Where are You?

• Neighbors Hot Dog and S’mores Roast on July 20th 11-2.
• INC Picnic on July 27th at 1pm
• Next Bible Study with Seth is on July 24th at 7pm (in person and via Zoom)
• Discussion Group Sunday is July 27th after Church
• Village Fair and 5K on August 16th (please register for race day or hybrid by July 16th to guarantee a race t-shirt)
• August 17th, we will be joining INC at SAUMC for a Tropical Worship with a Steel Drum Band (there will be no services at CCNOT that day)
• Next Death Cafe is September 27th at 4pm (join us for an informal conversation around death and dying that may include curiosities, living well, and managing grief–we provide the sweetness with snacks and coffee)
• Council Resumes in September

Watch the recording HERE. Recording posts after services are complete each Sunday (usually by noon).

We ended last week with a thought that we are meant to fall and rise and fall and rise again and again and again.  It’s part of the ebb and flow of life and living. It’s part of the trials and practice of living and living well. We learn through our mistakes. We grow through our vulnerability.   

I like to imagine that when we fall, God lifts us us, wipes the muddy tears from our cheeks and brushes the dust off our knees. Then nudges us forward to begin anew with a soft whisper: you got this.  

God brushes off the dust and we are made of dust.  To dust we shall return.  My friend likes to say that it is stardust that we are made of and to stardust we eventually return.  A gentle reminder that we are a part of a greater plan than we can possibly know.  God’s Plan.  A Mysterious plan.  A Universal plan.  

Thoughts of dust and dirt and tears might bring us back to thoughts of the Garden.  

One of the big moments in Genesis is God coming into the Garden and calling out: Where are you?  

It has this feel of a hide and seek game. It also has an edge to it, because we know that Adam and Eve have just reached for the Forbidden Fruit.  

Where are you?  

There is this sense that once we walked fully and truly with God and now we only get glimpses of those moments in our lives. There’s a sense of something lost.  

Where are you?  

What is striking is that, of course, God already knows exactly where Adam and Eve are.  Perhaps it’s more asking of Adam and Eve: Are you still walking in the Garden with me?  You got lost, but where are you now?  Are you going to stay in hiding?  Are you going to stay lost?  

Perhaps God is voicing aloud a call back to ourselves.  Because, with these words, God is also asking us: Where are you?  

Are we walking with God?  Are we partaking of the sweetness of the Garden of life, noticing God’s little loves notes everywhere, the soft whispers, reminding us that no matter how bad it seems or how hard it becomes Presence is always still around us.  Are we hiding?  Are we lost?  Are we going to stay in hiding or stay lost?  

Are we walking with God, doing the heart work of God or are we off somewhere else?  

Where are you?  Are you lost?  

It is a moment when Adam and Eve get lost.  We get lost too.  In many different ways.  

We can get lost in a chaotic mess of guilt and shame and forget Original Goodness.  We forget that we are in the likeness of God.  That we are the hands of God.  That we can always find God.  That we can always walk with God in our lives. We can get lost in a vicious cycle of never good enough.   We can get lost seeking, and seeing, only what’s wrong. We can get lost seeing only where we have failed.

Where are you?  Are you lost?  

We can get lost grasping after the elusive apples of life instead of the real treasures of life.  Reaching for the biggest and shiniest apple at the very top, not noticing that we are surrounded by an abundant community of apples at our feet.  We can get so lost reaching for more that we don’t even notice what we have and what we have to give. 

In Buddhist philosophy, those who are constantly reaching and are never filled are called “hungry ghosts”.  No matter how much they have, it is never enough. They are always reaching for more and more and more, thinking that then it will be enough.  But they become mere hollow shadows of beings, shaped not by what is within, but by the outer masks of success and wealth.  Hungry ghosts.

Timber Hawkeye recently said that perhaps a more modern phrase for this might be: speed demons.  Rushing through life that we miss the Garden.  We miss the Whispers. We miss the Love Notes.  We forget to see the blessings and we forget to give thanks.  We forget gratitude and prayer.  We are just rushing, rushing, rushing toward “more” apples and “better” apples.  

Where are you?  Are you lost?  

Sometimes, we are in the perfect garden, peering over the gates at the greener grass on the other side. We are looking outside of ourselves and what we have for success and validation, instead of within or near.  We are looking for validation from the people around us, instead of seeking it in Grace.  

It’s so easy to get lost. We often find ourselves in moments where we wonder: how did I get here?  Momentary lost.  Why did I come into the kitchen and where is my cup of tea?  We laugh, but it’s also a sign that we have lost sight of the present and without the present it is impossible to find Presence.  

We sometimes wonder how did the path of my life bring me here?  We look back on the unexpected paths and journeys that lead us to unexpected places in our lives.  Sometimes getting lost isn’t a terrible thing.  Getting lost can help us to grow and help us to find the path back to what matters.  Sometimes we need the wake up calls of life to reorient us to what matter.  We need to reach for the wrong apple to learn something…

Where are you?  Are you lost?  

Where are you? is an invitation to Come Home no matter how far we may have strayed.  It is an invitation to stop hiding.  

It is an invitation to be still—to sit, to pray, to be.  A place for us to slow down enough that we name all the trees and the birds. We name the flowers and the critters. We catch a glimpse of the unexpected. 

To be still in the garden offers us a place where we do not get pulled into the rushing speed of life or led to grasp after more and better or dared to peer over the garden gates of compare and judge.  

Maybe sitting in stillness IS the garden. It’s even better if we find ourselves a garden filled with gracious Love Notes.  A time of quiet to be with the precious gifts of our lives as they are.  To sit with, and to talk happily with, God.  This is where magic happens.  This is where healing happens.  

Leaving the Garden is inevitable.  God knows this or there wouldn’t have been that tempting tree and our tendencies to thrill seek.  PAUSE.  We can debate how and why we lost the Garden.  We can debate whether we ever had to leave the Garden.  We can debate whether we can ever get back to the Garden.

But perhaps the important thing is how we leave the Garden and what do we do next?  Maybe that’s why God asks:

Where are you?  Are you lost?  

We may have lost the Garden, but we don’t have to be lost.  We can find ourselves and be found by God.  We never truly lost the connection to Grace.  

Where are you?  Are you lost?  

Because if we feel lost…it is time to take a seat, to remember the garden, to remember grace, and to come home.  It’s an invitation we can accept in this very moment and in every moment.  

Be Still. I am here. Still.