Holy Land

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Abram, Genesis, listening, Lot, Peace, separate, surrender, the Holy Land, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, willingness

Occasionally – not often but once in awhile – when I read the lectionary texts from the Bible I long for “the old days” – a simpler time. This morning’s reading from Genesis (GN 13:2, 5-18) has Abram and Lot in conversation about their many possessions and how the land can’t support both of them; their herdsmen were quarreling. So Abram simply says to Lot, “We’re kinsmen; we don’t want any strife between our herdsmen or ourselves. Let’s separate. If you want to go left, I’ll go right and vice versa.” So Lot went east and Abram stayed in Canaan – just like that.

Would that things could be settled today in like manner. But no, the strife in “the Holy Land” goes on and on with no peace on the horizon. How are we to interpret God’s promises in these complex times? Certainly not with contentious rhetoric or weapons. How can God break through to the hearts of all parties in a way that will bring peace to the Middle East? Only, it seems, by listening more deeply to the hearts of one another and allowing love for God and for the land to be the impetus for reconciliation. It will take great leaders and great willingness to surrender on the part of everyone in order to see the truth that all are one in God and that there is enough for everyone’s need. May it be true in our day. May peace come to reign once again, I pray.

The Old and the New

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acquaintances, deeper values, fate, friends, Jesus, kingdom of heaven, new, old, parable, separate, snap judgment, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Interestingly, for no apparent reason yesterday, a rhyming ditty from my childhood came wafting up from my past. “Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.” I heard it and smiled and then it was gone. I think it was one of the learnings of Girl Scout meetings. It came back to me this morning as I read the parable of the Kingdom of heaven being compared first to a net cast into the sea that collects every kind of fish. Upon return to shore, the fishermen separate out what is good and throw away what is bad.

After explaining that it will be so at “the end of the age” when angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous, Jesus gives a rather harrowing description of the fate of the wicked. He asks his disciples if they understand what he’s saying but when they say they do he proceeds to offer another image. I would have thought he was so happy that they got something he was talking about that he would have stopped there. But no. “The kingdom of heaven,” he continues, “is like the head of a household who brings forth from his storeroom both the new and the old.”

While I’m not trying do a serious analysis of Scripture here (I leave that to the theologians) I am interested that Jesus seems this time to be comparing new and old without judging them good or bad. You can’t know without opening the bottle and tasting the wine whether it is fine or turned to vinegar. I go back to the fishermen and see them grabbing fish and throwing them back or into a bucket, perhaps counting on their experience to help them make a quick decision about good or bad. Sometimes, though, it takes time to assess what is worthy or not.

So I guess my singsong memory is relevant after all. No snap judgments of friends who are getting older or newer acquaintances who have yet to show their true colors. Just looking for the deeper values that come to light with time and patience.

 

 

 

 

 

Two in One

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divisions, duality, Gospel of Thomas, Jan Phillips, No Ordinary Time, one, opposites, separate, spring, tension, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, unitive consciousness, variety of solutions, Western society

All during this week in a great variety of circumstances I have been engaged in conversations about unitive consciousness: the effort needed to grow in the realization that ultimately “we are all one.” I began this week by writing about it. I sat with people in individual spiritual direction considering practices that help us to move toward it. I participated in a study group on the Gospel of Thomas (logion 22) that considered the dual roles of effort and the energy of inspiration in pursuit of it. And yesterday in the midst of my scheduled day I spent an hour outside breathing in the peace and loveliness of a perfect spring day to remember the possibility of it.

None of these events took away the consciousness that there are deep divisions in our society and in nations around the world as well as in the personal lives of everyone I know – including myself. If, however, I maintain the hope that ultimate unity is the achievable goal, I am able at some fleeting moments to sense it within the distress and sometimes even the chaos of separation. I call on No Ordinary Time for some words of Jan Phillips and those “lights” on whom she depends to give credence to my own thoughts this morning. Listen:

If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough – sustain it, be true to it – we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality. (Marie Louise von Franz (1915-1998)

Can you evolve your own thinking process beyond duality, beyond “right and wrong,” beyond “good and evil?” Can you accept that we are all right, only partly so? That we need to mix our thoughts up with others to come up with the greatest variety of solutions, the highest synthesis of consciousness? (Jan Phillips)

We grow up in a world that keeps things separate/Science is a thousand miles from faith/The right wing and the left are far divided/Though the angel cannot fly without them both. (Jan Phillips)

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)