A Winding Road

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comfort, God, God acts, God speaks, God's voice, Joyce Rupp, praise, pray, psalm 16, Stephen Mitchell, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Feeling a need for inspiration I pulled out the book, Prayer Seeds, by Joyce Rupp this morning. I wanted to hear and see something that would speak of hope or certainty to some deep place in my heart with the hope that it would do the same for others. I read a lot of Sister Joyce’s prayers, all lovely and appropriate for many occasions or seasons. This is, however, a season that we might call “out-of-time” so I needed to look further. At the top of page 167, there was a quote from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of selected psalms. It read:

Unnamable God, I feel you with me at every moment. You are my food, my drink, my sunlight and the air I breathe. (Psalm 16)

This could have been enough, I suppose, but then I thought, “What about people who are not feeling God at every moment these days?” so I found a selection of Mitchell’s psalm translations at another place on the internet. I feel a need to write two of them here as sort of a stream of consciousness: in on-going sentences rather than the traditional psalmody form, as if the speaker were walking a path while thinking/speaking. I don’t know why that seems important but I hope Stephen Mitchell would forgive this diversion from his work. It is my best offering for today.

God acts within every moment and creates the world with each breath. God speaks from the center of the universe, in the silence beyond all thought. Mightier than the crash of a thunderstorm, mightier than the roar of the sea, is God’s voice silently speaking in the depths of a listening heart. (Psalm 93)

Even in the midst of great pain, Lord, I praise you for that which is. I will not refuse this grief or close myself to this anguish. Let shallow people pray for ease: “Comfort us; shield us from sorrow.” I pray for whatever you send me, and I ask to receive it as your gift. You have put a joy in my heart greater than all the world’s riches. I lie down trusting the darkness, for I know that even now you are here. (Psalm 4)

Bad News/Good News

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blame, criticism, Meg Wheatley, perseverance, praise, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The news today continues to be astoundingly distressing for our country. From confusion and distress about the Iowa caucuses with the “electronic advances” that didn’t work to the vitriol being spewed in public by our political “leaders,” one wonders where we are going as a nation. It’s difficult to speak except in one’s closest circles, and even there we are sometimes surprised with unexpected and vehement differences of opinion!

Two readings helped me this morning to keep an open mind. Meg Wheatley’s page on “Praise and Blame” from her book, Perseverance, stated obvious facts and raised some good questions. “There is absolutely no way to avoid being criticized,” she says. “Nobody gets through life being described as totally wonderful. The question is, what do we do with criticism? Do we take it in, believe it and develop self-loathing? Do we assume that a criticism of something we’ve done is a condemnation of who we are?…Can we not instantly push criticism away yet not accept it totally? Can we treat praise the same way?…Praise and blame are two sides of the same coin…In both cases we need to listen with caution and discernment…”

Good advice.. and even better was what I found in the Scriptures for today in the verse before the gospel: “Blessed are they who have kept the word with a generous heart, and yield a harvest through perseverance.”

Morning Glory

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awareness, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, dawn, praise, psalm 66, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

The deck at the back of our house is wet. I am grateful for the rain that gentled the heat of yesterday while we slept. Everything is still quiet – except the birds who must know that today is the beginning of a new week, a new moment for songs of praise. I feel like the sole witness to creation’s great, miraculous beauty as I read the refrain from Psalm 66: Let all the earth cry out to God with joy!

Some moments later, even the birds are quieting down in awe as Thomas Merton steps in from long ago with his own psalm at dawn just perfect for this holy sabbath day.

Today, Father, this blue sky lauds you. The delicate green and orange flowers of the tulip poplar tree praise you. The distant blue hills praise you, together with the sweet-smelling air that is full of brilliant light. The bickering flycatchers praise you with the lowing cattle and the quails that whistle over there. I too, Father, praise you with all these my brothers, and they give voice to my own heart and to my own silence. We are all one silence, and a diversity of voices. You have made us together, you have made us one and many, you have placed me here in the midst as witness, as awareness, and as joy.

(Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 177-178, excerpted in Thomas Merton – A Book of Hours edited by Kathleen Deignan)

Memorial Day Weekend

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an instrument of praise, celebrate life, creation speaks, defend, Lynn Bauman, Memorial Day, praise, presence of God, psalm 67, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

We sit today in the middle of what is celebrated during this weekend as the beginning of the summer season (although the calendar announces that late in June). Memorial Day weekend sees us stretching back to remember those brave people who have defended our nation in times of war and who have served throughout our history in all manner of capacities to preserve our freedom. By extension, we celebrate life: family, friends, colleagues – with picnics, baseball games in parks, laughter and prayer for peace in gathered communities of faith. At this hour we live in hope of weather that supports our plans, but in reality that doesn’t matter much; it is our presence together that creates the success of the day.

Psalm 67, the lectionary offering for today, can be considered, writes one commentator, as an international hymn of praise. Lynn Bauman says that our task as contemporary creatures is not simply to pray for ourselves, or narrowly for those around us who are dear to us, but to give voice for the whole earth. This is what it means to become “an instrument of praise” through which the whole creation speaks. Imagine yourself as creation’s voice, as an instrument through which those without voice can enter with praise the presence of God. Ancient Songs Sung Anew, p.166)

May the blessings of this weekend be great and may our gratitude mend division so that true peace may find a home in our hearts!

Kickstart

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fortress, kickstart, Lord, praise, prayer, refuge, rock, salvation, stength, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Some mornings there is no reason for the joy or distress we feel upon waking up to the day. Nothing on the calendar is more than a mild challenge, no ache is greater than the normal twinge of aging, no residuals of a delightful or disturbing dream can be named. Some of us do, however, act as the weather directs: sunny or gray depending…

It’s good to have a few “fall-back” kickstarts just in case we need something to get going. Prayer helps, and certain quick reminders from the psalms do just fine most days. Today provides one such example. I recommend saying it aloud and then keeping it written in a convenient place for any gloomy day.

I love you, O Lord, my strength, O Lord, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer. My God, my rock of refuge, my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold! Praised be the Lord, I exclaim, and I am safe from my enemies.

Merton’s View

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creation, hope, nature, praise, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours

Up early, I am sitting in the quiet darkness. Feeling the need for someone else’s words to get me going into this day I turn to Thomas Merton, whom I have not visited lately. I can feel him sitting on the porch of his small hermitage taking in the very early morning and putting pen to paper with these words.

I am under the sky. The birds are all silent. But the frogs have begun singing their pleasure in all the waters and in the warm, green places where the sunshine is. wonderful. Praise Christ, all you living creatures. For Him you and I were created. With every breath we love Him. My psalms fulfill your dim, unconscious song, O brothers in this wood. (A Book of Hours, p. 93)

It must have been summer or later morning when he wrote those words as we have a long way to go until the sun appears today, but the hope of the meteorologists and their listeners is exactly that for a second day in a row. That would be enough, I think, to convince us that spring is truly not far off and the “warm, green places” will soon grace us once again.

Kick-Start

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compromise, excuses, God, gratitude, inertia, intention, Lynn Bauman, meditation, praise, psalm 96, refreshed, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Sometimes it’s just the vocabulary of a line or two that snaps us open to possibility. Occasionally there is a convergence of small events that sparks a new knowing. Let me give this morning’s example. 

In the semi-darkness of the kitchen as I poured my coffee, Sister Paula mentioned yesterday’s blog and the essential nature of what Dave Peters had written about intention that I had quoted. Ten minutes later, settled in my chair looking out at a tree stripped of any sign of life and then back at a blank computer screen, I picked up and read Lynn Bauman’s enthusiastic translation of today’s lectionary psalm. 

Come sing to God, O earth, sing out this song anew. And bless God’s holy name in praise, for day by day we are renewed, restored, refreshed again by glory’s light. Proclaim good news among the nations of the earth, tell all the peoples everywhere God’s work, God’s ways, the wonders that God does…This is your God, bring all you have and offer it in honor of that sacred name. (Ps 96: 1-3, 8)

At that moment I recognized that I had been moving on “automatic pilot,” slipping deeper and deeper into a place of inertia. I didn’t need to search for explanations, blaming the weather or the political climate or anything external. I just knew that the discipline of intention had somehow leaked out of me and left me in that state. As I resumed reading the psalm something in me began to lift and let me know that today needs to be different.

O, heavens rejoice with fullest joy. O, earth express your deepest praise. O, oceans roar in satisfaction and delight, and lands from sea to sea join in. You trees on earth and mighty forests deep, shout out to welcome God’s return. For God has come to us as fairest judge to settle all our wrongs with right. (vs. 11-13)

No compromises today will be tolerated. No excuses will be good enough to give in. I’m due on my meditation mat right now, then to the shower and soon to work, all with determination and deep gratitude.

The First Moment

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dawn, morning, praise, silence, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, wakefulness, wisdom

I believe that I understand at this moment what Thomas Merton wrote at dawn on a day a half-century ago about waking up. It is totally silent inside my house; everyone is sleeping still or again. (The coffee is made so someone was up before sunrise.) Outside is a different story. The mourning doves punctuate the conversation that is constant and loud – some would say cacophonous – among all  the other birds large and small. And through it all the rooster reigns, splitting the silence with a voice that carries to the river and back again calling us all to wakefulness. “It is like the first morning of the world,” Merton writes, “when Adam, at the sweet voice of Wisdom, awoke from nonentity and knew her…” Only in silence, I think, is it possible to have such an experience. And so I will dress and go into the day, carrying with me the pure sounds of praise in the natural world, hoping to know the wakefulness that is available to me this day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Short and Sweet

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Ancient Songs Sung Anew, doxology, fidelity, glorify, hymn, kindness, praise, psalm 117, spiritual practice, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today’s lectionary offers us the shortest of psalms for response to the first reading. Ancient Songs Sung Anew gives a good idea for a spiritual practice using this text, saying that since it is one of the most universal in its meaning, “it could rightly be said by almost any person from any nation on earth.” Here’s the psalm, the challenge and the rest of the commentary.

Praise the Lord, all you nations; glorify God all you peoples! For steadfast is God’s kindness for us, and the fidelity of the Lord endures forever. (PS 117:1-2)

If you can, put this short Psalm to some music of your own making. Sing it to yourself till you have memorized it, and use it for a number of days as you pray for the nations of the world. Notice, though, that it is a prayer addressed to people rather than to God.

If you were to write your own short “doxology” (hymn of praise) what would you add or leave out? What should the people of the earth come to know about God which you yourself have personally experienced? (Ancient Songs Sung Anew, p. 297)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Virtual Travel

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Cynthia Bourgeault, music, praise, song, Stonington Maine, taize, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, worship

Sometimes virtual travel is almost as good as being there. So it was last evening when a large rowdy band of Christians walked up a hill in Stonington, Maine and was transported from St. Mary’s Church to the chapel at Taizé, France to worship God in song. Not unlike Stonington, Taizé is a tiny town with a stable population of just under 200 people. in the summer, however, over 100,000 people, most of them young pilgrims, descend on Taizé to sing and serve in what becomes for them a spiritual homecoming.

We were lots more than half a hundred, spilling out of pews and finding our places around the sanctuary to sing those same melodies with gusto and devotion – none more devoted and joyous than our “maestro,” Cynthia Bourgeault. It was a glorious session accompanied with piano, harp and base viol.

I thought of how music is often able touch us in places where nothing else can. Last evening was one of those times when community was clearly deepened among us. I was aware also, however, of our monthly gatherings at the Sophia Center in Binghamton, NY where we also pray in the manner of Taizé. We are sometimes only three or four souls singing to recorded music or even just with our own voices. While not as spectacular, we are certainly as fervent in our praise and live by the motto that “Those who sing, pray twice.” I recommend it highly – even if it is a solo song, a simple song, to God.