Praying Daily

2011-12-17T09:28:00.003-05:00

"One Big Self" by Stephen Rue

“As the soul becomes more pure and bare, and possesses less of created things, and is emptied of all things that are not God, it receives God more purely, and is more completely in Him; and it truly becomes one with God, and it looks into God and God into it, face to face as it were; two images transformed into one.” -Meister Eckhart

2011-12-06T08:19:00.001-05:00

Saint Nicholas Providing Food during a Famine

Today is St. NicholasDay, and forty-some years ago or so it was a rather important day in my life.Because in the late 60’s and early 70’s I was often overwhelmed by the days andevenings surrounding Christmas itself, I used to compensate for my not being ableto spend bunches of time with the kids by “pre-doing” Christmas a bit.

My family knew that overthe centuries fat Santa had evolved in story, myth, and importance fromtraditions surrounding fourth-century Bishop Nicholas of Myra. The real “Nick”was born in Patra, a village located in the southern coast of Turkey. Asthe orphaned son of fairly wealthy parent, Nicholas, took Jesus’ word to “sellwhat you own and give the money to the poor” at face value and unloaded up hisinheritance to help the needy, sick, and suffering. The tradition says that hededicated his life to serving God and became well-known for his generosity,especially toward children, along with his concern for sailors and ships. Laterin life Nicholas suffered for his faith during imperial persecutions with exileand imprisonment. When released from prison, he attended the Council of Nicea in325, died eighteen years later on December 6 in Myra, and was buried in hiscathedral church.

Of the many storiesassociated with his life, the best known rehearses his helping a gentleman withthree unmarried daughters. The father was unable to raise enough money toprovide his girls with dowries; as a consequence they were destined to becomeold maids. Some embellish the tale suggesting that they might have well endedup as prostitutes. When walking by the gentleman’s home, so it is said,Nicholas threw a bag of gold through a window on three successive nights and sosaved the daughters from a life of shame. As you might imagine, yes, all weremarried and lived happily ever after. Such is the hagiographical nimbusof Old Saint Nick, good enough to make sure that our present jolly oaf has adecent resume, the business world’s best gift-giver.

Retelling thestory of Saint Nick to our children on December 6 had twoadvantages. First, it nicely deconstructed the myth of Santa. Our kids werenever fooled beyond the age of four or five. And second, it gave us anopportunity to finesse the 25th out of its overbearing emphasis on gettingso many toys that little else mattered. We finessed by giving the children some pre-Christmasgifts on December 6, the Day of Saint Nicholas. Moreover, for several years webaked and bagged St. Nicholas cookies, tied up small branches of evergreens,and early on the morning of this day surreptitiously hung both on ourneighbors’ front doors. We never told them who had hung the greens.

I still like to rememberthe real Nicholas, the generous saint who suffered for his faith and helped theChurch think through her understanding of Christ at the Council of Nicea.I’ll say the Niceane Creed today and thank God for his witness.

Almighty God, who in your love gave to yourservant Nicholas of Myra a perpetual name for deeds of kindness on land andsea: Grant, we pray, that your Church may never cease to work for the happinessof children, the safety of sailors, the relief of the poor, and the help ofthose tossed by tempests of doubt or grief; through Jesus Christ our Lord, wholives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Second Sunday in Advent: Mark 1.1-8

2011-12-03T13:46:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow's Gospel reading is Mark 1.1-8. In our Sunday Adult Seminar we will be working through the Good News of Mark because important selections from Mark's Gospel will be read in Year B. As our Seminar's moderator, I usually prepare a three- or four-page handout, sometimes distributed in advance. Here's is the handout for Mark 1.1-8:

Today we begin our reading of Mark inearnest. And the very first awareness wemust have about verse one is that Mark’s first sentence is radical, especially froma political point of view. Understandthe contexts. First, there is thepolitical context. The powerful Romangovernment has been telling everyone that it has the “good news”! Second, there is a smaller context: that ofyoung Christian community, the scattered “house churches” established byitinerant missionaries throughout the Mediterranean. For two decades, from the early 30s until theearly 50s, there has only been talk, preaching, and “house communions” held onevery Lord’s day, Sunday. Paul and otherChristian missionaries have been walking, traveling, sailing, and plantingsmall church groups all around and throughout the Mediterranean world. Importantly, in the year AD 50, there is noChristian Bible. While in prison duringthe late 50s, Paul, often in prison, has been sending letters out forcirculation among the tiny congregations. During their times of worship, they have been reading their Hebrew andGreek (Old) Testaments.

When does Mark write his Story?

At the time when Mark writes, there is no NewTestament. Paul’s letters are simply beingcopied and sent on to nearby towns where again they are read, re-copied, andsent on again. There is no “life ofJesus” available for reading or study. Preachers pass on what they have heard from other preachers. People no doubt take notes and try toremember what they have heard. For twodecades, everything has been “word of mouth.”

And, of course, time is going by ratherquickly. And disturbingly, the promisedreturn of Jesus does not take place. Inearly 50s, Paul writes to the Thessalonians, the first letter included in the developingNew Testament; he tells his Christian friends not to worry too much. The endwill come when it comes. Jesus will keephis word. Meanwhile, although details about the life of Jesus are precious, someof them are fading away. Lost. Here and there, folks begin to write down whatthey can remember. The sayings and teachings of Jesus get special attention andare preserved.[1] As time passes, there’s a good bit of talkas to how best to preserve the story of Jesus. And again, disturbingly, here and there one hears stories circulatingthat don’t quite match up to what is generally held to be true.[2] As the original apostles and disciples beginto get old and some die off, the pressure to make a record of things gets moreand more intense. Somebody needs towrite up what happened. That first somebodyis Mark.

To whom is Mark writing and telling the Story?

Nowimagine yourself listening to Mark’s story about the good news. Who are you? As the audience to whom Mark writes, who are you? For many reasons, most Biblical
experts thinkthat you and those around you in your “house church” are Palestinean farmersliving in and around Galilee.
You are notwealthy. You are not anaristrocrat. You are not elitist,well-educated, or prosperous. You have awife and kids to support. You may or maynot own some land or a small home. Youare probably a day-laborer, a stone mason, a field hand, a fisherman, or acarpenter. In other words, you liveharvest-to-harvest, fish-catch to fish-catch, hand-to-mouth. You have no savings, and you are dependent onfamily and community support when things get tough. In short, you are poor.

What do the first house-church listenersreally hear? News in your little churchcommunity tells us that somebody has written a story about Jesus and you canhear it being read at the house church for the next couple of Sundays. So you go to worship, and this is what youhear:

1Thebeginning of the good news ofJesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As itis written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending mymessenger ahead of you,
   who will prepare your way;
³ the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
   ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight,’”

⁴John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming abaptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the peopleof Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the riverJordan, confessing their sins.⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather beltaround his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is comingafter me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

What do the first-listeners really hear? Listen, as they did, to the introduction, phrase by phrase—as a poor Galilean peasant, day laborer, stone mason—andimagine what those words mean to you as a poor working man. If it helps, take a look at these pictures. They were taken in the backhills of Haiti, inthe small village of Ranquitte. Thesepeople are much like first-century Palestinean Jews.

Look hard, listen well. What do you hear as Mark is read to you in your house church? Let’s go phrase-by-phrase and find out. Ask yourselves: Where have I heard thesewords and phrases before? And what do Imake of them now?

“The beginning”? Aclue: Genesis! A radical new start!

“of the good news”? Itis difficult for us to hear the phrase “good news” without automaticallythinking “Gospel.” But in Jesus’ time,the term “good news” was primarily a political expression; good news was thepropaganda that the Roman government promoted about Caesar. Here, for example, is the text of theso-called Priene Inscription; it sums up what everybody was supposed to believeabout a Roman ruler:

Itseemed good to the Greeks of Asia, in the opinion of the high priest Apolloniusof Menophilus Azanitus: Since Providence, which has ordered all things and isdeeply interested in our life, has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus,whom she filled with virtue that he might benefit humankind, sending him as asavior, both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrangeall things, and since he, Caesar, by his appearance excelled even ouranticipations, surpassing all previous benefactors, and not even leaving toposterity any hope of surpassing what he has done, and since the birthday of thegod Augustus was the beginning of the good tidings for the world that came byreason of him, which Asia resolved in Smyrna. [3]

This is but one sample of the “good news” that Romekept sending down for all to hear, read, and believe. From Rome, the “good news” is that our almightyEmperor is God’s son and the savior of the world. Be grateful and obey his royal commands! Pay your taxes and bow your heads when he orhis representatives come by. Always actlike an appreciative citizen. Above all,don’t question his authority.

Now with Mark comesanother political announcement! Usingpolitical language to begin his story Mark is about to reject all the current“good news” about Caesar. Disagreeingwith his own government’s propaganda, Mark is about to present an alternativeview of life, just as “political,” but with an entirely different set of valuesand a different vision about who’s really important. Mark is about to introduce Jesus the Anointed,God’s politician.

What happens next is astonishing. Working from memory, Mark quotes from Isaiahthe Prophet (actually the first two lines are from Malachi 3.1) 40.3,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
   who will prepare your way;
³ the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
   ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight,’”

Add caption

A “voice”loud, roaring like a lion, in the wilderness. A “be-wilder-ing” man! Isaiah isspeaking through a loud speaker. Amessenger is bulldozing a way in the wilderness. His voice roars out: “Prepare for God’sarrival! Make the road smooth andstraight!” When emperorsenter a city, their advance teams of horsemen, guards, and trumpeters sound thewarning. Caesar is on his way! Stand aside, the Divine Royalty isapproaching! Get ready to meet yourRuler!

Mark will have none of that. His trumpeter is a crazy man who comes outof a wild place, the “wild”-erness. He’spreaching. Get “watered” and change yourlives! You need forgiveness. He appeals to enormous crowds. They come not only from the country, butstream out from the capital itself. Someare gawkers.

John lookslike a bum. He eats like a homelessman. He probably stinks. It’s a good thing he works in water. Our Sunday School pictures of him are muchtoo nice. His skin is baked likeleather. He’s rough looking, gaunt,muscular, and fiery. He’s the equal and more than any Baptistrevivalist; he is The Baptist! He’s offhis rocker. He’s eccentric. He eats bugs. And he’s the herald of God’s politician, Jesus. For the local authorities, he’s a pain in-the-you-know-what. They don’t like him, never will. Best to send the CIA or somebody to get himbehind bars.

What he saysis startling. “I’m just a stagehand, afront man. The star in this drama isJesus!” He will blow on you the Breath of God. And change you from the inside out. You will change your political views once youget to know God’s personal “politician”: the life-changing Prince of Peace.

Now, havingestablished that we are listening to radically political “good news” in ourfirst-century house church, let’s go to 1.9-15 next Sunday. As you read these verses, perhaps one verse,day-by-day, using the method of “sacred reading” (lectio divina), let these six verses sink deep, word by word, intoyour heart and life. For guidelines, seehttp://www.contemplativeoutreach.org.

Seeyou next Sunday! Anddon’t hesitate to bring your coffee and donuts in with you! Maybe somebody can lug in a big coffee urnfor our refills! ~ Andy

[1] Many scholars believe that we can see whatone of those documents looked like; in New Testament studies, it’s called “Q,”the abbreviation for the German word Quelle (in English, “Source”). Paul in his farewell address to the Ephesianelders reminds them of one of Jesus’ saying that is not recorded anywhere inthe Gospels: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20.35). There were apparently many stories about whatJesus did and said that were not preserved in writing; our historical knowledgeof Jesus is at best partial, but we have been given all we need to know (seeJohn 21.35).

[2] For texts of many “competing” Gospel, see TheComplete Gospels Annotated Scholars Version. ed. Robert J. Miller (San Francisco: Harper,1994). This book contains texts from theGospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Peter, and many others.

[3] For a detailed examination of1.1, see the following: Craig Evans, “Mark’s Incipit and the Priene CalendarInscription: From Jewish Gospel to Greco-Roman Gospel,” Journal of Greco-RomanChristianity and Judaism 1 (2000): 67-81; and AdamWinn, The Purpose ofMark's Gospel: An Early Christian Response to Roman Imperial Propaganda (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen ZumNeuen Testament 2. Reihe), Nehren, Germany: Laupp and Gabel, 2008.

Not hankering after glamour

2011-12-03T06:42:00.001-05:00

The great obstacle may be not greed but the modern hankering after glamour.

Dorothy Day

A lot of our smartest, most concerned people want to come up with a big solution to a big problem. I don't think that planet-saving, if we take it seriously, can furnish employment to many such people.

When I think of the kind of worker the job requires, I think of Dorothy Day (if one can think of Dorothy Day herself, separate from the publicity that came as a result of her rarity), a person willing to go down and down into the daunting, humbling, almost hopeless local presence of the problem--to face the great problem one small life at a time.

-- Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community: Eight Essays.

Born in 1897, Dorothy Day was baptized in 1927. After her conversion, Day desired to combine her activism and her faith. Peter Maurin's brand of personalism provided the link that Day sought. In 1933 Day and Maurin founded The Catholic Worker newspaper and house of hospitality. Until her death in 1980, Day continued to work on behalf of her "fellow workers" and the poor.

More information about the personalism of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin is included on a PDF file provided by the National Catholic Reporter and used with persmission. Click on the following link to read Pat Marrin's article on the personalist roots (PDF file) of the Catholic Worker Movement.

November 30, St. Andrew's Day

2011-11-30T10:42:00.001-05:00

Todayis my favorite saint’s day. After all, it’s St. Andrew’s Day! You shouldn’t get the idea, however, that I was intentionally named after him(although in the long view of things, I like to think so). Thestory goes that during the Great Depression (yes, I’m that old) my father wasunable to render due payment to my mother’s obstetrician, Dr. Harvey AndrewStein, for the services he provided during my delivery and birth intothe God’s world. With little or no money in hand, my fatherdecided to honor (or pay!) the Dr. Stein, one of the finest Jewishobstetricians in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, by naming me after Dr.Stein. So on my birth certificate, the nurse penned in myfull name as Harvey Andrew Stein. For whatever reasons (and I’m gladsomebody decided to do so), the first name never stuck, and nobody ever calledme Harvey. To this day, I don’t use it ever andhave always managed, when necessary to do something legal,to sign my Hancock as “H. Andrew Harnack.”

Bethat as it may, I know I was baptized as Harvey Andrew Harnack on St. Andrew’sDay, and consequently (as I said, “in the long run”), St. Andrew is and has been for 74 years my patronsaint. His icon now hangs in my study by the door so that I get to lookat him many times during the day. Although the icon itself displaysSt. Andrew as a rather dour-looking fellow (I am, of course, dour at timesmyself), I like to look at the icon appreciatively for at least tworeasons. First, it was to Andrew that Jesus said clearly, “You did notchoose me; I chose you!” And second, in Scripture it is St. Andrewwho likes to introduce people to Jesus. He is, after all, the disciplewho introduced the first Pope to Jesus. All of this reminds me thatI am Andy only by the grace of God and that one of my jobs is to introduce asmany people to Jesus as I possibly can.

So on this day, give thanks with me for my Holy Baptism into thelife of the Most Holy Trinity and the Church created, sustained, and nourishedby the grace of the Father through the gift of His son and the presence of theHoly Spirit. And as often as possible, ask God to let me use mylife and Praying Daily Blog as an introduction and invitation toresurrection with Jesus, ourLord.

2011-11-29T19:32:00.004-05:00

During the past year in my local parish we've been able to form a small group that meets weekly for Centering Prayer. Meeting on Tuesdays at 10:00 a.m. since January, we've recently been studying Cynthia Bourgeault's Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening. Our small group is firmly knit, and today we welcomed two new hearts: Carolyn Shaw and Carol Garman. Typically we first enter the sanctuary and practice Centering Prayer for twenty minutes and then gather over coffee to discuss Bourgeault. Well committed to our practice and meetings, we're determined to continue for as long as possible. Even when only one or two are able to come, someone sits for the practice. As we move along, you can be sure that we'll keep you informed about what's happening.

Returning

2011-11-29T17:50:00.005-05:00

It's been some time now since I've posted to this blog (actually since Tuesday, October 20, 2009), but tonight I'm returning for the best of all reasons: it's inexpensive to post here (no expense at all!), manage, and maintain. As someone who has become more aware of the limitations of his fixed retirement income, I have over the years been reducing many items on my budget, many except those that serve either directly or indirectly my parish and the beloved poor of Christ. To that end, then, I'm back, and I hope you will continue to visit Praying Daily, reading what I trust will be interesting postings, and commenting when the opportunity or desire arises.

We've moved to a new blogsite

2009-10-20T11:11:00.004-04:00

Dear readers,

With the help of a young friend, I've been able to set up a new site for Praying Daily at http://www.prayingdailyblog.com/, an installation using WordPress that will enable me to make attractive postings more easily. Please visit http://www.prayingdailyblog.com/ and then subscribe at its RSS FEED so that you'll receive email notices of the new postings and comments. Speaking of which, let me add this encouragement: if you find yourself responding to whatever it you may read at http://www.prayingdailyblog.com/, please post a comment. It's so easy to do! I so much enjoy your commentaries, and so do others!

I'll keep this blog up for a while; then when it's time has run its course, we'll pack it up. Nothing will be lost; everything here has beem migrated to http://www.prayingdailyblog.com/. If you wish, let me know what you think about the move with a few words to me at andrew.harnack@eku.edu.

Thank you, www.blogger.com for your years of helpful service. And may God bless you, www.wordpress.com for all that you will offer in the years to come.

Blessings! -- Andy

Living in the "Not-So-Quite-Right" Church

2009-10-01T11:39:00.012-04:00

Many of us are members of churches wherein at times we feel uncomfortable for one reason or another. Perhaps it's as small an item as the choice of hymns that don't seem to fit our needs. For some it may be that the Liturgy seems too traditional; others may believe their Sunday worship lacks any real memory of the church's historical identity. For others the infiltration of "entertainment worship" is disconcerting. Maybe you feel that the pastor doesn't get out and visit folks as he should (or you think he should). Worse yet, according to your lights, something is askew with the theology of your pastor, your denomination, your church. Whatever the reason, you squirm in your pew. You think about going elsewhere. If so, listen closely to what William J. Abraham in "Staying the Course: On Unity, Division and Renewal in The United Methodist Church" (Ancient and Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century, ed. Kenneth Tanner and Christopher Hall: InterVarity, 2002) suggests:

We need to beware [of] a naive utopianism in our thinking about the church. Even with complete success in the work of renewal, the church will be a fragile and mixed vessel. Jesus warned us that even the kingdom will have wheat and tares which can only be sorted out at the end of the age. Hence we should be prepared to live with all sorts of difficulties, setbacks, strategic retreats and challenges. If any are discouraged, I urge them to read the writings of the fourth-century leaders. Athanasius complained that when the Arians took over his church in Alexandria, folks were frolicking naked in the baptismal fonts. Yet Athanasius stayed the course, organized the faithful in exile, suffered banishment at least five times and eventually won the day for the gospel and the faith.

What Abraham says is not only thoughtful counsel for Methodists, but for any Christian who is unhappy in the pew. If you find yourself unhappy, discouraged, and down-spirited with what you see happening liturgically, theologically, or "whatever" in your church or your parish, bring your concerns before God in prayer, ever-so-quietly consider the merits of your concerns, talk gently and honestly with whomever you disagree, and work fervantly toward the renewal you desire. Above all, in everything let us all allow the love and centrality of Christ rule (and perhaps over-rule) our thoughts, manner of living, and actions.

September 29: St. Michael and All Angels

2009-09-29T08:51:00.005-04:00

Collect of the Day: Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Today's Daily Office

Getting Ready for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

2009-09-28T07:36:00.007-04:00

Each Monday morning Daniel B. Clendenin publishes an essay givng us opportunities to anticipate the lectionary readings for the coming Sunday. Next Sunday, October 4, will be the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (also the Feast of St. Francis), and many of us will hear these appointed readings (Revised Common Lectionary, Year B):

Job 1:1, 2:1–10 or Genesis 2:18–24
Psalm 26 or Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1–4, 2:5–12
Mark 10:2–16

Clendenin tells us that his essay this week takes a page from the pastor-poet George Herbert to consider humanity "Between Nature and Grace." In addition to writing fine essays, Clendenin also usually suggests a book or movie for reading or viewing; his recommendations this week are The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin and the seven-part HBO series John Adam. For poetry he posts his all-time favorite poem, "The Revival," by the Welsh poet-physician Henry Vaughan (1621-1695). Clendenin's weekly publication, a "webzine for the global church," is read by our brothers and sisters in 230 countries. See what you think by visiting Journey with Jesus. You may even wish to subscribe and receive his weekly email announcements as reminders to read his essays and recommendations.

2009-09-27T07:44:00.005-04:00

Susan, on another list, recently posted this remarkable quotation taken from Robert Sardello's Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness:

Each of us has an ever-faithful companion--presence. Something that is always with us. Something that helps us to live with inner integrity and depth, to see through the outer coverings of others and of the world to their purpose and core being, and to get over placing ourselves at the center of everything. This companion-presence is Silence. It never goes away. We go away from it, become distracted and forgetful, and lose the manners needed to nurture companionship with it. We go away from Silence into the world of noise as if into a vast buzzing of insects, pushed to exist within the permanent irritation of dissonance. [...] Silence is palpable. [...]What if, to some degree, the "subjective" experience of God is also subjectively stated? ...What one names "God," for example, another may call "Silence." Certainly, in my devotions the lines between what I "know" of God/Silence often dissolve.

I share Susan's posting of this quotation with you because I have found that Sardello's observation, so creditably articulated, has often been mine. And perhaps yours? My friend Susan recommends that I get a copy of this book, and one reviewer at amazon.com confirms her recommendation: "Get this book now. Crawl naked over brocken glass to get a copy. Read this book before you die." It's Sunday morning and the Gospel, I hope, will remind that I do in fact need to die. I hope it will be a good death. If, however, I live through the week, I should be able to pick up my (used) copy in the mail box sometime this week.

2009-09-26T08:25:00.005-04:00

In Open Mind, Open Heart, Fr. Thomas Keating discusses five kinds of thoughts that may come to us during our practice of Centering Prayer:

1. wanderings of the imagination
2. exploratory intellectual searchings
3. attractive solutions to problems
4. feelings of self-congratulation
5. reawakened emotions arising from dormant traumatic experiences.

At one time or another in our contemplative practice many of us have experienced what Fr. Keating calls "the consequences of traumatic emotional experiences." While such experiences often occur in childhood, we may also encounter them in domestic arguments, the undoings of marriages, the death and suffering of loved ones, the horrors of the battlefield, and our encounters with poverty and injustice here and in the Third World. We live in a violent society; our movies, newspapers, and television shows constantly barrage us with scenes of pain, despair, and great unhappiness. Our personal lives have often carry the wounds of psychic damage. In Centering Prayer it would be unusual not to have violent images, feelings, thoughts, and memories intrude into our movement toward "unworded" contemplative prayer. When that happens, Fr. Keating gives us this exceptionally helpful advice:

When you feel restless, agitated, or pained by some emotional experience, you can't spend the time better than by waiting it out. The temptation is great when you are suffering from a distressing emotion to try to push it away. However, by allowing your attention to move gently toward the emotion and by sinking into it, as though you were getting into a nice jacuzzi, you are embracing God in the feeling. Don't think, just feel the emotion.

If you were blind and then got your sight back, even the ugliest things would be appreciated. Suppose you had no emotions and suddenly experienced one; even a disagreeable emotion would be thrilling. Actually, no emotion is really distressing; it is only the false self that interprets it as distressing. Emotional swings are gradually dissolved by the complete acceptance of them. To put this into practice, you must first recognize and identify the emotion: "Yes, I am angry, I am panicky, terrified, restless."

Every feeling has some good. Since God is the ground of everything, we know that even the feeling of guilt, in a certain sense, is God. If you can embrace the painful feeling, whatever it is, as if it were God, you are uniting yourself with God, because anything that has reality has God as its foundation. "Letting go" is not a simple term; it is quite subtle and has important nuances-depending on what you are intending to let go of. When a thought is not disturbing, letting go means paying no attention to it. When a thought is disturbing, it won't go away so easily, so you have to let it go in some other way. One way you can let it go is to sink into it and identify with it, out of love for God. This may not be possible at first, but try it and see what happens. The principal discipline of contemplative prayer is letting go.

To sum up what I have said on this fifth kind of thought, contemplative prayer is part of a reality that is bigger than itself. It is part of the whole process of integration, which requires opening to God at the level ofthe unconscious. This releases a dynamic that will be peaceful at times, and at other times heavily laden with thoughts and emotion. Both experiences are part of the same process of integration and healing. Each kind of experience, therefore, should be accepted with the same peace, gratitude, and confidence in God. Both are necessary to complete the process of transformation.

If you are suffering from a barrage of thoughts from the unconscious, you don't have to articulate the sacred word clearly in your imagination or keep repeating it in a frantic effort to stabilize your mind. You should think it as easily as you think any thought that comes to mind spontaneously.

Do not resist any thought, do not hang on to any thought, do not react emotionally to any thought. This is the proper response to all five kinds of thoughts that come down the stream of consciousness.

Note: There are two editions (and many printings) of Open Mind, Open Heart. The first was published in 1986; the second (The so-called 20th Anniversary Edition) in 2008. Although they are basically the same, in the 2008 edition, Fr. Keating has rearranged and revised the text in a catechetical (question and answer) fashion. The quotation cited in this posting may be found on page 98-99 in the 1986 edition; on pages 102-104 in the 2008 edition.

Images: Michelle Forsyth, Trauma, 2002. Cotton thread on cotton, 4 x 5 inches ; Sunday, July 9, 2006, 2006. Watercolor on Fabriano SP watercolor paper, 18 x 27 inches.

Reflective Silence during Evening Prayer

2009-09-25T12:40:00.010-04:00

There is a set of paperback books on my shelf that has attracted my attention for years. It’s a four volume edition of the Philokalia. Last night, reading in and around the first volume containing St. H esychios’ “On Watchfulness and Holiness,” I found myself underlining this passage:

Each hour of the day we should note and weigh our actions and in the evening we should do what we can to free ourselves from the burden of them by means of repentance—if that is, we wish, with Christ’s help, to overcome wickedness. (124)

St. Hesychios’ advice is good, and my prayerbook asks me to take advantage of it.

Each day at 5:00 p.m. in Evening Prayers, this prayerbook asks June and me to maintain a period of “silence for meditation.” We don’t observe an overly long silence (admittedly, sometimes it’s short), but most of the time we allow a minute or so to go by in which hear only the ticking of the clock or our own heartbeats. During that silence we reflect on what has happened during the day.

As the day passes, I know we are aware, more or less, of how things have gone. Nevertheless, the evening silence for meditation is an especially good time for summing up and reflecting on the day’s thoughts and actions. This “summing up” allows us to explore and examine the more subtle forms of egotism to which we are constantly inclined. In contemplative language, our review of these egoistic activities alerts us as to how we have been constructing what Thomas Merton, Basil Pennington, and Thomas Keating call our “false selves.”

Each of us knows how to construct a bogus, phony, cooked-up, and specious self; that is, we are experts in creating identifies intended to deceive others—and ourselves!--as to who we really are. I, for example, am given to suggest to you that I’m a fairly decent practicing Christian. Writing these sentences is right now a movement in that direction. For example, I like to read. But lots of times I know I am tempted to read so that I can quote other Christians, a temptation which professional academics find especially fetching. My false self is especially prone to the production of such presentations. I like to associate myself with famous Christians; it helps to suggest that I'm a pretty good Christian. In other words, surely you will recognize me by the company I keep. Just take a look.

Luther, following St. Augustine, describes this tendency to fabricate a false self as the product of homo curvatus in se, “the human "curving" or turning in upon the self.” That is, as a human beings, you and I like to turn and direct our gazes upon ourselves. We’re the objects of our own fascinations.

Homo curvatus in se. Here’s how it works. Although I don’t usually say so emphaticly, I’m personally and often quite secretively convinced that my thinking is generally a little better than your thinking; my politics slightly more on target than yours; my spiritual life, especially when seen in the right light, is at least a tad better than most others. And, of course, my use of silence more productive than yours.

Homo curvatus in se among us humans is insideous. Dangerous. If left unchecked, it marginalizes others, struts our own egos, and eventually discounts as little or nothing what—or better yet, who!-- is our True Self: the Lord Jesus Christ.

Heading in one direction by the dynamics of homo curvatus in se, we desperately need to go in another direction. Curving, arching, and habitually swerving toward one’s self, we need to aim ourselves—minds, hearts, strength, and soul--toward someone other than ourselves: each one's True Self, the Lord Jesus Christ.

God in his grace gives us our True Self in Christ. In prayer we turn from our false selves and meet the Center of our lives, the True Self. Whenever we review our day and discover where repentance is necessay, we are going in the right direction.

God’s gift of a good prayerbook works wonders in this redirectioning. Here’s how it works. Just before we get ready to pray the Psalms for the day, my prayerbook suggests that I observe “silence for meditation.” That where and when I sit quietly for a while to review the day. This extended review invariably reveals numerous occasions when I sinned against family members, neighbors, strangers, and God. I didn’t do what I should have done, and I did what I should not have done. And all in the interest of promoting my false self, my egotistical, self-protective self.

After the “silence for meditation” June and I offer this prayer, echoing images from Psalm 141:

Let in incense of our repentant prayer ascend before you, O Lord, and let your loving kindness descend upon us, that with purified minds we may sing your praises with the Church on earth and the whole heavenly host, and may glorify you forever and ever.

Aware that God’s loving kindness is descending upon us, we then sing the Psalms for the evening and end the day in God’s grace, centered in Christ, the True Self.

Images: Evangelical Lutheran Worship

A post-script: If an exploration of the undercurrents of self-deception and the management of false selves interests you, perhaps like me you may wish to purchase and read Gregg A. Ten Elshof's I Told Me So, recently published by Wm. B. Eerdmans.

The closing of our eyes in prayer

2009-09-24T10:55:00.009-04:00

Last Saturday (during the Week of Pentecost 15) during Morning Prayer many of us read Chapter 8 of I Kings: it’s the story of Solomon’s dedication of the new constructed Temple. At one point, the story’s narrator says,

And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. Then Solomon said,

The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness.
I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever.

This is a remarkable detail of the dedication story because it turns up-side-down and inside-out our usual thinking about God’s glory. Usually we imagine God’s glory as a great brightening Light, a kind of blinding whiteness that bursts radiantly from God’s presence. Here, however, the glory of God comes cloud-like, a foggy darkness so solid that the priests had to grope their way around, unsure about their whereabouts, unable to stand and do their work. In short, God’s glory is also an enveloping darkness.

Those who practice Centering Prayer know that teachers like Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington make it a point to recommend that we sit comfortably “with eyes closed” when introduce the sacred word as the symbol of your consent to God’s presence and action within.

To close one’s eyes is one way we allow God’s darkening glory to come upon us. Jesus himself recommended such environmental darkness for prayer when giving us guidelines, he recommended that we into our closet, shut the door, and pray to our Father who sees in secret (Matthew 6). As I have said elsewhere, inasmuch as first-century Jewish homes had no closets as we know them, it likely that Jesus is suggesting that go off somewhere alone, pull a prayer shawl over our heads or at least pull down our eyelids so that we enter a personal darkness to be with God--or better said, that God may be with us.

That is the experience of many when God meets them: Moses on Mt. Sinai, Paul when struck blind, Joseph in his dreams. The fourteenth-century classic on contemplative prayer is titled The Cloud of Unknowing. The anonymous author of that book tells us that it is when we enter a "cloud" and remove as many distractions as possible, even to the diminishment of following thoughts themselves, that God speaks His healing silence.

Yet even in darkness one may experience what appears to be simply darkness. A friend of mine recently told me about his contemplative practice this way:

Having a subjective “felt experience of God” would be nice, but I don’t really don’t look for that. Just sitting for twenty minutes or so and then listening to the healing silence that dwells behind all of the noise and chatter in the world is enough for me! Centering Prayer is a tool which quiets the mind and then allows a person to rest in silence for a short period of time every day. And for me that silence is not empty -- but it’s alive and good and has something to do with eternity and with God. Perhaps we should not expect more than that.

In the closing of our eyes, in whatever darkness we enter, we always sit as the guests of God who comes as and when He wishes. Fr. Keating has somewhere noted that that he "continues to meet people who are very advanced in the spiritual journey who insist that they have never had the grace of contemplative prayer as a felt experience of God.” Certainly my own experience has been something of the kind. My “felt experiences” of God have been terribly (I use the word carefully) brief, sometimes awefully (again I use the word carefully) brief. More often in God’s silence I find myself almost always wrapped in some kind of pervasive Love, healed, cured of anxiety, dissipation, and worry. In my "unknowing," without words in some strange way I am aware of God’s presence. At the same time, like those priests at the dedication of the temple, I sit gropingly, many times unsure as to where to stand and go. Nevertheless, as I raise my eyelids and look around (sometimes to see the difference between night and dawn), I realize God in his great dark glory has been with me.

Isn’t it so with you?

Image: Jack Baumgartner, Self-Portrait with Closed Eyes

Recent new about Fr. Thomas Keating

2009-09-24T10:50:00.002-04:00

As some of you may know, Fr. Thomas Keating was hospitalized last week with a pulmonary embolism. On Saturday, September 12, he had a simple surgical procedure to ensure the clots do not move into his lungs. On Sunday evening, September 13, he returned to his home at St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, and is resting and in good spirits.

Fr. Keating is the author of many book on the theology and practice of contemplative prayer.

Listing Prayer

2009-09-02T20:04:00.006-04:00

Many Christians look forward to those times during the day when they can find a time of silence for sacred reading, morning and evening prayer, and some form of contemplative practice, perhaps Centering Prayer. It may require that they rise earlier in the morning than others or go to bed a little later than some. To turn their intentions into action they also find it helpful to mark in advance their daily calendar for such times. Along with making a list of daily things to be done (don't forget to get eggs!), not a few find it helpful to write the word Prayer at the beginning and end of each day’s listing. All such habits help us keep time sacred, enter the Presence of God, listen to Our Lord, and respond to the Holy Spirit through the whole day--all twenty-four hours.

By the way, I found this observation earlier in the day while reading The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware:

It is common to regard contemplation as a rare and exalted gift, and so no doubt it is in its plenitude. Yet the seeds of a contemplative attitude exist in all of us. From this hour and moment I can start to walk through the world, conscious that it is God's world, that he is near me in everything that I see and touch, in everyone whom I encounter. However spasmodically and incompletely I do this I have already set foot upon the contemplative path.

Beginning Again

2009-09-02T10:09:00.010-04:00

I realize that it has been quite a while since I’ve posted to Praying Daily. Since my last post on July 18 I have been in Georgia at our home on Jackson Lake, and while there I decided to wean myself away from the computer as much as possible. My days were filled with ample reading, a good bit of sweaty manual labor around the house, rounds of morning and evening prayer with June, some contemplative silence, evening boat rides, visits from family and friends, and Sunday Eucharists at St. John Lutheran Church in Griffin, Georgia. Importantly, I had a lot of time to reacquaint myself with Flannery O'Connor, her stories, novels, and criticism of and about her. I was able to visit several times her home at the Andalusia, the dairy farm near Milledgeville, Georgia. One day I drove over to see the manuscript collection at Georgia State College and University. All of which is to say that while absent from Praying Daily here, I was able to find refreshment with family, friends, reading, and prayer. And, oh yes, with my son, pastor, and three other dear friends, I went to Haiti for a week in late July and early August. Now it’s time to return to Praying Daily and begin again our sharing of times and things prayerful.

You can expect not a few words from Flannery O’Connor in the coming days, and I’ll begin this blog renewal with one now. While at Andalusia, I bought a Flannery O’Connor Perpetual Calendar; each day it gives the reader either a quotation (sometimes with a sketchy cartoon), usually something from her letters, her stories and novels, or from the talks she gave at various universities and assorted literary groups. On August 18, here’s what the calendar gave us:

Isn’t that so? Well, it must be; I've copied it into my chapbook.

From the Chapbook

2009-07-18T09:42:00.008-04:00

As some of you know, I keep a chapbook in which now and then I record sayings and quotations that I want to remember. This morning as I paged through my collection of observations, some sayings brought me consolation and encouragement; perhaps one or more of the following four will do the same for you:

From even my sins God has drawn good. (St. Augustine)

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. (Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being, 307).

Aim to make daily life sacramental which means literally to keep the sacred (sacra) in mind (mental). On other words, . . . seek a mindfulness--a mind full--of God's presence int he world. (Phillip Yancey, Rumors of Another World, 44

[Concerning reading Scripture]: Come before the Lord and begin to read. Stop reading when you feel the Lord drawing you inwardly to himself. Now, simply remain in stillness. Stay there for awhile. (Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717), Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ.

2009-06-29T12:54:00.005-04:00

Whenever I find it possible, I listen to Krista Tippett ’s weekly hour-long NPR program, Speaking of Faith. Each week Tippett interviews someone whose life and witness is a testimony to faith, ecumenically defined. Yesterday Tippett interviewed geophysicist and spiritual thinker Xavier Le Pichon during a program entitled "Fragility and the Evolution of Our Humanity — A Geophysicist's View." Here’s the beginning of the interview:

Ms. Tippett: Xavier Le Pichon is a pioneer on the field of plate tectonics. He was a formative figure at one of those junctures where science not only radically revises its own assumptions but changes the way all of us see the world. When he began his life as a scientist in 1959, the prevailing view among geologists is what we know call "fixist." There was no knowledge of tectonic plates beneath the ocean with fault lines and constant motion that across time had configured and reconfigured the earth's crust and entire continents.

Mr. Le Pichon: The earth was considered a place where everything was static. You know, things were moving up and down but never laterally. Actually, the earth is an extraordinary living being with the motions of the oceans and continents continuously changing, evolving, and this was a tremendous shock.

Ms. Tippett: Still a practicing scientist, Xavier Le Pichon is also a lifelong Catholic. Since 2003, he has lived in an intentional community he and family helped found to provide retreat for families caring for a loved one with mental illness. Before that, for nearly three decades, he and his wife raised their family of six children at the original French L'Arche community, centered around people with mental disabilities. This aspect of his life was foreshadowed by his previous adventures at great universities and exploring the depths of the world's oceans in submersibles.

Near the conclusion of the interview, Le Pichon spoke briefly about his prayer life:

Mr. Le Pichon: And I then discovered later on the love of the suffering people, which I found could not be separated from the love of God. Actually, I could not go to God unless I went through these people. And all this is, in a sense, incompatible. Somebody once asked me, "How do you maintain unity in your life? Aren't you schizophrenic?" And my answer was, "It's through prayer. I spend a lot of time in prayer." I pray at least one or two hours a day. And it is through the prayer of God that has taken people into this extremely different field. I think it's the power of God that when you ask him he lets you unify things that apparently cannot be unified.
As I listened, it stroke me as quite remarkable that Le Pichon, a world-reknown geophysicist, should openly say that he prays “at least one or two hours a day,” that in his prayers God has taken him to love suffering people, and that in prayer God lets him “unify things that apparently cannot be unified.”

Le Pichon prays an hour or so every day. While I don’t know how he prays, I suspect that a good portion of his daily prayers is taken up with the Church’s traditional Morning and Evening Prayers. As a Roman Catholic he may well call his prayers The Liturgy of the Hours. If my intimations are correct, Le Pichon surely uses the Psalms as the foundation of his prayers. By building his prayer life on the Psalms, Le Pichon is called to remember the poor, the weak, and suffering again and again as he daily murmurs or perhaps quietly sings the Psalms in his home. Remembering the weak and suffering in this way has led him, as he says, into an “extremely different field,” that of living within an intentional community whose vocation is to serve the mentally ill.

As a Christian Le Pichon finds God’s creative love for an evolving world a reason for awe and wonder. Again, while I don’t know exactly how Le Pichon prays, I suspect that sitting in Silence before such a mystery plays a considerable role in an appreciation for his True Self and his understanding as to how we humans have evolved under God’s care.

A world-famous geophysicist who has introduced us to the study of plate techtonics intentionally lives with those who suffer from mental illness. Remarkable! Through prayer God has given Le Pichon the desire and ability to unify two supposedly different ways of thinking and living: scientific examination and prayerful listening. Le Pichon is a witness to what a radically expanded understanding of prayer can do.

If you’d like to read the transcript of the entire interview, visit http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/fragility/transcript.shtml.

I'd rather be cleaned first.

2009-06-23T16:52:00.009-04:00

Although C. S. Lewis is much loved by all Christians (and deservedly so!), it's not well known that Lewis came to believe that prayers for the dead and purgatory were, after all, commonsensical Christian realities in the Grand Scheme of Things; that is, they made a good bit of Christian common sense to those who trust and love God. Here's what Lewis says in Letters To Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer:

Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age, the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to him?

I believe in Purgatory.
Mind you, the Reformers had good reasons for throwing doubt on the "Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory" as that Romish doctrine had then become . . . . The right view returns magnificently in Newman's DREAM. There, if I remember it rightly, the saved soul, at the very foot of the throne, begs to be taken away and cleansed. It cannot bear for a moment longer "with its darkness to affront that light." Religion has claimed Purgatory.
Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, "It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy"? Should we not reply, "With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I'd rather be cleaned first." It may hurt, you know." -"Even so, sir."
I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don't think the suffering is the purpose of the purgation. I can well believe that people neither much worse nor much better than I will suffer less than I or more. . . . The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much.
My favourite image on this matter comes from the dentist's chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am 'coming round',' a voice will say, 'Rinse your mouth out with this.' This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure. But . . . it will [not] be disgusting and unhallowed." (Chapter 20, paragraphs 7-10)

Lewis had no doubt that God in his infinite love will welcome us into his Presence with open arms. But he also had reason to believe that we Christians will quite naturally like to polish our shoes, mend the tears in our shirts, and brush our teeth before we step into the Throne Room. Of course, if may be something of Lewis' British appreciation for politeness that prompts him to want to "clean up a bit" and comb his hair that teases him into an appreciation for purgatory. Be that as it may, such a Christian impulse reflects no desire to improve ourselves morally or engage in some form of salvation by works. The conviction that purgatory may be an appropriate vestibule for the Throne Room simply reflects a Christian's redeemed desire to "get ready for worship," making sure he or she knows well how to step into the Royal Presence. As I understand Lewis, a willingness to be in purgatory is simply living out one's desire to learn how to express a fully an appreciative life of Christian courtesy before God; perhaps we might well take a final lesson or two on how to sit, stand, and sing (or learn to play an instrument) before the Royal Family, the Most Holy Trinity.

The reason I mention Lewis' conviction that purgatorial training of some sort belongs in the Grand Scheme of Things is to suggest that our prayer life--especially if it takes the form in Centering Prayer--may also be a kind of purgatory as Thomas Keating suggests:

Contemplative prayer is a kind of purgatory. Purgatory in Catholic theology is a state in which we complete the journey to divine union in the next life if we have not quite finished it here. Every bit of progress means an enormous benefit for us and for everyone else in the human race. To be on this journey is really the greatest contribution one can make tothe human family. This journey does not just involve what happens in prayer; rather, what happens in prayer enables us to live daily life as a continuation of the purification process. The ups and downs of daily life, including its very everydayness, are the arena in which the Christian journey takes place. God is in solidarity with our lives and deaths, just as they are. Perfection does not consist in feeling perfect or being perfect, but in doing what we are supposed to do without noticing it: loving people without taking any credit. Just doing it. (Intimacy with God (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996, 63-64.)

Prayerful Clarity

2009-06-17T05:55:00.004-04:00

In Further Along the Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck makes this observation:

When Jesus gave his big sermon, the first words out of his mouth were: "Blessed
are the poor in spirit." There are a number of ways to translate "poor in spirit," but on an intellectual level, the best translation is "confused." Blessed are the confused. If you ask why Jesus might have said that, then I must point out to you that confusion leads to a search for clarification and with that search comes a great deal of learning. For an old idea to die and a new and better idea to take place, we have to go through periods of confusion. It is uncomfortable, sometimes painful to be in such periods. Nonetheless it is blessed because when we are in them, we are open to the new, we are looking, we are growing. And so it is that Jesus said, "Blessed are the confused." Virtually all of the evil in this world is committed by people who are absolutely certain they know what they're doing. It is not committed by people who think of themselves as confused. It is not committed by the poor in spirit.

Peck is on to something, and if you're like me I suspect there's a good bit of confusion in your life as there in mine. Here I'm thinking not only about the numerous befuddlements we experience daily (Where the dickens did I put those pliers?), but more importantly my confusions have to do with genuine perplexities about complex moral issues (What about assisted suicides for those who suffer painfully terminal diseases?), family issues (Is it all right to counsel my son to obtain a divorce?), and matters of national importance (Can I be a Democrat while opposing abortion?). Sometimes, depending on whom I've recently heard, I find myself changing "sides" on issues for which other make seemingly persuasive observations. In short, it's not unusual for me to find myself in the middle of things--confused.

In prayer, that is, in the distillation of interior silence and listening, God, as Jesus promises, blesses those of us who are confused . As we read Scriptures (especially the psalms), meditate on the Gospels, say our Morning and Evening Prayers, attend to frequent Holy Communions, practice some form of centering prayer, and allow the mind of Christ to shape our vision and actions, entering daily silence gives the Holy Spirit opportunities to clarify what's possible, what's right, and perhaps where ambiguity about somethings is all right. After all, even our opinions and decisions, as good as they may be, are nonetheless always in need of more thorough saving and forgiveness. Lest we think we've "got it," there's always the possibility that God will give us not only the right decision, but also a good way to express it with love and compassion. And confusion about that is often the tough part.

Image: Fra Angeica (1387-1455), The Sermon on the Mount

Chipping Away

2009-06-10T13:40:00.004-04:00

In The Orthodox Way (St. Vladimir's Seminary P, Crestwood, NY: 1979), Bishop Kallistos Ware enters a sculptor's workshop to find a wonderful metaphor clarifying what happens when in contemplative prayer we strip away all the predicates of our descriptive selves (for example, "I'm a professor; my name is Andrew; I'm a Lutheran; I go to church; I'm the father of many children; I pray; I'm married; I like beer, and so on!") and release ourselves from notions of importance (or insignificance), success (or failure), current happiness (or sadness), intellectural abilities (or lack thereof), and so on. When we practice "letting go" of such illusive notions about who we really are and arrive at our innermost heart--where God is always intimately one with us--then we down-dwell with Him (or Her, as some come to know the Presence) and we realize and enjoy our True Self Jesus, who/Who we are:

The apophatic method, whether in our theological discourse or in our life of prayer, is seemingly negative in character, but in its final aim it issupremely positive. The laying-aside of thoughts and images leads not to vacuity but to a plenitude surpassing all that the human mind can conceiveor express. The way of negation resembles not so much the peeling of an onion as the carving of a statue. When we peel an onion, we remove one skin after another, until finally there is no more onion left: we end up with nothing at all. But the sculptor, when chipping away at a block of marble, negates to a positive effect. He does not reduce the block to a heap of random fragments but, through the apparently destructive action of breaking the stone in pieces, he ends up by unveiling an intelligible shape. (124)

Many ways to enter prayerful contemplative living

2009-06-08T12:33:00.013-04:00

For those of us who live in the Bluegrass of central Kentucky, it' s almost always a pleasure to drive by a horse farm and enjoy the fencing.

Sometimes in the spring when the foals can be seen, I stop my car to say hello to mom and her newborn. Last year Moonstone Farm on Grimes Mill Road (a lovely part of the horse country south of the Lexington) let me walk around its paddocks, taking pictures of the horses, barns, and fencing.

A lover of such fencing, I often think of them as reminders of how I spend my time "fence-walking" or pilgrimaging through life. Just as the placement of well-grounded fence posts provides solid anchorage for the railings of horse-farm fencing, so praying the Daily Offices and setting aside time for centering prayer serve as "fenceposts" for contemplative living. Between the posts, between our morning and evenings, there's a good bit of "railing," that is, our time during the day. Assuming that one's "fenceposts" (prayer in the morning, prayer in the evening) are well in the ground, we are fairly ready to put the railings in place and walk along their timbered bars, the hours between sunrise and sunset.

What is that "railing" walk for those of us who have the fenceposts in place? How do we pass our "day hours" as we go from post of post? Here, by way of encouragement, Merton suggests how one might live prayerfully and contemplatively as the day passes, inbetween the fence posts:

Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train. Above, all, enter into the Church's liturgy and make the liturgical cycle part of your life-let its rhythm work its way into your body and soul. (New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions Press, 1961), 216.

What Merton is suggesting is that we allow our more or less concentrated contemplative times of prayer to extend themselves into every facet of living. With a contemplative heart, we say hello to the cashier at WalMart; with a contemplative mindset, we answer the phone to find out who's calling and why; with a contemplative attitude, we wash the dishes, do the laundry, grade student papers, mow the lawn, work on the budget, and work as an attorney, a salesclerk, a pastor, a custodian, or a retired professor. Just so, all of life becomes a contemplative journey.

Image: A picture of the paddock fencing I took at Moonstone Farm on Grimes Mill Road.

The Fruit of the Holy Spirit

2009-06-05T22:34:00.009-04:00

This morning Harry came over to share some coffee and chat about things. After we said Morning Prayer together, we managed to talk about Quaker Elton Trueblood and then our conversation turned to St. Paul’s listing of the “fruit of the Holy Spirit” in Galations 5:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.

How, we asked ourselves, does one come to produce or enjoy such fruit? Harry suggested that the Spirit’s fruit isn’t “produced” by anything we do. I nodded in agreement: the fruit of the Spirit is simply the outward evidence of an inward indwelling or abiding in Christ.

After Harry left to distribute a carload of noontime “Meals on Wheels,” I had occasion to read again in my dog-eared copy of George Maloney’s Inward Stillness. And wouldn’t you know it! In Chapter 2, “A Silenced Heart,” Maloney makes this observation:

This [silent indwelling of God] is a gift from God’s Spirit. It flows as fruit from deep union with God outwardly to effect not only a deeper silence of the mind but a silence that affects also the very way we look at others, smile, the way we walk and talk. St. Paul described the fruit of such silence of the heart as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control.” . . . When the heart is silent and the whole [person] is integrated, then she enters into the Kingdom of Heaven that is within. (31-32)

Those who practice contemplative living, prayerful listening, and frequent restful quietness within God’s presence, know from experience that Maloney speaks truthfully. When in Great Silence we quietly say goodbye to our self-nurturing egos and self-flattering illusions of importance, something wonderful happens. Quietly, often slowly but surely, the Holy Spirit begins the reshaping of our interior selves. Transformation takes place.

As we move through our days within this awareness of the Spirit’s creative use of silence—sometimes intense, sometimes not—we learn, as Maloney says, “to stand before God in honesty, humility, silent to our own need to tell God what we have been doing for Him” (33). In other words, any sense that we are doing something important simply goes by the bye. Instead, we become aware that God is doing something quite remarkable within us. Our actions—when done in love, joy, peace, and patience--are really the fruit of the Spirit.

Literally doing nothing, we center “upon God as the Source of all our energies,” as Maloney puts it. The point is this: we really don’t have to work real hard to bear fruit. Rather, it’s through “abiding” in God that we are set free to release the fruit of Spirit.

Isn’t that right, Harry?

World News This Week

2009-06-05T07:06:00.005-04:00

While I'm not entirely sure, I think it was Reinhold Niebuhr who recommended that we pray with Scriptures in one hand and a newspaper in the other hand. That's good advice whether or not my memory of its ascription to Niebuhr is correct.

Several months ago Louise Heiss, a friend at Faith Lutheran Church, recommended that I subscribe to World News This Week, and I have found this ministry of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist
Lodi, California, USA, both a source of valuable information and a profoundly helpful resource for my prayer life. Here's how it works. Each week a volunteer scours through newspapers and news reports to learn where and how people are suffering from hunger, war, injustice, natural disasters, torture, false imprionment, economic stress, and environmental damage. Then that person writes a prayer and shares it with all of us who subscribe to World News This Week.

When I receive my weekly notice, I print myself a copy and place it in my prayerbook. Then, when its time for various "other prayers" (confessions, intercessions, thanksgivings, praises) in Morning and Evening Prayer, I pray one or more of the petitions, adding them to my prayers for family and friends. I pray these peitions slowly so that I keep their intent memorably in tact during the day. Admittedly, sometimes I don't know the circumstances surrounding some petitions and therefore find it necesary to do some research, usually right after my World News This We prayer incentives arrive.

You may want to look into subscribing to this service. Here, for example, is what I received this morning, what is now printed and placed in my prayerbook:

We pray for a commitment to life so full that we will not accept the ways of death. We pray to be led more fully by the Spirit. We pray to accept ourselves, and others, as children of God. Not enslaved by fear, but joyfully adopted into a family dedicated to witnessing the reality of life as it ought to be, we pray to live by the realization that Cornel West worded this way: “Indifference to injustice is more insidious than the injustice itself.”

Deliver us from indifference to the prevalence of slavery in the world. Let us not just pray for, but also devote our attention and contribute our resources to, the work of initiatives that combat child prostitution, that pursue liberation for individuals, that advocate for cultural and political change, and that break our hearts. Some say there is more slavery in the world now than at any time in its past. Deliver us from apathy.

Deliver us from indifference to the abuses of imprisonment. As we recall a fifth casualty of suicide among the detainees in Guantánamo, Cuba, let us not forget to mourn the death of a real person, a man from Yemen, a man with a name, Muhammad Ahmad Abdallah Salih, held since February 2002, untried, allegedly a Taliban fighter. Let us not forget his fellow detainees, the Uighurs, and let us not accept the way journalists were denied information and access both to the suicide and to the protests of the Uighurs.

Deliver us from indifference to the efforts to suppress discussion of the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China 20 years ago this week. All the old-fashioned forms of censorship are being supplemented with new efforts to make social networking unavailable. Let us celebrate the creativity, not to mention the courage, of those who would keep the images available. We pray especially for civic organizations in Hong Kong holding a vigil and otherwise noting the anniversary.

Deliver us from indifference to the circumstances of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and her country, Burma. Arouse effective response to the conscription of child soldiers, sexual violence, forced displacement and other violations of international law.

Correct our unwillingness to acknowledge the connection between prosperity and peace. Redouble our efforts to mitigate the damage that economic problems cause, not just for the sake of those who are most badly affected by also for all of us, who eventually suffer the consequences of a poorer world that becomes a more violent world.

Dismantle our preoccupation with simplicity. Grant us grace to understand and to work with the realities of no prevailing power group in Somalia, of no certain path for the swine flu virus, and of ills where we can find no one source of blame.

Finally, we pray you deliver us from indifference to evidence that some lessons are being learned. Brazil is set to show the lowest rate of Amazon deforestation in 20 years. Companies in the U.S. are responding to consumers, federal regulators, employees and environmental watchdogs with better monitoring of carbon emissions and with projects to reduce emissions. We can learn to expect better results when we make better efforts. Too often we come to you in childish ways, but always you respond to us with a wise love. We know that it is a human obligation to care for the world, and, we thank you for your abiding companionship in the effort.

Amen.

Image: Pray for the World

The Quiet Place

2009-05-27T06:48:00.007-04:00

On a regular basis, a good many of us find it difficult to place ourselves both physically and spiritually in a "quiet place” where by desire and desert solitude we can simply “be” in the presence of God. I know that we're told that we can do so even in a busy airport where in some corner, amid all the announcements and distractions, we can enter an oxymoronic "terminal tranquility." But most of us beginning contemplatives naturally prefer the stillness of a garden, a room part, an empty chapel to the hurley-burley of a chair in WalMart. Somewhere deep inside of us there’s a nagging realization that Tom Merton has a good part of it right with this comment, made late in his life:

This will give us some idea of the proper preparation that the contemplative life requires. A life that is quiet, lived in the country, in touch with the rhythm of nature and the seasons. A life in which there is manual work, the exercise of arts and skills, not in a spirit of dilettantism, but with genuine reference to the needs of one's existence. The cultivation of the land, the care of farm animals, gardening. A broad and serious literary culture, music, art, again not in the spirit of Time and Life-(a chatty introduction to Titian, Prexiteles, and Jackson Pollock)-but a genuine and creative appreciation of the way poems, pictures, etc., are made. A life in which there is such a thing as serious conversation, and little or no TV. These things are mentioned not with the insistence that only life in the country can prepare a [person] for contemplation, but to show the type of exercise that is needed. (The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. ed. William H. Shannon. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003, 131)

Speaking for myself, I don’t really have a country life, my days cultivating the land; nor do I spend my hours in a “broad and serious literary culture” even though I’m a retired English professor. I wake up, sit in centering prayer for a while, have breakfast with June, do the traditional prayer office with her, and then try to make some headway in accomplishing the day’s obligations. Today, for example, I’ve got to “clean out” the debris (logs, old torn-away decks, hunks of styrofoam, and so on) from the lake cove. Jackson Lake is feed by three rivers; and when the rains come long and hard, upstream trash comes pouring into the lake. Since we live on the east side in a cove, the westerly winds blow the stuff up against the shore line. Right now it’s awful. So this week, my neighbors and I will load up a Georgia Power trash barge , and five or six times we’ll transport the head-high piles of river junk five miles down to the dam where we’ll unload it for recycling. That work will take four or five us three or four days. Some contemplative life, eh?

The good side of everything is that I get to work outside, away from the incessant noise of the TV. And while the lake trash sometimes smells awful (rotting leaves in the water), I do get to feel the sun’s warmth inbetween the showers, hear the screams of a hawk now and then, and see the rhododendrons in full bloom.

I take encouragement that Merton concludes his environmental remarks concerning the contemplative life when he says, “These things [“the exercise of arts and skills”] are mentioned not with the insistence that only life in the country can prepare a [person] for contemplation, but to show the type of exercise that is needed.” Well, I suppose, like you, I too am getting “the type of exercise that is needed.” You do your office work, mow the grass, and feed the kids. I know that Merton himself was also frequently frustrated by his lack of time for solitude and quiet. After all, his monastery was nothing less than a huge bread factory, and he often complained about its noise and commercial preoccupations. The grind of the tractors in the fields were particularly bothersome (as were the roar of the bombers flying over from Fort Campbell.) All of which is to say that none of us has a so-called perfect place, neither inside or outside ourselves, wherein we may be always fully at rest in God. That will come only in death and life thereafter. But we should all take encouragement by the desire we have within us. That desire comes by the prompting of Holy Spirit. Keeping our eyes and ears open for beauty and loveliness, we can practice pausing often—and sometimes for quite a while—to enter the Quiet we seek. For me, sometimes the beginning of a contemplative turn comes just sitting to catch my breath. I know the same goes for you too.

There is in the heart "the peace of God that passeth all understanding," a quietness and confidence which is the source of all strength, a sweet peace, which nothing can offend, a deep rest which the world can neither give nortake away. There is in the center of the soul a chamber of peace where God dwells, and where, if we will only enter and hush every other sound, we will hear His still small voice. (The Fire of Silence and Stillness: An Anthology of Quotations for theSpiritual Journey. Ed, Paul Harris. Templegate Publishers, Springfield, Illinois. 1995) , 15.

The Interior Air

2009-05-22T07:00:00.007-04:00

Thirty-three years George Maloney published his little book, Inward Stillness (Denville, NJ: Dimension, 1976); from my dog-eared copy I share this lightly edited (for more inclusive language) notice:

Silence is the interior air that the spirit of man needs in order to grow spiritually. Such silence leads us into the inner recess and there his Heavenly Father will recompense him (Matt.6:6). This recompensing comes to us in the healing of psychic disturbances, the chaotic meaninglessness of so many past experiences that hang like dried skeletons within our memories, the anxieties that force man into an isolation of deadly loneliness. We become consoled, loved by God in an experience that is beyond concepts. We know that we know God loves us! This being-loved-by-God experience at the deepest level of our consciousness restores our strength, pushes us to new self-giving and creativity. (30)

This is what happens during morning and evening prayer, within centering prayer, during the open intervals of our day, while awakening to night's dark silence, and when pausing long in the slow, quiet reading of Scripture. During such times we open ourselves to the mind of Christ. During such times, we breathe deeply "the interior air."

Image: Samantha Lamb, Breathing Deeply

Praying Selflessly

2009-05-14T08:41:00.010-04:00

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together reminds us that we practice selfless prayer when we pray the psalms:

The psalms teach us to pray as a fellowship. The Body of Christ is praying, and as an individual one acknowledges that his prayer is only a minute fragment of the whole prayer of the Church. He learns to pray the prayer of the Body of Christ. And that lifts him above his personal concerns and allows him to pray selflessly.

To pray selflessly means that we practice a letting-go of many seemingly important personal needs. In the psalms we let the egocentric desires of the self recede into the background and eventually learn to let them go entirely. We enter the lives of other people, especially the poor. As we practice letting go of ourselves, we learn learn that our emptiness is filled with the suffering of others and the active Presence of God. We enter the place and space where "no things" weigh us down and we are lifted up with and for the world in Christ's Body to God the Father. This is the work of a lifetime, but it may surely begin and continue whenever we enter God's gift of the psalms.

_____

Image: Dean Mitchell, Rowena

2009-05-09T08:52:00.004-04:00

On Thursday, The National Day of Prayer, June and I stopped by Faith Lutheran Church’s twelve-hour (9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.) Prayer Vigil. While in prayer for about a half-hour at noon, in addition to there were several readings: one from Wendell Berry, two from Pastor Luckey, and this one by Jim Wallis:

This world of ours is not working. Even while we cling to the illusion that everything is all right, we know in our hearts that it is not. In our society the gap between the rich and the poor is larger than any time in our whole history. The threats to our environment seem to grow every day and the middle classes are afflicted with an anxiety, a loneliness and a fear that we know too well.

On a world scale, the poor are dying in enormous numbers now -- forty thousand children each and every day. The world is gasping for breath, pleading for mercy for us to stop. The credo of the affluent comes to us from bumper stickers which read, "I shop, therefore, I am." This is a faith statement, a theological affirmation of a culture that is in danger of losing its own soul. Now we are on the edge of war in the Middle East. We face a horrible catastrophe to protect our access to cheap oil. The President says the oil symbolizes our way of life, but it is really our national addiction to an over consumption that is killing the poor, killing the earth and denying us our own humanity. The questions we must ask are "Where have we gone wrong and how do we find the resources to move into a different future?" Where do we turn?

I was a seminary student in Chicago many years ago. We decided to try an experiment. We made a study of every single reference in the whole Bible to the poor, to God's love for the poor, to God being the deliverer of the oppressed. We found thousands of verses on the subject. The Bible is full of the poor.

In the Hebrew scriptures, for example, it is the second most prominent theme. The first is idolatry and the two are most often connected. In the New Testament, we find that one of every sixteen verses is about poor people; in the gospels, one of every ten; in Luke, one of every seven. We find the poor everywhere in the Bible.

One member of our group was a very zealous young seminary student and he thought he would try something just to see what might happen. He took an old Bible and a pair of scissors. He cut every single reference to the poor out of the Bible. It took him a very long time.

When he was through, the Bible was very different, because when he came to Amos and read the words, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream," he just cut it out. When he got to Isaiah and heard the prophet say, "Is not this the fast that I choose: to bring the homeless poor into your home, to break the yoke and let the oppressed go free?" he just cut it right out. All those Psalms that see God as a deliverer of the oppressed, they disappeared.

In the gospels, he came to Mary's wonderful song where she says, "The mighty will be put down from their thrones, the lowly exalted, the poor filled with good things and the rich sent empty away." Of course, you can guess what happened to that. In Matthew 25, the section about the least of these, that was gone. Luke 4, Jesus' very first sermon, what I call his Nazareth manifesto, where he said, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to poor people" -- that was gone, too. "Blessed are the poor," that was gone.

So much of the Bible was cut out; so much so that when he was through, that old Bible literally was in shreds. It wouldn't hold together. I held it in my hand and it was falling apart. It was a Bible full of holes. I would often take that Bible out with me to preach. I would hold it high in the air above American congregations and say, "Brothers and sister, this is the American Bible, full of holes from all we have cut out." We might as well have taken that pair of scissors and just cut out all that we have ignored for such a long time. In America the Bible that we read is full of holes.

In the silence after this reading, I can assure you that some of us were praying for the poor. We were asking God to help us respect, feed, clothe, educate, and house the poor--the beloved of God.

Why we pray the psalms

2009-05-04T05:25:00.011-04:00

We pray the psalms for many reasons. Here is an important one: we pray the psalms to express our solidarity with people who are suffering and in pain. As privileged “first-world” people, most of us have little personal experience with genuine poverty or communal misery. Our first-world culture urges us to purchase happiness, and so we buy memberships into book clubs, golf clubs, health clubs, camera and country clubs, associations and organizations of all sorts to make sure we’re on the road to satisfaction and pleasure. Life is a cruise.

The psalms point us in another direction so that we learn the preoccupations of God. In The Promise of Paradox Parker Palmer reminds us that we may bend our lives into God’s beloved poor:

It is the suffering already present in the world which we can either ignore or identify with. If pain were not real, if it were not the lot of so many, the way of the cross would be pathological. But in our world with its hungry and homeless and hopeless, it is pathological to live as if pain did not exist. The way of the cross means letting pain carve one's life into a channel through which the healing stream of the spirit can flow to a world in need.

The psalms, so often written by people “down under,” help us create and form an alliance with those who suffer affliction, anguish, discomfort, and hardship. In the psalms we hear the voices of alcoholics (it's much like going to an AA meeting), drug addicts, prisoners orphans, and widows. In the psalms we sing the songs of the unemployed, the tormented, the disfigured, and the mentally ill. These are the songs of those immigrants trapped in homelessness. These are the whisperings of the poor and suffering.

When we pray, say, sing, or chant the psalms we are taken away from our self-preoccupations and in solidarity join hands with the dispossessed, discouraged, and discomforted.

We pray the psalms because often it's a first step toward action. Here, like the Samaritan Jesus called “good,” we allow ourselves to look down into life’s ditches and find the wounded, bruised, and bleeding. In the psalms we take our eyes off the highway signs promoting self-success and find ourselves climbing down the highways' shoulder banks where most of the world’s people live, work, love, and die.

Yes, the psalms often express our personal emotional feelings. But they also articulate the distress of our brothers and sisters in the third-world, those who live across the tracks, and those who are largely unseen by most of us. In the psalms we listen for their voices, learn to sing their sobbings and lamentations, and eventually embrace, as best with the Spirit's help, their pain and suffering. We pray the psalms to enter the mind of Christ.

Image: Finding Grace

The Kingdom of God is within you

2009-04-29T06:30:00.002-04:00

"The kingdom of God is within you'"corresponds to the sense of taste. This spiritual sense perceives that God is not just close to us, but that weare rooted in him. The food we eat is taken inside of us and becomes us through its transformation into cells in our body. In a sense, we become what we eat. In the transcendent relationship, we become cells in the Body of Christ, the new humanity whose eyes and ears are opening to reality at its deepest level.

Keating, Thomas, Awakenings (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 39.

Sharing a beautiful video

2009-04-29T06:14:00.000-04:00

A friend sent me this video, and it is too beautiful not to share with others.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

http://www.findingjoymovie.com/

Eastertide Hospitality

2009-04-27T07:57:00.002-04:00

Yes, it’s been over two weeks since my last posting, but now that I’m back I’ll be posting much more regularly. In the past half-week, my wife and I have traveled from Kentucky to Missouri, specifically to reunite myself with an dear friend whom I’ve not seen for over thirty-five years. What a heart-hugging experience. Somewhat isolated in the Ozark Mountains, farmer Chas Roth and his wife Liza welcomed us with open arms and squeezed us warmly with gracious and wonderful hospitality. And wouldn’t you know it? Last night during Evening Prayer St. Peter said that we are to “practice hospitality ungrudgingly to one another” (I Peter 4). Chas and Liza have taken those words seriously all their lives! Sharing more of our weekend with you later today, I’ll be posting pictures at http://www.yourfamilyblog.blogspot.com/. Right now my point here in Praying Daily is to remind all of us that within every Benedictine Monastery there is always a reminding sign that says, “Welcome Each One as Christ Himself.” That's how Chas welcomed me over the weekend. It was wonderful.

Chas' hugs reminded me of God's great welcome and "Come on in!" As we offer our lives in prayer to God and contemplatively enter the Mystery of His Presence, we do so aware that God is always the Gracious Host, always welcoming us, holding the door open so that He can enjoy our entrance into His “farm.” As the Great Gardener, God likes to show us around, urging us to shake hands with all and everyone in His creation. So walk like a beloved guest today in God’s world. Say “Hi” to the sky, the animals, the fields, gardens, and everyone whom you meet. Say “Hello” and “Good morning” to place where you work, live, and worship. Say, “God bless you” to the ground you walk on and to the cashier who rings up your bill at the grocery store. Say “Thank you!” to every Chas and Liza who welcomes you into their lives and arms. Hug God so close that you can hear His heart beating.

The Easter Vigil

2009-04-13T14:43:00.009-04:00

On Holy Saturday evening, June and I participated in the Easter Vigil at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Covington, GA. When it came to light the "new fire" outside the church, Fr. Tim asked me--I was a good Boy Scout sixty years ago--to light the fire so that the Paschal Candle might be lit from its flames. Although it was windy, it took only one match to get the bundle of paper and twigs ablaze. Nevertheless, the Pascal Candle declined its lighting in the stiff breezes, and so we had to go to Plan B, as Fr. Tim explained things: we lit the Pascal Candle with a cigarette lighter, and then made our way into the nave singing "Light of Christ," with incense a'plenty. The Rev. Buddy Crawford, the parish deacon ("deacon" here indicating his being in first of the orders toward becoming a priest) chanted the Excultet, the Easter Proclamation, with a absolutely lovely voice. Here's the text sung by the deacon standing next to the Paschal Candle:

Rejoice, heavenly powers!
Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God's throne!
Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!
Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
Darkness vanishes for ever!
Rejoice, O Mother Church!
Exult in glory!
The risen Savior shines upon you!

Let this place resound with joy,
echoing the mighty song of all God's people!

My dearest friends,standing with me in this holy light,
join me in asking God for mercy, that . . . . (the rest of the Exaltet)

The Eucharist itself was beautifully celebrated, and an infant was baptized during all the happiness. So began our new Eastertide living in the resurrection of Christ. May your Eastertide be as joyous as ours.

Praying with Merton

2009-04-11T10:16:00.009-04:00

For my Eastertide gift for anyone who comes along and reads these postings, I'm promising you a new sister blog, Praying with Merton. Here's how it will work: several times a week I will begin by sharing with you my reading of Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation, one of Fr. Louis' most enjoyable books. I'll go chapter by chapter, page by page, quoting Merton and making a few observations on my own. If all goes well, I make my first post on Easter Monday. I hope you enjoy what you see, read, and share.

Waiting for Easter (like a Good Ol' Georgia Pine)

2009-04-11T07:00:00.006-04:00

Today is a day of waiting, and often waiting for anything, perhaps much more so for Easter, can be a wearisome business. Most likely you, like me, will spend this day of waiting by getting ready, not only for your parish's Holy Saturday Easter Vigil or Easter morning worship, but also for preparing Sunday's dinner, for visiting friends, or for sharing your lives with the world's poor.

When waiting is a big part of my life, I often like to read quietly (out under trees if possible), and in this morning's earliest light, while reading Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation, this came to me:

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. It ‘consents’ so to speak, to God’s creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree…. This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do. Therefore each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what God wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by God’s Love and God’s infinite Art.

As I wait (and later vacuum the house and help June get ready for the family to visit tomorrow), I'll give glory to God this Holy Saturday by simply being Andy. That should be easy enough, just like the trees over my head are now simply being trees.

Image: Ol' Georgia Pines Rising Above Me as I Read by Andy

What the Early Church Taught about Holy Week and Easter

2009-04-10T19:19:00.008-04:00

It is long-held Tradition, based on the Biblical texts, that Jesus died on a Friday and rose from the dead on a Sunday, which would place the Last Supper on a Thursday night. Scripture tells us that Jesus rose from the dead "early on the first day of the week" (Mark 16:2, RSV). It was on the same day (the first day of the week) that Jesus met his apostles on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:1). John also confirms that Jesus rose on a Sunday (John 20:1). The early Church Fathers universally held that Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday, and worshiped on Sunday, "The Lord's Day." The Fathers also testify to the Institution of the Eucharist on a Thursday and a Friday crucifixion of Jesus. Even though Jesus tells us that he was to be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights, in ancient Jewish reckoning, this included partial days. Thus, Jesus was saying that his time in the earth would span three days (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). Saint Justin Martyr (writing in 150 AD) testifies to both Sunday worship and a Friday crucifixion of Jesus:

But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples
. . . . (First Apology 67)

The Didache (70-90 AD) also mentions Sunday worship, and fasting on Fridays (likely connected to Jesus' crucifixion that day):

Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites... but fast on the fourth day and the Preparation (Friday)...But every Lord's day gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure (8, 14).

The Apostolic Constitutions (late 4th century) verifies the same chronology. Note that, based on Scripture, this document provides the rationale for the dates of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday.

And on the fifth day of the week (Thursday), when we had eaten the Passover with Him, and when Judas had dipped his hand into the dish, and received the sop, and was gone out by night, the Lord said to us: "The hour is come that ye shall be
dispersed, and shall leave me alone" (V:3:XIV).

. . . it being the day of the preparation (Friday), they delivered Him to Pilate the Roman governor, accusing Him of many and great things, none of which they could prove . . . . [Jesus] commanded us to fast on the fourth and sixth (Friday) days of the week; the former on account of His being betrayed, and the latter on account of His passion (V:3:XIV, XV).

But when the first day of the week (Sunday) dawned He arose from the dead, and fulfilled those things which before His passion He foretold to us, saying: "The Son of man must continue in the heart of the earth three days and three nights" (V:3:XIV).

Virtually every Church Father who addresses the issue agrees with the traditional dating of a Thursday Last Supper, Friday Crucifixion, and Sunday resurrection. This includes those Church Fathers and writings mentioned above, but also Ignatius (105 AD), Pseudo-Barnabas (120 AD), Clement of Alexandria (195 AD), and many others. This chronology is firmly based on Scripture, and universally verified by Tradition.

Text Source: All About Holy Saturday; Image: The Road to Resurrection

Good Friday

2009-04-10T09:19:00.005-04:00

I often don’t know what to do with Good Friday. Somehow this day with Jesus is most profound when I do nothing, allowing Jesus to do everything.

After the stripping of the altar last night, everyone left the church in silence. June and I drove home with little to say. We jotted down the addresses of a few homes for sale in a small corner of McDonough, Georgia, while driving around. Then we headed back to Jackson Lake.

I woke up this morning early. After Prayers I went outside to put a few things away in case of rain. In an hour or so we’ll drive back to McDonough to help the parish at First Baptist Church provide and serve dinners for an anticipated three hundred less fortunate people who surely need and appreciate a decent meal. No doubt there will be preaching and singing of songs. While I will listen, I suspect that mostly I'll simply try to help out as best I can whether serving dinners, doing what's asked, or simply enjoying the faces of people whom I'd like to know.

While I realize that some of us will worship in various churches (the folks at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in McDonough will do the ten evangelical “Stations of the Cross”), my own Good Friday afternoon will most likely be a walk somewhere as I look for some quiet time, some opening for solitude and silence. During that time (if it comes), I’m not sure what I’ll do, say, think, or whatever. I might well be at a loss for words and thoughts, more of less feeling empty, dried out. It during such times when I may not know how to pray that I remember what Francois de Salignac Fenelon (1651-1715) once said:

MANY are tempted to believe that they no longer pray, when they cease to
enjoy a certain pleasure in the act of prayer. But, if they will reflect that perfect prayer is only another name for love to God, they will be undeceived.

Prayer, then, does not consist in sweet feelings, nor in the charms of an excited imagination, nor in that illumination of the intellect that traces with ease the sublimest truths in God; nor even in a certain consolation in the view of God: all these things are external gifts . . . .

Remember our Lord abandoned by his Father on the cross: all feeling, all reflection withdrawn that his God might be hidden from him; this was indeed the last blow that fell upon the man of sorrows, the consummation of the sacrifice.

Never should we so abandon ourselves to God as when He seems to abandon us. Let us enjoy light and consolation when it is his pleasure to give it to us, but let us not attach ourselves to his gifts, but to Him; and when He plunges us into the night of Pure Faith, let us still press on through the agonizing darkness.

Moments are worth days in this tribulation; the soul is troubled and yet at peace; not only is God hidden from it, but it is hidden from itself, that all may be of faith; it is discouraged, but feels nevertheless an immovable will to bear all that God may choose to inflict; it wills all, accepts all, even the troubles that try its faith, and thus in the very height of the tempest, the waters beneath are secretly calm and at peace, because its Will is one with God's. Blessed be the Lord who performs such great things in us, notwithstanding our unworthiness.

Christian Perfection, VII, On Prayer

2009-04-09T14:47:00.012-04:00

Today is Maundy Thursday, and anticipating Jesus coming to us in the Eucharist tonight. June and I will be at St. Luke Lutheran Church, a little store-front place in McDonough. Georgia. Several days ago we met the parish's pastor, Robb Harrell, a once-long-ago Baptist who became Lutheran because the Holy Gospel is articulated and celebrated so beautifully in the Divine Liturgy. (among other reasons). Pastor Robb has a fine sense of the evangelical-catholic tradition so often apparent in the Lutheran Church, and we’re looking forward both to hearing his homily tonight and participating in the Eucharist under his pastoral presiding.

Earlier today during Morning Prayer, June and I decided to read the fourth reading from the our lectionary because we probably will not be able to say Evening Prayer (getting to St. Luke's Eucharist requires driving considerable distance.) What a delightful surprise it was to find out that the fourth reading in our prayerbook for Thursday in Holy Week is from John Calvin’s Short Treatise on the Holy Supper of our Lord: we read it slowly and carefully; you will want to do the same:

But as the blessings of Jesus Christ do not belong to us at all, unless he be previously ours, it is necessary, first of all, that he be given us in the upper, in order that the things which we have mentioned may be truly accomplished in us. For this reason I am wont to say, that the substance of the sacraments is the Lord Jesus, and the efficacy of them the graces and blessings which we have by his means. Now the efficacy of the Supper is to confirm to us the reconciliation which we have with God through our Savior’s death and passion; the washing of our souls which we have in the shedding of his blood; the righteousness which we have in his obedience; in short, the hope of salvation which we have in all that he has done for us. It is necessary, then, that the substance should be conjoined with these; otherwise, nothing would be firm or certain. Hence we conclude that two things are presented to us in the Supper, viz., Jesus Christ as the source and substance of all good; and, secondly, the fruit and efficacy of his death and passion. This is implied in the words which were used. For after commanding us to eat his body and drink his blood, he adds that his body was delivered for us, and his blood shed for the remission of our sins. Hereby he intimates, first, that we ought not simply to communicate in his body and blood, without any other consideration, but in order to receive the fruit derived to us from his death and passion; secondly that we can attain the enjoyment of such fruit only by participating in his body and blood, from which it is derived.

Johm Calvin's witness to the reality of Holy Communion is remarkably full--high, deep, and wide! His understanding of the Eucharist is profoundly catholic. Calvin says unequivocally that in order to receive Christ’s benefits we must receive Christ himself as their only source. This, of course, is the orthodox, evangelical, and catholic understanding of Holy Communion. Christ gives us himself in the Eucharistic bread and wine; all subsequent blessings come from him.

All this is important because as a Lutheran (who affirms with the church catholic that we receive the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar), I was erroneously told years ago that Calvinists were under the impression that the Lord’s Supper was "only" a symbol of Christ’s presence in the world. Calvin, the spiritual father of our Presbyterian friends, certainly thought otherwise. For him Christ is the authentic “substance” of the sacrament and only by receiving him in the Eucharist do we receive the gifts and fruits he offers, namely the forgiveness of sins and newness of life.

As you attend Holy Communion tonight, may the holy catholic church in all of its various manifestions (Lutheran, Episcopalian, Roman, Presbyterian, Orthodox, Methodist, among others) give you opportunity to receive Our Lord Jesus in the sacrament of the altar so that you are filled with his divine presence as our Incarnate Lord. Living with the presence of Christ deep within your mind, soul, and body leads to forgiveness, regeneration, adoption, and resurrection. On Maundy Thursday, let the fullness of Christ abiding in you show you how to live to the glory of the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

Holy Week, 2009

2009-04-07T15:36:00.008-04:00

On Palm Sunday (also known as Sunday of the Passion), June and I visited St. John Lutheran Church in Griffin, GA, and we were welcomed by Pastor Katie Pasch and her parishioners. Joining some thirty or forty other worshippers, we began the service by walking slowly into the sanctuary, palm fronds in our hands, while singing a Palm Sunday hymn. During the service parishioners, previously assigned "voices" in the passion narrative of St. Mark, read most of chapter 14. Pastor Katie preached a fine homily on the second reading from Scripture, God's word in Chapter 2 of Phillipians. The Eucharist itself, simple and chaste (if that's the right word) was marked with clear articulations of "the Body of Christ for you" and "the Blood of Christ for you." After the final blessing, we shared breakfast with a number of parishioners, all of whom were welcomingly full of Christ's hospitality. It was a wonderful way to enter Holy Week. Now we look forward to the rest of Holy Week: Morning and Evening Prayer with special hymns, readings, and collects; the Paschal Triduum--Maundy Thursday and the Stripping of the Altar, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. And then we enter the Easter Vigil and arrive at the Feast of the Resurrection.

As together we pass through this week, each in her or his own way by parish and church tradition, June and I pray for deep repentance over our waywardness, a solid determination to amend our lives, and the overarching compassion and mercy of God so that his presence in both repentance and determination brings us to Easter with gladness.

As always, remember God's beloved poor and strive mightily to serve justice.

2009-04-07T15:22:00.001-04:00

Bearing Witness

2009-03-31T07:49:00.002-04:00

The following is the text of a sermon George Hunsinger preached in 2006.

The question that Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself, his students, and his readers remains as urgent now as when he first raised it: Who is Jesus Christ for us today? Bonhoeffer by no means intended to challenge the authoritative biblical answer. What he confessed with the prophets and the apostles, he attested at the cost of his life. He affirmed that Jesus Christ is the Risen Lord who had become incarnate for our sakes in order to die for our sins and liberate us from the power of death. That was the answer presupposed in every other possible answer to his question. It was the one answer that contained all others within itself.

But Bonhoeffer knew that other answers were indeed included within that one answer. He knew that in dying for our sins, Jesus Christ had made the sufferings of the world his own. He knew that discipleship to Christ meant participating in Christ’s sufferings in the present time. “The hungry need bread,” he once wrote, “and the homeless need a roof; the oppressed need justice and the lonely need fellowship; the undisciplined need order and the slave needs freedom.” Because Jesus had entered into our world of sorrows, and because he had taken up the cause of those in need, making their cause to be his own, Bonhoeffer could continue: “To allow the hungry to remain hungry would be blasphemy against God and one’s neighbor, for what is nearest to God is precisely the need of one’s neighbor” (Ethics, p. 137).

Get Radical: Root Yourself in Christ

2009-03-30T08:09:00.006-04:00

I've just started reading Ched Myer's Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus, certainly one of the best commentaries I've read on the Mark's powerful witness to Jesus. Myers describes his reading of Mark as radical, that is, deeply "rooted" in Jesus' Palestinean toil and soil (radical comes from the Latin radix, root). Daniel B. Clendenin must have been reading a good dose of Myers because his essay on next Sunday's radical Good News is "right-on" Myers. While I don't want to plagiarize Clendenin by copying his entire posting, I want you to start here and then make your way to Journey with Jesus.

Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday: "He's No Friend of Caesar!"

Sixth Sunday in Lent 2009
For April 5, 2009

Lectionary Readings (Revised Common Lectionary, Year B)

Psalm 118:1–2, 19–29, Mark 11:1–11 .John 12:12–16

For three years Jesus criss-crossed the villages of Galilee teaching in synagogues, preaching the good news of God’s kingdom, and healing the sick. Thousands of people trampled each other just to get a look at him (Luke 12:1). Some people responded positively, for reasons that were both good and bad. Many others responded with rejection, resistance, and unbelief. To say that at the end of those three years he was a controversial figure would be a gross understatement.

Toward the end of those three years Jesus “resolutely set his face toward Jerusalem.” When he entered that city for the last time, knowing full well that betrayal, persecution and death awaited him, it’s easy to imagine that he was greeted by his largest and most boisterous crowd. His so-called “triumphal entry” on what we call Palm Sunday triggered the beginning of the end for Jesus.

What began on Sunday with a religious procession ended Friday morning with a public display of state terror. Excited children waving palm branches were quickly forgotten when violent mobs shouted death chants. The adulation of the crowds evaporated into abandonment by his closest friends.

By Good Friday, Jesus's disciples argued among themselves about who was the greatest, Judas betrayed him, Peter denied knowing him, all his disciples fled (except for the women), and Rome employed all the brutal means at its disposal to crush an insurgent movement — rendition, interrogation, torture, mockery, humiliation, and then a sadistic execution designed as a "calculated social deterrent" (Borg) to any other trouble makers who might challenge imperial authority.

Jesus's "triumphal entry" into the clogged streets of Jerusalem on Good Friday was a deeply ironic, highly symbolic, and deliberately provocative act. It was an enacted parable or street theater that dramatized his subversive mission and message. He didn't ride a donkey because he was too tired to walk or because he wanted a good view of the crowds. The Oxford scholar George Caird characterized Jesus's triumphal entry as more of a "planned political demonstration" than the religious celebration that we sentimentalize today.

March 31: John Donne

2009-03-30T06:17:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow we remember John Donne. An especially good "Lenten" poet, Donne is one of my favorites. As we prepare for Palm Sunday and Holy Week, perhaps this sonnet provides an opportunity for reflection:

Holy Sonnet X: Death, Be Not Proud

Death, be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which yet thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more, must low
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men
And dost with poison, war and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then ?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Icon of John Donne

2009-03-30T05:55:00.004-04:00

The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from God.

Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart

Image from Humanity Matters: Toward an Incarnational Spirituality by Rich Vincent

Prayer and Action on Matters of Justice

2009-03-26T10:59:00.005-04:00

Last Monday evening June and I attend a meeting of Building a United Interfaith Lexington through Direct Action (BUILD) at Immanuel Baptist Church in Lexington. Quite an event! For a full report, see "Putting heat on the city for affordable housing." Inasmuch as the co-chair of BUILD is Pastor Ron Luckey of Faith Lutheran Church, we were with him in prayer as we saw him work prophetically, confronting the Mayor Jim Newberry of Lexington on behalf of the poor. The mayor was told in no uncertain terms that even in these economically hard times (when we can provide millions for the 2010 World Equestrian Games!), it is a miscarriage of justice when "18 percent of Lexington's 48, 357 renter households spend more than half their gross household income on rent." When asked if he would find funding for the creation of affordable housing, the Mayor flatly said "No." That NO was greeted by an absolute silence as we Christians registered our dismay at the Mayor's lack of imaginative commitment. In response Pastor Luckey expressed his disapproval and enormous disappointment. "We expect a great deal more from our elected officials than what you have given us tonight," Pastor said. Undeterred, BUILD will continue to bear witness to the powers until justice for the poor is achieved. Newberry will hear from BUILD again!

This is exactly the kind of direct action that churches throughout our nation need to be doing in witness to their Lord who, as we heard two Sundays ago in John's Gospel, upturned the tables, not only to disrupt the commercialism of the temple but at the same time overturn the tables of the corrupting and powerful political machine at Jerusalem.

The one-hour BUILD program, attended by nearly 1300 Christians representing 21 churches, was well organized, powerful in its witness, and an encouragement to all who pray for and witness to the power of God. Within the Body of Christ and through the Church, God continues to love and help the poor and set the prisoners--in this case, prisoners of high rents!--free. Be sure to remember the poor, those who are oppressed economically, and all who support BUILD in your prayers.

March 25, The Annunication: Pregnant with the Messiah

2009-03-25T07:21:00.009-04:00

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation in the Church's calendar. We celebrate the day when the Blessed Virgin Mary said Yes to God exactly nine months before Christmas, the Nativity of Jesus.

In every Evening Prayer we sing or say the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, as Luke preserves it in his Gospel. When we pray the Magnificat, we not only remember that Mary is the Theotokos, the Mother of God, but we also realize that each one of us is pregnant with the Son of God, who lives inside of each individual, in our hearts. Because Christ is in you and me, we want to see life with his eyes, listen to life with his ears, walk the sidewalks with his feet, and handle all of life with his hands. Seeing everyone and everything with the mind and heart of Christ allows us to grow into the fulness of his stature.

Tonight June and I will sing a special hymn, "For All the Faithful Women," 419 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship. It's sung to a lovely Finnish folk tune. Here's the first verse:

For all the faithful women
Who served in days of old,
To You shall thanks be given;
To all, their story told.
They served with strength and gladness
In tasks Your wisdom gave,
To You their lives bore witness,
Proclaimed Your power to save.

In each subsequent stanza we give thanks, one by one, sometimes two by two, to God for numerous faithful women whose life stories are told in the Bible. Miriam; Hannah; Ruth; Mary, the Mother of Our Lord; Martha and Mary; The Woman at the Well, Mary Magdalene, Dorcas, and Eunice and Lois.

Stanza 6, in which we give thanks for Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, sings this way:

We honor faithful Mary,

fair maiden, full of grace.

She bore the Christ, our brother,

who saved our human race.

May we, with her, surrender

ourselves to your command

and lay upon your altar

our gifts of heart and hand.

May all of you, with Mary, proclaim the greatness of the Lord today!

2009-03-23T14:55:00.005-04:00

Published after Thomas Merton's death, The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation, ed. William H. Shannon (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003) is one of his most exciting and exacting set of reflections on contemplative living. Here is a typical passage:

The life of contemplation in action and purity of heart is, then, a life of great simplicity and inner liberty. One is not seeking anything special or demanding any particular satisfaction. One is content with what is. One does what is to be done, and the more concrete it is, the better. One is not worried about the results of what is done. One is content to have good motives and not be too anxious about making mistakes. In this way one can swim with the living stream of life and remain at every moment in contact with God, in the hiddenness and ordinariness of the present moment with its obvious task. (66)

It was with Merton's spirit that this afternoon I replaced the battery of the lawnmower, fixed one of its flat tires, and mowed a good bit of the yard. And I'm asking God that with Merton's kind of spirit I will go to Immanuel Baptist Church tonight to participate in a "Building a United Interfaith Lexington through Direct-Action" (BUILD) meeting, a city-wide ecumenical gathering anticipating over 1500 people gathered to meet with the mayor to require affordable housing for the city's poor.

By the way, the deacon at the Eucharist yesterday, after the pastor's final blessing, said: "Let us go in peace" and then added "and serve the poor." Great reminder! With a hearty response, the parishioners all cried out, "Thanks be to God!" Very Merton-ish!

2009-03-21T13:41:00.001-04:00

Give me the strength that waits upon You in silence and peace. Give me humility in which alone is rest, and deliver me from pride which is the heaviest of burdens. And possess my whole heart and soul with the simplicity of love. Occupy my whole life with the one thought and the one desire of love, that I may love not for the sake of merit, not for the sake of perfection, not for the sake of virtue, not for the sake of sanctity, but for You alone.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

When what you thought was faith was an illusion

2009-03-19T13:33:00.004-04:00

In New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Press, 1961), Thomas Merton warns us about confusing faith with feeling good about God and ourselves:

How many people are there in the world of today who have "lost their faith" along with the vain hopes and illusions of their childhood? What they called "faith" was just one among all the other illusions. They placed all their hope in a certain sense of spiritual peace, of comfort, of interior equilibrium, of self-respect. Then when they began to struggle with the real difficulties and burdens of mature life, when they became aware of their own weakness, they lost their peace, they let go of their precious self-respect, and it became impossible for them to "believe." That is to say it became impossible for them to comfort themselves, to reassure themselves, with the images and concepts they found reassuring in childhood.

Place no hope in the feeling of assurance, of spiritual comfort. You may well have to get along without this. Place no hope in the inspirational preachers of Christian sunshine, who are able to pick you up and set you back on your feet and make you feel good for three or four days-until you fold up and collapse into despair.

Over and over, again and again

2009-03-19T09:47:00.006-04:00

The Church’s traditional Morning and Evening Prayers have two parts: those parts that we say over and over each morning and evening and those parts that change day by day—readings from the Bible. For example, this morning as we began our prayers, June and I said Psalm 95 (as always) and later prayed the Song of Zechariah, Luke 1.68-79 (as always). Inbetween those two “repeatables,” we will sing Psalms 95, 96, and 97 and then read to one another selected passages from Jeremiah and Paul’s Letter to the Romans as we work our way through God’s Word, day by day. So our prayers have two parts: the "same old, same old" and the new every day. (There is also a third part: our intercessions, praises, and thanksgivings, many of which are spontaneous in nature.)

You might ask, “Why do we say some things the same way every single day?” That’s a good question. Perhaps something of an answer can be found in a story Anne Lamont retells in her disarming Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith:

There’s a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked: “Why on our hearts, and not in them?” The rabbi answered, “Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside. (73)

The rabbi is right. Reading sacred texts until you know them by heart really does allow the holy words to fall inside us when we really need them. I have found this falling happens in two ways. First, there are times when I want to pray Morning Prayer, but for whatever reason I may not have my prayerbook with me. Nevertheless, because I have sung Psalm 95 and the Song of Zechariah over and over again, I have them memorized and can sing them whenever I need them, sometimes when taking a morning walk, sometimes when driving, sometimes when standing in line at a grocery store. Even without my prayerbook, I can pray in the morning. But second, and equally important, when life crashes down on me (as it often has and does), God's morning songs and canticles, lying as on my heart, frequently and miraculously fall into my heart when I desperately need them. In other words, at times in my dark places, the morning Songs sing themselves to me. People have often said that this sort of singing also happens to those who say the Jesus Prayer over and over. God has fortified me with his word when I need for him to talk to me.

Billy Graham in his old age said that he wished that he had memorized more of Scripture so that he could lean upon God’s holy words in his later years. Saying the same words in Morning and Evening Prayer, over and over, again and again, is a big step in that direction.

So don’t be afraid of saying God’s word, the same holy word over and over. When you need His words, they will tumble down into your heart.

Image Source: Russian icon of Zechariah, holding a scroll containing the opening words of the Benedictus (18th century, Kizhi Monastery, Russia).

An Irish Friendship Wish

2009-03-17T08:58:00.006-04:00

This morning my daughter Amy sent me this wish, and I'd like to pass it on to you!

May there always be work for your hands to do;

May your purse always hold a coin or two;

May the sun always shine on your windowpane;

May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain;

May the hand of a friend always be near you;

May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

2009-03-17T08:06:00.007-04:00

When we were at the monatery several weeks ago, we noticed that in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, at the end of February, the daffodils were already blooming. When I return to Richmond, however, it took at least ten more days for the daffodils in my garden to nose their way out of the ground, spring up and then wave their yellow blossoms as a grand "hello" to the sun. So it was yesterday, working in the garden, that I stooped low to take this picture and share with you these harbingers of spring (along with the pussy willows). And, of course, while looking that them, I couldn't but remember Wordsworth's lovely poem.

"Daffodils" (1804)

William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

March 17: St. Patrick's Day

2009-03-16T10:26:00.006-04:00

When we were in Ireland last year, six of us were able to visit The National Cathedral and Collegiate Church of Saint Patrick in Dublin and Saint Patrick's Church of Ireland Cathedral in Armagh, both dedicated to the memory of St. Patrick, whose festival day we celebrate tomorrow. As Daniel B. Clendenin reminds us, "recovering reliable historical information about many of the saints is difficult if not impossible, and Saint Patrick (c. 390–461) is no exception. Born in Scotland, Patrick was imprisoned and taken to Ireland when he was about sixteen years old. He retuned to Scotland, only to have a dream in which the people of Ireland called out to him, “we beg you, holy youth, to come and walk among us once again.” He did return, and although the details are obscure and the legends are large, he wandered and ministered in Ireland for over thirty years, converting the nation."

When you rise from your bed tomorrow and go to your prayers, you may wish to include "The Prayer of St. Patrick" as part of your Daily Office:

I arise today

Through a mighty strength,

the invocation of the Trinity,

Through a belief in the Threeness,

Through confession of the Oneness

Of the Creator of creation.

I arise today

Through the strength of Christ's birth and His baptism,

Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial,

Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,

Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.

I arise today

Through the strength of the love of cherubim,

In obedience of angels,

In service of archangels,

In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward,

In the prayers of patriarchs,

In preachings of the apostles,

In faiths of confessors,

In innocence of virgins,

In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven;

Light of the sun,

Splendor of fire,

Speed of lightning,

Swiftness of the wind,

Depth of the sea,

Stability of the earth,

Firmness of the rock.

I arise today

Through God's strength to pilot me;

God's might to uphold me,

God's wisdom to guide me,

God's eye to look before me,

God's ear to hear me,

God's word to speak for me,

God's hand to guard me,

God's way to lie before me,

God's shield to protect me,

God's hosts to save me

From snares of the devil,

From temptations of vices,

From every one who desires me ill,

Afar and anear,

Alone or in a multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and evil,

Against every cruel merciless power that opposes my body and soul,

Against incantations of false prophets,

Against black laws of pagandom,

Against false laws of heretics,

Against craft of idolatry,

Against spells of [men and ] women and smiths and wizards,

Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.

Christ shield me today Against poison, against burning,

Against drowning, against wounding,

So that reward may come to me in abundance.

Christ with me,

Christ before me,

Christ behind me,

Christ in me,

Christ beneath me,

Christ above me,

Christ on my right,

Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down,

Christ when I sit down,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,

Christ in the eye that sees me,

Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through a belief in the Threeness,

Through a confession of the Oneness

Of the Creator of creation.

2009-03-13T16:15:00.005-04:00

Since becoming an oblate, I more or less thought my prayer life would some become easier, more dedicated, more focused. That's not happened. I'm reminded of this little story told in Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers [ed. Yushi Nomura (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982)] about the Desert Elder Agathon:

The brothers asked Abba Agathon: Father, which of the virtues of our way of life demands the greatest effort? He said to them: Forgive me, but there is no effort comparable to prayer to God. In fact, whenever you want to pray, hostile demons try to interrupt you. Of course they know that nothing but prayer to God entangles them. Certainly when you undertake any other good work, and persevere in it, you obtain rest. But prayer is a battle all the way to the last breath. (103)

For me "the hostile demons" come in a variety of ways: old habits that linger on into my later years: procrastination, a second glass of wine when I really don't need it, an annual March ennui, the low grey clouds, rot-gut eating, low-grade headaches. Some are minor demons, at least one major, but all hostile nonetheless. I can say the morning office with some profit, but withhout any semblence of intensity. The only real thing I continue to know during these past few days is that I'm aware that prayer is hard work. Agathon is right. No one ought to have any delusions about how hard it is to pray. It doesn't come naturally. God must help us.

Praying and working in Haiti / Dr. King's Photographs

2009-03-12T12:49:00.008-04:00

In January a group of thirteen Lutherans and Methodists went to Haiti. Dr. Joe King on the University of Kentucky medical faculty worked as our photographer, and he's invited you to see his "Haiti Slideshow." Travel to http://photoking.zenfolio.com/p290900660, use the password mesi (that's Creole for "Thank you"), be our companion as we fly down to Port au Prince, stay a while at the Village of Hope, and then take off for the mountain village of Ranquitte, where we built a small home for a Haitian family in desperate need of shelter. You'll enjoy the trip.

Image: Pastor Larry Bollinger, Director of the Village of Hope, with two children from the Little Children of Jesus Orphanage in Port au Prince, the capital of Haiti.

Photos of our visit to the monastery

2009-03-09T12:12:00.005-04:00

Danielle just sent us a note saying that she's posted pictures of our recent winter weekend at the Mt. Tabor Benedictine Monastery. The photo to your left nicely shows you the small labyrinth near Sister Judy's workshop; far back in the picture is St. Joseph's house, our place of lodging for the weekend. To see more photographs, visit her album on Facebook . Thanks, Danielle for the sharing!

The tables go crashing! The whip stings! The money rolls on the floor!

2009-03-09T08:00:00.009-04:00

The Gospel for this coming Sunday is a "they-ought-to-have-put-Jesus-under arrest" story, worth reading every day this week as we prepare for the Third Sunday in Lent.

Often called "the cleansing of the temple" to make it sound acceptable for third-graders in Sunday School classes or the Priscilla Club in the local parish, John 2.13-22 is better described as a story about the crashing, wrecking, liquidation, shattering (anything from that anticeptic cleansing!) of the Grand Temple, the Jerusalem "megachurch." Cleansing, after all, makes it sound as though Jesus took a dish cloth and cleaned off some dirty counters. Jesus did not "clean" the temple. He smashed it up, toppled tables, and "let all hell loose," as Daniel B. Clendenin accurately describes the chaos:

Incensed at the sacrilege of it all, Jesus improvised a whip, thrashed the animals from the temple, scattered the coffers of the money changers, and overturned their tables: "How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!"

Strong stuff! Strong enough to want me to take down and throw right out the parish windows all the church's sanitized parlor pictures of Jesus by Warner Sallman! Over a half billion copies have been printed since 1940! Isn't he just adorable? I'll bet he bought that tunic in the temple boutique and no doubt had his hair done in the narthex salon. No wonder we misunderstand Jesus so badly. Bad art, bad theology!

Wondering how in the world the Church's pastors will be preaching on the story, I'll be musing over John's story of Jesus demolishing the Grand Temple in the coming days and will certainly listen carefully next Sunday to my pastor's sermon (he'll need some guts to preach on it). May God bless him with indignation and a vision of Jesus that deserves telling.

Andy becomes at oblate at Mt. Tabor Benedictine Monastery

2009-03-07T23:17:00.003-05:00

Although I posted this on Your Family Blog, I'm posting it again here where it also seems appropriate:

On Sunday, March 1, during Morning Prayer with the Benedictine sisters of Mt. Tabor Monastery, I was received into the community as an oblate. Having studied the Rule of St. Benedict intensely for more than a year, I promised to support the Benedictine community with my prayers and a way of life that would give glory to God, especially as that glory is manifested by a life of hospitality, the special mission of Mt. Tabor Monastery. With June, Harry Smiley, and Danielle and Stan Brown, and all the sisters supporting me with their prayers, I'm looking forward to a renewed prayer life and the rededication of my life to obedience to the Gospel.

Image: The Medal of St. Benedict

2009-03-07T22:47:00.001-05:00

Among the many ways we pray, we frequently place ourselves before God, giving thanks for his mercies, praising him for his compassion, interceding for our families, neighbors, government, the poor--laying before God a wide range of concerns, the labors of our hearts and minds. Some pray fixed-hour prayers each morning, each evening; some practice centering prayer, the "prayer of the heart." Some practice lectio divina or make frequent use of the Jesus Prayer. But no matter how we pray, in all honesty, we are often aware that our prayers are now and again unnecessarily restricted in the breadth of their concerns. With something like a "checklist" or with petitions associated with a litany, we might well be wearing blinders that reduce what Paul calls "the mind of Christ," narrowing our concerns to a little of "this" and some of "that." Lacking the imagination to see "bigly" before God, we settle for small praying, comfortable praying, unimaginative praying.

The Church, however, gives us resources to widen, expand, and deepened the way we prayer. If you find yourself knowingly repetitive (boring yourself and God perhaps?) and restricted in thoughtful praying, I urge you to visit World in Prayer and take the time to read, investigate, download, and perhaps print and place in your prayerbook what you find at World in Prayer. You will be surprised at the care with which your Christian brothers and sisters have opened themselves to new avenues of concern, new venues of focus, and new appreciations for what God is doing, what we need to do, and how these two fundamentals may come together in our lives, in our prayers. Go ahead: take a look as how others are looking at prayer.

Image Source

2009-03-07T17:18:00.003-05:00

The The Merton Institute sent me two quotations from Thomas Merton's Jounrals yesterday. As I read them, I thought to myself, "Well, Andy, haven't we all had days like these?" Here's what Merton said to himself (and to us):

In the afternoon I went out to the old horse barn with the Book of Proverbs and indeed the whole Bible, and I was wandering around in the hayloft, where there is a big gap in the roof. One of the rotting floorboards gave way under me and I nearly feel through. Afterwards I sat and looked out at the hills and the gray clouds and couldn't read anything. When the flies got too bad, I wandered across the bare pasture and sat over by the enclosure wall, perched on the edge of a ruined bathtub that has been placed there for the horses to drink out of. A pipe comes through the wall and plenty of water flows into the bathtub from a spring somewhere in the woods, and I couldn't read there either. I just listened to the clean water flowing and looked at the wreckage of the horsebarn on top of the bare knoll in front of me and remained drugged with happiness and with prayer.

Thomas Merton. Entering the Silence, Journals Volume 1. Ed., Jonathan Montaldo (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 363.

A Thought for the Day

Morning after morning I try to study the 6th chapter of St. John, and it is too great. I cannot study it. I simply sit still and try to breathe. (Entering the Silence, 364.)

Image: a photograph of an old barn that Tom Merton took with his 35 mm camera

Amma Syncletica on Starting the Fire

2009-03-03T13:42:00.005-05:00

When a few of us were on retreat at Mt. Tabor Benedictine monastery, we were lucky enough to find a wood-burning stove in St. Joseph's House, our lodgings for the weekend. It being a tad chilly, we decided to start a fire in the stove. After rumpling up some newspapers, covering them with some dried-kindling branches, and completing our stacking with some fair-sized logs, we lit our matches. We soon discovered that the chimney was not quite warm enough to allow an updraft of smoke; instead, a good bit of smoke came puffing out of the stove door. Then—wouldn’t you know it! The fire-alarm went off, and Harry had to pull the battery out to shut off the noise. However, upon closing the stove door, the chimney finally got warm enough to accept the smoke, and sure enough, we soon had a good fire burning, warming us all toasty-roasty.

That little experience reminded me a story in Yushi Nomura’s Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers, wherein I once read that

Amma Syncletica said: In the beginning, there is struggle and a lot of work for those who come near to God. But after that, there is indescribable joy. It is just like building a fire--at first it's smoky and your eyes water, but later you get the desired result. Thus we ought to light the divine fire in ourselves with tears and effort. (26)

Amma Syncletica, one of the few desert mothers whose saying have been preserved for us, is right. When we first begin to practice silent, wordless, and imageless prayer (in addition to our Morning and Evening Prayers), we may well experience considerable difficulty. At first our thoughts and mental pictures seem to overwhelm us; it’s as though we are fighting great battalions of mental and emotional barriers in order to enter the Great Peace. But after a while—especially when we lay our thoughts and images aside with a gentle word expressing our intention to be with God—then, slowly but surely, developing peace comes and eventually we settle into "indescribable joy," as Amma Syncletica puts it. Yes, it takes some effort, but it’s “the most non-violent effort possible,” as Thomas Keating likes to remind us. Eventually the fire catches on and burns, the smoke goes up and away, and we are in the warmth of God's Presence.

2009-03-02T11:33:00.007-05:00

Sr. Joan Chittister in Illuminated Life says that "silence is that place just before the voice of God. It is the void in which God and I meet in the center of my soul."

I once had something of an gentle argument with a teacher of philosophy as to whether you not silence can be heard. He said, "No': I said, "Yes." Now I suppose in the strictest sense of the word silence, you can't hear it if you take a reductionist point of view. After all, for a sound to be possible, there needs to be a sound-receptor: at least a human ear or something like an ear, perhaps some mechanical radar-receiver probing the universe, picking up the vibrations of the universe as they make their way to our earth. If there's no ear, there's no silence. So, I suppose, in times before life evolved far enough to have ears, before we were smart enough to invent instruments that detect sound vibrations, there was in fact no sound--unless you allow that the Most Holy Trinity, who creates sound, also listens to the sounds of his creation.

But apart from the "receptor-needed" debate, I am convinced that you can hear silence even without ears, even if you are stone deaf. From experience in quite solid silence (the silence of a cave interior, for example) you can mentally anticipate sound and so mark off and "box up" silence so as to experience and listen to silence in all its deepness. After all, just as I surely "hear" the four-beat "rest" or silence between two musical notes when listening to a symphany, I also hear a Great Silence when it comes along. But more importantly, I am also aware that in silence God genuinely manages to let us hear him (sometimes loudly). In silence we can hear God because, as St. John of the Cross says, "silence is the first language of God." Paradoxically, God speaks with silence. This is not to say that silence is God's only language. Certainly not. But before the Holy One speaks--especially in prophetic voices, in our thinking, in our consciences, and in our awareness of other people, and especially in Jesus--God enjoys speaking, chanting, and singing his silence and asks us to join him in his soundless sabbath resting.

When Christians take special care to enter God's silence, not only do we enjoy the benefits of living in God's first language, but at the same time we provide ourselves with an environment that gives God the oppportunity to surprise us when he does in fact speak. This is why many of us appreciate what has come to be known as a "contemplative Eucharist." When we gather together for a contemplative Eucharist, upon entering the room, we see people simply sitting or kneeling; they are breathing, thinking, praying, and waiting in silence. Some are quietly placing book marks or ribbons in their hymnals. Others are simply looking at the altar, icons, paintings, and other works on art in the sanctuary. Hardly anyone chats or carries on a conversation. Then, at the right time, the pastor or priest enters in silence and sits down to join everyone in the Great Quietness. After a while the Eucharist begins and words begin to be spoken. More silence is gathered up after the reading of lessons as quiet people sit, stand, and kneel, often to enjoy God's silent Presence. After the sermon, there is more silence. Throughout the Holy Communion, the sanctuary is again and again wrapped in silence.

What happens with so much silence is that God comes to us so that we can hear him with more awareness, both in the quietness, in spoken words, and in the reception of Jesus' body and blood in the Eucharist. The welcome silence is the open rest between our words and actions so that we listen more attentively and watch more carefully.

The gift of such silence encouages us to open ourselves to more and more silence in our daily lives. Perhaps to the practice of centering prayer. And more and more silence in our daily lives encourages us to gather together on Sunday to share God's first language as a community. Just so the silence accompanies us as God speaks his sometimes frightening, but always gracious Word. It's really quite a miracle.

Back from the Monastery / Now read this!

2009-03-01T15:01:00.006-05:00

I 've been back from Mt. Tabor Monastery for a hour or so, and of course one of the first things I did was go to the post box, get the mail, and read it. Always eager to get The Messenger of Faith Lutheran Church (my parish newsleter), I immediately began reading and was stunned, delighted, proud, and astonished while pushing myself through my pastor's monthly encouragement. I'd like for you to read it here (and please read it before you go on!)

Now that I've taken a good second look at Pastor Luckey's words, written "in the disruptive peace of Easter," I'm eager--with you!--to see what I can do to join up with God who stands

defiant and belligerent over any human institution that causes death, be they predatory payday lenders, religious leaders who club gays and lesbians with a heavy Bible, or ambitious politicians who curry favor with the powerful while ignoring the cries of the most vulnerable in their cities (and one might add: in the mountain hollers].

I'm therefore going to take seriously my pastor's urgings. Having already submitted my 2008 tax information to someone who knows how to squeeze every ounce of legitimate deduction possibile, I hope within a few days to find out how much of a refund I will get. And, trust me, a sizeable portion of that refund will find its way to my parish and its support of "Habitat for Humanity, Mission Lexington's healthcare programs, and my Pastor's Discretionary Fund which financially assists people in times of emergency [especially the poor in Haiti]."

If you are a member of my parish, I encourage you to do something similar. And if you're not a member of my parish, I urge you to support financially your church (or some other agency), provided your money goes to undo those who cause harm to the poor or somehow actually helps the poor directly. In fact, I would encourage you not to give to anyone who uses the money to benefit their own institution (no self-aggrandizing building projects, please!); give only to those people who, in turn, help the poor and provide help for those suffering from injustice. If you want to help and are not a member of my parish, I recommend Food for the Poor, Mt Tabor Monastery, or Christian Flights International. You can trust my parish, Food for the Poor, Mt. Tabor Monastery, or Christian Flights International to squeeze your dollars hard and long to help the poor and fight injustice.

2009-02-27T06:59:00.007-05:00

Within our small group, a number of us (in addition to praying the Church's Morning and Evening Prayers) practice Centering Prayer and make suggestions to one another that will help us sit quietly before God in patient silence. Yesterday a friend sent me this quotation from Timothy Jones' The Art of Prayer: A Simple Guide (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997); it's worth sharing.

I also try to remember that much of advance in prayer has to do with waiting. Waiting is not the same as being passive. It is not doing nothing. It is readying ourselves for something more. "Be still before theLord and wait patiently for him," Psalm 37 tells us. Sometimes we need to say to ourselves: "Don't just do something; sit there." Our goal in prayer is not to make things happen on our timetable; it is to allow God to come to us. We cannot orchestrate his coming any more than we can force someone to love us. Gentle awareness of God comes as a mutual presence between two parties who come in loving expectation. My stillness in God's presence is away to be ready. (50-51)

Ash Wednesday, the First Day of Lent

2009-02-24T19:36:00.012-05:00

Tomorrow, February 25, is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. If you need help in determining what you can do to give shape to your Lenten discipline this year, visit Connecting Worship and Daily Living in Lent or Spirit Home, where you can find more suggestions.

The Prayer for Ash Wednesday

Gracious God, out of your love and mercy you breathed into dust the breath of life, creating us to serve you and our neighbors. Call forth our prayers and acts of kindness, and strengthen us to face our mortality with confidence in the mercy of your Son, Jesus Christ and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

These websites, updated and lightly edited from Spirit Home, can help you better understand Lent from a variety of Christian traditions. If you want to learn more about Lent, visit each link.

Creighton University's Collaborative Ministry Lenten site.
CRI Institute's Lenten seasonal page (Protestant) by Dennis Bratcher.
Ken Collins' Lenten pages.
The intergenerational Generations in Faith Together (GIFT), from Faith Inkubators, which can be started in a Lenten seasonal form.
Annette LaPlaca's Christian Parenting article on ways for parents to share this season as a family with your children.
A search for Lent-related Blogs. (For some, a blog acts as a sounding-board on creating a different edge to Lenten practices. Others do a Lenten blog-journal, a natural blend of blog and devotional journal. These will develop as the Lenten season leads on, so check in once a week.)
An Orthodox Lenten Triodion, called the season "The Great Lent," the season of the bright sadness.
Roman Catholic Lent (Quadragesima) information on American Catholic, and the Catholic Encyclopedia at New Advent. These reflect a more-or-less standard Catholic view of Lent.
Andrew Santella on Protestants doing Lent.
Orthodox theological writer Alexander Schmemann on the Great Lent, posted by Seth Earl.
worship.ca's Lent / Easter Resources. Especially helpful for worship services.
Lenten reflections from St. Elizabeth Church in Melville NY.
The Work of the People, Travis Reed's visual Lenten liturgies.

On the Eve of the Transfiguration

2009-02-21T16:57:00.008-05:00

Tomorrow June and I will listen to St. Mark telling us about the Transfiguration of Jesus. Here’s what Mark will say:

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

Mark’s telling of the event is remarkable, especially for the way he honestly lets us know how the disciples respond to what they see and hear. Take Peter’s reaction. Stunned and quite blown away by the way things are going, he can barely contain himself; his enthusiam boundless, he blurts out: “Rabbi, this is a great moment!”

I hope that sometime in your life you’ve had a moment like that. One time in front of the Oklahoma State Univeristy Library, I experienced something like God’s “tazar,” an extended moment that exposed me to “no time and no space,” an experience close to whatever God might experience of Himself. At least it seemed to me. It came suddenly. Stayed a moment or so. And went suddenly. I wish it could have lasted a lifetime.

More usually, however, my mountain-top experiences tend to come within an especially beautiful liturgy when the Eucharist is celebrated with special care among friends and loved ones, both here on earth and in heaven. During the singing of a notably beautiful hymn, for example, something (maybe the Holy Spirit) comes over me and I get choked up, bowled over almost, so that I can barely sing. I feel tears welling up, and taking deep breaths, I find it difficult to calm myself. Strangely enough, once I’ve blown my nose, and returned to the more normal way of things, at such times I wish I could have captured whatever its was that overwhelmed me.

At other times I’ve found myself racing with a camera to catch and make permanent something that has caught my eye. How I’ve wished for the Ansel Adams’ moment, and when it has arrives (at least to my imagination), I work feverishly to capture all of it on a print I’ll be glad to exhibit anywhere.

Whenever the Holy, the Lovely, the Beautiful, and the Good takes us aback, we often want to capture the moment. So with Peter. “Let’s catch the moment,” he implores. “Let’s build three skene--the Greek word Mark uses to translate Peter's Aramaic term. Skene! What are the skene that he plans to have everyone to build? The word can mean a "tent" or "temporary shelter." It can mean "tabernacle" as a worship place (the dwelling place of God in the Hebrew Scriptures). It can mean a "house" -- a permanent dwelling place. Why would these three need houses? Perhaps he wants to "house" the event so that it will last forever.

One pastor has diagnosed Peter as having an "edifice complex." He wants to encase, rope off, pin down, and create something of a museum so that the excitement—good, holy, beautiful, and stunning as it is—lasts as long as possible. Not a few pastors have a strong desire to memorialize that they consider their astonishingly wonderful ministry in a building that will last for centuries.

God, however, often opts (both for himself and for us) to have things otherwise. In Christ God tells us that it’s best not to endorse such probamatically egocentric desires. It’s better not to stake down the tent. It's better to pack it up, shove it in the backpack, trudge down the mountain, and go where the action is more palpably intense. It's better to get back to where others truly need our help, better to lose ourselves in service to the genuinely poor, better to follow Christ into the alleys, prisons, and hovels of the marginalized. Having seen something of the splendor, we’ll more truly be astonished at the real glory, the glory of the Radiant Light fading away on the cross, then flickering and eventually going out. For the time being, Easter can wait. On this coming Ash Wednesday, of course we will remember that the Son shines. He is, after all, "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God," as we say the Creed. But we'll also "listen" to Him as the Voice commands and importantly put grey ashes on our foreheads and head out the doors and down the steps with the Suffering Servant to where the real re/construction takes place.

Yes, the liturgy during tomorrow's Feast of Transfiguration will be incredibly lovely, beautiful, and good. We will see Jesus for who he is, "of the Father begotten." But that's not all of who he is. He is the Glory of the cross. That vision lies ahead of us. Within seventy-two hours. With the beginning of Lent.

Yet this first, momentarily: the Liturgy of the Transfiguration with the shining Jesus.

Next Sunday: The Transfiguration of Jesus / I I

2009-02-16T12:51:00.008-05:00

As you may have guessed, I appreciate the Church’s use of icons. Grateful the my prayerbook contains numerous (albeit black and white) reproductions of famous icons, along with extended commentaries, I thought you might enjoy learning about The Icon of the Transfiguration. I think I’m correct in saying that what follows has been written by Frederick J. Schumacher, the editor of the four-volume set I use for Morning and Evening Prayers.

In the book of Exodus (33.20-22) the Lord says to Moses: “You cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live. Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand upon the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.

Irenaeus (130-200), commenting on these verses explained:

Two things are thus indicated: that it is impossible for man to see God, but secondly that through the wisdom of God, man shall see him in the last times standing upon the rock; that is, in His coming as a man. For this reason the Lord conversed with Moses face to face on the top of the mountain [of Transfiguration] in the company of Elijah, as the gospels relate, thus fulfilling the ancient promise. (Against Heresies, IV, Chapter 20)

When St. Catherine’s Monastery was built at the foot of Mt. Sinai in the sixth century, one of the fist images of the transfiguration was created, and this icon in the Orthodox tradition has remain basically the same ever since.

The icon portrays the gospel accounts of the fulfillment of what Moses and Elijah on Mt. Horeb (Mt. Sinai) did not see (Matthew 17.1-8; Mark 9.2-8; Luke 9.28-36). Here Christ stands on the top of the mountain (according to tradition, Mt. Tabor) in the middle of a perfect circle (mandorla), symbolic of the transcendent God. In the center of the third inner circle sometimes there is a star, but here rays of light represent the “luminous cloud” once seen on Horeb, symbolic of the Holy Spirit and the source of divine light (Exodus 24.15-18; 34.5). The light of God’s glory transfigures Christ, the Word made flesh, as the light of God shines through him. In the words of Gregory Palamas (1269-1359),

The Father by his voice bore witness to His beloved Son; the Holy Spirit, shining with Him in the bright cloud, indicated that the Son possesses with the Father the light, which is One like all that belongs to Their richness (Homily 34).

In this light stands Moses to the right with a book or the tablets of stone in one hand representing the law, and Elijah to the left representing the prophets. They both point to Christ, acknowledging that they have in Him seen the face of God, and that through His coming death and resurrection will begin the New Covenant foreshadowed in and prepared for by the law and the prophets. In Mark’s account of the event, when Father said, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him,” the disciples, depicted in the lower part of the mountain, no longer saw Moses and Elijah (9,7-8).

Looking at the three apostles, we see three rays of divine light, symbolic of the Trinity, coming from the circle and overwhelming them. To the right Peter appears to have just spoken to Jesus saying, “Lord, it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah” (Matthrew 17.4) when one of the three rays of light falls upon him and supporting himself with his left hand, he raises his right had to protect himself. It is Peter who would later preserve his recollection of the event itself: “We were with him on the holy mountain” (2 Peter 1.16-18). John in the center falls, turning his back to the light. It would be he who would pass the vision on in the words: “God is light and in him is no darkness at all” (I John 1.5). And James flees from the light in either a backward or downward fall.

Christ at the top of the rocks that form the mountain appears to be in composite continuity with the rocks of mountain, recalling Paul’s words, “the rock was Christ” (I Cor. 10.4). Christ is the mediator between God and all who look at this icon. Christ is the mountain, the absolute meeting place between God and His people.

The ancient iconographers began their writing (painting) of icons with the icon of the Transfiguration. It became a direct initiation into the divine light, revealed on Mt. Tabor, that they would need to express through all subsequent icons. Whether in an icon of a feast day or of a saint, the divine light of God was to be shining through the image so all who would look on the icon would behold the light and the beauty of the Triune God. To the fullest extend, the icon of the Transfiguration is bathed in sunlight of high noon where there are no shadows, as in the Kingdom of God itself. The icon of the Transfiguration is thus a foretaste of the future where God’s Kingdom is fulfilled and “there will be no need for sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory9 of God is its light, and its lamp is the lamb” (Revelation 21.22-25; 22.5).

In the Orthodox tradition the significance of the light on Mt. Tabor is expressed in Matins:

Today on Tabor in manifestation of your Light, O Word, you are the unaltered Light from the Light of the unbegotten Father, and we have seen the Father as Light and the Spirit as Light, guiding with light the whole creation.

Image: The Icon of the Transfiguration

Next Sunday: The Transfiguration of Jesus / I

2009-02-16T05:02:00.011-05:00

I’m looking forward to going to Faith Lutheran Church next Sunday, the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, the Sunday we celebrate as the Feast of the Transfiguration when we will listen to the story of Jesus’ glorified change in appearance on the mountain as Mark tells it in Chapter 9:

2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

You must read this week’s Journey with Jesus wherein Daniel B. Clendenin asks us: Do we see the transfiguration of Jesus as a “beautiful lie" or an "eyewitness account"? As Clendenin looks over the various ways people try to make sense of the Transfiguration (I myself have experienced nearly all the numerous interpretive possibilities), he asks that "God save us from the safe middle ground of domesticating deism." Clendenin urges us to trudge up that steep mountain with Jesus and his threesome and there stand stunned, shocked, and terrified at who Jesus is.

Yesterday there were only two of us in our Sunday School class: just Harry and me. (Yes, it was quite small.) In preparation for our discussion both of us had read Chapter 10, “Annie Dillard: The Splendor of the Ordinary” in Philip Yancey’s Soul Survivor. Having read most of Dillard’s books over the past thirty years and remembering my pleasure in turning their pages, it came as no small surprise early this morning, when reading Daniel B. Clendenin’s previewing commentary on the Transfiguration of Jesus that he quotes this memorable passage from Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk:

Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets! Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews! For the sleeping God may awake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us to where we can never return.

It’s my prayer this morning that God will draw all of us “to where we can never return.” Bring your crash helmets.

Image: The Transfiguration of Jesus, The Saint John's Bible

Reflective Silence: A Part of Ordinary Prayer

2009-02-15T12:00:00.013-05:00

A four-volume set of books, collectively known at the Philokalia, has attracted my attention for years. Sometime last week, reading in and around the first volume containing St. Hesychios’ “On Watchfulness and Holiness,” I found myself underlining this passage:

Each hour of the day we should note and weigh our actions and in the evening we should do what we can to free ourselves from the burden of them by means of repentance—if that is, we wish, with Christ’s help, to overcome wickedness. (124)

St. Hesychios’ advice is good. After supper in our Evening Prayers, after three or four minutes into Evening Prayer, after we have said or sung the Phos Hilarion, spoken a blessing upon each other, and joined together in saying a portion of Psalm 141, a small rubric in our prayerbook asks us to observe “Silence for meditation.”

While I suppose that as the day passes, we are aware, more or less, of how things have been going, the evening silence for meditation is an especially good time for summing up and reflecting on the day’s thoughts and actions. We don’t always observe a long silence (sometimes it’s very short), but most of the time we allow a minute or so to go by. During that silence we reflect on what has happened during the day.

This “summing up” allows us to explore and examine the more subtle forms of egotism to which we are constantly inclined. In contemplative language, our review of these egoistic activities alerts us as to how we have been constructing what Thomas Merton calls a “false self.”

Each of us knows how to construct a bogus, phony, cooked-up, and specious self; that is, we are experts in creating identifies intended to deceive others—and ourselves--as to who we really are. I, for example, am given to suggest that I’m a decent practicing Christian. Writing these sentences is right now a movement in that direction. For example, I like to read novels, poetry, and "Christian" literature. However, lots of times I am tempted to read so that I can underline a quotable passage, a temptation which professional academics find especially fetching. My false self is especially prone to the production of such presentations. I like to associate myself with famous Christians and other writers. In other words, surely you will recognize me by the company I keep. Just take a look at what I write.

My personal tendency towards egotistic actions (often known only to myself) Luther describes as homo curvatus in se, “the human turning in upon the self.” That is, as a human being, I like to turn my gaze (and, if possible, yours) upon myself. I’m the subtle object of my own (and hopefully your) fascination.

Homo curvatus in se. Here's how it works: although I don’t usually say so emphaticly, I’m personally convinced that my thinking is generally a little better than your thinking; my politics slightly more on target than yours; my spiritual life, especially when seen in the right light, is at least a tad better than most others. And, of course, my use of centemplative silence more productive than yours.

Homo curvatus in se among us humans is insideous. Dangerous. If left unchecked, it marginalizes and eventually discounts as unnecessary or nothing one’s True Self: Christ.

Consequently, although the curve or arch of one's life tends to head in one direction, we need to go in another direction. Curving, arching, and habitually swerving toward one’s self, we need to redirect ourselves—minds, hearts, strength, and soul--toward another destination: Christ.

Such redirection is called repentance. St. Hesychios suggests that "in the evening we should do what we can to free ourselves from the burden of them [that is, the recollection and exact personal location of curvatus in se] by means of repentance." Daily silence as a part of regular prayer allows for this interior examination of a developing false identity whose scaffolding needs deconstruction. Within daily "silence for meditation" we examine ourselves, locate our movements away from God, acknowledge our waywardness, open ourselves to God's grace, receive God's forgiveness , and move forward toward praising and thanking God for his healing mercies.

After the “silence for meditation” or reflection, our prayerbook, echoing images from Psalm 141, asks us to offer this prayer:

Let in incense of our repentant prayer ascend before you, O Lord, and let your loving kindness descend upon us, that with purified minds we may sing your praises with the Church on earth and the whole heavenly host, and may glorify you forever and ever.

It is then, after repenting for how we have damaged ourselves during the day and opening ourselves to God's grace, that we go on to sing the appointed psalms for the day. Reconstruction and healing follow as we enter the psalms in solidarity with Christ, solidarity with his earthly and heavenly Church, solidarity with our sisters and brothers around the world, and solidarity with the poor and those suffering from injustice. Now we can sing the psalms "with purified minds," glorifying God, trusting Him to help us make possible the kingdom of Jesus.

Image: For All the Saints, "Evening Prayer," Vol. 1, 498.

Something the Regular Practice of Contemplative Prayer Does

2009-02-13T16:38:00.003-05:00

The regular practice of contemplative prayer initiates a healing process that might be called the "divine therapy." The level of deep rest accessed during the prayer periods loosens up the hardpan around the emotional weeds stored in the unconscious, of which the body seems to be the warehouse. The psyche begins to evacuate spontaneously the undigested emotional material of a lifetime, opening up new space forself-knowledge, freedom of choice, and the discovery of the divine presence within. As a consequence, a growing trust in God, a bondingwith the Divine Therapist, enables us to endure the process.

Keating, Thomas. Invitation to Love (New York: Continuum, 1996).

The Brick

2009-02-07T20:40:00.002-05:00

A Benedictine friend sends this story for sharing:

A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed downwhen he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag's side door! He slammed on the brakes and backed the Jag back tothe spot where the brick had been thrown. The angry driver then jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car shouting, "What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing? That's a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost a lot of money. Why did you do it?"

The young boy was apologetic. "Please, mister . . . please, I'm sorry but I didn't know what else to do," he pleaded. "I threw the brick because no one else would stop . . . ." With tears dripping down his face and off his chin, the youth pointed to a spot just around a parked car. "It's my brother," he said. 0 "He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can't lift him up."

Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, "Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He's hurt and he's too heavy for me." Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat. He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into the wheelchair, then took out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes and cuts. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay. "Thank you and may God bless you," the grateful child told the stranger. Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the boy! He pushed his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home.

It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door. He kept the dent there to remind him of this message: "Don't go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!" God whispers in our souls and speaks to our hearts. Sometimes when we don't have time to listen, He has to throw a brick at us. It's our choice to listen or not.

Isn't February 25th--Ash Wednesday? Is it too early to get ready for Lent?

2009-02-07T07:38:00.011-05:00

It surely is! In less than three weeks, after the imposition of ashes, you may well be walking out of church with a cross-like smudge of grey-black ashes on your forehead on February 25. That's when you begin your Lenten discipline.

I don't know about you, but as I get older, the whole business of doing a better job with my life seems to become more important. Paradoxically, as I learn to be more dependent on God's grace, the Holy Spirit urges me to be more creative and determined to put a God-pleasing life into practice. Lent is such a practice time.

Last night before going to sleep I was reading The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, an alphabetical collection of their short stories, and I came across these words by Anthony the Great:

Whoever hammers a lump of iron, first decides what he is going to make of it: a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge or we labor in vain. (8)

Anthony's good advice, of course, can apply to the whole of our lives or in a smaller way, with a smaller lump of iron, to our Lenten forty-day window of time. Personally, I usually prefer to work with shorter time slots; they seem a lot more manageable. Many Lents ago, for example, I used to try and give up bad habits like smoking cigs (yep, forty years ago I puffed a pack or more of unfiltered Camels every day) or put off delightful habits like savoring a good glass of wine or beer. Sometimes I decided to add a decent habit to my life; one year I promised myself I'd walk or jog a mile or two every day. One year in February I jokingly announced that for Lent I was "giving up lawn-mowing." Those were the days--of Lent.

Lately, however, I find myself expanding my sense of things. No doubt my bigger vision has much to do with simply getting older. Who knows? Maybe I won’t even be around in forty days! Then too I may live to till I’m eighty. If I make it through the next ten years to a nursing home, I’m quite aware that, over the years, time will fly by awfully fast, nearly at the speed of light. Right now a year goes by, and it seems like two weeks. So maybe I’d better think of my Lenten discipline as “starting on Ash Wednesday and from now on, Andy!”

If you know me, you realize that I don’t like spur-on-the-moment decisions. O yes, I have to make them when June cries out, “Put on the brakes, you idiot!” But if at all possible, I prefer to weigh things in the balance and come to a decision after considerable musings. Applied to this year’s Lenten discipline, that means it’s really not too early to explore the possibilities as to whatever I do with my lump of iron as I get ready to bang on it.

Today, you might say, I'm lighting the first in my forge and looking over my blacksmith tools. In the next few days I’ll be making some suggestions about shaping some lumps of iron, yours and mine. This afternoon, however, after considerable thought, I’ll simply share with you the plans I'm developing for my upcoming Lenten forgings. These forgings will have, I think, mostly to do with my environment and God’s creation. Shortly said: my forgings concern the care of the earth. To that end my Lenten discipline will include the following:

a room by room assessment of my home to figure out what choices I can make to walk more lightly on the earth
a “spring-time” re-examination as to my lawn practices and garden care
an evaluation of my use of electricity and gasoline
reconsiderations about my purchases of goods and food
the making of a list of "creation-care" commitments I plan to embrace at home and wherever I travel
a posting of these commitments on the refrigerator and car dashboard as daily reminders

These are my first scratchings about my 2008 Lenten discipline. I'll include these musings in my daily prayers. As I make my assessments, re-examinations, evaluations, lists, and postings, I'll share some of my discoveries with you soon.

Three Interviews with Thomas Keating

2009-02-06T07:58:00.004-05:00

You may interested in watching and listening to the following three-part interview with Fr. Thomas Keating, recorded at the Garrison Institute in New York: Part One / Part Two / Part Three .

Three Mondays, Then to the Monastery at Mt. Tabor: February 27-March 1

2009-02-03T07:58:00.004-05:00

Hello to all our Praying Daily friends!

As you may know, eight of us (by my last count) are planning to visit the Mt. Tabor Benedictine Monastery in Martin, KY, on Friday evening, February 27, returning early afternoon on Sunday, March 1.

If you have not visited this monastery of Benedictine sisters, do consider coming with us; it will be a very special blessing your life.

Last year in Advent we met two times to introduce ourselves to Centering Prayer. The response was warm and so encouraging!

Now it time to follow up. To prepare for our retreat, it will be helpful if we continue to support one another in Centering Prayer by coming over to my home on any or all of the following three Monday evenings:

February 9, 7:00 p.m.
February 16, 7:00 p.m.
February 23, 7:00 p.m.

At these times we will continue listening to Fr. Thomas Keating. Already we have heard Fr. Keating’s first talk, “The Method of Centering Prayer.” As we prepare for our retreat will move on to “The Psychology of Centering Prayer” and “Attitudes toward God.” As we did last time, after our discussion we'll send twenty minutes practicing Centering Prayer.

During our Monday evening meetings, we'll also travel arrangements for getting to and coming back from the monastery.

Don’t hesitate to come to these Monday evening meetings even if you did not make any of the Advent evenings. You are welcome to enter the practice of Centering Prayer at any time. Centering Prayer is a wonderful complement to Morning and Evening Prayers.

As we get ready for our retreat, some of you may have been able to read Keating’s Open Mind, Open Heart and practice Centering Prayer. If you want to read the book and need a copy, we can loan you one.

To make sure that my count is accurate for those of us who will be going to Mt. Tabor Monastery, I’d surely appreciate your sending me an email confirming your intension to go. I probably need to send Sister Judy, the prioress, a note sometime next week, after our Monday evening meeting, telling her exactly how many want to come.

Hope to see all of you on the upcoming Mondays!

In case you need them, here are directions to our home:

1. Go to Exit 87 (the intersection of I-75 and the EKU By-Pass)
2. Go west on Barnes Mill for 2.3 miles to Crutcher Pike, the first crossroad past The Corner Store.
3. Turn right onto Crutcher Pike.
4. Go .5 miles to Mule Shed Lane.
5. Turn left onto Mule Shed Lane.
6. Go .8 miles to Marengo Drive.
7. Turn left onto Marengo Drive. Go .3 miles to 281 Marengo Drive, the brick house on the crest of the hill after you enter the left-turning curve of Marengo Drive. We’ll leave the porch lights on for you!

IF FOR ANY REASON, YOU NEED A RIDE, CALL ME (859-626-8535) AND I’LL MAKE SURE A LIMO COMES TO YOUR DOOR TO PICK YOU UP! SERIOUSLY! CALL ME, AND SOMEONE WILL BE GLAD TO GIVE YOU A RIDE TO OUR HOME AND BACK TO YOUR HOME. WE WANT YOU TO BE WITH US.

More about the Desert Elders

2009-02-02T15:40:00.003-05:00

As you know, I really like Dan Clendenin's weekly posting on Journey with Jesus, and this week's commentary is especially good; take a look and a read!

Remembering and Praying on the Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, February 2

2009-02-01T16:41:00.013-05:00

On February 2, our Christian Year calendars remind us that on Tuesday we remember and celebrate The Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple.

On this day your prayerbook may well provide you with this beautiful collect:

Almighty and everliving God, we humbly pray that, as your only-begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented to you with pure and clean hearts by Jesus Christ Our Lord; who livings and reigns wit you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Celebrating the Saints: Devotional Readings for Saints’ Days tells us why the Church highlights this day in our calendar of sacred time:

This day marks the completion of forty days since the birth of Jesus, when Mary and Joseph took the child to the Temple in Jerusalem. The requirement in Levitical law was for Mary to be “cleansed,” the completion of her purification following the birth of a male child. Until that day, she could touch no holy thing nor enter the sanctuary. Yet on seeing the holy family, Simeon praised God and acclaimed the infant “the light to enlighten the nations,” and the prophet Anna gave thanks and proclaimed in the redeemer. The image of Christ as the light has led to the celebration of light countering the darkness, with candles often taking a central place in the observance of this festival.

You can read the story in Luke 2:22-40.

In an extended footnote, my Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible provides this commentary:

In modern society the elderly are rarely held in high esteem. They are shunted off to senior citizens' homes where they are cared for by professional staff rather than their own families. We seem to be saying their usefulness is past, and the increasing tolerance of euthanasia underscores that belief. This is not God's attitude. Simeon and Anna are the senior citizens of Luke's version of Jesus' birth, and they know and understand more than anyone else. Of all the people that Jerusalem's streets were teeming with the day that Jesus was named--the rich, the powerful, the young, the holy--only Simeon and Anna are given insight into who is being carried into the Temple courts in his parents' arms. In fact, they know more than Mary or Joseph, who are astonished at what Simeon says about Jesus. It is clear that God has placed great value on Anna and Simeon and that he does not think he is wasting the Holy Spirit on two seniors who have passed the prime of their lives.

So to all you grey- and white-haired (and bald-headed too!) senior citizens who have so graciously carried Jesus in your arms and sung your Nunc Dimittis, I thank you for your love of Christ and the songs I've heard you sing about God's mercy and love. If you're reading this, you know who you are; may God bless you.

The story of the presentation of Jesus and the purification of Mary is full of good news, so good that many Christians, using the church's "Night Prayer" or "Compline," sing or say the Song of Simeon (often referred to as the Nunc Dimittus, its Latin name) each evening before they go to bed.

If you wish look at beautiful paintings and icons celebrating the Presentation, listen to the Song of Simeon in Russian and watch the following video, The Canticle of St Symeon as set by Sergei Rakhmaninov for his "Vespers", opus 37:

And to see how more of your Christian sisters and brothers are remembering the Presentation, visit the following:

Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord
Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ
The Presentation of Our Lord: Candlemas

The Presentation (Meeting) of Our Lord in the Temple

Abba Poemen said about Abba Pior that every single day he made a fresh beginning.

2009-01-31T13:16:00.009-05:00

I don't know about you, but sometimes when my rhythm of daily prayer is disrupted (especially when it's disrupted seriously so), I find it difficult to return to the pattern of things. This has happened to me recently. While in Haiti, the demands of building, visiting, keeping track of records (I was the team coordinator), teaching, and walking extensively gave me little of my usual time for Quietness. Most of the time, Pastor Luckey and I were able either to rise well before dawn or slip away late at night and do at least one of the Daily Offices, more often Morning Prayer. But more than once, we simply said, "Good night," and went to sleep, largely out of exhaustion.

Then when I returned to Kentucky from Haiti, I found myself under the weather with some kind of respiratory infection that has yet to be placated, not even with two doses of week-long antibiotics. That too has taken its toll on my prayer life. Only sporadically have I been able to do, what is usually for me, twice-daily centering prayer, along with Morning and Evening Prayer with June.

I don't suppose I'm too different in discovering that once the rhythm of something is broken, it's difficult to get back on track. I used to run a lot; when I skipped running for several days, it was always hard to get my feet back into their running shoes. The same thing happens in our prayer lives.

I've been thinking about this a good bit lately and seem to remember that somewhere in The Cloud of Unknowing, the author indicates that one should not try to keep up with things when sick. That, I must admit, is a bit comforting. Sickness often puts us into some kind of a fog, and perhaps it's best that we simply ask others to pray for us.

This morning, while reading The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, I came across a sentence describing something Abba Poemen once said concerning Abba Pior I needed to hear. It was reported that Abba Poemen once said that his friend Pior "made every day a new beginning." That complement has given me pause to think. Abba Poemen was not complementing his friend Pior for his long extended track record in praying (even though he may have had one). The point of the complement was rather this: each morning when Abba Pior awoke, he welcomed it as an absolutely fresh start. His yesterday, good as it might or might not have been did count for much. Something was more important. For Abba Pior each morning became an opportunity for a brand new beginning. It was not really the continuation of yesterday or the return to something old and habitual. When Pior rose from his bed and put his feet on the floor as the dawn was breaking, it was absolutely the very first day of creation, the freshest of starts.

Abba Poemen complements Abba Pior because he and his friend realize that no one is ever an "expert" in prayer; no one's yesterdays guarantee anything. There's no Ph.D. in prayer; one is always going to school for the first time. It's a fresh start every morning. We are always all beginners in prayer whenever we pray.

That means that being in or out of rhythm makes no difference. If I've prayed all day yesterday, this morning's prayer is taking me into the only Reality there is--today. And if I haven't prayed for two days, so be it; this morning's prayer takes me into the only True Presence, that of God. It's exactly as Saint Paul says, "Today is the day of salvation." In prayer I enter eternity, or better yet: our eternal God enters to meet us here and now. Every morning. Every evening. Don't hesitate to enter. Everywhere. Always. Like now.

Image: Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers. Intro. Henri J. M. Nouwen, trans. and art by Yushi Nomura (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2001), 1.

The Fear of the Lord and Humility

2009-01-30T16:39:00.015-05:00

Today I've been reading The Rule of St. Benedict, concentrating on Chapter 7, Humility. In this chapter Benedict asks me to enter, understand, and thoughtfully introduce myself (perhaps with some qualifications) to twelve indicators that signal the emergence of humility in someone's life. Benedict believes these twelve markers to be indices, manifestations, and signs that point to the presence of humility in one's life.

The first indication as to one’s movement toward humility is one's fear of God. As I consider what Benedict says about the fear of God in one's life, I'm quite aware that various external [medieval] expressions of humility . . . are cultural forms and, as such, may not necessarily translate into the milieu of the twentieth century . This observation may well be applicable as I try to unpack Benedict’s insistence that humility begins with one’s “fear of God.” Quite frankly, “the fear of the Lord” is bluntly a medieval sounding phrase, at least to my ears. As a youngster growing up in a Lutheran parsonage, I knew something of the fear of God. When I was in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades as a Lutheran catechetical student (three hours of study and memorization of Luther’s Small Catechism each Saturday for three years!), I was taught that the meaning of each of the Ten Commandments certainly involved the fear of God. Here, for example, is what Luther’s Small Catechism says about the first commandment:

THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
“You shall have no other gods.”
What does this mean?
Answer: We should fear, love and trust in God above all things.

The use of the three verbs—“fear, love, and trust”—together as the initial sentence in explaining the meaning of each commandment made it impossible for me as a young Lutheran to think of “fearing” God apart from “loving” and “trusting” at the same time. My catechetical teacher (actually my father) always pointed out to me the distinction between “filial” and “servile” fear (a distinction I later learned he got from The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, XII, 38).

My fear of God is to be filial; that is, I am to fear God just as I fear a loving father who knows when and where I need punishment for my own good. I was not to cringe before God in some servile fashion, full of dreadful anxiety as a slave might find it necessary to quiver and cower before a menacing master. In our synod’s “expanded” edition of the Catechism, this understanding of the first commandment was re-enforced with numerous Scripture texts.

Furthermore, it was made quite plain to us twelve-year-olds that the English word fear does not quite catch the original Hebrew word which is best translated as reverence and awe. “Reverence for God” is a better way of expressing the biblical concept of faith and trust in God, we were told, so that in the progression of things, we turn from sin and evil and trust in God’s promises centered in Christ.

As Terrence Kardon notes, all of us who live in post-Vatican II, have been encouraged (as in my Lutheran tradition) to place our first emphasis on the love and faithfulness of God, rather than in the so-called “fear of God.” As a consequence, when Benedict says “we must constantly recall the commandments of God, continually mulling over how hell burns sinners before God,” Kardong finds it necessary to make this observation:

This ferocious verse . . . is exactly the kind of religious sentiment most people today no longer accept. . . . We have to accept that on some questions our religious sensibilities may be quite different from those of the ancient monks—and from our grandparents! (Day by Day with Benedict, January 10)

Yet in spite of these differences, it seems to me that there is something in the older way of understanding the “fear of the Lord” that is necessary for a firmly grounded Benedictine way of life. While it is true that the phrase “fear of God” is used only once in the New Testament (Acts 9.31), nevertheless much of what our Lord says to us (for example, his insistence that we will be judged by our actions in Matthew 25) ought properly give us serious hesitation about any day-by-day assumptions we may have about the quality and quantity of our presumed Christian behavior. Under no circumstances may grace afford us casual or easygoing comfort simply to walk as always. We will be judged and that judgment may well be harsh, if not damning. Here Psalm 36 (sung in my breviary during Morning Prayer on the seventh day of each month) is a telling reminder as to how the fear of God either works well or, if absent, fails to work in my life:

There is a voice of rebellion deep in the heart of the wicked;* there is no fear of God before his eyes.

He flatters himself in his own eyes* that his hateful sin will not be found out.

The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful;* he has left off acting wisely and doing good.

He thinks up wickedness upon his bed and has set himself in no good way;* he does not abhor that which is evil.

When the fear of God is absent, I am out of touch with the importance and opportunities of life, and I neglect considering the consequences of decisions. And if even if aware of decisions, I may deliberately and maliciously enjoy the effect they will have on others—-to their harm. It is a serious problem when I decide to have no regard for God—-either by complacency or deliberate
decision.

By completing with faith the rest of the Psalm, we sing that whatever disasters not fearing God may produce, God Himself moves us toward recovery, that is, a fearful and reverent awareness of His presence; in God's light, we see light:

Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens,* and your faithfulness to the clouds.

Your righteousness is like the strong mountains,your justice like the great deep;* you
save both man and beast, O LORD.

How priceless is your love, O God!* your people take refuge under the shadow of your wings.

They feast upon the abundance of your house;* you give them drink from the river of your delights.

For with you is the well of life, * and in your light we see light.

Continue your loving-kindness to those who know you,* and your favor to those who are true of heart.

Let not the foot of the proud come near me,* nor the hand of the wicked push me aside.

See how they are fallen, those who work wickedness!* they are cast down and shall not be able to rise.

To live in the fear of God is be aware of the significance of life; it guarantees wide-eyed robust living. We need “the fear of the Lord” so that we can be fully alive. And lest we imagine that we generate any such fear by our own effort, it too is a gift of God, encouraged by the Holy Spirit (Acts 9.31). It is, as Proverbs says, a builder of confidence, “making a world safe for [our] children,” “a spring of living water” that keeps us from “drinking from poisoned wells” (14.26-27).

Our fear of, love of, and trust in the Lord frustrates, demobilizes, and deconstructs whatever incipient tendencies we possess toward egotism, self-conteredness, haughtiness, smugness, complacency, and self-righteousness so endemic and pervasive in one’s daily life. The fear of God is, as Benedict reminds us, the first step toward humility, a deep appreciation for all of life.

Image: Julie Deane, Reverence, pastel. About this work of art, the artist writes, "During a music and praise session one evening [on a mission trip to Peru], the man in the foreground of the painting came into the church and stood next to me. He was obviously very weary, but he stood for hours that night, worshipping quietly. The scene was a highlight of my trip."

Thomas Merton on The Inner Self

2009-01-30T15:43:00.004-05:00

The inner self is not a part of our being, like a motor in a car. It is our entire substantial reality itself, on its highest and most personal and most existential level. It is like life, and it is life: it our spiritual life when it is most alive. I t is the life by which everything else in us lives and moves. It is in and through and beyond everything that we are. If it is awakened, it communicates a new life to the intelligence in which it lives, so that it become a living awareness of itself: and this awareness is not so much something that we ourselves have, as something that we are. It is a new and indefinable quality of our living being.

The inner self is, first of all, a spontaneity that is nothing if not free.

Thomas Merton. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Ed. William H. Shannon (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), 6.

Image: Stephen Rue, One Big Self, oil on panel, 36" x 36"

January 27: Remembering Lydia, Dorcas, and Phoebe, Witnesses to the Faith

2009-01-27T12:32:00.008-05:00

While in Haiti, a few of us managed to rise early in the mornings and, gathering in the darkness, turn on our flashlights so as to read Morning Prayer; truth-told, our Evening Prayers suffered somewhat, the place where we were staying often overcrowded with young Haitian men and women who wanted to talk with us. Now, however, that I'm back from Haiti and recuperating from a respiratory illness, I find it so physically and spiritually healing to re-enter more fully the Church's prayer life on a more regular basis.

Many of us when checking our church calendars find that in the last week of January (either on the 27th or 29th) we are asked to remember the life and witness of Lydia, Dorcas, and Phoebe. All three shared one pre-eminent quality: they helped others.

Dorcas was known for her assistance to the poor. So highly regarded was she, that when she died, the saints of Joppa appealed to Peter. He prayed over her and God raised her from the dead.

Lydia was a seller of purple cloth. After Paul shared the gospel with her, Lydia and her entire household were baptized--his first convert in Europe. She insisted Luke and Paul stay at her house. Her prosperous home became the original church at Philippi.

As these three individuals of the New Testament show, middle-class women were already beginning to play an important role in the Christian world.

Most of the women I know--like Lydia, Dorcas, and Phoebe--are well within the so-called middle class. Here I think of those women in our ecumenical prayer group: Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, and Roman Catholics, many of whom have so positively and deeply influenced my life. As the Church owes so much to Lydia, Dorcas, and Phoebe, so my life is indebted to many women who share their faith in Christ with me. While I will not mention names, those of you who are reading my words know who you are. You may be middle-class by some definitions, but you are truly "classy in Christ" to me and to all who know, work, pray, and worship with you. To all you Lydias, Dorcases, and Phoebes--by whatever name we know you today--may God bless you, each and every one. Tonight in Evening Prayer I will remember you before God, asking him to bless you, take care of you, sustain and heal you, and keep you in His compassion and protection.

The Prayer for Today

Almighty God, who inspired your servants Lydia, Dorcas and Phoebe to uphold and sustain your Church by their loving and generous deeds: Give us the will to love you, open our hearts to hear you, and strengthen our hands to serve you in others for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Image Source: St. Lydia, Theology in Color

Poverty, Jesus, and God's Silent Night of Love

2009-01-16T13:49:00.016-05:00

While in Haiti, we found the unsettling poverty of Our Lord Jesus everywhere, on every street, in every home, shop, school, chapel, church, clinic, hospital, cane field, and alleyway. In the eyes of nearly all Haitians--especially the children--Jesus starred at us and held out his hands to us to touch and hold. While at the Village of Hope, Pastor Bollinger took the three of us (Pastor Ron Luckey, Pat Mundt, and I) twice to visit "The Little Children of Jesus," an orphanage for 101 "throw-away"children who are, in one way or another, severaly disabled, either physcially or mentally, sometimes both. As sadly and commonly understood among the poor of the world, there are not enough resources to take care of the weakest and most desperate. Were it not for the Village of Hope, these children would not be living.

Children everywhere are in need to help, love, and assistance. In his arms Pastor Luckey holds a little girl whose parents died in the recent hurricane; in Ranquitte Pat Mundt is opening herself to a special relationship with 12-year-old Hippolyt; and I saw the face of my Lord Jesus in little Monuel, who just recently underwent a coronary transplant and now sees at least a bit more clearly her Haitai world and friends. Her photograph here is in my prayerbook.

Going to Haiti changes us. I expect my prayer life to change now so that it will include intercessions for this little Monuel, this Jesus. I will look at her, remember her before God, and then do what I can to give her some water, some clothes, a meal, and the touch of a nurse. And so Jesus will be in my prayers speaking to me through Monuel.

The world's poverty unsettles terribly. And one might well grow desperate were it not for God's abiding Presence in the midst of it all. While in Haiti I had little time to enter God's Silence, his Deepest Presence wherein all Haitians and their recents visitors-Ray and Bobby, Greg, Pam and Grover, Charlene and Amos, Pam, Shannon, Joe, Ron, the orphans, Pat, Hippolyt, Monuel, and all God's poor--are covered in the Night of Love and blanketed with compassion beyond words.

Recently a friend sent me the following from Thomas Merton's The Hidden Ground of Love; apparently it was part of a letter Merton sent to a Christian community. You may wish to enter its encouragement as I do today:

O my brothers and sisters, the contemplative is not the person who has fiery visions of the cherubim carrying God on their imagined chariot, but simply those who have risked their mind in the desert beyond language and beyond ideas where God is encountered in the nakedness of pure trust, that is to say, in the surrender of our poverty and incompleteness in order no longer to clench our minds in a cramp upon themselves, as if thinking made us exist. The message of hope the contemplative offers you, then, is not that you need to find your way through the jungle of language and problems that today surround God: but that whether you understand or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, abides with you, calls you, saves you, and offers you an understanding and light which are like nothing ever found in books or heard in sermons. The contemplative has nothing to tell you except to reassure you and say that, if you dare to penetrate your own silence and risk the sharing of that solitude with the lonely other who seeks God through you, then you will truly recover the light and the capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanations because it is too close to be explained: it is the intimate union, in the depths of your own heart, of God's spirit and your own secret inmost self, so that you and God are in all truth One Spirit. I love you, in Christ. (157-158)

How much God loves us

2009-01-11T10:07:00.003-05:00

God loves us too much to allow us to be satisfied and contented with mere images or signs of his Presence, like the material icons that we see or the mental concepts of him that we form with our intelligence. It is to his most secret and hidden abode-symbolised by the clouds which covered Mount Sinai or enveloped Jesus at his Ascension-that God calls his beloved children. The words of Jesus in the Gospel exactly express the Father'swill: 'Father, I desire that they also.may be with me where I am' (John17:24).

From The Fire of Silence and Stillness: An Anthology of Quotations for the Spiritual Journey, ed. Paul Harris (Springfield, Illinois: Templegate, 1995), 13.

Some More Words from Haiti

2009-01-10T12:11:00.009-05:00

Hi, ieveryone! Our thirteen-member team (with 20 cargo tubs) left Kentucky and Georgia, met in Miami, and made our way to Port au Prince on Tuesday, January 6. After spending the night with Pastor and Margaret Bollinger at the Village of Hope at Port au Prince, we left on Wednesday to arrive by plane in Pignon; from there we traveled an hour and a half trucks to Ranquitte, our destianation. On Thursday and Friday working with a team of Haitian masons, helped construct a home for a family that has been living in a sticks-and-mud home. Their new home will have a concrete floor, walls made of blocks (made days before on site), wooden rafters, and a metal roof. We will note be able to see the completed home because the mortar needs to dry thoroughly before the roofing can begin. The family, however, will be able to move into their new home in about two weeks.

In the photo below, you see me in front of the nearly completed home with Jude, a disabled young many who works with his heart and hands as best he can. Below that photo, someone has taken a photograph of Pastor Luckey, the family, and me.

This morng we all went to a joyful Mass where Per (Father) Andre Augustin, the much-loved priest at St. Francis parish, welcomed us to the celebration of Christ's Presence in the world. It was really quite wonderful additionally because we witnessed the marriage of two Haitian coiuples. Absolutely happiness!

There's lots of prayer here, wonderful fellowship, good vegetarian food, much laughter, and a whole lot of smiling. More tomorrow.

On my way to Haiti

2009-01-05T20:17:00.006-05:00

Tomorrow morning I'll be driving to the Atlanta airport to catch a plane to Miami where I'll meet twelve others, all of whom are going with me to Port au Prince and Ranquitte, Haiti; most are going for a week; three of us are staying an additional two days. I may have access to our blog while there. All depends on the amount of solar energy the roof panels can generate. If opportunities arise, I'll keep you posted as to how things are going.

Tomorrow we celebrate The Feast of the Epiphany. The star we twelve will be following leads us to the manger at Haiti, and all of us ask for your prayers, especially as you pray for the Haitian people who are so desparately poor. Our work while in Haiti will be the building of a small concrete-block home with a metal roof for a family that now sleeps on a dirt floor.

Here are some words from Thomas Merton that you may wish to ponder:

Spiritual rebirth is the key to the aspirations of all the higher religions. By "higher religions" I mean those which, like Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, are not content with the ritual tribal cults rooted in the cycle of the seasons and harvests. These "higher religions" answer a deeper need in [humankind]: a need that cannot be satisfied merely by the ritual celebration of [our] oneness with nature-[our] joy in the return of spring! [Humankind] seeks to be liberated from mere natural necessity, from servitude to fertility and seasons, from the round of birth, growth, and death. [Humankind] is not content with slavery to need: making a living, raising a family, and leaving a good name to posterity. There is in the depths of [our] hearts a voice which says: "You must be born again." It is the obscure but insistent demand of [our] own nature to transcend itself in the freedom of a fully integrated, autonomous, personal identity. --Love and Living (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979), 194.

Do visit this Epipahny video. I'll be back in Kentucky on the 22nd.

Some thoughts on January 1, 2009

2009-01-01T07:54:00.014-05:00

This morning the Church asks us to remember that when we wake up today, we may well want to remember, as Luke tells us, that” at the end of eight days, when Our Lord was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.” In other words, January 1 is the Feast of the Circumcision and Name of Jesus.

Quite frankly, except on January 1, I don’t think about the circumcision of Jesus very much. But today I’m aware that there are numerous paintings depicting the scene, and that when January 1 occurs on a Sunday, I may hear a sermon reminding me that long ago Jesus began to bled for our redemption. So soon after birth, his Passion begins. Having never seen a medical circumcision, I’ve always imagined it, however, to be somewhat painful for the infant, but I could be wrong; maybe today some kind of anesthetic is used. When Jesus was circumcised, however, I’m quite sure he did a good bit of screaming and crying in protest. And I’m equally sure that Mary, setting her eyes squarely on the body of her screaming son, watched with empathy as the local surgeon went work on her son while Joseph did his best to hold their son firmly on the operating table.

As I understand the custom among Jewish families, the circumcision and naming of a Jewish baby took place eight days after birth, and it was performed at home; a specialist cut the prepuce, the father gave the child a name and imposed his hands on him. Luke seems to imply that Jesus was most likely circumcised in or nearby the “inn” inasmuch as makes no mention of it occurring anywhere else. Today when we see paintings, icons, or other depictions of the event, the artist frequently places Jesus’ circumcision in the Temple of Jerusalem. That fairly well eliminates the family setting of the ceremony and ritual. Moreover, artists, often not squeamish about anatomical details, often depict the cutting up close and often with an altar in the scene to link the blood of the Circumcision to that of the Passion. Sometimes a lamb is added to the scene.

So what are we to make of this day, this scene, this realization of what’s happening in our Lord’s life. For me it’s a very profound reminder that Jesus’ heart always pumped Jewish blood, that he was bilingual, speaking Aramaic with a Galilean accent, the way his mom and dad chatted, and that he learned to read Hebrew with the rest of boys at the local synagogue. During the so-called 'missing years' filled in by spurious apocryphal gospels, my Jesus undoubtedly received a Jewish education perhaps, as Jonathan West suggests, along these lines: “at five years of age" he would be "ready for the study of the written Torah, at ten years of age for the study of the Oral Torah, . . . at 20 for pursuing a vocation, at 30 for entering one's full vigour.”

My Jewish Jesus grew up watching Roman soldiers patrol the streets, played Jewish teen-age games, learned how to chant the psalms from his elders, sweated in a saw-dust strewn carpenter shop with Jewish tools, and got acquainted with local zealots (terrorists, some of whom were active in his inner circle). He was liturgically informed, observed Jewish prayer customs (e.g., reciting the Shema three times a day), went to synagogue every Sabbath, made frequent pilgrimages to the Temple in Jerusalem for important religious celebrations like the Passover. When traveling he mostly walked and sometimes rode donkeys. My Jewish Lord slept out in the fields when necessary, made good friends among Jewish women, and often overstepped cultural boundaries and local expectations. He loved the Torah, especially the Prophets and the Psalms. My Jesus had a Jewish memory. And yet he had a way of being more--the most!--authentically Jewish man than all of his Jewish friends and critics. While Jewish, he saw into the heart of Almighty God who is not Jewish. And therein lay the tension, the suffering, the Passion of his life.

He was barely eight days old when the pain began that would ultimately wind him up on a cross, marked as a anti-Jewish criminal who showed himself the King of Jews, the man for everyone, the man for Andy, thoroughly non-Jewish, who never learned Hebrew well, who struggles with the Prophets and the Psalms, and who—to this day—has a hard time figuring out what an authentic life with the radical Jew Lord Jesus really means from a domesticated, basically urban, American point of view.

For me January 1, Feast of the Circumcision and Name of Jesus, means that I am more and more somehow called to be wonderfully Jewish--to think prophetically Jewish about injustice and poverty--in order to live with Jewish Jesus. So I pray today that my Jewish Lord fills me up with his Jewishness--his uncommon prophet, redemptive Jewishness--so that my heart is circumcised even as he was circumcised both in body and in heart.

Images: “The Circumcision of Jesus”, The Cloisters, New York; A mohel (a ritual circumciser) carries out the circumcision of a boy on the eighth day after birth; The Circumcision; Simon BENING; 1525; tempera and gold on parchment; from Cardinal Albert von Brandenburg’s Book of Prayers; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; The Circumcision; workshop of Giovanni BELLINI; 1500; oil on wood; National Gallery, London; Jesus as a Boy

Thomas Merton on Contemplation: Two Observations

2008-12-29T12:02:00.002-05:00

Each week The Merton Institute sends out one or more reflections taken from Thomas Merton's writings. Here is the week's reflection:

True contemplation is the work of a love that transcends all satisfaction and all experience to rest in the night of pure and naked faith. This faith brings us so close to God that it may be said to touch and grasp Him as He is, though in darkness. And the effect of such a contact is often a deep peace that overflows into the lower faculties of the soul and thus constitutes an "experience." Yet that experience or feeling of peace always remains an accident of contemplation, so that the absence of this "sense" does not mean that our contact with God has ceased. Thomas Merton. (New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions Press, 1961, 211)

You will never be able to have perfect interior peace and recollection unless you are detached from even the desire of peace and recollection. You will never be able to pray perfectly until you are detached from the pleasures of prayer. (New Seeds of Contemplation, 208)

From my chapbook of thoughtful sayings

2008-12-29T08:41:00.004-05:00

Benedict Groeschel says, "A saint is just a sinner who is more repentant than most of us."

Getting ready for next Sunday, January 4, 2009

2008-12-29T08:33:00.003-05:00

Each Monday morning I receive a weekly essay on the Biblical lectionary by Daniel B. Clendenin. Here's the beginning of this week's essay:

Last month I called Palo Alto's Friends of the Library to help me purge my bookshelves. They hauled away thirty-two cartons — 1,002 books, if I counted correctly. What was interesting was not the books that I gave away, but the ones I kept. When I looked at the few books that I kept, I noticed that a large percentage of them came from the desert monastics of the fourth century. Read more . . . .

Learning to face Facebook

2008-12-27T18:47:00.007-05:00

For the past half-year people have been inviting me to Facebook, and in the past few days I've been exploring the phenomenon. For what it's worth, I'm there now, staring at I-don't-know-what and gazing fixedly at the "wall." It's an interesting village! I've found a namber of groups focused variously on Centering Prayer, the Divine Office, The Cloud of Unknowing, and the witness of Tom Merton, among other interesting areas of interest. If you are ever somewhere in the area, whistle "hello!" and show me the way around!
!

Prayer Shawls and Tallits

2008-12-27T15:32:00.020-05:00

Danielle is knitting a prayer shawl for a friend who has been diagnosed with a recurrence of breast cancer. As Danielle knits, she is both praying over the shawl for her friend’s restoration to health and asking others to join her so that eventually the shawl is saturated with prayers. When Danielle finishes her knitting, she will give the prayer-soaked shawl to her friend as a gift heavy with hopes and intercessions for healing.

When Danielle asked if I’d like to participate in the praying and preparation of the shawl, my musings about prayer shawls led me to remember that Jesus might well have used and recommended prayer shawls as an aid to “secret prayer” in Matthew 6.6:

But when you pray, go to your private room and, when you have shut your door, pray to you Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.

Here Jesus urges that we enter a private room (other translations call it a “closet,” “a quiet, secluded place,” “chamber,”) to circumvent any ego-driven tendency to ostentatious praying. Some commentaries suggest that Jesus’ word for closet--in the Greek New Testament (τὸ ταμεῖόν, to tameion) is best understood as a reference to the Jewish prayer-shawl, the tallit, traditionally used by observant Jews during prayer. The wearing of the "tallit" (Hebrew: טַלִּית‎, pronounced tal-eet), also called the "tallis" or "prayer shawl," was commanded by God in Num.15:37-40:

God spoke to Moses: "Speak to the People of Israel. Tell them that from now on they are to make tassels on the corners of their garments and to mark each corner tassel with a blue thread. When you look at these tassels you'll remember and keep all the commandments of God, and not get distracted by everything you feel or see that seduces you into infidelities. The tassels will signal remembrance and observance of all my commandments, to live a holy life to God. I am your God who rescued you from the land of Egypt to be your personal God. Yes, I am God, your God."

Lest we forget that Jesus was thoroughly Jewish and that he observed that commandment, it may be helpful to picture Jesus as always wearing his tallit or prayer shawl. Indeed, Jim Gerrish is quite right to remind us that we can be assured that he wore one. Marc Chagall's "The Praying Jew" might well give you the image of Jesus that fits what we know about the way Jesus looked when wearing his prayer shawl.

Had he not done so, he would have broken the very law that he came to uphold. The law concerning the wearing of such garments is found in Numbers 15:37-49. These garments were certainly still worn in Jesus time, because along with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a tallit was found almost intact. It can be seen on display today at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem.

On one occasion a sick woman came and touched what must have been the fringes (tzitzit) of this garment, and in so doing, she was healed (Mk. 6:53-56). Traditionally the four corners of the tallit are called "the four wings." Perhaps she had in mind that phrase in Malachi 4:2, which speaks of the Messiah as one with "healing in its wings."

The clear implication is that at Matthew 6.6. Jesus is recommending the use of one’s tallit as a closet, inner room, or secret place.

This interpretation is born out when we remember that TALITH contains two Hebrew words; TAL meaning tent and ITH meaning little. Thus, you have LITTLE TENT. Each man had his own little tent. Six million Jews could not fit into the tent of meeting that was set up in the Old Testament. Therefore, what was given to them was their own private sanctuary where they could meet with God. Each man had one! His Prayer Shawl or Talith. They would pull it up over their head, forming a tent, where they would begin to chant and sing their Hebrew songs, and call upon God. It was intimate, private, and set apart from anyone else -- enabling them to totally focus upon God. This was their prayer closet! (The Hope of Israel)

As Danielle knits her prayer shawl for her friend, she is encouraging the revival of an ancient prayer tradition—the use of a tallit; and moreover, remembering Jesus’ encouragement of its use for “secret prayer,” Danielle might also be suggesting a prayer shawl is perhaps an apt aid to Centering Prayer, prayer spoken only to God in secret, deeply interior prayer, prayer that forsakes not only public ostentation but also minimizes as much as possible the interruption of private thoughts, images, imaginative speculations, interior story-telling, and pious perceptions, no matter how "holy" they may be.

Surely we enter our closets by simply closing our eyes. Many, however, also find it helpful to pray in a darkened room or at night. If those practices are helpful, surely the use of a prayer shawl might also be beneficial in that it may help us—as Jesus recommends—to physically close the door to distractions and nearby disturbances.

Personally I don’t own or use a prayer shawl, but in Centering Prayer I sometimes pull the hood of my so-called sweat-shirt up so as to bury my head inside something much like a tallit. Now, however, that Danielle has gotten me interested, I may start actually thinking about using one. Methodist women, like Danielle, seem to be leading the renewal of tallits as gifts, prayer closets, and aids to healing. If you’re interested, you might like to visit one or more of the following:

May God bless Danielle's knitting and prayers for her friend.

Images: Marc Chagall (Russian-born French painter, 1887-1985), "The Praying Jew" (1923, copy of 1914 work), oil on canvas, 116.8 x 89.4 cm, Art Institute of Chicago; The blessing of shawls made by Methodist women

Monastic Skete

2008-12-27T07:59:00.003-05:00

Found a good blog this morning: Dan Phillip's Monastic Skete (a skete is a settlement of monks or ascetics). Dan is wise Baptist pastor who likes Tom Merton. You need to meet him, and so I'm adding Monastic Skete to our list of places to visit so you can tromp on over now and then when you come visiting here. To give you a preview as to what sorts of things Dan is up to, here's a poem that Dan wrote and posted on December 16:

FIRST CORINTHIANS 13 (paraphrased)

CHRISTMAS VERSION

If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows,
Strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls,
But do not show love to my family,
I'm just another decorator.
If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies,
Preparing gourmet meals and arranging a beautifully adorned table at
mealtime,
But do not show love to my family,
I'm just another cook.
If I work at the soup kitchen, carol in the nursing home
And give all that I have to charity,
But do not show love to my family,
It profits me nothing.
If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and
crocheted snowflakes,
Attend a myriad of holiday parties and sing in the choir's cantata,
But do not focus on Christ,
I have missed the point.
Love stops the cooking to hug the child.
Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the husband.
Love is kind, though harried and tired.
Love doesn't envy another's home
that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens.
Love doesn't yell at the kids to get out of the way,
but is thankful they are there to be in the way.
Love doesn't give only to those who are able to give in return,
but rejoices in giving to those who can't.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures
all things.
Love never fails.
Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will
rust....
But giving the gift of love will endure.
You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.

BRO. DAN AND THANKS ROGER WILLIAMS