The painful bright

Romans 13:11

The hour has come for you to wake up.

It is the first Sunday of Advent. We begin our vigil, waiting for the light.

Sometimes I feel ambivalent about the coming of the light. When the light comes, justice will come; when justice comes, I might be found on the wrong side of the equation. In what ways do I oppress others with hardly a conscious thought? In what ways do I need to wake up to my own subtle ways of using and injuring others?

Today I have a new thought about the coming of the light and another reason to feel ambivalent: Not all of us want to be in the light at all, and it's not because we purchase clothes made in sweat shops, or whatever else I was alluding to in the paragraph above. Much closer to home, in our emotional lives and our relationships and our everyday behavior, some of us don't want to wake up. We don't want to be conscious of painful realities.

There's a further complication: We help each other stay asleep. People in group X don't want to wake up, and people in group Y are desperately trying to help group X stay asleep at any cost. Meaning that the helpful assistants who make up group Y are also asleep.

The system breaks down with the coming of light, and it hurts like hell. Nobody, including me, a recovering member of group Y, wants that painful bright thing shining on everybody's private business.

But alas:

The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.
—Rom 13:12

Only God's money

Matthew 25:16

Right off, the first servant went to work and doubled his master's investment.

This morning at St. Cuthbert's, Pamela offered each household a fifty dollar bill from the church's discretionary fund. Is she insane? Instructions: This is God's fifty dollars. Use it to invest in God's kingdom. In ninety days, tell the church what you made of it.

This is a poor church. A small church. But that fifty-dollar bill began to enrich and enlarge my ideas about God the moment I touched it. My first thought was an earnest desire to make something of it and come back next week with a hundred-dollar bill to put in the offering plate. So far so good.

I left church and drove downtown to the YMCA. I packed my wallet in my gym bag to take into the building with me, where I planned to spend a quarter to store the wallet in a locked box during my workout. But I nearly left behind the fifty, which I had stashed in the glove compartment. I caught myself thinking a dark, quiet thought: Well, if it's stolen ... it's only God's money.

Perplexed, I slipped the fifty into my wallet—my wallet—and took it inside with me.

My wallet. Inside which my credit cards and my cash and my insurance cards have shifted to make room for this stranger, God's fifty-dollar bill, which is only here on holiday.

Though I am generous with my money, this fifty-dollar bill is illuminating a fixed stinginess in me. I believe the theory that my whole wallet belongs to God. It is a beautiful theory. But how does my belief hold up in practice? In my unguarded moments?

What would happen if I was carrying around God's wallet, containing God's credit cards? What if my ATM card gave me access to God's checking account?

But that's crazy talk for another day. What will I do with the fifty dollars? I'm still thinking. If you have a great idea, post a comment, or email me at momently@gmail.com.

For her part, our cat Rosie does not see the thing having any value whatsoever.

Unenlightenment

Luke 1:35

... and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

On the surface, fame; deeper down, obscurity. The angel has just told Mary that she will be famous, and she wonders how this will come about, given her empty state. The angel's answer? Among other things, Mary will be overshadowed.

Overshadowed. Light will be blocked. God's proximity will throw Mary into darkness.

In Isaiah 45:7, God says, "I cause light to shine. I also create darkness." The author comments in verse 15, "You are a God who hides yourself."

This is a puzzling God, alright, whose love for me does not always involve enlightening me or saving me from the terrors of the night. God is not always driven to self-revelation. God is not afraid of darkness, is not anxious to make it go away as fast as possible, and in fact even creates it.

And God can stand close enough to make it impossible for us to see, even impossible for us to see God.

Learning to sort

2 Chron. 20:15b

Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God's.

Today I am holding three prayers next to each other, one being an entreaty that Jesus makes of us, and two being entreaties that we make of Jesus:

• Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.... For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Mt 11:29-30)
  
  
• Let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you. (From the Methodist Covenant Prayer)
  
  
• God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. (From the Serenity Prayer)

What is mine to do today? What is not mine to do today?

Jesus, please help me to see more clearly those things you are calling me to do; give me the will and the courage and the energy to do those things; help me to let go of false guilt about things that are not mine to do.

Help me to learn from you.

A good book

Romans 12:9

Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good.
(The Message)

I just finished a book that is good in two senses of the word. First, it is excellent; of high quality. But it is also good in the sense of being the opposite of evil—or at least that's what my experience was in reading it. If evil has a kind of metaphysical bad smell to it, Candlelight, by Susan Phillips, is a bouquet of mixed spring flowers. It is filled with stories of God's benevolence, and I find this encouraging and, well ... "good."

In my review of Candlelight on Amazon, I go into more detail about exactly why I like this book so much....

Flowers like flames

Acts 2:1–4

The flames separated and settled on each of them....

Ten years ago at this time I was on a retreat at Our Lady of Solitude in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.

During most of my three and a half weeks at OLS, the only other retreatant was an abbess on sabbatical from her convent in India. She and I spent much of each day together in silence in the chapel. One day she looked at me knowingly and pointed to the now flowering ocotillo plant outside the chapel window. "It's almost Pentecost," she said. "Those flowers remind me of flames."

The anticipation of Pentecost in the middle of one of the hardest years of my life. Spring in the desert during an El Niño year. Flowers like flames.

The director of OLS when I was there, Sister Therese Sedlock, has since passed away, and OLS is now the home of five warmly dressed Poor Clares, four cats, and two puppies.

I wish I could return to OLS. I sent an email to ask about the possibility, and one of the sisters replied that they now offer retreat space only to Catholic priests.

But in my heart, I'm there. I found a lovely photo of an ocotillo plant, on a lovely blog. Worth visiting. Do click.

(Especially appropriate because Sr. Therese loved Cardinals, and she knew the individual birds that visited her bird feeder. She also had a special relationship with some members of the Arizona Cardinals football team and would fax them prayers and messages of encouragement before their games.)

Surprises

Acts 1:9–11
Jesus rose from the dead (Easter), appeared to various people over the course of forty-plus days (the Easter season), ascended into heaven (Ascension), then sent the Holy Spirit to those he had left behind (Pentecost)—a series of terrifying, beautiful surprises.

Today is the sixth Saturday of Easter; Thursday was Ascension Day; Pentecost is in eight days. We're in the middle of all this crazy new life. The bulbs I planted in December put up a few flowers and are now reduced to drooping green stalks, but ... the wild irises outside my office window are rioting. There are six flowers out there this morning. Go figure.

Gazing at Jesus

John 14:9

Jesus answered, "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."

During the long silence that followed the reading of John 14:1–14 this morning at St. Cuthbert's, I found myself wondering exactly what Jesus meant when he said that anyone who has seen him has seen God.

In Exodus 33:20, God tells Moses that no one may see God's face and live. So gazing at Jesus, we are able to gaze upon what would otherwise kill us. Looking at Jesus, really seeing him, is a way to pass down an otherwise deadly corridor; a way to reach the true, eternal, mysterious, awesome, hidden Source of Life.

What actions, then, do I feel God calling me to take?

1. Gaze more often at Jesus as he is described in the gospels ... read the stories; imagine what it would be like to take part in the scenes; consider how Jesus might be calling me to change.
   
   I did this more often while I was going through the Ignatian Exercises, and I miss it. Taking a slow, careful look at Jesus is transformative. He is fascinating.
   
   
2. Exercise the discipline of watching for Jesus in his distressing disguise in the faces and lives of the people around me. Matthew 25:40 comes to mind; the people who need something that I am called to give are Jesus.

A scrappy, messy affair

I'm grateful that the Easter season lasts for 50 days.

I didn't go to church on Easter—I wouldn't have been able to take it all in. (Maybe that's why I didn't feel like going this year. Too big a disconnect: the agonizingly slow growth of rooted faith on one hand, and the fast-blooming cheerfulness of an Easter Sunday church service on the other.)

Some of the bulbs I planted are flowering. It's a scrappy, messy affair; unpredictable, earthy, and with mixed results. But maybe that's how faith is anyway.

No, it's not about comfort.

John 11:1–45

v. 37: But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"

It's the fifth Sunday in Lent, and the first anniversary of my dad's death. The story of Lazarus's death and resurrection (or resuscitation?) was very alive to me during March of last year. Here is an excerpt from my journal.

March 15, 2007 The heading for this section in my bible is "Jesus Comforts the Sisters." I just crossed it out. I don't think your deepest intention and hope for them here is that they be comforted. Comfort is so little compared to whatever it is you're really driving at in your interactions with them. No, you are not bringing COMFORT to the sisters—COMFORT would have been showing up a week earlier and sparing them Lazarus's death scene, embalming, burial, and their own grieving, doubting, and loss of faith in...

in what?

They probably forever lost their faith in their COMFORT being your highest priority for them. After this scene, they knew that you were willing to let them suffer—though you did eventually suffer with them.

Jesus, if you were not in my dad's room during this last year, then you were not anywhere. Again and again, therefore, I chose to believe you were there—the silent God who brought no happy affect or felt sense of presence. Now that is a durable God. The existence of so much suffering on Earth is not a data point for atheism if God is like that: so very unmotivated to always relieve suffering, but always suffering alongside, so deeply, and seeing more deeply into suffering than we could ever imagine doing—living all the way in the forest of it when I'm only brave enough to visit the outermost trees.

Lent and repentance

Psalm 51:6

Behold, You desire truth in the inner being; make me therefore to know wisdom in my inmost heart.

In The People's Companion to the Breviary, Psalm 51 comes up not only on days like Ash Wednesday, but every Friday morning, rain or shine. The Carmelites of Indianapolis, who created the People's Companion, phrase verse 6 like this: "For you desire truth in my innermost being; teach me wisdom in the depths of my heart."

I have prayed this prayer many, many times. As I figure it, because God desires truth in my innermost being, God is willing to teach me wisdom. This is a prayer I would expect God to answer.

Am I any closer to an answer? I don't know, but I do continue to see my need to make the request.

To see and act on deep truths that are revealed by growing self-awareness and awakeness—this is my idea of deep repentance. Sounds easy, maybe? .... but I don't think it is. Not at all.

She saw in the dark

John 20:1
On Sunday morning while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance.

11–12
Mary Magdalene stood crying outside the tomb. She was still weeping when she stooped down and saw two angels inside.

14–15
[Mary] turned around and saw Jesus standing there. But she did not know who he was. Jesus asked her, "Why are you crying? Who are you looking for?"

18
Mary Magdalene then went and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord.

She saw. In the darkness of night, in the darkness of a tomb, and in the darkness of confusion and grief, she saw. How does that work?

—> I'm beckoned into the darkness —> I'm awakened to a sight —> perhaps, with grace, I'm led to a dim recognition of what it is I'm seeing (epiphany!) —>

—>I'm beckoned into the darkness —> I'm awakened to a sight —> perhaps, with grace, I'm led to a dim recognition of what it is I'm seeing (epiphany!) —>

I'm thinking maybe it goes on like this.

Unstill Epiphany

Still Epiphany

Matthew 2:1–12

When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. (NRSV)

Sometimes the Epiphany holds still, and we can catch up with it.

The breath of God: new life

(My blog has moved to SleepOnTheHearth.com. Please visit!)

John 20:22

And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said unto them, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost.

I planted bulbs about a month ago, and this photo shows four tiny shoots above the ground. Can you see them? I can, but only because I have felt them with my fingertips. It dropped below freezing last week, which is rare for us, and I worried. But then I remembered that bulbs can survive much worse.

The last thing anyone saw

John 20:17

Jesus said, "Go to my brothers and tell them, 'I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.'"

In York Minster, I remember seeing the soles of Jesus' feet depicted on the ceiling, surrounded by a cloud.

The last thing anyone saw of his physical body as he ascended!

I can't find any sign of such a thing on the Internet, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Here's my version.