Wow. That was fast. For most of her life, when mom got an idea into her head, she was off like a jack-rabbit to act on it. It was part of the difficulty as she grew less and less able---she forgot to take things slowly. Then she'd fall. It was her last big fall that did it. She just couldn't bounce back from that one.
I don't know how much mom realized she was leaving. But she sure went quickly, when the time came! I had begun to pack to go see her when the call came. Dad and the two oldest siblings were with her. One moment she was there; the next, she was not.
So, we cry.
Grieving is such a personal thing. I don't think our culture is very comfortable with it. I've gotten a few, "Don't cry. She's happy now," messages, which puzzle me.
Crying is a normal, healthy response to loss. It just comes when it comes. And when it is done, it stops, and I get on with what I was doing.
"Don't cry," seems like such a strange thing to say. I find, "Awww. Yeah. Let it out..." much more helpful.
Don't remind me that she's happy now and free of pain. I know that. That very good thing doesn't cancel out or negate the loss. Both are true. I alternate between tremendous relief knowing that she is free, and big sobs of the shock of it all. no matter how much we wanted her free of pain, it means she is gone. Period.
My mommy is gone. There. Then not there. Poof. Just like that. It is a shock.
So I'll cry if I want to.
"Love and Gratitude"
by Shirley Holzer Jeffrey
The agony is so great...
And yet I will stand it.
Had I not loved so very much,
I would not have hurt so much.
But goodness knows I would not
Want to diminish that precious love
By one fraction of an ounce.
I will hurt.
And I will be grateful to the hurt,
For it bears witness to
The depth of our meaning
And for that, I will be
Eternally grateful.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
“Why Is My Pain Unceasing?” - Dealing With Despair
I preached this sermon, thinking it was not one of my better ones.
Afterwards, several people told me it was just what they needed to hear and very good. Who knew? God was doing some good work despite me.
So, as many folks I know and love are going throught some pretty rough stuff, I will post this.
I dedicate it to my mom, who is in the process of leaving this world.
“Why Is My Pain Unceasing?” - Dealing With Despair
Jeremiah 15:15–21, Matthew 16:21–28
By Alison Longstaff
St. James Lutheran Church, New Dundee, Ontario
Sunday, August 31, 2008
One nice thing about pain is that it feels so good when it stops.
The reason my pain is unceasing is that I recently started Ashtanga yoga, and I can barely move. But that is not why we are here today.
In our Scripture readings, we heard a lot about suffering. We heard a pain-filled cry to God to end the suffering in Jeremiah. In the gospel reading, Jesus is warning the disciples about the terrible suffering he will endure. Peter objects, and Jesus shouts at Peter, “Get behind me, you Satan!” in a shocking, very un-Jesus like moment. He says, “You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Peter was the voice of the tempter when he declared that such suffering and death should never happen to Jesus. Jesus knew it was imperative to focus on the spiritual work about to be accomplished and not on the suffering. He had to focus on His Divine mission and not be distracted. Perhaps Peter was the voice of the demon attacking Jesus, trying to convince Jesus to opt out of the suffering. This would explain the intensity of the rebuke.
Jesus had to keep his eyes set on the Divine to accomplish his mission.
Life on this earth includes suffering. Even here in North America, with our health-care and insurance policies, relative wealth and myriad safety measures, we can’t seem to escape suffering. We often think we shouldn’t have to suffer. We keep creating more ways to protect ourselves, as if constant comfort and total security were the answer to all our problems.
So why are we still so restless and unhappy?
Some of the countries that rank highest for overall national happiness are places like Nigeria and Bhutan. What’s that about? Nigeria suffers from extreme poverty, and many people live in mud huts. How can they possibly be happier than us? Well, it seems they have a deep reliance on God. They are a very Christian country, and they live their faith in every way they can. They are desperately poor, yet they sing and pray and share the little they have with each other, and they are happy.
Toronto journalist Jonathan Power interviewed Olusegun Obasanjo, a Nigerian who became a Christian and a preacher after being unjustly imprisoned. In his three years of captivity, Obusanjo became a sort of chaplain to his fellow prisoners. He says, “The time I had real joy in my life was when I was in prison. I felt then that there was just God and me, and my fellow prisoners whom I must try and help." Extreme hardship robs us of everything- but God. Perhaps this is why some of the most loving and deeply spiritual people are also people who have suffered great hardship.
In the midst of the deepest suffering God becomes all we have left, and this breaks ground for a deep and rich faith to grow. I’m not saying we should all chuck our current lives and go live in a third-world country so as to really suffer so we can experience God. Suffering finds us, no matter where we live. I am saying that it is good to remember that suffering can be our greatest teacher. God wouldn’t allow anything to happen if it didn’t serve some purpose for good. So even the painful times in life---perhaps especially the painful times---are carefully overseen by God to deepen us and eventually bring us joy.
My one objection to books and philosophies like The Secret and A Complaint-Free World is the way they can promote the idea that we are solely responsible for what happens to us in our lives. The idea is that if we cultivate a good attitude, we invite good things into our lives, and that we invite misfortune by having a bad attitude. The logical conclusion to this is that if we just work hard enough to have a great attitude, nothing bad will happen to us. But if it were true, those Indonesians must have had one bad attitude to invite that tsunami onto them. Every victim of every tragedy could be blamed for their misfortune. I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.
No, such a philosophy falls too easily into a judgmentalism toward the suffering. “It must be their fault. If only they were positive like me, they’d be okay.” This is a lie. It demonstrates a strong reliance on one’s own efforts for “salvation,” and no reliance on God.
My mom has been in chronic physical pain for over twenty-three years. She has fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, which means “everything hurts.” And she has depression. (Well, duh. Poor thing. Who wouldn’t?) She’s on all sorts of medicines, which have their own strange side-effects and cause other problems. I don’t know how she manages. I can’t hack chronic pain for even a day. I get grumpy and whiney and can be very impatient when waiting for my next dose of pain reliever. But twenty-three years?! Did I mention that she also gets regular migraines? She has tried every treatment in the world, from steroids to vitamins to acupuncture to moose meat, and nothing helps.
I love her. I don’t want her to suffer. Sometimes I get really impatient with her. (Surely she’s doing something wrong!) I judge her for not trying hard enough or not trying the right things long enough. My judging comes from how hard it is to see her in pain. But my judging her never helps. My impatience never helps. Again and again, the best and only thing I can do for her is to love her to bits, and spend time with her, and believe with my whole heart that God has a plan. Period.
Have you ever heard someone say, in the midst of some awful situation, “I suppose God has a lesson for me,” as if he or she could stop the suffering, if they could just figure out what the lesson was and learn it? But I don’t think God works this way. I don’t think God ever sends suffering. I think God allows it sometimes, only when He can bring some long term good out of it for everyone involved.
Has my mom been suffering for twenty-three years because there is some lesson she is refusing to learn? I can’t believe that. She’s doing the best she can. She just got dealt a rotten hand. She didn’t invite this onto herself any more than my classmate’s two-year-old son invited death from liver cancer onto himself. Terrible stuff just happens.
Yes, a positive attitude can greatly improve certain aspects of our lives, and can spin off some nice side effects. Optimism and hope are our wings, and when we have them, they lift us up and over a multitude of life’s hurdles. But sometimes, through no fault of our own, our wings get plucked or broken. Sometimes a hoard of locusts swoops down on that rich and thick harvest of positive thinking and in a heart-beat, strips it to dead stalks. Sometimes we are left walking or crawling down life’s dusty road, not flying, experiencing every bump and ditch and thorn and mud puddle. “The rain falls on the just and on the unjust,” says God in the Gospels. Or, to quote contemporary wisdom, “Shit happens.”
So we must set our minds on divine things, and not on human things.
There is so much in this life over which we have no control. There are all sorts of forces at work around us, and we are far less powerful than we think. Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts. We want a happy, comfy life now. God wants us to have a happy, comfy life for eternity.
We are part of a great tapestry. Stuff that looks bad to our eyes now, is allowed to happen because God sees a bigger picture. But don’t forget, God isn’t some cold, distant artist. When we suffer, God suffers along with us. He knows what it is like to be a mortal. He was one, in Jesus. Jesus suffered to bring a much better outcome for everyone down the road. But, just the way the disciples couldn’t see why Jesus allowed Himself to suffer, we often can’t see why we or our loved ones are allowed to suffer. We can’t see God’s plan, but it is there.
Shit happens, and not all the positive thinking in the world save us from it. No one is that powerful, no matter what we’d like to think. All twelve steppers can tell you that powerlessness is the first and most important thing to learn. We have to embrace and face life on life’s terms, not ours. Facing our powerlessness throws us finally and completely into God’s arms.
“Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?” Set your mind on divine things, and not on human things. Spiritual growth, personal growth involve finding our relationship with suffering, not avoiding it. Why else would God invite us to take up the cross to follow Him? Jesus fought through temptation after temptation on his journey to the cross. He showed us the way. He showed us that it will come out all right, no matter how hopeless it looks.
God loves us desperately. He doesn’t want us to suffer. But sometimes the most loving thing He can do for us is to let us have our experiences, good and bad. Eliminating the struggle for us eliminates the joy and triumph we will feel when we finally arrive at the finish line. Suffering draws out good qualities in us like endurance, stamina, and patience. It frequently teaches us compassion and opens us up to the Holy Spirit. It is like spiritual roto-tilling, breaking up old and set things about us, turning us upside down and making room for new and wonderful things to flow in.
Suffering helps us more fully appreciate the truly good things in life. It also teaches us how precious are the times of peace and good fortune. We don’t take them so much for granted. Suffering deepens us, whether we like it or not. And it reminds us who’s really in charge of the universe, and that it’s not us. It teaches us to trust in God; and to set our sights on divine goals and not on human ones.
For those of you who are in the midst of suffering, take heart. Every single thing in life is in God’s hands. Not one hair of your head falls without notice. No matter how long the night may seem, the morning always brings new hope.
"Why is my pain unceasing,
my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
…They shall not prevail over you,
for I am with you
to save you and deliver you,
says the LORD.
I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked,
and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless." (Jer. 18,21)
Amen
Nigeria: Happiest Nation on Earth?
by Jonathan Power, Published on Monday, December 29, 2003 by the Toronto Star
Afterwards, several people told me it was just what they needed to hear and very good. Who knew? God was doing some good work despite me.
So, as many folks I know and love are going throught some pretty rough stuff, I will post this.
I dedicate it to my mom, who is in the process of leaving this world.
“Why Is My Pain Unceasing?” - Dealing With Despair
Jeremiah 15:15–21, Matthew 16:21–28
By Alison Longstaff
St. James Lutheran Church, New Dundee, Ontario
Sunday, August 31, 2008
One nice thing about pain is that it feels so good when it stops.
The reason my pain is unceasing is that I recently started Ashtanga yoga, and I can barely move. But that is not why we are here today.
In our Scripture readings, we heard a lot about suffering. We heard a pain-filled cry to God to end the suffering in Jeremiah. In the gospel reading, Jesus is warning the disciples about the terrible suffering he will endure. Peter objects, and Jesus shouts at Peter, “Get behind me, you Satan!” in a shocking, very un-Jesus like moment. He says, “You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Peter was the voice of the tempter when he declared that such suffering and death should never happen to Jesus. Jesus knew it was imperative to focus on the spiritual work about to be accomplished and not on the suffering. He had to focus on His Divine mission and not be distracted. Perhaps Peter was the voice of the demon attacking Jesus, trying to convince Jesus to opt out of the suffering. This would explain the intensity of the rebuke.
Jesus had to keep his eyes set on the Divine to accomplish his mission.
Life on this earth includes suffering. Even here in North America, with our health-care and insurance policies, relative wealth and myriad safety measures, we can’t seem to escape suffering. We often think we shouldn’t have to suffer. We keep creating more ways to protect ourselves, as if constant comfort and total security were the answer to all our problems.
So why are we still so restless and unhappy?
Some of the countries that rank highest for overall national happiness are places like Nigeria and Bhutan. What’s that about? Nigeria suffers from extreme poverty, and many people live in mud huts. How can they possibly be happier than us? Well, it seems they have a deep reliance on God. They are a very Christian country, and they live their faith in every way they can. They are desperately poor, yet they sing and pray and share the little they have with each other, and they are happy.
Toronto journalist Jonathan Power interviewed Olusegun Obasanjo, a Nigerian who became a Christian and a preacher after being unjustly imprisoned. In his three years of captivity, Obusanjo became a sort of chaplain to his fellow prisoners. He says, “The time I had real joy in my life was when I was in prison. I felt then that there was just God and me, and my fellow prisoners whom I must try and help." Extreme hardship robs us of everything- but God. Perhaps this is why some of the most loving and deeply spiritual people are also people who have suffered great hardship.
In the midst of the deepest suffering God becomes all we have left, and this breaks ground for a deep and rich faith to grow. I’m not saying we should all chuck our current lives and go live in a third-world country so as to really suffer so we can experience God. Suffering finds us, no matter where we live. I am saying that it is good to remember that suffering can be our greatest teacher. God wouldn’t allow anything to happen if it didn’t serve some purpose for good. So even the painful times in life---perhaps especially the painful times---are carefully overseen by God to deepen us and eventually bring us joy.
My one objection to books and philosophies like The Secret and A Complaint-Free World is the way they can promote the idea that we are solely responsible for what happens to us in our lives. The idea is that if we cultivate a good attitude, we invite good things into our lives, and that we invite misfortune by having a bad attitude. The logical conclusion to this is that if we just work hard enough to have a great attitude, nothing bad will happen to us. But if it were true, those Indonesians must have had one bad attitude to invite that tsunami onto them. Every victim of every tragedy could be blamed for their misfortune. I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.
No, such a philosophy falls too easily into a judgmentalism toward the suffering. “It must be their fault. If only they were positive like me, they’d be okay.” This is a lie. It demonstrates a strong reliance on one’s own efforts for “salvation,” and no reliance on God.
My mom has been in chronic physical pain for over twenty-three years. She has fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, which means “everything hurts.” And she has depression. (Well, duh. Poor thing. Who wouldn’t?) She’s on all sorts of medicines, which have their own strange side-effects and cause other problems. I don’t know how she manages. I can’t hack chronic pain for even a day. I get grumpy and whiney and can be very impatient when waiting for my next dose of pain reliever. But twenty-three years?! Did I mention that she also gets regular migraines? She has tried every treatment in the world, from steroids to vitamins to acupuncture to moose meat, and nothing helps.
I love her. I don’t want her to suffer. Sometimes I get really impatient with her. (Surely she’s doing something wrong!) I judge her for not trying hard enough or not trying the right things long enough. My judging comes from how hard it is to see her in pain. But my judging her never helps. My impatience never helps. Again and again, the best and only thing I can do for her is to love her to bits, and spend time with her, and believe with my whole heart that God has a plan. Period.
Have you ever heard someone say, in the midst of some awful situation, “I suppose God has a lesson for me,” as if he or she could stop the suffering, if they could just figure out what the lesson was and learn it? But I don’t think God works this way. I don’t think God ever sends suffering. I think God allows it sometimes, only when He can bring some long term good out of it for everyone involved.
Has my mom been suffering for twenty-three years because there is some lesson she is refusing to learn? I can’t believe that. She’s doing the best she can. She just got dealt a rotten hand. She didn’t invite this onto herself any more than my classmate’s two-year-old son invited death from liver cancer onto himself. Terrible stuff just happens.
Yes, a positive attitude can greatly improve certain aspects of our lives, and can spin off some nice side effects. Optimism and hope are our wings, and when we have them, they lift us up and over a multitude of life’s hurdles. But sometimes, through no fault of our own, our wings get plucked or broken. Sometimes a hoard of locusts swoops down on that rich and thick harvest of positive thinking and in a heart-beat, strips it to dead stalks. Sometimes we are left walking or crawling down life’s dusty road, not flying, experiencing every bump and ditch and thorn and mud puddle. “The rain falls on the just and on the unjust,” says God in the Gospels. Or, to quote contemporary wisdom, “Shit happens.”
So we must set our minds on divine things, and not on human things.
There is so much in this life over which we have no control. There are all sorts of forces at work around us, and we are far less powerful than we think. Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts. We want a happy, comfy life now. God wants us to have a happy, comfy life for eternity.
We are part of a great tapestry. Stuff that looks bad to our eyes now, is allowed to happen because God sees a bigger picture. But don’t forget, God isn’t some cold, distant artist. When we suffer, God suffers along with us. He knows what it is like to be a mortal. He was one, in Jesus. Jesus suffered to bring a much better outcome for everyone down the road. But, just the way the disciples couldn’t see why Jesus allowed Himself to suffer, we often can’t see why we or our loved ones are allowed to suffer. We can’t see God’s plan, but it is there.
Shit happens, and not all the positive thinking in the world save us from it. No one is that powerful, no matter what we’d like to think. All twelve steppers can tell you that powerlessness is the first and most important thing to learn. We have to embrace and face life on life’s terms, not ours. Facing our powerlessness throws us finally and completely into God’s arms.
“Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?” Set your mind on divine things, and not on human things. Spiritual growth, personal growth involve finding our relationship with suffering, not avoiding it. Why else would God invite us to take up the cross to follow Him? Jesus fought through temptation after temptation on his journey to the cross. He showed us the way. He showed us that it will come out all right, no matter how hopeless it looks.
God loves us desperately. He doesn’t want us to suffer. But sometimes the most loving thing He can do for us is to let us have our experiences, good and bad. Eliminating the struggle for us eliminates the joy and triumph we will feel when we finally arrive at the finish line. Suffering draws out good qualities in us like endurance, stamina, and patience. It frequently teaches us compassion and opens us up to the Holy Spirit. It is like spiritual roto-tilling, breaking up old and set things about us, turning us upside down and making room for new and wonderful things to flow in.
Suffering helps us more fully appreciate the truly good things in life. It also teaches us how precious are the times of peace and good fortune. We don’t take them so much for granted. Suffering deepens us, whether we like it or not. And it reminds us who’s really in charge of the universe, and that it’s not us. It teaches us to trust in God; and to set our sights on divine goals and not on human ones.
For those of you who are in the midst of suffering, take heart. Every single thing in life is in God’s hands. Not one hair of your head falls without notice. No matter how long the night may seem, the morning always brings new hope.
"Why is my pain unceasing,
my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
…They shall not prevail over you,
for I am with you
to save you and deliver you,
says the LORD.
I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked,
and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless." (Jer. 18,21)
Amen
Nigeria: Happiest Nation on Earth?
by Jonathan Power, Published on Monday, December 29, 2003 by the Toronto Star
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Yoga
So, my husband, Phil, started going to yoga. And as I'm not one to like being 
left out, I decided to join him. It's a good thing our teacher is so good- natured, because she has some pretty goofy, clumsy students on her hands now. She, of course, is slim and gorgeous, and looks fabulous in every pose, so I just pretend I look like her. We go twice a week, and sweat like pigs (and look a little like pigs too). I think she won my heart, when at the end of the first class, she bent in a yogic bow honouring us and all her teachers, and as she bent low, she gave a little moan of pain....
Ahhh. She's human! Okay, I can work with her.
The first class was also filled with lots of skinny young things in spandex, and it took all my, "I'm beautiful just the way I am" self-talk to make it through the class. Since then, there have been a few older folks here and there, and students who show up in shorts and T-shirts, so that helps too.
And occasionally I can do something better than somebody else, which helps the bruised ego. Okay, yoga isn't about being better than others or looking good in spandex, or
being young; it's a spiritual discipline, that grows my relationship with myself and my body. But until I get really spiritual and ego-less, those are the things I notice the most.
So I've got lots of room for improvement. If you live in the Waterloo region and want
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Back on the Treadmill....Sigh!
Well, I'm home from two weeks of travelling and attending and giving presentations, and it's time for me to get back to work. I am definitely hitting the "Why am I doing this?" phase of the journey.
I'm tired. I'm just tired. I've started an on-line course for one of my final important credits, and the readings bore me, the discussion questions bore me, and I took one look at the next assignment and said out loud, "You're kidding. Do I have to!?"
I am not in the mood for esoteric discussions on the nature of God! It's not the professor's fault. It is study-fatigue.
So. This is what this journey looks like too. Boredom. Study fatigue. Flagging vision. I feel so DONE with the preparation. I just want to get out there and DO.
Thanks for loving me anyway.... This too shall pass.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Home again
Well, I'm home from the "Gathering Leaves" event in England. It was wonderful. I took absolutely no pictures, and am hoping that the many pictures my friends took will find their way to me eventually.
At the Newark airport, I looked up and rubbed my eyes to see dear 
friends Paul and Beryl Simonetti waiting for the same flight to England. After some mutual astonishment, we happily settled down together. Their seats ended up being right behind mine on the (packed and cramped) flight. They generously allowed me to share their rental car for the drive from Birmingham airport, and poor Paul patiently endured our cries of "turn here!" and "Close on the left!" and "Don't stop; we have the right of way!" etc. as we careened down the left side of the road and perilously 
navigated the high-speed round-abouts. (I think God creates special guardian angels just for foreign drivers on English soil.)
friends Paul and Beryl Simonetti waiting for the same flight to England. After some mutual astonishment, we happily settled down together. Their seats ended up being right behind mine on the (packed and cramped) flight. They generously allowed me to share their rental car for the drive from Birmingham airport, and poor Paul patiently endured our cries of "turn here!" and "Close on the left!" and "Don't stop; we have the right of way!" etc. as we careened down the left side of the road and perilously 
navigated the high-speed round-abouts. (I think God creates special guardian angels just for foreign drivers on English soil.)Purley Chase was wonderful, and I highly recommend it as a low-cost, warm, centrally located spring-off point for touring central England. Anne is a trained chef, and the food was fantastic. Purley also runs many spiritual retreats, and hosts events for reasonable rates. It is near Stratford and Warwick Castle, and many other sights. Tell them Alison Longstaff sent you.
Before our event, Paul and Beryl and I spent a lovely day at 
Warwick Castle, a wonderfully preserved medieval castle. We saw a show about eagles and hawks, full of dry British humour and real birds of prey. We climbed up some steep spirally stairs to a magnificent view across England. And we got thiroughly haunted by the resident ghost. Lots of fun. I am now jet-lagged, and feeling much older than I am, but the trip was worth it.
With luck, more about the actual event later, with pictures.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Jolly England
I certainly have been lazy updating this blog.
I am fresh back from Convention and am now in the middle of England at Purley Chase Retreat Centre, preparing for the upcoming "Gathering Leaves" which starts on Friday.
http://www.purleychasecentre.org.uk/
It is green and wet and rainy, and the folks are lovely. It's just myself and the staff. (I'm very early.)
Coincidentally, I 
discovered Paul and Beryl Simonetti at the Newark airport, waiting to get on the same flight. They sat immediately behind me on the plane. We couldn't have planned it better. So I was saved having to find and ride two busses (and a lot of walking in the rain) because they offered me a ride in their rental car. Tomorrow we will go see Warwick (sp?) castle. They are at a B&B in the area.
discovered Paul and Beryl Simonetti at the Newark airport, waiting to get on the same flight. They sat immediately behind me on the plane. We couldn't have planned it better. So I was saved having to find and ride two busses (and a lot of walking in the rain) because they offered me a ride in their rental car. Tomorrow we will go see Warwick (sp?) castle. They are at a B&B in the area. I hope to take 
pictures, etc, but right now I'm surprised I can even finish these sentences....
pictures, etc, but right now I'm surprised I can even finish these sentences....Sunday, May 11, 2008
The Mother Clothed with the Sun
(artwork by Anna K. Cole)
"The Mother Clothed with the Sun"
Alison Longstaff
Pentecost Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Church of the Good Shepherd
Acts 2: 1-4, Rev 12: 1-9,13-16
Well, I set myself a tall order when I accepted the preaching gig for today. There are three themes going on for us this week: first, it is Mother’s Day, which though secular, does have certain spiritual overtones; this is also Pentecost Sunday, which is celebrated throughout most of the Christian world and is considered the birthday of the Christian church; and finally, in connection to the birth of Christianity and uniquely Swedenborgian, we are beginning the build up toward the birthday of the New Church which happens in just over a month, and which Swedenborgians celebrate on the 19th day of June.
So, how do I combine Pentecost—with it’s rushing winds and tongues of fire—with gentle, loving Mothers’ Day and June 19th?
For me, the logical way to tie all of it together is with the image of the woman clothed with the Sun. In the text from the book of Revelation this woman gives birth, which makes her a mother—a mother clothed with the sun, making her perhaps one of the most beautiful mothers found in the Bible. She is clothed with the sun, which means (in Swedenborgian terms) that she radiates love. The natural sun is pure fire, and it represents God’s love to us: the same love that filled the disciples at Pentecost and urged them to go out and spread this love throughout the world. That is why tongues of fire appeared above their heads. They were lit from within by God’s love for the human race and all of creation. And that is why they could speak in every language, because God’s love crosses all cultural barriers and longs to sweep all peoples into his loving embrace.
So, who is this Mother Clothed with the sun, and what meaning does she convey? To start with, she probably represents the same thing that all princesses, damsels, and wise women represent in all the fairy tales—she represents all that is soft and beautiful, nurturing and life-giving in the human spirit. She represents all the gentleness, compassion, and tenderness that typify the archetypal Mother. No, we flesh and blood mothers never achieve such a perfection of gently beauty. We are clumsy and goofy and we get zits. We have PMS and bad hair days, and each of us has our emotional and spiritual stuff that we have to work through—which means we often fall seriously short of motherly perfection. But that’s not the point. We still honour motherhood, today and every day, for the loving care our mothers did achieve, and for that incredible, God-given, self-sacrificing love that we have all seen and long for and cherish in our human community.
In Swedenborg’s writings we discover that this Mother clothed with the Sun represents "the church." But be careful: "church" here does not mean the specific religious group we belong to or even more abstractly, organized Christian religion. The Mother clothed with the sun represents the great collective of all the good people on the earth who are trying to live good and conscientious lives. This collective crosses all denominational boundaries. And any one group that claims they are IT, has missed the boat. In particular, the woman clothed with the sun represents all those people who are able to incubate, nurture and give birth to a healthy, living understanding of what it means to live a life according to God’s Word, which means God’s love. Sometimes, that is you and me. And most specifically, this woman represents God’s love. She radiates such love that the only way to describe her is "clothed with the sun." Have you looked at the sun lately? It can be blinding in its brilliance.
So, in our story from Revelation we have a beautiful damsel in distress, she is in labour, which is probably the most vulnerable time ever in a woman’s life. And right then a dragon appears! (I hate it when that happens)—a big red one with seven heads and ten horns. This dragon’s sole intent is to eat up the tiny new baby. That’s just creepy. What is this dragon doing in God’s Word? What message is it telling us about our human struggle to become loving people? This dragon is identified as "Satan" which in Hebrew means "Tempter" or "Adversary." The dragon represents all the things that distract us from God’s love and make us afraid. The dragon is a natural side-effect of being born not omniscient, not omnipotent, and not omnipresent. We can’t help it. We just get afraid. We worry about things, and then we try to control things and 
manipulate people so that we won’t be hurt. And we tend to invent formulas and rules and we think they will be our salvation. We are scared of the dark, and we line up our defences so we’ll be safe. We can’t help but be sure that there is a monster under the bed. We are afraid to trust God. We are afraid to love. Loving can feel WAY too vulnerable.
God knew this is what we would do, and that’s why the dragon is in the story. It’s not a warning; it is just what we do while we are learning. The dragon continues to be in the story and cause problems until it is no longer in the story. Eventually we stop being afraid and we stop trying to control things and we open up to love. God knows this will happen too. That is why the dragon disappears from the story, never to be seen again. The dragon never wins. In the end, fear never wins.
There are many theories out in the world about this dragon, with most of them full of fear, and asserting that this dragon is or will be some specific earthly organisation at a set time in history doing some bad things. *Sigh.* The eternal and timeless nature of God’s love and God’s Word is never so limited and specific. God’s Word speaks to all humans of all time, and is uniquely designed to do so. No one story, not even one abstruse and fantastical prophecy in the Bible is secretly about helicopters or bar codes or which nation controls the land west of the Jordan river. God’s Word is incapable of being so limited. The Bible is about spiritual human dynamics. It is about the individual journey of the human heart towards God. It is about our struggle to learn to trust God and trust the process. We don’t need to be afraid of any story in the Bible. Even the number 666, or "the mark of the beast" is simply describing the nature of religion when it stops teaching love. When we are loving, we embody the best of what is human. But when we forget compassion and loving-kindness, when we think we need to be afraid and to judge and to make religion about rules and a certain lifestyle, we look more like a beast. We become inhuman. The number 666 is a simple spiritual representation of "getting it all wrong." 666 means we completely missed the boat. *Buzzer sound* "Try again. " And the beauty is, we can.
Yes, sometimes we are the beast. Sometimes we are the dragon, but God’s plan is for each of us eventually, finally, and completely to become a part of the enormous, beautiful, blindingly radiant woman clothed with the sun.
So, in our story, right on cue, the brave knight shows up to rescue the princess, or in this case, to 
rescue the new mother. There is a great battle with swords and everything. Swords are "truth" or in this case remembering that love and compassion are the heart of the life of religion. You and I battle the dragon with our swords when we hold fast to the thought, "I am to treat each person with loving respect because he or she is a child of God." Period. The dragon and his thinking would say something like: "There are the right sort of people and the wrong sort of people. I don’t respect the wrong sort because they believe such-and-such, or they wear such-and-such, or they like such-and-such.... Those people are the problem and I am okay so long as I reject them." I would guess we’ve all been on both the giving as well as on the receiving end of such an attitude from time to time. It is no fun. It does not feel good. It does not feel like God.
Fortunately, the dragon has no power over God’s love. It is finally cast out of "heaven" in the story, which means we eventually really, really learn that the fearful, judging way of doing religion doesn’t produce heaven in our lives. We really get that it doesn’t belong anywhere near heaven. That is when the dragon is cast out of heaven.
This arc in the Bible that tells the story of the Mother clothed with the Sun and the Great Red Dragon has a sort of muddled, repetitive nature to it. It seems like the dragon is cast out for good, only to show up again and make more problems. There’s something familiar-sounding in that. Isn’t that how it so often goes in our lives? We think we’ve licked something, and then it shows up again in a slightly new form and all the trouble starts again. That’s just the way things go on this epic journey. It’s not our fault. It’s the shape of things. Maybe it’s in the Bible, not to tell us we are losers, but to give us heart.
Remember, the Bible is also the story of the journey Jesus made on his path from human infant to Divine Human. That means even Jesus had to battle this spiritual dragon, and it didn’t want to go away for him either. I think we see it when the devil promises him "Just bow down to me, and all the world will be yours." It must have been very tempting to want to simply force us all to be good—to take control, to remove the process and zap us all into instant perfection. We can be so slow to learn! And we do such horrible things to each other in the process! We did such horrible things to Jesus. He must have been tempted to simply eliminate all the struggling and pain and suffering.
But He also knew that to do that would not be the most loving thing, though that can be hard for us to understand. Eliminating the struggle for us also eliminates the overwhelming joy and triumph we will feel when we finally reach the end of the race. This spiritual journey is a marathon, and it is worth every drop of sweat and every ounce of stamina and patience and endurance. It draws these qualities out in us, and teaches us compassion. Good things take time. Very good things take a very long time. If it wasn’t worth the time it takes, God wouldn’t have created it the way it is.
So, on this lovely Mother’s Day, celebrate all the forms of love in your life. Honour everyone who has "mothered" you on your journey—old and young, male and female. Celebrate all the ways this church and others have been a spiritual mother to your spiritual life. And celebrate the good home this church has made—that we make for each other here by trying our best to be as fair and loving as we can be. And on this Pentecost Sunday, let the love of God so shine in your life, that you—that we all—can be clothed with the sun, if only for a little while.
God’s blessing on us all on this Pentecost, Mother’s day Sunday. Amen.
"Though the human body is born complete in one moment, the birth of the human heart is an ongoing process. It is being birthed in every experience of your life. Everything that happens to you has the potential to deepen you. All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honour these possibilities."
-John O’Donohue- Anam Cara (pp 6,9)
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