The trail feels steep today and leads me to an opening among pine and madrone, a vantage point above the green valley clothed in spring splendor and cradling the town that is becoming my home.
Purple Finch and Nashville Warbler trade gentle notes upon the breeze, back and forth, a call and response, their lively voices drenched in delight, never tiring of this celebration of living.
I pause to allow my breathing to still enough so I might receive a message birds seem singularly able to bestow, like blessings drifting down in consecration, alighting on the still restless places in my soul.
“To have memories, happy or sorrowful, is a blessing, for it shows we have lived our lives without reservation.” ~ Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain
I remember the smile you wore when I first came to your door. I remember our first embrace, so full of yearning. I remember our first kiss, so full of delight. It was a tender time, wasn’t it? The sweetness held us, even as we revealed the pain that we each had known.
I remember lazy walks with you among pine and cypress trees, the ocean’s soft roar in the distance calling us.
I remember deep conversation interspersed with comfortable silences, as though our two souls needed time to breathe – to breathe in the fullness, the beauty, and the terror, of all we had experienced before meeting, all we were experiencing now with each other.
I remember quiet days and sleepless nights.
I remember worrying I might not be enough for you, confident you were everything I needed.
I remember you always being there for me, with a fierce and tender loyalty and love.
I remember making mistakes and being forgiven.
I remember the long waiting hours for the doctor to return from the operating room and invite me into a private space to talk. And I remember the distress I saw in her eyes as she delivered the awful news – your abdominal cavity was riddled with a rare form of cancer, they didn’t yet know its origin, but they had done their best to get all of it.
I remember the years of oncology visits and the many tests and scans and invasive procedures the medical world inflicted on your body to save you for another day, another month, another year.
I remember the silent toll it took on you, even as you wholeheartedly embraced each day of living.
I remember time – measured, sifted, scattered — that we received as gift and blessing.
I remember your hand slipping into mine whenever we walked.
I remember the places we still wanted to go together, the life we imagined living together.
I remember the times we were apart, wanting only to return to you.
I remember joy and sadness mingling so often as one.
I remember being deeply humbled and grateful to have you in my life.
I remember not being able to imagine your absence. And now, there is no need to imagine it. It meets me unwanted around every turn.
Mark Lloyd Richardson In memory of Dallis April 2024
After 40+ years of pastoral ministry, with most Sundays being taken up with worship and/or preaching responsibilities, today was different. As of two days ago, I am in the “retired relationship” with the California-Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Church. That’s what it is called: a “retired relationship.” In other words, there is a relationship that exists after these many years with a people who seek to live out their faith in this part of the world. It is a relationship of accountability and of blessing!
Today was different for me because I had no responsibility for any church matters. I had to consciously decide how to spend my morning. Always before it was decided for me. I had some thoughts, but nothing was really firm. Already, I guess, I am releasing myself from always having to have a definite plan. Have some ideas and see where you feel most called when the time comes. So although I thought I would be attending worship in person somewhere locally, when I woke up, I found my heart being tugged toward the ocean which has always been a restorative place for me.
So, I decided to attend worship online with the good people at Washington National Cathedral in D.C. They’re a few hours ahead, so I got to their website at 8 a.m. and waited for the Prelude to begin. It was quite an amazing worship service, including inspiring Gospel music, wonderful choral music, and a thought-provoking sermon.
Then it was off to the beach in Carpinteria (CA) for the morning, where it was cloudy and cool. The tide was in, and the waves were relatively calm. It was a lovely time to meander off as far as I could in one direction and just listen to the music of nature and watch the seabirds do their thing. Along the way I picked up some shells, rocks, and driftwood that looked interesting. Mostly though it was about being immersed again in the rhythm of life. About beginning a new chapter. About taking what I’ve learned and the relationships that continue to be a source of joy to me and moving into new ventures and new places.
The past forty years of pastoral work have naturally involved a lot of writing — mostly related to ministry with the constant need to write letters, articles, columns, sermons, and liturgy. Now the writing I do will have more to do with what feeds my soul and nourishes my spirit on any given day. Perhaps some of my writing will also be meaningful to someone else along the way. I expect, although I don’t know, that my writing will mostly be poetry, blessings, prayers, and reflections on the natural world and our place in it.
The recording on my phone from a near and distant day says only New Recording 3— not much to go on.
I haven’t heard it in years since standing in a throng of preachers inside a packed sanctuary in Minneapolis singing together a beloved Spiritual before the Gospel is to be read.
At first, I struggle to remember – where is this? why am I recording this? what moved me to preserve these particular moments?
Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand, I am tired, I am weak, I am worn; through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light: Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.
These words, these timeless words… oh, how they soothe the soul. Loved by so many, they are words that smooth over the hard edges of this life, holding us at least for a time in the safekeeping of holy love.
As I listen they do that for me as they have for generations of light-seekers before me.
Then I hear it— unmistakable like a songbird in the early morning air.
The one beside me singing in that voice that melts me causing the tears to form as I listen.
Precious Lord, take my hand… we sing together on that near and distant day when life was not yet changed.
When the darkness appears and the night draws near, and the day is past and gone, at the river I stand, guide my feet, hold my hand: Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.
You’ve taken her hand now. And you’ve taken mine. Lead us on to the light. Lead us on to our home where holy love dwells.
Just enough time has passed that people think I’m okay that I’m myself again back to normal whatever that means when in fact I’m a wounded warrior a man who’s been in a battle to cling to meaning and to hope and to a chance to heal.
How long is enough for such things? How much time does it take to believe you will be okay maybe someday in an unknown future as the moon hovers mournfully over the pieces of your life littered across the ground like dark humus meant to rouse a dormant soul?
There may not be enough time. How could there be? Time is meaningless. It’s here it’s gone it’s fragile it’s tenuous it’s mystifying it’s merely a container for the life you thought you would have.
That life has slipped from your grasp. You’ve lost the one you loved. You will not get her back. There’s no normal anymore or okay or time enough to heal the deep wound. It remains.
A Prayer for Our Country On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11
“For Jesus, there are no countries to be conquered, no ideologies to be imposed, no people to be dominated. There are only children, women and men to be loved.” ~ Henri Nouwen
God of expansive and generous love, whose concern is the whole wide wonderful world, especially the vulnerable and anawim (poor ones), who hears prayers in countless languages, who cannot be imprisoned in any one religion, who took human form in a person of color, in whom unity is discovered in beautiful diversity, whose heart breaks anew each day at the disease, death, and destruction wrought by the creatures of earth, hear our prayer.
We cannot claim you as our own – you are not an American God. To do so is blasphemy.
Rather, you claim us as your own – ordinary folks from all walks of life, each one different, yet more similar than dissimilar – and you call us to live lives of genuine love, caring for the least of these among us, becoming persistent warriors for peace, laboring to achieve justice for all, seeking to be compassionate as God is compassionate.
So, while we identified some enemies and misidentified others in the aftermath of 9/11, and then marched dutifully off to war, thinking we could avenge the harm done to us when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were struck and a plane was forced down in a Pennsylvania field, and so many innocent lives of loved ones with futures and hopes were lost to us, we were mostly serving ourselves, not you.
We pray for our country on this anniversary of tragedy and resolve. We pray for comfort in our collective grief.
We pray too that the discipline of duty might be turned to addressing our own troubles before turning our fury upon others.
We pray that we begin to take seriously matters of liberty and justice that affect us all, directly or indirectly – climate change, income inequality, equal access to voting, racial profiling, police violence, wrongful convictions, prisons built upon profits, women’s health and reproductive choices, equal protections for our LGBTQ siblings.
We pray for healing amid our deep divisions, not so that we all think alike, but so that we might again be able to talk meaningfully and honestly with one another.
Finally, we pray for the wisdom to reclaim and redefine our nation’s core principles to ensure the liberty and justice that is due to all.
This blessing isn’t sure where to begin. So many steps are just steps in the dark. So much of life is shaped by uncertainty. So many questions litter our paths. Where to begin.
Where to begin in mending one’s shattered heart. Where to begin in creating a life on one’s own. Where to begin in accepting joy when it comes. Where to begin.
Even if there are discernible first steps, then what? At the core of being human the heart beats with a force originating in the earth’s beginnings where fire and water and soil and air collide and explode into wondrous breathtaking life! Is this the place where healing begins – as you immerse yourself in this cosmic life force? If so, where do you learn how to do this?
This blessing sees how often you lose your way as you unsteadily chart a strange new path alone without another soul truly able to guide you. What could anyone possibly say? They would be trying to piece you back together into their vision of wholeness.
This blessing admits defeat when necessary. There is no winning the wrestling match with grief when it approaches with muscles bulging and gaze focused squarely on your weaknesses. It will pin you every time. Every damn time.
Maybe though, just maybe, this is precisely what you need – a sweeping wide-ranging battle to live with the very things you fear most – loneliness, meaninglessness, being forgotten left behind as the world moves on, accepting undeserved joy – as you spar with your muscled opponent who looks surprisingly familiar, like someone you’ve encountered before but haven’t seen in years.
When we fell in love it was a long and lovely fall tumbling heart first into a trust so deep and wide neither of us recognized it at first.
Here where the soul is bare and unashamed and caught off guard by the beauty of another we discovered home for the first time in our lives.
It is not to be taken for granted – this serendipity of finding what we knew our souls needed but had never been able to find – a shelter from the storm, a refuge amid life’s troubles, a sanctuary of healing grace.
Your dying shook the foundations of this home we fashioned out of love and sweat and laughter and tears.
Now many questions travel with me in this liminal territory I’ve entered – where am I to turn for shelter, how will I recover a sense of home, how do I cultivate a circle of trust, how does one pray with a heart bereft, how do I travel this long, lonely road?
Travel with me, sweetheart. Please, I pray, travel with me, as I wait for answers and go in search of them.
Travel with me, sweetheart, and in the traveling hold these questions with me until a new dawn arrives.
Travel with me and be home for me, and in the sweet mystery of love be home with me.
I’m told you’re looking down on me from above, but I don’t believe it. I don’t want you looking down on me from some lofty perch. You never did that in life, so why would you start now? It’s odd to even think about you hovering over me – how high I’m not told – viewing my life as a spectator, watching me move from here to there, seeing me make my mistakes and not being able to prevent them, having little to do with me really, other than to observe my days and pray for the best.
In life, this life, you were always by my side and I felt your deep presence. You were my sanctuary – where love flourished, where healing occurred, where life was restored each day, where hope never died.
On this side of the veil I still look for you in this sacred meeting place where egos fall away and love without conditions abides.
You don’t look down on me from above. You look as you always have, into my eyes, with a tenderness too deep for words. You draw me out and love me, unreservedly, truthfully, and that is a gift that can only be given from the inside.