For Rachel B

And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:7-8)

The phone rings, and we are immediately cast into the depths of ultimate mystery, the final passage from what we know to what is unknowable.

This time it is not our phone, but that of another family member whose step-mother lies in the shadowy suspension between life and death, which is neither, lingering over the threshold of forever, tethered by a slender thread.

For what shall we hope? And what to pray? Can life have another day? Or …?

Thrust back upon ourselves, human resources are insufficient companions in the waiting rooms of life and death. Our questions are not much help either.

We have no ultimate explanation for the undeniable fact of our existence at this time and place on this lone oasis of life in the cosmic darkness. Nor have we a solution to the woeful awareness that we each must die.

But perhaps the unfathomable reality of our living and dying is not a question to be answered or a problem to be solved. Perhaps it is a mystery best embraced with a companion who promises to meet us in the darkness of paths untrodden and perils unknown.

It is exactly this that Christ promises and invites us to trust.

Most often, we meet him … or he us … when we quit fighting what is and allow ourselves to descend into the midst of questions we cannot answer, problems we cannot solve and hurts we cannot heal.

Somewhere in the darkness of ourselves or in the compassion of a face known or unknown, we hear the silent whisper of the Voice who says, ‘even here, even this, even now.

‘There is nowhere I will not go for you, no depth to which I will not descend, no place my love will not find you, no depth of hell can keep you from me.’

Only this, only the One who has descended into death for Love’s own sake, allows us to lovingly embrace the mystery of our life and of our sadness, grieving and dying with hope.

For Christ has descended into the utmost depths of bitter suffering and death, embracing the glory and despair of human existence, taking all of it and all we are into himself, joining our mortality to his reality.

His triumphant love, risen, exalted from the lowest of the low to be Lord of heaven and earth, life and death, speaks the final word over our lives and all history.

And that word is love, the Love who says, ‘There is no place so dark, no death so final that my love will not find you and my life cannot fill you.’

So, do not fear. Lift up your head and be strong. You are not alone. We live, together, in a universe where Love holds sway.

David L. Miller

Love’s completion

 I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. … And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight. (Philippians 1:6,9)

‘It’s early,’ I whisper into an unseasonably warm February sky.

The fluty trill of a Sandhill Crane is unmistakable. I expect them in these woods in mid-March, not now.

Standing still, I scan the sky and wait for an answering call that doesn’t come. He must be lonely, I think. They usually travel in flocks of hundreds and thousands.

Hiking on, a mile deeper into the woods, I hear the call again. Flying low against the crystal blue dome, two cranes make their way northwest toward nesting grounds a thousand miles hence or even more.

They will mate and birth the next generation, some of which I may see come fall when they make their way south once more, marking the seasons as they have for tens of thousands of years—and will, long after my face has faded into forgetfulness.

Grateful for their promise of Spring, their call is yet a wistful reminder that time marches on. There will be a season when my legs will no longer carry me to this blessed place to watch them, often as not through these tears of joy which come for reasons beyond my understanding.

Except for love, of course. For surely this is the reason I come out here, hoping to feel the irresistible surge of love the Holy One awakens in my heart, filling me whole until I cry the two most essential words of life.

Thank you.

And for the time of such awakening, I am almost as alive as the cranes. Almost.

In their flight, the Love Who Is wakes the joy and beauty of love lying within the secret depths of my (and every) soul, our truest identity. But this is just one of myriad sacramental moments the Loving Mystery employs to draw us a millimeter closer to Love’s completion. There seems to be nothing God will not use, even our faults, perhaps especially our faults.

I have miles to go on this walk. My legs will grow heavy before the 10 miles are done. But I keep on in the mud, knowing there is a smile waiting for me at home, a smile that stops shoppers in the produce section or the women’s department or at checkout counters because something about her radiates a kindness for which human hearts long.

One more sacrament of divine grace, working out Love’s completion, not just in my soul but in others, too.

Christ plays in ten thousand places and shines in so many more, most certainly in her smile.

But God help me, she, too, will pass into yesterday and the very thought of that kills me. After all these decades together, I cannot imagine a world where that smile is lost, an unspeakable tragedy, a poorer world, indeed.

But even this sobering awareness of our mortality moves gratitude for every moment shared, for every good gift received, for every gentle grace that ever awakened my heart to love the life I have been given.

And even more: To love the love God is … drawing us ever onward toward love’s completion.

David L. Miller

All in

 

All in

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:20)

There’s a kind of slavish righteousness that involves keeping the rules, dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s. Too often, this produces an odious self-righteousness for which legalistic religion is rightly denounced.

On the other hand, there is the ‘all in’ righteousness of Jesus, in which one’s head, heart and whole being are given to a just and loving purpose. Purity of heart is what he calls it in the Sermon on the Mount.

I don’t think this is something we can summon from the resources of our ever-wavering wills. It comes as a gift, a grace when love fills the heart and we desire only what love wants, which is to say what God wants and wills for us.

Such moments are fleeting because our wills, especially in this consumeristic culture, are always craving more of something we imagine will fulfill our hearts and still the nagging fear that we are missing out. We seek our fulfillment in a million places that do not and cannot satisfy the soul.

But moments of awareness come, like when I look at my beloved, my heart at rest and peace, knowing that no matter what the years will bring, sickness or health, comfort or hardship, I am ‘all in,’ we are ‘all in,’ totally given, not from a sense of obligation but because our hearts know that it is enough that we are together.

The loving awareness of being ‘all in,’ totally given for love’s own sake, is the fulfillment for which human hearts are shaped.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, great apostle of love that he is, wrote of four stages or movements of love. We begin our lives loving ourselves for our own selfish sake. With time and prayer and maturation, we might come to love God for God’s gifts to us. But this is still a utilitarian love.

With years and the reception of many divine graces, we may begin to love God simply because God is God and God is love, no matter what good or evil comes to us. Finally, for a blessed few, I suppose, we come to love ourselves not for what we have accomplished or managed to avoid, but for the sake of the precious expression of divine love that we are, for the love living in our souls.

The righteousness of being ‘all in,’ loving for no other reason than for love’s own sake, is the exceeding righteousness Jesus awakens in our hearts as we contemplate the love he is for us and all creation.

We taste the sweetness of God’s kingdom and the blessed righteousness for which we are made, when love rises from our depths, filling us with the awareness that becoming this divine love is the one thing that truly matters.

David L. Miller

People of the light

‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.’ (Matthew 5:7)

They are people of the light, and there are tens of thousands of them. They are in the streets and classrooms and neighborhoods and behind store counters and a thousand other places.

We must see them, hear them and feel their hearts. For they can save our souls … and the soul of the nation.

Perhaps no single story, in the saga of MAGA vs. the State of Minnesota, reveals the beauty of these hearts as clearly or as poignantly as the plight of a little boy named, Liam, and the students and leaders at his school, Valley View Elementary.

After Liam was illegally carried off by immigration enforcement agents, clad in his bunny hat and Spiderman backpack, leaders at his school mobilized the most potent salvo yet in the battle for human decency amid the great indecency the Trump administration is exacting on the nation.

Their actions, like those of their fellow Minnesotans, have upended the administration’s devout conviction that virtue is rare, that people don’t really care about injustice or the struggle and suffering of their neighbors, just so long as they are comfortable.

In this case, the virtue in evidence is profoundly spiritual, certainly for Christians, Muslims and Jews. ‘Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy,’ many Christians read or heard on this Sunday in the season of Epiphany.

The merciful receive mercy because their hearts are already carried in the current of love that is God’s living presence in human hearts and amid human affairs, a living flow of mercy.

Any whose eyes and ears and hearts have not been shuttered by hate, apathy or political ideology can see the beauty of mercy at Valley View school, especially when viewed against the dark and brutal background of what ICE and Homeland Security are doing in their community.

It was unmistakable as a principal at Valley View Elementary, his voice wavering, walked a reporter through a school room to see Liam’s desk and his cubby, with a bin of school supplies, his water bottle and a stuffed, green dinosaur.

Leaving that room, bags of groceries and supplies lined the hallways for families too scared to come out of their homes. Twenty-five parents of Valley View students have been carried off by ICE, and now … two more students, a second and fifth grader.

Students have written letters to ICE and recorded them, sharing what they are seeing and the fear and sadness they are feeling. But there is also this letter from an African American girl, ‘I believe there are birds whose songs of love aren’t heard by people who need to care.’

A living mercy flows through the beautiful, young heart who gave voice to those words. They are a prayer, a hope that mercy and simple human kindness will soften stony hearts, evaporate apathy and carry us all away in the stream of mercy flowing through the halls of Valley View school.

For there are more children languishing in ICE gulags. There are more shattered families longing to touch and hold their beloved. There are thousands carried off for no reason beyond the nihilism of power for power’s sake … and many, many more living in fear.

But there are victories in the struggle. Liam and his father are home, and all because an army of light has appeared in the mercy of those who care … and in judges who know the difference between the darkness of lies and the light of truth.

They are people of the light, every last one of them.

David L. Miller

People of the lie

 

 

[T]he people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned. (Matthew 4:16)

It’s infuriating.

They stand, open their mouths and they lie. They lie again and again and again.

Their tone, authoritative. Their confidence, sure.  Their position, secure, ensconced in the trappings of officialdom we were taught to trust when we were naïve children.

But no longer. Now, we know.

They are lying about their brutality. They are lying about the people they arrest and abuse. They are lying about the justification for their actions. They are lying about the people who leave their homes in the bitter cold to protest—average, decent human beings who blow whistles to warn their neighbors, bear food to their doorsteps and ferry their children to school to protect them from illegal arrest and deportation.

And, now, they are lying about the people they shoot and kill in front of witnesses on city streets, calling them terrorists and assassins.

They lied in Portland and Chicago and Charlotte, et. al., and have reached new heights … or depths … of depraved mendacity, in Minneapolis.

We know their names: Noem, Bovino, Homan, Miller, Trump, and all who attempt to justify the fascistic machinations of this administration.

They are people of the lie, and they will keep on lying, day after day after day. Possessed by a malignant, narcissistic self-righteousness, they project their bitterness, hatred, imperfections and inadequacies onto those they despise and defame.

And we? We live with the disorienting dissonance between what our eyes see, our ears hear and what our hearts know …. and the world of lies they narrate, forcing us to deal with the dark and bitter world their lies create.

‘In our country the lie … has become a pillar of the state,’ wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the murderous brutalities of Soviet Russia.  

‘We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, but they are still lying.’

His words apply to our situation today. But with apologies to the great Russian author, I wonder if those so deeply engaged in denying and dissembling lose their capacity to know they are lying. Have they called evil good for so long that they have lost their souls, unable to find their way back from the abyss of inhumanity.?

Blessedly, we are not left or consigned to live in their darkness. All we need do is to look around, especially in Minneapolis.

As a Christian, and I hope a contemplative Christian, the light of compassion I see in the eyes of my Lord Jesus shines in the life of Alex Pretti, well-known among friends and colleagues as a nurse who cared deeply for his patients at the VA hospital where he worked, a trusted and encouraging mentor to less experienced nurses.

He was no terrorist or would-be assassin, but a man committed to healing and care. His life gives the lie to people of the lie, unveiling the darkness of their hearts and illumining a way of life that truly is life.  

He died saying ‘no,’ to the brutality and inhumanity of immigration agents employing unchecked power to push a woman down in the street, attacking and shooting him in cold blood when he tried to help her up.  Our eyes do not lie.

He is not alone, of course. Tens of thousands have gone to the streets to magnify that ‘no.’ They say ‘no’ to the lie when they take food to their neighbors, ferry their kids to school, blow whistles to warn of danger and when they sing and pray and mourn, hoping their voices will move people in power, finally, to stand up and say ‘no.’

The light of truth and compassion shines in their hearts, and the darkness will not put it out.

David L. Miller

Who belongs?

And as [Jesus] reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mark 2:15-16)

I heard it long ago and many times since: ‘If you draw a circle to define who’s in and who’s out, be assured Jesus is on the outside looking back at you.’

It’s a cliché, a bit tired. But perhaps it fits today amid the brutal question roiling the soul of America: Who belongs? How big should the circle be? Differences of opinion are currently being played out on the streets of Minneapolis.

Christians have a dog in this fight. At the heart of a truly Christian consciousness, lies the love of Christ, who is constantly seeking to restore human community to a fullness of love and belonging, where graces are shared and every human soul knows its worth.

There is something in the Christian heart that hates walls that divide, a desire to welcome every willing soul into the respect and warmth of human community.

It is well accepted that nations need borders, and no nation can or should be expected to accommodate all who want to enter. But the faith of the church leans toward welcome, toward mercy, toward compassion, shaped as it is by Jesus, who so regularly stood outside circles of exclusion, erasing lines of division drawn by the privileged, the fearful and the self-righteous.

There’s nothing more telling in this regard than Jesus’ meal practice. Take the quote above.

Most translations have Jesus sitting at table with a group of outcasts and social disasters whose behavior has placed them well outside community acceptability. But he doesn’t sit. He reclines, along with everyone else enjoying the meal.

Lying on his left elbow, the typical practice of his time and place, he reaches with his right arm for bits of food or to take a cup. The picture is one of relaxation, familiarity, comfort, ease, savoring the pleasure of food, drink and human presence with people who were regularly reminded they didn’t belong, except here, with Jesus.

It is impossible to think of this without imagining a smile of satisfaction tugging at the corners of his mouth. Lord knows, I feel his joy as I imagine him there, creating his own circle of acceptance into which his critics would have been welcome had they been willing.

This after all was his purpose, to regather and restore the people of Israel to their true spiritual vocation of being ‘a light to the nations,’ where the Lord ‘will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines’—the fullness of human existence, as the prophet Isaiah proclaimed.

Something of this hope and vocation, ‘a light to the nations,’ is deeply embedded not only in the hearts of those who cherish the boundary-breaking joy of Jesus’ witness, but also in the American dream of many peoples becoming one for the good of all.

This dream and vocation are daily attacked on the streets of our nation by those who draw narrow, exclusive circles because they have replaced the vision of America with arrogant delusions of their superiority.

Even more troubling, many American Christians have lost or never knew and felt the gracious vision of Jesus reclining with his excluded friends. Seduced by the rhetoric of fear and falsehood, they fail to know the joyful mission to which they are called. But Jesus doesn’t forget. He is still there, inviting all of us to come home and share the feast of welcome.

Perhaps this is why I cherish the demonstrations of Christians singing in the streets of Minneapolis, so much more than the bitter vitriol (however understandable) that merely mimics the brutality of ICE. The singers seem to know Jesus.

David L. Miller

Staying human amid the mess

 

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Matthew 11:29)

We took the Christmas tree down today. The tree is artificial; the emotions were not.

The process follows a decades-old pattern. I remove the ornaments and give them to Dixie, who packs them away until next year when we will bring them out of storage and tell stories about where this one or that came from, or who gave it to us, and how it is connected to the life of our family.

Dixie is better at remembering these stories. She was paying closer attention to what most matters through the years, so she reminds me as we put away the tatted angels and glistening stars, olive wood mangers and the artisan acorn our daughter, Rachel, reclaimed from my mother’s house after she absconded with it.

‘I suppose this is silly,’ Dixie says, as she slips ornaments into protective boxes and bags they don’t necessarily require.

‘No, it’s not,’ I reply without thinking. ‘Its gentle and respectful and reverent,’ which is what I see as I watch her eyes and hands guide each item into its bag or tiny box until it is safely ensconced, her pulling a draw string or sealing the top of a Glad bag, ensuring it is safely home.  

Gentle, respectful and reverent, the words came without prior consideration. They crossed my lips before I knew what I was saying, which doesn’t make them less true, only more so. The words are, in fact, a prayer of my sad and troubled heart. In this case, they are an answered prayer, for which I am doubly thankful.

My mind and heart have been absorbed in the news where gentleness, respect and reverence were killed once again, this time by a bullet piercing the head of a Minneapolis mother and wounding the hearts of all who still believe every human being is a precious and irreplaceable image of the God who is Love.

Unfortunately, the federal government of our nation is now led by men and women who lack this reverence for life, regardless of what pieties they may spout. Their hearts are wed to power without principle, and their words demonize, their actions brutalize, any who get in their way.

A woman is shot, and they immediately blame her, undisturbed by the agent who called her a ‘fucking bitch’ as he holstered his gun and just … walked away … after killing her, his words and actions an apt metaphor for the dark heart of the Trump administration—if not also for the loss of transcendent values at the heart of post-modern secularity.

It is hard, no, impossible, for me to navigate the vertiginous distance between the nihilistic barbarity of our times and the preciousness of life I felt as Dixie and I carefully stored Christmas away until the happy day, we, God willing, do it all again.

What happened in our living room seems insignificant amid the fury of recent events. But I know it is one more thing that keeps me human. It softens my heart, eases my sadness and protects me from the rage that swells within at the malignant malevolence of ICE, which, unchecked, would make me a mirror image of that which I hate.

Holding the image of those hands slipping ornaments safely away, my heart is healed by the gentleness, respect and reverence that is the heart of my Lord in the heart of my beloved.

David L. Miller