Intersection

The Way of the Cross
Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1603)
Koninklijk Museum Voor Schone Kunsten (Belgium)

Scripture Passage:  Matthew 11: 28-30
²⁸“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

In this Season of Lent, we are called to deepen our own walk with Christ.  This means moving beyond what Christ does for us.  Oh, don't get me wrong.  Christ does everything for us.  But our relationship with Christ does not stop at that.  God is more than some sort of divine vending machine.  We are called to do more than worship the God who gives us everything; we are called to enter the Way of Christ itself, the Way of the Cross.  It means experiencing all of Christ--the birth, the ministry, the life, the Passion, the crucifixion, the death, the Resurrection--on the deepest and most profound level.  It means moving from being an observer to being a participant with Christ.  It also means entering our own humanity at the deepest level. It means becoming real.  Sadhu Sundar Singh says  that “if we do not bear the cross of the Master, we will have to bear the cross of the world, with all of its earthly goods.  Which cross have you taken up?  Pause and consider.

Over the last few years, I have become more and more drawn into the Stations of the Cross, that 4th century devotional tool that helped pilgrims flocking to the Holy Land from all parts of the world to walk in the Way of Christ.  It has become more than a way of prayer.  It is real, full of the depth and breadth of human experience and emotion, full of the power to move one beyond oneself, full of Christ.  These Stations, also called the "Way of the Cross", the "Way of Sorrows", the "Sorrowful Way", and the "Via Dolorosa", are a pilgrimage not just to the historical places of Jesus (because, truth be known, the places marked as stations in the streets of Jerusalem are really just good guesses) but to the Way to which we are called.

In this walk of faith, we are clear that we are called to worship and revere God, our Creator, the very Spirit that runs beneath us and at the same time courses through our veins.  This is the God who is there just ahead of us, calling us forward, calling us home.  This is our very source of gravity, that straight and perfect plumb-line that connects us to the Holy and the Sacred.  And yet, in science, relative strength is measured not just with the vertical pull of gravitational force, but with the horizontal relationship to that force itself. And true horizontality, the strongest point, occurs at the intersection with the vertical.  This Way that we walk with Christ, this horizontal side-by-side with Jesus gives meaning to our worship and reverence and draws it strength at that point.

So in the midst of our Lenten journey, remember that it is more than becoming a better person, more than developing a deeper relationship with God.  It is about worshipping and walking, walking and worshipping.  It is about entering the way of Christ.  So in the midst of these writings, let us walk this Way of the Cross.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli  

ADVENT 3B: Hallowed Be

Lectionary Passage:  1 Thessalonians 5: 16-19 (20-24)
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit.

How do you pray without ceasing?  I mean, OK, now, let's pray.  We pray and we pray.  Things are going OK.  We're praying along.  Wait, who's phone is that?  Hold on, it's mine.  Stop praying.  Answer the phone.  OK, now, I need to pick up the house a bit.  And I need to write the blog for tomorrow.  And tomorrow is trash day.  And Maynard needs his dinner. And, to be honest, I think I do too.  Pray without ceasing?  Really?  How do you fit that in?  And, sadly, the Spirit is quenched.

Paul was not laying down a rule for prayer.  Paul never envisioned us living body-bent and knee-bowed 24/7.  After all, there is WAY too much work to do.  We've got some Kingdom-building to accomplish, don't we?  No, Paul was not calling us to a life spent in prayer; He was calling us to a prayerful life, a life that is sacred, hallowed, a life lived in the unquenchable Spirit of God.  It's not about logging prayer hours.  Rather, it's about perspective, about seeing everything that is your life as hallowed and holy, as of God, as prayer.  Olga Savin says that “[the Scriptures] tell us that ceaseless prayer in pursuit of God and communion with [God] is not simply life’s meaning or goal, the one thing worth living for, but it is life itself.”  And a life lived the way it is called to be lived is the very will of God.  It is prayer.

And so, pray without ceasing.  When you answer the phone, cherish the family member or the friend or the co-worker who has called you.  In fact, give thanks for the person on the other end who inadvertantly dialed the wrong number.  After all, they, too, are your brother or sister.  God has called us to love one another.  And as you clean and straighten, look around you.  Your dwelling is more than shelter.  It is an expression of you.  Give thanks for the you that God has made.  And then do what God has called you to do.  Use your talents.  Give thanks for them.  They were given to you by God to use in the building of God's Kingdom.  And that big black lab that wants his dinner?  Personally, I thank God everyday for bringing us together.  How did I find a companion like this on the internet?  He needed me; I needed him.  Isn't that why Creation exists?  Then sit back and taste dinner.  Taste that which has been lovingly grown by the Divine.  And give thanks.  Every household task, everything thing you do, do as a prayer.  And all of those never-ending interruptions?  Think of them as holy.  (After all, think about it--when did God show up as planned?)  Make everything you do an offering to the Divine.  Let everything you have and everything you are be a preparation for God's coming.  Embrace it.  Rejoice in it.  Give thanks.

In this season of waiting for the coming of God, pray without ceasing.  In other words, live your life to the fullest and the best.  Offer it to God.  And rejoice in what you have--companionship, beauty, work, love.  G.K. Chesterton exhorted us to “let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.” I love that.  You know, God is coming. It will happen. But don’t forget that God is here. Rejoice! And live your life waiting and rejoicing, rejoicing and waiting.  And, most of all, love.  That is how you pray without ceasing.
 
In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of seeing your life as prayer, of living in a love affair with God.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Lenten Discipline: Bowing and Becoming

"Then Jesus went to a place called Gethsemane..." (Matt. 26: 36)

During the Sundays of this season of Lent, I am posting some thoughts on different spiritual disciplines.  Today I have chosen prayer.  Who am I to talk about prayer?  After all, it is probably "THE" spiritual discipline, the one that we all do (or think we should do more often!), that we all know (or think we should know better!), that we all feel like we should be doing better.  So, what is prayer to you?  At its simplest it is a conversation with God, a connection with the holy and the sacred.  So why is it that most of us claim that we need a deeper prayer life.  Are we not satisfied with the conversation?  Are we not getting the answers we want?  Or do we think that God wants more from us?  My guess is that it would be a little of all of the above.

In my "previous life" before ordained ministry, I sang in the choir as a layperson.  We almost always did a choral response following The Lord's Prayer.  So, to this day, I cannot say that prayer in worship without looking up when I get to the last line, as if I'm still watching for the cue from the director.  (Of course, if you who go to St. Paul's and you already know that, I guess it means you don't have your eyes closed either!)  But, the point is that I cannot NOT do it and when I catch myself looking up while everyone's heads are still bowed in prayer, I'm always a little embarrassed.  But, when you think about it, maybe that's not such a bad thing.  Prayer is a way of  "attuning ourselves to a conversation that is already going on deep in our hearts", as Marjorie Thompson says (in Soul Feast, p. 31.). It does not end with "Amen."  It, like most good spiritual disciplines and all good faith stories, ends with a beginning.  It ends with our becoming engaged with God and joining what began long before we came along to the story.

There is a story from the Sufi mystical tradition of a disciple that comes to an elder for direction.  "Where shall I find God?" the disciple asked the elder.  “God is with you,” the Holy One replied.  “But if that is true,” the disciple asked, “why can I not see this Presence?” “Because you are like the fish who, when in the ocean, never notices the water.”  It is not that God is not with us; it is that we are unaware of that incredible Presence. (From There is a Season, by Joan Chittister, p. 14.)

And yet, most of us tend to pray prayers as if we're throwing something out to a God that is "out there" somewhere, hoping against hope that God will pick them up and answer them (hopefully with the answer that we desire!).  We are told to "turn everything over to God." I don't think, though, that God meant to be in this alone.  Our prayers should not resemble our Christmas list of desires or even our grocery list of needs.  Rather, our prayers are our way of connecting to and entering the heart of that incredible Presence that is everywhere that we can imagine and everywhere that we will never know, the Presence of God.  Think of prayer as reaching and grasping, connecting and attuning, enfolding and becoming a part of the holy and the sacred God that is everywhere in our lives.  Prayers are indeed answered.  We just have to attune ourselves to the answer that is already present in our lives.  God's desire is to fulfill our heartfelt prayers by filling our open heart with God.

Prayer is indeed "THE" spiritual discipline.  In fact, prayer is everything we are and everything we do, our whole life, every breath, every person we meet, every word we say, every thought we think that brings us closer to knowing this God who is already there.  Think of your "amen" as the beginning of that journey of holiness and wholeness that fills your life.  Maria Boudling says of prayer:  "All your love, your stretching out, your hope, your thirst, God is creating in you so that God may fill you...God is on the inside of the longing."  And needing to pray, or wanting to pray, or just knowing that you "should" be praying means that you have already entered the conversation.  Amen.

Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, unuttered or expressed,
the motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast.
Prayer is the burden of a sigh, the falling of a tear, 
the upward glancing of an eye, when none but God is near.
Prayer is the simplest form of speek that infant lips can try;
prayer the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high.
Prayer is the contrite sinners' voice, returning from their way,
while angels in their songs rejoice and cry, "Behold, they pray!"
Prayer is the Christians' vital breath, the Christian's native air;
their watchword at the gates of death; they enter heaven with prayer.
O Thou, by whom we come to God, the Life, the Truth, the Way:
the path of prayer thyself hast trod; Lord, teach us how to pray!
                                           (James Montgomery, 1818, in The United Methodist Hymnal, # 492) 

So, in this Lenten season, become your prayer and let your prayer become part of all that is God.



Sometimes You Just Have to Wait...(See "A Season for Pruning", 03/31/2011)

 Grace and Peace,

Shelli