Put Your Whole Self In: Connecting

Put Your Whole Self In: Connecting!

The play "Streetcar Named Desire," is about loneliness and love, about connection and the life that is lived, tragically, without connection. Blanche Du Bois, the heroine is trying to hold her life together. With her world falling apart, she is looking for solid ground, for a center to her life. In a way familiar to all of us she is looking for love, for a deep connection to another human being. The play really is quite sad as Blanche grasps for love in her life, ceaselessly talking, repelling the very people to whom she would be connected.

But, then something seems to turn in her life. Blanche meets a man named Mitch. Mitch, too, is very lonely. He is overweight and shy. Blanche shares with him one of the tragic and painful moments of her life. This strikes Mitch as he takes her in his arms and says, "You need somebody and I need somebody too. Could it be you and me, Blanche?” She looks at Mitch and with tears in her eyes she says this, "Sometimes -- there's God -- so quickly."

That's how it can happen in our lives, they turn, so quickly. We long for human contact, for the connections to be made, connections that will run deep in our lives that will strike us to the soul, binding us to another. And it happens -- just like that. I am amazed at how quickly those changes have come in my life. The heart reflexively turns, and in turning says "Yes" to love, "Yes" to a deep connection to Life. When we say yes to God in this way, as we affirm our human connection to the Divine, we find that we experience a re-orientation in our lives, what Jesus referred to as being "born from above," or what we know of as being "born again."

The connections that we make in our lives are where we find reason to live, connected to God and to one another. In this our lives have depth and purpose. This Sunday we will be celebrating the human and the divine connections that make us who we are in Love, in Christ. I look forward to seeing you all in church.

Blessings, David

Advent and the New Day

I was writing my newsletter article for November and found myself out on the proverbial tangential limb. Here is the result. See how it begins like a newsletter and veers into the esoteric. I offer it up to you. David

As we move into November the trees change color and remind me that winter is coming. I become aware of the darkening world, the long nights and short days. November and December remind me of things ending, the end of another cycling of days which we call a year. Just when the nights seem the longest, the world's spiritual traditions proclaim a light within the dark, a calling into a new year, a new day. In the church we call this new year's day "the first Sunday of Advent." The newness of life invites us to participate, invites us to welcome the light of the world. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "the glory of the Lord shall be revealed."

One place that revelation comes to us is in scripture. Scripture is many things: in our scripture we can find a moral code for the good life, we can read great stories -- the very stories that inform us about who we are and where we come from . In scripture we discover "our people," the people who preceded us in faith. One often overlooked quality of scripture is that scripture also reveals, it removes the veil of our illusions and introduces us to "reality," our real lives as they are lived, in Paul's words, "in Christ." For the study of scripture Isaiah's words might again work, "the glory of God shall be revealed."

Some people have asked me why we are studying koans on Wednesday night. The koan tradition comes to us from China and is thousands of years old. The intention of koans is to help us have a direct vision of reality, to see things as they are rather than as we imagine them to be. I thought that it would be an interesting project to apply the centuries old study of koans to our own Christian scripture. An example of a scripture that can be read as a koan might be this saying of Jesus:

"The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is in your midst."

To read this as a koan would be to begin to ask questions of oneself, each question leading you more directly into reality itself. Examples of these questions might be: Where is the kingdom of God? How do you enter the kingdom of God? Show me the kingdom of God. See how the questions ask us to put our finger on something that does not come "with careful observation?" Instead, the koan and the questions invite you to directly experience "the kingdom of God" in your life. To be lead into spiritual experience is a gift. A reading of scripture from this perspective is an invitation into the continuous renewal of our lives. To read scripture thus might well fulfill Isaiah's, "the glory of God shall be revealed."

So, as Advent approaches, get ready for new year's day. For the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.

Blessings,

David