Good Friday Compline

Real Time Thomas Group

We are welcoming members to this new group forming in the real-time virtual meeting grounds of the internet, so you may join our meetings from any geographical location.  Starting with a simple contemplative liturgy of chants, centering prayer and readings, we transition into an enquiry into selected Logia from The Gospel of  Thomas  using the practices of lectio divina and visio divina to build a dynamic midrashic dialogue between the scriptures, the icons, and ourselves.

Please contact me by email for more information about this group:  alicedespard@gmail.com

"Introduction to the Luminous Gospels" Seminar and Retreat January 13-15, 2017

Dear friends,

After a long hiatus, I am finally returning to this blog as a way to convey some new developments with respect to growing a contemplative wisdom community in my new home on the edge of the continental U.S. in southeastern Connecticut.  It is about as far east as I can get on the eastern seaboard without falling off the mainland:  a place of serene beauty and quiet wonders--such a contrast to the more crowded life I lived in Washington, DC.  The winter season is very much the off-season here in an area reliant on the tourism trade, and so the quietude becomes deep and the denizens very few as the cold winter winds arrive to seal this seaside village off from the rest of the world.  The boats have all been pulled in to drydock in the boneyards, the vacationers, sailors and fisherman have all but disappeared for the next five months or so.  This tiny seaside community is a perfect place to hold a contemplative retreat, and so I am enthusiastic about sharing my home as a retreat setting for the first time in the deep mid-winter of January.

I hope you will prayerfully consider joining us for the first retreat to be held in my new home, which I am henceforth calling the Sophia Meeting House.  We will gather around the wood stove with some warm-hearted souls and listen to my dear friend and mentor Lynn Bauman hold forth on one of his pet topics--"The Luminous Gospels: The Oriental World of the Christian Tradition"

Please contact me by email for more information:  alicedespard@gmail.com
or Deborah Shields, deborahshields@hope-tree-healing.net

Seminar:  The Luminous Gospels, with presenter Dr. Lynn Bauman
Dates:  7 pm Friday, January 13 -- 9 pm, Saturday,  January 14, 2017
Location:  Sophia Meeting House, Stonington, CT
Registrar:  Deborah Shields, deborahshields@hope-tree-healing.net
Fee:  $150, $50 nonrefundable deposit due by January2, 2017

NOTE:  In response to requests, we have decided to open up the full dates of the seminar, Friday through Sunday, to all attendees.  The increased cost will be $50 to cover the cost of additional meals.
Please contact Deborah Shields to register and to let us know if you need help with housing.

Christmas message

Shepherd and Lamb -  December 16, 2013 by the hand of A. Despard

Written on Christmas Eve, 1513 

I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.

There is nothing I can give you which you have not. 

But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. 

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.

Take peace! 

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. 

Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. 

There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see.

And to see, we have only to look. 

I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver. 

But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. 

Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, 

woven of love by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you.

Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there.

The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. 

Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys.  They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering,

that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. 

Courage then to claim it; that is all!

But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together,

wending through unknown country home.

And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings,

but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, 

now and forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.

                     ~Fra Giovanni~

Whitsunday: Feel the Burn

Whitsunday, the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit made manifest!  

It is a rich and exciting moment in the church calendar, the calendar which we observe as members of the faithful in Christ.  It is a time to take stock of the many gifts of the spirit, the charisms, which we have been given, and to offer them up anew to the Holy Spirit, and hence to God's purpose for us.

So, today I was given a realization, perhaps from the Paraclete, that I must begin to prepare inwardly for my upcoming pilgrimage this September to the Camino de Santiago de Compostela with as much earnest enthusiasm as I have been preparing for it outwardly.  My material preparations have reached a fever pitch:  planning itineraries, preparing travel equipment, researching every angle through books, blogs and sifting the seemingly banal details which others have shared in  pilgrimage forums.  If I continue this way, I will become not only obsessed, but a crashing bore to all those around me who must pretend to be interested in what sort of tent I plan to carry for 500 miles.  I know these outer preparations must slow down and give way to another type of preparation, even more necessary than these.

"For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit."  -Romans 8:5 KJV

But where, then, to expend my pilgrim's zeal?

Today I was given a hint:  I now begin the process of feeling the burn within--the action of the Holy Spirit burning out the dross from my spirit and pulling me forward into new inner terrain.  Just as Jesus was sent out by the Holy Spirit after his baptism to wander in the wilderness for forty days, so has the Pentecostal flame been lit above my head and my heart sending me into an inner wilderness.

"For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.  And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption...the redemption of our body." -Romans 8:22-23 KJV

Revisiting stale old illusions, recurring resentments, fruitless frustrations--I feel them all coming to a slow boil within me, their vapors and aromas all too familiar to me.  They render me inarticulate in prayer, yet they burn and explode painfully within my being, and I feel like the whole foundation of my soul might drop out in an angry, fiery, toxic mess, perhaps like Fukshima is melting down right now (as above, so below).

This brings me to my knees.

"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words."  -Romans 8:26 NSRV

But this was all to the purpose of helping me remember that all my charisms are blessings given to me by God, and to God must I return them as enhanced gifts-- gifts made incarnate through me, by me and even often despite me!  But in order to return them, I must first extricate them from their small cage within my ego, where I jealously guard them.  And hence, the burn...

"And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God."  - Romans 8:27  KJV

So, today, Whitsunday, it was given to me to be warned against avoiding preparing for the inner journey by dithering too much with matters of the physical road:  My body will feel the burn on the Camino, most certainly, and so will my soul.

Conscious Love as Sacrament

The Rev. William C. Redfield
Trinity Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, NY
Lent IV—Year B—March 18, 2012

John 3:14-21
    And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

In a little less than three weeks from now a relatively small group of us will gather here in church to mark Holy Saturday. Marking the entombment of Jesus, this day has become—if anything at all—a non-event.  Traditionally, we just use the time to clear the deck and prepare the church for the next day’s grand and festive Easter celebration.

Perched between the final agony of Good Friday and the unexpected mystery of Easter, Holy Saturday is that empty space that marks the boundary and threshold from the nothingness of despair and dead-ends to an unexpected grace.  What is so striking is that this miracle comes through the very midst of life’s worst possible pain.

            Our attention on that day will rest on Mary Magdalene.  In fact, using the gospel attributed to her name—one of the recently recovered gospels widely known to the early church but then neglected, lost, and all but forgotten—we will follow the suggestive outline of Jesus’ powerful relationship with Mary Magdalene.

            Without getting sidetracked into any kind of titillating or scandalous take on their relationship, we will see the essential truth that Jesus and Mary Magdalene drink from the common cup of love.  That is, they are deeply committed to each other’s spiritual growth and care so deeply about each other’s well being that each is willing to lay aside his or her own life for the other.  And this is precisely what Jesus does—he does this for Mary Magdalene, his partner in ministry, and he does this for us all as well.  But so united are Jesus and Mary Magdalene in this sea of love that death cannot separate them.

In the Apostles Creed we say that, after his death, Jesus descends into hell.  As Jesus enters the underworld to redeem all of life and to change the very foundations of existence, he continues to be tethered by the exquisite expression of Mary Magdalene’s love through her profound grief.

In the empty space beside that tomb there is nothing for her to hold on to—no hope, no promise, and no future—only the love she shares with him.  And maybe it is the sheer dead-end of her grief and desperation that amplifies her love or that presses it into a new manifestation.  But whatever it is, although Jesus is gone, the love remains.

What unfolds in the resurrection is so much more than the continued existence of the one life of Jesus.  Resurrection marks the deep truth that we are all swimming in this great sea of love right now and that neither death nor diminishment can limit or compromise that reality.  That’s what we will celebrate come Easter.  And just as Mary Magdalene’s love accompanies Jesus and tracks him from above when he descends into the earth, so too does Jesus’ love continue to track us from a realm that is both higher and deeper.

*

In his life on earth Jesus often declared his love for and union with God the Father.  Yet the fullest expression of this came in his relationships with those around him. For Jesus, love of God and love of neighbor are inseparably woven together.  And he shows us that by loving those whom wefind in our lives—our family members, our friends, our spouses, and even those whom we find so difficult and different, we are being led into the fullness of God’s love and God’s kingdom.

*

            Now—before I get any further—you might be wondering, first, why I am talking now about Holy Saturday’s entombment and the resurrection that ensues and, second, where I got the audacity to use such a non-canonical writing as the Gospel of Mary Magdalene to draw insight and wisdom from the Pascal event.  Let me tell you.

            First, the Gospel for this Fourth Sunday of Lent is that famous phrase from John’s Gospel, “For God so loved the world...”  Rather than take that passage as the litmus test for orthodox belief as many do, I would like to get to the diamond truth that lies beneath this phrase, “for God so loved the world.”

Second, I am operating on the deep wisdom that I have gained from you over the past 18 years.  For over this time I have been privy to the sharing of private events about which I have kept silent—until now.  On more occasions than I could ever recount, a surviving spouse—especially a surviving spouse of a marriage that had been deep or long or both—has told me of a felt presence of his or her beloved after death that has been experienced as both very real and very physical.  Sometimes this has come in the generalized sense of continuing to be immersed in the love that was shared in life.  But sometimes the beloved has appeared to the surviving spouse in a form that was much like a physical form—only lighter and maybe more subtle.  And by the way, I have also heard very similar accounts from those who have lost beloved family members and friends.

Here’s what I have come to conclude.  True love, deep and abiding love, provides the alchemy that opens our eyes to the reality that we are swimming in this sea of love.  We begin to realize that we remain connected to our loved ones because the love remains and because we are inseparable from that love.  That is why this connection of love remains unbroken—even beyond the divide of death.

Now let me take this just one more step.

Traditionally, we acknowledge the power of the sacraments in our lives of faith.  We think of the Eucharist and Baptism as those outer forms of ritual that deliver to us an inner grace and power.  But beyond this more conventional understanding, I have in the past shared an understanding of Jesus’ life as sacrament.  This means something more than the fact that God was speaking through Jesus’ words and actions.  Even beyond that, Jesus’ life as sacrament also means that it contains within itself a power, a blessing, and an energy that is not confined and contained in Jesus’ life alone.  As sacrament, his life is present to us—if we can but recognize it and open to it.  As sacrament, his life enables us to follow his example so that we too can walk the path that he walked.  So more than just believing in him, we might indeed, walk with him.

But I now want to press this a little farther.  I am going to suggest that the gift of conscious love—the love I talked about a minute ago—the committed love I have seen from the members of this parish in the expressions of dedicated marriages and deep friendships—is a sacred sacrament as well.  Its external form opens us to a powerful internal grace.  Marking the exact path that Jesus took, the path of conscious, committed love delivers us to the threshold into the kingdom.

Here’s how this seems to work.  We seem to have been relegated to a far distant ray of creation where we experience our existence in these dense and heavy forms of these human bodies of ours.  Life in this dimension is often very painful, difficult, and frustrating.  Besides all the challenges and difficult choices that confront and confound us, we are given bodies that get sick and, with advancing age, break down in diminishment.  We are bounded by finitude and death.  And ultimately, through the loss and suffering inherent in our lives, our hearts get broken wide open.

But all of this has nothing to do with either sin or punishment.  They are simply the specific givens of this existence within which this sacrament can fully flower.  And so it is right here in the very fragility, finitude, and brokenness of these lives of ours where love can be expressed most eloquently.  Not despite this fragility, finitude, and brokenness—but right through them.

If life were easier and less challenging, this love would not be so precious.  So to love without holding back—to love without counting the costs—even while we are broken, heartsick, and sinking inexorably toward our own demise—this is the very purpose of life, and this is what life in Christ looks like.  And what it requires is only the hardest thing there is—that, although our hearts are battered and broken, we love anyway.  Linked to the sacrament of Jesus’ life, our lives too become sacraments of loving even though we are broken—no, because we are broken.

Jesus’ life makes it perfectly clear that this kind of loving is costly.  This is what Lent is about.  But because it is costly, and yet poured out anyway, it becomes precious.   It is in this sacrament that we are joined to Jesus.  The purpose of life for us on this planet is to live our lives of suffering and eventual death while daring to love through it all.

            Over these many years, I have witnessed how you have committed yourselves to your loved ones through thick and thin and how you have endured through tragedy, heartache, and profound loss.  You have shown me the path of life and you have manifested Christ’s love in your devoted caring.  Consequently, your lives have become a sacrament for me.  While on the outside they may only appear to be the struggle to put one foot in front of the other, the revealed grace in the sacrament of your lives is that you have loved through it all and you continue to do so.


This is the deep well of love from which Mary Magdalene and Jesus drank.  And this is the diamond truth that lies beneath that vast phrase, “that God so loved the world.”  It is the sacrament of conscious and committed love.  And its miracle is that it can blossom from even the darkest of places.

 

Thanks, Wikipedia!

Radical Incarnation: Thoughts on Nondual Spirituality

Matthew Wright is a senior at Virginia Theological Seminary in Virginia, and a budding interfaith theologian.  Here is his latest piece posted on FaceBook:

Radical Incarnation: Thoughts on Nondual Spirituality

by Matthew Wright on Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 8:13pm

Dear friends,

Some thoughts from head and heart today on nondual spirituality, the shape of the path, and the importance of practice...

Peace and love,

Matthew

The 9th century Hindu philosopher Shankaracharya is famous for his pithy three statement summation of the teachings of Advaita Vedanta: The world is illusion.  Brahman alone is real.  Brahman is the world.  We might compare the traditional three movements of the Christian mystical path: purgation, illumination, and union.  Likewise, the Islamic shahada, or affirmation of faith (La ilaha illallah Muhammadan rasulullah), as understood by the mystics of Islam, moves through three similar stages:  La ilaha (“There is no god”), the negation of the world; illallah (“only God”), the affirmation that Divine Reality alone is;Muhammadan rasulullah (“Muhammad is the messenger of God”), the affirmation that the world is not other than Divine Reality.[1]  This final insight is not different in essence from the Zen Buddhist realization that “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.”  It could also be seen as the deepest meaning of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation (in St. Athanasius’ words, that “God became humanity that humanity might become God”) or the koan of a Christ who is simultaneously fully God and fully human.

[1] Muhammad is understood here not only as the Arabian prophet, but as the Nur Muhammad, the Light of Prophecy that shines through all prophets, both the essential name of the whole creation and the fullness of perfected humanity (as ahadith qudsi says: “If not for you, O Muhammad, I would not have created the worlds.”).

Some nondual teachers, however, seem to stop short of Shankara’s final affirmation:Brahman is the world.  Especially in Hindu tradition, the message can seem to be simply the world is illusion, with the ultimate goal of moksha, or escape (this is not only the fault of the tradition, but is due, to some extent, to the lack of nuance—and simple misrepresentation—on the part of Western scholars).  This insight, however, is a significant and necessary one, bringing disillusionment with the world around us and an awakening to the impulses and drives that we have been in unconscious obedience to.  We begin to see the web of attachments that has made us selfish and self-centered, separating us from God and from others.  We see that practically all of our relationships and actions are tainted with subtle (or not so subtle) traces of egoism.  At this stage, we may begin to experience the world and its forms with a sense of disdain or even disgust, seen as so many traps and entanglements.  Dissatisfied, we turn to God.

Now begins the work of seeing and cutting through the attachments that veil us from naked Reality.  Classically, the Advaita Vedanta tradition has formulated this work in terms of “discrimination” (viveka), expressed through the phrase “neti, neti”, “not this, not this”—discerning and negating everything that is not God (that is, everything separating or egoic, temporal or finite).  God is the all-embracing and eternal Reality; anything that is not That, is not God.  This begins the awakening to Brahman alone is real, our encounter with the “oneness” just beneath the surface of ordinary experience.  We touch the unchanging peace, stillness, and love that is our essence.  Thrilled to have made the discovery of “what’s real”, we reject the surface and affirm the depth.  We retreat to the Eternal.

For a truly nondual spiritual vision, however, we must make Shankara’s final leap, and affirm what Christian language might call radical Incarnation: Brahman is the world.  But before arriving there, I want to look at some possible pitfalls along the way.  As stated above, one serious error (we might even say spiritual pathology), is ending the spiritual journey at Shankara’s first or second statements, which at their worst can produce the kind of world-denying, dualistic Gnosticism that plagued the 2nd and 3rd century Christian church (or simply a disengaged quietism).  But another, and perhaps more dangerous error in the context of contemporary culture, is attempting to start at the third statement (“Brahman is the world”).  It is tempting to jump to this final insight from the get-go, but then it is held only as an intellectual concept, not a realization.  As a realization, we begin to actually live from this truth, acting differently (that is, less egoically) in the world around us; as an intellectual concept, it is merely words, however lofty and seemingly beautiful.  However uncomfortable, we are first required to pass through the necessary stage of negation (in Jesus' words, "the eye of the needle" and "the narrow way").

I give this point special emphasis, as there is a tendency in liberal Western Christianity (and Western spirituality in general), because of our history of negative attitudes towards sex and the body, to overcompensate with talk of “incarnational spirituality” and Ginsbergian shouts of “Everything is holy!”  As a corrective to a pervasive negativity, this has its place (and at its best can be an authentic insight into Christianity’s nondual core).  In the context of spiritual work, however, it is extremely important to recognize what level of realization we are speaking from when we make such claims.  The purified ego can truly recognize the inherent holiness of everything, but a person operating from a lower level of consciousness development will happily (and probably quite unconsciously) use such claims to justify any manner of behaviors, under the guise of “It’s all holy” (perhaps most clearly seen on the level of egoic sexual expression).

Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, and mystical traditions in general, put great emphasis on the place of detachment and renunciation in spiritual life—words that are not generally favored in our contemporary spiritual climate, as they are often heard as world- or life-denying.  What is being renounced or detached from, however, is egoism and clinging, which lead to a contracted and selfish life.  Renunciation, in its fullest sense, expands life.  “Incarnational spirituality”, on the other hand, is too often an excuse for spiritual laziness and a way of baptizing our impulses towards egoic experience (“God’s in everything, it’s all holy!”).

We see this attitude expressed in phrases such as “My life is my prayer.”  Indeed, to live a life of prayer is the end goal of all spiritual activity—that we would enter into St. Paul’s “prayer without ceasing.”  But this is the end goal, not the starting point.  Only the great saints can truly say “My life is my prayer”, because they are always in remembrance of God, seeing only that One Face.  Most of us are simply striving towards that state, and to claim it prematurely may actually serve to inhibit our spiritual progress.  A more honest statement would probably be: “Sometimes, when I'm lucky, my life is my prayer.”  To truly awaken into a greater and more constant state of prayer, disciplined practice is needed.  There is little instant gratification on the spiritual path (until we see that it’s all instant gratification), although the work can be joyful.  Certainly, in the end, life itself will bring us all of the lessons that we need, and practices and awakening will come as we’re ready.  But now is always the moment that we can begin the work of letting go.

With these dangers set aside, the final circling back (or rather, spiraling forward) toBrahman is the world (or Muhammadan rasulullah) is the full expression of the nondual vision of Reality.  We neither remain in the negation of the world, nor the simple affirmation of God.  Having negated all that is impermanent, and having experienced and affirmed the Eternal, we now come to see everything previously negated in new light.   All is the manifestation of Divine Reality.  Everything that had veiled us from God is now seen to be simply the expression of God.  There is only Kali dancing on Shiva, the Divine Attributes dancing in the Divine Essence, Shakti and Brahman, the Relative and the Absolute, a single Reality.  There is only Christ, incarnate, crucified, and ascended; judge, savior, and saved.  There is nowhere to go, nothing to escape, only God; perfect freedom, total service, One Face.

The world is illusion.  Brahman alone is real.  Brahman is the world. La ilaha illallah Muhammadan rasulullah.  God became humanity that humanity might become God. 

Holy Silence

Hagia Heyschia

Thank-you, Gail Wiggin, for the following contributions.  I pass these on here in the interest of widening the network of information available to seekers:

When one comes into contact with a teaching that comes from a particular psychological [spiritual] place, that has been reached by others who have laboured in the past, then if the teaching is valued and followed it leads to that place where, on the way, one begins to get help. Another reality and another meaning begin to show through what one has hitherto taken to be the only reality and meaning. Every form of inner teaching is a way to a place. For example, Christ calls himself a Way. Only when it is followed to the end can a person be transformed into a Christian. Yet people begin by imagining they are Christians. -- from the Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky by Maurice Nicoll, p. 997

The mind, which we call in religious language the Almighty, and in mystical terms the divine mind, is the depth of life, the depth of activity, with which all activity and every activity is connected. Therein lies the whole of religion. The mystic's prayer is to that beauty, and his work is to forget the self, to lose himself like a bubble in the water. The wave realizes, “I am the sea,” and by falling into the sea prostrates itself before its God. As it is said, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”-- Hazrat Inayat Khan



EVENTS OF INTEREST

Wisdom School with Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault and Father Richard Rohr, Ghost Ranch, Albuquerque, New Mexico
May 1-5, 2011
There are still a few openings so don’t
miss this opportunity! Apply now: http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/conferences/2011/wisdom/reg.php

If Christianity is to emerge as the path of mystical illumination and compassionate action that it truly can be, it will be through the courageous commitment of those willing to follow the call to the next level of conscious evolution. This Wisdom School brings together Cynthia Bourgeault and Richard Rohr (who will join us for the first 2 two days), both gifted teachers in the ancient wisdom ways of contemplative prayer, particularly as it supports the emergence of non-dualistic thinking and action. We will work with the core Christian practices of contemplative prayer and lectio divina, but add to them the specific wisdom methods of self-observation, conscious work, and sacred gesture, in order to facilitate the opening of what is classically known as “the third eye,” or non-dual perception. The goal is not only to deepen our personal spiritual lives, but to raise human consciousness, leading to the ultimate transformation of society.




Rabbi Rami Shapiro on Wisdom in the World’s Religions, Wisdom House, Litchfield, CT 

March 11-13, 2011 Lady Wisdom has taken on many faces in many cultures throughout history. In this exploration of wisdom spiritualities, we will meet many of Her forms and study many of her teachings. Rooted in the texts and teachings of many faiths, this workshop will challenge you to step beyond religious ideologies to hear the words of Lady Wisdom in your way for your own life.Cost: $190 shared room, $230 private room    For more information: http://www.wisdomhouse.org/program/calendar.html
register here:  http://www.wisdomhouse.org/forms/formRS3-1113.html

Francis and Clare: The Eye of the Heart

The Omega Point is Love


Returning home renewed and restored in Love.
The greatest gift I received from a pilgrimage to Assisi is this:

To absorb the greatest teaching of St. Francis and St. Clare--
the teaching of the path of conscious love.

To hold precious and yet not to cling.

To restrain the lower self for the sake of allowing
the higher self to blossom forth and radiate this love.

To render oneself obedient to this love
and let nothing and no one
distract nor derail love.

To give freely and completely of oneself
and to hold nothing back.

To entrust oneself to a higher vision
engendered by this love.

To remain poor in spirit
and make space for this love
to infill, make whole, and make holy.

To seek union in the new intensity.

To plant in the cosmos
and reap in the Aeon.

~~~

Meditation on Assisi by Gail Wiggin

I thought Gail's observations were so profound that I wanted to share her short essay with you:

There’s a great deal to share about our trip but a highlight was the visit in Italy to Monte Subasio -- a few miles outside the walls of Assisi— where Francis (1181-1226) and his followers established their first home in caves on its slopes. Throughout his life, Francis apparently returned often to those graceful heights on foot (despite his many illnesses) to pray and contemplate (if so inclined, you can get a sense of the place here:  http://www.sacred-destinations.com/italy/assisi-eremo-delle-carceri). A few of us chose to walk back down the mountain to our retreat house, Oasi Sacro Cuore. Now THAT is a walk that every person on the planet should experience. How does one describe the profound pleasure of being dwarfed by a landscape? The Umbrian valley spreads out as far as the eye can see, in beauty and abundance as melodic counterpoint to this rock, this foot, this olive tree, this specificity.

As Christians, we are taught that a similar sacred vastness lies within each of us — however difficult to comprehend-- in the form of our capacity to love. It seemed quite clear that the perspective and fecundity of this landscape, their home turf, deeply informed Francis and Clare in their ministries. At every bend in the road down that mountain, one could almost taste afresh the certainty with which they abandoned themselves to God. Although a photograph can’t begin to capture the nature of the experience, it’s impossible not to give you just a hint of it.



Blessings to you this day,
Gail

Assisi, Italy 2010

Return of the Prodigal Son, a Sermon

The Prodigal Son

The Rev. William Redfield

Trinity Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, NY

The Fourth Sunday of Lent—Year C—March 14, 2010

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."

So Jesus told them this parable:

"There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands."' So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe--the best one--and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate.

"Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'

Let me review the territory we have covered so far on our Lenten journey.  We started out by leaving everything that was safe, comfortable, and predictable in order to seek out the desert wilderness.  Out here we have not only been confronting the dangers around us (the world around us that threatens our very existence), but we have also been facing up to the demons within us.  This started out on Ash Wednesday by our facing our own mortal existence and the reality that these lives of ours in this dimension have a beginning and an end.  

But rather than leading to some sort of depressive morbidity, we are finding that, if we take this confrontation far enough and deep enough, it surprisingly leads to a greater freedom and lightness.  It opens us up to a surprising sense of aliveness.  Incredibly, those ashes on our foreheads turned out to be not signs of death, but signs of greater life!

In this journey we are also learning how important it is to let go.  Our model, of course, is Jesus.  Even as he has begun his own experience of suffering, in taking it all the way and in holding nothing back, whatever divine entitlement he might have tempted to cash in on and whatever very human fear he might have harbored have bloomed into a flowering of deeper love and compassion.  He is living from that eternal wellspring of Spirit.  Yes, he has hit the mother lode!  

And then last week we began to see how the exercise of true forgiveness fits into this whole picture.  This, too, is part of dying before you die.  More than a path of moral uprightness, this is a way of intentionally and humbly stepping down from any presumed moral high ground.  As we release the built up resentments and hurts of a lifetime, like Jesus, we become freer and lighter and able to love like he shows us.  Eternal life flows into us and through us.  

One of the methods I introduced last week in assisting us to move from conditional forgiveness to unconditional forgiveness involves stepping deliberately onto the level playing field of human life and entering into a more deeply shared life with the rest of humanity.  One way we do this is by seeing that, as much as anyone else, we have fallen short of the mark ourselves.  

And today in our Gospel reading the story of the Prodigal Son suggests another way to get to this real forgiveness—and that has to do with opening ourselves to the infinite yet unmerited love from the Father.  When we open ourselves to the full realization that we are loved beyond measure, we begin to realize that it is no longer either important or necessary for us to count the costs.  If God is not keeping score, it is pretty unreasonable for us to do so.

And so the story…

Although the parable has been called the story of the Prodigal Son, it is so much more the story of a father’s steadfast love (so perhaps it should be called the story of the Prodigal Father!).  Told in a culture in which the father was the representative of the law, this father instead disregards his own rights and honor in favor of his enduring and uncompromising love for his two sons.

You have just heard the story.  The younger son, feeling the ache to see and experience the big wide world out there, asks his father for his share of the inheritance.  This, in that society, he is technically entitled to do.  But it is then the duty of the sons to set aside enough in resources to provide for the father in his old age.

Well, the younger son spends the whole wad in riotous living and finds himself one day in the pits (literally as well as figuratively).  Feeding pigs in a foreign country has got to be about as low as you can get for a Jew in those times.  So he figures, even as a hired servant for his father, he could do a lot better.

But how will he be able to face the judgment and retribution of his father?  How can he possibly soften his heart?  The younger son begins to rehearse in his mind a repentant sounding story that might possibly open his father’s door.

But no story—rehearsed or otherwise—will be necessary.  The father, it turns out, has been watching the road and waiting and longing—yearning, really—for his son’s return.  And before he can even get to the property line, the father throws all dignity to the wind and runs out to meet his long lost son.  Runs!  No self-respecting elder in this society would surrender his dignity and run—unless, that is, his uncompromising love was bursting from his heart and so greatly overshadowed his need to preserve his own dignity.

Before the son can get a word out of his mouth to express his shame and remorse, the father throws his arms around his son and kisses him.  Again, this behavior was very much out of character for an elder in such a patriarchal society.  Stunned, the son tries to mutter a confession, but the father hardly seems to be paying attention.  The father is much more interested in expressing the joy he feels in the son’s return.  He calls for the finest robe (probably his own) and sandals for his son’s feet as a sign of his full restoration of honor back in the family.  Then the party begins!

But here, as you know, is where the story gets juicy.  The older son, who just happens to be working hard out in the field, hears the merrymaking and inquires of one of the servants what is going on.  The report of the forgiven return of his self-serving little brother cuts like a knife into his heart.  He cannot abide this gross unfairness.  He shames his father by refusing to go in and join in the merrymaking.  And when his father graciously comes out to explain the situation to him and to encourage him to join in, the older brother dishonors the father by insulting him.  

Now many of us—especially the prodigals among us—might judge the older brother harshly.  But before we think of this elder brother as a stuffy old stick-in-the-mud, let’s just think about it.  

The younger brother has all but wished his father dead and expressed this by leaving with half of all the inheritance.  This is the money that was supposed to take care of the father in his old age.  That meant that the older brother had to care for the father out of his half of the inheritance.  And now that the reckless younger brother has returned, he too must live off his older brother’s half since he has squandered his own.

Knowing the impetuousness of his younger son, one wonders why the father would have given him his share of the inheritance.  He must have guessed his son would squander and lose it.  He was certainly not obligated to give him his share at this time.  It must be that the father valued his son’s freedom more than his own security.  Or maybe security was of no real value for him at all.

All that is bad enough.  But when the older brother sees the extent to which his father is celebrating the other son’s return and how quickly he has forgiven his brother’s grievous sins and reckless behavior, he is understandably upset. And the frosting on the cake is that the father is giving that profligate one the party that he has never given him, the dutiful one.  The father has simply relied on him to always do the right thing without ever such a demonstration of acknowledgment or support—let alone a party.

At the very least, the older brother is looking for conditional forgiveness.  He would at least have the younger brother pay back what he has lost and given some sort of provisional status in the family until this whole thing gets sorted out.  He’s counting the costs, and he’s going to make him pay.  But because the father’s love overshadows all other concerns, there will be no conditional forgiveness here; the father’s forgiveness is immediate and completely unconditional.

So here in this story we can see and identify with part of us that so often and egregiously screws up and misses the mark; we are, in other words, the profligate younger brother.  Here too, though, we can also see and identify with the part of us that would prefer to stick to the moral high ground and express our self-righteousness in conditional forgiveness that would require some real conditions before reinstatement could place.  This, of course, is the part of us that is constantly counting the costs and keeping score.  Yup, we’ve got that part too.

Perhaps you had thought that the father in this story represents the unconditional love of God the Father.  Maybe.  But maybe that’s just the door to something deeper.  Maybe the father presents the wellspring from which we too are invited to drink.  Maybe the father is the picture of aliveness that reveals our essential nature when we are willing to take it all the way.  

Take it all the way?  Yes, maybe this route to the father’s unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness requires that we be willing to claim those profligate parts of ourselves as well as those self-righteous parts of ourselves.   

Perhaps we never quite completely leave behind us the part of ourselves that is subject to the whims of self-indulgence and thinks it can get away with murder.  Perhaps also we never completely leave behind the part of us that keeps drinking from the poisoned well of the need to be right and in control and takes refuge in some imagined moral high ground.  

But maybe we are invited to take it all the way such that a deeper part of ourselves will refuse to get provoked or misdirected by our own waywardness, our own self-righteousness, or even our own self-judgment.  You see, we are not forgiven because of our repentance.  Nor are we justified by any dutiful obedience or hard work.  The deeper part of ourselves knows that eternal life is not the denial of these parts of ourselves.  It knows that these parts—the parts represented by the two sons—are only partial and conditional identities that are simply hiding our deeper identity in God.  

And here’s the secret—once they are identified and claimed, they be seen for what they are—partial and conditional identities; they can be held more loosely; and gradually over the course of a lifetime, they can be let go of.  This is precisely what delivers us to an existence that is both freer and lighter.

Indeed, three weeks from now this will be the resurrected life we will be claiming and celebrating.  But just to give us an advanced peek—this will not just be the resurrected life of Christ.  I suppose that might be miracle enough.  But it will go beyond even that.  We will be celebrating and claiming our own resurrected life, and it is here prefigured in this story and seen in the person of the father.  

We are being invited to drink from the eternal wellspring of divine love.  And as the father in the story illuminates, the nature of this love is that it is always being given away—whether it is recognized or not, whether it is responded to or not. Neither our own foolhardiness (represented by the younger son) nor our own self-righteousness (represented by the older) can stifle or suppress it.  

Thanks be to God!

Peace on Earth

And to celebrate the season:

I arise today
Through the strength of Heaven
Light of sun
Radiance of moon
Splendour of fire
Speed of lightning
Swiftness of wind
Depth of the sea
Stability of earth
Firmness of rock

I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me
God’s eye to look before me
God’s Wisdom to guide me
God’s way to lie before me
God’s shield to protect me
From all who shall wish me ill
Afar and anear
Alone and in a multitude
Against every cruel
Merciless power
That may oppose my body and soul

Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise, Christ to shield me

Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me
I arise today.

The Days Are Surely Coming...

The Days Are Surely Coming…

The Rev. William C. Redfield

Trinity Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, NY

The First Sunday of Advent—Year C—November 29, 2009

Three weeks ago for our confirmation class I showed a 20-minute You-Tube clip of Jill Bolte Taylor and her very personal description and lucid explanation of a stroke that she had survived several years ago.  A Harvard-trained and published neuroanatomist, she watched her mind completely deteriorate to the point where she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. Fortunately, because of excellent medical care and the loving support from her family, she survived.  (You can see her short account by going to You Tube and writing in, “stoke of insight.”)

Jill Bolte Taylor has now written about her experience in My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey. There, beyond just telling her story in vivid detail, she also shares the insight she gained into the unique functions of the right and left halves of her brain.  You see, during her stroke Jill lost the categorizing, organizing, describing, judging and critically analyzing skills of her left-brain.  Along with its language centers and her ego center, her left-brain became disengaged.  Thus, during her stroke her consciousness shifted away from her normal, everyday ways of seeing and evaluating things.  In the absence of her left brain’s dominance, her right brain had the opportunity to become fully engaged, and her consciousness shifted into full present moment awareness, whereby she experienced herself “at one with the universe.” 

This kind of language links us to the realm of religious experience and spiritual transformation.  And while it doesn’t necessarily mean that spiritual awareness can be explained away by brain function, it does perhaps give us a greater understanding of these two types of thinking and awareness in our own minds.  And it does, in other words, remind us of that ever present dividing line between two very different ways of understanding our life in this world—the deliberate focus of the left brain which would have us operate out of a rational and linear understanding of life, and the right brain awareness which senses and intuits things in timeless intensity and opens us up to our inherent connection with the divine.

This, I believe, is the same line that runs through our Christian tradition and separates the more obvious and institutional and historical expression of our faith tradition from the more hidden, mysterious, and contemplative part.  Jesus, as the founder of our faith, seemed equally balanced between these two halves of life.  While he lived in the world and fully accepted the frailty of his human condition and marched inexorably in time toward his fate in Jerusalem, he also lived in full, deep, and timeless communion with God the Father.  In other words, while living fully on the horizontal axis of life, he also and simultaneously lived fully on the vertical axis of life.  The way our tradition expresses this is that Jesus was fully human and fully divine.

In the early decades of the young church there seemed to be an effort to express both sides of this equation in the tradition, although some groups and communities expressed one side more than the other.  Some groups emphasized a coherent and rational belief structure that would further the institution of the church and bring faith and belief into greater uniformity.  Other communities, on the other hand, were more engaged in the mystical side. But in those early years there seemed ample room for various expressions of faith in Jesus without one side having to defend its existence at the cost of eliminating a side that understood things a little differently.  Consequently, one could speak more truthfully about various and complimentary Christianities rather than one uniform and thoroughly defined Christianity.

But that all began to change when certain church leaders grew more intent on building uniformity instead of unity.  This gradual shift toward getting all Christians in line with one another was accelerated in the fourth century with the dramatic growth of the Church and its acceptance as the state religion of the Empire.  More and more the Church became entwined with the State and more and more involved in the worldly issues of power and control.  Over time the leaders of the Church became convinced that in order to continue to flourish and succeed, there must be greater uniformity of belief and practice.  Sometimes violently, sometimes brutally, the Church at that time rooted out minority opinions and practices in order that the dominion of Christendom could prevail.  The minority opinions were then pronounced heretical, and these parts of our tradition were thoroughly and sometimes viciously rooted out.

If we make the analogy of brain physiology, we might say that the Church’s left-brain accomplished full domination of its right brain in order to do what it thought it needed to do to survive.  But this “survival” was only the limited vision of what the organizational side of the church with its own resources could conceptualize.  The left-brain had dominated.  But what was worse, it cut off its mystical side to its own great detriment.  It didn’t and couldn’t see the full picture because what it was destroying held the other half of the equation of fullness and wholeness.

I mentioned heresy.  Heresy is the term given to the loser of a theological and doctrinal conflict.  Orthodoxy, on the other hand, is the term we give to the winner.  The problem was that the Church at this time didn’t just consolidate the faith (for that might have been a very legitimate undertaking); rather it set out on a trajectory of power and control in order to extend its influence far and wide.  Would this be considered the call of Christ?  Is the job of Christianity to convert the rest of the world?  These are good questions, but they are hard questions.  The institutional and left brain side of our tradition might answer them one way, while the mystical and right brain side might answer them another way.

*

OK, enough with brain physiology and function and the development of the church doctrines of orthodoxy and heresy.  It’s Advent—thank God—and a time to wait and watch and pray.  As the long season of Pentecost has come to a close and the season of Advent has commenced, the Scripture lessons turn to the end of time and the ultimate and final coming of Christ.  And so we might think that what we are watching and waiting for is something that is about to take place in time.   It seems that we are invited and encouraged to wait and watch for something that future time will deliver.

Oh dear, I’m sorry. I need to go back for a minute to brain physiology and function.  Remember, the left-brain operates linearly—that is, it sees the life through the unfolding of the sequential movement of time.  It goes from the past to the present to the future.  So much are we immersed and even controlled by our left-brain thinking that we don’t even question that.  We think that that’s simply the way life moves—through time.  Scriptural tradition calls this chronological time or chronos.  

But we must remember that there is another, perhaps deeper way of understanding life’s unfolding, and it is measured, not in terms of the linear march of time, but in terms of developmental readiness or kairos.  It is only our right brain that can grasp this wondrous sense. Instead of moving laterally across the horizontal dimension of life, the kairos trajectory of life moves toward depth.  

So, what are we waiting for in Advent?  Are we looking for something to happen in future time?  Or, are we looking for the unfolding of meaning in terms of readiness, ripeness, or depth?  Well, of course, we mean both.  When we say “thy kingdom come,” we mean that the Reign of God that will come in both time and in depth.  The kingdom, Jesus said, is around you, but it is also inside you.

Perhaps the best unifying metaphor for this complex reality is pregnancy—which is what this season of Advent is really all about.  When a woman is pregnant, she is more than a little aware of her baby’s full term—the nine long months her body will experience these dramatic changes.  Because of all of the difficult and demanding bodily changes, most women I know can’t wait for those nine months to be over and done.  But at the same time, the movement through pregnancy can at the same time be experienced as something moving toward ripeness and fruition—something that cannot be grasped or measured only by time.  There is another scale altogether on which something is forming and building and deepening.  And, yes, it takes the full nine months, but there is something timeless in this as well.

*

My dear friends:  These are the awe-filled days of Advent.  We are called to watch and watch and pray.  But that for which we wait, watch, and pray is not only coming in time; it is also coming in depth and fruition.  The story highlights one woman—Mary—who is to give birth to a special son.  Instead of getting all tied up in historical accuracy of this truth, we must remember that its meaning is also timeless.  And rather than just something we think about having happened in time way back when, its truth is both timeless and unconstrained.  Simply stated, there is a divine movement toward depth and fruition, and it has to do with you, and it has to do with what is happening in you right now, in the ripeness of this present moment.  More than life in just Mary’s womb, there is something growing and forming in you—in the womb of your heart.  Never mind how irrational that may sound.  Even if your mind cannot grasp it, your heart can.  This is the call of Advent.

And so we are called to live the full life of historical time (or chronos) as well as the timelessness of eternity (or kairos).  We are perched at the point of the cross—the cross that brings together the horizontal axis with the vertical axis.  We need both kinds of understanding.  The trick is to stay soft and flexible and open.  The trick also is to stay awake and present in the moment.  But know beyond all doubt that there is a something stirring in the depths.  There is something groaning to come to fruition and be born.  And it has everything to do with you.  

Wait, watch, and pray.  Preparation and readiness are imperative.  But the time is now.