grateful for to dance with god...

One of my favorite books arrived today: To Dance with God by Gertrud Mueller-Nelson. I have held at least one copy in my library since it was published in 1986 - and sometimes more. I have given some away as gifts, purchased study copies for a three congregations, and as Advent arrived last year shared what turned out to be my remaining copy with my daughter's Brooklyn family. In winnowing out my library in retirement, I was certain I kept a few of these old friends around. Apparently that was wishful thinking. So, while I am delighted that Ms. Mueller-Nelson is being appreciated and engaged in NYC, I found I needed her in the Berkshire hills, too.

In the first chapter, she articulates the challenge of living humbly as an adult person of faith who is still willing to trust God like a child. Not an easy quest - and one we never get quite right. She puts it like this: "I had to wonder what happens in our development that as adults we became a serious folk, uneasy in our relationship with God, out of touch with the mysteries we knew in childhood, restless, empty, searching to reqain a sense of awe and a way to "dance with God." I still remember a Roman Catholic nun saying to Jesse's momma and myself shortly before we departed for California to work with Cesar Chavez and the farm workers, "We come into this world at peace with all of creation and our Creator - and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get back to this peace as adults." Mueller-Nelson echoes this insight:

Life's tasks of learning to think and compare, to sort and choose began with our taste of 'knowledge of good and evil' and for that fruit we have developed a great appetite. That knowledge changes our innocent relationship with God. And we spend the rest of our days circling the garden of our original innocence, yearning to find our way back in. The route we choose is marked with the mysteries of the human condition: peak experiences and pitfalls, births and deaths, joys and suffering. Our 'fall' from innocence is double-edged; it is both our sickness and our salvation. It is our painful, guilt-ridden split and separation of what is human from the divine. But it also sets us forth on the natural and saving journey of the human process to ultimate wholeness. Our way back to a connection with God is through the profound experience of our humanity and the discovery of meaning. When we are struck with the meaning of our most human experiences, we are most closely connected with the divine.

I have learned so much about how the liturgical year - at its best - leads us back into ever new and deeper connections with the sacred. Joined with Thomas Keating's, The Mystery of Christ: the Liturgy as Spiritual Experience, and you have the best of Western liturgical theology in two highly satisfying volumes. I am so very grateful Ms. Mueller-Nelson is back in the house.