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Ordinary life discloses to us, in the experience of loving, this dimension of glory—discloses the transcendence of loving over everything else that a human being can do. The Gospel of John suggests to us that the divine glory, in that ultimate dimension in which it appears in the handing over of Jesus, is of this same shape, though on a vaster scale. There is in it something whose shape we know and can recognize—the shape of the glory of loving. There is in the God Who is disclosed in Jesus first the glory of signs and mighty works—the glory of free and unfettered activity and achievement; but when Jesus destines himself, by His own will and initiative, to wait at the end of exposure and helplessness, there is disclosed, as the ultimate dimension of the divine glory, that same glory which we dimly perceive in our own experience when, because we love, we destine ourselves to wait and to be exposed and to receive. The glory of that waiting figure in Gethsemane is not wholly strange and unfamiliar to us—not so strange that we could mistake it for misfortune and regard the figure with pity or sheer incomprehension. The glory of God which finally appears in the waiting figure in the Garden is the glory of that not wholly unfamiliar activity which always, in the end, destines itself to waiting—the activity of loving.
From The Stature of Waiting by W. H. Vanstone. © 1982, 2006. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com.
The real tragedy of Good Friday was the death of Judas. This death was truly tragic, meaningless, violent and desperate. Much of my ministry has been spent with people who have died tragic deaths. Others have lived lives which have been devoid of hope. I think particularly of the experience of many heroin addicts as they moved towards despair. Unless we can identify in some way with this loss of hope, we have not begun to understand the Good Friday experience. In fact only those who know something of the meaning of despair can come to experience victory. Only the dead can appreciate resurrection, and all Christians must confront and experience the darkness as they move along the way to death. One of the worst aspects of the darkness which we face is the painful fear that some of the darkness we encounter may not be redeemable, that it may be the darkness of original sin. Yet this too must be faced in trust and confidence.
This entry into the darkness is the very heart of faith and of hope. To be a Christian at all is to enter this dark night: the night in which we do not know the way but in which God becomes luminously present. This dark night is a paradigm of the paschal transformation by which we are integrated into the life of God.
From We Preach Christ Crucified by Kenneth Leech. Tenth anniversary edition. Copyright © 1994, 2005. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org.
The third procession is that of the Easter Vigil ceremony which is held on the night before Easter Day and once again it is possible to come into this central moment of the Christian year, the celebration of the completion of salvation, by the simplest of ways, by walking, bowing, standing, breathing, being. On Easter night we are on even more fundamental ground in the simplicities of this procession, which is shaped by the basic elements of earth, of air, of fire, and of water. There is silence at the basis of it: when all lights in the church are extinguished, we stand with Adam in darkness, at the moment of creation, in earth and air only, until new light is struck out of the rock. The Scripture readings of the Vigil will later emphasize this beginning, by using Genesis, with the creation of all things, of which humankind is the crown, the complete image of God. This is the time of new beginning, a new creation, and therefore especially it is the time of the catechumens; this is, those who are preparing for baptism, and for those already baptized who are with them as they go towards baptism, the unifying basis of Christian life. There is in this moment of darkness a sense of alienation, of exile, of not being at home, created in the image of God but still far off, helpless of ourselves to change. From the rock of the tomb a new light is struck from flint and shines into darkness. A candle is lit and from it small candles take their light, so that behind each small candle-flame there is the face of a human person newly made in Christ whose only identity in the darkness is that of this new light. We are taken into a new dimension of life which is pure gift. We are with the reconciled, with the baptized, with the risen Lord, who is the new Adam. It is the first and timeless day of a new creation.
From In the Company of Christ: A Pilgrimage Through Holy Week by Benedicta Ward. Copyright © 2005. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org.
Here and now in this new dawn there is someone who weeps, broken-hearted, in a garden and hears her name. The young man is risen, death is taken into victory, but it is still a time of tears, both of sorrow and of longing and of wonder for amazing love. It is overwhelming: as Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) wrote, meditating on the meeting of this new Eve in this new garden with the new Adam:
The Lord called her ‘Mary’,
the name he had so often called her by as if to say,
‘I know who you are, and what you want;
behold me; do not weep, I am he whom you are seeking.’
At once her tears were changed;
I do not believe they stopped at once,
but where once they were wrung from a heart
broken and self-tormenting,
they flow now from a heart exulting.
From In the Company of Christ: A Pilgrimage Through Holy Week by Benedicta Ward. Copyright © 2005. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org.
I found a loose thread in the sleeve of my jacket the other day and hesitated to pull it off in case it unraveled the entire seam. I did it anyway and of course the whole lining came apart. This made me think of certain questions we are reluctant to ask ourselves. We think twice about dealing with them in case we make a worse rip in the fabric of the story we tell about ourselves. Just now, as we approach the celebration of Easter, I am not sure that I want to ask: “How real will my Easter joy be this year?” Questions about the authenticity of our feelings scare us. Where might it lead if I start wondering whether my religious experience is fake?
So what is authentic Easter joy? Well, I do know it isn’t relief at the return of spring, however welcome that is. Easter joy has to be something that I would experience just as much in the southern hemisphere, where Easter heralds the onset of winter cold. Easter joy is not a seasonal mood of uplift.
Neither is Easter joy to be confused with a sense that Jesus’ resurrection is a reassuring illustration of the adage “All’s well that ends well.” A penetrating remark made by the fearless Anglican philosopher Donald McKinnon has always haunted me. He claimed that a lot of conventional talk about the resurrection misrepresented it as “a descent from the cross given greater dramatic effect by a thirty-six-hour postponement.” The counterfeit version of Easter joy depends on the make-believe that God pulls a surprise “happy ending” on us after the ghastly setback of Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus is presented as a Houdini figure who, it seems, could not possibly have gotten out of the ultimate trap of crucifixion and burial in a sealed tomb. But no! To our relief—our so-called Easter joy—out he comes! All is well and our hero is victorious, the One they couldn’t keep down! Happy Easter! Let’s congratulate ourselves for being on the winning side!
From “The Real Thing” in Compass and Stars by Martin L. Smith. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
Many of those who are skeptical about the story of the empty tomb and take the stories of Jesus’ appearances as legends opt for an interpretation that is similarly reassuring. They assume the early disciples created the stories to express in a vivid but imaginary way their inner conviction that Jesus’ soul had passed triumphantly and inevitably into heaven. But this is impossible to square with the evidence that the apostles regarded the resurrection as a shocking anomaly. Something utterly unprecedented had happened to transform the dead Jesus, and this transformation involved the passing of his body into an entirely new state. The visible trace of this transformation was an empty grave.
From “The Real Thing” in Compass and Stars by Martin L. Smith. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
Easter joy focuses then on why God would do this unique thing to Jesus, something that by definition only he could do. If someone is raised while history is allowed to go on, this is God’s only way of showing us what he is actually like. The resurrection is God’s way of showing that it is the crucified Jesus who is the ultimate manifestation of his identity and character. In the resurrection, it is Jesus-on-the-cross who is confirmed as the “last word” about the nature of divine love and creativity—and divine vulnerability.
From “The Real Thing” in Compass and Stars by Martin L. Smith. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
This is where it gets scary. The resurrection only makes sense as God’s “showing his hand” about the meaning of the cross. So I can’t have Easter joy if I don’t find joy in Jesus-on-the-cross. In fact, I can’t even believe in the resurrection, unless I want to believe in a God who would be so crazy as to identify himself with the crucified Jesus. God identifies with Jesus’ choice to risk being crucified, his refusal to make the compromises that could have saved him from it. Paul speaks of the foolishness and weakness of God shown on the cross. The resurrection, far from supporting the notion of a triumphalistic deity of power, mysteriously confirms how deeply hidden and baffling the Creator truly is, as he reveals that he is at one with the man who so willingly exposed himself with an open heart to the fate devised by political power and religious expediency to crush him.
Authentic Easter joy—the genuine pearl of great price—is unfeigned delight in my heart of hearts that a hidden God turns out to be so different from all the stuff, aggressive or sentimental, that gets fabricated about him. Centuries ago, a custom grew up of beginning Easter sermons with a joke, known as the risus paschalis. The subtlety of Easter joy is like getting a joke. It is impossible to explain the resurrection to someone who doesn’t get the foolishness of the cross. You either get it or you don’t. The real God has authenticated himself in an event only the poor in spirit can appreciate. Easter faith comes with a desire to be in on the secret, to get the joke.
From “The Real Thing” in Compass and Stars by Martin L. Smith. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
Wendell Berry, the great environmentalist poet-theologian, has written a piece about somebody he calls a “mad farmer” who goes around shouting, “Practice resurrection!” “Practice resurrection.” That’s not bad advice. It’s certainly what Thomas does—and maybe, just maybe, the other disciples are rehearsing the story and replaying the experience, too. Most of us don’t “get it” the very first time. Most of us spend our lives learning what the reality of resurrection looks like, feels like, and tastes like—because it keeps on happening in new ways every day of our lives.
How do we practice resurrection?
Maybe the most important skill is learning to live in the now, looking toward the future, rather than living in the past. That doesn’t mean we forget about what’s come before, though we are meant to honor what’s good about it, and grieve what is gone if we need to. It also means that we live in hope for the new thing God is doing.
Resurrection means that creation isn’t over and done with. And if we’re made in the image of God, then we’ve got creation work to do. What’s coming may not look exactly like what we knew before, but God promises that it will be abundant and life-giving.
From “Practicing Resurrection” in A Wing and a Prayer by Katharine Jefferts Schori. © 2007. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com
Practicing resurrection means living in openness. It’s a vulnerable attitude. Jesus invites Thomas to examine his wounds—come and see the ugliest thing you can imagine. God has made it a source of beauty and healing. It means that our fears, our inadequacies, the wretched parts of ourselves, can be the vehicle for new and more abundant life—if we’re willing to confront them honestly and openly. In the baptismal covenant, it’s the second promise we make—to repent and return to the Lord. But it’s not just our wrongdoing—the weak and untried parts of ourselves can be the stuff of new life, too. That’s what exercise is all about—stressing, trying the weak parts of our bodies so that they become stronger. Our psyches and souls can find new strength too if we’re willing to journey within and confront some of that darkness or fear or mystery.
Practice resurrection. Live in open expectation of the new thing God is doing at all times and in all places. It means opening ourselves to that new thing, recognizing that the change it brings will cause some distress. But there is always more abundant life on the other side of the pain and grief that comes with change and growth.
From “Practicing Resurrection” in A Wing and a Prayer by Katharine Jefferts Schori. © 2007. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com
I am very sure that so long as we are caught in time, we will never be able to see heaven, which I believe is entirely and absolutely seeable. But having arrived at that statement (which, alas, I have discovered is the only definitive one I can actually make at this juncture), I immediately run up against the very core of the problem for me: namely, that I have had what is now euphemistically referred to as a near-death experience. In 1955 when I was having it, there were no easy terms for such, no almost jocular NDE abbreviations to lessen the outréness of the experience.
The whole thing was fairly straightforward, really. I was threatening to miscarry our first child; and the drug I was given, while hardly experimental, was nonetheless new and, as it turns out, highly toxic to some women. Six or seven of us died, in fact. I didn’t . . . Correction: I did, but I came back.
The second most vivid memory of my life is that of sitting, hunched up like a gargoyle, in the upper corner of my hospital room, watching Sam and the nurse beat on my body, trying to restart my heart. The most vivid memory is when the corner opened up and let me out of the room into a tunnel, pleasantly grassed even on its curved surfaces. Walking through it, I could see the light coming from the other end and I could know myself drawn without effort toward That Which Waited There.
I never left the tunnel, though I stood at the edging place where it ceased and the translucent goldenness began. We talked there, just on the brink of the entering, I saying I needed to go back, that there were children I wanted to have before I came . . . and the What Is saying, “Go,” and my soul breaking within me that I was leaving a greater love for a lesser one, but knowing that I must go . . . and knowing as well that I would return and that the What Is and I were, and would be, when I do return.
So it is—and for over fifty years has been—that I cannot, in any discussion of heaven, get beyond the verge where the end of the tunnel met the That Which Waits There. Neither my mind nor my necessity are ever sufficient to push beyond that place.
From “Sweet Reluctance” by Phyllis Tickle, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
I do not know—none of us does—what it must have been like to have a dead man materialize through the wall of a meeting room and lay out for public viewing the holes in his hands where his executioners had nailed him to a cross or the rip in his belly where they stabbed him open to hasten his demise. Whatever they felt or experienced, those witnesses to the unspeakable, they knew. They knew what they had seen, and it was enough to persuade them at all costs of the actuality of the thing . . . which is by way of saying that I, too, know what I saw and am persuaded, at all costs, by the actuality of the thing.
I know no more to say or write; but the exercise of having tried has not been entirely wasted. At least I can admit now that I shall never be able to speak of the what-I-don’t-know that lies beyond the what-I-do-know. There is relief in that, as well as comfort and a certain inexpressible pleasure in realizing that someday soon I shall be about the business of greeting again that which I once left with such sweet reluctance.
From “Sweet Reluctance” by Phyllis Tickle, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
In the garden Christ gently but deliberately says to Mary Magdalene, “Noli me tangere.” “Do not touch” is a misleading translation that deprives us of the significance of what is happening here. “Do not cling” is a more accurate rendering of the Greek, for surely we do need to touch, to touch the hem of the garment, to touch the wounds and feel them. But we must not cling, for that carries the danger of becoming dependent, of clutching or holding on in the wrong way. I love the statue of the Walking Madonna by Elisabeth Frink in the cathedral close at Salisbury. Here is this young woman who strides out boldly into the future, her one hand strong and determined, while the other is vulnerable. She knows that she has seen the Lord, the risen Christ; she has heard the resurrection message and now she is ready to cross the threshold and engage whatever lies before her. What gives her the strength to move forward with today: such assurance, calling out that loving welcome, that Deo Gratias, to a future that is unsure, unknown?
From To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border by Esther de Waal. © 2001. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com
The cross is the abyss of wonders, the centre of desires, the school of virtues, the house of wisdom, the throne of love, the theatre of joys, and the place of sorrows; it is the root of happiness, and the gate of heaven.
Of all things in heaven and earth it is the most peculiar. It is the most exalted of all objects. It is an ensign lifted up for all nations, to it shall the gentiles seek. His rest shall be glorious: the dispersed of Judah shall be gathered together to it, from the four corners of the earth. If love be the weight of the soul, and its object the centre, all eyes and hearts may convert and turn unto this object, cleave unto this centre, and by it enter into rest. There we may see God’s goodness, wisdom and power: yea his mercy and anger displayed. There we may see man’s sin and infinite value, his hope and fear, his misery and happiness. There we might see the Rock of Ages, and the joys of heaven. There we may see a man loving all the world, and a God dying for mankind.
From Centuries by Thomas Traherne (Faith Press, 1960).
I can explain why heaven makes no sense, why the most logical response to the human condition is despair, why the future that lies ahead of us is only chaotic and dark, why we—as individuals, as a species, as a planet—in fact have no future at all. I can explain why belief in heaven as afterlife or belief in heaven on earth is equally impossible, equally absurd. But eventually, and often when I least expect it, something in me rises up and declares: Nevertheless. Is it the Risen Christ? That’s what I would say. For when it comes, so does heaven—a glimpse of it, anyway, a chink in the wall, an echo in the ear. And hope becomes possible again, a hope as lovely and startling as the sight of Earth rising above the barren landscape of the moon.
From “When Heaven Happens” by Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
See, Christian soul, here is the strength of your salvation, here is the cause of your freedom, here is the price of your redemption. You were a bond-slave and by this man you are free. By him you are brought back from exile, lost, you are restored, dead, you are raised. Chew this, bite it, suck it, let your heart swallow it, when your mouth receives the body and blood of your redeemer. Make it in this life your daily bread, your food, your way-bread, for through this and not otherwise than through this will you remain in Christ and Christ in you, and your joy will be full.
Consider, O my soul, and hear, all that is within me, how much my whole being owes to him! Lord, because you have made me, I owe you the whole of my love; because you have redeemed me, I owe you the whole of myself; because you have promised so much, I owe you all my being.
From “Meditation on Human Redemption” by Anselm of Canterbury, in The Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm, translated by Benedicta Ward (Penguin, 1973).
In the common way of looking at things heaven is a place you go after you die (if you’ve been good). And I suppose that overall this shorthand is true: when the physical body has dissolved, there is less to obscure what had really been there all along anyway.
But it is possible to encounter heaven earlier, while still in physical flesh, and to live in it—and from it—here and now. In fact, more than a few people think that’s exactly what Jesus meant by his term the kingdom of heaven: it’s this world seen through the eyes and heart of divine love. Or perhaps better, it’s the flood of transfiguring energy set loose in this world once the eyes of heaven have awakened.
So why not go for it now? For sure, this question stumped Jesus; you could even say it comprised the tragic miscalculation of his life. Why, when this angelically tinged “other” is as simple as opening the eyes of the heart here and now, why wouldn’t people immediately open their eyes and give thanks? Why does the good news tend to receive a rain check?
But the fact is, this other way of seeing requires a high level of spiritual attunement—to use the current buzzword, presence—far more so than is accustomed or perhaps comfortable in this life. “Those who are given liberty by Him to act freely are nailed on the earth; and those who are free to act as they choose on the earth will be nailed in the heavens,” an old Sufi proverb goes. One becomes a fastidious servant of the Now, not of daydreams and future options, and certainly not of one’s personal preferences and agendas. It’s a strange, Himalayan environment of the heart that seems out of tempo with most of what we usually call “getting the most out of life.” And so heaven can wait, as the old saying goes. It’s easier to get caught up in the enchantments and diversions of this existence. Drink it in for all it’s worth, then allow heaven to be “next,” once the veil has melted on its own. From “Hobbling (Walking, Flapping) North” by Cynthia Bourgeault, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
What I have said so far suggests a provisional definition of the primary stage in preaching the resurrection as an invitation to recognize one’s victim as one’s hope. The crucified is God’s chosen: it is with the victim, the condemned, that God identifies, and it is in the company of the victim, so to speak, that God is to be found, and nowhere else. And this is not simply to say, in the fashionable phrase, that God makes his own the cause of the poor and despised. We are not talking of ‘the’ poor and despised, ‘the’ victim in the abstract. The preaching of the resurrection is not addressed to an abstract audience: the victim involved is the victim of the hearers. We are, insistently and relentlessly, in Jerusalem, confronted therefore with a victim who is our victim. When we make victims, when we embark on condemnation, exclusion, violence, the diminution or oppression of anyone, when we set ourselves up as judges, we are exposed to judgment, and we turn away from salvation. To hear the good news of salvation, to be converted, is to turn back to the condemned and rejected, acknowledging that there is hope nowhere else.
From Resurrection by Rowan Williams (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1982).
Evangelion (that we call the gospel) is a Greek word, and signifieth good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him sing, dance and leap for joy. This Evangelion or gospel (that is to say, such joyful tidings) is called the New Testament; because that as a man, when he shall die, appointeth his goods to be dealt and distributed after his death among them which he nameth to be his heirs; even so Christ before his death commanded and appointed that such Evangelion, gospel, or tidings should be declared throughout all the world, and therewith to give unto all that repent, and believe, all his goods: that is to say, his life, wherewith he swallowed and devoured up death; his righteousness, wherewith he banished sin; his salvation, wherewith he overcame eternal damnation. Now can the wretched man hear no more joyous a thing, than such glad and comfortable tidings of Christ; so that he cannot but be glad, and laugh from the low bottom of his heart, if he believe that the tidings are true.
From “A Pathway into Holy Scripture” by William Tyndale, in The Work of William Tyndale, edited by G. E. Duffield (Sutton Courtenay Press, 1964).
April 26
We spent the afternoon like that, the three of us. Vincent and I changed places at [my mother’s] bedside. We sponged her mouth. I watched her eyes. I held her hand. Her face was smooth. Her eyes were like the eyes of a child or a delicate bird. A creature. Curious, delighted. She was, we were, there is no other word for it, changed.
How is it that things fall away? The hours of that afternoon were like a wave set off by a stone dropping into a pool of water; the ripples reverberated backward through her life. The past is not what we think it is. It is not written in stone after all, but can be washed over and through by the present’s events.
I felt I understood a part of the resurrection. Jesus rode a wave backward into time and human history and redeemed events, that is, stole them back from chaos and destruction. He walked among the dead and woke them up with the power of the same thing that stood with us that afternoon. In the mind of God, there is no past or present and nothing ever dies.
That afternoon, whatever we had done together in our lives, or failed to do, the fragments of love in all three of us were gathered up so that they coalesced to the point of profound connection. We crossed over, my mother leading the way. It was as if a door had opened into heaven, allowing heaven in. In my Father’s house are many mansions. It matters that it was only a fraction of a long life, a few hours at the end of eighty-eight years, but it was, for then, and for now, enough.
From “Her Last Hours” by Nora Gallagher, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
April 27
Of course the Church is conservative for it has so much to conserve. But let it conserve a vision of the world’s destiny and not the structures of the world’s past. Let the Church in remembering Christ remember that it is conserving the most uprooting, the most revolutionary force in all human history. For it was Christ who crossed every boundary, broke down every barrier. He crossed the boundaries of class by eating with the outcasts. He crossed the boundary of nations by pointing to a Samaritan as the agent of God’s will. He transgressed religious boundaries by claiming that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Everywhere he manifested his freedom and called others to theirs, calling them forth from family, national, and religious loyalty to the world at large. If ever there was a man who trusted his origins and had the courage to emerge from them, it was Christ.
From Credo by William Sloane Coffin (Westminster-John Knox Press, 2004).
April 28
Love for God cannot be separated from love of neighbor. Jesus calls us to love God through our neighbor—by visiting prisoners, by hospitality to strangers, by actions that ostensibly give us no reward at the end of a long day’s work. Jesus seems idealistic at best. When we look around and see others prospering through violence or greed, most of us pay little attention to God’s love. How can we? After all, we live in a “real” world in which survival is paramount. Work with prisoners or those on death row may be typical of God’s kind of love, which gravitates toward generosity and gift, but not for our kind of love that is seeking to survive in a violent world. Jesus knows our dilemma, but he does not let us off the hook. He still requires us to channel God’s infinite generosity. Just as we cannot love God without loving our neighbor, we cannot worship in a church building without also ministering in a jail, hospital, or school.
God’s love always points toward the capacity to love outside of self-interest. When it came to heaven, Jesus was no realist—if by realism we mean self-interest. This was his genius. Perhaps the greatest lesson in this for us is to learn that we must prepare to love as God loves—through random acts of kindness. We prepare through our daily prayers. We prepare through the butterflies in our stomach when we make our first volunteer visit in a jail. This kind of preparation hones our skills of navigation as we make our way toward heaven—toward the real heaven, not just our own narcissistic version of heaven. We must practice heaven. In so doing, we catch glimpses of God’s idea of what’s real because we are increasing our attention span to see beyond the ordinary.
From “A Strange Route to Heaven” by Michael Battle, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
Week of April 29, 2006
Easter 4
April 30
It is essential to remember that for a Christian “the word of the Cross” is nothing theoretical, but a stark and existential union with Christ in his death in order to share in his resurrection. To fully “hear” and “receive” the word of the Cross means much more than simple assent to the dogmatic propositions that Christ died for our sins. It means to be “nailed to the Cross with Christ,” so that the ego-self is no longer the principle of our deepest actions, which now proceed from Christ living in us: “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:19-20). To receive the word of the Cross means the acceptance of a complete self-emptying, a kenosis, in union with the self-emptying of Christ “obedient unto death” (Phil. 2:5-11). It is essential to true Christianity that this experience of the Cross and of self-emptying be central in the life of the Christian so that he may fully receive the Holy Spirit and know (again by experience) all the riches of God in and through Christ.
From Zen and the Birds of Appetite by Thomas Merton, quoted in Wisdom of the Cloister, edited by John Skinner (Image Books, 1999).
May 1 • St. Philip and St. James
The Cross is completely baffling both to the Greeks with their philosophy and to the Jews with their well-interpreted Law. But when one has been freed from dependence on verbal formulas and conceptual structures, the Cross becomes a source of “power.” This power emanates from the “foolishness of God” and it also makes of us “foolish instruments.” On the other hand, he who can accept this paradoxical “foolishness” experiences in himself a secret and mysterious power, the power of Christ living in him as the ground of a totally new life.
From Zen and the Birds of Appetite by Thomas Merton, quoted in Wisdom of the Cloister, edited by John Skinner (Image Books, 1999).
May 2 • Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria
By becoming incarnate in Jesus, the Logos had enabled human beings to transcend themselves and, in a pregnant phrase of the New Testament, “to become partakers in the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). “The Logos of God has become human,” [Athanasius] would say, “so that you might learn from a human being how a human being may become divine.” The original creation in the image of God, in which true human greatness consisted, had been brought about through the Logos; that creation would now achieve not only restoration but consummation and perfection through the same Logos: his incarnation would achieve our deification. And the whole cosmos would have its proper share in that consummation; for “the establishment of the church is a re-creation of the world,” in which “the Logos has created a multitude of starts,” a new heaven and a new earth.
From Jesus Through the Centuries by Jaroslav Pelikan (Harper & Row, 1985).
May 3
It was Isaac of Nineveh who confirmed what I had supposed all this time: that the biblical phrase “the world to come” refers not to pie-in-the-sky by-and-by but to “the kingdom of heaven within you.”
Once you have reached the place of tears, then know that the mind has left the prison of this world and set its foot on the road towards the new world. Then it begins 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 all, makes haste to give birth mystically to the soul, the image of God, into the light of the world to come. . . . Then you will start to become aware of the transformation which the whole nature will receive in the renewal of all things, dimly and as though by hints.
Heaven is without beginning and without end. It’s when I’m not looking for heaven that heaven appears. It is by definition more than I can ask or imagine. It permeates all that I live, have lived, and will live, in weal and in woe. It suffuses the ordinary flow of our lives if only we will stop trying to cut it down to our size, to objectify it, to make it finitely less than it is.
From “Heaven Can’t Wait” by Maggie Ross, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
May 4 • Monica, Mother of Augustine of Hippo
Not long before the day on which she was to leave this life—you knew which day it was to be, O Lord, though we did not—my mother and I were alone, leaning from a window which overlooked the garden in the courtyard of the house where we were staying at Ostia. We were talking alone together and our conversation was serene and joyful. In the presence of Truth, which is yourself, we were wondering what the eternal life of the saints would be like, that like which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no human heart conceived. But we laid the lips of our hearts to the heavenly stream that flows from your fountain, the source of all life which is in you, so that as far as it was in our power to do so we might be sprinkled with its waters and in some sense reach an understanding of this great mystery.
As the flame of love burned stronger in us and raised us higher towards the eternal God, our thoughts ranged over the whole compass of material things in their various degrees, up to the heavens themselves, from which the sun and the moon and the stars shine down upon the earth. Higher still we climbed, thinking and speaking all the while in wonder at all that you have made. And while we spoke of the eternal Wisdom, longing for it and straining for it with all the strength of our hearts, for one fleeting instant we reached out and touched it.
From the Confessions of Saint Augustine (Penguin Classics, 1962).
May 5
I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new! I have learnt to love you late! You were within me, and I was in the world outside myself. I searched for you outside myself and, disfigured as I was, I fell upon the lovely things of your creation. You were with me, but I was not with you. The beautiful things of this world kept me far from you and yet, if they had not been in you, they would have had no being at all. You called me; you cried aloud to me; you broke my barrier of deafness. You shone upon me; your radiance enveloped me; you put my blindness to flight. You shed your fragrance about me; I drew breath and now I gasp for your sweet odour. I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am inflamed with love of your peace.
From the Confessions of Saint Augustine (Penguin Classics, 1962).
Week of May 6, 2006
Easter 5
May 6
Christians inherit two basic views of heaven. The popular Western version tends to be of the static angels-and-harps variety. I prefer the Eastern version. It has more of the flavor of dynamic continuity. We move “from glory to glory” right now, not simply after we’re dead. In the Eastern tradition, human beings long for the infinite. We are not fixed entities, but beings-in-process, defined by an infinite longing which pulls the soul forward in an infinite progression. We live out the questions, and it might take longer than a lifetime. For Christians, the best metaphor for heaven is a banquet. Heaven is not a place you go to when you die. Heaven is present now, all around us, a code word for where God is—in the music, in the feast.
So the question of heaven isn’t an intellectual puzzle which in principle has an answer. If there is life after death it begins now. At the moment, I find myself occupied by the question “Is there life after birth?” So, whatever heaven is, it isn’t about “the hereafter.” The danger of imagining heaven as a destination or a final resting place is that we miss the glory of the present. To quote the wise theologian N. T. Wright, if heaven is going some place it’s “going to be with God in the place where he has been all along.” It’s about presence or, better, Presence right now.
From “’I Tell You a Further Mystery’” by Alan Jones, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
May 7
My adventure into fullness of life (which I take to be the kingdom of heaven) involves reading, writing, and great conversation—preferably over a good meal. It is nourished by the arts, especially music. But there is a paradox here, one that the mystics might understand. What are virtues for the mystics are torments for many of us: alienation, loneliness, silence, solitude, interior emptiness, stripping bare, poverty, not-knowing, emptiness. The arts have, more often than not, given me an experience of being emptied. What we really need is often to be found in what we dread most—risk, not being in control, in the emptiness of the self. This doesn’t sound much like “heaven,” but how else can we make an inner space for living with ourselves and with each other? Cultivating gratitude helps us draw out the gold that is often hidden in the loneliness, the silence, the interior emptiness, the suffering, the poverty, and “the knowledge-that-knows-nothing.”
Emptiness, then, is indispensable to true enjoyment of the world because true enjoyment has nothing to do with possession. It is the kind of emptiness that encourages me to give myself away to others in love and service. Heaven isn’t a private possession, anymore than music, anymore than food.
Food is a delight. I love cookbooks and miss the times when the whole family would gather together to make bread. There was flour all over the kitchen and we loved to throw the dough around—especially the smooth oily dough of challah. There’s no pleasure quite like preparing and cooking a meal with the bounty of the earth. Where is the food for the soul? It is in the “useless” activities of music and play. We get a taste of heaven in the various ways in which we “waste” our time eating and drinking and delighting in one another.
From “’I Tell You a Further Mystery’” by Alan Jones, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
May 8 • Julian of Norwich
God is the goodness that cannot be angry, for He is nothing but goodness.
Our soul is one-ed to Him, who is unchangeable goodness,
and between God and our soul is neither anger nor forgiveness, as He sees it.
For our soul is so completely one-ed to God by His own goodness,
that there can be absolutely nothing at all separating God and soul.
From A Lesson of Love: The Revelations of Julian of Norwich, edited and translated for devotional use by Father John-Julian, OJN (New York: Walker and Company, 1988).
May 9
The cell was a sacred space, a place in which a woman could be with herself and the divine Presence and listen. The cell was a place of divine encounter and of ongoing, daily experience of being immersed in God’s presence. Amma Syncletica’s counsel with regard to this uses a tenderly maternal metaphor—that of the mother bird hatching her young. Each woman in Syncletica’s community would have been formed by this teaching as it was repeated and handed down. The life of faith looks like a mother bird, sitting on her eggs. For all we know, that mother bird has moments when it seems like nothing is happening. There are moments when real boredom sets in and the temptation to leave the eggs and do something more interesting arises.
Amma Syncletica’s metaphor speaks directly to one of the dilemmas of the spiritual life—that of coming to terms with the plain old ordinariness of spiritual practice and the life of prayer, of the whole of life becoming prayer. Instead, we are encouraged not to sit, not to persevere, not to struggle with boredom. We are enticed by a variety of means to leave our “eggs” and simply move continually from one interest to another. The result is that we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to bring forth new life. The “eggs” die because they are not tended. We miss the deeper life of the Spirit because we are constantly moving from one interest to another rather than focusing on one thing.
From The Desert Mothers: Spiritual Practices from the Women of the Wilderness by Mary C. Earle. © 2007. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com
May 10
An African woman perceives and accepts Christ as a woman and as an African. The commitment that flows from this faith is commitment to full womanhood (humanity), to the survival of human communities, to the ‘birthing’, nurturing, and maintenance of life, and to loving relations and life that is motivated by love.
Having accepted Christ as refugee and guest of Africa, the woman seeks to make Christ at home and to order life in such a way as to enable the whole household to feel at home with Christ. The woman sees the whole space of Africa as a realm to be ordered, as a place where Christ is truly ‘tabernacled’. Fears are not swept under the beds and mats but are brought out to be dealt with by the presence of the Christ. Christ becomes truly friend and companion, liberating women from assumptions of patriarchal societies, and honouring, accepting, and sanctifying the single life as well as the married life, parenthood as well as the absence of progeny. The Christ of the women of Africa upholds not only motherhood, but all who, like Jesus of Nazareth, perform ‘mothering’ roles of bringing out the best in all around them. This is the Christ, high priest, advocate, and just judge in whose kingdom we pray to be.
From “The Christ for African Women” by Elizabeth Arnoah and Mercy Amba Oduyoye, in With Passion and Compassion: Third World Women Doing Theology, edited by Virginia Fabella and Mercy Amba Oduyoye (Orbis Books, 1988).
May 11
Can we say it is God’s home? I prefer to perceive it “through a glass darkly” as what I might call God’s holiest of holies. What is my connection, if any, to heaven? I’ve seen glimpses of it only by eyes of faith. I’ve felt the presence—never in a merely logical way—in thin places or passages that I’ve encountered on occasion between the visible world and—what? Greater reality? God’s love and power? Awareness of the holy?
Ten days before her ninety-ninth birthday, my mother lay dying. I was with her in the convalescent hospital where she’d resided for the past four-plus years. Beatrice appeared to be unconscious. I held her limp hand in mine.
Suddenly, a change occurred. Her hand gripped mine with fierce strength. Now her eyes opened, staring directly into mine with a determination, even a passion, that was startling. I grasped her hand, held her gaze. Then, after a moment, her eyes closed. Shortly her grip wavered and let go.
I knew Beatrice had left and gone to heaven. I could almost follow her journey into what seemed to be light. Her departure was not passive, nor had her life been. In Beatrice there burned an intensity. Born in 1898, she had always lived in what used to be referred to as “a man’s world.” While accepting its Spartan rules, she kept inviolate a part of her life that was a “secret garden.” So, as a single mom who had to work, she did so during her days. But, in her private time, she painted and sketched and gardened. Fame did not touch her; she had no interest in it. Her honesty could be almost shocking in its directness. She remained open to life, clearly honoring the moment at hand.
Being with Mother on the occasion—at the very moment—of her journey’s end here, and the start of her journey to heaven, was a deeply touching revelation of God’s mercy, healing, and treasured gift of this thin place close to heaven.
From “Moments in Thin Places” by Malcolm Boyd, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
May 12
Some of our mothers taught us what it was like to be loved. Some others of us grew up with mothers who couldn’t really teach us much about love, because they’d never really learned themselves. We tend to idealize mothers as the perfect dispensers of love.
Sometimes mothers do their best work by getting out of the way, or by leaving. After all, children need that to grow up, too. After all, even Jesus gets out of the way so we can try his way for ourselves.
When Jesus is getting ready to leave his disciples, he begins to tell them good-bye. It’s not so different from the speech a mother on her deathbed might give the kids: “Now children, I won’t be with you much longer. You are going to keep looking for me. . . but you can’t come where I’m going. I’m giving you some new instructions: love each other, just the way I’ve loved you. Everybody will know whose family you come from if you love each other.”
The kids get a remarkable challenge—now it’s time to put to work everything they’ve been taught. Love one another, as I have loved you.
What does love look like? Getting out of the way, so another person can try. Blood, sweat, and tears. Feeding one another. Above all, love liberates, love sets us free to be more than we thought possible. Love one another as I have loved you. Befriend the stranger. Engage your enemy in love. Challenge the unlovable. Go hunting for the unloved.
From “Mother Love” in A Wing and a Prayer by Katharine Jefferts Schori. © 2007. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com
Week of May 13, 2006
Easter 6
May 14
Gardening within a monastery is both a task and an art, and it’s something we only gradually begin to fathom in the early years of our monastic life. The more experienced gardener monks teach us to start slowly. They instruct us how to improve our soil with compost and other amendments, knowing well that this will have a profound effect on the variety of plants we grow. I learned early, as well, to let Mother Nature be our guide. Her signals often indicate the propitious time for many garden chores. For instance, when the crocus is in bloom, we begin cleaning up the winter’s debris. When the forsythia begins to flower, we prune the roses, evergreens, and the plants that have been damaged by the winter. When the soil warms up, we begin to divide and transplant the perennials.
Spring gardening nurtures hope in the monk, then fulfills the promise of new life when all creation is renewed by the power of Christ’s Resurrection.
From A Monastic Year by Brother Victor Antoine, quoted in Wisdom of the Cloister, edited by John Skinner (Image Books, 1999).
May 15
Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have. I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart. Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.
“Thirst” by Mary Oliver, in Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press, 2006).
May 16
“Hell is other people,” according to a character in Sartre’s play No Exit, and it is difficult to imagine a more aggressive contradiction of the Christian vision. The doctrine of the communion of saints affirms that heaven is other people, and the hope of the resurrection of the body affirms that those other people are no wraiths and abstractions but fully alive. When most people talk of heaven, they tend to speak of reunion with certain loved ones and imagine encounters with a chosen few they want to meet. But those great artworks of the resurrection that stir me do not lie—Stanley Spencer’s resurrection paintings contain over seven hundred lovingly delineated figures. The resurrection of the body brings together everyone, including our unloved ones, the strangers. Heaven is the new embodiment of all, and our encounters will be with all, stranger and former enemy, as surely as our neighbor and kin. Our lives, transfigured within the memory of God and remembered by us in a completely new way in all their depths and meaning, will be gifts for sharing with one another. It will take eternity to exchange with one another—all of us—the meaning and fullness of our lives.
Meanwhile, heaven is in the making in this world, and I am one of its makers. My hopes mean little unless they lift the routine of today. So I want to live with the thought that my life is not only a gift now for other people, but that it will be in eternity. In my odd and short life, I take up into myself a certain time, particular relationships, just these parts of creation. They will rise in God with me. So loving what I see, and what I do, and those I meet, helps to get us all ready for surprise.
From “Bodies, Rising” by Martin L. Smith, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
May 17 • Ascension Day
Something has happened
to the bread and the wine.
They have been blessed.
What now?
The body leans forward
to receive the gift
from the priest’s hand,
then the chalice.
They are something else now
from what they were
before this began.
I want
to see Jesus,
maybe in the clouds
or on the shore,
just walking,
beautiful man
and clearly
someone else
besides.
On the hard days
I ask myself
if I ever will.
Also there are times
my body whispers to me
that I have.
“The Vast Ocean Begins Just Outside Our Church: The Eucharist” by Mary Oliver, in Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press, 2006).
May 18
Most people I know seem to think of heaven as compensatory. Whatever is missing here will be present there. Those who have endured war will know peace. Those who have suffered want will have plenty. Those who have been broken will be made whole. In this sense, heaven is essential both for divine justice and compassion, for heaven is where God’s purpose will be fulfilled, and all people shall see it together. This is more or less what scripture promises, and what my Episcopal tradition teaches as well, yet it does not exhaust my curiosity about what comes next.
That something comes next seems likely to me, although I would gladly admit that I have no certainty about what it is. People I trust speak of seeing through the veil to the life beyond death. I have sat with dying people often enough to watch them become translucent toward the end. Plus, my sense of the communion of the saints is so strong that I have never in my life been lonely. Even when I cannot hear them speaking any language I understand, the very air is thick with their presence. This could be my imagination. What if God’s imagination is where heaven exists?
I suppose my greatest curiosity about the afterlife is whether I will continue to be me. I want to continue being me, of course. I want not only to see all of those creatures that I have rescued through the years; I also want to see the loved ones whom I have lost. I want to lay my head on Grandma Lucy’s lap again. I want to shell field peas with Fannie Belle and listen to Schubert with Earl. The problem with this scenario is that it turns heaven into my perfect version of earth, with a perfect me in the middle of it. As appealing as this is, it strikes me as an underutilization of God’s gifts.
Since ecstatic union with God is my best idea of heaven, I think I have to be ready to let myself go—literally, I mean. I think I have to entertain the possibility that joining God in heaven may mean surrendering everything I hold dear on earth, including my me-ness, in order to be made entirely new. In Christian terms, I think I really do have to die, and be willing to leave the rest to God.
From “Leaving Myself Behind” by Barbara Brown Taylor, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
May 19
One enduring sense I have is that everything will be revealed in the hereafter. In the words of the old Anglican collect for purity, heaven exists in the presence of the God “unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.” I think of this when I say something disloyal about someone who is not present, or when I try to hide the truth about myself from people whose illusions flatter me. If all of this will be perfectly transparent by-and-by, why not prepare for that by practicing transparency now?
Of course I also harbor the hope that if I have managed to do or be any good for God, that will be transparent too. I am embarrassed to admit that, but as someone who has spent my whole life confessing my sins, the prospect of being allowed to discover what I might have done right in this world sounds like heaven to me.
If it is true that most of us give what we want to get, then in the end my highest hope for heaven is simply to be rescued when my time comes—plucked from the roadside where I have fallen, struck dumb by all there is to love and grieve in this world—and gathered into God’s own safety, whatever that turns out to mean. I am willing to forego the details, as long as I know whose lap I am in.
From “Leaving Myself Behind” by Barbara Brown Taylor, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org
Week of May 20, 2006
Easter 7
May 21
There is a traditional saying of ancient wisdom: “A threshold is a sacred thing.” When I visited Japan I experienced the role of the threshold in a very simple daily experience. Before entering the house, the Japanese stand on the lintel in order to remove shoes worn outside in the street. Upon entering the house, they put on slippers placed inside the door. This forces a very deliberate and conscious way of standing still, even if for only a moment, in order to show respect for the difference between two spaces, the outer and the inner; the preparation for the encounter with another person, another household.
This is very similar to the traditional monastic practice of statio, which also pays homage to the threshold moment, and shows reverence for the handling of space and time. The monk or nun enters the church for the saying of the daily offices, but always leaves him- or herself time to stand, to wait, to let go of all the demands of whatever the previous activity had been, with all its concurrent anxieties and expectations. That stillness permits each one to enter into that space kept empty in the heart for the Word of God. By rushing, whether through a sense of duty or obligation, or to save a few extra moments for the task at hand, they may gain something in terms of daily work. What is lost, however, is the attention, the awareness of the crossing over into the time and the place for opus Dei, the work of God.
From To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border by Esther de Waal. © 2001. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com
May 22
In his book Living on the Border of the Holy, a title that is itself significant, William Countryman writes of that border country that we all carry within us. He describes it as a kind of fault line that runs right down the middle of our lives. We can of course ignore it but it does not go away. We all live with it and we all have our unique experience of it, for it is part of who we are as human beings. It connects the surface or the ordinary reality with its deeper roots; indeed, he would actually claim that the border country is the realm in which human existence finds its meaning:
This border country is a place of intense vitality. It does not so much draw us away from the everyday world as it plunges us deeper into a reality of which the everyday world is like the surface. . . . To live there for a while is like having veils pulled away. In the long run we find that the border country is in fact the place we have always lived, but it is seen in a new and clearer light. Stay at the border, in active conversation with the holy and the everyday.
From To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border by Esther de Waal. © 2001. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com
May 23
Recently when a nun in her mid-nineties sent me a note on my birthday, she quoted a line of Hegel: “The owl of wisdom flies in twilight,” and then said, “I like to think that as we get older we live in two twilights; the evening twilight of letting-go and the dawn of looking forward. In both, Christ is our Light.” This makes me think of “a kind of double vision in which we see both the light and the dark together and both sustain us,” words actually taken from a book significantly entitled Let Evening Come: Reflections on Aging.
Here is the giving up of the solace of certainty, for it means living with both/and. It is enjoying juxtaposition. It is embracing ambiguity. And if I recognize this poignant mix in my own inner landscape, ought I not let it shape my approach to the world around?
From To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border by Esther de Waal. © 2001. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com
May 24
Whatever name we may choose—the time between, the threshold, the pause—it is by naming it that we honor it and thereby honor change, movement, difference. When a book recently appeared in England written by the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, it was significantly given the title The Dignity of Difference. In it Sacks wrote:
Truth on earth is not, nor can it aspire to be, the whole truth. . . . God is greater than religion. . . . Can I recognize God’s image in someone who is not in my image, whose language, faith, ideals are different from mine? If I cannot, then I have made God in my image instead of allowing him to remake me in his.
The first step in listening, learning, and changing is to see that different is not dangerous; the second is to be happy and willing to live with uncertainty; the third is to rejoice in ambiguity and to embrace it. It all means giving up the comfort of certainty and realizing that uncertainty can actually be good.
From To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border by Esther de Waal. © 2001. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com
May 25 • The Venerable Bede
Bede’s industry and scholarship are generally acknowledged, but his most significant achievement lies in his inspired ability to select and integrate the vast mass of facts and traditions that he gathered into a single framework. He doubtless rejected much material as unreliable or irrelevant, but all that he retained he welded together into a coherent and eminently readable unity. Even a modern historian, with the advantage of greatly superior facilities and assisted by the researches of many generations of experts, faces a formidable task when compiling a history covering several centuries. And when we consider Bede’s limited facilities and resources, it is clear that his achievement is unique. For although Bede’s monastery at Jarrow possessed a library, it would seem insignificant by modern standards, and while it contained theological works of the Greek and Latin Fathers, there was little material useful for Bede’s purpose. Furthermore, in addition to the slowness and uncertainty of communications, the physical conditions under which the writers of that day had to work were extremely inconvenient and austere during the long northern winters. It is noteworthy that despite the many difficulties under which it was written, Bede’s History contains relatively few errors, and modern research has confirmed the accuracy of most of his statements.
From the Introduction to the Penguin edition of Bede’s A History of the English Church and People (Penguin Classics, 1968).
May 26 • Augustine of Canterbury
Augustine, Bishop of the Church of Canterbury, sought advice on certain problems. The Pope answered his enquiries without delay, and I have thought it proper to record these replies in my history. . . .
The second question of Augustine: Since we hold the same Faith, why do customs vary in different Churches? Why, for instance, does the method of saying Mass differ in the holy Roman Church and in the Churches of Gaul?
Pope Gregory’s reply: My brother, you are familiar with the usage of the Roman Church, in which you were brought up. But if you have found customs, whether in the Church of Rome or of Gaul or any other that may be more acceptable to God, I wish you to make a careful selection of them, and teach the Church of the English, which is still young in the Faith, whatever you have been able to learn with profit from the various Churches. For things should not be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Therefore select from each of the Churches whatever things are devout, religious, and right; and when you have bound them, as it were, into a Sheaf, let the minds of the English grow accustomed to it.
From Bede’s A History of the English Church and People (Penguin Classics, 1968).
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