email: whitpresby@charterinternet.com
Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
March
2006
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Therese of Lisieux on prayer |
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Poem of Hadewijch of Antwerp |
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Henri Nouwen, Choice for the Beloved |
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Brother Roger of Taizé |
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History & web info on St. Patrick |
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Albert Schweitzer on Bach’s birthday |
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Nature poem from Ry Cooder’s “Chavez Ravine” |
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Francois Fénelon on mortification |
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Margaret Guenther on life’s unfixables |
Two sections of meditation for today.
Our church secretary passed some things on to me about Therese of Lisieux, the subject of Tuesday’s email. Here is a prayer from a card put out by the Society of the Little Flower, which promotes devotion to her.
“For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to Heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy. Finally it is something great and supernatural., which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus
Here is one of several websites devoted to Therese: http://www.littleflower.org/ There you can find out more about her and the devotion that has grown up around her. She will be one of the featured subjects at the Companions retreat mentioned below.
We have a labyrinth at the church this week. Here are some epigrams from the book “Labyrinths: Walking Toward the Center” by Gernot Candolini, Crossroad Publishing, 2003. He doesn’t credit them.
“The path to the center is never straight, but always clear.”
“As she walks along, a person learns to listen to her soul.”
“If you haven’t grasped it with your hands, you can’t comprehend it.
If you don’t go there with your feet, you can’t understand it.”
Candolini applies these to labyrinths but, as with much about the labyrinth, you can apply them to life as well.
May you find wisdom and prayer in your life today, as you make your Lenten journey.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Another of the spiritual writers who will be featured at the Companions on the Inner Way retreat next month (see below) is Hadewijch of Antwerp – sometimes called Hadewijch of Brabant. She lived in the 13th century in what is now Belgium. She is rightly called one of the greatest names in medieval Flemish and Dutch literature. Here is one of her poems, entitled “All Things.”
All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast
In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated
I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide
Everything else
is too narrow
You know this well,
you who are also there.
You can find out more about Hadewijch at
http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/H/HadewijchofA/index.htm
Hadewijch was a Beguine. The Beguines were a sect of devout women in Belgium, Holland, Germany and France. Beguines did not take vows, but they gathered together to live in simplicity and service. Many Beguines were mystics and poets of the highest order. Here is some proof of that. Consider the Companions retreat: wouldn’t it be great to bask in spiritual poetry like this for a week?
May you find today a sense of the abundant blessing that God has for you.
Grace & peace
Geoff
We are using a booklet at the church for our Lenten devotions called “Renewed for Life.” It consists of a series of excerpts from the writing of the late Henri J. M. Nouwen. The collection is published by Creative Communications for the Parish. Here is an excerpt taken from “Life of the Beloved,” Crossroad Publishing, 1992.
The unfathomable mystery of God is that God is a Lover who wants to be loved. The one who created us is waiting for our response to the love that gave us our being. God not only says: “You are my Beloved.” God also asks: “Do you love me?” and offers us countless chances to say “Yes.” That is the spiritual life: the chance to say “Yes” to our inner truth. The spiritual life, thus understood, radically changes everything. Being born and growing up, leaving home and finding a career, being praised and being rejected, walking and resting, praying and playing, becoming ill and being healed—yes, living and dying—they all become expressions of that divine question “Do you love me?” And at every point of the journey there is the choice to say “Yes” and the choice to say “No.”
That freedom to say yes or no is wonderful. It is another sign of the love of God for us. I like this definition of the spiritual life too.
May you rejoice today in the freedom given you by a loving God.
Grace & peace
Geoff
The next few days will be your last chance to register for the March, 2006 Companions retreat. See below. Here is another sample from one of the saints who will be featured next week in the retreat, Brother Roger of the Taizé community in France. This is part of a biographical sketch by Patrick J. Burke, taken from the web site of “Spirituality Today.” The article is dated Autumn, 1990 and I think it is a web posting of a journal article. Here is part of what Burke has to say about Brother Roger.
“From an early age Roger was very conscious of the divisions between Protestant and Catholic, but was encouraged by his parents to look beyond them. While attending secondary school in a nearby town his parents chose to lodge him with a Catholic rather that Protestant family, because the Catholic family was in need of the income from the rent. Roger had very high regard for his maternal grandmother whom he remembers as having a powerful gift of welcome. Although she was also the wife of a Protestant pastor, she often attended Mass and even received Holy Communion. The openness, discretion, and freedom with which Roger grew up regarding the division of Christians in the years that followed developed into a prophetic quality that has been acknowledged the world over.”
I like what Burke has to say about Br. Roger’s ecumenical outlook. But what struck me here was the reference to Br. Roger’s family background and influence. How often do we remember our families as being huge influences in our spiritual formation? You can read the whole interesting article here: http://www.spiritualitytoday.org/spir2day/904234burke.html
May you find ways today to broaden your understanding of what the Christian community is, as well as find a way to give thanks for the influence of your family on your spirituality.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. This day was established to commemorate the death of St. Patrick on Mar. 17, 493. After several adventures including slavery, he was called in a dream to return to Ireland and preach. His prodigious effort resulted in the firm establishment of Christianity in Ireland and laid the foundations for Celtic influence throughout Europe for the next several hundred years. Among other things, Thomas Cahill in his “How The Irish Saved Civilization,” Anchor Books/Random House, 1995, says “…the greatness of Patrick is beyond dispute: the first human being in the history of the world to speak out unequivocally against slavery.” Donald Atwater’s “Dictionary of Saints” Penguin Books, 1965, points out the importance that the Croagh Patrick Pilgrimage has had upon the faithful over the centuries.
Here’s a little Evening Hymn attributed to St. Patrick from “Celtic Prayers’ compiled by Robert Van De Weyer, Abingdon Press, 1997
O Christ, son of the Living God,
May your holy angels guard our sleep.
May they watch us as we rest,
And hover around our beds.
Let them reveal to us in our dreams
Visions of your glorious truth,
O High Prince of the universe,
O High Priest of the mysteries.
May no dreams disturb our rest
And no nightmares darken our dreams,
May no fears or worried delay
Our willing, prompt repose.
May the virtue of our daily work
Hallow our nightly prayers.
May our sleep be deep and soft,
So our work be fresh and hard.
Some interesting web sites:
http://www.prayerfoundation.org/ This has a St. Patrick’s Day special
http://www.anu.ie/reek/ This one has a virtual tour.
http://www.ireland.ie/things_2_do_results_single.asp?sID=13274 This has to do with the pilgrimage.
May your day be blessed with remembrances of Saints past and your sleep tonight be as blessed as Patrick prays for here.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Today is the birthday of J.S. Bach, born Mar. 21, 1685. His contribution to Western music, and church music in particular, is unmatched. In the two-volume work “J.S. Bach” by Albert Schweitzer, Dover Publications, 1966, there is an interesting story told by Charles Marie Widor, a famous French organist & composer, about his learning the music of Bach. Albert Schweitzer, another well known Christian of 100 years ago, was a student of Widor. Chorale melodies are the texts, the words, set to music for the choir to sing. St. Thomas is the church in Leipzig Germany where Bach had his longest tenure as organist choir director.
“One day in 1899, when we were going through the chorale preludes, I confessed to him that a good deal in these compositions was enigmatic to me. “Bach’s musical logic in the preludes and fugues”, I said, “is quite simple and clear; but it becomes cloudy as soon as he takes up a chorale melody. Why these sometimes almost excessively abrupt antitheses of feeling? Why does he add contrapuntal motives to a chorale melody that have often no relation to the mood of the melody? Why all these incomprehensible things in the plan and the working-out of these fantasias? The more I study them, the less I understand them.”
(Schweitzer replied…) “Naturally, many things in the chorales must seem obscure to you, for the reason that they are only explicable by the texts pertaining to them.”
“The mysteries were all solved…In a flash it became clear to me that the cantor of St. Thomas’s was much more than an incomparable contrapuntist to whom I had formerly looked up as one gazes up at a colossal statue, and that his work exhibits an unparalleled desire and capacity for expressing poetic ideas and for bringing word and tone into unity.”
Text and context; how important to put the two together, whether trying to understand music or life. I wonder if we can say that our “music” doesn’t make sense until we put the Word behind it?
There might be extra opportunities to hear the music of Bach today or this month. I know that local music organizations observe March frequently as “Bach month.”
May you be blessed by some musical grace of God today, and may the “music” of how you live your life resound to those around you.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Ry Cooder is a local Los Angeles musician whose latest release is a kind of modern oratorio entitled “Chavez Ravine”, Nonesuch CD 79877-2. This work is both historical and social commentary as well as fun music. One of the songs is a setting of a poem found inscribed on a plank in the Cloud Forest in Costa Rica. The poem is a hymn from the earth to us. I find it moving. Here is the English translation from the liner notes.
I am light and shade, the brilliant sun.
Cool kiss of the clouds, cool kiss of the clouds
That caresses your cheek and supports your walk.
The rock beneath your feet, I am.
The voice of the owl, who always sings to us,
“Who could deny us our needs?”
Every one of them passes their days here in my embrace.
We have so much to share and talk about.
A fertile home of seasoned trees,
Of tender, newborn flowers.
With mature roots, a hope and a future,
A family united.
Just ask the dust from where we were created.
Ask the forest whom with the rainfall we grow.
Ask the palms that move with the wind.
Listen to the heart of your mother, taste and see.
The voice of the owl, who always sings to us,
“Who could deny us our needs?”
Every one of them passes their days here in my embrace.
We have so much to share and talk about.
The pressures of our lifestyle and the needs of the world make a great impact on the earth, which sustains us all. This poem is a reminder of our relationship to the earth. The Bible tells us we are stewards of this earth
Grace & peace
Geoff
During Lent we may focus upon the Cross of Christ and how we might carry that cross in our lives. Francois Fénelon was a French contemplative who rose as high as the court of Louis XIV, only to be cast down because of political issues rooted in religious controversy. Dr. Liz Carmichael, in “The Story of Christian Spirituality” Gordon Mursell, editor, Fortress Press, 2001 has this to say about Fénelon:
“Fénelon’s activity as a (spiritual) director was often in the context of court life. He suggests there is no need to go looking for special ways of mortification: ‘We will find enough to mortify ourselves by entertaining contrary to or taste the people we cannot get rid of, and by being tied down by all our real duties.’ Christian perfection simply ‘asks us to be God’s from the bottom of our hearts’, and ‘peace of conscience, liberty of heart, the sweetness of abandoning ourselves in the hands of God, the joy of always seeing the light grow in our hearts, finally freedom from the fears and insatiable desires of the times, multiply a hundredfold the happiness which the true children of God possess in the midst of their crosses, if they are faithful.’”
Mortification is literally “putting to death.” It was, and still is, a practice in various Christian traditions centering upon the cross, particularly taking up our own cross. Fénelon here is referring to simply putting one’s self and one’s desires aside in service to Christ as we meet Christ in others. Fénelon’s words about mortification remind me of the platitude that goes something like “I was trying to do God’s will but I kept getting interrupted, until I realized that the interruptions were God’s will.”
Where do YOU find the cross, or God’s interruptions, in your life? May you find yourself moving towards that Christian perfection that Fénelon speaks about here.
For more (…than you want to know??) on mortification, go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortification
For a history of Fénelon, go here: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06035a.htm
Grace & peace
Geoff
I recently had occasion to reread the book “Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction” by Margaret Guenther, Cowley Publications, 1992. In the introduction by Alan Jones, the dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, these words are found.
“Another debilitating effect of the drive and greed of a consumer society on the life of the spirit is the assumption that everything is, in principle, FIXABLE. True spiritual direction is about the great unfixables in human life. It’s about the mystery of moving through time. It’s about mortality. It’s about love. It’s about things that can’t be fixed.”
If you take the phrase “spiritual direction” in the second sentence here and substitute “life” or “faith” the sentence makes just as much sense, but it finds a wider audience. Perhaps one way to think about our life of faith during Lent, is to think about the unfixables in our lives right now. How might we offer them to God?
May you find the comfort and inspiration you need in the unfixable parts of your life, indeed in all your life.
Grace & peace
Geoff
