Job: My Side of the Story

Here are two "new" poems--actually ones I spent a little time revising today. I found them in a stack of papers that I've been going through. The stack is getting considerably less, but finding a way to organize them has been interesting, to say the least.

Job: My Side of the Story

My children are gone; dead and buried
preceding their parents to the grave.
All my wealth swept away
like so much dust in the wind.
In the end, I could do nothing,
but put my hand over my mouth.

Life is damned crazy.
How could I be blamed
for wanting to cling to
one more shred of control?
My trust and innocence stolen
then the very definition of self
stripped away by questionable friends

Sometimes I wake at night
in a cold sweat
I dream that I am a ghost
haunting someone's house
A ghost walking through the evening
seeing my life floating as from above.

None of us can help
the tragedies that come to us in life;
but in choosing to leave
the scent of bitterness behind
I seek not to lose my true self forever.

Prophet's Vision

A wind
speak a word
a word of peace, of healing

make these dry
bones rattle

give a vision
of new flesh and sinew
of life returning
and then

speak the Word
"BREATHE!"

Take in the life, be filled with
the Spirit of Yahweh

Go out, prophesy bones
like parched branches
in a desert landscape

waiting, waiting
for the breath
and the command
to rise from brown earth

to live once
more

Ruminations on Cultural Enrichment

Last night, Michael and I made Pad Thai for the first time. It’s not a particularly difficult dish to create, and the two of us worked together gathering our ingredients while he chopped the peanuts in our coffee grinder (very effective!), and I chopped green onions in the more conventional method using knife and cutting board. We rather effortlessly created what turned out to be a scrumptious dish. We even made rice stick noodles which I had only eaten in a Chinese restaurant once or twice. When the Pad Thai was done, we put it in bowls, took out the chopsticks, and sat in front of the television to watch a DVD of Law and Order.

Since that kitchen experience, I've been reminded of how world culture can infuse our own "American" culture making it richer and "tastier." I am a teacher of AP and World Literature, and I revel in the stories of Ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel. There are stories I also enjoy from India, poetry from China and Japan, and the wonderful tales from the tribes of Africa are often very funny and teach rich lessons about living life to the fullest.

When one studies these cultures, the "spectre" of religion often comes up. I say spectre because in many, many cases, discussion of and thinking about other religions is seen as taboo and dangerous, especially by many Christians. After all, Christianity is called "The Way," and many Christians believe that Jesus is the only way to an eternal afterlife. Does that mean that no Jew will ever be in Yahweh's presence, no matter how devout he or she may have been in life; that no Muslim will ever see Allah, and that certainly no Hindu or Buddhist will ever arrive at his or her own understanding of the state of bliss? Taken to the extreme, it means that reading the poetry of Saadi or Rumi is anathema; that sitting meditation (based on Buddhist thought) or contemplative prayer is a questionable practice, at best, and that exploring archetypes from psychology based on the ancient Greek religion is foolish.

Jesus came to earth to teach us how to live. In that teaching, he lived a full life which ended in the ultimate sacrifice. That's an important key to the way I read holy scriptures. I think something very different goes on in the Gospels and especially during the Triduum than apparently most people think happens. If we look closely at his life, Jesus modeled so many practices that are holy and loving. He fed people; he blessed their lives with presence; he healed; he prayed. Very often, we just don't get it, and if there was atonement on the cross, the atonement was for our stupidity in not seeing how we are supposed to walk this labyrinth we call life.

But Jesus wasn't the only great person who has shown us how to live a sacrificial yet full existence. I have a friend who says, "Jesus was a person and Christ is the process he taught us. The spiritual life is about becoming en-Christed, not re-Jesus'd. We don't even know who Jesus is, but we do know what he taught us about becoming Christ." Jesus didn't have the market cornered on holiness, but he did call all people to be holy. In their own ways, so did Muhammed, Ghandi, Prince Sidhartha, and others.

Just as we can receive nourishment from the food of other cultures, and be entertained by their stories, so can we learn from the wisdom of both east and west--cultures close to our own, and those that seem very foreign. Having an open mind and an open heart can delight the senses and draw us closer to holiness--and to God.

Retreat with a Purpose

Just why would anyone want to be in solitude for fourteen days? What attraction does a sparsely equipped hermitage in the desert hold? What lessons are there to learn in the silence that isn't really silence; in the stillness that is left after the whirlwind and earthquake?

Some might speculate that a person chooses to go on a retreat like this one to seek healing and peace after traumatic life events occur. That's very probable and was certainly on my agenda when I made plans to go to Nada. I was fairly sure while preparing to be in solitude that I would think about my dad's passing and my son's troubles and all that means to me in my current situation. I also knew I was going to explore my decision about vocational discernment, and about what it would mean to stay with teaching young adults for up to five more years. Surprisingly, I spent only a little time dealing with those hurtful places, and the vocational discernment just felt more and more "right" as I thought about the ministry that I could now do because my life would not be consumed with becoming a priest.

Mostly, however, I just stopped to listen. Sometimes a thought would "pop" into my head or an angel would whisper a sweet remembrance in my ear of a God who loves me. It only took a day or so, and prayer became deep and rich and filled a longing in my soul that I often don't take the time to nourish when I'm "doing" life. One night at Nada when I was awake because I had taken an especially long and satisfying afternoon nap, I sat in the window seat gazing at the moonlit landscape. The moon was full and outshone many of the stars in that amazing sky, but there were also clouds that would occasionally cover the moon as she traveled slowly across my line of vision creating an other-worldly effect.

Earlier in the day, I read the Elijah and Elisha cycles in the Book of First and Second Kings. These stories are really entertaining as well as insightful. Of course, Nada, is a Carmelite Community which harkens back all the way to Elijah and his school of prophets on Mt. Carmel in northern Israel. I was especially struck by God's coming to Elijah on Mt. Horeb. God wasn't in the strong wind, nor earthquake, nor fire. God was in the gentle breeze and spoke with a still, small voice.

God is present in the hermitage in the same way God was present to Elijah on Mt. Horeb. The gentle breeze, the amazing sky, the moonlight, the desert flower, the gentle rain all contributed to my recognition of God's presence in and around me there in that place of solitude. I heard God speak in my heart, and the words were about love. When my prayers had words to them, I prayed for strength to remain present and to meet Love with love. And that became my work in the hermitage.

In the past, retreats have afforded me the opportunity to go to liturgies as early as 3:20 AM and to fill my days with the rich prayers of Trappist tradition. This retreat allowed me time to simply be. I didn't fast; I didn't have a set schedule of waking and resting. I didn't even have a set schedule for meals. My only "discipline" was to sing Compline (from memory) each evening, and to wash the dishes as the sun set in order to see it from my kitchen window. I somehow realized I was ready to give up the illusion of being a spiritual athlete and to simply be gentler with myself.

Of course, my ego tried to shoulder its way into the hermitage. It's still fighting for an identity I've decided not to give it, at least not in the most accepted form of that identity. Knowing that God loves me is all that I can promise my ego at this point. Loving us, however, does not mean giving into our every whim or granting wishes like the magic genii. It's up to me, through prayer, to figure out where Love extends and when the magic thinking takes over.

I believe my retreat at Nada has allowed me to become truer to myself. I am growing older, and my circumstances are changing. But external expectations can no longer be the basis for my decisions in life. From now on, my decisions will be based on who I am and who I want to become as I continue to grow more and more in the image and likeness of Christ. That's what I learned at Nada. That was the purpose of my retreat.

Desert Baptism

During my retreat at Nada, I celebrated the anniversary of my baptism. I can remember the actual event since I was baptized as a teenager in another Protestant expression of our faith. I even remember what dress I wore, and how it felt to be "dunked," as we used to say. Baptism by immersion, of course, is the preferred method of baptism, even in the Episcopal Church, but so many of us have never even seen a baptismal pool in a church. The first summer I studied in Santa Fe, the Cathedral where we worshipped did not have a baptismal pool, but when I returned to visit four years later, I discovered they had built a pool right in the center of the church. It reminds all who enter that there is a sacramental method and means for entering into the Christian community.

That particular morning was quiet. It was so cool that I had turned off the small electric fan I was using to circulate the air. Occasionally, the glass or the roof of the solar passive hermitage would "pop," or I would hear a bird chirp, but not even the wind was stirring. There were large cumulus clouds draped over the tops of the Sangre de Cristo, as well as clouds gathering over the San Juan Range, but otherwise the sky was that incredible Colorado blue. Because there had been rain the last two afternoons, the nights turned off cool enough to sleep under a quilt.

I lay down to rest about 3:00 in the afternoon, and shortly afterwards, it began to rain. I thought of Langston Hughes who said, "Let the rain sing you a lullaby." At first there were just a few sputtering drops which dried quickly upon hitting the sand, but then a heavy rain with lightening, thunder and hail began. I moved to the window seat so that I could see what a real desert storm looked like. After a while, the pounding rain let up, but a gentle shower continued to fall. I went out for a walk and found standing puddles on the driveway and foot path between my hermitage and Agape, the main building. The air was cool and clean and smelled of fresh pine.

When I got back from my walk, I put on water for tea, and sat in the rocking chair just enjoying the sound of crickets, the daily visit of the birds, and the squirrel who came to see if I had "accidentally" dropped another apple core on my front stoop. Seeing so much beauty was a feast for my eyes. The rain had baptized the desert, and I could not help but think of Psalm 107:35. "He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into spring of water." More than the Psalms, however, Isaiah resonates with water imagery. In Isaiah 35.1, the prophet says, "The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus." It did seem to me that the blooms of wildflowers grew more vivid after each rain and danced happily in the breeze. In Isaiah 35.6, we hear "then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert." When I read this verse, I could not help but think of the deer that made it's bed outside my kitchen window that night. And in Isaiah 43.19, "I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." Read allegorically, this verse promises renewal for the one who finds life has become a bit of a dry desert. I will put you on notice, however, that even what seems like desert can be a deceptively beautiful place once you learn to read the signs and pay attention to the springs of water!

Being Present to God—Part II—God in Nature

After a couple of days in solitude, I began to notice things about my environment. There actually is much more to the desert than sand. In the apparent barrenness of the desert, there is life. A flock of blue-gray birds with which I am unfamiliar made daily stops in front of my hermitage. There must have been a 100 or more of them, and they frolicked and played in the Piñon trees and searched for insects in the sandy ground. Chipmunks and brown squirrels skirted to and fro in front of my window, and the landscape was blooming with varieties of cactus and thistle and wildflowers. Surely our Celtic forbears would have connected the beauty of nature with the presence of God and bless God's goodness in providing a world filled with creatures lovely to behold. "When we love the world that God loves, we love God, because it is God's Spirit that holds all creation in existence" (Fr. Eric Harrar).

I also noticed signs of death-in-life. There were bones of animals either killed or that died naturally in and around the gully in front of my hermitage. I'm pretty sure they were the remains of a large animal--perhaps a deer--since there were several live ones in the area. One evening as I was taking sunset photos, a deer came out from behind my hermitage and walked within ten feet of me. She was not frightened by my being there, and casually strolled over to a bush and began to eat berries from it. Eventually she walked back toward the hermitage--by this time I had been driven inside by the mosquitoes--and she bedded down under a tree right outside my kitchen window. I made a point to do the dishes at 8:30 each evening so that I could watch the sunset over the San Juan Range. Now I had a deer silhouetted in the foreground of the gloriously colored evening sky. Even washing the dishes became a mystical experience.

Part of my meditative practice during the solitude of my retreat was to create a mandala out of natural objects in the area surrounding my hermitage. I went out several mornings to collect these items. I ended up with pebbles, seeds, grasses, pine and pinion cones and nuts, and a feather. I also picked some cactus leaves. I had no ideas what the mandala would look like or what I was trying to say through creating it, but I am very happy with the outcome. Here's a photo:

Being Present to God—Part I

Being in the St. Thérèse hermitage here at Nada makes me think of the beach on the South Carolina coast. There are miles of sand creeping right up to the door, blowing in through the screened windows and leaving a gritty coating on every surface. It’s difficult to walk in as well. Unlike being at the beach, however, there’s no ocean just over the ridge; no salt smell in the air. Walk as long as you care to, and you’ll come to verdant pastures a lot sooner than you’ll arrive at an ocean shore. Life’s journey is somewhat like that. We become dissatisfied with the sand that banks around our front steps and aggravated at having to sweep and wipe up the grains on the floor and furniture, so we set out to climb the ridge and search for the ocean.

That search, or pilgrimage, is an attempt to travel to sacred places looking for whatever our restless hearts think will satisfy the longing we feel. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, for even great saints like Augustine declared, “God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you." While I think going on a pilgrimage is a wonderful idea, I would like to suggest a different approach. Granted, I traveled quite a distance to discover these ideas—more than half way across the country—but once I was there, I stayed put for thirteen days. Fr. Eric Haarar, a resident priest at Nada says, “Yes, God is present everywhere. But we are not. We are the ones who are so often absent. Sacred times and places do not make God more present to us, they make us more present to God.” Staying put in a small hermitage that had a micro-kitchen on one wall, a desk on the opposite wall, a bedroom large enough for a single bed and table, and a bath was the setting I needed to make myself more present to God.

And, so, I ask myself, “How do I make myself present to the God that I know is present in me?”

While on retreat, I had copious opportunity to read, write, pray, and meditate. I decided to consider what the early church fathers and mothers said about being present to God. For example, Isaac the Syrian said, “The ladder of the Kingdom is within you, hidden in your soul. Plunge deeply within yourself, away from sin, and there you will find steps by which you will be able to ascend.” Gregory of Nyssa said, “All the heavens fit into the palm of God’s hand. And though [he] is so great that [he] can grasp all creation in [his] palm, you can wholly embrace [him]; [He] dwells within you, nor is [he] cramped as [he] pervades your entire being.” God is so big that God is beyond our understanding, rational minds, yet God fills us completely and makes that presence known through the God in us, or the Holy Spirit. St. Teresa of Avila, one of the patrons of the Carmelites said, “Within oneself, very clearly, is the best place to look for God… and it’s not necessary to go to heaven, nor any further than our own selves; for to do so is to tire the spirit and distract the soul without gaining much fruit.”

Maybe that’s why our hearts grow restless. Looking inside oneself can be a struggle because sometimes I think, very often, we don’t think we will like ourselves very much. Morton Kelsey tells a story about a patient of Carl Jung. The man was a minister who was exhausted from overwork. Jung instructed him to limit his work hours and to spend some time alone each day. For a number of evenings the minister went into his study, played the piano, and read books from his library, but several days later returned to Jung feeling no better. Jung asked him what he had done to follow the simple prescription, and when the minister told him, Jung replied, “But you didn’t understand! I didn’t want you with Hermann Hesse or Thomas Mann, or even Mozart or Chopin. I wanted you to be all alone with yourself.” At this the minister looked terrified and gasped, “Oh, but I can’t think of any worse company!” to which Jung replied, “And yet this is the self you inflict on other people fourteen hours a day.”* It doesn’t have to be that way. We can cultivate a friendship with ourselves, and ultimately with the God within. God wants to fill the God-shaped hole, and frankly, only God can do that.

I thought it would be hard sitting in a hermitage with only myself and God for company, but as it turned out, the days went by far too fast. At the end of my retreat, I felt a new freedom and a deep sense of trust that God would lead me where God wants me to be.

(Kelsey, Morton. The Other Side of Silence. New York: Paulist Press, 1976.)

Nada Hermitage Retreat

~~~~~

~~~~~

View from St. Therese Hermitage at Nada Community in Creston, Colorado

I returned home today from a two week solitary retreat in a hermitage at the Nada Community (http://www.spirituallifeinstitute.org/Nada.html). The photo above is what I saw from my hermitage each morning. I can't really say much right now about my time away, for I must sit with the experience for a while longer. After reflection and taking time to look back at my journaling, I will share some of what I believed I heard and saw. For now, please enjoy a few of the photos that I took while traveling through New Mexico to Colorado.