poetproph

A Quote for today about Wisdom and Spiritual Practice

2012-01-23T09:51:00.000-05:00

Starting to teach a one-week intensive course on "Contemplative Writing," I am doing what I can to keep to this practice myself. I do it anyway -- fill several pages of a journal every morning, whatever other writing I do, and for no other audience than myself and God. I am hoping that some of the readings I've selected for my students, out of many, many that I love, will help them into this practice, which over the years has helped me to get out of my own way, perhaps out of God's way, and open myself more and more deeply to the gifts of each day. Here's a quote from Barbara Brown Taylor that sets the mood for me, going into this week, and seems rich and full of wisdom to reflect on. In An Altar in the World, she writes

     In biblical terms, it is wisdom we need to live together in this world. Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails. Wise people do not have to be certain what they believe before they act. They are free to act, trusting that the practice itself will teach them what they need to know. If you are not sure what to think about washing feet, for instance, then the best way to find out is to practice washing a pair or two. If you are not sure what to believe about your neighbor's faith, then the best way to find out is to practice eating supper together. Reason can only work with the experience available to it. Wisdom atrophies if it is not walked on a regular basis.
     Such wisdom is far more than information. To gain it, you need more than a brain. You need a body that gets hungry, feel splain, thrills to pleasure, craves rest. This is your physical pass into the accumulated insight of all who have preceded you on this earth. To gain wisdom, you need flesh and blood, because wisdom involves bodies--and not just human bodies, but bird bodies, tree bodies, water bodies, and celestial odies. According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has its own angel bending over it, whispering, "Grow, grow."
       How does one learn to see and hear such angels?

(from An Altar in the World (HarperCollins 2009), p. 88

"Keeping Christmas": A Spiritual Practice

2011-12-28T18:53:00.002-05:00

“Iwill keep Christmas always, and strive to observe it all the year.” Thisis Ebenezer Scrooge’s promise tothe Ghost of Christmas Future, as we witness his conversion in CharlesDickens’s A Christmas Carol. Our family Christmas ritual includes both church services and our yearly viewing of “The Muppet ChristmasCarol,” a favorite from our children’s childhood,on Christmas Eve. (We also find time each Christmasseason to re-watch “Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol,” a favorite from their parents’generation). So Scrooge is on my mind. You could say this is a cultural rather than a specificallyreligious or theological practice but for me it is bound up with all that iswonderful, mysterious, full of a hidden and ever-growing joy in each year’scelebration of the Mystery of the Incarnation.

“Keeping Christmas,” I’m coming tosee, is less about belief than about practice. It is in fact a "spiritual practice": something we do as a way of becoming more available tothe mysterious dimension of life, the dimension where love and hope andcompassion are active and transforming, and at work in the world.

The idea of the limitless mystery of Lovebecoming a human being and living our lives with us is at the heart ofChristian meditations in this season -- indeed, always. But it is too big to explain or reallygrasp in any way : the story ofthe baby in the manger, the shepherds hearing the overflowing song of the angels,the foreign wise men drawn to the birth of this Child -- these parts of thestory make it more friendly and familiar. And I think that is also what my Christmas practices do for me: trimming the tree, shopping for gifts,baking cookies, inviting people in for parties, caroling. All these are part of “keepingChristmas” in our family, and theprocess of making them happen continues to be formative for me. As we pull out the ornaments each yearand put them on the tree, we remember, as a family, the stories behind them --the ornaments bought on vacations, given as gifts from grandmothers, theornaments that hung on my tree when I was growing up. And I reflect on the blessings of the years.

Wehear a lot in the Christmas season about the way it has all been taken over bycommercialism, or about all the stress that preparations cause those who feelresponsible for doing everything perfectly. Or the pressure to spend money we don’t have. Or of how hard it is -- and it is -- ina time of grieving or loss. And none of this is untrue. I myself faced a scary health crisis one year around Christmas time, and since then every Christmas has become a celebration of what we DO have, whatever it is. The “things” and the people become incarnational symbols, in theirway, if we let them.

The practice of Gift-giving, for example, can easily become about the stuff, and about getting what we want. It is a real spiritual challenge not tobe overwhelmed by this. Butgift-giving is redeemed for me when I think of it as a practice of abundance. I usually try to do most of theshopping, strategizing and wrapping early in December, so that when we get toChristmas Eve it seems as if someone else might have brought all those presents-- and whether or not we spend a lot of money on the gifts, I like to see a lotof packages under the tree, thoughtful, sometimes homemade gifts - small things and big things, depending on what we are able to give. But it's the "gift" part that is best for me. SometimesI think my favorite moment on Christmas Day is in the early morning, beforeeveryone gets up, seeing an abundance of gifts under the lighted tree -- whynot receive this as a symbol of the overflowing Love whose mysterious coming we arecelebrating at this season?

Itis also a season to remember those in need, and our giving includesdonations to charities we care about. We find to our great delight that some of our friends, and even our children, are making suchdonations in our names these days and that is good. Toys for the toy closet, food for the shelter. These are also part of the practice of “Keeping Christmas” - practices to sustain "all the year long."

Thenthere is hospitality. “And leteach heart prepare a home/where such a mighty guest may come,” goes a line froma favorite Advent hymn. Or “make your house fair as you are able, trim thehearth and set the table. .. . . Love the Guest is on the Way.” It really is a joy to push thefurniture against the walls and “stage” our modest suburban house for a bigworkplace Christmas potluck, with kids and families and caroling. Seeing the house full of people,eating, visiting and even singing, is one of the great joys of the season forme, even though it IS a lot of work to prepare and clean up. I do what I can to keep it simple, and thewhole process becomes spiritual practice for me.

Andyes. Singing, definitely a spiritual practice for me as more or less a lifetimechoir member. What I like aboutChristmas caroling is that people can appreciate the spirit of it whether ornot they “agree with the words.” Or at least I hope this is true for manypeople. I myself just loveChristmas carols -- know all the words, and find that singing carols at aChristmas party is a wonderful way to quietly bring together the sense ofpraise and wonder that I carry through the season, with the goodwill and funthat comes with singing together - whether it’s “O Come all Ye Faithful,” or“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” or “Deck the Halls”. It’s about practice, not about belief. The singing, not the words. But somehow the mystery and the wonderand the mutual welcome that are at the heart of the season do creep into thesepractice, and if we let them, they can change us, at least for a time.

Likeany spiritual practice, “Keeping Christmas” only works if it is freely chosen. If someone tells you how you have to do it it becomes a performance, not a practice. The usual spiritual traps arise, especially for parents and hosts: perfectionism, the need to do itbetter than other people, the preoccupation with what’s in it for me -- all these motives can get in the wayand make the practice a chore and not a source of openness and joy. But I have to say this year has been agood one for me, and when it is freely entered, the practice of KeepingChristmas can open up other ways of “finding God in all things,” which is whatthe spiritual life is about anyway. It’s what the Mystery of the Incarnation is about, too - not aspirituality that goes apart from the world of stuff and busy-ness, but onethat comes right into the midst of it all to make us fully alive.

Andso, as Tiny Tim would say, “God bless us, every one.”

Bible Reading Episcopalians - Who Knew?

2011-12-07T15:53:00.001-05:00

Also on Episcopal Cafe

“Who knew that Episcopalians read the Bible”? Twice in the last month, someone has said exactly these words to me, in contexts that now have me wondering. Both conversation partners were people who have been excited to find that you can read the Bible faithfully without taking it literally (indeed, a new book by Christian Smith that I’ve just started reading has suggested that “Biblicism” as we know it in American Protestant tradition actually undermines the enterprise of Evangelism -- but that’s for another post). One was a young adult raised in a progressive, pluralistic household, who is curious about the Bible, and has become more interested in reading Scripture because conversations with an online Episcopalian friend. The other was a priest raised in a deeply conservative Evangelical tradition, who told me he was drawn to the Episcopal Church partly through a “Disciples of Christ in Community” (DOCC) class. “I was raised to think that Episcopalians knew nothing about the Bible, he said, and here were people animatedly engaged in learning about Scripture: Who knew that Episcopalians were readers of the Bible?”
I wonder now whether some of the efforts in the 1980’s and 90’s to promote Bible Study among the laity -- the development of DOCC and EFM, the teachings of people like Verna Dozier and the adult Bible studies she designed -- are actually beginning to “take” among a critical mass of Episcopalians. Certainly it is true to our tradition to take Scripture seriously -- part of the “three-legged stool” of Scripture, Reason and Tradition, but taking a place of priority in many ways. At the consecration of Bishop Mariann Budde I noticed again that one of the things every ordained person must say publicly (in addition to accepting the “doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this church has received them”) is “I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary for salvation” (BCP, 538). And the next morning, in church, we offered this collect -- which comes around every year just at the end of the long season of Pentecost:

Blessed Lord, who caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. (Proper 28, BCP p. 236)

“For our learning,” Verna Dozier emphasized: We read Scripture, the record of how men and women experienced the work of God, as our way of learning who God is calling us to be, in our time and place and lives. And each generation is invited to this practice of reading, marking learning, taking in Scripture. When I read recent books by former evangelicals promoting “new ways of reading Scripture” I find that I recognize the way that I have been taught to read Scripture, first in a fairly liberal Presbyterian church in the 1960’s, but then beginning in the 70’s, in Bible studies and conversations with fellow Episcopalians. In our effort to distinguish ourselves from literalist and fundamentalist approaches to Scripture and doctrine, we may well have ceded too much ground in the public conversation about and use of Scripture to guide and inform our account of ourselves. “Who knew?” What would it be like, if people knew Episcopalians as people who were faithful, creative, thoughtful and open-hearted readers of the Bible, and who do regard it as the Word of God for us, in each succeeding generation, using all the resources of reason and tradition to “hear read, mark learn and inwardly digest” what the Scriptures contain?

Gratefulness - on Thanksgiving Day

2011-11-24T11:13:00.001-05:00

Everyone is home, and I am full of gratitude.
My children, in their twenties, -- arrived yesterday, safely, flying in from long distances, but without undue traffic or airport delays. I am so grateful for this . They are home rarely and it always seems like a moment of miracle when they come in the door, as they did together, yesterday evening. This year I added a ridiculously "Norman-Rockwellish" touch to their arrival by making the apple pie while I waited for them to navigate the Dulles Toll Road and get home. It was in the oven when they arrived and they responded immediately to the "smell of food" as they came in the door, warming my own heart. And that evening all four of us gathered around the dining room table for dinner-- as we only do now when they are home -- for a meal I had prepared and good conversation -- And I was so grateful for this chance to enjoy firsthand who they are growing up to be.

Last night after dinner, the "kids" dispersed to their rooms to do their own thing, my husband sat down to play Brahms and Chopin on the piano, as he does most evenings, and I stood at the kitchen window, listening, washing more dishes than I am used to washing -- one of the things I notice when everyone is home-- and just feeling overwhelmingly glad, that gladness washing over me as the water washed over the plates in the sink. I am so grateful that once again, another year, everyone is home, and whole, and here, for a time.

We have a lull this morning, again just hanging out, all adults together under the same roof. This is something I always hoped for when they were growing up, that we could be comfortable and at home together, at least sometimes, once they became adults. That was a blessing I had from my own family and I have hoped for it for us. And here we are. I don't have to cook today. Later we will go to a friend's house for Thanksgiving dinner with long-time friends. My contributions are pumpkin and apple pies, which I enjoyed preparing, these last few days, in anticipation of the feast. Nice to have them all ready to go -- all we'll need to do is get dressed and drive to the feast this year. (My turn will come at Christmas).

Gratefuless, says Brother David Steindl-Rast, is the heart of prayer. I am full of gratitude today.

My "Adventures in New Testament Greek" John 3:16

2011-11-09T08:35:00.000-05:00

Scott Cairns, one of my favorite poets, has a series of poems he calls "Adventures in New Testament Greek." (you can read an example here). The Young Adults Bible study group I lead is reading the gospel of John this year, and I have been having my own adventures in New Testament Greek as I prepare for our meetings and reread this so-very-rich gospel. On my new ipad I have access now to the Greek text and a Greek-English study dictionary- and just enough New Testament Greek to be able to follow up on my literary instincts when I wonder "what was that word in the original." (I've basically had a semester of seminary level NT Greek -- a few years back -- see my post about that here).

There are a lot of important "key" words in the gospel of John -- including many that have become almost jargon for readers of the Bible and church people -- light and darkness, believing, being born again, seeing the light or not. Staying with some of these words (and I may come back to this in future blog posts -stay tuned) has helped me as I reread this gospel deeply and prayerfully, letting it "speak" to me imaginatively, and paying attention to the words. All of this is opening new doors for me.

A good example is the word "believe" --which has become kind of a slogan in fundamentalist circles   "John 3:16" gets held up on signs at football games as a kind of inside code or rallying cry for evangelicals and it IS, arguably, the heart of the gospel. But what does it mean.    "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life." That "whosoever believeth" has too often been an entry into the perilous territory of "well, what happens to those who don't believe, or what happen to me if I stop believing -- and does that mean if I don't agree with you I'm going to hell. And how can anyone believe any of this" and . . . well, you know. It's a rabbit hole.

But looking at the words more closely gets us to a very different, freer, understanding -- supporting what Sam Lloyd, former dean of Washington National Cathedral, has called "a generous and open-hearted Christian faith." Here's how this passage speaks to me, paying attention to the words. To me the heart of this is the love part -- God loved the world the Greek verb there, "agapein" is about the kind of love that knits together families and communities (not so much a sacrificial, costly love that creates an obligation for us, though that's in the mix -- but "agape" is about passionate, faithful relationship, a love that reaches out and awakens our willing response and knits us together, creating community and mutuality). So this is a God who wants to connect with us -- to be in relationship with the world - and Jesus, the "Son," -- especially in this gospel -- is all about that relationship.   He keeps inviting people to "come and see" for themselves. (See for example John 1:39 - more on this perhaps in a later post).

The word "believe," as in the King James "whosoever believeth," has tripped us up in fights about who is a "Bible believing Christian" and who isn't. But if you look at the way the word is used throughout John it really seems to a disposition of the heart quite different from "belief" in a set of propositions. The Greek verb "pisteuo", translated "I believe" really means something closer to "I have faith in", "I trust" -- related to the adjective "pistis" meaning faithful, loyal. It's about a human relationship, not about assent to propositions.

So when I say I "believe" in the gospel, it's not about insisting that this or that event actually happened, historically, exactly and verifiably as described, or even about fussing over what Jesus did or did not "actually say." (Actually John 3:16 is one of the passages where scholars disagree about whether these are meant to be the words of Jesus or an commentary by the evangelist -- but either way, they invite us into the good news if we want to pay attention). Rather, it's about setting my heart to the truth that the stories point to. When I come to something I stumble over on the literal level, rather than dispute about what's factual, I try to pay attention to what's true. I ask "what is this saying to me?" what else is here? why were we given this passage, this story? This is a way of reading Scripture that takes the Bible very seriously, without taking it literally. Indeed, to take the gospel of John literally, i.e., according to the "letter" of the King James version, as many fundamentalist traditions have done, is to miss a lot of the wisdom in this gospel. In John, Jesus is all about inviting people to "come and see" for themselves -- to be in relationship with him, to walk alongside him, really, to imagine God as a human being who desires to be in a good and right relationship with us.   So I like better the versions that translate "to believe" so that it's "come to believe" or "come to have faith in" or even "come to know". It's about experiencing a God who is engaged with our humanity and desires our transformation. Reading the text of John with that in mind opens a lot of new doors.

Every translation of course is an interpretation, but here's my translation/interpretation/testimony about John 3:16, with my very elementary Greek and my experience of this gospel fully in play.   "The God of Scripture is a God who is so passionately engaged with the world, who so loves us, God's chidlren and creatures, that God became one of us, fully sharing our whole human experience warts and all, so that in the process of coming to know Him, we might know what fullness of life really is, beginning now." The more I read and reread this gospel, the more I come to see that it's about growing into relationship with God, in and through this life, and about an eternal life that is not in some far away place, but beginning here and now.   And the more I read the more my own faith is deepened -- and this is what "coming to believe" is all about.

The lens I'm bringing here is consistent with contemporary thinkers who say that Jesus is a "Wisdom teacher" -- (see for example Cynthia Bourgeault's The Wisdom Jesus) -- that is, his teaching invites a response of the heart and a transformation of life, more than an assent to propositions.   The more I "get" this, the more excited I become about what I am learning, re-reading this gospel.

November 1

2011-11-01T22:49:00.000-05:00

November 1 - just getting around to writing and the day is almost over. It has been lovely, increasingly muted fall weather today. And it is a day I associate with a "turning" in the year. In Celtic tradition, this day is Samhain, the beginning of the new year, celebrated as the harvest is complete, as the days begin to shorten visibly. And indeed today, busy with office work most of the day, I barely got a walk in before nightfall, though it was quite lovely -- Rock Creek Park and the Georgetown Branch trail at twilight. At this time of year, when the dark comes, it seems darker. It is why the spookiness of "Halloween" feels right at this time of year. Halloween is, of course, All Hallows Eve, and November 1 is All Saints Day - a festival that I've always particularly enjoyed since I've been an Episcopalian and so part of a liturgical church. We won't celebrate the day until Sunday at my parish - but I've been aware today, and praying for the faithful departed in my life as I've thought of them, with gratitude. The influence and memory of those who have gone before me, and whose example has guided me spiritually, is very much on my mind this time of year. It also happens, oddly, that November 1 was the birthday of David Jones, the poet and artist whose work and ideas have been so thoroughly formative for me). A number of family members in my family and family of friends have just died in the past couple of weeks, and so that border between the worlds does seem thinner today, as we enter a time of year when the world feels like a "thin place," the trees growing barer, the leaves, thinning out, still lovely orange and red-gold, and the sky often so dramatic late in the day.

I'm thinking about my friend Esther de Waal's reflections on the Celtic cycle of celebrations -- November 1 for Samhain, Feb 1, St. Bridget's Day, May 1, May Day, and August 1, another Celtic harvest time-- and how they bring us into what she calls the "border country" of our lives, inviting us to be in tune with the rhythms of nature rather than the artificial rhythms of our "plugged in" lives. (I think her reflections on this are in her little book called To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border .I've been very aware, today, of what T.S. Eliot calls "time not our time" -- that passage of the seasons of nature and the church year (it will be Advent less than a month from now, I know), the holiday season (my children will be home for Thanksgiving in November, and beyond that Christmas and the other New Year.. . .) And so the year is turning, and I with it. I welcome the darkness, which is another country in its way, the thinning trees and opening sky, the mystery of the passage of the time and the borderlands where we glimpse other dimensions of life, beyond the busy-ness and occupation of our daily routine.

2011-11-01T22:46:00.000-05:00

Rummage Sale Spirituality

2011-10-27T19:18:00.002-05:00

(also on episcopal cafe)

I’ve never been a big fan of church fundraisers, but for various reasons I’ve spent the past few months helping organize a rummage sale at church. To my surprise, the process has been something of a spiritual practice for me and I think for others involved: A spiritual practice, i.e. something we do that helps us to be more open to the Holy Spirit at work in our common life, and to become more and more available to God.
Like many congregations, we had some history to challenge us in this area: for years, the women’s group of the founding congregation had run a monthly “opportunity shop” -- it dwindled in the late 1990’s when it became clear that there was not a sufficient critical mass of women in the new generation who could devote the huge amounts of during-the-day time required for the monthly sorting and pricing. If that was the only way to do a rummage sale, then the times for such events has simply passed. But after many years’ hiatus, some newer members had become established members, and wondered why we couldn’t have a rummage sale? Their experience of rummage sales came out of church experience in West Africa. A few of the “op shop” women were still willing to pass on some of their wisdom and to give generously of time-- a lot of daytime hours -- for this one event. So the challenge was to pass on the wisdom and still share ownership of new ways of doing this. It could not “belong” to just one small group, or it would be too much work. So we made it about participation: open to anyone: People could participate by coming to sort and price for an hour or two or by working on a Monday holiday, or by coming in the evening the night before the sale. There were still people who worked longer hours than others, but it was like the parable of the laborers in the vineyard: everyone who participated contributed something, and the rewards were the same for all. Meanwhile, energy grew around the emerging “rummage sale committee” and many of the women of the church -- now representing the many cultural backgrounds in our congregation -- began to offer time, cooking, ideas. Planning meetings started to happen - boisterous and disorganized by my own standards, but ultimately kind of fun.
Now, none of what we were doing looked particularly spiritual: the process involved organizational meetings, dickering over who was supposed to do publicity and how it should be done; navigating potential “turf wars,” and in our multicultural congregation, making sure we were really “hearing” each other, addressing perceived slights before they escalated, giving everyone a voice. We did pretty well -- not perfectly-- at this. There was tension sometimes, and there was also some hilarity: (I never knew how much the phrase “white elephant” belonged to my northern “yankee” tradition -- my Southern US and west African sisters were mystified by the term until I was able to show them how it applied to some of the more outrageous pieces of household junk we received!) Everyone will have feedback about what didn’t work, and I’ll chalk those up to “lessons learned” for another time. But my sense is that at the end of the event we all felt we had done something good together, and for the church. To quote some wise words of our friend the Rev. Rondesia Jarrett, “Everybody got fed. No one got hurt.” Not a bad mantra for any family event.

The other thing a rummage sale offers is what I’d call the “ministry of stuff.” Knowing it was happening allowed me to finally bite the bullet and clean out my closets and it has been great to lighten the load of stuff in my household. (the books, alas, will have to await another year). Some of what we sold included the possessions of people who had died-- a chance for widows and widowers to let go of those things and give them to the church. We spent hours and hours sorting through people’s stuff, a ministry in itself -- and deciding how to price and organize and present and publicize. There was potential controversy in all of these steps- - and it took a lot of good will for newcomers and old timers to work it out together. But we did. The process of pricing and sorting creates its own little women’s culture, where the things create stories: “Oh, that’s a dress I made of silk I bought in Japan in the 1970’s.” “Now there’s a clever gadget: I never thought of that before. . . “ etc. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re buying these plates: I really used to enjoy them when I did more entertaining!”
The day of the sale, people from the neighborhood came by, as well as people from all over the county who had seen our ad. A young adult woman from the neighborhood recalled Girl Scout meetings and community events from her childhood that happened in our building and shared a sense of “coming home.” Others remembered the “op shop” at our church building years before, and wondered if we were bringing it back. Meanwhile, Spanish-speaking members of the congregation came to shop and help interpret if necessary -- and reminded us that another year we should do a lot more advertising in Spanish because that’s who lives around here. All of this reminded us of where we are located in this community. I was glad of what some people saw when they came: - a multi-racial, cross-cultural community, working together and getting along. I hope there was a gospel word in just the way we were together.
When it was all over, the clothes went to a local clothes closet for the homeless, and the leftovers from the bake sale will go into lunch bags for the community shelter week: further reminders of how we are connected to our local community.
We made some money, too - a little over $1500 after expenses. I was glad of that and already reflecting on how to do better next time. But for me the experience was about working together in community. The fact that it was “for the church” was the bond: And in much of what we were doing here, we were learning how to be together, trying to be, truly the “church of Our Saviour” -- which is also the name of our parish. We may do better next time. But this time through, we worked together to make something good happen in our neighborhood, and we did it well. And I for one learned something about the nitty-gritty of loving one another, navigating interpersonal, intercultural challenges because deep down what draws us all here is the desire to be a part of a common life. Perhaps this will shape us. Perhaps our neighbors saw it, too. That is my hope and my prayer.

2011-10-05T08:21:00.004-05:00

We've started up a new season with the ecumenical Young Adult group I've been leading in Northern Virginia -- my second full year with them now. (More info about this group, which we call "Pathfinders," is available on our new blog ). Our study this year focuses on the gospel of John, and so a couple of days ago I sat down and read the whole gospel through, from beginning to end -- i.e. from "In the beginning was the Word" to "But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." It is a wonderful work of literature, full of layers of story and symbol, and reading it this way, suspending critical thought, without stopping to look at too many footnotes, but just paying attention to the figure of Jesus and who he seems to be, was for me a profoundly prayerful experience. Since the gospel starts out with the radical claim that Jesus is "the word made flesh," who "came to dwell among us" (John 1:14), the whole book can become a meditation on what in the world that can mean. Every human interaction in the story has a double meaning: it is both a human interaction and a clue about what God is like, and an invitation to relationship. This is the gospel where we learn about a God who wants us to love one another, who desires to be in relationship with us, who shows us the way to do that, as disciples in community. And we learn about this through the way Jesus relates to people and what he says about himself.
There are also some things in this gospel that can derail us if we don't have a little background/historical knowledge (notably the apparent anti-semitism, where the persecutors of Jesus are called "the Jews" -- this comes out of the historical situation -- the community this gospel was written for had just been kicked out of the temple for insisting that Jesus was divine, and the Messiah, the "word made flesh." So there's definitely some sectarian conflict there and the people who kicked them out of the temple are called "the Jews" even though Jesus and his followers were themselves Jewish and the book is permeated with quotations and allusions about Hebrew Scripture). So, some background is needed. Aiding this effort, for me, is a fascinating study of the gospel of John by Sandra Schneiders, a distinguished New Testament scholar who proposes a reading of this gospel that is both spiritually oriented and grounded in scholarship. I am loving it and finding it helpful -- and energizing to grapple with the gospel's presentation of a Jesus who is at once divine and human, very vividly, in the story. Anyway - I do commend the practice (also recommended by Sondra Schneiders) of reading the whole gospel through, beginning to end. It helped me see many things I hadn't noticed before, even in this very familiar text!
I'll be posting on the young adults/pathfinders website over the course of the year my thoughts about our discussion of this fascinating gospel, and some of the thoughts and questions that come out of our discussion. Please feel free to check out that page for more!

Upcoming Conference I recommend

2011-10-03T10:30:00.000-05:00

The Grand Canyon

2011-09-28T09:53:00.009-05:00

Two weeks ago I visited the Grand Canyon for the first time in my life, with the whole family. We took hundreds of photos and loved the whole experience. But I'm still trying to write about the experience of being there. Here's a start, expanded from my journal on September 16, 2011.

“Lofty mountain grandeur,” the old hymn sings . And my soul sings these words, or something beyond them, in this place. Standing and gazing on nature’s morning painting, we watch clouds and light change moment to moment, mountain to mountain., shifting the hues of standstone-red, juniper green, grey-white granite, deep gray schist, black basalt, all shaped and stacked with symmetry, as if by human hands, but really, by eons of natural force. No human hands. All of this was here long before there were human beings to breathe this air, to see and name this beauty. Yet we are here now, for this brief time, seeing, receiving, trying to name. I stand here, speechless, wordless, with my husband, my grown children - rooted in the love that holds us in this life, smelling juniper and sagebrush, waiting as the morning clouds, socked in below across the canyon, lift their veil and let us see what we are here to see -- depth and height, color in rock and stone, deep cliff and canyon wall. Extending vast, below us, farther than we can see. Between deep cliffs, we glimpse the Colorado, the river that has carved all this through eons and milenia, winding far, far below us. All unnameable and real and here, shaped out of earth, the earth beneath our feet, opening out. I am here, with those I love most in the world, here on the edge of the canyon, as the clouds lift into early morning sun, and the view expands. No words.

A 9/11 recollection

2011-09-08T10:56:00.008-05:00

The newly reported vulnerability of the Washington National Cathedral, in the aftermath of earthquake, hurricane and now a falling crane, has deepened for me my memories of the importance of that place for me in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. I don't usually do this but am reposting here an article I published 5 years ago in the issue of Weavings that focused on the theme of "security" in our spiritual lives

“Like a Child at Home”:

Seeking Safety in Post-9/11 Washington DC

(originally published in Weavings journal, Fall 2006)

Kathleen Henderson Staudt

On September 14, 2001, three days after the terrorist attacks, a National Prayer Service was held at Washington National Cathedral. I was present at the service because my daughter was in the choir. Even the youngest choristers, boys and girls, had welcomed the invitation to sing as “something they could do” for the country in this time of crisis. We parents were proud of them, but we were also afraid.

We felt close to the tragedy, that Friday after the attacks, and vulnerable as we watched our children being escorted to the choir room, under tight security. Usually a familiar “home” for our families, the Cathedral had become a fortress. Security guards were everywhere. There were bomb-sniffing dogs. We knew President Bush would be in attendance, and the Vice President hidden away somewhere for safety. The Vice President was safe in “an undisclosed location,” but our children would be in the same building with the President, the vulnerable target.

Chorister parents knew that if our children were going to be there, we had to be there, too. One mother requested, and the White House promptly agreed, that there should be one ticket per family for the service, so each child could have a parent there. We knew it was irrational: if disaster struck it was unlikely we would be much help, but we needed to be in the building. Our children seemed fearless, eager to sing. It was not their fear that drove us; it was our own.

Parents sat together in a block of seats in the north transept of the Cathedral. All kinds of famous people, former presidents, political and military leaders walked by us, but we were focused on the area behind the grille work where the choristers were gathering.

“There they are!” one of the mothers whispered as the children appeared, lining up before their first anthem.

“They’re the only children here!” another parent exclaimed.

It seemed the place was filled with military uniforms. I noted eerie parallels between the choristers’ procession into the nave, as they turned the corner in synchronized steps, and the disciplined marching of soldiers. They had a clear symbolic role to play in this service. They stood for the children of the nation, singing of hope and assurance in a time of vulnerability. But one of them was my child. .

Many heard the cathedral choristers’ anthems at that service as a voice of hope and encouragement amid the disorientation that followed the attacks. For me, their music stood against a palpable energy toward vengeance and war that grew as the service progressed. The President had requested a setting of the twenty-third psalm, and the version chosen was Isaac Watts’s paraphrase, “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need,” sung to a traditional folk melody. The unison singing of this hymn, by those clear treble voices, stays in my memory. The end of the final verse, in particular, reassured me on that day:

The sure provisions of my God attend me all my days

O may thy house be my abode, and all my work be praise

There would I find a settled rest, while others go and come

No more a stranger or a guest. But like a child at home.

These words carried an image of the security we all sought, a security we feared would elude us forever in the months that followed September 11,2001. We longed for the deep safety of dwelling where we live, in our own communities and in God’s presence. In Washington, we lived through heightened alerts and anthrax scares. In the charged atmosphere of the following year, we were losing that sense of safety and security.

Many local parents told stories of the urgency we felt about gathering our children home just after the attacks on September 11. But there was no guarantee that home was any safer than anywhere else. It had become a real possibility that we could be attacked right where we lived. There was no safety. School had been cancelled for my children that week, and I cancelled classes and appointments and stayed home with them in our suburban Maryland neighborhood. I needed to be a “mother hen,” gathering and sheltering those I loved, even if the gesture was futile. My spiritual director, acknowledging a cancelled appointment, affirmed my motives: “I’m glad you’re being a ‘mother hen,’ she said. Jesus was also a mother hen.”

She was thinking, of course, of the passage in the gospels where Jesus laments over Jerusalem and the people’s failure to hear his message:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. (Matthew 23: 37 NRSV)

In those first days after the attacks, biblical images of desolation became real. Recalling Jesus’ words, it was consoling for me to reflect that the urge to gather my children, to make a home in a place of desolation, reflected a desire that lies close to the heart of God. I began to listen for words and watch for images that would help me to embrace that part of the divine personality which longs to draw us together, under the shadow of protecting wings.

That September began an academic year in which I became aware of my own increasingly frustrated desire for an actual place that would be a spiritual “home.” My professional life scatters me around the Washington beltway. I am adjunct faculty at three different institutions in the area. We adjunct faculty members are sometimes referred to as “beltway scholars,” (I like to call myself an “itinerant scholar/teacher”) because we are on the road so much. The deep and continuing urgency I felt about gathering my family home after September 11 had reminded me how widely dispersed my places of work, worship, home and ministry are. I felt more fragmented, that fall and winter, than I had before. Several days a week my drive took me past the blackened wall of the Pentagon, where repairs were going forward after the attacks. Students in my Virginia seminary class on Contemplative Writing struggled to write their way through the aftermath of the attacks, and our discussions were haunted by these events. Across town in College Park, Maryland, my college students were reeling not only from September 11 but also from a tornado that struck the campus two weeks later, killing two undergraduates. I myself felt spiritually homeless -- scattered around among my beltway destinations, and even among worshipping communities: at seminary chapel services one day, at Evensong at the Cathedral another, juggling between Sunday mornings at my home congregation in Maryland and Sunday mornings at the Cathedral on days when the girl choristers sang. Called to create places of safety for others, I found myself hollow and home-less inside. I sang wistfully, longingly, as I drove through town and around the beltway, the hymn the children had sung: where would I find “a settled rest, while others go and come?” I was always going and coming. Always visiting, adjunct, on the edges. Never entirely “at home.”

Whenever my adult life has brought a traumatic event or turning point, the Lent and Holy Week following that event have been times to enter more deeply into the mercy of God, bringing with me whatever I have experienced of loss or brokenness. The Ash Wednesday following September 11, 2001 began such a time for me, and left me with a new and lasting way of understanding where we find our rest, and what it means to be “at home” with God.

Not having a place of my own at the seminary where I was teaching, I asked to use a guest room for the day on Ash Wednesday, when the community traditionally shares in a silent retreat. I brought with me a small copy of Rublev’s famous icon of the Holy Trinity, hoping this small object from the prayer-space that I use at home might help me to create a space that felt like my own during the quiet of the retreat day. I set it on a purple cloth and lit a candle. In the time we were given for quiet, I spent some time resting and gazing.

Volumes have been written on the possible significance and interpretations of this famous icon, but I have never made a formal study of it. Rather, in keeping with the tradition of praying with icons, I spend some of my prayer-times simply gazing on the images, allowing them to be for me a “window” into the divine life, to offer clues to what God is like, and to open a connection. The icon depicts three angels, seated around a table whose shape also evokes an altar, or a tombstone. In the distance behind them is a tree—an oak tree, perhaps—and a house. The angels are resting, barefoot, around the table. There is a chalice in their midst. They carry staffs, as if they were travelers pausing to rest at this table. They evoke the three angels who visited Abraham, by the oaks of Mamre, to tell him that Sarah would bear him a child (Genesis 18). But the icon is called “Holy Trinity,” suggesting that the three figures together also reveal something about the Triune God. Looking deeply at them, noticing the way their heads incline toward one another, the ease and sense of relationship that comes out of their composition around the table, I am invited to see the mystery of a God who is known in relationship, and of the divine life as one of sharing and friendship, around a holy table. The wings of the angels form a kind of screen around the three figures. They offer assurance, safety, and a sense of being shielded and protected from whatever may lie outside of this holy gathering. They reminded me, that day, of the wings of the “mother hen” that I so cherished in Jesus’ analogy.

At the front of the altar-table in the icon, opening out toward the viewer, is an empty place at the table, and I understand, contemplating the icon, that I am invited to come and sit at this holy table. It is a place of rest and confidence, of safety and of a mysterious, powerful love that weaves between the figures at the table and draws me into itself, so that at prayer I am a part of the divine gathering that this iconic table represents. It is a beautiful invitation and I am aware of stillness, silence, and a lively and loving companionship, beyond words.

And because I am a word-person, a music-person, I remembered the words and music of Virgil Thompson’s hymn, and recalled those treble voices that had been icons of the divine presence and comfort, for me and for the nation, at the September prayer service,

There would I find a settled rest, while others go and come

No more a stranger, or a guest. But like a child at home. (text by Isaac Watts, Hymnal #662)

In that guest room, at a workplace where I “go and come,” in a community just a few miles from the Pentagon and still traumatized by the September attacks, I found in my time of contemplation a way of entering a more lasting and solid place of prayer, a place of security not tied to any outward location. I heard the divine invitation that is always offered to us: the invitation to be at home at the heart of the divine life.

As I reflect now on September 11, 2001, and the season that followed it in Washington, I hear the divine invitation in images from that time – all of them reflecting our deep spiritual yearning for “home.” There is the Cathedral, with its mission to be “a house of prayer for all people,” where we are always living in the tension between Holy Place and national monument. There is my family, gathered around the table evenings, reminding me of the place of gathering that is the table in Rublev’s icon. I serve at the head of this table, trying in my small way to live out the Divine Image of mother hen, both desiring and providing places of gathering and safety for those I love and care for. And when I come to resting places – in borrowed spaces at churches, at the seminary, in my own prayer corner at home - I gaze on Rublev’s icon, gradually becoming more aware of who God yearns to be for us in times of great turmoil. Together at the table, surrounded by angel wings, the figures on the icon remind me to return and experience the place within our hearts where we meet the One who gathers us in, the place where we are truly at home:

There would I find a settled rest, while others go and come.

No more a stranger, or a guest. But like a child at home.

“Just Pay Attention”: the Practice of Writing in Place

2011-09-08T09:53:00.007-05:00

I'm going to try to write a little more often on this blog in the next few months (will try for weekly posts) - right now I want to do some reflecting on the connections, for me, between writing and the practice of prayer.

I just recently led a 2-day workshop on “Prayer, Poetry and Spiritual practice” at the Northeast Guild for Spiritual Formation in Seal Cove, Maine. While there I enjoyed the wonderful hospitality of the Alcyon Center retreat house. It was wonderful - people were so very receptive and deeply prayerful. And I loved sharing what I have learned over the years about the connections between prayer and what Annie Dillard has called the "writing life."

A kind of “core text” for a lot of us who teach about poetry and spirituality has become Mary Oliver’s poem “Praying,” included in her 2006 volume Thirst and now used widely, I've noticed in workshops where people are exploring means to pray, and how poetry might help with this. It’s a good place to start as I reflect on the role of poetry and contemplative in my own spiritual practice, both as a poet and as a spiritual guide and companion. Oliver’s poem begins

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together, , , , , ,

Here are two things that are important both in the life of prayer and in the writing life. It doesn't matter so much what we choose to write or pray about: often it's a matter of letting the world give itself to us: “Just//pay attention”: that’s the hardest part. To slow down long enough to let what is happening around us claim and deepen our attention. To “wake up” to life, as the Sufi poets invite us to do. And then to “patch/ a few words together,” not for self-promotion, but as a prayerful response to what we are noticing.

Mary Oliver’s practice of paying attention is tied closely to her daily walks, and a reader of her poetry knows this, as she observes the birds, the flowers, the beach, the pond around her home in Provincetown, MA (and now as she writes from a new place in Florida). A longtime reader of her poetry, I now feel as if I’ve been to the places that recur in her work - the pine woods, Blackwater Pond, the meadows and vacant lots where wildflower grow. For me, for the past five or six summers, as long as the weather is warm enough, my daily practice has been to start the day on my patio, and gradually I’m discovering deeper ways to be “at home” in this place where I have lived for over 23 years. The birds, the many colors of green that there are in the world, the sounds of birdsong and beltway, the breeze, the colors of the flowers in the patio pots. All of these things have more and more drawn and deepend my attention, leading me to a very deep gratitude. And gradually, as I’ve patched words together, a body of work is emerging - so that at other times of the day I’m writing and crafting a collection that I call my “Patio Poems.”

The practice is simply to “pay attention, then patch/ a few words together” in a contemplative journal entry, or sometimes in a poem, where the white spaces on the page, and the shimmering of the words tell me something more about what I am seeing and experiencing. This kind of writing becomes for me a way of entering into dialogue with the place I am in.

Paying attention and patching words together. This can indeed become a spiritual practice, opening, as Oliver says later in her poem, “a doorway into thanks”.

"Christian" Faith and Politics: Having the Conversation

2011-08-12T22:09:00.004-05:00

also on episcopal cafe

Annie Dillard describes a visit she made once to a neighbor near her home in rural Virginia. Trained by Evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell to greet any stranger with a faith-challenge, the neighbor asks Dillard, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour?” Dillard, a Roman Catholic, writer and mystic, relates, “She was stunned that I knew the Lord, and clearly uncertain whether we were referring to the same third party.”

I’ve thought of that encounter as I’ve heard the word “Christian” used in the media lately, especially reading about the rally led recently by Texas governor Rick Perry, strongly supported by the American Family Association and other “Christian” groups. Are we all talking about the same party when we say we are followers of Jesus, the Christ? Is it possible even to have that conversation? Absent any agreed-on source of authority, we are left with Christians of different political stripes hurling accusations at each other, saying, “Well, these people are not real Christians” (reminiscent of Muslims after 9/11 who insisted with deep plausibility, “This is not Islam”). I’ve done this myself.

Particularly distressing to me is seeing the practice of prayer co-opted as a political tool, by any side of the spectrum. Tilden Edwards, writing about Contemplative Prayer, warns against what he calls the “God and me” approach to faith, widespread in our culture, which sees God as “out there” and assumes that we can somehow direct or control God’s actions through prayer, to support our agendas. He connects this to what Parker Palmer names as the “functional Atheism” of our society -- the belief that really we control everything, and we invite God in when we choose, to bless or ratify the judgments we’ve already come to, thus claiming the moral high ground. If we’re honest, we have to admit that all of us do this sometimes. But it is a perilous thing, closing off the living God who desires to heal and transform us. Contemplatives everywhere will tell you that going into prayer begins with letting go of our most firmly held agendas, and being open to a deep and risky conversion of heart. How many Christians really have the courage to embrace a life of prayer that relinquishes our own agendas, and opens us to deep transformation? And what do we believe about the call of Christ in this kind of prayer? I have more questions than answers here, but perhaps the questions are the place to start.

It seems to me our first call as Christians, of whatever stripe, is to open ourselves in prayer to the possibility that our most beloved political agendas may be flawed, and that our political enemies are fellow human beings -- and to be available to the best ideas for meeting the urgent needs of “the least of these.” My own process, looking at our broken world, from a prayerful place, is to ask, what does the Scriptural tradition say about this? (Not a verse here or there but the whole arc of the Scriptural story of God’s call to covenant living). It’s worth asking: how has this tradition seen issues of social justice, the right use of resources, and the needs of the poor? ( It even helps to ask what do other monotheistic faiths -- say about what God desires for the social order? There is remarkable consistency here, across Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, about our obligations to the poor and to the care of creation). And how can a thinking person be guided by the tradition, knowing what we know from our best and most careful observation of social and economic realities? (Scripture-Reason-Tradition -- my Anglican orientation is obvious here). When I try to turn to Scripture without proof- texting, I remember God’s instructions to Israel to leave food in the fields for the gleaners, to observe a year of Jubilee when debts would be forgiven and slaves set free, to even the playing field and prevent the emergence of the super-rich. And I remember the huge gap fixed between the rich man and Lazarus, and the separation at Judgment day between those who did and did not recognize Christ in “the least of these.” And I am challenged more and more by the parables of Jesus that present a world radically different from the status quo.

This is not the time to surrender the label “Christian” to a particular right-wing or even left wing social agenda. It is a time to reflect openly, with our friends and in our writing and public discourse, on how we connect our politics and our faith, resisting labels and speaking out of a core of faith and prayer, and using whatever forum we have. To do this I think we have to assume, for the sake of connection, that we’re all talking about “the same third party” in our claim of faith in Christ. I ran across a delightfully unexpected example of this the other day in a quote from comedian Stephen Colbert posted on a blog I’ve just discovered called Dover Beach , Colbert writes: “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”

It’s a start: What Colbert is doing here, in his sharp way, is having the conversation as if we were all talking about the same third party, and without succumbing to either “God and me” or “us and them”, at least not in this moment. This is the challenge for all of us who are speaking and writing publicly, out of our professed Christian faith, in these times of pervasive social and economic suffering and injustice.

Christianity from the Outside - my Easter among the Humanists

2011-07-22T16:28:00.005-05:00

also on episcopal cafe

Sometimes it’s useful to move outside of my church-activities “bubble” and pay attention to ways that Christian faith -- my tradition -- is perceived, described, characterized “from the outside,” by people who are not Christians.

Because of an illness in the family , I was away from my usual treasured liturgical observance of Holy Week and Easter. Also through family connections, I found myself at worship on Thursday and on Sunday with the Unitarians -- at First Parish in Concord, Massachussetts, a vibrant and welcoming and faithful community. There was a lot to like there -- celebrations of community, a commitment to spiritual practice and a desire to “make a difference in the world.” I recognized in this worshipping community attitudes that are shared widely in our culture -- that really, you don’t need religion - that only leads to dissension and controversy (2 blocks away from First Parish is “Tri-Con” -- Trinity Congregational -- 2 identical white clapboard buildings, testimony to theological splits in New England in the 19th century). In fact it almost seemed petty of me, sometimes, to be clinging to more traditional, even “orthodox” Christian belief. The awareness of this disconnect has stayed with me ever since Easter, and I’m still mulling it over. Not sure what it means.

Among the Humanist members of First Parish UU, the observances of Maundy Thursday and Easter were offered mainly in a spirit of education and respect --solidarity, even, with Christians (some members there would call themselves Christians; most would not). There was a respectful agenda for worship: “here’s what Christians do at this time of year -- let’s experience some of what that is like, through our own worship, and see how that helps us to deepen spiritually in our own way, and even if we don’t share their [somewhat archaic] beliefs.” So on Thursday evening there was a “Mermorial” communion service, reminiscent of the Presbyterian worship I grew up with. Communion is celebrated once a year in this congregation, and it’s an important yearly event there. As the story of the Last Supper was retold, the emphasis was on Jesus gathering his friends. Almost anyone can relate to this part of the story. The congregation was invited to reflect on themselves as a community and to view this act of eating and drinking as a celebration of their life and history together in that place. So the meal on Maundy Thursday was a celebration of community, and a remembering of who we are and where we have been. Jesus’ example was a human example: this is something that people do. Little to disagree with there. But something left me restless.

Meanwhile, the choir sang (beautifully) a sampling of classic liturgical music belonging to the day, music that deeply touched me: Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus” and Bach’s “O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded.” The story I deeply wanted to connect with and retell that night was carried in the music. There was really nothing here to object to, from a human point of view: here was an assembly of good people, celebrating their common life and honoring some of the religious ideas of their neighbors -- including mine. It felt fussy and theologically petty for me to reflect too much on what was missing for me here. But there was a lot missing. It was the part about God sharing our humanity, and suffering with us, and calling us to a radical, mutual love for one another, grounded in divine love, expressed quite starkly in our liturgies of foot washing. That was missing. Not to mention the entry into darkness, expressed in the stripping of the altar. I was seeing the stories and practices reinterpreted, through the lens of an enlightenment humanism. Something was definitely missing. A dimension of mystery -- and even of darkness.

Between hospital visits, I did treat myself to an Easter Vigil service at Trinity Episcopal in Concord - and it was a wonderful, familiar service, with people of all ages on board with the movement through darkness, to the lighting of the new fire and the declaration “The Lord is Risen indeed.” (If anyone from that parish reads this - I thank you!) I needed a chance to say that out loud, in public, with fellow believers, at Easter. At the hospital and around town, I was really moving in circles where that was an irrelevant idea. So I was grateful that the church was there for me, a visitor from out of town. And it was a gift to realize how deeply I desired to be part of that celebration - how real it was to me. The church felt like an island of mercy and welcome in the midst of a world that was mostly oblivious to the good news of Easter. That image has remained with me and I’m still pondering what it means to me.

Meanwhile, back at First Parish Easter Day dawned, a wonderfully sunny, springtime celebration on a gorgeous New England spring day, and the church was packed. I was curious about what an Easter Sunday service of worship would be without the proclamation of Resurrection. But the service started promisingly, for me, with the Easter gospel rom Mark as the call to worship, and the singing, with trumpets, of Wesley’s “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” (though not the version that mentions the Cross). The theme of the service was Jesus, and the children’s sermon a re-enactment of a parable of Jesus. And the adult sermon did invite people to think about resurrection as a metaphor that could have meaning in their lives, using imagery from the Christian tradtion, and also some great poetry (read the sermon here. It's a good one). At one point, the preacher alluded to the previous week's observances, including "Friday called Good, and I cannot imagine why. . . ", unless for the irony of it all, just as when we say “good-bye” and there is nothing good about the leave-taking at all."

Right there: I thought. That is what I’ve been missing -- and it may be a good way of naming what we as Christians are called to wrestle with, reflect on, embrace, and maybe explain better to the world-- the paradox at the heart of our faith. “Talk to a Christian,” I wanted to say to the preacher, “talk to a Christian about that -- rather than describing us as if we were confused, or being ironic -- see what that Christian might say to you about why we call that Friday Good. Because that is the heart of the matter -- the way of life that leads through the messy reality of human life, suffering, evil and death, and triumphs ultimately and transformatively. It’s a supernatural claim we make -- there’s no getting around it. We do call this Friday Good. I’m still working on my “elevator speech” about that question. And I'd challenge any Christians reading this, what's yours? How would explain to someone, in less than 5 minutes, why we call this Friday "good?"

All this was 3 months ago -- now we’re in a different liturgical season and a different place in church life, as I note in my previous post. But I’ve been reflecting ever since about this weird sense of being a “topic” in a world that does not widely embrace or understand our Christian message and practices. Why do we call this Friday good? Why was it so important to me to be able to move through the darkness, in the company of fellow believers, to proclaim out loud “The Lord is Risen indeed.”? It is about all those good humanist goals. -- trying to be good people, deepen spiritually, make a difference in the world, Yes. But there is more at the heart of Christian faith. How can I own and name that, from where I stand in faith, and in language the world can understand? That’s the challenge I’ve been pondering lately. No clear answers. Just pondering.

The Long Green Season

2011-07-16T08:28:00.003-05:00

also on episcopalcafe but I've revised the poem

Having been on an academic schedule my whole life, I find that when summer comes it has a liturgical feel. For academic professionals, summer is the time when we’re not teaching and meeting -- the time when we are free to do “our own work” of writing and creativity -- for many of us, the work that called us into academe to begin with. Sometimes it’s pressured, but ideally it’s at least in part “fallow time,” with space for contemplation. This year, with Pentecost so late, the feel of the summer season coincides quite well with the church year -- and I am sinking into it happily now, spending the early mornings on my patio, before the heat sets in, finding a little more “butt-in-the-chair” time for writing projects, getting in touch with the places in myself from which the best things come -- perhaps even with what Evelyn Underhill called “that deep place where the soul is at home with God.”

It has been a lush, green summer in Washington so far, and so I find the world around me, on my patio-mornings, in harmony with the green season at church -- the season after Pentecost which used to be called, quite appropriately I think -- “ordinary time” -- the longest season, and perhaps the most instructive, when we’re learning to live more deeply into the faith whose stories we’ve told from Advent through Pentecost.

Here’s a poem that came, one morning on the patio. It reflects how liturgically “right” this “green season” is for me this year. Hoping these words may help some of you also rejoice in the riches of this season.

Here on my patio
This July morning
After drenching, cleansing
Storms in the night,
I rest amid birdsong,
Surrounded in green

Green of the long
growing season
After-Pentecost at church

The season to put out leaves
Take in
Sunlight, nourishment
Put down deep roots
Bear maturing fruit

The long green growing season:
Ordinary time.

Mysticisim Revisited -- Evelyn Underhill Again

2011-05-21T21:54:00.006-05:00

also on episcopal cafe

2011 marks the 100th anniversary of Evelyn Underhill’s groundbreaking book, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Human Spiritual Consciousness. This book has been remarkable in that it has appealed both to scholars and to seekers, and it has been continuously in print for 100 years -- a miracle in itself, as anyone familiar with publishing knows. Even though Mysticism is not my favorite among Underhill’s writings, I have welcomed the invitation this centennial year brings to read more widely in her work, and to appreciate again how vividly she speaks to our own time. (Most recently I’ve been involved in organizing a conference on her work, to be held at Washington National Cathedral June 3 and 4 -- more information about this here.)

Mysticism is the product of the Edwardian era, when the more affluent classes, as well as clerics and academics, were interested in various aspects of the life of the spirit. Underhill herself was the author of several spiritual novels with neoplatonic world views, and spent some time with a spiritualist group known as the Golden Dawn. The interest in personal spiritual experience in her era mirrors the New Age spirituality of the 1980’s and 90’s, and also speaks to the popularity in our own time of being “spiritual but not religious.” To this audience, Underhill, largely self-educated in the area of religion, assembles here a comprehensive survey of the great Christian mystics, especially of the west, insisting at once upon their universality as “pioneers of the (human) race” and on the particularity of their Christian identity, rooted in the mystery of the Incarnation.

What is fascinating about Mysticism, and a thread through all of Underhill’s writing, is her simple insistence that spiritual experience is about God, and not (primarily) about our own internal psychology or makeup. A thoughtful and well-reasoned Christian apologist, she is unapologetic about insisting on the “reality” of God as the ground of mystical experience. In the 1920’s, following the upheaval of the Great War, she embraces to a decidedly “catholic” Anglican faith and moves into a remarkable career as a writer and lecturer on Christian spirituality, directing retreats, writing letters of directions and teaching “normal people” about the life of prayer in the modern world. Archbishop Michael Ramsey said of her that “ in the twenties and thirties there were few, if indeed, any, in the Church of England who did more to help people to grasp the priority of prayer in the Christian life and the place of the contemplative element within it.”(Preface to Christopher Armstrong’s Evelyn Underhill (1975, Eerdmans), pp. ix-x)

I find Underhill increasingly appealing as her work matures, from the Romantic celebrations of Mysticism to a focus on what her later work calls “the spiritual life,” preferring that term to “mysticism” when she discusses the life of prayer for ordinary people. Particularly infectious is her deepening appreciation for the ancient wisdom of the Christian tradition, which she sees forming the greatest of the western mystics. Increasingly, she finds their theological heritage she finds in eastern orthodoxy. Though my preferences vary when it comes to Underhill’s work, at the moment I am very much taken with the series of Lenten retreat addresses on the “Christian creed” which she published in 1937 under the title The School of Charity. I led a study course on this work recently and was surprised to find how fresh and wise it is, for contemporary Christians seeking clarity about our identity and practice in the postmodern world. It presents the Creed (mainly the Nicene Creed), not as a series of propositions to be debated or assented to, but as a series of themes for prayerful exploration and contemplation.

The heart of her argument in The School of Charity offers fresh and We are created by, and in the image of, a God who relates to the world as the “Artist-Lover” -- delighting in Creation and loving us and desiring us to grow into deeper and fuller companionship in the divine life. “We are Christians,” Underhill writes, bracingly, "and so we accept, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, the Christian account of [God’s] character. God is Love, or rather Charity; generous, out-flowing, self-giving love, Agape. When all the qualities which human thought attributes to Reality are set aside, this remains. Charity is the colour of the divine personality, the spectrum of Holiness. We believe that the tendency to give, to share, to cherish, is the mainspring of the universe, ultimate cause of all that is, and reveals the Nature of God: and therefore that when we are most generous we are most living and most real.” (10-11)

The Incarnation follows naturally from this fundamental character of God as generous love: it is out of compassion and love that God becomes one of us, taking on the “pattern” of a human life, and inviting us to make our own Christ’s life of loving service and availability, compassion, radical peacemaking, and ultimately radical self-offering. Rather than pursuing the theology of a “substitutionary” atonement(i.e. we have sinned and deserve to die, but Jesus dies in our place, thereby saving us frm God's wrath), Underhill invites us to marvel at the generosity of the divine self-offering, which enters the brokenness of our human experience to share and transform it.

And so the heart of our faith is the Incarnation; the Cross, the central symbol of that faith, is the inevitable outcome of the divine decision to share our human nature. In the Crucifixion, the extremes of human are suffering experienced in his own humanity by the One who loves us. The suffering that we experience in our lives is given meaning and hope by the profound generosity of self-offering Love - “caritas” - “Charity,” which is the heart of the divine life, the goal of our formation in the Christian life, the ground of human transformation.

“A Christian’s belief about reality,” she Underhill writes, “is a wonderful blend of confidence and experience. On one hand it asks great faith in the invisible world that enfolds us. On the other hand it includes and embraces the hardest facts of the actual life we know, and gives them a creative quality. It is a religion which leaves nothing out (p. 51).” In her chapter on the Spirit and the Church, she insists that however incongruous it may seem, the Holy Spirit’s mission of transforming a broken world happens through us, the Church, in our ordinary, practical lives. So she writes with wry awareness:

. . . . .All this seems terribly concrete to the enthusiast for “pure spirituality”: and when we think of pews and hassocks and the Parish Magazine, we tend to rebel against the yoke of official religion, with its suggestion of formalism and even frowstiness. It seems far too stiff and institutional, too unventilated, to represent the generous and life-giving dealings of the Divine Charity with men. The chorus which exclaimed with awe and delight, “I believe in one God! Thins out a good deal when it comes to saying, “I believe in one Church!. . . . Yet there it is; the Christian sequence is God-Christ-Spirit-Church-Eternal Life. No link in this chain can be knocked out, without breaking the current of love which passes from God through his creatures back again to God. The incarnation of the Holy in this world is social. We are each to contribute our bit to it, and each to depend on the whole.” (92)

Rereading these and other works by Evelyn Underhill has invited me to recognize agiain the excitement at the heart of Christian faith, and what it this faith says about the generosity of God. It makes me want to try try to live into this hope more fully. Hers is a “practical mysticism”-- an aliveness to the Reality of the Divine mystery that embodies itself in a way of life. Her work continues to hold wisdom for us in the Church today. It has been well worth a revisit in this centennial year of Mysticism.

Reconciliation in violent times-Eastertide musings

2011-05-03T14:03:00.006-05:00

The rejoicing over Osama Bin Laden's death has me thinking again about how profoundly counter-cultural and radical the Christian message really is. Are we indeed called to "love our enemies" to this extent? Most of us find it very hard; but certainly it was as a Christian that I found myself troubled by the public rejoicing over the man's death. A number of emotions surfaced: compassion for those who had lost loved ones on 9/11, and for whom this event brought it all back -- some were relieved at having vengeance, some said it didn't change anything -- people my children's age were prominent among the celebrators - understandably relieved at having the enemy they have grown up with "gone." So I can't fault anyone for feeling the way they do at the man's death -- but at the same time I am praying that we will not be sucked into the folly of dancing on the grave of an enemy, as our enemies rejoiced after we were hit in September of 9/11. It leads nowhere.

I've been thinking lately about the gospel and empire (and may have more to say about this in further posts). A few months ago my husband and I were immersed in the HBO series "Rome" -- very instructive for seeing the world in which the gospel stories played out, and particularly repulsive and distressing was the way that conquered enemies were treated-- their bodies thrown out to be eaten by dogs, or paraded throug the streets in triumph, or left on crosses to die and then fall to the ground, to be left without burial rites. The Easter story, which we are living through now in our Christian liturgical observance, reminds us that it was both a political and a personal act of defiance for some of the most prominent citizens among Jesus' secret followers (Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus) to ask for his body -- the body of someone who had been crucified by the Romans--and to give him a decent burial: an assertion of humanity and compassion in the face of all-too familiar human brutality.

With that story alive in my memory I was very glad of the decision of those who killed our enemy to give him a prompt and respectful Muslim burial, even at the risk that it will make it more difficult to prove that it was really him we "got." I am praying that we will not be reduced to releasing gory photographs of the dead body though I don't have a lot of hope about that. But I was heartened by that expression of human decency -- that moment of not being Rome, dancing on the graves of our enemies, but acknowledging, in death, a common humanity. Hard to sustain, but it was a moment.

As I seek to live faithfully with the unfolding story in the news, two resources from my own branch of the Christian tradition are helpful to me. One is the collect for our enemies, in the Book of Common Prayer, posted on facebook by a number of my priest-friends, for which I'm grateful. It goes like this:
O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth: deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

We are so entangled, so complicit, in a violent culture that it is probably impossible to pray this prayer with perfect integrity, but saying the words is a start, whether we fully believe them or not. I'm grateful for a tradition that gives words to the prayers we should be praying - even when it's hard for us to do so.

I am also remembering my own post-9/11 experience, which I wrote about in the Fall 2006 issue of Weavings. My daughter at the time was a chorister at the Washington National Cathedral, and so was one of those who sang the anthem "My Shepherd will Supply my Need" at the nationally televised memorial service that was held at the Cathedral on September 14, 2011. What I remember about that service is that it started beautifully and humanly, as a gathering of remembrance and an honoring of the innocent victims of the attacks: and we have seen that same outpouring of remembrance, condolence and support with this announcement about Bin Laden's death. The anthem, based on the twenty-third psalm, reminded us that there is goodness that we can trust, even in the midst of violence and chaos. My memory is that this moment in the Cathedral service expressed the best in us at that service, which later degenerated, in my view, into a highly unsettling call for vengeance, following the president's speech, and the incongruous and deeply unsettling singing of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic"at the end of the service. But the choristers' singing is the moment I want to rest with now, so I'm glad one of them has posted it on youtube. I am hoping that we (especially we who seek to follow the Way of Christ) can hold fast to our fundamental conviction that compassion and love are stronger than violence and revenge, despite what the world seems to present. And learn to live that conviction.

That is the hope that the Easter season brings. The hope I hold to. May we have the courage to live out this hope, even in violent times.

What if it's All True?

2011-03-26T10:48:00.003-05:00

(also on episcopal cafe)

As I prepare to lead various Lenten experiences inviting people into prayer and deepened reflection, I have been noticing how the season offers us, if we wish to embrace it, a “time out from doubt.” Not that doubt or questioning are in themselves bad things – an openness to questions is part of what has kept many of us in progressive mainline churches. But I’m thinking that Lent is a time to stretch our faith -- to live with these familiar stories, which we’ve called Good News. Take a break from questions about what may be “factual” or accurate and ask “What if it’s all true?”

What if it’s all true? What if (to begin), the Ground and Source of our being, our life, our connections with one another and the earth, is real and alive, though beyond our ability to name it. What if this Reality is best described and apprehended in personal terms, through our human images of love – mother-love, father-love, the love of devoted friends, the love of an artist or a gardener for what she has made or nurtured, the love that desires, above all things, the well-being of the beloved. What if it’s all true? What if the heart of Reality is that love?

And what if it’s true, as we Christians claim (set our hearts to – as the word “credo” implies) that this Love became human, took on fully our experience of bodily life, limiting itself (himself/herself – for this is a personal Reality) to a person in history, with parents, friends, enemies, a culture, a community.? What if Jesus is the Word made flesh, “Incarnate,” as we say. A mystery beyond our understanding, perhaps: but what if it’s true? What if, fully human, he experienced what it is to be loved and cared for, and to be oppressed, rejected, betrayed, killed. And what if the witness of all those early disciples is true – that death could not contain him: that the life Jesus lived and brought and called us to is actually eternal life, and has already begun, even in a broken world?

And what if it’s true that that Life and Love cannot be killed. What if, in the life of Jesus, in companionship with him, we can re-learn that love at the heart of Creation, and embody it in our lives here and now?. What if he really does live on in the gathered worshipping community (ekklesia/) that we call the Church. It seems so unlikely, and yet what if, through all our divisions, abuses, human distortions, abuses and misunderstandings of the good news, his life still lives in us. What if we are held, despite it all, in something that could be called “the Divine Mercy”?

And what if it is still possible to somehow be, in this world, that risen body of the Holy One, through our life together, through our relationships, through the choices we make for ourselves and for others. And what if there is power available to us, beyond what we can find within ourselves, to become what we were made to be – whole, and just and loving, bearers of the divine Love. What if there is a Holy Spirit, working through us, that really can transform and change? What if the whole thing is a whole lot bigger than we thought? What if it’s all true?

What would it be like, truly to live in the hope that it’s all true?

Chosen for Blessing - further musings on Scripture

2011-02-23T09:32:00.006-05:00

also on episcopal cafe

In his book A Generous Orthodoxy--the chapter on “Why I am Missional”--Brian McLaren, makes a point that opened up for me the whole tangled question of what it means to be “called and chosen” as the People of God. Crediting the theology of Leslie Newbigin, he reminds us that when God calls Abraham and promises to make of him a great nation, God’s purpose is that Abraham and his descendants will be a blessing to the world.

Though God’s language in this story is still very rooted in a tribal ethos, the promise is that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3) . They are called out from among the nations, not for special privileges, but so that God can work through them. And at its best, the covenant that God eventually calls them into is, by the standards of the time and place, a new way for people to be together in society, where just distribution of wealth and resources are assumed, family relationships honored, and right relationship between creatures and Creator is valued. At least that’s what the overall narrative reaches for, with its ongoing pattern of embracing and falling away from the covenant that God offers and keeps offering again. I think we can learn a lot be reading Scripture with this pattern in mind.

Like McLaren, and like Verna Dozier, (both of whom, like me, started their careers as readers & teachers of literature), I see this theme of “chosen-ness” as a part of the “arc” of the Biblical story -- perhaps of all the Abrahamic traditions in one way or another. The Biblical story is the story of a God who is engaged with and wants to work through human history. In Hebrew Scripture God does this through the Torah, and the narrative tells of the waxing and waning of the people’s faithfulness, and all the consequences of that. It goes all the way through the story of exile and return, when the people, repentant and redeemed, see themselves again as being called to be “a light to the nations.” And then for Christians, the New Testament offers another take on Hebrew Scripture, through the lens of our call to follow the Way of the Risen Christ. I honestly think that it is possible to embrace this reading without being supersessionist, i.e., without arguing that the call of Christ somehow displaces or negates the call of the Israelites to be the people of God. I hope that the way of reading I propose does not necessarily makes us complicit with the damage this misreading of scripture has done through history. Rather, I think it helps us toward faithfulness to read Scripture at least in part as the story of a God who calls people into covenant and acts in human history. It is a particular and radical theology and it is at the heart of the Biblical story. The New Testament may be our chapter of that story, as Christians, but we need to embrace the whole story.)

In the gospels, we also have stories of calling and again the call is not to special privileges but to participation in a mission – the bringing in of the kingdom, the reign of God. The fishermen become “fishers of men” in Mark and Matthew. When Jesus is bidding farewell to his disciples in the fourth gospel, he says “you did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you to bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commandments so that you may love one another.” (John 15:16-17). This is not the conferring of special privilege or magical powers, but a commissioning to a new way of life that will touch and transform human communities.

Obviously I’m picking and choosing passages here – (I hope it isn’t “proof-texting: -- just suggesting some themes that thread through the Biblical story and help to make it our own). When there’s language about God’s call in Scripture, we may want to resist our contemporary inclination to read everything individualistically and consider that in the context of the story, being called and chosen is usually about becoming part of ( or even leading) a new kind of human community, bearing the cost of this, and becoming in some way an example to the world on God’s behalf. True, Christians as a body have not always been a blessing to the world -- we’ve certainly been known to appropriate and distort the language of chosen-ness in destructive ways. But I think it’s important to revisit the idea and try to understand it in a fresh way, rather than to throw it out as contaminated by our past. Just because we’ve failed to live up to it doesn’t mean that the call to become God’s people and to be a blessing has gone away.

Most of us cringe at language about chosen-ness because of all the attention that has been given in theological discussions to more individualist questions about who is and is not chosen and what it might mean not to be chosen. Paul struggles over this himself - and comes to a ringing, hopeful conclusion when he says that in Christ “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus .” (Galatians 3:28) It may just be “human nature” to turn a story that it mainly about what it means to be called “the people of God” , , into a story about us and them, who’s in and who’s out. It happens within the story itself, many times. Nevertheless, I think we’re meant to pay more attention to what we’re called for and to, if we see ourselves as part of the Biblical story, than to worry much about who is in and who is out and how God makes that choice, questions which have occupied us perhaps too much in Christian theologizing.

“Your way of life must be different from that of others,” writes that early Christian reformer St. Benedict, “the love of Christ must come before all else.” That is still a Biblically- based reading, related to this understanding of being called and chosen. McLaren’s take on the call to “be a blessing” as the basis for a missional theology offers us a liberating way to read Scripture as a story that is in some sense our story. He uses it as the basis for his claim that the church’s call is “to be and to make disciples of Jesus Christ, in community, and for the sake of the world.” And so this way of reading Scripture provides a fresh lens for asking what the Church is called and chosen to be, as the people of God in the real world of the 21st century.

"Lamb of God" - Musings of an English Teacher reading the Bible

2011-01-15T09:11:00.008-05:00

I've been reading more of Brian McLaren lately -- his first book, The Church on the Other Side, and his most recent, A New Kind of Christianity. A lot of the ideas he presents as "new ideas" "new ways of thinking" about Christianity have seemed a little self-evident to me. But I think I've figured out why now. I read the Bible the same way he does, the same way Verna Dozier does, the way literary critics like Northrop Frye or poets like David Jones do -- as a work of literature, of poetry, a work that tells a story of who "God" is and wants to be -- and what it has meant for people of different eras to be "the people of God." I was excited a number of years ago to begin learning a little about the Jewish tradition of "midrash" which reads the whole Torah, and the whole tradition of interpretation, as ALL part of God's revelation -- and sees the process of reading and rereading the story, generation to generation, as a religious activity. In fact I've run across some literary criticism that connects the practice of midrash to postmodern ways of reading, where we understand that a text is a "construct" of words and ideas and cultural frames. There is not "one way" to read a text. I think the difference between the deconstructionist critics I encountered in grad school and the rabbis as I've encountered them, reading about midrash, is the purpose of reading: If we are people of faith, seeking to know God, then we read in order to find out how the tradition has experienced the divine presence and expressed that. If we are focused on "deconstructing" one paradigm of faith (the "western tradition" - target of deconstructionist criticism in the 1970's), then we'll be looking for ways that texts that claim absolute authority seem to undercut themselves.

But I'm feeling energized, authorized, by finding that many of the readers of Scripture I find most congenial are alert to the Biblical text as a literary text. That makes it possible to appreciate patterns and symbols, and ideas that get changed and reinterpreted even within the unfolding of the Biblical story over thousands of years, reflected in the text we have. I've just been reflecting, for example, on the phrase "Lamb of God" - which is in this Sunday's gospel reading: John 1:29 where John the Baptist calls Jesus the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world". So much in that phrase: there's the evocation of the really gory practice, in ancient Israel, of blood sacrifice to consecrate the priests and make atonement for the sins of the people (Exodus 29: 38-46). But in John it's not "sins", its the "sin of the world" -- and we've just read earlier in John 1 that with the coming of Christ, the "word made flesh" there is a victory of light over the darkness of the world. It's a whole new symbol structure, more Greek than Hebrew - but bringing the traditions together in a new way. "The sin of the world" suggests this is not so much about individual "sins" of the people as about a cosmic overcoming of evil, at the heart of everything -- this is poetry, mystery, challenging and beautiful stuff. And then the "Lamb of God" in John also looks forward to the really wild imagery in Revelation 5 of the lamb slaughtered (so evoking those early blood-sacrifice rites), with 7 horns, representing the 7 churches of the time, whose slaying (in a culture that still knows about blood-sacrifice) brings a victory that is both cosmic and political -- the spiritual victory of the persecuted churches over the empire of Rome. (And of course inevitably for me echoes of Handel's grand final chorus based on this text" Worthy is the lamb that was slain" -- but what does that mean. Then there's also the suffering servant in the book of Isaiah, whose willingness to give himself for the people is compared to the meekness of a lamb, taking on everyone's sins (Isaiah 53:7 "He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent he did not open his mouth." Even so, the phrase "lamb of God," which is familiar -- used in liturgy -- seems more puzzling and also "fuller.

Poets have reworked and re-presented this image at various times. The study guide we're using at church points us to what I think is actually a very important poem o the 20th century, Denise Levertov's "Mass for the day of St. Thomas Didymas," whose last movement is called "Agnus Dei." Here she uses the lamb to get us back to the Incarnation -- the lamb who is both sweet and attractive but also reminds us (as do the bloody sacrificed lambs) of muck and mortality: she wonders if the idea of the Lamb of God demands something of us:
is it implied that we
must protect this perversely weak
animal, whose muzzles nudgings
suppose there is milk to be found in us?
Must hold to our icy hearts
a shivering God? (you can find the whole poem, "Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymas," in Levertov's volume Candles in Babylon. This poem is also excerpted in the anthology The Stream and the Sapphire.

Much to ponder here: but the question isn't "what is the one true interpretation of this symbol?" Nor is it really "can I believe in this idea"? It is "what is here"? What's the mystery being presented, for us to sit with, ponder. It shows us that the mystery of the Holy among us -- that mystery that we call the Incarnation -- is huge -- and connected to many other parts of the story -- and invites us to ponder, to reflect, to pray.

The Poetry of Handel's Messiah

2010-12-21T14:27:00.004-05:00

Also on episcopal cafe (with some discussion)

This shopping season, I’ve already received two videos of “flash mobs” singing Handel’s Hallelujah chorus in unexpected public places – a mall food court, at Macy’s in Philadelphia, to the accompaniment of the Wanamaker organ. (See them here and here.) In these videos no one seems to be offended by “Christian” content – there is wonder and delight in the music – in both cases performed by very able singers! Something hopeful and exciting has burst in on the mundane, and people seem to appreciate it. I think that these videos capture not only the fun of this kind of guerilla culture-event, but also the hopefulness that is carried in the words and music of that particular piece. And it has got me thinking of how important Handel’s Messiah as a whole has been to my own formation over the years.

A recording of Messiah was the first “adult” Christmas present I remember receiving. I was 16, and had sung a few choruses from Messiah in high school chorus. My parents gave me the Robert Shaw Chorale’s performance, my very own – probably the first classical album I owned, too. I cried when I opened it. I hadn’t realized how much I really wanted to be able to listen to this music.

Why did I like the Messiah so much as a young person? I think I was responding to the way that it uses the poetry of Scripture to tell a profound story, without insisting on belief or professions of faith. It was a time of my life when I was beginning to ask what it meant to be a Christian in a world where not everyone was Christian, and especially what it meant to be a thinking person who embraced Christian belief, and with it Christian hope?

I already knew the Bible pretty well from my Presbyterian Sunday school upbringing , and I was also a universalist (still am) in my thinking about the salvation on offer to us from a God whose mercy surpasses ours. . To me Messiah, performed in all kinds of secular contexts in the Easter and Christmas seasons, seemed to present Christian faith in a broad, nondenominational but deeply committed way. I still look forward to hearing the whole thing performed at least once a year. Familiar as it is, it is also poetic theology at its best. The music carries and interprets the words, and all the words are from the Bible. The text and music work together, revealing the radical hope that is the underlying thread of the Biblical story. And perhaps most strikingly, in this oratorio that tells the story of Jesus, the majority (not all, but the majority) of the texts are taken, not from the gospels but from Hebrew Scripture.

The librettist of Messiah was a Balliol educated Shakespeare scholar named Charles Jennens (1707-1773). He was a staunch Protestant but a “non-juror – i.e. he refused to recognize the Hanoverian dynasty that was ruling England. He was a huge admirer of Handel, and evidently a devout man, steeped in Scripture and in the poetry of the Book of Common Prayer. Disillusioned with the earthly king, he seems to have placed his hope in the promise of God’s kingdom coming on earth. (and so in words most of us can sing: the text from Revelation: “the kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our God, and of his Christ. And he shall reign forever and ever.”)

As a poetic text, the libretto of Messiah is both lyrical and distinctively “Anglican” in feel; like the Book of Common Prayer it stitches together pieces of Scripture in a way that creates a theologically grounded narrative. But this isn’t simply Christian triumphalism: these same Blblical texts, in their original context in Hebrew Scripture, invite us to a way of reading the whole of “salvation history” as told in Hebrew Scripture as an essential part of our ongoing story as Christians.

Within Hebrew Scripture (the “Old Testament”) the overall story is of a God who desires to redeem his people, and does so by calling them out to be a “chosen people”, bound by covenant and formed by joyful obedience to the law. In various ways, and at various points in history, they disobey, fall away from the promise, and terrible, hideous things happen. Sometimes they heed the call to return, but in the era of Assyrian and Babylonian invasions, 722- 520 BCE, the story is of their repeated failures to the messengers of God, the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah especially, who warn them that the failure of rulers and people to live faithfully will ultimately result in disaster. The destruction of Jerusalem, and the exile in Babylon are understood as God’s righteous punishment of Israel, and the ultimate return from Babylon and rebuilding of the temple is seen as evidence of God’s abiding mercy and love for God’s people.

Underlying all of this is the theology of a Creator-God, a God of both Justice and Mercy, reliable and intimately engaged with history. The prophetic voice known as 2nd Isaiah (which begins at Chapter 40 of the book of Isaiah) dates from the time when exile is ending and those exiled from Judah are being called to return. Speaking to the remnant of Jerusalem, those who have stayed behind, the prophet predicts that there will be a path through the wilderness, leading back to Jerusalem, and the glory of the Lord will be restored to its rightful place in the Temple: “Comfort ye, my people.” He says on God’s behalf . . . “Prepare ye the way of the Lord. . . every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed (see Isaiah 40: 1-11). By beginning the whole oratorio with this text, Jennens/Handel remind us how central to all of Scripture is the story of Exile and Return – the recurring plot of a God who ultimately desires healing and restoration, despite human perversity. And following ancient Christian tradition, they imply that the coming of Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy.

The other theme from Hebrew Scripture, perhaps more alive for those in the 18th century than for us now, is the prophecy that the restoration of Jerusalem will involve the restoration of a thoroughly righteous king in the Davidic line: the Messiah. This is a tradition that viewed the reign of David as a golden age, when the king and people were faithful to God and lived in security and prosperity. They look forward to a ruler chosen by God and in intimate connection with God, who will preach peace. So the longing for Messiah joins with the postexilic theme that the chosen people are chosen to become a “light to the nations” – a beacon to all and a manifestation of God’s will for the world.

There are also apocalyptic themes but again couched in Messianic hope. Despite assaults by surrounding nations, despite world politics, as long as Jerusalem remains faithful to God, she will be preserved and will become ultimately the city of God, the place where God’s glory dwells. (In the later chapters of Isaiah and in postexilic prophets (Haggaie, Zephaniah, Micah), there is the expectation that after great trial, God’s kingdom will be restored, the temple purified, and the Anointed one will come.

So that’s the framework, the story as told in Hebrew Scripture. And I think Handel’s Messiah is sensitive to that poetry of exile, return, and ultimate hope.

While our Jewish neighbors are still waiting, we believe that Messiah has come, and that the era of the reign of God has begun, despite persistent human efforts to thwart it. We are waiting for the fulfillment of this (A Jewish friend once remarked, wisely, that the season of Advent is the time when the spirit of Jewish and Christian tradition are most closely connected—paradoxical as this seems.) What does it mean to believe, claim, proclaim this? I think that is the theological question that Handel’s Messiah is raising and exploring, for an audience that is mostly Anglican, highly educated, and wary of superstition and doctrine. So, arguably, he is somposing for a “modern” even secular, audience. Messiah carefully resists two common traps in Christian readings of the Old Testament throught the New. First, it is not dispensationalist (i.e. between the “old dispensation” ruled by an angry Old Testament God, and the “new dispensation” of grace and mercy, ruled by Jesus and excluding the Jews) No: Messiah presents the whole of Scripture as telling a continuous story of the divine mercy that longs to lead people out of darkness into light, out of death into life, to a final, confident Amen.

This is also not a piece that preaches Christian triumphalism: Many people listen to Messiah, whether they believe in the Christian story or not, and respond to the message of radical hope it carries. The emphasis of the story is apocalyptic, proclaiming the triumph of God and– a sense of the “fullness of time” -but it does not exalt a cultural and political Christianity trampling down more primitive faiths or knocking down the idols; it is not Constantinian or triumphalist. Rather, with a calm that belongs to the Age of Reason it demonstrates how the text of the Bible presents prophecy that is fulfilled in good time. It looks ahead to the reign of God – not to a human empire, but a time when human sinfulness is overcome and the reign of God is established (where Christ is, in the word’s of Revelation: “King of king and Lord of Lords) And he shall reign forever and ever.” Whether you believe it or not, it is a compelling story.

As for literary form, the basic approach in Messiah is juxtaposition: this is how we construct lyric poetry, as opposed to narrative or didactic poetry. Jennens had a narrative in mind – the story of salvation history. But he tells it by juxtaposing texts from Scripture. Isn’t this also how we do theology in our Anglican liturgical practice? Many of our most beloved services work through juxtaposition of Scriptural texts. Think of the readings at the Easter Vigil, or the beginning of the burial service, or , from the 20th century, the telling of the “whole story” in the service of Nine Lessons and Carols.

When we get New Testament texts in the first section of Messiah, they are usually juxtaposed to Old Testament texts, illuminating, interpreting them. So we have, for example, Isaiah 40: 11: “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd” alongside Jesus’ words: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. . . “ Each text interprets and validates the other. We have Jesus bringing in the New Covenant of grace – the theology is not explicit but it is expressed in the music, in the joyful chorus: “His yoke is easy, his burthen is light.”

Handel and Jennens could assume that their audience knew the Passion story, But whether you know the story or not, the poetry of the juxtaposed Scriptural passages carries it. The piece is not interested in any questions about personal belief or salvation or “who’s in and who’s out” . Rather it is interested in what “Kingdom of God” might look like –the fulfillment that has been promised all along. That is the focus of Parts 2 and 3 of Messiah, summed up for many in the music of the Hallelujah chorus -- very positive, focusing on coming of God’s kingdom on earth. The emphasis here is not on individual guilt or repentance, but more on divine suffering and victory for the sake of “us” – a universal human restoration. So the Passion story sings out as the fulfillment of the Chosen One’s calling using the prophet Isaiah’s descriptions of the Suffering Servant (He was despised and rejected. . . a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”). Salvation has come. It is for all. And it has all been done for us. “I know that my Redeemer Liveth” – the Easter section begins – using a text from the book of Job. And it ends by giving life to the cryptic words from Revelation: Worthy is the Lamb that was slain,” and the singing of an endless and cosmic chorus of Amen.

But the texts that stay with us most through the haunting familiar music of Messiah are from Second Isaiah . They tell of the hope of God’s people in the time of exile, as they awaited deliverance from exile and the return of a good king in the line of David. It is the hope we proclaim as Christians, believing that Messiah has come. It is ultimately, for the librettist of Messiah, a paradoxical, universal hope for all humanity: – rooted in ancient prophecies of exile and return: “Comfort ye, my people. . . . The People that walked in darkness have seen a great light”. . for unto us a child is born, . . . and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Reflections on Benedictine Values and Church Life

2010-12-16T09:53:00.004-05:00

also on episcopal cafe

Since I’m currently serving as Rector’s Warden/Senior warden at my home parish, I am very aware of November/December as “budget season” and of course these are challenging times for churches, with high anxiety around financial matters. From a spiritual point of view, this time of year raises for me deep questions about the way we do church, whether it’s sustainable, faithful to the gospel and how we measure that. So much of what we receive from congregational development experts seems aimed at figuring out what people need and giving it to them, attracting more members to sustain what we have built evangelism as marketing (which it is to some degree) – but a model very much attuned to the culture around us.

And at the same time I’m rereading Esther de Waal’s writings about monastic spirituality for our time, and remembering that monasticism began with people who felt that the values of the church and the values of the surrounding culture were getting blended together to a point of great confusion. When Benedict established his rule in the fifth century, he was building what I think turns out to be an abiding “counter cultural” tradition of Christian living, preserving what he understood to be the central values of the gospel.

These values are not really developed in response or reaction to the culture; they simply offer themselves as guides. And so as I prepared for the November vestry meeting, I spent some time reflecting on the three vows that monks take, the vows of “Obedience”, “Stability” and “Conversatio” or “conversion of heart.” Unpacking these ideas has been helpful to me – and was helpful to the vestry, meeting about the budget in November. So I thought I’d share some thoughts about them here.

First, “Obedience,” which de Waal reminds us comes from the the Latin for “to listen.” Looking at parish life and our own lives, how do we listen for God’s guidance/ What practices orient us toward discernment rather than simply the pushing and defending of competing agendas. Where in our common life are there opportunities for study and prayer together, especially for leaders? How do we pay attention to Scripture? Listening to each other – giving each person around the table an opportunity and invitation to speak, practicing “appreciative inquiry” and other ways of discernment that help us hear one another: all of these practices, I think, fulfill the spirit of the vow of obedience. We can move toward healing if we also pay attention to the ways in which we are “not listening” in our pairhs life – to the neighborhood around us – to the needs of the world at the moment (not so much for marketing purposes as for mission and ministry). We need to pray for a deepening ability to listen. A symbol for this kind of obedience might be the Rublev icon, with what one writer has called the “listening eyes” of its three figures attentive each to the other – or another image might be building blocks, shared by a community of leaders. In her book Seeking God, Esther de Waal writes:

The Christian and monastic model for discerning God’s will in a given situation is not that of finding the solution of a crossword puzzle . . . where the answer must be exactly right, fitted to some preconceived plan. A better model is that we are given building blocks and have to see what can be done with them, using in the task all our intelligence, sensitivity and love (p. 49)

Not a solution, but a process of listening: putting gifts and ideas together and seeing what new thing comes out of that process. I like this as a model for a leadership team. Even a vestry!

The second vow, which I find fascinating despite the challenging term, is “Stability.”(Perhaps a better word for us would be “commitment” – but let’s hold the two together). – in our “cafeteria-Christianity” culture, this is the value that calls us to seek ways of staying together: not by silencing difference but by hearing and receiving the diversity of our views. . It is the vow a monk makes to stay with the same community –and let himself be formed by its challenges. The call to stability is of course a great challenge in the Anglican Communion just now but it helps me to name it in that way – not a call to “unity at any cost” where a dominant voice “wins” – it’s not a call to put up with abuse -- but it is a call to stay at the table, stay in conversation stay in relationship– not to leave—or at least not to consider leaving and going elsewhere as our first option. In parishes, “stability is a deeper value than giving everyone what they want or keeping things the same. it is an invitation to commit to being together and worshipping God in this place, to stay on rather than move on, when leadership changes. It is the value that fuels sustainable stewardship, care for one another in crisis and in conflict. It requires faith and endurance. I’d like to see leaders in congregations reflecting more on what stability looks like for them – what the challenges are, what the obstacles and rewards. The symbol we have for the value of stability is the symbol of our faith: the Cross, which tells of endurance through suffering, for the sake of the whole Body. Joan Chittister says this about the Cross and stability:

The cross is not a dark aspect of religion. It is, on the contrary, the one hope we have that our own lives can move through difficulty to triumph. It’s the one thing that enables us to hang on and not give up when hanging on seems impossible and giving up seems imperative. . . . The cross says that we can rise if we can only endure (Wisdom from the Daily, p. 148)

The call to stability might sound like a call to stuck-ness or to doormat-like acquiescence if it were not balanced by the third vow of conversatio or openness to change – the most famously challenging value for congregations. The symbols or this are the water of Baptism and the fire of the Holy Spirit. Ours is a faith that is about transformation, and as leaders we serve people best when we lead them toward this kind of openness. I like what de Esther de Waal writes about this in Seeking God:

If the vow of stability is the recognition of God’s complete faithfulness and dependability then the vow of conversatio is a recognition of God’s unpredictability, which confronts our own love of cosiness or safety. It means that we have to live provisionally, ready to respond to the new whenever and however that might appear. There is no security here, no clinging to past certainties. Rater, we must expect to see our chosen idols successively broken. It means a constant letting go. (Seeking God, p. 70)

Meditating on these vows has kept me going in this “budget-season,” and as our parish’s annual meeting, always in Advent, approaches. The reason to be in the church is to be shaped into a counter-cultural community – and I think it is a wonderfully creative challenge to look at our life together in the light of these Benedictine values of listening, stability/commitment and openness to change.

Of Sacred Space, Loss and Liturgy

2010-11-02T07:54:00.003-05:00

also on Episcopal Cafe

On October 22, a fire destroyed most of the chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary, where I teach. Built in 1871, the chapel has been a sacred space to many generations of seminarians and clergy in the Episcopal Church. Despite heroic efforts by the firefighters who were on the scene immediately, the chapel burned in about 40 minutes, as the community watched in awed disbelief. No one was hurt; no other buildings were burned. But it was a deeply traumatic loss. And in the week since then we have been very aware of what sacred space has come to mean in our lives.

Exactly a week before the chapel fire, I was traveling in Wales and reflecting deeply on this theme of place and sacred space. I spent that Friday at a beautiful, remote place called Capel y ffin (the chapel at the end of the road – aptly named) which was once home to a community of Catholic artists and craftsmen, led by the English sculptor Eric Gill. Capel y ffin was a formative place for the artist and poet David Jones, whose work has been important to me for many years. (Read more about Jones and his work here) Jones wrote of the “strong hill-rhythms” of the countryside here, which was formative for his artistic and poetic vision. His paintings capture well the rounded hills and pastures (the “landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plow” – as the Welsh poet Hopkins wrote) and the curious “aliveness” of the landscape that one experiences in this place.

In this region of Wales – near the black hills – I was also impressed by the ancient stone churches – some of them a millennium old – at sites with strange place names like “Partrishow” and “Clydwch”. The sites would include, typically, a tiny grey-stone church, with old wood interior, silent yet filled with echoes of centuries of prayer. Beside the church, there is typically an ancient (and sometimes still active) cemetery, together with a stream and a holy well, whose sacredness dates back to pre-Christian times and is often incorporated somehow into the story of the saint of the place – for each one of these places has a story attached to it. There is a sense that these churches and tombstones and celtic crosses mark a holiness beyond what can be contained. Inevitably, here, I thought of lines from a David Jones poem where he celebrates:

The adaptations, the fusions,
the transmogrifications
but always
the inward continuities
of the site
of place (The Anathemata, p. 90)

Having been so recently immersed in this awareness of sacred place, I was available to the depth of grieving the VTS community was experiencing at the loss of the of course much newer “historic” chapel. In particular, I have been watching and listening during this past week as students and alumni (a few of them in purple shirts) visited the campus and simply stood, gazing, in sad homage, at the charred beams where the chapel ceiling once was, open to the sky below the cross that still stands on the front of the chapel. Soon, the conversations around the seminary will turn to what was not destroyed and what can be restored and carried forward. We know that “the Church is not a building. . . .the church is a people” – but this grieving-time has invited more reflection, for me, on what places mean to us, in a sacramental tradition.

We remember sacred places, often, because of what happened here. Every one of the Welsh churches I saw was sacred to a saint who had a story. And as I have spoken with grieving members of the community, I have heard stories. People remember the events that happened in the chapel: a classmate buried, an ordination, a profoundly memorable liturgy or sermon, the daily round of prayer that is part of community life and forms us.

Liturgy itself is an important part of what sanctifies places for us. At my own church on the Sunday after the fire, I found myself experiencing those “flashbacks” that we get when we are grieving, where one thing recalls another. We sang the hymn “Great is thy Faithfulness” on Sunday, and I recalled, with quick tears, that that was the last hymn that I sang in the seminary chapel, at Morning Prayer the day before the fire. Receiving the chalice from our seminarian, who is a VTS student, I recalled receiving the chalice from his hand a few weeks before, at a noon Eucharist in the chapel, with its scent of old wood, faint mustiness and beeswax, and midday light filtered through the “great commission” stained glass window, now gone. Receiving the presence of Christ in one place, I was remembering another place where I have met Christ, and been shaped and formed by that experience. It reminded me of the paradox that the presence of Christ is not confined to any particular place, and yet meets us where we are, in the world: and that involves place.

The first community Eucharist, the Monday after the fire, was held in the light-filled Georgian sanctuary at Immanuel Church on the Hill, across Seminary Road. The space recalled for me the New England Presbyterian church where I grew up. It could not have been more different from the Victorian feel of the old chapel. What was most consoling in that service, for many, was what we did together there. Dean Ian Markham named in his sermon what I was feeling from the opening sentences. The words of the Eucharistic liturgy, the familiar faces of the community, the celebration – our actions together – actions and prayers we had offered in other places – were what sanctified this gathering place for us, despite undeniable loss. This is true for any space where we gather in for worship – especially for Eucharist. And yet we are people of flesh and blood, and our lives are shaped by what we can sense, touch, feel, smell, and by our receptiveness to beauty. The places that shape us are not themselves sacred, and yet, they form us, open us, make us ready and able to receive the gift of God – body and blood, as people of flesh and blood, standing where we are.

And this took me back to David Jones, whose long poem The Anathemata revolves around the celebration of a mass in a London chapel, during the blitz. The celebration is the pivotal point of a long meditation on what holds us together, as Christians, when much that is recognizable in the surrounding civilization is crumbling away. Jones’s poem connects this particular Eucharistic celebration to the place and the time of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, which happened at a particular time and place, and to gatherings of Christians at the altar down through history. In the poet’s vision, the priest at the altar, blends into Christ presiding over the Last Supper and fulfilling the story in the mystery of the Cross. Contemplating the priest at mass, “Here in this place,” “at a time’s turn,” the poet concludes:

He does what is done in many places
what he does other,
he does after the mode
of what has always been done.
What did he do other,
recumbent at the garnished supper
What did he do yet other
riding the Axile Tree? (The Anathemata, p. 242)

Summarizing the Faith

2010-10-27T11:03:00.005-05:00

This is also on episcopal cafe, where the discussion links to other people's personal summaries of Christian faith -- please feel free to add yours here.

Verna Dozier is known for saying that every Christian should be able to tell the story of the faith in 10 minutes or less. Sometimes people call that out of us. Recently more than one friend has asked me some version of the question “What does the Crucifixion mean? The question was asked in an email (I can’t actually remember from whom, now – and I never answered it.) Stumbling in prose, but haunted by the question, thought I’d lean imaginatively into the question, see what would come out in verse – with line-breaks providing space to ponder. I’m not really sure about the quality of what follows as “great poetry,” but it does offer a crack at the that question, one which perhaps other Café readers have been asked at one time or another. Here’s my try at a response.

Stumbling Credo
(lines written in response to a friend who asked me, as if she thought I would know, “What does the Crucifixion mean, anyway?”)

The world is broken: there’s no doubt
About that part. People are cruel and violent
And the ones who are in power
Religious or imperial – they know
Their power rests on privilege, and fear

And yet there is, beneath it all, a love that is for all
That calls us home to ancient faithfulness
And gives the dispossessed a voice, a place, a grounded life.
It seems such love cannot prevail, when those in power
Who profit from the broken world, create a reign of fear.

But when that love, which has a human face
Cannot endure to see how people harm each other
He comes to be among us, shares the fate
Of those the most oppressed and says –
You are all God’s people: rich and poor, in and out
You are all so greatly beloved.

So stop this now. Repent, he says to all
Change your way of life. Love one another, and resist
The rule of those who lord it over others. Refuse to fear.

Such love, it seems, cannot survive
In this broken world
Where love incarnate comes to live among us
So his own leaders work together with
The rulers of the age. Call him a traitor
Kill and torture him,
And crucify: the punishment of traitors.

They can crucify the man, but they cannot kill
The love he bears and is, nor can anything
Blot out this love,
The Love that has has suffered
The worst that power and rage could then inflict.
The suffering is real. The love persists, And so
He rises from the dead, to say
Look: you canot kill it.

He comes back to his closest friends, and says again
I am the way – follow me, and I will set you free
In this world, love is bound to suffer
But bear it, and love will teach you to live
Together, be my people – my friends, and I
Will do great things for you.

Do not be afraid: Sin will not stand. The victory
Has already been won.
It is possible to live another way: follow me.
Do not be afraid
The work I brought is already begun
There is a way, it is still real
The promise that this broken world can be made whole
Available to love.
There is still a Way.

Poets and the Mary Story I: "Her Fiat is our Fortune"

2010-08-29T15:05:00.003-05:00

“Her Fiat is our Fortune”: the Mary Story
(also on Episcopal Cafe)

There was a lively and sometimes very scholarly two-part discussion a month or so ago on Episcopal Café about the Virgin Birth, whether and why we should or should not believe in Mary’s perpetual virginity, what doing so says about ideas about women, the role of the creeds, etc., etc . I found as I read that I not really inclined to weigh in because I didn’t care that much about what seemed to be at stake. It may be that it’s a gender thing: one commentator in the fray did notice that not many women were weighing in on the whole question of Mary’s virginity or not, perpetual or temporary or whatever – and I have to admit that it doesn’t seem to be that important a question to me, at least in the terms in which it was being posed, as a question of doctrine).

But this doesn't mean that I don't mean what I say, saying in the creed that Jesus was "incarnate of the holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary" -- that mystery, about incarnation, is at the heart of my faith -- and in fact as readers of this blog may know I really like the story of Mary, especially the annunciation as told in the first chapter of the gospel of Luke-- I find it “makes sense of things” in my faith the way that profoundly true stories do, and in a way that make quarrels like the one about the nature & duration of Mary’s physical virginity (or not) seem beside the point, for me. I think this reaction comes out of my instincts as a reader of great imaginative literature and my vocation as a poet.

My own reading of the story of the Annunciation, in particular, has been shaped by the way that a number of 20th century poets, male and female, have read that story – seeing it as a story about how the Incarnation happened, and about miraculous and world-changing cooperation between a human being and God. And also in how the story is told in Scripture – especially in Luke’s gospel.

The story in Luke, skillfully put together, begins with a familiar pattern that we know from Hebrew Scripture: A barren woman, Elizabeth, finds that she is with child, in her old age. This tells us that we are reading a story that is in a continuous tradition with stories of God’s grace and favor to those who are marginalized So, in Luke, we start with the story of a barren woman conceiving, just when everyone thought God had stopped acting. The father, Zechariah, doesn’t believe the angel’s promise, and he’s struck dumb until that promise is fulfilled. So we have a story about the usual way that God’s promise works in the lives of the people. . (To me it misses the point to say that this business of God blessing barren women overvalues childbearing as a sign of female worth: the stories have been abused in this way, certainly, but that’s not what it’s about in Hebrew Scripture. Rather, in a story about the survival of God’s people, both naturally and spiritually, the whole barren-woman-made-mother motif is about the one who was rejected being blessed and made whole and honored by God. When his motif turns up, it’s a signal that God is working in this part of the story: NOT a normative statement about how a society should be organized).

Anyway – we get the story of Elizabeth, and a famliar motif to anyone who knows Hebrew Scripture: and then the stakes are raised.

Side by side with this story, we have the story of Mary, encountering the angel Gabriel with the extraordinary news that she will bear a child. This is extraordinary because she is a virgin/has no husband/has not known a man (pick your translation). Her status as a virgin means that she still “owns” her own body – she doesn’t belong to any man, so in that sense she is free to respond to God’s request. Now, Luke’s Greek readers were used to stories of human women conceiving by gods (the rape of Leda, by Zeus disguised as a swan, comes to mind) – but in those stories it usually happens without the woman’s consent. So you could say it’s a motif familiar to the Greeks, but here it’s told in a very Hebrew way – where the body matters. The story has to be told this way, and it works. (the issues of female purity that the tradition has brought to the reading do not seem to me to be IN the story here.) Mary doesn’t question the promise; she just wonders about the logistics: “How can this be, as I am a virgin?” In that, Luke’s telling of the story contrasts her with Zechariah, who asked for proof, and was silenced for doing so. Mary just wants to know what will happen to her, which seems to be a fair question, and the angel gives her an answer. And Mary gives her consent. That is the heart of the story.

And we know, in the story that follows – written for its audience of Greeks and Jews – that in a wonderfully earthy, Hebrew way, this Jesus whom we read about, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is actually “the Son of God” born of a woman, in the flesh. (I’ve always appreciated, in fact, the human homeliness of the Church’s wisdom in appointing March 25 as Feast of the Annuciation – 9 months before December 25, which was settled on as the Feast of the Nativity.) Aesthetically, imaginatively, theologically, and spiritually, the story “works” this way, and challenges us to consider at every turn that the Jesus we meet here is the hero of a story about how God is active (and now incarnate) in human affairs, both within and beyond Israel. He is God-with-us and “one of us” in a way that is really almost shocking, if you think about it. The story insists that we think about it.

The poet David Jones (about whom you can read more here), writes in the mid-twentieth century and re-tells the marystory in the context of salvation history, offers a reading of it that has shaped my thinking about both Annunciation and Incarnation (and in Jones it’s all connected to the Eucharist – but that’s probably for another post). Anyway, at one point in his long poem The Anathemata, the narrative voice the poem calculates the date of the Passion by looking back to the Annunciation:

Thirty four years and twenty-one days
since that germinal March
and terminal day
(no drought that year)
since his Leda
said to his messenger . . .
(his bright talaria on)
fiat mihi
(The Anathemata p. 189)

In the poet’s retelling of the story, Mary is God’s “Leda” (the woman in Greek mythology raped by Zeus, in the guise of a swan), but this event is not a rape: Mary’s consent is the important thing: she says “fiat mihi”: “let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Elsewhere in Jones’s long poem a lively female narrator says of Mary “ her fiat is our fortune” (p. 128) -- and in a note to this passage Jones acknowledges being inspired by the doctrine that “The Eternally Begotten could not have become begotten on a creature except by a creature’s pliant will” (Ana p. 128). In both poem and commentary, Jones, a Roman Catholic, is emphasizing an aspect of the cult of Mary more familiar in the eastern church, where Mary is celebrated as the human “God-bearer,” the Theotokos.

In this strain of the Christian tradition it’s not really about whether she’s a virgin or not,: it’s about her humanity, which happens to be a female humanity, and needs to be, for God’s purposes in this part of the story: it’s about a free human being consenting to be fully used, body and soul, for God’s purposes. “Her fiat is our fortune.” The poet puts it well. This is the kind of insight that has shaped my habit of going to the poets for insight into the deep spiritual and theological questions that challenge us, both in doctrine and in Scripture.

Anchored in God

2010-08-17T08:48:00.003-05:00

I haven't posted much lately, I see -- even forgot to put up my latest summer post from Episcopal Cafe -- Here it is, to get me re-started, and perhaps motivate me to write something else that's been "brewing"

also on episcopal cafe

In several different contexts over the past month, I’ve been brought up short again by this quotation from Evelyn Underhill’s The Spiritual Life. She writes: “a spiritual life is simply a life in which all that we do comes from the centre, where we are anchored in God.” It came up at the annual Quiet Day in honor of Evelyn Underhill, at Washington National Cathedral, and at a conference I was leading on Poetry and the Journey toward God, where we listened for the ways that poems can be an invitation, an opening, a first step into prayer-- into what Mary Oliver calls “a silence in which/ another voice may speak.” Underhill invites readers to think about people they’ve known either personally or through the tradition who reflected this confidence -- insisting that this life from the center is available to “normal people”; it is not some kind of superhuman spiritual achievement.

That same image of the anchor comes up in a spiritual we sing sometimes at my home parish, a hymn by Mother Jones that says what we all know about what we need -- particularly timely nowadays:
“In times likes these, we need a Saviour;
in times like these, we need an anchor
I’m very sure, I’m very sure
My anchor holds, upon the so-lid-rock.

(If you know the tune you’ll recognize how the tune and the meter leave us “anchored” in the rock, who is Jesus).

The anchor image is a good one, actually, because it suggests that even though we may drift, we ultimately know where we are, and there is a place we can get back to. And the spiritual life, considered as an integral part of our journey of faith and mission, is about grounding all that we do in the love and power of a reality beyond our inventions, prejudices, even righteous political positions , and a justice and mercy beyond our own making. Perhaps a fruitful direction for meditation is this: what causes me to drift away from where I am anchored? And what brings me up short, and pulls me back? This anchor image reflects a solidity of faith that many of us yearn for in ourselves and in our leaders. How do we get back to that, individually and collectively? And what sets us adrift?

So often our discussions of church life, governance, mission, and denominational politics seem to lose track of this kind of vision -- to reflect more familiar cultural values of marketing, institutional survival, or for leaders, personal mental health and self-care. Somewhere recently (Was it on the Café? I can’t remember.) I even ran across some discussion about how church leaders and clergy find they may not believe in God any more, and that’s just how it is (though we can be reassured that even if clergy have a crisis of faith this does not affect the validity of the sacraments). I’ve been musing about how often, in the privacy of a spiritual direction conversation, people have been relieved but surprised when I’ve raised the question: “so where is God in all this?” Something makes us forget to ask this question, whatever image that word “God” carries for us. It has become almost a commonplace that spiritual burnout is an inevitable outcome of ministry -- but I keep asking myself, why do we settle for this? Don’t we believe that there is something on offer in the life of faith? Some centering point that can draw us back to what is most real to us? At some point in most of our lives, someone’s centered faith helped bring us into the life of the church to begin with. So why is it so hard to keep track of that “centre, where we are anchored in God?”

I’m just raising the question, today. I suppose (and hope) that for many readers this will all seem obvious, perhaps not worth mentioning, but I’ve been brought up short by that quote from Underhill, and that “anchor” image, enough times lately to wonder whether there is something there worthy of continued meditation. Since genuine faith is usually “caught” rather than “taught,” I am wondering what the church would look like if more of us in leadership paid closer attention to where our faith is “anchored, ” and to what it takes for us, in our own particular lives, to relocate and find our center, in a quiet, undramatic, and “normal” way. The answers will be different for each person, but I think they’re good questions, and they’ve been helpful to my own meditations over this past month.

Covenant, Communion, Personhood, Wholeness - some thoughts to pursue

2010-05-17T21:50:00.005-05:00

These are some somewhat rambling reflections, published recently on episcopal cafe (where there is a comment thread), and coming out of some of my recent reading.

First - I think of the prayer we offer in most Episcopal churches as part of our weekly "prayers of the people" intercessions:

Father, we pray for your holy catholic church
That we all may be one.

We say this most Sundays, gathered around the altar in whatever local congregation we belong to. I’ve been thinking lately about this prayer as one of the many in our liturgy that both holds up a vision and confesses our very deep brokenness. And it has resonated particularly over the past few weeks when for various reasons I’ve been reading, side by side, Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas’s classic Being as Communion and Parker Palmer’s A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. Because I’m a word-person I’ve been playing with the consonance in the language between these two writers -- Orthodox theologian and Quaker retreat leader-- and finding a dissonance -- perhaps a fruitful one -- with some of the language about “covenant” that have come up lately on Episcopal Café. As a church and in our personal relationships, we are often living divided lives. Both these writers remind us, in different ways, that ours is a God who calls us to wholeness and unity. So what does that mean? My thoughts about this are still a little unformed but I’m hoping that putting them out there, partly in response to things I’ve been reading lately on the café, may elicit some discussion that will help me think more clearly.

So here goes.

Theologically and spiritually, in conversations about “covenant” and “communion,” I have been wondering whether we’re missing the point, or forgetting what these words mean because of the way their meaning is being distorted or manipulated in the political discussions within the Anglican Commuinon.

Just to remind ourselves of what we know: “Covenant” in Hebrew Scripture is about the relationship between God and God’s people -- “you will be my people and I will be your God” -- bad things happen when the covenant is broken, but ultimately it is God’s desire to restore it. “Again and again, you call us to return,” we say in our Eucharistic prayer, acknowledging this part of the story.

The “new covenant” established in the Eucharist is also about relationship between ourselves and Christ, and again, it comes from God’s side. We live in brokenness, all the time, in relations to these covenants -- we fail to live up to them. But I don’t think that our tradition can deny that the call to live into a covenant relationship with God is fundamental to our identity as Christians, however we express that identity. And so how to live into a covenant with God that demands something of us as a human community and as separate persons within that community is a worthwhile topic for theological reflection.

Living in covenanted relatinship with others is part of our human effort to imitate and reflect back the faithfulness of God. Zizioulas takes it further: he says that since our God is a unity of “persons in communion,” we live into our identity as persons made in the divine image through our relationships with one another. This is what it means to be made in the divine image; to the extent that we violate and distort human relationships, or seek dominance over one another, we are dimming the divine image in ourselves; this is called “sin.” In this view, Jesus’ command to “love one another as I have loved you” becomes primary, and love becomes a way of being to which we are continually called home. The Eucharist draws us together as a church to remind us of this.

A covenant IS different from a contract because it rests not on defending the interests of individuals but on setting terms that will preserve the relationship, through mutual consent. Our growing cynicism about the language about “bonds of mutual affection” in the Anglican Covenant debate is distressing to me because that language does express an ideal we are called to live into, with God’s help and despite our human brokenness.

I welcomed with interest the discussion on Episcopal Café about the covenant of marriage, and how it compares with the monastic life, in a discussion that I think was meant to get us thinking about the manner of life we are called to as Christians in relation to one another. Objections can legitimately be raised that it is seems exclusive to focus only on marriage and monasticism as models for covenanted relationship -- but I would like to see us have the conversation about what it means to live in covenanted relationship -- what does Christian marriage mean in an era of sexual freedom and gender equality? For those who can agree that marriage is not dependent on gender, can we have this discussion now? Surely people who have been denied the opportunity to marry have important thoughts to contribute to a discussion of what Christian marriage means. And through that discussion we might come to a fresh theological consideration of other relationships to which we give ourselves in love and commitment.

The point, in the marriage conversation, is that we’ve so lost track of covenant language that we can’t even talk about what we aspire to in our theology of Christian marriage (“in it is represented the union of Christ and the Church” we say in the liturgical prayer: what do we mean by that? Or do we avoid the whole conversation because it’s couched in sexist language? Or can we talk about how we’d translate the idea into language we can embrace? Can we peel of the layers of abuse/oppression in these words and get to some kind of understanding of the nature of the relationship with God that these words, this image of Spiritual Marriage holds? Or do we throw it out altogether, and if we do, what happens to the Biblical challenge to live in covenant with a God who is passionately engaged with us and who exhorts us to love one another?

If I were to announce in a contemporary assembly that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, there is no male and female but all are one in Christ “-- would people be offended by not being mentioned in the list? ((why did he leave out black or white, gay or straight, old or young, married or unmarried, east or west, north or south -- is he snubbing some group or other by exclusion? I exaggerate, but among liberals I think this can be a common distraction in our conversations - we focus on who seems to be excluded and sometimes miss the point) -- Paul of course is saying that there is a greater wholeness to which we are called, in which we find the fulness of our identity as human persons made in the image of God? Isn’t the point is that there are NO divisions in the divine life of Christ? And isn’t the invitation to hold up that vision, even amid our brokenness, and to admit that we all contribute to that brokenness, by those we exclude or allow to be excluded?

Similarly, even if few of us make profession to a monastic community, what are the expectations of monasticism that can help us in our human relationships? Joan Chittister suggests, for example, that “Benedictine spirituality is about caring for the people you live with and loving the people you don’t and loving God more than yourself. Benedictine spirituality depends on listening for the voice of God everywhere in life, especially in one another and here.” Is this an ideal we would like to retain as part of our identity as Christians and as Anglicans? How might it translate into our everyday situations. Why is it so difficult for us to have this kind of conversation?

I’m wondering what happens if we try on the Eastern Orthodox language and think of our particular selves in terms of “personhood” rather than in terms of “individuality.” It would be countercultural for us, in the post-enlightenment, individualistic west -- but it seems to me that this might help us to look more closely at the formative effect of our relationships in the Christian life -- how we shape and are shaped by one another, growing into the divine image, without denying the dignity of each and every human being. It seems to me that this may be what Parker Palmer is getting at when he invites people to live “undivided lives.”

None of this helps with what should be done about the Anglican Communion, the “Covenant,” etc. I don’t know where that will go; but I hope that our frustration over the politics and the difficulties of cross-cultural conversation (sketched out beautifully in Marshall Scott’s recent post on the café) will not lead us to become cynical about the abiding call to unity in Christ, or to fear serious discussion about what is radical, counter cultural and hard about the call to love one another, to live into covenanted relationships, and to recognize our deep identity in communion with persons very different from ourselves.

To desire unity in Christ is to come face to face with our brokenness; but isn’t that unity what we are called to as persons made in the image of God and called to be in communion with one another? The Covenant, the dream, of a God who desires relationship with us, is still the invitation we are called to hear. The brokenness is real, but so is the promise.

Reflecting on all of this (with apologies if it seems very disparate) I am led back to Verna Dozier’s wisdom, who sums it up when she writes: “We have all failed the dream of God. The terribly patient God still waits.”

Reading: "Fuel for the Fire" of Prayer

2010-04-30T21:22:00.008-05:00

I haven't been writing much because I've been reading - and trying to read in a different way than I've been accustomed to: following the advice of Abbot Hugh Gilbert, OSB (in an interview with Phillip Zaleski in the anthology The Inner Journey: Views form the Christian Tradition)
Abbot Hugh says this about reading in Benedictine practice

Reading is the food of prayer. Or perhaps one can say that reading is fuel for the fire. Prayer is the flame, but you won’t have fire if you don’t have fuel. If the monk is not feeding himself with the word of God, if he is not putting the logs of the word of God into the hearth of his heart, there won’t be prayer. The fire will just die out in one way or another.
. . . .
If people come from an academic background, they have to learn to read in a less acquisitive way. Not read just to make notes and gain information and write an essay about it in the end. But to read for reading’s sake, as it were, to read with an eye to meeting God.

"To read with an eye to meeting God." I've been reading, just lately, two books that speak to each other interestingly -- at least in my imagination -- about God and the experience of the Divine Life. The first is John Zizioulas's classic, Being as Communion. It develops the Eastern Orthodox idea of God as a "communion of persons" - a being defined by communion -- and suggests that what we mean when we say we are created in the divine image is that we are made to be persons in communion: that is our eternal identity. I am who I am, who God has made me to be, and the journey of Christian faith is to grow more and more into that person, and to understand more and more how I am connected to other persons, in the "communion" (koinonia) that is the true divine life. He makes the distinction between being "individuals in community" -- a consumerist model -- occupied with what we can get out of the community -- and being "persons in communion" -- gradually discovering our divine identity through our connection with other human beings, all of us made in the image of God. Zizioulas says the Church lives this image of the divine life most fully at the Eucharist. I'm not expressing this very well, but it seems to me to be a compelling idea -- one I'd heard about but have enjoyed mulling over more fully, wading through the often quite technical systematic theology that Zizioulas presents.

I've been reading other things too - most recently Parker Palmer's wonderfully titled book A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life: Welcoming the Soul and Weaving Community in a Wounded World. -- which I think speaks to some of the same things as Zizioulas, in another mode -- but will write more about this in another post. I'm not sure I fully understand everything I've read in Zizioulas -- couldn't write a term paper or a theological essay on him yet -- but the experience of reading & pondering this work has been rich and prayerful. "Fuel for the fire" of prayer indeed! I want to read around more in the spirituality and practice of the very earliest church fathers.

Perhaps I'll write more soon about what I've been reading. But that's enough for now.

Faith and Writing

2010-04-18T16:22:00.005-05:00

I'm just back from the biannual Festival of Faith and Writing held at Calvin College. It's the second time I've been and I hope to make a habit of it. Will probably be processing for awhile the things I heard, and I hope that may prompt more frequent blog posts in the next couple of weeks.

It was wonderful to be around people who understand that writing is a vocation, whether or not one is widely published. And we heard from some lovely people who are published writers -- Scott Cairns, Thomas Lynch, Parker Palmer -- many others (those are the three who signed books for me). I am reminded that we write because it is a calling - and that writing well is part of how we worship -- attention to the craft a kind of contemplative activity. It makes me look forward to the summer months when I have more time to truly attend to that crafting. It also reminded me that a love of reading is something that writers share - nice to be among people who shared that passion.

What I'm chewing over right now -- perhaps following on some of the reading I've been doing in orthodox spirituality, and some of my Holy Week blogging -- is the keynote speech given by poet Scott Cairns. Scott was raised in a strict Calvinist tradition but is now a very joyful Eastern Orthodox Christian, and he is perhaps unique in his ability to bring alive to people what is richest in orthodox doctrine - and as he often says, the common heritage of all Christians. A couple of things he said in his opening remarks stay with me: first, just generally, the clear sense he had that all of us abide in communion with the great Mystery that we call the Love of God. Jokingly, he brought greetings from his Orthodox priest to the Calvinists -- "tell them,"he said, "that they are not as bad as they think they are" -- a wonderful summary of the difference between Orthodoxy, which sees us as made in the image of God, and our sinfulness as our tendency to dull or violate that abiding image of God in us. So there is no sense of original sin or "total depravity" of human beings, which is so important to some forms of Calvinism, and notorious in popular accounts of Christianity in this country (the sense that we are hopelessly fallen and bad and can only hope for redemption through the mercy of God) -- of course there's no denial, in either tradition, of the reliability of God's mercy or the sinfulness of humanity, but for me the language of Orthodoxy (also used by many Anglicans and by many Christians these days _ is a much more generous and hopeful understanding of our brokenness and of our call to be whole and human and in communion with God, in the orthodox way of thinking about sin and redemption. I appreciated that. Scott also invited us to reflect on whether we follow the way of faith as servants, hoping for a reward, or as slaves, fearful of punishment, or as lovers, who simply long to be near the beloved, and are formed by our love. Obviously the invitation, he would say, is to the last - to live into our identities as persons made in the image of God, and to understand ourselves as a whole community living within the divine life, and growing more and more into fulness of life.

Some of this is my language, brought in from my reading of orthodox theologian John Zizioulas, of whom more later -- but it seemed to me that Scott was speaking my language, and his poetry does, too -- in a kind of pithy, down-to-earth way that is very aware of human brokenness, hypocrisy, and sinfulness but radiates the experience of the divine mercy. Here's the end of one of his poems, "Adventures in New Testament Greek, Metanoia (metanoia, in Greek, is usually translated "repentance" - but it means "turning around," implies a total change of life, a turning toward God -- I love these lines:

The heart's metanoia
on the other hand, turns
without regret, turns not
so much away, as toward

as if the slow pilgrim
has been surprised to find
that sin is not so bad
as it is a waste of time. (from his volume Compass of Affection, p. 93)

Good Friday Thoughts

2010-04-02T09:10:00.007-05:00

The Maundy Thursday sermon last night (preached by our assistant rector, Peter Schell (you can see videos of his preaching at the Church of Our Saviour homepage – though not this sermon) has given me a good image to take through this Holy Week observance. He spoke quite simply about how Jesus, in giving his disciples the Eucharist, was giving them a “point of reference” – a landmark to return to when we lose our way. When we feel lost, or headed in the wrong direction, that point of reference, he said, will always reorient us, and help us “find our way home.” It is a gift of love to us.

For me, the whole observance of the Triduum: Maundy Thursday-Good Friday-Great Vigil of Easter and Easter Day – has become such a point of reference in life. Each year, the return to the Cross is a time to re-orient my life toward what is truly real: the mysterious love of God for a broken world – the reality of a way of life offered to us, different from the one we usually choose, a way that leads straight through the brokenness of the world, into the fullness of life that God desires and intends for us and all creation.

And so each year Good Friday invites me to re-orient my life, toward the “home” that is prepared for all of us, beginning right where we are, at the heart of the Divine Life. I bring to the Cross – that mysterious symbol of love and suffering “made holy” (see my previous post) – whatever is most broken in my own life – and I ask what it might mean, in light of the central mystery of our faith.

This year I have a sense of urgency about how true this all feels: the urgency of a love that is always calling to us across whatever obstacles we put in the way – the agony of that love when it is rejected and not heard – and yet its persistence, in a deeply personal and yet mysterious way, in and through the darkest moments of our human experience. I cannot get to it in words, though there is a poem coming, perhaps – in the voice of Christ, beginning “walk with me” –(stay tuned). I’m trying to listen -- there’s an invitation, here at the Cross, to experience the divine desire to share in our human brokenness and to show us a way through that is beyond anything we can find on our own: a way through to life. I am convinced that this is what God offers – and for me Good Friday is a day when it all seems vividly, heartbreakingly true. I am grateful for this.

And yet I also know it is a mystery beyond what anyone can grasp or understand. Each year, in the process of finding our way again, we come up against this. Evelyn Underhill writes “I suppose no soul of any sensitiveness can live through Holy Week without an awed and grateful sense of being incorporated in a mystery of self-giving love which yet remains beyond our grasp.” I see what she means.

At Our Saviour on Maundy Thursday, when the altar is stripped bare, the crosses in the church are also veiled in black. Over the years, that black-veiled Cross has become a powerful invitation to me to simply be in the mystery. I realize that this is a local custom – many churches do it but many don't -- it isn’t observed everywhere. But that solid symbol of hope shrouded in mystery – life hidden in death and brokenness – that black-veiled cross is the symbol, for me, of the mystery to which our lives are oriented. It is the point of reference that I return to each year, to reorient my life, and find my way home. I look forward to spending some quiet time today, in between actual services, simply resting in the presence of that Mystery.

"Sacrifice" - Some thoughts for Holy Week

2010-03-31T17:31:00.003-05:00

Also on episcopal cafe

On most days in Lent this year my prayers have included Psalm 51, the penitential psalm, and various parts of it have been resonating for me. Some fresh insight seems to be coming as I pause over the verses late in the psalm:

Had you desired it, I would have offered sacrifice,
But you take no delight in burnt offerings
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit
A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Ps 51: 17-18)

I haven’t been sure what I meant, praying this psalm, by “sacrifice,” but an article I’ve run across just lately by Orthodox theologican Andrew Schmemann has opened this up to me in ways that will probably carry my meditations through much of the rest of Lent. Here are some directions that meditation is taking.

Schmemann resists the western notion of sacrifice as a legalistic “satisfaction” of an unpaid debt – something offered to make up for sins or to earn forgiveness – or to satisfy the anger of a sinned-against God. Instead he insists that “sacrifice” is “an ontology” – a way of being. The word literally means “to make holy.” When the people of Israel went up to Jerusalem and offered sacrifices they were responding to the holiness of God by offering back something from their own flocks, thus making holy the things from their daily lives; when they feasted on the meat of animals offered as “burnt offerings,” they saw themselves as sharing in a meal with the God to whom the sacrifice was offered, and so they, and their offerings, were “made holy.” And so the sacrifice also was one way that they responded to and renewed the Covenant – assented to God’s desire that ‘you will be my people and I will be your God” – the sacrifice is reciprocal, mutual. God was often delighted (though in the psalm the sacrifice demanded goes beyond burnt offering and into the human heart). Sin offerings work the same way: because we were made to be holy people, by a God who longs for us, acts of repentance or turning back to God, become celebrations of a feast of reconciliation – the feast ordered up by the prodigal son’s father because his the beloved has returned home. (I now see even more clearly why this image of the prodigal son figures so prominently in one of our rites for the Sacrament of Reconciliation (BCP p.450))

“Where there is no sacrifice there is no life,” Schmemann writes. “Sacrifice is rooted in the recognition of life as love: a giving up, not because I want more for myself, or to satisfy an objective justice, but because it is the only way of reaching the fulness that is possible for me.”

As we are made holly, through God’s loving invitation, we want more and more to offer ourselves, and all that we we have – and so Schmemann wisely suggests the opposite of sacrifice is ‘consumerism” – the belief that we own what we have and have control over it and need to own more and more. An ethic of sacrifice recognizes that growth toward God always requires a letting go and a receiving, a mutuality that is part of the divine nature, part of what we share in because we were made in the image of God.

Of course the divine invitation to a life of sacrifice – a life energized by the desire for greater communion with God – can be distorted by all kinds of power dynamics. Women for generations have been familiar with the expectation of “self-sacrifice” often before any mature sense of self has been built or affirmed, and this can be profoundly wounding—one of the sadder results of an authoritarian reading of the notion of “sacrifice.” But this is exactly to the notion of sacrifice that Schmemann refjects – “a legal transaction. . . a duty of the creation to the Creator, like an income tax”( Schmemann, p.142) -- the notion that our giving of self is a transaction, a condition that wins us the love we long for.

That is not how God works: the process of being “made holy” is one that invites a constant, willing giving over, giving up, of parts of ourselves we thought we controlled; and it also invites a practice of receiving with gratitude – a practice that we lose very easily! Because our deepest identity is that we are made by God and beloved by God, the process of sacrifice is ultimately a life-giving and freeing one: “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains but a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) – Jesus is talking here about his own sacrifice and how it gives life. There is much more here for further meditation.

Repentance, sacrifice, being made holy, bearing much fruit – it is all part of the same process, a way of being that Schmemann calls “sacrificial living.” To return to the psalm: a “troubled spirit,” the sense of separation that comes when I truly examine my conscience in relation to the faithfulness of God, is a gift that “makes holy” – a returning to the One who loves me. If it hurts to look honestly at myself, I can rely on God to receive what I bring – a heart made a little bit more sincere by self-examination. Another small step toward the trust-filled returning, the self-offering that gives life.

I hadn’t realized before reading this Schmemann piece how much this psalm of contrition is also a psalm of celebration – an invitation to deeper connection, through deeper honesty, with the One who made us and calls us. For Schmemann the idea of sacrifice (making holy) is integrally connected to worship and to Eucharist and here too is much more food for meditation. But perhaps it is enough for now to observe that the same psalm contains these familiar words of worship:

“Open my lips, O God
And my mouth shall show forth your praise.” (Ps 51:16)

*note - for further reading, the Schmemann piece is collected in a really good anthology put out by the Parabola Magazine it's called "The Energy of Life: Sacrifice and Worship,” from Parabola 3:2. Reprinted in Lorraine Kisley, ed. The Inner Journey: Views from the Christian Tradition, p.143ff

New Online Journal Devoted to the Work of David Jones

2010-03-14T16:43:00.008-05:00

I'm delighted to announce the appearance of a special issue of the online journal Flashpoint, a journal of modernist literature, completely devoted to the work of the British artist and poet David Jones. I helped to edit this special issue, which includes most of the talks that were given last year about this time, at a conference that the Cathedral College of Washington National Cathedral sponsored entitled: "David Jones: Faith, Art and Poetry in a Post-Christian World". Jones has been a focus of my scholarly work for many years. My book on his work, At the Turn of a Civilisation: David Jones and Modern Poetry was published in 1994. Returning to his work after many years I find that Jones's poetry, which is demanding and highly allusive, and his poetics - which are based in a sacramental Christianity -- were very influential for me, and I reflect on this in my own paper in this new online collection, called "The Sagging End and Chapter's Close: Revisiting a Long Conversation with David Jones's Poetry" -- might be of interest to some readers of this blog. My introduction to the special issue provides a map through the various papers, and I hope gives some feeling for the conference itself - there's more about the conference at a blog I set up last year for David Jones enthusiasts at DavidJonesArtistandpoet

Mourning - Another part of "Mothering Life"

2010-02-26T14:18:00.008-05:00

I've written quite a lot of poetry about "mothering life" and its blessings. But these past few weeks I have been experiencing a painful side of it all. A young friend and neighbor -- whom I've known his whole life through our babysitting co-op years ago -- died a few days ago. He was 20. He was also a gifted poet, and I had the privilege of working with him and his family on pulling together a chapbook of his poems, which is now the March Book of the Month at Finishing Line Press . But today I am writing my own poem of grieving, shared with a whole community of stricken friends and neighbors, who loved this young man and his family. Here it is.

Broken Sonnet

The time was very brief when we could keep
Them safe, secure and happy, meet their needs.
We shared the work, the joy of raising them.
Now they are gone, or going, into a world
We can’t protect them from, where hard things happen
And this is part of life, we say. But No: Not This.

The little boy whom we remember, blonde, playful and earnest
Grows into strong young manhood, is a friend
And poet. Stricken with a tumor on a Christmas Eve, he lives
A whole life in his twentieth year, writes poetry
That speaks out of a wisdom beyond years
And dies, leaving us all
Speechless with grief, hearts aching for the tears
Of our friends, his parents, their empty arms.

--Kathy Staudt
February 26, 2010

Snowbound:Some Spiritual Lessons

2010-02-25T18:07:00.004-05:00

(Also on episcopal cafe)

Except for a brief grocery run between storms, I was “snowbound” for nearly a week, from February 9-13, with the two huge storms falling on the DC area. It took 2 days for our suburban cul-de-sac to be plowed at all – and then the second blizzard came. Unlike many in the area we have had our power on the whole time, so we were not materially deprived, apart from cabin fever. It was just a long stretch of time at being at home, mostly it’s been an experience of just being “stopped.”

At first we celebrated this time as an “enforced Sabbath,” something that is welcome in the workaholic culture of the DC area, when the weather conditions and the slowness of the cleanup process simply force us to let go of whatever important things we were doing. And for a day or so, yes, it was a welcome “sabbath time.” But after that a more insidious inertia set in.

Indeed, I have been wondering whether an “enforced Sabbath” is kind of a contradiction in terms. Sabbath is supposed to be a regular spiritual practice, a part of our routine – a way that we simply let go of busy-ness to acknowledge that God is Lord of all of our time and work, and that our work is not our own, but God’s. It strikes me that perhaps a more regular practice of genuine Sabbath would have been a good preparation for the spiritual challenge this snowstorm posed for me. For what I felt most of the time was a deep restlessness, a sense of being unhooked from any reliable routine or pattern, and so an inability to settle to much of anything – even settling down to read a good book, as I’d longed to do, and had time to do, or to write, or pray, or do anything much more than responding to what came: answering email, gmail chatting, facebook, grading the occasional paper.

By the end of the week I was snowbound both outwardly and internally. Unmotivated. Stuck. It is a place in life I recognize, and perhaps it has left me with a useful image, a new spiritual metaphor to remember when I do not have control over the way forward, and the place I’m in seems crowded, enclosed, confused, with too many competing demands. Outwardly, I kept busy, apparently “doing things.” Since I work at home, the work was all there, looking at me, and I picked my way through it, in an unmotivated way. But any substantive or creative writing was just blocked. With the rhythm of days flattened out, I lost the internal rhythm of prayer, study, work and rest that would normally steady and settle me. The computer was too alluring – a way of staying connected with people, emails and facebook posts that make me feel needed, important, not buried at the end of a suburban cul de sac. My spouse was at home, also working, we broke for meals together, and I did find that losing myself in the creative art of cooking does help to redeem a snowy day -- but even that grew old after 5 days.

Inwardly, my response to this snowstorm and the break in our routine was beginning to feel more like the kind of “stopping” of life that comes with illness, or grieving, or other unexpected interruptions. Times when we are “brought up short” – as theologian Richard Osmer puts it – where we come up against a break in our regular expectations of life and are not sure what to make of it. Sometimes such times turn out to be places of grace- but they sure don't feel that way when we're in them!

Then there was the shoveling out: my way to freedom, once the roads were clear, thwarted by my own bad choices: I had parked the car in the driveway after the first storm, to save the effort of shoveling our whole driveway, which slopes uphill from the garage. But the second snowstorm buried the car under a snowdrift – so the work of digging it out doubled. In the end I needed to dig the whole driveway, roll the car back into the garage, and begin again. No work saved, hard to see how long it would take me – and no help in sight. The neighbor who had helped me after the first storm was tapped out; my spouse was laid up with bronchitis. My car would be free only when I could get it out.

The task itself was clear enough, but discouraging. I would dig away at the snow but there was nowhere to go with it – the piles blew back at me, and though I’m in decent shape it grew tiring, heaving each shovelful to the top of the growing snowpiles along the driveway. Gradually I’d begin to see patches of pavement, mingled with ice -- but I’d think: “this will take hours – maybe won’t be done by dark today. I don’t know how long my strength will last.” All I could do was to keep filling the shovels full, piling snow high on the already deeply covered lawn behind me. An unrewarding task for long stretches, but obviously the only way out.

Gradually, shovelful by shovelful, I began to break through to a way out.. It was fine as long as I could focus on the single task: lifting the next shovelful, moving the snow, pausing to admire the brilliant sky and the sparkling icicles around me. When I started to obsess about how long it would be before I was dug out, and whether it would be today or tomorrow, discouragement quickly overwhelmed.. There was no way of knowing how soon my efforts would pay off. I simply had to keep on. Knowing it would be done eventually. Not knowing when, or how long I could last, this shift, before taking a break.

But I can't say I did it all myself Help came, finally, when I was about ready to admit defeat for the day – from someone with fresh arms and a fresh approach. He moved the last few shovelfuls and backed the car out for me, up and over the icy hill, and finally, I was free.

I’m appreciating some spiritual insights from this experience of being snowbound. It may be reaching a bit, but the metaphor works for me, I shall try to remember all of this next time I am aware of being spiritually “snowbound” – in that place of interior “stuckness” that is all too familiar for me.

Missing Church: Meditations on a Snowy Sunday (Epiphany 7)

2010-02-07T12:27:00.009-05:00

I am a Sunday church-goer. Statistics tell us that may mean I’m part of a waning group – I keep hoping that’s not so. But for me it’s simply true: my life is grounded in the rhythm that includes showing up with other Christians, on a Sunday morning, to worship God, to hear the Word, to be together in the mystery, as it is for us that week. Since I’m also a “professional Christian” for part of my life – often teaching & traveling on Sunday mornings, I don’t always get to worship at my preferred place, the 10:30 service at Our Saviour, Silver Spring. But I usually get to church somewhere, sometime on Sunday, when I can. Sunday worship is part of the deep shape of my life. If I miss it or it is disrupted for long I begin to feel un-whole.

Sunday worship didn’t happen for me last week because I was traveling (I offered my morning prayers along the beach of Monterey Bay and felt connected with God, but the communal piece was still missing—and couldn’t be scheduled). This week it won’t happen, either, because we are buried under 2 feet of snow, and it’s unlikely our cul-de sac will be plowed out for the next 24 hours.

But one great gift of Anglican/Episcopalian tradition is the book of “common prayer,” and so this morning I have spent some time slowly and deliberately reading the service of Morning Prayer, using the lessons appointed for Sunday Eucharist by the Revised Common Lectionary, remembering that even though I am alone, here in this sunlit-snowlit place that is my study, there are members of the church at prayer at this time, today, somewhere – many of them reading and listening to these same words. This is a comfort to me, and a connection. It is said that 'When one member of the church is at prayer, the whole church is at prayer." I hope this is true.

This weekend would have been a retreat weekend for the vestry of our church – and I’m the Rector’s Warden – the senior lay leader for the church – so our worship, with these lessons, would have been a Eucharist with this small group, discerning together what our common call to leadership in the church might mean for the coming year. I am impressed by how appropriate the lessons appointed for today, the 7th Sunday in Epipihany, are for those of us called to leadership – and so I’m dwelling with them, and putting up a few thoughts that have been particularly vivid in this quiet worship time, and that I want to remember after the snow clears and I’m back into the busy-ness & complexity of life & leadership.

The first lesson is that wild passage from Isaiah 6: 1-8. The story of how the prophet Isaiah, praying alone in the temple, has an overwhelming vision of the holy – so overwhelming it makes him completely aware of his own unworthiness, as a mere mortal, to have anything to do with God. (“Woe is me,” he says, “for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.”) But the point of the story is that God calls him and makes him worthy: it’s a strong, shocking image: the angel puts a burning coal to the prophet’s mouth, in his vision, and says, essentially: “God has made your lips pure. No excuses now.” The next word from God is the naming of a need –“Who will go for us?” And the prophet, made whole and inspired, says “here am I , send me.” Not really knowing what he’s getting into – but face to face with the power, beauty, and ultimate trustworthiness of a God who seems to want to be in touch with humanity, and to use this particular human being for some purpose. “Here am I, send me!” seems the only answer.

Not all of us identify with that story just because it is SO dramatic and supertnatural: for Isaiah it is the source of his conviction, what makes it possible for him to proclaim an unpopular message that will not be heard in his generation. He agrees to play his part in an unfolding story whose redemptive ending he will not live to see. Kind of grim. But there is joy and conviction in his willingness to say “Here am I, send me.” That’s what stays with me. What might that spirit of joyful obedience look like, for me? Something to ponder.

Then there’s the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul bears witness to the Resurrection as the core event that defines all of our faith as Christians – how Christ Jesus appeared to the disciples, to James, to the apostles, and last of all to him. That witness, placed next to the Isaiah story, sounds to me like profoundly good news: Though the Isaiah story seems to me just, well, crazy, I can think of moments in my life when I have felt sure of the presence of the Risen Lord, as an invisible but active, joyful, personal love, calling me to embrace and affirm life even in the face of great suffering and loss. Many Christians can point to these experiences in their own lives. Or they have been brought to a place of hope by hearing others’ stories of Resurrection faith. Or by the conviction and joy at the heart of an Easter celebration. Our connection to the Risen Lord as we’ve experienced it (sometimes we don’t call it that) may be the equivalent, in our lives, to Isaiah’s vision. It is what makes us able to say, in some way – as any of us who are involved in leadership have said – “Here am I. send me.” I wonder if we should be sharing, more intentionally, these stories of Resurrection faith?

And then we come to Luke 5:1-1l. My favorite among the stories of the call of the fishermen that we run into in all of the gospels. Jesus singles out Peter, and asks to use his boat as a place to teach from. So Peter sits beside him in the boat, presumably listening to what he is preaching – the good news of God’s love for all, and especially for the poor and the marginalized (a big theme in Luke/Acts, especially). After this Jesus tells him, “Put out into deeper water and let down your nets.” And Peter’s response is like the one I’ve given a lot lately, in moments of distress over the struggles of the church, especially – “Lord, we’ve tried that already, a million times. It’s not going to work.” Jesus is persistent, and Peter replies, faithfully, “If you say so,” -- and he puts down the nets and finds an abundance previously unimagined. What is the equivalent, for us in leadership today, of that invitation to “put out into deeper water and cast down your nets.?” Where are we resisting invitations to find abundance?

These are my meditations coming out of my “Sunday time” – not the same as it would have been, in church with others, singing and listening – but a time of worship and listening nonetheless.

After the lessons, the service of Morning Prayer takes us into the prayers – and includes a “collect for Sundays” – which I almost never use because I’m usually at a Eucharist on Sunday morning, rather than at morning prayer (two distinct services in the prayer book). But this does express well the simple blessing of Sunday church, as a practice that shapes my week -- what I’m missing today, and what I’ve partly reclaimed, in this time of solitary “common prayer” this morning:

O God, you make us glad with the weekly remembrance of the glorious resurrection of your Son our Lord: Give us this day such blessing through our worship of you, that the week to be come may be spent in your favor; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Love, the Guest is On the Way

2009-12-24T11:29:00.003-05:00

I wrote this piece for episcopal cafe Sunday, and appropriately, they're running it today, Christmas Eve-- now, as I begin the final preparations for our quieter family Christmas celebration, I am aware, quietly, of the deep mystery of this celebration of the Incarnation -- it's something about Love coming among us, wanting to be with us, rejoicing when we find ways to be together, despite so many obstacles life offers. Without being able to put it into words I am learning something about this mystery, as I go about the practical, outward tasks of preparation. And I am grateful for this holy season.

Here's the piece:

For the past day I’ve been happily preparing for a party we’re giving for my husband’s co-workers, and humming as I go, the Advent hymn:

People look east, the time is near of the crowning of the year
Make your house fair, as you are able
Trim the hearth and set the table
People look east, and sing today
Love, the Guest is on the way

With two feet of snow on the ground, and our house on a cul de sac, it is now a little unclear when the party will actually happen – probably we’ll need to postpone it. But with the whole family home to chip in, and the house full of good smells and music, the time of preparation, surrounded by falling snow all day yesterday, has been a time of blessing – whenever the party may be. And out of it has come a Advent poem, which I’ll share here. Some readers of the café already know that my new book of poems, Waving Back: Poems of Mothering Life, from Finishing Line Press, is now out and available on Amazon. This poem is in the same vein as many of those poems – but it’s brand new (and likely to be revised beyond this version). I offer it to all of you, on this snowy Advent IV in Washington, when we pray “that our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.”

Make Your House Fair

Today I will clean clutter out of rooms
Push sofas up against the wall
Begin the preparations for a feast.

The Christmas tree will glow
We will pull out the outgrown toys
To please our youngest guests

And friends from all over the world
Will fill our modest house
Loading the long table
With food that they will bring

Tomorrow, for a time, we will all be in one place
Greeting one another, noticing together
That once again, the festive time has come.

The darkness of the year is not dispelled
It lingers at the windows,
Weighs on hearts
For some there is no consolation here

But for me,
The welcome task today is to create
In this, our house, a place of warmth and light
To grow cramped space into a gathering place
Where for a time
In glow of fellowship, and whatever we believe
Together, we may celebrate
The crowning of another year of life.

Kathleen Henderson Staudt
(copyright 2009)

2009-11-30T22:13:00.002-05:00

also on episcopal cafe

By Kathleen Staudt

I have been teaching for years about the ministry of the laity, resonating with Verna Dozier’s writing about “the Church, the people of God” as opposed to “the Church, the Institution.” I have explored with people the implications of our baptismal covenant and more recently reflected deeply on the catechism’s account of the ministry of the laity: “to represent Christ and his church, to bear witness to him wherever we may be, and -- oh yes – almost an afterthought, “according to the gifts given us, to take our place in the life, worship and governance of the Church.” (BCP, p.855) The work of the Church, I’ve been telling people for almost a generation, is primarily in the world, carried out by “the church, the people of God.” The institutional church & its leaders sustain and nurture us in our ministries. That’s the idea, anyway.

And now I find I am taking my own place in the “life, worship and governance of the Church,” by serving as the Rector’s Warden in my congregation. I've thought of myself mainly as a "spiritual formation person.," a mission-minded Christian. So why am I spending all this time on budgets, finance, "maintenance?" As we put all these resources into maintaining and sustaining a building, staff, and program, I need, for my own sanity, to ask: What are we doing here? Here, in this place where the church building stands: on a busy thoroughfare leading into Washington DC, just inside the Capital beltway, on the edge of a suburban neighborhood.

Some insights about this came to me recently on “parish beautification day,” when some of us came over to church on a Saturday morning to do some deep cleaning and setting-to-rights in the aftermath of major work on our new HVAC system, the centerpiece of our capital campaign. My assigned job was to take a rag, a bucket, and some Murphy’s oil soap and wash down the tops of our solid oak pews. I had to empty the wash water every other pew because it was black with the soil from all those human hands, supporting themselves as they stood, sat and knelt at worship. I thought of Gerard Manly Hopkins’s poem, “God’s Grandeur,” where he says that “all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil, /and wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell.” Real people, bringing with them all the mess and muck of life, come here to worship and pray and be together at our lively worship services in this place, and we leave our marks. For a moment my job felt like the rite of foot-washing we are called to on Maundy Thursday, acknowledging the soiled humanness of all of us, our need to be washed in order to participate in Christ.

As I worked, together with my friends Quinton and Abdullah, washing floors and pews in various parts of the sanctuary, a woman came in the front door, which we had left open. She wondered if she could fill a bag of food from our food closet; she’d lost her job and this would help her to make ends meet this week. We welcomed her gave her a bag,, and showed her where the pantry was -- and reflected, among ourselves, at our own blessedness at having enough, right now, in these hard times, when so many people are struggling economically.

Indeed, it seems that many in the local community are turning to our presence on this corner in hopes of finding a place of help and welcome. More and more, in these difficult times, the rector reports that homeless people are coming to our door in search of food, warm clothing, access to social services. A community of homeless people is forming under the beltway overpass, just a quarter of a mile down the road. We are clearly being called to some deeper discernment about how we can best and most responsibly provide the right kind of help to our near neighbors in need. The church building, with its carving of Our Saviour, arms outstretched, over the front door, says to the world, “There is help here.” Somehow the building and the people alike are called to give solid form to that help.

“The church is not a building/ The church is not a steeple/ The church is not a resting-place/ The church is a people,” goes a song my children learned in Sunday school. But now it seems more complicated than that. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes somewhere that “the church of Jesus Christ takes up space in the world,” and our buildings and the way we use them is one way we do this. As I enter my 2nd year of a 3-year term in leadership, I am praying for clarity about how we are called to use what we have – in building, staff, and other resources—the nitty-gritty, institutional stuff that we support with our regular givings and thanks-givings – to be the presence of Christ on this corner, for those around us and for all who come through our doors.

My book is out!

2009-11-18T22:58:00.004-05:00

My new book of poems is out. If you ordered it you should receive it soon. It's also available on amazon (feel free to write a review if you are so inclined,once you've seen your copy) and from Finishing Line Books (order it from the publisher to support small press publishing!)

A lovely post on a spiritual practice for dark times

2009-11-18T16:33:00.002-05:00

Just want to give a "shout out" and provide a link to what I think is a quite beautiful post on today's episcopal cafe by a former student. I love the way he describes the blessing that the practice of spiritual direction has been to so many of us -- and the way that his use of the traditional practice of the daily "examen" opens a way through times of darkness. Check it out!

Resources for Vocational Discernment - especially for Young Adults

2009-11-14T17:14:00.008-05:00

I received a grant earlier this year from the Episcopal Evangelical Education Society (EES) to do some work with Young Adult groups around discernment -- helping people explore the meaning and purpose of their lives, using practices of prayer and guided questions and meditations about their lives. I'm trying to assemble these resources into a form that will work for people. I'd love it if readers of this blog -- especially the young adults, but everyone, really, could give me some feedback on these materials. I'm developing a new site at Discerning Your Way in Life -- a second "poetproph" page. With the help of a friend who leads the Young Adult Group at St. Mark's, Capitol Hill in DC, I've also put some of these resources up on a wetpaint site. You can find that here I have very mixed feelings about the platform, but would appreciate it if people could take a look and let me know what you think of some of the materials and interactive things (especially videos) collected there -- haven't figured out how to migrate the videos to a "blogspot" framework.

You can tell if you've followed these postings that the practice of discernment has been very important to me in my writing and teaching. Feedback would be very welcome if anyone feels like weighing in. How might I present/package/offer these materials in ways that would be useful to you?

Halloween Nostalgia, and All Saints Day

2009-10-31T16:31:00.009-05:00

This is the first time I've been home for Halloween night in a number of years, and I'm feeling nostalgic. Perhaps this isn't surprising for someone who spent 20 years of her life with identity firmly fixed in "momdom." Today (raking up leaves into piles but realizing there were no small people to jump in them -- and haven't been for some time) I have been remembering my children's pre-teen years when Halloween was a BIG deal in our household and neighborhood. We spent weeks before the event planning what my son & daughter would be for Halloween and figuring out how to help them "be" that was one of my creative challenges -- (I was one of those moms who usually put together some kind of homemade costume). This was a particular challenge with my son who when he was in elementary school tended to want to go out as one of his imaginary friends, whom no one had ever seen. So I had to work with his instructions. My daughter would look forward exuberantly to the day, from the time she was very small, and our neighborhood -- and the neighborhoods of her friends, later on -- were very hospitable to trick-or-treaters. So it was a fun, family time. And since in those days all the neighborhood kids went to the same elementary school, it was a neighborhood time, too. It seemed as if it would always be that way though of course it was just 7 or 8 years of our lives, probably, all together. But it was a special time.

It also marked, for me, the beginning of "holiday season" -- when it was part of my role as the Mom to engineer the various special family traditions. That role persists, & I still love it, though now I'm observing it in less visible ways, e.g. by making the plane reservations for everyone to come home for Thanksgiving. And I'm recognizing that to the kids in the neighborhood our house is now one of the ones where people they don't really know live -- those slightly older people who appreciate visits from children. I'll need to leave the light on so they know they're welcome. It's fine being in this role -- but I'm remembering the other times, too, today.

And tomorrow is All Saints Sunday AND All Saints Day -- one of my favorite days of the church year. It was the celebration of All Saints, with its vision of a vast communion that extends through and beyond the boundaries of life and death, beginning where we are right now, that brought me into the Episcopal Church and its liturgical tradition, many years ago. (For a very good summary of what All Saints is all about read Peter Carey's post here). There have been years when I've been indifferent to Halloween, or even irritated or creeped out by some of the excesses in its celebrations -- but I always do look forward to the celebration of All Saints, the opportunity to renew my commitment to my Baptism and a vision for human life that is hopeful and strong beyond our wildest imaginings. (See last year's post for some more formal theological thoughts on All Saints Day) In the Celtic calendar, November 1 marks the turning of a new season, and it works that way for me, too. Moving into November, toward Thanks-giving and Christmas, I find myself anticipating good things, family, home-comings, reunions and various kinds of feasting. Our trick-or-treating days are long gone, but it is a turning-time for me, this weekend, this season, for various reasons, and one that I welcome.

Hearing the Words of the Greek New Testament

2009-10-14T20:01:00.005-05:00

Also on episcopal cafe

Call me a nerd if you like, but this past August, my end-of-summer treat to myself was to sit in on the three week intensive course in New Testament Greek that the seminary offers to incoming students. Students required to take a Biblical language expressed some surprise that someone would choose this, but people who know me and my love of language and languages predicted: “You’ll get hooked.” And they were right.

Even now, with my time more limited by the regular semester, I am trying to show up once a week for the continuation of the introductory course. It’s an exercise in humility; my brain is getting pretty full-up with verb forms and noun endings and vocabulary, and I’ve got a generous colleague and student TA reading my often muddled papers and quizzes. But I’m also finding that it’s a return to “vacation mode” for me when I can spend a couple of hours drilling on my flashcards, and solving the intriguing word-puzzles posed by the Greek-English translation exercises, and the “aha” moments that come with translating passages from the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament.

The reward, for me, comes in moments of exquisite clarity, when a passage from Scripture, familiar in English, suddenly makes sense to me in its own language. It began with learning to read and pronounce the alphabet. Words which previously looked like hen scratches on the page began to sound, and sing. Our teacher wisely provided us with the Greek of the first chapter of John, mixed in with the course materials, not assigned, but just there for our perusal.. Within the first week, I found I could transcribe and read: “En arche eyn ho logos” I puzzled it out: ”En Arche” “En" for “In” “arche” like “archeologist. In the beginning. Then a little word – likely to be a form of “to be” and a word I recognized: “Logos” - Word – and there it was – with the sudden immediacy of poetry: “In the beginning was the Word”.

Naturally, I looked further down the page, wondering what John 1:14 would look like in Greek. I could just sound out: : “Kai ho logos sarx egeneto” (And the word was made flesh) “Sarx” – like sarcophagus. Flesh, mortality. I remembered Bible studies where someone told us that there are 2 words for “body” in Greek – “sarx” and “soma” – and this is the one that is the gritty, fleshly, mortal one: even the sound conveys it: “sarx” – the sound sharp and guttural next to the smoothness of “logos”. There it was: the poetry emerging from what was once looked to me like secret code: now the words were singing.

“It’s like being there,” a friend remarked to me, telling of her experience gaining fluency in Biblical languages and reading the texts. I doubt I’ll ever reach her level of fluency but I’m learning enough now to receive in a new way the poetry of the New Testament – in the language it was written in – and so in the word themselves, now new gifts to me.

All this has me reflecting further – in ways for which I there are no words – about a reality that we meet, by God’s grace, within our humanity. Reading Scripture, I am receiving in words the revelation of a God who has chosen to come to us in ways that meet our humanity--our language--our bodies. En arche eyn ho logos. . . Kai ho logos sarx egeneto. It gives me the shivers. It’s like being there

A Poem from my retreat last month

2009-09-12T07:25:00.003-05:00

I have been meaning to post this -- a poem that I found last month when I was on retreat at Holy Cross Abbey. It is by one of the monks there, Fr. Mark Delery, with whom I had some good conversation. As I move into the business and swirl of fall and all its demands it is helping me to remember the centering experience of that lovely weekend of silence in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Here's his poem. Food for thought in quiet moments.

Dear one,
What have you
Come to the desert
To see? To hear?

Cistercian monks
Of former times were known
To write it thus:
“Tell them,”
They said,
“Tell them
What the wind
Says to the crags,
What the sea says
To the mountains

Tell them
That an immense goodness
Penetrates the world

Tell them
That God is not
What you think He is

He is a wine one drinks
a banquet shared
where each one gives
and receives

Tell them
That He is your loneliness
And your night,
Your wound
And your Joy

Tell them
His Voice alone
Can teach you
Your true name.”

(Originally published in Hallel 18:(1 (1933)

Watching the Birds

2009-08-29T22:17:00.002-05:00

also on episcopal cafe

My spiritual practice in the summer is to begin each day on my patio, in the cool of the early morning, sip my first cup of tea of the day, sometimes write in my journal, and watch what is going on in my back yard. We have a regular wildlife sanctuary this year, on our fifth-of-an-acre suburban lot. In the yard of the abandoned house next door (awaiting new construction), grass and shrubs have grown up, and a family of deer has taken up residence there. There’s now so much growing next door that they don’t even come into my yard any more. The rabbits, on the other hand, have eaten down just about whatever will grow – and yet there is something lovely, peaceful about them, browsing on the clover in the grass, in the early morning light. As I watch them, and the growing light, the sound of birdsong around me increases – cardinals, catbirds, crows and mourning doves, gradually drowning out the not-so-distant hum of cars on the capital beltway, half a mile away.

But what I most love is watching the birds on the feeder each morning. Though the English sparrows and grackles can be aggressive, a wonderful variety of birds visit each day, sometimes fighting over the black oil sunflower seeds, sometimes perched beside each other, simply being fed. Purple finches, goldfinches, house finches, cardinals, sparrows, downy and hairy woodpeckers, a flicker and occasionally a red-headed woodpecker, the occasional blue jay – and, this morning, hovering briefly over the bright pink and orange potted zinnias beside me, a tiny hummingbird!

I don’t get tired of watching them, even when they’re fighting over roosting spots or charging each other off with a flap of wings. Rather, I have the sense that I am being admitted into another world, watching them from my patio. They have their issues and their competitions but there is such a variety of species, colors, shapes among them – all birds, but abundant in their diversity. I find myself delighting in just seeing them all there together in all their variety – and I wonder, sometimes, how they see each other – across species and families yet within their bird-world. My feeling, watching them from the outside, is delight. They seem to be giving to another way of being, beyond my understanding. They invite me to watch and pay attention.

William Blake wrote somewhere, “How do you know, but every bird that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?” He’s on to something there. Watching the birds each morning is a contemplative practice, bringing me to the limit of what I can see and observe, fascinating me, offering a glimpse into a beauty, a mystery, I cannot name, and teaching me to sit still and pay attention. In this way it is a contemplative practice. It is one of the things that I love most about the summer months –this time to sit outdoors, before the air becomes too warm, to watch and wait for the birds to invite me into the mystery of prayer.

Invitation and Exclusion

2009-08-25T15:48:00.003-05:00

Also on episcopalcafe

NB: Read information on my new book, "Waving Back", and pre-order information, here

Several weekends ago, I spent a refreshing and prayerful time on retreat at Holy Cross Abbey, a Cistercian monastery near the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. As one might expect in an atmosphere infused with the monastic tradition, I felt thoroughly welcomed and quieted, and was nourished by the opportunity offered to enter what T.S. Eliot called “time not our time. In the one conversation I had with a monk, I was reminded of the Cistercian devotion both to prayer and to the intellectual life, two parts of myself that I’ve been a long time in bringing together. (A favorite book title of mine, about the monastic tradition, is called The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. I think that does describe something important about my vocation).

Sure of the divine welcome in the place (and of creation’s welcome, among the meadow flowers, birds and mountain scenery), I became vividly aware on Sunday of the obstacles to welcome that still exist in a church that is still far from the unity for which Jesus prayed. As a Roman Catholic order, the Cistercians abide by a discipline that limits participation in Eucharist to Catholics. I knew this. I knew I could present myself for Eucharist and no one would speak or object, but I was interested in the way that the non-invitation to Eucharist was worded. “The Catholic bishops do not allow us to invite non-Catholic Christians to receive Eucharist. We ask that you respect the discipline of the Roman Catholic Church and join us in prayer for the unity of all Christians, for whom our Lord Jesus prayed on the night before he died.”

My own operative theology is scandalized at the idea of excluding anyone from Eucharist, believing that we go at Christ’s invitation, rather than at the invitation of a human community, however organized or faithful. And the careful wording of the placard I’ve just quoted suggested to me that whoever wrote it might even share the same operative theology. I’m certainly glad that the Episcopal Church has pushed back against any statement that would begin “The Anglican Communion does not allow us to invite. . . . " But there was also in this sad non-invitation a solid piece of truth-telling that I appreciated. I was grateful to the community for honestly naming the brokenness. It caused me to experience, as I have not before, what it is to be excluded from a rite that is our central expression of belonging. It was wrong. But it was true to how things are in the Church for whom Jesus prayed, and died.

So, I accepted, and learned from, the invitation to “join us in prayer for the unity of all Christians, for whom our Lord Jesus prayed on the night before he died.” As people lined up to receive the Body and Blood, I remained kneeling, praying fervently and deeply for the unity of a broken church, the whole church catholic, Anglican, orthodox, whatever our sad divisions may be. I heard in my heart snatches of hymns: “Bid thou our sad divisions cease/ And be thyself our king of peace. . . . . “ “By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” It was a rich, full and genuine participation, in its way – a sharing in the broken heart of Christ, in the midst of the assembly. I wouldn’t want to make a habit of this way of prayer. But at least on this day, it was an unexpected gift.

"Waving Back": My New Book of Poems, is coming out!

2009-08-14T10:37:00.004-05:00

My chapbook of poems, called Waving Back: Poems of Mothering Life, is available now for pre-order at the website of Finishing Line Press. The poems come out of the years when my children were growing and reflect my sense of the richness and challenges of that time of life -- the volume also includes a series of poems that came out of my experience with breast cancer in the midst of all this, in the 1990's. They tell a story of a time of life, one that I hope will speak to others' experiences.

Now begins the self-promotion that has to come with the appearance of a new book. The book is available for pre-order now, and will be out November 13, 2009 (in time for Christmas, I hope!). I'm hoping for several readings and booksigning opportunities in the DC area once the book is out and will keep people posted about that. But I'll be very grateful to friends and fans who are able to pre-order a copy, since the publisher decides how many copies to print based on the # of pre-orders. Just go to the website, scroll down the books (alphabetical by author's name) and you'll find it!

Enjoying August at Home

2009-08-12T13:17:00.004-05:00

We aren't getting to the beach this year - which I'm sorry about even though it's because we took a great vacation earlier in the summer instead. Will have to rely on Wordsworth (see my post from last August) to remind me of what I need to remember.

Being at home in August, I can understand why most people around DC are at the beach or somewhere else if they can be. It gets pretty hot, and there's a lazy feeling. But I'm savoring this week, which amounts to my last week of really "open time" at home -- I start regular class meetings next week (will be studying NT Greek with the incoming seminarians - something I've always wanted to do and in that way a "vacation activity" still for me - but it will be hard work and a daily commute). I just want to post a few things about today - my favorite kind of summer day - so I'll remember the peace of this week.

I started the day on the patio watching the birds, as I do every summer morning when it's not raining. It becomes my contemplative prayer time, with that, a cup of tea, a journal, sometimes some reading. Then I came inside, got coffee & lunch together for my husband (a daily ritual), and settled down at the computer for my "butt in the chair" time working on the book I've been writing this summer (I'll be looking to readers of this blog to help me publicize it if I ever get a publisher interested -- working title is something like "Fully alive: Discernment for Discipleship in the 21st cantury" -- lots of themes that started on this blog, and workshops I've been doing, especially with young adults but the audience for the book spans generations I hope).
Anyway, I poked along at that - (yesterday was a really blank day as far as writing went -- couldn't get anything down so I just gave up and did other stuff around the house, feeling frustrated; it paid off b/c I woke up this morning with an idea about how to regroup and fix the chapter I was struggling over).

By about 11:00 I knew I couldn't spend any more time on the computer, and the writing wasn't really going anywhere. It was relatively cool today, so I went out for a walk, taking the printout of my whole MS with me. (It's still very rough but I think I have something down now for all 6 chapters - about 100 pages). I stopped off at my congresswoman, Donna Edwards's office to tell her how heartily I support the passage of Health Care, and her handling of the issue and her response to opposition (more about this in another post) To my astonishment, ran into her in the hallway and was able to say my piece to her, which was fun. Then went in and talked to a staffer. I really feel strongly about this issue. And it felt like "democracy in action" to be able to stop off at her office on a walk around my neighborhood near downtown Silver Spring.

I wound up at Starbuck's, where I bought a "for here" skim chai and spent a couple of hours with my MS and a pen, seeing what parts of the very rough draft work and what parts don't. Discouraging in spots, encouraging in others, but at least I had a little distance and could see what I have -- it is almost the end of the summer and this was to be my "summer project" so it's time for some stock-taking.

Anyway, after that pleasant "writer's time" in Starbuck's, I took a pleasant route back home, one that took me past my neighbors' well groomed yards and lawns. One thing I love about the DC area in August is the crepe myrtles, blooming everywhere, I don't have one in my yard but I love my neighbors' -- Walking through the neighborhood and the park, listening to the cicadas who are singing all day now that it's August (crickets mixed in, perhaps), I have been enjoying the summer day. The rich magentas of the crepe myrtles, the brilliant gold of black-eyed Susans in a sunny garden -- even the somewhat reassuring observation that like me, a lot of my neighbors have been pretty much defeated by the wild grape vines that grow over pretty much everything by this time of the summer. But it's familiar, it's home, it's been a comfortable day to be out enjoying the beauty of my neighborhood, and the fruits of my summer writing-mode - a part of the pattern of academic life that I love, and have never lost track of.

Again a familiarline from Wordsworth comes to mind, one I usually remember late in the summer, from "Tintern Abbey" where he reflects, revisiting a familiar landscape in summer "That in this moment there is light and food/for future years." Looking back I see I quoted this and other parts of that poem in last year's August blog! I guess there's always a certain wistfulness, mingled with the quiet joy of the time, that comes to me in these later weeks of the summer. I still have hours ahead of me now today, and a stack of reading to do - but glad to have the time to give it my full, luxurious attention without any plans or interruptions. Nice to have a little time for blogging, too!

May I remember the pleasant openness of this summer day as the fall routine heats up and this kind of open day for walking, writing and reflecting becomes rare indeed.

A Good Quote about Grace and the spirituality of time

2009-08-07T10:17:00.004-05:00

Have been reading a wonderful book by my friend Bonnie Thurston, written 10 years ago, but I'm just running across it now. It's called To To Everything a Season: A Spirituality of Time and offers many wise words about spiritual practices around time and how our attitudes toward time and our obsession with "busy-ness" create spiritual problems for us. Here is a quote from the book, one of the best expressions I've found of a Christian theology of grace:

Nothing I “do” ultimately assures my value. My value as a human being is already secured by God as the source of my creation and by Jesus Christ as the source of my salvation. I may choose to engage in “good works” – benevolence, charity, whatever – as a grateful response to these gifts, but there is absolutely nothing I can do to earn them. The bottom line is I don’t have to do anything; I just have to be, that is, to accept God’s gift of life and respond by grateful living. Why is it that this Christian ontology is so hard to accept? Could it be because the nature of God is so foreign to us? We do not deeply, existentially, understand that God is Love, that God loves us because that is God’s nature, not because we are smart or pretty or productive or “worthy” of such love. Because human love so rarely comes to us unconditionally, many of us have decided that God’s love never could either. We are wrong in this assumption, as the cross of Jesus Christ so clearly demonstrates. (Bonnie Thurston, A Spirituality of Time, pp. 75-6)

Sabbath and Giving - some musings on spiritual practice

2009-07-16T09:23:00.004-05:00

It's one of those weeks when I feel as if I'm hearing connections between a lot of different messages, and in a bunch of roles. Some of it has to do with the connection between "church" and "spirituality," which I know a lot of people think of as pretty much separate. The other things we think of as really separate are money and spirituality, and (perhaps to a lesser degree) time management and spirituality. In the background is my current reading in Brian McLaren's good book Finding our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices -- which invites the kind of connection I've been trying to make between living daily life and engaging in spiritual practices as a way of "training" ourselves for the journey with God.

For me it's happening in a pretty traditional context, but opening some new doors.I've taken on leadership in "stewardship" at church (The word, I've been reminding myself and others, is not just church talk for "fundraising" -- it's about recognizing that we are "stewards" of what we have from God -- invited to work with God in relationship, managing and making good use of the time and money we are given).

Last night (same week so it's all been on my mind) I led a seminar for young adults about living faithfully with our time and our money. And we struggled over some Biblical passages about the practice of tithing - a practice I've been skeptical about because of the way that it can feel like a "bill" that I can't pay. So when I use the biblical word "tithe" I really mean "proportional giving" -- something I've tried to practice, both with money and with time.

We get hung up on the specificity of the 10% provision, but what jumps out at me when I look at passages like Deuteronmy 14:23ff (and into chapter 15) is the attitude toward life that this practice encouraged. For the ancient Israelites (when they were in faithful mode, which wasn't all the time), it was just a given that everything they had came from God -- and so they also took it as a given that when the harvest came in, they would take something off the top and make a feast-- basically just give it away, to remind themselves that what they had left over after the 10% would be enough, because God is a God of abundance. African members of my congregation have been helping me to see this: they are looking for ways of making public offerings in thanks-giving- and "giving back"/rendering thanks, with material contributions, to the God who blesses us. Their spirit around this is contagious, and I'm grateful for it. It's about "rendering" (giving back) to God a portion of what we have, in gratitude for the gift of abundant life.

The requirement that we aside a specific portion of what we have does also have to do with supporting the institutional gathered community. Deuteronomy offers the proviso that every 3 years, people set aside the top 10% for the support of the Levites, who run the religious establishment, because the Levites don't have resources of their own: hence the custom, observed to this day, that clergy are supported by the offerings of the people (except we've lost the grace of the "tithing" part along the way).

I was thinking that Jesus released us from the obligation of tithing by saying justice and mercy were more important, but again, when I looked back at that passage (Luke 11: 42)I saw that it's "both and" ("Woe to you, Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and herbs of all kinds, and neglect justice and hte love of God; it is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. Hmmm. - I hadn't noticed that "without neglecting the others" before. Jesus, like his communty, assumes that people practice proportional giving. The Pharisees are overfocused on the details - but it looks like Jesus doesn't actually let us off the hook on the basic practice. At least that's what I'm pondering.

Paul, as he advises new Christian communities, doesn't dwell on the 10% part but he invites a practice of setting aside a portion of whatever one has, each week, and doing it joyfully and in gratitude. (1Cor 15:2-3 and 2 Cor 9: 1-14) Again it's seen as a response to what God has given, and not as an oblligation that we're shamed into fulfilling. But it does seem as if in the Biblical tradition, proportional giving is a part of the Christian way of life.

What's completely absent from all of this -- and this is disturbing for us in the 21st century -- is the consumerist idea that we give in payment for what we've received -- and withold our gifts if we don't like what's going on: as if we were "tipping" God for a job well done. No. The proportional giving/tithe tradition invites what is really a pretty radical spiritual practice with regard to "our"money: We set aside a portion to remind ourselves that we don't "need" all of it. Whatever is left is always enough, that God gives us what we need. The practice of proportional giving is profoundly counter-cultural in a consumerist society. But it can also be liberating. Something to ponder.

In all of these texts, the practice of tithing is seen in addition to giving to the poor -- not instead of. Again, it's just part of being a decent society that those who have give to help those who have not. The tithe part is different: it's an "off the top" gesture acknowledging God's abundance and supporting the community/institution of temple/church.

This all gets controversial when we come up against our issues with the institutional church and what it's doing with its resources- but it's worth noticing that both tithing AND giving to the poor are held up as spiritual practices that, followed faithfully, help us to recognize more clearly what God has given us. It leads us to look at our lives from a perspective of abundance, rather than scarcity. And invites us to make our lifestyle choices around what is left over after we have given a portion, as we are able. The calculation is going to be different, perhaps, in our time -- (I suggest just leaving taxes out of it and looking at take home pay or discretionary income as we begin to discern around tithing) but the question: "what do I have? how am I using it" comes into more vivid perspective with a practice of actual proportional giving "off the top" (and wherever we decide to give it).

Here's my insight today, though. The invitation to observe Sabbath is the same principle in relation to our time. God rests on the 7th day; most of us feel we are just too busy to take a full day of rest from our wok -- so this is perhaps the most disregarded commandment among western Christians. And if we can't take a full day then the whole concept of life being a rhythm of work & rest goes out the window (just like proportional giving goes out the window with the excuse that 10% is just too much to ask).

So this is what I'm pondering: Time:Sabbath = Tithe:Money. In both cases, the Scriptural and Spiritual traditions offer us practices that help us remind ourselves that all that we have is a gift from the One who made us, loves us, and desires abundance for us. Even if we have trouble even beginning to keep these disciplines, the fact that they're there may be seen as an invitation to let go of some of our anxiety about control, status, busy-ness, and see it from a "God's eye" perspective. How much time do I have? How much money do I have? What will it take for me to see that whatever it is (unless I am in abject poverty), it is enough. The bottom line in all of this is the words of Jesus in the sermon on the mount: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Matthew 6:23). It's an invitation to discernment around the nitty gritty of my everyday decisions: Where is my treasure? Where is my heart? What practices will help me see that God has given me all that I need?

When I get to this point I flip into hymn-humming mode and sing a favorite:
"Great is thy faithfulness. . . Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have needed, thy hand hath provided.
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.

Simply Poetry?

2009-06-01T08:09:00.002-05:00

Also on episcopalcafe

I was caught up short by the title of Bishop John Bryson Chane’s column in the latest Washington Window: “Prayer without Action is Simply Poetry.” It raised the ire you might expect from a poet. “Simply poetry?” The phrase was clearly dismissive. It seemed as if the title meant something like “faith without works is dead” – and actually, in reading the article, I didn’t find much I disagreed with – of course we are called, as Christians, to address injustice in the world, to examine and refashion ways of life that are draining resources from the poor, to keep in mind the mandate of Matthew 25. The statistics the Bishop offers are horrifying, numbing, about the level of human suffering in the world. And of course addressing these things is part of how we are called as Christians.

But I think we need poetry as we respond to the gospel’s call to action in the world. Talking with college students about vocation over the past year or so, I have been struck by the way that many young adult Christians are intimidated, overwhelmed, by the whole notion of the call of Christians to heal a clearly broken world. The task seems too great for them and they don’t know where to begin, and how they can contribute. It seems like a lot of pressure, trying to identify a vocation that will save the world. In these conversations it seemed to me that some imagination, some poetry, needs to be brought into our preaching and teaching about the call of Christ to a ministry of healing and reconciliation amid the world’s brokenness. Poetry can help us imagine our way to the particular ways we are called to heal a broken world, “wherever we may be”

It seems to me that there is a great deal of “poetry” in our faith tradition and story – the act of imagination that story and poetry invites is a powerful source of the energy and spirit that propels us to love and serve the world. And the practice of prayer, of receptivity to God, requires imagination – is a kind of poetry. Modern prophets Bishop Desmond Tutu and Verna Dozier both invite believers to an act of imagination as we attend to the brokenness of the world. They speak of the “dream” of God – a poetic expression of our common awareness that the world is not what it is meant to be – and that we are called by our faith to participate in its transformation. Tutu writes, in lively, imaginative mode, drawing on the poetic language of our tradition:

"I have a dream," God says. "Please help Me to realize it. It is a dream of a world whose ugliness and squalor and poverty, its war and hostility, its greed and harsh competitiveness, its alienation and disharmony are changed into their glorious counterparts, when there will be more laughter, joy, and peace, where there will be justice and goodness and compassion and love and caring and sharing. I have a dream that swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, that my children will know that they are members of one family, the human family, God’s family, my family.” ( God Has a Dream, pp.19-20)

Verna Dozier makes a similar point when she points to the poetry of the Biblical story, with it’s account of a God who loves us and calls us to return, and a Saviour who gives himself to that work and calls us to new life. It begins, as Bishop Chane implies out, with the ability to look squarely at the world’s brokenness and to see the huge chasm between the world as God desires it to be and the world as it is. But to address this without being overwhelmed, we need imagination, poetry and faith.

Dreaming with God requires ongoing discernment: we need to learn to look at the story God is telling about the world, known through Scripture and tradition, and also at the world as it is. Then we need to ask, “Where is my heart breaking; what is calling me here: what is my small piece of this great work of redemption and reconciliation that God is calling me to?” We need to be imaginative enough to “dream with God ” and to give ourselves to that dream.

No one of us can do it all. We can and should participate in large programs through our institutions; but each of us, as individuals and as congregations, need to look at the relationships, needs and communities around us and say “what is the dream of God for this situation, even if I can’t figure out how to realize it all by myself? What might be my piece of the work of reconciliation here?”

My point is, of course, it’s “both/and.” Prayer without action is passivity; Action without prayer can wind up being about more narrowly political and social agendas – it can lead us to miss the dream of God in the work we are called to do. Genuine prayer will lead us to action. But it is folly to dismiss either of these as “simply poetry.”

Walter Brueggemann has named the poets as the “prophets” of our time. We are required, in reaching out to the world, to learn compassion through imagination, to name suffering and to speak truth to a corrupt social order. And activist poet Denise Levertov described imagination as “the perceptive organ by which it is possible. . . . to experience God.” We need poetry, the expression of imagination, to name the brokenness and imagine the healing, to help us to dream with God, and to ourselves keep humbly open to possibilities we may not have imagined. True poetry, like true prayer, will call us to action, powered by the energy of the imagination, which enables us to touch the heart of God. It teaches us, within whatever sphere of life we are called to encounter and name, to live into the dream of God.

Resurrection Faith, or "What is Jesus Doing?"

2009-05-15T09:43:00.004-05:00

(also on episcopalcafe)

In his book on Resurrection, Rowan Williams points to the strangeness of the Risen Christ. Though we have stories of Resurrection encounters, the risen Jesus is always at first unrecognized. Some fundamental transformation has happened, and that transformation testifies to an altogether new relationship between humanity and God. Everything has changed.

This is something that I think is not widely understood about Christian spirituality: People know, we know, that we are called to “follow Jesus,” to try to live as he lived, and we are often judged by the degree to which we fall short of his example and his teaching – and that is fair enough. We ask “What would Jesus do?” to guide our ethical thinking. But in fact, when Christians reflect on our relationship to “Jesus,” it isn’t really the historical Jesus we’re talking about, or even, completely, the Jesus we meet in the gospels. It is, more mysteriously, the Risen Christ, who belongs at once to our flesh-and-blood experience and to the transcendent mystery of God – who brings together, once and for all, our humanity and the God who reaches out to us, loves us, desires the restoration of our lives and our world.

This is a tough thing to get our minds around but I think it is the heart of the gospel, the heart of what it means to be a Christian The resurrection proclaims the action of God in history and yet moves beyond history. – We proclaim it in our Easter liturgies without always noting the extraordinariness of what we are proclaiming. Listen to our words: “On this day the Lord has acted/We will rejoice and be glad in it” is the Easter psalm. Or in the words of Brian Wren’s hymn: in Brian Wren’s hymn “Christ is alive, let Christians Sing:”

Christ is alive, no longer bound to distant years in Palestine.
He comes to claim the here and now, and conquer every place and time. (Hymnal #182)

For Rowan Williams, the Resurrection removes Jesus from being simply an object on whom we project our fantasies, our woundedness, our desires – because he is in some ways, utterly strange, unknowable, as God is . And yet he also invites us into relationship.

At Our Saviour, Silver Spring,we sing with gusto gospel hymns that actually teach us something quite profound about the relationship with the living God that Resurrection faith opens up to us. “I serve a risen Saviour, he’s in the world today,” we sing. “He lives! He lives! From him I’ll never part. You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart. “ (LEVAS,42) Or in another hymn that particularly moved me this year:

Because He lives, I can face tomorrow;
Because He lives, all fear is gone
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.(LEVAS, 43)

These hymns are emotional rather than theological in focus, yet they help us experience the RESULT of Resurrection faith, the conviction that the world actually IS in God’s hands, that the redemption of the world has happened, is being fulfilled, and we are called to participate the work of transformation that continues.

So when we think of Christian faith and life, the question to ask is not just “What would Jesus do?” (i.e. how can I best follow the example of the Jesus I meet in the gospels) but “What is Jesus doing?” How is the life of the Risen Lord shaping my life, and the life of the communities I participate in, in the here and now?

Why Church? -- another thought from Evelyn Underhill

2009-04-24T08:35:00.005-05:00

As I reread in Evelyn Underhill I find again how she addresses some of the questions I've been carrying now. Here, from her retreat, "Sanctity, the Perfection of Love" (in Ways of the Spirit) is a gentle but I think eloquent reason for why we need churches in some form. I've been thinking about this because of a conversation about "what needs to be thrown out" in the church, being carried on mostly by church-people, on various blogs and particularly at A Church for Starving Artists -- where there's a discussion of "things to toss" in the contemporary church. I haven't tried to respond on that blog because my response is complicated. But here's a quote from Underhill that makes the case for some presence of churches that are carrying on some kind of tradition into the next generation, in some accessible way.

No gardener who knkows his or her job ever gives seedlings rich soil, and God does not either. A step by step response to that which is given is the way to prepare for more. The simple food comes first, and there is lots of it to be found in religious institutions and traditions which modernists are too apt to despise. All the hoarded spiritual food of the race is there, all that it has found out about God. It is silly and arrogant not to accept it.

It is quite true that it is not the same thing as direct experience, just as jam is not the same thing as fresh fruit; still, it is made of fruit and will feed the soul and make it capable of more. Such variety of nourishment is better than fastidious concentration on one kind of food. We are a multiplicity in unity with mind, sense, heart and spirit -- all, possible channels of grace.

Maybe that's a question for churches -- how are we feeding mind, sense, heart and spirit -- and how are we becoming communities of prayer (another theme for Underhill) equipped to reach out to the world in love and charity. For her, it all goes together -- this might be a better measure for deciding what is/is not working in contemporary churches. And for reminding us what churches are for -- in a consumerist context that can confuse us about that.

Underhill also writes (In The Spiritual Life) - a quote I use often: "The Church is in the world to save the world. It is a tool of God for that purpose, not a comfortable religious club established in historic premises. . . . " In that she seems to "chime" with conversations about what needs to go in contemporary religious institutions -- but I appreciate the reminders she gives us of why we might want to have churches, from one generation to the next.

Food for thought -- whether or not we like jam!

Evelyn Underhill and "The Call of God"

2009-04-20T08:21:00.003-05:00

Rereading Underhill's retreat "The Call of God" in Ways of the Spirit. This in preliminary preparation for the Underhill Day of Quiet, sponsored by the Evelyn Underhill Association, to be held on June 6. I like her reminder that it all begins in our awareness of ourselves as at once members of Christ, Children of God and Inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven. These quotes from her reflection on our growth as "children" of a God who loves us and desires and invites our thriving. Underhill can sometimes sound stern but she has a bracing wisdom about the way that God works with our growing souls. A few quotes I'm pondering this morning:

We are trained through ordinary events and objects, not by peculiar religious experiences. It is better to stay where we are, be gentle and peaceful,and acknowledge that ordinary lilfe. Even the most homely incidents will serve the purposes of God. Our Lord is more likely to come to us in His garden clothes than in robes of glory (p. 231)

Spiritual growth is real growth toward the maturity of free creatures; it is not being brought up in an incubator. And holiness isn't a kind of white wash; it is a growth in freedom, love, and true being. In the process, we must learn to tread firmly and carefully and to lose our fear of spiritual darkness and our greed for spiritual sweets. (p. 231)

When we do not know what the will of God is, surely His will is that we should do our best and use common sense and initiative as we remain open to His strength and surrendered to His love. If we do, surely He will protect us in the ultimate consequences and as regards what really matteres which may not be at all the same as what we think matters. (232)

Spiritual Practices

2009-04-18T13:39:00.002-05:00

I've had a number of occasions just lately when I've been asked to talk to groups about what have been called "disciplines" for a lively faith, for staying alert to God's presence in our lives. Listening to myself, and to the questions I hear, I am aware that we need to remember WHY we seek to practice things like prayer, scripture reading, hospitality, sabbath-keeping, service, etc. It is NOT in order to "make ourselves better people". It is to respond to the grace and goodness of God that has already come into our lives. When we say that a way of prayer "isn't working" for us -- we may mean that it makes us feel bad about ourselves, or that it isn't giving us a pleasant and welcome experience of God -- or perhaps that it is distracting us from other good things that we believe deserve or demand our time attention.

So I want to remind myself and others that spiritual practices, creating what the monastics call a "rule" of life -- is NOT for the purpose of "self-improvement." It's rather for the purpose of making us available to the God who loves us in a world where it's pretty easy to get distracted. I'm trying out some categories to think about when I or anyone else begins to reflect on their yearning for spiritual practices that will make us more open to God. And here are some of them:

1. SOME way of regularly "showing up" with God -- Evelyn Underhill calls for "a definite time set apart" sometime during the day -- just on waking or just on sleeping -- some people spend a large chunk of time reading Scripture or a set prayer ritual; others remember to greet the day with a prayer and end the day with reflection on "Where I've seen You/ Where I've missed you." Too many people, however, resist the concept of "showing up" regularly because there seems to be a "right" way of doing it that they can't do: I'd frame it differently then: What practices in your life enable you to "show up" regularly and intentionally for God, in more or less the same time & place, regularly (my link on this blog on "practical suggestions for daily prayer" can help with this but is not an exhaustive list.

2. SOME way of "practicing the presence of God" as we walk through our lives: many people practice a kind of walking/talking prayer, where they think of God while moving, enter a conversation. I hear many speak of times in the car or other times of solitude when they're aware of the presence of God. Watching for beauty in life, being aware of how God speaks to us through daily encounters -- these are all practices that help us toward the goal that Paul counsels, to "pray without ceasing" -- to live in such a way that prayer is a "natural" part of ongoing life. I think many people find this easier than the first practice ("showing up") - I think both are important if we are seeking to be more and more available to a God who is always reaching out to us in love.

A third practice -- and there are lots of ways to approach this -- is to be aware of where we find joy, and nourish those areas of life, and be aware when they're not being nourished. "Making and Moving" go in this category: Making things, exercising our creativity; Moving our bodies so that we are aware of the gifts of life and health. Attention to what is strong and good in our humanness leads us to prayers of thanksgiving to the One who made us. If we are losing track of joy, why is that? What's getting in the way.

A fourth practice, related to this: The Fourth Commandment ("Remember the Sabbath") -- God works for 6 days and rests on the 7th day. The commandment to remember the sabbath is really a reminder that finding balance in our lives between work and rest is an essential part of a lively spiritual life. If we are too tired because we're working too hard (or if we find ourselves "wasting time" because we're just burned out on work that isn't going anywhere -- it may be a sign that it's time to look at the balance between work, rest, and prayer in our lives.

The purpose of all of this is not to make us better but to help us become who we most fully are, so that we can be of use to the God who is in the process of transforming the world, and desires our participation in that work, as the people we are. "The joy of God is the human being fully alive" wrote the Church Father Irenaus of Lyons. Prayer and spiritual discipline are meant to move us toward fulness of life.

The challenge that comes with adopting a regular spiritual practice is it always brings us up against our own inadequacies - we feel guilty or frustrated because we don't "feel like praying" one day, or our efforts to turn to God are disrupted by distraction or the millions of other demands we have in our lives. And we give up because it makes us feel bad. We want to have a "spiritual life" next to all the other things we do in our lives -- but in reality, a spiritual life is lived out in the midst of everything else, and developing an intentional practice helps us to track that.

I've been reading in Evelyn Underhill's retreats - and was stopped by the place where she points out that almost always in Scripture, when someone experiences a true encounter with the living God their first reaction is "depart from me, for I am a sinful man" (Peter in Luke 5) or "Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips" (Isaiah 6) -- Maybe we avoid opening ourselves to the possibility of encountering the Living God in our lives because we fear that sense of inadequacy. But Underhill says that the point is to acknowledge that inadequacy and move on - because the next stage in the story is always God MAKING the person called worthy of and adequate to whatever they are called to do. I think sometimes dwelling on our failures at prayer and saying "I just can't do that" is really an avoidance of the relationship that's being invited, where we say "I don't seem to be able to do this - but God will help me if this is what I'm supposed to do."

Spiritual practices remind us of our connection with a mystery much larger than ourselves and invite us to get out of ourselves and pay attention to those around us and to the way God is working in our lives and communities. They remind us of two items of Good news: 1) that we are not God, and 2) that God is with us, and loves us, despite our inadequacies. When we feel inadequate or ashamed, we can ask for mercy - just say "I can't do this alone." And that mercy will come. I think many of us miss out on this experience of grace because we are afraid of "failing" at a regular spiritual practice. But the desire to pray is the thing to nourish -- everything else will follow from that.

Those are my still-developing thoughts on why spiritual practices are a good thing and a gift.

The Beauty of the Burial Service - and Resurrection Faith

2009-04-16T22:19:00.004-05:00

By Kathleen Staudt (also, in a slightly different version, on episcopal cafe)

A character in one of Mary Gordon’s novels, talking about what the various denominations believe, concludes wryly by saying, "and Episcopalians are not required to believe in anything but the beauty of the Burial Service.”

There's something to that, I discovered again this past Lenten season, when on 3 out of the 5 weekends in Lent I have had a funeral to attend. None were for close family members, but all were services I couldn’t miss. All used the same basic liturgy. All were beautiful and fitting. Two of the services had been carefully designed by friends as they were dying, enshrining something of themselves in eloquent readings and uncannily appropriate music. A third was bare-bones and beautiful, following the sudden death of a member of the church choir, who had been there singing with us the Sunday before. All three services somehow managed to bring together for us the life of an ordinary, beloved person and the quiet hope of Resurrection faith.

Funerals are always disorienting, coming as they do in the midst of life. But a funeral during Lent, if we are observing the season aright, is jarring in ways that go beyond words, and into the heart of our Resurrection faith. On the Sundays and other days in Lent, the cloth on and behind the altar is purple, as are the stoles the priests wear. Our local custom replaces the bronze altar cross with a simple wooden one; floral arrangements are replaced by budding branches or sparse greenery. We don't say "Alleluias." And we commit to whatever practices help us to be aware of our need for God's mercy and love, our desire to repent, return, be restored. Much is taken away, deliberately, during Lent, to make us available to transformation.

And then we arrive at a funeral in mid-Lent and find ourselves suddenly kicked out of Lent into Easter: "I am the Resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. . . . I know that my Redeemer liveth. . . whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord's.” There are flowers in the church and the altar hangings and vestments are white. The paschal candle burns, and we sing an Easter hymn. Lent or no Lent, “even at the grave, we make our song, ‘Alleluia.’” A funeral in Lent takes us to the unnameable heart of our faith, which is not about any one of us, our worthiness or unworthiness, but about the unfathomable grace and power of a Risen Saviour who calls us to himself, and gathers us together to receive the promise. But the way to this place of promise is through the loss and the grief that are a part of our human condition.

This year the liturgical seasons of Lent and Easter have grounded me in the spiritual journey, reminding me of the need simply to be in a "between-time" -- during Lent with glimpses of Easter, but only through the lens of grief and death, on this side of the Cross. I found it almost a relief, the Sunday after a Saturday funeral, to return to the sombre purple of Lent. I was back to a place I knew how to be in. It is a time we move through, each year, a pilgrimage- time, between the life we're used to and the mystery of transformation and life eternal. It is hard to find words for this, frustrating to me since I am a word-person; but the visual and liturgical cues of Lenten observance - and of our paradoxical, beautiful burial service, provide an experience of the mystery that I am cherishing this year.

I suppose what I am experience is the truth that we are ultimately and always an Easter people - but our whole life's journey and beyond is about figuring out what that means, and each Lenten season invites a new beginning in that direction. I felt closer to the mystery this year, because of these Lenten funerals. They have been disturbing, disorienting, paradoxical. But a blessing, nonetheless. A Holy Lent, which has made me more aware, now, of the mystery and blessing of Easter.

Eastertide - The Stone

2009-04-14T07:39:00.003-05:00

At the end of her really good commentary on Mark, Bonnie Thurston writes in a way that has been speaking to me about the image of the stone that covers the mouth of the tomb. She writes: "In the accounts of the Garden of Resurrection in the gospels there is a great stone over the mouth of Jesus' tomb. Who will move it? The women know that they are unable to remove what separates them from the Lord. This is a great metaphor for the spiritual llife. We cannot, in our own strength, remove what separates us from God and the life God wants us to have in fullness. We cannot bring life from death. But God can and does. The technical word for this is "grace." (The Spiritual Landscape of Mark, p. 78)

And then I turn to the gospel appointed for today, John 20, 11-18 (but I am reading it all the way from 20:1) -- my favorite of the Easter gospel accounts, of Mary Magdalene, meeting, first an angel and then Jesus in the garden and not recognizing where she is or who she is speaking to until the moment when she does. (I've written about this elsewhere on this blog (see other posts tagged "Easter"). But now, in light of what Bonnie Thurston has written, I notice again the first verse of John 20: "

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.

An image of grace I now see: While it is still dark -- the stone is already removed. Before we even know how or what has happened. Something real has changed, by God's power and love. Coming to see what this means for me seems to be an invitation, this Eastertide.

Holy Saturday - a new poem

2009-04-11T09:04:00.002-05:00

Martin Smith writes that "Poetry can lead us to the place of wonder, but it patrols the shoreline of what can be said, only making us more aare of the ocean of the unsayable" (Love Set Free, p. 66) Perhaps that is why what I was trying to say in my journal about this odd, rich, in-between day in the triduum came out as a poem. (See also my friend Kit Carlson's meditation on this day at Saints Alive -- good stuff).

But here's my poem: a first draft, no doubt, but it begins to say something.

Holy Saturday

Rain. Strong, steady April rain
Scatters waning cherry blossoms over the grass
Invites scarlet tulips, yellow daffodils
To stiffen, open, rise.

In churches that observe this day
Everything is grey
Crosses gone or covered, candles out
Waiting for the night, when New Fire flames
Baptized, Exultant, Singing.

Today, the waiting time.
Whatever happened during Lent
Is buried in the harrowed soil,
Puts down roots now, drinking in
The steady April rain.
Who knows what green will grow
From this quiet, rain-soaked day?

Kathleen Henderson Staudt
April 11, 2009

Good Friday: "Making it Real" II

2009-04-10T10:08:00.005-05:00

My "Lent book" for this year, Bonnie Thurston's The Spiritual Geography of Mark's Gospel, reminds me that because God suffered alone, no one, ever again, will suffer alone. I'd paraphrase it this way: from this side of the Cross (the Easter side), we know Christ is there in solidarity and love, with all human suffering, having suffered himself. Knowing this provides us with a way through suffering, though it is often hard to feel or see. But when we understand it the Cross becomes a healing image, a reflection of the divine compassion for the whole world, as expressed and lived out in the Incarnation and Passion. As a hymn-hummer, I find this summarized well in a middle stanza of Isaac Watts"s "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross":

See, from his side, his hands, his feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

It's a baroque, vivid image but it stays with me as an image of the divine love.
I think Bonnie's book also does a beautiful job of showing us both the vulnerability and the strength of the suffering Christ, and the paradoxical hope that we find in the mystery of the Cross, so central to Mark's gospel.

But today we are in the gospel of John - as we always are on Good Friday. And the focus is the Love of Christ for us, and the totality of his self-offering, expressed in the events of the Passion. The hymn that springs to my lips is "What Wondrous Love is this, O My Soul!" For Holy Week I've been rereading Martin Smith's wonderful meditations on the Passion according to St. John, Love Set Free. He shows how the Cross, in the fourth Gospel, becomes the moment of union between the divine and the human, when God's desire for us, and our desire for God, is consummated and made real. Ever since I first read Smith's meditations, I have found that the image of the Cross has become, for me, an image for the mystery of God's love, hidden, incomprehensible, and yet manifest in the real events of the Crucifixion, and in the Holy One's willing submission to this.

Martin Smith looks at the moment when Jesus, from the Cross, speaks to his mother and the Beloved Disciple and makes of them a new family. And for Smith, this is the moment when the Church begins, at the foot of the Cross. This moment was made real for me last night and this morning, after the Maundy Thursday service, when we held an all-night prayer vigil in the stripped-bare, darkened church (the only liturgical symbols the black-veiled crosses on the altars.

There were many gifts to me in this time of silent prayer, but perhaps the most impressive was the first hour, when a surprisingly large group gathered in the small chapel, where the altar of repose was (holding the Cross and the consecrated bread and wine being reserved for today's liturgy). There were probably 15-20 of us, and as is typical in our congregation we represented many backgrounds and cultures and languages -- the prayer vigils, held in silence, are impressively the place where the English speaking and Spanish speaking members of the congregation can be fully at prayer together. I thought of Martin Smith's observation about the Church being formed at the foot of the Cross and I was deeply moved by the way this gathering made that real: all of us in deep reverence, puzzled and yet drawn to the mystery of love that we had just re-enacted in the liturgy -- recognizing that every one of us is held in this love, safe in this love and open to prayer. Just the fact of our being there reminded me of a friend who once remarked that "Christianity begins at the foot of the Cross." In that place of shared suffering and growing compassion, we were together. It would be good for the Church at large, with all our truly silly divisions and quarrels, if we could remember this place where we begin, contemplating the mystery of a Love that is beyond our understanding, offered and raised up for our contemplation and deep gratitude.

By the time we get here, to Good Friday, we've done what we can do about our own sins and struggles - that was what Lent is for. Today is about Christ, and what he, in his love, has done for us. We are gathered to be present with Christ, as he desires to be present with us, and to give thanks for what has already been done, once and for all, to bring us back into union with his Love. For that is really all there is to say on Good Friday - a quiet "thank you" for the redemption that has already happened, whether we can feel it or not in the moment. And a waiting, in adoration, for the unimaginable part of the story, which comes next. We do this together. It doesn't make sense any other way.

The starkness of the Good Friday service in the Book of Common Prayer is appropriate for all of this, beginning as it does with a prayer that sums up where we are, praying at the foot of the Cross, aware of both horror and the ultimate promise that it holds:

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. (BCP 2760

Holy week pilgrimage: Making it Real I

2009-04-08T18:03:00.003-05:00

Today I joined a small group from the church youth group on what was billed as a "mini-pilgrimage" to the National Holocaust Memorial in DC. I have never been before, and this year, Holy Week did seem an appropriate time for such a pilgrimage. Now I'm back to reflect just a little on the experience - hoping that the "blogging process" will help me put a shape to it.

It's spring break in DC and the place was really crowded with groups of young people. How was this a "pilgrimage?"was my first question to myself My working definition of the attitude to bring a pilgrim, rather than a tourist, comes from T.S. Eliot's great pilgrimage poem, "Little Gidding." Visiting the chapel where Nicholas Ferrar and his companions formed a religious community during the English Civil War, Eliot writes,
"You are not here to verify,/ instruct yourself, or inform curiosity or carry report. You are here to kneel/Where prayer has been valid."

That is, pilgrimage is about entering the experience and the place, and finding where God is there. (Not just learning the history - which in this case is numbingly awful) Walking through these exhibits "makes it real" - we're invited to remember the real people killed in the holocaust, their stories, their lives. The Memorial bears witness to the awful combination of state-sponsored genocide and a long history of ugly and widely accepted racist anti-semitism. On the face of it this does not seem to have much to do with the "valid prayer" of Eliot's pilgrimage vision. Indeed the question: "Where was God in all of this evil" reverberates inevitably as you walk through the vivid and beautifully constructed exhibits, the terrible images, the terrible stories of the Nazi era, those who were its victims and those who carried out the horribly named "final solution". In Holy Week, as we reflect on the Way of the Cross, it is both distressing and convicting to reflect how the same tradition that tells of the compassion and love of Jesus, going willingly to the Cross (in the fourth Gospel especially) has been retold in ways that furthered and deepened the anti-semitism that made so many Germans-- and Americans -- indifferent to the horror was happening to the Jews of Europe. It seems so utterly contrary to the message of the gospels to blame the "other" -- the Jews-- for the Cross. The only prayer that has been valid in this place and time in history seems to be that of the psalmist: "My God, my God, Why hast thou forsaken me?"

But of course that is also the prayer of Jesus - who is God Incarnate -- from the Cross. This realization also brings me deeper into the story we are telling in Holy Week. We dwell on the horrible details of Christ's Passion to remind ourselves what human beings are capable of; We try to imagine a God who willingly takes flesh and comes to a world where someone is capable of driving a nail into the hands and feet of a fellow human being -- and who suffers that, with a radical compassion of the One who suffers with us, longing for our wholeness despite what we do.

This is the mystery I've come up against, taking this pilgrimage today. If nothing else, it has forced me to bear witness to the suffering that goes on and how easy it is to become complicit in the infliction of suffering. This pilgrimage made it real, in an experiential way, forced me to see what we are capable of. The Cross does that, too -- and also tells us something about the love of God for us, and what kind of truth-telling and clarity of vision about ourselves that love demands of us.

I don't have words for what that "something" is -- but I am seeing, on the Eve of Maundy Thursday, that this was an appropriate pilgrimage for me to make, this Holy Week.

More on Julian - Sin and the persistence of Love

2009-04-07T12:48:00.004-05:00

Julian is really "speaking" to me again -- haven't read her in years but glad to be returning. And I like Frances Beer's modern translation (especially for devotional reading). In the 24th revelation of divine love she reflects back on her vision of the suffering Christ on the Cross, who for her has become the emblem of a divine Love that desires nothing but that we should thrive and love and be whole (my paraphrase but I don't think it misrepresents Julian). She has also been having an honest conversation with Christ about sin - how it separates us from His love, and how he is eager to remove that separation. This passage seems very wise both about divine love and human psychology:

Though the persons of the blessed trinity are all equal in property, love was showed most fully to me, because though it is closest to us all, we are blindest in our knowledge of it. Many men and women elieve that God is all mighty and may do all, and that he is all wisdom and can do all; but that he is all love and will do all -- there they stop. Such ignorance most hinders God's lovers, for when they begin to hate sin and to amend themselves according to the ordinances of holy church, a dread remains that stirs them to dwell upon themselves and their former sins. (my italics) Though this is a grievous blindness and weakness, we do not despise it becuase we think of it as humility. Yet if we recognized it, we would immediately reject it, as we would any other sin with which we are familiar, for it comes from the enemy and is opposed to truth.

Of all the properties of the blessed trinity, God wants us to feel the greatest confidence and pleasure in love, for love makes power and wisdom humble before us. Even as by his courteous love God forgets our sins as soon as we repent, so does he wish us to forget them, and all our sorrow, and all our doubtful dread.

Julian seems to know that a lot of our sense of captivity and separation from God (aka "sin") comes from dwelling on ourselves and our failings instead of trusting God's love. This is really hard to grasp but something about the way she puts it is speaking to me, in these last days of a Holy Lent.

Lenten Thoughts - Revisiting Julian of Norwich

2009-03-28T18:03:00.003-05:00

I haven't posted much except for my Episcopal Cafe pieces. Part of my Lenten practice has been to try to delay the sign-on to the computer until after prayer time and some kind of morning movement - walking or workout. It is helping to restore some balance in my life -- it's so easy to get the feeling that I MUST be on email all the time because there are so many important demands on my time. It's good to find that there is time for other things. And surprising what a challenging Lenten discipline it has been. But it also means that blogging (which I wasn't doing much of before Lent either) has seemed like a luxury.

Some insights, though, to note as we round the bend past mid-Lent. Once again, I'm seeing that the whole story is about Love. Not a cheruby, greeting-card love but a strong, fierce love that will not let us go, and wills our wholeness even when we don't. And that love is somehow associated with the Cross, and that's the mystery I am contemplating for this season. I've been returning to Julian of Norwich, startled to find myself resonating in new ways with her vision of the Cross, which at other times I've experienced as somewhat bizarre. But on divine love she is incomparable She prays for three "wounds" -- two of them she asks only if God wills it (a vision of Christ's Passion, and an experience of mortal illness -- and of course she gets both of those things and sees them as gifts: this part of Julian is hard for most of us to grasp).

But I can relate to the third "wound" that she desires unconditionally -- that she insists on in all her prayers -- the wound of "an endless longing for God" -- a wound because this longing can sometimes be painful, but she knows that this is what connects us to the One who made us and loves us: our longing (and God's returning longing). So this passage from Julian, which I've read before, is even more striking for me today. From Frances Beers's translation of Julian of Norwich:
"At the same time as I saw this bodily sight, our lor dhowed me a spiritual vision of his matchless love. I saw that, for our benefit, he is all that is good and comforting and helpful to us. He is our clothing, who for love wraps and encloses us, embraces and encricles us, clings to us for tender love, that he may never leave us. In this vision I understood truly that he is everything that is good."

Coming Home to Lent

2009-03-09T22:45:00.003-05:00

(also on Episcopal Cafe)

On the Sunday of the Transfiguration, February 22, I began my day in summer sunshine, sitting on a patio in Sidney, Australia watching the sailboats and ferry boats that were just beginning their day, and reading, for my morning devotion, the story of the Transfiguration. We spent those last 12 days of Epiphany “down under,” -- away from the awful brushfires though they were very much in our awareness all over Australia, a national tragedy—and mostly by the sea. For us it was a sojourn into summertime, a conference by the southern beaches (our reason for going) along the Great Ocean Road, and four days of pure vacation on a tropical island in the Great Barrier Reef, living alongside Creation at its liveliest – with nesting birds and turtles, and a whole colorful and unimagined world right under the surface of the water, off the beach, on a part of the reef that still seems healthy and beautiful. It was a time of reconnecting with my “summer self” – the me who spends time each morning in summer on the patio, writing poems and watching the birds, claiming that season as the time of regrouping and regeneration that the summer is for those of us who live by the academic calendar.

Even sitting there that Sunday morning I knew it might be hard to remember my “summer patio self” by the end of the day. Because the end of the day would be almost a day later. Before February 22 ended for us, we would be back in Washington, in freezing cold weather, and ready or not, called to jump back into the busy life of teaching and formation that is characteristic of my winter-time --- AND it would be Lent 3 days later!

Now, a week later, after a wonderful whirlwind weekend of teaching, barely recovered from jet lag, I look back on that time on the patio as a quiet example of what the Transfiguration story gives us: a lamp shining in the darkness, the letter of Peter calls it; a moment on the summer patio, sipping tea, resting in the quiet of a Sabbath morning on the harbor, reflecting on what it means to be invited into the presence of the living Christ and seeing, just for a moment, that it’s all true. I wonder if those disciples connected, just for a moment, with their own deepest selves, the part of themselves that was called out and loved – as he showed them, just for a moment, that ‘yes – it’s all true”; and they heard “This is my Son, the beloved” – before they headed back down the mountain to discover how much work there was to be done, how much the world needed healing, and dealt again with their own inadequacy to the task of healing and reconciliation that called them back down the mountain.

This Lent, the vastness and smallness of the world, revealed through the time of travel, offers a special gift to me: I am hoping that the memory of my “summer self,” sitting with Jesus on that patio down under, will stay with me this season, as I enter the swirl of activity that this season inevitably brings for someone engaged in retreat and formation work. Perhaps that time as my summer self is the “lamp shining in the darkness” that I’ve been given, this Lenten season.

Mourning Cathedral College

2009-01-03T10:24:00.001-05:00

(Also on Episcopal Cafe)
By Kathleen Staudt

Like many people I have felt great sadness at the news that the Washington National Cathedral will be “suspending” programs at the Cathedral College beginning March 31, and until further notice. Sad, certainly, about beloved staff members who will be laid off. Two programs that I’m involved in with Esther de Waal, are still a “go” for the month of February – “Approaching God Through Poetry” from February 2-6, and a weekend conference on “Faith, Art and Poetry in a Post-Christian Age” February 27-1. I wouldn’t ordinarily “plug” these except that I think people may not realize that the conferences being offered before March 31 are still a go this year, and may offer a last chance for awhile (we hope not forever) to be in this very special place. But the closing of the College feels to me a bit like a death in the family – and it has me reflecting on what the place has meant to my own spiritual growth over the years.

The College has been a part of my inner spiritual landscape for many years. I first visited there on a Saturday in June, perhaps in 1995 or 1996, for a Quiet Day in honor of Evelyn Underhill, a yearly event that we have held at the College whenever we could reserve the space. We met in the book-lined library, with its black chairs and red cushions, worn but homey rugs, and those high casement windows, facing out on the “garth” at the center of the place, and the thick stone walls that turn out to be soaked with prayers. Especially as we shared communal silence, I was aware that this was sacred space. If you have been there when there aren’t many people around, you may know that feeling—walking into the foyer of the place, one experiences a resonant silence, and a sense of being at home.

I went often to the College for quiet during the years when my two children were attending Cathedral schools, working, with permission, as a kind of always-unofficial “fellow” on various writing projects. I would go there after teaching and before a late-evening carpool pickup, or in the early morning after dropping off my chorister for rehearsal, and spend a few hours in the gentle half-light coming in the windows from the garth, finding a creative energy in the awareness that this was a place where many people have come to find focus, to do one thing for awhile and refresh their ministry.

And over the years I’ve been involved in various programs, mostly locally directed, in the College. I remember gathering in the chapel one year at the end of an Evelyn Underhill day, in a violent thunderstorm, the rain beating on the roof, as we celebrated Eucharist with then-program director Fred Schmidt presiding, and experiencing the white linen, the candle-light, and the gathered community as a kind of stronghold. I remember a retreat for MTS students from Virginia seminary, held in the white-paneled, light-filled lounge, where we began to share stories of how we had experienced God’s call to discipleship, and found ourselves in tears of amazement at the affirmation and welcome that we were able to provide one another – a group of laity called to ministry in the world, in a place so often used for the nurture of clergy. We truly sensed the liveliness and vigor of the Holy Spirit working among us that day. And it wasn’t the first time I’d met Her there.

And I remember two years of regular meetings, in the shabby but lived-in seminar room, with a lively group of gifted spiritual companions, dreaming up together a new educational program on “The Art of Spiritual Companionship” – now in its second run at the Cathedral in 2008-9. I don’t know what will happen to this program, but the fellowship of those planning meetings, in that little room beside the chapel with its worn upholstered chairs and heavy wooden furniture, was charged and fruitful time.

Last year, I worked with Esther de Waal and Bonnie Thornton leading a week long program on “Approaching God through Poetry” with a lively group of more than 30 participants who were in residence for the week. All week we took in and shared the spiritual power of shared imagination, and of the beauty of the place, the silvery bronze light of February in Washington reflecting off the stone cloister around the garth, and illuminating our gatherings. Anyone who has been to the College for some time in residence can appreciate the fellowship that came in gathering for (very good) meals in the refectory, with high-vaulted gothic ceilings and portraits of previous wardens gazing down – and many will remember special insights that come out of those conversations, with a group of people who have stepped out of the swirl of life for a few days, into the sheltered calm of these massive stone walls. Upstairs where overnight guests stay, the rabbit warren of hallways and rooms gives a sense of secret blessings hidden away, and invites withdrawal into solitude with God. It is obvious, if you look closely, how huge the burden of deferred maintenance must be for this quirky old building. There have been leaks and peeling paint and cold radiators here and there for years. Still, living among those prayed-in corners and for a weekend retreat a few years ago taught me a lot about solitude with God – and in learning there I felt myself sustained by the prayers of generations.

At a plenary session during our poetry week last year, Esther de Waal and then-warden Howard Anderson were making connections between the sense of place that flows through Celtic tradition and the reverence for land and locality in Native American tradition. Alluding to our own indigenous tradition, and speaking of the College, Howard affirmed that “an Underground River flows beneath this place.” I have felt that energy, too, gathering with others or coming alone for prayer, learning and reflection, in the “thin place” that the Cathedral College has become for me. I have no inside information on the future, though clearly there are huge financial challenges. I’m told that there are task forces gathering to consider both the Cathedral’s vision for education and the future of the buildings, and I pray for their work. Yet even if the College must be closed soon (hard as that still is for me to imagine), I believe that the Underground River keeps flowing. You can’t stop it. It carries the wellspring of spiritual energy that has brought so many to the College for so many years. And I pray that we will see it springing up again, and bringing renewed life to this beloved and prayed-in place.

"It's So Good to See you"

2008-11-23T12:29:00.006-05:00

(also posted on episcopal cafe this month)

For my church’s 50th anniversary celebration we held a “homecoming” party recently, inviting back former clergy and active members who had moved away, for an evening of food, wine and mingling, a wonderful slide show of our history, a hymn-sing and some remarks from former clergy. The program for the evening was deliberately loose and simple. The point was to come together and to enjoy seeing one another again.

And the evening was full of the usual family-reunion exclamations: “How are you! Look at you! How you’ve grown! You haven’t changed! Wow! Here you are! Here we are! And, since this was across generations: “If only x (not here) could see us now! I really want you to meet x! It’s hard to believe you’ve never met, you’ve both been so important to me!” And of course, the greeting heard most commonly, that evening “It is so good to see you!”

“It is good to see you!” The experience of being together belongs to something that goes even deeper than the conversational details of questions like “How has your week been?” “What are the children up to?” “How’s work/what do you do for a living?” Even without specific personal information, there is something holy about the presence we are for each other when we gather for church. The familiar faces, and companions in worship, tell us something about who we are and what we belong to. I believe it is our way of expressing and experiencing a growing culture of ubuntu, that concept that has been held up as a model in our conversations about the Anglican Communion. Ubuntu is the awareness, essential to African culture, that “I am because we are.” In his book God Has a Dream, Archbishop Tutu writes, “The first law of our being is that we are set in a delicate network of interdependence with our fellow human beings and with the rest of God’s creation. . . ubuntu is “the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and inextricably bound up in yours.” (God Has a Dream, p. 25)

“It is good to see you” It is good to be together, because each of us is shaped by what the other brings. Ubuntu, I have come to believe, is an experience, rather than a theological concept; I have learned most about it simply by worshiping with people from various parts of Africa, who make up a large proportion of our congregation now though we started life, 50 years ago, as a suburban “white-flight” congregation like many others in the suburban DC area. At our festival celebration, Bishop John Chane described our congregation today as “ the face of the Anglican Communion,” and this rings true. The welcome we gave each other at our homecoming weekend stretched across generations, cultures and races, reflecting the increasingly multicultural history of this congregation and of the larger church we belong to. It reminded me, repeatedly, about God’s dream for us and who we are called to be as church, both locally and internationally.

“It is so good to see you!” When we say the to each other on Sundays, or at a reunion, we are not just making conversation. “I see you” is in fact an African greeting. To see each other, gathered for church, is to see who we are in God’s presence. We sing together, with great enthusiasm and expressiveness; we gather at the altar, and we recognize in these experiences glimpses of who God calls us to be as a human family. Even though there is little we fully agree on, even though we have our conflicts, anxieties, financial issues and prejudices, there is at the heart of our common life an awareness that being together has shaped us, each of us and all of us, in our journey with God We are learning, slowly, that church is about welcoming one another and being transformed, sometimes radically, by each other’s experience. We are learning that what draws us together, in song and prayer, worship and common mission, is greater than the differences between us.

“This is what heaven will be like!” one old friend remarked, as more and more familiar faces appeared at the homecoming party. But even more moving for me was the simple joy of being together at this event. It offered a glimpse of how we live into the Dream of God in this life. At the hymn-sing, full of old favorites, we sang the truth about ourselves in God’s eyes: “O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come,” we sang. “Come, we that love the Lord, and let our joys be known,” we sang -- “we’re marching through Emmanuel’s ground. . , to” the beautiful city of God.” We’re not there yet, but we are on the journey together, and we continue to grow from being together. It is good to celebrate that, each Sunday, as at our home-coming -- good to be together, Good to see everyone again!

A Time to be Alive in

2008-11-06T22:47:00.003-05:00

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive," wrote Wordsworth about the early days of the French Revolution, "But to be young was very heaven!" I have thought of those lines a lot in the past 48 hours, since the announcement of Barack Obama's election. It is thrilling to me to see so many young people engaged in the political system again, and believing that maybe things can be changed. Not all young people, of course. I did bring all this up in my poetry class the day after the election. It wasn't so high energy, I guess because people were dog tired -- and I also sensed some bewilderment about why all the adults were saying they were supposed to see this as so "historic." For many of them there was a lot of excitement about this having been the very first time they voted! (And they WILL remember, I know, that this was their first vote (just as I remember that my first vote was for George McGovern - in Massachussetts, mind you). Their memory of this will be far more compelling than they think, whatever comes next, and definitely something to tell their children! Even if they don't know it now-- and of course I saw lots of young faces in Grant Park who already get it!)

I was even more very inspired by the experience of going door to door on Election Day morning, near Fredericksburg, Virginial, leaving door signs and "getting out the vote." Though most people were at work by mid-morning, at one stop I knocked on the door and was greeted with joy by an African American mother, with her 3 school aged children crowding to the door with her. "Yes!" she said WE voted already -- they came with me and helped me cast this vote! This is SO EXCITING!" and we shared the excitement together. I a 50something white woman, she a younger mom in her thirties. Later on I had a similar encounter with an African American dad. He pointed to his young daughters and said. "Yes. We voted already. And they voted too. We're just going to let their votes ripen until they're old enough to cast their own!" I made the rounds with a woman older than I who had come to Washington in the 60s with her husband to work in the Kennedy Administration -- an era I remember from being a teenager. The sense of new possibility and new participation in the political process is so thrilling. And when I woke up Wednesday morning and learned that Virginia had turned blue, I thought "I helped to do that." "Yes, we did!"

An acute reader will point out to me that Wordsworth's long poem, "The Prelude," goes on to recount the disillusionment that followed the French Revolution and of course he's taking a long view, but in the poem, the social disasters that followed did not wipe out the memory of that dawn of new things, and the new ideals, of liberty and equality, were here to stay despite what came later. We will have our challengesin the time ahead but the sense of hope and possibility, and the conviction that this is how things REALLY are supposed to be, remains - as it remains in the poet's lines, despite what comes after. Whatever may lie ahead, a new thing has happened now that cannot be turned back. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive" - that's how I'm feeling today!

These People are Serious!

2008-11-06T22:40:00.003-05:00

A Sermon preached at Brent House, the Episcopal Ministry at the University of Chicago. All Saints Sunday, November 3, 2008

When I was a graduate student at Yale in the late 1970’s, the Episcopal Church at Yale was a community that understood ourselves as grounded in liturgy. We were especially into processions: we had processions around the Old Campus at Yale, with its neo-gothic buildings, on Palm Sunday, at the Easter Vigil and – my very favorite – All Saints Day, always observed on Halloween night when the whole campus was showing up in Halloween costumes. On that night – in a tradition that started during “the revolution”- as Yale calls the student protests of the late 60’s—the ECY would process around campus, pausing to bless key places: the administration building, the library, gathering places. (During the revolution, I understand, they were exorcising these places, in a blend of liturgy and political protest, but by the time I was there we understood ourselves as bringing blessing – complete with vested priests and servers, a processional cross, incense and candles). Bagpipes accompanied our procession, and we chanted parts of the litany of the saints – with names we had contributed --as we paused for prayers). Following in our train were probably100 Yale students in Halloween costume, – in the fall night, with the neo-gothic buildings, this parade created a decidedly medieval, carnivalesque feeling for all involved. I particularly remember one time, when we stopped to offer our prayers of blessing, and I overheard one of the costumed Yale students turn to his friend, point toward us, and whisper – “You know, I think these people are serious!

In that moment I realized that we were functioning as the visible church of Christ on the campus: We were serious about what we were doing -- offering blessing, prayer, a presence oriented toward God, and having serious fun as we did so. I remember this incident when I reflect on my own calling, which seems to be to be a reasoned, creative Christian voice in the world – and to be a presence that somehow brings blessing. It tells me something about what it means to remember the saints and to “be a saint” in the settings where we find ourselves in our daily lives and communities.

The epistle to the Ephesians that we just heard read tells us something about our identity as “saints,” that is, as people who have been made holy by God’s love and grace, and by the fact that God has called us into the life of Christian discipleship.. Listen especially, to these words f
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints. . . .

What he’s talking about here is the gift we call “discernment” : the ability to recognize the shape of the new life we have been called into as Christians: And the way he puts it I love: “that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints”

What is the hope to which he has called us? (And no, I’m not giving a campaign speech for Barack Obama: the language of hope and transformation are at the heart of the gospel). The Beatitudes and woes, offered by Jesus in the sermon on the plain in Luke, are not merely new laws: “Do this, don’t do that, in order to be blessed.” Rather, they are descriptions of what it’s like to live in a world where we know our dependence on the love and care of God. The poor, the persecuted, the mourners, know this dependence far better than those who are able to rely on themselves for all their sense of security. The hope that Jesus brings is also promised in that other classic Lucan text, the Magnificat, when Mary sings:” He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty, he has put down the mighty from their seats and has exalted the humble and meek.”] The hope to which he has called us opens the eyes of our heart, enables us to see that the world looks different when we see it through God’s eyes. This may make us uncomfortable, call us to conversion – but what we “with the eyes of our heart” may give us clues about the growth and transformation each of us is called to, for the sake of the world we live in now.

The primary call of Christians is to be in the world as the loving, healing, reconciling presence of Christ. The prayer book says the ministry of the laity is “to represent Christ and his church, to bear witness to him wherever we may be and according to the gifts given us, to carry on Christ’s ministry of reconciliation in the world. We are called to represent Christ, and the hope that the gospel brings. -to be a blessing wherever we find ourselves. (In this way, the calling of Christians as the church carries on God’s original call to Abraham in Genesis: “you shall be a blessing. . . and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:2-3). )

This is why I am so interested in listening to and helping people tell their stories about vocation. Each person’s experience of call teaches the rest of us something about the work of transformation and reconciliation that God calls us to, as church, and as members of the Body of Christ. The central vocational question, I think, is not so much “What is God calling me to do with my life,” though that is a part of it, – but rather – What is the work that God is doing in the world as I see it, and what is my piece of that work? These are not questions about the future but questions about where we are right now. Where is the need for blessing, reconciliation, healing, in your circle of friends, in the systems and structures that affect your life; in what way might even the work of studying and writing papers be offered as part of God’s work in the world? What makes you, each day, aware that there is something more to life than just getting through the day, that there is a greater hope that we are called to live?

What does it mean to be a saint? I think it is partly to know that the way the world is is not the way it is supposed to be, and to pay attention to the ways large and small that we are called to participate in the new thing that God is doing. This, I take it is, why we read the Beatitudes on All Saints Day, and why we pause to recall the lives of those who have gone before us and who still mysteriously surround us, a cloud of witnesses that “the hope to which God has called us” can be embodied in our lives, right here, where we find ourselves now. To be a saint is to be blessed and to be a blessing, to inherit a promise and to live in hope. It is not to be a perfect person; rather, it is about being a part of something – part of a human community that persists, from generation to generation, oriented toward God’s desire for healing, transformation and reconciliation.

As the Yalie in the procession observed, we are serious about this. All Saints is a seriously joyful celebration of who God has called us to be, and of the hope that is in us, because of what God has done in Jesus. Each of us will find that God calls us to do this in our own unique way, and that is why the prayer in Ephesians is so compelling, and so appropriate on this day: I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give [us] a spirit of wisdom and revelation as [we] come to know him, so that, with the eyes of [our ]heart enlightened, [we] may know what is the hope to which he has called [us], what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints. . . .

All Saints Day and the Call of God

2008-10-31T23:03:00.001-05:00

(also on episcopal cafe

Once again, teaching my class on the Call to Discipleship at Virginia Seminary’s Evening School, I am struck by the Reformers’ insight that vocation is actually where we experience the grace of God. Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer are clear on this: Our calling is the expression of God’s grace in our lives; obedience to God’s call is our faithful response to that grace – not something we have to earn or even fully understand, not even something that makes us “better people,” though technically it is what makes us “saints.” This is hard to grasp but it is a beautiful mystery. Vocation is ultimately less about “what shall I do with my life” than it is about “how shall I respond to the relationship with God that I’m already in, perhaps without knowing it? The stirrings and restlessness that come with that experience of call are really already responses to God’s grace, active in us and in our world and relationships. This is what makes reflection on vocation something different from simply career counseling or self-awareness, even though our feelings and yearnings about work and our understanding of our identity help us in discernment. But vocation is the good news that God invites us to participate in the divine work of transformation in the world. So our honest questions about where our real work and our real heart’s desire lies are a form of prayer, really, “responding to God,” as the prayer book has it.

These thoughts about the grace of call and vocation seem particularly appropriate to me as All Saints Day approaches, a day that used to strike me as one of our most “Catholic” celebrations in the Episcopal Church. My first invitation into the Episcopal Church, many years ago, came in a children’s sermon offered by the Rev. Robert Denig (later bishop of Western Massachusetts) at St. John’s, Northampton MA, where he invited the children, whenever they hear the communion prayers, to “remember the company” – the company of heaven who surround us and have gone before us. Raised as a Presbyterian with the concept of the Priesthood of All Believers, I found it a natural and beautiful transition to embrace this idea of the mystical body of the church and to understand participation in the life of the church as a calling for all God’s people, rooted in baptism. “The saints of God are just folk like me,” we sing in that silly and beloved hymn, “And I mean to be one, too.” And the grace of God makes that possible – as Luther and all the saints have known and taught.

There are several different emphases in our celebrations of All Saints Day. Often we combine All Saints and All Souls, and/or the “dia de los muertos,” praying for the faithful departed and loved ones, and embracing the hope of eternal life that is implicit in the idea of the Communion of Saints. I suppose that’s the “catholic” dimension of our Anglican tradition. But it’s also appropriate that the BCP calls for baptisms to happen on All Saints Day, because that stresses the Reformers’ emphasis on God’s grace expressed in our baptismal identity and calling us, right from that moment onwards, to faithful discipleship and membership in Christ’s “eternal priesthood.” It seems to me to be a day when we celebrate the experience of vocation as the center of our relationship to God, regardless of the particular callings that we discern.

“They loved their Lord so dear. . . and His love made them strong.” What the “saints of the Church” know, and what they show us, is that God is active in human affairs and that we come to know God as we discern the divine invitation, always there, to participate in what God is already doing. Baptism begins a life of companionship with those who have known and know this, a life that goes on beyond the boundaries of life and death, but begins here and now, each moment that we say “yes” to this call to participation, to faithful discipleship empowered by grace. This opportunity for recommitment, together with the celebration of the Mystical Body, continue to make All Saints Day a highlight of the church year for me.

Prayer Vigil

2008-10-25T20:16:00.006-05:00

I started my day today helping to lead a 12 hour prayer vigil that my church held today. Its announced purpose was to lay "a spiritual foundation" for our capital stewardship campaign which culminates tomorrow as we bring in our pledges for annual and capital fund. So one might have been cynical, perhaps, about whether this was "praying for money" or some kind of ploy. But what made it a profound experience was that the people who stepped forward to lead it are people in the congregation who are truly gifted in prayer, and take seriously the idea that we can bring all that we need to God. The design of the day was simple: People came to pray for an hour, sometime between 9-9, many signing up in advance, and there was a different leader for each hour. I had the 9AM shift so got to begin but the leaders of the team had already set everything up (including bringing some blankets and space heaters because the heat was off in the church, as it happened (the Heat and A/C system is the at the top of the the list for the capital campaign, so it was telling that the heat was off on this particular day!)

There were 5 of us: We began with a brief prayer, and then we each took a handful of prayer cards, filled out by members of the congregation over the past couple of weeks, and took them with us to places of our own choosing, around our very beautiful and nearly empty sanctuary. We prayed in silence, but the silence was rich and full, and held us together. Daylight, candlelight, and stained-glass light combined in the early morning, with the pale brick and sand-colored stone of our sanctuary to make it an experience bathed in light -- even the need to wrap shawls around ourselves against the cold reminded us that we were wrapped in the love of God, each of us praying from a different part of the church -- our own prayers of adoration and petition, as well as the prayers of our fellow parishioners. I was moved by many of the prayers on the cards -- most of them asking for guidance, deepened faithfulness, help with jobs and financial issues, healing. There is something powerful about being invited to bring another soul into prayer, and particularly in that familiar space where I'm used to worshipping -- the candles lit on the altar, the green altar linens of the current liturgical season, and a sense of love and connection between me and the others gathered at prayer - women I feel I know well, even though we know each other mainly from worshipping together on Sundays for many years, and from the meeting or two that we had together to prepare for this day.

In the silence I remembered something Evelyn Underhill wrote about intercessory prayer (in her wonderful little book of essays called "Life as Prayer" -- this is from the title essay: "One human spirit can, by its prayer and love, touch and change another human spirit; it can take a soul and lift it into the atmosphere of God. This happens, and the fact that it happens is one of the most wonderful things in the Christian life." I experienced this at the prayer vigil today, in that familiar place with these well beloved people, all of them, I believe, particularly gifted in intercessory prayer. I am glad to be reminded, and invited again, into this mysterious and very beautiful dimension of the Christian life. It was a holy time, this morning, for me, and I am grateful.

The Spiritual Advisor and the Public Square

2008-10-25T20:14:00.002-05:00

Well, I've been pretty lame about keeping up this blog. Here's something I posted last month on Episcopal Cafe, in case anyone is still out there checking this, and missed it. It seems timely as election day approaches

I recently visited the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church (NYAPC) in Washington DC, and enjoyed a fascinating historic tour of the building, especially the “Lincoln Parlor.” Mary Todd Lincoln and the children were members of this church during the Lincoln Administration, and apparently the President relied on the pastor, the Rev. Phineas D. Gurley, as an informal spiritual advisor. On display in the Lincoln Parlor are photos of the Lincolns and the Lincoln cabinet, and, behind glass, an early draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. The story is that originally, Lincoln intended an arrangement that would have reimbursed the southern landowners for their slaves, essentially a government “purchase” of the slaves, to free them. In private conversations, the president’s spiritual advisor encouraged him to take a more morally consistent position, and the ultimate result was the Emancipation Proclamation as we have it.

Gurley was the preacher at the funeral of the Lincolns’ son Willie (as well as at Lincoln’s own funeral), and apparently met with the president to talk about “the state of his soul” and to listen. Apparently he did make some use of his relationship for what might be called “political” purposes: there are records of his recommending several people for influential political positions. But he seems to be someone whose judgment and integrity were generally held in high regard. He was also known as a preacher who did not preach politics. It appears that there was a relationship of genuine spiritual companionship between Gurley and the President, though they met relatively infrequently and Lincoln never joined Gurley’s church. The obvious spiritual depth of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, together with the story told at NYAPC about the Emancipation Proclamation, give us some sense of the “fruits” of that relationship, but its details were not a matter of public record when those conversations were going on. And , I believe strongly, this is as it should be, when it comes to spiritual advisors to the powerful and famous.

There’s a contrast here to the way that the religious advisors of the powerful have been covered—and, I suspect, manipulated nowadays, and it is dismaying to me. From my training and work as a spiritual director, I know that conversations about the “state of one’s soul” are about a work in progress, God’s work in progress. And there are good reasons why our code of ethics insists on the sacred confidentiality of such conversations. I would think that for a famous person, such a relationship would need to be a place of freedom and absolute confidentiality.

People sometimes quote their spiritual advisors (as Barack Obama does, for example, in his use of Jermiah Wright’s phrase “The audacity of hope”), and that is their prerogative, as well as their spiritual risk. But I grow uneasy –and suspicious– when spiritual advisors themselves take the public stand and talk about their pastoral relationships with candidates From this point of view Jeremiah Wright’s speech to the NAACP was profoundly distressing and obviously embarrassing to the candidate, whatever one might say about the theology of the black church and the value of the Reverend Wright’s ministry generally. I had the same problem with a New York Times front page article a few weeks ago featuring an interview with Sarah Palin’s pastor, who spoke of her worship and prayer practices and her request for Bible passages to guide her in her desire to be a faithful leader. Even apart from my personal objections to the theology and the political priorities expressed in this interview, I was troubled by the situation: What are we to think, when the pastors to the powerful give public interviews about those conversations. Are they doing it with the candidates’ permission? Or if not, whose agenda is being furthered?

It seems to me that revealing publicly the details of a spiritual conversation is a kind of sacrilege, a manipulation of holy things to further a personal or political agenda. There’s a commandment against that: You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain. It seems to me that public discourse about the theological positions of the candidates – and the pressure on them to explain their beliefs is our most blatant contemporary violation of that commandment. There is good reason why pastors and spiritual companions are enjoined to be very respectful of boundaries and confidentiality. In my view, if there is a genuine relationship of spiritual guidance and companionship, this kind of confidentiality should trump the public’s “right to know” about a powerful person’s associates and beliefs.

What a candidate says about him/herself is another matter – and may or may not be the fruit of good spiritual advice. But I have become profoundly suspicious of anything we hear publicly from a “spiritual advisor” about the state of a candidate’s or President’s soul. There’s a Buddhist saying that “those who know, do not speak, and those who speak, do not know.” This seems to me a good guide for processing media stories about the spiritual lives of the candidates, or of any public figures.

Dr. Kathleen Henderson Staudt (Kathy) keeps the blog poetproph, works as a teacher, poet, spiritual director and retreat leader in the Washington DC area, and teaches courses in literature, theology and writing at Virginia Theological Seminary and the University of Maryland, College Park.

"Household" and "Mystery": The Words we Use about "being a church"

2008-09-04T21:23:00.006-05:00

(A version of this was published this morning on episcopal cafe. And it does reflect my sense of "Episcopal/Anglican" identity, which has grown over the years, though I hope some of this will resonate for people in other Christian denominations and traditions).

“Good Morning, Church!” This greeting has become familiar in my congregation. Members who originally come from West Africa are accustomed to beginning announcements that way. And it’s catching on. “Good morning Church!” the lay leader says.

“Church.” That would be us. And we respond heartily “Good morning!”

I’ve been musing about my own sense of what it means to “be a Church,”and where it comes from. And I find that a lot of it comes from the words that we say at worship.

I came into the Episcopal Church in 1975, as the “new prayer book” (published officially in 1979) was just coming into use. Coming from a Reformed and Confessional (Presbyterian) tradition, I was drawn by the beauty of liturgy and what I understood us to be saying at worship about what it meant to “be Church.” What holds Anglicans together, I learned in confirmation class, is not set doctrine but common worship, though of course we are always in conversation about doctrine and tradition. That has been what I’ve understood about being Anglican, and that’s been my experience at worship. Some of the discussions at the recent Lambeth conference of Bishops, and the comments of the Archbishop of Canterbury, have confused me because it seems there are now voices in the Anglican Communion that want a more centralized understanding of church doctrine, and the Archbishop of Canterbury has even suggested that such a Covenant might make us "more like a church." This seems befuddling to me. I had thought there was consensus that as church we are not unified by doctrine or discipline sent from on high, but by our practice and worship. That’s what I take people to mean, discussing Lambeth, when they say we are “a communion, not a church.” But of course we are a church (as in “the Church, the people of God” to use Verna Dozier’s language). We’re not “not a church.” Clearly much remains to be discerned. And the Anglican Communion will continue exploring these matters, I hope in a spirit of mutual respect, across differences of culture and belief.

As is my habit, I go to back to the liturgy for help, to see what poetic images of "church" have rooted themselves into my imagination and memory. And here I find some metaphors that seem worth pondering in these times. They are from important prayers that I think are not always as familiar as they might be to people in congregations – and now might be a good time to revisit them in our corporate life in congregations.

The first comes from the baptism service, a passage that sometimes gets lost in actual practice, when the priest says “Let us welcome the newly baptized” and the congregation responds with applause. (I’ve seen this happen at a number of baptism services, in a number of congregations). But the words of welcome are Biblical, and important:

We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood.” (BCP 308)

The “household” of God. Yes. A good image of the Anglican Communion right now, as well as of many a congregation. We live together, we share the same food, and we have conflicts and celebrations, upheavals and challenges. But we belong to the same household. The rest of the welcome prayer is a catechism in itself – worth spending years unpacking: Confess, proclaim, share. We live out a “priesthood” as Christians, a life that involves bearing the Holy into the world, and sharing it with others, as Bill Countryman has described so well in Living on the Borders of the Holy. We are carrying out into the world the transforming love that is expressed in the faith of Christ crucified and the good news of his Resurrection. Being church means being the presence of Christ in the world, or in another metaphor I like, from Robert Capon, to be the Church is to be “the hat on the Invisible Man” for the world.

The fullness of that calling is expressed in my favorite prayer in the book, which I often use when I teach workshops on discernment and discipleship:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual ordering of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. (BCP 280, 291, 515, 528, 540)

This prayer is appointed for Good Friday, just after the solemn collects, and Holy Saturday, just before the baptism service. We also say it at ordinations. (Marshall Scott has a good discussion of this in an earlier post on the Daily Episcopalian). It’s worth pointing out and holding up this prayer in a time when we’re reflecting on “being Church” because people who don’t attend a lot of ordinations may not be aware of having heard it or offered it.

I love the poetry of this prayer: the suggestion that radical transformation – things cast down, raised up, grown old, made new—can be carried out “in tranquility.” That in itself is a prayer for a miracle! This prayer acknowledges that our life as Church is held in the Divine life. To acknowledge this requires humility, as we craft ways to be together as the “household of God.” That’s why I also love the prayer’s description of the Church as “that wonderful and sacred mystery.”

The scrappiness and challenge of a “household”, held in “that wonderful and sacred mystery.” Holding these two metaphors together may help keep us open and humble, in the lives of our churches generally. as we continue to discern together what it means to “be a Church.”