Wednesday Wondering - February 28, 2024

Ecclesiastes 3: 1 – 8

1For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

2    a time to be born, and a time to die;

    a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

3    a time to kill, and a time to heal;

    a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4    a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

    a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5    a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

    a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6    a time to seek, and a time to lose;

    a time to keep, and a time to throw away;

7    a time to tear, and a time to sew;

    a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8    a time to love, and a time to hate;

    a time for war, and a time for peace.

Reflection

I have been wondering this past week about the many emotions that I have been faced with, and the reality is that many of them are contradictory emotions. I was in a car accident on Monday morning and although I was frustrated, with both myself and the other driver, I did not let my frustration impact the way that I dealt with the other driver. I have lived a life where getting angry, showing frustration, has been frowned upon, so I tend to bottle those ‘negative’ emotions up and just push them down, rather than deal with them. I have often wondered if this is the way that I should be dealing with them, or is there a better way?

For many of us this is a well-known piece of scripture and often times we pull these particular passages out when one whom we have loved has died. But I also think that these verses speak deeply to us in our everyday lives. I would like to share a story from Rabbi Brian Zachary Mayer:

A few years before children and my beloved minivan, I sit behind the wheel of my red Acura TSX in a line of cars waiting to enter a parking garage. Yet another opportunity to practice patience.

Soon enough, I am next to the man in the booth.

“$10,” he says.

I give him a twenty and an “I thank you.”

He adds my money to the large stack of bills in his hand. I wonder how it feels to hold that wad of cash. He hands me a ten and a receipt and presses the button to lift the gate.

Before I press the gas, I notice the sign behind him.

$8 FOR THE FIRST TWO HOURS.

“Hey, I’m not going to be here longer than an hour,” I say.

His gaze is fixed off towards the distance. Silence. He says nothing.

I try a more direct approach: “Can I get the $2 back? I’m not going to be here longer than an hour.”

“You didn’t tell me,” he says sharply.

I counter, “I’m telling you now.”

“You didn’t tell me when you came. No refund.”

He points to the sticker on his booth: NO REFUNDS GIVEN.

“Come on,” I say. And I wait.

He is better at this game than I am.

The car behind me, seeing that no transaction is happening and that the gate has already lifted, gives a polite honk.

“I’d like your supervisor’s number,” I say.

Nothing. He is stone-faced. He knows that I’m probably not going to spend the time to call, even if he gives me the right number.

A chorus of beeps and a shout come from behind me.

I refer to him using profanity,  as I punch the gas and leave to find a parking spot.

I chastise myself for losing my cool, remind myself that I am human, and then chastise myself again for not being able to just let it go. It’s just $2. And my outrage seems ridiculous. After all, I had just given $5 to a woman standing on the freeway off-ramp.

A phone call to Marla (ROTB’s longest-serving board member) sets me straight. She says, “You have every right to be angry. You were ripped off.”

And that’s when I realize it: telling myself that I shouldn’t be upset when I am upset does not help.

In fact, it makes it worse.

I would be horrified to hear a parent tell their upset child “Just get over it.”

Yet I do that to myself.

How often in our own lives do we not give ourselves the grace to feel exactly what we are feeling at the moment? How often do we resort to negative self-talk, rather than allowing ourselves to feel what we might be feeling, berating ourselves for feeing a certain way? My parents always told me that our emotions are neither good nor bad, they just are, but it is what we do with them that matters. The reading from Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a time for everything under God’s sun. There is a time when we might be angry. There is a time when we might be sad. A time for us to grieve. Pretending that we are not allowed to feel these emotions doesn’t help us, it only stops us from processing them. I think that many of us could honestly say, that we have been through a lot in the course of our lives. It is okay to feel sad, confused, angry, tired. It is okay to not be okay.

In God’s creation there is time for it all. To know that we are not alone in how we feel can help us to accept that we can feel what we feel. To know that God knows all of our feelings can allow us to truly feel them and then process and move beyond them. There is a time for everything, we just need to recognize that that time might be right now, what we are feeling right now. To not allow ourselves to feel only hurts ourselves. So I invite you to not tell yourself that you don’t have a right to be upset when you are upset. I invite you to have compassionate self-talk. To speak to yourself with a softer, gentler voice that tells you that it is all right to feel exactly as you feel. To examine those feelings so that you might come to understand them more, not hide them away like they don’t exist. God comes to us with compassion and love, let us come to ourselves with compassion and love as well.

Prayer

God of all seasons and of all times. Help us to remember that you come to us in love. That you come to us with compassion challenging us to be people of love and compassion in our own lives. Help us to remember that this also means that we are called to be loving and compassionate to ourselves. Help us to remember that there is a time for everything in your creation. Give us the strength and courage to face what we are dealing with in our own lives, to feel all that we are experiencing in a way of love and compassion for ourselves and those around us. We ask this in the name of the one who walked the dusty roads offering love and compassion to all, your son, Jesus. Amen.

Wednesday Wondering - February 21, 2024

Scripture

Daniel 6: 10 - 13

10Although Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he continued to go to his house, which had windows in its upper room open toward Jerusalem, and to get down on his knees three times a day to pray to his God and praise him, just as he had done previously. 11The conspirators came and found Daniel praying and seeking mercy before his God. 12Then they approached the king and said concerning the interdict, “O king! Did you not sign an interdict, that anyone who prays to anyone, divine or human, within thirty days except to you, O king, shall be thrown into a den of lions?” The king answered, “The thing stands fast, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be revoked.” 13Then they responded to the king, “Daniel, one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or to the interdict you have signed, but he is saying his prayers three times a day.”

Reflection

I have been wondering lately about this idea of presence. We all have those friends who, although we don’t see often, when we do it is like no time has passed and we pick up where we left off. By extension, I have also been thinking about God’s presence, and our being present, or open, too God in our own lives. What does it mean to have a presence in someone else’s life and what does it mean to have God present in our lives, or maybe the better question should be what does it mean to be present to God in our lives. The reality is that we live in a very busy, hectic, world. Sometimes it seems as if there are so many opposing forces pulling on our lives. We have family commitments, friends, acquaintances, and all of the other things that the world tells us must be important in our lives if we are to be successful. We seem to be a people who schedule our lives to the maximum because, I wonder, if we don’t have a full schedule, if we are not ‘doing’ something, then our lives are not complete or fulfilled, or successful. But I wonder if we actually need more in our lives than a full schedule? 

I was out for lunch with a good friend of mine recently and although this is a friend whom I care deeply for, it seem as if they are so busy that we rarely, if ever, have time to spend together. Even when we do manage to spend some time together it ends up being very limited as there is always another thing that needs to get done. This is not something that is intentional, it just happens to be the reality of their life. The difficult thing is that in some ways the time that we do seem to be together almost feels like the crumbs of their life. This is not to say that our friendship is not important, but rather it is a commentary on how busy life is for both my friend and myself that we don’t get a lot of time to be with those who are important in our lives. How many times have we felt that way with people in our lives? How often have we lamented the fact that we seem to always only get the crumbs of someone’s life? But in reality how often do we only offer God the crumbs of our own lives? I wonder how many times we don’t think of God, unless we need something? 

The reading that I chose today speaks about making room in one’s life for God. Daniel had been taken into exile in Babylon after the fall of Jerusalem. Eventually Daniel was working for the King of Babylon in his court, as a trusted advisor. This was a position, as an advisor to the king, that was required a lot of time, energy, and responsibility, it was a job that held a lot of importance. Yet, in the midst of all that had happened in his life Daniel made it a habit to go home and pray to God 3 times a day, inviting God to be a part of his life always and throughout the entire day. How often do we invite God to be a part of our own lives? I wonder if maybe we only really reach out to God when we have challenges that we are facing, or petitions that we hope God will hear, or maybe it is only when something good happens in our lives and we offer our thanks to God. When we only reach out when we need something, or when we are grateful for something, are we only offering God the crumbs of our lives? I believe that it is important to have an ongoing relationship with God, allowing God’s presence to be felt in our lives and being open to God at all times in our lives. Maybe we need to offer God more than the crumbs of our day and instead wake up inviting God into our lives in the morning, during the day, and in the evening, inviting God to be a part of every aspect of our lives.

Prayer

Loving God of presence, we ask that you accept all of our lives and not just the crumbs that we are tempted to offer. Help us to cultivate a practice of recognizing and speaking to you throughout the day, each and every day. Give us the courage to continue to be your people, to hear your call, and to bring your presence into our lives, in the midst of a world that seems to have discarded you. We ask this in the name of the one who came to be with us, your son, Jesus. Amen.

Wednesday Wondering - February 14, 2024

Scripture

Psalm 43: 3

O send out your light and your truth;

let them lead me;

let them bring me to your holy hill

and to your dwelling.

1Corinthians 13: 1 - 4

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Reflection

I have been thinking lately about this world that we currently exist in. Well it is more a wondering, or a contemplating, as I have struggled this last little while with everything that is going on around the globe. But, then we come to today, Valentine’s Day a day when we are told that we are to celebrate love. I have wondered what does it meant to celebrate love in the midst of such darkness in the world. It is even appropriate to speak of such things in a world that is so filled with anger and violence. So, let me be completely honest here, I am not immune to the anger of the world, it has at times affected how I have interacted with the world around me and I have struggled with my own reactions to the darkness of this world.

We speak a lot about love in the church. We speak of how we are called to love, even those who hate us. Yet, I think that we all know how difficult that can be. J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings, wrote, “ The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingles with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” Even though Tolkien might have been talking about the world of Middle Earth, this quote speaks to our world as well. It speaks to the reality that we live in a world that can be very dark, but it also speaks to something more. This quote speaks to another reality and that is the same reality that is reflected in the scriptures that I chose today. It is the reality that even in the midst of darkness we are called to be people of love. We are called to see the light of love in the darkest of times, not just when everything is good. The Psalmist speaks to the desire to see God’s light in the darkness and for the light to lead them forward. Paul in the letter to Corinth speaks to our need to be those who bring that light, that love, to what we for the power of love is the power that will allow us to endure, hope, and believe that even in the midst of darkness there is still some goodness, some light. Tolkien then builds on this as he speaks to the fact that even in grief love exists and sometimes through the experience of grief our love grows ever stronger. It is a challenge for us as Christians, it is a challenge for us on the Valentine’s Day, to not reduce the idea of love to romanticized version of love, but rather to see love as that which will bring light to the darkness of the world. It is our challenge to see beyond what we know of the world to something more.

I am sure that there are many who, when reading this, will say that this is ‘all well and good, but it is not that easy!’ I couldn’t agree more, it is difficult but if we understand God to be Love then we must rely on God for the help that we need in order to love, as we are called to love in this world. Sarah Speed wrote a poem for today, which I would like to share with you:

Tune My Heart

Tune my heart.

Like an old violin,

like a worn down piano,

I have been left out in all manner of weather;

I have been left alone for far too long.

So like a concertmaster

with a steady hand,

tune me up.

Listen and learn

the cracked keys,

the broken strings.

Memorize the forgotten intervals

that even I did not know.

And then, when we’re ready,

When this creaky heart is tuned,

teach me a new song.

To love in this world today, to really love in this world today, I believe that we need to reach out too God to teach us a new song. It is a song that will help us to love in the midst of darkness. It is a song that will bring light in the midst of darkness. It is love, the chance for us to bring God’s love to this world. That, I believe, is who and what we are called to do.

Prayer

God of Expansive Love, shine the light of your love into our lives so that we might be bearers of that light to a world that lives in darkness. Give us the courage to truly love in a world where it is too easy for anger to take hold. Give us the wisdom to know that it is only through love that we might truly change the world. We ask this in the name of Love Incarnate, your son, Jesus. Amen