The last outward voyage of my sabbatical pilgrimage is concluded, as I am back from my "in residence" time with "emerging" Church of the Apostles in Seattle. I feel that the labyrinth-path is turning homeward once again. Homeward, towards resuming my life of public ministry, hopefully bearing in my hands the "clews" of threads which lead to something like insight for the voyage yet to come.
In Seattle I stayed with a hospitable couple in their early 50's, their age constituting "elderhood" in Karen Ward's decidedly young adult congregation. Ned and Jeanette have a room with bath on the first floor of their more vertical than horizontal new townhouse built in the midst of older wood-frame homes in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood. Fremont is old white blue-collar Northwest first gone counter-cultural, now nouveau-riche and yuppie. Think SE PDX meets Oregon Country Fair with some Pearl District thrown in plus a waterfront. The whole Silicon Valley post-modern empire continues in Seattle as Google and Adobe have both moved in.
I tried to live as a pilgrim there, staying on foot (easy, as everything including a well-stocked Episcopal bookstore are within walking distance). I wanted to get to know this neighborhood in which Karen's bold experiment in liturgical-sacramental-monastic Emerging Church has taken root.
There are many things to learn about post-modern culture as incarnated in our own midst. There are great risks, as the rags and vestiges of established church hold no refuge for us now. In the somewhat-underground press, the Seattle equivalents of The Mercury and Willamette Week had random statements of hostility directed at "the imaginary god" of establishment religion. This God is characterized as oppressive and a projection of those who wish to cramp the freedom and expression of others. On the other hand, the culture and those who participate in it are so removed from the central "Christian story" that there is a curiosity evident from many, especially if a community shows itself to a) not be lame or espouse scary politics b) be open and conversant with contemporary life, and c) be passionate and genuine about the faith-life it is living and is willing to welcome others into their midst.
I walked, enjoyed Fremont which describes itself modestly as "the center of the universe" whose motto is "de libertas quirkum"--"the right to be wierd." I talked with people--street folks, barristas, shopkeeps, people who responded with surprise and pleasure when I asked them "Are you well?"
I feel my journey into monasticism and into Emerging is beginning to make sense and even to integrate the Celtic understanding. To be a pilgrim in the world...to not pretend to have the answers...to listen deeply, to others, to one's own questions and pain, and to God who speaks so softly...to not attempt to be anything more than human.
One conversation took place in an uber-cool basement coffee shop called "Stickman". After discussing the theology of Johnny Cash with the barrista who was playing his Dark Stranger remix I settled into an upholstered church pew. A very young couple entered, the young man flame-haired as Ron Weasley and his friend quiet and dark. They ordered and edged over my way self-consciously. Addressing me respectfully as "sir", they asked if they could share my seating as "we are big pew fans." I shoved over saying "Of course" and as they settled in with lattes and laptops they politely asked if I was a regular and if not then why was I in town. I told them that I was in residence with Church of the Apostles which met in the Fremont Abbey up the hill, a cool postmodern-traditional church. I took my leave after the conversation ran its clear course and commended to them the pew.
Church of the Apostles' Eucharist is Saturday at 5. The liturgy was to be a "Blues Eucharist", and the ponytailed-wildman Lutheran pastor and bass guitarist was warming up with some good riffs and wails. I looked up from the couch-conversation I was having and smiled. There was the flaming red hair of the young coffee-shop pew fan and his dark-haired friend. I walked over and said, "The irony is that here there's not a pew in sight." They grinned and said what I had said about the church sounded "pretty good." They stayed for the whole service.
By God's mercy, we have a place in this emerging world. It will be a good place, if we walk our path with humility, faith, and trust, loving the people who are placed in our path by the good God.
archived musings and preachments
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
11th Sunday after Pentecost
11TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
(Proper 12, Year A)
July 27, 2008
Ss. Peter & Paul – Fr. Phillip Ayers
+++++
For 52 verses of the 13th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus preaches on the Kingdom by telling parables. That’s a lot of verses! That’s a lot of preaching and teaching for one sitting. Yet, despite going on for quite a while, Jesus drew—and kept—large crowds listening to him, an interesting fact, considering that nobody had to be there.
In contrast to this, listen to this:
A rich man said to his rector: “I want you to take a three-month, expense-paid sabbatical to Europe. When you return, I will have a surprise for you.” The rector accepted the offer on the spot.
Three months later, the minister returned and was met by the wealthy parishioner. A new nave had been built in the rector’s absence—a state-of-the-art house of worship. When the rector walked into the new edifice, he noted one striking difference. There was only one pew, and it was at the back of the nave. “A church with only one pew?” the rector asked with concern.
“You just wait until Sunday,” the wealthy parishioner countered. Sure enough, when the time came for the Sunday service, the early arrivals entered the church, filed into the pew, and sat down. When the pew was full, a switch clicked silently, gears meshed, a belt moved, and automatically the rear pew began to move forward. When it reached the front of the nave, it came to a stop. At the same time, another empty pew rotated up from below in the back, and more people sat down. And so it continued, pews filling and moving forward until finally the church was full by 11 o’clock.
“Wonderful!” exclaimed the rector. “Marvelous!” (You may have deduced by now that there was a problem with everyone wanting to sit in the back pews.)
The service began, and after the hymns and readings the rector started to preach his sermon. He launched into the text, and when 12 o’clock came, he was still going strong—with no end in sight. Suddenly, a bell rang, and a trap door in the floor of the pulpit dropped open.
“Wonderful!” exclaimed the congregation. “Marvelous!”
Jesus, as a preacher and a teacher, was never accused of being long-winded, pedantic, or boring. His sermons were not lectures with three points and a poem. They were not apologetic in nature. And they were short on citing religious precedent to back up his contention, what is called exegesis. He spoke “with authority,” which means he spoke out of his direct experience of God. No one ever “put him on the clock” or took friendly wagers as to how long his preaching would last. Jesus never needed a trap door. (When wrist-watches with alarms came into vogue, a young chorister used to time my sermons – I could hear it go off after 10 minutes!)
Why was Jesus so compelling with these parables? One reason comes from Hebrew prophecy: “I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world” (Mt. 13:35). He spoke of mystery. He was a spokesman for an unseen realm called the Kingdom of God. The prerequisite for hearing the parables: “Repent” Jesus told them, which, as Marcus Borg has reminded us, was not a fevered call to moral improvement, but rather, “Give up your agendas and trust me for mine.”
So, rather than try to argue people into the reality of the Kingdom—rather than trying to command them, or to moralize them into it—Jesus enticed them into it through the use of parables. The parables invited his listeners to participate in the reality of God as he himself did.
Isobel Anders has captured this parable-dynamic beautifully. She contends: “The parables of Jesus are intended to instill in the hearer a longing for the Kingdom of God and the world of the spirit—from which we ourselves have been brought by God to this earth—and to which we are summoned to return.”
On the lips of Jesus, the Kingdom of God itself was a comprehensive metaphor, and the individual parables its offspring. Jesus used both to bridge the gulf between finite beings in the finite existence and the unseen dimension of the spirit. At once, the parables were as tantalizing as they were challenging, as large in meaning as they were small in construct. In all cases, the parables of the Kingdom, as Marcus Borg so aptly teaches: summoned the listener to a new way of seeing, a new way of living, and a new way of centering.
As W.H. Auden said, “You cannot tell people what to do, you can only tell them parables; and that is what art really is, particular stories of particular people and experiences …”. Or, as Lane Denson offers, “… like jokes and jazz, if you’ve got to have parables explained, don’t bother. Parables are not to be explained, they are to be understood, and like most of the important things in life, they are understood only by our opening ourselves to them and listening with wonder and imagination, participating in them in a way.
In the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the yeast, we encounter images of the domain of God that nobody expected to hear. As The New Interpreter’s Bible [Vol. VIII] says: “We find not the natural and expected, but the supernatural and the surprising. The big tree growing from the tiny mustard seed is like the comic post card illustrations of a farmer with a gargantuan tomato strapped to the back of a flatbed truck. That one, lone woman working with that massive amount of flour has either lost her mind or is working for the Kingdom bakery … a modern analogy to these parables would be: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a preacher who preached every Sunday to a congregation of 25 people in a city of 2 million residents. The preacher kept on preaching until the whole cit believed the gospel’” (p.311).
Nothing whatsoever can be compared in value to experiencing the Kingdom—not even buried “treasure” or “fine pearls.” Jesus evokes the attention of the simple folk he addresses. The Kingdom might start out the size of a single coffee ground, but it will mushroom into a force to challenge and ultimately supersede the kingdoms of Herod and Caiaphas and Rome—indeed all earthly powers. But unless you are looking for the Kingdom, unless you have set aside enough of your “agenda” to make room for its reality, it will remain a “hidden” dimension, effectively nonexistent. We need a childlike willingness to accept it, and our eyes need to be opened to see it (Jn. 3:3). But it is indeed in our midst—“at hand.”
Ancient mariners told stories of many ship crews that died for lack of water while adrift in the occasionally windless waters of the South Atlantic off the coast of Brazil. An irony surrounded the desperate experiences, however. It seems that the mouth of the Amazon River—the largest river in the world—widened to some 90 miles, and it flowed out nearly 200 miles to sea.
From time to time, many a suffering, dehydrated ship’s crew would be lucky. They would see other ships, and plead to them for water. The other ships would yell back to them—to their great surprise—that all they needed to do was lower their buckets and haul up all the fresh water they needed. The full force of the Amazon current flowed all around them. If only they had known. If only we would know!
[Ideas and quotations from Synthesis 7/28/2002 and 7/27/2008]
(Proper 12, Year A)
July 27, 2008
Ss. Peter & Paul – Fr. Phillip Ayers
+++++
For 52 verses of the 13th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus preaches on the Kingdom by telling parables. That’s a lot of verses! That’s a lot of preaching and teaching for one sitting. Yet, despite going on for quite a while, Jesus drew—and kept—large crowds listening to him, an interesting fact, considering that nobody had to be there.
In contrast to this, listen to this:
A rich man said to his rector: “I want you to take a three-month, expense-paid sabbatical to Europe. When you return, I will have a surprise for you.” The rector accepted the offer on the spot.
Three months later, the minister returned and was met by the wealthy parishioner. A new nave had been built in the rector’s absence—a state-of-the-art house of worship. When the rector walked into the new edifice, he noted one striking difference. There was only one pew, and it was at the back of the nave. “A church with only one pew?” the rector asked with concern.
“You just wait until Sunday,” the wealthy parishioner countered. Sure enough, when the time came for the Sunday service, the early arrivals entered the church, filed into the pew, and sat down. When the pew was full, a switch clicked silently, gears meshed, a belt moved, and automatically the rear pew began to move forward. When it reached the front of the nave, it came to a stop. At the same time, another empty pew rotated up from below in the back, and more people sat down. And so it continued, pews filling and moving forward until finally the church was full by 11 o’clock.
“Wonderful!” exclaimed the rector. “Marvelous!” (You may have deduced by now that there was a problem with everyone wanting to sit in the back pews.)
The service began, and after the hymns and readings the rector started to preach his sermon. He launched into the text, and when 12 o’clock came, he was still going strong—with no end in sight. Suddenly, a bell rang, and a trap door in the floor of the pulpit dropped open.
“Wonderful!” exclaimed the congregation. “Marvelous!”
Jesus, as a preacher and a teacher, was never accused of being long-winded, pedantic, or boring. His sermons were not lectures with three points and a poem. They were not apologetic in nature. And they were short on citing religious precedent to back up his contention, what is called exegesis. He spoke “with authority,” which means he spoke out of his direct experience of God. No one ever “put him on the clock” or took friendly wagers as to how long his preaching would last. Jesus never needed a trap door. (When wrist-watches with alarms came into vogue, a young chorister used to time my sermons – I could hear it go off after 10 minutes!)
Why was Jesus so compelling with these parables? One reason comes from Hebrew prophecy: “I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world” (Mt. 13:35). He spoke of mystery. He was a spokesman for an unseen realm called the Kingdom of God. The prerequisite for hearing the parables: “Repent” Jesus told them, which, as Marcus Borg has reminded us, was not a fevered call to moral improvement, but rather, “Give up your agendas and trust me for mine.”
So, rather than try to argue people into the reality of the Kingdom—rather than trying to command them, or to moralize them into it—Jesus enticed them into it through the use of parables. The parables invited his listeners to participate in the reality of God as he himself did.
Isobel Anders has captured this parable-dynamic beautifully. She contends: “The parables of Jesus are intended to instill in the hearer a longing for the Kingdom of God and the world of the spirit—from which we ourselves have been brought by God to this earth—and to which we are summoned to return.”
On the lips of Jesus, the Kingdom of God itself was a comprehensive metaphor, and the individual parables its offspring. Jesus used both to bridge the gulf between finite beings in the finite existence and the unseen dimension of the spirit. At once, the parables were as tantalizing as they were challenging, as large in meaning as they were small in construct. In all cases, the parables of the Kingdom, as Marcus Borg so aptly teaches: summoned the listener to a new way of seeing, a new way of living, and a new way of centering.
As W.H. Auden said, “You cannot tell people what to do, you can only tell them parables; and that is what art really is, particular stories of particular people and experiences …”. Or, as Lane Denson offers, “… like jokes and jazz, if you’ve got to have parables explained, don’t bother. Parables are not to be explained, they are to be understood, and like most of the important things in life, they are understood only by our opening ourselves to them and listening with wonder and imagination, participating in them in a way.
In the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the yeast, we encounter images of the domain of God that nobody expected to hear. As The New Interpreter’s Bible [Vol. VIII] says: “We find not the natural and expected, but the supernatural and the surprising. The big tree growing from the tiny mustard seed is like the comic post card illustrations of a farmer with a gargantuan tomato strapped to the back of a flatbed truck. That one, lone woman working with that massive amount of flour has either lost her mind or is working for the Kingdom bakery … a modern analogy to these parables would be: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a preacher who preached every Sunday to a congregation of 25 people in a city of 2 million residents. The preacher kept on preaching until the whole cit believed the gospel’” (p.311).
Nothing whatsoever can be compared in value to experiencing the Kingdom—not even buried “treasure” or “fine pearls.” Jesus evokes the attention of the simple folk he addresses. The Kingdom might start out the size of a single coffee ground, but it will mushroom into a force to challenge and ultimately supersede the kingdoms of Herod and Caiaphas and Rome—indeed all earthly powers. But unless you are looking for the Kingdom, unless you have set aside enough of your “agenda” to make room for its reality, it will remain a “hidden” dimension, effectively nonexistent. We need a childlike willingness to accept it, and our eyes need to be opened to see it (Jn. 3:3). But it is indeed in our midst—“at hand.”
Ancient mariners told stories of many ship crews that died for lack of water while adrift in the occasionally windless waters of the South Atlantic off the coast of Brazil. An irony surrounded the desperate experiences, however. It seems that the mouth of the Amazon River—the largest river in the world—widened to some 90 miles, and it flowed out nearly 200 miles to sea.
From time to time, many a suffering, dehydrated ship’s crew would be lucky. They would see other ships, and plead to them for water. The other ships would yell back to them—to their great surprise—that all they needed to do was lower their buckets and haul up all the fresh water they needed. The full force of the Amazon current flowed all around them. If only they had known. If only we would know!
[Ideas and quotations from Synthesis 7/28/2002 and 7/27/2008]
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
(Proper 10, Year A)
July 13, 2008
Ss. Peter & Paul – Fr. Phillip Ayers
+++++
Henri Nouwen, in his book, The Living Reminder, quotes a saying that he French use to express the paradox of progress: “To step back in order to jump farther” (Retirer pour mieux sauter). In his chapter on “Guidance,” he applies this to the ordained ministry and its guiding function among the people of God in the concrete circumstances of everyday life.
Nouwen reminds the reader that all reformers are revisionists, people who remind their communities of the “original vision” of their cause. Their task is returning the people to the source from which the initial inspiration came.
For example, Benedict in the sixth century recaptured the vision of community; Luther, in the sixteenth century, recaptured the vision of God’s undeserved grace; Wesley recaptured in the eighteenth century the vision of a living faith; and Martin Luther King, Jr., in the twentieth century recaptured the vision of peace and justice for all. Each of these leaders took a step “back” in order to bring us further along.
Nouwen points out that the minister guides by confronting and inspiring. Then he asks: “How might such confrontation and inspiration express themselves in our daily ministry?” He answers it with one suggestion: “Tell a story.”
Nouwen explains further that “Often the colorful people of great faith will confront and inspire more readily than the pale doctrines of the faith.” This is essentially wheat Jesus accomplished in telling his parables.
The hearer was confronted and inspired—not in some bland or dogmatic way, but through the medium of story.
Through the “indirection” of this method of teaching, Jesus was able to break through his listeners’ fearful barriers of resistance and to challenge them, in a fresh way, to recognize God’s inbreaking presence in their lives—and make a decision to accept it. He was tilling ground to make it fruitful.
In today’s Parable of the Sower, Jesus skillfully sets the stage for learning. He does not launch into a theological treatise on double predestination or on why some people believe in the Gospel and commit themselves to it—and others don’t.
Rather, he broadcasts—that’s the way a sower sowed the seed, broadly scattering it—the Good News of God’s love freely, spread out on all kinds of ground, most of which is not conducive to receptivity or growth.
Does Jesus fret over the silence, the incomprehension, the lack of fruitful response? Does he lament that only one of the four locales where the seed lands shows any growth? No more than he seems to fret over the rich young aristocrat who heard the gospel and went away sorrowful (Mt. 19:16-22).
Jesus doesn’t follow after him, trying to convince the lad, like a salesman, with sweeter offer upon sweeter. “Just give half of it away … or I’ll settle for a third … how about just a tithe, a tenth?”
Nor is it recorded that Jesus suffered from insomnia. If he could sleep through a howling squall—as in the storm-tossed boat--, he could sleep despite the fact that some seed dos not take hold.
Jesus never worries because he depends on the utter reliability of the Father, all appearances of arid ground notwithstanding. The reign of God will arrive, despite the obstacles. It will reach a maturity and richness in spite of the staggering odds it faces.
Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), the French explorer who became a Trappist monk and was called “the hermit of the Sahara,” once said, “Cry the gospel with your whole life”—and he did not follow the adage with worry about how it was to be received. Just sow, wherever you are.
As to the listener, he or she is confronted not only with the reality that the Gospel has been universally broadcast, but also with the inevitable questions: “What kind of ground am I? Am I a stony place? If so, what are the stones blocking my soul? Old fears and inhibitions, resentments or lingering guilt? AND What am I, with God’s help, going to do about them? What thorns are choking God’s activity out of my life? What keeps the Gospel on a superficial level, prevents it from germinating and growing ripe fruit? Is it majoring in the minors? Over-commitment and over-exposure to the world? Or just laziness?”
The inspiring part of the story, of course, is the dramatic growth and fruit-bearing potential of the Gospel when it does take root in the willing heart of the convert. By the time of Matthew, its growth is unstoppable. It must have been good enough even to afford the First Evangelist a good night’s sleep!
The following allegory by “Hieronymum” illustrates as only story can how acceptance of the Word and Jesus’ offer of eternal life depends on the heart’s openness—AND our own effort in getting ourselves out of the way for the Spirit to work:
Walking within the garden, the pupil suddenly came upon the Master, and was glad, for he had but just finished a task in His service, which he hastened to lay at His feet.
“See, Master,” said he, “this is done; now give me other teaching to do.”
The Master looked upon him sadly yet indulgently, as one might upon a child who cannot understand.
“There are already many to teach intellectual conceptions of the Truth,” he replied. “Thinkest thou to serve best by adding thyself to their number?”
The pupil was perplexed.
“Ought we not to proclaim the Truth from the very housetops, until the whole world shall have heard?” he asked.
“And then—“
“Then the whole world will surely accept it.”
“Nay,” replied the Master, “the Truth is not of the intellect, but of the heart. See!”
The pupil looked, and saw the Truth as though it were a White Light, flooding the whole earth; yet none seemed to reach the green and living plants that so sorely needed its rays, because of dense layers of clouds intervening.
“The clouds are the human intellect,” said the Master. “Look again.”
Intently gazing, the pupil saw here and there faint rifts in the clouds, through which the Light struggled in broken, feeble beams. Each opening had its origin in a human heart.
“Only by adding to and enlarging the rifts will the Light ever reach the earth,” said the Master. “Is it best, then, to pour out more Light upon the clouds, or to open hearts? The latter thou must accomplish unseen and unnoticed, and even unthanked. The former will bring thee praise and notice among men. Both are necessary: both are Our work; but—the openings are so few! Art thou strong enough to forego the praise and make of thyself a heart center … ?”
The pupil sighed, for it was a sore question.
(Proper 10, Year A)
July 13, 2008
Ss. Peter & Paul – Fr. Phillip Ayers
+++++
Henri Nouwen, in his book, The Living Reminder, quotes a saying that he French use to express the paradox of progress: “To step back in order to jump farther” (Retirer pour mieux sauter). In his chapter on “Guidance,” he applies this to the ordained ministry and its guiding function among the people of God in the concrete circumstances of everyday life.
Nouwen reminds the reader that all reformers are revisionists, people who remind their communities of the “original vision” of their cause. Their task is returning the people to the source from which the initial inspiration came.
For example, Benedict in the sixth century recaptured the vision of community; Luther, in the sixteenth century, recaptured the vision of God’s undeserved grace; Wesley recaptured in the eighteenth century the vision of a living faith; and Martin Luther King, Jr., in the twentieth century recaptured the vision of peace and justice for all. Each of these leaders took a step “back” in order to bring us further along.
Nouwen points out that the minister guides by confronting and inspiring. Then he asks: “How might such confrontation and inspiration express themselves in our daily ministry?” He answers it with one suggestion: “Tell a story.”
Nouwen explains further that “Often the colorful people of great faith will confront and inspire more readily than the pale doctrines of the faith.” This is essentially wheat Jesus accomplished in telling his parables.
The hearer was confronted and inspired—not in some bland or dogmatic way, but through the medium of story.
Through the “indirection” of this method of teaching, Jesus was able to break through his listeners’ fearful barriers of resistance and to challenge them, in a fresh way, to recognize God’s inbreaking presence in their lives—and make a decision to accept it. He was tilling ground to make it fruitful.
In today’s Parable of the Sower, Jesus skillfully sets the stage for learning. He does not launch into a theological treatise on double predestination or on why some people believe in the Gospel and commit themselves to it—and others don’t.
Rather, he broadcasts—that’s the way a sower sowed the seed, broadly scattering it—the Good News of God’s love freely, spread out on all kinds of ground, most of which is not conducive to receptivity or growth.
Does Jesus fret over the silence, the incomprehension, the lack of fruitful response? Does he lament that only one of the four locales where the seed lands shows any growth? No more than he seems to fret over the rich young aristocrat who heard the gospel and went away sorrowful (Mt. 19:16-22).
Jesus doesn’t follow after him, trying to convince the lad, like a salesman, with sweeter offer upon sweeter. “Just give half of it away … or I’ll settle for a third … how about just a tithe, a tenth?”
Nor is it recorded that Jesus suffered from insomnia. If he could sleep through a howling squall—as in the storm-tossed boat--, he could sleep despite the fact that some seed dos not take hold.
Jesus never worries because he depends on the utter reliability of the Father, all appearances of arid ground notwithstanding. The reign of God will arrive, despite the obstacles. It will reach a maturity and richness in spite of the staggering odds it faces.
Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), the French explorer who became a Trappist monk and was called “the hermit of the Sahara,” once said, “Cry the gospel with your whole life”—and he did not follow the adage with worry about how it was to be received. Just sow, wherever you are.
As to the listener, he or she is confronted not only with the reality that the Gospel has been universally broadcast, but also with the inevitable questions: “What kind of ground am I? Am I a stony place? If so, what are the stones blocking my soul? Old fears and inhibitions, resentments or lingering guilt? AND What am I, with God’s help, going to do about them? What thorns are choking God’s activity out of my life? What keeps the Gospel on a superficial level, prevents it from germinating and growing ripe fruit? Is it majoring in the minors? Over-commitment and over-exposure to the world? Or just laziness?”
The inspiring part of the story, of course, is the dramatic growth and fruit-bearing potential of the Gospel when it does take root in the willing heart of the convert. By the time of Matthew, its growth is unstoppable. It must have been good enough even to afford the First Evangelist a good night’s sleep!
The following allegory by “Hieronymum” illustrates as only story can how acceptance of the Word and Jesus’ offer of eternal life depends on the heart’s openness—AND our own effort in getting ourselves out of the way for the Spirit to work:
Walking within the garden, the pupil suddenly came upon the Master, and was glad, for he had but just finished a task in His service, which he hastened to lay at His feet.
“See, Master,” said he, “this is done; now give me other teaching to do.”
The Master looked upon him sadly yet indulgently, as one might upon a child who cannot understand.
“There are already many to teach intellectual conceptions of the Truth,” he replied. “Thinkest thou to serve best by adding thyself to their number?”
The pupil was perplexed.
“Ought we not to proclaim the Truth from the very housetops, until the whole world shall have heard?” he asked.
“And then—“
“Then the whole world will surely accept it.”
“Nay,” replied the Master, “the Truth is not of the intellect, but of the heart. See!”
The pupil looked, and saw the Truth as though it were a White Light, flooding the whole earth; yet none seemed to reach the green and living plants that so sorely needed its rays, because of dense layers of clouds intervening.
“The clouds are the human intellect,” said the Master. “Look again.”
Intently gazing, the pupil saw here and there faint rifts in the clouds, through which the Light struggled in broken, feeble beams. Each opening had its origin in a human heart.
“Only by adding to and enlarging the rifts will the Light ever reach the earth,” said the Master. “Is it best, then, to pour out more Light upon the clouds, or to open hearts? The latter thou must accomplish unseen and unnoticed, and even unthanked. The former will bring thee praise and notice among men. Both are necessary: both are Our work; but—the openings are so few! Art thou strong enough to forego the praise and make of thyself a heart center … ?”
The pupil sighed, for it was a sore question.
Monday, July 7, 2008
8th Sunday after Pentecost - Sermon By Deacon Tracy
Proper 9, Year A
We talk a lot in church about loving God and loving other people. These are tremendously important themes for our faith. But today we are going to talk about letting ourselves be loved by God, a surprisingly difficult task yet also very important.
It has been a discordant summer for this community, I think. Summer, which brings up images of relaxation, freedom, ease and sunny joy has dished out, instead, to many in this community very heavy hearts. Several are unemployed or struggling with finances, many are facing chronic pain or illness, and many are lonely or suffering pain in relationships. Jesus’ words, “come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest” is an invitation desperately needed by many of us.
It is immensely comforting to know that there is a wideness to God’s mercy that lifts up even our own heavy hearts, that there is no place where our sorrows and pains are more heard and felt than in the heart of God. But it is also true that God’s ways are not our own, and as we have heard for the past two weeks that we must give up our life in order to gain it again today we hear that the path to peace and rest for our souls runs counter to what we intuitively expect.
“Be like an infant, needy and vulnerable and yoke yourself up like an oxen submitting to the pull of another” Nope, Jesus’ grand plan would not have gotten him booked for any motivational speaking tours. These aren’t character traits we seek out to increase our happiness or what we would say are the makings of heroes.
Think about heroes for a minute. If you were to describe your heroes they might have a lot of tremendous traits. Self sacrificing, generous, brave, passionate, wise, striving for justice. But, I bet your descriptions didn’t include things like needy, ignorant and untaught, lost on their own…yet that is exactly the definition of the heroes in today’s Gospel. For it is the “little ones” or “infants” that are the ones who are able to receive the word of God – the ones who can perceive God in the world and the ones who can receive the peace of God.
The wise and intelligent in today’s Gospel aren’t able to see God. They see John and perceive a demon. They see Jesus and call him a drunk. The more we are lost in our heads and lean on our own understanding the further we seem to get from being able to find God in the world.
But the infants – they are the ones who see Jesus and know that they are in the presence of God. Why is that? Infants, and the words here can also mean servants, are utterly dependant on another. They are aware of their need and must trust another to provide for them.
Yet we have been trained up on the ideals of the wild west, corporate America, and protestant work ethic where it is every man and woman for themselves, independence is honored, self sufficiency is necessary and rewarded, freedom from control by others is a blissful state of being. We fear illness that will make us unable to care for ourselves, we feel ashamed when we have to ask for help from others, we view our neediness as a weakness. But Jesus is saying here that there is something about our own ideal of self-sufficiency that places walls around our hearts that keep God out. Howard Thurman writes, “My ego is like a fortress. I have built its walls stone by stone to hold out the invasion of the love of God.” Our egos have indeed become like fortresses. We have defended ourselves from our own need, and thus the love of Christ, by placing brick after brick of independence around ourselves.
Yet, Jesus proclaims, it is with an utter abandonment of self-sufficiency, overflowing with our own need and complete trust that allows us to perceive the Holy. Being yoked to Jesus requires this openness of heart.
Jesus uses a farming image here that may not be familiar in our urban context. The first thing to note in this image is that we are all compared to oxen carrying heavy burdens. I might prefer to be compared to a light floating fairy or soaring bird, but I suspect this image is more accurate: we are all of us already yoked to something and carrying extremely heavy loads.
I like the image in the Old Testament reading in which Zechariah calls the people “prisoners of hope”. Is that good or is that bad??? Being a prisoner just seems intuitively bad. Same here with this image of being yoked. But I think the OT text and Jesus’ message here speak to an important truth that we are prisoners either way but we can choose who we are prisoners of. The people to whom Zechariah speaks have been prisoners of exile, likely prisoners of fear and despair. Now their life can be devoted wholly to hope. Jesus would call us to be yoked to him, but if we do not choose him I would submit that we are just as yoked to other things. We are Prisoners of perfectionism, addiction, fear, money and success... The people to whom Jesus speaks in this Gospel story have become yoked to an interpretation of the law that requires hundreds of rules to be followed, a strict legalism in order to be faithful. Jesus offers a gentler way. To us too, Jesus offers a gentler way than the yoke the world has to offer.
In Jesus’ agricultural image an ox would receive a yoke around it’s neck to connect it to another ox. This was done for young, inexperienced oxen who would be paired with other oxen who could help and train them. It was also done with older oxen so that they might be connected with a stronger ox who could share the burden and lighten the load. Perhaps a more accessible image is that of a young mom taking the child’s hands as he toddles along, learning to walk or a daughter who takes the hand of her elderly father who hobbles in his age struggling to walk down the hall. If we reject that hand we fall.
Here Jesus offers us his hand. When the burden of staying upright is hard, when the weight of life would knock us on the ground he offers to help us along the road sharing and lightening the load. When we are fumbling and ignorant, tripping along and longing to see God but cannot, he offers his hand to guide and to gently teach our hearts.
The image of yoking is a bit more difficult than that of taking someone’s hand, though, because it is an image that means being connected to another in a way that requires that we go his way, it is an image of submission and of a complete abandonment of an illusion of control. It is a hard choice. Lose your life to find it.
Taking this yoke means we will go where Jesus leads and that will undoubtedly mean to some unexpected places. Yoked to Jesus we aren’t going to walk down the path that the world would define as success. His path leads to dinner with the tax collector and sinner (where perhaps we will find that we fit in just superbly), it will lead to conversations with the insane seeming demoniac (where we perhaps will see reflections of ourselves) and it will lead to the cross (where in the midst of death we will find life). Not a road map that would be chosen by those looking for the “top seven paths to success” but a way that promises peace, rest and a sure view of the Holy.
But how does one become yoked to Jesus and what does it really look like? I suspect that the answer is broader and deeper than I can articulate. But let me offer a few ideas to begin the process stirring in our hearts as we contemplate surrendering to this call.
CH Spurgeon, a 19th century preacher echoes today’s Gospel saying, “Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.”
His idea of being yoked is to plunge ourselves into the Godhead’s deepest sea. It takes a tremendous amount of trust to go diving into a wild sea and the result is that you are covered in salty sea water, you are immersed in God. How do we recklessly throw ourselves into contact with the Holy, how do we cover our days and our thoughts with God? Our own spiritual practices will look as varied as the uniqueness of our fingerprints, but it is important that we think about what that practice might be in our own lives.
Finally being yoked means that we must let go, we must surrender ourselves, trusting that we will receive ourselves back again healed, transformed and more true to who we are created to be. For we have a God full of mercy and compassion, rich with unending love who longs to make our hearts a home for the holy. Being yoked, most importantly, then, means trusting Jesus. All we can do is ask. Here is the rest of Thurman’s prayer
“My ego is like a fortress. I have built its walls stone by stone to hold out the invasion of the love of God.
But I have stayed here long enough. There is light over the barriers, O my God. The darkness of my house forgive and overtake my soul. I relax the barriers. I abandon all that I think I am, all that I hope to be, all that I believe I possess. I let go of the past, I withdraw my grasping hand from the future and in the great silence of this moment, I alertly rest my soul. As the sea gull lays in the wind current, so I lay myself into the spirit of God. My dearest human relationships, my most precious dreams, I surrender to His care. All that I have called my own I give back. All my favorite things, which I would withhold in my storehouse from his fearful tyranny, I let go. I give myself unto thee, O my God.
Amen
We talk a lot in church about loving God and loving other people. These are tremendously important themes for our faith. But today we are going to talk about letting ourselves be loved by God, a surprisingly difficult task yet also very important.
It has been a discordant summer for this community, I think. Summer, which brings up images of relaxation, freedom, ease and sunny joy has dished out, instead, to many in this community very heavy hearts. Several are unemployed or struggling with finances, many are facing chronic pain or illness, and many are lonely or suffering pain in relationships. Jesus’ words, “come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest” is an invitation desperately needed by many of us.
It is immensely comforting to know that there is a wideness to God’s mercy that lifts up even our own heavy hearts, that there is no place where our sorrows and pains are more heard and felt than in the heart of God. But it is also true that God’s ways are not our own, and as we have heard for the past two weeks that we must give up our life in order to gain it again today we hear that the path to peace and rest for our souls runs counter to what we intuitively expect.
“Be like an infant, needy and vulnerable and yoke yourself up like an oxen submitting to the pull of another” Nope, Jesus’ grand plan would not have gotten him booked for any motivational speaking tours. These aren’t character traits we seek out to increase our happiness or what we would say are the makings of heroes.
Think about heroes for a minute. If you were to describe your heroes they might have a lot of tremendous traits. Self sacrificing, generous, brave, passionate, wise, striving for justice. But, I bet your descriptions didn’t include things like needy, ignorant and untaught, lost on their own…yet that is exactly the definition of the heroes in today’s Gospel. For it is the “little ones” or “infants” that are the ones who are able to receive the word of God – the ones who can perceive God in the world and the ones who can receive the peace of God.
The wise and intelligent in today’s Gospel aren’t able to see God. They see John and perceive a demon. They see Jesus and call him a drunk. The more we are lost in our heads and lean on our own understanding the further we seem to get from being able to find God in the world.
But the infants – they are the ones who see Jesus and know that they are in the presence of God. Why is that? Infants, and the words here can also mean servants, are utterly dependant on another. They are aware of their need and must trust another to provide for them.
Yet we have been trained up on the ideals of the wild west, corporate America, and protestant work ethic where it is every man and woman for themselves, independence is honored, self sufficiency is necessary and rewarded, freedom from control by others is a blissful state of being. We fear illness that will make us unable to care for ourselves, we feel ashamed when we have to ask for help from others, we view our neediness as a weakness. But Jesus is saying here that there is something about our own ideal of self-sufficiency that places walls around our hearts that keep God out. Howard Thurman writes, “My ego is like a fortress. I have built its walls stone by stone to hold out the invasion of the love of God.” Our egos have indeed become like fortresses. We have defended ourselves from our own need, and thus the love of Christ, by placing brick after brick of independence around ourselves.
Yet, Jesus proclaims, it is with an utter abandonment of self-sufficiency, overflowing with our own need and complete trust that allows us to perceive the Holy. Being yoked to Jesus requires this openness of heart.
Jesus uses a farming image here that may not be familiar in our urban context. The first thing to note in this image is that we are all compared to oxen carrying heavy burdens. I might prefer to be compared to a light floating fairy or soaring bird, but I suspect this image is more accurate: we are all of us already yoked to something and carrying extremely heavy loads.
I like the image in the Old Testament reading in which Zechariah calls the people “prisoners of hope”. Is that good or is that bad??? Being a prisoner just seems intuitively bad. Same here with this image of being yoked. But I think the OT text and Jesus’ message here speak to an important truth that we are prisoners either way but we can choose who we are prisoners of. The people to whom Zechariah speaks have been prisoners of exile, likely prisoners of fear and despair. Now their life can be devoted wholly to hope. Jesus would call us to be yoked to him, but if we do not choose him I would submit that we are just as yoked to other things. We are Prisoners of perfectionism, addiction, fear, money and success... The people to whom Jesus speaks in this Gospel story have become yoked to an interpretation of the law that requires hundreds of rules to be followed, a strict legalism in order to be faithful. Jesus offers a gentler way. To us too, Jesus offers a gentler way than the yoke the world has to offer.
In Jesus’ agricultural image an ox would receive a yoke around it’s neck to connect it to another ox. This was done for young, inexperienced oxen who would be paired with other oxen who could help and train them. It was also done with older oxen so that they might be connected with a stronger ox who could share the burden and lighten the load. Perhaps a more accessible image is that of a young mom taking the child’s hands as he toddles along, learning to walk or a daughter who takes the hand of her elderly father who hobbles in his age struggling to walk down the hall. If we reject that hand we fall.
Here Jesus offers us his hand. When the burden of staying upright is hard, when the weight of life would knock us on the ground he offers to help us along the road sharing and lightening the load. When we are fumbling and ignorant, tripping along and longing to see God but cannot, he offers his hand to guide and to gently teach our hearts.
The image of yoking is a bit more difficult than that of taking someone’s hand, though, because it is an image that means being connected to another in a way that requires that we go his way, it is an image of submission and of a complete abandonment of an illusion of control. It is a hard choice. Lose your life to find it.
Taking this yoke means we will go where Jesus leads and that will undoubtedly mean to some unexpected places. Yoked to Jesus we aren’t going to walk down the path that the world would define as success. His path leads to dinner with the tax collector and sinner (where perhaps we will find that we fit in just superbly), it will lead to conversations with the insane seeming demoniac (where we perhaps will see reflections of ourselves) and it will lead to the cross (where in the midst of death we will find life). Not a road map that would be chosen by those looking for the “top seven paths to success” but a way that promises peace, rest and a sure view of the Holy.
But how does one become yoked to Jesus and what does it really look like? I suspect that the answer is broader and deeper than I can articulate. But let me offer a few ideas to begin the process stirring in our hearts as we contemplate surrendering to this call.
CH Spurgeon, a 19th century preacher echoes today’s Gospel saying, “Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.”
His idea of being yoked is to plunge ourselves into the Godhead’s deepest sea. It takes a tremendous amount of trust to go diving into a wild sea and the result is that you are covered in salty sea water, you are immersed in God. How do we recklessly throw ourselves into contact with the Holy, how do we cover our days and our thoughts with God? Our own spiritual practices will look as varied as the uniqueness of our fingerprints, but it is important that we think about what that practice might be in our own lives.
Finally being yoked means that we must let go, we must surrender ourselves, trusting that we will receive ourselves back again healed, transformed and more true to who we are created to be. For we have a God full of mercy and compassion, rich with unending love who longs to make our hearts a home for the holy. Being yoked, most importantly, then, means trusting Jesus. All we can do is ask. Here is the rest of Thurman’s prayer
“My ego is like a fortress. I have built its walls stone by stone to hold out the invasion of the love of God.
But I have stayed here long enough. There is light over the barriers, O my God. The darkness of my house forgive and overtake my soul. I relax the barriers. I abandon all that I think I am, all that I hope to be, all that I believe I possess. I let go of the past, I withdraw my grasping hand from the future and in the great silence of this moment, I alertly rest my soul. As the sea gull lays in the wind current, so I lay myself into the spirit of God. My dearest human relationships, my most precious dreams, I surrender to His care. All that I have called my own I give back. All my favorite things, which I would withhold in my storehouse from his fearful tyranny, I let go. I give myself unto thee, O my God.
Amen
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
sleepless in the monastery
It has been five days since I left Our Lady of Guadalupe Cistercian Abbey. My exterior residuals include a) a lingering tendency and preference towards silence b) an interior clock that still gets me up in time for the "Vigils" office that the monks pray at 4:15 AM each and every day c) a lack of interest in the presidential election, in answering the phone, or least of all in Anglican Communion church food-fights.
I regret to report that I cannot a) levitate b) walk on even shallow bodies of water, nor c) tell with any accuracy how many Inquisition victims the monks have chained in their dungeon. No dungeon even; they do have a fairly clean laundry room though where you can see their white and black robes whirling in the spin cycle.
I'm indulging in some harmless sarcasm as I think I will be discovering and processing the gift and experience of living with the Cistercians of OLG for a long, long time, and it is important to me that I claim absolutely no mystique or false level of "illumination" at having been privileged to live and work and pray intimately among them for one month. It was a luxurious experience spiritually speaking, and I am very grateful to you all members of Saints Peter and Paul as well as my intrepid wife and kids in allowing this to happen.
It's a luxury to live so intimately with members of one of the most venerable and, within living memory, most private and seemingly mysterious Orders within monasticism. Thomas Merton's autobiographical books began in the late '40's to open the Cistercian world to those curious or those seeking spiritual food from ancient sources. Since the reforms in the RC Church of the early '60's the Cistercians and other Orders have sought to free themselves of archaic customs and overly-rigid attitudes that actually obscured the purpose of their lives. The Cistercian "purpose", if I might be so bold, is to seek God in simplicity, silence, and in community. As an outsider coming in, I'd say they are pretty straightforward about that today.
There is not and never was a "vow of silence" per se; that is a romantic notion. Rather talking is to be brief and to the point, and certain times of the day as well as certain parts of the monastery are to be utterly quiet unless at great need. This "honors silence" and honors the God who speaks in a "still small voice." Silence is not an abstract imposed suffering for these men; it is embraced for the sake of listening. Some monks are naturally introverted and take to silence with little strain. Others are extroverted by nature and the practice is difficult for them.
They pray the "hours" of the Divine Office, the communal prayer of the ancient Church consisting of Psalms, hymns, and readings, seven times each day starting with the "night office" of Vigils at 4:15 A. Simply put, they think that some sleep-deprivation is worth it to pray in the darkness to God and for the world while the world sleeps.
If you can hack the celibacy, it's actually a healthy and balanced life with no gratuitous suffering (hair shirts, self-beating) woven in. Food is healthy and balanced albeit with no flesh-meats save a little fish on occasion. Six days a week the monks work and everyone participates in keeping the house and grounds and in working the small businesses they run to keep themselves afloat financially. Their attitude to work is enlightening--during work hours they work steadily but without anxiety; when work is done it's done and they walk away and forget it until the next day. There is flexibility and space in the day, and each monk has a "cell" or private room that's actually a little bigger than a college dorm "single". The grounds are beautiful and most of the monks like to hike. They deal with one another with respect and all the monks have a say in things that effect them all. The Abbot is elected by the membership and the office is reviewed every seven years.
When I thanked the Abbot for their hospitality towards an ex-RC renegade turned Episcopalian, he waved his hand in the air and replied that it is their pleasure, and that the baseline to their life is not denominational identity but the search for God which provides a ground in which to meet and engage with many sorts of people with respect.
One woman staying at their guesthouse for a weekend was very impressed that I was staying with the community "for a whole month" and said with the best intentions, "You'll leave here transformed."
That remark made me very uncomfortable and I think I remember waving my own hand like the Abbot although with less patience. Perhaps I was keenly aware that I and my month-long stay was a dust-mote on the 900+ years of Cistercian history and a blip before the commitment of the quiet and modest men who were in the Abbey for a lifetime of almost invisible faithfulness. I told her that I would settle for a new tool or two with which to continue my journey.
What I learned there, as recorded in the journals which I almost filled with at times feverish writing, was a re-appreciation of the ancient and unfashionable virtue of humility and of my need for it. I learned that much in me that I thought had been healed in terms of past experience was not as healed as I thought. In the relative silence and reduced outside stimulus, the superficial identity given by role and title and duties, lots of old material came bubbling up in a nearly-overwhelming fashion. My dreams were positively psychedelic, Peter Max and Salvador Dali having an "unplugged" session together with Karl Jung as consultant. I had a palpable sense of vulnerability much of the time. When I reported this to the Abbot and the other monks, they chuckled and avowed how this was completely "normal" and continued for most of them for years in some cases.
I learned that I was tired of trying to pray and realized that I cannot pray. And I learned that this is a valuable step, as we cannot pray. The Spirit prays within us and the goal of Christian prayer praxis is not to plug and plug away and bang one's head against the divine brick wall until one gets it "right". The goal is to learn by grace the art of getting out of the way and to be attuned to the Spirit praying within. In my head I knew this and I probably passed that on to other people with the best of intentions. At the abbey I learned that I was not "practicing" this myself.
And all of this sounds like grim and depressing news. But it is not. It is freeing, liberating. I feel like a beginner again. And I like the feeling.
Not all the moments at the abbey were fraught with "emo" inner turmoil and angst. Praying Vigils and watching the land slowly lighten with the midsummer sunrise halfway through, with the sense that the awakening birds were joining in the Psalms...private prayer in the "interval" between Vigils and Lauds at 6:30 AM and experimenting with the "ancient art" of lectio divina, praying with the Scriptures and listening for the divine voice...work outside and chatting easily with the monks who reminded me at those moments of my father's hardworking, hard-handed friends...looking down a hallway and seeing a habited monk framed by a white arched doorway and shivering, wondering if I'd been transported to medieval France...listening to some of the journeys of the men who have taken permanent vows and never for a moment believing that these guys were "hiding from life"; rather they were embracing life and their particular path within it...meditating in their Zen-style chapel and smiling as some squirrel peered through the clear ground-level plate-glass window and seemed to mock our piety by sitting up and clasping his impudent little claws in prayer.
Made some new friends--some living, with whom I have every intention of staying in touch. On my last day men who had not spoken one word to me came up and said how they had enjoyed my presence and that I was "welcome back anytime I wanted." Some dead, like St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the great intellectual and spiritual figure of the early days of the Cistercians in the 12th century. I'd always avoided Bernard because of his unsavory medieval political adventures--preaching the Second Crusade, making himself the worst nightmare of the scholar Peter Abelard, assisting in the foundation of the Knights Templar. But I read Bernard's piece on "Humility and Pride" and felt it had been written somehow with me partially in mind. And his other writings breathe an energy and love for the spiritual quest, a deep devotion to the humanity of Christ, and wonder at the transforming mystery of the Incarnation. All of these are Anglican-Episcopal notes as well, at least when we're at our best.
I begin to have thoughts about how monastic principles can help inform and deepen parish life as we first began to examine some seven years ago. And I want to patiently see what permanent marks may be left on my soul from this very privileged time.
I missed my wife and kids with a tangible ache in my flesh, and was wildly happy when my wife and older daughter arrived and picked me up on my last day. I am not, repeat NOT, called to celibacy and the stay made me realize that my decisions long ago to embrace marriage and priesthood in the Episcopal Church were "right" for me. But I do not mind telling you that as we drove away I had tears in my eyes.
I regret to report that I cannot a) levitate b) walk on even shallow bodies of water, nor c) tell with any accuracy how many Inquisition victims the monks have chained in their dungeon. No dungeon even; they do have a fairly clean laundry room though where you can see their white and black robes whirling in the spin cycle.
I'm indulging in some harmless sarcasm as I think I will be discovering and processing the gift and experience of living with the Cistercians of OLG for a long, long time, and it is important to me that I claim absolutely no mystique or false level of "illumination" at having been privileged to live and work and pray intimately among them for one month. It was a luxurious experience spiritually speaking, and I am very grateful to you all members of Saints Peter and Paul as well as my intrepid wife and kids in allowing this to happen.
It's a luxury to live so intimately with members of one of the most venerable and, within living memory, most private and seemingly mysterious Orders within monasticism. Thomas Merton's autobiographical books began in the late '40's to open the Cistercian world to those curious or those seeking spiritual food from ancient sources. Since the reforms in the RC Church of the early '60's the Cistercians and other Orders have sought to free themselves of archaic customs and overly-rigid attitudes that actually obscured the purpose of their lives. The Cistercian "purpose", if I might be so bold, is to seek God in simplicity, silence, and in community. As an outsider coming in, I'd say they are pretty straightforward about that today.
There is not and never was a "vow of silence" per se; that is a romantic notion. Rather talking is to be brief and to the point, and certain times of the day as well as certain parts of the monastery are to be utterly quiet unless at great need. This "honors silence" and honors the God who speaks in a "still small voice." Silence is not an abstract imposed suffering for these men; it is embraced for the sake of listening. Some monks are naturally introverted and take to silence with little strain. Others are extroverted by nature and the practice is difficult for them.
They pray the "hours" of the Divine Office, the communal prayer of the ancient Church consisting of Psalms, hymns, and readings, seven times each day starting with the "night office" of Vigils at 4:15 A. Simply put, they think that some sleep-deprivation is worth it to pray in the darkness to God and for the world while the world sleeps.
If you can hack the celibacy, it's actually a healthy and balanced life with no gratuitous suffering (hair shirts, self-beating) woven in. Food is healthy and balanced albeit with no flesh-meats save a little fish on occasion. Six days a week the monks work and everyone participates in keeping the house and grounds and in working the small businesses they run to keep themselves afloat financially. Their attitude to work is enlightening--during work hours they work steadily but without anxiety; when work is done it's done and they walk away and forget it until the next day. There is flexibility and space in the day, and each monk has a "cell" or private room that's actually a little bigger than a college dorm "single". The grounds are beautiful and most of the monks like to hike. They deal with one another with respect and all the monks have a say in things that effect them all. The Abbot is elected by the membership and the office is reviewed every seven years.
When I thanked the Abbot for their hospitality towards an ex-RC renegade turned Episcopalian, he waved his hand in the air and replied that it is their pleasure, and that the baseline to their life is not denominational identity but the search for God which provides a ground in which to meet and engage with many sorts of people with respect.
One woman staying at their guesthouse for a weekend was very impressed that I was staying with the community "for a whole month" and said with the best intentions, "You'll leave here transformed."
That remark made me very uncomfortable and I think I remember waving my own hand like the Abbot although with less patience. Perhaps I was keenly aware that I and my month-long stay was a dust-mote on the 900+ years of Cistercian history and a blip before the commitment of the quiet and modest men who were in the Abbey for a lifetime of almost invisible faithfulness. I told her that I would settle for a new tool or two with which to continue my journey.
What I learned there, as recorded in the journals which I almost filled with at times feverish writing, was a re-appreciation of the ancient and unfashionable virtue of humility and of my need for it. I learned that much in me that I thought had been healed in terms of past experience was not as healed as I thought. In the relative silence and reduced outside stimulus, the superficial identity given by role and title and duties, lots of old material came bubbling up in a nearly-overwhelming fashion. My dreams were positively psychedelic, Peter Max and Salvador Dali having an "unplugged" session together with Karl Jung as consultant. I had a palpable sense of vulnerability much of the time. When I reported this to the Abbot and the other monks, they chuckled and avowed how this was completely "normal" and continued for most of them for years in some cases.
I learned that I was tired of trying to pray and realized that I cannot pray. And I learned that this is a valuable step, as we cannot pray. The Spirit prays within us and the goal of Christian prayer praxis is not to plug and plug away and bang one's head against the divine brick wall until one gets it "right". The goal is to learn by grace the art of getting out of the way and to be attuned to the Spirit praying within. In my head I knew this and I probably passed that on to other people with the best of intentions. At the abbey I learned that I was not "practicing" this myself.
And all of this sounds like grim and depressing news. But it is not. It is freeing, liberating. I feel like a beginner again. And I like the feeling.
Not all the moments at the abbey were fraught with "emo" inner turmoil and angst. Praying Vigils and watching the land slowly lighten with the midsummer sunrise halfway through, with the sense that the awakening birds were joining in the Psalms...private prayer in the "interval" between Vigils and Lauds at 6:30 AM and experimenting with the "ancient art" of lectio divina, praying with the Scriptures and listening for the divine voice...work outside and chatting easily with the monks who reminded me at those moments of my father's hardworking, hard-handed friends...looking down a hallway and seeing a habited monk framed by a white arched doorway and shivering, wondering if I'd been transported to medieval France...listening to some of the journeys of the men who have taken permanent vows and never for a moment believing that these guys were "hiding from life"; rather they were embracing life and their particular path within it...meditating in their Zen-style chapel and smiling as some squirrel peered through the clear ground-level plate-glass window and seemed to mock our piety by sitting up and clasping his impudent little claws in prayer.
Made some new friends--some living, with whom I have every intention of staying in touch. On my last day men who had not spoken one word to me came up and said how they had enjoyed my presence and that I was "welcome back anytime I wanted." Some dead, like St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the great intellectual and spiritual figure of the early days of the Cistercians in the 12th century. I'd always avoided Bernard because of his unsavory medieval political adventures--preaching the Second Crusade, making himself the worst nightmare of the scholar Peter Abelard, assisting in the foundation of the Knights Templar. But I read Bernard's piece on "Humility and Pride" and felt it had been written somehow with me partially in mind. And his other writings breathe an energy and love for the spiritual quest, a deep devotion to the humanity of Christ, and wonder at the transforming mystery of the Incarnation. All of these are Anglican-Episcopal notes as well, at least when we're at our best.
I begin to have thoughts about how monastic principles can help inform and deepen parish life as we first began to examine some seven years ago. And I want to patiently see what permanent marks may be left on my soul from this very privileged time.
I missed my wife and kids with a tangible ache in my flesh, and was wildly happy when my wife and older daughter arrived and picked me up on my last day. I am not, repeat NOT, called to celibacy and the stay made me realize that my decisions long ago to embrace marriage and priesthood in the Episcopal Church were "right" for me. But I do not mind telling you that as we drove away I had tears in my eyes.
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