we used to wait.

If you haven't yet seen "The Wilderness Downtown" interactive music/film experience, go to this link: http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

I think this is a really amazing project, and I hope you enjoyed experiencing it as much as I did... For me it was a beautiful way of experiencing the sense of anticipation that comes with youth. It reminded me so vividly of all the things I was waiting for, running toward and running away from as a teenager --as so many dreams were just coming into view.

Here are the lyrics, from the amazing and innovative Arcade Fire:

I used to write

I used to write letters, I used to sign my name
I used to sleep at night
Before the flashing light settled deep in my brain

But by the time we met, by the time we met
The times had already changed
So I never wrote a letter
I never took my true heart, I never wrote it down
So when the lights cut out
I was lost standing in the wilderness downtown

Now our lives are changing fast
Now our lives are changing fast
Hope that sonething pure can last
Hope that something pure can last

It may seem strange
How we used to wait for letters to arrive
But what's stranger still
Is how something so small can keep you alive

We used to wait
We used to waste hours just walking around
We used to wait
All those wasted lives in the wilderness downtown

We used to wait

Sometimes it never came
Sometimes it never came
Still moving through the pain

I'm gonna write a letter to my true love
I'm gonna sign my name
Like a patient on a table
I wanna walk again, gonna move through the pain

Now our lives are changing fast
Now our lives are changing fast
Hope that something pure can last
Hope that something pure can last

We used to wait

Wait for it

rest in peace albus dumbledore.

I just finished the 6th book in the Harry Potter series and am about to start the 7th and final book. I know I jumped on the bandwagon much later than I should have, but since starting the first book back in July, I (like so many others) have been swept away in the magic of this great story. I feel like I know these characters, and I am both sad and excited to join them in the last part of their journey.

And unsurprisingly, I cried as I finished the sixth book. Albus Dumbledore, you will live on in our hearts :)

"There is nothing to be feared from a dead body, any more than there is anything to be feared from the darkness... It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more."-Albus Dumbledore, in memoriam

heat wave.

So, today in Berkeley there was a high of 97, and in Pleasanton where I work the high was 104. I know to many mid-westerners and southerners this does not seem so bad compared to humid, hot weather you've been suffering for weeks. And I have to admit that I have been quite a whiner all summer about how its been in the 50s and 60s and I wanted real summer weather worthy of a trip to the pool or beach.

But this week the heat finally hit and I realized two important things: I do not have time to go to the beach or pool when I work all day. And two: we do not have air conditioning.

I know I am being a baby, but I must confess I actually used the phrase, "It's hotter than the devil's balls." I don't even know what that means, I just know its true.

I need an icy margarita. Or at least a diet coke.

borrowed eyes.

Christian theologian Dorothee Soelle writes, "What really happens in mystical union is not a new vision of God but a different relationship with the world-- one that has borrowed the eyes of God... God calls upon the soul to give away its own ears and eyes and to let itself be given those of God. Only they who hear with other ears can speak the mouth of God. God sees what elsewhere is rendered invisible and is of no relevance. Who other than God sees the poor and hears their cry? To use God's senses does not mean simply turning inward but becoming free for a different way of living life: See what God sees! Hear what God hears! Laugh where God laughs! Cry where God cries!"

So, often we think of spiritual experience, especially those we name as mystical, as deeply inward and personal. A moment where we are one with God. I love how Soelle turns this on it's head. For her, to be one with God, means turning outward toward the world. It means to see others, not just yourself, with new eyes. The heart of Christian spirituality is not merely a personal interaction between ourselves and God, but a transformation of our interaction with everyone and everything. It is literally a new way of seeing and being in the world.

For this week, I am making a goal of praying this simple prayer each day: "God, help me to see what you see. Help me to borrow your eyes. Amen."

one sermon.

Over on her blog, the Painted Prayer Book, Jan Richardson writes about the idea that every preacher really has only one sermon, and she writes about what she imagines her "one sermon" to be. She suggests that most of us have one real message that we see in the gospel, and we simply find new ways of saying that same old message over and over.

Which of course, got me thinking about what my one sermon would be. I think, boiled down it probably goes something like this: Notice the Miracle, and become new. In other words, look at the incredible beauty of every moment, look at what God is doing right now in your life and in the lives of those around you. Look how the Divine is breathing in the painting, coming to life in that poem, shining with dewy green in the grass. Look, look! How could we be missing this?! And think how that God is creating still, even now, even in you. The God who breathed life in the dust, who became incarnate in Christ, who rose from the dead-- is creating and recreating. Right now. In us. We get to be a part of it.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how this is really the sermon I most need to hear. It is the message I most often forget, and need to be reminded of. I fill my mind and my life with things and forget that God is in all of it. I forget to take time to see God in the poem, the painting, the day. And more than anything, I so often doubt that change and transformation is possible, especially in myself. So, the sermon I try to give over and over, is really the one I am giving myself.

I wonder, if it is the same with most of us. Is the message we preach, really the one we need to hear? I was also thinking of how most people I know, whether or not they are in professional ministry, seem to have a sermon they are living as well. The message that they hope to share with their words, and their choices. Whether it is as simple as, "Love others," or "Dance whenever you can," each person I know has an amazing sermon they are telling me with their lives. What do you think yours is? If you had to boil down all your sermons (or all your days of living) into one overall message, what would it be?

virginia woolf in the afternoon.

Whenever I feel a little lost and have had a day of wondering about my calling, my future, my ministry and questions abound, but answers are few, I find it hard to pray. I can't seem to get to that quiet place of rest where I can just swim in the presence of God. I also cannot sort my thoughts enough to put my restless mind into into words.

The way I sometimes pray is to open familiar books. I run my fingers across the soft worn pages and I look to find some place of comfort in the space of words. Words that have spoken to me before, I know may speak some new thing to me now.

This afternoon, I opened an old favorite, To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf-- and here is what I found. For some reason, this makes sense to me, and bring me a peace I rest in. I feel the sense that all the little moments of love are mounting into the wave that is my life -- my own particular life, which is exactly the one I was meant to have.

"They became part of that unreal but penetrating and exciting universe which is the world seen through the eyes of love. The sky stuck to them; the birds sang through them. And what was even more exciting, she felt how life, from being made up of separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach."

Though life sometimes feels like a confused series of unconnected moments, and random choices, I rest in the sense that in the end it does build to this whole thing. And even though, it happens so quickly, a mere blink of an eye, the crash of a wave. Still, there it is: our life lived, our calling unfurled, our moment of becoming what God created us to be.