“God speaks to each of us as (we are made), 
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me…”
(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Let’s hold that space, for just a moment.
God speaks to each of us
as we are created
and walks us into the night
and invites us to go to the limits of our longing
and Embody God.

Just hold that space for a moment.

In fact, Krista,
play a little please,
while we imagine that God has invited us
to the limits of our longing
and asked that we –
you and me –
embody God.

It is way too easy to sluff this off –
to hide our faces from it
as if an ugly child.

It is way too easy to deny it –
like a roll of fat
we hide under our loose clothing.

But do not let it go away.
Truly, we do not want to let it go away
even though it is so hard to hold.

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going.  No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.”

It is so easy to say,
such a platitude,
but it is as true as water boiling
or the sensation of toothpaste in the morning.
We simply have to hold it
and keep it
in the safest place
we own.
And it is this:
you…
each one of us,
is an absolutely unique expressions
of holiness.

You…no seriously, you
are an utterly unique embodiment of God.

You are needed.

The truth is, you are needed.
You were not some accident waiting to happen,
and you are not some goofball
afloat in the universe now –
a random event
without course
or meaning
or significance.

It may seem too simple
and too obvious
and ridiculously mundane to say,
but I really do think we have forgotten.

You are,
we are,
utterly unique embodiments of the holy.

It is not our fault alone that we have forgotten it.
It is not only that we do not feel
all that godly.
It is not simply that
most of us
feel without true worth or value
most of the time.

We live in a world that muddies our true
and splendid
unique holiness.

We live in a world of commoditization
where everything has a price attached to it;
where everything and everyone
is measured by an economy of consumerism
in which the consumer
and consumed alike
must have a price-tag.

No price tag,
no real value.

In such a world
there are some people
who have a vested interest in devaluing you.

In such a world
there are some people
with a vested interest in your not recognizing
that you are a unique expression of the holy.

In such a world
there are some people,
as mean and nasty as it seems,
that have a vested interest in you and me
not seeing the physics of the situation,
and that is:
What we have to offer
will never exist
through any other medium.
What we have,
without us,
will be lost forever and always.

I may be a Pollyanna about this,
and you may think I am being ridiculous
when I say it,
but I do believe that if we truly understood
in a visceral kind of way
just how precious we are,
that we might begin to reject the fraudulent claims
of those who mass produce happiness,
false hope,
and pleasure.

I do believe
that if we actually embraced ourselves
as an utterly unique expression of the holy,
then we would walk out into the night
and no matter how dimly
we heard the voice within,
we would start shedding the layers
of bad adviceand Hucksterism
and plain old distortions of self image we have suffered.

“Give me your hand,” the voice of God says,
and let’s go get clean,
open the channel
and feed the urges that evoke your life
instead of strangling your vitality.

Seriously,
we are so glib when we say things like,
“Namaste”
or we otherwise
chatter about how everyone is an
expression of God.

But if we truly knew that –
held it
as we would hold a newborn –
then it would change our lives
from the inside-out.
Yellowed layers
of exposure to first and second-hand abuse
would begin to crack and peel like old tape.
Fresh,
vibrant
new growth would appear
and we would feel it.

So, please,
for the sake of the rest of us
who will be impoverished
and bereft without you,
use this
or some other mantra,
until it comes to life inside.
Breath in:
“Flare up like flame, O God…”
Breath out:

“I am your light.”

Flare up like flame, O God…
I am your light. 

Repeat it over and over and over again.

Let us take another moment of quiet
to try out that or another mantra,
touching inside

the wild and radical truth
that we are
an absolute unique expression
of God in our midst. 

“Flare up like flame, O God…”
“I am your light.”

And now,
as Krista and Rick play,
we are invited to come forward
and light candles
in thanksgiving for this amazing life
we have been given.