
Street of Santa Rita, oil on canvas, 1961 by Antonio Lopez Garcia.
Accessed from http://www.artelibre.net
This morning’s post for Return to Our Senses in Lent is contributed by C. Christopher Smith. He is the editor of The Englewood Review of Books, and author of several books, including most recently The Virtue of Dialogue: Conversation as a Hopeful Practice of Church Communities (Patheos Press 2012). He is presently in the process of writing a book entitled Slow Church (co-written with John Pattison, forthcoming from IVP Books). Chris and John blog about Slow Church on the Patheos Interfaith portal.
“[Hope] to belong to your place by your own knowledge /
Of what it is that no other place is…” – Wendell Berry
I was deeply moved by the story of the Spanish painter, Antonio López García, as it was told by art critic Daniel Siedell in a recent Books and Culture review:
For most of us, the world is no longer a cause of fascination, of sustained contemplation and reflection. A bird is just a bird, a vase of flowers just that, and the grace of this man or the charm of that woman is buried beneath a multitude of judgments we make about them as they pass us. This is the “real world,” the world in which as Cervantes writes, an inn is just an inn. …
One of the more remarkable and stubbornly beautiful and seductive objects in the world for López García is the quince tree in his backyard. For decades he has tried to paint this simple tree as it absorbs and refracts the sunlight. In 1992 filmmaker, Victor Erice was given unique access to the artist’s world to make the award-winning documentary El Sol del Membrillo (The Quince Tree of the Sun). The film tells the story of López García’s approach to art through his relationship with this little tree, which he feels the urge to paint every autumn. And yet every autumn it thwarts his attempt to capture his experience of it.
In a similar way, I have for several years now been getting to know my own immediate urban neighborhood in Indianapolis, an undertaking that I like to call urban naturalism. Inspired by the poetry of early twentieth century agrarian Liberty Hyde Bailey, I walk the streets and paths of the neighborhood, take pictures, climb trees, look, listen and often write. Our Englewood neighborhood is a postage stamp of a place, about twelve blocks in all, sandwiched between two abandoned industrial complexes that have sat idle for about two decades. Our ZIP code also has one of the highest rates of abandoned housing in the nation. By practically any measure, Englewood is what the new monastics would call “an abandoned place of empire.”
And yet, the life of God abounds in this place (as in all places). Treetops are full of all manner of birds, insects and mosses; fiesty, bright yellow dandelions emerge through cracks in the pavement; even when things made be human hands start to crumble, the life of creation rolls vibrantly on. And the life of creation is a superabundant gift of god for us to see, smell, feel, hear and maybe even taste. Certainly, we need the wisdom of time and others. Not every plant was made to be eaten, or even touched, for instance. Being able to identify birds, plants and trees, can help us to care for them better, or to know when something is awry – say, when we encounter a bird or an animal that is not native to our place.
As we come to know our places, and belong to and love them, we make ourselves available for the healing love of God to flow through us to our neighbors and the other creatures who share this place with us. We strive to live carefully on the land, and cultivate it in ways that sustain us and our neighbors (e.g., growing food), and engaging in the economy and built environment of the place in a way that moves the place forward ever so slightly toward health and flourishing. But to submit ourselves to God’s all-encompassing work of reconciliation in this way takes discipline. We have to slow down, be still and receive the rich gifts that God wants to offer us. Our fast food world does not make this easy for us. Lent is a season in the church year in which we learn to discipline ourselves, not for our own sake but for that of the common good. I’m not a very disciplined person; even in my urban naturalism efforts, I am often too busy with my work to do much at all.
We need discipline. We need seasons like Lent that help us look beyond ourselves and our busyness and by belonging to our places to grow in our love for God and for God’s creatures that share our place with us. God help us. May your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven!
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C. Christopher Smith is the editor of The Englewood Review of Books, and author of several books, including most recently The Virtue of Dialogue: Conversation as a Hopeful Practice of Church Communities (Patheos Press 2012). He is presently in the process of writing a book entitled Slow Church (co-written with John Pattison, forthcoming from IVP Books). Chris and John blog about Slow Church on the Patheos Interfaith portal.
Today’s Lenten prayer is written by A.B. Simpson, who was founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance:
“Breathing Out and Breathing In”
Jesus, Breathe Thy Spirit on me,
Teach me how to breathe Thee in,
Help me pour into Thy bosom
All my life of self and sin.
I am breathing out my own life,
That I may be filled with Thine;
Letting go my strength and weakness,
Breathing in Thy life divine.
Breathing out my sinful nature,
Thou hast borne it all for me;
Breathing in Thy cleansing fullness,
Finding all my life in Thee.
I am breathing out my sorrow,
On Thy kind and gentle breast;
Breathing in Thy joy and comfort,
Breathing in Thy peace and rest.
I am breathing out my longings,
In Thy list’ning loving ear,
I am breathing in Thy answers,
Stilling every doubt and fear.
I am breathing every moment,
Drawing all my life from Thee;
Breath by breath I live upon Thee,
Blessed Spirit, breathe in me.
I posted this prayer a couple of years ago but thought that because it is St Patrick’s Day next Sunday I would take advantage of this opportunity to repost some of my favourite Celtic prayer so feel free to respond by sharing your favourite prayerrs
Today’s post in the series Return to Our Senses in Lent is written by Cindy Todd social entrepreneur, Mustard Seed Village co-ordinator and facilitator for our upcoming workshop Igniting the Divine Spark
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MacGyver…now there was a creative guy! Not sure how many of you recall the show, way back in the late 80’s early 90’s.
MacGyver was some kind of secret government agent guy who was incredibly creative at problem solving.
He could make a sound barrier to ward off the bad guys and in the video I’m including today, stops a bomb in the nick of time with a paper clip.
The phrase “doing a MacGyver” has become synonymous with innovative problem solving.
I hate to brag, but I did my own MacGyver thing a few years ago. Back in the day, I drove a big tall conversion van. I was at Miami airport with the Operation Mary team getting ready to head to Ukraine. Unfortunately, I took the wrong parking garage entrance and while I was okay height wise to get in, I wasn’t okay to navigate through. Almost, but not quite.
You know the horseshoes and hand grenades story, close wasn’t going to cut it. Departure time was coming close, there was a line of cars behind me…honking, tapping, being generally impatient and so, I put my best MacGyver thinking cap on and figured out a solution…I hopped out of the van and let about 25% of the air out of each tire. It worked! Wasn’t I proud…
And while I’ve never gotten into that type of situation precisely before, when I found myself unemployed and my family sinking financially a few years ago, I had to get creative again. First for us, and now for other struggling families. As Snohomish Soap Company grows, we can work and partner with a whole lot more women. Now I’m working on scaling…developing the model…and stepping out and making it happen.
This type of model, this idea of doing well by doing good isn’t new, although its definitely emerging as a respected, powerful business philosophy.
Creativity is at the heart of it and a much more cohesive business/life/community model is the result.
For the first time, our friends over at the Inhabit Conference will be hosting the Inhabit Enterprise Challenge, a forum and competition for a few of these new types of businesses to present to the attendees.
Get inspired! Get Creative! Get connected to other Parish changemakers in your community…
A good place to get those creative thoughts bubbling might be at our “Igniting the Divine Spark” workshop.
Igniting the Divine Spark
Today’s post in the series Return to Our Senses in Lent is another written by my husband Tom Sine, futurist, author and hospitality guy here at the Mustard Seed House.
Christine and I, and our golden retriever, Bonnie, just came back from one of our prayer retreats at a doggie friendly motel in Anacortes just north of Seattle. It is a modest place with a little view of the water and a great walking trail. Part of the discipline of our lives is to go on a prayer retreat 3 to 4 times a year…following the church calendar.
We usually spend two nights and come back on the third day. Day one is always hard for me. We start by reading back over 3 months of journals. I find it always hard to see how little I have changed. Day two is always a little easier as we seek to listen for a new sense of direction for our individual lives and for our lives as a couple.
Christine and I have found these times immensely valuable. We encourage all couples and singles to find a friend and go on retreat at least twice a year. In addition to reading scripture and our journals and spending time in prayer we often bring an inspirational book. This year I read Desert Fathers and Mothers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings by Christine Valters Paintner.
It was just the book I needed for this Lenten retreat. The author writes “The desert elders call us to a radical reclaiming of full responsibility for ourselves.” pp.46. I have long believed that the major work of the Holy Spirit is to get us to come out of hiding and deal honestly with all our broken places. God nailed me this past weekend regarding one of my real broken places. I have with God’s help been working this issue for years. But change in my life seems to come at glacial speed.
God’s prescription for me isn’t really that demanding. It means taking time every day in addition to my time in scripture an prayer to re-discover how deeply loved I am by the creator God…in spite of all my broken places.
On those rare occasions when I can fully enter into God’s grace filled love for me at a very deep level then nothing can shake my tree. In those deeply centered moments I can view my life and times of difficult encounters with a much fuller sense of both detachment and discernment.
As we are journeying through the final days of Lent, can you find even a couple hours on Sunday or some other evening to be present to God? I encourage you to ask the Lord to not only show you those areas in your life that need some work, but also to ask God to show you how deeply he loves you.
Can you find two hours this Lent to transparently wait before God to receive both God’s correction and God’s deep love for you? Will you write me this week and tell me how God is getting your ready to celebrate on that great Easter morn?
The following prayer was written by Thomas A Kempis (1380-1471) the author of Imitation of Christ. Prayers like this are truly timeless and make a great addition to our Lenten prayer series.
Grant me, O Lord, to know what I ought to know,
to love what I ought to love,
to praise what delights Thee most,
to value what is precious in Thy sight,
to hate what is offensive to Thee.
Do not suffer me to judge according to the sight of my eyes,
nor to pass sentence according to the hearing of the ears of ignorant men;
but to discern with a true judgement between things visible and spiritual,
and above all things always to inquire what is the good pleasure of Thy will.
Today’s post in the Lenten series Return to Our Senses is written by Kimberlee Conway Ireton who has embarked on a Year of Prayer. To help hold her accountable to this commitment to live more prayerfully, she promised herself (and her blog readers) that she’d write about (some of) her prayer experiences.
My twins are napping, my oldest is at the pool, swimming with a friend, and my daughter and I are sharing a rare moment of just-the-two-of-us time. I make tea, while she sets out teacups and saucers, bread and jam. When the tea has steeped, I pour it into our cups, and we sit together, talking a little between sips of tea and bites of jammy bread. The late afternoon sun slants through the dining room window, falling across the table, across the tea tray, onto Jane’s dress.
It is a moment of no import. Once it has passed, I forget all about it—until days later when I meet with my spiritual director, and she asks me where God has met me this past month. We sit in silence as I wait for God to speak, to reveal to me His presence in my life these past weeks. And the image that comes to mind is of Jane and me, sitting at the dining room table, drinking tea. In my mind’s eye, the sunlight streaming into the room seems to be the very presence of God.
Later still, I re-read chapter three of Eugene Peterson’s Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer, about the language of prayer, in which he claims that prayer is, first, the language of desperation, of someone in trouble who needs help, deliverance, redemption. It is “primal language,” the language of a baby who wails or fusses so that someone will feed her or change her diaper or pick her up or rock her to sleep. (Stay with me here, okay? This will connect back to that afternoon tea, I promise!)
Peterson goes on to sketch a rough map of language, dividing it into three levels: Language 1, the language of intimacy and relationship; Language 2, the language of information; and Language 3, the language of motivation. He outlines how we move through these stages of language as we grow from Language 1 in babyhood (“mama, dada”) to Language 2 in toddlerhood (“doll, table”) to Language 3 in childhood (“give me, I want”).
Languages 2 (information) and 3 (motivation) are the languages of school, the workplace, politics, and advertising. Our culture is very good at these languages. As we grow older, Peterson says, we don’t practice Language 1 (intimacy) much, and it withers.
But Language 1 is the primary language of prayer. Prayer is relational. It is intimate. It is very much like the language of that crying baby who cannot articulate her needs and can only cry out for someone to come help her, someone to come figure out what she wants or needs and give it to her.
This language of need is, I think, a language of being. It is, Peterson says, the language of those who recognize that they are in trouble and cannot help themselves, and who hope or maybe even believe that God can. It is our first language. And it is the language of prayer.
But we are unpracticed in this primal language of prayer. Learning to pray, Peterson says, is not learning something new, but rather recovering our first language. Intimacy is at our core. Relationship is at our core. To learn to pray, we must return to this core, to the first language we ever knew, the language of need, of trust, of relationship. That is where prayer begins.
Peterson then launches into a discussion of Psalm 3 by observing that, at the very center of the prayer, after the initial cry for help, the psalmist lay down and slept and woke again (vs 4). “Three verbs,” Peterson says, “describe what everyone does each evening, night, and morning: lie down, go to sleep, get up. These actions are prayer.”
As I read those words, I thought again of that moment at the dining room table with Jane. I can’t remember what she said, or what I said. But what we said is less important than who we were—a mother and a daughter quietly enjoying one another’s company. We were living, for a moment, the intimate, relational language of prayer, a language born of trouble and need but maturing into mutual pleasure and delight and enjoyment.
Sipping tea, talking softly so as not to wake the babies, enjoying sunlight streaming through the window—these actions are prayer.
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