Saturday, November 01, 2014

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Today’s text
Matthew 5:1-3
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:  ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Poor & rich

Wise and secure today,
no grasping rankles the heart
content to welcome what
comes as from your hand,
receiving as one who has no
claim on tomorrow or
even my next breath.

Poverty of spirit You
call it; forsaking all claim
and demand of what is not
or which cannot yet or
perhaps ever be, but receiving
with gratitude what is, knowing
the Love and grace it is;
the challenge, too, each
thing, each day, each grace
a challenge and gift shaping
the soul into the Mystery
of You who are in this
and every soul.

So with open hearts we
live, waiting …
the unveiling only time  
can bring, but knowing
always the Mystery we bear
is the Love you are, shaped
by particularities of our
surprising lives and
histories--who could have
guessed?--each a glory
of Your Glory.

Just so, in hope we watch,
trusting, knowing …
whatever time brings or
soul grows in its secret soil
will be the Love you are, and
peace will attend our poverty
of spirit, a taste of that kingdom
made of Love alone
by Hands not ours.

Pr. David L. Miller



Tuesday, October 28, 2014

October 28, 2014



Today’s text

Matthew 5:8

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Seeing

Beatific vision tradition calls
the seeing of the One who
sees in love, so different
from our seeing, obsessed eyes
compulsive, fixed on warts
and wounds, busy tongues
seeking every sore spot.

With delight the Seer sees
every curve and contour
of body and soul, eyes
lingering, caressing,
slowly moving, savoring
even the smallest the quiver
of lips upturned into the smile
that echoes the Divine Heart’s
joy, who sees and says, “mine,
mine, mine,” bursting with Love
at the sight of life filled
and revealing the Life who is.

Just so we are seen by
the Beauty who seeks
and savors Beauty
in all, inviting us to see
self and all so well, and
seeing to know in all we
see the One who always is …
and Who always is Love.

Seeing that we are seen
in love, vision is pure, and
we see with love through
eyes longing for the One
Love present in all that is, waiting
the day we see Beauty
and nothing more.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, October 27, 2014

October 27, 2014


Today’s text
 
1 John 3:1-2

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

As you see …

I am glad I was born in a rural place where fields roll among hills carved by ancient glaciers, where golden trees follow valleys, crowding near rivulets that run when the rains come, seeking the water of life … just like me.

The trees, I see, are my brothers and sisters, teaching me what I tend to forget.

Autumn colors are all around, not only in rural landscapes. But seeing the hills roll before your eyes from the top of a ridge, hazy mounds purple in far distance, awakens the awareness of beauty in a young child, or at least in the child that I was … and in many ways still am.

But as the years pass a blessed awareness appeared: Somehow, mysteriously, the beauty you see resides also within you, or you wouldn’t be able to see it at all.

The hills whisper that the beauty you see is the beauty you are.

We become … more and more what we see, more of the beauty … or, sadly, the ugliness or distractions or whatever it is on which our eyes most linger.  

You are the Great Beauty shining in the hills of childhood memory and in the eyes and hearts of so many, in so many places where I sat and listened--and looked into the glow of eyes and hearts where shined your Love and Beauty … and was made more alive than I had ever been.

I saw you then … and now, and you continue to make me feel truly alive, moving me to hunger for more … of  You. Whatever goodness and beauty lies within this soul was brought to life by seeing you where you appeared, or at wherever I had eyes to see and know you.

As we see, so we become, so let me see you that as you are so I may be.

Pr.  David L. Miller