Step By Step

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Ancient Songs Sung Anew, heart, insights, law, lesson, messages, prayers, psalm 119, soul, teach, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, thought, treasure, truth, vision

Psalm 119, the longest in the book of 150 psalms, has 176 verses and can be the study of a lifetime. In a commentary this morning I read that the subject of these prayers is the hard learning one gains in light of a multitude of hardships and circumstances encountered on the spiritual path…Experiences are often repeated again and again. As we go over the same territory learning it in new ways, truth becomes grounded. Insights are gained from each spiral of ascending experience.

How true that seems to me! The great thing is that as we grow older and if we are paying attention it becomes easier to accede to what is being taught. Our resistance to the messages and thinking we are right all the time wanes and God’s voice becomes stronger – but only if we are listening deeply.

Today’s lectionary section is early in the psalm and sounds either like a young person who is full of enthusiasm for the journey, or someone who knows from experience the pitfalls and is ready to surrender to God’s dream. Either way, I find it a lovely morning offering.

Even now, O Lord, if you will but teach me, I shall keep as treasure all you say. Give me an understanding heart to grasp what lies alone in you, the outlines of your law, your thought; imprint them on my soul. My deep desire is for a heart whose compass-point is aimed at your true north and not some weaker pole. I desire eyes as well that do not wander but hold your vision fast for all eternity. (vs. 33-37, Ancient Songs Sung Anew)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where Is Your Heart?

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law, love, love your neighbor as yourself, my voice, practice, Romans, shouting from the rooftops, solution, St. Paul, Texas shootings, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, theory, victims, violence

Our first real frost today has its effect on arthritic limbs even for those of us who feel it only in tiny places (one finger perhaps). It seems an appropriate metaphor for our  state of heart after seeing the 26 faces of those killed in church on Sunday in a small town in Texas, victims from 17 months to 77 years old. “Frozen with shock,” disbelief and overwhelming sadness at this latest outrageous act, I read again today from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Whatever other commandments there may be are summed up, Paul says, in this saying, namely, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law. (ROM 13:10)

This is a time when “shouting from the rooftops” to get the attention of the masses seems the only recourse. Theory must move to practice in the face of such tragedy that seems to be escalating too rapidly to ignore any longer. What am I called to do to add my voice to a solution? It is not enough now to lament the violence. What is possible right now to me? To you? To us, in fulfillment of the law?

 

 

 

 

 

Whose Law?

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commands, law, laws, psalm 119, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wisdom, wisdom's gift, wise

Sometime during my career as a high school French teacher it occurred to me that my name means laws in French. (The plural of la loi is les lois.) That seems rather obvious and not an earth-shattering revelation but I guess the word must have come up in the singular if used at all in class; for some reason it never dawned on me. When it did, it made me consider how it fit my personality. Although I have continued to be a law-abiding citizen, I have tried to be a bit less strident in taking stands on complicated issues.

And then there is God’s law. This morning’s psalm response (Ps. 119: 97-102) was one of those where each verse is quite brief so that the refrain is repeated many times in quick succession. It began with the following: Lord, I love your commands. How I love your law, O Lord! It is my meditation all the day. Lord, I love your commands. The refrain repeats five more times around the verses in what seemed to me like staccato rhythm. It gave me pause, first because usually the only people I hear speak of loving law are lawyers, but secondly because it seems there is a wide gap sometimes in the law of the world and the law of God. Human laws are not always made these days (it seems) for the good of the whole but rather skewed away from “the common folk.” God’s law of universal love is quite different. To be fair there are many wonderful people who work tirelessly to narrow the gap between the two but it is often a thankless task.

Today I pray that people will come to a better understanding of the words of the psalmist, seen here in a contemporary translation. This is the way I choose to live the law in identification with my name!

My heart and mind are centered on your will. O, how I love to walk in your ways. For as I ponder these my wisdom grows. They make me wise beyond my years. I’m wiser now than many teachers and all the teachings that this world can give, because I hold to wisdom’s gift. I’m stronger than my many foes or fears of them. As you yourself instructed, I’ll turn my feet away from every evil on this path through life. You are the teacher and the teaching, Lord.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Weight of Evidence

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condemn, discernment, guilt, innocence, Jesus, John, judge, judgment, justice, law, Nicodemus, Pharisees, psalm 7, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Both the psalm and the gospel in this morning’s lectionary remind me of a basic principle of law in the United States of America, i.e. “innocent until proven guilty.” We are still in chapter 7 of John’s gospel where people are divided about Jesus. As yesterday, they are convinced he cannot be the messiah because he comes from Galilee but the guards say to the authorities, “No one has ever spoken like this man!” The Pharisees are still resistant asking, “Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?” (as if position alone yields probity.) It is Nicodemus that enters then and asks my question: “Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?” Would that this question always be raised at moments of personal and/or public judging in our lives!

The psalmist turns the job of judging over to God, as in psalm 7 he cries out: Judge us, judge me, judge everything and all that’s in your care. Weigh me on the scale of innocence, according to your law, and as you establish justice, bring evil to an end. For this I know, you are the source of justice done, the fairest judge of all. You know what’s in the human heart to the very secrets of the soul. You are also the great protecting one, you shield the good, defending all that’s true. (vs. 8-11)

The faculty of judgment in the manner of discernment is essential to our lives in assessing what is beneficial and what is not – from what we ought to eat, to wear, to spend our money on, etc. When judging moves into the public arena, however, where we begin to assess the intelligence, worthiness of respect, good character – or any other quality – of another person or the rightness in a situation, we ought to be sure we have spent the time and energy it takes to really make an informed judgment. And, in truth, we would be better off leaving that kind of judgment to God, letting love be the measure of our lives. I will try today to notice how quickly I move to judgment in my thoughts throughout the day and I will try to keep those thoughts to myself for the benefit of all!

Complex Construction

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commands, decrees, deeper wisdom, good, law, ordinances, precepts, promise, psalm 119, statutes, trials, words

Today’s responsorial psalm is a selection of verses from Psalm 119, starting with verse 66. I knew that this psalm was the longest by far but was reminded of how complex it is by the footnote in my Bible which names it “an alphabetic psalm of didactic nature” and elaborates: “In the form of prayer it inculcates the excellence of keeping the divinely revealed law…there is a constant repetition of the main theme with numerous disconnected variations of it. The external form is based on an elaborately constructed scheme. The psalmist chose eight synonyms – law, statutes, commands, ordinances, decrees, precepts, words and promise – and in his strophes of eight verses apiece planned perhaps to use a different synonym in each verse. In the present form of the text, this plan is not perfectly carried out…but the psalm is the longest by far and each of the eight verses in the first strophe begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, each verse of the second strophe with the second letter and so on for all 22 letters of the alphabet. Hence, there are 176 verses in the psalm.” Below are a few of the verses from today (in alternate translation) that speak to the beauty of God’s law and the psalmist’s desire to know and follow.

So good are you, you bring forth good; instruct me in the pattern of this deeper wisdom…I’ve slowly come to know your perfect word, your ways, even in my deepest trials, for there your love is always present to console; this is your promise made. Your love shall come and I shall live according to its law, my soul’s delight…So I will not forget your precepts, Lord; by them you hold me up in life. All that I am is yours…I seek to be the image of your word.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of Rigidity and Willingness

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common sense, God, Jesus, law, love calling, Matthew, mercy, Pharisees, Pope Francis, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today Jesus speaks about law and common sense. It’s the gospel about being hungry on the Sabbath and walking through a field of grain. (MT 12:1-8) As the disciples begin to pick the heads and eat the grain, the Pharisees start complaining that the law says it’s unlawful behavior on the Sabbath. It strikes me as interesting that there are Pharisees in this band of followers. Either they are being drawn to Jesus (and still unable, it seems, to let go of the rigidity of the law) or they are spies, planted to gather evidence against Jesus as a blasphemer. Whatever the reason, it gives Jesus an opportunity to teach a lesson. He quotes the Scriptures about David and his companions going into the temple on the Sabbath and eating the bread of offering as evidence that God’s law supersedes human law and that sometimes conditions call for different behaviors; we should not be slaves to disciplines that have been given for our good but sometimes grow into practices that need to be put aside for good reason. His charge to the Pharisees is to learn the deep meaning of the axiom, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Jesus is not suggesting disregard for the law but, when necessary, response to a higher law. The example of the Good Samaritan comes to mind. If everyone followed the law of separation in that case, the Samaritan would have died at the side of the road.

It’s easy for us to say, “Well, of course the priest – or anyone who passed by on the other side of the road – should have helped the man.” I think, however, that we might consider laws in our own lives that some of us would never think of disobeying in our quest for perfection. It’s difficult, if you have been raised in a religious household learning all the tenets of your faith, to allow exception in cases where love must overcome obedience – where mercy is called for. In his book, A Church of Mercy, Pope Francis says the following:

God always thinks with mercy: do not forget this. God always thinks mercifully…God thinks like the Samaritan who did not pass by the unfortunate man, pitying him and looking at him from the other side of the road, but helped him without asking anything in return – without asking if he was a Jew, a pagan or a Samaritan, whether he was rich or poor: he asked for nothing. He went to help him; God is like this. (p. 73)

Today I will try to notice where I experience unwillingness to bend inside myself and what would be the cost of letting it go if love is calling me beyond myself.

The Rabbi’s Yoke

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burden, cultural, inner motivation, intention, Jesus, law, Matthew, rabbi, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Torah, yoke

A clear image comes to mind when Jesus says this morning (MT 11:28-30) “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.” I see a team of oxen joined together by a wooden structure that keeps them together and joins them to a wagon that is full of supplies of some kind. That “collar” that joins them has always been known to me as their yoke. Whether or not the “burden” that the oxen are pulling is heavy or light, they themselves are heavy and so the yoke appears that way too.

Some years ago I heard a talk that gave me a new interpretation making the “yoke” Jesus was talking about more plausibly light. It seems that as rabbis began to interpret the Torah for their students they stressed different things in the law: care for the poor, personal piety, proper worship, etc. It did not mean that they jettisoned part of the given law but rather that they considered the community to which they were speaking, the cultural situation, etc. (just as we know the gospel writers did) and taught what was most needed for the people who were their disciples. Their interpretation came to be called their yoke. So when Jesus spoke of his yoke being easy and his burden light, he was calling us to the way of love and to what he came to reveal of the Kingdom of God. For those who truly grasp his message, it is not a question of the outer experiences of our lives being the determining factor in our assessment of ease or difficulty, but rather the inner motivation and intention that allow a vision and a path of light. It does not mean that we will never feel burdened but that we will be able to withstand our trials in light of the example of Jesus who came to share his “yoke” with us.

Welcome Laws?

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alert, enlightened, law, Matthew, psalm 19, rules, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I was captivated this morning by a verse from the Psalm (19) which is one of my favorites because it speaks in the first half of the majesty of the universe. I rarely get past the part that begins, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God…” and sings of the grandeur through verse seven. I suppose (and will investigate later) that the second half of the psalm could be continuing the theme by looking at the stable patterns in the workings of the universe when it speaks of the laws and decrees of the Lord. Nevertheless, before I realized that it was psalm 19 I was reading (from verse 8 to 15) I was taken by the notion that The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The command of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eye. I began to muse on a common response to the word “law” which often, it seems today, is effort toward “getting around” it or at least resisting internally what the law calls us to if we haven’t been part of creating it. Now some of this is more appropriate to a discussion on the everyday “rules” that govern our lives. On the whole though, I’m not sure most of us rejoice in coming up against a law that we need to follow if it entails work or discomfort for us.

When I read the gospel from Matthew 25 about the sheep and the goats it all began to coalesce. Living with the love of God at the center of our hearts we are enabled to see clearly and respond to the needs of those who cross our path. The impulse to reach out to those we see becomes automatic, such that if we were questioned about our acts of charity and justice, we would hardly think of them as such. Rather it would spring from our desire for God and God’s reign to be realized in the world. No hesitation – just doing from our being.

Today I will work (again) toward willingness, asking myself whose hunger I can satisfy today, what thirst I will notice in another, how I might welcome a stranger or companion someone who is ill. Might I even find a key to unlock the prison in which someone sits? Only if my heart is alert and my eye enlightened. May it be so.