Sabbath Rest

Mark 1: 35 In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 


              Question: 

Could it be that Lent is a time to seek the “rest areas” for the soul?

This is a far different kind of rest than sleeping in!  It is a new awareness.

What are the things that give rest, peace for the soul?  Might I suggest that we find them as we lessen connection (and responsibilities) with the world—and then, reconnect with the Spirit?  Pity the practice of getting busier during Lent!  The Scripture records how Jesus went out in the dark to a lonely place—one deserted from human presence and activity.  There—he prayed, he connected with the Spirit.  Only then did he go out into the public arena and minister.  

Maybe the sign we need to obey is one that see alot during the day...
                                                                     but we only believe it applies to a vehicle!

 

The Near Life Experience.....

Near-Death OR Near-Life Experience....

I attended a funeral and the nave was packed.  The whole church was for that matter.  So I took up a place at the nave door with the ushers to listen to the service.  As I stood there, I became intensely aware of "looking in on the celebration of a life."  Once outside, I looked down on the funeral tent and people huddled there. It was like one of those near death experiences --except this one was  "NEAR life"--really near the LIFE of a beloved person.  We catch sight of all of our life's, short-lived, rich in eternal meaning.

It was Graham Greene who wrote the novel, The Tenth Man, with the condemned prisoner who sells his life for a million dollars--for somebody else to die for him.  He leaves the jail cell, the other person dies and his family inherits the other man's wealth, estate--everything!  So, the prisoner who has bought himself out of life faces the torment of having lost everything.  He sneaks around and looks "in on his life," as it was--visits his home, watches the other people living there.  He is utterly lost and knows not the real meaning and value in his life.

Looking in on that funeral....
I caught  the intangibles of what really matters in life, the gifts you have truly left behind that keep on giving.  M. Scott Peck, in The Road Less Traveled, said that real love is when we enrich the lives of others.  He defined "enrich" as enabling them to find more of who they really are.  Strange how the true beauty of the one who had died enriched so many ... and I looking in on it all from the outside caught a glimpse of those "immeasurable riches of Christ."(Ephesians 2:7)

Eyes of the Heart

Eyes of the Heart

The other night, my dog was walking me (not the other way around), when she stopped dead in her tracks…she was peering into the night, her body stone still, and she was fixed and fastened on something –unseen to me.  As we got closer, out of the dark bolted a deer.  She knew it was there.  She had to be my eyes!  We often talk of “seeing eye dogs,” yet that is closer to the truth.  Jesus is clear that those who claim to see on their own (spiritually) really do not.  Those who look with the Spirit’s “seeing eye” really do.  But what it sometimes takes is to stop in your tracks and pray that the Spirit will open the eyes of the heart.  In Benedict’s Way, the first chapter talks about “the eyes of the heart.” They disciplined themselves to allow the Spirit to see through them into the lives around them.  They saw Christ in the stranger! 

What exactly is Prayer?

Now, looking at these two pictures 

what would you say is Prayer? 

                           When does the soul speak....
                                         and when does the mouth? 

The Great Stories

  The Bridge within Us!

One of the truly great dialogues comes from Tolkien’s The Two Towers. Frodo is the ring bearer who must take the ring of evil to Mt. Doom in Mordor and toss it into the molten lava to destroy it.  This dialogue comes just after the pair are beset by yet one more attack that leaves them exhausted in body and spirit.  We all have narrow bridges to cross between who we are and what God calls us to be and do.  Finally, we awaken, I believe, to the great mystery that the Giver of the Vocation also gives the grace to carry it out.  We have to give ourselves to the Giver to cross that bridge.

The Dialogue

Frodo: I can't do this, Sam. 

Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something. 

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?  

Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for

fanning flames...

I came downstairs this morning to find the coals from the evening's fire still glowing....
And, they could easily be fanned into flames for the new fire of the cold morning.
How often do I cover over the old ashes in my life as if they could never catch flame again?
Lent is after all a word that means "lengthening of light"--the light returning to the world.
Could it not be the time to fan those flames into the passion for living in a new direction?

I began to read the story of the temptation this morning....and after I introduced it, I immediately saw that the book was marked incorrectly.  It was not Matthew, but supposed to be Mark!  A much different story....Just what does it take for us to close the book on one story line in our lives and move on to the next one?  All the temptation stories make clear.  The same Spirit that leads Jesus into the wilderness, we can infer leads him out.  A new chapter began for him, and for us when we make the effort to get on the same page with him. 

Shutting Down the World.....

I love the way the snow shuts down the world....maybe it gives us all an excuse to detach, let go, a temporary freedom of responsibility.  I am not overlooking hardships caused in the meantime, nor do I wish to trade places with somebody in Boston.  Just peace, blessed peace from myself:  that never-ending list of people to see, places to go, things to do--the emails that expect instant answers.  Is peace something that passes understanding?  Or, is it something that I have the master key to as far as the lists in my life? 

There is a marvelous picture and a note card by graphic artist and calligrapher, Michael Podesta. It shows the snow descending and has this caption in red:   A gift of peace, quietly descending, blankets the terrain of the heart.

What does it take for us to shut down our own world...
and be at last at.....
Peace?