Not Earth, Wind or Fire

Friday of week 10 in Ordinary Time

1 Kings 19:9,11-16

Elijah is in hiding from Jezebel…after the whole God contest and the slaughtering of the 450 prophets of Baal…she wants him dead.  The scene before today’s text has God feeding the starved and suicidal Elijah and sending him on a long trek to the “Mountain of God’ aka Horeb aka Sinai.

So Elijah knows that God is not done with him yet.  The mighty wind, the terrifying earthquake, the consuming fire, are NOT the Lord. 

Finally, Elijah hears "a sound of sheer silence" …the NRSV translation of 19:12.  There is nothing quite so unsettling as that non-sound.  There is nothing to distract from the truth.  It must be faced.  He wraps his face in his cloak and walks to the mouth of the cave.

I wonder if my life, my world, my psyche can get quiet and still enough to hear the sound of “sheer silence.”  I am practicing.  My Yoga instructor says to me often, “Cindy, you are trying too hard.”  That is an appropriate comment for me several times a day in differing circumstances.  Elijah was trying too hard to see and hear God in the places and events he thought most appropriate. 

The sound of sheer silence.  It was there all along.  It still is.

Feasts of the Heart

Jesus’ Sacred Heart (yesterday)

&

Mary’s Immaculate Heart (today)

The words sacred and immaculate are not words I would use in any earthy way.  In fact immaculate is the word my mother used when she banished me to my room where I was not to leave until it was immaculate!  And yet devotion to these sacred and immaculate hearts began amid the mediaeval mystics’ contemplation of Jesus’ human nature.  So, I’m thinking that my focus ought to be on the word heart instead.

Hearts are very earthy.  They are fleshy and bloody.  They are mechanical pumps, relentless in their life sustaining work.  I can feel mine working, thumping as it constantly feeds and energizes my systems.  And I can feel when it gets off track as it sometimes does.  It is then that I am reminded to attend and care…to lie down and breathe deeply and pay attention.

I can’t feel my brain or my liver or my pancreas in the same way.  My hands rest naturally over my heart, its placement is so perfect.  It is no wonder that the heart is so prone to rich metaphor:

-a broken heart

-take a hold of my heart

-from the bottom of my heart

-to speak from the heart

-my heart goes out

-to take something to heart

-the heart bleeds for…

-the heart goes out…

-the heart’s desire

-to lose heart

-to take heart

-my heart sank

-faint of heart

-heart of gold or of stone

-hard-hearted or tender-hearted

-big heart or no heart

-my heart tells me

-to learn by heart

-cold/warm hearted

-to win someone’s heart

The takeaway?

All that is expressed in heart metaphor…

worry, sincerity, sadness, pity, sympathy, affection, kindness, desire, courage, value, intelligence, core…

Is grounded in the all-encomasisng heart of God

Oops...forgot one:  The key to my heart???

the Lord is ONE

Thursday of Week 9 in Ordinary Time

“Jesus answered, ‘The first is: ‘Hear, O’ Israel, the Lord, your God, the Lord is one!’’”

(Mark 12:29)

Every time this text comes around in the lectionary I think of BoBo…Fr. Aurelius Boberick, OSB.  He taught Creed & Cult and St. Meinrad School of Theology and when he perused the classroom, which was mostly seminarians, he would say with sonorous dramatic flare “You say you want to be a priest…but you don’t SING!  Poppycock!”

He studied at Hebrew Union College in New York and if I remember correctly, he was also a visiting professor there.  It was his seminar course, Jewish Roots of Christian Liturgy, that really caught my imagination.  We began every class with a chanting of the Shema...the first two lines anyway.   I remember visualizing Jesus, awakening in the morning and wandering to the window to greet the day with this foundational prayer.   And I tried to remember to do the same as I went to sleep.

Sh'ma Yisra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.

Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

To remember that God is One is to keep idolatry creep (a serious and debilitating condition;) in check.  My guess is that for most of us idolatry creep happens as busyness and agenda unfold in our day.  Prayer in the morning is like beginning fresh at the beginning of the album.  Prayer in the evening is like lifting the needle on the turntable and starting all over again...

In an undertone: 

Barukh sheim k'vod malkhuto l'olam va'ed.

Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever.

We also chanted this second line, which is the liturgical assembly’s response.

V'ahav'ta eit Adonai Elohekha b'khol l'vav'kha uv'khol naf'sh'kha uv'khol m'odekha.

And you shall love the Lord your God

with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

It is this line that Jesus quotes in today’s Gospel that adds the passion.  It guards against too much head.  Nothing about being human can be separated from the love of God.

Remember Lois & Eunice!

Wednesday of Week Nine in Ordinary Time

2 Timothy 1:1-3, *6-12
*from missing verses 4&5:  Lois & Eunice…Elders in Faith

Excised again!!!  Arrrgh!!!

I love their part in the mystery of the great passing-on.  Lois and Eunice pass on faith that is living…it sounds almost DNA-like. It LIVED in Lois and Eunice and because of their stewardship of the gift it LIVES all the way down to…well, with a little imagination…me!  Whenever a Baptism is celebrated within the liturgy, it doesn’t matter if I know the family, I am always reminded of Lois and Eunice when I affirm, along with the parents and godparents:  Yes.  I will be some part of bringing this child up in the practice of the faith…to love God and to love our neighbor as Christ taught and teaches still, through that great passing-on!

Thank you Lois and Eunice.  And thank you Paul for reminding Timothy…even if the Church seems to forget;)

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, 2 To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.  3 I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day.

NOW HERE ARE THE VERSES CUT-OUT:

4 Recalling your tears,

I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.

5 I am reminded of your sincere faith,

a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois

and your mother Eunice

and now, I am sure, lives in you.

6 For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; 7 for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. 8 Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, 9 who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, 10 but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 11 For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher,[a] 12 and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him.