Urban Skye Soul

Beannacht

2010-03-11T09:30:00.000-08:00

A Blessing
by John O'Donohue

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

Chaos and Harmony, Part I “Origin Stories”

2008-07-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve always had a fondness for origin stories. I remember when my big brother gave me Stan Lee’s Origins of Marvel Comics for graduation. I loved reading “Issue #1” of The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Spiderman, Thor and Dr. Strange, the first five in the legendary Marvel stable of superheroes.

But what I found I loved even more was reading of how Stan Lee, the creator of Marvel, fills in the backstory of each new creation. He was trying to carve out a living, of course, in the growing world of young adult comics. And he was competing with the more established DC brand. But his new creations weren’t just shrewd marketing: Stan was as playful as he was savvy.

What would it be like, he wondered, to have a superhero team without a secret identity? Crazier yet, What would the world do if a teenager was given super powers? He answered his own curiosity with the FF and your friendly neighborhood Spiderman (also the first superhero to be located in a real world city: Manhattan).

I found out that many of his creations grew out of his own childhood interests. The Hulk, for example, is his version of the misunderstood Frankenstein Monster. Thor brings to us his interest in the ancient world of Norse mythology and a chance for a comic book character to speak Shakespearean and still be cool. Dr. Strange emerged from an old radio program favorite called “Chandu the Magician”.

Origin stories inform us of what we long to know about any character of interest: How did they come to be who they are? Their origin – in the case of Marvel the origin of their superpowers – continues to haunt or drive them the rest of their lives. This is why we might enjoy the adventure of Spiderman’s second and third movies, but if you don’t know how his newfound power contributed to his uncle’s death you don’t know Spiderman. Not really.

So what if the character of interest is you?

We all have our own origin stories rooted in family history and circumstance. We all have those moments where our “superpowers” (gifts, passions, character) seemed to be birthed. But even those don’t fully explain us. There’s more to your story because it’s rooted in a much deeper origin than your birth.

To find that deeper place we go back to The Origin Story found in the Book of Origins, Genesis. It is there we get to read “Issue #1”. And it is there we get to see some of the playfulness as well as the savvy-ness of our Creator. He sets the stage for our becoming by telling us what happened In the beginning…

The Rhythm of God

2008-05-28T08:31:00.001-07:00

I am one of the most un-rhythmic people I know - my life is like reading a good book but you keep losing your place. I need a book mark, and a way to remember what I’ve read and where I am in life. Maybe you are like me.

Others are rhythmic to a point of tedium. T.S. Eliot writes of his regimented rather than rhythmic culture in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

Let us go then, you and I,
when the evening is spread out against the sky
like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go through… streets that follow like a tedious argument….

To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Do I dare disturb the universe?

For I have known them all already, known them all:
have know evenings, mornings, and afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

How do you measure out your life? Meetings, weekends, parties, dates, nights out, nights in, vacations, classes, holidays, sports… I’m not sure if any of these are much more nurturing for the soul’s rhythm than coffee spoons. At least, by following these lesser rhythms, we don’t have to worry about disturbing the universe.

Jesus, however, the Ultimate Disturber, seemed to judge his culture based upon their chosen rhythm. Using a dance analogy, he scolded the “keepers of societal rhythm” for their lack of imagination and unwillingness to join in the rhythm of God:

To what can I compare this generation?
They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:
We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.”
(St. Matthew 11:16-17)

Jesus’ generation did not hear God’s rhythms. Whether John the Baptist’s mournful tune and Jesus’ party mix, they simply didn’t dance. They just sat there and measured out their lives in the first century equivalent of coffee spoons. They followed a societal rhythm that was leading to them to death rather than life.

It seems that whatever dictates our rhythms has claim on our soul. If your driving rhythm is work, then work has your soul. If your driving rhythm is a relationship, then that has your soul. To live by a rhythm other than God’s is like trying to learn to dance without listening to the music, doing the polka to Earth, Wind & Fire.

To what shall I compare this generation?

Those who seek to follow the ways of God have always found and nurtured God’s rhythm in life. Embedded in our design and brought to consciousness in the generation of The Exodus, our Sacred Scriptures offer us three Divine Rhythms:

I am going to rain bread from heaven for you,
and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for the day. (Exodus 16:4)

Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord... (Exodus 20:8-10)

Three times in the year you shall hold a festival for me. (Exodus 23:14)

In these Divine Rhythms we find our soul: a daily rhythm to remind us of our dependence, a weekly rhythm to offer us rest, and a seasonal rhythm to instill in us hope. May we find ourselves as we dance mightily within our Holy Design becoming dancers and poets of the soul and not simply mindlessly keeping in step with the latest rhythm.

Soul poets embrace hope that God’s rhythm – unlike our own – is always on time, always in perfect measured beat to his purposes.
– Joy Sawyer, Dancing to the Heartbeat of Redemption

God Bless the Cougher

2008-05-13T12:37:00.000-07:00

This morning, I almost said “God bless you” to a young woman coughing. It was an involuntary impulse that was only narrowly averted by voluntary restraint. That got me thinking…

Why do we say “God bless you” to a sneeze but not a cough? A cough is routinely the vocal evidence of an illness. It could be the visible result of an invisible killer, like tuberculosis. It could reveal a person who should be home in bed but is forced to be in public (is this case, serving me coffee) because they can’t afford to miss work lest the baby starve! Disease! Poverty! Outside of the benign tickle in the throat, the tell-tale cough has a sordid story, to be sure. I think we could make an easy case for blessing the cougher.

Now, a sneeze may be a symptom of something sinister as well, but it is often produced by too much pepper. It doesn’t matter, though; the blessings come freely without judgment. That is my point. Like my 6 year-old son who demands a “Bless me!” response after every sneeze, who wouldn’t want to be blessed when they coughed as well as sneezed?

Offering a blessing is a wonderful thing. Given the opportunity, I oblige my son and the stranger in the airport with equal enthusiasm. When else do you offer such positive words to people you’ve never met? That’s why I think we ought to include coughs in our blessing repertoire. Maybe we could say “peace be on you” instead, but it offers the same kind of welcome sacred response.

Why stop at coughs? What about hiccups? Burps are clearly too unsocial (at least in the West) to provide such a holy opportunity with a straight face, but hiccups have potential. We’re already armed with a host of cures to try. Why not offer a blessing instead?

We’ve all heard the etymology of the “God bless you”. Apparently superstitious theologians of the middle ages thought that the sneeze opened the soul’s door for some roaming demon to enter. This naturally warranted the blessing of God for protection. There was no dichotomy of body and spirit in those days. The sneeze threw back the curtain and reminded anyone within earshot that blessings were desperately needed and the words offered by the immediate community were the ordained vehicle. It wasn’t about good health but about the human condition and the chance to participate in another’s salvation, if you will. They were actually protecting the souls of their sneezing comrades.

We don’t buy that anymore, of course. We bless the sneezer to be polite not to fight evil. But even that is rare chance to offer something to a stranger as well as a friend; a welcome opportunity for words that mean to bless, comfort, and connect.

Who wouldn’t want more of that?

Incarnational Stream: Writing

2008-03-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

Richard Foster, founder of Renovare
On the “Incarnational Tradition” from his Streams of Living Water.

Here we come to the most fundamental arena of the Incarnational Tradition: the arena of everyday life. It is the place par excellence, in which we make visible and manifest the invisible realm of the spirit. To move into this sacramental way of living, we must take deep into our heart and mind Paul’s words, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3:17)

The most basic place of our sacramental living is in our marriages and homes and families. Here we live together in well-reasoned love for everyone around us. Here we experience “the sacrament of the present moment,” to use the phrase of Jean Pierre de Caussade. C. S. Lews wisely observe, “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life.”

Work is another everyday place – perhaps the most substantive place – for incarnational living. By “work” I am referring not merely to our job; I am referring to what we do to produce good in our world. I am referring to our vocatio, our vocation or calling. Now, I really must bear down on this point of our work as the place for living sacramentally. While some have a special calling to pastoral or priestly work, the calling for most of us is smack in the midst of the workaday world. This is where people desperately need to see the reality of God made visible and manifest.

The third place that we learn to live sacramentally is in society at large. Here we bring the reality of God to bear upon cultural, political, and institutional life. We work to life our culture, not just through the commonsense moral standards of decency and honesty, but through art an literature and drama, justice and beauty and shalom. We nurture “the good, the true, the beautiful” throughout society – through the person-centered caring of the schools we run, through the beauty of the parks we build, through the entrepreneurial empowerment we offer the poor, through the imaginative and redeeming literature we write, through the ecological sensitivity we bring to land use and development, and so much more.

The Incarnational Tradition underscores the fact that God is truly among us in the warp and woof of our very earthy existence. God is not distant, nor is he disinterested. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” writes Gerard Manley Hopkins. We, you understand, are not alone. God stoops to our needs and allows himself to be glimpsed in the material world.

Evangelical: Writings, Charles Spurgeon

2008-03-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) Baptist Preacher, England
Known as the “Prince of Preachers”, Spurgeon helped shape the culture as well as the church of 19th century England. (He also founded a theology school and an international charity that helps families and children.) The sermon excerpt below is based on the familiar evangelical text, John 3:7, where Christ tells a religous leader, You must be born again. Regardless of your own history with that language, take another listen...

Sermon title: “Every Man’s Necessity”

WHEN men are perishing all around you it would be cruel to waste time in attempting to interest their minds or to amuse their fancies. We must do something more practical and give earnest heed to their pressing necessities. Is it famine which slays them? Let us feed them. Is it cold? Let us supply them with covering. Is it disease? Let us administer medicine. When the case is urgent, we confine ourselves to necessities and attend with our whole heart to that which must have our attention. That which may can wait, but that which must demands our immediate care.
Now, the spiritual needs of men are urgent and among them the most pressing is their regeneration—they must be born again or they are lost! Therefore, at this time we will dwell on this topic and give it our whole consideration, letting other interesting matters wait till this most weighty business is happily over. This is a must and we must press it upon you at once with our whole heart! Our earnest desire is for a great ingathering of souls to the garner of salvation, but in order to this they must be born again. We have had many of you hovering round about us like birds around the fowler, but you are not, as yet, taken in the Gospel net. This state of things cannot content us—we need to see you decided for Christ and truly born again.

You have long been hearers, but, alas, you remain hearers, only, and are not “doers of the Word of God.” We do not want the fault to lie with us—if you continue unsaved it shall not be because we have not preached the Gospel and kept to preaching it and preached it as a matter of life and death! Again, then, we aim at the one point, the point of absolute necessity—“You must be born again.” We trust that if one arrow does not reach the mark, another may. At any rate, we will continue driving at the one target—the conversion of your souls. O you who as yet have not been brought to know the Lord, may the Holy Spirit guide the arrow at this hour! And now we will have a little simple talk about the great experience called regeneration, or the new birth, without which no man can see the kingdom of Heaven, much less enter it.

Evangelical: Personal Story

2008-03-11T14:30:00.000-07:00

The Evangelical Tradition is a "Word Centered" life. We come to understand ourselves as formed and sustained by God's Sacred Word, The Bible. Below, Bobbie writes of her first encounter with The Word in college. Notice her places of connection and see if the mirror your own.

By Bobbie Jo Morrell

Living across the hall from Drusha brought me into contact with many of her other friends. They were an odd bunch; smiling a lot, carrying big leather bound Bibles around, and when they met me, they really looked at me—and still smiled. They dressed like yuppies (it was 1983), and seemed to call themselves “Navigators.”

I watched them curiously, cautiously, out of the corner of my eye—trying to figure out what made them different. One day it struck me like a blow: they were all Christians! Could that have something to do with it?

Being a scientist by training, I sought out source material to research this Christian thing. It was difficult to look nonchalant ambling through the church library in search of a Bible. Surreptitiously I began to read, beginning—of course—in Genesis.

I believe some of those “navigators” were a bit alarmed at my starting there, but in the Old Testament I found an amazing adventure: The world was created in a glorious symphony of words; the earth flooded, then saved; plagues fell on Egypt; the Red Sea parted and a pillar of fire led the people through; Joshua and company crossed the Jordan dry shod, and the sun stood still for them at his prayer.

Here was a world like JRR Tolkien’s world! Good and evil—danger, courage, and victory—magic: good and bad. The Bible showed me a world like Middle Earth, with a difference: I sensed strongly that this world was real, true—and I could be a part of the story if I wanted to. A beautiful, attractive thought—hadn’t I wished for just such a thing? But I found it also rather alarming.

In the middle of my reading, Drusha (to whom I had confessed my research) suggested reading Matthew together. That way I could learn about this Jesus person, too. I agreed: and the same thing happened here: prophecies were filled, prophecies were spoken; fish and bread multiplied profusely, mysteriously; the hero walked on the boisterous sea as though it were the smoothest highway. This man, this Jesus, really seemed to know who he was and what he was meant to do. Again, a real adventure was being offered to me. Would I join in?

But there was also a difference here. This story was about a bold rescue mission deep in enemy territory. Real danger—torture and death—was necessary to forge the passage out of the prison for those trapped. And I began to see that I was one of the prisoners that Jesus had gone to such lengths to rescue. While somewhat comforting, it was really alarming.

For weeks I wandered along this razorback ridge that I’d somehow ended up on. Both sides of the ridge were dark, frightening. Down one side was the darkness I knew: drinking, despair, death. The other was even more impenetrable: the darkness of the hope of the possibility of hope.

Parts of me longed desperately to walk into that dark hope, but most of me was terrified of it. Yet I knew a time would come to choose my darkness.

Social Justice Writing

2008-03-04T09:10:00.000-08:00

Offered by Rachel and Lauri

Reading: Read through the following, a prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

This prayer emphasizes peace and reconciliation through self-sacrifice. A key word used here – instrument – can have several different meanings. In Romans 6:13, Paul uses the word instrument to refer to a weapon. Using this understanding in the context of prayer means that we are to be “weapons of peace.” This kind of instrument is active, not passive. It is on the offensive, working for peace, for justice, for shalom. It can work only in the power of the Spirit, in concert with the “whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:10-18). Paradoxically, its strength is made perfect in weakness, in surrender, and in obedience to the will of God.

St. Francis’s whole prayer is a paradox. It shows us how in God’s economy everything is upside down. Jesus set the example for us, and the Little Poor Man of Assisi followed in his footsteps. His prayer illustrates this upside-down life in the kingdom of God. In the world we strive for our rights; in the kingdom we relinquish what we believe we deserve and seek the lowly place. In the world we strive for power; in the kingdom we embrace a life of service. In the world we strive for self-fulfillment; in the kingdom we die to ourselves.

But these are not negative things. Francis himself is known for his joy and most of all as one who overflowed with love – love for God, love for people, and love for every part of God’s creation. These are the things that make for peace.

Read the prayer again. Reflect on how contrary its teaching is to the dominant mood of our day. And yet the words are so true. Think of times in your life when you found it true that giving led to receiving, that pardoning brought you freedom, that dying to self gave you new life. In the light of these great truths, dedicate yourself to live, like St. Francis, against the tide of contemporary culture.

The Prayer of the Heart:

Lord Jesus, the world is so filled with destruction. I despair at it and I condemn it. And yet I too take part in its destructive ways – belittling, defaming, slandering. Have mercy, O Lord! Forgive, O Lord! Make me an instrument of your peace. Amen.

Adapted from Songs for Renewal by Janet Janzen and Richard Foster.

Charismatic Stories: Francis, Paul & Seymour

2008-02-28T06:53:00.000-08:00

By Scotty Sawyer

If you had to name one figure from church history who most embodies the charismatic stream of faith, you might be inclined to go with the guy who:

* couldn’t stop dancing from joy, even in meetings with world leaders – and won them over;
* healed a girl of blindness and a man of a foot-long tumor;
* spoke about God so profoundly that all within earshot were enraptured with a palpable
sense of the divine;
* led a church so filled with God’s Spirit it literally glowed, causing a panic among townspeople
who thought it was on fire;
* refused his family’s inheritance in order to rely solely on God to provide every expense for
food and shelter.

Who was this charismatic figure that so embodied the Pentecostal example? You guessed it – Francis of Assisi!

That’s right – the man we think of as a twelfth-century Fogelberg singing to woodland animals was a bona fide – and bold – charismatic by any era’s standard. Francis didn’t just preach to ground squirrels, he supernaturally tamed a renowned killer wolf. He didn’t just quietly take a vow of poverty, but, Jeremiah-like, stripped naked before a bishop to demonstrate his commitment to give up every possession.

Richard Foster does us the favor of contemporizing Francis’ charismatic experiences, in his book Streams of Living Water. In doing so, he connects Francis backward in history to the unequivocally charismatic Apostle Paul, and forward to perhaps the most overlooked charismatic leader of the 20th century, William Seymour. Seymour was the catalyst of the Azusa Street Revival, a spiritual movement that began in Los Angeles in 1906 among poor and working class Christians of many races, and which ran continuously for three years. Indeed, it was the non-stop prayers of Seymour – a humble, poor, African-American pastor – over three days’ time (and years of prayer before that) which ultimately gave birth to the modern Pentecostal church, whose worldwide adherents in 2000 were estimated at 115 million and skyrocketing.

Talk about “the scandal of the gospel” – these three figures lived it. And they shared these common characteristics, among others: familiarity with poverty, accusations of lunacy, a dedication to holy living, gospel messages that were direct and (apart from Paul) unstudied. Most amazingly, the movements they led cut sharply, consistently, and genuinely across lines of race, gender and class, humbly recognizing the Holy Spirit as the sole giver of true power.
Long considered the backwoods cousin of mainstream Christianity, the charismatic reach is visible today not only in Pentecostal churches but also in pockets within virtually every mainline and evangelical denomination, including Catholicism, and theological scholarship abounds. How has something long seen as essentially irrational now moved to the center of a “reasonable faith”?

According to Richard Foster, we might well ask of ourselves: when has our rationality and reasonableness ever fully defined God? He advises, “The ecstatic gifts are given to show us that God is present where we assume he is not…. [At Azusa Street,] God freely chose the insignificant, the unimpressive, the foolish to show forth his glory…. (It) was a supernatural work, a Spirit-empowered work, a charismatic work.”

Foster posits the following four strengths of the charismatic tradition:
“It offers an ongoing correction to our impulse to domesticate God. Jesus reminds us, ‘The Spirit blows where it wills’ (John 3:8)….
“It offers a constant rebuke to our anemic practice. How easily we become satisfied with religious talk….
“It offers a continuing challenge toward spiritual growth and development. It is ‘by the Spirit that we defeat the works of the flesh’ and develop holy habits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control….
“It offers a life of gifting and empowering for witness and service. Supernatural gifts are all part of our walk in the Spirit, offering (1) a witness to nonbelievers and (2) an affirmation of hope to believers….”

Inevitably questions continue regarding the long-term value of the charismatic tradition: What about the value of unity, and the divisive nature of charismatic groups, leading to church splits? (Invariably, in the early days of the Pentecostal movement, it was the established church that gave charismatics the boot.) What good are the demonstrative gifts? Doesn’t Paul say we should “covet the better gifts”? (Seymour and other humble leaders at Azusa coveted the charismatic gifts, for power to witness, evangelize and lead holy lives.)

Ultimately, Foster offers a suggestion for all who would reflect on the “Spirit-empowered life” of the charismatic stream:
“Regularly test your leadings and experiences in the Spirit with those you trust. Allow their spiritual discernment to encourage, correct, and refine you. And you them. In this way we will fulfill the words of the great Apostle of the Spirit: ‘Since you are eager for spiritual gifts, strive to excel in them for building up the church’ (1 Corinthians 14:12).”

Sources:
Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water.
Richard M. Riss, A Survey of 20th Century Revival Movements in North America.
Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity.
Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language.

Charismatic Writings

2008-02-26T17:52:00.001-08:00

Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751)
French Jesuit scholar and preacher
Excerpt from "The Sacrament of the Present Moment"

God’s order, his pleasure, his will, his action and grace; all these are one and the same. The purpose on earth of this divine power is perfection. It is formed, grows, and is accomplished secretly in souls without their knowledge. Theology is full of theories and arguments expounding the miracles it works in each soul. We may be able to understand all these speculations, cogently discuss, write, teach, and instruct souls through them. But with only this in mind in relation to those in whom that divine purpose exists, I suggest we are like sick doctors trying to cure patients in perfect health.

God’s order and his divine will, humbly obeyed by the faithful, accomplishes this divine purpose in them without their knowledge in the same way as medicine obediently swallowed cures invalids who neither know nor care how. Just as it is fire and not the philosophy of science of that element and its effects that heats, so it is God’s order and his will which sanctify and not curious speculations about its origin or purpose.

To quench thirst it is necessary to drink. Reading books about it only makes it worse. Thus, when we long for sanctity, speculation only drives it further from our grasp. We must humbly accept all that God’s order requires for us each moment is what is most holy, best, and most divine for us.

All we need to know is how to recognize his will in the present moment. Grace is the will of God and his order acting in the center of our hearts when we read or are occupied in other ways; theories and studies, without regard for the refreshing virtue of God’s order, are merely dead letters, emptying the heart by filling the mind. This divine will flowing through the soul of a simple uneducated girl, through her suffering or some exceptionally noble act in adversity, carries out in her heart God’s mysterious purpose without thought entering her head. Whereas the sophisticated man, who studies spiritual books out of mere curiosity, whose reading is not inspired by God, takes into his mind only dead letter and grows even more arid and obtuse.

God’s order and his divine will is the life of all souls who either seek or obey it. In whatever way this divine will may benefit the mind, it nourishes the soul. These blessed results are not produced by any particular circumstance but by what God ordains for the present moment.

Holiness Practice

2008-02-19T09:43:00.000-08:00

The Holiness Stream was championed by John Wesley. To combat laxity in the culture (church and otherwise) Wesley formed small accountable groups - "holy clubs"- that centered on asking and answering questions. They may seem somewhat victorian to us but the heart to help one another live a life of holiness has always been embedded in communities of faith.

John Wesley (1703-1791)
Founder of Methodism
“Holy Club” Questions

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really
am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?
2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?
3. Do I confidentially pass on to another what was told to me in confidence?
4. Can I be trusted?
5. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits?
6. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?
7. Did the Bible live in me today?
8. Do I give it time to speak to me everyday?
9. Am I enjoying prayer?
10. When did I last speak to someone else about my faith?
11. Do I pray about the money I spend?
12. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
13. Do I disobey God in anything?
14. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?
15. Am I defeated in any part of my life?
16. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?
17. How do I spend my spare time?
18. Am I proud?
19. Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the
publican?
20. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment toward or
disregard? If so, what am I doing about it?
21. Do I grumble or complain constantly?
22. Is Christ real to me?

Holiness Story: Augustine

2008-02-19T09:42:00.000-08:00

By Doak Felix

Reflections on Holiness,
Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
Church Father

Holiness to us means sacred or virtuous. Yet the word “holy” means set apart, other, different. The holy objects of Judaism and Christianity are those things that are set apart, i.e. sanctified, consecrated to bless the parishioners. Physical objects reflect the reality of a holy God. God is not mundane nor normal. He is set apart. He is other than we are. He is holy. All other attributes stem from His holiness.

Augustine was born in the town of Hippo (present day Algeria). He was reared in the Christian faith of his mother, but as a teenager he began to rebel. He studied law, logic, and rhetoric in Carthage. Augustine became such a skilled speaker that by the age of twenty-one he moved to Rome and founded his own school of rhetoric. At this time he renounced his Christian upbringing and launched himself into the study of philosophy. By thirty, Augustine had risen to be the most well known orator in the Roman Empire, yet he found his life was full of stress.

His mother, Monica, had never ceased to pray for her son nor neglect counseling him in Christian teachings. In 386, Augustine put away his concubines (and his fiancee), his partying and converted to Christianity. Five years later he became a priest (against his will) in his home town. He founded a monastery in Hippo and preached from there for more than thirty years. Outside of the Bible, Augustine's writings have been more influential on Christian doctrine, theology, and practice than anyone else's.

Augustine was a rebellious teenager, a student, a libertine, an academic, a preacher, an author, and a son. He dealt with the same issues that we deal with today... the accumulation of wealth, diet, social injustice, personal betrayals, sex, drugs, war, civil strife, political corruption, family illnesses, emotional stress, job fulfillment, and spiritual indecision.

In his magnum opus, Confessions, Augustine detailed his inner turmoil over his struggle with temptations. He knew the heart of Paul's Epistle to the Romans (ch. 6-8) by heart because he lived it. He dealt with the problem of a person, saved by faith in Christ Jesus, who has trouble accomplishing tasks that are spiritually beneficial. He knew the awful feeling of succumbing to temptation. He knew the guilt. He also knew the blessings of temptation... namely patience, humility, and sympathy.

The struggle with temptation can only be resolved for Augustine or for us by Jesus. A holiness in life (not moral perfection) was achieved by Augustine by letting Christ deal with his temptations, believing that by following Christ, He can set us apart and make us holy.

Holiness: Writings

2008-02-19T09:38:00.000-08:00

These quotes were gathered by Tracey

Because you cannot walk with the holy, if you’re just a half-way decent man.
Paul Simon- “Wartime Prayers”

God: I’m not like you…I am what some would say ‘holy’ and wholly other than you. The problem is that most folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn’t much and then call that God. And while it may seem like a noble effort, the truth falls pitifully short of who I really am. I’m not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that.
William Young- The Shack

God appeals to us through other good people, through sermons, or through the reading of good books. Sometimes he calls through our sicknesses, and our trials as he bids us to pray. However feeble such prayers may be, God values them highly. God looks into our souls and perceives our desires. If our desires are good, we cannot fail.

That is why it is very important for us to associate with others who are walking in the right way-not only those who are where we are in the journey, but those who have gone farther. Those who have drawn closer to God have the ability to bring us closer to him, for in a sense they take us with them.

Let us therefore place our trust in God and not in ourselves, relying heavily on his mercy and not fighting the battle alone… You will not be able to enter all the dwelling places through your own efforts, even though these efforts may seem great, unless the Lord of the castle himself brings you there. Hence I advise you to use no force if you meet with any resistance.
Teresa of Avila-Interior Castle

Contemplative Practice: Lectio Divina

2008-02-17T07:14:00.000-08:00

Bobbie Jo lead us through the ancient practice of lectio divina or "divine reading". Below is the format we followed as we contemplated a passage from St. Mark: "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. " (Mark 1:35)

Soul’s Compass: Listening for God through Sacred Reading
Lectio Divina Shared in Community

LISTENING FOR THE GENTLE TOUCH OF CHRIST THE WORD
The First Reading
Listen for a word or passage that touches your heart, something particular that draws you. Gently recite and ponder that word or phrase during the silence which follows.

After the silence we will share briefly which word or phrase has touched our hearts.
Note: Anyone may “pass” at any time during sharing.

HOW CHRIST THE WORD SPEAKS TO ME
The Second Reading
Allow the text to interact with your life today. Visualize. In other words, how is Christ the Word touching your own life? How are you seeing or hearing Christ reach out to you through the text?

Then, after the silence, each member of the group shares briefly what he or she has “heard” or “seen.”

WHAT CHRIST THE WORD INVITES ME TO DO
The Third and final reading
Experience Christ “calling you forth” into doing or being. What is Christ in the text calling you to do or to become today or this week?

After the silence, we will share the results of reflection.

Bobbie leads "Soul's Compass" a monthly gathering to practice lectio divina. She borrowed the format above from a Benedictine Monastery's website at http://www.valyermo.com/ld-art.html

Contemplative Writings

2008-02-11T12:29:00.000-08:00

Found by Steve and Linda Dieter

Contemplative Prayer is not so much a way to find God, as a way of resting in him...
Thomas Merton

In meditation we should not look for a method or a system, but cultivate an attitude, an outlook: faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust, joy. All these finally permeate our being with love in so far as our living faith tells us we are in the presence of God, that we live in Christ, in that the Spirit of God we see God our Father without seeing. We know him in unknowing. Faith is the bond that unites us to him in the Spirit who gives us light and love. Some people may doubtless have a spontaneous gift for meditative prayer. This is unusual today. Most people have to learn to meditate. There are ways of meditation. But we should never expect of find magical methods, systems which will make all difficulties and obstacles dissolve into thin air.
Thomas Merton

To bring some solitude into our lives is one of the most necessary but also most difficult disciplines. Even though we may have a deep desire for real solitude, we also experience a certain apprehension as we approach that solitary place and time. As soon as we are alone, without people to talk with, books to read, TV to watch, or phone calls to make, an inner chaos opens up in us. This chaos can be so disturbing and so confusing that we can hardly wait to get busy again. Entering a private room and shutting the door, therefore, does not mean that we immediately shut out all our inner doubts, anxieties, fears, bad memories, unresolved conflicts, angry feelings, and impulsive desires. On the contrary, when we have removed our outer distractions, we often find that our inner distractions manifest themselves to us in full force.
We often use these outer distractions to shield ourselves from the interior noises. It is thus not surprising that we have a difficult time being alone. The confrontation with our inner conflicts can be too painful for us to endure. This makes the discipline of solitude all the more important. Solitude is not a spontaneous response to an occupied and preoccupied life. There are too many reasons not to be alone. Therefore we must begin by carefully planning some solitude.
Henri Nouwen

No one can believe how powerful prayer is and what it can effect, except those who learned it by experience. It is important when we have a need to go to god in prayer. I know, whenever I have prayed earnestly, that I have been heard and have obtained more than I prayed for. God sometimes delays, but He always comes. It is amazing that a poor human creature is able to speak with God’s high Majesty in heaven and not be afraid. When we pray, the heart and the conscience must not pull away from God because of our sins and our unworthiness, or stand in doubt, or be scared away. When we pray we must hold fast and believe that God has heard our prayer. It was for this reason that the ancients defined prayer as an Asensus mentis ad Deum, “a climbing up of the heart unto God”
Martin Luther

Contemplative Story: Julian of Norwich

2008-02-11T12:26:00.000-08:00

By Shannon Hennebry

Julian of Norwich (1314-1413)
Benedictine Nun
Biography with excerpt from Revelations of Divine Love

The contemplative life arose out of the desire to return the church to its first-love: God. Contemplatives feel the need to be different and that the church should not be secularized. God’s love for humanity and our subsequent love for others is a major contemplative theme. There have been contemplatives from the time of Christ to our present age.

One such contemplative is Julian of Norwich. Little is known about her early life. Scholars don’t even know if “Julian” was her given name or simply the name she adopted for the church where she was an abbess. She was born around 1342, during the time of the Black Death. She survived the potential horrors she was born into, but became deathly ill when she was thirty. A priest came to give Last Rites and she was miraculously healed. In the hours after her healing she received sixteen visions regarding God’s love for humanity as shown through the Passion of Christ.

Julian went on to write two accounts of her visions, which became known as The Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love (believed to be the first book in English written by a woman). The first, shorter account, she wrote after becoming an abbess at St. Julian’s Church in Norwich. She wrote a fuller account after twenty years of silent prayer and mediation on her visions. Through these visions Julian sees divine love as creating, sustaining and redeeming all thing and that by this divine love “all manner of things shall be well”.

Julian’s small room, or cell, in Norwich reflected the three-fold life of an abbess. One window looked out to the altar, a second window allowed her to speak with others who had given their lives to serve God and a third looked out to the public road. Julian was known as a counselor who combined spiritual insight with common sense.

For Julian, her prayers and meditations on her visions filled her life. She came to believe that faith was believing even when God opts to hide such dynamic visions. She went into complete seclusion in her early 60s and died around 1413. She is not officially beatified by the Catholic Church, but is considered “blessed” due to popular devotion.

For we are so preciously loved by God that we cannot even comprehend it. No created being can ever know how much and how sweetly and tenderly God loves them. It is only with the help of his grace that we are able to persevere n spiritual contemplation with endless wonder at his high, surpassing, immeasurable love which our Lord in is goodness has for us.

Contemplative Practice

2008-02-11T08:50:00.000-08:00

By Kristen Adams

The Glory of God is man fully alive. - St. Irenaeus

This morning was the perfect setting for one of my favorite contemplative practices; running after a snowstorm in the beauty and brightness of a new morning. (I'm so lucky I
don't work until later and I didn't have to practice the not so fun "contemplative communting").

The crispness and the bright blue sky beckoned to me today, and I forwent my previous plans to head to a yoga class. The cold seeped in quickly, and then just as quickly I forgot my discomfort as I started taking in the frozen air and the beauty of the frozen crystals floating around me, making me feel like I was being given diamonds for breakfast. I warmed up, and the cold was momentarily forgotten until I rounded a new corner, and was in the shade for a time. So, running in and out of the sun was distracting, but so invigorating, I had to laugh. And, cry a bit. The cold brings tears to my eyes, and I love that I have gloves with "sniff guards" on them.

I wanted to challenge everyone to try a contemplative walk, hike or run in the first week of Lent. Or even make a commitment to do one each week for the seven weeks of Lent. It has only come about for me in the last 3 years, but I specifically run a "contemplative trail run" every Sunday morning on one of the Front Range trails of Jefferson County. I cannot tell you how meaningful and healing this one two-hour time is for me each week. I will look forward to all of your own expressions of this kind of tuning in to God's voice.

Here are a few tips:
You can do this anywhere: around your neighborhood, around the closest park, or on a trail. If you would like to try an open space trail, they are easily accessed from Denver, they have good maps, good trail markers, and good facilities. Go to
http://co.jefferson.co.us/openspace. My favorite: Apex or Deer Creek Canyon.

If you have them, wear or bring your yaktracks. This will prevent any slipping on ice this time of year. If you don't have them and want them, go to REI or Runners Roost, and pick up a pair for a cool $20. They have become my #1 favorite winter accesory.

Dress in Layers and start out "cold", wear things you can unzip and tie around your waist. You will get warm. Wear a hat and gloves. These are easy things for you to remove as you warm up. Bring a small water bottle, or wear one around your waist so your hands are free to swing.

Try not to use an ipod or any kind or music. Listen to your breath. Concentrate on breathing deeply, all the way down to the triangle your pelvis bone makes with your hips, and then expelling for over 4 seconds. If you get distracted by other thoughts, try to go back to concentrate on breathing, which focuses you on the immediate present. Listen to your heart. Allow yourself to feel how your body feels, especially the pain or the discomfort the cold may be causing.

After you return from your walk/jog/run, sit down and write what was brought to your heart, if there was something specific. Or, if there was nothing, don't worry. There are many times there is nothing specific that I was in touch with. Just the vigorous exercise was enough to bring some peace to my soul in this busy world I live in.

Here is an excerpt of what was going on with me this past Sunday;

I started noticing the small things; how the ice and snow made these beautiful patterns and hung over the small trickle of the stream. And, just the sound of the stream was beautiful. I am often brought to tears on my trail runs. Probably for the pure fact that I do not allow myself moments of complete adoration of the beauty around me, and it overwhelms me. There is a heard of deer (mostly female with babies) I have often seen, but have not seen them this winter for a while. But, I pay close attention to the sides of the hills and notice their tracks everywhere.

It is slowly starting to emerge as I allow God to show me that all of the gifts he gave me are actually not bad; they are amazing; and they are worthwhile. It has taken so long for
me to realize this. There have been people in my past that I have allowed to tell me that my gifts are unimportant, or just hobbies. And, probably over the last 5 years, I have realized there is a hunger and a huge need for those of us who can understand and communicate through nature and other's cultural differences the nourishment for the soul. I am excited for what is emerging through my gifts in my life. God is so magical.

~Kristen

The Balanced Life

2008-02-11T08:47:00.000-08:00

This Lent Urban Skye and friends will be seeking to practice “The Balanced Life”.

It is an ironic title for me. For several years I have reacted against “balance” as the epitome of human living as is so often suggested these days. If “balance” is akin to having “one’s ducks in a row”, then not only am I doomed for failure I am seeking a lesser good than the command to love one another. In other words, I’ve not associated “balance” with “love” (which shows my stubbornness more than anything else).

But the pursuit of The Balanced Life is not the precise ordering of our days, hours and minutes but the appreciation, the celebration and, yes, the conviction of God’s revealed ways throughout the centuries. We lose our balance by emphasizing one way to live with God at the exclusion of the others.

Some ten years ago, I found myself on a steering committee, something I rarely seek. This one, however, was a godsend. I helped organize (also something I rarely seek) a conference by Renovare, an organization dedicated to bring balance to the Church. At the conference different “streams” of God’s ways where emphasized. These streams, or traditions, are different dimensions of faith and practice used by followers of Christ over the course of history. Renovare identified six streams that will serve as our guide for the six weeks of Lent.

Contemplative Stream: The Prayer-filled Life focuses upon intimacy with God and depth of spirituality. This spiritual dimension addresses the longing for a deeper, more vital Christian experience.

Holiness Stream: The Virtuous Life focuses upon personal moral transformation and the power to develop "holy habits." This spiritual dimension addresses the erosion of moral fiber in personal and social life.

Charistmatic Stream: The Spirit-empowered Life focuses upon the charisms of the Spirit and worship. This spiritual dimension addresses the yearning for the immediacy of God's presence among his people.

Social Justice Stream: The Compassionate Life focuses upon justice and shalom in all human relationships and social structures. This spiritual dimension addresses the gospel imperative for equity and compassion among all peoples.

Evangelical Stream: The Word-centered Life focuses upon the proclamation of the evangel, the good news of the gospel. This spiritual dimension addresses the need for people to see the good news lived and hear the good news proclaimed.

Incarnational Stream: The Sacramental Life. Focuses upon making present and visible the realm of the invisible spirit. This spiritual dimension addresses the crying need to experience God as truly manifest and notoriously active in daily life.

For help in our Lenten journey, we are using three Renovare resources we highly recommend. These can be found on the Renovare website, www.renovare.com.

Streams of Living Water, Richard Foster
Devotional Classics, edited by Foster and James Bryan Smith
A Spiritual Formation Workbook, Smith and Lynda Graybeal

An Introduction to Lent

2008-02-06T07:40:00.001-08:00

A few years ago my friend Kathleen offered this concise introduction to the season of Lent:

The word “Lent” is derived from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “to lengthen” and refers to a season when the days become longer, ie, spring. Most liturgical traditions refer to this period as “forty days” (not counting Sundays) beginning with Ash Wednesday and ending the Saturday before Easter Sunday. It became a forty-day period during the seventh century to coincide with the forty days spent by Christ in the desert. Historically Lent was a time of preparation and instruction for new Christians as they prepared for their baptism and welcome into the body of Christ on Easter Sunday. Lenten spirituality is rooted in repentance and conversion, the putting off of the old life and the putting on of the new. To assist us in this pilgrimage Lent calls us to fast, pray and give alms (serve others).

With no obligation, pressure or guilt required you may choose to form a practice during the Lent season. Acknowledging most of us are Lent neophytes, let the word “practice” give you grace to experiment with a different rhythm for a few weeks. As a starting point, you may consider the three practices of fasting, prayer and serving.

FASTING is the practice of abstaining from something (often something good) to show our dependence on things to make us happy. My sister used to give up bread for Lent which is admittedly hard core. Some give up or cut down on TV by replacing it with a good book or abstain from deserts or snacks or beer. Not having the commitment of my sister, I fast from things that “soften and sweeten” (I’m writing this sipping my black coffee!) just to have something daily to practice and to get in touch with my dependence on how luxurious my life really is. It is not the big sacrifice I may do one day, but it helps me spiritually and personally and that is the point.

PRAYER, in many ways, is natural. We find ourselves praying in moments of crisis or relief, when we hear bad news or good. Perhaps during Lent we become a little more intentional and “practice” prayer. So, rather than “finding” ourselves praying, we create spaces to pray. My wife lights a candle to create space and remind her to pray for a friend in need. Intentional prayer is not so natural for me. I often need to attach prayer to something else. I carry a “prayer rock” in my pocket and when it touches my hand I pray for who comes to my mind. Some pray every time they see an ambulance or when they watch the news. The real godly might pray for those who cut them off in traffic (I’m not there yet). Perhaps this Lent we can discover our natural prayer rhythms.

ALMS GIVING is the practice of offering something good to someone who needs it. We certainly have no lack of opportunities to give of our time, talent and treasure. This may create a different kind of problem for us. Overwhelmed by our choices and shamed by our abundance we may not give much at all or give without much thought. The season of Lent might be a time to focus our serving. "Are there people in need that I sense a calling to help in a more involved way?" Or, we might simply practice the spiritual discipline of availability with our friends and neighbors, extending a conversation when they need to talk or saying yes to a dinner invitation. These are true acts of service.

Two final thoughts for Lent: the first is to fight off discouragement and see Lent as a helpful path for spiritual and personal growth,

Lent is often called a journey. That means that at the end of Lent we should expect to find
ourselves somewhere different from where we started.
(The Lent Sourcebook, Archdiocese of Chicago)

The second may help us from getting lost in the practices and miss the heart of the One for whom Lent is practiced,

May our fasting be hunger for justice;
our alms, a making of peace;
our prayer, the chant of humble and grateful hearts.
(Celtic Household Blessing)

May Jesus reveal Himself to this season.

Fat Tuesday

2008-02-04T20:12:00.000-08:00

May this prayer by food critic and theologian, Robert Farrar Capon, encourage your “Carnival” (Fat Tuesday) to be a grateful gateway to a meaningul Lent 2008.

O Lord, refresh our sensibilities. Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in, and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with, and casseroles that put starch and substance in our limp modernity. Take away our fear of fat, and make us glad of the oil which ran upon Aaron’s beard. Give us pasta with a hundred fillings, and rice in a thousand variations. Above all, give us grace to live as true folk – to fast till we come to a refreshed sense of what we have and then to dine gratefully on all that comes to hand. Drive far from us, O Most Bountiful, all creatures of air and darkness; cast out the demons that possess us; deliver us from the fear of calories and the bondage of nutrition; and set us free once more in our own land, where we shall serve thee as thou hast blessed us – with the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine.

Christmas Greetings From a Fairy to a Child

2007-12-20T07:10:00.000-08:00

This poem is from Lewis Carroll and comes to us by our Urban Skye friend and school teacher, Marilyn.

Lady, dear, if Fairies may
For a moment lay aside
Cunning tricks and elfish play,
Tis at happy Christmas-tide.

We have heard the children say--
Gentle children, whom we love--
Long ago on Christmas Day,
Came a message from above.

Still, as Christmas-tide comes round,
They remember it again--
Echo still the joyful sound
"Peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Yet the hearts must childlike be
Where such heavenly guests abide;
Unto children, in their glee,
All the year is Christmas-tide!

Thus, forgetting tricks and play
For a moment, Lady dear,
We would wish you, if we may,
Merry Christmas, glad New Year

A Genuine Choice

2007-12-20T06:41:00.000-08:00

Maggi Dawn, Beginnings and Endings (and what happens in between): Daily Bible readings from Advent to Epiphany, (Dec. 20 reading)

Between the lines of this story, though, is also woven the intriguing idea of a call being a genuine choice. God calls Mary to be the mother of God; he doesn’t insist that she will be or impose his will upon her. He waits for her acquiescence. Some have wondered before now whether God had made this call to other ‘Marys’, who had not been willing to grasp the possibility. There is almost the sense that while Mary ponders and questions and considers, heaven waits with bated breath to see whether this time the offer will be received. What kind of God is willing to allow for the unfolding of salvation to hinge on the decision of a teenage girl in a rural backwater? At the creation, God worked with nothing to create something (Genesis 1:1-2), but this new creation was worked in partnership with humans, and God’s plan unfolded only with Mary’s cooperation. The call of God is an invitation, not an imposition.

Celtic Evening Prayer for Blessing during Advent.

2007-12-13T08:54:00.000-08:00

God of the watching ones,
give us Your Benediction.

God of the waiting ones,
give us Your good word for our souls.

God of the watching ones,
the waiting ones,
the slow and suffering ones,
give us Your benediction,
Your good word for our souls,
that we might rest.

God of the watching ones,
the waiting ones,
the slow and suffering ones,

And of the angels in heaven,

And of the child in the womb,

give us Your benediction,
Your good word for our souls,
that we might rest and rise
in the kindness of Your company.

In the name of the Father,
And the Son,
And the Holy Spirit
Amen.

Angel Texts

2007-12-13T08:35:00.001-08:00

Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John.

In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.”

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

A Brief History of Angels and Demons

2007-12-13T08:31:00.000-08:00

How many angels can stand on the head of a pin? This was a serious question among Middle Age theologians (I’m talking about the medieval kind, by the way). They wondered if angels occupied any space? The question was part of a highly developed theology of the spirit world over which they poured much time and energy. Angels and demons were aplenty, in their mind if not their world, and the perched gargoyles we see in surviving churches remind us of the influence of spirit beings in more than architecture.

The Middle Ages gave way to the Reformation when a split in the Church moved many theologians toward a more carefully defined biblical theology. Conjecture and tradition took a back seat to the Bible Alone and as the Protestant Bible did not offer great detail regarding the spirit world, neither did the reformers. John Calvin in his "Institutes", for example, summed up angeology with one biblical verse, Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? (Hebrews 1:14)

The Enlightenment came on the heels of the Reformation and transcendent beings of all kinds went the way of the dodo. The spiritual world was explained rationally or dismissed altogether. One of my favorite theologians, Stanley Grenz, describes it this way, Angels became an embarrassment to Christian theologians who sought to articulate the faith in an age of science and rationalism.

This brings us to the Current Era which seems to borrow from its three predecessors. Mostly, I think, we are reacting against the anti-supernatural bias of the Enlightenment. Angels and Demons have reemerged into our national consciousness in this bizarre mix of highly sophisticated technology (thanks to the Enlightenment) combined with a deep, primordial craving for the transcendent (thanks for God).

With the musical group Train who is “Calling all angels”, we question where they are more than are they there.

Annunciation

2007-12-12T20:56:00.000-08:00

Anna Kamienska
Translated from the Polish

He stood wrapped in air
he said like an angel do not be afraid
then he announced something in a language
which I didn’t comprehend
Lord how much we don’t understand of the most important things
then I remained alone

No one can know
how lonely it is
when an angel departs
the world is then immense open and empty
and the voice cannot describe it
and no hand is friendly enough
words are all mute tied

From no on even an eternity
would be too short for expectation

The Question of Evil

2007-12-12T20:46:00.000-08:00

With its screen presence, The Lord of the Rings has captured the imagination of yet another generation (who, unfortunately, may never feel the need to read the book). One low point in the compelling drama comes at the battle of Helm’s Deep. A fortress that had never been breeched in its glorious history was overrun by dark creatures hell-bent on the destruction of all things good in Middle Earth.

The armies of men and the elves who fought beside them had retreated as far as The Deep would allow. Trapped in the last enclave, it was the King of Rohan who uttered the despair that most were feeling,

What can be done against so much evil?

That’s the question, isn’t it? And, it’s not only a fair question, it is a necessary one. No theology that refuses to tackle the question of evil is worth its salt. How does God deal with systematic, widespread evil? We look to the past and see some disturbing trends; evil often seems to have its way. We look to the far future with hope it won’t be an issue in eternity. We simply try to avoid it in the present.

Not since Reagan’s “Evil Empire” references has the concept of evil made its way into the national conversation. A kinder, gentler nation – 9/11 notwithstanding – rarely names the darkness. Instead, we allow fingers to point in all directions especially up at The One who is supposed to be sovereign. Armed with our modern “What’s God done for me lately” theology we scream heavenward believing that He will never answer.

But maybe He already has.

In the nativity we see God take on the darkness. And it was dark. Widespread, systematic evil was embodied in a king who killed on whims and ruled his empire with the sword. Women were raped without any way of recourse, the poor were jailed without a trial, no one spoke their mind in public for fear of punishment. On one unthinkable occasion, this threatened king deployed his Roman troops to kill baby boys in a small town out of fear that one might fulfill an old prophecy.

What can be done against so much evil?

Invade the darkness with a Greater Power, one that has to ability to unnerve the violent and give hope to the violated. One that is animated by a source not of this world while being intimately involved in it. One that is shrewdly innocent, so shrewd in fact that it will look like a monumental failure to most but will overcome evil in such a fashion that that evil itself can be transformed.

Unto you a Savior has been born. Advent. That is the response to evil.

Watching and Waiting

2007-12-12T20:41:00.000-08:00

I went to buy stamps in December. By any account this was a silly move, especially on a Saturday. I did have the presence of mind to go to our small post office hidden in the back an Ace Hardware. Seeing only one gal in line as I passed the corner display of yule logs, I was feeling brilliant. That was before I was told that the particular stamps I needed for a mailing were completely sold out.

So, I hurried over to the big post office in downtown Littleton. I arrived at 11:57 and joined the line. Not that I’m counting, but there were fourteen people in front of me.

How do we wait?

Some wait by staying busy. They got on their phones to attach themselves to someone not in their miserable situation. They may have been multitasking, getting some things done while “wasting time” in a line. More likely, they called a friend refusing to face 30 minutes with nothing but their own thoughts. Stay occupied and it won’t feel like waiting.

Some wait by complaining. Nothing seems to build unity out of diversity like a common foe. Thank God for the United States Postal Service. Why are there only three windows open? They sure are chatty up there! Do you see the guy with a dolly full of packages! Focus on your discontent and maybe the time will pass more quickly.

I decided to wait by watching. I watched people. I watched the guy two people up stepped out of line for ten seconds to look at some packaging options displayed on the wall. He even pointed his back foot toward the line like a ballerina as it to say “I still have a spot.” We all knew what he was doing but that didn’t stop the woman in front of me to move up forcing him to squeeze back in to his place. What a waiting game we play.

A lot of my watching, however, was not of people but of time.

12:07 I made it out of the lobby into the mail room.
12:12 I’m half way there, only seven in front of me and I get to rest on the large island counter.
12:16 I get excited to see a couple move to the window that I had counted as two singles!
12:19 I’m at the window placing my stamp order.
12:22 Victory! I walk out past the line slowly enough to count the poor mortals still waiting.
There are fourteen.

Waiting and watching.

We cannot watch unless we wait, but waiting doesn’t guarantee our watching will be any more than killing time. I can see that longs gaps without any sense of an advent, or coming of God into my life leads me to any of the above. I may stay busy, complain, watch how others respond to the silence, or get caught up in counting the time. I suppose that, like me, the Church has done all of these over the years.

But, as Thoreau once said, you can’t kill time with injuring eternity.

So, with eternity in mind I seek to be more intentional in my watching for the coming of God in and around me. If God has already revealed Himself in the lives of an old priest and his wife, a young small town girl and her fiancé, a guy and his family who had a stable, and some crusty shepherds then He is probably already doing things around my humble circumstances.

I’m watching for it.

The Slaughter of the Innocents

2007-12-05T15:40:00.000-08:00

Who Says
Julia Hartwig
Translated from the Polish

While the innocents were being massacred who says
that flowers didn’t bloom, that the air didn’t breather bewildering scents
that birds didn’t rise to the heights of their most accomplished songs
that young lovers didn’t twine in love’s embraces

But would it have been fitting if a scribe of the time had shown this
and not the monstrous uproar on a street drenched with blood
the wild screams of mothers with infants torn from their arms
the scuffling, the senseless laughter of soldiers
aroused by the touch of women’s bodies and young breast warm with milk

Flaming torches tumbled down stone steps
there seemed no hope of rescue
and violent horror soon gave way to the still more awful numbness of despair

At that moment covered by the southern night’s light shadow
a bearded man leaning on a staff and a girl with a child in her arms
were fleeing lands ruled by the cruel tyrant
carrying the world’s hope to a safer place
beneath silent stars in which these events hade been recorded centuries ago

Herod, The Great

2007-12-05T15:38:00.000-08:00

The Need for a 3rd Way
Every good story begins in innocence and then introduces the tragedy to be overcome. In the Nativity Story, the innocence is seen in an elderly priest and his wife who never had a baby and the young love of a small town couple. The tragedy was embodied in the King of the land, a man named Herod.

Herod was a threatened but powerful king, a dangerous combination. He had murdered family members as well as competitors including his favorite son just days before his own death (giving rise to Caesar Augustus’ famous quote, "I’d rather be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son.")

We’re told he was terrified at the rumor of another king being born. Intimidating the religious scholars, he found out the prophecy of where the child king was to be born and proceeded to manipulate the unsuspecting Magi to confirm it. Then, the response:

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious,
and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were
two years old and under…(Matthew 2:16)

Herod committed so many crimes against humanity that what the Church refers to as “the slaughter of the innocents” did not even warrant a footnote in the annals of Roman history. Perhaps it was because “only” a couple dozen little boys killed in the hunt for the Baby Jesus.

We remember early in our Advent journey that The Third Way is needed because Love has enemies.

The Third Way

2007-12-05T15:25:00.000-08:00

“Fight or flight” was coined by American Psychologist Walter Cannon in 1915 to describe a natural response to a percieved enemy. Originally applied only to the animal world, these two ways are also used to describe how we human animals respond to threats. Simply put, when
backed into a corner we tend toward one or the other. Understandable. But, when “fight” or “flight” become our only options for any perceived threat, these “natural” ways will harm us rather than heal us. If unrestrained…

… the First Way will respond to any threat with a fist. Return evil for evil, abuse for abuse, until the scoreboard lights up in your favor.

… the Second Way will run from the fight. Tell yourself that cooperating with evil will work out in the end and that turning a blind eye is better than getting another a black one.

The soul (as well as the body) suffers when violence or passivity reigns. A Third Way is needed. It is needed wherever the struggle is with matters of justice and mercy, for ourselves and for those we love and champion. On a grand scale, it’s been practiced within nations, but it also works itself out in the common places of life: marriage, parenting, work, neighbors, even strangers.

During this Advent let’s take a four-week walk in the Third Way. Adventus.

Ecce advenit Dominator Dominus.
Behold, the Lord, the Ruler, is come.

Welcome to Advent

2007-12-05T15:23:00.000-08:00

Advent is the season when we remember the Coming of God into the world in the most unexpected of ways. It is a holy season, marking “sacred time” – the beginning of the Church calendar – as opposed to “ordinary time.” Historically, it has always carried with it the theme
of preparation. In this sacred time we prepare ourselves to make Him room. That’s tough sledding these days.

Our typical preparation for Christmas is a bumper-to-bumper on-ramp for the Holiday Superhighway. It has a kind of violence to it, spiritually and emotionally, if not physically. Ubiquitous marketing. Mindnumbing jingles. Shameless insistence that we must consume more now than the rest of the year. And, HURRY! By all means, hurry to get it all done or you won’t be merry! (God rest ye merry gentlemen must surely refer to those recovering from the holidays.)

This Advent, join Urban Skye in our counter-cultural attempt to slow down and bring some spiritual intention to these four weeks preceding Christmas. Our blogging this season will be an invitation to enter the Story of the Nativity through the theme of The Third Way.

May you find Peace in His coming. May you find your Way.
The Urban Skye Community in DenverWelcome to Advent

4th Week of Advent, 2006

2007-01-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

It is early on Christmas Eve day. I sit with Charlie in front of the fire (a real one with logs and smoke). Like any sane kid, he’s mesmerized by the dancing light. He’s also commenting on how slow the day seems to be going. I’m waiting for the girls to stir so I can yell, “Christmas Eve Gift!” a tradition from Shari’s side of the family which results in an early present. I owed everyone last year even with the advantage of being the first one up.

Shari and I spoke last night on the way home from our last pre-Christmas gathering. We thought back through the last couple of busy weeks and asked out loud the question, “Do you feel less stressed this year?”

I suppose the “stress meter” is not the most positive way to view the success of Advent, but it is a real one for us. What we sensed was that in the midst of the crazy season we both found some places of peace this year. Peace. That is the ticket for all of us. Peace deep down, solid enough to stand on. Peace you can’t conjure but only, somehow, receive.

Certainly this kind of peace is not circumstantial. It’s not our right for surviving the holidays.

Before we had this conversation, our day was not full of peaceful things. My car overheated and died unexpectedly on Broadway. 4 hours later through the efforts of two good friends and James, my new AAA buddy, my only “snow car” settled into holiday resting place.

Hours before this, very early on the 23^rd, we get the call we’d been anticipating. Shari’s grandmother has passed away. She was 91 and ready to go be at home with God but it is sad not to see her in our world again. Tears have been part of our Advent.

Certainly peace is not like a present under the tree that always gets to be opened just because of the holiday. For it’s not the holidays, but Him that brings us peace.

In our search for true peace, let’s turn our affections this last Sunday in Advent, to the mother of our Lord, the one who birthed Peace. Her posture in the face of all the hopes - the gift of a child, the visit from an angel, a new husband, the filling of the Holy Spirit - and all the fears - searching for a place to give birth, escaping to Eygpt, hearing chilling prophecies about her baby - was to treasure and ponder. She ran from nothing. She embraced everything. She found peace.

May you receive the peace that He offers.

May Christ Himself meet you in your places of light and darkness.

Merry Christmas, Dave

3rd Week of Advent, 2006

2006-12-20T12:58:00.000-08:00

He was barely three feet tall. That may explain our affinity for him when we were children. His name was Leo Beuerman. He lived in rural Douglas County, Kansas just outside my hometown. Each day of the week he would ride his tractor into on main drag, Mass. Street, His speech was almost unintelligible and he was unable to walk. To overcome this handicap, he would use a homemade pulley system to hoist him from the tractor to a seat near a wooden box where he sold pencils and pens.

I was young but I remember him. I’m sure it was hard not to stare, at least in the beginning. He made such an obvious figure on the corner outside the bank. But eventually, Leo would become a fixture to me and my childhood as he had long been a fixture on Mass. I just found a quote from his autobiography which shows his spirit:

"One of my greatest wishes always was that I may get into some very profitable business and use my surplus money and help others that are too poor to have something to eat most of the time ... through the teaching of Christ you will see that a helping hand for one's unfortunate brothers is a Christian's highest duty."

Simeon and Anna are the guides for this, our 3^rd week of Advent. Oddballs, we’ve called them. Local legends. Leos in Jerusalem. They were both as old as dirt. One claimed the Holy Spirit has given him a special message. That must have provided much gossip for the town. The other never left the Temple. No trips to the outside for any reason. She was always there. That’s just a little strange, don’t you think?

Strangeness has never been a deal-breaker with God, especially when the strange offer blessings.

This week at Soul we think about some of our local legends as we warm up to the idea that oddballs may be outside the camp but fully engaged with the blessing of God. Blessings are not simple niceties; God’s blessings are full of truth and power as well as kindness and grace.

Making Him Room,

Advent: Enter the Shepherds

2006-12-10T08:33:00.000-08:00

Now to the Shepherds.

A story: In 1991, Shari (great with our first child) and I ventured to Romania as part of team sent to encourage a woman pastoring a new church. This was only two years after the “Velvet Revolution” in Eastern Europe. Our pastor friend had miraculously escaped the reigning terror by rafting the Danube. She made it across; her husband did not. He was caught and killed. She returned a widow to nurture the faith that had been so oppressed. As she educated us on the now visible church, we mentioned the gypsies we had seen by the roads on the way in. “Gypsies,” she spat, “are all thieves!” She went on to tell us that they try to come into church services to steal. She wouldn’t dare take the offering with them present. Not exactly the romantic figures of legend I’d imagined.

The shepherds of the Nativity were the gypsies of their day. They were all liars and thieves. They couldn’t be trusted with anything beyond sheep. The Temple, the synagogues, the townies were all suspicious of everything they said and did. As we point out in the guide, they couldn’t even testify in court. These are our spiritual guides for Week Two.

The shepherds move us to consider two themes in our own life. First, we consider simplicity. We look at the shepherd’s lifestyle and, yes, we will romanticize a bit. They were simple folks with simple needs.

Urban Skye Soul began three years ago in the same living room we meet in today. We began with Advent because I had begun to despise Christmas. Not the “reason for the season”, of course - I was a pastor after all. But, I despised the season of Christmas. I hated the rush. I hated the pressure to consume and accumulate even if we are doing so for a loved one. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. So, this week we consider a life more attune to holy simplicity.

Second, we consider the “outcast”. They represent so well our theme of “outside the camp”. We’ve been there and we know others who live there. We will turn our attention to the outcast in our midst. Like Van Gogh who found himself an outcast, our faith can be nurtured on the outside. And who knows, maybe such outcasts will be chosen once again to herald good news for the world!

I leave you with the prayer from our Guide (click here for the PDF). I’ve personalized it for our own Advent journey:

May I have the courage to befriend my longing for eternity,
May I have a sense of something absent to enlarge my life,
May I live in the neighborhood of wonder,
May I know that they I am ever embraced in the kind circle of God.

Blessings upon us as we simple shepherds find ourselves outside the camp but inside the kind circle of God.

Advent: More on the Magi

2006-12-10T08:31:00.000-08:00

I’ve opened a different Starbucks this Sunday morning, Week Two of Advent. Avoiding the guilt of opening a paper I didn’t plan to purchase, I glanced at the top half of the NY Times headlines awaiting my americano with room. It had “religion” in the title. Not surprising this season, I thought.

Paragraph one told me that inmates at a Texas prison got preferential treatment – occasional pizza and live music, nicer toilets - if they signed up for an evangelical, religious program. The writer snarled at those damn evangelicals with money who coerce others and talk about sin and God and George W. This injustice happened on his watch and with his blessing, of course. Religion and politics, page 1.

Call me crazy, but I want religion and politics to live in different rooms rather than share the same bed. I hate the type-casting, the fight-picking, the chosen misunderstanding. Religion and politics. Maybe the sweet Nativity Story would take us away from all that?

Nope.

Those lovable Magi of our Week One went straight to the heart of religious and political center by naively seeking out Herod, the self-titled King of the Jews. Paranoid Herod, in turn, sought out the Jewish priests in his pocket. Together the religious and political powers were “disturbed”. That’s how Matthew puts it. “Disturbed” that Nature herself was pointing to another King. This was a threat. “His star” was seen in the heavens by these well dressed strangers and By God, we aren’t going to give up our power without a fight!

Religion and politics and power. It always gets bloody even with a Baby Jesus on stage.

As you can see, I’m having a hard time leaving the Magi and moving on to the Shepherds who guide us in Week Two. I’ve been entranced by the Magi’s seeing following His Star. I’ve loved their innocence in wanting to worship the Baby King. I’ve wondered all week about God speaking “outside the camp” of religious centers.

We talked at our Soul gathering last week about some of our own stars. Eagles and foxes and the sun on a tearful face have been vehicles of God’s grace. These “stars” don’t end our journey toward Jesus but are necessary to further it.

Look around. Look up and down. His Stars appear on the cloudiest of nights.

1st Week of Advent, 2006

2006-12-04T14:06:00.000-08:00

It’s Sunday morning, Dec. 4 and I sit at a coffee shop thinking about practicing Advent this year. I glance around and see a few dressed for church (one parent shushing her loud kids, “You’re in your church clothes!”) and many more dressed down for their own version of Sabbath.

I feel anxious for some reason. I always hope for some infusion of unearthly peace during special seasons like Advent and want it to infuse me from Day 1. Well, it’s Day 1 and I stumble about looking for peace and trying to practice Advent.

I think, for me, I’m tired of stumbling about. I want to know that everything I do, every moment of my precious time I take to be centered on God will pay off immediately and obviously. Okay, I’m practicing Advent; I want peace now, thank you! I’m such an American.

So, I’m stumbling about as you can tell. But even as I write something begins to loosen in my soul. I think it simply feels good to begin. And, it feels good to write something down and send it off to someone else. I need some version of conversation in order for most anything to be real to me. Writing you has that quality for me. So does our Wednesday Soul gatherings. It helps center me.

I opened our Urban Skye Advent Guide and began to think about the questions we created and the directions we set. I’ve included the first week’s text as an attachment if you need it (or you can get to it in all its beauty from our web page, www.urbanskye.org. )

Our theme is “God outside the Camp” and our story begins with the Magi. We’ll talk more about them Wednesday. What captured us when creating the guide was that the Magi saw. In their passionate search of the stars, God unveiled his star and they saw it and recognized it as a revelation from God.

The question posed is, “Recall one place from your past where God made something of Himself known to you.”

That was part of my journaling this morning. I don’t have a defining “God moment” where all the stars aligned (so to speak). What I found were a few impressions, some places where I tasted transcendence. I choose to believe these tastes to be God unveiling Himself to me in some way.

I first thought about my home. I knew only one address growing up and it is still in the family. We stayed in the house my dad built just last weekend. What struck me was that I do not remember God making Himself known to me in my house! Conversations that had that sense of transcendence, for example, didn’t happen in my house. When I began reading my Bible in high school I can’t picture myself doing it in my house. (This “aha” thought was not lost on me as I left home this morning for an hour to journal and write to you!)

Here are two memories that helped me “see” God. As you can see, they are somewhat vague but it is where I went when I prayed and begin searching for responses to our question:

I was walking around the most beautiful lake with a friend. There were cliffs on one side and the lake on the other. It was fall, my favorite time of year, and we were doing what all boys do – throwing rocks. I don’t remember the conversation or the destination; I just remember never wanting it to end. It still tastes of heaven.

I remember a day in high school. It was a weekend and I spent the whole day with three other friends. It was a simple day: we drove and walked around my little town, ate a bunch of ice cream at Baskin Robbins. We also volunteered for a couple hours on a service project. Throughout, I remember talking about God off and on throughout the day. This wasn’t normal. I remember feeling like God was not just the topic but somehow a part of the conversation. I remember falling asleep feeling “holy”. That’s the best word for it.

These are vague, but I plan on continuing to think more on these this week. It does the soul good to consider places, days or conversations of transcendence that we never wanted to end. We’ll talk about what you remember on Wednesday night.

I’ve got to get home now (as I glance at the time) and I have a few more things to tell you about Soul this week but I’ll do that tomorrow.

Blessings upon you as you dare to believe God makes Himself known to all His creation.