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.

Looking for someone else

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

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-

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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....

1. In this particular passage, Jesus is talking about asking on behalf of others, not on behalf of ourselves, and
2. He's talking about asking for *food* ... necessities; sustenance, not luxuries, and
   
3. 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?

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

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.