email: whitpresby@charterinternet.com
Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
July/August
2005 Bulkleys on Dreams & Death Brian C. Taylor, Honest Spirituality Brueggemann on Dreams Archbishop Tutu’s Dream Hawthorne on Emerson’s spirituality Parker Palmer on Pilgrimage Bicycling in England & body spirituality Shalem list of ‘contemplation’ definitions One of the books I bought at the IASD conference last
weekend was “Dreaming Beyond Death; A Guide to Pre-Death Dreams and
Visions,” by Kelly Bulkeley & his mother, Patricia Bulkley, Beacon Press,
Boston, 2005. Here’s some of the
reason they wrote the book: “Yes, death lies inevitably ahead, and having a
powerful dream is not going to change that. But
the idea that nothing good or valuable can come from people’s experiences
during those final weeks and days of life reflects a tragically impoverished and
shortsighted understanding of what happens when humans die.
Our experiences—Tish as a hospice chaplain, Kelly as a dream
researcher—have convinced us that pre-death dreams and visions offer gifts of
insight and wisdom that can…profoundly change a person’s view of death and
even help his or her friends and family in their time of mourning.” We all have friends and family that face death and we
each handle the challenges of death differently.
Using our dreams is one more tool that we can use to grow in and through
our deaths and the deaths of our loved ones.
May God bless you this day with some dream or vision of insight, as you
live out your life of faith. Grace & peace Geoff In his book “Setting the Gospel Free” by Brian C.
Taylor, (Continuum Publishers, New York, 1996), Rev. Taylor, who is rector of
St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has
this sensible reminder. Those of us
who consider ourselves progressives in the Christian Church and are interested
in spirituality need to hear these words. “For progressive Christians, more attention needs to be
paid to the manner in which we as individuals respond to this post-Constantinian
age. Out of a desire for security
in an increasingly uncertain time, we also create closed-system cults, in a more
subtle way. A currently popular
method is our attachment to what we call “spirituality.” In various ways, we replace a radical openness to God-in-life
with spiritual disciplines and programs. Spirituality
is very fashionable these days, and to some degree this reflects an increasing
dedication to holiness of life instead of religiosity.
However, spirituality itself can become a thing, just like fundamentalism
or institutionalism, when it turns away from life and toward itself.” This is the kind of ‘reality check’ that I need
personally. It is all too easy for
me to get caught up in my personal spirituality, how well I pray, how well I
incorporate my dreams, whether I do my daily psalm reading, etc.
Then I realize I’m like those who pray on the street corner in Matthew
6. If my personal prayer life does
not effect my attitude and behavior towards others, it is not worth much. How do you do a reality-check in your life of faith?
May you be blessed today. Grace & peace Geoff The latest issue of “The Christian Century” magazine,
June 28, 2005, has an article about one of my favorite subjects by one of my
favorite authors. Walter
Brueggemann wrote an article called “Holy intrusion: the power of dreams in
the Bible” and he says this: “Dream interpretation, so Jewish in its imaginative
attentiveness, pertains to psychological matters and the realities of
repression. But it is not limited
to those concerns. Dreams concern
larger realities and possible futures. There
are many voices in the night, not all of them noble. Among them, however, is the voice of the holy God, who
“plucks up and tears down” what we have trusted, who “plants and builds”
what we cannot even imagine. We do not forgo the use of reason; but we know in our own
troubled context that our best reason has around it—in, with and under
it—gifts of the ‘otherness’ that make for newness.
Our technological achievements require and permit us to learn again what
the community of faith has known—and trusted—from the outset:
there is something outside our controlled management of reality which
must be heeded. Sometimes that
something turns out to be a miracle of new life.” Brueggemann works with several of the dreams in the Bible
and leaves the way open for us to realize the power of our dreams.
Alas, the article is not on the Century web site or I would refer you to
it. Paying attention to our dreams
is just one way to be aware of God’s Holy Spirit active in our lives.
But it is a way that is readily available to us, since most of us know
that we dream every night. We
usually need a little help to get out from behind our rational, planning,
controlling minds, in order to hear God speaking to us. May you hear God in your life today. Grace & peace Geoff One of my personal heroes of the last 50 years is
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. I’ve
always found him inspiring and he begins his latest book with a paragraph that
merely affirms his ability to write and speak.
The book is “God Has a Dream,” Doubleday/Random House, 2004. “Dear Child of God, I write these words because we all
experience sadness, we all come at times to despair, and we all lose hope that
the suffering in our lives and in our world will ever end.
I want to share with you my faith and my understanding that this
suffering can be transformed and redeemed.
There is no such thing as a totally hopeless case.
Our God is an expert at dealing with chaos, with brokenness, with all the
worst that we can imagine. God
created order out of disorder, cosmos our of chaos, and God can do so always,
can do so now—in our personal lives and in our lives as nations, globally.
The most unlikely person, the most improbable situation—these are all
“transfigurable”—they can be turned into their glorious opposites.
Indeed, God is transforming the world now—through us—because God
loves us.” Tutu begins nearly every chapter with that address, “Dear
Child of God…” It serves as a
reminder of our true status. That
“There is no such thing as a totally hopeless case” is the kind of message
that so many in our world need to hear, even me sometimes.
May you find the kind of inspiration you need in these words from a great
man of our time. Grace & peace Geoff No emails July 22, 26 & 29. I’ll be off to Oxford. One of the ways I try to use time in my car is by
listening to the Mars Hill Audio tapes that I subscribe to (http://www.mhaj.org/).
One of the recent editions had a discussion of the fiction work of
Nathaniel Hawthorne. Many of us had
to read his “The Scarlet Letter” in school.
This particular discussion dealt in small part with the relationship
between Hawthorne & Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Emerson was one of the pioneers of philosophy and social experimentation
in the early years of our nationhood. He
began as a Unitarian minister, but later left the ministry.
Here are some of Hawthorne’s words about Emerson, taken from this Mars
Hill tape, vol. 72: “(His work)…is too airy and abstract, the work of
an everlasting rejecter of all that is and a seeker for he knows not what.” The idea of rejecting what is and seeking for we know
not what is the attitude I sometimes find, particularly among New Age
spirituality proponents. I believe
our task as Christians is to seek the Kingdom of God, though I’m aware we
don’t know the details of that kingdom. Jesus
tells stories and gives living examples of what that kingdom might look like.
It is on the basis of what Jesus says that we have some clue about what
we seek. It is God’s kingdom
against which we measure the systems around us, like family, community and
nation. Though not great admirers
of each other’s work both Emerson & Hawthorne remained friends throughout
their lives. That too is a sign of
the kingdom. May you have a vision of God’s kingdom before you this
day and always. Grace & peace Geoff No emails July 22, 26 & 29. I’m off to Oxford. As I pack for my trip to Oxford, I find these words
helpful. They are found in Parker
Palmer’s “Let Your Life Speak; Listening for the Voice of Vocation,”
Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2000. “Most of us arrive at a sense of self and vocation
only after a long journey through alien lands.
But this journey bears no resemblance to the trouble-free ‘travel
packages’ sold by the tourism industry. It
is more akin to the ancient tradition of pilgrimage—“a transformative
journey to a sacred center” full of hardships, darkness, and peril.
In the tradition of pilgrimage, those hardships are seen not as
accidental but as integral to the journey itself.
Treacherous terrain, bad weather, taking a fall, getting
lost—challenges of that sort, largely beyond our control, can strip the ego of
the illusion that it is in charge and make space for true self to emerge.
If that happens, the pilgrim has a better chance to find the sacred
center he or she seeks. Disabused
of our illusions by much travel and travail, we awaken one day to find that the
sacred center is here and now—in every moment of the journey, everywhere in
the world around us, and deep within our own hearts.” Those are words I take with me as I venture through
various airports, public transit systems etc., trying to be mindful of God’s
presence with me everywhere I go and in everyone I meet. I’ll let you know how it goes. May you face all your challenges and come to know your self
and your calling in and through those challenges. Grace & peace Geoff I’m still unpacking from my trip to England.
My wife says it’s fairly normal to still “live” for a week or so in
the place/s where you’ve visited when you’ve been abroad.
One of the ways I’m still living in England is in the desire to ride a
bicycle everywhere I possibly can. I
was able to rent a bike for two days (they say “hire a bike” there) and
therefore able to do one of my favorite activities in a foreign place.
I noticed the ways I had to shift my thinking, riding on the opposite
sides of the road. And, oh those
roundabouts (traffic circles we call them)!!
In Oxford alone, over 10,000 people per day ride their bikes in and out
of the city.
One of the benefits of so many people on bikes is the healthier
appearance of the people. That got
me to thinking about our bodies and our physical health, which bears on our
spiritual health. Here’s a little
excerpt from a chapter of the book, “Practicing Our Faith” edited by Dorothy
C. Bass. This chapter is entitled
“Honoring the Body, by Stephanie Paulsell. “The Christian practice of honoring the body is
born of the confidence that our bodies are made in the image of God’s own
goodness. (See I Corinthians 6:19) As
the place where the divine presence dwells, our bodies are worthy of care and
blessing and ought never to be degraded or exploited.
It is through our bodies that we participate in God’s activity in the
world, just as my friend united her creativity to God’s own during the birth
of her child. And it is through
daily bodily acts—bathing, dressing, touching—that we might live more fully
into the sacredness of our bodies and the bodies of others.” Our bodies ARE our spirits and the closer we look the
more inseparable they become. May
you take care of your body, as well as you take care of your faith. Grace & peace Geoff No emails until Sept. 2.
I’ll be on vacation. One of the tutors at the Oxford program I
participated in a couple weeks ago was Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish, the Bishop of
the Diocese of Utah, of the Episcopalian Church in the USA.
She is associated with the Shalem Institute, in Maryland and presented a
class on “The Spiritual Life of Spiritual Leaders” from a contemplative
perspective. She handed out a sheet
with a list of quotations on contemplation that if found a wonderful gathering
of short, pithy statements. Each
one is worth a moments meditation, (or a week’s, or a year’s!!) http://www.shalem.org/resources/quotations/ More definitions than you can shake a contemplative
stick at! May you use this list as
some daily inspiration over the days and weeks to come. Several years ago, as I stopped the emails for the time of
my vacation, I recommended Henri J.M. Nouwen’s definition of devotional
reading as something that we all can learn from.
It can be found on the archived emails on the church website.
You can go to either Aug. 4, 2000 or Aug. 7, 2001 to find this helpful
insight. Wherever you find inspiration, may you be blessed in this
time of your life. Grace & peace Geoff
