How to pray?

This week, I'm still working out a bit for myself what it is to enter Lent. I mentioned at our Tuesday supper and Bible study that I find myself looking for a discipline, but that everything seems so trivial; I am saving water with 4 or 5 minute showers, but it feels short of transformative. I could try to eat less or skip dessert more, but then I'd just be focused on losing my pregnancy weight, not the fasting of Christ in the desert. So I am still trying. In general, I'm trying to pay attention more, to move a little more slowly, in spirit if not in practice. And praying.

But how to pray? A while ago I was listening to the radio program Speaking of Faith (http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/), where they interviewed one of my favorite writers, Roberta Bondi. Her books bring together contemporary life and theology with the early monastic desert fathers and mothers. She says,
We often have a kind of notion as part of this highfalutin, noble picture of ourselves as pray-ers that when we pray we need to be completely attentive and we need to be fully engaged and we need to be concentrating and we need to be focused. But the fact is, if prayer is our end of a relationship with God, that's not the way we are with the people we love a large portion of the time. We simply are in their presence. We're going about our lives at the same time in each other's presence, aware and sustained by each other, but not much more than that.

She went on to tell the story of how exhausted and lifeless she felt when she began teaching (she's now retired from Emory University). She said she came home from work and felt totally useless to her family. She was already so tired, and would then be overwhelmed by all the things they needed her for--the washing machine had overflowed, or there was too much homework, or whatever. And she'd just want to run away. What she also knew, though, was that the important thing was that she was there--that part of being a family was showing up for meals. She continued, "However we are, however we think we ought to be in prayer, the fact is we just need to show up and do the best we can do. It's like being in a family."

I certainly know my prayer is like that--I have joked about how the dog's crate in my office had replaced my meditation cushion, but that since the dog died, the meditation cushion is back. For a year, most of my prayer time went to walking in the woods with him. Now, I'm back trying to sit down there in the corner--both examples of a certain kind of holy "showing up"--not always so regular, not always so focused, but doing the best I can.

Here is a line from TS Eliot (I found myself quoting him in my Transfiguration sermon, too).
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
Amen.

Blessings,
Sara+

The invitation of Lent

A blessed Ash Wednesday to you. I'm in between our services now--we have one more coming, at 7 pm. We had a nice turnout at noon--about half from St Peter's Ugandan congregation--so it was nice to celebrate together. Well, I guess Ash Wednesday isn't celebratory, exactly-but maybe it should be. Lent isn't so much about renunciation and leanness as it is about making room for God's love to come at Easter. We get tangled up in wanting to punish ourselves for being bad, while that can sometimes just turn us more deeply self-ward, rather than God-ward. A friend of a friend on facebook, also a priest, commented on "that great English tradition of thinking ourselves virtuous when, in point of fact, we're merely uncomfortable." Ouch.

As we've been planning, we don't have cut flowers on the altar or in the baptistry this year. Several years ago, Sheila Gillen donated several crown of thorns plants for the Lenten altar. For a while they were in my office, but when one of them died it seemed like the sacristy might be a better place (there's more light--and also I am not great with plants), so it has really grown well. Maybe too well--almost like nature joking with us in our solemnity, last week it also sprung two tiny flowers. You can only see them up close, but it's almost as if we are being told that there will be some tiny sign of new life, even in this dark winter.

What will really bring you new life in Lent this year? What will clear open the space to meet the joy of Easter? One theme that I always come back to again and again is forgiveness--forgiving myself, as much (if not more than) forgiving others. This Sunday, we'll meet upstairs in to watch "The Power of Forgiveness," a documentary on forgiveness in its many shapes, with stories from Northern Ireland, Post 9/11/01 New York City, the Middle East, and more.

I'd like to share a poem (of sorts) that I mailed out last year as well--I'm not sure where it comes from. A friend sent it to me and I thought it captured well the invitation of Lent.

This Lent...
Fast from suspicion and feast on trust
Fast from complaining and feast on appreciation
Fast from judging others and feast on Christ within others
Fast from idle gossip and feast on purposeful silence.
Fast from bitter anger and feast on forgiveness.
Fast from discouragement and feast on hope
Fast from worry and feast on trusting God
Fast from unrelenting pressures and feast on prayer that sustains.
Fast from lethargy and feast on enthusiasm.
Fast from emphasizing the differences and feast on the unity of life.
Fast from thoughts of illness and feast on the healing power of God.
Fast from discontent; feast on gratitude.
Fast from hostility; feast on nonviolence.
Fast from self-absorption; feast on compassion.

Blessings,
Sara+

Call to joy

Despite the fact that Ash Wednesday is in a week, I'm suppressing the desire to write about Lent; it isn't here yet, and there is still quite a bit of celebrating to do between now and then--one baptism and one pancake supper (and, of course, one vestry meeting--but it's possible that that isn't as much an occasion for fireworks). One of the most wonderful things about observing a liturgical year is also one of the most challenging--how in the world do we stay where we are? How can we not look forward, or look back? How to stay gazing out from the mountain top (this Sunday's Gospel) without descending into the valley of the desert (the first Sunday of Lent)?

This past Sunday, we had a children's sermon and a wonderful group of kids come up and sit together. Our Gospel was the story of Jesus calling Simon Peter and James and John. Jesus is teaching by the lake, and climbs into Peter's boat so the people can hear him better. Discouraged by not having caught anything all night, Peter lets him in and listens to him teach. Jesus tells him to let down the nets, and all are astounded at the enormous catch--so many fish it nearly sank the boat. Peter and his friends then leave everything to follow Jesus, who tells them that they'll fish for people from now on.

This story is powerful for me because it reminds me that wherever I go, and whatever I do, God is with me. God gives us our gifts to be used in the service of God. Everyone has some skill that gives glory to the One who created us. For our kids' sermon I invited the kids to write their gifts on their own fish, and the answers were as varied as our kids (though "annoying my sister" did come up twice...). Whether dancing, reading, smiling, canoeing, writing, drawing, playing piano or soccer, or just playing, our kids give glory to God, and they know it. Ella Hobin is fond of castles. So is my son Isaiah.

But we forget. We know that God takes pleasure in them just as we do, but we forget that God takes pleasure in us, too. As Brother Roger of Taizé reminds us, Christ's call is to joy, not gloom.

It's a good time to remember that call, and soak up as much as we can. It might seem paradoxical to feel a call to joy so close to Lent, but I think it's a good time for it. Brother Roger's counterpoint is instructive. The opposite of joy isn't sadness--there is plenty of that in life, and even in the life of faith there is space for it. But gloom is something else--gloom is when we are turned inward and see only our own anxiety and our own worries. It's essentially self-ish; centered on the self, it takes ME and MINE as the most important category.

So for now, there is celebration--leave the mourning to Lent, but remember that even then there is space for joy, the joyful freedom of life centered on Christ's self-giving love for us. But for today, look for both the joy and celebration that meet us and love us where we are.

Blessings,
Sara+

From Feb. 5: Transformation and potential

After having just completed our Bishop's Visitation and Annual meeting on two consecutive Sundays, we have been very busy! We didn't get an issue of the Fieldstone Crier out this January, and so it has been some time since I wrote to you in this space--I'm glad to be back here, and back to work. I came back in the midst of all the movement of Christmas, and new leadership, and new members--and I am so excited about what this year will bring.

There's quite a bit happening this month, too. On the 14th, we'll baptize Alana Shirley, whose parents Michael and Michelle have been coming for several months. That Sunday is the Feast of the Transfiguration--the last Sunday before Lent. I think every year I've been here we've done baptisms on that day, and it is a good one for it. In our Gospel for that Sunday, we meet Jesus on the mountain top, transfigured in white in a cloud, along with Moses and Elijah. God speaks from the cloud: "This is my son, my Chosen (The Gospels of Matthew and Mark say "beloved") listen to him." When we celebrate a baptism the Sunday before Lent begins, we're following Jesus' pattern, in a way; the Scriptures tell of him being driven into the wilderness after his own baptism. He goes out in the wilderness with a deep sureness of his nature as a beloved child of God, and his power comes directly from that beloved nature.

If we observe Lent to remind ourselves of Jesus' ministry and mission and his time in the desert, we should do so with the same awareness of God's presence and love as he did. The season of Lent is about stripping down and focusing. We don't observe Lent and focus on our sin to think about how bad we are, we observe Lent to remember how good we can be.

Whenever we celebrate a baptism, we reaffirm the promises of our own baptismal covenants. We don't do baptisms privately because we need the support of the community to make, and keep, those promises.

When Adah and Vanessa were baptized a few weeks ago, each of you promised to do "all in your power to support these persons in their lives in Christ" --partly because they need it, but also because you need it! We need each other to practice our faith and to know God.

This Lent, I invite you to pray about how you are a member of this community; how does it sustain you? How do you help to sustain it? How is your life of faith intertwined with others in this place? What do you need for the life of your Spirit this Lent, and how can you invite this community into that life?


Blessings,
Sara+