Holy Lemonade

Here we are, God -

a little lemonade stand in a borrowed kitchen on Embassy Row

in the "most important city...” blah, blah, blah...

We've learned to make it good:

tart and sweet with just the mix of action and reflection needed

to quench our complex thirst.

We brew a batch each Sunday - prayer and silence, song and story

stirred into a heady brew with plenty left when we have drunk our fill

to fill our jugs and take it home.

I take Seekers lemonade to work,

where there are three or four who always have a thirst.

Lots of us are giving leftover lemonade to thirsty fellow travelers:

The poor in Spirit really need a pick-me-up these days!

The brew gets better

whenever someone new stays long enough to help.

And there are others who find it worth their life to stop by on the Internet

to take a sip or two.

They mostly ask if there's a lemonade stand like Seekers

close to where they live.

The best that we can do so far

is offer them a recipe

and tell them where to come to find us when they come to town.

We think about a bigger kitchen of our own,

and maybe space to offer what we brew at cut-rate prices --

a sort of factory outlet store for Seekers lemonade

with room for other kinds of healing, resurrection, cleansing.

And then we worry who will mind the store.

Whenever we make lemonade the Holy Spirit seems so present;

so we can only hope you find it pleasing, all this

slicing, praying,

squeezing, preaching,

stirring, healing.

O Holy Maker of the sweetest sugar and the sourest lemons,

give us the courage to keep mixing up this stuff of life --

elixir for the poor in spirit.

Amen.