email: whitpresby@mindspring.com
Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
July 2000 Emails
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The mystery of God |
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We are the self-reflection of the universe |
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Prayer |
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Compassion |
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Being a mystic |
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Matthew 6:6 |
Craig Dykstra is a teacher, currently Vice President for Religion at the Lilly Endowment, Inc. Last year he published a book, “Growing in the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practices” where he works at helping the reader, in a community of faith, “see and grasp the inner character and hidden nature of the graceful Mystery that sustains” our life. In the Foreword to the book he talks about the manners within which we live. Those manners are the “ways of seeing, valuing, believing, knowing, responding, and acting” that are shaped by the social forces of our communities and societies. Then he goes on to point out that these manners are not the Mystery. He says:
“Beneath the level of norms, roles, institutional structures, rituals, stories, and symbols lies the level of our fundamental communal intentions toward one another and the world, which govern how we live in our roles and rituals and by means of which we apprehend the mystery of our existence. Deeper still abide the everlasting arms of God.”
I was reminded of the old hymn, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” May we be ever more conscious of God’s arms around us as we go through life.
Grace & peace to you all.
Geoff
Brian Swimme, in his “The Universe Is a Green Dragon” gives new ways to think about the universe around us, in a most personal way. Listen to this statement that, for me anyway, provides a profound insight into the universe, each human, and our relationship to the universe and vice versa.
“We are the self-reflexion of the universe. We allow the universe to know and feel itself. So the universe is aware of itself through the self-reflexive mind, which unfurls in the human.”
In a time when we are more and more focused on what we can get out of the world around us, Swimme gives us the opportunity, if we will take it, to consider the deeper implications of our relationship to the world/universe around us. May his insights deepen your own appreciation of creation.
Grace & Peace
Geoff
I went to seminary hoping, in part, to study the insights of the “Early Fathers” as the writers and leaders of the first 500 years of the church were called. I thought that with the prayer and meditation they were involved in, there would come some deep insights into what it meant for humans to try to follow the new faith and spiritual path set out by Jesus. Alas, I was soon overwhelmed by required classes and other pressures, aside from the dearth of the kinds of classes I wanted. Thankfully others pursued what I had hoped to look into. Roberta Bondi and Kathleen Norris are two writers, among others, who stand out for me in their familiarity with the first centuries of Christian soul- or psychological- insight.
I continue to read early Christian material however, and here is a gem from St. John Cassian, a monk of great influence in southern France after the Fall of Rome. He had studied with the monks and hermits of Egypt and was much sought after for his insights and stories of those experiences. In talking about prayer Cassian says:
“Whatever the mind has been thinking about before it prays will certainly come to it while it is praying. Therefore, before we begin to pray, we ought to be trying to be the kind of people whom we wish God to find when we pray. The mind is conditioned by its recent state. In prayer, the mind remembers recent acts or thoughts or experiences, sees them dancing before it like ghosts. And this annoys us, or depresses, or reminds us of past lust or past worry, or makes us(I am ashamed to say) laugh like fools at some absurd joke or circumstance, or go over again some recent conversation. Whatever we do not want to creep into our time of prayer, we must try to keep out of the heart when we are not praying.
I’m reminded much of Jesus’ pleas in Matthew 5 to 7 for a certain purity of heart in our prayer. May you seek and find more and more purity in your prayer.
Grace & peace to you all.
Geoff
I was drawn to Henri J. M. Nouwen’s writing on compassion. From his book “Here & Now” comes my distillation of some of his insights.
One notion central to all great religions is compassion. Compassion is the way to the truth that we are most ourselves, not when we differ from others, but when we are the same. The main spiritual question is not “What difference do you make?”, but “What do you have in common?” It is not excelling but serving that makes us most human.
Jesus shows us the way of compassion by his words his life. The temptations (of Luke 4 and Matthew 4) are the temptations for Jesus to prove that he is worth loving. The devil tries to seduce him into becoming a competitor for love. Jesus’ response is “I don’t have to prove that I am God’s beloved.”
Being the beloved of God is perhaps the theme that Nouwen was most involved with at the time of this death a few years ago. For me there is great comfort, great rest, in recalling that I am God’s beloved child.
May you find that comfort, that rest, in the sure knowledge that God loves you for who you are, not what you are or what you do.
Remember there will be no emails until July 25, as I will be backpacking with Synod youth next week. Please keep us in your prayers.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Frank X. Tuoti tried to be a Trappist monk in his younger days, but after a few years re-entered the world to have a career in television management, marry etc. Yet he has pursued the life of the spirit and prayer from the vantage point of being a layman. He published a book in 1995 entitled “Why Not Be a Mystic?” Listen to the opening paragraph of the introduction:
“Mysticism is a phenomenon that has rapidly swept through the world during the second half of the twentieth century and will surely continue to increase as we enter into the third millennium. Mysticism takes many forms, which should convince us of a basic hunger in all human beings for an intimate union with the Divine. In all human beings there exists a propensity toward mysticism. We have within ourselves an inner drive towards union with the Supreme Reality.
If we think about our hunger for spirituality as hunger for God, the question does become “Why not be a mystic?” Are you feeding that hunger for experience of God in your life? How is your prayer life? Summer can be a good time to find the opportunity to reflect on one’s spiritual life. May you try some of the appetizers, snacks, even a full meal, of spiritual food that is available in our time.
Grace & peace to you all,
Geoff
I made reference to St. John Cassian a few weeks ago. He was a monk of great influence in southern France after the Fall of Rome. Here is his interpretation of Matthew 6:6, the text that talks about praying in your closet. He says:
“This has a spiritual meaning. We pray ‘in the closet’ when we have driven from the heart the turmoil of thoughts and cares, and are offering our prayers like friends whispering intimately. ‘The shut door’ means that we are praying silently, to him who searches the heart and not the lips. ‘In secret’ means that with a concentrated heart and mind we display our petition to God alone, and no devilish enemy can discover what we are asking.”
May your prayers be to God alone, and may your attitude towards God be one of an intimate friend, with whom you constantly long to talk and be with.
Grace & peace to you all.
Geoff
