Isaiah 55:1-9

Lent 3 - Year C


"My thoughts are not your thoughts," says G*D.

It is not that they couldn't be, but that they aren't.

When are we living up to our being G*D's image?

When are we living up to being co-creators (care givers of creation)?

When are we living up to being one with G*D - and Jesus and Buddha and Muhammad and Confucius and Rumi and Krishna and e.e. cummings and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ghandi and Joan Chittister and Thich Naht Hanh and whomever and more?

When are we living up to thinking beyond Jew and Gentile, female and male, slave and free, homosexual and heterosexual and multisexual, near and far, up and down.

All these and more are available - so seek while this larger, expansive thinking can be found or it will take a conversion of cosmic proportions to shift into seeing the dance of both foreground and background. [MISSING URL] To see beyond our first interpretation is to begin to think like G*D and gives us the energy to speak up, as did Abraham for Sodom and Moses for enslaved Israelites and Jesus for Crucifiers.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/march2004.html

 


 

In just how much of the image of G*D are we made? Are we partners with G*D or just associates? Co-creators? Just how much higher are G*D's ways and thoughts than our own?

All too often we turn this into an eternal co-dependency rather than a movement toward holiness for both G*D and ourselves - a revelation or wholeness of both and all. One book that talks about the maturing of G*D (not needing to show off) is The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery by Richard Elliott Friedman. Here is a sample, "It is ironic that, starting with Bible scholars, we have begun to use the intimate name of God again, especially since the nineteenth century, precisely in the period of acknowledged divine hiddenness. Let us hope that we are not using it in vain, but that we are moving closer to the entity that the name represents. The name Yahweh probably means "that which causes to be." And that which causes to be is what we are seeking. It is what we have been seeking all along. We may be very close to it. There is some likelihood that, as some of the conscious matter of the universe, we are created more in the divine image than we have suspected. There is some likelihood that the universe is the hidden face of God." (p 284)

The holiness questions of theosis, sanctification, perfection are importantly applied here.

- - -

prevenient grace
never so far away
a turn toward Being-In-Love
is always available

when might the lord not be found
if present in grace
if present in ghenna
if present in Dachau and Sudan

when is the lord absent
in towers tumbling
in buses crashing
in nations warring

since salvation is universal
and assured for all
we might as well get on with it
preemptive mercy ho!

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

 


 

Come for water: Come for Torah. Thus runs some rabbinic commentators. Wherever your yearning and call for nurturing rain takes you, follow.

With this interpretive tool we continue a journey of redemption, of transformation.

We need manure from below to bring additional growth elements to the soil of being. We need rain from above to activate the release of compost.

When manure and rain work together a new reality begins to be spoken into being - receive food without money and wine and milk without cost. Bread will be more than simply bread, it will be a revival of ancient dreams, present forgiveness, and future fulfillment. For there cannot be bread without wheat from fertile soil and adequate rain and community reapers and millers and bakers and feasters. Do be sure to read the whole psalm to know again what joy you will have in leaving whatever your current exile entails and to come home secure.

What is good for the wheat is good for the fig and the delight of citizens of Newton MA and the world. As you proceed into the day's activities may you recognize opportunities to be a manure-carrier and a rain-maker.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/03/isaiah-551-9.html