Knee-Deep in Wonder

Baptizing a friend in the Pacific, Easter Sunday @ Sunrise, April 20, 2014.

Mark Weller opens up and the Seas respond with praise!

BEYOND THE MITZRAYIM

During Thursday night's traditional Jewish Seder, Rabbi Eli Cohen reminded us that Egypt was, for the ancient Hebrews, a 'narrow' place.  Mitzrayim.  Throughout the Seder, Rabbi Eli deliberately and bravely invited us out of our own 'narrow' places and into more expansive fields of freedom.  If the Exodus story is the 'big bang' of biblical narrative, the story that sets all other stories in motion, Passover is primal and spiritual, formative and generative.  We pick up the narrative at some risk--for we recognize in its verses our lifelong struggle within the confines of our fearfulness, our shame, our pride. 

I was moved by Rabbi Eli's passion for the story: all the ways the story inhabited his music, and evoked delight, and stirred in him something like resilience and grace.  This journey out of the mitzrayim is a daring one, and it sets the human heart on fire.  We could feel this, Thursday, in the rabbi's presence.  Out of the mizrayim and into the fields of freedom!

"Do you receive life as a gift?"

INTO THE DEEP WATER

With my own community, I rose this Easter Sunday to greet a daring new day.  On a beach, in the fog, surrounded by love, we baptized eight friends into the life and ways of Jesus the Christ.  We tell a somewhat different story--a story of death and resurrection, a story of betrayal and forgiveness--but I felt a kinship with my Jewish friends just the same.  In so many ways, our different symbols tell similar stories.  Out of the fearful tomb and into the bright light of the garden!  Out of the zero-sum world and into the abundant life of grace!  Out of the mitzrayim and into the deep!  Out of the mitzrayim and into the roiling and expansive Pacific!

Lori Rivera and Art Alm at Sunrise

One of the reasons I love the picture above (very top) is the wave that's bearing down on the two of us.  Faith doesn't deliver us out of the world, or out of the weirdness of it, or out of the unsettling pattern of swell and storm.  Instead, we stand right there in the midst of it all.  Waves bearing down.  Unseen chaos tossing us this way and that--and all those we love as well.  By the light of this day, by the grace of it, we stand in the midst of it all--knowing that nothing can separate us from the One who is love, from the One who is risen in our hearts.

So my prayer for each of the eight has something to do with all this.  It's a prayer for deep faith, and it's a prayer for expansive courage, and it's a prayer for graciousness and generosity, in a narrowing world that scares so many so much of the time.  What a pleasure to stand in the sea with them!  To look out to the distant horizon and know that it goes and goes and goes!  To stand knee-deep in wonder!  Sisters and brothers in Christ, let us risk the journey beyond the mitzrayim and find grace, peace, even God out there in the deep!