We are on the cusp of high summer. Our upcoming word for the month, or theme at Echoes, is re-pair. Repair. As you all know by now, I love words. Their various meanings feed me intellectually and also spiritually.
Repair has several meanings, which means there are several ways we can interpret this word in our own lives. Perhaps if you are a pessimist like me, you immediately ask yourself: “What in my life is in need of repair?” or aka “How broken am I?”
Most negative christian theology is focused on how broken we are as human beings. How far we have fallen from the light of God. How unworthy we are of love, how undeserving of God’s grace. But thankfully, this isn’t the only meaning of repair. This isn’t the only way we can experience our humanness in the light of the Holy One.
One definition of repair is: A STATE OF BEING or FITNESS. Repair can ask us what state we are in. How is our spiritual, emotional, physical, financial and mental health? What kind of estate or form do we find ourselves in in the present moment? Where are we in good order in our lives? Where do we feel most together? Where do we find our deepest tenderness? Our most intimate places with the Divine?
Another definition for repair is TO RESTORE TO A PREVIOUS STATE OR VIGOR. Instead of thinking we must be entirely destroyed or remade (calling to mind our culture’s obsession to makeover nearly everything), we can begin to think about nurturing life and greenness into areas that use to have more vigor. Instead of demolition think freshen, refresh, rejuvenate, refill, replenish. Our God is a gentle and tender-hearted one. In our upcoming indoor worship, we pray recalling the Psalms:
When hard pressed, we cry out to You our God, and You bring us into a spacious place. Holy One, you are with us, we will not be afraid.
In the month to come, as all things are ripening and bearing fruit—as we take in the warmth of the sun—as we remember the abundance of the natural world—let us recall the gentle abundance of the Holy One. Let us find what is ripening within ourselves and see what God is bringing into fruition in our lives.
By Jory Mickelson