A New Frontier

Yesterday (literally!) I thought I had nothing new to give you, but then I realized I did have something old to offer, the wisdom of the poet Kahlil Gibran. My mother loved reading his books in the sixties and I’ve been reading her copy of Mirrors of the Soul, translated with biographical notes by Joseph Sheban and published by the Philosophical Library of New York in 1965. It’s amazing to me how relevant it is today.

In seminary I had a friend from Lebanon who could not understand why Gibran was so popular in the United States. “There are better poets in Lebanon,” he said frankly. But reading this particular book explains it to me. He immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was a teenager, though he returned to Lebanon for his higher education. No doubt being “bicontinental” as well as located in New York City gave him the exposure needed in the publishing world.

This book begins with a quote of Gibran that speaks to our need to listen to our own hearts and the heart of the universe:

My soul is my counsel and has taught me to give ear to the voices which are created neither by tongues nor uttered by throats.

Before my soul became my counsel, I was dull, and weak of hearing, reflecting only upon the tumult and the cry. But, now, I can listen to silence with serenity and can hear in the silence the hymns of ages chanting exaltation to the sky and revealing the secrets of eternity.

How often we only attend to “the tumult and the cry” rather than “the hymns of [the] ages”!

Sheban contends that Gibran was “a rebel, but only against ceremonial practices,” while familiarizing himself with a wide range of spiritual teachers, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Confucian, non-religious philosophers, and more. In one of his stories in Arabic, “Kahlil the Heretic,” a novice urges his monastic community to go out and serve the people, saying,

“The hardships we shall encounter among the people shall be more sanctifying and more exalting than the ease and serenity we accept in this place. The sympathy that touches a neighbor’s heart is greater than virtue practiced unseen in this convent. A word of compassion for the weak, the criminal and the sinner is more magnificent than long, empty prayers droned in the temple.”

Of course, the novice in the story is driven from the monastery!

Another character from another story, “John the Madman,” prays, “Come again, O Jesus, to drive the vendors of thy faith from thy sacred temple.”

Finally, these excerpts from Kahlil Gibran’s essay entitled “The New Frontier” written a hundred years ago may have a familiar ring and relevant reverberations for our time:

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert.

Are you a merchant utilizing the need of society for the necessities of life for monopoly and exorbitant profit? Or a sincere, hard-working and diligent person facilitating the exchange between the weaver and the farmer, charging a reasonable profit as a middleman between supply and demand? If you are the first, then you are a criminal whether you live in a palace or a prison. If you are the second, then you are a charitable person whether you are thanked or denounced by the people.

Are you a religious leader, weaving for your body a gown out of the ignorance of the people, fashioning a crown out of the simplicity of their hearts and pretending to hate the devil merely to live upon his income? Or are you a devout and a pious person who sees in the piety of the individual the foundation for a progressive nation, and who can see through a profound search in the depth of one’s own soul a ladder to the eternal soul that directs the world?

If you are the first, then you are a heretic, a disbeliever in God even if you fast at day and pray by night. If you are the second, then you are a violet in the garden of truth even though its fragrance is lost upon the nostrils of humanity or whether its aroma rises into that rare air where the fragrance of flowers is preserved. …

Are you a governor who denigrates himself before those who appoint him and denigrates those whom he is to govern, who never raises a hand unless it is to reach into pockets and who does not take a step unless it is for greed? Or are you the faithful servant who serves only the welfare of the people?

If you are the first, then, then you are as a tare in the threshing floor of the nation; and if the second, then you are a blessing upon its granaries.

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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. Photo from California desert by Chris. 

My Monastery

A recent selfie!

The day I write this, I realized during my morning prayers that they are my entrance to “my” monastic community. I put “my” in quotes because the community in which I’ve been blessed to participate has never been mine alone, but that of generations of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Native peoples, Celtic peoples, and more—past, present, and future, from every people and culture.

And, in my heart, I join you who read this or who have read anything I’ve written, because you are a part of me as I am a part of you. And you too enjoy the same contemplative community whenever possible.

I guess this all began yesterday afternoon as I went through “Mom’s box” of my life’s souvenirs. Mom saved things that I had forgotten I had written and published, as well as articles about my work and announcements about presentations I had forgotten. And she included a file of my stuff labelled “Chris” in Dad’s handwriting, indicating he had done likewise.

Reading and writing words has been my way into a spiritual community vaster than I ever imagined when I was a child. And it has been my way into discovering a God grander than could ever be “captured” by mere words, even those of the Bible.

As happened this morning, my morning prayers are often a means of continuing conversion and more comprehensive understanding, providing continuity to my (and our) disparate experiences. I continue reflection begun several weeks ago on Benedictine John Main’s Letters from the Heart. He writes of the monastic experience:

More and more it will fulfill its prophetic role by living in the cities where the experience of community and of spirit are all but lost. There, in these modern deserts, it will bloom by the proof of the power of faith and absolute generosity to achieve the impossible in liberty of spirit. “Let the wilderness and thirsty land be glad; Let the desert rejoice and burst into flower” (Isaiah 35:1). [ p 75]

I thought of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the early Christian monastics who went off into the wilderness to pray. Now we, in our own “deserts,” may hear the call to take what I call in my retreats “monastic moments,” opportunities to look inward, to listen to our own hearts, undistracted.

Of visitors to his monastery, Main writes,

They think they will find God in the terms they have imagined until then. But instead they first find themselves—recognized, known, and inexplicably loved. And because of that experience their expectations begin to change. They no longer seek a God of their own imagining. Instead, they begin to expand in the presence of the God they know to be beyond thought or image. [p 72]

And, he adds, “They now realize that God is seeking them. They must simply be still and allow themselves to be found.” [p 72-73]

We are called, Main says, to shape a community where others may also find their way, at the same time recognizing it is not “ours” but God’s. He correctly cites Bonhoeffer’s warning that an idealistic view of community leads only to disappointment, either in God, in others, or in oneself. The Rule of Saint Benedict describes the essence of Christian community as loving people as they are.

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/

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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.

Lauds and Lost

A week ago today I walked toward the St. Bernard Abbey Church for 6 a.m. lauds, the morning service of the Benedictine monastery in Cullman, Alabama hosting a weeklong men’s monastic retreat led by Carl McColman under the auspices of the Spiritual Formation Program of Columbia Theological Seminary.

Then I saw the sun’s first rays midst the mists arising from the pond just to the left of the doors I approached, casting in profile an empty, inviting bench on its shore, as in the picture above, taken the next morning when the mists were not quite as billowy. Mists are a mystical draw for many, accounting for the covers of many books on the spiritual life, including my own Communion of Life, maybe because mist is iconic for divine mystery and metaphor for the unfathomable.

Surrounded by greenery of trees and shrubs and grasses, I sat on the bench awaiting the full penetration through these mists of the light of the red morning sun on the horizon beneath an otherwise clear blue sky.  I heard the day’s opening praise of diverse birds and insects: warbling, chirping, quacking, whooping, thrumming, buzzing, whirring, shrieking, as well as the occasional plip-plop from some unseen and unknown water creatures.

The incense of the day was a blend of recently cut grass, distant manure, brackish water, wisteria, and dewy freshness. I looked down at my feet to discover a mosaic of moss, roots, sandy soil, seed casings, stones, grass, and shimmering water. I took deep breaths not only with my lungs but with all of my senses.

O Lord, open thou my lips.

And my mouth shall show forth thy praise.

The next morning during our full day of silence I went for a run through the forests of the monastery’s extensive grounds. I began near the pond as a long, thick snake quickly slithered across my path from shore to shrubs, my first sign of danger on the grounds. For the remainder of my run, I carefully scanned the path in front of me and avoided planting my feet in piles of leaves or thick grasses that might conceal another unwanted surprise.

The paths were wide and shady, and seemed well-marked, giving me a false sense of confidence. Monastic modesty prevented stripping off my shirt till I was well into the woods. Passing two fellow retreatants further assured me that these trails were friendly. Following “The Big Loop,” I assumed it would provide an ample run as well as a safe return to civilization, emboldening me to take a narrower side path that diverged from the main trail.

But that was not my first mistake.

My first mistake was not looking at the map of the trails provided in the guest house. I’ve walked and run solo many a trail, from my days in a junior high nestled among foothills to high school and college walks, hikes, and runs on the cliffs, beaches, mountains, and deserts of California, and since, in multiple venues that travels and speaking trips have afforded. But as I passed again and again the same landmarks, uncertain where to turn or run, I grimly noted the irony that this is also what happens in the spiritual life. We fail to check the maps others have provided.

I was lost.

Adding to the challenge was one stretch of road I passed along several times where a buzzing bee or wasp, presumably protecting a nearby hive or nest, kept bumping into me, buzzing my face, shoulders, and chest. The last time I was stung, though by an African hornet, my entire body broke out in scary, reptilian scale-like hives, rushed to a hospital by an EMS unit. My EpiPen was home in Atlanta. I used my t-shirt to keep brushing it away, careful not to do so violently enough to prompt it to sting, ultimately sprinting for all I was worth each time I passed.

I knew I had to go downhill, but the rivulets where waters had run were misleading, as were the up-and-down trails. The main stream was my clue to the flatlands, but I was not always beside it. I had (unintentionally) been running more than two hours, so the sun was directly overhead, unable to give me direction. Earlier I had followed a trail labeled “Farm Road,” which I presumed led to the farm on the grounds of the monastery, but I had been dissuaded to pursue it by an official-looking locked gate with no pedestrian access through or around it.

Now I was trying to find that gate again, but I couldn’t quite remember where I had passed it. Intuition told me that road would lead me home.

I broke my silence and said loudly, “Can anybody hear me?” hoping that someone else was on one of the nearby trails. In a whisper I prayed, “Please God help me!”

O God, make speed to save us.

O Lord, make haste to help us.

Following a counter-intuitive urge, I went a different way on this road too often travelled and stumbled onto the gate again. This time I ignored its authority, climbed it and ran further down the road. Soon I was rewarded by the sound of a passing car. I came upon a highway, and across a field, saw three people consulting over farm equipment. One of them crossed the field to give me directions. I was four miles from the monastery.

I began running, but fearful of dehydration, also thumbed for a ride. Though my shirt was back on, how many people want to pick up a sweaty runner? Finally a local man looking for work offered me a ride. Though the evidence was clear he enjoyed smoking, my gasping lungs were grateful he chose not to. After driving me deep into the monastery grounds, out of his way, he offered me his hand and said his name was Lance Jones. I told him I would pray he finds a job. 

I will never forget his name.

Because we were still observing silence, I went directly to lunch unable immediately to tell my companions about my fearful adventure. No one knew I had been lost. One of my fears had been that, when I was finally missed, they would have to waste time to find me.

O God, come to my assistance.

And my mouth shall show forth thy praise.

+ + +

I will be guest preacher during this coming Sunday’s 11 a.m. worship of Ormewood Park Presbyterian Church in Atlanta.

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Finding Walden Where You Are

I offer an excerpt from my paper for a Christian Poetry weekend course I recently took through the Spiritual Formation program of Columbia Seminary. The paper was to be about one’s own spiritual pilgrimage. 

Writing is my central spiritual discipline. Kathleen Norris considers writing her form of lectio divina. This is where and when and how I figure out the why and the who. The word “saunter” is believed to come from the practice of spiritual pilgrims meandering here and there on their way to holy sites, and that’s what I do, in words, hoping that I might happen onto a sacred place or two in the process, perhaps encounter God, or the Word made flesh, or the Spirit’s pentecostal gift.

I do not outline beforehand, I do not “plan” the outcome, but “wait for the Lord” and the serendipitous gifts of water from rock, manna from sky, quails overhead, a still, small voice or “the sound of sheer silence,” the providential beauty of lilies, the promised land and commonwealth of God, the birthpangs of all creation.

Like Emily Dickinson, I don’t need to go somewhere to witness these wonders—I experience them in my room, in my case, a tiny office off the garage with a window to see outside. I identify with Mary Oliver’s reaction to friends suggesting she visit Walden, in her poem of that name.  I checked Mapquest and found she lives just three hours from Thoreau’s paradise, the transcendentalist prophet whom Oliver characterizes:

They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:

How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!

She resists making the trip, realizing she can do so in her imagination, reminded by his book of that name:

Going to Walden is not so easy a thing

As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult

Trick of living, and finding it where you are.

I understand her resistance to friends’ suggestions she go there, because some of my friends have suggested I visit the monastery in nearby Conyers, when indeed, I live in some ways a more monastic lifestyle than if I had been a monk! Such is the life of the writer, the self-employed, those who work from home. 

And besides, as I tell those attending my workshops and retreats, the “trick” is finding Walden “where you are,” finding the contemplative life within one’s own space and schedule and work.

Progressive Christian Reflections is an authorized Emerging Ministry of MCC supported solely by readers. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you!

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.

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