Humus still smeared on my face

“Why should it be said

 among the peoples,

‘Where is their God?’”

                       __Joel 2:17

It has come to this, 

day of ash and cross. and good it is that this is so: we can start.

remember o mortal:

there is nothing to say, nothing that is real, nothing that is hopeful,

nothing that means anything without this,

this day of carbon: ground-up planetary minerals

designing dirt,

carbon cleansing,

reality

of God. remember o mortal who are you.

humus

my face honest

free from artifice, and God creating again.  

we come to this day, to this place, where truth is told:

which makes forgiveness possible.

forgiveness, and turning, turning, turning

returning   summoning nerve to tell truth

stretching taut muscles to lean down

‘presente’

about ourselves,

hearing truth

about ourselves.

this day. when truth is told:

which makes forgiveness possible.

remember, o mortal, you are dust: 

you are humus,

the very humus 

God uses to fashion your being:  you come from God;

to  this, dust, God-making material,

in humility, in humus you shall return:

back into the very heart of God;

you shall return.

And so we live:

we live,

we must live, awareness of our humus,

our humility,

our madeness, our createdness, our fashioning,

straight from the heart of God.

in the Imago Dei: the mystery of the divine shows up as we do,

the life of God alive as we come alive. God shows up in and through us,

the fancy word is ‘manifest.’

Or you can say, God. Is. In Her. Him. Them. “People, see, look! look at what God does.”

but we don’t.

\

  

we don’t ‘do’ God, we do us:  broken-apart, scared, screwed-up us.

greedy, scared, anxious us.

shoot, but we are scared     of our shadow like,  literally.

and we project it not – oh, if only – on mother’s hung up bedsheets like a movie in the dark.

we project it on others.

and we live in fear of who we are – the we we see in them.  the me we see in them.

so forgive me please: I’ll be back but first:

there is a tree trunk I need to pry out of my eye; it will require excavation; does anyone

have        a crane?       a winch?

ooo, there, almost, got it, but another will get lodged in tomorrow. this is not a life for the feint of heart, all this wrenching and rooting out. but it must be done.

for the love of God, I’ve done it again: screw up. oh, God, how we screw it up.

so here we are.

we have come          

we have come to this time to tell the truth

so forgiveness, repentance can come out of us and

into us into us can happen and again something come out of us

that is the divine, God, who creates a new heart, a new desire, new love

for all that is God, for all that God desires – for us and for God’s whole creation

here, this. humus on my face, again,

so God can use it again to make of me the one God wants

to ‘do’ God, to ‘be’ the God that is alive for now with some skin and a mouth, a brain, and a heart.

NOT GOD. but the work of God, heart, love, inclusion, truth-telling.

so, again, forgiveness can happen

and turning and welcome and  beloved community can find its place on this planet.

we have come to this. oh, good.

and we have come to this: oh boy, but this too is true:

turning comes with truth and truth comes with a prophetic word, a word that is honest, loving, but clear; there is always love or there would be no bother to tell truth,

and this:

prophecy is the return of blessing. truth gives space for blessing, for the new act,

and oh,

we still haven’t seen everything under the sun,

there is still something new and revealing what is and what

isn’t

brings forth the blessing

of that new thing, new creation, the new appearance of God’s design, desire, intention.

 

failure to make room for God to make, failure

to honor what all God has

what all God has poured Herself into, draws us here, to this: 

“have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin…

create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart,

O God, you will not despise.”

this

here

is the only place for this to begin. This, this, here, here,

here

humus smeared in the sign of the cross on my face,

and water splashed around it, affirming my call, in baptism, and yours,

washed ready,

having told truth  heard it,

having turned and bent down low to be fashioned anew,

built up out of the humus, in humility,

only now do I dare to

offer blessing, that is truth: the possibility of return, 

repentance: I call in the name of God,

in the name of grace and all that is

right and good and

kind, in the name of

Creator God, I call to "Officials" 

who have hard hearts (or blind guides), to turn 

turn turn 

turning, come

to my friends, to others,

as I rend my heart over the broken hearts of Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transexual, and Queer

humus-fashioned friends and strangers, in love for them,

telling truth their truth their reality their lives humus-in-the-image-of-God.

some harsh words for intolerance, impatience (Lord, help me!) and indignation because, oh,

how long do we really expect them to wait?  impatience is not a bad thing always when

God is involved.

                                                   but

it must start here, digging the log out of my eye, knowing one will be back, I speak

only

only can I dare to speak with a face covered in dirt, the dust

from which I’ve come, to which I go,

and in the meantime, now

God  -- who is is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast

love:             needs our attention:

Return return, come back, come, come to me,   return to me with all your heart: make room for me my people my banished exiled

all

all

and weep, mourn, and rend your hearts (not your clothes), break your hearts

over the hearts of my people, for them,

for them to see,

to know, to be clear

they are humus – “Mine, says God, Mine, in my image.”

Like you.

Like me.

“Why should it be said among the peoples,

‘Where is their God?’”

                                           ___Joel 2:17

          Now that we are here, to the days of humus, with memory of humus, dust, fire, fresh in mind, past Ash Wednesday, the time for telling truth, so forgiveness is possible, so turning is possible, so the breaking in of blessing is possible, and even the miracles of change, the change we long for:   now only now we can speak these words, dare to hope, to dig and prepare the ground for new life. After all, “why should it be said among the peoples, where is their God?”    ---Why, right here, thank you! At work, through us!   May God enjoy her work through you! 

          I offer these words with humus still smeared on my face, in humility and love – even when it sounds not so sweet and lovey-dovey. Truth doesn’t, always. But why else do this if not for love? And I offer these words in hope, that repentance is possible. God is compelling.

Trip Toward the Far Horizon: How Far is JukkMokk? To Flourishing?

Welcome again!  

   Time for a bit of refreshing here on the blog. And here in the mountains, where we have escaped for a few days of renewal. It's been an intense start to the year. And we have miles to go!  

  Annika bought her plane ticket for Anchorage this week. And here, I thought she wanted me to drive her. I've always imagined a marathon on the AlCan Highway, but no, she's going to fly!  Where's the sense of adventure in that!  :)   

  So now I'm just going to have to drive to Jokkmokk. 

You think I'm kidding. 

   Three years ago I made an 11 week, 11,000 mile road trip alone from Denver to Nantucket and back. Conversation with long-time best friends mingled with insights from folks I just met. I was covering familiar territory but it all felt new, as I was moving quickly and it all mixed together. 

  Two years before that, I lived on my own in Warsaw, Poland altogether for seven months, listening, taking it all in, putting pieces together from communist past to EU, capitalist present. 

  I’m an anecdotal anthropologist, seeking to find insight from the stories and experiences of people I’ve known for eons and the mechanic who just fixed my car.

   How does the light get in?  What do folks want?  Value? Hate? Long for?  What is going on?  What is life? For you? For folks who are very different from me?  And like me?

 I invite you to consider this blog a long road trip around the world, from 5 Points in Denver and my beloved mountains, all the way to Moscow, through a time warp of Soviet era Eastern Europe, across modern Europe, through my true home territory in Sweden, crossing  the Mediterranean into Africa, especially South Africa, and back in to the Middle East, especially Palestine and Israel. 

  We travel by way of spirit and heart, conscience and engagement with the traditions and stories that I've gathered up through listening and through my own desire and attempts to live faithfully according to the words of Micah, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God, and with the words and life of Jesus of Nazareth, who said without irony that the life given away for others, will be the fullest life one could ever imagine. And who insists still, that grace, grace is everything. That's a lot of ground to cover! 

  You are invited to ponder, wonder, and ask right along with me: is this our best work? Our best living? How can we get beyond the injustices and hate, the deep fears and frightening reactions society tends to put out there? I invite your feedback, ideas, 'best practices.' .

  I want to tell truth about life so far as I know it. I sense that folks are hungry for honest expressions and stories about "the living of these days," and welcome blunt, probing, but also encouraging, inspiring words of grace and hope.  

"Forget your perfect offering;  there is a crack in everything;

That's how the light gets in."    __Leonard Cohen

  There are many cracks, fractures and whole slices of me that have been cut away. And I have been quoting Cohen since early June, 1982, Tallinn, Estonia, 'the "white nights," nearing the Arctic Circle where the the nights were bleached by dim sun, dusky twilight lasted all night and emptied into the bright revelations of day, where too much was exposed to harsh unrelenting glare of capricious and summary judgment. Entirely illegally, we sat -- young adults from there and here, and tried to imagine a future. Life in Soviet Estonia was bleak and uncompromising (except when you were compromised, and that's another story entirely), and the songs of Leonard Cohen brought raw comfort, broken "halleluhjah's" and all. They discovered him long before we did. And begged, if anything, for me to bring back more Leonard Cohen. And that's when I discovered imperfect offerings, and how "Light Gets In."

  Adrienne Rich, a favorite poet, taught me many long years ago that it is costly to be creative, as she wrote about Madame Marie Curie who discovered radium and the use of radiation, “She died a famous woman, denying her wounds, denying her wounds came from the same source as her power.”  So it is. And yet we must not be afraid of using our power, and of becoming “fierce with reality.”  (Florida Scott-Maxwell)    We have work to do!    

   If curiosity pulls you to know who is this woman writing these things, you may find references by googling either "The Reverend Jan Erickson-Pearson," or "Rev. Jan Erickson-Pearson" or "Jan Erickson-Pearson"  where some of the different and various aspects of my life, work,career will appear. In some circles and on Facebook I'm known simply as Jan Erickson but googling that will get you nowhere. On FB, I am the Jan Erickson from Denver, with my 'About' references to Princeton and the ELCA, blonde hair and a very handsome husband.   I am an ordained (1983) pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), but like I had to write on the bottom of every single page of the first book I wrote, "Safe Connections"   (ironically, for the ELCA):  all opinions are my own do not reflect official policy and teaching of the church. If you're more curious than even my kids, you'll find bio material on the Google plus page that links from this  blog. 

  Thirty-five years of professional writing, work, and thinking out loud about, more than anything else,  this:           the life of the spirit          I find there is now a deepening, a clarity, a winnowing.  

  At the same time, there is more breadth and the horizons are moving farther away. I have always lived in  mystery, and these days yet more inviting, enticing, compelling. Clarity is not about what, or how, or even why, but about the urgency of engagement, or action, healing, justice. Tikkun Olam, ‘hesed,’ kindness, and transformation seem urgent. The earth, the world needs us to care, to change, to turn around.  

  Grace, though, is the notion that beckons to me with more power,more gravity,more gravitas, more pull, more energy than anything else. It begins with being beloved, blessed, given to, and life goes from there. It is the place to which we return when we are bogged down, bashed, broken, empty. It is primal: grace.

  I invite you to join me on a continuing journey to push out the edges, plumb the riches, tug at the sleeve of what that means.  Not so I can nail it down, but in order to experience it more profoundly.  Dialogue is very very welcome. I hope you'll respond. 

  I laugh a lot. My nurse was so very serious as she copied down my list of medicines the other day. She got down to this item on my list    "One good belly laugh per hour."  And she just wrote it down. Exactly. If we're not laughing, we're not paying attention. And, if we're not laughing, we're paying too much attention!  

  Of course, there is always this, worth remembering, from my favorite Polish poet, Wyslawa Szymborska,  "the facts, while interesting, are irrelevant."  Or might be. They certainly are not the last word!  

  We have to push beyond, to the deeper, buried realities, behind the facts, to the world, the life that is ultimately one that is given away, for others. That is where, and how I think the light gets in.  You?  

   Mobilization.        For.       Survival.        Not a movement, a lifestyle.

   And we were born to do so much more than merely survive.

   "We know that we more made for so much more than ordinary lives! 
     It's time for us to more than just survive!  
     We were made to thrive!" 


Time for a road