Modern Prophet: Ancient Wisdom—John O’Donohue 8-24-14

God, bless us this day with a sense of wonder in our minds and in our hearts.  Show us the power of your blessing of us and our blessings of others.  Show us how to love.  Amen

                Here’s what I learned from reading Fr. John O’Donohue:  We don’t know anything about the power of blessing others or the radical nature of God’s blessing upon us.  Nevertheless, if I were to sneeze, I would instantly gather 40 or 50 blessings because saying “Bless you” is just something we do and we do it without thinking.  If we really understood the power to bless and if we really meant it when we said “Gesundheit”, why, we’d be sneezing all over the place just so we could gather blessings along the way.   

You’ve heard me quote from Fr. John O’Donohue before.  He died unexpectedly at age 52 and wrote several books about Celtic spirituality and did wonderful work on the nature and necessity of blessing.  He says:  “What is a blessing?  A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal and strengthen.  Life is a constant flow of emergence.  The beauty of blessing is its belief that it can affect what unfolds.”   If you think about it at all it will give you pause—imagine believing that we can affect what unfolds in this constant flow of life.  He  then continues:  “Our longing for the eternal kindles our imagination to bless.  Regardless of how we configure (or think about) the eternal, the human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness, a place where everything comes together, where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform into vision, where damage will be made whole, where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise, where the travails of a life’s journey will enjoy a homecoming, to invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now.”                         

In his work, O’Donohue reminds us that Old Testament Jews believed that all blessings were owned by God and, therefore, dispensed by God.  The patriarchs such as, Adam, Noah, and Moses were all blessed by God.  For his part, Moses passed on a parting blessing to the Twelve Tribes of Israel in Deuteronomy.  In the Old Testament, the idea of "blessing" was also closely related to the question of inheritance, passing blessing from parent to child. Jacob blessed Joseph in Gen. 48:15, and Joseph's two sons. We must also remember that Old Testament Jews had a very sophisticated understanding of the sacred.  God was so sacred that you dare not speak the name aloud.  Places became sacred when God was encountered there.  Names were given to commemorate God’s visitation.  You may remember that Jacob names the place where he encounters the sacred “Bethel”.  This naming, the blessing of sacred space is consistent with our need to speak the blessing. 
                Earlier this week, I got to thinking about the story of Nicodemus from the perspective of blessing—seeing Jesus’ response to Nicodemus as the ultimate blessing.  Nicodemus had come to Jesus at night.  For the longest time, Nicodemus has gotten a bad rap for doing that.  Many think that he did it because he was afraid of getting caught.  He was, after all, a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, the high Jewish Court.  But, if he suspected or even believed that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah, it is also possible that he went at night so as not to draw extra attention to Jesus which would have put him in immediate danger.  Whatever the case, we see Nicodemus deep in conversation with Jesus.  He has asked Jesus how one gains eternal life.  Jesus tells him, cryptically, that a person must be “born again”.  Nicodemus jumps to the wrong conclusion about what Jesus is saying.  You can almost see him, after having been engrossed in the conversation, sitting back and saying.  “What are you talking about?  How can anyone who is already grown up go back into their mother’s womb to be born again?  This talk makes no sense.  What’s this ‘born-from-above’ talk?”

Jesus, with his usual compassion says, “You’re not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation—the ‘wind-hovering-over-the-water’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom. When you look at a baby, it’s just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can’t see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.”  As the dawn begins to break, we see the light beginning to shine in Nicodemus’ heart as well.

Is this—this availability of God’s Spirit—not the ultimate blessing given to us by God and explained so beautifully by Jesus?  Most of us need a little more explanation than this, however.  I found one of O’Donohue’s poems, simply called “The Blessing”, that I think gives us a way to understand what happens to us inside when we allow God’s Spirit to form us into a living spirit.  O’Donohue would suggest that we are brought to the point of wanting and longing for something more and this leads us to welcome God’s Spirit.  His poem, his blessing upon us is this:

Blessed be the longing that brought you here and that quickens

your soul with wonder.

May you have the courage to befriend your eternal longing.

May you enjoy the critical and creative companionship of the

                question “who am I?” and may it brighten your longing.

May a secret Providence guide your thought and shelter your

feeling.

May your mind inhabit your life with the same sureness with

                which your body belongs to the world.

May the sense of something absent enlarge your life.

May you succumb to the danger of growth.

May you live in the neighborhood of wonder.

May you belong to love with the wildness of Dance.

May you know that you are ever embraced in the kind circle of

                God.

Furthermore, O’Donohue states this about blessings:  “The Bible is full of blessings.  They are seen as a communication of life from God.  Once the blessing is spoken, it cannot be annulled or recalled.” 

              Can we think of the impact on our lives if we begin to view God’s blessings as a “communication of life from God?”  If every time we meet and share the good news of God’s radical love and acceptance of us, we bless each other and ourselves, we begin to open up a floodgate of God’s gracious gifts that we best be ready to accept and pass on.  If every time we meet, we remember to bless the God who created and first blessed us, we begin to live into a place of constant communication of life from God and to God.  As we mature into a fuller understanding of the role of being blessed, accepting and living into God’s richest blessings, and desiring to reach out into the lives of others to bless them similarly, we will experience the grace of God to a depth, height, and breadth formerly unknown to us. 

                We also need to bless each other because when you bless another you make real O’Donohue’s belief that no life is alone or beyond the reach of all others.  When you offer a blessing, you make a potentially life-altering connection with that person—a connection that permeates all the fences we erect to keep others at a distance.  To offer that blessing and to have it received, is to connect with another at the deepest level.  

O’Donohue writes, ―a blessing is different from a greeting, a hug, a salute, or an affirmation . . . blessing is from soul to soul.”  I think we hunger for soul-to-soul connections.  And we hunger for them in everyday life—not just in church or in some special retreat or conference.  And so, we go about our daily lives.  How often do we stop ourselves to think about the innate sacredness of another person—that same person as the one who just bagged our groceries or cut our hair?

Think what might happened if we deliberately set out to infuse our lives and theirs with more and more blessings.  O’Donohue believed that “blessing” is a way of life and a means of transforming a broken world—a “huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.”

I know that some of you have noticed that at some point in the last year, I added “Namaste” to the “amen and amen” at the end of my sermons. “Amen” feels like God’s blessing on us, but Namaste feels like our blessing upon each other.  Some churches now use “Namaste” when passing “The Peace” or greeting each other in the service.  The Namaste, is performed by slightly bowing and pressing hands together, palms touching and fingers pointed upwards in front of the chest.   Commonly performed in India, “Namaste” is a respectful greeting and means “The spirit in me respects the spirit in you,” or “the divinity in me bows to the divinity in you.” The gesture first appeared 4000 years ago on clay seals of the Indus Valley Civilization. The Namaste is a reverential salutation that could stand a bit of use in and out of church in our own country.  I’m not suggesting that Open Circle take up the Namaste as an official greeting, but I would never be offended if you offered it to me and I to you. 

And, so, in whatever form you use, I invite all of us to exercise our blessing ability just a bit more.  As O’Donohue says, “May we all receive blessing upon blessing. And may we realize our power to bless, heal, and renew one another.”  Amen and amen.  Namaste.

       

“Modern Prophet: Ancient Wisdom: Oriah” 8-17-14

God, over and over you invite us to enter the holiest of holy places—our hearts—complete when one with your spirit living within us.  Give us courage, God.  May we not back away from the truth of your invitation.  May we answer, ‘yes’ when you call.  Amen

          Now that I am older and finished with school and all those other things that determined what I needed to spend my time reading, one of the things I have noticed is that I am drawn to writers who are not afraid to ask us and themselves the hard questions.  As I read and meditate upon those difficult questions, I find, increasingly, that pondering upon these questions leads me back to the truths of Jesus’ teachings that I have carried with me since early childhood.  I am one of those persons who have no memory of not going to church.  From the country Disciples of Christ in Clear Creek, IN to the Methodist and then Baptist churches in Apopka, FL., in Sunday School and Wednesday night Bible Study, I learned a familiarity with the scriptures that surfaces more in my later years then it did in the middle ones.  But, it is not because I am spending more time necessarily studying the Bible.  It is because as I read these modern prophets, some explicitly Christian and some not, their questions continue to lead me to a new way of thinking of the life and teachings of Jesus.  And that is exciting!  So for the next several weeks, I plan to bring to you some of those modern prophets and speak to you of the questions those prophets bring to us.  From there we can springboard to a new and deeper understanding of the life and work of Jesus and go deeper in our journey to become more and more aligned from inside to out. 

          Oriah wrote the poem “The Invitation” one night after she returned home from a party.  She says on her webpage that the party reminded her of how superficial most of our relationships are and so she penned this poem in response. 

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are 
squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain,
mine or your own, without moving to hide it
or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,

if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you 
to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us
to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty every day.
And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know

or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire
with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

          As I have utilized this challenging poem in meditation, and have wondered what in Jesus’ words might be most similar, I am most drawn to Jesus’ surprise endings teaching which have come to be known as the Beatitudes.  If I dare myself to think in terms similar to Oriah’s, the Beatitudes might sound somewhat different, inviting us to look deeper into Jesus’ words.  Go with me, if you can, and picture a strong, kind, compassionate Jesus saying these words to the crowd:

          “Don’t tell me how God has forgotten you when you have nowhere to turn and no way to know the next step; I want to know how turning from self-reliance to reliance on God and the Divine Rule of Love has expanded your inner life.

          Don’t tell me how bereft you are when you think you have lost that which is more precious than anything else.  As you find your way back to God, tell me how you experience the embrace of the Divine in the realization of that which is truly the most treasured in your life—the Sacred itself.       

          Don’t tell me of all that you feel you need to have to be complete.  I want to know of the joy and pride when you find yourselves in complete contentment when you celebrate all that you are.

          It doesn’t really interest me that you are hungry for things outside of the Sacred.  Instead tell me of the banquet prepared for you when you place your reliance in God.

          Don’t tell me in your weariness how you cannot care anymore.  Tell me how being full of care for others brings you the most wonderful experience of being cared for ever.

          Don’t tell me how hard it is to see God at work in the world.  I want to know of your struggle to get your inside world—the world of spirit, heart, and mind—aligned with how you live your life.  Then tell me how you see God transforming the world.

          Don’t tell me how powerless you are to change things.  Instead, tell me how you work for peace.  When you devote your heart and time to peace, you’ll see exactly who God wants you to be.

          I don’t want to hear that you are feeling sorry for yourself when standing for justice makes people hate you.  That makes you rely on God even more.  Instead, tell me of the blessings that come when people lie about you.  Don’t you know that when you speak my truth, it is too threatening to them?  Be proud to join the long line of prophets and witnesses for truth who have always had to stand up to people’s mistrust of them.”      This brings a different look at very old wisdom.  Over and over again, we are invited to look on the positive side of each of these equations.  And, whether it is Oriah or Jesus saying the words, we know that it is the Sacred inside each of us who is whispering the invitation to become more. 

Now, I know a lot about invitations.  And I’m not talking about the kind where one of you generously invites me and Nan to lunch.  I’m talking about those end of service “Just As I Am” and “Have Thine Own Way, Lord” kind of invitations which sometimes seemed a little less than genuine.  If you did not come from a particular portion of the Protestant world who practiced this ritual, you have no idea of what I am speaking; but, if you did, you know that an invitation where no one was responding could add a good ten minutes onto any service just when you thought you were going to escape.  I am, of course, talking from a teenage perspective here; but, I often imagined that there were a good many adults also praying that someone, anyone, would just go forward. 

The invitation was, of course, to make Jesus your Lord and Savior and to enter a new life of forgiveness and relationship with God.  The only problem was, as many times as I went forward, I never could quite get clear about what that life was to look like; so, as I got older, I got braver about seeking and finding other ways to explore my relationship with the Divine—ways that affirmed my goodness as God’s creation and God’s child.  All of those other ways have been ways that have led me to refine my relationship with the Divine who does indeed live in me and is me.  This new way of thinking, therefore, has led me to rethinking and re-exploring much of what I learned as a teenager and young adult.

Few MCC Churches do those “Come forward and get saved” kinds of invitations—and, please, do not misunderstand, I am not suggesting that those invitations are not meaningful to many people.  Nevertheless, we know that an invitation exists which will call us far deeper, move us much farther forward in our search for wholeness, and stretch us to think, feel, and pray in different ways—calling us onto a path of courage and daring.  Won’t you accept this invitation this Sunday to commit yourselves to allow God and God working through this community to transform your life for good, and wholeness, and peace?  May it be so. Amen and Amen.  Namaste.

What Are You Packing? 8-10-14

Source of all that is holy and pure, show us our journey.  Prepare our hearts and open our spirit.  Let us travel inward to learn more and more of you.  Amen

          It’s late summer—time for all those last minute trips.  And we go all kinds of places—most of us are looking for someplace cooler right about now.  Sometimes our trips are special and sometimes they are just to get away.  Many of you know that after years of negative attitudes about camping, I have recently discovered that I love it.  There is one part I don’t like quite as much and that is the preparation.  But any trip requires just that and so today I want to talk about our spiritual journeys that we take throughout our lives. 

You may well know someone who has made a pilgrimage to somewhere.  Occasionally, we may say that we make a pilgrimage to our place of birth or the country of our ancestors; and, that is certainly one type of pilgrimage.  But, there is a second, more ancient kind of pilgrimage and that is a pilgrimage to a sacred or historically important religious site.  In the Christian tradition, Catholics have, up until recently, emphasized the importance of religious pilgrimages.  Now, however, a good many from the Protestant tradition have also begun to speak of making a specific pilgrimage.  Whatever your background, whether you come from either one of those, or another or none, it’s probably helpful to review the nature of pilgrimages before we talk about what we will pack for our pilgrimage. 

          First, a spiritual pilgrimage implies that you are taking a journey to a holy place.  This is more than a trip as a tourist to the Holy Land or to a famous cathedral.  When we are tourists, we go to see what we can see, take as many pictures as we can, post as many of those on Facebook as is possible, and return home to tell others of all that we have seen and heard.  We may, in fact, be significantly be touched and moved by things we saw along the way, but seeking out those holy places was not our primary motivation for going.  A pilgrim, on the other hand, is motivated almost solely, by the desire to meet God in a certain place.  A pilgrimage is usually planned as a time of self-discovery and is almost always carefully planned.

          Secondly, a spiritual pilgrimage implies a spiritual change or transformation in the heart and life of the pilgrim.  If you experience your spiritual life and have the same amount of self-awareness when you return as when you left, something went awry in your pilgrimage.  Because spiritual transformation is so often a part of spiritual pilgrimage, pilgrimage is considered a practice of spiritual formation.   However, since specific spiritual practices do not possess some sort of universal appeal, not everyone will feel called to undertake a spiritual pilgrimage.  Those who do, however, will experience great change in their lives.

          In the third place, spiritual pilgrimage is not supposed to be easy.  This does not always mean that the pilgrimage is physically difficult; but, it often is.  It may be psychologically difficult, pushing the pilgrim to explore things about themselves they would not ordinarily choose to explore.  Sometimes, pilgrimage requires great financial hardship.  It may, perhaps, be spiritually challenging, leading the pilgrim to explore new concepts about the Divine; or, perhaps, to be in silence on the pilgrimage.  Whatever the hardship, the pilgrim welcomes them as an integral part of the pilgrimage. 

          Finally, spiritual pilgrimage takes us away from our usual life.  Our routine is completely disrupted and we are thrown into an unknown schedule.  The composition of our days is radically altered.  Pilgrimages often take people to new countries with new languages and cultures.  We become more aware of our day to day surroundings because we need to in order to continue on the pilgrimage.  Paying attention to our surroundings increases the possibility that we will pay attention to God.   Pilgrims leave the usual behind and seek to experience God in the midst of a completely new environment. 

          A pilgrimage is, first and foremost, a journey—a very special journey, I’ll admit, but a journey, nonetheless.  Judaism is one of the first religions to talk about journeys.  Our brief scripture today from the Old Testament comes from the blessing that God gave Abraham as he left his home, his country and family.  But the reward was great.  God told Abraham that in return for his journey he would become a great nation, blessed, famous, and a blessing to many.  God gives Abraham authority and says that he will determine who God blesses and who God curses.  God tells Abraham that all of the families of the earth will be blessed through him—all because he took a very special trip.  We know that thus begins the travels of a great journeying religion, a religion whose people would journey for hundreds of years until the State of Israel was founded in the last Century. 

          The life of Jesus is, of course, filled with journey after journey.  He is even born while his parents are in the midst of their journey to Bethlehem and back to Nazareth.  We have the story of Mary and Joseph taking Jesus to the Temple where he is blessed by Anna and Simeon.  And then they go home.  We don’t hear about Jesus’ life until another journey brings his family to Jerusalem and he is left behind where he is found two days later amazing the rabbis in the Temple.  John the Baptizer wandered the country-side preaching and telling of the one to come.  Even the language about him is related to journey—‘prepare the way of the Lord’.  Finally, we see Jesus journey to John to be baptized and immediately he is led on a 40-day journey into the wilderness to be tested and proved.  Throughout his ministry, Jesus travelled.  His parables are full of the travelling theme and we come to know that it was through journeying that Jesus met and touched so many people.  Jesus called others to journey with him.  Of course, there were the Twelve; but, there were others like the ones in our Gospel reading today who missed their pilgrimage because of their many excuses. 

          But what of us?  Are we called to make a pilgrimage?  Perhaps, but I would like to briefly talk about another pilgrimage—an inner pilgrimage to the holy spark of the heart of God.  I want to return to our earlier four points about pilgrimage and see if they pertain to an inner pilgrimage.  First, the pilgrimage is to a holy place.  As we journey inside over time, in retreat, or during a crisis—the proverbial dark night of the soul—we seek the holiest of places—the place where we can experience the infusing of every part of ourselves with God’s spirit.  Yes, God and I are one, but I may not always be able to bring that to consciousness or feel the implication of such knowledge.  But, when I journey to where I am able to have it known in my heart of hearts, it usually requires many of the same steps as an outward journey.  This journey inside shares the planning and seeking of spiritual discovery with its sister pilgrimage—the physical, outer one.

          Secondly, an inner pilgrimage also implies that a transformation will take place in the heart and life of the pilgrim.  After the discovery of the understanding of the divine nature or our own spirits, we, simply will never be the same.  Even, if, somewhere down the road, we suppress the transformation of this pilgrimage, one can never alter the inner transformation of the soul when it has found and focused on its connection to the Divine.  The third characteristic is probably the easiest to understand.  The pilgrimage is not supposed to be easy.  The inner journey is, simply, not easy.  We must uncover and disempower all those things which tell us that this pilgrimage won’t be worth it; that it won’t make any difference in the way we feel about ourselves or our lives; and, that the cost is too great.  We must undertake it anyway if we value the deepening of our lives in and with God.  Finally, a spiritual pilgrimage breaks us out of our routine.  It simply can’t be done in the regular course of things.  It requires time and patience, willingness and courage, love for yourself and for other pilgrims.

          So, what are you packing?  What will you take along with you on this inner journey should you choose to undertake it?  Will you take your sense of unworthiness and trust that God will show you your worth along the way?  Will you take pictures of those you can’t or won’t forgive and trust that the inner light will shine so brightly that you will discover that nothing is more important than living in love with one another?  Or, perhaps, you will take all your memories of past failures—other times you sought God and got lost along the way.  It might be that you will take your feelings of powerlessness and allow God to fill you with power as you journey into your deepest self.  There is the chance that you will take your anger at God for the losses of your lives and allow the healing balm of inner peace surround your heart with the knowledge that God hurts as you hurt.  Questions, fear, doubts—all good things to pack; but, also pack hope, longing, and the willingness to go.  And, most of all, go in peace.  Amen and amen.  Namaste.    

          

Rivers of Life 7-20-14

God of Light and wonder, lead us to recognize your gifts in everything we see.  Your Light shines and we rise to meet its beauty.  Lead us to see the Source of Sacred Love of which Jesus spoke.  Lead us to see you.  Amen

          We hear the poetry in James’ description of God’s gifts to the world.  “The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Source of Light”.  Imagine yourselves—you might find it easier to close your eyes—at the bottom of a very beautiful medium-sized waterfall.  Don’t start with Niagara Falls—that would be so overwhelming that we wouldn’t be able to describe it or take it in.  I, for one, am going to Bish Bash Falls in Western Massachusetts, just across the border from New York.  The water comes from two, maybe three directions at the top and feeds into the stream that crashes down through the falls.  It’s one of those tall falls, so the water falls a long way, reaching the bottom pool of water with enough force that the spray rises up many feet into the air.  It is one of my sacred places—“thin places”, the Celts call them—where I have experienced God in a special way.  The Celtic designation makes sense as they talk about places where those things that separate us from God are thin; and, if you are paying attention, you can glimpse the special beauty of God as the barriers that keep us from feeling the fullness of God are thinned out. 

          So, you go to your waterfalls, or stream, if you don’t have one and gaze upon the water flowing either over the falls or down the stream.  The sun is so bright that little stars of light dance upon the surface of the water.  At times, the spray makes lopsided rainbows just above the mist.  Perhaps, the sun goes beyond some clouds, giving your eyes a chance to rest from the brightness and prepare you for the next ray of sunshine bringing you up to a new sense of the lightness and brightness of the scene before you.  And, now, listen to James’ poetic description of God in the world again.  “The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Source of Light”.  As you stand at the foot of your waterfall, begin to name the gifts of God that are cascading in front of you.  What is your response?  I find myself drawing closer and closer until I am close enough to feel the mist upon my skin.  And, as I allow myself to look through the thin place that separates me from God, I find my tears mixing with the mist on my face as I begin in a new and deeper way to let the gifts of God permeate my very being.  As the scene fades from my mind’s eye, I wrap my arms around this sense of closeness to God and return to this place with you.

          I hope that you were able to get into that visualization.  I won’t call it a fantasy, because it is so very real—available to us at any time, perhaps more so when we are in one of our thin or sacred places, but, available to us at other times as well.  As we mature in our ability to spend time with God and build up our tolerance to receiving the immensity of God’s grace, we can have these experiences as often as we choose to allow God—the Source of Love—to be present to us.

          What are these gifts that God gives to each of us?  God gives to each of us the gifts that we recognize, acknowledge and claim.  These gifts may be, and probably are different for each person.  In other words, I believe that all of God’s gifts are available to all of us at any time, but only those that have meaning for us materialize for us at any given time.   As a very simple example, if I am in such a low place as to be unable to appreciate the beauty of a particular garden, it does not mean that the garden is not beautiful, but it is not a gift to me at that time.   We are not in control of the gifts; we are only in control of whether or not we choose at any given moment to receive them.  I may stand at the foot of my waterfall where the rivers of light plunge over the rocks and see nothing but water and rocks.  My, oh my, what a loss that would be.

          Let’s talk just for a moment about what it is that blocks us from receiving those gifts that make up the rivers of life in James’ letter.  Those things which serve as ‘blockers’ in our lives fall into three categories:  fear, arrogance, and unbelief.

First, fear.  I think that most of us are terrified to fully immerse ourselves in those rivers of light.  We are frightened by the prospect that God, the Source of all light, has plans for us far beyond what we have yet to experience.  We are afraid to be more than we already are.  This is why James refers to it as light.  This is why Jesus says, “I am the light of the world!”  We are called to shine, not just in the darkness but in the already light of day.  Bear with me for a moment if you will.  We are comfortable or at least more comfortable showing the way out of darkness.  When it’s dark, the world needs the light to see its way out.  What about when it is already light and God is calling us to be more than just a light out of darkness?  This is when the real fear sets in—the fear that we are set to become more, do more, experience more, and feel more than we can currently comprehend.  Jesus alludes to this throughout the Gospels as he talks about being one with the Source of Light.  He and God are one.  As Jesus leads us further and further into uncharted territory, we become more and more one with God.  God, however, does not leave us to deal with our fear alone.  Love, perfect love, is the antidote for fear that tells us we are not worthy or capable.  When we allow ourselves to believe that God loves us unconditionally, we become risk-takers.  We risk being more to the world than we think we are.  When God’s love fills us and overflows onto the world, we risk not only failing in our work in the world but, also, succeeding. 

As for arrogance:  I thought about calling this category ‘pride’ but decided that pride didn’t quite cover it.  It is not just a matter of feeling proud, puffed up, that we are handling life on our own.  It’s more about the belief that not only do we not need any help from people or God, it also includes the notion that it is all right to be so self-focused, dare I say, self-centered, that we can reject whatever it is that God has for us that would enable us to be more of a blessing to the world than we currently assume ourselves to be—I’ll wait a moment for the humor to sink in.  Now, if we can get ourselves and our focus on ourselves out of the way, we can clear the way for God to use us for a greater good.  We arrogantly assume that we are all we want to be and fail to contemplate that God may have other plans or that the world needs for us to allow God to make us more.  The antidote for arrogance is undeniably gratitude.  As we allow our gratitude to literally push out our arrogance we come to see ourselves as both one with God and created by God.  Jesus tells the Pharisees that they cannot understand that when they have seen him they have, indeed, seen God.  Unlike the Pharisees, we know that Jesus and God were one; and, while we struggle to believe that we, too, are one with God, we are called into an interconnected relationship that cannot help but fill us with gratitude.  And, when we allow it to, that same gratitude sends arrogance, the belief that we are alone in all of this, packing.

Finally, there is unbelief.  That doesn’t take much explanation.  It does not imply that we do not believe in the waterfall; that would be kind of dumb.  What it implies is that we do not believe God telling us that there is more.  We do not believe that God is pouring out gifts of life at the speed of light and that we are meant to receive those gifts in order to live fuller, more whole, lives.  And that a gift is truly and that the spirit of God, the Source of light and life itself longs for us to rest in the belief that God has no greater desire than for us to accept the gifts beyond comprehension. For unbelief, God sends us courage.  Courage, one of God’s most precious gifts, enables us to allow God to fill our hearts to overflowing with comprehension that these gifts belong to us.  Courage says, “‘here I am, send me’, fill me, use me”. 

As we allow ourselves to be drawn more and more into those rivers of light our lives will reflect for all to see the myriad reflections of God’s great mystery and love.  This is my prayer for all of us.  We stand at the foot of the waterfall, lifting our hands to reach toward the water itself, feeling the mist of the spirit, the energy of the river and the love of God.  Amen and amen and Namaste.