Spiritual readings        "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"

July, 2002

 July 2, 2002

In continuing to think about how we are to respond to ecological/economic issues, here are some more insights from the article “Household Economics.” by Sharon Daloz Parks in the book “Practicing Our Faith,” edited by Dorothy C. Bass, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1997.  There is much good in this article and I commend it to you, but here are some of my favorites.

“For Christians, the move that is faithful is not from the material to the spiritual but rather from materialism to incarnation.

…the call to the desert, the development of religious orders, and their subsequent renewals, the Protestant Reformation, all were re-formations of life that gave rise to new economic patterns and structures.

(Quoting from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops pastoral letter on economic justice for all…) Confronted by this economic complexity, and seeking clarity for the future, we can rightly ask ourselves one single question:  How does our economic system affect the lives of people—all people?

(Quoting from the Quaker Thomas Kelly, on a more personal note)  Prune and trim we must, but not with ruthless haste and ready pruning knife, until we have reflected upon the tree we trim, the environment it lives in, and the sap of life which feeds it.”

Parks focuses more on people than on the environment, but her point is to use the things of the world for our benefit and the benefit of others.  We may make the mistake of blindly copying or adapting someone else’s standards.  What we need is to see the environment we are in, using Kelly’s image above, and find what is the most spiritually informed way to behave.  A challenge, but a challenge that our times and our world call us to.

May you find the grace to meet the challenges of the environment around you in a way that mirrors your faith.

Grace & peace

Geoff

July 5, 2002

I hope you had a good Independence Day holiday.  As I went through this first July 4 after September 11, I was conscious of deeper levels of meaning and significance in what people did and said.  Verity A. Jones, pastor of Central Christian Church, Disciples, in Terre Haute, Indiana, has an article in the June 19-26, 2002 issue of Christian Century magazine.  In reflecting on the gospel and epistle lessons for July 7, 2002, she notes:

…“The Star Spangled Banner” won’t be served up with dessert as an afterthought, but offered as the main course.”

Then, in reflecting on the increasing anxiety in our country she observes:  “As a result of all this anxiety, we’ve accepted tighter security measures at airports and public buildings, despite potential infringement on personal rights.”

Finally, on the deeper levels of what this country is about, she notes:  “The U.S. Constitution says that everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but we have been unable to eradicate poverty, bigotry and violence, things that radically hinder life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

“The Star Spangled Banner” was indeed a centerpiece of the celebration in my neighborhood, where we had a moving tribute to the heroes of September 11, 2001.

Here is a prayer from the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer that I find appropriate for our July 4 holiday for this year.

Almighty God,. Who created us in your own image:  Grant us grace fearlessly to contend against evil and to make no peace with oppression; and, that we may reverently use our freedom, help us to employ it in the maintenance of justice in our communities and among the nations, to the glory of your holy Name; through Jesus Christ…….Amen.

Grace & Peace

Geoff

July 9, 2002

Here is a rather long reflection that I think provides some balance to our spiritual lives.  It comes from “Reformed Spirituality; An Introduction for Believers” by Howard L.Rice, Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 1991.  He is dealing with the issues of head and heart in spirituality.

“The Reformed rejection of sentimentality has meant turning away from those forms of piety which seek a warmhearted feeling and celebrate private feelings of intimacy with Jesus as the ultimate test of faithfulness.  When piety degenerates into that kind of pietism, it wallows in feelings and uses emotions as a test for truth—if one FEELS right about Christ, then surely one IS right.  The emotions are made central as the means of receiving revelation. This leads to a misguided use of the imagination.  People may, after all, commit terrible acts while feeling quite good about themselves at the time.  They may even become so out of touch with reality that they believe God has commanded them to perform some terrible destructive act.  The emotions can be dangerously misleading.

Yet the mind is not free from the dangers of being misled.  Calvin, who treasured the gift of the mind as absolutely central to the definition of human, could also recognize the limitations of rationality.  ‘For we know all too well by experience how often we fall despite our good intention. Our reason is overwhelmed by so many forms of deceptions, is subject to so many errors, dashes against so many obstacles, is caught in so many difficulties, that it is far from directing us aright.’  Just as the emotions can mislead and distort our faith, so rationality can also been an escape from depth.  Persons in the Reformed tradition need to be careful of trusting the mind too much.  Too often we have made an idol of rationality.”

Keeping a balance between our head and our heart, and discerning when to rely on which, is a major challenge for our lives, particularly our spiritual lives.  How do we know God?  How do we discern between our own inner voices, thoughts and feelings, and the word of God?

Big challenges, but when addressed day by day, step by step, we will find some growth all along the way that will mature into a deeper sense of life and God’s presence in our life.

Grace & peace

Geoff

July 12, 2002

Yesterday, driving back from a meeting, I passed a cocktail bar called “Yesterday.”  It made me think of the Lennon-McCartney song by the same name.  Part of the lyrics are:

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away,

Now it seems as if they’re here to stay,

Oh I believe in yesterday.

How many of us live part or even much of our lives in “yesterday?”  How many of us get caught up in the events, relationships and feelings of all the yesterdays we have had?  As I continued my reflections I realized that our Biblical faith uses the yesterdays of our life to show us where God has been active, in our life and in the life of Israel/the Church.  Also, when searching through the scriptures I found much about the mornings that God provides us the new opportunities and new futures that God offers.  In particular, the Psalms have 17 instances where “morning” is referenced, many times in positive, faith-inspiring ways.  Here is the refrain from the hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”

    Great is Thy faithfulness!

    Great is Thy faithfulness!

    Morning by morning new mercies I see;

    All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;

    Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!

 How much of your life do you life in your “yesterdays?”  How open are you to what God offers each new day?  What do you think about as you drive around?

Grace & peace

Geoff

 July 16, 2002

I have a friend, the Rev. Shel White, pastor of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Pleasant Hill, California, who has begun an inspirational email program like this one.  Here is his website for those who might be interested:  http://www.standrews-pcusa.org

Here is a translation of Psalm 67 from "A Book of Psalms, selected and adapted from the Hebrew" by Stephen Mitchell (Harper-Collins 1993)

Bless us. Lord, with your peace;

   and make your light shine within us,

so that your presence may be known

   and your love appear to all people.

Let all earth’s nations honor you

   and all people shout out your praise:

Christian, Muslim, and Jew,

   idol-worshiper, agnostic,

Buddhist, Taoist, scientist,

   brown-skinned, yellow, and white.

Let wisdom speak in their hearts

   and justice light up their eyes.

Let All of them feel your presence

   and sing out in the fullness of joy.

The Psalms remain my favorite source material for prayer and it is always refreshing to find a new creative, yet true-to-the-original, translation.  May you be graced with a sense of God’s presence today.

Grace & peace

Geoff

July 19, 2002

Some time back I ran into a book entitled “Grace & Peace” and, given that is my closing blessing in each of these emails, I couldn’t pass it up.  It is written by M. Craig Barnes, pastor of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. and published by that church in 1999.  The subtitle is “Glimpses of Life in the Hands of God” and here is one of those glimpses into grace itself

 “Occasionally someone will ask me when I’m going to preach on sin.  The question always makes me want to ask, “Is there someone you would like to bring to church that day?  Or are you troubled by your own sins?”  In either case, it just makes me want to talk a lot more about the grace of God.

We live in a society that is so unaccustomed to grace that the church really has to keep going over this concept time and time again.  Nothing illustrates our confusion about grace better than those who want to hear more hammering on sin.”

 Indeed, God’s grace is so unlike much of what we experience in life that we do need to hear more and more about it.  I pray you will find some of that grace in your life today, and not just in my closing words of….

Grace and peace to you.

Geoff

 July 23, 2002

A recent conversation got me thinking about spiritual direction, the task of mentoring someone’s relationship with God.  I’ve been under spiritual direction on and off for the last 11 or 12 years.  I’d considered it for several years before that.  It was a brief conversation with Eugene Peterson at one of our presbytery’s retreats that finally got me motivated enough to find my first director.  Here are some words on spiritual direction from Peterson’s book “Working the Angles; the Shape of Pastoral Integrity,” Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI, 1987.

 “Erich Auerbach in his wonderful book MIMESIS saw the significance of the Christian faith as “the birth of a spiritual movement in the depths of the common people, from within the everyday occurrences of contemporary life….”  He went on to contrast the Christian movement with the original Roman conquest:  “The agents of Christianity do not simply organize an administration from above, leaving everything else to its natural development; they are duty bound to take an interest in the specific detail of everyday incidents; Christianization is directly concerned with and concerns the individual person and the individual event.”

Spiritual direction is the aspect of ministry that explores and develops this absorbing and devout attentiveness to “the specific detail of everyday incidents,” “the everyday occurrences of contemporary life.:  It counters and resists the pressure to shape pastoral work on the pattern of the “Roman conquest.”

 There is a simpler description of spiritual direction that I heard several years ago.  It went something like this:  spiritual direction is the art of listening to the person with one ear and listening to God with the other.  I’ve always thought that definition could apply to the spiritual life as a whole, listening to those and the world around us with one ear and listening to God with the other.  More on spiritual direction in the emails to come.

May you be blessed with hearing God in your life this day.

Grace and peace

Geoff

July 26, 2002

Our Vacation Bible School and some recent sermon texts have encouraged me to look again at dreams in the spiritual life.  I began focusing on my dreams nearly 30 years ago in seminary and now have years of journals tracking my dreams.  Here’s some words on dreams and the spiritual life from Morton Kelsey’s book, “God, Dreams & Revelation; A Christian Interpretation of Dreams,” Augsburg Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1968.  Apologies for the chauvinistic language.

 The truth is that modern man has lost confidence in his own probing intellectual powers.  He is no longer sure of a science that deals only with measurable and repeatable events, and he seeks some source that can give the insight and knowledge he needs to guide his life.  Intuitively modern man seems to know that there is some deep meaning in the dream.  He asks for a key that could help him understand these visitations of the night.

Most people have no idea that Christianity once provided this understanding.  Yet the Christian church originally had a well-developed theory about dreams, based on both the Old and New Testaments and consistently expressed by the ear4ly fathers of the church.  These Christians believed that God reached down and touched men, particularly in dreams.  The dream, in fact, was the principal way in which God spoke to man.  Although this attitude was held by Western Christians for a very long time, and has remained the attitude of Eastern Orthodox Christianity right to the present, it has been put aside and practically forgotten in our own churches.

 Do you pay attention to your dreams? You might find a surprise of wealth and self-knowledge there.

Grace & peace

Geoff