Get over yourself

Here's a little paraphrase of St. Paul's instructions in Philippians 2.1-11. Apt guidance for everyday life in our families, work settings, and neighborhoods.

If you climb over others on your way toward your goals, you're blind to Christ in them, and your ego's become your god.

Instead, remember what I've told you: you have everything it takes to set yourself aside and help others find their way.

Look, this is the down-to-earth way of life modeled for us by Christ, and Christ expects us to follow him.

But if you don't do the hard work of letting go of the things you don't think you can live without,

You'll never be able to get past yourself long enough to lend a helping hand.

Examining my life: Am I present?

I'm leading a day-long retreat for hospital chaplains next week. Their ministry is the ministry of presence. But like most of us, they struggle to be truly present to the sick and dying and their families, and to the doctors and nurses who care for them. Like us, they too often find their minds flitting to and fro from one thought to another like bees in a flower garden. Bees seem always in a race against time. Chaplains don't want to make their rounds that way, but often do. So we'll explore two topics, "Living in the Present" and "Praying in the Present," as ways to recover the ministry of presence.

I'd like to put together a short questionnaire that helps them examine the state of their presence of mind---how present they really are to this present moment.

You can help me.

Here are three sample questions I may use. Would you test them in your own life, and give me some feedback. Do they help? What question might you add?

1. I find myself looking deeply into the eyes of the person before me, even if just for a few moments, pausing before the mystery of their life, reading their gaze as I'd read a good book.    __often __ occasionally __ rarely __ never

2. When I'm distracted by a thought about an obligation, responsibility, or need---what I'm to do next, a fear, memory, desire---how quickly am I able to return to what is right before me?

__ I don't know; I've never even stopped to think about how my thoughts lure me away

__ I can wander off with a thought for minutes at a time before I realize I'm not really here

__ I quickly recognize the distraction, tell myself "I'll get to that," and return to what I'm doing

__ When I'm driving, I'm driving; when I'm washing dishes, I'm washing dishes---thoughts pull at me but I follow them only when I choose to

3. In an average hour of my day, what percentage of time do my thoughts hover over things from the past (____%) or over concerns about the future (____%)? What percentage of that hour is spent completely absorbed in the present, aware only of what is going on here and now around or within me? _____%

Living resurrection

The Resurrection is likely a belief you affirm (or maybe don't), a doctrine that's part of the religious faith you affirm. But the Resurrection is not a mere idea. It is to be lived. Not just by Jesus or by others, but by you . . . in the ordinariness of your daily life.

A woman with young children tells me that resurrection is something she practices each day--when doing dishes, parenting a child with a challenging emotional make up, talking with her husband about her day. It's no longer an idea, something she confesses in the creeds. It's a reality that feeds her way of life.  She says she's learning that she can't live life anywhere other than where she is, what's in front of her, who she is right now.  Resurrection frees her to open to Life here and now.

Religiously we say that the Resurrection is God's triumph over sin, death, and evil. It is, in a word, freedom.

So, as St. Paul says: "Awake sleeper, rise from the dead." (Ephesians 5.14)

You'll make the Resurrection more than nice ideas by practicing the resurrection daily. Free now to embrace this moment as sacred, this moment as the meeting place between you and God, this moment as alive with wonder.

The spirituality of Trinity or Why you'll be glad to be Trinitarian

Some of you have suggested posting a link to my recent sermon on the Holy Trinity. The Trinity is largely ignored except by those who like to debate doctrine.  But the Trinity is much less about ideas than about direct experience.  In this message I not only explore the ways people have thought about the Trinity, but more importantly  invite us into a trinitarian spirituality that enriches all of life.

If the Trinity has baffled you, confused you, bored you, or even repelled you, you might find yourself opening to the mystery of God as Three, and reveling in a richer spirituality of daily life.

Listen to it or download it here.

Toward a spirituality of management

An example of holy reading, lectio divina, on Scripture, Psalm 104.  It illustrates my meditation and listening early one morning as I readied myself spiritually for the tasks before me that day:

The psalm is a meditation on the goodness of God's creation and praise for God's gracious administration. God sets up the conditions, the environment, but doesn't control us.

How can I follow God's lead as an administrator? I often struggle with the I experience people's performance, their own self-management. I feel responsible for what they do, and can get trapped by my own over-functioning, which is an effort to increase their performance.

Scripture shows me that God may grieve human performance, a person's failure to live into the goodness God has set up for us, offered us. But God never controls us. God gets angry, even demanding (Hosea 11), but backs off again and again, realizing that anger goes against God's own virtues.

Like God---as a servant of God---I can step up the conditions for people to live and work, but I cannot make them perform; in fact, I must not. The genius of human life is that people can find ways of performing that are astonishing---just as they can be immensely disappointing.

This is the splendor of freedom.

Each individual must be given freedom if we are to see their brilliance. Freedom is a risk. You may guide, pray, even sometimes urge, but beware of your own needs and attachments to outcomes. Attached to such things, you will become a tyrant.

So, give them bread (104.15); provide them with water (104.10). Set up the boundaries (104.9). But remember, you cannot make them eat or keep them from wandering.

Your delight is in giving them what they most need---love. What they do with these things is ultimately their business, not yours.

from my journals, October 6, 2007