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Spiritual readings        "Greetings from Whittier Presbyterian Church"

September 2003 Emails    

 Sept. 9, 2003

I’m book-ending my vacation with thoughts of Sabbath from “Practicing our Faith” edited by Dorothy C. Bass, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, 1997.  It is a collection of essays on various topics of spiritual practices.  The final chapter is “Growing in the Practices of Faith” and has this little story.

 “This is what happened, rather spontaneously, for a group of busy professionals.  One Monday, after all had whined at lunch about how much work they had taken home over the weekend, one remarked that they seemed to be awfully complacent about their violation of the commandment to observe the Sabbath.,  “I know that we sometimes break the other commandments as well,” she observed, “but at least we don’t’ sit around boasting about it.”  How was it, this group began to wonder, that they had become so heedless of something of supposed value within the Christian faith they all professed?  What was that value, anyway?  They knew they needed rest, but they had not thought about that need in relation to their faith.  Research followed, and then an informed discussion about the nature of God’s gift of Sabbath rest of the world.  Afterwards, the subject lingered in the air among the, and a few patterns began to change—not enough to satisfy strict Sabbatarians, certainly, but that was not the point.  Rather, in ways suited to their own circumstances, members of this group grew in their lived awareness of the holiness of time and creation, in regularity at worship, and in opposition to injustices in the distribution of work and wealth in our society.”

How do we grow in our “lived awareness of the holiness of time and creation”?  As most of us are now caught up in the full “program” of our life, vacations over, school resuming, etc. it is all too easy to lose the awareness of the holiness of time and creation.  Part of the blessing of whatever spiritual practices we may engage in is to help us with that awareness.

May you be aware of the holiness around you this day.

Grace and peace,

Geoff

Sept. 12, 2003

Yesterday I participated in our City’s Service of Remembrance for Sept. 11, 2001.  I found some interesting reflection on 9-11 in a book review in the August 23, 2003 issue of Christian Century Magazine.  It was written by Rev. Lillian Daniel, pastor of the Church of the Redeemer in New Haven, CT.

“Two years and two wars later, the church still struggles with the implication of 9/11.  Rage at the cruelty of the terrorists is tempered by our worry that the prince of peace does not want us to kill one another in war.  At local clergy meetings pastors share sermon synopses and stories of the fallout that followed the sermons.  “Did you go pastoral or prophetic?” they ask one another.  “Did you sing “God Bless America’? Or did you remind the congregation that we are citizens first of the kingdom of God, and then the nation state?”  “Do you refer to the war as having been won or are you still praying for the troops?”  “Do you also pray for their troops?  All troops?  Or for a day when there will be no troops?”

The questions posed here point to the deeper issues of faith that lie under the events of 9-11.  How did those events change your faith?  Did they deepen it?  Were you able to handle your grief and rage?  Upon whom do you rely for vengeance?

May all the deep events of your life resonate within your faith.

Grace & peace

Geoff

Sept. 16, 2003

Technology and spirituality can sometimes clash and sometimes work together wonderfully, but there is always a tension between them that needs attention.  The August 23, 2003 issue of Christian Century magazine had an interview with Dr. Albert Borgmann, the Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montana in Missoula.  Here are some excerpts from that article.

“Reason and reflection cannot presume to govern faith, but they can precede it and clear a space for it.  Making room for Christianity is in fact the most promising response to technology.”

“If two or three hours of television a day come into our lives, then something else has to go out.  And what has gone out?  Telling stories, reading, going to the theater, socializing with friends, just taking a walk to see what’s up in the neighborhood.”

I’m reminded of notes to a music CD by Nitin Sawhney that I used in my Feb. 1, 2002 email, available on the web site.  How do you handle the tension in your life between technology and spirituality?  Are you able to hold your own against the swelling tide and pressure of technology upon our lives?  May God’s grace give you the clarity you need in this issue and in these times.

Grace & peace

Geoff

Sept. 19, 2003

One of my favorite sources for these emails is the section of Christian Century magazine entitled “Century Marks.”  Here is as excerpt from the August 23, 2003 issue.

“When writer Annie Lamott defended her practice of making her 14-year-old son go to church even though he hates it, she was bombarded by critics who accused her of child abuse and brainwashing.  Lamott’s response:  We live in bewildering times and a little spiritual guidance never hurt anyone.  Besides, teenagers left on their own would opt out of many important things that they don’t enjoy, like homework or flossing their teeth.  “Ti’s good to do uncomfortable things.  It’s weight training for life.”  Lamott knows God also loves teenagers who don’t go to church, but such teens are deprived of seeing people who love God back.  “Learning to love back is the hardest part of being alive.”  She also makes her son go to the church’s youth group.  Youth “want guides,” she says, adults who “know how to act like an adult but with a kid’s heart.  They want people who will sit with them and talk about the big questions.”

I remember how much I resented my parents making me go to church as a teenager, but by the time I was 30 or so, I was thankful for them having done so.  I had indeed gotten to see and know adults who loved God.  It made a huge difference in my life.  How do you show your love for God?  Who sees you loving God?

Grace & peace

Geoff

Sept. 23, 2003

Recent events in my ministry have driven me back to the book by Joan D. Chittister entitled “Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope,” Eerdmans/Novalis, Grand Rapids, Ottawa, 2003.  In there she writes:

I am writing this book because struggle, long a recognized factor in personal development and spiritual growth, has become one of the major spiritual problems of our time.  Change—the shifting of life from one stable context to another—envelops us.  Nothing seems fixed anymore—not theology, not culture, not institutions, not relationships, not family, not even my own sense of self.  In the post-modern world, with its critique of the modernist belief in progress, suspicion becomes the lens through which we view everything.  We ask new questions: Is the church given to holiness or only to ritual:  Is the West really creative or only exploitative?  Are the poor really oppressed or only lazy?  Is anything what it seems to be or does it all need to be deconstructed in order to raise up something purer in its stead?  It begs a veritable philosophy of transition.

Life itself has become a series of life-changing interruptions we are meant to expect and to broach with very little help.

The rest of 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.  I’ve used it twice before in these emails, June 24, 2003 and June 27, 2003.  You look them up on the web site.

How do you handle the transitions in your life?  What tools do you use?  I’m often amazed at the lack of knowledge of the great resources that our faith has and has had for millennia.  Sr. Chittister is well aware of those resources and her book in a great Rx for much that troubles us.  My you sharpen your coping tools with such help as she and others in the faith can offer.

Grace & peace

Geoff

Sept. 26, 2003

Roberta C. Bondi is Professor of Church History at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.  She is well known for her knowledge of the early fathers and mothers (Abbas & Ammas) of the church and their insights in to prayer and spiritual living.  Here is some helpful talk from her book “To Pray and to Love,” Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1991.

“If you have been praying for a long time but feel anxiety about whether you are doing it “right,” the monastic teachers remind you “Cannot all works please God equally?”  Although the Abbas and Ammas have many helpful things to say for deepening the practice and understanding of prayer, you do not need anyone to tell you the right way to pray.  If you are praying, you are already “doing it right.”

If you are praying, you are already doing it right.  What wonderful advice for those doubtful about their ability to pray.  Reformed theology reminds us that any desire we have to pray is a response to God moving in our lives in the first place.  That is even more comforting, for it tells us that God is already there with and for us, even before we ask.

Do you ever feel like you want to pray, but just don’t know how?  You are already praying.  Do you ever feel so full of joy, you don’t know how to express it?  You are already praying.  Do you ever wonder why God allows certain things to happen?  You are already praying.

May God bless you in your prayers this day.

Grace & peace

Geoff

Sept. 30, 2003

Here is another quote along the same lines and from the same source as last Friday’s.  It comes from Roberta C. Bondi’s book “To Pray and to Love,” Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1991.  Here she is quoting from the “Conferences” of St. John Cassian.

“Not only is the prayer of each person unique.  Because our shared life with God in prayer is ongoing, we need to take seriously that our prayer is going to change according to what is going on in our lives.  Cassian says:  Certainly, the same kind of prayers cannot be uttered continuously by any one person.  A lively person prays one way.  A person brought down by gloom or despair prays another.  One prays one way when the life of the spirit is flourishing, and another way when pushed down by the mass of temptation.””

To acknowledge that external circumstances affect our prayer life seems like a no-brainer.  But sometimes we are so disoriented by trauma or crisis that we don’t stop to re-adjust our prayers.  How do your moods affect your prayers?  Do you have certain prayers that you use when sad?  When happy?  May your prayer repertory ever expand.

Grace & peace

Geoff