Month: February 2015

Lessons From the Desert Fathers

shelliwilliams Awakening, Becoming, Darkness, GOD, LENT, Presence of God, Wilderness , , , , , ,

 

 

The Judean Wilderness, February, 2010
The Judean Wilderness, February, 2010

Scripture Text:  Mark 1: 10-13

10And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” 12And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Jesus was baptized by John and then the version of the Gospel by the writer we know as Mark has immediately being driven into the wilderness.  Still wet with the waters of life, Jesus began his 40-day quest filled with danger, temptation, and probably questions about his own identity and the ministry that would come.  We struggle with this.  We often get hung up on the whole temptation thing, trying to come up with reasons why Jesus, of all people, would have been tempted.  But the writer of this version of the account doesn’t offer more than a mere mention of that.  Instead, we have Jesus being driven out into the wilderness and then the story picks up a few sentences later.  You see, no one followed Jesus out in the desert to get the first hand account.  He was on his own, alone in the wilderness.

We’re not big fans of wildernesses.  In fact, we try to do everything we can to avoid them, or at least find one that has cellular reception and free WIFI available.  And yet, Jesus was driven into the wilderness, as if he had no choice.  Jesus was forced to spend 40 days in what is essentially a wasteland.  The wilderness was waiting for him, offering something that the crowds and the towns and even the synagogue could not.  The wilderness, the place that no one owns, the place that no one has tamed, the place that no one really wants to beat, the place that will never become something that it is not offers just that–itself.  Jesus is not the first to wander in the wilderness and he was not the last.  A few centuries after this, orders of monks in Northern Africa began to make their way into the desert, into the wilderness to experience God’s Presence unhindered by what humans have attempted to create, unhindered by expectations and schedules.  It was the place where they went to renew their prayer life, to begin again.  There were those, like Jesus, that returned to their lives but with new eyes and new hearts.  There were also though that chose to stay , even though they would remain visitors in a place that was not theirs.  In the wilderness, nothing exists but you and God, and, uninterrupted and unhindered, God can create you yet again.

Our wildernesses come in all forms.  Some are self-imposed and others are those to which we are driven at a time that we have no control over where we are going.  The wilderness is hard and dangerous and uncomfortable.  Some are filled with grief and despair.  Others are wrought with a feeling that we will never get out.  Sometimes the wilderness seems unforgiving, as if it’s only focus is to push us into vulnerability, to push us into temptation.  But the lesson that we learn from the wilderness is that, when everything else is gone, when the clouds make us unable to see the way out, when we feel that it will never end, God is there.  And we have become someone new.

Most of us will not drop out of society and make our way to the wilderness.  Even Jesus returned to Galilee, proclaiming the Gospel.  But in this season that remembers Jesus’ time in the wilderness, we can learn what it means to awaken to God’s Presence, to be mindful of this Presence that is always and forever with us, to, day by day, strip those things away that have our attention.  We can learn what it means to enter an intentional wilderness, a place and a time where God is all we have. These forty days are our emptying time—the time when we strip all of our preconceptions away and meet God where God is—right there with us.  We do not walk this road alone.  God is always there.  And when we are tempted to once again take control, God will still be there.  Lent is the time when we allow God to work on us that we might burst forth on Easter morning in radiant bloom.

We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only the wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.  We can never have enough of nature.  We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. (Henry David Thoreau)

FOR TODAY:  Think of what it would mean to enter an intentional wilderness this Lent, to, day by day strip all those things away that have your attention until all that is left is God, who is recreating you even now.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

 

Return to the Waters

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man under waterfallScripture Text:  1 Peter 3: 18-22

18For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, 19in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, 20who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.

21And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

In this season of returning, here the writer of this general letter known as First Peter dispenses with any talk of being “saved” as it relates to salvation.  Instead, the promise lies in our re-creation, our renewal, our resurrection (the “little r” one), our being made into a new Creation.  It is a reminder that in our baptism, in that moment when the waters covered our body, or covered our head, or when drops of the stuff clinging to another’s hand somehow, some way, landed on our head and brushed our forehead and became the sign of a cross, in THAT moment, we were made new.  It wasn’t just washing away of sin and it certainly wasn’t some sort of something that made us sin no more (although, let me tell you, that would have made this life thing a little easier!)  In that moment as the waters touched us, we were made new, suddenly swept into a new way of being, and our life in Christ began.

Now baptism is not some sort of magic potion that makes everything perfect.  After all, we are not robotic churchy beings.  We are human–messed up, sometimes sinful, sometimes without hope, sometimes without direction, sometimes overwhelmed, but always, always, Beloved children of God.  For those to whom this was written, the words were a reminder that whatever chaos and peril life now holds, it is not permanent, that beyond what we know, beyond what we can imagine, the God of all Creation is working on us even now, creating molecule after molecule, so that when the flood waters of life finally subside, we will remember who and whose we are, a Beloved Child of God with whom God is well pleased.  And no matter what we do, no matter how much we mess up this life that we’ve been given, no matter how much the world’s chaos swirls around us beyond our control, the promise is true.  God is always there beckoning us to return to the waters, to return to where we began and begin again.

This season of Lent is not a season that merely calls us to clean up the mire and muck of our lives.  It is not a season to finally become good and obedient boys and girls.  It is not a season that promises to get your life together (or organize yourself or lose weight or some other thing you think you need to do disguised as a Lenten discipline).  Lent is a season that calls us to return–to who we are called to be, to what gives us life, to God.  It is a season to return to the waters of your baptism, not just for 40 days, but forever.

Do you remember the old version of the Apostles’ Creed, where we proclaim that Jesus descended into hell?  Well, this is the passage from which that notion may have started.  It claims that Jesus proclaimed to those imprisoned spirits; in other words, Jesus entered hell and blew the gates off.  See, you can always begin again.  You can always return to the waters. You just have to be willing to try out some newness.

One cannot step twice in the same river, for fresh waters are forever flowing around us.  (Hereclitus of Ephesus, 535-475 BCE)

FOR TODAY:  Remember your baptism. Now begin again.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Return to Grace

shelliwilliams CREATION, Grace, LENT, Noah's Ark, Recreation, Redemption , , , , , , ,

Rainbow

Scripture Text:  Genesis 9:12-17

12God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” 17God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

This is actually the tale-end of the story of Noah and the famous ark filled to the brim with the remnants of Creation.  And here…after all this time of pounding rains, all this time cooped up with animals of all kinds, all this time rocking and swaying with the boat…here, God speaks.  The familiar bow of color is set in the clouds as a sign of the promise that God has made.  We usually take it as a sign that God will take care of us, that God will right the wrongs of the world and order them yet again, that God will somehow assuage our pain and grief and put things back the way they were.  Really?  THAT’S not what that says.

Now we can either look at this story as a sort of children’s story, complete with rainbows and pairs of elephants and zebras and orangutans or we can look at this story as one depicting a deity who was so angered by the rebellion of the Creation that God wiped it off the face of the earth. Truthfully, neither one works. Indeed, this is a story about rebellion and human sinfulness. (And to be honest, what story is NOT?) But the whole point is that no matter how far the human creation wandered from the Creator, there was a calling back, a return, an offering of love and forgiveness and a chance to begin again. Now, that’s hard for us to fathom too, possibly because we are not good at offering each other “do-overs”. We are not good at understanding a God who would dispense with all means of justified destruction and just offer Presence and Grace and a future filled with hope. It is hard for us to imagine that no matter what we do, no matter what we screw up or blow up or make up, God is offering a chance to return, a chance to be recreated into something that only God can imagine.

You see, the Celtic tradition would look upon the rainbow not as a promise that God would “fix” the world or “fix” us, but as a threshold, a point between what is and what will be.  So, the promise is not that God will fix everything, but that, always, there is a chance to begin again.  We always and forever, no matter what we’ve done or thought or how many times we’ve flaked out in life, have the chance to return to the beginning. God does not wipe what has happened.  God does not forget what we have done.  Rather God, knowing and remembering full well what the creatures have done in Creation, STILL God offers a threshold through which we can return to Grace–if we will only step through.

The grace of God means something like:  Here is your life.  You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.  Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don’t be afraid.  I am with you.  Nothing can ever separate us…There’s only one catch.  Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it.  Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.  (Frederick Buechner)

FOR TODAY:  What does it mean to return to grace?  What does it mean not to forget what has happened, not to forget what you have done, but to allow yourself to step through the threshold that God has opened wide, to allow yourself to begin again?

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Return to Dust

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Return to DustScripture Text:  Psalm 51: 10-12

10Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.  11Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. 12Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.

Scripture Text:  Genesis 2: 7

7then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

This is the day.  The pancakes are gone.  The Mardi Gras beads lay strewn across the road as the wind blows them toward the gutter.  Whatever you did yesterday is gone.  The bingeing stops. And now, now we return to dust.  What an odd lot we are.  We eat and drink ourselves silly early this week so that we can approach the altar today and have ashes wiped on our foreheads.  We party and binge and then mark ourselves as sinners, repentant once again.  I used to think that this day was somewhat overly morose.  It never made sense to me.  Why are we carefree partyers one day and then sullen pious ones the next?  And then, we are warned against being overly pious, overly “showy” of our faith disciplines.  So make up your mind, already!

Dust…dirty, yucky, dust…the leftovers, that which remains, that which stays behind clinging to that on which it lands.  We try to wash it away or wipe it down or use some product named Lemon Pledge to give it a fresh scent and perhaps prolong its return.  But, no matter what, it ALWAYS returns.  But on this day, we return to it.  And then we pray to God that we might somehow get a clean heart, a fresh start, a new beginning. And yet, the second Creation story says that God created humans from the dust of the ground, from the dirty, yucky dust that blew uncontrollably across the land.  The dust moved freely from one place to another carrying the beginnings of life whether or not it knew it.  And then God breathed life into it and it became something new, a new Creation made in the very image of God.

And so this day, we return.  We return to our beginnings.  Rather than expecting God to “wipe us clean”, this day calls us to expect God to create us yet again.  We return to dust so that God can take us, breathe life into us once again, creating in us a clean heart and a new and right Spirit.  Today we become dust once again, moving freely and then clinging to God yet again.  I think, given that image of the dust, I am tempted to become a little “Peterish” (oh no, not just my forehead, but ALL of me…Create ALL of me.) But in that speck of dust shaped in the form of a cross, God begins me again.

Lent is not just a time for squaring conscious accounts but for realizing what we perhaps had not seen before.  (Thomas Merton)

FOR TODAY:  Become dust.  Become free to be created yet again.  Open yourself to God breathing life into you yet again.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli