PRAYER IS PAINFUL

Most of us would have to confess that our spiritual life is not what we want it to be nor what we know it should be. We wish we had more time to give to prayer and spiritual reading. The Bible may even have a prominent place in our homes but it barely gets opened or certainly not opened and read enough. Our self-discipline, as far as our spiritual life is concerned, leaves much to be desired.

But we do not give up. Every once in a while we make a concerted effort to spend as much time on the spiritual part of our lives as we do the physical in an effort to lead a balanced life. A spiritual life, spirituality, begins with prayer, setting aside certain times during the day when we actually do pray, whether from a book of prayer or use words we have memorized over the years or simply utter words that come from the heart.

Herein is the problem. Sister Joan Chittister, in her In a High Spiritual Season, writes this: “Spirituality without a prayer life is no spirituality at all, and it will not last beyond the first defeats. Prayer is an opening of the self so that the Word of God can break in and make us new. Prayer unmasks. Prayer converts. Prayer impels. Prayer sustains us on the way. Pray for the grace it will take to continue what you would like to quit.”

Isn’t that the truth? We pray because we find something missing in our lives; we find a staleness there, a same-old same-old that craves for something new or at least something refreshing. But when we pray, really pray, when we are in tuned to the words we utter, we find ourselves dealing with the nitty-gritty, with so much of what we don’t like about ourselves and our lives and the reason we felt moved to pray in the first place.

As Sister Joan says, prayer unmasks. It forces us to see the real person and not the person we pretend to be or others think us to be. We’re not that bad but have too many faults that cannot be overlooked and certainly not excused. Prayer forces us to speak the truth about ourselves. If and when we listen to that truth and take in seriously, we begin a conversion process. In fact, the more serious we become about our prayer life, the more we are impelled to making those changes in our lives our prayer recognizes need to be made.

Once we head down that road, once we begin that journey, it is prayer that “sustains us on the way.” Yet, as we know from experience, that road so often quickly comes to an end. Our prayer exposes too much of us, demands too much of us, wants to make changes we are not ready or even willing to make, and so we stop praying.

Prayer is painful because it demands that we take our spiritual lives seriously. When we do, that will demand that we make changes in the rest of our lives, changes that will discomfit us and perhaps even make the lives of those we love uncomfortable.

Jesus is our example. His deep-seated prayer life governed what he said and did. That made everyone else uncomfortable because they saw in him the life they were to live. It took God’s grace for Jesus always to be a person of prayer and never quit even when the going got rough. It takes that same grace for us as well. Pray for that grace.

SEARCHING FOR THE LOST GARDEN OF EDEN

Ever since Adam and Eve got thrown out of the Garden of Eden because of their disobedience, humanity has been trying to get back in, searching, if you will, for the lost Garden of Eden. The belief is that were we able find that place, all would be well. It would, once again, be heaven on earth. That is assuming that the first Garden was actually that place of bliss and enjoyment.

We don’t know. We may only think, or wish, it to be so. The story of the Garden of Eden, of course, is only a parable that reminds us over and over again, each time we read or hear it, that all of creation is good including, and most importantly, the highlight of creation, namely we human beings. The fact that humanity, from the very beginning, has not taken care of creation, has used an abused it, does not lessen the command to respect and love all of it and everyone and everything in it.

Even more, it does not mean that the Garden of Eden no longer exists or that we have to go looking for it or recreating it somewhere here on earth. The Garden is still here. It is everywhere we look. It is all around us. It is this earth and not a specific and special place on this earth even though whenever we think about the Garden of Eden we may have visions of some place that looks like Hawaii.

All of creation is good. There is nothing bad. We are to love creation in no less a way than we are to love our God and love our neighbor: with all our heart and mind and strength. We are to love it and to love them not because in doing so there is some reward in it for us, but simply because as part of creation, we are to love ourselves in no less a way than we love anything and everything else. Or as Wendell Barry once observed, “It is not allowable to love the Creation according to the purposes one has for it, any more than it is allowable to love one’s neighbor in order to borrow his tools.”

But we don’t and that is why this world, this created order, is in such a mess. That is why we dream of and desire a place like the Garden of Eden. Like Adam and Eve in the biblical story, so often we use and abuse creation for our own selfish purposes and not for the purposes for which they were intended by God. God’s command not to eat the fruit of a certain tree was not to  rules and regulations or to see if Adam and Eve would be obedient. It was simply a reminder that God had another purpose in mind for that tree and that purpose had nothing to do with them. So leave it alone.

As the story goes, they could not. Neither, it seems, can we. Even though there are moments and places where we think we have found the lost Garden of Eden, times and places where it seems that we are experiencing heaven on earth, where we feel totally loved and love totally in return, those times and those places seem too few and too far between and away.

They are not. They are everywhere. There is no need to go searching for the Lost Garden of Eden. It was never lost and finding it does not demand a search. It only demands that we open our eyes and love and respect everything and everyone we see.

SINNERS AND THE SELF-RIGHTEOUS

The sign says very simply that “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You.” There is no asterisk anywhere on the sign or words in smaller print listing exceptions to the welcome. Everyone is welcome, sinners included, which would be redundant because we are all sinners, every last one of us.

Granted some of us may be more sinful than others, and probably are, but it is only a matter of degree. And when it comes to degree as far as sins are concerned, difference in degree really makes no difference. A sin is a sin is a sin, to sort of paraphrase Gertrude Stein. Stealing a dime or stealing a million dollars is still stealing; both actions are sins. The fact that one sin may be the lesser as far as civil law is concerned is of no concern when the issue at hand is that of morality. Little sinner meet big sinner.

This does not hold, of course, when our self-righteous gene kicks in, and it kicks in regularly. It is so easy to measure our own self-worth or self-loathing if we compare our sins to those of others. When doing so, we can always pick a more notorious sinner than we so that we come off, if not smelling like a rose, at least not as stinky as that other person, horrible sinner that he is.

But the sign says that everyone is welcome, even the notorious sinners among us, even us. Let’s face it, we’re all notorious, all known in God’s eyes. And we are all, in fact, forgiven. The problem the self-righteous have (or we, when that gene is in full bore) is that we won’t forgive those whom we deem to be worse sinners than we deem ourselves to be. We set the standards, the measuring stick and, in the process, proclaim that’s how God sees it as well.

We do well not to play God, however. The old dictum that we should not judge lest we be judged holds true even though we all tend to ignore it on a regular basis. We instinctively make judgments about the actions of others almost immediately upon becoming aware of them. And when we are convinced that that action is beyond the pale, certainly something we would never do, it makes it that much easier for us to justify our sins. When self-righteousness rears its justifying head, look out.

None of this is to make light of sin or to think or act as if it is no big deal. It is. Sin is selfishness and any act of selfishness not only demeans those whom our sins hurt but it also demeans us in the process. Self-righteousness, however, allows us to take our own sinfulness less seriously because we are, at least in our own estimation, not as bad, not as sinful as someone else. Even if we are not, that does not lessen our guilt.

Jesus always seemed to hang out with those whom proper society and the church of his time considered sinners, even notorious sinners. Jesus never condoned their sins nor did he either demean them or deliberately avoid them. And he did not judge them either. What he did do was forgive them just as he forgives us so that they and we can acknowledge our sinfulness, do our best to be less sinful in the future and move on. Unfortunately, the self-righteous sinner can or will not do any of this.

POSSESSIONS CAN SOMETIMES LEAVE US EMPTYHANDED

Sometimes we all have a difficulty with sharing our possessions. We are like the little child who grabs the ball from his younger brother and says, “That’s mine!” and will not, under any circumstances, share it. Even when Mom of Dad tries to explain why he should share his ball with his brother, he resists. He can neither understand why he has to nor will he give in even under parental orders.

Again, such selfishness is not the sole prerogative of children. Adults are just as susceptible to holding on to what they have and being unwilling to share it with anyone, even a sibling or parent, as are children. There has to be some specific possessive gene within each of us that makes us so. Yes, some people are less prone to hoarding possessions than others, but even the greatest of saints is tempted to do so and even gives in on occasion.

When we find ourselves doing such hoarding, what we will also discover, if we stop to think about what we are doing and why, is that we are preventing ourselves from gaining something more and something even more valuable. For when we close our hands, literally and figuratively around something, some possession, we are then unable to open those same hands to receive anything from another, from others.

When we unclasp those hands to let loose of something, they are then opened to receive back from another thanks and love, friendship and support. It is so true that it is only in giving that we receive because it is only in opening our hands that they can reach out and receive something from another. What is received, we soon learn, or if we have learned and are again reminded, is always more valuable than that which we have let go.

Over the years I have saved over 200 lives having donated over twenty-five gallons of blood. I did not hoard my blood but shared it. What I have received in return is the knowledge that I have indeed saved that many lives, but even more, I benefited from giving. My blood and blood pressure got tested every two months. The truth is that even in my generosity I have been somewhat selfish.

The point is that even in totally selfless giving, there is always a modicum of selfishness. Thus, that is why it is also true that there is more pleasure in giving than in receiving because, again, we always get back more than we give, even if what we get back seems at first glance to be so much less. We give gifts because doing so gives us pleasure, makes us feel good in the process and even makes us feel good about ourselves.

The saddest people in the world are not those who have nothing but those who seem to have everything but are unwilling and even unable to share something, even some small piece of their abundance, with anyone. They hold their hands so tightly around their possessions that they literally squeeze the life out of them, the life those possessions could be giving to those in need and, at the same time, squeeze the life out of themselves. It is sad but it happens and it can happen to us. That possessive gene can rear its ugly head and grab us by the neck when we least expect it. Beware!

 

WATCHING THE ANTS GO BY

We’ve all been told, move often that we would like to admit to, that we need to stop and smell the roses. We live in a hurry-up society where we are pressed to get the task at hand finished as quickly as possible so that we can get to the next task at hand. As a result, we hardly get to appreciate what we are doing or what we have done. It’s a loss for us and for those who would benefit from our taking our time and not being in such a hurry.

Sometimes, however, stopping to smell the roses is only for a starter. The other day my wife and I went for a long walk. It was a very hot and humid day and we may have overdone the distance. We stopped at a local convenience store, bought something cold to drink and then sat on the bench next to our church’s outside columbarium. I was beat and could only hang my head in exhaustion. (I deserved the agony as it was self-inflicted!)

As my head hung low, I spotted this tiny little creature, no more than a 16^th of an inch, if that long, scurrying all over the place. I suppose it was looking for food, but who knows. For some reason, and it was not because we were in a churchyard, I thought about God the Creator. It’s easy to think about the beauty of the created order when looking closely at a rose or watching the sun set on the beach: God in a thousand places!

But in that ant at that moment I truly saw God at work. The beauty of creation in a part of creation that I often wish never existed. I can do without pesky ants and stinging mosquitoes and nasty gnats and all of their ilk. They’re pests and not things of beauty and certainly not a reason to thank God for their creation. But at that moment on that bench, dripping with sweat, that’s all I could do.

Yes, God boggles my mind. Whenever I try to get a grip on God, God slips out of my hands. And I cannot ever hope to understand God and know I never will in this life and probably not in the life to come. But that ant said everything I need to know about God. And what is that? It is simply to stand, or in this case sit, in awe of the fact that every creature and everything and everyone is God’s personal creation. And for that, I should be very thankful.

Why God creates ants is none of my business. Why God created me is none of my business. What is important is that that ant and this Bill go about our businesses as God created us to do and not ask why. As we do, we will discover why God created us. Will that ant discover its purpose in life? Not my business. It’s its. But what I discovered, or certainly, maybe finally, realized, is that God has a purpose for everything God creates, even that ant – and especially me.

I wonder if God was behind our taking that walk when any sane person would have stayed inside so that I was forced to sit on that bench and then contemplate about my life as seen through that little ant. Probably so. Such is God!