Holy Week Devotionals

Hi All,

Here's a list of simple but compelling exercises that you might read or do during this Holy Week.  They are opportunities and food for thought, a chance to walk the whole walk of Holy Week.  Poke around, see if one of these works better for you...this story is your story!  See yourself in it.

-Kelly+


Morning and Evening Prayer services with appropriate readings for each day.

Live streams of services from St. Thomas's, 5th Ave and other congregations

Video Sermons and Hymn Texts from the Brothers at the Society of St. John the Evangelist

Follow the Holy Week blogging of the "Internet Monk"

A series of family activities for those with young children.

You can also follow @Virtual_Abbey on Twitter to participate in their brief services



If you have another link for a devotional source you like to do or a family tradition that you'd like to share, please post them in the comment section!

A Hard Blog Entry

The past few days I have been haunted by a conversation I had about the war in Syria.  The conversation began around the "did they or didn't they" argument about chemical weapons that may have been used there on Tuesday.  But during the course of the conversation, I became aware of the extent to which rape is being used as a weapon of war by both sides of the conflict.  In fact, many of the refugees that have reached Turkey and Jordan have reported that it is the risk of sexualized violence against women and girls that compelled them to flee their homes even more than the fear of guns and bombs and lack of food.

It's nothing new of course.  Sexualized violence against women has been a feature of warfare since Biblical times (see Judges 21).  And it's been heart-wrenchingly common in our modern era as well...from the Korean "Comfort Women" of WWII to Bosnia to Rwanda.  Syria isn't even the only place this is happening right now, today, as the conflict in South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo continues.

What does this have to do with Henri Nouwen?  In our reading for today, he references the idea that in some times and places and cultures, suffering has been justified by claims that it is the "will of God."  If God is omnipotent, then instances of suffering must exist because God either wanted it that way or God didn't care enough to change the circumstances.

Nouwen dismisses this argument, reminds us that we were created for joy, and calls us to look for the presence of God amidst suffering.

Denis Mukwege is a Congolese gynocologist who has been forced, by necessity, to become an expert in treating victims of sexualized violence.  He has worked to help women recover from the physical and psychological injuries they've experienced, and then has helped set-up networks to ensure that these women who have lost everything are not exposed to further abuses by their poverty.  His work has earned him an assassination attempt and threats on the lives of his wife and daughters.  He fled the Congo after the attempt, but returned to the country this past January.  Women, many of whom were his patients, raised the money from their meager wages (less than a dollar a day for most) to send him a plane ticket to come back.  He now lives in a hospital with security provided by rotating groups of twenty female volunteers who are unarmed, but never leave him unprotected.

God is present amongst great suffering.  I pray for many things for the people of Syria, and one is that they have a Denis Mukwege.

Helping Each Other on the Journey

I don't know about you, but I find myself so very easily distracted these days, just as Nouen describes.  It's easy to fall victim to a kind of helpless despair as we read the papers and see what goes on in this world. It is difficult sometimes to keep an eye on Easter, to know that no matter what happens, all will, somehow be well.  As Palm Sunday and Holy Week approach I think it is ever more important to be aware that we are not on this journey alone.

When I walk into St. Albans's on a Sunday morning I truly feel surrounded by my fellow-travellers - some old timers to this church, some new, all at different stages of their faith journey.  If I feel too weary or distracted to say the prayers, I know there are others there who will be saying them on my behalf. Perhaps nowhere during the service do I feel as close to my fellow parishioners as when I put the communion bread into their hands.  This is such a sacred moment for me, and, I hope, for the ones receiving the bread.  We are connected.  We are in this together.  We listen to the wonderful stories of the Church every Sunday and we break bread together.  There is much to be said about the Church today - and not a lot of it very good.  But at her best, the Church is there for us with solace, story, companionship, and the assurance of the Eucharist.

All food indeed for the journey.

He's Got the Whole World in His Hands

I love the bit in this morning's reading when St. Francis suddenly saw the whole world in God's hands, and wondered why God didn't drop it.  What a thought - God just dropping the world! I imagine there are times God would like to do just that; we human beings do manage to screw things up so badly sometimes that I wonder if God wouldn't like to say, "you've had chance after chance and I'm fed up with the lot of you," and then just drop the world into oblivion.  Poof!

Well, God doesn't work that way.  God loves this world, warts and all, and doesn't give up on it, or on us, God's frail and faltering people.  God craves intimacy with us, the kind of intimacy he shared with Jesus; and God, like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, waits patiently for us to enter into that intimacy.  God watches for us as we journey on that road to intimacy, as we come to know that everything, everything comes from God, and that the greatest of these things is love and closeness, whether in times of sorrow or in times of joy. Through silence and prayer we can learn to weld this knowledge into our hearts.  Through service to our fellow human beings we can learn to feel this in our bones.

God won't drop this world; God loves it too much.  Perhaps as I write this God is rejoicing in the snow that is falling here in New England.  We may not be rejoicing a whole lot as the snowplows block off our driveways yet again, but we can also say to ourselves, "boy this snow is beautiful.  So beautiful."

Audrey

In our first passage from Nouwen for today, he indicates that it is "false ways of obtaining love" that keep us bound to anxiety and violence.

It's amazing how easily we can get ourselves confused.  It's not even that we are confused about what love is, instinctually we already know that.  It's the false way of getting there...a way that is inauthentic to what the love actually is when it is graciously and freely bestowed.  True love can't be coerced or demanded, you can't get there by anything other than honest means.

It's like what our prayer for the day says.  Taken from Psalm 25, it points out that "Integrity and generosity are marks of Yahweh."  Seeking love in a way that compromises our own integrity is is one of those false ways of getting there.  But if we can get there, if we can experience genuine love of others and genuine love of God, then we are taking steps on the journey for each of us towards new life.

Poor Listening

"We are poor listeners because we are afraid that there is something other than love in God."

-Nouwen, 121

At my last job, I have a very clear memory of sitting in a meeting where someone said something that annoyed me.  It more than annoyed me.  It made me mad.  It actually made me pretty furious.  And I sat in my chair silently fuming for I don't know how long before I realized that I hadn't been paying any attention to what was actually happening in the meeting.  Perhaps someone else in the room had disagreed with the speaker.  Perhaps the speaker later apologized or edited their previous remarks.   I imagine that would have been very satisfying to watch, but I have no idea if it happened because I was far too busy focusing on my own emotions and my own sense that a boundary had been violated to bother paying attention to anything else.  Furthermore, I have no recollection of what decisions were made in the meeting during that time...I lost out on my chance to offer feedback.  And it was all because I had this anger that was blocking my ability to listen.

Maybe you've had an experience like that.  Perhaps it was another kind of emotion that overwhelmed you.  I think anger is a common way to get to that point, and I think fear is another common way to get there as well...something Nouwen touched on in today's passage.

 I love the sentence quoted above for two reasons.  I'm interested in the question of what keeps us from listening to God, but I'm also curious about the idea that there might be something other than love in God.  The sentence rings true to me, but what other things do we think are in God?

Perhaps we believe that God may be judgmental or wrathful or disappointed or indifferent.  And there's certainly been enough bad theology combined with personal experience to lead us to that point.  But if we can't listen to God because of our fear or anger that God might be those things, then it's kinda like me having no idea what actually happened in that meeting.  If negative emotions block us from listening, then we can't hear the reality of what's actually happening - the truth that God is love.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

Where Is Our Glory?

Nouen does not make life easy for us, does he?  Every meditation is so full of food for thought, and so full of counterintuitive observations!  We human beings, especially in America, thrive on competition - it's the American way, right?  Our "glory" so often comes from making it to the top, being the best, the coolest, the smartest, the richest.  We always have our eye fixed on the top of the ladder.

It is just the opposite with Jesus.  Instead of scrabbling for glory by being the best rabbi in town, the best prophet, the cleverest orator, he kept his eye fixed on the poor and the outcasts, on the ones who didn't count worth beans in his society.  God's glory is revealed to us by moving downward.  How bizarre this seems to us at first glance, and how difficult a concept for us; I think it is something we all struggle with all the time. We want to pattern our lives after Jesus, but it is so hard to break old patterns, to turn ourselves away from what most of us have known since we were little kids - the vying for our parents' attention, trying to beat out the other kids with better grades, more accolades at school - you know the drill.  Our eye keeps moving up that ladder!

In reading Nouen's meditations this Lent I have been most intrigued by this "downward call" of Jesus - not an easy concept, but one that we can hold before us and aspire to.  I don't expect in a million years that I can come close to answering that call for myself; I can but try my best, and maybe that is enough.

Audrey

Filling Ourselves With God

One of the main themes of Nouen's book is prayer, and learning to open ourselves to God, to fill our very beings with God. It has been agreed that this book is harder going than his Advent book, and I think that is perhaps because learning to fill ourselves with God is so very difficult for us. There are so many other things that "fill" us, that eat up our time, that cause us to sometimes, alas, put God at the bottom of our list of things to think about. Turning ourselves around is hard work - good Lenten work!

I love his image of prayer as a way to "clean [one's] heart and to create a new space" - a space that can then be filled with prayer for others, so many others, without becoming weighed down.  That, Nouen says, is the spirit of God praying in us.  What a lovely thought that is - God's spirit praying in us!

Of course, prayer involves not only an open heart, but also open eyes and open ears; when we see the little green buds on a tree - thank you, God!  When we hear a siren or see an ambulance speeding down the street - a quick prayer for the person on his or her way to the hospital. When we see a plane flying close to the airport, a little prayer for its safe landing. A thank you to God when we wake up in the morning and before we fall asleep at night.

An open heart can be at prayer all day - kind of like breathing!

Audrey

God and Lady Grantham

Last night I was hanging out and channel surfing and ended up falling into an episode of Downton Abbey that I had (of course!) already seen.  That show is impossible to resist!

I tuned in toward the end of the episode, just after one of the characters had suffered a particularly cruel and wrenching kind of heartbreak.  The character runs upstairs to her room and throws herself on her bed in the most acute emotional pain.  Her mother and her sisters run up the stairs after her to try and find a way to comfort her, but when they arrive in her room, they realize there's not a thing to be done.

"Is there anything I can say to make it better?" her mother asks with the kind of desperation only present when someone we love is in pain.

I replied to the fictional character from my couch, "Of course there's not."

And so the mother simply crawls onto the bed with her daughter and holds her.

I wish the scene had stopped there, but after a moment or two, the mother begins to tell her daughter that God is testing her in order to make stronger.  Oh how I detest this kind of theology!

I wish the scene had stopped with the mother simply holding her daughter because I think it's a wonderful example of the way in which God loves us.  It's like Nouwen says - "The mystery of God's love is not that he takes our pains away, but that he first wants to share them with us."  I think God is like a mother desperate to soothe a child's pain, but knowing that the child requires independence.  It doesn't mean we're left alone with our struggles...far from it...but it means that we are given the space to work through our challenges knowing that there is a loving presence close by.

Here's to hoping Lady Edith figures that out!

Conversation With God

Last fall, I spent two weekends out on Cow Island with the youth of St. Alban's.  I have a rule on church trips that no one eats until someone has said grace/thanksgiving/blessing over the meal.  And for the most part, I insist that whoever says that blessing must be under the age of 18.

The kids inevitably all stand there and stare at one another waiting for someone else to step up to the plate (this has been a trend throughout my youth ministry career).  On Cow Island, I asked the kids what was so hard about it, and one teenage boy responded that he couldn't speak "fancy enough" to say grace.  "It doesn't have to be fancy language," I replied, but this young man refused to believe me.  Eventually, he convinced me that he would pray the next day but he needed time to prepare something.

Sure enough, at breakfast the next morning, there he stood with a scrap of paper on which he'd pre-written his prayer.  And the language was indeed fancy...even this 21st Century teenager seemed to believe that the only way to talk to God was in the King James version of English.

In some ways, I think it is the blessing and the curse of the Book of Common Prayer.  We have this resource for prayer that is thoughtful and beautiful and poetic and gorgeous, but sometimes it has us convinced that when we talk to God, it HAS to be those things.  It has to be fancy.

But Nouwen's quote from Brother Lawrence hits the nail on the head - "Everyone is capable of such familiar conversation with God..."  It's innate within us.  All of us are naturals at talking to God as long as we speak with our own authentic voice.  So have a conversation with God today and make it as plain as you can.  God will still be glad for the chat!

Being All Ear For God

In today's reading Henri Nouen writes that true prayer is being "all ear" for God, always alert and listening for the still, small voice of God in our lives.  How difficult this is for us!  So often prayer time is cut short by other more intrusive and demanding voices.  What will I make for supper?  Have I done the laundry?  How will I get to all three meetings that I have today?  Don't forget the grandchildrens' swim meet. And on and on.  It takes real discipline (that pesky Lenten word!) to shut those voices out and to open our hearts to God and God alone, if only for a few minutes.

I think it is not only in those moments that we purposefully set aside for prayer that we need to be alert, still, listening.  It is all the time! The other day I was rushing around trying to get things done when I caught sight of a crow struggling in our yard with a very long, thin branch that had fallen from the maple tree. It was about ten times the size of the bird, but he was determined.  He walked around it, plucked at it, pushed at it with his beak, tried to get a grip on it.  He must have been a good five minutes trying to lift that branch and I found myself rooting for him.  Come on! You can do it!  He finally got his beak around a thinner part of the branch and tried to fly away with it.  He flapped his wings fiercely but to no avail.  At last he flew away to settle, not happily I imagine, in the higher branches of the tree.

So what has this got to do with prayer, you may ask?  Well, I think it was prayer, in a way.  It was noticing what was going on.  It was seeing one of God's creatures (although crows are not my favorite of those creatures) in a rather comical but earnest quest to accomplish the impossible, and I was in awe of his determination.  I was, at that moment, "all ear" for God through that ugly back bird.

Maybe we need that kind of determination in our prayer lives, as we try to become "all ear" to God, whether sitting quietly by ourselves, or paying attention to God's world out there, a world more full of joy and mystery than we can imagine.

Audrey

A New Heaven and a New Earth

Compassion is a word we hear a lot during Lent.  The Compassion Cross is set up in the Parish Hall, and the word turns up often in sermons and in Bible studies and classes during this season.  Actually, when you think about it, we hear the word over and over during the year and with very good reason.  Compassion lies at the very heart of Christianity and Nouen writes that our lives as Christians are to be marked by compassion, as Jesus' life was. We are to be compassionate toward our fellow travelers on the way, even as we look forward to the "new heaven and the new earth" described in the Book of Revelation - that time when there won't be any need for compassion because there will be an end to all suffering.

Many of you may remember the YouTube clip of a policeman in New York City tenderly putting a new pair of socks and new boots on the freezing feet of a homeless man.  The policeman had seen this fellow, cold and alone, and had gone into a store to buy the socks and boots for him.  Then he knelt down on the pavement and gently put them on the fellow's feet.  The whole thing was captured on camera by a tourist.  It was a touching and very poignant scene; a compassionate and loving act by a New York City cop - guys not always known for their tender hearts!

That video clip made news fast, and was sent around the world.  It touched everyone who saw it.  Won't it be wonderful when such acts of kindness won't be so rare that they make the headlines!  Won't it be lovely when compassion will be as natural and as spontaneous to us human beings as breathing!

We have faith that a new heaven and a new earth will arrive one day, but it is beginning now.  It begins with us - with you and with me - and with a tough New York City cop kneeling in front of a scruffy homeless fellow, warming his icy feet with new socks and boots.

Audrey

For All Who Serve God in God's Church

The prayer at the end of our Nouwen reading for the day resonates with something I've been thinking about this Lent as we've used Form VI of the Prayers of the People during worship.  Each version of the Prayers of the People include petitions for the universal Church, the nation and those in government, the local community, those who suffer, and the departed.  Form VI draws particular attention to the ministers of the church by praying "for all who serve God in his Church."

Each time we pray this on Sunday mornings, it reminds me that in the Catechism at the back of the Book of Common Prayer, it lists the laity as the primary ministers of the Gospel.  It is the laity who are listed first, followed by bishops, then priests, then deacons.  In some ways, I think our Nouwen prayer names the same themes.

But as Henri says, being ministers of Christ is not the same thing as being publicists for God.  Our job is not to give the very best spin to the actions of God; it's not even our job to presume that we know which are the actions of God and which are not in some kind of finite way.  Rather, I think as ministers of Christ, all of us are called to live authentic lives that reflect the ways in which we are transformed because of our faith.  That's not a spin job, that's a testimonial.  That is a form of ministry.

A Song for the Day

"We believe that this world not only passes but has to pass in order to let the new world be born.  We believe that there will never be a moment in our lives in which we can rest in the supposition that there is nothing left to do..."

-Nouwen, pg 72

One of my favorite songs we sang in chapel at YDS is called "God Has Work for Us to Do."  Today's passage from Nouwen put this text in mind - it's by Carl Daw and the music by Mark Miller.

Till all the jails are empty

and all the bellies filled;

till no one hurts or steals or lies,

and no more blood is spilled;

God has work for us to do.

Believe in the promise, "I make all things new."

God has work for us to do.

Till age and race and gender

no longer separate;

till pulpit, press, and politics

are free of greed and hate;

God has work for us to do.

Believe in the promise, "I make all things new."

God has work for us to do.

In tenement and mansion,

in factory, farm, and mill,

in boardroom and in billiard-hall,

in wards where time stands still,

in classroom, church, and office,

in shops or on the street;

in ev'ry place where people thrive

or starve or hide or meet;

God has work for us to do.

By sitting at a bedside

to hold pale trembling hands,

by speaking for the powerless

against unjust demands,

by praying through our doing

and singing though we fear,

by trusting that the seed we sow

will bring God's harvest near:

God has work for us to do.

Believe in the promise, "I make all things new."

God has work for us to do.

Here's a link to a YouTube video of a high school choir singing the song and being directed by Mark A. Miller, the guy who wrote the music and was also the gospel choir director at YDS.  I think they tweaked the text a tad since this video was recorded, but you'll get the idea.  

Happy Friday!

Keeping Score

One of sad and troubling trends in our modern world of competition is the frantic scramble among our high school students to add as many accolades, as many accomplishments, as many unusual interests to their college applications as is humanly possible.  They struggle to be the best in as many sports as they can.  They take SAT classes so as to ace the tests.  They join school clubs so as to have more activities listed on their applications.  They go to the Soup Kitchen because social service is impressive to college admissions offices.  They may head off to Uganda for a summer because it is unusual and interesting and will surely catch the eye of anyone who reads their applications. Too often the rigid and competitive application process drives the kids away from what they really love, to what those colleges want them to be.

God knows the competition for college admission is fierce. God knows competition for any position in the world is fierce.  Try finding a good job these days! We all want to put our best foot forward, of course, and we should do that.  But when it becomes obsessive, when it makes us worried and frantic and sick, something is terribly wrong.

Nouen says that a life without a quiet place, some solitude, can easily become destructive.  We need the time just to "be" - to give ourselves a break, and to look at who are are, not at what the world expects of us, or demands of us.  What do we do well simply because we love doing it?  Maybe gardening is our passion, not the desire to be a nuclear scientist.  Maybe gardening is what we are meant to do, and to do with gusto and passion!

So listen to your heart, and to what God may be whispering to you.  Put away the worldly shoulds and oughts and rest in the knowledge of God's love for the person you are, not the person the world may be shouting for you to be.

Audrey

Henri Nouwen's rich passage for today creates a little map for us...a map with two destinations in mind.

The first is the  knowing of God through God's choice to come to us as a servant, that is seeing God in Jesus' role as a servant. The second destination on the map is that of knowing God through acting as our own most compassionate selves. That is, embracing personal and generous compassion as a "joyful way of life in which our eyes are openend to the vision of a true God who chose the way of servanthood himself."

We often think of servanthood as a burden, one we accept by our desire to help the needful and perhaps change the world, or as a burden we accept because we "should."

Here Nouwen invites us into a Lenten perspective that is fresh and exciting. Here we are reminded that " the poor are not blessed because poverty is good, but beacuse theirs is the kingdom of heaven; the mourners are called blessed not because mourning is good, but beacuse they shall be comforted."

"Here we are touching the profound spiritual truth that service is an expression of the search for God and not just the desire bring about individual or social change."

As we face the St. Alban's Compassion Cross and make our Lenten choices for servanthood...let's take Henri's map in hand looking for God in all our choices.

blessings, and thanks,
 Tim+

Clearing Out the Weeds

Ah, humility.  Another "Lenten" word that does not fall easily on the ears of us Moderns.  As Nouen asks, "who wants to be humble?" But if we are to come to some kind of understanding of the nature of the God we worship we need to look pretty carefully at just what it mean to be humble, to live the life of a servant, to seek not to be first, but to be last, to become like a little child.  None of these holds a great deal of allure at first glance, that's for sure.

Nouen writes of the "downward pull" of Jesus - his coming to live among us through the Incarnation, his humbling himself, his suffering, his dying a humiliating and painful death on the cross.  This is the way Jesus fully discloses the sacrificial love of God - the way of humility, of servanthood, of suffering, leading to joy and to resurrection.

How odd this seems to us mere mortals.  And how difficult, indeed impossible, it seems to us.  But as Christians it is a way, a path, that we are called to be on.  The descending way, the way of discovering what is really important, what brings us in closer relationship with our fellow human beings, what brings us in closer relationship with God.  It is the way that calls us not to be at the top of the heap, but to walk with love and compassion alongside our fellow travelers on the journey.

To be humble is not to be a cowering, servile, obsequious character like Dickens' infamous Uriah Heep, a toad- like man we love to loathe. A humble person, a person who recognizes his or her true dependence on God, who values her fellow human beings, who puts puts the other guy ahead ahead of himself, who seeks to make the world a better, more compassionate, loving and forgiving place - now there is a person of real stature.  There is a force to be reckoned with.  There is someone who shows us that the downward path - the path away from self absorption and self promotion is a path, oddly enough, of great strength.

But it is not a path easily undertaken.  As Nouen points out, there are a lot of weeds to clear out.  All those weeds that choke the path, that trip us up:  those weeds of power-seeking, the weeds of needing to "prove" ourselves, to be the best, the prettiest, the smartest, the cleverest, the most popular, the most likely to succeed.  To choose this weed-strewn path is a courageous and difficult choice, and as Nouen points out, we will each have our different ways of seeking out this "descending way of love." This Lent we can think about how that way will be for us.

We can start by sharpening up our weed-whackers!

Audrey

I'm very struck by the discussion of competition in our reading for today and the relationship between competition and compassion.  Competition is definitely a theme that I hear coming from our young people at various youth events.  They talk about competition for spots in college, competition for opportunities to play in the game rather than ride the bench, competition on test scores and grades.  And then I think about how it is that we adults model that competitive spirit for our young people...best car, best house, newest gadgets, most perfect life.  And then I think of the competitive nature of our wider society and particularly our politics today, where the goal no longer seems to be about winning for the sake of pride in a job well done, but rather winning for the sake of ensuring the other side loses.

I love this notion of "imaginary distinctions as sources of identity" that Nouwen mentions on page 54.  So many of the distinctions we make between ourselves are, when you get down to it, imaginary.  I think this is one of those hardest lessons to learn when we're growing up, that the difference between having a flip phone and an iPhone or a Bean fleece vs a North Face or an A vs an A- is, in the grand scheme of things, an imaginary one.  What does it matter as long as you can make a call or stay warm in the snow or did your best on the test?  I think it has to do with our notions of the world as a place of abundance or a place of scarcity. 

If we think there's a limited amount of "the best" then we must compete for it.  If there's only one way to be the best or one thing to have that's the best, then there's not really any other choice.  But if we think of the world as an abundant place, then it frees everyone and everything up to be their own unique kind of best...an infinite number of "bests" that we can  be.

And that mindset of abundance is at the heart of compassion.  We don't need to hoard all of those best and most generous parts of ourselves if we believe there's plentiful "best" to go around.  This is part of what we're trying to show our young people here at St. Alban's...there are an infinite number of ways for you to be the best version of yourself, and your best is no better or worse than anyone else's. 

Got an enemy?

One day when I was eleven years old, for no reason at all (other than he could) a school bully pushed me off a low foot-bridge in the town park and laughed as I landed in the shallow creek a couple of feet below.

Now, in my childhood household, my mother ran things on a very tight budget. It was a really big deal when we went shopping for new school clothes and shoes, and we were told to watch out for grass stains on the kahkis and mud on our loafers. They had to last.

So, in addtion to being shocked by the petty assualt on the foot bridge, I was alarmed because I knew that my new shoes were ruined and my mother would be upset. Upset with me.

So I stood up dripping, and as the bully walked away chuckling, I prepared my response to his attack.

I walked in my squishing shoes, right up to the front door of his parents' house and rang the doorbell, dripping creek water onto the step. His father, who happend to be the school supernintendent, was surprized to see me, but listened carefully as I explained through my tears what had happened. I wanted the bully to get his comeupance at his father's hand, but I also wanted a witness who could help with my mom's upset. Good plan, right?

What I didn't realize was that I had dramatically escallated the conflict. I had made my first enemy.

The bully must have heard from his father for he walked well out of the way whenever he saw me coming...but he would glower at me with hate. I had made a glowering enemy...one a foot taller than I was. I tried to ignore him, but he haunted me a bit. Our emnity lasted nearly a decade, unspoken but real, until we just didn't know or care about each other anymore.

Humans make enemies...it's a long sad story.

And then along comes Jesus and suggests a different ending to the story.

Today (at page 46) Henri Nouwen calls us this Lent to consider this different ending...an ending without emnity...an ending grounded in God's love of us. Knowing, as Nouwen writes, that people who make our lives difficult and cause us frustration, pain or even harm are least likely to receive a place in our hearts, Jesus directs us to love them, to pray for them, to do that which is the most contrary to our impulses, whether we're eleven years-old or just acting like it.

I hope you do not have glowering enemies, but all of us have suffered injury, and we know this love of enmey is a hard, hard thing to ask. A Lenten thing to ask. But you see, the asking of it is a gift.

For we're invited to know God's love not as an idea or concept, but as a lived experience. Let's live it, pray for your enemy.

Tim+

The Great Chicken Caper

"Maybe the reason it seems hard for me to forgive others 

is that I do not fully believe that I am a forgiven person."

Guilt is an incredibly complex emotion.  When we feel it, we are desperate to get rid of the sensation.  At the same time, letting go of guilt is also letting go of control, an action many of us are a lot less interested in.

So often when we make a mistake and we cause injury, we like to think that we can make up for it somehow.  It's called restorative justice.  If I steal your chicken, the way to restore the situation is for me to get you a new chicken.

Or is it?  

What if that chicken was a gift from your great Aunt Sally who has since passed away?  I can give you a new hen that will lay eggs and do chicken things, but it's not Sally's chicken.  It's not going to restore the situation to it's previous state, nor is it necessarily going to mean that you'll trust me around your chickens in the future.  

So in this great chicken-thieving caper, there are two kinds of injuries.  The first is the tangible loss of the physical object which can in someway be replaced.  But the second is the emotional injury that comes from the sentimental value of the object and/or the damage done to the relationship.

Sometimes I think we confuse these two kinds of injuries, and I think we hold onto guilt as a result.  We hold onto the guilt because we are able to control some aspects of the situation (like chicken replacement), and as a result, we think we can erase the guilt by erasing the loss.  But while we are able to easily replace the lost chicken, we can't easily replace lost trust.  We can't easily repair the emotional harm.  But in our confusion between the two kinds of injuries, sometimes we think we do have the power to fix the emotional harm too.

We think we can earn our way out of guilt, earn our way into that emotional forgiveness.  We think we can control our own destiny on forgiveness, we just have to work hard enough to get there.  And if I believe there is a way for me to work hard enough to earn forgiveness, then gosh darn it, it's possible for you to earn it too if you just keep trying.  As a result, I don't believe I'm forgiven and I won't forgive you either.

But the sandy ground on which this argument is built washes away when you realize that forgiveness can't be earned.  There is no way to replace emotional harm the way we can replace the loss of an object.  We simply can't control that.  And Nouwen is right when he says that this is the "lifelong struggle at the heart of the Christian life."  It's another example of the reality that God is in control and we are powerless.  That can be a really scary thing to have to admit, but it's at the center of the possibility for forgiveness.

So I guess the question is, can we admit our lack of control over guilt and our need of forgiveness, or are we too chicken to do so?

To Be Like Jesus

"Our lives are destined to become like the life of Jesus."

This sentence really stood out for me in today's reading. Our lives to become like the life of Jesus??  Wow.  How can our lives, absorbed as they are with ourselves, with our own concerns and anxieties, our human foibles and restlessness, become like the life of Jesus?

Nouen gives us a clue when he writes of Jesus' obedience. That is not a word we moderns like much; perhaps it takes us back to our youth when mindless obedience was called for - no questions asked, just do what you are told.  I don't think this is the kind of obedience Nouen is talking about.  Jesus obeyed his Father because he was in such a loving, intimate relationship with him that it came as naturally as breathing to him to do what he knew his father would have him do.

Jesus came to bring us closer to God, to show us what God is like, to bring us to the same kind of intimacy that he shared with God.  When we look at the life of Jesus we see a life of giving - of his time, his energy, his love, his passion, his entire self.  All this he gave for us, at the bidding of his father.   Were there moments of doubt, fear, in that life?  You bet there was, just as there is for us.  But Jesus was in such a close relationship with God that to do other than what God hoped for was, ultimately, out of the question.

So what does that mean for us, living in the sometimes crazy world of the 21st century?  How do we go about making our lives like the life of Jesus?  It seems such an impossible goal!  But Nouen says that our lives are destined to be like his.  Somehow, that gives me hope.  And with hope we can set out to fulfill our destiny, right?  So we keep on plugging, listening to that little voice inside that tells us what we need to do, how we need to cherish what is good and right, how we need to look with compassion on all around us, how we need to keep our hearts open to a closer relationship with each other and with our creator - not because we are ordered to do so, not because we fear eternal damnation if we don't, but because we long for the intimacy with God that Jesus had.

I think back to my relationship with my grandmother, surely one of the people I loved most in the world. I obeyed her wishes (most of the time) not because I was afraid of her, or because she was some remote Being that demanded total obedience, but because I loved her so much, was so close to her, that I naturally wanted to please her and maintain that closeness and love.

Hmmm.  Could it be as simple as that?

Audrey

Just a Wednesday word on God.

In our reading for today (p 36-37) Nouwen asks us to look with him at an assertion: God exists.

He says, When we make that statement, all the distinctions between intellectual, emotional, affective, and spiritual understanding fall away and there is only one truth left to acclaim: God exists. ...when God exists all that is flows from him.

For people of faith the very existance of God is a given...or is it? I think these words of Nouwen's are shared in Lent because it's a good time to look at some basics. I encourage you to read his short passge again with an ear for how the words touch your own understanding of what it means to assert God exists.

In the first century, shortly after his founding of the church at Thessalonica, Paul visted Athens .

So what?

Well, while there he must have noticed all the images and symbols erected to the many pagan gods worshipped by the Greeks. Athens was famous for its profusion of religious images, including tributes to "unknown gods." 

Paul seizes on this particular Greek concept of the identity of the gods, God-the-unknown, as a way into the mind and hearts of his broadest Gentile audience.  He, like Nouwen, makes for them an assertion that God exists and he offers two phrases that serve us well this Lent.

First, he acknowledges that God is a mystery, yet he invites the Gentiles and us to accept, setting aside all idols, that the unknown God is the single living and true God. And then he describes, just as Nouwen does in his own words, the implications for us all that this unknown God exists.

This God he says is one in which we live and move and have our being.

These words, some of the most loved in the Christian language, deeply shape our understanding of what it means for us and our lives and loves to say that God exists.

God exists. ...when God exists, all that is flows from him.

Tim+

Babbling to God

"Do not babble as the Gentiles do..."

  I had to smile as I read that passage from Matthew's gospel.  "Babbling" is a word I have never associated with prayer, but it is a pretty accurate description of some prayer, I think.  Do you ever "babble" when praying?  I know that I do sometimes - usually when afraid, or deeply worried or anxious.  I babble a lot on airplanes.  "Please God, let this thing land safely and I will be a better person!  I will do whatever you want, just don't let this plane crash!"  Babble, babble babble.  When I am struggling with some problem and long for God's assistance in the solution I often find myself chattering away without stopping for breath. Babble, babble, babble.

Nouen is right on the mark when he says that we so often expect solutions, answers, responses, and we want them immediately. NOW.  When that doesn't happen we are frustrated and wonder what the purpose of prayer is, anyway.  We may increase the babbling and hope that God will hurry up and do something.  Trouble is, we don't always know how to be quiet and listen to Jesus, and to our own hearts, where indeed Jesus abides.

I don't know about you, but I find sitting quietly and listening for Jesus, listening to my own heart, is difficult.  There are so many distractions, so many things to do, so many responsibilities to think about - and these distractions seem to attack the minute I try to focus on God.  It takes a certain amount of discipline - a word the modern world does not much like - to stop our babbling and to just be quiet.  To listen.  To open our hearts and to find God there.  To stand with our hands open to the world, as Nouen suggests.  To see the glory that is God in all that is around us.

Outside my window this morning the ground is pristine with snow, and in the snow are little footprints made by myriad creatures who have crossed over our lawn in the night.  It is a sight beautiful beyond words.   It is part of God's secret that the world holds within itself, as Nouen writes. Like most secrets, it is whispered.  We must be still to hear it; we must quiet the confused babbling and rest in the presence of the One who has created us all.

Take some time today to look out at the snow, the bright sunshine, the blueness of the winter sky. Be still.  Listen.  Open your heart to the beauty of it all.  God is speaking, whispering.  Listen. Listen.

Holding Onto Emptiness

These passages from Nouwen on hospitality seem so perfect that I feel like it almost takes something away from them to comment.  I think they are just wonderful.

But that makes for a pretty boring blog post.

So I'll say that the line that jumps out and touches me in this particular moment is when Nouwen says "Once we give up our desire to be fulfilled, we can offer emptiness to others."

It never really seems like emptiness is something we should be proud to offer, or that someone else would ever want to receive.  But as I take some time to dwell in that sentence and what it means, I find it utterly compelling.  It makes me think of my nun.

I have a spiritual director who is a Sister of Mercy affiliated with St. Joseph's College.  Once a month I drive out to Standish to sit in her living room and spend 90 minutes or so talking about my life.  I went and visited with her this past Friday morning, and one of the questions she asked me was why I came to see her; why did I want a spiritual director?

By now you all may have learned that I am a verbal processor, and so I tend to ramble a bit before getting around to answering questions.  Ultimately, I told her that I visit with her because she always leads me back to love.  She gently, patiently reminds me that if I center myself in the love of God, then anxieties slip away and my deepest authenticity emerges.

But as I read this sentence from Nouwen, I think I also go to see Sister Sylvia because she offers me emptiness.  Her living room, her presence is a place empty of expectations and that is an unbelievably liberating place to be.

I realized this week that when I leave Sister Sylvia's for the lengthy drive back to Portland, I never listen to the radio.  I'm an NPR addict who is always looking for something to occupy my mind, but on my drives back from Standish, my mind feels emptied out in the best possible way.  I don't want the radio to fill it back up again.  Sometimes I'll even take a long meandering drive up around Sebago Lake to try and hold onto that emptiness.

It's counter-intuitive, but true.  In my experience, emptiness is a profound gift to receive.

Mystery

Day three of this new book, and I'm already finding it more challenging than our Advent reader.  At the same time, I think I'm also finding it more rewarding.  It took me a few minutes to realize that the design of this book is different from our last one in that it has two Nouwen passages paired together rather than a Nouwen passage and a commentary from the editor.

And today I'm struck by the tension that's held between these two passages from two different books by Henri.  The first part focuses on the incarnation, the very realness and presence of Jesus in our world, the historical fact of the man we believe wasn't only a man.  The second portion focuses on the absence of God.

Wait...what?  The absence of God?  Didn't Henri Nouwen go to Sunday School?  Doesn't he know that God is everywhere?!

But Nouwen goes on to point out that God "transcends our psychological distinctions between 'already' and 'not yet,' absence and presence, leaving and returning." In each of these opposing pairs, God gets to be both at the same time.  This is one of those concepts that has me utterly convinced that scientific advances are actually bringing science and faith closer together, not further apart.  This notion of a flexibility in time and space that is beyond that which a human can experience is part of what's at the heart of the theory of relativity.  Sometimes I think the line between theory and belief is actually a pretty blurry one.

So what does it mean to focus on God's simultaneous presence and absence?  What does that look like experientially?  Practically, I think the easiest way to focus on God's presence in any given moment is to find the thing(s) for which you are grateful.  Gratitude is one emotional fast-track to God.  In the same moment, to focus on God's absence it to go to a place of emotional uncertainty, and wait there in peace.  For example, in this moment I can look out my office window and focus on God's presence by being grateful for the particular kind of rosy glow the setting sun is giving the trees on Cushing Island.  And in this moment, I can also focus on God's absence by thinking about the things in my life that provoke the most anxiety, the things about which I have the least amount of certainty.  And rather than giving in to that uncertainty and getting overwhelmed by it, I could choose to sit with it.  And in that way, I can try and befriend mystery and learn to tolerate the uncertainty with which our society is becoming less and less comfortable.

I think this comfort with mystery is at the heart of the Descending Way of Lent and life.

Invitations and Parties

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the

observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance;

by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and

meditating on God's holy Word.

-BCP, pg 265 

As a child, I never liked going to Ash Wednesday services.  I used to refer to it as "the creepiest day of the church year."  The Ash Wednesday liturgy involves so much intense and gloomy-sounding language...Ash Wednesday always seemed even darker than Good Friday.  And knowing that it was the kick-off for the season of Lent, the whole season of Lent seemed dark and gloomy as well.

What appeals to me about our reading from Nouwen today is the way it speaks of joy and light.  Here we are, on just the second day of Lent, and good old Henri is telling us to choose life.  Jesus is telling us to choose light.

The invitation to the observance of Lent from the Book of Common Prayer speaks of a season of self-examination, repentance, fasting, self-denial, prayer, and study.  That can read like a very gloomy list.  But that list is not the point of Lent.  Fasting is not the point of Lent.  Self-denial isn't what Lent is all about.  These are some of the modes, but they are not the actual expression.

What Lent is about is preparation.  We're spending 40 days getting ready for the feast.  It's kind of like throwing a dinner party.  But before you can get to the actual party, you have to put in the work.  You have to plan and shop and pick the right recipes and put in the time and clean the house.  And all that work can feel burdensome, or all that work can feel exciting.  If you don't prepare well, you're running around at the last minute and may be too tired to actually enjoy the event.  But if you're well prepared, you can enjoy the feast with friends and be truly present to that moment and those relationships.

That's Lent and Easter.  And our time of preparation doesn't have to be gloomy.  Nouwen's suggestion that we focus on gratitude is a direct line to making us more aware of God's presence in our lives and doing so in a deeply joyful way.  We can either take this suggestion or not.  We can choose joy and gratitude, light and life, or we can choose something else.  How do you want to plan your party?

Ash Wednesday basics...

Have you ever given a swimming lesson..or taken one?

If so, you'll remember that when the new swimmer is anxious, shivering, taking short breathes while holding every muscle taut, it's nearly impossible to float. The body as a tightened, closed ball sinks gracelessly into the water. 

But if the new swimmer is able to stand tall and spread her arms, take a deep breath or two and then calmly step into the pool at a warm, shallow place and lay back, using all the natural bouyancy of the body and the support of the water, she is able to float and breathe and then slowly move her hands. Relaxing one's muscles and stretching open one's body leads to breathing deeply and finding yourself afloat. The swimmer swims.

Grace is a lot like that...a natural bouyancy. A counter-force to the posture of tightness, closedness, denial, fear, troubled...the posture that sinks us.

There's quite a bit of talk of sin in today's worship and in Henri Nowen's moving opening words.

Henri seems to suggest that we're paralyzed by the guilt we feel over our sins. That may be true.
But if our sin is essentially a disharmony between our choices and God's hopes, I think we're more likely paralyzed by our defense of our turf, our posture of tightness and control, our self-focused denial of God's grace and distrust that God's hopes have us in their frame.

Paralyzed we sink gracelessly below the waterline.

Lent is a time to be new swimmers...looking clearly at our choices while taking deep, wholesome breaths and trusting in the bouyancy of  Grace.

Tim+

2013 Daily Lenten Readings begin Wednesday

Welcome. We will all be enjoying daily lenten readings from Henri J.M. Nouwen's book Show Me the Way.

The clergy will be offering their daily perspective and we encourage you all to add comments. If anybody would like assistance on this, please feel free to contact me directly at joanne.olsen@gmail.com.