Waking Up to Weakness as the Way to Holiness

 

Can we accept that growth in holiness comes through vulnerability?

Finding the Holy in the Ordinary

Over my bed hangs a print of a mostly brown butterfly. Not the type you might consider art-worthy. Under the butterfly are these words: Finding the Holy in the Ordinary.

 To be able to find the holy in the ordinary grind of daily life is a practice that can transform the mundane to the marvelous. Awe and wonder are not only triggered by big things, but also by the small things we may overlook or take for granted.

 

Nature is full of things we may often overlook in their ordinariness. One day I was 

walking near where I live in downtown Macon. I saw what had looked like a patch of weeds every other time I’d passed it, but that particular day, what I saw were adorable flowers. The flowers had been there all along, but because I was able to see differently that particular day, I collected a bouquet to enjoy in my home.

 A number of Psalms extol God’s creativity in the natural world. One of my favorites is Psalm 104. The whole Psalm is a song of praise for God’s work in creation, but these particular verses always make me smile:

O Lord, how manifold are your works!

In wisdom you have made them all;

the earth is full of your creatures.

Yonder is the sea, great and wide,

creeping things innumerable are there,

living things both small and great.

There go the ships,

and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.

Psalm 104:24-26

I love the Psalmist’s use of imagination. Creation and creatures are not merely acknowledged and described with literal precision. We are invited to see with the Psalmist’s imagination—even a giant sea monster frolicking in the ocean! 

I invite you to get outside, take a slow walk, and simply see what may be quite familiar to you with a fresh sense of awe. Let your seeing be a prayer of praise to God. A friend of mine calls it “marveling.”

 Author Macrina Wiederkehr was walking one morning when she saw a silver maple tree whose leaves were shimmering in the sunlight. She was suddenly uncertain if what she was seeing shimmering in the light were leaves or angel wings. I think about that when I see the sunlight shining on leaves, especially when the tree is glistening after a rain shower.

Another way to invite mystery into the mundane is with a practice the Celtic people employed:    blessing the ordinary activities of the day.

They had prayers for rising, prayers for kindling the fire, prayers for making the bed, prayers for dressing, and even prayers for milking the cow. And that’s just the first part of the day! There were prayers for travel, prayers for the herd they were tending, prayers for seaweed they harvested, prayers for the seeds and plants, prayers for churning butter, making cloth, and for the tools of cobbling shoes. And then there were prayers for putting the fire out at the end of the day, prayers for protection at night.

 There was no activity or item too mundane to bless.

 Several years ago I was part of a retreat that studied Celtic spirituality. One of the exercises we were given was to write a blessing about an ordinary practice or item. A friend who attended with me wrote a blessing for her favorite paring knife. How might you bless the ordinary items you use each day or the ordinary activities of your day?

 Is a blessing for your paring knife or your toothbrush silly? I would argue that it is a tool for a deeper relationship to God. When we live with eyes that see the holy in the ordinary, we are actually praying without ceasing.

 I invite you to a fresh way of encountering the world today, even if your world feels quite small and confined right now. God meets us in the ordinary. Our experiences provide all we need to swim in holiness, even if those experiences feel mundane and unremarkable. How will you meet God today?

Holiness

Holiness does not lie on the other side of temptation; it is to be found in the midst of temptation. It does not sit waiting for us on a level above our weakness; it is given us in weakness, or else we would elude the power of God that is operative only in our weakness. . . It is only in our weakness that we are vulnerable to his love and power. Accordingly, to continue in the situation of temptation and weakness is the only way for us to connect with grace, the only way we can become miracles of God’s mercy. 

                          –Andre Louf

In my observation, it seems there are two categories of people in church. There are those who believe themselves to be holy because they feel themselves to be morally flawless, and there are those who believe they will never be holy because they struggle with temptation.

Those who equate morality with holiness are generally hard folks to be around. They see Christianity as a list of rules to be followed. If you follow the rules, you are good; if you come up short, then you are unacceptable. When one lives this way, they find it hard to have compassion for others who don’t measure up to the standards they deem important. And it’s not at all Christlike, for Jesus didn’t limit access to himself based on who followed rules. On the contrary, he spent more time with those whom we might judge to be morally deficient.

Morality, however, is not the measure of one’s holiness. Holiness is not about being correct, saying the right words, doing the right things, or following the right rules. Holiness is about knowing who we are—that we are subject to temptation and that God is with us in the struggle, whether or not we succumb to temptation. God’s grace comes to us when we are able to accept that we are weak and in need of God’s grace. If we are so certain of our moral purity, then we really don’t acknowledge a need for God’s grace.

Julian of Norwich is one of my favorite Christian mystics. She offers us a gracious image of God, as both strong Father and nurturing Mother. She even says that when we fall (succumb to temptation) it gives God occasion to care for us, to show us mercy and forgiveness. It’s not that we try to fall, for we don’t really have to try. It’s going to happen because falling is simply part of our nature (and those who don’t think they are falling are fooling only themselves).

When we can receive the gracious love and forgiveness of God for our own falling, we actually are more closely connected to God than when we feel ourselves morally correct. And those who know themselves as ones who fall receive the strength and compassion of God for themselves, and are likewise able to share God’s compassion with others who fall. A church full of compassionate souls who fall is a beautiful expression of the body of Christ.

Mercy

“Show us mercy, Son of David.”    --Matthew 9:27

 Show us mercy, Son of David

   for we are blind and do not know the way forward.

Show us mercy, Son of David

  for darkness envelops us today.

Show us mercy, Son of David

   when we use scripture to justify sin and excuse our callousness.

Show us mercy, Son of David

   when our blindness is so deep

   that we call the bad good

   and the good bad.

Show us mercy, Son of David

   when we do not see the log in our own eye.

Show us mercy, that we may learn mercy,

   that we may love mercy,

   that we may show mercy

      to the hungry and the hurting,

      to the sick and the homeless,

      to the prisoner and the outcast,

      to the privileged and the proud.

Show us mercy, Son of David

   until we become mercy.

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.”

Three Haiku from Ireland

On Easter Monday, I traveled to Ireland for a writing retreat, giving my blog a rest while generating fresh ideas for future posts. Today I offer three haiku written in the ruins of the church named for St. Colman Mac Duach.

Ancient prayer grows

from the stone. Small fern speaks life

into hopeful hearts.

Warmh of holiness.

Sanctuary of silence.

Eternity speaks.

I offer my heart

on this ancient altar as

prayers seep from stones.

Song of Praise

Revelation 4:1-11

Holy, holy, holy!

Creator God, you are holy!

In the orange fire of sunset,

in the vivid pink of sunrise,

in the indescribable blue of spring sky,

your glory bursts forth.

Holy, holy, holy!

Christ Jesus, you are holy!

In you, we see God’s heart for us—

love we cannot fathom,

patience filled with grace,

forgiveness that bids us live with joy.

Holy, holy, holy!

Spirit, you are holy!

In the stillness of early morning,

in the silence of a chapel,

in laughter, tears and love of community,

your presence is palpable.

Holy, holy, holy!

Wrapped in Trinity’s holiness

may we too be holy,

lifted by love to deep devotion,

challenged by grace to grow in grace,

filled with joy irrepressible.

Holy, holy, holy!

Faster than Grace

Flipping through my copy of The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, a monk who lived in the 1600s, I saw a  couple of sentences I highlighted several years ago when I read the book: She seems to me full of good will, but she would go faster than grace. One does not become holy all at once.

I wonder what Brother Lawrence would have to say about our instant, disposable, microwave culture that doesn’t have time for even a five-year plan. It seems to me that the Church of western culture has jumped on the runaway train of instantaneousness of everything we do. When I talk to church folk in various locations and denominations, I hear the lament of declining numbers, fear of irrelevance, and I see efforts at one-upping activities “competing” for the attention of church members.

We seem to want to go faster than grace, to find the magic pill that grants instant holiness. We forget the gifts we offer souls: the importance of consistency in an inconstant world, of stability in a transient society, of quiet in a world of noise. Heck, we don’t even build churches with sanctuaries anymore; we have “worship spaces” instead.

Maybe we need a sanctuary, a place to find roots and rest, a place that wraps us in healing embrace and asks, in return, that we go and do likewise with one another. A place to slow down and abide is a place of grace, a place where we are given permission to grow gradually, a place where life is about a long obedience rather than a quick fix.

One of the lessons I’ve learned from the labyrinth is that if I am distracted or try to go too fast, I lose sight of the path. Walking a labyrinth is not about efficiency or speed or results. Rather, the labyrinth invites one to move at a slower pace, to pay attention only to the next step, and to simply be present. The labyrinth reminds me that the journey takes time and is filled with changes in direction, but if I stay on the path, I will never go faster than grace. I’ll never be out of the reach of God’s love and goodness.

Brother Lawrence’s observation reminds me that distractions that pull us away from rootedness in God have existed forever. We haven’t changed that much throughout time. The hunger for God can only be filled by God, and we cannot devour it all at once, and declare ourselves done. We become holy over time, with discipline and stability and sanctuary. May we learn to walk with the pace of grace.

Holding the Chalice

Holding the chalice as my church family receives Holy Communion is a privilege for me. That we share ourselves with each other when we dip bread in the common cup demonstrates what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 12:27 when he says “You are the body of Christ and parts of each other.”

On a recent Sunday I was privileged to hold the chalice. As people dipped their bread, some crumbs remained in the cup. As I said to each person, “This is the blood of Christ, poured out for you” I was aware that the cup also held the body of Christ, the crumbs of the bread each communicant had received. Body and blood cannot be separated. Each needs the other.

This is no less true of us. While I could not identify from whom the individual crumbs in the chalice came, seeing them mingled together reminded me that we need each other, that we cannot be separated one from another and be fully who we are created to be. Wholeness is never a solitary way of being. Holiness is not an individual achievement.

Our interdependence is demonstrated in Holy Communion, eating from the same loaf, dipping into the same cup. As the servant allowed to hold the cup, I saw visual confirmation of our interdependence—crumbs—fragile life given and shared in Christ’s body and blood. What a precious gift to hold in my hands, and what a glorious memory to now hold in my heart! Some may disdain crumbs in the chalice but for me they represent bits and pieces of ourselves, our broken and shared selves, immersed in God’s sweet and generous grace.

Morality As An Obstacle to Holiness

I’m reading Life and Holiness by Thomas Merton, so over the next few weeks you will likely find my blog posts exploring some of the ideas from that book.

Merton says that moral goodness is an infantile conception of holiness. He observes that we don’t appreciate the meaning and greatness of our vocation to Christian holiness because we don’t know how to value the divine redemption and infinite mercy of God, so we content ourselves with exterior signs of respectability.

An article I read recently in Weavings magazine referenced three phases of discipleship described by Father Ron Rolheiser. The most basic phase, Essential Discipleship, is defined as the struggle to get our lives together. Moral goodness would seem to fit into this lowest level of discipleship. If being good in the sight of God and others is my goal, I remain in the shallow end of the pool of discipleship.

The second and third phases of discipleship are Generative Discipleship, defined as the struggle to give our lives away and Radical Discipleship, the struggle to give our deaths away. Jesus gives us the ultimate picture of what giving one’s life and one’s death away looks like. Jesus’ path of downward mobility, giving up one’s rights and privilege for the sake of others, is the way of holiness. This is not an easy way, especially when we are the ones who have rights and privilege. Merton notes that the way of Christian holiness means embracing hardship and sacrifice for the love of Christ and in order to improve the condition of people on earth. He says, “We may not merely enjoy the good things of life ourselves, occasionally ‘purifying our intention’ to make sure that we are doing it all ‘for God.’. . . Our love of God and of man cannot be merely symbolic, it has to be completely real.”

Such a love means we cannot close our eyes to the injustice that surrounds us in our own communities and across the globe. We cannot excuse our indifference or inaction by saying someone “deserves” their lot in life, or that exploitation is okay because it’s the cultural norm or that the problem is too big for me to make a difference.

The amazing thing about the path of holiness is that in giving ourselves away we discover freedom that is not possible when we content ourselves with being morally good and respectable. When all we have is available to others, life becomes joyful.

Wicked Advice

The truly happy person doesn’t follow wicked advice . . .

                                                                Psalm 1:1a

Wicked is a strong word, and because of it, I wonder when we read it in scripture, if we discount its applicability to us. After all, if advice seems wicked to me, I doubt I’d follow it!

So what is wicked advice? If we are to be on guard against it, it must be more subtle than what might initially come to mind as wicked. I believe that wicked advice is any advice that contradicts the stirring of the Holy Spirit within us, any advice that discourages us from being who God created us to be.

Wicked advice could be advice that guilts us into acting when we know what we really need is to be still. Wicked advice might be the advice that tells us to be reasonable when what we really want to do is be generous with our resources. Wicked advice may tell us to play it safe, to think about the risks, when our spirit yearns to be part of a mission team to a third-world country, or a blighted neighborhood. Wicked advice could be discouraging one from pursuing a call to a particular vocation because it might not provide a lucrative salary.

Wicked advice can even come from our own self-talk, when we act because we are concerned about what others will think of us if we say no to some request (even to serve some good cause). Not every call to serve is our call to serve. Not every request is one aligned with our truest self and our area of giftedness.

The path to true happiness, which is the path to union with God, means that we must tend our soul with love and care, giving it what it needs to grow and minimizing those things that suck the life out of it. Discerning the difference between these requires us to be attentive to the stirrings within, which is not a practice encouraged in our society. True happiness is found in neither superfluous activity nor superfluous leisure, but in living a life that continually draws us nearer to the One Who created us and Who sustains us.

Holy Desire

“The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people.”  A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

What images come to your mind when you hear the word “desire?” Our possession-laden, sexually-oriented culture influences our thinking around the whole notion of desire. We desire a lot of things, but do we desire God with a single-minded, panting desire?

Last week, I referenced Psalm 42:1: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. Do you pant for God? A.W. Tozer speaks of acute desire. What I take from these words like “acute” and “panting” is that our desire for God is to be all-consuming, not an add-on to an otherwise busy and complicated life.

Even within the church, we get so caught up in activities that we can become dislocated from the heart of Christ. Speaking about the church, Tozer says, “The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart.” I wonder if we miss the boat within churches by pasting on more activities instead of teaching people to be attentive to the longing of their hearts.

We are created to long for God, to find our rest and fulfillment in God. When our heart’s desire is God, our action flows from the inner well of deep love and devotion to God. Living with such desire, we can surrender control to God, embrace the rest that Jesus offers, and know the peace that Paul speaks of in Philippians 4:7: Then, because you belong to Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. And this peace will control the way you think and feel.

Small Things

Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin . . .

                                                                                                                Zechariah 4:10a

A fond memory from my recent mission trip to El Salvador was a small event, taking no more than 30 seconds, but one that made a big impact on me.

Liz, our translator, had supplies to make piñatas, an activity we could do with the women and older children after teaching the day’s hygiene lessons. It took two days to make the piñatas. On the second day, we strung some cord between two trees for hanging the piñatas to make it easier to decorate them. One of the women on our mission team was pulling the cord from one tree to the other. She tripped on a large rock, just a small trip, an incident that didn’t draw any attention.

Debora, the same girl who had given us her bracelets the previous day, saw it happen. With no fanfare, I saw her move the rock, along with another large rock, to the base of a nearby tree.

It was a small gesture that touched my heart and told me volumes about this young girl. Her attentiveness and action were a lesson to me. She simply saw a need and acted. She paid attention closely enough to notice the trip, and responded from a heart of compassion. I think I am the only person who even saw Debora’s action.

How many such opportunities do I miss because I get distracted by other things going on or worse yet, by my own thoughts? I wonder how often I am so preoccupied with myself that I don’t see a simple way to make things better for others. The pace at which we move can blind us to small acts of love and thoughtfulness toward others. When my head is down, looking at the screen of my phone, I miss the chance to show love to one of my brothers or sisters.

1 John 3:18 says: Little children, let’s not love with words or speech but with action and truth. Debora loved with action. He act of noticing and moving the rocks and her generosity in sharing her bracelets with us was love that needed no words. These were simple but powerful acts of love that challenge me to follow her example. If I am to love with action I must be intentional about paying attention to the rocks in another’s path.

The Lighted Path of Righteousness

Light is planted like seed for the righteous person. 

                                                                                Psalm 97:11a

It is enlightening (bad pun) to think about light as seed. It’s easier to think of seed needing light to grow. Imagine the ground looking like the sky on a dark but clear night, light beaming out all around your feet. It is like a scene from a Disney movie, a path so illuminated that it is nearly impossible to stray from the right path.

Ah, you say, if only the path were so clear! But is it really that hard to see the right path, the path that God has for you? I believe that righteousness, while a gift from God, grows within us as we practice living rightly day in and day out. It’s not about “being good” but about such an overwhelming love for God that you want what God wants. This deep love compels you to faithfully walk in the way of Christ, and as you do, it becomes easier to see and follow the path.

Like exercise, the regular practice of walking in the way of Christ strengthens our faith muscles, and what was once unnatural for us simply becomes who we are. Several years ago my New Year’s resolution was to eat more fruits and vegetables. It was quite hard at first to change my eating patterns. I had to crowd out the other foods to make room for more fruits and vegetables. But consistent practice has changed the foods I crave. It is the same with living righteously. It begins with falling in love with God and grows to be who I am, instead of something I have to consciously do.

That doesn’t mean I never fail. Righteousness does not equate to perfection. Righteousness is a way of living in obedience to Jesus, an obedience that bubbles out of you because the center of who you are is overflowing love for God. We daily learn to follow more closely and we discover that our failures are caught in the net of grace! We can acknowledge our failures, repent of them, but not be defined by them or held hostage by them. They don’t rob us of our joy. They don’t turn our vision from the light on our path.

Wonder and Oneness

I pray they will be one . . .

                                 John 17:21a

I’ve been thinking about reverence this week, because I am part of a small group studying An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor. As I read the gospel lesson for this past Sunday, from which the above verse is taken, it dawned on me that reverence means the ability to recognize that we are all one, that we are all in Christ—not only people but all created things. Paying attention—being reverent—is to see the thread of Light and Love that binds us all one to another: apple to fish to person to tree to ant to star to water to bird to God.

I wonder how my seeing ever got so bad that I was no longer able to see that thread. My husband tells the story of getting his first pair of glasses as a child and being surprised that the mass of green on the side of the road was comprised of individual blades of grass! It seems that for a time I lost my “glasses” of grace and wonder, glasses I had as a child. When I do put those glasses on, I can see God in everything. When I see with grace and wonder, the thread that connects us all is obvious.

It takes conscious effort on my part to put on the glasses of grace and wonder. Our culture, with its cynicism and frenetic pace of life, is not going to encourage me to view the world through lenses of grace and wonder. While our culture loves to idolize created things—money, possessions and status—it does not encourage us to be reverent, to hold the mystery of what we cannot explain, nor to even attempt to explain that which is greater than us.

Glasses of grace and wonder differ from regular glasses by training my eyes to see reverently all the time. I want to be where I always see the oneness of all creation with its Creator. I want to be able to see all creation as holy so that all of life becomes sacrament (visible image of the invisible God) for me.