The earth is languishing for more contemplatives. We have not even been courteous to her, much less respectful. We have never sincerely asked forgiveness for our massive exploitation of her. We have failed to see that she is numinous and to treat her with proper deference as our mother. It is time now for the child to mother the mother. Nothing less than a mysticism that can perceive the diaphany of the divine at the heart of matter itself is capable of experiencing mystical union with nature. Even if we have not had a vivid mystical experience, we can learn in prayer to meditate on what the union could imply.
In our secret yearnings
we wait for your coming,
and in our grinding despair
we doubt that you will...
Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edges of our fingertips.
We do not want our several worlds to end.
Come in your power
and come in your weakness
in any case
and make all things new.
~ Walter Brueggemann in AWED TO HEAVEN, ROOTED IN EARTH
No wonder the prophet weeps yet —
We begin again but not innocent...
And we feebly watch for you and wait.
Teach us how to weep while we wait,
and how to hope while we weep,
and how to care while we hope.
~ from "Teach Us How To Weep" in AWED TO HEAVEN, ROOTED IN EARTH: PRAYERS OF WALTER BRUEGGEMANN
Hope is a human act of commitment to and investment in the future. Hope is an act of human courage that refuses to cherish the present too much or be reduced to despair by present circumstance. Hope is the capacity to relinquish the present for the sake of what is imagined to be a reachable future...
Sureness about God's large resolve...is a summons...Now is the time for yielding justice, for foolish forgiveness, for outrageous generosity, for elaborate hospitality. None of these acts can come from fear, anxiety, or despair. But they are all acts that evoke new futures that the fearful think are impossible. Hope in the end is a contradiction of the dominant version of reality...it is at the root of human well-being, for ourselves as for all our would-be neighbors.
~ Walter Brueggemann in Sojourners Magazine, Dec 2013
