Meditation Moment in Easteride: Saturday, Week 7 '23

I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead 

for billions and billions of years before I was born, 

and had not suffered from the slightest inconvenience of it.

 ~ Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain* 

     Of course, grief is for those who are still earthbound, feeling lost, and sometimes more than a little shell-shocked when a loved one dies. Whatever normal was, it is now really gone and, while a new sense of normal will come, it will take time to adjust. In addition to the enormity of the change in everyday life without that person, and the emotion and pain attached to this powerful loss, there's all the bureaucracy ~ the funeral plans, the paperwork, the finances, the notifications, the legalities, the details that come out of the woodwork just when you can’t think straight. More sad is that because some are so fearful of the inevitable, and can’t even think let alone say the word death or worse: dying, they’re too afraid to make the plans that will so very much help those left behind, and it truly is a very heavy burden on those who are grieving. 
    Death is an open-secret usually discussed in hushed tones and quickly diverted to something else. Of course none of us really want to die and so we sure don't want to talk about it. But we really do need to think and talk about the really helpful preparation for the eventual, the definite, the - yeah, THAT. 
    Whether or not I believe in eternity with Jesus at the end of life is ~ for some purposes ~ irrelevant, and is another sort of preparation to think about with a priest or minister. But what is uppermost in my heart is how do I help those who will be left to do all the required paperwork and funeral stuff all in the midst of missing me (they'd better miss me!)? And what if I suddenly can’t talk, or think, and no one knows how I want to be cared for before the end arrives?

     Lead me sooner, Lord God of the Inevitable, into accepting that my life will end at some point. Let me live into the understanding that all will be well for me and wholly better for my family if I, or we together, do the planning, the will, living will/advanced directive, what kind of memorial or service, and whatever other arrangements such as burial or cremation and where to put me in order for things to go as I'd like. And guide me to have the conversations with them to explain it on a sunny day when all is well and everyone is still healthy and not wait until I’m 80 or 90 or... Perhaps if I give it the "matter-of-fact" treatment, we can then move through the cloudy parts quickly and move back into the other reason we got together ~ just to be together because we can, now. By then, if we work on it together, they'll have all they need to know about how to do the necessary stuff in the aftermath more easily and they can just continue to remember the many happy nows we have had. And I will go easily on my way into eternity without the slightest inconvenience. amen. 

*Samuel Clemens [1835-1910], with his pen name of Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist most famous for his The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He was known as the greatest American humorist of his day leaving a treasure trove of great quotes and he has been called the Father of American literature.

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Meditation Moment in Eastertide: Friday, Week 7 '23

Life is not the way 

it's supposed to be. 

It's the way it is. 

The way you deal with it

is what makes the difference.

~ Virginia Satir*

                                                                    

    How many times, after something awful has happened, have I heard ~ and said ~ "it's just not fair; that shouldn't have happened; it's not the way it's supposed to be," especially when those something awfuls have happened in my life. But yet I can't remember ever saying ~ or hearing ~ those words when something spectacularly good has happened. How IS life supposed to be? We are born through no fault of our own, we grow up, go to school, work, marriage or not, divorce or not, kids (or not), loved ones die, and there are tragedies...and all the other stuff that happens good and bad until...we die.
                  

  So, God of All That's Supposed to Be, I don't really believe in "Fate," I believe in "Stuff Happens," and that some days, weeks, months, years are better than others, some are less better and some are plain awful. I know what to do in the good times, but I need Your help in the not-so-wonderful moments. I want to be able to quickly accept the reality of a moment, however crazy, difficult, or tragic, and find a practical way forward ~ to have a sort of spare tire plan. I've already had quite a bit of very ordinary, very lovely, and very difficult life experience. Looking back and realizing my initial shock when the sudden blowouts have hit, I can remember only fragments of those first moments, and now I understand that it takes time to find my footing. With my car, having a spare tire gives me a precious first step toward a measured, if shaky, response about what to do next.

   Of course, I can't possibly predict or plan for every eventuality but with Your help, a lot of deep breathing, even more attention to You with a regular conversation like this one (that is really my way of prayer), I'll have a spare tire attitude ready for almost anything. I will work on not blaming myself wondering what I might have done differently when things happen that I cannot control. The best part is that I always have You to lean on through every day.  amen.

*Virginia Satir was an American author and psychotherapist specializing in family therapy. Her role play formats in family reconstruction and family sculpting among other aspects of her work have been widely used and she received many honors within her profession.  She often used meditation and poetry in her written work and lectures. The following, one of her best known pieces, was written in response to angry teen-aged girl but is certainly useful for us all:

I am me

In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me

Everything that comes out of me is authentically me

Because I alone chose it – I own everything about me

My body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions,

Whether they be to others or to myself – I own my fantasies,

My dreams, my hopes, my fears – I own all my triumphs and

Successes, all my failures and mistakes Because I own all of

Me, I can become intimately acquainted with me – by so doing

I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts – I know

There are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other

Aspects that I do not know – but as long as I am

Friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously

And hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles

And for ways to find out more about me – However I

Look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever

I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically

Me – If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought

And felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is

Unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that

Which I discarded – I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do

I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be

Productive to make sense and order out of the world of

People and things outside of me – I own me, and

therefore I can engineer me – I am me and

I AM OKAY

Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ’This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as [you love] yourself.” ~ Matthew 22:37-39

 

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Meditation Moment in Eastertide ~ Thursday, Week 7 '23

 When I have something to say that I think will be too difficult for adults, 

I write it in a book for children. Children are excited by new ideas; 

they have not yet closed the doors and windows of their imaginations. 

Provided the story is good... nothing is too difficult for children.   

~Madeleine L'Engle* 

Ruler of the Universe We Know, and All the Ones We Don't ~
    It's amazing to watch children at play. They see the wonder, the color, the surprise, and have the imagination to find excitement in a beautifully creative understanding of life. They accept revelation, move boundaries, and effortlessly disentangle enigmas. They ask why a thousand times without caring how many times they get the same answer and never stop looking for another.
    Lord, when did my world become so limited, fixed, and absolute? How did I lose my curiosity and agree to be constrained by imposed and unexplored assumptions?  Please help me find the child in me that my education, life experience, and trying to prove my worth to others has set aside. Open my eyes to possibilities, potential, insight, and a new experience of You. Let me learn how to play again and to expand my inner vision to rediscover delight, joy, laughter, and un-seriousness in my relationship with You. Grant me the gift to know now what I knew then and the non-sense to live it.  amen.

*Madeleine L'Engle,  an author of many books and articles, among other accolades she was a Newbery award winner for her junior novel A Wrinkle in Time. L'Engle was a strong Episcopalian, and later in life she was a "writer-in-residence" at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City where she is now buried. Because of some of her theological views such as universal salvation and a limit to divine punishment, many Christian libraries and bookstores refused to carry her books while at the same time she was criticized by secular reviewers as being "too religious." On writing for children, she often said that children could understand very complex topics better than adults and she emphasized the importance of being childlike and not childish. I had the extreme delight and pleasure to have her all to myself for over an hour once long ago and how lovely was the time together.

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Meditation in Eastertide ~ Wednesday, Week 7 '23

The sun is the width 

of a human foot.  

   ~ Heraclitus*

   Well, ok, then, maybe two human feet...and my first reaction is to laugh at an old memory! I remember myself as a child lying on the grass blocking the sun with my foot and feeling powerful. And there you are, Sun, in all your resplendent presence pouring light upon us brightening, dazzling, blinding, warming, heating, wilting, frying us and then suddenly we're chilled by a passing cloud!  

   So much of life is a matter of perspective. Too much of a good thing followed by too much of a bad thing...and here I am trying to find balance, harmony, and just the right measure of objectivity. But when I get swept away in emotion, I can easily lose my perspective and feel overwhelmed. There have been moments when I was so lost in love I could hardly breathe, some moments when anger has sent my blood pressure nearly to explosion. And when the extremes of passion take over, truth is lost.

   Help the soul You gave me Lord of Sun, Moon, and Stars, to find the warming light of You in the darkness, the cooling shade of You in the heat, the balance between want and need, and, the wisdom to check the width of the sun every now and then.  amen. 

*Heraclitus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher born to an aristocratic family in Ephesus in what is now Turkey. He insisted that the "only constant is change" and most famously that "No man steps into the same river twice."  

 

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Meditation in Eastertide: Tuesday, Week 7, '23

It's good to have an end to journey toward; 

but it's the journey that matters in the end.

 ~ Ernest Hemingway*

        

Dear Master Travel Agent ~
       As You already know, I've come a good distance on this journey and sometimes I don't know how I've gotten this far let alone figured out where I'm headed. Oh I know I'm ultimately headed in Your direction and that how I get there matters, it's just that there have been so many twists and turns along the road so far and I'm sort of directionally challenged at times. Am I headed down or up the right road? I'm hoping that effort, spelling, and punctuation count toward my final grade (please, though, not neatness).  In the meantime, I'm just here to ask for the usual traveler stuff ~ please continue as my Guide and Companion along the Way and let me recognize You wherever I go and in whoever I know and meet along the way. I know that Google Maps won't help but I look forward to little hints here and there that I'm on the right track. Thanks for letting me get this far and, if it's not too much of a bother, I'd like to go on for quite a while yet, whatever the bumps and bites and storms are yet to come. amen. 

*Ernest Hemingway, [1899-1961] American journalist and author, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, his writings are considered classics in American literature. Multiple marriages and a colorful life led Hemingway down many roads in his fairly short but completely filled journey that culminated in suicide in 1961 but left a legacy of words that will never die. 

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Prayers of the People: Fired Up! ~ Pentecost Sunday Yr A '23

For Sunday, May 28, 2023, Readings: Numbers 11:24-30, Ps 104:25-35, 37; Acts 2:1-21, John 20:19-23

  So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord, and he gathered seventy of the elders of the people…Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders, and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied...  [Numbers 11:24-25]

   O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all...You send forth your Spirit, and they are created...Bless the Lord, O my soul. [Psalm 104: 25a, 31a, 37a]   

   When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were altogether in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind... Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability... then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. [Acts 2:1-4, 21]

      ...[Jesus] cried out, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said, 'Out of the believer's heart shall flow the living water.' Now he said this about the Spirit, which the believers were about to receive..." [John 7:37b-39a]

     Fifty Days after Easter, Ten Days after the Ascension, comes Pentecost, the feast of Holy Spirit: the Birth Day of the Christian Church. The word Pentecost comes from the Greek for "fiftieth" and carries much ancient history and tradition along with its place on the Christian calendar. On the Jewish calendar, this ancient feast is Shavuot and follows 50 days after Passover. Although in the Hebrew Bible Shavuot is not explicitly named as the day on which the Torah was revealed by God to Moses who gave it to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, this is commonly considered to be its primary purpose. Today’s passage from The Book of Numbers certainly gives some credence to this celebration. Shavuot may perhaps be another reason the disciples of Jesus were gathered. Being together, comforted by a familiar and venerable ritual, they waited for the unknown sign promised by the resurrected Jesus in his final in-person teachings.

    Remember, that in just in the prior month and a half, the disciples had experienced a confusing “Last Supper,” the arrest and violent execution of Jesus, his resurrection, various appearances to them, his ascension, and their own grief, fear, and uncertainty at these inexplicable turns of events. Here they are gathered together again without quite knowing what was next or when. Suddenly a sound like a violent wind and tongues of fire resting on them, as they began speaking in multiple languages, of course they were bewildered, astonished, and amazed! And then, their ministry began in earnest, taking Christ's message far and wide.

    Today we are blasé. We know the story too well; we are immune to the thrill and amazement of it. The churches are packed at Christmas and Easter yet come Pentecost, all seems routine even if a "Festival Eucharist" is celebrated. Of course, Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter are all critical to our Christian history. We can't have gotten to this point at all without Christ's birth, death, and resurrection. But it was the arrival of the Holy Spirit, on that Pentecost, that fired up the Apostles. That was the moment that sent them around the known world proclaiming Christ, converting, and making the way for us to be the Church here, now, more than 2,000 years later. Without that Pentecost, would we still know about Christmas, Good Friday, or Easter? 

    It is in these current times with fear, frustration, anger, and intolerance swirling around in ever more intense and too often violent levels, that we must take the time to stop and read the texts with new understanding, a fresh awareness of what it must have been like for those in that Upper Room. From the devastation of the Crucifixion, to the confusion and the wonder of the resurrection, to the joy of his return among them, and then suddenly mystified by his ascension, now, only 10 days after his final leaving...they are waiting...and wondering...for what they are unsure.          

   For us, today is the day to move beyond merely knowing the story. Today is the day of knowing that the Spirit IS within US ~ to be as awe-struck, and dazzled and even as flabbergasted [is there such a word in Hebrew?] as the Apostles ~ and to be reinvigorated and excited.  God’s grace, and the love and Salvation of Christ is ours. THIS IS the day that the LORD has made! Let us truly rejoice and be glad and joy-filled, and alive in it! After all, what else is faith for?

    On this fiftieth day after Easter, let us accept and welcome the extraordinary gifts and abilities bestowed on us, chosen for and unique to each of us. Let us be eager and enthusiastic in embracing all that a true life of faith calls us to be and to do, to live fully in the belief in Christ that we claim to have. Let us strive to be all that Jesus and his imperfect disciples have shown us that we can be. We, too, celebrate, with our Jewish heritage, the giving of the Law on Sinai as our rules of life, transformed by Jesus into the Greatest Commandment [see Matthew 22:37-39]. 

    On this Birthday of the Church*, let us begin again to live as Children of God, equal one and all, using the language of love with each other and especially with those who aren't so lovingly inclined. Christmas is wonderful, and lovely, and blessed. Easter is fragrant and joyful, but with Pentecost comes the true gift that brings fire to our souls and lifts our life's journey to a new level! Get Fired Up!

   

    *As the Birthday of the Church, Pentecost marks the official beginning of the ministry of the Apostles beyond their local area and into the world at large. The descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of tongues of fire imbued, instilled, and infused them, and each of us, by extension, with extra-ordinary gifts to bring the message of Christ to everyone. This day is known as Whitsun/Whitsunday in Ireland and the United Kingdom, a name descending from a Gaelic celebration of medieval or perhaps even more ancient times, often wearing whit or white robes. 

LET US, GOD’S PEOPLE, PRAY

Leader:  ~ Most Holy Spirit, Breath of God, let us breathe deeply of Your sacred fire and the gifts that it brings into us, onto us, and through us, to fuel our desire for faith-filled living and moving and being the Church-in-Action, in the name of Christ Jesus, our Lord.  

                                                         Spirit of Goodness and Glory

RESPONSE:                    Fall afresh on us

~ Most Holy Spirit, Breath of God, set our tongues alight to speak in the fervent language of Your Truth to the leaders of this Earth, this Country, and this Community, as the voices of those crying in the continuing wilderness of racism, poverty, intolerance, violence, and injustice. We pray especially for: add your own petitions

                                                       Spirit of Goodness and Glory

                                                       Fall afresh on us                                                      

~ Most Holy Spirit, Breath of God, lighten the burden of pain for those who are weakened in body, spirit, and soul; and ease the worry of all who give comfort and care, if only at a distance. We now join our hearts together to pray for those in need… add your own petitions 

                                                       Spirit of Goodness and Glory

                                                       Fall afresh on us         

~ Most Holy Spirit, Breath of God, soothe the weary hearts of those who struggle in the midst of grief, as You carry those who have left us, into the loving and eternal arms of Christ. We pray especially for… add your own petitions

                                                       Spirit of Goodness and Glory

                                                       Fall afresh on us

~ Most Holy Spirit, Breath of God, we pause in this moment to offer You our other heartfelt thanksgivings, intercessions, petitions, and memorials… add your own petitions

                                                       Spirit of Goodness and Glory

                                                       Fall afresh on us                 

~ Most Holy Spirit, Breath of God, grant an extra measure of Your gifts to those who lead us in Your Church, as they steadfastly strive to guide our spiritual journey through these trying and uncertain times. We pray especially for: add your own petitions

                                                       Spirit of Goodness and Glory

                                                       Fall afresh on us                                                                                                   

The Celebrant adds: God of Creation, Redemption, and Wisdom, though we are many, we are one body in the one Spirit, all equal yet unique by Your design. Set our hearts ablaze again, that we may seek Your will, keep Your Commandments, and use our earthly lives for the common good of all. We ask through Jesus, our Redeemer Christ; and the Holy Spirit, our Wisdom Advocate; who together with You reign as One God, now and for eternity. Amen. 

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Meditation Moment in Eastertide: Monday, Week 7 '23

THINK DIFFERENT. 

But don't believe everything you think.
~ Charlie Chaplin*

           I'm always certain that my thoughts are on track and correct, except when I stop to think about my thoughts. Then, I realize I might, possibly, perhaps, have a bias or two or, at the very least, an untested expectation that affects what I'm thinking. Often I think that she or he or they think that I should think one thing or another, but I've never asked her, him, or them so maybe they don't think that at all but something else instead. But if I ask them, will they think I just don't know what I'm thinking? All this thinking stuff gives me a headache. Can't I just breeze through life thoughtlessly?

           Dear Most High Lord and Excellent Thinker of Thoughts, please help me to work more diligently on how to think critically, objectively, and constructively. Let me recognize and understand the biases and emotions that influence my thoughts and, after some analysis (which may include advice from several others), feel comfortable moving forward anyway or, to change direction entirely. I do know that my thoughts, human as they are, will always be flawed in one way or another. Grant me the ability to be open to changes in my opinions and positions based on new information, even if from people I have decided I don't especially like. Let me work calmly through criticism ~ fair or not (in my opinion) ~ and accept the outcomes of my actions (and my [sometimes] over-quick mouth) while learning new lessons for the future. Whether my thinking is inside or outside of any given box, let me not recycle the same ways of understanding life in ever smaller circles with ever smaller thoughts, or, in other words, don't let me believe everything I think. 

amen. 

*Charlie Chaplin [1899-1977], born in England, was an actor, comedian, director, and writer ~ all of the first magnitude ~ with a huge fan base on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere that helped him survive both adoration and controversy. His brilliance in his early silent films is still being admired today. His most famous character, The Tramp, propelled him to icon status. 

 

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