Pastor Annette's Blog
"OF ALL THE THINGS GOD HAS SHOWN ME, I CAN SPEAK BUT A LITTLE WORD NOT MORE THAN A HONEYBEE CAN CARRY AWAY ON ITS FOOT FROM AN OVERFLOWING JAR."
~ MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG, 13TH CENTURY MYSTIC |
"OF ALL THE THINGS GOD HAS SHOWN ME, I CAN SPEAK BUT A LITTLE WORD NOT MORE THAN A HONEYBEE CAN CARRY AWAY ON ITS FOOT FROM AN OVERFLOWING JAR."
~ MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG, 13TH CENTURY MYSTIC |
Beloved:
Every now and then I hanker for a different house. Something smaller to neglect like I neglect my current rooms and flower beds. Just the thought of moving kills the hankering, and I remember that I can only ever occupy a single spot on earth – so how about I occupy this one fully? I might choose to watch the seasons pass through the trees of this backyard. To learn the different sounds of traffic on this stretch of highway. Were I to pay attention long enough, I might become an expert of this place, the expert not only of this plot of ground but the terrain of this particular human heart. If I could just stay here, of course, which is the hardest exercise of all. Trusting there’s nothing inside the memories and dreams which I cannot afford to sift through, like forgotten souvenirs. “They can be ours to relive and be glad for, or to weep over and forgive,” Richard Rohr* writes, “without ever having to fix them.” So, practicing the wanting to stay put is my thing these days. It hardly rolls off the tongue like prayer or contemplation but amounts to pretty much the same. Be here, Now. In this house, with these people. On this ground, with these plants and animals. In this body. In this mind. In this heart with all its shadows and regrets. Visit often and stay longer every time, long enough to discover that there is always more to see and hear. More light. More beauty. More life, than we can ever, ever hope to comprehend. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette * Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs - The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, Crossroads Publishing, 2003
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September 18, 2018
Beloved: A little one in church this week had an especially hard time sitting still. At children’s story time she roamed up to my lap and then took a lap around the room on her way back to her seat, sing-songing all the way. Later we had a little chat, about how important it is to listen. As if I know anything at all to be giving her advice. Of all the time I say I spend at prayer, it’s but a fraction that I’m praying. My thoughts wander like a herd of goats to every corner of my mind. Things I need to do today . . . what I ate last week . . . the weeds that fill my garden . . . is that bird a rooster or a hen . . . is that a freckle or do I have cancer? Nothing is too small a speculation to pull me from my prayers. Every saint I’ve ever read reports the same phenomenon: the impossibility of prayer – along with its grace; how, despite its aggravations, the very act of trying has some way of righting the world just a little more. One says that his prayers are like a donkey that keeps escaping from the barn. The work of prayer is gently leading him back every single time. For all her wiggly antics, the little one at church loves church. She’s always glad to be there. She dances during hymns and sings when it’s not her turn. She passes out hugs like candy canes on Christmas. Who’s to say she’s not way ahead of us, when it comes to knowing how to be when we come before the Lord? Do take care, dear people. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
Turns out my ash tree isn’t special but just another victim in a scourge that begin in Michigan sixteen years ago. A pretty little green bug apparently crossed the ocean hiding in a wooden Chinese shipping crate and her family migrated in every direction. Emerald ash borer is her common name, and one clan can suck the life from a small elm in months, from a giant one like mine in three or four years. They’ve killed tens of millions of trees in North America and Canada already, and they are found further from Michigan all the time. I am both horrified and wildly impressed at the industry of such tiny creatures. What they do with their jaws humans can only do with hard hats and rigging. Oh, and saws. Lots of very noisy saws! There must be millions of bugs in my tree by now, chewing all the time. I wonder what it sounds like to their little ears. Do they have some tiny noise-cancelling earmuffs built into their tiny heads? Of course I’ve never stood and listened to my tree. Maybe it’s alive with sound to those with ears to hear. My neighbors already think I’m crazy, so I might as well go take a listen. I can’t afford five thousand nor for the tree to fall on my house, so we agreed that he will take down one of the four giant trunks and let the rest fall into my yard and forest, tomorrow or next year. Then the day will last a little longer, since the giant ash tree is to the west. The sun sinks behind it for several minutes before touching the next treetop line. I will miss her but I rather like knowing these are our last days together. I’ll pay better attention to her now, I think, and be grateful that we were here at the same time. All of life is so fleeting, isn’t it, and yet each moment is so full. I pray the day is full of life and love for you today. ~peace & prayers, pastor annette September 4, 2018
Beloved: Nature is the hiding place of God. ~ Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs Within another paragraph or two I want to close the book and scream, I feel so overwhelmed. In the simplest of terms, Rohr exposes God’s movement in the cicada buzzing on my porch floor, the begonia at my elbow, quivering a breeze too slight for me to feel. Once seen, it cannot be unseen and seeing is painful, both for its beauty and its sorrow. What kind of people might we be, could we live as seeing people, treasuring every element as the heart of life itself? How might we regard each other, with tenderness at the very least, rightly shy to ruin something presently so fine? We humans mostly choose a different course, one that seems less sorrowful to bear. We narrow down our focus to the necessary duties of one job, one house, one family. “This is more than I can manage,” we say, and mostly it feels true. “I’d like to manage something else” is the harder truth to tell. There’s awesome pressure in this world to have the perfect family, house, career; kids competent in class and sports; and colleagues convinced you pull your weight. Who has time to see a hummingbird flitting at the glass when there are bills to pay this week? Here’s the part of seeing that is so overwhelming: once seen, God cannot be unseen. God is at the grocery store - in the cheerful clerk teaching the Chinese student how the checkout line works, while her line backs up endlessly. God is in the power of those legs on the high school soccer field. Right there, buried in our to-do lists, God is hiding in plain sight. More than I can bear, almost, for the beauty of its presence and the sorrow of having missed it even once before. How can anyone sit still for so profound a revelation! ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette |
I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here.
Enjoy! Pastor Annette Copyright
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