Good Words from the Upper Room Reflections

SOMETIMES WE SEEM to … adopt a one-size-fits-all paradigm of the spiritual disciplines that we all “ought” to live by. Without meaning to, we may adopt the idea (and convey to others) that we should all pray in this way, for this long, about these things, in this order; read this much of the Bible; give this much time each week; journal every day; and ________________ (add here your own personal practice that you feel guilty about not doing or not doing well enough). … But relationship with God is not a matter of rules. God invites us, instead, into an open-ended relationship.

- Mary Lou Redding
The Power of a Focused Heart

From pp. 57-58 of The Power of a Focused Heart: 8 Life Lessons from the Beatitudes by Mary Lou Redding. Copyright © 2006 by the author. Published by Upper Room Books

Quotes to Share

Some thoughts,
passed on,
for the day;

Wendell Berry: “Perhaps the greatest disaster of human history is one that happened to, or within, religion: that is the conceptual division between the holy and the world, the excerpting of the Creator from creation.”
----------------------------------------------------

To be with God is really to be involved with some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you. God is a means of liberation and not a means to control others.
- James Baldwin
Nobody Knows My Name
copied from Sojourners Verse and Voice


-----------------------------------------------------

from today's Spirituality and Practice post:

WHY NOT BE POLITE
Everyone
Is God speaking.
Why not be polite and
Listen to
Him?
— Hafiz quoted in The Gift translated by Daniel Ladinsky

To Practice This Thought: Listen for all the varieties of God's speech.
--------------------------------------------------------

And ...Wednesday's post from the Upper Room Reflections

GOD,
your mystery
is woven around me
like a shawl
that invites me to rest.
Transform and renew me.
Amen.

- Alive Now

From p. 60 of Alive Now, July/August 2006. Copyright © 2006

Weekly Ramble

A Long Ramble through The Past Week.
With several topics:

We had a nice Thanksgiving Day with the usual menu. But Beth made up some stuffing with tofu to accommodate Nick’s vegetarian wishes. There was also a little bit of ham for me since I am not much of a turkey fan. Growing up we often had potato sausage on the menu too. We made our own and the tradition continues with my sister and her family in Arizona. It was a quieter stay- at-home kind of day, the kind of day we were all desiring. I enjoy the thought of just having ‘all the family home.” I have heard my dad say how nice that is and I wish I had been home more often to give him that good feeling.

I was looking at the Parsonage Open House date (Dec. 9) coming soon----and the fact that swimming would be starting for Nick, Sara would be back to college and Beth had some travels scheduled so I commandeered a work force to get up the outside Christmas lights, pulled the Christmas tree and ornament boxes out of their hiding places, and we got the tree up; all in time for Nick and Sara to invite about 20 high school and college kids over to the house on Saturday night (on short notice!) Actually that was the day we had also decided to clean out closets so I could drop off things at Goodwill. So we had a pile of clothes in the middle of the dining room floor just two hours before the party. But it all got done.

Sunday afternoon after church I was the "college shuttle" driver with student deliveries to the University of Minnesota and to Hamline.

Monday I headed to St Cloud as part of the Fall Gateway Clergy Retreat.
My Gateway group plans to continue with its experiences at the Episcopal House of Prayer.
Here is the Oratory

On Tuesday Bishop Dyck unveiled the new district lines. It will be the Plan B model (see my earlier blog entry for the map.) Brainerd is in the Big Waters District.

The Whittier and Lincoln School closings in Brainerd have been announced and those two schools are very much a part of Beth’s position as The Literacy Collaborative coordinator so we are still uncertain of what that will mean. I know for some in our church and community those school closings have very clear and direct consequences as school staffs and classrooms and identities will be disbanded and lost. Beth used to teach at Lincoln so I got familiar with that building too. Keep this whole thing: people and process in your prayers. We have some in Park church facing loss of employment and I believe that in the church we can model a better sense of respect and sensitivity than what has been displayed in the newspaper’s Vox Pox and the Letters to the Editor.

On another note; there was a letter to the editor in the Dispatch in which a person was threatening to boycott any merchant that said ‘Happy Holidays” to him instead of “Merry Christmas”. I think I understand what the person is trying to say. He is feeling that his Christian faith is being threatened and that would , of course, raise a person's temper. Maybe the person has been listening to John Gibson and Bill O Reilly’s take on the "war on Christmas." I don’t buy the book or the reasoning. Personally I would be very concerned if I felt my faith required the support of the government or some large corporate interests. I would rather think that it can exist without that dependence. Christianity began, and the Christian scriptures were written at a time, and for a setting when the church was certainly not the pre-dominant culture. Our beginnings were in the hostile environment of the Roman empire and the marketplace was a market place of competing religions as well. The gods (under many names) of prosperity, power, success and pleasure were selling well back then too.
I am probably an old fashioned religious conservative because I would just as soon have the merchants of today keep my sacred church language out of their commercialized profit ventures. If Christmas is a holy word, then I would like it to be used in holy ways. For years, even though I know that my local merchants need strong December sales, I have been among (the majority) church voices that have cautioned, moaned and warned us about the commercialized, advertised, consumerized and secularized Christmas (even though I too, participate in it..confession!).
Now that some merchants are actually dropping the religious words we have been trying to protect...we are angry about it!!? Maybe they are finally doing what we have been asking them to do? We might now have a better chance of keeping ‘Christ in Christmas”. If you want Christmas, maybe you should expect to find it at a church or in some expression of Christian servanthood, rather than at a retail center or a public square.

And I really don’t mind “Happy Holidays”. Holidays is short for holy days, and I would like to have someone wish me “Happy Holy Days.” These are Holy Days for me. And, in the generous and loving spirit of Christ, (the real Christmas spirit) I want to practice hospitality toward others and I don’t want to force my religious will over others. That deeper respect for others seems to be the Christ way. Could we especially model that in the month of December? Our nation could use much more of that. We Christians, could perhaps model community and loving respect, within diversity, as a kind of Christmas gift to our multi-cultural country! That would be a great witness. The Peace-making of Christmas. I think Luke's Gospel said that it was included in the message.

Or.....maybe we could simplify the whole thing, and still keep the economy going, by following what I saw in the store windows of Cuba back in 1981. In an officially secular society they had red and green signs that spoke of the Season of Giving. You could support your merchants and add your own interpretation of the giving!

Maybe I will stick with greeting people to have a “ watchful and adventurous advent!” After all this really is advent season before Christmas season. Then when Christmas comes around on December 24/25th. I can start with 'Merry Christmas" just about the time when the stores are moving on to the next sales event!

Pray for peace or steps in the right direction in the Israel/Palestine talks, and in Iraq , Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma/ Myanmar , Congo, Dar fur...and ..and....so many places.
pray for peace in your heart, your life, your own words and actions.
Peace.

Enough “Rambles” for now. Maybe I have raised some issues and eyebrows. You can comment on the blog or can e-mail me at roryswen@gmail.com.

A Blog Bonus

I didn't realize how much a blog could be a way of connecting to people with whom I had gotten out of touch. Today my cousin, Jennifer, in Tacoma Washington called to say she had been to the blog, and then just wanted to call. I hadn't seen her since she and my uncle (her dad) came to visit us in Ortonville about 14 years ago. Her call made my day. Thanks Jennifer, if you are reading this!

Park Church hosted a Thanksgiving eve service tonight. For several years now we have partnered and alternated being the host church with the Congregational UCC which is just across the corner block from us. Deb Celley from the UCC church preached this year. This worship service is also also known as "Pie night." Pies are brought to the church, and a slice or two is taken out of the pies for the social time after the service and then the pies go to the Moose Lodge where they are served at the community thanksgiving dinner. The offering tonight went to the local Sharing Bread Soup Kitchen and to the Food Shelf. The Soup kitchen numbers had risen in the last few weeks and they have had some attendance over 100 with more children, youth and families showing up.
Other than that, I checked the hospital, visited a couple of people in some assisted living apartments, had the Wednesday Bible study (lectionary group) a few other "in office" visits, some administrative paper work, worked on sermons and bulletins. ..all in all, an easy day. Since I had worked on Monday (the day off) with a funeral for a women who died at the age of 48 after a 5 year struggle with cancer, I think I was due for an easy day.
For Thanksgiving I am hoping to slip into deep introvert mode....a family at home day!
This year Nick has a 7 Am "early bird" class that usually gets us out the door well before 6:30 so getting to skip the alarm clock tomorrow sounds great!
Rambling on.

One of Sara's poems

You could link over to Sara's writing blogs and read this but I have permission to copy it here . Her site has mostly short stories and vignettes, but some times she does a poem. She wrote this one last night.

IF I WERE A POEM (c) Sara Swenson - November 2007

I ride a purple unicycle on the spiraled lines of time
up and down
against sea-sick gravity,
with a mouth full of cosmic dust
the kind of stuff you only taste
on merry-go-rounds, with your head hanging off to one side
and
somebody's sneakers kicking up gravel next to your nose
(dizzy spinning)
I wish
I
could
(sometimes)
backpedal time
and laugh a little longer
with strong white, teeth, like stars shining back at the universe
just laugh so long.

but life is linear and so am I
balanced precariously
I cry pearl tears and ride, ride, ride
just pedal strong
like scraped knees
faster faster faster forward
because I can't go back

I
ride
I
pedal strong across this thin line of
acrobatic fishing line
tight rope walker
playing games
I
ride
I
pedal strong
I,
balancing, ride
this thin, thin line
strung like spider's silk: a web
my life
strung
soft among the stars
I ride
I ride
I ride
and laugh
my spiraled lines
of time
strung soft
strung soft
strung soft
across
this golden
universe.
-

Small Christmas

This will be my article for the December church newsletter; blog readers get an advance copy. So when the newsletter comes you can get on to the rest of the articles!

Think Small for Christmas.
That would be counter cultural for much of our society and Christmas traditions.
Businesses are hoping for big holiday sales.
Some people are looking for big parties. We like to see the big Christmas decoration light shows or big Christmas trees. We get tricked into thinking that bigger is better and I admit that I would love to have big crowds for church on Christmas eve!

But apparently God is willing to do things small, think small, go small; a baby in a little town with not much of a crowd, a mother, a father, and a few socially small shepherds. For a glimpse there was a “multitude” of the heavenly host. But it was to a small audience. Later on perhaps magi. How many? This chapter, this opening chapter of our gospel story is all about small beginnings. It is central to the message itself.

Joan Chittister, a contemporary Benedictine writer, in her book, Becoming Fully Human, has a chapter: “Do the little Things Matter?” She uses the Christmas story to answer much of that question:
“There is a secret to the spiritual life.... Every spiritual master in every spiritual tradition talks about the significance of small things in a complex world. Small actions in social life, small efforts in the spiritual life, small moments in the personal life. All of them becoming great in the long run, the mystics say, but all of them look like little or nothing in themselves.. .....Christmas itself is the call to recognize the significance of smallness; to realize what each of us can and must become if we ever are to become fully human....maybe we will come to understand the real miracle of Christmas; Jesus came to us as a child so that we might come to understand not only that nothing we do is insignificant but that every small thing we do has within it the power to change the world.” (P.115f)

As part of the Spiritual Life Class we read these words from St. Theresa of Lisieux .“Each small task of everyday life is part of the total harmony of the universe .” Or again from Chittister: Every word, every action, every effort of our lives has a ripple effect. Because of us, others will do more or do less to co-create this world. “Every action of our lives,” Edwin Hubble Chapin wrote, “touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.” What do you want to hear played there on your account?
(Maybe it should be Christmas music?”)

This kind of thinking could simplify the business of Christmas! Maybe you can do “Christmas in a small way” but trusting in great, unseen influences. Say a loving and long awaited word, spend a timely moment with someone, hold a hand, write a letter, make a phone call, be in silence, make a donation, take someone new out for coffee, do a kind deed, plant a tree, pass on an heirloom, share a memory. Re-arrange your schedule. Make room for the sacred.
Christmas invites us to believe in “small"...as in mustard seeds or Bethlehem.
Or perhaps small as in, "each of us”...personally and as a church.
I suspect that we all wonder or have doubts about our impact or significance in this great big world. Christmas can answer that concern for us. We can all do something. It doesn’t have to be that big!
So have yourself a "Merry Little Christmas"


And this: separate from the newsletter article, but a nice pairing, from Richard Rohr quoted in today's inward/outward.
(inward/ outward sited this blog once for the Pavarotti story so I can return the favor?)

By Richard Rohr

Our ordinary lives are given an extraordinary significance when we accept that our lives are about something much larger, our pain is a participation in the redemptive suffering of God, our creativity is the very passion of God for the world. No longer do we need to self-validate, self-congratulate or self-doubt—our place in the cosmos is assured. I do not need to be the whole play or even understand the full script. It is enough to know that I have been chosen to be one actor on the stage. I need only play my part as well as I can.

Source: Jesus’ Plan for a New World

And a picture for fun!

The Dining Room

My son, Nick, is in the Brainerd High School Play “The Dining Room.”
Friday night was opening night and we have tickets for all three performances.

A.R. Gurney wrote the play as a commentary on northern New England WASP culture and he uses the setting of a Dining Room to give us 18 vignettes. The center of the Dining Room is of course, a dining room table. Around and near the table we see and hear dramas of life, love relationships, family activities, joys, sorrows, rituals of propriety, romantic affairs, birthday parties, perceived insults and issues of shame and family honor, dreams unfulfilled, a women wanting to come home because there is no where else to go; an aged father giving funeral instructions to a son, a turkey dinner strained by the dementia of the family matriarch, conversations of money, politics, sexuality and values,..and in the end, a vision of a perfect dinner party...and through it all, there is a table.

The religious symbolism for me came early whether Gurney intended or not: human life and a table. A table of welcome . A table of some authority and history. A communion table. Some times it has healed us and called us, sometimes it has not been well presented and becomes a cause of division and distress. As in the play, sometimes we argue about the table, what its proper uses are and who should control it.
But finally it remains, and it too holds fast for a larger vision of hospitality. In the end it is a witness of Presence and hope.
No doubt a few dining rooms and tables will “come into play” this week for Thanksgiving with gatherings of family and friends. May they be tokens of the Greater Dining Table. May they “play well” as a place of family. The play ends in a toast, for all the gathered characters; "To all of us."

The Almost Blogs

I notice that I have not had much in the blog of a personal nature. The "almost blogs" that could have been more personal were as follows:
Dad's new pacemaker, installed on Halloween in Thief River Falls and I was glad to be up there for the the day. He is doing well. Mom and Dad are in Arizona now for the winter.

The school operating levy referendum for Brainerd did not pass. It caught me off guard. That topic begs to have larger conversation on the tax structures and economy of school support, but in the meantime we wait to see what it means for Beth's employment and Nick's high school years. His interests areas in debate, drama, swimming and (AP) Advance Placement classes; are all at risk. I am thinking of all the school employees in the congregation that are living with some high anxiety right now.

Beth and I spent spent Saturday with Sara at Hamline (Nick was off to a Youth in Government event) and did some visiting in St Paul; Garrison Keillor's bookstore, St Paul Cathedral, a bakery; supper at the Hamline dining hall and then a fine music concert. (Sara's French horn is still getting some use.) On Thursday we had Nick's band concert, it was fun too. With Sara back in the French Horn section sometimes it was hard to see her. Nick plays tuba; not so easy lost in the crowd!
Sunday morning I preached at Light of the Lakes while Jeff was at Park church. At 2 pm I had a memorial service for a woman who died at the age of 51, after a three year struggle with cancer. I did not know her or the immediate family but I knew something of what I wanted to say; what I always want to say; about the presence of God, and life, and love, and the mystery of influences that we do not know how to name, and I know how to say thanks for the uniqueness of a life.

From there it was off to Home Depot to buy plastic to cover the screen porch for winter. There is probably some small analogy or metaphor there..how we try to plastic off the winter; seal it out, and we feel better as if we have done something to protect ourselves...but not really.
Its only plastic, a thin layer covering a small space, that I will fill up with unused summer things, like bikes and chairs, lawnmower and garden hoses. Winter is the same- physically, emotionally, spiritually... it is there. I expect it and even trust it. But I need the illusion and the space. ...to think I have done something to prepare and control.

In the evening we had the second to the last session of the Spiritual Life class. The material combined "doubt" and "questioning" as if they were the same. But they are not. I tagged a few of my PowerPoint quotes on the end of this blog entry.
Today was a day off. Still watching the Estimate of Giving projections in time for the Finance Committee on Tues. Did some housework, made spaghetti, ran some errands and got some groceries, filled the bird feeders, strolled out for two walks, read some Mary Oliver poems.
Asked myself how much of a poet I would be, to just be?


still unblogged :
Church Conference was Oct 28th, the annual Swedish Meatball Supper was Nov 5 with about 550 served; Had the All Saints Service on Nov 4. We had 16 names to read , to remember. ....people ask me if its hard to do services for people you don't know. I tell them its harder for me when I do know them. 16 people that I got to know.
Went to say goodbye to Ray Koehn, church member who chaired the mission committee when I first came here, and was the "usher" for the chapel at Woodland when I went there for services. He is moving to be closer to family in Paynesville. I will miss him.
Maybe I need another roll of plastic.

Those were the Almost Blogs



Nov 11 Spiritual Life class, the additional notes

True, deep-down goodness is never a matter of mere compliance with laws. Deep-down goodness shows itself in spontaneous generosity, uncalculating kindness, and unstinted love. It is itself inspired by a vision of goodness'
(Westerholm, Understanding Matthew:The Early Christian Worldview of the First Gospel, 53).


God did not create us to watch us like a scientist,
but to dance with us like a lover.”
Brian Robertson


“You need a pilgrimage.
Begin by closing your mouth.”
From the sayings of the Egyptian Fathers



Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith. --Paul Tillich


Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves.-- Rainer Maria Rilke


"The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth."
Pierre Abelard


Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.
F Buechner

Nov 4th class notes

Nov 4th Power Point notes for Spiritual Life Class


“God Speaks to the Soul
and God said to the soul:
I desired you before the world began.
I desire you now
As you desire me.
And where the desires of two come together
There love is perfected.”
- Mechthild of Magdeburg
- Translated by Oliver Davies


We must offer ourselves to God like a clean, smooth canvas and not worry ourselves about what God may choose to paint on it, but at each moment, feel only the stroke of His brush.
— Jean Pierre de Caussade quoted in The Inner Treasure by Jonathan Star

There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.
— Rumer Godden in A House with Four Rooms

GOD of surprises,
as we walk through the day,
keep our eyes open
and our senses tuned
to your presence
in unexpected places.
Amen.
- Beth A. Richardson
Child of the Light
From page 87 of Child of the Light: Walking through Advent and Christmas

“The mystery of God touches us -- or does not -- in the smallest details: giving a strawberry, with love; receiving a touch, with love; sharing the snapdragon red of an autumn sunset, with love. “
- Marion Woodman, "Coming Home to Myself "

Faith is like trusting in a deep ocean…if you struggle, if you tense up, if you trash about, you will eventually sink. But if you relax and trust, you float… Faith…is trusting in the buoyancy of God. Faith is trusting in the sea of being in which we live, and move, and have our being
Marcus Borg quoted on 126 of Habits

To have faith is not only to raise one’s eyes to God…; it is also to look at this world but with Christ's eyes…We must pray to have sufficient faith to know how to look at life.
Michel Quoist 128

Our whole business in this life is to restore health to the eyes of the heart, whereby God may be seen.
St Augustine

"God wishes to be seen, and wishes to be sought, and wishes to be expected, and wishes to be trusted."
Julian of Norwich .p 131 of Habits

"I can't point to any one time in the last dozen years I ‘got’ faith. There were- and are- many moments, nudges, and jolts that incubated my faith and helped it grow."

Kathleen Norris p134 Habits

Nothing more tedious than practicing your scales or mumbling your beads. Yet the accomplishments of art, the efficacy of prayer, the beauty of ritual, and the force of character depend on petty repetitions any instant of which, taken for itself alone, seems utterly useless.
— James Hillman in The Force of Character and the Lasting Life

…writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way…
…. so also with faith.
adapted from pg 134 in Habits

MY LORD GOD,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude