Mennomystic

  Hope, an Advent Lament   “Hope,” they say, in this, the first week of Advent, when despair takes the shape of a shawl. Heaviness hangs hard round my shoulders rounding my spine bending low my spirit.   “Hope, huh?” Glad it doesn’t depend on me and my moods, which now is a weighted blanket of my community’s divisions stuffed with fear and pride and powerlessness and stubbornness, stitched together with hand picked verses.   Hope...as I sit in the dark, wrapped in this melancholy mantel of longing for a season of rebirth.   Hope is faith in the future, good thing it doesn’t depend on how I feel today.

Photo: Coming Home by Samantha Reuter https://www.srueterart.com/ If God is everywhere then there are no profane places; all places and spaces are sacred and holy. Our work as Christ followers, Holy Spirit inhabitors, is to unveil the divine mystery hidden in all things, to uncover the sacredness of all of creation. Which includes our very bodies. As I write this, I realize that the discovering of ourselves as sacred spaces is not a one-off , it too is part of the human journey.   A process requiring the re-ordering of our very own hearts to the true reality that always is, that we are sacred. And it is a process, a process of re-membering “who and whose we are.” Too often though, this development is arrested and stalled often by the Church that claims it is the bearer of our salvation. For many years… many, many years, I truly believed I was evil. Inherently bad, cursed, flawed and irredeemable. This inner knowing persisted as a result of my fundamentalist evangelical...

 The Stark Reality of Prairie Trees Scraggly sticks stuck in stubbled soil, a sad giant’s poor playthings. Stunted stems in rows and ringing homesteads, a human endeavour to stave off sweeping winds. Scrawny clutching claws outstretched, a striving to grasp into endless expanse. Dwarfed are these otherwise towering trees by sheer infinity of space between earth and ether. Denuded stark gnarled limbs drawn against such bounteous backdrop of blue. Diminished, with no hope inspiring awe in themselves, instead, by association granting glory to the prairie skies.

  The Nature of Death and Life – Contemplating on the Prairies Most of my life has been spent on the Prairies of Southern Manitoba, save for a few months up North. It is from this place that I sit and think prayerfully about life, my lived reality through God in whom I live, and move and have my being. I literally walk this Contemplative path in this environment. Being on this Contemplative journey leads me to new ways of thinking and living in relationship with the rest of the world. This path is not straight, nor easy. The journey has been a painful process of dying small deaths. And it’s only now, as I look back along the trail that I see all the resurrections. I’ve observed the Prairie soil, not as a farmer or soil scientist, maybe as a gardener, although a very poor one, but more so as a Contemplative. By being a part of the Prairies for decades and learning a bit about how they were formed and knowing a bit about plants I began to ponder over the nature of creation. Knowi...

  It’s only love that can explain a girl’s shining eyes as she watches out her window on brown textured spread of prairie. What else but love could quicken her heart in this in-between winter-spring. No white snow blanketing the world in wonder. No greening haze to grace the ground and trees. What beauty in scraggled leaf abandoned wind-rows could she see? It must be love. Unconditional love, waiting patiently through apparent barrenness. This girl is one with the naked branches reaching out in endless expanse of space, stretching herself within the clear and clean blue sky. Her soul knows too the body’s ache to bury itself in the prairie’s deep, rich soil. To plant itself as seed. To die to itself, to live. This is pregnant latent love. It is this prairie-girl’s heart and soul and mind and body that aches with love as she looks out over fields to farms and is reminded that the Christ who dwells within as God breathed Spirit longs to look through her eyes to see what she sees...