Reclaiming the Beloved Child

Sermon for St. Augustine's Episcopal Parish 
18 March 2012 
The Fourth Sunday in Lent

1).

I want to cast a scene for you.

Picture a mother nursing a baby boy in a rocking chair.  It’s evening, a lamp dimly lights the room, the boy is dressed in a one-piece sleeper, the mother in a simple nightgown.  You hear the creak of the rocker, the gentle suckle, and a whispered soprano:

For God so loved the world, he gave his only Son, to die on Calvary’s tree from sin to set me free.  Some day he’s coming back, what glory that will be! Wonderful his love for me, for me, wonderful his love for me.

Every night it’s the same scene: the baby is held close, feels the warm, sweet milk fill his belly, hears the creaking of the chair and this song.  And the boy drifts off to sleep with the words, “wonderful his love for me,” still kissing his ears.

There is a kind of knowing taking place here by this baby boy before language has any meaning for him.  This is the knowledge of belovedness, what developmental experts call attachment.  You can screw up a lot as a parent, but as long as you succeed in planting this knowing deep within your child, 99% of your God-given work is done.

And for this baby, as language is acquired and begins to carry more and more meaning within his experience of the world, the words of John 3:16 are imbued with the power of his attachment to his mother and to the Divine Reality she embodies to him. 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

2).

But the boy was weaned, and soon the cognitive use of language employed by his intellect became the main way he attached meaning to his life.  Slowly a great distance grew between the boy’s conscious experience of the world and the first knowing he ever had.  That distance enabled the boy to function in the world, to develop a personality and an identity of his own.  This is appropriate and normal.  It’s what developmental experts call individuation.  And slowly, a veil was drawn over the knowledge of his belovedness.  He replaced that knowing with a story about himself and the world in which he needed to earn his belovedness.  This particular boy replaced his first knowing with the story that he is loved to the extent that he is approved of, and he built his life according to that false story.  He began to develop habits of thought and attention and emotion that reinforced that story in every area of his life.  Before he knew it, he was out of college, married, and had kids of his own and the story seemed to be holding up pretty well.  There was the occasional anomaly, but there were no serious signs that the fiction was slipping.

But there came a point at which the false story did slip.  And when it slipped, the whole shebang came crashing down around him, and the boy was trapped—separated from his first knowledge by a lifetime of mistaken beliefs engrained by habits of thought and attention, of distorted feelings learned through habits of emotion and reaction.  He could not reach the knowing of his belovedness for anything more than a fleeting moment at a time.  He can’t go back to the rocking chair and listen to the song with infant ears.  He is grown.  He is banished from the garden.

3)

It is at this point that the boy, the man, comes to the true work of the spiritual life.  It is the work of remembering and reclaiming one’s attachment to the Divine, one’s visceral knowledge of belovedness, not by reverting back to infancy and innocence, but by transcending the ego’s false story as a fully grown adult.  This work is done with an ancient set of tools that employ language in the service, not of the ego, of the intellect, which is enslaved by the fiction, but of the soul, our true Self, which includes our unconscious and never forgets what it knows. 

These tools are myth and symbol.  Myth and symbol provide us access to the riches of our inner experience, and they aid the spiritual adult in the transforming work of remembrance and reclamation of her core identity as the beloved child.

4)

Nowhere are these tools seen more clearly in action than in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John, chapter 3.  Here we see Nicodemus trapped in our boy’s predicament.  His false story isn’t working for him in the way it once did—respected, pious Pharisee on the ruling council of his people—so he comes to Jesus by night seeking answers.  And what does Jesus do?  He feeds him myth and symbol to lead him into the experience of inner transformation.

* Birth of water and of Spirit

* Being born again from above

* The serpent of bronze lifted up in the wilderness to heal those bitten by snakes

* The Son of Man likewise lifted for all to look upon and be cured

* Light coming into the world, and the struggle against the human love of darkness

Myth and symbol calling for Nicodemus to leave the comfort of his intellect and join Jesus on a transforming journey inward to remember and to reclaim what is veiled from his conscious mind.  But Nicodemus, this earnest inquisitor is left perplexed.  “How can these things be?” he asks.  I hear him saying in this exasperated question, “You are asking too much from me.”

5)

What is Jesus asking of him, of our boy turned man, of all of us?  I believe he is asking us to follow him on that inward journey through myth and symbol to the depths of our soul, to our true Self, the beloved child.  He is asking us to employ these tools in the difficult spiritual work of reconsidering our stories, of remembering and reclaiming the knowing that is ours from our earliest days. 

It is a long and tedious process as we, habit by habit, thought by thought, emotion by emotion subject our fictions, our personal darkness, to the exposure of God’s light, as we turn our eyes upon the Son of Man with hope for healing, and as we accept our birth of Spirit, our lives made new from above.

This is a hard path.  It’s no wonder Nicodemus balked at the prospect of following Jesus down to the depths.  It feels like we die when our stories die.  But this is the death of a fiction that frees us to live our true life in the embrace of our Divine Parent where our soul is at rest in the knowledge of our belovedness.  This is life that never ends.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Amen.    

Cultivating Interiority

Sermon for St. Augustine's Episcopal Parish 2.5.12

1)  One

At the beginning of this week, as I began to ponder our scripture texts for this morning, I couldn’t get a song out of my head.  It’s a popular tune from the late 60’s written by Harry Nilsson.  Maybe you’ve heard it.  It begins like this:

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.

Two can be as bad as one, it’s the loneliest number since the number one.”

Catchy little tune.  The song expresses a widely held sentiment in our culture: that it’s bad to be alone; it’s bad to be “lonely.”  It casts a vision of “the good life” that results from the character of our exterior relationships.

“It’s just no good anymore since you went away . . .” the song goes on to say.

But there’s that sophisticated twist in the second line:

“Two can be as bad as one, it’s the loneliest number since the number one.”

It seems that an external relationship gone wrong can be just “as bad as no relationship at all.

I think Mr. Nilsson had his finger on a central issue of real concern for all of us: From where is derived our identity as human beings?  What is the source of meaning in our lives?

Harry and most of our society conceives of these questions and their answers along the lines of external relationships—a human being’s interactions with her environment, and, most importantly, with the other human beings in that environment.  Let’s think of that environment as a plane of existence, we’ll call it the “plane of exteriority.”  Our society teaches us to find our identities and the meaning of our life by moving around upon this plane.  And on this plane of exteriority we can fix points that represent states of relationship.  We can label one point, “alone,” and another, “together,” and others that represent everything in between.

The great spiritual traditions, on the other hand, conceive of these questions and their answers very differently.  The questions of human identity and the meaning of life cannot be answered without taking into account a different plane of existence that we can call the “plane of interiority.”  On this plane we can fix a whole different set of points that relate to our inner life experience.  In these traditions, including our own Christian tradition, human beings occupy the space between these planes.

2) Mark 1: 35-37

In St. Mark’s Gospel we just heard, “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”  Jesus withdraws from the plane of exteriority and settles himself deep within his inner life, on the plane of interiority.

But what happens to those he left back on the exterior? “And Simon and his companions hunted for him.  When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’”  I can almost hear Simon singing . . .

“It’s just no good anymore since you went away . . .”

And so what does Simon do but insist that Jesus engages with them the plane of exteriority where “everyone” lives.  It’s as though he is oblivious to the larger Reality according to which Jesus conceives of his life.  He’s completely unaware that a plane of interiority even exists, it seems.  Yet, in Jesus’ Reality, the inner experience gives meaning to the outer experience.  One could say that Jesus brings the power of his inner life to bear on all his dealings upon the plane of exteriority.

3) What is interiority?

What is this interiority, this inner experience?  What does it look like?  What is its nature?

Is it a personality disposition?  Is it to be introverted?  No, an introverted personality is simply a predilection, a preference, to spend time near this point on the plane of exteriority that we named “alone.”

So what is interiority?

This week was a rich week on the liturgical calendar.  On February 1^st we celebrated the Feast of St. Brigid of Kildare, one of the patron saints of our community.  She is known as the patron saint of many, many things from babies to chicken farmers to dairymaids to blacksmiths to printing presses, but central to her identity among the Irish and throughout history is that she is the keeper of the perpetual flame, the keeper of the hearth.  We all understand the symbolic significance of the hearth, even here in Arizona.  The hearth represents the center of the home, the seat of intimacy and warmth, of belonging.  It doesn’t get more iconic—a family sitting around the fireplace reading, mother knitting a sweater, the cat chasing the ball of yarn, etc.

In the language of interiority, the flame that Brigid tends is the fire of the Divine Presence that burns in each soul—in the hearth of one’s true home, deep within.  The inner hearth is the place where we are fully and truly at home with God and God is truly at home with us.

This week we also celebrated the Feast of the Presentation, which is when Mary and Joseph brought the newborn Jesus to the temple and they encounter an old, mystic seer named Simeon. 

From the Gospel of St. Luke we read, “Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.  It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.  Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying . . .” and he goes on to say what has become one of the primary canticles of the Church, the Nunc dimittis.

We see here a portrait of a man who lived deep within on the plane of interiority.  Simeon communicated with God; he was guided and directed by the Holy Spirit in all his dealings upon the plane of exteriority.

Interiority, it seems to me, is an art; it is a capacity to be cultivated.  It is learning to find your chair by the hearth.   It is learning how to sit there long enough to be warmed by the fire of the Divine indwelling.  It is learning to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and to be guided onto and along the plane of the exterior.  In short, interiority is intimacy with God.  As St. Augustine of Hippo said, “God is more intimate to me that I am to myself.” 

4) Why interiority?

The question before us now is, why would one desire to cultivate this capacity?  Why would one want to learn the ‘art of inwardness’, as the late Irish poet and mystic John O’Donahue called it?

First of all, it is the path modeled by Jesus for us as Christians, as we see in today’s gospel.  That path is one that engages the exterior plane in light of the interior—to bring the experience of our inner life to bear on all our relationships and all our dealings upon the plane of exteriority.

Secondly, it is by learning this art of inwardness that we are enabled to relate to others in a healthy manner—in a way that transcends our personal programs and agendas.  This art teaches us to engage all in light of our deep awareness of God’s love and our true belonging as a member of God’s family seated around the hearth.  When we bring that awareness with us onto the plane of exteriority we are freed from the need to grasp for our identity by finding some “us” that can be in opposition to some “them.”  And we free others from our need to feel affirmed and approved of and safe because we find the source of our identity and the meaning of our life is on a different plane.

Thirdly, to cultivate interiority is the process of transducing God’s own work into our own work and our own work God’s own work.  It is to convert God’s words into our words and our words into God’s words.  It is to make God’s own breath our breath and to make our breath God’s own breath.  It is the process of becoming fully alive, fully human.

5) How to cultivate interiority

John O’Donahue said that “there is an evacuation of interiority going on in our times,” and that we are in need of “a pedagogy of interiority.”  I am far from being a master of the inner life, but I will humbly offer what I understand to be some rudiments of such a pedagogy as modeled by the masters of interiority we’ve looked at today: Jesus, Brigid, and Simeon.

A first rudiment is solitude.  “In the morning, while it was still very dark, [Jesus] got up and went out to a deserted place . . .”

A second rudiment is silence—silence of mind and thought.  Simple as it sounds, it is not simple at all as anyone who has sat amidst the chatter of the monkey mind can attest.

And a third rudiment is waiting—waiting, like Simeon, for the whisper of the Spirit, for the hope to be revealed.  Waiting, like Brigid, by the fire that was tended and kept for lifetimes on end in Kildare.

Solitude. Silence. Waiting.

After some time, when you’ve become acclimated to the plane of interiority by engaging in these rudiments, you might find that Harry Nilsson’s tune is in need of some substantial revisions, because, as it turns out, one is not lonely in the least.

Amen.

Life Above Water: Living in the Gospel of God

Sermon for St. Brigid's Community 1.19.12


Mark 1: 14-20

This week we celebrated, as a nation, the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Dr. King found himself in a long line of prophets who held up the assumptions of the status quo for all to see and turned them on their heads to show them for the falsehoods they are.  He then called us to live according to what is true instead of according to those falsehoods.

This week we also celebrated, as a church, the Confession of St. Peter, which commemorates his declaration that Jesus is the Messiah.  St. Peter would later, much like Dr. King, find himself prophetically addressing vast crowds with a call to reject their false assumptions and live in the light of the truth he declared at his celebrated confession.

In today’s reading, when Jesus first stepped into the public sphere in the wake of John the Baptist’s arrest proclaiming the “gospel” of God, he holds up, in the prophetic tradition, the assumptions surrounding the great power of his time.  You see, a “gospel” or “good news”—“evangelion” in Greek—was something told about Caesar Augustus, who was the “savior of the world.”  It was he who instituted, through war and occupation, the Pax Romana, the reality in which everyone in Jesus’ audience lived and moved.  “Gospels” were about Caesar, and everyone knew it.

So when Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel,” people would have heard something like, “Caesar’s gospel is false, it is not “good news.”  From now on it is the story of how God saves the world and how God brings peace that can be the operative Reality of your lives.  Utterly re-orient yourself to live in God’s story, no longer in Caesar’s. 

So what is Caesar’s gospel?  It is a story of power in which power is held in an iron fist and lorded over those with no power.  It is a story in which opposition is crushed and brought into submission by force.  It is a story in which peace is achieved through fear of punishment.  It is a story of “us” vs. “them”, of citizens vs. slaves and barbarians.  It is a story of self-interest at all costs.  This is the gospel of Caesar.

And what is God’s gospel?  It is a story in which power is held in a hand that liberates and heals the powerless.  It is a story in which opposition is met without resistance.  It is a story in which peace is a state of being that arises from inner freedom.  It is a story in which all bear the image of God.  It is a story of kenosis— of self-emptying, of a willingness to suffer death rather than inflict it.  This is the gospel of God, the gospel Jesus proclaimed.

St. Peter confessed Jesus to be the Messiah near the end of the synoptic accounts, after spending years with Jesus who inhabited and embodied this gospel.  The Messiah, the Christ, literally means, “the anointed one.”  It is, first and foremost, a kingly title, and, as such, it is conceived of by most, including Peter, in terms of worldly power—according to some version of the gospel of Caesar.  But Jesus embodied this title in the radically alternative vision that is the gospel of God.  He would not sit comfortably in a palace, but walk among the poor and the outcast.  He would not gather an army to overcome his enemies, but would bear in his own person the effects of their hatred.  Among the final words on his lips would be words of forgiveness rather than curse.

What does it take to make a person like this?  How does one come to live in God’s gospel when our inner and outer landscapes seem submerged beneath Caesar’s gospel?  It’s as though we are made for one habitat and find ourselves stuck in another.  Like we are trapped underwater and can’t get out into the air and onto the land.  We live like fish when, really, we are women and men.  It is as though we need someone to fish for us—to catch us in some net that pulls us up out of anger and conflict into forgiveness and peace, up out of power that serves only self-interest into power that serves to free and empower others, up out of the need to identify and rail against one’s enemies into the ability to perceive the very image of God in each face. 

Dr. King was caught in a net that pulled him up out of the gospel of Caesar into the gospel of God.  That net is called Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.  It is where he learned to fill his lungs with air rather than water and breathe out words of nonviolence.  It’s where he learned to use his feet to march in peace on land rather than to swim in the waters of hatred. 

What net are you caught in?  What pulls you up out of the socio-political assumptions, out of the mainstream cultural and religious stories that make up your watery habitat?

I have found myself caught in a net woven from Benedictine, Catholic, and Anglican spiritualities here in this time and place, in this community.  It’s a slow ride to the surface of the water.  Sometimes the undercurrent is strong.  Sometimes the net gets snagged on a branch.  Sometimes I thrash and struggle against the pull.  But by the grace of God and faithfulness of fishermen like my father Benedict, like Sr. Joan Chittister, like my spiritual director, Fr. Bob Rossi, like Gil, my priest and mentor, I am moving steadily upward toward the air, toward the light, toward the revolution that is the gospel of God.

I ask once more, what net are you caught in?

Amen.

December 31

Chapter 73

The Rule of Benedict December 31

from May:

Here at the end of his Rule, Benedict models humility regarding his own work.  We can learn from his example and hold gently the good that comes from our lives, recognizing that it is by God's love and grace that we have been brought to the place we are.  Let us adopt our Father Benedict's humility, then, and open ourselves to what we can learn from others on parallel journeys so that we might be formed more completely into the likeness of Christ.

from August:

Benedict reminds us here at the end of the Rule that means to do not equal ends, and it is the end, the goal, the telos of our life that is the priority.  We are formed by our Benedictine practices to find our true self at home with God, and to find God at home in our lives.  We are all beginners.  And we will always need to begin again.

This will be my last daily post on this blog.  I look forward to a blessed and fruitful New Year with you all.

December 30

Chapter 72

The Rule of Benedict December 30

The first sentence of this chapter resonates with me today.  The evil zeal is bitterness, and it separates from God.  If our life's journey was represented on a map, the zeal of bitterness would point us in a the direction opposite of where we desire to travel.  Yet the good zeal points us precisely in the direction we desire to go--to our true home with God.

The difference between these two zeals is found in the depths of our inner life, at the intersection of our emotions, desires, and will.  Good zeal must be cultivated and grown within by our consistent effort and by Divine grace.  Evil zeal grows in the soil of our false self, that persistent foe who desires MY will, not God's.

December 29

Chapter 71

The Rule of Benedict December 29

In my reading of the Gospel of Mark this morning during lectio, I witnessed Jesus in Gethsemane fully owning his emotions and desires, bringing them before his Abba whom he trusts, and fully releasing them with, "yet, not what I want, but what you want."

Benedict states in this chapter that the road of obedience brings us to God, and I perceive that the road Jesus walked in Gethsemane is the same road we all must walk among our own particular emotions and desires.

Here are thoughts from April:

Benedictine obedience comes down the point at which we, in the thick of our emotions, desires, and will, submit to another.  It is a painfully difficult practice.  It requires the laying down of whatever story I tell myself that places me in the possession of what is right.  And at no time are the feelings of being right stronger than when I am in conflict.  Yet it is precisely at this point that Benedict instructs us to quickly and decisively put aside excuses and blame. 

Next time you find yourself being offended, imagine what it would take to extend a blessing rather than a rebuttal or a curse.  And next time you find yourself having given offense, imagine setting aside explanations and asking for unqualified forgiveness.  This is the inner freedom that Benedict seeks to cultivate in us.

December 28

Feast of the Holy Innocents


The Rule of Benedict December 28

from August:

I find it so easy to set myself up as judge and executer.  So often my perspective is trapped behind my two small eyes, and I succumb to the temptation to act as though I see Reality.  Benedict seeks to prevent this very impulse in this chapter. 

As a non-cloistered community, let us consider carefully how we posture ourselves with each other and with those we encounter in our daily lives.  As much as it appears at times to be the case, God has not set us up as vigilantes for God's own Truth.