This week I’m preaching about a Richard Rohr concept called “Being or Living in the Flow”. I think it is best described by Daniel James Brown, in his book called “The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for God at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.”
Two quotes here sum up, in my understanding, what “being in the flow” means by Richard Rohr.
“Ah, that moment of perfect synchronicity—the elusive “swing.” In rowing, it’s when all oarsmen move together seamlessly, trusting and respecting each other. Imagine their eight taut bodies rocking like pendulums, blades flashing above the water like seabird wings.”
And
“All were merged into one smoothly working machine; they were, in fact, a poem of motion, a symphony of swinging blades.”
The Christian life then is lived at it’s best when we live in the flow between God as Source and Spirit and all of God’s Creation. It’s when we all fall in step with each other that we find our eternal “oneness”.
I think all of us have had moments like this in our lives. Maybe it was a hike on the Pacific Crest trail, and we looked out over a ridge right at sunset and as we looked out an eagle soared over head, and it was almost as if we were in holy communication with that eagle. It almost felt like that eagle was our sibling and that that sunset was God holding us all in God’s arms.
Maybe it was a moment playing soccer with your teammates and you all came together and worked together in unison to score the perfect corner kick.
Maybe it was a moment singing in your church choir where you were no longer single voices, but one single voice joined together by God’s concord and time.
Whatever those moments, we know them to be truly holy moments because they point us to where our life ought to be striving for. These moments are “kin-dom of God moments” that point us to what we all need to be striving for as a society and world.
What an impressive goal! Our goal, then isn’t just to be a Christian, but instead, it is to live in harmony with our siblings from all over the world...whether they be Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, or agnostic. Being “in Swing” with God. “Living in the Flow” with God is about getting in sync with all of creation!
As I listen and ponder this idea of “holy living” I think it important to point out one potential flaw in this thinking. In the book, The Boys in the Boat, Brown alludes to this flaw in the chapters where the boys are in Berlin, Germany. The young men, now in their early 20’s, are understandably impressed with Berlin. It is so clean. Everyone seems to be in sync with each other. The German people living what the boys are living in the boat! They seem to be “as one”. And it’s impressive. But as the boys experience this “ideal society’ they begin to get a glimpse of something that just doesn’t smell right. The streets seem to be too clean. The German people seem to be just a little too in sync.
The people of Germany at this time, you see, weren’t united by a love for the world, they were united by a hatred and racism fueled by Hitler and the Nazi party. Yes, they were in sync with each other, but they were not at all in sync with the love and mercy and kindness of God’s love. Their “in sync”-ness was too narrow. They had lost the true North Star of this world. They had lost sight of the true DNA that God has placed at the very heart of what it means to be human...the wideness of God’s mercy.
I pray that we continue to heed this lesson and stay true to this universe’s north star!
1 There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice, which is more than liberty.
2 There is welcome for the sinner, and more graces for the good.
There's a mercy with the Savior, there is healing in his blood.
3 But we make God’s love too narrow by false limits of our own,
and we magnify its strictness with a zeal God will not own.
4 For the love of God is broader than the measures of the mind,
and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.
5 If our love were but more simple, we should rest upon God’s word
,and our lives would be illumined by the presence of our Lord.
Your friend and pastor, thankful for songs of the faith that keep me “in sync” with God, Brook
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