Living Stones Community

Suffering Is Central to Christianity: Meditation on 1 Peter

2011-12-03T20:48:00.000-08:00

First Peter makes it clear that suffering is central to Christianity. After the standard greetings of “grace and peace,” the writer begins right in discussing suffering. Every time he moves on to discuss other things, he comes right back to suffering. In fact, he bluntly says that when we suffer, we should not “be surprised” “as though some strange thing were happening.” Suffering is basic. Suffering is Christianity 101. It is little wonder that our primary symbol is a torture instrument: the cross.

The letter, then, says quite a bit about suffering. To begin with, it is “necessary” for us to be “distressed by various trials” because these trials will result in good things, as they are connected to our faith, to glorifying Jesus Christ, and eventually to “the salvation of [our] souls.” After all, suffering is central to the life and work, even the very identify, of Christ. Indeed, it is by his suffering that he was revealed to “the prophets who prophesied of the grace.” So in turn, “for the sake of conscience toward God,” we too are to “bear up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.” We are not to return abuse for abuse. We are not to give back evil for evil. Suffering in this way is our debt, the example set for us in Christ, and our calling. We are called to suffer. It is a blessing to “suffer for the sake of righteousness.” Moreover, sometimes our suffering will lead to righteousness, especially when we suffer in our struggles to be more like Christ. Moreover, we are not alone in our suffering. Not only has Christ suffered before us, but those all over the world who follow Christ share “the same experiences of suffering.” Also, after we “have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace” will grow us. Because of all this, the writer even goes so far as to say that “to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing.”

But this is a lot to accept. Rejoice in our suffering? Bear through our suffering with patience? Not return abuse for abuse? If this is possible, it is only so because of the deep spiritual insight that is the heart of the epistle, a beautiful truth: “Those also who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.”

The gospel of suffering is good news only in a world where everyone suffers already anyway. Our suffering is not relieved for following Christ—in some cases it is made worse—but it is given meaning. Moreover, we are given examples of how to suffer well, we are assured of companions in suffering, and we are shown glimpses of what good can come out of our suffering. Most importantly, our suffering becomes part of our life in God. Read it again: “Those also who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.” Our suffering is not relieved but it is transformed.

The basic movement of prayer is surrendering to God—letting go of everything we are holding on to and accepting everything that God has for us. At times, this is pure joy. Usually, it is not. But my prayer is that, in our suffering, we will entrust ourselves to God.

Collaborative Contemplation

2011-11-19T06:32:00.001-08:00

Greetings fellow sojourners! I would like to ask if I could begin some dialog with you about this odd juxtaposition of terms: collaborative contemplation. I have been asked to talk about contemplation at a contemplative retreat in January, and after talking with the leaders, we noticed that there was a strong concern for the communal dimensions of contemplative prayer. Why do we come together to do this "individual" practice? I found the discussion inspiring because I was making connections between it and the book I'm currently reading: Cathy N. Davidson's Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Work, Live, and Learn. The book deals with "attention blindness" -- a state of unawareness which is a process of learning that begins in pre-infancy. We are culturally nurtured to "pay attention" to certain things and disregard others. While this is a necessary skill for survival, it is nonetheless a limiting agent in the observation of reality. Thus, Davidson argues that collaboration is a much needed factor in the lives of communities.

With this idea in mind, it seems that centering prayer (and other contemplative practices) may be viewed as a "tool" to help one's attention blindness by training the brain to take a break from its conditioned patterns of "paying attention." My question is, "Can the idea of collaboration work somehow with contemplation to add a new dimension of spiritual awareness to not just an individual, but also to a community?" I don't mean to imply that "two heads are better than one, and with more we'll figure out the Mystery." But can we come closer to the Mystery and be enriched in the process of viewing "it" in a form of collaborative silence that is not possible in isolation?

Do you know of writers that tackle such a perspective? Scripturally, I'm looking at the story of the Transfiguration and other instances of Jesus taking a few of his disciples with him to retreat in prayer as a springboard into the discussion. I would appreciate any advice, or corrective suggestions this idea inspires! By the way, it's interesting that this talk will be held during Epiphany.....

Faithful Presence

2011-11-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

In the last third of his 2010 book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World James Davison Hunter develops an alternative approach to our dominant secular culture, one that is not adversarial. He advocates “faithful presence” and argues this is the model most appropriate for our current historical context—which he calls exile. He cites Jeremiah’s prophecy regarding the Babylonian Exile as relevant to us. I would also point to Joseph’s service to the Pharaoh in Egypt. Like those Israelites we must seek to bless those of the dominant culture while simultaneously maintaining the integrity of our own spiritual calling. Hunter develops and emphasizes the concept of shalom, drawing on both the Old and the New Testaments. We are to be representatives and transmitters of the shalom of God—the harmony, wholeness, beauty of God—seeking and sharing God’s shalom with all others to the fullest extent possible.

To effectively develop and share God’s shalom, we must first be faithfully present to God and then faithfully present to fellow Christians. Only if these first two sets of relationships are real and active can we be effectively present to those outside the church. All these relationships need to be incarnated in genuine, actual practices.

Clearly the first and foremost relationship is with God. If this relationship is not vibrant, then all our other relationships will not be as they should. To practice being faithfully present to God, Hunter identifies these kinds of disciplines: “participation in the sacraments, collective adoration, repentance, contemplation, intercession, devotion, and service” (244). In terms of individual devotion, he specifically mentions “prayer, meditation, fasting, study, simplicity, and solitude” (244). Unfortunately many of these practices are not emphasized in contemporary circles. Enthusiastic worship and eloquent preaching are often promoted, but meditation, solitude, interior silence, and the like are given only lip service at best, at least in most circles, perhaps piously encouraged, but if so, only in vague, non-specific ways that fail to challenge and/or actually help most believers develop in-depth spiritually.

But in fact these practices are central, core. As Hunter says, "It is important to remember that Christianity – in its beliefs and practices – is defined from the center out" (281). If instead of making God and relationship with him the center, we make “a certain understanding of the good in society the objective, [then] the source of the good – God himself and the intimacy he offers – becomes nothing more than a tool to be used to achieve that objective” (285). When this happens, as it has numerous times in Christian history, the results always include the tragic and grotesque. In contrast, our lives both individually and as Christian community, need to be expressions love, beauty, and harmony. My prayer is that God will indeed help us to be faithfully present to him and to one another in these ways.
--Rickey

A Complex Combination

2011-10-23T04:50:00.000-07:00

John 1:39: Jesus said, “Come along and see.”

Psalm 34: Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see— how good GOD is. Blessed are you who run to him.

In my Ecology, Theology, and Literature class we have just finished reading For the Beauty of the Earth by Steven Bouma-Prediger. Among the many things I’ve learned two stand out: I’m not at the center of things, and I’m certainly not in control. Annie Dillard’s biting quote makes this stunningly important point, “…(at church) we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares…the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” Dillard's words have a forbidding air. God isn’t tame. He’s wild and unpredictable. This needs to be noted and remembered. But I know I didn’t sign up for this Christian life because I was afraid or wanted to win arguments (although I appreciate and value clear, strong reasoning). I joined the family of God because I was drawn by God’s love. I saw God’s love in people I could hang out with, just like Andrew did with Jesus when he asked, "Teacher, where are you staying?" Jesus replied, "Come along and see for yourself." And Andrew ended up spending the day with Jesus. In fact, the first thing Andrew did after finding where Jesus lived was find his own brother, Simon, telling him, "We've found the Messiah.” He immediately led him to Jesus. And we know how that connection ends: Simon is renamed Peter and becomes a rock Jesus can build on.

That’s what I call a solid foundation, but God’s been in the drawing-us-to-him business for a very long time. For example, Psalm 34 directs me to open my mouth and taste, open my eyes and see how good GOD is. This is where His love tugs at me in a different way, and I’m happy to spend time appreciating God in the taste of rain; ripe, red strawberries fat with rain and sun; His rainbow over the soaked strawberry field and over the wet workers in the strawberry field; and God’s warm kiss on my lips when I say his name with thanksgiving in my heart for it all.

There is a lot of value in recognizing that God is wild and unpredictable. But it is crucial to also remember that God is Love. It’s a complex combination, but I’m not confused. “Come along and see,” he says. I’m full of hope and running toward him open, open, open.
--Anna

I Must Be Healing

2011-09-18T05:32:00.000-07:00

I walk often, although I’ve put it off for about two weeks because I hurt my right foot tripping over a curved chair leg, sticking out like a giant comma. (Obviously I missed my cue to slow down and pause.) Well, I’ve missed my regular morning walks--the way they help me start my day with quietness and confidence, strengthening me with every step. I’ve missed seeing the way the sky looks when it’s still dark and dotted with starry colons and periods and a capital O of a glowing moon. Or at first light when a growing grayness creeps slowly across the papery horizon defining the familiar landscape of trees, houses, and an old pasture where I frequently experience the cows rising stiffly to greet me. And I bow, smile, and tell them good morning in return. And I've missed seeing when the sun is rising and clouds are strewn haphazardly in ever changing purples and reds. This morning the sky was one of those skies--an artist's messy palate that's somehow beautiful before a single stroke meets a waiting canvas. Later I expect the clear definition of white, puffy balls of vapor filling an endless blue space punctuated with a powerful yellow period, declaring God is in his heaven and everything I’m getting ready to face—the anxiety of traveling in traffic, meeting deadlines, paying bills, and washing dirty laundry—everything will be manageable. I’m celebrating my walk today, and I’m happy to know I’ll be back treading the neighborhood again tomorrow because my foot isn’t hurting too much. I must be healing—hurray!
--Anna

A Rubric for Measuring Your Spirituality

2011-08-27T05:49:00.000-07:00

"But to me it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself. For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord. Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts; and then each man’s praise will come to him from God" (I Corinthians 4:3-5).

Category The categories list indicators of spiritual progress.	Raw Score Score yourself in each category on a scale of 1 (sinner) to 10 (saint).	Weight Some indicators of spiritual progress are more important than others. Multiply your raw score by the weight factor given for each category to get your weighted score.	Weighted Score Add all of the weighted scores together to get the true measure of your spirituality.
Testimony		x 0	=
Church attendance		x 0	=
Tithe and offering		x 0	=
Prayer and worship		x 0	=
Control over external sins		x 0	=
Missions trips		x 0	=
Control over internal sins		x 0	=
How close you feel to God		x 0	=
How much others look up to you as a spiritual person		x 0	=
Any other category by which you might try to measure your own spiritual progress		x 0	=
God’s view of you		x 100	=
Total Spirituality Score:

After being on the spiritual journey for some time, we may feel that we've really made some progress. But then we may slowly or suddenly run into a patch where we feel that that progress was all an illusion. For instance, I get so irritated when my two-year old daughter cries and whines over the slightest things--she's always crying! and whining!--I can't stand it! But then, I think, Where did the fruit of the spirit go? Wasn't I more patient than this a year ago? Shouldn't I be even more patient than ever by now?

The wisdom of St. Paul in the passage quoted above is very useful here. He points to an authentic humility, neither inflating nor deflating one's sense of one's self but rather giving the whole matter over to God. There are no meaningful measures--church attendance, feelings of holiness, amount of giving, time spent in prayer--by which we might rightly judge our own progress. What seems like a slump might be a time of hidden growth. What seems like regression in one area might be a time when one is growing in another area. What seems like great progress may be in fact only a little progress. Only God has an accurate perspective.

Constant self-assessment is counterproductive, as it takes time, adds worry, and is bound to be inaccurate. Students learning to write often lose control over skills that they had already mastered while they are working on new skills. For instance, their grammar may become sloppy for a time while they are working on critical thinking. In such cases, they may seem to regress while in fact they are making significant progress. The same seems to be the case in the spiritual life.

What I think the answer is is this. Seek God's perspective the best you can. But don't worry about how far you have come or not come. Instead, gently--though sometimes also fervently--keep on practicing, practicing the spiritual disciplines, practicing the presence of God, practicing the fruit of the spirit. And leave the results or lack of results to God who knows and loves us more than we know or love ourselves.

May we do this.

A New Contemplative Seeker and A New Book

2011-08-22T21:44:00.000-07:00

Greetings all,

I just wanted to drop a note about some of the things going on in my world in relation to contemplation. I have been meeting with a fellow United Methodist pastor for about a month doing some lectionary studies and discussion. Last week the topic of contemplation came up, and he informed me that he was interesting in mysticism and was reading some books about it. He told me that he had just started reading Richard Rohr's The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. I immediately order a copy of the book, and we are meeting in the morning to talk about it and the core practices of Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina. I can't begin to express how excited I am to have a local colleague that is inquiring about this type of spirituality! Just when you feel like a lonely Elijah, you learn that the Spirit is actually at work in many, many places!

I'm only a third of the way into Rohr's book, but it has been very intriguing so far. Here is one quote that has jumped out at me: "Yes, the mind welcomes education, but it also needs to be uneducated, to learn how much of what it 'knows' is actually mere conditioning and prejudice." p. 56, I'm humbled by the realization of just how much unknowing I lack!

Peace sisters and brothers,
Mark

At the National Cathedral

2011-08-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

Ever since I got back from visiting with my daughter Cristin in D.C. in July, I’ve wanted to share about my experience at the National Cathedral. I tried to tie it in with all that has occurred this summer, which is a lot. But what I wrote wasn’t coming together, so I’ve decided to just keep it simple and tell about one hour in one day--the Sunday folk Eucharist at the National Cathedral.

This service was held in the basement of the grand cathedral in a small chapel and led by a woman priest. Rickey had read about her on the web site--she is in charge of the music and she leads a centering prayer group. I found her to be warm, welcoming, and humble. The refrain of the morning was "This is the folk service and we are the folk," which, translated, meant we were all invited to be active participants. We were asked to volunteer for the readings. Cristin volunteered to lead the prayers of the people and was directed to read from a simple notebook where the prayers were freshly written specifically for that day. Also, "the folk" was the choir, so we practiced the songs before the service began--the instruments were acoustic guitars. Communion was served to us as we formed a circle.

But the most meaningful part of all was when the priest announced there was no sermon, but rather a discussion. It was typed in the bulletin: in place of "Sermon" was "Discussion." She asked us to be relaxed about sharing what "struck us" (doesn't that sound familiar :-) from any of the readings. We weren't to worry about connecting to each other. She said in her experience the Holy Spirit did the connecting for us. She made some opening remarks and opened the floor. Without any dominating personalities and with relaxed politeness, about six people responded, one at a time. If they had small voices, she repeated what they said for the rest of us. With gentleness and sincerity, she added, clarified, or merely accepted what was shared.

Before we started communion, she told us she would be leaving immediately after her part because she was going to be participating in the "big service" upstairs in the main sanctuary. She said the guitar leader would finish leading us, and then there would be announcements. I loved this part-- during the announcements about four or five different lay leaders popped up and shared briefly about how we could join in a variety of social justice projects--feeding the homeless, donating food for the poor, donating personal hygiene products for the homeless, donating socks for the homeless. We were offered the opportunity to give money, but the emphasis seemed to be on how to be directly involved. Rickey's sister, who had traveled to D.C. with me, made an offering and picked up a small brochure about reaching the homeless.

When I read the brochure later, I was impressed how it began by giving specific directions for connecting people with serious needs to helpful programs—food, clothing, shelter, counseling, and jobs. God was mentioned, of course, but it seemed to represent more his open hands than religious or reprimanding words.

Before I left, I briefly toured the huge cathedral. It is an amazing structure, and I was impressed by its grandeur and beauty, but mostly I came away encouraged, inspired and moved by my experience sharing the Eucharist in the basement with other "folk," who I recognize as other livingstones.
--Anna

Salt and Light

2011-05-15T19:57:00.000-07:00

‘You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.’

I once heard a funny exchange between two Christians about airplane travel. The one said that before he flies, he always prays for some unsaved soul to sit next to him so that he can serve as a witness for Christianity to that person. He loves doing this because the unsuspecting person is trapped next to him for the duration of the flight. The other’s travel prayers are quite different: before he flies, he always prays for an empty seat next to him so that he can stretch his legs and sleep.

I’ve always identified more with the second person and with the less combative and less demanding faith he embodies. Don’t get me wrong, I make no secret of my spiritual life and have no problem talking about it--in fact, I enjoy doing so when there are appropriate opportunities. But I don’t like feeling pushy or violent. I’ve never known quite what to do with the salt and light metaphors Jesus uses in the Sermon on the Mount. I’ve always thought of them as very assertive, demanding, domineering, and dualistic, as if the darkness stands in stark opposition to the light and fights against us. But reading these verses a few weeks back, I thought about the metaphors differently.

First, we are the salt of the earth. Salt is something that brings out the flavor that is already in the food. No one would want to eat a dinner of pure salt. To me, this metaphor speaks of going into the world and being aware of and making known the beauty of that world, of God’s good creation. That beauty is already there in God’s creation and in God’s people. Being salt is not a call for violent, pushy Christianity but for a life attuned to the good “flavor” that is already in the world. In the same way, light is something that makes it possible for us to see what we encounter in the world. Staring at pure, bright light is not a pleasant experience; in fact, it blinds us. But when the light is right in a room or in a natural setting, we barely even notice it. Rather, we notice the things that it allows us to see. I think that being like light is about reflecting the goodness and love of God, being aware of how others participate in God’s love, and inviting everyone to a deeper awareness of that love.

I pray that we might all be salt and light.

Reflections on Community

2011-04-20T20:12:00.000-07:00

1.

The other day I was able to put language to something I had been experiencing for some time without realizing it: loneliness.

To be sure, I have several people with whom I regularly have deep spiritual dialogue, which is more than many people have. But mostly I am alone. Teaching is a lonely profession. Even when I am constantly with my students, I am only sometimes really with them--only sometimes do we break through into human connection--and even if that happens often, it only happens for a short time. Also, my marriage does not provide me with the sense of community that, before I was married, I thought it would. Much of the time my wife and I are more doing life near each other than with each other. This is not unusual, of course. Also, Living Stones has provided an important sense of community. We've been together now for more than three years! But we a community in a limited sense, in a real but small way.

Now, I want to be careful to emphasize that none of what I'm saying is fault finding. I love my close spiritual friends, my work, my wife, and Living Stones! I'm just sharing and reflecting on this condition of loneliness. My reflections are not even evaluative but descriptive.

Also, I'm not asking for sympathy or commiseration for myself. I'm just using myself as an example. Most people are lonely, probably. Billy Joel conveys this when he sings in "Piano Man" that "Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness / But it's better than drinking alone".

Moreover, I'm also not talking about loneliness in order to talk about loneliness--but rather to talk about community.

People are designed to be in mutually edifying relationships. Spiritual friendships within the body of Christ are essential for the spiritual journey. Members of a spiritual community support each other in their spiritual walk through accepting each other as they are, through being mutually committed towards growing together, and through praying together. Communities with God at the center can serve as positive presences within the broader culture and can slowly transform the world. Community—in the highest, most human, and most spiritual sense of the term—is the end purpose of the spiritual life. Our aim is never to become more like Jesus for our own sake, but always in order to love and be loved more deeply, more purely, and more wholly.

3.

Here are some poignant statements by Thomas Keating on community, taken from the end of Open Mind, Open Heart:

Progress in the spiritual journey is manifested by the unconditional acceptance of other people, beginning with those with whom we live.
A community of faith offers the support of example, correction, and mutual concern in the spiritual journey. Above all, participating in the mystery of Christ through the celebration of the liturgy, Eucharist, and silent prayer bind the community in a common search for transformation and union with God. The presence of Christ is ministered to each other and becomes tangible in the community, especially when it is gathered for worship or engaged in some work of service to those in need.
The moderations of the instinctual drives of the developing human organism for survival and security, affection and esteem, control and power allows true human needs to come into proper focus. Primary among these needs is intimacy with another or several human persons. By intimacy is meant the mutual sharing of thoughts, feelings, problems, and spiritual aspirations which gradually develops into spiritual friendship.
Spiritual friendship involving genuine self-disclosure is an essential ingredient for happiness both in marriage and in the celibate lifestyle. The experience of intimacy with another or several persons expands and deepens our capacity to relate to God and to everyone else. Under the influence of Divine Love the sexual energy is gradually transformed into universal compassion.
The spiritual radiation of a community depends on the commitment of its members to the inward journey and to each other. To offer one another space in which to grow as persons is an integral part of this commitment.

4.

I'm grateful that I know enough of true community to feel lonely. I am grateful for the sense of community we've had through Living Stones for over three years now. It's been small, real, good thing. I have no expectations to put on this community for its future. We may grow into something more than we are. We may continue as we are. Either would be a blessing. We may become less of a community. If that is the spirit's leading, that would be okay as well. But I pray that God will guide us all more and more into community in those places where God calls us to be.

Introduction to Centering Prayer

2011-04-03T17:32:00.000-07:00

Our small centering prayer group has been meeting for most of four years now. Our circle sometimes expands, sometimes contracts -- we may have three or four who pray on a Monday night to or perhaps eight or ten. This Lent, our priest, who has tried very hard for all of four years to avoid centering, has been led to join our group as a discipline for this season.

As might be expected, this has generated quite an interest in the group throughout the church, and we have had various visitors over the last several weeks. Some have merely appeared for one week, and some have returned to sit again. We are glad for the new life, but an unintended consequence has been that our leader, Gus, has given the "Intro to Centering Prayer" speech every single week since the first Monday of Lent!

Of course, it is a bit awkward to those of us who have heard said speech many times before, particularly to sit through it multiple weeks in a row. But, in the spirit of the centering prayer group, I have been trying to be more present, more aware, and find what the Spirit would have for me in this time.

I realized, as I listened, how deeply centering has become woven into my life. I remember those first hesitant days as I tried to center my first five minutes after reading Fr. Arico's (I think that is the correct name) description of the prayer. Something tugged at me.

And I remember thinking that perhaps the somewhat fundamentalist-leaning people at my (former) church would find out what I was doing and condemn me to whatever happens to people who become involved with deeper spirituality. And perhaps, I thought, I would just stop (and avoid that danger). But somehow, I could not.

I think about my on-and-off experience with centering for (can it be?) 6 years and how much of an unpracticed seeker I still consider myself; how I was drawn to the silence for the first time during RC's seminar on Lectio Divina.

I never thought this thread would be woven over and under so many pieces of my life. I did not see the windings on which this path would lead me. I do not know how I came from there to here. I only know I cannot but reach deeper into the silence of His presence.

I think, after all, it is good to review.

--Sarah

Seen or Unseen

2011-03-26T17:03:00.000-07:00

“Settling”
I was welcomed here—clear gold
of late summer, of opening autumn,
the dawn eagle sunning himself on the highest tree,
the mountain revealing herself unclouded, her snow
tinted apricot as she looked west,
Tolerant, in her steadfastness, of the restless sun
forever rising and setting.
Now I am given
a taste of the grey foretold by all and sundry,
a grey both heavy and chill. I've boasted I would not care,
I'm London-born. And I won't. I'll dig in,
into my days, having come here to live, not to visit.
Grey is the price
of neighboring with eagles, of knowing
a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen.
-Denise Levertov

I’m spending the day at a Centering Prayer retreat in a beautiful setting that’s owned by our Episcopal Diocese. The chapel and gardens overlook the Willamette River, which runs right through the middle of Portland. From the west side of the river, there are breathtaking views (on a clear day) of Mt. Hood, the highest point in Oregon and only about fifty miles east. (The above picture is taken from these gardens, borrowed from someone's Flickr.) I’m a little jealous today, for there is nothing to be seen but clouds east of the river. Regardless, I consider myself lucky to have found a sunny bench in the midst of tall trees on this cloudy day in order to journal my thoughts. Portland, it seems, is cloud-trap, a deep valley surrounded by mountainous terrain. Still, we have our clear days, days when mountains that are hundreds of miles away in the Cascade range seem close enough to touch. Not to give cloudy, coffee-shop days a bad rap, but those crystal clear days are really quite something. Of course, it’s a package deal. Perhaps this is why I’m especially drawn to Levertov’s poem; this is the agreement I have made with beauty. “Grey is the price…of knowing a mountain’s vast presence, seen or unseen.” And if you'll forgive the extended metaphor, perhaps this is why mountains are helpful for understanding our relationship with God, however common and familiar the analogy may be.

Back in the chapel, I sit in silence in a circle of fellow pray-ers. By faith, I know that we are in the midst of God; in a sense, we are in God, yet we may only catch a glimpse. Maybe there are days, those rare days when God’s love is especially felt or sensed, but today (and probably most days) shrouded by clouds, only knowable by a faithful prayer that says, “I will sit.” Or, as the speaker of the poem declares, “here to live, not to visit.”

It is my prayer to continue to know God in this apophatic way, with greater sincerity and fidelity… and maybe just a glimpse here and there.

Gritty Ashes

2011-03-10T15:16:00.000-08:00

Last night, I conducted an Ash Wednesday service to start our community's Lenten journey toward Easter. As I placed the sign of the cross on each person's forehead, I sensed that we were in a different realm of time for those few minutes. Then as the last person placed the ashes on my forehead, I felt the grit of burnt palm leaves and heard the traditional refrain: "From dust you came, and to dust you shall return." With a thumb against my brow I sensed a welcoming peace in the midst of my contemplation of death and mortality -- a reminder that in silence and no/thing, I am never alone.

Those gritty ashes are calling me to the secret prayer closet this Lent. I hope to continue being met in my moments of solitude with assurance -- assurance that my sisters and brothers here are with me and that Emmanuel is with me as I am tempted to question my identity in Christ, the Church and the World.

Lenten Blessings to You All,
Mark

Tree as Spiritual Metaphor

2011-03-09T11:42:00.000-08:00

Jomon Sugi Japanese Cedar in Yaku Shima, Japan

As I've shared before, I've come to appreciate nature both in its own right and as a site for developing my awareness of God. I've been taking meditative walks outdoors (see "Our Sister Mother Earth," 22 April 2010). I've been learning about the ecology of the watershed I live in (see this cool website on Peace River Watershed). I've also been reading in environmentalism (most recently Eaarth by Bill McKibben). And I've been reading nature poems (especially Thirst by Mary Oliver). So when I came across a passage where Thomas Keating uses a tree as a spiritual metaphor, I paid particular attention.

Thomas Keating writes: "Take the image of a growing tree. At first you see the trunk and the branches. Later come the leaves. This makes the tree beautiful, the stage of growth that comes when you first learn how to enter into interior silence. After the leaves come the flowers, another moment of intense satisfaction. But they quickly die and fall to the ground. The fruit comes only at the end of the season, and even then it takes a while for it to ripen on the tree. So don't think when the leaves appear and the flowers come, that this is the end of the journey. The spiritual journey is a long trip." "Moreover," the spiritual life works in seasons so that "your experience will seem to recycle . . . You seem to be returning to the point from which you started, but in actual fact you are at a higher level." In other words, though you may find yourself bare of leaves for a time or though your leaves may start again growing from buds, your roots will be a little deeper, your trunk a little wider, and your branches reaching out a little farther.

The tree in the picture above is between two and seven thousand years old. As Keating says, "The spiritual journey is a long trip." The photographer, Rachel Sussman, has taken on a project of photographing the oldest living things on the planet. I recommend her blog or her 14 min. talk on TED as a way to reflect on this metaphor and the spiritual life.

My prayer is that we keep growing, that we have patience with ourselves and each other as we grow, and that we will produce more and more fruit of the spirit.

To Avoid Falling

2011-02-13T07:02:00.000-08:00

We meet every Monday evening for centering and prayer with a group of older people. Rickey and I are the youngest members of the group at 58 and 61 respectively. Our liturgy for the evening has evolved to include three parts: centering for 20 minutes, reading and discussing short passages from Thomas Keating's "greatest hits" (we use excerpts from The Daily Reader), and intercessory prayer. Last week our intercessory list included the names of five elderly people who had fallen and hurt themselves. Just as we were wrapping things up, one of our members, a woman who is a physical therapist stopped us. She pulled back the coffee table and said, "I'm going to show you an ankle strengthening exercise which will help you prevent falls." We all obeyed, laughing and enjoying the simple exercises. Our prayer partner directed us to do these short exercises regularly for good results. There are no guarantees we won't fall, of course, but there is a good chance we'll be in better shape to avoid falling.

It seems to me that the practical direction for strengthening ankles was a pretty good example of how the prayer works. We center regularly, giving ourselves to God’s presence and action in our inmost being. That's the strengthening part. And I like that the ankle results, like prayer results, are mostly invisible. You can tell you are making progress because you aren’t falling as often. Grace in action--amazing!
--Anna

Creation Spirituality @ Trinity UMC

2011-02-07T12:00:00.000-08:00

I'm reposting the following from the website of Trinity United Methodist Church in Austin, TX, because it seems worthwhile for us to reflect on.

______________________________________________

Trinity’s Statement Regarding Creation Spirituality

Trinity’s clergy support Creation Spirituality, a movement that draws on ancient spiritual traditions and contemporary science to awaken authentic mysticism, revitalize Christianity and Western culture, and promote social and ecological justice. Creation Spirituality teaches that God permeates all things and that humanity is created blessed, not tainted by original sin. In this paradigm, Christ is God’s liberating and reconciling energy, transforming individuals and society’s structures into conduits of compassion. As we embody God’s love, we become the Creation that God intends.

Creation Spirituality draws on the earliest traditions of the Hebrew Bible and has been celebrated under various names over the centuries, most notably by the Rhineland Christian mystics of medieval Europe. It is an eclectic tradition that honors women’s wisdom and the cosmologies of indigenous cultures around the planet. Creation Spirituality seeks to revitalize contemporary worship by asking what would happen if, instead of requiring artists to conform to established worship practices, Christian worship adapted to the creativity of artists.

Ten Principles of Creation Spirituality

The universe is a blessing, that is, something God created and we experience as “very good.”
Humans need to relate to the universe as a whole as we are a microcosm of that macrocosm.
Everyone is a mystic, born full of wonder and capable of recovering it at any age and of not taking the awe and wonder of existence for granted.
Everyone is a prophet, a ‘mystic in action’ who is called to interfere with what interrupts authentic life. We are called to the margins of the status quo to interrupt systems that marginalize other humans, creatures and our Mother, the Earth.
Everyone is an artist. Art as meditation is a primary form of prayer for releasing our images and empowering the community and each of us. Art finds its fulfillment in ritual, the community’s art.
Everyone and everything expresses divinity. All humans are all children of God; therefore, we have Divine blood in our veins and the Divine breath in our lungs; and the basic work of God is Compassion.
Divinity is as much Mother as Father, as much Child as Parent, as much Godhead [mystery] as God [history], as much beyond all beings as in all beings.
We experience the Divine in all things and all things are in the Divine. This mystical experience supplants the experience of the Divine as separate and unattainable.
Humans have to dig and work at finding the deep self, the true self, the spirit self. This is the spiritual journey. It is not so much about “adding on” as it is “letting go.” If we do not undergo the spiritual journey, we live superficially out of fear or greed or addiction or someone else’s expectations of us.
The spiritual journey is an ever-expanding spiral encompassing four paths: Via Positiva: Befriending Creation – wonder, delight, revelry. Via Negativa: Befriending Darkness – emptiness, sinking, suffering. Via Creativa: Befriending Our Sacredness – creating, awakening, birthing. Via Transformativa: Befriending New Creation – coming home, doing, justice.

After Christmas

2011-01-02T18:26:00.000-08:00

From W. H. Auden, “For the Time Being”

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes –
Some have got broken — and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week –
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted — quite unsuccessfully –
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.

This excerpt from the end of Auden's long Christmas poem is particularly appropriate for this time of year. It gets at the mix of nostalgia and hope and often disappointment that attends the holiday season. The speaker meditates on missing it, yet again, by not being fully attentive to the “promising child.” His best intentions to love both his relatives and his God have once again been derailed by distraction and by the reality that love is not easy. He is disappointed to return to “the time being”—the time of going to work, scrubbing the table. On another level, Auden's poem speaks to me about my journey in prayer, because I have higher intentions and hopes than are actually realized. Another year gone by and I'm not as committed, centered, mindful as I had hoped I would be. My prayer life has been, for the most part, a series of misses. Just like the speaker of the poem, I catch a glimpse of something beautiful and life-changing, only to be drawn away to my own distractions and shortcomings. It is difficult to retain a sense of God's presence and love, in spite of my best intentions.

But this might be the wrong way to think about it. The shattering of my idealistic expectations about the Christian life is not a failure. Prayer is not easy. Even one glimpse of God at the stable where “Everything became a You and nothing was an It” is enough to leave one changed, reborn. This insight takes root and changes us from the inside out. The final line that I've quoted invokes Buber, who suggests two primary modes of existence: I-It and I-Thou. We primarily move in the I-It dimension, in which we see ourselves, God, other people as objects that can be known, used, and perhaps exploited. There is nothing inherently wrong with the I-It, but it is severely limited. With God's help, we become aware of the I-Thou dimension, by which God, ourselves, and other people are recognized as infinitely valuable persons to be in relation with but never fully known, because to know fully would render the Thou an It. The encountered Thou, Buber writes, "has no borders." The I-Thou is relation without the violence of objectification. Contemplative prayer helps us to recognize God as Thou. Our moments of insight—whether at Christmas or at other times—can move us in this process of awakening to the infinite God. Even as we must return to the concerns of the time being, prayer helps us to slowly grow in the awareness that God is infinite Thou, as are God's creatures. It is this beautiful vision of love and connection with God, with other people, and with myself that sustains me in prayer even when I seem to miss it (again).

Our Calling

2011-01-01T14:13:00.000-08:00

As this new year of 2011 begins, I have been reflecting on our community. Below I mix in some of our website statements of who we are with a few comments.

We take our name from the metaphor of living stones in I Peter 2:5 because we are committed to being the kind of spiritual community pictured in this section of Scripture and throughout the New Testament. We find meaning and support in belonging to one another in a simple but explicit way. It provides us a sense of identity and mutuality. Ours is a “little way,” and we don’t seek to draw energy or resources toward ourselves in a demanding manner.

As a Christian community, we seek to support the work of the church of Jesus Christ and the growth of God’s Kingdom through supporting one another in our individual families, churches, and daily work. Daily life is the proving ground of our spirituality.

In his book Where God Happens, Rowan Williams wrote, “The church is always renewed from the edges rather than from the center.” As I understand the intent of our “little way,” we seek to be part of what God is doing in our time to renew and develop the church. I am grateful and excited to be part of this process with you.
--Rickey

SOF: John O'Donohue and The Inner Landscape of Beauty

2010-12-18T21:37:00.000-08:00

SOF: John O'Donohue and The Inner Landscape of Beauty

I listened to this podcast on beauty on the way home from Nashville today. I enjoyed it so much, I picked up a copy of John O’Donohue’s book: To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

Hot topics from the podcast: Beauty, Celtic Spirituality, The Power of Landscape/Nature (Great combo with Wendell Berry, readings), Beauty of Dialog, Talk about the Philosophy/Theology of Time, and The Irish Accent is just beautiful to listen to!

Here is a podcast excerpt from O’Donohue that really caught me:

“One way, and I think this is a really lovely way, and I think it’s an interesting question to ask one self too, you know? And the question is when is the last time that you had a great conversation, a conversation which wasn’t just two intersecting monologues, which is what passes for conversation a lot in this culture. But when had you last a great conversation, in which you overheard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew. That you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you thought you had lost and a sense of an event of a conversation that brought the two of you on to a different plane. And then fourthly, a conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterwards, you know? And I’ve — I’ve had some of them recently, and it’s just absolutely amazing, like, as we would say at home, they are food and drink for the soul, you know?

Second thing, I think a question to always, ask oneself, who are you reading? Who are you reading? And where are you stretching your own boundaries? Are you repetitive in that? And you know, one of the first books I read as a child — we had no books at home, but a neighbor of ours had all these books and he brought loads of books, that’s how I ruined my eyes and I have to wear glasses. But one of the first books I read was a book by Willie Sutton, the bank robber, who was doing 30 years for robbing banks. And in the book somebody asked Willie, and they said, “Willie why do you rob banks?” And Willie said, “‘Cause that’s where the money is.” And you know, why do we read books, ‘cause that’s where the wisdom is.”

I just love the power of words and friends!

In Remembrance of Father Thomas Merton

2010-12-10T07:26:00.001-08:00

Like all of you, I have gleaned much from the writings of Thomas Merton. I looked at my Merton devotional for today, A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals, and I thought I'd add an excerpt from it for today, the 42nd anniversary of his death.

December 10
Dying and Being Reborn in Christ

(Thomas Merton enters Gethsemani on December 10, 1941; he dies by accident while attending a monastic conference in Bangkok, Thailand, on December 10, 1968)

I come into solitude to die and love. I come here to be created by the Spirit in Christ.

I am called here to grow. "Death" is a critical point of growth, or transition to a new mode of being; to a maturity and fruitfulness that I do not know (they are in Christ and His Kingdom). The child in the womb does not know what will come after birth. He must be born in order to live. I am here to learn to face death as my birth.

This solitude -- a refuge under His wings, a place to hide myself in His Name, therefore, a sanctuary where the grace of Baptism remains a conscious, living, active reality valid not only for me but for the whole Church. Here, planted as a seed in the cosmos I will be a Christ seed, and bring fruit for other men. Death and rising in Christ.

I need to be "confirmed" in my vocation by the Spirit (speaking through the Church, i.e., the abbot and the community). This ordains me to be the person I am and to have the particular place and function I have, to be myself in the sense of choosing to tend toward what God wants me to be, and to orient my whole life to being the person He loves. (We are all "loved in general," but we have to personally accept a special love of God for ourselves.)

Simple, Not Easy...

2010-11-25T07:44:00.000-08:00

Here is another brief excerpt from the project:

Jane Vennard says that “Centering Prayer is simple but not easy.” She aptly notes that due to our cultural attachment to productivity, we may get discouraged with Centering Prayer and feel that nothing has happened, and we may in the beginning feel more anxious after the first few sessions of Centering Prayer. Centering Prayer is like growing corn. When one seed is planted, it takes time before it germinates. It must rest in the silence of the earth for some time and the farmer must wait to see the benefits of his/her labor. Just as it takes time to develop an ear of corn, it also takes time to develop an ear of contemplation. According to Michael Casey, “Our contact with God is not immediately profound, but reaches profundity only after many years’ continuance. Therefore, our initial experience must necessarily be superficial, although at the time we could not realize this. The full benefits of revelation are not accessible to a rapid perusal.”

As Advent is soon to begin, I pray that it is a season of slow revelation for us all!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Meditative Preaching

2010-11-13T18:38:00.000-08:00

Here is an excerpt from the praxis stage of my senior project. The context of my paper is guide for Methodist ministers in rural congregations to incorporate Centering Prayer into their churches. This is one of the first tactics I encourage fellow ministers to implement in preparing the way for deeper practices of contemplation.

Silence is a phenomenon that is predominately avoided at all costs in our technological culture. The radio and television industries refer to it as “dead air.” I have witnessed a friend of mine who is a radio program producer go into a frantic furry pushing buttons, twisting knobs and sliding controls as he struggled to get the music playing again during a period of “dead air.” Silence in our daily lives seems to make us very uncomfortable, and this psychological response may frustrate us greatly in our spiritual formation. While I was on a silent retreat in 2006, in Sewanee, Tennessee, I noticed that the priest who led our retreat intentionally interjected long pauses of silence throughout our daily Eucharistic services. Ironically, I was shocked on a silent retreat to witness silence in the “order” of corporate worship. I remember how profound the pauses were and how the timing accentuated my experience of the Sacrament. Thus, I agree with Kent Groff’s encouragement for pastors, priests, and worship leaders to intentionally weave extended pauses of silence into their worship services. This is one, non-offensive way to slowly increase an empirical awareness of the value of silence.

Henri Nouwen also describes the value of silence in preaching in his book The Way of the Heart. In this little book, he instructs preachers to consciously integrate meditative preaching as one way to “practice the ministry of silence.” He states that such preaching moves the attention of a listener away from the pulpit to the listener’s heart revealing an interior abode of silence. For example, if a preacher will read the phrase “The Lord is My Shepherd” and refrain from expounding upon it, and read it again after a slight pause and then allow for a longer pause, something transformational can take place. Nouwen argues that the Word will “lead a listener to the silent pastures where [he/she] can dwell in the loving presence of [God] in whose Name the preacher speaks.” Most rural congregations who use the lectionary do not sing a Psalm response, rather they responsively read it; a lector can easily add a minute of silence after a line the congregation echoes before reading her or his next line.

Passage on Faith, by Brian C. Taylor

2010-10-29T11:46:00.000-07:00

The following passage on faith comes from Brian C. Taylor, Becoming Human: Core Teachings of Jesus. Someone shared it with me, and I'm posting it here because it seems to fit nicely with John's recent post on hope:

_____________________________________________

Faith is a matter of moving into a region where we are not in control and then trusting anyway. We do not know if things will turn out the way we envision them; we do not know if God will heal us physically, transform our failure into success, or make our problems go away. When we call upon God’s help, the only things we do know is that we cannot heal ourselves, we cannot make our failure into a success, we cannot make our problems go away. We also know, in faith, that God is good. These two things—our helplessness and God’s goodness—are the only things we know. They are the only things we need to know . . .

Blind to the future, unable to envision new life, we nevertheless step forward in to the unknown, holding God’s hand, trusting, like a child. It is the only thing we can do. It is always hard to do it; it never gets easy. But the amazing thing is, when we do this hard thing, there begins to stir within and around us a power that is not our own. Insights come to us. People around us shift their positions. We listen more carefully, and a way forward begins to show itself. A sense of rightness begins to strengthen in our gut . . .

All this takes place over a period of time, and neither its schedule nor outcome can be forced. We must settle into a reflective, contemplative time of listening, actively watching, waiting, being ready to respond. Having surrendered, having hit the limitations of our human capacity, we then must let go and let god. But this letting go and letting God is hardly passive at this point. Surrender to grace is not like surrendering in defeat. It is active, watchful, attentive, willing to be taken forward beyond the point where we are stuck. It is a state of expectation, where we invite God to become active in us.

Thoughts on Hope

2010-10-26T17:03:00.000-07:00

“Every divine action disturbs: it foils our expectations and our calculations, our hopes and our fears, in a striking manner.”
- Jean-Louis Chretien

To me, hope seems natural; it’s as if human beings are always hoping for something. We usually hope for particular things: for a long, happy life; for a new job; for a child; etc. When these legitimate hopes are fulfilled, it is a gift from God. But these particular hopes are also finite, limited and thus subject to all sorts of accidents and disappointments. The unfulfillment of our hopes is something with which we are all more or less familiar.

There is a deeper hope that rests in God even when our conscious desires are left unfulfilled, shattered by circumstances outside of our control. If my small efforts at contemplative prayer have taught me anything, it is that our ideas and expectations about God are always coming undone in the silent encounter with God. Divine action “foils our expectations and our calculations, our hopes and our fears, in a striking manner.” God’s action undoes our conscious hopes; indeed, if we knew what to hope for, perhaps we would not be hoping for God at all but merely for our own ideas. You all are probably familiar with these lines from T. S. Eliot that express a similar sentiment: “I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope/ For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.”

It seems to me, then, that if hope is anything, it must be a basic stance that we take, a way of living in the world--rather than a commitment to particular ideas about our future or doctrines about heaven. It is an openness toward God who is newly present in each moment; it is a commitment to wait for, be present to the God whose action goes beyond our imaginative capacity.

In some ways, this is unsatisfying. I’d like a definite, hopeful vision I can hold onto in hard times. God’s foiling of our conscious expectations is not always a pleasant experience. But this hope, even though it doesn’t have a definite object, is far from empty. It is hope for an unforeseeable but certain encounter with God. It is openness to something new and different, infinitely more than we could think. While it is not hope in a particular doctrine or image, it is hope in the God “who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Eph. 3). As hopeful people, we live in an attitude of trust toward something that goes far beyond our comprehension and our conscious desires.

Integrity

2010-10-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

Psalm 41:12: “In my integrity you uphold me and set me in your presence forever.”

To have integrity is to be “integrated.” Not to be fragmented, disjointed, scattered. Not to have part of yourself here and part of yourself over there. Being/feeling one way in one kind of situation, then being/feeling completely different in another situation. To have integrity means to have a consistent self, a stable self, a true self.

It’s hard to maintain integrity, to stay integrated, in our society. So much busywork, so much noise, so many advertisements and other distractions.

And we’re all tempted to lie at times, or at least to be fake. The problem with lying or being fake – in terms of spiritual health – is that it manifests a false self. It is practice in being not real, not stable. It is practicing unreality, disconnection.

To become a person of integrity we must practice integrity. We must say what we mean and mean what we say. We must be genuinely ourselves in situation after situation, relationship after relationship.

And we must follow through on our words and our commitments. If we need to be released from a commitment, then we honestly say so rather than simply not doing what we said we would do. This is another way of practicing disconnection and unreality.

As Psalm 42:12 says, integrity is key to practicing the presence of God. If we are not fully, completely present—integrated—then we cannot fully experience and enjoy the presence of God. But through our practice of integrity in faith God will set us “in [his] presence forever.”
--Rickey

Back to the lab again

2010-09-04T04:52:00.001-07:00

I am creating a project that will not only allow me, but force me to engage our livingstones community forum for my senior project at VDS this semester. I'm excited about this endeavor, and I hope that many of you will be able to join me here in this medium to offer critic, personal commentaries, resource suggestions, etc. In this project, I want to deal with the themes of contemplation, epistemology, and social action. These topics are very dear to me, as I know they are with all of you. My ideas are currently in the initial phase of being defined. I'm working this morning on my first presentation to my seminar group for next week. I hope you will help me walk this task and as we do may we find opportunities to grow in our own journeys!

Some of you may know that I had a brief background in chemical engineering before I became a bible college student. I've shared with Rickey several times the paradox of my life that loves certainty and now craves mystery. Bridging these two paradigms in my life continues to be a work in creative synthetic design. I hope to flesh out this hybrid entanglement and in so doing, learn how my narrative can contribute to the larger narrative of the church. I'm eager to touch base with some technology, science and theology and see where this goes!

Blessings,
Mark

Take Your Time

2010-08-19T18:43:00.000-07:00

I’ve read that Wittgenstein would often greet his students and colleagues with the simple phrase “Take your time.” While Wittgenstein had in mind the time required to develop philosophical questions and insights, how much more does this greeting apply for the spiritual life?

I’m used to being productive, to getting things done as quickly as possible. It’s a requirement in school, at any job, just about anywhere. Nothing wrong with that. But there are also many things that take time to develop and ought not be rushed. Prayer is one of them. Reading parts of Teresa of Avila’s autobiography, I am struck by her long-term view of her spiritual development. Beginning a discussion of the stages of prayer, she writes, “in the twenty-seven years during which I have practised prayer, ill though I have trodden the road and often though I have stumbled, His Majesty has granted me experiences for which others need thirty-seven, or even forty-seven [years]...” Twenty-seven, thirty-seven, forty-seven years... and that's just the beginning for her. Her long-term attitude toward the spiritual life is refreshing: life takes time to grow.

And with that I’m reminded of one of the most pervasive images in the New Testament, the seed. Like the tiny seed which contains all the potential to be a great tree, our tiny spiritual life grows largely in its own time and on its own terms. But like the seed, we have such dynamic potential and we are somehow complete even as we grow. We don't fault the sprout or the sapling for not yet being the flourishing tree. We ought not fault ourselves or each other for our seeming lack of progress. Just as we can’t see the sapling develop from day to day, I think that our lives are impossible to assess in simple, temporal terms. Life takes time to grow.

Checking back in...

2010-07-27T07:15:00.000-07:00

Please forgive me for my extended absence. I've allowed the distractions of life to hold my attention while neglecting this form of communication with my spiritual friends. Just a few notes to touch base with everyone. I've finished my second year of Divinity School at Vanderbilt, and have one more year to go. I've been working all summer on my out-of-parish field education credit which has been centered on volunteer work to help Nashville recover from the historic flood of May 2010. I have seen and heard many heartbreaking things over the past months, and I'm thankful for my Centering Prayer discipline which has helped me listen to a lot of hurts, questions and anger.

I use to try and rationalize all the difficulties of the world and find scapegoats on which to blame such tragedies, but through the deep solidarity contemplation has developed in me, I've found it much easier to avoid the troubling questions of theodicy. I have discovered more joy in relating to people in the midst of tribulations and helping them recover through simple acts of manual labor and emotional support. My restful practice has noticeably nurtured my active discipleship!

Also, I just got back from a trip to San Francisco where I took some time to visit several sacred spaces. I visited Glide Memorial UMC, Howard Thurman's Church for the Fellowship of all the People, St. Peter and Paul's Church, Grace Cathedral, Old St. Mary's Cathedral, St. Patrick's Church, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. It was a thrill to see all these sacred spots. My most memorable experience was at Grace Cathedral. I had the joy of walking the indoor labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. I also did a Centering Prayer session in the pew of the sanctuary. It was nice to steal away from the busy city and find some solitude in this large vaulted cathedral. It was also special sitting outside The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. I took a class last year entitle Liberation & Spirituality in which we studied Thurman and read his autobiography. It was moving to be at the spot I had read so much about! Unfortunately, the church was closed when I visited it, but I did create a mini centering moment outside by the flower bed!

I hope that the coming year will be less busy; drop me an email or post a "loving" Facebook message on my wall if I make myself too absent again! :-)

Blessings for the remainder of all your summers.

Mark

Content and Attentive

2010-07-12T17:22:00.001-07:00

So often I am focused, active, moving. However, recently for about two weeks a deep sense of contentedness flowed over me. There was a tangible experience of belonging to God and being loved by God. As Julian of Norwich said "All is well and all manner of things shall be well".

Towards the end of that season I noticed a sense of complacency creeping up on me. A book came across my path - "The Attentive Life" - which follows much of the same theme as Bro Lawrence "Practicing the Presence".

The two themes have woven themselves into my life and are a rich, deep, delightful combination - content with where I am and whose I am yet expectantly alert and watchful for glimpses of the holy in everyday life. In a way my Centering practice is the same - sit and be content if nothing happens, yet being watchful for what God might be up to.

Bill

Silence and Writing

2010-07-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Spiritual Friends. I am posting a poem I wrote some time ago about silence and writing. Blessings to all, Rickey

SUBMITTING TO SILENCE

Yes, I submit to you, silence,
and gladly, too.
I have learned that those
who would use words well
must understand what words cannot do,
must realize that words
emerge from silence
and must find the ground of their meaning
in their silent source.
Perhaps later I will write.
But now I will sit in your presence,
still and open,
resting in your quiet embrace.

Kenosis Is Love

2010-06-05T07:44:00.000-07:00

Let what was seen in Christ Jesus be seen in you also:

Though his state was that of God,
yet he did not claim equality with God
something he should cling to.

Rather he emptied himself,
and assuming the state of a slave,
he was born in human likeness.

He being known as one of us,
Humbled himself obedient unto death
Even death on a cross. . . .
In this profound theological reflection, Paul sees that self-emptying is the touchstone, the core reality underlying every moment of Jesus' human journey.

--Cynthia Bourgeault, quoting from Philippians 2 as translated by the monks of New Camaldoli Hermitage, Big Sur, California

I've come into some useful insights recently while reading Cynthia Bourgeault's Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening. These insights are deepening my understanding of the practices of centering prayer and the welcoming prayer and my understanding of what it means to be human. Bourgeault says that "self-emptying is the touchstone, the core reality underlying every moment of Jesus' human journey. Self-emptying is what first brings him into human form, and self-emptying is what leads him out . . ." and self-emptying is what he does continually in between.

In a world of pain like ours, when this pouring out of one's self is too often one-sided, what this self-emptying looks like is the cross. We can call it kenosis, which is the Greek term translated above in reference to Christ as he emptied himself. In a perfect world, though, what it looks like is not the cross but the trinity. We could call it perichoresis, which is the Greek term for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit continually pouring themselves into each other.

In any case, we can simply call it love. Love is pouring out the self for, or in the best cases into, the other. "Greater love has no one than this, but to lay down one's life for a friend . . ." And since love is all that it is, we can see that kenosis/perichoresis/self-emptying/letting go has nothing to do with any sort of esoteric spirituality but is simply about being human. This is why Bourgeault says that self emptying was the touchstone of Jesus' humanity.

In terms of concrete spiritual practice, in centering prayer each time a thought or feeling is "let go" one takes part a little bit in this surrender, this becoming nothing, this emptying one's self. Such micro surrenders also train us to surrender larger things, such as the tensions and frustrations that we let go of in the midst of our day to day activities, say, in the welcoming prayer. Those surrenders in turn also take part in the process and also train us to let go of still larger things, such as anger, bitterness, disappointment, or an addition to comfort.

My prayer is for a heart that clings to nothing and seeks only God. My prayer is for a pure heart. My prayer is to follow Christ along the daily path of self-emptying (kenosis) to eternal fount of love (perichoresis).

The Welcoming Practice

2010-05-13T05:33:00.000-07:00

The Welcoming Practice has become my 4th core spiritual practice. My other 3 core spiritual practices are Contemplative Prayer, Praying the Scriptures, and Spiritual Friendship.

The Welcoming Practice is a surrender practice, a way of yielding the whole of our lives to God. The classic expression of this kind of practice is Jean-Pierre de Caussade’s book Abandonment to Divine Providence, also published as The Sacrament of the Present Moment, which is my favorite edition of it. We seek to respond to and work with the present moment instead of unconsciously reacting to it.

The Welcoming Practice is a way of extending Contemplative Prayer and Praying the Scriptures into the rest of the day. It is particularly used in situations which upset, frustrate, make us anxious, and/or throw us off balance. It is a way of recognizing the presence of God in these situations and of experiencing and yielding to the Holy Spirit in the midst of them. The practice involves 3 steps: (1) noticing and sinking into our feelings, thoughts, sensations, and commentaries, particularly as they are experienced in the body. Secondly (2), it involves welcoming the presence of God in the feelings, commentaries, or sensations in the body by mentally saying “Welcome.” And (3), it involves Letting Go (i.e., yielding everything to God) by mentally repeating the following sentences one time each: “I let go of my desire for security, affection, control” and “I let go of my desire to change this situation.”

This practice does not mean that we are always passive and yielding to the external circumstances themselves nor that the external circumstances may not need to be changed. It means we let go of our own agendas, our own timing, and our own interpretations. We fully surrender the circumstances to God and thus grow in our ability to sense and align ourselves with the Spirit’s presence and action in them. Having done this, we can then take appropriate action, which at times may involve protest or resistance. But whatever action we take, it is not merely mindlessly reactive or thoughtlessly self-involved. It is rooted in God, not in our egoic interpretation.

As with all the contemplative practices, the primary fruits of the Welcoming Practice are not experienced immediately but rather over the long-term. Gradually we become more peaceful, less reactive, and more effective in loving God and loving our neighbor.

Rickey

Our Sister Mother Earth

2010-04-22T14:16:00.000-07:00

About the Earth, St. Francis of Assisi sings in his "Canticle of the Sun":

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth,
who feeds us and rules us,
and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

I grew up loving the outdoors, but mostly in an aggressive way, using the outdoors to play at being a cowboy or a soldier or some kind of adventurer. The general attitude I sensed as a child, and went along with, was that hugging trees, saving whales, and recycling were things that only "liberals" did. But over the past four years or so, especially in the past year, I've grown to appreciate nature both in its own right and in the way that it seems to be able to help heighten my awareness of the loving omnipresent spirit of God.

Mary Frohlich suggests that those who are interested in Christian spirituality "are called to place the Earth and its wounds at the center of our attention in very concrete ways." She suggests that one of the proper transformations in the mystical journey through unknowing is to "[accept] the gift of oneself as a servant among servants in the company of God’s wondrous cosmic ecosystem." She quotes Teilhard de Chardin, saying that he "has best captured this insight into the divine at the heart of matter":

Oh, the diaphany of the divine at the heart of a glowing universe, as I have experienced it through contact with the earth—the divine radiating from the depths of blazing matter. Oh the beauty of spirit as it rises up adorned with all the riches of the earth! Oh human one, bathe yourself in the ocean of matter; plunge into it where it is deepest and most violent; struggle in its currents and drink of its waters. For it cradled you long ago in your preconscious existence; and it is that ocean that will raise you up to God.

I've taken a few small steps to increase my interactions with and connections to the Earth. Really, there is very little in the world that is not part of the Earth, so actually, it's my awareness that I'm working on.

I've begun recycling. : )
I've taken to really enjoy cutting fresh vegetables, to feel the sweet, clean vegetable flesh in my hands.
Sometimes, when out for a walk, if I see a stump or a large stone, I lay my hands on it for a few moments to touch and take in its physicality.
I've set up an aquarium in my office, and cultivated an an ecosystem in it with live plants, bacteria, shrimp, and fish.
I've brought home a potted plant, a bromeliad. Christine takes care of it.
Christine and I have both also taken to keeping fresh flowers on our dining room table.
I've begun to try to be intentional about noticing the air and grass when I'm outside, even if it's just on my way to my car. I've also tried to notice more often the grass and trees along the road as I drive.
And finally, I try to get out into nature when I can. Sometimes this is just a short visit to a park. But today, for instance, waking up and realizing that today was Earth Day, my family went to a nearby nature reserve that we'd heard about but had not been to before. We spent about a half an hour there. It really refreshed and recharged me for the day with a sense of presence, peace, and wholeness. Below I've posted some pictures that Christine took.

Mary Oliver says that those who love God will look "most deeply" into God's works. I pray that we may do this, that we may be blessed with such attention and awareness, that we may be refreshed, renewed, and grounded through "our sister Mother Earth."

Me with my daughter Elea in an oak tree.

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A dead tree against the sky with wetland (I believe) in the background.

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A mother and baby Sandhill Crane just a little off the path.

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A plant with about four different types of insects on it.
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Good Friday Reflection

2010-04-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.

T.S. Eliot Four Quartets

On this day we reflect on what it means for us to recognize the true presence of the darkness of Good Friday. So often in the culture of the church we want to rush ahead to the joy of the resurrection. Many Protestant churches give little more than a nod to Good Friday. However, as we seek to be fully present to our Lord, how can we seek to avoid being present in this most crucial of moments? This moment is, in fact, the exact one Christ calls us to when he bids us to take hold of our crosses in following him.

When we hold this moment just a little bit longer than we would like, we commune with the crucified God and with all of the people who are forsaken by their God in their pain, suffering, and death. As I continue to reflect and meditate on the enormity of this moment, I am reminded of the Mystery of Faith that we recite each week; Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. But in this moment, under the sheer weight of the reality of what has happened, all I can bring myself to say is; Christ has died, Christ has died, Christ has died.

Matt Addis

Purity of Heart

2010-03-27T06:22:00.000-07:00

Matthew 5:8 says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” So, since I want to see God, I want to be pure in heart; I want to actualize this Beatitude in my life. The heart is a major emphasis in the Bible. The heart the Bible speaks of is not the emotional center spoken of in contemporary culture. Rather it is the spiritual center of the human being; the Bible recognizes the heart as the preeminent human dimension. It integrates all the other human faculties. Reason, intuition, and the will are all informed by the heart. Although the heart radiates throughout us, permeating our entire being, it has mysterious depths beyond the reach of our everyday thinking. “Who can understand it?” Jeremiah asked about the heart. God replied, “I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind….” God penetrates both our conscious and unconscious mind and knows the depths of our heart. It is in these depths that the essence of the human being is rooted.

This is why I believe we are called to practice some form of the “prayer of the heart” such as the Jesus Prayer or Centering. Such prayer takes us into the depths of our heart beyond our mental reasoning and emotional variations, opening us to the presence of God there. Over time, this kind of deep prayer stabilizes us in our awareness of and connection to the Spirit and enables us to respond to God’s unfolding action in the present moment. We are able to see God's presence and action in our daily lives and live lives that more and more express our growing unity with him.
--Rickey

A Lenten Reflection

2010-02-24T19:25:00.000-08:00

Lovely it is to unfold
The soul and our brief life
- Friedrich Holderlin

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

I'm young, but not entirely unaware of my mortality. And with this in mind, sometimes I think and act as if my brief time on earth ought to be ever meaningful, ever important. I dole my time out as if I have only a limited amount and therefore just shouldn't have to be bothered by some things. I attempt to make calculations about the validity of one course of action over another. (Which class should I take? What author should I read? What ministry should I support?) There is some value to this point of view, of course. We are intrinsically limited, finite, dust.

But there's another important dynamic at play in the Ash Wednesday reminder of our mortality: Since life is always a divine gift, it is always therefore an excess. Rather than rationing out our time with a constant eye on calculations (which one could never have certainty about anyway) what would it look like to just live--to live with abandon? This would be a life that is not easily shaken, but rests simply in the knowledge of the givenness of life and the goodness of the giver. And since life is such a gift, it can only be lived authentically when we, in turn, give; we give our love, our time, our devotion, our lives. To live attuned to the givenness of life... that, I think, is a brief life that is lovely to unfold.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah?

2010-02-14T22:42:00.000-08:00

“He who seeks not the cross of Christ seeks not the glory of Christ.”

You’d never expect that a slip on an icy sidewalk would lead me to glory. But after hitting the pavers yesterday, my aching body began to wonder and question, asking first that inevitable “why,” which always transforms into “who.”

To give you a little background, I was diagnoses with Fibromyalgia Syndrome at 12 years old, and spent the next five years battling the widespread aches, constant pain, and chronic fatigue associated with this illness. But a few years ago, things started to change. After returning to the faith, the pains slowly faded until my rheumatologist amazedly pronounced my FMS “resolved” – a very rare victory when it comes to Fibromyalgia, a disease that typically does not ever go away.

So I had this amazing testimony: God healed me. My illness was gone without a trace. I had a normal life again, able to walk and attend school free from the shackles of pain and fatigue. But notice I’m using the past tense. Last semester, I started to experience the same symptoms again. I denied that it was Fibromyalgia for a time, but several aching months later, and I’ve finally accepted that I have Fibromyalgia. The physical discomfort didn’t bother as much as the nagging question in my mind, “Why, God, is it back?”

Why would God nullify the miracle He did in my life? Doesn’t that reduce His glory? I can no longer say that God healed me, but that He gave me a time of remission – not that grand or glorious, now is it? But then…what is glory? I guess I could ask the exact same question in this way: who is God. Or as Jesus asked, “Who do you say I am?” (Matthew 16:15).

The other day I was discussing the state of the Korean church with my “big brother” in my host family, who is a professor of church history at a university here in Seoul. He said that because American church has great influence upon Korean Christianity, the three major focuses in many church here are health, wealth, and success. I thought by coming to Korea I would escape this rapid consumeristic American gospel, but the US’s influence throughout the world is far more powerful that I ever realized. Maybe, if I may be so humble to admit, it has also influenced my perception of God as well.

Jesus asked, “What about you?” Who do I personally believe Jesus is? I’ve been just like the Pharisees, who demanded a sign from Jesus (Matthew 16:1-4), recognizing God’s glory in my healing, but too blinded to see His glory in my suffering. John of the Cross, in his 102th Saying of Light and Love, equated the glory of God with the cross of Christ. Wow… I’ve had it all wrong: God’s glory is not in His shining, radiant, miracle-working power; it’s in Jesus Christ, who fully manifested God’s glory on the cross – the cross of death, shame, humiliation, mortification – that brought the Father glory (John 17:4). This is our Lord: a man, weak and wilted, nailed on a cross. That is glory. His glory is not in His empty tomb – of course the God of the universe can raise the dead! His glory is in the cross, where the omnipotent God chose to suffer and die.

This glory is the essence of God’s presence. Glory is God. Not the way we humans think of glory (Matthew 16:23) as magnificent and resplendent, but glory is denying the self, taking up the cross and following Christ to Golgotha (Matthew 16:24). Right before He walked this path, Jesus prayed in John 17 that we would be with Him where He is to see His glory so that we can be brought into complete unity with the Trinity: the beautiful mystery of oneness.

Lord Jesus, help us to remember that suffering for You is better than working miracles (John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, 171), that your face, not Your hand, is what we seek (Ps 26:8), and that Your lover’s call to us is to forsake everything to be one with Your three-fold essence in humble glory.

T-shirt and Conference Christianity

2010-01-30T19:06:00.001-08:00

Today a group of friends and I went around Lakeland asking the community about their needs and how the Church has met or has failed to meet these needs. The idea for this “survey” was birthed out of a few individuals who really desire to see the Church unite and meet needs. A church can only do some much, but how much more can the Church do! One of the thoughts I had is that churches are often so stuck inside a building and don’t even know the needs that exist just beyond their concrete walls, in their community. Our hope was to do the “dirty work” and find these needs and then present them at a later date.

We talked to all kinds of people: homeless, single mothers doing laundry, some people celebrating for an upcoming wedding, and then decided to go inside a church: we figured surely God’s people would have something to say about this topic. Instead what we found was a lot of people running around from meeting to meeting with no time for us. We walked into what happened to be a “See Jesus” conference on this particular church’s “Jesus Weekend.” We asked one man if he would have a few minutes to answer a couple questions for us concerning community and the Church and he declined and asked us not to “harass anyone else.” He did however have a few minutes to tell us about the conference and proudly show us his hunter green tee shirt with bright yellow writing: “See Jesus” it said.

I walked out of the church and took a gasp of air. Is this what the Church has become…a place where we are consumed with our meetings, conferences, Bible studies, luncheons, and tee shirts? We kept walking downtown and came to a homeless lady lying in the middle of the road. She was drunk and obviously suffering from some mental disabilities. We gathered around her with some other homeless people trying to coax her out of the street. Cars sped past and she yelled over and over: “I want to die!” We called an ambulance and they took her away, hopefully to a clearer, more hopeful state of mind. I wonder if the people wearing the “See Jesus” shirts would have taken a few minutes out of their busy schedules to help this woman. Would they have even noticed her?

I guess my prayer would be that the churches would become the Church and love people like Jesus did, making their life about more than a filled up schedule. I would also ask that God grant me the grace and patience and love toward the churches that someday may take off their Jesus shirts and begin to walk and live as he did.

-Jennica

Into the Wild

2010-01-27T21:25:00.000-08:00

Over the Christmas break from Divinty School, I watched Into the Wild about three times. I felt a connection to the main character Chris McCandless (played by Emile Hirsch). While I don't foresee myself abandoning my lot in the consumer market in which I'm entangled, I can sympathize with the attraction of such a drastic dive into apophasis.

I purchased the soundtrack to the movie, and as I listen to the song "Society" I think about the desert fathers that turned their backs on secular Roman economy and retreated to the desert in search of the true kingdom in response to Constantine's Christendom of Christianity.

Society

Oh it's a mystery to me.
We have a greed, with which we have agreed...
and you think you have to want more than you need...
until you have it all, you won't be free.

Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.

When you want more than you have, you think you need...
and when you think more then you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
I think I need to find a bigger place...
cause when you have more than you think, you need more space.

Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
Society, crazy indeed...
I hope you're not lonely, without me.

There's those thinkin' more or less, less is more,
but if less is more, how you keepin' score?
It means for every point you make, your level drops.
Kinda like you're startin' from the top...
and you can't do that.

Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
Society, crazy indeed...
I hope you're not lonely, without me
Society, have mercy on me.
I hope you're not angry, if I disagree.
Society, crazy indeed.
I hope you're not lonely...
without me.

The song says "until you have it all, you won't be free." How true and unattainable this is. Happiness will never be found in the promises of our consumerist market. So I'm trying to opt out more and more in symbolic ways. Less is more, and I have to continually remind myself of this.

Click for a listen to "Society"

As Through Glasses Darkly

2010-01-16T16:41:00.000-08:00

We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

--1 Corinthians 13.1 (The Message)

I got new eyeglasses in the mail today. This is the first time I've worn glasses since I was about five years old, when I had a pair to correct a lazy eye. In the eye doctor's examination room, peering at the letter chart through that large optical machine, I saw the blurry black letters become sharp and crisp as the doctor flipped through lenses to come to the right prescription strength. I eagerly anticipated seeing a bright crisp new world as well. I had to wait a week or two, though, for them to be shipped. (For anyone interested, Zenni Optical sells prescription glasses from $8. I got two pairs for $31, including shipping.)

I realized that I might need glasses a few months ago, when the things I put on the projection screen in the front of my classroom looked blurry to me when I stood in the back. Just to make sure, I asked a few students sitting in the back, "Can you read that?" They answered casually: "Oh yeah." Another sign I had was that I couldn't read street signs until I came right up on them, particularly at night. Through all of my teenage years, I had "20-20" vision, and was quite proud of it then (as if I had anything to do with it). Thankfully, since then, I've gained the ounce of wisdom necessary to know that "perfect sight" is temporary, so I accepted my need for glasses gracefully. (In fact, displaying less spiritual maturity, I was even excited, since I knew they could complement my beard and tweed jacket in my "professor costume.")

When the glasses arrived today, I put them on and could indeed see things at a distance much more clearly. Right away, I could see the leaves on trees across the lake behind our apartment. And a little later in the day when I drove to the store, I could definitely read street signs more clearly and from farther away. But . . . that was about it. The glasses did a pretty good job, but still . . . I was a bit disappointed. I was disappointed that the glasses did not make a radical difference in my ability to see the world, which, for some reason, I had been expecting. I was even more disappointed with the thought that, since these glasses were my prescription, then I would never see the world any more crisply or sharply or clearly than this.

We live in this world with physical bodies that, for many of us, mostly work most of the time, though decreasingly so day by day. Accepting and even embracing our physical limitations, even minor limitations, which are the only ones I can personally speak about yet, can be an act of spiritual grace. So too, I am coming to realize, with our spiritual limitations. As little as we see with our physical eyes of what is out there, even of what ought to be visible, we see even less with our spiritual eyes. Coming to the end of his most famous discussion on love, St. Paul connects seeing, knowing, and loving in a spiritual metaphor. We can only "see" (or "know" or "love"), he says, as one seeing "through a glass darkly." In The Message Eugene Peterson puts in "fog" and "mist" for "glass." Gregory of Nyssa echoes St. Paul in this way: "The true vision of what we seek consists precisely in this--in not seeing . . ."

The promise, of course, is that eventually we will know (or see) in full "even as we are fully known." The promise is that "it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright!" And I do long for such perfection of sight and knowledge and love. But in the meantime, it is also an act of grace to accept with humility--to embrace even--our limitations, our shortcomings, our dim and blurry vision.

Annual Commitment

2010-01-06T09:46:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends and Members of Living Stones Community,

It is time for our annual recommitment. The Annual Commitment page on our website says, “Membership in the community entails a one-year commitment which members have the opportunity to renew each January.” After January 31, 2010, we will update the login information for our blog and distribute the new information to those who commit to being a part of this community for 2010.

We’ve made a change in the “requirements” for members. Instead of committing to posting to the community blog and commenting on the posts of others each month, we will now only ask of each other to post or comment each month. We will still ask that the blog be read each week. We hope that this will reduce the “burden” of spiritual dialogue without reducing its integrity.

We ask that you reread or review this month the community documents on the community website and reflect in particular on the Annual Commitment statement (Who We Are, Core Values and Practices, and Annual Commitment). If you don’t feel called to journey or continue journeying with us in this small way, we let you go with “open hands” and assure you that you are always welcome to visit and comment on our blog at your leisure. But, if you do feel God leading you to join or rejoin with us, please complete and submit the Commitment Form on the Annual Commitment page by January 31.

We’re grateful for all the wonderful interaction we’ve shared!

Peace and blessings,
Rickey and Paul

Monks Who Eat Cheerios and Go to the Zoo

2010-01-04T11:48:00.000-08:00

A wise man once said, “Either you’ll keep going deeper in faith or you’ll give up.” I’ve often found myself at this latter point. I remember thinking as a new Christian some 6 years ago, “This shouldn’t be this hard.” I read book after book and listened to sermon after sermon trying to figure this God out. I had perfectly planned out “quiet times” where I was anything but quiet; I believed God only heard the prayers of those eloquently worded. I strived to always say and do the “right” thing. Looking back now, it’s quite obvious why I found faith to be so difficult—I was trying to do so much in my own strength to impress this God who resided far, far away, instead of simply acknowledging the God all around, and even within me. I was doing and not being.

Along with this legalistic view of spirituality, I also had a very dichotomic perspective: some things were spiritual, and some were not. Churches often tells us there are certain things that are “holy”—reading the Bible, praying, tithing—but we forget the not so obviously (though they should be) spiritual things like loving, silence, community, and nature. I use to look for God in worship services and Bible studies, and often came home empty-handed. I’m now learning to look for Him in the everyday because that’s where He is. God doesn’t need pews or stained glass windows to exist; He certainly does reside in these places, but He’s a lot bigger than that, a lot bigger than I’m confident I’ll ever be able to comprehend.

God is found in the everyday and I’ve never seen this more demonstrated than at a recent trip to St. Leo’s Abbey. I was able to start 2010 exceptionally and spend a day there with Dr. Cotton, Anna, Professor Corrigan, and Ky Prevette. Monks, who I once considered hyper spiritual, do a lot of ordinary, day-to-day things like eat breakfast (whether it be Cheerios or Flan), wash dishes, work, and of course, pray. We shared breakfast with Brother James, who has been a monk for 72 years, and talked about the monastery and changes that have occurred over the years, orange trees, new roads being built, and even his trip to the zoo—it’s all spiritual: I’m convinced.
--Jennica Durbin

In Quietness and Confidence

2010-01-04T05:13:00.000-08:00

Saturday five of us from SEU rode together in our old van up to St. Leo’s Abbey for a mini-retreat day. We shared silence, prayed, and walked a lot.

I love roaming the grounds at the abbey, and I’m always delighted to see ducks and birds. (I’m a city girl by birth and zip code, so animals up close and personal have a special fascination for me.) Saturday I got a special treat when I came across two small raccoons walking ever so carefully through some bushes and across a low wall. I followed them as they drank water from a puddle and climbed a palm tree to munch on berries. (I had never even noticed that palm trees have berries—lots of them—wow!) The coons stopped to watch me from time to time as I whispered gentle assurances. Eventually it occurred to me they weren’t afraid of my presence; they were calm and confident (and mildly curious). Perhaps because they are so young they don’t know any better than to parade around in broad daylight, but maybe, just maybe, in that sacred space they are able to live their life like we prayed at the abbey to live ours—without drama or hype but moving in God’s grace with quietness and confidence.
--Anna

Scott Cairns, "Advent"

2009-12-27T20:28:00.000-08:00

Here is the poem by Scott Cairns that I mentioned in my previous post. That post was already too long even without the poem, but the poem seemed too significant and spiritual to leave out altogether.

"Advent"

Well, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas—everywhere, children eyeing the bright lights and colorful goods, traffic a good deal worse than usual, and most adults in view looking a little puzzled, blinking their eyes against the assault of stammering bulbs and public displays of goodwill. We were all embarrassed, frankly, the haves and the have-nots—all of us aware something had gone far wrong with an entire season, something had eluded us. And, well, it was strenuous, trying to recall what it was that had charmed us so, back when we were much smaller and more oblivious than not concerning the weather, mass marketing, the insufficiently hidden faces behind those white beards and other jolly gear. And there was something else: a general diminishment whose symptoms included the Xs in Xmas, shortened tempers, and the aggressive abandon with which most celebrants seemed to push their shiny cars about. All of this seemed to accumulate like wet snow, or like the fog which our habitual inversion tried to choke us, or to blank us out altogether, so that, of a given night, all that appeared over the mess we had made of the season was what might be described as a nearly obscured radiance, just visible through the gauze, either the moon disguised by a winter veil, or some lost star—isolated, distant, sadly dismissing of us, and all our expertly managed scene.

Holiday Malaise and the Ordinary Holiness of the Reason for the Season

2009-12-27T19:28:00.000-08:00

John 1.14

1.

The radio has constantly been on at our house lately, blaring holiday cheer into my ears. One song wails, over and over and over and over, quite literally like a broken record:

Have a holly jolly Christmas
And in case you didn't hear
Oh by golly have a holly jolly Christmas
This year.

Well, I did hear. I've heard about a hundred thousand times. This year alone. I've been hearing since before Thanksgiving. "Have a holly jolly Christmas." Don't tell me what kind of Christmas to have! Bah-humbug. I'm being a little silly, of course, but it's true that I've got a sense of holiday malaise, "a vague feeling of discomfort, one that cannot be pinned down but is often sensed as 'just not right'" (reference).

Clearly, as has been said ("many times in many ways"), we've lost the "reason for the season." But I don't think that the people with the Jesus-Is-the-Reason-for-the-Season Yard Signs have really got the "reason" down either. Both the signs (which seem more political than spiritual) and the "removal" of Christ from Christmas that the signs protest are, as Scott Cairns puts it, "symptoms" of a larger missing-of-the-point (see his poem "Advent").

What we've missed, I think, is not the splendor of the holiday--the Star in the East, the singing choirs of angels, and so forth--but the ordinary holiness that is, at the same time as the splendor, also part of the reason for the season. The ordinary day-to-day kind of holiness is easy to lose track of in all the bright lights. The holiness of the ordinary days is often barely visible, like the moon or a star barely visible through the clouds (in Cairns' metaphors). But, of course, the strength of the moon to pull the oceans and the awesome firepower of the stars reaching here from so many million miles away are not diminished because we do not notice them. So, God here is all around us, omnipresent--even in the air we breathe.

2.

The version of the Christmas story that I prefer comes from the Gospel of John (verse 14):

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (KJV)

Another version puts it this way:

The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood. (The Message)

Most literally, the passage could be translated from the Greek in this way:

The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.

This version of the Christmas story emphasizes the ordinariness of Christmas. John even makes quite a point of the fact that people did not even recognize that Christ was the Son of God (see verse 10) because he was so ordinary (see also, Isaiah 53.2). For many, the coming of Christ to earth as a cute little baby means that we can go to heaven. But if this is all that we get, we're missing at least half the story. The coming of Christ as a baby who cried at night, who spit up, who pooped in his diaper, who caught the cold, and on and on, as any other human baby, means something too. By becoming an ordinary person in an ordinary town, breathing ordinary air and eating ordinary food--Jesus Christ sanctified or made holy the ordinary.

3.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes a holiday or, more specifically, a "Holy-Day" as "a day consecrated or set apart for religious observance, usually in commemoration of some sacred person or event." It also describes the term "Holy" as meaning "kept . . . from ordinary use, and appropriated or set apart for religious use or observance." Part of what has "eluded us," as Scott Carins puts it, is the understanding that a big part of the whole meaning of the Christmas story is precisely to turn these definitions on their heads. As the life of Christ shows us, all days are equally "holy." And as the subsequent "sending" of the Holy Spirit shows us, holy days are meant for the present, not meant to merely be commemorative. Religious use--or at least, true spiritual use--is not any different from "ordinary use." When, in John's Christmas story, people failed to recognize their creator, it wasn't because they were blind to seeing the Spirit in the rare-supernaturally-fantastic, it was because they were blind to seeing the Spirit in the most-of-the-time-mostly-ordinary.

Often, the way holidays are celebrated, inside and outside the church, reinforces attitudes that cause us to miss this so important part of the story. This, I believe, contributes to the holiday malaise that some of us share. But all certainly is not lost. We still can use the very simple and precious symbols of Christmas--the manger, the shepherds, the teenage girl, even the tax season--to remind ourselves to live every day as a "holy-day," understood differently, to live every moment with an awareness of the most-often-ordinariness of the holy omnipresence of God.

Mixed Bags

2009-12-16T18:55:00.000-08:00

Many of my students, when they write, default to outrageous fundamentalist party-line thinking. One student, for instance, wrote about how evangelical marriages are astronomically more successful than the marriages of "atheists" and "agnostics." Of course, that is patently false. Ironically, the source she cited for this statistic actually points to something the opposite being the case (citation). In addition to being an example of careless research, this student's writing betrays several moral faults bequeathed to her by her wider social context: arrogance and judgmentalism. Many of us share these same faults to greater or lesser degrees (for instance, just see how much easier it is for me to see the faults in this student rather than in myself!). Apparently, as George Barna has found out, "Faith has had a limited affect on people’s behavior . . ." (same citation). These faults--and that statement by Barna--are things for us to mull over. But that's not my point here.

The point is this. My students are mixed bags. In the very same paper, this student wrote:

It is a crazy idea to think that perfect love dwells in every living soul on earth. That even atheists and agnostics have the same perfect love settled in them as any other religious individual, including Christians, Muslims, Buddhist, etc. Now this off the wall proposal may have your mind boggled, but its so true. Lets first look at this thesis from a Biblical standpoint. The Bible clearly defines in 1 John 4:8 that “God is love.”

This is not arrogant or judgmental but beautiful, not the party line but a spiritual insight. This shows me that my students are mixed bags, which--and this is what I'm getting at--gives me hope because I realize that I too am a mixed bag. We all are. When that part of myself manifests which is not any better than the arrogance of the party line, whatever the party, I may have the grace of knowing that that is not all of who I am. Our selves--the selves we live as day to day--are heterogeneous mixtures of good stuff and not so good stuff. We will continue to be this way until we are fully reconciled with God who is already within us, until we are no longer divided. As long as I'm not perfect, I am grateful to God that I'm not all bad.

Thomas Merton says, the person "who hates the division in himself [or herself] is already beginning to be free.” St. Paul says:

And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. (The Message)

Spiritual Sparks

2009-12-05T09:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, when it was 63 degrees and raining, our friends Stephen and Christine Hoffman came to visit Rickey’s class, Christian Mystics. (Stephen is the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Palmetto, Florida.) Stephen’s opening words to the students were they shouldn’t take this course for granted. Then he and Christine each spoke about how they came to appreciate and practice deep spirituality in their lives. Stephen talked about things happening in his life that brought him to a place of needing to be personally renewed. As a pastor, he was also seeking a fresh Lenten devotion to share with his congregation. He bought a book about centering prayer, and as he read it, he discovered he was being drawn and touched in a profound way. It was at this point he began a practice of prayer that considerably outlasted the forty days before Easter; he is still at it years later.

When it was her turn to speak, Christine said the short answer as to why she began the practice was because she wanted to join with and support Stephen. But as she has continued in it, she found her own meaningful reasons for persevering. As a Biblical scholar she was able to connect the Hebrew idea of tikkun olam, healing the world, with her prayer. She explained the concept, “When we join our spirits with God’s spirit, like a spark joining a fire, we are actively extending God’s healing presence into the world.” Also, she loved discovering what it meant to be silent and let go of thoughts in prayer. She said, “I am a wordy person, and I have lived my whole life using thoughts and words as effectively as possible.” (She was a teacher and a lay preacher for decades.) In this kind of prayer she told us she was delighted to experience the value and importance of silence.

During Q&A, she said by centering she was refreshed and strengthened for all the other kinds of prayer she does, adding that if you really care about people then engaging their needs can be exhausting.

Stephen was asked how much his congregation practices this kind of prayer. He replied that in spite of his participation and support, his own church prayer group only has five members. I immediately thought of Fr. Keating’s gentle response to this same lack of participation by the larger Christian community. He said, “Well, you will have to weigh them instead of counting them.” Stephen also told how much it meant to him to attend conferences and retreats with people that share the practice. Instead of trying to explain or even defend his practice, he is able to immediately connect with folks who, as one gifted teacher put it, “speak the same language.”

Too quickly our 50 minutes was over, and Rickey had to end class. Later, I thought of Stephen’s opening remarks about not taking for granted our opportunity to explore deep spirituality. He meant the course, but it made me reflect on what it means to share spiritual connections where we can be strengthened and encouraged to continue growing in God. Yesterday was one such time, one such place; and although it was a rainy day, perhaps some sparks were fanned in other hearts as well.
--Anna

Some thoughts on thankfulness

2009-11-23T09:55:00.000-08:00

"Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy -- because we will always want to have something else or something more." --Brother David Steindl-Rast

There is, I think, an ever present tension in the human experience related to the dissonance between our ideal, and the real. When the imperfections of life snag my heart like a tiger's claw, and I hear, "In everything give thanks" my initial reaction is, "How?"

How can I be thankful for the pain that certain ongoing situations produce? Where is room for gratitude when genocide decimates a large portion of the population of a country? What thanks can there be in broken relationships? Where can I begin to be grateful for a relative who both loves and hates me, and I never know what it is on any given day? How can I find thankfulness in watching a loved one repeatedly shooting himself in the foot, or in losing a loved one? When the illusions of life abruptly and with finality disillusion me, how can I say, "Thank you"?

Perhaps for each person, some of the answers will be different. Some may be helped by studying God, and who he is, what he is about, and how he works. That does not hold all of the answers by any means, but there is a certain trust that grows with knowing him better. Job never discovered the reason for his suffering, but in the end, he learned to trust God because he is God.

Occasionally, someone may learn from a character in a fiction book. Claudia Mair Burney's book, Wounded features a young, unwed mother who suffers from fibromyalgia and bipolar disorder. She prays to share in Jesus' suffering, and her prayer is answered with more suffering in the form of stigmata. In the end, she rejoices in the sharing as if she had received a precious gift. This is not entirely the solution either.

Some insight may come from places such as Rwanda. Our priest and his wife were in Rwanda for about two weeks, ministering to the people. Sitting in our warm, well-lit houses with enough food, water, clothing, high-speed internet, and more than we really need, the joy of the Rwandan believers is past belief. Less than 20 years ago, these people were embroiled in civil war and massive genocide. Their average yearly income is equal to $1000. And, yet, they reach out to give to and help others.

There probably is not a one-size-fits-all answer, but they all hold some general principles. Each individual will, perhaps, have a personal application. Often that will be heard while sitting quietly, expectantly, and confidently waiting.

Many of our life experiences may not make us immediately grateful. Br. David, however, calls gratitude the key to a happy life. The alternative is misery (and believe me, I have been there). I have found that learning to trust that God knows what he is doing even if I do not, is one of the keys to gratitude.

Susan Price

Community, Distractions, Disconnections

2009-10-16T06:20:00.000-07:00

Recently my teaching colleague Steve Fettke spoke to a group of us on faculty about the need and the opportunity for faculty here to create a teaching and learning community and for there to be a sense of welcome into that community. I thought what he said and my reflections in response could be relevant to our community life in Living Stones.

Steve quoted Parker Palmer in The Courage to Teach (10th anniv. ed.) telling us that we should be “creating a space centered on the great thing called teaching and learning around which a community of truth can gather” (166). And I felt like I heard the Spirit whisper to me that these words from John 24 apply: “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." Yes, I thought, my worship in spirit and truth, includes my teaching and being part of my faculty community.

But I considered how powerful are the realities that create disconnects and distances among us. Different personalities, different spiritual styles, different politics, different disciplines, different family situations, etc. Yes, these are incredibly powerful. Usually in contemporary settings—whether secular or Christian—they are dominant. Why would we try to resist them? Who really cares anyway? It’s an uphill battle. It would be easier to let these external factors keep us distracted and disconnected from one another.

But please forgive me for that cynicism because I hear God saying that he cares—and I remember, for a brief time anyway, that my calling is to be faithful—and let him deal with the success issues in his way and in his time.

In Chapter 1 Palmer says, “Small wonder, then, that teaching tugs at the heart, opens the heart, even breaks the heart—and the more one loves teaching, the more heartbreaking it can be. The courage to teach is courage to keep one's heart opened in those very moments when the heart is asked to hold more than it is able so that the teacher and students and subject can be woven into the fabric of community that learning, and living, require” (11-12). I think all of us have experienced what Palmer is talking about here. This is part of what happens in any setting in which we seek to be truly open and vulnerable to God and other people.

But Palmer also gives us news of the freedom and joy of becoming our true selves in God. He offers us a vision of depth, truth, and connectedness that come “from the teacher’s inner life…as I reclaim my identity and integrity, remembering my selfhood and my sense of vocation. Then teaching can come from the depths of my own truth—and the truth that is within my students has a chance to respond in kind” (34).

I want this for myself—as a teacher in my classroom, certainly—but also as I seek to be a good brother in the Lord, to relate faithfully and consistently to my brothers and sisters in genuine spiritual community. Amen.
--Rickey

Spiritual Experimentation

2009-10-07T18:33:00.000-07:00

I'm convinced that our lives offer profound opportunities for experimentation. There is some truth in the cliche, "There are no unsuccessful experiments." The value of an experiment is not "success" or being proved right, but is instead the process itself. In the spiritual life, we're always in the process of self-discovery, which requires a willingness to question even our sense of ourselves. By God's grace, we certainly hold onto what is most important, but life nonetheless takes us places we might have never thought we would go. To grow obviously requires change. Thus, something we thought was extremely important may eventually need to be cast aside, but its value as an experiment, as a creative act or venture, nonetheless remains. This can be extremely painful, but a recognition of the experimental qualities of life can be helpful. Perhaps this is some of what the great spiritual masters have in mind when they talk about detachment.

In Western culture, we value being firmly convinced of our own truths; to be caught in a self-contradiction is considered the greatest of evils or shortcomings. Witness what happens to a politician who contradicts him- or herself. Foucault (not necessarily a spiritual role-model) had a much more interesting conception of his life's work: he only engaged in studies that would profoundly force him to re-evaluate his position about a given issue throughout. If he had finished the work without changing (i.e., contradicting himself, in some sense), he would have thought the experiment not radical enough. I think this is in general a helpful assessment. While I'm not advocating some sort of libertine freedom to do whatever we want in the name of experimentation, I think finding our true selves in God requires a willingness to change, to contradict ourselves perhaps, to make mistakes but learn from them--to experiment.

Wine Instead of Syrup

2009-09-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

We've just started looking for a church to attend. I have a feeling that it is going to be a long and painful search. I came up with an analogy that I think is helpful for seeing one of the primary problems with many churches. I know, I'm pointing fingers and offering solutions, but I think this is a meaningful dynamic to uncover. So let me put it this way, I came up with an analogy that is helpful for seeing one of the primary problems with churches that are programmatic or program orientated (this could mean focus on a literal program, such as the Wednesday night prayer meeting, or a larger program, like saving the world) and a primary problem with us when we become similarly program oriented.

We come to church to meet with God with each other. We come for communion, for wine. (Or for water if that metaphor works better for you.) But what we get instead is someone telling us what to believe and what not to believe, what to do and what not to do. Instead of the wine, instead of communal communion with God, we get syrup. All we want is just a sip or communion cup full of wine. But we get lots and lots and lots of syrup. We have poured into our tiny communion cup a gallon of syrup, an hour or so of someone talking at us and, to make it worse, often trying to be cordial or humorous while talking. We get the wrong thing--and we get way too much of it.

I have some ideas of what I would like in a church service which would help to reverse this problem, minimizing the syrup and opening opportunities for the wine or water, or wine and water. I'm not sure what use this description will be. We can't usefully dream of a "perfect" church. I also don't mean for these to be rules but useful patterns. Perhaps the list can serve as a prayer that we will be ever-increasingly drawn towards what matters.

There ought to be a time of silence.
There ought to be meditative communal reading of scripture.
There ought to be Eucharist.
There definitely ought to be a meal.
Sometimes, there ought to be music.
Often, there ought to be discussion.
Sometimes, someone should present a prepared "word" or sermon.
This should rarely, rarely exceed ten minutes.
Often, people should be allowed to speak unprepared "words."
As the spirit leads.
Almost always for less than two minutes each.
There ought hardly ever to be any announcements.
Particularly not programmatic pleas for involvement.
Everyone ought to participate in the corporate worship.
Never should one or a few people dominate the talking.
Talking itself should not dominate the meeting.

Amen.

The Importance of Being Still, part 2

2009-09-13T17:18:00.000-07:00

I think this is the other half of what my mom (Susan) wrote. I didn't know she would write what I was thinking, but here is my "half" of the story.

Teaching is a profession in which being still and centered is not only extremely difficult, but is truly undervalued. I have found, bit by bit, how imortant silence can be in this professon. Learning to be countercultural in this way has been a process, and I feel I've only nibbled a tiny corner of its vastness. Usually summer finds me drained to the dregs, heading to a silent retreat to let the beauty of the silence flow into the dry corners of my soul. This summer, I traded the silent retreat for the whirlwind of planning and executing a wedding, moving from the home I've lived in for the past ten years, and setting up my own house for the first time, not to mention the adventure of being married.

Well, I resisted all of the rushing and preparation involved in marriage at first -- I've never liked rollercoasters, especially not when I get to the part that I know for sure I won't be able to get off. But the experience was surprisingly grace-filled. It occurred to me that this was a silent retreat experience transplanted to life: an opportunity to plant pockets of silence, to feel God's presence "on the run." It was a challenge to be in each moment even when they piled on top of each other like water rushing over a waterfall.

I wasn't perfect. I certainly wished for boring moments to hurry by and became frustrated by little things. I missed beauty because I was not paying attention, and I let go of silence without considering the consequences. But the Spirit was there and was forgiving and present and loving even when I was not.

And surprisingly, the sacrament of marriage, with the mix of earthy and ethereal that so often characterizes sacraments, served as its own silent retreat. In the days that followed the wedding, I found myself as soft and open to the Spirit and to others as I have often been after spending a week in silence.

Even roller-coasters can be filled with grace.

--Sarah Curran (formerly Price)

A Kind Answer Turns Away Wrath

2009-09-07T18:48:00.000-07:00

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Proverbs 1.15

They get it right every once and a while, those seers, wise men and women. I was reacquainted with this principle from Proverbs, reading an apparently secular self-help book called Verbal Judo which had several strikingly insightful--and surprisingly spiritual!--points about gentle persuasion (largely meaning verbal conflict resolution) (see it at amazon). Here are the ones that seemed most central:

The first significant insight: In a conflict, don't react to the words being said instead be present to (or empathize with) the meaning or feeling behind what's being said.
But in able to be able to do this: Empty the self and remove the ego.

Both of these seem to be contemplative spiritual principles to me. Most often, they are easier said than done, of course.

One time, however, I remember enacting the "kind answer" principle smoothly while working as a cashier at a drive through window of a fast food restaurant. The food was in fact not usually fast, and often customers would arrive at my window angry about having waited so long between ordering and getting their food. One man in particular I remember speaking kindly to and his attitude drastically changing, and so I thought of the above Proverb. But I mention this instance now to point out how easy it was to answer kindly; it was easy because I had no bit of ego at stake. It wasn't me who took too long cooking his food! Unhappily, most instance when wrath comes our way, our egos are very much more involved.

If there is wrath aimed at us to be turned away, either we are at fault and so we're probably not going to simply stop our problem-making or we're not at fault and so we are indignant about the wrath or, and this is probably most often the case, we are "a little" at fault, but not enough (it seems in our mind at the time) to justify the wrath and so we are both indignant and not simply going to stop our problem making. Or something like that. Whether my analysis here is accurate, it seems plain enough that usually our egos are involved. But nonetheless, being kind beyond the question of our ego is what is essential. Indeed, this point seems closely related to Rickey's recent post on kindness. It seemed to me that these points were very practical ways of implementing our core spiritual values in our daily lives, which include, at least for me, plenty enough conflict.

Dear God, let us embody this. Amen.

Double Dutch--or the Importance of Being Still

2009-08-31T05:17:00.001-07:00

I was so uncoordinated when I was younger (possibly still fit into that category) that I could barely keep up with one jump rope. Two ropes going in opposite directions baffled me completely. And I'm not even going to address "red hot pepper." Having said that, I will add here that last year when I was the oldest teacher (by twenty years at least) at the school where I was teaching, I was the ONLY teacher who helped my students learn to jump rope in the play yard. I loved it. They loved it. My body did, however, did not love it.

This past year went by in a blur. It was the double dutch of life, I think. One rope was my employment situation, the other rope was the wedding preparations including making the bride's dress. In fact, as the wedding day drew closer, both ropes definitely took on double dutch with red hot pepper. Just to make things more interesting, my older daughter decided she would like to be a wonderful matron of honor if she was great with child as she fulfilled her obligations.

All of this was extremely challenging to someone who functions best with time to sit and think, or, just sit and rest in God's presence. I had to learn to keep on the move without thinking more than it took to get through each day. It took its toll. I woke up Saturday night with a nightmare version of an oft-repeated scenario from school: the administrator confronting me with an area where I needed to grow personally, or professionally. It was well meant, I'm convinced of that. I know the administrator's heart, and she always meant well. But, the delivery was always devastating to me. And I lived in fear of the next "bringing Susan up" episode.

By the time Ellie arrived on August 5th, I was starting to unwind. After August 5th, I just let go. I worked at things, but could not seem to finish anything I started. I spent a lot of time just being still and knowing that God is God.

Now, I think, I am ready to take on whatever He has for me. He has done some healing, and some encouraging. One thing is certain: I must be doing the things that bring Him joy and pleasure, doing the things He has created me to do. And, I must be taking time to be still, and know.

Revised Living Stones Community Document and Invitation to Annual Commitments

2009-08-09T13:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Members and Friends of Living Stones Community,

Earlier this year we agreed to revise the guiding community document for Living Stones. After discussing changes with each other and with other members of the community, Rickey Cotton and I have finally managed to finish. We did not finish before the end of spring as we had planned, but here we are now, at least before the end of the summer. This letter is an open-handed invitation for you to review the revised document and, if you would like, to make or renew a commitment to membership in Living Stones Community for the remainder of the year.

Changes to the Community Document

The primary changes that have been made to the document are those that we discussed as a community earlier in the year, on our blog and voice to voice. We have dropped the language of a "rule," emphasized commitment to "values" over practices (in terms of what we are as a community), and made the language of the annual commitment even more gracious than before. The full text of the revised community document can now be found on the community website under the sections "Who We Are," "Core Values and Practices," and "Annual Commitment."

Changes to the Website and Blog

Along with the changes in our rule, we have updated the community website at http://livingstonesweb.net.The website is now intended to be the primary online portal and home for the community. For instance, the blog (at http://livingstonesweb.blogspot.com) has been embedded into a "blog" page on the website, which is why, as you will notice, elements of the blog have been rearranged (the blog can still be accessed at either URL). Please do visit the website and see the changes we've made. Artwork will be re-added in the future.

Annual Commitment

Also updated on the website is the form with which we can make or renew our commitment to and membership in the community. A very simply form follows the commitment statement on the "annual commitment" page. If you would like to make or renew your commitment and membership, upon reading the revised document, including the commitment statement, you may use this form to do so.

To reiterate, this invitation is open-handed. If you do not want to join or continue as a member, please take your freedom as you feel led. You will still be welcome to browse our blog and leave comments. If you would like to make or renew your commitment, I welcome you, thank you, and look forward to journeying together with you in this small way.

On behalf of the community,
Paul Corrigan

"Reading" for Relationship, a Quotation from Sandra Schneiders

2009-07-30T19:14:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a book by Sandra Schneiders called The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture. Schneiders describes scripture as a "text of meeting" with God, rather than as a codification of propositions. Tellingly, I first came across the book in an essay on "Reading for Transformation." I'm sharing a quotation here from it contrasting two ways of understanding the purpose of scripture and the two ways of reading which follow. Of course, as Schneiders would point out, it is not just scripture but the whole world that we can "read" towards this end, that God would meet us in, that God would "self-disclose" through.

If scripture is understood as a repository of divinely revealed true propositions and moral absolutes, then [its use or its demands on us] will appear as an application of those propositions and absolutes, literally understood, to matters theological, missionary, and personal. If [on the other hand] scripture is understood as a sacrament of divine revelation, of God's historical self-disclosure, then [the way to use it or the way that it calls on us] will be understood as the ever-developing guiding influence on our thought and action of an ever-deepening familiarity with God in Jesus. For those seeking absolute norms for knowledge and behavior, the latter position will appear incoherent, unstable, and finally inadequate. For those who realize that the only God worth knowing is a personal God, and that all personal relationships are dialogical and relative, the "uncontrollability" of God's self-revelation is a source of joyful astonishment and an invitation to the unwavering confidence that only a endlessly original love can justify.

Wholeness

2009-07-23T18:08:00.000-07:00

"We spend a few years being kind to people, a few years without temptations of the flesh, and we think all our troubles are over. We have passed to angelic life and will never more experience movements of anger or sensuality. In other words, there is no original sin. But there is original sin, and it is so real that to ignore it, practically speaking, is not to be humble. Humility consists in accepting the whole of reality, and original sin is at least half of it."
-Thomas Keating Crisis of Faith, Crisis of Love

It has been my prayer recently that God would guide me into a wholeness in my understanding of myself and my understanding of Him. It has not been my temptation recently to fall into the trap of thinking to lowly of myself. I have not experienced a distance from God or any kind of aridity in our relationship. He has been close and active in my life. In reading Fr. Keating's account of the way Christ calls us into an ever deepening spirituality, I am invited to look at myself in the light of how I perceive Christ's call. I am overwhelmed at the quickness of my ability to rest in the comfort of consistency and the pride I feel at the levels I have already reached. My continual prayer is that I would not long rest in the comfortable, but as Keating writes, "accept the whole of reality," with the humilty that only Christ can bring.

Matt

Kindness

2009-07-20T06:06:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that for relationships to succeed long term—at least as the New Testament describes success—kindnesss is essential. It is a partner with humility. Kindness means to be tender, gentle, sensitive, loving, compassionate. I think we should view it as a skill that we practice in regard to others. It is not merely a nice feeling or sweet intention. A skill involves what we actually do and the manner with which we do it. Kindness is an antidote to self centeredness, projection, ambition, and aggressiveness. To be kind requires self-knowledge and self-restraint. We have to be able to “see,” be aware, in order to recognize both others and ourselves, to love both others and ourselves. It then requires skill to respond first to the other person and not first to ourselves. We are able to set aside ourselves in order to focus on others and respond to them where they are, where they are coming from. Our response is based fundamentally on compassion. Of course justice plays a role, but in the Christian life love is greater than justice. I Cor 13 says that love is the greatest. My prayer for myself and our community is that we become more and more kind, more and more able to love as God wants us to love.
--RC

Sarah's wedding

2009-07-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Sarah and Liam were married. The Anglican marriage service overflowed with joy and beauty. Many in our faith community joined with friends and family and offered their love, gifts, and talents to create a day unlike any other. They made it an intricate dance unfolding with unexpected steps fitting smoothly into the anticipated choreography. We celebrated this long-awaited day with enthusiasm, and vowed to support and encourage the newlyweds along the way.

These are just some initial thoughts I wanted to share. Perhaps Sarah will have some of her own to add later. It was a wonderful day.

Following Christ

2009-07-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

"... though the soul is homeless and vulnerable, in deserts and clouds, it is most importantly 'at home' in so far as God has made himself a home in human life and death, and passed before us on the way we are called to go. Christ is the root of our security and our insecurity alike... present as a sign of hope at every stage of our painful journey out of bondage and across the wilderness."

-The Wound of Knowledge Rowan Williams

As I have been praying, studying, and reflecting this summer I have been consistently drawn in by the image of Christ as the divine Logos, Word of God. God's still small voice speaking this Word in my own life in very deep and meaningful ways has cultivated trust and hope. However, as I meditate on this and as I am in dialogue with others I am often overwhelmed with the journey towards/with this Word by a sense of being "homeless and vulnerable, in deserts and clouds." I have found that the times when I am most overcome with these feelings are also the times I gain the most insight about myself and God. I am reassured that God has not promised to whisk us out of the "deserts and clouds," but to be present with us in our vulnerability, both as a historical example and a present reality. Christ is "our sign of hope" on the spiritual journey as our end, and our constant companion, closer to us than our own heartbeat.

I believe Lord, help thou my unbelief.

-Matt

Thoughts on Detachment

2009-06-29T06:54:00.000-07:00

Detachment doesn’t mean not loving. It means to be free to love with God’s love. Without detachment we are not free. We are bound to our limited selves, our egos, and when we are bound we project onto others, grasp after them, and/or reject them. Without detachment we cannot be fully aware of others or fully present to them. So we love selfishly, at least partly, and in self-serving ways.

Detachment enables us to be aware of and engage reality as it really is. It enables us to welcome and embrace the unfolding of reality and be present and responsive to the Spirit at work within it. Without detachment we cannot see truth, cannot realize or actualize the truth.

Detachment requires skillful, intentional humility and vulnerability because detachment does not come naturally to us; it is a supernatural gift, a grace, though we can practice making ourselves available to it. My prayer for myself and for our community is that we continue to grow in loving others with awareness, humility, and skill. And this, I think, requires detachment.
--RC

For grace to be grace....

2009-06-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

"For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed, and take us to places where we didn't want to go." --Kathleen Norris

I've been reading Norris's Acedia and Me for a few months in between other other things, and this quote keeps coming back to me. One of the things that God's Grace has given me in the past four years is the clear awareness of not being able to be in control of my life. Little by little, what control I thought I had has been nudged away gently, or not-so-gently at times. It hits me hardest when I see my children struggling, and I may not interfere. There is a pain in those situations, yet the grace was abundant as needed...if I would receive it. The blessing has been to see them finding their own need to lean on God's Grace for themselves.

Grace took me to an employment situation this year that, much as I had longed for the position, became a place of intense, painful personal growth. There is no way I would have chosen to go there had I better known what lay ahead. Yet, knowing what I have gained this year, I would not change a thing of this past year unless it were that I should not have been so overly adamant and immovable for as long as I was.

The next event toward which Grace is moving me is my daughter's wedding next month. I am working on finishing her wedding gown which has become a contemplative prayer in and of itself. Maternal yearnings attached to each stitch and flower remind me that she is a precious gift of Grace which I never imagined I needed until she came into our lives.

Grace will be there the day after the wedding, too.

Susan Price

The spiritual life is so simple

2009-06-15T19:32:00.000-07:00

The spiritual life is so simple. For instance, Micah sums it like this: what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (6:8). Jesus also has a nice summery of the spiritual life (Matt. 22.40). So does St. Paul (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Lately, I've felt that I have not much else to learn about the spiritual life as far as mental learning, not because I know so much but because there isn't all that much to know. It seems, though maybe I'm exaggerating and maybe I'm wrong, that you need to "know" just enough to "do" and "be" in love, which mostly is to "know" the truth about a few key lies about the false self.

The spiritual life is so simple you would think it ought to be easy.

But its not.

Below I've pasted an excerpt from Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation which details one such instance where something so simple is so difficult: Merton speaks about the spiritual value of living with people (New Directions 1961, pp. 191, 192, edited for gender neutrality).

In my life, the friction of living with my wife and my children could be invaluable to spiritual growth. I know this! I have known this from the beginning! But so many times I act or feel as if my wife and children--and in-laws!--were distractions from "spirituality," from reading, writing, prayer or silence.

Gracefully, I do not always do this: often I realize in the moment the value of the grinding and am content to be present to it. Praise God for this. But when I live in the fragmentation between what I know and how I live or feel, I demonstrate the gulf between the simplicity of the spiritual life and the easiness thereof. But here's the passage:

Very few are sanctified in isolation. Very few become perfect in absolute solitude.
. . . Living with other people and learning to lose ourselves in the understandings of their weakness and deficiencies can help us become true contemplatives. For there is no better means of getting rid of the rigidity and harshness and coarseness of our ingrained egoism, which is the one insuperable obstacle to the infused light and action of the Spirit of God.
. . . Even the courageous acceptance of interior trials in utter solitude cannot altogether compensate for the work of purification accomplished in us by patience and humility in loving other people and sympathizing with their most unreasonable needs and demands.
. . . There is always a danger that hermits will only dry up and solidify in their own eccentricity. Living out of touch with other people they tend to lose that deep sense of spiritual realities, which only pure love can give.
. . . Do you think the way to sanctity is to lock yourself up with prayers and your books and the meditations that please and interest your mind, to protect yourself with many walls, against people you consider stupid? Do you think the way to contemplation is found in the refusal of activities and works which are necessary for the good of others but which happen to bore and distract you? Do you imagine that you will discover God by winding yourself up in a cocoon of spiritual and aesthetic pleasures, instead of renouncing all your tastes and desires and ambitions and satisfactions for the love of Christ, Who will not even live within you if you cannot find Him in other people?

We pray together that God will help us to be aware of what we know and to do those simple but hard things which are required of us by love.

"Frailty is a Moment of Self-Reflection"

2009-06-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

Erica and I went to the art museum a few weeks ago. One of the exhibits was called Paint Made Flesh. It featured works of mostly contemporary artists, who deal with what it means to be a material, fleshly being, complete with emotions, memory, sexuality, etc. One of the themes that was examined again and again was that of vulnerability. This painting by Eric Fischl especially caught my eye. The painting is (to me) haunting and beautiful. The old man stands naked and alone, obviously frail and vulnerable. The artist gives it the apt title "Frailty is a Moment of Self-Reflection." The painting invites the viewer into this reflective act; even though most of us are not as visibly frail as this man, we all face frailty and vulnerability. It is essential to being human.

We are vulnerable in so many obvious ways that it seems superfluous to even mention them. Our futures are not certain, our health is not a guarantee; we could lose people we love, or goals that we've worked hard to achieve could fall apart. In spite of our culture's best attempts to hide behind money or technological advances or U.S. military strength (could we call it a collective false self?), it seems that every now and then we are jarred out of our illusion and reminded of our vulnerability, whether by the events of 9/11, a financial crisis, or swine flu. Notably, vulnerability so often leads us to lash out at others before they hurt us: so much violence is justified in this way. This violence includes not just physical manifestations, of course, but the ways we close ourselves off from the other. If we recognize that we are all frail and our lives are in God's hands, we might be less likely to resort to such defense mechanisms, making us more open for dialogue with each other.

Another obvious element of vulnerability is that it is essential for relationships, including our relationship with God. We even talk about "skillful" vulnerability in our rule. Love is always a risk, of course, and it's not possible without opening up to the other. Our relationship with God seems to continually confront us with this reality, whether it's the vulnerability of sitting in silence, taking a sabbath (when there's so much that needs done), or embarking on a new and difficult journey in life. It seems to me that engaging in the spiritual life is to continually come to terms with this reality. The process of stripping away our false self and all of its defenses confronts us with our naked vulnerability; this process is often enough painful but ultimately healing.

The painting reminded me how important it is to come to terms with my own human vulnerability. Ultimately, vulnerability is a reminder of what we've all said countless times about the spiritual life: it is a gift. Our own actions and intentions matter, but a contemplative relationship with God always requires God's initiative. I am reminded that God made us vulnerable for a reason, and that it is essential to being human; I think the spiritual life encourages us to come to terms with that.

a Centering Prayer picture

2009-06-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

Well, as Matt and I spend time here at L'Abri, we are being incredibly blessed by the community around us. The mother of one of the couples here, Judy, came this week to see her family, and she is also a spiritual director who practices centering prayer as well as other meditative practices. This past Monday, she spoke to us on centering prayer and gave us a short period of time in which to pray as well. The following is about the time Judy spent with us and the picture God shared with me afterward.

Judy opened up the time by preparing the altar, our coffee table. She cleaned it gently and purposefully, and set a cloth, a cross, a rock, two branches, and a candle on the table. Then she said a guided meditation to lead us into our time of centering prayer. After we centered, one of the women here asked me about what goes on in my mind when I center, and I was given the neatest picture. I told her that it was like taking a walk or hanging out with my best friend Sarah. Sometimes we can just be silent together. We don't try to conjure up conversation if it is not already taking place, and sometimes we may not even mention something that pops into our heads if we recognize the silence. But we do notice the things around us; we see trees or people or beaches - the setting we're in. We just don't heed or engage them because we are content to just be us fully and silently together.
Now of course Sarah and I experience times when we can hardly stop speaking, or we ask each other for help, or we have fun, and that is an incredible and necessary part of our friendship. I feel that this is the same or similar with God. I can talk to Him, sing to Him, ask Him things, listen to Him, and, I can be with him.

Jen Addis

Thoughts on Humility

2009-05-09T04:58:00.001-07:00

Humility is essential to spiritual progress. Without humility we cannot come to God because without humility we cannot transcend ourselves.

Thomas Keating says there is no humility without humiliation. Most of us have already had a good dose of humiliation. Our life circumstances have provided it. By accepting humiliation we grow in humility.

We can do this because we believe God. We believe God loves us, and that over the long run he is working all things for good. We believe that originally—in our depths, in our essence—we were created good; we were created in God’s image. So we can abandon our surface self-created images of ourselves; we can abandon our embarrassment, shame, discouragement, and find courage and strength in God to live freely and strongly. We can do this because we have confidence in God, not in ourselves, because our lives are centered in God, not in ourselves. This kind of humility opens us to being continually aware of God's presence and to the acceptance of everyone with their limitations.

RC

Slowing down the pace

2009-04-19T08:53:00.000-07:00

In keeping with my recent decision to not work full time, I've been seeking ways to begin to slow down, and to listen better. I think I have rediscovered one of those ways.

My grandmother helped me plant my first garden of marigolds. We put the seeds into the ground, and watched them grow together. Her efforts turned me into a lover of the fruit of the earth. I've had gardens over the years, and have learned much from them. My biggest weakness with my gardens is becoming distracted with other good things, and forgetting to weed and cultivate.

Three years ago I had a myriad of pots around my deck boasting of parsley, sage, rosemary, and, of course, thyme. There were others as well, and I loved the container gardening. The weeding was easy, they were in my face with gentle aromas whenever I stepped out the door so I could not ignore them as easily. Additionally, I love using fresh herbs in cooking--my roasted vegetable pizza simply cannot do without the fresh basil to make the pesto sauce. Nevertheless, with working full time, and the many calls on my time outside of employment, they eventually and inevitably succumbed to drought, frost, and lack of loving care.

The empty pots have been looking at me sadly all winter. About a month ago I noticed life in the mint container. Brave mint--you simply cannot kill it! Then the Greek oregano (a member of the same family as mint) began to recover. On an impulse, I cleaned out their containers, and they began to thrive. The other pots looked more hopeful, and I remembered how peaceful and satisfying it is to pull weeds.

Last week my daughter-in-love's family were here from New England, and brought me a gardenia bush. Yesterday I planted it. Today, on the way home from the 7:30 a.m. service, I stopped at Lowe's, and liberated some herbs, tomatoes, and pepper plants. I rejoiced in the garden's sermon that had begun at church with the proclaiming of the Easter message of faith, hope, and love. My garden reminds me of the new beginning that the resurrection gives us; a picture of God's mercy poured out in one small corner of my world.

Susan Price

Sara Grace

2009-04-08T05:51:00.000-07:00

[T]o know our true selves is to know we are loved by God beyond all measure.
--Thelma Hall, Too Deep for Words

Our second daughter, Sara Grace, was born yesterday (April 7) at 8:55 AM. At birth, she weighed 7 lb. 9 oz. and was 20 and 1/2 in. long. Labor was mercifully only six hours. Through delivery, Christine held a calm and focus which, on reflection, seems to me to come from a spiritual depth, and, of course, grace.

Some people say that "Only people who have never had children believe that we aren't born with sin." And I used to agree. The idea of being born "into sin" has had a number of acceptable meanings: that people are born with the "propensity" to sin, that they find themselves in a "fallen" world, that they are born into a culture from which they inherit the language of the false self. These similar but differing understandings have in common that they are trying to make sense of some passages in the New Testament and of the fact that this world we live in is indeed "fallen" as we humans never stop hurting each other. I think that such ideas can be helpful at times.

However, the idea of "original sin" put in one particular way--that people are born as actual sinners, that is, as having already done something wrong or having some spiritual wrongness about them or having already "merited" some kind of punishment--is dangerous because it can lead us away from realizing the central goodness of people.

Now that I have seen two children into the world, I would reverse the saying I used to adhere to and would now say, "Anyone who thinks people that are born as sinners has never held an infant!" This too is hyperbole, but useful, I think.

Infants are not mature, of course, and they do have some big spiritual problems in front of them. So I am not saying that I would want to be an infant or to be infantile. But infants can remind us of our own central holiness; they can remind us of the fact that the center of who we are is the spirit of God. To say this is to say that, ultimately, neither sin nor the propensity to sin can tarnish, on the eternal level, the absolute loving holiness and omnipresence of God. The truth-fact of grace is greater than the need for grace. That Sara Grace has no false self can remind us that our false selves are false in that they are not who we really are and, gracefully, they too will fall away in eternity.

The Desert Experience

2009-04-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

In the desert we must face ourselves, every aspect of our selves, our fears, temptations. We confront our own heart and our heart’s deepest desires, without any scapegoats, nothing hidden. In it we wrestle with the rebellious forces of our nature.

Yet in the desert one also encounters the call to divine encounter. In the desert we encounter our true state and must face it without blaming others or our past. We are invited to shape off all forms of idolatry and distraction and fully engage the divine reality. You enter into a deeper, more complete relationship with the transcendent realm, the presence of the boundless God whose grace is without limits. The desert is the call to go beyond oneself and be transfigured in the presence of the Holy One. The desert mothers and fathers did not go to the desert to prove a point but to prove themselves.

For us the desert signifies not a place but a way. We do not have to literally go to a desert—though we may chose to for a time. But on the spiritual level we do have to go through the desert. The desert is a necessary part of the spiritual journey. To try to avoid it would be to refuse the fullness of God’s call.

As most of us know, we usually do not have to seek the desert—the desert will seek us. Everyone goes through the desert in one way or another, really multiple times. The forms of desert experience may include failure, illness, breakdown, divorce, loss of loved ones—any or several of the traumas that life brings. We all suffer.

We will be tempted at times to try to escape or to distract ourselves with activity, food, addictive behaviors, work.

But accepting the utter loneliness and inner fearfulness of the desert experience is vital to deep and genuine spiritual growth. If we go through desert experiences involuntarily, they can crush us. But if we welcome them and seek God in them, we can be transformed. God desires not to deliver us from desert experiences, but to join us in them.

--RC

Life passing by in a blur

2009-03-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

"It is so easy to come to believe that what we do is so much more important that what we are. It is so easy to simply get too busy to grow." Joan Chittister OSB

I began reading Chittister's Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today last week. Friday morning this quote hit me hard. This school year has felt so very much like the life that this describes. I understand that 50-60 hour weeks are in the nature of teaching, but it also seems to be the way that so many people live in general. I can no longer live at this pace, and am stepping down from full time teaching at the end of the school year.

So many things that God has given me delight in doing for Him had to be set aside this year. Even worse, so much that I wanted to learn from God has been also put off for the last four years in the busy-ness of my life, and that saddens me. I expect to find something to do to help pay the bills, but am hoping, praying that the Lord will help me to keep focused on Him, and what He is interested in making me to be.

Susan Price

Another Poem, Mary Oliver

2009-03-04T20:45:00.000-08:00

Of course I have always known you
are present in the clouds, and the
black oaks I especially adore, and the
wings of birds. But you are present
too in the body, listening to the body,
teaching it to live, instead of all
that touching, with disembodied joy.
We do not do this easily. We have
lived so long in the heaven of touch,
and we maintain our mutability, our
physicality, even as we begin to
apprehend the other world. Slowly we
make our appreciative response.
Slowly appreciation swells to
astonishment. And we enter the dialogue
Of our lives that is beyond all under-
standing or conclusion. It is mystery.
It is the love of God. It is obedience.

--Mary Oliver, "Six Recognitions of the Lord"

Erica posted some poetry of Oliver's a while back, and so I thought it would be alright if I post some more. The tension that Oliver seems to be exploring in this section of one of her longer poems is that tension between the apophatic and the kataphatic--or between, as Oliver puts it elsewhere, God's "body" and God's "mind" (all metaphors of course). For a poet like Oliver who has explored the "touching" side of spirituality through a mysticism of nature for forty years, this discussion seems like a deep realization. We "listen" for "the other world" and aim for a "dismebodied joy" even as we maintain our "physicality."

A Sweet Returning

2009-02-25T18:04:00.000-08:00

Today, of course, is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. We have just returned from church with its softly-lit and quiet nave, solemn recitations, and liturgy for the day we are bid to remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return. I still have the ash cross on my forehead and the words of our Old Testament reading ringing in my ears: return to the Lord. These are actually the same words that I have been consciously and unconsciously saying to myself for days now: return to the Lord.

It started a few nights ago as I was saying my rosary: this sense of returning just came over me. A sweet returning. A re-focusing of my attention, a drawing inward and towards. A return to myself and to God, both of whom I have been terribly distant from without even fully realizing it.

So Lent. This is my second time observing it, and my first time doing it with any real intentionality or expectation. This time I really want to prepare myself for the miracle of Easter and what it means for us. Lent is solemn, a time to take stock of one's life, to pare down, to pray and repent--but it is rooted in joy, the joy of the Christ's resurrection, the joy of our own resurrection.

This is a prayer I say a lot and the one that is foremost in my heart during this season of prayer, fasting, and preparation: Come, Lord Jesus. Draw us to yourself. Come, Lord Jesus. Draw all things to yourself.

--Erica

Czaslaw Milosz "On Prayer"

2009-02-20T09:57:00.000-08:00

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That Bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word is
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.
--Czeslaw Milosz, "On Prayer"

I'm sharing this poem "On Prayer" by Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel-winning, Polish, Christian poet, because it seems particularly mystical to me. Milosz invokes God in the tradition of the via negativa ("who is not"), speaks of the negation of all our constructs ("the shore of Reversal"), and emphasizes "the word is" with the suggestion that "being" means something we "hardly envisioned."

I don't think that the whole bit about prayer being a "velvet bridge" springing us "above landscapes" by "magic" is so useful for explaining the practical practice of prayer on a daily basis, which I find much less exhilarating. But perhaps the metaphor is getting at the mystical (rather than practical) aspects of prayer, which are important to discuss though impossible to find fully suitable metaphors for. The mystical aspects of prayer: spirit permeating matter, the intersection of eternity with here and now, "the stopping of the sun" (timelessness) on the landscape (in which we live in time).

The most mystical and most important part of the poem, though, is the emphasis on we which Milosz uses four of these twelve lines to explain.

Henri Nouwen Excerpt

2009-02-06T09:10:00.000-08:00

This exerpt from Henri Nouwen's The Way of the Heart really spoke to me, so I wanted to share it with our community:

“We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone….Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature….[W]e come to realize that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us, that he is our true self….Precisely because our secular [and religious] milieu offers us so few spiritual disciplines, we have to develop our own. We have, indeed, to fashion our own desert where we can withdraw every day, shake off our compulsions, and dwell in the gentle healing presence of our Lord. Without such a desert we will lose our own soul while preaching the gospel to others….[We] need to…set apart a time and a place to be with God and him alone….[L]ike all great disciples of Jesus, Mother Teresa affirmed…the truth that ministry can be fruitful only if it grows out of a direct and intimate encounter with our Lord” (20-21).

My prayer for all of us is for a direct and intimate encounter with our Lord!
--Rickey

Lectio on an unusual verse which may be useful to us in our community-making

2009-01-25T11:38:00.000-08:00

Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank. (Exodus 25:9-11)

Lectio. Seventy. They saw God, and they ate and drank.

Meditatio. I came across this passage earlier this week while reading The Cure of Cain by Ragina Shwartz, and I had to grab a bible to make sure she wasn’t making it up (though I’m sure I’ve read it before because I’ve read Exodus). The Cure of Cain is a book on the violence inherent in “monotheistic” identity formation; in it Shwartz offers this passage from Exodus as an alternative to exclusivist versions of collective identity formation in which “the cutting covenant has cut people off, from one another and from their God.” Though I wouldn’t necessarily agree with Schwartz’s definition of “monotheism” (the book is challenging), I am grateful that she has highlighted this passage and grateful for her commentary on it: “‘[T]hey gazed on God, they ate, and they drank’—three words that offer no hint of the violence of the covenant curses, but are prefaced instead by the explicit rejection of violence. Exodus tells us that just looking on God should be fatal—‘no man can see the face of God and live’—but the story says ‘He laid no hand on these notables of the sons on Israel: they gazed on God.’” I am grateful, moreover, for God’s gracious fellowship with us.

Oratio. God, to see you, not alone, but in a community of earth’s people: We want to eat and drink—on mountain tops and in our daily walks—in peace and communion with you and with each other.

Silencio.

Children's Children are the crown of the aged....

2009-01-18T12:47:00.000-08:00

On Thursday I had the wonderful privilege of helping my daughter-in-love as she delivered her first child, our first grandson. It was love at first sight, and one of the most moving moments of my life. As I reflected later on Samuel James' birth, my mind inevitably traveled to Bethlehem. I felt such gratitude for God who, in order to communicate with and redeem humankind, voluntarily took on human flesh. He intentionally chose to make Himself vulnerable, and to go through the wholly undignified birth process to demonstrate His love. And that was only the beginning....

Susan Price

Community Commitment

2009-01-11T06:37:00.000-08:00

Since it is January, we are due to renew our annual commitment to the community. But we are presently rethinking and rewording who it is that we are (see "Revise Our Rule, etc?"). I don't think we really can sign on to the community when we don't yet know what the community will be. I think it would strengthen our community and the process of reworking our community document, though, if at this time we could make not one-year commitments but, say, two-month commitments to the process of rethinking our "rule."

The commitment would be to participate in the discussion about the rule in good faith--to continue (or join) as a member for that time. Once we have decided what the community document will say, perhaps in March, we can then sign on or not ("open hand" policy) for a year.

I've posted a page on our community wiki for these short-term commitments to the process of discussing the community. Please go there, read the "pledge" statement (comment if you think it needs to be revised), and, if you would like, add your name to the list.

Paul Corrigan

Revise Our Rule, Etc.?

2008-12-28T06:38:00.000-08:00

Dear Spiritual Friends, we are coming up on the end of the first full year of our experiment in being a “non-geographical Christian contemplative community.” Our website’s “Join Us” page says, “An annual re-commitment is then due during January 1-31 of each year for as long as you feel led to journey with us.” So now is meant to be a time of community reconsideration, etc., which fits with the ending of the calendar year, New Year’s resolutions, etc. It seems to me that a number of us have found some genuine sense of spiritual meaning and spiritual support in our community experiment and inter-connecting. Thus, in my view, we should continue our experiment. That’s certainly my “vote.” But it also seems to me that we need to consider revising our rule to fit who we really are and what we are really willing and able to do in regard to this community. Integrity matters, I think. Our website and our blog should represent who we really are and what we really do. Actually I am thinking that the terms “the rule of our community” and “our rule” may not fit where we really are in our development, in our experiment. Rather than sharing a “rule,” i.e., “core practices,” I am thinking that overall we share certain “core values,” such as contemplative reflection, humility, presence, and so on. I think our actual regular practices may vary. So instead of a link on our blog and web site saying “Rule of Our Community” we might have that link say “Core Values of Our Community.” Well, reflect on this anyway. You can let me know your thoughts by commenting on this post or by using the “Contact” tab on our community’s web site to send an email. I am very grateful for our community and what God has done in it over this first full year! May you and yours have a deeply blessed New Year!
- RC

My Aged P: the next installment of my spiritual journey

2008-12-21T14:25:00.000-08:00

(with apologies for the length of this post)

I have heard that there are two blunders one makes when writing of one's mother. The writing is either angry and unforgiving, or unforgivably saccharine. Such is the influence a mother has on her children. Either way, this part of my journey is a difficult one for me to articulate.

I remember some fun things Mom and I did together when I was small. I have a clear picture of making cookies at Christmas, and being allowed to make the fork criss-cross on the peanut butter cookies. I remember sitting in church waiting for her to finish playing the piano. She then sat by me, making me be still, but allowing me to doodle on paper. When I fell in the one-room schoolhouse next door and split my chin, I remember her anger because I had been running and she had warned me against it. (Mom was frantic; we had one car, and my dad was out somewhere in it. We had a telephone, but she could not find him.)

Usually, though, it was difficult connecting with Mom, and I always felt it was my fault. It may have been the trauma of being taken away from my hitherto primary care provider (my grandmother) at such an early age, but it always seemed to me that she held me (and my younger siblings) at arms length. There were times when I thought we were beginning to connect, but she pulled away. I never stopped trying to please her, but I never felt that I had succeeded, and what pleased her changed frequently. And we were seldom allowed to forget our misdeeds.

I did not see the loving God near at hand around my mother as I did with my grandmother. Inevitably this affected my view of God. He was a faraway god who must be pleased at all costs. His anger and wrath could not be appeased, nor could my mistakes be forgotten even if forgiven. God's grace was sufficient for salvation, but it ended there. He had rules! This god continued to haunt me for much of my life. I tried various ways of appeasing his anger, and strove to measure up to...I'm not even sure what. We always attended the rigid fundamentalist type of churches which, naturally, exacerbated my frenetic struggles.

**************
In 1994, my husband and I invited my parents to move into our home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was probably the worst mistake we ever made as a couple, one which nearly tore our family apart. Mom had not mellowed over the years. She was ever discontent herself, and often took offense at nothing. She pitted family members against one another, and manipulated situations. Being unsuccessful in getting what she wanted, within months she was agitating my dad about moving out into a place of their own. Shortly after they moved out in late 1997, I suffered a severe emotional blow-out. I alternated between trying to ignore God altogether, and yelling at Him a lot in between some serious acting out.

We soon realized that we needed a new beginning as a family, so we sold out, packed up, and moved from Lancaster, to Florida in 1999. I freely admitted to people that we needed some space between us and my mother. We did end up in one more rigid fundamentalist church, all the same God provided some emotional healing over a period of time.

After my dad passed away in 2001, Mom had gone to live with my brother. She was not happy, and at the end of a year she moved out into subsidized housing nearby. My brother, who long ago had given up trying to please parents or God, was completely devastated. Mom did not do well living alone, and went into a deep depression. In December, she ended up in the hospital with bilateral pneumonia. None of my siblings were for various reasons, able to get involved and help. As I prayed for her, I became sure that the Lord wanted me to do the impossible and unthinkable: go get her and bring her to Florida.

We found a place for her to live about a mile from our home, and she was fine for awhile. But, she really had not changed. We had some interesting interchanges over time, and before long, she was again unhappy and wanted to go back north--which was not possible. That didn't stop her from calling all her friends and begging them to come rescue her. I realized that I had not yet forgiven her completely for what happened in Lancaster, so I spent some dark days. She was angry because I would not do what she wanted (move her back north).

In December, 2004, she was diagnosed with probable Alzheimer Disease, and by the end of 2005, I was looking for an assisted living situation for her since we knew we could not bring her to live with us. Early on January 1, 2006, I found her on her bathroom floor with no recollection of how, or when she fell there. I called 911, and we went to the hospital. The doctor sent her right into the nursing home when she left three days later due to her hallucinating and inability to function on her own.

For a time afterward I continued resentful about all of the details of taking care of her, her finances, her Medicaid, and all the odds and ends that always come up. The church we were attending was not helpful in our spiritual needs at that time, and only made me feel condemned because I was struggling.

In December of 2006, we began our occasional involvement in an Episcopal church. In January, one of their Wednesday night classes was for caregivers, and Harry and I attended. It was a revelation that someone understood what I was going through, and that there was help, and support. I probably cried through the first four weeks of the class, and somewhere in there God began a work of healing, restoration, and strengthening which continues to this day.

Mom now attends church with us at Christ the King Anglican most Sunday mornings where we receive much encouragement and support. In spite of being raised in rigid fundamental Baptist churches, Mom absolutely loves the services, and participates in her own ways. She really hasn't changed much, but through the affirmation, and understanding of my faith community, God has taught me that I don't have to take on the responsibility for making Mom happy. I just need to do what He wants--and His burden is light. We will never have the relationship I always hoped for with my mother, but we do have a peaceful relationship. We have found some ways to connect, and sometimes we even have fun together. She even tells me she loves me.

--Susan Price

Readings in Common

2008-12-18T07:35:00.000-08:00

Rickey Cotton has suggested that as a community we ought to read and to have read certain texts in common as a way of cultivating our community culture. I think that we already have been doing this to some degree, but I propose that we build a list of the books and essays related to the purposes of our community that we have read in common. From there, we could periodically select new texts to read together.

This list, of course, isn't meant to show who's read stuff and who hasn't. But since, inevitably, it will, I should point out, as we all already know, those who have read little are not better or worse than those who have read much. The point of the list is, punningly, to help us move onto the same page.

Starting with the books on the reading resources page on our website, I have set up a list on private wiki for our community that you can access here. Please logon with the community email address and password and contribute to the list. I think that once the list is more or less complete for all of our members, we can begin to select texts to read together.

--Paul Corrigan

Reflections on our Rule

2008-11-30T17:27:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think it would be interesting to have some apparent distinguishing physical characteristic or set of practices connected to my spirituality: Eastern Orthodox fast days; Hasidic side-curls; a Sikh turban; Muslim prayers said toward Mecca. Of course, that's only a passing fantasy, but I wonder to myself what sort of formal commitment I have to anything besides trying to get my papers done on time. But then I remember that I do have such an opportunity for commitment in the living stones community rule. I admit I haven't been exactly fastidious in keeping it. I know, I know--no guilt. And of all the groups in the world, living stones seems to be the least likely to kick me out for not doing enough lectio. But this mental process got me thinking about our rule and my own relationship with it.

I read this story recently, which seems relevant: When William Penn became a Quaker, many of his fellow Friends wanted him to give up wearing the sword on his belt that was a distinguishing mark of his status as an aristocrat. Quakers are pacifists, they reasoned, and William couldn't carry the sword, even if he never used it. But Penn was upset that he would have to give up this marker of identity. He sought out George Fox, the leader of the Friends, to settle the issue. After some consideration, Fox told the young man, “Wear it as long as thee can.” Fox realized that the way to change someone wasn't by issuing commandments (“Take off your sword immediately”). Instead, the immersion into the Friends' shared community of silence and an increased awareness of God's presence would lead Penn to cast aside the things that stood in his way to divine union, not least his own false self as embodied in his sword. Likewise, I think committing to this rule, being part of this online community, is less about “getting it right” all the time and more about about commitment to a gradual process of spiritual transformation as we share in life together. I hope to be open to this type of direction from the Spirit, from this community, and from the rule to which we are committed.

--John

Thanksgiving Eucharist Reflections

2008-11-29T09:18:00.001-08:00

Sorry it has been so long since I dropped by to reflect. I was talking with Rickey and Anna today and they both encouraged me to make a brief reflection on the Thanksgiving Eucharist that I held for my two churches.

This year, I've been wrestling to get through Pastoral Care at divinity school (a class with which I have a strong love/hate relationship). I remembered a line from one of the books I read for this class about reclaiming holidays for the Church. One of the holidays the author suggested we reclaim was Thanksgiving. She or he suggested we rename Thanksgiving as “Immigrant Appreciation Day” in honor of the Native American's who welcomed the European settlers to their land. As I began to think about this image in preparation for the homily, I found myself in an uncomfortable space. Were it not for the Native American's generosity, would we be here? And to think of how we have treated this race of God's children is unsettling. My Methodist History teacher mentioned in one of his lectures just a few weeks ago that Tennessee’s mythic hero Andrew Jackson was responsible for this country’s shameful act of "Ethnic Cleansing"--The Trail of Tears. How could I "celebrate" in light of this injustice? Had I not read that book nor heard this lecture, Thanksgiving this year would have been another mindless participation in national egoism, but this year, I found it much harder to enjoy.

I managed to find solace in Christ's invitation to His Table, and in the Epistle Reading that went along with the service:

2 Corinthians 9:6-15 (NRSV)
6 The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. 9 As it is written, "He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures forever." 10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; 12 for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God. 13 Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, 14 while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you. 15 Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

I challenged myself and my parishioners to envision what Thanksgiving would look like if we were the generous host of immigrants today. What would our tables look like? Who would be seated around them? The inclusive language of verse 13 created a spiritual image of a Great Thanksgiving Dinner of which we soon partook! Placing myself as the needy alien in front of the bountiful table of the Lord was a humbling image. Holding out my hands to receive my daily bread was moving. I emphasized that we have received seed and as we put that seed to good use, the supplier of our seed will cause our supply of seed to multiply.

How do we play this out? One small way we are doing it is by bringing canned food items with us to each communion service which we then donate to the local food bank. Hanging from the arms of the cross in front of our sanctuary are plastic grocery bags filled with food for the poor: a powerful icon with the heart of Thanksgiving in front of our corporate face! May our celebrations in lieu of justice form us into prophetic extensions and voices against injustice.

--Mark

Instances of Grace

2008-11-22T19:55:00.001-08:00

For most of us, there is only the unattended moment . . .
--T. S. Eliot

As with many of you, I'm sure, I'm lurching forward with no relief in sight until a few weeks into December. I want to say that I really appreciate the posts our community has added to the blog this past week or so. I'm posting now (postponing designing an assignment for Monday and revising my paper on George Herbert's prophetic voice and learning to translate Spanish to English) to share some (spiritual) images from the past month, instances of grace in pressure:

It snowed a few inches yesterday. Okay, a few centimeters.
Two weeks ago I visited a monastery and went on a day trip with two old monks and one young monk to the mountains to see the leaves and on the way back we stopped at Wendy's and ate frosties together. "I think God wanted you to come with us today," the younger monk told me.
This morning, I got to stop my work for a few minutes to do laundry, and there was also an crotchety-looking man at the laundromat doing laundry. He told me, "I don't like doing laundry. This is two weeks worth. Have a good day." I bet he was an angel God sent to remind me how much I do like doing laundry.
Yesterday, I visited a literature class a friend of mine is teaching at baptist seminary to talk about Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and "Footnote to Howl." "Everything is holy. The bum is as holy as the seraphim," Ginsberg told them. "All truth is God's truth," I told them.
We're expecting another baby in April. Some of you already knew this. Two days ago, Christine and I went to the doctor's for an ultrasound. It's another little girl. But before he told us that, the doctor got caught up looking at the her little beating heart. "Sorry," he told us, "I'm obsessed with hearts."

Paul Corrigan

Reflections on Confirmation

2008-11-17T16:51:00.000-08:00

John and I were confirmed yesterday. We're officially Episcopalian. It's funny--even just four years ago I wouldn't have imagined myself in a denominational church, much less the Episcopal Church. But we change, life changes us, and so it is. I have certainly found a home there, a stabilizing connection. I find it hard to believe how whole I feel these days.

The confirmation ceremony was not quite as daunting as I'd imagined; I had been a bit nervous about the bishop and his hat. Even though I appreciate high church and have no problem with the ceremonial garments, that hat just gets to me. But I saw a kind and smiling face underneath the hat, which I think I've decided I like after all, if only for its amusing qualities.

John and I attended a month-long Inquirers' Course prior to being received. Throughout the whole class I thought that Father Rick was referring to all of us who were to be confirmed as "contrabands" and secretly wondered what the meaning of this strange term might be. I didn't realize until yesterday morning when I looked at the order of service that Rick had actually been saying "confirmands." I'm glad I didn't ask why I was illegal.

So I've been thinking about the process of confirmation, what it means to be received into a body of people. I think I've always thought of church in social terms, as a family, which it is; but it is also, somehow, mystically Christ's own body. Every time we celebrate Holy Eucharist we are reminded of this: that Christ is present with us in our own bodies, and in those we share communion with. We who are many are one because we all share one bread, one cup.

I don't know why, but these words of Mary Oliver come to me now:

Of course I have always known you
are present in the clouds, and the
black oak I especially adore, and the
wings of birds. But you are present
too in the body, listening to the body,
teaching it to live, instead of all
that touching, with disembodied joy.

My reception into the Episcopal Church was an event and a commitment, but more than that it is a reminder to me of my life that is hidden with Christ, where God is; of my true self; of Christ dwelling in me, loving me, teaching me, and helping me to live a life that is truly reconciled to God and aligned with the core message of the gospel.

--Erica

Of Stress, Sunsets, and Kathleen Norris

2008-11-16T12:56:00.000-08:00

Today ends my rather extended (and unintentional) sabbatical from this blog. I've been wanting so much to write on here for something like three weeks or so, but it has always been something--report card comments, wedding plans, delinquent lesson plans...the list goes on!

This week has been one of the worst, stress-wise, for a variety of reasons, many of them work-related. Let's just say working with a group of people who are minimally technologically inclined trying to convert all grade reporting work into a highly technological format does not come easily. On top of that I might cite extra social engagements and a continuing saga of a rather disrespectful decision on the part of an administrator at my school (I won't go into detail). I had no hope that I would be writing this today....

Even though I looked at the week and saw nothing but potential for harried and hurried days, God surprised me with so many gifts of His presence this week.

I was amazed as I left work each day, exhausted and sometimes discouraged, by a sunset of blazing beauty. They were each different, some with bold colors, some with dramatic clouds, some with subtle outlinings of light. Somehow I knew that these were a gift.

My before-bed habit is reading a little prior to turning out the light. Recently I began Kathleen Norris's Dakota, and I have fallen deep into the wild beauty of her writing about this land that she loves. This, too, I know is a gift.

Unexpectedly, I turned to see my fiancee weeping in church this morning. I knew it was serious as he is not much of a crier, typically. The beautiful reason for his tears was the presence of God speaking to him in a deep way...he was so moved by it. And this was a gift.

Despite the busy-ness of the week, I was thrilled that my lesson plans, which usually drag on into Sunday afternoon were completed and ready by last night. So this afternoon, I've had the rare freedom of reading and writing, cooking and dreaming. Another gift.

I think this is contemplation--even when life and work and friends and family are busy, crazy, stress-filled...finding the gifts that are there, letting your heart rest in the Spirit in the midst of life with all its loose ends and mixed-up strands.
--Sarah Price

Two Hounds of the Baskervilles, and one Shih Tzu

2008-11-15T07:30:00.000-08:00

Tuesday night I arrived home around 9:30 p.m. and let our three Shiz Tzu dogs out into our front yard to, erm, water the lawn. We don't have a fence around the yard, so we are vigilant, and one dog with a vice for chasing varmints of all sorts isn't allowed out without a leash on any terms.

I was shepherding the dogs back toward the house when the two hounds from Hades showed up at the edge of our yard. They belong to our neighbors, but have found an escape route from their fenced-in lot (much to their people's despair). When you look up at night, and see two large black dogs, which share a mixed heritage of rotweiler, pit bull, and black lab, (even without glowing eyes) it may cause the most intrepid to shiver. At best, I was alarmed. I dragged the leashed dog and encouraged the loose dogs in the direction of the front door. Unfortunately Wu, my Shih Tzu, (who often knows what I am going to do next even before I know it) heard the panic in my voice . He went into vigilante mode.

Before I even realized that Wu was going to take care of business, he lit out after those dogs that probably weigh five times what he does with the energy and fury of a Florida lightning strike. My understanding of doglish is somewhat rusty, but it sure sounded like he was telling them in no uncertain terms (using some language he undoubtedly picked up from our cats somewhere along the line) to remove their sorry selves from the premises. Or else. Then, still breathing out threatenings, he proceeded to escort them home.

The harrassed hounds took their cue and moved with great velocity and accuracy through their secret exit (now an entrance) before the fury caught up with them. Fortunately, they got there before Wu discovered their secret. He did hang out around the fence doing what sounded like some sort of trash talking for awhile--but what can you expect? He's still a dog. Wu then trotted back home, head held high, bedazzled by his own brilliance. He still won't get out again soon without a leash.

*********

I just missed two days of school due to a raging sinus infection. I went to the doctor, and she was horrified by how elevated my blood pressure was. This school year, for various reasons, has been stressful beyond what I could have expected. There have been pressures in other areas as well. I've been playing and replaying issues like videos in my mind, trying to solve problems that won't need to be solved for months yet. Fretting over things over which I have no control.

This morning I sat in my favorite chair with Wu snuggled beside me while I drank my coffee. I smiled as I reflected on how one small companion dog chased off two big dogs with aggressive heritages. Then the Lord reminded me of how I've been letting my aggressive anxieties to inform my walk rather than abiding in Him as He invites me to do. Ouch.

Susan Price

Zen and the Art of Driving a Fifteen Passenger Van

2008-11-06T05:58:00.000-08:00

At 4am in the morning last Thursday we loaded all our luggage and bodies into a fifteen passenger van to drive to North Carolina to be with Daniel and Melissa for there wedding. The van was full of people with different attachments to the couple and with different roles for the weekend. We had in the van a portion of the wedding party, the wedding musicians, and the hair and makup artists. There were girls who have worked with Melissa for some time and through that have grown to love the person she is and who she would become as Daniel's wife. There were girls who have gotten to know Melissa through our Sunday night group and the many other nights of fellowship we share together. They have no doubt loved her for her commitment to her friends in that setting. As for the Guys, there were also a number of ways that we have become close to Daniel. Some of the guys have played music with Daniel and have witnessed first hand the passion with which he approaches art. Some of us have gotten close to Daniel through our shared practice in different spiritual disciplines. We have been able to witness his dedication to God and his desire to see us be closer to God as well.

While driving I got a real sense of all of these different motives. The girls were talking about how they couldn't wait to see the decorations or the plans they had for Melissa's bachelorette party, with each one singling out the thing they knew Melissa would love to do. The guys also had all the little things in mind as we drove. Some of us were thinking about our roles in the wedding, while others were reflecting on the weekends plans. Throughout the whole trip I was struck by the excitement and dedication that I was surrounded by. It came easily for all of us but there was also something special about it. Our occasion this time was the wedding of our close friends, but this was not a new feeling for me. I have felt this love exude from my friends many times before. I realized how blessed I have been to be surrounded by God's love with my friends as the vessels. I am so grateful for opportunities like this to witness this love. I couldn't be happier for Daniel and Melissa and I hope I am around to see them grow with this new dynamic. I know that they will continue to strengthen and love each other as they have done with each other and with their friends.

Matt

Wedding Congratulations!

2008-10-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

Daniel and Melissa will get married this Saturday, Nov. 1. This Thursday he and about a dozen of his closest peers will pile into a rented van and head out for the l-o-n-g ride to North Carolina. (Melissa has been there for a week attending to last minute details.) I think it is incredibly special that his and Melissa’s friends are willing to make this trip to show love and support for them. It seems to me their journey could serve as a metaphor for marriage--great fun, bumpy, unforgettable, and, if everyone can practice letting go of irritations, unifying.

I like reflecting on Jesus’s first miracle being at a wedding. If he was wanting to get our attention, it worked. It was his mother, of course, who requested he do something. And what a spectacular something he did--changing water into wine! I think it is fair to say Jesus cared about important celebrations.

Daniel’s friends care, and we in our extended livingstones community care, too. So our deep-felt congratulations and sincere prayers go out to Daniel and Melissa--May God richly bless you now and in all your years together!

--Anna

The Early Years

2008-10-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

In the interest of not overwhelming anyone, I will be posting my spiritual journey in digestible portions. :-)

My dad was stationed in Colorado Springs when I was born, and 11 months thereafter he followed a call to be a pastor. I've read his written response to that call, and he was full of love for the Lord, and eager to serve the Lord in that capacity. He took an early discharge from the Air Force, and moved into my grandparents' home in a suburb of Philadelphia. He went to a Bible institute, worked part time, and my mom went back to work (and received a PHT--Putting Hubby Through--certificate) to help pay the bills.

This left my grandmother in what she considered a delightful situation. She was my primary caregiver for the next four years. My dad was an only child, and I became the daughter that she had always wanted to complete her family, but could never bear herself. My grandmother lived out her faith daily under difficult circumstances. We were two families living in a small, two-bedroom bungalow, and my grandfather was a difficult man to live with. She often included me in her Bible reading and prayer times. She cared for me tenderly, and although she was a pattern housekeeper, she always seemed to have time to help me have a tea party with my dolls out on the patio in the side yard. She taught me homemaking skills, and it was all part of who she was in her walk with the Lord. Although I do not remember it, family history records that I knelt with her when I was around four years old and asked Jesus into my heart. I never doubted at that time that Jesus loved me dearly. Several years later my dad baptized me in the Baptist church in which he had grown up.

The only mystery in connection with God that touched my life at that time was what I picked up from our Italian neighbors. They were Roman Catholic. One stormy day I was playing with Stephen and Frankie in their basement, and saw their St. Christopher medals. I asked them what they were, and their mother, "Aunt" Rita, told me what they were, and that they would keep the boys safe. I was fascinated. When I got home, I told my grandmother that I wanted "a piece of iron" around my neck. Of course she quickly disabused me of any such notions, and told me "We don't believe that way."

When I was five, my dad took his first pastorate in Pleasant Heights, Colorado, a minuscule church in an almost invisible town on the prairie in Southeastern Colorado. I was taken away from the one human being whose love I never doubted, and whose tender care was woven through my days to a barren prairie home with two people who were almost strangers to me. I grieved silently during the days for my grandmother, but the nights told the truth as I often woke screaming after nightmares in which my grandmother died. They lasted for several months.

This was the part where I learned that if one carefully conformed on the outside, and didn't rock any boats, everyone around me was happy. Quite possibly the closet rebel was formed at that time. We were there about two years during which my father pastored two different churches in SE Colorado, my brother joined the family, and then moved back to my grandparents' house while my dad went for his degree in Bible.

To be continued...

Susan Price

God's Garden

2008-10-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

On a regular walk in our neighborhood, I briefly stopped to greet a man working in his garden. He was busy trimming his rose bush when I told him how lovely I thought his flowers looked. He smiled kindly, but said, “You don’t see the bugs and weeds I’m struggling with.” “No, I said, “all I see are your beautiful flowers.” We both chuckled, and I walked on. Today I walked past his house again, and again I slowed down to enjoy his flowers. I had thought his small patch was pretty before, but now it was stunning. He had weeded and trimmed everything, and the proportion of leaves, limbs and blooms was exquisite. I think we are like his garden; we present well enough, but if let God do his work of trimming and weeding we can be stunningly effective in reflecting his glory.
--Anna

Spiritual Story (Paul)

2008-09-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
--T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

As is the case with many of you, a main point in my spiritual story is my conversion into the contemplative life. At this point I can most fully describe this as a conversion from a theology of certainty to a theology of mystery. I am still trying to work out a language to describe and understand both the continuities and changes in my life between “now” and “then.” I want to respect both.

I was born Massachusetts, my pregnant mother praying daily at the foot of her bed for a “warrior for God.” One of my earliest memories is of my parent’s telling me God had a special plan for me in heaven. I thought that they said “plant” so I went around daydreaming that it might be a cactus! Another important early memory is my first conversion: in the car with my mom and I asked curiously, “Am I going to heaven when I die?” I was four and my mother didn’t think that I was ready for “that talk.” But I started hysterically crying, “I need to know!” Shortly, I prayed that Jesus would clean my dirty heart and live inside me. Though some consider stories like this one as religious psychological child abuse, I am grateful and consider it an important point in my journey, the validation of the spiritual life of a child. When I was eight, my parents moved to North Carolina to get away from snow and liberals. I was home schooled, and my family joined an evangelical Pentecostal church with a strong program for children. In my time there, which lasted until I went to college, I had quite a few significant spiritual mentors and many important moments of spiritual growth, though all in a context of “certainty” that I no longer find as edifying. This phase of my life included a broad mix, most of which I am still grateful for, wonderful spiritual experiences in the wilderness, several “Youth Camp” cycles, lots of service and ministry inside and outside of church, and maybe a few metaphysical miracles. For the sake of this story in this space, I need to skip over this. As with all of your stories shared here, this one is a partial account.

I came to college at Southeastern University quietly, sincerely wanting wisdom and intimacy with God. As with some of you, the transformations in my understanding about life and God were largely influenced by Rickey Cotton through courses I took with him, conversations we had, and books he taught me (T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets as a particularly important one). But I don’t want to ignore the other influences, other professors, several humbling falls, and my previous spiritual experience. I believe that God long prepared me for a contemplative way of knowing and living. For example, even before college I began to practice silent prayer on my own. My conversion took place over about a year and a half. There was a series of necessary changes. First, my politics took a concrete intellectual turn toward the socially marginal--as is the case with many social conservatives, my heart was already with them, . After this my theological-philosophical foundations for “certainty” were unpinned. I let go of the “absolutes” of literalism, objectivism, and emotionalism, which had not led me to the wholeness and revival I was told to expect as a teenager. With these intellectual barriers to truth removed, I was open to look for God in more relational ways, through art, silence, community, and tradition. In other words, my philosophical conversion opened a space for me to be able appreciate millennia-old practices of knowing the unknowable. I have walking on this path for the past year and a half.

In the past few months I believe I have entered my next phase of transformation, which involves the practical details of life, particularly, the practical details of housework. My political, philosophical, theological transformations I believe are largely complete. Now, partially through readings books like The Rule of Benedict and The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and “Women’s Work,” I am embracing that part of the spiritual work in front of me which God would have me do right now, cleaning the house, vacuuming, washing dishes. In cleaning the house, and in the perspective it gives me on the actual “importance” of my intellectual work, I am growing in balance, in humility, in love.

--Paul Corrigan

The Cloud of Unknowing

2008-09-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

I have been reading The Cloud of Unknowing recently and I am struck by so many things that the author puts into perspective for me. In particular the following thoughts:

"Remember that the nearer a man comes to the truth the more sensitive he must become to error... for I assure you, contemplation is not the fruit of study but a gift of grace."

This has impacted me greatly in the last few days. As Jen and I have been transitioning back into our lives in Lakeland after our extended holiday this summer there have been quite a few stumbling blocks. It is important for me to remember how little control I really have over the situations of my life. So much of it is guided by extenuating circumstances, as well as God's hands. Most of the time I like to think that I am controlling my destiny and that each decision I make is wholly my own. I have realized that the way I relate to God is a mirror of how I relate to all of those situations in life. If I can learn to be humble and surrender my worries to God on a personal level it will flow over to all of my daily activities. There may be a time to take charge and make difficult choices, but it seems that if you realize your existence as being in and through God you start to see his hands on the little things, and all of those "take charge" moments start to fade away.

Matt Addis

A Thought on Community

2008-09-13T16:35:00.000-07:00

Today, I went to an introductory workshop on Centering Prayer.

Odd, I know, for someone who has been centering for nearly two years and has been to two week-long centering prayer retreats, but I went, and I found unexpected depth of silent beauty.

It's rather a long story, but I wasn't in Lakeland long enough to be a part of this community before it became geographically scattered, so I long hoped for a centering prayer group in my area. One began in February of '07, but went on a rather extended sabbatical that is just now ending.

And this introductory workshop is its new beginning. I went to the workshop because I wanted to support my mom and sister, who were attending for the first time, and to be with the facilitator, who was facilitating on his own for the first time, I believe.

The twist came when this facilitator shared with us, in the course of the workshop, about how he had lost two of his children in the past year, one of whom had died just this past week. His humility, his love, his gentleness in opening himself to us truly affected the atmosphere of the workshop. There was a depth, a strength in our silence at the first centering prayer "practice" that I have rarely felt in a centering session, even among those most experienced in the practice.

Our workshop was an introduction to centering prayer in its deepest sense--an invitation to community...in Fr. Keating's words, an invitation to love.

--Sarah Price

9/11

2008-09-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

I realize I'm a couple of days late, but I wanted to share this.

My dad passed away on September 9, 2001. Before the numbness had worn off, the World Trade Center was attacked. My youngest brother and I were driving up to Delaware to the funeral and we drove by the still smoking Pentagon on the 12th of September.

I staggered at two such emotionally devastating events so close to each other. My third or fourth thought was that I was glad that my dad had not lived to see such a thing happen, and I thought of his inevitable grief if he had seen it.

One thought led to another, and soon I was wondering about the grief of my Heavenly Father over such destruction by His creation. After a couple of months processing, I wrote this poem:

Creator
of the universe;
Composer
of the stellar
music of the ballet of the planets
around the sun;

What lamentation can speak your grief
for the malevolence
of incendiary destruction and slaughter
that Your creation executes
upon itself? --Susan Price

Spiritual story (John)

2008-09-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

Following the trend, here is a short account of my spiritual journey. I grew up going to church, but I doubted the existence of God at a fairly young age and became an atheist. Throughout high school, I struggled with drug addiction out of my feeling of the meaninglessness of life. Even then, I suppose, I had a yearning for spiritual depth: in spite of my atheism, I spent many afternoons in my room saying Hare Krishnas—if only for the psychological value—but I never committed myself to any real spiritual practice. After going through rehab, my parents (to my chagrin at the time) signed me into Teen Challenge, an Assembly of God affiliated ministry for people with life-controlling issues. After some time there, the love of God manifested through the staff members and other students there led me to reconsider my atheistic convictions. I returned to Christianity with renewed hope for the future and a strong desire to know the God who restored purpose and direction to my life.

Even then, contemplation played a strong part in my practice of faith. I read Dostoevsky ravenously and was enriched by the life of Alyosha, the young man adjured to be a “monk in the world” in The Brothers Karamazov. In addition to the charismatic worship of Teen Challenge, I also came to appreciate silence and tradition—in the most meaningful sense of that word.

At Southeastern, after writing an exegetical paper on Paul's prayer in Eph. 3 (a very “mystical” prayer), Dr. Waddell recommended I read Thomas Keating. From there, I picked up John of the Cross and some other classic Christian mystical texts. I quickly discovered RC as a resource (as so many others of this group) and spent many afternoons in his office as he graciously explained to me “what this all meant” and how to incorporate this type of spirituality into my daily life.

As I still work toward that goal, mostly content to always be a beginner on that journey, I'm exceedingly grateful for this group that's sharing that pilgrimage. I am reminded of this quotation from Evelyn Underhill: “we realize the very best we are likely to achieve in the world of prayer will be a small part in a mighty symphony; not a peculiarly interesting duet. When our devotional life seems to us to have become a duet, we should listen more carefully. Then we shall hear a greater music, within which that little melody of ours can find its place.”

Recognition and Hope

2008-09-01T07:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Joan Chittister's Called to Question...a Spiritual Memoir, and am marveling over how much her spiritual journey has in common with the wonderful stories of the pilgrimages I've been reading that are posted on this blog. Her epilogue sums it up:

"The purpose of a book like this..." is "to demonstrate that we all change and struggle and develop as we go. The notion that the spiritual life is something we achieve gets little support here. The spiritual life is something we seek every day of our lives....a journey of ever increasing depth and circularity. We deal with [major questions] over and over again...understanding them differently, learning from them more, dealing with them better.... ...growing is both the same, and distinct, for all of us. Whatever the dark uncertainty of the spiritual journey, the sometimes barbed unquiet that comes with real questions, may you carry within you without fail the promise of the One who says, 'Seek and you shall find.'"

I've been blessed, encouraged, and uplifted by the transparency of all of your struggles, victories, and persistence in your seeking of the spiritual life. I've also related to much of where you all have been, and participate in the hope of each of you.

I suggested to Sarah that one of my first posts was my contribution to this project, but she gave me a teacher look that gave me to understand that it was no such luck. So, at some point (hopefully not too long from now) I will post something dealing more with the details of my spiritual journey.

Susan Price

My Spiritual Journey (Sarah)

2008-09-01T07:12:00.000-07:00

Well, I've thought, journaled, discussed, and thought some more, but I cannot find the point at which my spiritual journey began. It well might have begun before I was born as my parents were missionaries with an outreach organization in Portugal at the time of my birth. I only know that as far back as I can remember, I had a deep longing for God. The churches I attended as a child hardly fed that longing--they were mostly non-denominationals of the Baptist-ish persuasion, and their path to God was rooted in following rules. It broke my heart that I could not find strength in myself to follow those many rules, and in my eight-year-old mind, I figured this destined me for Hell, but what could I do? I remember saying a "sinner's prayer" multiple times per month as if that might fix whatever was wrong with me.

Somehow, though, even in that environment, God had His hand on me because my soul still sought him despite my despair over my "lack of spirituality." In my teens, several spiritual mentors led me deeper into God, but I ran into a wall of spiritual darkness. I was wracked by doubts about everything--myself, God, His existence, the church--I was becoming a regular cynic at the age of 15.

It was at this point that my family relocated to Florida from Pennsylvania (where we had lived since I was six years old). We attended a new church, with many of the same old rules, but I was less attached to the authority of the church at this point and continued to seek fullfilment for that longing for God in my deepest self.

Upon graduation from high school and subsequently from community college (where, ironically enough, I first discovered the beauty of being involved in a true community of believers), God led me to Southeastern. Now that in itself is a story because churches of the type I had attended my whole life were decidedly suspicious of anything "pentecostal/charismatic." But there was a time when I stood on the sidewalk of the under-construction area of the school and felt the call of the Spirit to be there.

Talk about culture shock! For a while, I was overwhelmed by the "differentness" of of Southeastern but soon became somewhat disillusioned when I found many of the rule-bound ways of Christian growth were the same there as they were where I grew up. I was very detached from the student life around me and struggled spiritually as it seemed so many of the beliefs I had always clung to were suddenly transformed from solid foundation-stones to misty mirages that may or may not be there when you need them.

It was at that point that I met Dr. Cotton in Advanced Expository Writing, which I innocently took, not realizing that it was a class on spirituality disguised as a class on writing! I don't know how it happened, but I found myself reading Thomas Merton, Fr. Carl Arico, Thomas Keating, Kathleen Norris, and Joan Chittister. I well remember the day Dr. Cotton and I had lunch in the cafeteria when he explained to me the philosophical/spiritual underpinnings of centering prayer and mystic spirituality. I thought what I knew was already dissolving, changing form beneath my eyes--alas for my independent-fundamentalist upbringing. This conversation threw me into more confusion, doubt...I felt if I believed it, I would be abandoning my relationship with Christ for I knew not what.

So I struggled, argued with myself, became anxious, depressed, prayed and didn't pray, cried and didn't cry--read my Bible and ignored it, centered and abstained from centering. After so long, I found little bits of mysticism creeping into my spiritual life, in fact, feeding it, not destroying it.

I don't consider myself a full-fledged mystic, yet I'm thankful for the strength this spirituality has taught me as I inch along its path. The changes have been gradual: sweet drops of rain smoothing my sharp edges, shaping my spirit; I am changing, though. And this community, the people in it, the spirituality intertwining it, is part of that change.

--Sarah Price

My Spiritual Journey (Matt)

2008-08-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

I guess I am still fairly young in my spiritual walk. However, I am finding this group and our dialogue and prayer together to be the thing I was missing.

I grew up in a charismatic Assemblies of God church and always felt a little out of place. I have come to appreciate the many rich blessings that come from that tradition but I have been unable to consign myself to all of their views. I came to Southeastern University a very cynical and bitter young man with a very narrow mind for the things that God was doing. Through different relationships and largely in part to this group I have been able to Let God mold and shape me into a person of deeper faith. I have been able to see that our rational attempts to find God must be subject to our mystical encounters with him. I have been attending an Episcopal Church for a number of years now and I am seeking ordination through them. I hope to start seminary in the fall of 09. I have been able to share an extremely important time in my life with most of you and for that I am thankful. Thank you all so much. I want to share this quote from Thomas Merton that is helping me to give voice to my minds thoughts.

"Too often our notion of faith is falsified by our emphasis on the statements about God which faith believes, and by our forgetfulness of the fact that faith is a communion with God's own light and truth... Faith terminates not in a statement, not in a formula of words, but in God."

Matt Addis

Spiritual Story (Erica)

2008-08-26T18:06:00.000-07:00

I joined this community because I needed a freer, quieter, humbler way to be with God and desired to have relationships with people who want that too--a safe place to become rooted in God's love. It's not that I'm crazy about centering prayer--honestly, I sometimes sit through the better part of a centering session staring at everyone's shoes. But sitting in silence, opening myself to Love in a community of people who are doing that too is good for me. And sharing with and listening to people on the same mysterious journey I'm on seems to be the best way to keep myself going.

My spiritual journey has been a strange one. I didn't grow up in a Christian home; in fact, my brother and I are still the only Christians in my family. My only exposure to the message of Christianity as a child were a few years in the Mormon Church (in which I was baptized) and a step-grandfather who sat in an armchair reading a big black Bible for much of the day. Still, (thanks to my New Age mom and God's grace) I had an early love for God and a desire for goodness which left me very open to spirituality. At fourteen I started attending a charismatic church and entered a deeply personal (and emotional) relationship with God. Mostly I stayed in church because of the community I found there; I developed long-lasting, meaningful relationships with my spiritual mentors who took me in like a little lost sheep and loved and encouraged me and provided me with the safe, spiritually nourishing environment I had always desired as a child. Even when I became disillusioned with that particular expression of Christianity and much too cynical to be a good evangelical I did not lose my faith in Christian community.

About two years ago I started reading Merton and talking about his writings with John, which was a very positive turning point for me. I went to England for a semester at Oxford, where I sometimes attended Anglican services--and I felt amazingly at home, strangely moved by the thoughtfulness and tradition I found there. I took a lot of walks, talked to John a lot, and got very quiet before God. Away from what had been a frustrating spiritual environment for me and free to explore spirituality for myself, I discovered the immenseness of God's grace. My spiritual sustenance consisted mostly of poetry, liturgy, the parks, writing, and waiting--and that's mostly how it is now, too.

When I returned to Lakeland I discovered the wonder that is lectio divina and the small community that gathered to pray and share the spiritual journey together. I found a community that was both intellectual and spiritual, peppered with many personalities and people. For me, it was about being part of something real and deep and beautiful, which is what our community is, even though many of us are now spread out across the country. About seeing others, listening to one another, caring, learning from each other and from God. Through my reading, college experiences, and this community I have come to see spirituality as a process and a journey, rather than a race or a destination. A journey into love.

--Erica

a brief anecdote about how I am living the spiritual life bit by bit as a process

2008-08-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.
--Jesus

I’m reading a commentary by Joan Chittister on the Rule of Benedict. At one point, she quotes from the Tao Te Ching, the Chinese Book of the Way: “Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.” I’m stressed and depressed for several reasons. Some of it has to do with work at the beginning of the semester, but I won’t get into details. I took Elea to sit by the red canoe on the bank of the lake today for our rock prayers. No miracles happened. But I’m breathing more calmly.

--Paul Corrigan