Made of God
So God created hymankind: in the image of God he created them. Genesis 1:27
Yesterday evening, eleven Memorialites and friends traveled to St James', Monkton to hear Philip Newell speak about Celtic Spirituality. Philip Newell was formerly the Warden of the Iona Community in Scotland and currently is a retreat leader and writer who spends time in Edinburgh, Scotland and Casa del Sol at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. In a far-ranging talk on the Celtic ways, his words were a perfect beginning to a Lenten journey to know and embrace oneself.
Instead of seeing the human condition as "fallen," the Celtic tradition honors the divine that lives at the heart of the human condition. As Julian of Norwich said, we are "made of God, not by God." Newell spoke about how the doctrine of original sin made popular by the work of Augustine has done much damage to humanity and the world throughout human history. For centuries, certain Christian traditions make us feel unworthy in so many unhealthy ways. We feel so unworthy that the very thought of undertaking a Lenten discipline of self- study seems oppressive. Instead of bringing us closer to God, we feel even further away. The Celtic tradition gives us another way of seeing the human relationship to God. Instead of being "saved" by God's grace, Celtic father Pelagius says that "the medicine of grace reconnects us to ourself" and thus to the divine within. This is the way I approach Lent--as a way to reconnect to God, not as a way to beat myself up further for repeated shortcomings.
More on this tomorrow in the Sunday sermon. Pentitence is not about self-loathing, but about turning to what is deepest and first in us as humans--the beauty and love of God. Once we discover that we are made in the image of God, we have the strength to turn away from all those places in our lives that separate us from the love of God.
Text: Genesis 1:27
Pondering: Has Lent been a place of self-loathing for you?
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
Friday after Ash Wedneday--Becoming Myself
Becoming Myself
No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; if it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved. Matthew 9:16-17
The initial "threshold" movement of Lent is to move inward. Beginning with Ash Wednesday and into the early weeks of Lent, we are invited to go deeper into our own self--the glories and the defeats. The places that we shine with God's light and love and the places where we turn away from God.
In her poem, "Now I Become Myself," May Sarton writes these lines:
Now I become myself.
It's taken time, many years and places.
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces....
The time of Lent always coincides with three important anniversaries in my life: my birthday and the anniversaries of both my parents' death. This time of year, I spend a good deal of time remembering my parents and assessing where I find myself with another year under my life belt. As I look back over the years, I know that I have worn my parents' faces in many parts of my life. One face that has dominated my vocational life is the face and life of my father.
After my mother's death when I was just entering my teenage years, my father and I deepened what was already a strong bond. As a little girl, I thought my father was the greatest thing on earth. As a railroad lawyer, he spent his workweeks in Chicago. I only saw him on the weekends. On the weekends, I was his shadow. I got up early so I could eat breakfast with him--imitating his eating style of "get it done quickly." I followed him around as much as I could in the garden. I would read nearby as he settled into his comfortable chair for an afternoon read and nap. Some evenings, we would dance to the soundtrack of "Around the World in Eighty Days" on the hi-fi. The best treat in the whole world on summer Saturdays was to climb on the tractor with Daddy and ride along as he mowed the seven acres of grass.
When my mother died, he became even more important in my life. Not only was he a great weekend companion, he was my rock and shield. I depended on him in ways I still cannot properly articulate. About that time, I decided that I wanted to become a lawyer--like my father. This dream continued throughout high school and into college. When I came to my senior year of college, it was time to start law school applications. That's when I hit the first snag. I couldn't really answer the question in print or voice: Why do you want to become a lawyer? Nothing there.
When I arrived at law school in the fall of 1980, I did not have the usual glee and excitement that I always had during the first week of school. I was out-of-kilter in more ways than one. Once classes started, I could not warm to the legal way of thinking. I never warmed to the legal way of thinking. Through three years of law school, a job in a law firm, and another year of tax law school, I could not get a handle on the law in a way that satisfied me. I could do it. I did not love it. I had no passion for it. For more than 10 years, I vocationally wore my father's face. My mind could not recognize this fact. My deep self knew all along.
It took my father's death in 1988 to realize that I was living a life not my own. Shortly after his death, I realized that I no longer wanted to practice law. I was at a threshold point in my law career--about to leave my clerkship at the Tax Court and go back to private practice or enter government service. I remember the day the reality of my life came rushing towards me. I was at an interview lunch at a swanky restaurant on K Street in Washington D.C. with the partners in a tax boutique firm. As they asked me questions such as "What would excite you about being with our firm?" I realized that I had nothing to say. I was not excited. It was like that essay question on the law school application about 10 years back: Why do you want to be a lawyer? I had nothing to say both times, because truly that was not my soul's calling. That day on K Street, I was 30 years old and I had no idea what my soul's calling was. On a Lenten journey that lasted a few years, I was to find out that God knew. God knew all along. I just had to turn toward God and with God, go deep within. That was the key to opening my deep self. To becoming my true self that God knew and loved from the time that I was born.
Text: Matthew 9:10-17
Question: What faces have you worn in your life that are not your own? This Lent, is it time to turn closer to God and together see how you can remove a mask and uncover your deepest self?
No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; if it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved. Matthew 9:16-17
The initial "threshold" movement of Lent is to move inward. Beginning with Ash Wednesday and into the early weeks of Lent, we are invited to go deeper into our own self--the glories and the defeats. The places that we shine with God's light and love and the places where we turn away from God.
In her poem, "Now I Become Myself," May Sarton writes these lines:
Now I become myself.
It's taken time, many years and places.
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces....
The time of Lent always coincides with three important anniversaries in my life: my birthday and the anniversaries of both my parents' death. This time of year, I spend a good deal of time remembering my parents and assessing where I find myself with another year under my life belt. As I look back over the years, I know that I have worn my parents' faces in many parts of my life. One face that has dominated my vocational life is the face and life of my father.
After my mother's death when I was just entering my teenage years, my father and I deepened what was already a strong bond. As a little girl, I thought my father was the greatest thing on earth. As a railroad lawyer, he spent his workweeks in Chicago. I only saw him on the weekends. On the weekends, I was his shadow. I got up early so I could eat breakfast with him--imitating his eating style of "get it done quickly." I followed him around as much as I could in the garden. I would read nearby as he settled into his comfortable chair for an afternoon read and nap. Some evenings, we would dance to the soundtrack of "Around the World in Eighty Days" on the hi-fi. The best treat in the whole world on summer Saturdays was to climb on the tractor with Daddy and ride along as he mowed the seven acres of grass.
When my mother died, he became even more important in my life. Not only was he a great weekend companion, he was my rock and shield. I depended on him in ways I still cannot properly articulate. About that time, I decided that I wanted to become a lawyer--like my father. This dream continued throughout high school and into college. When I came to my senior year of college, it was time to start law school applications. That's when I hit the first snag. I couldn't really answer the question in print or voice: Why do you want to become a lawyer? Nothing there.
When I arrived at law school in the fall of 1980, I did not have the usual glee and excitement that I always had during the first week of school. I was out-of-kilter in more ways than one. Once classes started, I could not warm to the legal way of thinking. I never warmed to the legal way of thinking. Through three years of law school, a job in a law firm, and another year of tax law school, I could not get a handle on the law in a way that satisfied me. I could do it. I did not love it. I had no passion for it. For more than 10 years, I vocationally wore my father's face. My mind could not recognize this fact. My deep self knew all along.
It took my father's death in 1988 to realize that I was living a life not my own. Shortly after his death, I realized that I no longer wanted to practice law. I was at a threshold point in my law career--about to leave my clerkship at the Tax Court and go back to private practice or enter government service. I remember the day the reality of my life came rushing towards me. I was at an interview lunch at a swanky restaurant on K Street in Washington D.C. with the partners in a tax boutique firm. As they asked me questions such as "What would excite you about being with our firm?" I realized that I had nothing to say. I was not excited. It was like that essay question on the law school application about 10 years back: Why do you want to be a lawyer? I had nothing to say both times, because truly that was not my soul's calling. That day on K Street, I was 30 years old and I had no idea what my soul's calling was. On a Lenten journey that lasted a few years, I was to find out that God knew. God knew all along. I just had to turn toward God and with God, go deep within. That was the key to opening my deep self. To becoming my true self that God knew and loved from the time that I was born.
Text: Matthew 9:10-17
Question: What faces have you worn in your life that are not your own? This Lent, is it time to turn closer to God and together see how you can remove a mask and uncover your deepest self?
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Choose Life---Thursday after Ash Wednesday
Choose Life
These are the words the Lord commanded Moses to speak to the people: "I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil. ...I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him." Deuteronomy 30:15, 20
Sometimes you just know when God is talking to you. It doesn't happen very often in own's life. But sometimes, you just know. This passage for today's meditation is one of those critical verses of scripture for me personally. In fact, I think this passage saved my life.
In the sermon at the Tri-Church service at Corpus Christi last night, I spoke about Parker Palmer's own spiritual crisis in his early thirties. He speaks about the experience in his excellent book Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. At some point in his early thirties, he read the line from William Stafford's poem "Ask Me." The line that seared his soul was this: Ask me whether what I have done is my life. That line changed his life. Palmer would probably say it saved his life.
This passage from Deauteronomy did the same for me. It saved my life by showing me the way to healing--not only in my body but in my vocation and soul. I heard this passage read on Sunday morning on a hot summer July morning in 1989 at St Paul's Church, Alexandria. It had a been a wonderful and terrible two years. In 1987, my father-in-law died of a sudden heart attack while my father was in the hospital receiving a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. In March 1988, my father died. In November of that year, my son Jack was born. In April of 1989, Jack was baptized and I found myself in the hospital with gallbladder surgery. After the surgery, I could not get well. At first, I thought I was just tired from having a new baby and no sleep. One day, I found I did not have the energy to walk a city block. Something was very wrong. I didn't know what to do. It felt like my whole world was in a shambles. My life didn't feel like my life anymore at all. I should be enjoying my new son. I wondered if I was slowly dying. Would I leave my son motherless? I didn't know what else to do. I went to church.
In 1989, I could count the number of times on one hand that I had been to church in 15 years--and that included my father's funeral and my son's baptism. I had lost my way to church as a teenager. But without my father's strong presence in my life, I didn't know where else to go. So, I showed up on Sunday morning. And Deuteronomy was the first reading right out of the box. I put before you death and life--choose life. Choose life. That is all I wanted to do. Mysteriously, that passage seemed to change me that day. I realized that I wasn't alone in this struggle for health. God was with me. I knew it that day. I've known it ever since.
In the weeks after that Sunday, I was diagnosed with a thyroid condition that was easily remedied. I regained my strength. I didn't go back to church the next Sunday. But that fall, I did. And I signed up for a Bible Study course and...well, I kept right on going. In a year, I had left tax law (where I was miserable) and was in the process for ordination in the Episcopal church. All along, from that point, choose life was my mantra--God speaking in my life.
I can't tell you the number of times that I come back to Choose Life as a mantra. Life continues to throw the choice of life and death in our path. It is a continual process of choosing life. Again and again and again. I am so glad that God as Holy Spirit somehow nudged me that July Sunday to go to church. Just when I was at the lowest point of my life, God was there. And God spoke in the words of Deuteronomy.
Today: What you are doing today--is this your life? The way that gives you life? Begin to wonder with God on that question. How do you choose life for YOU?
Text for today: Deuteronomy 30: 15-20
These are the words the Lord commanded Moses to speak to the people: "I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil. ...I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him." Deuteronomy 30:15, 20
Sometimes you just know when God is talking to you. It doesn't happen very often in own's life. But sometimes, you just know. This passage for today's meditation is one of those critical verses of scripture for me personally. In fact, I think this passage saved my life.
In the sermon at the Tri-Church service at Corpus Christi last night, I spoke about Parker Palmer's own spiritual crisis in his early thirties. He speaks about the experience in his excellent book Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. At some point in his early thirties, he read the line from William Stafford's poem "Ask Me." The line that seared his soul was this: Ask me whether what I have done is my life. That line changed his life. Palmer would probably say it saved his life.
This passage from Deauteronomy did the same for me. It saved my life by showing me the way to healing--not only in my body but in my vocation and soul. I heard this passage read on Sunday morning on a hot summer July morning in 1989 at St Paul's Church, Alexandria. It had a been a wonderful and terrible two years. In 1987, my father-in-law died of a sudden heart attack while my father was in the hospital receiving a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. In March 1988, my father died. In November of that year, my son Jack was born. In April of 1989, Jack was baptized and I found myself in the hospital with gallbladder surgery. After the surgery, I could not get well. At first, I thought I was just tired from having a new baby and no sleep. One day, I found I did not have the energy to walk a city block. Something was very wrong. I didn't know what to do. It felt like my whole world was in a shambles. My life didn't feel like my life anymore at all. I should be enjoying my new son. I wondered if I was slowly dying. Would I leave my son motherless? I didn't know what else to do. I went to church.
In 1989, I could count the number of times on one hand that I had been to church in 15 years--and that included my father's funeral and my son's baptism. I had lost my way to church as a teenager. But without my father's strong presence in my life, I didn't know where else to go. So, I showed up on Sunday morning. And Deuteronomy was the first reading right out of the box. I put before you death and life--choose life. Choose life. That is all I wanted to do. Mysteriously, that passage seemed to change me that day. I realized that I wasn't alone in this struggle for health. God was with me. I knew it that day. I've known it ever since.
In the weeks after that Sunday, I was diagnosed with a thyroid condition that was easily remedied. I regained my strength. I didn't go back to church the next Sunday. But that fall, I did. And I signed up for a Bible Study course and...well, I kept right on going. In a year, I had left tax law (where I was miserable) and was in the process for ordination in the Episcopal church. All along, from that point, choose life was my mantra--God speaking in my life.
I can't tell you the number of times that I come back to Choose Life as a mantra. Life continues to throw the choice of life and death in our path. It is a continual process of choosing life. Again and again and again. I am so glad that God as Holy Spirit somehow nudged me that July Sunday to go to church. Just when I was at the lowest point of my life, God was there. And God spoke in the words of Deuteronomy.
Today: What you are doing today--is this your life? The way that gives you life? Begin to wonder with God on that question. How do you choose life for YOU?
Text for today: Deuteronomy 30: 15-20
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Ash Wednesday--The Threshold to Lent
Today is Ash Wednesday and today we stand at the threshold of Lent. Will we cross the threshold and enter into this season fully? How do you enter Lent fully? The word that comes to me this year when I think of Lent is the word "liminal." The word "liminal" comes from the Latin word limin or "threshold." Liminal means "a barely perceptible, barely sensory threshold." Liminal is "an in-between state." Lent has such a way about it.
The Ash Wednesday liturgy is a service that recognizes the liminal. The service begins simply and seems to be as usual--the readings and a homily. Then the threshold moment comes. We are invited to "the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and be reading and meditating on God's Holy Word." (Book of Common Prayer, p. 265). We are then invited to receive the sign of the cross in ashes on our forehead as we hear the words: "remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." A humble threshold moment. A moment where in the midst of life, we find death.
As the service moves forward, we repent of our sins in a more considered way in the Litany of Repentence and in the recitation of Psalm 51, and then we turn, even on this somber day, to celebrating the Lord's Supper. In our tri-Church service tonight, instead of Eucharist, our three congregations will come forward once again--to have our hands anointed to go out into the world and serve God. Even in the midst of death, we live. Another threshold crossed.
Psalm 51:7 reads: "for behold, you look for truth deep within me." In truth, we all are moving from death to life and back again over and over again in our lives. Sometimes that fact is imperceptible. Sometimes we do everything we can to ignore this condition. Lent is the time that we stare this fact of "death in life, life in death" squarely in the face. At the base of everything we do as humans, this very basic truth lies deep within. This very basic truth is the cause of so much heartache and suffering. This basic truth is our holy joy.
Where are you on the threshold of life and death this Lent? Take a look--or better yet, experience--the Ash Wednesday liturgy on p. 264 of the Prayer Book as well as Psalm 51. What deeper truth about your life is God nudging you to look squarely in the face this Lent?
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