Psalm 126
Advent 3 - Year B
Lent 5 - Year C
Proper 25 (30) - Year
B
Thanksgiving - Year B
Wonderful new words from 10 years ago were penned by Ruth Duck and set to that marvelous tune, Resignation. It is # 2182 in The Faith We Sing.
It moves from "the seeds we watered once with tears sprang up into a song," to recognizing there are those now caught in mourning and suffering wrong who need active prayer, "may seeds they water now with tears spring up into a song."
As we sing our song we strengthen others to sing their song. A sign of our being one, as Jesus prayed for us and all, will be when we can sing together. The image here is not a battle of the bands, but the interplay of tonalities and rhythms even more widely cast than the category of world music.
For one who can sometimes manage a johnny-one-note participation in singing and finds that any melody I try morphs into an entirely different key and tempo, this is a remarkable image. Imagine, even off-key singing is still singing.
William Butler Yeats put it this way in closing his "Dialogue of Self and Soul,"
I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/december2002.html
Rejoice!
Restore!
Rejoice!
Restore!
etc.
What a wheel of life we are on.
In theory we are not on a dynamometer that lets a vehicle run in place to measure output. Rather, our theory is that each revolution is going some where.
Feel like you are spinning your wheels? Call for restoration.
Feel like you can glimpse a destination in the distance and it is getting closer? Offer rejoicing.
Do both with good integrity (acknowledging the reality of the other perspective) and good energy (call and offer enthusiastically).
It has sometimes felt as though our lives have been stolen by our brothers and sisters of the religious right who can only measure restoration in terms of going back rather than returning to go ahead. We can hardly breathe within their constraints. We have been in a time when the only reality has seemed to be the necessity of our own calling out, "Restore, Restore, Restore," with no rejoicing available.
Here we have two different calls for restoration battling one another. Perhaps one way to break this impasse is to be diligent in seeing the possibility of celebrating anyhow. I hope to see some of you at the next Kairos CoMotion Celebration coming up soon (Oct 30-Nov 1 in Madison, WI). You can still come even though we are past the deadline. Go to Kairos CoMotion for more information.
It may well be that we need to see beyond the moment and anticipate rejoicing in our release from bondage by our own. What can fear do to laughter but try to do it in and set up the eventuality of rejoicing having the last laugh.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/october2003.html
Psalm 126 or Psalm 119:9-16
How can young people keep their way pure?
They can't.
Even hedged in by a law within their heart there come times of weeping. After all, we are make in the image of god's who weep and repent.
So we sometimes wait for perspective that will allow the presence of shouts of joy for coming home again for the first time.
What are the great things G*O*D has done alongside us? Commitment with our whole hearts to one another - a gift beyond our own self. Learning the distinction between wisdom accumulated over the years and idolatry of tradition beat into the present over the years. Affirmation of great things surfacing within ordinary things.
We can reap where we have not sown. Joy in the morning still is present after the tears of the evening. So we keep on.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/march2004.html
Psalm 126 or Luke 1:47-55
There seems to be a time for all things under heaven. Satisfied for the moment,? - hang on a bit and you'll have an opportunity to once again come face-to-face with suffering and need to yet again come to terms with it. Having great difficulty? - uno momento, it will all come 'round right in some valley of love and delight.
Seedtime to harvest, powerful to lowly, hungry to full, weeping to joy. There are longer arcs and shorter ones, but they are none-the-less arcs of pendulum periodicity. These seem to go on with some timed frequency beyond our usual ken. Getting in tune with these arcs leads us to participate in them through some planned perturbation. Get ready to participate in moving your life arc and that of all of us together into a new phase. We do this by not acquiescing to our current state and not simply taking the opposite pole. Our call is to holding both arcs within ourselves, being the unity they have fractured from.
Jesus leads us into the space between past promises and emerging mercy. Here we travel with GOD, as did Mary and Jesus and others, to bring to limited situations an expanded picture of options. In between we can find healings not bound by distance. In between we can find exemption from laws. In between we can find partnership, not patriarchy. In between we can find our rich selves emptied and our fallow selves cultivated once again. In between we can find a connection between our unique and our cultural selves.
How would you describe the arcs you are between? Where between are you? Which way would you ordinarily be traveling? How might you effect a change in that expectation?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/december2005.html
Psalm 126
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
or
Luke 1:47-55
I Thess. 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28
Gaudete Sunday is a moment of joy while waiting. It plays the same role in Advent as Sunday's do in Lent - a reminder of resurrection. In these lections that joy is connected with justice, renewal, and a voice from the wilderness, calling forth renewal through justice.
Given the devastation of many generations it takes a call from an unexpected source to get through to us regarding the source and location of renewal. These forgotten, avoided, and fearful waste places of life lie across and away from our usual religious Jordan boundaries.
A way in which this shows up is found in Psalm 126.
We can look back:
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
"The Lord has done great things for them."
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.
In our present:
The joy of justice revealed comes to the fore, the straight-jacket of the past with all its apparent fatalism has changed streams in ways we could not predict. We rejoice at having come thus far.
In our present:
The recognition that justice has not yet been completed raises its reality. We yet stand in need of not getting trapped in the fatalism that today will be extended into the future, ad infinitum. We rejoice in anticipation of going further.
We can look ahead:
Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home
with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.
Or, as Paul puts it:
Rejoice always,
pray (be renewed) without ceasing,
give (renewed) thanks in all circumstances;
for this is the will of God
in Christ Jesus
for you.
- - -
where is there not trouble . . .
Darfur, Iraq, Figi . . .
poverty increasing, hunger growing . . .
abusive homes in our community . . .
divided hearts within ourselves . . .
trouble enough for any day,
particularly one after Human Rights Day?
where is there energy to renew
broken dreams, dashed hopes
if not in laughing justice
connecting
re-connecting
restoring
shouting for joy
revived with a flood of justice
we pass this gift forward
shedding light abroad
testing a wasteland voice
echoing
repairing
rejoicing
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html
Remembering past restorations gives hope for a restoration in the present day. This is very upbeat and a helpful reminder in the midst of difficulties. [Listen to the Song of the Reaper]
This is one of those passages that can bear repeating unto vanity. Inasmuch as life is what life is, this are among the most contemporary of expressions.
As a way of testing this, spend a week with this Psalm. Speak it and sing it over and over. At the beginning of the week note your level of enthusiasm for the work before you. At the end of the week note your enthusiasm. I wouldn't be surprised if this perspective of a different ending spot than starting spot makes a change in the way in which you are able to be persistent in doing good.
- - -
restored
restocked
revived
in retrospect
we find perspective
to willingly perspire
not bound by the past
but taught by it
we don't repeat
eventually our revival
is not a recycling
but a new joy
share
fill
dream
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
Psalm 126 or Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22)
Job 42:1-6, 10-17 or Jeremiah 31:7-9
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 10:46-52
So many cry out for mercy!
They cry here and there, directing their cry in the direction of their heritage (that which narrowly points a direction to a source of mercy). So some cry inwardly. Some to a process that may alleviate suffering, Some to Allah the Merciful, or YHWH, or Jesus. Some to some yet unknown over an invisible horizon.
Those of us who are not an ultimate source of appeal for mercy are caught in the middle. We hear the cry. We hear a response to go to the crier and carry them to the source of mercy they seek.
We are in a privileged position and need to find it in ourselves to behave honorably within such - responding to both calls with alacrity even when we are not part of the system currently at work. As a Muslim we might help a crier to the Mercy of YHWH; as a Christian, to Allah the Merciful; as a Jew to Buddha's Paths; as Wiccan, Native Person of any tradition, Atheist, Egoist, New Ageist, or whatever, to any other journey.
This position is one of friendship that goes beyond Job's friends who had their own agenda of how mercy might be engaged. We help folks move to an experience of mercy rather than convince them of some reason for their suffering.
- - -
when our cries for mercy
found their source
and we were able
to cease our weeping
we were like those
who dream without
desiring to wake
our dream mouth
was filled with laughter
connected with joy
rather than irony
seeing new sources
for rejoicing
than our previous one
to find our dream
and our awaking
so closely allied
stunned our reason
into silence
weeping became
joy seed harvested
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html
There are comedic dreams and tragic dreams. Here is an example of the comedic. No matter what the difficulty or intensity of a nightmare, things come 'round right. Restoration after disaster brings laughter.
The prayer of the glass-half-full psalmist is that others who are tearful will find a way to see joy eventuating from their exile into dryness. There is a presumption of life being a comedy, not just because of the importance of timing (and what is Advent about but timing), but because difficulties are wonderfully resolved.
A question we are left with - what to do with a comedic dream in the presence of wide-awake tragedy? Do we step back from our disaster and trust a sweet by-and-by? Do we use the dream as motivation when there is not yet an armload of blessed sheaves to bring home? Do we dismiss the dream as "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato"?
What dream is holding you in the midst of economic uncertainty, political conspiracy, or on-going genocide? Might it hold something as unimaginable in daylight as a manger or a Baptizer John – both of which portend beyond current powers and processes?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html
Note that dreaming is not a passive activity.
Dreaming includes laughter as future becomes ever more present.
Dreaming includes shouting "Joy!" at the stick-in-the-mud's resistance to move from past to present.
Dreaming also includes all the pain and sorrow that is a context in which laughter is such a release.
Dreaming also includes all the difficult work to prepare, plant, and nurture seeds into releasing their future.
May you dream strongly enough to bear and release the present into a better future.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/03/psalm-126.html
We dream we have been restored before.
We pray we will be restored again.
Advent dreams of fulfillments prior.
Advent prays for fulfillment on its way.
We live beyond our past.
We live before our future.
Tears became joy.
Weeping becomes blessing.
And so we stand, past bound.
And so we stand, future free.
We mourn being stuck here.
We laugh to move on.
When?
Always.
= = =
Comment from Reader:
How does it play, this way
(with much gratitude and apology, Wesley,
for "response" is always much easier than "call"):
****
We pray we have been restored before.
We dream we will be restored again.
(If we have not been restored before,
the dream becomes a nightmare)
Advent prays for fulfillments prior.
Advent dreams of fulfillment on its way.
(Has any of my life really mattered?
and if it hasn't, may it yet?)
We live beyond our future.
We live before our past.
(An ancient Greek perspective saw our past spread out before us
as we moved backwards into an unknown future)
Tears became weeping.
Blessing becomes joy.
(A few tears become weeping;
blessing comes unsought, unexpected: joy follows)
And so we stand, past free.
And so we stand, future bound.
(After all, NOW is an open moment, free,
except for what is still, NOW, unresolved, which our future binds us to resolve)
We mourn having to move on.
We laugh being stuck here.
("Get it right and hold it" is the ultimate idolatry, no one is exempt;
but after all, we know how to negotiate our particular briar patch)
When?
Already and not yet. We are prolepts.
(Advent is hell. We are in hell;
Advent is heaven, we are in heaven)
T.
- - -
Comment from Wesley:
Thanks, Tom - it plays well both these ways and some others. The trick is to be able to pull the appropriate play out for a given situation.
Our past helps us know a bit about categories and styles of prayer that might be helpful and to shape what might be prayed about in a current context. It also is the stuff of which dreams are made and idealized/idolized beyond its initial reality.
Our future is but a dream that begins to take shape as we pray/act it into today.
The interaction between prayer and dream continues, background now and now foreground. Likewise with being bound or freed by our experiences of the past or fantasies of the future. And yet again with abiding awhile or traveling on.
I do like the shift you made with:
Tears become weeping.
Blessing becomes joy.
Hope you heard my postlept laughter to your proleptian assertion.
Wesley
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/12/psalm-126.html