Love has many errands.

Love has many errands

I am a list-maker.  Grocery lists, project lists, today to-do lists, this week lists, future lists, bucket lists.  I'll make a list for you if you like.  Sometimes I make a list just to clear out my head and never look at it again.

Today I am reading in Incandescence: 365 Readings with Women Mystics.

Love has many errands says Mechthild of Magedburg.  "Love has many errands. Happy, Love, I know what your job is and ever has been and ever will be. You bind God and the human soul together."

Love has many errands.
Love makes lists.
God has errands.  (love that!)


Today my errands-lists-- of Love:

Celebrating friendship with two old friends over dinner (one who happens to be visiting)
Being present in the NOW of today, breathing in God in this minute, exhaling worry and anxiety
Being grateful for sunshine and beautiful spring weather
Planning a birthday lunch with a new friend
Ferrying my daughter to and from her musical rehearsal and appreciating the minutes together
Walking across my campus with love in my eyes and heart for these students
Taking our crazy little dog for a walk

I am making lists today of Love.
What errands do you have for Love today?

Peace and grace to you today in your errands love.
Trusting that Amma God is binding our soul to the Soul of God!

Certain Women

I am preparing for a series on Acts for the fall, so I'll be reflecting on some passages as I read through Acts that capture my attention.

"they went up to a room upstairs where they were staying, Pete, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, and Simon, Judas son of James...All of these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers."
Acts. 1: 14

Whenever I read this chapter, the certain women rise up to greet me. Part the mystery of their anonymity, part the injustice that they are unmentioned, part the delight of women and men followers gathered in an upper room, waiting and listening to God together...The beginning of the church.


I have a church that I attend that is my public place of worship.  I belong to that group and they belong to me.  But my personal church is certain women and men--who I meet together in various upper rooms, cell phone calls, emails, living rooms, offices, retreat spaces and wait and listen to God.  Sometimes it is obvious that this is what we are doing, but mostly it is not.  It is church lived out in ordinary time and space of shared meals and shared time.  

The gift of certain women who listen to God in my life has been one of the most transformative things in my life.  It is truly the reason that I follow Jesus. Without certain women and men to speak into my life, I do not know that I would be able to recognize the presence of Christ on my own.

Who are the certain women or men who are devoting themselves to prayer (meaning a life lived listening to God) in your life?  How are they the church to you?  What are the upper rooms of your life?  Who is in the upper room of your heart as your certain women and men who listen to God with you and for you?