Meditations on bearing each other’s burdens: themes from Galatians 6
Have you heard the phrase, “Share the load?” This week’s themes from Galatians reflect being in community by recognizing each other’s challenges and issues, and finding ways to work on them together. Link to scripture: Galatians 6: 1-10. — Rev Gail |
You live in me; I live in you. — Richard Rohr
Questions to consider:
- Whose burdens do you already help to share?
- When do you feel overwhelmed by serving and giving of yourself, and do you take time for self-care?
- What does self-care look like for you?
- How is your community part of your self-care?
- Do you feel responsible to solve all of the problems about which you are aware, or can you prioritize, and give your time and energy to specific concerns or causes that kindle a passion in you?
- Who has helped you to carry a burden?
Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together — surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power. We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. Rich nation-states will have to share their wealth with poor ones. But the choice, as H. G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing. ― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Call Me by My True Names (excerpt)
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Call me by my true names
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes,
arrives in time to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
… My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom
in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
Bearing One Another’s Burdens
Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can. — John Wesley
Love is the bridge between you and everything. — Rumi
Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious. ― Ruth Reichl
When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death. ― Clarence Darrow
Judaism … For us, faith is the redemption of solitude. It is about relationships – between us and God, us and our family, us and our neighbours, us and our people, us and humankind. Judaism is not about the lonely soul. It is about the bonds that bind us to one another and to the Author of all. It is, in the highest sense, about friendship. — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
As we continue our earthly journey, if we learn to bear each other’s burdens and to exchange the rich patrimony of our respective traditions, we will see more clearly that what unites us is greater than what divides us. — Pope Francis
I know that part of the mixed blessing of getting older is that you have lost somebody. You’ve lost more than one person maybe and you get that message that life is really short and to be here for it. And second of all, you’re seeing people who were given such an excruciating burden to bear and they did it, and they did it with a lot of support, and they did it one day at a time, and they did it against all odds and they came through. And there are certain losses you never get over, of course, but they’re not broken bones anymore. There are things that are going to make you limp for the rest of your life, but they’re weight bearing again. And when you’ve seen that up close, when you’ve seen people come through, it just changes everything you know about life. — Anne Lamott
He [author of Galatians] speaks to the plural, the Us of the community. A community which does not give up to self-indulgence reaps a good harvest. That community cannot depend on the efforts of a few; the community as a whole needs to use its freedom well. — Andrew Prior
And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to humankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. And I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. […] and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we aren’t moving wrong when we do it, because … God is love. — Martin Luther King
What I love about the ministry of Jesus is that he identified the poor as blessed and the rich as needy … and then he went and ministered to them both. This, I think, is the difference between charity and justice. Justice means moving beyond the dichotomy between those who need and those who supply and confronting the frightening and beautiful reality that we desperately need one another. ― Rachel Held Evans
When we do good for someone else a strange thing happens. We help someone thinking we are doing something for them, but in the practice of it we find that we are the one who is blessed. When we extend our heart to someone else, it is our heart that is filled. — Church for All People
Now human beings can begin to revel in what is meant by growing to full stature as a responsible and participative spiritual adult whose work on the planet really, really matters. Life, suddenly, is more a blessing both to the universe and to the self than it is simply a test of a person’s moral limits. To be alive, to be a person in the process of becoming, it becomes clear, is a blessing, not a bane. We are, alone and together, significant actors in the nature of life and the strengthening of the fibers of humankind. — Joan Chittister
You (and every other created thing) begin with your unique divine DNA, an inner destiny as it were, an absolute core that knows the truth about you, a true believer tucked away in the cellar of your being, an imago Dei that begs to be allowed, to be fulfilled, and to show itself. … This is your True Self. Historically, it was often called “the soul.” … Every Sacrament, every Bible story, every church service, every sermon, every hymn, every bit of priesthood, ministry, or liturgy is for one purpose: to allow you to experience your True Self—who you are in God and who God is in you—and to live a generous life from that Infinite Source. — Richard Rohr
I think we would have to agree that there is something built into the very nature of a life of sacrificial love, a life of bearing one another’s burdens, a life of loving your neighbor as yourself that is “wearying.” You give and give and give some more, and never really know if any of what you’re giving is doing any good at all! But Paul recommends that we take a longer look when we find ourselves getting discouraged. We need to look at things from a broader perspective when we feel that our work is insignificant. In a very real sense, our “bigger” perspective of the vastness of the universe and our place in it needs the “broader” perspective of the Kingdom of God that continues to grow and produce fruit until the final harvest day. — Alan Brehm
Emptiness and compassion go hand in hand. Compassion as transaction—me over here, being compassionate to you over there—is simply too clunky and difficult. If I am going to be responsible to receive your suffering and do something about it, and if I am going to make this kind of compassion the cornerstone of my religious life, I will soon be exhausted. But if I see the boundarylessness of me and you, and recognize that my suffering and your suffering are one suffering, and that that suffering is empty of any separation, weightiness, or ultimate tragedy, then I can do it. I can be boundlessly compassionate and loving, without limit. To be sure, living this teaching takes time and effort, and maybe we never entirely arrive at it. But it’s a joyful, heartfelt path worth treading. — Thich Nhat Hanh
The Bridge
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o’er the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.
I saw her bright reflection
In the waters under me,
Like a golden goblet falling
And sinking into the sea.
And far in the hazy distance
Of that lovely night in June,
The blaze of the flaming furnace
Gleamed redder than the moon.
Among the long, black rafters
The wavering shadows lay,
And the current that came from the ocean
Seemed to lift and bear them away;
As, sweeping and eddying through them,
Rose the belated tide,
And, streaming into the moonlight,
The seaweed floated wide.
And like those waters rushing
Among the wooden piers,
A flood of thoughts came o’er me
That filled my eyes with tears.
How often, O, how often,
In the days that had gone by,
I had stood on that bridge at midnight
And gazed on that wave and sky!
How often, O, how often,
I had wished that the ebbing tide
Would bear me away on its bosom
O’er the ocean wild and wide!
For my heart was hot and restless,
And my life was full of care,
And the burden laid upon me
Seemed greater than I could bear.
But now it has fallen from me,
It is buried in the sea;
And only the sorrow of others
Throws its shadow over me.
Yet whenever I cross the river
On its bridge with wooden piers,
Like the odor of brine from the ocean
Comes the thought of other years.
And I think how many thousands
Of care-encumbered men,
Each bearing his burden of sorrow,
Have crossed the bridge since then.
I see the long procession
Still passing to and fro,
The young heart hot and restless,
And the old subdued and slow!
And forever and forever,
As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
As long as life has woes;
The moon and its broken reflection
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven,
And its wavering image here.
Where Will I Find You
— Yehudah Halevi,
translated by Peter Cole
Where, Lord, will I find you:
your place is high and obscured.
And where won’t I find you:
your glory fills the world.
You dwell deep within—
you’ve fixed the ends of creation.
You stand, a tower for the near,
refuge to those far off.
You’ve lain above the Ark, here,
yet live in the highest heavens.
Exalted among your hosts,
although beyond their hymns—
no heavenly sphere could ever contain you,
let alone a chamber within.
In being borne above them
on an exalted throne,
you are closer to them
than their breath and skin.
Their mouths bear witness for them,
that you alone gave them form.
Your kingdom’s burden is theirs;
who wouldn’t fear you?
And who could fail to search for you—
who sends down food when it is due?
I sought your nearness.
With all my heart I called you.
And in my going out to meet you,
I found you coming toward me,
as in the wonders of your might
and holy works I saw you.
Who would say he hasn’t seen
your glory as the heavens’
hordes declare their awe of you
without a sound being heard?
But could the Lord, in truth,
dwell in men on earth?
How would men you made from the dust and clay
fathom your presence there,
enthroned upon their praise?
The creatures hovering over the world
praise your wonders—
your throne borne high above their heads,
as you bear all forever.
Reflections on eating with ‘the other’ – themes from Acts 11
With whom do you most want to sit down and share a meal? And with whom would you prefer not to eat? What do you experience when you eat with ‘others’ … with strangers or people considered ‘unacceptable’ … until love recognizes them? What do you receive and what do you give away? — Rev Gail
Bowls of Food (excerpt) — Rumi
Moon and evening star
do their slow tambourine dance
to praise this universe.
The purpose of every gathering is discovered:
to recognize beauty and love what’s beautiful.
“Once it was like that, now it’s like this,”
the saying goes around town,
and serious consequences too. …
Go outside to the orchard.
These visitors came a long way,
past all the houses of the zodiac,
learning something new at each stop.
And they’re here for such a short time,
sitting at these tables set on the prow of the wind.
Bowls of food are brought out as answers,
but still no one knows the answer.
Food for the soul stays secret.
Body food gets put out in the open like us.
Those who work at a bakery don’t know the taste of bread
like the hungry beggars do.
Because the beloved wants to know,
unseen things become manifest …
Invite a few friends and perhaps even strangers to join you in sharing a feast of love. You might prepare a simple meal or invite each person to bring a dish. The focus is not on the food itself, but the act of sharing that food in the presence of each other. Eat mindfully, slowly, with plenty of time for conversation, listening, and laughter. You might also sing songs or read poetry of gratitude or talk about how you are experiencing God in your lives. However you practice an agape feast, let it flow as naturally as your very hunger and fulfillment. Be aware of God’s presence within each person and be thankful for the food that makes life possible and the love that makes life meaningful. — Richard Rohr
Eating Together: Acts of Community
We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink. To eat and drink without a friend is to devour like the lion and the wolf. ― Epicurus
Cumulatively, the work of food memoirists, bloggers, investigative journalists, chefs, and film makers have made it increasingly obvious for the average American that food is a practical means through which we may interpret our world, and that it is loaded with meaning. — Cecily Hill
A successful dinner is one that lasts a while and one where everyone leaves happy. It’s a meal where we didn’t just wolf food down, rather something else happened at the table. That is the goal. — Laurie David
… in the midst of grief, all anyone can really do is be with us and make some casseroles. See my wounds. I’m here. Don’t be afraid. Let’s eat. And this is what we get to do for each other, as well. This is what we get to do for the world God loves so madly. — Nadia Bolz-Weber
Sharing a meal together is not just to sustain our bodies and celebrate life’s wonders, but also to experience freedom, joy, and the happiness of brotherhood and sisterhood, during the whole time of eating. — Thich Nhat Hanh
Jesus’ most consistent social action was eating in new ways and with new people, encountering those who were oppressed or excluded from the system. A great number of Jesus’ healings and exorcisms take place while he’s entering or leaving a house for a meal. In the process he redefines power and the kingdom of God. — Richard Rohr
From an evolutionary anthropology perspective, eating together has a long, primal tradition as a kind of social glue. That seems to continue in today’s workplaces. — Kevin Kniffin, Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management
In a big transient city … most people rent, and renting often sees a high turnover of faces, places and neighbourhoods which means that despite best efforts, it is sometimes hard to connect with the community. We all know the benefits of a strong community and friendly neighbourhood but often we don’t know how to engage or start the conversation, There’s something about the act of eating with someone, I think you can get past that basic conversation because you’re doing some kind of activity — cooking, drinking or preparing food — that allows people to open up a little more. — Bethany Jones
Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody. — Samuel Pepys
Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon. — Dalai Lama
Americans are just beginning to regard food the way the French always have. Dinner is not what you do in the evening before something else. Dinner is the evening. — Art Buchwald
Dinners are defined as the ultimate act of communion; men that can have communion in nothing else, can sympathetically eat together, can still rise into some glow of brotherhood over food and wine. — Thomas Carlyle
The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling … — Judith Martin
Rules about food consumption are an important means through which humans construct reality. They are an allegory of social concerns, a way in which people give order to the physical, social, and symbolic world around them. — Carole Counihan
Being Present to the Other
If [we are] to survive, [we] will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between [us] and between cultures. [We] will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear. — Gene Roddenberry
[The one] who is different from me does not impoverish me – [but] enriches me. Our unity is constituted in something higher than ourselves – in [humankind] … For no [one] seeks to hear [one’s] own echo, or to find [one’s] reflection in the glass. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I remember one night at Muzdalifa with nothing but the sky overhead I
lay awake amid sleeping Muslim brothers and I learned that pilgrims from
every land–every color, and class, and rank; high officials and the
beggar alike–all snored in the same language. — Malcolm X
It is never too late to give up your prejudices. — Henry David Thoreau
Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it’s up to you to know with which ear you’ll listen. — Ray Bradbury
Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged. — Rumi
Plum Village ‘Eating Together’ —Thich Nhat Hanh
Eating a meal together is a meditative practice. We should try to offer
our presence for every meal. As we serve our food we can already begin
practicing. Serving ourselves, we realize that many elements, such as
the rain, sunshine, earth, air and love, have all come together to form
this wonderful meal. In fact, through this food we see that the entire
universe is supporting our existence.
We are aware of the whole sangha as we serve ourselves and we should
take an amount of food that is good for us. Before eating, the bell will
be invited for three sounds and we can enjoy breathing in and out while
practicing the five contemplations.
- This food is a gift of the earth, the sky, numerous living beings, and much hard and loving work.
- May we eat with mindfulness and gratitude so as to be worthy to receive this food.
- May we recognise and transform unwholesome mental formations, especially our greed and learn to eat with moderation
- May we keep our compassion alive by eating in such a way that reduces the suffering of living beings, stops contributing to climate change, and heals and preserves our precious planet.
- We accept this food so that we may nurture our brotherhood and sisterhood, build our Sangha, and nourish our ideal of serving all living beings.
Reflections on prodigal love: themes from parable in Luke 15
When is love prodigal? When is it wasteful and exuberant to offer compassion and welcome though it may not be merited or appreciated? Some early theologians so feared this parable of prodigal love, that they decided it shouldn’t be told or taught … it offered a model that overturned good sense and economical, societal order. When have you been prodigal and excessive in your love? And would you do it again? When have you received such impractical generosity of heart? — Rev Gail
Song: Prodigal by Sidewalk Prophets
The Prodigal Son (excerpt) — Spencer Reece
For a decade I did not speak to my parents.
Are you listening to me? I will not bore you with details.
Instead, I will tell you something new. Listen to me.
I was angry. But the reasons no longer interest me.
I take the liberty of assuming you approve of forgiveness
… we discuss blessings, absolutions, consecrations—our work of the soul.
… Mother and father, forgive me my absence.
I will always be moving quietly toward you.
Blessing that Waits to Come to Your Aid — Jan Richardson
When I have become / so reliant on myself
that I cannot see / the need that gnaws / so deep / in my soul,
open my eyes, open my heart, open my mouth
to cry out / for the help
that you do not ration, the deliverance
that you delight to offer / in glad and / generous measure.
Poem (excerpt) — Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
… You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
Prodigal Love: Extravagant Welcome & Unearned Grace
We’re all being loved in spite of ourselves. — Richard Rohr
I now see that the hands that forgive, console, heal, and offer a festive meal must become my own. ― Henri Nouwen, Return of the Prodigal Son
The pattern of the prodigal is: rebellion, ruin, repentance, reconciliation, restoration. — Edwin Louis Cole
We are so afraid of letting people off the hook. We are so resentful of unearned love. Unless we happen to be the ones toward whom the father is running, with his arms wide open and tears wetting his beard. — Barbara Brown Taylor
The story of the Prodigal Son is a story about hearts: selfish hearts and generous hearts, closed hearts and open hearts, cold hearts and warm hearts, broken hearts and joyful hearts, unrepentant hearts and repentant hearts, unforgiving hearts and forgiving hearts, resentful hearts and grateful hearts. It reveals so much about the vagaries of the human heart. When all is said and done it is the heart that matters. … The heart is what I am deep down. It is the real me. Darkness of heart is the blackest night of all. Emptiness of heart is the greatest poverty of all. A heavy heart is the most wearisome burden of all. A broken heart is the deepest wound of all. But the parable reveals how steadfast is the heart of God. — Flor McCarthy
The eyes of mercy are quicker than the eyes of repentance. Even the eyes of our faith are dim compared with the eye of God’s love. … It means much love truly felt; for God never gives an expression of love without feeling it in His infinite heart. — Charles Spurgeon
The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?” The question is not “How am I to know God?” but “How am I to let myself be known by God?” And, finally, the question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” ― Henri Nouwen
Prodigal Child
… the prodigal figure is at work in us when we go racing through the candy store of life, unaware of the price of the going and comingor the cost. We are takers who gather everything we can to ourselves, or squander it or do nothing, and then discover that life demands back everything it gives in ways we never dreamed. — Joan Chittister
In relation to my practice, I am the prodigal son when I live in forgetfulness and self-centeredness. When I hurry … because I am attached to my agenda, I waste the precious gift of life in the present moment. When I come back to my breath, I seek the peace of mindfulness … — Mark LeMay, from Mindfulness Bell published by Plum Village (Thich Nhat Hanh’s Buddhist Sangha)
And, like the prodigal son, he had returned broken in body and also in mind to the house where he had been born … ― Catherine Cookson
The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate. A fine example was the Prodigal Son — when he started back home. ― O. Henry, The Green Door
The back door beckons to a prodigal son. ― Michael Davidow
It was his home now. But it could not be his home till he had gone from it and returned to it. ― G.K. Chesterton
… and it was the son’s new revelation of his poverty of heart that propelled him back into his Father’s arms. ― Tommy Tenney
But at least you and I have this in common: I know what it’s like to hunger. To hunger for love, for depth, for passion, for joy. And I know what it’s like to imagine an exotic Elsewhere, a more perfect nourishment miles away from my Father’s all-too-familiar table. I know what it’s like to “come to myself” in the broken, impoverished places of my own foolish fashioning, and to long for the warmth and sustenance of a home. — Debie Thomas
Once a person learns to read the signs of love and thus to believe it, love leads him into the open field wherein he himself can love. If the prodigal son had not believed that the father’s love was already waiting for him, he would not have been able to make the journey home – even if his father’s love welcomes him in a way he never would have dreamed of. ― Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible
So when I reject my identity as beloved child of God and turn to my own plans of self-satisfaction, or I despair that I haven’t managed to be a good enough person, I again see our divine Parent running toward me uninterested in what I’ve done or not done, who covers me in divine love and I melt into something new like having again been moved from death to life and I reconcile aspects of myself and I reconcile to others around me. — Nadia Bolz-Weber
Offering Exuberant Love: Prodigal Parent
Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope. — John Ciardi
But the real Prodigal in this story is your Father, is he not? Over-the-top, undignified, and hair-raising in his love? — Debie Thomas
You never depart from us, but yet, only with difficulties do we return to You. ― Saint Augustine, Confessions
This father is not content to have one child without the other; he advocates for and seeks out both. — Barbara Brown Taylor
When the prodigal son returned … The father accepts his son with loving-kindness and rejoices at his return. He greets the prodigal son warmly and rejoices at his return. The father’s response is a model for how I can treat myself when I stray from the path of mindfulness … I try not to cling to or repress my shame and anger. I notice these feelings and return to my breath. My feelings cannot be removed with aggression. I recognize them as part of the fold, and each time I return to the path, I say to myself (paraphrasing Thay), “I have arrived; welcome home.” — Mark LeMay, Mindfulness Bell published by Plum Village (Thich Nhat Hanh’s Buddhist Sangha)
… let us remember that God is the prodigal Father, who refuses to give us the love we deserve, but instead who gives the love we need. … who waits patiently for His lost children to return. When He sees us from a long way off, He runs to welcome us. … feels our absence … steps outside to be with us, and waits patiently for our response. — Barbara Brown Taylor
The father wants not only his young person back, but his elder son as well … The father … wants both to participate in his joy … Thus the father’s unreserved, unlimited love is offered wholly and equally. He does not compare the two sons. He expresses complete love according to their individual Journeys. — Henri Nouwen
… your relationship to God is simply not defined by your really bad decisions or your squandering of resources. But also your relationship to God is not determined by your virtue. It is not determined by being nice, or being good … Your relationship to God is simply determined by the wastefully extravagant love of God. A God who takes no account of risk but runs toward you no matter what saying all that is mine is yours. — Nadia Bolz-Weber
Older Child: The One Who Stayed Home, Yet Was Also Lost
… But here’s your vindication: the power in this story is yours … Your Father stands in the doorway, awaiting your company. You get to write his ending. What will you do, as the music grows sweeter? What will we choose, you and I? — Debie Thomas
There are many elder sons and elder daughters who are lost while still at home.― Henri Nouwen
The fatted calf, the best Scotch, the hoedown could all have been his too, any time he asked for them except that he never thought to ask for them because he was too busy trying cheerlessly and religiously to earn them. ― Frederick Buechner
The older son squandered his freedom by not thinking he had any. He didn’t believe that all that was the Father’s was his. He squandered the gifts of the Father by living a life of mirthless duty. And coming home from the field he hears the party underway and resents such a lavish show of love thinking it a limited resource. He was being a complete ass and yet again, the Father comes to him reminding him of the great love he has for his child. — Nadia Bolz-Weber
The third character, the elder son, remained faithful to his father while his younger brother squandered his inheritance. … The story does not explore the elder son’s feelings, aside from his anger. I can easily imagine him also feeling resentful, wounded, and suspicious. These feelings are familiar, for I have held them toward others and towards myself … I wake up to the suffering caused when I stray from mindfulness, I feel critical and suspicious of myself … I sometimes feel the sting of shame … I feel both the guilt of the prodigal son, and the angry suspicion of the elder brother toward myself … Each time I catch myself living in forgetfulness and feel the prodigal son and his brother in my heart, I try to remember the father. — Mark LeMay, Mindfulness Bell published by Plum Village (Thich Nhat Hanh’s Buddhist Sangha)
Reflections on being curious and asking questions … the experience of the holy season of Lent.
In the holy season of Lent, we are called to the spiritual discipline of preparation. Some part of this is the practice of curiosity and questioning. Entering Lent is wandering into the metaphorical ‘wilderness’ … where everything is primal and makes a difference and you’re likely to be at risk and to get lost … it’s about life and death, about getting down to core values. From that deep place arises the deep questions, the underlying ‘why’ that shapes how we live. So Lent is about living close to the wellspring of creativity and tension, beyond the context that usually makes us comfortable, safe, and secure. Paying attention to Lent becomes an invitation to go into an emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual place where we have permission to wonder and doubt and explore and grow. — Rev Gail (with credit to Rev Sean Dunker-Bendigo of Madison Church for the inspiration to approach Lent as a series of questions)
Music Video Link: Question by the Moody Blues
Be present.
Make love. Make tea.
Avoid small talk. Embrace conversation.
Buy a plant, water it.
Make your bed. Make someone else’s bed.
Have a smart mouth and a quick wit.
Run. Make art. Create.
Swim in the ocean. Swim in the rain.
Take chances. Ask questions.
Make mistakes. Learn.
Know your worth.
Love fiercely. Forgive quickly.
Let go of what doesn’t make your happy.
Grow.
— Paulo Coelho
On Asking Questions: Being Curious
Always the beautiful answer / who asks a more beautiful question. —e.e. Cummings
Be curious. — Stephen Hawking
Don’t be afraid to look again at everything you’ve ever believed … I believe the more we search, the more we delve into the human teachings about the nature and God of life, which are in fact are the teachings of all the great religions traditions, the closer we come to a mature understanding of the Godself … In other words, doubt, questions, drive us to look at how we ourselves need to grow in wisdom, age and grace. The courage to face questions is the first step in that process. — Joan Chittister
Instead of anxiety about chasing a passion that you’re not even feeling, do something a lot simpler: Just follow your curiosity. — Elizabeth Gilbert
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea. — John Anthony Ciardi
Curiosity isn’t the icing on the cake. It’s the cake itself. — Susan Engel
We live in the world our questions create. — David Cooperrider
The role of the artist is to ask questions, not to answer them. — Anton Chekhov
I was looking for myself and asking everyone but myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. — Ralph Ellison
Ever since I was a little girl and could barely talk, the word ‘why’ has lived and grown along with me… When I got older, I noticed that not all questions can be asked and that many whys can never be answered. As a result, I tried to work things out for myself by mulling over my own questions. And I came to the important discovery that questions which you either can’t or shouldn’t ask in public, or questions which you can’t put into words, can easily be solved in your own head. So the word ‘why’ not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good. — Anne Frank
Judge a man by his questions, rather than his answers. — Voltaire
How do I create something out of nothing? How do I create my own life? I think it is by questioning. — Amy Tan
My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, “So? Did you learn anything today?” But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “did you ask a good question today?” That difference—asking good questions—made me become a scientist. — Isidor Isaac Rabi
On Lent: Surrendering Ourselves
The reality is that I cannot free myself from the bondage of self. I
cannot keep from being turned in on self. I cannot by my own
understanding or effort disentangle myself from my self interest and
when I think that I can …I am trying to do what is only God’s to do. To
me, there is actually great hope in admitting my mortality and
brokenness because then I finally lay aside my sin management program
and allow God to be God for me. Which is all any of us really need when
it comes down to it … — Nadia Bolz-Weber
… another Lenten season, a time of lengthening days…not just in hours
but in slowness, in taking time to linger over our spiritual lives, over
our identity as a people of faith, over the texts that form us and the
quiet places in which God speaks to us, still. — Kathryn M. Matthews
The big rub is that to surrender my “singularity” (John 12:24) and fall
into this “altogether new creation” will always feel like dying. How
could it not? It is a dying of the self that we thought we were, but it
is the only self that we knew until then. It will indeed be a
“revolution of the mind” (Ephesians 4:23). Heart and body will soon
follow. This is the real “try harder” that applies to Lent, and its
ultimate irony is that it is not a trying at all, but an ultimate
surrendering, dying, and foundational letting go. You will not do it
yourself, but it will be done unto you (Luke 1:38) by the events of your
life. Such deep allowing is the most humiliating, sacrificial, and
daily kind of trying! Pep talks seldom get you there, but the suffering
of life and love itself will always get you there. Lent is just
magnified and intensified life. — Richard Rohr
I think it is good news–because even if no one ever wants to go there,
and even if those of us who end up there want out again as soon as
possible, the wilderness is still one of the most reality-based,
spirit-filled, life-changing places a person can be … What did that
long, famishing stretch in the wilderness do to him? It freed him–from
all devilish attempts to distract him from his true purpose, from
hungry craving for things with no power to give him life, from any
illusion he might have had that God would make his choices for him. …
But it would be a mistake for me to try to describe your wilderness
exam. Only you can do that, because only you know what devils have your
number, and what kinds of bribes they use to get you to pick up. All I
know for sure is that a voluntary trip to the desert this Lent is a
great way to practice getting free of those devils for life–not only
because it is where you lose your appetite for things that cannot save
you, but also because it is where you learn to trust the Spirit that led
you there to lead you out again, ready to worship the Lord your God and
serve no other all the days of your life. — Barbara Brown Taylor
But the historic practices of Lent are Christian. There are three of
them: praying, fasting, almsgiving. These are three things that
Christians should consider doing all the time, but the 46 days of Lent
provide us with an explicit invitation to do them more intentionally. I
say an invitation, because we don’t have to do them, not during Lent,
not ever. … I am going to make an unabashed case for Lent, myself. …
Lent is a chance to uncork the bottle, to unclog our spirits from what
is stifling them, to sample the mystery. It is a chance to own that we
do not wholly own ourselves, but acknowledge that God has a claim over
us. We work so hard for radical equality in our lives—for equal
marriage, equal pay for equal work, an end to bigotry of all
varieties—and we sometimes delude ourselves, as religious people, that
radical equality extends to our relationship with God … Taking on a
Lenten discipline means surrendering to a higher power, it means placing
ourselves under God’s authority and protection. But here’s the rub: to
place ourselves under God’s authority is a reminder that we are under no
other authority, or at least that all those other authorities are less
than God’s. The church, the state, our remote fathers, our overbearing
mothers, our inept boss who gets paid more than we do, our snarky
coworkers, the popular crowd, the opposing football team, the opposing
political party, Al Qaeda, alcohol, fried foods, chocolate, caffeine,
porn, late-night cable. Whatever our addictions, whatever our
self-medication devices, whatever our overlords of fear and control,
none can match the power of God our Father and Mother, if we choose God
as our God. To claim that we are in a direct relationship with our
Creator, to join with that Creator and Sustainer in an act of
self-disciplining, is an act of resistance. It’s a boycott of all that
is body-wounding and soul-killing. It is a radical re-ordering of our
priorities, and a reclamation of our God-given will and strength … …
What might you do, this Lent, to rend your heart, to give God an
opening? What might you do to make God-shaped space within your heart, a
space that will invite you to call on the name of God more frequently,
to share the experience of your brother Jesus in the wilderness, to
uncork the Spirit and let it flow freely, to release yourself from rage
or addiction or the tyranny of lesser gods? What can you give up, or
take on, as an act of resistance against the authorities that don’t
deserve any claim over you? — Molly Phinney Baskette
Reflection on thin places, climbing & coming down from summits, and transfiguration (themes from Luke)
One way or another, we find ourselves standing in the presence of holiness. In thin places … sometimes beautiful, stunning, awe-inspiring … sometimes terrible and life-changing. Thin places are locations or experiences, in the world, when heaven touches earth. They are places and times in which we cannot stay or linger or make our homes … because they exist as both ephemeral and eternal. In such places and times, what will we leave behind? And what will we bring with us back into our daily living? — Rev Gail
That when glory shines,
we will bring it back with us
all the way, all the way, all the way down. — Jan Richardson
On Thin Places, High Places
Thin places are transparent places or moments, set apart by the quality
of the sunlight in them, or the shadows, or the silence, or the
sounds—see how many variations there are? What they have in common is
their luminosity, the way they light an opening between this world and
another … It works to make you more aware of the thin veil between
apparent reality and deeper reality. It works to pull aside the veil for
just a moment, so you can see through. Sometimes I know I’m in a thin
place because it feels like the floor just dropped two or three levels
beneath my feet and set me down in a deeper place. They can open up just
about anywhere … But thin places aren’t always lovely places, and
they’re not always outdoors. Hospital rooms can be thin places. So can
emergency rooms and jail cells. A thin place is any place that drops you
down to where you know you’re in the presence of the Really Real—the
Most Real—God, if you insist. — Barbara Brown Taylor
To put it simply: the Holy Spirit bothers us … moves us … makes us
walk … And we are like Peter at the Transfiguration: ‘Ah, how
wonderful it is to be here like this, all together!’ … But don’t
bother us. We want the Holy Spirit to doze off … we want to
domesticate the Holy Spirit. And that’s no good. because he is God, he
is that wind which comes and goes and you don’t know where. He is the
power of God, he is the one who gives us consolation and strength to
move forward. But: to move forward! And this bothers us. It’s so much
nicer to be comfortable. ― Pope Francis, Encountering Truth: Meeting God in the Everyday
On Climbing & Coming Down Again
I truly believe that there is no greater metaphor for life than climbing mountains. The mountains have a way of stripping the mind down to its basic senses and forcing us to live in the moment. In order to do this we must respect everything around us and maintain balance. If you guys truly value your lives, then you must live them to the fullest. We have planned this trip for quite some time and have known from the beginning that it would be dangerous. To turn back now is useless. To turn back in the face of a fierce storm or worsening conditions is obvious. We must expect the worst and hope for the best. If we do not summit because we make the decision to turn back, then we will have learned yet another lesson. If we do not summit because we did not try, then we will learn nothing. I hope we all realize that if we believe mountaineering is about getting to the top of mountains, then we are treading a path of foolery. Mountaineering is about everything BUT getting to the top. It is about teamwork, courage, fortitude, good decision making, determination, etc. Getting to the top is merely the culmination of effort and circumstance. — Mountaineer, not attributed.
We should refuse none of the thousands and one joys that the mountains offer us at every turn. We should brush nothing aside, set no restrictions. We should experience hunger and thirst, be able to go fast, but also to go slowly and to contemplate. — Gaston Rébuffat
Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end. — Edward Whymper, Scrambles Amongst the Alps
The aim of the mountaineer, if he wishes to be an artist in the full sense of word, is neither escape nor “the search for the absolute” as some have claimed, but rather seek that place where “the mystic remains silent and the poets start to speak towards men”. — Bernard Amy
The … trend in mountaineers is not the risk they take, but the large degree to which they value life. They are not crazy because they don’t dare, they’re crazy because they do. — Lisa Morgan
Just a reminder – a guidebook is no substitute for skill, experience, judgement and lots of tension. — Charlie Fowler
It’s a round trip. Getting to the summit is optional, getting down is mandatory. — Ed Viesturs
Definition: Alpinism is the art of going through the mountains confronting the greatest dangers with the biggest of cares. What we call art here, is the application of a knowledge to an action. — René Daumal
As I hammered in the last bolt and staggered over the rim, it was not at all clear to me who was the conqueror and who was the conquered. I do recall that El Cap seemed to be in much better condition than I was. — Warren Harding
Trying to connect to the moment, that move, that breath – this is what I have been striving for; finding the oneness that can exist with all the things around and inside me. — Ron Kauk
Relaxation, acceptance, and keeping open mind are key. … If I can’t do a move I merely accept that I haven’t discovered the right sequence… I will try to do it … different ways … until I find something that does work. That’s what I mean by keeping an open mind. — Lynn Hill
If there’s only one thing I would like to say, this is: enjoy the process. Don’t worry about the result. Climbing must be fun. — Marc Le Menestrel
In the Presence of Holiness
What can we say beyond “Wow”, in the presence of glorious art, in music so magnificent that it can’t have originated solely on this side of things? Wonder takes our breath away, and makes room for new breath. — Anne Lamott
Love enables us to see things that those who are without love cannot see. — Thich Nhat Hanh
An awake heart is like a sky that pours light. — Hafiz
We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. — Thomas Merton
Show us the glory in the grey. — George MacLeod
I understood that I was being shown the future: shards of what would come to be. Often, I cried out for the pain of it. But other times, I was comforted, because I saw, for an instant, the pattern of the whole. — Geraldine Brooks, The Secret Chord
…he
liked his transcendence out in plain sight where he could keep an eye
on it — say, in a nice stained-glass window — not woven through the
fabric of life like gold threads through a brocade. — Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God. — Irenaeus
Fortunately,
the Bible I set out to learn and love rewarded me with another way of
approaching God, a way that trusts the union of spirit and flesh as much
as it trusts the world to be a place of encounter with God. — Barbara Brown Taylor
Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its
fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is
there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by
the right word, by its right name, it will come. — Franz Kafka
It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor
gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance–for a moment or a year
or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to
look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or
light….Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like
transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little
willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? — Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
And these Things, which live by perishing,
know you are praising them; transient,
they look to us for deliverance: us, the most transient of all.
They want us to change them, utterly, in our invisible heart,
within – oh endlessly – within us! Whoever we may be at last.
Earth, isn’t this what you want: to arise within us,
invisible? Isn’t it your dream
to be wholly invisible someday?
― Rainer Maria Rilke
Commentary on the Transfiguration: Ascending and Coming Down Again
If the great spiritual journey is to have any meaning whatsoever in our
times, we, you and I, too, will have to wade into the throngs of hurting
people on every plain of this planet, listening, listening, listening
to the prophet Jesus, and exposing to people the underlying causes of
all the wounding in this world and healing what we touch. — Joan Chittister
A transfiguration, a morphing, a realization had to take place, even in
Jesus, before he became the Anointed One in which everything else
cohered and held together (see Colossians, Ephesians, and the prologue
to John’s Gospel). The resurrected Jesus is the Christ. The Risen Christ
is Jesus but also bigger and beyond Jesus’ individual form and lifetime
… But it is one universe and all within it is transmuted and
transformed by the glory of God. The whole point of the Incarnation and
Risen Body is that the Christ is here—and always was! But now we have a
story that allows us to imagine it just might be true. Jesus didn’t go
anywhere. He became the universal omnipresent Body of Christ. That’s why
the final book of the Bible promises us a new heaven and a new earth.
(Revelation 21:1), not an escape from earth. We focused on “going” to
heaven instead of living on earth as Jesus did—which makes heaven and
earth one. It is heaven all the way to heaven. What you choose now is
exactly what you choose to be forever. God will not disappoint you. — Richard Rohr
The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with
feeling; a beauty different from the beauty of landscape and the cold
perfect form. This is a beauty that has suffered its way through the
ache of desolation until the words or music emerged to equal the hunger
and desperation at its heart. It must also be said that not all
woundedness succeeds in finding its way through to beauty of form. Most
woundedness remains hidden, lost inside forgotten silence. Indeed, in
every life there is some wound that continues to weep secretly, even
after years of attempted healing. Where woundedness can be refined into
beauty a wonderful transfiguration takes place. ― John O’Donohue
The new heavens and the new earth are not replacements for the old ones;
they are transfigurations of them. The redeemed order is not the
created order forsaken; it is the created order – all of it – raised and
glorified. ― Robert Farrar Capon