I am currently reading John O’Donohue’s book The Four Elements and am delighting in his fresh approach to life and faith. In one of the blessings In Praise of Air, which he wrote not long before he died, he says:
In the name of the air,
The breeze
And the wind,
May our souls
Stay in rhythm
With eternal Breath.
It was this blessing that inspired my prayer above and has formed the focus for my prayers and meditations over the last week.
What does it mean to live a life in rhythm with Eternal Breath?
I have always loved writing and using breathing prayers, even more so since I listened to Richard Rohr talk about the name of God being breathed rather than spoken. The breath of God sustains us, yet we rarely acknowledge or live in the awareness of it. We are often unaware of our physical breath too unless it is interrupted by allergies, pollution or illness.
Becoming aware of our breathing can have a huge impact on our lives. Doctors recommend that we deliberately take deep breaths at regular intervals throughout the day to aerate our lungs. It relieves tension, rids our body of toxins, boosts our energy and strengthens our immune systems.
It requires intentionality.
As any experienced hiker or runner knows, we move more easily when we synchronize our steps to our breathing. Again this is often a deliberate action, especially when we are just learning to pace ourselves. We consciously take our steps in rhythm with our breaths. Living in synch with the Eternal Breath is just as intentional. We must regularly remind ourselves to breathe deeply of the presence of God and that means we need to learn to pace ourselves. That means pausing from busy lives, centering ourselves on the eternal presence and attending to the rhythm of our breathing.
Question: How much attention do you give your spiritual breathing? What do you do on a regular basis to make sure it is in synch with the Eternal Breath?
It means slowing down.
When we walk up a hill we know how out of condition we are if our breathing comes in short, painful gasps. Healthy hill climbing breathing is slow and regular.
I wonder at the spiritual analogy here. There is a tendency for us grab for God when we are on an uphill climb, facing pressures, challenges and anxieties in our life and faith. Unless we have been doing regular spiritual exercises, keeping our breath in synch with the Eternal Breath we find ourselves unprepared, gasping for the holy air that seems thinner and less life giving than it should be. We know we are in synch with the Eternal Breath when we are able to breathe in and out of the presence of God at all times, with long, slow breaths that nourish us deep within our souls.
Question: How healthy is your spiritual breathing? Think back to the last life stress you faced. What was the rhythm of your spiritual breathing like during that time?
It requires deep breathing exercises.
I have talked before about the fact that as we grow older we breathe more shallowly and need to learn to take deep breaths that fully aerate our lungs and provide the health benefits that only deep breathing provides.
I wonder if our spiritual lives follow the same pattern. The longer we follow Christ, the easier it is for us to take our spiritual practices for granted. They become stale, rote, unproductive of the spiritual depths that connect to the heart of God.We need to take time to breathe deeply, to replenish our resources and renew our spirits.
Tom and I have just returned from one of our quarterly prayer retreats, powerful deep breathing tools that help keep us in touch with God in a more intimate way. They enable us to restructure our lives and keep on focus with both our physical and spiritual disciplines.
Question: What are the deep breathing exercises your perform regularly to strengthen your spiritual muscles and maintain your life rhythm in synch with the Eternal Breath?
Listen to this beautiful poem by John O’Donohue. Allow it to enter your spirit and fill you with the Eternal Breath
Sitting in my office, gazing into my garden sanctuary, it would be easy to be disheartened today. The skies are gray, rain is falling, and the garden is still covered in a foot of snow and ice.
What happened to that amazing pallet of color splashed across the backyard? Now, dead sunflowers tower like brown skeletons, picked clean by birds and left as a barren reminder of a season past.
Dotted throughout this once abundant sacred garden are the steadfast ones: broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, and assorted herbs. Dried lavender spikes poke through the snow joining the still green spikes of rosemary. Everything else is either blanketed in snow or dead.
Yet with all of this death, I reframe my mind and discover hope. I know that just beneath the snow the soil teams with life. I know the “steadfast ones” will continue to produce through the winter months. A mysterious dance takes place in my garden sanctuary; death and life waltz before me, choreographed by the One who also orchestrates the song.
Ultimately, I embrace death for what it is: a renewing of the soil, a feeding of my subterranean friends that keep my garden healthy and nutrient rich. A reminder from God’s word… “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” Ecclesiastes 3:1
I’ve considered working toward a year-round garden. It’s possible, even here in the middle of the Cascade Range. But there’s something refreshing about rest. All this emphasis on production betrays a kind of sacred trust in the garden sanctuary. I need to learn from the rhythms of nature, the God-ordained seasons of birth, flourishing, abundance, death, rest and renewal.
Advent and Christmas, the beginning of the church year, points toward the cross… and to resurrection. On our way to Lent and Easter we pass through the season of Epiphany. Epiphany reminds us that God intends for the story of redemption to reach the ends of the earth. In Christ, God is reconciling all things (Col. 1:19-20). For me, the garden is a seasonal reminder of this deep spiritual truth.
I’m guilty of trying to make God in my own image, an image crafted for me by a society that has lost the art of rest. And I’m guilty of wanting to re-create the world around me, even the quiet places, into that same, hyper-productive image.
Ultimately it’s all a frenetic dance to avoid looking into the barren gardens of our souls, the dying, decaying life that must be embraced to grasp hold of real hope for today and the promise of life to come. A new beauty emerges as I gaze out the window; I begin to hear the music, to see the dance, and to enter into the celebration.
How are you entering the dance of God?
by Greg Valerio (Editors Note: This is the second of a series of 3 which was originally posted at the St. Columba Blog and is reposted here with permission.)
The Monastic Church was the earliest indigenous ecclesiology in Britain whose strength and dynamism was its simplicity of prayerful practice alongside a geographically liminal location in the cosmology of Gods created order. In today’s world, the idea of Church is often seen as a distraction to those whose natural tendency is towards contemplation, mystery and wisdom. Similarly the word monastic conjures imaginings of cloistered separation for the spiritual elite, hidden away from the daily lives of the great unwashed. For the executive styled career Christian, platform preachers and church leaders it can quickly become an idol at the heart of the narrative, a means by which we secure material wealth and maintain the gratification of public popularity. It is not the responsibility of human beings to build the church. Not something Jesus ever sanctioned. We must be clear, it is not our job to build the church, this is the purview of God alone. The followers of Christ are called to ‘strive first for the Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well’ (Matthew 6:33). The Church is the by-product of this Kingdom focus.
When discussing the reawakening of a British & Irish monastic church I start from the understanding that ecclesiology is not a fixed social, cultural or theological position.The axiomatic passage on church building is of course Jesus’s proclamation over the man Peter, ‘you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church’ (Matthew 16:18a). What is instantly clear is that Jesus builds the church and that Peter is a human being and not a rock (either in character or temperament). Later in his life St. Peter recalls Jesus’s words, when he speaks of ‘living stones… being built into a spiritual house’ (1 Peter 2:5). St. Paul talks of a body, the Body of Christ (Romans 12:5 & 1 Corinthians 12:12) and bodies are not stone or walls, concepts or ideas, they are are precisely what we live in – namely the skin we are in. The Ekklēsia (called out ones) of God are human beings, physical bodies, being formed in purpose and will to that of God the Creator as revealed in and through Jesus. The authenticity of the Body of Christ should never be about the quality of buildings, organisational political structure, size of congregation or commercial success. These things are helpful, but not defining as they are products of socio-economic conditioning and context. The Body of Christ is only ever to be judged on the quality of the love (John 15:12-17) expressed between the bodies that inhabit it and where those bodies choose to locate themselves. It is as simple as that.
The question then arises what do we do with our bodies and where do we choose to place them? These questions are at the heart of a monastic church ecclesiology. The monastic church is a place that creates the social and creational context in which the individual can be formed in the likeness of Christ. This spiritual formation occurs in three principle ways, through discipleship, imitation and location. So is there an ecclesiology that harnesses the strength of a rooted spirituality, an inclusive communitarian edge and creational harmony?
Discipleship in its simplest terms means to follow after, to learn from and to be taught. We learn by example and clearly for Jesus the call to come ‘follow me’ (John 1:43) was at the very heart of His life’s work. This discipleship however should not be interpreted as primarily evangelistic (if we understand evangelism as a process of converting individual people). Yoder summarises the sociological traits of discipleship as three fold,[1]
- A visible social structure or fellowship (Matthew 10:1-4).
- A sober decision regarding the cost of discipleship (Luke 14:25-33).
- A clearly defined lifestyle that is distinct from the world (Matthew 5:1-14).
Jesus was intentional about the establishing of an alternative society or fellowship that was in direct contrast to the existing system of the world and established governance. During His final meal, Jesus speaks plainly about the essential difference between the kingdoms of the world and the Kingdom of God, being that of servanthood rather than power and control (Luke 22:25). The Kingdom of God is the in breaking of a new social order of love expressed as service and sacrifice, not the revolutionary overturning, or coalescing to, the existing political and social structures of the world.
Monastic disengagement from the start was a social and political statement as well as a theological one. We cannot overlook the vital importance in the fourth century of ‘social meaning’. The presence of heavenly power on earth expressed in the monastic life was closely related to an ascetic stance to ‘this world’ – represented by disentangling oneself from the conventional social and economic obligations in the favour of reshaping of human relations.[2]
This visible counter-cultural community is established in lifestyle, a lifestyle that revolves around the primary commandment, ‘that you love one another as I have loved you’ (John 15:12).
Imitation of Christ is at the very centre of all the monastic traditions and the heart of a Columban ecclesiology and expectation. ‘Be naked in your imitation of Christ and the Evangelists’ (rule 2) is the injunction that follows on from ‘being alone in a separate place’ (rule 1). Imitation is often understood as the copying of Jesus in all aspects of lifestyle and it cannot be denied that this aspirational devotion over the centuries has produced many inspirational exemplars of transformational holiness. What imitation cannot be understood to mean however is that every disciple of Christ should live an identikit lifestyle to Jesus. Jesus was not married, was a carpenter, was itinerant etc. The very fabric of life itself would be out of balance if every Christian copied Jesus in this fashion. If discipleship is an outward expression of an in breaking Kingdom, imitation is the process of inward formation that leads to that out breaking of the Kingdom becoming a material reality (Luke 17:20-21). The imitation of Christ is authenticated in our orientation towards the power structures of the world. Are we transformed (internally and externally) by the authority and values of God or the authority of the world value system? Imitation of Christ is a transformation that leads to the realisation and fulfillment of our true nature. A nature created in the Image of God. Imitation is participation, partaking, abiding, corresponding with the very nature of who God is. ‘Be holy for I am Holy’ (Leviticus 19:2), and ‘be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48) captures the very lifeblood of what it means to be created in the image of God. At this point we must concede failure and our need of grace. No one is perfect in holiness, yet our desire for union with God leads us to climb the ladder of holiness each and every day and when we fall off, start all over again.
Actions without internal concordance swiftly become meaningless religious observance. The heart and soul of our humanity must be liberated from worldly values, so our lifestyle and actions are authentic expressions of our faith (James 2:26). Matthew’s beatitudes, not only focus on external behaviours, they also focus us on the inner world of love, peace, reconciliation, equality, inclusiveness and being free in our hearts from hatred, materialism, revenge, violence, segregation and greed. St. Paul captures a high point of Christian theology when he writes, ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28).
From the inner world of intentional imitation flows the required detachment from the corrosive worldly values that would have us formed in the image of all that is destructive to humanity and creation.
At the core of discipleship and community is a spirit shaped by Holiness that is free to love without reward or notoriety. The Utopia that is the Kingdom of God is fashioned first in the heart and soul of each follower. St. Columba’s call to imitate Christ and the Evangelists (rule 2), is so we are able to confess with integrity that the ruler of this world ‘has no power over me’ (John 14:30, 19:11).
Location is an indispensable positioning in order to mature in Christ. What is unequivocal in the historical analysis of the British & Irish monastic church was that liminal creation was the physical location for their ecclesial settlements. These liminal wildernesses in turn actively shaped and formed the monastic life in Christ.
God’s indwelling spirit is not merely in humankind or even in animate objects. The Spirit dwells in all things without exception. In that sense the elements such as earth and water are powerful spiritual forces because they have within them the creative energy that is God’s own.[3]
On the monastic island of Iona, St. Columba has a word of fore-knowledge that a pilgrim from Ireland would be blown off course and arrive on the island exhausted and near death. St. Columba instructs one of the monks to wait for the unfortunate to arrive, to take him to one of the monasteries guest rooms, give him hospice until he is fully recovered and able to continue his onward journey. This pilgrim turns out to be a Heron, blown off course in a storm and it is significant the bird is afforded the same hospitality that a human guest would have been (VC 1:48). In this simple prophetic encounter we witness a charismatic creational balance at work in the life of the monastic house.
Those early adherents of British monasticism sought places of creational liminality that afforded the minimal amount of secular distraction and maximised the immanence and transcendence of God in creation. Theirs was a spirituality that embraced wilderness as home.
There can be little doubt that early British and Irish Christians built on the tenants of desert monasticism that included;
- Separation from worldly values of empire
- An embracing of ascetic practices
- A creational worldview
- A focus on an imitation of Christ in all aspects of life.
This indigenous desert in the ocean asceticism was rooted and emerged from within the soil of these islands and uniquely found expression upon the waters that surround them. It recognised that although monastic principles espoused in the Egyptian and Syrian deserts[4] may be inspirational, these principles cannot be imposed from above, they emerge from beneath our feet, from the very soil on which we tread and the waters we sail on.
All of creation proceeds from God, all of creation participates in God, all of creation returns to God – John Scottus Eriugena.
Creation, of which humanity is uniquely a part, is an active participant in our spirituality and ecclesiology, not a passive recipient. To speak of the whole of life as being (w)holy is a theological confession few would disagree with. Yet the challenge comes in living a life that treats all of creation as Holy. To live an intentionally (w)holy life is the most difficult and challenging vocation in today’s aggressively secularised Britain. A privatised modern secularism and liberal economic dogma demand life is structured into manageable monetised and politicised components. This dystopian segregation fails to recognise the primary creational mandate that all of life is sacred and an inter-dependent whole under God. Our spiritual maturity is dependent on a right relationship with creation, and creation needs a (w)holy people to work in partnership to fulfill God’s expectation for salvation.
The final blog article in this series will explore the Columban charism of prayer, work and reading as a way of focusing on the essential practices of the Christian walk.
For a complete copy of Reawakening our Origins, please click on title at the original blog.
[1] John Howard Yoder. Politics of Jesus. (Eerdmans: 1972), p.47
[2] Philip Sheldrake. Spaces for the Sacred. (SCM Press: 2000), p.91-92.
[3] Philip Sheldrake. Living Between Worlds: Place and Journey in Celtic Spirituality. (Darton, Longman & Todd: 1995), p.82.
[4] For a good summary of the theological and spiritual link between desert monasticism of the fourth century and its influence on British and Irish Monastic practice, see chapter 2 of The Church in Early Irish Society, Kathleen Hughes.
by Christine Sine
This has been a very challenging week. The inauguration on Friday of a new president, followed by protest marches across the U.S. and around the world, have had many of us oscillating between despair and hope. My greatest concern is that in the midst of venting our strong feelings we lose the ability to listen to each other and increase the conflict and the divide between us. Hope so easily gives way to despair and faith is replaced by doubt.
Transitions are always uncomfortable. Moving from the familiar through the unknown into something new that has never been seen before brings out all of our insecurities. It often creates turmoil, discord and unrest. Restoring our hope in God at times like this can, however, be a transforming experience.
Finding Hope
On Saturday night we had some good friends over for dinner and Tom asked me to write a prayer on hope for the evening. Hope, I thought, what is there to be hopefully about? So I went looking for hope. I did a search on biblegateway.com of the word hope. First I searched in the New International Version, then in the New Living Translation and finally in The Voice, all of which give different perspectives on the Bible.
Some verses proclaimed where our hope lay – in the eternal God, in Christ our Saviour, in God’s call to be a covenant family and to seek God’s eternal kingdom of love, peace, justice and compassion. Others described hope – never ending, ever present, never failing. By the time I finished my prayer I found that my own emotional state had changed completely. I had regained my hope in God and God’s eternal purposes.
Sharing Hope
What I realized as I wrote this prayer is that hope in God is not an ephemeral, intangible emotion that we can artificially conjure up. First it must be grounded in our trust in God and in what we believe about who God is. Second it must be put into action. The act of writing a prayer and then reciting it out loud with friends was a reviving experience but it is an act that must be followed by concrete action. So this week I am looking for ways to practice my hope in our community .
So my question for all of us today is: Do we have the courage to participate in Jesus’ mission and make his message of hope concrete and tangible in a world where inequality, injustice, and hate seem to reign? Beyond this weekend, how do we intend to practice the kind of hope our faith gives us and bring glimpses of God’s eternal world of justice, equality, love and compassion into being?
A pigeon and I shared morning tea,
Coconut rough and brine of the sea
Our feet rest on yellowed moss over stony cement
I think he talked, or perhaps I dreamt
“see these clouds, this sky, the fountain,
The roads, the houses and there a mountain
…these are connected but you cannot see
These must co-exist in harmony
You affect I and I affect you
In the ways that we go and the things that we do
Some have plenty and some not a lot,
It seems that we ought to share what we’ve got
It is as clear as the water, firm as the ground
Certain as sunrise, at least, I have found.””But pigeon,” I ask, “”What can we do?”
“Next time,” he answered, “You might buy two.”
This post is part of our reflections on the season of Epiphany.
by Andy Wade
I wrote this poem the other day after a couple of weeks of reflecting on these changes of church seasons. Advent to Christmas to Epiphany and on. The promise began long ago, announced its arrival in Mary’s song, and burst into the world surrounded by animals. But that was not the end of the story.
The other day I’d written the draft of a totally different article regarding the theme of Epiphany. It had to do with the gifts of the Magi, and how we could perceive them as being given to “us” today if we looked at them through a different lens. And actually it was turning out okay…until I HAD A REAL EPIPHANY!! The unlikely source of my sudden insight, this sudden revelation “of” myself “to” myself occurred while watching the Golden Globes on television, and listening to Meryl Streep give her profoundly honest and poignant acceptance speech after receiving her Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press.
As she stepped on stage, her remarks began by recognizing the part women have played in helping to change the attitude of the entertainment industry into one of inclusion and acceptance as they took on roles of heft and depth to expose issues that had once been unacceptable for women to express. Many of the “break through” roles were given to women of color, many of whom were in attendance, and to whom she addressed specifically as she looked around the room. From there she went on to point out the various places these women were originally from, and then proceeded to include the male actors as well, noting their roots not only in the United States …but Canada, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. She noted how their experiences of being born in different cultures only prove to enrich our own perspective as we look at common day situations and problems through the eyes of people who are totally different from us, and often culturally respond in ways that seem foreign to us.
From there she recounted her “heartbreak” of seeing a disabled news reporter mocked and derided during a news conference during the pall of last year’s election campaign. It was at this point that she urged the news media to stay resolved to presenting the truth and allowing us all to continue enjoying the privilege of our constitutional right of free speech. She then turned back to her fellow actors and urged them to continue to take on roles and projects that would encourage compassion, which is needed so desperately, especially in the current climate of these times.
At the conclusion of her speech, I told my husband how much I admired her for standing up on that stage and having the courage to speak out her truth not only to her colleagues, but to the millions of people that were watching the program. THAT’S WHEN I HAD MY EPIPHANY!!
Now …this is not a political piece. My point is not to expound on the depth of value I personally found in what Ms. Streep said; even though she was speaking about gender equality, race, acceptance and inclusion of foreigners, and our rights and responsibilities regarding free speech – which are not politic issues …they are quintessentially moral issues! No, the “epiphany” I had was about the lack of courage I display when – unlike Ms. Streep, who got up before God and everyone and made an effort to make constructive comments – I make my comments and share my likes and dislikes on social media, hiding behind the safety of my computer screen where I can be very bold without any direct personal contact! I can say things I wouldn’t ordinarily say person to person, because deep down I hate conflict. I lack the courage to go toe-to-toe with someone who vehemently disagrees with me in person. I like having time to choose my words, time to plan both my defense AND my plan of attack! ATTACK … yes, that’s what this all feels like!!
Case in point: earlier in the day I shared a post on Facebook that, in my opinion, was positive and meaningful. As we headed off to bed after the Golden Globes, I checked my phone and found a “response” to my posting that blasted me for being political, and suggested that I’d better learn to DEAL WITH IT. That the election was OVER and that I needed to GET OVER IT. (btw, this person used these same “all caps.” I think she was shouting at me!). She certainly has her right to express her opinion – just like I do; however, in my heart of hearts, I do not think she would have ever said this to me directly …certainly not in that tone anyway. But her message was received loud and clear! I could feel her hate and disgust oozing from her keyboard. Has anyone ever told you to “get over it” with any real success? Personally, a remark like that makes my claws come out and I dig in even deeper!! Somehow I don’t think this way of resolving an impasse would ever be taught in an “Art of Negotiation” class! We must learn, somehow, to disagree without becoming enemies!
Perhaps the first step is to be more courageous: dare to speak our mind without having an air of superiority that negates the feelings or opinions of others. It seems to me that’s the only way one can get her point across in a manner that just may intrigue the other person enough to look at an issue differently. Always taking a “frontal attack” never accomplishes anything – especially when it comes to our fragile human egos!!
It was at this point I decided to scrap my previous draft and speak to what was more clearly an example of an “epiphany.” There is truly a blessing in the angst of this reality; and I think without the suffering that often accompanies our own complicit role in the problem, we’ll never arrive at the solution.
This post is part of our series of reflections on the season of Epiphany.
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