It is exhilarating to see the hundreds of thousands of people all across creation turning out for the Climate Strikes. This is a kairos moment and change is in the air. Walter Brueggemann, wise and able scholar of the Hebrew Bible from my tradition, teaches that after God's prophets call us beyond denial into lament - and we embrace that season of grief and emptiness with heart, soul, mind and flesh - there comes a time when sacred creativity fills the human imagination with new possibilities. New songs. New visions of justice, tenderness, and solidarity. These are holy gifts beyond our ability - inspiration and possibilities poured into our emptiness by the One who is Holy - and they are staggering to behold. After exile and collapse, ancient Israel's prophet Isaiah shared a word of the Lord with the people: "For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind." (Is 65: 17) In the midst of an other generation saturated by violence and oppressed by the Roman Empire, my own Christian tradition heard the prophetic blessing of God in their own tongue as John of Patmos discerned what the Spirit was saying to the churches:
Who could have imagined last year that an adolescent girl with Asperger's would give shape and form to our collective emptiness and fear as she called creation into repentance? It is an expression of our deepest hunger meeting our truest self in public. Of course this holy energy must be focused: without channeling it into disciplined and deliberate acts of political engagement, this opportunity will be squandered. Social change is bound by the same wisdom that governs the pursuit of spiritual equilibrium: it must move beyond feelings. The late Eugene Peterson is insightful when he notes:
We live in what one writer has called the "age of sensation."' We think that if we don't feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is (one) act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in relationship with God is nurtured...
Feelings are great liars. If Christians worshiped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship. Feelings are important in many areas but completely unreliable in matters of faith.
I believe this is true in matters of social change, too. Richard Rohr expressed it like this in this morning's reflection: "There is no secret moral command for knowing or pleasing God, or what some call “salvation,” beyond becoming a loving person in mind, heart, body, and soul. Then you will see what you need to see. Jesus did not say, “Be right.” Jesus said, “Be in love.” We are invited to be focused on love. Be disciplined in love. Learn to live beyond mere sensation into the discipline of love.
For me to be faithful in love, I am learning that I must train my body and my spirit. The Benedictine tradition speaks of ora et labora - prayer and work - the practice of mixing physical labor with personal and corporate prayer as well as hospitality. Benedict recognized the mind/body/spirit nexus long before holistic health was ever imagined. Training the body as well as the soul in the ways of disciplined love becomes an integrated spirituality. And what I have been discovering this past year is that one of the gifts of regularly working in the yard is an extended time of silence. Or, more truthfully, quiet. I am finding that quiet time plus physical labor is essential for my heart, mind and body to grow into communion, harmon,y and rest within God's grace.
I have read about this for years - but never really practiced it - and then quickly forget about it. Most of my life has been lived as an intellectual, too. And as one who is clearly lodged in the thinking sector of the Enneagram, moving out of my head hasn't been easy. Consequently, I have neglected doing a lot of physical labor. Cutting the grass and hauling some snow, to be sure, but until recently these were chores rather ways to nourishing my commitment to love. Small wonder that Eugene Peterson speaks of "a long obedience in the same direction." Like flowing water over a stone, a life time of work, prayer, and engagement smooths down some of our rough edges. I have quite a ways to go because I can easily slip into fits of anxiety. But now that I get how important physical labor is in connecting me to God's first word in nature, the extended silence is like being in a natural monastery. In this, Peterson was right:
Every day, I decide to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily - open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving - daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride... There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. (Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society)
Today I pulled weeds, cut grass, and started to map out where a new terrace will be built for next year. This year's terraces will need rebar reinforcements and more concrete blocks to keep everything in place. And a LOT of work needs to be done to improve the quality of our soil. Thanks be to God that I am slowly learning how to do this work so that then we can then let the quiet and hidden work of winter do its part so that this old land might bear fruit again come next July.
No comments:
Post a Comment