Life

One of most valuable things about being part of a faith community is also one of the most painful. This year three friends in my church died. Gabe was hovering around 80 he died quickly from pancreatic cancer. Al was 74 when his healthy life ended much too soon after a brief bout with leukemia. Mark was 62 when he died from a heart attack two days after retiring.

We watched with amazement as Gabe died very graciously. He was in church the Sunday before he died. I didn’t know how to talk to him. I couldn’t bring myself to ask with my usual cheerfulness, “How are you doing?” It was painful to watch him. He made me look. Look at death.

It doesn’t seem fair that Al died so young. He did everything healthy—physically, mentally, spiritually, environmentally. He should have lived to 120. But he went so fast. We exchanged our last email the day before he was too tired to even read emails. Two days later he was dead. He had been a mentor of mine. Al was everyone’s mentor.

Mark was in our Thursday night faith group. He shared with us his decision to retire to preserve his health. We were happy with him talking about his last day of work. We were shocked the next day when he died.

Then there is Hershel and Evelyn. Hershel is 99 and Evelyn is 94. Recently my friend Cindy posted photos on Facebook learning to bake pies with Evelyn. I greet them every Sunday at the front door as Evelyn informs me she came over on Saturday and pulled weeds that had been ignored. She points out the step that needs repaired.

Gabe, Al, Mark, Hershel, and Evelyn all make me think about life—and death. They preach to me in ways our pastor can only dream of preaching to make life matter. I mourn them—Hershel and Evelyn I rejoice with—but I value the lessons they teach me about making life matter and what eternal life is really about.

Finding purpose in work

A few years ago our then-associate pastor was prone to post on Facebook about how rewarding her work was… and how much she enjoyed it… and how rewarding it was. I remember vividly reading her posts with envy: all of us can’t work for the church preaching sermons, having conversations with people about their faith, planning weddings, etc. 

So I did what I try to do, which I’m sometimes more successful than at other times: I prayed about it. 

If memory serves me correctly, I prayed a number of times. I was working in a job that didn’t tell me how rewarding it was. We knew how fortunate we were to work in a department that allowed us considerable schedule flexibility but that was it. 

I don’t always expect answers to my prayers. I pray about getting old but I don’t expect to get any younger. But I started seeing my work differently. I was working as a Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement analyst but I started seeing that I was doing more than watching and manipulating numbers and codes. I was improving my hospital’s reimbursement. I was really improving my hospital’s finances so my hospital could extend healthcare in our region. I was helping spread healthcare into further—needed—corners of our region. 

I started loving my job. How could I not?! Sometimes work was crazy whenever my hospital opened a new clinic, extended hours, or offered a service they hadn’t offered before, I knew I had helped expand healthcare in my region.

I actually had mixed feelings when I left that department a year ago… but I had this sense of the Spirit telling learning that valuable lesson about work prepared me for job I have now, working as an enrollment counselor. 

Work can get old. We can lose sight of why it matters what we do. We wonder if others see it—or appreciate it. We’re likely to stay there if we don’t pray about it. And listen. The circumstances don’t need to change as much as I need to change.

... and I didn't know it

Last Friday I sat down in our hotel room and started writing on a poem while my partner napped. It’s my first poem, if you don’t count the haiku I have been writing for the last couple years or so. The whole poetry thing has been growing in me for quite some time. It has seemed strange to me that poetry would start calling to me as it is something I have always struggled to get. In my college literature class I breezed through fiction and drama but I really had to work at poetry and I still didn’t think I got it.

But it’s been calling to me, to which my bookshelves can testify. Mostly, I’ve dabbled in reading it or about it but I hadn’t attempted to write anything.

Until Friday. So I wrote without much attention to where it was going. I wrote until what was in me to write seemed written and I stopped and moved on to other things.

Saturday we spent the day with the German student we had hosted a couple years back. We went to the Cleveland Museum of Art (consider this a recommendation). Later we drove him and another on his delegation to the airport. Sunday morning we headed home.

Sunday evening, after I had unpacked and started some laundry I looked at the poem again.

O.M.G. The poem had a theme that I hadn’t intended and hadn’t seen before. I didn’t so much write the poem as it wrote itself to me. The experience has been deeply spiritual. I know on some level that poetry is/should be spiritual but it really wasn’t my intent when I started writing.

Like Jacob, God was in this place and I didn’t know it. I’m left with this even stronger sense that the Presence is always with us… if we can find a way to step aside and let it show itself to us. I don’t feel I’m especially good at recognizing God in the moment so I feel very much like Jacob when I look back on my day—or a poem I have written—and surprised to see that God was there and I didn’t know it.

A new drive to work

The new job I started last year changed the route I drive to work, with the view of the downtown courthouse dome looming above the trees. Actually, it isn’t the new route at all—I still drive down Walnut before the same left turn on Grimes. Rather, what has changed is haiku.

I’ve been dabbling in haiku for a couple years but the pace has picked up. I see them rolling across the lawn… like dandelion puffs. Well, not our lawn because my partner chemically eliminates them, but other lawns. Maybe I should say, like a leaf rolling across the lawn. Either way, as I have first dabbled, then studied, and taken on a haiku mind, haiku have started happening to me. I don’t so much write them as see them already there, offering themselves to me.

Like the drive to work with the courthouse dome downtown. The haiku call out to me:

two mornings this week

sun flashing off the courthouse

before I turn west

morning’s golden glow

on the courthouse dome downtown

on my drive to work

there above the trees

the browned courthouse dome is perched

the end of summer

But, like I said, it isn’t the drive that has changed at all—but me. There is grace that begs to be noticed on the drive to work. Or in the patient rooms of the hospital where I work. Or the walk to my car after work.

A Crazy Thing Called Prayer

I haven't written in forever. I half feel like I should say something like, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

I was thinking about prayer tonight at my evening prayer—it’s what I call prayer, anyway… for me. Prayer is something I try to start and end each day with. I know many tend to think that’s over kill but I need it. I don’t know if prayer changes things—but it certainly changes me.

For the longest time after coming out of the closet and leaving my fundamentalist Pentecostal life, I didn’t know what to do with prayer—what to make of it. Wasn’t prayer superstitious and mired in a theology that no longer worked for me? If I wasn’t praying asking for things, what was prayer anyway?

But an oblate is expected to pray and I was called to be an oblate—of that I am very sure but I can write about that more later.

Prayer for me is a time of reflection… and introspection. I read a psalm and then either scripture or some spiritual writing. In the morning I do lectio divina with the reading, asking what word or phrase called out to me; what does this word or words mean to me… for me. In the evening I do examen, asking what event from my day calls out to me, where did I see—or miss seeing—from this day?

But in between the psalm and the reading I started including my concerns, and my joys, too—a colleague’s family, my own family, the Interfaith Winter Homeless Shelter where I volunteer, Bread for the World, etc. I don’t make specific requests. I just bring these and others into my time of being intentional in relationship with the Holy. I just bring them. I’m not expecting hocus pocus.

I don’t know what happens with things we bring into prayer with us. I tend to think speaking these names can cause something cosmically to happen that I don’t understand. Here again, it causes something in me.

As I end each evening prayer, One thing I ask for, and this I seek after, that I may dwell in your Presence all the days of my life, to behold your beauty, and to inquire in You. Amen.

Control

I envy a friend of mine who always seems to be at peace. It must be genetic—and unfair: he never heard his father raise his voice. Who can do that?

Some think I pray a lot—I pray because I need it. I often turn to Welcoming Prayer. I’m really good at Steps 1 and 2. From the sound of it, the Psalmists were also very good at Steps 1 and 2: feeling the feeling, and affirming, by god, my right to feel this way!!! Usually multiple exclamation marks are appropriate here.

My peaceful friend’s father who never raised his voice? My mother was a pot-cusser, slamming cabinets, pots, etc. I think I’m a little more peaceful than my mother but sometimes I wonder.

Step 3 I struggle with—woefully: Letting go. Giving up control. Often I forget this step (conveniently?). I may indeed know better. I may indeed have the best motives. But I have to give up control… and it’s easier said than done.

I learned long ago that another friend who always sought out my advice was never actually going to follow said advice. What makes me think people who have not sought my advice are going to do any better? How long will I wander around this mountain of wanting to control?

Sometimes I just can’t make it better. I can only pray for us, loosen my clenched teeth, and let it go.

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Spiritual Community

I respectfully disagree with a favorite blogger I follow regarding his recent post. Of course, I know that church community is not for everyone… and many church communities in particular are not for everyone. As a gay man, many, MANY churches are not for me.

I’m sure many others can and have said it more eloquently than me—both for and against church. And I’m not even suggesting you must be part of a church. I grew up Pentecostal believing one did have to be part of a church to be saved. I no longer believe in either of those components, the church or being saved. There was outrage in my community a while back about signs stating one could be good without God. I wholeheartedly agree that you can be good without both God and especially church.

Still, being part of a diverse faith community offers so much. You can get by without it but life is so much fuller with it.

I speak as one who was really just planning to come, eat, and go with church. I really wanted to stay anonymous. My church currently has a number of these (who I think are missing out, even as they are part of this faith community).

As a former Pentecostal, I was interested in Bible study kind of stuff so I would come, eat, Bible study, and then go. Maybe give up just a bit of my anonymity. Then along came helping my church become officially open, welcoming and affirming of LGBT people. And a committee here and there. At some point I found myself in the deep end of the pool, so to speak.

I’ll tell you what I don’t like about church: older members I’ve come to love who decline in health. Then die—sometimes suddenly, sometimes a slow and very sad decline. I love college students and young parents with families making their way in the university. I don’t love that they leave just when I thought they would stay here forever, even as I must be happy for them getting tenured positions at other universities. I really love the retired couples who retire to our community and our faith community. But they will be the ones declining in health in a few years.

They all are teaching me something out holding and letting go. Some Sunday mornings I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. And how do I make reconcile both feelings with the Gospel?

Life in a faith community is not easy. I’ve had a falling out with my pastor. I’ve watched things fall apart. I’ve dealt with difficult people (not the pastor). In the midst of all of it, I have been challenged—and called—to live like Jesus. Hug the pastor. Put the pieces back together. Learn to deal with difficult people. Proclaim the Gospel together and be surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.



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Oh!

I’m prone to rush through my life. My life is pretty well packed. Maybe over packed? But I’m learning.

This morning reading about Jesus healing the ten lepers and only one ran back to thank him, I had a discussion about when I miss seeing the Holy in my life. As I read scripture, I try to see myself in a similar situation. Needless to say, I’ve never been healed from leprosy but I have missed seeing the Holy in my life. Lots of times. Most of my life it has been a way of life.

Like all of us, I get busy. I get distracted. I’m not paying attention. Often, in the midst of one event my mind is on the either the last or the next event instead.

So, this morning I considered where I might see the Holy in my day ahead. But it’s such a typical day… and, yet, the Holy is in the typical just as much as the spectacular.

I’m better at looking back to see God—like Moses could only see God after God had already passed by. Then, where did I see the Holy yesterday? I know, I saw the Holy in the coworker I chatted with—the one I used to run from. But awhile back I discussed her with the Holy—it involved lots of grumbling on my part. I wasn’t even asking to changer her or to feel differently and, yet, I do feel differently. I even recognized that moment with her was Holy—as it was happening!

Then I rushed off and forgot about it. That’s the wondrous beauty about stopping daily to be with the Holy, even as I feel I can’t cut back on my busy schedule. I get to savor Holy moments I may have rushed through… running back to acknowledge the Presence in my life.


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Time for Prayer

Most days I pray in the morning and evening. I love having this rhythm of prayer in my life.

Most days, like I said. Some days my schedule seems to get overtaken by life. Yesterday I jumped out of bed at 5:15am to volunteer at the homeless shelter, then rushed from there to an out-of-town work retreat. And while I know the shelter feeds my soul, we also need regular quiet time. with the Holy.

Life can get out of hand. The shelter feeds my spirit better if I can take time to reflect on it and the many others ways the Holy is at work in my life.

The Benedictines call morning and evening prayer the hinge hours, the beginning and ending of the day. In morning prayer I can present my day ahead to the Holy, then in evening prayer I can review the day with the Holy—if I'm not constantly rushing from one day to the next, blurring it all together.

At this point I don't have any answers. Some days and from some things I can more easily just cut fifteen minutes. But if prayer ends up feeling rushed, what have I gained?

So, this conversation with the Holy is ongoing.



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Back at the Monastery

I will spend next week at Our Lady of Grace Monastery for a week of formation toward becoming a Benedictine oblate. I often refer to it as being a "groupie" of a monastery: associating with a particular monastery, oblates live out Benedictine spirituality in our lives outside the monastery.

This isn't quite what I set out to do. I'm a former Pentecostal church pianist who came out of the closet and landed in a progressive mainline congregation. When I was elected president of my church council I couldn't imagine how I could possibly contribute. What did I know about mainline Christianity? But, reader that I am, I started reading and soon discovered that what at first seemed like metaphorically stumbling across books, books were being laid across my path. I didn’t need to know any more about mainline Christianity, church growth, or church governance. I just needed embrace the Holy alive in my life.

Benedictine spirituality and oblate kept showing up in the books—and newspapers—lain across my path. Over and again.  I almost felt stalked by the Spirit.

In a sense, the ground of my life is soaked with monasticism. Every summer of my life Sister Bessie Carter, a little black preacher preached a revival at my church. Sister Carter never married and lived a life of devotion to God. She continues to touch my life in the most profound ways.

But monasticism also touched my life before I was ever born: generations of my grandfather Pa Corn's family were next door neighbors to the Kentucky Shaker community. When they speak at Shaker Village now that their singing was heard by neighbors for miles, it was my ancestors who were listening, and touched by their spirituality.

While the first thing Sister Carter, the Shakers, and Benedictine monks have in common that comes to mind for some may be celibacy—and that as a gay man I'm hardly "honoring" that—there is so much more… and I am very much honoring it. For one thing, because oblates do not profess vows, celibacy is not expected of us. But like Sister Carter, the Shakers, and Benedictine monks, we gay people live our lives in nontraditional families with a different sense of family and community.

But really, I am drawn to—stalked by—the spirituality. This past year along my oblate journey I learned to pray. After leaving Pentecostalism I didn't know where prayer fit in. Prayer was mired in a theology I no longer embraced. But over the year I discovered that prayer isn't something we do... but something that happens to us.

So next week I return to the monastery with my oblate group in anticipation of what the Holy will do in me this coming year.

Conversation

It's a bit of a continuation of my previous post on hearing voices but recently my conversation with the Holy has been about conversation with the Holy.  A favorite of mine, Psalm 27 says:

One thing I asked of the Lord,
   that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord
   all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
   and to inquire in his temple.

If I'm in conversation with God, I must be in—or near—God's temple. God's temple is wherever and however one encounters God.

Surely, two-way conversation is crucial to such conversation. It's not just about one doing all the talking, all the time. How do we both contribute to this conversation… and to this relationship? We both have questions and responses that in turn prompt more questions and responses.

This is how my morning and evening lectio divina is going. Granted, I have more time in the evening but every morning something in the reading catches my attention there, too. At first, I thought I didn't have time for it but I have found myself carrying the word or phrase with me into my day. Twice in recent days it has been about conversation.

Some days the Word embraces me, other days it smacks me around. Some days it fascinates me throughout the day and other days it I'm left scratching my head, trying to figure how can I possibly learn this big a lesson in one day. But it's not just one day and maybe the Holy is just slowing introducing it to me.

So I'm dwelling in the conversation… in the house of God.

Hearing Voices

Call has recently been on my mind. How can I know I am being called when I can’t even decide what to call that which many call God?! As for name, the Voice that spoke to Moses from the burning bush claimed the name “I Am Who I Am,” Yahweh in Hebrew and commonly translated at Jehovah. Thank you very much, I Am Who I am, could you be any more vague?! Really?!

From the get-go, the Voice is going to be vague—and not particularly particular about what name we use. God. Holy. Divine. Spirit. Christ. You can expect me to use any of the above, if not a few others.

But how can I know I am being called by the Holy? And how do I respond… without looking like a fool?

First off, what do I think the Holy is calling me to? When I am at my quietest, what do I hear the still small voice saying? What is repeating me in my life or what caught my attention? Maybe it only infrequently repeats, or repeated a few times just recently, or a word or topic floating across my life caught my notice. Not even my attention, just my notice.

Now, can I discuss this with the Holy? We don’t have to decide anything in the first conversation, but we talk about it. Maybe I have to explain to the Holy why not.

Maybe it’s just my imagination. And who gave me my imagination? So, this could go on for a very long time.

I don’t know about you but I figure I have two choices: respond or cover up the voice with other noise. More later about this.

Julian of Norwich

After many recommendations I have started reading Julian of Norwich. Julian was a 14^th century anchorite, Christian mystic, and the first woman author of a book in English. I can't decide whether she was crazy or a saint… or both. A friend asks, "Or was she sane and the rest of us are crazy?!"

 

Instead of reading Julian to gain information, I will be reading her as spiritual invitation, formation rather than information. It has taken me awhile to get here. Julian includes some awkward theology for me. But I'm not reading her to gain information about her theology, as if I am studying 14^th century theology. Instead, this will be a triangular conversation between friends: the Spirit, Julian, and me.

 

Julian's first chapter, where she briefly introduces sixteen visions shown to her, prompts me to consider, what has the Spirit shown me? I can't claim any astonishing revelations beyond the everyday things the Spirit wants to make known to us.

 

Like prayer. Prayer can be so cliché: pray about it. We are easily confused about prayer. Prayer is about much more than little puppy dog prayers asking for magic tricks from the guy in the sky. Our notion of prayer is prone to be faulty. Prayer, instead of changing things or others, to change me. Prayer to live my life as guided by the Spirit through my everyday life. Prayer as listening. Apply it liberally.

 

When we listen closely, we'll find the Spirit is constantly calling and revealing to us. Listen. And, like Lady Julian, consider what the Spirit has shown—and is showing—us.

 

Beginning a Spiritual Practice

I suggest to anyone who wants to start praying the Daily Office—or any spiritual practice—to start small. Start out with just the Psalms, or just one Psalm at a time. Allow yourself the flexibility to miss a morning or evening here and there.

Benedict says to begin every good work with prayer so I began praying Daily Office prayerfully… in the shallow end. I just wasn’t ready to commit to an all-out Daily Office every morning and evening, even while I knew in my heart it was my goal. Commit to a couple minutes. The commitment can always be added to… as the Holy invites you closer. And closer.

Work up to all the Psalms for the day. Then add the reading of the day. As I added the evening Gospel readings I found myself savoring it, while I didn’t have that kind of time for the morning Hebrew reading. Then a morning here and there I took more time with the Hebrew reading in the morning and found myself savoring the reflection into my day.

Now I excitedly rush to morning prayer to discover what the Holy has for me. This morning I reflected on being quick to listen but slow to speak. Oh, yeah. This one was written just for me.

Places of Prayer

I started out last summer with daily morning and evening prayer. I eased into it, just the Psalms at first. I didn't push myself to do it everyday. If I was pressed for time or forgot, it was okay. Over time, though, it grew into every day. One day recently I forgot until to 2pm. I won't beat myself up about it but suddenly my spirit was out of balance and I needed to right it with afternoon prayer.

Eventually I added daily reading with my prayer, still with some flexibility—though most days my spirit seems to want prayer more than flexibility. I seem to have settled into catholic.org's daily readings—I like the New Jerusalem Bible. Evenings I include lectio divina. Mornings I listen for a word or reflection to carry into my day.

Yesterday's reading from 1 Kings 8:22-23, 27-30 carried into my day: reflect on where I pray. I like praying on hilltops with a clear view—and wish I could find one nearby. Sometimes I walk in the woods above Lake Griffy until a spot calls to me to prayer. I tried praying once at Cascades Park but the traffic was too distracting. Most days, though, I pray in a corner upstairs at home, complete with Goodwill finds table and candlestick. The prayer builds up, soaking the corner in prayer. It grows.

Where do you pray?

Awkward Theology and Unrelenting Forgiveness

I’ve been away from blogging far too long. Because the details don’t really matter, I’ll just say life got busy and I lost track. I’m back blogging about food justice and life as a Benedictine oblate for a gay, former Pentecostal now Progressive Christian

Part of Benedictine oblate life is praying the Daily Office of morning and evening prayer. I pray something of a blend of United Church of Christ-Episcopalian-Catholic daily office. This prayer includes the Psalms and a daily reading. Mornings I include a reading from the Hebrew Testament and evenings a reading from the Gospels.

Some days it can be a lesson in faithfulness, like today’s Hebrew reading from 2 Samuel 24. I don’t like the theology. I just don’t think God would be that bent out of shape over a census. Maybe David was trusting too much in numbers but I have encountered a God who is much more loving and forgiving.

Absalom Leaving David

We tend to think we have two choices: embrace the bad theology or reject the Bible. I prefer to discover what the Word is saying to me today. There is far more going on in this story than the theology. Without disregarding that culture and its theology, can I hear the real story and ask myself what about when I have disappointed God?

Disappointing God—and God’s unrelenting forgiveness—will carry into my day. As monastics say about failing, they fall and get up and they fall and get up, in community. Perhaps there are two lessons for me to learn here: when I fail, embrace forgiveness and keep going; and when others fail, give forgiveness and help them keep going.

Picasso, Passion and Travel

This painting by Picasso in the IU Art Museum is a favorite of mine. Anytime I visit I have sit in front of it and just take it in. I hear passion wailing out from it. I like—I need— passion in art. My partner—a former art teacher—disagrees but I find the art of the likes of Georgia O'Keefe passionless. But, especially in this painting, Picasso's passion cries out.

This photo was taken to try out a new camera before our trip this summer to Germany. In addition to visiting friends and attending the confirmation of my partner's godson, we will visit—and photograph—art museums and churches. Travel for us usually consists of lots of churches, galleries and just strolling around until it's time for a meal, coffee or dessert. And if we happen upon an organ recital as we enter a church, like once at the cathedral at Regensburg, all the better.

I like beautiful churches. I guess I even like some that aren't considered so beautiful. A few years ago while visiting my friend, Marlene in New Mexico, I was enchanted by the simplicity of the small adobe churches across the desert.

It is the passion. Granted, the small adobe churches have a passion that is expressed differently but I feel passion in places of worship. I like just taking it in.