books | Michael Valliant

Much to ponder, much to cherish, much to lament

It’s been a heavy season of late. Funerals, hospice, medical, pastoral, for friends and family. When things are heavy, I often seek solitude and frequently that leads me to find some space in Oxford, the town where I grew up and continue to grow.

A couple Sundays ago, after our church services were done, I drove down to Oxford. It ended up being Plein Air day and the town, and the park where I often sit, were full of people. That and the park benches being in full sun, I walked to the end of Market Street, where there is a shaded bench next to Town Creek.

I sat quietly for a while, breathing and feeling a welcome breeze on my face. And then I pulled out three books I’ve been working on:

“Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi
“Four Quartets” by T.S. Eliot
“What Grows in Weary Lands” by Tish Harrison Warren

“Theo of Golden” is a novel that has been making its way around our congregation, talked up, talked about, and sometimes copies are passed around. A friend sent me a copy a few months ago, which I started, loved, and then reading for sermon prep, small groups, etc., took over, and I have been happy to pick it back up.

Getting to the end of the chapter I was reading, Levi wrote:

“There was, and would be, much to ponder.
Much to cherish.
Much to lament.”

I put the book down. That’s life. Every single day. We have much to ponder, much to cherish, much to lament. It is always a gift, each of those things, because to lament is wrapped up in loving. Loving opens us to lament. When we can love and cherish this life, we are fully living. Lamenting is a part of all of that, knowing that our time here is limited.

I read more in each of the books, enjoyed the company of other Market Street walkers who stopped and sat on the bench and enjoyed the shade and the breeze, and then moved along.

Among my practices for solitude is walking or running and that day was a walking day. I walked down Banks Street, cut onto Tilghman Street, and up Stewart Avenue, walking by a house where a friend and Little League baseball teammate lived, and it was his house where I first watched the slasher film classic, “Friday the 13th.” As all 11-year-old kids should (kidding).

Oxford is a town made up of memories for me, where the present and the past blend together. I wrote something about that in the August issue of Tidewater Times. Though the town has changed, it still feels like home, which is part of why I am drawn there.

I walked up onto The Strand and found a tree to sit under near the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry Dock. There I dug further into Eliot’s “Four Quartets.” I have lost count of how many times I have read this poem/book, it is one of a handful of books (mostly poetry) that I can and do carry in a backpack for quick and frequent access. Break glass/open book in case of existential emergency, or for inspiration, or to ponder, cherish, lament.

“Four Quartets” is divided into four sections, and I try to read a full section at a time. That day it was “East Coker.” Here is a stretch that jumped out at me:

“… Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”

I try to keep the wisdom of humility close to my heart day to day, moment by moment. If you are a follower, or even a fan of Jesus, humility was part of the marrow of his Incarnation. If you look back over the history of humanity, when we lose humility, we lose ourselves, and one way or another, individually and/or collectively, a crash/fall is in the works.

Eliot’s “Four Quartets” teaches or reminds me of something every time I pick it up. If I string things together, actively pondering, cherishing, and lamenting should keep us humble.

Though I also read “What Grows in Weary Lands” on my Oxford walkabout, the chapter that connects here is one I read a few days later on our back porch.

Tish Harrison Warren shares a wisdom story from the sayings of the Christian Desert Fathers and Mothers. It’s the story of three friends who were monks, who were all earnest and faithful:

“One of them, motivated by the call in Matthew’s Gospel to be a peacemaker, chose to spend his time seeking to ‘make peace between people who were at odds.’ The second monk, motivated by Christ’s concern for the vulnerable, decided to ‘visit the sick.’ The third chose to ‘go away to be quiet in solitude.’

“The first monk did some good helping others to reconcile, but he grew sad over conflicts he could not solve. He felt ‘overcome with weariness.’ So he went to visit his friend who was tending the sick, only to discover that his friend, too, was ‘flailing in spirit.’

“The two men visited the third monk and told him about their exhaustion and sense of futility–what today we might call burnout.

“The third monk sat silently for a long while, then he poured water into a cup. ‘Look at the water,’ he said. The water was murky with silt. But after they sat together for a while, the water settled. ‘See now, how clear the water has become. So it is with anyone who lives in a crowd; because of the turbulence, he does not see his sins: but when he has been quiet, above all in solitude, then he recognizes his own faults.”

Loving, helping, and caring for others is part of why we are here. And if we are constantly focusing on others, we can lose ourselves, the things we need to work on, our own shortcomings, and also our own connection to and relationship with God.

Of course the monastic Desert Fathers and Mothers are going to drive home the need for solitude. And it is a teaching and message that resonates with my soul.

Warren brings the point home:

“This story implies that solitude and silence are our orienting goals, the re-humanizing rhythms that teach us that we are not, in fact, machines, but creatures–creatures with faults, limits, beauty, and worth, creatures made to dwell deeply with God.

“If we see solitude and stillness primarily as a means to more productivity, we will try to get by with just enough to keep us going and no more. But if these practices are essential to our very being, to our purpose and humanity, then we will orient our work and our days, our weeks and our years, around them.”

That’s what I was looking for in my Oxford walking, sitting, and reading. That’s what I look for in centering prayer, in mornings on the back porch–“to dwell deeply with God,” to rehumanize.

We have four-week small group studies of Warren’s book coming up in August at Christ Church Easton and I am looking forward to our discussions and how we might help ourselves reconnect and dwell deeply with God, especially during seasons where that can feel difficult.

Goals for any/every given day: ponder, cherish, lament, mind the wisdom of humility, dwell deeply with God.

To do these things, solitude, silence, and stillness are required.

Making Time

Yesterday I made time. I knew I needed to. Stress has been high, sleep has been hard to come by, mental, emotional, and physical clutter were building in my body.

I threw books, a notebook, and pens in a bag. Parked at the Oxford Conservation Park, hopped on a skateboard and cruised for a bit. I found some shoreline near my thinking/praying tree at the Oxford Cemetery. And I sat. And breathed. And prayed. And listened. And watched. And read.

Marcus Aurelius had this to say in his “Meditations”–

Everything is transitory–the knower and the known.

Constant awareness that everything is born from change. The knowledge that there is nothing nature loves more than to alter what exists and make new things like it. All that exists is the seed of what will emerge from it. You think the only seeds are the ones that make plants or children. Go deeper.

Even when we know that’s true, change can still be tough to take in. I’ve become a fan of Ryan Holiday and The Daily Stoic and his Painted Porch Bookshop near Austin, Texas. He motivated me to pull Marcus off my bookshelf. Holiday points out the tenet of stoicism that asserts that we can’t control much of what life throws at us, but we can control how we respond to it. That’s something to sit with.

This is what Luci Shaw says in her poem, “Few Words”–

To write with
restraint, with
few words,
is to give each
a great power
that stands
for itself on
the page–
this red bird,
that crescent moon.
Each sentinel
of meaning
pointing us
to what
it stands for.

I prefer to write and speak with few words. The right ones when I am lucky enough. To listen more than I talk. Creation, God, and other people have much more to offer than I do.

A friend sent me a copy of Allen Levi’s “Theo of Golden” in the mail, saying it seemed like it would resonate with me. When I started reading it, the story starts a short time before Easter. I am a sucker for books that correspond in time to where we are, so I jumped in. It’s too early to write about the book in itself, but I am drawn to three ideas on the blurb on the back of the book.

It says it is a novel about:

“the power of creative generosity”
“the importance of wonder to a purposeful life”
“the individual threads of kindness that bind us to one another”

The phrase “creative generosity” has been on my mind since reading it. We can be generous with money, generous with time, in ways that have become expected. But what does it mean to be creative with our generosity? To offer something unexpected? What does it feel like to receive creative generosity? Like someone sending you a book unexpectedly in the mail, thinking it may speak to you or wake up something in you?

Wonder is my jam. I’ve written “Wired for Wonder” as my mantra or a guiding principle. The idea of the “importance of wonder to a purposeful life” is intriguing. Bringing wonder and purpose together is both necessary, but often overlooked. I want to walk farther down this path.

We get that kindness is a good thing and that we should be kind to one another and to ourselves. Well, we might not all understand that, but we should. That kindness binds us to each other, I want to dwell and reflect more on that. We need to realize the connective threads of our humanity more these days than I can express.

Though I have started and am loving “Theo of Golden,” the gift of these phrases and thoughts before I even opened it, is its own creative generosity.

Yesterday I made time to sit and read outside when I almost didn’t. This morning I made time to write it down and share it with those who will take the time to read it. Today, I hope you make time to do what the Spirit calls you to do.

Being Salt and Light

Background: last weekend I preached at Christ Church Easton on our lectionary reading, Matthew 5:13-20, where Jesus tells those listening to his Sermon on the Mount that they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. This is the text of my sermon, bouncing off of Bishop Jake Owensby’s book “A Full-Hearted Life” and commentary from the SALT Project blog.

“Being Salt and Light”

This is our second week sorting through parts of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, as it’s come to be known in Matthew’s Gospel. The full sermon goes from chapter 5 through chapter 7.

Jesus sees crowds of people gathering and he goes up a mountain, sits down and teaches.

It begins with the Beatitudes: the “blessed are” statements, where those considered “blessed” are not people many would consider fortunate or lucky. Last Sunday on Zoom, Rev. Anne Wright walked us through the Beatitudes, pointing out that being blessed isn’t about having good things happen to us; part of the blessing is that when we go through difficult times, God is with us. We are blessed in being close to God and not being alone in our dark nights of the soul.

This week’s reading picks up right where last week left off. Continuing to teach, Jesus tells his disciples, his listeners, that they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Those things are great, but they come with a warning: if salt has lost its taste, you have to throw it out, and don’t hide your light, let it shine so that others can see.

What does it mean to be salt and light? Let’s take a look at a few things here.

First, Jesus isn’t asking his listeners to become something new; he doesn’t tell them to “become” salt and light. He says, you ARE these things already. In the book we’ve been reading in small groups, “A Full-Hearted Life” by Episcopal Bishop Jake Owensby, he reminds us that we are all God’s beloved. God made us with and out of love. We don’t have to do anything, we are loved.

We are salt and light. Jesus is telling his listeners, and us, to act like it; to be who we were created to be.

Another aspect to this, salt losing its flavor or light being covered up: our faith is not supposed to be a hollow faith. It’s not a matter of doing things because we are supposed to do them. Even things like going to church, helping the poor, praying—all things that are good for us to do, but not if we are going through the motions; doing them because we are told to do them.

Bishop Owensby in talking about the world and the church today says that we see a lot of “functional atheism.” He says:

“a longing for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses—a longing for a relationship with the risen Christ—no longer animates the lives of many people, even church-going, creed-professing people. Our life-shaping desire is no longer focused on the Transcendent God. Many lives—including the lives of self-identified Christians—are centered on things of this world.”

One of the things Owensby points out is that many lives are centered around work, instead of our relationship with Christ. He says “workism,” is “the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose.”

Workism is a spirituality that measures human value as a function of productivity and efficiency. Workism “distorts worship, prayer, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and all spiritual practices into transactions.”

If you are coming to church, or you consider yourself a Christian, just because you want to go to heaven, or so you will be well thought of in the community, those are transactions.

Owensby says that spiritual practices are supposed to be “responses to the infinite love that God has always already given us, not pleas to receive what we do not have.”

We are already God’s beloved. All of us. We are already salt and light.

Faith is not performative. It’s meant to be heart-centered. It’s meant to be a response to, and a part of, our relationship with God.

As Jesus continues teaching to the crowds, he says:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.”

Okay, Jesus, that’s a bit of a head-scratcher. What does it mean to “fulfill” the law? Here is what our friends over at the SALT Project website have to say:

“the underlying notion is that when something is “fulfilled,” it’s truly embodied, incarnated, filled out, brought to life. When we “fulfill a responsibility,” for example, we perform it — we give it form… To “fulfill the law,” then, is to embody its essential features, to “fill out” and exemplify its meaning, spirit, and substance.”

Jesus has come to embody, fill out, bring the law to life. If we want to see what it looks like to live out the law—look at Jesus. If we want to see what it looks like to be salt and light: look at Jesus.

As he continues his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is going to spell out in greater detail how we are to live, some of the things we are to do in fulfilling the law the way that he does.

The difference between “following the law” and “fulfilling the law” can be the difference between salt that’s lost its flavor and light that’s being hidden, and the salt and light we were created to be.

The laws say: don’t murder anyone, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, don’t covet, don’t worship false idols.

Are we being salt and light if all we are doing is following these laws, these “don’ts?”

What’s the difference between following and fulfilling these laws? Later on in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is pressed on which law or commandment is the greatest and he replies:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

It’s not a statement on our actions, it starts with our hearts. It isn’t just don’t do these things that are harmful; we are meant to love God and love each other.

If we love God, we won’t worship work and put works as idols where we are meant to put God. If we love each other, we are not going to murder, steal, or covet.

Being salt and light happens when we soften our hearts in love and turn away from making the things that the world seems to hold dear—money, power, status—the center of our lives.

This is counter-cultural today and it was counter-cultural in Jesus’s time. It’s not a message we hear from CEOs to stockholders, but it’s the message Jesus tries to get through to his followers in order to change the world; to bring about the kingdom of heaven. We are made by God to love and be loved.

If from our hearts we love God with everything we have and we love our neighbors, we don’t argue with each other whether it’s okay to kill someone, or not pay them a living wage, or to treat them as less than human. If we act with and from love, we know what to do. We know how to be salt and light.

The order of the Sermon on the Mount matters here. Jesus starts with talking about blessings and then says you are salt and light.

He doesn’t say: go be salt and light and then you will be blessed. He says even when you don’t think you are blessed, you are. You are salt and light. Being so, go do what salt and light do.

It’s not a matter of performing our duties. It’s a matter of sharing the love we receive from God to be a blessing to others.

We aren’t required to do this; we get to do this.

We are loved and made to love others. We are blessed and made to bless others.

This is not something we can force or yell at or argue into someone. These are inherent gifts, given to us, that we get to share in gratitude with joy and love.

And if that feels like pressure, to be salt and light in a world that desperately needs both, what do we know about salt:

It takes just a little salt to add flavor to whatever you are making. You are enough.

What do we know about light? If you are in a dark room, a match, a candle, a flashlight, or even the light from your phone, all of a sudden illuminates the whole room.

You are enough to make a difference. It’s who you were created to be.

We have Jesus as our model. We have the Holy Spirit as our guide and helper. And we have each other to both encourage and be encouraged by.

We can start by sharing God’s love with those around us. We can do our small part. And be a part of where things go from there.

We can do this, following Jesus, with God’s help.

Showing Up

This slow morning time, unrushed with coffee and reading and writing and prayer and wonder and gratitude, is important enough for me to get up before everyone else; to find and carve out a spot in the still dark; to turn on a light like a starting gun—sitting down to begin, but not a race, permission, time, a gift.

Sometimes it is something I see: hummingbirds and Cardinals, butterflies, cats jumping fences or lounging on the porch, the dog curled on the tile floor.

Sometimes it is something I hear: I have learned the Indigo Bunting’s song, the snorting of deer on their path beyond the fence, the fish pond’s filter, peepers or bullfrogs, cicadas in the trees.

Sometimes it is something I read: a poem, Scripture, commentary, a story, an essay, a question.

Sometimes it’s writing: spinning a thought into a sentence, finding new words for something I have felt my whole life or just felt for the first time, lending voice to compassion or wonder, the beginning of a sermon, an epiphany small or large.

Sometimes it comes in prayer: a word, a question, a connection, a feeling, a name, a calling, a passion, tears, laughter, a smile.

What I know: I only get these gifts if I show up.

Kindness, blessing, and the eyes of Jesus

From Ash Wednesday to Easter. A journey, a transformation, and one of the most intentional and richest parts of our liturgical calendar.

Our Lenten e-mail prompt and discussion of John O’Donohue’s book, “To Bless the Space Between Us,” was rich, meaningful, and eye-opening. It was a continuing and deepening conversation with 20 people which included the Eastern Shore, Vermont, and even photos and stories sent from Finland.

One of the purposes of the book for O’Donohue was/is to get us thinking about “blessing” differently, and that blessings can take many forms, not always something that we would wish, ask for, or even want. Sometimes blessings can be the sun and sometimes the silver lining.

The last section of the book is “To Retrieve the Lost Art of Blessing.” It is an intentional walk through a way of seeing. Here are a few early quotes:

“Something deep in the human soul seems to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it, we are able to trust and open ourselves.”

“Kindness has gracious eyes; it is not small-minded or competitive; it wants nothing back for itself. Kindness strikes a resonance with the depths of your own heart; it also suggests that your vulnerability, though somehow exposed, is not taken advantage of; rather it has become an occasion for dignity and empathy.

“Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness holds sway. This is the heart of blessing. To believe in blessing is to believe that our being here, our very presence in the world, is itself the first gift, the primal blessing.”

That last paragraph especially: to see life itself as the first gift, the most basic blessing. Despite all the darkness.

We’ve just gone through an entire liturgical season that sees light overcome what seemed like the ultimate darkness. When faced with what seemed like the end, death, God shows us more, that new life overcomes death. That hope is not in vain, but intrinsic and ever-present, if we will see it.

Over the course of our group discussion, participants responded with pictures of the Northern Lights in Finland and an Assateague camping sunrise.

The Resurrection is nuanced and layered in its meanings. One of the things it did was give credibility to Jesus being who he said he was. And it made the disciples for the next few generations, reflect back on what Jesus said and did, to the point of writing it down so that it could be passed down.

Many writers and theologians point out that Jesus’s words to his disciples were “follow me,” not “worship me.” It’s really a both-and situation, we can do both; and worship is a perfect response to God. But a problem over the years has been and continues to be that many Christians are content with worshipping ( and “believing” without living or living into any of that belief) and have dropped the following aspect of our faith.

Following Jesus means living like he did, loving like he did, doing our best to emulate his example. In John’s Gospel, Jesus gives the disciples (and us) the new commandment of “loving each other as I have loved you.” which he says knowing he is about to be arrested and put to death. That’s what his love looks like–sacrificing himself for the love of his friends and for humanity.

When we look at kindness through the example and eyes of Jesus, we have a sense of what we are called to do and who we are called to be.

O’Donohue closes his book with the poem, “The Eyes of Jesus”–

I imagine the eyes of Jesus
Were harvest brown,
The light of their gazing
Suffused with the seasons:

The shadow of winter.
The mind of spring,
The bues of summer,
And amber of harvest.

A gaze that is perfect sister
to the kindness that dwells
In his beautiful hands.

The eyes of Jesus gaze on us,
Stirring in the heart’s clay
The confidence of seasons
That never lose their way to harvest.

This gaze knows the signature
Of our heartbeat, the first glimmer
From the dawn that dreamed our minds,

The crevices where thoughts grow
Long before the longing in the bone
Sends them toward the mind’s eye,

The artistry of the emptiness
That knows to slow the hunger
Of outside things until they weave
Into the twilight side of the heart.

A gaze full of all that is still future
Looking out for us to glimpse
The jeweled light in winter stone,

Quickening the eyes that look at us
To see through to where words
Are blind to say what we would love,

Forever falling softly on our faces,
His first gaze plies the soul with light,
Laying down a luminous layer

Beneath our brief and brittle days
Until the appointed dawn comes
Assured and harvest deft

To unravel the last black knot
And we are back home in the house
That we have never left.

The eyes of Jesus are a way of seeing and a way of being, in terms of how we see and treat each other. O’Donohue talks about the way Jesus sees us, his gaze, and describes it in a way that should make us feel like we are loved before we do or say anything. Our souls are loved, as well as our bodies and minds. Do we allow ourselves to feel seen and loved that way?

Following Jesus means to try to look at ourselves, each other, and Creation with these eyes and this love.

Why do we take a journey through Lent? Why do we try to take in, reflect on, pray on, the Passion/suffering of Jesus over Holy Week? Why do we celebrate Jesus’s Resurrection?

I hope that at least part of the reason is to allow ourselves to be transformed, to become more Christ-like, to live and love like Jesus, which is to experience the kingdom of God and to do our part to help bring that kingdom, that love, to others, and play whatever role we can in bringing the kingdom here.

May we feel the eyes of Jesus gazing on us.
May we be the eyes of Jesus gazing on others.

May we know the love of Jesus, who became one of us, showed us how to live and how to love, gave his life for us, and then showed us that his love, God’s love, is greater than death, overcomes death and brings us to eternal life.

May we be the love of Jesus for everyone we encounter. And echoing Fr. Gregory Boyle, everyone: no exceptions.

States of Heart: Equilibrium

“The heart is where the beauty of the human spirit comes alive… To be able to feel is a great gift. When you feel for someone, you become united with that person in an intimate way; your concern and compassion come alive, drawing some of the other person’s world and spirit into yours. Feeling is the secret bridge that penetrates solitude and isolation… All feeling is born in the heart. This makes the human heart the true jewel of the world.”
–John O’Donohue, “To Bless the Space Between Us”

It all comes back to the heart. This week in our ongoing Lenten discussion of John O’Donohue’s book, “To Bless the Space Between Us,” we’ve reached the “States of the Heart” section. How we find our heart is how we find the world.

O’Donohue continues the thoughts from above with:

“The state of one’s heart inevitably shapes one’s life; it is ultimately the place where everything is decided.

– A courageous heart will go forth and engage with life despite confusion and fear.
– A fearful heart will be hesitant and will tend to hold back.
– A heavy heart will make for a gloomy, unlived life.
– A compassionate heart need never carry the burden of judgment.
– A forgiving heart knows the art of liberation.
– A loving heart awakens the spirit of possibility and engagement with others.

Let’s shoot for courageous, compassionate, forgiving, and loving. States of heart are something we can feel, learn, cultivate, practice.

The blessing/poem of O’Donohue’s we focused on today was “For Equilibrium.” I struggle with balance. It feels like I have 50 things going on and then I collapse for a spell, catch my breath, gather up what’s around me, and then pick up speed again. It’s something I am working on. So moments like sitting in the Oxford Park at sunset on Monday to feel the breeze on my face; or walking uptown to grab lunch and stretching my legs on the walk back; or finding a few minutes to skateboard, sit on the shore and listen to birds–those moments are big and balance out some of the busier times.

After late evenings leading class and our Wednesday evening Lenten service, equilibrium this morning was parking at the Oxford Conservation Park and skateboarding over to the cemetery to sit under my thinking/praying tree. I started reading Maggie Smith’s “Dear Writer,” jotted down a few thoughts, then sat quietly and turned on the Merlin Bird App’s Sound ID.

There were some of the standards: Red-Winged Blackbird, Northern Cardinal, House Finch, Carolina Wren. There was the familiar Osprey cry that has just come home. And then there was the gift: Pine Warbler.

I have mentioned before that I am Warbler-obsessed. I dig any Warbler encounter and they generally tend to be spring or fall around here.

I can’t recall if I have come across a Pine Warbler. Either way, I love their presence; it sang/called multiple times so that I got to know and recognize it when I heard it. The Pine Warbler made a cool and special moment above and beyond the other times I have come to sit by the water and find my balance.

Here is O’Donohue’s “For Equilibrium”–

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.

As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity be lightened by grace.

Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.

As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.

As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.

As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough
To hear in the depths the laughter of God.

I love that it is laughter and grace and reverence and freedom that he uses to give us back our sense of equilibrium. And to pull these things to our attention O’Donohue uses the joy of the sea, the wind, moonlight, silence, time, and listening. Things that we can encounter frequently, if not every day.

Equilibrium and balance can also be about perspective. Part of what can call us back into equilibrium when life feels out of balance is remembering the big stuff, what is important, zooming out to a more cosmic or Creation-based perspective. Listen to The Avett Brothers “No Hard Feelings” and see if your sense of balance isn’t shifted to a more thoughtful, introspective place in terms of where we want to put our time and energy.

Since I was a teenager, I have felt that when I am surfing back and forth on a skateboard, life’s worries drop off behind me, just for a minute.

Today, may you hold in your heart the people, places, memories, and dreams you hold dear and let them balance you.

Homecomings

“A home is a subtle, implicit laboratory of spirit. It is here that human beings are made; here that their minds open to discover others and come to know who they might be themselves.” – John O’Donohue, “To Bless The Space Between Us”

That is a way of looking at “home” that I hadn’t thought to articulate. Home is a laboratory of spirit, in that it gives us the comfort and the foundation to experiment, grow, change, find ourselves.

In our morning e-mail discussion of John O’Donohue’s book, “To Bless the Space Between Us,” this week’s theme is homecomings. One of the points he makes is that “home” should be a place that prepares us to go out and create a new home and ultimately that we also “develop the capacity to be at home in themselves.” He goes on to say:

“When one is at home in oneself, one is integrated and enjoys a sense of balance and poise. In a sense that is exactly what spirituality is: the art of homecoming.”

Spirituality as homecoming. As a coming back to something that we knew, or know, or that at least feels familiar. We recognize it. And it is something we recognize inside of us. If God is home, the Holy Spirit is the home within us. Mystical, or direct experience of something like that can help us feel at home in the universe and in ourselves.

But what if you’ve never known the safety of home, been able to open your mind, explore?

This past week, we had a Zoom conversation with Fr. Gregory Boyle. At Christ Church Easton, we’ve done studies of three different books that Fr. Greg has written–“Tattoos on the Heart,” “Barking to the Choir,” and “Cherished Belonging.” I’ve quoted and written about him frequently and I think that organization that Fr. Greg has founded, run, and been a spokesman for, Homeboy Industries, is the best example I can point to of what a community built around Christ-like love looks like today. Their community shows people in the toughest Los Angeles gangs what being loved and cherished can do, and it has changed the city and the world.

Fr. Greg mentioned that he sees tons of kids who have become adults and who have never been soothed at home, or anywhere. Between parents who themselves have never been soothed, or who weren’t there–were in prison or just left–or who were the opposite of soothing, imagine a childhood with no reassurance, no soothing. It immediately casts out any hope of HOME or this sense of home that O’Donohue is communicating. Homeboy Industries is the first sense of home they may know, and then once someone has experienced it, they can help offer a sense of homecoming to others.

Fr. Greg talks about a guy named Sergio, who Boyle calls his spiritual director. They write/text back and forth every morning reflecting on Scripture. The other day, Sergio ended his reflection saying, “Today, I will surrender into the arms of God, then choose to be those arms.” Boyle later made a similar point, that when we receive the tender glance, either from God, or from someone we encounter, we can then become that tender glance for someone else. Knowing that we are loved and cherished, then loving others from that knowledge, that belonging.

Let’s circle back to homecomings: if we have a sense of home, a sense of being loved, a sense of safety, we can be or offer that to someone who hasn’t had that experience of home before.

We develop or nurture our own sense of home, within us. And then we reach out to someone who could benefit from that feeling. Maybe that seems like a good idea, something you’d be game to try. You go through your day, you get to the evening, or maybe a quiet time before you go to bed.

John O’Donohue suggests, in his blessing, “At the End of the Day: A Mirror of Questions,” that we ask ourselves:

What dreams did I create last night?
Where did my eyes linger today?
Where was I blind?
Where was I hurt without anyone noticing?
What did I learn today?
What did I read?
What new thoughts visited me?
What differences did I notice in those closest to me?
Whom did I neglect?
Where did I neglect myself?
What did I begin today that might endure?
How were my conversations?
What did I do today for the poor and the excluded?
Did I remember the dead today?
Where could I have exposed myself to the risk of something different?
Where did I allow myself to receive love?
With whom today did I feel most myself?
What reached me today? How deep did it imprint?
Who saw me today?
What visitations had I from the past and from the future?
What did I avoid today?
From the evidence–why was I given this day?

That’s a lot of questions–almost like a spiritually inquisitive kid who has been slamming Pixie Stix and then gives us an existential 20 Questions. Maybe focus on a few each evening–the ones that resonate or open something up. Watch what happens when you start asking yourself questions like this at the end of the day.

It’s akin to the Jesuit concept of the “Daily Examen,” where at the end of the day, you look back at the day you’ve just had and look where you saw, felt, heard, or experienced God’s presence or touch. And by doing that, you are also preparing yourself to look for it the next day.

O’Donohue’s questions are like that. If you get to the end of your day and reflect back with questions like this, you can be more mindful of looking for these things–keeping our eyes, minds, and hearts open to them–as they happen.

So what happens when looking back on our day with questions informs our coming days, that become our present days? Maybe we see, or hear, something we wouldn’t have.

It is so easy to stumble through our days without seeing, hearing, feeling. When we do that, there are so many things we miss out on. Let O’Donohue’s questions be a mirror. Let us be open to things that might be going on all around us, that we haven’t noticed before.

When we experience something new and profound, we can take it with us, and share it with others.

Conversion of St. Paul: Embracing Change

January 25 is the day the lectionary celebrates the Conversion of St. Paul. For our Wednesday Healing Services at Christ Church Easton, I have been using feast days that occur during a given week as a chance to do something along the lines of a homily to recognize them. This is what I put together for this week.

“The Conversion of St. Paul: Embracing Change”

Saul was not an atheist. He wasn’t a morally questionable person. He was a faithful and devoted Jew, who thought he was doing God’s work. And he was a persecutor of Christians. He approved the stoning of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr in the Book of Acts.

There is no way in the world he was going to be even supportive of this movement, these followers of Jesus.

Until he was. This was not a change-by-degrees situation; this was being struck blind on the road to Damascus and having to come face-to-face with not just the risen Christ, but with the idea that the things you were devoted to, committed to, SURE OF, turned out to be wrong.

This was not an unlikely conversion. It was an impossible conversion. It made no sense. Saul had to come into it and not only that, if you were one of the early followers of Jesus, you knew who Saul was and there was no way you were going to trust him.

From the account in Acts, Saul was blind for three days and didn’t eat or drink for that time.

The Lord called out to a disciple in Damascus named Ananias, and told him where to go to find Saul and lay hands on him so that Saul could regain his sight.

And Ananias said:

“Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem, and here he has authority to bind all who invoke your name.”

In other words, “Lord, I don’t think this is such a good idea.”

The Lord said to him, “Go for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel. I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

Even after his conversion, regaining his sight and becoming an incredibly powerful and persuasive preacher—so much so that now the Jews wanted to kill him; when Saul came to Jerusalem to join the disciples, they were all afraid of him and didn’t believe he had really changed.

Paul’s life got significantly more difficult after his conversion. Many of his letters were written from prison, which he found himself in and out of.

Now in terms of hand-picking apostles, Jesus hit the jackpot with Paul. Paul was Jewish, a pharisee. He was a Roman citizen, he spoke multiple languages, he was literate and educated, and passionate—he was actually the perfect combination of skills, upbringing, and knowledge to take this movement to the next level.

Let’s talk about change. Paul had to completely change his life, to repent, to turn around and go a different direction. And he is well documented in his own words for doing so.

Has your own path of following Jesus asked you to change or make changes in your life? What kind?

Our changes aren’t going to be a severe as Paul’s—I don’t think any of us were persecuting or killing Christians. Changes in our lives might look very different.

I’ll show you what I mean. I make this point a fair amount: over the past eight years, I have cried more than any other period of my life. Following Jesus has opened my heart and caused me to care about more people and more things, to take them into my heart—it’s a much more difficult way to walk through life. But it’s also richer and more rewarding.

Following Jesus with our whole hearts should make us care more about the world and be heartbroken by things we might have ignored before.

Following Jesus asked me to give up a temper that I had been developing over the years.

Following Jesus asked me to let go of judging people and situations. On the Meyers Briggs personality test that people take, I used to test as INFJ—introverted, intuitive, feeling, judging—over the past five years, anytime I have taken the test and been totally honest, I am INFP—judging changed to perceiving.

Change was necessary for Paul and it’s necessary for us. Transformation is a word that is not to be taken lightly.

Another thing we might learn from Paul is the difference between righteousness and self-righteousness. Saul, the pharisee who persecuted Christians was sure he was right. Jesus had a different opinion.

It makes me think of a more modern-day hero of mine. Verna Dozier was an African-American woman who was an English teacher at Dunbar High School. When she retired, became one of the lay (non-ordained) leaders of the Episcopal Church. I keep a copy of her book “The Dream of God” on a shelf near my desk. We did a small group study of that book, and I loved everything about this quote:

“We always see through a glass darkly, and that is what faith is about. I will live by the best I can discern today. Tomorrow I may find out I was wrong. Since I do not live by being right, I am not destroyed by being wrong.”

It is a powerful and humbling thing to live knowing I (or we) don’t and can’t know everything. I do my best to figure things out and have the courage and grace to keep learning and I realize that because something seemed right yesterday, it doesn’t mean it can’t be proved wrong today or tomorrow. If that happens, then I need to be willing to change. Just like Paul did.

So maybe humility becomes important, to realize I am not always right, no matter how passionate I might feel about something. I could have a realization—an epiphany—that I was wrong. Then I need the courage to admit it and think and live differently.

What else can we learn from Paul’s conversion? How about don’t write off your enemies. Saul wasn’t just disliked by the early Christians—he was public enemy number one. They were scared and skeptical of bringing him into the fold.

I apologize for bringing sports analogies into a discussion of such important things, but it’s still football season and we can make a couple points here.

There was a defensive back who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers named Rod Woodson, who is a Hall of Fame player, one of the best to play football at his position. The Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens are big rivals, they don’t like each other on the field very much. Rod Woodson ended up becoming a Raven, helped them win a Super Bowl, and now he is one of their radio broadcast announcers. Loved in both cities, he has dual citizenship.

If you follow the Philadelphia Eagles, running back Saquon Barkley was the franchise player of their division rival New York Giants. Philly fans booed him when the Giants came to town. This year he was traded to the Eagles, has been their best player, the most loved of the Eagles this year and one of the main reasons they are playing this coming weekend for a chance to go to the Super Bowl.

Sports are not life, but the point is, people who were once hated by entire cities and fanbases, become beloved and embraced.

Because someone was your enemy one day, or for a time, doesn’t mean they can’t become an ally, a friend, even beloved. Jesus wasn’t kidding when he said “love your enemies.” He showed the world with Paul, that your enemy is your brother or sister, and we and they are capable of change.

I have been reading Gregory Boyle’s book “Cherished Belonging” to get ready for our small groups that start next week. Boyle points out that on the day when Jesus entered Jerusalem on his way to be arrested and crucified, there were two parades that day.

On the one side, coming from the west on the main road, was Pilate and his show of military power and force. It was a display of power. Don’t mess with Pilate or you see what you’ll get. Boyle writes:

“Then there’s Jesus, on a small donkey, humbling entering the city from the east. Jesus’s trek and mission displays a way of life whose hallmarks are inclusion, nonviolence, unconditional loving kindness, and compassionate acceptance. The parade of warhorses announces the threat of violence, force, coercion, and the oppression of the poor. The “triumphant” entrance of Jesus is not an indictment but an invitation. Village transcending tribe. Jesus doesn’t draw lines (of division). He erases them.

Paul’s encounter with Jesus caused him to change his life completely. To become the thing that he despised. To embrace the other side.

Jesus invites us to do the same. To change. To be humble. To let go of our self-righteousness. To embrace his way of inclusion, even of our enemies, nonviolence, unconditional loving kindness, and compassionate acceptance.

Paul’s conversion changed everything. So can ours. So can anyone else’s.

Top image: “The Conversion of St. Paul” by Caravaggio, oil on cypress wood, 1600/1601.

Helped Are the Lonely

Background: This month at Christ Church Easton, we are offering Blue December services on Wednesday evenings leading up to Christmas. These services recognize that people have a difficult time leading up to Christmas for any number of reasons–loneliness, grief, depression, anxiety, or just feeling out of step and out of place in a commercially-consumed culture. These services include lighting of candles, prayers, quiet music and singing, Scripture readings and reflections, some silence, Communion with previously sanctified elements (often called a Deacon’s Mass), and they are for are for anyone going through something this time of year who might want to come together for a quiet worship service in the evening in the middle of the week, and have some fellowship and discussion after. Our hope is that people will feel God’s presence and love and experience the company, care, and fellowship of other people.

The Gospel reading for the service on December 4 was Matthew 5:1-12, often called the Beatitudes from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.

“Helped Are the Lonely”

The cards are stacked against us if we are going through a hard time in December. It’s getting colder, it’s basically dark after lunch, Christmas movies and music are streaming 24-7, and we feel like we are supposed to act like we are happy, even when we are the farthest thing from it.

States of being that include loneliness, grief, depression, and anxiety are all connected, we can move back and forth between them. And I say states of being because these aren’t things we can just change our mind about and decide, “I am not going to be lonely or sad,” “I am not going to grieve anymore,” or “I am tired of being depressed.”

But we can reach out. We can show up. We can give ourselves permission, allow ourselves to be low or hurting, or questioning. It may be counter to what we see when we look around this time of year, but it’s honest. Let’s start where we actually are.

How’s it going? Fine. How are you doing? Good. Granted, when someone asks us that when we run into them at the grocery store, that may not be the time and place to bare our souls. But we need to have some place we can do that.

Different people have different ways of coping with life. I don’t know where I would be without distance running and reading, two things that have helped me keep going through some of my darkest times. Reading, in part, because I find people who are describing the same thing I am feeling—someone who helps me give words to something I feel but can’t describe.

There is a poet named David Whyte. In his book “Consolations,” he talks about loneliness.

“Loneliness can be a prison, a place from which we look out at a world we cannot inhabit; loneliness can be a bodily ache and a penance, but loneliness fully inhabited also becomes a voice that asks and calls for that great unknown someone or something we want to call our own.”

One of the questions that led me to searching and to the journey I am on now was wondering in my bones and in my soul, “am I really and ultimately alone—are we only ever truly alone in the Universe?” It’s a question I came back to often enough, and one of the times that it had legs and kicked me in the gut was when my marriage was ending. I knew that even together, I felt alone, I knew that even among friends, I felt alone, like no one was out there, or really understood who I was.

But I wanted there to be. The fact that I didn’t want to be and feel alone, sent me both inside myself and out into the world.

This is David Whyte again:

“Loneliness is the very state that births the courage to continue calling, and when fully lived can undergo its own beautiful reversal.

“Loneliness is the place from which we pay real attention to voices other than our own; being alone allows us to find the healing power.”

Lonely human beings are lonely because we are made to belong. Feeling alone is hard because we aren’t made to be alone. As many times as I feel like living as a hermit would be a lifestyle-change I would embrace—even for an introvert, there are times I need connection.

In one of the most counter-intuitive sermons in the Bible, Jesus says that these low times we experience have a purpose. We call this section of Matthew’s Gospel, the Beatitudes, for its use of the word “blessed.” This is one of the key parts of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. He tells us:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
“Blessed are those who mourn,
“Blessed are the meek,
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…”

Ummm… Jesus, what are you talking about? I’ve felt those things, and no offense, but I’d like to be done with all that.

In her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories,” Debie Thomas writes:

“What Jesus bears witness to in the Beatitudes is God’s unwavering proximity to pain, suffering, sorrow, and loss. God is nearest to those who are lowly, oppressed, unwanted, and broken. God isn’t obsessed with the shiny and the impressive. God is too busy sticking close to what’s messy, chaotic, and unruly.”

What our faith tells us, what Jesus showed again and again with his teaching, his healing, his life, is that it was the outcast, the low, the hurting, the people no one wanted to think about or deal with, who were his people.

Self-reliance and independence are very American values. I can take care of myself, I got this, I don’t need anyone’s help. Those ideas are NOT Christian values. They are not love-centered values.

One of the biggest Christian values we hold is surrendering. Realizing that we don’t control the Universe; that there are so many things in our own lives that we don’t have control of and that we are helped when we surrender our need to be in control to a higher power, to God.

It often happens that we don’t experience a need for God, a need to accept that we aren’t always in control, until things start to fall apart.

And it’s those times that God is closest to us. It’s those times when what we’ve been fed by society—that if we have the right house, the right family, the right job, the right car—then we ‘ll be happy. When that turns out not to give us what we are looking for, or pursuing those things stops making sense, and we are looking for something more substantial, then we are open to another way of thinking about life.

One of the most useful things I’ve run into in thinking about the Beatitudes is the novelist Alice Walker, who wrote “The Color Purple,” in coming up with a similar list for a character of hers, changed the word “blessed” to “helped.” Listen to Jesus’s teaching like this:

“Helped are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Helped are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Helped are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Helped are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
“Helped are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
“Helped are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Helped are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

The world wants us to be hard, tough, to put our heads down and be productive. To be good, to be fine, to be surface level.

Jesus wants us to have soft hearts. To go deep. To care for one another, to help one another, to love one another. Our ability to do these things is part of what constitutes the Kingdom of Heaven.

We are not meant to go through life alone. We need each other. We need to be there for each other.

To have soft hearts, to be able to be there for someone, we are helped by knowing what they are going through.

Brene Brown describes herself as a storyteller and social worker. This is how she talks about empathy:

“Empathy is feeling WITH people. I always think of empathy as this kind of sacred space. When someone’s in a deep hole and they shout from the bottom and they say “I’m stuck. It’s dark. I’m overwhelmed.” and we look and we say “Hey” and climb down and say “I know what it’s like down here, and you’re not alone… Empathy is a choice and it’s a vulnerable choice. In order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling.”

Helped are the lonely.

Helped are those who struggle.

Helped are those who feel lost.

Because they are closer to God. And God can help.

And we can help each other.

Thank you

Thank you.

Thank you for breakfast with Anna this morning at Rise Up.

Thank you for laughter and conversation taking Ava to work.

Thank you for the slow driver on Oxford Road who reminded me to slow down.

Thank you for the Oxford Conservation Park.

Thank you for the body and energy to skateboard and for the joy I get from it.

Thank you for the Eastern Bluebirds who cut across my path.

Thank you for the tree I sit under to think and pray and listen.

Thank you for the Great Blue Heron who squawked and landed on the dock across the cove.

Thank you for the hammock on the point across the way, which has been there for years and always reminds me to rest.

Thank you for the Bishop’s words on Wednesday that “Every day is a conversion experience.”

Thank you for giving me new eyes to see familiar places afresh.

Thank you for giving me words when I frequently don’t know where they come from.

Thank you for making my path clearer and clearer for me each day, even though I don’t fully know where it leads.

Thank you for companions on the way.

Thank you for the everyone I have crossed paths with, people walking their own paths, walking together for a time; thank you for those who have encouraged me and for those who I have struggled with.

Thank you for forgiveness for the countless times I have screwed up and the countless times I will screw up in the future.

Thank you for your Creation and for making me feel at home and at peace in it.

Thank you for the wisdom and inspiration that comes from your Word and from the words you’ve given to poets, mystics, artists, musicians, and prophets, known and unknown.

Thank you for the conversation this morning, under the tree, through Mary Oliver:

(Note: I was compelled to pick up Mary Oliver’s book “Devotions” when I left home this morning. I always start reading at the bookmark, where I stopped reading last time. I opened to “When I Am Among the Trees” and it picked up steam from there.)

“Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with
the fragrance of the fields and the
freshness of the oceans which you have
made, and help me to hear and to hold
in all dearness those exacting and wonderful
words of our Lord Jesus Christ saying:
Follow me.”

Thank you for your Son and for his invitation to “Follow me.”

Thank you for your love, which always comes from you, and your love that comes through others.

Lord, help me use my life and myself to serve you, to glorify you, to be your love and to shine your light in the world.

Here I am, Lord.

Thank you.