Walk for Peace

Buddhist Monks completed a walk of over 2000 miles from Texas to DC taking ten weeks they named this public offering of prayer a Walk for Peace.

While their faces were tranquil, often expressed joy and always patient, their commitment to peace also faced hardship all through the journey. No doubt it was difficult to endure exposure to the elements, physical struggle, danger, and perseverance. Even after one monk was hit by a truck and lost his leg these siblings of peace continued.

It has been amazing to witness their journey chronicled on social media revealing both the challenge of a long journey along with thousands and thousands of people in the US protecting and caring for them. If you watch the footage you will see young and old people, all colors, religions, and types of Americans showed up with gifts, often kneeling as the monk passed to honor and join their sacrificial prayer for peace.

Lord make us instruments of peace, is the first line of a favorite prayer attributed to St Francis of Assisi from 12^th c. As religious and spiritual Christians we are called to unite the ideal of peace with the embodiment of peace as justice and reconciliation just as these monks displayed.

Peace is a not an idea, it is not the absence of conflict. Rather peace is a right relationship with God, neighbor, self, all sentient beings and even with our enemies. Right relationship calls us to make choices that will inevitably face at the very least obstacles and perhaps hardship or violence. It means we listen deeply for what is ours to do choosing responses of peace that are grounded in reality.

 Jesus said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are children of God. It is our relationship with God that gives us a capacity to face hardships as peacemakers. Jesus was encouraging the disciples to meet their challenges with peace.

Watching the citizens of Minnesota and their sibling countryman in ICE uniforms confront each other has brought a huge variety of responses. Whether it is fear or patience, anger or kindness, violence or restraint they have pushed each other to the brink and further to make their opinion and beliefs public. We are seeing the best and the worst of human spirit on display in the streets, in the microphones, X statements, reporting, and political posturing.

The Walk for Peace is an inspiration to protect peace, honor peace, pray for peace, and ultimately to face our realities in relationship rather than isolation. Each of us are called to be instruments of God’s peace. Etty Hillesum wrote these inspired words about our duty to peace, “Ultimately, we have just one moral duty; to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.”

The Peace of the Lord be with you.

Committed Tenderness

Holy Week has come again. I sense a fresh tenderness in me this year. I am not sure how to explain it but it is like my inward being is leaning into God with more trust as I meet the deep cynicism, fear, prejudice, defensive posturing of this time and in me. I pray Lord have mercy with more feeling. I am seeking a more lively sense of companionship in church. Our baptismal chosen path feels small and powerless right now. Perhaps I have been fooling myself that it has ever been anything else.

Jesus taught the unmarketable self-emptying path holds power to transform greed, injustice, pain, grief and fear into service, hope and compassion. Some people live this way without much thought at all, others never even consider it, and if you are like me, you slowly grow into consciousness and commitment to it.

Richard Rohr offers many books and classes teaching the downward path to new life in God. His recent book, The Tears of Things is powerfully clear. He wrote,

There is an inherent sadness and tragedy in almost all situations: in relationships, our mistakes, our failures large and small, and even our victories. We must develop a very real empathy for this reality, knowing that we cannot fully fix things, entirely change them, or make them to our liking. This way of tears and the deep vulnerability that it expresses is opposed to our normal ways of seeking control through will power, commandment, force retribution and violence. Instead, we begin in a state of empathy with and for things and people and events, which just might be the opposite of judgementalism.”

To get through Holy Week this year, my heart turns to the women who responded to Jesus’ suffering with committed tenderness. Mary of Bethany poured perfume on his feet. Mary his mother who never left his side. Mary of Magdala who never gave up hope. They are the way to follow the downward path of Christ in our time.  Listen to this second quote by Richard Rohr,

“The older I get, the more it feels like I must forgive almost everything for not being perfect, or as I first wanted or needed it to be. This is true of Christianity, the US, politics in general, and most of all myself. Remember if you do not transform your pain and egoic anger, you will always transmit it in another form. This transformation is the supreme work of all true spirituality and spiritual communities. Those communities offer a place where our sadness and rage can be refined into human sympathy and active compassion.”

This week sacred pageantry will be organized by priests and parish for display all over the world on a small and large scale. People will draw close to Christ’s love manifest in suffering, under trees in Africa, in enormous cathedrals, in rural small parishes, hidden in homes, on exhibit in the streets of towns and cities. In every sort of political/social/cultural context- whether it be outright hostility or innocuous the most Holy Week of the year will be observed.

All this effort for what? Does it change anything? Are we becoming a kinder loving people with so many Christians in the world? I can’t see it. None of us can see the outcome of it all. All we can do is meet our day with committed tenderness.

Jesus embodied the prophet Isiah who declared to dispersed Israel living as captives, aliens and refugees in foreign territory, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” The only way forward with God is to let your house be swept clear by your tears in all things and to commit to trust Christ’s downward path as the only one that leads to salvation.

Seek God’s tenderness toward you and our reality on earth this Holy Week. May you draw close to others committed to Jesus’ way and to the reality that the world is ever in need of human tenderness with each other. May you experience a lively sense of of the Spirit of divine love that is trustworthy to carry us even in sorrow and grief toward hope in God alone.

For the Wonderful Grace and Virtue Declared in all Your Saints

By Canon Patrick Funstion

Our small group at church has been reading Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation (1961) and a recent quote jumped out at me as somebody whose spirituality has roots in study and reflection on the lives of the Saints.

Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious [people] are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the [person] or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives. They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint.

Merton’s challenge is salient. Do we learn about the saints in a misguided effort to be them? This week we find ourselves in the midst of the Patrick-Óscar Octave (this isn’t a real thing, I just made it up, but we are surrounded this week by eight remarkable saints from the Episcopal Church’s sanctoral calendar): Patrick of Ireland, Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Joseph, Cuthbert, Thomas Ken, James De Koven, Gregory the Illuminator, Óscar Romero and the Martyrs of El Salvador. While this octave does not reflect the Church’s work in the last two decades to expand the gender diversity of the calendar (0-8) and is heavy on the bishops, it includes some remarkable witnesses across the millennia: From just before Christ’s birth to the 1980s.

The goal of spiritual study of the saints is neither to have nor even to model their experiences, but to marvel in how their devotion to Christ transformed them into “who [was] called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives.” The saints are fully contextual, their saintliness happened at and reveals a specific time and place. Our Eucharistic liturgy says it another way, “For the wonderful grace and virtue declared in all your saints, who have been the chosen vessels of your grace, and the lights of the world in their generations” (Proper Preface, Rite II, Of a saint).

We are not called to be Cyril, nor Joseph, nor Cuthbert; they belong to their time and place. The challenges and pressures of this world are enough to make saints of us all. We need only to continue to grow into the authentic person we “are intended to be by God.” The lives of the saints are helpful, but they are not my life. Your life is not my life. I am called to be Patrick. (Not that Patrick! This Patrick!) Who are you called to be? I guarantee there’s a mirror nearby.

Life is short, Lord, have mercy, The Cross is LIFE

Millions and millions will stream into churches and receive the smear of a cross of ashes. Simply put, they remind us life is short, we need God’s mercy and the cross of Jesus Christ is a way of living.

Messy, ugly and public it is a Christian practice with layered meaning originating in the first century. While foreign to us who hide our failures and keep our sorrow to ourselves, at that time public displays of grief and remorse were normal. The act of disfiguring oneself with dark soot displayed what was going on inside. In many ways we could say it was an acceptable exhibition of human emotions and public announcement of what has happend. The covering of oneself in ashes told your neighbors what was going on, and in some cases was the event that caused you to become shunned by community.  

Remorse and grief are such powerful inner experiences that tell us something has gone really wrong that requires response, aid, reflection, hope and healing. So, it seems to me our annual practice of putting a cross of ashes on our brow is our emotional expression of our need for God’s mercy, redemption and sustaining Presence not only for ourselves but on behalf of our the World of  human failures and grief.

Ash Wednesday has become a diagnostic moment for the people in the pews. Receiving the ashes displays our commitment to the essential wisdom in them.

Life is short

Lord have mercy

The cross is LIFE

The Book of Common Prayer urges that Lent is for renewal in faith and repentance of heart and life. The liturgy today sets us on a 40-day pilgrimage where we will find at the end Jesus leading us to die that we might spiritually come alive.

Today my prayer grows beyond personal experience hoping our liturgy is experienced as a public display of remorse and sorrow for humankind’s failure. May God have mercy on our ignorance that our actions and our in actions ripple out and impact others. We are unconscious it seems that greed, lack of concern, focus on self, hatred and fear scaled up become an economy that does not care for the poor, inordinate focus on personal and individual self, prejudice, genocide, and defensive protective posture that adds to the pain and strife inherent in living. Join my prayer for God’s mercy, may the ashes smeared on millions of brows seep into all our hearts and lives.

There is only Us

Here we are on the eve of another presidential election night. There is a real fear that our union as Americans will be stretched too far and our tensions will erupt in violence. How do we be in this tense time as religious and spiritual people?

Consider this approach from a colleague who said, “no matter the outcome of the election and the resulting reaction, I am convinced it is the curriculum that Jesus wants us to follow to grow.” Appreciate the non-dual way of viewing an event that has us casting a vote. Even if our candidate wins or not, the result is the curriculum WE need to grow in the love and faith of Christ.

This wisdom caused me to reflect on the gospel. Notice when Jesus faced reactivity in his day that he responded thoughtfully in interesting ways:

+ When the woman was caught in adultery and faced her accusers, Jesus bent down wrote something in the dirt and confronted the crowd “the one who has no sin cast the first stone.”

+When accused of breaking religious sabbath laws, he asked questions that reminded the authorities that God is a God of healing, wholeness, forgiveness, and mercy.

+When pushed to the brink of his own life and death, he went away to a lonely place to pray.

Jesus’ response to reactivity is to stop fueling the fire, reflect, and stay connected in loving relationship with God.

It is like Jesus viewed the conflicts he faced as the curriculum for spiritual growth and maturity in relationship with others. The disappointment, frustration, and fears that froth up anger are actually what is needed to help us recognize our need to need to grow as the beloved children of God.

It is so challenging to be human. We tend toward summarizing issues into either or,  right/wrong, good/evil, if this/than that. When we do this, we generalize, and our assumptions take over curiosity, loving presence and we cut off from others.

My colleagues point is if what happens IS our curriculum then there is no us/them. And I am reminded of my sweet husbands voice singing the U2 lyric throughout the sermon at our Episcopal Convention in Kansas last year, “there is no them, there is only us.”

May the Dark Ash Seep into Your Heart

Written by The Rev Lisa Senuta

The ashes are an ancient public symbol representing repentance and grief. In those days people would make a public display of their grief covering themselves in ashes. The church took this symbol and mixed it with the sign of the cross. And now like the sound of a shofar or an ancient bell calling us, people all over the world will enter churches to receive the symbol painted on their brow. The ashen cross reminds the world that there is no grief, no sin, no despair, that God cannot reconcile.

Ash Wednesday proclaims we trust God: we trust our lives to God- we trust our human predicament to God- we trust that even when greed, fear, and human ignorance seem to prevail- God is at work reconciling this world and bearing hope and new life into what seems like death and destruction.

 “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return”

Poet, Ada Limon encapsulated the human reality when she said, “I write to trust unknowing and mystery.”  The ashes smeared on our brow remind us that the most basic element of being human young or old is to be born into a crisis of unknowing and mystery.  

Every person born shares this reality. And while our lives can appear so different across 195 countries and 8 billion people, our hope is discovered in our unity. Not born of power over rather discovered in shared humility and poverty of simply being mortal.

The church teaches the way to reconciliation. Prayer, silence, reflection, slowing down, repentance fasting, helping the needs of others are the practices of Lent that support living in the hope and peace of Christ.

May the dark ash smeared on your head seep into your spiritual heart. May you observe Lent as the blessing of time to reflect on your life. May you find grace to move toward reconciliation. And may the peace of God break into the locked doors of our unknowing and the mystery of life be alive with hope that Christ alone bears to us.

Walking and Lenten Journey

Written by The Rev. Gar Demo

“I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” BCP, pg 265

           Are you in a community that asks if we are a place that “shows people Jesus?” Lent allows us to work on our relationship with God and each other for that reason. In several encounters with Jesus, he challenges those who would follow him to work things out. Specifically, he challenges some to sell their belongings, others to go and sin no more, and in one story, to take the log out of one’s eye before judging others. 

           Why does a person need a season to do this? Lent allows a specific focus on the spiritual life. There are several spiritual disciplines to focus on: self-examination (2 Corinthians 13:5), repentance (Luke 15:7), prayer (Matthew 26:41), fasting (Matthew 6:16-18), self-denial (Luke 9:23), and study of God’s word (John 5:39). Self-examination involves being willing to take a deep look at the sin in our own life. Repentance is asking those we have hurt to forgive us or forgiving someone who may have hurt us. Prayer is having conversation with God. Fasting is allowing oneself a time of being deprived of plenty or blessing and experiencing real hunger. Self-denial is when we place God’s and others’ needs before our own or seeing that perhaps we aren’t the most important person in the universe. Finally, by committing ourselves to study scripture, we might gain new insights into God’s hope for us. Looking at the list, it seems daunting to many to undertake so much. Perhaps it’s best to focus on one or two disciplines or to build on them over time. 

           I know in my own life, I spend a good deal of time thinking and working toward all kinds of goals and projects. One of the hardest things to do is to devote time to oneself and the relationship with God. Well, isn’t watching TV easier? Or doing yard work? Or any number of other things that demand our time? However, when I find that I give God time, and when I find that I give myself a chance to pray, fast, repent, and do such good work, I am strengthened in ways I hardly knew possible. Think of some of the words of George Herbert in his poem called Lent:

True Christians should be glad of an occasion

 To use their temperance, seeking no evasion, 

 When good is seasonable; 

 Unless Authority, which should increase

 The obligation in us, make it less, 

 And Power itself disable.

 Besides the cleanness of sweet abstinence, 

 Quick thoughts and motions at a small expense, 

 A face not fearing light: 

 Whereas in fullness there are sluttish fumes, 

 Sour exhalations, and dishonest rheums, 

 Revenging the delight.

Yet Lord instruct us to improve our fast

 By starving sin and taking such repast, 

 As may our faults control: 

 That ev’ry man may revel at his door, 

 Not in his parlour; banqueting the poor, 

 And among those his soul.

Do we show people Jesus? Yes, of course, we do. But this season of Lent, remember to show yourself, Jesus. Take the time to work on Lenten disciplines this season earnestly. You might be surprised by the new insights and light you might encounter. Isn’t it worth the effort? 

Choose to Live

written by The Rev Canon Patrick Funston

As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I’m really excited about next week’s premiere of the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard. The Paramount+ show which follows the eponymous former admiral’s adventures as an old man, decades after he resigned his Starfleet commission. Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard will always be close to my heart having served as the captain of the USS Enterprise during Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Star Trek of my childhood.

Picard builds upon all the Star Trek universe that preceded it, staying faithful to its characters while creatively adding new characters and ideas. The first season of Picard introduced the Qowat Milat (pronounced Koh-wat Mih-laht), an order of Romulan warrior nuns who follow a creed of “Absolute Candor,” communicating their emotions and thoughts completely and openly, without filter. This is diametrically opposed to the general (sometimes comically one-note) duplicitousness of the Romulan race, especially their not-so-secret secret police, the Tal Shiar.

Described by Picard as “the most skilled single-combat fighters that I have ever seen,” a Qowat Milat warrior’s confrontation of an enemy begins with an invitation, “Please, my friend, choose to live.” It’s an incredibly cool thing to say, putting a smile on my face every time. My smile has also always included the knowledge of Moses’ very similar invitation in this Sunday’s Deuteronomy reading.

Deuteronomy is constructed as Moses’ farewell discourse to the people of Israel. Gathered on the borders of the Promised Land, he recounts stories and learnings from the previous forty years of of desert wandering. We find Moses, who knows he will not be entering the Promised Land, in advice-giving mode. Sunday’s reading comes from the end of the end of Moses’ ministry and life. “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live . . .” (Deuteronomy 30.19) Having recounted the Law, Moses reminds the people of their agency, their ability to choose whether or not to follow the Law.

Choose to live.

While the similarities bring a smile to my face, there’s a significant difference between the way Moses and Star Trek offer the choice. As we come to know the Qowat Milat, we learn that the full combat invitation is, “The path you are on has come to an end. Choose to live.” The Qowat Milat offer is potentially terminal, it happens the one time. Though the Deuteronomy invitation happens in a specific time and place, we believe (and we see in the rest of Scripture) that God is always making the offer.

Choose life!

As we swiftly approach Lent, I pray that we may hear God’s invitation full of the knowledge of God’s grace for our limitations. God’s invitation to life is always flowing toward us. We are always allowed to choose life. But, inevitably, we fall short, falling into sin, choosing death. But when we turn and return, we see and hear that God’s invitation remains. Please, my friends, choose to live.

The Great Mystery in Your Words

Written by Chad Senuta

“When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” 1 Corinthians 2:1-2

It’s ironic that for most of us “sharing our faith” with another person is a terrifying prospect and at the same time how alluring it can be to pontificate about God and theology. We seem to simultaneously hold a belief that we could never impose our ideas about spirituality and religion on someone else, while holding another that if we do speak, then it’s completely up to us to find the most compelling words, quote the most respected authors, and share insights that prove our own validity and that of Christianity itself.

The apostle Paul chooses another way. He chooses to “know nothing… except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” He denies both his fear and the impulse to sound smart. What would it look like for us to do the same? How might we choose to focus simply on Jesus, his life, his ministry, his death, and his resurrection as we go through our day? How might this transform the way we live, interact, and even talk with others about God?

God of Wisdom, when I am tempted to rely on my own insights, please help me return my trust to you, especially when I consider opening my mouth to talk about faith. Amen.

Melt my Arrogance

Written by The Rev Canon Lisa Senuta

The Light of the World is one of the most known 20^th century pieces of religious art. I have known of the famous piece a long time, seen it on bookmarks etc. However, honestly, I simply have never been attracted to the piece. Until I recently visited St Paul’s Cathedral in London where one of the three versions by artist William Holman Hunt resides.

The painting’s informal name is, “sermon in a frame”. Jesus is at a door with no handle, knocking. Out at dark, in a garden, you can see that Jesus arrives bearing the light of the world. The door can only be opened by the person on the other side.

It’s obvious message has always put me off. It felt too preachy if you know what I mean? However, recently I have been meditating on doors and thresholds in my own life with a book by Joyce Rupp called Open the Door which has melted some of my arrogance.

The truth is that all the important thresholds in our lives are actually not found in the obvious questions. The ones we grind at like, When should I retire? How much should we put in savings? What kind of house do I want? Is it time to change jobs? When the real doorways are in the questions about who are we being and becoming in life right now.

Jan Richardson offers a clarifying question, “In deciding what to do with my life will I choose what activates and refuels my dormant goodness? Will I choose what will help me become a loving presence in the world.”

As we meditate with the profound Beatitudes this week and prepare for Sunday, I wonder about these nine veiled blessings as threshold questions for our lives?

Jesus recommends in his sermon that we be poor, mourn fully, be meek, not fear hunger or disdain being merciful, and pure in heart he recognizes the fear of becoming a peacemaker and encourages that it is this that opens the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus in essence says these are doorways to new life.

Like the painting, Jesus stands at these thresholds in our lives and offers passage through them. His lifegiving Spirit comes as a guide awakening our dormant and reluctant goodness showing the way to bring forth light and love in our little selves and in our parishes and communities.