Christian

Today’s Word: Broken

Steve · December 14, 2014 · 1 Comment

guitar — Looks like an A-minor. Photo by Jon Givens.

It is perhaps a bit cliché to speak of “grasping the moment,” but like all good clichés, there’s some truth and wisdom at the bottom of this one. Especially right now, as we enter the third week of advent, we are reminded that “now” is our time. We may be “waiting” for Christmas, but God and Jesus are here and available to be experienced right now — no waiting required.

And so it goes with the moments that come and go in our lives, waiting to be truly recognized and experienced by us. This is perhaps especially true of the difficult times when we feel lost, broken, abandoned or alone. The Christmas season is a time of joy for many, but for others, it can be a tougher period. As some struggle to get by, as they see what so many others have (and buy, buy, buy…) and as they cope with the memories of those no longer with them, advent can be a time of just waiting for it all to be over. Advent can be a season of sensing our brokenness.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite Christmas stories — the tale of how that most beloved of all Christmas carols came to be written. By some accounts — we can’t be sure of the truth here, however — “Silent Night” was created out of brokenness. The story goes that a young priest, Fr. Joseph Mohr of Oberndorf, Austria, wrote the lyrics to “Stille Nacht” in 1818 and gave it to a friend and local musician, Franz Gruber, asking him to compose a simple melody to be played on guitar, as the organ in St. Nicholas Church was broken. The song was first performed on Christmas Eve and the rest, as they always say, is history. From brokenness springs beauty.

Here’s a simple guitar and voice recording that my daughter Jenny and I made a few years ago:

01 Silent Night

As we near Christmas, we recall both the woundedness of our lives and the joy of the birth of the Christ, who came to bind up our wounds, heal our brokenness and fill the empty spaces. This is the Christ who heals, who forgives, who makes whole. A child in a manger, yes, but more importantly the Word of God set in the midst of us not just 2000 years ago but even today. Especially today. This is ours to grasp, this is our moment to seize. This is heavenly peace for our lives right here.

Ask yourself in silence: Where am I broken? What beauty can spring from it? Where is my peace?

Today’s Word: Other

Steve · November 22, 2014 · 8 Comments

“You are loved / and so are they.”
(From Old Turtle and the Broken Truth, by Douglas Wood)

This is what we so often forget, even if we don’t consciously realize it. This is what we need to remember and rekindle. This is the kind of life to which we are called, one in which we walk and talk and act and plan as if the other is as loved by God as we are.

But we forget. Sitting in the comfort of our homes (here I am on an early Saturday morning with a laptop on my lap, a cup of coffee in my hand and a fire in the hearth), we can feel safe, warm and content. If we are people of faith, we can feel loved by the God we think of as Creator and Lord. If we are Christians, we can feel loved by the grace and peace of Jesus. All’s good, we say. I’m loved, we think. I have everything I need right here, we feel deep inside.

And that’s a good thing, to be so secure in this love that God has for us. This is as it should be.

But we need to be careful. For sometimes, in our assurance of our own belovedness, we begin to think that we (our group, our tribe, our church, our denomination, our country, our race) has a monopoly on God’s love and we begin to create in our minds “the other.”

The other lives far away, or maybe just in another part of the city. The other looks different than we do. The other prays and worships differently, or maybe they don’t pray or worship at all. The other speaks a different language or with inflections and accents strange to our ears. The other is darker or lighter than us. The other sometimes laughs and cries at different things than we do. The other is too loud or much too quiet. And we begin to fear the other because the safety of our own sense of belovedness begins to falter and crack.

If we’re so loved by God, we say to ourselves, how can the other, who is so different, be loved too? So we build fences and walls and otherwise put distance between ourselves and the other. We build up armies to protect ourselves from the armies of the other and, indeed, these are often necessary. For the other fears us as much as we fear them.

The thing is, we’ve got this all wrong. We don’t get to choose who God loves.

Ask yourself in silence: Who is my other?

Today’s Word: Planted

Steve · November 16, 2014 · 4 Comments

Richard Rohr has written that, “The whole point of religion is to let you know that what you’re drawing upon is already planted within you.” And I retype those words fully aware that, for many, the whole problem with the idea of God — that which is already planted within them — is, in fact, the whole religion part. The challenge of modern faith, it seems, has become for many the problem of finding God in organized religion because organized religion (of all different sorts and sects) has often let so many people down.

God can certainly be found in religion and religious practices, just as God can be found in quiet moments of solitude and prayer, in walks through the woods and in times of joy and ecstasy as we experience glimpses of God in art, nature, loving relationships with others, in the poor and in the sacramental moments of our own religion, if we have one of those.

But what’s most crucial, it seems, is that we don’t flip-flop the equation. We don’t draw upon what’s planted within us to find religion; we draw upon religion to find what’s planted within us. Even that well-worn phrase, “he’s found religion,” seems to be missing the point. It’s not religion God wants us to have but rather the deeply found relationship of looking within ourselves and finding God there waiting for us, so deeply implanted that we might not even have seen him there…nurturing, gently leading, making our lives richer and fuller and whole.

To give up on a religion that has let us down — or that never attracted us in the first place because of the imperfect people who make up that religion — makes perfect sense, it seems. Gandhi once said: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

If we are Christians, it’s our call then to look inside to find this deeply planted God, to resurrect in our lives what it means to be like Christ, and present that to world when it comes looking for a reason for our faith. Maybe they will even come to like our religion. It’s on us, not them.

Ask yourself in silence: What’s most deeply planted in my life?

Blessing: For Those Searching for God

Steve · November 2, 2014 · 9 Comments

May the God we search for make himself known to us, allow us to find and hold onto him as we would a trusted friend, a mother and a father, a confidant and unmoving rock in our moments of confusion and weakness and suffering and everyday busy-ness;

May we be committed to opening up a space and time for God in our lives, finding in precious times of quiet and solitude the still, small voice of God that whispers just loud enough that we may hear him;

May we have the courage to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment as he works and moves in our lives, reach out with the confidence of knowing that his spirit and healing flows from him to us just as it did when he walked in Galilee, healing the sick and giving strength to the weary, for we, too, are sick and weary and in need of his touch;

May the bread and wine of the Eucharistic meal – the body and blood of Christ poured out for us on the cross – become a living sacrament in us, our real and holy sharing in the resurrected Christ…the source and sustenance of our lives and the sacred reminder of our connection to all who share in and become the body of Christ as church; and

May we be present to God and God to us, may we find as we search for God in our daily lives that we have already been found, have already been chosen and called, have already been marked as his own. May we come to know that we are known by name by the maker of all. May we find that through and with and in him…all things are possible.

(This was written for the Holy Childhood of Jesus Catholic Church community in Mascoutah, Illinois for the mission I presented October 25-27, 2014).

Today’s Word: Bee-loud

Steve · August 28, 2014 · 11 Comments

My favorite poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, begins with these four lines:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

glade — Craggy Gardens Bald, NC. SJG photo.

I always loved the sense of silence, stillness and peace that Yeats paints for us in this poem, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I was really aware of what it might be like to live in a bee-loud glade. Yesterday we hiked Craggy Gardens Trail, a path right off the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, which promised a trail to “craggy flats through a high mountain Rhododendron bald.” I had never been surrounded by the bone-like Rhododendron before, and I became mesmerized by the bare branches clawing their way skyward, seemingly dead and yet holding life in the glossy leaves at the end of their limbs. Perhaps another word for another day…

rhodo — Rhododendron in Blue Ridge Mountains, NC. SJG photo.

When we arrived at the top and walked out onto the bald of the hill, I found myself virtually encircled by bees busy doing what bees do, not caring a buzz that I was tramping through their livelihood. But the sound! It took me a few seconds to realize that the roar in my ears was the chorus of the workers. Going about their life and livelihood, I wondered if they knew the sound they made. Yeats’ words immediately surfaced and I smiled. Bee-loud glad indeed. He knew. He knew because he paid attention, as I was doing now.

So often we don’t act because we don’t think we make a difference, as if one voice doesn’t matter, as if the buzz that comes off of our lives is insignificant. But that mindset negates the power of community — of people who put their heads down and work and get the job done, of singers who lift one voice and form a chorus, of worshippers who gather around a common table and form one body in Christ. That’s the buzz of our lives, the bee-loud glade of our existence. We are not made to be alone.

Ask yourself in silence: When do I feel insignificant? When do I feel alive and part of something larger than myself?