Tag: christianity

Where You Go, I Will Go: Leave the Rest to God

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I think there is no suffering greater than
what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. 
I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, 
in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. 
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. 
They think faith is a big electric blanket, 
when of course it is the cross. 
It is much harder to believe than not to believe. 
If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: 
keep an open mind. 
Keep it open toward faith, 
keep wanting it, 
keep asking for it, 
and leave the rest to God.
~Flannery O’Connor from The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

And those are called blessed
who make the effort to remain open-hearted. 
Nothing that comes from God,
even the greatest miracle,
can be proven like 2 x 2 = 4.
It touches one; it is only seen and grasped
when the heart is open
and the spirit purged of self.
Then it awakens faith. 

… the heart is not overcome by faith,
there is no force or violence there,
compelling belief by rigid certitudes. 
What comes from God touches gently, comes quietly;
does not disturb freedom;
leads to quiet, profound, peaceful resolve within the heart.
~Romano Guardini from The Living God

On my doubting days, days too frequent and tormenting,
I remember the risen Christ
reaching out to place Thomas’s hand in His wounds,
gently guiding Thomas to His reality,
so it then becomes Thomas’s reality.
His open wounds called
to Thomas’s mind and heart,
and to mine,
His flesh and blood
awakening a hidden faith
by a simple touch.

Leave it to God to know how to reach the unreachable.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: My Heart Caught Off Guard

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And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
~Seamus Heaney “Postscript” from The Spirit Level

…they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.

Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
~James Wright from “The Blessing”

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,   
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,   
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,   
Trod with a lighter tread.
~William Butler Yeats from “The Wild Swans at Coole”

‘Tis strange that death
should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
~William Shakespeare from “King John”

Walking outside before the sun was up on a recent rainy morning,  I heard overhead the swishing hush of wings in flight and the trumpeter swans’ doleful call as dozens passed above me in a long meandering line against the early dawn grayness.

The swan flocks predictably arrive here in late autumn to eat their fill, feasting in the harvested cornfields surrounding our farm, their bright white plumage a stark contrast to the dulling muddy soil. Usually, they stick around until spring, as they lift their long graceful necks and fan out their wings to be picked up the wind, leaving us behind and beneath, moving on to their next feeding and breeding grounds.

These incredible creatures bring such joy with their annual arrival, while their leave-taking reminds me, once again, nothing on earth can last.

My heart recently caught off guard still beats. God’s love heals our earthly hearts.

“‘Tis strange that death should sing…”

I give myself over to their beauty, and walk with lighter tread, singing a new song: I am grateful my heart someday will soar beyond this soil.

 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4: 16-18

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Be Still and Know

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Be still, and know that I am God…
Psalm 46:10

Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.

patrickscathedral
Down Cathedral, Downpatrick, Ireland
stpatrickgrave
St. Patrick’s grave marker

I rise today
in the power’s strength, invoking the Trinity
believing in threeness,
confessing the oneness,
of creation’s Creator.

I rise today
in heaven’s might,
in sun’s brightness,
in moon’s radiance,
in fire’s glory,
in lightning’s quickness,
in wind’s swiftness,
in sea’s depth,
in earth’s stability,
in rock’s fixity.

I rise today
with the power of God to pilot me,
God’s strength to sustain me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look ahead for me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to protect me,
God’s way before me,
God’s shield to defend me,
God’s host to deliver me,
from snares of devils,
from evil temptations,
from nature’s failings,
from all who wish to harm me,
far or near,
alone and in a crowd.

Around me I gather today all these powers
against every cruel and merciless force
to attack my body and soul.

May Christ protect me today
against poison and burning,
against drowning and wounding,
so that I may have abundant reward;
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me;
Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me;
Christ to the right of me, Christ to the left of me;
Christ in my lying, Christ in my sitting, Christ in my rising;
Christ in the heart of all who think of me,
Christ on the tongue of all who speak to me,
Christ in the eye of all who see me,
Christ in the ear of all who hear me.

For to the Lord belongs salvation,
and to the Lord belongs salvation
and to Christ belongs salvation.
May your salvation, Lord, be with us always.

—”Saint Patrick’s Breastplate,”
Old Irish, eighth-century prayer.

Six years a slave, and then you slipped the yoke,
Till Christ recalled you, through your captors cries!
Patrick, you had the courage to turn back,
With open love to your old enemies,
Serving them now in Christ, not in their chains,
Bringing the freedom He gave you to share.
You heard the voice of Ireland, in your veins
Her passion and compassion burned like fire.

Now you rejoice amidst the three-in-one,
Refreshed in love and blessing all you knew,
Look back on us and bless us, Ireland’s son,
And plant the staff of prayer in all we do:
A gospel seed that flowers in belief,
A greening glory, coming into leaf.
~Malcolm Guite  — A St. Patrick Sonnet

Every year on March 17, St. Patrick is little remembered for his selfless missionary work in Ireland in the fifth century. We visited his grave in Downpatrick, Ireland some years ago. It is a humble stone fixed upon on a hilltop next to Down Cathedral overlooking the sea.

I wondered what he would make of how this day, dubbed with his name, is celebrated now in the United States.

Perhaps Patrick would observe we have lost sight of our commitment to faith and purpose in our rush to be the first, greatest, wealthiest, and most dominant.

Patrick, in his prayer, urges us instead to know only God as the power of protection in our lives, knowing our human weakness and need for salvation.

He would advise us to be still and know.
Be still.
Be

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patrickcathedral2
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This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

Where You Go, I Will Go: Comfort Food and Clean Up

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The church, I think, is God’s way of saying,
“What I have in the pot is yours,
and what I have is a group of misfits
whom you need more than you know
and who need you more than they know.” 

“Take, and eat,” he says,
“and take, and eat,
until the day, and it is coming,
that you knock on my door.
I will open it, and you will see me face to face.”

He is preparing a table.
He will welcome us in.
Jesus will be there, smiling and holy,
holding out a green bean casserole.
And at that moment, what we say, what we think, and what we believe will be the same:
“I didn’t know how badly I needed this.”
~Jeremy Clive Huggins from “The Church Potluck”

“When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. 9 If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. 10 But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. 11 For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

“When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Luke 14: 7-14

In the unspoken hierarchy of what makes a church function, I’m a kitchen lady and always will be.  I remember those very women from my childhood church of the fifties and sixties– their tight-knit ability to function as if one organism, swarming in aprons among tables set up in the fellowship hall and bustling around in the back by the stoves with steaming pots and pans and the occasionally dropped plate.

They kept the rest of us alive, those church ladies, by feeding us efficiently and plentifully and never ever sitting down.  I would occasionally see them eating standing up in the back of the hall, chatting amiably among themselves after the rest of us were served, but I knew they carefully wrapped up the leftovers during the clean up to deliver to shut-ins who couldn’t make it to the church supper.

I knew I was destined to become a kitchen lady, shy and introverted as I am, hiding myself behind huge plates of food and piles of dish cloths. Our church potlucks together every Sunday after our evening worship. For me, it is a welcoming place of comfort and clean up filled with plenty of leftovers for anyone who needs them.

That perfectly describes the kingdom of God in my book and His Book.

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This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

Where You Go, I Will Go: Someplace We Never Dreamed of Going

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I came to your door
with soup and bread.
I didn’t know you
but you were a neighbor
in pain: and a little soup and bread,
I reasoned, never hurt anyone.

I shouldn’t reason.
I appeared the day
your divorce was final:
a woman, flushed with cooking
and talk, and you watched,
fascinated,
coiled like a spring.

You seemed so brave and lonely
I wanted to comfort you like a child.
I couldn’t of course.
You wanted to ask me too far in.

It was then I knew
it had to be like prayer.
We can’t ask
for what we know we want:
we have to ask to be led
someplace we never dreamed of going,
a place we don’t want to be.

We’ll find ourselves there
one morning,
opened like leaves,
and it will be all right.
~Kathleen Norris “Answered Prayer”

When I struggle with how to pray,
I fall back to asking for strength
to cope with whatever is to come,
rather than pray for what I hope won’t happen –
my prayer as someone terrified,
worried and weak.

How is it with God, in whom all things are possible,
even He asked for the cup to be taken,
knowing it would remain in His Hands.
His will
would be done,
even when terrified,
worried, and weary.

So instead of closing off,
as I would have done,
not wanting to go somewhere
I don’t want to be,
He opened up Himself
like a unfolding leaf,
the earth becoming His flesh,
His flesh one with the tree.

And it was all right.
It will always be
all right.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: No Excuses

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Divinity is not playful.
The universe was not made in jest
but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.
By a power that is unfathomably secret,
and holy,
and fleet.
There is nothing to be done about it,
but ignore it,
or see.
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

For since the creation of the world
God’s invisible qualities—
his eternal power and divine nature—
have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been made,
so that people are without excuse.
Romans 1:20

All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.
He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent
for a while,

worlds are forming
in my heart
~Meister Eckhart from “Expands His Being”

You and I weren’t conceived by random happenstance,
nor are those unwelcome souls
who are wished or washed away
before ever taking a breath.

We are here because we are earnestly needed and wanted,
by a Power and Divinity beyond our comprehension,
Who has capacity for love and compassion
unmatched by anything in our earthly experience.

We aren’t a cosmic joke or mistake.
We aren’t pawns in the universe’s chess game.

Though we may loll about in the smelly stuff of this life,
thinking what we say or do doesn’t matter a hill of beans,
we are created by God as a witness to who He is,
in whose image we are made.

He won’t be ignored;
we have no excuses.

We were blind but now we see…

God looks down from heaven
    on all mankind
to see if there are any who understand,
    any who seek God.
Psalm 53:2

photo by Josh Scholten

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Where You Go, I Will Go: Walking in His Path

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All the paths of the Lord are loving and faithful.
Psalm 25:10

All does not mean “all – except the paths I am walking in now”
or “nearly all” – except this especially difficult and painful path.

All must mean all.

So, your path with its unexplained sorrow or turmoil,
and mine with its sharp flints and briers –
and both our paths,
with their unexplained perplexity,
their sheer mystery –
they are His paths,
on which he will show Himself loving and faithful.
Nothing else; nothing less.
~Amy Carmichael–from You Are My Hiding Place

Sometimes we come to forks in the road where we may not be certain which path to take.

Perhaps explore the Robert Frost “less traveled” one?

Or take the one that seems less tangled and uncertain from all appearances?

Or in the recent email to U.S. federal employees, take the forced resignation or choose to wait and be fired?

Perhaps we chose a particular path which looked inviting at the time, trundling along minding our own business, yet we start bonking our heads on low hanging branches, or get grabbed by stickers and thorns that rip our clothes and skin, or trip over prominent roots and rocks that impede our progress and bruise our feet.

Sometimes we come to a sudden end in a path and face a steep cliff with no choice but to leap — or turn back through the mess we have just slogged through.

Navigating the road to the cross must have felt like ending up at that steep cliff. There was no turning back, no choosing or negotiating a different pathway or taking time to build a downward staircase into the rocks.

Christ’s words reflect His uncertainty and terror.
His words reflect our deepest doubts and fears–
how are we to trust we are set on the right path?

When we take that next step, no matter which way or which one, we end up in the Father’s loving and faithful arms.

He has promised this.

Nothing else; nothing less.

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

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Wrestling and Torn Open

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Schizomeno—meaning in Greek “ripped open.” It occurs twice in the Gospels: once when the temple veil is torn the day of Christ’s crucifixion. The other is when “the heavens opened” upon Christ’s baptism.

But they didn’t just “open.” They were ripped open. God broke into history with a voice and an act of salvation unlike any other. 

To study the Bible with people of faith is to see it not only as an object of academic or antiquarian interest but also as a living word, a source of intellectual challenge, inspiration, comfort, uncomfortable ambiguities, and endless insights for people who gather in willingness to accept what seems to be God’s invitation: Wrestle with this.

Healthy churches wrestle, working out their salvation over coffee and concordances, knowing there is nothing pat or simple about the living Word, but that it invites us into subtle, supple, resilient relationship with the Word made flesh who dwells, still, among us.
~Marilyn McEntyre from “Choosing Church”

Passing down this story of Christ’s life, death, resurrection and ascension is not merely, or mainly, an exercise in cognition. Nor is it a divinely inspired game of telephone, where we simply whisper a message to the next generation through the ages. 

Inevitably the story comes to us through ordinary people over dinner tables, at work, in songs, through worship, conflict, failure, repentance, ritual, liturgy, art, work and family.

Christianity is something we believe, but it is also a practice. Central to our practice is what Christians call sacraments, where the mysteries of faith are manifest through the ordinary stuff of earth—water and skin, bread and teeth.
~Tish Harrison Warren from “True Story”

photo by Barb Hoelle

Mom,
You raised your hands while we sang this morning
like I’ve never known you to,
but I guess until recently I’ve never really known you in a church that let you feel alive.

I’m sure the last one did before it faded,
but I was too young to distinguish church from habitual gathering
and they wouldn’t have taught me grace if they’d wanted to,

and that was before I cracked our lives apart.

But it was then, wasn’t it, in the aftermath,
that I saw more of your layers
and saw that they were tapestries,
punctured a thousand times and intricate,
majestic, though they’ve been torn.

Were you tired of hiding,
or just tired?

Thank you for letting yourself be seen.

Thank you, Lord, for her.
~Griffin Messer  “An Analysis of Worship Today”

Ripped open to allow access – that is what God has done to enter into this ordinary stuff of earth, and giving us access to Him.

I enter the church sanctuary twice every Sunday to be reminded of this struggle:
a wrestling match
with ourselves,
with each other,
with everyday ordinary and ornery stuff,
with the living Word of God.

None of this is easy and it isn’t meant to be.
We must work for understanding and struggle for contentment and commitment.

I keep going back – gladly,
knowing my guilt,
eager to be transformed,
not only because I choose to be in church,
but because He chose to invite me there.

photo by Joel DeWaard
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Beginning an Uprising

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To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
~Karl Barth

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Whatever happens.
Whatever
what is is
is what I want.
Only that.
But that.
~Galway Kinnell “Prayer”

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Ah — a resting place,
where we come to understand
it is not required of us
to wrestle constantly and passionately
with our God —
nor pursue relentlessly
all God’s decrees as we understand them,
but only that we listen and wonder
and hope and pray,
that we might, perhaps,
make just a little difference,
one quiet grey day.
~Edwina Gateley “Just a Little Difference”

There is much shouting and gnashing of teeth going on in our country right now – some from the streets, some from computer keyboards and screens, and some from inside the echoing halls of government and a certain white house.

We need to stop shouting and clasp hands in prayer.

Nothing can right the world until we are right with God through talking to Him out of our depth of need and fear. Nothing can right the world until we submit ourselves wholly, bowed low, hands clasped, eyes closed, articulating the joy, the thanks, and the petitions weighing on our hearts.

An uprising is only possible when our voice comes alive, unashamed, unselfconscious, rising up from within us, uttering words that beseech and thank and praise. To rise up with hands clasped together calls upon a power needing no billions of funds and no weapons of destruction and no walls to keep people in or keep them out.

He is the Word, come to overcome and overwhelm the shambles left of our world. Nothing can be more victorious than the Amen, our Amen, at the end of our prayers.

So be it and so shall it be.

Amen.
And again…Amen.

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original 1918 photo by Eric Engstrom

From a Boundless Deep

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The Incarnation is like a wave of the sea which,
rushing up on the flat beach,
runs out, even thinner and more transparent,
and does not return to its source but sinks into the sand and disappears.
~Hans Urs von Balthasar from Origen: Spirit and Fire

When the heart is full of joy,
it always allows its joy to escape.
It is like the fountain in the marketplace;
whenever it is full it runs away in streams,
and so soon as it ceases to overflow,
you may be quite sure that it has ceased to be full.
The only full heart is the overflowing heart.
~Charles Spurgeon from The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858: Unabridged Sermons In Modern Language

…continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Colossians 2: 6b-7

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13

photo by Nate Gibson at Sendai, Japan

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.
1 Thessalonians 3:12

I do not think that skies and meadows are
Moral, or that the fixture of a star
Comes of a quiet spirit, or that trees
Have wisdom in their windless silences.
Yet these are things invested in my mood
With constancy, and peace, and fortitude,
That in my troubled season I can cry
Upon the wide composure of the sky,
And envy fields, and wish that I might be
As little daunted as a star or tree.
~John Drinkwater “Reciprocity”

I’m first class in the category of overflowing tears.

My family knows it doesn’t take much to make me cry:
saying goodbye, saying hello,
listening to a childrens’ choir singing,
a heartstring-tugging show on TV,
the whistled “Greensleeves” theme to the old Lassie series,
not to mention the whistled theme to the old “Leave it to Beaver” or “Andy Griffith” series–you name it, whistling does it.

Yesterday, instead of weeping overly sentimental tears, it was tears of relief that our country peacefully managed a transition of power – something that was very nearly thwarted four years ago. On that day, I wept tears of anger at scenes of violence coming from the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

Undaunted, I know God our Father remains a boundless deep source of all that is good and just in troubled times, constantly refilling the love of the Savior who seeks us out, while His Spirit flows into us like water into the sand.

We who weep will never empty.

Sunset and evening star,
  And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
  When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
  Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
  Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
  And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
  When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
  The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
  When I have cross’d the bar.
~Lord Alfred Tennyson “Crossing the Bar”