This month I returned to Bowen Island to spend a few days alone with God. I hoped it would help me get through the dark months ahead.
I didn’t have much of a sense of God’s presence until I passed by a church and felt a tug to go inside. I feel that tug whenever I walk by the church, but I’d given up hope of getting in. Even when there’s a vehicle parked outside, it’s been locked. This time as I neared the church and empty parking lot, I was spurred on by the memory of another time in such a place and decided to give it a try.
The door opened. A woman named Elizabeth was polishing brass candlesticks and encouraged me to come in. “I’ll put the lights on for you,” she said.
I thanked her and took a seat near the front of the church, so I could look at the statues. On my left, Joseph held the toddler Jesus in one hand and a lily in the other. On my right, Mary held the infant Jesus who faced outward. With one hand, she supported his bottom and the other was under his arm with her fingers around his chest. The Holy Child’s arms were spread wide and his face kind. On them, I rested my gaze.
Eventually, Elizabeth went outside to tend the garden. In the silence, I imagined myself responding to Jesus’s welcome by coming close and letting him feel my hair the way my grandson did at that age. It was so soothing. I also pictured my hand, like Mary’s, firmly on Jesus’s chest with his back leaning against me. That’s how I prayed–just feeling Jesus’s fingers in my hair while mine were pressed against his warm body.
The next day I was home again, praying with Luke 17:20-25. In this passage, Jesus told the Pharisees they didn’t need to go looking for the kingdom of God because it was among them. In fact, they could touch God right there and then if they wanted to.
Jesus went on to tell the disciples that there would come a time when they would be “desperately homesick for just a glimpse of one of the days of the Son of Man, and you won’t see a thing” (The Message).
The felt presence of God is like that. Sometimes the Son of Man is in our midst, having sent someone ahead to open the door, so he can welcome us with open arms. Yet other times, the door is locked and God is a cold statue.
While on my retreat, I read something Gerald May wrote in The Dark Night of the Soul. He said that the sense of God’s presence is not God. “Union with God is neither acquired nor received; it is realized.” Whether we experience the Holy or not, God is in us and we in God–as surely as the stars are always in the sky.
During the day it is hard to remember that all the stars in the sky are out there all the time, even when I am too blinded by the sun to see them. ―Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark
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This summer Fred and I took our eight-year-old grandchildren to Aldergrove Regional Park to view the Perseid meteor shower. Metro Vancouver and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada invited people of all ages to set up their tents, lawn chairs, and blow-up mattresses, and look up at the sky. There were games, storytelling, a food truck run by the Elks, and members of the RASC and Fraser Valley Astronomy Club with telescopes for viewing. Our grandchildren munched popcorn and watched the sky. Our grandson said, “It’s a good movie. Not much action, but the scenery’s great.”
What love mischief are you and God doing to care for the earth?
Let me know and I will include it in an upcoming post.
“An ‘extraordinary man’: Ken Ryan and his wife, Lou, have been heavily involved in their community over the years. From running the coffee pots at the food bank to coordinating a kid’s summer camp, there’s almost nothing the pair hasn’t done,” says Tereza Verenca in the 
Once again she was on the cross with Jesus. But this time, instead of feeling comforted, her heart cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.”
Meanwhile, Deb Arndt, Jeff Imbach and I invited the participants of 
As I listen to directees share their struggles and listen to my own, I notice that there’s a strata to our feelings and desires. Like an archaeological dig, the top layer–the first one we experience–gets our attention. It’s the hurt right under our feet. Archaeologists don’t care about that dirt. It’s where they need to dig, but mostly they need to get it out of the way to find what’s underneath. They shovel, sift and gently brush the soil away to find relics of past civilizations. These give them clues about who we are and what has affected how we live.
It was an arts worship service and the theme was “The Kingdom of God.” Artists at New Life Community Church submitted their creations based on the theme, and we worshiped God with our senses and imaginations. That’s when I first saw Wendy Linnington’s painting Mustard Seed (above). It spoke to me of the seemingly small and unseen kingdom that is within us–potent, powerful and growing. I am so grateful for the love mischief of Wendy and other painters, potters, dancers and singers that open us to the kingdom in tangible ways.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.
–Psalm 139:13-18 (NIV)