Waiting...

So you wait. You wait for school to start. You wait for school to end. You wait for the big vacation trip. You wait for graduation. You wait for Mr/Ms Right. You wait for the baby to be born, and then for it to sleep through the night, and then for it to go to school and for it to come home from school…and this begins to sound familiar. You wait for the promotion and for the raise and for the paycheck, or sometimes for the job to show up. You wait for retirement and for pension checks.

You wait to die.

Through it all, you wait with longing that is sometimes passionate and sometimes faint but persevering, for Jesus to come.

They waited. “Redeemer,” said the angel at Eden’s gates, and “Messiah,” said the prophets, and the centuries and the lifetimes slid by, and they waited.

When you’re the one doing the waiting, it’s endless. It might be ten minutes for the phone call or a week for the medical test results or nine months for the pregnancy or hours for the birth, but it’s all forever.

“It’s all relative,” said Einstein. “

To me, all times are soon,” said Aslan.

“God is patient,” said Peter.

And still we wait.

Advent comes every year. At least you only have to wait one trip around the sun for that. Then you only have to wait a month for Christmas. It’s a time when we can rediscover both the waiting and the end of waiting. When the little girl and her fiancé got through the night at the stable, and the waiting was over, it had still just begun. There was babyhood to be got through, and childhood (bar mitzvah, Son of the Covenant) and then 18 years at home waiting for the ministry to begin.

That 3 ½ years must have gone by in a flash. Not so the hours of the “trial,” or, God help us, the crucifixion. Or the grave…But that part ended. And IT WAS DONE!

Then he said, “I’ll be back. Soon!”

And so we wait. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Sh’ma by the River 5—Loving the Great Spirit with All My Little Soul

Hear, O Israel,

the Lord your God, the Lord is One.

You shall love the Lord your God

with all your heart

and with all your mind

and with all your soul

and with all your strength.*

Many people separate soul from spirit and think of them as two different things, or as two different aspects of selfhood. I don’t do that. As Adventists, we believe a human being is a soul, rather than possessing a soul. We believe we are one being, that mind and body cannot be separated (except for consideration, such as in this series). What we do with our thoughts affects our physical health. What we do with our bodies affects our spiritual health. It’s all one.

If I were to draw a diagram of the self, it would look something like this:

The three smaller circles would be the body, mind, and heart, or emotions. The little spot in the center is where we are our full, true selves—all elements and aspects of us living and functioning as one whole being—a human soul. The large circle represents the Holy Spirit—the soul or spirit of God, “in whom we live and move and have our being.”

During this series, we have considered how to learn better to love God, others, and ourselves from our whole physical selves, our whole minds, and our whole hearts. To learn what it means to love God, others, and ourselves with our whole souls, just put it all together. Simple. Hard! Almost impossible! But simple. When all of our little circles are centered inside God’s big circle, then the peace God brings seeps into the center. It comes into our stomachs, and calms them. It comes into our emotions and lives with us in and through them. It comes into our heads and gives us a new outlook on life.

Simple, it may be, but it can also be scary. In the Bible, the Holy Spirit is often likened to wind. (The Hebrew and Greek words are the same—so is the English, but we’ve kind of lost it inside other words: inspire, respire, and perspire all share the same base as spirit, and they’re all about breath. So, for that matter, is expire.) Today, here in the last week of my Cape Breton Sabbatical by the river, the wind is so powerful it reminds me of that text in Acts, about “the sound of a mighty, rushing wind.” The cabin is shaking. When I went outside, I experienced something I’ve often said, but it’s never been actually true before—the wind really did nearly knock me down. When I would pick up a foot to take a step, that leg would be blown out from under me. The wind blew away my ice chest and all its contents, and took a large wooden picnic table off the porch and dumped it in the yard in two pieces.

Today, beside the river (from a safe distance, inside) I’m thinking about what it might really mean to throw my whole, puny, little spirit, my whole broken self, all my body, all my mind, all my heart, all my love, into the whirlwind that is the Holy Spirit of God, and go wherever that  Spirit chooses to take me.

Do I have the nerve?

Do you?

*These words combine the Sh’ma, found in Deut 6:4, 5, with Jesus’ words in Luke10:27, to give all four:  heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Sh’ma by the River, 4: Loving God with One’s Heart

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God

with all thy heart…

Loving from the heart seems like a no-brainer. Literally. Of course we love with our hearts. That’s where all emotions are seated, right? Or maybe the bowels, which is what the Hebrews used in this context. It seems to me that other societies have used other body parts, possibly the liver, certainly the brain, as the seat of emotion, but even Wikipedia is failing me on this one.

In the immortal words of Dr. Temperance Brennan, of TV Bones fame, “The heart is nothing but a pump.” True. However, I believe there’s good reason why humans have always thought emotions, positive and negative, (love, hate, fear, anger, happiness, sorrow, contentment, etc.), rise from body organs. There is a connection. Emotions make our blood pressure rise and drop, increase and decrease heart rate, adrenaline, dopamine, and more. Feelings, to put it more succinctly, are feelings.

The river overflowed its banks this week. I assume it did so just to give me good subject matter for this devotion. Emotions are scary for some of us. (I am one of them.) We have been raised so carefully to believe in “mind over matter,” and being mature and rational and in control and all that. We even name self-control as a gift of the Spirit. But the Greek word used in Galatians 5:23 is egkrateia, which means temperance. (Huh. Wonder what Bones would think about that?)

Temperance means the middle way. Not too hot, not too cold. Not too controlled by emotion, and not too controlled by brain. The river is essential to life, I want to say, when it’s contained within its banks, wending its merry way, not too low, not too high. But my analogy suffers a little when I think about the millions who depended for millennia on the seasonal flooding of the Nile, for one example.  Is it okay to overflow once in a while? And what does that mean?  Give way to emotion? Surely not…

Unless “give way” is taken literally. Make a way, or a path, make allowance for feeling.

When the Baddeck River overflowed this week, I don’t know if it caused harm or damage. I know it didn’t here, because there’s a nice big swale between the house and the riverbank. Room for it to swell, and to go back down again. A place for it to deposit, perhaps, all kinds of life-giving nutrients for future growth in the meadows.

This devotional did not go in the direction I had planned for it. I’m just saying.

Love God, others, self, from the heart. With the full strength of emotions. Without doing harm.

What does that mean?

Sh’ma by the River 3, Loving God with All Your Mind

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy…mind…

When I walk by the river and think of mind, I think of flow, of current, of direction. The river is born to seek the ocean, and that’s all it does. Our minds were born to seek God, but they, unlike the river, have free choice. We are even free to choose to believe we have no free choice. Consider that one for a minute!

I see the river doing all kinds of things at once, just like my mind. In the middle, it’s rushing along without much impedance, heading ever downhill. Then there are stretches that rush and ruffle over rocks and sandbars—impeded, but not letting the obstacles stop it. In fact, you could anthropomorphize (not that I would ever be guilty of that!!) and say the river seems to enjoy the obstacles.

Along the edges, there are spots where the river slows, circles, seems to get nowhere, but as long as it’s still connected to the main flow, that part of the water will move along, too, just at a different pace.

I mentioned last week that people used to be able to care for this river, to keep an open channel. I got to wondering what things I do, or could do, that keep an open channel in my mind?

I’ve noticed that one thing that makes the river flow more freely is rain. At first, I thought of this in the usual, even clichéd interpretation  of rain as adversity, but for the river, rain is not adversity, rain is life. Rain, to fill my mind, might be the water of the Holy Spirit’s presence.

Side waters might be good, for breaks, but how can I keep them from becoming separated from the flow, and getting stagnant?

I can use my mind to love myself by not allowing obstacles to get me down, by not speaking to myself in hurtful ways I would never use with another, by, as a friend of mine puts it, “paying attention to what I’m paying attention to!”

I can use my mind to love others by my words, written and spoken, by listening carefully when they speak, and watching their faces for the things they can’t say in words.

I can use my mind to love God by casting out into the depths of that immense, unfathomable love, by thinking of that love and patience and majesty, by trying (and failing!) to put some of it into words.

How do you keep your mind flowing free with love?

Sh'ma By the River: Loving God with One’s Body

As I walked the riverbank, I was thinking about the water versus the stones. Stones look a lot stronger than water. Water is so changeable, shimmering and glimmering around all over the place. A baby can shove it aside. A bug can walk on it. Fish even breathe it. Water is weak, right?

Stone, on the other hand, seems eternal. There it stands, holding firm, immovable. Big boulders and earth form the banks and boundaries of the water. Layer upon layer of smaller stones make up its bed, hold it on its way, keep it from sinking back down under the strata. Stone is strong.

The problem, of course, is time. The river, like all water, “seeks the path of least resistance,” but while it merrily chuckles on its way, it patiently and oh so constantly wears away at its banks, polishes the stones, grinds small ones smaller, and smallest ones into sand.

Once, people maintained this river. Among other things, they kept a channel dug, so salmon could get through easily. Now, the Crown doesn’t allow any modifications at all. So the river was taking out large chunks of pasture every year. The owners of the cabin got special permission to dump 90 square metres of big stone along the bank on the curve. So that’s how the big stones that hold the bank got here in the first place. Otherwise, the river would have changed its course again, as it has so many times.

Water is stronger than stone, after all.

Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy. . . strength. . . and thy neighbor as thyself.

In my analogy du jour, the water represents my mind. We’ll talk more of that next week. The earth and stone represent my body. And so it is, that the mind can wear away the body, if you let it. If you don’t maintain the body.

It seems to me that the first piece of loving God with one’s body—first in order, not in importance—is loving the body itself—taking care of it, nourishing it, feeding it, keeping a clear channel within it that leads to the ocean of God’s love. (Which of course means that love from and to God came first, after all. Can’t love this body unless I recognize that it’s God’s treasure, made by, and yes, loved by the Creator of all.)

Lately, rather to my own surprise, I’ve realized that morning grooming, and breakfast, and so on, are a real part of morning worship. I am loving God with my body when I take care of it. Or, more properly put perhaps, I am making my body strong and healthy, ready for use in loving.

The next piece is loving others as we love ourselves, which can’t mean in the same exact ways (unless the other in question is a baby or child or ill person whom we do actually feed, groom, and dress) but means loving others as much as we love ourselves. It’s been a hard lesson for me and many others to learn that the limit to our ability to love others lies, in part, in the limits we set on loving ourselves. Those limits can be set at either end of the spectrum, of course—true love is neither neglect nor overindulging.

I can use my body to love others by hugging them, listening to them, helping them, cooking for them, making things for them, and many other ways. May I have eyes to see the opportunities.

First, last, and always, comes love of God. In the ways in which we choose to show love to ourselves, we are loving God. In the ways in which we choose to show love to others, we are loving God. But we must also express our love direct to God, not through others. Do we use our bodies enough to do that?

I can use my body to show love to God by singing, using different positions in prayer, even dancing. I remember a story—you’ve probably heard it—about a child dancing and twirling around her back yard. Her mother asked what she was doing, and she replied happily, “I’m dancing with God!”

When was the last time you danced with God?

What are some of the ways you use your body to love God, others, and yourself?

What are some of the ways you maintain your body in good shape for that work of loving?

Sh'ma by the River

I have been considering the depths of the ancient prayer known as the Sh’ma for several years now. There is a great deal to consider, just in the first two lines.

Sh’ma Yis’ra’eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.

V’ahav’ta eit Adonai Elohekha

b’khol l’vav’kha

uv’khol naf’sh’kha

uv’khol m’odekha.*

Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!

You shall love the LORD your God

with all your heart

and with all your soul

and with all your might.

In Luke 10: 27, answering the question of the lawyer, Jesus added “with all your mind.”

"You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.” (NASB)

I’ve been considering what it means to love God with all those elements of my whole self. We Westerners are very good at the mind part. So were the Jews. They and we love to debate and study and exegete. Lots of Christians enjoy the same today. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it may not be particularly devotional.

This morning, by the river, I stood in the current (in my high boots, you understand!) and considered the mind and how it’s like the river. And I decided to do a series. It might ask more questions than it answers, but that’s okay. My hope is that it will raise emotions, too, not just brainwaves. (Well, not just beta waves, anyway. I suppose all our emotional states show up in our brainwaves.)

This week is the introduction. Here are the preliminary questions to consider:

How do you, personally, practice the deep love of the One God:

                --with all your heart?

                --with all your soul/spirit?

                --with all your mind?

                --with all your strength?

Each of the next four weeks, I’ll be pondering by the side of my borrowed river, and I’ll share my thoughts and questions with you. I hope you’ll share yours with me, too.

*http://www.jewfaq.org/prayer/shema.htm

Be, Like a Tree

I climbed a hill today and leaned in the arms of an old silver birch. Neil Diamond’s Be, from Jonathan Livingston Seagull was floating in my mind, and I thought,

Be

Like a tree

Stand patiently through whatever weather comes

Reach always for the sky, but also ground yourself deep

Even when the soil is being washed away beneath you

Withstand insect attack, woodpeckers, and disease…

Heal around the wounds, if you can…

Let go the lovely leaves you’ve worked so hard on

Wait silently through winter

Grow new, little ones

When the time comes

Fall gently

Still reach for the sky while you can

Nurture those coming after you

Like a tree

Be

Somebody said, “To learn patience, cultivate the friendship of trees.

Compass for a Soul

This week, in chapter 18 of The Monastery of the Heart, “A Listening Heart,” I am struck mute by the clarity and beauty of the first few paragraphs. I shall add nothing.

There is a magnet in a seeker’s heart

whose true north is God.

It bends towards the Voice of God

with the ear of the heart

and, like sunflowers in the sun,

turns all of life toward

the living of the Word.

This listening heart is pure of pride

and free of arrogance.

It seeks wisdom—

everywhere, at all times—

and know wisdom by the way

it echoes

the call of the scriptures.

The compass for God implanted

in the seeker’s heart

stretches toward truth

and signals the way to justice.

It is attuned to the cries

of the poor and oppressed

with a timbre that allows

no interruption,

no smothering

of the Voice of God

on their behalf.

Kissing Vikings

Chapter  17 of The Monastery of the Heart is on this rule of hospitality. Perhaps we can gain some ideas from it, in the context of visitors to our own homes and churches. Perhaps, we could even gain some insights about growing our church membership.

Chittister says:

It is possible, of course,

to make community

out of “our kind of people,”

out of people who look like us

and think like us

and have the same backgrounds as we do.

But that is not

the kind of community

the ancient Rule

has in mind. . .

In many churches, it’s not that we expect people to have the same backgrounds (though we like it); it’s that we think that, given time and prayer and instruction, they’ll become just like us in looks, word, and deed.

When Benedict of Nursia began

his new way of living

in wild, licentious, sixth-century Rome,

he turned that world upside down. 

He took into his monastic community

the rich and the poor,

the slave and the free,

the young and the old,

artists and craftsmen,

peasants and noblemen.

It was a motley crew.

I wonder if he’d read Galatians 3:28?

And then, as if that weren’t enough,

he opened the doors

of the monastery

to anyone who came,

at any time,

to anyone who knocked,

no matter who they were

or where they had been in life

along the way.

Hmm. I wonder if he’d also read Hebrews 13:2?

Benedictine monasteries are perhaps best known for their hospitality. They take seriously the injunction to “welcome strangers, for in so doing, you may entertain angels unaware.” Wherever you are in the world, if you are in need of shelter, you can go to a Benedictine monastery and they will take you in. (Speaking for myself, I’ve found that to be true of Adventists, too, in general, even though we don’t have a specific rule about it.) In the 9^th century, when Vikings were raiding the British Isles, the story is that at Martyrs Bay, Iona, the reason so many monks, along with their abbot, were slaughtered is that they were still trying to keep Benedict’s Rule that the entire community must welcome any and all guests “as Christ,” with prayer and a kiss of peace. They well knew the Vikings had not come in peace, or with any idea of being Christ-like. But they wanted to be Christ-like.

So do I. I’m not sure I’d be that brave about it. . .

When was the last time you greeted a Viking raider with a kiss of welcome and peace? Metaphorically speaking. Or not. . .

Care for Others and Spiritual Growth

 Joan Chittister’s book, The Monastery of the Heart, which we’ve been exploring in this devotional series, is an exploration of the Rule of Benedict in order to see that the principles of godly spirituality which it espouses are available to all humans, not just to those in physical monasteries and convents. Jesus clearly taught and demonstrated that we are to live our lives in the world, though not of it, seeking to act out the love of God to all who come in our way.

This chapter, “Loving Service,” is a particularly touching one. It speaks of the special care which Benedict required monastics to give to the elderly, infirm, and young. We have already seen in past chapters that the Benedictine model is different from many medieval monasteries in its decision to seek the middle ways rather than demanding extreme asceticism, self-punishment, and so on, such as Martin Luther experienced in his Augustinian order.

Chittister writes:

There is in Benedictine spirituality

a deeply compassionate heart

that neither glorifies the suppression

of human feelings

nor denies the reality of human needs.

Nowhere is that clearer than in

the attention the Rule gives

to the needs of the elderly, the sick,

and the children of the monastery.

Already we see a difference—how many monasteries would have had any children in them? Benedictines, then and now, are required to offer hospitality to all who come to them, believing that is what God, in Hebrews 13:2, had in mind.

She goes on:

We are here to enable one another

to go further.

We are here to learn from the insights

of the other.

We are here to bring all of humanity

to fullness of life.

The Rule is clear about the lengths

to which a Benedictine goes

to sustain the elderly,

to heal the sick,

to support the young in the community. . . .

Suffering is not glorified in this Rule;

Loving care is its norm. . . .

No amount of special asceticism

can equal the amount

of spiritual growth

and human maturity

that comes with care for others.

I believe that “we” in the first line of this passage means me. Means you. Means all of us who claim to follow the Way of the Christ.

Equality in the Spirit

Equality in the Spirit

Chapter 9 in The Monastery of the Heart is titled “Equality.” In it, Chittister begins by saying that we like to think equality is the characteristic of our age—that we are all equal now, with equal importance and respect, and equal opportunities. But, she contends that in fact “inequality is the greatest sign of our time.”

. . . it is also our world

that enslaves the poor to the drudgery

of survival, that ranks women as lower human beings

than men,

that distributes the goods

 we produce

according to race,

that worships at the feet

of the gods of money,

and lives in gated communities

in order to keep

the rest of the world out.

To this world,

Benedictine spirituality says clearly,

“No.”

She points out that elders, who have lived longer in the heat of life are considered as elders or wisdom figures, as signs that

. . . life grows sweeter with time,

 . . . holier with experience,

 . . .richer of heart

as the heart grows deeper into God.

But age and seniority

are also not its gods.

 . . .”the Spirit often reveals what is better

to the younger.”

The principle is a clear one:

“The Spirit blows where it will.”

We cannot damp down

the fire of the Spirit

on the basis of anything

but the greater movement

of the Spirit itself.

I find it noteworthy that Chittister does not say “We must not.” She says “We cannot.”

Community—Real or Not?

An interesting thing has been happening in our little “monasteries of the heart” group. The point of the book we are studying, Joan Chittister’s The Monastery of the Heart, is that one may practice many of the spiritual principles outlined by 5^th century monk, Benedict of Nursia, while living an “ordinary” life in the everyday world, rather than moving to a convent or monastery. But it is also true that ordinary, everyday life tends to get in the way.

In my opinion, that’s one of the main arguments for not moving into a convent or monastery—I believe Jesus showed us that spirituality is meant to be lived out in the regular, argumentative, difficult, chaotic world, not closeted with others of like mind. But any  monk or nun could tell you human nature is still present in the cloister, too.

In our case, what we’ve been weathering lately is that we feel less “together,” less communal and even less committed than we did at first. The group was intended to meet during the weeks of Lent, but some of us decided we wanted to continue to meet longer. Yet we find ourselves forgetting to pray together at noon, or praying but wondering if others are praying or if they care. . .

Naturally we are all aware that what matters most in prayer is that God cares and that we care. But community is what we were after. So it takes a little re-centering—a little extra effort. A little discussion and decision. . .

So it was with interest not unmixed with amusement that we opened to our next chapter this week: “Mutuality.”

[Community] cannot be accomplished

without making some kind

of connections—

but connections alone

are no guarantee

that a real community

will really form.

On the other hand,

to become community

in a Monastery of the Heart

requires regular

and meaningful interaction

among the members. . .

It gives us the underpinning

that enables us to go on

when we’re tired,

to go forward

when we’re afraid,

to go more deeply into the unmasking

of the self

when everything inside of us

seems to have gone to stone,

goes dry and dull

and lethargic. . .

How can you see these principles at work in the relationships you live in?

Rest and Retreat

Chapter seven of The Monastery of the Heart is “Retreat and Reflection.” This, in essence, is what our little prayer group that meets on Wednesday nights is doing—retreating to reflect together on where we are versus where we want to be. As Chittister puts it,

This requires the cultivation

of a reflective soul

and a disciplined mind

that goes regularly into “retreat”—

into that space where we look,

first of all, at what we set out to be,

and then look consciously

at what we are now doing

to get there.

There is value in doing this together. There may be even more value in doing it alone. Both are necessary. Christian traditions of all kinds (not to mention other faiths) have always included a sort of “soul inspection,” often at the end of the day. All too often, this has become a self-flagellating catalogue of sins. Mind you, it’s important to look our sins squarely in the face. To confess them to ourselves, then to God, then to the person or persons we have harmed. But the inspection doesn’t end there.

In fact, perhaps it shouldn’t begin there. In the family book Making Heart Bread, authors Matthew Linn and Sheila Fabricant Linn speak of looking back at each day and asking what one is most grateful for first, letting the heart fill with that gratitude and love. Then, they say, one feels safer and is now ready to look at what one was least grateful for, or most troubled about, and care for those feelings.

In the context of soul-searching, if I look at the moments when my soul did follow the Holy Spirit to the best of its ability first, then of course I will be filled with joy and gratitude, because I know those moments were of God, not of me! Now, if I am also aware of moments when I failed to follow the Spirit, I can feel the regret and remorse without feeling overwhelmed or shamed or blamed, which is far more helpful in determining how to make restitution, if possible, and how to do better next time.

Retreat time is the flagship piece of the year

that sets the standard

for a rhythm of life that moves seamlessly

between contemplation and action,

between work and Sabbath,

between a regular retreat

and reflection days

throughout the year.

The Creator designed a life that would have these retreats built in: daily at morning and evening worship time, weekly on the seventh day, and several times a year during fasts and feasts. Why would we rob ourselves of these healing times?

Silence

Silence

Joan Chittister writes:

Silence. . .

brings us beyond the noise

of chaos and clutter and confusion

of a spinning world

to the cool, calm center

of the spiritual self.

(The Monastery of the Soul, ch. 5)

David writes:

My soul, wait in silence

for God only,

for my hope is from him.

(Ps. 62:5)

God, speaking through Isaiah, says:

Coastlands, listen to me in silence,

and let the peoples gain new strength;

let them come forward,

then let them speak.

(Is. 41:1, emphasis added.)

I have often noticed that some Christians—well, many people, Christian or not!—seem to be afraid of silence. I think that to come before God with our prayers, speak them all, then say Amen and go away is rude. God wants to speak to us, too, and he’d like the courtesy of a hearing.

Along with a large dose of humility.

What have you heard or felt in the silence this week?

Life, Death, Life

Within the months following my husband’s death in 2011, I told my pastor that one extremely comforting thing was that the grief was just pure grief. I didn’t have regrets or remorse, I didn’t feel there were things I wished I’d done, or had left undone, or done better. I knew that, before God, I had done the very best I knew to do, taken care of him up to and beyond my ability, by the grace of God. I had made it through the Valley, and now had only recovery to face. It seemed possible.

When, only nine months later, my young, quite healthy mother suddenly died, I felt machine-gunned off at the knees. It took me months to even consider that it might be true, let alone begin to deal with it. Only, now it was complicated grief. Guilt and remorse dogged me. Every single thing I’d ever done or left undone or done “wrong” since I was five years old roared up into my face and stoned me and beat me and broke my heart.

Last Thursday, in counseling, I realized I was now the one doing the shaming and blaming that used to come to me from the outside. I was judge, executioner, and victim all at once. Life imprisonment, torture---no punishment seemed great enough for my sin.

Then I went to the Maundy Thursday service. As I listened to the Bible readings of Jesus’ last supper, betrayal, and trial, it dawned on me—I’d lost sight of the cross!  Jesus had already served a life sentence on a penal colony called earth. He’d already accepted the torture and the death penalty. My sins, which were many, were nailed to the cross forever.

The next day, I took part in the community Good Friday service. I was asked to pray the dramatic Prayer of Lament that ended in tears at the foot of our small cross, nothing like the horrible instrument of torture that had killed my God.

Sabbath, I did my own little memorial service for my mother, in the woods she loved so much. I hung a birdhouse she’d made, sang one of the 200+ songs she wrote, and scattered some of her ashes. I cried. I told God I knew my sins were all burned up like those ashes, and that I would let the burden go and give God my sins and my remorse and guilt with them.

Sunday morning, the clouds were heavy. You couldn’t see if the sun had risen or not. But the Son did—with healing in His wings. And I rose with Him in newness of life. My grief is pure grief now. It still hurts. But, because He lives, Les and Mama will, too. And every day is one day closer.

I still have work to do—work God created me for—and God can make me strong to do it. I can be touched by sorrow and loss, I can weep, I can be broken. But I can’t be chained down by the demons of guilt and shame. They have no power here. The tears can run clear.

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!!

Pray hard!

This week in our “monastery of the heart,” we are concentrating on prayer. The chapter abounds in eternal and unarguable truths:

Benedictine spirituality is rooted

in the timelessness

of scripture.

It is the story of God’s way

with the world.

And. . .

Bendictine prayer,

the heartbeat of Benedictine spirituality,

is always about

the presence of God in time—

this time, our time, my time.

And. . .

Prayer . . . heals the wounds of the day

and reminds us who we want to be

at the deepest, truest part of us.

Honestly, it’s such a beautiful and enriching chapter, such an encouragement to rededicate myself to deep and constant prayer, that it’s hard to choose quotes to share. Get the book! Read it! Some parts you’ll read over and over. But in the end, it’s not reading this or any book that matters.

Pray.

Pray hard.

Pray unceasingly.

Pray your praise and thanks.

Pray your laments and cries of sorrow.

Pray your doubts. Who else can you ask but God’s own self??

Pray.

What counts, says Chittister, “is not the sum of prayers we pray. . . It is the way our prayer life changes our own hearts and lives—the way it makes us more centered in God, the way it makes us more aware of our own limitations—that determines its quality.”

Amen!

Prayer--One for All,All for One

I didn't realize I'd missed a week! Here are two blogs for the price of one!

Thoughts from chapter three in Joan Chittister’s The Monastery of the Soul.

This week our little group read chapter three. One of the things this chapter invites us to consider is a part of the Rule of Benedict that says,” Perform the Opus Dei [the work of God] where you are. . . Those on a journey are not to omit the prescribed hours [of prayer] but to observe them as best they can.”

In today’s multicultural world, this rule brings to my mind the image of devout Muslims stretching out their prayer rugs no matter where they are—in malls, in airports—and praying at the prescribed times. No matter what one thinks of Islam (which means “submission”) or of Muslims (that means “submitted ones”) I think one can almost envy the sense of unity that must bring—knowing that one is praying with thousands—millions!—of others at that very moment.

Chittister expands on this part of the rule this way:

We are to pray by ourselves,

if necessary, “as best we can,”

but in the way

the community, as community, is praying,

so that our hearts and minds

stay in the place

where our bodies cannot now be.

One of the commitments our group made to each other the first time we met is that each morning we would pray for ourselves and our needs, each evening for the world and its needs, but each day at noon, we would pray for each of our group by name. In particular, we were to pray that each one would “listen with the ear of the heart.”

This week, our group leader asked for specific feelings about how this discipline of prayer is affecting us. Some spoke of difficulty in praying for our own selves. Others said that was the easy part.  Many say that remembering right at noon is hard, but that the prayer itself is blessing them. (I can only say, phone alarms are wonderful things!)

For myself, something new had happened during this past week. I was having no difficulty praying at noon (thanks to the phone) and I knew each person enough to ask for specific things for that person besides the listening with the ear of the heart. Each week I’d learn a little more and be able to pray more intelligently. But it was only last week, oddly, that it suddenly occurred to me that I was being prayed for by everyone else at (somewhere near) that same moment!

I don’t know why I hadn’t real-ized that. (Made it real to myself, that is. Did you ever take that word apart? Interesting!) It was a very comforting and illuminating sensation. I was being held, not just in the Everlasting Arms, but in the arms of my friends, held up to God, “held in the light,” as the Friends like to say.  It made for oneness. Like the Muslims. Like the Benedictines.

Like the Body of Christ.

In the (Cyber) World, but not Of It

Chapter 2 in The Monastery of the Heart, “A Seeker’s Path,” speaks of two different ways of seeking God—in solitude and in community—and says they are both important.

The solitary, says Chittister, “go deeply into the struggle with the self—both physically and mentally—that comes with solitude.” This path “strips away the . . .companionship of a partner, the counsel of others, the strength of a community. . .” She is speaking, of course, of the hermit lifestyle, more common during middle age and Renaissance eras, but still practiced sometimes, and she admits that there is a difficulty with this choice—“the human tendency to turn in on ourselves and to forget our obligation to build up the entire human community. ‘Whose feet,’ St. Basil asks, ‘will the hermit wash?’”

I have always said I’d rather be a hermit than a nun. I recognize in myself not only that need for rich solitude in which I experience God most fully, but also those all-too-human tendencies to isolation and self-centeredness.

The other path she speaks of is the intentional community, such as a monastery or convent. She describes the strength of being “immersed in a community, accountable to its standards . . . responsible for making the human community ever more human, always more of a community.”

 I recognize the need of community for myself and the strength the communion with other believers gives me, and perhaps had those historic communities not asked for so much more than God calls for—celibacy, self-abnegation, frequently a salvation by works kind of thinking, they might not have had as many extreme difficulties as they did (and do).

In Chapter 3, “A Single Vision,” she goes on to speak of the premise of her book, which is that “the Rule [of Benedict] does not necessarily require community of place—the geographical confinement of all the members of one community in one location.”

Whether we are near to or far from other members of the body of Christ, “the Rule asks two major things of us: First, we are to be constant at prayer. . . . Second, we are to live a single vision of life together, even when apart. . . . We are to go the way together in heart and mind and soul.”

It made me think of us—this cyber community of thinkers and bloggers, debaters and writers on what we call The Web. We are flung across not only a continent but a world, yet we may speak together in what we (probably amusingly to God) call Real Time.

Are we striving to “go the way together”, even if our pictures of God are different?

We say we wish to create a place where we are safe to discuss our differences, sure of respect and support. Do we, in fact, each watch over, care for, safeguard the presence and person (cyberly speaking)  of that irritating blogger whose point of view we hate?

“The bearer of the monastic heart,

either alone or with an intentional group,

must radiate

what is within

to a wider world

and respond to it.”

Listen to the Call

Tonight I attended the second meeting of our little “monastery of the heart.” This time, after prayer and a song, we read together the introduction to Joan Chittester’s book, and I want to share with you a part of that reading.

As monastics of the heart we must

read the scriptures day in and day out,

till they ring in our ears,

and fill our hearts,

and become the very breath

we breathe. . . .

God is calling us lovingly always,

if we will only stop the noise within us

long enough to hear.

Benedictine spirituality, then,

Is a continuing call to take one more step

on the way back to the God

from whom we have come,

to turn consciously now and here

toward the God

to whom our entire lives

are geared.

The Prologue to Benedict’s Rule

demands of us

that we “Listen.”

Listen to everything.

Because everything in life is important.

Listen with the heart:

with feeling for the other,

with feeling for the Word,

with feeling for the God

who feels for us.

Listen to the Word of God,

the Rule says,

“and faithfully put it into practice.”

Most of all,

know that to seek God

is to find God.

One of the main questions that held our attention tonight was, “In what ways can we more intentionally immerse ourselves in the Word of God, ‘until it rings in our ears, fills our hearts, and becomes the very breath we breathe’?”

Monasteries of the Heart

This evening I attended the first of several meetings on Joan Chittister’s book, Monastery of the Heart. For those who are not familiar with her work, Chittister is a prolific writer of amazing spiritual depth. She is also a Benedictine nun. This book is her attempt to share some thoughts on the ways in which some of the ideas and ideals lived in communal religious life might be lived out in an “ordinary, everyday” life. She suggests we make monasteries of our hearts.

My own opinion is that the concept of communities of celibate men or women living in close quarters and often under rigid discipline has not always been a healthy or spiritually productive one. However, I do believe that most of the people who have tried this (for centuries on end) have had at heart the intention of coming closer to God, and that God has drawn very near to every soul who desires that closer connection. I know that I can learn deep truths from some of these fellow Christians: Brother Lawrence is one good example. I feel that way about Chittister’s writings. They are rich in spiritual truths and I have been blessed by them.

So I thought that for the next few weeks I’d take those of you who are interested to my meetings with me.

Tonight, after prayer that God would help us “listen with the ears of our hearts” (one of the Benedictine prayers), we read together the introduction of the book and discussed some of the questions it raised. One of these questions was, “Do you agree that seeking the Divine is an attempt to complete the incomplete? Why or why not?”

My own reaction to this was that there are two ways (at least) to see the term “incomplete.” One is something that is broken or inadequate. The other is something that is new, small, has not grown up yet.

I can’t explain why I always, as long as I can remember, from babyhood or at least toddlerhood, have been strongly aware of the presence of God around me and in me. I have never experienced the “search for God” that is such a huge and sometimes desperate part of the lives of so many. Yet I began to be aware, in a small way as early as 7 or 8, and certainly by 14 and up, of my need and desire to “grow up” in God—to “complete the incomplete” in that sense. I am still aware of that need and desire.

Throughout my life it is also true that there has been much brokenness—both damage done to me by others who had power over me in one way or another, and damage done to myself by my own unwise choices. So one of the ways I like to think of the Holy Spirit’s work is as a sort of “force field,” holding me and all my holes and cracks together while I’m mended from the inside out. Completing the incomplete.

Paul said we see unclearly, as in the dim mirrors of polished metal with which he was familiar. We don’t see the Whole—and only a few of the parts, for that matter. But together with God we keep putting the puzzle pieces together, discovering parts of the Big Picture as we go, and one day (oh, please, God, soon!!) the Picture will be Whole. Complete.

Come, Lord Jesus! And in the meantime, keep the shields up and our force fields of faith activated. Amen!

A Prayer for Coming Home

“Today I declare to the YHWH my God, with deepest gratitude, that I have come into the land that YHWH promised to give me. Wandering gypsies (not by blood, just by spirit) were my ancestors; they came from Normandy, from Scotland, from Ulster into the foreign land of the New World (and some were already here long before). They became a great family, loud and populous. They loved music and laughter and storytelling—oh, how they did love storytelling!—and fighting and arguing, for good or ill. . . but most of all, they loved their God and each other. And they loved this church.

When life treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing pain and sorrow and loss and poverty on us, we cried to YHWH, the God of our ancestors; YHWH heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.

YHWH saw our tears and walked with us through the nights and the valleys. YHWH brought us out of the bondage of old sin and addiction with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, usually in quiet and unseen power, but sometimes with signs and wonders. Some of our women dreamed dreams and some of us saw visions and heard a song in the night.

YWHW brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk (from my goats) and honey (from the neighbor’s bees), a land that brings forth vegetables and fruits bountifully. Still, in this place, there is pain and sorrow and loss, and still YHWH of our mothers walks with us.

So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O YHWH, have given me. I share the milk and the eggs with Your beloved ones, and (when summer comes) I shall share the vegetables and the fruits and the herbs. I share the first of the stories and the best of the songs and the highest words of praise I can form.

I set it down before YHWH my God and bow down before YHWH my God. Then I, together with the friends and the strangers, the known and the unknown, the understood and the misunderstood who reside among us, shall celebrate with all the bounty that YHWH our God has given to us and to our community.

Amen!

Based on Deut. 26:1-11, with a little of Joel 2 and bits and pieces thrown in.