In the Beginning

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

John 1:1-5

               Today we have two very interesting passages that talk about the beginning of the world.  We have this story in Genesis, which tells us so much more about God and the nature of creation than it does about the hows of creation.  We learn from this story that God is creative, that this is the very nature of God to create, to make new, to shape. We also learn that God has a vision before acting, and that the very images of God begin the process of creating.  We learn that God speaks and the world is created, that it is in speaking, or moving thoughts out of ourselves through words that creation happens.  We learn that God values the passing of time and chooses to mark it with days and nights, and that God sees value in both light and dark, in days and nights.  We see that God values life and delights in huge diversity, creatures of the sea, animals that fly, creatures of the land, with so many different types and kinds.  We learn that God wanted relationship and creatures called humans who could be companions and have genuine interactions with God, ones that God would recognize as reflecting Godself.  We hear that the plan was not for killing, even for food, in the original.  Instead, to all animals and people was given the grasses and the seeds and fruit. We see that the work of creating is God’s work and is important, but that rest is also important.  And finally and most importantly, we come to see that all of this was made supremely good.  That creation, that earth, that life, that all animals and plants and stars and the moon and sun: all are very, very good.  Original blessing: something much stronger, by the way than any kind of “original sin” because it comes from God-self.  We learn therefore to appreciate and value the beautiful and wondrous creation that God has made, to not take it for granted, to not abuse it or mistreat it, but to honor it as the very creation of our good and loving and awesome God.  

                Breathe that in!  The awe, the wonder, the amazement.  It is good.  You are good.  The earth is good.  We were made good by God’s Words, by God’s WORD.  And we have been gifted by our time here; our time of work and our time of rest.  We have been blessed by the beauty of relationships and connection to God and to all living things.  We are part of this wondrous and amazing creation!  In Isaiah God said it this way, “Be glad forever and rejoice in what I create… for I create my people to be a delight.”  I invite you to just sit with that for a moment, sit in the awe and wonder of what God has created just by speaking.

               And then we come to the second scripture, the passage from John, which also talks about creation, about the beginning of everything and the vision for who God is, who we are and who we are to be together.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being.  What came into being through the Word was life, and the life was the light for all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.”               This is such an incredible, beautiful passage.  But I want to start this section by asking you, what do you think this passage actually means?  Why “the Word”?  Just past this passage in John we learn that “the Word” is Jesus: Verse 14: The Word became flesh and made his home among us. “  But why?  How do you feel about this passage?

            As you saw during children’s time, charades, while a really fun game, can also be a really difficult or challenging game.  Especially when the phrases you are acting out include names, or places.  And what makes charades, or even games like Taboo hard is the limitation on our words, the words we can’t use, or the words we can’t say. 

           I think about Helen Keller.  She contracted scarlet fever when she was 20 months old and became both deaf and blind.  Because of this, her life became one of wildness, isolation and frustration.  When she was six, the family hired Anne Sullivan who came and began to teach Helen sign language into her hand in order to teach her how to communicate with others.  It took a long time for Helen to even understand what Anne was trying to do.  But once she understood, her life changed completely.  Through communication – through words, though not “spoken” words they were still words, she was able to earn a college degree and become a successful lecturer.  More importantly, she was able to have relationships with other people, lifelong friendships, connections.

           Communication is never easy.  We misunderstand one another so often.  We mishear, mis-interpret, misunderstand.  We misread people’s body language, or people’s intent.  We mis-speak or phrase or frame things in ways that are sometimes easy to misunderstand.  Those misunderstandings are the primary cause of human distress, conflicts, problems.  And the only solutions to those miscommunications are more words, are more communication, are intentional talking. 

           We also at times misuse our words for bad.  Words can be weapons.  While words create, they create relationships, they create dynamics, they create our world, the ways we use our words sometimes create in negative or harmful ways.  We can create relationships in need of healing, or dynamics that are negative.  We can bully each other, put each other down, destroy egos and community with our words.  We can do so much damage if we are not intentional, graceful and loving with our words. 

           Our words can also be simply confusing and unclear, especially for children.  Someone passed on to me this story, apparently from the movie, My Queen: “A visiting aunt, who is a nun, gave her little niece communion. It was basically just for fun, playing. She put the wafer on the child’s tongue and said, “Corpus Christi”. The kid asked what that meant. The aunt replied, “The Body of Christ.” Alarmed, the kid made a sour face and violently spit it out. In the next scene, though, the kid was baptizing her pet, and because she didn’t know the Latin that her aunt used, she spoke funny gibberish (shubba dubba…).”  We know this is a true story.  Our kids do not always understand our words, and frankly neither do the adults in our lives.

          And yet, despite the possibilities for errors and misunderstandings and harm of our words, still we return to this passage: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being.”

      The word “WORD” in the Bible means more than language.  As one commentator said it, “logos, is a rich and nuanced word, meaning mind or rationality, but also speech or communication…. In Jesus, God speaks God’s mind.”  (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration.)  The mind that God speaks is creation, is creative, is love, is grace.  All was made through the Word.  But it is more than that.  It is also revelation and reconciliation.  Revelation is a revealing, an opening, a showing us who God is.  Reconciliation is a healing, a coming to understand one another, and a coming through that understanding to love one another and heal the breaches between us.  All of this is part of “word”.  A Word that speaks truth and opens up to us what we cannot see.  And a Word that brings understanding and healing, opening us to understand that which we do not understand in one another.  All of this is encompassed in the “WORD”.

This Word existed, we are told, from the beginning.  We knew God and God knew us.  God created through words.  God SAID “let there be light” and there was.  God SAID, “Let there be a dome…and it happened that way.”  “God SAID, ‘Let the waters swarm…”  “God said, “let the earth produce…” and thus it was.  God SAID, and it happened.   The WORD that was with God and the WORD that was God created it all with words, with THE Word.  Nothing and no one existed outside the word of God.  Nothing and no-one existed outside the creative, life-giving purposes of the Word.  Nothing has existence outside of the WORD.  It is the Word that tells us who, what and when because it is the Word that created who, what and when. 

In C.S. Lewis’ book, The Magician’s Nephew, Aslan created the new world by singing.  He brought into being the world, all it’s creatures, all it’s form through singing, speaking.  But unlike what CS Lewis said, this passage from John says that the Word is Jesus and that Jesus, as the Word, is God.  So the Words made the world, but the words themselves are not the world – instead God is the Word that made the world. 

It was the Word that created.  And then it was the Word that reconciles, reveals and redeems.  With the birth into this world of the Word, our knowing God, our understanding of God is different and everything else is different too.  Jesus as the Word then is the embodiment of revelation and reconciliation.  He is the embodiment of the creative energy that makes everything new, that reveals who God is, and that reconciles us to one another.

 When I think of words, I think first and foremost about communication.  And the key aspect of communication is that it only happens in community, in relationship.  This is, again, a strong statement about God as community and relationship, God as the author of community and relationship, and relationship being central.  In the beginning was God and the Word, and yet they are one.  They are relationship, they exist in relationship, and they create through relationship, through Words, through the Word, through speaking.

  So what is the message in all of this?  First, that God created and continues to create.  God creates through Words, through the Word, through communication with us and with all of creation.  God continues to speak, to reach out to reveal and reconcile.  That is God’s nature as shown to us through the creation and through Jesus.  We are created in and for community, for connection.  And that community and connection happens as our words of love and creation happen.  We are made in God’s image, called to use words to create, to build, to reimagine, to reveal just as God used the Word for the same purpose. 

               Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Ducks!

         Yesterday we were given a very odd, but amazing gift.  I was working in our back yard, pulling weeds and Middle came out to help me.  I asked him to please water the plants around the edges when suddenly I hear him yell.  I stopped what I was doing, ran to where he was and he pointed to...

                    

    In case it isn't clear, that is a picture of a mama mallard duck and she has ten little babies.  For those of you who might not know, our backyard is completely fenced in, there is no water area, and by non-Bay Area standards, it is actually quite a small yard (for here, it's pretty decent!).  I was astonished.  

    How did they get in?  How would they get out?  Where could they possibly go to find water near here? There is a creek about 3 blocks away... they could probably walk to it, but it is completely dried up.  There's no water in it.  

    But the first thing I did was open our gate.  Again, I couldn't figure out how they would possibly have gotten IN, but I had a suspicion that maybe the babies were actually born here, in which case, the mama could have flown in.  I had seen her and her mate in our yard once before, but had no idea they had taken up residence somewhere within it.  Was it possible the babies had actually been born under a bush here?  That was the only way I could fathom they had gotten in.  

    The second thing I did was that I called the wildlife hospital at Lindsay Museum.  But I had to leave a message.  (This was Sunday afternoon, after all).  In the meantime, I saw the mama duck basically pacing back and forth in the corner with her ducklings and I began to worry about them having water.  I took the bird-feeder bowl that we have on a pedestal (we made sort of a fountain out of it) and I put it on the ground near the corner where the mama duck was.  I refilled it with water and stepped back.  The mama immediately walked over and climbed into the bowl.

    Okay... but there was no way the ducklings would be able to climb into the bowl.  Hm.

    So, still waiting to hear back from Lindsay Museum, out of worry, I finally got out a cookie sheet, filled it with water and put it next to the bowl.  Within seconds the ducklings were all playing in the tiny bit of water:

    Both of those are under our big tree that has a bird feeder under it, and I noticed they were nibbling on some of the seed that had spilled out of the feeder.  So I took a scoop of birdfeed, put it on a plate and set it near the cookie sheet.  They immediately ate some of it.

    All this time I was talking to the mama duck.  She would tilt her head and look at me as if she was working to understand what I was saying.  She was not afraid of me at all, not even really cautious, which was both flattering and concerning.

    Finally, Lindsay called back.  The woman told me I needed to shoo them out of my yard.  They are wildlife and do not belong there.  I told her I was worried they would get hit by a car and that there was NO water source nearby.  She basically said "Too bad.  That is what you must do. It's not your responsibility if the mama duck is a bad mama."  Ugh.

    So we tried.  We told them they had to go and tried to encourage them to go out the gate by getting closer and closer to the ducks and trying to herd them in the proper direction.  This did not go so well...

    They basically sat down and were not moving.  Nope.  No way, no how.  

    I started to really worry about them.  Middle read that it takes 5-8 weeks before the babies are ready to fly.  I did not think our yard, with its lack of a real water area, enclosed, was a really good place for the ducks to live.

    So I got on the phone again and started making other calls.  California Game and Wildlife isn't open Sundays or Mondays, but I left a message.  Contra Costa Animal Control also wasn't open but I left a message there too.  I asked around.  Someone suggested I catch them and take them to Heather Farms Park (about a 15 minute car -ride away) that has a couple big ponds with lots of ducks and geese.  But I had read (in my search) that it is illegal to catch and relocate wildlife, even from improper places.  

    I kept my eye on the ducks for most of the time, and they seemed to just be exploring the yard.  The mama walked them here, walked them there.  They followed her around, but none of them seemed particularly anxious.  Still, at one point I had to get up and go into the other room for a couple minutes.  When I got back, I could no longer see them in the yard.  We went out to see if we could figure out where they went, but couldn't find them anywhere.

    While I think it is extremely unlikely that they went out by the gate, which was quite a ways away from where the ducks had been hanging out, we could not find them, nor could we find any other possible exit.  No holes in the fences that we could see, no holes to under the house.  This remains the case.  I haven't seen them at all today.  

    They appeared unexpectedly.  They disappeared unexpectedly.

    And while I know that their journey is their own, and that our yard was not a good place for them, while I spent most of the time they were with us trying to figure out how to help them leave, I still found myself unexpectedly disappointed and sad at their leaving.      

    I found myself reflecting once more on the story Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers, about a little boy's encounter with a penguin, his hard work to get the penguin back home and his final realization that the penguin wasn't lost at all, just lonely and wanting a friend.  The boy in the story only realized in the end that he, too, was lonely and needed the penguin as much as the penguin needed him.  

    That story became real for me over the last two days.  I spent the entire time of this amazing gift of a duck mama and her babies trying to help them move on, only to discover when they were gone how much their afternoon with us had touched me, had blessed me, had given me a gift I was very sad to see end.  I found myself wondering if we had been too mean, trying to chase them out of our yard, despite the instructions of the Lindsay Wildlife worker (and though we were unsuccessful at the time).  I worried they had felt unwelcome.  I worried I had missed the whole thing: spending it in being too concerned for the duck and her babies.

    But the thing is, this is how the Divine, God, Mystery, blessing, or (for the non-religious) serendipity shows up.  It can't be summoned, and it lasts an unpredictable amount of time.  We have no control over when it comes or when it goes.  Our call (and this is for our own sakes, as all of our calls ultimately and most deeply are!) is therefore, very simply, to keep paying attention so that we do not miss the blessing, the face of God, the gift of mystery when it shows up.  Our call is to be open to seeing it, because sometimes it comes in a flash and is gone just as quickly.  If we miss it, we can't get it back.  It is gone.

    Don't waste those amazing moments, those unexpected visions of life and mystery, those incredible and unanticipated wonders that sometimes come our way.

    I almost missed this gift.  I didn't appreciate the depth of it when it was mine to behold.  But the gift continues through the lesson.  So I step into a new day.  Eyes open.  Ears open.  For that next amazing wonder that comes my way.

The gifts of the dark

        I haven't been sleeping well at night.  The reasons aren't important, or at least, that can be saved for another post at another time.  Suffice it to say that I'm up at lot during the night.  I have found that my relationship to those dark and lonely hours in the night has been different at different times and now it has changed once more.

       As for many children, night time was terrifying for me when I was little.  As a teenager there were times when I had trouble sleeping and so night-time became something to fear: a time of frustrated attempts to get enough sleep that I could make it through the next day without falling asleep in class or being too sluggish to comprehend what I was being taught.  As a young adult, studying in college and seminary, nighttime was often a time of cramming through assignments that would be due the next day.  They were times I wasn't alert enough to do my best, but times I could rob, imperfectly, in order to complete work.  They were frustrating times when my own need for sleep competed with the need to cram through books and essays.  The dark felt like an oppressive blanket, trying to rob me of my ability to think and "get through" assignments.  Deeply lonely, unforgiveably dark, and infinitely oppressive. When I had babies, night-time was often interrupted by my sleepless children who needed attention in one form or another.  I hated those middle of the night feedings or times of trying to comfort restless or sleepless children.  They, too, were infinitely lonely times, times when I felt the burden of parenting without people I could call or talk to for reassurance, advice, help or support.  Later, sleepless nights usually were associated with times of trouble, deep worry, or even terror for what life held, what tomorrow would bring, what we were dealing with as a family, a community, or just as me, myself.  The bottom line?  In the past, as far as I can remember, sleepless nights, really any nights at all, were things to be dreaded, things to be feared, times and places where the ghosts of things undone and unsaid, of things misdone and missaid, of questions without answers, and long stretches of loneliness or frustration with demanding work that robbed me of needed sleep reigned and ruled and stretched out endlessly.  

         But now, while sleepless nights are still often accompanied by worries, by fears, by concerns, for the first time ever, the overall feeling of those sleepless nights is different for me now.  At a time when everyday is spent in a small house with the same four other people, when time "alone" is non-existent, and is either spent with all of us working or with us agreeing to do, as a family, the activities chosen primarily by the children, I've found a comfort in those sleepless nights that is new to me.  It is, for the first time, an "alone" time that is welcome.  It has become a space where I can listen to the music that I choose (through earphones that don't wake others), where I can sit in the silence and darkness and pay attention, finally, to my own thoughts, where I can read books on my kindle app that are of my own desire and choosing.  They have become, even in my inability to sleep, a place of rest, a break from the normal worries of the day, a time that I've been able, amidst all the work and care of normal days, to claim time for myself.

    While sleep is important, I've found a peace and comfort in the reality that sleep is currently elusive.  I'm reminded so much of Barbara Brown Taylor's comments in her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, about the gifts of embracing the darkness, exploring the night times, learning from the darkness.  This gift for me, though, has not been intentional.  It has come to me without my seeking, without my even knowing to look for it.  This gift of sleepless nights has snuck up on my unawares, as true grace often does.  So this Thanksgiving I find myself giving thanks for a time that I used to meet as an enemy, with dread and fear.  The nights have become a friend.  And in that friendship I am finding, each day, new gifts from which I can learn and grow and for which I give great thanks.

    My wish for all of you is to find new gifts during this season as well: to have the unexpected break through in new ways that open your eyes to new visions and different understandings.  May you find grace, and may gratitude fill your hearts.

The Frailty of Life

     As I described in an earlier post, my family and I were almost in a full head-on collision with a truck, both vehicles moving around 55 miles an hour towards each other.  That would have been a death sentence.  I returned feeling that I had survived a near miss, but I didn't think too much more about it.  Then later in the week after we returned, I received a phone call about a woman whose adult son (in his late 30s) was scuba diving and something went wrong and he died.  Again, later that same week I heard about a family that we have supported through CCIH and Winter Nights who WAS in a head on collision in which two of the family members were killed: a 13 year old boy and a 20 year old young man. Their mother has been struggling for years, was finally getting their lives together and then this happened.  Her life will never be the same.  The loss is overwhelming.  And I know that, were I in her position, I would wonder what all the struggle to get their lives together, to make something better for all of them had, in the end, been for.
     My kids and I were fine.  My parents, who were driving in the car behind us, were fine.  But I feel like the combination of the near hit, along with the actual horrific and great losses to others call me to remember that life is fragile, that everything can change in the blink of an eye.  All we have, really, is now.  This moment.  This minute in which we live and breathe and write and sing: that we hug our children, and really look into their eyes, that we offer a prayer for someone we love or make that phone call to the friend from way-back-when: these are all that we have, and these are the things that matter.  They are fleeting, they are momentary, they are precious.  We do not know what will happen tomorrow or even later on today.
        Where does that leave us?  Well, it leaves me with two different urgencies.  The first is to pay attention and appreciate each moment that we are given.  We never know when it will be our last.  What in this moment, right now, is beautiful?  Even in the hard moments, what is beautiful and worth gratitude?  There is so much that we have; air to breathe, feet that walk, ears that hear, eyes that see, family, friends, foods, music, art, LIFE.  Taking the time to notice, to send up thanks, to simply BE with what is; this is deeply worth the time and energy it may take. Life goes fast.  Take time to be in your life.
      The second urgency for me is, once again, the question of what mark I want to leave with my life.  We have a very limited time to leave a mark.  What do we want to do?  Who do we want to be?  What legacy do we want to leave?  This isn't about the work I do. I think it used to be: what do I want to have accomplished with my time here?  But it has changed in the last year or so. For me this has now become more about how I want to walk through each day, what I want to do with each encounter, who I want to be with the world, with the universe, with my community and with all I encounter.  I want to walk with kindness, compassion, being fully present with each person who is before me in each moment.  I want to be empowering, encouraging, bridge-building.  I want to exude grace, compassion, empathy.  I want to be with people, even the difficult people, in a way that leaves them feeling better for having that time with me.  I want to help change the world into a more united, loving, caring place.  I don't have forever to do this, so I need to do it now, and with every opportunity I am given.
     The recognition that life goes fast is a gift.  But, as with every gift, it calls for a response.  My response is to choose to be more present in my life: both being more fully who I am and being more grateful for the amazing gift of life.