Tags
awareness, best practices, blessed, Lynn Bauman, psalm 112, reconciliation, resolution, The Sophia Center for Spirituality
Here we sit with knowledge of unprecedented numbers of votes having been cast in our national elections – a very good thing – and with incredibly close numbers of those votes for each of the two presidential candidates – not such a good thing. I say that because that split in the vote is so indicative of the divide in our country. More than ever before as we continue to see new numbers with each report, we cannot imagine how a reconciliation will be achieved. I do not mean, of course, that I would ever hope for a world or even a country where everyone held all the same ideas, where there was no diversity; that would be boring! So what do I mean?
Lynn Bauman’s translation of the psalm for today (PS 112) speaks of how we need to proceed in life, and I think it is a fitting way to move forward. It begins with Hallelujah! and continues in a statement of what we might call “best practices.” See if you don’t agree.
I speak in praise of all the truly blessed upon the earth. They stand in awe, aware of God, and listen carefully to every breath and word God utters. (That would certainly take a great deal of attention! Later in the psalm we hear a darker side of life and how “the blessed” manage to keep the faith): In all the dark and bitter places of their lives the light remains and brightly burns with mercy and compassion, for these they balance with righteous laws.
As the days pass and the outcome seems close to a resolution, I can only hope that our “better angels” are with us as we strive for peace and compromise.
Speaking of antonyms (as I was doing yesterday), I have no choice but to choose love as the theme for today. Psalm 119 announces it when it declares: Blessed are they whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord!” (vs.1-2), waking up those who have slept through the first reading from the second letter of John. In a clarion call that John sees as only a reminder of what God’s law proclaims, he says: “I ask you, not as if I were writing a new commandment but the one we have had from the beginning: let us love one another.” 
6:03AM: It’s impossible to stay asleep with all the different birds that are announcing morning outside! I suppose it’s my fault for leaving my bedroom window open all night, but how could I resist? Spring is finally bursting everywhere and it is glorious! It was definitely worth waiting for, although the delay throughout all of April made me wonder if it would ever happen! I celebrate May as the most beautiful month of the year because new life is visible everywhere outside and, as a result, is rising up inside as spontaneous hope. Listen to how Joyce Rupp describes it:
My sister gave me a book a long time ago entitled, Our Lady of the Lost and Found. A work of fiction, the story is about a middle-aged writer who (the book jacket explains) “on a typical Monday morning, enters her living room and finds a woman standing by her fig tree. the woman is wearing a blue trench coat, white Nikes and a white shawl over her hair. She is holding a purse and a suitcase. She is the Virgin Mary…”
After reading a traditional translation of Psalm 122 in today’s lectionary, I came upon what the author called a “metaphoric” rendering wherein “one can experience the peace of the city of God and the kingdom of God as an interior reality…where the sacred geography of the Middle East becomes a reality in the heart.” Listen with your “inner ear” and see with your “inner eye” the vision presented, and then consider the author’s call to go deeper by reflecting upon “the inner geography of your own heart and being” and answer how you are that city, that temple, that kingdom.
We are in the midst of tropical storm Philippe this morning – the first weather event this year that has affected us at all. While other locations in our country have been devastated by flood or fire, we in Upstate New York have been blessedly spared from any damaging storms. Even this one just seems to be a steady, soaking rain but we are being warned to prepare for flooding. I believe the warning is just for overflowing streams in locations around the state as it seems that the storm has done its worst elsewhere. I will need to check the basement for water seepage later but mostly today it seems that our task will be to stay inside as much as possible and reflect on the fact that we are still not in charge of everything in life.
I love the feast that we celebrate today: the Visitation of Mary to her kinswoman, Elizabeth. This was no “stopping ’round for tea” visit. Mary traveled “to the hill country” and stayed for three months. Elizabeth was a woman past child-bearing age – whatever that meant in those long-ago days. In her 30s, perhaps, and probably concerned since she had heretofore been unable to conceive. Mary was just a teenager, and likely frightened by the process of carrying a child. For both of them this “favor” wrought by God was what many would have called “hard grace.” On a human level, how lucky they were to have each other! We speculate that Elizabeth was further along in her pregnancy so it must have been a relief to have Mary around to help her. The Scriptures intimate that Mary had rushed off to Elizabeth soon after receiving the message from God that she was pregnant. Her comfort would likely have been an older woman, who obviously loved her, to lean on and share with as she interiorized what was happening to her body and her life. Such a great story!