Becoming spiritually aware

When you wake up each morning, you open your eyes, put your feet to the floor, shuffle to the bathroom or coffee pot and begin the process of becoming more aware of your surroundings. Sometimes, a dream still lingers, and you’re confused—while part of you has got two feet in the real world, your mind’s still in the dream. Sometimes you awaken with a jolt, late for work or class or some other obligation and your mind’s already far ahead into your day, obsessing over something you have to do or something still left undone.

You’re awake but your not really there; you’re moving in the world, but not present to it.

There’s a big difference between being awake and being aware, alert, or conscious to what’s really going on around and within you.

An interfaith prayer for 9/11

Here's the invocation I offered tonight at the 9/11 Commemoration Service to an interfaith group meeting at the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno.  Note, I was asked by the director of the center to pray specifically as a Christian and not minimize my theological/spiritual convictions.

Almighty God, we call upon you tonight as memories of September 11, 2001 weigh heavily on our hearts. We recall our horror and shock when buildings tumbled and planes fell and people perished.

We remember our fear and anger our confusion and despair, the sense of vulnerability and insecurity that's been with us ever since.

The world has changed, and we have too.

But today, we come, resolved to be people of faith, taught by our sacred texts, comforted by your presence, instructed by your Wisdom, given hope by the friendship we share despite our differences, and committed to work together as people of peace, working for the reconciliation of the world, to you and to each other.

Come among us now, awaken us to your presence within us, drive fear and suspicion far from us-- for they are not the fruit of your Spirit.

Instead, open us to the power of your love, that we may love you with all our hearts and souls and minds and strength, and to love each other, for we are all made to be "partakers of your divine nature" (2 Peter 1.4)

So, may we turn our grief into action for the sake of your love for us and for all your world.

We ask this of you whom we call by many names, you, who have revealed in Jesus-- who lay down his life rather than take up arms-- what it means to live a life pleasing and honorable to you who call us to love one another.

Amen.

How to face the reality of suffering and evil

There's a lot of talk these days about the evil of the world and much concern about the suffering many of us experience. Questions about God, suffering, and evil will abound as the ten year anniversary of 9/11 comes and goes.

Here's something that challenges us to see things differently--

John Goldingay, a distinguished Old Testament professor, has written a remarkable memoir of his 43 year marriage, much of it challenged by his wife's experience with multiple sclerosis.  In the final years before her death in 2009, she was unable to walk or even speak.

To students who often struggle intellectually with the nature of God and the reality of suffering and evil, Goldingay often says:

"It's odd that people who are not suffering often seem to fret more about this problem than people who are? . . . [The people who worry about such things] are people who each day have food to eat and sunshine to enjoy and friends to share life with and a roof over their head and God to talk to.  What on earth are we to make of the fact that there is so much good in the world?  Isn't that at least as striking as the fact that there is so much evil?"

Yes, that fact is at least as striking.

Taking hold of that fact more consistent with a life of prayer that's nourished by the teaching of another Old Testament scholar who writes: "And God saw all that he had made and indeed it was very good" (Genesis 1.31).

How to have something worth saying

I don't think I have anything worthwhile to say unless it comes out of the deep silence.

What comes to you when you enter your heart in prayer

The heart is like the furnace in Babylon where the three brave souls were met and sustained by the Divine presence. It is also like the burning bush from which God spoke to Moses.  Again, your heart is like the rock in the desert that gushed forth water, saving the children of Israel. Enter it.