Dear Caldwell,
Last Sunday we heard the voices of our youth and one adult member of our Heifer Ranch mission trip reflect on what they learned about poverty amidst God’s abundance – and how they will live differently based on what they learned.
As we travel from Sunday to Sunday this week, we will stay with the theme of abundance as it is expressed in two scriptures we will unpack Sunday – Isaiah 55:1-5 and Matthew 14:13-21. Both speak of a God who is constantly calling, “Come, come …”, the same God who can provide more than we need through Christ, as happened one day with two fish and five loaves.
Picking back up on last Sunday, I asked Ann Dorsett to share the portion of her reflection in which she quoted the spiritual writer Thomas Merton. Coincidentally or not, she chose a passage that refers to how we can often find God in the “gaps.”
We’ve been thinking about gaps a lot here since last Easter’s sermon on what it means to be “people of the gap.” This is shaping our consideration of how the abundance of this congregation’s spiritual gifts and abilities can fill the world’s gaps in Christ’s name. In fact, that dialogue will be part of what we gather around at the final Summer Nights at Caldwell, Aug. 10.
Here is the full quote from Ann’s notes – worth the read.
Thomas Merton wrote, “there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.” There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.
Ezekiel excoriates false prophets as those who have “not gone up into the gaps.” The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clifts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the fissures between the mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn and unlock – more than a maple – a universe. This is how you spend the afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.
We learned this morning that member Kathy Neal’s mother died last night, so please keep her in prayer. Stay tuned for details of a service or how to contact her.
In Christ,
John