The Healing Gift of Tears

Posted on November 1, 2014 by shepsewell

Isaac of Nineveh

Once you have reached the place of tears then you should understand that the mind has left the prison of this world and set its feet on the road towards the New World.
It has begun to breathe the wonderful air which is there. It begins to shed tears.
For now the birth-pangs of the spiritual infant grow strong, since grace, the common mother of us all, makes haste to give birth mystically to the soul, the image of God, into the light of the world to come. –Saint Isaac of Syria

I find that as the years pass, I have found tears. Much of my life, like most men, I suppose, a major tragedy was all that wet my eyes. It wasn’t that I was unwilling to cry, I simply couldn’t find tears. However, at this place in my pilgrimage to God, as I experience God, the more tears fill my eyes and grief my heart. Till we truly grieve our lives we cannot find joy, the joy that is ours in Christ. The burdens of others, hurt my soul. Weep with those who weep, we are told; I can hold another human being and as I feel as much as hear weeping, I weep.

I believe that I have heard another call, perhaps beyond the first. to weep with those who cannot weep. Weep for them until their tears, breaking the dam, fills the channels to their eyes. Water intrinsically flows through channels unseen until the day the flood rises and leaks out our eyes. On that day we become men and women for new growth always requires irrigation. JWS.

The Archetype of the Shape-Changer…

Posted on October 26, 2014 by shepsewell

The magician is the archetype of the shape-changer, the protean power of men to move mountains, to adjust to changed conditions, to find a way to make things work. As Sophocles noted twenty-five hundreds ago, “How numberless are the world’s wonders/And none more wonderful than man.” He who tamed the salt-churned seas, who built roads across the mountains, who wrenched from the recesses of his soul the Fifth Symphony, is the wonder-worker in nature. His shadow side, though, is control, manipulation, sleight of hand and charlatanry. He is not to be trusted. He embodies the ethical edge along which all men walk, the fine line between working wonders and treating the world as a shell game.

Under Saturn’s Shadow: The wounding and Healing of Men – James Hollis [95]

“Healing”

Posted on October 14, 2014 by shepsewell

I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.
And is not because the mechanism is working
wrongly, that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep
emotional self
and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time.
only time can help
and patience, and a certain difficult repentance
long difficult repentance, realization of life’s
mistake, and the freeing oneself
from the endless repetition of the mistake
which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.”
– D. H. Lawrence

June 26, 2005

Posted on June 27, 2014 by shepsewell

NOTE; Obviously this is an old sermon. The themes are exactly the ones I struggle with today. You can interpret that several ways. I’m not sure myself. I feel the same issues but with greater intensity. As our Lord says, “Work while it is day for night is coming when no man can work.” John 9:4

THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Almost ten years ago I was interviewed for the local evening news in Jackson, Mississippi. The young reporter came to ask my opinion about prayer in public schools.

I thought long and hard about how to say what I thought.

For one thing a sound bite format is not kind to Anglican ways of thinking. Most issues are more complicated than that.

Secondly as a minority church in a sea of free-church Protestants, Episcopalians have some inkling of what it is like to have the “majority opinion” forced on us.

I am sympathetic to the concerns that prompt such controversy. But in many ways we have entered a post Christian era in this country. Which is to say that we can no longer assume that Christianity and culture are contiguous. I thought back almost twenty years to an article from the October 1986 issue of Christian Century. Here is an excerpt from an article by William Williman.

“THOUGH I COULD NOT have known it at the time, a momentous event in my faith journey occurred on a Sunday evening in 1963 in Greenville, South Carolina, when, in defiance of the State’s archaic Blue Laws, the Fox Theater opened on Sunday. Seven of us made a pact to enter the front door of the church, be seen, then quietly slip out the back door and join John Wayne at the Fox.

Only lately have I come to see how that evening symbolizes a watershed in the history of Christianity in the United States. On that night, Greenville, South Carolina – the last pocket of resistance to secularity in the Western World – gave in and served notice that it would no longer be a prop for the Church. If Christians were going to be made in Greenville, that the church must do it alone.

There would be no more free passes for the church, no more free rides. The Fox Theater went head-to-head with the church to see who would provide ultimate values for the young. That night in 1963, the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish.

In taking me to Church, my parents were affirming everything that was American. Church was, in a sense, the only show in town. Everybody else was doing it. Church, home, and state formed a vast consortium working together to instill Christian values. People grew up Christian simply by growing up American. All that ended the night that the Fox Theater opened on Sunday.”

Dearly beloved, take nothing for granted!

We can no longer assume that people who come here for the first time on Sunday morning have any idea about what we believe. The truth is that we often are not all that sure ourselves.

• Some come because it is what they have always done.
• Some come because it is good for the children to get values.
• Some come because one can make business contacts at Church.
• And some come because they are hungry for God.

Many come for a bundle of reasons.

Regardless of how it has been in the past, the culture will no longer prop us up. If we are going to be Christians and make Christians we will have to do it the old fashioned way: by depending on God and each other, and that, my fellow Episcopal Christians of Saint John’s is a choice.

Christ and sword

W. F. Albright translates the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:34 this way: “Do not think thatI have come to impose peace on earth, Do not think that I have come to impose peace on earth by force; I have come neither to impose peace, nor yet to make war. I have come to divide . . . a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be members of his own house.” Albright continues, “Jesus does not come to impose peace by FORCE. On the contrary, his coming will involve painful decisions. He will not interfere with human freedom.”

We are free to choose. The culture will not prop us up. It may no longer be good business to be Christian. In point of fact the Gospel is increasingly not the worldview the culture proposes.

And yet the call of Jesus is clear, “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

The country is anxious. Many want props. But I am not convinced that legislating props will do the job. When we venture beyond the safety of cultural Christianity, (civil religion) we will find that life is changing. Several things become evident.

• We want to see all bad in others and not in ourselves.
• We don’t know the reality of the Gospel all that well ourselves.
• We have majored on minors and minored on majors.
• We despair.
• We see the bad in others and not in ourselves.

This produces self-righteousness and contempt that is alien to the Gospel. A poem from He Sent Leanness, A Book of Prayers for the Natural Man by David Read

HOPE FOR HEAVEN

“Lord, I am quite convinced that I shall not be at home in heaven. Is this all Thou hast to offer? Thy eternal City as men have described it seems unbearably cosmopolitan. There are some nations (which I will not at present specify), some denominations (which shall be nameless), one political party (Lord, Thou knowest), and many types of musicians (if such a word can be applied to them at all), with whom I could not possibly live. Could I, perhaps, have a quiet detached mansion on my own, with a few specified visitors for short periods?”

Most of us are not that honest! By being “good” and keeping some of the rules we see ourselves as O.K., rather than saved by grace and NOTHING else. [Period]

• We don’t know the reality of the Gospel too well ourselves.

We’d have something more to share than rule and moral codes. We know the form but deny the power there of. We are always prepared for God to do nothing. When he does something we are ill prepared. We do not live as if there is a resurrection. We live as if we hoped there might be something, but we are not sure what it is.

• We have majored on minors and minored on majors.

Christians have been busy fighting about number of issues. Many issues cannot be “solved” or “voted on” and put to rest as much as we might like. We will have to pray and live through most of them. It is messy but throwing stones and being willful will not promote the Kingdom of God.

We have gotten things backwards. We build buildings and then try to figure out what to do with them, rather than preach the Gospel and build buildings to house the community that grows from that Gospel. We are in the process of looking at long range building here. But we are not doing neutron bomb evangelism: kill the people and save the buildings.”

For much of the late 20th Century the Church rearranged the deck chairs on the luxury ship Episcotanic. And when we do venture out beyond the doors of our churches we look around and we despair.

• We despair.

We act as if there is nothing that can be done and that God is finished. Despair is a sin!!! To despair is to say that God cannot act. We have never yet had to face any real difficulty for being a Christian. The most that we have ever suffered is mild embarrassment — and that not for long.

Let me be clear this morning about what I believe. Let me make a brief “I have a dream speech”. I believe that Saint John’s exists for one reason and one reason only: to be a place where souls are transformed in relationship to God! God in Christ Jesus calls us to follow him, and this journey is not one of convenience. It is a cross we pick up not a hammock. The Journey to God begins with you and with me.

There were three friends who were eager workers, and one of them chose to devote himself to making peace between people who were fighting, in accordance with ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’. The second chose to visit the sick. The third went off to live in tranquility in the desert. The first toiled away at the quarrels of men, but could not resolve them all, and so, in discouragement, went to the one who was looking after the sick, and he found him flagging too, not succeeding in fulfilling the commandment. So the two of them agreed to go and visit the one who was living in the desert.

They told him their difficulties and asked him to tell them what he had been able to do. He was silent for a time, and then he poured water into a bowl and said to them, ‘Look at the water.’ It was all turbulent. A little later he told them to look at it, and see how the water had settled down. When they looked at it, they saw their own faces as in a mirror. Then he said to them, ‘In the same way a man who is living in the midst of men does not see his own sins because of all the disturbance, but if he becomes tranquil, especially in the desert, then he can see his own shortcomings.”

I long for Saint John’s to be like a desert place where we become still and see ourselves and in that stillness hear the call of God. That is why we are here. Welcome in name of the resurrected Jesus!

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Amen.

RELIGION IS HARD-WIRED IN HUMANITY

Posted on June 22, 2014 by shepsewell

Gertrud Mueller Nelson

There are practices that appear to cross all religious systems and are near universal means for spiritual formation. Prayer is a human enterprise limited to no one religious tradition. Prayer is universal and even how one prays is widely similar. Now in these days a curious phenomenon has appeared. the secular rationalist and dismissive secular American. has begun to unconsciously fashion faux ancient practices. I got my first cue from Gertrude Muller Nelson in her book, TO DANCE WITH GOD..

SHE WROTE “WHEN THE CHURCH GAVE UP FASTING THE CULTURE TOOK UP DIETING.”

1. What is a diet, but a soulless fast? Now, consider the ancient practices with a corresponding secular invention.

2. What is a vacation but a soulless pilgrimage without purpose or focus. It is small wonder that people return home more exhausted than before. A pilgrimage is a journey to the holy, while a vacation is avoidance of the self.

3. What the Liturgical Year is the practice of faith, Civil Religion is to the culture. In the eyes of the ignorant they are the same, sharing Christian holy days. Think of it this way. Music in the West uses the same notes for all compositions. The notes sound the same even though as they are played in different keys. The culture rather likes the Baby Jesus (so long as he never grows up enough to meddle) and Easter is there but the focus is on bunnies and Spring rites. July 4th and President’s Day pass for saint’s days, and the flag, that civil totem is equated, even in the minds of some Christians, with the Cross. I love my country and I keep the flag as far from the altar as possible.

4. While constant prayer is a posture of faith, the call to continual communion with the Holy, the culture constructed a continual litter of stimulus important to nobody but forwarded by somebody to everybody with red-flagged emails, all caps, demanding instant access.

5. Tithing, the re-gifting of some of the abundance we have received from God is an act of faithful gratitude. April 15th and taxes are the shadow of the economy of heaven. If tithing were not tax-deductible would it long endure?

6. The Sacred Meal of the Eucharist has as its counterpoint Thanksgiving, that yearly Festival of Civil Religion. It is wonderful in its way, has vague Christian trappings but is firmly civil Religion.

7. Sabbath is a time but more an attitude of getting quiet before God has as its opposite: the weekend. I don’t think I need say more. One is holy and the other runs us ragged.

Only when the church discovers it own ancient practices will we have anything to offer the culture. Until then the culture will go on making up unreasonable facsimiles of soulful practice. JWS

Easter III

Posted on May 4, 2014 by shepsewell

Abraham’s Oak – Henry Ossawa Turner

Pausing, looking back toward where the story began there is symmetry, a type–antitype. The place God began his self-revelation was at Mamre, which wasn’t much even then except for one world-class oak, In fact the place was known as the Oak of Mamre as the tree gave it about its only reason for being.

God and two archangels some say or perhaps God, the Trinity, dropped by for lunch with Abraham and his wife Sarah. Since most have not seen an archangel and no one at all has seen the Trinity, it’s a little hard to know where one left off and the other began. It is safe to say that neither wife nor husband recognized their guests until all was revealed over lunch.

Abraham & the Three Angels – James Tissot

Abraham bent over backwards showing hospitality that day and Sarah would have baked a cake if they had given her warning. The holy ones gravely accepted Abraham’s spread under the spreading branches and then got on to the business at hand. You know how it turned out of course. The childless couple had a boy come new-year and Sodom and environs became the Dead Sea by year end.

Turning toward home, see the script? Cleopas and his companion are running away from home and bump into Jesus and then it all becomes clearer over supper. Both stories come to the moment of insight because of hospitality. Extending ourselves in service of the comfort and welcome of the stranger will often lead to gifts unforeseen. Do not neglect hospitality for some have entertained angels unawares. So you never know who might put their wingtips under your table, either expensive shoes or feathers. Prepare to hear the good news.

Jesus came near Cleopas and his un-named companion on the road from Jerusalem and Emmaus. Let’s get the actors straight on our program before we get confused. Hegsippus (early historian) records that Cleopas was the brother of Joseph the husband of Mary and step-father of Jesus our Lords. His companion may have been his son, Simeon. who became bishop after James, Jesus’ brother, was martyred?

Cleopas and company are running away from the scene of the crime. Their deepest hopes have become their deepest wounds. There is no one more cynical than a deeply wounded idealist. Their eyes were “held” so they did not recognize him. When they explain their distress, Jesus showed them, beginning with Moses and so showed them that another way to read and understand the Scriptures was exactly what happened to Jesus. Thus he reframed their history and made bad news into good news.

Anyone who has lived for very long has come to know that sometimes the only thing worse than the disappointment of not getting what we want is the remorse of getting exactly the thing longed for only to learn how bad it was for us and our souls. Of course, hopefully we learn from the consequences of getting what we want. It may well be that our “wanter” is broken. Actually it has been since Adam at the apple. It may be that God knows better what we need and want than we do.

Emmaus – James Tissot

They come to Emmaus, perhaps to the family home, where Cleopas and his older brother Joseph were brought up. It was there it happened. They were sitting at the old family table, the very one that for all their lives on Friday they had the prayers and only the day after the Passover Supper where again they had eaten and told the story of rescue, how God brought them out of Egypt into the promised land and where they hoped for Messiah, the anointed one of God.

Here Jesus did what is always done at this table, all Christian tables, at this service of Holy Thanksgiving.

Supper at Emmaus – Abraham Bloemaert

The four movements of the Eucharist, He took, he blessed, broke and gave.

He Took

In reply to Satan who suggested he turn loaf-shaped stones into bread Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone.” Of course he doesn’t live without it either. In the only story told by all four Gospels (other than the passion) Jesus took a lunch of 5 loaves and 2 fish and fed 5000 people. If Jesus is God, then he was on the ground floor when the Universe began and if you can make matter from scratch then he can stretch molecules of bread in hand.

Supper at Emmaus
– Diego Velazquez

What folk should have learned that day was (and is), whatever we make truly available to Jesus can (and will) be used. In addition, we should have learned by now that when Jesus takes something (any old thing) it is transformed and it becomes enough..
Now, think of all the “castoffs” of our lives. . It is a hoot seeing what Jesus does when he up-cycles what we distain into something needful. Today, look around, take inventory and then offer what we find to Jesus. He can do more with less than anyone I have ever I have ever known.

HE BLESSED

A couple makes promises and then is married but when they are blessed their relationship is filled with divine content. Having taken the bread, ordinary stuff to sustain life in the body, Jesus now makes the bread “different/holy” and it is no longer just bread, but, like Manna in the wilderness, it is the bread of Heaven.

Blessing changes things. It changes relationships. It changes effect. It changes value. To be blessed by God gives dignity and worth. If we are worthless by all human standards not so with God, divine love and blessing creates value where none existed before.

What we will give up, Jesus will take up. What Jesus takes up, he blesses as he did that day when the children came running to him. And what he blesses has merit and dignity if for no other reason, because he blessed them. If God can do that with ground wheat seed mixed with water and baked, what can God to our lives?

HE BROKE

The most solemn moment in any Eucharist is the “fraction” – the actual breaking of the bread. On a day with low humidity there is a discernible “cracking” sound heard through the room. In that moment we are confronted symbolically with the suffering of Christ.
The rubric (stage direction) in the Prayer Book is, “The celebrant breaks the consecrated Bread. A period of silence is kept.” What can we do in face of his sacrifice other than be silent? I believe that the breaking of the bread is all the broken things in our lives, our souls and bodies, those things done, those things left undone, are all (everyone) broken there as well. It is a good breaking, like re-breaking a leg that was inadequately set, in service of fullness of life.

HE GAVE

What Jesus’ taking, blessing and breaking make, he gives. It is food. It is life. It is healing. It is celebration and it is joy. Above all it is Viaticum, literally “food for the journey.” That which God requires of us, God in grace provides us. We need not grow hungry, forced to eat fast-food along the shoulder of the road. Lest we succumb to the junk-food at the Jiffy Mart, Jesus provides us nourishment such that we will arrive prepared to do what needs doing.

When we come for “solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal;” (BCP. Page 372) then we miss the best part. And what is the best part, you ask?
Why, the best part is going out and doing what Jesus said for us to do and seeing that indeed it is happening. What’s not to like? Join a ministry team and find out. These are the four movements of the Eucharist.

THEY WENT

In truth there is a fifth movement: they went. Having the last say, the Deacon exhorts, “Go and do what needs to doing. If you have been fed – be bread.” (My language)

Jesus gave them the bread, they eyes were no longer “held” and they recognized him. Then he vanished. Then, no longer tired; (interesting how that happens) Cleopas and company marched immediately from Emmaus back to Jerusalem with the news of Jesus’ resurrection. Upon arriving they discover that the risen Christ has been busy and there afore them.

Our hearts burned as he reframed the scriptures to include Messiah’s “failure” death upon a tree, they marveled. It’s really a simple matter, you see. Their unconscious got it even if their eyes were “held” and the same, beloved, is true in our own day.

Ever since Emmaus, Christians know that Jesus shows up when the bread is broken. We don’t have to see him with our physical eyes. Our hearts will tell us even when our eyes fail us. Pay attention to the awaking fascinations of your soul. The soul turns unconsciously to God, as sunflowers follow the sun. .

JWS

THE NOAH PARADOX

Posted on March 2, 2014 by shepsewell

TIME AS BURDEN, TIME AS BLESSING

CAROL OCHS UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS, NOTRE DAME, LONDON. 1991

IN THE BEGINNING: GOD’S CREATIVITY

Genesis 1: 1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

DAY ONE: Chaos as a Necessary Stage.

Chaos, or formlessness, is needed because if something already has a form it cannot be created, only re-created. It is formlessness that invites the many possibilities of creation.

Creative processes of the first day: God Saw, God Evaluated, God Separated, God Named.

God Saw: seeing entails the capacity to imagine new possibilities, a major step in creativity. The model of perception described here is not one that forces recalcitrant matter into some preexistent mold; instead it is one of openness, waiting for the intrinsic nature of a substance or situation to reveal itself. Perception all too frequently consists of only in taking in sense data but in ordering that data in terms of past experiences and future expectations. When our hopes and fears distort our openness often we cannot perceive the true nature of creation.
God Evaluated: seeing the light as good. Evaluation is needed to give the creation meaning. The creator cannot fail to evaluate; not to evaluate is not to care, and one must care enough to have standards. The evaluation process affirms that value is inherent in creation. God does not simply, by fiat, declare the light to be good, God judges that it is good.
God Separated: separating night from day (recognizing their differences) and separating creation from the Creator. This last act reminds us that an important aspect of creativity is letting go of the creation. If we are truly separate from our Creator, we can choose the extent of our distance, the direction in which we will go, the way we will follow. Separation is an essential component of creation, but one that bears great cost to the creator.
God Named: Naming draws distinctions and foster creation. God’s act of naming has creative force. Naming correctly joins the head and the heart, because to love someone is to know or bestow their real name

DAY TWO: Separation and Creation of Space

6 And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 8 God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

The creative process of separation is continued here. In addition, the concept of space is introduced, specifically, that of particular space or location. Creation can be understood, in part, as the process of recognizing the rightful place of things.

The concept of location allows for such concepts such as fullness and emptiness. These are empirical states but also value standards. Day 2 contains perspectives that could potentially deaden or renew.

DAY THREE: The Creative Force of Limit.

9 And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

Limitation is a significant part of creation, The dry land appears, not as the result of a new creation, but as a result of the restriction or limiting of matter. Creativity is not simply fecundity. It occurs within limits, such as those imposed by the span of one’s life, the frame of a painting, or the preexisting conventions of a musical form. One of the most powerful uses of creativity is the restriction of the process. …God must limit the Divine creative force so that it doesn’t overwhelm each separate creation.

DAY FOUR: The Creation of Time

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

The text describing the fourth day illustrates a way to mark time and invest it with meaning. The ability to mark time allows us to set periods of time apart as special or sacred etc. In reflecting on our limitations, and our finiteness, and our ability to recognize limitation, we can find God.

DAY FIVE: Blessing and Releasing

20 And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” 21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

It is on the 5^th Day that the word blessed is used for the first time. In this context we recognize that blessing is bestowing on a creature the possibility of carrying on creation (being fertile, increasing, and filling the waters). The freedom inherent in the first two days of Creation is taken to its ultimate in bestowing on creature the capacity to carry on the creation.

DAY SIX: In the Creator’s Image

24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” 29 God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

In order to understand more fully what it means for us to made in the image of God, we must review the events of the first five days of Creation, because our image of God is that of the God of Creation. Liberation and redemption are concepts that came long after the world was created, even though they may be recognizable in the early stages of creation. However, our explicit image of God lies within the first five days of Creation:

emptiness, openness, waiting;
calling forth, seeing, evaluation;
separating, naming;limiting, placing;
marking of time; and
blessing and releasing the creatures’ own creativity.

DAY SEVEN: The Creation of Rest.

2 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. 2 And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

The last day of Creation is not the 6^th day, but the 7^th.

Rest plays a vital role in creation. It links the themes of restricting the act of creation, of creating space for reflection, and of marking time as sacred. …the creation of rest allows the creatures made in God’s image to experience God’s presence. If we cannot experience God’s presence in a sacred place …we can experience God’s presence in time, in the weekly experience of reenacting the 7^th day of creation.

Bring us, O Lord God

Posted on February 15, 2014 by shepsewell

John Donne

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening
into the house and gate of heaven,
to enter into that gate and dwell in that house,
where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling,
but one equal light;
no noise nor silence, but one equal music;
no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession;
no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity;
in the habitations of thy glory and dominion world without end. — John Donne

This may be my favorite poem. I read it often in sermons at funerals as it gets at something intangible that touches me deeply. Donne puts his inspired finger square on the point and that point is at the beginning. Since the day of disobedience and the eviction of our for-bearers from the Garden of Bliss, we ride, caught on the horns of a dilemma of opposites.

If evil and good were not enough to learn, all the opposites imaginable caught us like wires, a nest, no a web of wires pulling in contradiction: up/down – in/out – come/go – black/white – friend/foe – hate and love and endless pullings such that we scream for release.

Through the maze, thicket of consternation and briars of expediency God longs for us; His Son came for us and The Holy Ghost schemes for that through union with God all contradictions, all opposites meet that we may be one, even as the Father and the Son are One!

It is here that Donne speaks the eternal truth:

no noise nor silence, but one equal music;
no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession;
no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity.

We shall be One and beloved it will be enough.

The Summer House on the River Wey, near the Village of Ripley. Here John Donne, Dean of Saint Paul’s, lived from 1600 – 1604

Ithaca

Posted on February 8, 2014 by shepsewell

Ithaca

Note: Cavafy uses the other Mythic system of the West. The images are different but the tug of pilgrimage, not vacation, but soulful travel in search of God. Of course, as the poet points out, the treasure is within you. Jesus once said, “the Kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field.” The treasure is closer than we know. So, here is Ithaka.

When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,

angry Poseidon – do not fear them:
such as these you will never find
as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare
emotion touch your spirit and your body.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon – you will not meet them
unless you carry them in your soul,
unless your soul raise them up before you.

Ask that your way be long.
At many a Summer dawn to enter
with what gratitude, what joy –
ports seen for the first time;

to stop at Phoenician trading centres,
and to buy good merchandise,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensuous perfumes of every kind,
sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;
to visit many Egyptian cities,
to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.

Alexandria, Egypt

Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don’t in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn’t anything else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn’t deceived you.
So wise you have become, of such experience,
that already you’ll have understood what these Ithakas mean.

Constantine P. Cavafy

Ithaca

Studies In Classic American Literature – D H Lawrence

Posted on January 31, 2014 by shepsewell

[Essay on Edgar Allan Poe]

D H Lawrence

“Love is the mysterious vital attraction which draws things together, closer, closer together. For this reason sex is the action crisis of love. For in sex the two blood-systems, in the male and female, concentrate and come into contact, the merest film intervening. Yet if the intervening film breaks down, it is death.

So there you are. There is a limit to everything. There is a limit to love. The central law of all organic life is that each organism is intrinsically isolate and single in itself. The moment its isolation breaks down, and there comes an actual mixing and confusion, death sets in. This is true of every individual organism, from man to amoeba.

But the secondary law of all organic life is that each organism only lives through contact with other matter, assimilation, and contact with other life, which means assimilation of new vibrations, non-material. Each individual organism is vivified by intimate contact with fellow organism: up to a certain point.”

So man. He breathes the air into him, he swallows food and water. But more than this. He takes into him the life of his fellow men, with whom he comes into contact, and he gives back life to him. This contact draws nearer and nearer, as the intimacy increases. When it is a whole contact, we call it love. Men live by food, but die if they eat too much. Men live by love, but die. or cause death, if they love too much.

Sacred and Profane Love – Titian (1490–1576)

There are two loves: sacred and profane, spiritual and sensual.

In sensual love, it is the two blood-systems, the man’s and woman’s, which sweep up into pure contact, and almost fuse. Almost mingle. Never quite. There is the always the finest imaginable wall between the two bloodwaves, through which pass unknown vibrations, forces, but through the blood itself must never break, or its means bleeding.
In spiritual love, the contact is purely nervous. The nerves in the lovers are set vibrating in unison like two instruments. The pitch can rise higher and higher. But carry this too far, and the nerves begin to break, to bleed, as it were, and a form of death sets in.

The trouble about man is that he insists on being master of his own fate, and he insists on oneness. For instance, having discovered the ecstasy of spiritual love, he insists that he shall have this all the time, and nothing but this, for this is life. It is what he calls “heightening” life. He wants his nerves to be set vibrating in the intense and exhilarating union with the nerves of another being and by this means he acquires an ecstasy of vision, he finds himself in glowing unison with all the universe.

But as a matter of fact this glowing unison is only a temporary thing, because the first law of life is that each organism is isolate in itself, it must return to its own isolation. Yet man has tried the glow of unison, called loved, and he likes it. It gives him his highest gratification. He wants it. He wants it all the time. He wants and he shall have it. He doesn’t want to return to his own isolation. Or if he must, it is only as a prowling beast returns to its lair to rest and set out again.

Sacred & Profane Love – Sean Keating

Beyond Contradiction

Gain Disguised as Loss

Tag Archives: Poetry

The Healing Gift of Tears

The Archetype of the Shape-Changer…

“Healing”

June 26, 2005

NOTE; Obviously this is an old sermon. The themes are exactly the ones I struggle with today. You can interpret that several ways. I’m not sure myself. I feel the same issues but with greater intensity. As our Lord says, “Work while it is day for night is coming when no man can work.” John 9:4

RELIGION IS HARD-WIRED IN HUMANITY

SHE WROTE “WHEN THE CHURCH GAVE UP FASTING THE CULTURE TOOK UP DIETING.”