LOVE ON THE BEACH

It was early this morning.  Valentines Day.  Cool for Florida but pleasant for us Northern types.  I was taking my daily hike.  Only a few fellow hikers.

And on this day I saw love on the beach. There they were.  A man and a woman. Two children—twins(?) maybe 3 years old. Curley hair, brown skin.  The Daddy took each in turn, held their feet up and they walked on their hands to the edge of the surf.  He then lifted them up, tossed them into the air and caught them.  They squealed with delight. “Do it again.  Do it again Daddy.”

I applauded and shared a moment of delight with these children. They may not remember this day when they get older but love will be in their flesh as their parents spend time loving their kids on the beach.

Further down the beach I heard a small plane. I looked into the bright blue sky and saw a bright yellow Cessna. It was dragging a sign behind it.  The sign read, “Erika Will You Marry Me?”
I looked ahead of me and there were a couple kissing.  A little girl stood and watched. The woman and man then took out their cell phones and took a picture of the plane as it circled out over the water. As I got closer the woman jumped up and down screaming with delight.  I went over, applauding.  She was grinning from ear to ear holding up a shiny ring and showing the little girl.  She said to me, “He’s crazy—an airplane.” 

I applaud crazy love in all its forms. Parents with children, commitment of lovers.  This love on the beach made my heart sing as I smiled my way down the beach.

DAILY FISH

DAILY FISH

Valentine cards. Never quite right. Words never capture the sentiment.

So, I sit by the sea. And my mind remembers a line from Pablo Neruda , “Give us this day our daily fish.” (Ode to the Sea)

And as I sit and ponder Pablo’s prayer and how hard it is to capture love in words, I write my own lines:

The sea, like love, is relentless.
It comes close and then fades away.
It returns to its source and then again, the sand.

Sometimes its dangerous, wild and unpredictable.
Sometimes calm, giving and forgiving.
Pressing in, paying attention.
Backing off, running from shore, hiding in itself.

It is mostly deep and unknowable
But surfaces to share a moment of furious foam.
In its depths it cradles unique treasures
To tease us with their scent on the surface of the sea.

It is courageous, pounding its chest 
And then holds its breath, waiting.
Expansive it swallows ships and souls, 
And then it salt-waters each creature with life.

On the horizon the sea touches the sky
And with a ribbon of green blue
Weds infinite space to finite sand.

Love, like the sea, cannot be contained.
It can be experienced and described, but never captured and held.
We glimpse its gifts, taste its offering, and rest in its song.
And we wait for a taste, a scent, to feed our hungry heart.

Maybe love, like the sea, is always there,
Eternal ebb and flow.
Maybe it offers its gifts in glimpse and whisper,
And we must but notice and let it in.

Pablo Neruda says, “Give us this day our daily fish.” I say, “Thank you for our daily love.”

DESPAIR

I have often thought that despair was the opposite of hope. It is something to not sink into. It is something that comes when coping has ceased and faith faded.

But, I have recently read words that offers a more hopeful perspective on something that haunts everyone sometime and tempts some to stop opening themselves to life. David Whyte believes that despair is a place we go when we need to escape the impossible world we inhabit at points in our journey. “Despair is a haven with its own temporary form of beauty; of self compassion, it is the invitation we accept when we want to remove ourselves from hurt.” (33)*

And it is not something that we can simply will our way out of. He suggests that, “We take the first steps out of despair by taking on its full weight and coming fully to ground in our wish not be  here. We let our bodies and we let our world breathe again. In that place, strangely, despair cannot do anything but change into something else, into some other season, as it was meant to do, from the beginning. Despair is a difficult, beautiful necessary, a binding understanding between human beings caught in a fierce and difficult world where half our experience is mediated by loss, but it is a season, a waveform passing through the body, not a prison surrounding us. A season left to itself will always move, however slowly, under its own patience and power and volition.” (57)*

This insight helps me. When I am down, I am tempted to become critical of myself. I wonder if my feelings are a reflection of my weakness or my lack faith. But, if despair is a resting place that helps us escape the hurt for a while, maybe it can be something to be embraced. Maybe I can learn from it. Maybe if I can breathe and allow my body and the world to open up in its new future, hope will dawn again. Maybe it will help to see my changing emotions as seasonal. Trusting the seasons may be a good place to live.

Read his full blog at https://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Whyte/213407562018588

*Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words”

ORAL CATHEDRAL

The following is an excerpt from my book about creating oral spaces for healing:

“A cathedral is entered through gigantic doors. They are far taller and wider than one person would need to enter. They are doors created with size, welcoming all who come to enter. Their size is invitational, not demanding. One has a choice—to enter and be swallowed by shadowed mystery or turn and retreat.

Through these vast doors, a whole community—stranger and friend, alien and enemy—gathers in the presence of a mystery grand beyond each and all. A cathedral is a space where light and shadow wrestle on the floor, where knowing and unknowing play tag among the pews. A cathedral is not a space where color and light are fixed and unchanging. It is a place where light pierces color and creates changing images in the air. Colors tumble over each other in a kaleidoscopic delight.

Cathedrals create a space in which the soul’s cacophonous voices can be drawn out into a safe space. They create stimuli to seduce the words from the depth of the repressed and controlled world in which many live and encourage them to center around a mysterious reality of grace and mercy. Cathedrals create communities whose character is formed by the space.

A cathedral is a space where words are bathed in beauty, and language is laced with incense. It is a place where music reaches beyond the heights and below the depths. It houses fire that flickers, casting its heat to warm cold hearts and its light to illumine the frightening dark.

A cathedral is also a place where time has an eternal quality. It is a place where the immediacy of urgent time is stretched into the expanse of timeless time. It is a place where time reaches back through the ages in memory and stares ahead into eternal wondering. A cathedral is a place where there is time to wander through the stained-glass stories, allowing ourselves to be stained by their humanity and divinity. It is a place where ordinary people seem to dance from the windows with a quality of illuminating saint-like life.

How does preaching create an oral sanctuary? How do we speak so that there is a sanctuary space in which the listeners might move without fear? How do we speak to create space between the tongue and the ear so that the spirit might have room to embrace both?”

For more about the creating an oral cathedral, you may download my book Healing Relationships: A Preaching Model FREE at www.danmoseley.com.

HEALING RELATIONSHIPS

Some things last longer than others. In 2009 I published a book on preaching that grew out of my experiences loss and change and my teaching in seminary. It develops a theory of preaching that operates on the assumption that we are more likely to be changed and transformed by our relationships than we are by what we think we should do. It assumes that “hope discovered is more life-giving than hope declared, that grace discovered is more healing than grace declared, that truth discovered is more liberating than truth declared.”

The book, “Healing Relationships: A Preaching Model” also includes six sermons first preached at the Chautauqua Institution that illustrate the theories I have developed in my book. It concludes with an essay on imagining preaching as the “Creating an Oral Cathedral” in which relationships happen and healing is possible.

Last year the book was taken out of print by the publisher. They burned their stock (the sad fate of books that don’t sell well). Because I think there is some material in the book that is helpful to preachers and others who are concerned about reconciliation and healing relationships, I purchased the rights to it and am now making it available free of charge. To get the book, just go to my website, www.danmoseley.com, and click on the book page. There you can download a PDF of the book.

I share this with the hope that I might contribute to the ongoing dialogue about effective preaching. I hope that the insights might help those who are new at the art of preaching discover an effective method of developing and delivering sermons. I also hope that those who have been at it a while (and may be getting tired of the same old experience) might find a fresh approach that can release new energy for their task of sharing gospel on the “relentless return of the sabbath.”

If you know ministers who might benefit from this resource, I invite you to share the book with them. I hope the thoughts shared in the book can enrich the experience of speaking and hearing gospel in faith communities.