Ocean Message: Springing into New Beginnings

I offer this episode in the time of the Covid-19 crisis, when we are practicing social distancing as well as creative ways to uplift one another. This message came to me at the winter solstice, as a kind of Christmas message, though I publish it now as a spring meditation in the time when many communities would be gathering with their communities, friends and families to observe Palm Sunday, Passover and Easter. Here is a virtual way to gather in “gathered / waiting” worship together. This is a message for all of us, whether far or near, F/friends dear to my heart. It was recorded it by the ocean. Below is my poem letter, We have to Lose our Way at Times. Also offered on the episode are a few of my favorite hymns and a tune that came to me in prayer: We have to lose our way at times We have to lose our way at times In order to find out way back We have to know this lostness To be people And to understand the way that it is for Others to walk the lonely way At times we are touched by, Humbly graced by, a type of loneliness Of quiet solitude That carries us beyond ourselves And into the care of that which is beyond us And brings us to an understanding of compassion and lived experiences of Eternal bottomless profound love That lets us live in and on into what it is we Can be There, We breath into the way through We breath into our own peace We breath into belonging and Knowing we are not lost We find there Forgiveness perhaps A humble grace in our littleness, and yet connection to the grandness of this place we get to live our lives When at times we are lost And frustrated Empty And finding only despair Questions to hold and let go of, Longing to ponder, we’re tumbling, uncentered Full of Hopes that cast us out to the wide ocean of possibilities, but leave us wondering at the why, Here is a time to pace and pause It is the worst time to pace and pause It is the most wondrous time to ponder In the quiet of our beings, out in the place Perhaps where the water meets the daybreak Or where the hilltop meets the dawn Or where the sidewalk cracks meet the morning There, Find yourself And touch God there Find the Light that is guiding you in Into the brightest and best corners of your life Into the capacity to hold yourself as loved Come there, And be held for a time Then you will know more How to hold others How to love others How to walk with others Into those places of despair or wholeness Into those moments of lostness or found-ness Into those chances to be broken open or filled full Hold that place for as long as you can And come back to it often Practice that coming home to yourself That you can then come home to us all too And then invite us back there with you in The way that is yours to By the one unique light of who you are In this one unique lifetime