souljournal

All my life I’ve had a running dialogue with my “inner voice”.  It’s not just the “voice of conscience,” although I’d probably be a better person if that’s what it was more often.  And it’s also not simply “the voice of reason,” although time and again I’ve succumbed to that voice as well, though again not as frequently as would have been most beneficial. And it’s much too simplistic to think of it as “the voice of God” — I’ve never had any experience of “hearing voices” like that at all.  My “inner voice” is more like another, “sixth” sense — if the spooky-movie-genre hadn’t co-opted that already for discourse with spirits or dead people (I did have one dream like that when I was younger, but it was a one-time thing).

When I write, for example, there’s a cacophony of dissonant “things” trying to be said, the more the merrier during the early phases of the creative process for me.  Then I start sorting them out, connecting some dots, discarding other thoughts, filing some items away for another day.  And way down the road I find I’m ready to take up a pencil, pen or computer keyboard, and I write “it” all out the best I can at the moment.  Then often I throw “it” away and find I’m finally prepared to say what I need to say, even if it’s no longer what I wanted to say, or planned to say at the outset — in fact, most often, it’s not.  I write this “final” draft whole cloth — 300 words, 1,000 words, sometimes more; and even this will need tinkering, adjusting, sanding down some sharp edges, while honing others like a straight razor.

The point is that I know that my writing is “done” for the moment, at least, when the words “out there” on the page are in consonance with the “inner voice” that helped compose them, surprised though I am quite frequently to discover what it is that I had to say.  Or the writing still is “just a bunch of words” and I ceremoniously “wad it up” and toss the paper into the proverbial trash can, whether it’s a yellow legal-page or my 24″ wide computer-screenful of type.

That’s the way my “inner voice” works in my spiritual life as well.  And it’s one of the reasons, I think, that I have a difficult time finding a personal blogger-voice for sharing my ‘favorite’ theological reflections with others.  Blogging by nature is too interactive for this process, too conscious of ‘the other’, too eager to please, or offend, or put someone else in their place.  There’s a time for talking and thinking and even changing one’s mind in conversation with an interested party, but I don’t “say my best stuff” when I’m too aware of ‘external voices’, who have every right to quibble with, be offended at, complain about, react against, and delete anything I say.

Blogging, as I see it, is most times just too self-consciously aware of how one’s blogger-voice is going to sound to an audience.  Too desirous of a reaction.  Too needy for affirmation.

Writing in concert with my inner voice seldom is as contentious and petty as my blogger-voice usually becomes.

• It can’t stay satisfied skating on the surfaces of things, flitting among links to other surfaces, however enticing.
• My inner voice calls me to a much more vulnerable and risky place, where I am no longer the provocateur — or the object of derision — but the one discovering only in the writing, or in the conversing with my interior voice, how little I yet understand, and how short the time is for exploration, and how much I’ve come to treasure the time I spend with my “inner voice”.

The closest I feel to God is in that compassionate and challenging interior interchange of heart-to-heart.  I don’t mind others overhearing or getting to read the transcript later.  I do know, however, that only when I turn off my stereotypical-blogger-voice, and ignore my audience for the sake of my interior interlocutor, do I have anything at all worth saying.

The words aren’t the treasure.   Still, without them, my “blogger-voice” — and its source — are muted.

I’m not even sure why I put “things” in a blog, other than to say, “these words are the tracks of God’s Spirit passing through my life for a while.  Now wait and watch and listen for your own.”  And then write for God’s sake.  Or whatever it is that you do to share the news.

I haven’t been blogging here for quite a while because I lost my voice. I ceased to like the tone of much of what I was tempted to say, and found myself even deleting some old posts because I didn’t like myself when I read them.

My season of self-examination during the Lenten 40-days before Easter have continued now up to the eve of Pentecost!

• And all I know is that if blogging and ranting are synonymous, my blogging days are done.
• I’m tired of getting caught up in the fever of “A VERY SIGNIFICANT CONVERSATION” — which will, of course, be even more important, since I weighed in with my 2-cents (what’ll we do if the entry level coin of the realm becomes the nickle? but I digress).
• I’m especially tired of the self-important delusions of grandeur that afflict so many of the religiously-oriented blogs that I’d gotten in the habit of reading.

Blogging has become more of an addiction than anything else, with the habit needing to be fed at least daily, if not hourly at times when the iron is hot. One isn’t a ‘real’ blogger without daily posts, and a high Technorati ranking. There are more rules governing the blogosphere than you can shake a mouse at. And the result is that seemingly unless you’re approaching the world with a jaundiced eye that appreciates the dichromatic poverty of red-and-blue, and have the links and trackbacks and metrics to show everyone is listening, you’re really not a part of the blogospher, which means you’re not really ‘real’ after all.

So the web is beginning to be populated with all too many who log on assuming the role of omniscient narrator about “the known world,” omnipresently retrievable on every search engine that exists, all-wise in all things, and dreaming of becoming all-powerfully able to command the heavenly hosts themselves, if we so wished them, to comment on topics that we have categorized and tagged to our own heart’s delight. We are not real bloggers until and unless we covet to speak with the very voice of God.

Having given up on that ambition, I am still examining my motivations and purposes in continuing to choose to flirt with even the sheer potential of ubiquity – of floating my perspective out onto the “world wide Web.”  What voice is it that is speaking in this journal of my soul’s journey, and why do I think I shouldn’t just pull the plug, let my Web domain name expire, and leave the blogosphere to those who are sure they belong here?

O.k., I admit it; when it comes to food, I really don’t have much self-discipline. I take that last bite of dessert. I eat the last cookie in the bag. Three scoops of ice cream can’t be that much worse than two. Just a handful of pistacios before bedtime. And so my pants seem to be shrinking. And my Lenten disciplines have been such a dismal failure that my piety feels like it’s shrunk, as well, allowing no cover this year for any spiritual self-righteousness.

So I’m not rationalizing away my own abominable self-control when I say that, theologically speaking, I’ve always had a problem with the voluntary renunciations of Lent. For suffering in itself grants us no privilege in God’s sight.

We do not please God because we suffer. We take on the suffering of voluntary renunciation, of denial of self, so that we may learn how to live in solidarity with the suffering of others.

This is why Anglicans always have taken care that the denial of the self in the renunciations of Lent is intimately linked with service to others — that what we give up is for the sake of what we take on, a Lenten discipline of service, compassion and forgiveness.

The point of our suffering is holy only when it points us towards others through concrete acts of love.

We must realize that to take on the poverty or suffering of others voluntarily is in itself an act of privilege— an act of one who can choose when to suffer, and when not. The discipline of Lent, and the voluntary suffering of deprivation that it entails — however harsh our version of it, even if we wear hair-shirts and draw blood with our self-flagellations as some medieval Christians were prone to do — is different, we must remember, from the involuntary suffering of those of God’s creatures who have no other choice.

We can choose to suffer in a holy way only if our voluntary suffering through self-denial binds us closer in love with those whom the world makes suffer against their wishes — and God’s. A ‘holy’ suffering remembers that when we live in solidarity with the poor, as the Catholic writer and social activist Dorothy Day once pointed out, “we cannot get away from our privilege background. We are not really poor. We are always foreigners to the poor.”

Dorothy Day’s warning about the false piety of voluntary poverty or suffering is a reminder that just as much as God does not desire us to suffer, even so God does not desire the suffering of others, either. Rather, God’s desire is redemption from suffering.

Lenten renunciation-of-self and service-to-others are meant to lead us further into the mystery of God’s own suffering on the cross — for it is this suffering, and none other, that is redemptive.

Only because of Christ’s suffering, does any other suffering, especially our voluntary suffering through renunciation, have any meaning at all. It is because God has chosen to suffer, that any and all other suffering can be redeemed.  It is because God has chosen to suffer with our suffering, and that of our neighbors’, that our suffering becomes incapable of defeating any of us. It is because God has chosen to die in the midst of God’s creatures’ dying, that even death itself has been overcome.

It was with this in mind that the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from prison facing his own death: “Only the suffering God can help.”

This was one of the favorite T.S. Eliot poems of my late friend Peter Bocock, with whom I learned so much about “the observance of a holy Lent.” May peace be yours, Peter.

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying
Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.
Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.
At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.
At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs’s fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.
Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Whe walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs
Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
Sovegna vos
Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing
White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.
The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word
But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken
Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew
And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice
Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.
O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn
Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.

St. Thomas’ Parish, Dupont Circle, Washington, DC

It’s the journey. Spiritual life, that is.

We live, however, in a destination culture. Just look at travel ads in newspapers and magazines; almost none of them are about ‘traveling’ – the point is what to do once you ‘get there’.

Christians are no less susceptible to this than anyone else. Christmas itself has become a destination-event. Once you get there, you’re done – trip’s over.

To begin to try to experience Christmas not as just a day but a twelve-day season requires us to shift our attention from the destination to the journey. Advent tried to slow us down a bit, emphasize the expectation.

© AP Image

The part of the Christmas story about the Three Wise Men (or, equally likelely, wise women), as told by the writer of Matthew, is a strange and disquieting interlude. It is about their long journey looking for a special child — and about the King of Judea, Herod, who himself wanted to use their curiosity to find this child so Herod could kill him, lest he grow up to threaten Herod’s power as King.

© Gisela Ueberall, “Three Wise Man II”

Herod wanted to turn the Magi into Wise Guys, as Gisela Ueberall’s painting portrays them, not a little scarily. But they decided otherwise, being warned in a dream. And having found the child Jesus — perhaps days, or even weeks or months after his birth — they journeyed back home without word to Herod, who in turn responded by killing all the male children young enough to include this messianic threat. These are the Holy Innocents commemorated in the Prayer Book calendar each year on December 28.

Throughout this season the wise have always been “on the way” to finding and being found by God among us. Time has gotten stretched out again into it’s more normal scale, rather than being compressed with everything appearing to happen simultaneously as in a medieval tapestry. The Magi in liturgical time have not yet arrived at the manger, despite all the Christmas creches that suggest otherwise. Their day is yet to come, Epiphany, celebrated on January 6th, when we recollect that this infant Jesus has unveiled for all the world the very heart of who God is and who we are, as well.

Spiritual life, as I understand it, is lived always “on the way” to understanding the wisdom of God who took flesh to dwell among us, and who in doing so, as the 16th century Anglican theologian Richard Hooker has put it, “hath deified our nature, though not by turning it into Himself, yet by making it His own inseparable habitation.”

“Wait” photo © Jan L. Richardson

I have a wait problem. Maybe some of you do too.

I hate to wait.

And if one of your favorite oxymorons is the sign that reads “emergency waiting room,” then maybe you have a wait problem too!

Waiting for the bus.
Waiting for water to boil.
Waiting for the paint to dry.
Waiting for your beloved to get home.
Waiting for the check in the mail.
Waiting for the alarm clock to go off.

When we have to wait, time gets heavy.
It’s hard to have time on our hands; so we stay busy. We don’t waste time.
But then there’s too much of it, and we find ourselves killing time, instead.
Maybe it’s that we’re afraid of running out of time.
In any case, speaking personally, after not much waiting, my patience runs out.
“Are we there yet?” the inner child in each of us sometimes screams. I can’t wait! I hate to wait!!

I’ve tried time management; now maybe I need wait management.
The problem with waiting is that when you’re waiting, as for a bus, many times you don’t know if you’re early or late.
And you don’t know what time is hiding from us round the next corner.
We don’t know if we’re optimistically waiting for the check in the mail, or pessimistically for the other shoe to drop.

I’ll do almost anything; just don’t ask me to wait!

Commuting to work early today, I was reminded how not alone I am in hating to wait.

I got off the Red Line METRO train, ten minutes ahead of schedule and facing a cold wait out in the snow for my ride to pick me up to carry me on to work. As I came up the escalator, a lone trumpeter was playing already at 6:45 a.m. the familiar Christmas carol, “The Little Drummer Boy.” “Ba Rumpa Pum Pum!!” It hit me: None of us know how to wait for Christmas.

So we drag the ecclesiastical 12 days of Christmas back into the 4 weeks after Thanksgiving, and by the time Baby Jesus is in the manger, we’re already plotting which of the toys we got for Christmas will need returning, and many of us are planning for our Super Bowl party.

We just can’t wait!!

What if time wasn’t such a burden, but more often really felt like a gift?

It’s easy to understand why some kinds of waiting are burdensome: Fear is just a kind of waiting in the expectation of an unpleasant outcome, and stage fright is simply a kind of anticipatory waiting for the curtain to rise on the unexpected.

It’s so easy to forget that hope, too, is an essential form of waiting.
What if we could go home after work saying, “WOW! Tonight I’ve got time on my hands!!”
What if tomorrow morning I could stand in the 29 degrees forecasted and say, “WOW! I get to wait for the bus!”

What if we could redeem time, turning our anxiety, fear, and boredom into sheer anticipation?
“Wait, wait, don’t tell me!” – a child may say, exhibiting pleasure at the anticipation of figuring out a riddle. So how come by the time we are adults has time become thoroughly infected with irritation at having to wait, or, even worse, at dreading what we think we know is coming?

Why is so much of our waiting frosted with disappointment, which is, after all, just waiting that we decide wasn’t worth it?

The Buddha, it is said, achieved Enlightenment simply by waiting beneath a Bodhi tree – waiting and waiting as long as it took. The sole difference between the Buddha and every other person is that, while he sat waiting, the Buddha remained fully awake. He taught that Enlightenment isn’t primarily about wisdom or fortune; it’s about staying awake to experience living whole-cloth while we wait. It’s about remaining vigilent. Even when we’re tired. Even when we get impatient. Even when we’re afraid.

Jesus the grown man taught his followers in the lesson we use during Advent that says: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. … Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. … Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

This is the same Jesus whose birth we await during Advent — the child who is born in the dead of night while most of the world was not awake but sleeping — except for his parents, a few shepherds, and the Three Wise Ones from the East who stay awake, traveling and following a star — who stay awake and find Jesus “at an unexpected hour” and in what others saw as “an inappropriate place.” “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” And remember, as the angel tells the shepherds in Luke’s telling of the nativity, “Fear not! For this night is born to you a saviour!” And this is GOOD!

But I get ahead of myself; I’ve committed a boundary violation and wandered over into a Christmas pageant. I really do have a wait problem!

Tonight, in the dark of Advent, we must still wait … singing in voices of hope, the Taize hymn: “Wait for the Lord, whose day is near. Wait for the Lord, keep watch, take heart!”

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From Scott Pelley’s 60 Minutes interview of Bruce Springsteen last night about his new anti-war album, “Magic”:

“ … We’ve seen things happen over the past six years that I
don’t think anybody ever thought they’d ever see in the United States.
When people think of the American identity, they don’t think of torture. They
don’t think of illegal wiretapping. They don’t think of voter suppression. They
don’t think of no habeas corpus. No right to a lawyer … you know. Those are things
that are anti-American.” “It’s unpatriotic at any given moment to sit
back and let things pass that are damaging to some place that you love so
dearly. And that has given me so much. And that I believe in, I still feel and
see us as a beacon of hope and possibility.” “There’s a part of the singer going way
back in American history that is of course the canary in the coalmine. When it
gets dark, you’re supposed to be singing. It’s dark right now,”
Springsteen says.”

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and other news from today’s Washington Post.

“… We will need to spend $1.6 trillion over the next five years to bring our infrastructure systems — roads, bridges, aviation, energy, ports, inland waterways and other facilities — to good condition.  That’s $320 billion a year. … There must … be a significant increase in government funding for infrastructure, which means we will have to consider an increase in the federal gasoline user fee. … We are a growing country. It’s time we understood that if we want a new road, new runway or new transit system, we’ve got to buy it.  No one is giving them away.” (Thomas J. Donohue, president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce)

“I really appreciate the Lancaster Chamber of commerce for giving me an opportunity to explain why I have made some of the decision I have made.  My job is a decision-making job.  And as a result, I make a lot of decisions.  And it’s important for me to have an opportunity to speak to you and others who would be listening about the basis on which I have made decisions ….” (“The Decider” himself)

“Pamela Anderson tied the know with boyfriend Rick Salomon Saturday in Las Vega.  This is the third marriage for teh actress and for Salomon, best-known for his sex tape with Paris Hilton.  The couple found romance, Anderson told Ellen DeGeneres, when “I paid off a poker debt with sexual favors, and I fell in love.”

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