Where our Feet have Trod...

"So Moses swore on that day, saying 'Surely the land where your foot has trodden shall be your inheritance and your children's forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.'

These are the words recorded in Josuah 14:9, the words of Moses to Caleb. When I first read these words, I was taken back to a reflection I read by Frederick Buechner when I was in college... The thrust of the reflection was about our feet and how, if we want to know about our lives, we ought to consider where our feet have been. Obviously, this scripture above can lead us into a debate about land and whose land is whose as well as the question of inheritance. This night, as I read this Scripture however, I think about the real inheritance that is the gift of life we share with others. How will our path and the places where our feet trod be gifted with a kind longevity, a living HOPE, when we embody the Gospel in community?

This night I had a lovely dinner with Talitha, Alexis, and her friend. Tomorrow I will go with a few youth group members to Boreal Ski Resort.


Psalm 126
When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion, We were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
And our tongue with singing.
Then they said among the nations,
"The Lord has done great things for them."

The Lord has done great things for us, And we are glad.
Bring back our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the South.

Those who sow in tears
shall reap in joy.

He who continually goes forth weeping,
Bearing seed for sowing,
Shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,
bringing his sheaves with him.

Reflection at the End of the Day

It's funny how things that never hit you just suddenly hit you... and you're there feeling it. Today I had this experience. First of all, I have been stopping ** and realizing just how much I am doing in a day. The last three days it has felt almost like continuous motion. Strangely, I am not tired, almost amazed at how much I have managed to accomplish, and yet there is a large part of me that is aching to break out of the rhythm and just do something incredibly spontaneous and joyful-- like give out free hugs, go swimming in the lake, set down the "list."

Then, I felt again the sometimes ever-present emotion that says: Speak what you need. Tell what you need. Say what you feel...

Then, this: I was driving into San Anselmo and passed the Bon Air shopping plaza. I do this so often. This time, I noticed amidst the 10:30pm sky how the plaza was still lit with lights. Then I imagined many other places I have been where there would never be enough resources or reason to spend such money in such a way. And I felt a huge emotion rise: When we will be able to live more simply so that, as the famous line goes, others may simply love?!?!?

Today at youth group was amazing. I was deeply proud of the theological conversation our group had.

Pilate

As part of my Ignatian Prayer group, we are going through the experience of a deathwatch, praying as we watch Christ approach Good Friday. Last night I was reading John 18, and the famous line from Pilate: "What is truth?" emerged!

Then this morning, my exegesis assignment is to read John 19:2, 5, Mark 15:17, and Matthew 27:29, where the soldiers create the crown of thorns and place it on Jesus' head. Watching him die and all the misunderstanding that hovers around the experience breaks my heart. It penetrates my heart, and I am reminded of my own week of observing death here.... And with all these emotional penetrations, I am struck by the personal consciousness of great meaning in all of this for me.... This is a Lenten reflection, I suppose, if I have yet written one. But it is also the simple words of one longing to see with open eyes the wonder, the sorrow, and the festivity behind Lent. ...

Trust in God Alone

General Musing

One question I sometimes find myself faced with hovers around boundaries and when to help: When do I know that I am enabling behavior and when I am helping? Have I gotten myself into a pattern where I am doing so much helping that I view it in a new way than I did before? What is the healthy response? What is the Christian response? Well, given it is late into the night as well as my general inclination, I am revealing my human nature with these words, but I find the revelation powerful and important. As I continue along the journey of recognizing myself within all my communities and contributions of care, these questions will grow more palpable and I'll have both my experience and intuitive wisdom to go by. Right now my prayer is for clarity as well as the courage to trust my instincts, recognizing that as I honor myself I also honor others... and visa-versa. Yes, visa versa. It is notable how some of us more readily jump into self-awareness while others are more apt at other-awareness.

to my dear Trinity, i love you

Life is fast paced. Our minds, souls, and hearts are too. Amidst this, we want to know that we have opened ourselves to the gift of community: Being not just folks who share space together but souls who have dared and delighted in actually knowing each other.

Ma this be a place that will continue us communally along our individual paths of growth-- where we will not feel guilty for not giving enough but rather feel empowered to give out of the deepest spaces of who we are....

The Parable of the Pocketbook

Ledger Book Legalism

So often we think... I will secure it! I will secure all things.. If only I am "good" enough or do enough "good deeds," I will somehow make my way clean or good with God. Lucky for us, we have grace. We can experience the party of the Prodigal and join in the party of God's grace. We don't need to bank our "security" on what we do. We don't need to enter the agonizing discourse of: "Is my relationship with God okay!?!?!" Wait: Now, "Is my relationship with God, okay?"

There is the constant tension as a Reformed Christian between giving, as we believe that we respond out of God's grace to serve and that we are called to serve, and the recognition that everything relates back to God's sovereignty and to grace.

This has been an incredibly palpable lesson in my life. With my personality, I have often struggled more from over-consciousness than from the lack of it... from having to establish good boundaries on my service than to somehow trying to muster up the motivation to do it.

When I came across Reformed Christianity and was told (Timothy Beach Verhey! ;) ) that as a Presbyterian, it is all about grace, suddenly I felt like the road under my feet made sense. I have often held within myself a huge motivation. It has been a precious and important thing. But, at the end of the day, I can be grateful to God for where I am and don't need to put a kind of unhelpful pressure on myself to ensure that everything turns out okay. I don't act mindlessly and I am fully in touch with "reality," and yet I recognize that life does not revolve around me; and it is incredibly freeing... and takes a day by day process to live into.

Notes from Jack's Sermon 3/14/10

"Be kind because everybody is fighting a battle." Philo

The Prodigal Son: In asking to take the father's inheritance, can we imagine the insult this must have been to his father?!?!? Also, when he got stuck working with the pigs, he was in the midst of a job where he necessarily violated kosher laws!

One imagines that the father was constantly looking towards the horizon....

The son "comes to himself"-- consciousness, awareness...

Insanity is when one continues a negative habit but thinks... this time this habit will produce the result I want!

The movement from the sheep, the woman with the coin, to 2 sons....

The Prodigal prays over Psalm 32 that night!!!

Subversive Grace!

Ledger Book Legalism

Recovery

The Kindness in it All

Remembering Brother Roger

Word

The Word ushers forth, calling us to belief. Implicates, Re-imagines, Re-defines, Illumines.

The Word strengthens, it inspires, and it remembers. It draws together the broken and uncollected pieces of me into a wholeness that makes sense, that spurs me to bank on home.

The real home that is.... and to honor the hems of homes here too.

The Word is a friend and gift of LIFE.

How can we daily treasure its work in us?

Lucky

I think I was lucky. Lucky to be part of the family as they mourned the death of a woman who deeply touched their lives and the life of the surrounding community. I was lucky to be able to share the space of our chapel with them... the same chapel that she had so generously worked to refurbish. I was lucky to share lunch with my two friends; it was a lunch of true American favorites, comfort and good food: hamburgers, mac & cheese, and salad. And I was so tremendously lucky to be invited into their room, and to see the body of one who had just been but who was no longer. Strangely, responding to my fourteen year-old self, I was not afraid... I was simply touched by a profound beauty and lyrical mystery that if I could put the experience into words, my voice would fade out into a hymn, saying: "Holy, Holy, Holy.... Lord, God Almighty..." May your dear one rest and peace and her family find rest too. The one thing I cannot deny is my luckiness. I experienced my own JOY-LUCK.

Room for Doubt

As I was listening to my housemate practice her sermon for Sunday, she spoke these words which took me back to my Weekly College Worship days and those many moments of reading Frederick Buechner, when I had so many questions and needed more than mental resilience to keep moving forward in my faith. My friend described how, on a college campus where she was awash in many new kinds of Christian groups, she found a home in a small, ecumenical group of students, in a faith space that allowed room for doubt. These words hit me and reminded me too of my Davidson days. I remembered the immediate sense of peace and belonging that I felt when I first began participating in Weekly College Worship. I was something of a religion-ophile: I often attended many different kinds of services; I was the only "white girl" in the Gospel Choir, for instance, and I was comfortable being part of Intervarsity as well as the more progressive Methodist Fellowship. There, in the space of Weekly College Worship however (WCW), we were allowed to be human. Not to give up on our faith or the power of God's presence in the world, but to admit to ourselves as well as to each other that somedays we don't have it all together and that we can be thankful to our God, who also understands what it means to be human. So... room to doubt. In a world of rhetoric that sometimes undulates, making stark contrasts between belief and unbelief, it was in this little space where I was free to be my whole self and proclaim my passion as well as my worries... that I found soul-siblings whom I deeply love. Gratitude.

More about the Author

Genesis

In the beginning, God created, and it was called Genesis. I have often enjoyed the uniqueness of this term: Genesis. What does it mean? Is there any reason why, for instance, the term shares so much in common with other similarly unique and even captivating words, words like genetics, genome, generate, gentle..... Perhaps the last word was a stretch, but my question is: What new beginning have you been entertaining recently? What new beginning have you already experienced and dip into and live out of today? What is... in actuality.... the meaning of the genesis of this blog.

This is a place I have created for myself and by extension you (my community) to peruse, examine, and delight in my writings. I will share sermons, spontaneous wonderings, poetry, and biographic accounts here. Perhaps there will be a greater meaning? Perhaps I will use the space as a kartharic realm in which to divulge my hopes, my fears, and my important epiphanies. Whatever this becomes, I am grateful that you have come. Without you, seriously, there would have been no reason for genesis.