And So It Begins

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conversion of hearts, good deeds, Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus, Joel, love, Matthew, repentance, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The prophet Joel wrote a very brief but compelling addition to the Hebrew Scriptures. We hear him today very much in a hurry to move people to repentance. After his affirmation of God’s willingness to forgive what seems a serious period of disregard for good behavior (“Even now“, says the Lord, “return to me with your whole heart…”) Joel blasts forth imperatives to call all the people to attention. “Blow the trumpet. Proclaim a fast. Call an assembly. Gather the people. Notify the congregation. Assemble the elders. Gather the children. Let the bridegroom quit his chamber…” Clearly, Joel sees this moment as paramount for salvation.

In Matthew’s gospel this morning we find advice of a quieter kind. Jesus says, “Do not blow a trumpet before you…” and “Don’t let your left hand know what your right is doing” as you go about doing good. The time is past for us to be showy about our good works but the day is just beginning for the necessity of greatness of heart. Look for nothing in return for your good deeds. Just turn to Jesus as a model and practice what he preached. Make this Lent about conversion of heart in small ways which will result in a transformation that may be imperceptible each day but will lead to a grand celebration of the Easter mysteries when we will know Christ in a deeper beating of our hearts. Love is always its own reward.

Even Now…

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A Sleep of Prisoners, Christopher Fry, divine heart, fasting, holy season, Joel, Lent, love, renewal, repentance, soul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Valentine's Day

As the curtain opens on another season of Lent and we gear up for repentance and renewal, the prophet Joel is way out ahead of us announcing God’s invitation. “Even now,” God says…”Even now,” the poet Christopher Fry writes in the play, A Sleep of Prisoners, “when wrong comes up to face us till we take the longest stride of soul we ever took…”

I am so captivated by those two words that seem to offer so much hope in a dark time. Even now…I begin reflecting on the world situation to find what needs to be redeemed by the poet’s words but I’m quickly thrown back to the personal as Joel continues. “Rend your hearts,” he says, “not your garments.” It’s a necessary course correction that has been needing attention for some time. Winter can be such a lazy season if we are not careful. We can slip into a listless, sluggish round of tasks that lulls us into the mediocre land of February, the “after-the-holidays” let-down that is not our best moment.

Then Joel comes along calling for a fast. “Blow the trumpet in Zion!” he commands. In other words: “Wake up! Get busy! There’s a lot to do before the flowers bloom.” It’s up to us to hear the word of God and act on it. Oh, and coincidentally, today is Valentine’s Day – just another reminder of the kind of God we have who longs for our love even as a greater love is pouring from the divine heart into our own!

So let us be about this holy season – starting now…yes, even now.

 

 

 

 

 

Faithful Witnesses

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Acts of the Apostles, faith, foundation, ministry, Paul, Peter, repentance, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

We all come to faith – and almost anything in life – in different ways. For some faith is a stumbling toward God that is motivated by internal promptings and inexplicable knowing. For others the path is immediately clear and grasped in a fullness that is never let go. Some of us inherit our religion from our family line and others try on different denominations and/or practices to see what fits.

Peter and Paul, probably the best known characters (in every sense of that word) in the Christian Scriptures and Tradition, had very different early lives and faith experiences. Peter, the fisherman, was the impulsive, “jump right in” kind of guy who often had to retrace his steps in repentance. His heart was large and loving, however, and the time he spent in the company of Jesus prepared him to endure everything that came after with a passion that served him to and through his horrific death.

Paul was a Roman citizen, a fact that sources say implies that he was moderately well-off, and which granted him a certain respect wherever he went in the Empire. Unlike Peter, Paul never met Jesus so didn’t have the advantage of experiencing the personal charisma and teaching that had so convinced Peter that Jesus was the true Messiah. In fact, Paul spent time persecuting people like Peter so, like us, his conversion had to take place through the agency of others. Unlike most of us, however, the Scriptures tell us a fantastical story of Paul’s conversion that was so complex it would have been difficult to ignore – or to allow Paul to return to his former life. (see ACTS 9:1-19)

The stories in the Acts of the Apostles chronicle the ministry of these two Christian giants as they traveled and facilitated the spread of Christianity in the known world. Today the Church celebrates one feast to honor both of them. How might we honor these two men whose paths to greatness were diverse but converged to provide a foundation in the earliest days of the Christian era? Perhaps we ought to examine our own willingness to commit to our calling. How authentic is our living in the everyday journey that we walk? Are there moments of recognition that strengthen us for fidelity to our life purpose? Do we share what we come to know for the good of others? Can we hear the testimony of prophets and judge truth, regardless of the personality that delivers the message? Many questions…to be answered by each of us out of our own personal experience and belief.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Morning Conversation

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cleanse, forgive, gladness, Holy Spirit, justice, Lent, light, love, mercy, Nan Merrill, Peace, psalm 51, Psalms for Praying, reflection, repentance, saving grace, strength, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, weakness, wisdom of the heart

During the season of Lent it is not unusual to see part or all of Psalm 51 show up as the response to the first reading in our lectionary. It is the season when repentance for our faults is traditionally front and center and God’s mercy is a constant call. Psalm 51 is uniquely suited to those themes and appears again today for our consideration.

In keeping with yesterday’s reflection on the necessity of really listening with openness to the thoughts of others, I decided to look at what Nan Merrill’s translation added to the meaning of this psalm. Her book, Psalms for Praying, emerged from the deep reflection of silence and is decidedly softer than the traditional psalmody. I find a few of the nuances fresh and helpful for my own prayer and offer her words in prose form this morning which I hear as one side of a conversation with God from a person whose desire for right relationship is boundless.

Have mercy on me, O Gracious One, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant kindness forgive me where my thoughts and deeds have hurt others. Lead me in the paths of justice, guide my steps on paths of peace! Teach me that I may know my weaknesses, the shortcomings that bind me, the unloving ways that separate me, that keep me from recognizing your life in me; for I keep company with fear and dwell in the house of ignorance. Yet, I was brought forth in love, and love is my  birthright.

You have placed your truth in the inner being; therefore, teach me the wisdom of the heart. Forgive all that binds me in fear, that I may radiate love; cleanse me that your light might shine in me. Fill me with gladness; help me to transform weakness into strength. Look not on my past mistakes but on the aspirations of my heart. Create in me a clean heart, O Gracious One, and put a new and right spirit within me. Enfold me in the arms of love, and fill me with your Holy Spirit. Restore me in the joy of your saving grace, and encourage me with a new spirit.

Prepare the Way!

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Bernie Sanders, consequences, European Union, harbinger, Jesus, John the Baptist, kenosis, metanoia, prepare the way, ramifications, repentance, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, tumult, unity consciousness

The first thing I saw as my computer came on line this morning was the headline about the result of Great Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. That showed up on the same screen with a headline quote of Bernie Sanders for people in the US to “beat the establishment.” It seems that the way of doing things not only in our country, where the expectation that Sanders would have graciously bowed out by now, and in Europe, where the economic ramifications will be epic, are changing incontrovertibly with consequences that cannot possibly be predicted in the present. Add to that the “sit-in” in our House of Representatives this week and we cannot possibly ignore the tumult that is upon us and growing in the world.

Ironically, today the Church celebrates the feast dedicated to John the Baptist, the harbinger of change whose mission was to prepare the way for the appearance of Jesus in the world. John’s call was to repentance toward a new way of life. Often stopping at a consciousness of sin for which one asks forgiveness, we forget the full meaning of metanoia – a synonym for repentance – that calls for a complete turning of one’s life around, going in a totally different direction. Although John’s way to this new life (renunciation/abstention from anything liable to lead one to sin) was different from that of Jesus (kenosis/welcoming everything but letting it all go, pouring himself out in love) their goal was the same. One might say they were both focused on “unity consciousness” – moving toward God’s will in this world in service to the whole.

In this time of tumult, politically and spiritually, may we pray and work for a turning that will open the eyes of people to see that diversity need not mean division, that peace is possible and that moving toward in our turning is the only way to come together for the good of all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sackcloth and Ashes

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change of heart, clean heart, consciousness, conversion, fast, God, Jonah, Nineveh, psalm 51, renew, repentance, sackcloth, second axial age, steadfast spirit, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, violence

Today’s first reading (JON 3:1-10) tells the story of the second time God told Jonah to go to Nineveh to preach repentance. This time he went. His message was that the city – so large that “it took three days to go through it” – was going to be destroyed because of the “evil way” and violence of the inhabitants. Jonah was persuasive in delivering God’s message; it only took one day for the people to really hear him and as the key to everything: “The people believed God.” So they all began to fast and everyone put on sackcloth. The king of Nineveh was himself the model for their repentance. He “rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in the ashes.” Here’s what he had proclaimed throughout Nineveh:

Neither man nor beast, neither cattle nor sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water. Man and beast shall be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God; every man shall turn from his evil way and from the violence he has in hand.

The end of the story tells that God did, in fact, relent and did not destroy Nineveh. I had a moment of wondering, in the midst of visualizing the scene and hearing the din of all those people begging “loudly” for God’s forgiveness, if perhaps we should try a similar tactic to rid our world of the violence that seems to be escalating in amount and kind everywhere we see on the news. But, of course, God was perceived differently to the people then and life, it seems, was more primitive. We are supposed to be living in a time of evolution of consciousness, the so-called “second axial age” where we are called to understand that we live now with a sense that the survival of the earth and all her inhabitants is in our hands. God is certainly not absent from the picture but our actions would sometimes belie that fact. Unless God is at the center of it all, nothing works. But God is not the only responsible party; we must see ourselves as co-creators or we are doomed to blame God for our failure. That is a different concept from all the images of God that most of us grew up with but I have come to believe that this is the maturity of faith that is incumbent on us if we are to survive.

Perhaps this is the year that the magnitude of the task of “change of heart” is upon us; we can no longer go on the way we have been living. Real conversion (turning) calls for solidarity as well as individual determination. So let us look deeply to see what needs to change in ourselves and join with others to call loudly to God in the words of Psalm 51: A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me. Perhaps God will answer and together we and God will make it happen.

Have Mercy On Me, O God!

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acceptance, acknowledgment, contrition, David and Bathsheba, evil, forgiveness, grace, guilt, just, personal sin, Pope Francis, psalm 51, recognition, relationship with God, repentance, Samuel, sinfulness, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Year of Mercy

Yesterday I was having a conversation about sin – not sins but sin, as in “the sin of the world” or “social sin.” It’s much easier to look at it that way, not so difficult then to exclude myself from the topic rather than talking about my personal sin and guilt. Today, however, I could not avoid such a “close encounter” in the face of the story about David and Bathsheba. (2 SM 11:1-17) David’s actions of adultery and the subsequent plotting the death of Uriah when his attempts to hide Bathsheba’s pregnancy from her husband had failed sound like a modern movie plot! This from God’s chosen one, the king of Israel, the one whose reign was to last forever through his descendants!

Most of us know our own sinfulness and try to hide our shadow side from others for fear that we would be abandoned if anyone “really knew me.” David’s story gives us opportunity for a different way to proceed. It comes in a series of steps: recognition, acknowledgment, contrition, repentance, forgiveness and finally acceptance – all of which come in his relationship with God. His waking up to the seriousness of his sin came at the death of the child born of his liaison with Bathsheba but that recognition was so deeply felt not only by the loss but also because of his great love for God and the knowledge that he had severely damaged that covenant. Thus, his sorrow matched his guilt as he sang, “I have done such evil in your sight that you are just in your sentence…Let me hear the sounds of joy and gladness; the bones you have crushed shall rejoice. Turn away your face from my sins and blot out all my guilt!” (PS 51) It is because of the depth of relationship that David could come to trust God’s forgiveness. Still cognizant of the enormity of what he had done, David was then able to accept himself and let go of his guilt to live into God’s welcoming embrace. I am confident that we are called to the same willingness in the face of our sin.

Serendipitously as I was pondering all this, my eye fell on a quote that seems apt for both this reflection and this “Year of Mercy.” Pope Francis writes that the Church is commissioned to announce the mercy of God, the beating heart of the gospel, which in its own way must penetrate the heart and mind of every person. Having received the grace and ability to acknowledge our own sins, may we be moved to extend such mercy to our companions and, yes, to our broken world.

Willing Witnesses

Tags

faith, jeremiah, John the Baptist, repentance, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The coincidence of threats to the prophet Jeremiah’s life in the first reading for this morning with the beheading of John the Baptist in the gospel – both because of their preaching about repentance – made me wonder two things:

1. How willing am I to listen to what is hard to hear about myself or about persons or causes that are dear to me, especially if the person speaking is not someone dear to me (but who may have great powers of observation)?

2. How willing am I to stand up for what I believe, especially about my faith and image of God, when I know that others within earshot are opposed to my belief?

That’s it for today!