Who am I?

This past Friday and Saturday the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut met in annual convention. We don't sit in pews or chairs facing front anymore. We quit that last year. Now we gather around tables in groups of 8 or ten and we do Bible study in our groups and we have conversations around the theme of the convention.

This year the theme is Claiming, Equipping, and Sending.

The Friday morning Bible study was on the passage from Exodus in which Moses meets God in the burning bush, from the 3rd and 4th chapters of Exodus. God tells Moses to go to Egypt and speak God's words to the Hebrew people. Moses says he can't. He doesn't have the gift of public speaking. We ask ourselves if we have ever tried to run away from God's call to us to do or be something or someone.

God tells Moses he will give him Moses's brother Aaron to do the speaking. God will give Moses the words, and Moses will give them to Aaron and Aaron will speak to the people. We ask ourselves how Aaron must have felt, not having been consulted as to whether or not he wanted to become the mouthpiece for Moses.

We are asked to publicly claim one gift we have been given - maybe even one we run away from. I claim the gift of silence. That's all I say. "Silence." The table wants to know more. What can I say? I say I like to create spaces of silence, in worship, in retreats, in quiet days, in working to create retreats that don't require any words, so all people of any language or ability or none can come together to sit before Jesus.

I claim silence.

And then, the whole rest of convention, I have to school myself to keep silent and listen instead of planning what brilliant piece of personal experience I know everyone absolutely must hear because it's so very brilliant.

On day two, I have the job of being one of over forty table presiders. Immediately, during all the discussions at table about the business of convention, everyone turns to me to answer their questions. I spend all day talking, as if I actually know something or other.

Now, today, I will try to protect a day of silence for myself. And here, on my desk, is a name and phone number a parishioner gave me at the door after worship yesterday, someone who is a member, who needs a phone call, someone I am pretty sure I don't know, because I don't recognize the name, but that doesn't matter. He needs to hear from the church.

Silence. Just what did I mean when I claimed silence as a gift? And not only that, I said it is my core gift, the core of my being - Silence. What did I mean?

Maybe it was a wish, a prayer. Maybe it is what I most want to have and to be. Silence. Not a gift already actualized, but one yearning to be made alive.

Rainfall

When rain falls overnight,
and creeks fill,
and grasses turn from brown to green,
my heart is full.

Writings from Vacation

I keep reading online that people thirty, forty and fifty decades younger than me demand that people and institutions, like the church, be authentic. I know how I think of myself - artist, painter, musician, writer, poet - and I know I rarely live into that self-image. Mostly because I'm afraid. Afraid what I do won't be good enough. So I don't write or draw or play the piano or scrawl out a poem hardly ever. And when I do, it's often that I force myself. Never mind that I feel most truly myself when I do, most authentic. I have no idea what the authentic "me" would look like.

I've been reading Kathleen Norris - The Cloister Walk - and Lauren f. Winner - Still - and find they too have lived with this sense of being other, of not fitting in, whether with themselves or in the culture or the society or company in which they live. It's nice to know I'm not alone.

Norris finds comfort in accepting that being "other" - not fitting in, always being a beat behind or on a different track from everyone else - is a calling. All three of us trace our sense of otherness back to our beginnings. I think I was born "other". I have struggled with this, worried over this, fought with myself and God because of this for my whole life, trying to fix those things about me that make me different so I won't feel so wrong about everything.

From my journal this morning, written on the deck as the sun broke over the top of the mountain in front of me: "I am other. I have always been other. Never fitting in.
      Kathleen accepts the necessity of being other
      She takes it up as a cross is taken up
      She embraces it
My angst-filled, self-questioning, self-justifying writings are symptoms of my own eternal other-ness.
The isolation of my life as a child - created by abuse and dysfunction> or me created as a necessary isolate? - is/may be in itself a call.
I have always been, tho without knowing it, free to accept it as a call, or not. The authenticity, then, is in living into my self-doubts and letting go of the need to seem to know-it-all. As Jeremiah [the prophet] challenged and questioned God, authenticity would be to know when to do so myself."

I end my journal entry with this question: Does everyone feel other, as I do? And does a calling to be other, then, once accepted, become a calling to point others to freedom?

In other words, a person who always feels out of step is authentically herself keeping on being out of step and embracing it as a calling. Jesus said, "Take up your cross and follow me." In this, he said, we will find life. Jesus is the number one "Other". He took up the cross of otherness and chose life.

Choose life.

Vacation

Vacation - to vacate
To vacate a place
To vacate a work
To vacate oneself
To leave behind
And
To take on
rest
peace
noticing
enjoying
delight
for a time
so as not to forget what these things are like-
beauty, water, earth, play, play, play
so as to store them up
to be remembered
after vacating
when one takes up again
the daily round

From Lauren f. Winner's "Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis"

"...I am not the author of my prayers; when they come, they come from God." (page 77)

This is my experience. I show up; I participate, sometimes. I have known, sometimes, that I am participating in God's prayer. I never thought, however, that even my cries for help do not originate with me but in God. That blows my mind!

The One Line Sermon

The best antidote to fear is the heart at prayer.
(Fr. Jose Diaz, sermon at the bilingual service at Grace and Betania, June 24, 2012)

Open Space

A friend sent me the first 34 pages of what could become a novel. It takes place in the future, but not the distant future - 2037. Without giving away the story, the island nation about which he is writing has found that everyone has the need for a place to be quiet, to meditate on or to or about whatever. So one of the places they have built is a Peace Hall. Inside it is open space. Sometimes there are directed things, but mostly people just come and are still.

As I read this part of the story I think again of the church building in which I serve. I saw, once again, the pews removed, or at least most of them. I see again the beauty of that open space. In the Peace Hall in my friend's imaginary island nation, there are whole tree trunks where, in my church, are square, wood paneled pillars. I think of the space in my church, open in my imagination, and I feel stillness, peace, quiet.

I believe what the people of that imaginary island found to be true, that everyone has a need to feed their spirit in places like the Peace Hall, which is a place for all people of whatever religion or none. I want to open up the space. I want to open up the doors and leave them open to the world and the elements all day, all night, all year.

Sometimes I wish I wouldn't have these visions.

Free Before God

I find myself standing, suddenly, naked before God, for one blinding second. Just me. Not my job, or my thoughts, or my fears, or who I think I am. But me. And then it's gone, and I'm aware of, aware again of all the stuff in my head that I think makes me, me, but I remember that one naked second.


Today I remember, I have been here before, that momentary stopping and being, naked before God. For one second I do not have to do anything, or even be anything. In that second I am free.


Free, and tenacious: spiritual gifts. Where is this going?

Spiritual Gift

This past Sunday, having met after church with three churchwomen, and as we were leaving, one of them   thanked me for staying with them for six years. She noted gladly that I am tenacious.

Well, I had never thought of that. So I have been doing so ever since, living into tenacity as a spiritual gift. I'm finding it very life-giving.

Tenacity: The property or quality of being tenacious.

Tenacious: 1. Holding fast. 2. pertinacious, persistent, stubborn, or obstinate.
3. adhesive or sticky. 4. holding together; cohesive; not easily pulled asunder; tough.

Pertinacious: 1. holding tenaciously to a purpose, course of action, or opinion; resolute. 2. stubborn or obstinate. 3. extremely or objectionably persistent: "a pertinacious salesman from whom I could not escape". (I love this one. I think Jesus is the pertinacious one to which this definition applies!)

Spiritual gifts: Not necessarily high and lofty things. Sometimes just plain keeping on going.

Micro-retreat of the day

It's amazing how a tiny thing can lift me up and connect me to everything around me.

Today it's a new bird song heard as I walk with the dog along the bike trail between Union Park and Maple. It's not going anywhere, so I can take the time to stop, get a bearing on from where the song is coming, maybe even see the bird.

Just minutes before, another new song had me doing the same thing. I did see the two birds, hopping after one another, singing to one another, through the very tops of the trees. They were small. I had no field glasses. So I could not identify them.

This one, however, was hard not to see, once my ears told me where to look. A Baltimore Oriole! It's yellow-orange markings blazing in the early morning sun as it hopped around in the top of a black locust tree. The presence of me and my dog did not deter it in whatever work or pleasure it was doing up there. Nor does the official name change for this bird to Northern Oriole touch me in the least. Once I hear the notes of that song, there's no mistaking it, and here it is, in the city. I can hope it will nest there next to the bike trail. Whether he does or not, the memory of this morning's treat is something I can return to in my mind, to slow me, and remind me, to stop, feel, see, hear, and be. Even only for a moment.

"Teach me to pray"

Thus began "Practicing Prayer" at Grace Episcopal Church in Norwalk, Connecticut. Practicing Prayer has been going on, once a month, for over two years now. It began with people who felt they just weren't getting their prayers right and could the priest help them.

The first lesson was: There is no right way to pray.
The second lesson was: God prays through us.

Over the years we have learned, together, supporting one another, that prayer, the way we pray, can change over time.

There is no one, absolutely right way to pray. There is just the desire to pray, which in itself is prayer, through which God can make our lives the prayer of God for others and ourselves.

What does it mean to you, to pray?

Proverbs

I've been reading the Bible straight through since January. I'm at the book of Proverbs. I read a few days ago the proverb we mis-state as "spare the rod and spoil the child" - "Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them." (Prov. 13:24)

Today I have found even more like this:
"A wise child loves discipline..." (13:1a)
"Do not withhold discipline from your children;
if you beat them with a rod, they will not die.
If you beat them with the rod, you will save their lives from Sheol." (23:13-14)

The Bible is dangerous in the hands of those who insist every word is to be taken as law.
How many children have, indeed, died because of being beaten "with a rod"?

I repudiate these verses.

Meditation word for today

In the Zen Buddhist tradition, and that of the ancient Christian desert mothers and fathers, who, when asked, would offer a word by which to live, here is today's word:

Ah!

What shall you do with this word?

Still

I want to spend some time this late afternoon, 4:00 post meridian, sitting in a worn wooden rocking chair, it's varnish totally ground away by three years of rains and snows and wind and morning sun, with a cup of Two Leaves and a Bud green tea with Italian orange essence.

I brew my tea - boil water to warm the mug. Fresh water to just a scant boil for the tea. Four minutes to steep, in a mug with flowers made of little hearts and the words, "I love you" scrawled on it.

After the brewing, I take my mug, and a volume by Lauren f. Winner (she uses the lower case for the "f"). The book is Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. I sit on the porch with my tea, sipping it and reading. I read about six pages.

The breeze is a bit too brisk, the cold too sharp. I give up, and I give in the the compulsion to write - anything, this note.

I chose the stopping place. The writer is explaining Epiphany, the season in some Christian faith expressions, and specifically the Episcopalian expression of the Christian faith, and why the baptism of Jesus is the first gospel we read in this season. "Epiphany (the word comes from the Greek for 'to manifest' or 'to show forth')..." she writes, "...is a season of questions and answers: who is Jesus...how can we bear Jesus' light in the world?"

Then the official reason for including the baptism of Jesus as an Epiphany story, it is "that after Jesus is baptized, a dove alights, and a voice comes from heaven declaring, 'This is my beloved Son...' "

But, the author wonders, is this is the prime meaning of including the baptism of Jesus in Epiphany. She reminds us that at Christmas we recognize Jesus as Emmanuel, God-with-us. And she says, there he is, in the line with all the other sinners of the world, waiting, like them, to be baptized. He is truly with us, in the midst of us, "...the One who stands with humanity in this line that is all about our sinning...".

Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis - by Lauren f. Winner, Copyright (c) 2012, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY.

I pick up my mug, cup it in my hands, feel its warmth, and sit and drink.

More germination

Two of the nasturtium seeds are peeping out of the potting soil in their tray.
Some of us are slower starters than others.
It has no bearing on the fruits of the labor.

Germination

The zinnia seeds are sprouting in their trays. That was quick!
I have just read a note of thanks for a person's sprouting. Slower work, but in terms of human spiritual and vocational germination, and the germination of zinnia seeds, pretty quick. Though maybe more like the nasturtium seeds, which are not sprouted yet.
It is recommended that the seed be filed a bit to make germination easier. I have never done that, so I don't know if it helps or not. I do know, however, the expression, "a hard nut to crack". That describes me, in the hand of a formative God.

Saturday: A day for planting

Yesterday was perfect, if a bit warm.
I read with dismay that I was supposed to sow the mixed seeds of the butterfly collection two to four weeks before the date of the last frost! This is because there are perennial seeds in the collection which require lying about in cold earth in order to germinate when it warms up.
But I planted the seeds anyway, even though the ground was warm. I prepared the plot, in front of the side porch, where my grape hyacinth, scilla and snowdrops are planted. This is the plot where the church's lawn guy mowed down all the grape hyacinths two weeks ago because it looked like a grass patch to him, I guess, never mind the beautiful flowers blooming there. Anyway, I loosened the soil between the remains of the bulb plants, scattered the seeds, raked them in, covered them with potting soil, and watered them in.
Last night it rained and the temperature dropped. Thank God for even the smallest of mercies.
I also sowed, in my kitchen garden tubs, french breakfast radishes, petit carrots, arugula, mesclun (a lettuce mix) and basil.
Now, the kitchen garden, in the back yard, is fenced, but that does not deter the squirrels from digging in the tubs and in the pots of chrysanthemums and herbs, even the smallest pots. So, with mi esposo on the road for the weekend, I had to remember how he covered those tubs last year to protect the sowings. I hope I did a good enough job. Those squirrels - really, rodents, tree rats with bushy tails - are determined critters. If I could have found the canister of Rodent-be-Gone, a garlic oil preparation, to sprinkle on the tubs, I would have done that, but with the rain last night, and the torrential downpours coming today and tonight, a waste of time.
So, next is the preparation of the main kitchen garden bed, for beans, parsley plants and the flower seedlings I sowed earlier this week.
Then, when it's warm enough, tomato plants will go into the patch along the rectory wall outside the kitchen door, along with seeds for various beans. (Must check and make sure beans and tomatoes go together. Maybe carrots instead.)
It's always a balance between the weather, my energy level, and my schedule, getting gardening done at all. But my soul requires me to muck about in the dirt and try to bring things to life outside, in order to be alive inside.
Once in awhile everything comes together in perfect time: a sunny day for being in the garden, with a day of rain to come for watering in, and cool night temperatures to help set those seeds that like that sort of thing, as well as a day with no sermon prep to do or appointments to keep. And I still had time to go up to Stew Leonard's to get bottles of sparkling lemonades for the reception today after church to send off our Seminarian Intern into the world after Yale-Berkeley.
And now, breakfast.

Spring thing

I am always late getting my seeds for the spring planting started. I have just this afternoon started in trays three kinds if zinnias, and three kinds of nasturtiums. I particularly like the giant zinnias, and especially the scarlets. So I have two packs of giant scarlet zinnias (one for seeding directly in the ground), two packs of mixed California giants (one for direct seeding, again) and one of cut-and-come-again, a short, cutting zinnia for bud vases.

In the nasturtiums, I have one pack of empress scarlet, one of whirlybird mixed colors and one of night and day (dark and cream mixed).

I had two bags of starter mix. The first I opened had gone moldy. It was damp inside. It must have had a small leak in the bag. Thank God the other bag was fine.

I am dismayed at all the early crop seeds I haven't put in the ground yet, because it got hot way too soon - carrots, arugula, lettuces. The beans, according to the charts for my area, shouldn't go in the ground for a long time yet.

So why post this on the spiritual life blog? Few things are more connecting to the spirit for me than gardening. The only thing that limits me to how much I can do in a day is that my body is old and getting decrepit - back, knees, right rotator cuff, that sort of thing. However, my spirits have perked up a bit since filling those trays with potting mix, watering them in, and seeding them.

Now the waiting begins. Like the life of the spirit, the trays have to be tended every day. I have a tendency to leave them to themselves and suddenly, when I remember to check them, the seedlings have popped long ago and are already leggy. It's a balancing act between taking them down off the fridge too much and not doing so enough. Fortunately for the spirit, the Gardener is, presumably, more expert than I am with my kitchen garden.

The next day

Feeling very fecund

Something is trying to be reborn

Returning to a beginning

decades in the past

Revisit

Recapture

Restore

Renew

Re - bear

Something new is happening

Something old is being born

Can I sit with it?

Yesterday was a very high energy day after writing.

Today I walk the labyrinth and wait.

New Beginning

This is my new blog, dedicated to retreats, quiet days, contemplative prayer and the spiritual life. Not exclusively my spiritual life, but the possibility of a life in the Spirit.

I am one of a number of men and women retreat leaders in the Diocese of Connecticut who are forming a network of resource people like ourselves, and who will launch our new group webpage in the beginning of May: Fresh Springs Retreats.

I have been thinking about putting up a new blog for some time, and since putting up my info page on the Fresh Springs site, I am inspired to make the name Julian House live again.

Some time ago, long before I even thought about seeking ordination to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church, I stumbled across contemplative prayer.

I have for some years wanted to have a "proper prayer life", the kind that God would approve. Many times I tried to have this prayer life. I would begin by saying the daily offices of the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer - Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer, Compline. I wanted to be like the monastics but being married it would have to be outside the convent.

The first to go would be Noonday Prayer and Compline (night prayers before going to bed). In addition, I would read all the scripture readings for the day, and meditate on them, adding, along the way, devotional texts. After a couple of weeks I would begin to weed some things out of the offices, until, after a month or so, I wouldn't be praying at all.

I wanted to get my prayers right. It had to be all or nothing. And since I couldn't do it all, I ended up with nothing, time and time again.

One day I sat down to start my prayer life all over again for the umteenth time. I laid out my Prayer Book, the Bible, the devotional texts I felt just had to be read, and I thought about beginning, but I never got any further than that.

I just sat there, in the right hand corner of the sofa, with my books before me on the table. And all I could do was close my eyes.

After time, I thought, "Well, at least I should be saying petitions for others, thanksgivings, prayers of adoration, prayers asking for forgiveness." But nothing was there. My head was empty. I sat in silence, worrying what was wrong, and at the same time, it felt right, which made me feel guilty.

I remembered Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. I phoned them and got a catalogue. Voila. I had stumbled into being a contemplative! It was normal. It had a long, long history and was one of the prayer traditions still being carried into the Episcopal Church.

I took all the courses in prayer I could from Shalem. One day, I was asked by the clergy of my church, the cathedral in Delaware, to lead a four week study in contemplative prayer. I began with Julian of Norwich, and her influence on me. I first encountered her and her "Showings", her Revelations of Divine Love, when on retreat at a convent in Philadelphia. From there, I had branched out into others of the mystics. Now here I was, being asked to teach.

I did. And the rest is history.

I don't know ahead of time what I will post here. I do know that I want to honor Julian and the others who gave me life, and I want to honor the gift I was given, one I have tended to take for granted, now that I am a parish priest, deeply embroiled in all that entails. I want to remember whose I am, and from where I came.

And I want a place where I can begin to chart where this gift is now taking me. I wonder where Fresh Springs Retreats will lead, and what part Julian House will play in it.