Tag: Advent

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“KEEP AWAKE: AN ADVENT MEDITATION WITH INSIGHTS FROM JESUS AND THE BUDDHA”

Under the boughs of the Bodhi tree, Siddhartha Gautama sat motionless, meditating. At once, the solution to the problem that had brought him to sit under that tree came to him. He opened his eyes. He was enlightened. He was awake. That is the story of the Buddha, the name that literally means “one who is awake.”

The Awake One, the Buddha, had set for himself the goal of solving the problem of human suffering. Shortly after his “enlightenment,” he announced to the world that human suffering is caused by “clinging,” that is, holding onto or trying to possess people or things. If we want to put an end to that suffering, he said, we must extinguish all desire.

This is just the beginning of what I could say about Buddha. I have taught numerous college courses on various religious traditions, including Buddhism. My point here is not to discuss the Buddha or the Buddhist tradition in detail but rather to contrast elements of the story of the Buddha with Jesus’ words in the gospels of Mark and Matthew.

The Buddha is the awakened one. The Buddha is awake. Jesus, similarly, urges his followers to be awake. In Mark 13:33-37, Jesus tells his disciples: “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey; when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” Matthew 24:42-44 reinforces this urgency: “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

St. Paul also urges the followers of Messiah Jesus to be awake and perennially ready for the return of the Lord. In Romans 13:11-14, Paul writes: 

Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Paul echoes this theme in 1 Thessalonians 5:4-6, “But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.”

In the scriptures we read from the Revised Common Lectionary during the latter weeks of the Season of Pentecost and into the beginning of the season of Advent, Christians are repeatedly called to live in constant readiness and preparedness. Our readings often end with the admonition that we remain awake because we cannot know the hour of the Parousia, the return of the Lord Jesus in glory. 

St. Paul urges his hearers, in so many words, to live lives that are blameless, such that if the Lord were to return at this moment would be beyond reproach. The point of these scripture readings is that we should never do anything for which we would not be prepared to give an account or to have to explain if the Lord were to return at that moment. Jesus illustrates this principle vividly in the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids in Matthew 25:1-13, concluding with the warning: “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

If you are a teenager whose parents trust enough to leave you at home without a babysitter, then you know what I am talking about. If you have ever been a teenager, you know what I mean. You never know when your parents will walk through the door. You can take a chance, but if you are surprised, you will have to explain, even account for, your actions. If you have ever been caught, you will know what I am talking about. We might have some explaining to do, and perhaps we might face a few consequences from our unwise decisions that we had not fully contemplated. Jesus makes a similar point in Luke 12:35-40: “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes.”

“Being awake” to the world around us is central to the life of faith. The figurative use of the idea of being awake is found in Buddhism, Christianity, and many other religious traditions. To be awake is to be alive.

Jesus often reminded those who heard him that they had ears, but could not hear, and eyes, but they could not see. Jesus might also have said that although many of his hearers were physically awake, they were nonetheless spiritually asleep. To be faithful to God, we must strive to awaken from sleep and be alive and awake to God.

What would it mean for you to be awake? Let us consider this together.

What is it like to be physically awake but spiritually asleep? We do not have to imagine that. Most of us are well aware of this fact. We know how easy it is to live our lives in a kind of stupor, just going through the motions. We know how easy it is to be bored with so many interesting people, places, and things around us. We know how easy it is to be so tired that we can hardly care about anything or anyone else. We know how easy it is to get stuck and for our lives and relationships to become stagnant. Perhaps you know, from your own experience or from the experience of those you love, how easy it is to become addicted to caffeine, alcohol, food, or something else. The well-known psychologist Rollo May argues in his book Addiction and Grace that being human is, in some way, to be addicted. For some people, the states of exhaustion, depression, and addiction that I have described are medical issues that can be helped by a variety of medications, therapies, or other remedies.

But even so, we cannot solely blame our spiritual ennui on our brain or body chemistry. Many of us often realize that we are spiritually dead and we have no idea how to remedy it.

As the Advent season begins and Christmas looms, we are assaulted by the promises of advertising that the key to personal happiness is to be found in the car we drive, the deodorant we use, or the diamond jewelry we give or receive. We may enjoy the use of our possessions, but sooner or later, we come to realize that they alone cannot supply meaning or purpose to our lives.

It is far easier to describe what it is like to be spiritually asleep or dead than to describe what it means to be alive. So, what does it mean to be awake and alive?

First and foremost, to be spiritually awake or alive is to have a vital and life-giving relationship with God. When you pray, do you nurture a real relationship that involves silence and listening, or do you fill your time with “fix it” lists for God? True prayer is not one-sided; it involves building a relationship with God.

To be truly awake, we cannot place our ultimate trust in our possessions or anything other than the living God. Here, both the Buddha and Jesus come to a somewhat similar diagnosis, even if their solutions are somewhat incompatible. The Buddha tells us that clinging to things or people is the cause of human suffering and that we need to let go if we are to find peace within. Jesus tells us not to place our trust in treasures that can rust or spoil, but to place our trust in the living God. As Jesus teaches in Matthew 6:19-21: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Being awake and alive means being engaged in what you do. If stagnation is a sign of spiritual sleep, growth is a sign of being alive. To grow, you will have to open yourself to an uncertain future and trust that if you remain attentive to the relationships with one another and with God, good will ultimately come of it.

Advent is a time of repentance, a time of turning away from the ways and patterns of our lives that keep us from being truly awake before God. To be truly awake, we must let go of the things that try to substitute themselves for God and go in search of the Living God–the God who gives us life and hope.

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LISTEN, WATCH, AND WAIT: AN ADVENT MEDITATION

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

One of the oldest traditions of Christian worship, one that stretches back for centuries, is that of beginning the day with reciting the psalms.  This practice strengthened in the 4th century when men and women began to leave the cities of the Byzantine Empire, becoming hermits and monastics, living alone in the “desert,” where they devoted their lives to God.  When monastics began to live together (the technical term for a monastic who lives in community is “cenobite”), liturgies were developed for collective prayer at fixed times of the day.  

The prologue of the 6th century Rule of Benedict urges the monks living in community “to open our eyes to the light that comes from God, and our ears to the voice from heaven that every day calls out this charge: ‘If you hear his voice today, do not harden your hearts.’”(Psalm 95:8)

The first service of the day was called Vigils, a watch kept during the normal hours of sleep. It occurred in the middle of the night, usually between midnight and 3 A.M. During Vigils, all are reminded that if they hear God’s voice that day, not to harden their hearts.  If there ever is a time when one’s heart is hardened, it is just after awakening in the middle of the night to watch and to pray.

All of the retreats I have made in the past five years have been to monasteries that lived according to the Rule of Benedict. At the monastery of Christ in the Desert in Abiquiu, New Mexico, Vigils begins at 4 A.M.  At Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, the monks rise at 3 A.M. and begin Vigils at 3:20 A.M.  While I was a guest of the monastery, I lived in accordance with this schedule. It is quite a shock, as you might well imagine, to move from a world in which going to bed between 11:30 P.M. and midnight is quite normal to a world in which one retires at 8 P.M. and arises at 3 A.M. But that is how it is in the monastery 365 days a year. 

The monastic schedule follows the rhythm of nature more closely than does our modern world of artificial light, endless movement and activity, and of global business and commerce that works relentlessly around the clock. The monastic day is tailored to a more ancient and more natural rhythm of going to bed when the sun goes down and arising before sunrise to work and to pray.  It always takes some time for a visitor to adjust to the schedule and pace of life in the monastery. I found it the most difficult to fall asleep shortly after 8 P.M. knowing that I had to rise at 3 A.M.

While I can’t say it was always easy to wake up so early in the morning, there was something exhilarating about the sounds and sights of the middle of the night. The first night I awoke in the high altitudes of northern New Mexico, I was astounded by the vastness of the starry sky. It is one of the few places I have been where light pollution from nearby cities has not blotted out the Milky Way and the numerous stars in the heavens. Each morning I had a five-minute walk with a flashlight from my lodgings to the monastery. On the way, I watched for fire ants and snakes, not really expecting to find one, but just to be safe. One day another person who was also making a retreat at the monastery asked me if I had seen the coyote that was right next to me on my walk through the sagebrush.  I hadn’t.  I had heard the coyotes but had not seen them. The rest of the week, I kept my eyes open and remained alert whenever I made this trek in the dark. 

In South Carolina, on the other hand, I awoke to the clammy humidity of a warm July night. As I walked from my lodging to the monastery, through the Spanish moss hanging from the trees, I heard the sounds of tree frogs, frogs, insects, and other assorted creatures.

At both places, when I entered the monastery for Vigils, I was reminded to listen to God’s voice, wherever I was and whatever I was doing.  God might speak to me that day and I needed to be vigilant to that voice. At Vigils, one is watching not merely for the dawn of the new day but also for the advent of God in one’s own life. As the psalmist wrote, “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning” (Ps. 130: 5-6).

The season of Advent is a time of special vigilance for all Christians as they prepare themselves for the Christmas feast.  It is a time in which we put ourselves in the place of the generations of people who waited and longed for the coming of God’s anointed one, God’s Messiah. At Christmas, we will celebrate the birth of the Messiah, the first advent of God in our human history, as we remember and give thanks for what happened in Bethlehem so long ago.  

In the season of Advent, we also are to be vigilant for the return of our Risen Lord in our history, his second advent.  The gospels remind us throughout the season to live our lives as if Jesus might return at any moment. We are urged always to be vigilant and prepared for the return of our Messiah and Lord at any time.  

Finally, in the season of Advent, we are to prepare our own hearts so that our Lord may find a place to be born within us.  Every day is a day in which God might speak to us.  Every day is a day to watch and wait for God to speak to us.  Every day is a day of vigilance. “Today if you would hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”  This Advent, try every day to pay special attention to the moving of God’s Spirit within you.  Harden not your heart—listen, watch, and wait and prepare to be surprised by God. 

 

In the booklet, for which you will find a link below, you will find a short Advent service that you can use as a private devotion or as a service with family and friends around your Advent wreath. You might even use it along with your blessing at dinner. You also will find activities for all ages.

May you have a blessed Advent season in preparation for the coming of our Lord this Christmastide.

advent-booklet-2019-finalDownload

 

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ADVENT— A SEASON OF PRUNING

One of the most difficult and daunting tasks gardeners face is that of pruning. After months of coaxing, tending, fertilizing, watering, and the like, working to get a plant to grow, there comes a time when the gardener needs to prune some branches. Pruning removes dead, damaged, or diseased branches from the plant and, in the long run, helps the plant to produce more flowers or fruit. Advice on when and how best to prune rose bushes varies to a degree but all the sources agree that rose bushes are fairly resilient and will recover from most pruning errors.

Over the past few years, I have been tending five rose bushes in the backyard garden. A few of them are of the sizeable Knockout variety. All spring and summer I nipped the flowers past bloom so that the rose bushes would produce more flowers. I watered and weeded around them, and encouraged them to grow. I hate to think that next spring I will have to cut some of the very branches I watched grow this year. Yet if the roses are to flourish—and flourish is the key word here—they will have to be pruned.

In his teachings, Jesus used pruning as a metaphor for the spiritual growth of his disciples.  He said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. …My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.  (John 15:1- 2; 8).

Advent is a season in which we make room for God in our lives. Advent, in other words, is a season of pruning.

For generations of Christians, prayer, fasting, various forms of self-denial, examination of conscience, and subsequent confession of sins have been integral to the preparation for major days of celebration in the church calendar. The fact that these days were called “feasts” is no accident. They were days of celebration accompanied food, fun, family, friends, and fellowship. Feasts, the church must have realized, are like flowers on rose bushes, they flourish and bear fruit most after pruning.

How, then, do we go about this spiritual pruning? We begin by turning away from the things that we know separate us from the love of God. We repent, we turn away from, things we know are not good for us, not good for those around us, and not good enough for God.  We open our hearts and minds to God and pray that God will allow us to let go of the branches in us that need to be cut and discarded.

We also may need to forgive those who have hurt us. When we are unable to forgive we carry the weight of that around with us wherever we go. We again should open our hearts and minds to God and pray that God will help us to forgive so that we can let go of these branches that need to be cut and discarded.

In one of the prayers of confession in the Book of Common Prayer, we confess the sinful “things we have done” and “the things we ought to have done.” Spiritual pruning may involve eliminating some of the internal clutter in our lives so that we are ready and able to respond to the new things to which God is now calling us. It may be painful to let go of those old branches, but when we do we are more able to bear fruit.

Pruning helps us flourish, flower, and bear fruit. Perhaps it’s time for you to do some spiritual pruning this Advent.

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ADVENT HOPE

piano keys illustration
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.   Isaiah 35:10

When I was sixteen years old, I sat on an airplane next to a man I have never forgotten. He was seated in the center seat of a crowded set of three seats. I was seated in the aisle seat. The man was returning from a trip to Venezuela where he had been given a circular brass shield, at least three and a half feet in diameter, with an intricate pattern pounded into it. The flight attendant asked me if I minded such a large object in front of my feet since it would not fit under the seat, in the overhead bins, or in the airplane closets. I said that I didn’t. Without this obstacle in front of us, we might never have spoken.

He was a balding man in his fifties with a fairly prominent nose, dark glasses, and a strong Eastern European accent. As we began to converse, we came to the topic of music. I do not remember everything that was said during our first conversation on the plane. I remember that he asked me if I played the piano. I told him that I had from the age of eight or nine until I turned fourteen and then had focused all my attention to the trombone. Somehow our conversation came around to the music of Frédéric Chopin and he asked me if I had any particularly favorite artists or recordings of Chopin. Undaunted by his presence and unaware of his musical prowess, I told him that I liked the recordings of Van Cliburn, whose “My Favorite Chopin,” a best-selling RCA album in the 1960s, was in my parents’ record collection. He seemed to wince as I told him this, perhaps, although he never said anything negative about van Cliburn, because his interpretation and playing of Chopin’s music was antithetical to his own. Little did I know that I was speaking to the Polish pianist Andrzej Wasowski (1919-1993), a man who Time Magazine in 1946 called “the greatest Chopin interpreter of modern times.”

A few weeks after the flight, I greeted him at the door of my home. After our in-flight conversation, knowing that I would appreciate his abilities, or perhaps to prove to me without words that his playing far exceeded that of van Cliburn’s, he invited me to his upcoming recital.

Andrzej Wasowski was a pianist who had emigrated to the United States from Poland. He came from a wealthy Polish noble family. His mother was a Princess and his father a vast landowner. In 1939 his dreams were shattered when the Nazis invaded his country and his family’s lands and property were forever taken from them. He told me how he was forced to play piano at the private parties of Nazi officers and on concert tours in Russia, where he was allowed to play anything but the work of Chopin, for fear that the nationalist sentiments raised by Chopin’s fiery and emotional piano music, would enflame the populace against the army of their occupiers.

Even at my young age, I sensed a certain sadness about him. I knew that the well of his emotions ran deep. The music of Chopin seemed to connect him to his lost homeland, his people, his mother, and the vast tradition of musical artists and performers. He played Chopin like no other!

I can only imagine what it would be like to have lost as much at once as he did. His sadness never seemed self-absorbed. It seemed to express itself in his music and in his kind and gentle manner to his students and friends.

As a child, I was surrounded by two very good piano players, my grand-mother Phillips and my mother.  I would play a tune and my grandmother, ever the severe critic, would tell me that I need to play it with expression. I had played all the notes correctly but that was not entirely what it was about. Expression is what separates the good piano players from the spectacular—and Mr. Wasowski was spectacular.

Maestro Autori, the Italian conductor of the Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra, lived around the corner from our house. Before an upcoming recital, Andrej Wasowski, after visiting the nearby conductor, would stop by our house and invite me and my family to attend. I still have the programs from two of the recitals we attended in the 1970s.

At the intermission of one of his recitals, my father and I went up to greet him and commend him for his artistry. He showed us an enormous fluid-filled blister on his thumb, the like of which I have never seen. It stretched from the palm of his hand to the tip of his thumb. He had practiced and practiced for the recital and had played his heart (and his fingers) out during the first half of the concert. Perhaps the Beethoven piano sonata that had been played with such vigor was the culprit. He showed the blister to us privately, as if only to us, and soon was back without the audience ever being the wiser and played the entire second half of his recital with a few encores—never telling the audience of his physical handicap that day.

Sadly, I lost track of him during my years in seminary. A few years ago, while listening to the piano music of Chopin and Scriabin, I was inspired to find recordings Wasowski’s piano playing. Much to my surprise, I found recordings of Chopin’s 51 Mazurkas and 21 Nocturnes. I bought them immediately and went home to listen to them. At the same time, I discovered that Wasowski had died in 1993 in Washington, D. C.

The memories of his piano playing and his personal kindness came back to me at once.

In the season of Advent, we read the words of the prophet Isaiah in which he foretells a time in which God will restore all things. In the midst of the world in which war, famine, torture, death, and evil abounds, the arrival of the Messiah provides hope.

In the midst of a world in which it is so easy for us to become discouraged or even to give up hope, the music Andrej Wasowski played provided hope both to himself and to others. I wonder sometimes if it was the piano music he played that kept him from despair. Andrej had a kindness and gentleness borne of the immensity of loss in his life and the fact that in spite of all that he and his wife had raised a family. Even in an undeserved obscurity in the United States, he somehow still had hope, a hope that he quietly shared with others, that is until he began to play the piano. And how he could he play!

Even now when I hear his recordings of Chopin, I hear the wings of hope ever ascending. I’m not sure if it is the music of angels, but it comes pretty close.