Prayers | most hopeful

Feb 26 2012

with your interfering and your promises

Unlike the other gods
you are not satisfied with holocausts
and the sweet smell of smoke.
Unlike the other gods
you do not let us be
but come and pitch your tent
with ours and sniff out
all we do. You are not satisfied
to have us satisfied,
to leave well enough alone.

No, you sent me out,
an old man, with your interfering
and your promises, and all your countings
of the stars and my son’s son’s sons.
You might have picked a better man
to fall before the terror of great darkness.
Twice, fear for my life
passed my wife off as sister.
Why not, with her barren womb?

And then a son. In my old age a son.
You do nothing like the other gods
and so I know you are my God
and my son’s God and my son’s sons’.
I do not understand the stars
uncountable in number;
nor do I understand you.

I wept. And when,
after all, you did not accept my sacrifice,
the ram brought laughter home.

+ “Abraham: With Laughter” from Madeleine L’Engle’s The Ordering of Love

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged abraham, count the stars, cry like a bell, laughing, laughter, Madeleine L'Engle, other gods, quote, stars, the ordering of love, uniqueness, unlike

Feb 15 2012

1 Comment

on, Prayers

in the meantime | a reflection on john 11

Tagged death, in the meantime, injustice, john 11, justice, lazarus, new, newness, reflection, waiting

Feb 13 2012

7 Comments

from the archives, learning to live, Prayers, Quotes

catch us up into reality

I was cleaning up around the house and found journal pages from Cape Town this past summer. Here is an entry from June 10, 2011, written while sitting in a restaurant at the V&A Waterfront. The picture is from the same restaurant, different trip. Thanks again to the friends who welcome me at the table.

***

Catch us up this day into the reality
of your good purpose, that by the time we leave
each other we will know – yet again – that your
mercy and justice and love outrun all the needs of the world …

… keep us simple and on task, and we will
praise you by our glad obedience.

+ Brueggeman, from “Prayer of the Church”

We fear that we’ve lost our minds, and perhaps we have.

Perhaps we’ve lost our minds and our life.

Life with.
Life by community.
Life plural.

Broken by the reality of our own struggle against status, power, privilege.

Broken by the reality of our own struggle against dulling.

Broken by the reality of what we see for only a moment when we dare open our eyes
Those things we see in others and then become terrified to see in ourselves

Greed. Pride. Injustice. Dishonesty. Piety. Blindness. Insecurity.
Relentless protection of the status quo under the guise of protecting the church, the faith.
Our arrogance.

And with
by community
plural
in the harsh reality of the present, you call us to join one another

At the table.

And slowly, as our broken pieces sit together
around warm food made by broken hands
around dim candlelight that already threatens darkness
around the giggles of children, around their questions

we begin to become whole.
Only in the context of others.

Truthfully
Honestly
Humbly

Broken hands. Threatening Darkness. Giggles and Questions.

Together.

At the table.
And for the first time in a long time
Something tells the truth, and we are made new.

djordan
V&A Waterfront
Cape Town, SA

Tagged all things new, at the table, be made new, brueggeman, cape town, communitas, community, quote, table, together, v&A waterfront

Jan 23 2012

2 Comments

learning to live, Prayers

best dreams and worst nightmares

I woke up this morning to an email thrown through time-zones from a friend. Its contents immediately made my insides go from quite calm to full-on knots.

Then I put my feet on the floor and got out of bed.

I learned long ago that first thing in the morning is a time when my brain not only doesn’t process well, but it processes into worst possible scenarios. About three years ago, I stopped listening to my thoughts until post-morning shower and first cup of coffee. I forgot the discipline this morning.

Sure enough, after that shower and cup of coffee, the clouds began to part a bit, and the proverbial rainbow was an actual thing arching all the way over Table Mountain on the drive in.

And then in prayer time at The Warehouse, there was this sense for me of the great power that God has to shine on us and beyond us, making our shadows stretch larger, broader, and longer than we think of ourselves being. When standing in his light, we become aware of our strength. In our awareness of what his light does to us, on us, beyond us––we are rightly filled with courage.

In the morning, may we lean into the light with strength and courage.

… When I awoke, I found you still to be God, presiding over the day and the night with serene sovereignty, for dark and light are both alike to you.

At the break of day we submit to you our best dreams and our worst nightmares, asking that your healing mercy should override threats, that your goodness will make our nightmares less toxic and our dreams more real.

Thank you for visiting us with newness that overrides what is old and deathly among us. Come among us this day; dream us toward health and peace, we pray in the real name of Jesus who exposes our fantasies.

+ from Brueggeman’s “Dreams and Nightmares” in Prayers for a Privileged People

djordan
Cape Town