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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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