Tag Archives: food for thought

not perfect

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scrappy flowerIt started with very good
Not with perfect.

I started with very good
Not perfect.

That was the plan all along.
That is the gift of life.
Very good.
Not perfect.

Perfect needs nothing,
No one.
Perfect should not change
Else it is perfect no longer.

Good can grow.
It needs soil and sun.
It is not complete in isolation.
It needs relationship.

That’s what makes it very good.
It’s born with the holes
Where the stitches can go.
A necessary part of the whole.

That is very good.

[image cropped from photo by scrappy annie per cc 2.0]

God is … ?

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light through cloudsA friend recently asked, ‘Who – what – is God, anyway?’ The question rumbled around in my heart for days … and here is one response:

God is the life-force, the love-force, that (who) holds everything together and moves everything toward deeper and deeper relationship – relationship with God and, thus, each other.

Or, working backwards, as we often do, we seek deeper relationship with each other and, through that, a deeper relationship with God, herself. True relationship, true love, always points to and reflects God, for God is love. Thus, even feeble, faltering, messy attempts to love can be steps in the right direction.

We might as well ask, what is the universe? For, as we connect more and more of the dots, we find that they reflect a mysterious unity. This scattered, shattered beauty is being drawn together in love. It blossoms and grows where it can. It repairs and reconciles where that is needed. In the end, love triumphs by loving.

It seems so weak, sometimes, to wait on love, to yield to love, to refuse to use coercion, to leave yourself so vulnerable. In the end, it is the only thing strong enough to hold it all together. And, that is heaven: being held together in love – in God.

 

[photo by Tyler Nienhouse per cc 2.0]

God’s culture

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seek first the kingdom - photo of woman looking upKingdom is a foreign term,
The metaphor of a different time.
It is so far removed from what I understand
That it no longer serves me well.

When I think of kingdom,
I think of coercion,
Abject subservience,
Ironclad hierarchy
Absolute, immutable rule.

What if there were a different kind of kingdom –
Hidden in plain sight, growing up among us,
Tiny, at first, like a mustard seed?
What if it were a land of healing and hope,
Where little children, and prostitutes, eagerly lead the way?

It would be an upside down land,
Where the last come first
And every lost thing is found.
Camels and riches would make it hard to enter in,
For what is truly yours is what you give away.

It would be like living in a foreign land.
I’d need to learn its culture,
Change my currency.
I’d need a whole new language.
But, somehow, I know I would be home.

Do you think I could find asylum, there?

[photo by Don McCullough per cc 2.0]

what if

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a friend's embraceWhat if, perhaps,
My arms, today,
Were meant to bring
God’s dear embrace
to you?

What if my smile
Was meant to show you
Just how much
Your life
Has blessed my own?

What if our lives
Could quietly reflect
God’s very being,
In this moment,
In this place?

What if?

[photo by Archigeek per cc 2.0]

strange universe

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image of an atom

In this strange universe,
It is the valence of relationships –
The rushing of electrons round the nucleus –
That holds all things together,
Even as it keeps them from collapsing in upon each other.

In such a universe as this,
Is it any wonder that the One God is a relationship –
An ever circling dance of love –
That both holds the whole and differentiates each part?

Well, yes.
It is a wonder.

 

[image – By JC713 [MIT (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons]

unnecessary crucifixion

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crucifixion

Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity – it did not need changing! Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God.- Richard Rohr

Perhaps …
Could this be true?

The crucifixion was unnecessary.

God did not require it – we did.

It was not God who demanded sacrifice as the gateway to reconciliation.
God’s power to love and forgive was never held hostage to some cruel death.
Love has always been more powerful than sin.

We are the ones who required blood-sacrifice.
We believed so deeply that the price of sin was death
That we would not accept God’s love and reconciliation without it.

So, Christ, who came for reconciliation,
Who came to show us love,
Met our conditions.

God’s desire for relationship was so deep
That God yielded to our obstinate delusions
To prove in ways that only we demanded
The awesome, terrible depth of love.

God does not love us more – or less – because of the crucifixion.
But we can now accept forgiveness
And find a way to receive and return that love.

That is God’s desire – that we would love in return.

God will do whatever it takes to help us find the way to love.

[image cropped from a photo by Steve Snodgrass per cc 2.0]

image and likeness

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likeness

Let us make humans in our image; according to our likeness – Genesis 1:26

Richard Rohr offers a nugget of understanding:
The image is Christ in me;
The likeness is how I live it out.

I like that – that I can somehow be like.
Then, I might actually like myself.
Like, wow.

[photo Thomas Rousing by per cc 2.0]

ask, seek, knock

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doorwaysYour words to me:
Ask, seek, knock.

So, what do I ask?
I ask to know You.
No small ask, for a small me.
Yet somehow I dare to hope
That it is your call
Echoing within me,
Evoking this desire.

Oh Holy One,
I ask to know you.

And what do I seek?
I seek a deeper understanding,
One centered in my heart
Rather than my head.
One that helps to anchor my soul
In a truth too big for explanation.
Big enough to lose myself,
So that I might be found.

Oh Holy One,
I seek understanding.

So where do I knock?
I knock on the door of your heart.
I knock on the side of the mountain.
I knock up against the daily news.
I knock on the walls of my cell.
I knock inside my skull.

Everywhere I turn,
Whatever I encounter,
I knock.
Surely you are there,
Since you are everywhere,
And any doorway is a threshold
To encounter.

Oh Holy One,
I knock.

[image edited from photo by Joanna Paterson per cc 2.0]

bullseye

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bullseyeThey say that the word for ‘sin’ can be translated as ‘missing the mark.’
But what do you call it when you make a direct hit – on the wrong mark?
What do you call it when you strive for ‘rightness,’ rather than relationship?

What happens when I delude myself into thinking that the way to God,
Is right living, right acting, right believing?
Somehow I miss the insight that the road to rightness takes me far away
From the God who is right here, aching to embrace me, just as I am.

The bullseye of my faith is not doctrinal correctness, but love.
Or, perhaps, it is not a bullseye at all, but a sacred center.
What if I’m not supposed to strike it from afar,
But to lean back into its enfolding?

What if I have been taking aim with a bow made for strict accuracy,
With straight arrows of good intent,
When archery, itself, is not what I am here to learn?

What if I’ve not so much been missing the mark, as missing the point?

[photo by Emily Moe per cc 2.0]