Shining Spirit

Words have sharp edges. Words cut deep. Sometimes words leave scars, if not on the body, certainly on the soul. In fact, some of us are still bleeding from the unkind, thoughtless word. Francis of Assisi, the author of this beautiful prayer, knows about injury caused by mean words spoken by mean-spirited people. He felt the sting of injury over and over again. But instead of seeking revenge, instead of plotting to get even, he prayed for the capacity to forgive . “where there is injury, (let me sow) pardon.”

There’s a pretty good chance that someone reading these words remembers the hurt and still carries that stone around with them. It’s time to put it down; also that stone of retribution. Let them go. Healing will come when I acknowledge my pain and join St. Francis in sowing seeds of pardon. I know; life has taught us to carry a sack full of rocks in case I meet that person who injured me, but Jesus, the man to whom Francis gave his life, teaches pardon and forgiveness. The sack of rocks gets heavier and heavier as revenge-filled time goes by. Pardon given is the doorway to freedom.

Why not make today the beginning of personal freedom? Put the rocks down; pick up the bag of seeds.
Sow pardon. Make the call, write the note, knock on the door and give to the one who opens it a bouquet of pardon. “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon.”

Hate: an intense dislike; an intense feeling of ill-will.

Sometimes it starts with a thoughtless comment, a word taken the wrong way. Maybe it is an intentional slur or a calculated action taken that causes pain. Something triggers hate. Something pokes the sleeping monster and it growls back.

Francis recognized that the antidote to hatred is love, but that most of the time, love needed time to put down some roots and grow into the hatred. Like sowing seeds; they don’t come up overnight. Love planted needs tending, maybe for a long time, but the seeds of love finally blossom.

Francis knew also that love has to be planted in the midst of intense dislike, where it lives and flourishes. Seeds of love don’t do much if they are contained in journals or literary publications. Love has to look hate in the eye, stand in the place where hate appears to be winning, live in hate’s neighborhood if it is to transform. I once knew a man who said we ought to love “promiscuously.” Lavish love, sown in hate’s backyard, will eventually produce the inevitable transformation. Nobody said living like this is easy. There’s a precedent.

It is said that Francis of Assisi gave away everything he had…his standing in the community, name, personal wealth, friends, even his family. Legend has it that he stripped out of his elegant robes, a public spectacle, and walked about from life into Life. His heart was changed and he changed the world. Like Jesus, Francis took the form of a servant and called others to his side. Out of those efforts and on behalf of the lost in his time, Francis produced this remarkable prayer that has borne his name forever…The Peace Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. Reflect on these magnificent words with me:

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…”

The first word of the prayer reveals that Francis is no longer bound to rich family life, wealth, or power. Francis has a “Lord” who gives life and is life. Francis no longer belongs to himself. “Make me…” Transform me! Reshape me! Shape the clay any way you desire, not into more abundance but into new poverty. “An instrument” What instrument would you be if you had the choice? Francis became the soft, authentic, completely honest music of the harp, truly an instrument of peace. “Your” peace, not mine.

Begin this day praying the words of Francis and then again and again and again throughout the morning and into the heat of the day. Reflect on the words, be with them until they quietly become your own word. May peace find you and embrace all your busy-ness.

Sometimes wonderful things happen in two hours and 47 minutes. I bought a simple office desk yesterday. It looked great on the showroom floor, just what I wanted, deal done. “Do you think I can get it in the back of my CRV,” I asked the salesclerk. “Oh, yes sir. Absolutely. No problem. Just pull your car around to loading dock number 2 and we will help you load it.” What a nice young man.

Loading dock number 2. The big door opened and there stood a man with a long box. Must be for somebody else, I thought. Where’s my desk? When the football-tackle sized man tossed the box into the back of my car, it suddenly occurred to me that I had bought a desk and it was in 2,376,389 parts in a very heavy cardboard box. “Have fun,” the man chuckled as he walked away. When you assemble a complicated item from the long box using 6 pages of instructions, do you ever have to take it apart and do it a second time. Sometimes Part 7 that fits into Part 12 will also fit into Part 3 and when you discover that 7 is supposed to go into 12 and you’ve tightened it down in 3 by mistake, you have to disassemble and start over. Not that I did. I was just curious if that ever happened to you.

But two hours and forty-seven minutes later I had it finished. My wife said, “Nice job. Does it lean to the left just a little?” Yes, sometimes wonderful things happen quickly, sometimes it takes two hours and forty-seven minutes, sometimes longer. My consolation is that it took God several days to put the universes together…several days. And every day I stand in awe of the creative hand that fashioned light and suns and darkness and living creatures and everything else I encounter each day. What other response can there be but deep gratitude for this day and all the ones waiting to be born? I thought God did an especially good job on the clouds I saw this morning. My guess is that it took God only the snap of divine fingers…and there it was.

Nice job!

Do you recognize this beautiful scene? Think hard. Maybe you’ve been here before and memories come rushing back. Remember? Recognize? Well, don’t work too hard and give yourself a headache. You haven’t been there. There is no “there” because the fake-photo is the product of two words put into the hands of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The publishing service that I have used for almost 15 years of Shining Spirit has added an AI component, which means that if I don’t have the photo I want to use, I can create one. In the case of the beautiful sunrise here, I wrote two words, “mountain sunrise” in the AI box and twenty seconds later, here it is.

Everyone has known for a long time that the implications and opportunities of AI are staggering. What is real? What is true? Honest? Suddenly we have shifted to a conversation about ethics and honesty, about truth. What is true? And this is a topic that has clear relevance to our daily activities. It seems that you and I were made to live life fully in what Jesus called “the Kingdom of God.” That is not a specific place on the roadmap. No, it is a state of mind, a perspective, an outlook built on a particular foundation, one laid by Jesus. In this Kingdom relationship with Christ, everything we do or say is held up to spiritual principles: truth, mercy, compassion. This Kingdom of God in which we live every day is all about ethical and moral principle. There is nothing Artificial about it. I pray that life in the future, the days of our great grandchildren and beyond, will maintain the balance between what is real and what is artificial. When He said: “I am the way, the Truth, and the light…” he meant it and he laid out the principles that must guide human beings through life. What is truth? An urgent question in today’s culture.

Night to day to night
Darkness to light to darkness
I am grateful for the light of this morning
I am grateful for The Light that never goes away
Even in my darkness, the Light is still there.
The earth turns by design
I turn away by my choice
Thank you, Source of my life,
for your constancy.
Walk with me through the light of this day.

Amen

Today is a dancing day!
First things first.
Stand up, clear some space.
Dance.
By yourself?  Why not?
Slowly, just move with that rhythm 
you hear in your mind.
Nobody's looking.
So what, if they were?
And if you can't stand and twirl,
use that vivid imagination and dance
in your heart.
Dance to the day.
Dance to life,
the Gift of waking.
This is your Dancing Day!

When I was in early elementary school, I came home one day and old my mother I had learned a new word on the playground. She was busy and her response was “that’s good” or “how nice” or something like that. Next I wanted to impress my elementary school classmate, Barbara, when she came over to the house to play in our spacious backyard. When the time was right, I inserted the four-letter word into the conversation and she never blinked an eye. The storm started brewing when Barbara went home and tried to show her mother how smart she was by using my, or our, new word. It wasn’t pleasant facing both startled moms.

With that confession as background, let me tell you that I learned a new word this morning, and I’m well past the second grade. It’s an African word: Ubuntu, which, according to writer Mark Nepo, means “I am because you are….You are because I am.” In short, it has something to do with how we need each other to be complete. It means, writes Nepo, that in our deepest joys and most profound sorrows, we are each other. We need each other to be complete. I know. It’s a deep subject and this might stretch into lots of pages if I let my imagination play. Ubuntu: “I am because you are…you are because I am.” Isn’t this the deep spiritual connection, the absolute oneness, that Jesus preached? Because we are all connected, because of Ubuntu, you and I are relatives of mountains and rivers and people who live in remote areas of Africa or in the crowded streets of New York City.

Life will be very different when we understand and respond to Ubuntu. We will honor the core sameness but go beyond that. We will see ourselves in the other who angers us, or frustrates us, and, seeing one’s own self, we will be hesitant to do damage to the other. So it is in the arena of spiritual understanding. When we grasp the deep oneness we have in Christ, when I really know that I am not just my brother’s keeper, but I am my brother, the world will regain balance, peace will be a possibility, and justice will flow like the river. Soon, please God.

As this remarkable day begins, I make this heart-felt prayer:
Lord, have mercy on your hard-headed people
who squander the moment in worry and fear,
forgetting the strength and power of Love,
ignoring the truth that you’re always here.

Take from our minds all divisive thought,
help us remember the truth you conveyed
through the life of that man from Bethlehem,
that division and hatred are pathways to death,
that the light of truth shines brightly through him.

Save us, Lord, from the power of hate
that brings darkness to so many minds.
Help us find courage to overcome,
to find common ground that benefits all;
the pathway that leads to peace and to hope
in the steps of our Savior, Your Son.

Amen

It’s a very hot day, but just around the corner, just out of sight, you will discover the following:
a small stream carrying water since it’s monsoon season in the desert, large boulders stacked randomly according to nature’s design plan, ancient drawings scratched into the boulders, the entrance to Stations of The Cross, several large trees on either side of the stream, and a wooden bench set comfortably in the shade of the tree branches.

Someone sits on the bench and looks up in your direction when you round the corner. Who is it? And what do you want to say to the one waiting? What needs to be said? Hello? Goodbye? I forgive you? Thank you? Forgive me, please? I’m sorry? I love you?

There is an opportunity around the corner today. Be watchful for the moment. In the midst of all you do, be ready to say or do what is really important. “The Holy Spirit will give you words to say at the right moment.” Luke 12:12