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DREAM, PRAY, ACT
 By mark lloyd richardson 2025This poem came to me, I believe, as a kind of counterbalance to the necessary activism of this moment in our country’s history. Each of us needs to take any actions we can to help thwart the encroaching authoritarianism of the Trump administration and to reclaim this country that we love. As a person of faith, I also rest in the knowledge that there is a Divine intention within all of creation, and that a part of my calling as a human being is to cooperate with what the Spirit is already doing in the world. There is a certain peace that comes in remembering that I am one among many who are doing this work of repairing the world, and that each of us brings our gifts to offer to the One who is Lord of all Creation. A Familiar Peace A light mist lingers over the prairie, releasing the purest scent of fall – a fragrant offering spreading gently over the wild greening fields. This land holds a familiar peace, nestled among these forested hills, as pillowy clouds in shades of gray drift unhurried across the noiseless sky. No threat of storm, no approaching calamity, only the quiet calm of morning, the silence nearly audible, an invitation to breathe. What blessing rests here in the early hours of this day to believe that all will be well, in the fullness of time, to imagine this world mended and made whole. |
The Broken Body of Christ
Fellow Christians, Today I’m going where anyone with a lick of common sense would just stay quiet. These are my recent reflections on Scriptures:
Romans 13:13-14 “…let us live honorably, … not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires,
Good old Paul is still trying to shape us all up. He says not only no quarreling, but also to make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
Well, pooh! I don’t drink, I stopped smoking, and as an eighty-five-year-old widow, licentiousness isn’t much of an option. During Covid I went on a low carb diet, so I even had to give up my addiction to jelly doughnuts. And to make it worse, quarantining gave me a lot of time to pray and reflect on my attitude toward those I strongly disagree with.
Do any of you find it as hard as I do, to give up feeling you’re right and that anyone who disagrees with you is not only wrong, wrong, wrong, but “BAD to the Bone?” I never before admitted even to myself how addicted I am to thinking that I am not only right, but also feeling that being right makes me good. I suspect that’s the definition of self-righteousness, which makes me nervous.
Being convinced we know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth not only claims we are infallible and equal to God, but it ends up making our quarreling push each other into extremes until we all become blind to the need to work together for good. We are like the blind men who each felt just one different part of an elephant and thought that was how the whole elephant was.
Even old self-righteous Paul admits we all see through the glass darkly. So, Christians beware! The worst sin is pride because we are blind to it in ourselves.
And in Matthew 24:36-44 Jesus warns us, we may be called to account at any moment, at work, at a party, or even in our snug beds tonight. “Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
This is a poem I wrote years ago when preparing a sermon for an ecumenical worship service for Directors of Religious education. I was reflecting on Paul’s description of us as the different parts of the Body of Christ.
The Broken Body
Reflecting on the Body,/ you the hand, I the foot/ Christ the head, perhaps the heart/, someone else the hidden part,/ I let the Scriptures/ flood my mind with images./ Then suddenly one image/ is so harshly real, I gasp aloud./ I see a person staggering/ and stumbling toward me,/ arms flailing, head jerking/ back and forth in spasms,/ body parts all pulling/ different ways./ This then, reality:/ Christ’s earthly body now./ Lord, forgive us!
Not a One Piece Puzzle
Seems to me life is like a puzzle
where we each only get one piece.
But rather than put our pieces together,
particularly the ones we can’t see
how to fit together with our own,
we create an imaginary picture
that tidily fits with our one piece,
but totally distorts the whole
all our pieces could complete.
That’s why I keep odd shaped
puzzle pieces in an open file
for when their place shows up.
Religious Rant for the Day
Theologians are theory people…and yes we need theory people…but they often miss the obvious. Yes, God is awesome, way way beyond our human understanding, worthy of our praise and admiration, but God is also practical!
YES! PRACTICAL! The BIG TEN weren’t traps, tests, or a spoil sport kind of thing. They are the incubator that helps keep us alive until we and finally all humanity mature enough to love others as much as, or like Jesus-more than-our small selves. They are for OUR protection! God is FOR us.
What about number 1? Does God need our love? God doesn’t NEED anything! WE need God What we admire and love, we try to be. But how do we imitate a God beyond our understanding? Duh! God’s goodness and love is fleshed out, visible, understandable, in a prototype so to speak: JESUS, a human growing into a Love that’s way beyond the “Big Ten,” a human struggling with the human suffering of sadness, discouragement, rejection, fear, and physical pain…but always open to God, both within and in others, open to grace to make the loving choice in the end, a human that moves beyond the “Minimum Ten” to fleshing out the beatitudes…a whole other level of love.
“Sins” against the Big Ten are just plain stupidity, once you realize that Jesus showed us that this very fleeting life isn’t all there is and that instant gratification and gathering toys are for children and need to be outgrown before we can move on. The truth is that coveting, stealing, killing etc., end up making our lives miserable, even hell.
And it takes finding that source of grace which we call God, both within and outside ourselves to out grow our childish shortsighted selfishness .
Friends, Family, and Countrymen Lend Me Your Ears!
LISTEN TO ONE ANOTHER…BOTH SIDES OF EVERY ISSUE HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO WORK TOGETHER FOR GOOD.
I have much loved relatives and friends that think very differently than I do. That’s works for me.
However, when posts turn vicious and judgmental, I hide them.
If posts are logical explanations of a different view point, I read them, because I’m old enough now to know there are valid points on both sides of any issue.
I have come to believe that progress will be made toward bettering all of our lives, if we find ways to cling to our ideals while using practical solutions to minimize the negative fallout for the innocent everywhere.
To quote my best friend, “Be wise as serpents, gentle as doves.”
It takes the idealists to move us toward better ways of humanity surviving in this world together.
It takes the pragmatists to keep us from getting destroyed while trying to do that.
For the sake of our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren open your minds and hearts to work together.
God is in the Reality of the Present Moment
I’m studying the book of Ecclesiastes in a Scripture Class at my church. We are using a book by my favorite Rabbi, Rami Shapiro. He boils Ecclesiastes down to accepting the reality of the present moment without judging it as good/bad, happy/sad, bright/dark. There’s none of this gritting of teeth and bearing things in hope for a reward of heaven or a star in our crown. It’s about accepting everything in this moment: myself, others, pain, joy, beauty, ugliness and by accepting the now…whole, we experience the grace, the transcendent in it.
God is in the reality of the present moment. It is all we actually have. But it is everything.
Persevering as an Imperfect Unfinished Person in a Pitifully Flawed Unfinished World
I once was a nauseatingly bubbly, outgoing, optimistic, like and help everyone type of person. I thought I was beautiful, generous, kind, humorous, honest and intelligent. It turned out that I was delusional about myself and criminally naive about other people and the world.
Somewhere in my fifties, I flipped.
I began to realize: that I was often a difficult person for those closest to me, that I was intelligent about theories, but had zero common sense, and that no one is so intelligent that they are right all the time. I found that rescuing people often reinforced their lifelong behavior of making poor choices. I began to notice that my humor usually had a victim. I sadly faced that I was a bottomless pit of needs and wants in my relationship with my husband and that my neediness stunted my ability to love. And I finally admitted that our American ideal of beauty has an expiration date and I was past it.
But other than these, I was an Okay person, because I wasn’t finished yet. 🙂
In the ensuing twenty plus years I have moved toward the middle by accepting being a reasonably tidy looking person, having a sense of humor about getting old and being human, being not only a person who has some valuable flashes of insight, but one who can be practical (at least when it’s absolutely necessary), someone capable of understanding, loving and actually making sacrifices for the people that I find myself unable to like because of totally disagreeing with them. I’m still into helping others – but I have admitted that I can’t save them and that helping others has the perk of making me feel better about myself. I am finally accepting the reality that though most people need a helping hand sometimes, it’s often important to allow others the chance to learn from suffering the consequences of their chronic bad choices. I have quit emotional garbage dumping on my husband and love him enough to now test the dubious leftovers in the fridge on myself, instead of him. And an almost fair amount of the time I do the necessary boring stuff I hate, though sometimes I just say “to hell with it” and stay up all night reading a spy novel and sleep all morning. While, I don’t idealize myself anymore, I both accept and value myself as the imperfect, sometimes downright weird, unfinished human being that I am, while still working to stay open to the challenge of changing when the need becomes obvious.
When my husband and I are watching the news together and it triggers one of those downward spirals of starting to focus on all the terrible people and things in the world, now one or the other of us will bring it to a halt by saying loudly and very irately, “It’s a terrible world, filled with terrible people!” and then we will laugh at ourselves and even at our pitifully flawed unfinished world.
Life is not about perfection. It’s about the life long challenge to develop paradoxical, but reasonable and practical balances between polarities.
But most of all, life is about persevering.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 