untill only love remains

May my love be sincere. May I be devoted to others in love. May I be able to hold my origins in the garden, my hurt and questions, and my new identity as your child all together. May I recognize and feel your arms around. May I be able to grasp that love and have it form me into newness.

Holding On For Hope ( Luke 2:25-40)

            This story is about a man named Simeon. His name means “hearing or to hear” and he is a righteous man, just, God fearing, and devout. He has his faults, but his heart is good, it is centered on God.

            Simeon is filled with the Holy-Spirit just like the many prophets that have come many years before him. And like his name, Simeon has heard, from God, a task. One day Simeon hears a whisper in his heart. He tries to ignore it at first but over time the message starts to write itself into his heart and mind and he cannot ignore it any longer. The message tells him that he will not die before his eyes see the messiah before he sees the savior. Simeon wonders why he has been chosen for such a blessing, yet also wonders how long such a promise will take to be fulfilled, how many people he will have to see die before the Spirits promise is made true.

            Simeon lives in Jerusalem, Jerusalem that is tired and weary form being occupied by the Romans and so the Jewish people also whisper. They whisper in the streets their hopes of the messiah, the messiah that will save them from the oppression they are under. And as the whispers flow throughout the city Simeon knows in his heart, the whisper he has heard, the whisper of the spirit that has told him he will not die until he sees the messiah.

            The whispers get louder and they echo off of the walls of the town. One day Simeon now wrinkled, hunched over and tired from many years of living, takes a walk through town and passes the temple. Simeon, feeling led, climbs the steps and enters the temple courts. He does not know why he is there, yet he feels he must be, his stomach is churning and saying to him “don’t you dare leave Simeon.”  His heart feels heavy and light, both at the same time as he sits and waits in the temple courts confused and wondering why the heck he is waiting here.

            And then a family enters the courts. A man, and a women who are carrying a baby they are not wealthy, but ordinary, covered in dust and weariness like the rest of the Jewish people. The family is coming to do in the courts what the law required them to do for their new child.

            They walk through the doors and at the sight of them Simeon falls to his knees. It is as if he has been hit by a wave, refreshing yet fierce a wave that has washed away the crap from his life and suddenly he feels different. His eyes drop silent tears down his cheek as he looks in amazement upon this family and this child. He goes towards them, Mary the child’s mother sees Simeon’s eyes full of tears and joy. In an act of trust she hands the child to the man. Many people have had similar reactions to their remarkable child.

            Simeon embraces the child his thin skin soft and weathered upon the youthful skin of the baby named Yeshua. Rocking the child in his arms Simeon begins to speak in a soft aged voice, “ My Lord” he says, “my eyes have finally seen salivation and now the rest of the world will see the same. Now all people will see the light you have for the gentiles and the people of Israel.”

            Simeon hands the child back and wiping his tears away from his eyes blesses the family as he goes.           

            As Simeon is blessing the child a woman named Anna notices the family.

Anna was of the tribe of Asher known for women of “beauty and talent and qualified for high and priestly marriage” Anna was no exception and at an early age she was married with the promise of a blessed life. But, after seven years of marriage her husband died. Anna was alone, Anna was a widow, Anna was in a patriarchal society as a widowed women but Anna was also wise she often had insight into peoples lives that proved itself to be accurate and so Anna devoted her life to the temple, to worshipping God, to waiting for the day when God’s people would be saved. She moved into the temple. Year-after-year, she lived in the temple, night-and-day she worshiped, and year-after-year she aged. Her beauty transformed into wrinkles, her hair turned white yet she never left the temple. After 84 years of this devotion she now was standing next to Mary and Jesus. Her 84 years of never leaving the temple and fasting now result in her standing next to this family. In her wisdom, with her insight and through she spirit she knows this is the one they have waited for. This is the child that will deliver her people to the light. She rejoices like she has, night and day, all the years before, but this time it is different. The messiah, the savior, she has seen him and her heart is warm as she leaves the family and continues with her worship.

            Meanwhile Simeon leaves the temple courts, walks down the steps, through the town and to his house. Feeling tired he decides to go to bed early even though the sun is still in the sky. Lying on his bed he whispers “Lord I have waited for years, I have seen my family and my friends return to dust before me. I have cried and rejoiced. I have wanted nothing more than to be your servant.  But I am tired. I am now whole. So may I leave here? Will you dismiss me? May I have final peace?”

            He breathes deeply and fades into a dream a dream of people dancing in the light of a glorious kingdom, the poor the rich, the gentiles the Jews, women and men, the weary and those with heavy burdens all of them dancing together and feasting over a great banquet. He dances with them and he eats with them.

            He breathes in once more, heavily and peacefully. God’s promise has been fulfilled and after all of Simeon’s waiting, he has seen the light and has passed in peace.

Roots

Family; they are the people we love, but that we don’t always choose.

Family seems to find us, sometimes they are the people we are born into; sometimes blood, sometimes not. Sometimes they are people we love and don’t know why or they are the people we hate and know exactly why, but for some reason we can’t seem to shake them. They hang in the back of our hearts and minds always whispering for us to come back home.

They are always singing “remember us, remember what we taught you- either through bad examples or good examples. Remember that time we laughed when the worst was happening or that time we danced amongst divorce and death, addictions and different views. Remember.”

That is who family is. They are the people that cause us to acknowledge, to remember our roots and the places we have come from, to remember our traditions and our battles. They are the people whose legacies we honor and the people who’s pain we sometimes carry with us, even if they have passed, until that pain is fully renewed.

Families are the people who are weaved together whether they like it or not and no matter how hard one tries to unbind the weave, it always comes back together; in a school family-tree project, at a holiday, a wedding, or a funeral. It comes together through dancing, crying, eating, or laughing; these are the binds that tie.

This is family.

Without family we have no story, we are drifting alone on a raft fending off the dark waves. With family are roots, roots that run deep from generation past to generation now, family transcends time.

Families all carry a part of the people who have come before them, because everyone comes from the same deep roots, even if they have forgotten them. We carry our family in our mannerisms and in physical features. We carry each other when we need it most. Despite not understanding, despite hurt caused, despite all the shit.

Family is the people who fill in the gaps for each other. Family is how the world ought to be. Family is the people who have your back whether blood or not. Family is the people in your corner when you need it and when you think you don’t. They ask “are you sure this is a good idea? Have you thought about this or that? I think you need to do this.”

But above all they are asking you to remember.

“Do you rememeber?”

The Space that Calls Our Name

No one tells you the time of day,
the time of year, or the time of life.
So we live. Live and
keep living until
something catches us. Until
something pats us on the back
and screams a whisper into our ear
–so what are you doing-

What are you doing where you are?
Why are you there?
Do you know, know?
Do any of us know
The time?

Father thinks the family is cursed-
“Would He do,
do what I think he
Might do? Do for years
Because of one,
Because of all?”

She teaches her mom how to add
“Help me through this one”
Looking into her daughter’s eyes. Humble.
I brought you life but I need your help.

He talks to his dad and his brother. Conversations
Through sweats of pain. The cancer has spread
And his brother and dad have been dead.
Dead, he will be soon. Yet he talks to them

Because no one knows the time of the year
Or the time of the day, the day that will
Change the mold, or smother the fire
Or increase the blood to the tumor spot.

No one knows.

She is back. No one knows.
He has waited, yet who knows?
Hands chase and hearts race, but
No one knows what permanence
Exists through it all. No one knows
What the space in-between it all means.

That space between life and death,
Bridging reality and hallucinations,
Between hoping and hopes-up.
That space that calls our name and
Makes us yearn for grace, for love,
For glue.

Who knows?

Change

Change. Why do we run from it? Why is it so painful? We like to think change is rare, like it is outside of everything, outside of everyday experience. Change seems so unnatural: it seems as soon as our feet begin to touch the ground they are lifted again into the abyss of transition.
Maybe change though is more natural than we would like to think. We are always changing, always becoming a different version of our one-moment-in-the-past-selves. Our hair falls out and in its place new hair grows. Our skin regenerates after constantly shedding the old. For the first 26 years of our lives our brains and bodies are not even done fully developing, fully growing, fully becoming what we are supposed to be. But what are we supposed to be? Do we ever get to one stationary being? Or are we constantly at work, constantly transformed over time, constantly morphing into an image of ourselves.

Change catches us off guard.  It always seems sudden; people move, school ends, and love dies. When we finally take the time to look back we say “wow how did that even happen,” it’s because natural change is slow, nuanced, the old is replaced almost instantly by new and subtle variations and so yes, it does sneak up on us.

We look up at the tress and it seems as if they changed over night, but the reality is they have been slowly transforming over time. The reality is they change every season, every year.

Every moment changing, every moment morphing, every second different from the last. 

Time continues to build upon its resume in our bodies, within our minds, throughout our personalities. We change and it is beautiful. We change without us evening noticing it. We change because we have to, in order to survive.  Maybe being surprised is better than being aware in every moment.

We can look back and say “yeah, you know I am different than I was and I am not 17 anymore…I am not 30 anymore…I am not 60 anymore.” How excruciating would it be to live completely aware every moment of morphing and transforming?

I am not the same as I was and so I will never be trapped. We can always squeeze through the bars of our tired identities and into a reality of changing…changing to be closer to the face of God. That is our reality to transform through our autumns, our winters, our summers, our springs, through birthdays, and through relationships, through all of that to come closer to the face of God.

Right Into Their Dirty Footprints

There is a world coming/to come, where the meek, the down, the religious-nothings, the dirty, the losers, and all those that don't deserve anything will inherit everything. The kingdom will crash to earth right where they are standing, right into their dirty footprints. The ostracized will be on the guest-list for the wedding celebration and dancing, laughing, feasting, balloons, and streamers, all of these, will carry their hearts from darkness into the embrace of Love!
So...

Blessed are the druggers,
the offenders,
the alcoholics,
and the cutters...

Blessed are those who
feel like they are never good enough,
or feel like they are
never pretty enough, or like they are
not worthy enough...

Blessed are those who can't fake-smile anymore, who can't pretend anymore...

Blessed are the surface dwellers, the muck-rakers,
the pushed away, and the never involved...

Blessed are those left out of the yearbook,
those thinking this is their last step,
those crying for another chance...

Blessed are the regretters,
the over-thinkers and the under-thinkers...

Blessed are those who hurt,
those who have been hurt...

Blessed are those whos names have been stripped from them,
those who have been de-humanized, labeled,
silenced
or stereotyped...

Blessed are those who have cheated, or failed, or lied...

Blessed are those who live outside:
outside of love,
outside of touch,
outside of joy,
outside of smiles,
outside of laughter...

Blessed are you, for you will
never be
outside of
the embrace of God... because
God is on your side!

God is on your side.

So for your tears, there are balloons,
for your pain there are streamers,
for your hunger there is a feast,
for your thirst drink, and
for your fear there is the
touch of Love.

For you there is God, and He/She
would never start the celebration
without
you
there!

Weaved

Life is like a circle not a line...
We always like to think about what the next step is, like we are adding on to a line. We think of everything so disconnected sometimes.
Always thinking about the future,
rarely about the present or the past. We rarely think about
how all things belong together. How all things weave together.
We rarely allow ourselves just to be. Just to sit in
the net that life has created for us.

Sometimes I sit back and look at where I am at a specific moment. Who I am siting with, or talking with, what the weather is like, sometimes what my assignements are even and i cant help but think that every moment in my life has led up to this very moment. That everything has been weaved together in such a way that there would be no other option but what is happening at that moment.

everything belongs in the weave, everything is a stran in the weave, everythig weaves together to make my life. It weaves together to show me the face of God in every moment.

God's hand is in every stitch; Her persisting love in every overlapping and intertwining moment.

It is because that pain was weaved into my life that I can smile now. I am in awe of the fog in the red leaves, because that person told me that so many years ago.

Some would call it inculteration, socialization, whatever. But it is love. God's love in my life, God's love that shows itself through weaving.

"Its a small world" because we are all weaved together, because everyone on the world is connected in some way. Roads, maps, people, ideas, we are all weaved. We are all held together by the love of God.

Everybody wants to love and be loved. That is God's face in our hearts. It keeps us weaving together.

And even when the weave seems to fall apart. When hope seems to be gone, when the strans fray and the image looses definition, all things weave together again eventually.God makes all things new.