Filed under: Books, Ecclesiology, Evangelism, Prayer, Spirituality, Theology, Worship | Tags: bombadil eucharist
Though the hobbits ate, as only famished hobbits can eat, there was no lack. The drink in their drinking-bowls seemed to be clear cold water, yet it went to their hearts like wine and set free their voices. The guests became suddenly aware that they were singing merrily, as if it were easier and more natural than talking.
The Lord of the Rings, Part One: The Fellowship of the Rings, Bk. I, Ch. 7
Filed under: Art, Bible, Discipleship, Family, History, Life, Medicine, Ministry, Pastoral Care, Prayer, Religion, Social Justice, Spirituality, The Holy Spirit, Theology, Worship | Tags: christ the healer, christian divorce, forgiveness, healing, intercession, jesus the healer, luke 5:17-26, miracle, paralysis
The Gospel According to Luke 5:17-26 (ESV):
On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal. And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.”
In the wounded state in which the end of my marriage left me, my friends brought me to Jesus, and I knew that I wanted Him to heal me. But when Jesus looked at me and said, “Your sins are forgiven,” I realized that that was what I had most wanted. The desire deeper than my desire to be healed, a desire I had not known I had, was to be forgiven.
Why, consciously speaking, did I have the desire to be healed, but not the desire to forgiven? I wanted His healing because I could feel my hurt every day and every step and almost every breath, a spiritual nerve damage. I did not want forgiveness because I did not believe it was possible for me to be forgiven.
Many people have noted that evangelical Christians tend to focus on certain favorite sins, especially those with any connection whatsoever to sex, while mentally marking others as less important or less harmful. I thought I was good at avoiding this particular trap until I found myself getting divorced, and I found I was incapable of believing that God forgave me. When I tried to believe, my imagination sputtered, died, and rolled to a stop. Loss of imagination is more than a foggy, moonless night. Loss of image-ination is the definition of blindness.
How broken was the body of the man whom Jesus forgave and healed? Was he born this way? It’s hard to believe that he could have survived into adulthood if that had been the case. Did he have a degenerative illness that we could name today but still couldn’t cure? Did he have a spinal cord injury?
To “rise, pick up your bed and go home” requires balance and the finest of motor skills along with that bundle of motions we call the ability to walk. Think through all of the motions and muscle groups required to stand up from the floor, kneel down and roll up some bedding, stand up again, then bend over to pick up that mat and carry it over your shoulder to walk home. These are levels of restoration happening in the human body that we still could not explain.
And yet forgiveness is the miracle, what Jesus extends first and what even the Pharisees and the teachers of the law know is something only God can give.
To receive forgiveness in the places we most need it is not only a passive reception but an act of the will. We don’t even know if the paralyzed man believed that he was indeed forgiven. I do will to believe and more and more I succeed.
I cannot offer enough gratitude to all those who carried me to the Healer and who strengthened my will to believe that He was also a Forgiver. Thank you.
Healing High Five!
Filed under: Art, Books, Discipleship, Ecclesiology, Evangelism, Food, History, Life, Medicine, Ministry, Pastoral Care, Philosophy, Poetry, Prayer, Preaching, Spirituality, The Holy Spirit, The Trinity, Theology, Worship | Tags: eucharistic prayer, he hides himself under the little form of bread, humble sublimity, sublime humility
Let the whole of mankind tremble
the whole world shake
and the heavens exult
when Christ, the son of the living God,
is [present] on the altar
in the hands of a priest.
O admirable heights and sublime lowliness!
O sublime humility!
O humble sublimity!
That the Lord of the universe,
God and the Son of God,
so humbles Himself
that for our salvation
He hides Himself under the little form of bread!
Look, brothers, at the humility of God
and pour out your hearts before Him!
Humble yourselves, as well,
that you may be exalted by Him.
Therefore,
hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves
so that
He Who gives Himself totally to you
may receive you totally.
from “A Letter to the Entire Order” in Francis and Clare: The Complete Works (Paulist Press: The Classics of Western Spirituality), trans. by Regis J. Armstrong, OFM and Ignatius C. Brady, OFM
Filed under: Discipleship, Evangelism, Life, Ministry, Pastoral Care, Theology, Worship | Tags: brother lawrence, peace be still
Contemplation is the practice of resting in the Sabbath rest of God, climbing into mother God’s lap and drifting off. Coming back home. Where I am, I am home. I just forget, so I need to practice remembering.
Filed under: Books, Discipleship, Family, Life, Ministry, Pastoral Care, Philosophy, Politics, Prayer, Preaching, Spirituality, The Holy Spirit, The Trinity, Worship | Tags: ego and love, ego boundaries, falling in love, i pray you fall out of love, love and otherness, m. scott peck, the road less traveled, when ego is good
M. Scott Peck, in The Road Less Traveled, doesn’t believe that “falling” in or out of love is really love at all. And he’s convincing (although it didn’t take much for me). Here, he makes an analogy between a couple continuing in love and a young child’s slow developmental discovery that it and the world are separate beings:
Just as reality intrudes upon the two-year-old’s fantasy of omnipotence so does reality intrude upon the fantastic unity of the couple who have fallen in love. Sooner or later, in response to the problems of daily living, individual will reassert itself. He wants to have sex; she doesn’t. She wants to go to the movies; he doesn’t. He wants to put money in the bank; she wants a dishwasher. She wants to talk about her job; he wants to talk about his. She doesn’t like his friends; he doesn’t like hers. So both of them, in the privacy of their hearts, begins to come to the sickening realization that they are not one with the beloved, that the beloved has and will continue to have his or her own desires, tastes, prejudices and timing different from the other’s. One by one, gradually or suddenly, the ego boundaries snap back into place; gradually or suddenly, they fall out of love. Once again they are two separate individuals. At this point they begin either to dissolve the ties of their relationship or to initiate the work of real loving.
To me, although it might be depressing to some, it is incredibly hopeful that “falling in love” is not love, and that “falling out of love” is actually a requirement along the way to “real loving.” This makes love about growing up, not about being “young [and stupid] at heart.” It also makes love about taking personal responsibility. If love just “happens,” then we bear no responsibility, take no ownership, and neither are we responsible if we never love or fail to love. But if love is work, a taking up of responsibility, a part of maturation and growth and human adulthood, then it is the greatest work of our lives, worth every ounce of sweat and tears along the way.
If you are in a relationship right now, I hope and even pray that you fall out of love soon.
Finally, what about that “ego boundaries snap back into place” line? Surely (you may be thinking) the ego is exactly what’s getting in the way of so many relationships, with self-centeredness and all that. While selfishness is indeed a problem, the reality is also that you cannot love someone until you recognize them as an other. If you do not recognize their otherness, then you are not loving them as yourself, but only as if they were yourself, and you will inevitably try to control them, to assert your power over them. That is, you will be “loving” a lie; to see the other as yourself is an unreality. The other person is an other person, and only when you see the space between you can you embrace.
Ten out of ten people agree, sex with someone-not-yourself is just better.
Filed under: Books, Evangelism, History, Ministry, Pastoral Care, Prayer, Preaching, Religion, Theology, Worship | Tags: ad hominem, lutheran insulter, reformation and the internet, theology and respect, theology on the internet
I’ve often thought that the atmosphere of theological discourse on the internet is very similar to ages in the past. Others apparently agree…
–Lutheran Insulter (or check out the original, Shakespearean Insulter)
Filed under: Books, Discipleship, History, Life, Ministry, Pastoral Care, Philosophy, Prayer, Religion, Spirituality, The Holy Spirit, The Trinity, Theology, Worship | Tags: apophatic spirituality, Belden Lane, contemplation, desert fathers, Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality
I am not able to distill from either my
mother’s encounter with death or my own exposure to desert-mountain terrain any universal insights about the wonder-evoking power of fierce landscapes. I am left, ultimately, at an end of language, having nothing more than my own emptiness to report, although gradually coming to recognize emptiness itself as a profound and wonderful gift.
-Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes
Filed under: Discipleship, Family, Life, Ministry, Pastoral Care, Philosophy, Prayer, Spirituality, The Holy Spirit, The Trinity, Worship | Tags: ask seek knock, novena to saint joseph, rosary novena, what is a novena
Knowing no Latin, I knew a novena had something to do with prayer, but my assumption was it was connected to nova, “new.” Nope, Dorothy Day teaches me:
Every Catholic faced with a great need starts a novena…Novenas are started nine days before the feast of some favorite saint or they can be made at any time. My favorite novena is the rosary novena, a devotion during which one recites three novenas in petition and three in thanksgiving. If you don’t get what you need by the end of the thanksgiving of twenty-seven days, you begin another series–continuing in prayer with perseverance, with importunity. “Ask and you shall receive,” “Knock and it will be opened to you,” and Our Lord tells the story of the unjust judge and the widow, and the weary friend and the neighbor who comes to get a few loaves, to show how importunity and perseverance are rewarded.
I know that we all prayed, coming and going, night and day, sleeping and waking.
(The Long Loneliness, this edition, p. 283)
I found this to be a beautiful idea, even if I’m not sure if I’m doing it right. Around the edges of my interest, there is the fact that it’s a Christian spiritual practice that has been done by literally billions of followers of Christ in history, but which I have basically never heard of, beyond its name. (Yay for growing up Protestant in the US!)
Then there is learning about all the numbers at play here. Sevens and tens, in Jewish and Christian numerology, are symbols of perfection. Nine, however, is incomplete, just as all people are incomplete, just as I am incomplete. The nine is also important because, especially at the novena for Christmas, the nine days represent the nine months of Jesus’ gestation in Mary. Christmas Day is the tenth day, perfection, the birth of God as infant.
Finally, because I’m doing six novenas (three petition then three thanksgiving, as described above), it’s a work of creation. God created for six days and then God rested on the seventh. Pray six novenas then rest in what God has created.
At dead center of making my first novena, however, is that while I’ve prayed for and about people, situations, etc. regularly and/or over long periods of time in the past, I have never determined to persevere in prayer every day for anything approaching 54 days. Now I’m really asking…What if Jesus actually meant it when he said to keep knocking, to keep pestering the unjust judge, to keep bothering the neighbor for what you need?
Traditionally, the major novenas were the nine days leading up to particular holy days. My 54 days happen to end in a novena to Saint Joseph, whose feast day is March 20th, whose name is my middle name. What’s more, Joseph is the patron saint of the Universal Church, of the family, and of workers. My petitions are about my place and calling in the Church, about family as I experience the end of my marriage, and seeking vocational clarity for the future (as well as…a job).
I had really wanted to write a prayer to memorize and meditate through each day of this time, but a week in, I basically have a theme, and it is Light. One version of the prayer I am praying:
Lord Jesus Christ, you who are Light, push back the darkness, bring vision to my eyes, and guide me into your brilliant future for me. Amen.
The Taser's Edge 