Interdependence Day

Artist: Vincent Van Gogh

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Today is Pentecost 6 but it is also the Fourth of July -- Independence Day in the United States. It occurs to me that something from this morning's epistle reading (from Galations 6) is especially appropriate for observing both:

Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

An article on the Sojouners website suggests we think in terms of interdependence today and steers us toward a blog post that goes into some depth about this.

We are all utterly interdependent beings from birth to death. We could not survive without microbes that help build our soil and the plants and trees that create oxygen and offer us food; we would never become mature adults without teachers and mentors; our cities would be full of disease if we didn’t have people who collect our garbage. More than Independence Day we need an Interdependence Day to celebrate our dependence upon one another and the earth, and our ultimate dependence upon God. We invite you to participate in a counter holiday on July 4th, a day on which we are declaring our interdependence.

The post then lists forty ways in which we can observe and celebrate this profound connectedness. Here are several that particularly caught my attention:

* Climb a tree and sit there for a long period of time, observing and documenting – in photographs, drawings, paintings, writings, etc. – the forms of life that you see from that vantage point.

* Look for everything you have two of and give one away.

* Attempt to repair something broken. Appreciate the people who repair things for you one a regular basis.

* Look through your clothes. Learn about one of the countries where they were manufactured and commit to doing one thing to improve the lives of the people who live and work there.

* Dig up a bucket of soil from your garden or yard, examine it, noticing all of the elements of organic matter, sand, clay, and the organisms that make your daily meals a possibility.

* Pray the Lord’s Prayer and commit to one concrete action to live out each part.

There are more, of course, and I urge you to click through and take a look at them all.

A blessed holiday to everyone.
~~~

Monks and Mystics

Artist: Sassetta

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Reader Cathy got me to thinking the other day when she requested a list of books for spiritual reading. From time to time (hmmm... maybe on Saturdays) I propose to tell you about a book that has influenced me in my spiritual practice.

Today I'd like to recommend Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics by Marsha Sinetar. There's no particular reason for having chosen this one first except that it jumped out at me as I was examining my bookshelves for something with which to begin. I read this one shortly after it came out in 1986 and studied it with some care as I was in the process of discerning my vocation at the time. Here's how Sinetar begins the introduction:

My bias is this: ordinary, everyday people can and do become whole. They can and do live in ways that express their highest and most cherished values - values which also happen to be those most prized universally and collectively throughout human history. People who become whole are the ones who find completeness by consciously integrating inner and outer realities. This is a book about such persons, and about the way in which they manage to merge their inner truths with the demands of everyday living. It is for them, and for all who long for their own wholeness, that this book is written and dedicated.

And so, the book is about real people who are actually doing it. Sinetar interviewed a considerable number of people who lived alone by choice and who experienced their lives as devotion and calling. It is quite fascinating to learn of the various ways different people found to order their lives so as to support the yearning for wholeness, purpose and transcendence.

I offer another brief passage here - this one from the chapter on silence and solitude:

From both a professional and a personal standpoint, I have come to believe that adults can build a secure framework out of which to live their lives if - and it is a big if - they are willing to face the necessary work of inner regeneration: the pulling away, self-scrutiny and self-acceptance/self-trust steps which I've outlined... The person who fears his own thoughts, who needs others too much, who is overly self-critical or serverely attached to his own cultural belief systems and values may not be able to do this work.

This book is written in a very accessible way. It is for people who are really having a go at learning to be "in the world but not of it."
~~~

A call to be in transformation

Artist: Wilhelm von Kaulbach

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I discovered Joyce Rupp some years ago. She is an experienced spiritual director and retreat leader who has an extraordinay gift for expressing the princples of these disciplines in words on the printed page and, as such, is also a prolific writer. Here is something she said in an interview that I like:

To me, the spiritual life involves the whole of our life, every single part - no piece can be left out. I used to think of most of my life as one part and my spiritual or prayer life as another. In fact, I used to think that the rest of my life took me away from my prayer life. But now I see that nothing can be left out of a healthy spirituality. Another piece is that it's always about relationship with the divine, but also with other people. So it isn't just a God-and-me kind of thing. True spirituality will always take me out of myself, and I do believe that authentic spiritual growth has to take me out into the world. It can't just be a feel-good pacifier. The spiritual life is a call to be in transformation, to become our true selves. That means it has to have an openness to growth and change. The word spirituality sounds like something static rather than dynamic. I like the term spiritual growth because it implies that we're always in process. We can never say, "OK, I'm saved. I've made it. This is it. I don't need to do anything else. I don't have to listen to what's calling me to greater growth or greater spiritual depth."

Simply gorgeous

Dear friends, please listen to this. You won't regret it.

I found it over at Paul's place. (Byzigenous Buddhapalian)

Something about angels

Artist: Joanna Mary Boyce

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I had not come across this teaching before today:

The virtue of angels is that they cannot deteriorate; their flaw is that they cannot improve. Man's flaw is that he can deteriorate; and his virtue is that he can improve.

- The Talmud

God's great lovers

Artist: Pieter Janssens
Image from Wikimedia Commons

I particularly value the observation here that spiritual reading helps us cultivate adoration. I have found this to be true. I would also assert that spiritual reading helps us experience ourselves as members of the community of the lovers of God. We are, indeed, surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses" and, not only that, we are part of that cloud:

Spiritual reading is a regular, essential part of the life of prayer, and particularly is it the support of adoring prayer. It is important to increase our sense of God's richness and wonder by reading what his great lovers have said about him.

— Evelyn Underhill

Putting one's hand to the plow

Artist: Aksel Waldemar Johannessen

Image from Wikimedia Commons

From this morning's gospel reading: Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Here are some observations about the point Jesus is making by Lutheran pastor, Sharron R. Lucas:

We 21st century North American Christians are for the most part products of the low expectation school of discipleship. We give an hour on Sunday, drop 2-4% in the plate, and if we’re really involved teach a class or serve on a committee. Again, any North Dakota farmer worth his or her salt could tell you that you won’t get a crop from that kind of investment. Why even your youngest 4H member puts more of an investment into the local club than the average Christian puts into his or her congregation.

Commitment. Maybe it would be beneficial for us all to ponder just what that means today - not necessarily when we were first baptised or confirmed or ordained or professed. What does it mean for me today to set my face toward Jerusalem, to put my hand to the plow and not look back? Maybe that looks different from what it did ten years ago or even two years ago.
~~~

The problem with sentimentality

Artist: Leon Wyczółkowski

Image from Wikimedia Commons

For some reason I have been forgetting about Flannery O'Connor lately. I was in my late teens, I think, when I discovered her and then I found myself consuming her fiction voraciously. Later, I came across her letters and devoured them as well. She actually had a huge effect on my religious formation. The following statement is certainly worthy of considerable refection, I would assert:

We lost our innocence in the Fall, and our turn to it is through the Redemption which was brought about by Christ's death and by our slow participation in it. Sentimentality is a skipping of this process in its concrete reality and an early arrival at a mock state of innocence, which strongly suggests its opposite.

-- Flannery O'Connor

Some thoughts on prayer

Artist: Cornelis Pietersz Bega

Image from Wikimedia Commons

This morning I was surprised to stumble upon an article originally published in Tikkun Daily entitled "God Doesn’t Play Favorites: A Religious Person Rethinks Prayer" by a divinity student named Be Scofield.

Mr. Scofield examines the approach to prayer that consists primarily of requests for wish fulfillment. But, sadly, many people's faith rests on this approach. Take a look at an excerpt:

If one abandons the notion that God can intervene in the world to answer prayer God all of a sudden looks much different. Gone is the notion that the Holocaust could have been prevented and was part of God’s divine and “awesome” plan. Gone is the immense power for God to take sides in war as illustrated in the Hebrew Bible. Gone is a God that plays favorites. No longer can God be omnipotent as previously understood because God lacks the power to act in the world. For many who begin to interpret the divine in this non-theistic new light, God then becomes synonymous with love, creative energy and relatedness. Just because the theology of yesterday is insufficient for our modern standards doesn’t mean we need to abandon God, religion or appreciation for the divine.

If you find this excerpt disturbing or shocking, may I suggest spending a little time learning something about process theology - just to get some perspective. I could be considerably illuminating.

I count myself fortunate that my religious formation emphasized prayer as the way we draw close to God and become more Christ-like ourselves - not as a way to get our requests granted.

Therefore, I find myself valuing this outlook:

God is the creative power of existence. Prayer is a radical act of centering and a powerful spiritual practice that helps unite me to the divine. In some ways it is similar to meditation, but it also differs. It is more active, and in prayer I will often imagine people being held and surrounded by love. Or I will visualize transforming fear into hope. I find that prayer attunes me to my deepest and highest self while providing clarity and insight into my life.

What would happen if, just for a while, we practiced abstinence from asking for things in our prayer life - just long enough to experience a radically different kind of prayer. Truly, it could be life changing.

Love and the existence of God

Artist: Peter von Cornelius

Image from Wikimedia Commons

For anybody out there who may be having trouble with the "belief" thing, have I got a quote for you:

The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul.

-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

And, you know something? If it turns out that God doesn't exist and that your soul is not immortal, you will still have had the best life you could possibly have had.

This one is win-win, folks.

Pride and humility

Artist: Annibale Carracci

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I'm trying to remember the last time I heard a sermon on the subject of pride and humility. Quite frankly, I'm stumped. That contrast doesn't seem to be a popular subject of late. I think such is unfortunate really because many people do not know to be on the lookout for slipping into spiritual pride. Here's a little observation worth pondering, I think:

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.

-- C.S. Lewis

When every day is a battle

"Healing of the Possessed"

Image from Wikimedia Commons

This morning's gospel reading is about the man healed by Jesus of a "legion" of demons. Here's something I found on Lindy Black's site about that from the Interpreter's Bible:

The story of the Gerasene demoniac should now be interpreted so that it speaks a word of assurance and hope to those for whom every day is a battle with depression, fear, anxiety, or compulsive behavior. They will understand what would lead a person to say that his name is "mob" (GNB). With such a response, the man had acknowledged that he no longer had any individual identity. He had lost his name. He had lost his individuality. All that was left was a boiling struggle of conflicting forces. It was as though a Roman legion was at war within him.

The importance of story

Artist: Alexey Venetsianov

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Here is another one from Anthony de Mello:

A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: "You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story."

Something important about love

Artist: Vincent Van Gogh

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I think I discovered that amazing Jesuit, Anthony de Mello, in the late 80s or early 90s and I remember simply not being able to get enough of his teaching at that time. I do wish I could have attended one of his retreats while he was alive. If a person is at all receptive, it is quite impossible to hide from oneself and really engage what he has to say a the same time. Here's a sample:

Is it possible for the rose to say, "I will give my fragrance to the good people who smell me, but I will withhold it from the bad?" Or is it possible for the lamp to say, "I will give my light to the good people in this room, but I will withhold it from the evil people"? Or can a tree say, "I'll give my shade to the good people who rest under me, but I will withhold it from the bad"? These are images of what love is about.

Windows to the inner life

Artist: Claude Monet

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I'm not much of a gardener, really. I don't particularly like being outside in the heat, I don't like stooping and digging and I don't like getting dirty. But I do have houseplants and I manage to plant some begonias in front of my little house every spring. So I really agree with the following:

Connection with gardens, even small ones, even potted plants, can become windows to the inner life. The simple act of stopping and looking at the beauty around us can be prayer.

- Patricia R. Barrett, The Sacred Garden

Godly whispering

Russian icon of prophet Elijah

Image from Wikimedia Commons

It's a very short little quotation that I bring you today. But it is one that is very evocative. Let us allow it to teach us, to encourage us:

Blessed are the ears that pick up the Godly whispering.

— Thomas a Kempis in The Imitation of Christ

Something about prayer

Artist: Georges Seurat

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have just finished reading the transcript of an interview with Sr. Joan Chittister whom I've admired for many years now.

Here is just a little bit of what she says:

After more than 55 years of growing into a life of prayer through a lifestyle based on it, my definition of prayer is consciousness, immersion, and relationship. Prayer makes us aware of the elements of the divine in human life, bringing us into contact with the God-life in and around us. Prayer is not personal devotion; it is personal growth. Prayer brings us to the ultimate and the eternal, the daily and the regular, the total consciousness of God now. Prayer enables us to be immersed in what is fundamentally and truly divine in life right now. It is not meant to be a bridge to somewhere else because God is not somewhere else. God is here. Prayer is the act of beginning the process of becoming one with the One we seek -- eventually, melting into God completely.

I urge you to click through and read the whole piece. It gets better and better as well as more and more moving. She talks about her family, about her parents' "mixed marriage" (Roman Catholic and Presbyterian), about her passion for social justice and how that is utterly connected with her prayer.

It is beautiful.
~~~

Radical gratefulness

Artist: Peter Paul Rubens

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I really like the following way of summing up this morning's gospel reading. (It's from a blog called "Contemplative Viewfinder"):

There was a woman who made a scene over Jesus when he was eating lunch at the house of a friend named Simon. (Luke 7:36) She cried and her tears wet his feet. She dried his feet with her hair. She poured perfume on them.

Simon told Jesus this was inappropriate. He was probably right. There’s a time and a place for everything, you know. Jesus’ answer: Simon, you’ve not even showed me basic hospitality in your own home, but this woman’s gratitude has caused her to do what you think is inappropriate. She’s just grateful. Leave her alone.

-- Melissa Bane Sevier

How wonderful to experience such gratitude that a person is able to be this "over the top". There's a humor website I recently discovered called "Overkill 9000". It's subtitled "Everything in excess, including excess!" I like it because, oddly enough, sometimes too much of something is exactly what it takes to jar us into waking up, to capture our attention about what is real, what is necessary. Today's gospel reading is a good example of exactly how this can work.
~~~

What sort of comfort?

Artist: Paul Gauguin

Image from Wikimedia Commons

You know, this strikes me as being a very important teaching about prayer, actually:

It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort. It's not the sort of comfort they supply there.

-- C. S. Lewis

It certainly flies in the face of the so-called "prosperity gospel", doesn't it?

What would happen if part of our prayer was to ask for help in cultivating an awareness of and a receptivity for the kind of comfort they do supply in heaven?

I would think that it's well worth pondering.
~~~

Happiness

Artist: Judith Leyster

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have shared with you before, I believe, that I had the privilege of hearing David Steindl-Rast speak at a conference in Virginia back in the 70s and was hugely impressed and moved by what he had to say. Some years later I read that he spent six months of the year in solitude and six months teaching and that was something that truly encouraged me in pursuing my solitary vocation. Here's one of his pithy sayings:

In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.

-- Brother David Steindl-Rast

Deep and abiding change

Image from Wikimedia Commons

At the heart of the Christian tradition lies the belief that transformation requires sacrifice. In fact, I would say that the difference between real movements and mere events is the sacrifice. Deep and abiding change is hard. When we experience conversion, we not only turn toward something new but away from something old. We can look down the road and recognize that in the long run our sacrifice is worth the cost, but it still does not make it easy or comfortable to sell all we have to buy the pearl of great price.

-- Jim Wallis

The above is from an article entitled "We Must Respond to the Needs of the Gulf Coast". I do recommend the entire article. It's painful to read but we need to read this sort of thing.

Some words on the mystics from Matthew Fox

This most amazing day

Artist: Jakob Hendrik Pierneef

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have long loved the work of this poet. And this particular poem is truly a little gem:

I thank God for this most
amazing day;
for the leaping greenly
spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything
which is natural, which is
infinite, which is yes.

-- E. E. Cummings

Building bridges with strangers

I realize that some who read this blog may not be happy with Archbishop Rowen's approach to dealing with the "current unpleasantness" within the Anglican Communion. Nevertheless, the reflection in this video is very powerful and well deserving of thoughtful attention.

Raising the sons of widows

Artist: Lucas Cranach

Image from Wikimedia Commons

In both the gospel reading for today and the reading from the Hebrew scriptures we are offered stories that relate how a widow's son is restored to her through divine mercy and power.

Please remember that in each case the widow's predicament is not merely that of losing someone she loves dearly. She is also losing her very means of survival. Women of that day were horribly vulnerable without the support of a husband or a son.

These stories are tremendously meaningful to me because they teach us that God cares for the woman who is alone, that her feelings matter, that her survival matters and that she is not to be devalued. I, too, am a woman alone; I have no husband, no son. And while I certainly have more options for survival than did a first century widow, I often feel very vulnerable indeed - especially as I age. So today's readings are powerfully consoling and affirming.

Now, there are other kinds of vulnerability besides that which makes physical survival precarious. What seems to have died in your life that has left you vulnerable and bereft - perhaps in on an emotional, inward level that most people will not recognize, much less acknowledge? Today's readings assure you that God will restore to you what you need for that part of your life to be supported once more, for you to thrive again.

Deo gratias.
~~~

Sacred, precious solitude

Artist: Václav Brožík

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I want to tell you about a very beautiful blog that I discovered quite some time ago and then re-discovered today. It's called "Spiritual Things Matter" and is made up of the poetry and reflections of the blog author, Viola Jaynes. Here is one stanza of a poem (which can be found right here in its entirety):

Oh solitude, my sacred precious solitude,
You so eloquently speak comfort to me.
May you captivate my heart fully -
And may you teach me never to fear you,
But to love you even more intimately!

In her post about herself, Viola writes the following:

As I write, I desire that those who have experienced pain will find some comfort and peace. The words which I write come from my heart, birthed from my own brokenness and a continued longing to find greater spiritual awareness. I want to embrace all people and therefore I will not limit my writing here to any religious beliefs or quotations of scriptures. That is a journey each will have to make for themselves. I simply want to share that in and through pain, a full life is still possible. It has been for me.

I identify with that hugely. It aptly expresses the reasoning behind my own interfaith focus.

The blog overall is gentle, lovely and offers writings of great depth indeed. You will not regret taking the time to explore this site.
~~~

That we may write our names in kindness...

Artist: Edmund Blair Leighton

Image from Wikimedia Commons

This is about having a sense of purpose. It's interesting that Chalmers talks about kindness, love and mercy and that he doesn't talk about financial success, professional achievement or impressing others:

Live for something! Do good and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storm of time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy on the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with, year by year, and you will never be forgotten. Your name, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind, as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven.

-- Thomas Chalmers

Something about words

Artist: Michelangelo Caravaggio

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Very often the problem between fundamentalists and other religious people revolves around the meaning of words. It helps if we maintain a humble and respectful recognition of how limited verbal language can be:

... God is not objectifiable. Words serve only as mute gestures pointing to the irreducible, ineffable dimension where God subsists.

-- Martin Buber

A little challenge

Artist: Angelo Bronzino

Image from Wikimedia Commons

No posting today, dear people. I had hand surgery this morning and that makes driving the old computer a wee bit difficult!

I'll be back tomorrow, I sincerely hope.

Blessings to all.
~~~

Memorial Day

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

I heard this on NPR today - Writer's Almanac - read by Garrison Keillor:

High school band. Memorial Day.
Country cemetery. Marched all the way.
We stood in formation, took off our caps.
Stood with the nation, we played taps

Year before Kennedy, year before King.
Last year I cared about anything.
But for that moment, we were one.
Honoring soldiers

At Arlington.

Notes drifted across the plains.
Swallows signaled oncoming rain.
Station wagons, pickup trucks
Rescued us then turned to rust

We put on new uniforms
Crisp, creased. Tattered, well-worn
Some forget where we come from
Some come to rest

In Arlington

When he was twelve, took my only son
Lost ourselves in the Smithsonian
Then Abraham, above the Mall.
Then raised our hands, touched the wall.

Headstone horizon, eternal flame
Unknown lie with familiar names
Sacrificed daughters and sons
So I could cry

At Arlington.

-- Dennis Caraher

Blessed Trinity

Artist: Edgar Degas

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The early church leaders described the Trinity using the term perichoresis (peri-circle resis-dance): The Trinity was an eternal dance of the Father, Son and Spirit sharing mutual love, honor, happiness, joy and respect… God’s act of creation means that God is inviting more and more beings into the eternal dance of Joy. Sin means that people are stepping out of the dance… stomping on feet instead of moving with grace and rhythm.

I'm not sure who said this but I found it on Lindy Black's "Sermon Nuggets" page.

I have long delighted in the image of the life of God (as well as the spiritual life of the lover of God) as a dance. When we allow ourselves to experience the Divine as movement (rather than trying to analyze or explain theological formulas) the difficulty associated with the doctrine of the Trinity simply falls away and we embrace the Mystery in joyful celebration.

Oh, yes: Amazing!

If this doesn't make you happy, well, I just don't know what to do for you!

~~~

Created for transcendence

Artist: Odilon Redon

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I'm sorry to say that I had not heard of the theologian, Joseph Sittler, before I found a passage from his book Gravity and Grace from which I offer the following:

St. Augustine, at the beginning of his Confessions, makes a great and beautiful statement: "Thou has made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." Back of that statement lies a proposition which says that the human is created for transcendence. It is the Jewish and Christian belief that we are meant for a selfhood that is more than our own selves—that we are by nature created to envision more than we can accomplish, to long for that which is beyond our possibilities.

I am so struck by the words "a selfhood that is more than our own selves". It merits considerable reflection, I think.

You can read more excerpts right here.

Something about why people lose heart

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Those of us who consider ourselves to be part of the Church need to think about the point being made here with all due seriousness:

Of the friends of mine who have abandoned the Christian faith, very few of them stopped believing in Christ because of intellectual problems with the Bible of because they were seduced by some other worldview or belief system. Rather, they tend to abandon Christian faith because of the irrelevance, judgmentalism, internal dissension and lack of compassion they experience within the Christian community. Rather than finding the church to be the community that most deeply encouraged them in their struggles, they lost heart in their discouragement and lost their faith in the process. Rather than experiencing the church as the site of the most profound hospitality, love and acceptance, they felt excluded because of their doubts and struggles.

-- Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat

Illuminating what love really is

Artist: Ivan Aivazovsky

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I've told you before, I'm sure, how much I admire this writer:

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

-- Frederick Buechner

There are some very erroneous and unhealthy ideas out there about what love really is. I think this particular Buechner quote comes very close to verbalizing what love - the real thing, I mean - is actually all about.

Why perseverence is so very necessary

"The Stonecutters" by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Image from Wikimedia Commons

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at a rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it -- but all that had gone before.

-- Jacob Riis

A challenge to our assumptions

Image from Wikimedia Commons

When you think about it, the celebration of Pentecost is the ultimate antidote against discouragement. And so I like this excerpt from a Pentecost sermon very much:

[W]e have a call, a “stunning vocation,” Walter Brueggemann says, “to stand free and hope-filled in a world gone fearful…and to think, imagine, dream, vision a future that God will yet enact.” Mind you, we are not in charge, God is in charge, but we are called to imagine this future, to trust in it, and to live into it, participate in it, and to share it with all of God’s children. We might be tempted at times to give in to those same impulses we see around us – to build up our defenses, look out for ourselves, find security in our “stuff” and in our sure knowledge that we know best, but this wind of the Spirit – it blows through our lives and it turns things upside down. We want a faith that only consoles us, and instead, God challenges our assumptions, blows them over, and opens up our eyes to see things in a new way, opens our hearts to a new creation of possibility and hope.

-- Kate Huey

I believe I have quoted Kate Huey on this blog before. I'm starting to like her preaching very much indeed. She is a United Church of Christ minister, by the way.

The Day of Pentecost

Bamberg Apocalypse miniature (11th Century)

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The following quotation may seem very simple but it is deceivingly so. Phillips is communicating a powerhouse here - something utterly radical:

Every time we say, "I believe in the Holy Spirit," we mean that we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it.

- J. B. Phillips

The question before us is this: Do we really want our personality to be entered by the living God and then changed?

Something about readiness

Artist: August Macke

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Have you ever tried to read a spiritual book before you were really ready and managed to get nowhere only to pick that same book up some years later and have it be utterly illuminating? Here's something about that:

Words are merely carriers of the secret, supernatural communications, the light and call of God. That is why spiritual books bear such different meanings for different types and qualities of soul, why each time we read them they give us something fresh, as we can bear it.

-- Evelyn Underhill

The benefit of solitude

Artist: Giovanni Fattori

Image from Wikimedia Commons

It grieves me when people have an aversion to being alone, who have not discovered the richness of a purposeful and chosen solitude. Here's a little encouragement in that regard:

We need not wings to go in search of Him, but have only to find a place where we can be alone -- and look upon Him present within us.

- Teresa of Avila

The archangel who fights for us

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I just found this stunning mosaic of St. Michael and wanted to share it with you all. The original is in Moscow.

A paradox

Artist: James Tissot

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Oh my. There is just so much to this one:

Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.

-- Joseph Campbell

There is unbelievably rich material for reflection in this great observation. I'm very glad I found it.
~~~

Sunday after the Ascension

Saint Paul the Apostle

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I was very struck by this morning's first reading from the book of Acts. In this narrative, Paul and Silas exorcise a divining spirit from a slave girl who is being exploited by her owners. Later they are locked up in an "inner prison" and an earthquake sets them free. The jailer is about to commit suicide (as he will surely be blamed for letting them escape) but Paul assures him that he and Silas are still there. The jailer then asks what he must do to be saved and is baptized along with his entire household.

How many of us find ourselves locked in an "inner prison"? And how many of us assume that freeing those parts of ourselves that have been locked up for so long is bound to be a disaster?

Here is an excerpt from a commentary I found on this reading. It has given me much material for reflection:

When the jailer asks Paul what he must do to be saved, Paul answers simply that he should "believe on the Lord Jesus." This is still a difficult question today, and Paul's answer presents its own challenges as well. Perhaps we need to spend much more time on what it means to "believe" (and Marcus Borg has written so helpfully on this in books like The Heart of Christianity). However, Ronald Cole-Turner's reflects on this question in the context of this story and poses this question for each one of us, personally: "What must I do," he asks, "to be saved from what destroys me? What must I do to be saved from my particular bondage, my oppressive addiction, emptiness, or boredom? There are countless ways to lose our way in this world or to be in bondage, just as there are many different threats from which we need to be saved." One of the most powerful captivities of our age, besides materialism and militarism, is the way fear can imprison us in our convictions and our desire for security, making us unable to open our hearts and minds to others, to events, to the God who still speaks through them. How amazed the jailer must be, just as he's about to kill himself, to see that the prisoners are still there! Fear almost leads to death, but compassion leads to his life, and his family's life, being transformed. Cole-Turner writes that "Believing….means becoming decisively aware that our small lives are swept up into a great drama, God's story line. God is indeed reaching out to us in Jesus Christ, taking our lives into the gospel story of transformation and redemption."

-- The Rev'd Kate Huey

You can read the entire commentary right here.

Honest and dishonest questions

I have admired and been influenced by Richard Rohr for many years now. He is a wonderfully skilled conference leader and retreat conductor. I had the great privilege of attending one of his conferences early in 2009.

Ascension

Artist: Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337)
Image from Wikimedia Commons

Christ is already in that place of peace, which is all in all. He is on the right hand of God. He is hidden in the brightness of the radiance which issues from the everlasting throne. He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness--stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy; that most perfect of joys, the utter profound, ineffable tranquility of the Divine Essence.

-- John Henry Newman

Think about how these words, "the very abyss of peace" are put together. What wonderful words. How full they are of both assurance and mystery.

~~~

Essence

Artist: Raphaelle Peale

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell. And therefore, if you want to discover nature's nakedness, you must destroy its symbols and the farther you get in the nearer you come to its essence. When you come to the One that gathers all things up into itself, there your soul must stay.

-- Meister Eckhart

A beautiful icon

Artist: Ekaterina Iliynskaya

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Healing

"River of Life" from the Bamberg Apocalypse

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have treasured these two verses of this morning's reading from Revelation for many, many years now:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Now here is a commentary:

The river of life in 22:1-2 is based on Ezekiel 47:1-12, where the river flows out of God's temple. In Revelation's New Jerusalem there is no temple building, and so the river flows from the throne of God, flows with life from the presence and the ruling power of the Lord of all. The old serpent has been dispensed with (20:2, 10), and the tree of life flourishes among the people again. In Ezekiel, the river was lined with all kinds of trees, but here there is only one, the one that matters, the tree of life lost with Adam's and Eve's sin. In Ezekiel's vision, the leaves were for healing (of Israel), but here they are for the healing of all the nations. Here there is nothing cursed (verse 3). Paradise is fulfilled in this city.

-- Brian Peterson

The fact that in Ezekiel the leaves were for the healing of Israel but now are for the healing of all the nations is a critical point to notice, I think. God wants us all to be healed - every single one of us.
~~~

The song of our soul

Artist: Benjamin Vautier

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I discovered Martin Buber while taking an undergraduate philosophy class when I read I and Thou. Many is time I have wishe I knew German so I could read his works in the original. Here is a lovely passage that adds to my collection of quotations about valuing the ordinary:

One should hallow all that one does in one's natural life. One eats in holiness, tastes the taste of food in holiness, and the table becomes an altar. One works in holiness, and raises up the sparks which hide themselves in all tools. One walks in holiness across the fields, and the soft songs of all herbs, which they voice to God, enter into the song of our soul.

-- Martin Buber

Angels

Artist: Hildegard von Bingen

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Now this is really worth thinking about:

All God's angels come to us disguised.

-- James Russell Lowell

Remember, the Greek word angelos simply means messenger.

Think back over your life and call to mind the divine messengers that have come your way. That's one approach to learning about the disguises taken by God's angels.

~~~

A paradox about worth and worthiness

"St. Martin and the Beggar" - El Greco

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Today's society - in the United States at any rate - is very caught up with the idea of personal and individual worthiness. Many of us believe that we shouldn't assist anyone who isn't worthy of being assisted according to our own understanding of what that means. Such an approach is not, however, the Christian way:

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can.

-- Thomas Merton

Embracing reality

Artist: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Image from Wikimedia Commons

One of the temptations that often assaults those who are striving to be spiritual is that of trying to escape reality rather than learning to embrace it:

If we want to be spiritual, then, let us first of all live our lives. Let us not fear the responsibilities and the inevitable distractions of the work appointed for us by the will of God. Let us embrace reality and thus find ourselves immersed in the life-giving will and wisdom of God which surrounds us everywhere.

- Thomas Merton

Supporting and inspiring the young

Artist: Max Slevogt

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I've really liked this saying ever since I first came across it. I think it applies not only to parents with children but also to teachers with students:

Do not limit your children to your own learning, for they have been born in another age.

— Jewish proverb

Sharing our home

Artist: Philippe Legendre-Kvater

Image from Wikimedia Commons

From this morning's Gospel reading:

[Jesus said,] "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

And, thus, the following quotation really gave me pause:

Martin Luther King said once that the story of the church is like a great extended family that receives a tremendous bequest: they receive an inheritance of a wonderful, beautiful, spacious, luxurious home to share. There is only one stipulation. All must live in it together.

-- from Lindy Black's "Sermon Nuggets"

Something about regret

"Hope in a Prison of Despair" by E. De Morgan

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Here's the lament of someone who spent just one day in "riotous living" and is experiencing great regret:

The Debt

This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.

Pay it I will to the end—
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release—
Gives me the clasp of peace.

Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best—
God! but the interest!

-- by Paul Laurence Dunbar

It's a beautifully crafted little poem and a truly evocative one. It can give us material for reflection about making reckless choices, I suppose. Of course, a reasonbly high doctrine of grace helps us let go of the suffering that accompanies regret. Sometimes, however, the consequences of recklessness really can't be undone - at least not in this life.