Seeking Authentic Voice

  Unravelling. We have spent the summer reflecting on stories in scripture of people whose lives are unraveling. When a life unravels everything is upended and it may seem as though God is nowhere to be seen. Yet the stories we have heard remind us that God is very present even in the unraveling. God does not cause the chaos, the circumstances, the unraveling. Life circumstances cause the unraveling. But God is in the mix, helping people restore their lives and make meaningful, substantive changes to adapt.   The three readings in our scripture today are no exception. Each one of these three characters is, or has experienced, unraveling in their life. Let’s begin with Job. This is a man who had lived a very safe, comfortable life. He was blessed with riches of land and money and family. The story begins with the Satan, a member of God’s executive council, making a bet with God. The Satan says, I bet I can make Job stop believing in you God. And God says, you’re on. So the Sa...

Like most people, when I was in my twenties,  I was focused on trying to figure out my life. I struggled to figure out what I was going to do to make a living, what I valued and what was important to me. Along with some friends of mine I found my way into practicing a form of Buddhism that focused on chanting. The idea was that the chanting had a harmonic resonance with the universe and would literally align one’s entire being, like a magnetic field aligning electrons, with the spiritual pulse of creation. One chanted every day with an intention held in one’s mind, something that one wanted. My chanting was grounded in the hope of finding a deeper relationship with the divine and aligning my life with the creator. I suppose, then, that it was really no surprise when one day while chanting, I realized that I was not a Buddhist, but a Christian. At the time this was actually a startling realization because I thought I had left Christianity behind when I was 15. I thought that Chris...