email: whitpresby@charterinternet.com
Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
March 2004
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Prayer and the labyrinth |
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Handel’s Messiah on Isaiah 53:3 |
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St. Nareg on Luke 10 |
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St. Nareg on Jesus’ suffering |
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Prayer & the labyrinth & life |
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Handel’s Messiah & Psalm 19:4 |
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Rev. Lauren Artress on the power of the labyrinth |
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Movies, books & “The Lord of the Rings” |
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Joan Chittister on Courage |
I’ve been reading about labyrinths in preparation for having a labyrinth at our church towards the end of the month. In the book “Labyrinths from the Outside In; Walking to Spiritual Insight, a Beginner’s Guide” by Donna Schaper and Carole Ann Camp, Skylight Paths Press, 2000, I found these words on the value of prayer.
“To live a life without prayer—to eat meals and say no grace before them, to go to sleep without saying goodnight to God’s larger meanings, or to drive through autumn leaves and not be aware of God—is to live in poverty. It is spiritual poverty, spiritual hunger, and spiritual homelessness. It is to risk living centered only on yourself, and that is worse than living on welfare. Living centered on God, becoming more and more capable over time of seeing the world from God’s perspective, is a form of wealth. It is a form of being rich. It is a form of piety.”
I do not read this as trivializing hunger or homelessness, but recall that a Christian spirituality is always to lead us to a life of service to others. Nevertheless there is beauty and wisdom in these words. How do you measure your wealth? Does your prayer life enable you to “see the world from God’s perspective”? Lent is a great time to polish, or even begin, your prayer life. I hope you are taking advantage of this season of Lent, 2004. May your wealth increasingly be measured by your prayer.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Our “Lent with The Messiah” class began Wednesday, as we look again at the musical composition “The Messiah” by George F. Handel. We are focusing on the second and third parts, which cover Jesus passion and resurrection as we prepare for Easter. One of the texts we looked at was this verse, Isaiah 53:3:
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.
One of the hallmarks of universal spirituality is beauty. Nearly all religions, cultures and philosophies hold up beauty as a spiritual quality of the highest value. Yet, in this text, our Judeo-Christian heritage reminds us that, as wonderful as beauty is, it does not cover all of the qualities of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob & Jesus. Isaiah here, and Handel, by setting the text to music, reminds us of this fact about God’s ways being different than our ways. One of the criticisms of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” is the close depiction of the brutality of the torture and crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus is indeed someone from whom many want to hide their faces.
We asked two questions of our class on Wednesday, and I put those same questions to you. What is your reaction to unattractive people in need? Would you be attracted to a messiah that was unattractive?
May your spirituality root itself more deeply in the whole depth and breadth of God and God’s love for us.
Grace & peace
Geoff
We have an Armenian Evangelical congregation meeting at our facility, St. Nareg Armenian Church. The pastor, the Rev. Greg Haleblian, gave me a book of prayers written by their namesake, St. Grigor Narekatsi, “Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart.” St. Grigor published this book in 1003 and a special English edition came out in 2003, to celebrate the 1000th year anniversary of the book. Here is part of one of the prayers. It makes reference to the story of the Good Samaritan that Jesus tells in Luke 10.
Nowhere is it shown,
Nowhere can we read that the traveler
All but slain by the swords of bandits,
Cried out to you in his distress, for he had grown stiff from his wounds.
Nor did he utter a single plea
For he was struck dumb…..
And now, you who have miraculously endowed
All things with the supreme light of your goodness,
Gathering as your own, the scattered treasures
And re-establishing your inheritance,
Redeem me also, wiping out the debt of my sins.
You, who minister without charge to the unworthy,
Grant me also atonement and healing,
O compassionate, mighty, inscrutable, incorruptible
And awesome, eternally blessed one,
unto the ages of ages.
Amen.
I like the way the help given the man left for dead, of Luke 10:30, is shown as a manifestation of God’s grace. The Samaritan who helps seems motivated by compassion alone, not from anything the poor beaten man said or did. St. Grigor Narekatsi shows us how the Biblical stories speak over time to all of us.
May you find evidence of God’s unsolicited grace in your life today, and may you live out that grace by some act of compassion.
Grace & peace
Geoff
My reading of St. Grigor Narekatsi’s, “Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart” coincided with our look at Handel’s “Messiah” this week. We continued looking at the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 and some of the liturgical material in Psalm 22. Here are some words of St. Nareg along the same vein. This comes from Prayer 34.
“He submitted himself willingly to the cross of death,
Like an innocent lamb led to slaughter
And girded himself with mighty self-discipline
For the salvation of those he created.
He truly suffered like a mortal.
He was placed in a tomb with no special treatment for his divinity.”
There is a kind of convergence of focus this Lent, 2004, as Mel Gibson’s film has publicized, on the suffering of Christ, and one of our challenges as people of faith, is to keep the perspective on the meaning of Jesus’ suffering, above and beyond the graphic brutality of it. Many are those who have suffered great brutality at the hands of others, but none carried the meaning and deeper value of that which Jesus suffered. St. Nareg’s words re-emphasize that for us.
As this Lent, 2004 progresses, may you renew your faith is what Jesus whole ministry has done for you and the world.
Grace & peace
Geoff
In preparation for our church having a labyrinth later this month, I’ve been reading “Labyrinths From the Outside In” by Donna Schaper and Carole Ann Camp, Skylight Paths press, Woodstock Vermont, 2000. I found this great passage, that makes the connection between the specific act of walking a labyrinth and our larger life in general.
“To walk in the ways of the Holy means that you walk the walk as if today were the first day of the rest of your life and tomorrow the last. To walk in the ways of the Holy requires that you be strong in your inner self; that you equip yourself with truth, justice, faith, and courage; and that you be constant in prayer, alert and willing to persevere. Walking in this way is not like going out for a stroll, it is like going on a journey. It is to intentionally choose to be on a spiritual path. The call is to be on the move; trusting in the journey, open to seeing things in new ways.”
Those are a few well-packed sentences! The walking they speak of here refers to the labyrinth of course, a specific way to pray. I like the way they take that image and “paint it large,” applying it to our lives of faith in every moment. It’s a perfect example of the way spiritual practices are to be seen as feeding our whole lives of faith.
May you find yourself being fed by God this day.
Grace & peace
Geoff
In this week’s “Lent with The Messiah” class we listened to one of the pieces in that work that set Psalm 19:4. As we discussed on Wednesday, we admired the metaphors used in Psalm 19:1-4.
1 The heavens are telling the glory of
God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
4 yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
This psalm speaks of God’s majesty in the beauty of creation. As we discussed this psalm in the context of our Christian faith, we realized that simply admiring the beauty of creation is a first step in faith, but for faith to be Christian, the admiration and gratitude expressed to God must also result in some kind of act of compassion. God has given us creation not only to be enjoyed, but also to be tended and shared, specifically with those who have the least share in creation’s beauty and bounty. The story Jesus tells in Matthew 25:31-46 reminds us of this connection, particularly as it relates to our care for the most vulnerable in our midst.
How does your faith, your appreciation of and gratitude for creation, result in your expression of compassion? A good question to ask ourselves during this Lenten season.
Grace & peace
Geoff
We will have our presbytery’s labyrinth here later this week. In recognition of that I have been reading “Walking a Sacred Path; Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool” by Lauren Artress, Riverhead Books, 1995. Rev. Artress is given credit above anyone else in America for raising consciousness about labyrinths over the last 15 or 20 years. Here are some of her words about her growing awareness of the power of and need for something like the labyrinth in a world like ours.
“I began to realize the profound need we all have to connect to the Spirit that enlivens us. We need that core feeling of connection to the Divine to give our lives meaning, to find the vision for the future. We need to awaken to a vision of a thriving, healthy planet that supports life among diverse communities. To evoke our vision, we need the experiences of archetypes that help us grasp the experience of unity and wholeness. The labyrinth is an archetype of wholeness, a sacred place that helps us rediscover the depths of our souls.”
This “need we all have to connect to the Spirit that enlivens us…” is a profound mover in my soul. See the website link “Weaving Our Lives in the Spirit”
http://www.whitpresby.org/weaving_spiritual_lives.htm for new programs I’m doing as part of our ministry here at Whittier Presbyterian Church.
How do you connect to that Spirit? Has this Lenten season given you any new ways to do that?
May you find that Spirit in your life and the lives around you this day.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Have you ever had the experience of seeing a movie version of a book you loved and being disappointed? The movie just could not capture the book as you experienced it. On a recent Mars Hill Audio tape, Dr. Ralph Wood, author of “The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-Earth,” speaks to the difference between movies and books. Here are just 3 excerpts from his talk
“The average American college student has seen 100 films for every book he/she has read.”
“The triumph of the visual over the aural(heard) produces danger for Christians because the Biblical faith comes by hearing, not seeing.”
He expressed hope (regarding The Lord of the Rings) that “…hundreds of thousands of viewers who will now become readers.”
Wood is speaking of the movie version of Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” books, but I thought that some of the same things could be said of or applied to Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ.” There is hope that viewers of both these movies will read the books behind them! Books stimulate our imaginations in ways that movies don’t. Our imaginations play a key part in our lives of faith.
May your imagination be fed this day in such a way that your life of faith grows.
Grace & peace
Geoff
I was looking through Joan D. Chittister’s book “Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope,” Eerdmans/Novalis, Grand Rapids, Ottawa, 2003, and found this piece. The book is a pairing of struggles and gifts, joining each struggle with a gift that is called out by the dynamics of that particular struggle. The book offers several gifts available to the variety of challenges we face developmentally and spiritually. It is one of the finest books in this genre I’ve run across in a while. Here is what she says about the gift of courage that we can have from the challenge of fear.
“Courage is not nearly so rare a quality as we sometimes like to think it is. We forgive ourselves the responsibility to muster it one the grounds that it is the unwonted virtue or unusual people in momentous circumstances. The truth is that courage is what carries simple people through an average day. It is not an action; it is an attitude. It is the spiritual strength that gives direction in the midst of confusion. It is no more uncommon than fear. It is, in fact, the child of fear.”
Her words make me think that, if I can but recall it when I feel fear, I can see fear as a summons to courage. Fear often comes upon us so suddenly that thinking does not take place for a while. We react emotionally first and think later. Sounds like the adage “shoot first, ask questions later.” But unless we are in a life-threatening situation, a moment’s thinking and summoning of courage may make all the difference. Think of the courage it would take to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:38-42). It can only be done when we take just long enough to think in the midst of our emotions. Chittister is speaking more of the common, everyday acts of courage we practice. Either way, courage in a powerful manifestation of our faith. May you manifest some courage in your life today.
Grace & peace
Geoff
