Shining Spirit

I think it was Henry Ford who said: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” How the mind operates has a lot to do with succeeding or failing. Do you remember a very popular book by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale called “The Power of Positive Thinking”? It was a big hit in its time, and the theory still works today. I wonder if Dr. Peale, a clergyman, got the idea for his book from Philippians 4:8 in the New Testament? In summary, whatever is true and honorable and just, pure and lovely…put these things in your mind and there is a good chance they could be manifested in your life. Another famous quote: What you think about, you become.

Works the other way, too, doesn’t it? Fill your thoughts with mean, evil, unkind ideas and often your behavior will follow your thinking. I think this is a particularly important concept today. I meet so many people who saturate their minds with fear of the future, or anger at current circumstances, or ideas of revenge and retribution. If you choose to live in that world, you become part of it. And it becomes part of you. Jesus never called his people away from the realities of injustice and evil. But he never let them get lost in the quicksand of those negative realities. More than once he called them to look up at the heavens that declare the glory of God, at lilies in the field, at birds sailing through the air. He directed them to the innocent beauty of children playing in the marketplace. And every time Jesus pointed them in those directions, he was washing their minds of all the dirt that can accumulate.

No question about it: Jesus fought against religious corruption and social injustice, but he knew the importance of keeping life in balance. He didn’t call us to casually ignore evil, but he also never called us to lose sight of the lovely, the beautiful, the positive. And that’s because he knew those things lead us to God and God’s love, the source of our strength to address the major problems causing the injustice.

Think on these things…he said. You might want to have a closer look at Philippians 4:8 today. Good for your mind and your soul. Press on.

I was lost in the dense jungle of my sorrow,
afraid of the sounds in the night,
unable to find comfort in kind words
or generous gestures.
And then you found me.
You searched for me at personal
cost, sacrificial effort.
Relentless compassion
unable, unwilling to
ignore the sounds of
my heart breaking
in the darkness of my night.

You lifted me from the
tangles of my tragedy,
sang to me songs of
hope and courage.
You held one candle against
the darkness of my despair,
light enough for me to lift
my head and see the faint
outline of my own freedom,
the pathway ever there but
hidden in my hopelessness.

One of my favorite photographs from the files. It helps me remember so many important things about my spiritual life. It helps me pray my way into this new day.

Lord God, creator of all that was and is and will be, guide me by the light of your love today. I know I have several paths I could choose to follow today, paths that will lead me deeper into the fears and concerns that want to capture my mind and my heart. May I be brave enough and devoted enough to choose the pathway of Christ, the lamp for my feet and the light for my path. The way is rugged, Lord; uneven and often treacherous. Help me find my way through the dangers and into the delight of your abiding presence. O Lord, how beautiful is your creation. The mountains call out your creative name; colors and textures remind me of the beauty that surrounds me; even the rugged pathway teaches me to step carefully but to never stop in fear or disappointment.

I cannot see around the bend nor over the hill to know what awaits. I simply trust that the Light will lead me through all moments, through unknown and unexpected engagements with life today. I will climb the hill and follow the path, Lord, in the confidence of faith, gladly and gratefully in the name of Christ Jesus, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Amen

Br. David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, introduces us to the term “religiousness” in his 2023 book: “You Are Here: Key Words for Life Explorers.” He writes: “That we have to interact with unfathomable, inexhaustible, unstoppable life is the basic fact of our human existence. The human mind is by its very nature bent on diving into mystery, on understanding it, and on guiding our actions based on that understanding.” This, he continues, is “the primal religious feeling” which he calls religiousness. We all have it and we express it through a wide variety of “religions” or belief systems. Religiousness is common to all human beings: religions are the ways we live it out.

I find this further explanation helpful. Compare religiousness “with a huge underground reservoir from which a multitude of wells draw water. At different moments in history, the founder of a religious tradition comes along and digs a new well. The wells may differ widely from each other, according to the personality of the one who built it, the given circumstances of the place and its people, and their needs at this historic moment. We can enjoy the resulting differences between the wells if we remember that from each flows one and the same water.” One reservoir, many wells, same water.

How do you think our religious landscape would change if we accepted this idea? If we valued the things that unite us, ultimately one God of all, one Source filling many wells, instead of defining the uniqueness of each well?

In an attempt to decipher some scribbled notes, these things emerged:

Some things change and some things don’t. The trick in life is to figure out which is which. Locked down rigidity narrows life to a razor’s edge. Anything goes often abandons principle. Discerned wisdom is never in the half-priced aisle.

Some things are worth fighting for, but some things aren’t. Not every fire is three-alarm. Thinking like a child, reasoning like a child, acting like a child is for children. Some things have to go in order for new things to grow.

It takes courage to live by faith, not to talk about it, but to live by it. Talk is cheap. Faith costs. Some of us are great conversationalists.

It has been said that fighting the riptide current is a sure way to lose your life. But, if you float with the current instead of fighting it, there’s a good chance you’ll be around to swim another day. One way is struggle; the other way is surrender. Life is not just sink or swim…it’s also float.

The great river, wide and deep, that runs to the sea is fed by many little streams, each bringing its contribution of water. By the time the river breaks into the sea, many waters have become one and the sea welcomes its return.

Just because it tastes good, it may not be good for you. Just because everybody does it, that doesn’t make it right. In order to be yourself, you have to know yourself.

Deciding is not the same as discerning. I decide; the Spirit and I discern. Big difference.

Scribbled notes are sometimes revealing, if you can still read your writing. Press on into this good day. Make some notes.

I have wondered, as you have, in a quiet, reflective moment: What is the purpose of my life? Why am I here on planet earth? What am I to be or to do? And I know the traditional answers. If you are secular, it is to be successful. If you are religious, it is to live in praise of and gratitude to your Creator. If you are a humanist, it is to do good for others. If you are entirely self-centered, it is promote yourself over all things. The fundamental problem with the question: What is the purpose of my life? is that it is set in constant, unpredictable, sometimes unwanted change. I am one person, a constant, in the midst of change that often borders on chaos. What if question was: “what is my purpose in this particular moment, this experience, this encounter? What if the question is daily or hourly? Let me give you an example.

Last evening, just before sunset, I drove to the highest point I could find here in the White Mountains in order to catch beautiful photographs of what was to be a spectacular sunset. Well, the sunset itself was a dud. I watched the sun go down without any colorful fanfare, returned to the car to put my camera away, and saw in an entirely different direction the rays of sunset bouncing off giant, puffy white clouds. And for the next few moments, I took photo after photo of this magical scenery. It seems that I missed a sunset in favor of a cloud. But my purpose was to capture a sunset. That’s what I thought originally. Instead I came home with a cloud. What if I stopped asking “what is the purpose of my life” and began asking “what is the meaning of this moment?” By not getting the sunset in the lens of my camera, did
I miss the mark? Fail to accomplish? Go home empty-handed? On the contrary, I got the most beautiful, stunning, remarkable cloud picture possible in that moment.

Consider the possibility of living moments and days instead of months and years. Maybe who I am is not the finished doctoral dissertation at the end of my life. Maybe who I am is a day by day conscious encounter with the mystery of life. It’s not what it all adds up to…it’s what happens right now. You’ve heard the expression: “Think big!” Not for me. It’s the moments that count, and I don’t want to miss any of them. That particular cloud will never happen like that again, and I was there to witness its grandeur. Purpose enough.

Faith, hope, and love. Three important words in the Apostle Paul’s vocabulary. I wonder how many times those words popped up in his preaching, teaching, and personal conversations? Probably quite a few times. I remember them, of course, from the beautifully poetic section of his letter to the church at Corinth, our Chapter 13. “Faith, hope and love remain; and the greatest of these is love.” Called “the love chapter,” I commend it to your reading today. In what some scholars designate as the oldest document in the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians, those three words appear again. Paul tells the Thessalonica church how dear they are to him personally and how he holds them in daily prayer: “We always give thanks to God for all of you”…constantly remembering “your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Of course, Paul learned the meaning of these three foundational words when he chose to leave his old way of life and “put on Christ.” Not only did he learn the meaning of the words, Paul demonstrated their practical applications in the lives of people in varied life circumstances.

It’s one thing to know the meaning, the definitions, of the words. It’s quite another to move them from dictionary to daily life, to apply them to specific moments . Faith – Hope – Love. In life’s great joys and certainly in the darkest moments, these words are like stepping stones across the quicksand, foundational pillars that hold the house up, and they work together like this: I have faith: I believe in that which I cannot see; I believe because of the witness of others and the testimony of Jesus, His life and His presence. I have faith, but when that faith starts to wobble, I have hope: Hope for me is one step beyond faith; sometimes when faith is assaulted by life’s brutalities, I hold faith as firmly as I can but I know that hope will withstand attacks of evil, hate, or cruelty. Lord, I have faith, but help me when I struggle. That’s when hope takes over. Against all odds, regardless of the circumstances, in spite of what might be lurking out there, I hope. The rest I leave in the hands of God.

But the greatest of these, love, is the capacity, the choice, to be Christ in the world. Faith may falter; all may seem hopeless, but still…but still I can love, for it is in loving that faith and hope are resuscitated, revived, renewed. I believe those who love out of tender hearts and grace-filled spirits are as close to the heart of God as those bursting with faith and hope. “The greatest of these is Love…” Paul’s own admission and his antidote to faltering faith or hopelessness.

I write this to anyone who cannot get beyond the eternal struggle between faith and reason, someone whose faith suffers because “it just doesn’t make sense,” to one who finds faith futile. Hope. Even if faith doesn’t make sense, seems out of date, is illogical or irrational, hope for the good. Hope for that which you know is intuitively right, fundamentally good. A waste of time? No. Hope is the middle ground between faith and love. Hope is a bridge that moves us to the ultimate expression of life, which is love. You don’t need faith or hope in order to love as Christ loved. Just decide to do it. Do it for the feeling love produces; do it to get a glimpse of joy or gratitude; do it for any self-serving reason you want to because love given eventually becomes love received. That’s the mystery, isn’t it. Love given returns to knock on your door, and love eventually brings two friends along…faith and hope. Whether you invite them to stay is up to you. Love is up to God. When we give it, we step into a realm that is beyond our common humanity, bigger than faith or hope, the closest place we know to the fulfillment of life’s meaning.

Short on faith and hope? Do love. Then set two extra plates at the table.

The unspeakable tragedies of flooding in Texas and New Mexico weigh heavy upon our hearts. We join our prayers with the grieving who wait anxiously for information, and we hold close to our hearts those lost in the raging waters, especially the children. In times of joy and laughter, imagination can be a wonderful friend, but in moments like these, imagination conjures up more than our minds and hearts can hold.

Submerged In Sorrow
Sometimes imagination is a horrible companion.
I lock the door, draw the curtains
around my inherent curiosity,
refuse to acknowledge the insistent knocking.
But it will not go away; it feeds on
the bizarre, relishes the possibilities from
the pain and suffering of others.
Imagination, freed from the guidelines
of common courtesy, splashes the canvas
with crimson paint and calls it art.

The faces of parents shielding their children
in the rubble of a Ukranian building.
Sudden flashes of light in the night sky
as the car rumbles over a scarred roadway
in a Gaza village. The feeling of her
heart being ripped out of her body as
her child is yanked from her arms
by the flooding river filled with
debris and death.

For so long I thought imagination always
led to cuddly puppy dogs or riding the
stars through a benevolent universe
or chocolate ice cream on a Sunday afternoon.
But I was wrong.

I hate imagination’s insistence that
overpowers compassion’s limits.
My soul is submerged in sorrow.
The raging rivers of imagination
have swept away the pieces of
my shattered heart.

Who knows the secrets of the great deep?
The hiding places of ancient life still unknown
to the human eye? The outer reaches of space
are not the only discoveries yet to be made.
You and I play on the beaches with buckets and
shovels, sandcastle makers who watch the tides
roll in and out, churning and smoothing,
churning and smoothing, fashioning its own art while
laying low what we thought indestructible.

Who knows the thoughts, the mind, of the great deep?
The wave? Perhaps. It is not the ocean of itself,
it is a single note of the eternal song,
one word from the encyclopedia of life,
a single taste of the sweetness that seems
inherent in the great mystery.

There was once a revealing of the Silent Deep,
a wave upon the shore where children play and
build their castles. For a moment, we frolicked
in the wave’s charm and invitation, but then
it was gone. Back to its source. Back to the
place of sending. And yet, mystery of mystery:
the wave returns again and again,
bringing a hint of the deep, a glimpse of
a deeper consciousness that reaches out in an
eternal rhythm, something we call life.
We play as children on a shifting beach, always
aware of the wave’s revealing, joyful in its song,
unfulfilled in its absence, renewed when it returns,
sent by the benevolent depth
that blesses again and again.

I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.
A couple in their 80s, walking quietly hand in hand,
turning to smile into each other’s eyes: that’s Love.

The wide eyes of a little child who sees the
big red balloon for the first time; the giggle:
that’s Wonder.

The homeowner bringing a glass of cold water
to the delivery person as she stands at the door:
that’s Kindness.

The willingness to say NO, that is not right, to
power or pressure: that’s Courage.

Always setting the dining room table with one
extra plate and one extra chair: that’s Hospitality

The smile in the face of adversity; the calm word
when people are shouting; that’s Hope.

I may not know how to define it,
but I know it when I see it.

And when I look at you:
a Friend.
Priceless.