Lent Post

I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right.

- author Anne Lamott, in a recent interview. (Source: The Washington Times)
From Sojourners

Lent Post From St Basil the Great

O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us. We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion…with ruthless cruelty so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to thee in song, has been a groan of travail. May we realize that they live not for us alone but for themselves and for thee, and that they love the sweetness of life.
~St. Basil the Great (329-379)

Maybe this ties in with some of Jeff Reed’s current blog thoughts.

Lenten Lazarus

GOD,
sometimes
we’re as tightly bound
as Lazarus
in a tomb:
unseeing,
unfeeling,
unmoving.
Then,
in our bondage
you send
another
to help free us;
a friend
who believes
and rolls the stone away.
Unbound,
enabled to emerge
from the caves of our making,
our eyes are opened
to see your loving face.
We are released —
Resurrection!
- Roberta Porter
Alive Now
From page 45 of Alive Now, March/April 2003

Lent Post on Lazarus... Truth Unfolding

I am thinking about the Sunday Gospel in John with the raising of Lazarus. I had planed to work with this sense of delay from Jesus and the "if you had been here" words from Mary and Martha. It could be a way to talk about our time in the tombs before we get called forth.. and how we would rather have that hurried up or avoided.
But then there is also the verse that says unbind him and set him free. It too is rich with potential, as we are partners in that process. But then I came across a simple quote
from Joseph Goldstein who writes from some Buddhist insight . "Be gentle with yourself. You are the truth unfolding."
(I found the quote on another blog; allchannels.blogspot.com)
But what a way to see ourselves and the community of faith in the setting of Lazarus and his unbinding or unfolding!
"Be gentle with yourself. You are the truth unfolding."
Our new life and our resurrection world is a truth unfolding....
the unbinding is still happening....

Just an information update. With the funerals this week for Dorothy Little on Wednesday, and Dean Prushek on Thursday, the Spiritual Life retreat for Thursday is being post-poned until April.

In the mean time you can keep their families in your prayers. I will be thinking of Dorothy and how she loved to talk and how she would come to use the church basement to do her quilting
and for Dean, how he loved to sing and sang in the church choir; and his pages and pages of art work- flowers, birds, and garden things. We plan to share his drawings.

Lenten post. The Deeper Role

Yesterday morning at the 9;30 service we had the baptism for little Cooper Cristion Drake. His family on both sides, are very much part of the Park church family. As Leslie Drake , a retired clergy person who had served this congregation in the past, assisted me in the baptism we had him wearing his clerical garb, white alb and stole, but as we began the baptism liturgy I had thought about how I would introduce him and said, "Les, you may have your liturgical garb on this morning, but we know who you really are, you are grandpa and great grandpa" and with such genuine pride and joy we heard him say, "That's right".

Of course we know that.
We do wear many outfits and roles in our lives, but there are times when , we know an even better and deeper and richer identity of relationships that tells us who we are and why we are here.
I think lent and the journey of renewal by the way of the cross and resurrection, is time when we layer ourselves though our many garments of identity and roles, and come to the joy of our belovedness and our inter-relatedness with others; and we can say, with love and joy that this is who I really am.
Maybe that's what I am hoping and seeking and needing to do with Lent... get past the clerical garb and the other roles, to get in that inner role that is the best and truest of all! Maybe baptism will tell me who I am as well!

Sunday March 2 Lenten Post..Waiting

I am preparing a Spiritual Life Retreat/Book Study for Thursday using Sue Monk Kidd's book; When the Heart Waits.
Throughout the book she uses the image of caterpillars, cocoons, and butterflies. With a wide variety of Biblical illustrations and resources such as Jung, Merton, Eckhart, developmental psychologists, some actual butterfly biology, and her own experiences, she builds on those images of waiting as a necessary part of spiritual transformation.
In that cocoon time we are in the dark, perhaps struggling or helpless, unknowing, vulnerable, (literally the larva becomes almost gelatinous in the transformative process) and nothing can be done to force the process. You have probably heard the stories of the well meaning person who helped the butterfly out of the cocoon, only to have a butterfly wounded and deformed, deprived of the struggle? But we often avoid it or fear it. She cites many biblical images that are symbolic of that cocooning,, Jonah in the “fish” Daniel in the night of the lions den, Sarah in her barrenness , the Egyptian years, or the Exile....waiting images are common; beggars like Lazarus or blind Bartimaeous waiting by the side of the road. I plan to pick up on the Lazarus in the tomb story as an image of this, and the odd statement of Jesus’ delay in coming. Does that simply describe the spiritual condition that you cant rush out of the cocoon time? The spiritual disciplines of Sabbath, contemplative prayer, listening, stillness. entering our suffering...all of it under the umbrella of the waiting heart as requisite in soul formation. Could the ancient desert monastic advice “to enter into your cell and your cell will teach you everything” call us to the cocooning and waiting that births us into the next stage of our growth? To put it simply: it is the cross and the tomb before the resurrection; Good Friday before Easter.

Here is one of her quotes and concerns about our ‘Quickaholic Spirituality” that would have us keep busy, rush past our pains and doubts, and avoid our cocoon stages

"When it comes to religion today, we tend to be long on butterflies and short on cocoons. Somehow we're going to have to relearn that the deep things of God don't come suddenly. It's as if we imagine that all of our spiritual growth potential is dehydrated contents to which we need only add some holy water to make it instantly and easily appear." (p. 26)


By the way, in Greek mythology, the soul /the psyche was personified as a butterfly
and I read somewhere that in Kabbalic mysticism the word for ego actually means “cocoon'. Of course the cocoon/butterfly has its Easter symbolism as well .