Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Proper 25 (30) - Year A

What vision is larger than yourself? Is glimpsable though not achievable in your life or life-time?

Is that not worth pursuing with all one’s presence and passion and prayer?

One way of coming at this is to listen for what promises ring most true. Another way is to listen to your heart’s desire.

Both ways are dependent upon listening as well as Moses did whether he was observing injustice, noting a strange event in nature, remaining persistent in the face of seeming failure after failure to have people freed, believing rocks and water contain each other, receiving mountain-top inspiration, etc. So, listen for a vision and follow and share.

What do you see that you will not be a part of, other than as an extension of what you are doing today?

This vision will help keep your sight unimpaired and your vigor unabated. To drop your eyes to where you are presently standing and to only find ways to keep standing there is to cause one to weep for oneself rather than weep for others.

Lift up your eyes to the world you want to see and live as though it were already present.

Then, when death comes, it is just a next thing to do.

As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience

What vision is larger than yourself? Is glimpsable [grin] though not achievable in your life or life-time?

Is that not the only thing worth pursuing with all one's presence and passion and prayer?

One way of coming at this is to listen for what promises ring most true. Another way is to listen to your heart's desire.

Both ways are dependant upon listening as well as Moses did whether he was observing injustice, noting a strange event in nature, remaining persistent in the face of seeming failure after failure to have people freed, believing rocks and water contain each other, receiving mountain-top inspiration, etc. So, listen for the vision and follow and share.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/october2002.html

Moses or Joshua. How do you choose between your kin? Thanks for Moses, thanks for Joshua, thanks for you.

We are not to bear a grudge against kin or neighbor (see if you can tell the difference between the two -- at some point the only difference is spelling).

To insist that everyone live up the wisdom I have achieved is to bear a grudge against those who aren't as far along and those who have gone much further. To insist on a particular answer for the testing questions of life is to fail the test, to insult a Living G*D, and to reduce our neighbor to our self. To insist is to slander.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/october2005.html

Moses, the great liberator, is shut up in foreign Moab. Ruth, the great grandmother, comes forth from Moab.

All of this disparagement and honoring of Moab, depending on time and perspective, is background to the famous "love your neighbor" dicta.

This is basic inclusionary, progressive vision. It allows Jesus to continue engaging those who would be his enemy, in this particular the Pharisees.

It is encouragement to us to keep the line open with our supposed enemies, for we may well find ourselves dying in their space and rejoicing when they bring forth a heroine of our own.

- - - - - - -

what is a millennia
what is a moment

a tension between
enlivens this present

relatives become enemies
enemies become friends

we chase one another
and flee the same

in a moment
all is lost

in a millennia
we can see today

may we prosper
in our in-between time

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

What are you seeing that you are not going to accomplish?

This is a most un-American, anti-positivist question. In places where kids are overscheduled and incessantly prepared for success, we don't catch a picture larger than ourselves. The same resistance to this question arises in religion precisely at the points where issues of tradition and salvation intersect. We yearn for a right answer from the past to care for our uncertainty and for a correct interpretation of signs to equate the present with the future.

To see beyond actually opens us to the unexpected ways in which we engage each moment along the way. Through all the dry times and hungry times and doubting times and unfaithful times we are strengthened. Through all the high times and satisfying times and times of certainty and surety come the next moments wherein we are humbled.

Can you catch a loving glimpse of G*D, of Neighbor? Just a snapshot? Just a quiet word? In that glimpse you have an insight into a larger world than expected. Such a quest is found in clarifying our expectations by looking again at our entitlements and finding them less than we had counted on; investigating again our hopes and finding in them more reality than we had first noticed. What is Messiah if not connected with my life? What is G*D if not a partner, a neighbor? What is a Neighbor if not a revelation of G*D? What is our Self if not connected with Christ?

Thank you Moses for setting a larger context. Thank you Joshua for attending to the details. Thank You for taking your part in gazing farther and carrying forward.

So, again, what are you seeing that you are not going to accomplish?

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html

What do you see that you will not be a part of, other than as an extension of what you are doing today?

This vision will help keep your sight unimpaired and your vigor unabated. To drop your eyes to where you are presently standing to merely find ways to keep standing there is to cause one to weep for oneself rather than have others weep for you.

Lift up your eyes to the world you want to see and live as though it were already present.

Then, when death comes, it basically won’t matter.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/10/matthew-341-12.html