Monday, on Memorial Day in the U.S., admonitions from a variety of sources were cast out via the internet and various media outlets, all encouraging our gratitude for those who paid for freedom with their lives. It was a day to remember those whose lives were given for our nation's freedom. Several persons in my extended family and circle of relationship came to mind as I thought of what Memorial Day stands for. Certainly, the freedom to express oneself, the freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness are important and not to be taken for granted. The freedom Americans often take as a given is not enjoyed by everyone in the world. The day reminded us of the sobriety and gratitude such freedom demands.
In the spiritual realm, there is another freedom that is even more crucial, a freedom that transcends a nation's freedom or any person's liberties. Freedom in the outer world is no guarantee of freedom in the inner world. Outward freedom, that provided by governments and social structures provides us with the liberty to move about, to seek the common good, to pursue our own happiness, and to seek (or not seek) fullness of life in a way that is mutually beneficial to others within society.
Inward freedom, though, is an entirely different matter, having little to do with outward structures or circumstance, almost nothing to do with the particular political system or social arrangement in which one lives. Inner freedom is a matter of soul . . . so much a matter of soul that a person may live in a setting in which there is little or no outer freedom, and yet have an immense sense of interior freedom. Nelson Mandela, imprisoned unjustly in South Africa, comes to mind as someone who was outwardly imprisoned with almost no outer freedom, yet who lived with an amazingly high sense of interior freedom. Mandela's body could be confined for 27 years on Robben Island and in Pollsmoor Prison, but never could his soul be imprisoned.
I'm thinking today of the ways you and I live imprisoned by the things that we've gathered to ourselves in hopes they would bring us happiness. And I'm thinking of this in terms of the Gospel reading that was appointed for Monday, May 28, Memorial Day in the United States.
17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.'”
20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”
24 The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
26 The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”
27 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”
(Mark 10:17 - 27, NIV)
I don't know myself very well. Most of us don't. Day after day we busily collect to ourselves the things we think will make us happy and fulfilled . . . . the diplomas, bank account balances, job titles, houses, accolades, and much more that we cling to, hoping for a life of meaning.
Ignatius of Loyola called these things attachments, because not only do I attach them to my own sense of self, but I also attach significance to them in a way that is out of proportion to what they can actually give me.
Day to day, I tend not to be aware of those things I cling to for happiness -- they dwell in such a deeply interiorized part of me -- but when I'm seen all the way through -- "Jesus looked at him and loved him" -- by one with eyes to see my interior, the things I've clutched to myself are named for what they are.
Inner freedom begins with the grace to see or identify the things to which I cling, the things that keep me from walking the path of my unique life wholeheartedly. This seeing means I must begin to notice where I am NOT free inwardly, the places in my interior landscape in which my own compulsions or "inordinate attachments" dwell (desires that are blown out of proportion, that are beyond "ordinary" and thus "inordinate"). These attachments to which I cling are usually the people, roles, and things I cannot imagine living without. When clinging to them, I am not free, but rather tied to something in which I have invested my happiness. Think "addiction," because we are all addicts, all addicted to something, even to many things . . . praise, status, affirmation, security, money, pleasure, even to our own sickness.
The extent to which we cling to anything which is not God -- even to our own ideas or notions of God, even to our own idea of what "faith" is -- we're not truly free.
With the young man in the Gospel story, Jesus simply put his finger on the place where the man was not free. For him, the issue was money, possessions, clinging to them and holding them in a way that tied him down and prevented him from making decisions apart from his belongings.
Like all attachments, his possessions were heavy. They weighed him down and held him in place, so that he could not move on down the path in a life-giving way. He was essentially paralyzed by the things he held onto, the things he could not let go. It really didn't matter that he was a good man, a moral man, a religious man who kept commandments, because his clinging held him in place and prevented him from moving on. He was stuck.
Whatever my attachments are -- and whatever yours are -- they weigh us down. They are heavy, cumbersome. Attachments don't travel well.
Maybe a couple of practical exercises will help us.
First, seeing what is within you. In order to reflect on your own inner freedom, consider something important in your life, perhaps a person or a car or a piece of furniture. Ask yourself, "What would I be without _______?" Do the same thing with a job title or role you carry out in life: "Who would I be if I were not ______?"
Of course there are people, pets, and roles that are important to us, which we do not want to do without. Remember, though, Ignatius felt that the guideline for considering inner freedom is "inordinate attachment," in other words, attachments beyond what is ordinary and healthy, beyond what falls into the realm of "addictive behavior." (In 12-step work, the key question is often, "Is my attachment to this substance, behavior, or person 'unmanageable'?")
"Has my attachment to this person or thing become unmanageable?"
Second, NO judgement. When you begin to see yourself and the degree to which you are inwardly free or unfree, do not judge yourself as good or bad. Leave judgment at the door. It is a great grace, perhaps the greatest grace, to be able to see yourself as you truly are and to withhold judging what you see in yourself. (By the way, not judging yourself is also the first step in not judging others . . . "Love your neighbor AS YOURSELF".)
When he looked at the young man, "Jesus loved him." The phrase should not be missed and is included in the text intentionally. You and I are seen all the way through in love, not judgement.
God has seen already all your attachments, all the ways you are not inwardly free . . . and God still loves you completely. Just because you see something about yourself for the first time does not mean that part of you just arrived. It has been there all along. You are just now seeing it. So resist judging yourself. See it, name it, but don't judge it.
Third, the prayer for freedom. Once you notice an interior area in which you are not inwardly free, pray this simple prayer: "God, free me from the need to cling to ________" . . . or "God, free me from the need to be _______." That's it. You don't have to fix your lack of inner freedom. You only have to be aware of your attachment and then be willing to pray for inner freedom. Then repeat the short prayer whenever you notice an attachment weighing you down in daily life.
[I picked up this short prayer for inner freedom from Jesuit priest and missionary Max Oliva (I believe the book was Free to Pray, Free to Love), who calls this short method the "Freedom Prayer."]
We, like the man in the Gospel, are often held in place by our lack of inner freedom. We are stuck where we are. In my own life, I seem to hear regularly an invitation to awareness, to become more and more aware of my own lack of inner freedom, and to do so without judgement.
[If you are interested in a simple, yet lovingly blunt, approach to attachments and inner freedom, try Anthony de Mello's The Way to Love. In the areas of spirituality and personal unfolding, it's a top 10 Must-Read in my opinion. De Mello, a Jesuit priest from India, could be both gentle and in-your-face within the same paragraph. He's the contemporary master when it comes to inner freedom and attachments.]
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Welcoming Whatever Comes
The postures of openness and receptivity cultivate within us a spirit of hospitality and generosity. I slowly learn not to judge what comes to my door as good or bad, as helpful or hurtful. I welcome whatever shows up, whatever life brings to my door. The human experience is vast and complex, and I can never fully know what some "guest" at my door may have to teach me. When I try to apply a filter at the door, though, I pretend to know what is best for me, what can lead me to growth, what experiences or life-situations can best shape me into the person God created me to be.
Perhaps the most basic truth about spirituality is simply that the journey is going to take me to a destination I cannot imagine. For whatever I think I know about myself or about life, I have not yet glimpsed what the end of the journey is like. It takes a profound humility to say, "I don't know". In truth, God directs the journey, and I am not in charge nearly as much as I like to think.
And then the corollary: The journey is going to take me to that destination by a road I would not have chosen. Again, I am invited to the kind of humility that recognizes my limitations, my humanness, my inability to know what is truly most helpful on the spiritual journey. I can create a chart that details actions and outcomes, I can create spreadsheets that say, "If you are HERE, then you need to do THIS", but those acts basically keep me in the driver's seat. They feed my ego, my sense of being in charge. In reality, you and I are not in charge nearly as much as we like to think -- and certainly not as much as we act like we are.
I recognize, for example, that the life-situations which have most shaped me and prompted my own becoming are betrayals in relationships, cancers hidden in my body, the liminal space of transitions, the emptiness of joblessness, and the pain of grieving many losses. I would not have chosen these roads for my own becoming . . . but I was not given a choice. These are a few things that have shown up at my door. Some I have resisted, until I could resist no longer. Some I have grudgingly received. All, though, once received, have become my teachers.
Essentially, then, if I am filtering the life-experiences which show up at my door, the whatever-is, I may be closing myself off from the very things that would make me "the kind of person God has been hoping I would become" (Fr Joseph Tetlow's paraphrase of Ignatius of Loyola).
What I'm describing is a kind of unconditional living, open and receiving what is without judgment or condemnation. Further, this stance of unconditional living opens one more deeply to unconditional loving, that is, love that does not measure merit or worthiness, goodness or badness. It simply loves.
Love loves what is, as it is.
Love doesn't judge what is. Love doesn't need to change what is in order to make it more lovable. Authentic love does not love because something or someone is lovable, nor does it love because something or someone is unlovable. Love loves. Period.
The spirit of openness and receptivity, of welcome and hospitality, of unconditional loving and mercy-ing is at the heart of "The Guest House", a poem by the Persian mystic Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks.
The Guest House
Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture, still,
treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
~~ Rumi: The Book of Love, trans. by Coleman Barks, 179 – 180.
Perhaps the most basic truth about spirituality is simply that the journey is going to take me to a destination I cannot imagine. For whatever I think I know about myself or about life, I have not yet glimpsed what the end of the journey is like. It takes a profound humility to say, "I don't know". In truth, God directs the journey, and I am not in charge nearly as much as I like to think.
And then the corollary: The journey is going to take me to that destination by a road I would not have chosen. Again, I am invited to the kind of humility that recognizes my limitations, my humanness, my inability to know what is truly most helpful on the spiritual journey. I can create a chart that details actions and outcomes, I can create spreadsheets that say, "If you are HERE, then you need to do THIS", but those acts basically keep me in the driver's seat. They feed my ego, my sense of being in charge. In reality, you and I are not in charge nearly as much as we like to think -- and certainly not as much as we act like we are.
I recognize, for example, that the life-situations which have most shaped me and prompted my own becoming are betrayals in relationships, cancers hidden in my body, the liminal space of transitions, the emptiness of joblessness, and the pain of grieving many losses. I would not have chosen these roads for my own becoming . . . but I was not given a choice. These are a few things that have shown up at my door. Some I have resisted, until I could resist no longer. Some I have grudgingly received. All, though, once received, have become my teachers.
Essentially, then, if I am filtering the life-experiences which show up at my door, the whatever-is, I may be closing myself off from the very things that would make me "the kind of person God has been hoping I would become" (Fr Joseph Tetlow's paraphrase of Ignatius of Loyola).
What I'm describing is a kind of unconditional living, open and receiving what is without judgment or condemnation. Further, this stance of unconditional living opens one more deeply to unconditional loving, that is, love that does not measure merit or worthiness, goodness or badness. It simply loves.
Love loves what is, as it is.
Love doesn't judge what is. Love doesn't need to change what is in order to make it more lovable. Authentic love does not love because something or someone is lovable, nor does it love because something or someone is unlovable. Love loves. Period.
The spirit of openness and receptivity, of welcome and hospitality, of unconditional loving and mercy-ing is at the heart of "The Guest House", a poem by the Persian mystic Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks.
The Guest House
Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture, still,
treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
~~ Rumi: The Book of Love, trans. by Coleman Barks, 179 – 180.
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
Always Beginning Again
A seeker went to the monastery, as the story goes, to deepen her prayer and to discover the peace missing in her fast-paced daily existence. After several days in which she joined in the daily prayer of the monks and observed the monks in-between times, she grew a bit bored by the slow pace, lack of stimulation, and monotony of it all. Full of curiosity, she found one of the monks and asked, "And just what is it you do all day, Brother?"
The old monk answered, "We fall down and get up . . . fall down and get up . . . fall down and get up."
Brother Monk had answered with a core notion from the Rule of Benedict. "Always we begin again," says the Rule, and this idea is crucial to the Benedictine vow of ongoing or continual conversation. God is continually creating us, Benedict said, and we can never say that we have arrived, or that God's work in us is complete. We do not know all we are given to know . . . we have not yet opened all the hidden doors in the closets of our lives . . . we have not yet come to the wholeness for which we were created. God's work of conversion within us is ongoing. "Always we begin again."
On a practical level, this means daily life is full of beginnings. Each day we find ourselves at new thresholds, new challenges, new potentialities.
Some of these beginnings are obvious to us. I find myself in a season of life where most of life feels new . . . a new homeplace in a part of the world that is fresh and with a new vocational setting. In some moments, we cannot miss the newness.
But even when the beginnings are not obvious, daily we are invited to "sing to the Lord a new song" (as the psalmist invited in yesterday's blogpost). This is the Benedictine way, the way of being present to each moment as the moment arises and as we seek to live the moment in faithful love and gracious attentiveness. Again, morning by morning new mercies I see.
I find a couple of companion disciplines helpful in welcoming these beginnings. They are not disciplines you'll find written about in classical books on spiritual disciplines, but they are core practices, especially for the person who would daily journey in a contemplative posture.
Openness
Openness is the spiritual practice keeping us alert and alive to whatever comes, to whatever is is at the given moment. I find in my life -- and I observe in others with whom I have conversation -- most of us spend a great deal of time trying to change the circumstances of our lives, trying to change "what is" in order to make "what is" more to our liking or more to our benefit.
To be open means that we open ourselves to all things, whether we have willed them or not, whether they seem beneficial or not. Further, this kind of openness lessens our capacity to judge whatever comes toward us as either good or bad, as either helpful or hurtful. After all, the human tendency is to try to hold at arms length the "bad" and the "hurtful", while embracing the "good" or the "helpful". Furthermore, our tendency to judge whatever comes to our door implies that we actually know what is good/helpful or bad/hurtful.
When we open ourselves to whatever shows up at our door, we also open ourselves to the all-things-are-possible that angels frequently testify to in the scriptures. In essence, to not be open to whatever comes, to whatever is is, is to shut down the all-things-are-possible. Do you see? We can easily shut down the possibilities, the potential in any situation, simply by pre-judging it and closing ourselves off from it.
The contemplative path is open to the all-things-are-possible of God, and thus, to whatever actually comes toward us.
I love this short poem by Galway Kinnell, who uses the repetition of 9 different words to describe a prayerful openness.
Prayer
Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.
[Galway Kinnell, A New Selected Poems, 116.]
Receptivity
Metaphorically, if openness implies opening the door to what actually is, then receptivity means inviting what is to come inside. To receive what is means I do not fight it nor struggle to resist it, but allow whatever is to find its place in my life. If we are people who "always begin again," then this posture of receptivity is essential. When the "new" or the "unexpected" or the "strange beginning" shows up at our door, we must make a fresh decision to either welcome or turn it away.
Receptivity is not blind passivity, so there are times when I must find the fine line or the tension between fighting something that is unjust, while still acknowledging its reality. For example, when I was diagnosed with cancer 14 years ago, I did not deny that diagnosis. I could have resisted the diagnosis issued by the medical personnel . . . and likely would have died within a couple of weeks. I was invited to receive what was the actual state of my body at the time. But receptivity did not mean I was passive regarding the disease. I have been through rigorous chemotherapy and immunotherapy in the years since in order to combat the disease and live with some measure of health.
You might say the same thing about social justice. Being receptive is not a call to passivity, not an invitation to put our heads in the sand and say, "This bigotry and injustice is just the way life is!" Being receptive acknowledges the reality -- and even dares to ask, "how much of this reality, be it racism, sexism, entitlement, etc., lives within me?" -- but is not passive in accepting the reality as the status quo.
This is the tension those who walk a contemplative path are invited to hold. We are invited not only to keep the door to life and experience open, but also to receive into self what actually shows up.
Day after day after day, always we begin again.
The old monk answered, "We fall down and get up . . . fall down and get up . . . fall down and get up."
Brother Monk had answered with a core notion from the Rule of Benedict. "Always we begin again," says the Rule, and this idea is crucial to the Benedictine vow of ongoing or continual conversation. God is continually creating us, Benedict said, and we can never say that we have arrived, or that God's work in us is complete. We do not know all we are given to know . . . we have not yet opened all the hidden doors in the closets of our lives . . . we have not yet come to the wholeness for which we were created. God's work of conversion within us is ongoing. "Always we begin again."
On a practical level, this means daily life is full of beginnings. Each day we find ourselves at new thresholds, new challenges, new potentialities.
Some of these beginnings are obvious to us. I find myself in a season of life where most of life feels new . . . a new homeplace in a part of the world that is fresh and with a new vocational setting. In some moments, we cannot miss the newness.
But even when the beginnings are not obvious, daily we are invited to "sing to the Lord a new song" (as the psalmist invited in yesterday's blogpost). This is the Benedictine way, the way of being present to each moment as the moment arises and as we seek to live the moment in faithful love and gracious attentiveness. Again, morning by morning new mercies I see.
I find a couple of companion disciplines helpful in welcoming these beginnings. They are not disciplines you'll find written about in classical books on spiritual disciplines, but they are core practices, especially for the person who would daily journey in a contemplative posture.
Openness
Openness is the spiritual practice keeping us alert and alive to whatever comes, to whatever is is at the given moment. I find in my life -- and I observe in others with whom I have conversation -- most of us spend a great deal of time trying to change the circumstances of our lives, trying to change "what is" in order to make "what is" more to our liking or more to our benefit.
To be open means that we open ourselves to all things, whether we have willed them or not, whether they seem beneficial or not. Further, this kind of openness lessens our capacity to judge whatever comes toward us as either good or bad, as either helpful or hurtful. After all, the human tendency is to try to hold at arms length the "bad" and the "hurtful", while embracing the "good" or the "helpful". Furthermore, our tendency to judge whatever comes to our door implies that we actually know what is good/helpful or bad/hurtful.
When we open ourselves to whatever shows up at our door, we also open ourselves to the all-things-are-possible that angels frequently testify to in the scriptures. In essence, to not be open to whatever comes, to whatever is is, is to shut down the all-things-are-possible. Do you see? We can easily shut down the possibilities, the potential in any situation, simply by pre-judging it and closing ourselves off from it.
The contemplative path is open to the all-things-are-possible of God, and thus, to whatever actually comes toward us.
I love this short poem by Galway Kinnell, who uses the repetition of 9 different words to describe a prayerful openness.
Prayer
Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.
[Galway Kinnell, A New Selected Poems, 116.]
Receptivity
Metaphorically, if openness implies opening the door to what actually is, then receptivity means inviting what is to come inside. To receive what is means I do not fight it nor struggle to resist it, but allow whatever is to find its place in my life. If we are people who "always begin again," then this posture of receptivity is essential. When the "new" or the "unexpected" or the "strange beginning" shows up at our door, we must make a fresh decision to either welcome or turn it away.
Receptivity is not blind passivity, so there are times when I must find the fine line or the tension between fighting something that is unjust, while still acknowledging its reality. For example, when I was diagnosed with cancer 14 years ago, I did not deny that diagnosis. I could have resisted the diagnosis issued by the medical personnel . . . and likely would have died within a couple of weeks. I was invited to receive what was the actual state of my body at the time. But receptivity did not mean I was passive regarding the disease. I have been through rigorous chemotherapy and immunotherapy in the years since in order to combat the disease and live with some measure of health.
You might say the same thing about social justice. Being receptive is not a call to passivity, not an invitation to put our heads in the sand and say, "This bigotry and injustice is just the way life is!" Being receptive acknowledges the reality -- and even dares to ask, "how much of this reality, be it racism, sexism, entitlement, etc., lives within me?" -- but is not passive in accepting the reality as the status quo.
This is the tension those who walk a contemplative path are invited to hold. We are invited not only to keep the door to life and experience open, but also to receive into self what actually shows up.
Day after day after day, always we begin again.
Monday, May 21, 2018
Every Day . . . Singing a New Song
O sing a new song to the Lord,
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
O sing to the Lord, and bless God's name.
(Ps. 96:1)
This is the daily invitation extended to God's people, that we sing a new song each day we live. The new song is not some rehearsal of an ancient truth, nor a recitation of God's past acts of kindness . . . but rather, the very way those ancient truths and past acts of kindness are being lived out in my own fresh experience day after day. No one has lived my path before, no one has lived my life in my way, no one has taken the particular pieces of my life and held them together in just this way before. My life, connected intimately with God, is to be sung in a way that gives life to the world.
You, too, are invited to sing a new song in a way that is faithful to your experience of God and in a way that gives life to you and the world.
So I'm not so interested in a recitation of ancient propositions about God or in sharing information about God. Rather, the contemplative presence asks, "How is God shaping my life and my world today? How am I joining or resisting this 'new song'? Am I able to live with openness and receptivity this fresh day? . . . this fresh day in which whatever happens is new, not precedented, not predicted, not prescribed?"
This stance does not mean the past is unimportant, nor that I should forget the former acts of God in me or in my world. It does mean, however, that all I know of God from study and all I have experienced of God in my own journey becomes a part of a stance that lives fully "the dearest freshness deep down things" (Gerard Manley Hopkins in "God's Grandeur").
The new song the psalm-prayer encourages is new each day because no one has lived my (or your) particular path before I (or you) arrived. "O sing a new song to the Lord."
My own path has been characterized by transition in recent months, and the transition simply means there have been significant endings and daily beginnings. I continue to grieve the endings . . . separation by many miles from persons I love dearly, from the common experiences, language, and desires that brought us together. At the same time, I have found new energy in exploring both outer and inner landscapes that feel life-giving. Daily, new discoveries touch a part of me that has been starving. Morning by morning new mercies I see.
I hold, often in awkward tension, the poles of activity and passivity, both of which scream out for a total commitment to one or the other. Activity says, "Nothing happens unless you initiate it. You'll have to work hard to build an audience, market yourself, and step into this next chapter of your life."
Passivity says, "Just wait. Be patient. See what comes to you. Don't force anything. Be still."
As both extremes speak, I'm trying not to fall over the ledge on either end of the spectrum. My desire is to faithfully sing the new song that is my life in connection with God, for the sake of the world. The question, phrased in various ways depending on the day, tends to sound something like this:
In this season of my life, how am I invited to live in openness and receptivity (two primary traits of contemplative experience, I believe) the one life that is mine to live? What is my unique path? What is the way that is mine to follow? In what way am I invited to sing a new song day by day?
In my next post, I'll offer a couple of thoughts on the particular stances that seem helpful in stepping into this daily "new song" we are invited to sing. And I'll pass along a couple of poems I hope you'll find helpful, as well.
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
O sing to the Lord, and bless God's name.
(Ps. 96:1)
This is the daily invitation extended to God's people, that we sing a new song each day we live. The new song is not some rehearsal of an ancient truth, nor a recitation of God's past acts of kindness . . . but rather, the very way those ancient truths and past acts of kindness are being lived out in my own fresh experience day after day. No one has lived my path before, no one has lived my life in my way, no one has taken the particular pieces of my life and held them together in just this way before. My life, connected intimately with God, is to be sung in a way that gives life to the world.
You, too, are invited to sing a new song in a way that is faithful to your experience of God and in a way that gives life to you and the world.
So I'm not so interested in a recitation of ancient propositions about God or in sharing information about God. Rather, the contemplative presence asks, "How is God shaping my life and my world today? How am I joining or resisting this 'new song'? Am I able to live with openness and receptivity this fresh day? . . . this fresh day in which whatever happens is new, not precedented, not predicted, not prescribed?"
This stance does not mean the past is unimportant, nor that I should forget the former acts of God in me or in my world. It does mean, however, that all I know of God from study and all I have experienced of God in my own journey becomes a part of a stance that lives fully "the dearest freshness deep down things" (Gerard Manley Hopkins in "God's Grandeur").
The new song the psalm-prayer encourages is new each day because no one has lived my (or your) particular path before I (or you) arrived. "O sing a new song to the Lord."
My own path has been characterized by transition in recent months, and the transition simply means there have been significant endings and daily beginnings. I continue to grieve the endings . . . separation by many miles from persons I love dearly, from the common experiences, language, and desires that brought us together. At the same time, I have found new energy in exploring both outer and inner landscapes that feel life-giving. Daily, new discoveries touch a part of me that has been starving. Morning by morning new mercies I see.
I hold, often in awkward tension, the poles of activity and passivity, both of which scream out for a total commitment to one or the other. Activity says, "Nothing happens unless you initiate it. You'll have to work hard to build an audience, market yourself, and step into this next chapter of your life."
Passivity says, "Just wait. Be patient. See what comes to you. Don't force anything. Be still."
As both extremes speak, I'm trying not to fall over the ledge on either end of the spectrum. My desire is to faithfully sing the new song that is my life in connection with God, for the sake of the world. The question, phrased in various ways depending on the day, tends to sound something like this:
In this season of my life, how am I invited to live in openness and receptivity (two primary traits of contemplative experience, I believe) the one life that is mine to live? What is my unique path? What is the way that is mine to follow? In what way am I invited to sing a new song day by day?
In my next post, I'll offer a couple of thoughts on the particular stances that seem helpful in stepping into this daily "new song" we are invited to sing. And I'll pass along a couple of poems I hope you'll find helpful, as well.
Friday, May 18, 2018
The Great Nevertheless
I posted some thoughts yesterday about the assumptions underlying our prayer. I chose a couple of stanzas from Psalm 43 as a reference point, representing some themes that run through the Hebrew Psalms with some consistency. The psalm implies that God has rejected the person praying -- or the larger tribe to which he is committed -- with the sign of that rejection being the pray-er's "mourning" and experience of "foes" around him/her.
In short, the person praying has taken an exterior situation of oppression or difficulty and made a leap of abstraction: This must mean God is absent, or God has rejected me.
This morning, my Benedictine prayerbook (A Shorter Morning and Evening Prayer: The Psalter of The Liturgy of the Hours, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press) led me to Habakkuk 3. The external situation in the chapter again seems to be oppression, as the early verses of the chapter seek to remind God of times past when Divine intervention delivered God's people from trouble.
The chapter takes a surprising turn, though, in the final verses of chapter 3. It stands in such stark contrast to the conditional perspective of Psalm 43, it is worth giving equal time.
Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.
(Hab. 3:17-19, NIV)
I wonder . . . is the prophet offering a hypothetical situation? Or is this the actual life-circumstance of this pray-er?
The situation is dire, with most all the externals of life pulled out from underneath him . . . a failure in many respects, or at least the prospects for prosperity have been pulled out from beneath him.
The person praying, though, does not assert that God has rejected or abandoned the people, nor does he follow the "normal" patterns of assigning blame, which believes that if _____ has happened, then surely _____ must have happened to cause it.
Further, contrary to so much ancient religion -- and a good bit of contemporary "faith" as well -- the prophet does not allow his life-situation to dictate his inner life, his connection to his God.
Everything in the outer world is coming up zeroes . . . loss, diminishment, failure, fruitlessness, and the shriveling of resources.
This pray-er, though, does not blame God or theologize in any way about why this lot has befallen him (which would not change his actual situation anyway), nor does he bemoan his state of life, nor does he wail for better days to come. Rather, this saint celebrates what is not broken and can NEVER be severed, which is his connection with God.
He is held by Love and Mercy . . . and whatever his situation in life, that is enough.
Nevertheless . . .
In short, the person praying has taken an exterior situation of oppression or difficulty and made a leap of abstraction: This must mean God is absent, or God has rejected me.
This morning, my Benedictine prayerbook (A Shorter Morning and Evening Prayer: The Psalter of The Liturgy of the Hours, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press) led me to Habakkuk 3. The external situation in the chapter again seems to be oppression, as the early verses of the chapter seek to remind God of times past when Divine intervention delivered God's people from trouble.
The chapter takes a surprising turn, though, in the final verses of chapter 3. It stands in such stark contrast to the conditional perspective of Psalm 43, it is worth giving equal time.
Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.
(Hab. 3:17-19, NIV)
I wonder . . . is the prophet offering a hypothetical situation? Or is this the actual life-circumstance of this pray-er?
The situation is dire, with most all the externals of life pulled out from underneath him . . . a failure in many respects, or at least the prospects for prosperity have been pulled out from beneath him.
The person praying, though, does not assert that God has rejected or abandoned the people, nor does he follow the "normal" patterns of assigning blame, which believes that if _____ has happened, then surely _____ must have happened to cause it.
Further, contrary to so much ancient religion -- and a good bit of contemporary "faith" as well -- the prophet does not allow his life-situation to dictate his inner life, his connection to his God.
Everything in the outer world is coming up zeroes . . . loss, diminishment, failure, fruitlessness, and the shriveling of resources.
This pray-er, though, does not blame God or theologize in any way about why this lot has befallen him (which would not change his actual situation anyway), nor does he bemoan his state of life, nor does he wail for better days to come. Rather, this saint celebrates what is not broken and can NEVER be severed, which is his connection with God.
He is held by Love and Mercy . . . and whatever his situation in life, that is enough.
Nevertheless . . .
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Discovering What Lies beneath the Prayer
For over 25 years I have prayed psalms as a part of my regular practice. I started when a mentor said the biblical Psalms were the prayerbook of the Bible, suggesting that Jesus prayed the Psalms. At first I prayed them methodically, with a rigid "must-do" mentality. I had to do that, otherwise I would have quickly given up. Yes, I found them full of violence, hatred, and "us-versus-them" dualism, but honestly, in those early days I had identified many perceived "enemies" to my own vision for life, so I was able to offer God my psalm-based prayers of vengeance and venom aimed toward those who were my persecutors. If I'm to be completely honest, the psalms I prayed literally in those days gave expression to much of what my life felt like at the time.
Still, there came a time in my own spiritual journeying when the psalms began to be more difficult to pray . . . when I realized that my enemies were not nearly as external (out there) as they were internal (in here) within my own life. I began to imagine what these awkward prayers might sound like if prayed with a different consciousness. These musings prompted me to begin jotting down my own prayers, based on the biblical Psalms, but standing in a bit different place.
I think -- no, I know -- theologians would have massive issues with what I began to do. A couple of them have written about the sanctity of these prayers, coming as they do from the Hebrew people as an expression of their experience of God, life, and neighbors in a very particular context. These persons would say, I believe, that no one has a right to tamper with the experience of this people of God. For all the hatred and enmity expressed in the psalms, these scholars would say that most importantly, the Psalms exist as prayer. That is, they take hatred and impulses to violence directly to God in honesty. The people present how they truly feel to this God who has reached toward them with covenant love. These pray-ers are connected deeply to God and thus, do not live in fear that they will receive a Divine cold-shoulder simply because their hatred consumes them.
I get it. But I also want to bring a different consciousness to the psalms. I understand what these astute theological minds say about the need for honest expression in prayer, but I also find that the kind of dualism (either-or thinking . . . insiders vs outsiders mentality) prayed in the biblical Psalms becomes license for contemporary persons who believe retribution, vengeance, and human violence is "the will of God." More fundamentally, persons feel justified in their own experience as THE way, vilifying anyone who disagrees as "the enemy" in ways that perpetuate divisions and hatred.
The question I ask today is: "What lies beneath a psalm when we pray it?" Or for that matter, what lies beneath any spoken prayer we offer to God?
What assumptions do we make about God when we pray as we do?
What assumptions do we make about life? . . . about ourselves? . . . about other people (including "enemies" or "our people")? . . . about the created world?
I'll give an example. Yesterday I spent time with Psalm 43. The first two stanzas of the prayer go like this:
Defend me, O God, and plead my cause
against a godless nation.
From deceitful and cunning men
rescue me, O God.
Since you, O God, are my stronghold,
why have you rejected me?
Why do I go mourning
oppressed by the foe?
The pray-er believes himself or herself to be up against a "godless nation", while clearly believing himself/herself to be a God-person, hence the repetition of "O God" through the two stanzas. These "godless" ones are deceitful and cunning, thus the prayer for God to defend, to plead her cause, and to rescue. Clearly, this person praying believes that she has made God her "stronghold."
The assumption, then, is that God should protect, defend, and rescue such people who are faithful to God. Instead, the person praying experiences her situation of being "oppressed by the foe" as being "rejected" by God.
Do you see the underlying thread? "I have made God my stronghold. But in my actual life-experience, I am oppressed by my foes and thus in mourning. That means God has rejected me."
I don't expect the person who first prayed or wrote this psalm to have a different consciousness. He/she prayed as best they understood God, themselves, and life. They prayed honestly out of their experience of God.
But neither should I -- nor you -- be expected to pray with their consciousness . . . that is, with an Ancient Near Eastern understanding of God, life, self, and others.
For example, what might it mean if I did not assume that all those who disagree with me are "godless, deceitful, and cunning"? They may be, but in some ways I am, too. In that case, why would I assume that God would attend to my prayer any more than God attends to their prayer?
Further, assuming that I have, in fact, made God my stronghold -- whatever that might mean -- is it really a sign of God's rejection of me if I find myself in grief or mourning? Has God actually turned God's back on me if something in life is squeezing me or "oppressing" me? Is that truly a valid assumption? Because if I go there, I am implicitly suggesting that God rewards goodness and punishes badness . . . that God is present to me when things are on the up-and-up, but turns away from me when I face obstacles.
Finally, two things:
1. Pray the Psalms. I'm still an advocate for praying the many psalms in the Hebrew scriptures. But bring your own understanding of God, your self, others, and life to your prayer. If you find a phrase or line that is difficult for you to pray, explore why it is difficult for you. What in you resists the words of the actual psalm? How is your understanding of God different from what you are praying in the actual psalm? How would you pray it differently? Then write your own prayer.
2. Be open to your own ongoing unfolding. Don't become too attached to your own prayer, as if you have arrived at a final state of completion when you come to a different understanding of a psalm-prayer. You, I, and all of us are continually unfolding, so don't get locked into the way you understand God today . . . or the way you pray today. . . . The near-fatal mistake in spirituality is to settle in where you are, to count your present place in life as the end or the destination, when in fact all of us are ever and always on the way.
So pray the psalms in your own way. But hold them loosely. Don't be surprised, if you keep up the practice, that at some point in the future you find yourself with a different take on a psalm than you have now. We're all about the journey . . . the journey that leads on and on into the boundless future.
Still, there came a time in my own spiritual journeying when the psalms began to be more difficult to pray . . . when I realized that my enemies were not nearly as external (out there) as they were internal (in here) within my own life. I began to imagine what these awkward prayers might sound like if prayed with a different consciousness. These musings prompted me to begin jotting down my own prayers, based on the biblical Psalms, but standing in a bit different place.
I think -- no, I know -- theologians would have massive issues with what I began to do. A couple of them have written about the sanctity of these prayers, coming as they do from the Hebrew people as an expression of their experience of God, life, and neighbors in a very particular context. These persons would say, I believe, that no one has a right to tamper with the experience of this people of God. For all the hatred and enmity expressed in the psalms, these scholars would say that most importantly, the Psalms exist as prayer. That is, they take hatred and impulses to violence directly to God in honesty. The people present how they truly feel to this God who has reached toward them with covenant love. These pray-ers are connected deeply to God and thus, do not live in fear that they will receive a Divine cold-shoulder simply because their hatred consumes them.
I get it. But I also want to bring a different consciousness to the psalms. I understand what these astute theological minds say about the need for honest expression in prayer, but I also find that the kind of dualism (either-or thinking . . . insiders vs outsiders mentality) prayed in the biblical Psalms becomes license for contemporary persons who believe retribution, vengeance, and human violence is "the will of God." More fundamentally, persons feel justified in their own experience as THE way, vilifying anyone who disagrees as "the enemy" in ways that perpetuate divisions and hatred.
The question I ask today is: "What lies beneath a psalm when we pray it?" Or for that matter, what lies beneath any spoken prayer we offer to God?
What assumptions do we make about God when we pray as we do?
What assumptions do we make about life? . . . about ourselves? . . . about other people (including "enemies" or "our people")? . . . about the created world?
I'll give an example. Yesterday I spent time with Psalm 43. The first two stanzas of the prayer go like this:
Defend me, O God, and plead my cause
against a godless nation.
From deceitful and cunning men
rescue me, O God.
Since you, O God, are my stronghold,
why have you rejected me?
Why do I go mourning
oppressed by the foe?
The pray-er believes himself or herself to be up against a "godless nation", while clearly believing himself/herself to be a God-person, hence the repetition of "O God" through the two stanzas. These "godless" ones are deceitful and cunning, thus the prayer for God to defend, to plead her cause, and to rescue. Clearly, this person praying believes that she has made God her "stronghold."
The assumption, then, is that God should protect, defend, and rescue such people who are faithful to God. Instead, the person praying experiences her situation of being "oppressed by the foe" as being "rejected" by God.
Do you see the underlying thread? "I have made God my stronghold. But in my actual life-experience, I am oppressed by my foes and thus in mourning. That means God has rejected me."
I don't expect the person who first prayed or wrote this psalm to have a different consciousness. He/she prayed as best they understood God, themselves, and life. They prayed honestly out of their experience of God.
But neither should I -- nor you -- be expected to pray with their consciousness . . . that is, with an Ancient Near Eastern understanding of God, life, self, and others.
For example, what might it mean if I did not assume that all those who disagree with me are "godless, deceitful, and cunning"? They may be, but in some ways I am, too. In that case, why would I assume that God would attend to my prayer any more than God attends to their prayer?
Further, assuming that I have, in fact, made God my stronghold -- whatever that might mean -- is it really a sign of God's rejection of me if I find myself in grief or mourning? Has God actually turned God's back on me if something in life is squeezing me or "oppressing" me? Is that truly a valid assumption? Because if I go there, I am implicitly suggesting that God rewards goodness and punishes badness . . . that God is present to me when things are on the up-and-up, but turns away from me when I face obstacles.
Finally, two things:
1. Pray the Psalms. I'm still an advocate for praying the many psalms in the Hebrew scriptures. But bring your own understanding of God, your self, others, and life to your prayer. If you find a phrase or line that is difficult for you to pray, explore why it is difficult for you. What in you resists the words of the actual psalm? How is your understanding of God different from what you are praying in the actual psalm? How would you pray it differently? Then write your own prayer.
2. Be open to your own ongoing unfolding. Don't become too attached to your own prayer, as if you have arrived at a final state of completion when you come to a different understanding of a psalm-prayer. You, I, and all of us are continually unfolding, so don't get locked into the way you understand God today . . . or the way you pray today. . . . The near-fatal mistake in spirituality is to settle in where you are, to count your present place in life as the end or the destination, when in fact all of us are ever and always on the way.
So pray the psalms in your own way. But hold them loosely. Don't be surprised, if you keep up the practice, that at some point in the future you find yourself with a different take on a psalm than you have now. We're all about the journey . . . the journey that leads on and on into the boundless future.
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Forgiveness: A Poem
forgiveness
after winter's harshness
the slow greening
again
of spring
April 7, 2018
May 12, 2018
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
A Psalm 42 Prayer
A Prayer from Psalm 42:1-4 in Contemplative Voice
Like the deer traversing ravines, hills, and woods
between Lake Ann and Lake Brittany
constantly moving toward
fresh sources of water
So my soul’s thirst
for you
for the lost oneness
in which I was created
My seeking will not stop
- restless soul -
until the trek
ends in your heart
when I am at home in you
drinking from the never-ending spring
So much in daily life
brings pain and confusion
I get lost in the bramble
And then my own inner world --
mixed motives and desire for affirmation
the clamor for success and a vague yearning for more
addictive patterns --
All, in their own way, manifestations
of this soul-hunger
that fuels my searching
The memory, then, of fleeting moments
when the oneness has overtaken me
when tasting the sweetness
kept me on the path
a foretaste of some greater union
than I’ve imagined
the recovery of that
which I didn’t know I had lost
the coming home
again
for the first time
Like the deer traversing ravines, hills, and woods
between Lake Ann and Lake Brittany
constantly moving toward
fresh sources of water
So my soul’s thirst
for you
for the lost oneness
in which I was created
My seeking will not stop
- restless soul -
until the trek
ends in your heart
when I am at home in you
drinking from the never-ending spring
So much in daily life
brings pain and confusion
I get lost in the bramble
And then my own inner world --
mixed motives and desire for affirmation
the clamor for success and a vague yearning for more
addictive patterns --
All, in their own way, manifestations
of this soul-hunger
that fuels my searching
The memory, then, of fleeting moments
when the oneness has overtaken me
when tasting the sweetness
kept me on the path
a foretaste of some greater union
than I’ve imagined
the recovery of that
which I didn’t know I had lost
the coming home
again
for the first time
Monday, May 14, 2018
The Soul's Thirst
Psalm 42:1 – 4 (NIV)
1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One[d]
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.
Where I now live in Northwest Arkansas, deer are everywhere, frequently roadside both day and night, and often visiting near our house. The locals say they are always moving between bodies of water, finding the fresh water in streams and creeks, as well as traversing familiar trails between the two lakes that are about a mile apart, one east and one west of our home. The deer are never far from that which is most needful for their existence.
This, says the prayer, is what the human soul is like. No matter what happens in life on the exterior level, no matter what arises, the tragedies, the confusions, life's setbacks, the dreams that will never come true . . through it all, there is a part of every human person that is thirsty only for the Source of life. Our soul's thirst for God is the inner fuel that keeps you and me moving and seeking, the interior spark that will not settle, will not stop yearning, even when that yearning leads us to explore that which will not satisfy. Most of life, including the desire for more, the yearning for affirmation, the striving for success, and any addictive behavior (we're ALL addicted to something, and most of us, to many things!!) . . . all of it is a result of this soul's unquenchability, the soul's restlessness that only finds its rest in God.
So the various shapes life takes, even those grossly misdirected steps, are merely expressions of a soul-thirst that is looking to be quenched. You and I and all humans were created, not only with this soul-longing for God, but for union with God which is part of our created DNA. We yearn for oneness, for wholeness, and this yearning drives us. Life's journey is mostly about our search, our relentless seeking -- even when we don't realize we are seeking this wholeness -- for this union.
An ancient teaching parable paints a helpful image for our frequently misguided seeking. The story is about a teacher who had lost his keys and was in the grass on his hands and knees looking for them. As his students passed by one at a time, each would ask him, "What are you doing?" His reply was always the same: "I've lost my keys and I'm trying to find them." So one at a time, the passers-by joined him on hands and knees, combing through the grass looking for the lost keys.
Finally in frustration, one of the students gathered the courage to ask the teacher, "Are you sure you lost your keys here in the grass?"
The teacher replied, "Oh no. I lost my keys in the house."
"Then why are we looking for the keys in the grass?"
"Because," replied the teacher, "there is no light in the house, so I thought it best to look here where there is light."
Fr Thomas Keating, when he tells the story, reminds us that this is the human condition: We have lost the keys to happiness and fulfillment, and we spend a lifetime trying to find them in the wrong places.
After a reading from Psalm 42, one of my Benedictine prayer books offers a prayer that God would "inspire us to yearn for you always, like the deer for running streams." And I have a minor objection: deer don't need to be "inspired" to find fresh sources of water. It's native to them, and essential for their survival.
You and I, too, don't have to be prompted nor be inspired to yearn for God. We were created with that yearning in our souls, knit thoroughly within our spiritual DNA. Longing for God and for wholeness fuels our daily seeking, even when we don't know we are seeking. We are merely asked, 1.) to become more aware of our seeking, and 2.) to grow up in our recognition of that which does not quench the soul's thirst.
Tomorrow I'll post my own prayer based on these 4 verses of Psalm 42.
1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One[d]
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.
Where I now live in Northwest Arkansas, deer are everywhere, frequently roadside both day and night, and often visiting near our house. The locals say they are always moving between bodies of water, finding the fresh water in streams and creeks, as well as traversing familiar trails between the two lakes that are about a mile apart, one east and one west of our home. The deer are never far from that which is most needful for their existence.
This, says the prayer, is what the human soul is like. No matter what happens in life on the exterior level, no matter what arises, the tragedies, the confusions, life's setbacks, the dreams that will never come true . . through it all, there is a part of every human person that is thirsty only for the Source of life. Our soul's thirst for God is the inner fuel that keeps you and me moving and seeking, the interior spark that will not settle, will not stop yearning, even when that yearning leads us to explore that which will not satisfy. Most of life, including the desire for more, the yearning for affirmation, the striving for success, and any addictive behavior (we're ALL addicted to something, and most of us, to many things!!) . . . all of it is a result of this soul's unquenchability, the soul's restlessness that only finds its rest in God.
So the various shapes life takes, even those grossly misdirected steps, are merely expressions of a soul-thirst that is looking to be quenched. You and I and all humans were created, not only with this soul-longing for God, but for union with God which is part of our created DNA. We yearn for oneness, for wholeness, and this yearning drives us. Life's journey is mostly about our search, our relentless seeking -- even when we don't realize we are seeking this wholeness -- for this union.
An ancient teaching parable paints a helpful image for our frequently misguided seeking. The story is about a teacher who had lost his keys and was in the grass on his hands and knees looking for them. As his students passed by one at a time, each would ask him, "What are you doing?" His reply was always the same: "I've lost my keys and I'm trying to find them." So one at a time, the passers-by joined him on hands and knees, combing through the grass looking for the lost keys.
Finally in frustration, one of the students gathered the courage to ask the teacher, "Are you sure you lost your keys here in the grass?"
The teacher replied, "Oh no. I lost my keys in the house."
"Then why are we looking for the keys in the grass?"
"Because," replied the teacher, "there is no light in the house, so I thought it best to look here where there is light."
Fr Thomas Keating, when he tells the story, reminds us that this is the human condition: We have lost the keys to happiness and fulfillment, and we spend a lifetime trying to find them in the wrong places.
After a reading from Psalm 42, one of my Benedictine prayer books offers a prayer that God would "inspire us to yearn for you always, like the deer for running streams." And I have a minor objection: deer don't need to be "inspired" to find fresh sources of water. It's native to them, and essential for their survival.
You and I, too, don't have to be prompted nor be inspired to yearn for God. We were created with that yearning in our souls, knit thoroughly within our spiritual DNA. Longing for God and for wholeness fuels our daily seeking, even when we don't know we are seeking. We are merely asked, 1.) to become more aware of our seeking, and 2.) to grow up in our recognition of that which does not quench the soul's thirst.
Tomorrow I'll post my own prayer based on these 4 verses of Psalm 42.
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
Julian of Norwich for Today . . . uh, I mean, "for Yesterday"
The second most famous resident of Norwich (my friend Peter) reminded me that yesterday was the Feast Day of the most famous resident of Norwich, the 14th century saint known as Julian of Norwich. She continues to be an important voice in Christian spirituality and mysticism for many reasons. I'll mention only two of them here, then include an excerpt from the "revelations" or "showings" she received from God on May 8, 1373.
First, Julian was a woman -- in a world dominated by men -- who dared to claim that she had received a vision from God . . . and even more remarkably, dared to write about her vision in a time when women did not make such claims about God nor have the freedom to write about them. From a contemporary perspective, even as women continue to struggle for equality in the world and workplace, it is difficult to overstate how radical was Julian's courage in the 14th century.
Second, as Julian reported the revelation she received, she drew a picture of a God very different from the images of God that dominated her time. Rather than portraying God as a harsh ogre who was intent on punishing people for sin, a God who was angry with humans, full of vindictive spite, Julian reported her encounter with a God who was all love. God is "our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us" with a tender love that will never desert us. (Julian of Norwich: Showings, in the Classics of Western Spirituality, p. 183)
Julian's well-known vision of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of her hand, illustrated her sense of God's always-everywhere love: "What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God." (Julian of Norwich: Showings, in the Classics of Western Spirituality, p. 183)
She also noted that God was as much "Mother" as "Father", and that all the attributes of a loving, nurturing mother are found in God . . . again, a brave and radical notion for her time (and still difficult for many modern persons to accept!).
Jesus Christ is our true Mother. We have our being from him, where the foundation of motherhood begins, with all the sweet protection of love which endlessly follows.
As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother, and he revealed that in everything, and especially in these sweet words where he says: I am he; that is to say: I am he, the power and goodness of fatherhood; I am he, the wisdom and the lovingness of motherhood; I am he, the light and the grace which is all blessed love; I am he, the Trinity; I am he, the unity; I am he, the great supreme goodness of every kind of thing; I am he who makes you to love; I am he who makes you to long; I am he, the endless fulfilling of all true desires. For where the soul is highest, noblest, most honourable, still it is lowest, meekest and mildest. . . .
And so Jesus is our true Mother in nature by our first creation, and he is our true Mother in grace by his taking our created nature. All the lovely works and all the sweet loving offices of beloved motherhood are appropriated to the second person, for in him we have this godly will, whole and safe forever, both in nature and in grace, from his own goodness proper to him.
I understand three ways of contemplating motherhood in God. The first is the foundation of our nature’s creation; the second is his taking of our nature, where the motherhood of grace begins; the third is the motherhood at work. And in that, by the same grace, everything is penetrated, in length and in breadth, in height and in depth without end; and it is all one love. . . .
The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life; and with all the sweet sacraments he sustains us most mercifully and graciously . . . .
(Julian of Norwich: Showings, in Classics of Western Spirituality, pp. 295 – 298)
Finally, Thomas Merton shared his sense of the importance of Julian leaning into her own experience of God, rather than leaning into someone else's God-experience:
Julian of Norwich is without doubt one of the most wonderful of all Christian voices. She gets greater and greater in my eyes as I grow older and whereas in the old days I used to be crazy about St. John of the Cross, I would not exchange him now for Julian if you gave me the world and the Indies and all the Spanish mystics rolled up in one bundle. I think that Julian of Norwich is with Newman the greatest English theologian. She is really that. For she reasons from her experience of the substantial center of the great Christian mystery of Redemption. She gives her experience and her deductions, clearly, separating the two. And the experience is of course nothing merely subjective. It is the objective mystery of Christ as apprehended by her, with the mind and formation of a fourteenth century English woman.
(Thomas Merton, Seeds of Destruction, pp. 274 – 275)
First, Julian was a woman -- in a world dominated by men -- who dared to claim that she had received a vision from God . . . and even more remarkably, dared to write about her vision in a time when women did not make such claims about God nor have the freedom to write about them. From a contemporary perspective, even as women continue to struggle for equality in the world and workplace, it is difficult to overstate how radical was Julian's courage in the 14th century.
Second, as Julian reported the revelation she received, she drew a picture of a God very different from the images of God that dominated her time. Rather than portraying God as a harsh ogre who was intent on punishing people for sin, a God who was angry with humans, full of vindictive spite, Julian reported her encounter with a God who was all love. God is "our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us" with a tender love that will never desert us. (Julian of Norwich: Showings, in the Classics of Western Spirituality, p. 183)
Julian's well-known vision of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of her hand, illustrated her sense of God's always-everywhere love: "What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God." (Julian of Norwich: Showings, in the Classics of Western Spirituality, p. 183)
She also noted that God was as much "Mother" as "Father", and that all the attributes of a loving, nurturing mother are found in God . . . again, a brave and radical notion for her time (and still difficult for many modern persons to accept!).
Jesus Christ is our true Mother. We have our being from him, where the foundation of motherhood begins, with all the sweet protection of love which endlessly follows.
As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother, and he revealed that in everything, and especially in these sweet words where he says: I am he; that is to say: I am he, the power and goodness of fatherhood; I am he, the wisdom and the lovingness of motherhood; I am he, the light and the grace which is all blessed love; I am he, the Trinity; I am he, the unity; I am he, the great supreme goodness of every kind of thing; I am he who makes you to love; I am he who makes you to long; I am he, the endless fulfilling of all true desires. For where the soul is highest, noblest, most honourable, still it is lowest, meekest and mildest. . . .
And so Jesus is our true Mother in nature by our first creation, and he is our true Mother in grace by his taking our created nature. All the lovely works and all the sweet loving offices of beloved motherhood are appropriated to the second person, for in him we have this godly will, whole and safe forever, both in nature and in grace, from his own goodness proper to him.
I understand three ways of contemplating motherhood in God. The first is the foundation of our nature’s creation; the second is his taking of our nature, where the motherhood of grace begins; the third is the motherhood at work. And in that, by the same grace, everything is penetrated, in length and in breadth, in height and in depth without end; and it is all one love. . . .
The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life; and with all the sweet sacraments he sustains us most mercifully and graciously . . . .
(Julian of Norwich: Showings, in Classics of Western Spirituality, pp. 295 – 298)
Finally, Thomas Merton shared his sense of the importance of Julian leaning into her own experience of God, rather than leaning into someone else's God-experience:
Julian of Norwich is without doubt one of the most wonderful of all Christian voices. She gets greater and greater in my eyes as I grow older and whereas in the old days I used to be crazy about St. John of the Cross, I would not exchange him now for Julian if you gave me the world and the Indies and all the Spanish mystics rolled up in one bundle. I think that Julian of Norwich is with Newman the greatest English theologian. She is really that. For she reasons from her experience of the substantial center of the great Christian mystery of Redemption. She gives her experience and her deductions, clearly, separating the two. And the experience is of course nothing merely subjective. It is the objective mystery of Christ as apprehended by her, with the mind and formation of a fourteenth century English woman.
(Thomas Merton, Seeds of Destruction, pp. 274 – 275)
Monday, May 7, 2018
The Slow Work of the Spirit of Truth
"When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me." (John 15:26)
Jesus described the role of the Holy Spirit as an Advocate, as One Who Speaks on Behalf of another. In John 15, Jesus used the phrase "Spirit of truth" to describe the Spirit's work. Sacred Space 2018, the prayerbook of the Irish Jesuits, synthesizes the idea this way: "The work of the Holy Spirit affirms the life and love of Jesus, giving witness to what is true."
I wrestle with this notion of "truth" and what is "true." Too many, in my experience, claim the truth -- usually their own experience or opinion or way of seeing the world -- as a single concept or idea which is infallible and to which all persons must gravitate. Of course, my notion of truth is correct and yours is faulty, even though you feel YOUR notion of truth is correct and mine is faulty. And so we go to war either as peoples or groups or isolated persons to defend what we believe truth is.
I want to play Pilate for just a moment, the Roman governor who had a bound Jesus before him and who was under compulsion by Jewish leaders to render some kind of verdict about Jesus.
As Pilate tried to discern Jesus' identity, as well as his guilt or innocence, Jesus said to him, "The reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. (Jn. 18:37-38)
As Frederick Buechner imagines the story, he says Jesus did not answer Pilate, at least not with words. He just stands there. He stands. And he stands there.
"What is truth?" Buechner implies Jesus answers by simply standing before Pilate. He embodies truth.
Buechner, though, merely hit upon what seems most obvious. I find it possible to affirm that Jesus IS the truth -- which I have for decades -- while still not living the experience of Jesus as the truth -- which has been my intentional pursuit for only a few years.
The more difficult question, to me anyway, is, "How does the Spirit of truth animate my life? How is the Spirit affirming the life and love of Jesus WITHIN ME, giving witness through my lived-experience to what is true?"
With Pilate, I ask, "What is truth?"
As the Spirit of truth, God seems most interested in accompanying each of us in the ongoing quest to live the truth in our own context . . . to have what Fr Thomas Keating has often referred to as a "lived experience of Jesus." That means this Divine Spirit aids each person in their openness to and pursuit of what is most true . . . about God, within the self, inside others, and about the created world.
For example, what is most true about me? What is my deepest and most authentic truth? Like you and like every other human on the planet, I am given to believing lies about myself, lies convincing me both of my abundant goodness AND of my overwhelming badness. I am prone to varnishing the truth of my self in convenient and self-serving ways, creating illusions that I want to believe about my self or that I want you to believe about me. None of us are particularly adept, at least for a great long time, at recognizing these illusions about ourselves.
Further, we can live with these illusions for such a long time that they really do become woven into the fabric of our lives, causing the lies to be ingrained tightly into our own self-image. After awhile we cannot see the truth from the falsehood. We see that happen to others -- even in public figures -- far more quickly than we recognize this bent toward illusion in ourselves.
If I played out the example even more, I could ask, "What is the truth about God I have not let myself believe . . .perhaps because it lies outside what I was brought up to believe about God?"
Or, "What is true about this other person that I have not yet seen and acknowledged . . . perhaps because to see that truth about him/her would mean I'd have to forgive them?"
Or, "What is the truth of the created world I have resisted . . . perhaps because it would make my personal lifestyle uncomfortable?"
The Spirit of truth, according to my vision, is the Spirit's work of nudging me slowly, almost imperceptibly, to see truthfully . . . God, self, others, and the world. On the other hand, the Spirit of truth seems NOT to move each of us toward a common belief system or ideology, as if being a capitalist is true and being a socialist is false. Rather, the Spirit of truth is gradually shaping my life so that the life and love of Jesus -- who IS the Truth -- becomes my own experience in the world.
Spirituality, after all, is about seeing first and foremost, seeing what is true, seeing what is real, letting go of illusions and the haze of what I want to see in favor of seeing what is actually present. And this seems to be the work that the Spirit of truth is interested in, yet which is hardly ever talked about in Christian circles. The Spirit invests sacred energy in this animating work of seeing, making connections, noticing what is always and everywhere true.
Perhaps you would wrestle with your own answers . . .
"What is truth?"
"What is the animating work of the Spirit of truth in my own life?"
Jesus described the role of the Holy Spirit as an Advocate, as One Who Speaks on Behalf of another. In John 15, Jesus used the phrase "Spirit of truth" to describe the Spirit's work. Sacred Space 2018, the prayerbook of the Irish Jesuits, synthesizes the idea this way: "The work of the Holy Spirit affirms the life and love of Jesus, giving witness to what is true."
I wrestle with this notion of "truth" and what is "true." Too many, in my experience, claim the truth -- usually their own experience or opinion or way of seeing the world -- as a single concept or idea which is infallible and to which all persons must gravitate. Of course, my notion of truth is correct and yours is faulty, even though you feel YOUR notion of truth is correct and mine is faulty. And so we go to war either as peoples or groups or isolated persons to defend what we believe truth is.
I want to play Pilate for just a moment, the Roman governor who had a bound Jesus before him and who was under compulsion by Jewish leaders to render some kind of verdict about Jesus.
As Pilate tried to discern Jesus' identity, as well as his guilt or innocence, Jesus said to him, "The reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. (Jn. 18:37-38)
As Frederick Buechner imagines the story, he says Jesus did not answer Pilate, at least not with words. He just stands there. He stands. And he stands there.
"What is truth?" Buechner implies Jesus answers by simply standing before Pilate. He embodies truth.
Buechner, though, merely hit upon what seems most obvious. I find it possible to affirm that Jesus IS the truth -- which I have for decades -- while still not living the experience of Jesus as the truth -- which has been my intentional pursuit for only a few years.
The more difficult question, to me anyway, is, "How does the Spirit of truth animate my life? How is the Spirit affirming the life and love of Jesus WITHIN ME, giving witness through my lived-experience to what is true?"
With Pilate, I ask, "What is truth?"
As the Spirit of truth, God seems most interested in accompanying each of us in the ongoing quest to live the truth in our own context . . . to have what Fr Thomas Keating has often referred to as a "lived experience of Jesus." That means this Divine Spirit aids each person in their openness to and pursuit of what is most true . . . about God, within the self, inside others, and about the created world.
For example, what is most true about me? What is my deepest and most authentic truth? Like you and like every other human on the planet, I am given to believing lies about myself, lies convincing me both of my abundant goodness AND of my overwhelming badness. I am prone to varnishing the truth of my self in convenient and self-serving ways, creating illusions that I want to believe about my self or that I want you to believe about me. None of us are particularly adept, at least for a great long time, at recognizing these illusions about ourselves.
Further, we can live with these illusions for such a long time that they really do become woven into the fabric of our lives, causing the lies to be ingrained tightly into our own self-image. After awhile we cannot see the truth from the falsehood. We see that happen to others -- even in public figures -- far more quickly than we recognize this bent toward illusion in ourselves.
If I played out the example even more, I could ask, "What is the truth about God I have not let myself believe . . .perhaps because it lies outside what I was brought up to believe about God?"
Or, "What is true about this other person that I have not yet seen and acknowledged . . . perhaps because to see that truth about him/her would mean I'd have to forgive them?"
Or, "What is the truth of the created world I have resisted . . . perhaps because it would make my personal lifestyle uncomfortable?"
The Spirit of truth, according to my vision, is the Spirit's work of nudging me slowly, almost imperceptibly, to see truthfully . . . God, self, others, and the world. On the other hand, the Spirit of truth seems NOT to move each of us toward a common belief system or ideology, as if being a capitalist is true and being a socialist is false. Rather, the Spirit of truth is gradually shaping my life so that the life and love of Jesus -- who IS the Truth -- becomes my own experience in the world.
Spirituality, after all, is about seeing first and foremost, seeing what is true, seeing what is real, letting go of illusions and the haze of what I want to see in favor of seeing what is actually present. And this seems to be the work that the Spirit of truth is interested in, yet which is hardly ever talked about in Christian circles. The Spirit invests sacred energy in this animating work of seeing, making connections, noticing what is always and everywhere true.
Perhaps you would wrestle with your own answers . . .
"What is truth?"
"What is the animating work of the Spirit of truth in my own life?"
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
"Farming" . . . Just Because I Can!
I am not a farmer, nor the son of a farmer.
My father, who grew up in rural Northern Oklahoma, wanted nothing to do with the natural world as an adult. As I child, I had to beg him to go fishing. And as an adolescent, when I wanted to grow tomatoes and watermelon in the backyard of our home in the heart of the city, it was my mother who helped me, not my dad.
My thumb tends more toward brown than green. I never was very good at the gardening . . . either too much water, or not enough. I've unintentionally killed more plant-life in my days than I have aided growth. I learned about my deficiencies firsthand in that adolescent garden. Further, the basketball, which I truly loved, kept bouncing into the plants when I would miss to the right, so the tomatoes had a rough go of it. In any given year that I planted a garden in that corner of the backyard, it only yielded a few tomatoes. But it was something I wanted to be a part of, something that was important to me.
The dream lives on, though, so this year with some space to garden -- I'm calling it "farming", just because I can!! -- our son Bradley and his family (Rissa, Ainsleigh, and Sullivan) have helped Paula and me prepare beds and put in vegetables of many varieties. We are calling ourselves the NW Arkansas Wendell Berry Garden Club -- again, just because I can! -- after the noted Kentucky farmer/poet/environmentalist/activist. It's not that I fashion myself as Wendell Berry, but I do take him as my role model.
I'm concerned, now that I'm late into the autumn of my own life, that my gardening skills have gotten no better, that I will do something to sabotage the seed and seedlings, causing them not to grow, not to produce fruit. I'm really a novice at this with no real experience, but I've enlisted good help -- Bradley and Rissa have cultivated gardens and produced an abundance of fruit for many years, so they bring the know-how while I provide the grunt labor. And the labor, thrusting my hands into the soil, mixing the compost and the peat . . . this is what I love, and what I have been disconnected from for decades.
I recognize that soil and water and sunshine and nutrients and humans, all bring their own energy to this endeavor. The success of the "farm" depends on the energy we each bring to the process. There is so much I, as the human energy, cannot control; however, there are some thing I CAN control. So I'll do what I can, the best I can, hoping that in two months there will be fruit to show for the effort . . . when all the various elements come together in an onion, in a potato, in a salad.
"The Man Born to Farming"
by Wendell Berry
The grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout,
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
that the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
descending in the dark?
My father, who grew up in rural Northern Oklahoma, wanted nothing to do with the natural world as an adult. As I child, I had to beg him to go fishing. And as an adolescent, when I wanted to grow tomatoes and watermelon in the backyard of our home in the heart of the city, it was my mother who helped me, not my dad.
My thumb tends more toward brown than green. I never was very good at the gardening . . . either too much water, or not enough. I've unintentionally killed more plant-life in my days than I have aided growth. I learned about my deficiencies firsthand in that adolescent garden. Further, the basketball, which I truly loved, kept bouncing into the plants when I would miss to the right, so the tomatoes had a rough go of it. In any given year that I planted a garden in that corner of the backyard, it only yielded a few tomatoes. But it was something I wanted to be a part of, something that was important to me.
The dream lives on, though, so this year with some space to garden -- I'm calling it "farming", just because I can!! -- our son Bradley and his family (Rissa, Ainsleigh, and Sullivan) have helped Paula and me prepare beds and put in vegetables of many varieties. We are calling ourselves the NW Arkansas Wendell Berry Garden Club -- again, just because I can! -- after the noted Kentucky farmer/poet/environmentalist/activist. It's not that I fashion myself as Wendell Berry, but I do take him as my role model.
I'm concerned, now that I'm late into the autumn of my own life, that my gardening skills have gotten no better, that I will do something to sabotage the seed and seedlings, causing them not to grow, not to produce fruit. I'm really a novice at this with no real experience, but I've enlisted good help -- Bradley and Rissa have cultivated gardens and produced an abundance of fruit for many years, so they bring the know-how while I provide the grunt labor. And the labor, thrusting my hands into the soil, mixing the compost and the peat . . . this is what I love, and what I have been disconnected from for decades.
I recognize that soil and water and sunshine and nutrients and humans, all bring their own energy to this endeavor. The success of the "farm" depends on the energy we each bring to the process. There is so much I, as the human energy, cannot control; however, there are some thing I CAN control. So I'll do what I can, the best I can, hoping that in two months there will be fruit to show for the effort . . . when all the various elements come together in an onion, in a potato, in a salad.
"The Man Born to Farming"
by Wendell Berry
The grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout,
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
that the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
descending in the dark?
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