Hearing voices

Then the temple police went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, ‘Why did you not arrest him (Jesus)?’ The police answered, ‘Never has anyone spoken like this!’ (John 7:45-46)

Hearing voices

Call it a coincidence, but maybe there is no such thing. Maybe people, places events and memories co-incide because the Soul of the Universe is trying to tell you something you need to hear.

For no obvious reason, three voices from long past woke from sleep and spoke within me on successive days. The first is Evie. She phoned Craig, my internship supervisor, one Monday morning and offered to take us to lunch, but first we were instructed to meet her at her favorite nursery.

Under a gray Seattle sky, she led us among tables crammed with plants and flowers spilling over each other, raving about the colors and textures that delighted her senses, hoping we might catch or be caught by the joy that possessed her.

“There’s so much beauty in the world,” she gushed. “You got to stop and see it,” obviously convinced we were spending too much time wallowing in the darkness of our negativity. She was right.

Then, there’s Art who told the same groaner about my Datsun every time I visited him. He either repeatedly forgot he’d already told the joke, or he was so tickled by his cleverness that he had to revisit the painful punch line again.

Finally, there is Albert, dying of cancer, sitting in a worn lawn chair in the yard of his Nebraska home, watching his neighbors harvest the wheat he’d sown the previous fall, combines cutting wide swaths across a field he’d worked most of his life. He had to see it one last time—the beauty of the earth, the graciousness of its bounty and the kindness of his friends gathering it in before he was gathered in.

Disease stripped 50 or 60 pounds from his ample frame before it finally took him. Having lost his padding, he joked that the church should buy cushions for the pews with his memorial money because they were “so damn hard.” Which is exactly what his family did.

Three long ago voices, living deep within, speaking their truth, each moved tears of loving recognition and gratitude for having known them. And what do they say? At least this:

Seek beauty; it is the light of God. It will save you from your darkness.

Laugh at bad jokes told by those who want nothing more than for you to laugh with them. They are God’s angels telling you to lighten up.

Love the earth with its rhythms of winter and spring, seedtime and harvest—and love those who love it to the very end of their days. Gratitude will ignite freedom and joy within you, and you will become a flame of the Love who is stronger than every death you will ever die.

When the powers of the day sent the police to arrest Jesus his words arrested them. They couldn’t fulfill their assignment. “No one has ever spoken like this,” they were reported to have said. What they heard in him was the Love, the Presence who filled his being, not to mention the being of old voices who speak at unpredictable moments of Love’s living nearness.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

 

Three-in-one love

Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my little boy dies.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. (John 4:46-50)

I’d never seen them before. Bald and 60, I suppose, fit and strong, his right hand firmly on shoulder of the young man a quarter step ahead of him, they walked as one bound together by the dirty-white service dog between them. Father and son, I thought, but thoughts were the least of it as they approached the priest at the head of the aisle.

The young man received the host and turned to the side, exposing a fleshy face, scraggly whiskers and a moustache. He made the sign of the cross, making it clear that there was no distance between him and all the rest of us in that room, whatever his disability might be.

We were all there needy as hell itself and all receiving the mercy heaven alone can give.

Days go by, and still I see his face, his father, the service dog, three joined as one ... and with my heart, too. The father, I’m sure, wanting the same thing for his son that we all want for our children and grandchildren, the same thing the father in this story wanted Jesus to give his son, healing, wholeness, joy, blessing.

The father’s ancient plea in this story oozed from the man in the church aisle as he guided his beloved to receive the bread of life, the Love who heals broken hearts and fans hope’s holy flame.

We could ask why the resurrected Lord Jesus has not healed the young man at Sunday Eucharist (or millions of others). Or we could look at the three-in-one love who walked up the aisle and realize great healing had already occurred and will continue, until final healing comes in the fullness of that same Love.

Jesus is right, of course. It’s easier to believe when signs and wonders walk up the aisle ... right beside you. All in all, I’ll take as many of them as I can get. Just give me eyes to see.

David L. Miller

With Mary

 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’ (Luke 1:26-28)

This is likely the second most painted scene in all of biblical story. It has excited and strained the imaginations of artists fine and crude through the centuries.

What did Mary see? A gaseous form? A person? A light? A winged creature? Was she sitting? Standing? Reading? Drawing water? What was her expression? Did she lean close or recoil from the mystery of what was happening to and in her? Did she bow? Were her eyes cast down or did she look into the heart of mystery? Did she seem to hear a voice from without or an awareness within?

A thousand questions challenge the artist and us, as we, centuries beyond, seek to see and feel the mystery of the moment and what, if any, meaning and grace it holds for us.

One of my favorite paintings of the scene has Mary and the Angel Gabriel standing a few feet apart, humbly bowing before each other, their eyes cast down knowing the one before them is so much greater than they, aware, too, that their lives have been swept up in the great mystery and beauty of a Love that far transcends them.

Another favorite shows Mary as an adolescent peasant girl in Middle Eastern garb, sitting among rumpled blankets at the head of her cot. Hands folded in her lap, head titled to one side, she gazes, a guarded glance into the vertical shaft of light standing at the foot of her bed, little knowing but wondering who or what this is.

I am drawn to these images, painted several centuries apart, for more and deeper reasons than I can say. That’s would good art does.

But I know this: Both paintings awaken love in my heart for Mary, whose life was as much a mystery to her as mine is to me. For I find that my life, as hers, is swept up in the mystery of Love’s love affair with this crazy, broken, glorious, confounding, bittersweet world in which we find ourselves, despite the fact that we had nothing to do with putting ourselves here.

With Mary, we look into the mystery of the light that shines into our lives, little knowing what it all means and what it wants from us, except, of course, to feel its rays on our confused faces and to know, like Mary, that we are favored, chosen and loved beyond our capacity to understand.

And if we are a tenth so gracious as she, we try as best we can to give birth to the Life who longs to live in us.

David L. Miller

 

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Love’s weight

 

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to Jesus with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him. And he said to her, ‘What do you want?’ She said to him, ‘Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.’ But Jesus answered, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’  (Matthew 20:20-22)

The gospels offer little detail about Jesus’ emotions. It seldom records the look on his face when he spoke, encountered resistance or struggled to penetrate the incomprehension of his dense disciples, which had to be frustrating.

We see glimpses of his joy and exasperation now and then. We hear of his compassion for the wounded and wandering whose hearts had no true home. And a few times we hear his anger at the hypocrisy and arrogance of those who preferred self-adulation to compassion.

Following those clues, we might risk guessing what this little scene moved in his heart.

I don’t hear anger in his voice, only sadness. Are you able to drink the cup of suffering soon to come?  

He might well have been sad about their continued failure to understand the kingdom of God is not an invitation to personal glorify. But I don’t think so.

I think his sadness is that of knowing how much bearing love’s weight will cost him ... and how much it will cost them as they follow love’s way. For the time will come when they, too, will be broken beneath the weight of love, giving themselves to reveal the love of the Love who is in them.

And right there we see the paradox of Christian faith. The fulfillment of our all-too-human lives is found not in the significance of our resumes but in giving ourselves away to salve the wounds of a very broken world, bearing love’s weight as it comes to us in our time and place.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

The big picture

 Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. (Luke 6:27)

Taken literally, this saying of Jesus can lead the naïve into a normless morass in which it seems impossible to praise the good and call out evil. Jesus himself had no problem naming evils that burden hearts and destroy lives and frequently called out hatred and hypocrisy when it appeared.

“Do not judge” can hardly mean holding your tongue in the face of injustice and hatred, which in itself is a careless act which empowers all kinds of oppression. Take Ukraine, for example, or casual racism for another.

But judgment cannot be an end in itself. It must not be a life stance in which we stand over against others, separating ourselves from them, creating ever new and deeper divisions within an already fractured humanity.

For oneness in love, mutuality and unity in common care, is the mission of Jesus. The distinctions we must make between what builds up and what tears down, between what is good and helpful for humanity and all creation, and what is not—these judgments are best made in light of the big picture of what God is doing.

Jesus prayed that those who follow him may all be one. Later New Testament letters speak of God’s holy purpose, drawing all things into one, harmonious loving reality, a community of grace, the body of Christ in which each part is loved and treasured and has its role to play, it’s beauty and grace to share. Jesus called it the kingdom of God

This is quite beyond our human capacity to create, yet we contribute to God’s holy dream of loving oneness each time we seek to unite and not divide, each time we manage to overcome self-righteousness in order to reconcile, each time we choose to bless and not curse and condemn.

After all, the world and its peoples are already are one body in which what affects one affects all.

Just so, our choices about judging or forgiving, damning or blessing are really decisions about what we want for ourselves.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ahead of me

After this Jesus went out and saw a tax-collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up, left everything, and followed him. (Luke 5:27-28)

George Bluebird appeared out of nowhere. I hadn’t thought about him in years, decades actually.

I interviewed him in the mid-1990s as part of a story on prison ministry in South Dakota. The pastor of the congregation in the S.D. state pen directed me to George and set up a time for us to talk over a small table in the room where the men worshiped.

My first impression was that this man could reach across the table and squeeze the life out of me in seconds; his entire physical presence bristled with strength. But I had nothing to fear. George rested his forearms on the table, his immense brown hands lifting to illustrate his story.

He was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for beating an elderly man to death in a drunken stupor. He remembers little; the details are lost in the fog of drugs and alcohol that cloaked the contours of a lost night.

He showed me pieces of his artwork and told me about the purpose that kept him going though he knew he’d never again see the prairie sky as a free man. He worked with other Lakota prisoners like himself, telling his story, sharing what wisdom he gained lest they, too, get sucked into the black hole that defined his existence and determined his fate, to say nothing of the man he killed.

They’re young, George said. They’ll get out some day. I tell them what happened to me so they don’t come back here.

George was an elder, a sage, who’d reaped a bountiful harvest of humility and wisdom from stony ground. That labor had taken years behind bars and far too many days of disorientation and isolation in “the hole.”

The reason George came to mind is the verse above these paragraphs recounting Jesus’ invitation to Levi, a social reject, to follow him. Levi got up and followed. George got up and followed, too, though he could go nowhere other than where he was ... and still is as far as I know. I’m trying to find out.

When I imagined the scene, Jesus calling Levi, George was there. He appeared out of nowhere, walking just behind Jesus. He looked back at me and motioned for me to come long.

And that’s just about right. George is ahead of me, and I’m okay with that. I’m certain he possesses a depth and painful wisdom beyond my own. It’s not a competition, of course. The important thing is that we are there—that we understand we belong and are wanted there—following the One who is Divine Love personified, no matter where we happen to be at the moment.

We are where we are through decisions we made and didn’t make, through the actions others took or did not take in relation to us, through things that worked out exactly as we wanted and things that went wonderfully or terribly wrong. The idea that we have control over much of this is a grand illusion the strong whisper in others’ ears, trying to convince themselves.

Wherever we are, wherever we end up, however we got there, Jesus’ call lives in our souls. ‘Follow me,” the voice says, and on our best days, we do, recognizing the voice within is Love’s voice inviting us to learn, however poorly, how to live the Love who abides in the inmost room of our souls.

That’s what I saw in George and what I want to hear and know, feel and do every day, humbly recognizing and giving thanks for those who are ahead of me.

A few years ago there was a movement to secure George’s release. I’m trying to find out what happened with that, if anything. I’d really like to hear George is walking under a prairie sky, free as the heart I met years ago.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love’s game

On the last day of the festival ...while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” ’ (John 7:37-38)

It was a small thing, very small. In another time, it would have tripped my compulsive reflexes. Small things do this to me, like photos that do not hang level on the wall. My eyes are calibrated to capture the slightest imperfection, which propels me to fetch the level in the desk drawer so I can put things in order.

I wake in the night thinking about an uneven curtain rod or the bead of caulk on the counter top that is less than perfectly smooth, not to mention a hundred other things I’ve done wrong. No one else might see them, but I know where they are, each testifying to my imperfection and manifold inadequacies.

But the center cushion on the couch makes me smile, one corner turned up, no longer flush with the cushions on either side. In another time, I would get up and straighten them, but my normal compulsion is quiet, lost in a wave of love that washes through me, awakened by ... a rumpled sofa?

This makes absolutely no sense. Why should a sofa cushion awaken immense love for this place, for this time and for the life that is mine, given to me by forces far beyond any I pretend to control?

And it’s not just this. Why does the rainbow glint of afternoon sun on icicles hanging from car bumpers move me to tears of gratitude? Why do the exuberant stories of a grandson and the athletic exhaustion of his brother leave me barely able to speak? And why does every obsessive thought evaporate in holy joy as a dark-eyed little girl sneaks a peek at me from behind a mask and her mother’s leg across a crowded café? 

It is love I feel, a very great love within the bounds of my own being, leaking out my eyes, longing to be shared, hungry to celebrate the beauty of small things and tiny moments for all their infinite truth and joy.

If God is love, as I have long believed, surely the human soul is a divine playground where the Love Who Is coaxes us to come out of hiding and join Love’s holy game.

Maybe what’s happening is the answer to my decades old prayer to become as gracious and caring as a few older men who loved and guided me when I was young and even more foolish than I am now. They were the face of this Love who is determined to have its way in us.

I’m sure I saw this same Love in those beautiful dark eyes across the café, inviting me to come out and play.

David L. Miller

 

One hand

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ (Mark 1:40-41)

It was just a hand, just a moment. I doubt it lasted two seconds, but days have gone by and I’m still thinking about it wondering why it still moves me.

A black-haired boy, no more than 6, returned to the pew after singing with his little choir in front of the congregation. He squirmed against his mother, his flop-haired head pressing into her right hip. She reached over and stroked his back, just once, soothing his impatience as the church service continued with communion.

I heard little of the communion liturgy. All my senses fixed on her hand resting motionless on his back as they stood together. The vision continues even now, warming my heart with the exquisite beauty of tenderness, the sacred splendor of love’s simplest act, precious and holy beyond words can tell.

Across the globe, mothers soothe their children millions of times every single day. Why this mother, this hand, on this day should startle my heart with its beauty is beyond me.

Perhaps it’s because I still remember many times I wanted to feel such a hand on my back when I was small and weak, scared and impatient.

Maybe it’s because I have never outgrown that need and know I never will. Maybe it’s because I’ve lost most of my need to pretend I’m any stronger or more together than I actually am.

Maybe it’s because I’ve seen and told the stories of children who needed a gentle hand to shelter them from brutalities most of us will never endure.

And maybe it’s because for one blessed moment I saw the love we all crave ... and the Love who reaches from eternity into time ... totally present ... in one mother’s hand, for all who have eyes to see.

David L. Miller

 

 

A good place to start

But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. (Luke 6:35)

Consolation sometimes comes out of the blue, like when sitting in the chair in the southeast corner of the living room. Nothing magic about the chair except its location beside east- and south-facing windows, which generously share the sun’s morning blessing on the house ... and me.

It’s a good place to start any day, but some days the emotions stirred far exceed their cause. There is no reason why today’s gray light should awaken anything except the longing for spring.

Faint rays shed pale shadows on the floor, exposing dust from recent painting projects down the hall, an unnecessary reminder of the stiffness in my back for which (I hope) black coffee is an adequate cure.

But even this is good, and my heart issues impromptu praise for the ache in my body, for the dust on the floor, for the paint spattered ladder in the loft and for the surprising tears in my eyes. “You are the goodness in all things,” I pray, “the beauty in all that is beauty, the grace in all that is grace, the love in all that loves and awakens love within our slumbering hearts.”

My praise continued in words I wish I could recall, phrases flowing freely from the Spirit within, each coming of its own accord, each filling my heart with love for the all-surpassing Love passing through me, sighting my heart that I might know (as only the heart can) the holy Source of goodness and beauty, love and grace.

This is consolation, the heart’s hope and deepest desire. Sometimes it comes through explicit means, a song, a smile, a timely word, s shimmering sunset, the toddling laughter of a child. Other times it comes for no apparent reason.

Perhaps it’s because God finds a path around our resistance, or maybe some unseen door in our hearts cracks open just enough to let the goodness of the Good pass through.

Whenever it happens there is nothing to do but notice and let the Love Who Is ... love us to life and teach us to love.

David L. Miller

 

 

Seeds and more seeds

 

Jesus began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. (Mark 4:2-3)

God, the universe, the divine Spirit, life ... or whatever you choose to name the mysterious source of this world ... is an inveterate, indiscriminate, reckless, profligate and infinitely generous sower of seeds.

Seeds of insight and freedom, love and humanity are strewn across the paths of our lives. Most produce nothing. We take no notice of them even as we trod them underfoot, but then ... for reasons unknown ... one or two find a place to grow in our hearts producing fruits of compassion and joy.

Take yesterday. Walking through Ikea, a middle-age women stopped in front of me to examine a lamp. Wispy gray and dark hair sprouted in uneven patches across her scalp. Chemotherapy, I thought. I’ve seen it too many times before. But maybe not. How could I know?

I couldn’t, but something in her bearing and mottled scalp, unashamedly unveiled, suggested a determined struggle for life, which stirred instantaneous compassion in my heart. With no other way to express it, I prayed for her healing, for blessing and strength for her and the man beside her, a prayer that continued off and on for several hours.

Everyone is dealing with something they’d rather be rid of, but not everyone wears their struggle ... whatever it is or was ... as clearly as did she. Maybe if we were more honest, more transparent, less concerned with maintaining the illusion of control, maybe then we could see each other more clearly and plant seeds of compassion in other’s hearts.

Maybe our honesty, our vulnerability is the means through which the divine Spirit graces and humanizes the world. Perhaps our weaknesses are the source of the world’s healing. All I know is that I became slightly more alive and compassionate as I rounded a corner at Ikea, of all places.

There was another moment in another aisle, too. Three children, two little girls and a stocking-headed boy, not quite three, I suspect, trailed three women as they shopped. The group stepped around a corner, unnoticed and unseen by the boy who lingered, playing with knobs on a dresser drawer, oblivious that he’d been left behind.

When he finally turned I spoke and pointed toward his family, he mumbled a Spanish word or two and toddled away in his snowsuit, smiling and unperturbed, with not a worry in the world that they were out of sight.

You know when you’ve seen a loved child who is absolutely certain of the care of those blessed to hold him.

Watching him waddle back to his family was, perhaps, the happiest thing I saw all day, humanizing, too. It planted a seed of love and compassion, joy and gratitude in my heart, thankful for the Loving Mystery who sows seeds ... everywhere.

David L. Miller

 

 

Crazy like Jesus

The crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ (Mark 3:2-21)

From one point of view, not much has changed. The figure of Jesus—his words, his example, the life he lived and into which invites others—presents a choice that is no different now than 20 centuries ago.

On one hand, there were those who clamored near to see what he’d do next. The evidence suggests he did some amazing things. People got healed and released from a variety of maladies, physical and emotional, in his presence. They also heard a message that the poorest, weakest and worst among them were at least as valued, important and loved as celebrities and those who occupy executive suites.

Any real American will tell you this is at least a little crazy.

So it is no surprise that many in his own time thought Jesus engaged in trickery, sorcery, and delusion, suggesting he was off his rocker, perhaps a megalomaniac who was a danger to himself, to society and to anyone who got too close to him.

They were right, of course, not about the megalomania, but certainly about being a danger to himself and others, as history and the experience of many millions well prove.

Consider. He had power. He acted with authority. He spoke as if the life of God worked though him. And he was certain this power was not for personal comfort, protection or glory but for the healing of broken bodies and hearts—even if that should cost him dearly, which it did.

Jesus’ family apparently wanted to save him from this madness by taking him home and ending this silly mission he called the kingdom of God, this community defined by the mutuality of love not the accumulation of power.

Some ... most, I suppose, believe or live like this is just as crazy as when Jesus suggested this is what God always had mind for us.

But what most impresses me, after nearly 70 years of life, is that the people I most admire, the souls who have made the biggest impact on my soul, the faces who bring tears of gratitude to my eyes are exactly those who were crazy like Jesus.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

 

Sabbath moment

Then Jesus said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath. (Mark 2:27)

Sabbath moment

I come here looking for sabbath, and often as not I find it. Or perhaps sabbath finds me once the scene is set.

The scene is simple enough, a desk piled with books partially read, pens and pencils askew in a desk organizer, a lamp, a candle, a computer, steam rising from a coffee cup, a small stereo from which Latin chant praises the God who meets us in common things and familiar places.

Today, sabbath time is interrupted by a familiar voice on the phone, a request, conversation, laughter, the promise to speak again soon.

The sun momentarily pokes through winter’s gray, disappearing again into a January sky.

It matters not, for warmth within offers the only sabbath the heart truly needs. Sabbath is more than rest or even quiet. Sometimes sabbath is as noisy as the laughter that filled the room ... and my heart ... as we ended the call that interrupted my silence.

Sabbath happens when the heart sinks into the well of Love hidden in the depth of one’s soul. Wholly immersed in this mysterious Love who loves us whole, gentle joy fills the heart ... knowing this Love is within us yet infinitely beyond and immeasurably deep.

Words fail, of course. For what words can encompass the Love who encompasses all and extends beyond all that is? This Love is unknowable, yet known; uncontainable, yet dwelling in the hidden depth of our souls into which we sink in sabbath moments.

Every such moment is a gift of love from the Love who invites us to seek sabbath space where our hearts can sink into their depths to receive what Love alone can give.

Love really has only one thing to give, its own dear self. Receiving this gift, we become more ourselves than we usually are.

David L. Miller

Caught in the middle with you

And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins. (Mark 2:22)

Liminal space, it is sometimes called, this time out of time when you are neither where you were nor where you might, could and (one hopes) will be, once body and soul find their way from the no-longer to the not-yet.

Faith is needed, of course. It always is, but perhaps more so amid transition because so little is seen, and the restlessness within is hard to define. Is it hunger for rest in the peace of God where love fills the heart, or is this restiveness the Spirit’s agitation, spurring the heart to new ways of being?

Ancient wisdom suggests it is Spirit’s way of saying, Keep going. Keeping looking. Keep your heart open, and don’t try fit your life into former patterns that once fit like a glove. They no longer do.

The happy implication here is the promise of more. I have more for you, the Spirit says. Don’t imagine I am done with you. Springs of water will bubble up in your life, and I will turn them into the wine of gladness, joy you have not yet tasted.

This is your word to me this day, a word for any, I suppose, who are caught in liminal space, eager to know what will come ... now that what-was is no longer.

You are in this space with me, dearest Love, and you bid me to wait and watch and know ...  all is well and will be, for there is no space where you, my Lord, are not.

And this is enough for me.

David L. Miller

Little things

 Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8)

Who knows when the hidden soul will speak, telling you ... lest you forget ... that the deepest part of you is not under your control? Insignificant moments awaken the heart to immense love and beauty in the world ... and in ourselves.

I pull a light gray t-shirt over my head, fresh from the drawer, clean, still fragrant from the wash, fitting my frame but not tightly. Gratitude fills me whole as it embraces my flesh. Such a little thing, yet it stirs love and gratitude for the grace of being alive, able to feel common cotton running down my chest and across my back.

There is no good reason for such surplus of feeling. But today something within notices ... and blesses me with unexpected joy.

And it is not just that. There are other little things, like the aroma of coffee as I sit in the rocker by the window, morning sun streaming through as I look left at the vase of red carnations on the hearth. Mere buds days ago, now they unfold their promise, each in its own time, delighting my eye with the color of beauty amid winter’s monochrome.

Nearby, a sheaf of dried wheat lies on the hearth. Deep red winterberries left over from Christmas adorn the stalks, each stalk headed with grain, kernels of life—no, Life—gracious bounty springing from the earth. They bear my heart to Nebraska days when I’d stop the car on country roads and survey great fields of grain, waves of life undulating in the wind, thankful for every stalk and every hope-filled heart who planted the seeds, wondering, too, why I should be graced to see such beauty.

Three candles stand guard a-front the hearth, a tall center candle closely flanked by two shorter ones of equal height. Together, they form a tiny cathedral, a trinity, framing a small stone angel. Her eyes cast down in contemplation, she invites the same of any who might sit near and bend low to see the words inscribed on the stone base where she sits, “Find peace.”

There is no need to go looking. It is right here. In little things. That aren’t so little at all.

Listen.

David L. Miller

 

My people

 On entering the house, [the wise me] saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (Matthew 2:11)

Perhaps it’s pandemic fatigue, but this detail moves me to tears. I want to be with the wise men. So I kneel and see myself beside them in the eye of my heart. This is my place, and these are my people, souls who kneel before the beauty of God’s loving humility.

The wise men do not speak as I kneel beside them, nor do they speak in the story about their arrival at the place of Jesus’ infancy. Scripture reveals no dialogue between them, Mary and Joseph.

This seems right. Words distance us from mysteries only the heart can know. If you can say it, it is not God, St. Augustine wrote 17 centuries ago, and I have no reason to suggest otherwise.

So I just kneel there, in the presence of Love Incarnate, and let my poor heart sink into the well of knowing that opens within, surrendering all attempts to name what cannot be named in any language, except those of silent love and gratitude.

But words still come, a whispered “thank you.”

It’s funny ... or maybe predictable  ... that I notice others standing around as I kneel before Mary and the child who bears God’s infinite love. I know these people. Their faces are engraved on my heart. They smile and nod as they look at us kneeling there, gestures of blessing and assurance.

It is for this that we taught you, their faces say. It is for this that we loved you. But they do not kneel, for they look on from a higher plane, pleased that seeds they sowed actually took root and grew.

They are my people, too, like the wise men, hearts moved to worship the wonder of Love’s holy presence.

I long to be among such souls, listening, sharing, laughing and struggling together. It is a missing piece of life in these pandemic days. And it has long been a missing piece in the lives of many Christians and spiritual seekers of various types.

We need gracious and welcoming places where it is safe to kneel, at least metaphorically, and share the mysteries we feel ... that we may fall into the Love we most need.

David L. Miller

We’ll see

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’ (John 1:45-46)

Cold winter wind buffets the west wall as night overtakes the leaden gray of this January day. The house flexes and creaks in the onslaught, irregular bursts of winter wildness sure to surround our sleep before dark gives way to the iron-gray smudge of a new dawn’s frozen light.

Winter has come, but not here where a candle glows at my right elbow and music from a Celtic harp keeps the cold from my heart.

The day has been well-spent. Children called. Books read. Warm soup consumed. Nearly Epiphany, decorations were lovingly stored, well-ordered and safe, ready to be retrieved with delight when Advent rolls around to excite our expectations once more.

Who knows what will be then? More Covid? Greater freedom to go where we want when we want? Will Mom still be with us, then in her 94^th year? Questions abound, all with the same answer, “We’ll see.”

Still, to quote Nathaniel, Can anything good come of this?

It is natural question when you consider the mess of the world, the bitterness of current divisions, a pandemic entering its third year and the unrelenting gale of troubling news that chills the heart if you care enough to let it in.

But I suppose that’s the magic of faith. It gives us just enough patience to wait and see what comes, trusting that whatever comes ... somewhere in the middle of it all ... we’ll see grace of the One we most need.

David L. Miller

 

Where Love dwells

 When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ (John 1:38-39a)

It’s been an off day, which is to say I am off, not sick but not entirely well either. I have recently had more of these than I have been willing to admit, even to myself, chronic conditions exacerbated by a bit of age. Tomorrow is a new day, and conditions will likely change but today must be embraced for what it might give.

What I most miss on days like this is the desire to do much of anything—and the inability to concentrate on anything except by force of will, and then poorly.

It is easy for me to pray and know you, my God, on days when my step is lighter and my body works as I think it should. But now, not so much. And I wonder about the inexorable reality that days will come when energy fades not for a few hours or days but for good.

Will I be able to know and enjoy you then as deeply as I have been blessed to know you through the years of my seeking? Will I still be able to force myself to these keys to speak my longing and find you in the midst of it?

For my need of you ... and my questions ... will be the same as they have always been. Where does Love dwell? Where can Love be known? Where can you and I dwell together that sweet tears may kiss my eyes at the joy of knowing you?

Perhaps you smile at this, Lord, knowing that I will know you exactly where you have always met and given yourself to me. And this is a very deep irony. For you dwell in my need, beckoning me to come in the honesty of prayer to the very place where Love dwells.

Come and see.

David L. Miller

 

 

That thing with feathers

All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:3-5)

Hope is that thing with feathers/that perches in the soul/and sings the tune without words, so begins Emily Dickenson’s poem that comes to mind as the water washes over me in the shower and the mind turns to what 2022 might bring. “I’ve heard it in the chilliest land,” Dickenson concludes, but it never “asked a crumb—of me.”

Hope certainly swoops and sweeps through our souls when we didn’t her coming. But to live in hope asks for at least a few crumbs. Hope just doesn’t spring eternal. It requires care and feeding.

The superficial optimism occasioned by the New Year (I hesitate calling it hope) soon dies in the doldrums of daily routine as we realize the world goes on much as before. The vagaries and frailties that dogged us in the past stubbornly cling to our flesh—leaving us to wonder if we will ever become the people we could be, want to be, and somehow know ourselves to be despite our persistent slips and falls from the self we feel within.

Hope lives in the willingness, decision and determination to see every goodness and beauty, every friendship, love and act of care, no matter how small, mundane or routine, as the presence and action of “the life that [is] the light of all people,” as the “light that shines in the darkness” no matter how bright or bleak our days may be.

Every time someone carries on in the face of difficulty or simply attends to the responsibilities life has given them just because they need to be done ... the light from which all things come shines. And those who have eyes to see can smile in recognition, while feeling “that thing with feathers that perches in the soul” taking flight and singing its winsome song to carry them forward with hopeful step.

An old spiritual practice suggests daily taking stock of the events and moods of the day, noting what stirred life, joy, energy and love for the world, ourselves and others—and conversely, what drained life and joy. The exercise begins with taking account of what moved gratitude during the day.

It’s an exercise in paying attention, seeing the presence of light and giving thanks for it. This is how we keep hope alive.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

Love us home

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being (Hebrews 1:1-3a)

It was almost midnight. Dixie’s timers had switched off the lamps an hour before. We climbed the steps from the garage into the living room.

Darkness shrouded everything but the tree in the corner. It’s nothing ostentatious, just a tree with tiny, colored lights reflecting off an angel and a few ornaments we’ve long had, each with a story to tell.

Simple things are the most beautiful and most likely to penetrate the heart. This was no exception. The lights in the darkness told me I was home, not just here in this room but in a Love who speaks wherever Love wants to speak, like in darkened rooms when all you want is your bed and sleep.

Love speaks in a million ways. This great and mysterious Love has found ways to get my attention since I was a boy hating school and playing with my dog.

And now we see what Love has always been whispering to our hearts. For we have seen Jesus, the beauty of grace untold, who wants only to love us home.

David L. Miller

Christmas morning

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:9)

Winter light slants through blinds in the loft, finding faces on the tapestry that hangs on the west wall. Joseph and two magi stand there. But the golden beam leaves them in shadow to illumine Mary, the infant Jesus, and a magi kneeling at the manger.

The light lingers on their faces, drawing my eyes and heart into this circle of light where my every longing falls silent as the air around me.

A photo across the way fills the dining room wall. Black and white, a country road, lined by bare trees, stretches into the distance, disappearing into a thin morning fog.

I don’t know where it leads or will end ... for me or anyone else. But sitting in the light of Christmas morning, none of that matters. All that matters is sitting here, enveloped in this circle of light, barely breathing, but knowing the Loving Light of Christ will find me ... and you ... on every road we shall ever walk, bearing us joyfully home at journey’s end.

David L. Miller