Mid-Lent Check-in

Mid-Lent I like to take my spiritual pulse.  How am I doing? Sufficient silence, prayer and giving up/taking on? All in all I've experienced some peace-filled moments and clarity: other times I've been distracted by the daily squirrels. Squirrel! (Looks elsewhere). 

Thus I came across this wonderful reflection by Joan Chittister. Why is it the emptying IS harder than filling? 

Once upon a time,” an ancient story tells, “the master had a visitor who came to inquire about Zen. But instead of listening, the visitor kept talking about his own concerns and giving his own thoughts. After a while, the master served tea. He poured tea into his visitor’s cup until it was full and then he kept on pouring. Finally the visitor could not bear it any longer. ‘Don’t you see that my cup is full?’ he said. ‘It’s not possible to get anymore in.’ ‘Just so,’ the master said, stopping at last. ‘And like this cup you are filled with your own ideas. How can you expect me to give you Zen unless you first empty your cup?’”

A monastic Lent is the process of emptying our cups. Lent is the time for trimming the soul and scraping the sludge off a life turned slipshod. Lent is about taking stock of time, even religious time. Lent is about exercising the control that enables us to say no to ourselves so that when life turns hard of its own accord we have the spiritual stamina to say yes to its twists and turns with faith and hope. . . . Lent is the time to make new efforts to be what we say we want to be.

From The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages by Joan Chittister (Crossroad, 1996).

A Son's Poem

Judy Wilson in Hartford Thanksgiving Day 2007

The Cane

I saw your cane near the door in the umbrella stand

                                                                                         sticking out

reminding me that you were here.

I had not thought of you that day, or for the last week for that matter. 

Is that bad?

Or has life moved on – with and without you?

That cane with the jaguar print was your style statement.

You leaned on it in your last years.

Style.

Where are you mom?

With God? Lord I hope.

With me and us? Yes, still.

Three years have gone by since you left us. You live on still.

In beaches. In noodles. In worry -- mine mostly.  

And when I arrive too early for a departing flight.

I saw your cane.

Do you see me?

Swimming through Lent

Among the various spiritual practices that form my Lenten discipline, this year I am reading my way through a small compilation of the writings of twentieth century Anglican mystic Evelyn Underhill. As dated as some of her minor references come across, a true mystic speaks both to her time and beyond time.  In Lent we are called to pray with a fresh voice: Underhill offers us an analogy that goes to heart of the matter. She writes, “the fish swims in the ocean but does not create it, neither does the Christian at prayer create the life of prayer but enters into it and is invigorated by it.” 

As we enter into Lent today on Ash Wednesday, our first decision really is whether we are going to accept this annual opportunity to listen, dig, swim, pause and be silent in God’s presence. Underhill writes: “Lent is a good moment for such a spiritual stocktaking; a pause, a retreat from life’s busy surface to its solemn deeps. There we can consider our possessions; and discriminate between the necessary stores which have been issued to us, and must be treasured and kept in good order, and the odds and ends which we have accumulated ourselves.”  I suggest that to go-to “giving up-taking on” formula of the season can be expanded to things beyond practices and food.

Lent is one of the more counter-cultural things we can do in a society that demands constant consumer spending and activity to prop-up a post-manufacturing based economy. Even a rational effort to save money for a rainy day or pay off credit card debts is said to routinely threaten growth. We text, tweet, post, email, DVR, and blog our way through these times in the face of a God who says be still and know me. Lent is yearly off-ramp for all of us.

So if you and I fellow fish take on this task of preparing ourselves for the outpouring of grace and hope that is the Easter feast, then let’s be prepared to swim upstream, alone at times and enter unknown and deep waters. There will be find the One who made us and who calls us into everlasting relationship.

Let Lent begin! 

Forgiveness

Of all the demands of being a Christian – being merciful, welcoming, hope-filled – is not the hardest of them forgiveness?  I can believe in the Resurrection, come to my neighbor’s side, fight for justice in society and even give of out of abundance for the good of the world – and still deny what is given to me by God in Christ in bucketfuls. Forgiveness.

In counseling others through the real-life workings of forgives, I have quipped: “I am not Amish.” What I mean by that is that, for me, forgiveness is less a knee-jerk, hardwired, built-in posture that I have heard about and marveled at in the Amish who forgive after horrendous things have happened to loved ones. Forgiveness looms over me. It will not allow me to relativize or rationize. I either forgive or withhold forgiveness.  I either let go or hold on.

In my life, I would say that my scorecard on forgiveness is flawed and incomplete.  And there have been moments of grace that have surprised me.

As New Hampshire debates whether or not to repeal the death penalty, a common moral refrain is how might we feel if an evil-filled convict murders a loved one of ours? We imagine the worst thing that could happen to one of our own and then put a hypothetical to the test: would we forgive a murderer?  A murderer who took a life of a spouse or child? How could we?

I heard the following story on the Moth Radio show as I was driving back from Vermont last week. The Moth is a fantastic production that I highly recommend: you will laugh and cry as you listen. (The Moth comes to Portsmouth March 8) Hector Black has been involved with Civil Rights and justice issues for decades. He shares a personal and heart-wrenching story that had me amazed and teary-eyed. The other two stories are good, and do listen to them, but make sure you listen to Hector.

God can do miracles. Forgiveness may be the ultimate gift for us to make our way though life in this world that can bring us unspeakable and even ordinary pain and loss.  

Download here or
Click here and find Hector's story of Mercy

Hector Black is an organic farmer who lives outside of Nashville, Tennessee. He served in the army during World War II and graduated from Harvard in 1949.

Theology in the New York Times

 http://nyti.ms/1fujvFB


The Theology of David Brooks.  A good read

Holy Ground: Not Stand your Ground

Stand your ground.  What is going on in my one-time state of Florida?  (I graduated from Florida State University and was sponsored for ordination from the cathedral in Jacksonville. My two sisters live in Florida).

It started as a legal defense that allows someone to use force – deadly force if need be – when they feel threatened by another person. In all other states, a threatened person must retreat to safety. At least that is the presumption. The law in Florida is: "A person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if: He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself.”  In Florida, there is no “duty to retreat.”

So case after case we hear the ways in which this law is being used and, to many outside observers, abused.  What began with the tragic death of Trayvon Martin and the hands of George Zimmerman has expanded to the death of 17-year old Jordan Davis – another young African American male, and Chad Oulson, who has shot dead after a texting dust up in a movie theatre.  Madness. With media hype the rule of the day it is hard to dissect the law here with any real impartiality. 

We hear a lot about road rage and anger management classes in our society. It is hard to get at the root of the problem.  Are we getting too isolated and alienated from one another? Is technology interfering with normal interaction? Or is all of this blown out of proportion because, in truth, people probably always have “lost it” in the heat of the moment. 

Yet, with this talk of stand your ground, I thought of a notion in Scripture that resonates through time.   Recall the story of Moses at the Burning Bush in Exodus 3. When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am." Then He said, "Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." He said also, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

I recall an encounter I had with a Hindu man in a very cold cathedral in England. During a meeting we were having in the large space, the man entered from the street – he clearly looked like he was having a tough time of it. His clothes were quite dirty and he appeared a bit what one might call “unstable.”  Yet, from his tradition, he knew what to do when entering a temple or any holy space. He took off his high top tennis shoes and placed them in a corner. His socks may have been less than clean, but his shoes were off. His feet certainly felt the cold unheated floor of that English cathedral.

The Lord said: “remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."

I hope Florida changes its Stand your Ground laws. And I hope we remember that we cannot fight every battle or enter with tempers flaring into each conflict situation.  The ground upon which we all stand is not ours to defend. It is God’s and our desire should be to seek unity with the Holy and peace with one another. 

Do we feel that we are standing on holy ground?  

Returning to Cuba: A Poignant Journey

I travel and return to and from Latin America almost every year. Mission trips to Colombia, meetings and vacations in Mexico, a once-in-a-lifetime visit to Argentina to see our daughter during her exchange year. My recent trip to Cuba this month was different. Some context.

In 1986 I spent a year in Cuba as an official representative of the Episcopal Church – sent from the Diocese of Florida during the early years of their companion relationship with Cuba. Since I was then a postulant for ordination, it was natural for me to spend a year studying at the ecumenical seminary two hours east of Havana before I entered seminary in New York City. The mid-1980’s were, looking back on it, a special time to live in Cuba: the flood of tourists and development had not yet arrived, there were no prostitutes and beggars in the streets that would later arrive with the tourists, and the Soviet Union had not yet collapsed – thus ensuring billions of rubles continued to prop up a perennially faltering economy. It was for a foreigner with a few dollars to spend and with a free and ready exit from an otherwise tropical police state -- a more “innocent time.”  In the years that followed my return to the States, the Soviet Union collapsed, the country went through a painful “Special Period” when hunger was very real and what ever trappings of an anti-imperialist planned economy had long ago given way to billions in investments from Spanish, German and Canadian hotel chains.  Time marched on.

 On my return to Cuba this month, accompanied by parishioners and colleagues from New Hampshire and board members of the Episcopal Church Foundation, my main personal goal was for a family reunion with our son Will, who is spending a year as a Young Adult Service Corps volunteer.  You can visit his blog here. Here  or http://pendletonyasc.blogspot.com/   

For me it was a joy to see my son Will enjoying Cuba in much of the same way I did 28 years before. Amazing really. He is living with my former seminary classmate in Cardenas. Will is traveling the same roads, attending church gatherings and probably making the same mistakes I made. How often can a parent pass on a love for a country and a similar opportunity to be one of only a handful of Americans to live openly and travel widely around Cuba? Very rare indeed. Clearly as parents we are proud. As a father, my pride comes with a fair dose of nostalgia and longing.  I am no longer at  the center of attention, riding around in vintage American-made cars stuck in the time warp of Cuba time, learning about the roots of Santeria – the Afro-Cuban religion – and going out until the early morning hours in the nightclubs that are particularly Cuban.  Many of my memories have been refreshed are now being played out by “Mini-me” who is apparently more Cubanized than I ever was. 

In revisiting some of the churches and sites I had seen decades ago, and reuniting with friends and active lay leaders of the church, I return from my trip to Cuba with a deep pang of -- I don’t know what -- loss perhaps. Time marched on for them and me over these years, yet seeing it all over again reminded me of my privilege and their sacrifice.  Over these nearly 30 years I have traveled the world: they have remained on this limited island. My two annual trips to the dentist and American toothpaste have left my pearly whites in fine shape: friends my own age look older and their grins filled with gaps and swatches of silver. There was food in seeming abundance, unlike the hard 1990’s, yet it all depends on who has access to remittances from family in the States. 

The church service we went to was alive and vibrant and seemed more Pentecostal than Episcopal – which worked just fine for a people of rhythm and innate joy. Even our government employed driver and tour guide took the microphone after the service during the testimonial time to speak of the impact of the service on them. The Church, always such a vital life force in society’s oppressed by politics and poverty, never ceases to surprise and inspire.

What will the future bring for Cuba? God only knows. The post-Castro years will certainly bring change and perhaps even upheaval.  I believe the people of Christ Church of Exeter can play a role in planting seeds of the renewal and the rebuilding of the physical church in Cuba. The spiritual rebirth is well underway.