One of my favorite places to go for nourishment and inspiration is the Spiritual Literacy library on YouTube. This week I was pulled in by a one-minute story about the hospitality of a person known as nothing more than the Desert Dweller. According to the story, this person has lived in the desert most, if not all, of his life. At the end of each day, the Desert Dweller leaves a lit lantern by the side of the road and a now worn out note in a plastic sheet protector letting people know how to find his cottage should they be in need. This story comes from a book by Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart.
For me this story is about the attitude we have about our willingness to open our hearts and homes to others. It is not about whether or not people accept our invitation. Rather, it is about our willingness to extend the invitation in the first place.
Read moreMy friend Kelleigh says “Hope is something you don’t know you have until you don’t have it.” It seems that this is when we look at those who have hope and it is like a lighthouse, it seems to provide a path to safety. This is what Kert Nerburn writes about in his book Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace. He said,
We are not saints, we are not heroes. Our lives are lived in the quiet corners of the ordinary. We build tiny hearth fires, sometimes barely strong enough to give off warmth. But to the person lost in the darkness, our tiny flame may be the road to safety, the path to salvation. It is not given us to know who is lost in the darkness that surrounds us or even if our light is seen. We can only know that against even the smallest of lights, darkness cannot stand. A sailor lost at sea can be guided home by a single candle. A person lost in a wood can be led to safety by a flickering flame. It is not an issue of quality or intensity or purity. It is simply an issue of the presence of light.
Read moreIn my studies on grace, I have come across a number of analogies. One was that of floating as I discussed in the newsletter. Another was to think about grace like the rays of the sun. The sun is always there. Even when we cannot see it, the sun is present. Regardless of what time we get up, the sun is there. Sometimes, when we first wake up, we see the sun coming in through our window and we roll over and pull the covers over our head. Sometimes we wake up, but leave our doors and windows closed, blocking the sunlight from coming into our spaces. In each of these situations, we are keeping ourselves from experiencing the fullness of God’s grace.
Read moreRecently, a friend shared a song called Secrets with me. It is sung by Mary Lambert. She begins the song by acknowledging some of her secrets, some of what some might call her dark side. The parts of ourselves that we do not always want to like or own. As Lambert says,
“They tell us from the time we're young
To hide the things that we don't like about ourselves
Inside ourselves”
We are all aware of our dark side. We know when we have had dark thoughts, dark actions, or dark behaviors. I can remember in my own life thoughts, actions, and behaviors that I am not proud of. Like Lambert sings, I was taught to hide those secrets inside myself.” Hiding our secrets, our shadows, our dark aspects only strengthens the power of the darkness in our life.
Read moreWhen I was pastoring, the song we processed into every Sunday was “Walk in the Light.” We never sang the whole song, nor do I think anybody knew the whole song, but they liked the rhythm and the notion of walking in the light. For a number of reasons, I have been thinking about this song quite a bit lately. It dawned on me the other day that walking in the light is fairly easy. When the lights are on, we can see details about our surroundings and others that we cannot see when the light is off. When we are walking in the light, we can see the path before us. We can see obstacles in our way. We can see the wide diversity of colors that surround us. We can see things and then associate the scents we are experiencing with them. We can see the signals that the weather is changing in the sky. We can see the clouds forming shapes. We can see flowers blooming, plants breaking through the soil, animals of all kinds feeding themselves and looking for food. We can see the plants and trees responding to the changes in the atmosphere. There is so much we can see when we walk in the light.
Read moreIt has been a while since I have preached or even written a Christmas message. I try not to because for me there more then one Christmas. There is the commercial secular Christmas, the religious Christmas with its story about the birth of Jesus, the cultural Christmas, which has its own ways of being celebrated around the world, and the one I personally celebrate – the defiant Christmas. My celebration of the defiant Christmas was inspired by a Christmas card I once say hanging on a professor’s door. The outside of the cover had a brightly shining star surrounded by darkness, an evergreen tree surrounded by trees without leaves and then there was a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger in a messy stable. The inside of the card said, “Wishing you a defiant Christmas.” While something about the card resonated with me, I knew I did not fully understand its meaning.
Read moreQuite some time ago, I gained an understanding about the importance of gratitude. It is amazing what happens to our view of the world when we acquire an attitude of gratitude and begin to look at the world through its eyes. It seems as if the more one finds to be grateful for, the more you see things for which to give thanks. It is this ever-growing experience. Being mindful of one thing for which to give thanks seems to give birth to some other thing for which to give thanks, which gives birth to something else and so on and so on.
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