How Subversive Was Jesus?

Pilate then called together the chief priests, the leaders, and the people, and said to them,…“I have examined Jesus in your presence and have not found him guilty of any of your charges…. I will therefore have him flogged and release him.” Then they all shouted out together, “Away with that fellow! Release Barabbas for us!” (Barabbas had been put in prison for an insurrection that had taken place in the city, and for murder.) (Luke 23:13-19)

I cringe a little when people describe Jesus as a revolutionary. The word is so easily used to justify a particular agenda that may—or may not—have to do with Jesus.

Then I run across stories like this one.

From what I have seen and read, Jesus’ presence in Jerusalem came at a time of extremely high tension between the Jews and their Roman occupiers. To make matters worse, Passover week, during which these events took place, inevitably brought hordes of worshippers from all over Israel. Hordes mean instability; the slightest altercation could erupt in chaos—and, in response, a Roman crackdown.

Yet when Pilate (according to custom) gave them a choice of one prisoner to release in honor of the Passover, the religious leaders chose an insurrectionist and a murderer—the very person to ignite the tinderbox of contemporary Jerusalem—instead of Jesus.

Can you imagine how much they must have feared Jesus?

And why? True, he had caused a frightening stir since his entry into the city. Many in the Passover crowds were loudly hailing him as a king who would throw off the Romans. He entered the temple courts and overturned the tables of the moneychangers. But he also spent time quietly teaching in that same temple. More frightening than a murderer with a record of insurrection? Why?

Maybe it wasn’t Jesus’ actions. Maybe it was his words.

We don’t know whether Barabbas had a vision, but Jesus did: what he called “the kingdom of God.” It described a way to transformation, a turning to God from the inside out and a concern for the poor and the everyday. As he articulated this kingdom, he could not help but challenge the authorities around him, who (if the New Testament account is accurate) had lost that spirit in favor of “ritual correctness” and the status quo. In today’s parlance, he spoke truth to power.

An insurrectionist without vision can be suppressed with brute force. A vision is much harder to quash. So they chose Barabbas.

The kicker, of course, is that Jesus’ vision is just as relevant, and as dangerous, today. All too often, our leaders favor the status quo, or tinker at the edges, and avoid looking at transformation. The current debate over health care is the perfect example: while a single-payer system—a complete transformation of the current situation—might prove the best option, no one wants to put it forward because of vested interests.

I don’t see the Jesus of the New Testament wanting to replace Judaism so much as revive it. That’s more evolutionary than revolutionary. Even so, his vision proved too hot to handle; in many ways, it still is. And yet, in a world that desperately needs transformation, how can we not take up his vision once again?

When We Give Up Our Lives

One of the monks at Holy Cross Monastery was telling me about his work with an Episcopal parish in the eastern U.S. He had worked with members to deepen the parish’s spirituality and reflect on its future. I can imagine hundreds of churches needing this kind of help, and I asked him if he ever thought about offering his services elsewhere. “No,” he replied with a smile, “because then I would no longer be a Benedictine.”

He’s right. As part of their vows, the Holy Cross monks pledge themselves to the Benedictine value of a balanced life. This means, in essence, that they must refrain from taking on too much because they have given up their lives to something else, something larger than themselves.

But this “living for something else” isn’t just for monks. It’s really for all of us who seek God. And it can be quite the countercultural adventure.

In what way? Well, a life lived for something else runs us afoul of many cultural expectations. Take the simple idea that if you do something well, you should do more of it. That makes for an excellent business strategy and a solid path to career success. But what if your “something else” pushes back? If you have vowed to live a balanced life, as our monk in the example above, you can’t always do more, no matter how well you do it.

Or consider the value of planning. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” goes the old maxim. Every company worth its salt has charted out where it wants to be in one year, three year, five years. But what if your “something else” pushes back? You can plan all you want, but God may steer you otherwise. In our “something else,” we have another—larger—consideration, and it may take us in directions we don’t fully understand. No wonder Jesus said of the Divine Spirit, “The wind blows where it will, and you can hear the sound of it, but do not know from whence it comes or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

Five years ago, I was passionate about my advertising career and happy to keep expanding it according to plan. But when I became an associate at Holy Cross—essentially pledging myself more fully to God—it dislodged the underpinnings of my life and raised a whole host of questions. Now I’m focusing a large chunk of my time on writing about spirituality, when that vocation may net me no income at all.

So why on earth engage “something else” if it’s so danged disruptive? Because a life out of our hands, and in the hands of the Divine, is much richer for us and more valuable for the world. By giving up control, we can let go our fears and vested interests and sacred cows—the things that often hold us back from becoming fully ourselves. We begin to realize that it’s not about me, but about we—which frees us to love others with abandon and serve them without regard for self-interest. By connecting with the Divine, we live in relationship with the Source of our lives, the Source of extravagant love.

It is an adventure. It rarely moves forward in a straight line. But travel that road far enough, and it’s hard to go back—because everything else pales by comparison.

Is This What Humility Looks Like?

I was humble the other day, and I want to tell you about it.

OK, that does sound strange, so perhaps a bit of context is in order. Two weeks ago, a member of a professional organization nominated me for the equivalent of a lifetime achievement award. I am quite capable of reacting badly to this sort of thing in one of two ways: with an “it’s about time they appreciated everything I’ve done for them,” or (far more often) with a reluctance to accept the nomination because, after all, it’s just little old me.

But my reaction was neither of these. Rather, it was a simple acceptance of some basic facts: I’ve been in my profession for 20 years, I spent six years on the board of the organization, it’s a small club with a limited flow of available nominees—all of which meant that I would probably be nominated at some point.

And I wondered: was this reaction an example of humility?

Not if you buy our culture’s understanding of the word. In the U.S., we generally equate humility with low self-esteem, insignificance, giving short shrift to one’s gifts and uniqueness. Does anyone really want to eat humble pie or be of humble means?

I don’t believe the saints and sages had that definition in mind when they encouraged their followers to be humble. Rightly understood, humility is simply complete clarity about our individual selves and our place in the universe. As the Rule for Associates of Holy Cross puts it, “Humility is not self-denigration; it is honest appraisal. We have gifts and deficiencies, as does everyone else. We start from there, remembering that God loves each of us with a unique but equal love.”

When we honestly appraise ourselves, we see our place in the universe quite clearly. Specifically, we see that:

• “I’m only one person.” As a result, I have only one person’s view of the world—and the views of other persons might hold just as much truth as my own.
• “I am one person.” As a result, I can make exactly one person’s difference in the world.

This kind of humility can release all kinds of potential within us. It opens our minds and our hearts to others. It enables us to let go of our need for certainty. It liberates us from feeling powerless in the face of the world’s overwhelming problems; instead, we can start on the problems before us—serving this homeless person, making this city safer. By pointing up our limitations, humility also makes us realize our need for one another, and the exponentially greater impact we can have as we instead of me.

We need this kind of humility to live in harmony with what is. The world needs this kind of humility to move forward. With humility in our souls, we can work together more effectively and come to peace more readily. It is a virtue well worth cultivating.

Out With the Stale, In With the Fresh

Sometimes a venerable spiritual practice jumps the shark—and opens a fresh opportunity to introduce people to the Divine.

This has been happening at Interfaith Partnership for the Homeless, our local homeless agency. In the absence of a clergy member at board meetings, I’ve been asked to give the opening prayer, asking God to bless our efforts, etc., etc. Perhaps this was once a valuable exercise, but now—with few connections between Interfaith and local faith communities, and many secular folks on our board—it’s lost most if not all relevance.

So a few months ago, inspired by a saint whose story I’d run across, I decided to scrap the prayer and tell her story instead.

The reaction was palpable and immediate. As the tale unfolded, I could see the faces around me relax, the eyes light up, the expressions take on the look of wonder we get when we’re looking deeply into life.

Since then I’ve told other stories to start our meetings. One involved a saint who served the homeless several hundred years ago. Another involved the lesson that a homeless man in Boston taught a tough-guy member of our church youth group. All of them include some insight about homelessness, or the human condition, or the value of each human being. Each time I see how much people welcome these stories.

This tells me two things. One involves the power of storytelling to stir us to our souls. It is at once a conduit for profound wisdom and a simple delight to the inner child. (Say the words “Tell me a story” and see how you feel.)

The other lesson has to do with this moment in time. Many thinkers believe we’re at a watershed in the history of spirituality—a time in which established faiths clear out the deadwood in their liturgy, doctrine, and practice and new forms emerge. This strikes me as especially true in the way we engage the secular world. I don’t know, for instance, that it’s most effective to “preach the gospel to all people,” especially when it implies that we have The Answer and they don’t. I see too much skepticism, if not downright hostility, in the public square for that.

So it’s just possible that overt displays of religiosity, like evangelism and public prayers, have run their course. In the marketing world, these displays are known as “push marketing”—telling your message to your audience—and “push” is out of favor. But the appeal of stories is universal. They express a desire not to sell, but to share, to genuinely connect, to “join the general conversation” with other faiths and those with no faith at all.

This could get exciting. It invites us to seek and discover new ways to share the extravagant Divine love with all creatures. In the process, it just might clear out some of our own deadwood and give us fresher, and broader, perspectives on the Divine.

What do you think? Can you see other spiritual practices that are actually blocking our way to the Divine or to others? Feel free to share them here.

Talk With Your Adversaries Without Throttling Them

I almost never use this space for self-promotion, but we’ve been discussing spirituality and dialogue at www.interfaithforums/interview-zone, and I thought you might like to take a look. The moderator was kind enough to interview me on the topic, partly because I’ve been writing a book on preparing the soul for dialogue (working title: Why Can’t We Talk? Living the Way of Dialogue in a Shouting World).

God and my easily diverted brain willing, I’ll post more about this topic here as time goes on. For now, feel free to check out the interview. (You may need to register at Interfaith Forums to access the interview thread, but I’d recommend that you do; some really interesting discussions take place there.)

A Portrait of the Prophet as a Human Being

O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people! O that I had in the desert a traveler’s lodging place, that I might leave my people and go away from them! For they are all adulterers, a band of traitors. (Jeremiah 9:1-2)

Have you ever been sick of someone you dearly love—but whose failings drive you nuts—and just needed to get away for a while?

The prophet Jeremiah found himself in just this situation. The people of Israel had lost their way, committing the grossest injustice and idolatry; God had withdrawn from them and warned of judgment. Jeremiah, caught in the crossfire, expresses his intense ambivalence about Israel in this passage: wanting to weep for “my poor people” one minute, dying to get away from them the next.

This is so, well, human.

The Bible is full of moments like these. The psalmist asks God to do terrible things to his enemies. Jesus, in agony, prays in Gethsemane that he may skip the cross entirely. Ruth, a complete foreigner to Israel, pledges undying loyalty to Naomi, her people, and her God. David grieves long and loud over the waywardness of his son Absalom.

I wonder how many people know about this Bible and the faith it expresses. It tells me that the journey toward God is also the journey to become fully human, fully ourselves. And that means the full range of emotions and experiences. No curse or plea or grief is too intense or too offensive for God. These things are part of us, and so God embraces them because God embraces us. They are part of being human.

Contrast this with, say, the holiday season in December. There is tremendous pressure—from our shopping malls, from the movies, from our own expectations—to be happy. “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” remember? It feels as though we’re supposed to set aside our complete humanity for a shallow facsimile thereof. No wonder so many churches hold Blue Christmas services for those who find the season difficult.

I wonder what Blue Christmas attendees would think if they read about the agony of Jeremiah—if they read the story of Gethsemane as well as Bethlehem. Would it give them comfort to know that even the darker emotions are welcome in the house of God?

In this week, the holiest in the Christian calendar, those emotions find their home. Peter weeps bitterly after denying Jesus. Judas suffers extreme remorse and hangs himself. Jesus, in all his humanity, begs God to take away the shadow of the cross. In doing so, he reflects a calling that is ours as well: to bring ourselves, with all our strengths and baggage and hidden darkness, to the One who loves us without pause, without conditions, without end.

The Love Behind "God Loves You"

Maybe a friend tells you, or you read it on a bumper sticker, or you hear it in a sermon: God loves you. What’s your gut reaction?

I’ve heard the words uttered so often—and sometimes so glibly—that I draw a blank. It makes sense in the abstract. I can agree with the idea intellectually. But it doesn’t come alive for me.

Then something happens to make it come alive.

It happened last Sunday at church, when I was thinking about my Lenten vow to have more fun. (Lent for the Unusual explains the details.) This wasn’t a frivolous decision; it was, rather, about becoming fully human—and fully the person God intends me to be. As someone who suffers from an excess of intensity and often finds life a relentless grind, I have badly neglected the fun aspect of me over the years. In a way, I felt a Divine nudge to attend to this.

What does this have to do with God loves you? Think of it this way: If I’ve interpreted the nudge correctly, God actually cares whether I (and you) become fully human. In fact, God cares enough to guide us in certain directions that are good for us. Doesn’t God have better things to do? Granted, it does seem awfully frivolous in the face of war and financial disaster and other catastrophes.

Yet it speaks profoundly of a God who tends not only to his whole garden, but to every plant therein.

That “tending” also speaks to the very nature of love. Anyone can say “I love you.” It’s an entirely different matter to listen to another being, learn about her soul, and do things to bring that soul to fruition. That is love. It’s less like the automatic “I love yous” I toss out to my wife and more like the times I take care of a chore to give her more time in the garden, because the garden is so important to who she is.

God doesn’t stop with saying “I love you” or “God so loved the world” or other words. No, God acts for our good, always, even when it costs him. As we approach the Christian Holy Week, this is what we see in Jesus: a God who was willing, not only to tend to us, but to become us—to live our daily grind—and give himself away for our good and the good of the world.

In-line Skating and AIG

Skating at a roller rink on Saturday can be hazardous to your health. But conducive to epiphanies?

You wouldn’t think it at first glance. Saturday brings out the kids, and kids bring out the chaos. Many are first-timers so of course they don’t know the safety rules. They cut across traffic, skate in the wrong direction and come to a dead stop—right in front of you. Multiply by about 100 kids and you can see that every linear foot presents a new and very sudden obstacle to anticipate, or navigate, or react to.

Think giant video game, and you’re in it.

I never thought of these weekend skates as training for the spiritual life until last Saturday, when the insight hit me right there on the rink: this is about mindfulness. The threat of constant surprise forces me to focus completely on the situation. If I lose focus, I risk injuring myself or, worse, running over a small child.

Thinkers from all faith traditions have long touted the value of mindfulness. When we are mindful, we devote our entire attention to the moment at hand. This enables us to encounter all its vividness, to appreciate its complexities, to see the Divine therein. Such full attention also makes us more effective in the task before us, whether it is a serious talk with our life partner, a complex project at work, or a collaboration to tackle social problems.

Mindfulness is in desperately short supply these days, and we’re seeing a classic example in the media coverage of AIG. To be sure, the bonuses are reprehensible; they symbolize the company’s astounding insensitivity to those outside the world of Wall Street. No wonder the public and the media have been glued to the story.

Ultimately, though, we focus on it at our peril.

Here’s why: the AIG story, involving about $200 million, draws our attention away from the larger question of how to recover from this mess—which involves $2 trillion. Every day that government leaders devote to punishing AIG is another day’s delay in working through the root causes of the crisis, which continue to weigh down the financial system. (Even now that the Obama administration has put forward a plan to deal with those root causes, the furor over AIG might make it much harder to implement.)

It’s true that the distraction might deliver some benefits. If the whole brouhaha motivates our government officials to improve oversight of the financial world as a whole, perhaps it will have been worth all the attention devoted to it. But as things stand now, they are focusing only on AIG while the rest of the system bogs down.

In short, they are distracted, as we all are these days. And that makes mindfulness as important as ever. In my case, it might keep a handful of kids at a roller rink a little safer. Applied to our government officials, it might hasten our journey on the road to recovery.

Turning the Faith into Flesh and Blood

Our church is at an impasse. Or so you’d think.

We are searching for a new priest. In the Episcopal Church, any candidate for the job must win the approval of both the church’s vestry (like a board of directors) and the bishop. But what if the two don’t see eye to eye on an essential issue?

That’s our situation in a nutshell. The bishop has told the vestry that he will never approve anyone who might possibly—someday, somewhere, whatever the conditions—bless a same-sex marriage. The parishioners (or at least some of their most respected members) have told the vestry that they will not embrace anyone who believes in anything less than full acceptance of gays and lesbians. To top it all off, why would any self-respecting candidate put herself in the inevitable crossfire?

You can see the problem.

But here’s the fascinating part: it’s a problem in theory. A situation like this, we were certain, would result in zero candidates. And yet about 15 priests have expressed interest. At least one of them—and quite possibly more—have articulated a sort of middle ground that, other things being equal, might be acceptable to all sides.

This just might work.

The lesson here, I think, is that we fill our heads with abstractions to our peril. Impasses that can never be rationally resolved suddenly resolve themselves when concrete examples appear. We can’t imagine how something will work, and then lo and behold, along comes someone who, far from having the solution, embodies the solution.

This shouldn’t surprise us, I suppose. Christianity is a flesh-and-blood faith. According to our traditions, Jesus was a concrete example of God. The people of his time could listen to his words and watch his actions and, perhaps more fully than ever before, see what God was like.

Not that concrete examples necessarily make our lives easier. Sometimes we can happily hold to a certain doctrine until a living breathing example upsets our theological applecart. In my fundamentalist days, I was certain that homosexual practice was a sin until an elder in our church—one of the gentlest, most godly people I’ve ever known—came out and forced me to examine the scriptures afresh.

Should we abandon abstractions? Not at all. But if we live in our heads all the time, we tend to go off in high-minded (and often high-handed) directions without looking at the people involved. So our faith traditions argue over theoretical issues and write authoritative reports and make grand pronouncements. How curious, in contrast, that the greatest commandment in the law involves a concrete object of affection: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Lent for the Unusual

I’ve decided to take up fun for Lent.

In case you’re not familiar with it, Lent is the observance of the 40 days before Christ’s death and resurrection. Christians use the time to engage in self-denial, acts of charity, and spiritual practices. Often this gets translated into “giving something up for Lent”—something you love, like chocolate or (in my daughter’s case this year) television.

I used to do this too: coffee is my besetting sin, so I’d go cold turkey for six weeks. But then I started thinking about it. Because of my particular background and neuroses, I had already spent many years denying myself the things I wanted, Lent or no Lent. How would “giving something up” help?

So I moved on to adding spiritual practices, like praying the psalms or extra scripture reading. That worked for a while. But then, four years ago, I became an associate of Holy Cross Monastery and started doing all those things as part of my Rule of Life. Now what?

In the last couple of years as Lent approached, I’ve simply paid attention to my life and adopted whatever filled a need at the time. That’s what brought me to fun. So far, 2009 has been extraordinarily trying. Earlier this month, I held our dog—our wonderful companion for 15 years—as she passed from this world to the next. Her illness in the month before left me dangerously sleep-deprived. Our parish’s search for a priest has placed me squarely in the crossfire over gays in the Episcopal Church. And it has been many years since I really understood how to have fun.

If my life is to be fully what God intends, I need to cultivate this side of myself.

So for the next six weeks, I’ll take in some movies. I’ll go skiing for a day or two. I’ll drive 300 miles to spend time with some of the funniest people on the planet. I may curtail my intake of news and study groups and even coffee hour at church to clear my head of the strident voices I hear in my daily life.

In the process—by attending to a shortcoming in my character—perhaps I’ll become more closely aligned with the person whom God created me to be. Put another way, I will become more of my best self. Sounds like a good goal for Lent, yes?

If you’re a Christian, what are you doing for Lent this year? If you’re from another faith tradition, do you have a season of the year for self-denial? And how does your practice bring you closer to the Divine? You’re more than welcome to post your own experiences.

We Have Read the Psalms and They Is Us

Ever since my youth, I have been wretched and at the point of death;
I have borne your terrors with a troubled mind.
Your blazing anger has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me. (Psalm 88:16-17)

Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
and the Most High your habitation,
no evil shall happen to you,
neither shall any plague come near your dwelling. (Psalm 91:9-10)

The genius who developed the Episcopal lectionary (the daily schedule of scripture readings) put these two psalms together on the same day. Granted, one is to be read at Morning Prayer, the other at Evening Prayer. But because I only pray once a day, I said them both together—and it was gut-wrenching. By the time I got halfway through Psalm 91, I felt that I was lying.

How on earth can both these psalms be true? In one, God has left the psalmist blind, friendless, and in a place where “darkness is my only companion.” In the other, “he shall give his angels charge over you…lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

If we look at these psalms for a moment as unvarnished human responses to God (rather than absolute truth claims about God’s character), we get closer to what I see as the breathtaking beauty of the psalms—and the value of the liturgies that call us to pray them. Name a human emotion, and somewhere, in some verse, the psalmist probably expresses it to God. The 150 psalms, taken together, sweep across the whole range of our experience, unflinchingly expressing our anger and thirst for vengeance as well as our joy and devotion to the Holy One.

When we pray the psalms, then, we see ourselves. When we pray them in a regular order, we come face to face, eventually, with the parts of our humanity we don’t like. More important—and this is the key—we express them all to our Source without reservation.

Is this maybe, just maybe, what a spiritual life should look like?

Imagine it. Life throws everything at us: birth and death, unutterable joy and unspeakable sadness, wild success and crushing failure, validation and rejection. Whether we can say God causes these things or not, we look for God within each experience. In the process, we tell God our feelings about it—even the “bad” feelings—with the implied confidence that God will never reject us utterly…that if God seems absent, it doesn’t mean God is absent…that, indeed, Love itself is always there, leading or carrying us to the other side.

This doesn’t answer the question of why life—God?—throws everything at us. I have my suspicions, and I think we can sometimes glimpse the reasons in specific circumstances if we pay close attention. On a global scale, of course, we have no answer. What we do have, in the psalms, is a model of how to approach God at our best and at our worst: naked, unashamed, and unafraid.

When the Word of the Lord Is Rare

The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. (1 Samuel 3:1b)

You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged for a month. Silence in these parts has happened before, but this time is different. (Yes, I’m about to blog about not blogging. Ironic, isn’t it?)

During past silences, I had several topics to ponder here, but other commitments demanded my time. This time, though, I’ve simply had nothing to say. It doesn’t mean that nothing is happening: in fact, we’ve endured a major life event or two, and I’ve learned some lessons about myself. But nothing that translates to this space.

That nothingness reminded me of the verse from 1 Samuel. I’ve always felt a twinge of sadness when reading it. How heartrending, I’d think, to be this out of touch with God. I’d wonder what happened to put this distance between the Creator and his creation.

What if it’s not sad, though? What if it’s a natural part of life with God?

The mystics have written volumes about times like this: times when God appears to be absent and no spiritual practice brings comfort. Their “desert,” which I think I’ve experienced on a small scale, can feel desperate and lonely; this past month has been more benign—a simple recognition that nothing is happening. Either way, the great writers of Christian mysticism have described this desert as a pearl of great price in the spiritual journey: it strips us of all our unnecessary layers and brings us face to face with God as nothing else can.

So is there anything to do when “the word of the Lord is rare”? I think there’s real value in maintaining the rhythm of our spiritual lives, day after day after day. If we say Morning Prayer each day, let us continue. If we attend worship every week, let us continue. If we read sacred texts to learn wisdom—even if the words just seem like a jumble—let us continue. A day off here and there for refreshment is not bad. But the steady, soothing rhythm of our spiritual practice serves as an anchor for our souls. Especially when nothing is happening.

Because in truth, whether we know it or not, something is happening. The verse from 1 Samuel introduces one of the greatest outpourings of the Spirit in Israel’s history: the rise of the great prophet Samuel, the reign of David, the wisdom of Solomon. Who knows whether it all would have taken place without a time when “the word of the Lord was rare”?

A Bit Part in God's Next Act

For an alleged introvert, December was a lot to take.

My wife and I hosted two open houses amid a severe ice storm. We invited my father-in-law and two friends over for Christmas turkey. We drove four hours one way to attend a family gathering. By taking part in these events, we conveyed blessing to people in ways neither of us had expected—particularly to those who were living without electricity, alone for the holidays, or missing spouses who had passed away.

And yet, in some ways, I had so little to do with it all. My wife initiated the gatherings (or at least our part in them). That left me uneasy: during such a holy season, I hadn’t done good works or learned deep things; I had simply gone along with the plan.

Lo and behold, that was the point.

I always think we’re supposed to set out to do good. We actively explore our calling, pursue what we hear as the Divine Will, and fulfill it. This mindset isn’t restricted to the spiritual arena either. Businesses seek out people who initiate, not those who react. Colleges strive to turn out leaders, not followers. We think we have to make a difference (in the sense of achieving some grand mission) rather than simply do what’s before us.

None of this is bad by any means. Sometimes we are asked to figure out what’s next. But sometimes we’re asked to live out what’s here.

Consider one of our most beloved Advent stories. The Virgin Mary wasn’t actively seeking her vocation when the angel came to her. She was told she would have a baby, and she went along with the plan. History would have been profoundly different if she had done otherwise.

How do you know when to figure out what’s next, and when to live out what’s here? I suspect it starts with paying attention—with being mindful. By clearing our heads of those ever-present distractions, mindfulness gives us a better chance to perceive what God is doing right here, right now, in these circumstances before us. Our daily life in God, particularly in prayer, can help us cultivate that attention.

God had a lot to do this December, and I played a minor role. That, to quote the creation story, was very good indeed. It reminded me of my place in the universe—as one person among many, not as me but as part of a larger we. And it called to mind the simplicity of God’s desire for us: as St. Thérèse of Lisieux once wrote, God “does not demand great actions from us but simply surrender and gratitude.”

"Everything Old Becomes New Again"

You’ve probably heard the saying before. People use it to note the return of fashions from the seventies, or family values from the fifties. It’s more startling when the time between old and new is 2,700 years.

This Advent, the scripture readings for the Daily Office have taken us through some of the judgment passages in Isaiah. These can be disturbing in any year, but at the end of 2008—as an entire American era has come to a crashing halt—they are downright haunting, because they could have been written yesterday. For instance:

The Lord sent a word against Jacob, and it fell on Israel…but in pride and arrogance of heart they said: “The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.” So the Lord raised adversaries against them. (9:8-11)

I’ve heard this unfounded optimism so often during the past 25 years. Stock market crashes in 1987 and 2000? Don’t worry, things will bounce back. Huge national debt? But it’s fueling the economy! Remember the books with titles like Dow 50,000? And then subprime mortgages came and swept it all away.

The Lord cut off from Israel head and tail, palm branch and reed in one day—elders and dignitaries are the head, and prophets who teach lies are the tail; for those who led this people led them astray, and those whom they led were left in confusion. (9:13-16)

Bernard Madoff and his Ponzi scheme. Investment bankers and their relentless push for higher profits. Before them, Ken Lay and Enron. All of them led us to believe things that shouldn’t have made sense to us, but did. They, too, have been swept away.

[The king of Assyria] says: “Are not my commanders all kings?...Is not Samaria like Damascus?...shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols what I have done to Samaria and her images?” When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the arrogant boasting of the king of Assyria and his haughty pride. (10:8-12)

Consider the Bush administration’s approach to Iraq. America knows how to fight wars; hell, we’ve won almost every one in the last 200 years! We’ll handle Iraq the same way. No need for overwhelming force. Five years later, Americans’ confidence in this type of arrogance has been swept away.

Should we view all these events, then, as God’s judgment against the U.S.? There’s no way to know for certain, and it’s dangerous to assume that we could. But I think we can read these passages simply as an apt description of the way the universe works: the arrogant and the corrupt and the complacent do get their comeuppance, eventually. When it happens, we come back to reality. We pay attention to the things that deserve our attention. Our life together recaptures a measure of sanity and health.

And eventually, something else becomes new again. Today the lectionary turns a corner:

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding…. With righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth…. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. (11:1-6)

A Messiah comes among us. He brings justice for the poor and the meek, the Divine Spirit to all of us, and an abiding peace to all the world.

In these times especially, we need such a Messiah. In these times as always, we have him—either in anticipation and hope (if you are Jewish) or as one who has come and will return (if you are Christian). Happy Christmas, Chanukah, or whatever feast you celebrate in this holy time.

The Danger of Balance

Three and a half years ago, in my pledge to become a monastic associate, I promised to live a life of balance, built around the quest for God. Rather than dominating my existence, as it had for two decades, work would coexist with play, family, service, study, and above all prayer.

I never imagined how subversive—or how isolating—this would be.

Yesterday I attended a business seminar on social media, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. It’s easy for me to come away from these seminars with a fear that the world has passed me by: oh my goodness, my customers have moved on to the latest and greatest, how could I not have known, I have to rush back to the office to keep up.

Balance, on the other hand, makes it hard to care whether I keep up—because it forces me to see there’s more to life than the latest trends, or even success at work.

At business functions, it’s almost a cliché to ask people “How’s business?” and have them say, “Busy!” Constant activity seems to be required for membership in the club: if we’re not busy, maybe we’re not successful. No wonder so many people wear busyness as a badge of honor—or a protective shield.

Balance, on the other hand, asks us to let go of our obsession with busyness and pay attention to something larger.

The life of balance can be subversive because of what it leads to. You start asking, “Why am I rushing around?” You have more time and clarity of thought to question all kinds of other things too. And you begin to live differently. Perhaps, in the interests of a more spiritual, more balanced life, you pass on a promotion that requires crazy hours, or you refuse a social commitment on the weekend because you’ve decided to keep Sabbath. Maybe you decide not to hit the malls during the holiday season, or you’re just not as productive as you used to be.

Just like that, you’ve broken the social contract—the one that equates constant activity with individual self-worth. The social contract won’t care, but the people who adhere to it may not understand you anymore.

That’s where the loneliness comes in. Suddenly you no longer speak the language of your old pals and co-workers. They talk about how much they’re rushing around; you have no reference point. They look for a place to squeeze in coffee with you; your schedule is flexible.

This can be profoundly disorienting. In my life, I often wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I question my self-worth. Sometimes I think how comfortable it would be to dive back in to busyness.

And then I look at the benefits of balance. For instance, I think more clearly. My vested interests are fading away, leaving me freer to approach things with an open heart. I get to follow a mysterious Spirit one small step at a time on a path whose form I can’t begin to guess. Part of every day involves communion with the ground of all being. I’m privileged to, however imperfectly, try to live a life for something larger than myself.

This life of balance is lonely. It is disorienting. It can be dangerous to things like income or financial security. And yet I would never go back. Even if I could.

THAT Is My Neighbor?

For days afterward, I couldn’t get Mark out of my head.

He took a room at Holy Cross Monastery during my last retreat—and he scared me. Well over six feet, chiseled, imposing, with a hard look in his eye, he never ate, rarely slept, and wandered the halls muttering to himself. The first time he started a conversation with me, he came out with a ramble of spiritual ideas and cited Satan as his teacher for at least one of them.

I assumed he was dangerous, or at least sinister. I thanked God I was not like him. And that was the problem.

Mark’s presence, together with some other guests who were “different” in their own way, made me realize how quickly I rush to judgment. I compare myself to others, disdaining many, including those who fly off the end of my approach/avoidance curve.

The funny part is, I think of myself as open-minded and compassionate, especially to those less fortunate. In much of my life, perhaps I am.

But God keeps pushing us, confronting us with the raw reality both within and outside ourselves. Exactly how wide can I throw my tent? I say I accept all people—but what about him? “The poor,” whom I can so easily romanticize, may not always look noble or dignified; can I deal?

The beauty of this Divine push, at least as I’ve experienced it, is that it is phenomenally gentle—and sometimes comes with visible grace. The last morning of my retreat, I was out on the porch, turning these things over in my mind, when who should come out but Mark. He started a conversation with his version of “hello”: “Have you ever read…?” For about 15 minutes, he rambled on about Jesus, monks, Hindu demons, and other topics. He revealed pieces of his hard and painful life.

And finally, when I got up to leave, he shook my hand, thanked me, and apologized for “laying all this stuff on you.”

The day before, the thought of that conversation would have made me queasy. When it happened, though, it was all blessing. It left me with a glimpse into my own raw heart, a tent that maybe got a little bit bigger, and another story of the extraordinary, awe-inspiring grace of God, who pushes and pulls and encourages and loves and throws challenges in our way so we take that next step toward the Divine.

Finding Your Way into the Future

The world gives us some extremely good advice for setting goals. Too bad we can’t follow it—at least not exactly.

The whole idea of goal setting pervades our world. “When you fail to plan, you plan to fail” ranks high among the business world’s pearls of wisdom. Smart executives set objectives for everything, from this morning’s meeting to the next product launch. Job seekers prepare for the inevitable interview question “Where do you want to be in five years?” Parents sigh over their adult children who “have no direction.”

There’s a lot of value in setting goals. It’s hard to make progress in anything without some idea of where you’re going. And yet, for people of faith, there is a pull in another direction as well.

In many faiths, we commend our lives entirely to God’s care and direction. Christians take their cue from Jesus in Gethsemane, where, wrestling with God in the most agonizing moment of his life, he finally said, “Your will be done.” In that simple yielding, he expressed the profound truth that, ultimately, our futures do not belong to us. (This can bring indescribable joy and, ironically, freedom, but that’s for another post.)

What does all this mean for goal setting? Simply that the dynamic of our unfolding lives is different from the norm. We do not plan our future so much as we respond to a call. We aim not to strive for personal goals, but to seek and fulfill the Divine will.

Now maybe, if we heard God’s calling all at once, we could use goal setting to create a framework that would help us fulfill it. But to make matters even more complex, God seems to call us only a little at a time. How can we lay out detailed plans when we don’t know exactly where we’re going?

Instead, we engage in an ongoing, slowly emerging dialogue with God. Two or three years ago, I sensed a nudge to write. It unfolded gradually: poetry came first, then this blog, and finally, about a year and a half ago, a call to “write books.” I still struggle with what this means. I have to be sure I don’t glom my personal ambitions onto this call—can I earn a living this way (please), can I quit my job immediately and just write books (please please please), etc. Rather, I have to let the call unfold as it will, while preparing my heart—via prayer, meditation, dialogue with others, and silence—to hear it.

I think we can use goal setting to gently shape what we hear, to facilitate its taking on a concrete form. But for believers, there is another step that both precedes and pervades the goal-setting process: listening. By always listening to the Divine voice, we learn to hold our plans lightly, realizing that they may change or refocus according to the Will whose fulfillment, after all, is our ultimate goal.

Lessons from the Ordinary

The fruits of the Spirit get less and less showy as we go on. —Evelyn Underhill, The Fruits of the Spirit

I just spent four days on retreat at Holy Cross Monastery. Normally when I visit there, even for an overnight, something happens. An encounter with the monks might raise a personal issue, and I use the monastic quiet to grapple with it. I consider God’s call on my life and discover an exciting new dimension. A scripture reading from the Office (the daily cycle of formal prayer which includes praying the psalms) strikes a chord in my soul. A profound lesson pervades the whole retreat.

This time was different. In fact, it was spectacularly ordinary: no great emotions, few profound insights. I took a walk at a nearby nature preserve, hoping to enjoy The Serenity Of Nature, but what I mainly got was winded. I walked into the Office, said the prayers, let my mind wander as usual, and walked out. There were a few exceptions—the writing I did was intensely joyful, and I had one encounter that will wait for another blog entry—but in general my retreat was awash with the commonplace. No profound lesson.

And yet that was the lesson.

Over the years, I’ve slowly learned to appreciate the fleeting nature of mountaintop experiences and breathtaking flights of spirit. Even so, I still unconsciously seek out the emotional payoff, the profound insight, the moment of bliss, the one tidbit that will validate my prayer and my life with God. Those payoffs and insights are not bad in themselves, but as objects of our focus, they distract us from the nearly imperceptible presence of God in the really, really ordinary—the dull and tedious and even annoying.

When we do perceive that presence, we encounter extraordinary grace. God is present during prayer whether my mind is on God or on lunch. God is present whether I serenely glide through the woods or cuss as I trip over every root. God is present, in short, even when life is routine and we are comically clueless. What a comfort.

I see the monks live out this “presence in the ordinary” every time they pray. There are few dreams or prophet ecstasies in their prayer. When the bell calls them to the Office, they put down their work, go to the chapel, pray, and go back to work. Rather than an ecstatic experience, prayer becomes seamlessly interwoven into their daily lives. And as my spiritual director says when his mind wanders during prayer, “There’s always next time.”

By finding God in the ordinary, we open ourselves to a minute-by-minute awareness of his action in our lives. We start to observe, and rejoice in, a cosmos permeated with the Divine presence. Our gratitude deepens, and so does our joy.