From Silence Broken

Continuing meditations and reminders while on the way.

Most recent are 98-100.

1. After taking his vows and being vested in his habit, the monk sat in silence and came to know that should he dwell in the desires of arrogance, anger and condescension, he would be nothing more than a hanger for his habit.

2. He sat in meditation upon the ascetic way, thinking, perhaps if I act holy, then I will be holy. Mother Spirit then reached down. Taking his face in her hands, she looked into his eyes and and said, "Be holy and you will act holy." The monk asked, "What is holy?" She the Spirit answered, "What is Love?"

3. Jesus calls us to be disciples, radical as he. Paul calls us to dare to be radical, to actually consider changing one's mind, to be transformed. It is radical indeed to consider discipleship. It is radical to truly ponder changing my mind, my self-perception as unchanging, to truly consider I need changing. Be transformed! It is radical to love without forethought but as a simple response to The First Love. But be not hard on yourself. Most often the most radical thing to do is to simply Believe.

4. Must I forever remain a neophyte? God willing!

5. Do I prefer guilt over healing to avoid the painful cleaning of my wounds?

6. Of all the things we can do, mercy and charity will bring us quicker into the heart of God.

7. Compassionate love, love and kindness, is joy to the heart of God. Praying for those who despise you is a song in God's heart. Sing then! Sing a joyful song!

8.Obsess on nothing, not even God. Joy is known in pure simplicity.

9. Without ceasing is God born into us, and with us, in the great communion in union with all.

10. The sands of orthodoxy can bury the head and swallow the heart.

11. The monk sat in silence, but his mind was mulling which form of asceticism to practice. Many masters taught that by disciplining the body, the heart would follow. Many taught that by disciplining the mind, the heart would follow. He wrestled with these notions until he could think no more. In this quiet Spirit came to him. She whispered into his silence, "Your true ascetic is of the heart. The heart is the body and mind of the soul. This is where the ascetic heart is trained: you hear me with your heart, you see me with your heart. Where the ascetic heart leads, the mind and body follow."

12. The monk's true abbey is the heart. Otherwise, he's just a man in a dress.

13. "Forgive me" cried the monk, again and again and again. Lost in the duality of sorrow and guilt, he felt his faith wavering in such agony so as to lose it. She came to him, Spirit asked, "Do you not believe, do you not know? Faith can be lost. Don't you know what you experience? Knowledge of Love can never be lost and never forgotten. Would you rather have faith or knowing? Faith is the final veil of the mind, discard your faith so that you may know!"

14. I need not the desert of wind, sun and sand to temper my heart. Sadly, I have the desert of my compassion wherein to find myself.

15. Vanity is a shelter from fear, truth its destroyer.

16. There is only one thing I need to remember: God is Love, God is with me now and always. This is the course of my orbit and the song of my being.

17. Mother Mary, you first bore He who we all too must birth into this world.

18. Love is not a goal or a prize, but is a blessing, known, unknown and unfolding.

19. Christ is present in everyone. Practice is required for Christ to be realized in me. Practice realizes the Love and reciprocates the Love into the communion of humanity and creation, never fixed but ever gaining in the expanse of God's Love.

20. Without the purification of contemplation, I am but an empty bowl, forgotten on a shelf and full of dust.

21. If I fail to reciprocate and realize Christ Compassionate, my endless repetitions of prayer and scripture have less value than the endless summer croaking of frogs.

22. The tree of gratitude bears endless fruits of compassion: this is the Tree of Life.

23. Loving is waking prayer, is being Christ, one with one and all.

24. Justice isn't something to be fought for and won. As with Christ, justice is something which must be lived in our selves and realized in each other.

25. If I fail to move, to realize compassion, I am a hollow idol, in a box, on a shelf, in a forgotten closet.

26. Shimmering light is absent without the shadow's willingness to dance.

27. The Spirit is moving, be ready!

28. Finding God in our fragility, knowing God in our forgiveness and compassion.

29. Moving in The Mystery of Faithfulness: Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ is with us always.

30. "And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith. (Matthew 21, Advent 1, Tuesday) What is my faith? Faith built on belief, belief built on knowing, knowing built on the experience of Christ. Then my knowing Christ should direct me towards asking faithfully in prayer what is true in my heart in response to God's love. Why should I pray for anything else but for the Father's loving direction, for Christ's loving compassion, for She the Spirit's loving wisdom? Why would God not answer this prayer of faith?

31. Liberate me, loving God, to love all creation in Christ, and to be free to be loved by all creation in Christ. Free to know your love in the earth beneath me, in the embrace of the sky and heavens above me, to hear your call to my heart in the red tail's cry, to feel your love in the rhythm of sea oats in the ocean breeze, to know and taste you in the ocean breeze, to see the power of your love in the Appalachians, to deeply breath in the perfume of your love in the rhododendron, to see it all in the last hanging raindrop on the blossom tip.

32. The answers gained lead me to more questions enveloped in the mystery of God's love.

33. The things I think I possess in truth would possess me.

34. Ignore the noise of certitude. All that matters in the journey is being in Christ.

35. My wrong choices are more easily forgiven. The choices of my ignorance are less so.

36. More and more through prayer, and in the intention of Christ, I'm finding myself lightened in the simplicity of true need rather than in the endless absence that is the vacancy, the emptiness, of desire.

37. I am finding myself increasingly at home, of simply being present in the mystery of God's love, unquantified and unfolding, rather than being in the thinking of attachment, possession and accomplishment.

38. Being held in the loving Spirit, the wonderful mysterious God of the cosmos, is my truest retreat.

39. At this later stage in life I am falling, no, I am in love with the Psalms. We in the West have tended to read, say, study, sing, or chant the Psalms, all good and lovely things full of their own merits. But now, finally, I sit and rest, I breath and pray with the Psalms. Praise be to the glory of our Living God's love for us all... Listen for Her tender voice, beloved world, listen.

40. I must remain careful to not allow my beliefs, seeking in themselves, to become names for God.

41. If I rest on the laurels of God's victory, the eternal power of love, then I practice a stagnant idolatry of my own self, and I fail to the whole point of God loving me: to love others. This would be an idolatry of the immobile tin god of selfishness, and empty praise from my hollow heart. The Living God is constantly moving in loving purpose and we in the Spirit must keeping moving to Love's purpose.

42. Regardless of where we come from, in the spectrum of light that is living in the love of God, we all speak the same language of Love's purpose. I don't hear or see different language or interpretations, just different dialects. My dialect is Christ and even in the dialect of Christ, there are countless variations of the same dialect, the same language.

43. The most tangible of Love's language is a sign language, the language of doing.

44. I am a foolish monk to wait on grace. Do I wait to breathe? Then how is it possible to wait on grace?

45. The question arose: "How can the Christianity be more relevant in today's world?" The Spirit, She answered, "Feed the hungry. Shelter the homeless. Heal the sick. Live justice and peace."

46. Again I say, and I'll say it again: Poverty is violence.

47. In Jesus' compassionate love, I pray for open hearts, open minds and open hands.

48. Poverty is violence and violence is the poverty of the soul.

49. The glory of love is not revealed until I experience its loss.

50. Meditations on Martin Luther King's "Poor Peoples' Crusade"

Poverty has never been a question of racial divide based on the color of skin but on the color of money. Poverty is the great tool, great weapon, of powers and principalities, used to keep us separated from each other and from Christ in each other. Poverty is violence of the most subtle and insidious form as it causes us all to be seemingly guilty by association. We can not let shame, guilt and misplaced desire hinder us, as we have Christ with us and in us; Christ to first allow us to forgive ourselves and each other, as one body in Christ, and to end the worldwide violence and tyranny of poverty. We have the God-given power to do this, the power to end the cycles of accusation and guilt, of fear and violence, by refusing to give in to the cynicism of the unnatural divide of human interests as being "black and white", "rich and poor" or "us and them". We who claim Christ must lead the way, as we claim the power of God's love to change ourselves and the world by our belief in God's love and therefore, our love. If we don't believe in Jesus, in realizing Jesus in the lives of the poor, then we deserve every criticism and accusation of superstition and hypocrisy made against us.

51. It seems we Christians, especially of the west, are woefully short when it comes to examining suffering and human suffering in particular. Whether or not this is residue from Augustine's confused embrace of Paul's struggles with morality is another topic to consider; yet it's unfortunate that at the moment of decision he flipped open his scripture to Paul instead of Jesus, which he took to be God's direction. It seems to me Jesus spent comparatively little time on morality, choosing to focus instead on human suffering, our roles in it, and the healing of it, through loving God and each other; the "morality" of intention and purpose, if you will. We would mostly rather talk about "sin" and "salvation", and numerous other code-words, than simply examine suffering, our part in it and the means to our being freed from our fear of it, it's impact on us and how we treat ourselves and each other.

52. Poverty is violence and in the truly rational mind and the spiritual heart, an abhorrent absurdity.

53. These are little prayers which came to me in meditation for receiving communion.

With the host: You feed me so that I may feed others.

With the chalice: You pour yourself out so that I may be poured out.

They remind me that I am but one step in the cycle of the communion with God, humanity and creation.

54. The road to hell is paved with certitudes.

55. The moment I think of myself as holy, is the moment I am lost.

56. One step at a time, then a few, then back, then around nearer, further and back, our lives are walked as a labyrinth.

57. The question isn't why the poor feel "entitled", as though a living wage is an entitlement. The question is why the powers feel entitled to make the poor suffer for their pleasure.

58. Who are you, or am I, to judge? We can overcome bad theology without resorting to the same belittling tactics and scapegoating used by extremists. In fact, we will only overcome the bad theology by first overcoming the bad rhetoric. There is no time for hyperventilated rhetoric. The time is now for options and solutions in our discourse. Even more, the time for discourse is fast passing, as we are now in a time for action in the care of those among us who are suffering in spirit, mind, body and economically: the actions that are God's justice and compassion. Jesus Compassionate calls us to act, not to judge.

This is a bittersweet time, yet full with emerging grace.

59. When I returned to the church, I wrestled with the liturgy's language and the Creed, I couldn't say the parts I didn't agree with, but eventually I did, and do, say them as a practice of humility: I just might be, could possibly be, wrong about some things. It is possible that I don't have all the answers. There are days when I don't want to go. I may be depressed or tired. But sometime we just have to show-up. You never know wonderful little thing may occur, a smile from someone who never does, or a hug from someone who never does but just happened to need one more than me and was willing to give it a try. You just gotta show-up sometimes, you never know what may happen.

60. The way of the prophets is hard to endure, yet graces the hearts of God's people with courage and love for all creation. The prophetic voice shatters hearts of glass.

61. God's call, and the prophetic echo, has always been liberation. Though it takes on different voices through history, the Spirit has always moved humanity towards liberty. We continue to move forward, as more people experience liberty, more people desire it. The more people desire it, the more they move towards it. Liberty, freedom, is the natural state of the garden, therefore, in a certain sense we humans are the last to evolve to it. But we will, it is inevitable, unless we completely destroy the garden before we can get there.

62. I think this is where the Spirit is leading us to ultimately.

People, from all around the world and different traditions will move past the ancient barriers of ideology, personified in brick, mortar and doctrine. Because we communicate now, literally "through the ethers" of electronic media, the barriers are dissolved. Because the barriers are dissolved we, the Church of Christ's communion of compassion, can make direct contact, right now, to accumulate help in addressing the needs of those who suffer around us. We who hear Christ's call to first value love, and loving God through loving each other, will ultimately move on beyond those who would despise, judge and ignore the pleas of the suffering.

It's only a matter of time before the regional "minorities" of disciples will look beyond their denominations, their regions to find each other and connect with each other. We will then realize, "Wow, the Church has been here the whole time, we've just been separated from each other." We, from our compassionate minorities, will join each other in a "super-majority": the loving, compassionate, justice bearing community Jesus promised us, if we but believe and do.

63. She the Spirit is rising and lifting us all with her. Powers and principalities are terrified, their minions' stocks are declining and with their declining influence, we are retaking stock of ourselves and each other. We go online (my blog is receiving as many hits from Russia as from the US), pick up our phones, and see each other, in real time, and see simultaneously, we are the same. We start to see that if we are the same, then perhaps we are one divided against ourselves, to someone else's profit. Eventually we say enough, we are one. We can therefore move as one. We can peacefully, as one worldwide community, communion, say to powers and principalities, with their machines of poverty and war, and say to them: Enough, we will participate in your illusion no more!

She the Spirit is moving. Can the church keep up? We must follow Spirit beyond the walls of stone and wood and beyond the walls of doctrine. If we must, we must leave preachers, priests and bishops behind. If we must, we must leave all the fearful behind with our sacrificial fears. We can simply follow God's call for loving justice. Pray and let Spirit remind you. Pray and be moved to remind me.

64. "Conservatives" are never good for national economies, good times or bad, as they only want to conserve their stranglehold on wealth. These professional "conservative" politicians and preachers function as agents for the wealthy elites, who have no desire to remove any more wealth than what they deem "necessary" from their clutches. If economies grow, then wealth is being removed from their clutches and then is distributed among the general populations, which is in truth, the sole purpose of capitalism: to generate flow of wealth through a society. Yet the wealthy elites, powers and principalities, would strangle economies for their purposes and strangle the individuals who make up economies. Think about this. This is not capitalism.

Poverty is collateral damage. Poverty is warfare. Poverty is violence. Poverty has never been God's will, as some think, or chance, or survival of "the fittest". Poverty has always been violence manufactured and sustained by human hands. Even by mine.

God help me, I have been so freaking thick. Mea Culpa.

65. I have a sense, a notion, that full integration of spirit and body, of prayer and work, contemplative and active, is what being a mystic is truly about, rather than the idea of being one who simply resides in the ethers. I am convinced that this is important in fully realizing the incarnation in ourselves.

It is seemingly a great struggle, and it is in the western mindset. Yet, as immensely powerful as that mindset is, that's all it is, a mindset; one to be transformed and restored to it's proper perspective of wisdom in the Spirit. Or as Paul puts it, we have a mindset to repent of, to be turned around back to the mindset of Jesus, of She the Spirit Incarnate.

66. The compassionate heart is an open heart: open to be emptied and open to be filled.

67. The religion Jesus lived on Earth excluded no one. All were welcome. All were welcome to his feast, his party, his journey. The only people who weren't there were the ones who declined to be there. They declined because ultimately they just couldn’t bring themselves to share in the heavenly banquet with everyone else Jesus invited. They would rather make up their own guest list and guidelines, to throw their own party, for their own kind. So when someone doesn’t want you at their party, the good news is that Jesus still excludes no one. Whoever you are, you’re invited here. All you have to do is show up as you are, mingle, take what you need, and pass the rest.

68. I suggest that perhaps relevance for Christianity as whole would be found in again discerning priorities indicated in Micah 6:8, Psalm 112:9, and Matthew 25: 31-40, and pray that we be so moved in our prayer, intention and application. I know of no other way to grow the Church in a more meaningful and sustainable way. I know of no better way to evangelize than in the compassionate way offered by Jesus: healing the sick, feeding the poor, comforting the afflicted, embracing the outcasts, joyfully taking the Good News out and raising up those who are dead in spirit and heart.

69. Could it be that the varieties of Scriptures and their meanings are not problems for evangelists, but rather for the literalists?

70.

Then I will ever sing in praise of your name

and fulfill my vows day after day.

Psalm 61

For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him.

Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. Psalm 62

Into the heart of intentional compassion, into the transformed heart, these lead me.

71. We are evangelists. We are evangelists of the Compassionate Heart of Jesus. We carry the Good News that God is love, with mercy and fullness beyond all comprehension, beyond the boundaries of what our minds can conceive or imagine. We proclaim that the greatness of God's love is available to fill anyone who will accept it in humility and with contrite hearts, accepting the vulnerable truth of who they are: in being forgiven and in being forgiving. We invite you into the New Creation born in Christ Jesus. We call on you into the compassionate life, the life of receiving and giving, the breathing in and out of God's Spirit within you, the life of living love, the work of living love. We welcome you into community.

72. There are more manifestations of love to be known then there are stars to be counted in all the cosmos.

73. Hell is life lived within the constructs of fear.

74. How would we be as Christians if we spent more time loving in God, rather than in the playing of God?

75. My being an evangelist is not my bringing Jesus to you, or bringing you to Jesus. My being an evangelist is my simply loving you as Jesus loves you.

76. What a folly is my life as a Christian if I fail to finally find anything but the Christ within you. What a misery am I should I then fail to embrace you in worship of the Christ within you.

77. Jesus says the time is now to worship God in spirit and in truth. Then in his Spirit of love in truth, I must kiss the lips that just spit on me, I must caress the hand that just struck me, I must embrace the one who would kill me, I must truly love the one who would deny me God’s love.

78. What a vain fool I would be if I believed God would really stop loving you because I can’t find it in my mind and heart to love you.

79. It seems that there are times when fear is more than the natural response to a threatening world, there are times when it’s a weapon to fight fear with fear. Worse, there are times when fear is simply a justification to hoard and a license to kill. Most worse is when fear is worshiped as the cause for living and the meaning of life.

80. Fear is the idol and nihilism is its truth, sacred individualism its theology, and manifest greed its liturgy.

81. The fearful life bows and grovels before a sterile god.

81. Jesus, make me drunk in the wine of your making, a staggering fool in love from the strength of your vintage!

82. There are more facets to love than in the number of stars in the whole of the cosmos. Everyone can be a guiding light. Find one! Chart your course home!

83. Intention is the setting of my heart, the compass to the map of my life. Like a compass, I must keep it oriented to the way. The needle always points to Love’s morning star, to which my intention must constantly be aligned so to navigate the way when I’m taken off course by obstacles or storms. The rule is the mind’s map to my life, the means to direction on the way. As wonderful a tool as the map is, without the direction of my compass, my travel through the wilderness is at best just hopeful meanderings.

84. How can we be judged as wrong if what we do is loving? How can we hope to be right if what we do isn’t loving?

85. The question for us isn’t one of right or wrong, but of loving or not loving. Our true identity is love, as we are all truly God’s children to be known in our loving heritage and perpetuation. Compassion is the fruitfulness of our linage. Therefore, go forth and be fruitful.

86. We judge, Jesus does not. We are not called to judge, in fact Jesus directs us not to. We are called to strive in our love for everyone and to compassionately serve everyone. 

87. God is calling us to Live the true religion as compassionate lives lived to care for the vulnerable and the poor, and to live unstained by the greed of the world. God's mercy is in us, to worship in the spirit of Jesus' love, and in the truth of our giving.

88. If companies paid living wages, we could virtually wipe poverty out. Poverty isn't a law of nature, it's a human decision. Poverty is violence.

89. Slowly but surely, She the Holy Spirit makes hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. We need only to be willing to enter in.

90. You feed us Jesus so that we may feed.

91. People of peace are people of faith.

92. Know the joy of compassion! Live the joy of compassion!

93. She the Holy Spirit is moving in grace, compassion, wisdom and understanding! Have courage and be moved!

94. Compassion is the engine that pulls the mercy train. 

95. It may be said that all our transgressions are rooted in the inability to have compassion for one's own self. As my priest confessor always reminds me, "Be gentle with yourself." We do treat each other as we treat ourselves, a hard lesson to accept. We love God in loving ourselves, our neighbors and our enemies, even if our own worst enemy is our self.

96. It is love, compassion, which connects the dots of understanding creation as a loving act by a God named Love, rather than as a road of sorrow, suffering and despair tumbling towards a post-modern void. Where we see love, we see God. Where we live love we witness God. Where we know love, we know God. When we see the world through compassionate eyes, we view the world through God's eyes.

97. We, who know the presence of Christ in us, are blessed with new eyes to see the faces of God in ourselves, our loved ones, and in our enemies. In all we adore or may despise, God's glory is found in our love and compassion, found in our willingness to be vulnerable to God in the Other, vulnerable to God in me, and in thee.

98. Its not that I lose my faith but that I'm shedding my thin perceptions of faith.

99. The movement of my soul towards all that is good, all that is God, begins with the humility to accept God's judgement as none, as the mystery of mercy. Sometimes my ego is so large that even in my darkness I feel to big, my transgressions are too big to be forgiven. With humility I approach the Mercy Seat, the place within me, and us, ever untainted, which remains God's sole possession, the place in the heart where God reserves a place for the Godhead, the place from which forgiveness resides and from which we may all withdraw into and emerge, healed, restored and transformed, by Christ's love. If we are vulnerable to this place and to the tears of first regret, then mercy, then joy, we emerge from tears, like from the Baptism waters, a new people, realizing in the crux of that moment, this moment of sweet release, as the future moment promised to us, as now, right now, the living eschatology.

100. From the fields of my shame, by grace, grow the sweet vineyards of compassion.

Jesus Unexpected

I approach Advent, the season of approaching incarnation, with questions of expectations and the unexpected. I'm thinking of the Gospel of Luke's description of the unexpected pregnancies of Mary and her kin Elizabeth. Elizabeth, barren and post-menopausal, "old" as the book reads, becomes unexpectedly pregnant. Mary, a teen aged girl, a virgin, also unexpectedly finds herself pregnant. How these unexpected events must have changed their expectations for life.

How unexpected for us to approach an encounter with one in whom the divine should come to us, as a human reality and experience? Who would expect the Spirit of God to be fully realized, incarnate, to us in human form, in the person of Jesus, who as today's reading from Ephesians describes as being "the fullness of him who fills all in all"? 

How unexpected is it then that the same God incarnate in Jesus would also fill us "all in all"? How does this change our expectations for ourselves and each other? How does this change the expectations of who it is we search out in each other? 

As we approach Advent, the final readings of the year for the Daily Office has the Gospel of Luke telling us about Jesus nearing his death in Jerusalem. The disciples have been told over and over by Jesus that he will soon die on the cross. Yet, the disciples will view Jesus' death as unexpected. They will later view Jesus's resurrection as unexpected joy from the sorrows of his death.

Jesus, the Unexpected!

Jesus, his life, death and resurrection are all things unexpected. His teachings, condemning the religious and embracing sinners, rejecting power and wealth for the company of the vulnerable and poor, all, in the common thinking of the world, are all unexpected of Priest, Messiah and God, and are all leading us to different expectations of God's judgement as being of compassionate forgiving, where we rather expect condemnation in the way we condemn each other. 

This season of approachment I will hope to change my expectations and seek out God's love in the unexpected people and places hidden behind the daily and ordinary of my life. 

God grant me the unexpected grace of eyes to see, with expectation in all, you who fills us all in all.

Sermon, 11 November 2012, on Silence and Solitude

Glenn Memorial Methodist
11 November 2012

TEXT: Matthew 14:13-21
13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14 When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ 16 Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ 17 They replied, ‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ 18 And he said, ‘Bring them here to me.’ 19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

First I’d like to thank Josh and the worship committee for inviting me to be with you today. I also am grateful for your hospitality in sharing with me your fellowship in worship and at the communion table. Thank you, all of you, who make-up Glenn Memorial Methodist Church.

I have to share with you too that I always have an inner-giggle, or sometimes outright laugh, when contemplating the prospect of talking about… silence… and of solitude… in a room full of people. I love this irony and believe God’s sense of humor is expressed in the contrasting tensions of ideas expressed in irony.
I’m not going to speak today about forms and types of silence and solitude found inside and outside of our Christian tradition, as there are many to choose from, and places from where to learn these forms. Glenn Memorial has a Tuesday night contemplative group, if you’re looking for a group to learn from and meet with.

Instead today I’m going to talk a little about the objectives of silence and solitude as a practice towards compassion. Then we will engage in a little guided meditation, and a few minutes of silence, to get a taste of the solitary space that is intentional silence.

For some the goal of silence is to be in silence, to attain a place of absolute quiet inside of themselves, from the outside intrusive noise of living in a noisy world. For some it is to achieve an inner-silence, where the mind is quiet, away from the constant chattering of one’s own thoughts and mind, to become more attuned in the awareness of the present moment. These are helpful and healthy objectives which promote a freshness of mind, reduce stress, and lower your blood pressure, in the midst of a busy day.

What I want to offer to you today is the idea that the ultimate objective of constructing a space of silence, is to be able to break the silence. Likewise, the ultimate point of being in solitude is so to thrust yourself back into the communion of humanity and creation.

What kind of silence am I speaking of, whose ultimate objective is to be broken? It is the kind of silence suggested in today’s Gospel reading. In the verses just prior to the ones we read today, Jesus, after hearing of his cousin John’s, death at the directive of Herod, has gone away immediately to a place where he can presumably mourn, and be alone, in the quiet of a desolate place.

The reading picks up where Jesus leaves a place of sorrow, silence and solitude, from where Jesus then feels compassion, and then from this same place of silence and compassion, he heals the people; then, when the disciples can’t find it within themselves to do so, Jesus feeds the people, the people who are in a desolate place. Jesus feeds them more than they can take in.

What a wonderful place of silence and solitude Jesus has come from, what a place of plenty.
As I view this reading, I can relate to the crowds, as I too often feel surrounded, by so many things, and obligations of living, and of people so demanding, that life itself seems overwhelmingly desolate-- and regardless of how much I have on my plate, I still feel deeply hungry.

I too understand very well, the sense of helplessness expressed by the disciples, who looking around at the crowd, in their desolation and hunger, how the disciples too, like I have, must surely have felt powerless and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of need in this world, not to mention the need of five thousand…  plus women and children.

And then later, while collecting the left-overs from the Teacher’s miracle, the disciples too may have felt, like me, dumbstruck and full of wonder about the place from where Jesus drew this ability, to feed hungry people, in desolate places.

Where is this place? Where is this place Jesus comes from where his sorrow becomes healing power? Where is this place where silence and solitude, erupt in expressions of healing and plenty, where desolation becomes a feast of excess from which baskets of leftovers are taken away?

I believe this place is accessible to us all if we are willing to clear a space and place for it. We can do this following Jesus’ model, to find a little solitude and silence, and then be willing to enter into the space, this sacred space, which we all contain within ourselves.

Like Paul, I believe the body is the temple of God. I also believe that as the ancient Jerusalem Temple had the sanctuary of God within, we too have a sanctuary within the body: the heart.

And as the sanctuary contained the Holy of Holies, the place where God resided on earth, so it is within our hearts. I also believe that as was in the Holy of Holies of the Temple, therein was The Mercy Seat, where while on earth, God rested.

Likewise, God’s mercy seat may be found in the Holy of Holies within our hearts, and that it is the same place described by the 20th century mystic, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who described it as being the little place in the human heart where no-thing exists, other than the spark of God.

There is a place in your heart where no-thing exists, in solitude and silence, no-thing exists but for the presence of God, and God’s pure being--- Love.

This is the place I aspire to in the practice of silence and solitude. This is why it is the Holy of Holies for me, as it is the incarnational place I approach, in the hope of having the ability to be absolutely honest with myself, in God’s presence, and to be as vulnerable to God, as God is to me; as vulnerable as Jesus was, to the sorrows of John’s death.

Like Jesus we can be willing to be vulnerable to the suffering and sorrow we experience on this earth, and be alone with it, and be transformed by it.

We have to allow the full experience of the loving work of transformation in us, in both its joys and sorrows, as these feelings testify to each other, the power of love, as being found in vulnerability.

As Jesus comes from his mournful silence and solitude, he is met with a crowd, all clamoring for him, with their need for them. He has just come from a place of suffering, and because he has given himself into it, he can fully understand the suffering of others, from his own-very- full-human-experience, and not only feel compassion, but be moved by it, be moved by it, to heal and feed the needs of the people around him.
The miracles recorded in Matthew 14 are big. I think the miracles are big to teach how important the transformation from suffering to compassion is in our lives.

It suggests that there is more to our suffering than living through it. It suggests that more than live through it, we can love through our suffering in silence and solitude in the presence of God in our hearts.
“For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation”, reads Psalm 62, and likewise, Psalm 46 reminds us, “Be still and know that I am your God.”

Our hope is in stillness, knowing the silent salvation of God which is our healing. Our hope is in, as Psalm 145 boldly declares, that “The Lord is loving to everyone; his compassion covers all his works.”
God is loving to everyone. God’s compassion covers us, all.

In your silent and solitary place deep within, know this, and except this gift from God’s love.
Then, be compassionate, towards yourself. Then, be compassionate towards your neighbors, then, towards your enemies, then, towards the strangers.

Jesus, in compassion, made big miracles. I think often in my life the tiniest miracles are the biggest. The miracle of accepting God’s love and the joy it brings is the first small step, the small miracle.
But it’s really big. It’s big, as it breaks the silence of the sorrowful heart. It releases the lonely heart, the shamed heart, into the community of compassion.

Little miracles are all around us found in an understanding smile, a knowing laugh, a compassionate touch or simply a willingness to engage into just listening to one another. All of these can go a long way to feed someone who finds themself hungry, in a desolate place.

Truly, we feed the multitude, one person at a time.

Silence’s intention is to be broken. Like the primordial silence was broken by the word of creation. Like the silence and solitude of the womb is to be broken in the life of new birth.

Your silence is connected to the silence before creation, and your silence is like the womb ready to put forth a new life, your new life.

This contemplative practice of silence is a gift from God, which we then shape, as the bread on that table is shaped by our hands. The practice of solitude is the pouring out of the vessels of our selves, like the cup on that table, empty, waiting to be filled again by God’s healing presence and then poured out to us, to each other, hungry in a desolate place.

Then we can see these contemplative practices help form lives lived as communion, sound intentions for living a Eucharistic life.

The Eucharistic Life, like the communion bread on that table, are lives lived, accepted and offered in thanksgiving, to be shared as abundant and broken offerings, to feed each other, and to be lives lived, poured out into each other, as the cup on that table will be poured out, in healing through God’s compassionate love.

I pray you; enter into the silence of the sanctuary of your heart, the Holy of Holies, and come before the mercy seat.

Enter intentionally, vulnerable, where the loving Father’s mercy waits for you, your spirit and your truth.
Enter into the embracing of life’s unavoidable hunger and desolation of sorrow and suffering, where the loving Son waits in compassion to heal you and feed you.

Enter into the solitude where the loving Spirit waits to again fill you up so to be happily poured out again.

Then, break the silence!

Know the joy of compassion, the shared life in companionship, the joy of loving and being loved, of healing and being healed, of feeding and being fed.

Know the Eucharistic life lived as an oblation, a sacred giving, with open hearts, open minds and open hands… know the loving life lived in communion with humanity and creation.

Amen.

Meditation on Acts 10:28

"God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean."

Acts 10:28

Reading for The Daily Office, Thursday, Proper 16

In Peter's conversation with Cornelius he provides another clear definition of what it means to be a believer, a follower of Jesus. As his followers, Jesus tells us over and over, and in many ways, that to follow him we must love ourselves, neighbors and enemies all. 

It is not our place, nor in our capacity, to refuse God's fellowship to anyone. Peter's words also echo the psalmist who wrote, "The Lord is loving to everyone, his compassion covers all his works." The psalmist didn't write "The Lord loves everyone", but "The Lord is loving everyone", which means God is acting in the present tense, that is right now, for everyone, all his works. 

As surely as the sun shines and the rain falls on us all, in our each unique lives as righteousness, and at times unrighteous persons, so does God's love shine and pour on us all. 

There is no one whom the Lord doesn't love, not one of us who is not covered in God's loving compassion. God is the source of all being, born out of the expediency of God's own love, therefore God is the source of all love, which means it is not our's to withhold or to expend, but only ours to refuse or to share. This means it is impossible to withhold God's love from anyone as God simply loves according to God's own nature and purpose, as God's love "is constancy and peace".

Can I stop the sun from setting or the moon from rising, how can I stop these elemental forces of nature from ceasing? Then how can I reasonably expect to stop love, the elemental nature of the cosmos? How can I say to love, the first cause of being found in the Spirit of the love of the Father and Son, you cannot be?

If I should attempt to withhold God's love from another, by judgement or threat, I invite disaster and suffering upon myself and those I associate with, as there is no greater disaster than to withdraw from love, the disaster which can cascade into great suffering of my own and into sufferings I may then cause others in my loveless carelessness: I risk myself to evil and its agencies, I begin to take myself from God and into the first steps of suffering's hell of my own making.

And for what, to seek to withhold the power of the cosmos from taking its natural course? I might as well tell the sun to quit shining.

If I want to do more than survive, I need more than food and water. If I want to live abundantly, that is with health, fullness, happiness, satisfaction and peace, then I must do so by loving more abundantly. This is the call of Jesus; to live more abundantly in love, and to live more abundantly in love is to be more vulnerable to love, which is loving all those requiring love in their poverty of mind, body and spirit; in their diseases of mind, body and spirit; in the lonely abandonment of their mind, body and spirit.

Peter knew this. We in Christ know this. We know this in the breaking of the bread and in the passing of the cup. We know this in the compassionate eyes of Jesus which see all humanity as the same. We know this in the vulnerable body of Jesus: broken to feed us, everyone, all the same. We know this in the vulnerable Jesus whose blood was willingly poured out to save us everyone, all from ourselves, and to heal us all, everyone.

Everyone is loved in God's compassion, and in Jesus to whom no one is profane or unclean.

Beyond Fear Into the Joy of Vulnerability

Last Sunday's gospel reading told the famous story of the young man who had lived a perfect life according to the law, according to what was expected of him. I suppose he had spent sometime listening to Jesus preach and had some knowledge of his teaching. I suspect he felt confident as he approached Jesus. I suspect ultimately the man was anticipating confirmation as he told Jesus that he had lived the perfect life, which was expected of him, in living rightly according to the laws of his faith. I suspect the wealthy young man was being a bit ironic, and maybe a little cocky, when with maybe a confident smile on his face, he asked Jesus, "Master, what else do I need to do to enter paradise?" We know the answer.

"Give away everything you own to the poor." Jesus told him, I suspect with a quiet voice, barely above a whisper and with a little smile on his face.

Had I been the rich man, I too would have been greatly sad and thunderstruck in Jesus's whispered answer. I would have said to myself, "I was afraid Jesus was going to say something like that."

I know how the rich young man felt. It's not that I fear God in the sense of "wrath of God stuff" or eternal punishment for my sins. No, I trust in Jesus, my transgressions are forgiven, as he promises, as I begin to live in the new life, the New Creation birthed in the shadow of the cross. Unlike the young man I have never come close to living the life expected of me, but Jesus has for me. I trust Jesus in this.

So if I'm not fearing wrath of God stuff, then what is it I fear about God?

I fear what God will ask of me. I fear what God will ask of me beyond the expected. I fear what God reveals to me about myself, about both the things I feel good about and about the apprehension I have about myself. I fear those things I too must give away, surrender, in order to fully realize my humanity. I fear the vulnerability true love requires, the vulnerability which is reflected in God's vulnerable love born on the cross. 

I fear the vulnerability which compassion requires, the vulnerability for my own weakness and sorrow, I fear the willingness to embrace my suffering in God's compassionate love, to be healed and transformed from a person self-absorbed in fearfulness and woundedness, into a compassionate companion to self, humanity and creation. I cannot truly embrace the suffering of the world unless I first embrace mine in the healing salvation of the embrace. 

When I deny my suffering, I conveniently too deny the suffering of the world. It's not enough to do what is merely expected, but I have to extend myself, into my heart and soul, towards the truth of who I am: sorry, mistaken, weak, in pain, hopeless and sad, yes; but also to acknowledge myself as one who is much more in the hope of God's love, one who is also living the future hope, now, as one forgiven, relieved, healed, made whole, and knowing the real joy of love.

There is real joy to be found in vulnerability. Real love requires willingness for vulnerability in the face of human struggles, sorrows and tribulations, which are more in number than in all the stars above and around us. We have to have a willingness to be vulnerable in order to more fully love, and be vulnerable to be more fully loved.This is the way to joy, to be abandoned in love. This is the Way of Jesus, the Way of the living God: upright, vulnerable, arms stretched out, chest and belly exposed, awaiting the sweet vulnerable embrace of the world.

Sometimes a Person Just Needs a Fish

"Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime."

Today again I had this old argument of fishing thrust upon me. It is a good argument as it is a convenient argument for which I could take if I want my conscience to feel better. Honestly on the surface as an adage it makes sense, until you apply it to real life.

What good is it to teach a man to fish if he doesn't have a fishing pole, line, hooks or bait? What good is it to teach a man to fish if the lake is empty? What good is it to teach a man to fish if he has no arms or hands to hold the pole or land the fish? 

There are times like now where people want to work, are trained to work, and are willing to work, but for whom there are no jobs or no connections. There are people who are working hard every day but are poor and need help because their jobs don't pay a living wage. And there are legitimately some who simply aren't able to work.

Even Jesus, after an afternoon of teaching parables would "be moved with compassion, for they were hungry" and would sit the crowds down and feed them bread and fish. He would feed them without question just because they were hungry. And then the people would feed each other and there would even be leftovers.

Sometimes a person just needs a fish. 

Compassion. God calls us to compassionately give to those who need help. God calls us to help, not judge, nor patronize, nor to take the easy way, condescendingly offer adages. God calls us to act with compassion and mercy.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, cut over 400,000 jobs in his tenure. He once said the perfect factory would be built on a barge which he could tow from impoverished community to community, working them to exhaustion, for pennies on the dollar, then weigh anchor and move onto the next. 

Given his way he would mine the community, and strip away its human resources, leaving nothing but ruin behind. Strip mining human resources. 

Humans aren't resources. They are treasures, to be valued and preserved above all else.

Jack Welch has admitted to what scripture been saying all along. Poverty is a construct of human greed and hoarding. It's not nature. It's not an accident. Poverty is the willful intentional construct of suffering and injury of one people upon another.  Poverty is violence and a crime against human rights and the human spirit. Poverty is a transgression committed by one people upon another as it disregards God's call to live God's loving will. 

We Christians are called over and over again; through the Prophets, through Jesus Christ and through the history of apostles and holy people everywhere; to care for the poor, the sick and the suffering. This is what we do, and if we're not, then we should wake up and do so. And as the Prophets demanded their royal governments to care for the suffering, and to end the injustice of poverty, we should do likewise.

By denying the suffering of others we may deny the suffering we know in ourselves. Or we can acknowledge our shared sufferings made as a sacramental offering of our lives to each other, as God did through Jesus, through the compassion "which covers all his works". 

Through our suffering, transformed by God's love in us into compassion, we can end the suffering and violence of poverty. We can have the courage to treat poverty for what it has always been and always will be, a crime of injustice. God's promise is that we can be healed our helping in the healing of others, as we are healed in Jesus. This is how compassion works.