email: whitpresby@charterinternet.com
Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
June
2005 Moya Brennan’s Celtic reasoning Moya Brennan song lyrics “Show Me the Way” Tilden Edwards on Sabbath Barbara Brown Taylor on Sabbath Nina Utne on The Compassionate Life Karen Armstrong on Fundamentalism & Compassion I’m continuing to explore Celtic spirituality since
the Companions retreat last March. The
latest exploration has been into the music of Moya (Maire) Brennan, a singer
formerly with the Irish music group Clannad.
I recently bought my 2nd CD of hers and in exploring her web
site, http://www.moyabrennan.com I ran
across these word of hers about her CD “Perfect Time” from1998, on Word/Sony
music. “Another
big step for me. Having explored
sounds and influences from around the world it was now time to delve into my
faith and, particularly, how it figured in my home country. Many see Celtic spirituality as a mix of pagan and New Age
traditions. I was keen to highlight
the distinct Christian origins of our cultural heritage.
Not just St. Patrick but the emphasis placed in Celtic Christianity on
the wonders of creation and the simple beauty of what surrounds us in fuelling
our passions. As the millennium
came to a close I saw Ireland standing at a crossroads. Now, more than ever before, a healing heart was needed.” I appreciated her distinction between Christian
Celtic and New Age Celtic spirituality. She
looks at the role of faith in her home country.
That is a task worth doing from time to time. How do you see your faith in your home country? May you feel a healing heart today. Grace & peace Geoff Last Friday’s email gave Moya Brennan’s rational
for making one of her CDs. Here is
the refrain from the opening song in her “Two Horizons” CD, which I take as
a prayer. Show me the way Where I belong Please show me the way To find you Show me the way To hear your song I appreciated the simplicity of this in the way I
take it as a prayer. My personal
prayers are often asking for the way God wants me to go, to know where I belong
and to hear God’s music in my life. You
can find the lyrics to the whole song at her web site, http://www.moyabrennan.com/
and navigate to the solo albums, then the track list for this album.
Click on the little text button on the far right, which will give the
full text of the song. I find the rest of the song lyrics somewhat obscure, but this
refrain speaks to and for me deeply. May you be shown your way this day. Grace & peace Geoff Another of the books I’m reading for Oxford is
“Sabbath Time” by Tilden Edwards, Upper Room Books, Revised edition, 2003.
In part of his historical tracing of the Sabbath tradition he says this: “The great American Puritan experiment with a
serious sabbath demonstrated some important strengths that we need to heed in
considering a modern approach to this special time. It was a socially progressive practice that gave everyone
equally a day of shared rest for spiritual awareness.
In so doing life was held up as far more important than personal or
social success and sensual gratification. As
Winton Solberg puts it in terms of the American settling of a new land, “the
Sabbath guaranteed that man would cultivate the better side of his nature;
wherever the Sabbath flourished, people did not sink into the slough of
materialism and barbarism.” The Solberg referenced here is Winton Solberg,
“Redeem the Time: The Puritan Sabbath in Early America,” Cambridge, Mass.
Harvard University Press, 1977. I
believe the Puritans have received a bad rap for some of their excesses, which
has blinded people to the value of much of what they did spiritually.
Here is one example. To
observe the Sabbath is indeed a strong challenge to the materialism around us.
How do you deal with the pressures, both internal and external, of
materialism? May you find in this day some small measure of that rest
that is implied in the Sabbath. Grace & peace Geoff One of my favorite writers of the last decade or so
is Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest who teaches at Piedmont College and
Columbia Theological Seminary. In
the May 31, 2005 issue of Christian Century Magazine, she has an essay on the
Sabbath. Following last Friday’s
email on Sabbath from Tilden Edwards, here is more food for thought and prayer
about the Sabbath. These are some
excerpts. You can read the whole
fine article at http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=297 “In his book “Jewish Renewal” Rabbi Michael
Lerner says that anyone engaging the practice of Shabbat (Sabbath) can expect a
rough ride for a couple of years at least.
This is because Sabbath involves pleasure, rest, freedom and slowness,
none of which comes naturally to North Americans.” “I have been doing it for seven years now, which is how I
know the rabbi is right….If I enjoyed yard work, was it really work:
Was browsing a mail order catalogue really shopping?” “Sabbath is no longer a good idea or even a spiritual
discipline for me. It is an
experience of divine love that swamps both body and soul.
It is a weekly practice of eternal life, marred only by the fact that I
do it alone.” “In its community form, Sabbath…is…also about
resistance. Each time it appears in
Torah, the commandment limits the exploitation of others as well as the
exhaustion of self. When you stop
working, so do your children, your animals, and your employees…” I’ll stop there, but encourage you to click the
link and read the whole article. Do
you ever think about Sabbath, about real, true rest?
I’ve found myself doing so over the years, but not in as disciplined a
behavior as Brown Taylor. Where do
you find rest in your life? Do you
practice anything like a Sabbath, a whole day of rest & “non-productive”
living? May you be blessed by God’s rest this day too. Grace & peace Geoff No emails June 22 & June 28. See below. Utne magazine is a kind of new millennium Reader’s
Digest. (See www.Utne.com
for more.) The March-April, 2005
issue’s cover topic was The Future of God.
Lots of interesting articles. One
of the editorial articles, by Nina Utne, was titled “The Compassionate
Life,” and brought the issue of religion down to ethics.
Here’s part of the article. She
is referring to a conversation with one of her sons. “I told him that I believe all the suffering and
catastrophe surrounding us offer only one possible survival route:
humans evolving to become a species that thinks and acts from the heart.
Free will simply means we have the consciousness to choose love or hate,
moment by moment. Whether we as a
species ultimately manage to make a shift is immaterial—acting out of
compassion is still the best game in town because, win or lose, we’ll have a
better time along the way. And all
that, I concluded, is why its important to be loving to your brother.
To my surprise and delight, he thanked me. Since then, I’ve realized I was talking to myself at
least as much as to him… Compassion requires the grace of an opening heart.
It starts moment by moment, every interaction an opportunity, until we
learn to soften our hearts to what we most hate and fear.” That last phrase reminds me of Jesus’ words in the
gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, about loving our enemies.
Compassion is a value among all religions that I’m aware of.
One of the reasons for developing our spiritual gifts and practices is to
become more compassionate in every moment.
That is a goal for many of us, regardless our particular religious
background or lack thereof. For me,
Jesus not only tells us about compassion, but lives and dies compassion. May you sense God’s compassion for you this day, and pass
that compassion on, in at least a few moments this day. Grace & peace Geoff No emails June 22 & June 28. I’ll be in Berkeley, attending the annual conference of the
International Association for the study of Dreams. If you’re interested, here’s the web site:
http://www.asdreams.org/2005/index.htm No emails June 22 & June 28. See below. One of the books I devoured after September 11, 2001 was
“The Battle for God” by Karen Armstrong.
It was a history of Fundamentalism among Jews, Christian and Muslims and
provided me with much help in understanding some of the religious dynamics of
our contemporary world. In the
March-April, 2005 issue of Utne magazine, Armstrong is the subject of an article
by Michael Valpy on the “looming religious storm” that she sees in the
future. The article originally
appeared in Shambhala Sun magazine (http://www.shambhalasun.com/).
Here are some tidbits. “Fundamentalism, she says, is an enormous problem that
must be addressed. It is splitting
countries like Egypt, Israel and the United States in two, and the lessons from
history are unequivocal: Religious
fundamentalists, always and everywhere, become more violent under attack. Bad religion, she says, is the suffocation of the sacred by
dogma, by man-made rules; it stifles the individual’s anarchistic search for
transcendent meaning and absolute truth beyond ego, often by investing worldly
values in what is ultimately ineffable. Good religion is the embrace of compassion and
confrontation with the ‘other,’ which are the matrix teaching of all the
great spiritual movements.” I hope that will tantalize you to read the whole article,
which can be found here http://www.shambhalasun.com/Archives/Features/2005/January/GodisBigTheseDays.htm.
I would commend anything written by Karen Armstrong.
As Friday’s email theme was compassion, so today’s focuses on the
same topic. It was Utne’s bottom line when it came to faith. Where do we find the ability to be compassionate,
particularly when it may not be popular or we may not always be appreciated for
showing compassion? That is a faith
issue and our faith in Christ is particularly helpful when it comes to finding
the strength and inspiration for compassion. Once more, may you sense God’s compassion for you this
day, and pass that compassion on to others. Grace & peace Geoff No emails June 22 & June 28. I’ll be in Berkeley, attending the annual conference of the
International Association for the study of Dreams. If you’re interested, here’s the web site:
http://www.asdreams.org/2005/index.htm
