2nd Saturday of Lent

"Light and day is more than you'll say, cause all my feelings are more than I can let by, or not, more than you've got, just follow the day follow the day and reach for the SUN!"
The Polyphonic Spree

Since its Saturday I thought I would lighten things up with a story.

A couple of years ago the family, (two four year olds, Mom and Dad) took a trip to Kansas City to attend the baptism of our god daughter. It was a very long car ride punctuated by an intense Kansas thunderstorm just east of Wichita. On the way we listenednd to lots of music, but the overwhelming favorite song was "Light and Day" by a band called the Polyphonic Spree. If you haven't heard them before, it is impossible to listen to the Spree and not have a smile on your face. They are very infectious.

So here we are driving along in the middle of Kansas listening to the song when Will says, "I really like singing that song, play it again."

"You bet" I said, "Why do you like it so much."

"Its the song I think they sing in heaven to make the sun come out." Will replied.

True story.

Today I hope that you take a moment and sing a song that they sing in heaven. I guarantee the sun will come out.

Walter

Friday of the First Week of Lent

"Jennie, God also made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure. “ Eric Lyddle in the movie Chariots of Fire.

I think we could do a whole Lenten Season’s worth of meditations on Chariots of Fire, and from just this one line comes a road map to our call and being able to say “all is well.” Eric’s sister is concerned that his running is separating him from his work as a missionary. Eric tries to explain to his concerned sister why he must, for a little while longer, pursue his running. For those of you who don’t know the story or seen the movie, I will not spoil the ending. Also, Walter and I might come back to the movie sometime. So let’s for the next few minutes focus on the line -- “...when I run, I feel his pleasure.”

When have you felt God’s pleasure?

Very few of us are Olympians, world renowned concert pianists, or so clear in our call, as Eric Little.

I suspect Mother Theresa felt God’s pleasure as she worked with the poorest of poor. Great athletes and artists may “feel his pleasure” often, I suspect , without realizing what they are feeling.

Again, we are not all possessed with visible or evident talents, although I believe we all have a “gift.” The question for us then as we search for this “gift” is when do “we feel God’s pleasure?”

A few examples:

The other day in church I sat close to a woman who sang with a beautiful, but untrained voice. It did not matter that she wasn’t in the choir, she recognized the classic hymn and sang the lyrics with pure joy. Clearly, she was feeling God’s pleasure and with her enthusiasm she infected all of us around her with her joy and love of the song. Even I started singing.

I had a friend, a gifted surgeon, who in his later years had to give up surgery. In his prime he had been given a talent by God that he used to heal. After his skills faded, he retired, and he began to garden. Soon he expanded his garden to the grounds of his church, where every day he would show up planting, mulching, weeding, etc. Perhaps the last conversation I had with him I asked him why he didn’t just play golf or travel. He actually used these words, “when I garden, I feel God’s pleasure.”

The question for many of us is not an easy one to ask or be able to answer. My surgeon friend who felt God’s pleasure in healing for many years only to have time and the erosion of his skills make that feeling a memory; he found it again in caring for the gardens and grounds of his Church. We may also need to find “his pleasure” in something new and unexpected.

Each answer to the question is individual, and I suspect for many may contains a few surprises. However, I am convinced that asking the question is setting on the right path, and if we listen long and hard enough God will let us know what to do to “feel his pleasure.”

Webb

2nd Thursday in Lent

"With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy,We see into the life of things." William Wordsworth Longfellow

Sometimes the most difficult thing in the world is to find the quiet. The space and the time where you are completely alone with your thoughts. For me, with two kids, a job, two dogs, a house, two cars, and a city full of traffic and sports radio, quiet is miles and miles away.

Dad wrote yesterday about the importance of finding solitude, a place alone with your thoughts. Longfellow speaks about the same thing. A quiet eye lets us see into the life of things, but where do we find the quiet? Where do we find that moment alone with God?

In the face of all the noise that the world presents to us, maybe the quiet we seek isn't a place or time of the day. May quiet is in our mind. It's the point when we stop and shut out the noise of the world. It can happen at work, or in traffic, or in the middle of the vicious storm. It is the point when we pause and open our ears to God. When we listen and hear the words of God. "I am always here with you. I will never abandon you. Trust in me and you shall not want."

Walter

Wednesday of the First Week in Lent

He (Saul) waited seven days, the time appointed by Samuel, but Samuel did not come.... And he (Saul) offered the burnt offering.... Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly; you have not kept the commandment of the Lord.... The Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever, but now your kingdom will not continue....” 1Samuel 13: 8-15.

Saul gets a little impatient and forever loses his kingdom, for himself and his heirs. A harsh lesson wouldn’t you say? I was a little impatient on Monday trying to find the right meditation, and when it didn’t just come right out, I wrote something that wasn’t what I wanted. I got in a hurry. I forgot one of the basic lessons of Lenten meditations. I needed to take the time in solitude to think and let the my thoughts coalesce and simply listen. It is easy these days to be impatient. We live in a culture that accelerates the number of things we are supposed to do in a day. It seems that every time-saving device is really a tool for others to put more demand on our time.

A wonderful friend explained to me that sitting in the quiet gathering one’s thoughts, listening for inspiration was ”okay.” He said, “ Do you think anyone walked by Einstein sitting in his study with his eyes closed thought, ‘what a waste? Why isn’t he doing something?’ No, they would say, ‘Be quiet, Mr. Einstein is thinking.”

Now I am neither Einstein nor Saul, but I know that Lent teaches us, if we practice, the value of quiet reflection. It cannot be rushed or distracted. The quiet prepares us for God’s call, and brings us a stillness to our lives. This Lent take time to immerse yourself in the Peace of God and wait patiently. It will be like you have “dipped your toes in magic waters.”

Webb

1st Tuesday of Lent

"The last temptation is the greatest treason:To do the right deed for the wrong reason." - T. S. Eliot

"All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:One time it was a woman’s face, or worseThe seeming needs of my fool-driven land;Now nothing but comes readier to the handThan this accustomed toil." William Butler Yeats

As everyone learned in Sunday school, Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights and endured the temptation of the devil. That's where the Lenten season comes from. At a Catholic high school in the middle of the bible belt south, the terrible consequenses of the temptation of sin were pounded into my head every day that I can remember.

Sometimes we are tempted to sin, sometimes to despair, and sometimes to suceed is a temptation itself. Father Jay, the rector at my church, describes temptation as "those things which we feel we can do without God's help." He is right. The basic foundation of temptation, the symbolic temptation in the Garden of Eden, is the desire to be like God.

On the mountain, the devil tempted Jesus with rule over the earth. He tempted him to shed his humanity and take on the power of God. And when we are tempted, whether it is a simple temptation to eat an extra peice of cheesecake or a great temptation like manipulating earnings to raise a stock price, ultimately, the arguement in your head is the same. The voice of temptation says, "You don't need God, you can do this and be like god". The voice of God says "You do not need this, I will provide all that you need."

Ask yourself, what tempts you? Why do you allow it to tempt you when God is present to give you everything you need?

- Walter

Monday of the First Week in Lent

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. Emerson

Walter called and asked that I take his turn so he could get his wife off to San Diego. Believe me I will call on him under similar circumstances. So I scrambled to my quote books, etc. and drew an absolute blank. I am tempted to talk about the Oscars, but having been to the store to buy popcorn and already positioning my chair in front of the TV prepared to comment on dresses, hairdo’s, etc., so I can hardly wax eloquently about our materialistic society. It is too early to talk about March Madness. So, I apologize with being left with my rambling.

We are all disturbed with the conflicts around the world, and if you are like me you don’t quite understand. I believe Lincoln understood that he could not heal a nation without eliminating the injustice ( human slavery) that permeated every decision of its government. I believe Gandhi believed India could not become a nation until Hindu and Muslim could co-exist. ( Forgive me for my over-simplifications.) And speaking of over simplifications, the greatest thought is simply to love your neighbor, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and care for the sick. This thought’s truth continues despite individual misinterpretations through out the ages, and debates on whose responsibility this simple truth falls.

This Lenten season is for the spiritual part of each one of us. Within each of us is a strength beyond any material force.

Earlier meditation

Several have asked I post the meditation that I wrote that was published in St. John's meditations. Thank you for the nice comments. Webb

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope,
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing: wait without
love
for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. T.S. Elliot



In the quiet of our Lenten meditations we wait and we listen for God’s guidance in our lives. T.S. Elliot’s suggests that we wait without any thought of what will come. An expert in meditation can probably accomplish this easily, but in the quiet of my room my brain quickly fills with the very thoughts T.S. Elliot warns – hope and love of the wrong things.

David Whyte, in his work The Heart Aroused, Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, suggests that if we have little idea on what we really need to continue on our road to God that we learn to say a firm no to those things we know will lead to loss of vitality. He calls it the via negativa the discipline of saying no when we have as yet no clarity about those things to which we can say yes. He believes that in the continued utterance of no is the profound faith that the yes will appear. Whyte says we create an energetic vacuum into which something we recognize can appear. Eventually appearing like an old and loving memory, it becomes more recognizable and real for its long absence.

Many of us during Lent say no to something. For forty days we unwittingly travel the via negativa. For others like T.S. Elliot, Lent may simply be a time when we learn to wait without hoping or loving the wrong thing. The Lenten season offers many paths, but each journey leads us to a clarity of God’s will for each and every one of us, and how may we bud and blossom in God’s time.