Shining Spirit

It is very likely that Mary did not look anything like this. The same goes for Jesus who is looking at you from the lower right corner of the photograph. But does it matter how they looked? I don’t think so.
And that’s because looks do not define a person. Unfortunately, we categorize people by what they wear and how they look; we label them successes or failures by the way they dress.

Perhaps during this Advent season, you and I could work on that issue. Let’s resolve right now that first glances don’t reveal the whole person, that style of dress may tell me about home or circumstances, but style of dress does not reveal a heart. Every person is sister or brother because of the common heart beat that moves the world. Let’s get passed how we look and move to the more basic question: how much and how deeply do I love?

“…and they dressed him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger.” Swaddling cloths?

So, again, I encourage you to use these days of Advent to address the major faith issues you carry in your mind and heart. Maybe one of them is how we regard the stranger. I believe the result of your Advent efforts will be a rich and meaningful celebration of His birth. Press on in faith, hope, and trust.

Simplify. Clarify. Sanctify. I have been thinking about how I can better order my life. These three words come to mind. To simplify how I live. To clarify how I think. To sanctify how I act. These are the first steps to a life of spiritual discipline. I share them with a prayer that we each be renewed by taking them. For it is in simplicity that we discover our center, in clarity that we hear our calling, in offering every act to God that every act becomes a blessing.

The words of Steven Charleston in his book Hope Older Than Fire. Read them again and use them as the backdrop for your own self-examination.

Today is a gift. Treat it gratefully.

I have tried to read Shakespeare several times, but I get stuck in that ancient language every time. I wonder what a re-casting of his language would be like? It’s the same thing for some people with the old translations of the Bible. As beautiful as the King James language is, it’s hard for some folks to grasp meanings and teachings. We are very fortunate to have several very good translations, some done with careful scholarship and others done with the intent of helping us hear the texts in common, everyday language. In fact, some efforts are more paraphrase than translation. One of those, The Message created by Eugene Peterson, is a very readable contemporary form that is often very helpful in pointing us toward understanding. I invite you to meditate today on the beautiful Psalm 23 as given to us in The Message.

God, my shepherd!
I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word, you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.

Even when the way goes through Death Valley,
I am not afraid when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd’s crook makes me feel secure.

You serve me a six-course dinner
right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head:
my cup brims with blessing.

Your beauty and love chase after me
every day of my life.
I’m back home in the house of God
for the rest of my life.

May you find comfort and confidence
in the new words of ancient scripture.

Today, when my family gathers around the Thanksgiving table, we will talk about all the things for which we are thankful. Things and people. People like you.

I think I’ve written eleven Thanksgiving Day messages for ShiningSpirit. And whether you have been reading since 2013 or just started recently, I want you to know how much I appreciate your participation, your support, your comments, and your prayers. Creating the posts is my personal act of devotion, and none goes out without a prayer for your welfare and blessing.

The wonderful season of Advent begins in a few days, a time when you and I will prepare to celebrate the birth of our Savior. I am honored to walk that Advent pathway with you, a Way made bright by the Spirit that goes before us. May you find reason to be Thankful today and may that thankfulness give you hope for the future. God is with us. We press on. Roger

What if I told you that I was in a meeting with Billy Graham years ago. Right there with this giant of a Christian man. Billy and me. And 75,000 other people. Or, that when I was in London a few decades ago, I walked along the boulevard with the famous actor, Peter O’Toole. A memorable moment, as he passed me walking in the opposite direction, never saw me, never said “Hello.” Proximity doesn’t qualify as knowing.

In Luke’s chapter 13 we get a glimpse of what Jesus thinks about name dropping. In that feisty translation by Eugene Peterson, The Message, we hear Jesus making the point. A bystander has just asked him about who or how many will “be saved.” His reply: “Whether few or many is none of your business. Put your mind on your life with God. The way to life–to God–is vigorous and requires your total attention. A lot of you are going to assume that you’ll sit down to God’s salvation banquet just because you’ve been hanging around the neighborhood all your lives. Well, one day you’re going to be banging on the door, wanting to get in, but you’ll find the door locked and the Master saying: ‘Sorry, you’re not on my guest list.’ You’ll protest, ‘But we’ve known you all our lives!’ only to be interrupted with his abrupt, ‘Your kind of knowing can hardly be called knowing.”

At the risk of being redundantly redundant, knowing about Jesus is not the same as knowing Jesus. Does hanging around the neighborhood make me a good neighbor? Does knowing all about the child of Bethlehem qualify as knowing him. I may know the chapters and the verses, the stanzas to lots of hymns; I may even be able to tell you the names of half a dozen saints, but hear it one more time: “just because you’ve been hanging around the neighborhood all your lives…” isn’t enough. Take him at his word: “the way to life, to God, is vigorous and requires your total attention.”

So, why not resolve on this wonderful Wednesday to be present to, not in proximity to, the One who offers us bread for the day and strength for the journey? Intentional. Vigorous. Total attention. Name dropping won’t get anybody a seat at the table.

Did I mention that I had breakfast with….never mind.

“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of faith is to see what you believe.” St. Augustine
May it be so for me today, Lord.

“Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come.” Chinese proverb
May it be so for me today, Lord.

“It is the heart that experiences God, not the reason.” Blaise Pascal
May it be so for me today, Lord.

“As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude. It is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.” G. K. Chesterton
Help me, Lord, to hope beyond mere flattery or platitude. May my sense of hope this day begin and end in You. Amen

I went to a movie last night. I discovered two important things: those theater seats are so comfortable and the pre-movie ads, previews, and promotions are as loud and generally obnoxious as the ones I saw the last time I sat in a theater. My choice: suffer through the offensive thirty minutes of promotional pandemonium or time my arrival to coincide with the actual start of the movie. O, the choices that present themselves!

The movie was the powerful story of a German man who, in the early days of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, was faced with an agonizing choice. I recommend the movie Bonhoeffer to you. It is well worth seeing and discussing. The movie led me back to the 1960s and Joseph Fletcher, the founder of a movement known as Situational Ethics. This way of thinking and making choices looks at a particular action and evaluates it on the basis of the context of the moment rather than on a universal code of ethics or morality. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who became involved in opposition to Hitler’s terror and who finally moved away from the universal moral code of his religion. When Bonhoeffer became part of a small group determined to assassinate Hitler, he crossed the line into Fletcher’s world of Situational Ethics and he faced the terrible dilemma of choosing between an ancient code of moral conduct or the needs of the immediate moment.

That same choice dilemma exists today and it will always be part of our human journey. Do I follow the mandates of my faith; is that code the authority that informs my actions. Or, do I choose to act on the basis of the moment’s particular circumstances. Is the Gospel of Jesus my source of ethical and moral responses, or can I step beyond those spiritual principles and act on the basis of “the greater good” or my interpretation of the particular moment. It’s a tough place to be, but you and I are there almost daily. As a spiritual exercise, become familiar with Fletcher’s work. Google it and grasp the basics of what he taught, and then consider the spiritual demands of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This puts the phrase “love your neighbor” in a whole new light.

Tucked away on an infrequently visited bookshelf, this little red Bible is worn around the edges and the pages are beginning to yellow. It is old. Things happen as you get older. But this isn’t about my latest visit to the doctor. Or yours, either.

This is about a little book that has a big message. If the number of Bibles one has on the shelf determines sainthood, I am now St. Roger. But among the many translations is this one, the little red one that belonged to my Mom, and it still has something to say. The first time I opened the little red book I thought to myself: this little book has Mom’s heart prints all over it. That’s particularly true when I turned to the back, inside cover. In this usually blank space after the writing has stopped, I found thirteen little strips of paper glued to the blank surface. Each strip of paper had a message in a few printed words. “The time will come when civilized man will feel that the rights of every living creature on earth are as sacred as his own.” Mom loved animals. “Animals are such agreeable friends: they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.” “Ye therefore who love mercy, teach your sons to love it, too.”

Maybe you have something that reminds you of someone special, or a special moment in your personal history. I’ve said many times that we cannot live in the past. But we can certainly learn from the past, respect and honor the past, and give thanks that Love speaks to us in so many ways, through photos, letters or notes discovered, and little Red Books.

Thank you, God, for the Word contained between the covers of this book, and thank you for the heart prints that give it life even now.

I learned yesterday that Robert Willis, former Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, died October 22 of this year. I didn’t know the quiet, gentle man; never met him and he did not know me. I was, though, a member of his Garden Congregation, a creative response to the terror called Covid. When the terrible illness struck, churches, among other public gathering places, shut their doors. Crowds of potentially infected people posed great problems. So, Fr. Robert thought: If they can’t come to the church, the church will come to them electronically. So, he created morning prayer each day in the lovely Cathedral garden where his onsite congregation consisted of thousands of online viewers and local congregants: chickens, pigs, cats, rabbits, birds, ducks…any and every living thing was invited to The Garden Congregation. It was not at all unusual for Fr. Robert to speak of the Love of God will holding a cat in his lap, balancing his Bible in one hand while scratching a pig’s ear with the other hand. He was authentic. He was a kind man who cared for his “flock.”

I offer the following as a tribute to the man who pulled many, many of us through the dark days of Covid.

The Garden Congregation

They had a meeting in the garden today,
a sad meeting, a weeping meeting.
“Is it true?” a large white duck asked a piglet.
“Tell me it’s not true.”

“It is so sadly true,” piglet replied.
“But,” said duck, “who will cast grain for us
across the lawn? Who will pour milk for Leo
and Lilly and Tiger?” Piglet sprawled on the
ground: “But who will scratch behind my
ears anymore?”

A choir of circling birds looked down
on the empty lawn chair and began
singing a dirge of despair. There is
no lap I can jump into, thought the cat.
Chickens wandered aimlessly through
the trees and along the old wall.
And there on the simple little table that
held his tea set was a single pitcher,
the small one that held milk for
kitten’s paw, now turned on its side.

At the hour of his usual appearing,
black cassock dragging through the wet
grass, prayerbook cradled under his arm,
tea set rattling with each step,
at that moment the Cathedral bells
clanged into a harmony that swept
through the streets and the halls and
the homes of Canterbury, causing all the
aimless animals to look up into the sky.

“Did you see him? I saw him,” the
gray cat exclaimed. “There. Just
above the pointy steeple.” But when
they all looked, the gentle puff of
cloud had disappeared into soft
droplets of rain that fell over the
garden. Some said later that it
didn’t rain anywhere else that morning,
only on the garden and the animals
awaiting his appearing.

Only on the Garden Congregation of his
tending where his gentle voice is silent
until the roses bloom another day.

“Come to me all who labor…and I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28

“I think I shall never see
a poem lovely as a tree…”
From “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer

Redwoods, ancient guardians
Maples, flame-throwers of color
Aspens, white-coated mountain spirits
Oaks, sturdy neighbors along the country road
Pines, mass choirs chanting sacred melody

Trees talk in their own language, communicate with each other, living – breathing – speaking

Trees promote mental health…ever take a walk in the woods?
Trees clean the air…particle filters
Trees are high-rise apartments for wildlife…sparrows and eagles
Trees cool the climate…the ultimate refreshment: shade
Trees filter our water…life in a gulp

My infant child’s crib, the carvings of artistic masters,
the cane that allows me to walk
I cannot live without trees.
The world cannot survive without trees.

Then, why do we cut down 27,000 trees
globally every day to make toilet paper?
27,000 Every day

There must be a better way.

“I think that I shall never see
a poem lovely as a…” roll of toilet paper.
(Sorry JK)