I'm a sucker for a good sermon - and for a good Sunday service. Especially when the Easter Bunny shows up... and in this ever so imperfect photo one can see Mr. Bunny and also in the middle of the singers my friend Cathleen in pink.Okay - so about this sermon this Rev stirred up. Jot worthy..
I'm never without a pen.
Why?
I have a need to grab the stuff of life and jot it down.
I remember years ago feeling glee when I came across a pen that had a light at the tip of it so I could jot down notes in the movie theater of things that moved me.
Still do it at times. Need to. Not just because my memory is going, but because I freak if I'm without a pen within arm's reach.
There is so much that happens - and it's overwhelming to not be able to capture it all. Well, okay, so I'm less overwhelmed than I used to be. Let's say I'm just welmed.
I say this because here it is Easter Sunday and I walked into this service and the colors and so vibrant I need shades. The whites and the pinks and the purples and the scarves and the light in the eyes of many were all blindingly beautiful and it was this openness that made it all even brighter.
The minister lady looks like the nun she used to be. She's unassuming and not a charismatic person - but her stories and little jolts of spiritual zaps where right on, really right on. I always say that I've heard it all, and I have, but we keep hearing the things we need to hear until it lands - firmly.
Okay - so lots of throat clearing - that's why it's a blog -
Here's what she said:
"we don't have to pitch our tents in suffering."
We can visit, but we don't stay there.
She also spoke to the idea of "divine discontent" - "letting go of lack, limitation and separation." - She told stories that won't do justice here with the typed word, and I'll try to find and redo -but the jist:
A story of an anthropologist in Africa who did an experiment with a group of young children and showed them a large platter of fruit and said that they should race toward it, and whoever gets their first gets to keep the fruit - and these young children decided to hold hands together and all run at the same pace. They call it "Umbantu" (ck) - means "I am, because we are."
A story of the frog and the pond (more later) - but the jist is the frog is always looking for a bigger pond - and that could be a good thing, or it could be the story of an insatiable frog - it's all how one looks at such a thing. For today, I choose to not constantly, habitually imagine that there is a perfect pond... that the pond I'm in is just right.
I bring this up because I went through a phase (a long phase) when I was out here in lovely Northern Cal of feeling bi-coastal torture and torn between two places I love. Wondering and wallowing in the thoughts of where I would pitch my tent.
It's pitched in a little place on the corner of 64th & York - and from there, I get to pitch at 5 Jefferson in Beacon (just another Berkeley).
Because of this --- I get to stretch out and explore. It is no small thing to choose where one wants to pitch there tents - geographically or emotionally.
I love that I have choice.
