Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Sneaking

“We work for peace every time we exercise authority with wisdom and authentic love.”

― Jean Vanier, Finding Peace

Last night after our Taize service, I found myself unable to leave the chapel. For about 20 minutes after the last person who walked through the chapel doors left, I sat in the dark with only candles burning, listening, being still, and praying.

At first I didn’t know what to pray for. There was so much on my mind.

There are those in life who are in a season of transition.

There are those in life who are enduring pain and heartache.

There are those in life who are battling with all their might an illness:  physical, spiritual, emotional, or mental.

There are those who find their lives uprooted by injustices; by violence; by hatred; by oppression.

There are those in Baltimore.

The are those in Nepal.

There are those in the LGBTQ community.

There are those in our own pews:  you and me.

Where does prayer begin? How does prayer begin when the world is so full of hurt?

Silence.

That’s where.

A fellow pastor recently posted this prayer and today, I’ve found myself praying it over

and over

and

over...

O God,

O Spirit,

O Christ,

Help me today to listen. Even more than usual. Even more than yesterday.

Help me to listen to voices usually silenced. Help me to listen to voices I put down. Help me to listen to those who have no voice. Help me to listen to those whose voices were taken from them. Help me to listen to those who disagree with me. Help me to listen to those who call me out. Help me to listen for hidden agendas and unknown biases. Help me to listen for my own privilege sneaking out of my own voice. And most of all, help me to listen for you. Help me to listen for you in the voices of my neighbors, my friends, and my enemies. Help me listen to the ways you are calling me to action. Help me to listen to the truth, hope and love in your everlasting voice.

Help me today to listen. Even more than usual. Even more than yesterday.

Amen.

Everyone has a voice. As God’s people, I always thought we were to be the voice for the voiceless.

I realize now this isn’t the case.

We are to listen for the voices of all people. We are to help them sing their song. We are to cultivate a community where all can be hear and their stories shared.

And then, listen to them. Whether they are familiar voices or voices that cause our pulse to quicken.

Listen to the people in your lives. Truly listen. Stop and listen.

Silently listen.

And you’ll soon discover, you’ve been praying the whole time….

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Solomon

Solomon

Before the daffodil petals disappear.

Before the bright colors of the tulips turn to green.

Before the maple trees burst into fits of green.

Before the whites and yellows, purples and pinks are gone take time to enjoy them.

Luke 12.27

²⁷Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

Take time to be still today. Take time to watch the robin hop from limb to limb. Take time to watch a squirrel struggle to get every bit of that bird seed from your feeder.

Thoreau said, and I think suggested, “Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher’s desk.”

Do what you need to do today.

Work a solid 8 hours. Accomplish all that is on your to do list. Go grocery shopping. Mow the lawn or weed the garden. Grade papers or bake goodies.

Whatever it is you need to do, do it and do it well.

Then, be still.

Take in the season of spring. Take a stroll around the block and notice the plants you haven’t before. Take a drive to the park and walk a trail.

Whatever it is you need to do, take time to do it and be still.

Be still.

Stop. Don’t argue. Don’t make excuses.

Be still.

Your spirit will thank you. The earth will too.

April Prayer

by Stuart Kestenbaum

Just before the green begins there is the hint of green

a blush of color, and the red buds thicken

the ends of the maple’s branches and everything

is poised before the start of a new world,

which is really the same world

just moving forward from bud

to flower to blossom to fruit

to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots

await the next signal, every signal

every call a miracle and the switchboard

is lighting up and the operators are

standing by in the pledge drive we’ve

all been listening to: Go make the call.

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Cease

cease to be a vocation

This year’s Holy Week hangover has extended into the 2nd full week of Easter. After taking the first week rather slowly at church, I’ve reentered into the pastorate full speed…and still a bit blurry.

A mentor of mine recently emailed a group of us young pastors an article encouraging us to take the necessary time to recover, regroup, and practice resurrection ourselves. Indeed, the holiest times of the church year - Advent, Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter - are often times of hurry and anxiety rather than reflection and prayer. We lose our way and forget what’s important when we place everyone else’s spiritual lives ahead of our own.

After a week that began with a bout with food poisoning during the early hours of Palm Sunday and ending with 6 services from Maundy Thursday through Easter Sunday worship, my body, my mind, and my spirit continues to limp into this season of light. Though I tried my best not to, during the last couple weeks of Lent I found myself putting everything on hold. This of course has lead to playing catch up and lots of frustration.

Last night during my session meeting I’ve decided I need to restructure, I need to reorganize, I need to resurrect the administrative piece of my profession. My thoughts were affirmed this morning when I read the following from Pope Francis in his memoirs titled, “Open Mind, Faithful Heart.”

“An abyss separates the priest from the religious functionary; they are qualitatively different. Sadly, however, the priest can be slowly transformed little by little, into a religious functionary. When that happens, the priesthood ceases to be a bridge, and the priest is no longer a pontifex, a builder of bridges; he ends up simply having a function to perform. He ceases to be a mediator and becomes simply an intermediary. No one chooses to be a priest; it is Jesus Christ who does the choosing.” 

Busyness can lead to anxiety which can lead to a job…and not a vocation. Ultimately, I have a choice:  I can pursue either an out of sync, overworked, long hour job or a balanced, boundary drawing, profession which includes regular recreation and rest. 

This is where I want to be. 

I imagine doing this will lead to the resurrection I preach about.

The article my mentor sent me summarizes the tension us clergy folk live in well, “Healthy ministry is grounded in finding your spiritual GPS, a spiritual center that enables you to discern the important from the unimportant, prioritize activities, balance action and contemplation, and relationships and work. Jesus regularly needed to check his spiritual GPS through times of contemplation and solitude.”

Pope Francis goes on to say a priest isn’t simply to speak about God’s presence. Rather, we must engage engage in a twofold movement of seeking to encounter God and receiving rest from God. 

Perhaps the remedy for my Holy Week Hangover isn’t catching up on all the emails I put off, but rather, it is accompanying Thoreau in the woods, away from the beep and buzz of a phone and the clicking and clacking of a keyboard and into that silent land where daydreams and creativity reside.

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Sunny Celebration

Sunny Celebration

It was a glorious day.

No one could have picked a more perfect Sunday to celebrate the joy of Easter.

I remember hearing the birds sing during the Sunrise service.

The sun made her way over the horizon (read:  the jr. high) just as we said our final ‘Amen’ and greeted one another once more, “Christ has risen indeed!”

Our 40 days in the wilderness and our slow march during Holy Week turned into a bright hour of song and celebration as we celebrated the gift of resurrection during worship at 10am.

Sunday, was, well, pretty perfect.

Easter has come and gone now….

Or has it?

As many of you know, Easter isn’t but 1 Sunday. No, it is actually 50 days! Thus, for the next 6 or 7 weeks we will hear stories of the post-resurrected Jesus.

We do this to remind ourselves that we are in fact an Easter people!

The work isn’t done. Rather, now is the season and time for us to celebrate the life we receive from God’s grace. Now is the time to celebrate the sunny days and the joy of laughter. Now is the time to thank God for life—for today—for our friends and family—thank God for

YOU!

Creation isn’t done with ‘resurrection’ either. Trees are blooming; daffodils are opening; and grass is growing. Before you know it, the slow process of re-creation will have completely consumed our neighborhoods.

This work, this re-creation, is also happening in you.

Everyday God is shaping you into the person who God wants you to become. Believe it. Trust it. Embrace it. As an Easter people we are reminded that God has never given up on us and that not even death could keep God’s love for us down.

So friends, I encourage you to practice resurrection in the coming days. Celebrate the gift of a new day…this new season.

Easter has not passed us. Rather, it is just beginning.

Also, in honor of national poetry week, I want to share a poem by my favorite writer, Thomas Merton that has set my course for this Easter season.

Take thought, man, tonight. Take thought, man tonight when it is dark, when it is raining. Take thought of the game you have forgotten. You are the child of a great and peaceful race. You are the son of an unutterable fable. You were discovered on a mild mountain. You have come up out of the godlike ocean. You are holy, disarmed, signed with a chaste emblem. You are also marked with forgetfulness. Deep inside your breast you were the number of loss. Take thought, man, tonight. Do this. Do this. Recover your original name. This is the early legend that returns. This is the legend that begins again. Remember the ancient dances. (He has remembered the whole world at peace. He has remembered the world of villages, of maize, of emeralds, of quiet mothers. He has lifted up the world.)

May you during this Easter season, discover your original name.

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Shouts of 'sanna

Shouts of 'sanna

We are just days away from Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem. The palm branches have been ordered, the children have practiced waving said palm branches, and the faithful church sexton has done a wonderful job preparing the church so it is fit for a king...or queen :) .

A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.
~Pope Francis

Soon our silent walks in the wilderness will yield to shouts of hosannas, and the rustling of branches will replace the sound of silence. Finally, we can smile! We can celebrate! We can hope! We can believe we again we have been rescued!

Lent is almost over. Our journey is almost complete. We've come this far. Do not lose heart, friends. As Christ called James and John, Peter and Andrew, Philip and Matthew, so Christ calls us now. We, like them, will have to make a decision soon. As the cross draws near, as the crowds press in on us, and as the rooster begins to crow, we may be tempted with a lie, a lie that we don't have enough to finish.

We aren't worthy enough to follow.

If you get to that point...WHEN you get to that point, remember this:

Love walks before and beside you. Love surrounds you when your awake and when you lie down. Love has been shaping you this Lent, beginning way back on Ash Wednesday.

The Face of Love goes with you even to the gallows of death.

Remember, our Lenten journey is not simply about keeping our chocolate urges at bay or how many cups of caffeine we didn't drink or how many hours we did or didn't sit in silence. These last 40 days were not about proving our worth by engaging in spiritual practices or avoiding something like the plague.

Rather, Lent has been about how even now we are worthy, we are desired by God. Pope Francis said it best when he said, "(W)henever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades.” He continues that, “We end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.”

Over the last 40 days we've journeyed on what may have appeared as individual roads. But the larger picture is that we've been pilgrims together on the way to Jerusalem, traveling not alone but with each other...

with Christ.

Lent has come to awaken us. We still have plenty of time to sit at the feet of our Christ. Let's not rush the procession.

There is still time to realize that though the life of a person is in a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. We have to trust God.

Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Sunday Rose

I have a confession:

                                                                        I am a liturginerd.

What does that mean you ask?

Essentially it means this:  someone who is extra enthusiastic about something to do with their church life, whether that’s theology, the liturgy, or just being an exuberant Presbyterian.

One of the reasons I love being Presbyterian is that we follow the liturgical calendar. This calendar begins on the first Sunday of Advent, which normally begins in late November. A major reason why the church follows the liturgical calendar/year can be simplified down to this point:  many periods of time shape us, and most of them do not begin or end at the same time.

The civic new year is, at best, a calendrical device designed to regulate the daily affairs of people. Meanwhile, the liturgical year is the year that sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus, the Christ. Feminist Christian mystic Joan Chittister says, “[The liturgical year] proposes, year after year, to immerse us over and over again into the sense and substance of the Christian life until, eventually, we become what we say we are—followers of Jesus all the way to the heart of God.” The liturgical year is an adventure in human growth, an exercise in spiritual ripening.

Currently the church is smack in the middle of Lent.

Did you know this upcoming Sunday, has a different name and color to it?

The Fourth Sunday of Lent (March 18th) is called Laetare Sunday, when the church (specifically speaking the Roman Church) takes a bit of breather from Lenten practice and opens worship with the Entrance Antiphon, “Rejoice, Jerusalem … Be joyful, all who were in mourning!” – taken from Isaiah chapter 66.

Like the third Sunday of Advent ("Gaudete Sunday"), the fourth Sunday of Lent is a break in an otherwise penitential season.  The day is a day of relaxation from normal Lenten rigors; a day of hope with Easter being at last within sight. One way the church has marked this hope is by changing the paraments from purple to pink. The rose colored cloth on Laetare Sunday is a custom originating as a symbol of joy and hope in the middle of this somber season.

This Sunday could not come at more perfect time. Robins have been spotted under your feeder and I bet, if you look close enough, you can see the earth come alive again.

Resurrection is coming.

Easter is near.

That is good news.

Rejoice, friends. You’re doing good work where you are, exactly as you are.

Here is one last bit of liturginerd information for ya.

Laetare Sunday is also called “Rose Sunday” because of the papal blessing of the golden rose, a floral spray blessed by the pope and given to a notable person or institution.

I’m not the pope.

But I give you this rose because your life,

your story,

your presence

is a gift to us all.

Be well. Be rose-y. Above all, be you!

No matter what the world preaches
spring unfolds in its appointed time,
the violets open and the roses,
snow in its hour builds its shining curves,
there's the laughter of children at play,
and the wholesome sweetness of rhyme.
~Mary Oliver, No Matter What