Sleeping with Bread (and Dropping Stones)

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In Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life (Paulist Press, 1995), Dennis, Sheila, and Matt Linn share that…

During the bombing raids of World War II, thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care. But many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night. They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food. Nothing seemed to reassure them. Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace. All through the night the bread reminded them, “Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.” (p. 1)

Employing the story as a way of introducing the practice which is the Examen, they continue:

For many years, we have ended each day the same way.  We light a candle, become aware of God’s loving presence, and take about five minutes of quiet while we each ask ourselves two questions:

For what moment today am I the most grateful?

For what moment today am I least grateful? (p. 5-6)

St. Ignatius (to whom this Examen is attributed) would word things a little differently:

What brought
me consolation
[i.e., an sense of
Grace and God]
today?

What brought
me desolation
[i.e., left me bereft of
a sense of God and Grace]
today?

Diagram from Margaret Silf,
Landmarks: An Ignatian Journey

Different words, yes, but the same intent:

  • in the spirit of a gratitude journal, there’s affirming the Goodness and God-ness of a day–and holding on to the Life I have received in the day

     

  • in the spirit of confession, there’s a sense of acknowledging and letting go of every “rock” and “stone” that has weighed me down and encumbered me in the race of and for and to Life (Hebrews 12:1,2)  [Here, I ponder the ways that loaves of bread and stones can often be confused with one another — as they were in the first temptation of Christ.]

When I am about the practice
(admittedly, I am still working to make it a habit),
I sleep better –
embracing Life…
dropping stones…
resting more comfortably as I hold and am held by the Bread of Life.

Yes, beneficial it is…

  • to close the day with more than the t.v.
    or some idle phone game having the last say in my day
  • to review and ponder God’s Presence throughout the day
  • to enter rest with some sense of what I need to leave behind
  • to sleep with the life-giving manna
    I want to celebrate
    and still be holding
    when the new day dawns.

Don’t Get Caught
with the Your in the Monkey Jar!

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In a meeting last week, Leadership Transformations’ Matt Scott spoke of his desire to live with hands less clinched and grasping… more open. It was an outward symbol of a deeper Grace he sought: wanting to detach from secondary things… to the end that his hands would be freer and more open to accept the primary things of God in his life.

In a follow-up ministry note, he would expand on this notion–emphasizing its relationship to the season we are now navigating in the Church…

The Lenten journey invites us to let go. To open our hands. To release…

Jim Branch writes: “In the end, there are only two ways to live. We can live with either clenched fists or with open hands. You can’t have them both. ” (A Devotional Guide For Every Season Of Your Life, p. 195)

When we clench and close our fists, we live from a place of refusal and resistance. Refusal to let go, resistant to trust and relinquish control.

Listening to (and reading) Scott’s words, a favorite stewardship illustration from my preaching days came to mind–something along these lines…

I understand that in Asia, they have a rather ingenious way of catching monkeys in the wild. All they need is a jug with a narrow neck at the top (wide enough to accommodate a monkeys open hand), a couple of ropes, some nuts, and a net.

Placing the nuts in the jug and tying it to a tree or two, they’ll lay in wait.  Isn’t long til the monkey comes and reaches into the jar for a snack.  Even as hunters approach, the monkey is disinclined to let go of the nuts.  It is “trapped” by its balled-up fist.  All you have to do is throw a net… and, voila, you got yourself a monkey!

In typical stewardship messages, I’d invariably relate that illustration to Paul’s admonition in I Timothy 6:10 about how “the love of money is the root of evil.”  Mind you, I’d point out, it is not money per se that is the root of evil and our entrapment – no, more than it is the nut which captures the monkey!  No, it’s the love of – the addiction to – these things that is the basis of the downfall of many a human… and monkey!

Scott’s words in mind, the illustration is about a lot more than money, isn’t it?  Or, perhaps we might say, Christian stewardship goes well beyond the financial and the material, doesn’t it?!  (Christian stewardship, I have emphasized through the years, is our co-management, with God, of all that God has entrusted to us for a season – and that goes well beyond cash-ews!)

Father Thomas Keating reduced the temptations – Christ and ours – to three fundamental programs of human happiness: what I have, what I do, and what people think of me.  To be sure, “what I have” – including money – is there in the mix.  But, let’s not belittle the mix of “nuts” we seek to grasp — things like looks and health and image and status…

Detachment would appear to be a part of what Rohr and others call “The Perennial Tradition” – the spiritual stream with courses through all the world’s religious systems.  Grasping and controlling have a way of enslaving.  It’s in the relinquishment and the letting go that we are most free to live and to receive what Life has to offer.

“Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it,” Jesus said,
“and whoever loses their life will preserve it.” (Luke 17:33)

It’s certainly a message at the heart of Lent, is it not?

Yes, don’t get caught with your hand in the monkey jar!

Fleshing Out Adolescent Jesus

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The second week — or “section,” as each section occupies several literal weeks — of The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola is focused on the events of the life and ministry of Jesus.  As Trevor Hudson puts it, “we desire to know Jesus more intimately so we can love him more deeply and follow him more closely.” (Seeking God, p. 82)

Prayers this last week had me engaging texts of his birth and early life.  In one fell swoop, we collect his adolescent years:  “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” (Luke 2:52) 

It was and is a text not without it’s question… 
and provocations of the imagination:

I know
what it says
about Jesus
growing
in stature
and wisdom
and grace.

And, I know
how we affirm that,
as Son of God,
He was sinless man.
Perfect.

But, still
(or, maybe,
for this very reason),
I wonder…

Did they have to tell Him
to eat his vegetables
and drink His milk?

Was He a goody two shoes?
And, did his peers resent Him?
(“Who died and made you God?”)

Or, did He play and know how to have fun?

And, when they played games,
was He picked first…
or last…
or did they just let him play umpire?

Did he ever play hooky?
Or tell a joke?
Did He ever daydream?
Ever engage in a belching contest?
Did He ever roll his eyes
and say, “whatever”?
Did he ever have a crush?

Come to think of it,
did he ever trip on something
and say, “Oops, I didn’t see that.”

I wonder.

What is it for God to be
human, yes – but
a teenager,
an adolescent
at that?

Was He a square…
or obtuse…
or acute…
or equilateral?
I am sure he was in good shape.

Yes, times are
different now from then.
Culture and stuff.
But, kids will be kids, won’t they?
What about Him?

I suspect there are some out there for whom these questions border on the blasphemous.  (Their Jesus is so “Heavenly minded that He is no earthly good.”)

Others may be inclined to ask, “So what…  What’s the point?” 

Hard to find anything out there which really fleshes out "adolescent Jesus." Yes, there are lofty and pious speculations on the one side.... and slightly irreverent treatments at the other end.

For my part, though, these lines of inquiry
— these questions — seem important.
For apart from raising them
(and, like Mary, “pondering them in our hearts”),
I wonder (along with Ignatius, I believe)
how seriously we are taking Incarnation.

Lent’s Invitation to Desolation & Consolation

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Walking with St. Ignatius and his Spiritual Exercises has me wanting to be more aware of the consolations of God (those times of nearness and contact with Spirit and Grace) in my daily living.

As a “1” on the Enneagram (and a not so resourceful 1, at that), I have no problems seeing the desolations (the points of departure and distance from God) in a day.

I knew it from my days in the Emmaus movement of the United Methodist Church and reunion groups therein: that the more you were asked “what was your closest moment to Christ?,” the more readily you saw them in a week.  Must be one of those muscles you have to work…  or you risk losing.  And so, I am re-working old muscles – looking for “close moments” or “consolations” throughout my days.

Enter Andrew McCormick, a student in one of my online spiritual formation courses.  In an assignment to further introduce himself to peers, he shared a video from one of his “sacred-music-composer-idols, Heather Sorenson.” 

 “Not One Falls” premiered at “A Leap of Faith Concert” benefiting The Grace Center Texas on February 29, 2020 at Lovers Lane United Methodist in Dallas Texas.

Taking time to view it (really view it)…
and claiming space to let it soak in —
at a point when I was otherwise
about a frantic rush through my “to do list” –
was and remains a clear and obvious consolation
for which I am truly grateful.

I pray it is the same for you –
even as I pray that you, too,
are being ushered into a fuller awareness
of the consolations of the Divine in your life
and the ways that “Earth is crammed with Heaven.”

Lent and Easter’s Exchange:
Out with the Old and In with the New

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Prefacing note:
Permission to share this was obtained from Michael and Megan. 
This preacher is beyond the days of sharing a family story… and, then, checking to see if that sharing was okay!

Michael, our youngest, turned 30 this last weekend.  (How is that possible?!?)

Just a week before his arrival and his joining Kathy and I and his two older sisters in this world, I wrote an article for the parish newsletter that captured a lot of my thoughts about Lent and Easter…

Michael and wife, Megan,
at a recent birthday celebration.

FEBRUARY 23, 1993

   FROM
   THE
   PASTOR’S
   DESK. . .

“Ye must be born again.”(John 3:7)

I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking a lot about babies and birthing lately. I ponder the adjustments the newborn must make–adjustments that are essential, though not necessarily easy–if life is to go on: adjustments to air, adjustments to light, adjustments to big sisters that ache to play,… in a manner of speaking, newborns need to “die” to one way of existing if they are to experience and enjoy the larger world “out here.”

The analogy to our spiritual lives and living is clear: there are those things we must die to, if we are to experience and enjoy the “larger world” out there. Altogether, it gives this coming Ash Wednesday and Lent a whole new meaning.

Of course, it all depends on how you look at it. The adjustments which a newborn makes: these we can choose to define as “birth.” The adjustments encouraged by Lenten examination: these we may choose to define as “death and dying.” For my part, though, I hate to separate the two: my,birth demands my dying, my dying invites new birth. It’s the tale of the newborn. It’s the profound mystery of Lent and Easter.

Yours, in the Pilgrimage of Lent and Easter,

Little did I know how prophetic that article would be.  For a day or so after his birth, Michael needed to be put into the ICU of Texas Children’s Hospital.   A blood disorder threatened to attack the rest of his body as though it were a foreign object.  What they call a double exchange transfusion—a 6 -8 hour procedure in which they meticulously pull out the old blood one syringe at a time and replace it with healthy whole blood—was prescribed.  Michael, you see, had to die to that old blood if he was to live in this world.

Needing sites for IV’s in ICU would reek havoc
on Michael’s scalp — creating a pretty ugly mohawk
and earning him the name of “Little Mo” among the nurses.

It’s a metaphor which informs the ancient path to Easter which is Lent:
    An exchange transfusion of sorts—
        dying to the old blood and living to the new,
            fasting from some thing
            and feasting on others,
                repenting (changing your mind about one thing)…
                and believing the Good News of the Gospel.

Of course, it all depends on how you look at it. The adjustments which a newborn makes: these we can choose to define as “birth.” The adjustments encouraged by Lenten examination: these we may choose to define as “death and dying.”

For my part, though, I hate to separate the two: my birth demands my dying, my dying invites new birth. It’s the tale of the newborn. It’s the profound mystery of Lent and Easter.  It’s the profound mystery of salvation—God’s ways and means in healing and wholeness.