Always A Solution

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creativity, Jesus, loaves and fishes, openness, possibility, problem solving, solution, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The gospels are replete with stories that teach a lesson. Sometimes I just have to smile at what looks like a “throw-away sentence” but is really a clue to the way Jesus functioned and a lesson that he was offering to his followers. Today, for example, we have one of the “feeding of the 5,000” stories—the one that Jesus uses to challenge the creativity of his followers by asking a question. “Where shall we buy bread for all these people?” he asked Philip. We get a clue to his purpose as the gospel then says, “He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.” (I would have hated to be in Philip’s shoes as creativity is not my best gift…and I’m not fond of being tested like that.) Philip couldn’t get his mind around a possible answer to the question so it was a good thing that there were others more creative in the band. Andrew’s answer of 5 barley loaves and 2 small fish from a boy in the crowd was clearly not a solution but it got the miracle going.

Sometimes we don’t have to have the solution to a problem all by ourselves; it’s good to have companions who can add to the solution. I have always been amazed at what can happen if a group comes together with a willingness to help and an openness to possibilities—even if some of the suggestions seem impossible, because sometimes that’s all that’s needed to get the creative juices of the group flowing. Jesus knew that and he trusted the group he had gathered. It’s up to us to do the same, letting go of wanting to be in charge but willing to add what we can to a solution. We may not be able to feed 5,000 people in the end but if the love generated in the group takes over, it can be a beautiful thing to see what God can create in us.

A Prayer of the Heart

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harmony, healing, heart, hurt, impatience, Joyce Rupp, kindness, openness, Prayer Seeds, rigidity, strife, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

As I ponder this season of Advent which is different from any other in any year that I have ever known, a familiar quote by Henry Van Dyke comes to me that begins: “Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear…” It reminds me that time is a construct that we cannot control or manage. We have to take it as it comes and live it. How to do that is the challenge of the day for me. Looking for some help in meeting it, I open Joyce Rupp’s Prayer Seeds and find a prayer that is reminiscent of the Prayer of St. Francis but with a bit of a different slant…It suffices for me today.

All Encompassing Heart, where there is impatience, let me bring kindness. Where there is strife, let me bring harmony. Where there is hurt, let me bring healing. Where there is rigidity, let me bring openness. Where there is judgment, let me bring understanding.

O Wide and Spacious Love, turn me toward your unconditional acceptance. I seek to be a vessel of your great love. Let me carry your love into all parts of my life and pour it forth willingly and generously.

Health from the Inside

Tags

Book of Acts, healings, intuitives, miracles, modalities, openness, Peter, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, visions

The Book of Acts that follows the four gospels is full of miraculous stories – of visions and healings that sound impossible to us who live in a world where concrete evidence and witnesses must accompany everything. This morning’s lesson from Acts concerns Peter’s vision of all kinds of animals that God was commanding Peter to slaughter and eat. Peter demurred saying he would not do so because “nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” (ACTS 11:1-18) The response came quickly that “what God has made clean, you are not to call profane.” Following that directive cost Peter a lot because it contradicted Jewish law, but his steadfast obedience was essential to the growth of Christianity.

We live in a time when inspiration is calling from many quarters for us to go deeper than logic to find answers to great questions. We are being asked (rather like Peter) to broaden our capacity for what we have eschewed in the past on religious or cultural grounds. Just as Peter was directed to go beyond a religious law that separated Jew from Gentile, so too are we coming to understand that the embrace of people of other faiths does not weaken our own beliefs but strengthens them and allows acceptance of persons in the process. Furthermore a renewed openness to alternative healing methods rather than what we call “traditional” modalities in health care has opened up the possibility of a more holistic view of life. While we marvel at the advances in science – miraculous in themselves, to be sure – we can benefit from the benefits of energy work and complementary therapies for wellness that can co-exist with our visits to the doctor. Moreover, a consciousness of medical intuitives and other spiritual practitioners can teach us that it is not enough to be aware of bodily concerns. We need to heed the totality of body, mind and spirit in our quest for wellness and trust our capacity for participation in our own healing process. All this leads me to question myself:

How willing am I to be healthy? When will I get serious about maintaining a healthy diet and exercise regime? How willing am I to listen to those who offer new ideas about modalities that can help me to live fully in body, mind and spirit? Do I accept and welcome everyone I meet? How do my attitudes play into my personal health plan?

Big questions…and extraordinary possibility ahead if I am willing to attend to the answers.

 

 

 

 

 

Rhythm

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chanting, conscious work, dancing, knowing, openness, present moment, rhythym, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, universal peace, wisdom, Wisdom School, wisdom work, worhip

As I try to stay in the present moment this morning, I am aware that today is the last full day of our leadership training event. I can feel myself almost physically leaning forward as at the starting line of a race, even while attempting to be present to my typing. One of the words that we have heard often in the last three days as we process the sessions of our time together is rhythm. The word itself is a rare combination of consonants with only the  y to act as vowel. I hear the singsong “a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y” English lesson of my youth and still wonder why that function is only “sometimes.”

I am glad for the “y” in this word as it made me curious enough to look up the word “vowel” on the internet. In a flurry of words, I learned (or learned again) that a vowel is a sound produced with an open vowel tract where some of the air must escape through the mouth. It is frictionless and continuant. Unlike with consonants, there is no build-up of air pressure along the vocal tract. Also noted is that the vowel forms the peak of a syllable. The word rhythm obviously needs that letter y!

That seems to me a perfect description of the way we have been proceeding through these days. There is a felt sense of openness among the participants and no pressure for anyone to act in any way that is other than authentic, whether we are speaking, chanting or moving around the room in a dance of universal peace. We have been blessed with good weather, the only rain a swift downpour in the middle of Thursday night, that has allowed us to exercise our powers of conscious working together – in rhythm with one another – outside stacking wood or inside chopping vegetables. We have recognized the wisdom in the group in such an organic way that our purpose has already been fulfilled, it seems. The challenge will be to stay in the moment for this last day and a half so as not to miss those moments of pure knowing which are sure to come in our interaction and especially in our worship together. I trust, when we are taking leave of each other tomorrow noon, our sense and perhaps our parting words will be the familiar: “It is finished in beauty.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mercy Within Mercy Within Mercy…

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broken heart, disdain, his mercy endures forever, Joan Chittister, justice, legalism, merciful, mercy, openness, pity, psalm 136, rejection, show mercy, The Monastic Way, The Sign of Jonas, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, understanding

This morning as I read Psalm 136, I recalled that I used to find it tedious in its repetition (every other line!) of the refrain, God’s mercy endures forever. In speaking of God’s action for the Israelites, it can become a singsong recording of their history: God led them through the wilderness, for his mercy endures forever; and made their land a heritage, for his mercy endures forever…and freed us from our foes, for his mercy endures forever… It was easy in our communal prayer to lose consciousness of the meaning of what we were saying (sometimes not really praying). It was when I first heard the definition of mercy as “fierce bonding love” rather than God’s willingness to “take pity on us” that my sense of what was happening in that psalm began to take on the deeper meaning of a real and lasting relationship with a beloved people.

That reminder was enhanced by a serendipitous discovery of the January 2008 issue of The Monastic Way that I found stuck in a book next to my chair this morning. I hadn’t intended to talk about mercy this morning – desiring something that would match the intensity of feeling in our country in the wake of the hateful demonstrations of the week. When I saw Joan Chittister’s monthly reflection pamphlet, however, I knew it was the perfect theme. If we are to become a mirror of God’s work in the world, we cannot ignore the quality of mercy. Some of Sister Chittister’s daily thoughts were the following:

• We pray for mercy; we expect mercy. What we find difficult to do is to be merciful to those in need of it. Or as George Eliot says, “We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.”
• The great spiritual question is not whether or not this person, this situation deserves mercy. It’s about whether or not we ourselves are capable of showing it.
• The major holy-making moment in our own lives may be when we receive the mercy we know we do not deserve. Then, we may never again substitute disdain for understanding, rejection for openness, legalism for justice. “I think perhaps it is a better world,” Helen Waddell writes, “if one has a broken heart. Then one is quick to recognize it, elsewhere.”

These “words” deserve some attention, I believe – perhaps even a little soul-searching. In summary, I offer the stated theme of this valuable reflection pamphlet printed on the cover page. It comes from Thomas Merton’s book, The Sign of Jonas, and offers what Joan Chittister calls a definition of God.

I have always overshadowed you with my mercy…Have you had sight of Me, My child? Mercy within mercy within mercy.

 

 

 

 

 

The Fuller’s Lye

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clean, fuller, growth, Jesus, lessons, Malachi, openness, pain, prophecy, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, willingness

I’m thinking about laundry this morning, specifically the necessity of working really hard to get spots off clothes – usually new ones that I’ve just worn for the first or second time. It would be nice to just drop a little bleach on the salad dressing or beet juice or whatever has created the offending stain, but that only means total ruin of the garment. It might have helped the biblical fuller though – the one from the third chapter of Malachi (3:2) where “the one who is to come” will be like the refiner’s fire or like the fuller’s lye. I remember from my childhood that lye soap was the strongest kind, used in the big laundry sink where clothes got really scrubbed on the washboard. It’s a vague memory, blotted out by modern conveniences like a wringer-less washing machine and every kind of spot remover possible to human invention. Our lives have been made easier in lots of ways but it would be unfortunate to lose the meaning of this analogy in Malachi’s prophecy.

I understand the process of what happens in a refinery to produce pure gold or silver – leaving the dross behind in that hottest of hot fires. Less easy to comprehend, perhaps, in this age of progress is the work of the fuller, who not only scrubbed and picked at the material (usually wool, I think) but beat it with a stick or some other hard object to get out all the natural oils and impurities before weaving or selling it.

I think, as I look back on my life, there have been times of significant growth occasionally brought on by the pain that can accompany purification in some way.  More often, however, it is simply life experience that has taught me the lessons necessary to moving deeper in consciousness. I’ve missed some of the signs along the way, but those are the times when something more blatant happens to wake me up and helps me to let go of what holds me bound. Interestingly, as I get older, the fire seems less hot and the lye less abrasive or caustic as I welcome rather than resist the refining as a step closer to “the finished product.”

I think that might just be one of the things that Jesus came to teach us, so that as we welcome him on Sunday, we do it with an openness and a willingness to learn the hard lessons. In the end, that should stand us in good stead to greet God as brilliant garments wrapped in purest gold.

Fill in the Blanks

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Calcutta, canonization, catching people, disciples, follow, James, Jesus, John, Luke, Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa, openness, poor, Simon, Sisters of Loretto, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

One of the most difficult things sometimes about reading the gospels, I think, is not what they say but what they don’t say. Today’s lectionary tells Luke’s story of Simon and his companion fishermen, James and John. It’s a familiar story (LK 5:1-11) where Jesus gets into one of their boats as they are washing their nets after a dismal night of catching nothing. Jesus is teaching from the boat (probably to get a little distance from the gathering crowd) and when he finishes, turns to Simon and tells him to “go deep” and start fishing all over again. Simon must have already had some experience of Jesus, first because he doesn’t seem fazed by Jesus just getting into his boat and asking him to go out a short distance from shore to teach the people. His response to the request to start fishing again was similarly instructive. Although he did register the complaint about having fished all night with no positive result, he acquiesces to the directive by saying, “…but at your command I will lower the nets.” The result is, of course, almost more fish than the nets can accommodate.

I’m most interested in the last line of today’s text, however. After Jesus assures them that they have a future in the trade of “catching” people instead of fish, Luke finishes the story with this conclusion: When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him. That’s it. No follow-up instructions. No conversation with their families. No packing or making arrangements for travel…Nothing but response. The next paragraph in Luke’s gospel is about the cure of lepers. We never get to hear the conversation between Simon (Peter) and his wife about this conversion experience – or about anything for that matter.

(Blessed) Mother Teresa of Calcutta will be canonized a saint this weekend with a huge ceremony in Rome. Her autobiography records her desire to enter the religious life from an early age to become a missionary, so she was already on a spiritual path, but her life, like those fishermen, took a very radical turn one day from being a teacher and principal of a school as a member of a traditional religious life in the congregation of the Sisters of Loreto. Already disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta where she was teaching, she was on the train on her way to her annual retreat when she received what she named “the call within the call.” She describes it as follows: ” I was to leave the convent and help the poor by living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith.” That was in September of 1946. We can now read of the struggles she faced between that day and the beginning in 1948 of the work of her new congregation, the Missionaries of Charity. Her life has been chronicled by many, but on that day, I wonder if she had any idea of what lay ahead as she promised, in addition to the traditional religious vows, “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor.”

Change comes to all of us, bidden or unbidden, slowly or “just like that” – in an instant by some cataclysmic event. Sometimes we long to know how others have negotiated such change so that we might know what to do should it happen that way to us. Since everyone’s path is personal, however, we can only learn to walk it by walking. Openness to what God asks each and every day is probably the best preparation for what comes next, living in the present moment is all we have and the only “place” we are called to inhabit. So with an open heart and a listening ear, let us go forward into this moment…and then the next.

 

St. Stanislaus

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cultural differences, Eastern European, family, hard work, integrity, moral corruption, openness, speaking truth to power, St. Stanislaus Kostka, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, values, welcoming

When I came to this lovely area of Central New York many years ago to teach in high school I was introduced to a wonderful community whose Eastern European parents and grandparents had come here to work in the shoe factories of the Endicott-Johnson Company. The Johnson brothers were benevolent visionaries who cared about their people, built houses for their employees to buy at reasonable cost and kept everyone on the payroll even after the stock market crash of 1929 and during the Great Depression. Polish and Slovak influence was felt everywhere, from the arches on east and west ends of Johnson City proclaiming it the “Home of the Square Deal” to the churches and grocery stores that carried pierogies, homemade sausage  and kolaczki that would melt in your mouth. Having been raised in an Irish ghetto, I was grateful to be welcomed into this very different yet similarly loving culture that even added a smattering of Polish vocabulary to my education.

One gap in that education, however, concerned the patron saint of Poland, St. Stanislaus Kostka, bishop of Krakow. I knew his name, of course, but that was the extent of my knowledge. Today, his feast day, I finally learned that his life was rather brief (1030-1079) because of his outspokenness about the unjust wars and immoral actions of King Boleslaus II. It is a testament to the integrity and beloved status of Stanislaus that when the king ordered his soldiers to kill the bishop they refused. Thus, the king killed him with his own hands. As a result of this outrage, the king was forced to flee to Hungary and spent the rest of his life as a penitent in a Benedictine abbey. The commentary about St. Stanislaus puts him in the category of John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Thomas More and even Jesus himself who pointed out the moral corruption in the religious and political leadership of their day. “It is a risky business,” the commentary proclaims, and calls us to examine our willingness to speak out in our own time as the need arises.

Today is a day for me to touch back into those early experiences of my adulthood and be grateful for the influence of strong, steady, devoted people who built into this community the values of hard work, family and speaking truth to power. In addition to this experience of welcome into a heritage different from mine, I realize the necessity now of openness to a broader world where the immigrants come from more distant lands, seeking the same goal – a better life, yet perhaps as an escape from danger. Am I ready to open my heart to them? Do I welcome their stories, their cultural difference? Will I defend their right to the freedom I have always enjoyed? Ponderous questions, these. I had better get about my day…

The Audacity of Mercy

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bravery, broken heart, courage, daring, Holy Week, Jesus, Joan Chittister, justice, Lenten journey, love, mercy, openness, Palm Sunday, Pilate, pluck, The Audacity of Mercy, The Monastic Way, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, truth, understanding

This morning as I was pondering the lectionary readings for the day I came across an old (2005) edition of Joan Chittister’s daily reflection pamphlet, The Monastic Way, that I had saved. Long before Francis had been elected Pope and proclaimed this a year of mercy, Sister Joan had spent a month writing about “The Audacity of Mercy.” Of course she was not talking about audacity in its negative “Well! The audacity of that woman to tell me what to do!” but rather of audacity in a positive context, meaning daring, bravery, courage, pluck…Her reflections are brief but always to the point and the one that caught my attention most of all this morning was the following:

The major holy-making moment in our own lives may be when we receive the mercy we know we do not deserve. Then, we may never again substitute disdain for understanding, rejection for openness, legalism for justice. “I think perhaps it is a better world,” Helen Waddell writes, “if one has a broken heart. Then one is quick to recognize it elsewhere.

As we come ever closer to the events of Holy Week, we would do well to remember this lesson and look for ourselves in the crowds that Jesus will encounter: those shouting praises on Palm Sunday, those jeering as he stands before Pilate or carries his cross…or even those of his disciples that go missing or deny him when it gets dangerous. Shall we judge them, or would we do better to carry a mirror with us into every situation to see where we stand? What is our “mercy quotient?” May you, may I, always be found standing on the side of the mercy that is born of truth and love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Prayer for Wisdom

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bouquet of life, dying well, fear, gracefully, let go, living well, Macrina Wiederkehr, openness, Saturday, seven sacred pauses, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, thoughtfully, weekend

For many of us, Saturday is a day to take a breath, pick up the fragments of the week that is ending and get ready for what is to come in the dawning of the week that begins tomorrow. After walking downstairs making a mental list of tasks for the day, pouring my coffee and coming back to boot up my computer, I opened Macrina Wiederkehr’s book, Seven Sacred Pauses, and found what seems to me a perfect prayer for this day. May it be a guide for us as we proceed.

Give us the grace of tender seeing. Help us to recognize and honor the wise one who lives at the core of our being. May we always be open to being taught. May we be able to let go of our work at the end of the day. May we learn to bless and affirm each person who passes through the hours of our day. May we lose our fear of those things which are transient. May we learn the art of living well and dying well. Teach us to end the day slowly, thoughtfully, gracefully. Soften the driven part of us that we may learn to relax and offer all we are and all we do as a bouquet of life at the close of each day.(p. 127)