To Walk with Saints and Scholars

Heaven is at hand.

All around us…all the time…heaven is right here. And because it often does not feel that way, it can be so very hard to know.

When I was growing up, there was a phrase used in the evangelical community that appalls me to this day: “My mind is so full of heaven I ain’t no earthly good.” It was meant to be self-congratulatory. In other words, “I am so busy thinking about God and what heaven will be like that I’m useless in this earthly life.”

“But…,” I wanted to protest, “WE NEED YOU WORKING HERE!”

Religion that asks us to not busy ourselves with making the world more equitable and more loving (or religion that distracts us intentionally from doing the same) is religion missing the mark…the Greek meaning of the word “sin.” Religion made into a personal salvation project or a purity test surely misses divine desire by a mile. Religion like that could do with a little Jesus: “Repent, heaven is (in your) hand.”

And yet we have to admit that the alternative to turning away from the needs of the world can be a painful one. Repentance (turning back to the Creator/Creation) means seeing the needs and the hurts – the failures of humankind to live into its potential. That recognition is never easy, and at the moment, it can be downright devastating. We work to stay the course nonetheless. And most of our work is not grandiose gesturing that lands us on the news, but rather simple, stable steadfast love. We pray that our willingness to stand witness and to say “no” will change us, change our communities, change our world. Blessed are those who learn from all Creation how to go slow and to love hard – those who know heaven is right here in our hands.

Blessing the Understory

You who have grown slowly,

deprived of good light,

of good ease,

May you remember your gait helped others grow also –

how your pace has privileged the whole.

You who does not bloom by the grandest gestures,

but leafs early and lays low,

May you remember that constancy

creates safety

for those who exist exposed.

You who finds succor in the sacred debris…

takes in, transforms, transmits…

nutrifies from a nothing that is, indeed, something,

May you recognize your story – The Understory.

Blessings on the understory.

Blessing on the ferns, the mushrooms, the moss.

Blessings on the hackberry and the holly, the creepers and the climbers.

Blessings.