I taught myself to play guitar in 9th grade so that I could play at the 12:30PM folk mass at my home parish in Tulsa, OK. It was the fourth worship service of the day. Often I served as an acolyte at one or two of the previous services before playing guitar and singing at the folk mass.
One of the first songs I learned to play was quite simple. It only had three chords. The 8 words of the chorus of the song, “The joy of the Lord is my strength,” were taken from the Old Testament book of Nehemiah (Neh. 8:10). The melody is nothing special, but I find the words difficult to forget. How is it that I find joy in the Lord? Where and when do I find this? If I don’t find it or feel it, is something wrong with me? These are but a few of the questions that arise whenever this verse comes to mind. I am sure that the words are true, but I often wish that I could find that joy more often than I do.
Holy Scripture exhorts us in numerous places to find joy in our relationship with God and with one another. Saint Paul, for example, exhorts the Christians living in Philippi to “rejoice in the Lord always.” He even goes on to say that we should be thankful in all circumstances. What does he really mean by that? How can we be joyful and thankful to God for everything that happens?
St. Paul provides a hint. He writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always…. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil 4: 4-5). To experience joy, in other words, we have to let go. Joy is perfect freedom from worry and anxiety and at the same time thanksgiving and gratitude for what God already has given us. To find joy we have to learn to be thankful for what we have, not for what we don’t have. This flies in the face of our consumer culture in which advertisers continually remind us of what we don’t have and what we have to have to be happy. True joy comes from letting go of worry and learning to be happy with what we have. This takes practice. That is why we learn to do this only as we grow and mature in the Christian faith.
Relax, count your blessings, be thankful to God for what you have and you will find that the joy of the Lord is your strength.
“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you….” Ephesians 1:18
When I was an elementary school student in Westchester County, NY, where I lived for 9 years as a child, I had my own daily subscription to the New York Herald Tribune. It was delivered to me at my school each and every weekday. So, at an early age, I learned the pleasures of reading the newspaper.
No matter how hard I try to get with digital editions of newspapers, I still prefer reading the printed page, over which I can scan my eyes all over the page or pages to find and read what interests me. It’s harder to do that when you have to hit a link for each article to show up.
One of my favorite things to do is to read newspapers from other cities and countries. When friends ask if there is something they can pick up for me on their overseas trips, I usually say, “please, bring a newspaper.” Most of the papers are in languages I can read or at least muddle through. Once, however, when I was a teenager, my father returning from a business trip bought me a Turkish paper that I was unable to read; I just looked at the pictures.
Now, of course, most newspapers from around the world can be read online. I look at the New York Times and the Washington Post nearly every day. But at night, some time before bed, I regularly look at online editions of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zürich), Die Zeit (Hamburg), Le Monde and Le Figaro (Paris), The Irish Times (Dublin), Frankfurter Allgemeine (Frankfurt), Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), The Guardian (Manchester), The Daily Telegraph (London), and The Independent (UK), along with a few papers in languages that I do not read much at all but enjoy for the challenge of parsing out the language. These include papers from Italy, Holland, and Sweden.
I’m sure that reading newspapers from around the world is a form of vicarious travel but I think it is much more than that.
The novelty of the new and the difference in perspectives is something I value. What seems so important to daily life in the metropolitan Washington, D. C. area isn’t even mentioned in the Boston, Chicago, or London papers.
At the same time, it is a chance to see that everyone doesn’t see the world just the way I do or the way most Americans do. It opens our eyes and widens our perspectives. We need that sometimes because it is so hard to get out of one’s own narrow view of things. Different perspectives challenge us to think again about our ideas, our cherished notions of how things work.
Newspapers report the context of our daily life. They often focus on things that terrify us, from acts of terrorism and violent crime to natural disasters and human frailty and corruption. There also are many heart-warming stories of human self-giving, sharing, and understanding.
When you read the papers from around the world, it becomes apparent that we all share a few things. We share the earth and we share a need for meaning and purpose.
Sometimes when we read the news it is difficult to discern the presence of God in it. There is so much bad news. While helping the newspapers sell subscriptions, reading the news can at times be pretty depressing. It may be difficult for us to recognize the epiphanies or manifestations of God in our world.* That may be because we may be looking in the wrong places. The epiphanies of God that occur in the lives of individuals and are easy to miss. St. Paul’s prayer for his fellow Christians is that “our inner eyes may be enlightened” so that we will be able to see the marvelous grace of God at work in the world. As we read or hear the news, we too may need to pray that our inner eyes be opened so that we may see the manifestations of God in our midst and trust in the hope to which God has called us.
With your eyes opened, who knows what you might see?
*In the season of Epiphany, we tell the story of the manifestation of Jesus Christ to the world, first to his own people and then to all the nations, that is, to the Gentiles.
In the late evening of January 2nd, some years ago, I was driving a rental car to Tampa, Florida, from which my family and I were scheduled to take a flight home the next morning. We were traveling on a barren stretch of road between U.S. 41 and Interstate 75 near Bonita Springs, a city on the southwest coast of Florida. Up ahead we saw the flashing lights of what appeared to be a police car. At first, we thought that there must have been an accident or that someone had been pulled over for a traffic violation. We slowed down a bit but kept moving forward. When we got closer we saw two police vehicles, with lights flashing, blocking our lane of traffic and a pickup truck, also with lights flashing, moving towards us in the opposite direction.
The pickup truck pulled up beside us and the driver rolled down his window and said straightforwardly to me, “Turn on your flashing lights and pull over, we’ve got a couple of elephants coming through.” Although puzzled by the meaning of his words, I did as he asked and stopped the car, turned on the flashing lights, and waited to see just what he was talking about. We all peered through the front window of the car trying to see what was ahead of us. Out of the darkness of the night emerged a long string of elephants. The elephants—we counted 13 to 14 of them— were linked, trunks to tail in one long and impressive procession. Handlers walked alongside the elephants guiding them in a straight line with the ropes attached to them. We could not believe what we were seeing.
I rolled down the window on the driver’s side to get a better look. One of the elephants, perhaps hearing the noise of my car engine or perhaps scared by me and the others in the car peering at him/her lifted up his front foot, and made a loud noise—the kind that elephants make— and moved towards our rental car. The handler pulled on the ropes to calm the elephant down. I, for my part, quickly rolled up the window.
The elephants were followed by 20 of more zebras, one mule, and then 20 to 30 horses. In no time the animals and handlers passed us by and I drove off wondering what in the world had just happened.
We quickly began to talk amongst ourselves, telling and retelling the story of what had just happened. We wondered aloud just how we might have explained it to our auto rental company if that disturbed elephant had stepped on top of our car. Realizing the utter absurdity of the story, and the likelihood that we would all be judged quite insane had something like that actually happened, we laughed with utter joy and frivolity.
The most remarkable thing about this experience was that it was completely unexpected. Nothing we had done that day could have prepared us for this event. It came as a complete surprise.
I’m sure that the earliest followers of Jesus must have sounded crazy to others when they claimed that they had found the Messiah, or when they later claimed that this Messiah, who had been crucified by the Romans, had been raised by God from the dead.
Although others may have thought that these followers of Jesus had gone off the deep end, those surprised by God’s glorious and unexpected actions, I’m sure, experienced a complete and utter joy when they told others about what they had seen and heard.
In the season of Epiphany, we tell and retell the stories of the manifestation of God’s goodness and love to the nations, particularly in the person of Jesus Christ.
These epiphanies of God’s grace and goodness, however, are not limited to the past. God’s mercy and goodness are new every day. Pay attention this season to the ways in which God moves in your life. Take time to share with others the joy and wonder of those unexpected moments in which you, perhaps for a moment, become aware of God’s grace in your life.
The canonical gospels tell the Christmas story in two different ways. The one more familiar to us is that of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem in Judea as told in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. (The gospel of Mark doesn’t tell this story at all.) The second is the one told in the gospel of John. Here we find the story of how Jesus, the word of God, became fully incarnate in human flesh. It is the story of how God entered into the world in splendid light. The writer of the gospel of John writes of Jesus, “in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it”(John 1:4-5).
Later in the same gospel, Jesus says, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world”(John 9:5). And, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Jesus is the light of the world. He is “God from God” and “Light from Light” as we affirm in the Nicene Creed.
The central Christmas message is that God became incarnate in Jesus. That is true whether it is told as the narrative of the birth of a child as in Matthew and Luke or in a more symbolic way as in John.
In the worship services of the Episcopal Church we read and tell the story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem at our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services. We read and tell the story of Jesus, as the light that enters a darkened world, being born in human flesh, on the first Sunday after Christmas. Both stories are read and proclaimed during the twelve days of the Christmas season.
We find many references to light and darkness in the gospel of John. In the first chapter of John, Jesus, the light of the world, enters a world full of darkness. The darkness now threatened by that brightness of that light is not able to overcome the power of that light, a light that comes from the very being of God (John 1: 4-5).
We can understand the darkness of the world in two ways —the first, in historical, political and social terms, and the second, in personal terms.
That world is a place full of darkness. Darkness is a metaphor for human sin, greed, corruption, and all of the things that are not in accord with the purposes for which God created them. [1] We see the darkness of the world in crime and lawlessness. We see it in political institutions and governments. We see it in social inequality and injustice.
We also find darkness within our own selves. We see it in the sinful and self-indulgent appetites that make ourselves the center of the universe, often to the detriment of others. We see it in our quickness to find fault with others without realizing that those same faults are found in us. We see it in the dishonesty of the little things in daily life that we just let slide, saying that it is someone else’s problem and not ours. We see it in the lack of concern for the welfare of others. And we see it in our failure to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
At the same time, we find this darkness even deeper within us, in our loneliness and lack of hope. The world can be a dark and hopeless place. Sometimes, we are just a breath or two away from despair. That is when we need to hear the good news of Christmas most of all. “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).
When hope is thin and frail, Jesus comes to us in our own dark night. He comes into the world to be near to us, to bring light into our darkness — to console us, and to save us. He comes to us in our weakness and our frailty, to enlighten the darkness within us, to bring hope. And when he comes, he brings light and peace that all may be well.
With the Mary and Joseph, the humble shepherds, and the heavenly host of angels let us give thanks to God for the gift God has given us at Christmas, the gift of God’s own self, in the person of Jesus. Gloria in excelsis Deo.
Footnotes
[1]‘Light’ and ‘dark’ are guiding metaphors for John’s gospel. They have attracted overtones of racial bias that are inappropriate and have no place in the good news of Christ, who brings salvation to all people, light-skinned and dark-skinned alike.
I first became an acolyte in 1967 at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In those days the clergy, acolytes, lay readers and chalicists gathered in the sacristy prior to the service for prayers while the clergy vested and prepared for the service. Prior to the service the altar guild arranged the vestments on a vesting table in their traditional arrangement. As the clergy vested the people gathered prepared for service at the altar by confession and absolution and by the reciting of Psalm 43 in versicle and response format. Together we prayed: “O send out thy light and thy truth, that they may lead me, and bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy dwelling; And that I may go unto the altar of my God, even unto the God of my joy and gladness….” The order for this brief “service” of preparation was posted on the wall of the sacristy and on cards we held in our hands. As a result of this time of preparation, Psalm 43 was the first lengthy passage of scripture that I committed to memory.
The prayer book of the Episcopal Church in those days was the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. What many people do not know is that the Psalter in that prayer book was not taken from the King James Version of the Bible (1611 AD), but from the “Great Bible” (1539 AD) of Matthew Coverdale, commissioned in fact by Thomas Cramner, the author of the first English Prayer Book of 1549. The official English Prayer Book of 1662 and the 1928 Book of Common Prayer were almost everywhere influenced by the wording of the King James Bible except when it came to the psalms. Here tradition prevailed. When these two prayer books were issued, people were not willing to accept the newer wording of the King James Psalter but preferred in their place the familiar wording of the psalms from the Great Bible, already known and memorized by many of them. In an age when many could not read, the church could not afford to change the wording of the psalms in every generation, and so the tradition held. Even in 1928, Episcopalians were not willing to give up the familiar words of the psalms from the Great Bible for another translation, even one as venerable as the by-then tried and true King James Version. When it comes to our liturgical forms, we Anglicans can sure hold on to our tradition!
In his “Golden Epistle,” the 12thCentury Cistercian monk William of St. Thierry urged his fellow monks to memorize passages of Holy Scripture:
Some of your daily reading should also each day be committed to memory, taken as it were into the stomach, to be carefully digested and brought up again for frequent rumination…
William hoped that as his fellow monks ruminated on the words of scripture and committed them to memory that the desire for prayer would arise within them.
It is a great comfort in times of prosperity and adversity to be able to recall by memory the promises and assurances of Holy Scripture. I am still working to memorize the canticles and many of the psalms from the 1979 Prayer Book. I have learned to love their words and wonderful phrasing. At the same time, Psalm 43 from the Great Bible is still firmly committed to my memory; I can recite it today as easily as I can the Lord’s Prayer. In times of trouble, the words of this psalm comfort me and lead me to prayer.
5 Why art thou so heavy, O my soul? * and why art thou so disquieted within me?
6 O put thy trust in God; * for I will yet give him thanks, which is the help of my countenance, and my God.
How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! (Psalm 133:1)
Because people are imperfect, there will always be conflict whenever they gather together to do anything. The same is true of the church. The realization that this is true is not enough; we Christians are called to form communities of forgiveness and reconciliation that are markedly different from others in the world in which we live.
In every letter St. Paul wrote, he offers advice and counsel to his fellow Christians on how are to behave towards one another. He continually reminds all members of the body of Christ of the danger of dissension and exhorts them to practice love and respect for all members of the church. Paul’s zeal is unflagging on this topic because he was keenly aware of how jealousies, passions, divisions, anger, lust, and all other sorts of human failings could weaken, and even destroy genuine Christian community.
In the Prayer of St. John Chrysostom, read at the end of Morning Prayer (BCP 102), we are consoled by the promise from the Gospel of Matthew “that when two or three are gathered together in his Name,” the Lord “will be in the midst of them.” The original citation from Matthew does not directly concern the presence of God at our corporate worship services but rather concerns the process by which disputes were to be settled within the early Christian community to which the gospel writer belonged.
If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone… But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses…. Again truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them (Mt. 18:15-17; 19-20).
Similarly, in the sixth century Rule of St. Benedict, St. Benedict outlines how monks, who live day in and day out in close quarters, should behave towards one another:
The monks are to bear with patience the frailties of others, whether in body or behavior. Let them strive with one other in obedience to one other. Let them not follow their own good, but the good of others. Let them be charitable toward their brothers with pure affection (Chapter 72: 5-8).
This is one of the best descriptions that I know concerning what it means to love our neighbor, particularly the members of our own church community. Although Benedict wrote for a monastic community, his words apply to life together in any Christian community. Let’s examine each point.
To bear with patience with the frailties of others
In the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, the “Lord’s Prayer,” we are reminded that if we ourselves want to be forgiven, we have to learn to forgive others. That is because, as Jesus reminds us, we most often are troubled most by the faults in others that closely match our own faults. “How can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye?” (Mt. 7: 4-5).
The path towards Christian maturity is long and arduous. We cannot expect to be perfect all at once. As we practice Christian charity and patience with others, we slowly begin to grow and mature ourselves. We, then, must learn first to be patient with our own faults and frailties and not to focus too soon on identifying and criticizing the faults of others.
To live in obedience to one another
In the Rule of Benedict, obedience to the authority of the abbot, the spiritual leader of the monastic community, was a foundation to the stability of the monastic community. In earlier monastic rules, the authority of the abbot was absolute. Benedict softened this by reminding the monks that they were to live in obedience to one another because “by this road of obedience they shall travel to find God” (71). In Christian community we can learn from the advice, and even the loving admonitions, of others. Benedict realized that sometimes we are not our own best guides. We can become lost and in need of the direction that others can offer us.
To seek the good of others above our own good
Here Benedict reaffirms the witness of St. Paul who wrote, “Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor ” (1 Corinthians 10:24). In Christian community our life together should always center around our efforts to “edify,” one another, that is, to build up and support them and not to destroy them by our selfish attempts to draw attention to ourselves and our own needs.
To be charitable with pure affection towards one another
When we read the Epistle to the Ephesians, alongside the Rule, we can see that Benedict’s ideas are thoroughly infused with the spirit of the writings of St. Paul.
I…beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4: 1-3).
Where other forms of community, including much of our present-day business culture, thrive on competition and killer instincts, we in the church are called to form communities of forgiveness and reconciliation that are markedly different from others in the world in which we live. In genuine Christian community we are not to live in competition with one another but rather are called to form a community of mutual support and ministry. What can you do to make that happen?
When I was eleven years old I moved from New York to Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was quite a different world from the suburbs of New York City where I had spent my childhood years. I was excited because I was finally going to see the city in which I had been born. My family moved to Tulsa just before I was born and moved away from it when I was only two years old. Now at the age of eleven, I had no knowledge and no memories of the place.
Tulsa was a different world from the world that I had known; I quickly adapted, however, to my new home. The temperatures in the summer often went well over 100 degrees F. The food also was different. Chili, barbeque, and fried chicken were served everywhere. I learned to like most everything about my new place of residence, except for the country music I heard everywhere around me. I never listened to it on my transistor radio, preferring instead to listen to the songs of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and others on KAKC “Top Forty Countdown.” Country music, however, seemed to be loved by everyone else except for my parents and all of my peers.
When the football coach of Edison High School in Tulsa prepared our team to play the team from Muskogee High School, he wanted to stir up the emotions of his team toward their upcoming opponent. To do so, he played Merle Haggard’s hit country single “Okie from Muskogee” over and over and over again before, during, and after the practices until the players from Edison couldn’t stand even the mention of the name “Muskogee.” As best I can remember, his plan worked and Edison defeated Muskogee.
Seven years after my graduation from high school, and after my graduation from college and seminary, I moved back to Oklahoma. For a year I worked as a chaplain in Oklahoma City. During that year I first learned to appreciate the music that everyone else there seemed to like. During the Oklahoma State Fair (after the rodeo!), we attended a wonderful concert by Charlie Pride. It was rare then, as it is now to hear an African-American sing country music. His voice was like velvet. This concert did not bring about a sudden conversion to country music. My conversion, if you can call it that, was really more gradual than sudden.
I am sure you have heard the expression “what goes around, comes around.” Maybe that explains, although I doubt it, why a year after our move to Oklahoma City, my bishop placed me in charge of two small Episcopal Churches in Eufaula and Muskogee, Oklahoma.
I might have been born in Tulsa, some 70-80 miles away, but I in no way was a country boy. In the town of Eufaula, however, I stood out like a sore thumb. My tweed coats and khaki pants just did not fit in. I soon bought a cowboy hat and a pair of boots to wear with blue jeans and my clergy shirt so that I didn’t look so out of place.
At the same time my radio listening habits also began to change mostly because the local radio stations played only country music. Within a year, I began to preach regularly on KCES, a local station in Checotah, Oklahoma. If I wanted to sound like the other local preachers, I had to learn to say “Jesus” with three syllables. I still had no intention, however, of becoming an “Okie from Muskogee.”
While continuing to listen to rock music, I began at first to listen to the country music of Waylon Jennings and Don Williams —and later George Strait and Alan Jackson—gradually branching out into bluegrass. It really didn’t take much for me to begin to like the music, once I allowed myself the possibility. The lyrics of country songs often tell a story that emotionally moves the listener. Some songs are happy, others are sad, some are silly, and some tell deep truths about living and loving. That music helps me connect to my own feelings and emotions like no other
What I thought I had to avoid or to get far away from as possible had never really left me. It had grown along with me. What I thought I didn’t like, even hated, had actually become dearer to me than I had ever realized.
My changing attitude towards country music is similar to the way many of us relate to our families. When we are first out on our own we may want to move as far away as we can from our parents or other family members in order to begin a life independent of their influence or control. As we grow older, we begin to realize how dear these same family members are to us and we may want both to be in closer proximity to them and to deepen our emotional ties to with them.
It is important to remember that you may not be fully aware of what really matters to you. We are never too old to change or to learn to appreciate new things. Never assume that what you disliked at the age of eighteen, you must continue to dislike into old age. Our God who creates, redeems, and sanctifies is forever offering new opportunities and new hope to us so that we can live full, abundant, and joyous lives in the present and in the years to come. God often calls us to open our hearts and our minds!
Your people take refuge under the shadow of your wings.
They feast upon the abundance of your house;
You give them drink from the river of your delights.
Psalm 36: 7-8
I arrived at Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist (Cistercian) monastery in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, on a Monday afternoon to begin a retreat that would last until Friday. The monastery is located twenty-some miles north of Charleston, South Carolina on the banks of the Cooper River. The large estate on which the monastery is located was formerly owned by the Henry Luce family, the founder of the Time-Life empire. In 1949 the Luce family donated the estate, on which they are also buried, to the Roman Catholic Church for the purpose of building a monastery on that property.
This was by no means my first retreat at a monastery, but it was my first retreat at Mepkin Abbey. Just as every congregation has its own ethos and flavor, so it is with a monastery, I did not yet know what I would find there and how I would fit in. I checked into my room in the guest quarters and then hurried to eat my evening meal at 5 PM. (The mid-day “dinner” served after noontime prayer is the main meal of the day and is the only cooked meal served at the Abbey.)
When I finished eating, I had some time to explore the famous gardens on the monastery grounds. As I walked through the garden I came upon the banks of the Cooper River. It was a great surprise to me. I had not looked at a map prior to my visit and so was surprised by the beauty of the wide river divided by a thin island, with water on both sides of it. It was hot and extremely muggy, but a strong breeze made it the most comfortable spot I found outdoors that day. I sat on the riverside and watched the current flow one way while the wind blew in the opposite direction as if it were trying to reverse the flow of the river.
Sitting by the banks of the river, I saw and heard fish jumping out of the water, launching themselves some two to three feet into the air. I thought to myself, “what a waste! Here I am by the river with no fishing rod or fishing gear. This would be great time to go fishing.” And then in a moment of insight I recognized the truth of that moment. I was not here to catch fish in the river but to drink from the water of life, to find refreshment from the living water that Jesus promises to all who believe in him. Later in worship as I read Psalm 36, I knew that I had come to “drink from the river of [God’s] delights.”
I had come to the monastery to allow God to work in me. My desire to go fishing I realized, while good and pleasant in itself, was symbolic of my (and I think I can safely say, “our”) tendency to work too much, thereby not leaving much time for the reflection, silence, solitude, and prayer that provide God the space to work in us to renew, refresh, and replenish us so that we become more available both to God and to one another.
I was at the Abbey to engage in a different kind of fishing—what might be called “no-fishing.” For a few days, I was to live and move within the river, not actively, but in a different manner of quiet and calm thus allowing God to fish for me as I opened myself to being captured and captivated by God’s love pouring from God’s “river of delights.”
“Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” — Collect for Proper 28, The Book of Common Prayer
“…The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” — Hebrews 4:12.
In December 2002, I attended my first CREDO conference in southwest Florida. CREDO is a program devised by the Church Pension Fund of the Episcopal Church to address Clergy Wellness. At week-long conferences, participants examine four areas of their lives, Vocation, Spirituality, Health, and Finances, and come up with a personalized CREDO plan to implement when they return home. It is the hope of the Church Pension Fund that every ordained person in the Episcopal Church will be invited to attend a CREDO conference at least every ten years during their active ministry. In 2008, I was invited to a second CREDO conference in Asheville, North Carolina area, and last fall attended my third CREDO conference in Fairhope, Alabama.
At most every CREDO I have attended, we gathered for worship twice each day, met in large plenary sessions, in small groups, and had personal consultations in each of the four areas. We got up for breakfast at 7:15AM and worked until 9PM for the first three days and then the pace slackened a bit, giving us some private time to work and prepare our own CREDO plans. Each time I went, I looked forward to the time of personal reflection, prayer, and fellowship with other clergy from dioceses all over the country. CREDO is not a “retreat” in the usual sense of the word, because we were quite busy, but it was a “retreat” from the familiar world of everyday life in the parish. Here was a place where we clergy could go to worship and not be responsible for making sure that everything went according to plan — a place where we could relax and hear the words of Scripture and take in the reflections of the staff members on those readings.
On the second day of my second CREDO conference–at least that is how I remember it — at morning worship, we read a portion of Psalm 107 together. I knew at once that these were words that would set the tone for me for the week ahead.
Some wandered in desert wastes; * they found no way to a city where they might dwell.
They were hungry and thirsty; * their spirits languished within them.
Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, * and he delivered them from their distress.
He put their feet on a straight path * to go to a city where they might dwell.
Let them give thanks to the LORD for his mercy * and the wonders he does for his children.
For he satisfies the thirsty * and fills the hungry with good things.
It would be unusual, I think, if you felt the kind of response I felt when I read these words aloud and simultaneously heard these words read in unison. They were words that spoke to me at that moment and perhaps to no one else in quite the same way. It is difficult and a bit awkward to try to explain it. I knew that I had arrived there hungry and thirsty for revival and renewal. These words hit me as if they were a promise to me of something greater that was yet to happen. My feet would once again be set upon a straight path and God would satisfy my spiritual thirst and hunger. It sounds rather prosaic to write about, but it was something else to experience the power that these words of scripture had for me at that moment. It was as if I could close the book at that moment with no need to read any further. Perhaps this kind of experience is best described in the book of Hebrews, when it says, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb. 4:12).
The history of the church is full of stories of people whose lives were changed by a single verse of scripture. St. Augustine picked up a manuscript of Paul’s letter to the Romans and knew at once with absolute certainty that the words “let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light” were meant for him. When St. Francis heard the words “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me,” read in church it gnawed at him until he responded to the word he knew the Lord had spoken directly to him. When Martin Luther’s encountered the words of St. Paul in Romans 1:17, who in turn was citing the book of the prophet Habakkuk— “the righteous shall live through faith,” it made him feel “as if I had been born again and passed through the open doors of paradise itself.” And when John Wesley heard a reading from the Preface of Luther’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans at a church meeting, he felt “as if his heart had been strangely warmed.”
These are only a few of the well-known stories in which a passage of scripture spoke directly to a person. When a passage of scripture speaks to us like that it cuts like a two-edged sword so that we cannot ignore what we have heard or read. This is not the sort of thing that happens only once in a lifetime. If you learn to be attentive to the words of scripture, either when you read them or hear them read in church or in your daily devotions, God will speak to you. Sometimes it takes a retreat or a place apart for us to find the space within ourselves to truly listen to what God wants to say, or already is saying to us, but because we have been so preoccupied with other things that we have not been able to hear. When you encounter the living God in the “living and active” word of scripture you will know it. When that happens to you, stop. Read, and re-read what you have just heard. Listen to what it says to your heart. When you revisit it in a few days, it may not have the effect that it had at first, but that is fine. If it is something that is meant for you it will have some lasting effect on you, whether it challenges you and calls you to repentance or nourishes and refreshes you in the face of difficulties and trials. If you share your experience with someone else, do not be surprised if they don’t get it. The words were not meant for them but for you. If you are really puzzled you might want to speak with a trained spiritual director or a member of the clergy.
I am sharing this story with you in the hope that you will be attentive to the word of God as it is revealed to you in Holy Scripture. Remember to take to heart the words of the famous collect from the Book of Common Prayer that remind us to “hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the words of Holy Scripture. These are words that can satisfy the thirsty and fill the hungry with good things.
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“A mind too active is no mind at all; the deep eye sees the shimmer on the stone….” When my mind starts to overload, I often recite these words of the American poet Theodore Roethke. I can become so busy — even obsessed with being busy all the time — that my eyes are closed to the world and all its wonders around me.
I often try consciously to cultivate “the deep eye”, to look closely at things around me so as to see “the shimmer on the stone.” One day, a good many years ago, I planned to cut down a dead elm tree aside a long, wooded, dirt and gravel driveway by a house in the Adirondacks. I was looking forward to the raw power of the chainsaw and its rich throaty sound. The chainsaw had other ideas; it wouldn’t start. Deep down I was half relieved. Undaunted, I set off alone, with a rather dull ax slung over my shoulder, down the driveway to the fated elm tree.
I began chopping “at” the tree. It was muggy and there I stood, sweaty, buzzed by bees and mosquitoes, trying to avoid the poison ivy, but exhilarated nonetheless.
As a priest I don’t often see the results of my work. How people are affected by what I say in the pulpit or in counseling is something almost impossible to measure. I could see the tree however gradually being chipped away. Professional woodcutters might not have liked my style—the cut looked like a mangled beaver’s cut—but nonetheless the tree fell with a crash and half way down, just for the effect, I cried out, “Timber!” My hands were blistered and they ached as I de-limbed the tree, but I was happy. I noticed the rings on the wood, the smell of freshly cut timber, and the grape vine loaded with grapes that had hung in the branches of that elm tree.
What is called “contemplation” in religious circles is really just what we might call “noticing” — noticing the little things around us, finding God in them, and thanking God for them. The “deep eye” is something most of us have to cultivate. Take the time to look for “the shimmer on the stone?” I find that when I do, the rest of the day is never quite the same.
IN THESE TIMES 