Postscript

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Advent, authenticity, charity, courage, faith, forgiveness, honesty, humility, Joyce Rupp, kindness, Lent, loyalty, mercy, patience, Prayer Seeds, qualities, reflection, respect, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, understanding

As travelers begin homeward journeys after celebrating Thanksgiving and those of us who enjoyed blessed companionship at home find ways to re-prepare turkey and “fixins,” Joyce Rupp offers a prayer. It is only one paragraph but holds a wealth of reflection should we accept the invitation of the 13 qualities that could take us far down a road of spiritual growth. Practicing one a week for 13 weeks would take us to the cusp of Lent. One a month, if the starting line was December 2, would span 2019 in fine style as a response to the holiday we have just observed. Why not write each one on a post-it note or index card and display it on the refrigerator or the inside of the exit door to your home and watch for how it affects things during its turn as your practice? What can we lose? What will we most certainly gain?

Sower of Seeds, you have placed in our hearts the potential for many gifts of your love to grow and ripen. Charity, authenticity, mercy, honesty, humility, forgiveness, loyalty, patience, understanding, courage, kindness, faith, respect, and other qualities reflective of your goodness dwell in our interior fields and garden…(Prayer Seeds, p. 181)

Awareness, Anyone?

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authenticity, awareness, collaboration, cooperation, heart, heartbreak, Jan Phillips, No Ordinary Time, oneness, pathway, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

In a section of the Thursday reflections that I was reading this morning in No Ordinary Time by Jan Phillips, I found the following paragraph particularly appropriate for now. See if you agree.

The only access we have to our authenticity is the pathway through the heart, and we must keep this channel open, at all costs. We must look deeply into our world, into its heartbreak, into the eyes of our sisters and brothers, and let these images awaken our senses, expand our awareness, and jolt our memories back to the truth of our oneness. It is not altruism, not charity, not selflessness that will open the gates to our own magnitude. It is awareness. And when awareness is fleshed out in the experience of our lives, it culminates in the events of relationship, of collaboration and cooperation. (p. 115).

N.B. Jan will be at the Sophia Center for Spirituality in Binghamton, New York on April 28 & 29. Please visit our website for more information on the EVENTS page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Risking Life

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authenticity, Brother Roger Schutz of Taize, conviction, courage, deepest integrity, divinity, Jesus, John, Messiah, Mohandas Gandhi, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., The Sophia Center for Spirituality, truth

The seventh chapter of John’s gospel is different from the synoptics because in what we read this morning (JN 7: 1-2, 10, 25-30) Jesus is already in danger. People are wondering if he has been identified as the Messiah but dispute that possibility because they “know where he is from” – indicating that no local person could ever be the Christ. Knowing that they’re wondering about him, Jesus declares, “You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true. I know him, I am from him, and he sent me.” So at this point they tried to arrest him but no one laid a hand on him because his hour had not yet come – a typical Johannine indication of his divinity.

Reflecting on the fact of that early message of danger in the public ministry of Jesus, I began to think of other, more contemporary, people who risked speaking and acting counter-culturally and often were vilified or even killed as a result while also serving as a transformational influence on others. I first thought of people like Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Brother Roger Schutz of Taize…but then I also began considering people closer to home whose risk of injury was less probable but who staked their life on their principles putting their reputation on the line. There is a small but persistent group of people who stand and pray every Monday outside our county office building hoping to influence legislation for the poor in our community. There were two local men who stood in the cold on Main Street during the harsh winter in the run-up to the Iraq war holding signs to alert passing drivers of the danger of making war rather than peace.

There are so many examples – large and small – of such courage. And I wonder what fuels the decisions of some to speak out for love and justice while some of us remain silent. It must be the same conviction that moved Jesus: the knowledge that he was sent, that there was something greater than his safety or even his life that needed to be imaged. Today I will try to walk in the shoes of that courage, that conviction, and try to find in myself a way to my deepest integrity and authenticity, knowing that whatever I am called to comes from “the One who sent me” and that I will never be abandoned if I strive to live in the truth.