Lenten Reflection 2/19

Talk about a God of second chances - or third, or fourth, or hundredth...

Today in Deuteronomy  Moses tells the people that the only reason they're getting the chance to go into the land of milk and honey is because the people who lived there before were even worse than they are and are being booted out.  The land happens to be free right now.  It's not because they earned it or deserve it - in fact, Moses describes well the multiple infractions against God's law these people have committed.  Why, even at the very moment Moses was up on the mountain receiving the commandments written in stone, the people were down below merrily messing up big time once again!

Yet, God still gives them another chance to come into a better place.  The whole 40 years in the wilderness was one instance after another of the people screwing up and God giving them another chance.

Which brings me to Mark Sanford.  Remember him?  He was the governor of South Carolina that "disappeared" on a hike in the Appalachians few years ago, but then it turned out that the married governor wasn't hiking, but using state funds to go visit his mistress in Argentina.  Sanford resigned in shame back then, and he's now divorced, has paid the state back for his South American romps, and is now--- wait for it --- he's now running for congress in South Carolina's 1st congressional district.

"I've experienced how none of us go through life without mistakes. But in their wake we can learn a lot about grace, a God of second chances and be the better for it," Sanford says in an ad that is currently on the airwaves in South Carolina.

OK, a space has opened up, and Mark Sanford does now have the chance to enter it.  And who knows, maybe he has 'wandered around in the wilderness' long enough and is ready to enter politics again (not to say that politics is a land of milk and honey). But you can see the Biblical references he's calling on here, right?  In his ad he says he's humbly stepping forward and asking for the voter's help in getting another chance to change Washington.

OK, although I absolutely believe that God gives Mark Sanford (and even people who've done far more heinous things than he has) second, third - even seventy times seven chances in life - that doesn't mean I'd vote for him as my congressman.  Try some real humility, Mr. Sanford.

Today's Readings: Deut. 9:4-12; Heb. 3:1-11; John 2:13-22
Elsa is reading The Message translation this year.

Lenten Reflection 2/15

A passenger from the cruise ship Triumph kisses the ground
upon returning to land

Lenten Reflection 2/15

The people who got onto Carnival cruise line's luxury liner "Triumph" did not get the cruise they'd hoped for.  A fire on board knocked out the power system, disrupting food preparation, sanitation systems and even forward movement.  For five days, passengers floated in the Gulf of Mexico while tugs slowly got them to shore and toilets overflowed and food went from lavish buffets to cold sandwiches.  The passengers finally made it onto dry land today and a whole lot of press has been devoted to their "ordeal."

OK, so I'm not going to poo poo the stress this caused.  People did not sign up for what they got.  And clearly it was an unpleasant experience, though not life threatening.  People lost out on having a fun and relaxing vacation - and I bet that for some of them, it'll be a whole year before they get another one.  However, I've got to say that what many call an ordeal might be no worse than what some people in the world live with everyday.  In Kampala, Uganda, for example, only 17% of the people have access to piped water.  And that's EVERY day.

In the reading from Deuteronomy today, it says that when you love God and God's commandments, God will love you, bless you, increase you, bless your family, your crops - and basically you'll never have anything bad happen to you ever again - no sickness or afflictions.  Not only that, all your enemies will be complete toast.

I've got to wonder about this.  I've got to wonder about the entitlement of it.  I've got to wonder about how it makes us God fearing westerners think everything should always go great for us, and when it doesn't, some horrible enemy must be to blame (and darn it, we're going to SUE them for it!)

I've got to wonder.  I've heard stories of crew members on that boat continuing to be supportive and cheerful.  Well, sure, that's their job.  But I also heard about people who made the best of the situation and had a vacation anyway, despite the stress and chaos of the unexpected situation.  I wonder if an attitude of gratitude toward God does - truly - bless us deeply.  I wonder if even sickness and affliction can be born with gratitute and peace if you can get into that God loving space.

And I've got to wonder if most of the time our enemies are not outside us - others inflicting things upon us that we are helpless victims of - but live within us.  I wonder if the attitudes we harbor inside us that make us feel entitled to have things the way we want them and that make us blind to the plight of others and keep us isolated at the center of our own universes could be the enemies that really hold us hostage on a daily basis.

If that kind of enemy were made complete toast, I've got to wonder how the world would look.


Readings for today: Deut. 7:12-16; Titus 2:1-15; John 1:35-42
Readings for Saturday: Deut. 7:17-26; Titus 3:1-15; John 1:43-51
Readings for Sunday: Deut. 8:1-10; 1 Cor. 1:17-31; Mark 2:18-22 
Elsa is reading "The Message" translation this year.

Lenten Reflection 2/14

 

Lenten Reflection - 2/14


 This morning, as I was getting the kids off to school, NPR news was on in the background.  Oscar Pistorius, olympic and paraolympic hero, was reported to have been arrested under suspicion of killing his girlfriend.  My boys looked at each other and they looked at me.  How could I find words for this?  How could an athlete so recently praised as a hero to anyone burdened with limitations (which all of us are, in some way) have fallen so far?

In Lent we are reminded that it doesn't matter how fine your reputation is or how good you are at what you do.  Everyone is broken and therefore prone to sin.  It feels very sad to me to hear that someone I have greatly admired has perhaps been involved in perpetrating domestic violence - a sin I find particularly troubling.  It reminds me once again, as I have been reminded so often lately, that the world is very broken, and that any of us might succumb to our most uncontrollable human weaknesses.

In this morning's reading in Deuteronomy, the Israelites, God's chosen people, are told that "God wasn't attracted to you and didn't choose you because you were big and important - the fact is, there was almost nothing to you. God did it out of sheer love, keeping the promise God made to your ancestors."  (Deut. 7:7,8a)

God can indeed stoop down into our most broken places and free us from slavery to our worst impulses. And "God keeps this covenant of loyal love with those who love God."

Loving our reputations, our possessions, our power, our control, our perceived safety, our own desires or anything else more than loving God and God's good, orderly direction leads to nothing but trouble.  That goes for you, for me, for celebrities, athletes, politicians, kings - Everyone.

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Want to follow along with the daily lectionary readings this Lent?  They can be found HERE. Scroll down to the section that is headed Daily Office and Daily Eucharistic Lectionary to find the readings for each day.

Lenten Reflection 2/13

Our mortality is front and center on Ash Wednesday - the first day of the season of Lent.  As the creaky, dry ashes are rubbed into your forehead, the priest says, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."  This afternoon, about 75 people came to "Ashes to Go" in front of Starbucks.  After Louise and I said a little prayer, applied the ashes and said the words about dust, people would look up, smile, and say thank you.  Thank you?  I just told you that you're going to die and you say thank you?

Old churches were intentionally built with cemeteries right outside their windows to remind the people in the pews of their own deaths every Sunday.  Early monastics would keep all their worldly possessions in their coffins as a reminder of their mortality, and early missionaries would often use their own coffins as their traveling trunks - sometimes even sleeping in them once they arrived at their destination!  There is a certain freedom in living like you're dying - like you've got nothing to lose.  And for the Christian, there is freedom in dying in Christ, for only when we die with him can we be raised into new life.  It's letting go of our own lives to gain them.

I met an Anglican priest from Uganda this morning.  He noted that Ash Wednesday is the one day of the year that you get to visit your own funeral.  And I got to wondering, if I were at my own funeral, what would I like to hear people saying about me?  What kind of love would I hope I'd left behind?  Ash Wednesday is like a wake up call to get moving on making my life into the kind of life that results in the kind of funeral I hope someday to have.  It's also a reminder that I'm already dead in Christ and can therefore trust God in stepping into a whole new life - a whole new me that is more fully in God.

It takes just a small correction of the wheel for a ship's destination to be completely different.  What little corrections can you make in the way you live, love and act in this world to change the outcome of your whole life?  If you can think of even just a little thing you can let go of that will free you from the burden of self, or if you can think of even just a little new practice you can adopt that will mold you more into who you are being called to be - today's the day to start trying these things on.  Lent is a season of practicing being new. 

On a Day Late in Lent

Spring officially arrived two days ago, but this year it has felt like spring for a while already.  This picture of our intrepid concrete-defying daffodils was taken two years ago - on about April 16.  This picture proves how early spring is this year because the flowers look like this today on March 22.

A few years ago Steve and I were in San Francisco in early March.  The flowers were blooming, the fields were bright green and the farmer's markets were overflowing with local produce.  We'd flown out from JFK in some pretty dismal winter weather, so the contrast was striking.  My first reaction was to be uncomfortable with it.  "This is not very Lenten!" 

You see, I have lived in New England all my life and I have become accustomed to how Lent falls in the gray and chilly time of year - the time of year when the snow has gotten hard and dirty and the sidewalks are gritty and things just look - well - dead.  When the first crocuses finally start to come out - sometimes up through a late snowcover - and the soft green grass begins to bring life back into the gray landscape it gives Easter an added layer of meaning. 

So while I've enjoyed the beautiful weather lately, I realize I've also been feeling a bit cheated out of the yucky late winter weather that makes the spring so sweet in comparison and gives Easter a literal new life feeling.  And because of this, I can sometimes be a bit like the Lenten version of Ebineezer Scrooge or something. Spring? Sunshine? Daffodils? Bah Humbug!

What is wrong with that picture?  Today it's 75 degrees and sunny with a gentle breeze and I'm sitting in my office resenting it?  So at about 4 this afternoon, I realized I was nursing a stupid resentment and I went outside, took off my shoes and sat on a bench and enjoyed sitting in the sun.  They say it's going to get cooler again soon.  So I'm going to enjoy this day while I can and practice some gratefulness for small things. 

Yet, to add another layer to this onion, there is something very Lenten still at work here.  One of the reasons I know I have a Scrooge-like attitude toward this warm weather is because I know that the bigger picture of this lovely day includes the reality of an overall change in climate and the ominous environmental implications it reveals.  I've noticed many people's discomfort with this obviously drastic change in the weather, and it seems that we all feel powerless to do much about it.  So we say things like, "What a beautiful day!" but then kind of shrug and say, "It's so strange, isn't it?   Weird.  Almost unsettling."  We are hovering on the edge of acknowledging that the root cause of this early spring is perhaps the result of a collective character defect of our society - of our wastefulness as Americans and our disregard for the planet. 

There's a nice prayer in the prayer book.  I think it expresses the better intent of those Biblical words, "dominion over," which has always given me some measure of discomfort. 

Almighty God, in giving us dominion over things on earth,
you made us fellow workers in your creation:

Give us wisdomand reverence so to use the resources of nature,

that no onemay suffer from our abuse of them,

and that generations yet to come

may continue to praise you for your bounty;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

I guess that through pondering all this, I'm coming up with a new way to describe what Lent is all about.  It's a time when we intentionally invite our discomforts to lead to more than just resentments or denial.  It's a time when we have a chance to allow our discomforts (and life gives us no shortage of those...) to lead us to a deeper discovery of God's will for us.  May you have a blessed Lent which brings you deep into the heart of God and prepares you for a new and transformed life this Easter.

Lenten Thoughts - Week 5

Being faithful means more that just 'believing right' or 'thinking right.' Thoughts and stated beliefs only go so far. Until your thoughts and beliefs are embodied in your life, your faith doesn't add up to much more than an idea. In other words, you have to do more than think the think. You've got to walk the walk of faith. In Lent, we're challenged to get walking. We're invited to intentionally add things to our daily routine that bring us closer to God and also to intentionally remove things from our regular routines so as to open up more room for God to enter our lives. Lent is about allowing God to take the wheel of our lives. It is about getting out of ourselves. It's about letting go and letting God. In our Eucharistic prayers during Lent we say, "God, You bid your faithful people cleanse their hearts, and prepare with joy for the Paschal feast." These words have caught my attention this year, because I know there are many ways to cleanse the heart, and I am encouraged to think that my Lenten preparations are to be done with joy.

So this brings me to Steve - who this week stopped thinking about the rotting corner of our porch and decided to get to work. He's been thinking about it since we moved in last summer. He's looked at it from many angles. He's drawn up diagrams and made supply lists. He's considered the many options. But this week, suddenly, he said, "You know, pretty soon the bugs will be out. I'm just going to do it." And from morning until after dark he went at it. He set up the circular saw, he went to the hardware store, he pulled out all of his beloved power tools and dug in.

There's nothing my husband loves more than a handyman project. It's a way that he gets out of himself. It's one of his 'timeless' activities - those things that take you up so completely that you just lose track of time doing them. This happens to me whenever I write or sew. And I believe that when you do the things that you enjoy so much you lose track of time, you are closer to God. After all, God planted our desires and talents within us in the first place. So even though it's common to think of Lent as a time to deny yourself, maybe spending more time doing the things you really love is one way to practice Lent. It's a way to fast from your usual "have to's" and to make room for God to enter your life through creativity and timeless joy.

So, inspired by his porch project, I think I'll put other tasks from my to do list on the back burner this afternoon and go out and start working in my yard. Pruning is definitely one of my timeless activities. I hope I will find God, and God will find me out in the overgrown forsythia bushes.

Lenten Thoughts - Week 4

I'm homing in on finishing my latest pair of socks. I started knitting them about when Lent started, and it looks like I'll finish them just about as it ends. This pair of socks has the 2010 Winter Olympics knitted into them, as well as a lovely time of silent retreat. In those stitches are also some wintery Mondays spent by my fireplace, some great Al Anon meetings, as well as a few days of a stomach bug. Knitting is definitely one of my ways of marking time - kind of like a clock that displays the seasons of my life.

I was talking to someone recently about how it seems that our collective sensibilities are becoming so digital these days. The glowing red numbers on a digital alarm clock tell us it's "6:32" as if this moment in time is discreet and unconnected to any other moment. Sometimes it seems our lives are becoming more and more like a collection of discreet unconnected moments, too. Our information comes at us from so many different directions at once in sound bytes and tweets and status updates, we have become used to receiving things in random order, as they come, out of context with the many other bits of information that come our way.

An analog watch or clock, on the other hand, shows the time of day not just as one discreet moment in time, but as a position within a larger context. The second hand sweeps the clockface once a minute. The minute hand goes all the way around in an hour, and the hour hand makes its slow march in twelve hours. Each moment in time is built on the one before it and is headed to the one that is next. Time is even spoken of differently with analog clocks. At 6:32, it could be 'just past 6:30' or 'about twenty-five minutes to seven.

Every couple of weeks, we get the chance to experience more analog time as our knitters, crocheters and needleworkers sit together on Knit One, Pray Too nights. There's a sense of continuity as each stitch brings the pieces we're working on closer to completion. Our digital thoughts pop up and come out of our mouths in a random way. But all our ideas and stories get knit together by the context of relaxed community, and our time together as a group gets stitched into our work. Our group has certainly become a part of this pair of socks I'm knitting.

Time is not really either digital or analog, but a dance of both. Like any dance, there needs to be tension and balance between partners. It seems that at this point in time, digital time is taking a strong lead, but analog time is still dancing. Living a life of faith means exploring the both/and tensions in the world. And it strikes me that the season of Lent itself is a good example of the both/and dance of time. In this season of practicing prayer, fasting and almsgiving, we receive many random experiences of God - sometimes popping up at the least expected moments. But although each day brings many new and unexpected experiences, each passing moment is still one more step in the journey - one more stitch in the sock. At the end, we will be closer to God than when we started, no matter at which point we began, only to discover that God was right there with us all along.

Lenten Thoughts - Week 3

As I listen to the dryer and the furnace humming below me in the cellar, I am reminded of just how many noises surround me everyday. Some are comforting, like the calm snoring of my dog, and some are annoying, like the repetitive music from a computer game. Many sounds are so familiar to me, I don't even hear them anymore. But when I really stop to listen, I begin to notice how noisy my life really is.

This week I took a break from all my usual noises and went on a silent retreat. The only time I used my voice was when I was in the chapel praying or singing. There was no one with me, so I didn't hear anyone else's voice either. I had no music, and didn't watch TV. It was pretty darn quiet! And the place where I was staying was really quiet, too. Camp Washington is the diocesan camp and retreat center here in Connecticut, and it's off the beaten path. Every now and then a car drives by, or you hear an airplane fly over, but when I went out to take a walk, all I heard was the woods. I heard no highways or roads in the distance - no motor sounds at all. That is very unusual for this region. At night, it was pitch dark, and there was not another soul at the camp but me. I stayed in the Transfiguration Lodge, a beautiful building with its own beautiful chapel. There are beds for six in there, but only mine was taken. Like I said, it was pretty quiet.

With all that silence, I found that I began to hear the noises inside me that are usually drowned out by the noises all around me. Silence tends to do that. It tends to allow stuff to bubble up and be noticed. It gave me the chance to feel, to acknowledge and to pray about things I hadn't made the room for lately. It slowed me down and woke me up at the same time. I had a few good cries, three great nights of sleep and lots of relaxing time by the wood stove, listening to the crackle of the burning logs. I took focussed time with all four daily offices each day, with the Rule of St. Benedict and some Al Anon literature. I also took long, quiet walks and wrote pages and pages of stuff in my journal. All of these things are ways I've found to be in conversation with God. God and I had some real quality time together this week.

During Lent, we've been putting more periods of silence into our worship services at Grace Church. I tell everyone that in this noisy world, Lent is an important time to make some room in our busy lives for for more silence. And it is. The silence wants to talk to us, if we'll make the room to listen.

Lenten thoughts - Week 2

As I mentioned in my previous post, Connecticut doesn't seem to have the kind of winters I'm used to. However, this February has been pretty snowy. This past week has been really gray, cold, damp and wintery and at this writing, other than a few brief glimpses yesterday we haven't seen the sun in almost eight days, and the forecast is predicting the same for three more days. Not seeing the sun gets to people. Everywhere I go I hear laments like, "It's so COLD!" "When is it going to be spring?" "I'm ready for this to be over now." Maybe it's my puritan roots, but I have to admit that I actually like something about this kind of weather during Lent. Perhaps it's easier to be penitent when you're miserable about the weather. It certainly is more of a spiritual discipline to be hopeful in this kind of weather.



I didn't realize I felt this way until last year at this time, when Steve and I took a trip to San Francisco. We stayed with a friend who has a beautiful yard that was positively dripping with fragrant wisteria vines and other flowering trees - in early March! Along her driveway were citrus trees covered with little oranges and lemons. And the birds were singing like a choir from morning until night. The hills surrounding the city were an amazingly deep, rich green, and everywhere you looked was the evidence of botanical bounty, including the most amazing vegetable markets I've ever seen - filled to overflowing with LOCAL produce. Coming from gray, damp and cold New England, where the tomatoes in the stores not only overpriced but also hard and barely pink at this time of year and where the only local produce available is the now kind of soft butternut squash stored in the cellar since fall, San Francisco felt like the most abundant and rich place on earth to me. My first reaction was to be delighted. But my second thought was, "This just isn't right during Lent!"

I was to learn that the moist green-ness of the area would not last long. In just a month or two, the hills would turn what they euphamistically call "golden" (but which my friend calls dried-out brown.) New England is actually a far more consistently moist and lush region year round, rich with natural springs and rivers and lakes, while California suffers from droughts every year. Knowing this at least appeased my green envy.



Everything in life has its own costs and benefits, as does every region, I guess. But I'll take Lent in the late New England winter any day, when the sky is often gray and the ground, when it shows, is damp, matted down and dirty, like a used dishcloth in need of a good laundering. The only breaks we get are the breathtakingly beautiful snows like the one we got this weekend that frost the trees with magical beauty. Too bad it all needs to be shovelled.

I once visted Key West for a few weeks, and I noticed how relaxed and happy everyone seemed to be all the time. I realized that their mood was definitely linked to the weather. I mean, how can you not be laid back when all you need to throw on is a pair of shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops? The colder the climate, the more tense the population seems to be. I have noticed this as a trend in my travels. People from cold climates tend to be viewed by others as being rather crusty, distant people - somehow especially New Englanders. Perhaps we retain some of the European reserve along with our cold climate temperament. We, like many cold weather people, don't let many of our feelings out - maybe we keep them inside in an attempt to conserve energy!

But our challenging climate attunes us to the seasonal changes around us. We can smell when snow is coming, and we can recognize the healing fragrance of spring earth - sometimes even when it's still covered in snow. Our ears pick up the first bird songs that are so welcome after the muffled silence of winter, that tease us into believing that spring must be just around the corner when we know it really isn't. What can possibly compare to that first warm day in the spring when you don't need to wear a coat and the sun feels warm on your neck? People in Key West don't get to have these experiences. It seems to me they must have to try a lot harder to believe in the resurection. Up here we travel through the somber Lenten journey in our very bones, and this makes Easter all the more welcome and all the more miraculous. Every year we physically feel salvation.

Lenten thoughts - Week 1

We had two new couples visit our church this Sunday. One couple stayed and showed great enthusiasm for having found us. The other couple slipped out before the service was over. I don't know what hit them wrong, but obviously we were not what they were looking for.

What do you suppose we are really looking for when we come into a church? What thirst are we trying to quench and what hunger are we hoping to feed? What hole in our souls are we trying to fill? And how do we know when we have found the place to which our souls are being called?

Most people I meet these days tell me they're spiritual but not religious. That makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, pedophile priests, televangelist scandals, religious lobbyists brokering political power, people being shunned for who they are and violence committed in the name of religion are reasons enough to turn any thinking person right off. It's no wonder people would rather find their spirituality elsewhere - in nature, in a yoga class, in a book group, etc. It is really clear that our souls can find sustinence in such places. So why put up with the church - that fallible and often messed up institution? It sometimes seems the church is more concerned about what people believe and what they think than about how they act and what they do. Christianity has degraded, in many cases, into a faith stance, a certain set of intellectual beliefs - an opinion - instead of the relevant and life-giving spiritual practice it was meant to be.

I think in this era of rugged individuality - and of increasing isolation and alienation - there is great value to coming together in real community, even when it is challenging. There are simply somethings we just can't do alone. I also think there is great value in examining history and tradition and mining it for its riches instead of constantly creating new wheels. I think the great mystics of Christianity and other religions have touched on the very things that we all deeply hunger and thirst for, and it is a good thing for us to pay attention and listen to what they have to say. They have things to show us that we can't see yet.

So I thirst for a church where people are welcome to ask lots of questions - to struggle with tradition and feel safe to disagree. In fact, I thirst for a church where finding answers is not faith at all, but living into the questions is. I thirst for community that welcomes us to show up exactly as we are - and where everyone feels the profoundly accepting love that Jesus showed everyone by his words and actions the minute they walk in the door.

I suppose no church can be that for everyone and some people will not find what they are looking for here. But, then again, if one church fit everyone's needs perfectly, there wouldn't be much dimension to Christianity. I think the deepest beauty is in the full, varied spectrum. I at least hope that the people who feel called to be here at Grace Church will find not only what they are looking for, but what they most deeply need.