A Poem by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Colossians 1:1-20
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father.
In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow-servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit.
For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in Christ all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through Christ and for him. He himself is before all things, and in Christ all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
In Christ All Things
A Homily for July 31, 2022
1.
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| New Camaldoli Hermitage, Big Sur |
I turned these things over and over in my heart this spring and into my summer’s vacation in California. And I found myself one afternoon, on a mountain high above the Big Sur coast, thinking and praying and, truth be told, weeping for it all. How does it all fit together? Why does it seem such a paradox, all of it?
It’s a place I have gone for many years, this Benedictine monastery and retreat. And it sits high, high above the Pacific, well above even the marine layer, and it’s just one of those “thin” places—where heaven and earth seem to embrace, to kiss, to touch one another. The Pacific is vast and blue and stretches north and south and west forever. Redwoods rise in valley pockets below, and all kinds of hawks and other birds soar through it all. Dancing in the thermals. Like I say: it’s a “thin” place.
So I’m sitting up there, on a bench overlooking all of this, and I’m praying for Grant and Mandy, and for Bob and Mary, and for Adam and Frann. So many losses. So many sadnesses. And truth be told, I’m thinking about the contradictions in my own heart too. The bright and expanding faith that seems to intensify with each year…a sense of holiness and grace in everything and everyone. But also this unsettling fear about the future of the planet, the future for my children and yours. How does such faith live with such fear! The contradictions abound.
And then there’s my East Coast life and my West Coast family—this geographical, spiritual divide that has marked my life these past three, four years. Part of me here, and part of me there. My brothers and cousins, here. Kate’s brothers and our three daughters, there. A profound calling here, a deep sense of family loyalty there. And a continent between us. I’ve tried to be brave about this, to be honest, even stoic perhaps; but it’s been something of a fault line in my heart these past few years. A contradiction, a divide, and a sadness.
2.
But this is what I see from the mountain over Big Sur: I see the Pacific, the vastness of the sea, hawks racing on the thermals. I hear sea lions barking from far, far below. And in the late afternoon, the bright western sun shines on all of it, all of it, all of it. And on me too.
And it hits me there, it hits me then, that all is one. One of those beautiful, mystical, god-shaped moments. Sometimes too fleeting. Sometimes there and gone. But none the less real. All is one. It’s something of a transfiguration in real time, in my heart, in my world.
And this vast, blue sea—dense with life, shimmering with glory—is both Pacific and Atlantic. All is one. This wild coastline, bejeweled with redwoods and oak trees, is a single continent: connected in every meaningful way to my New England coastline. All is one. And my life, my heart, my soul: a good bit of which is rooted in California, and a good bit of which is grounded right here in New Hampshire now. It’s all one. That sea is one. This world is one. And all of it is held together, knit together, reconciled into one life—by God. So I can live in that oneness too. I can choose to live in that shimmering, shining, reconciling oneness too.
And this is where Paul’s Letter to the Colossians comes in. It’s a sweet and loving letter from Paul to a community he clearly loves. And he wants so very much to encourage and embolden them—for perseverance and service, for loving and mutual care. But it’s this bit about Christ that touches me this morning: that Christ is “before all things, and that in Christ all things hold together.” Or maybe, if you like, in Christ all things cohere. Paul’s aware of all the same contradictions we live with now. The joy of faith, the fragility of life on earth. The ecstasy of God, the painful consequences of loving God as Jesus did. The thrilling beauty of the world, and all the ways the world is scarred by bigotry and suffering and violence. Paul lives with all these contradictions. As we do.
But that afternoon at the monastery, above the coastline, I connect with these first verses of Colossians: that Christ names the coherence, the ways all things hold together, even the things that seem paradoxical, contradictory, dividing hearts and souls and communities in two. This is—as Richard Rohr and Matthew Fox and Julian of Norwich like to say—the “mystical” Christ. This is the One whose love and mercy hold together the broken parts of our lives, bless as one the divided geography of our lives, knit into one garment the tattered pieces of our souls. Watching the waves roll in, I see that my West Coast family and my East Coast life are one and the same, connected by God’s grace and the mysterious, unknown ways of God. I may not fully understand God’s ways—for sure, I don’t. But I can live in grateful confidence that God pulls the pieces of my life, the chapters of my story into some kind of wholeness, some kind of blessing.
Listening to the wailing sea lions far below, I hear the voice of God blessing my whole life—the East Coast roots, the West Coast adventures and growth, the limited successes of my life and the big mistakes too. All is one. By God’s grace, by the Christ in whom all things hold together, all is one. It’ll bewilder me as long as I live. And it’ll befuddle my ordinary mind and heart more than I might like. But by the Christ in whom all things hold together, all is one. The divide is healed. My life is whole. And so is yours, every one of yours. Your life is whole.
3.
Now the thing is. Living in this mystery, abiding in it, embracing the wholeness—when life feels so precarious, and the world seems so divided, and our own hearts experience the contradictions so sharply—it requires something of us. This is the part about spiritual practice. This is the part about discipleship. This is the part where Jesus says to the disciples "follow me."
If I’m going to take that mountain-top experience, literally that mountain-top experience, and incorporate it into my life—which means embody it in my life: if I’m going to do that, I’ll need to leave behind some old habits and try on some new ones. I’ll need to set aside every temptation to divide the world up, every temptation to cave to dualism and judgment and despair. I’ll need to devote myself to the same practices that Jesus sets before us: prayer in all things, and for all things and on behalf of all beings; communion with my neighbors and my church, and communion with the poor and shunned, and communion (yes, communion) with the very ones whose ideas and politics and meanness I distrust with every ounce of my body. This is the part about discipleship. Spiritual practice. If I’m going to live into the meaning of Christ, into the blessing and promise of Christ—at least, this “mystical” Christ Paul preaches here in Colossians—I’ll need to follow Jesus, leave the habits of cynicism and despair behind, and embrace the grace that holds all things together. The grace that coheres.
4.
And I want to say this about all the other contradictions we’re holding in our hearts this summer.
Yes, friends, they break our hearts. To know that the world is holy and gorgeous and blessed, and then to bear witness to the injustice and bigotry and nihilism that disfigure and diminish us all—this will break your heart every time. Wide open.
And to watch friends, partners, dear ones suffer—cancer, depression, job loss, whatever the loss—to watch dear ones suffer is to have our own hearts broken. Wide open.
But Paul reminds the Colossians, and even us today, that in Christ all things hold together, in Christ all things cohere, in Christ the blessing and reconciling light of God gathers all things into communion and promise. To be sure, this is Paul’s interpretation of the gospel story; this is Paul’s recasting of the meaning of Jesus for a wide world of wonders and mysteries, a wide world trauma and grief. Christ is the way Paul understands the connections, the glory, the reconciling grace in all of it.
Now this doesn’t relieve us of the anxiety of our generation, or the grief of loss. None of this magically disappears for Paul or for us. And we will always need one another, one another’s tenderness, God’s wisdom, to ride through these very human and endless storms. That’s just how this goes.
But our faith does promise some kind of transfiguration: if we go where Jesus leads us. It’s this promise that life and death, beauty and pain, hope and loss are all bound up in God’s grace and God’s light and God’s promise of wholeness and salvation. Our tears and our laughter. Our epiphanies and our confusion. Our triumphs and our defeats. In Christ all things hold together. In Christ all things cohere. There is only Christ. This is only grace. There is only love.
5.
The great English writer G.K. Chesterton once wrote this: “A religion is not a church a person goes to, but the cosmos he lives in.” I want us to think about that this week. “A religion is not a church a person goes to, but the cosmos she lives in.” Let’s live, friends, in the cosmos of Christ. That’s the world where all is one, where all are family, where there are no walls dividing us from one another, the blessed from the damned, the sacred from the profane. Let’s live, friends, in the cosmos of Christ. That's the world where all is one, where all rivers flow into the same sea, where our joy and our pain are trails to the same summit, where success and failure are just human categories—but transformation is God’s promise through every bit of it all, where death and life are reconciled by God in promise and blessing and holiness.
Let’s live, my friends, in the cosmos of Christ. Not a simple world, and not a world to be won and defended either. But a world of gifts, a world of blessings, a world of amazing grace. Even the contradictions invite us to worship and insight and wonder. Even the paradoxes are gifts to be treasured. So let’s offer one another encouragement and God’s peace along the way. That we can be that cosmos for one another.
Amen and Ashe.
