To be Hopeful

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory

          Howard Zinn, quoted by Brian McLaren

_______________________________________

I can read

I see the polls

I read the comments from people on posts and memes on Facebook

I can see the rise of hate and racism

The raw lust for power

The desire to control, even to oppress

The desire for retribution

I see lies embraced as truth

Smallness embraced as greatness

And I despair

And that is good

I need to feel the pain!

I need to see the evil.

I need to panic, as Greta Thunberg once suggested

and act as if we are on the “eve of destruction”

because we are

There is no use pretending

I can’t just change the channel

This is our reality

Despair is needed

But so is hope

We need to hold despair and hope together

Hope without despair can lead to complacency

God has this, so I don’t have to do anything

Love always wins (eventually)

So I don’t have to do anything

But despair can lead to complacency as well

If there is nothing that can be done

To create equity, or justice, or even common decency

Why try?

We need despair, to see the world as it is

But

We also need hope. The belief that even as we despair

Even as the world burns

Even as malignant people are worshiped

And domination and cruelty are embraced

That even then

We can do small things

We can do hard things

We can do loving and kind things

We can, and should, do something

For God is working God’s purpose out

As year succeeds to year

God is working that purpose out through us

And we!

We should live “in defiance of all that is bad around us”

We can live in defiance

We need despair

But we also need hope

The despair of Good Friday

The hope of Easter

But above all, we need the reality of Pentecost

Something is missing in my heart

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft
My voice so
Tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear
Hafiz, The Gift, Landisky, Trans. P 277

My beautiful picture

I need Sacred Presence this morning
for something is missing
in my heart

I am pained by death
by pastors shot in their own church
by soldiers gunned down on a hot southern afternoon

but a deeper pain comes
when I realize how ready we are to hate
and see events through the eyes of prejudice
how easily we rate death
and how quick we are to value some lives far more highly than others

a deeper pain comes when I see
how differently we judge those
whose extreme view
drive them to extreme acts

depending on how close their ideology is
to our ideology

all extremism that leads to violence and death
makes the heart of God hurt

a deeper pain comes
when I see how ready we are to respond to hate with hate
and violence with violence

O God
forgive us
our need of You
is absolutely
clear

Fear turned to Ash

Love is

The funeral pyre

Where I have laid my living body

All the false notions of myself

That once caused fear, pain

Have turned to ash

As I neared God

Hafiz

it was just a walk

my normal two mile walk

along rural roads

one cannot help but be broken open

out there

amidst the mountains

and trees

as one wanders beneath

that brilliant canopy of blue

and hears

the wild birds sing

one cannot help but be broken open

and sometimes

poured out

this day

I went to dark places

to failures

to do

to be

in my minds eyes I imagined

people looking at me

with eyes that despised

so many mistakes

so many flaws

so many people

they were of course my own eyes

and there was nothing to do

but to walk

and place one foot in front of the other

and there was nothing to do

but breathe

God

In

and in the hot fire

of Sacred love

find

peace

The cry of the heart

The
Heart is right to cry

Even when the smallest drop of light
Of love
Is taken away

Perhaps you may kick, moan, scream
In a dignified
Silence

But you are so right
To do so in any fashion

Until God returns
To

You
Hafiz

the heart
cannot help but cry
when Sacred love seems absent

it screams
most oft
in dignified silence

this cry of the heart
rending and tearing
the fabric of the soul

hidden behind
every day tasks
and genial exchanges
with people similarly torn

is the Sacred gone?
absent

no
the Sacred is always within
patiently waiting for us
to stop our
desperate protests
and notice

that she
had never
left

and taste
the smallest drop
of
love

A heart, blessed and ruined

Keep ringing the bell,
Playing the tamboura, calling for Him

For you
Have touched something holy inside
With your spirit-body
And now your eyes look broken
Without his sacred presence near

The heart is like that: blessed and ruined
Once it has known
Divine beauty

Then
It becomes a restless sky hunter

The lover keeps circling in their being
Their sweetest moments
With God
Needing to kiss
His face
Again
Hafiz

gray
unremitting
like a shroud cloaks the rising of the sun

grieving eyes
search
the heart blessed and ruined
seeking the light

a restless hunter
and then
for a brief moment
light breaks through
brilliant red

then fading
softer
then gone again

sometimes grace
is like
that

One Saturday morning

How
Did the rose
Ever open its heart

And give to this world
All its
Beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being

Otherwise
We all remain

Too

Frightened
Hafiz
____________________

I sit in my study
the morning is dark
as clouds loom
and the green of the grass
glows eerily in the half light

I sit,
minister
therapist

one whom
many feel (including myself in my more foolish moments)

should have it all
figured
out

but I don’t have it all figured out
I am always in the process of figuring it out
I am always just hanging on
by the very tips of my fingers
hoping against hope
that I will not lose grip
and crash
into some abyss

sometimes it feels as if this should mean
that I should not
be trying to guide others
down a path to wellness

or standing in the “high place”
talking about spiritual things

how presumptuous
how dare I!

but then I realize we are all just hanging on
by our fingertips

Jesus had the temptations
and then
Gethsemane

Peter was not much of a “rock”
Paul had a thorn in the flesh…..
and would cry out

“wretched man that I am, who shall rescue me”…

let’s just say
I have my
Moments

wounded
are we all

not broken
not destroyed
just people in the process of figuring it out
making mistakes along the way
and then,
in the Sacred’s grace full presence

taking one more step
and then another
and another

moving toward the light
hoping to bloom
and give the world
all
our
beauty
or a least a brief glimpse

(so the minister sits in his study
and begins
to
write)

This Stops Here

Any God who would wander into the human condition, any God who has this thirst to pursue us, had better not be too put off by pain, for that’s the way we tend to treat our saviors. Any God who tries to love us had better be ready to die for it.
William Willimon

Sometimes it seems
as if hate is going to win
as if all that right
all that is good
is coming to an end

as on that Friday so long ago
when in the heat of the afternoon
jeers echoed
lashes fell
thorns pierced
hammer blows reverberated

and love took its last breath

or did it?

perhaps love is made of tougher stuff
perhaps
just perhaps

on that day
God looked in the face of hatred
and brutality
into the face or judgement and rejected
into the face of power and wealth

and said

“This Stops Here”

and that is why we call it
Good

Dance of Love

Every
Child
Has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who ever does
Anything weird,
But the God who only knows four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come dance with me.”
Come
Dance.
Hafiz

I walk through the day
With feet of clay
mired by the mud
of the world
which sucks and clings

and steals the vigor from my step

head down I trudge
afraid to look up
for fear of what I might see

I do not want to see the wicked flourish
to see those hungry for power and wealth
lie, and oppress

I do not want to see willful ignorance
and fear and hatred abound

and so my feet are bound to the earth

but then the Sacred stirs in my soul

and my heart lifts
and my feet are freed
and I am
freed
to dance
the dance of
love

Hope is not my friend

hope is not my friend
when I walk blindly
eyes fixed on far horizons
and thoughts far off
unhappy with this moment
distressed about who I am

unsettled
hoping only
for a better moment
a better me

and miss
the first crocus of spring
poking its purple head through the dirt beneath my feet

God is!

God to enfold me,
God to surround me,
God in my speaking,
God in my thinking.

God in my sleeping,
God in my waking,
God in my watching,
God in my hoping.

God in my life,
God in my lips,
God in my soul,
God in my heart.

God in my sufficing,
God in my slumber,
God in mine ever-living soul,
God in mine eternity.

Ancient celtic oral traditions – carmina gadelica

it has been a long time coming
this rain
welcomed and despised

I slog down the road
the earth sucking at my feet
as I make my way down our dirt road

my head is bowed against
the brazen wind that still gusts
and the rain
that steadily falls

I curse the darkness
But my soul knows – God is here
In this wet sloppy darkness
just as much as in the brilliant sunrises

the rain will become
the flowers, the grass
the fresh life of spring

all of life works together toward good
when we remember
God enfolds us
God is everywhere
God is in every thing
God is!