REFLECTIONS ON TENDERNESS: May 10, 2020 live-stream Face Book
Earlier this week we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. It was a glorious, cool day in the Berkshires filled with sunshine and silence – and we spent some of it wandering through the woods on a high rocky ridge above a roaring river filled with stone pillars reaching up for the sky. We were married outdoors in a stone quarry by a waterfall back in Cleveland on an equally stunning after-noon. So, as I am want to do, I found myself thinking of all the ups and downs we’ve encountered as a couple in our quarter century together. Let’s say it was a humbling and sweet journey down memory lane. As we walked through this pristine woodland palace, however, it was hard reconcile the beauty of the forest existing side by side with the plague still devastating our home – and much of the world, too. With 80,000 American deaths, US mortality rates are nearly twice the size of our small town in Western Massachusetts – and there are no signs that the contagion will be abating soon.
As we were soaking up the sunshine and fresh air in celebration, I was aware that at the very same time there were loved ones dying and relatives grieving – colleagues and friends ending or losing their careers in the midst of our current chaos – and good-hearted friends of every race and religion wondering how the hell they were going to pay their bills if the lock-down continued much longer. And as so often happens to me, that’s when the words of Jesus from St. John’s gospel for today popped up: Let not your hearts be troubled… trust that my love is the way, the truth and the life.
Holding the promises of the Lord in tension with reality – striving to keep trusting rather than surrendering to fear or despair – is the essence of faith. But it felt like spiritual schizophrenia even from the relative safety of my privileged solitude. I mean, how the hell are our hearts NOT to be troubled in times like this? As my younger colleagues say: if you’re NOT agitated and unsettled right now, you’re not paying attention, right? That’s why for today I can’t think of anything more counter-cultural and to the point than these promises of Jesus – unless, of course, it’s how St. Paul repurposed them to the church in Corinth:
We are fools for the sake of Christ: when reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day… for we know that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength… God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one, might boast in the presence of God.
The apostle was articulating just what Jesus promised: how practicing living from our heart looks absurd to those who think the heart is just the seat of emotions when it is really the core of how we consciously integrate reason and affect, spirit and flesh, hard truths and ethical responsibilities. The way of the heart celebrates rational wisdom even as it embraces poetic metaphor, encouraging the mind to dance together with the soul.
In a profound little book, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault clarifies the distinctions between popular, Western culture’s sloppy sentimentality and the more humble, heart-centered spirituality of Jesus. She writes: “In the psychological climate of our times, our emotions are almost always considered to be virtually identical with our personal authenticity – and the more freely they flow, the more we are seen to be honest and in touch” (p. 32.) One who gravitates to a mental mode of operation – valuing rational and linear thought – is regularly criticized for living “in his head” while we celebrate the domination of feelings and living “from the heart.” Yet this is the polar opposite of spiritual maturity, an existence enmeshed in the fickle ups and downs of feelings, rather than the stability of inner peace born of grace.
St. Paul put it like this: “When I was a child, I thought like a child and acted like a child. But when I grew up I put childish things away.” A humbled and reflective St. Peter realized towards the end of his life that it was time for people of faith to “put away all guile, insecurity and envy” for such were the ways of little children: let us now drink the pure spiritual milk of grace and grow up strong into adult lives of integrity. Dr. Bourgeault says something similar when she writes:
Far from revealing the heart, the Way of Wisdom teaches that our emotions are in fact the primary culprits that obscure and confuse (true understanding.) The real mark of personal authenticity is NOT how intensely we can express our feelings, but how honestly we can look at where they’re coming from, spot the elements of clinging, manipulation, and personal agenda that make up so much of what we experience as our emotional life today… (and sort out what is true, good, beautiful and just. Our goal is NOT to be addicted to feelings, but to understand and manage them.) In this, the heart is not for personal expression, but divine perception… (Through the integration of emotions with truth, experience, intuition, flesh and spirit) we are brought into a settled mind, a way of being that is present, balanced and awake whatever our emotional experiences. (pp. 32-37) In short it is how we embody a non-anxious presence in this age of insecurity.
The way of the heart that Jesus tells us will release us from anguish – the foolishness of Christ that St. Paul celebrates as the way to maturity – takes practice. It is NOT automatic nor simply the opposite of the head. Rather it involves embracing the “sensitive, multispectrum instruments of human awareness that include both the mental and affective operations of life as well as the conscious and subconscious dimensions” of our existence. (p. 85) And that is what I want to consider with you this morning: in this season of relentless grief, financial insecurity, political instability and an emotional uncertainty that feels surreal, Jesus’ promise of an untroubled heart cries out for a fresh hearing.
It not only offers us a measure of serenity and sanity within the madness, it can become for us a way to renew our personal lives while nourishing a social resistance born of tenderness. It is a way of being, to quote Sr. Joan Chittister, in which we learn to live “calmly in the middle of chaos, productively in an arena of waste, lovingly in a maelstrom of individualism (and sentimentality) and gently in a world full of violence.” (Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, p. 6) “Let not your hearts be troubled – trust God – and live into the way, the truth and the life.” Martin Buber called this the hallowing of our everyday. Robert Hayden captures this in slant in his poem, “Those Winter Sundays.”
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
To live and move and have our being from within the wisdom of the heart is to honor our failures, listen carefully to the sounds of silence and move deeply into each moment of life as a gift. It incarnates faithfully the patterns of the universe that reveal a love greater than death: Let not your hearts be troubled. To make these words flesh in our time is, I believe, part of how we move into healing now in the midst of the pandemic; and on the other side of the contagion, too when-ever that might be. So let me share with you my take on why Christ’s promise of an untroubled heart is the contemplative challenge for our season of solitude in solidarity.
The more I spend time with the gospel of St. John, the more mystery I uncover in its nuanced poetry, prose and purpose. Contemporary Biblical scholars have concluded that given the community’s context of conflict, we need to take our time parsing John’s carefully constructed phrases rather than simply accepting John’s words at face value. The most dramatic example of why this matters occurs in the way Christians have perverted the gospel when it comes to Judaism.
A surface reading sees only disdain and critique for the Old Covenant. The truth is, however, that the Johanine community began as a blended congregation of Jewish Christians from Palestine who still maintained some connection to the Temple alongside Samaritan believers – those left behind in 587 BCE when Babylon conquered Jerusalem – who now followed Jesus but were still alienated from traditional Judaism. To say that this created tension for both Christians and Jews while they lived in Jerusalem would be an understatement.
But tension turned to acrimony after Rome destroyed the second Jewish temple in 70 CE. John’s community was forced to relocate to Ephesus where Gentile believers started to join the mix. In one generation this small and feisty congregation found itself arguing not only with Jews over the inclusion of Samaritans and Gentiles in their church, but fellow Christians, too. Some had been influenced by Paul and believed Judaism was now passé given Jesus as Messiah, others shaped by those following the apostolic secessionist movement of Peter and a few old school congregations who continued to worship in the Jewish-Christian tradition of Saints Matthew and James.
I remind you of this because the ancient words that St. John penned during this first century conflict sound very different to those of us in the 21st century without an historical context. In the moment, John’s gospel was not the hateful, anti-Semitic tirade against Judaism it became; rather, it was more of a first century family feud between competing congregations. Tragically, much of John has been taken out of context, fueling the fires of vicious pogroms and eventually the Holocaust - all the more reason to be very careful when addressing the insights about practicing the way of the heart, ok? Today I see three nuanced insights that might have legs for us as we seek ways of being faithful to this moment in time.
First, consider Jesus’ promise that if we practice his way our hearts will not be troubled or filled with anguish. As I tried to clarify earlier, the heart has nothing to do with just our personal emotional lives and everything to do with trusting God’s love and purpose in the world. The way of the heart, you see, is a disciplined imagination and a focused attention. If we are to live as allies of God’s grace who embody tenderness within the cruelty of our culture, we cannot continue to remain addicted to random passions or let ourselves be driven by an adolescent fascination with romantic individualism. This is our time to go deeper into the foolishness of Christ as those who know how when reviled, to bless; when persecuted, to endure; when slandered, to speak tenderly of another way of living together.
Please understand that I am not saying we shouldn’t grieve or feel the real trauma and alienation of this hour. Not at all: our tradition is clear that our feelings and experiences all have a place in the dance of life. To everything there is a season and a purpose for all things under heaven: There is a right time for birth and another for death, a right time to plant and another to reap, a right time to cry and another to laugh, a right time to lament and another to cheer, a right time to make love and another to abstain, a right time to embrace and another to part, a right time to search and another to count your losses, a right time even for love and hatred.
I don’t know about you, but during this time of lockdown and self-quarantine there have been times when I’ve been overwhelmed with feelings of sorrow, grief and fear. Sometimes I can’t really believe it’s happening. Other times I feel exhausted but haven’t really done much all day.
Last week, during a Zoom visit with our grandchildren, my stomach flipped and eyes filled with tears when our grandson’s big feelings got the best of him. Clearly, we were all a little worn out and sad. It’s been two full months without hugs or walks or laughing together till we fall down on the floor in a fit of joy. So, as we were talking with our precocious six year old, our little man suddenly became unusually concerned that there was only 13% battery life left on the computer. In a flash, his lower lip started to quiver, his eyes watered up and in a tiny voice stretched to the point of snapping, he squeaked, “I’m going to self-mute myself for a moment” and walked out of camera range to speak with his dad. Oh my God. It stabbed my heart – Di’s too. There was nothing we could do to console him but wait till he returned – which he did - and we all regrouped for a few more minutes of loving chatter. I had to go out to the store briefly a few hours later. And when the friendly clerk asked how my family in Brooklyn was doing, I realized how fragile I was still feeling inside and nearly lost it right there at the check-out stand.
I get it – my life hurts like yours does - I grieve and cry and still sometimes wake up at 3 am feeling unglued. And still – and please listen carefully – still I trust that I do not have to be imprisoned by these feelings. I trust albeit imperfectly that there is a right time and right way to embrace our feelings and enter them fully. What the way of the heart asks is that we learn how to focus our response to our feelings so that they help us give birth to Christ’s tenderness rather than pass on more fear. Fr. Richard Rohr puts it like this: All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain, with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust and the undeserved—all of which eventually come into every lifetime.
If we could see these “wounds” as the way through, as Jesus did, then they would become sacred wounds rather than scars to deny, disguise, or project onto others. Most of the time, we see our wounds as obstacles more than gifts. But if we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become cynical, negative, or bitter (because) If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.
The way of the heart acknowledges the power of all our feelings, and, invites us to trust from the inside out the evidence and patterns of creation that show us that God’s purpose in everything is love. Love is what brings order out of the chaos and hope into the depths of despair. Love is what causes the sun to rise in the morning sky after the evening darkness and the moon and stars to shine every night with regularity. Love is why gravity works and the seasons flow one into the other. Since the big bang 13.8 billion years ago, love has been documenting that creation draws new life out of death – new insights out of suffering – heroic acts of compassion beyond the con-fines of history – resurrection Easter Sundays after the crucifixions of Good Friday – and the confirmation that even when the evidence is obscure, God’s love is greater than death. One old nun back in Cleveland put it to me like this: faith is the assurance that the eagle really is within the egg.
Now I am not saying that such trust is automatic or easy. It takes practice to surrender our monkey-minds to the wisdom of the universe. It takes time, sweat, tears, courage and acceptance to know serenity. It’s like the old joke about the young musician lost in Manhattan running around in a frenzy: frantically she rushes one way and then next until, seeing a police officer, she stops him and asks: Can you help me, sir? How do I get to Carnegie Hall? Looking at her violin case, the old says without batting an eye: Practice, ma’am, it takes practice. The lyric poet, Gregory Orr, captures this truth in the words he wants placed on his gravestone:
That’s the first insight buried in this text: our sorrows and anguish need not have the last word if we ally ourselves with God’s grace and practice letting our troubles rest in God’s care. This won’t take away the cause of our sorrow, but will give us the ability to respond in a healing and hope-filled manner.
The second insight that I believe Jesus and St. John are trying to tell us is that there is more than one way to get grounded in the way of the heart. “In my father’s house are many mansions– not just one - and where I am going to rest, you may go to rest, too.” To be sure, part of this is about the assurance of life after death spent in the eternal embrace of God’s love. Jesus made it clear to his friends that just as he came from God, he will return to God. That’s what the opening of St. John’s gospel is all about: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God and not anything that was made did not begin with God and God’s love, right? Clearly, Jesus is reassuring his friends that they need not fret, fear or worry about life after life: we begin with God and we return to God when this journey is complete. But I don’t think that’s ALL Jesus is telling us in the layered lexicon of St. John’s gospel.
I sense that he wants us to know that there are a variety of spiritual practices we can cultivate right now to help us stay grounded in the loving purposes of God and God’s love. Traditionally, the tools of grounding our hearts in grace include mindfulness, various types of meditation, chanting sacred songs and psalms together with others, quiet reading to discover God’s voice in our lives, spiritual direction, and the discipline of surrendering our egos to the greater good. Cynthia Bourgeault writes that training and awakening our hearts – what some call the spiritualized mind – involves practicing how to become more “sensitive, focused, energized, subtle and refined in living as allies with cosmic love.” Or as the poet Rumi used to say: there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground and a thousand ways to go back home again, too.
During this time of solidarity in solitude I have been rediscovering some of the traditional spiritual tools and must confess that they are wonderful. But let’s not be fundamentalist or biblically harsh when it comes to Christ’s insight that in God’s spiritual mansion there are MANY rooms. Many ways to tap into holy love and a variety of practices to help us stay grounded in this love. I have become enchanted with the whimsical wisdom in this poem by Carrie Newcomer as she articulates how she does evening prayer:
Every night before I go to sleep I say aloud three things that I am grateful for:
All the significant, insignificant, extraordinary, ordinary stuff of my life.
It’s a small practice and humble, and yet, I find I sleep better
Holding what lightens and softens my life ever so briefly at the end of the day.
Sunlight and blueberries – good dogs and wool socks –
A fine rain, a good friend – fresh basil and wild phlox,
My father’s good health, my daughter’s new job,
The song that always makes me cry – always in the same part –
No matter how many times I hear it. Decent coffee at the airport – and your quiet breathing,
The story she told me, the frost patterns on the window,
English horns and banjos, Wood Thrush and June Bugs,
The smooth glassy calm of the morning pond,
An old coat – a new poem, my library card, and that my car keeps running despite all the miles.
And after three things more often than not, I get on a roll and just keep going,
I keep naming and listing, until I lie grinning, blankets pulled up to my chin,
Awash with wonder at the sweetness of it all.
Do YOU do anything like that to practice nourishing the way of the heart in your life? Anything that is as tender-hearted and practical? How do you take up residence in one of the many rooms within God’s mansion to kiss the ground and return home to God’s love?
I’ve shared with you my new appreciation for the old hymn, “In the Bleak Midwinter” as well as St. Paul McCartney’s, “Blackbird.” As I was playing them again last week in prayer I found myself returning to another old chestnut, this from Bob Franke, “Alleluia, the Great Storm is Over.” I played it at my sister Linda’s funeral – used to play it during Advent for my children. It links inner serenity to the quest for social justice and assures me that the whole point of faith is not anguish, but rest, peace and compassion.
Alleluia, the great storm is over, lift up your wings and fly!
Alleluia, the great storm is over, lift up your wings and fly!
The thunder and lightning gave voice to the night,
The little lame child cried aloud in her fright,
Hush little baby, a story I'll tell of a love that has conquered the powers of hell…
Sweetness in the air and justice on the wind
Laughter in the house where the mourners have been
The deaf shall have music, the blind have new eyes the standards of death taken down by surprise.
Jesus closes his teaching with the words: I am the way, the truth and the life. He tells Thomas: you really DO know where to go. Look at me – my life – my freedom with the spirit - look at how I do it – and follow my lead. When Jesus tells us HE is the way, the truth and the life, he’s NOT asking us to sign off on a theological confession or creedal affirmation. And he’s not asking us to endorse a political action agenda either. He’s just inviting us practice an earthy spirituality shaped everyday by experiences that strengthen rest within and tenderness in public. St. Paul expressed the wisdom of Christ’s heart like this in Romans 12:
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for God. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God and you’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what God wants from you, and quickly respond. For unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops a well-formed maturity in you.
And what was true then, is true today: how do we nourish rest within ourselves – serenity – so that we can embody tenderness? Let me ask you to join me over the next week in exploring some of the many rooms in the mansion of God’s grace. Wander around in some you’ve never tried. Go deeper into a few you have visited but only on the surface level. Explore some that you’ve always wondered about but haven’t had the time to try. Ok? If you want to email or message me for suggestions, I will happily get back to you with some ideas.
This is a time we can use to strengthen our hearts, dear people: the lock down and its variants are going to become part of our lives for a long time – some say in various ways for at least the next 18 months – and maybe more. We cannot change this, we can only embrace it and let it take us deeper into trust, faith, hope and love. Do NOT let your hearts be troubled, beloved, let them be opened to God in love.
As we were soaking up the sunshine and fresh air in celebration, I was aware that at the very same time there were loved ones dying and relatives grieving – colleagues and friends ending or losing their careers in the midst of our current chaos – and good-hearted friends of every race and religion wondering how the hell they were going to pay their bills if the lock-down continued much longer. And as so often happens to me, that’s when the words of Jesus from St. John’s gospel for today popped up: Let not your hearts be troubled… trust that my love is the way, the truth and the life.
Holding the promises of the Lord in tension with reality – striving to keep trusting rather than surrendering to fear or despair – is the essence of faith. But it felt like spiritual schizophrenia even from the relative safety of my privileged solitude. I mean, how the hell are our hearts NOT to be troubled in times like this? As my younger colleagues say: if you’re NOT agitated and unsettled right now, you’re not paying attention, right? That’s why for today I can’t think of anything more counter-cultural and to the point than these promises of Jesus – unless, of course, it’s how St. Paul repurposed them to the church in Corinth:
We are fools for the sake of Christ: when reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day… for we know that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength… God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one, might boast in the presence of God.
The apostle was articulating just what Jesus promised: how practicing living from our heart looks absurd to those who think the heart is just the seat of emotions when it is really the core of how we consciously integrate reason and affect, spirit and flesh, hard truths and ethical responsibilities. The way of the heart celebrates rational wisdom even as it embraces poetic metaphor, encouraging the mind to dance together with the soul.
In a profound little book, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault clarifies the distinctions between popular, Western culture’s sloppy sentimentality and the more humble, heart-centered spirituality of Jesus. She writes: “In the psychological climate of our times, our emotions are almost always considered to be virtually identical with our personal authenticity – and the more freely they flow, the more we are seen to be honest and in touch” (p. 32.) One who gravitates to a mental mode of operation – valuing rational and linear thought – is regularly criticized for living “in his head” while we celebrate the domination of feelings and living “from the heart.” Yet this is the polar opposite of spiritual maturity, an existence enmeshed in the fickle ups and downs of feelings, rather than the stability of inner peace born of grace.
St. Paul put it like this: “When I was a child, I thought like a child and acted like a child. But when I grew up I put childish things away.” A humbled and reflective St. Peter realized towards the end of his life that it was time for people of faith to “put away all guile, insecurity and envy” for such were the ways of little children: let us now drink the pure spiritual milk of grace and grow up strong into adult lives of integrity. Dr. Bourgeault says something similar when she writes:
Far from revealing the heart, the Way of Wisdom teaches that our emotions are in fact the primary culprits that obscure and confuse (true understanding.) The real mark of personal authenticity is NOT how intensely we can express our feelings, but how honestly we can look at where they’re coming from, spot the elements of clinging, manipulation, and personal agenda that make up so much of what we experience as our emotional life today… (and sort out what is true, good, beautiful and just. Our goal is NOT to be addicted to feelings, but to understand and manage them.) In this, the heart is not for personal expression, but divine perception… (Through the integration of emotions with truth, experience, intuition, flesh and spirit) we are brought into a settled mind, a way of being that is present, balanced and awake whatever our emotional experiences. (pp. 32-37) In short it is how we embody a non-anxious presence in this age of insecurity.
The way of the heart that Jesus tells us will release us from anguish – the foolishness of Christ that St. Paul celebrates as the way to maturity – takes practice. It is NOT automatic nor simply the opposite of the head. Rather it involves embracing the “sensitive, multispectrum instruments of human awareness that include both the mental and affective operations of life as well as the conscious and subconscious dimensions” of our existence. (p. 85) And that is what I want to consider with you this morning: in this season of relentless grief, financial insecurity, political instability and an emotional uncertainty that feels surreal, Jesus’ promise of an untroubled heart cries out for a fresh hearing.
It not only offers us a measure of serenity and sanity within the madness, it can become for us a way to renew our personal lives while nourishing a social resistance born of tenderness. It is a way of being, to quote Sr. Joan Chittister, in which we learn to live “calmly in the middle of chaos, productively in an arena of waste, lovingly in a maelstrom of individualism (and sentimentality) and gently in a world full of violence.” (Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, p. 6) “Let not your hearts be troubled – trust God – and live into the way, the truth and the life.” Martin Buber called this the hallowing of our everyday. Robert Hayden captures this in slant in his poem, “Those Winter Sundays.”
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
To live and move and have our being from within the wisdom of the heart is to honor our failures, listen carefully to the sounds of silence and move deeply into each moment of life as a gift. It incarnates faithfully the patterns of the universe that reveal a love greater than death: Let not your hearts be troubled. To make these words flesh in our time is, I believe, part of how we move into healing now in the midst of the pandemic; and on the other side of the contagion, too when-ever that might be. So let me share with you my take on why Christ’s promise of an untroubled heart is the contemplative challenge for our season of solitude in solidarity.
The more I spend time with the gospel of St. John, the more mystery I uncover in its nuanced poetry, prose and purpose. Contemporary Biblical scholars have concluded that given the community’s context of conflict, we need to take our time parsing John’s carefully constructed phrases rather than simply accepting John’s words at face value. The most dramatic example of why this matters occurs in the way Christians have perverted the gospel when it comes to Judaism.
A surface reading sees only disdain and critique for the Old Covenant. The truth is, however, that the Johanine community began as a blended congregation of Jewish Christians from Palestine who still maintained some connection to the Temple alongside Samaritan believers – those left behind in 587 BCE when Babylon conquered Jerusalem – who now followed Jesus but were still alienated from traditional Judaism. To say that this created tension for both Christians and Jews while they lived in Jerusalem would be an understatement.
But tension turned to acrimony after Rome destroyed the second Jewish temple in 70 CE. John’s community was forced to relocate to Ephesus where Gentile believers started to join the mix. In one generation this small and feisty congregation found itself arguing not only with Jews over the inclusion of Samaritans and Gentiles in their church, but fellow Christians, too. Some had been influenced by Paul and believed Judaism was now passé given Jesus as Messiah, others shaped by those following the apostolic secessionist movement of Peter and a few old school congregations who continued to worship in the Jewish-Christian tradition of Saints Matthew and James.
I remind you of this because the ancient words that St. John penned during this first century conflict sound very different to those of us in the 21st century without an historical context. In the moment, John’s gospel was not the hateful, anti-Semitic tirade against Judaism it became; rather, it was more of a first century family feud between competing congregations. Tragically, much of John has been taken out of context, fueling the fires of vicious pogroms and eventually the Holocaust - all the more reason to be very careful when addressing the insights about practicing the way of the heart, ok? Today I see three nuanced insights that might have legs for us as we seek ways of being faithful to this moment in time.
First, consider Jesus’ promise that if we practice his way our hearts will not be troubled or filled with anguish. As I tried to clarify earlier, the heart has nothing to do with just our personal emotional lives and everything to do with trusting God’s love and purpose in the world. The way of the heart, you see, is a disciplined imagination and a focused attention. If we are to live as allies of God’s grace who embody tenderness within the cruelty of our culture, we cannot continue to remain addicted to random passions or let ourselves be driven by an adolescent fascination with romantic individualism. This is our time to go deeper into the foolishness of Christ as those who know how when reviled, to bless; when persecuted, to endure; when slandered, to speak tenderly of another way of living together.
Please understand that I am not saying we shouldn’t grieve or feel the real trauma and alienation of this hour. Not at all: our tradition is clear that our feelings and experiences all have a place in the dance of life. To everything there is a season and a purpose for all things under heaven: There is a right time for birth and another for death, a right time to plant and another to reap, a right time to cry and another to laugh, a right time to lament and another to cheer, a right time to make love and another to abstain, a right time to embrace and another to part, a right time to search and another to count your losses, a right time even for love and hatred.
I don’t know about you, but during this time of lockdown and self-quarantine there have been times when I’ve been overwhelmed with feelings of sorrow, grief and fear. Sometimes I can’t really believe it’s happening. Other times I feel exhausted but haven’t really done much all day.
Last week, during a Zoom visit with our grandchildren, my stomach flipped and eyes filled with tears when our grandson’s big feelings got the best of him. Clearly, we were all a little worn out and sad. It’s been two full months without hugs or walks or laughing together till we fall down on the floor in a fit of joy. So, as we were talking with our precocious six year old, our little man suddenly became unusually concerned that there was only 13% battery life left on the computer. In a flash, his lower lip started to quiver, his eyes watered up and in a tiny voice stretched to the point of snapping, he squeaked, “I’m going to self-mute myself for a moment” and walked out of camera range to speak with his dad. Oh my God. It stabbed my heart – Di’s too. There was nothing we could do to console him but wait till he returned – which he did - and we all regrouped for a few more minutes of loving chatter. I had to go out to the store briefly a few hours later. And when the friendly clerk asked how my family in Brooklyn was doing, I realized how fragile I was still feeling inside and nearly lost it right there at the check-out stand.
I get it – my life hurts like yours does - I grieve and cry and still sometimes wake up at 3 am feeling unglued. And still – and please listen carefully – still I trust that I do not have to be imprisoned by these feelings. I trust albeit imperfectly that there is a right time and right way to embrace our feelings and enter them fully. What the way of the heart asks is that we learn how to focus our response to our feelings so that they help us give birth to Christ’s tenderness rather than pass on more fear. Fr. Richard Rohr puts it like this: All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain, with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust and the undeserved—all of which eventually come into every lifetime.
If we could see these “wounds” as the way through, as Jesus did, then they would become sacred wounds rather than scars to deny, disguise, or project onto others. Most of the time, we see our wounds as obstacles more than gifts. But if we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become cynical, negative, or bitter (because) If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.
The way of the heart acknowledges the power of all our feelings, and, invites us to trust from the inside out the evidence and patterns of creation that show us that God’s purpose in everything is love. Love is what brings order out of the chaos and hope into the depths of despair. Love is what causes the sun to rise in the morning sky after the evening darkness and the moon and stars to shine every night with regularity. Love is why gravity works and the seasons flow one into the other. Since the big bang 13.8 billion years ago, love has been documenting that creation draws new life out of death – new insights out of suffering – heroic acts of compassion beyond the con-fines of history – resurrection Easter Sundays after the crucifixions of Good Friday – and the confirmation that even when the evidence is obscure, God’s love is greater than death. One old nun back in Cleveland put it to me like this: faith is the assurance that the eagle really is within the egg.
Now I am not saying that such trust is automatic or easy. It takes practice to surrender our monkey-minds to the wisdom of the universe. It takes time, sweat, tears, courage and acceptance to know serenity. It’s like the old joke about the young musician lost in Manhattan running around in a frenzy: frantically she rushes one way and then next until, seeing a police officer, she stops him and asks: Can you help me, sir? How do I get to Carnegie Hall? Looking at her violin case, the old says without batting an eye: Practice, ma’am, it takes practice. The lyric poet, Gregory Orr, captures this truth in the words he wants placed on his gravestone:
To be alive: not just the carcass , but the spark.
That’s crudely put, but … if we’re not supposed to dance...
Why all this music?
That’s the first insight buried in this text: our sorrows and anguish need not have the last word if we ally ourselves with God’s grace and practice letting our troubles rest in God’s care. This won’t take away the cause of our sorrow, but will give us the ability to respond in a healing and hope-filled manner.
The second insight that I believe Jesus and St. John are trying to tell us is that there is more than one way to get grounded in the way of the heart. “In my father’s house are many mansions– not just one - and where I am going to rest, you may go to rest, too.” To be sure, part of this is about the assurance of life after death spent in the eternal embrace of God’s love. Jesus made it clear to his friends that just as he came from God, he will return to God. That’s what the opening of St. John’s gospel is all about: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God and not anything that was made did not begin with God and God’s love, right? Clearly, Jesus is reassuring his friends that they need not fret, fear or worry about life after life: we begin with God and we return to God when this journey is complete. But I don’t think that’s ALL Jesus is telling us in the layered lexicon of St. John’s gospel.
I sense that he wants us to know that there are a variety of spiritual practices we can cultivate right now to help us stay grounded in the loving purposes of God and God’s love. Traditionally, the tools of grounding our hearts in grace include mindfulness, various types of meditation, chanting sacred songs and psalms together with others, quiet reading to discover God’s voice in our lives, spiritual direction, and the discipline of surrendering our egos to the greater good. Cynthia Bourgeault writes that training and awakening our hearts – what some call the spiritualized mind – involves practicing how to become more “sensitive, focused, energized, subtle and refined in living as allies with cosmic love.” Or as the poet Rumi used to say: there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground and a thousand ways to go back home again, too.
During this time of solidarity in solitude I have been rediscovering some of the traditional spiritual tools and must confess that they are wonderful. But let’s not be fundamentalist or biblically harsh when it comes to Christ’s insight that in God’s spiritual mansion there are MANY rooms. Many ways to tap into holy love and a variety of practices to help us stay grounded in this love. I have become enchanted with the whimsical wisdom in this poem by Carrie Newcomer as she articulates how she does evening prayer:
Every night before I go to sleep I say aloud three things that I am grateful for:
All the significant, insignificant, extraordinary, ordinary stuff of my life.
It’s a small practice and humble, and yet, I find I sleep better
Holding what lightens and softens my life ever so briefly at the end of the day.
Sunlight and blueberries – good dogs and wool socks –
A fine rain, a good friend – fresh basil and wild phlox,
My father’s good health, my daughter’s new job,
The song that always makes me cry – always in the same part –
No matter how many times I hear it. Decent coffee at the airport – and your quiet breathing,
The story she told me, the frost patterns on the window,
English horns and banjos, Wood Thrush and June Bugs,
The smooth glassy calm of the morning pond,
An old coat – a new poem, my library card, and that my car keeps running despite all the miles.
And after three things more often than not, I get on a roll and just keep going,
I keep naming and listing, until I lie grinning, blankets pulled up to my chin,
Awash with wonder at the sweetness of it all.
Do YOU do anything like that to practice nourishing the way of the heart in your life? Anything that is as tender-hearted and practical? How do you take up residence in one of the many rooms within God’s mansion to kiss the ground and return home to God’s love?
I’ve shared with you my new appreciation for the old hymn, “In the Bleak Midwinter” as well as St. Paul McCartney’s, “Blackbird.” As I was playing them again last week in prayer I found myself returning to another old chestnut, this from Bob Franke, “Alleluia, the Great Storm is Over.” I played it at my sister Linda’s funeral – used to play it during Advent for my children. It links inner serenity to the quest for social justice and assures me that the whole point of faith is not anguish, but rest, peace and compassion.
Alleluia, the great storm is over, lift up your wings and fly!
Alleluia, the great storm is over, lift up your wings and fly!
The thunder and lightning gave voice to the night,
The little lame child cried aloud in her fright,
Hush little baby, a story I'll tell of a love that has conquered the powers of hell…
Sweetness in the air and justice on the wind
Laughter in the house where the mourners have been
The deaf shall have music, the blind have new eyes the standards of death taken down by surprise.
Jesus closes his teaching with the words: I am the way, the truth and the life. He tells Thomas: you really DO know where to go. Look at me – my life – my freedom with the spirit - look at how I do it – and follow my lead. When Jesus tells us HE is the way, the truth and the life, he’s NOT asking us to sign off on a theological confession or creedal affirmation. And he’s not asking us to endorse a political action agenda either. He’s just inviting us practice an earthy spirituality shaped everyday by experiences that strengthen rest within and tenderness in public. St. Paul expressed the wisdom of Christ’s heart like this in Romans 12:
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for God. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God and you’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what God wants from you, and quickly respond. For unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops a well-formed maturity in you.
And what was true then, is true today: how do we nourish rest within ourselves – serenity – so that we can embody tenderness? Let me ask you to join me over the next week in exploring some of the many rooms in the mansion of God’s grace. Wander around in some you’ve never tried. Go deeper into a few you have visited but only on the surface level. Explore some that you’ve always wondered about but haven’t had the time to try. Ok? If you want to email or message me for suggestions, I will happily get back to you with some ideas.
This is a time we can use to strengthen our hearts, dear people: the lock down and its variants are going to become part of our lives for a long time – some say in various ways for at least the next 18 months – and maybe more. We cannot change this, we can only embrace it and let it take us deeper into trust, faith, hope and love. Do NOT let your hearts be troubled, beloved, let them be opened to God in love.
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