SpiritMatters Monthly December 2011

The hopes and fears of all the years...

If you think that Christmas is just about hope and love and light and happiness then you are setting yourself up for a huge disappointment come December the 25^th. Despite all the carols played constantly over the radio, this time of year isn’t always the “Hap, Happiest season of all.” Let’s face it, December is probably the most stressful month of the year for most of us: the crowds, the shopping, the traffic, the parties, the Christmas lists, and that’s just if you are lucky. For some, the holiday stressors take on an entirely different dimension: fear, depression, loneliness, anxiety. The darkness of December isn’t always outside our doors; sometimes it’s within us as well.

We all have this cookie-cutter image of what a happy holiday is supposed to look like, but most of us know deep down that our celebrations are rarely, if ever, perfect. Despite so much commentary and complaint about the commercialization of Christmas in recent decades, the reality is that holiday stress is hardly a new thing. If you spend much time watching old Christmas movies over the next few weeks you may notice a theme throughout many of them: anxiety, fear and desperation. Consider the following list of holiday classics:

A Christmas Carol

It’s a Wonderful Life

Miracle on 34^th Street

The Bishop’s Wife

Christmas in Connecticut

White Christmas

A Christmas Story

And yes even, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

Each of these classic stories about Christmas includes at least one or more characters that are driven to their absolute limit by the demands that life places upon them this time of year. Even Charlie Brown was overwhelmed by Christmas stress and that was over 50 years ago! Anxiety and fear are not a product of this generation, they are a product of every generation. Things like the media and the economy might make our problems worse, but they certainly don’t create them. We are human; and humans, for whatever reason, get stressed out and depressed this time of year. Maybe it is the weather, maybe it is the darkness, maybe it is something more profound and mysterious, but whatever it is, it is real and we need to be willing to address it and deal with it. Trying to act as if Christmas is merely a happy time, and nothing more, is destructive and dishonest. If we take the time to look closely at our holiday traditions, we just might find that they actually do try to address the great range of emotions we feel this time of year. The next time you are sitting in a church and suffering through a boring sermon (it happens), grab the hymnal in front of you and actually read the text of some of your favorite Christmas carols. You might be surprised to find out that these hymns, which many of us think we know by heart, actually have a lot to say about the darkness and brokenness in our lives. See if you can identify which popular carols these verses come from:

“Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long;

beneath the heavenly hymn have rolled two thousand years of wrong;

and waring humankind hears not the tidings which they bring;

O hush the noise and cease the strife and hear the angels sing!”

“For he is our life-long pattern; daily when on earth he grew,

He was tempted, scorned, rejected,

Tears and smiles like us he knew.

Thus he feels for all our sadness, and he shares in all our gladness.”

“Why lies he in such mean estate where ox and ass are feeding?

Good Christian, fear: for sinners here the silent Word is pleading”

“O Flower, whose fragrance tender with sweetness fills the air,

Dispel in glorious splendor the darkness everywhere:

True man, yet very God, from sin and death now save us, and share our every load.”

“Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child,

Where misery cries out to thee, Son of the mother mild;

Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door,

The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.”

These songs were not written to be sung by children; they were written to be sung by adults who know very well just how painful and dark the world can be. I get very frustrated when I hear people say that Christmas is a holiday about children or for children. It is not. Granted, there is great joy and fun in having little ones around that still have faith in the magic of Santa Claus, but that is just the point: they still have faith, they still believe. It is the adults in the world that need to be reminded of the power of God. We are the ones who need to hear the message of hope; we are the ones who need to be reminded that God’s love can heal our brokenness. Christmas is stressful, and we only need to review the story of the Nativity (cue Linus with his blanket) to be reminded that it always has been. Our holiday celebrations may not compare to those we remember as children, but then again, we aren’t children anymore; we know full well how tough the world can be. We need Christmas in a much different way than our children do: we no longer have visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads.

Of course the holidays can add stress to our lives, but they can also give us the added hope and inspiration that we need to get through that stress and keep going. If we listen to every verse of our Christmas carols, we just might realize that they are about hope AND fear. If we revisit some classic Christmas stories, we just might realize that much of the stress that we feel this time of year isn’t unique to us or to our generation, but is a part of the bigger picture which is Christmas. Of course, we could just do away with the holiday: we could take down the trees and the lights. We could blow out the candles, turn off the carols and cancel the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. We could get rid of everything that is Christmas, but it wouldn’t get rid of the stress in our lives. Christmas can help us to find what light there is in a world that can at times seem very dark. Know that every emotion you feel this time of year (joy or sadness, fear or relief, hope or despair) is a part of the Christmas story. Perhaps Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal Priest in Philadelphia, said it best when he wrote this carol in 1868:

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by;

Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light;

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Blessings!

SpiritMatters Monthly November 2011

For what we may be about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful...

Have you ever been really scared? I am not talking about the type of fear you have when you are walking through a haunted house or watching a horror movie. I am talking about the kind of fear that comes when you realize that your own death or downfall could be very imminent. If you have ever been really sick or almost in a fatal accident then you might understand the type of fear I am talking about. It is a horrible feeling to suddenly realize your own mortality or frailty. Most of us go through life without much thought of just how fragile human life really is. We may be aware of death, but for most of us it is at best a distant reality, and not something we worry about on a daily basis. With so many advances in agriculture and medicine and public health we have transformed our society from one whose primary concern is survival into one whose primary concern is comfort. Not that I am complaining.

Personally, I love good food, I like nice clothes, my house is warm and cozy and I just finished a round of antibiotics for an upper respiratory infection. I have no desire to live without the blessings of modern society, but I do think that it is important that we recognize those blessings as such. One of the side effects of the fear, which our ancestors used to live with on a daily basis, was thankfulness. Whenever the threat of imminent death passed by, the natural and immediate response was one of thanksgiving for being spared. If you have ever had a near-miss then you probably know the feeling: that sudden realization that your life is not your own and that it was only by a moment of pure grace that you are still alive. Having your life flash before your eyes is a real and horrifying feeling (and incidentally, it’s one of the reasons that I hate driving), but there is something to be said for that momentary recognition of the power of God’s grace that comes as we realize that we are still OK. True thankfulness only occurs when we recognize that we have been saved by a force completely outside ourselves.

The first Thanksgivings in America were not just harvest celebrations, they were solemn occasions wherein the early settlers truly gave thanks to God for the fact that they were still alive, which was something that they knew they couldn’t take for granted. When you consider that almost half of the English pilgrims that settled in Plymouth Colony died the first winter of malnutrition, disease or exposure, then it makes perfect sense that the survivors would take the time to give thanks for being spared. But the pilgrims at Plymouth were not the first settlers to proclaim a day of thanksgiving: the English settlers in Jamestown and Newfoundland had thanksgivings, as did the French in New France (now Quebec) and the Spanish in Florida. Solemn days of thanksgiving were nothing new to the European settlers that landed in the New World. It was common for communities to set aside days for intentional prayer and thanksgiving whenever they had been delivered from some calamity (like disease or famine). Not all of these thanksgivings were centered around food either, and in fact during some of them participants were actually asked to fast, NOT feast. What they all had in common was that they recognized the fragility of life and how much we as humans (despite all of our skill and cleverness) actually depend upon God’s grace.

During the hurricane a few months ago, I remember hearing a few people comment that it was the first time in their lives that they had actually seen empty shelves in the grocery store. That is really astounding if you stand back and think about it: for most of us we never have to think about not having enough food. Most of us spend our lives obsessed with the reality that we have too much food. We might stop to offer a prayer of thanks for our food, but usually not because we were actually worried that it wouldn’t be there. We take food for granted, along with so many other things. Sometimes it takes a crisis (even a minor one) to remind us that many of the things we enjoy in life are blessings and not promises.

Our world has not always had stores of food that never goes bad. Most of human existence has been about communities struggling to survive, and not just fighting over who gets to be the most comfortable. In some parts of the world, famine is still a very real issue and daily survival is something not to be taken for granted. It would be a shame if in our lives the only time we were truly thankful was when we were scared to death. How much better might our lives be if we realized how much we depend upon God’s grace and the help of our neighbors? Wouldn’t it be better if our lives were filled with that sense of relief and joy that comes from true thankfulness and gratitude?

Thanksgiving is not about turkey. It is about realizing that our lives are filled with blessings that we routinely take for granted: family, friends, food, and good health. Decide what you want your life to be filled with: blessings or burdens. The one that you spend the most time focusing on will most likely be the one you get. The great benefit of having a day of thanksgiving scheduled every year is that it reminds us that we don’t need to be scared to death to remember what a blessing life really is.

SpiritMatters Monthly October 2011

No self-respecting Southerner uses instant grits.”

Growing up in the South, I have eaten my fair share of grits. They have always been a staple of my diet and even today I find myself reaching for the bag of grits on the shelf when I am looking for a hot comfort food that goes with just about anything. Many Northerners know about the South’s love affair with grits because it was a crucial part of the plot in the popular film “My Cousin Vinny.” Grits are a tradition in the South that European settlers learned from the Native Americans and in ages past many poorer Southerners survived on grits and not much else.

In the early 1900s, a horrible disease known as Pellagra (which is a niacin deficiency) became epidemic in the South, particularly in the poorer regions. Originally it was thought that Pellagra was caused by some germ or toxin in corn, but that explanation didn’t make much sense given that corn had always been a staple in the Southern diet. Why was this strange disease becoming a problem all of a sudden? Because the traditional method of making grits involved soaking corn kernels in lime water (the mineral lime, not the citrus fruit) before grinding them. This simple step makes niacin nutritionally available in corn, and therefore Native Americans and early settlers could survive on a diet of corn without many ill side effects. In the early 20^th century, with the advent of so many new farming and milling methods in the South, the traditional method of preparing corn, including the preparation of grits, was replaced by what was thought to be a more sensible and faster method of just grinding the corn without soaking it. The results were disastrous: by 1916 approximately 100,000 Southerners had developed Pellagra and many died for the simple reason that they dispensed with an old tradition that they didn’t understand. The Native Americans didn’t know anything about niacin or specifically why soaking the corn in lime was important, they had just learned (undoubtedly through trial and error) that this was a step that needed to be taken.

I am always suspicious whenever any individual or group dismisses tradition lightly. It is a particularly nasty side-effect of so much wonderful innovation: we fall into the habit of thinking that the new way of doing things is always the better way, and it simply isn’t. Believe it or not, people have been having good ideas for a very long time. In our desire for creativity and innovation, we often forget the importance of wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge that comes largely from time and experience. If creativity is a spark, then wisdom is a slow-burning ember. We need wisdom because it keeps us from having to learn every one of life’s lessons the hard way. Tradition is one way in which the wisdom of our ancestors is handed down, but we have fallen into the belief that we must understand a tradition in order for it to be of value to us. We did not understand the purpose of washing corn kernels in lime water before milling them, but that doesn’t mean that tradition had no value. By dispensing with the tradition we were forced to learn the hard way just how important it was.

If the Pellagra outbreak in the South can teach us anything, it should be the danger of modern arrogance. Modern arrogance is the idea that we have only really figured the world out in the last 60 years or so and that every idea, every tradition and every practice of previous generations should be regarded with suspicion or condescension. Modern arrogance teaches us that people in the past were superstitious, ignorant and backward and that we, in contrast, are more enlightened and more clever. It just isn’t so. Next time you look at a medieval cathedral remind yourself that this building was built without power tools and calculators. How many of our modern buildings do you think will still be around in 500 or 1000 years? I am all for progress and innovation, but it should be done with humility and respect paid to tradition. We forget that traditions have had to stand the test of time, which is usually a far more severe judge than we could ever be. Give traditional ideas and methods a chance and don’t easily dismiss them. We may not understand everything our ancestors did, but that is probably more a sign of our ignorance than theirs.

SpiritMatters Monthly September 2011

The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit;

A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

In about the year 325AD, the Roman emperor Constantine sent his mother, Helena, to the Middle East on a very special mission: she was to find any artifacts that she could that pertained to the life of Jesus of Nazareth and preserve them, as well as any holy sites associated with Jesus and his followers. Helena was to spare no expense to find and preserve whatever remained from the earthly life of Christ. Two of the oldest and most sacred churches in the world owe their existence to Helena: The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Helena’s most famous discovery by far, was what was reported to be the true cross on which Jesus was crucified. While excavating around the site that local tradition claimed to be the location of Christ’s tomb, Helena found, unceremoniously dumped in the bottom of a ditch, three large wooden crosses. Surely, she thought, one of these must be the cross on which Jesus was crucified. When one woman was miraculously healed by touching one of the crosses, Helena believed that she had discovered the true cross of Jesus and fragments of that piece of wood were distributed throughout the world. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is built over the site where Helena discovered the crosses as well as the two places where tradition states that Jesus was crucified and buried.

It would be easy for us in the modern world to forget how powerful a symbol the cross once was. It is now so casually used and worn (in varying degrees of tastefulness I might add), that it is entirely possible to overlook the fact that this was an instrument of torture that represented not only the death of Jesus, but the deaths of countless others whom the Romans crucified. Jesus’ followers couldn’t bear to look at a cross after his death and the cross didn’t become the universal symbol of Christianity until much later. It was probably no accident that the actual cross was thrown into a ditch and forgotten for 300 years. It was a symbol of defeat and weakness and pain and it reminded Christ’s followers of a horrific event that they just couldn’t bear to face. But Christ’s followers eventually overcame their aversion to the cross by transforming it into a symbol of life, and not just death. The cross became a reminder of Christ’s life and the eternal life that he promised to his followers and for that reason it became a treasured symbol of Christianity and one of the most recognized symbols in the world.

In the days immediately following September, 11^th 2001, it became unbearable for many people to view media coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center. The pain was still too real. For many of us the pain still is too real. In the Pastoral Care Office is a binder that is left over from the weeks and months following September 11^th. It is filled with photographs and missing person signs left by family members desperately looking for their loved ones. I have to admit that I find this book almost unbearable to look through, knowing now that these people are no longer missing, just missed. I don’t know any of these people, but I do know that each one of them was loved by someone; each one of them had a family; each one of them had dreams. While many people are mourning for specific loved ones, some of us mourn for people we never knew. There is something pretty amazing about our capacity to connect with complete strangers and maybe one of the things that we learn during a major crisis is how much we really do need one another.

On the morning of September 11^th, 2001 the terrible, hateful actions of a few individuals got a lot of media coverage. What is less obvious is how many people responded to such hatred with courage and love. How many people ran into burning buildings to try to save complete strangers? How many people offered food or assistance or shelter? How many people worked long hours trying to rescue victims or recover bodies? How many people from around the world sent their condolences? How many stories are there of love, courage and compassion that we will never know? The most amazing thing about September the 11^th, was that on that day and in the days immediately following, nobody was a stranger. We were all in this together. Maybe that is why so many people feel so profoundly wounded by that morning even though they never actually met any of the victims: by some sort of revelation we realized that we were all family.

It took a while for the cross to transform from a symbol of death and pain into a symbol of love and hope, but eventually it did happen and now the Church observes Holy Cross Day on September 14th. Any church lucky enough to have a fragment of the True Cross typically displays it on that day. Now it is fragments of World Trade Center steel that have been distributed around the world in the form of various memorials, in the hope that they too can bring about healing. It will take a lot more than 10 years for us to be able to fully appreciate and understand the events of September 11^th, if we ever do, but it will only be possible if we can look beyond the hatred of the few that began that day, and remember the love that was expressed in how we responded. If you spend too much time hating something you usually condemn yourself into becoming what you despise. It’s just not worth it. Despite the media attention that was given to the hateful acts of the few, it was the loving and courageous acts of the many that actually won the day. Love may not be as showy or spectacular as hatred, but it is far more enduring and far more powerful. Whether it is on September the 11^th or September the 14^th the lesson is essentially the same: love always wins.

SpiritMatters Monthly August 2011

To love another person is to see the face of God...

In the book of Genesis, God states that: “It is not good for man to be alone.” God neglected, however, to elaborate on just how hard it would be for people to live together. In the biblical story, it didn’t take very long at all for Adam and Eve’s relationship to encounter serious trouble, and THEY were living in the Garden of Eden. It should come as no surprise to us then that relationships continue to be the central struggle of most of our lives. Whether it is with a significant other, a family member, a friend, a co-worker or a stranger on the street, the relationships we have with the other people in our life can be a blessing or a challenge and frequently they can be both at the same time. They are the source of our greatest joy, and of our greatest pain.

We all want to be loved. There is something deeply affirming and gratifying about having people in your life that want to be close to you either emotionally or physically. It gives us hope that the universe may not be as cold and lonely as we otherwise might imagine. None of us is perfect. We all have moments when we don’t feel loveable: a bad hair day, a bad mood day, or just a bad day period. We all have things about ourselves that we would like to change. It is important to have people in your life that can see past your flaws even when you can’t. The people in your life that truly love you know about all the skeletons in your closet and don’t care. They are the people who have seen you without your make-up or your game-face. They are the people who know who you truly are and not just the image that you project to the rest of the world. True love can really only happen when you truly know someone. It is amazing how many supposedly serious relationships are based upon false pretenses. The world can be a very difficult place in which to live, and we cannot be vulnerable to everyone all the time, but we all need at least one or two people in our lives to whom we can reveal our truest self.

On August 6^th, many Christian churches observe the Feast of the Transfiguration, which memorializes an event mentioned in the gospels where Jesus takes three of his disciples to the top of a mountain to reveal to them who he truly is. We know from the gospel accounts that Jesus was closer to some of his disciples than he was to others. It was only to Peter, James and John that Jesus felt comfortable revealing his innermost self. Perhaps in that moment of transfiguration, when Jesus revealed his true nature to the three disciples on the mountain, his desire was to be known and loved for who he truly was, and not just for what others wanted him to be. It is a desire that I believe most of us share. There is an iconic image of Christ holding open his chest to reveal his heart. It is meant to convey just how vulnerable God is willing to be in order to be loved by us. To open your heart to someone and reveal your innermost thoughts and feelings is an extreme act of vulnerability, but it is really the only way to be truly loved. If life were simply about survival of the fittest we would probably never allow anyone else to truly know who we are; it would simply be too risky. Luckily life appears to be about more than just survival and we each have the opportunity to be known and loved by others in a way that helps us overcome our own humanity. Perhaps the desire to be loved for who we are and not just for what others want us to be is a trait that humans have in common with God. Maybe that desire to be known and loved is a part of the divine image in which the book of Genesis claims we were created.

Who knows you? Who are the people in your life that know all your baggage and don’t care? Who can you be completely and totally honest with? Pay attention to the people in your life that pay attention to you. Hold on to the people that want to know what makes you tick; the people that know your foibles; the people that can anticipate your thoughts and actions. Those are the people that want to know and love you for who you truly are, and aren’t just looking to cast you into a role that they have already written.

As the story goes, immediately after Adam and Eve took the bite of that forbidden fruit, their first inclination was to try to cover themselves up and conceal themselves from God. Our reality as humans living in a broken world is that we aren’t able to reveal ourselves completely to every person we come across. Not every relationship in our life is meant to be deep and meaningful, and they aren’t all meant to be life-long. But pay attention when someone opens their heart to you. It is in those knowing and loving relationships that we experience how it feels to see another person with open eyes and a vulnerable heart. It might just be the way that God looks at us.

SpiritMatters Monthly May 2011

Get up, stand up...

Standing is a sign of respect. When I was in primary school my class was taught to stand whenever an adult entered the room. Soldiers are taught to stand at attention in the presence of a superior officer. When a priest enters the church at the beginning of the service the congregation stands; they do the same for the bride at a wedding. Gentlemen used to stand whenever a lady entered the room. In royal protocol, it is customary to stand whenever a king or queen enters the room, or to stand whenever a king or queen stands.

If you have ever been to a performance of Handel’s Messiah, then you are likely to have noticed that audiences frequently stand during the Halleluiah Chorus. Why? When Handel’s Messiah was first premiered in London, the performance was attended by King George II. When the choir began to sing the Halleluiah Chorus the king stood up, and because the king was standing everyone else in the audience had to stand as well and thus began a tradition that lasts to this day. But why did King George stand at that precise moment? The answer lies in the text of the chorus itself:

Halleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth…

King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Because Christ was being hailed as “King of Kings” by the choir, King George stood as a sign of respect to a greater king than himself. George’s very simple gesture sent a very powerful message: even he was subject to a higher power.

We often overlook or undervalue just how powerful physical language can be, but it can convey messages much more efficiently than our mouths can. It is trite, but true: actions speak louder than words. Regardless of what we say with our lips, or body language or our gestures will almost always give away our true thoughts or feelings. Countless books have been written to coach people on how to use body language effectively in the workplace and how to be aware of the non-verbal cues that we send others and that they in turn send us.

Physical language has just as much power in our faith lives as well. How we behave around holy objects or in our houses of worship says much more about what we actually think about God than what we profess with our lips. It is for this reason that the Church has at times paid close attention to the ritual actions and postures that people have during worship. One of the proclamations made by the First Council of Nicaea in 325AD was that Christians should stand during the service on Sundays and throughout Easter. It was felt that kneeling was too penitential and focused too much upon the sinfulness of the individual worshiper and not enough upon the dignity and respect owed to God. To this day many Christian traditions still stand during the Holy Eucharist.

Opinions and customs and postures have changed over the years, but the need to ensure that what we say is consistent with what we do has not. Much of what our mother’s taught us in the way of manners were not arbitrary rules of behavior, but guidelines to keep us from unintentionally offending others by not paying attention to our actions or our physical language. Having good manners is not about making yourself feel superior, it is about monitoring your actions in order to make the people around you feel comfortable.

The idea of standing as a sign of respect when a king, queen or someone of superior rank enters the room may seem antiquated to us today. Our society has shown a preference for familiarity over formality in recent decades and many of the symbols of honor and dignity that we once employed have fallen into disuse. The problem is that when our signs and symbols of respect fade away, very frequently the respect does as well. Paying attention to manners and body language and gestures may take a little extra effort, but the respect that it brings to us and gives to others make it worthwhile. Of course it takes more effort to stand during the Halleluiah Chorus rather than just sit there, but then showing respect to others is usually worth the extra effort. King George certainly thought so.

SpiritMatters Monthly April 2011

If you want a trail to stay alive, walk on it.

The ultimate test of a road is not whether or not it is bumpy or smooth, or narrow or wide, or long or short. The ultimate test of a road is whether or not it can take you where you want to go. A road is only as good as its destination; without a destination, a road is simply useless concrete. With a destination, a road can be a crucial means to get where we need to go. On my recent trip to the Middle East I had the opportunity to travel on two very ancient roads: the Via Maris and the King’s Highway. Both of these routes have been used by travelers and traders for thousands of years, and they are as heavily traveled now as they ever were for one very important reason: they still get people where they need to go. The pavement may have changed over the years, but the basic route hasn’t.

When we talk about religion in our modern world we often talk about someone’s beliefs or belief system or theology. We don’t often refer to religion as someone’s road or path, but that may in fact be a better way of thinking about it. Christianity was first referred to as “the Way” and its adherents were called “Followers of the Way.” The first Christian communities had some definite beliefs, but they were not organized around dogma, they were organized around a way of life. The Christians had a goal or destination to which they were headed: they wanted to be saved by their God; to be one with him and to be freed from lives that simply ended in death and meaninglessness. They found in Jesus of Nazareth their way or their road to an eternal promised land, just as the Children of Israel generations before had found in Moses their route to freedom.

God may give us the destination, and God may give us the road to get there, but we are the ones who must have the will to move. As anyone in New Jersey can tell you, even the best road to the greatest destination is still pretty useless if your car is not moving. From the earliest records we have, people of great faith have been people on the move: Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad and the list goes on. All of these individuals had an active faith and not just a passive belief system. They did not look at religion as simply another way to categorize themselves; for them, religion was their road or path to a relationship with God. They had the destination, they had the road to get there, AND they had the will to walk down it. Too often people think that they can just stand out in the middle of the road and wait for God to come by and pick them up, but in the Biblical story of the Exodus, God may protect the Children of Israel and guide them along the way, but ultimately they are the ones who must move, not God.

I have a friend who insists to me all the time that faith is a gift and you either have it or you don’t. I think that that idea is absurd. It is like saying that an athlete is born with big muscles or just develops them over night. We know that our bodies require constant work to stay healthy, so why do we imagine that it is any different with our souls? Our muscles are built over time and depend upon both the food that we eat and the exercise that we do. Faith is built in a similar fashion: it relies upon both the material with which we feed it (what we read, what we watch, and what we listen to) and the work we do to exercise it. The longer we walk along the road the stronger our faith will get. Not that there aren’t stumbling blocks, potholes and detours along the way, there always will be, but ultimately the journey is ours to make or not make. If we fall we can decide to lay there and stop moving or we can get up and keep going. We can trip over others who are sitting in our path, or we can simply go around them, never allowing anyone to prevent us from reaching our destination.

We can think of religion as specific customs, rituals, beliefs, and dogmas that separate us from each other, or we can think of religion as different roads with the common destination of God. The ultimate test of these roads is not how bumpy they are or how hard they are to travel; the ultimate test is whether or not they eventually bring us to God. My religion, or my path, is thousands of years old. Countless millions have walked this way before me, and many continue to walk this way today. I like to imagine that my tradition is like the Via Maris or the King’s Highway: ancient, but still in use because it still gets people where they want to go. But where the road is headed is really only one part of the equation; we also have to ask ourselves how willing we are to actually do the work, walk the path and practice the faith, because in the end, if we aren’t willing to move, any road can take us nowhere.

SpiritMatters Monthly March 2011

And whenever you fast, do not look dismal…’

It never ceases to amaze me.

Americans will latch on to any fad diet with an almost religious zeal. The rules can be strict or relaxed, obvious or obscure. Give up dairy and meat? No problem. Give up carbs and caffeine? Easy. Cut out wheat, butter, sugar, fat or almost anything else and people are still with you, but suggest that someone might want to give up one of these items for a spiritual reason, and not merely a physical one, and you’ve lost them completely! “Why would I want to do that?” “I don’t want a religion that tells me what I can and can’t eat.” “Why would God care if I eat ________ (fill in the blank)?” The idea that the physical body and the spiritual body are linked can still seem odd and foreign, even to people of faith, despite the fact that most major religions incorporate some type of fasting in their spiritual practice. The Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics and many Episcopalians refrain from eating certain foods during Lent, particularly on Fridays and on the High Holy Days of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Jews typically fast on Yom Kippur and also refrain from eating leavened foods during Passover. Muslims fast during the daylight hours during the month of Ramadan. The rules vary from one religion to the next but the principle is the same: we are called periodically to remind ourselves not to put our bodies ahead of our souls.

We all make sacrifices everyday. We refrain from buying the little things that we want, so that we may buy the big things that we want. We avoid foods that we like so that we can be a certain size or look a certain way. We spend more or less time at work so that we can spend more or less time doing the other things of importance in our lives. Life forces us to make choices all the time and many times those choices are made without a great deal of thought. We all get into routines and patterns that are actually taking us further and further away from our ultimate goals, and not closer to them. Sometimes it is good to stop and take a look at our choices and see what end they are actually serving. Which God do we make the most sacrifices to? Work? Vanity? Money? Entertainment? Secular people often scoff at the sacrifices that people of faith make, but at least faith calls you to be intentional about the sacrifices you make, and not to serve the Gods of this world by default.

For many Christians, Lent, which begins this month, is a season of self-sacrifice, reflection and renewal. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not intended to be some punishment or atonement for the sins that we have committed the rest of the year, nor is it meant to be a drudgery. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Lent does not begin on Ash Wednesday as it does in the West, but on Clean Monday and many refer to the first week of Lent as Clean Week. It is a tradition in Greece and in other Orthodox countries for people to clean their entire house either during or before the first week in Lent. This spiritual and physical house cleaning is celebrated with parties and festivities. The season is seen as a gift and not as a burden. Likewise in the West, many Christians are warned on Ash Wednesday not to use their fasting to seek the attention of others, but rather to direct their own attention towards God.

Fasting is not meant to be a weight loss technique. It is not meant to help us fit into our swimsuits in time for Memorial Day. But fasting can, in its own way, help us to reduce some of the weight that we carry around on a daily basis. How much energy and effort do I spend on a daily basis focusing on the food that I put in my body? What if I simplified my diet and spent that time and energy focusing on feeding my soul: praying, reading, meditating, or spending time in nature? What if I spent a little less time worrying about all the other “gods” in my life and spent more focusing on the one that really matters? Fasting may not sound as sexy as the Atkins, the South Beach, the Zone, the Paleo or the 24 hour Celebrity Juice diets, but it has been practiced by people of different faiths for over 5,000 years with sometimes tremendous degrees of success. Now that is anything but a fad.

SpiritMatters Monthly February 2011

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,

according to thy word;

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

which thou hast prepared before the face of all people,

To be a light to lighten the Gentiles,

and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

The world has a long history of favoring those that come first. First born sons, in particular, have held positions of great power in the world. If you are a first born son you stand to inherit not only your father’s name, but also your father’s estate and title. A first born son was also a prized possession, because it gave father’s stability and a legacy. We only need to look to King Henry the 8^th to see the lengths to which a man will go in order to have a first born son. If you were a first born son you were the heir apparent to whatever worldly power your ancestors had attained. I say worldly power, because a brief skim through the characters of the Bible should remind us that God’s favor is not always on those who come in first. Cain was the first born son of Adam and Eve and we know that he didn’t fair very well. Abraham was asked to sacrifice Sarah’s first son Issac (we can save what happened to his first actual son Ishmael till another time). Esau sold his birthright to his younger brother Jacob and then was even cheated out of his father’s blessing, and of Jacob’s sons, it was the youngest, Joseph, who was favored of God. Further along in history we will remember that it was David, the youngest son of Jesse, that God had anointed to be king over Israel. When Samuel was looking over the son’s of Jesse and saw Eliah, the eldest, he thought “surely this must be the Lord’s anointed.” But the Lord said to him “No. I do not see the way you do. You look for the oldest, the tallest and the strongest or the most beautiful. I am not looking on the outward appearance; I am looking on the heart.” God knows our tendency to judge things. God knows that we have a habit of putting our faith and our resources into what we can see and judge, rather than on what he has revealed to us. God tested Abraham’s resolve to put God first, before his love for anything worldly, including his first born son. When God sought to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, his last and greatest plague struck the Egyptians where it would hurt the most: the first born. God slaughtered the first born of all Egypt, and instructed the Israelites that they were to remember perpetually how they had been spared by God. This, of course, is the beginning of the Passover tradition, but an additional part of the tradition was God’s claim that even though Israel’s first born had been spared, they still belonged to God. Not just those that survived the exodus, but all future first borns too. So there develops this tradition, of not only sacrificing the first born livestock to God, but also ritually or ceremonially sacrificing the first born male children to God. All of those that are first born are consecrated to God as a solemn reminder that God always comes first. It is partially in the context of this ceremonial sacrifice that Jesus is brought to the temple in a passage from the gospel of Luke. He is a first born son and therefore Mary and Joseph had to acknowledge that he belonged first and foremost to God, not to them. Joseph offered to the priest Simeon the prescribed sacrificial animals to be offered to God in exchange for the life of this baby boy. This was the law of Moses and we are told that Joseph and Mary did everything in accordance with the law.

According to tradition Simeon was an old priest. He had been doing this very same service of claiming first born sons as belonging to God for years, perhaps hundreds of times. Simeon had been told by the Holy Spirit that this work he was doing would not be in vain, but that it eventually would lead him to see the messiah, the child that would actually be God’s very own. The first born, not just of one man and woman, but of all creation. And here at last he was in his arms. The beacon of light that he had waited his entire life to see and the one child that would give all of that waiting and working meaning. When Simeon utters the Nunc Dimittis, which is the prayer that begins: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace…” he does it for all of us who spend our lives working and waiting for God’s glory to be realized and seen. It is fitting that this prayer is traditionally said at the end of the day, because it is often only those brief glimpses of God’s kingdom that give us the strength and courage and peace that we need to go forward into another day.

Mary and Joseph were astounded at what Simeon and Anna said, not because they didn’t believe it, but because it confirmed what they already knew and could see. What a joy it is to have your faith confirmed by others; to have an experience that you thought only you had, be shared by someone else. How important it is to have that confirmation that other people see the light of God where you see the light of God. That is the beauty of fellowship: to be able to stand together with others and say hat we have seen God here. Part of the reason people of faith gather in communities, I hope, is that it is a way that we can claim those places and those ways in which we believe we can encounter God. For Christians, the Feast of Candlemas, which celebrates Christ’s presentation in the temple, can be a hard sell to get people to come to church sometimes. It doesn’t have any of the penitential lament of Ash Wednesday or Good Friday; it doesn’t have any of the joy or frivolity of Christmas Day or Epiphany. Its popular customs are largely forgotten and have mostly to do with this being the end of the Christmas and Epiphany season. It doesn’t stir us up and excite us, and maybe for that very reason it might have the most to say to us about our daily lives as people of faith. The Purification of the Blessed Virgin and the Presentation of our Lord were done not out of desperation or delight, but out of devotion. They were done because God asked for them to be done and the people that did them had the will and the patience and the faith to keep listening to God, to keep observing his commands, and to keep working for his kingdom until by God’s light and grace they were allowed to see it. May we too be so lucky to serve God, to see his salvation, and to depart in peace.