James 3:16 - 4:3, 7-8a and
Being a Person by William Stafford
September 22nd, 2024
By Rev. Nicole M. Lamarche
When I sit down to write, I always wonder who will be here to hear what I am putting together, so thank you again for showing up for yourself, to Spirit, to one another. for Spirit.
As we draw near to God, may we all open our hearts anew to that which is holy, if you are so moved, I invite you to join me in a spirit of prayer as we are all held by these ancient words from Psalm 19: God may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
“Be a person here. Stand by the river, invokethe owls. Invoke winter, then spring…wait.”
These words by William Stafford spoke to me this week. It seems that often we forget that one of the most important things we are to do here, is to be fully alive, to be a person here in whatever form we arrived, to be fully human here and now.
That was one of the gifts of my time of sabbatical, I got to focus on simply being human, repairing my body, opening my soul, being a mom, doing yoga, sitting in silence, reading scripture, talking to people.
So I thought that one of the very first things I wanted to remind you when I got back, to give you the message, don’t forget to be a person here, to be fully human whatever that means for you. Amidst all of the doing that some of us must tend to, let us not forget to also be.
Invoke the owls;
Wait.
As the green leaves out on the terrace have started to shift to yellow hues, pointing to a new season, I am wondering if our congregation is in a new season too?
There is something palpably different in us, between us, among us and I am still looking for the right words, but whatever it is, it feels really good. Are you with me? It feels like more openness, a tenderness, an honesty. I guess something like this is to be expected when you spend three months focusing on reading a Gospel that was so radical it was torn into shreds and hidden, a Gospel that says sin comes from loving what we deceive and that all creatures exist in and with one another. I guess it is too be expected that we will be different somehow after giving attention to this Gospel, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, that gives God the name of the Good and gives spiritual authority based on character and fearlessness and not gender. Maybe it is to be expected that we are a little different now.
It feels like something has been opened.
I have had some time to check in and connect with many of you and you are asking questions I have never heard you ask before.
I think we have drawn near to something powerful, to the sacred, and now we are all trying to figure out what it means.
For some of us, this opening up is more like opening up a yogurt that needs to be stirred still, where the fruit is at the bottom, if you just dive in and eat the top, it tastes like something is off. It needs to be mixed, integrated, put together still.
For some of us being opened is like pulling the lid off a box that you thought was one thing but the label was wrong and now you realize it’s something else. It’s surprising! You didn’t know you had this. And now it changes everything somehow.
For some of us being opened has been frustrating, you are mad, like being given a workbook in another language. You don’t understand and aren’t sure what to think of it.
For others of us being opened has meant that now we have been nearly transported, now residing on new ground, operating almost from a different paradigm, our old answers no longer suffice.
We have drawn near to something, something powerful, something sacred separately and together, having shared and different experiences and now we have come back together, some of us inspired, some of us confused, some of us anxious, some of us wondering what we missed. Eve in the places where we aren’t yet mixed or it seems unsettled, I want you to know it’s good.
This snippet that we heard from the Letter of James is believed to be from James, Jesus’ brother who became the leader of the newly forming movement around Jesus in Jerusalem, written in Palestine before the year 70 C.E. it is basically a letter to the congregation, to the people becoming the church, telling them that most of the conflict between them comes from the cravings at war within each of them. In the end, what is needed is to draw near to God.
Don’t you wonder what they were arguing about?
The gem in this text, at least for me in this time , when the going gets rough and even when it’s good, pause, and draw near to the holy. One of the core practices we do as a spiritual community individually and as a group is to intentionally seek, to seek the Sacred. Sometimes this means turning around, sometimes it means starting over, sometimes it means stopping.
And I believe with my whole heart that when we go seeking, whatever name we have for the Holy, it will respond, it will draw near.
But here’s the thing what was true for those first human beings trying to live out Jesus’ teachings together, like we are, it’s true for us too, in ordinary life or on once in a lifetime adventures, when we draw near to God, we will be met. But, here’s the catch, we must be open, wildly open to whatever comes to greet us.
One of the questions I asked in many of the places I visited on my pilgrimage was, okay God what do you want me to know? What am I to take away from this place? And I also asked God a very specific prayer. Please God to send me a French speaking woman who would become my best friend and help me navigate and show me the sights. I prayed God would send me this person right away.
Tired and teary on a wooden bench next to the coffee machine at La Hostellerie de St. Baume in St. Baume, I was waiting outside a red door that said Restaurante when I asked a man nearby “Parle vou anglaise?” “Not very much” he said. We used Google Translate to get as far as we could. I told him I was looking for dinner. He spoke basic English. He was curious where I was from and when he learned how far I had come, he asked what in the world I was doing in the middle of the mountains at this Dominican monastery. I told him that I was there to meet Mary Magdalene, to learn the true story and to bring the feminine and the masculine back together again. I figured he would laugh or quickly leave. But instead he said, “I know the truth.”
I learned his name is Bernard. He is a trainer and a coach and was taking a break from the Tour de France. It was to finish that weekend in Nice. He had pulled off the road and found his way to the coffee machine for an espresso. We talked and talked, going back and forth between him trying in English and me trying in French using my phone. He knew more about the Bible than most anyone I have ever met. He wanted to tell me everything he knew about Mary Magdalene. Before long, I realized the red door never opened and I became worried so I searched the lobby for any signs or someone to ask. Then I realized I had been confused when the woman at the desk welcomed me with quick instructions. Dinner happens out back in the prairie. I had missed it. And there is really nothing else around.
I went back to the wooden bench to cry some more. There was Bernard. “You like sushi?”
Getting into a car with a stranger to drive to a local village for dinner wasn’t something I would typically do. I used Google Translate to ask Bernard not to kill me. As we got in, he showed me all of his bicycles and tools and equipment in the back of truck and said, “You don’t kill me either.”
Just a few kilometers along a narrow winding road, Bernard parked, and we found seats in one of the few places open. We shared poke bowls, and he asked me to read from the book of Revelation, actually he said, “Apocalypse?” You mean the Book of Revelation. I showed him pictures of the church and shared more about my hopes. He started offering ideas for how to live out the plan I had and told me he would help transport me. You know I have so much more to share so consider this like episode 2 in the series….
I prayed for God to send me a French speaking young woman who would become my best friend and I got Bernard. A coach and a trainer, a retired military French man, who was devoted to exercise and Jesus. He’s the one who told me about the French expression “Pluerer come une madeleine,” “To cry like a Madeleine!” He said “That is you! Always crying!”
Bernard taught me a lot I will share more over the coming months. He was nothing like what I was picturing God would send me. Bu he drove me through much of Southern France. He believes there’s no such thing as coincidence, “No chance!” he would say. “There’s no chance! The espresso machine. God made us meet at the espresso machine!”
He told me at one point that his name means brave bear.
Maybe drawing near to God asks us to be open and also brave, because often it can require us to leave our familiars behind, to set our expectations of what we thought we needed to be open to what God knows we really need.
We are opened. I feel it.
May we stay open, may we not rush to fill the space, may we be okay with the yet unmixed, trusting when we draw near, we will be met! It just might look different than we expected.
May we let ourselves be and be human. May we invoke the birdsongs and hear wisdom there, let us welcome the new season we are entering. May we be okay to wait in the silence of the now and yet to be. Let us draw near to God, knowing that how we are here, right now, in this time, like this is important. How we listen for the next things to happen matters. How we are willing to greet what comes makes all the difference. How we are willing to stay open…
Communal Reflection…
How do you draw near to God? Or how do you get closer to things in the spiritual realm? Are you more open at some points than at others?
Beloved of God, we are opened, may we continue to draw near, putting ourselves and our intentions as close as we can get to the Holy, knowing we might be surprised and that we will be met. May it be so. Amen.
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