from the sayings of the Desert Mothers and Fathers (a paraphrase by Merton)…

The Desert Mothers and Fathers sayings have been gathered in numerous anthologies by the Orthodox and Roman church. These hermits of the Egyptian desert formed the basis for the formation of formal monasticism and give us a glimpse at a literal following of Jesus’ teaching. The sayings of our spiritual ancestors which I will share on Wednesdays for the for-seeable future are primarily taken from the hermits of Scete who fled the “worldly” habitation of the Roman Empire during the 3rd and 4th century.

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“Once two brothers were sitting with Abbot Poemen and one praised the other brother saying: ‘He is a good brother, he hates evil.’

The old man said, ‘What do you mean, he hates evil?’

And the brother did not know what to reply. So he said, ‘Tell me, Father, what it is to hate evil?’

The Father said, ‘That man hates evil who hates his own sins, and looks upon every brother as a saint, and loves him as a saint.’”

[from The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton p. 70-71]

For many years I focused on believing. Throughout college and seminary and the ensuing 5 or so years of “full-time” ministry I was enamored with and focused on presenting correct belief. What are the right ways to conceive of and discuss and comprehend the subject of Christianity.

I think this is pretty normal. No, I would say this is important and it is appropriate.

But the day comes when what we believe and the faith as understood in our head faces a crisis. Our faith diluted down to individual categories and systems looks great on paper but under the scrutiny of a full-blown crisis sometimes our beliefs can ring a bit hollow. The complexities and perplexities of life enter the picture forcing us to reconsider or even alter our belief system.

In my life it was at this point that a new realization hit. Christ came not only sharing a belief system (what I put my faith in) but also a way of life (priorities, practices and performance).

The Christian life is both a belief system and a way of life. I not only develop my faith by getting the “Story in order” but also by finding myself “in the story.” My faith is fed and tested and nurtured by both right believing and by right living. Both are needed. They feed each other and they stimulate one another growing us up into God’s image. (When I learned to live in congruence with my intellectual understanding of my Christian faith it moved me from a posture of arrogance about my rightness to a position of humility as I attempted to stumble forward in the way of Christ and his followers.) On this basis I propose it is not about believing as much as it is about be-living. The sense that we need to be concerned about who we are (being) and this is certainly understood as we ascertain our identity and our heritage. There is also an equal concern about how I am behaving and representing myself (living) and this comes into focus as I follow after Christ’s way of life. [Isn’t this the purpose of the final parable of the Sermon on the Mount? Doesn’t this twin focus capture the essence of James admonition, “be do-ers of the Word?” To be a do-er of the Word, necessitates a correct understanding of the Word (belief) and appropriate behavior (way of life)].

In youth ministry it seems that during the summer as we accompany kids through life and share experiences at camp or conferences or on a missions trip - it is a great time to remind ourselves and the students that the Christian faith is more than the acquisition of right thinking. The message of Jesus was one which affirmed both a belief system (Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is One) and a way of life (Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength… and your neighbor as yourself). As you go through this summer think of ways that you can call your students to nurture their faith as a way of life. Maybe even introduce a new word into their lexicon, be-live. Calling ourselves and those we lead and love to have a congruence between our beliefs and our way of living. Believing and following in the way of Jesus is finding that harmony between right thinking/believing and right living/priorities. I call that be-living.

Maybe it is just me. Probably.

I have noticed that I am more enamored or more drawn to the “prescriptions” or commands of scripture than to the promises or to the declarations. I think it may be a result of my penchant to act or “do something.” Maybe you can relate to this, as well.

Think about the great command (or the sh’ma as found in Deuteronomy 6).

The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’” (Mark 12.29-30)

When you think about this statement do you hear the declaration or the command. (I hear some of you, “both!”) But I wonder when we think of the “great commandment” as it is called - what do we do with God’s declaration, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

Another example that we probably know by heart, the great commission.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:18-20)

Again what are our ears drawn to - the declaration or the command; the prescription or the promise? I know we should be attentive to both, but where is our awareness greater? In my honest moments when I reflect on both of these passages, I hear the commands. I hear my duty. I hear my obligations. I hear the imperatives over the indicatives. I wonder in my reaction to act without really hearing the surrounding truths what am I missing?

Am I turning this vital faith into a human endeavor? Am I doing my own little thing oblivious to what God is up to in our world? Am I focusing on me rather than on Thee? Am I practicing a kind of deism, inattentive to the nearness and presence of God?

May I not glance past God’s promises and declarations - may I learn to like Mary ponder these statements and live out God’s commands in light of them. For if I “do” the commands - am I loving, if I am failing to listen for the one true God? Do I find myself so enamored or so focused on “making disciples” that I miss the presence of God in my midst (walking right by the figurative burning bushes around me)?

“If we take seriously the word of the risen Christ, ‘Know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time’ (Matthew 28:20), we should expect that He will be actively present in our lives. If our faith is alive and luminous we will be alert to moments, events, and occasions when the power of resurrection is brought to bear on our lives. Self-absorbed and inattentive, we fail to notice the subtle ways in which Jesus is snagging our attention.” [Brennan Manning in Abba’s Child p. 99-100]

This is completely and utterly fascinating. What a wonderful conversation - Krista Tippett is a wonderful host and opens up a wonderful dialogue.

I listened and watched completely enraptured.

I won’t spew out any of my opinions and muddy this beautiful and helpful dialogue about such a complex issue.

Check it out here.
(you can download an mp3 of the edited version - and you can view a video of the complete discussion - check out the page completely)

ht - Mike King

Do you get those crazy questions or thoughts that won’t let you go? They just keep rolling around in your mind - hitting you when you least expect it or hounding you when all you want to do is “veg-out?” Those mosquitoes on the mind just keep buzzing and buzzing in a threatening kind of way. I have had one of those suckers poking about my mind and heart the past couple of days - don’t know where it came from or when it will leave cause the question gets too close to “what it’s all about.” It is a question that I think right now I can’t answer the way I “should.” The answer is too revealing and disappointing.

I wish I could just smack this mosquito and put an end to this buzzing in my head.

The question:
Am I living from a posture or position of willfulness or willingness?

[Willfulness being a posture of stiff-armed distance that projects, “I am in control here;” and willingness is the position of the Gethsemane prayer, “not my will, but Thine be done.”]

The statement above is one I actually recall asking. I have thought it more often than I’d like along the Way as well. It is what motivated me to post the pictures in the previous post.

When you have been walking after God for 20+ years or far less for that matter - we can begin to think that merely accumulating years accounts for the growth of our soul. We know cognitively that this is false, but we can still believe it on other levels. So when the Mystery of the Universe comes in with a cosmic pruning shear or a chain saw and begins to lop off years of accumulated “growth” - it seems a fair question…

Is God killing me? Or keeping me?

Pruning and reshaping can sound pastoral and even “pretty” but as we go through the process we begin to see it as the great spiritual writer and mystic and poet St. John of the Cross states it, “the dark night of the soul.” We see it in light of the pain and desperation of Elijah’s flight to the desert. We begin to emote with our Lord in Gethsemane. And we begin to see beyond the burning hearts to the desperation and hopelessness of the pilgrims who couldn’t even recognize their Messiah and Master before them on the Emmaus road.

And if you have ever spent a sleepless night tossing and turning you know how LONG a night can last.

In these times of pruning and shaping the Spring time offers some hope. My faith can stop shaping me into question marks and for a moment I can rest and take hope in the buds and new life emerging around me.

So today I choose to say, the Potter prunes and reforms that I might in time reflect the Glory of my Maker even more.

In the beginning O God
You shaped my soul and set its weave
You formed my body
and gave it breath.
Renew me this day
in the image of your love.
O great God, grant me your light
O great God, grant me your grace
O great God, grant me your joy this day.
And let me be made pure
in the well of your health.
(prayer by J. Philip Newell from Celtic Prayers from Iona)

“I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.

“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15. 1-5 NLT)

happy earth day.

My family’s calendar is probably one of the most important documents in our home. Before things are scheduled; before answers are given; before money is spent - the calendar is consulted. What is already on our family agenda? Who is already committed?

You get the picture. I bet you can relate - as well!

Our agenda’s and the agenda’s of others converge and make for the need to schedule, plan, look ahead, budget, make decisions, weigh options and create deadlines. We live by schedules - daily plans, weekly schedules and monthly and yearly calendars - and we try to balance a life of activity that too easily can spiral out of control with planned activities (trying to fit more and more into an unforgiving, inflexible, 24 hour day, 7 day week and 365 day year).

Enter the interruption.

The unexpected guest, the unscheduled “drop-in,” the knock at the door (”who could that be?”), the ringing phone, the “can we slide that appointment up?” How do we respond to the immediate need or interrupting visitor impinging on our well-planned agenda?

Jesus never met an interruption. It seems every intrusion (whether a Samaritan Woman crowding into a quiet moment by a well or a sick woman latching on to his garment holding him up for an important appointment) was welcomed not as an interruption but as an appointment - a divine intervention. Jesus’ agenda was always submissive to the Father’s agenda.

This kind of perspective is so foreign to me (and also our culture) where efficiency and effectiveness are the measures of all things successful and “right.”

“The effectiveness of work increases according to geometric progression if there are no interruptions.”
- Andre’ Marois

As I look back these past couple weeks it seems that the lesson and the pattern of my life has been - welcome the interruption as an in-breaking of God’s agenda. As I have been open to this and surrendered my calendar and agenda (and wishes and hopes) to the serendipity of God’s timing (interruptions) it has been amazing the conversations, opportunities and even accomplishments that have ensued. Long standing plans have delayed to open up an opportunity to serve a friend and organization; a knock at a door opens to a neighbor needing to talk; working in the barn is interrupted by another lonely neighbor; a “last minute” e-mail invites me to speak to my favorite youth ministry… and so it goes?

How open am I to this? Well, truth be told I like to know what I am doing and when… but I am learning God calls us to live by faith, not certainty.

I still cringe at the interruption - so I am praying, “God open my eyes to see you in the now. May I be willing to embrace your interventions and appointments that come my way.”

“Interruptions can be viewed as sources of irritation or opportunities for service, as moments lost or experience gained, as time wasted or horizons widened. They can annoy us or enrich us, get under our skin or give us a shot in the arm. Monopolize our minutes or spice our schedules, depending on our attitude toward them.”
- William Arthur Ward

Just noticed this as I was praying this past week.

Our Father,

Amen

In the prayer Jesus taught us, besides being obligated to pray in this manner - I am only obligated to forgive - each of the other items in this prayer are requests, praise or acknowledgement of God as being God.

Help me be merciful as You are merciful, Father.

Sometimes when we say this I think we are emphasizing the wrong part. I think we think, “become like Jesus; become like God.” This trips us up - and “becoming like God” was the temptation that led to the first sin in Genesis 3.

“Becoming like Jesus” is embracing Jesus as fully human - and becoming like him is embracing and striving to become “fully human.” This is our goal, and thus the goal of our spirituality, in my view.

Some inspiration:

“What, dear brothers, is more delightful than this voice of the Lord calling to us? See how the Lord in his love shows us the way of life. Clothed then with faith and performance of good works, let us set out on this way with the Gospel for our guide that we may deserve to see him who has called us to his kingdom”
(St. Benedict - RB: Prologue: 19-21).

“Ministry is service in the name of the Lord. It is bringing the good news to the poor, proclaiming liberty to captives and new sight to the blind, setting the downtrodden free and announcing the Lord’s year of favor (Luke 4:18). Spirituality is paying attention to the life of the spirit in us; it is going out to the desert or up to the mountain to pray; it is standing before the Lord with open heart and open mind; it is crying out, ‘Abba, Father’; it is contemplating the unspeakable beauty of our loving God.”
(Henri J. M. Nouwen)

“The work of Jesus was not a new set of ideals or principles for reforming or even revolutionizing society, but the establishment of a new community, a people that embodied forgiveness, sharing and self-sacrificing love in its rituals and discipline. In that sense, the visible church is not to be the bearer of Christ’s message, but to be the message.”
(Stanley Hauerwas)

“I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition — that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else.

It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are even if we tell it only to ourselves — because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real things.”
(From Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner. )

May we become fully human and thus become like Jesus.

“The Glory of God is man fully alive.”
(St. Irenaeus of Lyons)