Mark 8:14 - 17
The disciples had forgotten to bring bread. They had only one loaf with them in the boat.
"Be careful," Jesus warned them. "Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees. And watch out for the yeast of Herod."
They talked about this with each other. They said, "He must be saying this because we don't have any bread."
Jesus knew what they were saying. So he asked them, "Why are you talking about having no bread? Why can't you see or understand? Are you stubborn?"
This passage is a head-scratcher. Read straight through with a literal mind, it raises questions.
The disciples of Jesus forgot to bring bread . . . but there was a loaf of bread in the boat with them.
The disciples said, "We don't have any bread," . . . but there was a loaf in the boat with them.
Jesus said, "Why are you talking about having no bread? Why can't you see or understand?" . . . because there was a loaf in the boat with them.
At one level, this takes the dullness of these disciples of Jesus to a new level. Are they really such slackers that they can't even see the one loaf they have in the boat? Are they truly that unobservant?
I think the story may have other levels of meaning for us. The Gospels, after all, are always working on us at multiple levels. Certainly, there is a way of looking at the obvious meaning of the text, at what it says right there at surface level. But there are also levels of meaning which must be uncovered. Part of the work of prayer is to listen more deeply, to hear some of the subterranean rumblings in a given passage with the ear of the heart.
Early Christians understood many of the "boat" stories in the four Gospels as stories that described both their personal lives and their life together as the people of God. For instance, in the story of the disciples on the stormy sea, the Church saw herself as that boat drifting amidst a stormy society which was trying to eliminate the followers of Christ. Their experience with the Roman Empire colored their understanding of the text. They became the boat, lonely and against the odds of wind and wave. But in that story, Jesus walked out to the boat, he came to them in the dark of night.
Further, "bread" is an image for sustenance and nourishment. A single loaf of bread may hearken back to the experience of the Israelites in the wilderness who were fed manna each day. There was only enough for that day, then the next day they had to go out and collect it again. On top of that, Jesus taught us to pray for "daily bread," no more and no less. This daily bread is enough and it is provided. God gives what is sufficient for the day.
So you might say that these disciples had in their boat "daily bread," enough for that moment.
So imagine for a moment that in the Mark 8:14-17 text, the boat stands for the Church or for the lives of those who follow Christ. There is a loaf of bread in the boat that represents what they have within themselves. You would think they could notice what was already present to them, but they do not.
Instead, the disciples lament that they did not bring more bread. This is consistent with how they are portrayed often in the Scriptures. For example, they want to feed hungry crowds by "going to buy" bread in the outside world. When Jesus says, "YOU give them something to eat," they have no idea what to give the hungry people. While they want to find resources in the outside world to give people ("go and buy bread"), Jesus wants them to give of the resources they already have within themselves ("you give them something to eat").
I think this little story in Mark 8 is about the inner resources that the followers of Christ have. The story seems to say, "There is a loaf within the boat, but you have to recognize it and acknowledge that it is present."
Most all of us are like the disciples, not recognizing the resources that God has placed within us already. We are continually looking in the outside world for something that will make us complete, that will help us achieve our goals, that will make us "more" of what we think God wants us to be. We read books and attend classes and go to conferences and try to be faithful to our congregation, trying desperately to get what we think we need.
I wonder if God might be saying to me or to any of us: "What is within you already is enough. You just need to uncover it and trust it. Enough has been given. Look within. Let the connection you have with Me grow, deepen, strengthen. You have a loaf in your boat. You don't need someone else's loaf. Your boat doesn't need to look like someone else's boat. Trust what you have. Trust what I've given you."
That may be the biggest part . . . trusting what I already have. In spiritual conversations with folks, I find that many people don't find it nearly as hard to trust God as to trust themselves, to trust that they hear God, that they are connected to God in unbreakable ways, that they can be loved, that they have a vocation and a life to offer in the world. We don't trust what God is doing within us. We don't trust those things about ourselves. We may see it in others, but we often don't trust it in ourselves.
So here's a word about trusting what's within you, trusting your inner resources. I doubt that you'll ever find anything in the external world that will make you complete, if you can't first of all embrace what is within you, what has been given already.
You have a loaf in your boat.
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Beauty of You: A Rilke Poem
The Beauty of You
by Rainer Maria Rilke
In deep nights I dig for you like treasure.
For all I have seen
that clutters the surface of my world
is poor and paltry substitute
for the beauty of you
that has not happened yet . . .
[In A Year with Rilke, trans. and ed. by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 25. Originally in Rilke’s The Book of Hours II, 34.]
by Rainer Maria Rilke
In deep nights I dig for you like treasure.
For all I have seen
that clutters the surface of my world
is poor and paltry substitute
for the beauty of you
that has not happened yet . . .
[In A Year with Rilke, trans. and ed. by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 25. Originally in Rilke’s The Book of Hours II, 34.]
Friday, February 11, 2011
Reaching out for the Things I Can't Reach
Where Does the Temple End, Where Does It Begin?
by Mary Oliver
There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.
The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.
I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.
Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.
And thinking; maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree –
they are all in this too.
And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.
At least, closer.
And, cordially.
Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold
fluttering around the corner of the sky
of God, the blue air.
[Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 8 – 9.]
This Mary Oliver poem found me last week as I spent a day on retreat. I've stayed with it in the days since and it keeps speaking into my life. There are images that strike me in the poem, but I really haven't moved beyond the first two lines yet.
There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The poem came to me in a season in which I have some uncertainty about what the future holds. I have a sense of interior unsettledness about the days ahead, and it has threatened to shut me down. I'm tending to feel myself withdrawing, pulling into myself, to keep from getting too far outside of myself. In my honest, self-reflective moments, I realize that my vision has gotten small and narrow. My capacity to dream is constricting.
I was drawn to these words in the poem, though, and for days brought them into my prayer. I considered the things in my life I was invited to reach out for, even if I would never reach them. I felt invited to continue extending myself outward, reaching out, not contingent on whether I would reach the end or not.
My reflections were fruitful. I wrote some poetry around the ideas that arose in me. I worked with the image artistically.
A few days into the poem, someone asked me about my health. I recited the most recent medical report. Then this person asked, "What are your dreams? What are you stretching toward?" Even though I had been working with this poem, I gave some lame, health-based answer about not being able to look very far ahead, not feeling like I was in a place to dream any longer. This wise friend said, "So what? Do you think you should let that stop you from dreaming?" I realized she was right.
Over a decade ago, one of the poems that drew me into poetry, and specifically to the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, was a poem in his Book of Hours in which he said, "I live my life in expanding orbits . . . I don't know that I shall reach the last, but that is my aim." Rilke and Mary Oliver are talking about the same thing.
To live life in expanding orbits . . . whether I ever come to the last or not. . . .
There are things I cannot reach . . . but I will reach out to them.
by Mary Oliver
There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.
The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily,
out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing
from the unreachable top of the tree.
I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.
Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
as though with your arms open.
And thinking; maybe something will come, some
shining coil of wind,
or a few leaves from any old tree –
they are all in this too.
And now I will tell you the truth.
Everything in the world
comes.
At least, closer.
And, cordially.
Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake.
Like goldfinches, little dolls of gold
fluttering around the corner of the sky
of God, the blue air.
[Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 8 – 9.]
This Mary Oliver poem found me last week as I spent a day on retreat. I've stayed with it in the days since and it keeps speaking into my life. There are images that strike me in the poem, but I really haven't moved beyond the first two lines yet.
There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The poem came to me in a season in which I have some uncertainty about what the future holds. I have a sense of interior unsettledness about the days ahead, and it has threatened to shut me down. I'm tending to feel myself withdrawing, pulling into myself, to keep from getting too far outside of myself. In my honest, self-reflective moments, I realize that my vision has gotten small and narrow. My capacity to dream is constricting.
I was drawn to these words in the poem, though, and for days brought them into my prayer. I considered the things in my life I was invited to reach out for, even if I would never reach them. I felt invited to continue extending myself outward, reaching out, not contingent on whether I would reach the end or not.
My reflections were fruitful. I wrote some poetry around the ideas that arose in me. I worked with the image artistically.
A few days into the poem, someone asked me about my health. I recited the most recent medical report. Then this person asked, "What are your dreams? What are you stretching toward?" Even though I had been working with this poem, I gave some lame, health-based answer about not being able to look very far ahead, not feeling like I was in a place to dream any longer. This wise friend said, "So what? Do you think you should let that stop you from dreaming?" I realized she was right.
Over a decade ago, one of the poems that drew me into poetry, and specifically to the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, was a poem in his Book of Hours in which he said, "I live my life in expanding orbits . . . I don't know that I shall reach the last, but that is my aim." Rilke and Mary Oliver are talking about the same thing.
To live life in expanding orbits . . . whether I ever come to the last or not. . . .
There are things I cannot reach . . . but I will reach out to them.
Monday, January 31, 2011
A Rilke Poem: About the Poverty of the Body
Rainer Maria Rilke's body was weak throughout his life. As a child he was often sick. A difficult childhood and home life did not help his physical strength.
In adulthood Rilke moved throughout Europe often and lived something of a vagabond's life. Late in life he was often a patient at a sanitarium because of bad health. Already weak, his body seemed to have played out. He died at the age of 51.
This poem comes from the final months of his life during one of his sanitarium stays. It goes to the way we often neglect the body until we come to some physical situation in which our bodies no longer function as we would like them to.
Rilke's demeanor toward his failing health and fragile body in this poem reminds me of how Francis of Assisi nicknamed his own body, "Brother Ass."
I wonder . . . in what ways are we invited to befriend our bodies, to recognize their limitations and the poverty of our human condition? We are, after all, made of flesh and not stone. All the health initiatives, diets and miracle drugs in the world cannot stall forever the inevitable deterioration of our bodies. We fight aging, we fight disease, we fight loss of appearance. It is the Western way, the contemporary way to deal with any poverty or deterioration.
Personally, I think we're frightened of admitting our own poverty, confessing that we are anything less that on top or on the up-and-up. In fact, it's a sham and a huge falsehood, but it is part of the cultural illusion under which many of us live.
I hear Rilke, here at the end of his life, advocating for a gentler, more friendly stance toward ourselves, reconciling the divisions we've created between body and soul, bringing the various aspects of our being into a congruent whole.
This is his poem:
Brother body is poor . . . : then we'll have to be rich for him.
Often he was the rich one: so may he be pardoned
the meanness of his worst moments.
If he then acts as though he scarcely still knows us,
let us gently remind him of everything shared.
Granted, we are not one, but a solitary two:
our consciousness and he;
but how much we owe each other
past conceiving,
the way it is with friends! and one learns in illness:
friendship is hard!
(in Uncollected Poems: Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Edward Snow, p. 239)
In adulthood Rilke moved throughout Europe often and lived something of a vagabond's life. Late in life he was often a patient at a sanitarium because of bad health. Already weak, his body seemed to have played out. He died at the age of 51.
This poem comes from the final months of his life during one of his sanitarium stays. It goes to the way we often neglect the body until we come to some physical situation in which our bodies no longer function as we would like them to.
Rilke's demeanor toward his failing health and fragile body in this poem reminds me of how Francis of Assisi nicknamed his own body, "Brother Ass."
I wonder . . . in what ways are we invited to befriend our bodies, to recognize their limitations and the poverty of our human condition? We are, after all, made of flesh and not stone. All the health initiatives, diets and miracle drugs in the world cannot stall forever the inevitable deterioration of our bodies. We fight aging, we fight disease, we fight loss of appearance. It is the Western way, the contemporary way to deal with any poverty or deterioration.
Personally, I think we're frightened of admitting our own poverty, confessing that we are anything less that on top or on the up-and-up. In fact, it's a sham and a huge falsehood, but it is part of the cultural illusion under which many of us live.
I hear Rilke, here at the end of his life, advocating for a gentler, more friendly stance toward ourselves, reconciling the divisions we've created between body and soul, bringing the various aspects of our being into a congruent whole.
This is his poem:
Brother body is poor . . . : then we'll have to be rich for him.
Often he was the rich one: so may he be pardoned
the meanness of his worst moments.
If he then acts as though he scarcely still knows us,
let us gently remind him of everything shared.
Granted, we are not one, but a solitary two:
our consciousness and he;
but how much we owe each other
past conceiving,
the way it is with friends! and one learns in illness:
friendship is hard!
(in Uncollected Poems: Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Edward Snow, p. 239)
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Birthright
Several years ago I picked up a new volume of Thomas Merton's journals. I have to admit that Merton has not been easy for me. I tried to read him about 15 years ago because he was an important figure in spirituality. I read enough snippets from his books to know that he articulated the spiritual life in a way that was unique and profound.
I knew that I needed to be familiar with him; in those days, however, I didn't always understand Merton. What I was reading seemed like a blur to me.
Years later my experience began to catch up with my head. When I tried Merton again about 12 years ago, I began to understand. He made more sense. I was able to read him not just with my head, but with my heart and life.
So when I picked up this new copy of his journals six or seven years ago, I began to work my way through the daily entries. Still, his daily journal entries can be tedious. Sometimes I have to sift a lot of days in order to find something that connects with me. In this particular book, the going was pretty slow until I came to one particular entry.
I was going through a period of life in which I wondered about my future, what direction my life would go. And I had questions about how I would know which door to walk through into the future. I had some major decisions before me. I read these words in Merton's journal:
The will of God is not a "fate" to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new (or failing to do so), something hitherto unforeseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation (seeking first the Kingdom of God) consists not solely in conforming to laws but in opening our wills out to this creative act, which must be retrieved in and by us -- by the will of God.
This is my big aim -- to put everything else aside. I do not want to create merely for and by myself a new life and a new world, but I want God to create them in and through me. This is central and fundamental. . . .
I must lead a new life, and a new world must come into being. But not by my plans and my agitation. (The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, p. 125).
Merton's words struck me deeply. I sat with them, meditated on them, tried to open myself to how God might speak to me through them. I knew something important was there, though I didn't immediately know what it was.
So I returned to this journal entry over the next several days, reading it again and again. I wrote it out in my journal. I dissected it. I listened to the words, the phrases, the images that spoke into my life. I needed to hear Merton's wisdom, to live into it, to wrestle with it.
I was about three days into this process when I finally noticed the date on which Merton had written these words. He made this particular journal entry on the day I was born! I was blown away! In Vinita, Oklahoma I was born before dawn. A few hours later in a hermitage in the woods of Kentucky, Thomas Merton put his pencil to paper and wrote these words.
As I read his words time and again that week several years ago, I had the sensation that Merton had written them with me in mind. They felt like Merton's wisdom that I was ordained to carry through my life.
Why am I writing today about an experience I had with Merton several years ago? Last weekend I sat in a large room in Albuquerque, New Mexico listening to Richard Rohr speak. He was eloquent and compelling as always. At one point in his presentation he said he wanted to quote Thomas Merton, saying something about how endless was the wisdom of this contemporary spiritual guide. Then further explanation or reference, these are the words that came from Rohr's mouth:
The will of God is not a "fate" to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new . . .
I'm carrying the words . . . like a birthright.
I knew that I needed to be familiar with him; in those days, however, I didn't always understand Merton. What I was reading seemed like a blur to me.
Years later my experience began to catch up with my head. When I tried Merton again about 12 years ago, I began to understand. He made more sense. I was able to read him not just with my head, but with my heart and life.
So when I picked up this new copy of his journals six or seven years ago, I began to work my way through the daily entries. Still, his daily journal entries can be tedious. Sometimes I have to sift a lot of days in order to find something that connects with me. In this particular book, the going was pretty slow until I came to one particular entry.
I was going through a period of life in which I wondered about my future, what direction my life would go. And I had questions about how I would know which door to walk through into the future. I had some major decisions before me. I read these words in Merton's journal:
The will of God is not a "fate" to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new (or failing to do so), something hitherto unforeseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation (seeking first the Kingdom of God) consists not solely in conforming to laws but in opening our wills out to this creative act, which must be retrieved in and by us -- by the will of God.
This is my big aim -- to put everything else aside. I do not want to create merely for and by myself a new life and a new world, but I want God to create them in and through me. This is central and fundamental. . . .
I must lead a new life, and a new world must come into being. But not by my plans and my agitation. (The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, p. 125).
Merton's words struck me deeply. I sat with them, meditated on them, tried to open myself to how God might speak to me through them. I knew something important was there, though I didn't immediately know what it was.
So I returned to this journal entry over the next several days, reading it again and again. I wrote it out in my journal. I dissected it. I listened to the words, the phrases, the images that spoke into my life. I needed to hear Merton's wisdom, to live into it, to wrestle with it.
I was about three days into this process when I finally noticed the date on which Merton had written these words. He made this particular journal entry on the day I was born! I was blown away! In Vinita, Oklahoma I was born before dawn. A few hours later in a hermitage in the woods of Kentucky, Thomas Merton put his pencil to paper and wrote these words.
As I read his words time and again that week several years ago, I had the sensation that Merton had written them with me in mind. They felt like Merton's wisdom that I was ordained to carry through my life.
Why am I writing today about an experience I had with Merton several years ago? Last weekend I sat in a large room in Albuquerque, New Mexico listening to Richard Rohr speak. He was eloquent and compelling as always. At one point in his presentation he said he wanted to quote Thomas Merton, saying something about how endless was the wisdom of this contemporary spiritual guide. Then further explanation or reference, these are the words that came from Rohr's mouth:
The will of God is not a "fate" to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new . . .
I'm carrying the words . . . like a birthright.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Blank Journals and New Terrain
On the first day of a recent retreat I opened a new journal. It was a marvelous experience, breaking open the cover and leafing through the blank pages. Nothing there. Blank.
I held the blank journal open on my lap for a few moments before writing a word in it. I allowed my mind to wander before putting my pen to the page . . . this particular journal will carry me along for several months . . . over those months, what will I experience?
Where will I go?
What will be the shape of my soul by the time I get to the end of the book?
What experiences and understandings will shape me and fill those pages?
What will be my growing edges?
I admit that I didn't spend too much time trying to predict what would fill the pages. I don't have a clue. The whole idea, though, was that it felt like standing at a new threshold, standing at a doorway into the days yet to come, looking at the blankness, the possibilities.
For me it was like seeing something for the very first time, opening my eyes to the mystery of something I have not yet seen. It was a wonderful moment.
John O'Donohue, the Irish poet, philosopher and former-priest, talked about his first day in Tubingen at attend that German university. He described seeing the city for the first time and his awareness that after that initial day, he would never see the city the same way again. The streets and buildings would become familiar. And as the city became familiar to him, he would lose his capacity to notice its nuances. His awareness would be dulled.
That's something of what my moment with the empty journal felt like. It was a pause to be open to every possibility. I sensed the invitation to be more expansive. I consciously thought of being receptive to the days ahead.
My journal will not necessarily lead my journey into the days ahead, but it will give some shape to my life. It will mirror the path. It will reflect my capacity to see, to notice, to live with consciousness the life which has been gifted to me.
In and of itself, that moment with the blank journal and new terrain was significant for me.
I held the blank journal open on my lap for a few moments before writing a word in it. I allowed my mind to wander before putting my pen to the page . . . this particular journal will carry me along for several months . . . over those months, what will I experience?
Where will I go?
What will be the shape of my soul by the time I get to the end of the book?
What experiences and understandings will shape me and fill those pages?
What will be my growing edges?
I admit that I didn't spend too much time trying to predict what would fill the pages. I don't have a clue. The whole idea, though, was that it felt like standing at a new threshold, standing at a doorway into the days yet to come, looking at the blankness, the possibilities.
For me it was like seeing something for the very first time, opening my eyes to the mystery of something I have not yet seen. It was a wonderful moment.
John O'Donohue, the Irish poet, philosopher and former-priest, talked about his first day in Tubingen at attend that German university. He described seeing the city for the first time and his awareness that after that initial day, he would never see the city the same way again. The streets and buildings would become familiar. And as the city became familiar to him, he would lose his capacity to notice its nuances. His awareness would be dulled.
That's something of what my moment with the empty journal felt like. It was a pause to be open to every possibility. I sensed the invitation to be more expansive. I consciously thought of being receptive to the days ahead.
My journal will not necessarily lead my journey into the days ahead, but it will give some shape to my life. It will mirror the path. It will reflect my capacity to see, to notice, to live with consciousness the life which has been gifted to me.
In and of itself, that moment with the blank journal and new terrain was significant for me.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
A Rilke Poem for Advent Darkness
This poem found me a few days ago. For me it matches the mood of Advent, the darkness and waiting to which we are each called. It calls me to a rootedness that doesn't fight the darkness, but rather allows the darkness to make me more fully and completely human.
There is a contradiction in darkness and waiting that makes us terribly uncomfortable, especially as persons who want our pain wrapped up in a tidy bow. But the task of becoming fully human is never clean. Seldom does it draw in straight lines and in perfectly square corners. Growing up is messy work. Maturity, including spiritual maturity, comes at a cost. Every experience of life has within it the capacity to be our teacher.
Rilke was familiar with darkness. As with most artists, his creativity emerged from this seedbed which was very much underground, cold, dank, still and in some ways seemed to be without life.
So this is an expression of Rilke's stance toward darkness.
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
[Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29, trans. by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows]
There is a contradiction in darkness and waiting that makes us terribly uncomfortable, especially as persons who want our pain wrapped up in a tidy bow. But the task of becoming fully human is never clean. Seldom does it draw in straight lines and in perfectly square corners. Growing up is messy work. Maturity, including spiritual maturity, comes at a cost. Every experience of life has within it the capacity to be our teacher.
Rilke was familiar with darkness. As with most artists, his creativity emerged from this seedbed which was very much underground, cold, dank, still and in some ways seemed to be without life.
So this is an expression of Rilke's stance toward darkness.
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
[Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29, trans. by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows]
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