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Let your entire body participate in your spiritual journey.  Inner awareness of God’s presence must culminate in action.  Show your soul in the way you treat your own body and in your body’s actions.

                                                                        Carmen R. Berry

Blessing to Heal a Sprain or Any Disunity

Bride went out
            One morning early,
With her two horses;
            One broke its leg
With much ado.
            What was apart
She put together
            Bone to bone,
Flesh to flesh,
            Sinew to sinew,
Vein to vein;
            As she healed that
May we heal this.

            Trans. by Cailin Matthews from Carmina Gadelica, vol. 2                     
Bride is another word for Bridget, the Irish saint of the Celtic Church .

A Blessing for Those Who Care

In your caring for others
            God cares of you.
As you give your life to others
            God gives Himself to you.
As you pour out your love
            God pours out His love into you.
God bless you and guide you.
God strengthen and refresh you.
God give you courage and hope
            that His deep loving care
            is revealed through you.

                                    David Adam

Distance and diversity are part of me. I bless my width and depth. All that is foreign and unfamiliar is yet a part of who I am. Mine is the family of man.[sic]. My tribe inhabits the earth, walking in different lands, speaking in different tongues, but living one life as we go forward. Knowing that I am a part of all life, I cherish differences. I embrace diversity. Recognizing that all faces and forms are my own face and form, I treat myself and others with dignity. We are brothers. We are sisters. We are husband and wife, mother and father. We are a family of many colors and many cloaks. We are one life. The language of the heart speaks to us all. I cherish that which my brother cherishes. I walk in harmony, generosity, and abundance. I share my gifts from the gifts I share.

                                    Julia Cameron in Blessings

The Buddha compared being angry with picking up hot coals with bare hands and trying to throw them at one’s enemy.  Who gets burnt first?  The one who’s picking up the coals, of course—the one who is angry.  We may not even hit the target we are aiming at, because if that person is clever and practiced enough, he’ll duck—and we shall still have burnt hands.

                                    Ayya Khema from When the Iron Eagle Flies

A hundred thousand elephants,
A hundred thousand horses,
A hundred thousand mule-drawn chariots,
Are not worth a single step forward.

What in your life is calling you?
When all the noise is silenced,
the meetings adjourned,
the lists laid aside,
and the wild iris blooms by itself in the dark forest,
what still pulls on your soul?

In the silence between your heartbeats
hides a summons.
Do you hear it?
Name it, if you must,
or leave it forever nameless,
but why pretend it is not there?

There is a well-known simile about a monkey trap of the kind used in Asia —a wooden container with a small opening.  Inside lies a sweet.  The monkey, attracted by the sweet, puts his paw into the opening and grasps the sweet.  When he wants to draw his paw out again, he cannot get his fist with the sweet through the narrow opening.  He is trapped until the hunter comes and captures him.  He does not realize that all he has to do to be free is let go of the sweet.  That is the way we live our lives.  We are trapped because we want it nice and sweet.  Not being able to let go, we are caught in the never-ending cycle of happiness and unhappiness, hope and despair.

                        Ayya Khema from Be An Island

If we divide into two camps—even into the violent and the nonviolent—and stand in one camp while attacking the other, the world will never have peace.  We will always blame and condemn those we feel are responsible for wars and social injustice, without recognizing the degree of violence in ourselves.  We must work on ourselves and also with those we condemn if we want to have a real impact.

                        Ayya Khema   Be An Island

When I rise up
let me rise up joyful
like a bird.

When I fall
let me fall without regret
like a leaf.

Unless we practice loving feelings toward everyone we meet, day in, day out, we’re missing out on the most joyous part of life.  If we can actually open our hearts, there’s no difficulty in being happy.

The more compassionate you are, the more generous you can be.  The more generous you are, the more loving-friendliness you cultivate to help the world.

                                                Thich Nhat Hanh  from Buddhist Peacework

Share your love, your wisdom, and your wealth and serve each other as much as possible. Live in harmony with one another and be an example of peace, love, compassion and wisdom. Try to be happy in your practice, to be satisfied with your life. Be reasonable in the way you grow, and don’t ever think that it is too late. And don’t be afraid of death. Even if you are going to die tomorrow, at least for today keep yourself straight and clean-clear, and be a happy human being.

Lama Thubten Yeshe,  from The Bliss of Inner Fire

Trust says the crumpled green license plate that hangs in my office. Trust what?  Trust that it is worth scratching on the wall that God Is Love and Life because, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, it may just be true. Trust that if God is anywhere, God is here, which means that there is no telling where God may turn up next—around what sudden bend of the path if you happen to have your eyes and ears open, your wits about you, in what odd, small moments almost too foolish to tell. If God is ever, God is now, in the in and out of breathing, the sound of the footstep on the stair, the smell of the rain, the touch of a hand on your bare shoulder where you kneel at the door. If God lives and loves, as the hay shed proclaimed, it is in ourselves no less than everywhere else, in the godless no less than the godliest, in the dead no less than the living, because the end of a life is no more likely to be the end of God’s love that keeps it alive than it is of our love that keeps it a living part of ourselves….

            Frederick Buechner in The Eyes of the Heart
A reflection on  words scratched into the wall of a hut in Switzerland

Clouds are flowing in the river, waves are flying in the sky.
Life is laughing in a pebble. Does a pebble ever die?

Flowers grow out of the garbage, such a miracle to see.
What seems dead and what seems dying makes for butterflies to be.

Life is laughing in a pebble, flowers bathe in morning dew.
Dust is dancing in my footsteps and I wonder who is who.

Clouds are flowing in the river, clouds are drifting in my tea,
On a never-ending journey, what a miracle to be.        

                                    Eveline Beumkes

“Those whose consciousness is unified abandon all attachment to the results of action and attain supreme peace. But those whose desires are fragmented, who are selfishly attached to the results of their work, are bound in everything they do.”                                       Bhagavadgita

A Blessing

Be the Three Persons taking possession of all to me
             belonging,
Be the sure Trinity protecting me in truth;
Oh! Satisfy my soul in the words of Paul,
And shield my loved ones beneath the wing of Thy Glory,
     Shield my loved ones beneath the wing of Thy Glory.

Bless everything and everyone one,
Of this little household by my side;
Place the cross of Christ on us with the power of love,
Till we see the land of joy,
    Till we see the land of joy.

Thou Being who didst create me at the beginning,
Listen and attend me as I bend the knee to Three,
Morning and evening as is becoming in me,
In Thine own presence, O God of life,
     In Thine own presence, O God of life.

The beauty of the trees,
the softness of the air,
the fragrance of the grass,
speaks to me.

The summit of the mountain,
the thunder of the sky,
the rhythm of the sea,
speaks to me.

The faintness of the stars,
the freshness of the morning,
the dewdrop on the flower,
speaks to me.

The strength of fire,
the taste of salmon,
the trail of the sun,
and the life that never goes away,
they speak to me.

And my heart soars.

Blessing of the Kindling

I will kindle my fire this morning
In presence of the holy angels of heaven,
In presence of Airel of the loveliest form,
In presence of Uriel of the myriad charms,
Without malice, without jealousy, without envy,
Without fear, without terror of any one under the sun,
But the Holy Son of God to shield me.
            Without malice, without jealousy, without envy,
            Without fear, without terror of any one under the sun
            But the Holy Son of God to shield me.

God, kindle Thou in my heart within
A flame of love to my neighbour,
To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all,
To the brave, to the knave, to the thrall,
O Son of the loveliest Mary,
From the lowliest thing that liveth,
To the Name that is highest of all.
            O Son of the loveliest Mary,
            From the loveliest thing that liveth,
            To the Name that is highest of all.

An ancient Celtic Prayer from the Carmina Gadelica

Blessed is the spot, and the house,
              and the place and the city,
              and the heart, and the mountain,
              and the refuge, and the cave,
              and the valley, and the land,
              and the sea, and the island,
              and the meadow where mention
              of God hath been made,
             and His praise glorified.

            Bahai Prayer by Baha U’Llah

A prayer written by Frederick Buechner for his brother, as requested by his brother, Jamie, as he lay dying.

Dear Lord, bring me through darkness into light. Bring me through pain into peace. Bring me through death into life. Be with me wherever I go, and with everyone I love. In Christ’s name I ask it. Amen.

Hey! Lean to hear my feeble voice.
            At the center of the sacred hoop
            You have said that I should make the tree to bloom
With tears running, O Great Spirit, my Grandfather,
            With running eyes I must say
            The tree has never bloomed
Here I stand, and the tree is withered.
            Again, I recall the great vision you gave me.
It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives.
            Nourish it then
            That it may leaf
            And bloom
            And fill with singing birds!
Hear me, that the people may once again
            Find the good road
            And the shielding tree.

            Black Elk

The words of the Buddha offer these truths:

Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed.
This is the ancient and eternal law.

Like a caring mother
holding and guarding the life
of her only child,
so with a boundless heart
hold yourself and all beings.

May I and all beings be filled with loving kindness.
May I and all beings be safe from inner and outer dangers.
May I and all beings be well in body and mind.
May I and all beings be happy and free.

Quoted by Jack Kornfield in The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace

While practicing generosity, we should always remember how very fortunate we are to have this opportunity.

            Gomo Tulku  from Becoming a Child of the Buddhas

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

            Wendell Berry

Grasping too tightly the things of this world, attachments arise.

Holding only to how we want it to be, anger is born.

Not understanding the inevitability of change, confusion clouds the mind.

Meet this transient world with neither grasping nor fear, trust the unfolding of life, and you will attain true serenity.

Brothers of the sea,
Look at the stars,
Look at the deep blue
And set the world free.
Our right is to live and be free;
Freedom will not come from outside.
It is only in ourselves united.

            Samar Fishermen’s Song , Philippines

Blessed are you, O God of the Universe,
for you have bound us together in a common life
on this fragile planet.
We confess and offer before you
our misperceptions, our hatred, our bigotry, and our deceit.
Grant us understanding that is grounded in love,
and reconciliation that grows out of humility. 
Open our hearts to the possibility and newness
of your Covenant Word.
In the Name of the One God who is
Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier,
world without end,
Amen.

            Martin Bell

Creative awareness lets you see the problems in your relationships clearly. We often relate to people only on certain conditions; we ask them to fulfill our needs or to be exactly as we want them to be. But the beauty of a relationship is that it enables you to open to another person, and that person to you. With creative awareness, you become more aware and appreciative of other people. You see them as they are, not as you want them to be. You recognize their good qualities but you also see their foibles and have space for those too: you begin to love them unconditionally. Acceptance is the ground of love.

Martine Bachelor from Meditation for Life

Every experience we have in our lives manifests from our mind. Because you interpret your life and your world through your mental attitude, it is important to have the right motivation.

            Lama Thubten Yeshe from The Bliss of Inner Fire

Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.

            From the Bhagavad Gita

Baptizing Cats

We were very pious children from pious households in a fairly pious town… Once, we baptized a litter of cats… I still remember how those warm little brows felt under the palm of my hand. Everyone has petted a cat, but to touch one like that, with the pure intention of blessing it, is a very different thing. It stays in the mind. For years we would wonder what, from a cosmic viewpoint, we had done to them. It still seems to me to be a real question. There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. I have felt it pass through me, so to speak. The sensation is of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time.

            Marilynne Robinson in Gilead

Cooking is not to rush. 
It’s a prayer.
A gift of love.
It’s family.
It’s standing in the company of your ancestors
 and feeling their hands helping you.

Bruce, quoting his grandma Katz from Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos

Within the circles of our lives
    we dance the circles of the years,
    the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
    the cycles of the moon
within the circles of the seasons,
    the circles of our reasons
    within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,
    changed, changing. Hands
    join, unjoin in love and fear,
    grief and joy. The circles turn,
    each giving into each, into all.
Only music keeps us here,

    each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
    we turn in pairs, that joining
    joining each to all again.

And then we turn aside, alone, out of the sunlight gone

    into the darker circles of return.

            Wendell Berry

I am the wind that breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave on the ocean,
I am the murmur of leaves rustling,
I am the rays of the sun,
I am the beam of the moon and stars
I am the power of trees growing,
I am the bud breaking into blossom,
I am the movement of the salmon swimming,
I am the courage of the wild boar fighting,
I am the speed of the stag running,
I am the strength of the ox pulling the plough,
I am the size of the mighty oak tree,
And I am the thoughts of all people
Who praise my beauty and grace.

From “The Black Book of Carmarthen,” an ancient Welsh work

A Thanksgiving Prayer

In the spirit of humility we give thanks for all that is.
We thank the great spiritual beings who have shared their wisdom.
We thank our ancestors who brought us to where we are now.
We are grateful for the opportunity to walk this planet,
to breathe the air,
to taste the food,
to experience sensations of a human body/mind,
to share in this wonder that is life.
We are grateful for the natural world that supports us,
for the community of humankind that enables us to do many wonderous things.
We are grateful that we are conscious, that as intelligent beings we can reflect upon the many gifts we have been given.

            Tom Barrett

May all beings be filled with joy and peace.
May all beings everywhere,
The strong and the weak,
The great and the small,
The mean and he powerful,
The short and the long,
The subtle and the gross:

May all beings everywhere,
Seen and unseen,
Dwelling far off or nearby,
Being or waiting to become:
May all be filled with everlasting joy.

Let no one deceive another,
Let no one anywhere despise another,
Let me one out of anger or resentment
Wish suffering on anyone at all.

Just as a mother wither own life
Protects her child, her only child, from harm,
So within yourself let grow
A boundless love for all creatures.

Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.

Then as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth.

            Sutta Nipata
            Buddha’s Discourse on Good Will

The Belonging

Presence ever yet around me,
Strength unasked for by my side,
Love unwarranted, before, behind me.
God within me, God without.

Held still tightly like a child,
With the freedom of a woman,
Certain, sure and more aware,
God is mine and I am God’s.

Seen a Love—total, powerful,
Though the vision is yet half-veiled.
God closer, nearer, breathing,
Claiming me, as I would him.

            Edwina Gateley    

I contend that in a divided Christianity, instead of reading the Bible to assure that we are right, we would do better to read it to discover where we have not been listening… Then the Bible would be doing for us what Jesus did in his time, namely, convincing those who have ears to hear that all is not right, for God is asking of them more than they thought.

Raymond Brown from The Churches the Apostles Left Behind

You, Lord, are the bread of life and the well of holiness. Just as you feed me day by day with the food that sustains my body, keeping me alive on earth, I pray that you will feed my soul with the spiritual bread of eternity, making me ready for heaven. Just as you satisfy my bodily thirst with cool water from the rivers and streams, I pray that you will pour the water of holiness into my soul, making my every word and action a joyful sign of your love.

Basil of Caesarea

Easter

Lord, you have passed over into new life, and you now invite us to pass over also. In these past days we have grieved at your suffering and mourned at your death. We have given ourselves over to repentance and prayer, to abstinence and gravity. Now at Easter you tell us that we have died to sin. Yet, if this is true, how can we remain on earth? How can we pass over to your risen life, while we are still in this world? Will we not be just as meddlesome, just as lazy, just as selfish as before? Will we not still be bad-tempered and stubborn, enmeshed in all the vices of the past?  We pray that as we pass over with you, our faces will never look back. Instead, let us, like you, make heaven on earth.

            Bernard of Clairvaux, 12^th c.

Beginners

Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

“From too much love of living,
            Hope and desire set free,
            Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea—“

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

            how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
            not as oppressors.

            Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
            into the sea of nonbeing?

            Surely it cannot
                        drag, in the silt,
                         all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet—
       there is too much broken
            that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

 We have only begun to know
    the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
      complete its gesture,  

so much is in bud.

            Denise Levertov

A BLESSING FOR THOSE WHO CARE

In your caring for others
            God cares for you.
As you give your life to others
God gives himself to you.
As you pour out your love
            God pours His love into you.
            God bless you and guide you.
            God strengthen and refresh you.
            God give you courage and hope
that His deep and loving care is revealed through you.

            David Adam, Vicar of Lindisfarne

For those in the Armed Forces of our Country

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad.  Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

In his poetic eulogy The World of Silence, the French philosopher Max Picard says that silence is the central place of faith, where we give the Word back to the God from whom we first received it. Surrendering the Word, we surrender the medium of our creation. We unsay ourselves, voluntarily returning to the source of our being, where we must trust God to say us once again. In silence, we travel back in time to the day before the first day of creation, when all being was still part of God’s body. It had not yet been said, and silence was the womb in which it slept.

            Barbara Brown Taylor

Be Still and Know

Today is a good day to be quiet.
It is grey and damp,
cool and calming.
The breeze is just enough
to nod the branches of new green~
reminding me to yield, to bend,
to give myself freely
to the unseen Mystery that is.
Should anyone ask me what I did today…
I shall tell them that I was quiet.

I shall tell them that I was quiet enough
to hear the robin’s wings as she returned
to her nest~
the nest I delighted in watching her
thoughtfully create a few weeks ago.

I shall tell them that the bumblebees seem
to prefer the rose-colored azaleas
to the soft pink ones,
and that I was drawn to the sound of their hum
as they danced.

I shall tell them that no sight could be more
breathtaking
than to look up from this scrawled upon paper
to a burst of sunlight on a lawn of green.

I am transfixed and transformed.

I am newly colored in this reflection of life
from whence I came.

I am about living,
about breathing,
about being.

Should someone ask…
I shall tell them how important it is
to be present,
to be open,
to free one’s soul
and say “yes” to one’s Spirit.

God is very near.
Rest in the grass, and imagine the
creation of green.
Hold the faces of flowers in your hands,
and see the Creator’s dreams.
Feel the magic of whirligigs,
and embrace the hope of every little seed.
Get your strength from the weeds,
and your comfort from
the steadiness and steadfastness of
brown earth.

In the quiet of this day…
God is here,
and
I am here~
and it is enough.

            Kathy Fuller Guisewite

Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot, Poet, Hebraist in France, 1153

            LORD JESUS, we praise you for this man and his love for you and respect for your heritage.  At a time when his contemporaries were condemning the local Jewish community, Bernard was open enough to see the spirit of holiness in Hebrew literature.  We praise you for his example of tolerance of others and appreciation for their holy writings.  Help us to see you in all people, and to treat followers of other religions, and those who do not follow a religion, with respect.  For it is in your name we pray.  Amen.

Bega, Founder of St. Bee’s Monastery, Gave to the Poor and Oppressed, 7^th c.

            SACRED THREE, we praise you for your daughter Bega.  Her courage in crossing the Irish Channel to Cumbria was matched by her compassion in helping the poor and oppressed people on both sides of the Scottish-English border.  We proclaim Bega’s strong leadership of her own community and rejoice that she was respected enough to substitute for St. Hilda of Whitby when her duties as abbess took her away from the convent.  We marvel that in the 7^th century, when travel was difficult, Bega assembled a circle of brilliant abbesses, all disciples of Aidan of Lindisfarne, to support one another.  When we are tempted to take on excessive responsibility or to go it alone, remind us of Bega and the others in her circle of abbesses (Hilda of Whitby, Ebba of St. Abbs, and Ethelreda of Elby).  Encourage us to support one another in our callings as they did.  Give us teachers like Aidan to nurture our continued spiritual growth.  For we pray in the name of Jesus, who sent the Holy Spirit to empower and comfort us.  Amen.

            From “She Who Prays”

The Body of Christ

            “The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

                                    The Book of Revelation

In the rain forest
each tree is a theophany,
each plant a possible savior.
Here the ant carries
cures for cancer,
here living flowers heal
souls as beautiful acts
of prayer.
Here birds sing ecstatic hymns
for the sacred dance
of feathered wings
and fur-soft feet,
and wildcats laugh
their anthems.

Here, by gray machine
and fires of greed,
a single species moves
in toxic fear, desperate
to kill.
Here humanity carries on
the act of crucifixion
over and over and over again.
Once the blood of God
spilled on the arms of a tree.
Now the blood of the trees
spills over our soul.

In killing the body of God
for profit, we are killing ourselves,
bark and bird, song and soul
going down as one.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Testimony (for my daughters)

I want to tell you that the world is still beautiful.
I tell you that despite
children raped on city streets,
shot down in schoolrooms,
despite the slow poisons seeping
from old and hidden sins
into our air, soil, water,
despite the thinning film
that encloses our aching world.
Despite my own terror and despair.

I want you to look again and again,
to recognize the tender grasses,
curled like a baby’s fine hairs
around your fingers, as a recurring
miracle, to see that the river rocks
shine like God, that the crisp
voices of the orange and gold
October leaves are laughing at death.
I want you to look beneath
the grass, to note
the fragile hieroglyphs
of ant, snail, beetle. I want
you to understand that you are
no more and no less necessary
than the brown recluse, the ruby-
throated hummingbird, the humpback
whale, the profligate mimosa.

I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
“a great and common tenderness,”
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it.

            Rebecca Baggett from “Women’s Uncommon Prayers”

Blessing of the Stew Pot

Blessed be the Creator
and all creative hands
which plant and harvest,
pack and haul and hand
over sustenance—
Blessed be carrot and cow,
potato and mushroom,
tomato and bean,
parsley and peas,
onion and thyme,
garlic and bay leaf,
pepper and water,
marjoram and oil,
and blessed be fire—
and blessed be the enjoyment
of nose and of eye,
and blessed be color—
and blessed be the Creator
for the miracle of red potato,
for the miracle of green bean,
for the miracle of fawn mushrooms,
and blessed be God
for the miracle of earth:
ancestors, grass, bird,
deer and all gone,
wild creatures
whose bodies become
carrots, peas, and wild
flowers, whose bodies
give sustenance
to human hands, whose
agile dance of music
nourishes the ear
and soul of the dog
resting under the stove
and the woman working over
the stove and the geese
out the open window
strolling in the backyard. 
And blessed be God
for all, all, all.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Burning Bush

Ascend the high regions
of the body, seek out
its mystery steadfastly,
become prophet in your own
desert, enter the narrow
vault and refine your sight
to its shimmering darkness.

Ride out the corpus callosum,
dark red against gray,
riverborne, cross over, enter
the sparkling cave downward,
descend to the blood source,
marrowstone.
It floods over itself,
darkly radiant, blinding.

Tell no one.
Bow low, humble yourself
before the burning bush
at the center where
brainstem hums, ganglia
enter and extend—
flames short forth in longing
to transform each thought
with fire no light or darkness
dare extinguish.

Here, deep and hidden
like a dear danger
within you,
speaks God.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

Be

Reality is intricate and vast.
            You are real.
Life is cosmically generous.
            You are gifted, alive.
The Universe holds.
            You are embraced,
             you belong.
It is enough.
You are enough.

Do not be centered in
your self or the world,
but be a Self centered in God.

Love and let Love.

Listen—Life is in love with you!
Your life longs for your trust.

Your life holds
and graciously
carries you through.

Every breath is an act
of faith and courage.

Your body believes.

Breathe.

Be inspired and let go.
Be faithful.
Be brave.

Be.

A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life.

            Wendell Berry

            One time I when I was visiting a friend, he kept playing with his dog, throwing a plastic bone for the dog to go fetch.  It not only wasn’t a real bone, it wasn’t even a convincing fake; pieces of meat were painted on the plastic.  Yet no matter how many times he threw the bone, the dog ran after it, with great excitement.  He kept chasing this plastic bone, which had no nourishment whatsoever, as if it could somehow satisfy him.  Suddenly I realized: that’s my mind, chasing after thoughts.  The mind doesn’t think it’s chasing a plastic bone with pieces of meat painted on it, of course.  It thinks it’s pursuing something that will have a vital effect on its life.  But if we look more closely at the objects that the mind chases, we notice a similar lack of nourishment.

            In contrast to that, think of a lion.  Can you imagine how a lion—sitting in that majestic way they have—would react if you threw him a bone (especially a plastic one)?  He wouldn’t even notice.  He’d just stare at you.  Lions stay focused on the source.  That’s the attitude we need to have, sitting with that deep calm, that steadiness of purpose, not chasing after every bone that flies our way.  We need to develop lion mind.

            Larry Rosenberg in “Breath by Breath”

In some ways this entire practice, everything the Buddha said, is concerned with having respect—an infinite respect—for life.  That’s what living dharma is finally about.  It’s one of the things that Mother Teresa has shown us: that the poorest of the poor, in the last moments of their lives, are worthy of total regard.  So are the most ordinary events in our lives.

            Larry Rosenberg in “Breath by Breath”

            The religion of Jesus is not built around death.  It is not about sin and how to balance it with suffering.  It is not about judgment and punishment—or even about obedience and reward.  It is precisely against all such dark and fear-provoking “measuring” ideas.  It is about God’s unconditional love and endless creativity.  It is about the unlimited potential for goodness in people, for godliness in the world, for beauty in the earth and in human souls.  It is about the “kingdom,” malchut, the union of God with people for unlimited creativity.

Thou Infinite One, it is Thy grace,
the highest opportunity for humanity
that we can sit and think and be together
to praise thee, O Lord.
O creative consciousness, O cosmos, moment of
positive existence, positive relationship,
positive love and brotherhood [sic],
dedicated unto this, the highest reward on this
planet for the individual being,
and You are the one who granted it.
Our gratitude for this, and may your blessings shower upon us
to make us healthy, happy, and holy
and may we live in a raised consciousness of
universal consciousness of love, peace, and harmony. 
Give us the power to exalt thee.
Give us the power to be thy channel.

            Yogi Bhajan in “Prayers for Healing”

A Balm in Gilead

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.

Sometimes I feel discouraged,
And think my work’s in vain,
But then the Holy Spirit
Revives my soul again.

If you can’t preach like Peter,
If you can’t pray like Paul,
Just tell the love of Jesus,
And say he died for all.

African-American Spiritual from “An African Prayer Book” edited by Desmond Tutu

The Dignity of Humanity

Christ took upon himself this human form of ours. He became human even as we are men and women. In his humanity and his lowliness we recognize our own form. He has become like a man, so that people should be like him. And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth, any attack even on the least of people is an attack on Christ, who took human form, and in his own person restored the image of God in all that bears human form. Through community and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. By being partakers of Christ incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which he bore.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “A Testament to Freedom”

One Family

We offer our thanks to thee
for sending thy only Son to die for us all.
In a world divided by color bars,
how sweet a thing it is to know
that in thee we all belong to one family.

There are times when we,
underprivileged people,
weep tears that are not loud but deep,
when we think of the suffering we experience.
We come to thee, our only hope and refuge.
Helps us, O God, to refuse to be embittered
against those who handle us with harshness.
We are grateful to thee
for the gift of laughter at all times.
Save us from hatred of those who oppress us.
May we follow the spirit of thy Son Jesus Christ.

Bantu prayer from “The African Prayer Book”

From the cowardice that dare not face new truths.
From the laziness that is contented with half truths,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Good Lord, deliver me.

Bread for Tomorrow, Kenya from “The African Prayer Book”

A Little Thankfulness

Thankfulness works in the Christian community as it usually does in the Christian life.  Only those who give thanks for the little things receive the great things as well.  We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts prepared for us because we do not give thanks for the daily gifts.  We think that we should not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been given to us, and that we must be constantly seeking the great gifts.  Then we complain that we lack the deep certainty, the strong faith, and the rich experiences that God has given to other Christians, and we consider these complaints to be pious….If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian community in which we have been placed, even when there are not great experiences, no noticeable riches, but much weakness, difficulty, and little faith…then we hinder God from letting our community grow according to the measure and riches that are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

            Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “Life Together”

Thoughts on Marriage

Marriage is more than your love for each other.  It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God’s holy ordinance, through which God wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time.  In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to God’s glory, and calls into the kingdom.  In your love you see only the heaven of your happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility toward the world and humanity.  Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal—it is a status, an office.  Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and humanity.  As you first gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God.  As high as God is above humanity, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of marriage above the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love.  It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

Detachment

I hope that, in spite of the alerts, you are enjoying to the full the peace and beauty of these warm, summerlike Witsuntide days.  One gradually learns to acquire an inner detachment from life’s menaces—although “acquire detachment” seems too negative, formal, artificial, and stoical; and it’s perhaps more accurate to say that we assimilate these menaces into our life as a whole.  I notice repeatedly here now few people there are who can harbor conflicting emotions at the same time.  When bombers come, they are all fears; when there is something nice to eat, they are all greed; when they are disappointed, they are all despair; when they are successful, they can think of nothing else.  They miss the fullness of life and the wholeness of an independent existence: everything objective and subjective is dissolved for them into fragments.  By contrast, Christianity puts us into many different dimensions of life at the same time; we make room in ourselves, to some extent, for God and the whole world.

Love One Another

What does it mean to be a Christian congregation when in the midst of many beneficial and nice activities that may take place in it, the one thing needful is not completely clear or obvious—that the members of the congregation are simply to love one another?  What kind of picture does a church offer itself and the world when not even this foremost duty is taken seriously?  If anything human in the early church was able to convince the pagans it was simply this—they could see, really see with their very eyes, that the two neighbors, the master and his slaves, the brothers on bad terms with each other all at once were no longer against each other, but with each other and for each other.  When they became Christians, they simply experienced radical outward changes.  Do we think perhaps that because we are already Christians, nothing needs to change anymore?  Or hadn’t we better say:  If we would really become Christians, immediately much would change in our lives too?  Do not these words bring judgment even to a Christian community even if everything is happening in a congregation, even if they all came to church, even if they did many good things and yet “if it has not love, it is nothing.”

The Upside-Down World

If the final “condemned” or “saved” that is to be spoken over our life really only depends on whether a person had love or not; if the verdict before God’s throne actually needs “love or nothing,” then all of a sudden the world looks very different than before, then all of a sudden much of what was previously big in the world abruptly plunges down into this nothingness, this emptiness, this destruction of life.  Whoever strived for power and authority and honor, for pleasure and material wealth, whoever elevated oneself up above this world is toppled, judged, destroyed by this simple word of the New Testament (see I Cor. 13:1-3).  This striving is nothing, nothing at all.  The world order is turned upside down when it takes these words seriously: “but [if I] have not love, I am nothing.”  But what really matters now is that our piety, our Christianity, our religious life, and all its seriousness has also fallen along with the world…In the presence of love, everything else becomes small.

Those who believe all things and hope all things for the sake of love, for the sake of encouraging and helping others must suffer and endure.  For the world takes them for fools, perhaps even for dangerous fools because their foolishness may even provoke malice into exposing itself.  But only when malice comes to light can it ever be fully loved.  Therefore love endures all things and is radiant and happy in this suffering.  For this suffering and endurance make love greater and greater and more and more irresistible.  Love that endures all things gains the victory.  Who is this love if not the one who bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, and even had to endure all things all the way to the cross?  The one who did not insist on this own way nor seek himself, the one who did not allow himself to become bitter, and who did not keep a record of the evil deeds perpetrated on him and thus was overwhelmed by evil?  The one who even prayed on the cross for his enemies and in this act of love utterly overcame evil.  Who is this love Paul spoke of in these verses if not Jesus Christ himself?  Who is meant here if not Jesus?  What is the mark of the whole chapter [of I Corinthians 13] if not the cross.

Hope beyond Measure

A faith that really keeps to what is invisible and lives by it, acting as if it were already here, hopes at the same time for the time of fulfillment, of seeing and possessing.  We hope for it as confidently as the hungry child to whom his father has promised bread can wait a while because he believes.  Yet eventually the child wants to get the bread.  Or take the music listener who willingly follows a dark interplay of disharmonies, but only in the certainty that these disharmonies will have to be resolved sooner or later.  Or think of the patient who takes a bitter medicine so that the pain is finally taken away.  A faith that does not hope is sick.  It is like a hungry child who does not want to eat or a tired person who does not want to sleep.  Humankind hopes as surely as it believes.  And it is not a disgrace to hope even beyond measure.

The Judgment of the Church

While the church is in the world and is even a bit of the world, it cannot hope to represent itself as a visible communion of saints.  Secularity means renunciation of the ideal of purity.  This has nothing to do with secularization.  The church has been in process of becoming world, not some “pure” entity since its origins.  Not even primitive Christianity was “pure.”  Otherwise, one confuses church with a religious commuity and the gospel with the ideal of an experience.  Perfectionistic sectarianism from Greek mysticism to Tolstoy has attempted to usurp the Kingdom of God for itself (Matt. 11:12).  They pretend to have revealed this kingdom.  They pretend to have made it clearly visible in the holiness of people.  However, the church, having become the worldy form or revelation, ought not to succumb to this temptation.  It ought not to seek to justify itself before itself and before the world.  Its justification comes from God alone.  It cannot anticipate the last judgment.  “You shall not judge!” also applies here.  God has reserved to the divine self the separation of the wheat from the chaff.

A Communion of Sinners

The church…remains the church of the baptized and, therefore, a communion of sinners.  All baptized persons belong to it, no matter what their works may seem to be.  Renunciation of its claims to “purity” leads the church back to its solidarity with the sinful world.  Through courageous acknowledgment of its being world, the church is perfectly free from the world to become Christian.  It has no more respect for the “shrines” of the world.  Fact to face with outcasts, it is as free as the nobility.  It has as its place not only with the poor but also with the rich; not only with the pious, but also with the Godless.  All are world.  It faces both groups with the same impartiality.  There is no sphere from which it distances itself out of anxiety over going astray.  Faith has completely conquered the world both for the outcast and for the rich.  Only this kind of church is wholly free, the church that confesses its secularity and thereby claims to be an ecclesia perfecta, or perfect church.

Such a Time as This

We have grown up with the experience of our parents and grandparents, that people can and must plan, develop, and shape their own lives, and that life has a purpose, about which people must make up their minds, and which they must then pursue with all their strength.  But we have learned by experience that we cannot plan even for the coming day, that what we have built up is being destroyed overnight, and that our life, in contrast to that of our parents, has become formless or even fragmentary.  In spite of that, I can only say that I have no wish to live in any other time than our own, even though it is so inconsiderate of our outward well-being.

Contempt for Humanity

There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity.  We know quite well that we have no right to do so, and that it would lead us into the most sterile relation to our fellow human beings.  The following thoughts may keep us from such a temptation.  It means that we at once fall into the worst blunders of our opponents.  The person who despises another will never be able to make anything of that person.  Nothing that we despise in the other person is entirely absent from ourselves.  We often expect from others more than we are willing to do ourselves.  Why have we hitherto thought so intemperately about human frailty and temptability?  We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.  The only profitable relationship to others—and especially to our weaker brothers and sisters—is one of love, and that means the will to be in community with them.  God did not despise humanity, but became a human for humanity’s sake.

May beings all live happily and safe
And may their hearts rejoice within themselves.
Whatever there may be with breath of life,
Whether they be frail or very strong,
Without exception, be they long or short
Or middle-sized, or be they big or small,
Or think, or visible, or invisible,
Or whether they dwell far or they dwell near,
Those that are here, those seeking to exist—
May all beings rejoice within themselves.
Let me no bring about another’s ruin
And not despise in any way or place,
Let them not wish each other any ill
From provocation or from enmity.

            The Buddha from “Prayers for Healing”

Where Life Begins

not in tidal pools but
 in the thermal vents between
Earth’s shifting plates in
the Ring of Fire—the Mountain below

The urges of Earth
are there;
in the hot hidden
down-under places

between worlds
where surface meets
surface and melts
in the opening.

This, then, is
the cosmic kiss
where all that
is hard touches
its own Other,
transforms
enticingly,
consummates
and makes
the Never-before.

Where so sun gives light,
no micron escapes
the Divine Fire
from Within, surging
and frothing to come forth

and secret clay
crystals merge
and marry
in such wet heat
of Meeting.

This is where
Life Begins
then:
neither here nor there,

Meeting God

The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian living in the diaspora recognizes in the nearness of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God.  In their loneliness, both the visitor and the one visited recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body.  They receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy.  They receive each other’s blessings as the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ.  But if there is so much happiness and joy even in a single encounter of one Christian with another, what inexhaustible riches must invariably open up for those who by God’s will are privileged to live in daily community life with other Christians!  Of course, what is an inexpressible blessing from God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trampled under foot by those who receive the gift every day.  It is easily forgotten that the community of Christians is a gift of grace from the kingdom of God, a gift that can be taken from us any day—that the time still separating us from the most profound loneliness may be brief indeed.  Therefore, let those who until now have had the privilege of living a Christian life together with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of their hearts.  Let them thank God on their knees and realize:  it is grace, nothing but grace,that we are still permitted to live in the community of Christians today.

Will for the Future

The essence of optimism is not its view of the present, but the fact that it is the inspiration of life and hope when others give in; it enables people to hold their heads high when everything seems to be going wrong; it gives them strength to sustain reverses and yet to claim the future for themselves instead of abandoning it to their opponents.  It is true that there is a silly, cowardly kind of optimism, which we must condemn.  But the optimism that is will for the future should never be despised, even if it is proven wrong a hundred times; it is health and vitality, and the sick person has no business to impugn it.  There are people who regard it as frivolous, and some Christians think it impious for anyone to hope and prepare for a better earthly future.  They think that the meaning of present events is chaos, disorder, and catastrophe; and in resignation or pious escapism they surrender all responsibility for reconstruction and for future generations.  It may be that the day of judgment will dawn tomorrow; and in that case, thought not before, we shall gladly stop working for a better future.

Interrupted by God

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God, who will thwart our plans and frustrate our ways time and again, even daily, by sending people across our path with their demands and requests.  We can, then, pass them by, preoccupied with our more important daily tasks, just as the priest—perhaps reading the Bible—passed by the man who had fallen among robbers (Luke 10:31).  When we do that, we pass by the visible sign of the cross raised in our lives to show us that God’s way, and not our own, is what counts.  It is a strange fact that, of all people, Christians and theologians often consider their work so important and urgent that they do not want to let anything interrupt it.  They think they are doing God a favor, but actually they are despising God’s “crooked yet straight path” (Gottfried Arnold).  They want to know nothing about how human plans are thwarted.  But it is part of the school of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service.  We do not manage our time ourselves but allow it to be occupied by God.

Self-Centered Love

There is … a “merely emotional” love of neighbor.  Such love is capable of making the most unheard of sacrifices.  Often it far surpasses the genuine love of Christ in fervent devotion and visible results.  It speaks the Christian language with overwhelming and stirring eloquence.  But it is what the apostle Paul is speaking of when he says:  “If I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames,” (I Cor. 13:3)—in other words, if I combine the utmost deeds of love with the utmost of devotion—“but do not have love (that is, the love of Christ), I would be nothing” (I Cor. 13:2).  Self-centered love loves the other for the sake of itself; spiritual love loves the other for the sake of Christ.  That is why self-centered love seeks direct contact with other persons.  It loves them, not as free persons, but as those whom it binds to itself.  It wants to do everything it can to win and conqueror; it puts pressure on the other person.  It desires to be irresistible, to dominate.  Self-centered love does not think much of truth.  It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the person loved.  Emotional, self-centered love desires other persons, their company.  It wants them to return its love, but it does not serve them.  On the contrary, it continues to desire even when it seems to be serving.

            Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “Life Together”

Unmediated Community

Because Christ stands between me and another, I must not long for unmediated community with that person.  As only Christ was able to speak to me in such a way that I was helped, so others too can only be helped by Christ alone.  However, this means that I must release others from all my attempts to control, coerce, and dominate them with my love.  In their freedom from me, other persons want to be loved for who they are, as those for whom Christ became a human being, died, and rose again, as those for whom Christ won the forgiveness of sins and prepared eternal life.  Because Christ has long since acted decisively for other Christians, before I could begin to act, I must allow them the freedom to be Christ’s.  They should encounter me only as the persons they already are in Christ.  This is the meaning of the claim that we can encounter others only through the mediation of Christ.  Self-centered love constructs its own image of other persons, about what they are and what they should become.  It takes the life of the other person into its own hands.  Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person as seen from the perspective of Jesus Christ.  It is the image Jesus Christ has formed and wants to form in all people.

            Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “Life Together”

The Community as Church

The existence of any Christian communal life essentially depends on whether or not it succeeds at the right time in promoting the ability to distinguish between a human ideal and God’s reality, between spiritual and emotional community.  The life and death of a Christian community is decided by its ability to reach sober clarity on these points as soon as possible.  In other words, a life together under the Word will stay healthy only when it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society, a collegium pietatis, but instead understands itself as being part of the one, holy, universal, Christian church, sharing through its deeds and suffering in the hardships and struggles and promise of the whole Church.  Every principle of selection, and every division connected with it that is not necessitated quite objectively by common work, local conditions, or family connections is of the greatest danger to a Christian community.  Self-centeredness always insinuates itself in any process of intellectual or spiritual selectivity, destroying the spiritual power of the community and robbing the community of its effectiveness for the church, thus driving it into sectarianism.  The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door.  We must, therefore, be very careful on this point.

            Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “Life Together”

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark.  Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

            Wendell Berry from “Prayers for Healing”

The Need for Joy

Since ancient times, acidia—sorrowfulness of the heart, “resignation”—has been one of
the deadly sins.  “Serve the Lord with gladness” (Ps. 100.2) summons us to the Scriptures.  This is what our life has been given to us for, what it has been preserved for up till now.  Joy belongs, not only to those who have been called home, but also to the living, and no one shall take it from us.  We are one with them in this joy, but never in sorrow…Joy dwells with God; it descends from God and seizes spirit, soul, and body, and where this joy has grasped us it grows greater, carries us away, opens closed doors.  There is a joy which knows nothing of sorrow, need, and anxiety of the heart; it has  no duration, and it can only drug one for the moment.  The joy of God has been through the poverty of the crib and the distress of the cross; therefore it is insuperable, irrefutable.  It does not deny the distress where it is, but finds God in the midst of it, indeed precisely there; it does not contest the most grievous sin, but finds forgiveness in just this way; it looks death in the face, yet finds life in death itself.  We are concerned with this joy which has overcome.  It along is worth believing; it alone helps and heals.

            Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “A Testament to Freedom”

God’s Instruments

Christ kept himself from suffering till his hour had come, but when it did come he met it as a free man, seized it, and mastered it.  Christ, so the Scriptures tell us, bore the sufferings of all humanity in his own body as if they were his own—a thought beyond our comprehension—accepting them of his own free will.  We are certainly not Christ; we are not called on to redeem the world by our own deeds and sufferings, and we need not try to assume such an impossible burden.  We are not lords, but instruments in the hand of the Lord of history; and we can share in other people’s sufferings only in a very limited degree.  We are not Christ, but if we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real sympathy that springs, not from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer.  Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior.  Christians are called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by our own personal sufferings, but by the sufferings of our brothers and sisters, for whose sake Christ suffered.

A Share in Suffering

It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith.  One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous person or an unrighteous one, a sick person or a healthy one.  By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities.  In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world—watching with Christ in Gethsemane.  That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes human and a Christian.  How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?

            Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “A Testament to Freedom”

Look Up!

Look up, you whose eyes are fixed on this earth, you who are captivated by the events and changes on the surface of this earth.  Look up, you who had turned away from heaven to this ground because you had become disillusioned.  Look up, you whose eyes are laden with tears, you who mourn the loss of all that the earth has snatched away.  Look up, you who cannot lift your eyes because you are so laden with guilt.  “Look up, your redemption is drawing near.”  Something different than you see daily, something more important, something infinitely greater and more powerful is taking place.  Become aware of it, be on guard, wait a short while longer, wait and something new will overtake you!  God will come, Jesus will take possession of you and you will be redeemed people!  Lift up your heads, you army of the afflicted, the humbled, the discouraged, you defeated army with bowed heads.  The battle is not lost, the victory is yours—take courage, be strong!  There is no room here for shaking your heads and doubting, because Christ is coming.

            Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “A Testament to Freedom”

Our Flesh

The body of Jesus Christ is our flesh.  He bears our flesh.  Therefore, where Jesus Christ is, there we are, whether we know it or not; that is true because of the Incarnation.  What happens to Jesus Christ, happens to us.  It really is all our “poor flesh and blood” which lies there in the crib; it is our flesh which dies with him on the cross and is buried with him.  He took human nature so that we might be eternally with him.  Where the body of Jesus Christ is, there are we; indeed, we are his body.  So the Christmas message for all people runs:  You are accepted, God has not despised you, but he bears in his body all your flesh and blood.  Look at the cradle!  In the body of the little child, in the incarnate Son of God, your flesh, all your distress, anxiety, temptation, indeed all you sin, is borne, forgiven, and healed.

            Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “ A Testament to Freedom”

The Terror of Christmas

Only when we have felt the terror of the matter {of God’s coming at Christmas,} can we recognize the incomparable kindness.  God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world.  And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love.  God makes us happy as only children can be happy.  God wants to always be with us, wherever we may be—in our sin, in our suffering and death.  We are no longer alone; God is with us.  We are no longer homeless; a bit of the eternal home itself has moved into us.  Therefore we adults can rejoice deeply within our hearts under the Christmas tree, perhaps much more than the children are able.  We know that God’s goodness will once again draw near.  We think of all of God’s goodness that came our way last year and sense something of this marvelous home.  Jesus comes in judgment and grace:  “Behold I stand at the door…Open wide the gates!”  (Ps. 24:7)

            Dietrich Bonhoeffer  from “A Testament to Freedom”

The holidays may be over but Christmas continues through Epiphany, Jan. 6

God’s Merciful Action

In the feast of Christmas we are directed in a new way to t