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.