Life is a pendulum swinging between remembering and forgetting. Often I find myself on the forgetting end of the swing.
The poet Rita Dove described something that goes on in my mind in her poem “Lucille, Post-Operative Years”–
Most often she couldn’t think–which is to say she thought of everything, and at once– …
Then, sudden as a wince, she couldn’t remember a thing. …
What bothered her: the gaps between.
(Those are connected excerpts from three different stanzas)
I can have what feels like so much spinning around in my head that I can’t think of the name of the person standing in front of me, who I’ve known for years and I can tell you everything about them, but their name is missing. Or I can be talking along towards a point and have it fly out of my head and leave me looking for a direction to catch up to it.
Meanwhile I have memories from the first 20 years of my life that are crystal clear and in context like they just happened. Oh, but the gaps in between. The mind is a marvelous thing, particularly when it cooperates or shows us things we had forgotten we knew.
Sometimes I wonder if our collective memory works like that as well. There are things we forget that are critical to who we are or who we are called to be.
That’s where my mind has wandered with this weekend’s lectionary Gospel reading, Matthew 5:13-20 (quoting 13-16, “Salt and Light”)
“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.
No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
What if we forgot what it is to be salt and light? What if we lost what that means? Maybe being light in the darkness makes sense, but what is it to be salt?
I am going to stick with Debie Thomas, who I have quoted a good bit lately from her book “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She says when Jesus calls his listeners ‘salt of the earth’ he is saying something profound that is easy for our to miss in our time:
“First of all, he is telling us who we are. We are salt. We are not ‘supposed to be’ salt, or ‘encouraged to become’ salt, or promised that ‘if we become’ salt, God will love us more. The language Jesus uses is 100 percent descriptive. It’s a statement of our identity. We are the salt of the earth. We are that which enhances or embitters, soothes or irritates, melts or stings, preserves or ruins. For better or worse, we are the salt of the earth, and what we do with our saltiness matters.“
Salt by itself doesn’t do much. And too much of it can ruin things. But the right amount of salt (which was in Jesus’s time a precious commodity) can enhance and make things better. Salt’s value is in its being spread around, added to other things–but not in a way that dominates or takes over.
If we forget that we are salt of the earth and keep ourselves separate and distant or try to take things over, we are not being true to who we are called to be.
Thomas’s essay, “Salty” looks deeply at what is to be salt–something that was precious, something that “does its best work when it’s poured around”, something that doesn’t exist to preserve itself; a calling that is not meant “to make us proud; it’s meant to to humble and awe us.”
What an honor to be asked to help, to be of service. Thomas continues:
“Our vocation in these times and places is not to lose our saltiness. That’s the temptation–to retreat. To choose blandness over boldness and keep our love for Jesus an embarrassed secret… But that kind of salt, Jesus tells his listeners, is useless. It is untrue to its essence… Salt at its best sustains and enriches life. It pours itself out with discretion so that God’s kingdom might be known on the earth–a kingdom of spice and zest, a kingdom of health and wholeness, a kingdom of varied depth, flavor, and complexity.“
I’m really looking forward to discussing Thomas’s reflections on the life of Christ. We’ll see how salty and balanced we can become during our Lent small groups .
These are some of the books that are pouring ideas and prayers and sentences and questions and wonder and inspiration into my heart and mind at the moment.
Next weekend (February 11-12), I preach at Christ Church Easton. What that looks like walking around and how to process it is a different kind of thing. Barbara Brown Taylor in her book, “The Preaching Life,” points towards it:
“I do not want to pass on knowledge from the pulpit; I want to take part in an experience of God’s living word, and that calls for a different kind of research. It is time to tuck the text into the pocket of my heart and walk around with it inside me. It is time to turn its words and images loose on the events of my everyday life and see how they mix. It is time to daydream, whittle, whistle, pray.”
The more often I tuck God’s Word into the pocket of my heart and walk around with it inside me, the more it helps shape who I am and how I see the world. If I hope to take part in an experience of God’s living word, I need to remind myself that I am salt and light–my role is to enhance, sooth, melt, preserve, to add some flavor that might bring it into our world in a fresh way.
Back to Thomas:
“We are the salt of the earth. That is what we are, for better or for worse. May it be for the better. May your pouring out–and mine–be for the life of the world.”
Faith, like life, is messy. This has been on my mind a lot, after thinking about Matthew’s Gospel (1:18-25) where he talks about Joseph and the birth of Jesus. Fr. Bill Ortt’s sermon stirred me up and Debie Thomas‘s essay on the same passage in her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories” sent me into overdrive.
In the Gospel, Joseph finds out his fiancé Mary is pregnant, not with his child, and plans to send her away quietly. What the law required is that he should publicly shame her and that she might be stoned to death. But Joseph’s heart demanded something different of him. Send her away quietly.
And then, in a dream, an angel tells Joseph not to worry, to stay with Mary, whose child was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and to help raise her son, who they are to name Jesus. He learned this in a dream.
Fr. Bill, describing what Joseph decided to do said, “Instead of following the letter of the law, displayed the heart of God.”
And there is the thing–look at the “law” over centuries–the law changes with the times. The loving heart of God is unchanging, constant, eternal. But that doesn’t make it easy to follow or live into.
Debie Thomas in her essay, “Into the Mess,” says:
“It is the humble carpenter’s willingness to abandon his notions of holiness and embrace the scandalous that allows the miracle of Christ’s arrival to unfold.”
This is not to dismiss Mary’s role and the need for her willingness to be the mother of Jesus. Luke’s Gospel looks at the birth story from Mary’s perspective, and has an angel speaking to Mary. Matthew looks at Joseph.
Saying yes was the first step, the same as it is with us today. But this is going to lead for an entirely different life for Joseph than he could have possibly pictured for himself. He has to let go of everything. Thomas writes:
“In choosing Joseph to be Jesus’s earthly father, God leads a righteous man with an impeccable reputation straight into doubt, shame, scandal, and controversy. God’s call requires Joseph to reorder everything he thinks he knows about fairness, justice, goodness, and purity.”
Think about that. Based on a dream, would you say yes to God’s calling in that situation? Joseph had to let go of his notion of all these things, to live a completely different life than he dreamed for himself–saying yes to God had a cost for him. It also had a reward, but in order to see it, he had to let go of what he thought he knew.
Fr. Bill, in thinking about the character of Joseph, said he must have been a young man. Why?
“The young dream, the old remember.”
As we get older, we are less likely to listen to our dreams. We are more inclined to look back and discern things by comparison, by whatever logic we can discern from our lives; we are less open to the new and the strange.
What if we could stay open? What if we could continue to dream as we get older? What if we could find a way to keep or develop soft hearts?
“The young dream, the old remember.”
Fr. Bill picked up another thread in his sermon that I want to weave in here. In talking about Christ’s birth, he said, “God himself became vulnerably present in the world.”
God as vulnerable. Both in the person of Jesus, but also in the way he deals with us. He asks, we can say yes or no. And this comes back to the idea of God as Love.
I recently picked up C.S. Lewis’s “The Four Loves” from my bookshelf and started reading it, based on coming across this quote online:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
To love is to be vulnerable. What normally happens to us as we get older, in response to the pain, suffering, and heartbreak that happens by living, we seal ourselves off. We harden. We build walls in self-defense. And this is what the world has largely come to look and feel like.
But we can choose a different way to be. It takes courage, it takes heart, it takes being vulnerable.
In his book “Consolations,” David Whyte writes about “Touch.” He says:
“Touch is what we desire in one form or another, even if we find it through being alone, through the agency of silence or through the felt need to walk at a distance: the meeting with something or someone other than ourselves, the light brush of grass on the skin, the ruffling breeze, the actual touch of another’s hand; even the gentle first touch of an understanding, which, until now, we were formerly afraid to hold.”
Even the most introverted want to feel deeply. We want to experience connection. We want to touch and be touched. To touch, to feel, we have to be open. And being open isn’t just to the good stuff, the stuff we want, but also to that which can wreck us. Whyte continues:
“Being alive in the world means being found by [the] world and sometimes touched to the core in ways we would rather not experience.”
Maybe that is along the lines of what Joseph experienced before his dream. This isn’t what he had signed up for. This isn’t the life he had mapped out. But he was open. And through and after his dream, he said yes to a life, a calling, that none of us can fathom.
Because he was open. Because he was willing to let go of what he thought he wanted. Because he said yes.
Whyte finishes his thoughts on touch looking at being untouchable:
“To forge an untouchable, invulnerable identity is actually a sign of retreat from this world; of weakness; a sign of fear rather than of strength, and betrays a strange misunderstanding of an abiding, foundational, and necessary reality: that untouched, we disappear.”
To wall up and go numb is a cop out. It deprives us of really living.
Life, like faith, is messy. In order to experience those things we all want–love, joy, happiness–we have to open and vulnerable to those things we want with everything to avoid, heartbreak, pain, suffering. That’s the mess of it.
Joseph and Mary became the earth parents of Jesus. Their saying yes changed everything for all of us. We don’t hear much more about Joseph in the story–it wasn’t about him, ultimately. And Mary watched Jesus being killed. Again with the mess.
Scripture tells us, Jesus tells us, God tells us, it’s worth it. Love is worth it. Life is worth it. The mess is part of it. And not just part of it, but an important part of it.
I love how Debie Thomas thinks about the mess. And invites us to do the same:
“Do not be afraid of the mess. Embrace it. The mess is where God enters the world.”
To live, to love, to be open. To have the heart of God and to become vulnerably present in the world.
Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. October 8-9 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.
Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.
The Gospel reading for October 9 was Luke 17:11-19, where Jesus heals 10 men with a skin disease and only one, a foreigner, comes back in praise and gratitude.
“Faith and Gratitude”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem. Over the past few weeks, we have seen him talking to and teaching his disciples. But today there is a bit of shift.
He’s approached by 10 lepers. What do we know about lepers during this time?
They kept distant from non-lepers.
They formed their own colonies.
They positioned themselves near trafficways so that they could make appeals for charity.
To be let back into society they had to be checked out by a priest, in a kind of certification process.
Leprosy was estrangement from both God and other people. It had a stigma.
When writing his novel, “The Name of the Rose,” Umberto Eco put it like this: “In saying ‘lepers’ we would understand ‘outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the city.’”
They were the fringe of the fringe.
The lepers are keeping their distance and following protocol and they call out to Jesus. And he SEES them. Seeing is important here.
He tells them to go and show themselves to the priests, which is how they would be able to get back into everyday life, to no longer be outcast or untouchable.
And “as they went,” they were made clean. Their healing was connected to their obedience—they did what Jesus told them to do.
One of the lepers, a foreigner, a Samaritan, SAW that he was healed, and his response was to turn back, praise God with a loud voice, and to lie on the ground in front of Jesus and thank him.
It’s notable that the leper doesn’t just thank Jesus as some great healer on the street, he knows the healing has come from God and he praises God before he thanks Jesus.
Jesus SAW the lepers and the one Samaritan leper saw that God had healed him through Jesus. And he was grateful.
We see a lot of healing stories in the Gospels, but in this case, the story Luke tells is less about the healing and more about the response of the one leper.
The three questions Jesus then asks are not really addressed to the grateful Samaritan but they underscore the point of the story:
Were not 10 made clean?
Where are they?
Were none of them found to return and give praise except this foreigner?
Why the Foreigner?
This is not a knock on the nine who did what they were instructed. They followed orders. They were healed. We don’t know what happened to them after—they may have gone on to spread their own stories and good news for the rest of their lives.
But the foreigner, the stranger was different. Why is that? What was it that made him turn around while the others went on their way?
I like a thought that Fred Craddock shared in his book, “Interpretations: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching—Luke.” In thinking through the stranger in our time, he said:
“It is often the stranger in the church who sings heartily the hymns we have long left to the choir, who expresses gratitude for blessings we had not noticed, who listens attentively to the sermon we think we have already heard, who gets excited about our old Bible, and who becomes actively involved in acts of service to which we send small donations. Must it always be so?”
Fred Craddock
I wonder, do I get complacent? Do we sometimes go about our business doing what was asked of us, but not stopping to give thanks and praise for both remarkable and everyday things that bring us joy? Or those things that connect us to God and to each other?
Reading Scripture: WWJD?
Studying Scripture has so many layers to it, any of which can give us pause, can make us think, can stop us and meet us where we are.
We need to understand the context in which something was written; we need to think about the audience the writer, in this case Luke, was writing for; and we have both God’s Word in the Bible and any number of great commentaries that have been written to help us understand it.
And then we also want to figure out the relevance of something for our lives. What do we do with what we read? Why does it matter? What is the “so what?” of ten lepers getting healed more than 2,000 years ago? Why should we care?
Fr. Bill Ortt often says to think about Scripture as a prism, where you can turn it around to see different facets of it. And if we do that in this story, we’ve got the grateful leper, we’ve got the other nine who were healed, and we’ve got Jesus. We may have a tendency not to put ourselves in Jesus’s place in the story, because, well, he’s Jesus and we’re not.
But these stories are shared for us to learn from. For us to ponder, to take in. And who is the main character in the New Testament who we want to learn about? Jesus.
And why? Maybe to be more like him. What’s the bumper sticker—what’s the saying that is used over and over again: WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
And how do you know, how can you consider what Jesus would do if you don’t read Scripture to get to know him better?
So in this story, what does Jesus do?
Seeing and Doing
First, Jesus sees the lepers who call out to him. Really sees them and what their problem is. And what he sees is human beings, not lepers. Luke illustrates this point over and over again in his Gospel:
When we meet the demoniac at Gerasene, Luke calls him, “a man from the city who had demons.”
Here, Luke doesn’t say 10 lepers, he says, “10 men with a skin disease.”
In writing his Gospel, Luke doesn’t define people by their afflictions, by their diseases, by what’s wrong with them. Because Jesus doesn’t define people that way. Jesus sees our humanity. And he sees the humanity of these 10 men.
And what does he do once he sees? He acts, he steps in to help, to heal.
If we want to model our lives after Jesus, where does that leave us?
We need to see. Do we take the time to see what is going on around us? We can look nationally and globally—the devastating damage in Florida from Hurricane Ian; the ongoing war in Ukraine; insert your news of struggle and suffering going on in the world.
We can also look closer to home: our family, our friends, our neighbors, and people in our community. We’ve got a lot of people barely holding on around us. Do we see them?
Then, what do we do when we see them? Do we reach out? Do we pray for people? Do we come alongside them when we can and walk with someone who is having a hard time.
Do we do…what we see Jesus doing time and time again in Scripture, and especially in Luke’s Gospel, and in today’s story? See, help, heal.
What do we see?
Do we see the needs, the struggles of others?
And what do we do?
Let’s take some pressure off of ourselves for a minute. Living like Jesus is certainly the goal, but wow, is that tough. Sometimes getting out of bed in the morning and getting through the day without telling someone off seems more attainable.
Gratitude
Let’s look more closely at the Samaritan who was healed and who came back. Let’s walk in his footsteps.
Back to seeing: what does the Samaritan see? He sees that he has been healed. He recognizes that God was at work. And he praises, he humbles himself, and he gives thanks.
We can do that, right? There are times when being grateful is everything. That’s a big part of my story and what has me standing here in front of you.
I caught up with a childhood friend who I haven’t seen in decades. We grew up playing little league baseball together in Oxford and he went on to fly F-16s in the Air Force for 20 years. We had lunch last week and what we both wanted to talk about was faith and spiritual awakenings. And he asked what prompted this calling in me.
My one-word answer was, and is, gratitude.
A little more than seven years ago my younger daughter had a bad seizure caused by brain swelling. She was visiting family outside Pittsburgh and she had to be intubated and flown by helicopter to Children’s Hospital, where she was in pediatric intensive care for 10 days and in the hospital for the next month.
Faith wasn’t a big part of my life then, but as I sat with her in the hospital, as I listened to doctors, as we tried to figure out what was next, people continually reached out to say they were praying and ask how they could help.
And what I could feel, could palpably feel, was a community of prayers changing me. I wouldn’t say I started out where the Grinch was, but my heart grew in significant ways that I am still trying to wrap my head around. And I felt a peace and calm in the midst of so much worry.
When we came home, I was full of capital “G” Gratitude. I didn’t necessarily know where to put it or what to do with it, but a friend invited me to church. That sounded like a good start. And that was the first step on a path that led here, and with gratitude every day it is a walk that is still going.
I saw healing. I felt a change, a kind of healing in me. And giving praise and thanks is my response.
Salvation
Let’s turn our attention back to the grateful leper. Jesus says to him, “Your faith has made you well.” Fred Craddock who I quoted earlier points out that the verb that was used for “made well” is the same word that is often translated, “to be saved.”
Jesus healed 10 people, but only one, the one who came back and was grateful, received something much bigger than physical healing. His faith, as expressed by his gratitude, saved him.
Alan Culpepper in “The New Interpreter’s Bible,” looks at this and says that the story challenges us to regard gratitude as an expression of faith.
That resonates with me. Gratitude feels like a way to express our faith.
Culpepper says further: “If gratitude reveals humility of spirit and a sensitivity to the grace of God in one’s life, then is there any better measure of faith than wonder and thankfulness before what one perceives as unmerited expressions of love and kindness from God and from others?”
Living with a Grateful Heart
What does gratitude look like in our lives? What do we do when we have a grateful heart?
I have one more quick example. When I started working here at Christ Church they gave me the office at the top of the stairs in the Rectory. I end up talking to just about everyone who comes up and down the steps—which aren’t the easiest steps to navigate.
Well, a few times a week, Bruce Richards would come up the steps and go into the bathroom, and when he came out he would stop in and share this amazing smile, and energy, and joy and gratitude.
It turns out at the time that all the Stephen Ministry books, brochures and pins were kept in the bathroom closet, and he would go in to stock up on whatever he needed.
So I had a running joke with Bruce that he had a Clark Kent/Superman phone booth in the bathroom and he would come out as a superhero for pastoral care. Except it wasn’t a joke at all. That’s who Bruce was.
As the years went on, Bruce was slower getting up and down the steps, but his joy, his smile, and his gratitude didn’t change.
We commended Bruce to God on Saturday and I have so many pictures of him on my heart. Bruce carried printed out prayers in his wallet and in his calendar and he sometimes gave me one if he thought I looked like I needed it, or he would tell me to pass it on to someone who did.
Bruce came with us to give Communion to a parishioner in Oxford who had fallen and couldn’t make it to church for a while. For us, it was a special visit, but Bruce did this all the time, in nursing homes, people’s houses, you name it.
And I have a picture of Bruce coming to his door on his 80th birthday, during the height of the pandemic, when a group of us went to sing happy birthday to him with Brenda Wood playing the accordion.
Bruce was a grateful heart personified. He showed us what it looked like to live with gratitude and for him it looked like caring for others, so much so, that he helped begin a new ministry at the church, specifically to care for people going through tough times… by listening to them, praying with them, and walking beside them. And Bruce’s work of 18 years here continues today with all the Stephen Ministers, the care givers and care receivers, who are grateful and helping us create a church community of compassion.
Bruce saw people hurting. He acted, he did something about it, using gifts that he didn’t know he had, always giving thanks with gratitude.
I wish we didn’t have to lose people like Bruce, people in our lives who show us what it is to live with a grateful heart—people we are grateful for. But it makes me even more thankful for the time that we had together and the example he still is for all of us. What a gift to know people like that and to be able to continue their work in love.
Alan Culpepper has a thought here that I’d like to close with, which gets us to the heart of today’s Gospel:
“Faith, like gratitude, is our response to the grace of God as we have experienced it. For those who have become aware of God’s grace, all of life is infused with a sense of gratitude, and each encounter becomes an opportunity to see and respond in the spirit of the grateful leper.”
We need our sense of awe, of wonder, kickstarted. When I look at any given week ahead, at the to-do list, at the bills, at the schedule, it’s easy to get lost in the details.
Everyone has a soapbox they frequently stand on. Wonder is one of my few soapboxes. Carl Sagan gets it. Let Carl get you going. When he says dot, he means the Earth:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
That’s the kind of perspective I need from time to time. The history of humankind–our dreams, accomplishments, stories, are all a speck in the cosmos. Get your head into the stars.
What are your go-to activities, places, or ways to amp up your sense of wonder and awe? For me, getting outside is as big as it gets. Watching the sun come up or set on a river, bay, ocean; hiking, trail running, skateboarding; gardening where I take the time to look at the details of what is growing or blooming. And obviously, books.
Some wonder-sparking books that were nearby while I was typing.
Here’s a thought from Pablo Neruda:
“We the mortals touch the metals, the wind, the ocean shores, the stones, knowing they will go on, inert or burning, and I was discovering, naming all the these things: it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”
Again with our brief time here, the span of time before and after us, and yet, there are times when we can feel connected to, a part of everything around us.
Let’s play that out. We are here. We were created. You and I have consciousness and questions and feelings. So the same Creator that made all of the wonder-filled, awe-stoking Universe, made you and made me.
“The story of our faith beings with the Creation narratives, in which the act of Creation itself becomes the unfolding of God’s love for the whole world.
God’s love is written all over creation. It begins when God takes the deep and the darkness and, instead of destroying these things, makes them a part of creation. God calls it very good, and we are all created together by a loving God who destroys nothing in creating–deep and darkness, earth and light, knit together in a creation that is both unified and diverse…
Nature is sacred; it was made by the same creator who made us. If we want to love, worship, and be with God, then it makes sense for us to stand in the midst of creation. The closer we are to nature, the nearer we most be to the heart and desire of the Creator.”
Let that wash over you for a minute. That sense of awe and wonder in us, that connection to the larger Universe, to creation, can be a means for us to get to know God and draw closer to Him. Even if we are a blip on the screen, we are still a part of it and we can do something with our time.
We were made to wonder. We were made to dream. We were made to enjoy and take part of the beauty of the Creation of which we are a part. And by doing so, we find ourselves a gateway to God.
I have two kinds of reading: work/church reading and other/personal reading, though they almost always overlap.
Work/church reading is reading that goes toward discussion groups and Bible studies. Over the past few years, we have done chapter by chapter group studies of the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and Paul’s Letter to the Philippians; shorter survey’s of Mark and Matthew’s Gospels, book studies of two Bob Goff books, one Brene Brown book, Henri Nouwen’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” and a deep-dive into The Lord’s Prayer. We have groups that have become like family, who have been meeting for multiple years now and when one study is done, they ask, “what’s next?” And it’s awesome.
When we could no longer gather together as groups this spring, Zoom meetings became our way of getting together. And for the past several weeks, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, we have had folks on screen together, live from their homes in Wittman, Sherwood, outside Cambridge, all around Easton, and it has helped–both with the stir crazy, cooped up feelings, but also staying connected to each other and connected to God.
As we finished our long studies of John’s Gospel and our Lent survey of Matthew’s Gospel, we kicked around some options of what to explore next. The thought of Paul’s prison letters resonated, as we quarantine in place. A reliable, accessible commentary can be hugely illuminating for Bible study, and we have loved N.T. Wright’s New Testament for Everyone books. His “Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters” is what we used for our Philippians study a couple years ago and we are heading back there to start with Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians.
From Wright’s introduction:
“This book includes the four short letters Paul wrote from prison: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. His own personal circumstances make these especially poignant, and give us a portrait of a man facing huge difficulties and hardships and coming through with his faith and hope unscathed. But what he has to say to young churches–and in the case of Philemon, to one man facing a hugely difficult moral dilemna–is even more impressive. Already, within 30 years of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul has worked out a wonderful, many-colored picture of what Jesus achieved, of God’s worldwide plan, and how it all works out in the lives of ordinary people.”
Paul’s letters from prison give us plenty to think, pray, and reflect on, and something to work towards. I always recall the line from Ephesians about putting on the “full armor of God.”
Something has happened in the shift from being able to come together at church, or anywhere, to now being distanced. Maybe we realize how much we need each other, how much we miss each other. And creating content to engage, inspire, and give hope, as well as creating interactive opportunities and experiences is more important than ever. So as we start with Ephesians and go through the prison letters, I want to throw out there for anyone who wants to, to do the same. I’ll be blogging and trying to find some creative writing opportunities with it; I will look to have some video conversations with Fr. Bill Ortt, Fr. Charlie Barton, and others to get their thoughts on issues and chapters that come up; possible podcasts with staff members and others; I will see if I can find some special guest stars to weigh in; and we can open up some Zoom meetings during the week where people can drop in and share and discuss their thoughts. The more the merrier–and has always been the case for our small groups, you don’t have to be a member of the church or any church to be a part of what’s going on. If it sounds interesting, give it a shot. With Zoom, Facebook, Instagram and the like, you can be in Florida, California, Maine, or in a different country.
In January 2017, I had started working at Christ Church Easton part-time in addition to my job as director of the Oxford Community Center. Our rector/pastor, Fr. Bill Ortt, asked me to put together a short (5-6 week) Bible study, whatever I picked to study, find 10 or so people to be a part of it, and he and I would co-lead the group. I had led small groups before, but this would be my first Bible study. I picked Ephesians. Many of the guinea pigs…er… willing participants, have become close friends, and are still both involved in and leading small groups at the church, with one woman finishing up her work to become a deacon. It’s been a wonderful journey together.
I was reminded recently (by Wright, in our John study) of lines from T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” which is one of my absolute favorite poems/books ever written. Eliot says:
“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot
I feel like that is the case for me with Ephesians. It’s maybe the case with small groups. It’s maybe the case with church and communities, who are having to re-examine what’s important and how to do things.
Fair warning though: it seems the longer you study with and work with someone, the more likely you are to dress alike.
We all bring something to the table. And what each person brings is necessarily different from what anyone else brings. And if you subscribe to the notion of life taking a village, a community, part of what makes everything work is each of us adding our own gifts.
This week in our Lent small group, we read Matthew 25 in N.T. Wright’s “Lent for Everyone,” which includes the parable of the talents. In the story Jesus tells, the master goes on a journey and leaves a sum of money (talents) with three different slaves. He gives the first slave five talents, the slave turns it into 10; he gives the second two talents, he turns it into four. The master is pleased and rewards them. The last slave is given one talent, is scared, buries the talent, and just gives it back to the master when he gets back. The master is not happy and wants him thrown out into the dark where bad stuff goes down.
The things about parables, about stories, if they aren’t memorable, they aren’t worth much. Some of them are harsh, and each of the stories Jesus tells are meant to get a message across. Whereas a talent in the story is currency or money, it is a word that works for us in our time as well: talking about our own talents.
Wright breaks it down for us in his commentary after the reading:
“…each of us has been put here with a particular purpose and calling, which only we can do. Our task is to find out what that is and to do it. That remains true whether the purpose is playing the trumpet, cooking meals, planting trees, performing heart transplants, or even preaching sermons. Sometimes, of course, it’s a struggle to discover what our calling is.”
N.T. Wright
We could stand to listen to Jesus, and to Wright, during this time of pandemic with COVID-19 calling for so many different responses from all of us. Some of the shining talents that have come to light at Christ Church Easton during this time, are the musical and video editing skills of members of the church’s music ministers, bands, and choirs. “Hold Us Together,” “Stand in Your Love / Chain Breaker,” and “Be Still My Soul,” have each become Facebook phenomena going far beyond anything the church has recorded or media that it has created. The comments about the hope and connection people are feeling from them have had hearts overflowing all over. I still have a hard time getting through any one of the videos without breaking down.
None of this happens if contemporary music minister Ray Remesch doesn’t step up and say he can direct, record, and edit videos; if Alive @ 5 music minister Bruce Strazza isn’t using his technical expertise, above and beyond his musical talent, to make sure the staff and the band have the systems and equipment they need to work remotely; if the musicians and singers don’t make the time to bring their skills to the table; and Tracy Kollinger doesn’t research and figure out the best ways to upload and stream live videos. We’ve had different staff and volunteers who have stepped up and into different hats in both subtle and profound ways.
Obviously these aren’t front-line jobs. The talents of doctors, first responders, school systems and community volunteers working to make sure kids and families are fed; grocery store and restaurant workers coming up with new ways to stay open and feed people; there are so many people offering and stretching their talents in so many ways, that it is nothing short of remarkable. People are stepping up with the gifts they have been given and are increasing their talents, not burying them.
There are also those of us that are waiting, maybe unsure what gifts we bring to the table, and unsure about the timing and way we might use them. In his commentary on the parable of the talents, Wright has some thoughts:
“…each of us is called to exercise the primary, underlying gifts of living as a wise, loving human being, celebrating God’s love, forgiving, praying, seeking justice, acting prudently and courageously, waiting patiently for God’s will to be done.”
Wright
In this case, God’s will has nothing to do with the pandemic virus sweeping the world, but everything to do with how God’s people are called to respond. It’s up to us, to use the talents God has given us to give back to the community, our neighbors, and thereby the world.
It could be praying; it could be reaching out to a friend or family member; it could be supporting local businesses who are going through an unprecedented time; it could be feeding people; it could be staying home and being available when ready; it could be giving hope and humor and peace to someone who needs it.
What’s asked of us is not to bury our talents, but to be open, to increase them, and to share them. There is hope there.
Sometimes it’s there, just below the surface. My mind is distracted, looking for the familiar, but knowing it won’t come from there. It’s something new.
A beautiful morning, or evening, outside, smelling cut grass, swooning in the start of spring. It seems like normal. But go to grab groceries and it hits: it’s eerie. Off. Something is not right. You can feel it.
We are all called to respond in our own ways. To stay home, yes, but also called to look differently, think differently, maybe to live and be differently. I’ve been trying to get my head around it.
Before COVID-19 arrived, Fr. Bill Ortt put out a Lenten challenge at Christ Church Easton: 1) Find a word that speaks to you; 2) choose a Bible verse that uses your word; 3) Memorize your verse and pray, meditate, reflect on your word/verse as a Lenten mantra of sorts; 4) Write your word on one of the small, wooden crosses the church gives out. And if you are inspired to, take a picture and share your cross-verse.
There have been some wholly wonderful responses. “Heal,” “light,” “love,” “pray,” “faith”–it’s been inspiring to see and read how people came to their word (or their word came to them) and what they are doing with the experience.
My word wasn’t there at first. Or it was, but I wasn’t listening.
As a church, when it was clear that we weren’t going to be gathering together for a time, we had to figure out what that meant; what it looked like; how to stay relevant, be there for people; how to continue to shine a light; how to connect; how to help people be hopeful. We had to do things differently.
We had to create something new. Or at least new to us. We moved our meetings, small groups, and prayer gatherings to ZOOM. Worship services (what would worship look like now?) to Facebook Live. And our music ministries became video artists–I stop every time I hear/watch “Hold Us Together,”“Stand in Your Love / Chain Breaker,” or “Be Still My Soul.” These are videos that have been viewed tens of thousands of times now on Facebook and shared widely. They strike a chord, they speak to hope and faith and love and connection. They weren’t a priority before social distancing, until they became one of the key ways to communicate. This is a time that is teaching us how to create, how to be differently, how to look at what’s important. And it’s not about adapting to a temporary predicament–it’s about moving toward, embracing something new.
I am fascinated by stories. As a writer, I read them, listen to them, think about them, and hope to share and tell them in new and interesting ways. But with between work, two teenage daughters, life, it’s not always easy to make time to write.
As I sat, prayed, reflected, my word, both professionally and personally was there all along: CREATE. And when I started looking through Bible verses, Isaiah practically smacked me upside the head:
“For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.”
Isaiah, 65:17
In this time, our time, maybe we are called to look at our lives with an eye towards creating better lives.
Maybe we are called to look at our personal and collective stories, and tell new ones.
If our world is necessarily knocked off its axis, perhaps we can look at how to get it spinning around love, kindness, community, sustainability, and creativity.
If I stay home, simply waiting, doing things as I’ve always done them, and at the other end of this pandemic, just shrug, and go back to business as usual, what have I learned or gained from the experience?
This isn’t meant to be some Pollyanna motivational speech. I know my shortcomings. I know I will be lazy, I will fall short, I will miss opportunities. I try to own my humanity, my flaws, and my mistakes. But the idea behind a word, a mantra, a verse to think, pray, reflect on, is what I set my eyes to–what I aim towards, what I strive for. And in the face of a global virus the world is responding to in ways that none of us have seen in our lifetimes, it is a legitimate time to look at our lives and think about where and how we are and where we want to be.
Each spring, I go back to Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” It’s become a way to enter the season of rebirth, of resurrection. And this year I am hit especially by his “O ME! O LIFE!” in the same space and way that Robin Williams quoted it in Dead Poets Society.
We are here. We exist. It didn’t have to be, but it is. And in life’s powerful play, we may contribute a verse. That is what we create. But it’s up to us.
I want to wake up open to what it is God is creating in the world and creating in me.
“Create in my a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.”
If you take Jesus at his word, loving our neighbors is a big deal. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they record the same to-do list from Jesus, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40 NIV)
These are important. And if we take to reading, studying, reflecting and meditating on, and praying on Scripture, we’ll find new depths and heights for how to connect to and love and obey God.
I’ve got to say, the Bible is my favorite book. That is not a statement I could have made 10 years ago. And part of the reason I say that is that I’ve spent the last three years reading Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s versions of the Gospel, slowly, chapter by chapter, studying with different groups, using the help of N.T. Wright’s “New Testament for Everyone” commentaries. And we’ve prayed, laughed (a lot), cried, wrestled with things, been confused, found grace, found ourselves in the stories, found God and Christ in the Scriptures, found poetry, and soared to new heights of feeling and depths of understanding. I can’t recommend it enough and it has become one of my favorite things to do. We’re currently studying John’s Gospel and, wow.
But about this loving our neighbor thing: what if our neighbor has no interest in the Bible? And there are plenty of big reasons they might not (disdain for organized religion being one). One of the best things we can do is look to Jesus for an example. Jesus is constantly reaching out to the lonely, the outcast, the disenfranchised, the unclean, the sick, the marginalized–the people who the “church people” of the day wouldn’t have anything to do with. And when he reached out, he didn’t tell them to go to church, read their Old Testament, etc. He heard them. He met them where they were. He healed them. He loved them. He knew them and spoke to them. In the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, who society would have told Jesus he had no business talking to, Jesus talks to her, tells her things about who he is and who she is; the woman is amazed and tells others he “told me everything I have ever done!” He told her HER story.
At a time where we don’t know our neighbors, or their stories, and in many cases, maybe we don’t know ourselves the way we should, it’s our sacred duty to recognize the divine in each of us. In a 2018 sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, Brene Brown reminds us that,
“If you are a person of faith, you are called to find the face of God in every single person you meet.”
Brene Brown
Sometimes that is not the easiest thing to do. Especially when we disagree with someone, maybe don’t like them; or if they look, think, love, or act differently than we do. A key way to know someone is to hear their stories; to understand who they are. Brown shows one way of doing that in a short, narrated cartoon video about empathy. Sometimes it is no more simple, and no more profound, than just being there.
Brown says that empathy fuels connection and cites Theresa Wiseman’s four qualities of empathy: perspective taking, staying out of judgment, recognizing emotions in others, and communicating that. If we want to love our neighbor as Christ both told us and demonstrated, this is a pretty solid beginning.
Part of the problem is that this isn’t an easy thing to learn. It doesn’t come naturally to everyone. And it isn’t always easy. We need all the help that we can get.
This fall, we’ve had two evening classes reading and discussing Brown’s book, “Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.” It’s been interesting, hearing some folks who are not church-goers, who say, “A church discussing a Brene Brown book? Wow, that’s really cool, I’d love to be a part of that.” And some folks at the church, who wonder about discussing a book that isn’t the Bible and doesn’t talk directly about the Bible or God in the way that we are used to. And both of those things are great and right and fair discussions to have.
I love the idea of thin places–places where heaven and earth are closer, or places where we are closer to God. There are absolutely physical places in the world where that space exists. But I think it that space can also be a state of mind or emotion. And when we feel vulnerable, that is one of the places–being exposed, and truly seen and heard, where we feel our need for God and for each other. Brown defines vulnerability as “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.”And she points out that love for us feels uncertain, incredibly risky, and leaves us emotionally exposed.
She points out that, “vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”
This is not easy stuff and it’s not necessarily a feel good book, in that it asks us to look past all the barriers we build to protect ourselves and be open with ourselves, each other, and with God. Being open to God is to be vulnerable, to put our hearts out there, which is the business God is in: the battle for our hearts.
Brown gets the title for her book from Teddy Roosevelt’s famous speech, about the “Man in the Arena:”
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”
God calls us not to be on the sidelines, but in the arena. He tells us that Jesus has come so that we may “have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). He wants us to get to know Him and get to know each other. And He knows it is a struggle, a journey to get there, one where we lay down our old lives to have a new life in and through Him. And that it’s worth it.
What keeps us from having that life in all its fullness? The life that we might dream of, or that God dreams for us? What, in our culture, are the things that most stand in our way? If most of us had to name it, it would probably involve fear, shame, vulnerability. We are often afraid of failing, afraid of falling, afraid of being ridiculed, afraid of being exposed. This is true in our personal lives, in our education system, and at work. And in Daring Greatly, Brown helps us to look at this, to name and understand it, and talks about how we can connect with one another and develop a resilience that could allow us to try; to dare.
In the Gospels, Jesus compares himself to a physician, who is not here to help the healthy, but here to help the sick. He asks Peter and his disciples to continue his work. He asks us to continue his work today. And when we can diagnose something that keeps people down, keeps us from knowing each other and knowing ourselves; keeps us armored up, numb, and therefore not open to God or His love for us and what plans He might have for us, maybe He asks us to reach out to people where they are. Maybe he asks us to open ourselves up and help others connect to us and to Him.
And maybe we need to use every tool, every language, every means that He has given us to help do that. It’s a sacred call, to love our neighbors. And to love them, we have to know them, and know ourselves.
There are different paths to come to faith. I know my own did not involve the Bible until it did. And that has begun one of the coolest lifetime adventures there is. And our paths also involve finding God in all of creation, in other people, and in books, some of which are obvious, some of which are subtle, but all of which are part of God.
At our best, maybe we are called to synthesize secular and sacred texts, or to view everything as sacred, seeing with the eyes of a Creator who loves his Creation. Maybe we can create a language and a vision with room for both. I appreciate folks like Rev. Arianne Rice, who in her practice is both an Episcopal priest and a certified Daring Way instructor, bringing together Scripture, faith, social work, research, vulnerability, and empathy. And who may be able to help us, and others, do the same. It’s cool to see Christ Church Charlotte offering classes, lectures, and an evening with Brene Brown; Stonebriar Church in Texas talking about healing from shame; and the Episcopal Church and United Thank Offering talking about return, practice, and gratitude, citing Brown’s work. The point here is not about Brown, but about cases where churches are looking to engage their congregations and communities by being open to new ways of thinking about connection, empathy, vulnerability, and how to be neighbors. It doesn’t change our sacred calling, it engages it on the ground.
I have so much to learn from so many different people. And so much to learn about God’s love, and grace, and Word. And I am grateful for all those in the arena, trying to do God’s work , through their unique gifts, perspective, and place in the world.
“Nature’s first green is gold, / Her hardest hue to hold.”
Robert Frost might have had a magnolia tree in his front yard. I’ve never seen anything like it. Over the past week, it’s been in different phases of bloom and I just go out and stand underneath it in complete awe. It will only last a week or two, but man, what a week.
“Her early leaf’s a flower; / But only for an hour.”
Spring is a time for rebirth, for taking root and for growth. But within that, there is also the notion that it doesn’t last, like the magnolia tree in bloom, so appreciate it while it’s here. Be present. Feel the growth. Take the moment.
W.S. Merwin in Hawaii at the Merwin Conservancy. Image from Stefan Schaefer.
W.S. Merwin, one of the brightest shining, most brilliant, and most venerable American poets died recently. I met him briefly in Washington, DC, after hearing him read. I’d made it a point to catch him after work when I worked in the city. He was one of the voices; one of the lives worth emulating, or using as a model to find your own.
In a great New Yorker article, Casey Cep writes about Merwin’s writing and his effort to preserve Hawaiian landscape, “The palm forest, like Merwin’s poetry, has become a kind of prophetic stance against contemporary life: bearing witness to individual, almost foolish acts of creativity while devastation abounds.” We do what we can in the time that we have.
Sometimes I can connect the dots, sometimes I lose the picture. My reading list of late has included large parts of Luke’s Gospel, Henri Nouwen’s “Return of the Prodigal Son,” and legendary and/or mind-bending graphic novels, including Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s “Daredevil” run, Donny Cates’ “God Country,” and Jonathan Hickman’s “Fantastic Four.” I’ve never read Hickman, who is known for his epic story arcs for Marvel Comics. Marvel announced this past week that he is set to take over the X-Men this summer.
I’ve been thinking about the Faust/Faustus storyline a lot lately, where to gain unlimited knowledge, the seeker sells their soul to the devil. It has to deal with hubris, excessive pride, and pushing beyond the limits of where we should go. And Hickman plays that exact storyline out with Reed Richards in his Fantastic Four story. But when faced with the decision either come up with the answer to everything, to save the universe and feed his ego flashing his brilliance, or to be human, be with his family, Richards thinks back to the words of his father.
“All of my hopes and desires rest in you becoming what I am not. When you grow up, I expect more. Son, I expect better. I want you to be a better friend than I was. Be a better husband. Be a better father. Be a better man.”
Father-son, father-daughter messages hit me straight in the heart. And it makes me reflect on the prodigal son story, and how the father wants his sons to know his love, no matter what they’ve done. And that’s big.
For Lent this year, Fr. Bill Ortt at Christ Church Easton, has given out prayer stones during worship services. There are 11 different words and you choose without looking: love, peace, believe, remember, listen, forgive, hope, pray, heal, follow, grace. The idea is to use your word as a mantra during Lent. And to look up Scripture for your word that you connect with, and pray, reflect, and meditate on it for the season.
My stone is love. It’s not the one I expected or the one I would have picked. But it’s the one I needed. It’s what I need to remember and to focus on. I picked two verses.
John 13.34-35
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’
And
Corinthians 13:4-8
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
Those are big for me. Because it is easy for me to look past, to get too busy, to be in my head or deep in thought too often.
Finishing up Robert Frost’s poem:
Then leaf subsides to leaf. / So Eden sank to grief, / So dawn goes down to day. / Nothing gold can stay.
Nothing gold can stay. And that’s true for spring. It’s true for knowledge and accomplishments. It’s true for the world. It’s true for almost everything we see around us.
But not for God. And not for love. “Love never ends.”
I’ve got to get to know Alice Walker. I’ve never read “The Color Purple,” but I love and live by her character Shug Avery’s quote, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” God gives us things to notice, to experience, to enjoy, to wonder about, but it’s up to us to see them.
We are up to chapter six in our study of Luke’s reporting of the Gospel at Christ Church Easton, which includes Luke’s version of the Beatitudes–Jesus’ sermon on the plain, which is slightly different than His sermon on the mount in Matthew’s Gospel. Most people have heard it–“Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God, Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” (Luke 6:20-21)–even if they don’t know it. But it’s fair to say that most people don’t give it much thought.
“Blessed” is a word that is overused and casually used, to the point that maybe it has lost its meaning in daily life, or at least it’s been watered down. As I was looking around this week for thoughts, commentary, and creative takes on the Beatitudes, Alice Walker popped up again. It was her same character, Shug Avery, but in the sequel to “The Color Purple,” the novel “The Temple of My Familiar.” In it, Shug gives her own version of the Beatitudes, but she replaces the word “blessed” with “helped.” And it changes so much (grabbing just a few):
“HELPED are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.
HELPED are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity.
HELPED are those who live in quietness, knowing neither brand name nor fad; they shall live every day as if in eternity, and each moment shall be as full as it is long.
HELPED are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception, and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.
HELPED are those who love the earth, their mother, and who willingly suffer that she may not die; in their grief over her pain they will weep rivers of blood, and in their joy of her lively response to love, they will converse with the trees.
HELPED are those whose every act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our planet. To them will be given the insight that every good act done anywhere in the cosmos welcomes the life of an animal or child.”
I love the way “helped,” changes the way we think about things; blessed is easy for us to think, oh, that’s nice, things will balance out eventually. Helped lets us know that we are helped by seeing things that way, or by being or acting a certain way. We can also look at it as helped by God for loving, living, acting, or seeing in a particular way. But it puts it on us to take action, to be in the world.
Eknath Easwaran was a fascinating, brilliant mystic who wrote about all kinds of religions, on meditation, prayer, and who has written a commentary on the Beatitudes called “Original Goodness.”
To begin his book, Easwaran quotes another mystic, Meister Eckhart:
“I have spoken at times of a light in the soul, a light that is uncreated and uncreatable… to the extent that we can deny ourselves and turn away from created things, we shall find our unity and blessing in that little spark in the soul, which neither space nor time touches.”
Easwaran goes on to outline four principles that Eckhart tried to get across:
“…there is a light in the soul that is uncreated and uncreatable… a divine core of personality that cannot be separated from God.
“This divine essence can be realized… it can and should be discovered, so that its presence becomes a reality in daily life.”
“This discovery is life’s real and highest goal. Our supreme purpose in life is not to make a fortune, nor to pursue pleasure, nor to write our names in history, but to discover this spark of the divine that is in our hearts.”
“When we realize this goal, we discover simultaneously that the divinity within ourselves is one and the same in all–all individuals, all creatures, all of life.”
From Jesus, to Eckhart, to Easwaran, to Shug/Walker, the idea is that we can know God directly, personally, that He dwells in each of us, and that we would do well to get in touch with this Holy Spirit inside us, which connects us to God; and in order to do so, we need to look past, to strip away so many of the worldly things that we hold up as more important.
Simple, right? Not so much. Jesus calls for a reversal, for us to change our priorities, our way of looking at and being in the world; how we look at and treat each other. That’s the goal, what we aim toward–feeling connected to God, feeling helped or blessed in all that we do. We may never get there (I’ll probably never get there), but that doesn’t mean we don’t pray, meditate, study Scripture, love each other, live it out, and try to get closer to God in our attempt.
We’ll leave it to Shug to say a thing or two more about the “helped:”
“HELPED are those who strive to give up their anger; their reward will be that in any confrontation their first thoughts will never be of violence or or war.
HELPED are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgiveness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth.
HELPED are those who are shown the existence of the Creator’s magic in the Universe; they shall experience delight and astonishment without ceasing.
HELPED are those who love all the colors of all the human beings, as they love all the colors of the animals and plants; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them.
HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another–plant, animal, river, or human being.”
