The Thread of Words

I've moved - please come visit

2011-05-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

I have a new WordPress web site called Sleep on the Hearth, and I've moved my blog there, along with my main web site. I hope you'll come visit.

Bigger. And more interesting.

2011-04-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

Psalm 63:6

On my bed I remember you—
I think of you through the watches of the night.

I have a medical test coming up, and last night I lay awake spinning out possibilities. I'm not God, I'm not a doctor, and I don't possess the facts. Even so, I want to believe I can figure it out.

So on my bed I remembered me—
I thought of me through the watches of the night.

It didn't feel good, though. Each fantastical, self-absorbed thought was delicious, but made my heart sicker.

It reminded me of a time when I ate my way through several boxes of Screaming Yellow Zonkers.

← Not helpful.

But as I was crunching away on my anxious thoughts, I remembered Psalm 63:6, and it sounded like healthy food. Antipanic medicine for my soul.

I made an effort to do what the psalmist had done, to remember God. The line three verses earlier came into my mind:

Your constant love is better than life itself—
and so I will praise you. Ps. 63:3

What is this constant love that surrounds and holds my body, inside and out? It's bigger, and certainly more interesting, than my obsessive thoughts about myself.

God knows the secrets that are in the darkness of my body, the secrets that doctors can only see (and even then, imperfectly) by doing tests.

Here's what I fell asleep thinking: God knows the whole of me, and is not panicking. I have much to do in my life. Many things call me forward. So I'd better get on with it, and do what's mine to do.

Inversion

2010-11-24T16:15:00.000-08:00

Romans 13:11

But make sure that you don't get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! (The Message)

This year, the four-week season of Advent begins on November 28th.

It's two lines crossing, one line heading up, the other down. Our cultural religion is turning the lights up, up, up to full brightness. We're encouraged to be busy, surface-level Christmas consumers. In the bright light, but sleeping.

Meanwhile, the trajectory of our inner life during Advent is meant to be downwards. Deepwards. Our tradition invites us into darkness, reflection, mystery, and even fasting as we go deeper in hopes of seeing the faint light grow ever so slightly brighter.

One eye clear

2010-07-31T14:13:00.000-07:00

This is one corner of a soul collage, or soul card, that I made last week.

One eye stays clear, in spite of trouble revealed from within and distortions layered on top.

(I'd like to find a generic term for this process: SoulCollage® is copyrighted, and "soul card" can refer to tarot, but this video is not either of those things. Any suggestions?)

Memory

2010-07-23T17:19:00.000-07:00

This hippocampus lives inside building 46 at Google in Mountain View. I walk past her* often, and I always stop.

Hippocampus, by Mardi Storm

She is a dream trapped in a latex room. Most of the time she has nothing but electrical gadgets, event notices, and a couple of office plants to gaze at.

Surprised (every time!) to see her, I stand by her head and let her gaze at me … and I'm reminded that I have forgotten something important, but what? What is it? Has even she forgotten, dry-docked as she is?

For photos that do justice to the hippocampus, please visit the artist's website (http://www.mardistorm.com/).

* Is she a her? I don't know. To me she is.

"I think he's hiding," she said

2010-02-27T11:15:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 45:15a

You are a God who hides yourself.

I boarded the shuttle to work last Monday with a cloud over my head. A lot's been going on.

The bus was almost full. I sat in the second row behind the driver, next to a young woman whose laptop was open on her knees, its screen touching the back of the seat in front of her. I crammed my work backpack next to hers, under my feet. I made room for her elbow so that she could type, then lost myself in my phone's browser.

About 45 minutes into the ride, she began to rummage on the floor, as if surprised.

Did she lose something?

I looked down. To my astonishment, a Golden Lab was resting his head on my left foot. He was very quiet. He moved nothing but his big brown eyes, looking from one to the other of us as if to say, "You're not going to kick me out, are you?" Dogs aren't allowed on the corporate shuttle, and he knew it.

"I think he's hiding," the woman said.

He must have started out behind his owner's feet, fully hidden beneath the seat in front of us. Then little by little he stretched out as the ride went on, finally daring to lean his head against my foot.

When we neared our destination, he moved his head, and my foot felt cold. I hadn't even noticed that someone was keeping it warm.

God's will

2010-02-15T09:58:00.000-08:00

When someone is sick, people start talking about God's will.

Thy will be done. What does it mean? I've heard it used several ways:

"Thy will be done" as a magical prayer.

It's easy to fall into the belief that if I say this special prayer before a frightening, uncertain event, then the outcome is God's will—even if the outcome is terrible.

I knew a woman who broke her neck in an accident. Just before the accident she had prayed for God's will to be done, and so she believed that it was God's will for her to break her neck. She lost her faith over it. This interpretation of "Thy will be done" imagines us having a lot more power than we do. If I say the magic words, then everything will happen exactly according to God's will? No. My words and thoughts do not control the universe.
"Thy will be done" as an existential statement.

To some people, "Thy will be done" isn't a request, but an observation about life's great events being beyond our control. It's like saying, "Que sera, sera." The dice will land how they will, and we must accept our mortality and our limits. I can see truth in this, certainly. But it's not really a prayer; it's more of a philosophy.
"Thy will be done" as an affirmation of my willingness to see God in all outcomes.

This prayer takes courage, for sure. The outcome might be painful; it takes great faith to open up your hands and say, "Okay God, I believe you're with me in this, and I'm with you in this, no matter what."

This is subtly different from saying that a terrible outcome would be the will of God. It's saying that no matter what happens, I will look, hope, and pray for God's will to come out of it. Which is related to....
"Thy will be done" as an ardent, passionate request for what is good.

This prayer assumes that wholeness, peace, love, hope, life, and freedom are God's will, whoever or whatever God is. It's a request for God to bring those things about. "Please, God, may your kindom*, in which there is peace and perfect health and unity of spirit, come to pass here, now, on Earth, in this situation! May your greatest hope be fulfilled."

I gravitate most naturally to number 4 when I pray, though I'm thinking that incorporating more of number 3 would be a good thing too....

* not a typo

Redemptive sadness

2009-10-24T13:28:00.001-07:00

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

I spent three nights last month at Mercy Center in Burlingame, California. The Mercy Center has several walking paths that were created years ago by Father Thomas Hand, S.J. One of the paths, called the Water Way, leads you down a slope and into an area shadowed by trees, then alongside a dark creek that is criss-crossed with fallen branches and tree trunks.

This depiction of the Tenth Station of the Cross is nailed to a post at one end of the Water Way. At this point in the story, Christ's clothes are taken from him: one last humiliation before death.

I am struck by the sadness in each man's face, and by the way in which Christ is clasping the man's hand. I don't believe that redemptive violence is part of the Christian story.* Instead, I believe that God willingly entered into our suffering to be with us, because of love for us. It is a different story.

* Shout-out to Shawn Anthony at Lo-Fi Tribe.

Handmade

2009-10-17T09:30:00.000-07:00

I gaze at the heavens,
searching for you, my God. (Ps. 123:1, ICEL Psalter)

Barefoot in the dirt outside our tent
in the dark, I bend back my head
and open my heart to the sky.

I hope to see heaven unravel,
galaxies take up the thread
then spin, then snap as
larger, more practiced hands
pull spacetime taut
weaving, reweaving
uncountable yards of stuff and nothing,
endless bolts of evidence—

Meanwhile, after billion-year trips,
photons land without fanfare
in my skin
in my eyes
right where I stand;
primordial lights
like jewels, sewn by hand
onto the dress
of a princess.

Ex nihilo

2009-09-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

Psalm 18:16-19

But me he caught—reached all the way
from sky to sea; he pulled me out
Of that ocean of hate, that enemy chaos,
the void in which I was drowning.
They hit me when I was down,
but God stuck by me.
He stood me up on a wide-open field;
I stood there saved—surprised to be loved!

In Addiction & Grace, Gerald May writes about how we often substitute one addiction for another. We are compelled to fill our life's emptiness: the void. When people are delivered from addiction, he writes, it's because grace enables them to tolerate spaciousness, at least to some degree. Grace transforms the void in which we were dying, and we find ourselves in a wide-open field.

A void and a wide-open field are both spacious, but in a very different sense. The void that meant loneliness is transformed into space that means freedom. A void lacks air and light and structure—it's a nothing—and in it we're aimless and can't find direction. A wide-open field, on the other hand, is a generative space in which new life and purpose can unfold. It's a riot of fresh air and little wild animals. We stand there saved, surprised to be loved!

For me, the surprise comes from being loved right there in the emptiness, in the place where I have nothing to comfort or distract me. I mean those times when nobody needs me and it's clear that the world would go on without me; those times when I understand that my task in life is not to fix everybody and know everything. It's plainness, mortality, and human limits. It's those times when being with God is like sitting in silence in an empty, lightless room, hearing and saying nothing.

I've spent many hours over the years gazing at the carving in this photo. Today I am struck by the spaces around Mary and Joseph, and the space between them—the dark emptiness into which Love was born. I tried to photograph it in a way that would capture what I mean.

The easiest, hardest thing

2009-08-28T10:15:00.000-07:00

Matt. 26:38b

Then he said to them, "....Stay here and keep watch with me."

My friend Sue Ann works as a chaplain with SpiritCare Ministry to Seniors. She conducts lovely, gentle worship services at long-term care centers, plus she does visitation and pastoral counseling. SpiritCare recruits volunteers to do things like play the piano, help with communion, and spend time with residents.

I've helped Sue Ann at three homes now, and helping turned out to be simpler and less scary than I'd feared. I can help just by singing loudly, or just by slowing down to really look at and see the beauty of the person I am speaking to. These things don't cost me much—in fact, they bring me joy. I'm grateful for the structure that Sue Ann's ministry provides, because it makes it easy and possible for me to do what would otherwise be too much for me.

I've been praying through the story of Gethsemene in Matt. 26. In this scene, Jesus tells the disciples that for the moment, their task is to stay where they are:

+ Sit here while I go over there and pray. (v. 36)
+ Stay here and keep watch with me. (v. 38)

During these hours in the garden, Jesus is preparing for his own death. He asks his friends to help him by doing what sounds easy but is often painful and difficult for us to carry out: to stay awake, to stay present to what's really happening, to keep vigil with those who suffer.

SpiritCare's ministry is a taste of just such presence.

Laid aside for you

2009-05-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

The Methodist covenant prayer

I am no longer my own
but yours.

Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you,
exalted for you, or brought low for you;
let me be full, let me be empty,
let me have all things, let me have nothing:

I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

You are mine
and I am yours.

So little depends on me, really. What a relief. If I were nothing, had nothing, produced nothing, God's great dream might be just as well (or better) served as if I were full and productive.

It's a relief to think that it's okay for me to be what I am: Limited.

3. Uniquely

2009-04-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

Psalm 63:7

I sing in the shadow of your wings.

Sometimes it's done in a shadow, in obscurity. Not standing on a box in the middle of downtown. Heh - I love that.

2. Sustenance

2009-04-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

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

Psalm 63:2

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.

Where? Where do you see God? Where are you when you get those fleeting glimpses of the real thing? Outdoors? Tucking a child into bed? Whispering a prayer of gratitude? Reading a great book? Petting a dog? Singing in church?

Find those symbols and observances and savor them. Call them what they are. We need all the refilling we can get.

Last weekend, probably very early in the morning on Holy Saturday, a doe gave birth to twin fawns outside our livingroom window. Here she is with one of them.

1. Craving

2009-04-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

Psalm 63:1

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

When I look down into myself, I see that the bottom of the well is continuously in need of refilling. I'm tired, thirsty, empty—and I need contact with the real thing.

The routines of religion buy me nothing if they don't connect me with the source of relief. God does not need me to do religious things; the need actually goes the other way. I need contact with the living, refilling God (source of all life) or my soul will dry up and die.

Religious observances exist to help me get that contact. As soon as the symbols and practices of faith leave us empty, we have to extend them, reinterpret them, deepen them, even replace them. Otherwise they are flat, like paper dolls that used to be people.

They become nothing more than a means of superstition and magical thinking—by which I mean, "If I do this, God will do that."

A rain poem

2009-02-08T12:59:00.000-08:00

The Favor

I said,
"May I pet you? What an honor it would be."
You replied with
some drawn-out "mmm" syllable of complaint as if
it cost you money to arch your back up to meet my hand, as if
you were not free to run back out
into the rain.

The voice received on the outside

2009-01-13T08:43:00.000-08:00

I recently viewed some porn online. I wanted to know what's out there.

I'm wise enough to stay away from things that would definitely offend me or injure me emotionally, so I steered in the direction of what doesn't offend me, at least not in the abstract: consensual sex between grown ups.

It didn't take long to learn what I needed to know.

Reflecting on my, um, adventure, I wonder what makes scenes like the ones I saw so hard to forget? Well, that part seems biological; even kind of mechanical. (That word has come up several times during my reflections: mechanical.)

And what was it, exactly, that troubled me about what I saw? What was it that marred the rest of my day, made my sleep fitful, and gave me a sort of spiritual and emotional indigestion?

I found a rich answer in this adapted quote from The Confessions of St. Augustine:

I asked the earth, the sea and the deeps, heaven, the sun, the moon and the stars. My questioning of them was my contemplation, and their answer was their beauty. They do not change their voice, that is their beauty, if one person is there to see and another to see and to question. Beauty appears to all in the same way, but is silent to one and speaks to the other. They understand it who compare the voice received on the outside with the truth that lies within.

Yes! As I reflect on the "voice" of the porn that I looked at and compare it to the truth that lies within, there is a grating and ugly clash. They do not match. The voice received on the outside was not true, and it was not beautiful.

(Click the photo to get a better view of Star Cluster M34.)

What the angel could mean

2009-01-06T22:01:00.000-08:00

Luke 1:29

Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean.

This evening I parked in the garage behind the YMCA, walked to the elevator, and pushed the call button. The doors opened and a tall woman stepped out. I only saw her for a few seconds as she passed, but in those few seconds.....

Unlike most others who step out of the elevator in the parking garage behind the YMCA, this woman was looking up, and right at me. Her face was lit with unselfconscious recognition, as if she had been hoping it would be me when those doors opened. She smiled right into my face, beautifully, kindly, as she quickly stepped past me and out into the garage. I moved inside the elevator, the doors closed, and the moment was over. But what I felt in those seconds of anonymous encounter was ... love. Recognition. A peaceful belonging.

Later, in the locker room, an elderly woman gave me a warm, kindly smile. It gave me a point of comparison: Okay, this is what a warm, kindly smile from a stranger feels like. It's a nice feeling, and it made my day a little better. But the smile I received from the stranger in the elevator was something else altogether.

I couldn't stop myself from wondering if I had passed an angel who had been on some errand in the Y.

She was headed for her car in the garage, her beatific task for today complete.

The painful bright

2008-11-30T16:28:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-16T14:22:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-24T16:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-18T18:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-09T14:58:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-03T11:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

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?

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.
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

2008-04-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-03-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

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

2008-02-08T14:47:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-25T12:18:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-15T17:22:00.000-08:00

Still Epiphany

2008-01-09T08:12:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-02T09:41:00.000-08:00

(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

2008-01-01T08:01:00.000-08:00

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.

Looking for someone else

2007-12-27T11:48:00.000-08:00

John 20:14

At this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

Jesus, I don't want this to be you. I would guess that Mary saw only two options: Jesus was either dead, or he was alive. She had seen him die and knew he was dead. Then he came back to "life," and maybe she assumed that if Jesus was "alive" again, he would go back to being how he was before.

For me, it's easy to imagine these two options (and only these two options) for God: (1) God is dead, dead meaning DEAD, and therefore powerless and uncaring; or (2) God is alive, meaning active and powerful. This would be a never-fading, never-dying God who prevented suffering and death from happening in the first place.

But what have we got? In John 11:1–44, Jesus allows Lazarus to die, joins the sisters in their grief, cries with them, ... and then raises Lazarus from the dead. Jesus is not dead (powerless and uncaring), and he's not "alive" the way I would want him to be (preventing suffering before it occurs).

Jesus,
Like Mary, I'm having trouble recognizing you. What can I expect of you? I guess I can expect you to be present in my suffering and in the suffering of others, and I can expect an ultimate redemption—justice and relief. But I can't expect you always to ward off suffering before it happens.

The implication is that to follow you, I need to be present to suffering, willing to suffer alongside those who suffer, not necessarily ever able to take away the suffering altogether. I'm scared that I can't do this—I'm not sure I'm willing. Or able.

All the suffering on earth is like a forest, and you traverse the dark paths through the trees night and day, searching for and staying with those who are lost and in pain.

How can you stand it?

With your help, holding your hand, I've timidly touched the outermost trees. Give me the compassion and the courage to follow you wherever you want me to go, even if it's right into the darkness with you.

First Principle and Foundation

2007-12-12T08:38:00.000-08:00

What is the bottom line? What is my bottom line?

Pax

All that matters is to be at one with the living God
To be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair
At peace, in peace
And at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
At home, at home in the house of the living,
Sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world
Yawning at home before the fire of life
Feeling the presence of the living God
Like a great reassurance
A deep calm in the heart
A presence
As of the master sitting at the board
In his own and greater being,
In the house of life.

—D.H. Lawrence

What can come out of the dark? -part 2-

2007-10-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

John 20:11–12

...As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been...

Present only there

2007-10-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

John 20:13

"Dear woman, why are you crying?" the angels asked her.

Because my dad's gone, and I don't know where he is.

Because I saw him cry like that.

Because twice, I held him as he cried.

Because of the loneliness of the people where he lived.

Because he left me a long time ago, and I miss him.

Because our reconciliation came only when he was so out of it.

Because I never saw him dead, and I don't know whether he ever looked peaceful.

Because I saw a stranger feed him.

Because of his childlike moment of joy when the guitar man came.

Because I gave him so little such joy, but maybe somehow I could have?

Because no efforts to bring him relief or joy seemed to help.

Because to visit with God, I had to visit my dad.

Because while my dad was sick, Jesus seemed present only there.

Because Jesus's compassion, like my mother's, consisted of silent, patient presence.

Because we couldn't fix it.

What can come out of the dark?

2007-10-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

John 20:11–14

The disciples then went back home
but Mary stood outside the tomb weeping.
As she wept, she knelt to look into the tomb
and saw two angels sitting there....

They said to her, "Woman, why do you weep?"

"They took my Master," she said,
"and I don't know where they put him."

After she said this, she turned away and saw Jesus standing there
but she didn't recognize him.

I did a little bit of artwork related to this passage, which you can see by clicking here. A warm thanks to Designs in Light for the photography.

To be found

2007-09-16T15:42:00.000-07:00

Luke 15:8–9

Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won't she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, "Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin."

This Sunday's scripture is one I pondered a few years ago when my spiritual director assigned it as part of the first week of the Ignatian Exercises. I wrote this poem during that time and just revised it.

My fevered search for the lost shiny coin
that was God Who Made Sense:
Light the bright lamps of the mind!
Sweep the corners of reason!
Empty the pockets of theodicy!

What work!

At last work wears out
and I fall exhausted on the floor
and lie flat and deathly
and the silence makes room for a question:
Is the story about the woman's search—
not mine
but hers?
her fevered search for the lost shiny coin
that is me?
She calls for lamps,
She sweeps the corners,
She empties her pockets....

And what more can a coin do
(small, flat, and round
lost in dust under a bookshelf
or the kitchen stove)
but lie there
and hope like anything that the woman
driven by love
will never call off her search?

Darkness

2007-09-01T16:56:00.000-07:00

John 20:1

While it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.

Yesterday I painted some images while considering David Whyte's beautiful poem "Sweet Darkness." You are welcome to detour from wherever else you were headed and have a look at them.

Waves of sand

2007-08-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

Luke 13:10–17

When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, "Woman, you are set free from your infirmity." Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

I had a dream a few weeks ago that has already served me a few times as a touchstone. In the dream, a young man is in a desert, and waves of sand are sweeping over him as if they were water. He has to stay upright and pay attention so he won't be smothered.

What are my waves?

.... the thought of an overwhelming problem in the world or in the life of someone I love .... an impulsive idea that seems to need my immediate attention .... a tangled situation that I don't know how to solve .....

In her sermon yesterday, our vicar pointed out that the bent-over woman doesn't ask Jesus for healing. Jesus sees the woman and heals her, and now she's able to straighten up. So that's what she does.

And here I am, able to straighten up, after many episodes of Jesus' healing in my life over the years. I'm not helpless when the waves come, so before acting, I'm trying consider whether maybe the idea is not quite as urgent and brilliant as it seems; maybe the problem I'm obsessing about is not actually mine to solve.

It will pass. Let it go.

A maddeningly long wait

2007-08-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

Luke 12:32–40

It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.

Okay, so...
Servant = me
My master = Jesus
House = the world
House's owner = whatever's calling the shots around here

What does it look like to be ready? What helps me stay ready, even if it's a maddeningly long wait?

It helps me that Jesus predicts a maddeningly long wait. Thank you, Jesus, for being realistic. It's not a surprise to you, I guess, that this world is a dark room in which people seem to be stumbling all over each other. But someday the door will open, and light will break in from the outside. That's how I picture it, anyway.

Staying with Jesus

2007-08-05T18:05:00.000-07:00

John 19:38–42

[My paraphrase...] Two wealthy men who've been pretending not to be Jesus' disciples come forward to claim his dead body, prepare it for burial, and lay it in a tomb.

I've been working my way through the gospel of John, and for round about a year I've been mired in the crucifixion. Jesus' willingness to suffer astonishes and puzzles me something awful, because the implications are really frightening. Back in March or April I wrote the following question on the bookmark that I keep in my breviary:

Christ is not driven by a need to avoid suffering. What does life look like, knowing this?

What did going forward with life look like for these two men who had just watched Jesus willingly endure suffering?

For one thing, they stayed with him, tolerating the discomfort of a sight, sound, smell, and touch that just about everyone else wanted to get the hell away from.

I'm struck by the tenderness of the scene. It must have taken them hours. They probably washed blood and sweat off of Jesus' body. Was what they did women's work? It was intimate in the extreme. They stayed with Jesus.

My cupboard is bare

2007-07-29T14:02:00.000-07:00

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

Luke 11:1–13... Teach us to pray. Hmm.

...one of [Jesus'] disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray..." ...Then he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and she goes to that friend at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.'

"Then the one inside answers, 'Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.' I tell you, though he will not get up and give her the bread because she is his friend, yet because of the woman's boldness he will get up and give her as much as she needs."

I heard this, went home, and sat in my chair to reflect. Here's what hit me: This woman is not asking for something for herself. She's asking for food for a visiting friend, because her own cupboard is bare.

In my intercession for the people I love, my cupboard is bare—and Jesus is telling me what I can do about it. If I go to my creator God, who is far more powerful and compassionate (one assumes) than any of my neighbors, and ask for something on behalf of a stranded visitor who's in my house, God will not refuse me.

So....

In this particular passage, Jesus is talking about asking on behalf of others, not on behalf of ourselves, and
He's talking about asking for *food* ... necessities; sustenance, not luxuries, and
The one praying is literally the "intercessor" in that she herself will deliver the bread. (*sigh*)

The rest of my prayer time went something like this....

God, God! It's the middle of the night inside me, I am so tired inside, and I have no power to help these people I love. Help, help! They are tired too, and they need food, and only you have it. Please provide it. I can't save them! I can't heal them!

And if I must be the one to deliver what you give them, I will, if you show me how. I don't want to. But you know that.

(*sigh*)

Who takes care of me?

2007-07-15T17:18:00.000-07:00

Luke 10:25–37

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

That is, "Who must I love if I want to inherit eternal life?" And then Jesus hit him with the story of the good Samaritan:

A man is robbed and beaten. A man just like the lawyer asking the question, perhaps? Two upstanding citizens walk past without helping, but a Samaritan (read: outcast) bandages his wounds, gets him a room at a hotel, and leaves a credit card in case the man needs more help.

Jesus asks which of the three is a neighbor to the man who was robbed. The Samaritan, of course.

Neighbor = the one you must love if you want eternal life.

Neighbor = the amazingly generous outcast who isn't too busy to help the story's "me" (the man to whom Jesus is replying).

Therefore, the one you must love if you want eternal life = the amazingly generous outcast who isn't too busy to help you and others like you.

Jesus packs three massive concepts into one little story: Receive the love of the Samaritan, love as the Samaritan loves, and love the Samaritan. I'm humbled by the difficulty of doing any of these things.

In my right mind

2007-06-24T16:57:00.000-07:00

Luke 8:26–39
Jesus cast a squadron of demons out of a crazy guy. And then...

...they found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at Jesus' feet, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid.

At the 8 a.m. contemplative mass at St. Cuthbert's, a twenty-minute silence follows the reading of the gospel. I listened to the story about the lonely, unclothed, crazy man who had broken his own chains again and again, but still wasn't free, and how it was only Jesus who could clean up the nasty mess of his life.

And then I sat there for twenty minutes at Jesus' feet thinking and feeling this:

I am in my right mind. I haven't always been and might not always be, but for now, I am in my right mind. And I am grateful.

At 9 I headed off to visit a place and a group of people among whom I could possibly wonder if I really am in my right mind. But I went with a deep, unexpected, inexplicable peace, along with a willingness to forgive and even to see my own wrong-doing. Wow.