SEEKING YOU

I never knew you Lord,
Or your love in such great measure.
I'd heard about you as a child
But you were someone else's treasure.
I'd always hoped for more, I hoped you would be true,
When growing up, I'm sure you knew
I was always seeking you.

Teenage cries, confusion reigned, the order of the day.
And all the while, your awesome presence, with me all the way.
Not knowing you're my Saviour; I'd never heard of grace,
I couldn't hear your voice of love, so closely at my face.
I'd always hoped for more, still hoping you'd be true,
Still growing up, I'm sure you knew,
I was always seeking you.

Unsuccessful plans, mistakes were running high,
An adult crying to the Lord; He'll know the reasons why.
I heard about you in that book, when I was but a child,
I wanted to know this Jesus, so kind and meek and mild.
I'm so grateful for your word, in You I've come alive,
My heart you've filled with gladness, and joy has filled my eyes.
I'm glad I hoped for more, and now I know You're true,
When growing up, I never knew
That You would seek me too.




my input: God see's everyone in their day to day issues. But God always loves us for who we are but not who we do. 

In the Garden

Last night at St. John's Maundy Thursday Worship and Agape meal, we embodied the story of Jesus' last night with his disciples. We shared in a meal and communion, remembering the last supper. We washed one another's feet, remembering how Jesus became the servant washing the feet of those he loved, telling them that they were to serve one another. Then we processed outside into the sanctuary where the Eucharistic elements, representing Christ were placed in an altar space created to be the garden. We read the story of how Jesus moved away from his disciples to pray, asking them to stay awake with him. And we read his desperate prayer: ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.’

In these moments, I thought about the people I have loved who have been lost in death. I thought of my grandmother and my mentor Dari Gibbs. I thought of my friend Lori, who has recently been moved to hospice care. And I felt I was there with Jesus and his friends. I understood their grief and fear and love in a way I never have before.

Lori's husband recently shared about her move into hospice care and this time of goodbyes. He wrote, "My sense is that the miracle will come – not as we hoped, but by the grace of God – when God opens His arms and welcomes Lori home. Then she will be set free from the pain and the struggles that have been so much a part of her life for the past few years. She is a woman of great faith, and there is absolutely no doubt that when she leaves us, she goes to God. I’m so grateful to God to have had the time. I think of those who suddenly lose someone they love, and I think that must be so much more difficult. Lori and I, as well as our children, have had the time to speak from our hearts about what we hold in the depths of our hearts."

So, I sat in the garden with Jesus, and I thought of Lori. I felt amazed and blessed by the miracle of having time with the ones we love before they go. How it is both beautiful and heart-breaking at once. I understood Jesus' prayer in a new way. No longer did I think he feared the physical pain that was to come. But instead his anguish arose out of leaving these friends who he adored, the people who were a part of himself. He prayed, not out of doubt, but out of grief and love, wishing only that there could be more time. More time to laugh and tell stories around a dinner table, more time to share dreams and fears, more time to teach and question, more time to hold one another.

This holy week is an invitation for us to stay awake. To be fully present with Christ and with those around us who we love. This time in the garden is a time to share our hope and our grief. A chance to realize how very blessed we are to be together in community. Today, I am remembering the deep truth that every moment we share is a miracle.

What is Home?

Like with most major holidays the days leading up to Easter will be filled with thousands of people traveling home for the happy holiday. I myself was fortunate enough to return to Marin from school in San Diego. This pilgrimage that so many of us make any number of times in a year made me consider what home truly means. For me home is not simply made up of a structure in which I sleep or familiar surroundings of material things. Home is defined by the people who create the environment around us. The beauty of this definition is that home is not simply confined to our familial ties, with this definition home is opened up to include those who we choose to include as our family, as our most special. What's more is that I believe you can find "home" wherever you go. The solace that we typically identify with home can be brought to us by those who are most important to us, and it can be brought to us in any situation or environment, regardless if we are thousands of miles away from our familial "home".
This concept of home brings me to reflecting on what I feel is a much larger theme of lent as a whole: importance.

The time of lent offers us a chance to specifically contemplate aspects of our lives. The pervasive "giving up" of lent in itself often offers people an opportunity to reflect. If we allow ourselves to take full advantage of this lenten period we can welcome Easter with a better understanding of ourselves including what is most important to us. Thanks to Katie Trinter I was recently offered the chance to consider what I would do if I knew it was my last week on Earth. With Easter so close this consideration was very appropriate and challenged me to truly contemplate. For me a final week would not be filled with ostentatious trips or adrenaline pumped "bucket list" items; if I had one week left to spend on Earth I would surround each and every day with those who mean the most to me. The further consideration of who those people would be also became very telling and eye-opening for me. This question of how I would spend my final week has stayed with me for the past few days and while certain activities may change every time I consider it, the feeling of home surrounded by the people I love remains the same. I prompt you to spend some time this holy week considering how you would spend your remaining week on Earth if you knew it would be your last.

Human Love vs. God's Love

You love someone in a way you connect when you look in each other’s eyes. There is a spark you feel when you touch the other person that gives you goose bumps. You have this relationship you want to build between each other. Where you and the other person has things in common: outdoors: hiking, biking, snowboarding, bowling, church, and kayaking. When you find things like that it makes loving someone much easier. Sometimes it might take a while to let someone in. Once you do have that trust with that person you love, you can do anything together like climb the golden gate bridge, bungee jump off a bridge, go sky diving, and jump off a helicopter in to a cave.

In a way god has showed us how in the bible. In the first commandment he says to "honor your father and mother". In the Deuteronomy 5:16 "Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you". So when the lord has commanded you to this of what he has asked you should obey. Then the lord will know that you love him in return. Prov.17: 17 say, “A friend loves at all times.” Prov.18: 24 say, “There is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.” Prov.27: 6 say, “When a friend rebukes you, that rebuke can be trusted.” Prov.27: 9 says, “The pleasantness of having a friend springs from his earnes counsel.” Prov.27: 10 say, “Do not forsake your friend.” God can see that he wants us to make friendships with others that we don't show a lot of affection. In John 4:7-12 God's life-giving love, then, is the theme of this passage. As John develops this theme, he makes three important points: God is the source of all love (4:7-8); God models what genuine love is (4:9-10); and God commands us to love each other (4:11-12). Now you can see how God loves us and how we love.

The Sacred Hard Drive

As we travel through this life we unconsciously collect memories with each day. It's as if we have a virtual net scooping up all the happenings that are too big to pass through. It's an automated motion and self manages it's own storage system. Occasionally, we may need to plug into this mental hard drive and browse for certain files to recall a name, date, etc.

However, what seems to happen often is a trigger mechanism. Smells, sights, sounds and touch prompt the wiring to find a memory by association.

The beauty is that this corner of the brain is ours. No one knows the full content but ourselves. We're the only ones that can access it. While we can't necessarily control input and output, we have the only window.

The amazement is the power that this storage unit has over us. Quite easily synapses can cause a gamut of emotions that overtake our composed nature. It's this action that seems spiritually calculated. Why would that stranger just happen to be wearing that perfume? Why would that song come on the radio right now?

Happenstance, sure, it could be.

Although, doesn't that seem like an ideal opportunity for the Holy Spirit to show presence in your life. How better for God to sneak his way into our memory box and force the file to our consciousness. While our mind is busy churning it's daily thoughts, it takes an ethereal tug to take us away into another plane of emotion.

This ironic happening and the direct connection with a memory is uniquely personal because all the parts fit. And it's ours and only ours. This conceptual occurrence serves many purposes such as a friendly reminder to call an old friend or for logistical needs such as paying the rent.

Even so, the most powerful affect seems to be when you are transported back to a time you had long since experienced. Our only way of time travel. It's as if God lets us visit this time either for comfort or to remind us of times we have overcome. A waking dream. It's as if He is reminding us that yes, that did happen, you were there, and so was I.

It's one of His ways of grabbing us for a moment. 

And reminding us that we are more than the present.

It's a sacred tap on the shoulder.

The Embrace of Silence

Leaving your everyday environment and escaping the worries and fuss that plague us daily is sometimes very difficult to do. But if we take some time, even if its only 10 minutes, we can shrug off the stress that can consume us. For me, the best way to do this is to be in nature. Whether it is sitting quietly around Phoenix Lake, watching the waves from the bluffs of Muir Beach, or my personal favorite spending some serene moments in Muir Woods. I feel that nature provides us with this incredible opportunity to connect with the spirit! In my opinion when we interact with nature we get to come into contact with some of God’s creation that isn’t influenced by the technology that at times seems to run our life. I think the best way for us to experience nature is to leave all of our iPhones, iPods, iPads, and whatever apple releases next at home or in the car and go by ourselves and just sit and be with our thoughts for as much time as we can. For me the best place for this just happens to also be one of the most gorgeous places known to this planet, and we are all fortunate enough to have it so near to home. Muir Woods is so wonderfully silent and the sound of the ancient trees swaying in the wind makes me feel a connection with not only the spirit but with all of God’s creation that has come before me. So I urge you, the next time you have even the smallest amount of free time, spend it in God’s beautiful creation and embrace the silence.

-Kendall Sones

The Sacred Path

In my last blog, I wrote about accessing the sacred from within by pushing past our fears and our own internally fabricated limitations. The “inner sacred” is what I think I can only describe as the Holy Spirit gently chiseling away on us from within. Today, I’d love to dig deeper and ask you to hop in my passenger seat for a minute or two.

During this Lenten season, having limited past experiences with actually participating in Lent, I failed miserably at my attempt to give up something in order to make more room for my spirituality. Well. I take that back. I made it almost two weeks. :)

The funny thing is, even though I ceased to cut back on one physical aspect of my life, I have lately still found myself plowing full steam ahead on this thought-provoking and life changing path to self-discovery and spiritual awareness.

As Amy described beautifully in one of her prior posts, one of the many reasons that we moved out of Los Angeles was to get away from the mindset that seemed to run rampant in the city. It’s hard to actually put it in to words, but we both knew LA was not the town where we wanted to settle down. And that’s fine. For many others, it’s where they need to be in their lives. We just knew it wasn’t for us. Our dedicated time and placement there had expired.

Maybe it comes from entering another decade, but over the last couple of years I’ve started to really think about my life path: where I came from, where I’ve been, the triumphs, defeats, personal tragedies, and epiphanies that I’ve had, and the various life lessons that I’ve learned along the way. I’ve also thought a lot about how my perceptions have changed throughout the years with these experiences, and how it may continue to evolve as I carry on throughout my life. It’s amazing how our personal experiences really can mold our opinions on subjects and people in general. I’ve started to realize that sometimes these revelations can be incredibly inspiring and eye opening, and other times they really suck. But the reality is that it’s their journey. It’s their personal experience and individual path. It’s also their decision to do what they want with the knowledge or new experience that has been presented before them.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is a very real hazard for inner and outer turmoil when we start to pass judgment on others and their life journeys, particularly when we have no clue where they’ve been or to where their life journey will lead. We are usually only given a very small slice of the big picture.

Not to say we shouldn’t stand up for the oppressed when injustices occur as a result of the actions of others, but I’m speaking more on the smaller level of reacting to their personal choices in everyday life.

In that realm, there is so much more room for gratification by focusing on our own paths instead of judging or even comparing ourselves to the personal life journeys of others. It’s important to remember we learn as we go. And that each new experience is a building block to achieving inner and outer peace, a chance for gaining a new understanding, an opportunity for achieving inner and outer harmony, and obtaining a closer relationship with God.

To me, the sacred is the path that I take. Road bumps and all.

The music video below is a live performance from a concert in Japan of a song written and performed by Jason Mraz. For the past 10 years, it hasn’t stopped being my favorite song no matter how hard I’ve tried to find another. But for now, I’m starting to realize that there might be a reason for that. I should probably let it be and share with you this mere tidbit from along my sacred path that still speaks to me today.

Life is not always easy. It’s messy and complicated, discouraging and overwhelming, heartbreaking and devastating. It’s also beautiful and miraculous, mysterious and intriguing, euphoric and filled with wonder.

It takes a night to make it dawn, and it takes a day to make you yawn brother, and it takes some old to make you young, it takes some cold to know the sun it takes the one to have the other.