Category Archives: Mysticism

What is Old is New or What the hell?

Posted on by
Reply
Gasoline prices at Shell in Denver

Prices for the three grades of gasoline light up the pump at a Shell station Friday, May 25, 2020, in Memphis, Tennessee and over the United States

Marilyn, my beloved, just arrived home from her intermittent hunting and gathering safari, what used to be called “grocery shopping”.  She said, “What do you suppose gasoline cost just now?”  I shrugged,  no idea. “Sixty-eight cents a galleon!” I am 68 years old.  When I was 16, gasoline cost 15 – 20 cents per gallon.

In the year of the plague, we stand at threshold of a new world.  We can choose to embrace the ADVENTURE of life on this changing planet, making new economies such that the planet has no need to wipe out human  beings in order to survive in her orbit.

I vote for adventure, a new epoch of history that has clear skies over New Delhi. Fish swimming in the clear lagoons of Venice and the nations turn swords into hemostats that we may safely get off Mother Earth while we still are able. May Mother Earth recover and may the Kingdom of God come and increase.   To God be glory now and forever.

I live in hope in spite of the facts.

John Sewell

 

The Nobleman

Posted on by
Reply

 

eckhart2-bs-618x330

Meister Eckhart (1260 -1328)

-From Eckhart’s teaching The Nobleman

The first stage of the inner man and the new man, St. Augustine says, is that a man lives by the example of good and saintly people, though he still holds on to chairs and supports himself by walls, and subsists on milk.

The second stage is when he not merely regards the outward examples and good people, but runs and hastens to the teaching and counsel of God and divine wisdom, turns his back on mankind and his face toward God, crawling forth from his mother’s lap to smile up at his heavenly Father.

The third stage is when a man withdraws more and more from his mother and, being further and further from her lap, escapes from care and casts off fear so that, even if he might with impunity do evil and in justice to all, he would have no wish to do so, for he is so bound to God with love in eagerness, until God establishes and leads him in joy, sweetness, and bliss, wherein he cares nothing for whatever is repugnant and alien to God.

The fourth stage is when he grows more and more, and becomes rooted in love and in God, so that he is ready to welcome any trial, temptation, adversity, and suffering willingly, gladly, eagerly, and joyfully.

The fifth stage is when he lives altogether at peace with himself, resting calmly in the richness and abundance of the supreme ineffable wisdom.

The sixth stage is when a man is de-formed and transformed by God’s eternity, and has attained total forgetfulness of transitory, temporal life and is drawn and translated into a divine image, having become the child of God. Beyond this there is no higher stage, and there is rest and bliss, for the final end of the inner man and the new man is eternal life.

Try this growth sequence on for size!

In hope, in spite of the facts.

John

 

Posted on by
Reply

This affirmation of the resurrection has become very important to me over the many years.  It became a go to remark at funerals. It speaks to the hope in us that nothing in all creation or history can “trump” resurrection and grace.

Frederick Beuchner writes, “The New Testament proclaims that at some unforeseeable time in the future God will ring down the final curtain on history, and there will come a Day on which all our days and all the judgments upon each other will themselves be judged. The judge will be Christ.  In other words, the one who judges us most finally will be the one who loves us most fully.”

In hope in spite of the facts.  John

Quote

Posted on by
Reply

duck in flight

When I rise up

Let me rise up with joy

like a bird

fallen leaf

When I fall

Let me fall

Without regret

Like a leaf

Wendell Berry

This short prayer, one of the Sayings and Prayers of the Mad Farmer, by Wendell Berry is a favorite of mine.  I have quoted it at many funerals in the past thirty-eight years of my priesthood.  It re-framed walking through the dead and dying leaves of fall.

Quote

Posted on by
Reply

Over-the-horizon

Among all my patients in the second half of life – that is to say over thirty-five – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort that was that of finding a religious outlook on life.  Carl Jung – Psychotherapist of the Clergy (1923)

SATURDAY OF EASTER III

Posted on by
Reply

May 11, 2019

LUKE 24:30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” 33 That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34 They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Laughing Jesus barry moser
Jesus Rabboni – Barry Moser KJV Bible 1999

For several days we have mediated on the four ritual movements of the Eucharist. Today, let’s look at the fifth.  He took, blessed, broke and gave bread to them. They ate and they went.  The last words of a Eucharist is the dismissal by the waiter (deacon), “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” “Thanks be to God,” we say as we head for the exits.  As I often say, “We are to be for others what we have received at the table.  In other words,

“If you have been fed, be bread!”

 

In hope, in spite of the facts.

John Sewell

WEDNESDAY OF EASTER III

Posted on by
Reply

May 8, 2019

LUKE 24:28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29 But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

Jacek Malczewski - Christ in Emaus.

After he took the bread, he blessed it. What is it to bless? What it is not, is a baker sprinkling powdered sugar on the loaf emerging from the oven. To bless is to give, not just sweetness on the surface but deeply in the molecules, even the DNA of that bit of creation. Blessing is more concrete than abstract. To enjoy life having survived a day longer. That is blessing.

Fr. Matthew Fox entitled a book, ORIGINAL BLESSING, contending that blessing was the intention of the Creator, existing long before sin, enduring long after the “stain of sin” disappears from the fabric of humanity.

Claus Westermann instructs us, “God in the Bible relates to humans by deliverance and by blessing.” BLESSING IN THE BIBLE AND THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH. The Eucharist ”re-presents” the resurrection as both. . While there is a lot of “Junk food” for the soul to be had, Eucharist is the most important meal you eat all week. It’s good for you, nary one empty calorie

In hope, in spite of the facts.

John

TUESDAY OF EASTER III

Posted on by
Reply

April 7, 2018

emmaus

 

LUKE 24:28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29 But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

It is no accident that at supper that night in Emmaus, Jesus performed the four ritual acts of the Eucharist. This would not have been lost on any who heard Luke read in the early church to now.

He took the bread. The Word took on flesh, mortality and morbidity. He took on cold, fear and the slings and arrows of human sexuality. He as much as we, felt deeply. He cried, chuckled, and anger was familiar. Yet he did not sin. Suffering was his companion and death his foe. He died and pulled the fangs of meaningless dying.

All this and more, he took on when he took the bread.

In hope, in spite of the facts.

John