Perichoresis and the Interwoven Spirituality of the Labyrinth

In honor of both my parish's namesake feast celebrating the participatory holy dance that is the Trinity and the impending solstice upon which a formative labyrinth walk occurred four years ago, I want to post an excerpt from a letter that I wrote in September 2007 reporting on some shifts within my spiritual life. My path has had and still has many component threads, but like a labyrinth seems to prevent loss of one's way as long as each footstep follows on the last.

One thing that happened was attending my first Labyrinth walk at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral here in Portland (they have a public drop in session once a month and are three blocks rom my apartment). For years I have struggled with my connections to the church. I was raised Presbyterian but for the last four or five years have been much more drawn to the Anglican Communion. I haven't attended much in recent history but I think it is time to reintegrate my mysticism and my personal connection to Christianity with an actual community of faith. That is one element. Another is seeking to renew my studies with the Druid Order (OBOD). I completed their ourse of studies about six or seven years ago. Last year I received the materials for their new audio version of the revised first level or Bardic Grade. The course itself has been revised a couple years before and I had the new paper lessons but did not pursue them at that time. Up until now I had only made it through about a quart of the audio course, but I believe it is time to pick that up again as well. Raising my connection to both the Church and the Druid Order are clear priorities at the moment though of course I don't know where those paths lead and how well they will interact. The point of contact between them of course is the labyrinth. It doesn't care whether I am a Christian/Druid/Both. I am just another silent reverent walker on its arcs and turns. The Labyrinth connects to the Rosicrucian Order as well for me this year. After the Peace Ceremony in June we created one of the seven circuit classical versions on the floor of the Grange Hall where we meet in masking tape. That was probably the day where all of these shifts began. It is certainly the dy where to my surprise the goddess Ceridwen appeared in my mind when I reached the center of the Labyrinth. She simply stated that I wasn't finished with the Druidic material and that I would return to it. She is who I have always resonated with as the mother within the Celtic tradition. OBOD's new course places encounters with her at very few key points on the path, although the Bardic Course uses one of her stories as an ongoing thread to understand the basics of Druidry as well as storytelling, etc. Long story not short, regardless of some of my comments in my last letter (though my developing business knowledge and connections are key to my situation right now) my mystical studies/associations are clearly not going anywhere.

I am thankful for all the gifts these spiritual homes have given me over the years, particularly during the last four since walking the Labyrinth on Solstice four years ago. Trinity has truly provided a place where I could be my whole self and live out Richard Rohr's maxim "Everything Belongs". It will be my honor to present a new group of catechumens to the community and the bishop for confirmation. The fact that the bishop is going to turn right around and march with us in Portland's Pride Parade is the icing on the cake. Being a whole person is goal after all. As Irenaus said most of two thousand years ago, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive." Here's to being alive!

The Pleroma of Eastertide

One hardly knows where to being when leaving so much space between entries. I had intended to visit in the quiet of Holy Saturday, something I thought of this year as a crease; the fold of the folio in the passage of before into after. As it is, I passed through Holy Week this year on very quiet feet: from a Eucharist on what is occasionally known as Spy Wednesday, around he feast of Maundy Thursday to sneak into the garden after all was done to hold vigil in the small hours of the morning, crossing to the chapel the morning of Holy saturday for tis brief prayers and readings. Not until the early Easter Eucharist did I become once again in synch with my community. Until then my notes wove in and out of their services like the black keys on the piano.

The coming of Easter season has been wholly different. Connection to the cathedral has been primarily through Sunday mornings, but other bright and holy paths have opened up in this window coincident with the dawning of the bright half of the Celtic year. Two short term clases presented them selves in ways not to be ignored. Our Academy chaplain and holder of Irish mysteries is hosting a veritable feast of conversation Thursday evenings under the title Celtic Wayfaring. The beautiful intersection between Celtic lore and a devout pilgrim incarnation of Christianity is proving fertile ground for a small group of us on this journey.

A very different path running parallel to this is a short course with the Academy to continue the historical exploration I undertook this past fall. With our guide returned again we are looking at the myriad players and forces at work in the reformation of the 16th century with hints of its 17th century fal out. As I noted in my reflection paper for our session this past weekend, one constellation of consequences is the movement of my family to the new world from a variety of enclaves seeking deeper reform; whether Pilgrim & Puritan, Huguenot, Dutch Calvinist, Presbyterian or Anabaptist, the combination of economic possibility and spiritual space drew them west, as it always seems to do for those descended of the Celts.

So I have arrived labyrinthine to see the full moon rising one cycle beyond Easter dawn with a renewed sense of my Celtic call to wander and the resurrected life flowing so deeply in my veins. Not a bad place to scout forward in hopes of the Pentecostal fires yet to come.

Bright Blessings in this season of growing light and God willing perhaps even some summer heat one of these days.

Leading Edge of Lent

Lent for me this year is all about re-connection. So far it is working pretty well. I've connected with old friends, made some new ones, re-engaged work to a level that I haven't seen in quite a while and most importantly woken back up to the realities of ministry in the places where I already find myself.

In these early days of Lent I have come across a good reason to stay with my career: I don't entirely believe in its fundamental concern. Or rather I believe that it's fundamental concern is essential but it is also the basis for economic abuses and misperception of value. Private property is a very helpful feature of society but only up to a point. Beyond which we get the increased isolation and huge disparity between have and have-not that we see in the US and between various parts of the globe.

However, having no Land Administration System at all makes it even more difficult for those on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Creating land records is the beginning of a path that can create reasonable wealth for the most people. It can be an important part of the technologies which help to underly a society based on enough.

There is a justice concern wrapped up in all the day to day work of maps, deed searches, comparable sales, and poring over county and assessor data. In some of my reading today ("Land Administration for Sustainable Development" from ESRI Press) I found this hopeful and helpful tidbit:

The international land policy literature observes three components within the broad goal of sustainability:

* Efficiency and promotion of economic development
* Equality and social justice
* Environmental preservation and a sustainable pattern of land use (GTZ 1998; Deninger 2003)

You never know what might come of remaining engaged here. An opportunity through the GIScorps or my own company's international efforts might open up a pathway to contribute to a world based on enough rather than just more without end. I can certainly get behind that.

Blessings to you on the Jerusalem road.

The Long Tail of Epiphany

Parts of three liturgical seasons have passed since I was last here: the latter half of Advent, all of Christmas, and most of Epiphany. I can definitely say that Epiphany this year was revelatory but in some pretty rocky ways and distinctly of the less is more variety.

Despite all my excitement regarding the Academy last fall and the hope that came with the feeling that I was finally getting somewhere (whatever that means), I have come to see that not only was I unable to keep up in the new term given my hypo-depressive state, but I also had really good reasons for letting that trajectory go. That was just over two weeks ago.

There are a number of factors behind discerning such a choice. They largely fall into two categories which might appear to be contradictory, though in practice they are not given the nature of my community:

1. My monastic stability was at risk of being permanently impaired. My connections and avenues of service at my church home as well as through work and my personal life were under nearly terminal strain from the striving for the future and the work itself associated with the Academy. I came to realize that where I already found myself was were I wanted to be and I was losing the ability to be present to it.

2. I am very likely too religiously multivalent to fare well in the official discernment process and administration of the church even in a denomination as progressive as this one. However I can be a very happy and hopefully helpful member of this expression of the body of Christ.

So I have been steadily been building that reality back up during this long tail of Epiphany and its collection of small nudges leading to big shifts.

My subjunctive adventure continues...

Churches as Monasteries; Parishioners as 21st Century Religious?

I started this late last night but the technology conspired to tell me to wait, rest as best I could and finish later. As a contextual note, temporally this post surrounds the passing of my father, spiritually his passing surrounds the granting of the image above. I felt I needed to capture it because though yet undeveloped I felt it strongly connected to a call to the ordained priesthood finally arising from the sea of possibilities. As they say: discerning good from good is far more difficult than discerning good from bad.

Last night, once I knew we were only hours away from his transition, a liminal space was created in my vigil for him. Though far away in distance, the part of him that is in me really seemed to give me some clear perspective as only moments like these can. In a final period of quiet reading before bed, I picked Eugene Peterson's "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places" off my shelf as I had been diverted from reading this series some time ago. This paragraph in particular struck me in relation to the spiritual but not religious crowd and the role of churches:

Because of this spiritual poverty all around, this lack of interest in dealing with what matters most to us--a lack in our schools, our jobs and vocations, and our places of worship alike--'spirituality,' to use the generic term for it, has escaped institutional structures and is now more or less free-floating. Spirituality is 'in the air.' The good thing in all this is that the deepest and most characteristic aspects of life are now common concerns: hunger and thirst for what is lasting and eternal is widely acknowledged and openly expressed; refusal to be reduced to our job descriptions and test results is pervasive and determined. The difficulty, though, is that everyone is more or less invited to make up a spirituality that suits herself or himself. Out of the grab bag of celebrity anecdotes, media gurus, fragments of ecstasy, and personal fantasies, far too many of us, with the best intentions in the world, because we have been left to do it 'on our own,' assemble spiritual identities and ways of life that are conspicuously prone to addictions, broken relationships, isolation, and violence.

I think a lot of the concern lately among churches (even those within the emergent stream) is how to get the genie back in the bottle so to speak. It just doesn't go that way. That is not necessarily a bad thing. With cooperation, this situation could actually become Joachim di Fiori's "Age of the Holy Spirit".

That is not to say that we don't need to undertake the work that Rev. Peterson is setting out to discuss. We do need to clear the decks and get at the heart of our traditions to inspire each other towards becoming the child of God that we already are.

Given that spirituality is not going to be reinstitutionalized, what is the contribution of institutions? This is where the image in the title of the post came to me. With a very different baseline in the surrounding society, Christians become the countercultural minority our best self often shows.

With no societal pressure to be a part of churches, the people of those communities become like monastics keeping a rule of life (the Baptismal Covent for Episcopalians) in an environment of attentive listening (i.e. obedience) to each other and the ordered clerics that serve to coach them in their call to ministry. Even without a practice of the daily office, the discipline of Sunday services when society is free to sleep in is a witness to a way of connecting to God.

These communities allow for gradual belonging as a permeable set centered on Christ. They connect with their neighbors in a variety of ways. They are places of hospitality for those seeking a connection with God in keeping the liturgy, the work of the people, going so that it is available as a bridge to the divine. The radical ethics of Jesus inform the choices made in the daily living of the lives of God's people.

As the leaven in the loaf of the world, we let our prayers and compassion reach to God, soak into us, and reach out through us to change the whole. One of my Benedictine brothers describes monasteries as grace factories. May our churches of whatever variety, however large, and however numerous be that light for the world.

Mentoring Christians towards that type of engagement is a vocation to which I would happily give the rest of my life.

I thank my father, deacon and elder of the Presbyterian Church, lover of God, Neighbor, and Self, for clearing away my mental and emotional clutter on his way out of this life and into the next. He does not leave this world unchanged. Many blessings upon his soul: freed now from physical struggle and in the Peace of God. Amen.

A peace settles in

In the midst of an academy weekend, I settle in for the evening amidst books, music and some new furniture that rounds out the reading room of my living room: more shelves to give some space to breathe and a foot companion to last years armstool. Funny story about the armchair is that I picked it up last year's retreat to Guadalupe Abbey in Lafayette. Only about a month later did I realize that the chair, lamp and other rearrangements gave me a space that replicated my situation in the abbey guest quarters.

Tonight I am looking into the life of St. Malachy of Ireland. In addition to some interesting prophesies that I knew about previously, as it turns out he was an almost exact contemporary of St. Bernard and brought Cistercian practice to Ireland. I picked it up yesterday in Reed's library while looking for a book on Francis Xavier for my second homily assignment. I couldn't resist it and now I am really glad I followed through on the urge. The difference of perspective of Cluniac and Cistercian monks was the subject of my reflection paper this week, which was the primary purpose of my visit to Reed last night. i needed the space and time set aside to produce it. I am finding that I work really well there.

Tonight though, is not production but quiet reflection. Other matters on the table before final lights out are Prayer Book evolution as I now have copies of the 1662 English standard and the 1928 American to go along with my Oxford Guide to the subject.

So many fascinating nooks and crannies within this faith that in principle can be so simple (if not easy). In the midst of all this complexity is a hunger for the sacred and for mystery. My historical studies this term with the academy have stirred up a consciousness of this cloud of witnesses. As our chaplain reminded me this evening, it is this cloud with whom we pray the office even when we are alone.

May the blessings of peace be with you this night.

A new milestone

So my birthday just passed. Two years ago I spend my birthday evening in the "Introduction to Benedictine Practice" class prior to joining my community. Last year I was in a mini-retreat at Guadalupe Trappist Abbey from the day before to the day after my birthday. This year I spent it at the Academy. In addition to turning in a pile of written work, I delivered my first sermon and survived.

Just for fun, here is the text:

Sometimes once you notice something you start seeing it everywhere. That’s how I feel about this evening’s Psalm over the past couple weeks. As I started thinking about preaching for the first time, I remembered my church growing up. We used the final verse of this Psalm as a responsive prayer in preparation for the Sunday sermon. I had considered using it here even before I knew that we would already be praying it together. I wasn’t even sure which psalm that verse came from. It cropped up again about a week ago in my Benedictine small group. That week’s leader had chosen it as our opening prayer and we reveled in its expansive language. I was pleased both to run into the verse that I had in mind and to see the beauty of its original context. And so as I begin, I feel blessed that this scripture from my early formation has shown up to greet me in a new phase of formation.

Tonight, we are honoring the life and work of Richard Hooker: an Anglican apologist born in the decade following the printing of the first Book of Common Prayer. He would devote an entire volume of his primary work, “The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” to defending the Prayer book and its style of worship against the claims of the Puritans. As is generally the case with great works, this undertaking has roots earlier in our scholar’s life. Richard Hooker was Master of Temple Church in London from 1585 to 1591. The unusual title for his position as rector comes from the church’s origin as the English headquarters for the Knights Templar. Needless to say, the Knights hit an extremely bad run of luck and their space became the spiritual home to others. In Hooker’s time, it was primarily home to lawyers, judges and future hopefuls in that field. It was also home to those of a more reform and even puritanically minded Christianity. Hooker’s traditionally oriented Mastership was balanced by a Puritan named Walter Travers, who was nominally Hooker’s assistant, but was in reality a bit of an opponent and theologian in his own right. He held the title of Reader of the Temple. While the Master was in charge, it was the Reader who generally set the theological teaching and tone. Naturally they didn’t see eye to eye. From what I could find it does not seem that Hooker had a particularly great effect on his flock’s opinions at the time, though Travers was eventually censured for annoying the Archbishop one too many times.

It is not surprising then, when away from London in a less demanding post that he should take up the question once again. Five volumes of “The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” were published in his lifetime and three more after his untimely death from a winter chill. However, the compelling thing to me is that he was not trying to defeat either the Catholic position or that of the Puritans. In some ways, he was really playing for a draw. He began by demonstrating the very small kernel of doctrine necessary for salvation. He showed that not even the creeds are based on the scriptures alone but by our reason applied to them. They represent a developing tradition of inquiry upon the revelation of Christ’s life and teachings. Some even point to this argument as the origin of our “Anglican Three-Legged Stool” of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. What his line of reasoning did show is how Christians are connected on the most fundamental level and that much of the rest can come or go without anyone risking their salvation. All he wanted to demonstrate was that the Church of England was a suitable vehicle for the mystery of Christ. Indeed one of his complaints against the Puritans was that they were pushing too hard on the mystery and trying to sharpen edges that were meant to be a bit blurry. There is a beautiful line from his Laws which speaks to this: “Oh, that men would more give themselves to meditate with silence what we have by the sacrament, and less to dispute of the manner how.”

This tendency to avoid the sharp edges and hard extremes is an important characteristic of Anglicanism. It is driven not by a sense of avoidance, at least not on our good days, but rather by seeking unity. One of my favorite snippets of prayer from our liturgy is the beginning of Form III of the Prayers of the People: “Father, we pray for your Holy Catholic Church; that we all may be one”. I feel that Richard Hooker was praying that prayer too, the one we take from today’s gospel reading.

Today we hear Jesus’ prayer for us. He reaches beyond and through all the pages of history that we’ve been studying these past several weeks and reaches right into this gathering. The one we gather around prays this his disciples and all those in the great chain of followers that they initiate can hold things together that we might know the unity that he has experienced with God. We might be a little rough around the edges, a bit more fractured that perhaps one might wish, but if we believe with Richard Hooker that all we need is our connection to Christ to be Christian, than we can celebrate that connection and our Lord’s prayer reaching our ears this evening.

All of our struggles with understanding are perhaps the bulk of the Christian story we have been reading, but they are not the thread binding the book together. That honor goes to this unifying love Jesus prayed for us. And with this love might just come a sense of the wisdom that Paul points to in our reading from his First Letter to the Corinthians. It might be hiding out between the lines of this contentious story. Paul assures us that it is there, behind the competing claims of this world that will pass away. Where there is now a façade of struggle and argument, we might one day find wisdom holding us up like the Strength of the Lord, the Redeeming Rock, of our Psalm.

In spring for the past couple years I have attended a conference on the Emerging Church hosted by Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation. The first year the backdrop behind the speakers was a great tree representing the Christian tradition with its roots in Judaism and its branches spreading out into the various denominations that we know today. This symbol was a reminder for us that what can look fractured might indeed be the development of a living unity when looked at from a different angle. Jesus is the seed that brought forth this flourishing tree: one holy tree that we may be one in him as he was one with God. I offer up Richard Hooker this night as a careful and loving gardener that tended to our branch just as it was emerging from the limb that had carried it that far. Amen.



Feast of Richard Hooker

Psalm 19
1 Cor 6-10, 13-16
John 17:18-23



Background reading on Richard Hooker

Lee W. Gibbs, Richard Hooker: Prophet of Anglicanism or English magisterial reformer? (Evanston, IL: Anglican Theological Review 84:4, 2002).

Robert K. Faulkner, Richard Hooker and the Politics of a Christian England (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1981).

“Richard Hooker,” http://www.parishes.oxford.anglican.org/draytonbeauchamp/richard_hooker.htm, downloaded on 10/29/2010.