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dreamprayact

~ Reflections of a preacher, poet, and contemplative activist

dreamprayact

Tag Archives: Mystery

The Feast You Spread Before Us

22 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Poems

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Eucharist, feast, freedom in Christ, Gospel, grace, heavenly banquet, Mystery, praise, Psalm 23, surrender

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
~ Psalm 23:5 

This is the feast you spread before us, O God,
a sumptuous celebration of freedom in Christ,
sitting down at table not only with those we love,
and with all those who love us in return,
but with the very ones who trouble us.

This is the feast of Eucharist –
profound gratefulness for earth, bread, and breath,
as we dance with joy before the mystery of God,
the One who speaks hope into our troubled hearts,
the One who alone is able to soothe our weary souls.

This is the feast of holy love –
first tasted in a Gethsemane garden
then poured out on Calvary’s hill,
an inexhaustible love that knows no fear
and is undeterred by hate or malice.

This is the feast of surrender –
releasing the anxieties that plague us,
the resentments we nurse over time,
giving us hearts of gladness instead,
hallowing our lives in the sweetness of grace.

This is the gospel feast –
overflowing the small containers of our lives,
bathing us in the font of baptismal blessing,
anointing us with Holy Spirit wind and fire,
bidding us to live forgiven, loved and free.

This is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet –
where lion and lamb lie down together in peace,
where foes watch their bitterness melt away,
where there is neither weeping nor pain nor fear,
rather the sounds of love’s creation praising their God.

~ Mark Lloyd Richardson

Contemplation: A Long Loving Look at the Real

09 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Contemplative Life

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

beloved community, Contemplation, God's presence, Gospel of John, healing, Inner life, Mystery, prayer, silence, wholeness

img-9914The obstacles to contemplation are graphically summed up in a comic strip – mother inside the house, looking out a window, her little boy sitting in the yard with his back to a tree:

Mother:“Ditto, what are you doing out there?”

Ditto:“Nothing.”

Mother:“You must be doing something! Now tell me!”

Ditto:“I’m not doing anything.”

Mother:“Ditto! You tell me what you’re doing!”

Ditto (to himself): “Good gosh!” (He tosses a stone.)(out loud):“I’m throwing rocks!”

Mother:“I thought it was something like that. Now stop it at once!”

Ditto:“Okay.” (to himself):“Nobody will let you just do nothing any more.”[i]

Thankfully, my Midwestern childhood gave me plenty of space to do nothing much and not feel guilty about it. Sometimes it was a long lazy afternoon of baseball in the side lot. Other times it was canoeing and fishing on the slow-moving Fox River. And when I was feeling especially adept at “nothing doing,” I would lie in the tall summer grass and gaze at the clouds in the sky and dream of what my life might be.

Then as I grew into adolescence and young adulthood I shed my doing of nothing in favor of the rule most Americans live by: “Only useful activity is valuable, meaningful, moral.” I was so eager to become an adult that at the age of 22 I simultaneously got married, started full-time church employment, purchased a brand new Oldsmobile, trained for a marathon, and began my seminary education as a commuter student. Always the over-achiever! It took about three years for my entire world to come crashing in on me (a story for another day)!

The prayer of Jesus in the 17thchapter of the Gospel of John feels remarkably intimate to me – like eavesdropping on a conversation between Jesus and the One he calls “Abba.” Jesus prays, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us”(17:21). “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, as we are one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”(17:23).

This prayer recognizes a unity within community that is possible when we set aside our egos long enough to seek the Presence of Love that is the Word made flesh among us! Thomas Merton once observed, “Hard as it is to convey in human language, there is a very real and very recognizable (but almost entirely undefinable) Presence of God, in which we confront Him in prayer knowing Him by Whom we are known, aware of Him Who is aware of us, loving Him by Whom we know ourselves to be loved.”[ii]

How do we enter this contemplative way of being, this journey inward? How do we create enough space in the soul’s inner landscape to welcome the One who made us, the One who redeems us, the One who will sustain us until we are home?

When one is young one thinks one knows things! This was true for me when I jumped into adulthood with both feet. I knew I was called into pastoral ministry. I knew I was committed to my young wife until death do us part. I knew I was going to set the world afire. Then I became acquainted with Reality, and it was not overly impressed with my newly minted college degree, or my naive sense of call, or my obligatory marital promises. Indeed it called all of these into question!

I walked through valleys of disillusionment and despair in my twenties and early thirties as I experienced what felt like loss after loss. Ministry became drudgery, marriage a source of deep pain, and life a matter of survival. It turns out that all the books in the theological library were inadequate to meet my existential needs, and Reality set about to educate me on my utter dependence on God!

During this period in my life I wondered: How can I be more present to the Divine Presence in ways that will heal and bring wholeness? Am I able to step fully into the embrace of the One by Whom we are known, loved, forgiven, and brought to awareness of the richness of life?

Marjorie Thompson once wrote, “In contemplation we move from communicating with God through speech to communing with God through the gaze of love. Words fall away, and the most palpable reality is being present to the lover of our souls. When we let go of all effort to speak or even to listen, simply becoming quiet before God, the Spirit is free to work its healing mysteries in us: releasing us from bondage, energizing new patterns of life, restoring our soul’s beauty. Here we allow ourselves to be loved by God into wholeness.”[iii]

For years now a description by contemplative Carmelite William McNamara has spoken to me. He describes contemplation as a long loving look at the real.He calls it “a pure intuition of being, born of love. It is experiential awareness of reality and a way of entering into immediate communion with reality.” He explains that while it is possible to study things, “unless you enter into this intuitive communion with them, you can only know about them, you don’t knowthem. To take a long loving lookat something – a child, a glass of wine, a beautiful meal – this is a natural act of contemplation, of loving admiration.”[iv]

Walter Burghardt adds, “reality is living, pulsing people; … reality is the sun setting over the Swiss Alps, a gentle doe streaking through the forest; reality is a ruddy glass of Burgundy, Beethoven’s Mass in D, a child lapping a chocolate ice-cream cone; reality is a striding woman with wind-blown hair; reality is the risen Christ.”[v]“And so I am most myself, most human, most contemplative when my whole person responds to the real.”[vi]

When I was serving a small rural church in the desert, the parsonage was located just around the corner from the church. So I always walked to work, coming home for lunch, and again at the end of the day. My son Ethan was just a few years old at the time, but he knew my daily routine.

At the end of each morning or afternoon, as I crossed the intersection on my way home and set foot on Cedar Avenue, I would catch a glimpse of our rather plain looking white house. And almost without fail, the drapes in the front picture window would be slightly pulled back and a little head would be sticking up, just watching, waiting, knowing that his daddy would soon be home.

Then, when he saw me he ran out the door as fast as he could, across the front yard and into my grateful arms. I knelt down to receive my son, whose exuberant love astonished me. This is prayer– running to the One in whom we are known and loved and held in welcoming arms.

There were days when Ethan ran out that door with tears in his eyes because something had happened to make him sad or angry. But, you see, he still came running. No matter what kind of day he was having, he wanted nothing more than to be held in strong loving arms and to tell his daddy all about it. Are we this hungry for prayer?

What would it mean for us to cultivate silence within the rhythms of each day – sacred pauses, if you will – so that we might take a long loving look at the real? What would it mean to commune with God, receiving and returning the gaze of love, letting words fall silently away and simply being present? Others might equate it with doing nothing, but we would know this contemplation as time spent with the lover of our souls. We would let it all hang out – our hurts, our fears and struggles as well as our joys, our dreams and hopes, and allow ourselves to be loved into wholeness by the One who is Holy Mystery.

[i]Walter J. Burghardt, “Contemplation: A long loving look at the real,” Church, Winter ’89, p. 15.

[ii]Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, p. 44.

[iii]Marjorie Thompson, Soul Feast, p. 48.

[iv]Burkhardt, p. 15.

[v]Burkhardt, p. 15.

[vi]Burkhardt, p. 16.

Words (c) 2019 Mark Lloyd Richardson

Emmanuel

13 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Peace with justice, Poems, Prayers, Reflections

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Christmas, compassion, creation care, Earth care, God with us, healing, hope, human suffering, justice, Mystery, mysticism, peace, wholeness

NASA Cloudy Earth medium

NASA Cloudy Earth, Flickr Creative Commons

What was spoken through the prophet is fulfilled:
Look! A virgin will become pregnant
and give birth to a son,
and they will call him, Emmanuel.
(Emmanuel means “God with us.”)

 In bomb-shattered cities
children unable to play freely in the streets

In poverty-wracked slums
families struggling to put food on the table

In violence-plagued neighborhoods
the young learning early that life is cheap

On tear-soaked refugee trails
people desperately looking for a way to freedom

On vulnerable island shores
communities fighting the futile battle against rising sea levels

In the midst of everyday pain,
in the grip of widespread suffering,
the promised one comes and takes up residence among us.

Emmanuel – God with us in our deepest need.

There is no one left out of this divine scheme,
no one whose accident of birth disqualifies them,
no one whose skin color lessens their sacred worth,
no one whose race or gender changes their standing before God,
no one whose religion or lack thereof alters God’s affection for them.

God’s concern is with the whole.
God’s dream is that we all will one day see:
What affects one affects all.
Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.
Suffering is never isolated or contained.
We weep with those who weep,
our tears mingling with the tears of divine compassion.

God with us—
the whole human race,
the whole soul-stirring creation,
the whole beguiling mystery of what it means to be alive.

God with us—
in our search for wholeness,
in our poverty of spirit,
in our labor for peace with justice,
in our reaching out with hearts and hands to help,
in our holding on tenaciously to hope.

Words (c) 2015 Mark Lloyd Richardson
Photo Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

 

With Sighs Too Deep For Words

23 Saturday May 2015

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Poems, Reflections

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

creation, gladness, grace, intercession, Mystery, prayer, sorrow, spirit, spiritual life

Pentecost Sky

Pentecost Sky

We do not know what we should rightly pray for,
but the spirit intercedes with groans that cannot be uttered,
and he searching our hearts perceives the mind of the spirit,
since as God commands the spirit intercedes to help the saints.
~ Romans 8:26-27

The spirit,
from your first breath,
breathes God’s loving intentions through you.

You,
in your weakness,
don’t know enough to welcome this silent grace.

Your days are littered
with numbed neglect of your soul
and unresponsiveness to the groans of creation.

When you pray
the noises of your mind clamor and disrupt
the stillness where you had hoped to find rest.

Yet below the words
in a deeper, mysterious consciousness
the divine within appeals to the divine above.

There your heart is laid bare,
and with sighs too deep for words
the spirit intercedes to help you find your way.

This day’s sorrow
takes the hand of your heart’s undying gladness
and crosses over into the mystery where hope resides.

Pentecost 2015
Words © 2015 Mark Lloyd Richardson

Mystery and Community

26 Sunday May 2013

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Reflections, Sermon portions

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Brennan Manning, Community, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Love of Christ, Mystery, theology, Trinity, truth

Vermont Countryside

Here is a small portion of my sermon today on the Trinity.

Christians, of all people, ought to have an expansive view of God.  We, of all people, ought not to be trying to put God in a box.  Even the revered theological concept of the Trinity can do that.  Unless we see it for the mystery that it is, our doctrine can become a straightjacket in which God is neatly wrapped up by our small minds.

In speaking of the mystery of the Trinity the closest comparison may be the mystery of community.  When a group of people becomes a community – when they risk sharing their questions, their sorrows, their dreams, and their hopes with one another, and when they do not hide their true selves, warts and all, from one another – then they are known for who they are.  They become part of one another, just as the risen Christ is said to be one with God the Father/Mother and God the Spirit.

This is indeed the mystery, how the triune God draws all of creation into a dance where the melody of Christ’s love unites them in the Spirit.  Some say unity can only occur when people conform to a prescribed set of beliefs.  But God says no – unity is available to those who have open minds, open hearts, and open spirits to what the Spirit is saying in our day.

Each Sabbath, we gather in worship where the community of God meets our human community.  We give thanks for the Spirit of truth that guides us into all truth – the truth about ourselves, the truth about our world, the truth about God’s ways in the world.

We celebrate the self-giving love of Jesus of Nazareth who willingly laid down his life because he had been drawn so completely into God’s vision of reconciliation and peace.

We bless the Spirit who is the breath of life, the source of love, the ground of all being.

We seek to match our beliefs to our actions in Christ-like fashion by being a voice for those on the margins of life, by being instruments of peace in a violent, war-torn world, by being open to the truth, and by embracing the higher calling of self-giving love.

The mystery and community of the Trinity invites us into an expansive view of God, calls us to justice-seeking and peacemaking, and unites us in one faith, one baptism, one Spirit, and one Lord, so that we may live for God.

A prayer by the late Brennan Manning speaks of how we meet this triune God:

“May all of your expectations be frustrated,
May all of your plans be thwarted,
May all of your desires be withered into nothingness,
that you may experience the powerlessness and poverty of a child,
and can only sing and dance in the love of God,
Who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

Words and photo (c) 2013 Mark Lloyd Richardson

Christ Is Firstborn Of Creation

16 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Poems, Worship Liturgy

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Body of Christ, Christ, Epistle to the Ephesians, hope, Mystery, peace, reconciliation, Revised Common Lectionary

This coming Sunday, to accompany the Revised Common Lectionary epistle reading from Ephesians 2:11-22, I am using a hymn text I wrote six years ago. I’m posting it here early in the week in case any of my colleagues in ministry wish to use it in worship too. It is sung to the tune “BEACH SPRING,” found in The United Methodist Hymnal and other worship songbooks.

Christ is firstborn of creation, image of the God of grace.
In Christ all things are created, and the pain of death erased.
Christ before things seen and unseen; In him God is pleased to dwell.
Christ has first place within everything; In him God does all things well.

Christ across the farthest ocean, and in neighbors near at hand.
Christ upon the highest mountain, and in valleys ‘cross the land.
Neither death nor life can keep us separated from God’s love
that is ours within Christ Jesus, Lamb of God who reigns above.

We the church are called his Body, of which Christ our Lord is head.
We, with hands and feet made holy, feed the poor with Christ’s own bread.
God in Christ is reconciling, making peace upon the cross.
Alleluia! Praise the Mystery! In Christ hope is never lost.

Words: Mark Lloyd Richardson, (c) 2006 (Col. 1:15-20, Romans 8:38-39)
Photo: Dallis Day Richardson (c) 2012 (Redlands University Chapel)
Tune: BEACH SPRING

Holy Mystery, Three in One

30 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Worship Liturgy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Call to Worship, Christ, God, HolySpirit, Mystery, Trinity, Worship liturgy

Here is a Call to Worship for use on Trinity Sunday:

One: God is the music in our souls,

All: touching deep chords within us,

One: soothing our weary hearts,

All: connecting us with the melody of life.

One: The Spirit breathes grace through our world,

All: helping us to forgive one another,

One: convincing us that we are God’s own,

All: praying for us when we have lost all words.

One: Christ invites us into a full and generous life,

All: a compassionate and affirming life,

One: a life abounding in joy and peace,

All: a life that never loses sight of eternity.

One: Come, Holy Mystery, Three in One, and meet us here.

All: Come, and we will know true worship.

Words (c) 2008 Mark Lloyd Richardson
(Permission to use in worship with credit given.)

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