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.