Love & power

 

The centurion answered, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, “Go”, and he goes, and to another, “Come”, and he comes, and to my slave, “Do this”, and the slave does it.’ When Jesus heard him, he was amazed (Matthew 8:8-10a)

The story is simple enough. A Roman centurion, a commander of a hated and occupying army, comes to Jesus with his hat in his hand, hoping Jesus will heal his servant. But what impresses me is what is in his heart. First, his humility.

“I am not worthy,” he begins his plea. Humility is a strange posture for a man with a sword at his side and a cohort under his command. He doesn’t need to ask. He could demand, threaten and bluster, if he so chose. He could have his men take Jesus by the nap of his neck and drag him to his servant. But he does none of those things that come so easily and often to the powerful and well-connected, who use force to get their way.

He recognizes the mystery that surrounds Jesus, stories and rumors that he possessed a power over forces neither centurions nor emperors could command.

More moving, however, is the love coursing through his beating heart for a servant he could replace with the snap of his fingers. Perhaps, just perhaps, love for his ailing servant gave him eyes to see the love flowing through Jesus for wounded bodies and broken hearts.

So it is; love recognizes love. Selfishness, hate and apathy are blind to its beauty.

Through the cloud of his fear, the centurion recognized, however poorly, that Jesus was the rarest of realities, a soul in whom great power is harnessed to a surpassing love. Just give the command, the commander asked, trusting that Jesus not only could but truly wanted to give him the desire of his heart.

Hearing the man’s speech, Jesus is startled. One can imagine the two of them standing there, the centurion, his head slightly bowed before one who can do what he cannot; Jesus, startled, his mouth pursed in wonder at the beauty of the soul standing before him, the faith, the love, the perennial human hunger for healing. It’s all there.

Like so many biblical stories, this scene is not to parsed and wrung out for its meaning. It must be seen and savored, heard and felt until Love’s presence and power awakens a hope and joy you thought were beyond you.

David L. Miller

 

Withness

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding [Jesus] and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? … Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ (Luke 23:39-40; 42-43)

Your presence is enough, I say to my beloved, Dixie, when she apologizes for falling asleep (again) in the middle of a movie. And it is. It is enough that she is here, with me, and I am not alone, bereft of the love that has enabled most of whatever it is that I am, have been and will yet be, a sacrament of the Greater Love whom I ceased trying to name years ago.

It is a kind of paradise to know yourself attended by a love you neither deserve nor imagined could be quite real because it seems too good to be true. But isn’t this what we want and need from the loves of our lives?

Our silent hearts, if not also our lips, speak the truth: Please, whatever happens, be with me. A more sincere prayer is difficult to imagine.

Little wonder, then, that Jesus’ words stir the heart “You will be with me in Paradise,” he promises. The two most important words are … with me, for with him we feel and know a Withness without limits. With him, we can walk the way of our lives, looking to our side, seeing him near, feeling the Love who inhabits him whole, knowing the Presence who stills our noisy hearts.

Such is my prayer many days. Let me feel and know myself with you, for with you everything is alright and without you nothing is right.

Perhaps this is why the death of the taunting criminal beside Jesus is most poignant on this winter day. For if paradise is to be with a great and ever-attending love, then despair, hell, is a closed heart no long praying, hoping and longing for whatever Love’s living presence might give in whatever place you find yourself.

Wherever that is, the promise of Jesus is that the Love you want and so desperately need wants you even more. Our hunger to be with a great and constant Love is the echo of God’s hunger in the mystery of our own hearts.

David L. Miller

Justice for Maurice’s children

 

And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’ (Luke 18:7-8)

There is a cry in the heart of God, a cry for understanding, a yearning for us to know and finally realize the One who is Love seeks justice for us and for every beloved thing God has made.

Justice is not what most imagine. It is not retribution or punishment for wronging. It is the union of God’s desire with material reality. It is human hearts and our broken creation existing in oneness with the Infinite Love from whom all creation springs, an ever-flowing stream of life.

In other words, justice is you, Holy One. It is knowing you, being encompassed, enveloped and inseparably one with the Love you are. It is to know oneself inside, wrapped and rapt within the enveloping cloud, the encircling arms of your great love, delighting and treasuring us as we do our children, our grandchildren, our little ones and all those souls who loved and blessed us in ways and for reasons we never fully understand.

Today, I want this justice for Maurice’s children. They are not his children, except as his heart has adopted them in their crying need. He understands their hearts and hopes because he was once one of them, as when I first met him 30 years ago in a refugee camp in what was then southern Sudan.

He was a teenager, displaced and separated from his family by war and hunger as he would be for many years. Unable to go home, with no money and little to do, he approached a visiting journalist and asked if he could help. For the next few days, Maurice was my interpreter. In the following years, several of us supported him through boarding school and an agricultural college. We stayed in touch on and off, until now when our correspondence is very much on.

Southern Sudan is now South Sudan, an independent nation, and Maurice is back in Juba where he was a boy, working among orphans and vulnerable children with insecure food supplies and little chance at an education. Children like the child he was.

He provides food, safety and basic education, making do with meager resources, knowing what the justice of God is for children like these. It is to know the enfolding arms of love, to feel the goodness of warm food in their stomachs, to joy in the wonder of learning and to smile as they plant seeds in the ground that will produce a harvest of hope.

The Green Foods Enterprise is the name of Maurice’s nascent organization. It is one small but irreplaceable expression of God’s justice for invisible and forgotten souls, who cry out day and night hoping to be heard. Maurice hears first-hand and has invited me in this holy work. Perhaps you hear this invitation, too. If so, let me know. Justice for the children can use all the help it can get.

David L. Miller

As graced as they

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

Is it a prayer or a hope? Both, I suppose, for what is hope but prayer born in a place deeper than any we command? It appears in unexpected moments when the heart finally sees what it truly wants, the end which alone can satisfy the restless longing for that elusive something we can neither name nor attain.

But there it is, my heart’s earnest hope and truest prayer, appearing in an instant on a Facebook page, posted by a soul I knew 40 years ago and treasure still. Her post? A photo of an old man, Ed, shuffling across the sidewalk outside a Lincoln, NE church. I neither know nor have met him, though I have met his like many times and in places, near and far.

Hand in hand with a boy, 11 or so, he makes his way in sunlight far less radiant than his smile, to say nothing of the solicitous warmth of several who look on, likely concerned he will fall. A strong wind would surely topple him. But no worry creases his face, just joy in the moment, loving being loved by those he loves. What could be better?

I have no idea of the history these faces have shared beyond what the post tells. It seems Ed often woke at 4 a.m. to bake bread for friends, delivering it to their door. But his labor of love is over, complete. He has passed into the Blessed Source of the love and smiles that reach across the miles to moisten my eyes and console my heart with a vision of the beauty for which we are intended.

I want to be like Ed, like so many old souls I’ve known who learned Love’s lessons and lived them full ‘til the end of their days. This is my prayer, the beauty I long to be and share, giving and receiving the love of the Love who dwells within us. It has been my hope since I was a young man, blessed by souls nearing the end of their days who breathed the Love who lived in them.

So thanks, Jackie, for your post. And thanks, my Lord Jesus, for choosing to live in the likes of Ed and so many who have blessed me along the way. Thanks, too, Holy One, for the plains of Nebraska where once I lived among souls so much richer than mine. May I be, one day, as graced as they.

David L. Miller

Temple space

 In the year that King Uzzi′ah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”  (Isaiah 6:1-3)

It’s not a temple, just my usual spot in the southwest corner of Starbucks on 75^th and Lemont. My chair is round and orange, the day gray.

A ballet of baristas weaves behind the counter, fluid movement punctuated by the clang of a pot in a sink and the comforting whoosh of steam from the espresso maker.

Students locked into their laptops pay no heed to the murmur of orders passing voice-to-ear a few feet behind them. The girl at the next table momentarily looks up, wide eyes blank and weary from her work. She gazes across the two-generation divide between us, perhaps not even seeing me as I scribble in my journal seeking the center of my soul where holiness or something very like it dwells, waiting for me to arrive.

Traffic piles up at the red light outside the plate glass windows that meet in the far corner of the room. Outside, a Pace bus ferries commuters home though the mist, waiting for the green when a shaft of gold and burnt-red lances the fog, igniting car widows in an explosion of autumnal glory as October shouts a final chorus before  surrendering to the sobriety of November.

It’s all a gift, of course, a vision of wonder beyond the capacity of human hands to create, to say nothing of mortal words that stumble and fall mute as splendor transforms a coffee shop into a holy temple, where transcendent Love arrests the meandering mind with intimations of eternity and tears of gratitude.

Who knew it could be so? We all can, I suppose, as long as we remain capable of being overwhelmed by wonders that pierce the mundane as Love awakens us to the unlikely truth of our own existence ... and thanks for the grace of being alive.

And there’s more; there’s always more of the More who makes temples of common places, teaching our hearts that prophets’ visions of divine glory are not so far as we imagine or so rare as we fear. No, but here, hidden in the fog, eager to swamp our senses and engulf our hearts in the mysterious Love who wants us and wants us to know.

David L. Miller

 

As we are seen

Lead me in your truth, and teach me. (Psalm 25 5a)

The locust tree whispers, autumn gilding its leaves. A maple across the lawn replies in red. Not a word is spoken, but my heart hears and fills with silent love for the beauty of it all.

They are my teachers today. They lead me into God’s own truth, which is not a list of beliefs or a moral code. It is to see through eyes of love, for God is love and only love sees the truth.

The truth will break your heart at the suffering of children, the brutalities of war or the death of a friend. But it will mend it again when the beauty of kindness takes your breath away.

If you want to know the truth, do something that awakens love deep within. Then, think of friends and enemies, the mess of the world, people who annoy you, a child or grandchild. Recall memories that make you wince because you were unkind, foolish, insecure or arrogant. Let the love you feel pour over every memory, every person, every pain.

Look back with love, and see ... as God sees.

David L. Miller

Disarmed

 Unless you ... become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3)

Sonia caught my eye as I turned to share the peace during worship. Seven, I suppose, she stood close to her mother, shy eyes peering through a thick cascade of dark hair. I bent low and extended my right hand to share what the words say, “Peace.”

She smiled and took my hand, before holding a small stuffed animal out to me. “What’s her name?” I asked. “Tara,” she whispered, clutching it again to her chest.

With this, I was undone, my heart totally disarmed. Love surged through me for the preciousness of her heart, so totally open to receive and share a simple moment of grace and care.

I wanted to extend the gift of God’s peace to her, but she became a sacrament, awakening the great love God is flowing within and between us. My heart became as unguarded as hers, ready to receive and share the holy kindness of God. 

It was only a moment, soon past. But I will be looking for her again next Sunday. She helped me enter heaven’s kingdom.

David L. Miller

So good

 How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head ... . It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord ordained his blessing, life for evermore. (Psalm 133)

From one point of view it was an evening with friends. From another, it was water for the soul.

Eight of us gathered bearing food and drink to share. Talk led to eating and eating to longer conversations in twos and threes or fours until the night was full and our bodies tired. Gathering bowls of leftovers, hugs are shared as we linger at the door and go to our cars, our hearts lighter than when we came.

Sinking into the seat, there comes a sigh and oft repeated words. “I needed that. It was so good to be together.” I whisper the words of this Psalm every single time.

But it is better than good. It is a holy sacrament, the sweet savor of the everlasting life, the peace and mutual love the Holy One gives even now and will forever.

It is like the oil of anointing that freshens the fragrance of living. It is like water on the mountain side, flowing down into rivers to quench our parched hearts and make us glad again. A holy gift. Thanks be to God.

David L. Miller

A better world

‘For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard ... .’ (Matthew 20:1)

My middle grandson, Ben, sits across the room in my rocking chair, describing college visits as we brainstorm ideas for his application essay. He’s visited six public universities, all in the Midwestern United States, with two or three more to go.

“Every one of them says we want only the highest grade point averages, the tippy-top most ACT and SAT scores, every one of them,” Ben repeats, his arms spread wide, amplifying the meritocratic message driven home by admissions officers.

This message, I suspect, is exaggerated, both by Ben and by the universities themselves, which polish their image while fueling the anxiety of people like Ben, who do well but don’t have the highest grade point average or tippy top scores on entrance exams.

Frankly, Ben will grace, humanize and lift the level of conversation on whatever campus he appears next fall, not to mention the infusion of playful humor that is natural to him. But grace and thoughtfulness, humanity and humor are not quantifiable and do not much appear on entrance exams.

From where I sit, as the grandfather of a young man whom I love fiercely, college admissions looks like a deeply flawed, brutal, dehumanizing process where a precious few are wanted and vaunted and the rest—and most of us are, overwhelmingly, the rest—are “less than.”

Of course, this process is just a more obvious expression of deep culture forces that suggest our worth, value and truth are directly related to the score—in points, money, status or fame—that we or others assign to us. Allowing this poison to saturate your heart kills your soul and steals your joy, a truth I have too often lived and observed in others.

Perhaps this is why Jesus’ story of the landowner hits me hard. The story brings me to tears. It goes this way.

A landowner went into the marketplace at daybreak to hire workers. He went out again at nine, then at noon and three. By 5 p.m. people were still standing around, waiting to be hired. Perhaps they slept late or were lazy or not as hungry as those who woke early to be first in line. Didn’t matter. The landowner hired them, too.

He didn’t ask for resumes or test scores. He doesn’t weed them out and take only the best. He seeks all to participate in the goodness of creation, generously sharing the fullness of life. At the end of the day, they all receive the same pay. The early birds understandably grumble about the injustice of the boss’ generosity ... or stupidity.

But this misses the point. Jesus’ story startles our assumptions and upends our sense of justice to invite us into a different world, a world of grace.

Reading the story, I meet the reality of a Love, a Heart, who wants me ... and Ben ... and every last one of us. We meet the Love who doesn’t ask for resumes or test scores, but is moved only by an overwhelming generosity. We encounter an Embracing Heart eager for us to share its work and bask in the only reward Love has to offer, which is Love itself.

All in all, Jesus invites us into a better world, a much richer way of being ... where life is gift, giving is gain and gratitude graces our days.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

More than enough

I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:18-19)

It was our last conversation, 12:26 p.m., Central Daylight Time, April 15, 2021. Fifteen days later my friend, Grace Adolphsen Brame, passed into the Loving Mystery who had beguiled her heart and mind since childhood.

She had been and done so much in her 91 years, a choir director, opera singer, beloved spouse, good will ambassador, author, professor, retreat leader, and an expert on Evelyn Underhill and Christian mysticism.

But age and illness had exhausted her characteristic verve and exuberance, including Grace’s startling proclivity to break into an aria in the middle of one of her presentations.

“David,” she breathed when her aide handed her the phone, “there is not much of me left.” Her voice laden, syllables dragging through long seconds, I strained to hear, willing her to complete each ... labored ... breath.

She was right, of course. There wasn’t of her much left. But what remained was profound and beautiful, and she needed to give it away, one more time.

 “I love you,” she murmured. “Thank you for being my friend. You are God’s friend ... and mine.”

As blessings go, it is hard to imagine one much better. But her blessing didn’t end with these words. There was one more agonized sentence that drained the remainder of her energy. “You are the only one who understood me,” she mumbled.

The only one? A bit of exaggeration, I suspect. We had been friends since meeting at the back of a conference hall 31 years before. We rarely met after that but regularly spoke on the phone, telling stories, sharing insights and planning writing projects, two of which evolved into books.

Through it all, there was one central truth, one awareness that was present from that first conversation. Grace and I shared a deep desire to know the Love who is and was and always will be—and to share the Healing Mystery we knew, however obscurely, in the depth of our being.

She struggled throughout her professional life to share the gift of contemplative prayer and awareness with a resistant church that did not know what it was missing, a decades long frustration.

In her final words to me, she said I would receive a gift in her will. Use it, she said, to “carry out my mission.”

Softly, I asked if she had any specific suggestions, but she didn’t answer. She drew another heavy breath and said, “You know me.”

It was more than enough. I knew what to do.

 David L. Miller

Doors

 

Be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. (Luke 12:36-37)

Jesus’ parables always give us something to see. Here, it is a man, a landowner, returning home from a wedding, filled with good food and fine wine, eager not to be served by his minions but to share the joy.

For me, the story awakens an image of Jesus hurrying home. Hungry to be with him, I throw open the door and our smiles meet with a tear of loving recognition.

For it is not just any wedding from which he returns. It is his wedding, the marriage of time and eternity, heaven and earth, mortal flesh and Eternal Love.  

He comes, eager for us to open the door to Love’s living appearance wherever and whenever we feel him nudging our hearts from slumber. Heaven and earth are wed, a union known in every moment of love and beauty, grace and hope, care and wonder.

Yes, ugliness endures, and hatreds rip the loveliness of life asunder. But the wedding has happened. Earth and heaven are joined to save us from ourselves and our cynicism.

Jesus approaches in every love and beauty, grace and care, hoping that we just might open the door and embrace him so the joy in him might infuse our souls with the Life who is Life.  

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” Jesus says in another place in Christian Scripture. Yes. Always.

Our task and hope is to watch, pay attention, like at Christmas or Thanksgiving, or when we are waiting for a certain car to enter the drive, listening for the scuff of shoes on the walk, the knock on the door and the arrival of a heart for whom our hearts long.

He comes every time your heart warms in love and gratitude, care and hope. He knocks in our longing for the beauty of heaven to shine amid this world’s troubles.

Open the door. Embrace the moment for all your worth. He’s inviting you to the feast.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

In the field

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. (Matthew 13:47-48)

There are not many things but only one, or so it seems in the coffee shop.

An Indian woman, gold ring and chain in her left nostril, feverishly punches a long series of digits into the computer as Bianca, a young African American woman, offers a joke to occupy the delay as she waits to take my order.

Behind them, a pale girl with pink highlights shares the laugh as she shakes an iced latte and delivers it to a waiting customer, seamlessly moving onto the next order as she will to mine in a few moments.

No need to hurry this along. Everything here happens to plan. Movement and moment flow as one, each of us encompassed in this carefully choreographed dance of caffeinated fulfillment.

From my usual chair by the plate glass window, I take it all in. Not just the seven working here today, nor the dozen scattered about tables and chairs, drinking, reading, talking, peering into computer screens or off into space. No, much more.

I see all of us caught up in an all-embracing field of force that is drawing, drawing, drawing us toward a single far-off point shrouded in darkness. We move, each towed in a great sway of Love toward a common home whose presence we feel in this gentle moment of shared laughter and harmonious movement.

Love pulls us to the home Love is, to the final, omega point where the many are finally one and realize we always were though we seldom recognized it. We live and move in the field of Love, sometimes consenting, often resisting this gracious tide that envelops all of us and everything, including the olive-skinned youth who splits my field of vision, gathers his drink and hurries out the door.

Who knows where he is going? Well, Love does and lives there, too, pulling us toward its embrace regardless where we are or where we go.

Deep peace and consoling tears, quickly hidden, accompany this awareness. And why not? For in a single moment the wonder of your presence, the joy of your love and the beauty of your divine intention are clear enough.

We all live in you, in the field of the Love you are.  I know it now. But please remind me, won't you, when I forget.

David L. Miller

 

The pearl in the park

‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. (Matthew 13:45-46)

A bench in McCollum Park invites my presence and awakens prayer: Dearest One, help me be open to you. Fill my thoughts with your pea ... ce.

Consolation and Presence washes through me before I finish the word, answering the prayer that is deepest in my heart and most often on my lips.

Peace: the presence of Love Unlimited, Love Uncreated, the Mystery who is the soul’s source and deepest center, always present, waiting ... for the mind and heart to open the door upon which this holiness knocks.

Today, I manage to find the handle. The door effortlessly swings open, for it is not I who open it but this Love whose longing to console my heart infinitely exceeds my own.

Questions that occasioned my retreat to the park recede then disappear, knots untied, my heart released from solving the mystery of myself, what I am to do and be as my seventh decade draws to a close.

The question of choosing this way or that remain. Shall I continue in a ministry which has long drawn me or let it go for another way of loving life in the name of the Love who won me long ago, playing with my heart, coaxing me close in the days I chased Blondie, my cocker spaniel, across the wide fields of the Warren fairgrounds? 

I think it was then that I first knew the Love who sets the heart free, even though I didn’t understand who this Love is or what was happening in me.

But then do we ever really know who this ever-greater Love is or understand the mysteries of our hearts? A bit, I think, especially in moments when we feel ourselves enveloped in the Love who invited me to this bench on a July afternoon.

After all, Love’s joy is revealing the wonder of Love Unlimited in the confines of our finite hearts, the pearl of great price at home in mortal measure. Who knew it could be so? Well, we do.

I came out here looking for a bit of peace, only to discover, again, that it is not peace I crave, but You. For You, Loving Mystery, are my peace, the Holy Presence who says, “Stay here awhile. I have something beyond all the world’s wealth to give you.”

David L. Miller

St. Vernon

At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the people who are wise and smart. But you have shown them to those who are like little children. Yes, Father, this is what you really wanted. (Matthew 11:25-26)

The world’s a better place because Vernon Yung lived. I think of him every time I come upon these verses in Matthew 11. Vernon is one of the little ones—the natural, unpretentious, open-hearted souls—in whom Jesus delights.

But then so did I, and pretty much everyone who had the pleasure of being warmed by Vernon’s contagious joy.

It’s his smile I remember more than anything else. A gentle sweetness surrounded him, which some suggest is common among those with Down Syndrome. Maybe so; but that’s beyond my knowledge.

All I know is how glad I was to see him and he to see me on the occasions he brightened the door of Salem Lutheran, on those weekends he visited his parents on their farm near the sprawling metropolis of Guide Rock, Nebraska, population 220, give or take.

During the week, Vernon lived in a group home in Hastings, a little more than an hour away if you drove the speed limit, which almost nobody did. He worked in grocery there. I crossed paths with him one day as he was stocking a shelf with cans of something, totally absorbed in his task. It’s been 40 years, but the image sticks with me and warms my heart each time it comes to mind.

And each time I smile remembering his smile and the halting cadence of his voice as he spoke to me. Vernon loved laughing, a good meal and the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers, suffering and celebrating their fortunes during football season.

On Sundays, he took pride in serving as an usher, greeting people and handing out worship bulletins at First St. Paul Lutheran in Hastings. Envisioning his smile, it’s hard to imagine anyone better equipped for the job.

But when I imagine Vernon I tend to see him with the little clutch of people gathered around Jesus as he praises the Loving Mystery of God for the love and joy that shine in these unsuspecting souls who have no idea how much they bless the rest of us.

I have no idea if, in heaven’s eyes, my life has contributed half as much to this world’s good as Vernon’s 62 years, which ended in 2020. Such assessments are well beyond my paygrade.

Such comparisons are not the point, however. What’s important is the Love who shined in St. Vincent and still does. That Holy Mystery found him in a thousand ways through people who treasured him that he might shine with the light of the Love who would illumine all our hearts, given half a chance.

So, whatever else you do on these hot summer days, you might just give it that chance. Find a moment to sit and savor faces and places where the Love Who Is has found you. Stay there long enough to feel your heart warmed; then go embrace your life.

If you do, someone you least expect may bless God for having known you ... though you know nothing of it.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Made for joy

At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.’ (Matthew 11:25-26)

Watch. Do not ask what he means. Just watch Jesus. What does he do? What is his mood? What moves him? Whisper his words, and listen to his heart. “I thank you Lord of heaven and earth ... .”

He turns about to take in the clutch of human souls gathered around him. Raising his eyes into the Loving Mystery he calls Father, he gives thanks for the divine generosity that illumines the hearts of the small and simple with the light of Love Eternal.

Elation sweeps him into a current of joy and love for the simple and pushed aside, the no-counts and the forgotten whose eyes sparkle, aware of the wonder of God’s loving kingdom alive within them. They feel its presence in the healing love that flows from him, touching their broken places, assuring their anxious hearts that Love’s healing rule will by no means exclude them. They are the wanted, the sought, the found, blessed of God. As are we.

Their joy brings Jesus joy. He sees and knows they experience the living, loving Presence with whom his heart dwells in constant communion. Truest of friends, he wants to give them what he has, to share the fullness he enjoys that they may enter the intimacy that flows, an unending current of life, between his heart and the One who is Love.

This intimacy, this participation in Love is the home we have craved since our first breath and will until our last.

Jesus’ face, his joy unveils the Eternal Mystery, the Spirit of Life for whom our hearts long. Watching him, what he does, what brings him joy, moves his anger, elicits his tears, we see, we meet, we are enfloded in the Love who longs to give us everything it is that we may know the joy for which we were always intended ... even amid the mess of the moment.

David L. Miller

 

 

The Love who sees

 

 ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 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. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ (Matthew 11:28-30)

To see anyone is to see their need, or at least to see they are every bit as needy as yourself. This is one of the more striking and attractive characteristics of Jesus in all four biblical portraits of his presence: He sees.

He sees human beings in their neediness. He sees that being human is not easy. He sees that human souls break down beneath the burdens life heaps upon them. He sees human hearts long for a gentle word, an understanding presence and a way of being that lightens their load.

He sees and welcomes the burdened to come as they are and rest in his presence, the presence of compassion where there is no need to be anything but whatever it is they are at the moment.

One doesn’t begin to understand this, not really, until you imagine him turning his face to glimpse the hidden need your eyes cannot deny and speaking directly to you, “Come ... and rest.”

Only then, do we begin to feel why human souls clamored near to him, hungry to feel whatever it was that made their hearts breathe and burn in his presence.

They came because he was ... and is ... the Love who sees. The Love who welcomes. The Love who whispers the truth that we are creatures of Love, created by Love to know the Love he is coursing through our lives and hearts, giving relief, release and purpose.

My burden is light, he says of that purpose. Maybe so, though I don’t always believe it. Bearing the weight of love, both the receiving and the giving, will break your heart and teach you just how weak and inadequate you really are.

But it is for this receiving and giving that we are born, and it is only this that fulfills and completes a human life. It is our chief beauty, however much we might fail in the endeavor. A single moment of truly knowing and truly loving sparkles with the brilliance of eternity.  

And even when we break down beneath the weight we carry, the divine voice continues to call, echoing through the centuries in search of our souls, a voice earnest and eager who beckons, “Come. Rest in the Love who knows you.”

David L. Miller

 

Drawn forward

 As you go, proclaim the good news, “’The kingdom of heaven has come near.’” (Matthew 10:7)

Thoughts and images flash into consciousness, one after another, often passing away as quickly as they appear. But some return and linger, seeming to bear a message we need to hear.

One moment, one image keeps drawing me back to a small, side chapel in a Spanish cathedral where I gazed at a black Jesus hanging on a knotted, wooden cross. His body twisted, tortured and lifeless, his humanity stripped away, the suffering and sadness the world inflicts and endures hangs there, emblemized in this one man.

Seeing it again, alive in my mind, a flood of images races through me even on these bright, summer days while walking Bailey, my daughter’s dog: Places I’ve been. Things I’ve said and done that cause me shame. People I have known whom I have blessed or disappointed. Places and moments of human suffering I will never forget.

And amid this flood of graces and joys I hardly deserve, and moments I’d erase if I could, there hangs this Jesus, suffering the worst the world can give, yet still loving, forgiving and blessing, even his torturers.

If there is anything truly divine in human history, truly transcendent, it is this moment ... and this tortured man whose love didn’t break, fail or dissolve into hatred when hatred poured its fury on his flesh.

This image, this Love draws me not into the past but ahead, into the future of what we each might become as we savor the moment of Love’s great victory over all that is not love, knowing this Love is for us, drawing us close to heal and transform us into its image for the sake of a broken world.

The kingdom of heaven is the wonder of Love transforming time. It is the transcendent Love in Jesus pulling us beyond what we are, beyond what has been, into the future of what Love will do.

Most of us are drawn into God’s future kicking and screaming, resisting Love’s holy gravity because of fear, ego, envy, pride, old angers and the conviction that loving is foolish and naïve, instead of the only thing that can save us from ourselves and each other.

But Love is patient and never ends, tugging at our hearts, restless in our souls, drawing us near to feel its transcendent power. It just keeps coming.

David L. Miller

The first word

 Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide ... Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” (Luke 10:5-7a, 8b-9)

For decades, I have closed notes and emails with a single word, “Peace.” It always was and remains a prayer for myself and for what I want to prevail between myself and the person to whom I am writing. I sometimes use the grace of this blessing and hope as my parting word in conversation.

It’s a good final word, but perhaps an even better first word. It is the word Jesus placed in the minds of those he sent into a world every bit as conflicted, dangerous and cynical as our riven era.

“First, say peace,” he told them. Some will welcome you. Some will not. Don’t worry about them so much, he counseled. Stay and share blessings with those who welcome you, for the kingdom of God’s peace will appear around their tables.

And you will feel it. No, Jesus doesn’t explicitly say that, but I know it to be true.

I have known its truth around tables and while sharing meals sitting in the dust of every continent where I traveled and reported. I’ve felt it in the presence of souls so much more loving and alive than my own. And I know it to be true in common moments of human sharing, even an evening ago as my beloved, Dixie, and I sat at a table over wine and cheese with our friends from Germany. Their son fast asleep upstairs, we talked, just talked, sharing bits and pieces of what had happened during the three years an ocean separated us.

In the midst of conversation about families and children, DIY projects and pitfalls, the kingdom of God’s hospitality settled over us. We felt it, surely, knowing God’s presence as the Love who swept us into its flow, breathing life into our mortal flesh, lifting us into the peace of eternity as heaven came to earth and hovered around the Formica of a kitchen table, making us glad to be alive.

Who knew it could be so? Jesus knew. He sent his friends and followers into a frightening world filled with foreign dominators and injustice, giving them only a first word, a word to speak and be, Peace.

He knew what we can still discover by entering each moment, each encounter with a word of peace, a gesture of grace, knowing the kingdom of God’s love is closer and more wonderful than we imagine.

We don’t make it happen. We just open ourselves to the possibility with a single word, Peace. The rest is all gift, a gift God is breathlessly eager to give. 

David L. Miller

 

 

Wings

Jesus ... withdrew privately to a city called Bethsaida. When the crowds found out about it, they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured. (Luke 9:10b-11)

There is much to love here, much to see, to hear and feel. Crowds gather. They push close, his arms extend in welcome. Perhaps we, too, can lean near and catch the voice of welcome for which our wounded hearts ache.

Jesus sits, as ancient rabbis often did, to teach those who drew near. He speaks to them of the kingdom, which invites our imaginations. What did he tell them? How did he sound? I imagine a quiet voice, unhurried, earnest, speaking from a depth not of learning but of soul, words flowing from loving communion with the Mystery he knows within himself.

He speaks of a kingdom where the poor are blessed and the merciful find mercy, where peacemakers are honored and wounded hearts are consoled. It’s a kingdom planted in the earth like a seed that grows immeasurably large with innumerable branches, giving home and shelter to souls whose labors wear them weary.

Jesus tells them of a kingdom ruled by the Love he knows in the depth of his soul, the Love who possesses his heart and bids him speak.

His words lift them into a world being born, into a reality that is always present but never fully so, a world wonderfully alive in every mercy and care and in every decision to carry on when life is hard and hope elusive.

His words awaken their hearts. For in spite of everything that is ugly and wrong, we live in a world of grace that sweeps our hearts away in startling moments when sweet oneness with our gorgeous little planet fills us with joy and the Love who is mysteriously and unmistakable alive within us.

Jesus spoke to them about God’s kingdom, and in his presence the wonder of Love’s immensity came to them that they might know the deep hunger of their hearts is not an illusion but the savor of all God will do.

Little wonder that crowds gathered around him or that we, in faith or doubt, continue to be drawn, hoping to hear his voice that our souls might sprout wings and rise into the Love who makes all things new.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

Only there

But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well. (Matthew 5:39)

None of this is possible except in the presence of a great love.

There is no way to rationalize Jesus’ turn-the-other-cheek teaching and make it make sense. It’s utterly beyond anything we can produce, and maybe that is part of the point. It’s beyond us; it’s certainly beyond me.

There are few quicker than I when it comes to taking offense when criticized or slighted. It’s an old wound, a childhood scar sensitive to the slightest touch. My heart harbors old hurts; anger and defensiveness ever ready, a well-honed reflex well trained by long ago moments of feeling small and “less than.”

Most of this is well hidden, of course, like so many of the inner dramas we lock behind heavy doors in our hidden hearts, trying our best to deny what we know all-too-well.

However well hidden, old hurts and suspicions control many of our moods and immediate reactions to, well, pretty much everything. Unearthing and understanding old wounds and unfilled hungers affords a bit of freedom to choose our responses to people and events we encounter day-to-day, including those most troubling.

But only the experience of a great and impossible love allows us to release our hurts and let down our guard knowing our worth, our dignity, our beauty has nothing to do with the words and actions of others.

Only there, immersed in an all-encompassing love sensibly embracing everything about us—every thought and memory however they have wounded us, only there do we find freedom from what has long defined and bound our hearts. Only there are we released to live beyond our defensiveness, beyond the tit-for-tat way of the world.

Jesus’ impossible words invite us beyond what we are and into the Love he is, the Love who invites us to descend into our hearts and pray out whatever darkness we find. He waits there, smiling.

David L. Miller