Mary Mag Day Continued

Last night we met via Zoom for our annual celebration.  I gave a brief reflection on our texts, Colossians 3:12-18 and John 20:1-18.  Here it is.

If we were gathered in person, we wouldn’t have this sort of reflection offered by one person.  We’d have a simple liturgy with lots of conversations around it.  But this year is unusual, to say the least.  So, although we may still have conversations with one another, I get to say a few words.

We have two readings to frame our life together, readings we share every year.  The Gospel tells the story of Mary Magdalene encountering Jesus and receiving her commission to tell others what she has seen.  She becomes the apostle to the apostles.  Now, Mary doesn’t have a lot of dialogue in the Gospels, so we need to pay attention when she speaks.

When she recognizes Jesus, she says, “Rabbouni!”  Teacher!  Jesus is her teacher, her rabbi.  She follows him and learns from him, and, when she is commissioned, she shares what he has taught her.  I believe that her words to the other apostles were only the first of many times she taught and testified.  

As we walk with Mary, we follow Jesus.  We learn from him.  And much of what we learn is summarized in the Colossians passage.  Colossians tells us how to treat one another in the community, but Jesus taught the disciples to proclaim the reign of God everywhere.  How we treat one another here in this community is simply a training ground for being with everyone.  The point is not to have a lovely oasis safe from the world, but to have a base for moving into the world and calling forth the awareness of the reign of God that is already present.

Mary’s other line is the key to her proclamation.  “I have seen the Lord!”

She doesn’t expound doctrine.

She doesn’t explain.

She says what has happened to her, and in so doing she invites us into mystery.

Mystery is our deepest fuel for the journey.  It is the destination, but it’s also the source.  When we touch mystery we are moved to explore, to journey.

As we journey with Mary Magdalene, we follow into the mystery, hoping to see what she saw and to be addressed as she was.  We pray to be given a word to share with others as she was.

So right now, what is your word?  

As you sit, can you hear a whisper from that garden?

Your name, spoken like a breeze.  A breath.

A presence, real but impossible to box in or reproduce or cling to.

A message.  A word, a phrase.

Let the whisper sink into your soul.  Carry it as Mary did, in her heart.  

I have seen the Lord.  Alleluia.

Oh Happy Day!

(Icon of Mary Magdalene written by a Companion.)

Today, of course, is our "patronal festival" - Mary Magdalene's feast day.  There's too much to say for one post. 

I'll start by asking your prayers for those who will be making new commitments tonight.

Diane, Ernesto, and Lauren are making their first annual commitment as Covenant Companions, after being Candidates for over a year.

Shelby is making her Candidacy commitment, exploring what it means to be a Covenant Companion.

The rest of us will be renewing our vows and promises - Annie and Dario, Elizabeth and myself.

All of this, this year, on Zoom, with our covenant group, Board members, and friends in attendance.  It will be joyous, and yet poignant - as perhaps befits Mary Magdalene.  Joy, but not simple triumph.

She sees Jesus risen from the dead, but she doesn't get to cling to him.  There's new life, but it's not about going back to what was.  The past is past, except as it lives in memory.  That normal is gone forever.  

But the end of that normal is not the end.  No:  "even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.  So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Cor. 5:16-17).

We need to hear this today.  A lot is passing away, and what is emerging is not all pretty.  A lot of it stinks of death.  But amid the stench there are new blossoms, new frontiers of creativity and caring and leadership.  Rather than sighing for the loss of our annual in-person gathering, we are planning a "semester" of events that will deepen our practice of the covenant and our dwelling in the charism.  And tonight, because of the technology we are "forced" to use, we can include others in what is usually a private moment.  We may never be the same.  

I pray we will never be the same: we the Companions, we our country, we our world, we this blessed creation in which we are privileged to dwell.  I pray for the new creation in Christ.

In this new creation, "the love of Christ urges us on" (2 Cor. 5:14).  What I love about this is the ambiguity of the phrase.  "The love of Christ": is that Christ's love for us, or our love of Christ?  I don't really want to have to choose, whatever Paul meant.   I like to see it as a circuit - Christ's love urging me to more love, my love of Christ urging me to live no longer for myself, but to share the good news of this love.

So today, my friends and companions, let the love of Christ urge you on, encourage you, dwell in you richly.  I give thanks for all of you who have blessed us with your support and participation over the years, too many to name.  May we all know and share this new creation.

One Person's Wheat . . .

Today's Gospel is Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.  It's the parable of the wheat and the weeds.  It got me thinking.

First, let me say that I need to leave behind Matthew's explanation of the parable (vv. 36-43).  Just like last week, when he has Jesus explain his parable to the disciples, it seems that Matthew wants to head off the very work of wondering that Jesus' parables invite us into.  By telling us what the parables mean, he makes them less parabolic, and therefore less fruitful.  So, let's leave behind his little summary and just enjoy the parable.

In the parable, there is wheat and there are weeds.  And, of course, no farmer wants weeds mixed in with their wheat.  Jesus' audience would get an image of what he means.  Let them grow together and sort it out later, lest pulling up the weeds also uproots the wheat.  At the end, we will sort them out.  OK, got that.

But here's where I've been wondering this week.

For the last month or two, we've been gathering the various grasses and wildflowers that grow on our lane and the pathway to the monastery and using them in place of flowers.  We have lovely arrangements of  - weeds. 

In past years I would have just walked by those grasses.  I might have appreciated them where they are, but I wouldn't bring them inside - I'd buy flowers, or cut flowers we had grown.  I would not be making bouquets out of weeds.  But this year, the beauty of the grasses overtook me.  I haven't been settling for weeds - I've been appreciating what they bring, the "wheatness" of them.  

So now, when I read this parable, I wonder: How can I be sure what is wheat and what is weeds?  See, it's not just a matter of not uprooting the sprouts I know to be good and nourishing - it's also a question of knowing which is which.  For all I know these weeds are wholesome in their own right!  In uprooting them, I may be depriving myself and others of potential nourishment.

Of course, there is a place for discernment.  Some things are clearly toxic - some plants, and some qualities of the soul.  But some things are less clear.  Is my impatience a weed, or is it a wild unruly flower?  Is my obnoxious neighbor (pick your version of why they are intolerable) a weed to be thrown into the fire, or wheat that can teach me something or bring a gift if properly cultivated with patience and understanding?  You get my drift.

This is not a prescription for paralysis.  In fact, Matthew's explanation leaves us both judging and impotent:  I know who is a weed, and I can trust that God will burn them.  Yuck.  No, this is an opening toward discernment, toward a more careful contemplative approach to myself and others.  Knowing that I don't always know what God finds to be useful leads me to pray as the recovery programs teach us:  I pray for God to remove every defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to God and to others.  That may include some things I like (my "wheat") and leave some things I don't.  Then I watch and notice, and make the best choices I can.

What's growing in your garden today?

Not as I would have it . . .

Each morning I read several daily meditations from recovery programs.  This morning one of them included these sentences:

"With my life in God's care, fear, uncertainty, and anger are no longer my response to those portions of life that I would rather not have happen to me.  The pain of living through these times will be healed by the knowledge that I have received the spiritual strength to survive."

Well, for sure these days have a lot of portions that I would rather not have happen.  From the global, to the national, to the local, to the personal, there's a lot of disruption and interruption of my plans and desires.  And some days - some minutes of each day - fear, uncertainty, and anger do indeed crop up.  At those moments it can be hard to hear or believe that my life is in God's care.   If this is care, I want to say, what is neglect like?  If my life is in God's care, what of those whose lives are immeasurably harder than mine?  Words like the ones I quoted can sound facile.

I do believe, however, that I have been given the strength to survive.  My life is a miracle.  It was a miracle that I survived my youth, my drinking and drugging days.  It has been a miracle to be held during the times that I got lazy in my own recovery work.  I have been given the strength to survive, even before I reached out to God, but since then I have learned to thrive.  Death, loss, disorientation, financial insecurity, fallout from my history and my addictions - none of them have severed the connection to God.  God initiated that connection; I just responded.  I still respond, as well as I can.

These times are hard.  But God is strong, and fierce.  We can reach out for the strength to survive, and to thrive.  And beyond that, we find the strength to reach out to others who need to see God in the flesh, in another person.  Even behind our masks, our eyes can smile.  We can still talk.  We can share what we have.  When we do, we actually get stronger.  Abundance grows as it's shared.

So today, I will stand in the knowledge that I, that we, can weather all the storms confronting us.  Together we get through.

And today's Gospel at the Eucharist:  Matthew 11:28-30.  Go get it!

Unblocking

I can't believe I haven't posted since May!  Well, actually, I can.  I spent June in some sort of twilight zone.  I didn't write on my memoir, nor did I blog or write sermons or - anything.  As the days went on I wondered what was up.  Yes, I was unhappy with so much in the world, big and small.  But I knew there was something more.  I was reading a lot, but I wasn't finding anything to write about.  (Well, sometimes I did, but they were scary ideas I was pondering from my reading, not ready for prime time.)

Then, two days ago, I asked myself what had changed.  I realized that I had stopped doing jigsaw puzzles. I had been doing puzzles and listening to music for the first two months of "enclosure," then I decided that the puzzling was probably leading me into rabbit holes and negative thoughts.  So I stopped.

I didn't know just how much I needed that open time to think.  I knew that I did much of my writing in my head, while doing a puzzle, but I didn't know just how crucial that time was to my process.  But doing a puzzle lets my mind wander while my eyes and hands do something trivial.  In stopping it, I was depriving myself of a crucial time of reflection and composition.  So two days ago I got out an old puzzle.  And here I am, ready and eager to start again.

This experience made me wonder where else we block ourselves by dropping practices that don't seem integral to our spiritual or creative lives.  Where do I block my prayer life by letting go some little thing that has worked for me?  Something as small as a jigsaw puzzle.  Or taking time in the garden, or exercising, or calling a friend, or listening to music, or cooking, or . . . 

If you're feeling blocked or cut off from yourself or God these days, is there a little practice that you've dropped?  Is there one that might help if you started?  And if you aren't feeling blocked or cut off, how do you keep an open channel?  Give thanks for it and keep it up!

And now, back to the memoir.  I haven't been posting pieces, but I'm moving along - again.  God bless you all.