Isaiah 40:21-31

Epiphany 5 - Year B


Paying attention to sources of energy rather than drains of reserve is always tricky business in the midst of many distractions.

Here it is trying to settle into a new housing/home setting and new job setting. There are so many things yet unpacked and so many new tasks to attend to. It is difficult to pay attention to the basics of abundance when the fate of Sisyphus seems so attendant. How do we pay attention to happiness while surrounded by distractions?

Albert Camus put it this way: "I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

You can read more of Camus' Sisyphus here.

Sisyphus at the bottom of the hill seems like a strange way to get to eagle's wings, but it is the journey of this day. May we conclude that all is well in the midst of our distractions and breathe deep again.

- - -

Following up on the Sisyphus image and imagining him "happy," can we go further and imagine him having learned from pushing stones how to lead stones up the mountain and to do so by a variety of paths (each path best for that stone)?

To play with this image I encourage you to read the whole of this article.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/february2003.html

 


 

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Punxsutawney Phil has made it clear.
The weather must be perfect, all the year!

Can Phil compare to G*D?

Even when underground, before sticking a weather eye out for shadowlands, Phil is not hidden from G*D. G*D hibernates not nor rests since one seventh day for seven suns.

Still, Phil, humble prognosticator (several light days below prophet) can reveal the ground of being who we are.

Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall doze in the dark with marmots,
they shall stick their nose out and investigate,
they shall see their shadow and not faint.

So, bless a candle, light it and hold it high. Christmas ends, Easter begins. It is the turning of the year beyond that of a calendar. This is the time for that resolution you've been dreading - the one you will stick to.

Make the most of this day, dig out your CD of Groundhog Day and read the review by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Might this be the ordinary day that is the best day of your life? See yourself through resurrection eyes, making the changes that you need to make because the rest of your games are ultimately frivolous (floating in the sky instead of building on the ground).

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/february2006.html

 


 

Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147:1-11, 20c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39

Though there is a tendency to attribute power to that which is greater, longer, wider, deeper, power that is implacable and must be bowed down to, it is important to see an on-going vitality of steadfast eternity. Time, Creation, G*D are powerful in relationship to grasshoppers, slaves, or frail (various images of humans). But to stop with that distinction is to dismiss everything in favor of some one thing.

In these passages a key dynamic is not the distance between the great and the small, but the willingness of the powerful to energize the less powerful. This might be called silly as it adds to entropy (at least in a closed system) but it might also be envisioned as the only perpetual energy mechanism there is, one that passes on energy in an open environment.

Our tendency is to look at a given cycle of rising and falling, rather than an on-going stream of life. When looking cyclically we get into law issues such as this interesting one: "(though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law)". When looking on-goingly we can see patterns of connection between our predecessors and our descendants, our selves and others, one religious, economic, or political system and another.

Here we proclaim a connection of intentional interaction between every disparate moment and rejoice in time's flow that supports us and encourages us and engages us to join the flow. Rejoice in every evidence of power coming to the faint, being received, and passed on.

- - -

haven't you heard
has your heart not known
it is not what gets stored up that counts
but what passes through

hearts get attacked
with storage blockages
they faint and fail
in need of new flow

as we pass through
we store of loose
set your heart on this choice
that others might also hear

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

 


 

Let's back up a bit to verse 18: "To whom will you liken G*D, or what likeness compare with G*D?"

Whatever you have chosen to listen to, to attend to, sets the relationship between yourself and G*D, yourself and Neighbor. Our tendency is to set our sight too high or our expectation too low. We give G*D credit for more than G*D would do and we discount G*D's presence in our routines and patterns. And so we aggrandize ourselves as G*D's special agent and interpreter or experience ourselves as disregarded and lost.

To be called out to play with Neighbor G*D, to soar and dive, invites us to face our realities and throw out the high and low bids for recognition and simply pick up the ball of life rolled to us and toss it back. It is always the right time and space to play catch, even when what we perceive as a Nerf ball tossed our way turns to a raw egg half-way here or our return of a wicked backhanded sliced tennis ball morphs into a badminton shuttlecock. The funner the game the less weary we be. Calvinball lives where eagles soar, kids run, and the faint walk on.

As Mary Poppins puts it: "In ev'ry job that must be done there is an element of fun – you find the fun and snap! The job's a game." And here we have been Jane and Michael finding every excuse for not doing our tasks. Remember the Doxology has been sung – so, Play Ball!

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html

 


 

Have you not known? Have you not heard (seen, felt, smelled, tasted, sensed in any way)?

There is more than the circle of earth we run on. Raise your eye and see systems and processes whirling slowly - beyond your control.

This larger universe is available to your moments of faintness and powerlessness. Amazingly, this larger reality, from the inside, rises and we mount higher and walk farther.

This wonderful dynamic makes our very being tardis-like. We are larger on the inside than ever we thought for we are connected to an outside which is more intimate than we had felt possible (AstroCantus).

What have you yet to know? What have you not yet experienced as real? All of that and more is available to you and me, and us together. Let this epiphany not go lightly.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/01/isaiah-4021-31.html