faith | Michael Valliant

Getting Connected: The Feast of St. Francis

St. Francis was not in the movie “Stripes.” He’s not that (“my friends call me psycho”/lighten up) Francis. I think the first time I connected Francis of Assisi to words was the prayer that is attributed to him:

“Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, union;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.”

And I thought, I want what that guy has. I want to get to that place. It is not an easy road. And then I realized that St. Francis is the guy who is always pictured with animals, connected to nature, known as a hippy in some circles, patron saint of the environment. So more good stuff.

And as I’ve come to find writers and thinkers who resonate, open doors, help me name things, or get out of my own way, one of those folks is Richard Rohr, who is a Franciscan friar/monk.

Today (Oct. 4) is the “Feast of St. Francis,” which has given me a bunch to think on. Rohr’s book “Eager to Love,” outlines “the alternative way of Francis of Assisi.” In his preface, Rohr says:

“We are each loved by God in a particular and incomparable way, as in the case of a bride and bridegroom.” Francis and Clare knew that the love God has for each soul is unique and made to order… Divine intimacy is always and precisely particular and made to order–and thus ‘intimate.'”

If you dig into his life and teachings, Francis (1182-1286) is a fascinating friar. Son of a wealthy merchant who lived it up, was captured, got sick, had dreams and visions and transformed his life. He lived a life most of us couldn’t handle or live up to. He embraced and marveled in all of God’s creation. Again from Rohr:

“In Franciscan mysticism, there is no distinction between sacred and profane. All of the world is sacred… you can pray always and everything that happens is potentially sacred if you allow it to be. Our job as humans is to make admiration of others and adoration of God fully conscious and deliberate.”

All the world is sacred, pray always, everything that happens to you is a chance to find meaning and grace. Francis is often depicted in nature, praying with and spending time with animals. I think artist Sue Betanzos, who creates whimsical paintings of St. Francis, and whose painting is the featured image at the top of this post (used with the artist’s permission), gets his connection to nature.

On this Feast of St. Francis, I want to make it a point to study him more, his life, writing, and teachings. One of the things he seems to get is the idea that we are all connected to everything–God, each other, nature/creation, it’s all rolled into one. As Rohr puts it:

“The great irony of faith is that authentic God experience does indeed make you know that you are quite special, favorite, and chosen–but you realize others are too! That is the giveaway that your experience is authentic, although it may take a while to get there. You are indeed hurting–and others are too. Your only greatness is that you share the common greatness of the whole communion of saints. Your membership in the communion of sinners is a burden you can now carry patiently because others are also carrying it with you. You are finally inside what Thomas Merton calls ‘the general dance.’ You no longer need to be personally correct as much as you need to be connected.”

We don’t need to be correct, we need to be connected. And what St. Francis got, what Rohr gets, what Christ was making known to us, among so many other things, is that we are all connected, to God, each other, the Universe/Creation. Now we just need to start acting like it, both for the joy, the wonder, and the stewardship that is entrusted to us.

St. Francis connects all the dots in his “Canticle of Brother Sun,” quoted in part below the stained glass:

Praised be you, my Lord, with all your creatures,
especially by Brother Sun,
who is the day through whom you give us light.
He is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
of You Most High, he bears the likeness.

Praised be You, My Lord through Sister Moon and the stars,
In the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all weather’s moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,
So useful, humble, precious and pure.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister,
Mother Earth
who sustains and governs us,
producing varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.

And you may ask yourself…how did I get here?

We all reach a point in our lives when we look around and wonder how we got here. Maybe not all of us, but I definitely do. A friend recently described present life as feeling like, “I accidentally got dropped into this weird world.”

David Byrne gets it.

And you may find yourself
living in a shotgun shack.
And you may find yourself
In another part of the world.
And you may find yourself
behind the wheel of a large automobile.
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house,
with a beautiful wife.
And you may ask yourself, well
how did I get here?

Sometimes I get the sense that part of that not knowing where we are is because we’ve forgotten we’re on a journey. We live life like it’s the same, day in and day out, then we look around not knowing where we stopped paying attention.

We were recently talking about faith–what is faith? How can you have faith? And when we talk about it in that way, when we frame the questions like that, what people often mean is faith as belief: how do I believe in something? Faith is much bigger than belief, in the same way a mountain is much bigger than simply dirt and rock and a journey is more than crossing the street.

There’s plenty I don’t agree with theologian Marcus Borg about. But there is also a lot about what he has to say that excites me and gives me hope for what faith is and where it can lead. Borg, in a posthumously released book, “Days of Awe and Wonder,” asks what would happen if we look beyond our notion of faith as believing, and try to see Christian life as a journey:

“To be on a journey is to be in movement… A journey is a process that involves our feet as well as our minds and our heads. A journey involves following a path or a way. To be on a journey is not to be wandering aimlessly, though there are many times when it feels like that; people have gone on this journey before us, and there is a trail, a path, a way that we are called to. The journey image suggests that the Christian life is more like following a path than believing with our minds.”

If we allow that our life is a journey, it makes sense that the view is going to change along the way. And maybe if we walked looking through that lens, we’d key into when changes are taking place.

Borg digs back and looks at ancient meanings of the word faith as used in Scripture. He unpacks three: 1) Faith as trust (the opposite of which is anxiety), 2) Faith as fidelity (to our relationship with God), and 3) “Faith as a way of seeing the whole, the whole of that which we live and move and have our being.”

And he points out the different ways we can see the whole, the universe, in which we live and move and have our being: we can see it as hostile towards us, indifferent towards us, or we can “see the whole as gracious, nourishing, and supportive of life, to see it as that which has brought us into existence and continues to nourish us.” Let’s lean into the last option, gracious, nourishing, supportive.

And here’s a part I fully dig:

“Faith is thus about setting out on a journey in a posture of trust, seeking to be faithful to the relationship we are called into. We are invited to make that journey, that journey of faith, in which we learn to trust our relationship to God, learn to be faithful to that relationship, and learn to see it in a new way. We will be led in that journey into an ever more wondrous and compassionate understanding of our lives with God.”

If we look beyond faith as being as simple as belief, and we see it as trusting God, setting out on a journey to learn how to be in relationship with Him and with each other, and building that relationship over a continuing journey into more wonder, more compassion, more understanding; that’s a journey, an adventure I want to wake up to, dig into, and live into every day.

Everyday People, Everyday Grace

give me
the daily
struggle,
because these things are my song,
and so we will go together
shoulder to shoulder
– Pablo Neruda, “Invisible Man”

Neruda saw the universe in an artichoke, birds, tomatoes, socks, seaweed, and stamps. And in the people he encountered everyday: a bricklayer, a woman gardening, or a couple on the street.

My first double-take at Neruda was in the late 1990s, out of college, trying to figure out what should occupy my thoughts, where life was going to go, how to put things together. Funny, I’m still wondering those same things. A friend brought “Elemental Odes” around and Neruda takes the time to look at the everyday world around us, to really look at it, and see deeply into it. He elevates the humble. Everything is full of stories and we are connected to all of them. In the same poem, “Invisible Man,” he feels everything around him:

but I smile,
because when I walk through the streets
… life flows around me
like rivers

When my head gets stuck in the clouds, I often turn to Neruda’s odes as a way to reconnect. Sipping coffee in the morning, listening to birds in the yard, watching the dog bum-rush the bird feeder, or being in a church full of 700 people–pouring out into the parish hall and under a tent, rain coming down–brought together by the love of one person who connected us all. Each of these things, from the simple, to the profound can be an act of everyday grace, connecting everyday people, if we choose to look at them that way.

I know “Everyday People” is a Sly and the Family Stone song, but the version I hear in my head with that phrase is the Arrested Development hip hop version, “People Everyday.”

We are all people everyday and that’s what we’ve got to work with. Through struggle, uncertainty, celebration, and joy, we get up and we go. Anything we are going to come to know, we are only going to find through our everyday lives. When we find and feel grace in those moments, we find something more. I dig what Anne Lamott has to say about grace in “Traveling Mercies:”

“It’s unearned love–the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It’s the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually as grateful as you are to be there.”

I wake up, let the dog out, put coffee on. I walk through the yard, hearing traffic from the highway, I look at the tomatoes growing, and I sit down to read, to pray, to remember, to be grateful. And I hope to find, to connect with, to be everyday people living into everyday grace.

A Sunday Prayer

God, Creator of the Universe, I thank you for this day.

Thank you for coffee, for sweet cream, for a quiet morning, and for speaking to me through books, words, and other people.

Thank you for Brown Thrashers, Cardinals, Blue Jays, and for small gray birds that fly away before I can get binoculars to get a better look.

Thank you for rivers, coves, and creeks, and for time to paddle out on them. Thank you for showing me beauty that I can’t get to by land. Thank you for for the warmth of the sun, for breezes, for currents and tides to battle, ride, and surf. Thank you for sand bars, beaches, and driftwood.

Thank you for showing me new things on waters where I’ve spent 46 years exploring. Thank you for hidden coves, fish jumping, families trotlining, and Great Blue and Green Herons, who must swear at my scaring them, but I love seeing them fly and settle again further down.

Thank you for allowing my mind to see my life reflected in a 6-mile paddle–for memories and mistakes, for joy and love and dreams, for connection to place and to You and Your creation. Thank you for not giving up on me when I was distant from you. Thank you for ears to hear your voice.

Help me remember this feeling of connection when loneliness comes. Help me find direction and purpose when I get lost.

Help me find the right words, the right actions, the right heart as a father, son, brother, friend, and whatever other names I wear.

Please be with the broken, the hurting, the confused, the lost. Give them peace, help them find their purpose, and know Your love. Thank you for the words of Bob Goff, who wrote, “It has always seemed to me that broken things, just like broken people, get used more; it’s probably because God has more pieces to work with.” Please take us in our brokenness and use us to help each other, to paint the picture, to make the world You would have us make.

Please give us rest. Help us find and know You in quiet, in down time, in play. Help us recharge and re-create ourselves, so that we can find, and know, and do the work You have given us to do.

Father God, I don’t have a map, a script, or a clue how You do things. And I probably wouldn’t do a great job with it if I did. There are so many things that I don’t understand.

But I know the greatest blessings and wisdom and love I have known, have come when I listen, when I’m open, when I show up, and say, “Here I am.”

More Subtle Than a Two by Four

God sometimes speaks with a two-by-four. That’s helpful for me because I’m frequently dense enough to miss something more subtle. I need to be knocked upside the head from time to time.

Sometimes though, we just get glimpses and it is up to us to take notice. In his book, “Tales of Wonder,” Huston Smith adapts the term grace notes to describe these glimpses or moments:

“I must have been under six that early morning I stumbled out barefoot into our backyard. The moist dew under my feet felt fresh, exciting between my toes. Its freshness penetrated every atom of my body. The day was just dawning, the sun was coming out, cool and warmth intermingled, and I knew that everything would be just right. I use the musical term grace notes to describe such moments, when our perspective shifts and we suddenly glimpse perfection beyond words.”

Those moments can happen anytime, as long as we are paying attention. I see them with sunrises and sunsets; I catch them while reading or running. I feel them when finding spinning pinwheels planted in front of the church after a Pentecost worship service. Or in taking the time to notice and help a dragonfly who needed a hand.

It means we have to redirect our focus off of where we are going or what we are doing next and take time to be in the present. I don’t think we can hear God speaking in the future, but we’ve got a chance to hear him in the here and now.

In her book, “An Altar in the World,” Barbara Brown Taylor goes back to the story of Moses and the burning bush, through which God speaks to Moses. Brown Taylor points out that the burning bush was not right in front of Moses–he had to stop what he was doing and turn aside to go see it. If he hadn’t, if he’d stayed on his task of tending sheep, he would have missed it and wouldn’t be the Moses we read about.

“What made him Moses was his willingness to turn aside. Wherever else he was supposed to be going and whatever else he was supposed to be doing, he decided it could wait for a minute.”

And that made all the difference. I wonder if we would? Or if I would? I try. I am pretty good about seeing the sky start to turn a sublime color and dropping lunch making or laundry folding and heading out to investigate.

Or having lunch outside and listening, breathing, and centering. But I used to be better about finding and helping create those moments with my daughters. If you posit God as a loving parent, then our own chances to be creative, loving, listening parents/shepherds/counselors/friends (I don’t think that is relegated to being parents) to others should and do provide countless opportunities for us to experience something of the love of God, by putting it out into the world ourselves. I have to sit with that more. I have to be that more often.

Sometimes in the frustration of parenting teenagers, which absolutely needs to be done–in the midst of grades and attitude and apathy–I lose sight of, and don’t make the opportunities to fill their (and my own) hearts and minds and days with the kind of creative joy and love that I want to. I have heard, felt, and experienced love through Anna and Ava in ways I will never be able to show enough gratitude for. I need to live into that more.

Brown Taylor cites a character in Alice Walker’s book, “The Color Purple,” who says, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

We’ve all got our color purple moments. Our grace notes. Our burning bushes. Our chances to notice and to be differently in the world. To make time.

Note to self: notice purple; don’t walk by burning bushes; cultivate the smiles, the questions, the adventures, that begin from the inside and launch their way into the world. That way maybe God doesn’t have to break out the two-by-four so often.

Signs, Spirit, Connections

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Who wouldn’t want more of each of those in their lives? Those are the fruits of the Spirit as Paul describes them in his letter to the Galatians.

April 13-15, Christ Church Easton went to Camp Arrowhead in Lewes, Delaware, for an Alpha Weekend retreat. More than 40 people headed for the woods, the beach, cabins, bonfires, camaraderie, laughter, and discussions in small groups about our own journeys, struggles, questions, and where we are.

This is our third Alpha Retreat in the past year, running the Alpha Course in the spring and the fall, and I have been blown away each time with amazing and honest people and generous spirits. And the deep laughter that comes with spending a weekend with people in cool places, talking about stuff that matters.

When you ask questions like “How does God guide us?” and “How can I make the most out of the rest of my life?” and people get real with their stories and experiences, profound and unexpected things can happen.

It’s often the unscripted time that makes the weekend. Try showing up at a camp with cabins on the water on Friday the 13th and get ready for the Jason stories. Give people a beach, bonfire, marshmallows, hot dogs, and guitars, and you have an instant party. Break bread together on the beach and in the dining hall, gathered to talk and learn about faith, and in my experience, the Holy Spirit is present in those moments, with these people.

Some people think of worship as what happens at a church service. And it is. But worship is also much more than that. The entire weekend was a celebration, worship. Worship can connect us to God, to people, and to nature, creation. And Camp Arrowhead is a setting to allow all those things to happen. On Sunday morning, before breakfast, I wandered the camp, finding Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Cardinals, Blue Jays. I sat down to read and think about Galatians again after Saturday and read in Gary Snyder’s “Turtle Island,” which is a book I almost always carry.

the path is whatever passes–no
end in itself.

the end is,
grace–ease–

healing,
not saving.

singing
the proof

the proof of the power within.

Joining Snyder’s words, the path, the weekend was grace, ease, healing, singing–the proof of the power within.

After breakfast, and our last small group gathering for the weekend, we gather for a worship service proper, a celebration and culmination of the our time together. Jerrett Hansen, our interim pastor who joined us for the weekend points out, “When the church is in its proper place, we don’t have to go through this thing called life alone.”

He talks about the power of simple signs that we can see throughout our lives if we aren’t too busy looking for the big signs.

“We have been given the great gift in our community to be signs to each other.”

This morning (Monday), I woke up thinking about the Saturday night bonfire on the beach; of everyone coming up with the best way to roast marshmallows or hot dogs; the laughter and conversations. And I got this in a daily e-mail of Frederick Buechner’s writing:

“In the pages of Scripture, fire is holiness, and perhaps never more hauntingly than in the little charcoal fire that Jesus of Nazareth, newly risen from the dead, kindles for cooking his friends’ breakfast on the beach at daybreak.”

And that’s maybe what a weekend like this is about, what a faith community, a church, is all about. During the Easter season, post-Resurrection: being signs to each other; helping one another along the way; staying connected to God, to the Holy Spirit, to each other, through Jesus Christ.

On Being Born

The last five years have been off the map. If you’d sat down with me on this day in 2013 and told me what the view in 2018 would look like, I’d have backed away slowly. And yet, they are some of the most important and beautiful years in shaping who I am, for better or worse.

One thing I remember clearly, when summer came and the Coast Guard contract we were working on ended, I was out of a job and searching for a direction. And I remember reading Frederick Buechner and having this overwhelming feeling that I should go to seminary; that there was something about a journey of faith that was key. I look back at Buechner’s words that I found again recently:

“Listen to your life. Listen to what happens to you because it is through what happens to you that God speaks… It’s in language that’s not always easy to decipher, but it’s there powerfully, memorably, unforgettably.”

I talked to a long-time friend and mentor who is an Episcopal priest and looked into things and sat and prayed on it, and then let it go when another Washington, DC, job working for the Coast Guard presented itself. I simply couldn’t imagine what life would look like or what would have to happen to end up working for a church.

There is no way I can do justice to the events that have taken place or the unexpected cast of characters who have been a part of what has happened since. There have been so many unexpected and undeserved blessings, even while there has been confusion, frustration, and letting go. Looking with hindsight doesn’t show the heartbreak, missteps and mistakes, letting people down, the questions, or being lost in the woods for stretches. We each have to own our scars and those we cause others. And we each have to get up each day and ask and answer, “Now what?”

In his book, “The Heart of Christianity,” Marcus Borg talks about being what resurrection means in our lives:

“…the process of personal transformation at the center of the Christian life: to be born again involves death and resurrection. It means dying to an old way of being and being born into a new way of being, dying to an old identity and being born into a new identity–a way of being and an identity centered in the sacred, in spirit, in Christ, in God.”

There is so much there. So much to live into, live up to, and I don’t always to the best job of it. But trying to focus and center and find each day, something of a new life, centered in God and the sacred. That feels like what I have been trying to get to since I was a teenager and started uncovering pieces of life and the world that I love.

There is something new and at the same time, there are the parts and passions and wonders and curiosities that abide and make us who we are, each of us a piece of a larger puzzle. And how we see things and how we see ourselves, they are and we are. I have been reading John O’Donohue’s “Anam Cara,” which goes on my very short list of books I’d take with me anywhere.

“There is such an intimate connection between the way we look at things and what we actually discover. If you learn to look at yourself and your life in a gentle, creative, and adventurous way, you will be eternally surprised at what you find… Each of us needs to learn the unique language of our own soul. In that distinctive language, we will discover a lens of thought to brighten and illuminate our inner world.”

“Anam Cara” shows how creatively and actively our inner world, our bodies, and the landscapes around us are all sacred and interconnected.

Each of the last five or six years, I have picked myself up a pair of shoes and a book for my birthday. Sometimes they have been trail running shoes, sometimes running shoes, Sanuks, or Vans. The books are more varied and tangential than I could even account for. The purpose is to invite in new adventures for the year: physical adventures on foot as well as intellectual adventures. Both make for adventures of the soul. This year it is trail shoes and Huston Smith’s autobiography, “Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine.”

Who knows what adventures year number 46 holds? I’ve learned I don’t know much. But I’m trying to get better as I go on about listening to my life and to hearing God speak. I am trying to use life up to this point, scars and all, to invite transformation and embrace new life ahead, centered in the sacred, centered in Christ, centered in God.

And I find life is generally better when I remember to get outside, with the dog 🙂

Matthew and the Rock Face

If you’d told me 15 years ago that I would find laughter, joy, friendships, tears, questions, answers, life, sorrow, challenges, confusion, exhaustion, and exhilaration, all in a Bible study, I am sure I would have dismissed it.

At the beginning of October 2017, two groups at Christ Church Easton started a journey through Matthew’s gospel, using N.T. Wright’s “Matthew for Everyone” as a touchstone. We weren’t sure whether to end at Christmas, part-way down the path, but both groups wanted to see it through. With three weeks left to go, Jesus has been arrested, and we know what’s coming.

Wright looks at where we are in the story and compares it to standing at the bottom of a huge rock face.

“That is how we should feel as we stand at the foot of the final ascent of St. Matthew’s gospel. We have walked at a steady pace through the hills and the valleys of the story. We have sat down to hear Jesus deliver another parable or discourse. We have marched with him along the road, enjoying the sunshine of the early days in Galilee, and the remarkable views as the disciples gradually realized more of what the kingdom was about. We have arrived in Jerusalem at watched dramatic events unfold. But we are now standing in front of a sheer wall of rock, and if we don’t find it both compelling and terrifying, we haven’t got the right spectacles on.”

I feel that. I feel it in my life and I feel it as we read and work through Matthew. I feel it as we approach both spring and Easter. With all the beauty and questions, there is death ahead. There is rebirth and renewal after, but it only comes after and because of a death. I think that is also true of our lives. It is of mine–some of the most beautiful and meaningful times come after loss, come after the low, come after the crap. And sometimes they only happen because of the painful experience that preceded it.

Wright goes on:

“The theories about why Jesus died–theories of the ‘atonement,’ as they are called–are like maps or old photographs, taken from a distance. They may be accurate in their way, and the’re helpful particularly when it’s cloudy and you can’t see too much for the moment. But they’re not the same thing as climbing to the top yourself, and perhaps, if you’re lucky, getting there on a clear day when you can see the view. When that happens, you will find you quickly run out of words to describe what you are looking at.”

It’s not the same thing as climbing to the top yourself. What we find in Scripture is a lot like what we find in life–we get out of it what we invest in it, what we live into it. And if we are going to understand Scripture, or life, it is going to help to have guides, and friends to share the journey with, and the views. We are going to stumble and we are going to need help.

We’ve got three classes left, finishing this ascent during Holy Week as we head into Easter. Our two groups of pilgrims are at the rock face. A journey that started together five months ago. When I look back, when I look around, and when I look forward, I “quickly run out of words to describe” it.

Distractions and Renewal

Stuff gets in the way. Stuff gets in the way of life happening the way it is supposed to. We get distracted, we lose focus, and before we know it, our lives have veered from where we thought they were supposed to go.

Maybe that’s where Lent comes in. As a season, it asks us to let go of some of those distractions. To let go of those things that keep us from living life as we were meant to live it. When people pick a trivial thing, even a happy thing, to give up for Lent, I think maybe it misses the mark.

I like the notion of Lent as a time for renewal and refocusing. Last week at Christ Church Easton, the Gospel reading was Mark’s account of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain. Interim pastor Jerrett Hansen, reflecting on this mountaintop experience, asked, “How are we connected to the story?”

He posited we need to live into the mystery of the story, the mystery of God and Christ, rather than try to intellectually analyze it.

“Jesus and God are to be experienced. We need to be open to these experiences… Experiencing God is essential to our journey.”

I think that is what life’s distractions prevent us from doing. They get in the way of our wonder; they get in the way of loving more fully; they get in the way of opening ourselves to possibilities and to each other. Distractions keep us from knowing ourselves more fully and from knowing God more fully.

Maybe instead of giving something up just to give something up, for Lent we can think about getting ourselves into spiritual shape. Building better habits to peel back the distractions. Jerrett introduced a notion that a friend of his, Michael Foss, spelled out as marks of discipleship:

1. Pray daily
2. Worship weekly
3. Read the Bible daily
4. Build spiritual friendships
5. Serve in the community
6. Be generous in all things

We’ll be spending time over the next weeks working through what some of those look like and what they mean. If you are up for it, maybe think of Lent as time to take on a discipline, or a devotional habit, to help get into shape a bit.

We all need help in our lives in some form or fashion. We can all be better people, for ourselves, our family, our friends, our community, our world.

I’m stoked to be helping lead groups this Lent and spring, which will be looking at Mark’s Gospel; which will be looking at how and why to pray and read the Bible. And the Alpha Course.

I love Mother Teresa’s notion that through prayer God guides us to do the things that need to be done in the world, that “prayer changes us and we change things.”

God invites us to come as we are, just as we are. But He also knows we are capable of being so much more. We can be better. We can do better. Maybe we can start now.

I’ll leave with a final though from Jerrett’s sermon this past Saturrday:

“God loves you the way you are, but He knows how much more you can be.”

Buechner on Eternity

I spent late Sunday on a bike and under a tree. The morning and afternoon had been music, prayer and fellowship of worship services, then blessing of pets (several dogs, a hedgehog, two guinea pigs, and a horse) at Christ Church Easton.

On a beautiful fall evening, I hopped on my bike and eased around Boone Creek and then found a tree on the shoreline of the Oxford Cemetery. I stretched my legs out and listened to geese in the cove, the breeze through the trees, conversations of boaters in Town Creek, and watched the sun dance on the water. I read David Bailey, Richard Rohr, and N.T. Wright. Mostly I sat, watched, listened, imbibed.

I was completely full. I didn’t try to give it words, just breath and feeling.

Yesterday I came across this passage from Frederick Buechner’s “Wishful Thinking,” and I realized Buechner had the words I was looking for:

ETERNITY IS NOT endless time or the opposite of time. It is the essence of time.

If you spin a pinwheel fast enough, then all its colors blend into a single color—white—which is the essence of all the colors of the spectrum combined.

If you spin time fast enough, then time-past, time-present, and time-to-come all blend into a single timelessness or eternity, which is the essence of all times combined.

As human beings we know time as a passing of unrepeatable events in the course of which everything passes away including ourselves. As human beings, we also know occasions when we stand outside the passing of events and glimpse their meaning. Sometimes an event occurs in our lives (a birth, a death, a marriage—some event of unusual beauty, pain, joy) through which we catch a glimpse of what our lives are all about and maybe even what life itself is all about, and this glimpse of what “it’s all about” involves not just the present but the past and future too.

Inhabitants of time that we are, we stand on such occasions with one foot in eternity. God, as Isaiah says (57:15) “inhabiteth eternity” but stands with one foot in time. The part of time where he stands most particularly is Christ, and thus in Christ we catch a glimpse of what eternity is all about, what God is all about, and what we ourselves are all about too.