Justify my soul, O God,
from your fountains fill my will with fire.
Shine on my mind, "be darkness to my experience,"
occupy my heart with your tremendous Life.
Let my eyes see nothing in the world but Your glory,
and let my hands touch nothing that is not for Your service.
Let my tongue taste no bread that does not strengthen me
to praise Your great mercy.
I will hear Your voice and I will hear all harmonies You
have created,
singing Your hymns to find joy in giving You glory.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Daily Prayer: Thursday Dawn
Antiphon
The fire of a wild white sun has eaten up the distance between
hope and despair.
Dance in this sun, you tepid idiot. Wake up and dance in the
clarity of perfect contradiction.
Lesson
There is a silent self within us whose presence is disturbing precisely because it is is silent; it can't be spoken. It has to remain silent. To articulate it, to verbalize it, is to tamper with it and in some ways destroy it.
Now let us frankly face the fact that our culture is one which is geared in many ways to help us evade any need to face this inner, silent self. We live in a state of constant semiattention to the sound of voices, music, traffic, or the generalized noise of what goes on around us all the time.
This keeps us immersed in a flood of racket and words, a diffuse medium in which our consciousness is half diluted: we are not quite "thinking," not entirely responding, but we are more or less there. We are not fully present and note entirely absent; not fully withdrawn, yet not completely available.
It cannot be said that we are really participating in anything and we may, in fact, be half conscious of our alienation and resentment. Yet we derive a certain comfort from the vague sense that we are "part of something"- although we are not able to define what that something is...we just float along in the general noise.
The fire of a wild white sun has eaten up the distance between
hope and despair.
Dance in this sun, you tepid idiot. Wake up and dance in the
clarity of perfect contradiction.
Lesson
There is a silent self within us whose presence is disturbing precisely because it is is silent; it can't be spoken. It has to remain silent. To articulate it, to verbalize it, is to tamper with it and in some ways destroy it.
Now let us frankly face the fact that our culture is one which is geared in many ways to help us evade any need to face this inner, silent self. We live in a state of constant semiattention to the sound of voices, music, traffic, or the generalized noise of what goes on around us all the time.
This keeps us immersed in a flood of racket and words, a diffuse medium in which our consciousness is half diluted: we are not quite "thinking," not entirely responding, but we are more or less there. We are not fully present and note entirely absent; not fully withdrawn, yet not completely available.
It cannot be said that we are really participating in anything and we may, in fact, be half conscious of our alienation and resentment. Yet we derive a certain comfort from the vague sense that we are "part of something"- although we are not able to define what that something is...we just float along in the general noise.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Cliff Notes: The Historical Jesus
The starting point of a liberating Jesus is the historical Jesus of Nazarath, his life, mission, and fate. This Jesus consists of both a historical element (Jesus) and a transcendental element (Christ). The recognition of this in faith is a gift from God. That is, one cannot simply accept that Jesus Christ was God; one must contemplate the details of the reality and its process.
That we must do so in the language of faith is difficult, as these limit-terms address transcendent processes that we must go through; faith is both word and walk, and one interprets the other. This is true for freedom, love, and life itself. For example, God became a liberator after leading the Hebrews out of Egypt- the term makes little sense before this.
So too did the first believers address the historical facts of Jesus's life- before they confessed him as Christ. Jesus is the way to Christ.
Yet the New Testament is not interested in portraying the historical Jesus, but only the Christ in Jesus. They are always already christologies, and not the materials for a study of Jesus Christ. That they themselves study Christ by going back to the historical Jesus is precisely our starting point as well.
And it has always been the starting point; early Christianity struggled above all else with the scandal of a human Christ. This is possibly because even the term Jesus Christ implies a split; Christ is an adjective, Jesus a noun. It has always been possible to worship a Christ that no longer describes the fact of Jesus of Nazareth.
We should not be surprised that this has happened because christology is, as is all else, a human process, and there exists in the very notion of Jesus Christ an unthinkable and scandalous novelty.
Yet we must make a crucial choice in talking about Jesus Christ, to say "Jesus Christ" or "Christ? He's Jesus." The New Testament says the latter. Thus, the best protection of Christ is to do what the Gospels do and return to the historical Jesus.
This concludes, under protest, this Cliff Notes series. Next I will be summarizing, in much more abbreviated form, a work on the formation of the early church.
That we must do so in the language of faith is difficult, as these limit-terms address transcendent processes that we must go through; faith is both word and walk, and one interprets the other. This is true for freedom, love, and life itself. For example, God became a liberator after leading the Hebrews out of Egypt- the term makes little sense before this.
So too did the first believers address the historical facts of Jesus's life- before they confessed him as Christ. Jesus is the way to Christ.
Yet the New Testament is not interested in portraying the historical Jesus, but only the Christ in Jesus. They are always already christologies, and not the materials for a study of Jesus Christ. That they themselves study Christ by going back to the historical Jesus is precisely our starting point as well.
And it has always been the starting point; early Christianity struggled above all else with the scandal of a human Christ. This is possibly because even the term Jesus Christ implies a split; Christ is an adjective, Jesus a noun. It has always been possible to worship a Christ that no longer describes the fact of Jesus of Nazareth.
We should not be surprised that this has happened because christology is, as is all else, a human process, and there exists in the very notion of Jesus Christ an unthinkable and scandalous novelty.
Yet we must make a crucial choice in talking about Jesus Christ, to say "Jesus Christ" or "Christ? He's Jesus." The New Testament says the latter. Thus, the best protection of Christ is to do what the Gospels do and return to the historical Jesus.
This concludes, under protest, this Cliff Notes series. Next I will be summarizing, in much more abbreviated form, a work on the formation of the early church.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Editorial: Upon My Trin-iversary
One warm May night more than five years ago, I sat around with my closest friends talking into the very small hours. We were graduating the next day. For the most part, we talked about how not to, how we could not possibly end this and go our separate ways. We talked about we could live together, intentionally, working as and when we needed to. Furthering our dreams. We planned. This could actually happen, we said. We can really do this. We can buy a house. We can pool our money for a property.
And we could have. All of it could actually have happened, down to the goat cropping grass in the lawn. But it didn't.
I don't doubt that I would have been happier in the intervening years, between 2003 and now, possibly excluding the last, when I have been well enough. I would have by neccesity grown closer to, and not further from, most of the friends that college gave me. I probably wouldn't have been fired twice and had half a dozen jobs in thee years, because I wouldn't have taken jobs I didn't want or need. I wouldn't live a thousand miles away from my family, a fate which seems more and more ambiguous. And above all else, a lonely soul might have lived, for a charmed longer while, a less supremely isolated life.
I would have lived in constant daily contact with other human beings, a fate which seems to me now so remote I can scarcely imagine it.
My solace, the only sense that I can make of this grand not-happening, this supremely pangy non-event, is that it wasn't meant to be. By that I mean that it would have been good, but it would have been a limited good. It would have been a good for me. It might even have been a good for all the rest of us. But I don't think it would have been good for everyone. It wouldn't have been good for France and China and Connecticut and New Jersey and D.C and Tennessee, all the places we eventually went. It wouldn't have been good for Minnesota.
And it wouldn't have been good for Gethsemane. I mean that. I cannot, fortunately I think, see whatever good that I actually do, but I can see that I am here. And that if I were not doing good, I would not be here, and would not be feeling good myself. There certainly have been plenty of opportunities for me to leave, and I certainly have considered them in my three years now, of living here.
But all of this is silly. I only mean that I was afraid that night, talking. I was afraid of everything that was about to end, all the best days of my-little-life-so-far running out like sand. I was afraid of my promise and my indirection and all the opportunities I'd missed so far. I was afraid, not of the future that would happen, whatever that was, but the future that might not happen, all the wants that would not come true, of the things I might not be able to pick up again.
I was not wrong to fear those things. The years since have seen several of them realized. And my motives, all our motives, were pure and good and based on the good we already had. There was nothing wrong with any of that.
But it was not entirely in our hands. It was certainly not in mine. And just because something was not wrong, was not in error, does not mean there is nothing to be learned. And I've learned that I am not my own, not my joy, not my sorrow, not my solace and not my grief. My treasures and time and talents are not mine to hold, anymore than the people I know are my possessions.
We, right now, are choosing our chuch. We are choosing what will happen to Gethsemane. Our future is no more certain now that mine was five years ago. We too face dissolution, not to put too fine a point on it.
What I'm writing to tell you is that you do not need to be afraid. This is a grand and august church, with a far longer history and with a far broader reach than my small group of friends. But no part of it is our posession. It is God's. We are stewards not only of the things we've spent the last month talking aboout, our resources and talents and opportunities.
Rather, we are stewards of this church, of this garden, of this idea of Gethsemane. Each and every one of us.
So it is not enough that we choose how to keep the doors open. It is not enough that we decide how to keep money flowing in and out of our accounts. It is not enough to consider our survival, anymore than it was enough for my friends and I to consider how to stay together.
Rather we must ask how we can be worthy of survival. God has far more options than Gethsemane. And we are only as good to God as we are good to this community. We must think more broadly, as I might have considered the good my friends and I could create wherever we decided to go. The work with the Drake Hotel is an excellent start, but it can only be a start.
Gethsemane Episcopal has a fine tradition. But it does not have a tradition of preserving its tradition. Rather it has a history of being part of Minneapolis, of being tethered to a hospital and an orphanage and Indian communities, of hosting a school and youth programs and counseling centers.
We confuse these things, I think, to say that these things were only possible when we were larger. Rather, I say that we were only larger because we said that these things were possible.
And then we did them.
That's why I decided to stay, about two years ago, when I got the chance to possibly go live with my friends again. Because I already see these things happening at Gethsemane, and I want to see them done.
Thank you.
And we could have. All of it could actually have happened, down to the goat cropping grass in the lawn. But it didn't.
I don't doubt that I would have been happier in the intervening years, between 2003 and now, possibly excluding the last, when I have been well enough. I would have by neccesity grown closer to, and not further from, most of the friends that college gave me. I probably wouldn't have been fired twice and had half a dozen jobs in thee years, because I wouldn't have taken jobs I didn't want or need. I wouldn't live a thousand miles away from my family, a fate which seems more and more ambiguous. And above all else, a lonely soul might have lived, for a charmed longer while, a less supremely isolated life.
I would have lived in constant daily contact with other human beings, a fate which seems to me now so remote I can scarcely imagine it.
My solace, the only sense that I can make of this grand not-happening, this supremely pangy non-event, is that it wasn't meant to be. By that I mean that it would have been good, but it would have been a limited good. It would have been a good for me. It might even have been a good for all the rest of us. But I don't think it would have been good for everyone. It wouldn't have been good for France and China and Connecticut and New Jersey and D.C and Tennessee, all the places we eventually went. It wouldn't have been good for Minnesota.
And it wouldn't have been good for Gethsemane. I mean that. I cannot, fortunately I think, see whatever good that I actually do, but I can see that I am here. And that if I were not doing good, I would not be here, and would not be feeling good myself. There certainly have been plenty of opportunities for me to leave, and I certainly have considered them in my three years now, of living here.
But all of this is silly. I only mean that I was afraid that night, talking. I was afraid of everything that was about to end, all the best days of my-little-life-so-far running out like sand. I was afraid of my promise and my indirection and all the opportunities I'd missed so far. I was afraid, not of the future that would happen, whatever that was, but the future that might not happen, all the wants that would not come true, of the things I might not be able to pick up again.
I was not wrong to fear those things. The years since have seen several of them realized. And my motives, all our motives, were pure and good and based on the good we already had. There was nothing wrong with any of that.
But it was not entirely in our hands. It was certainly not in mine. And just because something was not wrong, was not in error, does not mean there is nothing to be learned. And I've learned that I am not my own, not my joy, not my sorrow, not my solace and not my grief. My treasures and time and talents are not mine to hold, anymore than the people I know are my possessions.
We, right now, are choosing our chuch. We are choosing what will happen to Gethsemane. Our future is no more certain now that mine was five years ago. We too face dissolution, not to put too fine a point on it.
What I'm writing to tell you is that you do not need to be afraid. This is a grand and august church, with a far longer history and with a far broader reach than my small group of friends. But no part of it is our posession. It is God's. We are stewards not only of the things we've spent the last month talking aboout, our resources and talents and opportunities.
Rather, we are stewards of this church, of this garden, of this idea of Gethsemane. Each and every one of us.
So it is not enough that we choose how to keep the doors open. It is not enough that we decide how to keep money flowing in and out of our accounts. It is not enough to consider our survival, anymore than it was enough for my friends and I to consider how to stay together.
Rather we must ask how we can be worthy of survival. God has far more options than Gethsemane. And we are only as good to God as we are good to this community. We must think more broadly, as I might have considered the good my friends and I could create wherever we decided to go. The work with the Drake Hotel is an excellent start, but it can only be a start.
Gethsemane Episcopal has a fine tradition. But it does not have a tradition of preserving its tradition. Rather it has a history of being part of Minneapolis, of being tethered to a hospital and an orphanage and Indian communities, of hosting a school and youth programs and counseling centers.
We confuse these things, I think, to say that these things were only possible when we were larger. Rather, I say that we were only larger because we said that these things were possible.
And then we did them.
That's why I decided to stay, about two years ago, when I got the chance to possibly go live with my friends again. Because I already see these things happening at Gethsemane, and I want to see them done.
Thank you.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Daily Prayer: Sunday Day
It is a glorious thing to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one what which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one hold the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake.
I have the immense joy of being a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
It was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each is in God's eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and understood by a particular gift.
-Thomas Merton
I have the immense joy of being a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
It was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each is in God's eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and understood by a particular gift.
-Thomas Merton
Thursday, October 2, 2008
What is Mount Athos?
Mount Athos, also known as the Autonomous Monastic State of the Holy Mountain, is a self-governed monastic state within the Hellenistic Republic. It is situated entirely on one mountain and consists of 20 Eastern Orthodox Monastaries under the patriarchate of Constantinople. It is only accessible by boat. Only males can visit, and only Orthodox males over the age of 18 can reside there.
Also called "the holy mountain," it was legendarily established by the Mary the mother of Christ during a trip with John the Evangelist to visit Lazarus. Nearly shipwrecked, Mary asked Christ for it to be her garden, and Jesus blessed it from the heavens. Historically, the community's origins are less clear. Both pagans and Christians lived there during the 4th Century reign of Constantine I; Christians fled there from persecution both during the Roman reign of Julian the Apostate and the later conquests of the desert regions by Islamists.
Since then, despite greatly varying political and religious climes, Mount Athos has been a nearly constant refuge for contemplative monks and scholars. And as more monasteries arose, the population naturally became more Christian overall.
In modern times, through Greece, it has become a member of the European Union.
Each of the 20 monasteries of the autonomous state is itself self-governing, led by an Abbott. The whole community is administered by a group of four abbots, elected by all the monasteries of the island and subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Except for cats, there are no female animals permitted on the island.
Also called "the holy mountain," it was legendarily established by the Mary the mother of Christ during a trip with John the Evangelist to visit Lazarus. Nearly shipwrecked, Mary asked Christ for it to be her garden, and Jesus blessed it from the heavens. Historically, the community's origins are less clear. Both pagans and Christians lived there during the 4th Century reign of Constantine I; Christians fled there from persecution both during the Roman reign of Julian the Apostate and the later conquests of the desert regions by Islamists.
Since then, despite greatly varying political and religious climes, Mount Athos has been a nearly constant refuge for contemplative monks and scholars. And as more monasteries arose, the population naturally became more Christian overall.
In modern times, through Greece, it has become a member of the European Union.
Each of the 20 monasteries of the autonomous state is itself self-governing, led by an Abbott. The whole community is administered by a group of four abbots, elected by all the monasteries of the island and subject to the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Except for cats, there are no female animals permitted on the island.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Daily Prayer: Wednesday Dark
There should be at least a room, or some corner where no one will find you and disturb you or notice you. You should be able to untether yourself from the world and set yourself free, loosing all the fine strings and strands of tension that bind you, by sight, by sound, by thought, to the presence of other men.
"But though, when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret..." Once you have found such a place, be content with it, and do not be disturbed if a good reason takes you out of it. Love it, and return to it as soon as you can, and do not be quick to change it for another.
-Thomas Merton
"But though, when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret..." Once you have found such a place, be content with it, and do not be disturbed if a good reason takes you out of it. Love it, and return to it as soon as you can, and do not be quick to change it for another.
-Thomas Merton
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