Universal Falling

Saturday of the 28^th Week in Ordinary Time

Luke 12:8-12

Do not worry about how or what your defense will be…

for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment

I had a professor once who straight up laughed at me…he laughed at how upset I was about the trouble I was having grasping what I was supposed to be learning in the course.  I was upset in week three.  What he saw and what I now see is that I wanted to be a master BEFORE I began my learning!  I wanted to know ahead of time that I would succeed…right out of the starting gate!  That worry speaks to my fear of failure or perhaps my desire to never be ill at ease.  I like being on the proficient side of the room.

I am thinking that today’s Gospel text urges the disciple to remember that whole ‘coming in the name of the one who sent me’ business.  I want to come in my own name.  And I want that name to be full of honor and praise.  The ego is so very powerful and it exerts its force…like gravity…without my notice!  

It takes a pretty sure faith and hope to relax into God.  To trust.  I am reminded of Fall*, a Rilke poem I scribbled with a Sharpie on my laundry room wall:

The leaves are falling

Falling as from far

As though above were withering farthest gardens

They fall with a denying attitude

And night by night down into solitude

The heavy earth falls from every star

We are all falling

This hand’s falling too

We all have this falling sickness

None withstanding

And yet

There’s One

Whose gently holding hands

This universal falling

Can’t fall through

*This poem has many various translations from the German.  I couldn’t find the translator of this version.  I scribbled it from an audio-listening many years ago…it is my favorite

Promise or Threat?

Friday of Week 28 in Ordinary Time

Luke 12:1-7

There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed

Promise or threat?

My daughter and 4-month old grandson came for a nice long visit last week.  There is something that happens when grown children return to the home they grew up in…for one, they forget how to do the dishes or put away food!  But more importantly there is a magnetic attraction to reminiscing.

On one of our walks I joined her, remembering things from my own childhood that still have the capacity to make me cringe…what a great word…cringe;)

And they are all, at their core, sins.  They are times when my inside and my outside were at war.  They are times of hypocrisy.  The funny thing is that the cringe continues.  And that is as it should be.  Cringing helps me stay attentive…practiced, if you will.  Yesterday’s cringe worthy actions are still hidden.  I have to turn around and look with ‘practiced’ reflection. 

Talking about the transformation the Gospel invites us into, John Shea* notes that the move is always from:

Blind

Deaf

Asleep

Lost

And

Dead

To:

Seeing

Hearing

Awake

Found

And

Risen

Promise or threat?  Both!

*from The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers, Mark Year B, Introduction p1

Checking the Wake

Friday of the 27^th Week in Ordinary Time
Joel 1:13-15, 2:1-2

Psalm 9 The Lord will judge the world with justice

Luke 11:15-26

Joel is delivering fire and brimstone!  And I hear it!

The house of your God is deprived!

I am called to notice the ‘emptiness’ and ‘ruin’.  In my house of worship, my parish, my diocese, and in my home and around my table…what is empty and in ruins?

Luke gives me a clue to how to see clearly.  ‘Whoever does not gather with me, scatters.’

Does the work of my hands; do the thoughts of my heart, serve to gather?  If so, what is at the center of my ‘gathering’?  Is it love and mercy and justice?

Or do I divide?  What is in the wake of my comings and goings?  I can get so focused on the ‘busyness’ of my life that I forget to turn around and check my wake.

This kind of reflection is the work of Compline/Night Prayer.  I lie down before sleep and wonder:  Looking at the evidence…the concrete words and deeds of my day, what have I loved?  What does the evidence suggest about what I truly long for?

God grant me the honest reflection

to notice what I leave in my wake

And grant me a heart open to your mercy

For your mercy alone

has the power to change my scattering into gathering

For this I pray

Especially today...

Monday of Week 26 in Ordinary Time

The Holy Guardian Angels

                    

Zechariah 8:1-8

Matthew 18:1-5, 10

When I think of Guardian Angels I can see in my mind’s eye the linen (and a bit stained) needlepoint that hung above my bed.  The prayer, Angel of God, My Guardian Dear, was illustrated with a winged angel…my individual angel!

Though I am now more likely to identify the presence of that guardianship as the Holy Spirit, it still retains a certain childlike something.

The passage from Zechariah paints a picture of a renewed Jerusalem that is worthy of Norman Rockwell.  Old men and women, with their tennis ball capped walkers are resting in the city center as they are entertained watching the boys and girls play in the safety of the streets.

In the Gospel the greatest in the kingdom are those who preserve that childlike something. It is that receptive humble stance vis-a-vis the unimaginable love and creativity of God where we rest into our creaturely relationship with the God of all creation. Today, even more so because of the senseless violence that covers the news, I long to abandon my quest to understand…and just weep, child-like, in the embrace of God. 

Though not an article of faith, I am happy to lean in to the Holy Guardian Angels

Asking for their support to deepen my prayer

O God

Hear the cries

Comfort the terrified

Absorb the anger

Untangle the knots that squeeze out your love

Gather the prayers

Bring us, childlike, to your embrace

Heal us 

O Lord

Heal us