Creator of the Universe, we know that You are Mystery beyond mystery, yet our finite minds and fragile fears often want to contain You in a way that keeps us comfortable. We resist stretching our beliefs to include the new. We hesitate to break with the past, even if it is filled with illusion. Help us to be open to your revelation, not merely because it is new, but because it can bring us closer to the truth of who You are and who we are in You.
Holidays are about families, and families can be a bit of a mess under stress. But the love that will gather is much more important than anything else on earth, and bigger than anything else on earth, too. Because finally, that love is sovereign.
Unfortunately, change and forgiveness do not come easily for me, but ANY willingness to let go inevitably comes from pain; and the desire to change and forgive changes you, and jiggles the spirit, gets to it somehow, to the deepest, hardest, most ruined parts. And then Spirit expands, because that is its nature, and it brings along the body, and finally, the mind.
Steeping ourselves in a place, simmering in its bounties, celebrating its wonders, and loving its peculiarities are necessary steps on a spiritual journey. We often take for granted the places where we work and play. To get to know them again, or perhaps for the first time, involves acts of consecration and imagination. Or as Wendell Berry puts it: "My most inspiring thought is that this place, if I am to live well in it, requires and deserves a lifetime of the most careful attention."
The silence of the marsh was so profound that it could have been the flip side of the singing in my church. Just last Sunday the people had sung the old spiritual, "Go Down, Moses," a cappella because the pianist was gone, and a bunch of people were crying, singing very loudly with their eyes closed, and the singing of that cry of a song was a wonderful form of communion. How come you can hear a chord, and then another chord, and then your heart breaks open?
