The sun has set and the Vesper Lights flicker and glow
It was a day of meetings and worship preparation
It was a time for a wonderful evening with dear friends
It was also a time for reflection
Thirty-one years ago today my son came into this world
A wonderful gift indeed
As I watched the Full Moon rise over the mountain
I was overcome by a sense of wonder
When I look into the night sky I am reminded of God’s presence, even in the darkness.
These words from Thomas Merton in Entering the Silence: The Journals of Thomas Merton-Volume Two (1941-1952) struck a chord within me:
Teach me to be content with Your grace that comes to me in darkness and that works things I cannot see. Teach me to be happy that I can depend on You.
Now as my eyelids grow heavy
I lift this humble prayer to you
Dona Nobis Pacem
Grant Us Peace
A wee prayer and reflection from your Padre…
I began writing some bits of verse while I was in my Clinical Pastoral Education residency in San Antonio. It was a way for me to process some of the difficult lessons that I was learning as I walked with the patients and their families in the hospital. Death, dying, serious illnesses, difficulties in the ICU/Pediatric ICU/Neonatal ICU, challenges on the Mental Health units, tragedy in the Emergency Department… all of these experiences tugged at my heart and very soul.
Now as we walk through this time of the COVID-19 Pandemic and civic unrest, my heart aches and looks for some semblance of peace. Believe it or not, I have found that peace in our times of prayer, reflection, and the sharing of stories with friends who are living in the “hotspots” in this nation and world.
Today I had my first Zoom opportunity to meet with my professor who is teaching the first course I am taking in my Doctoral program at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in St Paul, MN. As we discussed (the professor and another student who also lives and works in St Paul, MN) proposals, research methods, and questions which will become the foundation of our Proposal and Dissertation, I found myself becoming excited about where this process could go. The academic words which I had been slogging through in the readings thus far were not exactly inspiring. However, this week’s readings and our discussion today opened up the poetic process of researching and writing. The last thing I want to write is a dry and dusty academic tome which fails to inspire me, the review committee, or the potential reader who might choose to pick up the fruit of my labor.
As I considered the importance of language and theological study and writing, these words from Thomas Merton in his book The Sign of Jonas touched my heart.
I have attempted to convey something of a monk’s spiritual life and of his thoughts, not in the language of speculation but in terms of of personal experience. This is always a little hazardous, because it means leaving the sure, plain path of an accepted terminology and traveling in byways of poetry and intuition. (The Sign of Jonas, p. 8)
Words without the heart and spirit of an individual mean nothing! My prayer for me and for you dear reader, is that we can make an impact not only through our words, but through our actions. May the voices of the poets enrich and enliven our hearts as we seek to be the hands and feet of Christ during these challenging times.
The sun has set and the Vesper lights flicker and glow
It has been an amazingly long day, Lord
It is after midnight and we are still working
As the sun set and the moon and the stars came out
I thought of Thomas Merton and his reflection on the Fire Watch. The Fire Watch was the responsibly of one of the monks. They would make their way around the monastery and the grounds ensuring that all fires were out and the brothers were safe.
In the middle of the night when all is dark the Spirit often whispers her wisdom and guidance to those who are keeping the night watch. Merton recognized that when he penned the following words.
O God, my God, the night has values that day has never dreamed of. All things stir by night, waking or sleeping, conscious of the nearness of their ruin. (The Sign of Jonas, p. 355-356)
Stir within us this night the desire to follow you, Lord.
Stir within us this night the desire to walk through the flames of hatred and ignorance.
Stir within us the energy to walk with our sisters and brothers of color.
Stir within us the ability to listen and keep our mouths shut.
Stir within all of us the desire to make a better today.
Stir within all of us the desire to bring Justice, Peace, and Hope to this fallen world.
Lord in your mercy, hear this humble prayer.
Dona Nobis Pacem et in Terra
Grant Us Peace On Earth
A wee prayer and reflection from your Padre…
The sun has set and the Vesper lights flicker and glow
You walked with us throughout this Lord’s day
Spirit guided us every step of the way
Spirit inspired our worship and reflection
The beauty and wonder of your creation never ceases
Each day something new is revealed
Thank you Lord for your companionship on the journey
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…
“Christians have been discerning from biblical times to the present, seeking to understand how God is present, acting, and calling – be it in personal prayer, in the worship of the faith community, through moral choices, or simply in the ebb and flow of ordinary life.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative PracticeWhat is your discernment process in trying to understand how God is acting in your life and the world?
When we were in Ireland on our honeymoon we saw countless ruins of castles, churches, and ancient monastic settlements. This particular picture is of what remains of the chapel which stands on the site of an even earlier eighth century monastery, Disert-Tola, the Quiet Place (literally “the desert”) of St Tola in County Clare, Ireland. When I think about Pentecost, it was the first time that the Good News was shared with a worldwide audience. It is even considered to be the birth of the Church. The church is dynamic and ever changing as the Spirit continues to equip and encourage the Church to share the Good News in new ways. The message doesn’t change; the means of sharing can change due to circumstances. Today as we continue to navigate the COVID-19 Pandemic, I believe the Church has an opportunity to listen to the Spirit’s guidance as we seek to be the Church today and into the future.
When I first began to contemplate Pentecost-2020 I thought I knew where I was going with my message. The Church in this new reality of being a community outside of the building has been a challenge for some and has been embraced by others. I quickly learned while deployed with the Air Force or out on Air Force War Exercises that the chapel wasn’t a building. Sometimes it was a tent and sometimes it was a hangar. There were times where worship was outdoors as well. These were lessons that I carried with me after hanging up the uniform in 2011. I’ll admit that I had no idea that nine years later these lessons would be coming back to me. I believe it has been a valuable thing for the church I currently serve to learn. It hasn’t been easy but the members and leaders continue to explore new ways of being a community of faith without walls.
Isn’t that what the Apostles discovered as they began to understand what it meant to be a movement of people who followed Christ? The group first began meeting in the upper room for prayer, worship, and fellowship. Within one-hundred years they would be meeting in catacombs. When Peter spoke that day faithful Jews had gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of the first fruits (Shavuot) which occurred seven weeks after Passover. It also commemorated God giving the Torah to the nation. On this particular festival celebration another gift was given to this newly formed group of Christ-followers or Followers of the Way. Pentecost is a celebration of the beginnings of the church and the spreading of the Gospel around the known world.
Scholars also point out that there was a “pre-Pentecost” event where Spirit was given to the Disciples. This is found in our Gospel reading for today from John 20:19-23. In this first post-resurrection meeting, Jesus appeared and offered the peace of God to them. In verse 22 we read the following: When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
The interesting thing about the Hebrew word for Spirit, Ruah, is that it literally means breath. Jesus breathed on the Disciples and gave them the gift of the Spirit. This gift came with responsibilities as we read in the next verse: If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. (vs 23)
During the COVID-19 Pandemic we have learned how the virus slowly chokes the individual until they can no longer breathe on their own. This also happens when a patient has Congestive Heart Failure and their lungs fill up with fluid, literally drowning them. Breathing is something that we often take for granted. In my early practice of Yoga my instructor focused on breathing. Living at high altitude I have witnessed many cases where a hiker or resident cannot breathe adequately and they have to return to a lower elevation. Something that we take for granted will stop us in our tracks. Breathe… Be Still… Be… without breath we cannot Be Still… we cannot Be.
Ruah is also how God breathed life into Adam at the creation of the world. Ruah is also the last thing which departs a person’s body when they die. I have heard that last breath as Denise and I have walked with parishioners through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. In 33 years of ministry I have had that sacred honor too many times.
What has struck me this past week about life-giving breath (Ruah) is how it was forcefully stopped when a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota crushed George Floyd’s ability to breathe. The same thing happened in 2014 to Eric Garner in New York City at the hands of another police officer. The last bit of breath was squeezed out of these two men of color by the inappropriate use of force at the hands of law enforcement.
Breath is a critical requirement for living. Ruah, the Holy Spirit, is a critical requirement for being a Christ-follower. In a prayer that he wrote on the Vigil of Pentecost in 1961, Thomas Merton wrote the following:
And now Father I beg You to teach me to be a man of peace and to help bring peace to the world. To study here truth and non-violence, and patience and the courage to suffer for truth. Send me Your Holy Spirit, and unite me with Your divine Son and make me one with You in Him, for Your great glory. Amen. (Turning Towards the World – The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Four 1960-1963)
That is my prayer for all of us who seek to be Christ-followers. With the life-giving presence of the Spirit (Ruah) may we have the courage to listen to the victims of systemic racism. May we have the courage to hear their rage along with the courage to keep our mouths shut. Then may we walk together and work for reconciliation and peace. That is my humble prayer.
I thought that I would be focusing on something else tonight. However as I receive reports from family and friends in Minnesota and across the country my heart is breaking. I am also infuriated by the lack of response from the our country’s leadership.
On the eve of Pentecost, when the Christ-follower movement was officially begun, our nation is literally at war. The world has been suffering due to the COVID-19 Pandemic and now, we are dealing with the despicable forces of racism. When I see the people who are supposed to protect and defend the citizens of this nation killing people of color without challenge I wonder… who will stand with and speak up with those who are voiceless. As Dr King said in his 1967 speech:
Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention. Dr Martin Luther King’s Speech
The sick development today is that the very white supremacists whom the Civil Rights movement fought are the ones who are hijacking the voice of the down-trodden and oppressed for their own evil designs. Today has been another day of struggle for my heart as we absorb the continued violence and oppression of people of color who are are sisters and brothers.
Thomas Merton said the following in the era of the Vietnam War and Nuclear proliferation: The present war crisis is something we have made entirely for and by ourselves. There is in reality not the slightest logical reason for war, and yet the whole world is plunging headlong into frightful destruction, and doing so with the purpose of avoiding war and preserving peace! This is true war-madness, an illness of the mind and spirit that is spreading with a furious and subtle contagion all over the world. Of all the countries that are sick, America is perhaps the most grievously afflicted. On all sides we have people building bomb shelters where, in case of nuclear war, they will simply bake slowly instead of burning quickly or being blown out of existence in a flash. And they are prepared to sit in these shelters with machine guns with which to prevent their neighbour from entering. This in a nation that claims to be fighting for religious truth along with freedom and other values of the spirit. Truly we have entered the ‘post Christian era’ with a vengeance. Whether we are destroyed or whether we survive, the future is awful to contemplate. (New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 112)
What side will you stand on… the side of peace, justice, grace, and love… or the side of violent hatred… the choice is ours… and this world’s survival depends upon the correct choice. In the words of Joshua 24:15, choose this day whom you will serve….
Today we went on a hike in Hermit Park Open Space near Estes Park. It had been a day of meetings, work emails, and studying for class. Both of us needed the break and simply needed to have a chance to breathe. While we hiked and explored an old homestead and sawmill, people were trying to make it through another day around this nation and world.
I began thinking about the smoldering rage and anger of people of color in Minneapolis, MN and other places in this country. The senseless deaths of so many are added to the horrors of nearly five hundred years of slavery, discrimination, and belittlement. If someone wants to know why there is so much rage and anger, go to places like the National Civil Rights Museum in Montgomery, Alabama or the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. As a white man, I cannot presume to understand this legacy in its entirety. However, I can encourage you to walk through the memorial to the lynching victims tortured and murdered by white supremacist terrorists… as you see the hundreds of jars of soil taken from lynching sites around this nation… let it sink in. This was part of the oppression that Dr Martin Luther King, Jr and others fought against. This was the evil which tried to keep the dream from being alive. This is the legacy we see today in disproportionate mass-incarceration (the new lynching according to the Equal Justice Initiative) and the killing of so many men, women, and children simply because their skin is a different color.
Last night I wrote about the need for the white moderate or progressive to be invited to the table, keep our mouths shut, and listen. We need to listen and acknowledge the horrors faced by people of color along with their ancestors. Only by acknowledging our complicity in the evils of the past and present can we stand up to the white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and racists and walk with our neighbors towards a future where, in the words of the Prophet Amos, justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24)
I came across a poem written by Thomas Merton which addresses some of what I am thinking. Merton was writing about the fear so many had in his day (and long before) of beggars. They were to be ignored and shoved aside. They weren’t human in the eyes of the so-called righteous individual. In the poem “Ointment” he opens with the following lines.
This day throw open all your houses, and forever,
And love, not fear, the many poor.
(Poem, The Ointment in Entering the Silence: The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Two 1941-1952, p. 8)
I know that I have been called, along with Denise, to throw open our doors and share our hospitality with ALL of God’s children. We are called to love, not fear those who might be different from us in some way. We are called to see in each other an individual, created in the image of God. May we throw open our hearts and our homes… may we love extravagantly… may we be instruments of God’s peace.
My heart is breaking and my anger at the murder of George Floyd by police which has led to the protests in Minneapolis. I have watched our country descend even further into the gloom of hatred, racism, hypocrisy, and all manner of *isms we are seeing today. It was only nine months ago that we were in Minneapolis and St Paul visiting United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities as I began the process of being enrolled as a student for their Doctor of Ministry in Public Theology.
I remember the racial tensions in The Cities when I lived there during my seminary years. It continued as the years went on. When we walked through gentrified neighborhoods downtown I wondered where the working class and working poor ended up. On one trip we were in Minneapolis not long after the shooting of Philando Castile in 2016 by a police officer. The anger was palpable then.
The voice of the voiceless is screaming now and I hope to God that someone listens and does the right thing. Am I dismayed at the violence on both sides? Yes. I believe that as a white, privileged individual I am being called to speak out. Dr King wrote the following in his Letter from Birmingham Jail about this. I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Council or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
As Dr King said earlier in the letter, Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. So where do we go from here? What is our calling? Thomas Merton speaks of the missing foundation for life in his book Love and Living.
Love is not a problem, not an answer to a question. Love knows no question. It is the ground of all, and questions arise only insofar as we are divided, absent, estranged, alienated from that ground. But the precise nature of our society is to bring about this division, this alienation, this estrangement, this absence. (p. 16)
Lord help us to humble ourselves and come to the table with our neighbors who are frustrated and angry. We must not come to the table with our solutions. We must come to the table and be silent. We must be silent in order to listen. The listening will be uncomfortable for many of us but it is required.
Before we can get to the ground of all, love, we must listen to the hurt, the fear, the frustration, the anger, and the rage of the people of color who are our neighbors. Then perhaps we will be invited to stand with them against racism and so-called white nationalism. But first we need to listen and honor their stories.
A powerful and timely blog…
Many of us are keenly aware of the recent news of black, brown, and other marginalized bodies being threatened and killed by systems of injustice and oppression. Sometimes these systems slowly kill through discrimination, inequality, and other racist acts––other times they kill immediately by the bending of a knee into the neck of a man whose face is in the pavement… until he dies. In times like this, words ring in my ear from Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas: “It should not require a miracle simply to be black and alive in America.”
— Read on cassidyhall.com/2020/05/28/dear-white-people-including-myself-how-much-time-do-you-want-for-your-progress-james-baldwin/
