Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22

Lent 4 - Year B


Even fools are redeemable, healable.

There is more than enough foolishness to go around. Let us pray for all the fools that led us to war. Let us pray for all the fools that were led to war. Let us pray for all the fools who protested war so ineffectively. Let us pray for all the fools who got caught between warring parties. Let us pray for all the fools who will profit from the war. Let us pray for all the fools who pray for all the fools.

May we find the joy and thanksgiving available to replace the warring madness. May faithful love lead to honesty and rejoicing. May redemption lead to a vast silence.

- - -

Dave (Reader)

Thank you for your words of healing and hope!

I have found myself down, discouraged and feeling so powerless.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/march2003.html

 


 

The redeemed (those who recognize G*D's steadfast love and are able to respond to it instead of react to it) give thanks that steadfast love, beyond any expectation that it would still be there, is yet available. This action of thanks is a spark or flow of energy that comes from a completed circuit.

Remember back to your own days and moments of thanksgiving that goes beyond official turning on and off of thanks (a proclaimed national day, a letter to grandma for a birthday gift, etc.). Now can that be turned into anticipation of thanks to come and an intentional working toward that which completes a circuit between steadfast love offered and responsive love returned. When working well this small circuit has become connected with other similar circuits to become a larger presence of steadfast love now awaiting additional responses.

Whether an individual sized circuit or a congregational sized circuit, the experience of wholeness leads to a life of activity oriented toward an expansion of thankfulness. Whatever might get in the way of such an expansion is thankfully left behind (read sacrificed).

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/march2006.html

 


 

Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Numbers 21:4-9
Ephesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21

The poisonous language of complaint usually ends up in a community that bites each other. Any way one turns there is complaint ready to strike. Everyone is a heel to be struck and a heel who strikes.

In a poisonous context, working from the inside is no longer an option for healing. It has to come from the outside. A discipline or methodology needs to be designed and followed for, left to one's own devices, the poison is too strong to fight against and poison breeds poison - that which we abhor, we do; that which we intend, we don't.

Look clearly at the result - complaint becomes a snake. Look clearly at this connection. Perhaps by turning it around and seeing the snake on its way (still on a pole, but ready to descend to bite again) we might yet change our complaining ways.

Wherein such clarity that can stop a consequence by seeing it? Here it is prayer. Prayer for a larger context. Prayer of thanks. Prayer for mercy. Prayer for deeds of light.

In this Lenten season prayer is not just duty, but a lens through which we might yet see more clearly. Or, as St. Richard of Chichester prayed in the 13th century and the Shrine of St. Jude modified for use as a midday prayer in the 21st:

Merciful Friend, Brother and Redeemer
May I know you more clearly
Love you more dearly
And follow you more nearly
Day by day.

[may this prayer be more, this day, than a pious covering of crusade preaching (complaint) against another faith - Richard did have his limits and blind-spots, as do we all]

- - -

a serpent is raised as a question mark
"is this what you want to become"
that question twines itself around our lives

a messiah is raised an exclamation mark
"come on in life is fine"
that call echoes within and through our lives

a singular you is raised to take them both
and demonstrate that steadfast love endures
that good works are - our way of life

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html


 

The redeemed or freed or those who can peek through those lenses of beauty and belovedness know a gift of perspective on issues that runs alongside them. They are not particularly surprised when consequences come nipping at their heels, when delays of healing occur.

It is a gift of perspective that makes all the difference. To see, both desperate situations and outs that are mysterious enough to be connected with G*D, is a blessing. It is also a gift worth pursuing, a skill set worth developing.

G*D, source of trouble and source of solution (who needs Satan or Seraphim when G*D's at work), is quite a song and quite a singer. I hope you appreciate this kind of music of the spheres as it is so prevalent in life. May you help G*D sing well.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html

 


 

Congruence of experience and interpretation is often tricky. 

Experience slips and slide away from being pinned down. Memory is famously prone to emphasizing a minor point and elevating it to prominence. Timing is crucial as to when we are open for a conversion interpretation of a previous set of experiences. Are we able to see a new healing while still trapped in a web of debilitating habit of hand and heart? Experiences pile up and our ability to find an organizing principle is notoriously slow and suspect.

Our heads are often set to interpret a next experience only in light of the ethos of the prominent group in our life (past or present, seldom a desired one to come). Having learned that G*D is always the right answer for a pleasant surprise and absolved of pain (except as a set-up for a blessing yet to arrive), we are separated from self and creation/nature. Prevailing ethical standards are ethically suspect when they refuse to allow a second opinion.

So, if you can identify having had a new opening into a preferred future, rejoice, give thanks, and begin living as though tomorrow were already present. When freed from external or internal oppression, develop a steadfast love of your own.

If you can recast a sinful way away from always being particularized and leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy, there will be a background rebalancing of prevenient grace and brokenness. In this reconstituted equation, sparks of paradise will light fires of warmth, not wrath.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/03/psalm-1071-3-17-22.html