Praying

It doesn’t have to be the blue iris,
it could be weeds in a vacant lot,
or a few small stones;
just pay attention,
then patch a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate,
this isn’t a contest but the doorway

into thanks,
and a silence in which another voice may speak.

by Mary Oliver
book titiled Thirst

Therese desCamp

The Longing of Mary, the Mother

Beneath this withered tree – branches cross the sky

My heart breaks open for even

God cannot protect the Son

from the crimes of humanity.

Beneath this withered tree – branches cross

as my heart breaks open watching

the soul of my son fly

into the sky.

Beneath this withered tree –  

hope crosses my broken - open heart

as I feel the shelter of a God  that does not control

but bears with us the sorrows of our humanity.              (by Rev. Dr. Sally Harris - 22/4/11)

                    

Obituaries and Eulogies

                I’ve reached an age where I religiously read the obituaries.  I never know what sort of story I’ll find; they run the gamut from succinct to saccharine, poignant to pontifical, as if volume or vocabulary will somehow express the very being of a life and the significance of its loss. Dates are noted, geography reviewed, families and loved ones named.  Accomplishments are boasted, significant changes woven through, illness acknowledged as a venue for bravery and as a reason for gratitude at care received.  I can only speculate what of the story has been omitted, changed, emphasized, downplayed.  “Never speak ill of the dead” is an adage that has held its own, even in these post modern times.

                Speaking of the dead, eulogy is the oral cousin of obituary, a verbal rendering of honour to the deceased.  In the absence of public funeral observance and memorial gathering, eulogy has seeped its way into obituary as the only opportunity to praise the life of the dead. Blurred though they may become, each stands with its own integrity: obituary a written telling of biography, eulogy a lived experience of honouring someone at the end of their life.

                It seems to me that the gospels stand as Jesus’ obituary - written witness to the events of the life of the One whom we title Messiah.  Distinct from that, our lives as disciples and the life of the church that springs up from his death, are Jesus’ eulogy, a continued telling of the story of God’s grace and an honouring of the life of the dead.

(Rev. Dr.) Murray Groom

Tenebrae

Those who know Latin know that it means “darkness” or “shadows.” I know it as some of the most profound worship of my year.

The format is simple: 15 candles are the only light in the darkened sanctuary. As the passion story of Christ is read, one vignette at a time, the candles are slowly extinguished. When Jesus dies on the cross the last candle goes out. All is in darkness. A cymbal is crashed and fades into silence. Eventually a single light reappears with the reading “surely this man was God’s son!” All exit in silence.

In the service I will lead Thursday evening I add some music – beautiful, solemn, reflective music that helps us to go to the depths, to be “pro-found” (from the Old English meaning “bottom”).

The music has power. The darkness has power. The silence has power. More than anything, the story has power… simply told, simply heard… in a brief moment simply lived.

There is lots of room in Christian worship for joy and happiness, for noise and drums and guitars and chatter, for perky songs and constant musical bridges between and through prayers and readings.

Surely there is also room for silence, the simple word, the darkness… for tenebrae…

…because the darkness is not absent from the depths of my life, and to discover it within the depths of Jesus is somehow saving.

Shalom, Doug Goodwin

Holy Week Begins

While at the recent Conference Leadership event, ‘Sowing Promise, Growing Leaders’, we heard Chris Corrigan, from Birkana, talk about being part of change in a living system, like the church.  He offered us some models that are motivating and speak to the nuts and bolts of effective leadership in times of flux and uncertainty.  All of it was inspiring.  The part that keeps ringing in my head is one comment that he made.  He said that the experience that we are having as the church in this time and place is similar to other systems that have been formative of our culture and are now being shaped differently by the culture itself.  He said that our church, the United Church, in all that we are doing to respond to our present experience, is doing hard work for more than just the church.  Our struggle, our heartache, our questioning, our innovating, our risk taking is all important work for the world in which we live.

As we begin Holy Week, let us be mindful, that the struggle for life in which we find ourselves, is important work for the whole world.  And…we are not alone.

Lori Megley-Best

Great Excuses…

This Sunday is a high holy day in Vancouver.  Tens of thousands of people have been preparing for April 17, anticipating it, eagerly awaiting it.  Because this Sunday is the Sun Run.  Oh sure, it also happens to be Palm or Passion Sunday, but for at least 50,000 runners, joggers and walkers, from babes a couple of months in age getting pushed in a stroller to fit octogenarians, more community will be found with feet beating on the pavement and slugging Gatorade after the race with a gaggle of runners than in a coffee hour after a worship service.

So it occurs to me how similar our spiritual disciplines are to the discipline of running.  Whether you’re talking about prayer or getting to the gym, the “rebellious dogs” are eager to pull you off the path so they can smell this bush over here or that lamp post over there. 

When I played on the basketball team in Jr. High School, Jose Agarre often missed practice.  He was a good player, and fast.  But often gone.  Every time, though, he had a great excuse.  I think the coach actually enjoyed anticipating the creative excuse Jose would bring in this time. 

There is a fine art to excuses.  We’re good at them.  Often we don’t even recognize an excuse when we use it and are offended when someone else names it for what it is: an excuse, a rationalization.   “Really?  I thought it was just a good reason,” I mutter.

So in celebration of our human ability to make an excuse, here are a few from runners who found it a little too challenging to make it to the Sun Run this year.  I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you adapted and borrowed, because a good excuse can always be used more than once.

 I can’t run today because…

·         My shoes are too old to run in.

·         My shoes are too new.

·         My running outfit is in the wash.

·         I’m not really a runner.

·         My body fat is too low.

·         My hair hurts…

·         PMS… And if you push me on this you’ll regret it.

·         The elevation in Vancouver is too high, the air too thin.

·         Sun spots.

·         My heart rate is too high.

·         My heart rate is too low.

·         I don’t have a heart rate.

Whatever your discipline is, spiritual or physical or both, may you enjoy your excuses, and then outrun them.

Dan Chambers

A Springtime Prayer

As we head into Easter this year I know more than a few of us are longing for more vibrant signs of spring. I am looking out the window of my office at a cherry tree that has only a few buds popping out. Even this treeIt seems to be looking longingly at the sky for any sign of the warmth that would cause it to bust forth with spring time joy! So this morning I offer a prayer from Joyce Rupp.

A Springtime Prayer

Ever-renewing and energizing Creator,

come, stir in my dormant spiritual limbs.

Wake up my tired prayer.

Revive my weary efforts of care.

Sing hope into my discouragement.

Wash my dusty, drab attitude

with the cleansing rains of your vision.

Go deep to my roots and penetrate my faith

with the vibrancy of your grace.

Shake loose the old leftover oak leaves

of my tenacious ego-centerdness.

Coax joy to sprout from my difficulties.

Warm the buds of my relationships

so they bloom with healthy love.

Clear out my wintered debris

with the wild breeze of your liberating presence.

Nudge me, woo me, entice me, draw me to you.

I give you my trust and my gratitude

as you grace my slowly thawing spirit.

Light-filled Being, my Joy and my Hope,

let the greening in me begin!

- Joyce Rupp

Winding Down

Lately my life has felt pretty much unretired, or maybe just tired!  It gets that way sometimes - I tell myself it has to - and I let it happen.  I know it will calm down in time, again.  So when the reminder came from Brenda “It’s your turn” I went to my book shelves, since my spirit felt too frenzied in the midst of the stuff I’ve been about today.  Pretty quickly I found the reminder I need in the midst of the “stuff” of today.  Maybe you need it too.  If you do - then we might spend some time “together in spirit” with the truth of these words from the wisdom of Ann Weems:

We run around the world and church

like wound-up toys,

looking for a way to get to Easter

without reading the instructions.

When we wind down,

we lie on the floor

on our faces,

unable to move.

Perhaps, in the still and the silence,

God will give us the courage

to see our souls

and give us the chance

once more

to choose Life:

faith, rather than frenzy.

Choose life!  I’d say also, choose love!  God is always loving us with a love that is strong beyond our imagining, refreshing as gentle rain on the parched earth, near as the air that holds us and fills us. 

God invites us to be still, and know this love is ours... and rest in this love.

Soak it up!

Just Be!

Sharon Copeman

So Much is in the Bud

Like Treena’s picture of the Balance Rock that has captured her Lenten imagination… a reading by John Leax has captured mine. 

John lives on a small farm in New York State and teaches writing at Houghton College. There is never enough time to do all the work on the farm, and the old orchard, planted long ago by someone on a hillside, is neglected and overgrown. One day John was driving through the large, carefully groomed orchards of central Ontario, and found himself vaguely depressed by the endless rows of well-ordered trees. He reflected on his feeling, and on the sense of being at home in his own little, poorly tended orchard. “Why was that?” he wondered. It had to do, he finally concluded, with the way a small orchard fits into the scheme of creation, with many people caring for their tiny plots of ground. The huge orchards of the conglomerates, on the other hand, were sad reminders of the commercialization of the land.

"Perhaps this is why," he wrote "though I feel my failure to bring the old orchard to fruitfulness, I feel no real guilt, why in fact I feel a sort of pleasure in watching it turn wild and useless. When I walk in it, it tells me that one's caring comes to an end. It tells me that life is lived within the boundaries of extremes, of wildness and domestication. It tells me that my order is not the only order. And in its message I feel comfort."

"We have only begun 

to imagine the fullness of life.

  How could we tire of hope? 

         So much is in the bud."

~ Denise Levertov

 photo taken March, 2007

Rebellion dogs

There’s a line in the AA Big Book that I love, that speaks of the difficulty of staying on a spiritual path: Rebellion dogs our every step.

I recently spent time as a rebellion dog.

Don’t ask me why—I could give you reasons galore; but the fact of the matter is one day last week I stopped meditating, stopped praying, stopped eating my vegetables. These are the outward signs, if you like, of inward resistance.

And then one day I stopped stopping and got back at it, started doing all the things that actually make me happy and cause me to feel like part of the human race.

Yesterday I ran into a woman who was dithering about going to a meditation workshop. She told me, I am undisciplined and can’t maintain a practice.

My answer to that was, So what? That’s what it is to be a human. We stop, we start; we rebel, we return. I believe that my deepest work is to RESIST judging myself about this. Engaging in judgment, feeling like a pile of poo about myself, is the best way I know to prevent my return to practice. To close out the love of God.

So if you, like me, are feeding the rebellion dogs these days, why not come on back to yourself with gentleness, tenderness, and forgiveness? After all, that’s the Christian message, isn’t it?

Therese

Enlightenment !?

Lent is about enlightenment.

Not about privation or hardship, we already have those in abundance!

The human condition we live with is a state of disconnection from God, ourselves and others. A shadowed world which has us convinced that we see clearly, but we “see through a glass darkly”. Privation and hardship in abundance, and we don’t see it.

Jesus heals a man blind from birth (John 9). The Pharisees (and there is that in each of us) are rigid and legalistic, preferring their ‘sighted’ world. Clear evidence that they were ‘blind’ spiritually. (9:41)

These ‘Catch 22’ realities become a glimpse of Jesus as the way, or path, out of the dilemma of our human condition. The only way out is on the path taken by the one born blind.

I suggest you read the story again, attending to the qualities of humility in that disciple.

How do you bring those attitudes to your spiritual discipline? Even if only for a moment!

-Knowing you see in the dim light of self, rather than in the radiance of Jesus.

-Having the desire to wait in simple attentiveness.

And the amazing result is that we will not only ‘see’, but will become light.

“... but anything (eg our blindness) exposed by the light will be illuminated and anything illuminated becomes light. That is why it is said

‘Wake up from your sleep,

rise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you’ “

(Eph 5:13,14 italics added)

Choose (and do!) your spiritual practice with the awareness that it is ‘waking you up’.

I find that Centering Prayer is doing this in me. Sometimes I enjoy it, sometimes not, but it is working.

And this story from Anthony deMello in “One minute nonsense” p.48

‘The Master always taught that Truth was right before our eyes and the reason we did not see it was our lack of perspective.

Once he took a disciple on a mountain trip. When they were halfway up the mountain the man glared at the underbrush and complained, “Where’s the beautiful scenery you are always talking about?”

The Master grinned. “You are standing on top of it, as you will see when we reach the peak.” ‘