For Christians today is a day we remember the painful and ugly cross of Christ crucified. We call it holy because it is an image of tragic and innocent suffering, the kind we all endure in our life time here on earth. Such an image evokes our tears and our resolve not to crucify, not to do what we hate to our neighbor or to ourselves, in any way.
To say that Jesus had it worse only cheapens your own suffering, whatever it is, so give yourself a gift today and know that whatever your troubles are they matter to God and to those who love you as God does.
There’s no way to prevent suffering I’m sure but a good way to be with it is to pray and form communities of care and love, communities that stand at the foot of the cross, helpless save for compassionate empathy, tears and prayers.
Sometimes there is something you can do though to prevent injustice and inequity and create nets of support. Money helps. Sharing riches helps even more.
I read a letter to the editor in the Globe this morning suggesting that Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is right by definition to call Social Security a ponzi scheme: a monetary investment vehicle in which gains are made to initial investors with money collected from new investors. The letter writer concludes with...............
“That sure sounds like 20-year-olds paying for the Social Security benefits of 60 year-olds.”
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT?
Thank you, all you young people. I am as grateful for the benefits as my parents were for theirs and never resented paying into a system in which the able help the less able.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
2011.09.11 9/11
Do what you are able and for God’s sake be kind to yourself and all creation. But above all pray, for that is how you will be in touch with your internal arbiter, the soul voice that, at its most naked, conjoins with the transcendent to bring forth goodness and peace.
There is no accounting for tragedy—no need to quantify it, no need to compare it as if every tragedy weren't exactly the same to the human hearts involved, and no need to get even for we can't. There is just a need to name our heart's truth and grieve together.
To share on this day of remembrance I quote from Leo Tolstoi who in 1854 was at the front in the Crimean war. On leave he witnessed a public beheading in Paris that changed his spiritual life forever and brought forth his lasting work War and Peace.
Tolstoi wrote: "During my stay in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the instability of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped separately into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I."
Judith Shulevitz writing about the sabbath remembrance in her book Sabbath World ends her fine book with wise and simple words: “We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember.”
To pray is to stop, remember, and allow Other to transform your heart’s soul. A sabbath community reminds us to stop, pray and remember to strengthen our collective hearts.
There is no accounting for tragedy—no need to quantify it, no need to compare it as if every tragedy weren't exactly the same to the human hearts involved, and no need to get even for we can't. There is just a need to name our heart's truth and grieve together.
To share on this day of remembrance I quote from Leo Tolstoi who in 1854 was at the front in the Crimean war. On leave he witnessed a public beheading in Paris that changed his spiritual life forever and brought forth his lasting work War and Peace.
Tolstoi wrote: "During my stay in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the instability of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped separately into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I."
Judith Shulevitz writing about the sabbath remembrance in her book Sabbath World ends her fine book with wise and simple words: “We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember.”
To pray is to stop, remember, and allow Other to transform your heart’s soul. A sabbath community reminds us to stop, pray and remember to strengthen our collective hearts.
Monday, September 5, 2011
2011.09.05 Labor Day and Memorial Day
Today, a week before the 10th anniversary of the disaster in NYC we call 9/11, is a day on which a LABOR of love was revealed in New York. It is a MEMORIAL to help us remember what we can not restore.
I just saw a video of the memorial, “Reflecting Absence” —for me a spiritual experience, meaning awe, hand to my mouth, a gasp, and tears that flowed with the two enormous human-made waterfalls.
The two pools, a colossus to mark the foot prints of what were the twin towers plunge down, earthward, rather than up, heavenward.
Who decided Divinity was always up anyway?
Like the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. the names are engraved along the granite edges of the pools, in no special rank or order. If only life could be as great an equalizer as death.
I didn’t know anyone personally who lost life but I had a client whose new husband was on one of the planes. So I felt along with her.
I got to wondering about absence and presence. We assume that the presence of God is the only good thing, however in the tradition of the Psalms the felt absence of God elicits some of the most beautiful poetry and heart-rending spiritual aching ever created—a memorial to the biblical God who gave humanity freedom and made it sacrosanct, a gift never to be violated by power, even divine power, a Love willing to be powerless, to be experienced as absent.
The presence of God is not unimportant of course. I see it not in intervention but rather in the tears of a nation, in the labors of those who dropped their own lives for a time just to help in heroic ways offering whatever they had to give including prayers, and in the creation of great beauty in this memorial.
Reminds me of the biblical women who stood by Jesus to the end and so many others who sit in prayer or at bedsides keeping God company.
I just saw a video of the memorial, “Reflecting Absence” —for me a spiritual experience, meaning awe, hand to my mouth, a gasp, and tears that flowed with the two enormous human-made waterfalls.
The two pools, a colossus to mark the foot prints of what were the twin towers plunge down, earthward, rather than up, heavenward.
Who decided Divinity was always up anyway?
Like the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. the names are engraved along the granite edges of the pools, in no special rank or order. If only life could be as great an equalizer as death.
I didn’t know anyone personally who lost life but I had a client whose new husband was on one of the planes. So I felt along with her.
I got to wondering about absence and presence. We assume that the presence of God is the only good thing, however in the tradition of the Psalms the felt absence of God elicits some of the most beautiful poetry and heart-rending spiritual aching ever created—a memorial to the biblical God who gave humanity freedom and made it sacrosanct, a gift never to be violated by power, even divine power, a Love willing to be powerless, to be experienced as absent.
The presence of God is not unimportant of course. I see it not in intervention but rather in the tears of a nation, in the labors of those who dropped their own lives for a time just to help in heroic ways offering whatever they had to give including prayers, and in the creation of great beauty in this memorial.
Reminds me of the biblical women who stood by Jesus to the end and so many others who sit in prayer or at bedsides keeping God company.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
2011.08.31 Prodigal Lover
It’s my son’s 44th birthday today. Happy birthday, son.
I dedicate this little poem to him and to the biblical figures, Peter and John, who ran to the tomb to see if what the women reported could be true, that God always brings new life out of the stuff of our worries and fears.
A wise woman writer Judith Shulevitz wrote: “We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember.”
He is running for love
against the wind
Pushing aside
forces, furies, old wounds
in the path
as he runs for love
for love
Earth has no fire
like this man’s love.
I dedicate this little poem to him and to the biblical figures, Peter and John, who ran to the tomb to see if what the women reported could be true, that God always brings new life out of the stuff of our worries and fears.
A wise woman writer Judith Shulevitz wrote: “We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember.”
He is running for love
against the wind
Pushing aside
forces, furies, old wounds
in the path
as he runs for love
for love
Earth has no fire
like this man’s love.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
2011.08.30 Goodnight Irene or Perfect Sunday, not Perfect Storm
I still think of going to church as an important part of my spiritual health. It’s part devotional duty and part inhaling the Holy in community through song, word and sacrament. So even though I’m retired and church-going is not a “job” I go.
That said, I don’t mind missing church for a good reason. Tropical storm Irene today was a good reason. Winds threatened, our porch door sailed open though locked, and our governor declared a state of emergency pleading with people to stay off the roads. It turned out to be not as bad as meteorology predicted. But who can really predict weather?
Yet, in New England at least, we love to talk about the weather. It’s as mysterious as Godde whose grace is even more unpredictable. The religiously sane among us don’t even try to predict Godde. Most clergy try anyway because we think it’s our job. It is, but who does any job perfectly?
So I wasn’t disappointed at all when, after careful discernment and checking news of parish cancellations, my husband decided to call the parish where he’d been contracted to fill in and crawled back into bed next to me this morning.
We slept till 10 a.m., made love, cooked a sumptuous brunch, read the Sunday papers with ease, had hunks of dark chocolate for brunch dessert, and remembered to thank Godde for this unpredicted Sabbath grace.
It was made even more beautiful to me when I read in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine an article by Linda Wertheimer about a middle school in Wellesley Massachusetts where they have an education unit on religion that includes trips to worship sites and services.
It’s controversial of course but students have benefited from knowing something about religion. Religion, like it or not, has been and will continue to be a major player in history, world politics, and many personal lives. But it’s a “spiritual lemon.” People fear its bitter power and want to make lemonade out of it instead of getting to know its zest.
My favorite quotes from young students: “They are not teaching you the religion, they’re teaching you about the religion . . . they’re trying to get you to learn.” And: Before the comparative religion class I didn’t realize that Christianity came out of Judaism.”
That’s good education. That’s good spirituality. That;’s good religion.
Maybe the best part of this “perfect” Sunday was seeing that religion can be a respectable curriculum item in public education. When religion is too isolated it is dangerously subject to fanaticism, exclusionary politics, idolatry, and yes, war.
Paradox: the more you know about other religions and their participants, the more you are able to appreciate and value your own even if you are an atheist.
Good night Irene, and thank you in the name of Peace and Love.
That said, I don’t mind missing church for a good reason. Tropical storm Irene today was a good reason. Winds threatened, our porch door sailed open though locked, and our governor declared a state of emergency pleading with people to stay off the roads. It turned out to be not as bad as meteorology predicted. But who can really predict weather?
Yet, in New England at least, we love to talk about the weather. It’s as mysterious as Godde whose grace is even more unpredictable. The religiously sane among us don’t even try to predict Godde. Most clergy try anyway because we think it’s our job. It is, but who does any job perfectly?
So I wasn’t disappointed at all when, after careful discernment and checking news of parish cancellations, my husband decided to call the parish where he’d been contracted to fill in and crawled back into bed next to me this morning.
We slept till 10 a.m., made love, cooked a sumptuous brunch, read the Sunday papers with ease, had hunks of dark chocolate for brunch dessert, and remembered to thank Godde for this unpredicted Sabbath grace.
It was made even more beautiful to me when I read in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine an article by Linda Wertheimer about a middle school in Wellesley Massachusetts where they have an education unit on religion that includes trips to worship sites and services.
It’s controversial of course but students have benefited from knowing something about religion. Religion, like it or not, has been and will continue to be a major player in history, world politics, and many personal lives. But it’s a “spiritual lemon.” People fear its bitter power and want to make lemonade out of it instead of getting to know its zest.
My favorite quotes from young students: “They are not teaching you the religion, they’re teaching you about the religion . . . they’re trying to get you to learn.” And: Before the comparative religion class I didn’t realize that Christianity came out of Judaism.”
That’s good education. That’s good spirituality. That;’s good religion.
Maybe the best part of this “perfect” Sunday was seeing that religion can be a respectable curriculum item in public education. When religion is too isolated it is dangerously subject to fanaticism, exclusionary politics, idolatry, and yes, war.
Paradox: the more you know about other religions and their participants, the more you are able to appreciate and value your own even if you are an atheist.
Good night Irene, and thank you in the name of Peace and Love.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
2011.08.25 POLITICAL RANT
Today would be my father's 100th birthday. He died 30 years ago, too soon for the length of my love. This rant is for him. He loved to rant mostly against Democrats. But now I'm sure he, a sensible and respectful man, would wonder about his own party.
MICHELE BACHMANN ADVERTISES HERSELF AS A MODEL CHRISTIAN AND AN EXEMPLARY WOMAN WORTHY OF BEING THE PRESIDENT OF THESE UNITED STATES.
I AM A CHRISTIAN PRIEST IN THE CHURCH OF GOD, EPISCOPAL BRAND. I SPEAK FOR MYSELF NOT FOR MY CHURCH.
AND WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY IS AS AGAINST MY “CORE BELIEFS” AS BACHMANN SAYS UNCONDITIONALACCEPTANCE OF HOMOSEXUAL PEOPLE IS AGAINT HERS. .
I FIND MICHELE BACHMANN’S POLITICAL POSITIONING NAUSEATING, FULL OF GLITZ AND SHOWING OFF, TRYING TO MAKE A MEGA CHURCH OUT OF HER CAMPAIGN AND ARRIVING TELLINGLY LATE FOR EVERY SCHEDULED APPEARANCE. CATCH HER IF YOU CAN! CUTE GAME.
SHE MUST HAVE BEEN BULLIED BECAUSE SHE IS A BULLY, AND WORSE, A BULLY IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST WHO, LAST I LOOKED AT THE GOSPELS, WAS ONE GIVEN TO EMBRACING OUTCASTS, FINDING OUT WHAT THEY WANTED AND HEALING THEM ON THEIR TERMS.
JESUS DIDN’T DO WITH HIS BODY WHAT BACHMANN IS DOING WITH HERS; SHOWMANSHIP TO AVOID TRUTH. HE MOVED AMONG THE PEOPLE TALKING AND LISTENING AND RISKING HIS LIFE.
AS A CHRISTIAN I TRY TO EMULATE & TEACH THAT KIND OF MOVEMENT—WITH GOD’S HELP. I FAIL REGULARLY AND KEEP TRYING ANYWAY.
BACHMANN IGNORED THE COURAGEOUS GAY IOWAN TEEN WHO (see Boston Globe august 19,A1) SHOUTED OUT HIS FEELINGS ABOUT BEING A SECOND CLASS CITIZEN BECAUSE OF THE PREACHMENTS OF SOME CHRISTIANS LIKE BACHMANN. BACHMANN WENT “DEAF.”
I DON’T GIVE A DAMN IF SHE THINKS THIS KID IS LIVING IN SIN BECAUSE OF HIS SEXUAL ORIENTATION. HER ARROGANT AND, YES, FRIGHTENED AVOIDANCE SPEAKS VOLUMES ABOUT HER POLITICAL INCOMPETENCE AND HER CHRISTIAN DISGRACE.
IF BACHMANN’S POSTURING IS A COVER UP FOR SOME UNACKNOWLEDGED PAIN, I FEEL SAD—BUT NOT ENOUGH TO WANT HER ANYWHERE NEAR THE HIGHEST OFFICE IN OUR LAND OR STRIKING A POSE SHE CALLS CHRISTIAN.
MICHELE BACHMANN ADVERTISES HERSELF AS A MODEL CHRISTIAN AND AN EXEMPLARY WOMAN WORTHY OF BEING THE PRESIDENT OF THESE UNITED STATES.
I AM A CHRISTIAN PRIEST IN THE CHURCH OF GOD, EPISCOPAL BRAND. I SPEAK FOR MYSELF NOT FOR MY CHURCH.
AND WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY IS AS AGAINST MY “CORE BELIEFS” AS BACHMANN SAYS UNCONDITIONALACCEPTANCE OF HOMOSEXUAL PEOPLE IS AGAINT HERS. .
I FIND MICHELE BACHMANN’S POLITICAL POSITIONING NAUSEATING, FULL OF GLITZ AND SHOWING OFF, TRYING TO MAKE A MEGA CHURCH OUT OF HER CAMPAIGN AND ARRIVING TELLINGLY LATE FOR EVERY SCHEDULED APPEARANCE. CATCH HER IF YOU CAN! CUTE GAME.
SHE MUST HAVE BEEN BULLIED BECAUSE SHE IS A BULLY, AND WORSE, A BULLY IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST WHO, LAST I LOOKED AT THE GOSPELS, WAS ONE GIVEN TO EMBRACING OUTCASTS, FINDING OUT WHAT THEY WANTED AND HEALING THEM ON THEIR TERMS.
JESUS DIDN’T DO WITH HIS BODY WHAT BACHMANN IS DOING WITH HERS; SHOWMANSHIP TO AVOID TRUTH. HE MOVED AMONG THE PEOPLE TALKING AND LISTENING AND RISKING HIS LIFE.
AS A CHRISTIAN I TRY TO EMULATE & TEACH THAT KIND OF MOVEMENT—WITH GOD’S HELP. I FAIL REGULARLY AND KEEP TRYING ANYWAY.
BACHMANN IGNORED THE COURAGEOUS GAY IOWAN TEEN WHO (see Boston Globe august 19,A1) SHOUTED OUT HIS FEELINGS ABOUT BEING A SECOND CLASS CITIZEN BECAUSE OF THE PREACHMENTS OF SOME CHRISTIANS LIKE BACHMANN. BACHMANN WENT “DEAF.”
I DON’T GIVE A DAMN IF SHE THINKS THIS KID IS LIVING IN SIN BECAUSE OF HIS SEXUAL ORIENTATION. HER ARROGANT AND, YES, FRIGHTENED AVOIDANCE SPEAKS VOLUMES ABOUT HER POLITICAL INCOMPETENCE AND HER CHRISTIAN DISGRACE.
IF BACHMANN’S POSTURING IS A COVER UP FOR SOME UNACKNOWLEDGED PAIN, I FEEL SAD—BUT NOT ENOUGH TO WANT HER ANYWHERE NEAR THE HIGHEST OFFICE IN OUR LAND OR STRIKING A POSE SHE CALLS CHRISTIAN.
Monday, August 22, 2011
2011.08.20 Bernard de Clairvaux:Love in Process
August 20 is the calendar day set aside to remember one of my favorite Church heroes. Yes, a Father, a man and a Saint Bernard, not canine with saving stimulants but human with saving spirituality.
“Who among you my brothers, was not born amid feces and urine?” he reminded those in his charge. Kinda keeps you humble, no?
But to be serious this 11th century Cistercian monk abbot gave us a summation of the spiritual process of Love
-Love of self for self’s sake.
-Love of God for self’s sake
-Love of God for God’s sake
-Love of self for God’s sake
“Who among you my brothers, was not born amid feces and urine?” he reminded those in his charge. Kinda keeps you humble, no?
But to be serious this 11th century Cistercian monk abbot gave us a summation of the spiritual process of Love
-Love of self for self’s sake.
-Love of God for self’s sake
-Love of God for God’s sake
-Love of self for God’s sake
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