Shining Spirit

I know. Some people don’t like to open a website and have a bug staring at them. But I submit to you that this is a work of art, not a picture of a bug. The anatomy is amazing; the wings are wonderful. Overall, a masterpiece of creative marvel. Do you know how many things are in this world that could rightly be categorized “amazing”? More than that! So, today is unofficially “amazing day” and our assignment is this: Look for the amazing. Note each amazing thing you see in a little notebook or on a simple piece of paper. Be generous; count everything that amazes you. Then, tonight before you sleep, go back over the list and say thank you for each entry. Everything around you qualifies; if you think it is amazing, then it is amazing. One way to remind ourselves that we are surrounded by and immersed in wonder. And, one way to be reminded about the source of all beauty and wonder. Thanks be to God who makes flying bugs and universes upon universes. Notebooks ready? Press on.

I live in a world that values noise.
It must; there is so much of it.
It communicates. It irritates.
It becomes the tolerable backdrop for life
until, purely by chance, I discover
that there is a state of being,
far superior to noise.
It is that moment when
hiking the forest trail, I step into a
dimension beyond word description,
beyond physical parameters. Motionless.
Not even the sound of the world breathing.
No bird song.

No melody of the river.
No leaf crunch under foot.
The marvelous mystery lasts until my
next breath or until I shift my weight
from one foot to the other, snapping the
brittle branch, creating the rolling echo
that races toward a distant star.
If I create noise, which I can,
I call it life. If I create silence,
which I must, I call it sacred.
Perhaps today is your day to
step into that holy place that
is always on the verge of becoming.
You are good at making noise.
Now, make silence.
Be still and know.

Never walk past a burning bush without saying “Hello!” You might hear a response, one that would comfort, challenge, encourage you, and sometimes we need those things, don’t we? Burning bushes are not all that common, so you have to be on the lookout for them, alert to the possibility, conscious of the Sacred as you walk the path. Today, try not to be a point A to point B person, destination driven. Instead, watch for the burning bushes, stand still in the Presence, and listen to your heart. You and I live in the great ocean of spiritual reality. Float. Float as if you are held up by strong, caring arms. As a matter of fact… Press on!

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.