Unexpected Blessing: Annie’s Song and the Divine Feminine

One of the rare opportunities for pastors during this season of social distancing and digital worship is the chance we have to “attend” the services of other churches and to be led in worship ourselves. It’s like being a chef and having the opportunity to enjoy a meal that you didn’t have to prepare. I have been blessed by the work of some of my friends and colleagues and consider this a special gift.

The morning of April 26^th, just as I got home from sharing our own online worship service at First UMC – West Memphis, I turned on Facebook and saw a friend of mine who is a United Methodist pastor in Whitefish, Montana. Morie and I had met at an Academy for Spiritual Formation at Flathead Lake near Kalispell back in the fall. Their worship service was just about to begin as I got home.

As the service began, it became clear that we were joining Pastor Morie and his family in their home for worship. Morie’s spouse Erin brought out her guitar and sang, “Let Us Break Bread Together,” that great Communion song, and I began to get into the spirit of worship. The next thing she did caught me by complete surprise and touched me right to the heart.

Accompanied only by soft chords on her guitar, our worship leader began to sing John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” (1974):

You fill up my senses

Like a night in a forest

Like the mountains in springtime

Like a walk in the rain

Like a storm in the desert

Like a sleepy blue ocean

You fill up my senses

Come fill me again

Come let me love you

Let me give my life to you

Let me drown in your laughter

Let me die in your arms

Let me lay down beside you

Let me always be with you

Come let me love you

Come love me again

You fill up my senses

Like a night in a forest

Like the mountains in springtime

Like a walk in the rain

Like a storm in the desert

Like a sleepy blue ocean

You fill up my senses

Come fill me again 

As I heard her sing this song my eyes began to fill with tears. Growing up in the years when John Denver was active, I remembered hearing this song many times during his performing life and after his untimely death. He said he "wrote this song in about ten-and-a-half minutes one day on a ski lift" after having "just skied down a very difficult run" and being inspired by the beauty all around him and being moved to write this heartfelt ode expressing his love for his wife, Annie. 

When I remember this song, I remember that tragically, his marriage to his beloved Annie did not survive John’s troubled and volatile personality, and he himself would be gone all too soon.

Over the years I had often been brought to melancholy by hearing this song and remembering the circumstances, but now on Sunday morning, so many years after its release, I was hearing this lyric celebration of both nature’s beauty and romantic love now being sung as a worship song.

Hearing a young mom from the Rocky Mountain West singing this as a love song to God moved me in places too deep for mere emotion. I will never hear this song in the same way again.

Now most people who know me, know that I am a “man’s man.” After all, I eat animals and drive pickup trucks and all of that. I am in no way an expert on feminine spirituality. But as a trained spiritual director and student of nature, I also know that the divine feminine is active in all of our psyches whether we are male or female, and how we relate makes a difference in how we integrate our spiritual lives.

The saints and mystics of old would often refer to God as the divine Beloved, and now many contemporary Christian lyrics are love-song lyrics to God, as are many of the Psalms and the Song of Solomon/Song of Songs in the Bible. Bringing “Annie’s Song” into church and making it “God’s Song”’ is a beautiful way to continue the tradition. So, thank you, Erin, for this profound and delightful surprise. You have changed forever the way I will hear this song.

                        Come let me love you

                        Let me give my life to you

Let me drown in your laughter

Let me die in your arms

Let me lay down beside you

Let me always be with you

Come let me love you

Come love me again

Series for Eastertide During the Pandemic of 2020: 1 Peter: A Letter to a Church in Exile. Words of a Living Hope!

In the early 2000’s the leadership of our annual conference became so concerned about the continuing decline of our denomination and the larger church that they took a desperate measure: they called in a “consultant.”  Because of course they did. That’s what failing organizations DO – they hire “consultants.” They were careful to bury the consultant’s fees somewhere deep within the conference budget, so that no one would be able to tell how much of our people’s tithes went to pay this consultant, but I can assure you they don’t come cheap. If I had known fifteen years ago what I know now, I might have quit doing actual work a long time ago and become a “consultant” (said tongue firmly in cheek).

The first thing our distinguished expert consultant did was to suggest a biblical metaphor that he thought would capture and describe our current malaise in graphic, historical terms. He told us we were in the “wilderness,” much like Moses and the Israelites. We were leaving the old reality but not yet ready to enter and embrace the new. This sounded good on its face, but it was absolutely the WRONG biblical image. Any second-year seminary student who had ever read Walter Brueggemann or most any other reputable scholars could tell you the church is in EXILE, not the wilderness, having lost its cultural hegemony for some of the same reasons the Israelites did, and now finds itself exiled in a strange land.  So, we paid this consultant untold amounts of money to give us the wrong answer, and we are no better off than we were before.

The thing about being in exile is, there are always lessons to be learned from it. If the exile is endured in the short term but is not reflected upon and ends with a simple return to the past, the lesson is wasted.  Upon reflection we realize that there is no simple return to the past, no “back to normal,” and that after the exile is over, we will not be the same as before. Hopefully with God’s help we will be better, we will have learned what God wanted us to learn and we will not have missed the learning and the growth. 

Jeremiah told the exiles to “build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:5-7). In other words, learn to make the most of where you are until the time comes that the exile is ended. For after that, God still has great plans (Jeremiah 29:11).

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed the church in a different kind of exile. Rather than rush to return to “the way things were before,” as we all want to do, maybe we need to be still and ask God how God wants us to grow and what we should learn from this experience. The writings of the prophets and some of the letters of the New Testament (1 and 2 Peter, for example) speak of how to listen to God and have faith during time of exile. “If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live out your time of your exile in reverent fear” (1 Peter 1:17).

Even as we begin to think about how we are going to safely “relaunch” when the time comes, let’s not lose the lesson of the present moment. Even now some of our churches are growing, and we are finding new ways to be in ministry. This is a time of challenge, but also a time of hope and a time of growth.

I hope you can join me in a series of reflections on finding life, love and hope even in times of exile.

First United Methodist Church West Memphis: Series for Eastertide 2020:

1 Peter: A Letter to a Church in Exile. Words of a Living Hope!

April 26                 I Peter 1:3-9                        “A Living Hope”

May 3                    I Peter 1:10-12                   “A Living Promise”

May 10                 I Peter 1:13-23                   “A Living Faith”

May 17                 I Peter 2:1-10                     “Living Stones”

May 24                 I Peter 3:14-18                   “A Living Spirit”

May 31                 I Peter 5:6-11                     “Living in God's
Pentecost                                                            Power”                                      

WALKING TOWARD A NEW PENTECOST: THE GREAT FIFTY DAYS 2020

Today is four days after Easter Sunday.  All of your pastors and worship leaders have pushed hard for the past three weeks to learn new skills and to make fast, adaptive changes in order to make Holy Week and Easter special for you in spite of the fact that we were not able to gather in our church buildings and worship in the traditional ways. So now Easter Sunday has happened, and the church is still the church and the old song that says, “The Church is Not a Building” carries a depth of meaning that no one could have anticipated. 

We know from scripture that the risen Christ spent forty days with the disciples before ascending back to heaven and commanding them to wait for the fulfillment of the promise. Then for another ten days they waited, so that after a total of fifty days after Easter Sunday, the church was born.

So now we find ourselves in that “in-between time” between Easter and Pentecost, pausing to catch our breath and regain our strength and prepare for whatever comes next. Like the disciples, we need to spend some time just walking with Jesus and let that be enough for now. Then, again like the disciples, we will be told to wait (Acts 1:4).

Pentecost this year will be Sunday, May 31^st, and none of us knows whether or not we will be again worshiping in church buildings by then or if we will be doing what we have been doing. What we do know is that the church will still be the church, and it will probably be different. 

When the risen Christ told Mary at the tomb, “Don’t cling to me,” he was telling her things would not go back to the way they were before. The earthly ministry of Jesus is over; what is about to take place is the ministry of the risen Christ in and through his disciples and those who would come after (you and me).

Like the disciples, we sense that something new is about to be born, and we do not yet know what that will look like. After all, it is Jesus who “makes all things new” (Revelation 21:5; 2 Corinthians 5:17).

Pentecost was full of surprises, and nobody knew what the new church was going to look like.  We might also be in for some surprises, but right now the thing for us to do is pay attention to some radical self-care, walk with Jesus, and wait to see what the Holy Spirit is going to do.