Tags
aloneness, Easter, faith journey, hear, Holy Week, light, Matthew, prayer, Seder, silence, The Sophia Center for Spirituality
We have arrived. “It is the first day”, the saying goes, “of the rest of our lives.” It is the first day of April, the month when we expect great flowerings – in our weather, our gardens and, hopefully, our life. We have survived the winter, some with great stress and destruction, and though it seems to be hanging on, we need to remember that the resistance of Mother Earth can be as strong as our own when it comes to change.
I just went back and read each of my posts for the past week. It was a different kind of Holy Week for me. I wait each year to dive into the meaningful rituals that put me in touch with the life and death of Jesus like no other moment in the year has the power to achieve. I have done that at home this year, having spent much of the winter in respiratory distress and not willing to give or bring home the germs so universally prevalent in the crowds of worshippers during this season. Oh yes, and by Palm Sunday, I had contracted a serious cold and sinus infection that sealed my decision to walk the way of the week at home. It was a surrender that was difficult but, in the end, meaningful.
Going to one’s room and closing the door is a well-known directive offered by Jesus in the gospel of Matthew (6:6) as a significant way to pray. He promised that the God to whom we “pray in secret” in that silence and aloneness will hear and reward the prayer. I can say that this has happened in flashes of insight during the week, coming to a deeper sense of what it must have been like for Jesus and how the events can influence my willingness to live more directly in the manner of Jesus. The most significant learning from the week, however, has been the recognition of the importance of community for spiritual support.
Each year on Holy Thursday, my local community celebrates a Seder meal, commemorating the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples and in solidarity with the worldwide Jewish community celebrating the Passover. We eat the ritual foods and recount the history of the Hebrews in the same manner as our Jewish neighbors. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem and give thanks for the providence of God that has kept us safe in the past year.
As we concluded the Seder this year, and as I have reflected today on the entire week, I recognize the significance to my faith journey of the presence of companions. While I am able to meditate in private on the articles of faith and the events that inform our practice, it is the energy shared in the rituals as well as the experience of the rituals themselves by the gathered community that is at the heart of it all. I can sing alone and hear my voice proclaim a gospel text alone, but the light of the Easter candle burns brightly only as the light is passed from person to person so that it illuminates the whole room.
I will carry my portion of the light, hopefully as it has been made brighter by this insight, back into the community of the faithful in the coming days. Writing that, I remember a quote from long ago that seems apropos for my metaphor and a good image of possibility. Simple but profound, it declares: Easter people everywhere, shining Jesus love!
Happy, blessed Easter to all of us.
Today is not a happy remembrance in the calendar of Church feasts. It is the commemoration of “the Holy Innocents,” the victims of Herod’s massacre of all the baby boys under two years old. Herod was determined to eliminate the possibility that someone – a “new-born” king (Jesus) – would usurp his power. Since he had no idea of where that child might be found, his rage prompted the terrible deed that left so many mothers bereft. It was a fruitless gesture, as violence always is, because Jesus and his parents were well on their way to Egypt when the massacre occurred.
I just spent about a half hour reading on the internet about sheep. I never got past the basic information about things like their color (some are very dark brown while most are white), life expectancy (10 – 12 years), amazing peripheral vision (270-320 degrees) which allows them to see behind them, two sets of teeth, excellent hearing and scent glands in front of their eyes and between their toes!!
I knew, of course, that yesterday was Halloween, i.e. “All Hallows’ Eve” but it’s still a bit of a shock this morning to wake up in November! Suddenly the trees are bare and the temperature outside is so low that one can hardly hold on any more to the season of autumn. It’s rather ironic that we celebrate many of our grandest holidays during the darkest time of the year. Perhaps it’s necessary that it be that way to keep us positive through the darkness. We begin today in Christianity with the feast of All Saints.
The gospel in today’s lectionary is probably the most commonly known prayer in Christianity: The Lord’s Prayer, also known as The Our Father. The text is found in two of the four canonical gospels, Matthew (6:9-13) and Luke (11:2-4). Most of us know it as it comes from Matthew’s version, appearing in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. Reading Luke this morning made me think that his version might have been easier to learn for children who had trouble memorizing prayers; it’s very succinct and yet seems to cover all the requisite items for our living. It comes in Luke’s gospel as the response of Jesus when he himself was praying and one of his disciples asked him to teach them to pray. Luke reports him telling them: “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed (holy) be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test.” Period – the end.
I remember the day, early in his papacy, that Pope Francis said, “I am a sinner” in public. The quote, as we say now, “went viral.” It’s rare to have a public figure admit during an interview or a widely attended speech that s/he has imperfections. We all know that none of us is perfect but admitting it to the world – especially using the word sin to describe our actions – is not a common practice. At first I was dismayed about his admission because I think that religious people tend to focus more on sin than on giftedness and good deeds. I grabbed onto Barbra Streisand’s line that “there are no mistakes, just lessons to be learned” and used it to talk about sin from that perspective. I still think we either overplay our imperfections sometimes or try to hide them by prevaricating (i.e. “skirting around the truth or delaying giving an answer, especially to avoid telling the whole truth”) but being able to follow the Pope’s example can be very freeing. If we are honest enough to offer our true selves to others we may find that we are accepted in spite of ourselves because nobody else is perfect either!
Since I need to be ready by 7:00AM to make breakfast for our energetic group of workshop participants this morning, I hoped there would be a brief message in today’s lectionary readings that would serve as a worthy point of reflection for the day. I found not one, but two – so take your pick or choose them both since joined together they provide both a goal and a promise!
Today is one of those times when inspiration is very easy to come by, just from about five minutes with the Scripture texts from the daily lectionary. See if you find the story from the Hebrew Scriptures consonant with the Christian gospel. To me it’s a “no brainer” with a most important shared theme.
It’s amazing what you can find when you start researching one little word like “fair.” We know it to be a noun and an adjective – with differing meanings, so it’s necessary to put it in context so that you know whether you’re talking about going to a carnival or watching the weather. I went to Merriam-Webster, the most trusted etymological source in my youth, just on a whim, and found 10 examples before I even moved to the nouns or added an “ly” to make it an adverb.