Divinity In Motion

"God is a force that can't be pinned down no matter what you do.  If you have to find God, you are lost before you start, because God isn't to be found.  God is to be accepted, to be experienced, to be accessed.  That's the purpose of deep prayer, to be still enough to attune ourselves to what already exists."  Rev. Eric Butterworth

"Be still and know that I AM God."  Psalm 46:10

I am reminded of the movie City of Angels, when Nathaniel says "Some things are true whether you believe them or not."

That has always stuck with me.  Belief is irrelevant except in our own action.  Every choice or action we make has a consequence, whether we deem it a "good" or a "bad" consequence.  Cause and Effect.  God Is.  You can accept or reject God.  You can experience or ignore God.  You can access or deny God.  Your choice.

God has always been and will always be and is not dependent upon our choice to accept or deny.  The God we know from the bible and through the example of Jesus is Love.  Love by invitation.  We are invited to Love God, Love ourselves and to Love all that we meet with the same value. 

How do we do that?  How do you Love God?  How do you Love yourself (not in a narcissistic way, but in a healing, awe-inspiring, beloved child of God way)?  We can't even begin to love another person until we begin to recognize and practice the Love for God and the Love for ourselves.  If we don't have those first two in place we have nothing to give.  We can still act - and many do - but it is not action sprung from Love, it is action sprung from Ego.  The effect is not the same.

Silence.  It scares people.  Prayer.  It scares people.  I sat with a couple of people asking them to sit in silence.  Not even 3 solid minutes passed without it being broken and God only knows the chaos traveling through their hearts, minds and souls before their physical silence had to be broken.  A woman came up to me on Sunday in pain, soulful pain, agitated.  She wants peace in her chaotic, stressful life.  When I mentioned to her she might first try to just sit in silence for the first 5 minutes of her day once she is awake she almost had a visible panic attack.  She proclaimed that even 1 minute was impossible.

When did that happen to us?  When did we become so instantaneous and in need of miraculous gratification that we lost our ability to sit in silence, to find peace in stillness?  Have we truly lost the art of waiting on God?  If we can not be still, sit in silence, contemplate nothing but the desire to access God to be with God, how can we hear God, know God and act on behalf of the God who calls us into action?

The challenge today is to join divinity in motion by sitting in silence and waiting on God to speak to us!  Just give it a try and see what happens.

What do Cupcakes have to do with it?

Well by the looks of this blog you would think I fasted from the on-line world for Lent ;-)

Not true.  However, this Lent seemed to fly by and Eastertide is already upon us.

Holy Week (combined with my kids Spring Break) kept me hopping (pun intended).  I tried to watch The Passion this year, but I couldn't.  I had nothing left in me after Good Friday services.  I literally read the Passion Gospel 15x.  I have to say it was worth it when just 1 parishioner came up to me on Easter Sunday and said "I have to tell you how God spoke to me after Good Friday", she had been a part of our Lectio Divina group - where I read the Passion Gospel 5x.  It is funny I LOVE Lectio Divina - but after the 3rd reading I started to wonder how the participants felt.  The Passion Gospel is 11.5 minutes long.  I ended up just reading the last 5 minutes for Lectio.  That is a long time to sit and listen - and it is really long for a Lectio Divina.

Then the Easter Egg hunt where we took the Easter Bunny to a new level.  You see my version of the Easter Bunny hides the Resurrection Eggs.  So I did an interactive sermon using the Resurrection Eggs and then sent the kids out to find them amongst the candy filled eggs.  It is one of my greatest joys to see the church campus filled with running, screaming kids who delight in joy at being the one who finds the empty egg - the empty tomb. 

When I arrived home after the Egg hunt and setting up for the Sunrise service - there was a beautiful box on my front porch.  It was from Georgetown Cupcakes with the most divine cupcakes you can imagine; little bites of heaven.  The card read Happy Easter.  I have dubbed the anonymous giver The Easter Bunny.  To date, the coconut and key lime pie version of the cupcakes are my favorites.  Utterly divine and inspired.

And this is the surprise.  You go through life expecting the normal, the same as it ever was, the routine.  Good Friday comes every year as does Holy Saturday.  Sitting with the empty tomb, feeling the sadness of the Beloved Disciple; Mary.  Holding on to the moment of unknowing, the how shall we live now that our Lord and Savior has been crucified and we are alone in this brutal, broken world.  And then surprise, the gift at the door of the tomb.  The stone pushed away, the linen cloth laying there empty and the words whispered, "Woman, why are you crying?  Whom is it you are looking for?"

"And Jesus said to her "Mary".

"Rabboni!"

And it is with us, Jesus calling us by name.  Asking us, who are you looking for?  Who are you searching for?  In all the ways we try to fill our lives, to fill the emptiness of our own tombs; in our own story we mirror Mary weeping and desiring our Rabboni.  It is only Jesus who can fill us, make us whole.  It is only Jesus who can call us by name and we recognize His voice.  It is only Jesus. 

Oh we try!  We try so hard to fill the tomb, the gaping unknowing with shreds of linen spread about, with angels garnering our attention.  We try to fill it with so much and in the end it is only Jesus who can satisfy.  The Hope of Easter is not just finding Jesus standing at the empty tomb - but of recognizing Him and inviting him to abide in our lives, our hearts, our soul!