The beauty of the Lord

Though he was in the form of God, … [he] emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. (Philippians 2:6a,7a)

I’ve kept a curled, yellow news clipping on my desk for years. It’s an obituary for Kenneth Ignatius Neff. I never met him and know nothing more about him than what his obit says.

He had been a monk in Iowa but left the monastery to start his own monastic community in Illinois. Moving to Palestine, Texas, he lived as a hermit for 18 years, before pouring himself into volunteer work to protect children, abused women and hospital patients. He also worked in a crisis center and taught prison inmates in a rehab program.

He requested no funeral service, wanting only to be remembered as having ‘lived a simple life of reflection, prayer and service.’

I don’t wonder about his motives. They’re obvious. His heart was totally given, surrendered to the high and holy purpose of loving the world the way Christ Jesus loves the world.

I remember weeping when my eyes first fell upon his contented smile in the photo that accompanied his obit. It was like looking into the face of Jesus and feeling the love that you always wanted … and always wanted to be.

David L. Miller

Wounds of love

Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ (John 20:26b-28)

The painting was impossible to miss. I had seen it before, but so have millions. Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Thomas loomed 15 feet across, projected on a screen, on the southeast side of the sanctuary, as I crossed myself and took my seat.

No more needed to be said as far as I was concerned. Virtually the totality of my faith was right there.

Jesus grasped Thomas’ right wrist in his left hand, guiding Thomas’ finger into the hole in his side, pierced by a Roman lance to ensure his death.

Jesus’s eyes are on his side, helping Thomas to touch him, to place his finger between the lips of flesh out of which blood and water flowed as life left him.

His head turned ever-so-slightly to the side, Thomas doesn’t look directly at the wound and certainly not up at Jesus, whose gaze is fixed on Thomas’ right hand, guiding it to his open flesh. No anger creases Jesus’ brow, no reproval purses his lips. His desire in singular. Please. Just touch … and see … the Love that hate cannot kill.

Wounds of love, I thought in the moment. Instantly, my mind traveled thousands of miles away to a moment of watching a mother walk to a feeding station run by an old Irish nun in Baidoa, Somalia. Thousands were dying of starvation and disease at the time, fleeing their homes with little food, dying along the way, burying the children and old ones where they fell, trying to get to a place like this where there was compassion and food—a place where nobody asked whose side you were on because they were on the side of life.

Like so many, this mother denied herself food on the journey, giving what little she had to the children. She was one of the lucky ones. Many more died on the way, pointing their children toward places like this when they could go no further, hoping against hope that their flesh and blood might live to know the grace of laughter once more. I heard their stories … told by their orphaned children.

Stories no different than this are being told across Gaza these days. We see the pictures, too, children cradling younger brothers and sisters while separated from parents, if they are still fortunate enough to have parents.

They bear deep wounds, wounds of love, the wounds of Jesus in present time, blessed incarnations of the Love human brutality cannot kill.

A local reporter interviewed me after that long ago reporting trip to Somalia and Sudan. He stammered and tripped over a question he thought impolitic to ask, wondering if seeing such suffering undermined my faith.

The opposite, I told him. Amid the worst that human beings can do to each other, I had seen Jesus. Yes, in the old nun and many others like her, like, say, those seven blessed souls killed last week while feeding people with World Central Kitchen. They are not only the best of humanity, as Jose Andres, WCK’s founder said. They are the hands of the risen Lord Jesus multiplying loaves and breaking bread.

But more, even more, I had seen the wounds of love in suffering hearts who surrendered life and hope that others might live: Not just survive, but live in the knowledge that there is a very great Love at work in the world, a Love death cannot kill and brutality cannot destroy, a Love who gives everything and holds back nothing, a Love who longs for us to touch and see, trust and know that—in spite of all the ugliness—we live in a world where Love lives and breathes and becomes flesh and blood in the wounded love of our humanity.

Every time I see it, every time I feel it, every time I witness the wounds of Love, I join Thomas, my brother, and together we cry to Jesus, ‘My Lord and my God.’

 David L. Miller

 

 

 

The fellowship of Easter brunch

 Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord. (John 21:12)

My friend, Kevin, sent the 7 a.m. squirrel report from the front porch of his rural home. Apparently, a drippy rain induced them to sleep late today. Here, 160 miles away, golden sun illumines the neighbor’s daffodils, heralding nature’s resurrection, soon to delight us with the renewal for which every heart hopes.

I, however, am still stewing on Kevin’s last note, telling me, with absolutely no rancor, why he and his beloved wife will not be in church on Easter … as they haven’t been regular for years.

It’s a familiar litany. I talk to God frequently, Kevin tells me, in gratitude for the day and to help him do the good that he wills.

But the hypocrisies of clashing egos among the supposedly faithful keep him from the church door, along with the rejection of a gay pastor, loved by some but not all, dividing the congregation, which moves Kevin to think of gay family members and clients he loves and serves.

Then, there is the PTSD (my words, not his) occasioned by hearing songs or words that transport them back to their 16-year-old son’s funeral, killed in a terrible car crash. And I get it. I’ve seen trauma do that before.

All of this moves me to love my friend more than ever because I feel a great and deep heart beating in his chest. But there’s one more thing: Part of me identifies with him because—after serving the church for more than 40 years as a pastor, journalist and spiritual director—I won’t be in church this week either.

It’s not that I have lost my faith. Far from it. I hold the faith of the church, the faith of Jesus the Christ, deep and dear in my heart where Christ lives and breathes in the great love I feel for him and all creation. I cherish and hunger for his divine presence more than ever in my life.

But when I participate in corporate worship, as I have a number of places since retirement, I find little space—and certainly no home (at least, not yet)—for my hunger to feel, know and share the joys and sorrows, the struggles, doubts, elation and mystery of being a vessel of Christ. I long to be among a people where reverence, praise and expression of God’s boundless love for everyone is central, trumping everything else.  

Years ago, one of my spiritual directees said he wanted to be a member of ‘the fellowship of the Sunday brunch.’ He spoke partly in jest, but mostly not.

His suggestion sparks the image of a few friends or fellow travelers gathering around a table to share food and talk about their lives. What gave them life or joy or hope that week? What are they reading or seeing that moved them to see differently or understand something anew? Who moved them to love or joy or anger or sadness? How is what is happening in the world affecting them?

The Spirit blows where it chooses, Jesus said. You hear the sound of it, but where it goes and why, well, that’s a mystery. I have no doubt, however, that the Spirit of Christ’s living love would be more than pleased to warm a few hearts and console wounded souls at the fellowship of the Sunday brunch.

And I know, absolutely know, I have felt the Spirit of the One who is Life and Love at cafe tables and sickbeds, in living rooms, my favorite Irish pub and a host of other places where human hearts cracked opened just enough to share a morsel of what is actually there, the heaven and hell of being human.

It's interesting to me, and telling, I think, that several of Jesus’ resurrection appearances happen over sharing food. Jesus breaks bread and eyes are opened to his presence. Or, he cooks fish on a rocky beach and invites his old friends to breakfast and nobody asks whether it is Jesus whom they are experiencing.

There is no need. They know … because they feel the loving life of the Spirit in the mystery of their own hearts.

All of this awakens a desire to join Kevin on his front porch to watch the squirrels … and talk. I have every reason to expect Easter can happen there … just as well as anywhere else.

David L. Miller

 

 

Simple truth

Jesus answered, ‘For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’ Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’ (John 18:37a-38)

My friend, Kevin, tells me he has become the archetypal old man. Every morning, he sits on his porch with a cup of coffee, lights a cigarette and watches the squirrels wake up, while thinking about the past.

I wonder what he sees there. Next time, I’ll ask. This morning, the question rebounds to me, and an answer springs to technicolor life in my mind’s eye, a familiar scene, decades old, telling my heart what I have lost and most want for the stretch of life that lies ahead.

One word: Simplicity. I hunger for the simplicity of heart that was mine when I was nine or 10 or 11, running across the elysian fields of the old fairgrounds near my childhood home.

Heaven was chasing my cocker spaniel across the emerald expanse, dandelions sprouting across the meadow, as Blondie ran, her toenails ripping through the grass, eluding my grasp at every turn.

And I laughed. I laughed at her joy, swept up in the rapture of running free alongside and far behind, unrestricted and unrestrained, feeling the exhilaration of being alive in a wide and open space where no one cared if I laughed or shouted or prayed or sang at the top of my voice, songs from the radio, others from church.

Those fields are the reason I love the stories of Jesus’ early ministry so much. I can see him as he walked through grassy fields with his friends, their palms running across the top of tall grasses, plucking the heads of wild oats and eating them, talking, asking questions, stopping on a hill to gaze at the waters of the Sea of Galilee, as the bluffs of Bashan paled to pink miles across the water in the late afternoon sun.

I see them as people brought their children, and Jesus held them in his arms, loving them, blessing them, as he raised his eyes to the heavens praising the Loving Mystery for the song of birds, the yellow of flowers and the tenderness of open hearts.

But that was then. Now, Holy Week is upon us; darkness settles in. The warm sun of open fields is lost behind thick clouds of threat and gloom. The joy of beginnings flees like a dream at the break of day, leaving only the nightmare. The air bristles with anger and intrigue. Jesus is no longer a free soul on the hills of Galilee. Sadness settles on his soul as furtive eyes surround him, waiting their time. He is but a political problem, a pawn passed from one authority to another, each seeking an expedience to be rid of him.

Night has come, and Jesus stands before his accusers, silent, but for this. ‘I came into the world to testify to the truth,’ he says.  And I ask the same question as Pontius Pilate, ‘What is truth?’

I don’t know whether he spoke with a sneer or with faint hope that Jesus might say a little more, wondering against all odds that there might be an answer to the question.

But Jesus just stands there, silent, for truth allows no words. Truth is what filled me on the fields of my childhood. Truth is what swept my heart to tears and songs and prayers and joy as love for life filled me from a Source that I did not then and never will comprehend.

Truth is the divine smile that delighted in my play and warmed me whole as I ran with my dog. Truth is the Love who filled me with graced awareness that this Love, this Great Mystery, is real and knowable, and that my laughter was the greatest praise I could ever return.

The simple truth is Jesus, the face of the Loving Mystery who forgives his enemies, blesses those who curse him, prays for those who kill him, and still has time to find young boys on the fields of their play. (Girls, too, I’m sure).

It may be that I was closer to God at 10 than any time since. My heart was simple then, and I knew … the truth that matters most.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Angels unaware

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. (Hebrews 13:2)

I recognized the face immediately, older, certainly, and her hair was a different color. But the shape of her smile had endured years of crippling arthritis, transporting me to the high school classrooms we shared more than 50 years ago.

Her name was … is … Diane. I didn’t know her well. We were not friends, just pleasant acquaintances occupying the same spaces for a few short years in our little high school. Most classes were required and elective opportunities were few, so we saw the same people over-and-over from one hour to the next until the bell rang at 3:57 p.m., setting the prisoners free.

So, then, what is this flood of gratitude as she smiles at me from a Facebook obituary, recounting her death at 71 and naming family members who were blessed by the life she lived?

I know almost nothing of that life beyond a few brief moments we shared in the narthex of my childhood church while visiting my mother. The first time, I was surprised to see her there, since she was not part of the church when I was growing up.

Reading the names of her children and grandchildren, teary words of purest gratitude rise unbidden from the center of my soul, praise to God for a life with which I had but fleeting connection, long ago.

But why such praise and spontaneous emotion? Perhaps this: She was an unassuming presence, making no demands and offering no judgments at a time in my life when I felt insecure, uncertain and even more confused by life than I am now. It was enough for us to exchange greetings, comment on the class assignment or whatever rumors were buzzing through the hallways.

There is a certain grace in this, moments when it is enough just to be, free of expectations to be something or someone at a time when you weren’t sure of who you were … or are … or might or want to be.

I certainly wouldn’t name Diane as having much influence on the development of who I continue to become. But maybe I should.

There are far more channels of grace, unnoticed streams of Presence, than the obvious ones we can see and name. Our days are sprinkled with little moments—incidental, nothing-special, entirely forgotten encounters—that direct our paths, change our course and shape our hearts in incalculable ways beyond our awareness.

All of which is to say life is a greater mystery than we imagine, and God, which is to say the presence of Loving Grace, is woven more deeply among the twisted threads of our days than our blinkered eyes can see.

But moments come when the heart is grasped by an intuition, when it knows what the mind cannot teach, and tears offer their silent prayer, moved by Love’s Living Presence that was always there … unnoticed … in places and faces that were more important than you ever knew.

No one needs to tell you to be thankful at such a time. For a beatific presence well beyond you moves you to gratitude for the great mystery of your life and for the greater mystery of the Love who managed to find and bless you … even though you were clueless about it at the time.

But when, finally, your heart sees and knows, love flows as easily as your breath. Just so, Diane, beloved of God, I return the blessing.

May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs greet you at your arrival and lead you into the holy city, Jerusalem. May the choir of angels greet you and, like Lazarus, who once was a poor man, may you have eternal rest.

David L. Miller

 

Nightlight

 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. (John 12:32)

Perhaps it was the setting, a hospital room when I couldn’t rest, sleep or find any comfort. Maybe at another time the image, the juxtaposition, would not have struck me, but lonely hours staring at the ceiling affects your vision … and opens your heart.

Three parents stared from a silent television screen, receiving hugs from supporters who visited them in solidarity with their grief and calls for justice. They will never get it, however. Justice would mean getting their children back, alive and well. But they are gone, slaughtered in an elementary school room in Uvalde, Texas, two years ago.

Justice, for them, lies far beyond human reach, in a realm more gracious than anything we might imagine let alone provide.

For the time being, there is grief, the consolation of tender hearts and the faint hope that public authorities will hear them and respond like it was their children who were cut off from their precious lives by a shooter and his soulless killing machine.

Who knows what beauty and joy would have graced their families and community through the irreplaceable lives of these children? For this, we should all grieve. The Holy One gave those lives not just to their parents, their families and to one Texas town …. but to every one of us.

But it was more than this, more than my frustration of another night tethered to heart monitors in a hospital bed that moved my tears. There was an image. Behind the faces on the TV screen, a crucifix hung on the wall over their shoulders.

My bleary eyes could not make out much detail on the cross. It looked to be plaster with little color that I could see in the darkness.

But it was just right, in exactly the right place … as if forces beyond us curated the scene, a juxtaposition of shattered hearts standing there as the Crucified, arms spread wide by the ugly brutality of this world, his arms, above and around them … and me in that cursed bed, all of us in need of healing.

And there he was … and is … and always will be, arms open, Love giving itself away, refusing to hate, lost in love for a world that hates far too much and all-too-often.

That’s who Jesus is, the crucified and risen one, Incarnation of the Love who embraces all that we are, all that we have suffered and celebrated, all that makes us laugh and cry, enfolding the worst and best of us in an overflowing triune Love that has neither beginning nor end.

I cannot explain it and am certain I will never have such wisdom, but I know there is healing in those arms. More than once or twice I have tasted it, many more. And I know … that plaster crucifix, on a wall somewhere in Uvalde, Texas, speaks to places in our hearts that only Love can reach, transforming sorrow into hope and death into life.

In the darkness of night, only a crucified savior will do. Nowhere is God any greater … than on that cross.

David L Miller

 

 

 

 A clean and open space

 Making a whip of cords, he (Jesus) drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ (John 2:15-16)

All in all, it’s not a very ‘sweet Jesus’ sort of thing to do. But I understand the impulse.

Walking into the temple precincts, Jesus twists together a whip of cords, upends the tables of the money changers; their coins ching and clatter across the pavement.

Swinging the whip above his head, he drives off the merchants with their birds and lambs and cattle and who knows what else, clearing out an empty space until all that remains is him, standing alone in the courtyard, catching his breath, looking around for who or what he has yet to chase off.

He wants the temple—the ‘Father’s house’—to be a meeting place where human hearts might know and feel the Great Heart who loves and longs for them, a space to pour out their loves and hurts that they might meet and enter the Love who is their home, their hearts enfolded in the divine heart.

I felt something of the same yesterday while visiting a church that was new to me. The choir stood at the director’s command, a flute from a hidden corner intoned an exquisite passage, inviting the heart to rest, wait and listen for the voices to breathe their harmonies over the gathered people.

A spiritual, deep and soulful washed over us, the congregation rapt, moved but unmoving in the pews around me, until it was over. The final note hung in the air a nanosecond as a moment of sweet, mystic communion was about to gather every heart into one love for the Holy God who inspires such beauty and devotion.

But it was not to be, the congregation broke into simultaneous applause, unable to leave a tender moment alone, as they did every time someone sang or played or spoke, shattering any opportunity for silent communion with each other in the Great Love who woke us from sleep and called us together.

There was no open space for the heart to breathe and pray and be.

I was not tempted to make a whip of cords and drive these good people out, but I certainly wanted to tie their hands that they might let Beauty’s presence wash over them and grace their hearts with whatever the Holy One might give them.

Just so, I think I understand Jesus as he stands out of breath in the middle of the courtyard.

He cleared an open space where the clamor of buying and selling, of work and worry is stilled, a space where human hearts are relieved of the compulsion to fill every single moment with sound and motion—all the things we do in our vain attempts to fill our life with meaning or to drown out the nagging doubt that our lives and all we do to fill them has any meaning at all, that the emptiness we sometimes (often?) feel has no cure.

But the heart does not lie. Our hearts know we are made for love, to be filled with affection and warmth, to find ourselves amid the mutuality of giving and receiving that makes us truly human and truly glad to be graced with the privilege of drawing breath on this wonderous little corner of the cosmos.

We need a clean, open space to feel what we feel and to speak our fears and needs and hopes from the hidden silence of our hearts. And there, exactly there, in that open space, we meet the one who is the face of the hunger within us.

He is not only the fire of our hunger but also the food and drink that satisfies the heart’s ancient longing, standing in the open space, ready to hear, ready to heal, ready to receive, ready to welcome us that we may be taken into the Heart he is. Heart-to-heart, we meet and know the Love who made us, the Love who ever awaits us, the Love who lies waiting to live and breathe through our holy and precious lives.

David L. Miller