Tag Archives: Love

Advent IV: A Well-Lighted Wreath

24 Friday Dec 2021

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“Love, the Rose, is on its way..”.

All my senses are invited to join in as this part of the season crescendos…the culmination of Advent, Winter Solstice, Christmas Eve, then Christmas Day, beginning twelve days comfort and joy to savor. And for me in my rose garden, small but reminding me of the giver so long ago, a confluence of scent, color, softness, awakening to the possibiity of the Light that has come, will come and is here!

The Church calendar this final week of Advent lights the way with Love. Although the promise and vision of Light is increasing each week, I am all too aware of the opaqueness and miasma that surrounds us daily–rising COVID numbers with its Greek variants, standoffs and vitriol in the world’s capital cities, floods and tornados, with destruction and cutoffs shriek from the headlines. Yet, all though this season, and I believe, beyond, I can sense Love lighting up the world, Love wafting through the air, Love softening some of the hurts and slights, Love sweetening the bitterness. Indeed, Love wins!

On Christmas I celebrate with Christian communities the coming of Jesus, the Christ, Love in person. The Love that I have sensed throughout these days of bafflement and confusion comes from that Love. In my small world it has looked like generosity, goods, service and presence given to so many in such places of need, grand and small, in the name of that Love. It has touched folk with gentleness in response to ranting, impatience and grief. It has filled the room with the aroma of patience, deep listening, even to the oft repeated stories, more than twice-told. It has been a taste of the goodness of the Holy One, who has downloaded the Grace of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

I am as unclear as everyone else about what a new year might bring, to me and to my beloved ones, to my community and my city, to the nation and the nations of the world. But in the lighting the Advent wreath I can see as much as I am able that Love is the only way to navigate the unknown–Love when I deliver coffee bread to the neighbor, Love when I make that phone or e-mail connection to the lonely or limited one, Love when I encounter the service people who come or to whom I go, Love to the agencies and organizations that are on the front lines of distributing resources for shelter and sustenance, Love to my dearest and nearest amid frustrations of changed plans, snafus and hoped denied. And I can reach down into that Love, because I am Beloved myself–by the Holy One in Jesus.

Heedless of the pouring rain this Christmas Eve morning, I am letting myself be filled, in my body, mind and spirit with God’s Love for the world, for me, and am trusting that in recycling that Love, I can participate in the ongoing healing of the world this season and on the days to come. Love Wins!

Advent 1: Attention in Quarter Light

01 Wednesday Dec 2021

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…now we see in a mirror dimly…

.Only one candle to begin Advent…things are gray, misty, even opaque…yet it cheers me, one candle to set the intention to look for the places the Light gets in. However, my presbyopic eyes have trouble seeing much behind or within that tiny Light

So my attention has been directed to another sense, my hearing. In a conversation with a friend, I was asked to listen for the way the Holy One reaches out in sounds, words, music, echoes, touching me, if I am open to it through those media. Even though my spirit journey experience has been circled, enlivened, nourished and directed by those sounds for all of my life, I was startled. The liturgy Advent has rested heavily on words of darkness and Light, on looking and watching.

Yet now I am directed to Listen! Immediately I began to hear the ways that the Holy One is present in my conversations, in the Word proclaimed, in the reading fo sacred text, in the sacred music of the season, phrases of comfort and joy, speeches of challenge and daring! Following that thread, I found immediately discovered that the sounds in my life were leading me to clarity, understanding, reassurance and spiritual perspective. Even though my eyes are dim, my listening is acute, and the Spirit keeps catching my attention through whispers, through gentle voices, through clear and straightforward thinking expressed–eloquently or not. And often the Word that I hear stays with me, sinks down into my bones and marrow, into my heart and ruminations. And it brings me Hope.

The word that returned to me this week–as it has again and again over my life–is Love. Despite the messiness, despite the venality, despite the heavy, heavy grief, despite the pain and the loss, I am prodded to join with the saints and angels to hear Love as it is spoken, to speak Love as I am given space, to offer Love no matter who might want or need it. Each day of this Advent will be unique–different circumstances different demands, different opportunities, but all opportunities for me to act in Love. The “encircling gloom” is not too dark to be Love this Advent.

Advent IV: Love

21 Monday Dec 2020

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We love because God first loved us…

Advent 4 is the candle of Love. Loving in the time of the corona virus is demanding re-imagining, stretching on my part, yet it seems like the most important thing I can do in this season of non-doing!

My love needs to be creative! No more dropping by for conversations, no more hugging at the door, no more long lazy lunches. Even close up exchange of gifts are off the table this year. So how do I keep the Love alive? I am so inspired by pastors in worshiping communities who have uncovered ways to share God’s love without being there in person. Our Christmas children’s pageant on Zoom was full of laughter and affection. I am so touched and comforted by notes and remembrances that come in the mail. And I am planning a memorial service by Zoom with deep sorrow and affection, something I have never done, but is what Love asks for in this season.

And my love need to persist! it can be easy for me on any particular day to stay rooted to my couch, and say to myself that there are too many limits, too many constrictions, too much gloom, and too little energy to keep in contact with others, even if they are alone, suffering or just in need of a listening ear. Yet the candle of Advent insists that Love, in person (or on-line, or by mail or phone) is what it’s all about. So I must write those cards, make those calls, make those contributions, send those greeting by whatever means, for the sake of Love!

I am aspiring to express Love with Joy! As I listen to the familiar seasonal texts, I find them laced with Joy–a birth, a supportive soul-mate, a chorus of angels, the found destination after a long journey, gifts from the heart are all expressions of Joy. So I want to offer my gifts–tangible or not–with Joy, taking Joy to my own heart in hope that Loving Joy (with laughter!) will be the real contagion of this time, in spite of all the dour prognostications. Mother Teresa of Calcutta has said, Spread love everywhere you go. Going or coming, that is my intention!

Love the star is on the way!

What to Wear!

17 Monday Aug 2020

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Clothe yourselves with love…

I have always cared about what to wear. As child I looked wistfully at a store window, knowing that my clothes came from what we then called “the missionary barrel.” As an adult in public ministry when I received an invitation to preach or speak, my first interior response was always, “what will I wear?” And now in retirement I have found that my sartorial needs are fewer and fewer.

Then comes the Covid-19 virus! Symbolic to this season is a dress hanging in my closet. For years it was important to me to have an “Easter dress” to wear on Easter Sunday, and then in the vocational years I wore a clerical robe all the time, so no new togs were necessary for festival days; I was out of the habit (so to speak!). But This Year, I thought, I would celebrate by choosing an Easter dress early, and on that time of great rejoicing, would add to the festivities by wearing something new, a sign of new life, energy and spring., of Resurrection. And on that day, we were sheltering in place! And the dress still hangs on its store hanger, waiting!

On a “normal” day in this pandemic, I don’t go to my closet to try to choose what will be best suited for the day’s occasion. At the most demanding, I try to see if my top is presentable for the Zoom and FaceTime calls ahead. I don’t spend an inordinate time in front of the mirror, making sure that the things I am wearing match, accessories are not too flashy, or the whole look clashes with the occasion. If it is to be a day of phone calls only, I am content to allow my T-shirts and comfortable pants suffice–no need for make-up, shoes, maybe even bras!

However, my attention has been caught by some words from Colossians:

…clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness,and patience…Above all, clothe yourselves with love… Colossians 3:12,14

No matter what my body is wearing, this list a wardrobe to which I need to attend. In my conversations with people, I find that I am not the only one who finds herself with frayed edges in which I am judgemental toward others—near and far; unkind in words and action; impatient with over-exposure to beloved ones, as well as with the chaotic news of the world; and I find myself egocentrically wondering “what about ME?” It takes stamina and intention to keep reminding myself that the outfit of the day is Love, and the challenge of the day is to see what Love looks like today with all its sameness and surprise. This is a demanding practice, even in long relationship and commitments, and it is also a challenge to practice for myself–to extend the same kind of compassion and kindness and patience to my own muddling through these baffling times. “Put on Love!” That’s a pretty clear choice to make each day, and it doesn’t require washing ot ironing!

Clouds of Lent

01 Sunday Mar 2020

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clouds of unknowing

Lent is frequently depicted in linear fashion, one day, one Sunday after another. However, this year I am feeling more as if I have entered a cloud of a season, unclear, unpredictable, with poor visibility. I have taught a class on preparing for Lent, with particular attention to the ways we observe it in my tradition. I have considered and decided practices that I want to follow during these “40 days,” minus Sundays. I have considered the external signs that signify Lent in the Church: purple paraments, special services for Ash Wednesday and Holy Week, a purple candle alight where I sit for sacred conversations, a cross in the sanctuary for prayerful intentions to be tied with ribbons. But somehow in these days in none of those things are giving shape and order to my days, my musing, my habits.

Instead I am needing to continue to travel each day as it arises, some days not knowing where I am going or where I will end up. Some of this is shaped by the ongoing recovery of my husband after surgery. Some is shaped by deadlines set by agencies and “powers that be.” Sometimes the calendar for this year demands attention to occasion that are counter in spirit to Lenten solemnity. And sometimes “things fall apart,” according to Chinua Achebe, “the best laid plans go oft agley,” as Robert Burns tells us. Lent is not so much a journey as it is an ambiance, a backdrop, a cloud of mist which covers my intentional forward vision. This week alone, I have encountered tears and laughter, memory and forgetting, beauty and ugliness, health and healing. And I haven’t known what will arrive until is does! No guarantee that what I plan will be what I can or will do!

So am thrown back on the many times in sacred text where the promise is that clarity will emerge, where resources will be provided, and where Grace will abound. I love the early Christian hymn which names that state of unknowing: Now we see in a mirror dimly…Now I know only in part…” (1 Cor, 13: 12). Then the hymn writer points us back to the daily practices, Lent or not: And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (v.13) So in the midst of this cloud, I can find some place to practice paying attention to the Jesus journey, by asking myself as each new event or demand arises: does this help me be Faithful–to the Holy? to the ones I love? to those given to me to serve? And/or does this help me be Hopeful, sharing that hope with those I encounter? And most importantly, will this be something to which I can be bring Love, which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things. endures all things?

Joni Mitchell taught me long ago that clouds have many sides to them, that I really don’t know clouds at all, but I don’t need to know what the clouds have in store. I can, with Spirit tenderness and presence, show up for the cloud of each day with Faith, Hope and Love, on this Lenten journey, even as Jesus whom I follow did!

Love Among the Spoons

14 Friday Feb 2020

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Welsh Love Spoon

Today is Valentine’s Day, and it is the 60th Anniversary of the first date I had with my husband. In the years we have been together we have celebrated, acknowledged or honored the day in a variety of ways. I came from a family which honored all kinds of love on the day with paper, glue and hearts; my husband, not so much! So our observances have varied from year to year, place to place, energy to energy. This year while we recover from injury and illness, I am naming this year The Year of the Loving Spoons!

There is a prevalent theory for people who are in the process of healing of all kinds called the Spoon Theory. It posits that a person has a certain amount of “spoons,” units of energy that they are given at the start of the day, and each activity uses up a certain amount of spoons. When one has run out of spoons, one needs to rest up until the energy has been restored. This is what we are finding on our road to healing: limited “spoons,” needs for restoration, yet continuing to love and learning to love. It is not always immediately intuitive to me. Each of us has different speeds, wishes and needs, and to love the other in concrete ways isn’t the same for each of us.

Among what we are figuring out day by day are some of these things:

  • each of us knows our own needs better than the other; if we want help, we need to ask, in some way–with words or another medium
  • we each want the best in body, soul and spirit for the other, so our intentions are loving
  • it is not easy to be quiet, patient, or (fill in the blank) that the other one needs right now
  • we don’t get everything right the first time
  • we are not made to be everything to each other, just some important faithful things
  • when one need to rest, he or she needs to rest
  • it is important to laugh as often and as genuinely as possible
  • we have better imaginations than we knew
  • we have plenty of things to do together here and close by that don’t use too many “spoons”
  • we need to give our forgiveness muscles continuing workouts
  • we have family and friends at the ready to come give us a hand
  • we are held in Grace by the One who will never let us go

So this Day of Loving Spoons, we are sharing five small meals tailored to one of us, savoring two dozen roses from the local store, sharing the humor we encounter in reading, welcoming message of cheer, trying to remember how our first date happened and continues, and practicing deep gratitude for all that was, for all that is and for all that will be! Happy Valentine’s Day!

Into Holy Week: Taking Delight in Love

12 Friday Apr 2019

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Lent is coming to an end, and I turn into Holy Week, and I have just celebrated another wedding anniversary. In my practice of Taking Delight this Lent, I am aware of how many ways Love has shown up and continues to show up, around me and in the events we commemorate next week, enough to fill an alphabet:

Love is Ample. Love is Blessed. Love is Caring. Love is Delightful. Love is Elegant. Love is Forgiving. Love is Graceful. Love is Holy. Love is Imaginative. Love is Joyful. Love is Kind. Love is Lavish. Love is Mysterious. Love is Nuanced. Love is Observant. Love is Pliable. Love is Quintessential. Love is Redemptive. Love is Splendid. Love is Thoughtful. Love is Useful. Love is Volatile. Love is Wrestling. Love is eXtraordinary! Love is Yearning. Love is Zesty.

And Love is all around–in creation, in children, in old folks, in longtime enemies–now reconciled, in congregations and gatherings, in memories, in animals and birds, in friends and lovers. And in the Presence of the Holy.

During this coming week I will be seeing where Love appears still–in sacred texts, in worshiping groups, in conversations, in halls of governance and political encounter (!), and even in moments of solitude and silence. My prayer is not just that I can take delight in the Love I find, but that I will learn to practice and share Love more deeply in the Easter season to come, awash in the gifts given me through the Holy One–compassion, self-giving, and New Life! I will take Delight in the Love!


Turning and Turning

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

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The Turning of the Year

The year has turned! All the celebrations of the festival season are past, the decorations (save for a few stragglers ) are put away, the yearly letters have dwindled to a precious few, and we have pictures left to remind us of the sweetness and light, and the other moments we just checked off. But all signs are now that we are in a new moment, a new calendar year. Somehow that event also has brought with it other changes– a retirement, an ending of treatment, a death and loss–even my tree in the front yard, always off schedule with other trees in the neighborhood, suddenly went from green to bright red and now is losing all its leaves!

And time and the world keep turning. I go to a store I have always gone to, and it has moved. I plan to order a longtime favorite dish, and its been replaced. Another rule has been established for drivers’ licenses, more complicated than the last. Turning, turning, turning! And so I struggle to ground myself in what’s real, here and now, and to be elastic and open to what might be coming.

I keep coming back to what the prophet asserts that the Holy One says: “I, God, do not change” (Mal.3:6) I believe that as I read sacred texts that I see God work in a variety of ways, so there is change is action; but the essence does not change, and the essence of God is Love. So I let my imagination go: love the turning, love the mover and shakers, love the memories of the way we were, love the hope of what we shall be, love the longtime friends and companions, love the new fold moving in next door. My equilibrium is kept be continuing to learn to love–the ones I am with, the place I find myself and the world which calls out for Love!

Last week I was given sacred conversations, family birthdays, maintenance appointments and an encounter with a groups of people new to me. This week there are more conversations, doctor appointment and celebrations. And the outside world keeps reeling from shock to shock with shrill, angry and hurtful voices. But I must stay rooted and grounded in Love, whatever the new invitation or challenge.

I pray to see the continual turning as opportunity, as I keep my heart fixed on Love, and bend and dance with that Love wherever I am!

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Advent 3: Love Evolving

16 Sunday Dec 2018

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My reflection on Mary, the mother of Jesus prompts this prayer on the third Sunday of Advent. which by some calendars is about Love:

O Holy One of Love,

I long to be as loving as Mary, when she first said yes to Gabriel, to be the bearer of the Light, persistent despite her anxiety, reaching out for friendship when she felt so alone, bursting forth with praise and gladness for the Light she knows in her body and spirit.

I would want to be as flexible as she was in adapting to her circumstances–long journey in discomfort, doing what was required amid fearful politics, reflective of all that kept coming her way.

I celebrate and would learn from her caregiving to her child, no matter how old he was, and her celebration of his emerging person, meanwhile speaking her truth to him as she understood it.

I pray for the tenacity and courage to stay with each of my beloved ones, as long as I live, even if means walking with them through heavy sorrow and broken-heartedness.

I pray that I will be supportive of the vision and journey of each one, even as they go on paths that are alien to me, even unimaginable.

In this Advent season I look back and give thanks for the Love that has brought me safely thus far, however imperfect, love that was patient, faithful, elastic, welcoming and celebrating. Keep teaching me by your Spirit to keep learning to Love as many days as I have been given to Love!

In the name of the One who is Love in Person, Amen


Mothering Spirit

19 Saturday May 2018

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Betsysrainbowquilt                  Betsysmourningquilt

I am right between Mother’s Day and Pentecost. Our pastor gave a trenchant sermon last week on the “mothering” aspects of the Holy, taken from the first story of the creation, allowing that to neglect the feminine force of God means we are missing out on part Hebrew word, Ruach, Spirit, present at the creation. This week we are anticipating celebrating Ruach once again, this time when She came visibly and audibly on the gathered ones to create a community called Church.

I am wondering what is particular about the Mothering Spirit this week. Our new-ish hymnal gives many choices:

  • Mothering Spirit, nurturing one/in arms of patience hold me close. (Jean Janzen, 1991)
  • Womb of life and source of being, home of every restless heart,/ in your arms the world’s awakened, you have loved us from the start. (Ruth Duck, 1986)
  • Like a mother you enfold me, hold my life within your own…(Shirley Erena Murray, 1986)

As a daughter and as a mother and grandmother, I recognize what it is like both to give and receive that kind of care. However, I must say in honesty that that kind of care was not only offered by  women, or by mothers. I have been graced to receive it from surprising places, from unpredictable places.

So what is it? In conversation with a friend this week, we tried to identify one who embodied a mothering Spirit in our faith journeys. Our attention fell naturally and the easily on the woman who had been our spiritual director for many years, Betsy, whose “Rainbow Quilt” and “Mourning Quilt” are attached. Words like Grace, hospitality, welcome, wisdom, joy, creativity, bubbled up between us. But more than anything else was the sense that she saw us and knew us for who and what we are and loved with unconditional graceful regard, without judgement, categorization or label. That was evident in many ways, and led me to recall others who have “mothered” me along the way.

In the days that followed I am thinking of other persons of mothering spirit:

  • a college counselor who took delight in me and imagined my future accomplishments
  • a pastor who was not threatened by my questioning struggle, but challenged me to pursue being all I was meant to be
  • a couple in my church who subsidized a trip to my first Christian feminist conference when I was a new mother of two small children
  • that one who sat with me as I wept over a deep, deep loss
  • that one who saw my mistake and helped me try over again
  • the one who taught me certain kinds of knowledge and skills with patience, always believing I could do it
  • the ones who listened without censoring to my stories, sometimes over and over again

So as I prepare to celebrate the Holy Spirit tomorrow, who gave birth to the Church and to all people, I am grateful for all the “mothering” I have had, whether it came from a man or a woman, an elder or child or peer, from a source I had hoped for or a complete surprise. All of them were holy. All in that moment saw me for who I was right then, and all were cheering me forward. I am blessed by that Mothering, and I want continue to keep Mothering, in Spirit and in Truth!