The Reverend Bill Blaine-Wallace, Sunday July 26th, 2026

The Reverend William Blaine-Wallace

St. George Chapel

Tenant’s Harbor, Maine

July 26, 2026

Proper 12

A poem by Iranian German poet SAID:

Psalm 10

lord

spread wide your arms 

and protect us

from the multitude of your guardians 

stand by those who wander 

who've not lost the gift of hearing 

and listen within their solitude

stand by those too

who stay and wait for you

I have been a spiritual director for thirty-three years. I have had a spiritual director for about thirty-five years. You can’t offer what you haven’t received. Spiritual direction is not as lofty as it sounds. It’s people who matter, having conversations that matter, awakening assion for what matters.

For the last 18 years, I have offered spiritual direction one or two Wednesdays a month in a parish an hour or so from home. During the first few years, I would meet with folks in whatever space was available—a Sunday school room, the rector's study if vacant. For the last several years, I have met in the quiet room, a place set apart for silence, prayer, and spiritual direction. The quiet room was part of a building renovation project.

I arrive about 10 minutes before my first meeting. One might think I use the time to settle in. More often than not, I use the time to straighten up.

I find that spaces in church buildings designated for godly endeavors become sanctuaries for stuff. One Wednesday, I may need to remove a rummage-sale banner draped over the prie-dieu. During the few weeks leading up to the annual Christmas fair, I am booted upstairs to the senior high youth room so that marketable stuff can be stored until the big day. Imagine Moses not taking his shoes off at the foot of the burning bush.

Messy holy space is a metaphor for a not so small slice of my spiritual life.  The space between God and me sometimes is filled with stuff that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else: highfalutin agendas and pretentious intentions, big commitments and tall expectations. Once again, I’ve overdressed for the occasion. God murmurs to God’s self: There goes Bill again. Guess I’ll balance my checkbook and act like I’m listening.

 I imagine God longing for me the way my nine-year-old self yearned for dad to come to at least one or two of my Little League baseball games, if for no other reason than to give mom a hand at the concession stand.

What if God endlessly aches for our underdressed selves. What if God unceasingly, recklessly desires company with our lives the way they really are, not the way they might, could, or should be?

Words of Richard Rohr come to mind: “God is never an object to be found or possessed, as you find other objects, but the one who shares your own deepest subjectivity.” The one who seeks desires to be sought.

That’s the God who inspires us to take off our shoes, sit for a while, possibly bow before radical regard. A beatitudes kind of God.

The Beatitudes are getting a lot of attention of late. Could be because our government, and some of our Christian siblings, offer cocksure counterpoints to the Beatitudes.

The Gospel of Matthew adds two words to the beatitude about the poor.

The words? In spirit. The Gospel of Luke is more blunt. Poor is poor.

For the longest time, I held tight to the belief that poor in spirit was Matthew’s domestication of poverty. Poverty as the doldrums. Blues without the beat. Poverty light.

Older age has brought with it an emerging respect for Matthew’s more inclusive poverty. His less discriminating, more nuanced poverty makes room for us.

We’ve endured the assaults of bone-dry despair. If we claim we haven’t, our ignorance has not been bliss for us or for those around us. We have made our way through, and sometimes out of, frozen and inflamed relationships. Most of us here this morning is of an age visited by more losses than usual and greater infirmities. Marjorie and John, two of my best friends, who were also my beloved colleagues, recently died. Thursday night, I dreamed that I was on the operating table about to get my second hip replacement. Glad I only have 2.

We know poverty. We know enough poverty to step out of our shoes to sit, bow, and sometimes lie prostrate before the burning bush.

The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra canceled public performances from November 2nd to November 30th, 2020, due to measures taken by the federal and regional authorities in Germany to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

In response to the devastating effects of the pandemic, chief conductor Kirill Petrenko added another piece, the concluding piece, to the October 31st concert, the last concert before closing: 4’33” by John Cage. Four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence.

Cage affirmed that his silent piece was his most important composition. It was a piece he considered before he wrote later pieces.

I watched a video of the performance. Mr. Petrenko had no baton. The piece has three movements. For each movement, Mr. Petrenko offered a hand motion. The motions were, for me, a choreography of passionate engagement with self, orchestra, and audience.

First movement: Arms lowered, spread wide, palms open. Mr. Petrenko makes penetrating eye contact with orchestra and audience as if to say, HERE I AM.

Second movement: Arms raised, spread wide, hands reaching out, palms open. Mr. Petrenko connects with orchestra and audience as if to say, THERE YOU ARE.

Third movement: Left arm, hand open, palm facing upward. Right arm partly extended and bent slightly, a few inches lower than the left arm, hand open, palm facing upward. Mr. Petrenko scans the orchestra and audience, as if to say, AND NOW WHAT. Not a question. Instead, a disposition, a posture of readiness. Like a chaplain resident carrying the beeper the first time she is on call.

4:33 is not a model for inhabiting the space between God and us. It is my way of going deeper into the space in order to emerge more engaged with and for the world I inhabit.

Consider quietly and regularly—in your own way— offering God the landscape of your dressed down poverty. No preconceived notions about stuff to bring to the space.

HERE I AM.

THERE YOU ARE. An unembellished self before an unadorned God enlarges self, God, and neighbor.

AND NOW WHAT. A heart prepared to engage the moment at hand., whatever is at hand.

Offering God our unvarnished self, awakens desire.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Desire is our way home to God. Desire is our path of godly resistance into the fray of a nation in peril.

Amen.