Free Time

 

Our neighbor Luna enjoying our bird bath.

Perhaps nothing sounds better on a schedule than “free time.” But it can be a source of anxiety for many—how will I fill up that time? Will I be bored? Will the moments be wasted? What am I to do? 

To be honest, though I have no problem spending leisure time with friends, when alone I have difficulty with leisure time. I like to work, I like to be constructive, I like to do things, I like to grow. But the idea of free time does sound luxurious. I love the popular song by Bruno Mars, “Today I Don’t Feel Like Doing Anything.” I wish I could live its ideal! 

In a video I use during my retreats on Henri Nouwen, Henri talks about how proud we are of being “busy, busy, busy,” buzzing these words like a bee! We brag about it to others, “Oh yes, I’m very busy.” I’ve met clergy who needed to go into detail about how busy they were to counter the misconception that they only work one hour per week! Henri describes our need to be “occupied,” or if not occupied, “preoccupied,” which he jokes as “occupying a space before you even get there”! 

This tension between work and idleness is why I begin my workday with morning prayers. There’s a lazy part of me that is attracted to a time when I don’t have to accomplish anything, and so this is a seductive way to begin my workday. Sure, I read various things during that time, but the goal is to spend time in reflection, meditation, and prayer. It can last anywhere from five minutes to two hours, depending on the day’s agenda. 

A counseling professor in seminary told of being assigned a child by the courts for therapy. Each visit, the kid said nothing, but wandered around the office looking at things in silence. In frustration, the professor told the child that he would ask the courts to assign another therapist. The child cried, “But I like coming here!” Astonished, the therapist asked why. “You’re the only adult who leaves me alone,” the child replied. 

Free time is perhaps the only time that leaves us alone. One possible origin of “scholar” is a word that means “leisure, rest, or free time.” Though most of us worked our way through various schools, we understand that luxury of having been students. I’ve never stopped being a student, though I did not go into academia as a vocation. And maybe that’s partly why I didn’t—I didn’t want my “free time” regulated, occupied, or preoccupied.

 

This post appeared September 4, 2013. Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely to the “Chris Glaser Archive” through the Tribute Gift section of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion. 

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Dolphins & Sharks

“Look, over there, there are dolphins in the water!”

Somebody shouted this to me as I began a several-mile run along a beach during a vacation. This stranger was absolutely right. Three dolphins playfully leapt up out of the water and, in tandem, we raced down the South Carolina shoreline for almost an hour. And most of that hour I reflected on that moment when the gracious abandon of a stranger, who might not otherwise have greeted me, alerted me to one of God’s wonders.

Running for me is a time to meditate. Like a Buddhist walking meditation, its rhythm gives me peace and a place for thought. And what I thought was that this stranger had played the preacher—that this is the purpose of any exhortation—to awaken us to such wonders.  Because I believe each one of us may serve as a minister, it occurred to me that this is our role, to shout,

“Look, over there, there are dolphins in the water!”

There’s something about the shore that gives us permission to talk to strangers. I think it’s the elation, even the ecstasy, that we experience in nature—whether manifest in shores or dolphins. It awakens the child in us that freely enters the commonwealth of God.

The stranger speaking to me about the dolphin was purely gratuitous, an occasion of grace. He had nothing to gain by it other than the thrill of sharing the experience. But I proclaimed his gospel to all I passed in my run along the beach,

 “Look, over there, there are dolphins in the water!”

The next day, our last full day along the shore, it rained. And instead of wading into the Atlantic, I waded into all those e-mails I had avoided all week. It was sobering, to get back to business. There’s nothing natural about sitting in front of a laptop, reading a screen and plucking keys on a keyboard.

And I had another thought. Earlier in the week on the beach we had met a couple who alerted us to a shark in the water. It occurred to me that our job as “ministers” (remember, all of us) is not only to point out the dolphins, but warn others about the sharks.

Many of us got too many sharks growing up in our churches and too few dolphins. Like the preacher in the novel and movie Pollyanna, egged on by Pollyanna’s stern and bitter aunt, we heard preachers who focused on the curses found in scriptures rather than its blessings. Pollyanna, the orphan of missionary parents, who herself had every right to be bitter, pointed out to this preacher that there are many more blessings than curses in the Bible, many more dolphins than sharks.

Progressive Christians recognize the sharks infesting the waters of our faith tradition: biblical literalism, fundamentalism, prejudice, exclusion, patriarchy, condemnation, and so on. It’s important that we warn others to stay out of these waters. But it’s equally vital—or all the more vital—that we point out the dolphins of our faith tradition: grace, mercy, justice, compassion, inclusion, blessing, wonder, storytelling, and spiritual truth.

“Look, there are dolphins in the baptismal water!”

 

This week marks the tenth anniversary of beginning my blog with this post from February 16, 2011.

There’s been nearly half-a-million visitors, not including an average of five-hundred free weekly subscribers.

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely in Chris Glaser’s name to the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network. Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here.  Thank you!

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

 

I Live in a Forest Called Atlanta

My shadow on my morning walk.

(Remember, shadows add a hundred pounds!)

You might not guess that I get tired of reading and writing and saying words. Several weeks ago, I dispensed with words for my morning meditation and simply paid attention, reverently, to the trees that I passed on my morning walk. That’s easy to do in Atlanta, where we live, so full of trees.

Shortly after moving here, I tried to glimpse our house from a plane and realized I couldn’t see the houses for the trees. Arriving in my hometown of Los Angeles on that trip, I realized I couldn’t see the trees for the buildings, concrete and asphalt—an exaggeration, of course, but not much.

I distressed my mother by telling a friend that, by contrast, southern California looked bleak and bare. Mom had come from Kansas, and to her California was a verdant paradise.

Atlanta’s streets curve and wind and go up and down because they follow the old paths through the forest created by native peoples, at least according to a book on the history of Greater Atlanta Presbytery. This is the only thing I remember from reading that book, which may be revealing! Those paths have endured a very long time, in reality and in memory.

Saint Thomas More’s fictional Utopians held “that the careful observation of nature and the reflection on it and the reverence that arises from this is a kind of worship very pleasing to God.” This is one of the reasons why I appreciate Celtic spirituality, its “thin places” where and when we may glimpse heaven in earth.

Enya’s “Memory of Trees,” comes to mind, Joni Mitchell’s famous lyrics “You paved Paradise to put up a parking lot,” and of course, Mary Oliver:

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields…

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

In college, a tree on campus became my “axis mundi,” center of the world, as I sat beneath it reading texts for my religious studies courses.

As I write this, Wade is at a paper mill in Oregon in his role as an IT product manager for the paper products division of Georgia Pacific. He long ago reminded me that trees are a “renewable resource.” Companies like his go to great lengths to plant new trees where others have given up their lives for human products, otherwise they couldn’t remain in business.

This is true spiritually as well. We can’t spiritually “remain in business” if we forget the gifts of the rain forest as well as the tree outside my window.

As school children we learned the devout Catholic poet Joyce Kilmer’s famed lines, “Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.”

Blogs are written by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.

Today, go find a tree to hug.

I will be co-leading a contemplative retreat April 27-May 1, 2020 to which you are welcome: https://app.certain.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x3039640abcd

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Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

"Be Careful!"

Most readers know Christian writers’ penchant for trinitarian points, but that’s not why I am following “Be Still!” and “Listen Up!” with “Be Careful!” Rather, I am making the point that it’s not enough to practice silence and mindfulness in the spiritual life. The practice of love is required. “Love is the spiritual life,” Thomas Merton summed up in The Wisdom of the Desert.

“Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love,” the apostle Paul wrote of the spiritual life to the Corinthians. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus quoted Hebrew scriptures. And he told us to “love your enemies.” All of this takes practice.

My mom seldom let us leave the house without her admonition “Be careful!” But here I am not using it as simple self-preservation, though it also means care of the self, care of one’s own soul. The spiritual life means being “full of care,” care for others, care for our community, care for our environment. That requires stillness and listening and practice.

Stillness so we don’t project our own needs, anxieties, and desires onto others. Listening so we are better able to discern what is truly needed in a given situation. Practice so we remember “one size does not fit all,” in other words, one solution does not fit every circumstance. And, I would add, we are not the solution to every problem. Better yet to consider ourselves only a part of every solution.

I’m aware how common-sensical the foregoing is, but spiritual direction is often the practice of common sense.

I felt compelled to add this post about care because too many Christians view the contemplative life as a form of self-absorption, little better than the me-me-me narcissism too prevalent in our time. The opposite is the case. Christian contemplation is about one-ing oneself with God, with Jesus, to open their floodgates of love and compassion into the world. It affects how we view the migrant, the homeless, the sick, the indebted, the marginalized, and more. It prompts our help and directs how we vote.

Intimacy with the God of all means intimacy with all those from whom we might want to keep a safe distance. Being full of care in many ways is the opposite of being careful.

To conclude with Benedictine John Main’s description of a meditator’s spiritual growth in Letters from the Heart, p 20:

When people would ask how they could tell if they were making progress in meditation, since they were not supposed to analyze or assess their actual periods of meditation, the answer would usually be self-evident. A greater rootedness in self, a deeper emotional stability, a greater capacity to center in others and away from self were the signs of spiritual growth. To the Christian this could be expressed more simply as becoming more loving and more aware of love as the essential energy of life.

I took the above photo of a caution sign we passed while entering a mill in South Africa last summer. Think of all the places a sign like this could come in handy!

I will again be co-leading a 5-day contemplative retreat: April 27-May 1, 2020 in Cullman, Alabama, through the Spiritual Formation Program of Columbia Theological Seminary. It is open to the public.

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: https://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

Scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

"Listen Up!"

For fun, I asked Wade to take this staged photo 

of me "meditating" in South Africa last August!

Benedictine monk John Main has reminded me of something I first learned reading one of Gore Vidal’s historical novels. Reading silently to oneself became a thing only in recent centuries. “The spoken word is the essential medium for the communication of the gospel,” Main wrote in 1982, the year he died. He explains:

…To meditate is to listen to the word. In the early days of our literate culture, the link between the book and the spoken word was not broken—St. Benedict warns his monks not too read too loudly while at their private lectio; and St. Augustine was reading aloud from his Bible when his great awakening occurred. Today our books are too private experiences that rarely communicate themselves to others. --Letters from the Heart: Christian Monasticism and the Renewal of Community, p 19.

I did not intend to offer two spiritual imperatives in a row on this blog. Last week’s “Be Still!” was a reflection on another book of Main’s. I ran across both books on my shelves, having no idea how I came by them and why I haven’t read them till now. This second one has a bookmark from Newman Bookstore in Baltimore, so maybe I purchased them on a speaking trip there, one of my favorite cities. If someone gave them to me, I thank them!

In a conversation about speed reading with fellow English majors in college, I remember now retired Episcopal priest Gary Hall commenting how we needed to “hear” literature at least in our heads to get the full effect intended by an author, as we were not reading simply for information. Tom Boomershine has argued the same for scripture, coaching readers in the art of re-telling rather than simply reading a text. Oral transmission was the original way many of these stories and teachings were “traditioned,” or passed on, after all.

John Main suggests “that tradition becomes just a historical memory when it is not one with personal experience.” That’s why I often invite listeners to hear a biblical text as personally addressed to them.

One of my novice mistakes was asking the brothers at Mt. Calvary Retreat House not to read to retreatants from my then congregation during mealtimes, explaining that one of the reasons church members go on retreat is a chance to talk among themselves. I had no idea I was denying those church members the monastic experience of listening.

I’ve written that the most challenging monastic vow for me would be that of “obedience,” thinking little of how the word obedience comes from a word meaning “to listen,” to attend to what another is saying.

We use the phrase “listen up” when we want to convey something vital, something important, possibly urgent. How true this is also of things spiritual.

For Main, in his other book, Word into Silence, silence is needed to catch the deepest cries, ahas, and awes of our hearts, of our world, of our universe. He writes, “The qualities we need in this fundamental encounter between ourselves and the ground of our being are attentiveness and receptivity.” [p 34] Main later adds:

The understanding of prayer that makes it merely a matter of telling God what we want or need and reminding God of our sins of omission only compounds our alienation from reality. For this was the liberating message Jesus came to bring: “I bid you put away anxious thought about food and drink to keep you alive and clothes to cover your body. Surely life is more than food, the body more than clothes (Matthew 6:25).” [p 65]

Main writes that the Lord’s Prayer was “a series of rhythmic phrases in the original Aramaic,” thus memorable. I have found each phrase can serve as a centering word, a mantra. Mine lately has been “Thy kingdom come.”

Along with other centering prayer advocates, Main believes such a mantra can quiet the mind and welcome a “reverential silence.”

Please check out the related posts, “Be Still!” and “Be Careful!”

I will again be co-leading a 5-day contemplative retreat: April 27-May 1, 2020 in Cullman, Alabama, through the Spiritual Formation Program of Columbia Theological Seminary. It is open to the public.

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: https://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

Scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

"Be Still!"

Seattle waterfront. (crg)

Our mothers’ admonition to us as children is the first step of contemplation.

During my prayers the morning I write this, it occurred to me that, if we are still enough, we can sense the world breathe.

Doesn’t matter if we are under trees or skyscrapers, raining skies or starry nights. We can see or hear or feel the world breathe, and that breath is the breath of God.

God is not on a faraway planet, but within this planet, offering the breath of life to all creatures, to all creation. And to you, specifically and particularly.

Meditation aligns our breathing with God’s breathing.

To allow that, we need truly “free time.” Scholar comes from the Latin “schola” which means free time, or leisure time for learning. Free time allows us to become “scholars” of the spiritual.

Free time means letting go of all claims on us—in the words of the Lord’s Prayer, released from debts, trespasses, and sins, as well as those indebted to us, trespass our space and time, and sin against us. Also, we are free of obligations, expectations, and the day’s agenda. It requires an act of the imagination to do this, to offer the welcoming, existential prayer “thy kingdom come” and to believe Jesus’ words “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and “this day you will be with me in Paradise.”

“It is because this kingdom is established and is present within us that we can be made free of the limitations of language and thought,” in the words of Benedictine monk John Main in his 1980 book, Word into Silence. He explains of most Westerners,

We tend either to be alert or relaxed; rarely are the two states combined in most of us. But in meditation we come to experience ourselves as at one and the same time totally relaxed and totally alert. This stillness is not the stillness of sleep but rather of totally awakened concentration. [p 8]

I can’t find what translation of Romans 5:2 that Main is using, but I love the turn of phrase, “we have been allowed to enter the sphere of God’s grace.” [pp. 2-3] (I did an internet search for this translation and only found this wording in interpretations of “we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand.” NRSV)

The “sphere of God’s grace” releases us into free time. It forgives the past, and, in a sense, “forgives” the future. It allows a truly existential moment to bask in God’s presence, which is not other-worldly but here and now. We are Adam and Eve naked in the garden. We are Jesus, children being about our “Father’s/Mother’s business” in the Temple and beyond. Holy Spirit inspires us, overcoming divisions and dualities with unity and harmony.

As such we know ourselves, even as we yet puzzle over knowledge of God.

“Monks are essentially people whose first priority is practice rather than theory,” Main writes, “Such a monasticism…will be an inclusive rather than an exclusive movement in the Church. It will know that the experience has only to be really lived to be communicated. … It is the silence of monks that is their true eloquence.” [xi]

Be still, and attend to God breathing in your world and in your life.

Please check out the follow-up posts, “Listen Up!” and “Be Careful!”

I will again be co-leading a 5-day contemplative retreat: April 27-May 1, 2020 in Cullman, Alabama, through the Spiritual Formation Program of Columbia Theological Seminary. It is open to the public.

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: https://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

Scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

Compassion for Those We Envy

Icarus flies too close to the sun.

This post marks the eighth anniversary of beginning this blog. Thanks for reading!

You may know that the story of how I come to have a book is sometimes as important to me as the book itself. Cindy is part of our extended family, and every Christmas she gives me a few books that are appropriate to my interests. Given her limited resources, she finds them in bargain book shops, gently used or seemingly unread, slightly damaged or simply unwanted.

This year she gave me Thoughts on Virtue: Thoughts and Reflections from History’s Great Thinkers, Philip Larkin Collected Poems, Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable (whose cover boasts a handsome, hunky Icarus in midair), and the Dalai Lama’s An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life. The latter’s only wound seems to have been water damage that made the book’s jacket stick to the first pages.

The Dalai Lama is a favorite of mine, so that’s the book I’ve been reading. As is his wont, his teachings begin almost too simply before delving deep into the murky waters of human nature, though he might argue with such a phrase suggesting essence or identity that is unchanging.

Soon I came across a description of contemplation that answers many of its critics:

We must know how to pace ourselves down to the snail’s pace of profound contemplation while also ensuring that we do not forget our neighbor’s problem or that of the fish swimming in polluted oceans many thousands of miles away. [p54]

In this simple way, he reminds us that, though focus is a gift of a meditative way of life, it is always held in context with the bigger picture of a neighbor’s need or our environment’s plight. His “snail’s pace” made me think of a snail I wrote of in the introduction to the third section of my book of prayers, Coming Out to God:

A snail stretched its full length in a strenuous assault, climbing the tall picture window. Inside, those of us on retreat discussed our vision of the future church. A sadness had slipped into some hearts, as often happens the final day of a retreat. The common purpose, camaraderie, and caring intimacy that are experienced at such gatherings inevitably lead one to wonder, Why can’t it always be like this? Our visions of hope for the church painfully reminded us of our place—or lack thereof—in the present church, intensifying our letdown. Yes, we were on the downhill side of our mountaintop experience. Yet the slowly ascending snail, apparently unintimidated by the long vertical climb, offered hope for progress.  [p119]

When reading a sacred text, many of us know that meditating on a line or phrase or thought that disturbs us may be as helpful as reflecting on one that is pleasing. And so I soon found my “disturbing” text in the Dalai Lama’s elaboration of compassion:

It is not difficult for us to develop sympathy for a child in the hospital or an acquaintance mourning the death of a spouse. We must start to consider how to keep our hearts open toward those we would normally envy, those who enjoy fine lifestyles and wealth. [p105]

For me, that’s a tough one! The Psalmist had no qualms complaining to God:

For I was envious of the arrogant;

            I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

For they have no pain;

            their bodies are sound and sleek.

They are not in trouble as others are;

            they are not plagued like other people. …

Therefore the people turn and praise them,

            and find no fault in them. …

Such are the wicked;

            always at ease, they increase in riches.

All in vain I have kept my heart clean

            and washed my hands in innocence.

 [Psalm 73:3-5, 10, 12-13  NRSV]

Anyone who knows me knows also that I can’t exactly claim that I have always “kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.” But still, without impugning them as “evil,” why do professional athletes and performers, celebrities and CEOs live so well, while “do-gooders” scrape by?

Funny thing is, when I started writing this post, parenthetically referring to the depiction of a beautiful and handsome Icarus in the sky on the cover of Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable, I hadn’t yet thought that this could be an illustration of keeping “our hearts open toward those we would normally envy.” The myth of Icarus is that he flew too close to the sun, melting the wax on the wings that held him in flight. Many of those we envy “fly too close to the sun.”

“How the mighty have fallen,” cried David in a psalm of lament at the opening of 2 Samuel upon hearing of the killings of Saul and his son Jonathan. David had earlier resisted killing Saul when he found him sleeping, despite the humiliation, threats and attacks he had endured from him. The “ideal” king showed compassion.

Even for those who don’t suffer such a comeuppance as Icarus or Saul, the Dalai Lama believes we must hold open our compassion for all who share the human condition:

There is a certain irrationality in responding to injustice or harm with hostility. Our hatred has no physical effect on our enemies; it does not harm them. Rather, it is we who suffer the ill consequences of such overwhelming bitterness. [p111]

Remembering both the mighty and meek suffer may hold our hearts open for our sake if not for theirs.

Related Post: Praying for “Enemies”

Thanks to Toby Schmidt, cover designer of Bulfinch’s Mythology: The Age of Fable, which features the image of Icarus used above.

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: http://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

Scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

The Monasticism of the Closet

Free-standing closet from an art exhibit 

in the Berkeley Center of Yale Divinity School, 1973.

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet…,”Jesus advised in the KJV translation of Matthew 6:6. The NJB renders this “your private room.” I am told that this was a pantry, which would be at the center of a house of Jesus’ time. Like pantries today, it had no windows, so to keep stored food fresh and protected from critters, outside temperatures, and sunlight.

In his book, Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton wrote: “Some people may doubtless have a spontaneous gift for meditative prayer.” Beside it I wrote, “I think I do.”

This is more happenstance or grace than achievement on my part. I can go into a meditative state at will. I use it to begin my morning prayers, or as I approach a tense situation. I even use it when my blood pressure is being checked at the doctor’s office.

I once wrote that it may be sheer laziness on my part: I enjoy having to achieve nothing, to be at rest and at peace, given my busyness, schedule and work ethic. I also have described as difficult sitting with Henri Nouwen meditating on the Host for an hour, but I realize not because of the silence, rather because of the focus and the restless companionship of Henri. Centering Prayer has always seemed busy to me, having to return to one sacred word or phrase over and over again. I have found lectio divina helpful, though, but for the purpose of elucidating a text.

Merton writes that meditation is less about “method” and “system” than cultivating an “attitude,” an “outlook”: “faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust and joy.”

He warns against going simply by feelings, declaring, “A hard and apparently fruitless meditation may in fact be much more valuable than one that is easy, happy, enlightened and apparently a big success.” He suggests the movement of meditation follows the “rhythm of the Christian life, the passage from death to life in Christ. Sometimes prayer, meditation and contemplation are ‘death’—a kind of descent into our own nothingness, a recognition of helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion, ignorance.”

Thinking of my own contemplative proclivities, I have realized that my version of the monasticism of the desert is my monasticism of the closet, a version of Jesus’ pantry. It was the one place I was “safe” from shaming and bullying, as well as from the demanding and distracting world. I was carefully taught that God loved me; so my closet served as a retreat where I could rest in that love, a love that prompted my coming out in ministry with others. I feel for those who instead got the message that God was a God of wrath and hate that preferred they stay in the closet.

I felt safe enough in God’s love that God and Jesus were the first ones I came out to as gay. That did not mean our “conversations” were not filled with angst and fear and doubt and wrangling. But, thanks to my parents and my church and my Christian elementary and junior high school teachers and my love of scriptures, I grew in trust of God’s love. “When one is simply obeying God, a little effort goes a long way,” Merton writes.

He says that in meditative prayer, God “draws us out of darkness into light—[God] hears us, answers our prayers, recognizes our need, and grants us the help we require—if only by giving us more faith to believe that [God] can and will help us in [God’s] own time. This is already a sufficient answer. … A new realm opens up, that cannot be discovered otherwise: call it the ‘Kingdom of God.’ … But effort is necessary, enlightened, well-directed, and sustained.” (Emphasis Merton’s)

I was blessed with good spiritual directors, from my parents to my teachers, some of whom I only met through their writings.

Today’s quotes may be found in section III of Contemplative Prayer, pages 34-37.

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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.  

Misplaced Devotion?

Our nearly sixteen-year-old dog, Hobbes, has been going through a rough patch of aging for the past two months. I know she will die, just as I will, but the process is fraught with stress and uncertainty, save the final outcome. She refuses her normal food, prompting Wade and me to improvise meals that are inviting yet bland enough not to upset her system. Her intestinal discomfort and its manifestations have led to disruption of our daytime schedules and our night’s sleep, as well as requiring energy in cleaning up everything from bedding to floors, so all three of us are very fatigued.

We have become practicing if not exactly believing Buddhists: Hobbes moves very slowly these days, mindfully taking each step, as in a walking meditation. Wade and I mindfully attend every morsel of food she either takes or rejects, as well as being mindful of her other bodily functions or lack thereof.

An ultrasound has revealed a mass on the liver, probably cancer, but she is too old to safely survive surgery (assuming we could afford it). The morning I write this, she steadfastly refuses even to taste her freshly cooked morning meal.

That’s the background of sitting down for our morning prayers (Hobbes likes to join me on the deck.) and reading more of Julian of Norwich’s contemplation of Jesus and God.  I will soon have a post finished that does Julian justice, but today I became the rebellious reformer. Today it felt like her devotion is misplaced: Jesus does not need us to contemplate him, nor does God or the Trinity. There are people and species and ecosystems in my New York Times who are the ones in real need of our devotion. Them and our poor dog, which I immediately feel guilty comparing.

So I pulled out my John Leith, Introduction to the Reformed Tradition. I know, he  wasn’t exactly a progressive in most people’s eyes, but he seems more progressive than most conservatives these days. I wanted to remind myself of the Reformers’ reservations about contemplation.

Thomas Aquinas asserted, “[A human being's] ultimate felicity consists only in the contemplation of God.”

But Calvinist theologian H. Richard Niebuhr wrote: 

To call the vision [a human being’s] greatest good is to make contemplation, however prepared for by activity and however issuing in action, the final end of life; to put the sovereignty of God in the first place is to make obedient activity superior to contemplation, however much of theoria is necessary to action. The principle of vision suggests that the perfection of the object seen is loved above all else; the principle of the kingdom indicates that the reality and power of the being commanding obedience are primarily regarded. 

In other words, “Faith without works is dead.” Or, more bluntly, do we contemplate our navels and do nothing to help the world?

Julian, however, might take issue with this view of contemplation. Her idea seems to be that we become what we contemplate, that we are “oned” with God, a transformation that leads us to compassionate action. Such action then is not mere obedience; rather, it comes as a heartfelt expression of who we are, oned with God. Talk about at-one-ment!

I can’t see how compassion comes from obedience; it must come from transformation in the presence of absolute, all-embracing love.

Hobbes and Wade and I are cases in point: we have tamed and transformed the beast in one another by our love, loyalty, and actions. That’s what spiritual community is all about.

“What the world needs now…” is contemplation of the God of love.

I’ll be in New York City this weekend, June 5-7 at Fort Washington Collegiate Church leading two Saturday workshops, “Sex & the Body of Christ,” and “Coming Out as Sacrament,” and preaching on “Your Will Be Done” from the Lord’s Prayer during the 10:45 Sunday morning worship. For details, click here.

Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

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"All Theology Is a Kind of Birthday"

All theology is a kind of birthday

Each one who is born

Comes into the world as a question

For which old answers

Are not sufficient. 

Maybe you will do what I did when I read this first stanza of Thomas Merton’s “Untitled Poem.” Like a puzzling koan, it focuses my mind, causing me to read it again and again to glean its meanings before proceeding to the additional pages of the poem. Perhaps you too will stop at the words above, and that’s okay, because they’re much more profound than what I can offer.

Thomas Merton and Mary Oliver and the apostle Paul have joined me of late for morning prayers. I’ve read at least nine of Merton’s books, but this is my first exposure to his poetry. I’ve read occasional Oliver poems, but not a lifetime collection. I’m reading them for a Columbia Seminary Spiritual Formation weekend course on Christian Poetry and the Christian Journey: Illumination and Mysticism in Blake, Hopkins, Merton, Levertov, and Oliver that I will be attending later this month.

And I’m reading Paul because I created morning and evening prayers for the program’s recent Spiritual Immersion course, and the professor discussing New Testament spirituality suggested using liturgical elements from Colossians and Philippians, and that got me started again on Paul.

Though Tom and Mary seem to inhabit the same countryside, bringing Tom, Mary, and Paul into dialogue is only possible, perhaps, in meditation. All can be inscrutable (at least to me), and all can create golden one-liners and inspiring spiritual metaphors. Mary has always seemed free to me, borrowing from nature as much or more than from tradition, but Tom and Paul came to their freedom later in life.

Tom’s freedom makes his later poetry more accessible to me, his spirituality broader and more welcoming. Paul’s freedom makes his spirituality soar beyond the confines of his own traditional religion, and I better realize why the mystical Christ seems so important to him—a mythologized Christ helped him bust free from his religious rigidity.

My own experience is the opposite of Paul’s: I needed to bust free from the religious rigidity of a mythologized Christ sacrificed for sins to reclaim the life and teachings and belovedness of Jesus. “For freedom Christ has set us free.” Paul’s words about Christ are also true for me about Jesus. Yet at the same time, I do love Paul’s understandings of our unity with Christ and our spiritual community as Christ’s body, indivisible by condition or culture, sharing burdens and joys with one another, and sharing Christ’s spiritual inheritance as God’s children.

Mary Oliver best captures what I hope from life in these words from her poems “When Death Comes” and “October”: 

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited the world.

…

Look, I want to love this world

as though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get

to be alive

and know it.

Posts about 9/11 in the U.S. on today’s anniversary:

9/11: When We Were One

Where Is God?

A post about Chile on today’s 40^th anniversary of their 9/11 coup in 1973:

Redeemed from the Pit

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC. Your donations by mail or credit card are its only means of support, click here. Thank you!

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite. Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com. 

Free Time

Perhaps nothing sounds better on a schedule than “free time.” But it can be a source of anxiety for many—how will I fill up that time? Will I be bored? Will the moments be wasted? What am I to do?

To be honest, though I have no problem spending leisure time with friends, when alone I have difficulty with leisure time. I like to work, I like to be constructive, I like to do things, I like to grow. But the idea of free time does sound luxurious. I love the currently popular song by Bruno Mars, “Today I Don’t Feel Like Doing Anything.” I wish I could live its ideal!

In a video I use during my retreats on Henri Nouwen, Henri talks about how proud we are of being “busy, busy, busy,” buzzing these words like a bee! We brag about it to others, “Oh yes, I’m very busy.” I’ve met clergy who needed to go into detail about how busy they were to counter the misconception that they only work one hour per week! Henri describes our need to be “occupied,” or if not occupied, “preoccupied,” which he jokes as “occupying a space before you even get there”!

This tension between work and idleness is why I begin my workday with morning prayers. There’s a lazy part of me that is attracted to a time when I don’t have to accomplish anything, and so this is a seductive way to begin my workday. Sure, I read various things during that time, but the goal is to spend time in reflection, meditation, and prayer. It can last anywhere from five minutes to two hours, depending on the day’s agenda.

A counseling professor in seminary told of being assigned a child by the courts for therapy. Each visit, the kid said nothing, but wandered around the office looking at things in silence. In frustration, the professor told the child that he would ask the courts to assign another therapist. The child cried, “But I like coming here!” Astonished, the therapist asked why. “You’re the only adult who leaves me alone,” the child replied.

Free time is perhaps the only time that leaves us alone. One possible origin of “scholar” is a word that means “leisure, rest, or free time.” Though most of us worked our way through various schools, we understand that luxury of having been students. I’ve never stopped being a student, though I did not go into academia as a vocation. And maybe that’s partly why I didn’t—I didn’t want my “free time” regulated, occupied, or preoccupied.

Related posts: 

Why Progressive Christians Need Contemplation

Vacation and Vocation

The Thoughtful Pause

Upcoming Henri Nouwen events led by Chris Glaser:

October 12 in Pasadena, CA:

From the Heart: The Spirituality of Henri Nouwen

November 9 in Dallas, TX:

The Wounded Healer vs. Getting Hooked in Our Wounds—A Retreat for Clergy

January 10, 2014 in Seattle, WA:

Henri Nouwen: Forgiveness, Fruitfulness, and Fun

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC. Your donations by mail or credit card are its only means of support. Thank you!

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite. Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.