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? 

The Irrational Season

This is the irrational season

When love blooms bright and wild.

Had Mary been filled with reason

There’d have been no room for the child.

By:  Madeleine L’Engle

I have no doubt that author and poet extraordinaire—Madeleine L’Engle—could have continued her poem, “After Annunciation” with stanzas for “Into the Wilderness.”  What sense does it make for God to proclaim Jesus the Beloved Son at his baptism and then drive him into the wilderness temptation? What kind of a world with the Devil, yet angels that wait on Jesus—ready at his side?  A world in which the human soul could be turned into its own wilderness seeking its own end. 

Yet we know a different story….don’t we?  That Jesus does not fall into the temptation to deny his humanity.  That’s right!  The temptation was not to do miracles.  More was at stake.  For to do so would have denied his humanity.  No longer would he be living his life as the Son—he’s be on his own, a prodigal son. 

Jesus emerges from the wilderness affirmed in his humanity and dedicated to following God as fully human.  The only way I know through the wilderness beset with temptation is with Jesus out front leading the way.  It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote:

“Ah! The way ahead is so straight and narrow with deep chasms yawning on both sides.

To cross it yourself, well…think again and step back before venturing alone.  But, if you see Jesus going on before you.  That’s an entirely different matter!  The way is so wide you could drive a truck through it.” 

Bonhoeffer died in a German concentration camp the day before it was liberated, a few days after Christmas.  How irrational that God would let him die there—Or rather, did he not find his way across the chasm of that place and hold onto the gift of his humanity, the way into his identity as a child of God? 

A Farewell Letter

The Rev. Jennifer R. Durant

For all the Saints....

Now free from her body, set loose into eternity…

Her vision long sought, now beholding face to face.

Dear Jennifer,

You slipped out of this world just as quietly as you entered ours at Good Shepherd. Suddenly…you were just there.  Saying little, yet full of life; no grandstanding, a simple faith in full pursuit of the vocation, the indelible print on your soul.  I still hear your laughter, see the certainty in your face for your principles…the love you had for your husband and family. How I recall the day I saw you preaching when you found your voice—God’s Voice in yours—and you flew on your wings.  And I followed you through the days of diagnosis to the last chapter of your life.  I wonder if you realize that the cross you carried proclaimed the Jesus you love more than anything else you alone could have done with your earthly ministry? You were so much more a priest than you could have ever known. m

That’s callous I know….

Is there anything to rationalize the dreaded ALS?

No more than the Cross I suspect, a life given away in love more alive in Christ,

      than a script we could write on our own.

Thanks for forgiving me for not attending your ordination.  Another spirit was at work in the Church at that time.  But I did mean what I said when I wrote you my own ordination sermon and used the lines from Pop to Roy Hobbs from The Natural: 

You’re the best damn hitter I ever saw.  Suit up!

For all the Saints, I see you dancing up to the gates of heaven! 

Keep the door open for me up there, okay?

Eternal peace be yours,

Larry

 

The Day After Ash Wednesday

The service ended, and I washed the ashes from my forehead.
"Beware of practicing your piety in public."
Meanwhile Cardinal Whurl of Washington DC reminds us of those who dare
to wear the cross and risk their lives.
So what's the risk for me?
Unless that is....that I myself is the real challenge before me.  To wear those ashes
in my soul and burn off the dross that has collected there for a long time.

Maybe that is why I stood there at the end of the service....just staring at the altar candle.
Everybody recited the Post-Communion Prayer while I stood there staring at the candle
that found its way inside...to the heart....and burns there still.

Ashes that burst into flame?  
What power on earth is there that does that....
The same that drew Lazarus from the tomb,
    raised the daughter of Jairus....
has already started to raise me in these 40 days.  

 

Lenten Journey 2015!

40 Days of Godly Acts of Goodness!

Taking A Different Kind of Lenten Journey….

The day begins with “Remember that you are dust” …

And then leads into 40 more days toward Easter.

History tells us that these days are meant to follow Jesus.

Our minds often say yes—we get this idea,

But our hearts are slow to really embrace it. 

Something in us avoids the real work of spiritual growth. 

So  let the same Spirit that led Jesus lead us.

The desert was after all a place of demons and temptation—

But also angels…..

The angels lead us toward good works in God’s Name. 

Specific people….

with particular actions…

given with a prayer!

Let me give you a hint.

This is the whole idea of Lent.

Get the self out of the way to serve in God’s Name. 

Self-denial that leads to acts of goodness in God’s Name.

Remember that God alone

Raises flames of Charity from the Ashes….