Darrow Woods: Writer of Things

Mark’s Gospel begins with John, the wild-eyed prophet who lived in the wilderness, and called the Jewish people to repent, and turn away from their sinful ways. His call to a life of faithfulness, included a ritual washing, a baptism, to clean away the stench of bad living.

John called out, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” He went on, “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie, “ as if to say, “Wait until the real thing appears, it is going to be huge!”

John expected big things from Jesus. He expected the coming of the Kingdom. He attracted people who were also looking for something big to happen. Landless peasants who lived under Roman rule, and saw no earthly way to a brighter future could be keen for something world-shaking.

When I was 18, I had a powerful conversion experience. It was overwhelming, and emotional, and very confusing. I had grown up in the United Church, and God, and Jesus, and the Bible had always been part of my life. But now these things had a special hold on me, and claimed a large part of my attention.

It was like always knowing there is the possibility of life on other planets. It can be fun to watch a movie about aliens coming to earth, but it doesn’t really matter, unless it actually happens- until an alien lands on the lawn at 24 Sussex Drive, and says, “Hello, Mr. Prime Minister.”

When I had the conversion, and felt touched by a power bigger than me, beyond my little life, it was like having that close encounter. Now what do I do?

At first I didn’t have anyone to talk to about my alien invasion. My parents thought I was going through another weird phase. The minister at our church was not much help. It was almost a year before I connected with Bill, the minister at a neighbouring United Church, who became a mentor, and helped me sort out a lot of things over coffee.

Before I met Bill I spent a lot of time in the local Christian bookstore. A lot of the books, music, posters, and gift items reflected a religious culture concerned about getting people saved, in exactly the right way. I remember a whole shelf of books with titles like, “What’s wrong with the Mormons/Jehovah’s Witnesses/Roman Catholics/Anglicans/United Church of Canada/Buddhists/Hindus/Sikhs/Muslims/fill-in-the-blanks.”

Apparently a lot of faiths were getting it wrong, according to the authors of these nasty little word-bombs. You can find examples of this mean-spirited garbage online, if you really want it.

Before I became more discerning, I read a lot of junk. Sometimes, being seen with a certain kind of book in my hand, and a look of confusion on my face seemed to invite conversation from people in the Christian bookstore. They would ask me to church, or bible study, or to pray with them.

I met a guy named Ken, who worked near the bookstore. Ken talked about how he sensed God was doing big things in our town, and he could just feel something huge was about to happen. There was going to be a holy spirit revival, and hundreds and thousands of people were going to be saved, and we could be part of it! Looking back, I can see Ken was a sad and lonely guy who hated his job, and it would have greatly bolstered his ego to be part of something big.

In the passage we heard from Luke, Jesus compared God’s kingdom to tiny seeds that grow into bushes that provide resting places for birds, or yeast spread into kneaded dough, which causes bread to rise. The kingdom of small things.

In many aboriginal and tribal cultures around the world, each village had keepers of the flame. While others were out tending flocks, or hunting, or fishing, or harvesting crops, there was a small circle of people, often elders, who kept the fire burning. The fire was always needed for warmth, or cooking, or for light, or to mark the gathering place for a time of celebration. The keepers of the flame fed the fire enough to keep it going over time. It did not have to be a big fire, just enough so that it was still there. The kingdom of small things.

I helped with two funerals this week. The first was for Diane Harte, and there were a lot of Trinity folks involved in tending the fire that day. The warmth of God’s love was shared with sandwiches and sweets, with hugs and smiles of welcome, with directions to the bathroom, with prayers, and with many other small and important actions.

At the other funeral I heard great stories about the man who had died. When his first grand-daughter was little, he renovated his back yard. He turned it into a wonderful garden, through which he built a long winding path of inlaid brick. He painted each brick bright yellow. The path took those who walked it on a wandering route through the whole back yard, amongst bushes and flowers, and trees, and bird feeders, over a small bridge, to a little house where the little girl shared tea and cookies with her grandmother.

This man and his grand-daughter shared an enthusiasm for the Wizard of Oz, and she loved her yellow brick road. In the summer time, the grandfather would spend hours meticulously pulling out every weed, every blade of grass that pushed up between the inlaid bricks. He showed his love in hundreds of small ways. The kingdom of small things.

Each little thing matters. Paying attention to the details may not be all that exciting, but can keep us real, and help us live in the present. It can help us find meaning and joy in the right now, rather than focusing our hopes on some time in the future, when the big thing will happen.

Worlds are created one leaf, one branch, one flower at a time. People are shown grace and welcome one cup of tea, one sandwich, one cookie at a time. Cultures and countries are changed one heart a time. God’s kingdom comes. Amen

Tenzin Gyatso is recognized as the “tulku” or reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, and is in a lineage going back to at least 1546. My interest in this man of wisdom was renewed after I spent time with someone who has met him, and written extensively about that life-changing encounter.( Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus.)

BBC 4 recently aired an interview with the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, on the occasion of his 80th birthday. The interviewer, Emily Maitlis, asked why he may be the last Dalai Lama. His response:

“Now we are in the 21st century. So this Lama institution, frankly speaking it developed during the feudal system. So society changed, has to change, so some of the institutions, some of them they influence the existing societies, now they are out of date. So therefore as early as 1969, I publicly, officially, I announced that (whether) the very institution of the Dalai Lama should continue or not (is) up to the Tibetan people. If majority of Tibetan people, at the time of my death, feel that this centuries old institution not much relevant, then it automatically cease.”

I appreciate the Dalai Lama’s awareness of the need for institutional change. Like many church people I know, he seems to prefer it happen after he dies!

The denomination I serve, the United Church of Canada, formed in 1925, when Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists joined together. Congregations of the Evangelical United Brethren Church joined in 1968. We are relatively young, especially when compared to the institution of the Dalai Lama.

As I write this, commissioners from across Canada, lay people and clergy, are meeting in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland, for the 42nd General Council. This is our highest “court” or decision making body. Those attending read thousands of pages of reports, work together in small groups to consider recommendations, and vote on matters of policy and governance. They also worship together, renew old acquaintances, and make new friends. I have never attended but hear it is a tiring, inspiring, challenging, and sometimes overwhelming experience. I have friends there right now, including a few who let their names stand for election for the office of moderator, the elected spokesperson for our denomination.

The commissioners have done important work. They decided our church will divest from investments in the 200 largest fossil fuel companies. They passed a motion calling for a government inquiry into missing, murdered indigenous women and girls. They engaged in discussion about changes to the qualifications required of those offering themselves for ordained ministry.  (Here is a link to a site that offers news updates from GC42 General Council 42 News )

The commissioners also have before them documents of the Comprehensive Review Task Force, containing  recommendations that if enacted, would result in sweeping changes to the structure of the United Church. This may be the hardest part of their work. For years people have pointed to shrinking membership, closure of congregations, difficulty filling leadership roles at all levels of the church, and reduced financial resources, as reasons why we must be bold, and wise in making significant changes.

My hope, and prayer is we won’t wait until our current leaders die.

Three weeks ago I was at Kenyon College in the village of Gambier, Ohio, attending Beyond Walls, a writer’s conference for clergy. There were 84 ministers, priests, chaplains, rabbis, and spiritual directors from Australia, and Canada, and 23 American states. Our teachers were poets, novelists, editors, bloggers, and journalists. It was a celebration of spiritual writing, and a chance to explore possibilities outside the writing we normally do.

It was like summer camp for ministers, without actually having to camp. We stayed in furnished, air-conditioned student apartments, enjoyed meals in the faculty dining room, and had the use of several wonderful libraries, walking trails, bike trails, and the fitness centre.

A path behind the fitness centre leads to the 14 mile Kokosing Gap Trail. This is a repurposed rail line, paved for recreational use, cutting through the forest at the south end of the village.

(This is Rabbi Jamie on the left, cycling in Colorado)

Early one morning I cycled the trail with another “camper’, Rabbi Jamie, who writes children’s stories, and is working on a novel. We talked about writing as a way to connect with people who might never come to a worship service.  Jamie is younger than me, so I kept him chatting, so I could keep up with him. He lives near Denver, Colorado, and I think the altitude gives him an aerobic advantage.

As Jamie and I pedaled along, we saw ahead of us a mother deer and two fawns, using the trail as a kind of forest express route. We hushed our voices, and coasted quietly behind the deer, until they veered off the pavement, and up a hill into the cover of foliage. The deer were a wondrous reminder of the vibrancy and variety, and beauty of life in the world beyond streets and buildings. They emerged ahead of us on the trail two more times that morning. Each time was a blessing.

Rabbi Jamie and I are both interested in the experience of the holy, what some call the “numinous”. According to Rudolf Otto, a German Lutheran writer from the early twentieth century, the numinous is the most honest religious feeling. You might call it a sense of the holy, an awareness of something really important that is greater than us.

This is not religious in the sense of the rules or teachings of one religion or another. This is the more basic experience, the gut feeling. We may encounter it during the ritual and solemnity of a worship service. I have felt it in worship here on a Sunday morning. I felt it at a Friday evening Jewish Shabbat Service held in the pub at Kenyon College. I felt it a few years ago in morning prayer with the monks at a Cistercian monastery in South Carolina.

We may sense the holy in a place of worship, even when no one else is there. Some places feel soaked with prayer. I remember sitting on an old wooden bench in the worship room at a Quaker retreat centre in Pennsylvania, and feeling the tension in my back release. It was a good, solid place to rest, in the knowledge that God is there. I remember feeling awe while standing atop a Mayan pyramid in the jungle, in Belize.

Awareness of the holy may come as a gentle tide that brings a deep feeling of tranquility. It may come in a thrilling rush, overwhelming while it lasts. It may burst up from the depths of your soul so powerfully that it actually shakes and moves you physically.

I have read about Sufi masters, whirling dervishes who spin and dance until transported, not so much to a different place, but to a different way of seeing what is around them. They find themselves in the presence of the holy.

Maybe that’s how it was for a lonely shepherd tending to his father-in-law’s sheep. He saw something strange. A bush seemed to be on fire, but was not burning up. As he approached he heard a voice calling, “Moses! Moses!”

“And Moses said, “Here I am.”

“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”  Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.”

We are making our way through the Lord’s Prayer. The third line is “Hallowed be thy name”.  We recognize the word “hallowed” from Hallowe’en. It sounds supernatural or frightening. Moses was scared, but not in a bad way, when he approached the burning bush.

Hallowed is an archaic word meaning “to honour as holy”. I am glad we kept the old word in our translation of the Lord’s Prayer. It retains a sense of mystery.  Hallowed means we recognize God is holy, an overwhelming presence, that can surprise us, call us out of our normal way of seeing and being, to awareness there is more to life than we normally see or imagine.

When we repeat the Lord’s Prayer we tend to fly past the word hallowed without savouring what it tells us- that God is big and strange, wild, untameable, like a whirlwind, or a bush that burns without being consumed.

Moses’ encounter with the holy changed his life. He abandoned a largely solitary existence, to start a movement. He organized the people of Israel, who were slaves doing hard labour in Egypt, under the pharoah’s whip. He led them out of Egypt, towards a land where they built new lives. When asked where he got his authority, he said it was from God, known as “I am who I am”.

Life-changing encounters with the holy happen every day, and not always in deserts or lofty places. An historical marker on a street corner in Kentucky has become a pilgrimage site for people from all over the world. It marks the spot where Thomas Merton, perhaps the most famous Western mystic of the twentieth century, experienced a revelation. It did not turn him into a revolutionary in the manner of Moses, but it did crack his heart open to see God in everyone around him. He described it this way;

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)

I think every human being is made with a longing to connect to the Holy, and to the Holy within each other. I have heard it described as the God shaped hole in our heart, which yearns for meaning, hope, connection to something beyond ourselves. This is the part of us that most longs for intimacy with God. It is a tender place within ourselves. I think for many people, access to this yearning comes at times of vulnerability rather than at the times when we feel strong and confident.

Moses was alone with the sheep in the wilderness, and saw something mysterious, that made no sense, and should not have been there. It may have jarred him, reminded him that there is more to our existence than what we can understand or control.

Thomas Merton was in downtown Louisville, running errands for the monastery where he trained novice monks, and where he had been living for the previous 15 years. He’d gone to the monastery looking for a place to pray and find God, outside the rush of the world, away from the noise of people. He saw as if in a flash of bright light that there really is no place that is away, and that God is present everywhere, and in and with every person.

God is holy, and all that God has made, and is making is holy. Hallowed.

This past week my friend Sam Persons Parkes passed on a quote from that famous Canadian theologian, Anne of Green Gables, who said,

 “Why must people kneel down to pray?” If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone or into the deep, deep, woods, and I’d look up into the sky–up–up–up–into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness.

And then I’d just feel a prayer. “  Amen

NASA recently released this great new picture of the earth from space. It makes me think of scenes we sometimes see on television, video footage from the International Space Station, with our planet in the background.

We live in such a different time from when Jesus walked the earth, and taught his friends about God’s love, and how to pray. Jesus used the images and poetry available to him at that time. In the ancient world, in Jesus’ time, and for centuries after, most people believed the earth was flat and round like a pancake. Below the part we walk on was the underworld, also called the land of the dead. Above was the sky, which was a dome, that separated us from the heavens.

Mortals lived literally in the middle of the sandwich, or layer cake, between the land of the dead, and the heavens above. Depending on what culture or religion you came from, your god or gods was “up there”. This view of things persists, to some degree, in popular thinking.

I did a funeral yesterday for a lady from another congregation. More than one person who I spoke with before and after the service, when talking about the person who died, tilted their heads slightly upward, when talking about how this woman is now with God, and her husband, and will always be looking down, and watching over her family.

When people say these things at a funeral, the last thing I would ever do is challenge their view. That imagery, that poetry still has meaning for many people. But not for everyone. At the height of the cold war between the USA and the former USSR, Premier Nikita Khrushchev was speaking about the Soviet Union’s anti-religion campaign, and commented that Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut, had flown into space, but didn’t see any god there.

Khrushchev had his own reasons for saying what he did, but he also put into words one of the basic existential problems of life in our time. How do we think about God, when the ancient ideas about God’s location are no longer viable?

The question of “where” is God is closely related to the questions about what God is. If God is not the old guy in the throne in the middle of the heavenly city that floats above our heads, then who/where/what is God?

The questions raised by a modern view of the universe, and how religions deal with it or duck it, or push it away, may have as much to with how seriously religion can be taken in our time, as anything else. I don’t think the church is at its best when it rejects science, and puts people in a position of having to choose between faith and reason.

When I was at the writer’s conference earlier this month, I chatted with someone who writes for a journal called The Christian Century. One of her recent assignments was to interview a man named Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit priest who recently retired from his job as the Vatican’s astronomer. The Vatican has its own observatory in Italy, operates a telescope in Arizona, and has been doing scientific research since 1774.  Fr. Consolmagno recently published a book called “Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? . . . and Other Questions from the Astronomers’ In-Box at the Vatican Observatory.”

In the interview, he said, “For me faith has always come first. When you grow up, you don’t learn that everything that you were taught as a child was wrong; rather, you see that you didn’t have a very complete picture. It was right, but not in the way you thought it was. Any religious person has this experience over and over again. “

The astronomer, who also used to be the Vatican’s curator of meteorites, which sounds like a great thing to have on your business card, went on to say, “We need the humility to say that we don’t understand it all. I know my science is true, but I also know it is not completely true, so I have to keep improving it. I think my faith is completely true, but I know I don’t understand all of it—my understanding is in constant need of revision.”

We don’t stop trying to sort it all out. That I think is much healthier than saying if your science doesn’t agree with my religion, then you must be wrong, or vice versa.

There is a story I like, from a book called “The Song of the Bird”, by another Jesuit priest named Anthony De Mello. Born nand raised in India, her wrote several books which introduced Western Christians to the spiritual wisdom of the east. This story is called “The Little Fish”.

“Excuse me,” said an ocean fish, “You are older than I so can you tell me where to

find this thing they call the Ocean?”

“The Ocean,” said the older fish, “is the thing you are in now,”

 “Oh, this? But this is water. What I’m seeking is the Ocean,” said the disappointed

fish as he swam away to search elsewhere.

 

A student came to the Master in sannyasi robes. And he spoke sannyasi language: “For years

I have been seeking God. I have sought Him everywhere that He is said to be: on

mountain peaks, the vastness of the desert, and the silence of the cloister and the

dwellings of the poor.”

 

“Have you found him?” the Master asked. “No. I have not. Have you?”

 

What could the Master say? The evening sun was sending shafts of golden light into

the room. Hundreds of sparrows were twittering on a banyan tree. In the distance one

could hear the sound of highway traffic. A mosquito droned a warning that it was going

to strike… And yet this man could sit there and say he had not found Him.

After a white he left, disappointed, to search elsewhere.

Stop searching, little fish. There isn’t anything to look for. All you have to do is look.

One of the effects of the collapse of the layer cake model of the universe is that it pushes, or encourages us to think of God less as a human-like figure that sits on a throne far away from us, and more as a present, if invisible spirit, that pervades everything.

This is a change, and like every change, there is good and bad about it. Part of the bad is it is change, and we do not always welcome change. Another challenge is if God really is everywhere, many of exclusive claims made by religion about how to access god, how to be right with god, where god is, and how god is, and who god likes, all seem pretty petty, and more obviously human constructions- or at least reflective of the limits of human understanding.

How can we claim an exclusive route to heaven, when it turns out that heaven is actually everywhere? If there is no place that god is not, we don’t actually need special permission to be with god. We only need to look, to listen, to breathe, to swim, to be.

This is bad news in a way for the franchise model of religion. It radically undermines fear-based preaching and teaching, that still says, you need to get right with God, the way we tell you, or you will face eternal damnation.

But this is good news in other ways. If our imagination opens to the possibility that God is everywhere, in everything, that we are swimming in God, like the little fish, then we are never really far away from God.

If the world we live in, and all the trees and rocks and lakes and flowers and the soil and animals and bricks and bridges and buildings are all soaked through with God, and heaven really is all around us, then taking care of the earth becomes a holy duty.

This suggests that heaven is not some distant place, far above the dome of the sky, but that heaven is all around us.  I love the idea that those we love who have died, even though they have left their bodies behind, are still very much with us. Amen

Teaching Time: Our Father: The Mystery of God My new favourite show on Netflix is called “Granite Flats”. Set in a small town in Colorado during the cold war, it is full of mystery, and spies, and nothing is quite as it seems. My favourite character is an English teacher named Professor Hargreaves. He is played by Christopher Lloyd, who also played the mad, time travelling scientist in the Back to the Future movies, and starred in Taxi, as Jim Ignatowski, one of the weirdest cabdrivers. He seems to do well with characters that are a bit out there. Professor Hargreaves character extols the mystical qualities of authors like Walt Whitman and William Shakespeare. In a private tutoring session he asks one of his students if they ever pray. It’s a great question. The student, whose parents are serious scientists, and have raised their daughter to be a secular humanist, says she never has. Hargreaves says, “Prayer is nothing more than the desire to connect with a power that exists beyond your little self.” That is a wonderfully expansive definition of prayer. I hope to explore this basic human activity, while we work with one of the best known prayers. We will look at the Lord’s Prayer one line at a time, over the course of five summer Sundays, beginning today with the first two words, “Our Father”. (We will run out of summer before we finish the prayer, but I am okay with that.) It was a huge step for Jesus’ first students and followers, to call God “Abba”. In Aramaic, the word that we translate as “Father” is actually “Abba’, which in the original carries the closeness and intimacy of “Daddy”. Daddy is different from Father. Daddy is a term of endearment, soaked in the feelings of a relationship. It implies tenderness, and open-heartedness. Father is more formal, points towards the authority of a father-figure, and obligations to the head of the household. In Jesus’ time the patriarch in a very real sense, owned, and commanded the obedience of the children, the servants, the animals, as property of the family. The patriarch ran the family like a little kingdom, or family business. So “Father” was a lot like King, or CEO, or Boss. Daddy has more of the flavour of home, of welcome, of the assurance of love. “Father” is about position, and role. “Daddy” is about the love. Before our worship service began today, Mary was telling us about her experience of being on the naval dock in Halifax, with the crowd of friends and family who were there to welcome home the officers and crew of the HMCS Fredericton. This Canadian Navy frigate had just returned from 7 months of active, and sometimes hazardous duty. She and her husband were there to welcome home their son, who is a navigator on the bridge of that vessel. Mary mentioned a little girl who was quite excited to be there.

Mary, can you tell us more about the little girl on the dock? How old was she?

About two.

What about her hair?

It was bunched up in elastics and went in all directions.

What colour?

Blonde.

What about her eyes?

I think they were blue.

And the shirt? What colour?

White, with the words printed on the front.

Can you tell us again what they said? “

Out of my way, my Daddy’s coming home today.”

That’s powerful. What colour was the printing?

The letters were in all colours, like a rainbow.

Wow. The rainbow. The promise of a new day, after the stormy waters.

The vessel has landed safely, and the flood waters have receded.

I can see the little girl, in the imagination of my heart. She’s on the dock, maybe her hand is in her mom’s. She is bouncing on her little feet, about to burst with impatience, excitement, joy. She’s waiting. Not for her dad. Not for her father. She is waiting for her daddy. I met a lot of rabbis this past week, at the writer’s conference. One night I came back to the apartment I was sharing with four other guys, a couple of them rabbis, and there was this gathering of men, mostly rabbis, and some wine, and some beer, and they were in the common area of the apartment. They were solving, at great volume, the problems of Israel. I think this was the same day, or the day after President Obama announced the signing of the nuclear deal with Iran. The debate, argument, conversation was polarized, and lively. I had planned to go up to bed, but I had ducked hanging with the guys the previous night, and I also figured there would be no sleeping in our apartment for some time. I sat in on the conversation. One of the men is preparing to move back to Israel, and has a son in the Israeli Defense Force- so he was a little louder than the others.

I learned a little over the week about this style of friendly, loving disputation. These guys argued, and got loud, and did not resolve, or compromise, but at the end of the night, thanked each other, and blessed each other for the time.

According to rabbinic tradition, every verse in the Torah can be interpreted in 70 ways. They don’t literally mean 70, but rather, many, many ways. This must encourage reading, and conversation, and interpretation of the text.  I love the humility, and the encouragement in this. We don’t know everything, we do not speak for everyone, and there is room to look at things in different ways.

This openness to not knowing the “one answer”, and leaving space for other interpretations is such a contrast with some Christian teachers, who seem to have the single right way to think about things, and are ready to tell you how wrong you are, because you don’t see the thing their way. There is no room for mystery, or questions, just a single right answer.

Life is confusing. Have you noticed? Life is mysterious. There is so much that is beyond us. I love the phrase in Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians “Now we see as through a glass darkly”. That’s from the King James Version. In The Message, the paraphrase is, “We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing God directly just as God knows us!” That line comes from the famous passage in First Corinthians about love. We often read this passage at weddings, and at funerals. I think part of what Saint Paul is telling us is that in the midst of our earthly lives, there is a lot about life, and about God, that will remain mysterious, so it is a good thing we can place our trust, our faith, our hope in love. “Out of my way, my Daddy’s coming home today.”

When I began my training to be a minister, in the mid-1980’s, students in mainline Protestant seminaries were struggling with a radical suggestion. We did not have to think about God as a grey haired old man who lived in the sky, and looked down on us, literally, and kept track of our mistakes, and mis-steps, and would hold us accountable. I still kind of get that god confused with Santa, and his list of the naughty and nice.

Feminist writers showed us this image of God was not only insufficient, but in a lot of cases, quite damaging to people’s ability, and willingness to approach God as an idea, or as a focus for their hopes and prayers. If we only talked about God as Father, we ran the risk of hurting, or leaving out people whose experience of earthly fathers was not loving, or wholesome, or life-giving. That was part of the rationale behind the movement towards more “inclusive language”.

We can see now, looking back, that a lot of the efforts to replace all the “fathers” in the hymn book with words like “parent” or “mother/father God”  were not only bad poetry, but they often also offended by simply trading one limited metaphor for God, for another.

I think a lot of that effort distracted from a deeper consideration, that the whole enterprise of trying to say exactly who God is, was never really the point.

I was at a poetry reading on Friday, offered by a man named Rodger Kamenetz, who describes himself as a JuBu, which is a name sometimes applied used by Jews who are also Buddhist. Rodger is a gifted teacher, and a mystic. He was talking to room full of rabbis, and priests, and pastors, who are all interested in writing- people who work a lot with words. At one point he asked us to remember that as important as words are, words are also symbols that we use, that someone has made up, to point towards what we mean. At an even more basic level than words, there is what we see, and smell, and touch, and what we hear, and what we feel.

“Out of my way, my Daddy’s coming home today.”

When my children were babies, and they were crying, I held them. In the days and weeks and months before they understood language and knew the names for things, they knew what it was to be held, and protected, and fed, and loved. In the time before they had any name they could say out loud, they knew that they were loved. This knowing that they were loved did not depend on getting my name right.

When one of my kids, or my wife, or a close friend, or someone in our church family is hurting, or confused, or feeling lost, or fed up, or angry at themselves, or life, or God, I often have no clue what the right words might be to help them. Probably because words come mostly from the head. Often what people need does not come from the head, but from the tenderness of hearts.

God is the mysterious force who is at work making the universe and giving us life. When Jesus called God, “Daddy”, I believe what he was saying was that we may not have all the answers to the mysteries, we may not know what God looks like, or what is on God’s mind, if God has anything like a mind- but we can trust, and love, and place our hope in God, who was known to Jesus as tender love.

“But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the one to build me a house to live in?  I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. “(1 Samuel 7:4-6)

Does the ground of being, the source of the love that fills us and flows through us as we allow, really need a house to live in?

Nathan’s message from God to David is about an upgrade in accommodation from a tabernacle in a tent, to a house made of cedar. This suggests a permanent, stationary structure.

The biblical scholarship that lives in my memory wants to remind me this story may represent the transition for Israel, under David’s rule, from a nomadic, wandering tribe to a kingdom like the kingdoms that surround it, centered in one place. This may point to the development of a city, or at least a larger village or town, that becomes the place to live, from which governing happens, where people gather for religious celebration, and to which people come for commerce.

Setting that aside, I hear this passage as the pastor of small congregation in suburban Canada, in the first quarter of the 21^st century. I serve a denomination that seems about 50 years past its stale, or stagnation date. The sociologists of religion have been telling us that we were at our peak, and best condition, at least in terms of numbers of people, and social influence, in 1965. I have some awareness that we have built many “houses for God to live in”.

The community where I serve as a pastor has a half dozen houses of our brand, and I don’t know how many of other brands, other “god-house” developers. My congregation struggles weekly, monthly, annually, to meet the costs of maintaining our little house, and to pay the staff.

Was it supposed to be that our mission to be people of God, with hearts open to love others in God’s name would be overtaken with the financial and practical demands of property management? Did I know, when I was ordained 25 years ago that so many of the conversations I take part in, would be about this little house?

I find myself thinking about the tabernacle in the tent, and asking myself, “What was the problem again?”

The highlight of my kids’ summer is the Ontario Mennonite Music Camp. Forty teenaged musicians and a half dozen staff members live in residence at Conrad Grebel College for two weeks every August. Campers attend master classes for their instrument of choice, and work together to present a scaled down Broadway musical for family and friends on the final night.

Each camper is part of a small group that meets daily for devotions, and conversation. There is great food in generous quantities. There are games, and mysterious traditions, and late night escapades in an atmosphere of generous, good-hearted fun. For the other 50 weeks of the year, campers talk, and text with new friends who share their love of music.

This week I am at “Beyond Walls,” offered by Kenyon College. The campus is in the tree-lined village of Gambier, Ohio, where the bookstore rents bicycles, walking is encouraged, and the speed limit is 25 mph. There are 84 of us clergy-types: rabbis, pastors, and priests representing a mixed bag of denominations. We came from several countries, and many American states, attracted by a shared desire to write about spiritual life. Most of us produce weekly sermons, but would love to move creatively beyond the walls of the worship service.

We are living in apartment-style residences, and being fed well in a beautiful dining room. Our days begin and end with meditation and worship. Our teachers are bloggers, op-ed writers, poets and novelists. We compare notes in small groups as we take on writing challenges.

It is invigorating to meet people with similar passions. It is a blessing to leave behind everyday occupations of work and home, and put time and energy into writing.

This is my summer camp. What would yours look like?

Imagine a battlefield in an arid place. A huge fight must have taken place, and horrifically, the casualties were left dead or dying where they fell. The sun and the wind and the animals of the wild all did their work, and the battlefield was littered with dry bones, the skeletal remains of warriors who had been strong and courageous enough to fight, but who died.

This is a dramatic image of defeat, of the mighty and proud struck down, of the plans of conquerors or defenders gone awry. A valley of dry bones represents disappointment, hopelessness,, despair. What good could come from visiting such a sad, sad place, even in a vision?

This description of the valley of dry bones can remind us of the dry, and dead or dying places within ourselves, and our own lives. Are there ways that we feel stuck? Are there areas of our own lives that feel beyond renewal, beyond new possibility? Do we believe that our lives can change for the better? Are we open to that?

Where does hope come from, in the times that feel dry, and dead, and beyond restoration? In this vision, the Spirit says : “Prophesy over these bones: ‘Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!'”

Then, God speaks directly to the bones. A vision must be something like a dream, in which weird things can happen, that have meaning and make sense within the context of the dream.

“God, the Master, told the dry bones, “Watch this: I’m bringing the breath of life to you and you’ll come to life. I’ll attach sinews to you, put meat on your bones, cover you with skin, and breathe life into you. You’ll come alive and you’ll realize that I am God!”

In this dream-like vision, the combination of God’s power, and Ezekiel’s prophesying, or preaching, has the effect of rousing the fragments of dried up skeletons. God’s power causes sinew and flesh to re-grow, and knit together the bones, to re-form and revive the dead.

If someone came to me for help in understanding their dream, which happens sometimes, and told me about a dream like this, I would ask them, “ What feels dead in your life? “

Last week we spent some time with a spiritual exercise called the Examen. You ask yourself two little questions. The first question is along these lines,” When did I feel closest to God today, or when did I feel most alive, or filled with hope, and joy, and love. “ The second question is kind of the reverse. “When did I feel the most distant from God, or the most despairing, or without joy? When did parts of me feel dead, or hopeless inside?”

In the terminology of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who taught the Examen, we ask about moments of consolation, when we feel held in God’s love, and we ask about moments of desolation, when God seems impossibly distant, or disinterested in us, and we feel alone, or despairing, perhaps something like dry bones in a desert place.

The exercise of the Examen teaches that the dry times, when we feel that God is very far away, or that maybe there is no God, that even that feeling, that dryness, can be seen as a prayer. If we are thirsty for something, longing for relief from the dryness, that is a prayer deeper than words. It is a prayer we make, without even knowing we are praying, because our longing, our desire for a change, for hope, comes from such a deep place. It is good God can hear and see the prayer, because we ourselves may not know what our own soul has to say.

In Ezekiel’s vision there are both aspects of the Examen prayer exercise. There is awareness of desolation, of the dry desert, and there is also the consolation, when Ezekiel becomes aware that God is with him even in the terrible place. Ezekiel responds to God’s very strange instruction to prophesy, or preach to the dry bones, God becomes involved, and the bones knit, and grow flesh.

If this were a dream, we might ask the dreamer, what parts of your life are thirsting, hungering for God’s word, for a message of hope, encouragement, challenge?

The second story we heard is often spoken of as the birth of the Jesus movement, or the Christian church.

There was a very dry, and sad, and desolate time for the small group of Jesus’ original disciples. They were in Jerusalem, very likely back in the same upper room where they had gathered for Passover, and where they’d had that last Supper with Jesus, before he was arrested. Jesus’ friends were gathered because they believed they were supposed to be in Jerusalem for the Pentecost Festival, but the story says they were behind closed and locked doors, because they were afraid.

In the days after the first Easter, Jesus’ friends heard reports, and had their own experiences of Jesus still being with them, even though they had seen him die on the cross, and be buried. Somehow Jesus had overcome death. The word people use is resurrection, but a fancy word does not make this any less mysterious.

It must have been a great consolation to the disciples, to see and hear and feel Jesus with them. But the story we heard in church last week describes Jesus ascending into heaven, and leaving the disciples behind. However we make sense of the location of heaven, of the place that souls go when they leave the body behind, it was away from the disciples, and they would experience that as a loss, as grief all over again.

In their desolate condition, they returned to the upper room in Jerusalem. They may have gone there to hide. They may have gone there because they expected something to happen. They may have gone there because they did not know what else to do. The upper room was the location of the last supper, during which Jesus told them to remember him.

The story says while they were gathered in that place, “ Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them. “

God was in the midst of this situation, as God was in Ezekiel’s dream. Jews from many different places in the ancient world, gathered in Jerusalem for the Pentecost Festival were also aware something extraordinary was happening. No matter what nation or ethnic background they came from, these visitors all understood what was being said to them, as if it were in their own languages.

 “Their heads were spinning; they couldn’t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: “What’s going on here?”

That was when Peter, backed by the other disciples stood where the crowds could see him- they must have left the locked room, and began doing what God had told Ezekiel to do in his vision. Peter started preaching. Peter told the crowd about Jesus’ message of God’s love. Peter told them about how Jesus had been betrayed, arrested, crucified and killed. Peter told him that not even death could stop what Jesus had started.

Peter was pretty fired up, and he held the attention of many, who accepted his invitation to be baptized that day as followers of Jesus. Soon the little group of Jesus followers, had multiplied into hundreds and thousands of people.

The disciples, like Ezekiel, found their desert time of desolation was transformed. They felt and heard and saw the presence of God in their lives, and it made all the difference. These early followers of Jesus now had new work to do, as leaders of the growing Jesus movement. They worked together with the new followers to share their belongings, to offer care and comfort to hurting and hungry people, and to organize regular worship and shared meals, for the new community of faith.

They picked themselves up out of their dusty sadness, a little like those old piles of bones in the other story. They became warriors in a new kind of army, with purpose, and vision, with hope, and joy. To use familiar words, God gave them the choice to live boldly or die sadly, and they chose to live boldly.

We all have dry, desolate times. We may have parts of our lives where there is need for hope, and change, and newness. It may be that we could do with a little Pentecost ourselves, in our own lives, and in the life of our church.

Let’s take a moment now for a guided prayer exercise. I invite you to close your eyes. Get comfortable where you are sitting. Imagine that the Holy Spirit is just above us, like a warm breath of wind. Imagine that it touches you, maybe on the top of your head, maybe on your shoulders. It is a loving, reassuring touch, to let you know that you are one of God’s beloved. Is there something that needs healing in your life, or a dry and dusty place that craves renewal? Ask God to be with you, and to transform what is broken or wounded within you. God bless you.

It may be that this blessing will lead to a deeper consolation, and to a slightly different vision for life. You may find something that needs doing, that you are meant to do. And God will be with you in it.  When you feel ready, open your eyes, and we will sing our hymn together.

Voices United 400 Lord, listen to your children praying

Lord, listen to your children praying,

Lord, send your Spirit in this place;

Lord, listen to your children praying,

send us love, send us power, send us grace!

Before I went away for a week of study leave, I asked you to try to start each day with a simple prayer, like this:

“Dear God;

Please show me what I can do today, for you.

I will do my best to do it, with your help. Amen. “

Does anyone has any stories to share, about what it meant in their lives, to pray this prayer?

I had a great email this week from one member of the congregation who took the challenge seriously, and it led them to do something that was difficult, and involved a level of emotional vulnerability. The email described the effect this had on a small group of people. This person saw a change in their own life, and they were able to help a few other people as well. The person who emailed me was glad they took the risk, and with God’s help, moved a bit outside their comfort zone.

I believe powerful, important things can result if we follow this practice of prayer, and ask God what we can do, and then ask God to help us to do it. We need God’s help, and great changes can happen in our lives when we look for God’s guidance. Ultimately, God is the one we end up relying on. God is permanent. God is always with us.

The scripture stories this morning all seem to be about what happens to a faith community when it is time for their leader, their teacher, to leave. The leave-takings are very dramatic. In the case of the prophet Elijah, he is walking and talking with his protégé, Elisha, when

“suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.”

Just before that, Elijah had asked Elisha what he could do for him, before he was taken away. Elisha had asked his teacher for a double portion of his spirit. Elisha wanted to know that somehow, Elijah would still be with him, helping him with the work of being a spiritual leader.

In the Gospel of Luke story about Jesus’ leave-taking, Jesus told his followers he would send them what his heavenly father had promised. They should stay together until they have been clothed with power from on high. That phrase “being clothed” is a kind of literary allusion to the story about Elijah and his follower Elisha, who picks up a cloak, also called a mantle, that belonged to Elijah.

In the reading from Acts the promise is a little more detailed. Jesus said his followers should stay in Jerusalem until they had received the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Next week we will hear the story of Pentecost, which describes this promised moment, when the Spirit touched and energized Jesus’ followers, and a great crowd of others in Jerusalem.)

In both stories about Jesus leaving, after Jesus has made his promise, he is described as being taken up into the sky. In Acts it says a cloud hid Jesus from the sight of his followers.

A few years ago, when I was teaching the story of Jesus’ Ascension, I showed a short clip from Mary Poppins. The movie is actually 50 years old. It has received renewed attention because of a more recent Disney movie, called “Saving Mr. Banks,” which is about the making of the first movie.

Mary Poppins is the story of a magical nanny who appeared in an upper middle class English household just when they needed her most. She came sailing in on the wind, literally, floating through the air, upheld by her umbrella.

With her messages of love, and adventure, and openness to new experience and new people, she nurtured Jane and Michael, the two children of the Banks household.  They are transformed from brattish hellions into loving, kind, and generous young people. Much of this transformation happened because of the effect Mary Poppins had on their Mother and Father. She helped them look upon their children with love rather than mere tolerance, and re-discover the delight of actually spending time with them, rather than being absorbed in themselves.

Along the way there is magic and singing and dancing, and humour. These provide the spoonful of sugar needed for the viewer to swallow the medicine, or the moral of the story.  If parents don’t actively love their kids, they can lose them.

By the end, the Banks family is getting along famously, having been transformed by the message of love. Mary Poppins sees her work is done, and it is time for her to leave. It is time for them to carry on, with all that she has taught them, and with the spirit of love that gave life to her teaching.

It is not easy for her to go. She has grown to deeply love this family, especially the children.

The visual effects seem pretty hoaky, compared with what could be done in our time. Mary Poppins flies above the smoky clouds of London, as the credits roll on the screen.

Where was she going? She was a kind of a magical figure in the movie. She was actually very much a Christ figure, one who brings a message of love, and reconciliation, and tolerance and openness to differences in people. So where does she go at the end? Up into the sky. Heavenward.

That works in the movie, as long as you don’t think too hard about it. It even kind of works in the stories about Elijah and Jesus, again, as long as you don’t think too hard.

In the ancient world, there were many stories of kings, heroes, prophets or holy men being taken up into the realm of the gods, at the end of their earthly lives. It was a way of saying that they were divinely blessed, and that their message would live on.

In the ancient world, people viewed the earth, and the universe around it very differently than we do. They had what I have sometimes called the “layer cake” view. Our world was the middle layer. Hell was the layer below, and heaven, the realm of the gods, was right above.

With this cosmology, this understanding of the architecture of the universe, it made perfect sense to talk about a hero descending into the depths of Hades, or ascending bodily into heaven.

But that is not how we see things in our day. When we talk about Heaven being up, and Hell being down, we are usually only being poetic. We live in a time when satellites orbit the earth, and rockets have pierced the dome of the sky, and gone to the moon. It is harder to imagine heaven as a physical place that is over our heads. It is harder to read these stories as literally true.

So how do we think about this? Where did Elijah go? Where is Jesus?  One of the downfalls of thinking of heaven as a physical place, above our heads, is that this literal-ness reduces reality to things we can see. It leaves out the possibility that there are things that are real, that we can’t see.

The Irish poet and mystic John O’Donohue once said that rather than thinking of the human body as the vessel that carries around a little thing inside us that we call a soul, it may be that instead, our human bodies are surrounded by something like a force, or energy, that is bigger than our bodies. Maybe instead of our body carrying around the soul, our soul actually envelops our bodies.

In a lovely book called “To Bless the Space Between Us”, O’Donohue quotes another mystic, a fourteenth century philosopher and theologian named Meister Eckhart.

“Meister Eckhart was once asked, Where does the soul of a person go when the person dies? He said, no place. Where else would the soul be going? Where else is the eternal world? It can be nowhere other than here. We have falsely spatialized the eternal world. We have driven the eternal out into some kind of distant galaxy. Yet the eternal world does not seem to be a place but rather a different state of being. The soul of the person goes no place because there is no place else to go. This suggests that the dead are here with us, in the air that we are moving through all the time. The only difference between us and the dead is that they are now in an invisible form. You cannot see them with the human eye. But you can sense the presence of those you love who have died. With the refinement of your soul, you can sense them. You feel that they are near.”

This may be just another form of poetic expression, but I find it sits a little better with me than the idea of chariot of fire carrying Elijah up into the sky. Scientists now tell us that nothing can ever really be destroyed. Things change form, but the matter and the energy that make up our bodies continue to exist, in one state of being or another. Perhaps we don’t really go anywhere physically when we die. The visible parts of us, our bodies, may change form, but the invisible parts of us, our souls, thoughts, feelings, still exist, held safely by God, in God’s universe, which is all around us.

So perhaps Elijah and Jesus never really left. Maybe these Bible stories about them mysteriously disappearing into the sky were the best poetry the people had in their time, to talk about how even when their bodies failed them, their souls, their spirits, carried on. Amen