The Dude Abides
So yeah, this morning I was working in my garden and I turned on the ol’ iTunes DJ (Jeff) while I watered and pruned. Music played for a while and I really wasn’t paying attention to what was playing until I came out of my horticulture fog when I heard a familiar voice: my old homeslice Robbie.
Much to my surprise, DJ Jeff had reached into the way-back machine and pulled out an MP3 of one of Rob Bell‘s Sunday night messages from Mars Hill in fantasmagorical Grandville, MI. (Hollah!) I don’t even know quite when this message was given and by the time my ears (and heart) tuned in, Rob was midway through his message.
This is what I heard:
…When Jesus dies the temple curtain is ripped. The Book of Hebrews says “because then we can come into the presence of God.”
Yeah, but the Spirit of God can come out.
See, the scriptures are all about a God who says, “I cannot be confined to buildings and boxes.”
Celebration confronts us with the simple truth that ALL space is sacred.
This issue isn’t whether or not God is there. The issue is whether you’re aware of it .
See celebration confronts us with the truth of a God who’s not somewhere else, a god who’s right here. And the difference between our perceiving this God or not is not an issue of God’s location or God traveling from place to place, it’s our awareness.
It’s being surrounded by people who are atheists, and beginning to point out in each of the, maybe even quietly to yourself, to notice the divine spark that resides inside of them.
You can be with a room full of people, none of them believers even that God exists, and the one of them loves to create great art. And then one of them has a passion to help those who are marginalized and poor. And the other one wants to be the best possible parent. And you can be sitting there realizing, God instilled these desires and passions in these people whether they acknowledge it or not. And when you find this divine imprint on people, you’re finding the sacred and the divine in the daily.
So this is what hpappens when we begin to celebrate. We begin to find the presence of the God who made the universe. All around us.
So we might gather with a group of people who care about the same kinds of things, like tonite, but we understand that we gather hopefully to learn more about the God who we meet everywhere we go. Let me just say it this way – we’ve already said it once but we should say it again: Celebration comes from awareness.
See today we could have talked about celebration and we could have jumped up and down adn we could have sang lots of loud songs and we could have shouted and we could have had a veritable pep rally for Jesus. We can do that here. And we’ll do that in the future. And we’ve done that in the past. But celebration is about you and I meeting the God of the Universe in a thousand different ways every day. Becoming aware of the world that we live in and who made it.
And who’s putting it back together.
Then Rob red a poem by one of my very favorite writers, Mary Oliver, called “Mindful.”
Rinsing the soil from my hands, I sat down on the porch steps and listened — slain by delight.
I see or hear
something
that more or less
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
— from the 2005 poetry collection, Why I Wake Early, by Mary Oliver
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