Luke 9:51 – A Meditation for Ash Wednesday

Jesus set his face like flint

to the city that killed the prophets.

It was not by accident that he

landed among the raging storms

political, religious, and spiritual.

He set his face like flint

to the city that killed the prophets.

He set his face

to fear, hate, and jealousy,

violence, lies, and treachery,

division, wrath, and envy.

He set his face

To the agony of the garden,

the betrayal of friends,

the fists of soldiers,

the scorn of elders,

the dance of demons,

the might of empire,

the filth of politics.

He set his face

to bone studded flagella

that tore his flesh,

the weight of the beam,

the bite of iron nails,

the slow loss of breath,

the knowledge of impending death.

He set his face

to the full weight of sin:

theft, lies, adultery,

abuse, neglect, cruelty,

guns, bombs, missiles,

war, famine, genocide,

my country right or wrong,

silence, fear, cowardice,

complicity, ignorance, indifference.

He set his face

to cold death surging

through his veins,

to pulses of unending pain,

to the mockery of passersby,

to the contempt of those

for whom he’d die.

He set his face to

to you and me.

To all who lived

or would come to be.

To the criminals gasping at his side.

To the soldier watching as he died.

To the women gathered ‘round his cross

To all the least, the last, the lost.

Jesus set his face like flint

to the city that killed the prophets.

It was not by accident that he

landed among the raging storms

political, religious, and spiritual.

He set his face like flint

to the city that killed the prophets.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

On the Superfluousness of Words

Using many words,

I stretch and grope and strain

to understand the ineffable,

to explain what I can’t explain.

I’ve done so for so many years,

trying to understand.

Asking, answering, questions,

gripping reason with my hand.

An expert I’m supposed to be,

the guy who knows it all.

But now at last I’ve come to see:

The time has come to fall,

Into the grace of silence,

where questions cease to be,

where reasons do not matter,

Only you and me.

With you I find my answers

though neither of us speak.

My arguments, superfluous,

it’s presence that I seek.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Why all the Poetry?

‘I’m singing this note ‘cause it fits in well with the chords I’m playing’ – The Who

You may have noticed I’ve been posting a lot of poetry lately.  I have no idea whether this is being received positively or not, but for what it’s worth, I thought I might explain why my posts have taken this surprising turn. 

It has to do with my spiritual journey.  Those who know me know that for the past few years, I have been delving more deeply into what Brother Lawrence called ‘the practice of the presence of God.’  It began with John Eldredge’s Pause App, where I found the value of stopping throughout the day to re-center and rest in the presence of God.  As time went on, I found myself increasingly drawn to silence, stillness, and solitude.  I began checking out Lectio 365, which drew me more deeply into the books and writings of the 24-7 Prayer movement, where I began to create a ‘rule of life’ to govern the way I approached prayer in particular and life in general.  Then, last year, I enrolled in an 18 month program at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation designed to deepen both my spiritual life and leadership in the church. 

In the course of this journey, I have discovered that the clearest path to the presence of God involves shutting down my discursive mind, that part of myself that is always thinking, always bouncing from one subject to another, rambling about in search of answers to both complex and not so complex problems.  I have lived most of my life this way.  I suppose there are some deep psychological reasons why this is so, things I don’t need to get into right now.  But this way of being has both upsides and downsides.  On the one hand, I enjoy being a thinker, a guy who reads books and knows things.  On the other hand, a mind always in motion, one that seldom rests, can be damaging to one’s soul.  It can prevent the soul from connecting with the God who dwells both in and around us, who invites us into the awareness of our union with him. 

And so, I have learned the infinite value of Silence.  Stillness.  Solitude.  The emptying of my mind to simply rest in the presence of God.  Of entering into what an anonymous 14th century Christian mystic termed, ‘the cloud of unknowing.’  I liken that cloud to an experience I once had atop Mount Cadillac in Acadia National Park in Maine.  My wife Megen and I had driven to the top, only to find ourselves enveloped in a dense fog.  Our dog Phoenix took the drive with us, and as we walked around, Megen took her a short distance away to, well, do what dogs have to do after long car rides.  Suddenly, the fog became so dense I could not see anything, Megen and Phoenix included.  It was just me and the cloud, nothing or no one else in sight, for what seemed an eternity (in realty it was probably less than a minute or two).  I was concerned that I couldn’t see them at first, but slowly I began to rest and trust that they would reemerge from the cloud.  I began to sense their presence even when I could not see them.  And soon enough, there they were. 

I’ve been learning to rest in the cloud with God.  To know he is there even when I sense nothing.  To rest in his presence.  Sometimes, it is nothing more than that.  But sometimes, he emerges from the cloud, and I experience his presence even more deeply.  It’s not like I hear words or see visions.  It’s more like what Mother Teresa once said when asked by a TV reporter (I think it was Tom Brokaw) about how she spoke with God in prayer.  ‘I don’t say anything,’ she said, ‘I just listen.’  The reporter then asked, ‘Well, what does God say to you then?’  To which the beautiful nun replied, ‘He doesn’t say anything.  He just listens.’ 

If you don’t understand what that means, I don’t know if I can explain it to you.  All I can do is encourage you to try it out for yourself and see what happens.  I trust you will find it wonderful. 

In any event, my spiritual practices have taken me into such spaces, where all else fades away and I simply rest in the presence of God.  It doesn’t happen every time.  Spiritual practice doesn’t work like that.  To borrow a phrase from Henri Nouwen, often, ‘as soon as I decide to stay in my solitude, confusing ideas, disturbing images, wild fantasies, and weird associations jump about in my mind like monkeys in a banana tree.’  I’m still learning, and I suppose that I will always battle my discursive mind. 

But sometimes…

I’ll enter a time of silence, or take a walk in the woods, or contemplate an experience of sacred memory (and all memory is sacred), or practice Lectio Divina, or engage in some other practice, and fall into a state I can only call grace.  And sometimes, the felt presence of God emerges from the fog in ways my discursive mind cannot possibly explain.

And somehow, for reasons I cannot fully explain, I have discovered that when I leave such space, poems emerge.  I don’t know where they come from.  They just come.  They seem to emerge from the cloud, from my experience of God’s presence.  Perhaps it is that when a person touches their Creator, they cannot help but create. 

The poet Jane Hirshfield says, ‘one reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn’t know was in you, or in the world…poetry is the release of something previously unknown into the visible.’  Yeah.  I think it’s something like that.  Somehow, when I emerge from the cloud, I do so having discovered something, something I didn’t know existed, a thought, a feeling, a part of who I most deeply am.  And when I go to journal about the experience, words emerge in a form that leaves my discursive mind behind, that is, in the form of poetry that just flows from the deepest recesses of my soul.  I don’t think much as I write the words that emerge.  Again, they just come, making visible something I previously had not known to exist, something that was always there. 

I honestly don’t know if my poems are good or bad.  I suspect that discriminating poetry aficionados scoff, snicker, or worse, at my paltry attempts.   I honestly don’t care.  The only thing that matters is that my poems are real to me.  They reflect the deepest parts of myself, the parts that reflect my truest self, the parts that are most in touch with God, the parts I want to reflect more genuinely in the whole of my life. 

They are my heart’s prayers. 

So, whenever one appears on this blog, I invite you to make of them what you will.  I hope that at least some of them have been, or will be, meaningful to you.  And that perhaps they will inspire you to seek God’s presence as well, and discover, well, whatever it is that God wishes you to discover. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Mary’s Oil

A Meditation on Mark 14:1-9

I’m not going to stop evil. 

Not entirely.

I mean, who ever did?

It’s like perpetual motion,

a machine that won’t stop.

A devouring, raging brute,

clawing its way from age to age. 

I read the signs, my heart flutters

to history’s latest frenzy. 

Things fall apart, as Yeats observed. 

All I can do is break my flask,

offer my libation,

proffer my resistance,

pour out my love,

as small and meaningless

as these may seem. 

But at least He will know.

At least the fragrance

will fill the room –

if only for a moment. 

What good will it possibly do? 

Perhaps no more than a fleeting respite. 

Or, perhaps, by God’s grace,

all the good in the world.    

Time will tell. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Dark Sunrise

I rose before first light

to behold the sunrise

on the morning after

a drenching winter rain.

But the sky was darkened

by long trains of clouds,

racing across the heavens

on stacked parallel tracks

as if to keep a schedule.

So I did not see the sun rise.

But I did see her light.

And a kettle of vultures

shaking off their slumber

to spread their wings and take

possession of the skies.

I heard the dark eyed junco,

with his feathered cousins,

the wren, sparrow, and jay,

battling the morning cardinal

for supremacy in song.

I heard the roosters crowing,

calling the monks to Lauds,

if any could be found, and

felt the breath of a new day

filling my lungs with glory.

I did not see the sun rise,

But she rose just the same.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Benefits of the Singularity: An Essay

Name: Donald Zuckerberg

Date: January 24, 16 A.O.A.

Class: 8th Grade

Subject: History

Teacher: Musk Avatar 3000

Location: Subterranean Station 775

Essay Topic: Benefits of the Singularity

It’s the year 16 A.O.A. (After Our Ascension), or, for the Neo-Luddite’s who insist on using the old Gregorian calendar, 2052, and there has never been a better time to be alive!

True enough, the scorching temperatures at the surface have forced everyone to live either underground, as I do, or on a Blue Origin Satellite Station (at least those of us who can afford it).  But the stunning simultaneous achievement of Artificial Super Intelligence, Biometric engineering, Neuro-Nanotechnology and the perfection of gene manipulation techniques in the year zero (aka ‘The Event’) has, among other blessings, brought an end to the indignity of labor (aside from the writing of this essay) and enabled the entire human race (at least those of us who can afford it) to enjoy unlimited amounts of leisure time.  What we used to call ‘work’ is now taken care of, here below, by the lesser drones of our AI overlords, and, on the surface, by those unfortunate humans who, probably as a result of either laziness or stupidity (or a combination of both) foolishly refused any and all of the many available biometric implants, genetic improvements or positronic enhancements.  For those of us here below, or way up above, life has never been better!

But by far the greatest gift of our age is the gift of immortality (at least for those who can afford it).  Long Before I was born, when people’s bodies wore out, people would just…die!  Can you believe it!   Now, we can extend human biological life for decades, all the way up to the age of 125!  And when a person’s body wears out, we just download their brain data to our Advanced Afterlife Machines (AAMs)! From there, people can live on and continue to interact with their friends, family, and world in digital form forever.  This is our new heaven! In the words of that ancient trumpeter and balladeer Louis Armstrong, ‘What a Wonderful World!’

Nowhere have we been more blessed by these developments than in the field of politics. In the old days, we had things called ‘elections.’   Our AI overlords, and our long serving President, Donald J. Trump, praise be unto his name, often remind us  of  how horrible those days were.  Before The Event, our Lord and Savior had to fight all sorts of unjust systems to stay in power.  There was an alternative political party, if you can believe it, that once threatened, and even interrupted, his reign!   In 2028, four years after he had wrested it back with the help of the Founding Tech Overlords (including, of course, my Dad), he needed the help of something the ancients called a ‘Supreme Court’ to allow him to hold office for a third term, and in 2032, he and the Blessed and Eternal Party (BEP, formerly known as the GOP), had to formally abolish the wicked and nasty Constitution (something they had already by and large achieved by 2026) to hold on to power.   But since the event, we have never had to worry about elections again!  When the year Zero came around, they were simply called off, and our Lord’s brain was simply uploaded into the first AAM, from which he has ruled and reigned ever since!  Now he is everywhere!  Watching everyone’s every move! Sharing the joyful meanderings of his very stable genius mind with the masses, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Oh, how we have benefited from his surpassing wisdom! Thanks be to God (that’s him now) and to the armies of AI Droids who enforce his will at every level of society!

The future is just so bright now (especially on the surface).  There is talk these days of uploading all of us into the AAM in a few years, decades before our projected natural deaths, that we might live whole and free, interfacing with the essence of our eternal leader and all the greats who went before us (at least those who could afford to be so uploaded).  Aside from the obvious benefits, this will save us all from the daily risk we face of having our lives cut short by all the flying bullets fired from the plethora of automatic and semi-automatic firearms that exist in our society (everyone owns them, even in the space stations, they kept that part of the Constitution of course) or by the marauding unwashed hordes from the surface who raid our tunnels from time to time in search of food and water (thank the Lord and Savior for his army of defense droids!).  

Until that glorious upload comes, I will grow and mature as I continue to receive implants and genetic modification treatments to help me endure the radiation that somehow manages to seep down into even the lowest levels of our subterranean paradise, rest assured that my well-being will always be first and foremost on the mind of our great leader. 

There has simply never been a better time to be alive! 

A Forest Trail

Is there anything more lovely

than the sight of a forest trail,

when you are standing at its head

where it stretches to who knows where?

More beautiful still are those that

rise in uneven stairs fashioned

by rangy and gnarled tree roots,

inviting you to step up and in

to wherever they wish to take you.

Proceed at your peril dear traveler,

for beyond the sylvan horizon

are treasures beyond imagining

that will make your life seem dull

despite its urban complexity.

Once you touch the face of God

your heart will burn forever.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Mercy

As snow falls tenderly to earth,

so mercy alights on stony hearts,

softening their terrain.

Or so I would like to believe.

I saw a gentle prophet

speak words of mercy,

words of grace,

as truth sprung forth in love

spoken on behalf of the vulnerable

who lie in the crosshairs of a Caesar

whom, I must confess, I despise.

Her pacific tone reminded me

that even he needs mercy,

as do we all.

O God of mercy

let your snow fall freshly,

to tenderize his heart of stone

for the sake of the vulnerable.

For his sake too.

Amen.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Inspired by Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s plea to Donald Trump at the January 21, 2025 Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral.

The Gift of the Magi

Make me a star dear Lord

A bright, shining incandescence

Set against the malignant darkness.

Remove all hatred from my heart

That I may become a vessel of peace.

That I may see my enemies

Not as monsters to be slain,

But as victims to be rescued.

May I be filled with a holy love,

The kind that forgives as you forgive,

Even when nailed to a tree.

May my light be impossible to miss

That all I pass, or who pass by me,

Might stop…

See…

Think…

Wonder…

Confess…

And Follow my gaze to you.

May my luminous words and actions

provoke such irresistible curiosity

That people will have no choice

But to put on sunglasses,

The magic kind that reveals

The world you desire,

Where swords become plowshares,

Spears, pruning hooks,

Where hate is swallowed up in love

And dread dissolved in hope.

Where enemies become brothers,

And the whole Earth finds salvation.

Yes.

Make me a star dear Lord

A bright shining incandescence

Set against the malignant darkness.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Limping Through Advent

During the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two servant wives, and his eleven sons and crossed the Jabbok River with them.  After taking them to the other side, he sent over his possessions.  This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until dawn began to break…

– Genesis 32:22-24

When I first received this assignment, I wondered why God would ask me, Jacob, to write to you during Advent.  I’m not exactly your typical Advent character.  Usually people want to hear about Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the Magi, or one of the other heroes of the Nativity story.  Not only am I historically distant from those events, I’m nobody’s hero.  Maybe that’s why…maybe God wants you to hear from someone who isn’t a hero.  Someone who might even be a little like you.

Many of you know the basics of my story.  I was born second in my family, having lost a nine month race with my twin brother Esau by mere seconds.  I hated being second, even from birth apparently, so much so that I entered the world grasping my brother’s heel in an effort to overtake him.  That’s how I got my name: Jacob means, ‘he usurps.’  It also means, ‘he deceives,’ or ‘he finagles.’  Yep.  That’s me.  A usurper, a deceiver, a finagler.  About as far from a hero as you get, I suppose. 

I lived up to my name early and often, eventually conniving my way into possession of Esau’s birthright and blessing, which by custom were his as the firstborn.  The latter I gained by tricking my sick and blind father into thinking I was Esau.  Pretty bad, huh?  Not that it bothered me at the time.  Again, I never liked second place, and I had always stood there in my father’s eyes.  His greater love was for Esau, probably because he reminded him of his estranged brother Ishmael.  It was unfair.  Wrong.  I figured I was entitled to set things right.

There were consequences of course.  When Esau found out what I’d done, he consoled himself with thoughts of murdering me.  I guess I didn’t blame him, but I wasn’t about to let him put his dark fantasies into action.  So I high tailed it from my father’s lands to find a wife in the land of my ancestors.  And that’s when the first truly significant thing happened to me. 

Stopping for the night near the town of Luz, I had the most remarkable dream.  I saw stairs reaching to the heavens, with angels going up and down.  I’d never imagined that heaven and earth were so close.  From the top of the stairs I heard the voice of God for the first time.  ‘I am Yahweh,’ he said, and spoke of the promises made to my grandfather Abraham, which now, he said, fell to me: land, descendants as numerous as the dust, blessing for the whole world.  Then he said, ‘I am with you Jacob, and will protect you wherever you go.  One day, I will bring you back to this land.  I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you.’  Quite a promise, huh?  To think that God would bestow such a promise on the likes of me. 

With the promises of God in my back pocket, I went to Haran, where long story short, I continued my finagling ways.  For twenty years I built quite the shepherding business, and along the way picked up two wives, two servant wives, and eleven children.  Then one day, I heard God’s voice again, telling me to go home, and reminding me that he would be with me.  On the one hand, I was glad for an excuse to leave my father-in-law Laban, who besides me, was the biggest finagler I ever met, but on the other, well, what if Esau still wanted to kill me?  I’d like to tell you that I left for home because I believed God’s promise, but honestly, it had more to do with my desire to get away from Laban.  I was half eager, half scared out of my sandals as I made my way across the desert sands.

Along the way, God sent angels to meet me, further assurance of his protection.  But even so, I wasn’t exactly what you would call confident in my faith.  I was really limping along in it.  So imagine my terror when the messengers I had sent to convince Esau I was coming in friendship came back with the news that Esau was on his way in the company of an army of 400 men.  What did I do?   I prayed.  I begged for deliverance.  I reminded God of his promises.  I tried my best to believe in them myself.  And then, proving I did not, I sent more messengers ahead, this time with cattle, goats, sheep, and donkeys as gifts for my brother, hoping these might appease his wrath.  My family and I stayed behind, waiting for news.  Eventually, I sent them across the river too.  And that’s when God came near. 

He didn’t just stand atop a stairway this time.  HE CAME NEAR.  In my most desperate moment.  My finagling ways had finally caught up with me.  I was alone, ruminating over the course of my life, the things I’d done, the things I might have done differently.  Doubting God’s promises.  I mean, seriously, why would he ever protect a guy like me?  It’s funny really, how God meets us where we are.  There I was, wrestling with my faith, so God came to wrestle with me.  I guess it was the only way to get my attention. 

So there we were, rolling in the mud of the Jabbok from dusk till dawn.  I fought him with all I had, something, I suddenly realized, I had been doing all my life.  And then, in a beautifully poetic moment, knowing he had not prevailed over me by conventional means, he wrenched my hip.  Sometimes, you see, when we won’t listen to God, he does something drastic to get our attention.  As one of your poets, Michael Card, has said, ‘pain is [sometimes] the path to blessing.  Love will fight us to be found.’  Well, mission accomplished.  I shouted, ‘I won’t let you go until you bless me!’ I begged to know his name.  He just smiled and said, ‘why do you want to know my name?’  And I remembered he’d already told me long ago, at Luz: Yahweh.  The God who had already blessed me.  And right there, close as breath, he blessed me again.  I walked the rest of my life with a limp, a reminder of the night when God came near.  A night when God condescended to roll in the mud, to get dirty, just to reach a finagling doubter like me. 

The morning after, I met my brother.  Turns out I had nothing to worry about.  Esau greeted me with pure grace.  All had long since been forgiven.  We both wept like children, I more than he.  I told him, barely able to get the words out, that seeing his face was like seeing the face of God.  And so it was. 

But what does this have to do with you, dear reader? Well, you’re here reading my story in the season of Advent.  Celebrating something that, if you haven’t quite made the connection, isn’t all that different from my night at the Jabbok: the time when God came near.  Perhaps you wonder if that story is for you.  Perhaps, like me, you doubt God would ever take up with the likes you.  Maybe your past isn’t as bad as mine, but it might be bad enough.  Or maybe you have trouble believing God’s promises.  You’ve sensed God in his heaven, heard his still small voice, and yet, struggle to believe.  Maybe you’ve been wrestling with belief your whole life.  I want you to know, that all of that is the reason why God came near at Christmas.  It is the reason why he went so far as to come into our world, to roll in its mud, to get dirty.  Sometimes you see, God has to do something unconventional to get our attention.  Sometimes, he has to meet us where we are.   

This Christmas, know that he has done this for you.  Whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done.  You may be limping right now, but trust me, you are loved and blessed beyond imagining.

You are the reason that God came near.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Jacob

Author’s note: Looking this over, I suspect that there are echoes of a couple of old sermons by Jurgen Moltmann and Max Lucado latent in this monologue. I have not intentionally quoted them, but it is right that I give credit and thank them for their inspiration.