Bend First Presbyterian Church

Here’s a link to yesterday’s message, “Journey Toward the Light – The Journey of Joseph: Trust” http://www.bendfp.org/.docs/pg/10770

I love the story of the twin 10 year-old brothers who couldn’t be any more different from each other. One brother was negative and pessimistic. The other brother was positive and optimistic and looked on the bright side of everything.

The negative brother was placed in a room that was filled with every imaginable toy and video game you could think of. Whatever a 10 year-old would think of as fun was placed in this room. But, he just sat there and complained saying, “I know if I play with something I’ll probably end up breaking it and getting in trouble. Plus, my favorite game isn’t even in this room and that’s not fair.” He just sat there with a frown on his face.

Now, his brother, the positive one, was placed in a room about the same size that was filled almost to the ceiling with nothing but horse manure. It smelled terrible. Well, this young boy didn’t waste any time and he started digging around, having the time of his life, tunneling his way through all of this manure. Some one asked him what he was doing and he said with a huge smile on his face, “With all this manure, there’s got to be a pony here somewhere!”

Attitude is everything! As we near Thanksgiving I want to share the importance of having an attitude of gratitude . . . an attitude of gratitude makes all the difference in the world!

Meister Eckhart said the best prayer in the world is two simple words: THANK YOU!

Gratitude, I believe, is at the very heart of our faith and is the fundamental Christian emotion. Gratitude, the theologians have always said, is the basic human response to the goodness and mercy of God. Gratitude is the natural response to God’s grace . . . God’s undeserved and unconditional love that is extended to each and every one of us as a gift.

At the heart of Christian experience and teaching is not guilt, as we have some times been taught. It is not obligation and duty. It is gratitude . . . pure and simple. Gratitude for the gift of God’s amazing grace revealed to us in Jesus . . . gratitude for the sacred gift of live . . . gratitude because all of life, every precious moment of it, is a gift we did not earn but were given.

Albert Einstein said there are two ways we live our lives: either as if nothing is a miracle or as if EVERYTHING is a miracle. In other words, we either take life for granted and close our eyes to the many blessings that surround us everyday, or we live our lives with a sense of the preciousness of life and the sacred gift of each moment we are given.

I encourage you to write down two words and place these two words beside your bed – opportunity or obligation.

Everyday, whether you realize it or not, you choose one of those two words – and the word you choose will determine the spirit by which you live the day. Is it an obligation – something to endure, to get through, or is it an opportunity – something to embrace with gratitude, an opportunity to love and be loved.

I remember when my son was a baby and I was having less than a pleasant time changing his diaper – it was defiantly an obligation.

That day I visited a friend in the hospital who had just has surgery for breast cancer – I didn’t tell her about my day but the very first words out of her mouth were – “All I wanted to do is go home and change my baby’s diaper.”

She helped me realize every moment is a sacred moment, a gift to be grateful for, an opportunity to love and make a difference!

Write those two words down – opportunity or obligation. Make each day an opportunity to be embraced by gratitude – an opportunity to love and make a difference!

A GRATEFUL HEART IS A PEAEFUL HEART IS A LOVING HEART!

C.S. Lewis said that what we need most as human beings is a good dose of praise and thanksgiving. “Gratitude,” he said, “is inner health made visible.”

The Bible is a constant and persistent advocate of giving thanks. “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord and enter into God’s presence with thanksgiving!” The remarkable thing about the biblical command to praise and thank God is that these words are mostly written by people who had precious little to be joyful about. Many of the glorious psalms of thanksgiving were written during times of tragedy, exile and suffering.

There’s something about gratitude that’s more powerful and authentic when it is experienced and expressed not in the good times, when it’s easy to be grateful, but in the not-so-good-times. There’s something magnificently defiant and profoundly faithful about gratitude in adversity.

I remember the story Leo Buscaglia told of the day his father came home and announced that he has just lost his job. He was devastated. They had very little money to begin with and now things were even worse. Leo’s mother said she was going to the store to buy food for a feast. His father said, “I just lost my job. We can’t afford to buy food for a feast.” His mother said, “We can’t afford not to. Now is precisely the time we need joy and to gather together and be grateful for all that we have and to be grateful for each other.”

A grateful heart is a peaceful heart is a loving heart.

There’s something magnificently defiant and profoundly faithful about gratitude in adversity.

That was certainly the case around the very first Thanksgiving. That first winter in New England was a terrible one for the Mayflower pilgrims, who weren’t prepared for the ferocity of the weather and the hard work of establishing a new colony.

More than half their number died that winder in what they called “The starving time” where a ration of five kernels of corn was apportioned to each adult for a meal. It was the next year, when a successful harvest was in, that they set aside a day for Thanksgiving.

It’s important to remember that just a few months before they were facing starvation, digging graves in the rocky soil for their children, wives and husband’s.

It’s important to remember that as they sat down to eat that first Thanksgiving feast together, their hearts were still broken from their grief and trauma.

This started a custom that still takes place in many homes in New England today on Thanksgiving. In the middle of the beautiful tables, five kernels of corn are placed on a red maple leaf and set at each place to remind people, who now enjoy a good bounty, of the “starving time” of long ago . . . to remind people of the precious and fragile and sacred gift that life is . . . to remind people that God’s love is always there, in the good times and the not-so-good times, and God will see them through.

I remember a time in my life when I was struggling with a bit of depression – you know that dark cloud that hovers above you – when you feel a heaviness of spirit and you tend to look at life through the lens of negativity and pessimism. No matter what I tried. I couldn’t shake it. I felt stuck.

I confided how I was feeling to a friend of mine who encouraged me to start keeping a BLESSING JOURNAL. He suggested at the end of every day I was to write down at least 10 things I was grateful for.

It sounded a bit simplistic, but I trusted this person so I thought I would give it a try. The first few days I wrote down things like:

• My family
• My health
• My job
• A place to live
• Something to eat

I noticed by the end of the first week the things on my list began to change. I began to write down things like:

• The flower I noticed growing through the crack in the cement.
• The fresh smell of the air after it rains.
• The gift of a friend who doesn’t have to say anything. You know they understand.
• The way my son’s stomach moves when he laughs.

What I began to notice was that the heaviness of my spirit was becoming lighter. My eyes and my heart began to be geared to look for the blessings that were always there. I just hadn’t noticed. The circumstances of my life at the time hadn’t changed but my relationship to those circumstances changed. I call this thanks-therapy.

A grateful heart is a peaceful heart is a loving heart. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

For some of us this week, Thanksgiving will be a time to be together with friends and family. It will be a time of feasting, laughing, rejoicing; a time when thanksgiving and gratitude will fall easily and gracefully from our lips. For others, Thanksgiving will be a lonely time, a time of loss and grief, a heightened time of anxiety, perhaps fear and worry. For those, particularly, gratitude is an act of magnificent defiance and profound and authentic faith trusting in the God whose love will never let you go . . . the God who will see you through!

Meister Eckhart was right. Maybe the only prayer we ever need is two simple words: THANK YOU! May that be your prayer today and may you carry that prayer with you every where.

Psalm 8:3-5 (The Message)

I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,

your handmade sky-jewelry,

Moon and stars mounted in their settings.

Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,

Why do you bother with us?

Why take a second look our way?

Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods,

bright with Eden’s dawn light.

You put us in charge of your handcrafted world,

repeated to us your Genesis-charge,

Made us lords of sheep and cattle,

even animals out in the wild,

Birds flying and fish swimming,

whales singing in the ocean deeps.

“We wake, if ever at all, to mystery.” – Annie Dillard

“As soon as you do not take your existence for granted, but behold it as something unfathomably mysterious, wisdom begins.”-Albert Schweitzer

“People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.” – St. Augustine

“Earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his shoes—the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Stuff your eyes with wonder . . . Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” – Ray Bradbury.

“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the Christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.” – Rachel Carson

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes

Albert Einstein – There are two ways you can look at life . . . as if nothing is a miracle or as if everything is a miracle.

In the play Our Town, after Emily has died in childbirth, Thornton Wilder has her ask the Stage Manager if she can return to relive just one day.

Reluctantly he allows her to do so, but urges her to pick an ordinary, insignificant day.

So she goes back on the day of her 12th birthday. And she is startled by the beauty of the ordinary, and by our lack of awareness of it.

She says to the Stage Manager, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?”

And he sighs and says, “No. The saints and poets, maybe. They do some.”

Wonder.

Georgia O’Keefe says, “No one ever sees a flower really. It’s so small it takes time. We don’t have time. To see, really see, takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”

The Psalmist was filled with wonder –

“I look up at your micro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry,

Moon and stars mounted in their settings.

Then I look at my life, my micro-self and wonder,

Why do you care about us?

Why even take a second and look our way?” (Psalm 8.3-5)

Do you ever wonder at the wonder of life?

Do you wonder why there is something in the universe rather than nothing; a great empty void?

Do you wonder why you exist with your unique combination of flesh and cell, and not someone else?

Do you wonder why you exist . . . what your purpose is on this earth?

Do you wonder why you have a will to live and love?

Do you ever wonder at the intricate forces combining to create a single snowflake?

Do you ever look at where the water seems to touch the sky, before disappearing in a massive waterfall and just wonder?

Do you ever wonder if there is an end to discovery or if there will always be more?

Do you ever wonder why you wonder – why you seek beauty you can’t even define?

Do you ever wonder who is the “I” who is doing the wondering? Who is it, who watches through your eyes, listens with your ears, and feels with your hands?

You don’t have to answer all the questions. Just love the wonder and that will fill your life with joy. (with thanks to Ian Lawton)

Emily asked, “Do human beings ever realize life while they live it?”

You don’t have to name all the mysteries . . . just embrace the mysteries . . . and open your heart to the gift of each moment.

You don’t have to solve all the problems of the world . . . just love the world, and that will make all the difference.

Here’s a link to the message from last Sunday,”The Power of One” http://www.bendfp.org/.docs/pg/10770

Don Miller in his amazing book, A Million Miles in A thousand Years (highly recommend it!!!!) tells this story about his friend Kathy who struggled with her relationship with God for a long time…” She had a marriage go bad. Some hard things happened to her daughter because of this. Some of them happened at the same time the Rwandan genocide was happening, which made the whole world seem crazy. She wondered why it mattered if jesus hung on a cross and died. Since the world went crazy anyway.

She hung out in the fringes of God for a while, and about a year ago she was ready to let go of God completely. Then she had a chance to go to rwanda…she went to the capital city Kigali. They took a tourist bus to the genocide museum in Kigali.

Kathy got off the bus and made her way through the exhibits, reading about the events that led up to the genocide, the colonial rule, the confusion of identity created by British occupation, and the tribal tensions that mounted between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Churches got caught up in the genocide too. kathy read the part about religion and was emboldened. “See,” she prayed, “you created us only to let us march around in our own misery. You’re supposed to be good. What are you good for?”

A twenty-minute ride away from the memorial is one of the genocide sites – a church where tutsis had hidden from Hutus during the massacre. The Tutsis believed they would be spared if they took refuge in the church, but they weren’t…The museum had piled the skulls of mothers and their children against the wall and laid out the bones as a memorial…Kathy looked at the bones and the ragged and bloody clothes hanging from the walls. She was ready to feel the same old anger at god, only a thousandfold more. She was ready to pray her last prayer, announcing that she could no longer believe in God in a world with such pain, with so much devastation.

But Kathy told me it was then and there, in that church, that she heard from God. Instead of old anger, she felt overwhelming tenderness and sorrow.

{she felt as if God whispered to her} This is what happens when people walk away from me, Kathy. I have brought you to this place to show you something important. This is what happens when my compassion and love leave a place.

It is when people do not allow God to show up through them, she realized, that the world collapses in on itself…The world needs for us to have courage…The world needs forus to write something better.”

How is god seeking to show up through you today? I am reminded of Thomas merton who said, “Because God is present we are able to love and because we are able to love God is present.”

Surrendering to “What is” today…reminded of this story:

A farmer wakes up to find that his horse has run off. The neighbors come by and say, “Too bad. Such awful luck.” The farmer says, “Maybe.”

The next day, the horse returns with a few other horses. The neighbors congratulate the farmer on his reversal of fortune. “Maybe,” the farmer says.

When his son tries to ride one of the new horses, he breaks his leg, and the neighbors offer condolences. “Maybe,” the farmer says.

And the next day, when army officials come to draft the son – and don’t take him because of his broken leg – every one is happy. “Maybe,” the farmer says.

I don’t know. Maybe.

“I slept and dreamt

     that life was joy.

I awoke and saw

     that life was service.

I acted, and behold,

     serivce was joy.”

-Rabindranath Tagore

Jack Kornfield writes of a tribe in East Africa in which “the birth date of a child is not counted from the day of its physical birth nor even the day of its conception, as in other village cultures.

For this tribe the birth date comes the first time the child is a thought in its mother’s mind.

Aware of her intention to conceive a child, the mother goes off to sit alone under a tree.

There she sits and listens until she can hear the song of the child that she hopes to conceive.

Once she has head it, she returns to her village and teaches it to the father so that they can sing it together, inviting the child to join them.

After the child is conceived, she sings the song to the baby in her womb.

Then she teaches the song to the old women and midwives of her village, so that throughout the labor and the birth, all the villagers learn the song of their new member and sing it to the child when it falls or hurts itself.

The song is sung in times of triumph, or in rituals and initiations.

This song becomes a part of the marriage ceremony when the child is grown; and at the end of life his or her loved ones will gather around the deathbed and sing this song for the last time.

What an amazing, powerful image of so intentionally, and thoughtfully providing the background music for a child’s life!

It’s probably not something one thinks much about, but whether we are aware of it or not, all of us both swim around in as well as provide background music for our relationships, for our children, for our work, for our recreation -

We both swim around in and provide background music that gives shape to our lives.

Think for a moment about the background music of your life.

Is it harsh and discordant?

Is it soft and soothing?

Is it exciting?

Is it gloomy?

Is it a song of fear? Or, a song of peace?

There is a song sung at the beginning of creation and it is a song that is the background music to all of life—and that is a song of grace . . . The background music playing without pause for each and everyone of us is God’s unending, inexhaustible love.

But, we all know that music can so easily get drowned out by all the other noises of the world and all the other noises of our life.

Find a time today -

to be still

to listen

to hear, maybe for the first,

or maybe to hear once again,

the notes of God’s grace that are

being played in the depth of our hearts.

Each week at our Contemplative Worship (Wednesdays @ 6 pm) I introduce a word to contemplate. Each person is given a small card with the word on the front and a quote on the back.

Last night’s word was: GENEROSITY.

The quote on the back was:

        “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”  - Mother Teresa

The scripture and reflections I shared were:

                Luke 21:1-4 (The Message)

^1-4Just then he looked up and saw the rich people dropping offerings in the collection plate. Then he saw a poor widow put in two pennies. He said, “The plain truth is that this widow has given by far the largest offering today. All these others made offerings that they’ll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all!”

 The Pearl of Great Price (from Tales of a Magic Monasteryby Theophane the Monk)

 He asked me what I was looking for.

“Frankly,” I said, “I’m looking for the Pearl of Great Price.”

He slipped his hand into his pocket, drew it out, AND GAVE IT TO ME. It was just like that! I was dumbfounded. Then I began to protest: “You don’t want to give it to me? Don’t you want to keep it for yourself? But . . .”

When I kept this up, he said finally, “Look, is it better to have the Pearl of Great Price, or to give it away?”-

Well, now I have it. I don’t tell anyone. From some there would just be disbelief and ridicule. “You, you have the Pearl of Great Price? Hah!” Others would be jealous, or someone might steal it. Yes, I do have it. But there’s that question – “Is it better to have it, or to give it away?” How long will that question rob me of my joy?

Here’s a story by Eugene Peterson—

One day I saw some birds teaching their young to fly.

Three young swallows were perched on a dead branch that stretched over a lake. One adult swallow got alongside the chicks and started shoving them out toward the end of the branch – pushing, pushing, pushing.

The end one fell off.

Somewhere between the branch and the water below, the wings started working and the fledgling was off on his own.

Then the second one.

The third one, however, was not to be bullied. At the last possible moment, his grip on the branch loosened just enough so that he swung downward, then he tightened again, bull dog tenacious. He wasn’t going to let go.

The parent pecked at the desperately clinging talons until it was more painful for the chick to hang on than RISK  the insecurities of flying.

The grip was released and the wings began pumping. The mature swallow knew what the chick did not know – that it would fly – that there was no danger in making it do what it was designed to do.

Peterson writes, “Birds have feet and can walk. Birds have talons and can grasp a branch securely. They can walk; they can cling. But FLYING is their characteristic action and not until they fly are they living at their best – gracefully and beautifully.

Loving . . . Giving from our hearts . . . Living with a generous flowing spirit is WHAT WE DO BEST!

It is the air into which we were born. It is the action that was designed into us before our birth.

Some people try desperately to hold on, fearfully living for themselves, hanging on to the dead branch of fear and self-centeredness and self-preservation, afraid to risk themselves on the untried wings of generous living.

They don’t think they can live in the freedom of a generous spirit because they have never tried.

“We are the baby bird,” Peterson writes, “God is pecking away at us, encouraging us to let go, to trust, encouraging us to fly!”

Here’s a link to the message from last Sunday,”Living Extraordnarily” http://www.bendfp.org/.docs/pg/10770