Category: Sacramental Mystic

Blessings in All Things!

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

The Blessing of Winter is there are no Mosquitoes

The Blessing of Summer is …

You can say what you will about summer.

I’d say, it is that

winter will come again

so there will be no heat (except in the furnace)

and no mosquitoes!

Psalm 103:15-16-17

As for mortals, their days are like grass; they flourish like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children.

Romans 5:2

Our Lord Jesus Christ is through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

Words of Grace For Today

We always like to think we are more than we are.

It’s almost built into our DNA.

We strive to achieve more, to become our own godlets, to no avail.

We are but like grass, here one day for a short season, and blown down, mowed to nothing, overtaken by weeds, eaten up by even vegetarians, and the gone, just gone with only a few people who perhaps remember us to live on after us.

Short and brutish … that’s how life is described by poets and philosophers and even wise theologians and priests … though the last along with other wise people do not stop there.

They also go on to give God thanks for the greatness of creation we are privileged to participate in, and especially God’s Grace which gives us more than meets the eye, or rather just as can meet the eye of a faithful mystic, one who looks and sees God at work in the most common things of every day life.

Jesus brings us the story that tells us this Grace is ours to live in, to enjoy, to trust … and to share.

It is this steadfast love of God that gives us breath even when we should not be still alive at all. It is God’s steadfast love that promises that everyday common and usual events and things are much, much more … and we can see them as works of God’s steadfast love.

As we fear and love God, God is able to show us that we live in, work from, and can prodigiously share God’s steadfast love with all people.

Hot long daylight days, short ferocious loud and destructive storms, and cool calm after the heat of the day … all are blessings from God.

I’m not sure about the mosquitoes that just devoured me while I was outside for a few minutes … okay even they are blessings from God. I was driven back in to write and give God thanks.

This is God’s blessing – that we know how, can, and do give God thanks for all things … so much so that we pray for our enemies unceasing, that they may be a part of a double victory for Christ.

Let the storms come, let the heat come … even let the mosquitoes come in droves. There is calm after the storm, there is cool after the heat … and there is ammonia based glass cleaner to dry out the itchy poison the mosquitoes inject to get blood to flow to their bite. Itch, itch, itch. Itch to distraction, endless itch .. until the ammonia works it wonder and the bites settle finally to a comparatively marvellous calm. Thankfully there is no malaria here!

And the night settles in, the day is done. The only thing to do is give thanks, wash up, and sleep deeply in God’s embrace. Tomorrow promises to be another marvellous day, all in all.

Seeing the Light, Being the Light

Monday, April 12, 2021

No Matter How Dark

Our Horizons Seem

God’s Blessings Abound for Us

Jeremiah 33:9

This city shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and a glory before all the nations of the earth who shall hear of all the good that I do for them; they shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for it.

Luke 2:29-32

‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.’

Words of Grace For Today

God’s blessings …

God’s blessings are named by us humans in many and various ways.

God’s blessings often are equated with prosperity and power, independence and might, progress and children.

Except for the children, all this seems to be a complete misapprehension of God’s way of providing for God’s people.

God, rather (as so often made clear in Jesus’ story and people’s reaction to him and his story) blesses us with salvation, which God prepares in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to God’s people.

This salvation rarely looks like worldly prosperity.

It is a life coloured first with gratitude, humility, service, and grace … oh, and the wisdom to recognize God’s blessings as salvation, i.e. forgiveness (freedom from the bondage to sin) and sanctification (making us holy, set apart, to be the presence of God for all people … as the people of light who exercise God’s Grace and love for all people.)

God’s creation has a greatness in it, and we as part of creation share in that grand wonder: that God provides this as a way, place, time for us to exist and be awestruck.

God provides.

We get to receive and share …

and hope that also tomorrow will bring opportunities to be bedazzled by God’s love.

God’s Glory

Strikes Awe

into All Who See

Fleeting Sunshine on Smoke or Light of Life

Saturday, April 10, 2021

Much of life is fleeting as sunshine on smoke.

God’s blessings are sure and forever.

Psalm 71:9

Do not cast me off in the time of old age; do not forsake me when my strength is spent.

2 Corinthians 4:16

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.

Words of Grace For Today

What used to take little effort and next to no time or thought, now takes great effort and forging onward through pain, dealing with lack of clear sight, and being exhausted way too soon each day.

Fear makes it worse.

There is almost no resolution.

‘If you have your health that is everything.’

It’s a nice sentiment, though the truth is more clearly ‘if you do not have your health, then nothing else can compensate for that. Life is a finite experience, and without health (as old age takes if from us piece by piece) that finite experience becomes smaller and shorter and smaller and shorter and then will soon end.

Our real comfort is that God does not ‘unbless’ us as we get old and ill.

Even as our bodies and minds seem to waste away, God renews our faith and trust, and thus we are able to continue on, blessing others with all we have left in life, of life itself.

Anything else is a mirage.

Do You Listen?

Thursday, April 1, 2021

Look and See.

Listen and Understand.

Job 33:13-14

Why do you contend against him, saying, “He will answer none of my words”? For God speaks in one way, and in two, though people do not perceive it.

John 18:20-21

Jesus answered, ‘I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret. Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said.’

Words of Grace For Today

Listen.

God created us able to love. It is what life is about. It is what God is about for us.

Listen.

God created us able to listen. Able to hear God’s Word and Grace and Love for us.

Listen.

God also created us able to refuse to listen, refuse to love, and to refuse to understand what life is all about.

Whether we listen or not, God speaks clearly, loudly, and demonstratively obviously … in many and various ways, and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus most obviously.

Life abundant is available to those who listen. It is part of listening that we come to know the abundance of life is not in material things, nor the absence of material things, or in having more than others.

There are more ways to get through life than living an abundant life, loving God, self, others and all creation as God created us to live and love. None of the other ways is worth pursuing. The Devil collects payments all along the way until there is no life left.

Living by lies eats at you, until there is nothing left.

Living by injustice eats at you, until there is nothing left.

Living by greed eats at you, until there is nothing left.

Listen.

Living by love feeds you, until you realize life is wonderful, most wonderful when it is spent giving life abundant to others.

That’s the truth.

Listen or not, lies always remain lies, injustice always remains injustice, greed always remains greed: that is the truth.

Listen or not, God loves us unconditionally and wishes us to share that with all people.

Listen.

Furnace or Grace, What Do You Say Today?

Monday, March 15, 2021

God Speaks Clearly.

So

what do you say with your life today:

‘Into the furnace!’

or

‘Welcome to the Light of Christ!’

Daniel 3:17-18

If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.

Acts 4:20

For we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.

Words of Grace For Today

When God speaks, there is no one who ….

Well, that cannot be true, because people react on the full spectrum from loving worship to full our rejection that God exists, yet alone speaks clearly to people … for people to hear.

God is not a puppeteer, pulling the strings of control over humans, or any part of creation. Yet when some people hear God speaking, clearly, lovingly, they and we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard. That is the life of a sacramental mystic, who encounters God talking at every turn in creation, even in and among those most dangerous of animals, the two-legged kind that speak every kind of word on the spectrum from life-giving truth to life-robbing, evil lies.

What kind of word do you speak this day?

Amidst a pandemic, do you speak truth that supports, enhances, and inspired people to life healthily and abundantly, blessed by God.

Or are you off worshipping another kind of godlet, one who demands strict adherence to reality denying lies, controlled thoughts and expressions, and (like the king who is ready to throw Daniel and his companions into the furnace), the painful death of anyone who will not ‘fall into line’ worshipping your life-sucking godlet.

The powerful king who demanded Daniel worship his godlet, had not encountered God, Daniel’s God, who may or may not deliver Daniel (and us) from the fiery furnace of destruction (the actual fires of burning or the fire of lies that destroy our reputations.) Whether God chooses to deliver us does not deter us from remaining faithful. For we will not begin to worship a godlet who takes life from so many people, promising the greatest life, and delivering it’s followers into a long life more painfully greedy and selfish than death in a fiery furnace ever could be.

We have seen. We have heard. We have known. God is gracious, unconditionally loving, and prodigiously generous. We need nothing more than God’s blessings and opportunities to worship and serve God … with every word and breath … even if it be our last.

On the spectrum from life-giving, self-sacrificial, unconditionally loving (reflecting God’s Grace for us all) to the Devil’s empty promised, self-made life at the expense of others’ lives:

What kind of word do you speak this day?

From the outcast homeless poverty captured person to the most powerful ruler or judge of the day, God allows a simple question to sit before us each day:

What kind of word do you speak this day?

Searching Famine, Hear and Obey

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Listen and You Will Hear

the Colours of God’s Word

in the Sun Setting Through the Trees

Amos 8:11-12

The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.

Luke 11:28

But Jesus said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’

Words of Grace For Today

A great many religious efforts through history and on-going today are well described by Amos’ Words from God: They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.

To make up for the futility of our great and desperate searchings, we humans make up all sorts of things, religious things, rituals, ‘truths’ which are certainly nothing of the sort, ways of speaking, judgments against other people, wars, and great empires and ideas.

It is as if we have ourselves convinced that if we are seeking the Other, the divine, then what we do must be other than … well other than everything sane, practical, real, truthful, reasonable, understandable, and even reverent.

Yes, God is OTHER than we are, so other, infinite, immortal and on goes the list of how great God is compared to how miserably un-great we are.

All our efforts to bridge the gap between us and God are doomed to fail. That is the kind of gap that it is between Divine and us humans. Ah, you say, then with a long tradition behind you, ‘Why bother with God at all! Most likely God does not even exist!’ There certainly is no irrefutable proof of God’s existence, for sure!

The origin of our very idea of God is not knowable.

And for the faithful it does not matter.

We do not bridge the gap.

God created us and has gone to great lengths (in human terms of reference) to demonstrate to us that God already has bridged the gap between the Divine and us humans.

In a word we refer to it as God’s Word.

Jesus, the Word of God, God’s self, become human, so that we could encounter God as one of us, points us to how we can respond.

First off, we stop trying to reach God, or win God’s approval, or become one with God. God has reached us, given us God’s approval (freely, that’s Grace), and has become one with us.

We do not and cannot ‘have God’ in anyway, not in our hearts, minds, souls, or special religious rites of any kind.

God has us.

Second Jesus points us to obedience: Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it! We’ve made great traditions of obeying in order to be good enough for God. It’s all and always futile and destructive to us and those around us. Hearing God’s Word and obeying it is to trust that God has provided the Word for us to hear. It is trusting that we can hear it, without some special rigmarole or religious effort. It is trusting that we can obey it, not to earn God’s favour, but in response to knowing God has already granted us God’s favour, unconditionally and overwhelmingly abundant, so that we have enough to share with everyone else.

So we all know where that leaves us. We humans fight with each other who has God’s ‘real’ Word, and who ‘really’ hears it and obeys it.

Ahh Quatsch. Get over ourselves. God’s Word is not something we can claim over other people’s claims. It’s there. Written by our ancestors as they encountered God, mind you quite imperfectly so. God has put God’s Word all around us, in nature, in the materials we build houses and cities with. God’s Word is the stuff that makes a city a community, and a house a home.

Obedience is simple. Listen. Hear the ten commandments. They set limits. Hear Jesus’ Commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself and love even your enemy.

Limits and goal. Life is pretty simple. Listen and give it all you’ve got. You cannot take anything to the grave with you, so ‘spend’ it sharing God’s Word here and now.

If not now, when are you going to do what God created you to do?!

Mystic Communion With God

By God’s Grace Mystic Communion With God is Possible For Anyone

Saturday, March 13, 2021

Meister Eckhart

Philosopher, Theologian, Mystic

Dominicon Monk

born near Gotha 1260

Proverbs 16:33

The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is the Lord’s alone.

James 4:15

Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’

Words of Grace For Today

Many see that Martin Luther was pivotly influenced by Theologia Germanica, thought by many to be written by Meister Eckhart, while he was in hiding. Luther provided the title as he assembled editions of it from not commonly available manuscripts that came to his attention.

Luther is said to have written:

[N]ext to the Bible and St. Augustine, no book has ever come into my hands, from which I have learned … more of God, and Christ, and man and all things that are….Wikipedia.

While traditionally mystics are seen as having ‘ecstatic experiences’ of the divine, uniting themselves with the divine, unlike other humans, Luther’s theology provides much more profound understanding of the divine presence in creation: it is sacramental. That is God makes Godself known to any who wish to notice in the most mundane and common things.

This does not detract from the complete otherness of the divine, nor our being made in God’s image, nor our great distance from being anything perfect. Rather it affirms that God bridges the great gap between the infinite and finite. Traditionally Christians have affirmed that God is present in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist, and in the Water of Baptism, and in the Word preached, sung and prayed, and in the gathering of two or three faithful.

Sacramental mystics do not strive to attain unity with God. We affirm the long tradition since Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, and Paul, Augustine, and Luther: We humans are sinful and cannot save ourselves. God comes to live among us to demonstrate to us so clearly that God is with us, God’s Kingdom is at hand, and that God delights in being present with us and in creation for all to experience.

Creation gives witness: God is here with us. God has made us saints, though simultaneously we remain sinners. We are able by God’s Grace alone to reflect God’s unconditional love for all, to all.

What a life!

Our enemies ought to cower at the power of God, who knows each and every thing they do.

Our enemies ought to run toward God’s love, for only there can they be safe.

For God will eradicate all Evil in God’s own time.

God delights in being present with us and in creation for all to experience.

So we pray:

The lot is cast into our laps, but the decision is the Lord’s alone. If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that, for the decision is the Lord’s alone.

We trust that no matter what comes our way, God delights in being present with us and in creation for all to experience.

God gave his Son

We sin.

God loves us.

God gives her Son to die, to pay for our sins.

(About the pronoun for God, see the ending.)

We ought not suffer the consequences of our sins if Jesus pays the price for them, Right?

The consequence that we do not suffer is God does not honour the reality that our sins create: namely that we are separated from God.

The rest of the consequences, we and others still suffer. And we do it sometimes too often without any Grace.

Grace, it’s that wonderful attitude of God toward us,

that is so great and large that it may be hard to comprehend well.

Just say that God is dancing with us through life, and when we sin, taking a misstep in the dance, God does not step on our toes, even when we put them right under God’s nose … or rather feet.

Grace is how God dances with us, serene, always there, smooth, never predictable, but never strained or clumsy, … just there

especially when we deserve everything but God’s presence.

Grace, that’s how God responds to our sins.

One tradition explains it all by saying that there is a price to pay for every sin. We can pay it, or, as in times of old, we can offer a sacrifice, an offering to atone, or make up for, the sin. It’s sort of like not really paying but paying something not so bad instead.

Which leads to all sorts of traditions around altars and killing and blood and …

Even Jesus death is seen this way, as a sacrifice, offered by God, taken by us all (no scapegoating – but that’s jumping ahead-).

The conundrum of this view is that Jesus pays the price for our sins, but we still suffer the consequences, except that God is not separated from us. God remains with us, which is something (well actually it’s everything) but we humans have always wanted to be free from the consequences of our sins, because we seem to understand how terrible they are.

If we were still in the business of sacrificing, killing, and offering blood to God to atone for our sins, then Jesus as the sacrificial lamb would make a lot of sense.

A side step first: Jesus living and dying did not change God; it changes what we know of God, and how we know it. Jesus life story makes us able to know many things about God that we may not have been so able to know, and to know just by knowing a story.

Jesus as the sacrificial lamb, stepping right out of the altar sacrifice, blood and making good for sins in the temple, is a powerful image, and not at all to be lost.

The story God gave us with his son is quantum levels more significant.

God gave his son to show us that God has made the last sacrifice on an altar, a blood offering, a life offering.

And that is supposed to show us, simple and easy, that that’s the end of that.

And not just the blood offering, taking of a life, but the kind of sacrificing someone else, making them pay for what we have done.

It’s about Grace making it possible for us to be fully accountable for our own sins. Enough (and then some) scapegoating.

It’s easy to know Jesus’ story as the end to blood offerings, because we don’t do that anyway.

It’s a full reality pill to swallow, one that will transform our lives if we pay attention to the story, if we understand that Jesus’ story is supposed to be the last time that anyone scapegoats anyone.

That’s harder to swallow because … well we all scapegoat people, sometimes even innocent bystanders to the mess we make of our lives.

So: God gives his son … to teach us, to give us a clear story of how God intended us to live, and scapegoating is not any part of what God intended.

If we know that God forgives us, stays right by our side when we suffer the consequences of our own or others’ sins, then it is possible to be accountable for our sins. We do not need to scapegoat someone else in order to think that God still accepts us, in spite of the terrible sins we commit.

God loves us, forgives us, stays with us: that’s the purpose of God giving Jesus … so that we can know God’s grace first hand, and then give it to others.

Even at sunset, God loves, forgives and stays with us … in the light.

Dance. For God is dancing, singing, laughing with us.

Dance. For God is carrying us, wailing in pain, and crying with us.

Dance. That’s what we do, if we choose not to scapegoat someone else for what we’ve done wrong.

God gave his Son, so that we might truly live and dance.

Even if we only dance in our dreams.

’cause if you’re not dancing … you ain’t nothing doing.

Now where did I put that music, the song of God’s creation, dancing with light and snow and cold and heat and rain and drought and … well all of us.

Breathe

There is a way through any dance, any circumstance, any challenge.
Even when the light is nearly gone, there is a way.

Breathe,

because in the next moment wen you recognize that God is leading, you just might not be able to catch your breath, the steps are so wondrously tantalizingly

grace – full.

Now about that pronoun for God:

There is so much that God has made clear for us to know, but what God has not made clear is if God is male, female or other, or how we ought to use pronouns referring to God. So they are all available, some disturbing in their historical and hysterical use, abuse and demand that others use the ‘right’ one.

The one thing we know clearly is: God is also full of Grace about all the pronoun use/abuse/demands; and we can be, too, if we so choose.

The only thing I’m pretty clear on, is demanding that others … fill in the blank … is almost always counter-productive, and doing so about the pronoun used for God is counter-grace-full.

That’s a dance, too. I wish only that it were more often a dance of grace instead of anger.

Pronouns are important, language is important, but only if they are part of a dance of grace.

Breathe.

God gave God’s son so that we could all breathe, and dance with Grace.