What’s Your Talent?

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boastfulness, Jesus, Matthew, self-esteem, talents, use it or lose it

This morning’s readings call me to a sense of balance in evaluating my worth. Too much self-esteem can lead to boastfulness if left unchecked. Too little leaves me unable to function in a world of expectations of success. As always, “virtue stands in the middle” and the message of the Scriptures today is a reality check for us, a sort of looking in the mirror of who we are and accepting what we’ve been given in order to become our best selves.

Paul starts right off putting his readers in their place (and he knew well where pride can take us!). He says, “Not many of you are wise by human standards, powerful or of noble birth…” He’s not interested any more in “human standards” but rather tells them, “God chose the foolish to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong, the lowly…” (1Cor 1: 26-31) The only boasting should be done in the Lord.

Jesus is interested as well in our ability to consider our calling as we live every day. The gospel (Mt 25: 14-30) tells of a man going on a journey who leaves his servants “talents” according to their abilities. A talent in Scriptural terms is a weight, usually in silver or gold, and two of the three servants increased what they had been given while the master was away. The third buried his out of fear of the master and rather than being rewarded for not losing it he was stripped of everything when the master returned. (The adage “use it or lose it” comes to mind here.)

The lesson is clear. Just because I haven’t won Dancing with the Stars (which in my mind I would love to count as a success) doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be happy with my cha cha. Here’s a realistic example. Each morning when I sit to write these reflections I wonder if I will have anything of value to say. I breathe a sigh of relief when the readings offer up something “easy” to work with but sometimes I find myself trying too hard because what I’m seeing on the page seems bland to me. It helps when someone tells me that my blog has been good for her/him that day. Often now though I just trust that what is supposed to open in me will do so and I breathe in the conviction that God’s Spirit is responsible for this task. I am called to be a co-creator, using my early calling as a language teacher and my long tenure as a seeker toward God to allow what will happen to be of service for the day. I remember Paul’s dictum: “Whoever boasts should boast in the Lord” and just say “thank you!” – rather than either refusing recognition of the worth of my stewardship or taking all the credit.

We have all been given talents for the building up of the kingdom of God. How balanced is your view of where your talents lie?

PS: One of my insecurities is that if I miss a day blogging, you may never return to reading. I’m getting over that, however, confident at last that you probably can live without me! I’m on a holiday with my siblings until Tuesday so the schedule and “alone time” are rather topsy-turvy. This time is a rare gift for me, as is the blog, so perhaps I will be in touch tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday but perhaps not. In any case, I am content in knowing that my worth is not dependent on my product but rather on my intention to be my best self each and every day. May God give you the grace to know the same!

…and the Complex Son!

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dignity, relationship with God, responsibility, St. Augustine, St. Monica, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Yesterday I spoke of St. Monica, whose steadfast attention and prayer is generally seen as the impetus for the conversion of her son who became St. Augustine. A brilliant character, Augustine did everything with rigor – wild living no less than the intensity of religious fundamentalism after his conversion. One commentator speaks of him this way: “Augustine is still acclaimed and condemned in our day. He is a prophet for today, trumpeting the need to scrap escapisms and stand face-to-face with personal responsibility and dignity.”

Wherever one stands – whether critic or supporter of Augustine’s teaching – it must be acknowledged that in his writings that speak of his relationship with God, his sincerity and love are profound. Here is my favorite:

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new; late have I loved you! You were within me and I outside…You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and now I burn for your peace.

The Patient Mother

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Augustine, children, difficult relationships, mother, St. Monica, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today is the feast of St. Monica, mother of the wayward youth, Augustine, who became a renowned saint in Christianity. Monica is well-known in her own right and revered especially by mothers who use her as a conduit to God when they need spiritual help in raising their children. Some would call Monica overbearing but most recognize the great need Augustine had for the presence and care of someone with his best interests at heart. What she did most was pray for him and love him and we certainly can’t argue with that! It took years, but Monica never gave up on her son and in the end Augustine saw the error of his ways in living a life of debauchery. We’ll talk about him (a complex character) tomorrow perhaps, as his feast day follows directly. Today, however, we are reminded to pray for mothers who are often the unsung heroes in life. We might pray especially for those mothers and children whose relationships have been difficult, that they might be reconciled, or that at least the offspring might be grateful for the gift of life given to them by their mothers.

Of Gnats and Camels

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camels, details, gnats, introspection, Jesus, making comparisons, Matthew, overall picture, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

There’s a line in this morning’s gospel (MT 23:23-26) that makes a very funny comparison but Jesus is certainly not in the mood for humor in using it. He’s trying to make a very serious point. He’s talking to the Pharisees about their penchant for attention to the tiniest details of the law while ignoring the overall message of God’s purpose in the world. He says, “Blind guides! You strain out the gnat and swallow the camel!” Yes, they pay their tithes on spices, etc. but they have neglected mercy and fidelity as they go about judging others. His suggestion to them – and to us – is to look inside ourselves rather than always congratulating ourselves by comparing our devotion to the failures of others. This, too, he describes in a somewhat less stark but very mundane and easily grasped image, saying, “You cleanse the outside of cup and dish, but inside are full of plunder and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean.”

I’m pretty sure I’ll remember this text at least for awhile as I do the dishes and grouse about the tea and coffee stains inside the cups. May it remind me to put a little elbow grease into the task as well as a bit of introspection in my heart.

Greetings and Salutations

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Business, encouragement, high school, Jesus, letter, Paul

As a freshman in high school I was happy for a course called “General Business” because we learned all sorts of practical things but nothing was too difficult. As I was trying to get my balance going from algebra to Latin class, it was always nice to sit in a class where we were learning things like how to write a check (not that any of us had a checking account in those days, much less a credit card!). One thing we learned was the difference in form of a business letter and a friendly letter. I’m sure business courses – even the most basic – are much more involved in high schools now but I have always been grateful for some of the practical things that I still use from my one and only business class.

I’m always uplifted when I read the salutations in Paul’s letters – today to the Thessalonians (1: 1-5). Paul writes:

Paul, Silvanus and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters, as is fitting, because your faith flourishes ever more, and the love of every one of you for one another grows ever greater.

I rarely write “real” letters these days but I’m thinking this morning about the value in taking time to encourage people – either on paper or electronically – or simply to let them know I think of them, praying for them and thanking God for their presence in my life. It could take less time now – no need to look for a pen or their zip code – and I wouldn’t even need to buy a stamp unless I communicated  in “the old-fashioned way” of snail-mail. The method isn’t as important as the product and neither is as vital as the intention. Paul was never too intent on his core message to overlook the importance of a positive “salutation” and, if we read to the end of the letters, we see the same in his “complementary closings” as well.

So today might be the day I send a shout out to my General Business teacher, Sister Patricia Gibson (aka Sister Marie Frederick) for all she taught me back then. Surely, it will be a grateful, friendly letter.

What Can We Say?

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glory, humility, Jesus, Matthew, Paul, Peter, Romans, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

It’s not easy to grasp what we can’t touch or see or understand concretely. Paul says today (Romans 11: 33-36), O, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!  Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? All this after he has had an amazing conversion experience when he actually (somehow) heard Christ speaking to him in a burst of blinding light long after Jesus had left the planet.

It seemed that Jesus was “taking the temperature” of belief in his disciples in this morning’s often quoted passage from Matthew (16: 13-20) when he asked, “Who do you say that I am?” They were hard-pressed to give him any answer, never mind the right one. It was only Peter who ventured a response: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And what did that mean, really? Students of Scripture today know that Matthew was writing for the Jews who had been expecting a “Messiah” who would restore the power of the nation of Israel. The divinity of Jesus was a dawning concept to the Christian community only after the Resurrection so if Jesus had asked a follow-up question, it would be interesting to hear how Peter would have explained what he meant.

There have been many holy people who have said and written many amazing things about God over the centuries. We ourselves have probably tried when asked about our beliefs to give answers that approximate our sense of what God is like. But words always fail. We see intimations of God’s presence in nature and marvel at the wonder of creation each time we are in the presence of a new-born baby. We are deeply moved sometimes after a splendid ritual celebration or in moments of deep prayer. Still, the best we can do is bow in humility and proclaim with Paul:

From God and through God and for God are all things. To God be glory forever. Amen.

 

One Breath at a Time

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justice, kindness, Peace, psalm 85, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, truth, violence, world

In the midst of reports that tell of escalating conflicts in the world and in the cities of our own nation, I read Psalm 85 this morning, the first line of which sings: I will hear what God proclaims – the Lord, for he proclaims peace. How so, I ask, when hot heads and ruthless behavior seem the order of the day? Once again the antidote to the violence seems to rise up from the inside, manifesting in qualities and practices that call to us from higher consciousness until they reach critical mass and tip the scales toward peace. The psalm continues:

Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss. Truth shall spring out of the earth and justice shall look down from heaven.

So it is ours to act with kindness, making sure that our sense of justice is founded on truth and a desire for peace in all things with no “tit-for-tat” thinking that spawns violence or resentment. This is not an easy path to walk when “wrong comes up to face us everywhere, never to leave us until we take the longest stride of soul we ever took,” as Christopher Fry writes (A Sleep of Prisoners). It seems the only way to achieve this state is to start with the little things of every day. What does kindness demand of us? Surrender of our ego and wish to control, perhaps? Letting go of our every whim in service to others, certainly. Kindness and truth, justice and peace. Breathe it in and out as a mantra – allowing the abstractions to become real and concrete inside of us until they cannot be contained and so are offered to the world.

The Big Two

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God, Jesus, love God, Matthew, trust God

This morning’s words from Jesus (MT 22:34-46) are very familiar but I’m finding it more & more profitable to read slowly and reflect deeply to recognize new meanings. Here’s the part of the text I’m considering:

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.

There are some changes in language depending on what translation of the Bible one uses (I’m missing “with all your strength” from my childhood), but the message has endured as a summary of the teachings of Jesus. The thing about it that called to me as a question this morning was that if we love God with everything in us – heart, mind and soul – what’s left of us with which to love our neighbor? If God is our every thought and impulse and deepest knowing, where’s the room for anyone else to enter us? The answer is mystery, of course. We trust that God is the ground in us out of which everything – thought, word and deed – arises and blossoms into awareness, care for and love of all others as well as our own fragile selves. God is, at the same time, the end of all our striving toward the fullness of love that we hope to know when we return to the heart of God in eternity. It is in fulfilling the second commandment that we move toward the “achievement” of the first because, as the Scriptures say, “How can you love God whom you do not see if you do not love your brother or sister (or yourself) whom you do see?”

Today, then, seems like a good day for filling up with God whom we encounter wherever we turn, in whomever we meet, with all that we are as gift.

Doing What Comes Naturally

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compassion, Ezekiel, heart, heart place, love, spirit, stony heart, tenderness, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The first reading for this morning from the prophet Ezekiel (36: 23-28) is an encouraging promise that I hope for and work toward each day. God says through Ezekiel:

I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes…You shall be my people and I will be your God.

I am interested this morning especially in the contrast between stony hearts and natural hearts. That says to me that it is in the very make-up of our being to be kind rather than hard-hearted. If we are living as we are meant to, it would be most natural for us to function from our “heart place” – the center of our being, the compassionate center – rather than (although including) our mind, the center of rationality. Meister Eckhart, a great theologian who lived from 1260 to 1328, said once, “Whatever God does, the first outburst is always compassion.” Compassion means to “feel with” and here are some of the dictionary’s synonyms: sensitivity, empathy, fellow-feeling, care, concern, solicitude, sensitivity, warmth, love, tenderness, mercy, leniency, tolerance, kindness, humanity, charity. That’s probably more than enough to get my point but interesting because there are nuances throughout that make compassion a very loud sound in God’s vocabulary. The meanings bring enough to us to reflect on for a very long time…maybe a good practice to begin today.

What’s Fair?

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fairness, generosity, generous, Jesus, Matthew, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, vineyard, workers

I’ve often heard the sentence, “All’s fair in love and war.” I can’t say that I ever thought about it much but this morning I wonder how that could be true in war. There are so many atrocities happening now in the world in places where “war” is being played out while not even declared as such. Is even “the rule of law” in conflict even fair? And what about love? People bandy that term around and often use it as a reason to take advantage or manipulate someone as if s/he were property. Real love, the example of which Jesus came to give us, is never like that. Real love is poured out in generosity spilling over the loved one in waves that never ebb. It’s manifested in all sorts of ways, mundane and heroic.

This morning Jesus is talking about generosity (MT 20:1-16) in a story that “hits us where it hurts” – in the pocketbook. It’s the parable about the workers in the vineyard who’ve been working all day and who, upon seeing those who only worked an hour because no one had hired them for the day, are expecting more than the agreed upon wage that they saw was paid to the latecomers. Imagine (or just read about) their reactions when they received just what they had agreed upon in the morning – the same amount that the latecomers had received. Jesus is trying to teach lessons about both justice and love here. He gave the early birds the fair wage that they had agreed upon and had there not been those others who showed up (were invited) at the last hour everyone would have gone home happy. The question that Jesus asks them as they grumbled is one we might ask when we are faced with what sometimes seems unfair:

Are you envious because I am generous?

I think we’re invited this morning to think about God’s preference for generosity over fairness in the way we treat others. Fairness is definitely better than stinginess but sometimes giving just a little bit more is good for the giver as well as the receiver. Going out of ourselves (not just with money, of course) can be a letting go of ego that opens our hearts and minds, changing our world just a little bit more each time.