Hopespace

Rejoice in Grace!

This week began like any other week:  I woke up on Monday morning, checked e-mail, made coffee, started working in my office.  As the week progressed it has gradually become more cumbersome and irritating.  My mother-in-law calls it the "woodpecker syndrome":  The woodpecker taps and pecks at the tree until there is a whole! Yes, at least the woodpecker is looking for food.  Our lives are filled with moments, events, circumstances which constantly tap and peck at us.  Sometimes we cannot take it and other times we patiently bear it.  Yet, still, everyone has their limit.  Today I reached my limit.  Had it not been for God's grace and the wonderful people in my life I will be sulking right now.  Instead I am rejoicing.  I am rejoicing for the miracles of everyday, for the miracles of tomorrow and for the miracles of the future.   Catherine of Siena wrote, "Be happy.  Be content -- always, everywhere, in all circumstances -- because every circumstance is a gift of love for you from the Eternal Father.  That's why God wants us to rejoice in every one of our troubles, and to praise and give glory to His name -- yes, in everything -- because God loves you with a forever kind of love."  I am rejoicing in the miracle of God's love for me, for you, for the whole creation.

The Rabbi's Gift

There is a story that I love by William White (Stories For The Journey: A Sourcebook for Christian Storytellers): The Rabbi's Gift. It is a powerful testimony of how God is able to pick up the ruined pieces of our lives and make them whole again in the power of the Risen Christ. Enjoy the story.

A famous monastery had fallen on hard times. Formerly its many buildings were filled with young monks, but now it was all but deserted. People no longer came there to be nourished by prayer, and only a handful of old monks shuffled through the cloisters serving God with heavy hearts.

On the edge of the monastery woods, an old rabbi had built a little hut. He would come there, from time to time, to fast and pray. No one ever spoke with him, but whenever he appeared, the word would be passed from monk to monk: 'The rabbi walks in the woods.' And, for as long as he was there, the monks would feel sustained by his prayerful presence.

One day the abbot decided to visit the rabbi and open his heavy heart to him. So, after the morning Eucharist, he set out through the woods. As he approached the hut, the abbot saw the rabbi standing in the doorway, as if he had been awaiting the abbot's arrival, his arms outstretched in welcome.

They embraced like long-lost brothers. The two entered the hut where, in the middle of the room, stood a wooden table with the scriptures open on it. They sat for a moment in the presence of the Book.

Then the rabbi began to weep. The abbot could not contain himself. He covered his face with his hands and began to cry too. For the first time in his life, he cried his heart out. The two men sat there like lost children, filling the hut with their shared pain and tears. But soon the tears ceased and all was quiet. The rabbi lifted his head. 'You and your brothers are serving God with heavy hearts,' he said. 'You have come to ask a teaching of me. I will give you a teaching, but you can repeat it only once. After that, no one must ever say it aloud again.'

The rabbi looked straight at the abbot and said, 'The Messiah is among you.'

For a while, all was silent. The rabbi said, 'Now you must go.' The abbot left without a word and without ever looking back. The next morning, the abbot called his monks together in the chapter room. He told them he had received a teaching from the 'rabbi who walks in the woods' and that the teaching was never again to be spoken aloud.

Then he looked at the group of assembled brothers and said, 'The rabbi said that one of us is the Messiah.' The monks were startled by this saying. 'What could it mean?' they asked themselves. 'Is Brother John the Messiah? Or Brother Matthew or Brother Thomas? Am I the Messiah? What could all this mean?' They were all deeply puzzled by the rabbi's teaching, but no one ever mentioned it again.

As time went by, the monks began to treat one another with a new and very special reverence. A gentle, warm-hearted, concern began to grow among them which was hard to describe but easy to notice. They began to live with each other as people who had finally found the special something they were looking for, yet they prayer the Scriptures together as people who were always looking for something else.

When visitors came to the monastery they found themselves deeply moved by the life of these monks. Word spread, and before long people were coming from far and wide to be nourished by the prayer life of the monks and to experience the loving reverence in which they held each other. Soon, other young men were asking, once again, to become a part of the community, and the community grew and prospered.

In those days, the rabbi no longer walked in the woods. His hut had fallen into ruins. Yet somehow, the old monks who had taken his teaching to heart still felt sustained by his wise and prayerful presence.

Fair Weather Friend

There is a song titled Fair Weather Friend by Eden's Bridge, one of my favorite groups:

When I’m down you’re always missing
When I’m fine you take your share
When things go bad you’re best forgotten
I could think that you don’t care

Walking in circles
We’re going nowhere now it seems
Nothing is certain
Of what becomes of you and me

Fair weather friend of mine
Fair weather friend of mine
Fair weather friend of mine
You know you’re no good for me

It all came home a week last Sunday
Things you’d said and things I’d seen
That when I live a week of Wednesdays
You will be no good for me

There’s something missing
And what it is is what I need
I’m going searching
For a friend who’ll never leave me

I listened to this song today as I wrestle with the question in my heart if the church community is full of fair weather friends.  We talk about loving God... loving our neighbor as ourselves.  We talk about being kind, gentle, caring and compassionate.  I think many times we give lip service to listening to one another. 

Do you know the troubles of my heart?  Do you care about my daily struggles?  Do you really want to know the hurts hidden deep within my being?  When you ask me, "How are you?", do you truly desire to love me, cherish me, take care of me, forsaking yourself?

As the song says there is something missing and what it is is what I need. I'm going searching for a friend [in the Church] who'll  love me, take care of me and never leave me.

On Being in Debt

Today I watched the movie, Maxed Out -- a sobering exposition of America's debt crisis.  The US National Debt Clock shows the outstanding US debt as $9,194,321,901,963.94.  The estimated population of the United States is 304,153,040.  So each of us share $30,229.26 of this debt.  The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.43 billion per day since September 29, 2006. See http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/. 

These numbers should move us to our knees pleading for God's grace and mercy over our idolatrous relationship with money and greed.  How easily we dismiss Jesus' command, "no one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." (Matthew 6:24)  And, yes, we do love money... the more we have, the more we want!  We want more at the expense of our neighbor.

This movie was released in June, 2007. One of the presenters in the movie, Harvard Professor Liz Warren warns that there will be a major crisis in the housing market due to the national debt. Her warning has become a reality.  According to Warren, things will get worse if we do not find a creative solution to our debt problem.  She says, "rich will get richer, and the middle class will become poor."

For the past several weeks, I have been sensing God's call to fast.  I am currently reading Elmer Towns' Fasting for Spiritual Breakthrough.  It has brought me to a realization how fasting as a spiritual discipline can free us from self-love to loving and seeking God in humility and joy.  "One of the greatest spiritual benefits of fasting," Towns writes, "is becoming more attentive to God -- becoming more aware of our own inadequacies and (God's) adequacy, our own contingencies and (God's) self-sufficiency -- listening to what (God) wants us to be and do."  Maybe, if we have made fasting a daily habit we will truly begin to experience the freedom in Jesus Christ to let go without hesitation.

My favorite prayer on fasting was written by Gloria Carpeneto.  I do not know where I found this prayer, but it brings me face to face with my need for repentance.

Lord, let me make a fast,

From all those things that have filled my belly for so

long.  Bloated from excesses, slowed and dulled and

numbed in spirit.  Lord, let me make a fast from those

poisons I have called nourishment, from the

poverty I have called wealth, from that

shallowness I have called depth, from any

meagerness I have called abundance.

I am ready to go out with You to be emptied

in whatever desert will be mine.

Lord let me make a fast.

May I fast from speed.

May I drive more slowly.

May I remove these shoes that help me walk

Quickly, and with great purpose—

and may my feet contact your earth,

slowly and with great care,

with gentleness and with much respect.

May I walk as your calm presence in this world.

May my voice be lower, slower.

May it be a voice more understood

by those whose ears are failing;

a safer voice that does not make the listener

ask again, a voice that comforts in its tones.

May I be your slow and soothing, still small voice.

May there be breeze where I have passed,

not cyclone, not chaos, not whirlwind sense of things of great import,

but only the echoing whisper of

where you have walked.  Lord, may I fast from speed.

May I fast from busyness.

May I learn to bless my simple be-ing,

and may I come to know that be-ing

as the fertile soil that roots and grounds

my do-ing.  May my days be less full, less likely to

implode, collapsing in on themselves, a black hole

dense with all those tasks, commitments,

things I simply cannot cease to do, for fear of the world—

indeed, the universe—will cease along with them.

Instead, may there be holes and gaps, may there be

light, great periods of wicked, wasteful idleness, that

Devil’s workshop transformed as, slowly, I come to trust

that You are there in the quiet, in the calm, in the

vacuum of nothing planned to do but be alive, that being

quite enough.  Lord, may I fast from busyness.

Lord, may I fast from fear.

May I come out from my hiding.  May I know sun and

snow, wind and rain, feel heat and cold as armor drops

to only such protection as I need, no less, but most

assuredly no more.  May I befriend the shadow.

May I coax it out of hiding, remove its ban of

excommunication, bring it back from exile.  May I

embrace that darker side that I have banished for so

long, beaten down, denied, and may I own it fully.

May I give shadow energy a voice, and come to know

that healing lies in unity, polarities in tension, but

never in denial.  Lord, may I fast from fear.

May fasting time be sacrament, outward sign, inward

grace; empty belly, an open space wherein You

might dwell replacing illusion of fullness.

Lord let me make a fast.

--Gloria Carpeneto

Jesus, God, Human,
Lord and Savior.
You look at me:
Your eyes
searching deep,
deep within my soul.
Your eyes, so gentle, serene,
so beautiful, inviting.
Look down within my soul
and find me,
for I am lost without you....
Let your hand touch and bless me.
Give me your peace,
your everlasting peace.
You are God and you love me.
You are God and I love you.
I am not lost... I am not lost...
I am not lost...
I am never alone...
In Jesus, I find Life...
Banu Moore, OblSB
July 10. 2007

HOPE

Hope means to keep living amid desperation, and to keep humming in darkness.  Hope is knowing that there is love, it is trust in tomorrow; it is falling asleep, and walking again when the sun rises.  In the midst of a gale at sea, it is to discover land. In the eye of another to see that you are understood. As long as there is still hope there will also be prayer, and God will be holding you in the palm of God's hands.

                                                               Henri Nouwen