Challenger, Space Shuttle Crew, NASA 1985NASA, 2003
Thirty years ago I was just coming home from a class when I heard of the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle on takeoff. Like so many others I was devastated by the loss of life and never knew how to respond to it. When the Columbia Shuttle exploded in 2003 I finally had a way to express my grief for all of the women and men in both shuttle disasters. So I offer this poem in memory of 14 brave astronauts.
Fourteen Stars
There are fourteen new stars in the sky tonight
Fourteen new stars whose hopes shown so bright
Fourteen new stars to give us great light
Fourteen new stars to guide us this night
Fourteen new stars in Gods heart … held tight
Matthew 28:20b “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
God does not want
us to be burdened
because of sorrows and tempests
that happen in our lives,
because
it has always been so
before miracles happen.
–Julian of Norwich, 14th century Anchoress
Microsoft Clip Art
Sorrow, grief whether from unforeseen circumstances or our own doing always seems to lead us to questioning our beliefs and faith. We ask ourselves, the universe, or the Divine “why is this happening to me?” In our woundedness we nearly always believe we will never be able to recover, to fully live life again. I know what it feels like, I have been there way too many times and yes I felt totally adrift without friend or companion. Yet I was, we are, never really alone. There is always someone to lay at their feet your fears and pain. Sometimes we have to look for confidants, and sometimes we only have to open our hearts. When we open up and let the pain scream out the healing process begins.
So yes with time the wounds of our heart, mind and soul do heal and we move on. We learn from our pain and discover new strength deep within that provides the fuel to live a joyful and fulfilling life helping us move into a better place in our lives. We learn there are relationships that can’t be broken even in the darkest times. We also learn that from loss great things will grow. The two greatest miracles of sorrow are learning we do have the strength to walk through the dark places in our lives and learning to forgive ourselves.
But when we refuse to look at our sorrows, too afraid of the memories to bring them out into the open where the light is we never learn from our struggles. By keeping the memories of the painful times of life locked within we never allow ourselves to find the deeper meaning in our sorrows, or the strength that comes from squarely facing them. We never completely heal.
Healing doesn’t mean forgetting because if we forget than we cannot come to an understanding of who we are and are meant to be. Life isn’t easy; it is full of ups and downs. More than likely we spend more time in the valleys than we do on the mountain tops. But just as a young tree grows stronger when strong winds blow it around we too grow stronger; strong enough to face the next valley, and the next, and the next. With each one we gain a bit more strength. Yes, I know all too well that it doesn’t feel like that in the moment but it is true. Living your life without challenges, or risk of sorrows, isn’t living it is existing and there lies the difference.
Spiritual Practice:
Have your traveled a dark valley? Did fear keep you from moving forward or from sharing your pain with a friend, pastor, spiritual director, or directly with the Spirit? If you could not let your sorrows out what would help you to find what you need? Prayer and silence are strong tools for rebuilding our relationship with the Divine. Offer your fears to the Spirit in your own way of prayer. Confiding in a spiritual director, a close friend, or your pastor may help guide you in your own search for answers. Each journey is different and requires different tools. Asking for help is not a weakness but strength and a spiritual practice in itself. Let your heart be healed by finding the best tool for you.
Blessings on your journey wherever the road takes you.
Genesis 12:1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
Matthew 2:13a Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you;
The winter stretches across bare trees.
And in our book we close the chapter on creation
And turn to the Exodus, to the leaving,
To our new becoming.
The Mystery reveals itself in a different guise
Out of a burning
It says “I will be that I will be, this is my name,
I am everywhere, in all things, and I call you forward.
Now take off your shoes,
The ground you are standing on is holy.”
It is hard to hear and difficult to imagine
Something with us in the pain,
In the exposed rawness,
Something with us in the brokenness of life.
But the voice is persistent, it whispers, it shouts,
“I am all that is. Everywhere you are, there I am.
I am the oneness, the unity of all being
And we are in relationship.
And I call you forward.”
The very ground we stand upon is holy.
There is nothing outside the realm of God.
We live in relationship with everything.
This is our covenant—our agreement with the continual becoming:
To know that every moment is sacred.
To act with reverence for all.
And to listen for the whispered silence
That holds us and calls us forward
To be of use
Within the fragility of all life.*
*Picture and meditation by Rabbi Yael Levy, founder of “A Way In: Jewish Mindfulness Program,” January 22, 2016, Face Book Page
It seems since the beginning of time we are called to make journeys. Adam and Eve journeyed from The Garden, Abram and Sarai leave for a place known only to God, and Joseph takes his small family of Mary and Jesus on the dangerous roads to Egypt. We too make journeys. In my life time I have journeyed across this country moving from Ohio, to Texas, to Washington, to California, and back to Washington. I have hopes that I won’t have to move again but I never know when God will call me to a new place.
There is one journey I have yet to make. My father and mother have made it, I have had friends make it and my time will come I have no doubt in that. At some point in the future God will call me to make the last voyage in this life and cross to the next life. Now that is a BIG journey. No one has ever returned to tell us that it is safe journey without dangerous places. In a way we will be making a journey similar to Abram’s and Sarai’s in that only God knows our destination. And, we have no choice but to trust that God will find us a safe route.
Every living thing and creature in this universe will make the journey; fish or plant, dog or human, all of us will cross to a new life somewhere that only God can lead us. Like the Hebrews in the desert we will have to look for the pillar of smoke by day and the pillar of fire by night in order to find the right path.
Last week my beloved Chihuahua, Suzie, passed away. She let go of this life and followed a new caretaker. As I held her in my arms and felt her leave, I knew she was now in good hands. I miss her but like family, friends, and other companions I know someday we will meet and cross the bridge together. Until I too am called, I will hold the memory of Suzie, family, friends, and companions in my heart, which grows to accommodate all the memories of those I love.
Suzie
While I miss those who have gone ahead I am comforted by the peace that comes from knowing that I will join them someday and what a party we will have.
Peace and blessings to you all. May your memories fill you with joy and give you comfort.
1 Kings 8:10-13 10And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, 11so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.
12Then Solomon said, “The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness. 13I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever.”
The Plan for King Solomon’s Temple (Wikimedia Commons)
King Solomon’s Temple was a wonder to behold. It was made with the finest of materials: the best stone, lumber from the Cedars of Lebanon, gold, silver, and precious jewels. Yet it still was a case of humans trying to control God, confine God in a place of their making. A place where God could be forgotten like many other things people put in boxes and placed on a shelf. Even though the temple was a marvelous box it was still a box.
History has shown that God doesn’t stay in boxes very well and you can’t put God on a shelf and walk away without God noticing. Even though we continue to build fancy structures for God where some of us go to sit like good children. Where we listen to the pastor preach (hoping it won’t be too boring or too long because the game starts soon), sing a couple of songs and bug out as soon as possible forgetting everything we’ve heard until the following week.
I know that everyone isn’t like this, there are many who find worship to be just that worship and praise to God. But I have been in way too many communities where this is true and I’ve been in churches that have given in to society’s demands to be entertained and make what is supposed to be the worship of God into a Los Vegas production just to keep people in the pews. What is saddest to me is that all too often works, at least for a while.
You can’t put God in a box and hope that God will stay there, no, God is going to know when you ‘walk away’ and when you ‘walk with.’ I’m sorry to disappoint you but God can never be placed in a box and brought out only at Christmas and Easter, if then.
I am reminded of the closing scene of the Indiana Jones Movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” You know the one where the U.S. Government has boxed up the Ark of the Covenant in an anonymous box and places it in a warehouse.
That scene summarizes the problems we have with putting God in a box and then forgetting where you put the box. (By the way God was never IN the Ark of the Covenant, it was only a conduit for God’s power through the stone tablets on which were written the Ten Commandments.) We always want a convenient God one that doesn’t give us too much trouble or bother our ‘well laid’ plans with details like kindness, or justice. I have discovered trying to keep God in the big stone or concrete boxes we call church doesn’t work. Those boxes don’t keep God from pressuring us to do what is right. God is always waiting for each and every one of us to realize we need God to remind us of who we are and who our neighbors are, our brothers and sisters in creation. God is good at waiting for us, and doesn’t turn us away when we come running or crawling, the way we have to God. When we return to walk with God, to collaborate with God, and to participate with God in creating the world we are meant to live in God accepts us without reservations.
My prayer practice for you this week is to notice when God makes the presence known to you in the small ways of daily living. Notice the sunrise or your baby’s first smile of the morning. Notice when you see someone doing something kind for someone else, or better yet do an act of kindness for stranger. What do you see in the persons face? God is all around us, God is never in a box, and God doesn’t visit us only on certain days of the week. No God is there in all the little joys, sorrows, disappointments, and celebrations of everyday living. This week take God out of the mental box and practice seeing God in life itself.
Exodus 14:10-11, 13-14, 21: 10As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. 11They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt?
13But Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. 14The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”
21Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided.
Clip art by Microsoft
I have begun a yearlong meditation discipline with the book A Year with God[1] by Richard J. Foster and Julia L Roller, which I am very excited about. Yesterday the above Scripture from Exodus was my morning reading. As I read it I thought about what it means to trust in God. In Speaking Christian[2] Marcus Borg says trust and faith mean essentially the same thing. So Moses was asking the Israelites to have faith that God would provide help. What Moses wanted the Israelites to understand was they needed to let go of their idea of planning ahead and of knowing what will happen next. God may have a plan but we don’t know what that is and God is not going to tells us what the plan is, until the moment it happens. In this case God’s plan was to divide the waters of the Red Sea, which allowed the Israelites to escape the Egyptians. Fundamentally to have faith/trust in God means we must let go of the control of our own lives and let God provide, for most people that is a scary thing to do. Usually we only let go when we are at a point when nothing else has worked. All our plans have fallen through, and we are at a dead end with no place to go except call on God. For most people God is the safety net we rely on and I for one am grateful of that net.
The meditation questions provided with the lesson brought back uncomfortable memories in my life when I had reached my own dead ends and didn’t know where to turn next. I remember feeling lost, frightened, terrified really, at the prospects I imagined lay before me. In the dark night of my soul I called out to God and said “I give up, I can’t do this anymore, help me.” I wanted God to be there, I needed God to be there, because I felt alone. For me giving up and trusting in God and letting God plan the next move was scary but not as scary as the alternatives. Letting go of the reins of my life released something inside of me and eventually things improved. I can’t say what I experienced will happen for everyone but I can say giving to God what stresses us and beats us down improves the way we see the world. Faith and trust are hard spiritual practices but are the foundation of all spiritual practices. It doesn’t matter how you envision God, or what name you call the Divine letting the All Encompassing Presence be your safety net when you are troubled will give you hope in life. The process may be slow; God works in God’s own time, but slow is better than not moving at all.
Spiritual Practice: this week reflect on when in your life you have been able to trust God wholly when things fall apart. If you haven’t had one of those moments do you think you could stand back and let God take over provide the solution?
As you journey on your path this week, may Christ be there to give you courage, may the Holy Spirit smooth your road, and when you are weary may God hold you in the palm of God’s hand.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to thee forever.
— Psalm 30:12b
It used to be that every year I would make out a list of New Year’s resolutions just like everyone else. The reality of those resolutions was I put the list in safe place and promptly forgot all about them, just like everyone else I know. A couple of years back I changed practice for New Year’s, instead of resolutions I started listing what I was grateful for from the Old Year.
I no longer feel guilty about not keeping promises to myself and speaking gratitude helps me to see the past year in a positive perspective. So here are my top 10 gratitude’s for New Years day 2016:
First of all I am grateful for John my beloved husband, best friend, and all around good company.
I am grateful for the presence of my furry and feathered friends. They have helped me to laugh when I least wanted to and they are a calming presence each day of the year.
I am grateful for my family; John’s 3 sons; our beautiful grandchildren Shannon and Amelia, Alex and Liam; my cousins who have made me laugh and so grateful that we have reconnected. Each and every one of you has brought joy into my life in so many ways.
I am also grateful for the Skype calls from Mark, Laura, Liam, and Amelia, who live in Boston. Amelia and Liam I love all of your antics and learning what you are up as you are growing up. Liam practice hard on those drums so that when we come the next time you can show us your progress. Amelia send me some of your dress designs, I would love to see what you are thinking of. Each of you are talented and amazing.
I am especially grateful for the Laura’s presence in my life. You my dear daughter-in-law are a treasure.
I am grateful for the kindness of strangers from all over the world. Their help when I needed it on our South Pacific adventure last year made the trip just that much more enjoyable.
I am grateful for caring and skillful medical professionals: Dr. Alberts who operated on my back, the Nursing staff at Stevens Hospital who made a difficult time easier, Physical therapists who encouraged me to work harder so that I would successfully recover from surgery.
I am grateful for the Faith community at Queen Anne Christian Church who have show me and John so much love and friendship
I am grateful for my In-Care-Committee who encouraged me to search deep within myself and who helped me to see myself as I am instead of how everyone see me.
I am grateful for the friendship of so many people that if I were to name them I would certainly forget someone, so from the bottom of my heart I love you all.
So those are my top 10 gratitude, of course I have many more. The listing of them will take all day on New Year’s Day but these are the most important ones. If you were to list your gratitude’s for 2015 what would they be? How would remembering them change your how you view the past year and how you anticipate the next?
My prayer for each of you is a year full of grace so that next New Year’s day it takes you 2 days to recite them. Have a Happy, Grace Filled New Year!
Loving God, Help us remember the birth of Jesus,
that we may share in the song of the angels,
the gladness of the shepherds,
and worship of the wise men.
Let us close the door of hate and open the door to Peace
and in the window set the candle of Love to shine into the world
Let kindness come with every gift and Hope with every greeting.
Deliver us from evil by the blessing which Christ brings,
and teach us to be merry with clear hearts.
As we are forgiven let us be forgiving, for Jesus’ sake.
May our Joy at the birth of Christ
make every morning a Christmas morning
and every evening may our song of gratitude for your blessings
lull us to sleep.
Amen.
Luke 19:40: He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
Power of 10 Are We Alone in the Universe,
Updated May 3, 2011 by Securityscience
Several years ago someone sent me this video that imagines going out from a 1 meter distance by a power of 10 up to 1020 Km or 10 million light years, then coming back to earth to 1 meter starting point and doing a reverse trip into a leaf by a power of ten to 10-16 meters or 100 Atómeters (that’s 0.0000000000000001 meters). What has always fascinated me we could have kept going forever if we are traveling away from earth, there is no limit that we know of to the distance we can travel. However, 10-16 is the smallest we can get if we reverse the trip. After this point all is mystery. What lies beyond that limit of 10-16?
While this video imagines going into leave they could just have easily imagined entering an atom of a rock. You see that place of mystery is found in all things, living or what we call non-living. Whether rock or human both are made of atoms and that means that this place of mystery is found in rocks, humans, our pets, trees, and air. What mystery does this place hold? What if our connection to all things created is found within this gigantic, tiny, place. What if, this is where the Divine can be found and how would that idea change the way you think about our planet, our universe.
When George Lucas created the story of Star Wars he consulted with the author Joseph Campbell about mythology and how it explains the unexplainable. From those conversations Lucas developed the concept of the “Force” surrounding and being within all things, not unlike this place of mystery in every atom. So might our search for the unexplainable be present within each of us?
Might it be that developing a relationship with the Creator requires us to look within ourselves, to listen to the inner “voice” that whispers to us at the edge of our consciousness. That is what the mystics tell us we should do. What if we should recognize the presence of the Creator in more than each other? That we should respect all created things, even rocks because the Creator, or however you name or depict the Divine, will be found there.
This week’s meditation
After you watch this video look at your hand and contemplate how the molecules and atoms that make up your hand resemble the greater universe. Then contemplate how the place of mystery compares to the limitlessness of space. Where might you find the greatest mystery of life? Contemplate how we as humans are connected to more than each other. Then ask yourself “what can I do, no matter how small, to help reconnect each of us to the Divine?”
And now faith, hope, and love abide,
these three; and the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13
Fourth Week of Advent Love Photo by Ruth Jewell
FAITH, HOPE, LOVE
faith, hope, love
in faith an elderly Priest and his wife
waited for their first child
in faith a maiden utters the words
“Here Am I”
in love a child leaps in the womb
at the approach of the pregnant Mary
in love a bridegroom
takes a pregnant girl as his wife
in love Mary lays
her first born in a manger
in love the angels sang
and a star appeared
in hope the shepherds
came to the stable
in hope Magi followed a star
to kneel at the feet of a carpenters son
Faith, Hope, Love
all three were needed
for the greatest of miracles
but it was Love that conquered all
— Ruth Jewell, December 21, 2015
Meditations for a Mindful Advent
Queen Anne Christian Church
Seattle, WA
2015
Slow down . . . seek hope
Buy less . . . create peace
Eat less . . . embrace joy
Worry less . . . give love
Prepare your heart for new birth.
An Advent Prayer
God who causes stars to burn and energy to flow,
may Your presence be made known to us in new ways.
When we wonder where You are, shine Your light in new ways.
When we wonder why bad things happen, help us to find all of Your Goodness.
When we feel hopeless, help us to become Your hope in the world.
You have created us out of stardust, and breathed into us life.
In You, all things are possible, and all things are created new.
Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, as we await the birth of the light of Christ
may we come to You in new ways on this journey of faith. Amen.
Love – The Fourth Week of Advent Light four candles and pray “an Advent Prayer.”
Meditation Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist. — Paula Gunn Allen
All this hurrying soon will be over. Only when we tarry do we touch the holy. — Rainer Maria Rilke
Questions
Morning: In anticipation of the day, call to mind the people you will meet.
Evening: As the day ends, where did you tarry, where did you glimpse the holy?
Prayer
Offer a prayer for those in need of Love; include yourself
For the past two years I have been wrestling with how my ministry would be expressed in the world. This discernment journey has taken me “around the block” and back again many times and during this past summer I had finally made my decision, I choose not to be ordained in my denomination of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), I choose not to be a pastor, or a chaplain, or even a spiritual director. I choose to be something else, what that something is has only just begun to take shape.
This may seem inconsequential to most of you but for me it has been a difficult decision. I graduated in 2013 with my Masters of Divinity (MDiv.) degree and it was with the intention of being ordained, primarily because I believed that is what one did when one received an MDiv. But you see it wasn’t my intention when I entered the School of Theology and Ministry (STM) at Seattle University in 2007. At that time I just wanted to be better informed in order to conduct Labyrinth retreats with more meaning. What happened as I progressed through my degree programs of Spiritual Transformation and MDiv I discovered I had talent and passion for learning and I wanted to share what I learned with others. And the truth of the matter is as an ordained pastor I would not be able to share all that I learned simply by the constraints of the job. I actually would have a greater voice if I wasn’t ordained.
So I chose to be a scholar, a learner of faith with the purpose of spreading what I learn back in to the world. This is important because we aren’t 1st century people; we live in the 21st century. That means we have a perspective on our faith that those living in the 1st and 2nd and 3rd centuries did not have. We have a history of being, or not being, people of God, just as the Jewish people of the 1st century had a history of being, or not being, a people of God. We have had our moments of living as God asked and we have had our moments when we have forgotten God, just as the Jewish people had and have. It is the task of the scholar to educate the people of God of their past and how can we do that if no one studies it?
In the last two years I have become interested in how our Christian faith is connected to our Jewish roots and to our younger sibling in the faith Islam and that interest has led me into the differences in how we read Holy Scripture as compared to our 1st to 3rd century faith ancestors, and the differences are striking. Those differences in perspective has shown me it is important for people to understand what the writings of Paul, Gospel Writers, Jewish Prophets, and Muslim Writers actually wanted their listeners to know, what was the message they were transmitting and how does that message resonate with us today. All those authors wrote and spoke was revolutionary in their time and I want to recover, at least for myself, that revolutionary message. I want to know what they wrote that was specific to their time and not relevant in the 21st century and what part of their message guides us forward into our own future. And, I want to share that news, that revolutionary news. I have no illusions that I am going to be another Marcus Borg, or a John Caputo, or anyone else who is way more learned in theology than I will ever be. But I can read what they have learned and pass it on to those who will listen.
You see scholars are often, well nearly always, not thought of as being relevant to world. When anyone envisions a scholar it is as a stuffy old man or woman who is a bit rumpled and surrounded by books and papers. It is someone who is absent minded and lost in the past, with no idea about what is going on in the world today. But that is not who learners/scholars are.
Scholars are connected to the world by stories, and threads of the past that live in the present and the future. The old quotation “if we don’t remember the past we are doomed to repeat it,” has never had more meaning than in today’s world. We are currently reliving a past history where the disadvantaged and those who are different from us are forgotten and made the objects of hate and fear. It is the role of the scholar to remind the people of who they are, and whose they are. It was the role of the prophets in Jewish History, it was the role of John the Baptist, and it was the role of Jesus of Nazareth and Muhammad. All of them called to their people to see each other, everyone, as themselves. Today we have and had people like President Carter, Desmond Tutu, and Martin Luther King who have called to us to remember and just like those who went before us too many are not listening.
I will never be an exalted a scholar like Desmond Tutu, or Elisabeth Johnson, Sallie McFague or Elisabeth Schüssler Florenza. But in my small part maybe I can pass on their learning’s to someone who will become exalted. That is enough for me. As the saying goes I am a very small fish in a very large pond and I am happy with that. To give back what I have been blessed to receive is more than enough.
There are many others like me out there, people who read, and study waiting for the opportunity to pass on what they have discovered beyond academics or a very small circle of friends. What each has is a nugget of truth and bit wisdom that needs to be heard. This choice is not prestigious, very few scholars make it to super star status and I am grateful for that. But the time has come for the telling of the past mistakes and success’. To help everyone remember that the eyes of the other are your eyes and to harm or denigrate the other is to harm and denigrate yourself. Scholars have a role to play in the world that is greater than writing dusty tomes that will be read by only a few. The past is relevant to the present and the future and it is important that we remember that. I would like to add my very small part to that story. To offer a tiny bit of knowledge that just might help someone else see the world differently.
My choice, my decision, my path not the easiest of routes to take, and it wasn’t an easy choice but I choose to be a learner, a scholar, a passer on of knowledge.
My prayer for all of you to listen with open mind and heart to what the teaching says, it just might change your life.
A Quiet Walk 