Asking for Our Authentic Selves

You delight in truth in my inmost being.
You teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
Psalm 51:6

God not only accepts your deepest, truest self — God delights in your deepest, truest self.

Did you know this?

God is interested in what is most authentically you, no matter how messy or confused or selfish or vulnerable or stuck that you might be.

During Lent, I studied some of the questions Jesus asked during his life, and I was struck by how often he sought to move past the veneer and get at the most genuine, real part of the people to whom he was speaking.

I imagine that Jesus asked “What are you looking for?” and “Do you wish to go away?” and “Do you want to be made well?” because he actually wanted to hear the answers.

These are questions for which there is no right or wrong answer, there is only the real answer of what’s true for the listeners at that moment. They are invitations into further reflection and conversation.

If I find that I don’t actually want to be made well, why not? What is holding me back? What am I valuing more than wellness?

The Psalmist declares that God desires truth in our inmost being. I heard that theme echoed over and over in the questions of Jesus — the desire to know us as we truly are, in the most hidden places of our hearts.

God is asking for our most authentic selves — we have only to answer.

Waking Up: Reflections on the meaning of Yom Kippur

The morning traffic is slow on my drive to work, and I remember. It is Yom Kippur. The public schools in my neighborhood are out for the Jewish holiday.

One of my school teacher co-workers tells me she didn’t know what to say to her students to acknowledge their holy day. “What do you say on Yom Kippur?” she asks me. I’m not sure.

At our staff meeting, our Jewish co-worker reads us this reflection by Rabbi David Wolpe on Yom Kippur, and I learn:

Yom Kippur is about death.

As Rabbi Wolpe writes:

Yom Kippur is a powerful existentialist statement. In its best known prayer, the Unetaneh Tokef, we are reminded that we are fleeting, that our lives are like the wind that blows, like the flower that fades, as a passing shadow.

I think about the article I read last week about another shooting in East Oakland, another child in the schools I served hit by stray bullets of someone else’s fight. I think about a woman in our congregation who was shaken last week after witnessing a stranger’s suicide when they leapt from a tall building. I think about a different woman in our congregation whose doctor found, accidentally, the tumor she just had removed – she breathes a cancer-free breath today.

The Psalmist cries:

Lord, let me know my end,
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting my life is.

You have made my days a few handbreadths,
and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight.
Surely everyone stands as a mere breath.

But, of course, because it is about death, Yom Kippur is also about life.

It is about being present to the goodness of another day, being open to the receiving of the grace of living, the mercy of God. It is about humility and open hands.

“It’s kind of like Ash Wednesday,” our Jewish co-worker explains. “You repent, you restart. On Yom Kippur, the Book of Life is closed, and you can again appeal to God for forgiveness.”

- – -

Later, in the afternoon, I drive South, away from the city.

The trees lining the highway, blushing their first touches red and gold, lean in and whisper Wake up, be alive in this moment.

The gray clouds slouch across the strip of sky, and they too lean in and whisper Wake up, be alive in this moment.

Suddenly it is as if the whole world is a quiet chorus bringing me to life, calling me to gratitude for the fleeting brush of this one moment, this one breath, and I feel so tiny and so huge all at once.

And I remember that each breath I take is precious because of the first breath I won’t take.

Wake up.

You are already alive in this moment.

- – -

Joining the harmony of voices at SheLoves for the AWAKE Synchoblog. Go visit and read some other stories of awakening.

Delight

Delight yourself in the Lord…
Psalm 37:4a

Delight: to take great pleasure in; to please greatly; extreme satisfaction

My new favorite running route takes me on the footpath around Fresh Pond. It hugs the 2.5 mile perimeter of the pond, and — aside from occasional entry points from the neighborhood streets — the path is surrounded by trees.

It’s lovely.

Yesterday evening, I arrived at the footpath via one of these entry points at precisely the same moment a boy of 7 or 8 biked past. He turned to look at me as I stepped onto the path and, at just the same time, rode directly through a gigantic puddle.

His eyes, saucer-wide, stayed locked on mine for the whole trip through the puddle.

This particular puddle was not just wet; it was muddy. Supremely muddy. And in those few seconds, this kid was covered in mud — all up his back, splattered on his face, everywhere.

It was awesome.

The perfection of our timing, combined with my knowledge that riding through a muddy puddle as a kid is the ultimate adventure, made me so happy that I grinned and giggled out loud.

The boy, who had stopped his bike, was still staring at me. When I laughed, a quiet, tiny smirk of pure pleasure crossed his face, as though my joy had given him permission to savor the moment.

Delight.

May our experience of God be as joy-filled as the trip of a 7-year-old boy through a muddy puddle. May the openness of our hearts allow us to soak up the sweetness of every moment’s perfect timing. May the strength of our communities be measured by the belly-depth of our laughter.

Pentecost Reflections: Renewing the Face of the Ground

O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures…
These all look to you to give them their food in due season;
when you give to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
When you send forth your spirit, they are created;
and you renew the face of the ground.
(Psalm 104:24, 27-30)

Holy breath

Pentecost is a time for renewal.

It is a time for spirit-moving, community-building, radical-loving transformation.

And it is not just humans who are transformed and renewed, it is all of creation, according to Psalm 104. When God feeds the earth, the earth is nourished. When God takes “breath” (ruah) away from the creatures of the earth, they lose their own ruah, their own lives. God’s spirit is the power of sustenance; it is the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

God’s renews the very face of the ground, the Psalmist tells us. This word “renew” is the same word used by the Psalmist who implores God to “renew a steadfast spirit within me.” In the same way our spirits are upheld and refreshed by God, all of living creation is made new.

Living Soil

I think there is deep significance to this idea that God renews the face of the ground. Living in a non-agrarian society we have perhaps lost touch with the crucial and delicate complexity of soil. In “Two Economies,” Wendell Berry writes:

We cannot speak of topsoil, indeed we cannot know what it is,
without acknowledging at the outset that we cannot make it.
We can care for it (or not), we can even, as we say, “build” it,
but we can do so only by assenting to, preserving, and perhaps collaborating
in its own processes. To those processes themselves we have nothing to contribute.
We cannot make top­soil, and we cannot make any substitute for it;
we cannot do what it does…
For, although any soil sample can be reduced to its inert quantities,
a handful of the real thing has life in it; it is full of living creatures.

Soil itself is alive, made up of the myriad of tiny organisms that work together to create its magical, life-giving abilities. It is part of the life and death cycle which God creates, sustains, and renews.

Flying like humans

And Berry tells us something important: we cannot make soil like nature can make soil. That is to say, we cannot make soil like God can make soil.

Later in his essay, Berry writes:

We cannot do what the topsoil does, any more than we can do what God does
or what a swallow does. We can fly, but only as humans—very crudely, noisily, and clumsily.

Humans have profound creative power, but that creative power is not infinite. There are some things humans can create beautifully — like music and art, relationships and communities, praise and poetry — but there are other things they cannot — like rivers and mountains, storm clouds and sunsets, soil and grain.

This Pentecost, may we be reminded of both these truths:

the truth that we have important creative power we are called to live into fully; that we bear the mark of God’s fingertips on our beings; that we — like all of creation — breathe with the ruah of God; that we have an ever-present advocate in God’s spirit

and

the truth that we can fly only like humans, not like swallows; that we depend on God to renew the face of the ground, to meet our hunger and need; that our lives are for the magnification of God’s glory; that even when we cannot find the words, God’s spirit will speak into our speechlessness

Friends, go find some soil and admire the complexity of its life. God, thank you for your renewing spirit that moves in ways deeper than we can even imagine.

Wild Worship

O, sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvelous things!
Psalm 98:1a

Hamsters alive at night

One of my favorite things about working with kids is hearing them sing.

I remember earlier this school year when two first grade girls invited me to join in their game. They had created it themselves; it involved drawing some specific shape with chalk while singing a repeating chorus: “Hamsters alive at niiiight, hamsters alive at niiiight.”

Leaving aside the fairly creepy/ominous refrain, it was a pretty cute game.

This week at school the kids learned a song called “Don’t laugh at me,” which warned about the dangers of bullying and encouraged respect and diversity. It was sweet and moving to watch them all join in.

It also needs to be mentioned that if you take kids anywhere on any kind of public transportation, they will choose that moment to rehearse all the songs in their cute little repertoires as loudly as they can. Be warned.

Re-discovering our wild side

I love the Psalm for this coming Sunday’s lectionary because all of creation joins in the song: the sea roars, the floods clap their hands, the hills sing. It’s a raucous picture of worship, all noise and vibrancy, a celebration of praise.

Revisiting this Psalm got me thinking: When God does marvelous things in my life, am I giving God that kind of joyous, raucous praise? Am I bursting into spontaneous song that is so infectious that even the trees, the grasses, the stones must join in?

I feel so grateful to the children in my life for reminding me of the beauty of uninhibited, creative song. And I feel committed to doing the same.

Like David, dancing scantily clad before God with all his might; like Miriam, leading the Hebrew women in spontaneous praise after the Exodus; like Hannah, offering her own beautiful poetry of exalting praise — may we let go of our quiet worship and replace it with wild worship.

God has done marvelous things, indeed!

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