Saturday, August 1, 2015

Psalm 8:1-4

O Love, my Beloved,
   how majestic is your name in all the earth! 

You, whose glory is sung in the heavens. 
   Out of the mouths of babes and infants
you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,
   to silence the enemy and the avenger. 

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
   the moon and the stars that you have established; 
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
   mortals that you care for them? 

Blue moon

Southbound jets from O’Hare stream across the face of the blue moon rising above the cedars, and I raise my glass to heavens, toasting with chardonnay the pale light of the second full moon of July.

The month is gone now, but not the gentle joy of sitting in the night, my glass held high, framed by the pure white disc shimmering in the eastern sky.

I toast your glory, O Lord, O Love who speaks in the night sky. I toast the glory of Love that refuses to let go, of light that penetrates the heart’s dark spaces.

The moon’s silent journey through the night, silver light reflecting from its rugged face, all this can be reduced to mathematical formulae, explainable by mind and reason.

But not so explainable is why I … and ancient souls thousands of years before … are drawn to this light, why it awakens wonder, why we find it beautiful, why it stirs love for earth and sky, life and breath; why we want to share this light, hoping another heart will be as moved as we.

And why does this pale light stir the desire to say, thank you … for my life, thank you for this love and hope?

Explain that one, please, and tell me why such desire is constant across the centuries. Why do we stare into the night sky and find ourselves as moved as our primordial cave-dwelling ancestors?

Perhaps it’s because we know … we created none of this. It is all gift, enlivening our senses, filling us with the joy of being a human soul, able to see and feel, to be moved beyond ourselves, to wonder how it call came to be and why it is all so beautiful.

O Lord, O Love, you made us to see and know, to raises glasses high under the pale moonlight, to say thank you and to be amazed that our lives are part of the story of this amazing universe, a cosmos that springs from an infinitesimal speck to this wonder, this light, this love.

I think you created it all just to awaken this love. I think this is what you really want and treasure.

For all this, thank you, thank you for making me a human soul, thank you for awakening my heart and moving me to look up, thank you for letting me know I am the child of the great love, the great joy of your divine heart.

Thank you for speaking in the moonlight.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, July 31, 2015

Ephesians 3:16-21

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

In a red chair

Sitting in a red chair in a room called Serenity, I know myself. This knowledge is not a thought but feeling and awareness. Tingling delights within as I listen to a troubled heart musing aloud from the couch opposite me.

Something just fits. I belong here, to this listening, as together we wait for wisdom and grace to appear and set him free from the grip of anxiety and guilt.

We wait, and I know I need nothing else than to be here, part of this mutual listening for the One who is Love to appear and fill us. But already I am full. I need wait no longer.

In this moment to breathe is to love. I cannot … not love.

There is no fear, no anxiety or hate in me for anyone or anything. Every breath I take is one of love. I love the person on the couch. I love this messy world. I love the longing and confusion I so often feel. I love the work I do and this place. I love the miracle of life, the sheer fact of existence, and I know … I am this love that is no love but the Love Who Is from the Beginning.

My soul is grounded yet soaring, filled yet flying, light as a feather in the wind, floating free, able and content to be this love in this time and this place, needing nothing more than what this moment provides.

“Breathe,” a most gracious voice says. “Breathe and know this is you, and this is me. This union of our hearts is all you were ever meant to be. All you will ever need is here. In this moment, you know what the mind cannot know, the love that surpasses all knowing.

“All that matters is this union, this knowing. Breathe and know.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, July 27, 2015

Ephesians 3:14-15

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.

No reason

Reason bends no one’s knees in adoration. Reason has nothing to do with it. Praise flows from a place beyond reason’s reach.

It comes when the heart is inexplicably filled with the warmth of a Love that reaches from soul’s depth to embrace everything it sees and hears. It flows from awareness of this Love within the soul’s own depths, uncreated, simply given like the miracle of life itself.

It burgeons within, filling every aching empty space, granting the heart truest knowledge of the Love that lives at the depth of one’s soul, the Love that is the soul’s Source.

There is no separation in moments of knowing. We know: The soul and the Love who is its Source are one and the same. And in every moment of filling, every millisecond of knowing, we feel the Love we truly are, knowing … the Goodness whom all the world cannot contain mysteriously dwells within the confines of our soul.

This Goodness is our soul. We are one with the One Love though we rarely feel and know it.

It is a mystery to me why certain moments bring awareness of this oneness. I know only that moments of oneness come and fill us so completely that praise and adoration of our Mysterious Source is natural as breathing. Two words form on the lips before one is conscious of forming them: Thank you.

Two words, totally inadequate and absolutely necessary.

Moments of filling and adoration are always a gift. We don’t make them happen.

The sounds of morning—bird chatter and cardinal call, the pounding of hammers far off, the whoosh of tires on asphalt—echoes of the world awakening: Today, it is these that awaken the heart to the Wonder who resides within, so that I ... that we ... might adore again the Love Who is … and the love we are.

Pr. David L. Miller