Out of Silence

Rockies Light as Seen Through an iPhone:

Re-entry today, home this afternoon.

Earlier this morning, watching the dawn come up over the Rockies, reading and praying. This caught my attention from Carlos Carretto's I, Francis in A Guide to Prayer Readings for Reflection:

The Gospel taught me to place the emphasis on the mystery of the human being being more than on the duty of the human being. 343

How shall I do that in my baptism preparation?

The middle-class spirit, which is present to every age, and is known as selfishness, arrogance, pride, sensuality, idolatry, and slavery. 344

Bishop Mark: Gospel Based Discipleship

Our authority is the presence of Jesus in our midst (Mt 18.20). Bishop Mark called all groups to begin their meetings with a reading of the Gospel and the answering of three questions:

1. What stands out for you?
2. What do you hear God saying?
3. What is God calling you to do?

The readings are the eucharistic Gospel readings of the day.

When we come together in this way, the authority of Christ in our midst brings blessing and transformation. People have the opportunity to engage with Jesus in a direct, personal, unfiltered way.

At His Pace and In His Way

This morning's Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

Our spiritual life is His affair; because, whatever we may think to the contrary, it is really produced by His steady attraction, and our humble and self-forgetful response to it. It consists in being drawn, at his pace and in His way, to the place where he wants us to be; not the place we fancied for ourselves.

…from The Spiritual Life by Evelyn Underhill.

At Your pace and in Your way, to the place where You want me to be.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is love towards the unlovely.

George MacDonald, Creation in Christ.

A Thomas a Kempis Day-Starter Prayer

Help me, my Lord Jesus, that I may persevere in good purpose and in your holy service unto my death, and that I may now today perfectly begin, for I have done nothing in time past.

O yes. From The Imitation of Christ.

Christ the Lord: the Road to Cana and Swordplay

Christ the Lord: the Road to Cana

Still enjoying the afterglow of Anne Rice’, Christ the Lord: the Road to Cana. I feel like, through her, the Lord gave me some idea of what might have been going on in his head in those early days as he struggled to comprehend and accept the reality of who he really was. I loved him as I read it. I was brought to tears as John baptized him in the Jordan. Rice’s imaginative take on the wedding at Cana and how Jesus came to be there is brilliant. Wonderful.

Kingdom Swordplay

Camping in Psalm 18 this week with A Guide to Prayer. It’s the “by my God I can leap over a wall” psalm. “He trains my hands for war (v32),” writes David. “I pursued my enemies and overtook them (v37)…I thrust them through, so that they were not able to rise; they fell under my feet (v38).” I can’t imagine thrusting someone through with a sword. David’s world was also one in which what he was called to do exposed him to the risk of being thrust through himself. It’s foreign to me except in some sort of allegorical, “spiritual warfare” kind of way, not to mention being seriously incorrect politically.

Still, it is God’s upright and true Word of Life.

Jesus has something to say about swords:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. (Mt 10.34)

and

But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. (Lk 22.36)

But on the other hand,

Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. (Mt 26.52)

What Are My Hands Trained For?

How does one apply that to life and ministry in twenty-first century Medicine Hat? What have You—do You—train my hands for? Who, or what, must I (figuratively, I presume, I hope!) pursue, overtake and thrust through so they are unable to rise and will fall beneath my feet?

What Prayer Is

Prayer is a disciplined dedication to paying attention.

…to the LORD, that is.

From The Spiritual Life by John H Westerhoff III and John D Eusden in today's Reading for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer.

Renounce, Bear and Go: Three Word Bible Prayer

A challenging three words in my A Guide to Prayer reading from Luke 14 this morning:

Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (v33)

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. (v27)

If I want to be His disciple I must renounce, bear and go.

David Warren, Evelyn Underhill and the Sons of Korah: Good Words

Some good words on a Thursday.

First, David Warren quoting 14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus:

God is not pleased by blood and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats.

The whole article is here.

Then, Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life, quoted in the Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer. The three marks of a healthy spiritual life: tranquillity, gentleness and strength.

Finally, from the Sons of Korah, the Psalmists:

The Lord God is a sun and sheild. (Ps 84.11)

Another Three Words and Eternal Life

Three Words

My post-before-last started what I thought might become a little Bible "triads" series—three word phrases that pique my devotional and intercessory interest. Imagine my surprise when yesterday I found a piece by Allan Dobras over at VirtueOnLine entitled "The Three Most Important Words." In his musing on what is happening to Easter and Christianity in America he wonders what are the most important words ever spoken to humankind. He first suggests "In the beginning," might be a contender, and "Come Lord Jesus," but then there's "It is finished!"—all profound and evocative statements worthy of reflection and prayer—but the most important, he suggests, is "He is Risen."

A Bible Three Word prayer point for today:

that all the people I love would come to know that He is Risen if they haven't yet realized that fact and those that know it, can be faithful and fruitful witnesses of it.

Read "The Three Most Important Words" here.

St Clive (S. Lewis) on Eternal Life

There will come a time when every culture, every institution, every nation, the human race, all biological life, is extinct, and every one of us is still alive.

This from The Weight of Glory in my Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer.

In one of his books, Dallas Willard asks, "Have you ever thought about what you'll be doing in ten thousand years?" I guess it depends on whether or not Alan Dobras' three most important words are true, and whether or not one believes it.

He is Risen, indeed! Alleluia!

His Excellencies to Proclaim: a Bible Triad

1 Peter 2.1-10 this morning. Sabbath on a Saturday this week. These three words lit up in verse 9:

proclaim the excellencies

What I was chosen, made a royal priest and part of a holy nation to do. Whose excellencies? The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. What are His excellencies?

His steadfast love which endures forever. I exist in it. Because of it I know I am never alone, that there is always Someone who holds me in His heart.

His grace. I like James Ryle's definition of grace: the empowering prescence of God which enables me to be who He created me to be and to do what He created me to do.

His mercy. I have been set free from so many snares and the consequences of so many sinful and foolish things done and left undone.

All of which have been perfectly and beautifully expressed in His Excellency, King Jesus, who is the radiance of His glory, the exact imprint of His nature and who upholds the universe by the word of His power (Heb 1.3).

What other excellencies might I proclaim? Jude, and our more than 40 years together. Our children, Kate and Anth; our grandchildren, Emily, Samantha, Levi and Seth; that Kate and Anth have both chosen to follow Jesus and are both doing that with intelligence and grace.

On another level, but still excellencies that delight me, all God-made and provided: good coffee and my Bible in the early morning (especially when the windows can be open and I can hear the warblers commenting on the day in the back yard), beaches (sunshine, salt on your skin, the sound of the surf), mountains (the smell of the spruce, the way the air seems to crackle in the higher elevations, the colour of the new leaves in contrast with the darkness of the evergreens), open prairie (I can almost see Regina from my living room window), Jude's garden (and her very non-linear approach to it), driving through new country, the sound of a hand-made guitar.

Excellencies, indeed.

With this post I'm beginning a bit of a series (not necessarily every day, mind, every now and then) on what I'm calling "bible triads;" three-word phrases that have lit up for me in my reading over the last few months that can be prayed or obeyed.

Mother Theresa on Smiling

A lovely bit last week in my A Guide to Prayer Readings for Reflection from Mother Theresa:

Some people came to Calcutta, and before leaving, they begged me: 'Tell us something that will help us to live our lives better.' And I said: 'Smile at each other; smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other—it doesn't matter who it is—and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.'

She reminds me of something Calgary's Roman Catholic Bishop Henry once said to a gathering of Anglicans: "If you're saved, inform your face!"

More from Mother Theresa:

And then one of them asked me: 'Are you married?' and I said: 'Yes, and I find it difficult sometimes to smile at Jesus.' And it is true, Jesus can be very demanding also, and it is at those times when he is so demanding that to give him a big smile is very beautiful. (from A Gift for God by Mother Theresa)

That reminds me of how lovely it is to see a smile on the face of someone who is worshiping the LORD in song. Smiling at Jesus.

Jesus Became a Sacrament for Me

A lovely bit from Carlo Caretto's In Search of the Beyond, one of the Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

Jesus became a sacrament for me, the cause of my salvation, he brought my time in hell to an end, and put a stop to my inner disintegration. He washed me patiently in the waters of baptism, he filled me with the exhilarating joy of the Holy Spirit in confirmation, he nourished me with the bread of his word. Above all, he forgave me, he forgot everything, he did not even wish me to remember my past myself.

Me, too. Alleluia!

Who Needs the Church! - Carlo Carreto

Who Needs the Church!

How baffling you are, O church, and yet
how I love you.
How you have made me suffer and yet
how much I owe you.
I should like to see you destroyed, and yet
I need your presence.
You have given me so much scandal and yet
you have made me understand sanctity.
I have seen nothing in the world
more devoted to obscurity,
more compromised, more false,
and I have touched nothing
more pure, more generous, more beautiful.
How often I have wanted to shut the doors
of my soul in your face, and how often
I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.
No, I cannot free myself from you,
because I am you, although not completely.
Besides, where else could I go?

Good question and amen.

From Carlo Carreto, The God Who Comes, Orbis Books, via Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer.

125 Years, Hans Küng, New Horizons and Striking Camp

From Roman Catholic priest and theologian, Hans Küng, The Church, via Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

If the Church really sees itself as the people of God, it is obvious that it can never be a static and supra-historical phenomenon, which exists undisturbed by earthly space and historical time. The Church is always and everywhere a living people, gathered together from the peoples of this world and journeying through the midst of time. The Church is essentially en route, on a journey, a pilgrimage. A Church which pitches its tents without looking out constantly for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling.

A challenge for any parish but especially one like ours celebrating its 125th anniversary in a lovely old (by western Canadian standards) building. Our anniversary slogan is, "Founded on Faith, Focussed on the Future."

Looking Out for New Horizons

This is the window over our altar.

Below is my view of it in the chalice as I preside at the Eucharist Sunday by Sunday. I am blessed to do so in such beautiful surroundings and among such a sweet spirited parish family.

Our stained glass portrays the faith upon which we are founded in beautiful, living colour. The danger, I fear, is that if we're not careful, they, and beautiful things things like them, will block our view of any new horizons to which the Lord is calling us and we will be unable to focus on the future.

Striking Camp

St Barnabas, Medicine Hat: the camp site.

The LORD graces us with his presence here. It is a very comfortable camp site. The food, the water and the company are good. It is a camp which many people do not want to strike. And who can blame them?

On Being a Good Loser

It's in the Cards

Between the eyes again this morning from Evelyn Underhill, A Spiritual Life, in Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

Osuna says that God plays a game with the soul called "the loser wins;" a game in which the one who holds the poorest cards does best. 

Not sure who Osuna is; a town in Spain a cursory Googling says.

Toil and Suffering

And Fanny Crosby's hymn, Close to Thee, is the hymn for the week:

Not for ease or worldly pleasure,
Not for fame my prayer shall be;
Gladly will I toil and suffer,
Only let me walk with thee.

I may not be praying for it, but the inclination to ease, pleasure and fame is in there. Toiling and suffering! Well…

Winning by Losing

So Kingdom success is winning by losing.

It brings the Stephen Ministry training material to mind: focus on process, not results. So, if we want to be fishers of men and women, we begin by following Jesus (process). Follow me, he said, and I will make you fishers of men (results).

I know, I know. Some folk in our parish (including my wife) will be saying, "See, see! Don't worry about growth. You can't make it happen. God gives the growth. It says so right in the Bible."

I'm trying. I need Jesus to wield more of that mud I mentioned in the previous post.

Mud Pies and Holidays By the Sea: Vintage CS Lewis

Vintage St Clive from today's Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that it's a bad thing to desire one's good and earnestly hope for enjoyment, it is because it has crept in from the teachings of Immanuel Kant and the ancient Stoics. Certainly, it has no part in the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy has been offered to us. We are far too easily pleased, like an ignorant child who goes on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: MacMillan, 1980), p136 (I think)

Am I missing any holidays by the sea? I wonder if Jesus can use the mud from my pies to heal my blindness, too.

More Nouwen and Thoughts on Success

Something in me (my "flesh," I suppose) pushes me to succeed. But the success to which I am so pushed is all about bigger, more and "better." I haven't been very good at that either in my life or my vocation. By worldly standards of success I don't rate very highly.

Then, from Nouwen's Reaching Out via A Guide to Prayer Readings for Reflection, I read this:

But it is important that in this world there remain a few voices crying out that if there is anything to boast of, we should boast of our weakness. Our fulfillment is in offering emptiness, our usefulness in becoming useless, our power in becoming powerless.

A word for me in my striving. And one for conservative Anglicans who aren't feeling very effective or influential but who also feel called to remain in the Anglican Church of Canada.

Nouwen is, of course, referring to this:

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12.9-10)

If there is any success, better that it come as a result of that kind of power and strength than anything I can work up.

Underhill on What to Trust When Responding to the Holy Spirit's Call

From Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life, via Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

…our own feelings and preferences are very poor guides when it comes to the robust realities and stern demands of the Spirit.

…the spiritual life does not consist in mere individual betterment, or assiduous attention to one's own soul, but in a free and unconditional response to that Spirit's pressure and call, whatever the cost may be. 

So much for "if it feels good and I like it, then God must like it, too."

Nouwen on Success

From Nouwen's, The Wounded Healer via Readings for Reflection in A Guide to Prayer:

…promises, not concrete successes, are the basis of Christian leadership. Many ministers, priests and Christian laymen have become disillusioned, bitter and even hostile when years of hard work bear no fruit, when little change is accomplished. Building a vocation on the expectations of concrete results, however conceived, is like building a house on sand instead of on solid rock, and even takes away the ability to accept successes as free gifts. 

Another hard thing for the likes of me, serving in a declining denomination with the annual meeting looming, to embrace.

And along with this today, 1 Corinthians 1.26-31, on not many of us called being wise or powerful but rather foolish and weak by worldly standards. Nouwen makes it sound like concrete results and success are the exception rather than the rule. When they do happen, there is an implicit challenge to discern very carefully whether it is a free gift or something we've wrought by our own strength.

More Uncomfortable Nouwen: Creating a Free and Fearless Place for the Unexpected Visitor

Further to my last post on the move from "easy support system to risky surrender" in prayer. More Nouwen, from The Wounded Healer this time via A Guide to Prayer.

Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger…Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes closed-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights.

…

What does hospitality as a healing power require? It requires first of all that the host feel at home in his own house, and secondly that he create a free and fearless place for the unexpected visitor.

Anxious Disciples

Risky surrender, indeed. I've got the first part down. I do feel very much at home in my own house, but my introverted self wants to use my home as a hiding place. I find it very difficult to open it up to strangers.

Congregations in their anxious discipleship and suspicious ownership can have a hard time opening their church buildings to be free and fearless places for the unexpected visitor.

An Invitation from Jesus

I think Jesus was speaking about how to create that "free and fearless place" in today's passage when he said:

Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Mt 11.28-30 ESV)

If his yoke isn't easy for me, I must have made it that way. If is burden is feels heavy, I must have made it, too, that way by, among other things, my anxious discipleship and suspicious ownership.

Lord, have mercy.