HOMILY: "Come Away With Me"

The 2nd Sunday in Creationtide

Sunday, September 8, 2024

Song of Songs 2:8-13 

1.

I had two intentions this summer, the whole summer really, but especially my month-long August vacation.  The first was to read a handful of novels I’d been collecting for most of a year.  And the second was to recommit to a daily practice of centering prayer, 20 minutes of silent prayer in the morning, and 20 minutes again in the evening.  I’m reminded of the simple teaching of the great teacher Thich Nhat Hanh—who once said: “Many of us have been running all our lives.  Practice stopping.”  Just that: “Many of us have been running all our lives.  Practice stopping.”  My hope this summer was to ‘practice stopping.’  And these two practices, reading novels and centering prayer, do so much to slow me down, sometimes even way down—reawakening in me the gifts of stillness and imagination, softening the edges of my mind’s rush to judgment, and emptying my analytic self of so many assumptions and Dave GJ notions.  No small task, that.

So these were my intentions all summer long: to read some novels and revive my centering prayer practice.  And for the most part, I made good on those intentions.  It was a good summer for me.

So one morning, about two weeks ago, I set out in a little red kayak on the ever-so-still waters of a favorite Maine lake.  And I was frankly kind of full of myself, satisfied with these two daily practices, and the calm and balanced spirit with which I paddled across the protected bay in front of our cabin.  I’d even left my phone on shore!  At the time I was deep into a spectacularly inspired novel by one of my all-time favorite writers, David James Duncan; and his story is, in part, a meditation on the unity of human spirit and created world, the wholeness and liberation we discover in and among the geographies of our lives.  The novel’s called “Sun House”—and I have it right here.  Can’t recommend it highly enough.

So as I paddled across the bay, I marveled at a flock of geese flapping in the reeds along the shoreline, then lifting off, and then winging in formation overhead.  And I felt less like an observer than a participant in their timeless migration, less like a sightseer than a kind of wild goose myself, following the instincts and desires of my own soul.  Paddling the still waters.  The late summer sun, like the Light of Christ, everywhere around me.  Like I say, it was a good summer for me.

And just then, over my right shoulder, I heard the sweet laughter of a loon, close enough to be along for the ride.  You know the sound, the laughter, the wonder of it.  A song millions of years in the making!  So, of course, I swung my big, no longer calm, nor balanced body around to take a quick look, because that’s what you do—and proceeded to flip my little red kayak, dramatically and totally, upside down.  K-splash!  Which meant, of course, that the paddler was paddling no more, and tossed instead into the loon-loved lake.  Grabbing after my paddle with one hand, reaching with the other for the upside-down kayak with a mind of its own.  And all the while, gasping for embarrassment and surprise. 

I was maybe a hundred yards from shore, and I had no genius ideas about getting my big, no longer calm, no longer balanced body back into the kayak.  So I did what I guess one does when one’s flipped his kayak in a loony lake.  I held on to the paddle, pushed the kayak forward and did my best little froggy kick to get us all back to dry land and a warm towel…and all kinds of humility and breathlessness.  A couple of kids in a motorboat, trailing a line with a happy water-skier, waved and cheered on their way by.  I was frankly relieved they didn’t stop to help.

And about half-way back, I saw just ahead of me another loon—maybe the same one, or maybe an amused friend—floating serenely and worrying about nothing.  And as if on cue, she caught sight of this crazy human being, one with creation, totally united with the lake and all its wonders, and looking about as silly as a human can look, pushing his kayak toward shore.  Like a great white frog.  And she lifted her gorgeous black and white neck into the Maine sky and whelped with joy, laughed with delight, welcoming me home.   Yes, I was embarrassed, a goofy, clumsy sight to see out there, for sure, for sure.  But I found myself laughing with her, the two of us, an unexpected community in the August sun.

2.

So, Creationtide!  A season of celebration, reflection and wonder.  What could it mean for us?  What could it mean for the church?

There is, in the reading this morning, in the Song of Songs, what I might call a “beckoning” spirit, even (some might say) a “seductive” spirit: “Arise, my dearest, and come away with me!”  There’s no question, really, that at some point this was a love song, romantic poetry, maybe even erotic poetry.  “Arise, my dearest, and come away with me!”  For God’s sake, for God’s sake, let’s not over-think this text.  It’s a love song, a duet: lovers responding to one another with delight, and finding in the fields and vineyards of their world a thousand mirrors of their own vitality, their own attraction.  “The flowers are unfolding in the fields; the birds are warming up their songs; the fig trees are bringing forth fruit; and the vines are filling the air with fragrance.”  The heavens are telling the glory of God, and all creation is shouting for joy!  “Arise, my dearest, and come away with me!”  By the way, this is all right there, in your bible!  

Then, too, the Song of Songs—when it’s read here in church, in worship, and especially during our Season of Creationtide—this Song captures a kind of intimate mysticism: the Creator and the created in love, in communion, in relationship.  We might call this “creation spirituality.”  Creation spirituality!  Faith, after all, is organic and relational.  It’s not static and tribal and cocky sure of itself; it’s responsive to birds warming up their songs in tall trees, and to vines filling the air with their fragrance, and to loons singing anthems millions of years in the making.  And when the Beloved says, “Come away with me,” faith goes.  My friend, you are not a cog in some theological machine, or a notch on some evangelist’s salvation belt.  You are the Beloved’s beloved; and you are sought out, you are invited into the world, you are beckoned into awareness and gladness every moment of every minute of every day of your life.  So when the Beloved says, “Come away with me,” you go.  That’s “creation spirituality.”

So the gift of this poetry, the gift of this Song of Songs, is in the poet’s unembarrassed celebration of the community of creation, and all the ways Love (and I’m talking about the One Big Love with the capital L), all the ways Love finds us and claims us and invites us to taste and see and revel in the reality of it all.  Revel in the reality of it all.  The reality of human love, to be sure.  The reality of lakes and loons, to be sure.  The reality of your neighbor’s zucchini and your dog’s happy tail.  The reality of sure-footed gazelles and sunflowers lifting their heads in the fields, and the cooing of the turtle dove and the explosion of fall foliage every October in New England.  

And don’t miss this.  To love it all is to be changed by it all.  To taste and see Love in the midst of it all is to be summoned to new life, to a kind of faithfulness that is well beyond orthodoxy and creed.  This is about mystery and union and the oneness of it all.  To revel in the community of creation is to become the rivers and streams that hydrate our bodies, and to become the fields and gardens that feed our souls, and to become the lakes that swallow us whole when we flip our kayaks on bright summer days.

3.

So the thing is this.  The gospel thing is this: we are not created by God, we are not gifted with a precious span of days and years to merely observe creation; we’re not blessed with breath and body to spend our seasons as sightseers on planet earth.  We are called into communion.  Always, always, communion.  We are invited into circles of loving and blessing and sharing.  We are taken by Love’s hand, summoned by Love’s voice: “Arise, my dearest!  Come away with me!”  And this means devotion and romance.  And this means sacrifice and feasting.  And this means a faith infused with love and shaped by responsibility for the integrity of creation and the life of the planet.  So, Creationtide! And creation spirituality!  Meaning, we are called into communion with fig trees and grape vines, with bee hives and salmon runs, with tiny streams and great bays.  We are called not to rise above creation, as if the whole point is to conquer creation, to subdue it all, and need very little of it for our survival.  No, no, and no again!  We are called to rise for creation, to rise with creation, to rise in courage and resilience and passion as lovers of creation, as friends of creation, as partners in creation.

And sisters and brothers, siblings in Christ, this has everything, everything to do with our faith and what it means to be a church, Jesus’ beloved community, in 2024.  And it has everything to do with your spiritual life and your spiritual growth, and the practices that ground your days in vulnerability, justice and God’s radical mercy.  

I think it goes something like this.  If we’re open to it, if we’re curious and receptive and willing to walk the walk, the spiritual life is awash in contradiction, paradox and surprise.  There’s just no way around it.  Gratitude dances with grief.  Wonder is ransacked by despair.  You don’t fall in love with God and then step into a flow chart for the rest of your life, one that makes perfect sense and offers no disappointments and only confirms your own wisdom and brilliance forever and ever amen.  You don’t choose the path of discipleship, the journey with Jesus, and then grow thick skin that feels no pain, that suffers no sadness, that understands the whys and wherefores of all the world’s woes.  Faith just doesn’t work that way; and the spiritual life is awash, instead, in contradiction, paradox and surprise.  

For example, and it’s a pretty innocuous example, I know—I did indeed connect with the Nameless Holiness of God in a powerful way this summer; day by day by day by day.  On the lake.  Beside the lake.  Listening to the lake.  Spiritual practice works when we show up for it.  And my own practices did indeed reintroduce me to a sense of calm and balance that is quite wonderful, revelatory and even helpful in facing the inner weirdness of my own spirit and the outer chaos of a world in crisis.  Seriously.  The great English poet William Blake said: “To the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”  And I did indeed paddle out that late August day renewed by prayer and reflection, open to holy communion with all that is and the Maker of all that is.  No doubt about that, really.  It’s all out there.  And it’s all in here.

But it is just as true that I have no real grasp on any of this, not on God, not on Jesus, not on faith or the spiritual life.  I’m along for the ride.  I’m not in control.  So the flipping of my kayak, the sputtering of my lungs as I flailed around in the bay, and the laughter of my loony sister out there—all of this was a pretty clear invitation to just embrace the contradictions of faith, the paradox that is the spiritual life, and the God who is (in the words of great mystics the world around) the wind behind the wind, the breath behind the breath, the ground beneath the ground, the light within the light.  We can accept everything and understand nothing at the same time.  We can be totally at peace with life and wildly overwhelmed by the world at the time.  In fact, the bewilderment is itself God’s gift of wisdom, the Spirit’s promise of unknowing, and Jesus’ cross.  When I empty myself of my need to know everything, God has a way of filling my heart with compassion and grace.  When I release my grasp of the right ways to do everything, Jesus has a way of showing me the way to be truly helpful, of service to the people around me.  And when I give up on trying to be the greatest this and the smartest that, the Holy Spirit breaks my heart so completely open that the whole world falls in.

4.

So, Creationtide.  Let’s be honest.  To love God in a time such as ours is to meet paradox and contradiction head on.  To delight in God’s creation on a battered and bullied planet is to confront bewilderment at every turn.  We know, after all, that those tiny streams and great bays we love are at risk as never before in human history.  And the bees are threatened, and the salmon too, and so many species, who are not simply biological categories, dissertation topics, but our sisters, brothers, siblings and friends.  Creation’s grief is loud and sometimes even fierce.  If you and I are friends of God in this world, we find God at the disarming intersection of gratitude and grief, the ever-befuddling crossroads of Love and loss.  Sometimes the songs of creation are enough to heal us and breathe life into our spirits.  And sometimes our kayaks capsize in still waters, leaving us to wonder what in the world we’re doing out there in the first place.  

Now I find that it’s centering prayer—a daily, disciplined practice of prayer and stillness—that grounds my days in God, and in God’s remarkable tolerance for paradox and contradiction.  Left to my own devices, I work overtime to work out the solutions to all these mysteries; and I perseverate on what’s right, and what’s wrong, and how it should all be fixed.  You know the drill.  But in prayer, in a deep and sustained relationship with God who is All That Is—I find it more and more possible, more and more honest, to dwell faithfully and gratefully in a world that so often makes no sense.  Grieving, weeping, mourning for the pain.  Aching, even raging at the violence.  But, all the while, finding in every breath, and in every ray of sun, and in every laugh of every loon, the grace and peace of the Creator. 

So consider that my plug—as a new season rolls in—for centering prayer.  And know that you have my permission, all year long, to pull me aside at any time, and to say to me, in all seriousness: So Pastor Dave, how’s it going with that “practice stopping” business?  How’s it going with that “practice stopping” business?  Because it’s something like the life-blood of Christian faith.

So, I think the question this month is not: How do we survive these contradictions?  Or, how do we learn to tolerate the discomfort?  No, I think the question for you and me, for all friends of God and disciples of Jesus, is: How do we lean into the contradictions themselves?  How might we pray our way into the very heart of the paradox?  How might we sit still enough, wait on God patiently enough, how might we so relentlessly practice stopping that the wind behind the wind, the breath behind the breath, the ground beneath the ground, the light within the light is revealed within us and all around us?  I think the question this Creationtide is something like that.  The wonder of any spiritual life—and especially this walk with Jesus—is that communion is our birthright, and celebration, our soul’s desire.  And the surprise is that we don’t have to wait for everything to be perfect, or decently in order, or all fixed up…in order to dive in.  The contradictions are enough.  The paradox awaits.  And God is calling.  “Arise, my dearest, my beauty, and come away with me!”

Amen and Ashe!

A BENEDICTION FOR CREATIONTIDE

May the God who breathes life into all that we love

and all that we have yet to love;

the Christ who is both vine and branches,

and holds all and all in one;

and the Holy Spirit who sings the sun into light

and bathes the darkness in beauty:

Bless your every yearning and 

consecrate your blessings to the good.

Amen and Ashe!

DGJ 9/8/24