Stay with Me

On the sacred mountain of Haleakala, a lone silversword, 1982.

My friend, Henri Nouwen biographer Michael Ford, asked me to write something about Henri, his affinity for Vincent van Gogh, and loneliness, as he prepares to write a book about Henri and loneliness.

Loneliness is the wilderness for the writer, the artist, and the contemplative. Writing, creativity, and prayer are not ways out of the wilderness, but a way to make the wilderness blossom, to turn the ache of feeling lonely to a fulfilling solitude, transforming “lone” to “alone,” derived from joining the words “all-one.”

French existentialist and novelist Albert Camus wrote a book of short stories, The Exile and the Kingdom, stories contrasting being alone and being with others. I’ll never forget the Algerian woman who leaves her husband’s bedside in the middle of the night to ascend to the roof and commune alone with the stars.

The story pertinent here is about an artist whose work makes him famous, acquiring admirers and students alike until he can’t work anymore—that is, until he finds a hidden attic in which to rediscover his art in solitude.

In his prolific and often profound letters to his brother Theo, Vincent van Gogh writes sometimes of his loneliness, while tending the fire in his hearth should a passerby stop to be warmed by its glow. His paintings became a way of offering himself to others, his “sermons,” as he once called them, that he hoped would have the same consoling effect that the Christian religion once offered. “While I sit here lonely,” Vincent wrote, “My work perhaps speaks to a friend.”

A theme or strand of loneliness wove its way into every one of Henri’s “letters to Theo,” his dozens of books on the spiritual life. A desperate extrovert, Henri nonetheless needed times of exile to hone his craft as writer and contemplative. His most severe exile, a time away from his community nursing a heart broken at the ending of a promising relationship, arguably produced his most profound, most simple, and most heartfelt spiritual treatise, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey through Anguish to Freedom.

Henri’s loneliness spoke to my own. Upon hearing a tape of a lecture on loneliness for his class, I enrolled in the course, the notes of which became Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. The movements were from loneliness to solitude, from hostility to hospitality, and from illusion to prayer. Of all his books, Henri later observed, this was closest to his lived Christian experience.

When I write, create, and pray, my loneliness is transformed, my exile becomes community, my wilderness blossoms and communion is possible.

My writing is talking to a friend, making conversation, or a stranger, breaking the ice. My creativity is imagination let loose, hopefully to entertain as well as to encourage. My prayer is recognizing and enjoying God’s presence and remembering people I care about as well as those I should care about.

Jesus taught love, compassion, mercy, and gratitude as ways of transforming our wilderness. Reaching out to one another is the way to the kingdom, the commonwealth of God.

“Pray with me,” he urged his disciples in Gethsemane.

“Stay with us,” the Emmaus disciples urged their fellow traveler.

“Stay with me,” the haunting cry of a popular song goes, explaining “Guess it’s true, I’m not good at a one-night stand.”

That’s true of all of us, even God.

Related post:

My Loneliness Led Me to God

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

A Flower's Tears

I had just read a quote from landscape artist Thomas Cole: “Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. Shall we turn from it? We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out of the garden is our own ignorance and folly.”

A woman on public radio announced Beethoven’s Pastoral Sonata, #15.

Then I heard something drop. I looked up from my tablet and realized the bouquet of flowers in front of me was losing petals. The before-dawn early morning was so quiet I could hear a petal fall.

This prompted me to compose this poem: 

A flower’s tears

are the dewdrops

that drip, orb by orb,

as sun rises.

A flower’s tears

are the raindrops

that stream, string by string,

as storms rage.

A flower’s tears

are the petals

that drop, one by one,

as life renews.

I was sitting at our dining room table, a very solid oak sturdy-legged altar that once served as Wade’s grandfather’s butcher block. Long before we met, Wade had painstakingly sanded (and sanded) and refinished this table that seats four and can be extended by way of built-in leaves for eight  just as comfortably. On all five windows of the pentagonal room hang patterned stained-glass, framed in various shapes in wood whose peeling white trim contrasted with the colors of their homes that no longer stand.

The morning I write this, I rose so early that my usual place for morning prayers was too dark to read, so I chose this alternate sanctuary.

And then I read: “Henri taught me that the characteristics I had identified with religion are just the outer circle. What really matters is a fundamental attitude of seeking to do something that is valuable to yourself and to the world.” Henri Nouwen’s nephew Marc van Campen wrote this in Befriending Life: Encounters with Henri Nouwen.

Moved by awe at this magical moment, I thanked God that life is filled with such opportunities to experience the world “as if for the first time” and then to express that mystery in writing, in art, in service.

“Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. Shall we turn from it? We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out of the garden is our own ignorance and folly.”

A post for the 15^th anniversary of 9/11 on Sunday: 9/11: When We Were One

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Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

"For Thine Is the Kingdom (burp!)"

Just a couple of weeks ago I mentioned I say the Lord’s Prayer every day. This morning I burped after praying “for thine is the kingdom.” I immediately apologized (to God) and went on, “and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

But then I thought better of the apology. This is the way God made us, to burp and to fart and to do all those things we’d rather not do or say in God’s presence, let alone talk and write about them!

Yet, choosing an alternative to the scary book I wrote about last week, I had just been reading a collection of Flannery O’Connor’s spiritual writings, bristling a little at her insistence on traditional Christianity, while intrigued by her notion of the importance of belief in writing fiction, in an excerpt from “Novelist and Believer” (1963). So I reviewed what I had underlined, “this physical, sensible world is good because it proceeds from a divine source.”

Could this Southern Roman Catholic lady living in rural Georgia have felt the same way about my burp during prayer, especially our Lord’s prayer? I daresay she’d join Gone With The Wind’s mammy, saying of Scarlett’s unladylike behavior, “Tain’t fittin’. Just tain’t fittin’.”

Then I re-read the paragraph in which I had only underlined the above phrase. She starts with St. Augustine’s notion that God is poured out in the world in two ways: intellectually and physically: 

To the person who believes this—as the western world did up until a few centuries ago—this physical, sensible world is good because it proceeds from a divine source. The artist usually knows this by instinct; his senses, which are used to penetrating the concrete, tell him so. When [Joseph] Conrad said that his aim as an artist was to render the highest possible justice to the visible universe, he was speaking with the novelist’s surest instinct. The artist penetrates the concrete world in order to find at its depths the image of its source, the image of ultimate reality. This in no way hinders his perception of evil but rather sharpens it, for only when the natural world is seen as good does evil become intelligible as a destructive force and a necessary result of our freedom. 

O’Connor fears “that religion will suffer the ultimate degradation and become, for a little time, fashionable,” reminding me of the first monastics escaping into the deserts to pray, wary of the popularization of Christianity in the Roman Empire of Constantine.

She then affirms, “Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama.”  Despite this serious assertion, she adds, “it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy.”

Perhaps this allows my burp after praying “for thine is the kingdom”—a little comic relief to my earnestness.

This past Sunday, asked to speak about generosity to a congregation, I began by asking them which person they felt most relaxed around, inviting them to name the characteristic of the person that made that possible.  For me, I feel most comfortable with someone who has a generosity of spirit, a graciousness that sees my “divine source,” my “soul,” even as I burp and fart.

In memory of Pam Byers, one of those easy-to-be-with friends and colleagues.

Today is the 75^th anniversary of my late parents’ wedding.

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Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by readers’ donations. It is an authorized Emerging Ministry of Metropolitan Community Churches, a denomination welcoming seekers as well as believers.

Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

"Jesus Preaches in the Temple"

“Jesus Preaches in the Temple” from artist Douglas Blanchard’s series, The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision, and his book with author and blogger Kittredge Cherry. Copyright © by Douglas Blanchard. Used by permission.

Please join Ormewood Park Presbyterian Church in Atlanta for 11 a.m. Easter worship this Sunday, where I’ll be preaching on “Whose Resurrection Is It, Anyway?”

It took Douglas Blanchard’s painting “Jesus Preaches in the Temple” and Kittredge Cherry’s reflections on his series of 24 paintings of Jesus’ life, The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision, to remind me that scripture says several times that Jesus taught in the temple in the midst of the Passion narrative. Of course, most of us remember that when Jesus was “handed over” (betrayed) to “the powers that be,” he mischievously asked why they had not arrested him in broad daylight while teaching in the temple.

But I always pictured Jesus teaching to those whose life circumstances would have prevented them from entering the temple, like the man unable to walk asking for alms from Peter and John at the temple gate, told in the third chapter of Acts. In the name of Jesus, it says, they lifted him up “and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.”

I tended to imagine Jesus preaching to those outside the doors of the temple like this man, and his story serving as a metaphor for their welcome, their strengthened resolve to enter, and their resulting joy.

That Matthew, Mark, and Luke place Jesus’ teaching in the temple just after his angry outburst clearing it of merchants who provided for worshipers’ ritual needs (temple coins and animal sacrifices) suggests he was indeed creating space for temple outsiders.

In an early book, I explained how the space he cleared would have been the space in which those of us who have been excluded and marginalized might have gathered: Gentiles, women, LGBT folk, people with disabilities. I didn’t think of the immediate accessibility he provided those then considered unclean by religious scruples. Matthew specifically claims that those with disabilities then joined him in the temple (21:14)!

Jesus in Love blogger Kitt Cherry (a longtime friend) points out, however, that the artist has not placed Jesus in the Jerusalem temple, but in a Christian cathedral, made clear by the procession of crosses being carried by robed liturgists behind the immediate scene. A variety of people are drawn to Jesus “spellbound” by his teachings while seeming to ignore the formal worship behind them. Kitt asks, what would Christians do if Jesus entered their churches today? And I wonder, would they prefer to rest in peace in their traditions?

Some Christians are fond of asking, “What would Jesus do?” But the Passion narrative asks us, “What would we do?”

How often do we hand Jesus over to “the powers that be”: those who use Jesus to promote political or religious agendas anathema to what he taught? And how often do we pretend we’re not with Jesus, fearful that others might think we’re “one of them.”

And how often do we hang on Jesus’ words, reading and reflecting on what he taught?

“My house shall be called a house of prayer for ALL people.” (Emphasis Jesus’)

Many thanks to Kitt and Doug! I’ve added another of Doug’s paintings to a previous post: Blessed Are the Prophets, a post which also appeared on the website of More Light Presbyterians this past Sunday.

Here are readings for the remainder of Holy Week:

Maundy Thursday:  Judas Kiss

In the Company of Birds

Good Friday:            “Faggot” Jesus

Holy Saturday:         What God Did for Love

Easter Sunday:         Resurrecting Jesus

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Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.

Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite, catalogued by year and month.

Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Blessed Are the Prophets

“Jesus Enters the City” from artist Douglas Blanchard’s series, The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision, and the book with author and blogger Kittredge Cherry. Copyright © by Douglas Blanchard. Used by permission.

Text Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved.

So was Jesus and his followers streaming through the streets of Jerusalem a parade or a march? Were the palm-waving crowds welcoming a demonstration against Rome or simply enjoying a party? Are we talkin’ political movement or Mardi Gras? (This will be familiar to those of you who hear the same conversations about annual Pride observances!)

The answer to me in both cases is “yes.” Both a Jesus parade and Jesus march were an affront to Rome, the political authorities who ruled Palestine. Both a Jesus demonstration and a Jesus party would have been a challenge to the cultural “powers that be.” Both a political movement and a Mardi Gras celebrated at Passover time would have disconcerted the religious authorities of Jesus’ time.

I can hear the politically powerful saying, “What’s this guy up to?” I can hear the culturally influential wondering, “What’s this low-life trying to do?” I can hear the religious elite crying, “This is no way to celebrate Passover! We’ve never done it this way before!”

Yet at the same time we hear, “Hosanna!”—which literally means “save us,” first said as a prayer and then as an acclamation. “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of God!”

Hope and fear, love and disdain, joy and grief flowed on the streets of Jerusalem that day when Jesus, with palm-waving flourish, humbly rode in on a donkey over the garments and palms laid out before him.

Oh, if his friends in Nazareth could see him now!

What PR firm came up with this plan? What marketing company staged this event? Which campaign consultants organized this photo op?

Jesus gives us a clue in the Gospel of Luke, when asked to calm the crowd down: “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones themselves would cry out.” 

In other words, this is what happens when God’s Spirit moves, whether upon the waters of earth or the blood of the human heart. This is what happens when people know a truth that will set them and others free. This is what happens when our spirit in union with God’s Spirit rises up and says: “Never again!” or “I am a man.” or “I am woman.” or “We’re here, we’re queer, get over it.”

Think what all the people felt following Jesus into the city! Surely their day had come! What pride to see the turnout! What joy to believe that they were going to send the powers that be running! What elation to know of a certainty that this was the one who would be the solution, political and personal.

What was Jesus like in this moment, we might wonder.

At the rally following one of the first LGBT Pride marches in Los Angeles, I heard Harvey Milk speak. I was surprised how loud and raspy his voice was, and how abrasive he was in his demands of the culture.

Was Jesus like that? Probably.

I met Cesar Chavez during one of his fasts for migrant farm workers, and I was surprised how gentle and loving and spiritual he was when he spoke of his cause and his people.

Was Jesus like that? Probably.

I encountered feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether in a committee meeting and I was surprised by how unassuming yet straightforward she was, even as she spoke with clarity about injustices against Palestinians.

Was Jesus like that? Probably.

We encounter every prophet for change with a mix of fear and gratitude: fear of what they might require of us, gratitude for speaking their truth.

Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem may serve as metaphor for how we too have welcomed prophets or been welcomed as prophets. On that first Palm Sunday, as the crowds cheered Jesus into the holy city, their welcome did not mean they would not struggle with this Christ. Jerusalem was to question Jesus’ authority, doubt his orthodoxy, ask trick questions, question his belief in resurrection, demand to know when the fulfillment of time would come, betray him, deny him, place him on trial, judge him, mock him, torture and crucify him. Toward the end of the week it would be hard to remember that this same city also welcomed him with a 21-palm salute.

Doesn’t this sound familiar? Haven’t most who identify as Christian and even those who no longer identify as Christian welcomed Jesus with joy only to struggle with him, question his authority, doubt his truth as well as his assurances of God’s eternal love, demand answers, betray him, deny him, judge him, mock him, even crucify him?

And haven’t most of us treated prophets or been treated as prophets similarly?

May the day come when we welcome every prophet with “Hosanna! Blessed are the ones who come in the name of God!”