16/01/07 Tuesday in the week of Epiphany 2
[Please remember this is a sort of "menu" from which to select. No one has to read it all]
Collect
Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ¹s glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Today's Scripture
http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/
Psalm 26, 28; Psalm 36, 39; Isa. 44:9-20; Eph. 4:17-32; Mark 3:19b-35
++++++++++
From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm
Mark 3:19b-35. And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?"
How Jesus must have puzzled people, especially his family. Teenagers do this all the time, as they separate themselves from their families of origin, to carve a place for themselves in a world that others have made. But Jesus' pointed question to the crowd is hardly an example of adolescent rebellion. This episode in Mark reflects the dazzling expansion of the idea of family evident in the earliest Christian communities, where all people-no matter where they came from, or how much money they had, or whether they were slave or free, male or female, Jew or Gentile-all regarded themselves as members of one family in Christ Jesus. No wonder they treasured these and similar remarks when they remembered stories about him. "Who are my mother and my brothers?" Jesus' question seems shocking, even callous to us today, living as we do in a culture that sometimes seems hostile to family life. But it must have seemed profoundly liberating at the time, when ancient kinship ties could strangle people's freedom of movement and belief. And in our own time of brittle xenophobia, the idea that all people are one family in this Christ Jesus--that even my enemy is my brother--might be just as liberating for us as it was when Mark wrote his gospel.
++++++++++
Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Lui (The Sudan)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
++++++++++
Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php
Take God for your bridegroom and friend, and walk with him continually; and you will not sin and will learn to love, and the things you must do will work out prosperously for you.
St John of the Cross
Sayings of Light and Love, 68.
++++++++++
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/
Living with Hope
Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes. Optimism is the expectation that things-the weather, human relationships, the economy, the political situation, and so on-will get better. Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God's promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.
All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day all lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like. Let's live with hope.
++++++++++
From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
Day Sixteen - The First Way of Service, cont'd
Tertiaries recognize the power of intercessory prayer for furthering the purposes of God's kingdom, and therefore seek a deepening communion with God in personal devotion, and constantly intercede for the needs of his church and his world. Those of us who have much time at their disposal give prayer a large part in their daily lives. Those of us with less time must not fail to see the importance of prayer and to guard the time we have allotted to it from interruption. Lastly, we are encouraged to avail themselves of the sacrament of Reconciliation, through which the burden of past sin and failure is lifted and peace and hope restored.
++++++++++
Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html
"Building the City of God"
In the United States we don’t have anything even close to Europe’s great cities with fountains, cathedrals, promenades and parks. I know we’ve only had two hundred years to work at it, but the point is, Americans don’t dream of building a great city. The American dream is having one’s own house. In the United States, we have moved from the great Catholic consciousness of the community, of building the city of God, a great people, to taking care of our houses, protecting our neighborhoods, so that handicapped people and people of other skin colors don’t move into it and kill property values. We have got to call this what it is: narcissism. There’s a world bigger than our families. The only way we can ultimately protect our family is to create and protect the entire human family.
from A Man’s Approach to God
++++++++++
From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.
http://www.artsci.villanova.edu/dsteelman/tradition/sources.html
Recognize your dignity, O Christian
Let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, who, by reason of his great charity with which he has loved us, has taken pity on us; and whereas we were dead in sins, has quickened us in Christ to make us a new creation in him, a new handiwork. Let us accordingly lay aside our former way of life with all its works, and claiming our joint portion in Christ's sonship, let us renounce the deeds of corrupt nature. Recognize your dignity, O Christian, and once made a sharer in the divine nature, do not by your evil conduct return to the base servitude of the past. Keep in mind of whose head and body you are a member. Never forget that you have been plucked from the power of darkness and taken up into the light and kingdom of God. By the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not through your depravity drive away so great a guest and put yourself once more in bondage to the devil, for the blood of Christ was the price of your redemption.
Leo the Great, (400 - 461), bishop of Rome, left many letters and sermons to attest to his teaching and preaching.
read more: www.newadvent.org/cathen/09154b.htm or en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_I
++++++++++
Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict
http://www.osb.org/rb/
CHAPTER 3: SUMMONING THE COMMUNITY FOR COUNSEL
Jan. 16 - May 17 - Sept. 16
As often as anything important is to be done in the monastery, the prioress or abbot shall call the whole community together and explain what the business is; and after hearing the advice of the members, let them ponder it and follow what they judge the wiser course. The reason why we have said all should be called for counsel is that the Spirit often reveals what is better to the younger. The community members, for their part, are to express their opinions with all humility, and not presume to defend their own views obstinately. The decision is rather the prioress' or the abbot's to make, so that when the abbot or prioress of the community has determined what is more prudent, all must obey. Nevertheless, just as it is proper for disciples to obey their teacher, so it is becoming for the teacher to settle everything with foresight and fairness.
An African proverb says: "You do not teach the paths of the forest to an old gorilla." Experience counts. Wisdom is simply its distillation. Abbots may be abbots and prioresses may be prioresses but the community was there long before them and the community will remain long after they have gone, as well. To ignore the counsel of a group, then, is to proceed at risk.
But Benedict knows about more than the value of experience. Benedict knows about the presence and power of God. And Benedict knows that there is a spark of the divine in all of us. The function of an abbot or prioress, of leaders and spouses everywhere, is not so much to know the Truth as it is to be able to espy it and to recognize it in the other when they hear it. Calling the community for counsel is Benedict's contribution to the Theology of the Holy Spirit.
In the monastic community, this common search for truth is pitched at a delicate balance. The abbot and prioress are clearly not dictators but the community is not a voting bloc either. They are each to speak their truth, to share the perspective from which they see a situation, to raise their questions and to open their hearts, with honesty and with trust. The prioress and abbot are to listen carefully for what they could not find in their own souls and to make a decision only when they can come to peace with it, weighing both the community's concerns and the heart they have for carrying the decision through.
"Foresight and fairness" are essentials for leaders who lead out of a sense of Benedictine spirituality. The decision is all theirs and they will answer for it in conscience and in consequences. They must not make it lightly and they must take all of its effects into consideration. The emphasis in this paragraph is clearly on results rather than on power. It is easy to gain power. It is difficult to use it without being seduced by it. The Rule of Benedict reminds us that whatever authority we hold, we hold it for the good of the entire group, not for our own sense of self.
++++++++++
A thought:
In an instant world, in a world where we can see in a blink of an eye,
events happening on the other side of this planet, we have come expect that
everything happens now. But in our faith journey there are often processes
that take time. We can't rush them - although we would like to. Like new
wine, in new wineskins, we have to rest and be patient for the maturation
process to happen. So don't burst your old wineskin, let God age the new
one.
++++++++++
The Merton Reflection for the Week of January 15, 2007
Notes on the race situation before the violence began—1962. . . .Fortunately the Negroes have a leader, who is a man of grace, who understands the law of love, who understands the mystery of the greatest secret grace that has been given to the Negro and to no other. The grace which the people who first created the spirituals well knew about: the grace of election that made them God’s chosen, the grace that elevated them about the meaningless and trivial things of life, even in the midst of terrible and unjust suffering. There are things the Negro knows that the white man can never know. Things which belong to the pure, unique, spiritual destiny of America, and which have been denied to the white man, will be denied to him forever because of his brutality to the Negro and to the Indian. So, too, there are things the Jew alone can know, things closed forever to the gentile, even to the best of Christians. Yet, unfortunately, this secret heritage, this most precious revelation of God, which one senses in the singing of Mahalia Jackson as well as in some of the very great, obscure artists of jazz can also be lost. The mere fact of being a Negro does not guarantee that one is worthy of this precious inheritance. [112-113]
Thomas Merton. Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander. New York: Doubleday and Company,
Thought for Reflection:
To act out of love for truth, “doing the truth in charity” is to act for truth alone, and without regard for consequences. Not that one recklessly does what seems to be good without care for possible disaster, but that one carefully chooses what one believes to be good and then leaves the good itself to produce its own good consequences in its own good time.”
Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander: 118
++++++++++
Amost Daily Emo: BEING THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE
It would be nice if I could type with both hands, I tell Ben, who is stretched out in my lap. Somehow he has succeeded in using my left hand as a headrest. I thought cats were supposed to curl up in people's laps, not stretch out. Ben opens one eye slightly, to signal that he has heard but chooses to ignore me.
He is always taking advantage of my good nature.
Let's call Chad, I suggest. I call Chad's cell and put the phone on speaker, close to Ben's whiskers. Ben meows a lot, so I figure I can count on him for a monologue. A familiar voice sounds from the phone: Chad's phone message. Ben listens intently but says nothing. Come on, I tell him, Say something. It's your friend, Chad. Ben begins to purr loudly, but does not speak. Finally I give up -- and just as I press the red button to disconnect the call, Ben begins a paragraph of meows.
I have mentioned that Ben's default meow sounds like the quacking of a duck. It is an unlovely sound, pitched as it is in his lower vocal register -- Ben has yet to discover his falsetto, which might be nice to hear and could also be quieter. So I am encouraging him to broaden his vocal range and work on his diction. Just now -- and on his own initiative, which is how cats do everything -- he is hard at work on adding some new consonants to his meows, notably an "ng" sound, so he can express ideas like "Please stop typing"or "Shouldn't I be eating?" more clearly.
I have learned that the way to get Ben to stop quacking is to stroke his chin, bury your face in his lovely soft fur and tell him in a soft voice that he is a good cat and that all is well. This must be done in standard English: what you do not want to do is quack back at him, although it is hard to resist doing so. Here, it is important to be firm: engaging him in the language of ducks just encourages him to quack. Besides, it is dangerous to speak to someone in a language you don't understand -- there's no telling what you might be saying without knowing it. What if you're saying something like "Bet I can quack louder than you can?"
What you want is engagement, not an arms race of duck rhetoric. If all I do in response to someone else is what he has done to me, who will ever do something new? Will we not live out our days in an endless quacking "Oh, yeah? Yeah!" loop of mutual misunderstanding?
I thought, when I sat down to write, that I would save this eMo about Ben the Cat for another day, and write instead about the legacy of Dr. King. But now I see that Ben has led me there. On his own initiative. You don't end violence with violence. You don't end insult by hurling more insult. You won't get something new by doing something old. You bring love into the world by showing the world more love. You allow yourself to come closer to the enemy, close enough to see not only the whites of his eyes, but to see also their beauty.
And once you have seen the beauty, you will not fire your weapon.
+
Copyright © 2007 Barbara Crafton - http://www.geraniumfarm.org
Collect
Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ¹s glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
++++++++++
Today's Scripture
http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/
Psalm 26, 28; Psalm 36, 39; Isa. 44:9-20; Eph. 4:17-32; Mark 3:19b-35
++++++++++
From Forward Day by Day: http://www.forwardmovement.org/todaysreading.cfm
Mark 3:19b-35. And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?"
How Jesus must have puzzled people, especially his family. Teenagers do this all the time, as they separate themselves from their families of origin, to carve a place for themselves in a world that others have made. But Jesus' pointed question to the crowd is hardly an example of adolescent rebellion. This episode in Mark reflects the dazzling expansion of the idea of family evident in the earliest Christian communities, where all people-no matter where they came from, or how much money they had, or whether they were slave or free, male or female, Jew or Gentile-all regarded themselves as members of one family in Christ Jesus. No wonder they treasured these and similar remarks when they remembered stories about him. "Who are my mother and my brothers?" Jesus' question seems shocking, even callous to us today, living as we do in a culture that sometimes seems hostile to family life. But it must have seemed profoundly liberating at the time, when ancient kinship ties could strangle people's freedom of movement and belief. And in our own time of brittle xenophobia, the idea that all people are one family in this Christ Jesus--that even my enemy is my brother--might be just as liberating for us as it was when Mark wrote his gospel.
++++++++++
Today in the Anglican Cycle of Prayer we pray for the Diocese of Lui (The Sudan)
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acp/index.cfm
++++++++++
Carmelite.com: Reflections http://www.carmelite.com/spirituality/reflection.php
Take God for your bridegroom and friend, and walk with him continually; and you will not sin and will learn to love, and the things you must do will work out prosperously for you.
St John of the Cross
Sayings of Light and Love, 68.
++++++++++
Daily Meditation (Henri Nouwen) http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/free_eletters/
Living with Hope
Optimism and hope are radically different attitudes. Optimism is the expectation that things-the weather, human relationships, the economy, the political situation, and so on-will get better. Hope is the trust that God will fulfill God's promises to us in a way that leads us to true freedom. The optimist speaks about concrete changes in the future. The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.
All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day all lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like. Let's live with hope.
++++++++++
From the Principles of the Third Society of St. Francis:
Day Sixteen - The First Way of Service, cont'd
Tertiaries recognize the power of intercessory prayer for furthering the purposes of God's kingdom, and therefore seek a deepening communion with God in personal devotion, and constantly intercede for the needs of his church and his world. Those of us who have much time at their disposal give prayer a large part in their daily lives. Those of us with less time must not fail to see the importance of prayer and to guard the time we have allotted to it from interruption. Lastly, we are encouraged to avail themselves of the sacrament of Reconciliation, through which the burden of past sin and failure is lifted and peace and hope restored.
++++++++++
Richard Rohr's Daily Reflection
http://cacradicalgrace.org/getconnected/getconnected_index.html
"Building the City of God"
In the United States we don’t have anything even close to Europe’s great cities with fountains, cathedrals, promenades and parks. I know we’ve only had two hundred years to work at it, but the point is, Americans don’t dream of building a great city. The American dream is having one’s own house. In the United States, we have moved from the great Catholic consciousness of the community, of building the city of God, a great people, to taking care of our houses, protecting our neighborhoods, so that handicapped people and people of other skin colors don’t move into it and kill property values. We have got to call this what it is: narcissism. There’s a world bigger than our families. The only way we can ultimately protect our family is to create and protect the entire human family.
from A Man’s Approach to God
++++++++++
From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.
http://www.artsci.villanova.edu/dsteelman/tradition/sources.html
Recognize your dignity, O Christian
Let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, who, by reason of his great charity with which he has loved us, has taken pity on us; and whereas we were dead in sins, has quickened us in Christ to make us a new creation in him, a new handiwork. Let us accordingly lay aside our former way of life with all its works, and claiming our joint portion in Christ's sonship, let us renounce the deeds of corrupt nature. Recognize your dignity, O Christian, and once made a sharer in the divine nature, do not by your evil conduct return to the base servitude of the past. Keep in mind of whose head and body you are a member. Never forget that you have been plucked from the power of darkness and taken up into the light and kingdom of God. By the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not through your depravity drive away so great a guest and put yourself once more in bondage to the devil, for the blood of Christ was the price of your redemption.
Leo the Great, (400 - 461), bishop of Rome, left many letters and sermons to attest to his teaching and preaching.
read more: www.newadvent.org/cathen/09154b.htm or en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Leo_I
++++++++++
Today's reading from the Rule of St. Benedict
http://www.osb.org/rb/
CHAPTER 3: SUMMONING THE COMMUNITY FOR COUNSEL
Jan. 16 - May 17 - Sept. 16
As often as anything important is to be done in the monastery, the prioress or abbot shall call the whole community together and explain what the business is; and after hearing the advice of the members, let them ponder it and follow what they judge the wiser course. The reason why we have said all should be called for counsel is that the Spirit often reveals what is better to the younger. The community members, for their part, are to express their opinions with all humility, and not presume to defend their own views obstinately. The decision is rather the prioress' or the abbot's to make, so that when the abbot or prioress of the community has determined what is more prudent, all must obey. Nevertheless, just as it is proper for disciples to obey their teacher, so it is becoming for the teacher to settle everything with foresight and fairness.
An African proverb says: "You do not teach the paths of the forest to an old gorilla." Experience counts. Wisdom is simply its distillation. Abbots may be abbots and prioresses may be prioresses but the community was there long before them and the community will remain long after they have gone, as well. To ignore the counsel of a group, then, is to proceed at risk.
But Benedict knows about more than the value of experience. Benedict knows about the presence and power of God. And Benedict knows that there is a spark of the divine in all of us. The function of an abbot or prioress, of leaders and spouses everywhere, is not so much to know the Truth as it is to be able to espy it and to recognize it in the other when they hear it. Calling the community for counsel is Benedict's contribution to the Theology of the Holy Spirit.
In the monastic community, this common search for truth is pitched at a delicate balance. The abbot and prioress are clearly not dictators but the community is not a voting bloc either. They are each to speak their truth, to share the perspective from which they see a situation, to raise their questions and to open their hearts, with honesty and with trust. The prioress and abbot are to listen carefully for what they could not find in their own souls and to make a decision only when they can come to peace with it, weighing both the community's concerns and the heart they have for carrying the decision through.
"Foresight and fairness" are essentials for leaders who lead out of a sense of Benedictine spirituality. The decision is all theirs and they will answer for it in conscience and in consequences. They must not make it lightly and they must take all of its effects into consideration. The emphasis in this paragraph is clearly on results rather than on power. It is easy to gain power. It is difficult to use it without being seduced by it. The Rule of Benedict reminds us that whatever authority we hold, we hold it for the good of the entire group, not for our own sense of self.
++++++++++
A thought:
In an instant world, in a world where we can see in a blink of an eye,
events happening on the other side of this planet, we have come expect that
everything happens now. But in our faith journey there are often processes
that take time. We can't rush them - although we would like to. Like new
wine, in new wineskins, we have to rest and be patient for the maturation
process to happen. So don't burst your old wineskin, let God age the new
one.
++++++++++
The Merton Reflection for the Week of January 15, 2007
Notes on the race situation before the violence began—1962. . . .Fortunately the Negroes have a leader, who is a man of grace, who understands the law of love, who understands the mystery of the greatest secret grace that has been given to the Negro and to no other. The grace which the people who first created the spirituals well knew about: the grace of election that made them God’s chosen, the grace that elevated them about the meaningless and trivial things of life, even in the midst of terrible and unjust suffering. There are things the Negro knows that the white man can never know. Things which belong to the pure, unique, spiritual destiny of America, and which have been denied to the white man, will be denied to him forever because of his brutality to the Negro and to the Indian. So, too, there are things the Jew alone can know, things closed forever to the gentile, even to the best of Christians. Yet, unfortunately, this secret heritage, this most precious revelation of God, which one senses in the singing of Mahalia Jackson as well as in some of the very great, obscure artists of jazz can also be lost. The mere fact of being a Negro does not guarantee that one is worthy of this precious inheritance. [112-113]
Thomas Merton. Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander. New York: Doubleday and Company,
Thought for Reflection:
To act out of love for truth, “doing the truth in charity” is to act for truth alone, and without regard for consequences. Not that one recklessly does what seems to be good without care for possible disaster, but that one carefully chooses what one believes to be good and then leaves the good itself to produce its own good consequences in its own good time.”
Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander: 118
++++++++++
Amost Daily Emo: BEING THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE
It would be nice if I could type with both hands, I tell Ben, who is stretched out in my lap. Somehow he has succeeded in using my left hand as a headrest. I thought cats were supposed to curl up in people's laps, not stretch out. Ben opens one eye slightly, to signal that he has heard but chooses to ignore me.
He is always taking advantage of my good nature.
Let's call Chad, I suggest. I call Chad's cell and put the phone on speaker, close to Ben's whiskers. Ben meows a lot, so I figure I can count on him for a monologue. A familiar voice sounds from the phone: Chad's phone message. Ben listens intently but says nothing. Come on, I tell him, Say something. It's your friend, Chad. Ben begins to purr loudly, but does not speak. Finally I give up -- and just as I press the red button to disconnect the call, Ben begins a paragraph of meows.
I have mentioned that Ben's default meow sounds like the quacking of a duck. It is an unlovely sound, pitched as it is in his lower vocal register -- Ben has yet to discover his falsetto, which might be nice to hear and could also be quieter. So I am encouraging him to broaden his vocal range and work on his diction. Just now -- and on his own initiative, which is how cats do everything -- he is hard at work on adding some new consonants to his meows, notably an "ng" sound, so he can express ideas like "Please stop typing"or "Shouldn't I be eating?" more clearly.
I have learned that the way to get Ben to stop quacking is to stroke his chin, bury your face in his lovely soft fur and tell him in a soft voice that he is a good cat and that all is well. This must be done in standard English: what you do not want to do is quack back at him, although it is hard to resist doing so. Here, it is important to be firm: engaging him in the language of ducks just encourages him to quack. Besides, it is dangerous to speak to someone in a language you don't understand -- there's no telling what you might be saying without knowing it. What if you're saying something like "Bet I can quack louder than you can?"
What you want is engagement, not an arms race of duck rhetoric. If all I do in response to someone else is what he has done to me, who will ever do something new? Will we not live out our days in an endless quacking "Oh, yeah? Yeah!" loop of mutual misunderstanding?
I thought, when I sat down to write, that I would save this eMo about Ben the Cat for another day, and write instead about the legacy of Dr. King. But now I see that Ben has led me there. On his own initiative. You don't end violence with violence. You don't end insult by hurling more insult. You won't get something new by doing something old. You bring love into the world by showing the world more love. You allow yourself to come closer to the enemy, close enough to see not only the whites of his eyes, but to see also their beauty.
And once you have seen the beauty, you will not fire your weapon.
+
Copyright © 2007 Barbara Crafton - http://www.geraniumfarm.org
posted by Gloriamarie Amalfitano @ 12:02 PM
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