A Collect for Beloved Children of God

God of tears,
who is troubled by the death
of every sparrow,
how you must be grieving now.

One hundred fifty girls dead,
your children,
our children,
killed by others who are also beloved by you,
also your children,
with mothers and fathers and families of their own.

I say I want to love as you love, but my heart is
breaking.
Yes, I do want to love as you love;
help me.

Help me.

Keep me from the callousness
that cannot grieve, and yet show me
how to bear up in a world that seems to
hunger and thirst
for hate and blood and death.

Help me
to remember that there is no one
not made in your image, no one
who does not bear
your divine light within.

Give me eyes to see,
even when I don’t want
to look.

Merciful God, abide
in this desert with us.

We Are What We Love

I don’t remember when I was first introduced to the wisdom of Thomas Merton. I do know, however, that when I’ve become dissipated and have my mind pulled in too many directions, I can touch something of the still point in myself by reading his writings. So as the country seems to become more and more unhinged and full of hate, I picked up a book I love, A Book of Hours, which is a daily prayer book compiled of Merton’s writings. To read the writings of a contemplative who was also deeply concerned with the state of world affairs helps me to return to center. I find stability amid the turbulence around me.

I could focus on any number of quotes, but today, here is one that rings true in all seasons: 

We are what we love. If we love God, in whose image we were created, we discover ourselves in him and we cannot help being happy: we have already achieved something of the fullness of being for which we were destined in our creation. If we love everything else but God, we contradict the image born in our very essence, and we cannot help being unhappy, because we are living a caricature of what we are meant to be.

God, in whose image we made, is perfect love, so if we are to live into that fullness of being that Merton speaks of, we will be people of love. We won’t be people who judge others by skin color, or by where someone is from, or by gender, or by someone’s political leanings, or by someone’s religious beliefs or lack thereof.

Have you ever noticed, when you’re busy judging someone or something, you aren’t really happy? Judgment and criticism don’t ever make us feel better. We may feel superior, but that is not the same as the deep happiness that comes from loving—loving another person, loving an animal, loving the beauty of the natural world, or simply loving life. These loves are possible because we are made in God’s image, and God is love.

The “love” of everything else that Merton speaks of is not imago dei (image of God) kind of love. It’s the love that manifests in egotism, greed, fear, cynicism, pride, and self-righteousness. These are not manifestations of love at all; rather they are the result of our settling for less than God and God’s desire for us. Why do we settle for greed when we are made for love? Why do we settle for prideful self-importance when it doesn’t truly satisfy the longing in our souls, which is for love?

To discover ourselves in God is a freedom that enables us to realize that we don’t have to grasp and cling to reputation, ego, possessions, or power. We don’t have to settle for a caricature of what we are meant to be. We can rest in the delight of God’s love and love what God loves, which is the whole creation. Living for the sake of others brings more joy than living for ourselves alone. That’s the fruit of loving God.

At Home

Jesus answered, “Whoever loves me will keep my word. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” John 14:23

I look around my home, how it reflects me,

the books, the artwork, the colors, the plants,

the open windows that let me see out and invite light inside,

the memories and people represented in items displayed,

the love that fills this space and fills me too.

It is good to be home, to let myself be expressed here.

I wonder what God thinks as God looks around within me?

I hope that what God sees stirs such fondness as I feel,

looking around my home.

Since God created me, I believe God does look with fondness

at God’s home within me.

Words Matter

As a steady drip of water on rock creates a depression,
reshaping stone,
your words heard over and over,
over decades, 
dug into my heart:
You aren’t enough.
   I’m better than you.
      No one else will take care of you.

Spoken often, implied always by your arrogance,
I shrank and withered under their weight,
under the judgment, until it seemed 
my heart broke open.

Whispered softly, words of healing came from elsewhere,
found a way in, hard to hear, hard to believe, yet unretreating,
persistent, falling into the break and lodging
in the heart.
Growing imperceptibly, gaining strength enough 
to counter your negative words.

Growing, as other voices sang them over me.
Growing, until I could hear them 
and believe them 
instead of the lies
you told.
Growing.
Growing, until they crowded out your words
and sang with every heartbeat:
You are beloved.
   You are appreciated.
      You are enough.

I may always bear the scars of your words
but they won’t rule my life.
I live by other words now,
words that give life,
words that give love.

A Prayer of Longing and Contentment

I need no more, I have

everything I need. Contentment

is a blessing, a gift. Yet I want

to grow, to know you better, God,

and to know myself better too.

You are always with me, and I am

always with me, yet both shrouded

in mystery. I get distracted, but

deep down, the waters are still,

cool, and teeming with life.

I long to go there, to enter

the depths of my heart, and yours.

I want to know why tears come,

why the sight of clouds against

blue sky swells my heart, why the

touch of another lingers in my mind.

I want direction when I’m aimless.

I want to hear my soul sing.

Acknowledging God's Extravagance Toward Us

Some thoughts for this Eastertide about what the Resurrection shows us:

Grace and Gentleness

A word for those of us who are hard on ourselves or others:

Loving Yourself is Essential

It matters that we love ourselves, for we can't love others properly if we don't love ourselves. I hope you'll be encouraged to practice healthy self-love as a way of being a more faithful follower of Christ.

 

Divine Providence

 

How do we understand the way God works in the world?

Waking Up to Right Use of Resources

 

Doom to the one making evil gain for his own house, for putting his own nest up high, for delivering himself from the grasp of calamity.

                                                                                                     Habakkuk 2:9

 Habakkuk was one of the texts for our weekly morning prayer service this week. While not a book I read often, this particular verse stood out to me that morning, and convicted me. How often am I concerned about making myself safe, putting my own nest up high, and not doing enough to make things safe for others? I expect that most of us able to read this post do what we can to keep ourselves secure—physically and financially. There is nothing wrong with that except when we stop at our own safety and security and fail to work to make the same provision for others in our world.

 The Common English translation of Habakkuk 2:13 says this: Peoples grow weary from making just enough fire. That seems to reinforce verse 9. We make just enough “fire” for ourselves, and fail to make a fire big enough to provide warmth to others. That we do so without any compunction or guilt says that we’ve forgotten that we are all interconnected. This is something I continue to struggle with in my life—how much provision do I need for myself, and what of my resources should I share with others?

 I don’t recall when I first read this quote by St. Basil the Great, who lived from 329-379, but I do know that when I read it, I was convicted, and I continue to be convicted by it:

When someone steals another’s clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.

 Reading this quote for the first time was an awakening moment for me. It was another of the experiences that reshaped my notion of what faithful discipleship looks like. It’s pretty amazing that Basil lived in the 300’s, not in the materialistic culture of the United States! In the same way, Habakkuk speaks out against those who take care of themselves while others suffer. Throughout time, we show ourselves to be selfish, self-absorbed residents of the planet.

 I could just shrug my shoulders and say, “That’s just the way it is.” But doing that would not be faithful to the one who gave his life because of limitless love.

 I believe that when we make Christianity a morality show, we often do so in order to not face our own greed and selfishness. In the well-known story Jesus tells in Matthew 25, the question that separates sheep from goats has nothing to do with personal morality. Rather it is about caring for others. To fail to share what we have with others, according to Basil, makes us a thief. May we struggle with how to make right use of our resources, and may we not numb ourselves to the needs of others that we can meet.

 

Another Waking Up Experience

A couple of weeks ago I shared a post about one way I had awakened to a different way to be a follower of Christ. You can read it here. This week I'm sharing a video post made for my church. It speaks of another way I have awakened.

Lizards, Snakes, and Spiritual Formation

 

I'm sharing a video post this week with some reptilian examples!

Sanity is No Excuse for Hate

 Last week my blog post was a video in which I shared a couple of stories that disturbed me. They remind me that no matter who we are, we are not immune from behaving in cruel ways. If you didn’t see the video, you can find it here. I want to spend a little time today reflecting on why it is so important that we not turn away from stories that make us uncomfortable.

One of the things I thought about, especially as I read the story of Stephen Biko and the cruelty inflicted against him, plus the government official practices that sought to make black South Africans feel inferior to whites, was that these practices were likely created and enforced by people who considered themselves Christian. Certainly not everyone involved in their creation or implementation would have considered themselves a Christian, but I’m pretty certain that there would have been white churchgoing South Africans who were actively involved in perpetuating the belief that black South Africans were inferior to themselves. And they may have excused their behavior because they were “obeying the law” or “doing their job.”

We certainly have our own history of such belief in the United States. And that belief was held by people who called themselves Christians. Beatings, killings, racial slurs and derogatory thinking about people different than we are does not get checked at the doors of the church. Sadly, it persists today.

We have to be better. We have to do better. Hatred is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. Arrogance and a belief in your own superiority cannot be supported by the Sermon on the Mount. We cannot justify calling other people, who are, like us, created in the image of God, any derogatory name, whether it is “animals” or “heathens.” (And I’ve heard church leaders use both of these to describe others).

A meditation by Thomas Merton entitled “A Devout Meditation in Memory of Adolf Eichmann” should give us all pause. Merton says this:

One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. . . The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared.

Merton goes on to say:

And so I ask myself: what is the meaning of a concept of sanity that excludes love, considers it irrelevant, and destroys our capacity to love other human beings, to respond to their needs and their sufferings, to recognize them also as persons, to apprehend their pain as one’s own?

Along with Merton, I wonder how we can fail to apprehend the pain of others as our own? If we claim to follow Jesus, we can neither condone or keep silent when policies and practices developed (and often made into laws) create and perpetuate systemic hatred and demeaning treatment of others. We cannot hide behind sanity. That is not a sufficient standard for Christians to follow.

The Choice to Love

We are capable of encouraging life or destroying life. The choice to love matters.

 

Ahimsa

Though many people think that yoga is predominately about physical poses, the actual postures of a yoga practice are only one limb of the eight limbs of yoga. Yoga is a way of being in the world. The first limb of yoga consists of ethical principles to guide how we live in the world among others, and the first of these is ahimsa, which means nonharming. 

 For those of my readers who are familiar with the founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, you may know about his three simple rules, the first of which is Do no harm. Nonharming is a universal ethical principle. 

 I have thought much about the importance of practicing ahimsa as we continue to be in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. The opportunity to practice nonharming is always before us, but it is hard to deny the importance of not doing harm to another right now. Harm is front and center, not only because of our unwillingness to take simple steps to slow the spread of Covid-19 but also in the continuing inequities toward people of color in society, especially when it manifests in being killed because of skin color. 

We do harm when we fail to be sensitive to the life experience of people whose experience differs from ours, when we choose not to listen, when we do not seek to understand. We do harm when we stereotype—whether by race, gender, age, nationality, religion, or any other way we box people into categories. 

 What if, for one day, we could practice ahimsa all day long, in mundane, invisible small ways that no one sees? If we could choose to not say the unkind word, share the inflammatory social media post, wear a mask in public, or learn what life is like for someone different from ourselves—by the end of the day we might discover a gentleness within ourselves that had been obscured from view. 

 For you see, when we practice not harming another, we reap the reward by a greater sense of well-being and inner peace. When we are practicing ahimsa toward the world, we experience ahimsa toward ourselves. Imagine how much better you can feel just by choosing to not do harm to another.

Seeing with Eyes of Love

A video post, of a devotional I gave this week.

A Prayer to Yield

Then he said to them, "Is it legal on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" But they said nothing. Looking around at them with anger, deeply grieved at their unyielding hearts, he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." So he did, and his hand was made healthy.

                                                                                                Mark 3:4-5

O God, show me when to speak,

   how to speak, and what to say.

May my heart yield to you and your way.

May I be one who loves, who does good,

   who places life ove rules.

May I practice ahimsa, seeking always to do no harm.

Lord, you know I burn inside with desire for justice and mercy.

Show me the right use of the fire within me, so it brings light and warmth,

   but not harmful destruction.

Let my life bring healing in the world.

Show me your way. 

Letting Go of Victim Mentality

I read a quote recently that I cannot recall verbatim, but it spoke of how freedom comes when we choose to no longer be a victim. Victimhood is a heavy burden to carry, yet many choose to live the victim story.

Things do happen to us, some of which we cannot control. Disease, crime and accidents can change the course of our lives. Discrimination of any kind may deny us opportunity. We may or may not be able to change the outcomes of circumstances, but we do have a choice in how we live within them. We can choose to be free or we can choose to be a victim.

Victim mentality thrives on blaming others. It is nourished by a poor sense of self, by a failure to love oneself. Very often, victimhood is claimed when one has not even been harmed. I have known people who claimed victimhood because of their own poor decisions.

There are many problems with choosing to live with a victim mentality. It wraps us in neediness, causing us to pressure others to pity us or shaming others for “causing” us to be victims. It keeps us from accepting personal responsibility and from claiming our self-worth. Victimhood drives others away from us, especially the ones who love us, because nothing they ever do is “good enough” to cure our victimhood.

Letting go of victimhood brings freedom. One would think that would be enough to entice one to let go of a victim mentality, but to lose the victim mentality means you have to not be identified as a victim, and this may reduce the attention or pity one receives.

When we can come to the deep knowing of God’s abundant love for us, we no longer need to manufacture attention and the pseudo-love of pity that is a poor substitute for deep, generous love.

Life Beyond the "But"

“They will kill him. But he will be raised on the third day.” And they were heartbroken.

                                                                                                Matthew 17: 22-23

Heartbroken. Just thinking about that word brings back the pain of a heartbreak I experienced. Maybe it also brings back painful memories for you.

Jesus has told the disciples that he will be handed over and killed, but. . . The disciples, like most of us who suffer heartbreak, stop before the but. We cannot even see the “b” of but, much less what lies beyond it. When you are in the depths, it’s hard to imagine that you will one day not be there, that you will be lifted into the light.

Jesus tells them what comes next, the life that lies beyond the but, yet they can’t hear anything past his being killed.

It is what lies beyond the but that gives us hope, that enables us to live in peace and joy despite our circumstances. Christians are Easter people, people who live with hope, with expectancy . . . people who see the but and know that there is more. Even if the but is all we see, simply seeing it enlivens us and gives us reason for praise.

It’s why I love the psalms of lament, because although they paint a picture of a terribly difficult situation, there is almost always a but, a turning point where God’s unfailing and redeeming love is acknowledged, not simply as something to come but present even in the midst of lamentable circumstances.

Experiences of heartbreak are never easy. Yet if we have experienced new life out of shattering circumstances, we can hold onto the hope that the but is not the last word. Life beyond the but is not only possible but full of promise.

Wholly Loving

He wants us to be like him: wholly loving toward ourselves and toward all beings.

                                                                                                                Julian of Norwich

Can love ever be carried to extreme? When I think about the term “wholly loving,’ that question comes to mind.

But when I look to God, I know the answer to that question. If love is truly love, pure love, it can never be too much. We can distort love in many ways, but pure love can have no excess.

Being a doormat for another is not love, because it is neither loving toward ourselves nor toward the person we allow to use us in that way. Allowing someone to use you, to denigrate and demand and control you is not encouraging them to become all that God wants them to be. Allowing such behavior lets a person live in their insecurity and fear, and actually encourages more such behavior, while at the same time diminishing your own sense of worth.

God does not love us this way. God does not oppress or shame or blame. God does not pressure us into certain behaviors or threaten us. God does not use fear to manipulate us. God is always loving us into life that allows us to be full, whole and alive in God.

Love is not needy, jealous, manipulative or possessive. Love does not traffic in shame or blame, but acknowledges failures and moves on, forgiving and apologizing when needed. Love knows the difference between apology and attention-seeking, between forgiveness and pridefulness. Love is all humility and no ego. Love looks with clear eyes and sees what is, which is that we are all beloved and clumsy, chosen by God for all eternity.

When we can know ourselves wholly loved by God, then we can rest in God’s love. We can love more like God loves, because we don’t need to manipulate or control others to receive love. And when we are wholly loving toward ourselves, we don’t allow others to diminish our worth to feed their insecurity.