Reflection: Double Vision & God's Electronic Circuit, July 4, 2018

Reflection: Double Vision & God’s Electronic Circuit 
Ha Na Park (Immanuel United Church, Winnipeg)
Message at JIGGN barbecue & worship, Jul 4, 2018, at John Black Memorial United Church

Good evening. 

My name is Ha Na Park. I am very happy to meet with you and share a message this evening. Since last September, I have been the minister at Immanuel United Church – and I have one thing to confess. I love Immanuel, my new faith community of the beloveds and elders. I truly do. I’m truly grateful for the privilege of working with some incredible friends in ministry who inspire me every day. 

Tonight, I wish to share with you the sermon I offered at my previous congregation, on Sunday, June 25th, 2017. It’s exactly one year ago, minus a week. I thought it might be interesting to go back and listen to my past thoughts, and share them with you to see and reflect how God’s power works in us over the course of time. Other than abbreviating and trimming some stories, this message I am going to share with you now is the same as last year’s, word for word, — except for the addition of one sentence – I will tell you when it comes up. Here we go: 

“In the present time, I am feeling called.

If I share this deep sense of being “purposeful”, people ask, “Do you have another church yet?” 

I answer, “No, but I am feeling incredibly grateful.” because there’s really nothing better than restoring the sense of being secure in the presence of the Living God. It is a relief, and a great reason to be hopeful. 

For those who don’t know the story behind this feeling, here’s a brief summary of the situation: In July of 2014, I joined the ministry staff at The United Church in Meadowood. Early in 2017, the Ministry Profile committee reassessed Meadowood’s needs, capacity and sustainability, and recommended that they reduce their ministerial staff to one full-time position. After much deliberation, I decided not to apply for the position. As a result, my pastoral relations with Meadowood changed. I admit that the months between hearing the news and making my decision were very, very hard.  

Now, I am ready to set out on my journey and move on. Of course, the first thing to do is stand beside the river and look at the water before I cross. Crippled, wounded, then healed, I come to the shore, and believe in faith that my current limitations also open up possibilities. Many of you have experienced this threshold, or thin place in your life, haven’t you? In order to restore confidence and hope and joy for a new adventure, I took some deep time for rest, reflection and study. Study really helps. Study, for me, means investing your whole intellectual and emotional capacities into what you really want to understand. I write things down on paper or type them into the computer. 

I open my old journals which I have been keeping between 2014 and last year. My last entry was made last November. I was really surprised to see that everything I wrote then, I need now: Notes from workshops. My own personal reflections; my memoirs of challenges and how I overcame them. After 3 years, these notes are treasures - positive memories of what inspired me to redevelop the map of spirituality in my mind in this present time. 

Has anyone here walked the beautiful trail of Spirits Sand in Spruce Woods Provincial Park? If you go there in the hot summer, you will need to bring a lot of water, but you will still feel very hot. This park is sand dunes, desert, mysteriously appearing from nowhere in the middle of the plain, nothing-special, Manitoban prairie! Luckily, when my family went, escaping rainy Winnipeg, it was a perfect day to take a slow walk.

On our visit, I experienced “double vision.” Double vision means that the world is alive with God. We become aware of God through the earth, through ‘double vision.’ The ability to see everything as it is and in God, both at the same time. It is not a rare experience. You often encounter this vision when you find yourself in the exceptional beauty of nature - inspired and awed by the perfect balance and harmony of the ecological network of life and creation. I really like how double vision is explained in this quote: “God and the world are not in competition: The more God, the more world, the more world, the more God.”

So, what did I see there at Spirits Sand? 

The desert wild plants and flowers — these plants, low in height, close to the ground, were entangled and complicated and reached out to fill the old sand dunes. Some of their roots came out above the surface and crawled onto the soil and sand and rocks. I saw and experienced God’s mystery: the place which seemed to be empty and void was filled with all things. In contrast, the other places in Spirits Sand that were densely filled with woods and trees revealed the self-emptying God. Children are very responsive to what they experience: the sacredness and the holiness of pure nature. I told my older son Peace (at that time, 11, now he’s twelve), “Hey, you see this amazing network of life connecting to each other…reaching out to each other…” 
My son replied, “It looks to me like the inside of a computer memory chip.”

Truly, it looked just like he said:

Electronic circuits!  



In the image of nature’s intricate ecosystem and also in my son’s image of electronic circuits, I saw a vision of the power of the present time and community. 

When I was sad and struggled and lost confidence in my strength, what restored me was relationship. Connections. In the most difficult times, the best thing I did was to reach out for support and get connected, strongly, and wonderfully, with the people I love and trust. 

Before, I wondered whether I had any good spirit left. To prepare a new resume to apply for Immanuel United Church, I read the resume I had written four years ago for Meadowood, and I was feeling almost defeated by my spirited younger self. I was so vibrant, and it was just three years before that low spot. Rather than panicking, however, when I could let go of my concerns for the past and for the future, only focusing on the present, suddenly my “inside” began to enlarge itself and fill me with new, fresh energy and hope. When I stopped assessing myself from a deficit model, asking, do I need this and that capacity? Have I lacked them? Do I have resources inside and within me? but believed I have everything I need, already, inside and in relationships, a miracle began to bloom – a miracle of being able to work again from a place of appreciation, gratitude and abundance. 

My miracle was Immanuel. (This statement is the new sentence I added for tonight.) The true miracle was finding the incredibly faithful, inclusive and affirming community of Immanuel. 

Rosemary Radford Reuther is a passionate and fierce feminist theologian. She says, “The Shalom of the Holy; Divine Wisdom; the empowering Matrix; She, in whom we live and move and have our being – She comes; She is here.” 

In Spirit Sands, what I experienced in my double vision was the empowering matrix, the divine wisdom of the present time. Like the Divine Mother’s womb, it is imbued with the pregnancy of possibilities. 

God works through us. Us with God and God with us is like the electronic circuits in the inside of God’s memory chip — while remembering the stories of the past, connecting to each other in the present, commanding a new order and vision.







In this present time, we are called to join, to diverge, to be connected. Even if we take different paths, our journey starts at a common source, and spreads energy everywhere we go.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Im-Manna-uel, What Is It!? (Exodus 16:2-15) - Sept 24, 2017

Sermon: BREAK! ... It's a Pentecost Sermon (Isaiah 65:17-19, 21-23), for Pacific Mountain Regional Council, June 3, 2023

Sermon: "We-racle" (John 6:1-14), August 6, 2023