A powerful reflection from my seminary classmate, colleague in ministry, and friend Shirley ❤️
Grief catches us unaware. A sudden and completely unexpected loss in my extended family left us all reeling. Grief’s expression comes in waves of sadness, the inability to sing a song, misplaced resentment. There is an emotional roller coaster which spins me on a ride I never intended to get on….
Read more at Grief Catches Unaware
Politics vital—even for monks. But in this, due place and with right measure. To live in a monastery as if the world had stopped turning in 1905—a fatal illusion. November 12, 1957 in A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s True Self (Journals of Thomas Merton, vol 3)
With this reflection, Merton shares a profound insight that goes far beyond the monastery. As a retired USAF Chaplain, and now pastor, this speaks to my heart. His words are a challenge to me, and in turn, to you dear reader. All too often christians are so focused on the individual salvation experience/relationship with God that they miss the call to be present to the world in the midst of the world’s messiness.
The church can be so caught up in survival of the “old ways” that it fails to hear the call of renewal and a new way of being that Spirit offers it. As one blogger said, stop mourning the church of the past and move into the future. These words challenge the “good old ways and days” to the core. However this challenge must be heeded if we are to be an effective witness today and in the future. To do otherwise, is in the words of Thomas Merton, is a fatal illusion.
“Toni Morrison said, ‘The function of freedom is to free someone else,’ and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh well, what are you going to do?”—Anne Lamott
Verse of the day
A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but an accurate weight is [God’s] delight.
– Proverbs 11:1
Voice of the day
The denunciation of injustice implies the rejection of the use of Christianity to legitimize the established order.
– Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation (1971)
Prayer of the day May we never use the gift you so freely gave us to reinforce oppressive systems that harm others.
Over these past three days (All Hallows Eve, All Saints, and All Souls days) I have been reflecting on both the sacred nature of time and the call to embrace each moment as a sacred gift. While I don’t have the option to enter the contemplative life as my friend and spiritual mentor Thomas Merton did, I am able to embrace those sacred moments when I close my mouth and open my heart and my ears. Merton’s thoughts below on time resonate with me, especially the concept of compassionate time.
The contemplative life must provide an area, a space of liberty, of silence, in which possibilities are allowed to surface and new choices—beyond routine choice—become manifest. It should create a new experience of time, not as stopgap, stillness, but as temps vierge—virginal time—not a blank to be filled or an untouched space to be conquered and violated, but a space which can enjoy its own potentiality and hopes—and its own presence to itself. One’s own time. But not dominated by one’s own ego and its demands. Hence, open to others—compassionate time, rooted in the sense of common illusion and in criticism of it. November 7, 1968 (The Other Side of the Mountain: The Journals of Thomas Merton, volume seven)
My prayer for myself and for you, dear reader, is that we can embrace the sacred pauses, be still, and learn from the Spirit.
“Turn your life toward what you love. . . . Become like a tree that shelters other lovers, roots finding secrets beneath, crown top waving in the sunlight no one sees. Be true to that love, not to ownership. Be like wind pouring through forests and clearings, circling mountains, running along rivers. Turn your life to that big love you have always suspected is the country you come from, sing the way they sing there, be that light-hearted and warm-hearted and easy-going even into your death, your sails full of love’s assurance.”—Elias Amidon
Verse of the day
Put away violence and oppression, and do what is just and right. Cease your evictions of my people, says the Lord God.
– Ezekiel 45:9
Voice of the day
If a house is burning, and a bucket of water is thrown on the blaze and doesn’t extinguish the fire, this doesn’t mean that water won’t put out fire. It means we need more water. And so with nonviolence.
– Dorothy Cotton
Prayer of the day May my hands never harm a living being. May my steps stay on the journey of justice.
– Sister Mary Lou Kownacki
“[The] monks understood that the soul’s ripening is never to be rushed and that it takes a lifetime of work. The gift of the contemplative path is a profound honoring of the grace of slowness.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD,The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred
How might you honor the grace of your soul’s slow ripening?
Verse of the day
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
– Ephesians 5:11
Voice of the day
When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.
– Oscar Romero, translated by Michael J. Walsh, Voice of the Voiceless (1985)
Prayer of the day Grant us discomfort at oppression that we may stand up against anything that harms your creation.
“It [the collective unconscious] is the place where archetypes emerge – those symbols and experiences that appear across time and cultures. The stories of our ancestors are woven into the fabric of our very being.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD,Sacred Seasons: A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year – A Self-Study Online Retreat
How does your ancestral heritage wave its wisdom through your being? How might you open your inner ears to hear whisperings from the past in the present?
