Friday, January 6, 2012

Fri Jan. 6 - Window on the Mystery (1 Giant Leap)

I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen.  I must bring them also.  They, too, will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.  
              - John 10:16


On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.  Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they returned home by another road.
         - Matthew 1:11-12

The shepherds get a lot of air time as being God's unexpected chosen guests at the manger - not powerful kings but the poorest of the poor, called upon to receive the Son of God. But what do we make of those other first guests, mysterious foreigners of other faiths who journeyed afar? Not Mary's 'church family' or religious leaders from Joseph's synagogue, but wisdom seekers, star trackers, faith sojourners?

The fact is, those "Wise Men," don't seem to have become 'Christians' in any recognizable sense either before or after they visited the manger - yet they still came to witness, honor, and give gifts to Jesus where he lay.  They were Zoroastrian foreigners who sensed the in-breaking of God in Jesus and worshiped that divinity, ultimately leaving transformed.  So in a way, this shows that Jesus truly and fully embodied the Divine Mystery which lays at the heart of all religions.  Yet rather than making Christ the center, the period on that Mystery, it also makes Christ the window on the Mystery itself.

As we've explored, that first Christmas was full of surprises and reversals, turning people's expectations upside-down. This Epiphany, we might consider the surprising ways in which Christ's coming continues to upend us, razing the boundaries we had in place, upsetting our rules and expectations.  Over and over, what Christmas really show us is that the God we worship is unlimited by our current understandings of the way the world works - and in the story of the "Wise Men" cannot even be tamed by the boundaries of religions we have tried to erect, transforming both us and others in the process.


I Love the Way you Dream by 1 Giant Leap feat. Asha Bohsle, Michael Stipe, et al.  (lyrics HERE)
Note: Brief nudity in the context of religious ritual toward the end of the video.


As we journey forward from Christmastide into the early days of a new year, may we feel Christ's in-dwelling Spirit making all things new, not just in the world, but in our own vision of the world - of its peoples; of its complicated, messy, problematic, blessing-filled faith traditions; and of God's spiraling, upending, all-encompassing plan for us all.




Thanks for journeying with us- and peace in the coming year!

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Thurs Jan. 5 - Love, Love, Love (The Mountain Goats)

One of the more popular of recent years' holiday films has been Love Actually, with its celebrations and reflections on the bitter and the sweet of earthly love in all its forms: family, romantic, friendship and more.  The general message, neatly packaged, is this: earthly love is messy, beautiful, complicated, painful, risky, self-contradicting- deeply imperfect, but somehow, sometimes, worth it.

Today's song takes the same idea, but to a much darker place.  As this song points out, the melody we're singing might be 'love, love, love,' but some terrible, brutal things are done in the twisted forms of love we foster in our lives, and the echoing of those actions can haunt us.

This could just be some morose anti-Christmas cheer reflection on human fallenness and depravity, but I hear something else: I hear God's pity and God's grace, too.  I hear Jesus coming as an infant, acting and speaking as a man about 'love, love, love' (echoing Dave Matthews 'love is all around' refrain from our Christmas Eve post) and having all of us so woefully, tragically, and almost willfully misunderstand him for two thousand years -- and yet and still offering us a love which is so wildly boundless, so graciously vulnerable, so passionately freedom-seeking that we can barely turn toward and believe it.

I received an emailed image tonight that sums up pretty well where I think we as Christians have twisted and mangled the idea of love, and especially Christ's love, back in on itself in so many ways (HERE).  How can we hear this song as not only as a call to own our own broken witness to Jesus' love, but as an invitation to remember the Source of that love and the ways in which, as the song reminds us, 'now we see this / as in a mirror dimly, / then we shall see each other / face to face' ?

Love, Love, Love by The Mountain Goats (lyrics HERE)

The line about seeing 'in a mirror dimly' is borrowed from 1 Corinthians 13, slightly after the famous passage on love popular at marriages, which, if we read carefully, is less about romantic love and more about the kind of love which Jesus modeled in his relations with us: the love of enemy and outcast, neighbor and friend, sinner and saint alike.

If I speak in the tongues of humans or angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  

Love never ends.
                                        - 1 Corinthians 13: 1-8a

May we continue to hear God's 'Christmas' song of 'love, love, love' in ways that bring life and wholeness, but also remember God's pity and grace for where we have erred.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Wed Jan. 4 I Release and I Let Go (Florence and the Machine)

Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.
-Galatians 5:1 (The Message)






This song, and the music of Florence and the Machine in general, I find to be rich in imagery and emotion. Every time I listen it resonates with me and sparks some different thought, question or memory. Today I offer them, patchwork style, hoping that these words and this music will create some sparks in you, too.


 Florence and the Machine: Shake it Out
**Some strong language



I'm always dragging that horse around
All of his questions, such a mournful sound
Tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground
I like to keep my issues drawn
cause it's always darkest before the dawn


Is this theme too late, we are four days in. People've started over already, haven't they? Begun already out-withed the old and in-withed the new? Have I begun already? Yep, begun and begun again.

Beginning as one point of time somehow isn't working for me.
The newness of this year feels blunted by my sameness; perhaps I didn't really intend to be changed, or did that step of beginning unearth some old pieces of my self that I didn't know were down there?

and I am done with my graceless heart
so tonight I'm gonna cut it out and restart


How can I still be holding that fear? anger? expectation? I let it go so many times.


A friend wisely said to me once, we should take a hint from our bodies. When there is something in there that is not good, the body does what it has to expell it. Some times we need to take our issues out and disect them or analyze them, sometimes we just need to know its bad for us and get it out, let it go.






That which we cling to, shapes us. Teach us to chose wisely what we hold to ourselves and that which we release to spiral away into the world.


Shake it out, shake it out, oh woah
and it's hard to dance with the devil on your back
so shake him off


"Shake therapy" is Kate's favorite thing. My friend didn't patent the idea but she may be it's greatest evangelist. When she finds herself carrying the detriments of stress in her body or when she is frustrated or angry, she will literally shake all of her limbs as hard as she can to release the stress that is harmful to her spirit and her muscles. When I have been present this shaking has transformed our frustration into riotous laughter (my favorite kind of release) on both our parts, and I believe there is something to it.

I release you, fear... I give you back....
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won’t hold you in my hands.
You can’t live in my eyes, my ears, my voice my belly, or in my heart

-Joy Harjo

(inspired I say) I release you, my fear and my self protection. I shake you off, lies of inferiority and I unwrap tight fingers from you, bitterness. Then I prepare myself to do this again tomorrow.


Cause looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Well what the hell I'm gonna let it happen to me


There is a kind of grace that we need in letting go, it is hard. And there is a kind of grace that we receive in letting go - the free-fall kind, the just-be kind, that grace where we don't have to work as hard as we think we do, where we can be who we are, where we can chose to let something go over and over and over, trusting God each time to move, further and further from our grasping hands that which is harmful and to place in them, instead, something new.

So, as Florence says, "what the hell, I'm gonna let it happen to me."










Gentle God, uncover in us that which needs release, strengthen our hands to open, to let go and to receive.

-Lindsey

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Tues Jan. 3 - Resolution Revolution (The Frames)


I want my life to make more sense,
I want my life to make amends,
I want my life to make more sense to me.
                  - The Frames


I'm not a New Year's "resolver."  I have never made a resolution to do something after the new year, similar to how I have only a very few times "given up" anything for Lent.  It's not that I have anything against the original concept of these traditions; it's just that their everyday forms generally fail to inspire me.  For instance, how much does giving up chocolate desserts for forty days really inspire me to think about my life or Christ's sufferings?  Not that much, really.

It's not that I can't imagine a possible scenario where giving up something small for Lent could help me focus or practice self-discipline, or how a New Year's Resolution could inspire me to new depths of self-actualization and happiness... it just also seems a little unlikely.

What would it look like if our resolutions had a revolution (literally turned around) to become something that was a little less about ourselves and reached out to encompass a community, a family, a world?

Sure, let's still go to the gym, but also let's think about the mark we leave on the lives of others, how our acts create waves that we can't even see.  Let's think about how we're making sense of our lives, how we are making amends, how we rightly choose to stay and fight or choose to find a fresh road forward...

Pavement Tune by The Frames (lyrics HERE)

Turns out, this ties right back into Christmas.  In the usual December flurry of "Does the 'Christ' Still Matter in Christmas?" articles, my favorite was one in the Huffington Post that reminded us that 'the greatest attack on Christmas has come from within,' from Christians whose actions so little resembled the teachings of Christ.

It is galvanizing to remember that perhaps my resolutions might take a different form because of Christmas: one of honoring the baby born in Bethlehem and the man he grew to be by starting anew the revolution in my own life - the turning again towards the difficult task of trying to live with more grace and less judgement, with more understanding and less ignorance, with more compassion and and less need for control.

Making all things new is ultimately a process of grace through God's help, but it is also a process of time and desire -- and practice.  We must want our actions to be transformed or we make God's work infinitely harder.  So it begs the question: how are our resolutions at the new year, at the mid-year, and elsewhere opening us daily to this transformation both personally and communally?

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.  For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
                          - 2 Cor 3: 18

May the work of the Spirit continue to be seen through even our small acts of courage, grace and peace in this coming year.


                                            - Anna

Monday, January 2, 2012

Mon Jan. 2 Be Made New (Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues)


So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of a new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!
-2 Corinthians 5:17






        As we enter the last week of the Advent Music Project and the first week of 2012, AMP is thinking about how all things are being made new. The glow of the manger still warms us and we linger for one more week in the path of Magi, in the stories that will ask us what we have to offer the newborn king. I must confess the metaphor only goes so far for me, as I have trouble conceiving what might be equivalent to frankincense in my spiritual life, but I don't think that is the point anyway. Rather, we encounter the baby of that manger, the embodiment of God's Love, as we are; and in that encounter we are invited to be changed, myrrh or not...



Amazing Grace

       For my money, there is no better song to speak of being changed by Love than Amazing Grace. This week we will explore the theme of all things being made new, but I do believe that the work of making creation new starts in the hearts of women and men as we are made new by grace. So I quite like the verse that Cat Power sings, (though it is a little off script from the old standard), that says "Good people been here more than 10,000 years, every one bright as the shining sun, we've got no less days to sing God's praise from the time that we've begun, it will be grace that will bring us safe and home." There is something in those lines that evokes a sense God's renewing goodness: people shining across the ages, people called good, by the Source of Grace who is journeying us home.  Whether it is the moment we first begin, or it seems thousands of years since we have begun our faith journey, there is something about Grace that invites us to be made new at each encounter. After all, as the poet Denise Levertov says, "But we have only begun to love the earth. We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life. How could we tire of hope?- so much is in bud. How can desire fail? - we have only begun to imagine justice and mercy, only begun to envision," (Beginners).




... So what does it mean for you to come as you are to the manger? How might the baby in the manger invite you to be changed? What do you want to be made new in you?



God With Us, draw us into your grace, into the promise that you are making this world new; draw us in the wild hope that we, too, may be made new.


-Lindsey

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Sun Jan. 1 - Happy New Year: Go. Do. (Jonsi)

Go Do by Jonsi  (lyrics HERE)



What 
will 
you 
 see?

Where will you go?

Who are you becoming?



Blessings for the journey...and may God the Friend walk with you.