On the Mount with Jesus and Fr. Dennis

 As [Jesus] came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. (Luke 19:41-42)

We come to Jesus in the hour of our need, but to know him we must stand at his side in the hour of his sorrow.

It helps to see and hear the places and moments, the words and small movements through which his heart is revealed. Watching closely, we hear what words cannot tell and feel his soul, speaking to our own.

He sits on the Mount of Olives, the ridge overlooking Jerusalem from the east. Shadows deepen in Kidron, the valley below him, as the remainder of the day fades, the towers of the city the last to savor the light.

His head turns from one side to the other, savoring the city before him, right to left, north to south and back again, his eyes embracing the thick, gray stones of the city wall he knows will not stand the violent storms soon to come, in the brutal crush of history.

He is silent. No words. None are needed. His silence voices the wonder of who he is, what he feels and what we most need to know.

Slowly, his lips form words …  seen as much as heard, the whispered longing of a grieving heart. ‘If only … .

‘If only you knew the things that make for peace.’

The words hang in the air, echoing a love that is true, bearing the sadness of the times and the bitterness to come. He has a death to die, and the city will see destruction as empires clash, unleashing a river of tears of which his own are the foretaste.

How can I not love a heart who loves like this, who looks over the city who will hate and reject him and love it still, down to the last lost soul? If his is the heart of God, then the victory over all that is hate is certain.

And there is only one good thing to do. Stand with him, stand by him, as his eyes embrace the city of his sorrow, our hearts softened to see as he sees and feel as he feels, sharing his sorrow. Knowing, too, it is not only Jerusalem he surveys, but the conflicts and burdens of our time and place, for we, too, do not know the things that make for peace.

Perhaps we can learn by standing by Jesus, watching him, as he loves the city which will destroy him. Perhaps then we can feel and become the love that refuses to hate in the face of rejection, the mercy that embraces the brokenness of our times without rancor, seeking only to pour the oil of consolation on those whose struggles are greater than our own.

It can be a small thing that maybe isn’t small at all. Perhaps this is why Fr. Dennis appeared in my prayer. As I watched Jesus surveying the city, I suddenly saw Fr. Dennis there, standing beside the place Jesus sat.

An older priest on Chicago’s south side, Fr. Dennis ferries Venezuelan immigrants to the parish house where he lives to do their laundry, so they can avoid the laundromats and ICE agents.

Who knew laundry could be one of the things that make for peace? Fr. Dennis figured it out, standing with Jesus in a place of his sorrow. Perhaps we can, too.

David L. Miller

The eyes of longing

‘When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’ (Luke 18:8b)

The heart is a lonely hunter, and it is no less true when the hunter is the divine heart. Loneliness and longing echo through the heart of Jesus in any number of stories the New testament records, including this haunting question.

Jesus gazes into the future with aching eyes, wondering aloud if any will know him when he appears. Will any be waiting? Will any be watching? Will any be praying and hoping for the healing and mercy he brings?

Will his eyes meet the watchful longing of tired souls yearning for him to shower justice, mercy and peace on this fractured world? Or will our hearts surrender hope, no longer believing, expecting or even desiring the healing only love can bring?

The image of God he unveils is not one of impenetrable power. He reveals the longing heart of a lover who hungers to be known and received by the beloved, who cannot rest content until the hearts for whom he hungers are gathered, safe and at home, encompassed in his love.

The desire I feel in him is reason enough for me to love Jesus and to call him my brother. For in his aching eyes, I see the reflection of my own. And in his lonely question, I feel his mercy, his longing for my heart to be one, finally at home in the great, eternal love of his heart.

In this, we are joined, his heart and mine, already one. The ache in my heart for healing and peace and mercy and everything this world so badly needs is the presence of his Spirit within my own, a share in his life and an answer to his lonely question.

Yes, Lord, you will find faith, for the flame of your love lives in the longing of our hearts. And we cannot be content with anything less than you.

David L. Miller

The divine must

 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? (1 Corinthians 3:16)

There’s a straight line between the most beloved Christian saint and 14 mothers sitting in the middle of Beach Street in Broadview, IL. That line runs straight through our hearts, and if we have the courage to listen it can save us from ourselves.

Just over 800 years ago, Francis Bernardone sat in the dilapidated church of San Damiano near Assisi wondering what to do with his heretofore dissolute life. Staring into the image of the crucified Christ, he heard or felt or intuited the voice of Christ speaking ‘in a tender and kind voice’ within him.

He didn’t immediately become St. Francics. That took more time, but he left a different person than when he entered, drawn forward by a ‘divine must’ that he knew he must obey and follow where it led.

I don’t know any of the 14 mothers who protested outside the Broadview detention center where ICE warehouses the immigrants it brutalizes on their raids around Chicago and suburbs—throwing people to the ground, piling on and cuffing them, asking questions later, if at all.

From one point of view, their protest appears futile. I doubt it will penetrate the cauterized hearts of the ICE officers whose brutalities occupy the evening news most nights.

Nor do I expect it will curb the cruelty of Trump administration officials whose deceitful tongues drip with a smug, arrogant, venomous malice, taking pleasure in the fear and suffering of human souls, as they peer down from the lofty perch from which they view the world.

I have no idea whether those moms are atheists or agnostics or Christians or Muslims or all or none of the above. But I do know this: Somehow in some way, the Voice who spoke to St. Francis at San Damiano spoke in them, and they did not dismiss the movements in their hearts.

They obeyed the internal and likely insistent ‘must’ that appeared within them, nudging their hearts from the immobility of helplessness in the face of official injustice and cruelty.

They are not alone. The Voice of San Damiano speaks everywhere, seeking a hearing in every heart. And now, as in every age, those with a heart of flesh hear the call; they feel the ‘must’ and do what love requires. Look around and listen.

A priest on the south side of Chicago drives immigrants to the rectory of his parish so they can do their laundry without risking the laundromat where ICE agents prowl.

Whistles and car horns echo along city streets as neighbors follow marauding agents, warning people to stay away. Parents and teachers keep watch and wait, protecting immigrant children and parents, providing transportation and safe harbor.

Courageous souls go into the streets to pray, protest and hold their cell phones aloft to document the truth of what is really happening, undermining the constant lies of those who seek to justify the great indecency playing out on our streets.

I feel it, too, as my wife, Dixie, and I, shopped and loaded the trunk of our car on two consecutive days with food for the pantry which is serving an overload of families as SNAP is shut down.

Like so many others, we heard something like what St. Francis heard, and we knew what we had to do, obeying the ‘must’ we felt within.

We live in difficult times when the better angels of our hearts and the soul of our nation are under assault by nihilistic forces that value power above all else.

Listening and responding, hearing and obeying the divine must—the inner voice of love, the blessed rage for justice and kindness—saves us from descending into helpless despair and the bitterness of anger and cynicism.

The inscrutable urging within is the Spirit of the One who brings good news to the poor and release to the captives. And when we heed and obey this gracious Voice, we, too, find true freedom.

The cry of the saints

 You are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14a)

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia. Alleluia. (All Saints Day hymn)

I sang the words to myself in the usual chair where I pray as the sun flowed through the southeast windows of the house. As always, one face came to mind first, my father, Lavern Miller, for whom I’ve now sung this hymn for 24 All Saints Days, since he was delivered from terrible debilitation into light eternal.

I see and feel him there with so many others, who in strength and assurance or in weakness and wavering faith confessed Jesus as Lord of life and death, heaven and earth. Jesus was our hope in those final days when all he could feel was his emptiness and need, as life slipped away.

I still feel the comfort of Jesus’ presence hovering over the scene in his cramped room, holding his hand, enveloped in a cloud of Presence lingering above his bed, waiting for the hour of deliverance.

Whispering in his ear, assuring his trembling heart, Jesus is Lord became my silent cry, a defiant affirmation, a shaking fist in the face of the specter of death and his soul-crushing suffering.

All Saints Day never fails to take me back there, consoling my heart. But the day and it signature hymn also carries me to the streets of the city and suburb where I live, raising a compelling question: What does it me to confess Jesus is Lord here and now?

For 20 centuries, Jesus is Lord has been the confession of all who place their faith and hope in him.

But what does it mean for us to confess Jesus is Lord in a country where government-mandated masked marauders engage in thuggish brutality, shattering the lives and families of immigrants, most of whom have been in the U.S. for years, if not decades, living productive lives?

At the very least, we must listen to the cry in our hearts that shouts, ‘No, this should not be.’ This is the voice of Jesus, our risen Lord, alive within the depth of our being, crying out for kindness and justice for souls created in God’s image, calling us to give ourselves more deeply to God’s work of giving life to the world.

Created in, by and for the love of God, Christ is the center of every human soul. There is no person on earth in whom we should not be prepared to see the presence of Christ.

Today, he is violated on the streets of our cities and suburbs as human beings are hunted down as if they were rabid beasts.

Christ not only suffers in these, mostly brown-skinned people, who are being profiled and targeted. He also suffers in the souls of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem and Thomas Homan and all who birthed this diabolic scheme that is brutalizing hearts and splintering families, while fanning the rancid anger and bigotry long present in our nation.  

Christ lies at the center of their souls, too, suffering, grievously wounded, buried deep beneath passions of greed, anger, pride, hate and vanity that plague all of us to one extent or another. But they have become particularly virulent and malignant in this administration.

But we who hear the voice of Christ within us must love and serve him by naming the ways and places he suffers in distressing disguise—especially today in the lives of the poor and in those who face government brutality.

Only so, do we join the cry of the saints of every age, Jesus is Lord.

Anne and the roses

The heavens are telling the glory of God …. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth. (Psalm 19:1-4)

It happens every fall. I talk to my plants. I talk to the trees on my walks in the woods. I talk to the fields, dusty with harvest on the rolling hills of my childhood.

Sometimes, I talk to them in the summer, too, the petunias and begonias and mums that light up the patio and the balcony, the day lilies in the flower beds and certainly the roses by the southwest corner of the house. I tell them how they bless me.

But our exchanges become more poignant as October goes. An urgent impulse builds within to say ‘thank you,’ not once, but again and again. Thank you.

The words come of their own accord, tears, too, as another summer slips away, its colors fading, one less, now, in the store of summers I have been given to savor the sun’s embracing rays—feeling myself so graciously, so gratuitously loved by the Blessed Author, who wrote me into the script of a great story whose ending we do not see.

But the wonder of light and color and beauty fires hope to carry the soul through winter’s sleep. Too soon, it will come upon us to silence the earth and bid us to rest in peace—knowing earth’s Beloved Author will write another summer into the story, because that’s what love does. Love always has another chapter to write. Always.

But this chapter is not quite done. Words must be spoken.

Rounding the southwest corner of the house, I stop and take a long, loving look at the last roses of summer. Five blossoms remain, one falling apart, three faded by a recent frost and one small, elegantly-formed, velvety red blossom sings out its name, undimmed and undaunted.

This is what remains from the hundreds of blossoms the bush produced this year, planted three years ago in a patch of soil that had killed everything else I dared plant there. Little wonder I consider every rose a defiant shake of the fist in the face of all that is loss and death, a triumphant yes of life praising the verdant heart of life’s loving Source.

At the corner of the house, under a crystal blue sky and in the sight of confused neighbors who might have wondered to whom I was talking, I did what my heart required, obedient to love’s insistence.

Touching my heart, an involuntary gesture, the words came simple and true:

Thank you for your beauty. Thank you for the miracle of color. Thank you for singing the glory of the One whose beauty you share. Thank you for revealing my deepest desire and prayer that … maybe … someday … if only for a moment … I might shine with heaven’s light as beautifully as you.

I might add one more bit of thanks: Thanks for reminding me of life and beauty amid the vicious social divisions and the ugliness of hate that have poisoned the air we breathe. You gentled my heart, whispering a word of love you received from the One who is Love.

The roses were healing balm for my soul amid the bitterness of our times. Nothing surprising about this. Mystics and contemplatives and Jesus, too, heard Love speak in deserts and mountains, forests and flowers, in rivers that flow and winds that blow.

‘Every common bush is afire with God,’ Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, which is to say, alight with love.

A teenage Anne Frank knew this even as she hid from the Nazis in the darkest of times. ‘The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside,’ she wrote, ‘somewhere where they can be quiet, along with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.’ 

I think Anne must have seen the roses.

The last rose of summer

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’  He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. (Luke 11:1-2)

Red roses have dwindled to a few on the west side of the house. Once, there were dozens. Now, I can count their number as I steer the car into the garage. Each one grows more precious as the days pass, stirring my heart to praise the Beauty to whom they sing in silent witness.

A single rose strains high above the rest, struggling to open fully, hungry for heat on these cool October days. I cheer her labor, hoping there will be enough time and warmth for her to fulfill her promise before frost stills her song and wilts her splendor.

I watch and hope for her for she speaks my hidden truth. I, too, long for the warmth of a sun that once warmed me.

Warmth and light embraced me when I was an anxious, insecure child, walking with confidence into only one place in my entire world, the door of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Warren, Il. I was safe there, wanted, secure and home, taken in by souls who had no idea how good the warmth of their normal, ordinary, casual welcome felt to me.

Taken in—small words, but they keep returning as I think of those days. I was taken in, welcomed in this community of hearts, who left their homes every Sunday to gather at the stone church on the west edge of town to sing and pray, listen to the pastor, drink coffee and talk about the weather or whatever was happening in our largely insignificant little village.

But it was not insignificant to me, not then or now. It was the breath of life, the warmth of the sun, water for my thirsty soul.

I remember their smiles decades later; I suppose because I needed them so badly. I still hear their voices, laughter in the narthex, serious tones in Sunday school rooms, gentle urgings for us to open our mouths to sing or recite the catechism—but also to quit poking each other, sit down and behave.

I belonged and knew l belonged on a level far deeper than consciousness. I long for this warmth and light as I make my way further into (gulp) the eighth decade of life. I still have so much I want to be and live and love and give, and I long to feel taken into the light and warmth of a loving community, feeling alienated, as I do, from the faith community that was once home.

I know I am not alone in this.

Perhaps that is why I feel a deeper yearning in the disciple’s plea, ‘teach us to pray.’ I wonder if what they really wanted was—not simply to pray—but to feel inside the warmth and love of the Holy Mystery within whom Jesus communed, the one he called Father, the one he revered and who revered him.

Seeing Jesus at prayer, perhaps they wanted to feel the encompassing embrace of the divine essence as he did, to be enveloped in one all-embracing love, so that their hearts might open and their lives unveil the beauty our loving Creator had sown in their souls.

Each of them … and me … like the last rose of summer, incomplete, not fulfilled, longing to sing one more song of praise for the wonder of light and love, warmth and beauty, before October goes.

Waiting for the sun to rise

And [Jesus] said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” (John 1:51)

I’m tired.

I’m weary of the hate and anger, bitterness and political division that is draining kindness, trust and hope from so many. I’m tired of the rage and mayhem piped into our consciousness through every digital device we own, tired of the shootings and burnings and destruction.

I am tired of the callous cruelty of masked brutes hunting down immigrants who are just working their jobs and caring for their families, treating them like rabid animals, unburdened by the humanity of those they abuse and the lives they destroy.

And I am heartsick that souls I once knew and served and loved now think of me as ‘the other,’ sick to death that they have become ‘the other’ in my heart, too. Once, they were human souls for whom I’d gladly rise in the wee hours had they any need of their pastor and friend.

I grieve the loss of what once was natural as breathing, tired of the passions of anger and resentment that imprison my heart. I fight them, but they are too strong.

The only thing that really helps is you, O Lord, seeing you, hearing you, singing about you so that the sorrow of my soul becomes prayer and my heart is restored, warmed in the rays of your goodness.

I wonder about the times when you were weary, not just tired, but soul-weary from the weight of loving the resistant, the rejecting and even the hateful, not to mention those who were just slow to understand.

You stepped away. You sat in the silent darkness waiting for the sun to rise, your heart turned to the Love who filled you … and who stirs in me, too.

Perhaps that is what I am doing here, fingers on these keys, sitting in the darkness, waiting for the sun to rise, refusing to deny how profoundly the darkness of these hateful, divisive times has darkened my heart, even as thoughts of my own end haunt me in the night, reminding me of decades I wasted and people I hurt, attempting to heal my own wounds and exorcise my demons by making a name for myself.

I cannot, of course. Only love casts this kind out, the Love ceaselessly streaming from the heart of your mercy, Jesus, to we who sit in the darkness. ‘Come to me all you who are weary,’ you say; you will see heaven opened.’

Indeed, I see you, even in my heavy heart, dear Friend. For what is this sorrow, if not your love within me, longing for a more gracious world? And what is this ache, if not a prayer for the freedom to love and laugh and embrace the world with a generous heart, your heart, Jesus?

So, I see, now; even this darkness is my friend, bearing me to your side that we may wait, together, for the sun to rise, as it will. It always does.

The man behind the counter

The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)

The heart cannot be denied. Not today. Not here. Not his. Nor mine.

A pair of sparkling silver studs in each ear, he turns left and right, back and again, dozens of times, as the line at Jersey Mike’s weaves its way through the lunch rush. 

Short, solidly built, Latino, small tattoos on each arm, one bearing a set of initials, he reaches again and again into the cold case for ham, roast beef, salami, prosciutto, provolone, white cheddar, each time shaving thin slices and piling them on loaves of white or wheat or Italian, split with a long silver knife far sharper than anything in our kitchen.

Never a hesitation, no movement wasted, a flowing current of life from one order to the next, a constant stream of affability flows from his smile to each person in line, questions, comments, jokes, laughter as each gives their order.

Tears well in my eyes as I watch, enthralled, waiting my turn, loving him, wondering who he is and how his heart became this bountiful. Strangely thankful to be standing in line with a couple of dozen others, my impatience evaporated in the spectacle of grace and the camaraderie of strangers.

For a few minutes, the reigning social divides ceased to exist. There were no conservatives or liberals in the line, no progressives or reactionaries, no venomous vitriol over the assassination of Charlie Kirk, only human souls received with joy and showered with welcome as the line snaked by, the world redeemed by the man behind the counter.

You cannot fake this. The moment flowed from the abundance of a bountiful heart that knows joy and loves human faces.

The bounty of his heart stirred an answering love in my own, revealing again the old, much forgotten truth that caring for the health of our hearts is the most important thing we can do for the redemption of our time and place.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk has exacerbated bitter social divisions and the rage simmering just below the surface in millions of hearts. A flood of hatred and mutual recrimination inundated social media, sweeping untold numbers of human hearts into the bitter tide of hatred and mistrust.

Only those who care for their hearts find escape and equanimity, returning again and again to the well of love and mercy, gentleness and care. An old friend wrote that the present troubles moved him to turn on Springsteen then listen to Brahms’ German Requiem, letting the music wash over him.

I see him there and understand. Lost in lyric and harmony, each song, each verse, each line a sacrament watering the tender growth of faith, hope and love within, washing away the soul-killing poison of fear, hate and division that overwhelm us when we are too much with the world.

Our first priority, especially these days, is to care for our hearts for our own spiritual health, to flee the fray and fly to places of refreshment, to the wells of grace that heal our souls and gentle our hearts.

I have no idea where that is for the man behind the counter. All I know is that I want a bountiful heart like his, free and full, flowing with the All-Embracing Love who graces my heart at lunch counters.

Enter the joy of your master

Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, “Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.” His master said to him, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master. (Matthew 25:20-21)

Time and distance dissolve in the silence of meditation. You never know who or what might appear in the inner eye of the heart, where nothing is ever lost.

So, it is today. I imagine the servant in Jesus’ parable, eagerly showing his master what he’s done, and Kristi appears. I see her in the photo she sent me 30 years ago. Relaxed, a gentle smile warming her face, a little Dominican girl sits in her lap.

I don’t recall who she was working with at the time, the Peace Corps? Maybe, but I’m only guessing. She was young, early 20s, doing agricultural work in a place much poorer than the bottomland along the Republican River of her Nebraska home.

She sent me that photo tucked inside a letter, apparently wanting me, her confirmation pastor, to see her there and know what she was doing. I wish I still had her letter. Perhaps it will appear someday, stuck between the pages of an old book, as is my habit.

I’d like to think I had something to do (however small) with what carried her body and soul to the Dominican Republic to hold that child. Maybe something I said or our fall mission festivals, where hunger and human need had central place, planted a seed in the fertile soil of her heart.

But modesty admits that a multitude of faces and unsuspected moments give birth and growth to what each of us becomes. Parents, teachers, friends, professors, any and all of them can awaken unimagined possibilities that take us to wild and unexpected places, changing our direction in the blink of an eye.

I don’t know what ultimately transported Kristi to embrace that time and place in her generous heart. I know only that she wanted me to know, and that’s plenty enough to awaken tears, my heart daring to believe that seeds I sowed for Love’s holy sake might still be growing, not only in Kristi but in the lives she touched.

I have long thought that the Holy One has yet to receive a reasonable return from the many gifts and graces God has so abundantly showered on my life. Looking back, I am more aware of my mediocrity and narcissism, most of which flowed from my vanity and insecurity.

At a young age, it seemed Kristi was well on her way to being more like the servant in Jesus’ parable than I became, for which I’m thankful. Still, I think she or God or both were trying to tell me something in that photo.

Maybe, just maybe, they were telling me that, despite what I know of myself, my poor efforts mattered more than I ever suspected.

Maybe attempting to measure how much or how little we have done, how well or how poorly, is a fool’s errand. Maybe we haven’t a clue about what the Spirit of Love manages to do through us, in spite of ourselves.

And maybe the gentle tears of remembering Kristi in that photo is the voice of my gracious Lord, saying, Welcome to the joy of your Master.

Why I come here

As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting (Psalm 103:15-17)

Too soon they will be gone. Wild daisies, four feet tall, cover the forest floor beneath the canopy of old oaks 70 feet tall and more.

Filtered light casts rays amid shadows on the forest floor, as the woodchip trail leads deeper into whatever mystery the woods hold for me this day.

Star-bright yellow blossoms celebrate in dappled light, seizing the day, as if they know cooling temperatures signal the end of their praise to the mystery of their Maker.

I come here to see them, already planning other hikes on other trails where I might take in their brethren, shimmering whites and blues across forest glens where my heart leads me less often than is good for my soul. Soon they, too, will pass away.

But I am here now and being here now is what most matters. I come to see and hear and feel and love the love awakened within, for which I praise the One who sings in forest flowers.

Strewn across the forest floor, the golden profusion accompanies my steps, stretching around the next bend and the next and the next, green and gilt melding together in a wash of impressionist delight.

Each blossom a saint of God, praising the Love who called them out of nothingness to light my way home into the Love for which I long.

White oaks and basswoods soar above like giants of holy faith. Spreading their arms, sheltering the life of all that flowers, fades and passes into yesterday, they strain toward the Mystery who has haunted my heart since I was a boy, wondering: what is this ache within me?

Out here, I know. It is not for the flowers and trees, but for the love they awaken that is not of my own making, but which is the other self I am, the self beyond ego and striving, the self who wants only to love, to know love, to be love, to be one with the utterly Nameless One who is Love.

The mystery of our lives is ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory,’ St. Paul (or one of his followers) once wrote. Out here, I know this Christ not as someone to believe in but as the Love beyond myself who is pleased to inhabit my mortal flesh, moving me to want nothing but more of the same.

So, I continue on, my boots scuffing the woodchip trail, a blessed pilgrimage away from all that clicks and beeps and shouts and flickers from digital screens.

Each step is a sacrament, a taste of the Everlasting Love who sings to me in the flowers, shelters me under the oaks and unveils the divine face in the merciful compassion of Jesus, my brother, who bids me to come here and abide with him.

A cruel and radiant beauty

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. (1 John 3:14)

I should be grateful, but I’m not much good at being thankful for pain and worry. I could say circumstances produced the hollow chill in my heart that refuses remedy. But that’s not true.

The malady is deeper, elemental. Love.

You never know how much you love someone until something happens that threatens to upend their life, their future, their safety, their happiness. Then, you discover the cruel and radiant beauty smoldering in the inmost chamber of your heart.

In that holy burning, you feel what it is to be alive, filled with an undeniable love long seeded in the soil of your soul, now grown so great that you no longer possess it. It possesses you. You … or some significant part of you … has become love.

Why would we want it any other way? Who are we if not the loves we love, the loves that carry us beyond ourselves to ache and work and worry and give our hearts away, there to discover that this is life, the only kind of life worthy of the name.

I most admire those, like Jesus, who loved … and loved to their end, fully, completely, so that at the end there was no more left to give, or so it seemed. I’ve known more than my share of this, the truest of all beauties.

I pray to find my place among such souls, knowing that my weak heart has a long way to go, if ever to shine with the radiance of the love that embraces pain with gratitude for the beauty of loving.

But here I am, walking love’s stony path, like so many others in so many places, praying and feeling helpless to soothe the soul and grant safe harbor to another heart as precious to me as my own.

This is the way the school of love works—a hidden, excruciatingly slow process of microscopic movement out of slavery to self and into love’s radiant light. The moment we risk loving anyone we enter a curriculum laced with the lilt of laughter and the anxiety of hoping that all will be well, fully aware that there are no guarantees.

Except love, of course. For in the cruel and radiant beauty of loving, we abide in the Love who draws us from death to life, perhaps especially when the days are hard and the nights are long.

Light savers

We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. (1 John 1:3-4)

The air has been heavy, threatening rain, every morning this week. Lush little branches with many-fingered leaves sprout in the sultry air on the locust limbs arching over the sidewalk. Feathery ferns, tender as baby-flesh, they coat the dark arms with the dewy fresh growth of Eden, creeping up to the fork where a dove repairs her nest after recent storms.

She flies across the street, picking twigs and wood chips from the neighbor’s mulch for her rehab project. Weaving them into her domicile, she flies off for more, repeating the process for as long as I care to watch from my perch on the balcony.

Watching is what I’m here for, whispers a silent voice within, stirring a thought: It’s what we are all here for.

We are here to watch and see and listen, to touch and testify to whatever light, life and beauty we see.

Only so, do we become truly human. Only this satisfies the Love who lives at our core, the Love who is our true self, children, as we all are, of the Love who first smiled on Eden.

Sharing what we have seen and heard breaks the ancient spell of selfishness that separates us from each other and hollows out the joy which God intends for us.

God is light, First John writes, the light in all that is light, which is to say the love in all that is love. The light and love whom God is … appears in every life, touches every heart, seeking to wake every sleeping soul to feel and know the Loving Mystery by which and for which we are created.

We are … or can be … light savers for each other, gathering up the moments, holding them to our hearts and sharing the light that touches our lives. For what we have seen and heard, what we have touched and hold dear, is our gift, no, God’s holy gift, to be shared with hearts close to us and perhaps strangers on our way, all of whom are no less needy that ourselves.

For the fulfillment of our humanity is not known in splendid isolation or the sweetness of morning reflection, holy as that is. Our soul’s delight is the joy that engulfs our hearts when the light who shines on our lives is shared.

All that is light draws us toward the Loving Mystery who is from the beginning and who shines most fully in the gracious face of Jesus, the Son of this Holy Mystery, whose unfailing love is the fullness of our joy.

Beyond the needles

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  (Matthew 11:28)

I didn’t feel the needle when the phlebotomist slipped it into my right arm. She likely knew exactly when to ask a question to distract me from watching too closely. Or maybe she is simply deft from long practice.

She filled two vials with my blood before I knew what was happening. What was happening, however, went far beyond the needles. In fact, it is still happening. I am haunted by her voice.

‘I’m terrible,’ she said at one point during our three minutes together. ‘I’ve got to get back to my Bible reading.’ She shook her head and repeated her judgment, ‘I’m terrible.’

Whoever this person is—and whatever her name, since I didn’t catch it—she is a million miles from terrible, which, caught off guard, I assured her, fumbling over my words.

“You’re not terrible,” I said. ‘That’s only one way to commune with God. There’s prayer, being in nature, talking with friends.’ My voice trailed off, failing to find words to say what I felt but couldn’t get out.

‘Yes,’ she responded, cutting through my awkwardness. ‘I talk to him.’

Catching my eye, we nodded, and within seconds I was out of her chair as a dozen others waited for their turn.

Half way across the parking lot, when my brain finally kicked in (five minutes late, like always), the words for which I stumbled finally appeared in my heart. ‘You’re not terrible,’ I wanted to say. ‘You are beloved. There has never been a day of your life when God has not delighted in you.’

How I wish I had those words at the tip of my tongue, ready to speak in that moment. How different our lives would be if we were ready in all times and places to offer this, the heart of God’s love, amid our bitter, cynical times when the Holy Name of God is blasphemed to justify hatred, division and cruelty.

I cannot know how she would have responded. But I would have loved for her to have heard that one word, ‘beloved,’ hoping that it would fall like a seed in her heart and grow.

For your heart, O God, surely hungers for her to know you have cherished her since before the dawn of time. And I, Lord, want you to tell her that the other voice, the one that says,’ You’re terrible,’ is a damn liar. For your love is the core truth of our existence.

Maybe then, she can read her Bible not as a spiritual obligation to be performed (and to feel guilty about when she doesn’t do it), but as an opportunity to listen to the Voice of Love inviting her to come home and rest.

I need to go back to the clinic next month and have more blood drawn. I hope she is working that day. I’d like to hear how she’s doing. And there’s something I’d like to say.

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  (Matthew 11:28)

I didn’t feel the needle when the phlebotomist slipped it into my right arm. She likely knew exactly when to ask a question to distract me from watching too closely. Or maybe she is simply deft from long practice.

She filled two vials with my blood before I knew what was happening. What was happening, however, went far beyond the needles. In fact, it is still happening. I am haunted by her voice.

‘I’m terrible,’ she said at one point during our three minutes together. ‘I’ve got to get back to my Bible reading.’ She shook her head and repeated her judgment, ‘I’m terrible.’

Whoever this person is—and whatever her name, since I didn’t catch it—she is a million miles from terrible, which, caught off guard, I assured her, fumbling over my words.

“You’re not terrible,” I said. ‘That’s only one way to commune with God. There’s prayer, being in nature, talking with friends.’ My voice trailed off, failing to find words to say what I felt but couldn’t get out.

‘Yes,’ she responded, cutting through my awkwardness. ‘I talk to him.’

Catching my eye, we nodded, and within seconds I was out of her chair as a dozen others waited for their turn.

Half way across the parking lot, when my brain finally kicked in (five minutes late, like always), the words for which I stumbled finally appeared in my heart. ‘You’re not terrible,’ I wanted to say. ‘You are beloved. There has never been a day of your life when God has not delighted in you.’

How I wish I had those words at the tip of my tongue, ready to speak in that moment. How different our lives would be if we were ready in all times and places to offer this, the heart of God’s love, amid our bitter, cynical times when the Holy Name of God is blasphemed to justify hatred, division and cruelty.

I cannot know how she would have responded. But I would have loved for her to have heard that one word, ‘beloved,’ hoping that it would fall like a seed in her heart and grow.

For your heart, O God, surely hungers for her to know you have cherished her since before the dawn of time. And I, Lord, want you to tell her that the other voice, the one that says,’ You’re terrible,’ is a damn liar. For your love is the core truth of our existence.

Maybe then, she can read her Bible not as a spiritual obligation to be performed (and to feel guilty about when she doesn’t do it), but as an opportunity to listen to the Voice of Love inviting her to come home and rest.

I need to go back to the clinic next month and have more blood drawn. I hope she is working that day. I’d like to hear how she’s doing. And there’s something I’d like to say.

I heard it from the finches

He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. (Colossians 1:13)

Early mornings were cooler this week. It was still humid, but lower temps summoned me to the balcony on the east side of the house to sip coffee and listen to the birds.

I usually try to call the cardinals, imitating their whistle. Sometimes they reply, although I sense confusion in their response.

There is no confusion among the finches, however. Red-crested house finches flutter madly around their home in the big spruce that brushes the side of the house, protecting their domain.

Nearby, goldfinches pierce the morning air, furiously pumping their wings. They rise then stop, pump then stop, pump then stop, pump then glide, over and over again. Their flight scallops the air in repetitive arcs, gracefully up and down, up and down, whizzing by until one lights on a frail, bare branch pointing skyward atop the maple near the corner.

With nary a catch of breath, like kindergarteners released for recess, they burst from their perch, racing and chasing each other above the grass-green expanse. Feather-light, unburdened with no thought of the morrow, they preach a Sunday sermon, demonstrating the joy for which we are made.

I pray to be as free as they. I seldom am, but watching them … I think I see what God has in mind for us.

Surely, Jesus had such as these in mind when he told us to look at the birds and let go of our obsession with ourselves. Just watch, he seemed to say. The Love who loves you will have its way; just give it some time. But that’s most of our problem. We want things our way.

It’s hard to let go and let Love have its inscrutable way with us. And it’s even harder these days when the Love Who Is appears so powerless. ‘The power of darkness’ poisons our politics as masked men maraud our streets, hunting prey, mocking the mercy and decency I once thought was irrevocably encoded in the DNA of our nation.

Examples of official cruelty and jingoism are too obvious to mention. More troubling are the millions who cheer it, willfully blind to the humanity of those crushed in the juggernaut of federally-sanctioned hatred.

Cheer it or condemn it, we all wake into the same world each morning, or do we?

So many appear to wake into a world where might makes right, a zero-sum world where one must always be on the defensive, where the most important value is power, being greater, better, stronger and able to enforce your will. In this callous world, the lives and struggles of others don’t much matter, especially if they are ‘different.’

This reality is all-too-much with us, but out here, looking at the birds, I feel the presence of quite another reality. Their sermon transports me into a world where the light of beauty and mercy has shattered the power of darkness, a world where I can breathe the featherlight sweetness of morning, drawing in the grace of an Immortal Love who dances and plays and charms my heart.

Out here, I know: I don’t live under the power of darkness. Transferred into the kingdom of the Beloved, I dwell in a world of beauty and mercy where every life is precious and holy.

And I … am personally invited … to come out and play.

The shining

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

There is no shortage of witnesses. Thousands testify to the shining. I come across their voices almost every week. Just yesterday, I found this:

‘Some people make you feel better about living. Some people you meet and you feel this little life in your heart, this Ah, because there’s something in them that’s brighter or lighter, something beautiful or better than you, and here’s the magic; instead of feeling worse, instead of feeling why am I so ordinary?, … you feel glad. In a weird way you feel better because before this you hadn’t realized or you’d forgotten human beings could shine so.’ (History of the Rain, Niall Williams, 128)

A smile rose from an uncontrollable something within as I read these words. Faces appeared, too, including a few I had met but once or twice. Remembrance also released a question. Where have I heard this before?

Was it Thomas Merton? Standing on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, Kentucky, he was suddenly overwhelmed with love as he watched the people around him going about their business. They have no idea, he wrote. ‘They are all walking around shining like the sun.’

But maybe Merton was borrowing from St. Irenaeus. ‘The glory of God is a human being fully alive,’ he wrote, 1800 years ago. I wonder, who was he thinking about when he wrote that? Somebody shiny, I suspect.

But this vision of glory is not reserved for saints and mystics. It also comes to those of no import, like me, as I watch the faces of people returning to their seats, after receiving Holy Communion.

They pass by me in the aisle, one after another, making no particular impression, when for no apparent reason, in the alchemy of the Spirit, a single face stuns me: A young girl, hands folded in front of her, a white scrunchy around her head, pulling together a long fall of black hair, a river of waves cascading nearly to her waist. Smiling, her face alight, this is a loved child who knows she belongs.

 

And with this, Irenaeus and Merton are sitting there beside me, wearing smug, ‘I told you so’ expressions, insufferably pleased with themselves, but not nearly as pleased as I am to witness one more face in a lifetime of faces that make me glad to be alive in a place where faith and love and beauty can strike you when you least expect. They can even make you forgive and infinitely forgettable sermon that doesn’t matter a whit, now that you’ve seen the shining.

‘The glory you have given me, I have given them,’ Jesus prayed, speaking of his disciples as he prepared to leave them. His giving didn’t end with them, as all who have seen the shining can attest.

Glory may not always shimmer, but it breaks out and sheds its light in lives of grace and truth that make you glad to be alive, wherever and whenever you are awake enough to see them.

For me, this gratitude quickly gives way to longing and prayer. ‘Might I shine, too, my Friend, just a little? knowing that Jesus doesn’t have all that much to work with when it comes to me.

But the prayer has already been answered. For in his light, we see light and become the light we see.

Eat this bread

 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” (John 21:15)

My Jesus, how shall I hear your words? ‘Feed my lambs,’ you say. Is this an invitation, a command, a demand? And what is the tone and timbre of your voice? Gentle and quiet? Firm and full of resolve? Do I hear beseeching, hoping or an authoritative insistence that this must be done?

I suppose how we hear those words or any words you speak says a great deal about how we see you … or how we want and need you to be for us.

So, forgive me, if I am merely projecting my need, but I don’t think that I am. For, how can anyone hear your words and not know that you ache for the ache within us, hungry for our hunger to feed on bread that satisfies?

Maybe that’s why there are so many stories about you eating and drinking in the Bible. There was nothing more typical of you than sitting around a table with friends and disciples and even opponents, talking, teaching and sharing food.

Whatever was on the table was almost incidental to the bread you offered, which was you, yourself, what was in your heart, the loving intimacy between you and the Mystery you called the Father, radiating from your presence.

People felt it when they were near you, which is why they came to you with their wounds and hurts and fears, and why they followed you.

You were their bread … and mine. I listen and hear your heart in these three little words, ‘feed my lambs.’ You want all our hungry hearts to feel and know what is in you.

Knowing the Love who abides in you stirs your Spirit in the secret room of our hearts, who rises and flows out, emanating from within to fill the heart and still the ancient ache which longs for the bread of life, you are.

At this time of life, I am less clear about how I can feed your sheep with the bread of your life, which so long has been my food and drink. My role is less clear, and the world roundabout has convinced itself it can satisfy the soul’s ancient hunger … or avoid it … by staying busy with one distraction or another. But our societies’ underlying angers and anxieties tell us what we fear to admit.

Beset by my own angers and anxieties, I look into your eyes Jesus and listen to the tenderness of your question to Peter … and to me. I have an answer. Yes, I do love you. I think I always have, from my youngest days, only I didn’t know how much I needed you then.

That didn’t matter. You found ways to feed me as you do now. Thank you for that. Thank you very much. Help me along, if you would, and I’ll try to share what you have so generously given.

A step too far … and not far enough

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything …. (Matthew 5:13)

Arresting farm hands harvesting strawberries was apparently a step too far in the current crackdown on undocumented workers.

Cabinet members lobbied President Trump on behalf of agricultural states, pointing out that the administration’s current policy could leave fruit and vegetables rotting unharvested in the field, as undocumented workers were being rounded up or not coming to work to avoid ICE raids.

One could cheer this development as a partial return to sanity, if not decency, curbing the despicable passions of those who would deport willing workers who, in many cases, have done arduous farm labor in this country for decades, raising their families and paying their taxes while bringing food to our tables.

But neither wisdom nor decency are evident in the casual cruelty of federal policies that daily inflict the nation’s conscience with images of children placed in zip ties by masked, gun-toting agents arresting their mothers and fathers, carting them off to an ICE gulag.

Their lives and families crushed by forces that neither see nor care about the inhumanity they inflict, one wonders at the fear fired in the fragile hearts of those children … and whether it will harden into hatred of what this country is doing to them.

Malignant seeds are sown into the soil of society with every one of these ICE raids; some, no doubt, will yield a bitter crop of alienation, resentment and perhaps, violence, in years to come.

And curse it all, too many of those who bear the name of my Savior, Jesus, the Christ, stand silently or cheer as if this display, rising from the cynical circles of hell, were not utterly contrary to Jesus’ call to love their neighbor.

One hopes that the president’s order to refrain from rounding up undocumented farm laborers, as well as hotel and hospitality workers, restricts ICE’s reach and destruction of the lives, families and communities wounded by recent sweeps.

We can also hope rational voices will prevail and further restrictions will be placed on arrests of others—like short order cooks and street vendors, or the mechanic in the shop down the street or the guys who show up every Friday to landscape around the townhouse where I live.

It's a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough.

As one who names Jesus as Lord, I can’t help but notice the reason given for the president’s recent directive, to hold off on some arrests, reflects a very pragmatic, utilitarian ethic. Don’t round them up because we need them. They are valuable to us. The ag economy might take a dive without them. Food prices would spike. Meat won’t get packed. Hotels and the hospitality industry won’t have enough workers.

This rationale sounds reasonable, but it falls far short of recognizing and respecting the humanity of each person, whether documented or not. It depersonalizes and devalues human beings to the status of economic units, of value only if they produce something society needs or wants.

And if they don’t, well, perhaps chasing the unwanted across strawberry fields and zip-tying their children becomes justifiable.

The moral and spiritual degradation into which our society threatens to sink is all-too-clear in the daily assaults on human bodies and souls that cross our television screens, offenses that deny the God-given sanctity of human life and the dignity of every human being—values which Christians insist upon, as long as they remain committed to Christ.

‘You are the salt of the earth,’ Jesus tells his followers in the Sermon on the Mount. At no time in my life has this nation more needed Christ followers to be exactly that—salt, working to preserve respect for the dignity of every human being. Christian witness in these times requires no less.

Mary in white chiffon

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed. (Luke 1:46-48)

Their images merge before my eyes, the mother of life and a child on my television screen.

On one hand, Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, raises her eyes to the gentle heavens and speaks in startled gratitude of the grace given to a humble spirit like herself. ‘You have looked upon me … me!’

I see no pride in her face, no defiant self-assertion. She wears the sincere, innocent joy and astonished gratitude of those who have tasted the utter gratuity of God. For she, who is small, seeming of no account, carries the beauty of eternity, the world’s true light, in the dark warmth of her womb.

On the other hand, there is this girl, a tiny slip of a child not yet in double figures, on my television screen. Garbed in a cascade of white chiffon, she positions herself on a bench and tilts a harp to her shoulder, preparing to play in the finals of a national competition. Her harp is smaller than the rest, for she is by far the youngest. Her fingers barely reach the low strings.

But she doesn’t begin her performance, not yet. Something essential must be done first. She repositions the harp, setting it upright. Folding her small brown hands, she lays them in the cloud of white chiffon in her lap, bows her head and prays.

She does not do this once, but before each composition she performs, playing her heart out.

And I wonder, what is she praying? Does she ask for help to do her best? Does she seek a breath of peace to calm her nerves? Does she ask for the Holy One to bless her and her performance? Does she give thanks for being graced with the skill and desire to make music? Does she express gratitude for just being there, for making it to the finals?

The innocence of this child in prayer—asking, seeking, giving thanks or whatever else was pulsing through her—merged with the image of Mary. She was Mary, and Mary was her.

Both of them humble and full of grace, they both bear the wonder of divine beauty within them. Each, in their own way and moment, birthed that beauty into the light of day … that we might see … and hear … and feel our hearts melt in the warmth of that which is most true and loving.

‘All generations will call me blessed,’ Mary sang, praising God that she should bear Christ, the heart of God, into the world.

I suppose I’ll never know what the girl in white was feeling and praying. But I hope, like Mary, she knows how blessed she is. She bears the treasure of God’s own life in the innocent beauty of her heart … and most certainly in the grace of those little hands.