Peace of Mind

Plettenberg Bay, South Africa, photo (c) 2018 by Wade T. Jones

In recent troubles and dark days, personal and political, my peace of mind has been “saved” by reading one poem a day by J. Barrie Shepherd, an octogenarian retired Presbyterian pastor but unretired author who this summer sent me his “chapbook” (a small collection of poetry) entitled, If You Don’t Have Twenty Minutes Don’t Stop! The title is a reference to a sign on Chebeague Island off the coast of Maine that graced the garage door of an inveterate storyteller who loved chatting people up.

After floundering for morning prayer reading material following the eventually overwhelming Tao of Physics, which regular readers will remember, I chose Barrie’s brief book of poetry. Initially I read several poems at a time, but soon realized contemplation was better served by reading only one per day. “Be here now!” each poem urged, as poems tend to do, much like pericopes of scripture, exactly what I needed as Wade and I dealt with the vicissitudes of a friend dealing with mental health and addiction issues, even as we in the United States deal daily with a leader like that in our government.

Focusing on one-a-day made me think of that wonderful Psalm 131 (NJB):

Yahweh, my heart is not haughty,

            I do not set my sights too high.

I have taken no part in great affairs,

            in wonders beyond my scope.

No, I hold myself in quiet and silence,

            like a little child in its mother’s arms,

            like a little child, so I keep myself.

Let [us] hope in Yahweh

            henceforth and for ever.

Barrie and I have exchanged emails from time to time about this blog, and I am grateful to have his encouragement and readership. I have told him that his books of poetic meditations helped me, early in life, to maintain a steady prayer life. Knowing I had one of his books made me eager to make time in my morning routine to read and reflect and pray. His gifts and those of others whose meditations I have used inspired my own books of meditations and prayers, including this blog to encourage progressive Christians to take time for contemplation.

Longtime readers will remember that I began this blog when I was told by publishers that there was no market for meditation books for progressive Christians because we supposedly don’t take time for contemplation! My first publisher told me the same thing about LGBT Christians when I wrote Coming Out to God: Prayers for Lesbians and Gay Men, Their Families and Friends. Publication of those prayers by another publisher helped create a market, and then my first publisher asked me to write a daily med book for LGBT Christians, which I entitled The Word Is Out.

As we approach and begin a new year and through the season of Epiphany, I’ve decided to  re-present some of my writings for you in the hopes that they will have the same effect Barrie’s poems have had on me during the last several weeks, offering you peace of mind. I begin with Day 10 of Coming Out to God, a book whose prayers are broken into phrases not with any poetic pretensions but to slow the reader down:

All-embracing Spirit,

I don’t know what to say to you today.

It’s like sharing a meal in silence with a friend,

or dropping wordlessly exhausted once home from work.

I do not believe

I will be saved by my words,

though I usually feel compelled

to say them.

I do believe, God,

your grace is sufficient

to save me

even if I were silent.

I believe

I need times

to express your grace

in words.

I also believe

I need times

to experience your grace

in silence.

Intimate Spirit, today

I simply want to be in your presence.

Speak to me in this silence,

and let this silence speak to me.

Copies of either J. Barrie Shepherd’s If You Don’t Have Twenty Minutes Don’t Stop! or his latest chapbook, A Piper Shores Christmas may be purchased @ $10 + $2 shipping by writing: J. Barrie Shepherd, 15 Piper Road, Apt K325, Scarborough, ME 04074. Proceeds go to charities. (Remember, there are twelve days of Christmas to use the latter chapbook!) You may also write him at barrieshep@aol.com. 

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Copyright © 2018 and Coming Out to God copyright © 1991 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

"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.