Showers of Blessing                                            from the Pastor

Sometimes God draws our attention through people we meet, the places we encounter, and the art that catches our eye.  Someone recently left a beautiful waterfall in my office on my desk.  The framed print has some words printed at the bottom from a sermon I preached a few weeks ago.  The gesture was kind and thoughtful—and anonymous.  It is an unsolved mystery that I hope to solve. 

Then, within the same week but[i] unbeknownst to the giver of the print, I encountered another waterfall—this time, in a poem by Mary Oliver.  Oliver’s waterfall is also the blessed, healing kind because it mingles the human cry of need with a necessary reminder of the transcendent power of transformation.  Of course, she says it much more simply.  She starts her poem by saying, “You want to cry aloud for your mistakes.  But to tell the truth the world doesn’t need any more of that sound.”1

Those words have been echoing around in my head since I first read them.  Aren’t they true?  At a certain point, we want to cry aloud for our mistakes…whether they be personal, communal, national, or international…but the world doesn’t need any more of that sound… Don’t we know this, at some deep level of gut?  The world indeed has enough of the sound of our mistakes, misgivings, and missed opportunities.  Still, it is part of the human condition to be a soul that cries out, that needs to lift its voice in resistance, rebellion, or--God willing-- reconciliation.  Oliver continues by suggesting that if you are going to cry out—if you simply must—then, it is time to go by yourself “across the forty fields and forty dark inclines” of rocks and water to find the place where the falls are spilling out over the rocks.  She suggests that you find the cave behind all that cascading water and stand there, with the flowing water leaping all around you, and “roar all you want,” because, there, nothing will be disturbed.

Have you ever wanted to “roar all you want,” but feared that something precious in you

or someone else might be disturbed or destroyed in the process?  Maybe you sense the

fragility of beauty, or of a loved one who is just getting by with whatever resources they

have and whomever they happen to be at the moment, and even though you are angry and

fearful for them, you also sense that your upset, whatever it may be, might just disturb the

tender beautiful thing that is growing there—in that difficult, holy place.  Oliver says that

you can “drip with despair all afternoon” and still, when you turn around, there will be a

lovely bird singing on a green branch in the midst of your sadness, in the midst of your

rant, or your own desperate cry.

When I first read the poem, I wanted to ask Oliver, where exactly is that cave?  Can you point the way? Where is the waterfall that would allow (or help) someone to cry out without disturbing anything in the process?  But, then I remembered the print on my desk.  Then, I remembered the songs of our choir ringing out, like that bird perched on a green branch.  Then, I remembered you—which is to say that I remembered us—all of us—gathered, as we are, as the church, gathered as in a cave of human souls, where Christ meets all of our cries for our mistakes or misadventures and draws us closer to Him.  Something of God sings despite the tumult of water, the tumult of circumstances, falling all around it.

Friends, the message is simple but true:  Rant if you must…God will bring it to blessing.

Peace,

Rev. Dee