A Soul on Fire

 

 

I recently finished reading St. Teresa of Ávila’s The Book of My Life in a superb translation by Mirabai Starr.  Starr’s rendering conveys the personality, vitality and humor of this 16^th century Spanish mystic.  It is a delight to spend time with this blessed saint. 

 

It is easy to become fascinated by the visions, locutions, and miracles St. Teresa experienced, but what is most important is the fruit that it bore in her life.  The through-line of her story that deserves our attention is the gradual transfiguration of her interior life, the dispossession of the self, that she undergoes.  Although the details of her experience are particular, the basic structure or progression of this transfiguration is remarkably congruent with the witness of mystics before and after her. 

 

St. Teresa sounds like Evagrius or Cassian (4^th century monks) when she writes about the relinquishment of egocentricity through the healing of stuck emotions, obsessions, and compulsions.   These are surrendered to God, seemingly dropping of their own accord when we realize the truth that they no longer serve us very well.  We don’t strive to let go of these things (that just keeps us locked in self-preoccupation), so much as they are lifted from us when we are willing to trust God’s presence and action in our life. 

A soul who has been given mastery of her own desires has a huge advantage.  But she does not bequeath this dominion to herself.  It is a gift from God.  Someone who does not have this kind of detachment cannot understand what it’s like.  It is not a matter of self-control; it comes naturally, without any labor on our part.  God does it all.  And he does it by revealing truths in such a way that they are imprinted on our souls.  It is obvious to us that this detachment is a divine gift, because we never could have acquired it so quickly and easily on our own. (p. 312)

Teresa is describing the ideal of apatheia, freedom from disordered passions and attachments, that leads to metanoia, a larger consciousness in which the soul becomes transparent to the divine energy of agape.  The fruit of the awakened heart is truly creative action in conformity with the invitations to love made possible by a new clarity of vision (purity of heart).  We no longer receive our identity from the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, or our attachments to external sources, but from God.

It’s amazing!  When we are united with this fire, it annihilates the old self, with all her cravings and faults, her insipid misery.  We are like the phoenix, which is completely burned and then rises again from those same ashes.  And so the soul, once she is consumed by the fire of love, becomes something altogether different.  She has new desires and tremendous fortitude.  She is not what she was before, and she follows the way of the Lord with new purity.  (p. 333)

St. Teresa combines a rare humility with a bold affirmation of the endless possibilities for the evolution of human consciousness.  Our Beloved desires such wonderful things for us.  By grace we can become so much more than we think we are capable of becoming.  We can become a living flame of love (as St. Teresa’s friend, St. John of the Cross, would say). 

Prayer of the Heart

 

Prayer of the Heart Retreat Participants, The Bishop's Ranch

I feel sorry for people who only have books to rely on.  It’s amazing how different what we think we understand is from what we learn later through experience. - St. Teresa of Avila

I'm a person who loves - LOVES - books.  Some of my best and longest-standing friends are books!  I've drawn sustenance from them and even a kind of energetic vibration that resonated within me while reading them.  Even so, there are some things we can only learn through direct experience, and that is certainly true in the life of prayer. I've just finished leading a two-day intensive Centering Prayer retreat with a half-dozen beautiful souls, who embraced the intimacy and transfiguring power of shared silence and holy conversation. I'm so grateful for their vulnerability, wisdom, and desire for God.

The focus of our time together was the practice of Centering Prayer, which Cynthia Bourgeault describes as "The prayer of the heart in meditation form."  It is a method of meditation that brings the mind into the heart, awakening the heart's capacities as an organ of spiritual perception beating in rhythm with the heartbeat of God.  It fosters what Jesus called metanoia - transcending or expanding the mind to embrace a larger consciousness that perceives the divine energies suffusing all of reality in love.  "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

St. John of the Cross perhaps best describes the experience of the awakened heart.

The soul feels its ardor strengthen and increase and its love become so refined in this ardor that seemingly there flow seas of loving fire within it, reaching to the heights and depths of the earthly and heavenly spheres, imbuing all with love. It seems to it that the entire universe is a sea of love in which it is engulfed, for conscious of the living point or center of love within itself, it is unable to catch sight of the boundaries of this love.

Centering Prayer helps us to stabilize our identity with this living center of love within ourselves, which is our true identity in the imago Dei.  When we do so, we begin to love others as our selves because they are: we begin to radiate the energy of agape, of self-emptying love.  

The practice of Centering Prayer literally reconfigures our brains - metanonia written in neural pathways that increase our capacity for wisdom and compassion, as contemporary neuroscience is beginning to discover.  

What we do matters.  How we pray matters.  It matters for the development of human consciousness, which may be an evolutionary imperative for the healing of the earth.  "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth."  May it be so, in us. 

The Way of Wisdom

 

St. George's Chapel, The Bishop's Ranch

Do not forsake her, and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever else you get, get insight. - Proverbs 4:6-7

 

For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  - I Corinthians 1:22-24

 

Drawing on Hebrew scripture's image of Divine Wisdom as a preexistent feminine figure through whom God created all things, the New Testament describes Christ as the Wisdom or Sophia of God.  She is incarnate in Christ.  This image is taken up in the prologue of John's Gospel and in St. Paul's letters (see John 1:3 and Colossians 1:15-15).  In later tradition, we see Anselm of Canterbury referring to Christ our Mother in his Prayer to St. Paul, and St. Julian of Norwich, too, in her Revelations of Divine Love, refers to Christ as our True Mother.  They are implicitly referencing and transposing this biblical image of Sophia onto Christ. 

 

We often reserve the "divine feminine" to Mariology, if we honor it at all, but that does not do full justice to the range of images in Christian tradition.  How delightful, then, to worship at St. George's Chapel at the Bishop's Ranch yesterday, and pray in these words written by Father Brendan Williams, CSR, the chaplain at the Ranch:

Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so to perfectly know your Divine Wisdom, embodied in our living Master, Jesus Christ, that we may steadfastly follow her steps in the way that leads to illumination, and thereby attain to eternal life; through the same Divine Wisdom, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit: One God, now and forever.  Amen.

And to affirm our commitment to the Way of Wisdom, in this Affirmation of Faith also authored by Father Brendan:

You, O God, are supreme and holy.

You are absolute Being, Consciousness, and Bliss,

from before time and forever.

You continually give birth to the world,

and give life to all beings.

Like waves on an ocean,

in and from you all things arise,

and, in your time, they return to you.

 

You, O God, are infinite Love,

and goodness beyond all measure.

You have revealed your compassion for all Creation

in Jesus Christ, the embodiment of your Wisdom,

who lived and died and rose again.

 

You, O God, are ever living, eternal,

birthing all things in the breath of your Spirit.

May we know your Truth and be freed

from every error and illusion.

May we be one and whole,

united forever with your Life,

in which there is no death.

Amen.

 

Father Brendan's liturgical innovations, rooted in Eastern Christian tradition and enriched through encounter with other Eastern Wisdom traditions, skillfully and poetically weave together themes of creation, incarnation, and the divine feminine that we desperately need to recover to heal our fragmented world.  They give fresh expression to the Mystery of God, who is calling us into a future that requires us to deepen our capacity for imagination and compassion.  A deep bow to Father Brendan, with thanksgiving.

On Burning Down the House

This is Andrew Harvey commenting on Rumi:

Desperation, let me always know

How to welcome you

And put in your hands the torch

To burn down the house.

When you are desperate, it is often a clue that you need to leave an old way of being, and old way of life, an old understanding.  Often, we smother that desperation, we cuddle it, we comatize it.  But Rumi says, "Have the courage of your desperation" and put in the hands of your desperation the torch, the flame of Love and insight, and burn your house down.  Allow desperation to be a Master instead of something that drives you deeper into coma.

We are at a desperate moment in human history.  The world is in terrible denial of what is actually going on, because people are simply afraid of the level of desperation that they would feel if they faced what is going on.  The point is that we have to face what is going on and allow that desperation to rise in us, and we have to follow that desperation right to its home which is in Divine initiation, Divine transformation.  We have to let that desperation "take a torch and burn down" all our concepts, limits, fantasies, and banal solutions, because it is far too late and none of them are going to work.

Light the incense!

You have to burn to be fragrant

To scent the whole house

You have to burn to the ground.

Incense is made out of all sorts of dark things, just like the ego.  If you want the incense to scent the house, you have to light it, light the ego.  In disappearing, it releases the Divine perfume everywhere.  If you want to scent the whole universe as Rumi did, you have to burn away.  That is the Law.                    

 

 - Andrew Harvey, The Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi (New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1994), p. 70 -71 

 

Or, as Jesus said, "Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." - John 12:24-25

Clearing the Path

 

Outdoor labyrinth at the Bishop's Ranch

I am currently on a three-month sabbatical, and am spending the first month as the Prayer Resident at the Bishop's Ranch.  In exchange for leading Morning and Evening Prayer preceded by a period of silent meditation, I receive room and board.  It is a wonderful program, allowing me to enjoy the peace and beauty of this remarkable camp and conference center that I have been visiting regularly for 26 years.

When I arrived at the Ranch, I noticed that the outdoor labyrinth had become overgrown.  Many of the rocks marking the path were completely covered with moss-like soil, and the path itself was filled with branches and weeds.  I decided I needed some labora (work) to go along with my ora (prayer).  I spent the past three mornings patiently clearing the path.  It was close work, much of it on my hands and knees.  

I found the work to be contemplative, focusing my attention on the present moment.  Rake the path.  Remove weeds.  Rake the path again.  Remove what you missed.  Place weeds in a bucket.  Dump in the refuse pile for composting.  Repeat.  I was like the Karate Kid:  "Wax on, wax off."  It took me about nine hours over three mornings to clear the path.  It was tiring, but satisfying.  

weed pile

Spiritual practice is about clearing the path.  We are all on a journey toward wholeness.  We all desire to live from the center, from the realization of our true identity as manifestations of divine love.  The truth is that this center is everywhere.  As Cynthia Bourgeault describes it, it isn't so much a place to which we go as it is a place from which we come.  We carry it with us in the awakened heart. 

The problem is that we forget our true identity.  We lose sight of the path, overgrown with anxiety, compulsions, and attachments like so many weeds.  We become identified with the story about ourselves, and the related emotional repertory, that we have internalized over many years.  It requires patient work to dis-identify with this familial and cultural identity.  We have to clear the weeds so that we can see the living stones that mark our path to the center.  

For me, the spiritual practice is Centering Prayer.  Twenty minutes every morning, twenty minutes every evening.  Wax on, wax off.  Those damn weeds keeping popping up, no matter how many times I rake the path!  But as I clear the path, gently letting go of the weeds (which really are nothing other than good compost for spiritual growth), I find my way back to the center. 

Clearing the path isn't easy.  Sometimes, it literally drives us to our knees.  It requires a posture of humility and a willingness to persist in our spiritual practice.  It isn't a one-and-done experience.  It is an iterative process, moving us ever more deeply into the depths of divine love that flows from the awakened heart.  With time and practice, we begin to stabilize our capacity to live from the center.  Having removed the log from our own eye, we can now see how to aid our neighbor in removing the splinter in their eye.  We mirror the divine light shining through them, so that they can find their way to the center too. 

Reflections on Observing Holy Week

We are drawing close to Holy Week, and I would like to share some reflections on how to enter more fully and freely into its observance.  It is the most important time of the Christian year.  It is also the most challenging time of the Christian year.  To experience this time meaningfully, we need to avoid its pitfalls and embrace its promise. 

 

Two Big Pitfalls

It is important to acknowledge up front that Holy Week lends itself to the worst kind of anti-Judaism.  While the Church has acknowledged that “the Jews” did not kill Jesus, our sacred texts and liturgies can still reinforce this idea if we do not handle them with care.  As one of my parishioners pointedly (and rightly) reminded me:  “We have to do better than just throwing the other team under the bus.”  If we come away from Holy Week believing that Judaism is the bad guy in this story, then we have missed the whole point. 

 

So, let’s be clear:  Jesus is a Jew, and his ministry was very much a reform movement within Judaism.  The texts of the New Testament are written primarily (perhaps entirely) by Jews, and they express 1^st Century conflicts among competing interpretations of Jewish faith.  Some Jews came to believe that Jesus is the Messiah.  Others disagreed.  This was very much an intra-Jewish debate.   Context matters and it is important to keep this context in mind. 

 

Jesus was crucified by the Roman Empire for sedition at the behest of some local Jewish authorities in Jerusalem.  John’s Gospel, properly translated, refers to them as “the Judaeans,” not “the Jews.”  Scholars like John Dominic Crossan have worked assiduously to separate out the historical kernel from the theological husk of the Gospel accounts. 

 

Theologically, Jesus’ death reveals the duplicity and cruelty of all human regimes of domination, and the veneer of religious piety within which it is hidden.  The Passion narratives rip away the political and religious justifications to reveal the violence at the heart of human civilization and the innocence of its victims.  Who killed Jesus?  We all did.  Human civilization did.  That is the theological significance of the Passion that the Gospels seek to convey.  The Passion is not a story about what Jews did to Jesus, much less to Christians, but rather about what humans do to each other.  Sadly, the history of what Christians have done to Jews only serves to underscore the truth of the violent human dynamic that the Passion story reveals.  Using this story to reinscribe the very “us” vs. “them” binary that Jesus seeks to overcome indicates just how seriously Christianity too often has misinterpreted it.

 

This leads to a related pitfall during Holy Week: the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.  It is the idea that Jesus’ died for our sins, bearing the punishment that we deserve to satisfy God’s demand for retributive justice.  Jesus did not die for our sins.  He died because of our sins, because of our collective enslavement to order based on sacrificial violence.  His death is liberating, not because it placates an angry God; but because it confronts us with the truth about ourselves, and makes it possible for us to consciously choose sacrificial love instead of sacrificial violence as the basis for human and ecological community. 

 

The theological meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection is the evolutionary leap in human consciousness that it inaugurates, unleashing an unlimited potential for growth in wisdom and compassion.  The Eastern Church understood rightly that salvation is deification, recovering the image of God within us.  Jesus died, not to liberate us from divine wrath, but from human wrath, so that we might reclaim our identity and our unity in divine love. 

 

One Big Promise

This is the big promise of Holy Week:  that by dying to the way of violence we can be reborn in the way of love.  We can partake of the divine nature by realizing the potential of our human nature.  There is another way to live. 

 

Holy Week is a dramatic rehearsal of the way of love.  Its practice is familiar to any good community organizer.  It begins with intentionally raising the tension in the system to make visible its violence and inhumanity.  It does so creatively:  a march on Jerusalem from Galilee with a symbolic entrance into the city that recalls prophetic hope for justice, a symbolic cleansing of the Temple in protest against exploitation, and a teach-in calling the authorities to account for their complicity with oppression. 

 

It continues with a kind of political ju-jitsu, confronting civilizational violence with a willingness to sacrifice oneself in solidarity with its victims.  Jesus refuses to deny either the reality of oppression or the humanity of everyone involved.  Conflict is heightened, not through reciprocal violence (sacrificing other people), but by raising consciousness through a willingness to make sacrifices in the service of truth and reconciliation (risking vilification, arrest, punishment and even death).  Sacrificial violence is opposed by sacrificial love, so that that the binary of “us” vs. “them” is overcome.  There is only “us.”

 

Sacrificial love escalates the confrontation by expanding the circle of community embracing the path of love.  The “them” keeps getting smaller and the “us” keeps getting larger as we realize and manifest the flow of mercy in tune with the beating heart of God at the center of reality.  The promise is resurrection: life lived from this center.

 

May we honestly and carefully navigate the pitfalls of Holy Week as we journey together to claim its astonishing promise.  May it become the pattern of our collective life until the promise is fulfilled. 

 

 

 

The Cost of Awakening

 

Currently, I’m taking an online course for continuing education through the Center for Action and Contemplation taught by the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault.  I highly recommend their website, which has some wonderful resources.  Recently, Dr. Bourgeault spoke about the cost of spiritual awakening, quoting another great living wisdom teacher, Brother David Stendl-Rast.  Her teaching touches on something that many of us are experiencing at different levels.

 

First, she notes that spiritual awakening does have a cost!  We might think that being spiritually awake is all about being able to stop and smell the flowers; it is all rainbows and unicorns!  But truly being awake to our senses and consciously present to reality requires vulnerability.  As Brother David says,

 

. . . you can’t touch without being touched, and as you awaken to touch, the pain of the world touches your heart and you carry it, and you have to be willing, and much more than willing – ready – in your nervous system to bear the river of pain, the collective pain body that is our planetary existence.  And to bear it lightly, joyously, and sacramentally. 

 

Then Dr. Bourgeault comments,

 

It costs something.  You have to be strong and clear inside to do it, because if you bear it with drama, everything’s going to fry.  You’re going to go tense and physically contract and you’re not going to help a bit.

 

So, clarity, strength, equanimity, balance.  All these beautiful human skills that lie beyond the egoic level.  To the degree that you are willing to sacrifice your personal pleasures and your personal dramas and your personal stories to instill and stabilize those qualities, then you join the great evolutionary flow. 

 

Cultivating these qualities that allow the river of pain to flow through us, rather than drowning us,  enables us to be present to suffering without being defined by it.  We remain loose, flexible, adaptive, capable of responding in ways that are helpful and that promote the spiritual evolution of our species.   But we have to know our limits, our capacities.  This requires honesty and humility.  Otherwise, we become overwhelmed and we shut down – or worse, we react in ways that increase suffering. 

 

I can’t stress enough the importance of the integration of our own inner work and the work of repairing the world.  Presiding Bishop Michael Curry speaks about it as the way of love.  We must learn, as William Blake said, “to bear the beams of love.” 

 

This is the urgent call of our time: to learn to bear the beams of love.  Jesus is our model and our guide.  But following his way requires discipline.  There is a cost to spiritual awakening.  That is why St. John of the Cross wrote,

 

God has to work in the soul in secret and in darkness because if we fully knew what was happening, and what Mystery, transformation, God and Grace will eventually ask of us, we would either try to take charge or stop the whole process.

This is faith: to trust God’s slow work in us, to be willing to be transfigured by love, and in giving ourselves away in love become capable of receiving everything.  Beloved, be gentle with yourselves.  Trust God’s slow work in you, and pace yourself accordingly.  Don’t take on what is not yours or that for which you are not yet ready.  And be prepared to be surprised by what you are able to embrace at the appointed time.  God is with you!

The Interval of our Wounding

 

May I speak to you in the name of the one, holy, and living God.  Amen.

 

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus walks on water and calms a storm.[1]  On the face of it, the story seems to be about the miraculous rescue of endangered disciples; much as the passage immediately preceding it that we heard last Sunday appears to be about the miraculous feeding of hungry crowds.  But there is more here than meets the eye. 

 

I read this story as a kind of picture-parable.  The image of the storm is a common image of chaos, fear and despair, yielding various metaphors of drowning, treading water, walking on water and calming the storm: different ways of imaging our response to the storms that rage around us and inside us.  These images point to very real and often devastating social and psychological experiences of physical violence, disruption, emotional pain and depression.  

 

Some suffering is so intense that it cannot be communicated; except, perhaps indirectly.  The great English poet-priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was no stranger to the depths of depression.  Writing in the 1880s while living in Ireland, he expresses those depths in one of his “terrible sonnets” from this period:

 

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,

More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.

Comforter, where, where is your comforting?

Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?

My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief

Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing —

Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-

ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief."'

 

    O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap

May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small

Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,

Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all

Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.[2]

Hopkins describes what it is like to be in the grip of a bottomless depression that leaves one feeling helpless.  There is no point at which this depression stops and one can say, “it won’t get any worse than this.” It is as if the depression, having learned from its previous waves, discovers ever-new ways to inflict pain on the soul.  There is no one to comfort him; not even The Holy Spirit or Blessed Mary.  His cries of pain heave like the waves of the sea, sounding like the cries of a whole herd of cattle stretched out in a line – and yet these cries are all focused on the “chief woe” that is “world-sorrow,” the melancholy we feel at existing in a world so full of pain and suffering. It’s like being hammered on an anvil, crying out with pain that attacks quickly without lingering but repeats over and over again.

The mind has vast mountains, off the edge of which we can tumble into black pits of despair. People who have never known such depression hold this “cheap,” and don’t understand how bad it is.  Life is too short, that small “durance,” to learn how to scale such steep cliffs.  All the poor sufferer can do is creep beneath whatever small comfort is available and cling to it while the storm rages; the threadbare comfort of sleep, however fitful, or, finally, death.

Pretty bleak isn’t it?  But for those who live with severe depression or chronic pain, or who suffer from grinding poverty or traumatic violence, it barely begins to express the truth.  This is the kind of storm that our Gospel is describing.

Even if we have not known the depths of such despair, I don’t think any of us is untouched by this world sorrow; not if we are awake and paying attention.  I consider myself pretty resilient, and even I’ve had some mornings in the past few weeks when it was hard to get out of bed.   Jesus and his disciples were no strangers to the storm of world sorrow.  Recall that they are still absorbing the news that King Herod executed their comrade John the Baptist, and that they are now on Herod’s list of enemies.[3]  They are wrecked from dealing with the grief, rage, and pain of the crowds of people who gathered in protest over John’s murder;  compassion fatigue is a real thing.[4]  Everyone is feeling on edge, emotionally spent, and anxious about the future.  

 

After dismissing the crowd and packing the disciples off into the boat, Jesus had the good sense to silence his smart phone, tune-out the news cycle, and head up to the mountain for some silent prayer – even if only for a little while.   Notice that when Jesus comes down from the mountain, the storm is still blowing.  Circumstances had not changed.  What had changed, was Jesus’ relationship to those circumstances. 

 

Suffering is real, but so is love.  Our vulnerability to suffering is also our vulnerability to love.  In the midst of the storm, the difficulty is to embrace our vulnerability, for it is the doorway that opens to love as well as suffering.  It seems we cannot close the door against suffering without closing the door against love.  But if we remain open, it is possible to suffer through to love. 

 

This love is as great a mystery as suffering, and equally difficult to describe.   Here, we again need the help of the poets.  Listen to the words of another poet-priest, R. S. Thomas, this one a Welshman writing in the 20^th Century:

 

Evening

The archer with time

as his arrow--has he broken

his strings that the rainbow

is so quiet over our village?

 

Let us stand, then, in the interval

of our wounding, till the silence

turn golden and love is

a moment eternally overflowing.[5]

 

Thomas, no doubt on some hillside bluff, sees the rainbow– that biblical sign of hope – the light that appears in the interval between storm and storm.  He invites us to stand in a silence that gathers light unto itself until the moment when love begins to overflow, pouring forth from God eternally into time – into the time of our lives. 

 

This is the vulnerability of Jesus:  the willingness to stand in the interval of our wounding and allow the light and love of God to flow through him.   Throughout his ministry, we see Jesus stealing away to pray, to allow the silence to turn golden and love to flow.  The wounding is real.  But so is the interval and in that interval, our relationship to our wounds beings to change.  Held in a love that overflows our wounds, they begin to flower into compassion for ourselves and for others.   

 

In the silence, we begin to see that we are not our wounds.  We begin to see through the wounds to the center of our being in God, which is pure love.  “The flower of the wound is the flower of awareness that is our grounding essence,” writes Martin Laird.  “The flower of awareness beholds the unity in all the joyous particularities of creation.  To perceive with the all-inclusive unity of creation is to be seen through by love.”

 

“When we sit in silent contemplation, we sit in solidarity with all who suffer affliction.  To realize that our pain, though personal, is not private to us is deeply liberating.  As we sit on our chair, prayer cushion, or prayer bench or simply lie in bed because at the moment we cannot manage much else, we are free enough, even in the middle of depression that will not budge, to become a gathering place for all who suffer in this life.  We become a bridge for all those who have no bridge.”[6]

 

Isn’t this what Jesus does for Peter?  He becomes a bridge for him to walk on the water and through the storm.  This is what becomes possible when we pause in the interval of our wounding and allow light and love to shine through.  We become a bridge over which others gain access to God’s love.  I thank God for the people who have been that bridge for me. 

 

Peter wants to cross that bridge, but he realized he couldn’t power his way through under his own steam, so he says to Jesus, “If you are who you say you are, command me to come to you.”  We need a power greater than ourselves; we need to be seen through by love.   But no one can be forced across.  It really isn’t by command, but by invitation that we cross the bridge.  We must embrace vulnerability, putting one foot in front of the other, trusting in love.  

 

This story is so true, so very human.  Peter embraces his vulnerability and trusts the love he sees in Jesus, until he doesn’t.  He stands in the interval of his own wounding, but then the continuing presence of the storm triggers his fear again, and he begins to drown.  But even the willingness to cry out for help is enough.  Jesus reaches out his hand, catches Peter, and brings him back into the boat.  

 

Our wounds, when seen through by love, can bring us into solidarity, into communion with our fellow-sufferers.  There is a movement between silent contemplation, standing in the interval of our wounds, and banding together in community, moving through the storms of life together.  It is only in the boat, in community, that the winds cease.  The storm will end.  But we can only ride it out together.  We can be bridges of love for each other.   

 

Amen.

 

 

---

[1] Matthew 14:22-33.

[2] “No Worst” in Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works, ed. Catherine Phillips (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 167.

[3] Matthew 14:1-12.

[4] Matthew 14:13-21.

[5] R. S. Thomas, “Evening,” in Collected Later Poems 1988-2000 (Tarset, Northumberland, UK: Blood Axe Books, 2004), p. 223.

[6] Martin Laird, An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, Liberation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 217-218.

Prayers of the People: Intercessions for the Beatitudes

 These intercessions were written by the Rev. John Kirkley for use at St. James Episcopal Church, San Francisco.  The people's responses are in bold type.

Let us pray in the name of Jesus for the blessings he has promised.

We remember, Lord Jesus, all who doubt and all who have been betrayed by those in power, that through the experience of your love they may learn to trust again.

Blessed are the poor in spirit

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

We remember, Lord Jesus, those who have died and all who are grieving, that through their loss they may come to know a larger wholeness.

Blessed are those who mourn

For they will be comforted.

We remember, Lord Jesus, those who are disregarded and forgotten: pour out your Spirit upon them that all may recognize their dignity and power. 

Blessed are the meek

For they will inherit the earth.

We remember, Lord Jesus, all who struggle for freedom and justice; may the bread we break and the cup we share be tokens of our solidarity with them and a sign of hope.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

For they will be filled.

We remember, Lord Jesus, all who offer compassionate service to those who suffer, that through them your mercy may extended to all in need or trouble.

Blessed are the merciful

For they will receive mercy.

We remember, Lord Jesus, with gratitude all who seek the truth of your way of life: may their vision inspire us to live with awareness and renounce deception and distraction.

Blessed are the pure in heart

For they will see God.

We remember, Lord Jesus, your witness to the power of sacrificial love; may we share in your mission of reconciliation through the practice of nonviolent resistance to evil.

Blessed are the peacemakers

For they will be called children of God.

We remember, Lord Jesus, the prophets and apostles, martyrs and mystics, who have shone with the light of your love in dark times; may we be the light of the world in our day.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

We claim these promised blessings

in the strong name of Jesus.  Amen.

The Company of Prophets: Hope Dealers for God

One of my favorite t-shirts – I can’t remember where I first saw it – had printed on the front of it: “I AM A HOPE DEALER.” God is calling us to be prophets of hope, visionaries of the future into which God is inviting us.   We are called to be a company of prophets.

This morning, our scripture texts provide an opportunity to reflect on this calling.  The language of prophecy may seem outdated, other-worldly, describing a spiritual elite that doesn’t have much in common with us or our time.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Prophets are us.  There are some in this room.  And there are plenty of openings for new applicants to the company.   Let me break it down this way:  

1.     Prophets are made, not born.

2.     Prophets are team players, not lone rangers.

3.     Prophets are Spirit led, not ego driven.

4.     Prophets are hope dealers, not doomsayers. 

Prophets are made.  This is very clear in our reading from II Kings, the story of the leadership transition from the prophet Elijah to his successor, Elisha.  When Elisha receives Elijah’s mantle (or cloak) as a symbol of his authority, it is the culmination of a long apprenticeship.  Elijah was deep in meditation on Mount Horeb, when God instructed Elijah to name Elisha his successor.[1]   The text doesn’t tell us this, but I suspect that Elijah had his eye on Elisha for a while.  He recognized his leadership potential, and God confirmed this intuition. 

When Elijah came down from the mountain, he found Elisha plowing the fields with 12 yoke of oxen.  Elijah threw his mantle over Elisha and roped him into the company of prophets. Elisha’s decision to accept this invitation was an irrevocable commitment. Elisha responded by kissing his parent’s good-bye, honoring their role in preparing him for this moment.  He then slaughtered the 12 oxen and made a feast for the people in his village; an act of celebration and of generosity, but also a divestment of his assets such that there is no going back to his old way of life.  There are no oxen to fall back on!  This is an act of radical trust in God.[2]

We are told again and again in the text that Elisha followed Elijah, repeating the refrain, “I will not leave you.”[3]  Whatever else was involved in Elisha’s training, it included the development of a profound relationship of love and loyalty.  This relationship was not rooted simply in personal affinity, but in shared devotion to God.  Their love for one another was comprehended by a larger love for the people of Israel, and for God.   Prophets are formed by this experience of love. 

Prophets are team players.  It is easy to read the text and fail to notice the emphasis on the company of prophets.  It isn’t just Elijah and Elisha.  There are bands of prophets in Gilgal, Bethel, and Jericho.[4]  In the process of moving toward Elijah’s final translation into the mystery of God, Elisha is introduced to these communities of prophets.  Elisha is initiated into a company of prophets; he is not a solo practitioner.[5]  Elisha engages in the spiritual practices of the community and becomes steeped in its traditions.  Prophets can critique the tradition, it’s political and religious institutions, and their leaders, precisely because they are profoundly conversant with it. 

One doesn’t just wake-up one morning and decide to be a prophet.  It requires commitment to a spiritual practice, rooted in a tradition, that seeks to awaken us to the power and presence of God and renew the life of the community in conformity with the creative, life-giving, loving intention of God.  For the company of prophets in ancient Israel, this loving intention was expressed in the Torah or covenant between God and Israel.  It is the touchstone that informed the prophets’ critique of contemporary injustice and corruption, and provided a foundation of trust in the future that God desires for us.

Prophets are Spirit led.  We are not given detailed instruction on the education of prophets.  We do know that prophets are transparent to God’s presence and power, transmitting divine energy and communicating a vision of reality that transcends their personal abilities.  God works through them.  How is this possible? 

The texts bear witness to the usual methods:  prayer, meditation, fasting, and worship.  We know from Elijah’s story that he encountered God in sheer silence through the practice of meditation in solitude.[6]  There are also references to ecstatic rituals among the company of prophets, involving a de-centering of the ego that opens pathways to channel spiritual power.[7]   There is also a more prosaic practice shared by the prophets: they listened attentively to the needs of those who were poor and suffering in Israel; the victims of injustice; and those who had no advocate.  Prophets come close to the pain in their communities.  They do not take refuge in their own privilege or power, but in the healing and empowering love of God.[8] 

These practices open the prophets to the Spirit.  They cultivate awareness of reality and a willingness to confront painful and difficult truths.  Prophets are not fortune tellers; they simply perceive the consequences of the present course of action that any woke person can see.  Prophets sometimes have a reputation for being confrontational or pessimistic, when really all they are doing is making conscious what others prefer to deny, dismiss, or even destroy rather than acknowledge.  Prophets and kings go together in ancient Israel, because the prophets are always revealing what the kings prefer to keep hidden.[9] 

Elijah becomes so transparent to God’s presence and power that he simply disappeared.[10]  No more Elijah!  What is left is a double-portion of his spirit, the Spirit of God with which he became aligned, transmitted to Elisha.   This is the hallmark of genuine prophecy; to become so transparent to God that the “I” unites with the “Thou” and becomes available to empower others for service.  Elijah knew the fulfillment of his mission would lie in a future of God’s creating that transcended him, requiring him to entrust himself to the work of others after him.  Prophets know that it is not about them; it is about God’s future.

When the company of prophets at Jericho saw the spirit of Elijah resting on Elisha, they bowed down before him.[11]  This was not simply an act of obeisance.  It was an act of confirmation.  Elisha’s initiation was complete.  Elijah gave himself completely in service to God so that Elisha and others could live into God’s future.  Elijah – like Moses, like Dr. Martin Luther King, like Harvey Milk – would not experience the fulfillment of the hope for which he struggled.  But he shared his power so that, one day, we would realize God’s dream.

Prophets are hope dealers.  Elijah and Elisha struggled against the injustice of their day, cursed the evil they resisted, and warned of the consequences of refusing to repent and renew God’s covenant of love and justice.  But that is only one part of the story.  When Elisha takes up Elijah’s mantle, he strikes the water of the Jordan River and a pathway across the water opens for him to return from the wilderness into the promised land.[12]  Elisha re-enacts the movement of God’s people from slavery to freedom; from want to abundance; from despair to hope. 

This is what prophets do: they announce the vision of God’s promised future that we cannot yet see.  They enact that vision in word and deed, creating and renewing a pre-figurative community in which that promise is realized already.  That is what it means to be Israel.  That is what it means to be the Church.  We are called to be the company of prophets living God’s future now. 

Prophets courageously name what is wrong with the world.  They are not dope dealers.  They don’t give us false reassurances, trying to numb us out, making us easier to manipulate and exploit for their own benefit.  They tell the truth in the service of awakening us to the need to change, to allow God’s Spirit to blow afresh through us to repair the world.  Prophets do not deny the pain of the past and the suffering of the present, but neither are they in bondage to it. They imagine God’s future and invite us to live into that future together.  Genuine hope is rooted in the truth, however painful, and is open to the future in deep trust that God is not done with us yet.[13]

I want to close with a couple of observations about how Jesus deepens our understanding of the company of prophets.  Jesus was considered by many to be a prophet; perhaps even the reappearance of Elijah.[14]  Like Elijah, Jesus was raised up into the life of God, but by transcending death rather than avoiding it.  The Spirit of Jesus is not poured out on just one person, but upon all who awaken into Christ consciousness.  Jesus does not claim the title of prophet but, rather, “Son of Man”:  human being.  All human beings have access to the Spirit.  The company of prophets is not an exclusive club.

Prophecy is, however, a demanding commitment.  It requires a radical de-centering of ego that leaves us without recourse to our usual means of security and control; we must give away the equivalent of our yoke of oxen and exchange it for Jesus’ yoke.[15]   This includes renunciation of violence as a means of prophetic action.  Unlike Elijah and Elisha, Jesus refuses to curse his enemies or bring down fire from heaven upon them.[16]  With Jesus, there is only blessing, no curse, purifying the prophetic vocation of its ambivalence about violence and its potential to mirror the very evil it resists.[17]

With Jesus, prophecy as the cultivation of complete trust in the power of divine love is radicalized and becomes an expression of ultimate freedom, liberation, nirvana, moksha, salvation.  It is a demonstration in word and deed of the power of self-giving love to realize God’s promises here and now.  In a world of dope dealers, let us be hope dealers.  Let us follow Jesus and become prophets of God’s future. 

---

[1] I Kings 19:1-16.

[2] I Kings 19:19-21.

[3] II Kings 2:2, 4, 6.  Compare Peter’s response to Jesus in John 18:17, 25-27 and 21:15-19.

[4] II Kings 2:3, 5, 7.

[5] II Kings 2:15, 4:38-41, 6:1-7, 9:1-3 indicate Elisha exercised a leadership role among the company of prophets.  The precise social location of the company of prophets and their function in ancient Israel is a subject of much scholarly debate.  See John S. Kselman, “The Social World of the Israelite Prophets: A Review Article,” in Religious Studies Review (Volume II, No. 2, April 1985), pp. 120-129. 

[6] I Kings 19:8-13.  Compare Jesus’ frequent retreats to pray in solitude, especially in Luke’s Gospel: Mark 6:30-32; Matthew 14:1-13; Luke 4:1-15, 5:16, 6:12-13, 22:39-44.

[7] These ecstatic rituals sometimes include kings as well; cf. Saul’s naked frenzy with the company of prophets (I Samuel 19:19-24) and David’s nude capering before the Ark of the Covenant (II Samuel 6:14-23). These stories are some two centuries earlier than the company of prophets in I and II Kings, but indicate a continuous tradition and practice over time; at least, in the northern kingdom.  For an intriguing investigation of the homoerotic character of the relationship between YHWH and Israel’s first kings, and the cult of the prophets as possessed of YHWH’s phallic power, see Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel (New York: Continuum, 2005).   

[8] Elisha is a good example.  Consider his intervention to assist a widow being impoverished by a creditor (II Kings 4:1-7); his healing of an enemy general (II Kings 5:1-19); his giving life to a dead son (II Kings 4:32-37); and his miraculous feeding of the hungry (II Kings 4:42-44). 

[9] Patrick D. Miller, Jr., “The Prophetic Critique of Kings,” Ex Audito (2, 1986 ), pp. 82-95.

[10] II Kings 2:9-11.

[11] II Kings 2: 15.

[12] II Kings 2:13-14.

[13] Constance Fitzgerald, OC, “From Impasse to Prophetic Hope: Crisis of Memory,” CTSA PROCEEDINGS 64 (2009): 21-42. 

[14] Luke 9:18-22.

[15] This is the force of the “hard sayings” in Luke 9:57-62.

[16] Luke 9:51-56.  Jesus makes clear that the “Son of Man” will suffer violence, not inflict it, unlike the prophets who precede him; cf. I Kings 18:40 and II Kings 2:23-24.

[17] Luke 6:27-36.