New (for me) Prayer Idea

I just love the way God works sometimes!

I belong to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), and got a discount on my vegetables by being the pickup site host…I call it my weekly veggie-sitting gig!

Anyway, I wasn’t too worried about the boredom of sitting around for a couple hours once a week…I’ve got books, mp3 player, a pad of paper and pen…I can easily entertain myself for a couple of hours, right?

Well, the pickup site is my church, so I have another way to amuse myself…a piano within eyesight of the front door that the veggie folks come to!

(yes, I play a LITTLE piano.  Emphasize LITTLE.)

Let me back up a little though.  I stumbled across this site for prayer on the mp3 when looking for the daily office as a podcast.  (note, this ISN’T a daily office podcast)

http://www.pray-as-you-go.org/

Now, I’m not sure this particular prayer podcast deeply speaks to me, but coincidentally enough, it reminded me of a prayer style that DOES!  Part of the podcast appears to be a rotating prayerful musical selection.  The particular Wednesday I was sitting there happened to be a week when Taize was the featured music.  I infrequently used to attend a Taize prayer service held at my church.  I think I want to get me a Taize album for my mp3 player!  If you haven’t heard Taize before you absolutely must give it a try!  Beautiful, repetitive, wonderful prayers set to sweet music that tugs at my heartstrings at least.

I’m trying to decide what album to purchase.  Anyone have any ideas?  I went to amazon.com and searched for taize as artist.  If you can recommend one album over another I’d love to hear your suggestion.  And if you’ve never listened to taize before you can go there to hear a brief clip to whet your spiritual appetite for more?

Pray without ceasing.  Let prayer pray within you.  That is most assuredly a niche for musical prayer (ever been unable to get a song out of your head?  Here are songs you want to feed into that endless repeat track!), and Taize is perhaps the perfect example of musical prayer!

Peace to you all, and I’d love to hear from you with opinions on this?

(bonus points for sharing your favorite taize chant with the cyberworld?  Bye again!)

About Me, revisited

I updated my “About Me” page today.

You see, in there I had previously referenced that I was still informally involved in the diaconal discernment process in my diocese of the Episcopal church.

As of Thursday, the letter to the bishop went in the mail.  I’m closing that chapter.

I feel pretty good about it.  Most people probably assumed I’d exited a long time ago, informal and off the radar as my explorations and Process was.  I don’t even get questions in my parish anymore.  Haven’t in a long time.

Close friends and spiritual confidantes I have been blessed with along the way have heard my wonders and struggles over these years.  Good, spiritually healthy struggles, please don’t misunderstand me.  Inwardly, it still occupied a great deal of my mental energies, despite my outward public appearances to most.

Until recently.  Then I was reminded that I really should be writing some sort of update on my discernment, or quite possibly finally saying goodbye.

Along with good bye to discernment is good bye to coordinating my small parish’s  Sunday school.  I have decided that I simply need a break.  The timing of the break may prove to be an unexpected blessing if it opens the door to an infusing of new ideas and energy in new leadership, or it may be terribly unfortunate, as we’ve been without a rector the past year, and are now on the brink of getting one.  No matter.  I had to listen to my heart on this one.  And I really and truly feel that God has laid his blessing on this…taking a break, and taking some time for renewal.

Heavenly Father.  In times of seeming silence and aloneness we need to call on faith that you remain near.  I trust and believe that you remain near, and are working in me to accomplish new growth, which I trust and believe will bear good fruit in due time.  Keep me receptive with wide open arms to what blessings and missions lie ahead…after I take a brief rest that is!  Amen.

Facing our darkness

I enjoy a blog called “real live preacher.”  I read this particular post a month or so ago, and some of the stuff reminded me of some of my stuff.  Wanting to be good, denying that darkness that lives inside all of us, etc. etc.  Recently I had an occasion where I allowed some of my darkness to surface and am currently pondering it to try and make some sense of it.  I haven’t decided yet if it was healthy or not…too soon to tell.  But it brought back to mind this blog post, and I thought you might find it interesting, too.

http://reallivepreacher.com/node/1384

Here’s a little taste, if you like.

That’s an interesting thing to say. “I’m trying to be what I’m supposed to be.” What are you supposed to be?

Okay, yeah yeah. I get this. I know. You’re supposed to be who you are, be yourself, all that. I get that. I’ve told people that myself. It’s just…I AM a person who wants to be what I’m…supposed to be. You know, do the right thing. Be the right person.

Okay, let me try again. I’m really not trying to catch you in some ontological paradox. I just don’t get it. You say you want to be what you are supposed to be. And I just want you to tell me what that is. Who is this person you’re supposed to be? How would you describe him?

I don’t know. Nice? Nice to people? Caring about them and just, you know, where you go places and interact with people and it’s better because you were there. People are better off. You help people when you can.

Okay I’m still not really getting it. How about this: we’ll allow that somewhere in your mind there is an idea of what a man is supposed to be. And let’s agree that this man you want to be is a wonderful man. Just a smashing person. Leaving beauty and healing and well-being in his wake as he goes through life. Real Jesus-like.

I’m not trying to be Jesus.

Well Foy, who are you? I mean now. Forget the man you are supposed to be or want to be or will be or whatever that is. Who are you now? Let’s imagine that there is no god looking over your shoulder, okay? And you’re in a secret room with someone who will never tell anyone what you say. And further, this person is going to think the best of you. So even if you felt like punching someone in the face, you could say that and the person listening knows you would never do that.

(a portion has been snipped out—go read the original!)

What did you say?

What I said was “F*** everyone in the world but me!”

———

Of course, I don’t mean it or anything.

I know you don’t.

untitled misc.

Tonight I was reading from “Simply Surrender” a collection of St. Therese of Lisieux’s writings gathered and combined with devotional prayers by the editor John Kirvan.  I understand this book is one in a series of devotionals based on the writings of highly regarded Christian mystics, “Christianity’s most beloved spiritual guides” as it states on the back cover.  Here’s some snippets that touched me tonight.

When everything looks black, it is indeed a heavy cross.  But you are not always to blame when this happens.  Do everything you can to detach yourself from passing cares, and then rest assured that your Father will do the rest.

and here’s another…

Do not be afraid to tell Jesus that you love him, even when you do not actually feel that love.  In this way you will compel him to come to you and carry you, like the child you will always be, too weak to walk on your own.”

and this one is precious.  To quote too much more would really stretch the understanding of publishers and plagiarism, but the context is God’s mercy and ready embrace, like the Father of the Prodigal Son, unfailingly ready to take us back in forgiveness and love…

Our Lord has every imaginable perfection but — dare I say it — he has one great handicap.  When it comes to his love for us, he is blind.  His heart thrills with joy when he has to deal with those who truly love, and who, after each little fault, fling themselves into his arms, imploring forgiveness.  He says to his angels what the prodigal’s father said to his servants: “Put a ring upon his finger, and let us rejoice.”

No more tepidity for now!

I’m re-reading a book my spiritual director has re-loaned me again: “Crossing the Desert; Learning to let go, see clearly, and live simply” by Robert J. Wicks. Excellent book! I’d like to share a couple of quotes from it that are especially touching and/or convicting to me at the present time:

“Humility is the ability to fully appreciate our innate gifts and our current “growing edges” in ways that enable us to learn, act, and flow with our lives as never before. Prior to this important passage [through the narrow gate of humility] we may be drained by defensiveness or wander in our own desert chasing a false image of self that has nothing to do with who we are really meant to be.”

and another…

“[Humility] will also allow us to have the perspective, peace, and joy that comes when we know and value our ordinary transparent selves without wasting the energy it takes to add or subtract anything from whom we really are.”

and one more…

“Humility opens up a space for sound self-respect in lieu of inordinate self-doubt or unbridled self-assurance. A space for the courage needed to be ordinary instead of wasting all of our time chasing after what we believe will make us someone special.”

Let’s just say my growing edges are chafing a little right now. But the good news is I can see a little crack of light. I think I’m progressing toward that light that finally (maybe!) starts letting go of some of the wanderlust in the ol’ desert.

Time will tell. (Be near, oh God.)

Failure to Care?

Today’s quote comes from The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages” by Joan Chittister, O.S.B.

“After years of trying to achieve a degree of spiritual depth with little result, after a lifetime of uphill efforts with little to show for it, the lure is to let it be, to stop where we are, to coast. We begin to make peace with tepidity. We begin to do what it takes to get by but little that it takes to get on with the spiritual life. We do the exercises but we cease to “listen with the heart.” We do the externals – the church-going and the church-giving – and we call ourselves religious, but we have long since failed to care. A sense of self-sacrifice dies in us and we obey only the desires and the demands within us.”

(Chittister expanding on Benedict’s caution against being a Sarabaite, one who has a character “soft as lead” taking for themselves a law of what they like to do. A “most detestable” kind of monastic as described by Benedict. Italicized emphases in the Chittister selection are mine.)

********

One need not be a monastic to see themselves in this. I suspect a Sarabaite was “nice” enough, maybe even well-meaning enough. Chittister goes on to comment that this is a religious practice of comfort and being comfortable. A life filled with God’s love and joy tends to be one lived on the growing edges, I think, quite frequently. Growing edges aren’t always safe or cozy. Tepidity is comfortable. “Being good” can be comfortable. Looking good can be more so. Comfortable sometimes keeps us from living life to the fullest though, I think sometimes.

Heavenly Father, draw me ever nearer to your fiery heart of love, a place where all tepidity is banished and wholly out of place. Give me eyes to see as you see, ears to hear what I should hear and a heart that responds, that burns with love for you and my fellow creatures. Keep me from coasting to that valley where I fail to care. If you find me slipping and coasting back down the hill, lift me up to you until I can be made stronger to follow you more nearly and dearly. Nudge me out of the mere comfort zone and ho-hum complacency into the places where love is found, and is sorely needed. Let me live there and share there and CARE there. Amen.

Good for nothing…NOT!

Quoted from, “The Story of a Life, St. Therese of Lisieux” by Guy Gaucher, O.C.D.

‘St. Teresa says we must feed the fire of love. We feed this fire of love by searching for all the little occasions to please Jesus … for example, a smile,  a friendly word, when I would have preferred to say nothing or look bored, etc.

What matters is the essential and not the appearance, the kernel and not the shell.  Jesus strips us so as to show that he is the one who is at work.  And these   poor little souls, seeing themselves in such great poverty, are afraid.  It seems to them that they are good for nothing since they receive everything from others and have nothing to give.’

Good for nothing.  She knew what she was talking about. She who worked at painting, while sturdy peasants vigorously got on with the heavy community work, knew the humiliation of beng thought useless: ‘Several sisters kept saying that she was doing nothing, that it seemed she had come to Carmel to amuse herself.’

How does Jesus call you to feed the fire of love?  Do you suffer, either outwardly or inwardly by a judgment from others that you are useless and not contributing?  Remember that Jesus calls us to give what he desires, not what always  “looks good” or is manically “productive.”  Sometimes, Jesus just wants our time and our gaze, I think.  What does it do to our souls when we give too much attention to those (or ourselves, if we are the judger?) who judge our actions, particularly our actions of love? What do we lose when we strive to be productive at the cost of carving out time for listening and responding to the still small, maddeningly at times subtle voice of God?  I don’t know about you, but for me it sure is easy to be discouraged or humiliated or stressed out when I don’t feel like (or genuinely can’t be!) a “valuable” producer.  And yet, in my clearer moments I know that is making it all about me, and taking me farther from the Jesus I long for.  Much to ponder.  Much to pray over…

God is in the Here and Now.

“The family is not just a routine relationship; it is our sanctification. Work is not just a job; it is our exercise in miracle making” from the jan.5-may 6-sept.5 meditation

Also from the jan.5-may 6-sept.5 meditation: God is neither cajoled nor captured, the rule makes plain. God is in the Here and Now in Benedictine spirituality. It is we who are not. It is we who are trapped in the past, angry at what formed us, fixated on a future that is free from pain or totally under our control. But God is in our present, waiting for us there.

Quotes come from “The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages” by Joan Chittister.

Humility

courtesy of http://tinyurl.com/dx6cz6

The humble man receives praise the way a clean window takes the light of the sun. The truer and more intense the light is, the less you see of the glass.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation Chapter 25

Welcome home, Sonic!

So, yeah.  I blogged publicly that I wouldn’t get a beagle.

Um… <ahem>   Oops!

“Sonic” is the latest addition to our family.  He’s an 8-year-old, overweight, lazy, very lovable beagle.  And my daughter and I just love him.  The son is out with boy scouts today…will meet him tomorrow when we pick him up.  That should be a surprise!  Peace, all! – Karla