Jackson Community Church

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Rachel Held-Evans

Mother’s Day Reflection

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Motherhood has powerfully reinforced for me the significance of the fact that when God was most vulnerable – in the womb, nursing at the breast, as a child, at death – God was wholly entrusted to the care of women. I find that frighteningly profound. — Rachel Held Evans

We are born of love. Love is our mother. – Rumi

Songs about and for Mothers:

Songs by, about, and for Women:

Blessing the Mothers — Jan Richardson

Blessing the Mothers
Who are our
first sanctuary.

Who fashion
a space of blessing
with their own being:

with the belly
the bone and
the blood

or,
if not with these,
then with the
durable heart
that offers itself
to break
and grow wide,
to gather itself
around another
as refuge,
as home.

Who lean into
the wonder and terror
of loving what
they can hold
but cannot contain.

Who remain
in some part of themselves
always awake,
a corner of consciousness
keeping perpetual vigil.

Who know
that the story
is what endures
is what binds us
is what runs deeper
even than blood

and so they spin them
in celebration
of what abides
and benediction
on what remains:

a simple gladness
that latches onto us
and graces us
on our way.

Remember — Joy Harjo

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn,
that is the strongest point of time.
Remember sundown and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth,
how your mother struggled to give you form and breath.
You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father.
He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too.
Talk to them,
listen to them.
They are alive poems.
Remember the wind.
Remember her voice.
She knows the origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

To a Child — Sophie Jewett
The leaves talked in the twilight, dear;
   Hearken the tale they told:
How in some far-off place and year,
   Before the world grew old,
I was a dreaming forest tree,
   You were a wild, sweet bird
Who sheltered at the heart of me
   Because the north wind stirred;
How, when the chiding gale was still,
   When peace fell soft on fear,
You stayed one golden hour to fill
   My dream with singing, dear.
To-night the self-same songs are sung
   The first green forest heard;
My heart and the gray world grow young—
   To shelter you, my bird.
Prayer for those getting through mother’s day 
— Maren Tirabassi
Spirit of gentleness,
wrap all your holy loving
non-binary compassion 
around all of those 
just hoping to get through a holiday 
that washes them in tears –
because their mothers are dead
or their children are dead,
because they wanted children
but did not have them,
or their children don’t want them
right now in their lives,
or their parents don’t love
a gender identity so dearly chosen,
because their childhood family
or their present one
is marked by abuse,
because there is great distance
of miles or minds
of border wall or prison wall
between them
and someone they love,
because of a miscarriage,
a failed search for a biological parent,
a lonely foster care bedroom,
a desperate attempt
to be a perfect stepparent
or no attempt made at all, 
or just because this holiday
holds up a magnifying glass
to the heart.

On this Mother’s Day, I celebrate and give thanks for my own mother … and all the mothers who have been able to provide this tremendous gift. And I offer prayers for those women who, owing to the gaps and fissures in their own landscape, have left pain and emptiness in the space where a mother should have been. For those who choose to enter into the empty, motherless places—the “othermothers” who come in the form of teachers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, neighbors, friends—bless you and thank you for your mothering hearts. For all the mothers—mothers by blood, mothers by heart—a blessing to you on this Mother’s Day. — Jan Richardson

Essay about Mother’s Day — Anne Lamott
I did not raise my son, Sam, to celebrate Mother’s Day. … Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path. Ha! Every woman’s path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother’s love is withering.
The illusion is that mothers are automatically happier, more fulfilled and complete. But the craziest, grimmest people this Sunday will be the mothers themselves, stuck herding their own mothers and weeping children and husbands’ mothers into seats at restaurants. These mothers do not want a box of chocolate. These mothers are on a diet.
…. the holiday makes all non-mothers, and the daughters of dead mothers, and the mothers of dead or severely damaged children, feel the deepest kind of grief and failure. The non-mothers must sit in their churches, temples, mosques, recovery rooms and pretend to feel good about the day while they are excluded from a holiday that benefits no one but Hallmark and See’s. There is no refuge — not at the horse races, movies, malls, museums. … You could always hide in a nice seedy bar, I suppose. Or an ER.
… Don’t get me wrong: There were times I could have literally died of love for my son, and I’ve felt stoned on his rich, desperate love for me. But I bristle at the whispered lie that you can know this level of love and self-sacrifice only if you are a parent. …
But my main gripe about Mother’s Day is that it feels incomplete and imprecise. The main thing that ever helped mothers was other people mothering them; a chain of mothering that keeps the whole shebang afloat. I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother, and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends, and my own best friends’ mothers, and from surrogates, many of whom were not women at all …
No one is more sentimentalized in America than mothers on Mother’s Day, but no one is more often blamed for the culture’s bad people and behavior. You want to give me chocolate and flowers? Great. I love them both. I just don’t want them out of guilt, and I don’t want them if you’re not going to give them to all the people who helped mother our children. But if you are going to include everyone, then make mine something like M&M’s, and maybe flowers you picked yourself, even from my own garden, the cut stems wrapped in wet paper towels, then tin foil and a waxed-paper bag from my kitchen drawers. I don’t want something special. I want something beautifully plain. Like everything else, it can fill me only if it is ordinary and available to all.
There was something so valuable about what happened when one became a mother. For me it was the most liberating thing that ever happened to me. . . . Liberating because the demands that children make are not the demands of a normal ‘other.’ The children’s demands on me were things that nobody ever asked me to do. To be a good manager. To have a sense of humor. To deliver something that somebody could use. And they were not interested in all the things that other people were interested in, like what I was wearing or if I were sensual. . . . Somehow all of the baggage that I had accumulated as a person about what was valuable just fell away. I could not only be me — whatever that was — but somebody actually needed me to be that. . . . If you listen to [your children], somehow you are able to free yourself from baggage and vanity and all sorts of things, and deliver a better self, one that you like. The person that was in me that I liked best was the one my children seemed to want. — Toni Morrison
What I Learned From My Mother
— Julia Kasdorf
I learned from my mother how to love
the living, to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants
still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole
grieving household, to cube home-canned pears
and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.
I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know
the deceased, to press the moist hands
of the living, to look in their eyes and offer
sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.
I learned that whatever we say means nothing,
what anyone will remember is that we came.
I learned to believe I had the power to ease
awful pains materially like an angel.
Like a doctor, I learned to create
from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once
you know how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter, you must offer
healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,
the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.
Your Clothes — Judith Kroll
Of course they are empty shells, without hope of animation.
Of course they are artifacts.
Even if my sister and I should wear some,
or if we give others away,
they will always be your clothes without you,
as we will always be your daughters without you.
Mother’s Day at Doña Rodríguez
— Sandra Maria Esteves (for Aya)
We never met, but I knew her.
By that ray of life that passed into her son,
brilliant as sky through cane fields,
casting pastel shadows on a jíbaro’s balcón,
abundant fruit and flower scented
from an ancient caribbean, full of spirit
y la vida india.
I never heard her cry, but I was there,
at the birth, when the hurricane growled,
fierce and terrible, screaming,
as she listened to its thunder within herself,
her womb stretching,
pushing out the manchild she offered the world,
not in regret, but full
of remembrances, of land-plowing farmers,
plátano covered rainforests,
asphalt paths carved in slavery
through migrant jungles and concrete mountains.
I never saw the high curve of her taíno face
with its delicate brown cheek,
or felt the caress of her motherly hands. But I knew her,
recognized in emanating points of vision
from a craftmaker’s fingertips,
in precision woven tapestries, like gifts from ancestors,
marking borderlines where families become whole.
We never spoke, or shared a conversation,
but I can still hear the music
composed in the black latino brew of her kitchen.
Smells and leftover renditions of creole beans and salsa,
of mamá-cooking ladles tapping three/two clave
from sinks to pots to laundry machines
in survival ritual symphonies.
We never exchanged a word,
yet she whispered to my soul,
the way mother teachers son to love his child,
the way father shares with daughter the meaning of abuela,
the way bonds are secured,
like a sunday afternoon banquet at the table of Orisha
where all food is nourished,
love-seasoned.
I never knew her, yet she reached out,
as sister, woman, teacher,
as mother, a gentle wind,
touching me. Becoming mine.
Lunchbox Love Note
— Kenn Nesbitt
Inside my lunch
to my surprise
a perfect heart-shaped
love note lies.
The outside says,
“Will you be mine?”
and, “Will you be
my valentine?”
I take it out
and wonder who
would want to tell me
“I love you.”
Perhaps a girl
who’s much too shy
to hand it to me
eye to eye.
Or maybe it
was sweetly penned
in private by
a secret friend
Who found my lunchbox
sitting by
and slid the note in
on the sly.
Oh, I’d be thrilled
if it were Jo,
the cute one in
the second row.
Or could it be
from Jennifer?
Has she found out
I’m sweet on her?
My mind’s abuzz,
my shoulders tense.
I need no more
of this suspense.
My stomach lurching
in my throat,
I open up
my little note.
Then wham! as if
it were a bomb,
inside it reads,
“I love you—Mom.”
Mother’s Day at Crystal Banquet, Now Closed
— Bryan Byrdlong
I dance with my mother beneath the fake crystal
chandelier. A group of us swaying kompa in circles,
with our mothers, in honor of our mothers, despite
our mothers. We radiate out like the plastic floral
arrangements adorning each table, our endless
fractal orbit, Creole as sonic centerfold. I don’t
understand what infects me, only know it does,
the iridescence of immortal flowers, the kompa band’s
baritone, the blue as the karabela dresses river
down a makeshift runway. We have come to
pay respect to our mothers, our mother tongue
which heals, speaks for itself, is here in our collective
magnetic spin, our slew of aphorisms, our revolutionary
lilt, honed. All our mothers are here with us,
our bodies & so their bodies raised mitochondrial.
& we have gathered to eat bread and chicken penne,
for Tante Raymonde to take my arm & lead me
to dance, for my cousin Michael to chase me,
this too a dance. He catches me, tickles my sides.
I am 8, sideways, a small infinity. My laughter is
in Creole. I laugh like no one is after me.
A Practical Mom — Amy Uyematsu
can go to Bible study every Sunday
and swear she’s still not convinced,
but she likes to be around people who are.
We have the same conversation
every few years—I’ll ask her if she stops
to admire the perfect leaves
of the Japanese maple
she waters in her backyard,
or tell her how I can gaze for hours
at a desert sky and know this
as divine. Nature, she says,
doesn’t hold her interest. Not nearly
as much as the greens, pinks, and grays
of a Diebenkorn abstract, or the antique
Tiffany lamp she finds in San Francisco.
She spends hours with her vegetables,
tasting the tomatoes she’s picked that morning
or checking to see which radishes are big enough to pull.
Lately everything she touches bears fruit,
from new-green string beans to winning
golf strokes, glamorous hats she designs and sews,
soaring stocks with their multiplying shares.
These are the things she can count in her hands,
the tangibles to feed and pass on to daughters
and grandchildren who can’t keep up with all
the risky numbers she depends on, the blood-sugar counts
and daily insulin injections, the monthly tests
of precancerous cells in her liver and lungs.
She’s a mathematical wonder with so many calculations
kept alive in her head, adding and subtracting
when everyone else is asleep.

Mother’s Day — Dorianne Laux
I passed through the narrow hills

of my mother’s hips one cold morning

and never looked back, until now, clipping

her tough toenails, sitting on the bed’s edge

combing out the tuft of hair at the crown

where it ratted up while she slept, her thumbs

locked into her fists, a gesture as old

as she is, her blanched knees fallen together

beneath a blue nightgown. The stroke

 

took whole pages of words, random years

torn from the calendar, the names of roses

leaning over her driveway: Cadenza,

Great Western, American Beauty. She can’t

think, can’t drink her morning tea, do her

crossword puzzle in ink. She’s afraid

of everything, the sound of the front door

opening, light falling through the blinds—

pulls her legs up so the bright bars

won’t touch her feet. I help her

with the buttons on her sweater. She looks

hard at me and says the word sleeve.

Exactly, I tell her and her face relaxes

for the first time in days. I lie down

 

next to her on the flowered sheets and tell her

a story about the day she was born, head

first into a hard world: the Great Depression,

shanties, Hoovervilles, railroads and unions.

I tell her about Amelia Earhart and she asks

 

Air? and points to the ceiling. Asks Heart?

and points to her chest. Yes, I say. I sing

Cole Porter songs. Brother, Can You Spare

a Dime? When I recite lines from Gone

with the Wind she sits up and says Potatoes!

and I say, Right again. I read her Sandburg,

some Frost, and she closes her eyes. I say yes,

yes, and tuck her in. It’s summer. She’s tired.

No one knows where she’s been.

Reflections on parable of the sower: themes of weeds, seeds, and many types of soil

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them. — A. A. Milne

Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds. —Norman Vincent Peale

When people try to bury you, remind yourself you are a seed. ― Matshona Dhliwayo 

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me. — William Shakespeare

SONGS about SEEDS & GARDENS

SEED SONGS (Kid Music): 

Earth, Teach Me — Native American Prayer, unattributed

Earth teach me quiet ~ as the grasses are still with new light.
Earth teach me suffering ~ as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility ~ as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring ~ as mothers nurture their young.
Earth teach me courage ~ as the tree that stands alone.
Earth teach me limitation ~ as the ant that crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom ~ as the eagle that soars in the sky.
Earth teach me acceptance ~ as the leaves that die each fall.
Earth teach me renewal ~ as the seed that rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself ~ as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness ~ as dry fields weep with rain.

Blessing That Holds
a Nest in Its Branches
— Jan Richardson

The emptiness
that you have been holding
for such a long season now;

that ache in your chest
that goes with you
night and day
in your sleeping,
your rising—

think of this
not as a mere hollow,
the void left from
the life that has leached out
of you.

Think of it like this:
as the space being prepared
for the seed.

Think of it
as your earth that dreams
of the branches
the seed contains.

Think of it
as your heart making ready
to welcome the nest
its branches will hold.

What would the world be,
once bereft
Of wet and wildness?
Let them be left,
O let them be left,
wildness and wet,
Long live the weeds
and the wildness yet.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins (excerpt from poem)

I the grain and the furrow,
The plough-cloven clod
And the ploughshare drawn thorough,
The germ and the sod,
The deed and the doer, the seed and the sower,
the dust which is God.
— Algernon Charles Swinburne, Hertha (excerpt)

ON WEEDS

The strongest and most mysterious weeds often have things to teach us. ― F.T. McKinstry

But what attracted me to weeds was not their beauty, but their resilience. I mean, despite being so widely despised, so unloved, killed with every chance we get, they are so pervasive, so seemingly invincible. ― Carol Vorvain

Some plants become weeds simply by virtue of their success rather than any other factor. You merely want less of them. — Monty Don

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones. — Charlotte Bronte

The weeds keep multiplying in our garden, which is our mind ruled by fear. Rip them out and call them by name. — Sylvia Browne

A man of words and not of deeds, Is like a garden full of weeds. ― Benjamin Franklin

COMMENTARY on SOWING SEEDS on DIFFERENT SOIL

Maybe the point of this parable isn’t judgement at all, maybe it’s joy. Since again and again in the midst of this thorny and rocky and good world, God still is sowing a life-giving Word. Just wantonly and indiscriminately scattering it everywhere like God doesn’t understand our rules.
Which would also mean that the thing we call the Word is not something relegated to religious institutions and ordained clergy and the piety police. The thing we call the Word isn’t locked up in some spiritual ivory tower. I am persuaded that the Word of the Lord is anything that brings good news to the poor, and comfort to those who mourn. Whatever heals the brokenhearted. Whatever opens prisons.
The Word is whatever brings freedom to slaves. Whatever brings freedom to former slaves. Whatever brings freedom to the descendants of former slaves. The Word is whatever liberates a nation from the spiritual bondage of human bondage.
And God’s Word is scattered all around us… joyfully scrawled on protest signs and heard in newborns’ cries, and seen in city streets and county fairs and shopping malls.  The Word of the Lord is written on the broken tablets of our hearts, it is falling like rain in the tears of the forgiven, it is harnessed in the laughter of our children. —Nadia Bolz-Weber, full reflection: https://thecorners.substack.com/p/gods-wastefulness

If we want to return our hardened paths to their natural condition so grass and flowers and trees can grow, they have to be plowed up, the soil aerated, new seeds planted and the rain and the sun allowed to do their work without force or interference. That’s what listening to the word of God does for hearts trampled down by the back-and-forth of busyness and that are hardened by the heat of over-exposure. — Kenrt from cslewisfoundation, full reflection: https://www.cslewis.org/blog/january-13-2014/

ON SEEDS

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. — Napoleon Hill

Your heart is full of fertile seeds, waiting to sprout. — Morihei Ueshiba

The seed is in the ground. Now may we rest in hope, while darkness does its work. ~ Wendell Berry

From seeds of his body blossomed the flower that liberated a people and touched the soul of a nation. — Jesse Jackson

We are a seed patiently waiting in the earth: waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But cock-crow is coming. — CS Lewis

I hope that upon this scorched earth we have planted the seeds of ideas that will bear the fruit of more diverse and inclusive stories ….  — Wilson Cruz

By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity. —Robert A. Heinlein

A seed neither fears light nor darkness, but uses both to grow.― Matshona Dhliwayo

Inside the seed are many trees… Inside You are many kingdoms. ― Bert McCoy 

We know we cannot plant seeds with closed fists. To sow, we must open our hands. —Adolfo Perez Esquivel

The Kingdom isn’t some far off place you go where you die, the Kingdom is at hand—among us and beyond us, now and not-yet. It is the wheat growing in the midst of weeds, the yeast working its magic in the dough, the pearl germinating in a sepulchral shell. It can come and go in the twinkling of an eye, Jesus said. So pay attention; don’t miss it.  — Rachel Held Evans

You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness. — Zig Ziglar

Help young people. Help small guys. Because small guys will be big. Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds, and when they grow up, they will change the world.— Jack Ma
Deep in the secret world of winter’s darkness, deep in the heart of the Earth, the scattered seed dreams of what it will accomplish, some warm day when its wild beauty has grown strong and wise. ― Solstice

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go. — Martha Washington

Failure holds the seeds for greatness – so long as you water those seeds with introspection, they can be the root of your success. —Daniel Lubetzky
The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.— Paramahansa Yogananda
We take the action—soup kitchens, creek restoration, mentoring—and then the insight follows: that by showing up with hope to help others, I’m guaranteed that hope is present. Then my own hope increases. By creating hope for others, I end up awash in the stuff.
     We create goodness in the world, and that gives us hope. We plant bulbs in the cold, stony dirt of winter and our aging arthritic fingers get nicked, but we just do it, and a couple of months later life blooms—as daffodils, paperwhites, tulips.. — Anne Lamott

Seeds are powerful. They operate in our culture and in our psyche on a literal and metaphorical level like nothing else. They are possibility incarnate – a tiny gift package wrapped in a protective outer layer with infinite potential to sprout, grow, and produce more seeds while providing food and shelter to humans and animals alike. Joan Chittister writes, “In every seed lie the components of all life the world has known from all time to now.”
Our ancestors have been saving, selecting, and planting seeds for thousands of years, which is largely why we are here today. It is an essential part of the human discipline. — Farmer Kyle of Bellwether Farm

The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is, and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God. — Meister Echkhart

Dreams are the seeds of change. Nothing ever grows without a seed, and nothing ever changes without a dream. — Debby Boone

God does not only sow his seed in good soil. He loves us with such abandon that he scatters that love far and wide. He does not want to miss the chance of reaching even one lost soul. And in these times, the thorns and weeds, may be the very thing that brings us back to a deeper relationship with God. —Kate Nicholsan

The focus is what is right before you – to give it your best. It sows the seeds of tomorrow. — Kiran Bedi
Carbonized grains of wheat unearthed
From the seventh millennium B.C. town of Jarmo
In the Tigris-Euphrates basin
Match the grains of three kinds of wheat still extant,
Two wild, one found only in cultivation.
The separate grains
Were parched and eaten,
Or soaked into gruel, yeasted, fermented.
Took to the idea of bread,
Ceres, while you were gone.
Wind whistles in the smokey thatch,
Oven browns its lifted loaf,
And in the spring the nourished seeds,
Hybrid with wild grass,
Easily open in a hundred days,
And seeded fruits, compact and dry,
Store well together.
They make the straw for beds,
They ask the caring hand to sow, the resting foot
To stay, to court the seasons.
— Josephine Miles, Fields of Learniing (excerpt)
In Case of Complete Reversal 
— Kay Ryan
Born into each seed
is a small anti-seed
useful in case of some
complete reversal:
a tiny but powerful
kit for adapting it
to the unimaginable.
If we could crack the
fineness of the shell
we’d see the
bundled minuses
stacked as in a safe,
ready for use
if things don’t
go well.

THRESHOLDS — John O’Donohue, from To Bless the Space Between Us

Within the grip of winter, it is almost impossible to imagine the spring. The gray perished landscape is shorn of color. Only bleakness meets the eye; everything seems severe and edged. Winter is the oldest season; it has some quality of the absolute. Yet beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are wakening up. Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bud opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges.

The beauty of nature insists on taking its time. Everything is prepared. Nothing is rushed. The rhythm of emergence is a gradual slow beat always inching its way forward; change remains faithful to itself until the new unfolds in the full confidence of true arrival. Because nothing is abrupt, the beginning of spring nearly always catches us unawares. It is there before we see it; and then we can look nowhere without seeing it.

Change arrives in nature when time has ripened. There are no jagged transitions or crude discontinuities. This accounts for the sureness with which one season succeeds another. It is as though they were moving forward in a rhythm set from within a continuum.

To change is one of the great dreams of every heart – to change the limitations, the sameness, the banality, or the pain. So often we look back on patterns of behavior, the kind of decisions we make repeatedly and that have failed to serve us well, and we aim for a new and more successful path or way of living. But change is difficult for us. So often we opt to continue the old pattern, rather than risking the danger of difference. We are also often surprised by change that seems to arrive out of nowhere.

We find ourselves crossing some new threshold we had never anticipated. Like spring secretly at work within the heart of winter, below the surface of our lives huge changes are in fermentation. We never suspect a thing. Then when the grip of some long-enduring winter mentality begins to loosen, we find ourselves vulnerable to a flourish of possibility and we are suddenly negotiating the challenge of a threshold.

At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotions comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossing were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds; to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.

To acknowledge and cross a new threshold is always a challenge. It demands courage and also a sense of trust in whatever is emerging. This becomes essential when a threshold opens suddenly in front of you, one for which you had no preparation. This could be illness, suffering or loss. Because we are so engaged with the world, we usually forget how fragile life can be and how vulnerable we always are. It takes only a couple of seconds for a life to change irreversibly. Suddenly you stand on completely strange ground and a new course of life has to be embraced. Especially at such times we desperately need blessing and protection. You look back at the life you have lived up to a few hours before, and it suddenly seems so far away. Think for a moment how, across the world, someone’s life has just changed – irrevocably, permanently, and not necessarily for the better – and everything that was once so steady, so reliable, must now find a new way of unfolding.

Though we know one another’s names and recognize one another’s faces, we never know what destiny shapes each life. The script of individual destiny is secret; it is hidden behind and beneath the sequence of happenings that is continually unfolding for us. Each life is a mystery that is never finally available to the mind’s light or questions. That we are here is a huge affirmation; somehow life needed us and wanted us to be. To sense and trust this primeval acceptance can open a vast spring of trust within the heart. It can free us into a natural courage that casts out fear and opens up our lives to become voyages of discovery, creativity, and compassion. No threshold need be a threat, but rather an invitation and a promise.

Whatever comes, the great sacrament of life will remain faithful to us, blessing us always with visible signs of invisible grace. We merely need to trust.

ON SOWING & PLANTING

Although nature has proven season in and season out that if the thing that is planted bears at all, it will yield more of itself, there are those who seem certain that if they plant tomato seeds, at harvesttime they can reap onions.
Too many times for comfort I have expected to reap good when I know I have sown evil. My lame excuse is that I have not always known that actions can only reproduce themselves, or rather, I have not always allowed myself to be aware of that knowledge. Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies.
Of course, there is no absolute assurance that those things I plant will always fall upon arable land and will take root and grow, nor can I know if another cultivator did not leave contrary seeds before I arrived. I do know, however, that if I leave little to chance, if I am careful about the kinds of seeds I plant, about their potency and nature, I can, within reason, trust my expectations. — Maya Angelou

It is memory that provides the heart with impetus, fuels the brain, and propels the corn plant from seed to fruit. — Joy Harjo

There are two kinds of compassion. The first comes from a natural concern for friends and family who are close to us. This has limited range but can be the seed for something bigger. We can also learn to extend a genuine concern for others’ well-being, whoever they are. That is real compassion, and only human beings are capable of developing it. — Dalai Lama

Everything we do seeds the future. No action is an empty one. — Joan D. Chittister

Whether we have happiness or not depends on the seeds in our consciousness. If our seeds of compassion, understanding, and love are strong, those qualities will be able to manifest in us. If the seeds of anger, hostility and sadness in us are strong, then we will experience much suffering. To understand someone, we have to be aware of the quality of the seeds in his consciousness. And we need to remember that his is not solely responsible for those seeds. His ancestors, parents, and society are co-responsible for the quality of the seeds in his consciousness. When we understand this, we are able to feel compassion for that person. With understanding and love, we will know how to water our own beautiful seeds and those of others, and we will recognize seeds of suffering and find ways to transform them. — Thich Nhat Hanh

ON SPIRITUAL SOIL

… our capacity to listen, to be plowed up by what we hear so that we can nurture the seeds of divinity when we encounter them. If we resist being unsettled and loosened and turned into good soil, then the religiosity that has gotten us this far will begin to slip away. We will abandon the spiritual life and say that it was doing nothing for us.  But if we accept our discomfort and truly listen with open ears, even knowing that what we hear might change and disrupt us, we will begin to grow, and find our capacity to see and hear expanding day by day. — Karl Stevens, article: https://dsobeloved.org/luke-81-25-being-the-good-soil/

Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it gems of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love. — Thomas Merton

We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way—centred on money or pleasure or ambition—and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown. — CS Lewis

 

Reflections on love, themes from 1 Corinthians 13: 1-3

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , ,
I looked in temples, churches, and mosques. But I found the Divine within my heart. ― Rumi
This is our great covenant: To dwell together in peace,
To seek the truth in love, And to help one another.
— James Vila Blake

Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Songs about Sacred Love:

Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?
… Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal:
it has no interest in a disloyal companion.
The human being resembles a tree; its root is a covenant with God:
that root must be cherished with all one’s might.
A weak covenant is a rotten root, without grace or fruit.
Though the boughs and leaves of the date palm are green,
greenness brings no benefit if the root is corrupt.
If a branch is without green leaves, yet has a good root,
a hundred leaves will put forth their hands in the end.
— Rumi

A SERMON on LOVE by Nadia Bolz-Weber (Excerpt – full article: https://www.patheos.com/resources/additional-resources/2010/02/sermon-on-love?p=2)

…  the really amazing thing about 1 Corinthians 13 is that even hundreds of thousands of schlocky wedding and inspirational posters and bad Christian coffee mugs can’t kill it.  Paul’s hymn to Love is perhaps one of the most recognizable texts in the New Testament.  And it is really beautiful… but it has just about nothing to do with romance.

To be sure, the subject of love is a tricky one.  I think because we so often are loved poorly, loved incompletely, loved conditionally.  The subject of love is a tricky one because we so often love poorly, incompletely, and conditionally.  And, forgive the pop psychology, but my theory is that when we are loved so poorly we begin, on some level, to assume that we are maybe undeserving of being loved well.  And from this state of being loved poorly, feeling undeserving, and then loving poorly in return — which, let’s face it, is the foundation of Oprah’s and Dr. Phil’s entire empires — we do some stuff that’s… unhelpful.

…. Richard Rohr has a way of assessing our spiritual health… namely what do we do with pain?  Do we transmit it or do we transform it?  Because the mirror in which we might see ourselves as God sees us gets dimmer and dimmer when the pain of being human is transmitted to us and not transformed.  As our own sin and brokenness begins to be a lens through which we view ourselves and others, the mirror grows dimmer. And then the pain of not knowing who we really are becomes transmitted through all the things Paul describes: arrogance, impatience, unkindness, envy, selfishness.

It can be a desperate cycle based on something as simple as the truth my mother once spoke: “Honey, bullies just bully out of their own hurt inside as though they have to spread it.” But this is true of so many things when we think about it.  And I think what Paul was saying to his little church plant gone bad was: stop hurting each other.  Stop transmitting your hurt and sin.  Because from that state of being loved poorly, feeling undeserving, and then loving poorly in return, we do some stuff that’s… unhelpful.

This letter to the church in Corinth ..  told them who they were not by telling them about history or biology or sociology, but by telling them about love. Not the emotion of Love. Not the sentiment of Love. Not the romance of Love. Because honestly, I have yet to see a Hallmark card with I love you so much that I will endure you. Or, My love for you bears all your things.  But Paul writes of Love as origin.  Love as source.  Love as God, and God as Love.  This Love has really nothing to do with feeling nice.  It’s actually not about feelings at all, it’s about truth.  It’s about the truth of who we are through the eyes of a God who knows us fully.

This love described by Paul isn’t mushy and sentimental.  It’s tough and unwilling to yield. This love — which is patient and kind and isn’t rude or boastful and is self-giving and all that — here’s what is scary about this kind of love:  you can’t manipulate it.  There is no amount of weight loss, piety, personality management, big smiles, or strained pretense that can effect this love.  And maybe in the absence of manipulation we stand bare before the eyes of God. This love is found in the gaze of God as God looks upon us naked and whole. Because this type of love is characterized by the giver not the receiver.  Gone are the strivings and manipulations and efforts to make ourselves more lovable.  In the face-to-face Gaze of the beloved we are known because we are loved.  We aren’t loved because we are known — that leads again to trying to gussy ourselves up to be lovable.

We are known by God because we are loved by God.  Think about that.  The truth of who we were before any pain and hurt was transmitted to us by those who are hurt and in pain…before we forgot our song… we were loved.  Paul says, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.”  For now we manipulate our selves and our image and our loved ones and see only dimly.  Now we gaze in the mirror and see only part of who we are and even then the image is reversed.  But we have the promise that in the fullness of time we will see face to face with God.  Because, Paul writes, “Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

The truth of who you are is found in the eyes of God, not the eyes of the world.  It is the love of God who created this world and called it Good. It is the love of a God who brought the Israelites out of slavery, who fed Ruth and Naomi, who walked among us as Jesus of Nazareth, it is the love of the God who knit you together in your mother’s womb that gets to tell you who you are.  Nothing else. Not the media, not a family who wishes you were different, and not even yourself.  Only the God who knows and loves you fully can tell you who you are. And this is true of everyone, the good the bad and the boring.

In the movie Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean offered pastoral care to a despicable murderer.  He was an unrepentant, wretched man.  Yet her faith in a loving God allowed her, moments before his execution, to say to him, “I want the last face you see in this world to be the face of love, so you look at me when they do this thing. I’ll be the face of love for you.”

I think Paul might be telling us to be the face of love for each other.  When we know that we are loved by God in the fullness of God’s knowledge of us we are free to live in this love.  Free to transmit the love of Christ in a hurting world.  Free to see ourselves and others as God sees us. Not because we are good, but because we are loved.  And seeing just a glimpse, wanting it, moving toward it, brings us closer to what is promised to us forever: that we will see God, who is love, face to face.

GIVING Out of LOVE, GIVING Out of GUILT — Rachel Held Evans (full article: https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/giving-guilt)

I realized that I was giving out of guilt, not love.  And according to Paul, even the greatest, most dramatic acts of charity will leave me feeling empty if I do them out of self-interest (easing my conscience) rather than out of love (easing other people’s burdens).

[Note that Paul says that, “I gain nothing.” For a kid in desperate need of clean water, a well is a well—regardless of whether a donor gave out of love or guilt. I firmly believe that giving out of guilt is better than not giving at all, and that sometimes our acts of faithfulness must precede (or do without) our pure motives.]

…A few things have come to mind:

  • First of all, I’ve got to stop measuring the amount of love in my life by the amount of money/publicity I give to my favorite non-profit organizations. The truth is, it’s easier for me to love people I have never met (kids with AIDS in Africa) than it is to love people I have met (that hard-core conservative down the street who always gives me flack about my politics).  It’s easier for me to have compassion on the widows I spent a week with in India than the women I see every day. It’s easier for me to say I am intellectually committed to Jesus’ teaching that we are to love our enemies than it is for me to let go of the bitterness I carry around from people who have wronged me.  In other words, if I have no compassion for my friends and neighbors, what I give to strangers is just charity—not love.  But if I can become more patient, kind, understanding, forgiving and compassionate toward those around me, what I give to those in far away places will come from the overflow of love already in my heart.
  • Secondly, I’ve got to stop looking at the “poor and needy” as mere objects of my charity and actually form interdependent relationships with the people around me—where I am a part of their community and they are a part of my community.  It’s so much harder, yet so much more authentic and rewarding, to give to people I know than it is to give to people I keep at arm’s length. It’s even harder (for me) to make it reciprocal, to accept their help and friendship in return. My pride likes to keep me in the position of giving rather than receiving.
  • Finally, my favorite trick for easing my conscience is to judge people who don’t give as much or care as much as I do. But this is not love. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.  The best way to inspire others to give more is not to tell them to give more, but to live as an example—without judgment, without pride, without envy, without (gulp) cynicism.  (Looks like I’m going to have to meditate on this passage a bit more!)

ON SACRED LOVE (AGAPE)

There is sweet family love, entangled by history, need, frustration and annoyance. There is community love, a love of music, Zorba’s reckless love of life. It can be vital or serene. There’s the ecstatic love — for the natural world, or in bed — there’s the love of justice or the radical transforming love of what we might call Goodness, Gus (Great Universal Spirit), or God. — Anne Lamott

Let your goal not be to be the first or the best. Let your goal be to be the peace, love, and light of the Divine.― Hiral Nagda

This fire that we call Loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls. ― Aberjhani

For love is a celestial harmony
Of likely hearts compos’d of stars’ concent,
Which join together in sweet sympathy,
To work each other’s joy and true content,
Which they have harbour’d since their first descent
Out of their heavenly bowers, where they did see
And know each other here belov’d to be.”
― Edmund Spenser

I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love. — William Blake

Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love? — Fulton J. Sheen

There are no galley-slaves in the royal vessel of divine love – every man works his oar voluntarily! — St. Francis de Sales

Agape love is selfless love . . . the love God wants us to have isn’t just an emotion but a conscious act of the will—a deliberate decision on our part to put others ahead of ourselves. This is the kind of love God has for us. — Billy Graham

Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re worthy. Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love. Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re beautiful. Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful. — Rob Bell

Agape is disinterested love. Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes.
Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both. — Martin Luther King Jr.

MEDITATIONS on SEEDS & PARABLES

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
From a small seed a mighty trunk may grow. —Aeschylus

The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is, and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God. — Meister Echkhart

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. — Napoleon Hill
God does not only sow his seed in good soil. He loves us with such abandon that he scatters that love far and wide. He does not want to miss the chance of reaching even one lost soul. And in these times, the thorns and weeds, may be the very thing that brings us back to a deeper relationship with God. —Kate Nicholsan
SONGS about SEEDS

In Case of Complete Reversal
— Kay Ryan
Born into each seed
is a small anti-seed
useful in case of some
complete reversal:
a tiny but powerful
kit for adapting it
to the unimaginable.
If we could crack the
fineness of the shell
we’d see the
bundled minuses
stacked as in a safe,
ready for use
if things don’t
go well.

SMALL & MIGHTY

So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself. — Florence Nightingale

I have a mustard seed; and I am not afraid to use it. — Pope Benedict XVI

A man of words and not of deeds, Is like a garden full of weeds. ― Benjamin Franklin

No faith is required to do the possible; actually only a morsel of this atom-powered stuff is needed to do the impossible, for a piece as large as a mustard seed will do more than we have ever dreamed of. — Leonard Ravenhill

The strongest and most mysterious weeds often have things to teach us. ― F.T. McKinstry

But what attracted me to weeds was not their beauty, but their resilience. I mean, despite being so widely despised, so unloved, killed with every chance we get, they are so pervasive, so seemingly invincible. ― Carol Vorvain

Man gains wider dominion by his intellect than by his right arm. The mustard-seed of thought is a pregnant treasury of vast results. Like the germ in the Egyptian tombs its vitality never perishes; and its fruit will spring up after it has been buried for long ages. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The Seed Market — Rumi

Can you find another market like this?
Where,
with your one rose
you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?
Where,
for one seed
get a whole wilderness?
For one weak breath,
a divine wind?
You’ve been fearful
of being absorbed in the ground,
or drawn up by the air.
Now, your waterbead lets go
and drops into the ocean,
where it came from.
It no longer has the form it had,
but it’s still water
The essence is the same.
This giving up is not a repenting.
It’s a deep honoring of yourself.
When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
marry at once, quickly,
for God’s sake!
Don’t postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.
No amount of searching
will find this.
A perfect falcon, for no reason
has landed on your shoulder,
and become yours.

SEED COMMENTARY

They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. — Frederick Buechner

But a closer reading of the text offers some help – and forgive me for talking about grammar in a sermon, but in Greek there is a “future conditional clause”: If you were to have the faith of a mustard seed — implying that you don’t have that faith now (which is how I always heard it).
But there is also an “according to present reality conditional clause” in Greek: in which case Jesus response to the disciples changes to: if you have the faith of a mustard seed (and you do) —implying that they ALREADY have enough faith.
So here in Luke Jesus isn’t actually scolding them for not having even the tiniest amount of faith – instead when they ask him to increase their faith he’s basically rejecting the premise of their request.
In essence, he seems to imply that what they need isn’t  more faith,
What they need to realize is that the thing they already have IS faith.
It’s like Jesus is saying how much faith do you have? and I’m like I don’t know Jesus, it’s not very much it’s like barely any and Jesus is saying “perfect!” — Nadia Bolz-Weber, full reflection: https://thecorners.substack.com/p/its-a-low-bar-thank-god

The Kingdom is like a tiny mustard seed, Jesus said, that grows into an enormous tree with branches wide and strong enough to make a home for all the birds. It is like a buried treasure, a delicious feast, or a net that catches an abundance of fish. The Kingdom is right here, Jesus said. It is present and yet hidden, immanent yet transcendent. The Kingdom isn’t some far off place you go where you die, the Kingdom is at hand—among us and beyond us, now and not-yet. It is the wheat growing in the midst of weeds, the yeast working its magic in the dough, the pearl germinating in a sepulchral shell. It can come and go in the twinkling of an eye, Jesus said. So pay attention; don’t miss it.  — Rachel Held Evans

Seeds are powerful. They operate in our culture and in our psyche on a literal and metaphorical level like nothing else. They are possibility incarnate – a tiny gift package wrapped in a protective outer layer with infinite potential to sprout, grow, and produce more seeds while providing food and shelter to humans and animals alike. Joan Chittister writes, “In every seed lie the components of all life the world has known from all time to now.”
Our ancestors have been saving, selecting, and planting seeds for thousands of years, which is largely why we are here today. It is an essential part of the human discipline. — Farmer Kyle of Bellwether Farm

COMMENTARY on SOWING SEEDS on DIFFERENT SOIL

Maybe the point of this parable isn’t judgement at all, maybe it’s joy. Since again and again in the midst of this thorny and rocky and good world, God still is sowing a life-giving Word. Just wantonly and indiscriminately scattering it everywhere like God doesn’t understand our rules.
Which would also mean that the thing we call the Word is not something relegated to religious institutions and ordained clergy and the piety police. The thing we call the Word isn’t locked up in some spiritual ivory tower. I am persuaded that the Word of the Lord is anything that brings good news to the poor, and comfort to those who mourn. Whatever heals the brokenhearted. Whatever opens prisons.
The Word is whatever brings freedom to slaves. Whatever brings freedom to former slaves. Whatever brings freedom to the descendants of former slaves. The Word is whatever liberates a nation from the spiritual bondage of human bondage.
And God’s Word is scattered all around us… joyfully scrawled on protest signs and heard in newborns’ cries, and seen in city streets and county fairs and shopping malls.  The Word of the Lord is written on the broken tablets of our hearts, it is falling like rain in the tears of the forgiven, it is harnessed in the laughter of our children. —Nadia Bolz-Weber, full reflection: https://thecorners.substack.com/p/gods-wastefulness

If we want to return our hardened paths to their natural condition so grass and flowers and trees can grow, they have to be plowed up, the soil aerated, new seeds planted and the rain and the sun allowed to do their work without force or interference. That’s what listening to the word of God does for hearts trampled down by the back-and-forth of busyness and that are hardened by the heat of over-exposure. — Kenrt from cslewisfoundation, full reflection: https://www.cslewis.org/blog/january-13-2014/

 

Reflecting on holistic choices: freedom, slavery, and fruits of the spirit from Paul’s letter to Galatians.

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Adult, Justice & Activism, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Allegories of slavery & freedom in sacred texts: liberating or problematic?

At the end of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. alludes to the apostle Paul’s words in Galatians 3:28: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”. — Biblical Archeology Review

Prejudice, discrimination, resentment and violence are enemies that never die. Every generation must redream the dream to overcome these destructive forces. — Bill Tinsley

Community of the Spirit— Rumi

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.
Open your hands
if you want to be held.
Consider what you have been doing.
Why do you stay
with such a mean-spirited and dangerous partner?
For the security of having food.
Admit it.
Here is a better arrangement.
Give up this life,
and get a hundred new lives.
Sit down in this circle.
Quit acting like a wolf,
and feel the shepherd’s love filling you.
At night, your beloved wanders.
Do not take painkillers.
Tonight, no consolations.
And do not eat.
Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.
You moan,
But she left me.
He left me.
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought.
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down
in always widening rings of being.

To the Holy Spirit — Wendell Berry

O Thou, far off and here,
 whole and broken,
Who in necessity and bounty wait,
Whose truth is light and dark,
 mute though spoken,
By Thy wide grace show me
 Thy narrow gate.

Songs about Spirit (many cultural references, including Holy Spirit):

Learn more about Paul’s Letter to the Galatians:

Questions to consider:

  • What do you need to be freed from? What do you desire to be freed for?
  • Can you recall or focus on a moment when you have experienced liberation? What parts of yourself were affected: body, mind, spirit, emotions? What led to your experience of freedom?
  • If you could be a “new creation” … what would you imagine or claim for your transformed identity?
  • Which aspects of unhealthy living do you most struggle to bring back into balance? What does your spending tell you about which parts of your life may be out of balance? Galatians suggest some problem areas such as: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy,[drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.
  • What fruits of the spirit do you already have? Which fruits of the spirit do you need or want more fully in your life? Galatians identifies them as: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

NOTES on SLAVERY: Then and Now

  • Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true. — Nikole Hannah-Jones
  • Fellow Citizens … The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men … The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. — Frederick Douglass (full article on Douglass’ historic Independence Day Address)
  • Not only does birthright citizenship bestow upon us a privileged status that we haven’t earned; our nation’s unparalleled wealth and power, as well as our actual borders, lack a sturdy moral foundation. But for slavery, genocide and colonization, we would not be the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world — in fact, our nation would not even exist. This is not hyperbole; it’s history. — Michelle Alexander, None of Us Deserve Citizenship
  • … it feels to me like the urgency of the history of this struggle, of a struggle for genuine racial justice and equality in this country feels more alive right now, has more bite and teeth to it than it probably has in my lifetime. — Chris Hayes, Why Is This Happening?
  • Hundreds of thousands of Africans, both free and enslaved, aided the establishment and survival of colonies in the Americas and the New World. — History’s Slavery in America
  • However, many consider a significant starting point to slavery in America to be 1619 … some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million enslaved people were imported to the New World. — History’s Slavery in America
  • Slavery itself was never widespread in the North, though many of the region’s businessmen grew rich on the slave trade and investments in southern plantations. — History’s Slavery in America
  • They were statesmen, patriots and heroes … I will unite with you to honor their memory … Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? … Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. … The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. … You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. — Frederick Douglass (full article on Douglass’ historic Independence Day Address)
  • And the thing about the history of all of this … it gets very sanitized. And the reason I think it gets sanitized is there is a kind of apology that is draped over all about it. Which is that, “Yes, it was bad back then, but they didn’t really know any better.” Do people feel like that was the message they got? Not that it was okay, right? But, they were creatures of their times. — Chris Hayes Why Is This Happening?
  • Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the enslaved population in the U.S. nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South. — History’s Slavery in America
  • I think white Americans woke up … to the America that black folks have always lived in … “Oh, this isn’t the country I thought it was …” So there is this desire, I think, to excavate our history to understand how we got here … And when you studied history, then suddenly the architecture of the inequality is revealed, and it’s calming because then you say, “Oh, so this does actually make sense, but not for the reasons that we’re told.” And I think that is a similar thing that is now happening to white Americans and other nonblack Americans. — Nikole Hannah-Jones, Why Is This Happening?
  • Since 2010, when I published “The New Jim Crow” — which argued that a system of legal discrimination and segregation had been born again in this country because of the war on drugs and mass incarceration — there have been significant changes to drug policy, sentencing and re-entry … initiatives aimed at eliminating barriers … for formerly incarcerated people. — Michelle Alexander, The Newest Jim Crow. Full article.
  • … hopefully we can now see that Jim Crow was a less restrictive form of racial and social control, not a real alternative to racial caste systems. Similarly, if the goal is to end mass incarceration and mass criminalization, digital prisons are not an answer. They’re just another way of posing the question. — Michelle Alexander, The Newest Jim Crow. Full article.
  • Black people remain the most segregated people in America in every aspect of American life, we remain on the bottom of every social indicator of well being, us and Native Americans, the two groups who didn’t choose to be part of America. But other groups are clearly more fluid, right? The historian who wrote, “How the Irish Became White” died today, and he talks about how whiteness is fluid. How people who were Irish, who were Jewish, who were Italian, or Greek were at one time not considered white and then they became white, certain Latino groups are considered white. Even Asian Americans who, in the 1800s, were classified as not being able to be assimilated just like black people, often the laws were against black and Mongoloids, but now are considered a model minority … — Nikole Hannah-Jones Why Is This Happening?
  • Of course, it can be argued that virtually all modern nation-states were created through violence, exploitation and war. But we claim to be unlike most nation-states; indeed, we insist that we’re “exceptional.” We are the only nation that advertises itself as “a nation of immigrants” and the “land of the free”  …  our nation was birthed by a Declaration of Independence, a document that insists that “all men are created equal” with “certain inalienable rights” including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” After centuries of struggle, including a Civil War, we now claim to understand that all people — not just propertied white men — are created equal with basic, inalienable human rights …  Even if we’re tempted to treat as irrelevant the circumstances of our nation’s founding, we cannot ignore the fact that our recent and current foreign policies, trade agreements and military adventures — including our global drug wars — have greatly contributed to the immigration crisis that our nation is now trying to solve through border walls and mass deportation. … challenging us to see immigrants not only as fully human, created equal, with certain inalienable rights but also morally entitled to far greater care, compassion and concern than we have managed to muster to date. — Michelle Alexander, None of Us Deserve Citizenship
  • Fortunately, a growing number of advocates are organizing to ensure that important reforms, such as ending cash bail, are not replaced with systems that view poor people and people of color as little more than commodities to be bought, sold, evaluated and managed for profit … If our goal is not a better system of mass criminalization, but instead the creation of safe, caring, thriving communities, then we ought to be heavily investing in quality schools, job creation, drug treatment and mental health care in the least advantaged communities rather than pouring billions into their high-tech management and control.— Michelle Alexander, The Newest Jim Crow. Full article.
  • The deeper question raised … how we ought to manage immigration in a manner that honors the dignity, humanity and legitimate interests of all concerned … Reaching for a radically more humane immigration system … does require a certain measure of humility on the part of those of us who have benefited from birthright citizenship. Rather than viewing immigrants as seeking something that we, Americans, have a moral right to withhold from them, we ought to begin by acknowledging that none of us who were born here did anything to deserve our citizenship, and yet all of us — no matter where we were born — deserve compassion and basic human rights. … our relationship to those who are fleeing poverty and violence is morally complex … — Michelle Alexander, None of Us Deserve Citizenship
  • Worldwide contemporary [21stc] slavery … refers to institutional slavery that continues to occur in present-day society. It can also be called forced labor and human trafficking. According to the International Labour Organization, a UN organization, an estimated 40.3 million people are in modern slavery, including 24.9 million in forced labor and 15.4 million in forced marriage. 1 in 4 of these people are children. Of those trapped in forced labor, 16 million people are exploited in the private sector such as domestic work, construction or agriculture; 4.8 million persons in forced sexual exploitation, and 4 million persons in forced labour imposed by state authorities. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by forced labour, accounting for 99% of victims in the commercial sex industry, and 58% in other sectors. — ilo.org

On Fruits of the Spirit

Fruit is always the miraculous, the created; it is never the result of willing, but always a growth. The fruit of the Spirit is a gift of God, and only He can produce it. They who bear it know as little about it as the tree knows of its fruit. They know only the power of Him on whom their life depends — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The fruit of the Spirit is fundamentally relational. Rather than originating with us, it flows to us from our union with Christ, and it flows beyond us to bring us into fellowship with others. The secret of this flow – and our unity with God and others – is humility. — Jerry Bridges

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human. — Henri Nouwen No one ever said the fruit of the Spirit is relevance or impact or even revival. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—the sort of stuff that, let’s face it, doesn’t always sell. — Rachel Held Evans

Jesus offered the world full and final participation in his own very holistic teaching. Jesus spoke of true union at all levels: with oneself, with the neighbor, with the outsider, with the enemy, with nature, and—through all of these—with the Divine. … The spiritual question is this: Does one’s life give any evidence of an encounter with God? Does this encounter bring about in you any of the things that Paul describes as the “fruits” of the spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22)? Are you different from your surroundings, or do you reflect the predictable cultural values and biases of your group? — Richard Rohr

There is a great deal we never think of calling religion that is still fruit unto God, and garnered by Him in the harvest. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, patience, goodness. I affirm that if these fruits are found in any form, whether you show your patience as a woman nursing a fretful child, or as a man attending to the vexing detail of a business, or as a physician following the dark mazes of sickness, or as a mechanic fitting the joints and valves of a locomotive; being honest true besides, you bring forth truth unto God. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton Already the new [people] men are dotted here and there all over the earth. Some, as I have admitted, are still hardly recognizable: but others can be recognized. Every now and then one meets them. Their very voices and faces are different from ours; stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off. They are, I say, recognizable; but you must know what to look for. They will not be very like the idea of “religious people” which you have formed from your general reading. They do not draw attention to themselves. You tend to think that you are being kind to them when they are really being kind to you. They love you more than other [people] men do, but they need you less … They will usually seem to have a lot of time: you will wonder where it comes from. When you have recognized one of them, you will recognize the next one much more easily. And I strongly suspect (but how should I know?) that they recognize one another immediately and infallibly, across every barrier of color, sex, class, age, and even of creeds. – C.S. Lewis

About “there is no longer slave or free” from Galatians

Our relation to God is not a ‘religious’ relationship to the highest, most powerful, and best Being imaginable, but our relation to God is a new life in ‘existence for others’ … — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing, Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last. — Martin Luther King

The inclusive vision incarnated in Jesus’ table fellowship is reflected in the shape of the Jesus movement itself. It was an inclusive movement, negating the boundaries of the purity system. — Marcus Borg

And in the Jesus business there is not male or female, jew or greek, slave or free, gay or straight, there is only one category of people: children of God. Which means nobody gets to be special and everybody gets to be loved.— Nadia Bolz-Weber

I believe patriarchy is a result of sin, and that followers of Jesus are to be champions of equality. I believe it is our calling, as imitators of Christ, to reflect God’s new vision for the world, initiated through Jesus Christ,  in which there is no hierarchy or power struggle between slave and free, Jew and Greek, male and female, for all are one in the family of God (Galatians 3:28) — Rachel Held Evans

So why does Paul put exactly these categories together? The three pairs that Paul includes in this verse all played a role in first-century conceptions of what an ideal world would look like. When imagining ideal or utopian communities, Paul’s contemporaries picture different peoples living together in one homogeneous group under one law—without ethnic distinction. They also imagine societies where people are not divided into households and families, but all live as “brothers,” as equals. Such communities could reject property, slavery, and marriage, since in the minds of first-century philosophers, doing away with possessions, slaves, and wives meant removing the major causes of social conflict. When Paul sums up the community of those who live “in Christ,” he uses categories that reflect such first-century ideals. — Karin Neutel

We also have been baptized in the one Spirit. But we are no freer than were the ancient Galatians from the bred-in-the-bone rivalry and competitiveness that can express itself religiously in any number of ways. Essential to the process of transformation in Christ is to see the ways in which we individually and communally fail to live out the spirit of love that fulfills the law of Christ. — Luke Timothy Johnson

RESOURCES:

  • Why Is This Happening? Examining slavery’s legacy — Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ibram X. Kendi with Chris Hayes (excerpt). Full article. Together they examine the 400 year legacy of slavery in America.
  • The Newest Jim Crow — Michelle Alexander: Full article.
  • None of Us Deserved Citizenship — Michelle Alexander: Full article
  • Slavery in America by History
  • 1619 Project — Nikole Hannah-Jones
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