Of Resolutions and Transformations

As 2014 came to a close and 2015 opened, I decided to commit to three New Year's Resolutions:

1) Pray every day (Daily Office or something else).
2) Post a blog entry at least every week (to get my thoughts out).
3) De-clutter my life and home in the next six months.

A fairly good list, I'd say. I started out with the prayer goal, as I noticed that is is all too easy for me, even as a priest, to get so  busy doing what I believe God has called me to do that I forget to actually "check in" with God to see if I am still supposed to be doing what I'm doing. Prayer can be 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or 45 minutes, so I should be able to make that one.

I started out with the goal of posting a blog entry every day, but as I've missed January 1, that clearly isn't an achievable goal for me. I'm figuring that if I can manage to post at least one blog entry a week, that will be a good start towards a more regular blogging schedule.

The life and home de-cluttering is my biggest hurdle. Like many people I know, I have accumulated a TON of stuff in my life, and I have moved that stuff several times. I have too many books in my office (many of which I no longer consult, especially in the age of the Internet). I have leftover items from when my parents moved sitting in my garage (anyone need any electrical receptacles or switches?) and I just, in general, have too many things lying around my closet, bedroom, and house. So, by July 1 of this year, I hope and plan to have as much stuff out of here as possible and the rest stored neatly.

As I read the above, and as I think about Good Samaritan Episcopal Church, the church I serve, and what we will be doing in 2015, I know that any changes that I hope to lead there really start with me. I love change, I just don't like TO chnage! But obviously the way of have been doing life and ministry is not generating the transformed church that I hope and pray Good Samaritan will be. No, it isn't solely up to me, but it does start with me. If I can begin to transform my own habits, perhaps I can more effectively help the church grown and prosper.

Onward to 2015!

Is it well with my soul?

As the church program year winds down and makes way for Summer, time and permission are given to all of us for a bit of reflection. Since this Fall will mark two years of my tenure as Priest-in-Charge of St. Edward's, and since we're in the midst of both a diocesan and parish strategic planning process, there have been reasons stacked upon reasons for such reflection. While I've begun the parish part of that reflection on the parish blog, it seems like at least some account (on this blog) of my personal reflections is warranted.

In my daily Facebook trolling, I came across this list of 10 Ways to Boost Spiritual Health. I recognize a number of spiritual disciplines--personal worship, journaling, prayer, personal (rather than simply professional) bible study--that I recall doing with much more faithfulness when I was in college and had newly discovered a more personal relationship with God in Christ. Like getting enough exercise and eating right, sometimes living life accidentally or on spiritual inertia can sneak up on a person. A good reminder.

As I read that "fitness list," I recalled another bit of wisdom shared by Brian McLaren, author of "Naked Spirituality" in his address at the 187th Commencement of Virginia Theological Seminary (my alma mater). He strongly encouraged the graduates (and, by extension, we alumni and friends) to guard and grow four friendships: with ourselves, with soul friends, with non-Christians, and with God. As McLaren said "it is sometimes difficult for those of us who are paid to be good to simply be good for nothing." Sometimes being a "professional Christian" gets in the way of simply being an intentional follower of Jesus Christ.

As I move through this summer of discernment, a big piece of my discernment is to look at where I have allowed my professional life to take over my personal life--in my relationship with my family and friends but also in crowding out hobbies and other things I do just because I like doing them. A good discipline for anyone, I'd say.

Covenant and Discipline

Today is Ash Wednesday, a day on which, among other things, the church invites us 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." Perhaps providentially, today is also the day on which the second draft of the Proposed Anglican Covenant was released. Finally, it is the day after "Super Tuesday" and the media is abuzz with reflections and prognostications about what it all means for our future. It also happens to be just over a month since I last put fingers to keyboard and posted anything on this blog.

As I prepare to say and hear the words "remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return" today it strikes me how such words put into perspective all of the issues and conflicts that seem to loom so large in the church and in the world. A century from now, no one now living, except for perhaps a few of the smallest children, will be anything but dust. All of the parties wrangling over church property, all of the political candidates vying for their party's nomination, and all of the bloggers (including me!) with their voluminous writings on this or that--all will be dust. Unless Jesus has returned, there will no doubt be new controversies to replace the old (just as the current controversies are replacing the old ones), new political candidates addressing new problems, and new bloggers (or whatever follows blogs) opining about the issues of the day.

For me, this Lent offers me an opportunity and a challenge not to give up paying attention to such issues, candidates, and opinions, but to place them in the context of a more disciplined life of prayer, study, and action. It is a time when we are all invited to examine our own lives even more minutely than we examine the lives of others, to engage in the time-honored activities of prayer, bodily discipline (fasting), and what might be called "life discipline" (self-denial), and to study the scriptures not as an academic exercise, but with an eye towards deepening our relationship with Christ and seeking out God's will for us as people living and working in the world.
Let the Lent begin!

Dancing Around the Center

As the initial flurry of responses and analysis of the statement from the House of Bishops has begun, I've attempted to keep up with some of the discussions that have ensued. As I remarked earlier, folks on both the conservative and liberal ends of the spectrum are unhappy with the statement. It is difficult to find a moderate take on the statement, but I happened to run across an article in the Church Times (London) that pretty much summarizes my opinion on the whole thing. Most especially, this observation:

By making this concessionary statement, allying themselves to the Windsor process, and inviting further debate, the Episcopalian Bishops have placed themselves firmly in the Anglican mainstream, however others prefer to define that word. There is nothing to stop the US conservatives’ continuing to combine with provinces in the Global South, but such moves will take them away from the centre.

I think that the author has it exactly right: the House of Bishops said what they could reasonably say, given the constraints of polity and power under which they operate. They served notice that they expect other provinces to actually engage in the "listening process" called for in Lambeth 1.10 (acknowledging how difficult that process might be in certain cultures), and staking out a middle ground that isolates the more conservative folks (who left early anyway) as they seek to cast an image of the Episcopal Church as radically liberal. I hope and pray that most provinces aren't buying it.

Service, Sacrifice, and Scars

Today I ran across an amazing article about Mother Teresa talking about a new book entitled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. It is a collection of previously unreleased correspondence between her and her confessors and superiors over 66 years. What it reveals is that one of the icons of Christian service, of service to thousands of "the least of these" in the slums of Calcutta, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner nevertheless endured a spiritual desert, no sense of the presence of God, for over fifty years. I can't do the article justice (and it is no doubt copyrighted anyway) so read the article for yourselves.

I have three initial reactions to the article.

First, I am struck by how much we rely on surface clues about a person's wellbeing and how tortured and spiritually lost even those we think of as godly, even holy, are. If that is the case, how many wounds does your average person-in-the-pew (or in the pulpit!) hide, gloss over, or simply ignore? I shudder to think how many walking wounded are in our midst including, if truth be told, myself. That sense of one being taken, blessed, broken, and given to the world as the bread of the Eucharist is, seems a more powerful metaphor than I previously grasped. Perhaps that is what Jesus knew when he commanded us to pray for our enemies: that they were broken and wounded and needed our prayers perhaps even more than our friends!

Second, with all of the correspondence with confessors and others in the church, why, literally for God's sake, didn't someone see this spiritual desolation and seek to help alleviate it? What an irony that a woman who brought hope to the world and to so many who were hopeless was herself spiritually adrift! I can't tell much from the article, but it appears that while some reassurances were given her, Mother Teresa worked tirelessly for a Savior whose touch she had not felt in her soul for over five decades while the church stood by watching. Was her work so valuable that piercing that veil of holiness and sacrificial love was deemed too great a cost? I ask myself, is she a saint because she persevered in service without a "sign" from God or is she an example of someone who gives themselves so much to others that she can't bear to receive consolation and solace from others? I don't know. What I do know is that God wrapped her in God's arms a decade ago and said "well done, good and faithful servant." Of that I am sure.

Finally, I am confronted with the stark reality that even someone like Mother Teresa, by all accounts a model of servant ministry if ever there was one, had neither an easy nor secure relationship with God. Oddly enough, it gives me some comfort that if others can serve God effectively with such impediments, my own humble attempts at a stable and fruitful spiritual life may at least suffice.

Be that as it may, as I count down the weeks remaining of my Sabbatical, I am struck anew by how much difference a strong spiritual foundation makes in one's ministry. More specifically, I am struck by how the strength of my own spiritual foundation relates directly to both my effectiveness and endurance in ministry. Making sure that foundation is strong and that my self-worth is rooted in God's love for me rather than the perceived day-to-day success or failure of my own efforts to faithfully shepherd the flock of St. Alban's will be a primary goal upon my return.

The Christian Center

As the "d-day" of September 30 grows closer and voices (and bloggers) from both sides become ever more strident in their assurance of the rightness of their respective causes, there are many voices from the center who are being increasingly heard. Though I would not want to characterize the Primate of Ireland (he can do that for himself), his recent sermon is the subject of entries in several blogs, among them The Anglican Centrist and Fr. Jake Stops the World. While others have highlighted various parts of this sermon, the part that speaks most forcefully to me comes near the end. Archbishop Harper says:

I have yet to meet any “leader” who does not treat with the utmost respect and indeed reverence the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. I have heard no one in this crisis deny the fundamental tenets of the faith as Anglicans have received them. Yet I have heard believing Christians attack other Christians for not believing precisely as they themselves believe. Equally, I have heard believing Christians attack other Christians for not attaching the weight they themselves attach to this biblical text compared with that.

This is not the way of Christ; it is the way of fallen humanity. It is a boulder of our own creation and I do not know who will help us to roll it away.

So before either side continues to stack up blocks in walls to protect the church from either rampant heresy or homophobia, it might be wise to remember that the people of both sides (and the vast majority in the middle) are faithful, sincere, believing Christians, not raving lunatics or heretics bent on destroying the church.

Every time my commitment to remaining within the Episcopal Church wavers, generally because I'm simply tired of the fight, statements like those of Archbishop Harper shore up my resolve to do so. We are always better together than we are when we are apart, no matter who else is at the table. After all, the table isn't ours, it belongs to Jesus and Jesus can (and does) invite anyone and everyone!

Iraq: How would Jesus leave?

In a brief diversion from ecclesiastical trials and tribulations, my mind had returned to a question I have often mulled over as the presidential campaigns of various Republicans and Democrats continues, with Iraq as the centerpiece. Let us assume that invading Iraq in the first place was a mistake, that our presence there is at best neutral (we're both provoking insurgency and also preventing it), and that we are headed for a pullout of our troops. Attempting, as with the ecclesiastical turmoil, to be both present and non-anxious, my question is: how might we leave in a way that both admits that, in a profound understatement, "mistakes were made" but also doesn't simply wash our hands of the troubles in Iraq? While I believe that we should leave Iraq, it hardly seems like anything but cowardice for us to simply say "Ooops, we made a mistake. Hope you can clean it up!" as we fly and float away, licking our wounds.

So, I'm wondering how, in the Christian sense, we might align our will with God's will and use this whole situation for good while not perpetuating the problem by remaining in Iraq one second longer than our presence is beneficial. I don't have the answer to that question, and probably don't have even a tenth of the information to even speculate, but I haven't heard the question posed by any of the candidates running for President. I would think that such a holistic departure plan, with or without a time-line, would seem prudent given the current political environment.

So, in other words, the question is: How would Jesus leave? How would Jesus have us leave?

More Reflections - Anglicanism and Christianity

I just ran across a blog post at Episcopal Cafe. The author says, in part, that when folks disagree with the Presiding Bishop or other official church teachings, they sometimes take the next step:

That step is to claim that since the Presiding Bishop has made a statement that the writer objects to, the millions of people who belong to the Episcopal Church are also therefore heretics and/or apostates who have materially repudiated Jesus.

Read the entire post here. The author, an Episcopal Priest for many years, makes an excellent point. Rather than assume that a handful of bishops, or even the Presiding Bishop, speaks for everyone in the Episcopal Church, might we assume a diversity of opinion on any given subject exists within the church? If that is so, then simply saying that The Episcopal Church is heretical, or apostate, makes little sense.

As I begin to wind down my Sabbatical (one month to go!), I am more and more attempting to cultivate that non-anxious presence that I blogged about earlier. This would seem to apply not only to parish life, but to diocesan, national, and international life as well. In a post-Christian society and a time of transition in the church, I see a huge amount of reactivity and tension in the church. Many people are reacting to it with statements and actions that may or may not be completely thought out or prayerfully considered. Discerning God's will takes time. In a world where we pace in front of the microwave, get our news in two or three minute segments, and are hyper-aware of thirty-second sound bytes, such discernment may seem to take a lifetime in comparison. Given that, perhaps a longer time-frame might be wise before making any final decisions.

Of course, it may be too late for the for some folks...but there is always repentance and restoration!