Saturday, August 22, 2015

John 6:65

And he said, ‘For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.’

The beauty you are

Deep calls to Deep; Love calls to Love.

The Love you are, Holy One, calls to the Love that is your image in us. Your Love is the core, the soul of every human being.

In every love we know, you draw us to the Love you are. Every love comes to awaken the Love you are in us that we may commune in joy with you and shine with the beauty of your grace.

We come alive in the communion of Love with Love. Our eyes glisten with love and hope. Our hearts sing songs of joy and of the Love that fills us. We become who we are … who you are in each of us.

For the Love you are shines through the veil of our fleshly existence. Our ordinary human lives—wherever we are and however we are shaped—become a holy canvas on which you paint an image of Love for all with eyes to see.

It is your pleasure, Great Love, it is your holy delight to draw us to yourself, enfold us in your embrace and light our eyes with the startled joy of discovering we are more loved, precious and wanted than we could have ever known.

It is your joy to reveal the Love you are, the Love hidden in our very souls, through our brother Jesus. You give him to us and say, “Look, this is what you are, too, an image of the joyous light and Love I Am.

“Your fear and wounds mar and hide your inner beauty, which will shine with the light of my glory if only you will come and feel what is in him. For what is in him is me, and what is in you is the Love I am.

“So come and know me. Know the Love I am. Know the light of my glory that shines in Jesus. Know I come to you in the grace of every love.

“I come that you may know me … and finally see the beauty I see in you.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday August 21, 2015

Psalm 84:1-2

How glorious is your dwelling place. O Loving Creator of the universe! My soul aches for the abode of the Beloved; All that is in me sings for joy to the living Heart of Love! (Paraphrase, Nan C. Merrill)

The street where you live

You never know where you will find it, or it will find you.

Great Love surprises. You never know when it will wash over you and fill you—warm with the knowledge that that dwelling place of God is everywhere.

We dwell within you, Holy One, within the compass of Great Love. All that is dwells within you. Every place is holy for every place is held inside the Great Love you are. And every place can shine and fill the heart with beauty and joy.

No one else might have seen a thing, but I felt and knew you among the towering condos along Lake Shore Drive as I stepped from greening parkland onto walks bordered by plants and flowers, excited children laughing at the joy of being under the brilliant blue of a late summer sky.

I knew Great Love for all I saw, for the towering buildings, the children and the greening of the city, for every soul who walked the streets, for all who live high above in the surrounding towers and those who labor behind the scenes to make it all work so people may live.

All of it. For a shining moment nothing escaped the embrace of my heart. I felt it all connected, everything needing everything else and everything inside a Great Love, held and treasured by the Great Love that embraces all … and that lives mysteriously in me.

My soul sang with the joy of knowing … what no book or teacher can convey. I knew You, even as I know you now as fingers rattle these keys and carry me into awareness of Great Love that shined through everything I saw on one summer’s day.

The abode of God is everywhere … and everything is in you, Holy One.

Why and how do I see and know this mystery in this one time and place but miss it in so many others? Why do whole days go by without clear vision and soul-filling awareness of the Great Love you are?

I cannot answer. Perhaps some places are thin to the eyes of my heart, allowing the Light and Love you are to shine through the veil of creation that I might see and know.

Or perhaps the experience of love anywhere in our lives … opens our eyes to the Great Love who is everywhere.

However awareness comes, Great Love, Thank you.

Thank you for summer days that enlighten my heart and fill me. Thank you for calling me beloved … on a city street where the belovedness of all was clear as a summer sky.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Psalm 84:10-11a

For a day within the Heart of Love is more to be desired than a thousand years elsewhere. I would rather be a servant in your dwelling place, than live in riches among those who know not Love. For the Beloved is as radiant as the sun, as strong as a steel shield, and invites each one to come, to partake of the Banquet. (Paraphrase, Nan C. Merrill)

Heart of Love

Where is this Heart of Love if not in the depth of our souls where we may retreat and rest and know you, showered by the great rain of grace that washes away every fear and enlivens our hearts with hopes that do not die?

Open the doors of our hearts that we may enter the Holiness within us, the secret province of soul where you dwell full of Love and Peace, welcoming us to come away from the busyness of life and know the Banquet that fills the soul when we dwell in you.

For your Heart is Love unbounded, the home where we may dwell wanting, needing nothing … because we have you. We are enclosed within you, surrounded and safe in the Love that never dies, the Love who calls us, “My joy, my delight.”

We live in the light of your delight, Holy One. But we forget and lose ourselves, our peace and place in the soul’s inmost room.

Our feet take us many places. Our lives make many connections with other lives, some filled with joy and others staggering beneath the burdens and sorrows that come to every life.

Draw us back into yourself when thoughts and anxieties cloud our hearts and we wander far from the inner room of knowing you … and knowing ourselves in you.

May our hearts retreat and rest in the Heart of Love you are within the secret province of our souls. May every word flow from this Eternal Spring of Loving Grace you are within.

Expand our hearts. Make them large and spacious with room for others to dwell with us, enclosed, safe and surrounded in the Heart of Love … where there is room for everyone.

Knowing your Heart is better than life itself. You are my joy, my delight, my Eternal Beloved.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

John 6:66-69

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’

Places in the heart

Dusk fades; the day nearly done. A cardinal lights on the side fence, a female, hopping from one post to another, coming closer to my chair. For a full minute she watches me, then flits and is gone … home, I suspect, to a nest in the neighbor’s yard where she has raised her young.

My heart flies with her to a place invisible to the eye, a place in the heart where I know your Heart. This is where I go to know the life eternal You are, resting as the cardinal in her nest, knowing the Love that is Home.

Where shall we go? Where can we know the Love who is beyond the dim flicker of stars in the twilight? Where is the place, near as our flesh, always waiting, always eager to welcome and fill us with the life that is Life?

You are the place. You invite me to dwell in your Heart and be filled with the Love that holds and works in every heart and in everyplace I go.

“Come, dwell in me,” you invite. “Rest in this knowing. I am your home.

“Surrender your unfulfilled hopes, your unfinished plans, your incomplete life and rest in the Love I am. Release it all. Be patient. Force nothing. There is no need.

“Trust and know … the Love I am will never depart and will unfold a way for you that is full of Life and the Love your heart craves.

“You were made for me, and the Life I am is for you … and in you, shining in the diamond of your soul and reaching beyond the twilight stars.

“Believe these words. Trust them … and know."

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Ephesians 6:16-17

With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Trust … and know

I want to live in a state of totally absorption in Love, the Love God is, totally rapt in the totality of the Love that so completes me that it is impossible to want anything more.

This is not an unusual desire. It is simply human. Created in the image of Great Love only Great Love completes us.

Nor is this a romantic dream that can never come true. Mystics and contemplatives of many traditions speak of being caught up in the fullness of God, the fullness of Love. They strain for words to say what cannot be said.

And they seek to remain unified, one with the Love filling them, bearing the blessed calm of this oneness with them wherever they go, always knowing … the One Love God is.

To know this for even a moment is to know salvation, and once you have known it you want it … always.

But life happens, fragmenting consciousness and drawing us from the sacred place in our souls … that sacred inner room where we experience oneness with the One Love.

It is then that faith shields us from doubts, impatience and skeptics’ taunts that God is unreal. Our mantra must be trust … and know— know that the Love that filled you in utter oneness endures.

Trust that the Great Love who found you will draw you back into its fullness and the joy for which every human soul is intended.

Trust and know … Love is, Love endures, Love will find you. Be patient. Love has its time and ways, and there is never anything to fear, not really. For the One Love who finds us … will find and fill us again and again.

We are never quite sure when or who or even what will awaken our souls, but we know the Great Love seeks us in the sounds and moments of our days and nights. With open hearts, we trust and know.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, August 17, 2015

John 6:56

It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

Hands

Old and young, parents with children in tow, the sick and worried, the hope-filled and shattered whose jobs, health or relationships are falling apart.

They shuffle to the kneeler where I stand with nothing but my hands and prayer to offer. They come, wanting that word which will open their awareness to a healing love that will ignite hope and set them free from the worry that possesses them.

They all want the same thing … life. And I can give them … nothing.

Still they come because they believe in a Love that can touch, hold and protect them, and change their lives.

They believe …that Love is mediated by human hands and words in ways they cannot understand. And so do I.

So I lay hands on their heads and speak their hopes, praying back their fears with words of love, words that let them know that whatever the future holds, you … Holy One hold the future, and the Love you are will always be enough for us. Always.

Words of Spirit, words of Love, the Love that was and is and always will be. 

And Life happens. The Life you are opens up in our souls and flows through our smiles and tears, connecting our fears and hopes to the Great Love you are.

And we know: We are not alone. 

The Love you are is never a breath away but closer than our breath, and in the touching and speaking you awaken our spirits and we feel alive again with hope for the day.

There is more than nothing in my hands and the words I speak are not empty, but full ... of you.

These hands bear a Great Grace, an Immense Mercy not of my own creation but of the Spirit … who is the Life who fills every emptiness.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Mark 9:2-4, 7-9

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.  Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

Elevation

It took three times before Ginny understood the most meaningful thing in her life. She lay in a low bed, half curled into fetal posture, eyes closed, dozing away what little is left of her life.

I had to look for her. She’d been moved to Silverado, a “memory facility” where all that is most human about us is lost. Looking for her room, I pass a man my age walking the hall in a diaper. He’s forgotten to put on his pants.

A hand waves wildly across the room. I am startled to see Anita, once my colleague, smart and professional, detailed to the point of annoyance. She recognizes me, knows my name, but little else. No longer can she string together a coherent sentence. Even her husband is lost in the foggy mist of her mind.

As for Ginny, she can barely stay awake to hear the end of my prayer. It wasn’t that long. Not long ago she’d receive Holy Communion every day if we could get to her. She was transported into intimacy with Christ each time.

A mystic in a nursing home bed, she would describe moments when she was aware of God’s loving presence pervading all things. Fall colors always moved her to know the Beauty who is the source of every beauty.

But not today. Today, it is only August. And I doubt autumn’s explosion of red … and gold … will awaken her mind to wonder this year.

Kneeling at her bedside, I ask if she wants communion. “I suppose I could call for that,” she says. But the third time the question finds its mark. “Yes, I would,” she says, and I quickly set up a tiny chalice and plate with the wine and wafer, setting them on the floor by my knees because there is no table or night stand.

I speak Christ’s words over the elements, and together we say the Lord’s Prayer. She still knows that. Soaking a wafer in wine until it is soft, I put it in her mouth and gently move her jaw until she remembers what to do.

Marking her head with the sign of the cross, I look down at my knees on the mottled brown carpet … then up … at the bare ceiling above Ginny’s bed … and begin to cry.

Is this what becomes of us? Is this what happens to all the love and beauty we know in our lives? If so, then for God’s sake we need to hold on … and treasure every blessed moment of love and grace that touches us.

But we don’t know what’s to become of us. None of us know.

But I do know this: The highest point of elevation for my soul is kneeling at Ginny’s bedside, looking up at the ceiling. I know … this is where God wants me. This is my mount of transfiguration … where the Holy One calls me … beloved.

Ginny, from one mystic to another … thank you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, August 14, 2015

Mark 5:27-30

She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’

Bridging

I don’t know what the worst feeling in the world is, but feeling separated from the great love you need and crave must be high on the list.

It also one of the easiest to remedy. All it takes is the smallest gesture, a knowing glance, a gentle word, the touch of a hand.

It’s mysterious, but it is through these that healing flows and soothes the heart that wants only to know the great love which every heart needs.

If only … I can touch him. If only … today … I can hear a word of grace. If only … I can feel great love touching, flowing into me … I will be healed. My heart will burst wide open. I will lift my hands to the sky and give thanks for life in all its beauty.

No, the woman did not say these things. But it is not hard to think thoughts like these stirred in the wounded silence of her heart. They are human … our … wants and needs. We need the word, the glance, the touch of a hand that obliterates the separateness between us, bridging the distance between us and the great love that alone fills and heals the heart.

We also need her openness and her faith on difficult days when that distance feels great and impassable.

She trusted … she knew there is great grace in Jesus that he refuses to keep to himself. It is for everyone. It is for us, and although we may feel distant from that great love … the moment of touch will come and we know what is there for us all along.

So even on difficult days, even after years of feeling separated from the great healing love God is, her heart remains open and ready for a knowing glance, a gentle word, the touch of a hand … that bridges the gap and makes the heart sing.

Touch us today, Great Love. We long to sing.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Mark 5:27-30

She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’

Touches

I wrote a prayer for healing and sent it to a friend. She sent it across state lines through digital media to her sister, a thousand miles away, and the sister is healed.

Well, not as we usually define it. Surgery still awaited and an uncertain future. Perhaps restoration of body will come, freedom from pain and the ability to enjoy simple pleasures again. Maybe.

But there was healing  … and hope, and I can’t explain it, no more than I can explain what relief and expansion of heart that comes when you pour out your troubles to a soul you know who loves you.

Nor can I explain the feeling that comes when I take my grandson into me arms, knowing the rejection he continues to receive from a school that sees him only as a data point, not a charming seven year old who needs a little extra help.

What flows through me? Why is it better when, sleepy-eyed, he wanders into my study and falls into my arms for a morning hug as he wipes the sleep from his eyes, a weathered comfort blanket rumpled around his shoulders?

There is no adequate explanation for the magic in that hug. Nor can anyone explain the healing that happens in the love that flows between us.

I know only that there are touches in which we know a great love in and beyond us, touches in which we know ourselves inside a great love that holds us … and everything that ever has or ever will happen to us. Healing happens in those touches.

Our broken bodies and troubled situations may not change. We may not get everything we want, but feeling the flow of this great love we know … everything will be alright … even when it isn’t, even when people reject and illness refuses to release us.

Even then, healing comes … each day … in the touch of hands and hearts where Love is.

Pr. David L. Miller

Friday, August 7, 2015

Psalm 34:8

O taste and see that the Lord is good;
   happy are those who take refuge in him.’

Taste and see

I see her walk … slowly across the room, and I wonder: Are the suffering happy, O Lord? How can they know your goodness when treatment is worse than the disease and their weary hearts fail within?

Where is your goodness then? How can she taste and see? How can any of us rise above the weight of life and struggle that drags us down?

Seeing her, I feel the leaden weight of flightless souls, wondering what to do or say to re-ignite the fire in their eyes and lift their souls to flight. And I have nothing. No words to lift the weary. The weight is too great.

Yet, I know … even this is for your glory. Every loss and struggle is the stage on which you make miracles, breathing life and joy into those laden with life.

“God is good all the time, I tell her and pause. “And that’s good news,” I quickly add, “because the news is not good all the time.”

But you are, Loving One. You are.

And just then the tear on her cheek sings the hope Love is in our hearts. And I see. I see the healing Love brings, the joy that comes when we hold each other in struggle and sorrow. For a moment our eyes hold each other, knowing Love lives even on days when our hearts cannot take wing.

You live, Holy One. You live in us. You live among us. You live in our mutual knowing and unity. You live, and the Life you are in us is the Love we taste and know in the freedom of beautiful days and when tears are our only language.

You—the Love you are within and among us--lift earthbound hearts high to kiss the sky and breathe the sweet air of this good earth, filling us with the deathless hope that tastes and knows the goodness you are … always.

Taste and see.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, August 6, 2015

John 6:48

I am the bread of life.

I am

I am. The words echo across centuries and resonate in my heart. I am.

It is an ancient name, the name Moses heard in his heart when the Holy One spoke on the mountain. I am.

I am Life. I am Being. I am the Source and Power that brings to be all that is. I am the breath and spark of Life that gives life to all that lives.

I am … always, forever, from before the beginning of time. I am that which always was and always will be.

I am beyond your capacity to know or understand. I am the One who is … wherever you go, whatever happens. I am … already, now, waiting for you in every future.

There is no where you will go where I am not. You live … every moment of your existence … in my presence, for I am.

And I am love, unfailing generosity, for the Life I am I give away, sharing the Life I am with all that has life and being; all that exists … exists because I am.

I am … the bread of life, Jesus says, and with this identifies himself as the bearer of the life who is Life, the love who is Love, the Holy Mystery, the great I Am who is and always will be.

I am the bread of life, the Love the soul requires truly to live with joy, knowing … always, that Love is the substance of our souls, Love is the Origin of our lives, Love is the Presence who never lets go, Love is the destiny to which we go.

Love is the environment in which we live no matter where we are or how far we wander, no matter what happens to us; we live in the atmosphere of Love

For the great I Am is the Love Who Is … everywhere and every time in every moment. Unchanged and unchanging. Always. For you.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

John 6:50-51

This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’

Bread of life

There is a longing that does not let go.

I feel it in my office. It gnaws at my heart when I sit alone or talk with someone about the bruises of life. I listen and hear their hopes for a life that is more than going through the motions of what needs to be done.

I know their yearning for something deeper, something that satisfies the heart. Most often they do not know what that is. They do not notice moments of completion that come, moments of depth satisfaction when the heart is warm and full and knows what it needs.

To be human is to yearn for fullness of heart, to long for the heart’s true joy. In moments it comes … and then goes. We lose it. We are fed only to hunger again.

The food we need is the Love that is in Jesus, the grace that is in his flesh. He embodies it. There is no split between his body and soul. His soul is known in all he physically does, and his physical life in the world, every act, is filled with soul, The Soul of the Universe who is Love beyond our capacity to understand.

When we feel this Love we know … we are home, no matter where we are or what we are doing, no matter the outward circumstances of life, good or bad, healthy or well. We taste and know eternal life, a life that does not die but goes with us from this life to the mystery of what is next.

It is then that our hearts are fed with the bread of life, receiving richly from the Soul of the Universe, the Soul who speaks in Jesus … and, frankly, everywhere if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

The Love who becomes flesh in Jesus speaks in flowing waters and crashing waterfalls, in the brilliant blue of summer skies, in the playfulness of squirrels—and mystery of mysteries, in every soul where Love breathes and takes flesh in our oh-so-common lives.

As much as we hunger for the bread of life, God hungers more to feed us and fill our longing with the fullness of the Love who is … everywhere.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

John 6:35 

Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Soul food

I know a food beyond my daily bread. I have tasted it, and I know … it satisfies every longing in your heart. It quiets every doubt and fear. It stills the restless yearning for more. It opens a hidden Source of love and joy in my startled soul.

It awakens such joy that sometime I cannot speak. I try, but words won’t come because what I know is beyond words.

How can one speak when you find yourself inside Love, a Love that engulfs every part of you and fills your heart beyond its capacity to hold? What words will do?

But no words are needed, not when you are carried away in a flood of knowing the Love Who Is … and who is in every love.

This is my food, my drink, the sustenance of my soul. Without it, the heart hungers and thirsts, it withers and grows cold, cramped and sad; the fruit of love it should bear dies and dries on the vine, half formed.

So I come here, Jesus. I come to know you. I come to savor, too, so many memories of being in the presence of those whose hearts are open to the Love that fills you, each shining with a rare beauty all their own, yet transparent to you.

Being with you, with them, feeling the Mystery, awakens the Love you are in me.

I become myself, the self I always was, the self I always am, the self that fills and spills out of me if only I eat the food and drink the wine of the Love who is present in you and in all who shine with the beauty you are.

For it is true, as you are, so are we.

We, too, are an incarnation of divine love and life, a unity of Spirit and flesh, but we forget. We lose touch with our soul, thinking we are merely what we do or how others see us.

Being here with you now, sitting, too, in the presence of those who bear this same Love, is soul food, my food and drink, awakening the startling beauty and love, the life and joy that is your life, your love and joy in us.

Is it any wonder… that I come here wanting more?

Pr. David L. Miller

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Ephesians 4:1-6

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

One Love

Give me eyes to see and a heart to know one truth: You are in all I see, and in all I see … you are.

Everywhere I go, each face I see, open my heart to see you, your life, your Spirit breathing, giving and being life, drawing all into the unity that is your will, one with each other and in this oneness knowing, too, we are one with you.

This is our truth, our reality, wherever we go, no matter how far we travel, no matter where our feet wander, wherever fiery red sunsets delight our eye and moonlight embraces our hearts, we are one.

No matter what wounds and wars, distrust and fear separate nations, races and neighbors, we are one, every face, every place and planet, every distant star, one.

All share in one story. All are part of one body, one universe, receiving life and existence from the One you are, sharing a single destiny, union with each other in one body where Love is the air we breathe.

You, Holy One, are in all, drawing us home again, away from the separation that hurts our hearts … and yours. Opening our eyes to the truth that we are one whether we know and feel it or not.

We share a single story, the story of life, the story of this wondrous universe where unbreakable sinews connect all that is with all that is, so that what affects one affects all. There is no separate life in this story, for it is one story.

Separation is an illusion. All are connected. What happens to you affects me. Grace or injustice, love or hate cannot be isolated. They carry their consequences through the whole story, throughout the one body of creation.

So humility and gentleness is the way we must be … for the blessing of all, as you, Holy One, shatter all illusions of separation and draw us home … (soon, we pray) into the One Love you are.

Pr. David L. Miller 

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