"There is no fear of God before his eyes." David the sheperd (Psalm 36)
The plague of consumption with oneself brings forth wickedness without tension. Eventually life loses its attraction. What is it we are thinking? Dark divinations and rueful musings which only serve to feed one's morbid addictions. It is abhorrent, we are abhorrent. What was David thinking? Of whom was he speaking? At one time was it himself? The looking glass is dangerously reavealing.
In horror he fled. Fled from the emptiness and the dread. He fled from himself. I suppose we will never know of whom David spoke. Still flee he does, whether from himself or some other sininster personality. He finds solace in the attractiveness of God. The simplicity of home, the sound of a fast running stream. It is the land. The sure mercies of God, hidden in the cleft of that rocky cragg. The Son of man, that high and lofty mountain.
There is fulfillment for those who run to the hills, who drink from the pure river of life. To be satisfied and yet needing more. Aaahh, the tension. You can breathe again, feel again, live (maybe for the first time). We taste life in him, for he is our life. He is the life in which we live. There is the tension. For to see is to understand. To hear is to grasp. To feel is to tremble. To know oneself in him is to be painfully aware that beyond the comforting glow of a porch light that tells you you're home is a darkness that waits. It will wait all night. It has embraced the virtue of patience.
From whence cometh the light? The day star rising in our hearts? We make our plea, we cry for divine provision. "Let not the foot of pride come against me." Our prayers for patron saints, guardian angels and the frayed rosary which scrawls across the dashboard. Prayer becomes more than words. It is the tension which which fights for life in a world of decadence and decay. Each sigh is a winged prayer that we just might get some sleep tonight. Sola Gracia, WHB
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Friday, February 17, 2006
Don't Tread On Me
"Our task is to offer ourselves up to God like a clean, smooth canvas and not bother ourselves about what God may choose to paint on it, but, at every moment, feel only the stroke of his brush." -Jean Pierre de Caussade
The trouble with people is they're always looking out for themselves. The 'self' is the root of many evils. One of which is self-preservation. There is no end to the ink being spilt over leadership. Our futile efforts to reconfigure the beast seem temporal at best. For those who would lead like Jesus must have "soul-discipline." The rent heart, torn asunder who has "forsaken all." Exactly what is that? All of what? All or our stuff or all of ourselves? As painfully attractive as that sounds it is an over-simplification of the truth.
Moses must have dealt with this. He left his flock to lead a nation (which did not always want to be led). Enter the desert, where men are broken and remade. Moses must have been made in the desert before he returned to Egypt for God's people. God prepared the savior. Though the savior proved to be less than perfect during the desert journey. Moses was not without shortcomings. But at least he owned his stuff. At the end of the day he pleads for his people, even when they drove him crazy. He must have seen himself in them, pitied them as he himself needed to be pitied. Of course we don't want any pity. Why do we always shrink from the benefits of compassion? Have we forgotten it is the meek who inherit the earth? Moses was the humblest man on the face of the earth (Numbers 12.3).
Maybe humility must be measured within the tension of one's experience? I say this only because so often I find Moses to be an angry man and yet God loved him. He was Israel's desert shepherd. God was always saving Israel's savior. Perhaps we expect too much. The demands are too great for one man.
So, it is into the desert of "soul-discipline." Where leaders are made, not simply born. The will is steeled and the heart learns to bleed. And bleed it will. For the desert is a place of peril. The irony of leading like Jesus is that it is so subversive. He has the appearance of a lamb which generates its own enemies. Only to discover he is a lamb that roars. Great leaders always have great enemies. I realize you're saying 'obstacles,' not enemies. Is all that really necessary, it sounds so "Bushish." Well you must not have read Psalms. Love your enemies, they might help you become a great leader. Sola Fide, WHB
The trouble with people is they're always looking out for themselves. The 'self' is the root of many evils. One of which is self-preservation. There is no end to the ink being spilt over leadership. Our futile efforts to reconfigure the beast seem temporal at best. For those who would lead like Jesus must have "soul-discipline." The rent heart, torn asunder who has "forsaken all." Exactly what is that? All of what? All or our stuff or all of ourselves? As painfully attractive as that sounds it is an over-simplification of the truth.
Moses must have dealt with this. He left his flock to lead a nation (which did not always want to be led). Enter the desert, where men are broken and remade. Moses must have been made in the desert before he returned to Egypt for God's people. God prepared the savior. Though the savior proved to be less than perfect during the desert journey. Moses was not without shortcomings. But at least he owned his stuff. At the end of the day he pleads for his people, even when they drove him crazy. He must have seen himself in them, pitied them as he himself needed to be pitied. Of course we don't want any pity. Why do we always shrink from the benefits of compassion? Have we forgotten it is the meek who inherit the earth? Moses was the humblest man on the face of the earth (Numbers 12.3).
Maybe humility must be measured within the tension of one's experience? I say this only because so often I find Moses to be an angry man and yet God loved him. He was Israel's desert shepherd. God was always saving Israel's savior. Perhaps we expect too much. The demands are too great for one man.
So, it is into the desert of "soul-discipline." Where leaders are made, not simply born. The will is steeled and the heart learns to bleed. And bleed it will. For the desert is a place of peril. The irony of leading like Jesus is that it is so subversive. He has the appearance of a lamb which generates its own enemies. Only to discover he is a lamb that roars. Great leaders always have great enemies. I realize you're saying 'obstacles,' not enemies. Is all that really necessary, it sounds so "Bushish." Well you must not have read Psalms. Love your enemies, they might help you become a great leader. Sola Fide, WHB
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Unclean! Unclean!
"No creature has meaning without the word of God." -Hildegard of Bingen
So many are without meaning. Rather they live in mayhem. There is a darkness that walks our streets. You can usually smell it before you see it. For it is the repulsive stench of rotting flesh. Much is left to the imagination as the open sore is wrapped in filthy rags. No matter how much society tries to disguise it, it is the purple elephant that we all see but no one is willing to acknowledge is in the room.
And so they walk on. One more mile or one more town, just so long as they go. Be gone. For them there is no way out. They are the mirror society refuses to peer into, let alone to touch it. For fear of becoming unclean. Banishment, exiled from the community. They are forced to live outside the camp. They are beyond redemption, no sacrament can save them. No waters of baptism can cleanse them? The eucharist can not heal them? Amazing Love, how can it be? When our desire is that they choke on a crust of communion bread. We covet their last gasp. The agonizing gurgle of a soul who drowns on the fluid which has collected in their own lungs. Are you the one to "pass the cup" of drowning? Is it your hand that will immerse them and with the other never let them up? Are you sarcastically saying, "Have a drink on me?"
There must be an oasis in the desert. Where by a quiet campfire one can drink from the river that never runs dry. Realizing for the first time that there is such a thing as rest. And hear, yes have ears that hear. That voice which speaks and birds hush their singing. Words of life, wonderful words, beautiful words. "Then a man with a serious skin disease came to him and, on his knees, begged him: 'if you are willing, you can make me clean.' Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched him. 'I am willing,' he told him. 'Be healed'." (Mark 1.40-41) Sola Scriptura -WHB
So many are without meaning. Rather they live in mayhem. There is a darkness that walks our streets. You can usually smell it before you see it. For it is the repulsive stench of rotting flesh. Much is left to the imagination as the open sore is wrapped in filthy rags. No matter how much society tries to disguise it, it is the purple elephant that we all see but no one is willing to acknowledge is in the room.
And so they walk on. One more mile or one more town, just so long as they go. Be gone. For them there is no way out. They are the mirror society refuses to peer into, let alone to touch it. For fear of becoming unclean. Banishment, exiled from the community. They are forced to live outside the camp. They are beyond redemption, no sacrament can save them. No waters of baptism can cleanse them? The eucharist can not heal them? Amazing Love, how can it be? When our desire is that they choke on a crust of communion bread. We covet their last gasp. The agonizing gurgle of a soul who drowns on the fluid which has collected in their own lungs. Are you the one to "pass the cup" of drowning? Is it your hand that will immerse them and with the other never let them up? Are you sarcastically saying, "Have a drink on me?"
There must be an oasis in the desert. Where by a quiet campfire one can drink from the river that never runs dry. Realizing for the first time that there is such a thing as rest. And hear, yes have ears that hear. That voice which speaks and birds hush their singing. Words of life, wonderful words, beautiful words. "Then a man with a serious skin disease came to him and, on his knees, begged him: 'if you are willing, you can make me clean.' Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched him. 'I am willing,' he told him. 'Be healed'." (Mark 1.40-41) Sola Scriptura -WHB
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Woe Is Me For I Am Undone!
"Here am I! Send me. -Isaiah
"ASK ME"
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
-William Stafford
Quiet contemplations are the way of mystics. Apocalyptic outbursts are the way of prophets. Yet they are both men of the desert. Praying in caves, meditating on mountain tops, trembling before bushes that never seem to burn. Of late I have heard much talk of "one's call." For some, calling is irrelevent. For is it not in the end a subjective response to what one thinks they have experienced? With others calling is everything. They stake their very futures upon it. They are compelled, drawn and at times driven into the desert. I readily admit I am more like the latter. Though I hold no ill will towards those who believe "calling" is only a figment of one's imagination. All I can say is that if he had not called I would not have known where to go.
It was Parker Palmer who put me onto Stafford's poem, "Ask Me." There is something etheriel in those words, "Ask me whether what I have done is my life." Palmer is so stable (you would expect that from a Quaker). He likely fits the bill as a modern mystic for there is much contemplation in him. He reflects, "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent." Granted there is much danger if one accepts Palmer's words from the Quaker perspective of reaching "self-consciousness" (my interpretation of Quaker philosophy). But if one realizes like Isaiah that it is God-consciousness that we must become. Then there is something here for those of us on a contemplative journey to commune with God in the desert.
Are we not complete in Christ? Without him we are only vaguely human, un-beings if you will. It is only upon having a close encounter of the highest kind that we become truly human. Then we become God's echo, the image-bearers of God (as it was always meant to be). This can not become a reality without a rift being torn in the cosmic fabric of our being. To encounter him is to be broken by him, horrified of ourselves (I am unclean) and terrified of him (I am undone). Yet amidst the chaos he speaks or more appropriately he "calls." For Moses it was a burning bush, with Samuel it was hearing voices and sleepless nights or Paul surrounded by bright lights on a dirty road to Damascus. Were they not all called? How could I not say, "Here am I send me." I readily admit I'm still not sure if they were my words or his. It consumes me, compels me, at times I've wondered if it will kill me. Has it not become me? Or should I say, I have become "it." It is my life, I have no other, nor seek none, can not imagine one. There are not multiple dimensions for me. For I am a man of a single dimension. I know that sounds so small. But I am small. God give me contentment in smallness. Suffer the little children to come to me (Jesus). I am that child chasing him down a dusty street for I hear his voice carried on a silent wind. He carries me.
This does not resolve our question, though it is sufficient for my quest. That is the question of the "call," relevent or irrelevent? Can we consider this objectively in a sea of subjectivity? One thing may help us. Obedience. Isaiah had to behave. He could not remain unchanged. Humbly we prostrate ourselves that the plague of sin be purged. "The uncreated Image, buried and concealed by sin in the depths of our souls, rises from death when, sending forth his Spirit into our spirit, he manifests his presence within us and becomes for us the source of a new life, a new identity and a new mode of action" (Thomas Merton). I am disturbed by those who profess some "call" yet are too proud to recognize their own disobedience. Their stubbornness is stifling. Thankyou, to every man and woman who has helped confirm in me the "call." With gratitude I praise you for not only building me up but for also seeing the necessity of tearing me down. Behavior matters. Woe is me if I am not undone. Sola Gracia, WHB
"ASK ME"
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
-William Stafford
Quiet contemplations are the way of mystics. Apocalyptic outbursts are the way of prophets. Yet they are both men of the desert. Praying in caves, meditating on mountain tops, trembling before bushes that never seem to burn. Of late I have heard much talk of "one's call." For some, calling is irrelevent. For is it not in the end a subjective response to what one thinks they have experienced? With others calling is everything. They stake their very futures upon it. They are compelled, drawn and at times driven into the desert. I readily admit I am more like the latter. Though I hold no ill will towards those who believe "calling" is only a figment of one's imagination. All I can say is that if he had not called I would not have known where to go.
It was Parker Palmer who put me onto Stafford's poem, "Ask Me." There is something etheriel in those words, "Ask me whether what I have done is my life." Palmer is so stable (you would expect that from a Quaker). He likely fits the bill as a modern mystic for there is much contemplation in him. He reflects, "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent." Granted there is much danger if one accepts Palmer's words from the Quaker perspective of reaching "self-consciousness" (my interpretation of Quaker philosophy). But if one realizes like Isaiah that it is God-consciousness that we must become. Then there is something here for those of us on a contemplative journey to commune with God in the desert.
Are we not complete in Christ? Without him we are only vaguely human, un-beings if you will. It is only upon having a close encounter of the highest kind that we become truly human. Then we become God's echo, the image-bearers of God (as it was always meant to be). This can not become a reality without a rift being torn in the cosmic fabric of our being. To encounter him is to be broken by him, horrified of ourselves (I am unclean) and terrified of him (I am undone). Yet amidst the chaos he speaks or more appropriately he "calls." For Moses it was a burning bush, with Samuel it was hearing voices and sleepless nights or Paul surrounded by bright lights on a dirty road to Damascus. Were they not all called? How could I not say, "Here am I send me." I readily admit I'm still not sure if they were my words or his. It consumes me, compels me, at times I've wondered if it will kill me. Has it not become me? Or should I say, I have become "it." It is my life, I have no other, nor seek none, can not imagine one. There are not multiple dimensions for me. For I am a man of a single dimension. I know that sounds so small. But I am small. God give me contentment in smallness. Suffer the little children to come to me (Jesus). I am that child chasing him down a dusty street for I hear his voice carried on a silent wind. He carries me.
This does not resolve our question, though it is sufficient for my quest. That is the question of the "call," relevent or irrelevent? Can we consider this objectively in a sea of subjectivity? One thing may help us. Obedience. Isaiah had to behave. He could not remain unchanged. Humbly we prostrate ourselves that the plague of sin be purged. "The uncreated Image, buried and concealed by sin in the depths of our souls, rises from death when, sending forth his Spirit into our spirit, he manifests his presence within us and becomes for us the source of a new life, a new identity and a new mode of action" (Thomas Merton). I am disturbed by those who profess some "call" yet are too proud to recognize their own disobedience. Their stubbornness is stifling. Thankyou, to every man and woman who has helped confirm in me the "call." With gratitude I praise you for not only building me up but for also seeing the necessity of tearing me down. Behavior matters. Woe is me if I am not undone. Sola Gracia, WHB
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
It's Hard To Take Courage
"we speak in Christ, as from God and before God" - St. Paul
In a world full of people it's easy to lose sight of Him. Not long ago I was at what some call the "greatest auto show on earth." I was in Detroit, Motor City viewing the latest and the greatest the auto world had to offer. The lights were bright, the cars sparkled and coreographed models showcased the next best thing to hit the car lot. The glitz and the glare, bright lights, big city. This does not feel like the desert. I felt like a child again amidst the mob of people. There was no place one could go where people were not. The frightful thing was that I was afraid I would lose him. My dad that is. The engineer who has worked in the industry most of his life. At first I thought "no problem," I'll just call him on my cell if we get separated. Then I realized I hadn't brought it with me. I made every effort to keep him in my sights amidst the mass of people.
The desert can become like a crowded house. The air is stale and the oppressive walls close in around you. It is imperative that the wanderer get a breath of fresh air. Check the north star to be sure his bearings are right. You must always keep Him in your sights. For you are without doubt in His. Our words must always be spoken with HIm in mind. For it is not our voice which the masses need to hear, but His. It is not as if we can borrow His voice. Rather it is embedded in us. A compelling spirit moves us to utter words not our own. At times there is a violence to it, such as when Jacob wrestled before the face of God. We fight for a blessing only to offer it up as a sacrifice upon the altar of proclamation. Its aroma rising, having passed amongst the people to the One who pauses from the balcony as if anticipating the echo. The best sanctuaries always have great acoustics. So take courage and breathe deeply for in the end we preach for an audience of one. Sola Fide, WHB
In a world full of people it's easy to lose sight of Him. Not long ago I was at what some call the "greatest auto show on earth." I was in Detroit, Motor City viewing the latest and the greatest the auto world had to offer. The lights were bright, the cars sparkled and coreographed models showcased the next best thing to hit the car lot. The glitz and the glare, bright lights, big city. This does not feel like the desert. I felt like a child again amidst the mob of people. There was no place one could go where people were not. The frightful thing was that I was afraid I would lose him. My dad that is. The engineer who has worked in the industry most of his life. At first I thought "no problem," I'll just call him on my cell if we get separated. Then I realized I hadn't brought it with me. I made every effort to keep him in my sights amidst the mass of people.
The desert can become like a crowded house. The air is stale and the oppressive walls close in around you. It is imperative that the wanderer get a breath of fresh air. Check the north star to be sure his bearings are right. You must always keep Him in your sights. For you are without doubt in His. Our words must always be spoken with HIm in mind. For it is not our voice which the masses need to hear, but His. It is not as if we can borrow His voice. Rather it is embedded in us. A compelling spirit moves us to utter words not our own. At times there is a violence to it, such as when Jacob wrestled before the face of God. We fight for a blessing only to offer it up as a sacrifice upon the altar of proclamation. Its aroma rising, having passed amongst the people to the One who pauses from the balcony as if anticipating the echo. The best sanctuaries always have great acoustics. So take courage and breathe deeply for in the end we preach for an audience of one. Sola Fide, WHB
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