Everyday Ecstasy

Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31; Luke 4:14-21

We had a great discussion at Coffee Table Communion this past Friday.  We talked about our gifts, and about what gifts we needed from others to really exercise our own.  It takes a lot of courage and humility to really name our gifts, to acknowledge that we have something others need.  It makes us responsible, somehow, for using them; we can’t hide behind the pretense that we don’t have anything to offer.  We left more united, more inspired, more grateful.

But I don’t really want to write about the readings today, as good as they are.  Go read them, and ask yourself about your gifts and your needs.  Ask yourself what the Spirit of the Lord is trying to accomplish through you.  Then come and sit down with me for a bit.

I’ve been pondering ecstasy.  I’m an ecstasy freak, really.  Not the drug, Ecstasy, but the state.  Of course, this is a common symptom among addicts and alcoholics; we love the big high, the intense moment, the “grand gesture” as someone recently put it in a retreat.  We - I - love the feeling of being swept up into the cosmic swirl of Being.  When I stopped drinking, I thought I would never have those moments again.  I’d be condemned to a mundane, boring existence.

Now, thirty years later, my life is nothing but boring.  But it can seem pretty mundane.  One of the jokes of our monastic life is that it looks so quiet on the outside, but inside it offers all the intensity and ecstasy I can handle.  It takes time and space to listen for that cosmic swirl, so our daily life includes times of prayer and silence, times of work, times to eat and relax, all on a schedule that would drive some people crazy.  And inside that schedule is ecstasy.

These days that paradox feels especially strong.  Ever since our long retreat two weeks ago I’ve felt called to a deeper, wilder relationship with God.  I don’t know what it means, what it will ask of me exactly, but it scares me.  It will for sure mean letting go of some parts of me that I have cherished, and risking new territory.  It will mean facing some old fears.  And, at the same time, I’m needed by my community to focus on the everyday tasks of organizing, walking with our new Covenant Companion candidates, preaching and teaching, writing plans and structures, keeping in touch with the news.  I’m needed to cook and clean in turn.  So the ecstasy that is surrounding me is jockeying with the everyday.  I think that’s what it is to be human, to be incarnated spirit or inspirited flesh.

I don’t know if this lands for you.  Maybe you don’t have the ecstasy gene.  Maybe you don’t have the everyday; maybe someone else takes care of everything for you.  Maybe you find your ecstasy in the everyday.  But if you’re like me, if you’re pulled in two directions at once, at least know you aren’t alone.  I don’t have an answer.  I have a condition.  If you do too, maybe we have the beginnings of community.

Be blessed this weekend.  God breathes love all over you, and through you.  Amen.

January 21, 2016: Come to the Water!

Thank you, God, for keeping me healthy this past month. I (Shane) am back from the third retreat I led in a month. All of them were wonderful, and I didn't get sick. Really, I'm grateful. Now it's back to the daily, to all the little things that pile up when we're away or preparing other things. It's disorienting at first, but I'm glad for it. So is Shadow the cat!

I want to talk about the daily office readings, but gosh they're making it hard. We're in Genesis, where too many people are dying and God is recommending slavery. We're reading Hebrews again (what's up with that, a monk asked yesterday). I picked up Garry Wills' book on the priesthood, and he has several devastating chapters on Hebrews. Can we just skip to Lent?

But today, thanks to John, we are at the well with the Samaritan woman. Jesus crosses religious/cultural lines to invite a "fallen" woman to give and receive the water of life. She doesn't know yet what he means, any more than most of John's characters "get" Jesus, but she's on the path.

At the retreat last weekend, we read other stories of Jesus' care for those outside the margins. "Who did Jesus come for?" I chanted. "Sinners!" we answered. That's us. All of us. Jesus offers us water, and bread, and spirit and truth and life and love. Jesus gives us words to take to others, to share our amazement and our questions.

So come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters! And you who aren't thirsty, or don't know it, get thirsty! There's life in that water.

First Sunday after the Epiphany

We're still in retreat. What a gift to get to just sit with Scripture for long periods each day, not having to rush to the next thing. But I'm getting ready to return to the round, looking forward to upcoming work.

Today is the Baptism of Jesus by John. It marks the moment when Jesus "finds himself" and begins his ministry. Different Gospel writers spin this differently; for some it is an affirmation of a timeless divinity, for others it is the moment when God adopts Jesus. But all agree it is the inaugural adult moment, the point where the story begins.

In 2005 my friend Fairbairn Powers preached on this Sunday. Through her powerful sermon, I finally heard deep down that I am God's beloved. I knew, too, that that was my message to the world. Not only I, but you, are God's beloved. That is the message of this day.

Go, today, and soak yourself in God's love. If you have a bathtub, take a long bath. Only a shower? Make it long. Don't worry about your hair or your dry skin. Splash water on your face. Breathe in the steam from the kettle. Take in that water. It is the water of life, of love. You, you, you - God delights in you when you rejoice and sing, and cries when you violate your own humanity and divinity.

Make God happy today. Dance and sing, say thank you for your creation and adoption. And tell someone else that they too are beloved. Rejoice!

The Epiphany of Our Lord

Eucharistic readings: Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12

If this is the end of the season of incarnation, of divine humanity, how special is it to have this be your birthday? Today is Elizabeth's birthday. Each year our winter retreat falls in this week, and we have a silent birthday celebration. I think she's getting tired of it. But silence still allows for good food prepared with love, and cards and gifts. We even have some frankincense and myrrh oil, and I'm sure I can scare up some gold. We just hold off on the air horns and tambourines.

Still, all creation rejoices and sings; for Elizabeth, for everyone celebrating a birthday today, and for all of us beloved children of God. This is the beginning of the season of light, in which we come to see who Jesus is and what he brings. Today, the magi find their way to Bethlehem via Jerusalem, and ask where the new king is. The priests and scribes told them that it was likely to be Bethlehem. Herod was so disturbed he killed all the children under two years old in the area; but the priests and scribes were so unmoved by the prophecy and the appearance of the magi that they stayed home. They knew the words, but they couldn't be moved.

Soren Kierkegaard likens the Christianity of his time to these scribes. "We may know the whole of Christianity," he writes, "yet make no movement. The power that moved heaven and earth leaves us completely unmoved."

Does that sound familiar?

Let yourself be moved today. Get your nose out of that Bible, and get on your knees or your feet. Offer whatever you have, follow whatever star is beckoning you, and go find the real treasure. It will be in some unlikely place. Then go home by another way, and tell what you've seen.

Blessings to you all!

Sunday, January 3: Second Sunday of Christmas

Daily Office readings: Wisdom 7:3-14; Colossians 3:12-17; John 6:41-17

First off, thanks to everyone who prayed for me during the recent retreat. It was a beautiful time with 16 people who showed up to be honest and vulnerable. I look forward to May 6-8, when we have our next one at Holy Cross, and I look forward to being in Maryland January 15-17.

Starting today we will be in silent retreat through January 10, so you will have to celebrate Epiphany and the Baptism on your own. Talk amongst yourselves.

But right now, due to the wonders of delayed publication, I can be with you for these wonderful days. The theme of Christmas - that Christ became human that we might become divine - continues. Solomon, the traditional author of the book of Wisdom, describes his love of wisdom and his joy in finding it: "those who get it obtain friendship with God." But it's the Colossians reading that is closest to my heart. We use it at the ceremony for admitting new Companions, as we used it for our clothing ceremony. The author tells his audience to "clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience"; to "clothe yourselves with love"; to "be thankful"; to "let the peace of Christ dwell in you richly." That is a lifetime's work, one at which I fail daily, but even the glimpses of it increase my desire for it. If ever there was a good New Year's prayer, this is it. Not a resolution, for that sounds like I can just do it, but a prayer. 

Please God, clothe me this year in this way. Let your peace dwell in me, in us. Teach me to forgive. Give me courage to teach and admonish, and to be taught and admonished. Make me as hungry for wisdom as Solomon, as hungry for you as I have been for lesser things. Feed me with yourself. Receive me as your beloved child. I ask this through your beloved one, Jesus. Amen.