Trinity UCC devotion February 19, 2015 by Nancy Boorman

Trinity UCC Lenten Devotional

February 19, 2015

Thanks to Nancy Boorman for writing the devotion for today.   We are seeking out people of all ages to share their thoughts about the following topics: Wilderness; Refuge/Sanctuary; Healing; Comfort; Struggle; Peace; Emergence/Transcendence and Obedience and the ways in which God is still speaking.  We will be sharing these reflections everyday throughout Lent electronically (via this blog and Facebook) as well as through weekly summations that will be available at worship.  We will get a chance to soak in the ponderings and tales of many of our members, and - best of all - respond in writing and dialogue in our journals, on line and in person.  What better way to engage our spirit and embrace and celebrate the wonder and mystery of God's love and our collective human stories?

Wilderness

By Nancy Boorman

Psalm 63  ( A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah.)

1 You, God, are my God,    earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you,    my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land    where there is no water.

I noticed the subtle but not ordinary coming and going of her memory well before anyone else did. Perhaps it was because our visits were twice a year and not a daily social event. I held what I noticed close to me at first, filed it just behind the daily thoughts of the day. I didn’t want to acknowledge that my Mother, who had become my best friend, was aging and something was not quite right. I chose to put off the thought that somehow, in what seemed like a blink of an eye, she had become “old.”  Two years later at my urging my sister took her to her general practitioner for a checkup and cognitive testing. It was Alzheimer’s. Three and a half years later I moved in to help care for her. 

My sister and I became the parent and caregiver, my mother the child. It is a hard realization when that happens. Her most striking question to me came just this week, “ I won’t ever have to be in a nursing home will I?” I looked up from my busy work, with great compassion in my face.  What I saw in her face at that moment was her fear of the wilderness, her wilderness. Her fear of being lost to her family, disconnected physically from those she loved. Alone and waiting for our return as her illness marched on. I told her only the truth, we can’t say never because we do not know what the future holds.  

For now I hold her, talk to her, cook with her and grab tight to all the good we can get before it slips away into her wilderness. 

So I ask you, are you wandering on the edge of a wilderness or are you in the midst of it? What does your dry and parched land where there is no water look and feel like?

Dear Lord, our great healer and physician, as the ravages of the wilderness tare at our physical and emotional selves, help us to remember that you are what we thirst for. You are the water that can quench our dry parched land. You are what we long for. You and you alone. AMEN.

To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness - especially in the wilderness - you shall love him.”

Frederick Buechner,

A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces