Thoughts for troubled times - 4

...this people has a stubborn and rebellious hear;

they have turned aside and gone away.

They do not say in their hearts,

'Let us fear the Lord our God,

who gives the rain in its season,

the autumn rain and the spring rain,

and keeps for us

the weeks appointed for the harvest.'

Your iniquities have turned these away,

and your sins have kept good from you.

The Book of Jeremiah 5:23-25

Vernal Equinox 2008

Picture from here

Christine at The Abbey of the Arts has called for poetry and other writing about the Equinox. Here below is my contribution:

VERNAL EQUINOX
UTC 080922 15.44

It happened last night:
AEST 080923 01.44.

It came in southern darkness
To say that summer isn’t far away.
It came in the sleepy midnight
To say that winter really would go
And the sun would come to stay.

This is my true herald of hope.
The depression and gloom of winter go
Replaced with hope and blossoming life
And a knowledge that sun and heat
Will cleanse my soul
And joy it into play.

Thoughts for troubled times - 3

Whether we like it or not, one way or another, we are called to account for our actions.

It almost certainly will happen in our own lifetime.

It certainly will happen when this lifetime is oveer.

~~~~~~~~~

Your ways and your doings

have brought this upon you.

This is your doom, and it is bitter;

it has reached your very heart.

The Book of Jeremiah 4:18

Thoughts for troubled times - 2

Jeremiah dictating to Baruch.

Picture from The Evolution of Jeremiah.

What wrong did your fathers find in me
that they went far from me,
and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?
……
And I brought you into a plentiful land
to enjoy its fruits and its good things.
but when you came in you defiled my land,
and made my heritage an abomination.
……..
Has a nation changed its gods,
even though there are no gods?
but my people have changed their glory
for that which does not profit.
be appalled, O heavens, at this,
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
says the Lord.

The Book of Jeremiah 2: 5, 7, 10-12

Thoughts for troubled times - 1

There are many things happening in our world

to give us pause for thought

environment and sustainability

surfeit and hunger

consumerism and financial security

individualism and community

war and peace.

While the problems abroad in the world may be new to this generation, the nations and peoples of the world have been troubled before. And, if the Lord tarries in His coming, such troubles may come again.

In this light, I thought it might be time to go back to another troublesome period in history, and look to some of the words of that period. So, beginning with this post, we will pay some brief visits to the words of Jeremiah. I hope these words can be taken to your heart, store there, reflected on, and perhaps they - in turn - will lead to further reading and reflection. Indeed, these are meant to be thoughts for The Journey.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

".......I am watching over my word to perform it"

God's words to Jeremiah as a young man

Reported in The Book of Jeremiah 1: 11

The broken wheel of life

Photo by Ted Szukalski

Man is born broken.

He lives by mending.

The grace of God is the glue.

Eugene O'Neill

Choice: the Kingdom of God or Tyranny

This picture came from here

We can move in the direction of justice,

but if our personal relationships don’t become more human,

we haven’t moved in the direction of the reign of God

and, in the long run,

we will discover that our point of arrival is just another form of tyranny.

Arturo Paoli

Great Spirit

Native American Prayer
Author Unknown

Great Spirit,

Give us hearts to understand

Never to take from creation's beauty more than we give,

Never to destroy want only for the furtherance of greed,

Never to deny to give our hands for the building of earth's beauty,

Never to take from her what we cannot use.

Give us hearts to understand

That to destroy earth's music is to create confusion,

That to wreck her appearance is to blind us to beauty,

That to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench,

That as we care for her she will care for us.

Give us hearts to understand We have forgotten who we are.

We have sought only our own security.

We have exploited simply for our own ends.

We have distorted our knowledge.

We have abused our power.

Great Spirit,

Whose dry lands thirst,

Help us to find the way to refresh your lands.

Great Spirit,

Whose waters are choked with debris and pollution,

Help us to find the way to cleanse your waters.

Great Spirit,

Whose beautiful earth grows ugly with misuse,

Help us to find the way to restore beauty to your handiwork.

Great Spirit,

Whose creatures are being destroyed,

Help us to find a way to replenish them

Great Spirit,

whose gifts to us are being lost in selfishness and corruption,

Help us to find the way to restore our humanity.

The ancient Christian tradition of hospitality

Rublev Trinity Icon - Abraham entertains

I'm seeking to start a conversation on ancient Christian hospitality.

A couple of things have stimulated this.

1. My local parish (St Thomas) runs an Open Church program. It is quite simple. Its purpose is to keep our parish church doors open from 10am to 2pm Monday to Friday irrespective of whether there is anything on at the church. It is run by volunteers who staff the program with 2 volunteers operating in pairs and each pair doing two hours each - so that is four people every day Mon to Fri. This means our chapel is open for prayer/quiet times. In winter a back pew is made comfortable with cushion, blanket and heater! The volunteers are happy to give a coffee to any one who drops in and have a chat with them as well. Emergency food parcels are available for those who need them - although like any organisation who provides such a service, there are some boundaries.

2. Anti-Poverty Week is coming up in Australia from 12-18 October. I am on the Christian sub-committee here in Victoria. I have been trying to think how I might be able to stimulate involvement and interest in this. What I would like to do is to have St Thom's through the Open Church ministry host a multi-faith day for our area with an emphasis on Hospitality within the different faith traditions. I believe it would give a profile to our Open Church program so that others might imitate it and so we might have fewer locked up churches in Melbourne. There might be other faith communities who have their buildings closed during the week who might consider how they could keep their buildings open to the community. And, of course, hospitality spins off into meeting with those at the margins, getting to know them, serving them and thus serving Christ.

In focussing on Hospitality I also have a hidden agenda and that is that our program at St Thom's might come to a deeper understanding of the role and function of hospitality within our tradition and how that tradition impacts us in our Christian walk and how, through hospitality, we might impact the lives of others.

I am aware that, for instance, the Benedictines have an ancient tradition re hospitality which I would like to hear more about. I have heard that locking doors goes against the ancient Christian tradition. Does anyone know about this? I am sure there is more that can be said - so I wonder if you could help me to learn more about hospitality in our tradition so that I can get a clear and deep focus on it to the extent that I am able to articulate this clearly to others. Documents that I could pass on to others to read might be a help as well.

Justice is always associated with the desert experience

Photo: The Sydney Morning Herald

Jarrod McKenna, our energetic peace-loving peace-making Aussie, has written over here of a great Olympic story. It is the story of a prophetic and public moment in the lives of three Christian men. Two of these men were black Americans. The third, a white Australian. The white Australian was Peter Norman.

What Jarrod didn't mention was that when Peter died in 2006, the solidarity of the three men that was so publicly and irrevocably evident at the Mexico Olympics in 1968 was evident once again. Tommie Smith and John Carlos were here in Melbourne for Peter's funeral and they helped to carry his coffin.

Dear Reader, you have no idea how much this meant to us in Australia. That such athletic comrades from almost forty years ago should do such honour by coming half-way around the world will not be easily forgotten by Aussies.

To-night, I will watch the opening ceremony of the historic Beijing Olympics. I am a great admirer - in spite of things that get in the road sometimes - of the Chinese, their history, their culture and above all the Tao Te Ching. I am conscious of Australian's long involvement with the Chinese people. But if, like our Prime Minister, I could be a forthright friend: there are issues of justice in China and some of its relationships which can be difficult to overlook. Some people, perhaps, at these Olympics will feel strongly enough to make a public - and possibly prophetic - stand.

I pray that if this is the case that such people will remember the time forty years ago when three men decided to make their stand: representing two very different cultures these men really stood for something. The speedy and gentle Australian did not raise a fist. He wore a badge and, with Christ in his heart and his motivation, stood beside his black brothers. After all, Jesus said, where two or three are gathered in my name: there I am in the midst of them.

Transfiguration

To-day is the Feast of the Transfiguration. Three years ago, the fruit tree beside my home office window was covered in blossom (the picture is from 2005) but my fruit trees have very few blossoms at this time and my magnolia seems to have blossom as a permanent condition since they have been there so long without flowering.

In the Northern Hemisphere, Easter coincides with new life in nature. In the Southern Hemisphere, Easter happens in Autumn when the leaves are falling and nature prepares for Winter.

I love the Feasts but, on those occasions when we observe those that are not Easter and Christmas, I think we talk about them in a way which does not give any depth to the experience. I think that, in the main, this is how the Transfiguration is treated.

The Transfiguration was a supernatural event intervening in the natural order of things. It was transforming and predictive of the new life to come. Just like the Southern Hemisphere is experiencing at this time. How wonderful then if people in the south of the globe could take this great season of the soul and transform it to mirror the wonder of regeneration that is happening in the environment. We could then experience both the transfiguration of our environment and of our spirits.

The Transfiguration Lyrics

~~~
When you can do nothing else: bear witness.

A monastery of her own

The role of the older single woman in society has always been surrounded by ambiguity - particularly post-menopause. In fact, we do well to remember that until just over one hundred years ago the pattern of a woman's life was to go from her father's house directly to her husband's house - except for the occasional exceptions where a woman entered a nunnery.

The formerly married single woman - in other words, the widow - has always been difficult and all the more so if she had dependent children. No longer virginal, a woman with sexual experience, and, once post-menopause, frequently seen as sexless. Now if this woman was not submissive and self-effacing and 'modest', she might be seen as dangerous, as a troublemaker, and - in some periods of history - a witch.

So what to do with such women? It is only in the last fifty years that most of us have controlled our fertility sufficiently to establish true independence - personal and economic. Prior to that, our biology was a factor in our dependency on the male of the species one way or another and a factor in the male ability to control women.

As an older woman, a widow, I have often thought of what it might mean to live in an intentional community with other women like me for mutual support. The sort of thing I have in mind would be be living independently in a building suitable for the purpose but having communal periods and, because we would be an intentional community, able to give our energies to projects that we were unable to carry out individually.

However, there are few totally new ideas in this world. No new thing under the sun, Ecclesiastes 1:9 says. Because, dear Reader, in medieval times someone actually thought of that and did it.

All those blokes, well probably the best of the blokes, went off to the Crusades and left the women at home - widows in every meaning of the word except death of husband although that might have happened and the news not yet arrived. Some women were single and could not marry because of the lack of men and some were deserted while the men did their "spiritual" duty. Out of this social milieu, came the Beguines. They were later to be followed by a male equivalent, the Beghards but, in this instance, the women led the way.

I was reminded of this when dipping into the Travel section of The New York Times and found this beautiful piece: A Lost World Made By Women. Sadly, the Beguines have gone from among us and their buildings live on as relics of an anachronistic idea.

But, you see, I don't think the idea is anachronistic. I think the idea could become a contemporary ideal for many women bearing in mind the words of the the Franciscan Friar Gilbert of Tournai in 1274:

There are among us women whom we have no idea what to call, ordinary women or nuns, because they live neither in the world nor out of it.

The Beguines and their story/ies give us much food for thought. Their ideal need not and should not be lost to us. But we need to learn lessons from their experiences:

• recognize how easily independent, autonomous women threaten male hierarchies, particularly clerical ones;
• provide structures for ourselves of ourselves that ensure we can act in a way that is true to ourselves so that we are susceptible neither to co-option nor marginalization;
• discover what beautiful intellectual structures we can build for ourselves when our own feminine leanings and desires are given free rein.

Faith, Hope and Peace

Jesus sowed his seed in our hearts, then off he went....

He knew things would not be ideal.

There were the birds and the droughts,

the weeds and the insects,

the parasites and the blights.

But there was also the power of the seed itself.

Joseph G. Donders

teacher and chaplain

at the University of Nairobi, Kenya

The Word and Community

The lack of a caring community

that incarnates the Word

makes us more and more incapable of being heard.

Melba Maggay

Filipino theologian

Contemplation, Witness, Resistance

Christine Valters Paintner over at the Abbey of the Arts has given us a link to her article: The Practice of Contemplation as Witness and Resistance. Please take time out to read this since it provides a balanced view of the contemplative life in modern practice. Such a life is not mere navel-gazing but the seeding of an active, prophetic life. The post is here.

I have snitched this quote from Sacred Threshold who seems to have got it from inward/outward. It is from Henri Nouwen.

You are Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you emphasize the need of conversion both for yourself and for the world, so long as you in no way let yourself become established in the situation of the world, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come. You are Christian only when you believe you have a role to play in the realization of the new kingdom, and when you urge everyone you meet with holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled. So long as you live as a Christian you keep looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life.

Desert spirituality: definition and experience.

A beautiful post on the definition and experience of desert spirituality at Theguyoutsidethewalls.

We search and we search and yet find no meaning.
The search for a meaning leads to despair.
And when we are broken the heart finds its moment
To fly and to feel and to work as it will
Through the darkness and mystery and wild contradiction.
For this is its freedom, its need and its calling;
This is its magic, its strength and its knowing.
To heal and make meaning while we walk or lie dreaming;
To give birth to love within our surrender;
To mother our faith, our spirit and yearning;
While we stumble in darkness the heart makes our meaning
And offers it into our life and creation
That we may give meaning to life and creation
For we only give meaning we do not find meaning:
The thing we can’t find is the thing we shall give.
To make love complete and to honour creation.

Leunig

in When I talk to you: a cartoonist talks to God

2004, HarperCollinsPublishers

The Light in Mid-Winter: a story for the winter solstice

Lantern Parade.

THE LIGHT IN MID-WINTER
A story for the Winter Solstice

The Earth is in winter once again. The Sun gets out of bed later to find the Day and tucks itself away earlier to bring Night.

But there is a place that we can’t touch or feel. We scarcely notice it when it is come and it is gone. It is Mid-Winter. The Winter Solstice. This is a very special time. Before this time the hours of The Sun are getting shorter and shorter. After this time, the hours of The Sun are getting longer and longer. Or we can think of it another way. Before Mid-Winter the hours of Great Darkness are getting longer and longer. After Mid-Winter the hours of Great Darkness are getting shorter and shorter.

The Sun is s-o-o important to us. It is the bringer of Life and Light. When we put our plants in the ground to grow our food, to produce beautiful flowers, and start big shady trees on their journey of life – our effort will be wasted if there is not Light. We need Light to live. And while plants and animals and human beings have adjusted and adapted to living with cold in most places on The Earth, we do need Warmth. The Sun gives us Warmth. Our life is in Light and Warmth – not in Dark and Cold.

Our bodies love to be warm. They do not like to be shivery cold.

But it is not just our bodies. We human beings are not just our bodies. We are spirit too. And sometimes, in our spirit, we do not feel warm. Sometimes, in our spirit, we do not feel full of Life and filled with Light. We feel the Dark and the Cold coming inside of us and this does not make us feel happy. Instead, we feel s-o-o sad. We don’t want to get out of bed. We don’t want to talk to people. We want to huddle into ourselves because the sunny parts of our lives feel as if they have gone away never to come again.

So what do we do when we feel dark in our spirit?

It helps to look around at the world created for us. When we make a garden we have to think of all that a plant needs. This includes thinking about the Light. If the garden is too shady because of big trees, we have to prune and shape the trees. The plants in our garden will receive more Light to grow.

We look at our spirit in the same way. We do this by sitting quietly. We sit quietly so that the spirit inside us can listen. We sit quietly so that the spirit inside us can be still and not disturbed. As we still our spirit inside us, it is like pruning and shaping that big shady tree. As we are sitting, as we are still, as we are quiet we find the Light comes to our spirit just as the Light comes to our growing plants.

A long time ago a man called George Fox learned about the Light. He said then – and his words have come down to us to this very day – I saw an ocean of darkness and death BUT – and this is a great, lovely, big BUT – and infinite ocean of light and love which flowed over the ocean of darkness.