A bit of a nuisance

My friend, MadPriest, posted the following:

"Blogger is messing us about again. Recent changes to the comment facility has resulted in the disappearance of the ability to subscribe to a comment thread if you have your comment settings set to pop up window. However, it is still there if you set your comments to "embedded beneath post."

"I strongly suggest that we all change our settings to embedded. Otherwise there will be no conversations on our blogs anymore and a drastic reduction in visits.

"Thanks to Grandmère Mimi for sussing this one out for us."

So, I'm off to change all those settings right now.

(Image above from Wikimedia Commons)
~~~

Silence and laughter

Artist: Salvatore Rosa

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The following is from A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life by Parker Palmer:

"The soul loves silence because it is shy, and silence helps it feel safe. The soul loves laughter because it seeks truth, and laughter often reveals reality. But above all, the soul loves life, and both silence and laughter are life-giving. Perhaps this is why we have yet another name for people who can share silence and laughter with equal ease: we call them soulmates."

~~~

Why a rule of life can be so valuable

The Society of St. John the Evangelist is an Episcopal monastic order for men. This particular monastery is in Cambridge, Massachusetts.



~~~

Keeping a holy Lent

Artist: Margret Hofheinz-Döring

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Hmmm. Has anybody ever thought of giving up hurry for Lent?

"To be impatient is to be hooked on the future."

— Gerald Jampolsky

All of the great spiritual teachers I've ever studied have emphasized the importance and, indeed, the holiness of the present moment. May I suggest that we use whatever Lenten discipline we may have chosen as a way of helping us be truly mindful of the here and now.
~~~

Spiritual reflection on Downton Abbey

Artist: George Hendrik Breitner

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Today I happened to come across a short piece by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, the authors of the outstanding website entitled "Spirituality and Practice".  Do take a look:

10 Spiritual Takes on Downton Abbey

Here's a sample:

6. The series as a whole provides a poignant and diverse presentation of the dynamics of emotional literacy as played out in the lives of the upstairs aristocracy and the downstairs staff.

7. We realize that the web of life revolves around our relationships with others and that we should see others not as adversaries but as fellow-travelers on the path of wisdom and insight.
...
9. The variety of characters in the drama show us the irrational and disturbing aspects of our behavior and give us glimpses of our hidden shadow sides.

There is material for our spiritual lives and for doing our inner work absolutely everywhere.
~~~

The importance of mystery in a person's life

Artist: Heinrich Tomec

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Do pardon the repeated use of generic masculine language in this passage by G. K. Chesterton and consider the times in which it was written. (It is just too good, in my opinion, not to it use it for that reason alone.)

From what I can discern, by "the ordinary man", Chesterton is referring to the person who is not particularly sophisticated in the sense, perhaps, of being thoroughly up to date in some regard. He seems to contrast this with "the morbid logician" to which he refers toward the end of this passage:

As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus, he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus, he believes that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.

~~~

Really believing that we are accepted

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Today, I'd like to share with you a couple of brief excerpts from a sermon I preached some time ago. I stumbled upon it this morning while looking for something else.

I feel as strongly about this today as I did when I first preached it.

I'd love to hear some response about Tillich's great "acceptance" passage if anyone is so inclined!

Here you go:

“Sometimes… a wave of light breaks into our darkness and it is as if a voice were saying, ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you… Do not seek for anything…; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.’” 

The great theologian Paul Tillich said that. And as far as I’m concerned nothing else he wrote comes close to the power, the startling, staggering, perfect truth of this famous “acceptance” statement. If I were the rector of a Church I think I would be tempted to repeat this quote to the same people every Sunday for a year, I think it is so important.
...
Can you accept the fact that you are accepted? It sounds so simple – perhaps too simple. But this acceptance is exactly what Paul is talking about when he says, “if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.”
...
What an extraordinary a gift it is to be accepted! How dare we think it is too easy! Surely there is something else we have to do! Do you think Tillich’s statement is too easy? “Accept that you are accepted?” I did. Until I tried it. Anyone who has spent much time in silent meditation knows how difficult it is to be completely aware of our own thoughts and feelings and then to accept them – unconditionally. I cannot sit for five minutes – probably not even one minute – in such a total acceptance. Yes, the way of acceptance is a crucifixion. It hurts. It kills. And what it kills is that which must die if we are ever to say, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

In case you want to know, this part of the sermon was referring to Galatians 2:11-21.
~~~

The importance of keeping our heart open

~~~

Something about happiness

Artist: Gerrit van Honthorst

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I found this wonderful little paragraph by Thomas Keating over on Inward/Outward - a website hosted by the forward thinking Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C.

Keating's observation is very much in line with the meditative principle that suffering arises from grasping and attachments. I also really like his compassion in recognizing that one reason people are caught up in grasping is because they've been deprived. We can truly benefit from giving a like compassion to ourselves:

"We are made for happiness and there is nothing wrong in reaching out for it. Unfortunately, most of us are so deprived of happiness that as soon as it comes along, we reach out for it with all our strength and try to hang on to it for dear life. That is the mistake. The best way to receive it is to give it away. If you give everything back to God, you will always be empty, and when you are empty, there is more room for God."

~~~

A living and vigilant silence

Artist: Olof Hermelin

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Oh, this passage by Thomas Merton is so, so beautiful. As much as I once wished for it, the life he describes here has not turned out to be my year-round, routine, life vocation. But I've had enough extended periods like this to cherish its value very deeply indeed:

"To deliver oneself up, hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hill, or sea, or desert: to sit still while the sun comes up over the land and fills its silences with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labor in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars. This is a true and special vocation. There are few who are willing to belong completely to such silence, to let it soak into their bones, to breathe nothing but silence, to feed on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence."

~~~

Something about understanding the universe

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Here are two very interesting quotations taken from an interview of the mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme:

The more I learn about light the more I realize, man, we don't know anything about light... It's just bizarre... a particle has it's own proper time which slows down as you speed up. But at the speed of light... there's no time. That's bizarre ... that we can, right now, as you know, see — interact with the light that has come from the birth of the universe. So ... from our point of view, that light traveled for 14 billion years but from the point of view of the light it's the moment of creation.
...
So I do think I do think absolutely that ... there will be a flourishing of religions, not a withering away. And they will flourish to the degree that they will move into the context of planet and universe. I even think that as a matter of fact that ... some of the central insights of the religions are more powerfully presented by what we know about the universe now then when they were first formulated.

~~~

Something about self-pity

Artist: Henri d Toulouse-Lautrec

Image from Wikimedia Commons

One of my Facebook friends posted the following today by Inayat Khan. I do think it is a very insightful observation:

"If one studies one's surroundings one finds that those who are happy are so because they have less thought of self. If they are unhappy it is because they think of themselves too much. A person is more bearable when he thinks less of himself. And a person is unbearable when he is always thinking of himself. There are many miseries in life, but the greatest misery is self-pity."

Now, I want to hasten to add that self-pity is not the same as self-compassion. It's very important that we have compassion for ourselves because (among other reasons) if we don't, we are likely to project that lack of compassion onto others.

Self-pity is not only unattractive, it is profoundly dis-empowering.

When you think about it, Jesus was never given to self-pity. But he certainly had compassion on himself as well as on others.
~~~

Spiritual practice idea

Artist: Georg Friedrich Kersting

Image from Wikimedia Commons

My goodness. I have actually done this (and it is a work in progress). I didn't realize before that Ralph Waldo Emerson recommended the practice:

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”

I have benefited hugely from my little collection, by the way. I really do urge everyone to try it.
~~~

The power of empathy

Artist: Alexej Kondratjewitsch Sawrassow

Image from Wikimedia Commons

All right. The following is actually a Zen koan but just think about it for a while and I think it will come to you why I put it here.

One day Chao-chou fell down in the snow and called out, "Help me up! Help me up!" A monk came and lay down beside him Chao-chou got up and went away.

~~~

The big problem with self-righteousness

Artist: Nicolas Poussin

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The late William Sloane Coffin was (and still is) one of my heroes in life. Here's something he said that I'm not sure I ever came across before today:

The temptation to moralize is strong; it is emotionally satisfying to have enemies rather than problems, to seek out culprits rather than flaws in the system. God knows it is emotionally satisfying to be righteous with that righteousness that nourishes itself on the blood of sinners. But God also knows that what is emotionally satisfying can be spiritually devastating.

Yes, it is spiritually devastating to judge others and, more than that, to justify judging others. Oh, certainly we can be intensely provoked at times. I suppose what really matters is if, upon recognizing how judgmental we have become, we are grieved by that state of affairs or whether we are determined to continue feeling smug and gratified.
~~~

Radiating from one center

Artist: Henri Rousseau

Image from Wikimedia Commons

For what it's worth, this really resonates with me:

Mystics report that every bit of the world radiates from one center - every cricket, every grain of dust, every dream, every image, everything under the sun or beyond the sun, all art and myth and wildness.  If they are right, then we have no more important task than to seek that center.

-- Scott Russell Sanders
~~~

The delicacy of Christ

Artist: Albert Edelfelt

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I know I post a lot about silence on this blog. I want to mention here that a person does not have to have an aptitude or preference for long periods of silence to benefit from the principle so beautifully honored in the quotation below.  Just a minute or so of intentional silence from time to time makes a huge difference in a person's life. Please trust me on this one!

"It is only in identifying with Christ, it is only by plunging into the great silence of God within myself, that I can love and identify with others. It is by listening to the great silence of God, and having this strange, passive dialogue in which I become aware of the silence which is the speech of God--it is only by listening to this that I am able to speak to my brother. It is only by listening to this silence that I can acquire the ingenuity of love, the delicacy of Christ in my human relationships. In this silence I become identified with Christ, I acquire a listening heart."

-- Catherine de Hueck Doherty

Interconnectedness

Artist: Caspar David Friedrich

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Here is a passage from a book by Terence Grant entitled The Silence of Unknowing. I think he's saying something terribly important here. Our collective lack of comprehension regarding how fundamentally connected we are is directly responsible for the prevailing belief that we can only succeed through competition and hostility.

Christ is the vine, we are the branches. We labor under the delusion that we are isolated from other people. The consequences are fear, suspicion and conflict--all of which are destroying our world today. Imagine what would happen if people were to drop this fantasy of separateness. What if even just the Christians were to let go of this delusion? What if we were to move beyond our little, separate self to discover our true Self, this shining sun that each of us is? There would be a revolution.

~~~

Something about purpose

Artist: Fritz von Uhde

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I'm quite certain I've posted the following before but I'm not sure where. I think it is utterly true and worthy of ongoing reflection:

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"

-- George Eliot

~~~

Making friends with silence

Artist: Vincent Van Gogh

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes I think that the loveliest, wisest, most generous thing we can do for ourselves is to make friends with silence. I see much suffering taking place within and also surrounding those unfortunates who cannot tolerate the depth and richness of experience with true silence. Here are a few thoughts and observations:

Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.- Edward Hoagland

Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary.- Peter Minard

Silence is as deep as eternity; speech, shallow as time. - Thomas Carlyle

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment. - Henry David Thoreau

And then, of course, there is my favorite (and this has been said by many but it was first told me by Bishop Mark Dyer):

"Silence is the language of God; anything else is a bad translation."
~~~

Twelfth Night reflections

From an essay by Dan Clendenin:

As I think about Epiphany, the disclosure or unveiling of the birth of Christ in all its multi-faceted dimensions, it is clear to me that the experience of disclosure is a life long journey. It is an always unfinished task. The issues of exclusion and power above are only the tip of the iceberg. Every day we ask the Lord to reveal, to unveil to us, aspects of our lives that the Christ Child claims—work, money, family, use of our time, friendships, and on and on. We pray that he would remove the scales from our spiritual eyes so that by some miracle we understand our own lives in the same manner that He does, as far as that is possible for fallen human beings.

(Image above from Wikimedia Commons)
~~~

Receptivity to the Christ

Artist: Donatello

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Is this not, perhaps, what we mean at Christmas time when we ask Christ to be born in us?

We cannot make the Kingdom of God happen, but we can put out leaves as it draws near. We can be kind to each other. We can be kind to ourselves. We can drive back the darkness a little. We can make green places within ourselves and among ourselves where God can make his Kingdom happen.

-- Frederick Buechner

~~~

Some thoughts for beginning a new year

Our poor flesh

Artist: Arthur Hughes

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The blessed son of God only
In a crib full poor did lie;
With our poor flesh and our poor blood
Was clothed that everlasting good
The Lord Christ Jesu, God's son dear,
Was a guest and a stranger here;
Us for to bring from misery,
That we might live eternally.
All this did he for us freely,
For to declare his great mercy;
All Christendom be merry therefore,
And give him thanks for evermore.

-- Miles Coverdale

~~~

Another implication of the Incarnation

Artist: Caravaggio

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Here's something the great theologian, Karl Barth, said:

“This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.”

I would submit that this is one reason it is important to experience Christmas in a fresh way each year. Even though we may know the old story very well indeed, we have the opportunity to see and understand in a greater way every time we celebrate this great Feast of the Incarnation.
~~~

A particular kind of peace

Artist: Master of the Trebon Altarpiece

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Remember, it's still Christmas, people, and will be through January 5 - Twelfth Night.

,,,there is a...kind of peace...(that) does not come either from the denial of evil or the acceptance of oppression. This kind comes from the center of us and flows through us like a conduit to the world around us. This kind of peace is the peace of those who know truth and proclaim it, who recognize oppression and refuse to accept it, who understand God’s will for the world and pursue it. This kind of peace comes with the realization that it is our obligation to birth it for the rest of the world so that what the mangers and crèches and crib sets of the world point to can become real in us—and because of us—in our own time.

- Sr Joan Chittister

Sr. Joan is definitely one of my heroes in the religious life.
~~~

One powerful implication of the Incarnation

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Here is a wonderful thought to keep before us during Christmastide:

“By virtue of Creation, and still more the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.”

-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
~~~

Joy!

Margret Hofheinz-Döring/ Galerie Brigitte Mauch Göppingen
Image from Wikimedia Commons

"...keep knocking, and the Joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who's there."

-- Rumi

~~~

Giving Christmas away

Margret Hofheinz-Döring/ Galerie Brigitte Mauch Göppingen

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I'm offering the following largely because of the words, "exuberant armfuls". That strikes me as very wonderful image:

Let me not wrap, stack, box, bag, tie, tag, bundle, seal, keep Christmas.
Christmas kept is liable to mold.
Let me give Christmas away, unwrapped, by exuberant armfuls.
Let me share, dance, live Christmas unpretentiously, merrily,
responsibly with overflowing hands, tireless steps and sparkling eyes.
Christmas given away will stay fresh—even until it comes again.

-- Linda Felver

~~~

Something about Christmas

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Here's a delightful story:

A few years back, under a cultural exchange program, a Texan family hosted a rabbi from Russia. It was Christmas time. The family took him to a local Chinese restaurant to celebrate a traditional Jewish Christmas. At the end of the meal, the waiter brought the check and presented each of them with a small brass Christmas tree ornament. They all laughed when someone pointed out that the ornaments were stamped “Made in India”, but the Rabbi began quietly crying. The family assumed that he was offended by the focus on Christmas but he smiled and said to them, “No. I was shedding tears of joy to be in a wonderful country in which a Buddhist gives a Jew a Christmas gift made by a Hindu.”

You can find it here.
~~~

Bearing God in this world

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Part of a reflection by one of my favorite preachers, Kathryn Matthews Huey:

"Barbara Brown Taylor, not surprisingly, addresses with great insight the question of Mary's "choice," her freedom to respond in this most unusual situation, and our freedom as well. Yes, Taylor has said that the angel announced the impending birth and didn't ask Mary for her assent, but there is a choice for Mary, "whether to say yes to it or no, whether to take hold of the unknown life the angel held out to her or whether to defend herself against it however she could." We have a similar choice in our own lives, Taylor says: "Like Mary, our choices often boil down to yes or no: yes, I will live this life that is being held out to me or no, I will not; yes, I will explore this unexpected turn of events, or no, I will not." You can say no to your life, Taylor says, "but you can rest assured that no angels will trouble you ever again." And then she takes a bold turn that calls for courage on our part, if we say yes to our lives: "You can take part in a thrilling and dangerous scheme with no script and no guarantees. You can agree to smuggle God into the world inside your own body" ("Mothers of God" in Gospel Medicine). How are you bearing God in this world?"

I would suggest that this is probably the most important question we could ask ourselves this time of year. (Or at any time, for that matter.)
~~~

The Absolute; the Beloved

Image from Wikimedia Commons

"The bridegroom is arising." And so it seems that the following is wonderfully appropriate for Advent:

“It is not for the concept, but for the experience, that we use the term the Beloved. The experience of this enormity we falteringly label divine is unconditioned love. Absolute openness, unbounded mercy and compassion. We use this concept, not to name the unnameable vastness of being-- our greatest joy-- but to acknowledge and claim as our birthright the wonders and healings within.”

-- Stephen Levine

~~~

Hope

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Lindy Black offers the following for Advent on her Sermon Nuggets page:

Rabbi Hugo Grynn was sent to Auschwitz as a little boy. In the midst of the concentration camp, the death and horror many Jews held onto what ever shreds of their religious observance they could. One cold winter's night Hugo's father gathered the family in the barracks. It was the first night of Chanukah...the feast of Lights. The young child watched in horror as his father took the family's last pd of butter and made a makeshift candle using a string from his ragged clothes. He then took a match and lit the "candle". "Father , no!" Hugo cried. "That butter is our last bit of food! How shall we live?"

"We can live for many days without food! We cannot live for single minute without hope. This is the fire of hope. Never let it go out. Not here. Not anywhere."

-- Willimon

~~~

Letting God participate

Artist: Giovanni Fattori

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Here's another problem with the so-called "prosperity gospel". If we only believe that God is made known in the things we want and prefer, we miss an experience of God's precense in the things that are difficult:

We can't love what we won't experience.... God enters the world through those of us who are willing to let God participate fully in our lives, in our suffering as well as our celebrations.

-- Nancy Mairs

~~~

Waking up to oursevles

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Although not overtly about John the Baptist, the following speaks to the spirit in which the Baptist preached:

Advent is a time of being deeply shaken, so that man will wake up to himself. The prerequisite for a fulfilled Advent is a renunciation of the arrogant gestures and tempting dreams with which, and in which, man is always deceiving himself.... The shaking, the awakening: with these, life merely begins to become capable of Advent. It is precisely in the severity of this awakening, in the helplessness of coming to consciousness, in the wretchedness of experiencing our limitations that the golden threads running between Heaven and earth during this season reach us; the threads that give the world a hint of the abundance to which it is called, the abundance of which it is capable.

-- Father Alfred Delp

Jesuit priest, Alfred Delp, was imprisoned and then executed by the Nazis. On the way to his execution, he whispered, "In half an hour, I'll know more than you do," to the prison chaplain accompanying him. Amazing sense of humor at such a time!

~~~

Peace - the real thing

Artist: Nikolai Galakhov

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I certainly agree with this:

"PEACE. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. It means to be in the midst of all of those things and still be calm in your heart."

-- unknown

Perhaps this is part of what St. Paul meant by "the peace that passes understanding".
~~~

Sleepers, wake!

If you listen carefully to the bass line, you can hear the watchman on the heights - pacing up and down.

Happy Advent, everybody!

We plow the fields and gather...

Artist: Camille Pissarro

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

~~~

The prayer of a great bishop

Artist: Philip De Laszlo

Image from Wikimedia Commons

By one of my heroes, Archbishop William Temple:

O God of love, we ask you to give us love:

love in our thinking, love in our speaking, love in our doing,

and love in the hidden places of our souls;

love of our neighbours, near and far;

love of our friends, old and new;

love of those whom we find it hard to bear with us;

love of those with whom we work,

and love of those with whom we take our ease;

love in joy, love in sorrow,

love in life and love in death;

that so at length we may be worthy to dwell with you,

who are eternal Love. Amen.

~~~

Self emptying

Artist: Marie Ellenrieder
Image from Wikimedia Commons

This, by Karen Armstrong, is so wonderfully expressed:

“Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, of self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.”

It's from her book, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness.
~~~

Tell me

Artist: Tsuji Kakô

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I've probably already posted this somewhere but never mind. It's by that astonishing marvel of a poet, Mary Oliver, and I truly love it. She (more than any other poet writing today, I would assert) teaches us what it means to pay attention:

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean--

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

~~~

Where is the promise of renewal?

Artist: Fra Angelico
Image from Wikimedia commons

I can hardly imagine how things would look myself:

“If contemporary Christians took seriously the possibility that those outside the boundaries of the church might hold the promise of renewal, if we ceased regarding ourselves as the source of salvation and the secular world as a potential threat, and if we emulated Jesus' example in accepting the faith and the courage of those who live beyond conventional standards of purity, well, I can hardly imagine how things would look.”

-- Greg Carey

~~~

Something about preparation

Artist: Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Some parishes will be observing All Saints today but I want to focus on the propers for Pentecost 21.

I found the following over on Lindy Black's page:

In Palestine, young couples wouldn't go away for a week-long honeymoon, instead, they would stay at their home and would have a sort of "open house" for their friends. Everyone treated the couple as royalty, the week following their wedding ceremony was undoubtedly the best week of their lives. Before the wedding, the maidens kept the bride company outside of the groom's house as she waited for him to arrive. They'd bring lamps to use while they waited because they were not allowed in the streets at night without light. Because the groom could come at any time, even at night, they had to stay and wait. No one knew exactly when he'd arrive. They didn't print invitations and invite people to come at a precise time for the wedding, it happened whenever the bridegroom came. It could be today, it could be tomorrow or it could be next week. When the bridegroom approached, a messenger would go out into the streets and declare, "Behold, the bridegroom is coming" then the maidens would accompany the bride into the house for the wedding ceremony and the week-long celebration to follow. (Barclay 354) There was a small window of opportunity to walk through the door into the house. Once the wedding began, no one else was admitted. In other words, it wasn't possible to be too early, but it was possible to be too late, you couldn't just walk in and find a seat in the back, when the door was shut, it was shut and it wouldn't be opened again. So when Jesus told this parable, His listeners had a cultural point of reference that made it come alive to them. They immediately got his point about the importance of preparation.

And I would be remiss if I didn't share this gem with you!

Back in the days when only young men prepared for pastoral ministry, a certain Dr. Eislen, president of Garrett Seminary, preached on this parable in chapel. When he reached the climax of his message, he yelled at his seminarians, "Young men, tell me, would you rather be in the light with the wise virgins, or out in the dark with the foolish virgins?" Such laughter arose that chapel was dismissed early that day!

-- Mickey Anders

If you're not familiar with the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, please go right here.

~~~

Those who have gone before

Artist: Antonello da Messina

Image from Wikimedia Commons

It's All Souls Day. Yesterday was All Saints Day. On both days we think about the departed about whom we care or who have influenced us in some way and for whom we're grateful.

Here's something I found that I really, really like:

Sometimes the saint is loved not simply for his closeness to God but for his patent humanity. The saint has a temper, flies off the handle, loses his or her cool in pursuit of a great ideal. St. Jerome, the first translator of the Bible into Latin, was famously irascible, once writing that one of his detractors "walked like a tortoise." To take another example, St. Peter is beloved not only because he was a great apostle, but for his many flaws: denying Jesus three times before the crucifixion, among them. Holiness makes its home in humanity. That insight says, “They’re not perfect. Maybe I could aspire to this level of achievement.”

-- James Martin

It reminds me of that wonderful hymn I learned as a child: "I sing a song of the saints of God..." that quite wonderfully ends, "And I mean to be one too."

May it be so for each one of us.

(A tip of the hat to Kirkepiscatoid)

~~~

Cherishing the ordinary

Artist: Mikhail Natarevich

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I've emphasized the following principle before on this blog. It bears pondering again from another writer's point of view:

The great lesson from the true mystics . . . is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's back yard.

— Abraham H. Maslow in Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences
~~~

A kind of taking stock

Artist: Paul Gauguin

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have recently come across some material about the spiritual teacher, Robert Benson. Here's something he said that speaks to me.

Sometimes letting go of a spiritual practice can be as important as adding a new one. Sometimes reshaping one to account for a new set of circumstances is needed. Sometimes there is a hole in our spiritual practice that must be filled, and we can tell it because we are beginning to run on empty.

No one knows those things unless they have a rule, formal or informal, and unless they stop to look at it from time to time and make note of what is to be found there.

Many of the people I've talked to over the years are convinced that in cultivating a spiritual and interior life we are required to take on new practices. I really like Benson's outlook here about sometimes needing to do just the opposite.

~~~

Love and pain

Artist: Dmitri Minaevich Sinodi-Popov

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I'm offering you something very brief today. It's by Ralph Waldo Emerson and I think it is profoundly focused and powerful. I plan to spend quite a bit of time reflecting on it because I think there's a lot being said here - a lot:

The love that you withhold is the pain that you carry.

~~~

Psalm 33 chanted

Oh, dear people. This is so pure, precise and very, very lovely:

Contemplation and solitude

"Hermit Woman"

Artist: Wojciech Gerson

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Here is definitely one of my favorite sayings from the Desert Mothers:

Amma Syncletica said, "There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town; they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one's mind while living in a crowd; and it is possible for those who are solitaries to live in the crowd of their own thoughts."

This saying is one I rely upon when people remark to to me, "Funny; you don't look like a hermit."

I tend to answer, "When I look like a hermit, nobody sees me."

More to the point, however, is that the value of solitude is more in one's state of mind than whether one is literally (physically) around other people or not.

~~~

Looking within

Artist: Edwin Harris

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The following was included in the email newsletter of the Diocese of Oklahoma. Including an "examen of consciousness" in one's daily routine is something I was taught in the convent. It's really a very powerful (and soothing) practice:

The Daily Examen is a technique of prayerful reflection on the events of the day in order to detect God's presence and discern his direction for us. The Examen is an ancient practice in the Church that can help us see God's hand at work in our whole experience.

The method presented here is adapted from a technique described by Ignatius Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises. St. Ignatius thought that the Examen was a gift that came directly from God, and that God wanted it to be shared as widely as possible. One of the few rules of prayer that Ignatius made for the Jesuit order was the requirement that Jesuits practice the Examen twice daily-at noon and at the end of the day. It's a habit that Jesuits, and many other Christians, practice to this day.

This is a version of the five-step Daily Examen that St. Ignatius practiced.

1. Become aware of God's presence.

2. Review the day with gratitude.

3. Pay attention to your emotions.

4. Choose one feature of the day and pray from it.

5. Look toward tomorrow.

~~~

Becoming more fully human

In case anyone is not familiar with the works of Walter Wink, you can find out more about him right here.
~~~

Our challenge

Artist: Nicholas Roerich

Image from Wikimedia commons

I was very influenced by Fr. John Main starting about twenty years ago or so. He was very much a major player in the revival of meditative practices in contemplative Christianity. Here's something he said that I like very much:

“...Our challenge as Christians is not to try to covert people around us to our way of belief but to love them, to be ourselves living incarnations of what we believe, to live what we believe and to love what we believe.”

~~~

Walk slowly, smile, drink tea

Artist: Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin
Image from Wikimedia Commons

Here's something that I think is really quite lovely and wise:

“From time to time, to remind ourselves to relax and be peaceful, we may wish to set aside some time for a retreat, a day of mindfulness, when we can walk slowly, smile, drink tea with a friend, enjoy being together as if we are the happiest people on Earth.”

It's by the marvelous Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh.
~~~

Another comforter

Take the time to listen to this, please, and let yourself be uplifted and consoled. It's only two minutes and ten seconds long!

~~~

With the heart of anyone in need

Artist: László Mednyánszky
Image from Wikimedia Commons

Dorothy Day has been one of my personal heroes for many, many years now. Here's something she said that is so very pertinent today:

Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts. But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks, with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ.

~~~

The need to give

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The other day, I came across a book published in 1946 called Peace of Mind by Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman. It was given to my mother by her aunt Freida for Christmas of 1948. My mom would have been pregnant with me at the time.

Here's an excerpt:

The primary joy of life is acceptance, approval, the sense of appreciation and companionship of our human comrades. Many people do not understand that the need for fellowship is really as deep as the need for food, and so they go throughout life accepting many substitutes for genuine, warm, simple relatedness....

There comes a time in the development of every ego when it must love its neighbors or become a twisted and stunted personality. The normal mature man and woman has with him a surplus "urge to give."

...

Man's restless yearning to give something of himself, whether it be a physical child or a spiritual child - the child of his mind - a bridge, a poem, a song, an invention, a cure of disease - is the true answer to all cynics and pessimists who maintain that man is total selfishness.

I think I'm going to read the whole book. It's dated, yes. But it seems to contain a lot of wisdom.

~~~

Under the weather...

So sorry for the lack of posting. I'm down with a really bad cold, I'm sorry to say, and will be back to normal posting when I'm feeling a bit better.

Take care, everyone!
~~~

God and the human mind

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I think both of these by W. Tozer are worthy of considerable reflection:

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
...

If God gives you a watch, are you honoring Him more by asking Him what time it is or by simply consulting the watch?

~~~