What Shall We Offer You, Beloved?

Candlelight Labyrinth Walk

Last Friday the Center for Spiritual Development hosted a Candlelight Advent Labyrinth Walk.  The night was brisk, the labyrinth dusted with swept snow and filled with small votive candles.  This was our symbolic gesture to remind us of the light in the darkness.

I handed out prayer cards to enable people to focus on the Advent prayer that God was inviting within them as they stepped onto the labyrinth.  The first part of the prayer concerned itself with offering, particularly what we desire to offer to God this Advent.

What shall we offer You,  Beloved?

We know that our culture refers to this as a gift-giving time of year, and we are right to pay attention to the gifts that we want to give to others. 

On the starry, cold night of the labyrinth walk, we wondered in our prayer about what we might want to offer to God.  Shall we offer our anxieties and expectations?  Shall we offer our joys and thanksgivings?  Our offerings are meant to connect us to the God of gifts, and to make space for the God of the manger.

What shall we offer You,  Beloved?

An offering is presented for acceptance or rejection.  It is something that is precious.    Even our less attractive qualities are precious to the God of Advent.  Whatever it takes to make a place in our hearts for the birth of Christ is a suitable offering. 

What shall we offer You,  Beloved?

As we near the fourth Sunday in Advent, let us make room.  The Christ child needs a place to dwell, a place to be born again.  That place could be within you or within me.

What shall we offer You,  Beloved?

Blessings,

Debra

 

 

Adoration

“God touches us with a touch that is emptiness and empties us.  He moves us with a simplicity that simplifies us.”

New Seeds

Last week I wrote about getting ready for the coming of the Christ child and ended my thoughts offering to praise God instead of thinking that I knew how to get ready.

This week I want to share with you the ways in which God has been simplifying my Advent.

I was invited on Tuesday to go and hear the Baltimore Choral Arts concert of sacred music and readings.  The beauty of the Basilica and the music transported me into a place of deep adoration.

Saturday evening we went to the liturgy of lessons and carols at the University of the South, and again deep silence and soaring music invited me to remember that adoration is perhaps the most significant aspect of greeting the Christ child at any season and any time.

Adoration is the quiet yet insistent attention that we offer to the Beloved One.

 It is the love that grows out of deep intimacy and thankfulness.

Adoration is the intention to will one thing-a love for God.

Adoring God is simple, but I make it complicated.

I want to be in charge of my adoration as well as all the other things that I do, but God invites me to become empty—to become still.

To come near and adore God-

as a baby in a manger, as a man along the road, as a Savior crucified and risen.

There is no end to the ways that God comes to me.  Or to you.

Come Let Us Adore Him!

To inspire your advent adoration listen to the choir at King’s College

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awd9gO_b3hQ&feature=BF&list=QL&index=2

An Advent Offering

Bethlehem Star

“The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved.  The faith that one is loved by God.  That faith that one is loved by God although unworthy—or, rather irrespective of one’s worth!”

New Seeds

Each Advent as the church begins a new year; the world winds down an old year through an increasingly frenetic pace of celebrating holidays.

When did a holy day become a cause for anxiety?  Is the coming of the Christ child a time for worrying and fretting?

I ask myself these questions each time the church year begins as I find myself in a mall, or worrying about what to serve my family for Christmas dinner.  At the outset, of course, I know how I want to receive the gift of quieting down in Advent, in order to rejoice in a new way with the coming of Christ.

And yet, each year I succumb to the pace around me and fall short of a quiet Advent and joy-filled Christmas.

We have heard this message again and again about a holy advent—a quiet advent—and we fit some quiet in when we have a chance.  We are trying to understand what getting ready for the Christ is all about.

This advent I am asking myself some different questions.

Is it possible to get ready to receive the outpouring of God in Christ?

And my answer is no.

This Christ who came to save the world is not an event or a day.  This Christ is the savior of my life, redeemer of my soul.

I cannot hope to get ready to meet this Christ by observing some quiet during the Advent season.

I can only offer myself to the beauty that is Christmas.

The quiet night, the bright star, a young man and woman with a new baby in a lowly place.

I can offer all my hopes and all my sorrows.

 All my fear and all my joys.

My whole self.

I can offer myself completely this year,

And I can praise the God who chooses to love even me.

Blessings,

Debra

Living Happily

 

It is not that someone else is preventing you from living happily; you yourself do not know what you want.  Rather than admit this, you pretend that someone is keeping you from exercising your liberty.  Who is this?  It is you yourself.”

New Seeds

Last weekend I visited with my son Alexander in Lexington, Kentucky.  During a free afternoon and feeling a bit tired, I went back to my hotel room and watched the movie “Invictus”.  The word means unconquered and the story takes place in South Africa in the first months of a new government headed by Nelson Mandela. In the movie, Nelson Mandela-played by Morgan Freeman- continues to offer the hand of forgiveness rather than the sting of revenge.  The fruit of forgiveness is invariably freedom for the forgiven and the forgiver.

Woven through the story is the poem “Vindictus”, by William Ernest Henley.  The poem was written from a sick bed in hospital. Henley used his experience of suffering to write about the unconquerable freedom within the human soul.  Here is the last stanza of the poem:

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

What Merton and Henley and the movie Invictus all have in common is the inalienable choice that human beings have to be free or to be enslaved.  Let me be clear about this.  We cannot always choose our circumstances, but we can choose freedom of spirit regardless of circumstances.  History is illuminated by human witnesses who regardless of their circumstances chose freedom.  I can name a few here: Portia and her companions, Dostoyevsky, and Victor Frankl. 

Freedom is essential for growth in the spiritual life.  Christ serves as our guide to this way of life, doesn’t He?  Never subject to anyone or any circumstance, Jesus kept His eyes on God and listened to Him above all other voices that clamored for His attention.  Over and over again, it is the behavior of freedom that creates the compassion of Love.  True love is also truly free, and wants only the best for the other.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 2Cor 3:17

Freedom is a touchstone of the heart.  When I do not experience spiritual freedom, which is my inheritance, then I know that I have allowed some other attachments to cloud my perceptions. 

Christ invites us to live in freedom.  Let us welcome freedom.  Let us live freedom, and let us become witnesses ourselves to true freedom in Christ.

For the complete version of Invictus go to:

http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/william-ernest-henley/invictus/

The Song of God

 Heart Nebula

I will hear Your voice and I will hear all harmonies You have created, singing Your hymns.

New Seeds

 Listening for the song of God is another way of talking about discernment.   A life of spiritual discernment is a life lived with one’s ear to the sky and one’s heart open to surprise.

Merton invites us to consider the Gospel of the universal sound of God’s voice, which echoes through the creation as song and as silence.

Each hum, each melody, has something of the Divine within it.  If my heart is tuned to God’s harmonies then I will vibrate with God’s tones as a tuning fork when struck causes a string to vibrate.  Both are tuned to the same pitch.  It is called sympathetic vibration.

We are already tuned to the sound of God’s voice and we

 will be able to hear God when we are quiet within.  That hymn is being sung within you right now.

 

Contemplative prayer begins to lead us into the deeply quiet interior of the heart, but it is only a beginning.

It is important to remember that just as God is the author of the hymns sung by the universe, God is also the author of our prayer and our silence.

When we keep our lives filled with other sounds, it is hard to hear the Divine voice.

We may not be able to find a completely silent place in our daily lives.  We need to cultivate the silence within, so that we will carry that silent sanctuary wherever we go.

The silent heart is natural to us.  We were created to leave space for God and to respond to the sound of God’s voice.

This is why many of us, once we have tasted contemplative prayer, yearn for more. 

And more is within you.  God yearns for you with a deeper longing than you can imagine.

Open yourself to silence—the natural silence that was born in you at your creation.

And then-

Listen for the hymn of God.

Blessings,

Debra

New Seeds

“The seeds that are planted in my liberty at every moment, by God’s will, are the seeds of my own identity, my own reality, my own happiness, my own sanctity.”

Thomas Merton

New Seeds of Contemplation

Many of you will know that I am teaching a course this year called ‘A Year of Contemplative Living’.  We are using Merton’s work on contemplation as one of our texts.  Each sentence seems to be crammed with meaning-sometimes inscrutable.

I wanted to take some time on the Blog to reflect upon some of these sentences and to share what cords they have struck within me.

When I ponder the field of liberty or freedom in which these seeds are being planted, I visualize a rich open field, overturned and aerated.  This field is filled with possibility and promise, but like all places of growth the initial planting needs to be nurtured.

I nurture this “field of the soul” through prayer and meditation.  I continue to feed this soil with worship and deep commitment to community.

Because what is being loved into existence here are the tender shoots of my true self.  God has planted the full reality of my unique beauty within my very being.  It is already all there, beneath the soil.

The promise of the spiritual journey is to bring that true self forth so that it may bloom into the full flower of God’s vision of me.

All along the way the green shoots, the tightly closed buds, the unfurling leaves that I am are becoming exposed to the world for the ministry of God’s love.

Yes, these seeds and these promises are uniquely mine, but they are also and always God’s gifts to the world.  I have something to offer, even as the trembling leaf reaches upward for a taste of dew.  I can stretch out my true self in response to the needs of the world.

Patience

 “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions”

 Rainer Maria Rilke

When I was on silent retreat this summer I spent some time with Rilke’s book Letters to a Young Poet.  This book is filled with spiritual wisdom of the type that makes you put down the text and wonder what it says.  While the advice of patience is apropos for a young man struggling to express himself, it speaks to an older person still struggling to understand herself—to understand the passions that rise up in my heart masquerading as frustration and rigidity.  How often have I settled for indignation and pride rather than opening to a new perspective born out of love?

But patience cycles us back to humility. Patience allows us to recognize our humanity at the same time that we have hope in God’s graces.

Patience, a necessary virtue on the spiritual path, keeps us grounded in an experience of God’s time.  As Rilke reminds us, God does not offer answers; God offers mercy and love. Sometimes questions are simply catalysts for exploration rather than problems to be solved.  Can we embrace the unknown with as much enthusiasm and joy as we welcome the gift of knowledge?

As we conclude our look at the three virtues St. Paul talks about in Ephesians, let’s pause and remember the scripture passage:

“ Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love”

Paul knows how difficult it will be for us to live together in community.  We will want our own way.  We will want others to acknowledge our good ideas and praise them.  We will say harsh words and our hearts will be hardened toward one another.

But there is a more excellent way and that way begins in love, is nurtured in humility and gentleness and is sustained by patience.  The process of living life in this new way with one another requires love. 

Love one another

As you have been loved by God.

Blessings,

Debra

Gentleness

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
    Plato

This week I want to explore the spiritual virtue of gentleness.  Gentleness and kindness are not qualities much admired in our society as a whole.  I think we want to admire people who are kind and gentle, but we have a hard time accepting the surrender required of this virtue.
Remember what Paul wrote about gentleness:

“Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness,”

Humility leads to gentleness.  When I know who I am I do not need to impose my opinion or my will upon another.  I can act out of a deep rootedness in God’s vision and welcome the other.  When I am gentle I am not afraid.  There is space for you and there is space for me.  I don’t have to make you small so that I can be large.
No, the gentle life is a life of hospitality and openness and delight in the accomplishments of those around me.
The gentle soul knows what she needs as well.  There is no pushing or striving in the gentle life, there is confidence and movement.
For me, a sign of the gentle life is the yield sign, and I experience this most often in lines at the store or post office.  I yield to the one who is anxious to get in line first.  I yield to the one who has two things when I have twenty.  I yield the right of way.
I don’t have to protect my status, because the status that is important to me cannot be removed by human power.
I am beloved of God. 
As Plato reminds us, we are all experiencing a battle of some sort.  An act of kindness could be a cease-fire for the other, if even for a moment.
Blessings,
Debra

Humility

 

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:1-3

I am back at work with gusto and enthusiasm.  Last weekend I taught a class on contemplative living, guided a labyrinth walk, and facilitated the last meeting of our on-line, on-site course in lay discernment.  Throughout the weekend I kept returning to the beautiful lesson of these words from Paul

-live with all humility and gentleness, and with patience.

For the next three weeks I want to explore these spiritual virtues, beginning with humility.

Humility is the grace to know the truth about myself.  It is not the kind of knowing that passes itself off as harsh assessment.  It is also not the overblown admiration for myself, which is sometimes mistaken for self-esteem.  The virtue of humility keeps me in touch with the reality of myself in Christ.  I am then free to move with grace through my life and within the context of my relationships.

The root of the word humility comes from humus or earth.  This refers to the origin of being.  The dust, which God molded in Eden and then enlivened through His Spirit, is the cornerstone of our experience of humility.

Humility invites us back to our essential reality. 

For me, it is so often in humble moments that I experience a glimpse of the grandeur of God’s beauty.

As I sat at the labyrinth last Friday night I was filled with the settled peace of simply being and waiting on what and who God was bringing to me for that moment.  I was not anxious and I was also not asleep.  A moment of humility, whose song was the breeze in the trees, the light going down, the smell of fall, the crunch of feet against dried leaves.  Humility is letting God be God and me be me.  It is a posture of acceptance and surrender.

Blessings,

Debra

Bike Rider

 

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:17-18

Last Monday my husband bought me a bike.  I haven’t ridden for a very long time, but when I was young, my bicycle was a source of freedom, independence and fun.  The Alaska of my growing up years was wild but also safe enough for a young girl to take off in the morning with a picnic lunch and return late.  I decorated my bike as a float for neighborhood parades. It was a horse upon which to do circus tricks, but primarily it was my transportation to adventure.

That young girl isn’t really gone.  I still have a deep desire for the kind of freedom exemplified by riding through a puddle with your legs off the pedals, your face aglow with delight, and the song of your own voice raised in joy. This is unself-conscious freedom!

The unveiled face, reflecting God’s glory, is the face of delight.  God’s glory shines through us when we allow ourselves to accept the freedom that we have already been given.

For some reason, however, we resist this gift, and we shrink away from transformation.  We are afraid of claiming both the freedom of the Lord and the cost of that same freedom.

But as I have ridden my bike around the island this week, I have begun to see the cost as the gift.  I had to let go of my fear of falling.  I had to let go of my fear of looking foolish.  In the process of realizing my own anxieties, I have surrendered to the possibility that God might have a different vision of me on my bike than I do!

Perhaps God sees the child as well as the adult.  God sees the fun of adventure, as well as the fear of a wobbly start.

And all these images are BEAUTIFUL to GOD!  As I shed fear, I become less self-conscious and more reflective of God’s light.  I am shining the surface of the mirror of my soul each day I strap on the helmet, take off and let the wind of the Spirit power my ride.

What adventure is God inviting you to consider?

For me, it has been worth the cost of wobbly beginnings and tentative stops along the way.

Strap on your helmet-God has a plan for your life!