Transcript for January 17, 2010 by Bob Kleinheksel

We realize our connection to all of life: The earth as our cradle, the stars and rains as blanket and beverage, deep roots in lush soil; ancient atoms -reused, recycled from generation to generation, reconfigure in our cells for new life upon new life. Stardust we come from, and to the universal stuff of life we return – in a beautiful, ceaseless cycle. We reverence Life; we honor the God of our understandings and affirm divine presence in all things and people.

We lift up saviors, saints and heroes who have inspired, guided, challenged and comforted us through scarcity and abundance, through pain and pleasures. In this silence, we abide in gratitude and humility for the chance to live, for the chance to choose, for the chance to love and for many opportunities this day to live, choose and love.

May the scorpion in us abide well with the sleepy-eyed turtle – the agression and the wisdom, the speed and thoughtfulness. All facets abiding together to forge our emerging selves in the face of the other. All thoughts, all cells, all traits, quirks, gifts, annoyances, flesh and bone. And while we may believe we pass this way but once, might we live considering that our essence, the grit and grace embodied, will continue and enhance all that come after. Let the doom and damnation of endings and decay be transformed into abundance and continuance – in cascading memories and moments on through to cosmic connection and infinite life we can only wonder of.

We are unloosened now from the dogmas of the quiet past, for they are inadequate in this stormy and dynamic present. We are free to live and give and serve and grow so that we are fully alive, able to give our best selves to this turning, yearning planet and to our families and communities close to home. We are like shimmering shafts of the Aurora Borealis, extending higher and higher, illuminating, inspiring, fulfilling beauty’s call and purpose. Let us be the light now…and then count on new life and hope and substance to arise from our humble end – which is really only another beginning.

For now our stories keep going. We wonder and wait now in the whirl of snow, tempted to imagine the lilacs of April or even the growing corn of summer. Oh well. In the meantime, let us reach out to the homeless ones; let us speak out words of hope, encouragement and inclusion; let us be stories of reconciliation and live lives rising above the little things. Let us practice peace and mete out justice now, here, in the daily, the humdrum of our lives…with kids, colleagues, parents and fellow pew sitters. Let us join in concert the countless and generous ones who know the agony, loss of life, despair and hope of those in Haiti. They are our brothers and our sisters.

We join the mystery; indeed we are part of the mystery. We’ll turn ourselves around again as part of the mystery. Maybe when we breathe our last, we leave and return as air, as dust, as rain – falling as rain from our real or imagined heaven. We abide in gratitude and humility for the chance to live, for the chance to choose, for the chance to love and for many chances this day to live, choose and love. And one day, we’ll turn ourselves around again and fall down as the rain. What could be more nourishing than that?