Friday in the Seventh Week of Easter: The better part

Lessons: Psalm 102; Ezekiel 34:17-31; Hebrews 8:1-13; Luke 10:38-42

Jesus he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.  She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying.  But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me."  Luke 10:38-40

In most relationships, be they marriage or family or chosen friendship, there is a Martha and a Mary.  At best they are a balance that makes the whole work.  At worst they are lives that miss each other, forgetting to value opposite. In truth by the end of our lives we may well find both within.

It is not always easy for the Martha in us to notice this. So whirling can our lives become that we feel the need of aid.  So much must be done each day to make the whole work that if we are a Martha, as I tend to be, Marys make us impatient. Why must so much time be spent on the paper or computer or book or quiet? It seems a wasteful mystery. That is until from a quiet corner some wisdom comes or some more inventive play or some inner beauty or depth.  Can our Martha stop and notice?  Can the pace slow to see the other?  That has been the challenge of my life because I am always attracted to the introvert, the one who seems to sit quietly often, who speaks considered thoughts, who is a mystery to me.

But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."  Luke 10:41-42

It has taken a lifetime for me to find my Mary, my better part perhaps.  There is this part that can rest and listen and ponder and be which I have always known but forgot to value when so much effort was required to keep much afloat.  I do not think Jesus overlooked it.  I think he merely knew that while on the surface the commanding part seems to save life daily with its schedules to be kept, the quiet place is the place where meaning is fingered and absorbed.  This is the needful thing.

Enjoy this poem, Mary and Martha by Gabriela Mistral.

They were born together, lived together,
ate together – Martha and Mary.
They closed the same door,
drank from the same well,
were watched by one thicket,
clothed by one light.

Martha’s cups and dishes clattered,
Her kettles bubbled.

Her chicken yard teemed with roosters,

a whirr of plover and dove.
She bustled to and fro

lost in a cloud of feathers.

Martha cut the air, reigned

over meals and linen,

governed wine press and beehives,

ruled the minute, the hour, the day...

A wounded outcry sounded

wherever she came and went.
Dishes, doors, bolts clamored
as to a belled sheep.
But all grew hushed when her sister passed by,
thin keening and Hail Marys.

In a whitewashed corner,

Mary in blue Majolica
wove some strange thing in the quiet air
though she never raised her hand.
What was this thing that never finished,
never altered or increased?

One golden-eyed noon
while Martha with ten hands in the air
was reshaping old Judea
without a word or sign, Mary passed on.

 She merely grew more languid,

her cheeks withdrawn;
the mark of her body and spirit
imprinted on old lime,
a trembling fern,
a slow stalactite;
no more than a great silence
that no cry or lightening bolt could shatter.

When Martha grew old,
Oven and kitchen grew quiet,
The house gained its sleep,
The ladder lay supine;
and falling asleep,
her flesh shriveling from ruddy to ash,
Martha went to crouch
in Mary’s corner
where with wonder and silence
her mouth scarcely moved…

She asked to go to Mary
and toward her she went,
she went murmuring, “Mary!” – only that,
repeating, "Mary!"
And she called out with such fervor

that without knowing, she departed,

letting loose the filament of breath

that her breasts did not protect.

Now she left ascending the air;
now she was no longer and did not know it….

Thursday in the Seventh week of Easter: Mercy

Lessons: Psalm 105:1-22; Ezekiel 18:1-4, 19-32; Hebrews 7:18-28; Luke 10:25-37

In her groundbreaking book, In a Different Voice, Carol Gilligan asserts that there is a difference in how boys and girls come to moral choice.  Boys, much informed by games in their play, look for the rules which will govern their interactions with others.  Girls, she asserts, will look for the relationships. Boys will generally correct a situation by finding the right rule and reacting to it.  Girls will look to the essential relationships and change play to preserve those relationships.  Her work, while controversial, proved groundbreaking because it took seriously how gender and gender formation play into moral choice.  Her observations can be reduced to a notion that when looking at a situation, men will tend to ask of themselves what is the "right" answer. They will ask themselves the why, what, when questions. Women, on the other hand, will tend to solve an ethical dilemma without trying to hurt anyone.  I think it is important to see these as tendencies rather than hard rules.  We are always more complex than our generalizations allow.

So much of scripture centers on moral choice. Ezekiel today is concerned with who pays the price for poor moral choice.  Is it paid by the current generation involved? Is it paid by our children? Are we paying for our parents and grandparents? What happens when good people go wrong and morally wrong people go right?  Is there favoritism by your birth or must you earn your own moral stripes?  Ezekiel actually advances the moral high road.  He understands God to hold us accountable for our own choices while holding a core hope for us. If we go wrong we can repent and be held in forgiveness and mercy. Our lives can grow deep again, find God again. We are not governed by an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  We are held in a relationship which nurtures and forgives.  Has God changed or has humankind's understanding of God shifted?

Jesus is asked by a young lawyer in Luke's Gospel today, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"  Luke 10:25

Jesus responds, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" ²⁷ The Lawyer answers, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."

And Jesus says to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Luke 10:26-29

The issue for this young man was how to tighten the rule.  How to make it clear and manageable.  In this neighbor category, who is in and who is out?  I do not think he is ill willed, but he is looking for the rule.  What he gets instead is relationship, which means to reflect God's relationship to us.  Thus he receives a challenge to be more open, more creative, more related.  I cannot say he is being asked to be more feminine because just like boys, girls rule people outside their play.  "In" groups and "out" groups exist for both genders.

The story of the Good Samaritan that Jesus now tells has so many nuanced points. We do not know to which national group the beaten man belongs. The priest and the Levite might well be ritually clean and going to Jerusalem to do their religious duty; by touching blood and having to repeat their extended ritual they would be encumbered, thus delaying their duty on behalf of the Temple.  Which is the higher good?

The one giving the aid is outside of the accepted group. The young lawyer would most likely have expected little of a Samaritan since Jews viewed them as holding a distorted faith in God, as inferior.  Assuming the beaten man is a Jew, the Samaritan has out performed by much.  Not only does he show care, he will return to restore the inn keeper's loss.  So who is the neighbor? 

He said, "The one who showed him mercy."

Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." Luke 10:37

My seventh grade English teacher once told a story of the Great Depression.  I don't remember why.  Her father was a college professor in the South.  When the Depression hit and his income shrank, he had to tell their long term cook and maid he needed to let her go.  You must understand that she was woven into their lives, in a "less than" kind of way. Southern folk lore usually overlooks this point. She was under paid as was the Southern custom. I guess her to be single and living either with them or humbly.  When told there was no money to pay her, she took the professor to a rug which she pulled back to reveal her savings.  "I reckon we are OK for now," she said.

The challenge of the story is that our rules often don't work .  We never know who will be the Good Samaritan.  We don't know if it will be us.  We don't know if it will be the "other."  We only know that it is a sure pathway to the heart of God.

Go and do likewise.

Wednesday in the Seventh Week of Easter: Investing in the future

Lessons: Psalms 101, 109; Ezekiel 11:14-25; Hebrews 7:1-17; Luke 10:17-24.

This week has seen two events in our family.  First there was Mother's Day with a visit to Mom and a planting of new perennials in her garden. Perennials are an investment in the future.  They are not as instantly showy as annuals.  They take time to settle in and must be balanced with other perennials which have different times of blooming.  A well balanced perennial garden has something blooming at most times and many areas of green either resting or waiting to bloom.  The joy of a perennial garden is seeing what now is blooming, even as you wait for what is next. A few spaces left for annuals gives you comfort while you await the next revelation.  It amuses me that at eighty-five Mother began this new garden and now at eighty-six she is adding, willing to wait.

The second event was Will receiving his Eagle Scout award at age fourteen, the youngest in the group to receive this award. Such an award is also an investment in the future. Someone made the comment that scouting is not an efficient system nor is this award.  Tasks could more easily be accomplished by someone already in possession of the required skills. As a boy works for his Eagle he must prove capability by advancing through various levels of scouting, earning twenty-one merit badges and learning and showing leadership skills. Once at the level of Life Scout, he must design an acceptable project which is to benefit a charitable or civic organization other than scouting. He is to design the project, coordinate the  efforts of others who will help him from design to execution. Significant hours of his time and others' will be involved.  The projects presented were tangible, lasting and required both physical skills and leadership skills to complete.

As I listened to the adults who honored the Scouts, and the Scouts themselves, one theme was core. Each young man had learned the interdependence of the whole.  Adults and youth in interdependent relationship grew more useful and aware of relationship.  The award was important not in and of itself but as an outward sign of these deeply woven relationships of helpfulness and ongoing creativity.  There was pride in self but it hung on pride in others, in relationship. There remains the invitation for these boys to go on and help younger boys also grow into leaders through service and patient mentoring.

In today's Gospel, the disciples are reporting in to Jesus after they have gone on a healing and teaching mission.  At this mid-place in Luke's Gospel, they have learned much.  Jesus sent them out two by two.  They are excited at their achievements and I suppose on the passing of their individual doubts. 

"Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" Luke 10:17

Then they are gently but clearly warned. 

"See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."  Luke 10:19-20

He will go on to honor God for the gifts that pass through him and honor that these few disciples have seen and been part of the flow of God's revelation of care and healing in the world.  He then quietly tells them,

"Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!  For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it."  Luke 10:23-24

Yes they achieved much, what was expected of them. Others before them longed and lived for this day, were just as worthy as they are.  Yet it is essential the disciples realize this was not done simply by their own abilities and learned skills of articulation and prayer.  Something more significant was passing through them, a deep and lasting relationship to God, whom we see through Jesus, manifested in actions of care, faith and healing.  It is this relationship to God and one another in which they do well to rejoice.  It is this being an open conduit of grace, of God's love, from God to humankind that should cause them to rejoice while remaining focused on the origin of the gifts.

So much in life is already here and we enter into its energy and blessing and pass it along. 

Perennials are cultivated between God's first gift of the flowering plants and humankind's arrangement and experimentation. From here we create gardens of pleasure more deeply enjoyed when we perceive the Creator through them.

Human relationships, service and care were created for us to enter into with creative joy.  When we perceive the intention and heart of God behind this power to create and care, we grow deeper and more alive.  As we learn by Christ's example to open and listen to each other, to see the places of need and serviceability, and to join in this flow of life, we become so much more than our isolated selves.

What remains a wonder is that not everyone will see this connectivity between us all emanating from God.  Our faith sees this by Christ's articulation.  When we hold this faith, Will's bench of quiet reflection built in a school yard becomes more than design, wood and screws, and companionship.  It becomes a gateway to heaven where all our names are written, a place of reflection where we assume a listening position and even here can look for the usefulness of our lives.

So too does Mom's perennial garden.

On the road

I will post soon.  I have been on the road tending to family.  

Blessing,

Carr

The Seventh Sunday of Easter: Mothers and imagination

Lessons: Psalms 66-67; Ezekiel 3:16-27; Ephesians 2:1-10; Matthew 10:24-33, 40-42

All of us I believe have some desire to see God, to gain some glimpse of God from the time of our first God awareness.  I suppose there are cultures who have lost the gift of teaching God awareness, but I do not live there.  I do know that a theory I was taught decades ago was that children are born with this awareness fully in place.  The role of guardian or parent is to help the child not forget what he or she knows but to grow into it. To color it with vital shades of wholeness and hope, I would add.  These are the shades we see vividly in Jesus if we care to look.

On this Mother's Day, which this year falls on the Seventh Sunday of Easter, it is fitting to recall the vital role of parenting in faith formation. For many of us the least conditional form of love we find is from our parents and often our mother who has carried us into life.  Where this is not true we are blessed if there is a grandparent, godparent or other adult who has adopted this role. The parental task in faith formation is first to love from the bond of one who creates life and releases it well guided into its potential.  That guiding and releasing will involve imaginative play, the joy of seeing what lies in the child's imagination.  The imagination nurtured in positive, caring possibility is where religious awareness finds its roots.  When this imagination is tortured with violence, negative stimulation, devaluation, one must wonder what becomes of the religious imagination.  Many of us develop with some mixture of the positive and negative.  Notice that classic fairytales are a mixture of both positive and negative, but even in say Hansel and Gretel the good wins out. Care becomes the final lesson of love, both that of the child and the good parent and providence.

Jesus uses this religious imagination to stimulate religious hope and action.  In today's Gospel we have a collection of teachings which reach into our imagination and call us to deeper life.  Two themes are clear.  There is a process in God's mind for our growth.  It is becoming like our Master, Teacher.  We do not need to be all knowing but to know enough to follow. Secondly, there is evil which will seek to misname the good as evil.  Yet stay with the good for this will make you, save you, develop your godly character. In this journey to stay the good, God accompanies you and values you above all else.  Finally we welcome God when we welcome each other in God's name. Even the smallest act of welcome, a cup of water shared, is noticed and rewarded by God who knows our heart.

And I must wonder, do we comprehend this last act as meaningful because in our infancy and childhood we were so dependent on adults to give us drink and food and care and they did.  Sometimes it was our mother, sometimes a grandparent, sometimes a hired caregiver.  Their care was god-like to us. And where this was missing, it can take real work of care to restore this lost place of first intimacy, love well imagined.

So today I am grateful to a mother of four who cared well enough for me to trust.  Who saw that I remembered God in my childhood.  Behind her I am grateful for grandparents who loved me into imagination and Christ. I am grateful for two of them in particular. As I imagine backwards I am grateful for those who became spiritual mothers and fathers for me and aided my imagination and growth into a godly life.

I imagine Mother's Day to be so much more than a Hallmark Card. Behind it is what God imagined motherhood, parenthood to be, a place where we taste love we first know as God's gift woven into us. This is the place we are ever to remember. If we have forgotten, Jesus can help us imagine it anew.

Saturday in the Sixth Week of Easter: Listen

Lessons: Psalms 87, 90; Ezekiel 3:4-17; Hebrews 5:7-14; Luke 9:37-50.

Years ago I was a summer chaplain in training in an institution for the intellectually disabled in Taunton, Mass.  One of my fellow chaplains, Lenny, was assigned to the youth wards while I ministered to the older adult unit. Lenny had in his care both intellectually disabled youth and those with Cerebral Palsy.  Kevin's case seemed severe in that both his movement and his speech were greatly effected. After a young woman patient said Kevin was very smart, Lenny took him on for a case study which meant he would spend especially long periods of time with him to open a space for Kevin to experience care and connection.

 As Lenny began to listen and learned to hear through Kevin's labored speech he was shocked to discover that Kevin had the Pre-Vatican Two Missal memorized and was liturgically very astute. It seems before Kevin was institutionalized, the only book he had was this missal.  He had taught himself to read and since it was all he had, he memorized it.  Beyond this he integrated its rubrics, understood the technical aspects of worship, the rules that held liturgy together to create a cogent flow. There was a miracle or healing of sorts here.  The healing was Lenny's and mine by extension. Our clouded eyes which saw physical and mental limitations as a malformation, a "less than" quality gave way to a wonder at the life all God's creation longs to embrace, to feel strong and capable enough to enjoy life.  Perhaps it was Kevin's wonderful drooling laugh that got us past ourselves.

In Luke's gospel, Jesus had descended from the Mount of the Transfiguration where the wonder of his full life peered outward upon three of his disciples. What greets him is his usual healing ministry and his disciples' limits in taking it on in his absence. Jesus comments on the limit to their faith and its effect on limiting healing. He heals where they could not.  He shares the growing revelation that he will soon suffer. 

"Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands."  But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was concealed from them, so that they could not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this saying.  An argument arose among them as to which one of them was the greatest.      Luke 9:44-46   

Clearly the Gospelor has reflected back on this moment and how the disciples missed what was put before them. Having healed where the disciples could not and shared the startling revelation perhaps gained on the mountain that  Jesus was to suffer, They go back to the infinitely mundane, which of them is greatest.  It is as if there is a spiritual speech impediment here, not so much in the speaking as in the comprehension. They do not seem to know how to listen or to go outside themselves to seek understanding.

A child is then placed before them. Here is one viewed as limited, the domain of women, not individually valued as distinct and of adult notice. Jesus then says, "Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me; for the least among all of you is the greatest."  (Luke 9:48)  

Without missing a beat, they go on to complain that someone outside their in group is healing in Jesus name.  They have forbidden it. To which Jesus responds, "Who ever is not against us is for us."
Looking back they must have been surprised at themselves.  All these moments to listen and hear obviously missed.  Their stations all greedily defined and their ability to recognize the profound change that was afoot.  Spiritual authority is present for those who have enough faith to seek it and act within it, even outside the core group.  The powerless imagination of a child, so often not noticed as open to real faith and growth, is here elevated over grown men.

Faith, it seems, is a combination of a willing openness to listen and then listen deeper; to get beyond our ego limitations by slowing enough to take God's presence in, especially among those of limited station and power, for both the "weaker ones" and the mature.  We never know who will heal whom or where we are blind and do not see. 

Kevin was left so far outside most people's notice, powerless such that he was institutionalized.  Yet he taught both Lenny, and me by extension, much.  God was at work and only those who could stop and listen would ever know.  His faith pulled the cloud from my eyes.

Today is a good day to slow down somewhere and just listen.  Someone's story may be your healing, my healing.

Friday in the Sixth Week of Easter: Transformed by Mystery.

Lessons: Psalms 85-86; Ezekiel 1:28-3:3; Hebrews 4:14-5:6; Luke 9:28-36

Last night we fulfilled our annual journey back to Grace Church in Newark, NJ, to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the parish 176 years ago.  The music and worship were exquisite as always. On this occasion my predecessor was made Rector Emeritus, in his eighty second year.  He so loves this parish and has given many years of quiet background service since his retirement.  It was sweet to watch him, firm of mind as ever, receive this gentle honor, be held in so kind a regard.

What was also sweet was to be told in succinct fashion how as a young man he had come upon a mystical kind of worship of God.  How this form of worship caught his imagination and heart even though it was not usual in all courts. He told his bishop, not expecting support.  His bishop, a wise man, then sent him to Grace Church to learn from a master the wealth to be found in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. At the heart of this tradition is a humility of the human creature seeking the glory of God in everyday places.  If bread and wine and water and oil can be animated with the mystical Spirit of God's abiding care, so can the human creature. Music, incense, silence, beauty, focus and prayer are the avenues we travel to enter the place of mystery and the fullness of God.  Together they weave a receptivity in us for the Holy Other to enter.

And then the Holy Other turns us outward to one another.  The great love at the heart of God is not content to leave us in the mystical, but turns us to each other as a place of divine service which is all about gentle care. To miss this step is to miss our core.  It is this care which has animated Father Bowen over so many years and was recalled last night.

As if to remind me of this principle of human transformation by the mystery of God's great love, when mass was over, William came looking for me.  William is a man I knew most of my fifteen years at Grace.  A Viet Nam veteran, broken by Agent Orange, never again to be fully whole.  He did not worship for all I knew.  He always battled drug addiction.  I employed him to do outdoor tasks at the Church from time to time.  I had named him one of the Lazarus' at my gate as I listened to his life. Last night was his birthday and always I gave him a gift.  So there he was with three hats in his hand for me and gently but insistently reminding me it was his birthday.  He flattered me with how he missed me.  So I invaded my wallet and offered him a gift. Will he use it well?  I am not to know. But I had left worship with Christ in my heart and had only this small space to offer him five minutes to care and hear his life and need.

The lessons are this day about glory seen and digested.  Ezekiel sees the glory of God over against the brokenness of Israel. Then he is handed a scroll of God's discerning and judging word, filled with lamentation and woe. Eat, he is told and when he does it becomes sweet on his lips.  It will be his task to share this word with others, the nation.

Jesus goes up the mountain with his inner circle to pray.  There he is transfigured, turned to dazzling whiteness in the company of two of the great fathers of faith. Peter drowsily notices the scene and as he articulates, "It is well that we are here..." it is past. He is impacted by the glory, "This is my Son, listen to him."  After the Resurrection and Ascension, this glory will make better sense.  For now they will leave this mystical worship and return to listen to life and human need. They will watch Jesus just filled with the fullness of God, return to ordinary daily care that emanates from divine love and awareness. Later they will catch how glory and service are flip sides on God's love.

It reminds me that when we have entered into worship, when we have tasted divine love and care, when we have eaten it in the Scriptures and Sacrament, Holy Communion, we are turned back out into the world of the ordinary and daily.  What will we then do with this glory eaten? Will it transform our awareness?  Will we see in each other arenas of care waiting to be entered in the ordinary? Will we notice that it is here, in the ordinary that God has placed us?  And we are here placed not just to daily live our lives, but to be transformed by the care with which we see each other, Christ's care.  By love which will work away at us, we become so much more.  We will also see in each other a potential more fully realized as we handle one another with this transforming love.

I am grateful today for Grace Church and what I learned there.  For the mentoring of George Bowen+ and the fragile William.  Through each I have seen something of the mystery of God's care.

Who will God use next to open me?  Who has and does God use to open you to the mystical and the daily?  Such is the way of God.