email: whitpresby@charterinternet.com
Spiritual readings "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"
May 2008
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J. S. Bach, BWV 31, “The heavens laugh” |
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Mary Sidney poem, based on Psalm 139 |
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Shel White/CS Lewis, God’s pursuit of us. |
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“Why join a church?”
By Garret Keizer |
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John Buchanan, Christians & Politics” |
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Margaret Guenther on Questions for life |
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Rowan Williams, “Nature on the rack” |
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Kelly Bulkeley on Wonder |
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Bonhoeffer on the suffering of the righteous |
Meditation
The Easter season is fast coming to a close. Here is an excerpt from one of J.S. Bach’s Easter cantatas, which struck me. It is the tenor aria from the cantata “The heavens laugh! The earth doth ring with glory,” BWV 31. My recording is from Hanssler Classics, CD-Nr. 98.8337/2, with the Bach Ensemble, Helmuth Rilling, conductor. If you know how, you might find this piece on the Internet. Pardon the male-dominated language.
Adam must in us now perish,
If the new man shall recover
Who like God created is.
Thou in spirit must arise now
And from sin’s dark cavern exit
If of Christ the limbs thou art.
The way our Presbyterian Book of Common Worship puts it is “Anyone in Christ is of the new creation.” Though the Easter season moves into Pentecost, we continue to grow into the meaning of Easter all our lives. What in you needs to die in Christ? What part of the new creation are you experiencing?
Grace & peace
Geoff
Meditation
Since my last trip to England (see http://www.asdreams.org/england07/index.htm and scroll down to the group photo, that’s me seated in the lower left) I’ve been listening to English choral music. On a CD of music by Sir Edward Bairstow (“Choral Music” by the Choir of St. John’s college, Cambridge, David Hill, Dir. Hyperion CDA67497.) I found a setting of a poem by Mary Sidney (1561 to 1621), one of the first English women to achieve a major reputation for her literary works. So says Wikipedia. Here is the poem that caught my attention. It’s based on Psalm 139.
O Lord, in me there lieth naught
But to thy search revealed lies,
For when I sit
Thou markedst it;
No less thou notest when I rise.
Yea, closest closet of my thought
Hath open windows to thine eyes.
Thou walkest with me when I walk;
When to my bed for rest I go
I find thee there,
And everywhere:
Not youngest thought in me doth grow
No, not one word I cast to talk
But yet unuttered thou dost know.
Actually that is parts of Ps 139 nearly word for word. Psalm 139 has always been one of my favorites because of the sense of being surrounded by God (not because it shows me to be nothing but lies!). When I understand God to be total love for me, it is comforting to be surrounded by God. Two questions arise out of those thoughts. What are your perceptions of God? How close to your self do you feel God to be?
Grace & peace
Geoff
Meditation
Tuesday’s meditation was centered on Psalm 139. Here is another meditation on that psalm, from my colleague the Rev. Dr. Shel White, pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Pleasant Hill, California.
C.S. Lewis, Oxford philosopher and literary scholar of the last century, described himself as a “lapsed atheist.” For the first part of his intellectual life, he believed faith in Christ was foolish. Then he describes in “The Weight of Glory” his realization of missing something vital. He became aware of a “desire for our own far-off country…the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a turn we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” In his search, Lewis suddenly was surprised to discover “God closed in on me.”
Whether we observe it or not, God is actively seeking after us.
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. (Psalm 139:23)
Shel’s words say it all.
Grace & peace
Geoff
This is bike to work week. I rode my bike to work today and hope to at least two more days this week. Here’s more info:
http://www.biketoworkweek.org/
http://www.bikeleague.org/programs/bikemonth/
Meditation
Why join a church? Then, why stay in a church, with all its institutionalization? Those are questions that have had particular power over the last several decades. Here are some answers from an article by Garret Keizer in the April 22, 2008 issue of Christian Century magazine.
First his list of reasons NOT to join an organized religion.
1. Religious institutions, like all human institutions, have a way of existing for themselves as opposed to the purposes they claim to serve.
2. With organization comes power, and with power comes the ability to oppress the less powerful and exclude those whom power deems undesirable.
3. Institutional religion has a tendency to distrust and even to stifle the same creative energies that formed the religion in the first place.
Then his six virtues of organized religions.
1. They give their adherents something solid against which to rebel;
2. They allow one to see farther by standing on the shoulders of giants;
3. They insist on the primacy of lived experience;
4. They work against illusion and historical insularity;
5. They point to the power of the collective and the merits of deep diversity;
6. They are capable of the kind of mobilization that can transform the world.
I have been and remained an ordained minister in an organized religion for many of the good reasons that Keizer cites. I’m aware of the shortcomings of the institution, but feel that the benefits outweigh the liabilities. A reason that Keizer does not cite (but I hope he assumes) is that I believe God can work through institutions.
How many of you are involved in an organized church? (Or maybe an unorganized church!). Why do you stay there?
May you find God present to you wherever you find yourself.
Grace & peace
Geoff
This is bike to work week. I rode my bike to work twice this week. That’s a start!
http://www.biketoworkweek.org/ http://www.bikeleague.org/programs/bikemonth/
Meditation
Our society goes through various contortions during elections and the church is not immune from politics. Here’s a reflection on the role of Christians in politics from the Rev. John M. Buchanan, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, and the editor/publisher of Christian Century magazine. It comes from the May 20, 2008 issue of that magazine.
“Christians have long struggled over defining the proper relationship between their faith commitments and the political order. The struggle is ongoing, because Christians believe in the incarnation and believe that God loves this world and cares about how life is lived. Therefore issues of war, health care, immigration, torture and energy and the environment are not just political issues; they are moral and theological issues as well.”
You can read the whole editorial here: http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=4752
There are those, referred to in the opening of Buchanan’s article, who believe religion and politics should be separated. I’m not one of those for the reasons Buchanan lists. How do you feel about it?
May God bless you today, in your heart and in the world around you.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Meditation
I was thinking about spiritual direction the other day and got down my copy of... “Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction” by Margaret Guenther, Cowley Publications, 1992. Here is a re-phrasing of some questions she poses. I’m re-phrasing them to address you, my readers. See how they fit.
What is happening in your life?
Where is God in your life? (or specifically in the things that are happening in your life?)
What is your story?
Where does your story fit into the common Christian story?
How is the Holy Spirit at work in your life?
What is missing?
See my previous emails of Jan. 18, 2005 or March 31, 2006 for more from Guenther.
I would suggest that you ask yourself those questions as kind of a spiritual inventory. This inventory can be done any time and can be a helpful way to get a perspective on what is happening in your life. I commend it to you.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Meditation
Most of us are aware of the environmental disaster that is unfolding all around us. There are many causes, but one of the spiritual causes is the attitude we take towards nature and the earth. Here’s a reflection on that attitude from Archbishop Rowan Williams in the book, “Wrestling with Angels; Conversations in Modern Theology,” edited by Mike Higton, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids/Cambridge, 2007. Pardon the German; I trust his phrases following the word are defining it.
“What has been lost…is the possibility of WONDER,
of contemplative receptivity in the face of the world’s richness, the
overthrowing of a contemplative( and thus potentially God -directed) mode of
knowledge by a model of Bewaltigung – thought as mastery, domination,
even exploitation, Bacon’s nature on the rack”
Hmm… “nature on the rack…” a grim image, but one that might fit the way we humans abuse the natural world around us. That kind of attitude is deep in our culture and our psyches and many of us react to life out of those depths and attitudes. Our challenge, not just as people of faith, but as a species, will be to change that deep attitude of abuse into an attitude that works more together with nature, in harmony with nature. “Nature on the rack…” Ugh!
May you find ways to pray into a greater harmony with the world around you, both natural and human.
Grace & peace
Geoff
Meditation
Last Friday’s email made reference to wonder as a quality easily lost when we want to control things. Here is a definition of wonder from the book “The Wondering Brain” by Kelly Bulkeley, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York, 2005. Here is Bulkeley’s definition of wonder for his purposes.
Wonder is… “the feeling excited by an encounter with something novel and unexpected, something that strikes a person as intensely real, true, and/or beautiful.”
Bulkeley notes that his definition is rooted in the Oxford English Dictionary, but that the ancient roots of the word are lost in the mists of time. Wonder is one of the basic feelings associated with religion or spirituality. This book covers wonder as found in dreams and visions, sex, creativity, and contemplative practice. Where do you find wonder in your life? Is wonder a part of your experience of God? May you be “wonder-struck” today!
Grace & peace
Geoff
Meditation
I’m using devotionally the book "I Want to Live These Days with You" compiled by Manfred Webber and translated by O.C. Dean, Jr., Westminster John Knox Press,
Louisville/London, 2007. It is a collection of writings by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I hope my editing retains the article’s coherence. Takes off on Ps 34:19.
“The righteous suffer from the things that for others are a matter of course and necessary. The righteous suffer from unrighteousness, from the senselessness and wrongness of world events…The world says: that’s just the way it is, always will be, and must be. The righteous say: it should not be that way; it is against God….God’s help is not in every human suffering., but God’s help is always in the suffering of the righteous, because they suffer with God….the answer of the righteous to the suffering that the world brings them is called blessing. That was God’s answer to the world that slew Christ on the cross: blessing. God did not repay like with like, and neither should the righteous. Do not condemn, do not scold, but bless. (I Peter 3:9)”
It was the quote from I Peter 3:9 that caught my attention, that called to me, and that became a prayer for me for a week or so. To get from scolding and condemning to blessing requires considerable forgiveness, but it is a formula that pushes my faith to test itself in the world around me. “Do not condemn, do not scold, but bless.” Try that for a challenge to your spiritual practices.
Grace & peace
Geoff
