The sun has set and the Vesper Lights flicker and glow
It has been a busy day of meetings and Advent Worship preparations
The day has managed to keep me busy
Busy and yet I still paused to remember
To remember my mom who slipped through the veil five years ago
To remember the tender ministrations my precious wife offered as she cared for her
To remember the memories of her love of cats
To give thanks for her life and her love
It has been a day indeed
Thank you Spirit for your presence and nurturing support
Now as my eyelids grow heavy
I lift this humble prayer to you
Dona Nobis Pacem
Grant Us Peace
A wee prayer from the heart of your Padre…
The other day we were talking with a friend about flying. We reminisced about the time well before September 11, 2001 when it seemed almost carefree. Flying is even more challenging in these pandemic or endemic days of COVID. To be honest, we don’t look forward to flying in large part because of the stress. Short fuses, overbooked flights, news stories about violence in the air, and constant delays that we have experienced make it a challenge. As we prepare once again to make a quick trip to Minnesota to see my dad, I feel the same sort of uneasiness welling up within me.
I was browsing through one of Thomas Merton’s journals (A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s Life, The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3:1952-1960) when I came across this entry which he wrote while flying to Minnesota and St John’s Abbey for a conference. It seems appropriate to read this and I believe it might be a good thought to focus on each time that we fly.
What a wonderful thing, to ride in the sky and keep quiet and love God. It is indeed true that He asks this–not only the riding in the sky, but love, whatever it may mean for each of us. — July 22, 1956
Keep quiet and love God… I would also add love our neighbors as ourselves.
“It takes a lot more courage to love than to hate.” –Elvis Costello
Verse of the day
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.
– 1 Timothy 6:10
Voice of the day
And I think this is where we must start to adjust our perspective on wealth: We must reject the idea that wealth has any bearing on a person’s true acumen, potential, or value.
– Tyler Huckabee, “Can Elon Musk Fit Through the Eye of a Needle”
Prayer of the day
Lord, may your people exemplify your love by disavowing the notion that wealth has any bearing on a person’s value.
“The spiritual journey is not about growing more certain about the world, but embracing more and more the mystery at the heart of everything.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, The Online Self-Study Retreat ~ A Midwinter God: Making a Conscious Underworld Journey
In what way is your own spiritual journey calling you to let go of your former certainties?
When we love God with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul, we cannot do other than love our neighbor, and our very selves. It is in being fully rooted in the heart of God that we are creatively connected with our neighbor as well as with our deepest self. In the heart of God we can see that the other human beings who live on this earth with us are also God’s sons and daughters, and belong to the same family we do. There, too, I can recognize and claim my own belovedness, and celebrate with my neighbors.
With all of the political upheaval in the nation and world… with all of the division and fear… with illegal/immoral military actions in Ukraine and other places in the world… with all of this, it would be far too easy to slip into despair and lose hope in humanity. It is at times like this that I find myself reaching back to the writings and the thoughts of Thomas Merton. As I have said many times before in previous blogs, his prophetic words over sixty years ago speak volumes to the world situation and life today.
In the preface to the Vietnamese edition of his book, No Man Is an Island, he wrote the following about compassion: Compassion teaches me that my brother and I are one. That if I love my brother, then my love benefits my own life as well, and if I hate my brother and seek to destroy him, I seek to destroy myself also. The desire to kill is like the desire to attack another with an ingot of red hot iron: I have to pick up the incandescent metal and burn my own hand while burning the other. Hate itself is the seed of death in my own heart, while it seeks the death of the other. Love is the seed of life in my own heart when it seeks the good of the other…. (Thomas Merton: Essential Writings, p. 114)
In the military where I was a chaplain for 26 years, I would hear time and time again language that was meant to dehumanize the “enemy.” This language has been used for centuries and it was supposed to make it easier to kill a non-human “them” instead of killing another human being. Sadly, that language has become a part of political, social, and religious rhetoric. I can’t help but imagine that Merton would weep to see how this insanity continues today. I believe that he would also embrace Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words from his sermon, “Loving Your Enemies”: Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Am I a dreamer? Perhaps I am. But to paraphrase John Lennon in his song “Imagine,” I hope I’m not the only one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOgFZfRVaww
Verse of the day
“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien.”
– Leviticus 23:22
Voice of the day
God is not a God of waste. Even when there is abundance, God will ask you to collect it because it can still be eaten the following day or by another group of people.
– Vanessa Nakate, “It’s Time to Talk About Climate Emergency (No Not That One Photo)”
Prayer of the day
Thank you that you waste nothing God; we will continue laboring for justice even when our own needs are met.
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. — Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking (1973)
As I chose the picture to go with the above quote, the rose bush spoke to my heart The rose bush began as a cutting from Denise’s grandfather’s rose bush that he planted in Champaign, Illinois. Her mother tended it for many years and now Denise is tending this living heirloom that is well over sixty years old.
When I consider all that this rose bush has experienced over the years I am in awe. It traveled from Champaign to Florence, Alabama and the house where Denise grew up. It was transplanted from the house to a pot at the apartment where her mom and dad lived. After her dad died, the bush made its way to Carrollton, Georgia and now it is now on our front porch in Orange Beach, Alabama. Denise worked to remove some sort of tree that was growing in the same pot. It not only survived, it is thriving!
Isn’t that what God is calling us to do in the church and in our daily faith journey? A church that is in survival mode won’t be able to see the wonders that it can experience. It won’t be able to see the potential for a hope and a future that moves beyond simply surviving into a calling to live out the love, grace, mercy, and peace of God.
As I till and tend the soil of my interior life and walk with the church that I serve and help them to till and tend the soil of their spiritual life I see the similarities between what we are doing and the journey of the rose bush. Loving care, pruning, and refreshing the soil has helped it to grow and to bloom in such a beautiful way. As I walk with the church as they seek to discern who they are and who God is calling them to be perhaps all of us will meet at the intersection of our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger.
Some food for thought… Thomas Merton invites us to consider life beyond ourselves… to consider the lives of the invisible whom society chooses to ignore.
It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as God’s will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe you–try to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as God’s will yourself! — Seeds of Contemplation
I need to remember this and look beyond myself. I would also suggest that those in power at the local, state, and national levels of government look beyond themselves and actually see their neighbors.
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