Eyes washed with grace

The house is quiet still and the day is ahead, full of demands and projects and people.  There is a long list of those suffering and in pain today in my heart.  May the baptism of a new day's light wash each of us with grace.


Breathing in these words from Celtic Benedictions, ed. by Philip Newell.


Show to me this day
amist life's dark streaks of wrong and suffering
the light that endures in every person.
Dispel the confusions that cling close to my soul
that I may see with eyes washed by grace
that I may see myself and all people
with eyes cleansed by the freshness of the new day's light.

Prayer of Oscar Romero

At the end of every year, the Prayer of Oscar Romero comes to mind for those of us who minister and work as teachers, pastors, mentors, and spiritual friends of all kinds. 

It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Returning home, opening the door again

The words "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it" from Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing echo in my ears after the song concludes--because they speak to my condition as a lifelong Christ follower (and I expect to most of us).  We are a wandering, disconnecting, wrestling, forgetting, changing people.

This has been a hard semester for me--a combination of physical (1st trimester pregnancy!), a little burn-out, a bunch of overschedule, and some significant waves of ministry/work crisis beyond my control.
Stir that in with a dash of the despair of feeling like a "professional" Christian and you can tell it's the end of April. In just a week or so the semester is over and the space to go deep and listen will return, slowly.

Nouwen's words speak to me often and today this is the passage that I came across:





My life drifts away from God.
I have to return.
My heart moves away from my first love.
I have to return. 
I realize the importance of returning over and over gain.

He goes on to say that the prodigal child didn't return because of a renewed love for his father. "No, he returned simply to survive....I am moved that the father didn't require any higher motivation...This is a very encouraging thought. God does not require a pure heart before embracing us."  (from The Only Necessary Thing, pg. 72-73).


For those of us followers who keep wandering and returning, what words of invitation to us--God our Mother, God our Father continues to embrace us in whatever we condition we return.

If we are in survival mode, we are embraced.
If we are in the midst of sin, we are embraced.
If we come out of desperation and not faith, we are embraced.


God's love does not require any expectations about why we are returning.

Wholeness not Shame

In Matthew 5, we are called to be perfect as our Heavenly Parent is perfect.

A better, more full translation is to be whole, as our Heavenly Parent is whole.

The word perfect comes from the Latin that means to do thoroughly.

In this section of scripture, Jesus is teaching us how to be congruent: for our inner and outer lives to be integrated.   We are called to be thoroughly integrated.  This is maturity, completion, "perfection": wholeness.  So much of our time is lost on managing our spiritual shame that we are not perfect.

Spiritual shame seeps into hearts like cancer, growing wildly and consuming us from the inside out.  Spiritual shame constantly undermines the work of the Spirit by trying to convince us that our weakness is a sign of cowardice and our vulnerability a sign of failure.  Instead, weakness and vulnerability is place in which we encounter God: it's the place of catalyst in us where incongruency, sin, and pain is transformed.  Spiritual shame tells us we aren't good enough and that we must do more and try harder.  The Spirit of God invites us to embrace our weakness and vulnerability as our need for God: and this is always our beginning point.  It is our daily beginning point.

Wholeness is the journey of becoming more human, not to become divine.  Jesus did not call us to turn into gods, but into humans--consecrated to God, abandoned to the Divine and Holy Spirit.

"We human beings are to be human--to be perfectly human, not indefectible or impeccable or faultless or superhuman, but complete, right with integrity undivided".  --Madeleine L'Engle

Today, I find myself weak and vulnerable (like most days).  I can think of a list of imperfections a mile long.  But, oh, the grace of releasing the Strive for Perfection and embracing the Peace of Wholeness.  Our weakness is a catalyst of wholeness and transformation in our lives.  I begin here: weak and in need of God, being made whole.

Thirsting for Friendship

Thirsting for Friendship:

Gorgeous piece with Jean Vanier reflecting on his difficult and beautiful relationship with Henri Nouwen.  For all of us who long for real, deep friendship...even when one of us is needy and demanding.

A Candle

I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.

I have no love
except that it come from Thee.

Help me, please, to carry
this candle against the wind.

--Wendell Berry, from Leavings

Nouwen + evangelism

A growing intimacy with God deepens our sense of responsibility for others.  It evokes in us an always increasing desire to bring the whole world with all its suffering and pains around the divine fire in our heart and to share the revitalizing heat with all who want to come.
--The Only Necessary Thing, p. 62

Evangelism: the place of intimacy with God in me, in you, that draws others to the warmth of soul and compassion that welcomes them into the heart of God.

Jean Vanier on powerlessness

 Today, contemplating this piece on Jean Vanier on Powerlessness.  Chris Heuertz writes about it on the Q ideas blog--:read, listen, contemplate.


Jean Vanier:  "I am not all powerful.  I am God. I need community. I need church. I need Jesus.  I need an experience of vulnerability....the last thing people want is to touch our weaknesses....to help people to become conscious that I need help, I am fragile...yet I am beautiful..."

We are weak. Broken.
We need God.  The greatness of humanity is that we are programmed to grow and programmed to become weaker.  As we become conscious that we are fragile, we are able to embrace our deepest humanity...that our fragility is a gift.

Trust the path

You may be interested in my post on Trust the Path on my other blog.  It's about the journey of discerning versus worrying...and the practice of walking a labyrinth.

The pursuit of happiness [read: grief]

 

We want to be happy.  All the time.  Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is as about as American as you can get.  It's deeper than American, it's human.  Humans seek happiness.

I find great happiness in experiencing beauty--a waterfall, a perfect front porch, deep red cherries on the cherry tree in our yard, the ancient look in a newborn's eye--beauty draws me to a deeper soul dimension.  It roots me in what is good, and true, and whole. Happiness for me is about living well with grace, loving the people in my path with my whole heart, seeking justice with open eyes and breaking heart, and finding the Holy Spirit in unexpected and expected places.  I am deeply happy when I am connected to people, living from my heart, and being part of the movement of God in small ways.

This kind of happiness is born not from the pursuit of happiness, but out of the pursuit of grief.

 Real happiness is paradoxically not in the "pursuit of happiness".  It is in the pursuit of grief.  A very unAmerican thing, but full of the Spirit.

In the spiritual life, we learn quickly that the path to happiness is not, always or even often, easy. Nor is the path to happiness forged from carefree living.  Real happiness is forged from grief.

The greatest gifts the Spirit gives us is the gift of repentance. To repent--to turn away--to change directions--is not something that we do in and of ourselves, it is a gift of God.  The apostle Peter speaks strong words in front of the high priests in the temple. The high priests were the people in charge of the whole repentance situation.  And here, in front of them, Peter announces that Jesus who they killed by hanging on a tree, God gives Israel (and all of us) forgiveness of sin (Acts 5:31). God gives us the gift of repentance.  It is the best gift God can give.  The gift of repentance through Jesus Christ is such a powerful, uncontrollable gift that it continues to be revolutionary.  Religious power structures have tried to control it, charge for it, and own it--but it is a gift, freely given, never to be governed by human powers.

The grief of recognizing that we have not embraced the Goodness in us, but instead turned from it and chosen Self is the beginning of Real Happiness.

In 2 Cor. 7:10, Paul tells us that "godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret...". And in Romans 2:4 we learn that it is God's kindness that leads us to repentance.

When the pursuit of grief--or the recognition of finiteness of life, the reality of our choosing Self over Others, the knowledge of loss as part of life, and the understanding that we cannot save our selves--becomes the pathway that we walk, it leads us to happiness.

Repentance leads us to happiness.  It orients our heart with the center on God, not on our Self.  And this all-defining change, changes everything about how we see the world.

Repentance is the beginning of and the daily way to live in the world.  When we live in this place of grief, we find happiness.  

Or happiness finds us.  We no longer need certain things to make us happy, happiness finds us, surrounding us, naming us, creating us.  Not because we pursued it, but because we pursued the grief that we have come to the end of ourselves and need God.