Lent Post on Leadership

In the absence of Jesus’ physical leadership, a new power to lead emerges among the disciples. Like the disciples, we honor Jesus’ absence when, as Christian communities, we do not look for a single leader to ride into town on a white horse and save us. We honor Jesus’ absence when we do not "look up" to a single human leader on whom we can depend for everything. We honor Jesus’ absence when we discover the Spirit of Jesus the Servant animating us as a Christian community of faith.
- Thomas R. Hawkins
Faithful Leadership
from a recent Verse and Voice mailing from Sojourners.
Read this along with Jeffrey Ozanne's blog post on the Prophetic Power of Tolkien

Rhythm patterns

Watching camp fires, fire places or even a candle; standing in the rhythms of ocean waves... being caught or moved in forces that come from far beyond my sight; or being near the lapping of lake waves along a shoreline..or the flowing sounds of a river , creek or stream...just watching it go on seemingly endless...
or like today, with the lure of stopping, slowing, just to watch the snowflakes come down..we all know the feeling....we have been there and know the attraction..why does it affect us all? Why does it work that way? Does it call us to ; or remind us of; some larger rhythm,
a wave , a flow, a source that we know we are from, or participate in, in some pre-verbal...pre rational kind of way?
Maybe old fashioned ticking clocks can have the effect for some people as it does for me. Or in music too, is it the sound waves, the beat and the rhythm that does the "magic'?
Maybe.... maybe not...but it feels good in my soul.

So I'm going to catch the falling snow flake views for a while..before going back to church for a meeting. Maybe we could have a church meeting, or a worship service where we all had to watch the snow fall for 20 minutes before we ever called the meeting to begin...before we ever spoke a word.
Rambling on and trying to find my rhythm?

Lenten Post on Discipline

Another copy from the Henri Nouwen society and their Daily Meditations.
This one is an obvious fit for Lent and any Lenten disciplines.
And once again, if I could only follow the advice and really embody the wisdom!
At least I keep reminding myself and the very act of keeping this blog is a part of the reminding.

Creating Space for God

Discipline is the other side of discipleship. Discipleship without discipline is like waiting to run in the marathon without ever practicing. Discipline without discipleship is like always practicing for the marathon but never participating. It is important, however, to realize that discipline in the spiritual life is not the same as discipline in sports. Discipline in sports is the concentrated effort to master the body so that it can obey the mind better. Discipline in the spiritual life is the concentrated effort to create the space and time where God can become our master and where we can respond freely to God's guidance.

Thus, discipline is the creation of boundaries that keep time and space open for God. Solitude requires discipline, worship requires discipline, caring for others requires discipline. They all ask us to set apart a time and a place where God's gracious presence can be acknowledged and responded to.

Lenten Post on Bible

A quote of Martin Luther about the Bible...
"The Bible is alive, it speaks to me, it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold on me."

And then go read Bishop Sally Dyck's blog (see my side link) and related comments on Bible Literacy . Blessings on the day!

Lenten post A Prayer

Come, O Holy Spirit!
Come, open us to the wonder, beauty and dignity
of the diversity found in each culture,
in each face, and in each experience we have
of the other among us.
Come, fill us with generosity
as we are challenged to let go and allow
others to share with us
the goods and beauty of earth.
Come, heal the divisions
that keep us from seeing the face of Christ
in all men, women and children.
Come, free us to stand with and for those
who must leave their own land in order
to find work, security and welcome in a new land,
one that has enough to share.
Come, bring us understanding, inspiration,
wisdom, and the courage needed to embrace
change and stay on the journey.
Come, O Holy Spirit,
show us the way.

--a prayer from the Sisters of Charity of New York
From Life Upon the Sacred Stage ;blog of Retta Blaney

Lenten Post In Light of the Oscars

From the Henri Nouwen Society Daily Meditations:

Hidden Greatness
There is much emphasis on notoriety and fame in our society. Our newspapers and television keep giving us the message: What counts is to be known, praised, and admired, whether you are a writer, an actor, a musician, or a politician.

Still, real greatness is often hidden, humble, simple, and unobtrusive. It is not easy to trust ourselves and our actions without public affirmation. We must have strong self-confidence combined with deep humility. Some of the greatest works of art and the most important works of peace were created by people who had no need for the limelight. They knew that what they were doing was their call, and they did it with great patience, perseverance, and love.

I'm guessing that the people who selected this daily meditation knew about the Oscars last night.
Even though glitz and glamor gets much of the attention the Oscars can also be a way of celebrating creativity, hard work, social commentary and large scale story telling. This is where the modern myth making happens. But I am still not much of a red carpet fan and I like what the Nouwen quote is suggesting.

Don't' get me wrong. I am not against having people in the "lime light." I am not against celebrating a generous act or bold decision. Of course, there are stories that must be told and public thanks that should be given. I am very much aware that some other organizations, causes and groups do a much better job than the church of thanking donors and doing volunteer recognitions. I am all for that! It is a way of giving witness, sharing faith, and encouraging good actions.
So in light of the Oscars: I hope you saw the newspaper piece today about Thomas North and the $100! Or the coverage that Cris Weber has gotten with the reading program software he has designed. Those stories encourage me. And I don't think they were looking for the limelight. But those are the kind of Oscars I want to present. Just being true to a call. Who gets the Oscars in your life? Enough said?

Lenten Post

When despair grows in me
And I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

I understand what Wendell Berry is pointing to, and inviting us to do. On three different pastoral visits this week I heard some people, older mostly, who spoke with such pessimism, fears, about the future of the world and the state of current affairs, economy, and politics and violence in the world.
But as I read Berry, in the winter days of Minnesota, the setting and the image has to be adapted, not to wood drakes, herons, and waters, but to perhaps, in this season,
the frost on the tamaracks, oak branches, pine boughs, and the cat tail rushes, and the reflection of the sun on those icy snow crystals.
Faith and spiritual work, can be a mind-full, (or mind less?) walk on a bright winter day. ..or just choosing to see what is here, uniquely, now. Gift. It too is a way to rest in the grace of the world. And I am free. A Stillness and a Peace
Go see it before it passes! But walk slowly!

Saturday Feb 23 Lenten Post. Cross work

I have never been attracted to the traditional Lenten practices of meditating on the passion of Christ, the sufferings of the cross and so on. I understand it as something that points us to the events of Holy Week and Easter. “We are going to the cross with Jesus.” Or I can understand the cross as a way of symbolizing our practices of self denial. Yes, I know it can be a traditional way of reflecting on how much he loved us; suffering for us, and went through for us. That was, I suppose, the thinking behind the popularity of Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ, " Still, I have wondered if there is another intuitive layer to this.

But then Richard Rohr’s insights help me see that all of this suffering and crucifixion language really is a different type of vicarious suffering and that it might be pointing me to a way of life for my own paler sufferings. Its not about something “out there” in the life of Christ or out there on the liturgical calendar. Its an iconic map that takes me into my soul; its about moving into my own wounds , vulnerabilities,, limitations---- to surrendering;
the hole of the soul., to die to my self.
Read this. And let it work on you, or in you.

Do you realize with what difficulty surrender will come to a fixing, managing mentality? There's nothing in that psyche prepared to understand the spiritual wisdom of surrender. All of the great world religions teach surrender. Yet most of us, until we go through the hole in our soul—our weak spot in the middle—just don't think surrender is necessary. But we have to face our limitations, it seems, in the interior world. That's our liberation theology. We must recognize our own poor man, our own abused woman, the oppressed part of ourselves that we hate, that we deny, that we're afraid of. That's the hole in our soul. It's the way through, maybe the only way, says the crucified Jesus.

from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps Richard Rohr

Now what does it mean to hear the words of Christ; "take up your cross and follow me..."
to die and rise with Christ!

Lenten Post Prayer

From Walter Rauschenbusch

O God, when our use of this world is over and we make room for others,
may we not leave anything ravished by our greed or spoiled by our ignorance,
but we hand on our common heritage fairer and sweeter through our use of it.
Amen

source unknown to me ,
I had it in my March 1983 journal notes

Lenten Post Cottonwood Prayer

My site meter reports that there is a person from Cottonwood who occasionally comes to the blog. So, today's post is a time of prayer for this person and the community of Cottonwood Mn.
Join me in the prayer............

Wednesday Lenten Post

From the Upper Room Daily Reflections:

THE BOTTOM OF THE SOUL may be in repose even while we are in many outward troubles, just as the bottom of the sea is calm, while the surface is strongly agitated.

- John Wesley
A Longing for Holiness

From pp. 62-63 of A Longing for Holiness: Selected Writings of John Wesley, edited by Keith Beasley-Topliffe. Copyright © 1997 by Upper Room Books

Comment...maybe I should check out the bottom of my soul now and then, and see what is stirring. A question sometimes asked in Methodist settings. "How is it with your soul?" Sometimes I am tempted to answer it by talking about things going on at church or in my life outwardly, but maybe the answer is below the surface?

Tues Feb 19 Lenten Post At the Nursing Home

What I saw at the Nursing Home

I stopped to see someone at the Bethany care center tonight and supper hour was still in progress. I was struck by the feel, or the reality, or even the spirit of that experience , people sitting next to others, around tables, slowly feeding someone next to them. So simple. So necessary. I was thankful for the view of the interaction. Are they volunteers, and staff; are they adult children feeding their frail fathers and mothers, a husband with a wife? Was that a grandchild?

When we were children, someone fed us. Life coming full circle. We need others. We need the daily attending of someone, with our spilling and shaking hands. Independence would have us starve. We need others to be with us in patience. And to fulfill that need is humanity at its best. It really is the essential human condition that we are able to disguise or deny for so much of our life. Community cannot exit without it.
Then after I made my visit, I noticed that the beautiful and spacious chapel, that evening, was being set up for a kind of bowling game. The pins were set up, and a long plastic runner formed an alley. Right down the center aisle. I have led worship services on that very spot. I have stood there for memorial services. Some voices of the church, over the years would have been appalled at just the thought of a worship space being used as a bowling alley. But it all seemed right. This seemed no less holy than the times when we sang the hymns, read the scriptures, prayed and preached the Word.
Community mixing ; happening, with attention again, , and care, maybe some laughter and encouragement, or just something out of the ordinary in a place where routine and long hours can be deadening. I am prayerfully thankful for those who minister there, with the people of those rooms and halls. It seemed so right to have that "activity”in the sanctuary space. Can a place of worship not be a place of community and the transcendence of forgetting the earthiness of time, that turns the ordinary into some other level of play? Reverence can be more largely defined. Thomas Merton reminded us that you cannot have God without having humanity.
I saw humanity there in that God space. Did I see God too in that fragile and complicated human space? I think that is what I saw at the nursing home.
It will be my Lenten prayer of thanks.

Monday Feb 18 Stone Houses Lenten Post

This is from Richard Rohr, another author I appreciate. You can subscribe to his daily email.

What can I do about his insight in this? I live in the the land of stone houses. But I can at least let the words poke into my door way... the stir to community and interdependence, the deception and lures of my private possessions? Something about simplicity? My sense of self? ....What do you think?
Read on:

Some people live without anything and have everything. The example that always comes to mind for me is in Africa. This little old black African man and I prayed together after a long session. He prayed with such tenderness, saying, "O Lord, help us never to move into stone houses." And everybody echoed, "Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord."
Afterward I asked the missionaries what he had meant. "Well," a priest said, "look at the villages. They're all door-less thatch huts. And so as long as you live a simple life in a thatch hut with no doors, you don't know where your family ends and where the next family begins. You move in and out of one another's lives, and it's all really one family. And there's no possessing, there's no mine and thine; it's ours. It's a world of community." "Once the first stone hut is built in a village," the missionary continued, "very quickly a door and locks are put on it. Immediately the world of mine and thine is created. The entire social worldview, the entire understanding of self, changes but… I'd say you can't see God very well if you spend too much time inside your stone house.

Richard Rohr A Spirituality of Subtraction

Sunday Feb 17 Lenten Post. Under Foot

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is look under foot. You are always nearer the divine and true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world."
- John Burroughs

Let me bend that quote to another direction as well. As I looked at the Sunday gospel lesson from John 3, I considered those familiar words of being “born again or “born from above”, as well as John 3:16, a verse that I memorized at a vacation bible school before I was 10 years old. Has it become old hat? Am I tempted to discard it and look to more distant sources of wisdom? Or do I need to look "under foot" and the nearness of this source?

I was recently part of some conversation that invited me to think of when I am “passionate about my faith” or what it means to have “an evangelistic heart.” As I prepare to to preach about these well worn words in John 3;16, I rediscovered how passionate I am in them.
For God so loved the world! And to tell the story of Jesus as that divine gift and truth....to invite people into this believing relationship...that is abundant, unending, and transcends death. It is a new beginning, in a new generative source! Born again..and from beyond myself, and from within...the wind /breath of the Holy Spirit. We have the opportunity right where we are in the ground of our gospel.

Lenten Post Prayerful Life Listening

The circumstances of our lives are another medium of God’s communication with us. God opens some doors and closes others.... Through the wisdom of our bodies, God tells us to slow down or reorder our priorities. The happy coincidences and frustrating impasses of daily life are laden with messages. Patient listening and the grace of the Spirit are the decoding devices of prayer. It is a good habit to ask, What is God saying to me in this situation? Listening to our lives is part of prayer.
- Marjorie J. Thompson
Soul Feast

The Color Purple Lenten Post

Last night I was showing Beth my latest Goodwill purchase of a nice new sweater but I wanted to know what color it is. ‘Is this brown or is it green?”
“It’s gray’ she said.
“Are you sure?”
I got it closer to her and into a better light. “Gray” she said again. "It comes across as a charcoal gray.”

‘But I’ve been wearing it with brown pants” I said.
“Well, that’s ok.”

The problem is my color confusion. Most of the time I get all the primary bold colors right, its just the shades and blends that throw me off, and even then I've learned how to compensate and guess. I can figure out what most colors are supposed to be. And I keep my color wardrobe pretty simple. When Beth met me I had a closet full of identical blue jeans or khaki pants and plain blue shirts that were easy to mix and match. When my son,Nick, was first learning his colors, he was convinced that I could learn my colors too. One day he got the color flash cards out just so he could teach me.

But the question I consider is this: How does my color perception or interpretation match up with yours?
Is the kind of blue or green that I see , the same as yours?. And how many times do I just plain get it wrong and my brown or green, to the rest of the world is actually gray?

The Lenten spin is this. If I am guessing and seeing the world though my own color perception, I wonder how many ways, that happens in my psychological, social , and spiritual perceptions?

We even talk about how a certain mind set or attitude or a history , can “color our perception.”
Some times the only way for me to find out how my perception lines up with another, is to simply ask. “What color is this? What do you see?" And even then, it still might be just a relative, comparable use, of a descriptive word. Can I really see what you see?

Lent is time to check out realities with each other. We need conversation, community, confession., to see the colors of life. Scripture, tradition, reason and experience are part of the color conversations

By the way , the color for Lent is purple; a color meant to symbolize penance and royal dignity; of suffering and of sovereignty. I think it is a color that I see. But what does that mean, or look like to you?

An Ounce of Love Lenten Post for Feb 14th

"Beware you be not swallowed up in books!
An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge"

John Wesley


And maybe you can get a Valentines Day message out of that as well!

Wednesday Feb. 13th Lenten Post

Little hopes, small visions, dreams not dared
efforts weak, thoughts confused, soul threadbare.
This is how we come to You
so lift us up, with heavens height
Enlarge our view, make bold our sight
This is why we come to You,
Christ who gives, Lenten, lengthening
growing Light.

Tuesday February 12th Lenten Post

PRAYER

Send us, O Lord, as your messengers, to hearts without homes, to lives without love, and to a multitude without direction.

Send us to children whom no one has blessed, to the hungry whom no one has fed, to the fallen whom no one has raised, to the desolate whom no one has consoled.

Light your fire on the altar of our hearts so that others may receive its warmth. Let your light shine through our souls so that others may see the path before them. Keep our compassion and discernment ready, our will fervent and alive, our hands reaching to help our brothers and sisters in their time of need. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

- Adapted from the closing prayer at the first National Convocation of Deaconesses, 1951

Monday Feb 11th Lenten post.

I will be gone on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday so I am posting ahead.

The Lenten journey is on. Keep going.

"I am being driven forward
Into an unknown land.
The pass grows steeper,
The air colder and sharper.
A wind from my unknown goal
Stirs the strings Of expectation.
Still the question:
Shall I ever get there?
There where life resounds,
A clear pure note
In the silence.

-- Dag Hammarskjold, Markings.

Lenten Post For Sunday Feb 10 Wilderness

A Three piece collage on the wilderness.

The Gospel lesson for the first Sunday in Lent is the Temptation in the Wilderness.

Piece one in the collage: I read these words by Sarah Parsons from the Upper Room site:

LENT BEGINS in the wilderness. … Even against our better judgment, we must begin these forty days [of Lent] by going alone to a wild place — in ourselves or in our lives. If we are fiercely honest with ourselves as we begin a Lenten journey toward greater openness, we must start by seeing things we would rather not see.

From p. 13 of A Clearing Season by Sarah Parsons. Copyright © 2005 by the author. Published by Upper Room Books. All Rights Reserved.

Those words could point us in so many directions. There are so many things we would rather not see; pain, poverty violence, ecological abuses, my own complicity in those injustices.
What are my own wilderness places? Making that list could be too severe even for Lent. I wrote earlier of prayer and honesty.

All of that melds with piece number two :
something I read last week in Wounded Prophet, A Portrait of Henri J.M. Nouwen.
it is citing The Inner Voice of Love by Nouwen; It too, is a call, the imperative of the wilderness. Does the wilderness honesty mean facing the wounds we would rather not see? Here is the quote: Live Your Wounds Through

You have been wounded in many ways. The more you open yourself to being healed, the more you will discover how deep your wounds are. You will be tempted to become discouraged, because under every wound you uncover you will find others. Your search for true healing will be a suffering search. Many tears still need to be shed.
But do not be afraid. The simple fact that you are more aware of your wounds shows that you have sufficient strength to face them.

The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them. The choice you face constantly is whether you are taking your hurts to your head or to your heart. In your head you can analyze them, find their causes and consequences, and coin words to speak and write about them. But no final healing is likely to come from that source. You need to let your wounds go down into your heart. Then you can live them through and discover that they will not destroy you. Your heart is greater than your wounds.

Third piece in this Lenten thought-collage came as Park church provided space for the Light of the Lakes UMC as they mourned the loss of a dear church member and leader in the life of their faith community and the Baxter business community. Nouwen has wisdom here in letting this hurt go to the 'heart." The head will offer no answer for the sudden death of man in his mid 50's. Believe, me after more than 250 funerals, for all ages; I have tried. It is one of my wounds.
It is wilderness. Go there. Jesus was there too. He left a way to follow it through. It is in the heart.

Lenten Post for February 9th Fear of the Lord?

"Working out one's salvation in "fear and trembling" doesn’t refer to the terror of the Almighty’s punishment or power - but rather, the fear of confronting ourselves exposed and finite before a God of Infinite Accepting Love. That is frightening!"

from 1-29-79 personal journal entry

Why is this frightening? Because I cannot consider what it might mean for me to live in the "practiced" or integrated truth of that love...with myself or others? That kind of love would threaten my ego self as I know it!

Are we afraid to live like that?

I confess that I can hear that kind of unconditional (grace) love as an idea...but my mind and heart ...at so many levels, in so many daily situations.....doesn't seem to "get it!"

Prayer and Scripture:

"Perfect (completed, matured) love casts out fear" (I John 4:18)

"Dear God, help me to "grace-fully...work on it" to work out my salvation..to grow in Your love."

Lenten Post for Friday Feb. 8th Honest Prayer

The Gift of Honesty

"Prayer is simply a matter of course in the Bible. It was so much taken for granted that, to begin with, Israel had no word for "pray." The word for praying was rejoicing, laughing, crying,

reviling, imploring, according to how one felt."

Huub Oosterhuis (Dutch ,Jesuit) Your Word is Near/ no page cited from my Feb 26, 1985 personal journal entry

Those words are so embodied by the Psalms, the Prophets (and Jesus too.)

The Psalms flow with such human emotion, in all its range and richness:

exultation and praise, anger and fear, vengeance and despair, questions..doubts...sometimes just a waiting, seeking.. searching.

It is poetry. It is the human soul put into word. It is prayer.

Could Lent be a time for me to trust, a little bit more, this kind of prayer. It is a form of trusting God's love...

..permission to be...

isn't that a kind of grace?

Prayer reflection:
Will I pray Biblically...being honest before God..."according to how one felt" as Oosterhuis put it. ..bringing all my emotion...just being...
and then....

and then ..the grace of being

as I am, in the presence of God...?

....................

Spend time in silence..letting your emotions come to your awareness. ... an honest prayer.

transformative..... healing

Another Lenten blog referral

Looking for another daily devotional tool for your Lenten walk?

Go to Jeff Reed's blog, listed in my Links column to the side.
I look forward to reading his material.

My Ash Wednesday sermon is posted on my sermon blog. See the link.

Next Wednesday our Lenten service will be at First Congregational UCC with Father Steve Haptonstahl from St Paul Episcopal Church as the "preacher."

Lenten Notes Thursday

Lent as a pilgrimage; a Walk; a Journey; considering the path of
my life:

“Mt Carmel monastery. Carmelites walked barefoot when they first came here because they were on Holy Ground..” (Pg. 22 of Holy Land Personal Journal notes from March 2001)

If I believed I am now on Holy ground, all day, all my life,
how might I walk in its respect?
Is Lent a Holy walk?
To take off my soul shoes for 40 days?
....to consider my steps and the Way I follow? How I carry myself...?
what ecological,
political,
social,
spiritual foot prints do I leave on the earth; the footprints of my life?
Will I go barefoot?
Vulnerable.
Careful.
Attentively.
Slowly .
Holy ground of being...
footsteps of prayer
and awe, and wonder.

Now, maybe before you leave this blog site.... reflect ..pray...... what will be your next step today?
...what is the next task before you...?
Consider that step.....

At the end of the day will you, as a spiritual practice, be in a time of recalling..listening to your life.. ....examining. .. how did you walk today?
What tracks did you leave behind?

Rambling on,
Rory

Ash Wednesday Lenten Post

This begins my Lenten prayer and reflection blog series.
It may get interspersed with other blog entries but I will give it captions with a title of “Lenten post” We begin on Ash Wednesday, Feb 6.

My goal is to have something brief, usually posted for each day of Lent. I know of some days when I will be away for a meeting and will post a few days in row. The posting might be a scripture, a prayer, a quote, a question, an image or an observation.
Come and see.
I encourage you to share this resource with others.

Amma Syncletica said: In the beginning there is struggle and a lot of work for those who come near to God. But after that there is indescribable joy. It is just like building a fire: at first it is smoky and your eyes water, but later you get the desired result. Thus we ought to light the divine fire in ourselves with tears and effort.


I make the ashes for the worship service by burning some of the old dry Palm Sunday palm leaves, and charred wood from a fire place, or bits of paper and twigs...and I do this every year in an old cast iron kettle that has accumulated ashes for at least 20 years. When I make the ashes, I have to make a fire, and I get some of the smoke in the process. So I recall these words from one of the desert mothers. And I think of the times I have bent down to blow on the start of a fire and felt the sting in my eyes and know the effort, but also the joy when the flame begins to burn clean and bright.
Begin with the ashes,
my own inner ashes,
as evidence that there is the possibility of fire.
Ashes are proof that fire exists!
It has been here before....

The picture at the top was in the Brainerd Dispatch about three years ago as I am smudging my daughter, Sara, at a worship service at the Congregational Church.

Advancing in Prayer

Ok, this helps...
I just got back from a two day spiritual retreat at the Episcopal House of Prayer (EHOP) along with some clergy colleagues.
I remember the first time I went; I thought to myself, I am going to learn how to do this: spiritual practices, contemplative prayer, meditation. I remember, in a time of silence, evaluating my performance. Am I doing this right? Since then I have heard the cautions about evaluating, measuring "progress". So this quote, from inward/outward, helps me today;

By Evelyn Underhill

Do not entertain the notion that you ought to advance in your prayer. If you do, you will only find you have put on the brake instead of the acceleration. All real progress in spiritual things comes gently, imperceptibly, and is the work of God. Our crude efforts spoil it. Know yourself for the childish, limited and dependent soul you are. Remember that the only growth which matters happens without our knowledge and that trying to stretch ourselves is both dangerous and silly. Think of the Infinite Goodness, never of your own state.

Source: The Fruits of the Spirit

I will try to keep this in mind for the season of Lent.
Thank God!
Rory

Wesley and Scripture

This is a large excerpt from Bishop Willimon's latest post. I am highlighting his last paragraph!

...So one of the most radical, truly countercultural acts that we perform in Sunday worship is when we gather and then open an ancient book -- written in languages quite unlike our own, in cultures very different from ours - and we become silent, and we listen to the word read and proclaimed and thereby we say to ourselves, “These ancient Jews know more than we.”

John Wesley had a vivid sense of Scripture as a talking book. In his first collection of published sermons, Sermons on Several Occasions, Wesley said that he aspired to be “a man of just one book.” With Wesley we believe that through this collection of ancient writings, God has uniquely spoken to the People of God. And even more remarkable, we believe that God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - speaks to us today through Scripture. John Wesley taught that Scripture is “God breathed,” that God continues to show us divine wisdom and guidance through Scripture.

Though a few confused United Methodists may have been “literalists,” or “fundamentalists” in their reading of Scripture, we have never officially been so limited. We have too much respect for our dependence upon the Holy Spirit in our scriptural interpretation, and a healthy acknowledgement of the distance between Scripture’s originating context and our own situations, as well as a too vivid sense of the reality of a living, resurrected and revealing Lord. We have found that the Bible’s word is enlivened through scholarly study rather than muted and that the word the Bible speaks is always multivocal, thick, lively, relevant and rich. The Bible intends to be more for us than just a book of rules, a repository of helpful principles for better living. Attempts to use the Bible like that are bound to be frustrated by the nature of the Bible’s way with the truth. Scripture is an attempt to construct a new world, to stoke, fund and fuel our imaginations. The Bible is an ongoing debate about what is real and who is in charge and where we’re all headed. So the person who emerged from church one Sunday (after one of my most biblical sermons, too!), muttering, “That’s the trouble with you preachers. You just never speak to anything that relates to my world,” makes a good point.

To which the Bible replies, “How on earth did you get the idea that I want to speak to your world? I want to rock, remake, deconstruct and rework your world!”

So when someone says that Scripture, contrary to the way United Methodists see it, is impractical and unrealistic, tell them that what they probably mean is that Scripture is difficult and demanding. When we read Scripture, allowing it to have its authoritative way with us, submitting to its peculiar way of naming the world, we are being changed, transformed, sanctified in the hearing. God is breathing an enlivening Holy Spirit upon us, Jesus is speaking directly to us, and a new world is being created by the Word. It’s Genesis 1 all over again.

Thus when we read Scripture, we’re not simply to ask, “Does this make sense to me?” or “How can I use this to make my life less miserable?” but rather we are to ask in Wesleyan fashion, “How would I have to be changed in order to make this Scripture work?” Every text is a potential invitation to conversion, transformation, and growth in grace. And, as we have noted earlier, we Wesleyans love to get born again, and again. Scripture is God’s appointed and most frequently used means for getting to us and getting at us and thereby changing us in the encounter.

William H. Willimon http://willimon.blogspot.com