfort for a very trying time. I hope they study its contents and are able to know the story of their faith ancestors.Whatever the case, perhaps in a few years, as they clean out their room preparing to head off to college, they may come across that little black book. They may hold it in their now much larger hands and run their finger across the gold letters of their name. Hopefully they will think:"That was a day I was known".

It is one of the things a faith community can offer. And isn’t it what we all want?

"O God, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways."  Psalm 139

"But ask the animals, and they will teach you, the birds of
the air, and they will tell you; Ask the plants of the earth, and they will
teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these
does not know that the hand of God has done this? In God’s hand is the life of
every living thing and the breath of every human being." Job 12:7-10

It was only 7:20 a.m. and I had already done several things on my to-do list. After running my son to school, I had completed one drive-through order at the pharmacy and was waiting in line at the next drive-through looking forward to the reward of my skim latte and cinnamon chip scone. It has truly been "one of those weeks." Each day has held more than it should. Each hour has been packed with meetings, phone calls, things to be accomplished.

As I pulled out of the long line of those waiting to be caffeinated, I turned toward an empty parking lot. That’s when I saw them. Probably twenty or more common gulls sat in rows on the asphalt.(My friend Bob Janssen, master-birder has reminded me many times there is no such thing as a "sea gull".) Not eating, not pecking away at stray particles that could be ingested, just sitting……all facing the same direction, as if waiting for a concert to begin. I slowed down(was this their intent?) and looked at them. In my slowing down I realized how my heart had been racing, how I was already on to the next thing, so disconnected from the present moment. Had I even tasted that first bit of scone I had so anticipated as my reward for all I had already done?

As I watched these common yet lovely white and gray birds, I thought of these words from Job. "Ask the animals and they will teach you. Ask the birds of the air and they will tell you." These parking lot birds had just preached a sermon without saying a word! Like Job, who tended to be self-centered and certainly tortured, I was flying around like I was the center of the universe. The message of Job is that the Holy One is the source of our life, breath, meaning and continues to renew us moment by moment, day by day. "Who among all these
does not know that the hand of God has done this?" reminds the writer of this prophetic book.

So, here I sit, writing this, wearing my humility coat. The gulls have stared me down. They pulled the rug right from under my really important feet. And to them I say…."thanks, I needed that!"

I pray you will take time this weekend to learn from the animals or the birds or the fish…………..have a wonderful weekend.

Listening to my favorite morning radio show earlier in the week, I was struck by the title of an Emmy Lou Harris CD:"Stumbling into Grace." While barreling through rush hour traffic, I actually laughed out loud at the image it conjured up…stumbling into grace. Can you imagine it? Isn’t that what we all do each and everyday? Through the twists and turns of the ordinary, when sudden life-events threaten to overwhelm us, when those we love disappoint or hurt us…or we, them…..we just keep on stumbling.

I love the bumper sticker that was around for awhile….’grace happens.‘ I know its origins came from a much different bumper sticker which was probably more about the stumbling and less about the human being’s ability to be lifted above all that life hands out by some unseen hand, an invisible presence. Many call that  God, others call it Energy, but most will agree that, indeed, often when life seems its most difficult, they will be surrounded by something that offers us grace. Not by any thing we did…it just happens.

In John McQuiston’s book Always We Begin Again:The Benedictine Way of Living, he writes in modern language the rules of St. Benedict created in the sixth century."What is wanted is not that we should find ultimate truth, nor that we should become secure, nor that we should have ease, nor that we should be without hurt, but that we should live fully. Therefore we should not fear life, nor anything in life, we should not fear death, nor anything in death, we should live our lives in love with life. It is for us to train our hearts to live in grace, to sacrifice our self-centered desires, to find the peace without want without seeking it for ourselves,and when we fail, to begin again each day."

So, my fellow-stumblers,as we trip along today,  may you be found falling in love with your life. May your heart be in learning-mode, stepping gently into each grace-filled moment.

Our theme throughout Advent this year is to be "Night Visions".It is always a wonderful creative process to see how a theme emerges, how different people live with the theme and write about it for our Advent devotional. It is interesting how the theme gets incorporated into worship, through music, sermons, words for liturgy. It is also fascinating how putting a theme before people invites them to think in new ways, stretch their usual ways of seeing things, even use different language to express common, daily events.

Last night was spent reading through the poems and reflections submitted for the devotional. It was so exciting to see how two little words…night visions….was brought to life in so many different ways. I think it will be a lovely devotional. The theme in some ways had its inspiration from writings by Jan L. Richardson, a United Methodist minister, artist and author. She writes:“There are other
senses, you tell us, and when the darkness obscures our choices, we must turn
to the other ways of knowing you have given us. In the daylight we can get by
on sight, but for the nighttime is our hearing, is our tasting, is our
smelling, is our questioning, longing touching. A thousand messages waiting for
our sensing, you have given us, O God.” 

Being a visual person, I have to see things to figure them
out….or so I try to make myself believe. But when no picture or image will lead
me through to understanding, it is sometimes the night visions that help me
come to a place of calm, a place of peace. Lying awake, eyes searching the
darkness for some picture to hand my thoughts to, I am forced instead to
listen…to the wind outside my window…what wisdom floats on its breath? The
sheets rub their knowledge into my skin, cooling the heat of whatever anxiety
that grips me. The questions that jump from the diving board in my head slowly
break the water’s surface and begin to do the backfloat, swimming gently in circles
until they begin to lull me to a deeper breathing, a quieter mind. I swallow,
noticing that now my mind is clearer, my heart is slowing, my breath becomes
deep and peaceful. From this place of darkness, I offer a prayer…..thank you,
thank you, thank you. Now I see.

What does ‘night visions’ say to you?

I was under the weather yesterday and never made it to the computer. So today when I read my horoscope the words made me chuckle. "Want to take up a cause? How about waving a banner in protest against the extreme under-appreciation of whimsy?"

Whimsy….an odd or fanciful idea…a whim. Not a word we use very often. It is a wonderful word to say, a word that feels good in your mouth. Whimsy. Yet, it doesn’t seem like something someone might take up as a "cause". Peace, yes. Hunger, definitely. But whimsy?

And yet, isn’t whimsy the beginning of almost any new and creative movement in the world?Left to pure rationality, total reason, what might our lives be like? Surely any fine piece of art, any musical composition, and poem, comes from a fanciful idea of beauty, of what needs to be spoken. Even those things we trust, like planes that fly, like bridges we cross, like elevators, for instance, would not exist without an element of whimsy. What about all those new medical procedures that will eventually save lives? Any new, innovation, any creation began in some form as an ‘odd or fanciful idea.’

Which is perhaps why when we say the word ‘whimsy’ we often think of children. Children live in the world of whimsy, where a stick becomes a sword to be pulled out of the stone, where a bath towel becomes a cape used by the one who will save the world.Giving birth to odd and fanciful ideas is the work children take up everyday. 

When I look at the creativity needed in our world these days, it seems we could all use a good spoonful of whimsy. We need the odd idea that will help feed the children in the world so none will be hungry. We need the fanciful dreamings of countless people to solve our environmental crisis. We are dying for the perfect scheme of anyone who will help deliver clean water to all those who have none. And what about war? It will undoubtedly take all the whimsy we can muster.

So perhaps today my banner might read…We can’t leave this to the children
.

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I heard a loud voice saying:"See, the home of God is among mortals."  Revelation 21:1