Yesterday we read from Psalm 32:
You are my hiding place;
You preserve me from trouble;
You surround me with shouts of deliverance.
God is indeed our hiding place, where we go for Sabbath time of quiet, contemplation, and forgiveness. Lent is a time that is especially appropriate for finding the hiding place that God has prepared for you. Like the wilderness Jesus encountered, it may be a place where God supports you in the tests challenging you. It may be a place where regrets are offered up to the compassionate love of Christ. It may be a place where God alone attends your thoughts and offers the peace that passes understanding, to "preserve you from trouble".
Wherever your hiding place with God is, come to that place in Lent. Know the shouts of deliverance upholding you.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
T.S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday"
Excerpt from Ash Wednesday by Thomas Stearns Eliot
VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn
Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.
VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn
Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Coming Into Lent, Coming into Our True Selves
A paraphrase from the Ash Wednesday prayer:
O God, you hate nothing that you have made.
We don't think about Lent as a time where we find the beauty of our souls, but that is what happens when we contemplate our created selves, enter into God's presence and find the soul that God has created within us. We each are unique persons, we each radiate a beauty that is our true self. The self that is not what others want us to be, what we think we should be, or what we strive so hard to become because we think we are sinful by nature and must be perfect.
This Lent, I challenge myself to become more the "me" that I was meant to be. A challenge that only God can help me meet.
O God, you hate nothing that you have made.
We don't think about Lent as a time where we find the beauty of our souls, but that is what happens when we contemplate our created selves, enter into God's presence and find the soul that God has created within us. We each are unique persons, we each radiate a beauty that is our true self. The self that is not what others want us to be, what we think we should be, or what we strive so hard to become because we think we are sinful by nature and must be perfect.
This Lent, I challenge myself to become more the "me" that I was meant to be. A challenge that only God can help me meet.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Some thoughts as others leave the Episcopal church
As those in the Episcopal church in some dioceses learn that they can no longer be in communion with the rest of us, I have mixed feelings. My first reaction is, "what took you so long?", an uncharitable and unthinking knee-jerk reaction, however true to my feelings.
The second, more reasoned response is, how do you think the Holy Spirit works if not through science, reason, imagination, scripture, learning, study, and revelation through experience? What else can the Holy Spirit do? My understanding is that spiritual growth happens when our experience is met with God's holy intentions for us.
I believe that the church is long overdue for rethinking the abuse of people based on their sexual orientation. While psychology, human dignity, and pastoral care all tell us to love people who are downtrodden and "less than", and our baptismal covenant requires us to work for justice and the dignity of all persons, the church has had unseeing eyes, based on unhelpful and hurtful dogma about the infallibility of some words written by men some 2000 years ago, which no longer speak to our hearts or our Christian understandings. Those who hold that scripture cannot be wrong seem to me to be the extreme result of those initial reformers who were trying to deny the pope's authority by substituting sola scriptura.
So, yes, let those who cannot go forward into the Way being offered by the Holy Spirit go the way of biblical inerrancy, if indeed that is their dogma (I wonder). Let the rest of grow into the knowledge and love of God and the care for our brothers and sisters, so we may go in peace to love and serve the Lord, Alleluia.
The second, more reasoned response is, how do you think the Holy Spirit works if not through science, reason, imagination, scripture, learning, study, and revelation through experience? What else can the Holy Spirit do? My understanding is that spiritual growth happens when our experience is met with God's holy intentions for us.
I believe that the church is long overdue for rethinking the abuse of people based on their sexual orientation. While psychology, human dignity, and pastoral care all tell us to love people who are downtrodden and "less than", and our baptismal covenant requires us to work for justice and the dignity of all persons, the church has had unseeing eyes, based on unhelpful and hurtful dogma about the infallibility of some words written by men some 2000 years ago, which no longer speak to our hearts or our Christian understandings. Those who hold that scripture cannot be wrong seem to me to be the extreme result of those initial reformers who were trying to deny the pope's authority by substituting sola scriptura.
So, yes, let those who cannot go forward into the Way being offered by the Holy Spirit go the way of biblical inerrancy, if indeed that is their dogma (I wonder). Let the rest of grow into the knowledge and love of God and the care for our brothers and sisters, so we may go in peace to love and serve the Lord, Alleluia.
Monday, December 3, 2007
St.Nick--We Got to Love Him
Nicholas of Myra will be celebrated this week. In North America, his day is not so special, but in other parts of the world, St. Nicholas Day is the day children get candy and fruit in stockings or shoes left out overnight.
Nicholas was bishop of Myra (in modern Turkey) around 375 or so. We don’t know many details about him, except that he was tortured and imprisoned during Diocletian’s persecutions. In one mythical story it is said he secretly left gold in the stocking of a poor maiden who could not marry because she lacked a dowry. He is known as the patron of seafarers and children, an odd combination, to be sure. The one thing that perhaps connects them is that both groups are dependent---one on their vessels in the midst of the gigantic waves, and the other on adults for their survival and growth. Thus we connect Nicholas to acts of benevolence and protection.
Last year I was part-time chaplain at both Northwestern University Canterbury and St. Gregory’s Episcopal School for at-risk boys in K-8 grades in urban Chicago. I wanted to make connections between these two groups, so I led some Canterbury students to St. Gregory’s to have St. Nicholas Day with the children. One NU graduate student looked very much like a Turkish bishop after we dressed him up for chapel. He led the children in a teaching on St. Nicholas, while other students filled with goodies the shoes that had been left outside the chapel. After chapel, the NU students helped the older class prepare for a Hip Hop Morning Prayer at which they were officiating the next week.
As chaplain at St. Gregory School I had hoped this visit from NU students, the first encounter with St. Nick for most of the boys, would be a special event for the school, as it was. But I had not counted on the college students being moved as well, as I later discovered that they had experienced an inner-city school for the first time in their lives. I am told by NU chaplain Liz Stedman that they still talk about that trip.
While St. Nicholas may be historically obscure, the acts done in his name, of giving and benevolence, powerfully speak to us today. While we may disdain the morphing of the bishop of Myra into a fat man from a mythical North Pole, brought to us from Dutch settlers as Santa Claus, we cannot deny the gifts, both temporal and spiritual, we have both given and received, that speak of love—enduring and divine. Nicholas of Myra fills a place in our hearts that calls us to give to others unconditionally. And if we connect that giving to the ultimate gift given to us by God, then the bishop of Myra, whoever he really was, lives again, showing us a path of peace.
Nicholas was bishop of Myra (in modern Turkey) around 375 or so. We don’t know many details about him, except that he was tortured and imprisoned during Diocletian’s persecutions. In one mythical story it is said he secretly left gold in the stocking of a poor maiden who could not marry because she lacked a dowry. He is known as the patron of seafarers and children, an odd combination, to be sure. The one thing that perhaps connects them is that both groups are dependent---one on their vessels in the midst of the gigantic waves, and the other on adults for their survival and growth. Thus we connect Nicholas to acts of benevolence and protection.
Last year I was part-time chaplain at both Northwestern University Canterbury and St. Gregory’s Episcopal School for at-risk boys in K-8 grades in urban Chicago. I wanted to make connections between these two groups, so I led some Canterbury students to St. Gregory’s to have St. Nicholas Day with the children. One NU graduate student looked very much like a Turkish bishop after we dressed him up for chapel. He led the children in a teaching on St. Nicholas, while other students filled with goodies the shoes that had been left outside the chapel. After chapel, the NU students helped the older class prepare for a Hip Hop Morning Prayer at which they were officiating the next week.
As chaplain at St. Gregory School I had hoped this visit from NU students, the first encounter with St. Nick for most of the boys, would be a special event for the school, as it was. But I had not counted on the college students being moved as well, as I later discovered that they had experienced an inner-city school for the first time in their lives. I am told by NU chaplain Liz Stedman that they still talk about that trip.
While St. Nicholas may be historically obscure, the acts done in his name, of giving and benevolence, powerfully speak to us today. While we may disdain the morphing of the bishop of Myra into a fat man from a mythical North Pole, brought to us from Dutch settlers as Santa Claus, we cannot deny the gifts, both temporal and spiritual, we have both given and received, that speak of love—enduring and divine. Nicholas of Myra fills a place in our hearts that calls us to give to others unconditionally. And if we connect that giving to the ultimate gift given to us by God, then the bishop of Myra, whoever he really was, lives again, showing us a path of peace.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
