Verse of the day
As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil.
– 1 Peter 2:16
Voice of the day
During times of war hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.
– Howard Thurman, “Jesus and the Disinherited” (1949)
Prayer of the day
Righteous God, may we not use our freedom as a defense of hatred and war. Our freedom is found in you, and you call us to preach freedom — freedom from war, hunger, and pain — to all people.
We sang this hymn today at Central Presbyterian Church in Midtown Mobile, Alabama. This particular verse touched my heart and challenged me. It’s been on my mind all day.
Though we build strong walls for prisons,
though we feast while others starve,
though we fill this world with weapons:
comfort, comfort.
Every prisoner will be rescued,
every hungry mouth be filled,
every gun will rust, forgotten:
comfort, comfort.
There is much here to ponder and consider in today’s political landscape.
It is indeed the task of everyone who cares to prevent people—young, middle-aged, and old—from clinging to false expectations and from building their lives on false suppositions. If it is true that people age the way they live, our first task is to help people discover their lifestyles in which “being” is not identified with “having,” self-esteem does not depend on success, and goodness is not the same as popularity. — from You Are the Beloved: 365 Daily Readings and Meditations for Spiritual Living (p. 199)
Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.
Some words of wisdom inspire by a beautiful Substack blog by Carrie Newcomer. In response to her writing, I shared these portions of Howard Thurman’s baccalaureate address at Spelman College on May 4, 1980.
There are so many noises going on inside of you. So many echoes of all sorts. So many internalizing of the rumble and the traffic, the confusions, the disorders. By which your environment as people, that I wonder if you can get still enough– not quite enough– still enough to hear rumbling up from your unique and essential idiom, the sound of the genuine in you…
There is in you something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself…
There is in every person, that which waits, waits, waits, and listens for the sound of the genuine in himself. There is that in every person that waits, and waits, and listens for the sound of the genuine in other people. And when these two sounds come together, this is music God heard when he said, let us make man in our image.
Baccalaureate Address source
Since coming back to Mobile after the retreat at Our Lady of Gethsemani I have been looking through my pictures and reflecting on our time spent there. One of the wonderful moments for me was being able to watch all of the birds at the bird feeders and in the trees. We have birds in our neighborhood but not like we saw and heard on the monastery grounds. It gave me an even greater appreciation for Thomas Merton’s reflections on the wildlife there, especially what he experienced while living in his hermitage.
This journal entry from July 2, 1964 has a deeper layer of meaning after spending time at the hermitage which he was allowed to build and move into in 1965.
Meadowlark sitting quietly on a fence post in the dawn sun has golden vest—bright in the light of the east, his black bib tidy, turning his head this way, that way. This is a Zen quietness without comment. Yesterday a very small, chic, blah and white butterfly on the whitewashed wall of the house.—(The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, p. 222)
While I was writing this short reflection, a serious thunderstorm hit our neighborhood. It makes me think of the birds and all of the other animals who are our neighbors. May God protect them and keep them dry and safe. May God also protect and keep my siblings who don’t have homes to take shelter in from the storm.
“Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.”—Franklin D. Roosevelt
Verse of the day
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
– Psalm 139:14
Voice of the day
Dignity is the soul-knowledge that I am worthy of love and respect.
– Rev. Jes Kast, “’Tis The Season For Family Boundaries”
Prayer of the day
Amid voices who try to tell us otherwise, remind us that you have created us all to be worthy of love and respect. May we see your wonderful works reflected in those around us.
In a day where we are too quick to choose sides in an us versus them battle, I believe we would do well to stop, step back, and check our assumptions. Yes, I am looking at myself in the mirror as I offer this challenge. In his book, New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton offers some very sound advice. And yes, he was looking into the mirror of his own soul as he wrote the following words.
Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you were capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.
Do not be too quick to assume that your enemy is an enemy of God just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy precisely because he can find nothing in you that gives glory to God. Perhaps he fears you because he can find nothing in you of God’s love and God’s kindness and God’s patience and mercy and understanding of the weaknesses of men.
Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice, your mediocrity and materialism, your sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith.
Denise and I are both attending the International Thomas Merton Society’s Scholars retreat and at breakfast this morning, I was enjoying the garden view as I quietly ate. The beauty of the Abbey gardens and the multitude of birds have been truly inspiring. Both Denise’s Mom and my Mom loved birds, especially cardinals. Since their deaths, whenever we see the cardinals, it is a gentle reminder of their love as we remember them in our hearts and our prayers.
Thomas Merton’s words from his journal entry on June 5, 1960 take on a fresh new meaning as we prepare to hike to his hermitage this morning.
The first chirps of the waking birds: le point vierge—the virgin point—of the dawn, a moment of awe and inexpressible innocence, when the Father in silence opens their eyes and they speak to Him, wondering if it is time to “be”? And He tells them, “Yes.” Then they one by one wake and begin to sing. First the catbirds and cardinals and some others I do not recognize. Later, song sparrows, wrens, etc. Last of all doves, crows.
Source: A Year With Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations From His Journals
