Bring to Light the Mystery: Worlds Forming in My Heart

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All beings
are words of God,
His music, His art.

Sacred Books are we,
for the infinite camps
in our souls.

Every act reveals God and expands His Being.
I know that may be hard
to comprehend.

All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.
He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent
for a while,

worlds are forming
in my heart.
~Meister Eckhart  “Expands His Being”

These first few days of spring are a reawakening of nature’s rebirthing rhythms, with increased activity of all the wild creatures and birds around us, and most importantly, God’s renewal of our weary wintery hearts.

Some late winter and early spring mornings still are pitch black with blustering winds and rain, even hail – looking and feeling like the bleakest of December mornings about to plunge into the death spiral of winter all over again.

What self-respecting God would birth Himself into recalcitrant hearts as dark as night?

This God would.

He labors in our bleakest of hearts for good reason. We are unformed and unready to meet Him in the light, clinging as we do to our dark ways and thoughts. Though we soon celebrate the rebirth of springtime, it is just so much talk until we accept the change of being transformed ourselves.

Though the woodpeckers are already noisily hammering on the bark, the birds singing their hearts out and the frogs chorusing in the warming ponds, we, His people, are silenced as He prepares for birth within us. The labor pains are His, not ours; we are awed witnesses to His first and last breath when He makes all things, including us, new again.

The world with its creatures, including us, is reborn — even where dark reigned before, even where it is bleakest, especially inside our healing wintery hearts.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: Marred Beyond Human Likeness

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IMG_6229

In a daring and beautiful creative reversal,
God takes the worse we can do to Him
and turns it into the very best He can do for us.
~Malcolm Guite from The Word in the Wilderness

When I was wounded
whether by God, the devil, or myself
—I don’t know yet which—
it was seeing the sparrows again
and clumps of clover, after three days,
that told me I hadn’t died.
When I was young,
all it took were those sparrows,
those lush little leaves,
for me to sing praises,
dedicate operas to the Lord.
But a dog who’s been beaten
is slow to go back to barking
and making a fuss over his owner
—an animal, not a person
like me who can ask:
Why do you beat me?
Which is why, despite the sparrows and the clover,
a subtle shadow still hovers over my spirit.
May whoever hurt me, forgive me.
~Adelia Prado “Divine Wrath” translated from Brazilian Portuguese by Ellen Doré Watson

See, my servant will act wisely;
    he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
14 Just as there were many who were appalled at him—
    his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
    and his form marred beyond human likeness—
15 so he will sprinkle many nations,
    and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see,
    and what they have not heard, they will understand.
Isaiah 52: 13-15

Emmet Till’s mother
speaking over the radio

She tells in a comforting voice
what it was like to touch her dead boy’s face,

how she’d lingered and traced
the broken jaw, the crushed eyes–

the face that badly beaten, disfigured—
before confirming his identity.

And then she compares his face to
the face of Jesus, dying on the cross.

This mother says no, she’d not recognize
her Lord, for he was beaten far, far worse

than the son she loved with all her heart.
For, she said, she could still discern her son’s curved earlobe,

but the face of Christ
was beaten to death by the whole world.
~Richard Jones “The Face” from Between Midnight and Dawn

Strangely enough~
it is the nail,
not the hammer,
that brings us together~
becoming the glue,
the safety,
the permanence of
solid foundation,
and strong supports,
or protecting roof.

The hammer is only a tool
to pound in the nail
where it binds so tightly
it can’t blend or be forgotten,
where the hole it leaves behind
is a forever reminder
of what I, wielding the hammer, have done
and how thoroughly
I am forgiven.

nailhole

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: Unsettled Petals

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God is within all things, but not enclosed;
outside all things, but not excluded;
above all things but not aloof;
below all things but not debased.
~St. Bonaventure, 14th C. philosopher and theologian 

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wwusakura6

Beauty, to the Japanese of old, held together the ephemeral with the sacred. Cherry blossoms are most beautiful as they fall, and that experience of appreciation lead the Japanese to consider their mortality.

Hakanai bi (ephemeral beauty) denotes sadness, and yet in the awareness of the pathos of life, the Japanese found profound beauty.

For the Japanese, the sense of beauty is deeply tragic, tied to the inevitability of death.

Jesus’ tears were also ephemeral and beautiful. His tears remain with us as an enduring reminder of the Savior who weeps. Rather than to despair, though, Jesus’ tears lead the way to the greatest hope of the resurrection. Rather than suicide, Jesus’ tears lead to abundant life.
~Makoto Fujimura

Everyone feels grief
when cherry blossoms scatter.
Might they then be tears –
those drops of moisture falling
in the gentle rains of spring?
~Otomo no Juronushi (late 9th century)

fallensakura
fallen sakura petals in Tokyo (photo by Nate Gibson)
sakurarain
fallen sakura blossoms in Tokyo, photo by Nate Gibson

For four decades, as a family physician, I saw patients struggling with depression, some contemplating whether living another day was worth the pain and effort. 

Most described their feelings completely dry-eyed, unwilling to let their emotions flow from inside and flood their outsides. Others sat soaking in tears of hopelessness and despair.

Their weeping moved and reassured me — it is a raw and authentic spilling over when the internal dam is breaking. It is so human, yet we also know tears contain the divine.

When I read that Jesus weeps as He witnesses the tears of grief of His dear friends, I am comforted. He understands and feels what we feel, His tears just as plentiful and salty, His overwhelming feelings of love brimming so full they must be let go and cannot be held back.

Our Jesus who wept with us became a promise of ultimate joy.

There is beauty in this: His rain of tears, the spilling of the divine onto our mortal soil like the unsettled petals of spring.

photo by Nate Gibson

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: Leaping and Shouting

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photo by Josh Scholten

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then will the lame leap like a deer,
and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Isaiah 35:5-6

Scripture documents Jesus’ healing miracles for those of us who were not there to witness them – a touch of saliva to eyes and tongue, fingers placed in ears, words that give new life to paralyzed limbs. 

As a physician who has worked with many tools in healing over forty years, I do know the power of spoken words, or the comforting touch, but never used saliva and mud. 

There is nothing I can do with those simple means to reverse the irreversible. Of course many medical “miracles” happen every day in the 21st century, but the spit and words of the 1st century are far more miraculous because of from Whom they came.

These ancient miracles took place when a willing heart met Mercy head on. No surgery required, no expensive medications, no magnetic imaging, no robotic procedures. In comparison to the skills of the ultimate Physician, I’m humbled in my obvious limitations. I myself was a blind, deaf, dumb and lame healer, immobilized until I underwent a modern heart-opening procedure myself. Not just a cardiac intervention to dilate my coronary arteries, but the knowledge that my spiritual heart has been opened wide.

Grateful, I become unstoppable, as I too now leap and shout for joy.

painting by Norman Rockwell

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Come and See: Do Not Be Afraid

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chihuly7
chihuly8

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum.

It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 
The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 

When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat,

…and they were frightened. 

But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.”  

Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.
John 6: 16-21

chihuly5

So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
~Isaiah 41:10

Maybe, after the sermon,
 after the multitude was fed,
  one or two of them felt
   the soul slip forth

like a tremor of pure sunlight
 before exhaustion,
  that wants to swallow everything,
   gripped their bones and left them

miserable and sleepy,
 as they are now, forgetting
  how the wind tore at the sails
   before he rose and talked to it —

tender and luminous and demanding
 as he always was —
  a thousand times more frightening
   than the killer sea.
~Mary Oliver from “Maybe”

chihuly9

Here is the world.
Beautiful and terrible things will happen.
Don’t be afraid.
~Frederich Buechner

chihuly4

Most days I depend on beauty to give me hope,
knowing somewhere, it will show its face.

Sometimes, in fearsome times,
I must search in unexpected places.

It is then I worry
I’ll not ever see beauty in quite the same way again:
perhaps Beauty itself frightens me…

Yet we are told, again and again and again
so we might listen and believe:

“It is I; fear not.”

…do not be afraid
do not be afraid…
…do not be afraid…

chihuly11

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: A Ministry of Presence

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More and more, the desire grows in me simply to
walk around,
greet people,
enter their homes,
sit on their doorsteps,
play ball,
throw water,
and be known as someone who wants to live with them.

It is a privilege to have the time
to practice this simple ministry of presence.
Still, it is not as simple as it seems.

My own desire to be useful,
to do something significant,
or to be part of some impressive project is so strong
that soon my time is taken up
by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops
that prevent me from walking the streets.
It is difficult not to have plans,
not to organize people around an urgent cause,
and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress.

But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be
to know people by name,
to eat and drink with them,
to listen to their stories and tell your own, and
to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs
that you do not simply like them, but truly love them.
~Henri Nouwen from The Practice of the Presence of God

For too many years,
I was wrapped up in the trappings of the “useful” life –
tight schedules, meetings, committees, strategic priorities –
I forgot there is so much living usefully that I neglected to do.

There needs to be more potlucks,
more “oh, by the way” conversations,
more connections “just because,”
more showing up whenever extra hands are needed.

If only I could invite you all over for breakfast.
We’d have a wonderful time…

Actually, now that I think of it —
you ARE invited for breakfast – Sunday, April 5, 2026 at 7 AM.
Dress warmly.
Wear boots.
Come hungry and thirsty for the Word and ready for hugs.

Easter Sunrise on our hill.

photo by Joel De Waard

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

Lyrics by John Donne
Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heav’n:
to enter into that gate and dwell in that house,
where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light;
no noise nor silence, but one equal music;
no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession;
no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity;
in the habitation of thy glory and dominion, world without end.
Amen.

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Bring to Light the Mystery: Overcoming

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In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?
~John Stott from “The Cross of Christ”

It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.
~J.R.R. Tolkien from Lord of the Rings

With all that happens daily in this disordered world, in order to even walk out the door on this spring equinox day, I fall back on what we are told in God’s Word, in 365 different scripture verses for each and every day of the year:

Fear not.

Do not be overwhelmed with evil but overcome evil with good.

And so – we must overcome — despite our fears in this world of pain.

As demonstrated by the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary of Bethany, we must do what we can to sacrifice for others, to live in such a way that death cannot erase the meaning and significance of a life. We are called to give up our own selfish agendas in order to consider the needs of others.

It is crystal clear from Christ’s example as we observe His journey to the cross: we are to cherish life -all lives- even unto death. As Christ Himself forgave those who hated and murdered Him, He forgives us as well.

Our only defense against the evil we witness is God’s offense through His Love. Only God can lead us to Tolkien’s “where everything sad will come untrue”, where we shall live in peace, walk hand in hand, no longer alone, no longer afraid, no longer shedding tears of grief and sorrow, but tears of relief and joy.

On this first day of Spring, we are longer overcome by evil but overcome with goodness, all to God’s glory.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:

…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: Being and Breath

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With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee

There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
~Emily Bronte from “No Coward Soul is Mine” The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Bronte

There is nothing else apart from God,
There is nothing apart from His Breath and Being.

Not even death sets us apart
in the already, but not yet.

Why then do we struggle to know Him
and to be known?

Our DNA pulses His image ~
our very atoms designed to celebrate and worship Him.

So let us listen for a change,
to our atoms blossoming richly
with the Breath of His Spirit.

It’s time already.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! 
As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”  
And with that he breathed on them and said,
“Receive the Holy Spirit…”
John 20: 21-22

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

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Bring to Light the Mystery: When It is All Said and Done

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When it’s all been said and done
There is just one thing that matters
Did I do my best to live for truth?
Did I live my life for you?
~James Cowan

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.
~Raymond Carver “Late Fragment”

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
~Mary Oliver from “When Death Comes”

We don’t know when we will be done with this world – some have a bit of warning and others disappear unexpectedly in the course of an ordinary day.

We all should consider ourselves warned.

When it’s all been said and done, have we spent our time on what is truly meaningful or are we determined to accumulate fame and fortune, stuff and status?

Christ lived His life for us. He was “all in” from the beginning and knew His destiny.

When it all is said and done,
what matters is the love He brought to this hurting earth.

We are called to live like Him.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

Lyrics:
When it’s all been said and done
There is just one thing that matters
Did I do my best to live for truth
Did I live my life for you

When it’s all been said and done
All my treasures will mean nothing
Only what I’ve done for love’s reward
Will stand the test of time

Lord your mercy is so great
That you look beyond our weakness
And find purest gold in miry clay
Making sinners into saints

I will always sing your praise
Here on earth and ever after
For you’ve shown me Heaven’s my true home
When it’s all been said and done
You’re my life when life is gone

When it’s all been said and done
There is just one thing that matters
Did I do my best to live for truth
Did I live my life for you
Lord I’ll live my life for you

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Bring to Light the Mystery: Fixed Upon the Rock

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Six years a slave, and then you slipped the yoke,
Till Christ recalled you, through your captors cries!
Patrick, you had the courage to turn back,
With open love to your old enemies,
Serving them now in Christ, not in their chains,
Bringing the freedom He gave you to share.
You heard the voice of Ireland, in your veins
Her passion and compassion burned like fire.

Now you rejoice amidst the three-in-one,
Refreshed in love and blessing all you knew,
Look back on us and bless us, Ireland’s son,
And plant the staff of prayer in all we do:
A gospel seed that flowers in belief,
A greening glory, coming into leaf.
~Malcolm Guite  — A St. Patrick Sonnet

Downpatrick Cathedral, Northern Ireland

I rise today
in the power’s strength,
invoking the Trinity
believing in threeness,
confessing the oneness,
of creation’s Creator.

I rise today
in heaven’s might,
in sun’s brightness,
in moon’s radiance,
in fire’s glory,
in lightning’s quickness,
in wind’s swiftness,
in sea’s depth,
in earth’s stability,
in rock’s fixity.

I rise today
with the power of God to pilot me,
God’s strength to sustain me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look ahead for me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to protect me,
God’s way before me,
God’s shield to defend me,
God’s host to deliver me,
from snares of devils,
from evil temptations,
from nature’s failings,
from all who wish to harm me,
far or near,
alone and in a crowd.

Around me I gather today all these powers
against every cruel and merciless force
to attack my body and soul.

May Christ protect me today
against poison and burning,
against drowning and wounding,
so that I may have abundant reward;
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me;
Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me;
Christ to the right of me, Christ to the left of me;
Christ in my lying, Christ in my sitting, Christ in my rising;
Christ in the heart of all who think of me,
Christ on the tongue of all who speak to me,
Christ in the eye of all who see me,
Christ in the ear of all who hear me.

For to the Lord belongs salvation,
and to the Lord belongs salvation
and to Christ belongs salvation.
May your salvation, Lord, be with us always.

—”Saint Patrick’s Breastplate,”
Old Irish, eighth-century prayer.

St. Patrick’s grave marker

On March 17, St. Patrick is little remembered for his selfless missionary work in Ireland in the fifth century.

When we visited his grave in Ireland years ago – a humble stone fixed upon on a hill top next to a cathedral overlooking the sea – I wondered what he would make of how this day, dubbed with his name, is celebrated now.

Patrick, in his prayer, urges us to rise up to meet God’s power of salvation in our lives, even in the toughest scariest times.

God is our Rock and our Redeemer. May we be fixed upon Him.

This year’s Barnstorming Lenten theme is Ephesians 3:9:
…to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things…

May the strength of God pilot us,
May the wisdom of God instruct us,
May the hand of God protect us,
May the word of God direct us.
Be always ours this day and for evermore.

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