Our Legacy is Now

• Lenten Fridays continue next Friday for Soup and Song for North Quabbin Citizen’s Advocacy.
• Look for our next Lenten Practice to post here soon.
• Easter Sunrise at 6:30am on the Steps. Regular Easter Services at 9am. Easter Egg Hunt at 9:15am.

To watch the Recording, click HERE

This is the midway point of lent, when everything but the essentials have been stripped away in the desert.  Death is coming closer…there’s no escaping it.  

It is a place that is very raw and feels vulnerable and unsafe.  All the masks have been stripped away and we’re seen…for who we really are.  

We have moments in our lives when this happens.  There’s death—the big goodbyes and losses that change everything.  There are also small deaths—the little losses that change everything in smaller, but rippling ways.  

Sometimes, there’s the unexpected storm that sweeps through, tears everything down, and we have to begin anew.  Sometimes there is an intentional tearing down and breaking down to shed the broken parts to make new.  

We don’t like these places of vulnerability and rawness (intentional or not).  We like our safe and cozy and secure with our stuff and our things and our safe people.  We like our buffers.  We fear that if people truly see us, they won’t like us and then we’ll be completely lost.  It’s scary to be stripped bare.  

And yet, it is also so very Beautiful.  

I once read that the gift of living in our society is that we have the comforts and leisures to turn our hearts to the bigger Questions.  Notice if there is an immediate resistance to this idea.  The “but” or the “you have no idea what I’m going through” initial thoughts.  It’s not that we don’t have aches and pains and griefs in our lives, but it’s also that:

We are Safe

We are Secure

We are Fed.  

We have Enough.  

We have all that we need, and more, and still we fear going into the desert or asking the bigger Questions.  That place is a responsibility.  It asks us to turn our hearts to bigger Questions.  That’s scary…it’s part of the journey of the dessert.

Perhaps that is the legacy we are trying to pass on.  We are striving and working and pushing to create more comforts and safeties and securities, so our kids can be in the perfecter place to ask these bigger Questions. The ones we’re afraid to ask.  That we might give our kids a place from which to find peace and grace and hope—that maybe we can pave the way for less work and without the scary parts.  But we can’t live life without the work or the scary parts.

Perhaps, we already have everything.  Each and every one of us.  Let’s take a moment to sit with our Beautiful and Precious hearts.  Your gift.  Your life beat.  Shh.  Listen….

When we are stripped bare and down to nothing, we have all the essentials we wish to “pass on”. We try to pass it on, but we can’t pass on our own physical heart…unless we’re in some Edgar Allen Poe nightmare. Which…we’re not.  Life is good.  

We can’t give it away, or pass it on, because we, each and every one of us, already carries the Legacy beating as our own one, single incredible heart.  Also beating as one heart together, if we allow it.  The Stories awaken our hearts and bring them together.  The Crosses awakens our hearts and brings them together.  The Bread awakens our hearts and brings them together.  

If it’s already here, if we have everything already, what do we have to pass on?  That’s scary.  What is our legacy?  What if we have nothing?  How do we pass on this thing that is always present even when we are stripped bare and raw and down to nothing?  That’s there, even when we don’t have safety, security, food, or enough?  

We pass on ripples.  That’s our legacy.  We pass on who are we and what do we do in those moments that are so hard and raw.  We pass on the wisdom of what it is we’ve learned in this life to DO with this gift.  We pass on what is most precious in this life.  It’s not the stuff or even the security of stuff.  Our “security” is…one another.  Our shared beating hearts as one.  

This whole season is a season of preparing for death It’s easy to get lost in that.  To stop moving through the desert.  To curl up and give up.  But if we tap into what truly matters, we have everything we need.  Even in the desert.  We shed the excess that gets in the way and death leads us to New Life.  

When we break down the old patterns of money changers and temple rules to get to the heart within, we discover where the real temple lies.  As Jesus becomes the embodied Temple, we too become a temple of love.  We awaken to that charge toward Love and Good and Grace.  

When we are destroyed to bare essentials, we can only pass on heart to heart.  And, truly, that’s what we hold to when we’ve lost someone we love. The heart moments.  The mugs of coffee. The phone calls.  The texts.  The letters.  That time on the beach…

We have it all and it’s already been passed on.  Our legacy is to walk with one another on the journey of life, within and through the desert moments.  Within and through the beach moments. Our legacy is to listen to and with our hearts open to one another’s stories of deserts and beaches.  Our legacy is to tune into our hearts.  To shed the gunk that gets in the way and to strip down to New Life…a resurrection to Love.  

Our legacy is Love.  

To give what matters most.  Sharing our hearts and ears and hands with one another on this journey.  To teach others to do the same.  To teach others that what they do and offer and are…matters.  To fully give to one another.  To connect and unite and be present with and for one another.  

Our legacy is the love we unfold into each day and every moment.  Our legacy is to be a temple of grace and love in a world that scares us with its deserts and wilds.  

Our legacy is to trust.  We will never fully see the ripples we send forth into the hearts and minds of those we meet on the Journey.  We’ll never full see our effect on the world.  But…we can trust that our Good Work ripples forth to join the Good Work of our Neighbors and continues on an unstoppable journey toward Grace and Peace.  

Our Legacy is Now.  

Have Faith. Trust the temple of Your Heart.   Trust in the great Temple of God’s Love.