LesleyBrogan
LesleyBrogan
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  • Advent 2023: Left Foot, Right Foot
  • 2022 Journeying Together through Advent
  • Home
  • Advent 2020
  • Lent 2020
  • Lent 2019
  • Lent 2018
  • Advent 2017
  • Lesley's Blog: Holding On and Letting Go
  • Relying on the Moon: Companioning Grief for 29 Days
    • Relying on the Moon (book excerpt)
    • 2014 Advent Daily Readings
  • Advent 2018
  • Slouching towards Bethlehem

Lent 2018

Easter Sunday

3/30/2018

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        Love wins!

      Bells ring and trumpets sound and hymns are sung today in ways that happen only once each year. This Easter day dawns with shouts of “Al-le-lu-ia!” “He is risen!” “He is risen indeed!”

        Part of the wonder for me about this day, is that for generations what we have been celebrating is an empty tomb. It is in our not -seeing that we discover and rediscover the core of what we believe. Our story tells us that on Friday, Jesus was crucified on the cross. Friends took him down, washed him and buried him in a borrowed tomb. And when that was done, his friends left. Defeated, in anguish. They left. The story tells us that on Sunday morning women returned with flowers, to grieve and comfort one another. When they arrived they found the tomb empty. Whispers turned to shouts turned to laughter and to song, “Jesus the Christ has risen from death,” they proclaimed.

    Love wins. Death is not the final answer. Life goes on.


        I believe this to be true. Can’t prove it, don’t understand it, and yet I believe it to be true. I believe that it was true then and is true now. Our lives go on somehow - in our stories and our remembering and they continue in some form of energy. My image is not a picture of pearly gates and long, white robes. That I can’t imagine. I do, though believe that life follows death. I do believe that love is greater than any fear that exists. I do believe that that love wins. Each and every time.

​        This morning our choir is singing a wonderful song, “A Repeating Alleluia” by Calvin Hampton. We sing only one word: "Alleluia." And we sing it over and over and over again. This song is a weaving together of three melodies that pass in and around one another and can (possibly) continue indefinitely. In rehearsals we sing it through twice, one time we let it circle round us three times. It’s fun to sing, and a gracious thing to imagine. What if from this day on - we, you and I choose to repeat Easter Sunday's Alleluia - over and over and over again? Til we can sing no more. What if our deeds follow our singing and we then come to live and move and have our being in a resounding, circular song of “Alleluia”?

        Easter welcomes us into what can be next. What was lost can now be found. What was broken, mended. What was wounded can be tended to with great care and can even be healed. Easter invites us to believe, as if for the first time that death is not the end. Love wins. He is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia. 

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Good Friday

3/28/2018

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     Walking the hallways of a hospital. Sitting at the bedside of a loved one. Waiting at a doctor’s office for test results. Walking into a courtroom where a judge holds your loved one’s (near) future in her hands. We, too have walked our lonesome valleys. We, too have experienced a loss deeper than we believed we could bear. On this holy Friday, it feels impossibly hard to breathe the word, “Good.” Today many of us know and understand the feelings that companion this day as we live in and through it.

     This day is a vital day of our faith. It is a cornerstone. It is a sacred day that holds our story, the part of our story when dreams die and we wonder if we'll ever dream again. This day shakes us to the core every year. This year feels like no exception.  

What wondrous love is this, oh my soul….

     On this day we are mindful of suffering, of sorrow, of grief, of death. On this day we may come closest to understanding that these moments – hospital hallways, a loved one's bedside, kitchen tables, courtrooms – these individual moments are held deeply in God’s heart. Especially. Especially on this Good Friday we yearn to remember God's holding us and God's loving presence.

     Times like this I want to be any place but here, to be any time but now. Times like this I feel that I use most every muscle in my body, trying to stop myself from running screaming into the woods. Times like this I realize how I search other people’s eyes for meaning, for kindness. Times like this...

What wondrous love is this, oh my soul….

     Many of us first heard the story of Jesus' crucifixion when we were children. Each year we have carried the story with us – we have heard of Jesus gathering with his friends for one last supper, then praying in the garden. We remember hearing of his arrest, his so-called "trial," his beating. Each year we have heard more of the story - that he carried his cross to the hill and was eventually nailed to it. We barely can imagine his death. Stories told us of some of his friends witnessing most of this time with him, some even standing close by as he suffered, as he cried out and then and as he died.

What wondrous love is this, oh my soul….

     Years ago I was on a walk with a dear friend. I told her that the cross made absolutely no sense to me. I explained that it felt to me like it was a symbol of torture, brutality and murder. And she nodded in agreement. Then she told me that for her it was also something else. For her the horizontal line represented our lives, each one of us. The vertical line, she believed symbolized God’s loving presence. And in the very center, that was the meeting place of our lives and God’s presence. It is there in the meeting place, where we know more than any other time, it is there that we know that God is with us.  It is here in this moment we are most afraid, here in this place we feel all-but lost - it is here when the horizontal and vertical lines meet - it is in the touching point that God is with us.

What wondrous love is this, oh my soul….



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Holy Saturday

3/25/2018

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    Of all the holy days, today speaks most to my spirit and my soul.

    This day, Holy Saturday. This day remembers the struggle, the holding on and letting go of waiting. This day embodies what it feels like in the empty time of not-yet-knowing and holds the place of perhaps
never really knowing at all.


    Our story tells us that today we live into the despair/hope, the pleading/praying, the angst/not yet of our deepest believing and of our faith. Was it just yesterday we watched love crucified on the cross? Was it just yesterday morning that we were able to wake up believing we were on our life path (believing that there was a life path) to follow all of our days. Yesterday has come / gone and now our world has turned upside-down. At yesterday's end, when we finally found a place to lay our heads, what we found felt like the sleep of death.

    And somehow this morning dawned. And somehow we managed to rise up.

    We’ve all lived Holy Saturday days. Learning of a medical test result, the ending of a relationship, the firing from a job we loved. I remember sitting at a red light at the corner of LaVista and N. Druid Hills after learning of Mom’s diagnosis of cancer, and banging on the steering wheel. Broken promises, broken bodies, broken dreams. It’s as though what was up is now down, what was right is now so wrong, what was trusted is now lost.

    Centuries ago those women and men stepped out in faith. For them it must have been a time of unimaginable anguish grasping for their most previos hope. And yet. And yet they persisted. Perhaps they held one another and prayed, “Our Father who art in heaven…” Perhaps they sang songs they’d sung their whole lives. Perhaps they leaned in and dared to whisper, “Remember when he said…?” “Remember when he told us, encouraged us?” “Remember when he laughed?” “Remember when he cried?”
 
     And it can be just like that for us. This Holy Saturday.


    This day wills us to get up, to rise up. This day bears witness to our struggles,  to our fears and tremblings. This day knows, deeply knows of our wilderness wandering. This Holy Saturday lives out the hesed (lovingkindness) our our faith - the hesed of not giving out or giving up. This day reminds us that even through the longest, darkest night - it is our work, it is our practice to look for the dawn to come. Even if, especially when we can’t imagine how, we wait for the dawn to come, the light to shine again. And when it does come - we rise up, say our morning prayers and we live into what is next.

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Time...what was, is and will be...

3/13/2018

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       Time is different in the wilderness. Time is different when we are wandering. Time is different when we are wondering. Funny how time can stand still or speed up. And all the while, we know it’s not really happening, even though it truly feels like it. Sixty seconds always adds up to a minute and sixty minutes in an hour and on and on....

           In this intentional Lenten-wilderness-time of being mindful, it is good for us to pay attention to time. When we pay attention we can remember the importance, the sacredness, the holiness of these hours that we’ve been given. It’s not forever, truly this moment is      just     for     now.

          We have been doing this pilgrim wilderness walk for days now, we are more than halfway through. There are moments when it is very clear to us that we know, deep in our bones that this very moment is the only thing we know that is really and it is the only thing we truly have.  


          For our whole lives we have been given words for different times of our different days and decades. We have been given different words to hold our hearts. We have been given words for us to mark a spot, to hold a place, to bring a purpose. Three of these words are timeless: Faith. Hope. Love.

       Words of faith so often hold our history. Faithful words describe what has brought us here, to this place. Words of faith hold our experiences, our stories. Faithful words remind us of our saints, those who have brought us this far along the way. Our faith holds our memory, and our memory holds our faith.

       Hope speaks to us of what is yet to come, what is yet to be. We are hopeful for the time that is yet up ahead for us. There, on up ahead we place our dreams and our visions. Up there, just beyond what we can now touch and see we allow ourselves to look forward with anticipation, expectations, and believing in what is yet to be.

       Love holds our words, our faithful, hopeful language for the time that it is right now. Love calls to this very moment. With love we know the core of who we are - our breath, our bodies, our past and our future all rolled into one. Love speaks to the strength and the courage that is demanded of us to stand in this moment. And in the very same moment love speaks to the grace and the mercy that holds us as well.

         So we continue, you and I -  left foot, right foot. Who knew this Lenten season would bring us right here, to this place and to this moment? We continue on because we can't turn back. All we know continues to guide us. What we are seeking, who we are seeking is on, up ahead. We journey on with time reminding us that we have it all with us -- what has been, all that is and all the will be. 

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God's steadfast love endures...

3/10/2018

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O give thanks to the LORD, for God is good; for God's steadfast love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, those God redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. Some were sick through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities endured affliction; they loathed any kind of food, and they drew near to the gates of death. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and God saved them from their distress; God's word was sent out and healed them, and delivered them from destruction. Let them thank the LORD for God's steadfast love, for God's wonderful works to humankind. And let them offer thanksgiving sacrifices, and tell of God's deeds with songs of joy.
~ 
Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
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      Since late in August 1988 I’ve been sharing long walks with Linda Carol Ellis. Walking with her to breakfast yesterday morning was one of those wonderful, stretch-beyond-your-usual-thinking, wonder-what-could-be-if kind of walks. Part of our conversation was about the world we are living in now.  We talked about how life is happening so quickly. We seem to have little or no time to understand, to feel, to respond. We talked about feeling reactive in so many parts of life. Daily, if not hourly I am stunned by announcements / briefings / news that just feels so startlingly wrong. Words of us versus them, black versus white, Christians versus Muslims, Democrats versus Republicans. How we listen to one another, treat one another, dismiss one another - seems out of sorts with who and whose we are.

                                       For God’s steadfast love endures…

      In these intentional, Lenten days of moving in and through the wilderness we have been given time to turn toward, not away
 from these `reacting places.’ In these wilderness days we are invited to lean in and listen to what is being shouted or said or whispered by our sisters and brothers around us.
 

                                     For God’s steadfast love endures…

      Last weekend I was at a wonderful retreat with women from our church. At one point we stood in a tight circle and turned to give one another back rubs. (Ahhhhhh). In front of me, Sherri was wearing a shirt that read, “
Love Thy Neighbor" with a list of neighbors (Homeless, Atheist, Muslim, and more).  As I read the groups of people listed as neighbors on her shirt, for some reason I skipped over the line that read: “Gays are my neighbor.”  For just an instant, "gays" weren't listed. When I didn’t see it, I thought, “thank God, we are finally OFF the list.” For me being OFF, meant that we (gay people) were finally seen as part of the mainstream, seen for being more than just that one part of ourselves.


      And there was a big ah-ha for me that morning. I started thinking about who was on the “Love Thy Neighbor”list and who wasn’t. Why do we (you and me) need to create a list at all? Is there a place beyond our fearful places where we can all see past our dividing places, categorizing places, marginalizing places to a place where we are leaning in, listening for, depending on, looking out for every last one of us?


                                                                           For God’s steadfast love endures…


      The psalm invites all of us, ALL of us to lean in to God’s steadfast love. We are told, “
Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, those God redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south...” these ever-changing, turning inside-out and outside-in days are happening to us all, each one. It matters that we all pay attention to one another, for one another.


                                                                         For God’s steadfast love endures…


      While we were walking we passed the tree in this picture. Along the way, I took this picture because it felt important to see beyond what is feeling so difficult now. This tree brought me hope. The big branch of this tree bends in a way that looks like a picture frame. We are able to
see through in a way that it is rarely possible. I felt I was being invited to look deeper, to look past what we usually see. In this seeing through we are invited to catch a glimpse of this steadfast love of God that has been, is now and will be.


      Sometimes I get bogged down with the mess of what is on all around me. It feels overwhelming and too, too much. Too much pain, sorrow, hate. And then I remember that God is holding us all. Always. God’s t shirt is big enough for
everyone’s particularity to be listed - from the east and from the west, from the north and the south, big enough for the Yankees and the Rebels, the young and the old, the slow and the speedy -- all of us.   God    has      this,    God has us all.


                                                                         For God’s steadfast love endures…


      A story from long-ago came to mind yesterday when Linda and I were walking. The image in my head was the story of the old brick pile. A young girl and older woman (story possibly gender-modified here) came up to a towering pile of bricks. “What can we do with this big ‘ole pile of bricks?” the young one asked. “Oh,
that is the question,” the older woman replied. “Perhaps each brick represents how we spend our lives. Why, with this great pile of bricks
we could build a wall all around us that would keep us safe and everyone else out. Or with this same pile, we could build a bridge that would allow people to cross that river just over there.” The older woman stopped and looked over toward the river, “It’s up to us. We decide. Brick-by-brick. Will we build a wall, or will we build a bridge?”

                                                                         For God’s steadfast love endures…
  

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A Faucet Will Do in a Hurry

3/5/2018

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What makes the world so lovely
is that somewhere it hides a well.
Something lovely there is about a well
so deep, unpiped and real
filled with buckets and buckets of that life-giving stuff.
A faucet will do in a hurry,
but what makes the world so lovely
is that somewhere it hides a well.
Sometimes people are like wells - deep and real, natural (unpiped)
life-giving, calm and cool - refreshing.
They bring out what is best in you.
They are fountains of pure joy.
They make you want to sing, or maybe dance.
They encourage you to laugh...even when things get rough.
And maybe that’s why things never stay rough
once you’ve found a well.
Some experiences are like wells, too.
People create them.
They are live-giving happenings.
They are well...wells wonders of wonder. Wells of hope.
When you find a well...and you will someday…
drink deeply of the gift within
and then maybe soon,
you’ll
discover that you’ve become
what you’ve received
and then you’ll be a well for others to find.    
So lift up your eyes and look all around you.
Over the mountains, down in the valley,
out in the ocean, over the runways
into the cities, into the country
sidewalks and highways
paths in the forest.
Into the hearts of a thirsty people.
Look!
and I beg you, don’t ever stop looking,
because what makes this world is lovely
is that somewhere
it hides a well.   
~ Seasons of the Heart by Macrina Wiederkehr


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                                                            A faucet will do in a hurry,
                                                     but
what makes the world so lovely
                                                       is that somewhere it hides a well.


     How deeply these words speak to my wandering-through-wilderness-days spirit. How deeply they seem to intuitively know of my weariness of all the faucets. Lord, in your mercy, may we - just for a minute - turn off the faucets! May we -just for a minute - stop the merry-go-round that is our culture and our everydayness. Too many of us have for too long been too often drinking too much from a fire hose.

       Oh my (heard in Vin Scully’s late in the summer, wonderful, baseball voice), oh my how we long for something from a deep, refreshing well. How we long for something that quenches our spirits first and then soon after quenches our parched throats.

       Too dramatic? Too first person? Maybe. Probably. Or perhaps not.

       I grew up in a small town. In Mattoon, we spoke to one another. It was unheard of to pass a person on the street and not look them in the eye and speak to them. Central Illinois people (for some reason still not quite fully understood) usually announced the time of day to one another: “Good morning,” we’d say, or “good afternoon.” But we saw one another and we spoke to one another. It was a big thing for me, as Linda and I were mothering our boys, “Look people in the eye and speak to them, each person you see.” I harped. It mattered. And still does.

       Living in Atlanta, walking across the Emory University campus or in some other crowded place, it’s unusual to witness passersby actually talk with one another. We don’t seem to do that here. And I miss it.  

         “Somewhere it hides a well.”


       Lenten days, wilderness days bring to heart and to mind what speaks so very deeply to us. I find myself in this season having a phrase of old songs companioning me throughout these days- “So I’ll cherish that old wooden cross,” “Be Thou my vision oh God of my heart,” “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,” “This little light of mine.” Walking along. Going from here to there and back again, songs bless me on the journey.

        And when I am paying attention, I drink them in and feel the strength, the nurturing that they bring. Maybe not in those actual words, maybe it's from the song as a whole. Or maybe the strength comes from the memories of when I first learned those songs in my heart, learned those songs by heart.  

​        How I count on Macrina's words being true. What a gift it would be to in these coming days (again, because I wouldn’t have made it this far without coming across several wells along the way) to stumble upon a well that is unpiped. That is real. That is life-giving. What a gift it would be to drink deeply and raise myself up, refreshed.

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It's Just a Pebble

2/20/2018

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     ​For years now we have set on our annual Lenten journey. Each year, we start out with hopes of remaining faithful. Each year it is our intention to be disciplined and after these forty days we hope to gain new wisdom and insights. And yet, and yet so often our practice falls short. Speaking for myself, part of my problem might be that I am trying to put new wine into old wine skins. I’m setting out doing what I’ve always done. “Same song, 51st verse.” (give or take a verse or two) This Lenten journey may we consider risking something new and seek not the familiar path. May we look to follow one that is not already marked with footprints – ours or someone else’s. This year, may we take heart and follow a new path. We are meant to be out, away from what is familiar, what is practiced, what is routine. We are meant to enter into a new space.
 
       So often for me when I able to get away, to go on a trip away from home, away from work I have more time to think. Less conversations, allow for more interior work. So often when I’m out and away I realize how very grateful I am. “Absence making the heart grow fonder” and all. So often I re-member how very thankful I am for this life that I have been given. I realize how grateful I am for my family, my friends, my home. And soon as I reflect upon this, I realize how rarely I speak about that.
 
        The words from Psalm 20 speak about that. The writer talks about being in the midst of the congregation, being with like-spirited sojourners. Probably the psalm’s most powerful line is from verse 24, the one that reminds us that God listens for us and listens to us. We hear, “For God did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; did not hide God’s face from me, but heard when I cried out.”  For this and so much more, I give thanks.
 
       Psalm 22 is perhaps known best as Jesus’ psalm. It was these words he prayed when he was close to his death. These words of angst that have sounded down the centuries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And it is important for us to remember that these are the beginning words of this prayer, not the ending words. This psalm speaks to the wilderness journey, the faith journey of moving from the desperate pain of our beginning place to a place of belonging and even proclamation. How is this possible? How is it possible for you and for me?
 
       Maybe this question will be the pebble in my shoe as I continue on these days wandering through the wilderness. Can my faith move from the painful places that too frequently capture my spirit? Can it move to a place of proclamation and deliverance? I’ve witnessed this kind of faith all through my life. I saw it in the faces of the older folks who sang all the hymns by heart in the fellowship hall in the Methodist Church growing up, I’ve seen it at bedsides of folks who were nearing death, and now I sense it walking the hallways of CHOA most every day.

         Ever walked with a pebble in your shoe? At first it's irritating, aggravating. A faithful pebble can be one that helps us shift our stride a little bit. A faithful pebble can move us from what has always been to a place to that calls us yet to be. 

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Wilderness

2/19/2018

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       We are told in the gospel of Mark that Jesus was sent into the wilderness for forty days. Mark’s sparse narrative doesn’t give us much of a picture of what happened there. This time is left to our imagination. Perhaps in not being told, we are given space and place for our wilderness stories to walk with his. Perhaps in not knowing for sure, we are not limited to one particular story. Perhaps in the openness of this telling, we are given freedom to walk with him and he with us when our days feel desolate and empty.
 
       We are centuries away from this story now. In our days of social media and endless news cycles it is nearly impossible to imagine the emptiness of his wilderness. It is not easy to try to feel what he felt, to hear and see and sense what he might have experienced. For these next days we are invited to let go of our busyness. We are invited to let go of our intense over-stimulated, constant global connections. In our unknowing, we are given the possibility of living into Jesus’ wilderness as we make our way through this Lenten season.
 
       Many of us have known our own wilderness time. Many of us can point to past days when we, too have experienced our time of feeling lost. We can remember times when we have felt sent out, sent away. We can remember feeling out and away from familiar people and places, far away from the comfort of our routines. Left foot, right foot. Taking those steps were all we knew to do, all we could do. Left foot, right foot.
 
        The Christian Century published a piece entitled “Wilderness” (11/8/17). B.L. Newell writes of wilderness saying,
                      “I go into the wilderness, no matter its size or locale, and find there some deliverance, a revelation, a knowing
                      or a joy. The wilderness of our earth and the wilderness at soul’s depth communicate. When I am in need
                      or searching for answers, untrammeled wilderness of place and untrammeled places of my soul reach out
                     to each other.”
 
       As I make my way through these February into March days of 2018, I am leaning into Newell’s words about essential connections. Here in these days we are invited to let go of what is no longer life-bringing. Giving up our burdens is at the heart of giving in to the wilderness. Left foot, right foot. And perhaps the gift can come with that next step. Perhaps there or there, or on up there grace will find us. Perhaps we will step into what may be - to experience the interconnection of what is around me and what is within me  - perhaps we will step into "some deliverance, a revelation, a knowing, a joy." To be held in just that moment that holds all time - what was, is and will be -  ah...that would be worth the stepping out into what appears to be so barren and empty. Left foot, right foot. 


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Signs

2/17/2018

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     Signs are all around us. Driving from here to there and back again, we pass road signs and advertising signs. So often we can be stopped in our tracks by signs outside of businesses or churches. Sometimes they can make us laugh out loud. Sometimes they plant ideas that take seed and grow. There was a sign outside of a Friends’ Meeting House the morning after the 2016 election: Let us see what love can do.

      Signs can be words written on paper or on a poster board. They can be letters seen side-by-side that can shake us and wake us up. Letters side-by-side that can enrage or engage us. Letters side-by-side that can take us to something as inspiring as the cry of a newborn, or remind of something we’ve known our whole lives.

      Signs can come in the sound of the wind through the trees or the song of the first bird of the morning in our backyard. Nature’s limitless teachers -- those buzzing bumblebees or the song of geese flying overhead. Signs come as we watch the path a  dolphin takes just a ways out in the surf, or as we watch a cloud passing in front of a full moon.

      Lent comes each year when we are gifted with signs of the one season moving into another. Buds into blooms. Winter giving way to spring. Daffodils. Crocuses. Blossoms. Spring bursting forth with colors that remind our hearts of YES and ABSOLUTELY and OF COURSE. Signs of spring come to us at just the best times, each year.  Spring comes when we are winter-weary and the darkness feels like it is just too heavy for our spirits. Spring comes.

       Signs are all around us. This Lent what signs are we following? Are we listening for familiar sounds only because we’ve heard them so often? Or are we gathering our courage to search the skies for some new message that just may appear on the horizon?

      Have you ever asked for a sign from on high? I’ve done it many times. More times than not, it was in the waiting that the answers have come. For me there was never a parting of clouds or a deep booming voice sounding a message. My signs have come more often from that still, small voice. More often than not I have been renewed by remembering deep in my bones, that the one who created it all is creating still.

       That sign on the board outside of the Friends’ Meeting House speaks to these days in which we are living: Let us see what love can do. This message allows no room for giving out or giving up. We are invited to hold on and to stay connected. Even when things feel overwhelming, feel messy and impossibly hard, maybe especially then. This sign encourages us to not lose hope. “Let’s see.” All of us. Don’t stop looking. Don’t stop painting or typing or yodeling. Messages come, one to another and back again. Who knows? There’s hope for us yet.
                                                                                Let’s keep looking
                                                                     for what love
                                                                         can do.

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Praying by Heart

2/17/2018

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                            (4) Make me to know your ways, O God; teach me your paths. (5) Lead me in your truth,
                             and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.
                             (6) Be mindful of your mercy, O God, and of your steadfast love, for they have been
                              from of old. (7) Remember not the sins of my youth, or my transgressions; according
                              to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness sake, O God.  
​                                                                                                                                                                     ~ Psalm 25
             Pilgrims sang and prayed these Psalms as they journeyed through the wilderness. Words known to them by heart. As they walked through desert, as they ascended steep hills, as they traveled they sang together, lest they forget. These were ancestral prayers. These were their ancestors’ words passed down father to son, mother to daughter to bring inspiration, consolation, reassurance. These words came from their hearts when other words fell short.

            Today’s readings bring words from Psalm 25. Even though we are just beginning our Lenten journey, I feel an appreciation for the psalmist’s words, "make your ways known." Even though we have just started walking through the wilderness season, we know already that this is not what we are accustomed to. The human comforts have been set aside for a bit and we are intentionally focused on what is here now and what is just up ahead for us.

             Verse seven entreats God to `forget what has been’ and instead look upon us with steadfast love. So much of our lives seem to be spent looking back, rehashing mistakes we’ve made or others have made against us. So much focus on what has been and because of that, time and again we’ve missed what is right here before our very eyes. What is done, is done. We can’t undo or redo it.

            Perhaps in these Lenten days we can put aside a burden or two or three. We are just beginning these days and we have a long way to go, wouldn’t it be a kindness to your spirit (not to mention your weary back) to lay a burden down?  Maybe it’s a “she said, he said” burden. Let it go. Maybe it’s a wrong done to you, something painful that hurt you deeply and you’ve righteously carried it a long time. Let it go.

        Verse ten goes on to say. “All the paths of God are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep God's covenant and testimonies.” Here we are given words of encouragement for these steps we are taking. Here we are reminded that all along the way, God is with us, step-by-step. It is our work to be mindful of our promises to God, as well as God’s promises to us. It is our work to live into words of life and faith. And with the reassurance of God’s lovingkindness t is our work to keep going.

             This season of Lent can be a time for stretching and risking, a time for re-membering and reclaiming our balance. This can be the season of praying and singing words passed down for centuries, and new to our hearts even this day.
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    Working in Family Experience at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Lesley is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.   She and her partner, Linda Ellis are raising their two sons, Brogan (now a freshman at Guilford College) and Sam at sophomore at DHS in Decatur, GA.

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