Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
January, 2002
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Christian Century best quotes of 2001 |
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Tom Long’s SUV of judgment |
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Cassian on True Prayer |
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Bonhoeffer on Morning & return of light |
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Louf, Teach Us to Pray |
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Kierkegaard on Attentive prayer |
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Willimon & Hauerwas on Patience |
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Von Balthasar in Bailie on new thinking & new questions for the Bible. |
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Isaac Bashevis Singer & Stealth Blessings |
Happy New Year to you all! Most of my favorite disc jockeys and radio programs have been playing their best of 2001 music. Christian Century has dome something similar in a section titled ”Voices of 2001” in the Dec. 19-26 edition. Here are my favorite picks of their favorite picks!
“We must remember that evil does not wear a turban, a tunic, a yarmulke or a cross. Evil wears the garment of a human heart woven from the threads of hate and fear.” From Nathan Baxter, dean of the Washington National Cathedral.
“To seek God’s blessings for American and not for the world fails to recognize the wideness in God’s mercy and the expanse of God’s love.” From Kenneth Carder, United Methodist Bishop.
“The promise of closure is a false promise. The heart will not heal from killing somebody.” Chicago Cardinal Francis George, speaking about the execution of Timothy McVeigh.
“Recognized Muslim scholars and jurists of all theological persuasions should tell Osama bin Laden that his cause is anathema to Islam…That such a coalition must be made up os Islamic legal authorities from all Muslim countries and all schools of thought is perhaps the greatest challenge to the unity of the Muslim world community since the time of the Prophet.” Sayyed Nadeem Kazmi, editor of the Islamic affairs monthly “Dialogue”, writing in the British Catholic journal the “Tablet.”
May you seek wisdom throughout the coming year and be open and ready to hear it when you find it.
Grace & peace
Geoff
How do we find God’s judgment in our world? Some would say Sept. 11, 2001 was a sign of God’s judgment. But already there seems to be some kind of recovery happening to our nation. We are bouncing back and things are indeed getting back to “normal” for most of us. So where is god’s judgment? Rev. Tom Long, of the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, wrestles with the issue of God’s judgment and the condition of our present culture. This is found in the Advent 2001 issue of the Journal for Preachers, out of Decatur, Georgia.
“America is in an SUV with the pedal to the metal. Sometime in the future—perhaps in our lifetime, perhaps in the lifetime of our grandchildren, but certainly in God’s good time—the cheerful, thoughtless, upwardly mobile and finally greedy American experiment will hit the wall.
…even now there are signs that God’s judgment is at work, stripping away everything else. I point, by way of illustration, to one small almost trivial, example. As I walk across the campus…I go past scores of students on their way to and from class. Many a student, as soon as he or she hits the campus green, reaches into a backpack for a cell phone and punches in the numbers for a call. We see the same thing in shopping malls and airports: dozens of people strolling along yapping into phones and talking to people somewhere else. It finally dawned on me that most of these calls ware not being made out of necessity or utility, but rather out of boredom and loneliness. For the most part, the students are not calling for cabs or dates or pizzas or to let their roommates know they’ll meet them at the library. Instead, these are “Whassup?” calls, random searches for action. It is as if we sense that nothing of consequence is happening in us or around us, and we are convinced that action and meaning must surely be occurring somewhere else, if we could just find it. So we phone….hoping to be connected to a possibility, a life, that is somewhere else, a possibility and a life we do not have.”
Long sees this loneliness as part of God’s judgment. How do you find God’s judgment in your life? What attitudes or behaviors of yours are out of synch with what God intends? How does judgment take place for you?
Beyond that are you aware that God’s judgment takes place within God’s love for you? Judgment may be difficult to understand, but like any good parent, sometimes there needs to be some discipline to create a better person. Can you find the better person in yourself that comes out of judgment? Keep looking, keep praying.
Grace & Peace
Geoff
St. John Cassian was a powerful force in the early days when the Roman Empire was coming apart and monasticism was taking hold in Southern France. He was a powerful influence on St. Benedict and his Rule. He is a writer of great clarity and I’m always reminded of John Calvin’s style when I read Cassian. Here are his comments on the words of St. Paul to ‘pray without ceasing.’ My apologies for the sexist language, which I’m leaving as found.
"He prays too little, who only prays when he is on his knees.
But he never prays, who while on his knees is in his heart roaming far afield.
There what we wish to be while praying, we ought to be before we begin to pray. The praying mind cannot help being fashioned by its earlier condition, cannot help its earlier thoughts lifting it upward to heaven or pulling it downward to earth."
Not only are we to pray without ceasing, but our prayer is to be as pure as we can make it, that is, as direct an appeal to God as we can achieve.
May you find directness in your prayers this day.
Grace & peace,
Geoff
What do we today, who no longer have any fear or awe of night, know of the great joy that our forefathers and the early Christians felt every morning at the return of light? If we were to learn again something of the praise and adoration that is due the triune God a break of day, god the Father and Creator, who has preserved our life through the dark night and wakened us to a new day, God the son and Saviour, who conquered death and hell for us and dwells in our midst as Victor, God the Holy spirit, who pours the bright gleam of God’s Word into our hearts at the dawn of day, driving away all darkness and sin and teaching us to pray aright—then we would also begin to sense something of the joy that comes when night is past….”
Bonhoeffer then adds a couple of verses from a hymn sung at the break of day. This can be sung to Tallis’ canon, used in the Presbyterian Hymnal for “All Praise to Thee, My god, this Night.”
Once more the daylight shines abroad,
O brethren let us praise the Lord,
Whose grace and mercy thus have kept
The nightly watch while we have slept
We offer up ourselves to Thee,
That heart and word and deed may be
In all things guided by Thy mind,
And in Thine eyes acceptance find.
Whenever you pray, one way to center yourself is to give thanks for your immediate surroundings and conditions, particularly those you might otherwise take for granted, like the dawning of a new day in the example above. You might also want to include a song or some singing.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Andre Louf is one of the deepest writers on prayer that I have come across. He is a Trappist monk, so he has much experience with the subject. He wrote the material used in these emails during Holy week last year(see http://www.whitpresby.org/emails_april_2001). Here are selections from the opening chapter of his book “Teach Us to Pray,” Cowley Publications, 1974.
“One of the Fathers—a monk of the very early period—confronted his pupils with a hard question which they all attempted to answer. When it came to the turn of the last one to speak, he said: ‘I don’t know’. The monk commended him for it. He had made the right answer.
We try so often, do we not, to find an easy solution to the questions with which life is continually confronting us. To save face or quieten conscience we come up with something or other—but it is not the ‘right’ answer at all. We are satisfied too quickly. The disciple of that old monk spoke the truth: he did not know and was humble enough to admit his ignorance. The proper response was lowly awe in face of the mystery. So too for us: the first and most fundamental truth about prayer is to know that we are unable to pray. ‘Lord, teach us to pray.’ (Luke 11:1)”
This is not to denigrate whatever methods of prayer we use, it is only to point out that we are only fumbling in the dark when it comes to the reality of facing God, of addressing the creator, redeemer and sustainer of the universe. Jesus gives us what the church has considered the best model in the Lord’s Prayer. Perhaps we can do no better than recite that prayer over and over. Yet our restless hearts continue to seek different avenues to God. It is a lifelong quest, yet worth all the effort we can put into it.
May your prayer this day be deeper and more honest.
Grace & peace
Geoff
The Oxford Book of Prayer, ed. George Appleton, Oxford University Press, 1985, has a section called “Prayer as Listening.” In that section are these words from the Danish Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.
“The ‘immediate’ person thinks and imagines that when he prays, the important thing, the thing he must concentrate upon, is that God should hear what he is praying for. Yet in the true, eternal sense it is just the reverse: The true relation in prayer is not when God hears what is prayed for, but when the person praying continues to pray until he is the one who hears, who hears what God wills. The ‘immediate’ person, therefore,….makes demands in his prayers; the true man of prayer only attends.”
Though we are explicitly told by Jesus to ask of God in prayer, there is this other, oft neglected aspect of prayer, that element of listening. It is more difficult to do, but the rewards are worth it. One goal of the spiritual life is to develop this listening ability to the point of being able to ‘hear’ or sense God talking to us all the time.
May you make/find the time today to do some listening.
Grace & peace,
Geoff
Many of us pray the Lord’s Prayer regularly if not daily. Here’s a meditation on part of that popular prayer. It comes from “Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer & the Christian Life,” by William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas, Abingdon, 1996.
“When we pray, ‘Your will be done,’ we haven’t specified a termination date. The world doesn’t have to come out right for us tomorrow. One of the problems we have with waiting for the will of God to be fulfilled is waiting. We want what we want and we want it now. Yet, as 2 Peter says ‘with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years are as one day’ (3:8). Sometimes, one of the main functions of our prayer is to give us something to do in the meantime. While we are waiting for God’s will to appear, we pray. When it comes to the will of God, sometimes the most important thing to pray for is patience.”
How’s your patience today? May this little meditation help you put things in perspective, therefore giving you a little more patience.
Grace & peace,
Geoff
My current reading includes a stunning book called “Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads” by Gil Bailie, Crossroad Publishers, 1996. Bailie wrestles with the issue and relationship between religion and violence, showing that humanity has reached a crisis and we need to find other ways than through violence to solve our problems. He challenges specifically the legitimization of violence by religion, a process that is exposed by the crucifixion of Jesus. Why has this issue not been dealt with by previous generations? On his website, http://www.florilegia.org Bailie offers a quote from the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar that addresses this question:
"Whole centuries felt no need to think about precisely those questions which agitate us most today . . . questions that the few generations separating us from Christ had not found the time yet to see and think about. …The new historical situation offers the theology of the Church new access-roads which lead unexpectedly into the deepest areas."
One of the wonderful elements of our God is the way new questions and new circumstances lead us into new ways of thinking about God and how the gospel addresses issues and circumstances that did not exist in the Biblical times.
Likewise in our personal lives, new situations and circumstances offer us the opportunity to find God in new and different ways. God does not change, but our perspective and our way of looking for God does change. God is big enough to contain our changing perspectives and attitudes, but it remains up to us to continue to seek God in our lives and in the world around us. We do that with scripture and prayer. We are teaching the Daily Bread students at Whittier Presbyterian Church the prayer technique of Lectio Divina. Go here to find out: http://www.whitpresby.org/daily_bread_lectio_guidelines.htm
May you continue your search for God through the new questions in your life.
Grace & peace
Geoff
One of my reading hobbies over the years has been Jewish literature. My favorite writer in that genre is Isaac Bashevis Singer. Here are some words from his book “The Slave,” Fawcett Publishing, 1962. This is part of a reflection of the narrator/protagonist, Jacob, about where he fits in the scheme of things.
“But here on the manor, he could study whatever he wanted in his free moments. He had brought with him the ‘Book of Creation,’ ‘Angel Raziel,’ and the ‘Zohar’ to use as charms against devils and to put under Sarah’s pillow when she was in labor. These were the books he kept returning to now. A man like himself could not expect to understand what was written in such volumes, but the very words had a sacred look about them. Merely gazing at a page edified him. Even if you were a sinner, it was a privilege to exist surrounded by so many spheres, chariots, powers, and potentates. Jacob remembered from his readings in ‘The Tree of Life’ that evil, synonymous with absolute emptiness, only arose because God had contracted and hidden his face. Repentance could change sins to pieties, justice to mercy. A transgression might at times even lead to good.”
Here is another view of what I call “Stealth blessings.” I don’t recall where the phrase came from but it refers to events in our lives that seem like disappointments and tragedies or catastrophes at the time, but when viewed later, in retrospect, they turn out to have been blessings. Our lives would not have been the same had we not had this disappointment or tragedy happen to us. God has used that disappointment to make or do something better than we imagined.
May you find that sense of being surrounded by the powers of creation, and may you find the stealth blessings in your life.
Grace & peace
Geoff
