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

 

 

 

 

Little pieces of heaven

 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. (Luke 24:50-51)

Heaven is on the veranda just outside the sliding glass door. But not just there.

Today, a familiar chair beckons as the breath of morning filters through the locust trees whose branches strain closer to the house each spring. The gentle coolness embraces arms and feet fresh from sleep and quiets the heart.

“Thank you for this little piece of heaven,” I whisper into the stillness, interrupted only by tires on Maple Avenue up the street.

Perhaps it is insensitive, utterly incongruous, to savor such consolation amid the great indecencies and anguish of our time. They are too many to number and too obvious to require naming. The slaughter of children from Ukraine to Uvalde, Texas, tops my list, all of them sacrificed to the bloody gods of ego, power and the worship of semi-automatic killing machines.

So different are the ancient words I come here to read. This day they speak of Jesus leaving his friends, carried to heaven, his hands raised in blessing. The image transports me miles and decades away to the sanctuary in which I sat from my earliest days of remembrance.

Jesus is there in a larger-than-life mural on the front wall. He rises lighter than air, surrounded by white clouds in a gilded sky, the image dripping with the sentimental romanticism of its age, yet speaking to generations of us who sat before it each week. I wonder how many of us remember it long after we left that place, even those who may have left their faith behind.

It’s his hands that most move me, raised in perpetual blessing, offering a peace that sometimes embraces the heart like a spring morning.

Every such moment is a gift of God’s own embrace, a little piece of heaven that can appear even when and where you least expect, like today, in a circle, several of them in fact, in parks and parking lots and churches in Uvalde, Texas, where grieving hearts join hands in prayer and great love, naming the One who is always there, hands still raised in blessing.

I guess he never really left.

David L. Miller

 

Fierce women

 

Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. (John 13:1)

It’s always the women, or so it seems; always the women who love most fiercely. It was on display again in a Texas classroom, as with a holy cohort of women whose silent witness reaches from their graves, again and again, to bless me with their beauty.

Irma Garcia died on the floor of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, her arms embracing children whom she taught and loved until her final breath. She loved them and loved them to the end. If there is anything holier, I know not of it.

The image sears itself on the heart, and if the Spirit is gracious to us we shall never be able to remove it. For she reveals the Love with which we are loved, and the love to which every human soul is called on our lifelong project of becoming truly human.

Hers was the fierce love of those blessed to know nothing else fully satisfies or is truly worthy of our souls. Blessed is she.

And blessed, too, are so many others whose names I never knew but whom, I pray, greeted Ms. Garcia at heaven’s gate, welcoming her into that great cloud of witnesses who had absolutely no doubt of life’s truest purpose. These are fierce women of whom I heard and witnessed with my own eyes, women who denied themselves food amid civil war and massive starvation to save their families in places like Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.

They carried their children out of harm’s way until they dropped on dirt paths unable to go any further, hoping, praying someone would pick up their posterity and lead their little ones to places where gentle hands would receive them.

Such souls are always closer than we imagine. “I love you both fiercely,” my precious daughter, Rachel, often texts at the close of her messages to her mother and me. I don’t doubt it. She has been ferocious since toddlerhood, and her passion for all her loves is known by any blessed to know her. And why not, she is the daughter of Dixie, who has managed to love me for more than five decades in spite of myself.

They are two of so many who live in our hearts, women whose love is like that of the women who stood by our Lord Jesus at the cross when others fled, women who were the first at the tomb to care for his broken body, women who were first to bear witness to the wonder that Love has an answer to every death we shall ever die, fierce women whose love incarnates the One who is Love Incarnate.

David L. Miller

God, save us all

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. (John 15:9)

I have no desire to write today, but here I am. And I have no illusion that I have anything worth saying, but I come back here because something or someone within says, Write! So I do, hoping somewhere amid the writing I will find something within me—or something within will find me—and calm the restless sea of emotion that drags me into its depths.

I cannot escape the image of bullets tumbling and tearing through the bodies of nine and 10 year-olds in a Texas school because I have seen dead children killed in civil war and others simply left to die by the roadside. And I have looked into the vacant eyes of teens who saw schoolmates shot dead, realizing that they didn’t see me; their eyes were fixed on scenes they could not erase.

Nor can I escape the heaviness of hearing my own mother’s pain. Nearly 93, her body is worn down and wearing out so that there is little anyone can do to still the pain that some days chains her to her chair. The hunger to get-up-and-go, which drove her fast-forward all her life, torments and agitates her heart because she can no longer do what was once like breathing. Deep within, she feels not past 90 but someone much younger, someone who wants to tend her flowers, run the food pantry and be on every other committee at church.

My mother and the horror of a Texas grade school would seem to have nothing in common, except the obstinate reality of human suffering that sooner or later renders us mute and helpless, knowing there is nothing we can say or do that will make any difference.

Any attempt to make easy meaning of the suffering of aging—to say nothing of the unspeakable grief over the mutilated bodies of children—is sacrilege.  Our words cannot ease the pain, relieve the sadness or still the bitter wrongness of it all.

We are left to despair ... or to the faith that there is yet a Love that can redeem all that is not loving, all that is bitter and sad, mute and gray.

Confused, sad and angry, possessing neither answers nor any words to still my heart, I urge myself to cling to the Love I have known who knows me, who knows my mother, who knows those Texas children and even the tortured soul who ripped open the hearts of all who love them.

God save them all, I pray. Somehow. God save us all, especially from ourselves.

Days to come will bring thoughts and prayers, glib words and heartfelt sorrow. The futility of our tawdry politics will disgust and further divide the country. Hands will be wrung, ideologies will collide, and children will lay flowers at a school house door. Again.

But redemption, at least as much as human efforts afford, will be known only in the embrace of those undeterred by bitter tears, souls unafraid to step into the breach and stand speechless alongside inconsolable hearts.

Redemption comes the only way it ever can, by finding a way to translate suffering into love.

So we abide in love, or do our best trying, for that is where the One who is Love meets us ... and redemption begins.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

May day

I have given up all non-obligatory devotions and prayers and concentrate on being always in His holy presence; I keep myself in His presence by simple attentiveness and a loving gaze upon God which I call the actual presence of God ..., an habitual, silent and secret conversation of the soul with God .... (Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, 1614-1691)

It is not a sense of sin or wrongdoing that brings me to a Sunday pew. Forgiveness is always welcome and needed, of course. But this is not what I seek nor what I imagine those scattered around me truly desire.

I doubt our desires are different than those of the dog walkers who pass by with absolutely no intention of ever darkening the church door on Franklin Street.

I want to feel the smile of a spring day, the joy of warmth and light enfolding me and quieting my heart so that I am at peace, one with myself, with nature and with the mysterious Source of May mornings.

I doubt the dog walkers would put it that way, and those sitting around me would likely find better and clearer words than these. But our desire is the same: We hunger for loving union with the grace we see and feel as the earth warms and greens, bringing lilacs and lilies to bloom, enlarging our hearts to human size.

So why come out of the sun to sit a pew? I ask myself that on some days because some days little happens as I pray the prayers and listen to the words we speak.

But then come moments when ancient words and hopes, prayers and praises awaken wordless joy that leaks from my eyes so that I lose my place and trip over the words we are praying and singing together. Stories of Jesus awaken scenes in my mind so that I see him and feel his presence as he heals and touches and gazes over crowds with a compassion beyond anything I have known or felt elsewhere.

And amid it all, I feel and know the great smile of One I cannot see, a face whose warmth and light embraces me whole, shining across the scope of my existence, indulging my fumbling efforts to figure life out, taking joy in loving me, the dog walkers, the pew sitters and all the rest—pleased that I should bask, one, with the Light who shines through May days.

David L. Miller

 

Where it all began

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17)

Sunlight cut through every contrary thought and emotion, inviting chilled bodies and spirits from their cocoons to bask (finally) in the sacrament of springtime. So it is on this Saturday morning.

But spring’s belated resurrection is a tiny fraction of the consolation that warms me. Sound does that, the discordant chintz of a toy piano playing on an IPad—and a voice of love, choked with tears, from across the living room.

“Is that where it all began?” Dixie asks. The question needs no further context. Two minds fly as one to the orange shag in her parents’ long-ago living room and a tow-headed boy joyfully pounding out painful chords and tuneless melodies on a miniature piano of plastic and particle board.

How old? Just two, I think, at least in the mental picture we jointly hold and which holds us in fast silence at the holy mystery of it all. Who’d have thought the making of a master musician began on orange shag carpet?

But that other voice, the one that never stays quiet for long, quickly corrects. No, it didn’t begin there but a little earlier.

It began in the depths of non-time when Love’s Source chose that there should be beauty; and if beauty, then souls whose joy is sharing in its creation; and if them, then other souls who partake of its wonder, lifted above the banal to consolation and joy, illumination and insight by the manifold colors and textures flowing through human imaginations from Love’s infinite store where it all began; often showing up where you least expect.

It all began in the boundless sea of Love from which our best tears flow, like these on a sun-kissed Saturday morning, when the awakened heart again discovers what an unlikely and mysterious journey life is.

Every moment is somehow carried in the flow of a Love beyond knowing, trying its best to carry us home to where it all began.

David L Miller

 

Hope’s reason

 We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. (Romans 8:23-24a

The groaning of the world is too loud and obvious to require elaboration. No one needs to be told. The news is more than enough. Nor need we be tutored about the groaning of our hearts for fulfillment and a peace that does not evaporate in the gloom of gray days when spring has been postponed.

Our all-too-human sighs are not reason for despair, however, but the breath of morning, the early fulfillment of our hearts’ constant craving.

For what, at deepest level, do we long? What, if not for the love that heals the heart and stills the awful thirst for status, glory or power that strains relationships, divides nations and stains the earth with the blood of innocents?

What do we most deeply need, if not for holy kindness to heal our world and engulf our hearts that we might finally become human?

The heart’s sigh for universal healing—our dissatisfaction with what is and who we are—is not a cry of absence, but the presence of the Love we crave within us, longing for fulfillment. Strange, it is, ironic, that the experience of wanting is simultaneously an experience of the Love we most need, Love’s longing to fill all things.

Imprinted on our souls, in the unreachable depths of our hearts, this Love is a gift granted in our creation by the One who is Love.

Our longings, our sighs over life as it is, are reason for highest hope, for it means Love has not died within, but lives in our mortal flesh; our hearts have not forgotten or been diverted from the glory of love for which all things are created.

Knowing this, feeling this, hope saves us from sinking into the despondency of gray days when the sun refuses to shine, warmed as we are by the Love who does not die.

David L. Miller

 

 

Simple as that

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. (Psalm 131:1-2)

It is not the knowledge of great complexities that fills the heart, but simple words and common moments that inexplicably bear us into Love’s embrace.

Just so, thick books no long allure me as once they did, many of which I forced myself to read to satisfy my ego. I seek common words and familiar images that transport the heart into the Mystery who transcends them.

Lately, I hear Freida Frahm’s voice and see her frown. She returns from whatever corner of heaven she occupies to accuse me. “You make everything so hard,” she says, as on the long ago day when I, fresh from seminary, led a women’s Bible study. “Why do you make everything so hard?”

Why, Frieda, wasn’t it clear? I needed to complexify everything to show you how smart I was, always knowing my knowledge and skills were insufficient to achieve the goals I once held for myself.

And now, nearly 70, weary of straining for thoughts above my paygrade, I want what I always needed—not to grasp the great but to be bathed in the clarity of words and images that transport the heart into its blessed homeland where words and images fall away and the silent soul sinks into a sea of Love, beyond the need to understand who and what this Holy Mystery is.

(If you understand it, it is not God. Isn’t that what St. Augustine told us 16 centuries ago?)

Ancient images, praying the Psalms, bear us into this wonderland, which is more real than the illusions to which our minds and egos daily cling.

The Lord is my shepherd, Psalm 23 says, right before interpreting itself to say, well, no, maybe the Holy Mystery is more like a host who sets a great table and makes us the guests of honor.

Another Psalm, 139, ushers us further into the great hall of portraiture Scripture is. There, the Holy One is an all-enveloping, all-knowing Presence, cloaked in darkness, silent as light, who knows us whole, sensibly touching us with an affection more poignant than the tears of longing awakened as we stumble to speak our love for our dear ones who one day will carry on without us.

Or maybe, as in Psalm 131, this Loving Mystery is like a mother holding her weaned child, the two, at one, at rest, needing nothing but their presence, one with the other. Forget words; there are none for such beauty, just the simplicity and irreducibility of the holy gift love is, the presence of the One who was and is and always will be.

Simple as that, and just as mysterious. Sorry Frieda.

David L. Miller

Love’s song

Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds? (Luke 12:240

It is easy enough to imagine Jesus saying these words. There are any number of meadows among the rolling hills of Galilee where he might have pointed to the birds, hoping his companions might hear the Incomprehensible Giver singing a love song.

But today I need not imagine faraway lands to enjoy the music. A red-breasted house finch perches at the extreme end of a branch nearest the window where I sit in my favorite chair.

Chattering on, he (she?) announces the morning as the sun works its way through a bank of clouds, suddenly filling the room with light, to say nothing of my heart.

He seems in no hurry, although I’m sure there’s a mate and nest nearby who require his care. For a few crystal moments my morning friend is content to sit there and call to me.

Watching him, I’m not so sure I am of greater worth than the birds, at least not this one, who awakens unexpected gratitude that I should be here, savoring the moment, a gift from the One who, through eons of time, fashions red-breasted finches, morning sun and this heart of mine, which may yet learn to rest in the grace of given moments.

Seek God’s kingdom, Jesus says, just after he directed his followers’ attention to the flowers and birds, hoping they would learn of God and life and themselves.

Perhaps this starts by simply paying attention, listening for Love’s song that it may awaken gratitude for life and light, for finch calls and the color red, and for the Love who sings outside my window.

David L. Miller

 

 

The Face behind

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up,’ and to the south, ‘Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth. (Isaiah 43:1, 5-6)

There is a face behind the words, a Presence known only when the words fall away and you feel the warmth and light, the affection and desire of their Source.

Listen: Do not fear. You are mine. I call you by name. I speak to the four winds into which my beloved are scattered, and I order them to bring you home ... to me. For you are mine, and I long for your nearness.

That is what you say to me, to us, Living One, and our hearts cling to each gracious phrase hoping they will dissolve every last doubt and fear from our being. But this is not yet the gift you long to give.

Let go of the words; release your anxious grip on what they offer, and one begins to notice the Infinite Source behind the words, a Face we cannot see but know, alight with a great and impossible Love embracing everything we are.

The words on which we meditate matter: “You are mine. I call you by name.” They are real and true. We turn them over in our hearts and minds, grappling with all they might mean for us.

But their truest purpose is to carry us to the moment when we let the words fall away and commune with the Face who is Love ... and nothing else. No words needed.

David L. Miller

 

 

 

 

Holy Thursday, Holy Desire

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. (John 13:3-5)

One ... more ... chance. What would you do if had one last chance to speak what is on your heart, to share your soul with someone you dearly love, husband, wife, children,  your mother or father, a friend whom you love like your own second self.

What do you want to give them? What do you ache for them to know? What do you yearn for them to carry with them as they carry on without you?

Think, what would you do? And listen ... to your heart. For your own confused, conflicted, complicated, heart will reveal to you the heart of Jesus. The yearning within you echoes God’s passionate desire to bathe you in the endless sea of Love Unlimited. And isn’t this what we want to give to those whom we love more than our words can say?

This desire burns in the heart of Jesus, striking home each year, as we watch Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. Watching him we feel—I feel—his desire, a human yet oh-so-holy longing, Love’s longing to be given away to his beloved.

Jesus has this moment to love them one more time, to teach them one more time, to show them the heart that is in him that they might know the heart of God.

He holds nothing back. Jesus takes a towel, wraps it around himself, pours water in a bowel and kneels at his disciple’s feet. He places each heel in his hand and pours water over it. He wraps each foot in a towel to dry them. He looks down at each foot, absorbed in the moment, one by one, flesh on flesh, washing away the dust of living that clings to body and soul.

Every single year, this scene awakens the image of a painting in my mind. Mary Cassatt, an American painter, working in France, painted intimate, domestic scenes from rural life, often mothers and children. One painting, The Bath, depicts a mother in a long, striped dress. A little girl, perhaps three, sits on her lap. Her feet dangle in a basin on the floor as her mother washes her feet. They don’t look at each other. They look down, on the mother’s hand caressing the girl’s right foot. You don’t see their eyes, but anyone with eyes to see feels the ocean of exquisite tenderness that surrounds them.

This ... is what we are invited to feel and know as the deepest truth of our existence. For as Jesus washes feet, we see into the incomprehensible depth of the Love who was, and who is and who always will be, the Love who is always for us ... for the whole confused, confounded, conflicted world, for shattered people in places like Ukraine, for the conniving dictator who seeks their lives and for everyone in-between, whether they choose to welcome it or not. After all, Jesus washed Judas’ feet, too.

He loves them, all of them, all of us, the whole mess, and he loves them to the end, giving himself even to those betray, deny and run away in his hour of greatest need. For he knows the time has come to return to the Loving Mystery from whom he came. The time has come for him to reveal the heart of that Mystery to all humanity.

So he washes them, and as we imagine his hands touching our dirty feet and troubled hearts, his love washes over us, rinsing away our regrets that our lives have never been as good as our intentions. 

He washes away the crushing weight of sin and guilt that we may take a deep breath of the sweet air of freedom.

He washes away our failures and the fears, lifting our hearts out of the doldrums into joy and expectation.

He washes away our denial and justifications of hurts we have caused that we may discover the startling truth that we are we are forgiven and beloved after all, everlastingly loved by an Everlasting Love.

He bathes us in the love that transforms bitter tears into the sweetness of consolation, knowing God’s love is greater than every death that ever was or will be.

He washes away our doubtful fear that we are alone, forgotten or forsaken, for we are carried in the current of an all-possessing Love.

This the love that moved Jesus to kneel at the feet of his disciples, the love which accepts the bitterness of the cross to reveal the Love who embraces even those who try to kill it.

Just so, we are blessed, for the Love who was and is and always will be comes to us in bread and wine, word and blessing. The Love Christ is comes in the flesh of those who greet us in peace and in every moment love awakens our hearts.

We are blessed every moment we welcome and allow this Love wash over us, for it is then that we know the heart of Jesus within our own hearts.

We are blessed. For knowing him we can give our hearts away in love, as our Lord Jesus gives himself to us. 

David L. Miller

 

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