Thou Art Present

In the darkest of hours
In the brightest of days
When all is said and done
And more, much more, remains.

Thou art present.
In ways that confound and befuddle
That comfort and confirm
Hovering over the darkened waters. 

Thou art present.
In the first breath of the new
Water, darkness, a restless sea
Beating wings beating life.

Thou art present.
I know not how.
Nor can I always perceive.
Or discern thy hand.

Thou art present.
For the ages … long before my kind showed up
Long before Eden’s wonder
Before snake and fruit and hate and hurt.

Thou art present.
I know not how.
But I cannot escape the suspicion
Of your grace.

Thou art present.
In life and in death.
In seasons of joy, and in the bitter winters of our discontent
When darkness sweeps away the light.

Thou art present.
And that is enough
More than enough
To steady the soul and strengthen the hand.

Thou art present.

My Wife Knows Me

My wife knows me.
Likely, better than I know myself.
Which sometimes frustrates me.
But it's okay, because she loves me.
And that's a great mystery.
I call it grace.
God, even, likely.

Dogs

Dogs.

Gotta love ‘em.

They eat shit.

They roll in it.

Gotta love ‘em.

Their breath peels paint.

They smell like hell.

Gotta love ‘em.

Here they come.

A-bounding with joy.

Gotta love ‘em.

It’s all joy for them.

To be with us.

Gotta love ‘em.

Their tails wag like mad.

Slobbering kisses.

Gotta love us.

It's in their DNA.

After millennia.

Gotta love us.

When we eat shit.

And smell like hell.

Gotta love us.

Such is grace.

Shit and all.

Gotta love one another.

It Happened on a Sunday Afternoon

Thelma called, panic in her voice - something strange and quite beyond words: “George shot himself. He’s upstairs.”

A quiet man who gave no evidence of distress … no sign of anything at all … I think in his late 50s at the time … so who knows what pain danced around him.

I walked over to the house, just a block away … one of those large, three-story affairs, a central Pennsylvania railroad town … 

Thelma answered the door … I don’t recall if anyone else was there yet … the police, an ambulance - I have no idea.

I went upstairs … did I go alone?

But in my mind’s eye, there I stand by the bed … George on his back, head on a pillow … lots of blood … where’s the gun? I don’t know … I don’t recall seeing it … lost in the folds of the bed?

I suppose Thelma thought he’d gone up for a Sunday afternoon nap.

But with a gun in hand, George ended his life instead …

That day, for the first time in my life, I wondered about suicide.

Like most folks, I had easily thought that suicide was a sin. Period! I had never dealt with it, never known of anyone in the family or in our circle of friends who took their own life. 

I remember thinking that George, a gentle soul, was certainly no sinner in this case, and certainly not deserving of eternal hellfire, or whatever grim punishments the church conjures up to keep wandering souls in line.

Did George shake his fist in the face of God?

Did George heroically assert his independence and end his life in some kind of ironic rebellion against God?

Was he guilty of some supreme cowardice?

I’m 28 at the time, and hurriedly thinking it through because the funeral is three days away.

It was then and there that I became clear - whatever suicide may be, it’s no sin … neither pride nor arrogance. It’s a moment of desperation, as the mind cannot see any other way out, of whatever the dilemma is. 

And no condemnation for the broken-hearted. No condemnation for those lost in sorrow, entangled in whatever heartache has come their way, either of their doing, or simply the circumstances of life … who knows just how tangled the pathways are for anyone. And when the moment comes, it all must make sense to them, even as it leave us bewildered as we try to figure out what will never make any sense to the living.

So, there it was for me … my first suicide funeral … and I spoke about the kindness and mercy and love of God for George … I remember saying something about our own struggles, and whatever hope I might offer, it’s not an encouragement to end our lives. But it is to say: None of the living can fathom the darkness that drove George to take a gun, load it, hold it in hand, place it to his head …

Did he take a deep breath?

Was he crying?

Was he thinking of Thelma?

Did it take long to decide?

I’ll never forget that Sunday afternoon and the funeral that followed.

It was a moment to decide.

I made the right choice, at least for me.

In subsequent years, other suicides would follow … amazing how people take their lives … some gave no hint whatsoever; others were clearly on a troubled road heading downward. Some do it in the home; others by a tree with a rifle … or in the car on the roadside. Maybe a note is left; in most cases, no note at all.

I’ve always remembered that moment when I had to decide. 

On a Sunday afternoon!

Frederick Buechner on Grace

No one has said it better than Buechner!

After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody’s much interested any more. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left.

Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?

A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.

There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it.

Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

Frederick Buechner, October 30 devotional reading, Listening to Your Life, p.288 - an except taken from his Wishful Thinking.

What Is Lent?

Lent isn’t supposed to be easy, but who said life is easy anyway? 

Nor should Lent be silly, like giving up chocolate for a few weeks, or broccoli – talk about triviality. 

What is Lent? 

It’s a time to think deeply about Jesus, and why he said what he said and did what he did, and why some folks thought they’d be better off if he were dead. Lent isn’t for sissies, but then neither is life. 

Lent is for deep thinking and quiet pondering and soul-searching and a time to say, “I’m sorry”-  to God, to the world, to family and friends – to creatures great and small, and to the farthest star, for whatever pain or sorrow or hurt or shame or sadness or distress or stupidity we’ve brought to our world. 

It’s the sheer honesty of Lent that makes Lent so important, and behind all of Lent, woven into it like a golden thread, the safety of God for those who are honest. “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Honesty and safety – powerful elements in our journey through Lent!

A God-Centered Life

To see our life under the loving hand of God, and to give God the glory, all the glory, every bit of it, for the love we have for Christ and the impulse we have for worship, prayer and virtue.

With untold mercy and infinite grace, God has saved us, from our selves and the wiles of the Devil, and brought us into the kingdom of light and into the realm of Christ.

Did we do any of this on our own? Even a little bit?

I think not.

Nor does Paul the Apostle who rightly suggests that if we could claim any responsibility, even a smidgeon, for our status with God, we’d quickly be inclined to boast, which always leads to unhealthy distinctions among believers (as if one believer could be superior to another) and worse: to look with disdain at those outside the realms of faith.

As you know, 2009 is the 500th birthday of John Calvin, the spiritual granddaddy of the Presbyterian Church. As Luther is for Lutherans and Wesley is for Methodists, so Calvin is for Presbyterians.

Calvin wrote clearly and passionately about the glory of God – that we would see our lives under the loving and guiding hand of God. To painfully (only at first) admit that we bring to the table nothing but our relentless self-interest, our confusion and an improper pride. That even our instincts for good are driven by self-interest in much the same way that an animal seeks its own comfort and desires the wellbeing of its offspring. Painful at first for the “old humanity within us,” such confession becomes joyful release as we grow in the grace of God.

Calvin seeks to create an attitude that is finally and firmly focused on the goodness, grace and glory of God. This is the “peace with God” of which Paul the Apostle writes and the foundation for love – to love God with all that we are, and with that selfsame love, to love our neighbor as we, now rightly, for the first time, love ourselves.

This is a God-centered life. To God, and to God alone, be the glory!

Happy New Year

What follows is the January 1 reading from Frederick Buechner’s Listening to Your Life … may it set the pace for the year ahead …

I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living on Rupert Mountain opened up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day’s work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly…. If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

Happy New Year to all of you … life itself is grace!

Faithfulness

An unexpected dimension to faithfulness …

Say your prayers, go to church, read your Bible, etc., are aspects of our faithfulness to Christ, but there’s an unexpected dimension to faithfulness that I’ve considered only as of late – our faithfulness saves others!

When we pray, go to church and read our Bible, we are adding salvation to the world. We are joining our will and our love with that of God; we are adding our light to the Light of the world; we are “completing the suffering of Christ” (Colossians 1:24).

Today, in the midst of whatever joys and laments come your way, say “Jesus my LORD” when you think about your family, a co-worker, a friend or a foe. Say the LORD's Prayer several times if time permits; add to it the Apostles’ Creed, or a Scripture verse.

You are saving someone somewhere by your faithfulness … someone maybe on the other side of the world, someone you will meet only in heaven … someone who needs the grace you offer up today to your Father in heaven.

Remember, it’s a mutual thing … for the grace offered up today by others will come your way via the Holy Spirit. Such is what it means when our LORD says, “Love one another as I have loved you.” What we do, we do for one another.

March 26, 2008

Simple Realities

Simple Realities …

1. I’m a sinner in need of grace.
2. I’m far from God and need reconciliation.
3. I’m at odds with my created self and need healing.
4. The world is ruthless with its infatuation with self-help.
5. The world cannot find or offer what the soul needs.
6. The help I need is found in Christ.
7. And Christ is utterly generous!

“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand!” Romans 5:1-2

Grace

Thomas Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain, is a remarkable book – the journey of a lifetime, his journey into faith and into the heart of God.

Tom’s younger brother, John Paul, pays him a visit at Gethsemane. John Paul is a pilot in the Canadian Air Force and will soon be deployed to England to defend that nation against Nazi bombers.

While visiting Tom, John Paul is baptized and receives communion.

Tom notes how peaceful John Paul has become – putting into place the final piece of life’s puzzle – that of grace. So much good can be done without grace, but without grace, the good cannot ease the soul’s hunger, but only mock it.

Grace is the finishing touch of life.

The next day, John Paul has to be on his way. Tom walks with him to the monastery gate and watches his brother step into a cab. As the cab turns to leave, John Paul looks back and waves, and Tom can see in his face that slight indication of knowing “that we would never see each other on earth again.”

I read those poignant words and stopped, tears welling up in my eyes.

Life is so precious! God be praised. And may the abundant grace of God keep us all!