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"A Fool and a Wise Man Don't See the Same Tree." --William Blake

9/16/2013

Blake was considered a fool and when he died his body was placed in a pauper's grave with two other bodies. Now, he is considered to be one of the great English poets and would be entombed in Westminster Abbey if only they had a body to place there.

Blake was at least a little crazy, as under-appreciated or over-praised geniuses often are. Nevertheless, he was also a wise man because of his vision, because of what he saw when he looked at a tree. Unlike the fool who doesn't even notice the tree or only sees its utility as a source of shade or a landmark on his route to work, Blake saw angels of light glowing in the negative space between leaf and branch.

Rather than mere biology narrowing matter down to descriptive labels that dismiss the miracle of a particular tree in a particular season in a particular relationship to a specific forest, Blake saw the wondrous creation of an inspired artist and was moved to awe and worship.

Because I am largely a fool, that is, a dullard, half asleep, too preoccupied with burdens piled on my back by a culture infatuated with productivity and wealth rather than truth and beauty, I barely see, rarely worship, am mostly incapable of wonder or awe. So I can not adequately describe what a wise man sees.

My appreciation of this bold statement feels like a divine invitation to wipe the scales from my eyes, as I am graced to notice them, and keep expecting to see a revelation of incarnation in the trees that are burning to declare God's glory.

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"Love is Light, not Consolation," --Simone Weil

8/8/2013

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Love is playful.
Love is curious.
Love is hungry for the beloved, it does not feed on what will not fulfill its hunger.
Love is focused.
Love is the only way to deep intuitive, wisdom and transformative knowledge.
Love is passionate.
Love pays attention.
Love is vulnerable, it disregards past hurt in its rush to open itself up to the worthy beloved.
Love delights in mystery.
Love accepts reality, not as an act of settling, but from the sure knowledge that it is necessary and in its essence, gift, grace.
Love is freedom, because it does not need to be in control.
Love listens.
Love is sight, without it we see only shadow.

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More Raw Material

6/18/2013

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(This Post is an appendix to the previous one called Raw Material of my Life.)

Most of what I notice in myself, especially when facing something for which I feel unequipped, is fear, and a desire for control and certainty, often mixed with self pity or resentment that life is demanding more of me than I feel prepared to face. With this image of myself it is not surprising that I often anticipate a poor outcome to upcoming challenges, increasing my dread and feelings of inadequacy. I've tried bravado, obliviousness, even prayer, but my self image is deeply rooted and those roots tend to grow into thorny brambles. And to tell you the truth, I don't think that my conception is all that skewed. I do have all that material in my heart and mind. The older I get -- even though I feel more loved by God and those who know me -- the truer this picture seems to be. This rotten stuff is a big part of the raw material of my life.

Pretty bleak, I know. But the surprising and happy reality that I have been experiencing is that these things don't really matter that much. The reason is, that even though what I have to offer God looks and smells like manure, it is exactly what God asks of me: "Bring your manure to me and I will fold it into the soil of the kingdom that I planted within you, and I will see that spiritual fruit begins to grow. Eventually, the smelly raw material of your life will become clean, sweet fruit that can nourish the lives of anyone you encounter."

Envisioning the kingdom of heaven as actually in my body, spacious and eternal, has brought an immense sense of freedom. For one thing it is far easier to face the truth about myself if I believe that the raw material of my life will be transformed into something good. It's easier to open to how my limitations and selfish preoccupations hurt others and even the world at large. It changes everything to believe that even my worst faults, in the hands of a creative God, can fertilize the soil of my soul. One of the gifts of hope is a greater tolerance for hard realities.

Another gift of hope is that it becomes easier to live in the present moment. The future is in God's hands and God is infinitely more trustworthy than I am. When I think that the future depends upon my competence and vigilance, I have every reason to be afraid. When I let go of the illusion of control and instead receive my life as the raw material from which God will fashion the future, something in me shifts. I move from a state of burdened responsibility to a sense of being a co-creator with God. I'm reminded of the image of being yoked with Christ, working together, sharing the burden.

At least a part of what is driving this quest is a growing awareness of just how limited I am. I don't know what the next best step should look like -- when a gesture or a silence is called for. I don't know who needs what, or when they need it, whatever "it" may be. If any good is to come from my life, I must trust God to accomplish it.

Of course, I feel the responsibility to do the best I can, to be as loving and kind, sensitive and responsive as I can be. But at the same time, I desire to be a vessel for the life of Christ in this world. I suspect that we all do. But the life of Christ must be received as gift. There's no point in looking to myself for this supernatural life. Only God can give it to me. If the life that I am living is something that I can do on my own, then I'm settling for far too little.

Christ wants to love the world through me and yet what I find in myself is not love. This is the human condition. What is God's solution? Incarnation. Strength in weakness. Taking the raw material of life and making a new heaven and new earth. What I am experiencing is the joy being a part of the divine re-creation.

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The Raw Material of My Life

6/6/2013

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"Time is perpetual presence, perpetual novelty. Every moment is a new arrival, a new bestowal. Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy. The moment is the marvel; it is in evading the marvel of the moment that boredom begins which ends in despair."

--Abraham Joshua Heschel

I want this statement to be true, because it implies that there is far more to life than I usually perceive. I believe that I have experienced this truth, because I do not feel boredom or despair when I get a glimpse of the marvelous moment. But when I am callous and unable to see the holy gift, I find myself asking the same old questions: Why don't I have eyes to see, or ears to hear? How do I wake up to the abundant gift of life right now? How do I stay in the present when painful memories or fearful projections haunt my imagination?

Since "every moment is a new arrival, a new bestowal" there is a question implicit in each moment, something like: Did you see that? Do you hear the invitation in this experience? Maybe the answer to waking up is as simple as hearing the questions as they are being asked. I've heard it said more than once that the most important thing in life is to ask the right questions, because the wrong ones lead to a dead end. I believe that we are always asking questions. But maybe we keep asking the same dead end questions and they hinder us from hearing the questions that Life is asking.

Some of the dead end questions might be: How will I ever pay off this debt? What should I do? Will I be anonymous forever? Why do we let them continue to do that? When will this (whatever it is) end, change, get better? Who's in charge? Why is life so hard?

Rabi Heschel suggests that we might be prone to evade the marvel of the moment. It might be that these habitual questions are an unconscious, automatic way to avoid the inherent challenges of "novelty." The blessing of the abundant now is a gift, but it also asks something from us. And from what I've seen and experienced, most of us feel overwhelmed by what we already have on our plate. The new thing better be pretty marvelous and it better be manageable, or I might not have time for it. And, of course, it rarely is. God will not be managed.

I've become increasingly aware of the dead end questions that blind me to the marvel of the moment. In the process, I have begun to form a question that feels like a good question because it keeps my attention focused on the activity of God's kingdom in this world. The question is, "What will God create from the raw material of my life?" As I take in my life with all it's trouble and uncertainty, surprises and delights, it enters the eternity that God put in my heart. (Eccl. 3:11) It becomes material in God's kingdom within. God is ever creative. Something is happening inside of me and it is good, maybe even "very good." (Genesis 1:31)

Another happy consequence of asking the question, "What will God create from the raw material of my life?" is that I feel both powerful and peaceful. I don't need to fear anything. I can breath it all in, into the kingdom within and wait to see what God's spirit will do with it. I used to deal with anxiety by breathing in love and breathing out fear. Now I breath in fear and breath out love. Isn't that what Jesus modeled? God's victorious kingdom exists in me, not in the world. This is the place, inside of you and me, where God is operating. And our lives are the material from which he will accomplish his "kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven."

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Rejoice!?

6/1/2013

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"Beloved, we are always in the wrong,
Handling so clumsily our stupid lives,
Suffering too little or too long,
Too careful even in our selfish loves:
The decorative manias we obey
Die in grimaces round us every day,
Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice
Which utters an absurd command ‒ Rejoice.

W.H. Auden

Yes, I feel it. Too little or too long, too careful... Everything is tainted by limitation and futility. Tohu wa bohu (תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ) is a
Hebrew phrase found in Genesis 1:2. It is usually translated "waste and void," "formless and empty." That's a good description of my attempts to accomplish something in this world. But even my failures are insignificant in light of God's ongoing creation.

When even our best efforts seem to "die in grimaces round us every day," out of the dying and emptiness comes a voice, a presence, laughter. How can this be? Just as in the beginning, God, so it is now and forever: Creation out of emptiness; Resurrection from death; Fruit from seeds planted long ago. Rejoice! The absurd command.

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The Cross of the Moment

5/2/2013

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"It is better to say, 'I am suffering,' than to say, "this
landscape is ugly."

--Simone Weil

I don't know if at the time that she wrote this sentence Ms. Weil was familiar with the psychoanalytic concept of projection, but she clearly understood that people are tempted to take their inner ugly and paste it on any surface they can find. We would rather do almost anything than bear our own suffering. Her pithy remark is a terrific reminder for me to look inside every time I notice myself finding fault with the people or circumstances of my life.

Not only does it temper my fault finding, it also turns my attention to God. Because of the mystery of my brokenness, I usually don't know why I am suffering. I become aware that a lead blanket is pressing down on my heart and the feeling of it can not be explained by the circumstances of my life. Even when life is hard, I can perceive that the circumstances are only a part of the story. The rest of the story lies deep in my soul where there is an illusion of
control, a lack of gratitude for the miracle of each breath, and a failure to appreciate the beauty that pushes up through the asphalt of life like a stubborn flower.

Only God knows the whole truth about my condition and the way, that is, the particular process by which I may receive the grace that would awaken and lighten my heart.

When I become aware that I am projecting and choose instead to turn to God, the first feeling is of confronting a hard truth. Bam! There's nothing to do but take it in the face. Justifications are embarrassing. Analysis feels both arrogant and stupid. There's really no way around the simple suffering of truth and experiencing of powerlessness. The good news, yes there is good news, is that the truth sets us free.

But the truth that sets us free is not a propositional statement, it is an encounter with the "the way, the truth, and the light." Statements of truth are not meant to be a substitute for the direct experience of the Christ. In my experience so far that usually feels like crawling up on an alter, knowing only that something must die.

W.H. Auden's line is apropos:

"We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die."

Another metaphor is useful here. We are like butterflies. This life is accomplishing something in our souls. While it may be understood that the caterpillar must enter a cocoon, it is sometimes forgotten that it must also go through a complete restructuring, it must become a gob of liquid before it can be re made into its final expression. The Kingdom of God is at hand and it is accomplishing something corporately and individually. There are no short cuts. We must go through it. Consenting to this process rather than projecting the pain of it out into the world is our way of co operating with God and joining him in the work that he means to finish.

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Orthodoxy/Orthopraxy/Fire

4/30/2013

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"Orthodoxy is about being consumed by glory: the word means not 'right belief' (as dictionaries tell us) but right doxa, right glory. To be orthodox is to be set alight by the fire of God."

--Kenneth Leech

I'll confess right up front that I am fed up with what I have perceived to be a preoccupation with right belief in the Christian milieu in which I was formed. I prefer the emphasis on orthopraxy (right action) which is making headway in the Christian imagination, but it also makes me a little nervous. I can't help but imagine that eventually political correctness will infect our perception of right action.

Father Leech's way of understanding orthodoxy sets the bar a lot higher, probably beyond our reach. I can't imagine way to achieve right glory. And to be set alight by the fire of God looks to me like a supernatural gift.

After much reflection on the human condition, that is, my own shortcomings, the only position that I've come to trust is that of the humble receiver of gifts. Furthermore, the only condition of heart and mind that can believe and act rightly is the state I'll describe as awe and wonder. Only a heart in right relationship to God, awestruckdumb, if you will, has a
chance of rising to this level of orthodoxy. And only a heart that longs for this gift has a chance of receiving it. And we won't do that if we keep hanging on to the dualistic ideas inherent in the common understanding of orthodoxy and
orthopraxy.

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What is Intercession?

4/23/2013

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"Intercessory prayer is not a technique for changing God's mind, but it is a releasing of God's power through placing
ourselves in a relationship of co-operation with God. It is an act. Prayer and action should not be opposed to each other, for prayer is action. Intercession means literally to stand between, to become involved in the conflict."

--Kenneth Leech

While I am a proponent of divine mystery, meaning that I believe that we are better served by contemplating the mysteries of the faith than by settling for easily understood explanations, I find myself wanting to make sense of the practice of intercessory prayer. It's not easy. The obvious, familiar difficulty is that God knows best what is needed and loves the people or persons for whom we are praying far more than we do.

I can imagine that God would want to share with us the joy of loving his creation and that intercessory prayer is an act of love. But there are far more compelling and courageous ways to love and to pray. Even the act of deep attention given to another person or any part of creation appears more loving to me then asking God to change something. Additionally, I can think of dozens of hard circumstances that produced fruit that would not have ripened if God had answered my prayer for reprieve. I feel more drawn to
the prayer, "Thy will, not mine be done?"

It is my hope that when we are encouraged to petition God, it means something very different than what I have seen modeled. The above quote speaks to something deep in me, especially the picture of co-operating with God. And to think about intercession as becoming involved in the conflict is also an attractive invitation. I sense that there is much in
what Father Leech is saying that I don't yet understand, but I intend to continue mulling it over. I simply recommend it to you for your own reflection. Does anything in this quote stir your understanding of intercessory prayer?

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Pray Without Ceasing

4/15/2013

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"Pray without ceasing"
1 Thessalonians 5:17

I've come to experience unceasing prayer as facing
reality–my external circumstances and my internal responses–while intentionally opening to God's presence. Rather than an ongoing conversation its more like a
shared awareness.

When I face into life and notice my internal reactions
to that life and allow it all to come into consciousness with as few filters or judgments as possible, I've found that God is neither judging nor resisting what's happening. Instead I experience God smiling knowingly as I become increasingly aware of both the great gift, that is, my life in Christ, and, my
egocentric response to that same gift. (Sometimes I don't have the eyes to see the great gift as gift.)

When I am feeling the unnamed angst that would
drive me into unconscious, automatic coping behaviors, I can, because of my awareness of God's presence, simply allow it to be a part of my reality. When I let God join me in the experience rather than attempting to bear it alone, I'm
not as inclined to compulsive, myopic introspection. Nor am I as likely to jump to the same old conclusions (I need to try harder, I'm useless); rather, by letting God's light and healing presence work beyond consciousness, and letting
the shame-based desire to fix myself be overcome by God's unconditional love, I can allow the Spirit to do what can only be done by God's Spirit in the context of my actual life.

Yes, it is hard to release control and trust God rather than my own resources. Like everyone, I feel obliged to take responsibility for myself. But with theblessing of five decades it has been made very clear that I am not that good at managing my own transformation.

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From My Grandfather's Blessing

4/9/2013

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But I know that if I listen attentively to someone, to their essential self, their soul, as it were, I often find that at the deepest, most unconscious level, they can sense the direction of their own healing and wholeness. If I can remain open to that, without expectations of what the someone is supposed to “do,” how they are supposed to change in order to be “better,” or even what their wholeness looks like, what can happen is magical. By that I mean that it has a certain coherency or integrity about it, far beyond what any way of fixing their situation or easing their pain I might devise on my own.

So I no longer have many theories about people. I
donʼt diagnose them or decide what their problem is. I simply meet with them and listen. As we sit together, I donʼt even have an agenda, but I know that something will emerge from our conversation over time that is a part of a larger coherent pattern that neither of us can fully see at this moment. So I
sit with them and wait.

--Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

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"A Fool and a Wise Man Don't See the Same Tree." --William Blake

"Love is Light, not Consolation," --Simone Weil

More Raw Material

The Raw Material of My Life

Rejoice!?

The Cross of the Moment

Orthodoxy/Orthopraxy/Fire

What is Intercession?

Pray Without Ceasing

From My Grandfather's Blessing

David Norling

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