Leaving your fragrant rest of the summit of morning calm,
Descend, Bird of paradise, from the high mountain:
And, plumed with glowing iris along each burning wire,
Visit in time our regions of eucalypt and palm.
Dance, prophetic bird, in rippling spectrums of fire,
Ray forth your incandescent ritual like a fountain;
Let your drab unearthly mate that watches in morning calm
Unseen, be filled with the nuptial splendours of your desire.
Engender upon our souls your sacred rhythm: inspire
The trembling breath of the flute, the exultant cosmic psalm,
The dance that breaks into flower beneath the storm-voiced mountain;
Array in your dazzling intricate plumage the swaying choir.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
A recent talk I gave at RMIT
Let me start with a bit of a confession. Many, many years ago, towards the end of my teens, when most young people were planning their futures or looking forward to the next party, I started reading and following people like T. S. Eliot, Rumi, Rilke, Emily Dickenson, Thomas Merton, J.D. Salinger, D. T. Suzuki, Carl Jung, Walt Whitman, Henry Thoreau: along with a long list of poets, prophets, matriarchs, patriarchs and a few politicians who hinted that there was a heart to it somewhere, some shared caring and compassion on the way. You might guess that this was in the very depths of the late nineteen-sixties.
Fast forward forty years and I turn out be a “liberal-catholic Anglican”, usually comfortable with my place in that tradition, but also valuing time spent studying the history and phenomenology of religions, living, praying and meditating in Christian monasteries and Buddhist temples, keeping my heart, soul and mind involved in ongoing conversation with Jews, Christians and Muslims, and making sure there’s time for a friendly community of silence with monks, nuns and pilgrims of various traditions and no traditions at all. With that start and that journey it could end in enlightenment, chaplaincy or jail, and most days I feel fortunate to have found a middle path. So, with that background in place, I want to talk a bit about learning, knowledge and wisdom from a multi-cultural and a multi-faith perspective.
It might be simple to posit two categories of education or formation in the modern University and TAFE: trade-skills and life-skills, and that these two areas might illustrate some crucial differences between learning and knowledge.
Trade-skills navigate the swiftly changing stream of information, learning what’s new in arts, crafts and technologies, current input, ideas, opinions, research, visions and revision, paradigm shifts and new possibilities, both software and hardware, trade-skills must try to stay afloat in the rapids of shifting inventions, applications, events which multiply as fast as the media itself in the rush to take in new ideas. This seems to be the necessary model and methodology in getting a global passport for working in the new world, it may be good or bad, but it is certainly a fact.
The problem comes in approaching what the Yale psychiatrist Daniel Levinson called the “Proteus personality”, people trained to respond to all the latest skills, fads and visions, learning to change quickly to meet the present opportunity or crisis, but lacking a critical focus or foundation grounded deeper than the present moment, deeper than the ability to adapt to change. Most chaplains and student life types come to know the look of students or staff, who sit down with a sort of hollow sadness about them and say something like, “My life looks nothing like what I see at the mall or on the web, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me”. It can break your heart, but it can also mark an opportunity for another kind of learning, a place for knowledge.
Perhaps everyone in the university community works with most of this in mind, but Student Life and Student Services primary task is this place: helping RMIT students balance career and degree objectives with all the foundational stuff of real life: balancing those tasks with the world of friends and family, wellness and illness, issues of money and housing, mind, body and spirit, integrating education with the whole person and their larger community of meaning: so that what is learned connects to where we live and move and have our being. So that education and occupation can ripen to be a kind of service in many neighbourhoods, hopefully adding value to the whole human family.
So if the modern mode of learning trade-skills moves us towards being what David Reissman used to call “other directed” persons, then mastering critical life-skills as part of a higher education remind us of the importance of relating our learning to existing structures and communities of meaning that are more “inner directed” and “tradition directed”: connect our new world with older visions that have seen the test of time. And for that we need a more formal affiliation with wisdom, a link to varied visions of wholeness and compassion or to a shy hope in the heart that there may be a heart to it all. And we need to approach this as a whole society as a necessary part of our public education.
You’ve probably guessed this is not a Canadian accent, ‘though at times in the last 8 years I often wish… but one of the things I bring as an Australian citizen who is also a Yank is a strong sense that privatising religion presence does not serve a country well. The American model of officially separating the secular and the sacred does justice to neither; on one hand, delegating issues of public meaning to a secular ideology spawned by capitalism and consumerism, industry and entertainment, without roots in wisdom or compassion; and, on the other hand, bring in a short-hand kind of private piety which demote religious affiliation to a stained glass and sentimental patriotism, a kind of leisure-time activity that justifies greeting cards and pilgrimages to Nashville or worse. I don’t mean to trivialise, these can be pervasive myths that carry much meaning: when I was a boy, the motto for General Electric appliances was “Progress is our most important product” and I still well remember the day when Disneyland opened in 1955.
Both were good products for what they were and both have since gone global. But if this world deserves a deeper vision, perhaps Australia can take a stance in new ways of approaching education, knowledge and wisdom that can make a crucial difference. And so I wonder if there could be an Australian educational process which encourages and incorporates the age-old visions and values of wholeness and holiness alongside the realms of trade-skills and life-skills, integrating learning, knowledge and wisdom in the education of the whole person in a multicultural society? It certainly would not be easy. We have to be extremely careful of both heroism and hubris when it comes to ultimate visions. Mahatma Gandhi once questioned how anyone who thinks they possess truth could be fraternal, could learn from another, and that’s a fair call, For each tradition has unique visions, specific proclamations, that can be strident and exclusive: we all exist in their echoes, and we all hear them still.
Perhaps our wisdom, spiritual and justice traditions can meet in a world of common values, not arguing right belief, not talking theory but in shared practice, walking the walk rather than talking the talk. Perhaps the picture we might strive for is made up more of actions and occasions, times spent together in small ongoing tasks and achievements that make a difference. This is one of the ways we are trying to go with our chaplaincy here; in creating new partnerships and possibilities, with people of different creeds and kinds coming together to share concern and action in areas such as ecology, economics, environmental concerns, working with youth and elders, the hungry and the homeless, areas that can be informed by the ethics and visions of a variety of faith and justice perspectives. All this in the hope that the values shown in working for justice, love and mercy, new communities of care, might in the end make a significant difference in the world we must choose to share.
So, that’s my take on it: that there is a unique opportunity for our own educational institutions in this civil society to open room to honour the wisdom of ages, the poets and prophets, holy and wise ones who speak out of a perception and a discernment both deeper and finer than either the mall or the web can offer. I believe that this could take us to new places, can ground us deep in the present moment under a very wide horizon for both possibilities and compassion, might give us a hope that working together for a more integrated structure of learning, knowledge and wisdom that could open a new possibility for the whole human family.
Fast forward forty years and I turn out be a “liberal-catholic Anglican”, usually comfortable with my place in that tradition, but also valuing time spent studying the history and phenomenology of religions, living, praying and meditating in Christian monasteries and Buddhist temples, keeping my heart, soul and mind involved in ongoing conversation with Jews, Christians and Muslims, and making sure there’s time for a friendly community of silence with monks, nuns and pilgrims of various traditions and no traditions at all. With that start and that journey it could end in enlightenment, chaplaincy or jail, and most days I feel fortunate to have found a middle path. So, with that background in place, I want to talk a bit about learning, knowledge and wisdom from a multi-cultural and a multi-faith perspective.
It might be simple to posit two categories of education or formation in the modern University and TAFE: trade-skills and life-skills, and that these two areas might illustrate some crucial differences between learning and knowledge.
Trade-skills navigate the swiftly changing stream of information, learning what’s new in arts, crafts and technologies, current input, ideas, opinions, research, visions and revision, paradigm shifts and new possibilities, both software and hardware, trade-skills must try to stay afloat in the rapids of shifting inventions, applications, events which multiply as fast as the media itself in the rush to take in new ideas. This seems to be the necessary model and methodology in getting a global passport for working in the new world, it may be good or bad, but it is certainly a fact.
The problem comes in approaching what the Yale psychiatrist Daniel Levinson called the “Proteus personality”, people trained to respond to all the latest skills, fads and visions, learning to change quickly to meet the present opportunity or crisis, but lacking a critical focus or foundation grounded deeper than the present moment, deeper than the ability to adapt to change. Most chaplains and student life types come to know the look of students or staff, who sit down with a sort of hollow sadness about them and say something like, “My life looks nothing like what I see at the mall or on the web, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me”. It can break your heart, but it can also mark an opportunity for another kind of learning, a place for knowledge.
Perhaps everyone in the university community works with most of this in mind, but Student Life and Student Services primary task is this place: helping RMIT students balance career and degree objectives with all the foundational stuff of real life: balancing those tasks with the world of friends and family, wellness and illness, issues of money and housing, mind, body and spirit, integrating education with the whole person and their larger community of meaning: so that what is learned connects to where we live and move and have our being. So that education and occupation can ripen to be a kind of service in many neighbourhoods, hopefully adding value to the whole human family.
So if the modern mode of learning trade-skills moves us towards being what David Reissman used to call “other directed” persons, then mastering critical life-skills as part of a higher education remind us of the importance of relating our learning to existing structures and communities of meaning that are more “inner directed” and “tradition directed”: connect our new world with older visions that have seen the test of time. And for that we need a more formal affiliation with wisdom, a link to varied visions of wholeness and compassion or to a shy hope in the heart that there may be a heart to it all. And we need to approach this as a whole society as a necessary part of our public education.
You’ve probably guessed this is not a Canadian accent, ‘though at times in the last 8 years I often wish… but one of the things I bring as an Australian citizen who is also a Yank is a strong sense that privatising religion presence does not serve a country well. The American model of officially separating the secular and the sacred does justice to neither; on one hand, delegating issues of public meaning to a secular ideology spawned by capitalism and consumerism, industry and entertainment, without roots in wisdom or compassion; and, on the other hand, bring in a short-hand kind of private piety which demote religious affiliation to a stained glass and sentimental patriotism, a kind of leisure-time activity that justifies greeting cards and pilgrimages to Nashville or worse. I don’t mean to trivialise, these can be pervasive myths that carry much meaning: when I was a boy, the motto for General Electric appliances was “Progress is our most important product” and I still well remember the day when Disneyland opened in 1955.
Both were good products for what they were and both have since gone global. But if this world deserves a deeper vision, perhaps Australia can take a stance in new ways of approaching education, knowledge and wisdom that can make a crucial difference. And so I wonder if there could be an Australian educational process which encourages and incorporates the age-old visions and values of wholeness and holiness alongside the realms of trade-skills and life-skills, integrating learning, knowledge and wisdom in the education of the whole person in a multicultural society? It certainly would not be easy. We have to be extremely careful of both heroism and hubris when it comes to ultimate visions. Mahatma Gandhi once questioned how anyone who thinks they possess truth could be fraternal, could learn from another, and that’s a fair call, For each tradition has unique visions, specific proclamations, that can be strident and exclusive: we all exist in their echoes, and we all hear them still.
Perhaps our wisdom, spiritual and justice traditions can meet in a world of common values, not arguing right belief, not talking theory but in shared practice, walking the walk rather than talking the talk. Perhaps the picture we might strive for is made up more of actions and occasions, times spent together in small ongoing tasks and achievements that make a difference. This is one of the ways we are trying to go with our chaplaincy here; in creating new partnerships and possibilities, with people of different creeds and kinds coming together to share concern and action in areas such as ecology, economics, environmental concerns, working with youth and elders, the hungry and the homeless, areas that can be informed by the ethics and visions of a variety of faith and justice perspectives. All this in the hope that the values shown in working for justice, love and mercy, new communities of care, might in the end make a significant difference in the world we must choose to share.
So, that’s my take on it: that there is a unique opportunity for our own educational institutions in this civil society to open room to honour the wisdom of ages, the poets and prophets, holy and wise ones who speak out of a perception and a discernment both deeper and finer than either the mall or the web can offer. I believe that this could take us to new places, can ground us deep in the present moment under a very wide horizon for both possibilities and compassion, might give us a hope that working together for a more integrated structure of learning, knowledge and wisdom that could open a new possibility for the whole human family.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
A Prayer to God the Father on the Vigil of Pentecost by Thomas Merton
Today, Father, this blue sky lauds you. The delicate green and orange flowers of the tulip poplar tree praise you. The distant blue hills praise you together with the sweet-smelling air that is full of brilliant light. The bickering flycatchers praise you together with the lowing cattle and the quails that whistle over there. I too, Father, praise you, with all these my brothers, and they all give voice to my own heart and to my own silence. We are all one silence and a diversity of voices.
You have made us together, you have made us one and many, you have placed me here in the midst as witness, as awareness, and as joy. Here I am. In mew the world is present and you are present. I am a link in the chain of light and of presence. You have made me a kind of centre, but a centre that is nowhere. And yet I am “here,” let us say I am “here” under these trees, not others.
For a long time I was in darkness and in sorrow, and I suppose my confusion was my own fault. No doubt my own will has been the root of my sorrow, and I regret it merciful father, but I do not regret it because this formula is acceptable as an official answer to all problems. I know I have sinned, but the sin is not to be found in any list. Perhaps I have looked to hard at all the lists to find out what my sin was and I did not know that it was precisely the sin of looking at all the lists when you were telling me that this was useless. My “sin” is not on the list, and is perhaps not even a sin. In any case I cannot know what it is, and doubtless there is nothing there anyway.
Whatever may have been my particular stupidity, the prayers of your friends and my own prayers have somehow been answered and I am here, in this solitude, before you, and I am glad because you see me here. For it here, I think, that you want to see me, and I am seen by you. My being here is a response you have asked of me, to something I have not clearly heard. But I have responded, and I am content: there is little to know about it at present.
Here you ask of me nothing else than to be content that I am your Child and you Friend. Which simply means to accept your friendship because it is your friendship and your Fatherhood because I am your son. This friendship is Son-ship and is Spirit. You have called me here to be repeatedly born in the Spirit as your son. Repeatedly born in light, in knowledge, in unknowing, in faith, in awareness, in gratitude, in poverty, in presence and in praise.
If I have any choice to make, it is to live here and perhaps die here. But in any case it is not the living or the dying that matter, but speaking your name with confidence in this light, in this unvisited place: to speak your name of “Father” just by being here as “son” in the Spirit and the Light which you have given , and which are no unearthly light but simply this plain June day, with its shining fields, its tulip trees, the pines, the woods, the clouds and the flowers everywhere.
To be here with the silence of Sonship in my heart is to be a centre in which all things converge upon you. That is surely enough for the time being.
Therefore Father, I beg you to keep me in this silence so that I may learn from it the word of your peace and the word of your mercy and the word of your gentleness to the world: and that through me perhaps your word of peace may make itself heard where it has not been possible for anyone to hear it for a long time.
To study truth here and learn here to suffer for truth.
The Light itself, and the contentment and the Spirit, these are enough.
Amen
You have made us together, you have made us one and many, you have placed me here in the midst as witness, as awareness, and as joy. Here I am. In mew the world is present and you are present. I am a link in the chain of light and of presence. You have made me a kind of centre, but a centre that is nowhere. And yet I am “here,” let us say I am “here” under these trees, not others.
For a long time I was in darkness and in sorrow, and I suppose my confusion was my own fault. No doubt my own will has been the root of my sorrow, and I regret it merciful father, but I do not regret it because this formula is acceptable as an official answer to all problems. I know I have sinned, but the sin is not to be found in any list. Perhaps I have looked to hard at all the lists to find out what my sin was and I did not know that it was precisely the sin of looking at all the lists when you were telling me that this was useless. My “sin” is not on the list, and is perhaps not even a sin. In any case I cannot know what it is, and doubtless there is nothing there anyway.
Whatever may have been my particular stupidity, the prayers of your friends and my own prayers have somehow been answered and I am here, in this solitude, before you, and I am glad because you see me here. For it here, I think, that you want to see me, and I am seen by you. My being here is a response you have asked of me, to something I have not clearly heard. But I have responded, and I am content: there is little to know about it at present.
Here you ask of me nothing else than to be content that I am your Child and you Friend. Which simply means to accept your friendship because it is your friendship and your Fatherhood because I am your son. This friendship is Son-ship and is Spirit. You have called me here to be repeatedly born in the Spirit as your son. Repeatedly born in light, in knowledge, in unknowing, in faith, in awareness, in gratitude, in poverty, in presence and in praise.
If I have any choice to make, it is to live here and perhaps die here. But in any case it is not the living or the dying that matter, but speaking your name with confidence in this light, in this unvisited place: to speak your name of “Father” just by being here as “son” in the Spirit and the Light which you have given , and which are no unearthly light but simply this plain June day, with its shining fields, its tulip trees, the pines, the woods, the clouds and the flowers everywhere.
To be here with the silence of Sonship in my heart is to be a centre in which all things converge upon you. That is surely enough for the time being.
Therefore Father, I beg you to keep me in this silence so that I may learn from it the word of your peace and the word of your mercy and the word of your gentleness to the world: and that through me perhaps your word of peace may make itself heard where it has not been possible for anyone to hear it for a long time.
To study truth here and learn here to suffer for truth.
The Light itself, and the contentment and the Spirit, these are enough.
Amen
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
GOOD-FRIDAY, 1613, RIDING WESTWARD. John Donne
LET man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
Th' intelligence that moves, devotion is ;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey ;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl'd by it.
Hence is't, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul's form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die ;
What a death were it then to see God die ?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes ?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,
Humbled below us ? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our soul's, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragg'd and torn ?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom'd us ?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They're present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them ; and Thou look'st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hang'st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity ;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face.
Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 172-173.
Th' intelligence that moves, devotion is ;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey ;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl'd by it.
Hence is't, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul's form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die ;
What a death were it then to see God die ?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes ?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,
Humbled below us ? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our soul's, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragg'd and torn ?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom'd us ?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They're present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them ; and Thou look'st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hang'st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity ;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face.
Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 172-173.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Ash Wednesday
12:15, Café @ RMIT. I went to Mass at 7:15, had a breakfast meeting with another chaplain at 8:30: then a meeting with International Student Support people at 10 and two quick meetings to touch base following that. It’s good to sit down, grab a sandwich and breathe.
So Jesus goes to the desert and we follow. And I remember visiting a friend in the Nevada desert some years ago who told me that there was a different beauty there, “There are flowers here, lovely ones, but you have to look!” And when I got over the expectation of green trees and flowers, ideals and images from the gardens I knew, I found she was right. There was another style of grace, new blossoms in the shade of rocks, hidden green leaves, soft growth, bright surprises that I hadn’t seen at first, because I was looking for something bigger, more easily categorized, closer to what I had known before. That’s the wrong focus for the desert, you have to see more than you look for, you have to prepare to be surprised by the small bright spots, the ones that aren’t domesticated yet. It’s time to learn from the wild animals and the foreign foliage in an unknown wider landscape, That is one of the ways to meet the desert.
So Jesus goes to the desert and we follow. And I remember visiting a friend in the Nevada desert some years ago who told me that there was a different beauty there, “There are flowers here, lovely ones, but you have to look!” And when I got over the expectation of green trees and flowers, ideals and images from the gardens I knew, I found she was right. There was another style of grace, new blossoms in the shade of rocks, hidden green leaves, soft growth, bright surprises that I hadn’t seen at first, because I was looking for something bigger, more easily categorized, closer to what I had known before. That’s the wrong focus for the desert, you have to see more than you look for, you have to prepare to be surprised by the small bright spots, the ones that aren’t domesticated yet. It’s time to learn from the wild animals and the foreign foliage in an unknown wider landscape, That is one of the ways to meet the desert.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Lenten Leanings
So Shrove Tuesday comes, and what do I want from Lent this year? How do I meet Jesus and the wilderness and the wild animals, prepare for Jerusalem and Golgotha and what comes after?
There are always the eternal list of to-do’s and should-do’s (both “spiritual” and “practical”) that follow around me, but I think the main task will be to take up the task my spiritual director recommended 25 years ago: a weekly or monthly one page reflection on “what I believe”, a summary of my operational theology. This year it will be a bit more often and sustained – maybe six weeks of reconnoitering around the questions concerned with where I find my faith (and doubt) right now, connecting it with the past, and moving towards the future.
I’m not thinking of a systematic theology, but just taking time to reflect on where my life finds meaning and grace at present and how that connects with the vows I made at Baptism over forty years ago. We’ll see where it goes, but a lot of it will go into the blog.
I’ve neglected this for the last year, and it was important to me before that; but four people have mentioned reading it in the last few weeks, so maybe it’s time to put some effort into Chaplinesque – here we go again!
There are always the eternal list of to-do’s and should-do’s (both “spiritual” and “practical”) that follow around me, but I think the main task will be to take up the task my spiritual director recommended 25 years ago: a weekly or monthly one page reflection on “what I believe”, a summary of my operational theology. This year it will be a bit more often and sustained – maybe six weeks of reconnoitering around the questions concerned with where I find my faith (and doubt) right now, connecting it with the past, and moving towards the future.
I’m not thinking of a systematic theology, but just taking time to reflect on where my life finds meaning and grace at present and how that connects with the vows I made at Baptism over forty years ago. We’ll see where it goes, but a lot of it will go into the blog.
I’ve neglected this for the last year, and it was important to me before that; but four people have mentioned reading it in the last few weeks, so maybe it’s time to put some effort into Chaplinesque – here we go again!
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Advent Sermon
“Christ, look upon this city and keep our sympathy and pity fresh and our faces heavenward lest we grow hard.”
This morning of the first Sunday of Advent, with all the high liturgy, wonderful readings, great music, this deep and wonderful connection between art and devotion, I keep remembering a bumper sticker I saw years ago which read, “Jesus is Coming, Look Busy!” It’s a very unworthy reflection for the solemnity of the day and I feel a little sheepish about it. But I did share it with today’s crucifer, Margaret Collins, who said, “But we’re always busy during Advent!”. So maybe the question for the day is this: are we busy with the right things, what should we be busy doing? And, as you might guess, I have two possible responses to this question.
Forty years ago, when I was 21 years old, I was baptized in the Anglican Church. There were many reasons, but part of it was that I felt the need to say two things out loud: “Thank you” and “I am sorry”, and this community offered that place. Over the years my understanding of my relationship with God, and how I live that out, has changed, but these two little phrases, small liturgies (for that is what they were) remain central in my own understanding of the importance of sorrow and thanksgiving, and of the wideness of God’s mercy in the midst of them.
So let’s walk into Advent and the holiday season with two simple ways to keep on the path.
First, say thank you to God at least twenty times a day. Now that may sound simple, but it isn’t easy. Personally, I don’t wake up pretty. I hide with coffee and email, sometimes with good music and sometimes even with stretching and very elementary yoga before breakfast, but giving thanks doesn’t come easy some mornings and oftentimes, if I have to leave here before Morning Prayer, I walk out the door with my life caught on what one writer calls the three ifs: “what if, as if, if only”.
But usually just outside the gate, here on Albert Street, I make an attempt to give some thanks: start on that twenty; 1, 2, 3, 4. For the people walking by or driving by, for the courage of bike-riders, for fresh air, for the green of the trees, for small birds singing in the shrubbery and parrots loudly proclaiming their own kind of Pentecost. And slowly or suddenly I begin to see again that “the world is charged with the Glory of God”. It almost always works before I get to ten! And I recommend it as a spiritual practice for every occasion.
It is not too difficult: you can make it a kind of fireworks prayer ascending to heaven in thanksgiving for wiggling toes, hot water in the shower, good coffee, breakfast; fire up some thanks for friends, family, passing strangers, all through the day, from morning to night. Allow yourself to give thanks for every new facet of creation that catches your eye.
It make sound simple and sweet, but it really can be profound, because, if God is true, then in this thanksgiving we’re joining God in naming the world - just like Adam walking with God in the second chapter of Genesis, name it as a gift, and give thanks for it every day, make it a part of our ongoing Eucharist. This simple practice of thanksgiving keeps the focus both grounded and upward bound.
Give thanks also for the life of Jesus living in us. Athanasius, a bishop of Alexandria early in the 4th century, writes something to the effect that God becomes human so that humankind might be one with God, because the love we see in the face of Jesus is the very face we are called to turn to the world. We may not get it right as often, it may not come as easily, certainly it will not make such a difference, but that doesn’t matter at all. What matters is that we take the chance to be a meeting place, a touchstone, between God’s love and human life, and that we begin to live that ministry of thanksgiving out in our daily life.
It can be difficult too. I think I’ve told this story before, but I will always remember, a few years after my baptism, standing at the kitchen window at my parents house watching my grandmother being carried to the car in her sons arms, her two daughter following after, as she went to the hospital for the last time. I remember watching this solemn procession when two things happened. I heard something like the bells at the beginning of the Eucharist, and, in the middle of the sadness and the pain, I could thank God that it all mattered that much.
There are scenes in scripture that are like that too. Times in the lives of the Saints and in the Lord’s own life where you can see Him looking around at people misunderstanding his teaching, disciples lost in power struggles, religious and secular communities caught in strange pains and priorities; where he probably wanted to flee the scene and find a lonely place - and sometimes he did. But he still found himself face to face with the fact that the world created by God could break his heart. It is enough to make you cry. And that’s very biblical. “If you will, let this cup pass… but let your will be done”. We’ve all been there. And often unfortunately, that’s where so much of our ministry takes place. At places that make us sorry.
So say “I’m sorry” sometimes. Not just for breaches in etiquette or falling short on your own personal potential or agenda, but for the fact that life is tough for everybody, it took Jesus to the cross, has been painful for saints and strangers in biblical times and every day since. So accept sorrow, penitence and empathy, then move through to forgiveness and the mercy that is found there, and go back through grace to giving thanks again. That is the texture of our life and the shape of our ministry as the people of God.
Every ministry is sacramental, and there are two things that are important about sacraments, first, that “they are an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace” and second, they are “patterns of countless ways by which God uses material things to reach out to creation”. That is true of what happens in the most holy sacrament of the altar, which we gather together to celebrate today, and it is also true in the whole sacramental world where our lives and ministries are changed and broken and cast out in service and self-giving, and renewed and resurrected in the light of the God who says “I am with you, in all beginnings, even until the end of time, even right now”.
So today we continue a tradition of honouring and blessing the ministries that find a home at St. Peter’s: both those that take place in the church, in the parish, and those which extends far beyond it.
Today, in this beginning of the season of Advent, we commission the vestry and officers for the coming year and honor the people who do much of their ministry in this parish church: the people who serve and read at early mass and Morning Prayer, who spend ministry and time giving food, clothing, blankets, looking into the face of God in the breakfast program as well as the Icon School and the Institute for Spiritual Studies; people who work and volunteer in the parish office and the book room, deal with money and meals and meetings, teach adults or children, water and work in the garden. As well as all who serve when we come together for worship here: by putting books out, lighting candles, reading the lessons, singing the music, preparing the altar, cleaning up after all, making a place to welcome and comfort the visitor and stranger and friend, all part of living out, singing out, this liturgy of love.
And more too. For each one of us, as members of Christ’s body, proceeds into the world God loves, day after day, year after year, time after time, to take on the tasks of stewardship in this wonderful world: to be present to family, friends and strangers, in tasks, hobbies, jobs and joys, in the times of frustrations and puzzlements, in agreements that must be honored, in situations and sorrows that must be met. All of the places where we act out, serve out, flesh out, live out the reconciling life of Jesus - meeting times of thanksgiving and tears, in serving love of every kind - in the ministry of acceptance, love, tears and forgiveness. For those are the places where we shall find the God who comes to meet us this Advent, in living out our baptismal vows from the midst of this covenant community.
So, please, today, come forward and give thanks for these many ministries of daily life and work, and let them be blessed in this place as we make Eucharist together.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
This morning of the first Sunday of Advent, with all the high liturgy, wonderful readings, great music, this deep and wonderful connection between art and devotion, I keep remembering a bumper sticker I saw years ago which read, “Jesus is Coming, Look Busy!” It’s a very unworthy reflection for the solemnity of the day and I feel a little sheepish about it. But I did share it with today’s crucifer, Margaret Collins, who said, “But we’re always busy during Advent!”. So maybe the question for the day is this: are we busy with the right things, what should we be busy doing? And, as you might guess, I have two possible responses to this question.
Forty years ago, when I was 21 years old, I was baptized in the Anglican Church. There were many reasons, but part of it was that I felt the need to say two things out loud: “Thank you” and “I am sorry”, and this community offered that place. Over the years my understanding of my relationship with God, and how I live that out, has changed, but these two little phrases, small liturgies (for that is what they were) remain central in my own understanding of the importance of sorrow and thanksgiving, and of the wideness of God’s mercy in the midst of them.
So let’s walk into Advent and the holiday season with two simple ways to keep on the path.
First, say thank you to God at least twenty times a day. Now that may sound simple, but it isn’t easy. Personally, I don’t wake up pretty. I hide with coffee and email, sometimes with good music and sometimes even with stretching and very elementary yoga before breakfast, but giving thanks doesn’t come easy some mornings and oftentimes, if I have to leave here before Morning Prayer, I walk out the door with my life caught on what one writer calls the three ifs: “what if, as if, if only”.
But usually just outside the gate, here on Albert Street, I make an attempt to give some thanks: start on that twenty; 1, 2, 3, 4. For the people walking by or driving by, for the courage of bike-riders, for fresh air, for the green of the trees, for small birds singing in the shrubbery and parrots loudly proclaiming their own kind of Pentecost. And slowly or suddenly I begin to see again that “the world is charged with the Glory of God”. It almost always works before I get to ten! And I recommend it as a spiritual practice for every occasion.
It is not too difficult: you can make it a kind of fireworks prayer ascending to heaven in thanksgiving for wiggling toes, hot water in the shower, good coffee, breakfast; fire up some thanks for friends, family, passing strangers, all through the day, from morning to night. Allow yourself to give thanks for every new facet of creation that catches your eye.
It make sound simple and sweet, but it really can be profound, because, if God is true, then in this thanksgiving we’re joining God in naming the world - just like Adam walking with God in the second chapter of Genesis, name it as a gift, and give thanks for it every day, make it a part of our ongoing Eucharist. This simple practice of thanksgiving keeps the focus both grounded and upward bound.
Give thanks also for the life of Jesus living in us. Athanasius, a bishop of Alexandria early in the 4th century, writes something to the effect that God becomes human so that humankind might be one with God, because the love we see in the face of Jesus is the very face we are called to turn to the world. We may not get it right as often, it may not come as easily, certainly it will not make such a difference, but that doesn’t matter at all. What matters is that we take the chance to be a meeting place, a touchstone, between God’s love and human life, and that we begin to live that ministry of thanksgiving out in our daily life.
It can be difficult too. I think I’ve told this story before, but I will always remember, a few years after my baptism, standing at the kitchen window at my parents house watching my grandmother being carried to the car in her sons arms, her two daughter following after, as she went to the hospital for the last time. I remember watching this solemn procession when two things happened. I heard something like the bells at the beginning of the Eucharist, and, in the middle of the sadness and the pain, I could thank God that it all mattered that much.
There are scenes in scripture that are like that too. Times in the lives of the Saints and in the Lord’s own life where you can see Him looking around at people misunderstanding his teaching, disciples lost in power struggles, religious and secular communities caught in strange pains and priorities; where he probably wanted to flee the scene and find a lonely place - and sometimes he did. But he still found himself face to face with the fact that the world created by God could break his heart. It is enough to make you cry. And that’s very biblical. “If you will, let this cup pass… but let your will be done”. We’ve all been there. And often unfortunately, that’s where so much of our ministry takes place. At places that make us sorry.
So say “I’m sorry” sometimes. Not just for breaches in etiquette or falling short on your own personal potential or agenda, but for the fact that life is tough for everybody, it took Jesus to the cross, has been painful for saints and strangers in biblical times and every day since. So accept sorrow, penitence and empathy, then move through to forgiveness and the mercy that is found there, and go back through grace to giving thanks again. That is the texture of our life and the shape of our ministry as the people of God.
Every ministry is sacramental, and there are two things that are important about sacraments, first, that “they are an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace” and second, they are “patterns of countless ways by which God uses material things to reach out to creation”. That is true of what happens in the most holy sacrament of the altar, which we gather together to celebrate today, and it is also true in the whole sacramental world where our lives and ministries are changed and broken and cast out in service and self-giving, and renewed and resurrected in the light of the God who says “I am with you, in all beginnings, even until the end of time, even right now”.
So today we continue a tradition of honouring and blessing the ministries that find a home at St. Peter’s: both those that take place in the church, in the parish, and those which extends far beyond it.
Today, in this beginning of the season of Advent, we commission the vestry and officers for the coming year and honor the people who do much of their ministry in this parish church: the people who serve and read at early mass and Morning Prayer, who spend ministry and time giving food, clothing, blankets, looking into the face of God in the breakfast program as well as the Icon School and the Institute for Spiritual Studies; people who work and volunteer in the parish office and the book room, deal with money and meals and meetings, teach adults or children, water and work in the garden. As well as all who serve when we come together for worship here: by putting books out, lighting candles, reading the lessons, singing the music, preparing the altar, cleaning up after all, making a place to welcome and comfort the visitor and stranger and friend, all part of living out, singing out, this liturgy of love.
And more too. For each one of us, as members of Christ’s body, proceeds into the world God loves, day after day, year after year, time after time, to take on the tasks of stewardship in this wonderful world: to be present to family, friends and strangers, in tasks, hobbies, jobs and joys, in the times of frustrations and puzzlements, in agreements that must be honored, in situations and sorrows that must be met. All of the places where we act out, serve out, flesh out, live out the reconciling life of Jesus - meeting times of thanksgiving and tears, in serving love of every kind - in the ministry of acceptance, love, tears and forgiveness. For those are the places where we shall find the God who comes to meet us this Advent, in living out our baptismal vows from the midst of this covenant community.
So, please, today, come forward and give thanks for these many ministries of daily life and work, and let them be blessed in this place as we make Eucharist together.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
After long silence.... from a recent publicity sheet
As I grow older I wear more hats. I am both an American and an
Australian citizen. In addition to being a Community Organizer for the
Parliament of the World Religions, I'm the senior chaplain at RMIT where
I work to focus and coordinate a multi-faith chaplaincy on our several
campuses, and serve as well as one of the Anglican chaplains on site. In
that work I am sponsored by the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne and based
at St. Peter's Eastern Hill, where I am a licensed lay minister and part
of the parish ministry team. I occasionally teach courses online at the
Theological School at Trinity College, University of Melbourne and do
some preaching and teaching and spiritual direction.
For the last 40 years I have learned much and taught some on the life
and work of Thomas Merton, a Roman Catholic monk who explored the
contemplative experience shared by Christianity, Sufism and Zen
Buddhism. Thomas Merton serves as a good companion and model on that
pilgrim way. He made many mistakes, contradicts himself over several
continents and many years, was a noisy contemplative, an ascetic who
loved beer, the Marx brothers and jazz, was often demanding of himself
and sarcastic to others. Yet, many people would say that he deserves a
place in the list of Saints in the last century. It just may be because
of all the places where he doesn't fit together. And I find that very
good news.
Australian citizen. In addition to being a Community Organizer for the
Parliament of the World Religions, I'm the senior chaplain at RMIT where
I work to focus and coordinate a multi-faith chaplaincy on our several
campuses, and serve as well as one of the Anglican chaplains on site. In
that work I am sponsored by the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne and based
at St. Peter's Eastern Hill, where I am a licensed lay minister and part
of the parish ministry team. I occasionally teach courses online at the
Theological School at Trinity College, University of Melbourne and do
some preaching and teaching and spiritual direction.
For the last 40 years I have learned much and taught some on the life
and work of Thomas Merton, a Roman Catholic monk who explored the
contemplative experience shared by Christianity, Sufism and Zen
Buddhism. Thomas Merton serves as a good companion and model on that
pilgrim way. He made many mistakes, contradicts himself over several
continents and many years, was a noisy contemplative, an ascetic who
loved beer, the Marx brothers and jazz, was often demanding of himself
and sarcastic to others. Yet, many people would say that he deserves a
place in the list of Saints in the last century. It just may be because
of all the places where he doesn't fit together. And I find that very
good news.
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