How Great Thou Art

(Warning: This post could get somewhat obscure.)

This morning on my walk I was awed, as always, by the wonder of creation.  There's always something to see or hear or touch or smell (taste only with caution!).  Sunrise, clouds, bushes, trees, rabbits . . . the usual cast of wondrous creatures.  And I, in the midst of it, praise God.

And I think about the distinction between creation and creator.  I was taught that this distinction is essential to proper theology and worship.  "Worship the creator, not the creation/creature."  But if God is in the creation, as I believe and sense, this distinction is problematic.  Here are some of the problems that came to me:

What is gained by separating creator from creation, positing a creator "behind" the creation?  This seems to me a hangover from Platonism.  At the limit it curbs idolatry, so that I don't start worshipping particular creatures or artifacts, but I don't think I have to go all the way to a creator that is separate from the creation.  I need the distinction between them, but I don't need to separate them.

Who is the "I" that worships?  I too am part of this creation.  If God is not behind or separate from creation, neither am I.  My ego consciousness approaches the world as separate, but my deepest awareness is that we are all one.  The "I" that worships is a tiny ship bobbing on the sea of Self that is one with God and with creation.

And what is this "worship"?  I think worship is the I approaching the creation as Thou, as separate.  In the land where all is one, worship doesn't make sense to me: there is no I to worship, no Thou to be worshipped.  But in the land of I and Thou, of ego and object, worship is the closest I can get to union.

So I walk.  I see the sky and I say, "Thank you.  Thank you for letting me be part of this, and letting me be aware of it as a creature.  Thank you for letting me be the sort of creature who can be aware on this level."  I address the creator, because that's what my language allows and my ego consciousness needs.  But on another level, I say nothing.  There is nothing to say, no one to say it, no one to receive it.  It's said, it's done, it is.  And that feels to me like worship.

Now I go inside, to our chapel.  I will say Morning Prayer, with its psalms and readings and hymns and prayers.  I will address God as the one who creates, and the one who receives us when we return to dust.  I will do my best, with my feeble "I," to remember my essential unity with this immanent, omnipresent God - including the faces of those I will serve today.

May you worship today, in whatever way brings you closest to the God who is closer than your own breath.  May you know the wonder that is bigger than any words, any worship.  God be with you.

Effing the Ineffable

Last weekend we led a retreat on Christ Sophia, the feminine face of God.  The participants were challenged and stimulated, and so were we.  We kept noting that God is in fact beyond categories, beyond masculine and feminine, encompassing all.  We are the ones who assign markers and boundaries and shapes to God.  It's important to see images of God beyond patriarchal ones, and to hear language of God in her wisdom, but it's a way station to the real mystery of God.

As we prepared for the retreat, I was deeply challenged to encounter this God beyond images and words.  I've always had an icon on my prayer desk.  Usually it's been Jesus, but sometimes Mary Mother or Mary Magdalene has been there.  But there's always been an image, a person for me to address.  But lately I just can't do it.  Or, I won't.  I don't know who I'm addressing in my prayer, and I don't want to pre-form the encounter by imposing my images.  I thought of getting an icon of one of the wonderful Christ Sophia images available now, but I don't want that either.  I need to let God be.

Elizabeth felt the same way.  Perhaps it's from spending the summer outside, encountering the powerful forces of nature.  Perhaps it's simply the reading and prayer that come with retreat preparation.  Anyway, we agreed.  So, in time for creation season, we each cleared out the icons.  Our chapel is centered on rocks and sea creatures we found this summer, and on the world outside our windows.  This doesn't substitute the rocks for the icons as images of God (I hope!), but gives us a focal point that can't be turned into a person.

We did  keep the tabernacle.  We talked about this: who are we to keep God in a box?  Did God tell us to build Her a house?  But we agreed that we, embodied humans, need that reminder of God's presence.  The fact that it is closed confirms that it is not for us to see casually, that the contents of the box exceed our comprehension.  But we need the sign of the presence, even as we know the presence cannot be contained in one location.

So, we are walking this strange land, wondering who we will be if our God images change.  Maybe you've wondered the same thing.  I don't know the answer.  I'm uneasy with the quest, one I've not sought exactly but which I find myself on.  I like to think that others are on that road with me.   I like to think that you are.  God be with you, wherever you are.

Quotes and Jottings

I'm finishing Metz' book A Passion for God, and I was reviewing the places where I put markers.  As I did, I knew I wanted to share them with you.   Herewith is my selective introduction to his work.

"If . . . the community is the locus for a guilt that has been recognized and acknowledged, then it must also prove itself to be the locus for taking on an undivided historical responsibility, a locus for the interest in universal justice and liberation." (p. 39)

"It is dangerous to be close to Jesus, it threatens to set us afire, to consume us.  And only in the face of this danger does the vision of the  Kingdom of God that has come near in him light up.  Danger is clearly a fundamental category for understanding his life and message, and for defining Christian identity."  (p. 48)

"Whoever hears the message of the resurrection of Christ in such a way that the cry of the crucified has become inaudible in it, hears not the Gospel but rather a myth.  Whoever hears the message of the resurrection in such [a] way that in it nothing more need be awaited, but only something confirmed, hears falsely." (p. 56)

"Could it be that there is too much singing and not enough crying out in our Christianity?" (p. 125)

"The traditions to which theology is accountable know a universal responsibility both of the memory of suffering. . . it always takes into account the suffering of others, the suffering of strangers.  Furthermore, this memoir . . . considers even the suffering of enemies and does not forget about their suffering in assessing its own history of suffering. . . . Respecting the suffering of strangers is a precondition for every culture; articulating others' suffering is the presupposition of all claims to truth.  Even those made by theology." (p. 134)

"What is really at stake is a fundamental theme of Christianity: a passion for God that encompasses the suffering and passion of those who will not let themselves be dissuaded from God, even when the rest of the world already believes that religion does not need God anymore."  (p. 151)

"One could almost say that Israel's election, its capacity for God, showed itself in a particular kind of incapacity: the incapacity to let itself be consoled by myths or ideas that are remote from history.  This is precisely what I would call Israel's poverty before God, or poverty of spirit, that Jesus blessed."  (p. 158)

Want more?  I'd start with his little early book, Poverty of Spirit.  It's all there.   If anything, his message is more timely now than ever; like climate change, we might have listened 50 years ago but chose to stop our ears. Unlike climate change, we can turn now without government action (or action by churches, for that matter).

Today, if you would hear God's voice, harden not your heart!

What's on My Mind

Phew!  We're back from vacation, back from the slowness of summer.  It was a fruitful time, full of reading and reflecting, and it is bearing fruit for how we work and serve this year.  I know for me that part of that will be a return to more regular writing here, as I miss this chance to reflect and share.

What's been up for me this summer is dis-ease.  I've been reading Johannes Baptist Metz' collection, A Passion for God.  Metz was a founder of "political theology," indebted to the Frankfurt School of social theorists and to Karl Rahner.  He continually calls the Church to face the hard questions about God and justice and suffering.  He sees the danger to the Gospel and the Church in a facile happiness, and the subtle ways we abandon eschatology for a focus on our present satisfaction and personal afterlife.

Reading him makes me ask, What do I mean by proclaiming resurrection?  I don't mean to avoid the hard places and the pain, but do I end up doing that?  Am I just purveying my own "good news" instead of the Gospel's call to seek God in the midst of the monumental injustice and destruction of our time?  Where have I substituted my personal "salvation" for the health and wholeness of the world?  Where have I in fact abandoned hope in favor of optimism?

Metz' general challenge takes on specificity when I read it with Jennifer Harvey's book, Dear White Christians.  The Companions are reading it for our September group reading, and it's painful.  Harvey makes the case that no racial reconciliation is possible until white Americans face their own racial specificity and privilege, and work actively for reparations to overcome the legacy of slavery and colonialism.  She documents the failures of the American churches to respond to this challenge.  It is painful reading.

Now, let me say that I used to teach political theory, including the Frankfurt School.  I used to teach women studies, and lgbt studies, and I wrote about white women's need to face their whiteness and privilege.  That makes me more horrified to realize that I have just dropped the ball for 18 years (if I had the ball before!).  Since I entered religious life I entered an all-white world full of "nice" people bringing comfort to those who are weary.  The churches I've served have been shaped by the optimistic, happiness theology that Metz decries, even as their leaders worked to intervene in injustice.  I've insulated myself from the pain of the world, even as I pray daily for those in pain.

So what will I do?  I don't know, honestly.  I know I can start by just naming this, by writing.  I can start by asking questions and noticing where I'm settling for easy answers.  I can start by facing the painful truth that alone I can't do much.  I can at least stop letting it be OK.

I know this is a long post.  If you're still reading, please join me in praying to know what to do, from where we each are.  Pray that the Companions will begin a conversation that invites our transformation and really opens us to serve God in others.  And pray for our world as it groans under the weight of growing tyranny and oppression.  God, make speed to save us!

Prayer and Community

This morning I was thinking about this coming Saturday, when Elizabeth and I will miss evening prayer to attend a movie (shocking!  scandalous!).  I need to let people know, since we stream our prayers via Zoom to our covenant group members and covenant companions.  And that made me think about the importance of community in prayer.

Before I entered religious life, I joined the Guild of St. Benedict.  The central practice was a four-fold daily office.  We never met in person, but I knew that people around the globe were praying - some when I was, others at other times.  It was a powerful mystical bond.

Later, when I lived in a convent, I got used to having people to pray with every day.  But there were times - rarely, but occasionally - when only 3 or 4 of us were there.  Once it was only me.  And those were powerful times too: I knew that I was praying not only for myself, but for my sisters who were called away.  I was doing my part to keep the community praying.  That not only strengthened my connection to God; it strengthened my awareness and connection to my sisters.

Now the people who join us online may think that we are praying, and they are praying with us.  But if we aren't there, if there's no computer, they may think they can't pray.  Au contraire, mes amies!  You have your turn to uphold the Companions in prayer.  And Elizabeth and I do pray when we're gone: if we're in the car we sing the Phos Hilaron and the Magnificat, say the Lord's Prayer, and close.  There is no wrong way to pray.

So I say, not only to our immediate community but to all of you: when you pray, you join the great stream of prayer flowing out of God and back to God.  You join sisters and brothers in joy and pain.  When you take your turn in prayer, you receive back the gift of connection to God and others.

Let us pray.  Amen.

Sermon July 29 2018, at Hopewell Junction NY

I’m glad to be with you today, but I have to be honest.  I wish our time together was beginning on a different note.  There’s good news in today’s readings, but there’s a lot of pain too.  It would be easy to avoid the pain and focus on the loaves and fishes.  Or we could enjoy the beautiful prayer of Ephesians.  But there’s no shortcut to that prayer, to that abundance.  We cannot buy our joy at the price of ignoring sin and horror.  There’s no resurrection without the cross.

Two weeks ago we heard the grim story of Herod’s beheading of John the Baptist.  Today we are confronted again with the abuse of power.  David, the Anointed One, the ancestor of Jesus, is guilty of rape and murder.

For many years we didn’t hear the word rape.  If people mentioned this story, they called it a seduction.  But the text says not a word about persuasion or seduction.  David saw her, he wanted her, he sent for her, he took her.  And he knew it was wrong.  He knew it needed to be hidden.  But rather than repent, he compounded his sin by having Bathsheba’s husband, David’s faithful servant, killed in battle.  He will repent later, but the damage has been done.

Now, I could preach a whole sermon about the dangers of absolute power.  And it’s true, Samuel warned the people when they called for a king: a king, he said, will take your daughters and sons.  He will take your land.  He will exploit and oppress you.  He didn’t say any particular king would do this; he said, this is what kings do.  And certainly the Scriptures give us plenty of examples of this abuse of royal power.  So when the people want to make Jesus king, he flees.  That is not the sort of authority he carries, or desires.  His vision for the people is greater than their own desire or imagination.  The reign of God is about community, not hierarchy; it’s about caring for the least of these, rather than indulging the whims of the rich.

But I don’t want to focus on David.  In this era of #MeToo, it’s time to listen to Bathsheba and her sisters.  What do we learn from Bathsheba?

First, we can learn simply to read more sides of a story.  I wonder, what was life like for Bathsheba after the rape?  She learns she’s pregnant.  When she tells David, her husband is killed in battle in a most conspicuous way.  She knows he’s been killed so that David can hide his crime and take her for himself.  The child born of that rape dies.  Later she will bear a son who becomes king in turn, and who in his turn will be known both for wisdom and for opulence.  He built the first Temple, and a palace, using the forced labor of thousands of men.  Bathsheba has a royal life indeed.  

Does that erase the scars?  We don’t know.  We’re left with more questions than answers.

One of the strengths of Judaism is the willingness to confront God, even knowing that we will not get the answers we seek.  It’s part of Jewish piety to question God, to express outrage, to lament.  The Psalms give us some of that picture.  We too can be outraged and still be faithful.  We can ask, “What are you thinking?  Where are you?” as part of an honest prayer life.  Praise and petition that doesn’t acknowledge hard feelings is just flattery.  God hungers for real relationship.

After this section of Scripture, we hear of Bathsheba once again.  Matthew’s Gospel opens with a genealogy of Jesus.  In the long line of male ancestors, four women are listed.  Bathsheba is there, though her name is missing: she is known only as “the wife of Uriah.”  She takes her place with Tamar, who was used by her father-in-law as a prostitute and bore Perez; with Rahab, a prostitute who helped the Hebrews conquer Canaan; and Ruth, a poor Moabite widow who offered herself as slave to Boaz.  She gave birth to Jesse, father of David.  These four women are the ones Matthew wants us to know about.

What does this tell us about God?  The Hebrew Scriptures make clear that being used or called by God does nor make anyone morally superior.  David is truly called by God, anointed, and that is not changed by his sin.  But neither does his call erase the sin or justify it.

God works by redeeming what has been broken and lost, but we must acknowledge the brokenness.  If we try to deny or justify, we cannot open to God’s grace.  We can’t ignore suffering on our way to glory.  God stands with the victims and the powerless.  We are called to stand there too.  

God’s power, working in us.

We are the ones through whom Bathsheba and her sisters will be redeemed.  We do that by welcoming those labelled unclean, those victimized by powerful and ruthless people - whether they be kings or other political officials, corporate titans, or simply the petty tyrants who keep others imprisoned through poverty or unjust incarceration or human trafficking.  Victims of domestic or political violence are part of Jesus’ family.

We also need to welcome those who have perpetrated these injustices.  The reign of God does not leave anyone out.  David is called to account by Nathan, and he does repent.  When we confront oppressors, when we name the truth and offer forgiveness, we make a space for them to return to God and to human community.  Jesus does this.  We can do this, with God’s grace.

This is a challenging way of life.  But we see it lived around us: in the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa, in the Amish community that forgave those who killed its children, in the movement for restorative justice that brings together criminals and victims to create a new future for them both.  This is the work of the Spirit, and the promise of Christian community.  

I pray that each of us, and all of us, may be strengthened in our inner being, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that we may be rooted and grounded in love, and that we may know and be filled with all the fullness of God.  To God be the glory.Se

Daily Prayer

Our normal daily pattern at the Companionary is to pray together at 7 a.m., 12 noon, 5 p.m., and 8 p.m., plus Eucharist at 8:30 a.m.  For five years we've used the St. Helena Breviary at Matins and Vespers, and adapted resources from other places at Compline.  We sit in meditation at noonday.

Lately we've been restless with the Breviary.  There's a lot to love there, but there's still some theology that's hard to take even in gender-neutral language.  We wanted to experiment but weren't sure how to go.  So God stepped in, in the form of Ernesto Medina.  Ernesto is a priest in Nebraska, who is part of our covenant group this year.  He shared in creating a prayer book for "busy people" that follows the pattern of the offices in a brief format.  It's called Daily Prayer for All Seasons (Church Publishing, 2014).  It's inclusive, not neutral.  It's inclusive across cultures as well as as genders.  It's beautiful.  And it's brief!

We are experimenting this summer by using this lovely book.  It's challenging to not say psalms, to not follow the daily lectionary.  (I'm reading the lectionary readings on my own each morning instead.). I'm sure I will miss the standard canticles.  But I really want to sink into the potential that is offered here.  Plus, since they have the office of None, I now have a 3 p.m. pause built into my day!

It's so easy to get restless with the same old routine, and so hard to let go and do something new.  I'm grateful to Ernesto for sending us this just when we were ready to try something.  I'm grateful to the committee who gathered and shaped the material, and to the Holy Spirit who inspired the writers.

Let me recommend this to you busy people who want to pray.  Ten minutes at a time, sometimes two, is enough.  Start with one office at each end of the day.  Carry the book with you and dip in during a coffee break.  It's better than checking your email - or reading this post!

Blessings on your journey.  Let us know what you find.