Searching for Hidden Affinity
We are paradoxical creatures. Simultaneously we long for the expression of our uniqueness and yet yearn for belonging. Given our seemingly oppositional proclivities towards individuality and relationship, it is often the case that we view the distance between ourselves and others with fear and self protection. John O'Donohue reflects on these tendencies of the soul in his book Eternal Echoes – Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong. He names this space we call distance as “longing.” This longing is a manifestation of the deepest nature of the soul which is relationship. How odd that we are seemingly drawn towards the very thing that reveals this distance. It is O'Donohue's following statement that intrigues me and is the focus of this pondering.
“Distance awakens longing; closeness is belonging. Yet they are always in a dynamic interflow with each other. When we fix or locate them definitively, we injure our growth. It is an interesting imaginative exercise to interchange them; to consider what is near as distant and to consider the distance as intimate.”
So much of our inner world is unclear & opaque even to ourselves. Why are we are so amazed at how incomprehensible many of the acts and feelings are into which we inhabit the idea of ourselves? As much as we desire transparency, there is at our core a portion of our soul that is inaccessible to those without. Yet community reveals that no one is cut off from others completely and much of the reticence and caution we display regarding others reflects a deeper yearning to connect. Although much of our world is private nothing is indeed exclusive.
Scripture speaks of unity over and over again. The Spirit’s advocacy appears to bring with Him a profound sensitivity to discord. Harmony within the Body of Christ is more than group think or unanimity. Surely it is the restoration of what the Creator’s intentions must have been from the beginning within the Trinity. That is a complete awaking to just how much we all belong. Many in our community have read Rohr’s "Everything Belongs.” In this work Rohr points again & again to the powerful awareness that our own center is never discovered alone. At this core reality we uncover the sacramental moment where no one need compete, judge or make comparisons, or seek to dominate. In this present moment God uses everything. In and through the lens of divine foresight nothing is wasted, all is recycled, & everyone & everything belongs. All is grace.
It is only the holy fool who walks into this way of being for it is beyond mere thinking. Until I regard the distance between myself and others as an invitation rather than a signal to cut & run, I will name it punitively. In a post modern world where much of our humanity is abstracted and real presence is always tempted to become mere simulation, how do we quell the crisis of belonging and the great divide between us all? Once again we must seek a new designation for this longing? Could this restlessness within our hearts be a voice rising up for form and presence? Are we like the Greek mythological character Echo who sitting in the eerie silence of the forgotten self longed for Narcissus’ love? But alas, mistaking Narcissus words for her own she ran to him and discovered his self absorption and felt her own deep rejection. As Rohr alludes in Everything Belongs, there is a place within the heart that we all share. In this silent depth we are open to love, to touch, to affection, to trust. Out of this place the distance we thought was powerful & real now is transfigured into a guiding vacancy, a divine opening in the soul awaiting the shelter of community. Being is being with. I am fully myself in & through my brother’s welcoming.
Let me end with another O’Donohue quote as his writing is so powerfully guiding in this piece.
“There is something incomplete in purely individual presence. Belonging together with others completes something in us. It also suggests that behind all our differences and distances from each other, we are all participating in larger drama of the Spirit. The life and death of each of us does indeed affect the rest of us. Not alone do we long for the community; but at a deeper level we are already a community of the Spirit.”
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
To the Orphans on Mother's Day
The Mothering of God
The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe."
- Albert Einstein
Then he said to the disciple, 'Behold, your mother!'" Jn 19:26-27
I have always been inept at physical nurturing. Touch and affection come hard. With the exception of our cat buddy, allowing anyone into my space is daunting and frightening. It is on mother’s day that this experience finds a name.
I always dread mother’s day. Church usually offers up a fairly maudlin version of motherhood & for anyone who doesn't fit the mold (most of humanity?), the very presentation & sermon meant to encourage tends to dishearten and depress. As I glance around the congregation and see countless adults wiping away the heartbreak they had buried for years, I find myself wondering why God made us this way. What is it about our relationships with our mothers that speaks so deeply to our being? Why did God create us with such a deep longing to be cherished & cared for?
I have read countless times the scriptural teaching on God’s loving character. I catch glimpses of this in the men I walk with at times but the memory of my mother’s gaze is much more painful & problematic. One only needs to ask my wife to discover how difficult it is for me to see my own loveliness. The burden of my broken estate & the subsequent flaw that is my birthright is real & resident to me. Is it possible that God has sent mothers to offer up a small & initial glimpse of how the Father sees & knows us?
To be nurtured because one needs it is one issue. To be cherished is entirely different & transforming. For those who have not had the experience of being treasured, this part of God’s character is estranged and distant. We are all orphans from the Father. To know His heart for us is to be able to imagine how He longs for our very presence. We first become familiar with this idea when our mothers welcome us home after a day at school. When our homecoming (not every day mind you) has a high degree of focused love, care & celebration, we can then imagine the fanfare of the prodigal’s father.
Today is a day of remembrance. Undoubtedly is will be bitter sweet as is most of life. But for those who long for love, these mother child memories can weigh heavily on the soul. To the orphans this day I say let the Father mother you. Surrender to that ache & let Him touch that profound sense of being unattractive to yourself, to your lover, to your friends & family. Surrender to His unrelenting pursuit. Let His Abba Fatherness be your mothering. Let His welcoming presence be the arms you never felt. Let His tender eyes reveal the pleasure He takes in you. Allow His still small voice to whisper just how much He values your company & looks forward to the intimate times you have together.
Remember, Jesus had a mother. She bore the Son of God. She is counted blessed by the entire family of God since her time on earth. So it must be important that you had a mother. So….To the motherless by circumstance or pain, let this day of remembrance find its meaning in the Father’s heart. For you are the apple of His eye.
The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe."
- Albert Einstein
Then he said to the disciple, 'Behold, your mother!'" Jn 19:26-27
I have always been inept at physical nurturing. Touch and affection come hard. With the exception of our cat buddy, allowing anyone into my space is daunting and frightening. It is on mother’s day that this experience finds a name.
I always dread mother’s day. Church usually offers up a fairly maudlin version of motherhood & for anyone who doesn't fit the mold (most of humanity?), the very presentation & sermon meant to encourage tends to dishearten and depress. As I glance around the congregation and see countless adults wiping away the heartbreak they had buried for years, I find myself wondering why God made us this way. What is it about our relationships with our mothers that speaks so deeply to our being? Why did God create us with such a deep longing to be cherished & cared for?
I have read countless times the scriptural teaching on God’s loving character. I catch glimpses of this in the men I walk with at times but the memory of my mother’s gaze is much more painful & problematic. One only needs to ask my wife to discover how difficult it is for me to see my own loveliness. The burden of my broken estate & the subsequent flaw that is my birthright is real & resident to me. Is it possible that God has sent mothers to offer up a small & initial glimpse of how the Father sees & knows us?
To be nurtured because one needs it is one issue. To be cherished is entirely different & transforming. For those who have not had the experience of being treasured, this part of God’s character is estranged and distant. We are all orphans from the Father. To know His heart for us is to be able to imagine how He longs for our very presence. We first become familiar with this idea when our mothers welcome us home after a day at school. When our homecoming (not every day mind you) has a high degree of focused love, care & celebration, we can then imagine the fanfare of the prodigal’s father.
Today is a day of remembrance. Undoubtedly is will be bitter sweet as is most of life. But for those who long for love, these mother child memories can weigh heavily on the soul. To the orphans this day I say let the Father mother you. Surrender to that ache & let Him touch that profound sense of being unattractive to yourself, to your lover, to your friends & family. Surrender to His unrelenting pursuit. Let His Abba Fatherness be your mothering. Let His welcoming presence be the arms you never felt. Let His tender eyes reveal the pleasure He takes in you. Allow His still small voice to whisper just how much He values your company & looks forward to the intimate times you have together.
Remember, Jesus had a mother. She bore the Son of God. She is counted blessed by the entire family of God since her time on earth. So it must be important that you had a mother. So….To the motherless by circumstance or pain, let this day of remembrance find its meaning in the Father’s heart. For you are the apple of His eye.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
The Imposition of Ashes -Ash Wednesday
We Are Tortured Wonders
The Church’s practice of Ash Wednesday has become a powerful metaphor for life’s transient nature. The very act of bowing one’s knee and having another human place darkened ashes upon your forehead tells a powerful story to our bodies that we are indeed going to face our end. Growing up in the holiness tradition I was fairly unfamiliar with the sacraments and rituals of the high church. Ash Wednesday and its formative power were missed on me and others like me. What was the point of wearing some kind of darkened ash on one’s forehead? In his book Tortured Wonders, Clapp reflects on an experience an Episcopal priest friend of his had during an Ash Wednesday service
As the priests were offering up prayers and the Gospel, they prepared to offer up the reminder of each and everyone’s frailty in light of the body’s fragile reality. As one of the priests administered the ashes on the foreheads, a stunningly beautiful woman dressed obviously with fashion and panache walked forward and knelt before the priest. Her reticence and awkwardness were obvious and at some point she leaned forward as if she wanted to say something to the priest. He instinctually drew closer to her whispering only to hear her say in halting speech, “Father, I am a model. I know I only have a few years, and then I will be too old for this work. My body is aging, and I can hardly admit it to myself. I do this once a year, at this service. So rub the ashes on. Rub them hard.” Page 170 Tortured Wonders
I bring up the season of Lent for it is the system of time under which we live. We all live under some construct of time and ascribe value to it. We know how we value time by observing how we manage it, how we talk about it, and how we attempt to capture more of it for our use. Time tells us when to go to work, when to rest, when to allow leisure, when to celebrate, when to mourn and on and on.
When we as Christians introduce the Church calendar as a lens through which we see and value time, it is going to form and frame our lives differently than clocks set to other standards of value. If one travels at all they begin to see that the perception of time and its presence is defined and expressed very differently from one culture to another. Any time spent in South America and it is clear that smaller increments of time do not exist. Time is measured in hours at best but mostly in days and those days are broken out into things like sunrise, the heat of a noon day son, and the cooler hours of impending nightfall. If one treks down to Columbia or Ecuador, they quickly learn that smaller configurations of time (like minutes and hours) usually are considered porous expressions of intentionality and not literal containers into which life should be lived.
Time is different for believers. The nature of this sojourn demands we regard this seemingly vaporous experience with great care and stewardship. The Church calendar is a value system created by believers that reflects this honoring. We see and value time in a distinctly Christian manner. As stewards of life and its resources, we are not ultimately going to see time as merely a container for our own personal needs and preferences. This is not to say that we do not see ourselves living inside of time as a person but that there are grander purposes into which life and truth, goodness and beauty can be expressed and time is one of those containers.
Lent is a season that takes us into a cycle of repentance and mourning. It is clear that as we approach Easter, our hearts and minds begin to see the impact of our personal sinfulness and the sinfulness of the world. So much of our suffering comes from our unwillingness to embrace our limitations and our rootedness in our own agendas for life. Thus, we need a calendar or a clock if you will to tell us to mourn this condition. We must set aside some time to remind ourselves of our own finitude, our own limitations, and our own divine confinements.
Divine confinements is a phrase that came to me as I sat in a hospital wondering why the season of illness had befallen me. Wondering is probably a softened term for in fact, I was feeling God’s hiddeness and most of my prayers were those of desperation and crying out. As we allow ourselves to fall under the power of the Church calendar we begin to see that our Savior as well entered into this time where the confinements of life and His impending death were looming large on the horizon and overwhelming to His humanness. The wounds of overwhelment and insufficiency plague us as humans. This is the space out of which we question our faith, question, God’s existence, question the very thought of a kind and gracious God.
Michael Card makes it clear in his book Sacred Sorrows, that real mourning is different than despair. Despair comes when we do not think God is hearing our cries, when we take our crying out, and like Nietzsche, scream it into the abyss of nothingness to a God that is a figment of our own imagining. It is during times of great lament that the aloofness of the mystery now moves from being merely an intellectual conundrum solved by philosophers and preachers to an emotional necessity that we settle once and for all whether God and us can handle the visceral exchange that takes place during lament.
The Imposition of Ashes (Ash Wednesday) is in many ways the Churches answer to the ultimate question which is, “why do we die and why must I know that I am going to die?” Animals of course don’t seem to have this awareness. This may be open to debate as some elephants do seem to mourn the loss of their mates and many have said that other animals do as wall. Regardless of the level of consciousness of animals, it is clear that for humans, the question of our forthcoming death is a foundational exchange that all of us have at some point or the other. Ernst Becker in his ground breaking writings talked about the power of death as a back drop for much of life’s intensities and challenges.
As Christians we do have a hope and much of the modern church tells us to focus only on the hope side. Real lament seems to me to take hope into consideration but it also allows for the soul to cry out. It allows for the soul to tell a Father that the pain is too much; the feelings of sorrow and abandonment go deeper than they ever imagined they could feel, the seeming sense of insufficiency and overwhelment stand like cold specters over our shoulder reminding us daily of our impotence.
Any cursive reading of Scripture reveals quickly that much of the Old Testament writers did not sugar coat their laments. I am fearful that our satiated sense of self sufficiency that comes through abundance, keeps us from feeling at a deep level that this life is just not enough. The perks, the positions, the joys and pleasures in the end do not keep death from our door. Thus, this is a portal through which all enter. Death is the great leveler if you will.
As we enter the season of lent we are being told by our ancient heritage that honoring the lament, repenting over our ways of engaging each other and the created realm, are ways to redeem the time. There are ways to spend our time wisely and mercifully. Any spirituality that does not allow for lament is a cheap religion. It is not what God came to earth to offer us. In Jesus we see that God cares about the suffering of His people. In fact, the rain falls on the just and the unjust implying that God’s common grace is not merely an over flow but intentional in the sense that He wants this part of His character to be preeminently available. Crying out is something He welcomes. Deep questioning and sacred sorrow are things He is familiar with as his own Son questioned the very plan of salvation on some level. “Why have you forsaken me? Why? Why?”
As we continue to explore our spiritual roots we begin to see that the prayer of abandonment is an entry point into the heart of God. To seek after God is to first of all speak into the darkness with truth. Are you there? Why are you hiding?
It is during times of darkness and its shadow that we feel the tension of this life with a vengeance. We cannot hold back the tears. We cannot explain well enough to our souls the sense of impending loss. Thus, wisely, our brothers and sisters from times past have said….come under the canopy of this clock. Come under the story of time offered to us by our Hebrew brothers and sisters and then through the atoning story of our Savior begin to see yourself and your relationships to time and space through this blessing of permission. We have a time set aside in our lives to see it as it is. We do not have to deny the seasons of the soul, the journey of the heart. Regardless of what time the clock says, what time zone we are in, what part of the world we are in, there is a moment set aside for us to face the divine confinements of this life and mourn. We can do this without shame and hiding. We can even make this time oddly enough one of beauty. Wear the ashes with humility and grace.
A Poem
The Final Boxing Up of Life’s Things
Death will peer thru the front door window
Quietly come in unannounced
Only to discover most of my projects in moderate disarray
Exposing just how unsettled I really am
But alas, the one uncovering my cluttered domicile
Will most likely miss any sense of meaning and placement
My things will dissolve into their separateness
Revealing little about the tapestry I was constructing
This unwelcomed intruder will box up my things indiscriminately
Never to reveal anything to anyone regarding
The underside of my life’s weaving mystery
Only You see the life we’ve formed
Ash Wednesday Historical Background
The imposition of ashes on the foreheads of Christians is an ancient Christian practice, going back at least to the 10th century. Biblically, ashes are a symbols of purification and penitence (see Numbers 19:9, 17; Hebrews 9:13; Jonah 3:6; Matthew 11:21, and Luke 10:13 ).
In the early church, people who had been separated from the church because of serious sins might seek to be re-admitted to the fellowship by observing a formal period of penitence during Lent. These people were generally sprinkled with ashes or given rough garments sprinkled with ashes as a sign of their sorrow for their sins.
Beginning in the tenth century, the observance of Ash Wednesday became a general rite for the church. The ashes, which were a symbol of purification in the Old Testament, remind us that we are mortal. In many churches the ashes are made by burning the palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday. Ashes are placed on the forehead, usually in the sign of a cross, in a ritual known as the Imposition of Ashes. As the ashes are placed on the forehead, words such as these are spoken:
"Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return," recalling God's words to Adam in Genesis 3:19.
The ashes are prepared by burning palm leaves from the previous year's Palm Sunday celebrations and mixing them with olive oil as a fixative. In the Roman Catholic Church, Ash Wednesday is observed by fasting & abstinence.
The Church’s practice of Ash Wednesday has become a powerful metaphor for life’s transient nature. The very act of bowing one’s knee and having another human place darkened ashes upon your forehead tells a powerful story to our bodies that we are indeed going to face our end. Growing up in the holiness tradition I was fairly unfamiliar with the sacraments and rituals of the high church. Ash Wednesday and its formative power were missed on me and others like me. What was the point of wearing some kind of darkened ash on one’s forehead? In his book Tortured Wonders, Clapp reflects on an experience an Episcopal priest friend of his had during an Ash Wednesday service
As the priests were offering up prayers and the Gospel, they prepared to offer up the reminder of each and everyone’s frailty in light of the body’s fragile reality. As one of the priests administered the ashes on the foreheads, a stunningly beautiful woman dressed obviously with fashion and panache walked forward and knelt before the priest. Her reticence and awkwardness were obvious and at some point she leaned forward as if she wanted to say something to the priest. He instinctually drew closer to her whispering only to hear her say in halting speech, “Father, I am a model. I know I only have a few years, and then I will be too old for this work. My body is aging, and I can hardly admit it to myself. I do this once a year, at this service. So rub the ashes on. Rub them hard.” Page 170 Tortured Wonders
I bring up the season of Lent for it is the system of time under which we live. We all live under some construct of time and ascribe value to it. We know how we value time by observing how we manage it, how we talk about it, and how we attempt to capture more of it for our use. Time tells us when to go to work, when to rest, when to allow leisure, when to celebrate, when to mourn and on and on.
When we as Christians introduce the Church calendar as a lens through which we see and value time, it is going to form and frame our lives differently than clocks set to other standards of value. If one travels at all they begin to see that the perception of time and its presence is defined and expressed very differently from one culture to another. Any time spent in South America and it is clear that smaller increments of time do not exist. Time is measured in hours at best but mostly in days and those days are broken out into things like sunrise, the heat of a noon day son, and the cooler hours of impending nightfall. If one treks down to Columbia or Ecuador, they quickly learn that smaller configurations of time (like minutes and hours) usually are considered porous expressions of intentionality and not literal containers into which life should be lived.
Time is different for believers. The nature of this sojourn demands we regard this seemingly vaporous experience with great care and stewardship. The Church calendar is a value system created by believers that reflects this honoring. We see and value time in a distinctly Christian manner. As stewards of life and its resources, we are not ultimately going to see time as merely a container for our own personal needs and preferences. This is not to say that we do not see ourselves living inside of time as a person but that there are grander purposes into which life and truth, goodness and beauty can be expressed and time is one of those containers.
Lent is a season that takes us into a cycle of repentance and mourning. It is clear that as we approach Easter, our hearts and minds begin to see the impact of our personal sinfulness and the sinfulness of the world. So much of our suffering comes from our unwillingness to embrace our limitations and our rootedness in our own agendas for life. Thus, we need a calendar or a clock if you will to tell us to mourn this condition. We must set aside some time to remind ourselves of our own finitude, our own limitations, and our own divine confinements.
Divine confinements is a phrase that came to me as I sat in a hospital wondering why the season of illness had befallen me. Wondering is probably a softened term for in fact, I was feeling God’s hiddeness and most of my prayers were those of desperation and crying out. As we allow ourselves to fall under the power of the Church calendar we begin to see that our Savior as well entered into this time where the confinements of life and His impending death were looming large on the horizon and overwhelming to His humanness. The wounds of overwhelment and insufficiency plague us as humans. This is the space out of which we question our faith, question, God’s existence, question the very thought of a kind and gracious God.
Michael Card makes it clear in his book Sacred Sorrows, that real mourning is different than despair. Despair comes when we do not think God is hearing our cries, when we take our crying out, and like Nietzsche, scream it into the abyss of nothingness to a God that is a figment of our own imagining. It is during times of great lament that the aloofness of the mystery now moves from being merely an intellectual conundrum solved by philosophers and preachers to an emotional necessity that we settle once and for all whether God and us can handle the visceral exchange that takes place during lament.
The Imposition of Ashes (Ash Wednesday) is in many ways the Churches answer to the ultimate question which is, “why do we die and why must I know that I am going to die?” Animals of course don’t seem to have this awareness. This may be open to debate as some elephants do seem to mourn the loss of their mates and many have said that other animals do as wall. Regardless of the level of consciousness of animals, it is clear that for humans, the question of our forthcoming death is a foundational exchange that all of us have at some point or the other. Ernst Becker in his ground breaking writings talked about the power of death as a back drop for much of life’s intensities and challenges.
As Christians we do have a hope and much of the modern church tells us to focus only on the hope side. Real lament seems to me to take hope into consideration but it also allows for the soul to cry out. It allows for the soul to tell a Father that the pain is too much; the feelings of sorrow and abandonment go deeper than they ever imagined they could feel, the seeming sense of insufficiency and overwhelment stand like cold specters over our shoulder reminding us daily of our impotence.
Any cursive reading of Scripture reveals quickly that much of the Old Testament writers did not sugar coat their laments. I am fearful that our satiated sense of self sufficiency that comes through abundance, keeps us from feeling at a deep level that this life is just not enough. The perks, the positions, the joys and pleasures in the end do not keep death from our door. Thus, this is a portal through which all enter. Death is the great leveler if you will.
As we enter the season of lent we are being told by our ancient heritage that honoring the lament, repenting over our ways of engaging each other and the created realm, are ways to redeem the time. There are ways to spend our time wisely and mercifully. Any spirituality that does not allow for lament is a cheap religion. It is not what God came to earth to offer us. In Jesus we see that God cares about the suffering of His people. In fact, the rain falls on the just and the unjust implying that God’s common grace is not merely an over flow but intentional in the sense that He wants this part of His character to be preeminently available. Crying out is something He welcomes. Deep questioning and sacred sorrow are things He is familiar with as his own Son questioned the very plan of salvation on some level. “Why have you forsaken me? Why? Why?”
As we continue to explore our spiritual roots we begin to see that the prayer of abandonment is an entry point into the heart of God. To seek after God is to first of all speak into the darkness with truth. Are you there? Why are you hiding?
It is during times of darkness and its shadow that we feel the tension of this life with a vengeance. We cannot hold back the tears. We cannot explain well enough to our souls the sense of impending loss. Thus, wisely, our brothers and sisters from times past have said….come under the canopy of this clock. Come under the story of time offered to us by our Hebrew brothers and sisters and then through the atoning story of our Savior begin to see yourself and your relationships to time and space through this blessing of permission. We have a time set aside in our lives to see it as it is. We do not have to deny the seasons of the soul, the journey of the heart. Regardless of what time the clock says, what time zone we are in, what part of the world we are in, there is a moment set aside for us to face the divine confinements of this life and mourn. We can do this without shame and hiding. We can even make this time oddly enough one of beauty. Wear the ashes with humility and grace.
A Poem
The Final Boxing Up of Life’s Things
Death will peer thru the front door window
Quietly come in unannounced
Only to discover most of my projects in moderate disarray
Exposing just how unsettled I really am
But alas, the one uncovering my cluttered domicile
Will most likely miss any sense of meaning and placement
My things will dissolve into their separateness
Revealing little about the tapestry I was constructing
This unwelcomed intruder will box up my things indiscriminately
Never to reveal anything to anyone regarding
The underside of my life’s weaving mystery
Only You see the life we’ve formed
Ash Wednesday Historical Background
The imposition of ashes on the foreheads of Christians is an ancient Christian practice, going back at least to the 10th century. Biblically, ashes are a symbols of purification and penitence (see Numbers 19:9, 17; Hebrews 9:13; Jonah 3:6; Matthew 11:21, and Luke 10:13 ).
In the early church, people who had been separated from the church because of serious sins might seek to be re-admitted to the fellowship by observing a formal period of penitence during Lent. These people were generally sprinkled with ashes or given rough garments sprinkled with ashes as a sign of their sorrow for their sins.
Beginning in the tenth century, the observance of Ash Wednesday became a general rite for the church. The ashes, which were a symbol of purification in the Old Testament, remind us that we are mortal. In many churches the ashes are made by burning the palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday. Ashes are placed on the forehead, usually in the sign of a cross, in a ritual known as the Imposition of Ashes. As the ashes are placed on the forehead, words such as these are spoken:
"Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return," recalling God's words to Adam in Genesis 3:19.
The ashes are prepared by burning palm leaves from the previous year's Palm Sunday celebrations and mixing them with olive oil as a fixative. In the Roman Catholic Church, Ash Wednesday is observed by fasting & abstinence.
Monday, January 12, 2009
The Scarcity of Wonder & Awe
The Reduction & Domestication of God
Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.
Matthew 5:4
I am called to be sad, confused, and disenchanted. Why? The times demand it. The epoch in which I live is experiencing much chaos and bewilderment. This deep sensation of uncertainty is not merely a passing condition of the soul based on a self ordained distancing from God but an attentiveness to our age. Lord, help my unbelief….
My assertions that God is easily accessible, discernable, and approachable quickly disclose my own audacity. As the Orthodox theologian, John of Damascus wrote, “God does not belong to the class of existing things, not that God has not existence but that God is above all existing things, no even above existence itself.”
The assuredness of the past is gone. Those preceding dispositions now speak more of self-belief and self-reliance than faith as all our foundations of knowing are up for grabs. To ignore the seeming domestication of God, His apparent departure from our awareness, the daily skirmishes between faiths and inner battles for power of those leading these various religious camps, makes public the inner barrenness of today’s supposed spiritual practitioners. The caustic banter of the day regarding faith & spirituality belies our glowing claims of piety and points to our overconfidence masquerading as faith. As Heidegger said, “We are in-between gods.”
Ironically, it is the very words about God and His nature that reveal our barrenness. We have reduced God to a text. We have diminished the miracle of faith to mere hermeneutics, creed, liturgy and a three point presentation as Peter Rollins says. Rollins goes on to say, “ The Word, if it exists at all, if "existence" is even the right word to describe its mode of dwelling, is not then the patch of meaning that covers over the wound of our unknowing but rather is that which causes the wound itself.” We cry out for a word, a voice in the wilderness and when we encounter this presence deny the very rupture in our beings that lead us to this event and encounter. We babble on and on about the inexpressible. In our attempt to bring our own inner world at one with itself we assault God’s revealing and systematize the text casting the very utterances of God out of our consciousness leaving us with nothing but the letter of the law. We then feast night and day on this dry & lifeless manuscript hoping for God to indwell a copy of Himself.
For believers, this assessment may sound dark and foreboding if not defeatist and full of unbelief. This is not the intention of this blog. In fact, my intentions, if I am in touch with them on some level, are to make sure I am here now. I want to make sure I do not nostalgically re-present time as if I could bring the former days into the now through wistfulness and longing. I do not want to offer up a picture of God, bloated and assured with His own being but a deity in tears, hidden from Himself, face down in the garden in prayer. This is God being disenfranchised by God. This is God embracing the real condition of humankind at this moment. This is Jesus.
Blessed are those that mourn. It is this overwhelming sense of loss, helplessness, and despair that Robert A. Guelich says expresses the grief of Jesus’ followers. Richard Rohr adds that this notion reveals clearly those who have entered into solidarity with the pain of the world. This is the incarnation. When the world is as it is, how else would Jesus’ followers be? We live in a world where even believers must admit the apparent absence of God. As Heidegger asserted many decades before, "the world of the Christian God has lost its effective force in history.” Christendom is dead.
There is a deeply personal and previously concealed disclosure to this observance. In fact, my recognition of this condition in the world begins within me. Much of my personal faith walk to date has been an avoidance of my own condition as well as the world’s. I was looking for an antidote that would immunize me to all the drama and pain of this world. I spent much of my adult life looking for this potion presuming my search was for truth. In fact, I was looking for a magic elixir that would get me high and keep me above the fray of life. I was looking for that supernatural buzz that quieted all the beasts and allowed me to offer my doctrinal and theological conclusions as ultimate answers instead of my own body. I honored the idea of the cross and yet denied its reality in my own life. I believed in Christ. I was not a follower after Him and His life.
I now see much of this search as a need to escape the real world. Rather than walk as my Savoir into the mysterious caldron of suffering and madness, I took the road most traveled, ate fruit from the lower branches, and kept my circle only to those who heartily agreed with all my speculations on the cosmos. I made the Church the Kingdom. The busyness of religion was my vocation. There was no need for a supernatural God breaking into my world. I had captured the essence of the message and was fine tuning its dissemination and calling it love. I had created my own cultural and spiritual monastery. I had successfully cloistered myself inside a bubble of denial that became, in the end, my own demise. For the degree to which I denied the world without was the same degree to which I denied the world within. But there is no escaping my own pain, and my complicity in the pain of the world. I am now tragically aware of my collusion with bigotry, poverty, sexism, phobias on countless marginalized peoples, and the daily blindness that comes with my inordinate desire for things. This admission is not a self flagellation but an emptying of my spiritual pride. How could I truly love when my presumptions of its presence manifest themselves in convincing arguments as to who was ultimately disserving?
For me to more fully embrace this tension is to admit to others that which I most want them to ignore in me. To allow others to speak into my arrogance, my selfishness, my glib responses to extreme suffering is to prepare myself for a deeper wonder. I am being formed into the New Adam. I do not simply allow this. It is happening to me sovereignly. I must indeed place myself in a position of possible transformation but to regard this deep conversion of the heart as something to which I requested or sought would be a great exaggeration and untruth. No one walks towards the cross without tremendous misgivings, great doubt, and immense trepidation. The cross appears. It is not something we seek. This apprehension is due to the nature of the encounter. Only a God of love would allow His most loved creation to be offered up to chaos. Only a God whose affections were tragically tied to His Son and the created world would consent to this torturous aching. We will not know this God until we step into this part of His heart.
I am daily becoming aware of how tight fisted I am with the blessings of grace. My calculations as to who is discerning, who is in a position to appreciate the truth and obey accordingly, is just not the way the Savior encounters me nor calls me to be. I am consistently smaller than my calling. I avoid the truth countless times and return to what brings me personal comfort. Only when I am willing to sit for a brief period in my own inner discord, do I begin to feel the real hunger of my heart
I was raised to believe that this transformation came through study, prayer, and obedience. There is truth in those practices. In fact, there is enough truth within those practices and postures to last a lifetime. I now thank God my own sense of inner chaos forced me out of my private contradictions to see the world as it really is. I am living in a time of great change and turmoil. Undoubtedly, any historian worth their salt would point to countless facts that could paint any and all times as those of great turmoil, but indeed, the current age is one of seeming collapse and great disenchantment.
I have remarked in previous writings as to the impact of the repression of beauty. I would include in that assertion the accompanying inner qualities of wonder and awe. In fact, for Christians much of our struggle is to avoid regarding the presence and immanence of God as comprehensible, easily recognizable and intellectually obvious. Quite the contrary. Until we dwell in the concealment of God, the sorrow of this world, and the seeming absence of a God who should be manifest in power and might, will we begin to contemplate our current estate.
Many of my friends are currently struggling to feel and witness God actively moving in their lives. Although this most recent writing was about my own search (the blog), I do often think about the current disquiet of entire communities who are experiencing great loss and suffering. From those in Palestine to Wall Street, great suffering is come upon this world and we cannot deny its presence and power. As we pursue answers to the misery and affliction of so many we wonder why and how all this can be taking place in a world where God is. Where is He? We discover that He leaves us seemingly strung out in the middle of the cosmos with little to go on. I am beginning to think that this indeed the Zeitgeist of our times and that unless and until we sit in this seemingly emptied space, we will not discover the God who is there. This is a place of contemplative wonderment and awe.
Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.
Matthew 5:4
I am called to be sad, confused, and disenchanted. Why? The times demand it. The epoch in which I live is experiencing much chaos and bewilderment. This deep sensation of uncertainty is not merely a passing condition of the soul based on a self ordained distancing from God but an attentiveness to our age. Lord, help my unbelief….
My assertions that God is easily accessible, discernable, and approachable quickly disclose my own audacity. As the Orthodox theologian, John of Damascus wrote, “God does not belong to the class of existing things, not that God has not existence but that God is above all existing things, no even above existence itself.”
The assuredness of the past is gone. Those preceding dispositions now speak more of self-belief and self-reliance than faith as all our foundations of knowing are up for grabs. To ignore the seeming domestication of God, His apparent departure from our awareness, the daily skirmishes between faiths and inner battles for power of those leading these various religious camps, makes public the inner barrenness of today’s supposed spiritual practitioners. The caustic banter of the day regarding faith & spirituality belies our glowing claims of piety and points to our overconfidence masquerading as faith. As Heidegger said, “We are in-between gods.”
Ironically, it is the very words about God and His nature that reveal our barrenness. We have reduced God to a text. We have diminished the miracle of faith to mere hermeneutics, creed, liturgy and a three point presentation as Peter Rollins says. Rollins goes on to say, “ The Word, if it exists at all, if "existence" is even the right word to describe its mode of dwelling, is not then the patch of meaning that covers over the wound of our unknowing but rather is that which causes the wound itself.” We cry out for a word, a voice in the wilderness and when we encounter this presence deny the very rupture in our beings that lead us to this event and encounter. We babble on and on about the inexpressible. In our attempt to bring our own inner world at one with itself we assault God’s revealing and systematize the text casting the very utterances of God out of our consciousness leaving us with nothing but the letter of the law. We then feast night and day on this dry & lifeless manuscript hoping for God to indwell a copy of Himself.
For believers, this assessment may sound dark and foreboding if not defeatist and full of unbelief. This is not the intention of this blog. In fact, my intentions, if I am in touch with them on some level, are to make sure I am here now. I want to make sure I do not nostalgically re-present time as if I could bring the former days into the now through wistfulness and longing. I do not want to offer up a picture of God, bloated and assured with His own being but a deity in tears, hidden from Himself, face down in the garden in prayer. This is God being disenfranchised by God. This is God embracing the real condition of humankind at this moment. This is Jesus.
Blessed are those that mourn. It is this overwhelming sense of loss, helplessness, and despair that Robert A. Guelich says expresses the grief of Jesus’ followers. Richard Rohr adds that this notion reveals clearly those who have entered into solidarity with the pain of the world. This is the incarnation. When the world is as it is, how else would Jesus’ followers be? We live in a world where even believers must admit the apparent absence of God. As Heidegger asserted many decades before, "the world of the Christian God has lost its effective force in history.” Christendom is dead.
There is a deeply personal and previously concealed disclosure to this observance. In fact, my recognition of this condition in the world begins within me. Much of my personal faith walk to date has been an avoidance of my own condition as well as the world’s. I was looking for an antidote that would immunize me to all the drama and pain of this world. I spent much of my adult life looking for this potion presuming my search was for truth. In fact, I was looking for a magic elixir that would get me high and keep me above the fray of life. I was looking for that supernatural buzz that quieted all the beasts and allowed me to offer my doctrinal and theological conclusions as ultimate answers instead of my own body. I honored the idea of the cross and yet denied its reality in my own life. I believed in Christ. I was not a follower after Him and His life.
I now see much of this search as a need to escape the real world. Rather than walk as my Savoir into the mysterious caldron of suffering and madness, I took the road most traveled, ate fruit from the lower branches, and kept my circle only to those who heartily agreed with all my speculations on the cosmos. I made the Church the Kingdom. The busyness of religion was my vocation. There was no need for a supernatural God breaking into my world. I had captured the essence of the message and was fine tuning its dissemination and calling it love. I had created my own cultural and spiritual monastery. I had successfully cloistered myself inside a bubble of denial that became, in the end, my own demise. For the degree to which I denied the world without was the same degree to which I denied the world within. But there is no escaping my own pain, and my complicity in the pain of the world. I am now tragically aware of my collusion with bigotry, poverty, sexism, phobias on countless marginalized peoples, and the daily blindness that comes with my inordinate desire for things. This admission is not a self flagellation but an emptying of my spiritual pride. How could I truly love when my presumptions of its presence manifest themselves in convincing arguments as to who was ultimately disserving?
For me to more fully embrace this tension is to admit to others that which I most want them to ignore in me. To allow others to speak into my arrogance, my selfishness, my glib responses to extreme suffering is to prepare myself for a deeper wonder. I am being formed into the New Adam. I do not simply allow this. It is happening to me sovereignly. I must indeed place myself in a position of possible transformation but to regard this deep conversion of the heart as something to which I requested or sought would be a great exaggeration and untruth. No one walks towards the cross without tremendous misgivings, great doubt, and immense trepidation. The cross appears. It is not something we seek. This apprehension is due to the nature of the encounter. Only a God of love would allow His most loved creation to be offered up to chaos. Only a God whose affections were tragically tied to His Son and the created world would consent to this torturous aching. We will not know this God until we step into this part of His heart.
I am daily becoming aware of how tight fisted I am with the blessings of grace. My calculations as to who is discerning, who is in a position to appreciate the truth and obey accordingly, is just not the way the Savior encounters me nor calls me to be. I am consistently smaller than my calling. I avoid the truth countless times and return to what brings me personal comfort. Only when I am willing to sit for a brief period in my own inner discord, do I begin to feel the real hunger of my heart
I was raised to believe that this transformation came through study, prayer, and obedience. There is truth in those practices. In fact, there is enough truth within those practices and postures to last a lifetime. I now thank God my own sense of inner chaos forced me out of my private contradictions to see the world as it really is. I am living in a time of great change and turmoil. Undoubtedly, any historian worth their salt would point to countless facts that could paint any and all times as those of great turmoil, but indeed, the current age is one of seeming collapse and great disenchantment.
I have remarked in previous writings as to the impact of the repression of beauty. I would include in that assertion the accompanying inner qualities of wonder and awe. In fact, for Christians much of our struggle is to avoid regarding the presence and immanence of God as comprehensible, easily recognizable and intellectually obvious. Quite the contrary. Until we dwell in the concealment of God, the sorrow of this world, and the seeming absence of a God who should be manifest in power and might, will we begin to contemplate our current estate.
Many of my friends are currently struggling to feel and witness God actively moving in their lives. Although this most recent writing was about my own search (the blog), I do often think about the current disquiet of entire communities who are experiencing great loss and suffering. From those in Palestine to Wall Street, great suffering is come upon this world and we cannot deny its presence and power. As we pursue answers to the misery and affliction of so many we wonder why and how all this can be taking place in a world where God is. Where is He? We discover that He leaves us seemingly strung out in the middle of the cosmos with little to go on. I am beginning to think that this indeed the Zeitgeist of our times and that unless and until we sit in this seemingly emptied space, we will not discover the God who is there. This is a place of contemplative wonderment and awe.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
The Dark Providence of Suffering
The Beauty of the Flaw
The Wound has left its imprint John O’Donohue
My tradition of faith has taught me much. I am so grateful for the love of sacred writ, the excessive favor of the Father, the assurance of faith, and the fellowship of saints. However, I was also invited to experience God in ways that now seem full of presumption and projected requirements upon God. I prayed. I experienced God in one situation. Why would not all my prayers have some kind of shelf life to them before the seal was broken and the answers poured forth. Time, it now appears, is deeply in collusion with the Healer. Time is a companion that continues to edit and do great surgery to my lexicon of faith and spirituality. Words and descriptions that I wrapped around experience at some point proved to be unable to carry and illuminate the true import of life’s events.
It is not clear to me whether I am genetically prone towards depression or whether I am merely aware of the grandiosity of grace given my true estate. In recent years I had decided to make my secret weeping more public and at times I am haunted by my own brokenness. Why would I choose to chronicle this litany of ashes? What is the motivation that chants the liturgy of mourning? Why remain vulnerable when it appears to preclude the accolades my soul desires? Is it the dark providence released in this vulnerability that continues to bring me to this place? All of life has been an intervention.
John O’Donohue, a recently deceased poet and aesthetic philosopher, speaks of a “refined interiority” that comes with those willing to take the inner journey, the road less traveled. I am so tempted to define myself from the outer most reaches of my soul. I am what I own. I am how I look. I am what I know. I am who I know. If anything, this penchant for excessive yearning must point to a need. A need so profoundly planted within the core of my being that I have only two choices. Live or die. As we enter the limitedness of our form, we suddenly encounter the cold clarity of our ultimate demise and the insistence of the heart to call forth beauty from the flaws.
Now even our death is embraced in the dark providence of suffering. We often see affliction and death through the awful outer circumstances that usher in the end. But beneath and within is a prevailing grace and a final reminder that we are more than we seem.
Just recently my father passed on to the next realm. Towards the end it was clear to me that his body was engulfed in his soul and not the reverse. After years of discerning primarily through the mind and body, it was now evident that his soul was preeminent in the naming and descriptions of his swan song. The final frontier of death was all that lay ahead of him. As much as his body was worn and weary, his resilience was an anticipation of the final gathering up of things and a welcoming of the crossing. “Behold I am making all things new.” He heard the Savior’s voice and now even the shadows of his final days could not damper his enthusiasm.
As much as he longed for the new, it was his memories of his life that awakened this longing full bloom. O’Donohue said, "Memory is the place where our vanished days secretly gather.” This final harvesting took all that hurt him, all that diminished him in his own eyes, all that spent his life energy and through his memoires pointed to the resurrection. He did not and could not see suffering and death as the final reversal and unraveling of this mystery called life. Now, more than ever, the shame and condemnation were loosened and he heard the sentries guarding the outposts of heaven chanting his welcoming. He would continue on as himself. How all the flaws would make it into this next land was not a worry. Somehow he and the Savoir had created a life of companionship and he welcomed his own vanishing. I watched him become more beautiful as he neared the Kingdom. I too forgot his flawed estate and limitations and saw the radiance of the eternal blush his cheeks. I want to pass this way.
Holy Ignorance
The Presumptions of Pursuit
I have spent my entire life pursuing this desire for more than what is.
Thomas Moore
I am a fool. This proclaimed status is not for feigned humility's sake. This is an upfront assertion of the very character of my soul. This is not to denigrate my worth before humankind or God. It is merely to reveal at the outset my inability to speak of the holy and my presumptions in offering up speculations of the invisible. That is what makes me foolish. It is idea that what is beyond can be spoken of with such certitude and bravado.
So I begin with repentance. Forgive me for the parts of the work that lead you away from love truth, goodness and most of all the beauty of the Incarnation. I pray these writings are not an escape but an imaginal door into a world that truly is but only in our hearts.
To utter speculation regarding the infinite and ineffable is by its nature more poetry than the transference of facts. What is beyond is always beyond. What appears empty to this world is full only in our imaginations that we jump start with the metaphors of faith. These metaphors are the really real as they exist to allow us to even wonder about that which we cannot ultimatley know. In these moments of faith, the inexpressible is more prayer, as suffering, ambiguity, paradox and mystery are always dogging our every move. Thus, this work is more about my doubt and anxious moments than clarity and certitude. This offering is less persuasive acclamation and more lamentation and confession. Much of what resides on these pages is also given as gift and offering. When proof is no longer the dominant posture of the soul, mystery can truly become revelation. If the sublime and transcendent do exist, they do so for the sake of beauty and less so for the sake or argumentation and apologetical proof.
I cannot imagine a world without God. Yet, His presence is not merely difficult to feel or know it is also hauntingly absent and full of longing and despair. As I have grown older my inclinations towards God have become less needful of things being certain and concretely provable. To some degree, I am leery of the defensive stratagems that make sure all truth is contained in some repeatable formula. Therefore, in this offering I will sometimes discuss the idea of God rather than assume I am discussing God. The difference is in the gaze of the heart and nature of the engagement. Much of this distinction is reflected in the opaque nature of my speech. My diatribes are by their very nature abstractions. God does not reveal Himself merely because I talk about Him or name Him on a page. He is above naming and speculative assertions. He is beyond the metaphors I choose to point towards Him or allude to His possible presence. He is beyond my rhetoric.
Because of this inability to capture God, I can sometimes imagine Him to not exist. I can feel the despair of attempting to know the unknowable and feeling the absurdity of that attempt. In those moments despair may indeed be a proper response. Like Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, I have waited for God to reveal Himself upon my beck and call, on my time table, and through my chosen words and descriptions. When He refuses, I can quickly become a cynic and wonder if all my experiences to date have been fictional and make believe. I am agnostic if not atheistic. I am not sure if this disposition is a blessing or a curse. Much like Thomas Moore, however, I find myself caught between the two worlds of suffering and hope. I am, as Moore says, involved in two journeys at once. “Often we have to do two things at once. Affirm and deny, believe and doubt, worship and be skeptical, relate and keep it all empty, Moore contends.”
There are indeed parts of God that are unknowable and if that is the case why endeavor to write about the anonymity of the holy and beyond? Why write about what I cannot properly tell? Is this when my doubt becomes virtue? Is this when my seeking is divine love incarnate, when my imagining manifests itself in faith that which my assertions of intellect were never meant to hold as sacred? Possibly. Who can know these things?
I have spent my entire life pursuing this desire for more than what is.
Thomas Moore
I am a fool. This proclaimed status is not for feigned humility's sake. This is an upfront assertion of the very character of my soul. This is not to denigrate my worth before humankind or God. It is merely to reveal at the outset my inability to speak of the holy and my presumptions in offering up speculations of the invisible. That is what makes me foolish. It is idea that what is beyond can be spoken of with such certitude and bravado.
So I begin with repentance. Forgive me for the parts of the work that lead you away from love truth, goodness and most of all the beauty of the Incarnation. I pray these writings are not an escape but an imaginal door into a world that truly is but only in our hearts.
To utter speculation regarding the infinite and ineffable is by its nature more poetry than the transference of facts. What is beyond is always beyond. What appears empty to this world is full only in our imaginations that we jump start with the metaphors of faith. These metaphors are the really real as they exist to allow us to even wonder about that which we cannot ultimatley know. In these moments of faith, the inexpressible is more prayer, as suffering, ambiguity, paradox and mystery are always dogging our every move. Thus, this work is more about my doubt and anxious moments than clarity and certitude. This offering is less persuasive acclamation and more lamentation and confession. Much of what resides on these pages is also given as gift and offering. When proof is no longer the dominant posture of the soul, mystery can truly become revelation. If the sublime and transcendent do exist, they do so for the sake of beauty and less so for the sake or argumentation and apologetical proof.
I cannot imagine a world without God. Yet, His presence is not merely difficult to feel or know it is also hauntingly absent and full of longing and despair. As I have grown older my inclinations towards God have become less needful of things being certain and concretely provable. To some degree, I am leery of the defensive stratagems that make sure all truth is contained in some repeatable formula. Therefore, in this offering I will sometimes discuss the idea of God rather than assume I am discussing God. The difference is in the gaze of the heart and nature of the engagement. Much of this distinction is reflected in the opaque nature of my speech. My diatribes are by their very nature abstractions. God does not reveal Himself merely because I talk about Him or name Him on a page. He is above naming and speculative assertions. He is beyond the metaphors I choose to point towards Him or allude to His possible presence. He is beyond my rhetoric.
Because of this inability to capture God, I can sometimes imagine Him to not exist. I can feel the despair of attempting to know the unknowable and feeling the absurdity of that attempt. In those moments despair may indeed be a proper response. Like Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, I have waited for God to reveal Himself upon my beck and call, on my time table, and through my chosen words and descriptions. When He refuses, I can quickly become a cynic and wonder if all my experiences to date have been fictional and make believe. I am agnostic if not atheistic. I am not sure if this disposition is a blessing or a curse. Much like Thomas Moore, however, I find myself caught between the two worlds of suffering and hope. I am, as Moore says, involved in two journeys at once. “Often we have to do two things at once. Affirm and deny, believe and doubt, worship and be skeptical, relate and keep it all empty, Moore contends.”
There are indeed parts of God that are unknowable and if that is the case why endeavor to write about the anonymity of the holy and beyond? Why write about what I cannot properly tell? Is this when my doubt becomes virtue? Is this when my seeking is divine love incarnate, when my imagining manifests itself in faith that which my assertions of intellect were never meant to hold as sacred? Possibly. Who can know these things?
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Wise Speech
Speaking the Truth in Love
Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.
Margaret Millar
Here we are at the final debate between presidential hopefuls. Both parties have ignored some of their earlier promises regarding the potential tenor and tone of the campaign and have resorted to unfair, untrue, and unwise discourse. What is the price a society pays when rancor and discord become common place? Why is our speech so important?
Speech is a vital part of our day to day lives. One cannot divorce speech from communication. Communication is in part words. We all know words can cause immense harm as well as great good. Skillful speech can open hearts and lead to profound insights as well as promote healing and transformation. Scripture tells us that a soft answer turns away wrath. James 1:19 says, Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath. Therefore the practice of “wise speech” is crucial for any person, company, church or community to truly communicate. In community speech is spiritually alive and therefore is in need of great mindfulness.
There are four qualities of wise speech
1) Truthfulness
2) Helpfulness
3) Kindness and Goodwill, and
4) Appropriateness (including timeliness, non distractedness and clear intention)
1) Truthfulness is clear seeing. It simply means not lying. This would include exaggerations, half truths, omissions, and denials.
2) Helpfulness deals more with the motivations of speech as to whether our speech is to create harm or enmity. This means looking deeply at the roots of non helpful speech discerning moments of ill will, self centeredness, and subtle disparagement.
3) Kindness and goodwill has to do with what might be called harsh speech. For it is possible to to be helpful in some ways while still remaining somewhat cold, seeing ourselves as superior, or lacking empathetic connection. Communication is not merely static information. Communication is carried and received through the conduits of our souls. Therefore harsh judgments and nagging comments will often reveal our cynicism and negativity. When we develop speech that is purposely kind we begin to see the power of words and communication differently. One can be truthful and still speak from the heart. These postures do not preclude being confrontational nor direct. It merely asks what the spirit behind the words. How does it feel in my body when I am saying the words? Why do I talk the way I do? Would I want these same words spoken to me in such a posture and tone? The biblical mandate to do unto others is salient here.
4) It is important to note that committing oneself to truthful, helpful, kind and appropriate speech does not mean being overly nice. There is an important place for speech that is direct, firm, and critical, (without being judgmental & personal). When one is being helpful or kind, it will impact the intentionality of the speech and therefore its delivery and spirit.
So how does one practice these guidelines of speech in the relationships, the public domain and business sector as well as the Church? Wise speech establishes safety. For true honest communication to go down safety is key. We need and want others to be truthful with us and thus we are safe as we know that what is being said to others is also being said to us and said in the same manner of disclosure. Many "concerned conversaitons" are indeed gossip and taint the spiritual water from which the community drinks. All discussions are indeed heard by the heart of the community. That is why the tongue has so much power over life. If we an control what we say, we are now in a positon to begin to get our bodies to do other things that look like servants of Jesus Christ. But without this kind of foundational safety, relationships in the business world and other arenas become strategic rather than cooperative and increasingly are filled with cynicism, skepticism, and even anxiety and fear about other’s intentions and perceptions.
In settings where community is not being experienced, I tend to look out for #1. Are there some , attitudes, postures,norms, guidelines, or policies individuals and communities can adopt to make wise speech more readily present? We currently live in a culture via websites and media where a growing lack of civility has impacted all public discourse. Spiritually grounded communities will make communication safe and encourage speech that is truthful, direct but also helpful, kind, and appropriate and timely. Can we practice safe and wise speech as we engage the political decisions that are about to take place? Without this intention, no policy or law will bring us together as a people. Let us strive to make all areas of our lives safe for the truth to be made manifest. Let us be mindful of the power of our tongue.
Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.
Margaret Millar
Here we are at the final debate between presidential hopefuls. Both parties have ignored some of their earlier promises regarding the potential tenor and tone of the campaign and have resorted to unfair, untrue, and unwise discourse. What is the price a society pays when rancor and discord become common place? Why is our speech so important?
Speech is a vital part of our day to day lives. One cannot divorce speech from communication. Communication is in part words. We all know words can cause immense harm as well as great good. Skillful speech can open hearts and lead to profound insights as well as promote healing and transformation. Scripture tells us that a soft answer turns away wrath. James 1:19 says, Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath. Therefore the practice of “wise speech” is crucial for any person, company, church or community to truly communicate. In community speech is spiritually alive and therefore is in need of great mindfulness.
There are four qualities of wise speech
1) Truthfulness
2) Helpfulness
3) Kindness and Goodwill, and
4) Appropriateness (including timeliness, non distractedness and clear intention)
1) Truthfulness is clear seeing. It simply means not lying. This would include exaggerations, half truths, omissions, and denials.
2) Helpfulness deals more with the motivations of speech as to whether our speech is to create harm or enmity. This means looking deeply at the roots of non helpful speech discerning moments of ill will, self centeredness, and subtle disparagement.
3) Kindness and goodwill has to do with what might be called harsh speech. For it is possible to to be helpful in some ways while still remaining somewhat cold, seeing ourselves as superior, or lacking empathetic connection. Communication is not merely static information. Communication is carried and received through the conduits of our souls. Therefore harsh judgments and nagging comments will often reveal our cynicism and negativity. When we develop speech that is purposely kind we begin to see the power of words and communication differently. One can be truthful and still speak from the heart. These postures do not preclude being confrontational nor direct. It merely asks what the spirit behind the words. How does it feel in my body when I am saying the words? Why do I talk the way I do? Would I want these same words spoken to me in such a posture and tone? The biblical mandate to do unto others is salient here.
4) It is important to note that committing oneself to truthful, helpful, kind and appropriate speech does not mean being overly nice. There is an important place for speech that is direct, firm, and critical, (without being judgmental & personal). When one is being helpful or kind, it will impact the intentionality of the speech and therefore its delivery and spirit.
So how does one practice these guidelines of speech in the relationships, the public domain and business sector as well as the Church? Wise speech establishes safety. For true honest communication to go down safety is key. We need and want others to be truthful with us and thus we are safe as we know that what is being said to others is also being said to us and said in the same manner of disclosure. Many "concerned conversaitons" are indeed gossip and taint the spiritual water from which the community drinks. All discussions are indeed heard by the heart of the community. That is why the tongue has so much power over life. If we an control what we say, we are now in a positon to begin to get our bodies to do other things that look like servants of Jesus Christ. But without this kind of foundational safety, relationships in the business world and other arenas become strategic rather than cooperative and increasingly are filled with cynicism, skepticism, and even anxiety and fear about other’s intentions and perceptions.
In settings where community is not being experienced, I tend to look out for #1. Are there some , attitudes, postures,norms, guidelines, or policies individuals and communities can adopt to make wise speech more readily present? We currently live in a culture via websites and media where a growing lack of civility has impacted all public discourse. Spiritually grounded communities will make communication safe and encourage speech that is truthful, direct but also helpful, kind, and appropriate and timely. Can we practice safe and wise speech as we engage the political decisions that are about to take place? Without this intention, no policy or law will bring us together as a people. Let us strive to make all areas of our lives safe for the truth to be made manifest. Let us be mindful of the power of our tongue.
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