God of Thursday afternoons
of rainy days
and dreary skies
when we try our best to be excited about the work
but may find ourselves struggling
to keep our eyes open.
Give us eyes to see
and ears to hear
and minds to understand
all that you are doing in the world.
Even on rainy Thursday afternoons.
Amen.
djordan
108 S Church
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.
“The Work of Christmas”
Howard Thurman
I received a book in the mail today from a friend I met through the blog.
Multiple conversations have been had via email, with time and oceans in between, about issues of faith and justice and loss and hope and hopelessness and holding on. When I recently had a time of near blog-silence, she checked in to see how things were. She immediately hit right on the nature of the issues adding to the silence, and gracefully wrote words that echoed like prayers of acceptance of creative silence, and requesting of hopeful imagination.
And today, after waking up to run, pour a slow cup of coffee and then get back to work at Area Relief Ministries for the first time since mid-December, I walked in to see a package on my desk. I opened it up and immediately knew who it was from, as this friend had referenced the book in an email during those dry days.
The following is an excerpt, and the book itself, sitting on my desk in its packaging waiting quietly like the sneaky gift it was is now a reminder, of how the kingdom community is broader and larger and more powerful than I remember on most days. It is ebbing and flowing in and out of our quiet and alive places, keeping us moving and pushing forward, even when we aren’t sure why it’s worth it.
So to this friend, and the other friends of which there are many brave and marginalized kingdom-souls, who are willing to tell the stories of struggle in an effort to sing the true songs of hope, I cannot say thank you enough.
djordan
108 S Church
“Hope is rooted in the past but believes in the future. God’s world is in God’s hands, hope says, and therefore cannot possibly be hopeless. Life, already fulfilled in God, is only the process of coming to realize that we have been given everything we need to come to fullness of life, both here and hereafter. The greater the hope, the greater the appreciation of life now, the greater the confidence in the future, whatever it is.
But if struggle is the process of evolution from spiritual emptiness to spiritual wisdom, hope is a process as well. Hope, the response of the spiritual person to struggle, takes us from the risk of inner stagnation, of emotional despair, to a total transformation of life. … The spirituality of struggle gives birth to the spirituality of hope.”
from “Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope,” by J.D. Chittister
You are God of all our possibilities. You preside over all our comings and goings, all our wealth and all our poverty, all our sickness and all our health, all our despair and all our hope, all our living and all our dying.
And we are grateful.
You are God of all of our impossibilities. You have presided over the emancipations and hearings of our mothers and fathers; you have presided over the wondrous transformations in our own lives. You have and will preside over those parts of our lives that we imagine to be closed.
And we are grateful.
So be your true self, enacting the things impossible for us, that we might yet be whole among the blind who see and the dead who are raised; that we may yet witness your will for peace, your vision for justice, your vetoing all our killing fields.
At the outset of this day, we place our lives in your strong hands. Before the end of this day, do newness among us in the very places where we are tired in fear, we are exhausted in guilt, we are spent in anxiety.
Make all things new, we pray in the new-making name of Jesus.
+ W. Brueggeman, from “You beyond our weary selves” in Prayers for a Privileged People
there is an unspeakable honor
buried deep and wide
in the days
and weeks
and months
and years
of doing life together with other people
time is marked much by
the kind of laughter that makes stomach muscles hurt
the kind of tears that make the tips of our noses hurt
the kind of stress that makes the bottoms of our guts hurt
and the kind of joy that makes everything worth waiting it out
and so we give thanks
while doing life together
when the sharp and truthful moments roll around
that shine like beacons in the water
like roadsigns on the journey
like answers to questions
like human touch to grief
like peace to chaos
like silence to silence
like rightness to wrongness
and it’s in those moments
that we pause
and give thanks to God Almighty
that in the ways of the kingdom
there are things worth sticking around for
and sticking around for and with kingdom friends
is and will always be
an unspeakable honor
so we mark those sharp and truthful moments in our calendars
for those other days where we are less sure
what it is that we are sticking around for at all.
God remind us.
djordan
Pine Tree Dr.
you’ve been walking a while
mostly in the dark
trying your best to make a map
of where you’ve been
in hopes that you can make a guess
of where you’re going
but the hill has been upward
for such a long time now
you’ve almost decided
you’re not going anywhere or
you’ve been pointed in the wrong direction
but you’ve done your best
to hold out in hopefulness
that you’re almost to the break in the climb
but it’s been in the walking
mostly alone
that you’ve learned the deep value
of holding on to the lantern
with a dim and fickle light
because it’s all you’ve had
to make out where you’ve been
and maybe where you’re going
but we see you now
coming up on the break
in the hill you’ve been climbing
mostly in the dark
mostly alone
and we know what you’re feeling,
mostly we do,
because we remember that climb very well
because of what we remember
we feel our own hearts
jump in our own chests
because of what we remember well
the lost and lone ranger
we remember the fear
we remember the conversations with ourselves
we remember the almost giving up
we remember the almost freaking out
we remember the almost giving in
we remember wondering if we’ve lost our minds
we remember the choice of going back to the crowds
because it felt like the only alternative
to being lost and alone forever
all here together
we now see a glowing
just above the crest of the hill
and all here together
we know that soon
our lights will wrestle the shadows together
you see us
we see you
suddenly that walk was worth it
suddenly the lost and alone and the lesson inside them
have done their work
have done their time
and now, all together
we walk with the light
wrestling the shadows
learning the path
the hill always breaks
and there’s always a crowd ahead of us
waiting, with hearts jumping in chests
because finding each other
is as thrilling as being found
We are no longer on our own.
djordan
León, Nicaragua
He went to his hometown.
He went to the temple, like he always did.
He went to the place that taught him the scriptures.
He went to the place that raised him in the faith.
He took the papers they had taught him with.
He took the place they had raised him in.
And he turned everything upside down
even though it was all that had been there all along.
“The Spirit is on me
Because he has annointed me
to tell the poor the good news
to tell you all of the prisoners’ release
to tell of the blind being able to see
to tell of the wounded victims’ new freedom
to announce the year of God’s favor”
He handed them back the words they had long ago taught him
And sat back down where he had been sitting for many years.
They stared.
And he said, “Today is the day.”
And it wasn’t that it had never been said before.
And it wasn’t that it had never been read before.
But he was filled with something big and huge that has been
saying it since the beginning of time
and when he was in the right place
and when the time was right
the words said something they had never said before.
and that’s when the time comes, like it always comes.
djordan
Pine Tree
History is marked by those pushing
into uncharted waters
unexamined worlds
and mostly unacceptable arenas
where people who were not to be
allowed
accepted
approved or
appreciated
were asked to
contribute
comprehend
compose and
conspire
against the ways that things are
and toward the way that things should be
in the kingdom
in the beloved community
in the new ecology
of a world and
of a community where
rich and poor
sick and well
like and unlike
loud and quiet
important and ignored
sit together
eat together
serve together
weep together
laugh together
learn together
give together
sing together and
hope together.
And while we are still so far behind
we have moved so far ahead
of where we have been
and only a few moments of remembering
will give us the wisdom and the humility
to pray to God–our only hope–that we will keep moving forward
faster and surer than the ways we are pulled to move backward
and we will remember
in our trepidation and
in our eagerness for
things to stay the same
that we are descendants of a long line
of rule-breakers
of peace-makers
of hope-holders and
of kingdom-bringers.
And now is not the time for stillness.
Amen.
djordan
Pine Tree
We pass each other like ships in the night.
The most meaningful conversations happen in person, but there’s an ocean in between.
I can point directly back to certain days, times of day, the commons where the walk was, how the sun was, how low the tree limbs were over the sidewalk that brushed my forehead as we walked back home.
I can point directly back to the kitchen counter, the conversation where the truth coming out meant a risk had to be taken, and once taken, the floodgates open. I remember the glasses and the stools and the way I rub my hands through my hair when I can’t think of anything clever or wise or meaningful to say.
And I can point directly back to the table in the restaurant in the airport where the goodbye was looming, and the risk of the sand ticking pushed me through my cowardice to laying out on the table something other than the beer and small talk, but rather laying out the things that had refused to let me go for quite sometime.
But then I got on the plane and flew back across the ocean. Back to work. Back to class. Back to groceries and bills and friends and all the other things we come back to.
Now, like ships in the night, we pass each other. My late-night hour is the twin of his early-morning hour, and across the latitudes we pass usually only a word or two, a prayer or the promise of a prayer. And while the ocean robs two friends of the possibility of walking through that field, sitting on those stools, or leaning over that table, we still know that the other is out there. Moving and knowing. Working and waiting. Watching for signs of the kingdom together.
And we give thanks before the day ends and begins simultaneously.
djordan
Pine Tree
Related Posts | Holy Indeed | The In Between Times
I was sitting with a good friend a few nights ago over a last minute dinner. We’d made jokes already about who was late (me, as always) and about what it was going to cost me (dinner, even though it never does).
At some point in the meal, after we’d been laughing and harassing and deciding all kinds of things, I realized that we had grown very quiet. But it’s the kind of realizing that it’s gotten quiet after it’s been quiet a while and yet I hadn’t realized no one was talking.
(There’s the other kind of silence, you know, when all parties are dying to speak but no one can think of a thing to say, either because they are bored senseless or the moment has grown too thick for words. This night was neither of those kinds of silences.)
I looked up at my buddy and knew in that moment that the last year for both of us––although in very different ways––had been both hellish and life-giving. We had endured all kinds of things, and moved unsurely but necessarily to the other side of what was lost, and began looking toward what will be found.
We are both still looking, of course, as everyone who is telling the truth about anything at all will admit that he is still looking for what will be found.
But in that moment when I realized no one was talking, but all was well, I realized how much I appreciate this kind of silence. It’s a kind of silence that is no longer pregnant with impending misery and loss and sadness, but has been there when misery and loss and sadness have been there. It’s a kind of silence that is no longer awkward and wishing for words, but has pushed through to where nothing needs to be said, and nothing else has to be made known. It’s a kind of silence that speaks to the fact that while there’s not much to talk about, that means there’s not much to talk about––which means that of all the things the space between me and my buddy has had to hold onto and make sense of, tonight it need only make sense of good food and good laughter and good memories of time when we have carried heavy silences together.
It’s a loudness of silence that makes me thankful for the last year. A year that looked like the end of all things, but ended up being the beginning of all things new.
New hopes for what God is doing through his church in the world.
New hopes for what God is doing through his people in their
businesses, offices, homes, churches, classrooms, streets, neighborhoods, banks, schools,
New hopes while though we feel unsure, unable, unwilling, unfeeling, unhelpful
a year later
after trying
praying
listening
pretending
we still feel, above all, most hopeful.
Most hopeful about the future.
Most hopeful about the stories that will be told about the past.
Most hopeful about what God is doing in the world.
Most hopeful about how God will bring his church to life to join him.
Most hopeful for the way the stories of pain and sadness will resolve.
Most hopeful about the way the stories of excitement and anticipation will continue.
Most hopeful about the coming of God’s great kingdom.
Here’s to one year of mosthopeful.com, and all that has it represents of things lost, learned, and loved.
We cannot walk alone.
djordan
Pine Tree Dr.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FIRST POST ON WWW.MOSTHOPEFUL.COM, posted one year ago today.
most hopeful 