Grace and Gentleness

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

Traveling the The Threefold Way

Some wisdom from the early church.

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.

 

Waking Up to Weakness as the Way to Holiness

 

Can we accept that growth in holiness comes through vulnerability?

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.

An Experience of Waking Up

 Life should be a process of waking up. I was recently thinking about some of my own waking up experiences. I define waking up experiences as times when you realize that something is other than what you thought it was, when you become aware that what you know is insufficient, or skewed, or seen through a lens that distorts your vision. Paul talks about seeing a dim reflection in a mirror in 1 Corinthians 13:12, and Rumi says “Wake up, wake up! You have slept millions and millions of years. Why not wake up this morning?”

 Father Richard Rohr had a recent series of daily messages about corporate sin, the sin perpetrated by powers and principalities that we often fail to see as sin because we benefit from the system. Reading these reminded me of one particular waking up experience. I woke up to the way I was swept up in a materialistic, acquisitive culture, and how incompatible that was to my faith.

 I was not asleep to the disparities among people, both within our country and in the world in general. I’d participated in mission trips and I knew that I had significantly more resources than most of the world’s people. But the waking up was the recognition that I was allowing myself to be swept along in the general current of American culture, which is oriented toward acquiring, holding, and protecting assets, and that this way of living did not feel healthy for me as I sought to practice being a faithful disciple of Jesus, who had very few assets.

 It’s interesting how we pick and choose which parts of Jesus’ teachings we want to follow and practice, or any of the Bible’s teachings for that matter. Some of my waking up experiences have been around the recognition that I cherry-pick which of Jesus’ examples I try to follow and which I choose to ignore or explain away as irrelevant or unrealistic.

 I realize that to live in our culture I will need certain assets to function effectively in the vocation I feel called to practice. But I am also aware that much of what I have is superfluous. While I am far from living as simply as Jesus did, I am continuing to work to detach from the desire to acquire and hold material assets because it is an expected practice of our culture. It requires attention and discipline, because even in the Western Church, we don’t necessarily advocate for going against the grain of our culture with regard to materialism.

What experiences have you had of waking up? Are you fighting to stay asleep? These are questions worth pondering, and questions I return to time and time again.

 

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.

 

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. 

Upheaval

Mary said,

“With all my heart I glorify the Lord!
     In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior.
 He has looked with favor on the low status of his servant.
    Look! From now on, everyone will consider me highly favored
         because the mighty one has done great things for me.
Holy is his name.
     He shows mercy to everyone,
        from one generation to the next,
        who honors him as God.
 He has shown strength with his arm.
    He has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations.
     He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones
        and lifted up the lowly.
 He has filled the hungry with good things
    and sent the rich away empty-handed.
 He has come to the aid of his servant Israel,
        remembering his mercy,
     just as he promised to our ancestors,
        to Abraham and to Abraham’s descendants forever.”

                                                                Luke 1:46-55

Mary’s song of praise, the Magnificat, does more than hint at the upheaval that her son’s coming brings. Her prophetic word is clear. The coming of God in human form will reverse the usual order of things. The hungry will be fed. The lowly will be lifted. The powerful are stripped of their influence. The rich are sent away empty.

If you only read this text once a year during Advent, you might simply enjoy its poetic quality and miss the power of the words themselves. Mary’s song is regularly recited as part of Vespers, the evening prayer service of the daily office. This daily reading of this text allows the words to sink into us, and, in our affluent culture, may cause us to wonder if we truly welcome this change of affairs.

Mary has much to teach us beyond her prophecy. Mary shows us that our power and influence are less important than our availability. Loretta Ross-Gotta says: God asks us to give away everything of ourselves. The gift of greatest efficacy and power that we can offer God and creation is not our skills, gifts, abilities, and possessions. The wise men had their gold, frankincense, and myrrh, Paul and Peter had their preaching. Mary offered only space, love, belief. What is it that delivers Christ into the world—preaching, art, writing, scholarship, social justice? Those are all gifts well worth sharing. But preachers lose their charisma, scholarship grows pedantic, social justice alone cannot save us. In the end, when all other human gifts have met their inevitable limitation, it is . . . the bold virgin with a heart in love with God who makes a sanctuary of her life, who delivers Christ who then delivers us.

Mary’s prophecy is an invitation to us who are rich and powerful in comparison to the rest of the world. Mary encourages us to no longer rely on our influence or wealth, but to empty ourselves, give ourselves away, die to ourselves, and instead offer space and love to Christ who becomes our food, our wealth, our strength.

We cannot deliver ourselves. Our possessions, our influence, even the good works we do—none of these can deliver us. When we truly believe that God, who made us and loves us, will deliver us, we can sing with Mary, “With all my heart I glorify the Lord! In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior.”

Vacant

“When an unclean spirit leaves a person, it wanders through dry places looking for a place to rest. But it doesn’t find any. Then it says, ‘I’ll go back to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the place vacant, cleaned up, and decorated. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself. They go in and make their home there. That person is worse off at the end than at the beginning.  

–Matthew 12:43-45

Let my heart not be found vacant, Lord,

well-adorned yet empty. Let my heart be

filled with warmth, love and your presence,

that I may walk in your way,

that I may radiate your love to others.

Fill me full of yourself, O God.

Leave no cell void of you

that I may dissolve into you

fully,

completely,

wholly.

Amen.

Seen

Humans see only what is visible to the eyes, but the Lord sees the heart.

                                                                                                                --1 Samuel 16:7b

 Because I am seen by God

   I want to see others as God sees them.

There are those who have seen me this way.

   They helped me to live.

   They loved me to new life.

To see another as God sees them—

   what greater gift can we give?

Was it God’s seeing of David,

   his anointing by Samuel,

   that sparked the faith to face Goliath?

Being seen is the sun and water

   for the Godseed in our hearts.

We grow and bloom when seen as God sees.

   We catch fire and burn brightly,

   fully engulfed with life and light.

With

Whoever isn’t with me is against me, and whoever doesn’t gather with me scatters.

                                                                                                                                ---Matthew 12:30

I want to be with you, Jesus,

always,

every moment, every breath, every step,

every thought, every heartbeat, every blink of the eye.

I want to be in the flow of your grace—

gathering, drawing in, embracing with you the ones you love,

everyone.

Let my words speak love; center me in your heart.

May I be light and salt for you.

Show me your way,

your path, that I may not stray from it.

Let me not be scattered but gathered,

centered, content in you. Amen.

Selfishness and Rights

I don’t know the answer. But what I do know from reading just a few of the Facebook posts that have come out since the latest mass shooting is that selfishness is alive and well in our nation. This isn’t really new news, but fear and greed have taken the defense of our “rights” as Americans to a place where our first interest is MY rights, not your rights.

Contrast that with the instruction of Paul in Philippians and the way of Jesus, which Paul describes:

Don’t do anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others. Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus:

Though he was in the form of God,
        he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.
But he emptied himself
        by taking the form of a slave
        and by becoming like human beings.
When he found himself in the form of a human,
        he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
        even death on a cross.
Therefore, God highly honored him
        and gave him a name above all names,
     so that at the name of Jesus everyone
        in heaven, on earth, and under the earth might bow
        and every tongue confess that
            Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Especially in this season of Lent, which is time we set aside for contemplating how we need to conform ourselves to the image of Christ, should we not be watching out for what is better for others? Should we not be willing to empty ourselves of self-interest as Jesus did?

Is there no longer a place in our country for self-denial, compassion and willingness to listen to one another? At the very least, is there a place among Christians for such behavior?

What might be different in our nation if Christians “adopted the attitude that was in Christ Jesus”?

Good

If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.   Matthew 7:11

What is good does not always seem that way in the painful moments.

What baby, though cramped in the warm womb,

thinks being pushed through the birth canal is good,

thinks emerging into light and chill and noises loud and harsh is good?

Does the caterpillar wonder at the cruelty of having the build its own coffin,

the chrysalis that seems the end of its life of freedom?

Good can’t always be discerned, foreseen;

sometimes, often, it is entered into blindly.

It is not willingly chosen.

Transformation comes disguised as chaos, upheaval, disorientation,

fraught with questions beginning with

why.

Sometimes good is only seen in hindsight,

as one flies on colorful wings,

or experiences the vastness of light and love.

A Prayer to Know Myself

“. . . your Father knows what you need before you ask.”  --Matthew 6:8

You know me, God, inside and out,

better than I know myself.

You know my needs, and though I am often

blinded by wants,

you see clearly.

Draw me closer to you so I may see myself

as you know me.

Help me to parse wants from needs

that I may be content and grateful.

I want my prayer to be a song

sung to your secret tune for me.

Let my life follow your melody,

let my spirit resound with your song.

We Are Our Times

“The times are bad! The times are troublesome!” This is what humans say. But we are our times. Let us live well and our times will be good. Such as we are, such are our times. ---Augustine of Hippo

This quote in today’s liturgy for Common Prayer could not be more appropriate, and yet, its author, Augustine of Hippo, lived from 354-430, in a time and place far removed from us. To read this quote in the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, and in a world that seems increasingly filled with violence and tension, I realize that there really isn’t any such thing as “the good old days.”

We are our times. . . Such as we are, such are our times. What we tolerate in ourselves grows. What we excuse in ourselves overtakes us. We are often quick to speak of what Satan is doing in the world. But evil isn’t simply “out there.” To blame evil on Satan keeps us from taking responsibility for our part in the perpetuation of evil.

The desert abbas and ammas, those early Christians who have much to teach us today, understood that spiritual growth and transformation happen only as we battle the demons within ourselves. The capacity for any kind of evil lives in each one of us. Why do you think Jesus stated that calling someone a fool was the same as murdering them? What we carry inside, what we allow within us is what determines the state of the times in which we live.

When we fail to understand our own capacity for evil, the seed of evil grows within us. What begins as a thought eventually is acted out through words or deeds—our judgment of someone who is different from us, our unwillingness to act for the common good because it will cost us something to do so, our sense of superiority over others—so the seed grows into a weed that we fail to even recognize as such.

Recognizing our capacity for evil is not the same as saying we are bad or saying “I’m only human.” These excuse us from taking the hard road of growth. Excusing our evil is like running a weed eater over weeds—it does not eliminate them but instead strengthens the unseen roots, causing the weeds to come back stronger than before.

Teresa of Avila understood that spiritual growth was not always easy or pleasant. In her book on spiritual growth, The Interior Castle, she uses the metaphor of a castle for the spiritual journey. She notes that when many people encounter the snakes and bugs of the basement, they turn away rather than persist through what is unpleasant within themselves. It is helpful to have a spiritual companion who will accompany us through the stages of growth, encouraging and challenging us. I have found spiritual direction a safe and grace-filled place to look at the parts of myself I’d rather ignore.

We may not have pulled the trigger in Las Vegas, but we have all wished ill for another. When we can acknowledge that, and see it for the evil it is, our world will begin to change. Such as we are, such are our times.

Stones

“And don’t even think about saying to yourselves, Abraham is our father. I tell you that God is able to raise up Abraham’s children from these stones.”          Matthew 3:9

It is often tempting

to rely on

the faith of others,

past experiences of awe,

rote practices now devoid of meaning.

But these are stones.

Too heavy to carry far,

they are designed

to make, to mark a path

forward. They are not

sitting stones

but rather

stepping stones

on the journey of spiritual growth.

“Move on, move on”

they say.

“Find new stones. Your life,

like a garden path, is a

collection of such stones,

of Ebenezers on which

to tread.”