A line often used when when coaching someone in speech competition. Also a title of an old Buffy episode. Yesterday's entry felt more like a first draft of a sermon I was planning to give the following week. Ideas are there, but not really making any sense.
This last week has been a bit intense. I feel a bit like I am in the middle of a great labor. Truthfully we all are in that work, being reborn each day. Some days are harder than others.
My prayer life seems to begin the moment I open my eyes in the morning and generally, I try to say my night prayers around 10 p.m. I am still watching a movie as I fall asleep, I am thinking about cutting that out, if I can. It might be better for me to fall asleep in prayer.
I can fall asleep in prayer, just never in my house. I am most comfortable falling asleep in prayer when I am in the presence of the Eucharist. I suppose some people might find that disrespectful, but for me, it is a sign that "here is the safest place to be, with God," and I feel so safe that I can rest here.
It is such an odd journey. There is so much I think about that I don't post. I see people's lives growing closer to God and think, as time passes, if I can remember, I'll write about her or him...put time must pass. It seems like an invasion of privacy to write about many things just as they are happening. Yet, then is the time when it all seems to make the most sense.
I was in spiritual direction with someone a while back and that person told me that she was going through these things and as she said them aloud and as I heard them, they began to make more sense. And my perspective, that is, how I saw what she was doing, helped to ease the struggle of the work.
This, to me, is the concept of the Trinity. God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God: Mother, Child, milk. God: husband, wife, child. God: "when ever two or more are gathered in my name, there is love."
God is love. God is why we love. God is how we love. God is what we love.
We confuse that love with so many other emotions. The other emotions can be good or bad...but I am now completely convinced: if it is love than I am feeling, then it is God that I am feeling.
Everything else is secondary. Second is not bad, and is often quite good, but it is always second.
Because I understand this idea now, I can love as I have always wanted to love: truly, madly, deeply.
Since this love requires no specific object, it is free to love without ceasing. It does not use time as a construct. It does not have a scale with which to measure itself or others. It is completely free and enters into a relationship with shame or guilt. It does not try to control or manipulate things for a desired outcome. It does not pine for what it had nor fantasize about what it might get tomorrow. It is completely and totally present in every situation.
If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with
That is the beginning of a good idea. At some point, as we learn how to love as God loves, the first condition becomes a non-issue.
You are always with the one you love, so love the one you're with.
That idea is a bit harder to hold. If we believe what Jesus said, "Love one another" then when we are with an 'other' then we are commanded to love that person. If we love that person, then God is present...the Trinity exists in and through the act of loving.
So sometimes we are in the presence of great suffering. Many times we are in the presence of great suffering...at least I am. Being present to the suffering is a deep act of love. Trying to fix it, distract the person who is hurting, lying to them so your discomfort can go away...these are not acts of love.
When I pray with others, I try to be completely honest with myself and to God. Not being part of the suffering, my job is to proclaim the suffering. I can sing the lament to God for the people who are too injured to speak.
And that is what we do for each other...sometimes on a grand scale and sometimes in very quiet, private moments.
Be aware that everything we do is sacred. Everything we do and are is a gift from God to be returned to God with joy and gratitude, even our pain. Pain means we feel. It means we are still alive. It means we can still love. Love! Ah, then God is there!
As I was to be ordained, I wrote my Credo: "Life as Sacrament." The Board of Ordained Ministry in the UMC didn't get it. That's when I knew I had to go somewhere else.
For me life is always a sacrament. My life is an outward sign of an inward grace given to me my God.
Right?
Oh well...
Love, Cindy
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