I had never thought about describing the Rule of Saint Benedict in quite this way before, but I like the way Archbishop Williams (Head of the Anglican Church) puts it:

'We tend, all of us, to try to solve our problems by more talking, and less listening,' said Williams in his sermon. 'As you read the Rule of St. Benedict, what you see being defined before you is a method for creating a listening community. And not simply a community of people who are all listening to the same thing… but a community of people who are listening intently to each other.' (taken from the Episcopal News Service)

"Listen" is the very first word in the Rule. "Listen"-ing is the greatest gift we can give to one another. A "listening" community of diversity...ah, just what the world needs right now!

The Work of God...

Seven times a day...can you imagine? Seven times a day, even in the middle of the night, the monastery bell summons the monks to "The Work of God." Saint Benedict invented the term, I suppose, he certainly made good use of it in his Rule.

As an Oblate of Saint Vincent's Archabbey I have tried to be faithful to the promises I made to practice the Rule as much as I can without depriving my church or my family from time they need. But I confess, only on retreat in a hermitage have I managed all seven, and then only by fudging a bit on that middle of the night time.

I begin usually when I arrive at my office, saying the offices for Lauds and Prime together. These are the two that start off the day and I am constantly amazed at how much better my days go when I am able to follow this routine. It's like my feet, my being and soul, are firmly grounded as the day begins. I am reminded of what really matters in this world, that all I am and have I owe to God, and that in Him I "live and move and have my being." I am less troubled by the vagrancy's of life, less bothered by the failures of others, less worried about what may or may not happen tomorrow. That hour in prayer affirms for me that ultimately I am not in control, that all that happens is in God's hands, and that humility is a virtue to be sought after far more than pride ever could be. I can face all things through Christ who strengthens me.

In the evening, last thing before going home, Vespers. The service of the close of the day, thanking God for all that has happened and trusting Him for all that will. Surprising how much better I sleep, how much easier I fall asleep, when I remember simply to pray and trust Him for tomorrow and all the tomorrows to come.

I was asked which prayer book I use recently. Before I share that with you, let me tell you this, if you are wondering which one you should use, and there are many, try some out, take them for a "test pray" or two, and use the one that you will use, the one that seems to express clearly what you would say to Our Lord. Prayer books taking up space on a book shelf are of no use at all. Everyone can find one that can use comfortably. It's a bit like Bible translations, find the one that you will read, not the one that everyone says you should have but which doesn't engage your thought or spirit and so sits there on the coffee table as a monument to a good idea gone bad.

I use the "Monastic Diurnal", which means the day hours of prayer used in Benedictine monasteries for fifteen hundred years up until Vatican 2. That conference led to the creation of the Liturgy of the Hours (LOH) in wide use today. So why Diurnal and not LOH? I like the language, and especially the psalm translations, better in the Diurnal and it was recommended to me by another Benedictine Oblate (Michael Lopiccolo). But again, the point is not what book you pray from...it's that you have that daily encounter with God.

As a small aside, I love the way each session in the Diurnal begins with a short prayer that goes like this, "O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me." Short, sweet, and to the point. I can't begin to tell you how many times I have prayed those words before opening the door into a crisis situation.

Well enough for now. Always remember God loves you, and that prayer is really a lovers conversation.

Have Yourself a Soulful Christmas...

This year I find myself wishing for a soulful or soul-filled Christmas. There is just something about the enforced gaiety of the Christmas season that almost seems contrived, wooden. I’d rather sit in front of a warm fire and send out good thoughts of some who I would love to see again this year. The daughter I haven’t seen since she was a year old who turned forty one this year. My parent’s dead now the better part of fifteen years. All the others who have loved me into being who I am, and yet somehow departed after walking along side for a season.
Oh, I’m not “blue” or sad, just journeying inward and upward. I suppose that’s how it was for Mary and Joseph, those two young people so long ago upon whom shone the light of a star and the fate of all mankind. Can you imagine what must have been running through their minds when the first labor pains struck? What on Earth was about to be born? Angels foretold his coming, but what would he be like? Would he even look like either of them? How do you define “normal” for a son of God? I imagine there was awe at what was about to happen, and fear, and deepening wonder at the star overhead. Must we celebrate that momentous night with gaiety when our hearts feel anything but gay? With commercialism when He was “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly?”
Perhaps what we need to do instead is to steal away to a parish church and sit there alone in the candle light and like Mary, “Ponder these things…” in our hearts. What does this baby now cradled against Mary’s breast mean to me? What gifts can I bring to the stable this night to give to Our Lord? What can I offer to the one who loves me more than I shall ever be able to understand or respond to? What does it mean to me that my Savior was born to a craftsman and his wife, in a barn, and laid into a feed trough? He could have “Called Ten Thousand Angels” the hymn says, and yes, he could have been born in the finest bedroom, in the biggest mansion, to the daughter of Caesar or Herod the Great…but he chose to come to ones such as you and I. What are we to make of that? How radical, how revolutionary, is that in the face of our culture that puts personal status and upward mobility above all else?
So have a soulful Christmas. There, in the candlelight of the sanctuary, or in your own room lit by the soft glow of the tree lights, contemplate the manger scene, stand yourself just outside the stable and hear the cry of the infant and the low calling of the animals within, and let the wonder and awe of it all wash over you. Yes, have a soulful Christmas and may the babe in the manger, Our Lord, be born in your heart this Christmas. Amen.

A Few Thoughts in the Autumn of my Life...

I sit here at the end of a frenetic week, the work is over, our new building is mostly finished, and I anticipate the celebration and consecration in the morning. Somehow, I started thinking about all the celebrations that are both endings and beginnings.

I am in the autumn of my life, like the trees I sometimes feel a blaze of creative color, of time compressed, of richness and meaning both realized and anticipated. Fall is for me a season of glorious fruition, of ripeness, of harvest and celebration. So I find my spirit, while I still have a sense of much to learn, still there is a quite recognition of the distance already traveled and a meaning imparted to it all by the Spirit of God. Fall is a time to let go of regrets and missed opportunities and to look for the learning that each experience offered. It is a time to nurture relationships that matter, to complete the circle with friends and family, the circle formed when we become one spirit in two bodies. Fall is a time to learn the difference between alone-ness and loneliness, to learn that I am enough, not perfect, just enough, and to learn that God is pleased with that.

Fall is a season rich in the Spirit. A time to assemble our cloud of witnesses for All Saints, a time to taste the sweetness of fruit harvested, both spiritual and temporal, and a time to give thanks to the maker of all things for making me. And yes, now we anticipate the winter. Even in fall's joy we find the chill wind reminding us that we are not forever, even fall is only for now, so taste it's sweetness and it's joy while we can. The witness of the spirit is not to fear the winter, but to anticipate it's arrival...to lay up stores of the spirit to survive it's chill...and to remember the joy of a good roaring fire, old friends around the table, and memories shared even as the fire falls to embers.

The sleep of death waits us all in winter's depths, but why should we rail and complain before the Throne of the Eternal simply because we, like the seed, must be planted in the ground to rise and flower anew in a new and awakening world? Did not our Lord say that we have a place there? Should not even the smallest cell there be beyond comparison to the finest mansion this world could offer?

Do I go reluctantly? Of course, in the fall I am becoming less enamored of changes of all types...more taken with the steady, the unchangeable, the eternal. And so I fear the unknown journey, but not very much. For the one who is both light and life, who is warmth and life, has promised to go with me on the journey and to go is but to take his hand and trust the rest to him. And even if the journey has no bright tomorrow but is simply an end, so be it. For to have known Him in this life, to have felt His presence, to have been transfigured before Him, has made all the difference and I will be of all men most blessed.

Don't know if this will make much sense to anyone, but those are my thoughts as the leaves of my spirit begin to ripen and brighten to rich reds, yellows, and oranges.

Answer to the question, "What is Christian Practice"

As a Methodist and Benedictine I grew up in a much more conservative household and so I know a bit of what some ex-fundamentalists are dealing with. My father was Methodist but some of his family was big in the Assemblies of God in South Carolina. I think when they heard I was going to Emory's Candler School of Theology they went into fasting and prayer for my soul!

I have used the metaphor of a love relationship leading to marriage before to explain what I think we are talking about. By the way, I never heard that anything in scripture might be metaphorical before either! Our developing relationship with God is a lot like falling in love here on earth.

I think of Christian practice as the growing relationship between each of us and God. Just like when we fall in love in this life, along the way we become intentional about seeking one another out, about learning what pleases the other, about enjoying time spent together. So it is with God. We "practice" our faith first by acknowledging this developing relationship and trying to learn all we can about our beloved.

I tend to see that in three ways of approaching God, first, in prayer. Just as I would call my wife many times a day and my world would light up when she answered, so it is with God. Prayer for me now is not nearly so much about composition, form, and structure as it used to be...now it is a lover's conversation. Think of your own beloved in this world, remember late night conversations where dreams flowed like heady wine?

The second way is through study. I can remember getting a letter from my wife when circumstances separated us for a time. How I hung on every word, how I looked for the nuances beyond the words that would give me an insight into her feelings as she wrote, how important it was to savor each word, not to go too fast, but to reflect on the word and the writer. So it is with scripture. I am a big fan of the Gospels and the Psalms. I remember growing up our reading of scripture was always "goal oriented." If we read a certain amount we got a gold star on the Sunday school wall. I was reading to get through reading, to conquer each page and count it done as quickly as possible. That's how I learned to read in school as well. God has taken me out of the "reading to finish" mode and shown me the reading to know the beloved mode. Slow, savoring, open to meaning not immediately clear, let the beloved speak through the words. A fancy name for this is Lectio (it's pronounced "Lexio") Divina or "Divine Reading."

Now for the third part, remember how special dates were? Remember hours spent in front of the closet trying to decide what to wear? Remember the thrill that ran up your spine when your date drew close in a dance? So it is in part three, worship. When we worship God we let go of this world and center our heart and mind only on our beloved, we come into his presence with love and thanksgiving, we sing praises from the depths of our heart and soul. Worship is our date with God, the time that we are most aware of his presence, when we respond to him in giving of ourselves as much as we are able.

And then there is the marriage. The giving of the self to the other completely in self-surrender. But that is not the end, it is only a beginning. I have tried to practice, to live out, my love for my wife thirty five years now, and every day we must begin again to love one another in some way. We are so much different now than we were back then, we have grown, we know each other in an intimacy that is so much more than the physical alone. We can finish each others sentences and thoughts. So it is with practicing our love for God. The more we seek, the more we find. The more we find, the more we know. The more we know, the more we see there is to know.

To me, practicing my faith is an unending quest for God. The more I seek him, the more I become aware of how immense this God of ours is, and how little we try to make him sometimes. I think this is the meaning behind the conflict of knowledge and mystery. As a fundamentalist, I felt I could know all there is to know about God. That by diligent effort I could become "the perfect disciple." I am afraid that is forever doomed to failure. God inspired the Scripture, but it is not always literal nor is it all there is to God. By abandoning ourselves to the mystery we find a God whose love is not earned but freely given, who wants to know us as we are, and not as our impression of "someone we think will please him." Here I can come to terms with the fact that I am not perfect nor will I ever will be. I can let go of the assumption that I can have perfect knowledge of God and of his will and can approach him not as a stern school teacher or absolute judge, but as one who genuinely cares about me as I am. Does he want me to follow him? Of course! Are their things I have chosen to let go of along the way? Sure, day by day I set down excess baggage, by that I mean those things that would come between us. In my relationship with my wife, the same was true. In order to have a close relationship with her, there were things, behaviors, that I had to let go of. I was willing to do it, because the love that we had for each other was worth the cost. So it is with God.

So, relax, take a few deep breaths, and begin to follow where your beloved leads. Let go of the idea of goals to achieve, and nurture the relationship he offers to you. Don't be too hard on yourself. We all fail, he expects us to, he made us after all. Like the old monk once said, "We fall down, we get up again. We fall down, we get up again." and so forth on and on. And then one day off in the distant future we see our beloved as he is, stretch our our hand and take his, and together we go home to be united forever. Works for me anyway. Peace. David

The Rise of the Fundamentalists

I have been thinking a lot about the rise we seem to see in militant fundamentalism around the world and several things have occurred to me. One, there are more of us, we live in ever increasing crowds of people. Many folks have no recourse to silence or alone-ness, all of this produces stress and a sense of disorientation for many. Fundamentalism seems to offer a restoration of walls, or definite boundaries, of separateness in those most afflicted with our crowded and hectic world. In setting ourselves aside in a walled environment we reduce the world to manageable proportions once again.

The death of hero's, role models, the seeming unlimited grey areas of morality and ethics again beget an attempt to approximate a time when, and an ethos where, right and wrong, black and white, were the norm and few grey areas exist. The sense that such times may never have really existed in reality seems to fuel an even more pronounced retreat, instead of the opposite. We passionately seek what may only be a fantasy, until that fantasied era of security becomes our reality.

The internet, with its world wide scope and mega-content is viewed as threatening since it offers so many more choices than humanity has ever had to deal with before. If one can dream it, fantasize it, or maybe only dimly glimpse it...one may find it fully fleshed out on the net. One may suggest that we exist in a world of content overload devoid of relabel filters to sort things out. We have, at our finger tips, a literal Pandora's box. Though we may not cognitively realize it, there is as much threat as there is blessing in the offering of unlimited choice.

The rise of terrorism, the daily scenes of death and dying, the awareness of threat within what were previously thought to be safe parameters. We have not yet begun to grasp culturally, at least in the western world, what events like 9/11 have changed in the fundamental understandings of our lives. The world has fundamentally changed, I would suggest, from the threat of terrorism. There is not illusion of safety any more. Especially in America, we are only dimly becoming aware of how much our basic group psychology has changed. Research years hence will give rise to many books on the shift in culture following 9/11 as reflected in our political, sociological, and cultural institutions.

And so we yearn for a time, for a set of rules or ethics, which will restore our sense of balance, of safety, of equilibrium. We no longer want the Jesus who offers "love" for that is too loosey-goosey, we want again the old testament God of rules and laws. Surrounded by the "do's" and decrying the "don'ts" we feel, at least for the moment, safe and secure. There are walls, there's one right over there, God said it and so I believe it, and that wall over there is constructed from that belief. In so doing we become a prisoner of our own desire for stability and we cannot admit any contradicting thought less one wall crack, the crack lead to a collapse, and then all the other walls of our "box of safety" collapse too. That's how it seems to me at least. Fundamentalism is a reaction to a confused and chaotic world that offers little sense of safety and security, and to follow the God who offers and requires love is just too much risk in such an insecure environment.

Well...Here Goes

In the beginning was the word...and it is in tribute to the author of that word that I begin. In the Rule of Saint Benedict the first word is "Listen." Seems like we do so little of that these days. We yearn for distraction, we turn on TV's, radio's, run here and there...all to keep us from listening to ourselves. Body, mind, and spirit are all in a conversation, but we are far to busy to listen to what they are telling us. How can we learn to listen to others if we cannot listen even to ourselves?

Think about the last time someone listened to you, I mean really listened. Wasn't it a precious gift? I belive that the most important gift that we can give to ourselves, and give to others, is the gift of listening in silence to the heart, ours or others. May God grant us grace, and may we learn to listen, to Him, to ourselves, and to those we care about around us.