Thoughts for Sunday August 21

August 21 – Dowsing for Water

Blessed are those
      who walk hand in hand
               with goodness,

     who stand beside virtue,

     who sit in the seat of truth;

For their delight is in the Spirit of Love

     and in Love’s heart they dwell

                day and night.

They are like trees planted by

                streams of water,

      that yield their fruit in due season,

      and their leaves flourish;

And in all they do, they give life.

The unloving are not so;

      they are like dandelions which

               the wind blows away.

Turning from the Heart of Love

      they will know suffering and pain.

They will be isolated from wisdom;

      for Love knows the way of truth,

     the way of ignorance will perish

     as Love’s penetrating Light

               breaks through hearts

                                filled with illusions:

                forgiveness is the way.

Psalm 1 from “Psalms for Praying” by Nan C. Merrill

For part of our vacation, Sue and I stayed at a bed and Breakfast nestled on the banks of the San Pedro River. “River” is an ostentatious title for what we saw there. The San Pedro is more akin to what we used to call a creek. We were there in the midst of monsoon season and even then there were places you could jump across it. The San Pedro River did not appear to be a river in the sense that the Missouri or the Mississippi are rivers. By comparison, it is a muddy little fingerling.

Yet appearances are deceiving. Lining both banks of this unassuming stream are thick groves of cottonwood trees. I’m told that a mature cottonwood tree drinks over 200 gallons of water daily, maybe more on hot dry days. The profuse, lush, and abundant grove of cottonwoods lining the banks of the unassuming San Pedro River should have sucked it dry in a matter of hours. But it keeps flowing. In fact, it hosts one of the most verdant and diverse wildlife populations in the world. What is the secret of the San Pedro River? We can only see a small part of the river. Most of the San Pedro flows underground. There is no exact way of telling, but by the amount and vigor of the life it sustains, the San Pedro River we cannot see must be immense.

We took a short walk along the bank on evening. We passed two to three ancient cottonwoods. Their trunks must have been five or six feet in diameter. One was nearly ten feet across, I would guess! Thick branches octopussed out, the leaves in full green. They were impressive old sentinels, and they were no fools, these trees. They knew where to plant and to grow.

During vacation, some of you saw that I was quoted in the paper talking about SCUCC. I said that one of our hallmarks was finding God out in the midst of our culture, and not just ensconced in church on Sunday morning. I believe that about us. But there is a lot of evidence to God’s absence in the world these days: wars, poverty, hate-groups, politics of just about every stripe, pollution, and on and on. The stream of our faith and hope seems woefully inadequate. So, where are we finding God out there? And, like the San Pedro, where is the underground river that feeds us? Or if not us, where is the river of grace that is feeding the sentinel trees of faith and hope beyond our “church” boundaries?

There are people who draw inspiration from authors and thinkers like Deepak Chopra, Thich Nhat Hahn, Eckhart Toelle, and others. Where are people finding faith, and God? And what do we have to learn from them. What do we have to share with them? I know that too often much in the Christian tradition seems like stubborn trees that have tried to stay planted by streams that dried up long ago. Yet I believe that as progressive Christians, we draw on much deeper resources than fad or trend. Where will our roots find their water?

Igniting Desire: We are thirsty for deep water, for hope and meaning that will not dry up.

Good News: It is Love that feeds and waters us and allows us to bear fruit and flourish.

Subject: There is deep water available in this world, and where we live in Love we will drink of it.