"Everything belongs" - Father Richard Rohr OFM

I still wonder what the second half of life has in store for my religious and mystical training. There is a very telling pile of small books currently on my nightstand, all pocket-sized: A gospel/psalms, a Rule of St. Benedict, and three slim moleskine journals in my own hand: daily prayers (written when I was preparing for entering benedictine community), the journal from when I was taking my post-Temple degree initiations within the Rosicrucian Order (OSB=OSB after all), and the journal of my struggles to maintain the Rule while making my way in the world. God always uses everything and these experiences remain close to my core. [cross-posted from a facebook status update]

St. Andrews Crossroads

Over the course of this year a series of shifts occurred for me wherein I stopped navigating life by the Christian map. It was not a question of not believing or even being in conflict on a values level. To use Marcus' phrasing: I stopped speaking Christian and found myself in territory where I needed to revive religious language and practice that I learned outside the church. Trinity has been a place where I could share a more complete version of myself than in any other Christian community that I have encountered. For that I am very grateful.

However this fall in particular I encountered situations and opportunities that I could not address adequately as a Christian. I did find that I could be of service by taking up roles of which I had systematically divested myself in the year that I returned to Trinity. I again find myself at a crossroads just as I did at that time. Both of them feel a bit like a betrayal to the community in which I was centered at the time. The one thing I do know about the whole arc of my journey is that God has been with me and that for all my mistakes and stumblings, I have drawn closer to the mysteries and have continually found sincere people doing what they are called to do in order to seek that closeness as well.

I knew I had hit a bit of a critical point last weekend when I had no desire to participate in any part of the Christmas liturgies. I thought a weekend in the hermitage, so to speak, would give me a fresh start. A fresh start, perhaps, but I know my place is elsewhere. I have been in similar positions with the church twice before in my life. Both of those times I took a stance where I was essentially voting against the church. This time I'm just letting go. The church has its role and its community. My associates and I have ours. I trust that God is using both of us to reach out to somewhat different folks but all for connection to the larger whole that is the divine-human family.

*****

And the conditionality of the subjunctive closes, leaving a very active but wholly different indicative.

St. Martin's Lent

This morning I put my medals (Timothy and Benedict) back on after a period of weeks wearing a different sort of cross, now safely gifted to someone else. As an aside I love networking by giving gifts. Jewelry is particularly good in that it allows a part of you connected with the receiver to continue wearing that token while you recenter perhaps under a different signature. So I return to my monastic path having accomplished the tasks outside the monastery that were mine to do.

This past friday was Martinmas, i.e. the Feast of St. Martin of Tours, who was a very early convert to Christianity having been a Roman soldier. He settled at Tours and eventually became bishop of that place. One of his primary legends is that of slicing his cloak in two in order to share with someone who had none.

Centuries ago Advent developed in the period before Christmas and was seen as a preparatory or even penitential period before the feast of the incarnation. Forty days placed a convenient starting point at the Feast of St. Martin, longer than our current advent of four Sundays. It is this advent that feels active for me this year.

On Friday I attended a wedding at the cathedral that chose to use the readings for the feast of the day as the couple felt they espoused the stress fo charity and justice that was key to their understanding of Christianity and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. This prepared the way for the realization that I came to at Sunday Eucharist this morning.

Having just past through this period of indulgence and activity in order to do work to which I felt called, I now need a period of cleansing in order to properly enter into the darkest of the Winter months, the anniversary of my father's death, and the finding again of light with the Solstice and the celebration of Our Lord's birth.

Project 119 as discussed in my last post was an incredible experience of grounding which helped to get me out of a very difficult and disorganized period in order to have the strength to live and work as needed to be done. I will return to some elements of this project as a way of entering into this purifying Advent.

Though more recently I had been looking at other translations of this psalm, I believe I need to return and dive deeply again into the Book of Common Prayer as the source for my personal liturgy. It's phrases were able to stick with me and echo through the walk of my days in a way that holds the sanctity of the law which is celebrated in the psalm.

Many blessings on your Advent whether taken up now or in a short few weeks time.

Project 119

Today after three weeks, I have completed Psalm 119 for the first time in a new experiment in monastic committment to sacred time, the psalms, and God's law as a source for life and health. A few days before I began this project I realized that my relationship with daily life was falling apart specifically for the reason that I was refusing to go to bed and refusing to get up in the morning. Frustration was rampant and I had no leverage anywhere in my life. Two days later I had what will undoubtedly be one of the top five dreams of my life. As it is now, I can only think of two others in its class. Key symbols involved were the plumb line of the masonic past master, the anchor as an early christian symbol, and the cross as an extension of that orienting compass to right living. This plumb line not only showed the way to go but also provided the resistance in which to help me climb. The next day, I asked myself what a monk would do to get out of my predicament. I said, he would get up at four o'clock. I resolved to as closely as possible sleep from nine to four [granted today I'm behind, but I have room to sleep late tomorrow]. This would be slightly more sleep than I often had and certainly would be more consistent. I tied this directly with the daily reading (generally two or three times) of one of the sections of Psalm 119 (they are eight verse sections which in hebrew all begin with the same letter) and this prayer from the Book of Common Prayer (#61 in the prayers for family and personal life; A Prayer for Self-Dedication):

Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated to you; and then use us, we pray, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

As I expressed tonight in my weekend benedictine small group, Psalm 119 is 176 ways of saying to God, your law will keep me healthy. This has proven to be the case. I had just enough time in this project to fumble with it for a week plus before the busiest week of my entire life for any reason happened. Despite this, I cancelled nothing; I came through on all my commitments to the extent that it was humanly possible; I reaped many blessings; and most importantly created no mess that would need to be dealt with down the road. I can honestly say that has never happened to me before. I attribute the difference to surrendering my schedule to God and just putting one foot in front of the other. So with that, to bed. Many blessings on your path.

Love Wins

I believe Rob Bell is totally onto something in his book "Love Wins". It is indeed a universalist message, but if "draw all things to myself" means nothing else, it means Jesus intends intends to save everyone. I believe this is the key theological teaching of the Harrowing of Hell which is a mythological feature of the reality of Holy Saturday which had shadows in our creedal statements. Regardless of what it is, there is a psychological experience of Hell here and now and perhaps after death for those unfortunate enough not to be able to forgive and be forgiven. It is most certainly not an external punishment but a fearful holding on to our chains which makes God weep. Thus the harrowing of hell and the preaching to the captives. No one is so far gone under any circumstances that God cannot reach them. Some are very far away indeed which is why the death on the cross and the descend of the underworld are mythologically required to get to them. The Aenead has some similarities in terms of this descent. It is part of the larger dying and rising pattern of Christianity and the "Descent into Egypt" tradition of both testaments. Imagine for a minute of Hell as this awful party where no one will go home at the end of the night. Satan is the bar manager desperately waiting to close up, but he isn't allowed to get anyone out. However the only thing he wants from his own first mistake is to get home. That is a very different narrative indeed. I wonder who more than he would be relieved to Jesus on that Saturday?

Testimony

Though (and actually because of) I offered some personal testimony this summer, both as a written letter and as a service announcement, for the particular ministries in which I am involved in my congregation, I was recently asked to consider doing something similar for the annual giving campaign coming up. For a bit I struggled with this as I didn't want to seem like a re-run. However this week I've come to a statement that I would like to post whether we end up using it in the stewardship campaign or not. It's first (and probably overlong) version runs like this:

Monastic spirituality is important to me. A key element of that spirituality is stability. After college I felt called to stay in Portland. For twelve years I have lived, worked, and walked downtown. It has provided me with my version of a monastic enclosure. The heart of this monastery is Trinity Cathedral. It is the center of my spiritual community and my school for the Lord's service as St. Benedict envisions in his rule. This isn't to say that everything is always smooth. In frustration or depression I have wanted to just walk away a number of times. But I have met real people here who care about what happens to me. I know they pray for me and I for them. It keeps me coming to the table time and again. Cornerstone, the cathedral's Benedictine community, renews its vows every Advent. This year I will vow obedience, stability, and conversion of life for the fourth time. These are really one interwoven vow to remain in community centered on God. Like the Trinity itself they create a round dance of community which is itself an expression of God.

Many blessings on your path.

Solve et Coagule

Given the nature of this post, I find it interesting that it is the 40th since I began this channel of expression. A wandering in the desert that is certainly not over but does indeed reach an interesting milestone today as news came of a shifting partnership with my work in the church the nature of which weaves in and out of this journal and journey mostly behind the scenes. The details are going to again remain behind the scenes, but I did want to register this time as one that may turn out to be pivotal for the road ahead.

This entire year has been one of radical shifts in basic things. Once the dust settles there may indeed be a monastic motivation that can be elicited from transitions. One which is a little ahead of the curve [and nearly got its own post under the title of "Feasting, Fasting and Daily Bread" around the time of the feast of St. Benedict last month; instead got an airing at my small group within our community] is a shift in the way I eat to bring my "daily bread" back into the scope of something worth that title in its original context of the Lord's prayer as well as in the context of manna for which you can only have that which you need. Daily work is also in extensive fluctuation in a move to more appropriately sized quarters couple with the addition of consolidation of two brands. Separate initiatives that have dovetailed and will arrive at a stronger more sustainable whole. July also saw two sets of travel experiences one into the deep roots of family an another into the lofty possibilities of intentionality through with realization that consciousness matters woven into the integration previously fragmented experiences of a city that was too close to home to know on its own.

Since returning from that second trip, all of these fluidities and uncertainties seemed to pile up on themselves making a rough passage of it. With the previously, though vaguely, mentioned news received today I feel that this period of dissolution has reached its final point. After a period of transition through the next nine days, the coagulation phase of what will next become can begin. There is now nothing else left to melt.

The Hermetic adage titling this post has of course its Christian analog in the path of dying and rising. This time immemorial pattern illustrated so brilliantly in the Gospel and in our experience of Jesus guides us through all these changes on personal and collective levels. When we lay down what we know in exchange for perhaps what we know not in the confidence of God's presence with us we follow in his footsteps, even in that moment when we feel forsaken before the confidence returns in knowledge that it is done. As it feel like I have done more often than usual this year, I embrace the Holy Saturday-ness of these next days, in preparation for a new manifestation to be found in a little Easter of its own.