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Lenten Post for Maundy Thursday

The Good Courage writer for today reminded readers that our freedom is never singular, but plural. He wrote, ” I can only be free if every being around me is free,” and went on to make similiar assertions about the freedom of all humans, of the rivers to run without pollution, of the forests to remain standing, and if public policies exist for the least of these.

His words reminded me of Buddhism’s Four Immeasurables:

Immeasurable love
Immeasurable compassion
Immeasurable joy
Immeasurable equanimity

Here, they are expressed in a traditonal Tibetan Buddhist prayer:

May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness.
May they be free of suffering and the cause of suffering.
May they never be disassociated from the supreme happiness which is without suffering.
May they remain in the boundless equanimity, free from both attachment to close ones and rejection of others.

Lenten Post for April 5, 2023

The Good Courage devotion for today asked the reader to consider where they have seen the fragility of creation, and witnessed its power.

For most of my life I have lived near one of the Great Lakes.

Superior, when I was growing up in Thunder Bay, was an ever-constant presence. It brought us lake effect snow in the winter, and fabulous lightning storms in the summer.

I also remember canoeing in the harbour, and the oily sludge that would stick to my friend Tim’s canoe. We could see the black stuff oozing from the outer hulls of the lake freighters we slipped around. It could be argued that we weren’t supposed to be there. I wonder the same thing, about the effluents leaking into the water.

We are not good to the world we call home. On an industrial scale, we do it great harm.

Lenten Post for April 4, 2023

The devotion for today from Good Courage referenced an image of Jesus in a straitjacket.

My first response was that it makes sense to me, to see Jesus depicted as vulnerable, and suffering.

My second, more considered response was to wonder if straitjackets are still used in mental health care. The short answer is that while they have largely gone out of favour, and have often been used inappropriately as punishment, they are still in use.

My worry is that depicting Jesus in a straitjacket, rather than serving to underline the suffering of those with mental health issues, actually contributes to that suffering by perpetuating a stereotype.

The devotion also asked the reader to think about their current favourite depiction of Jesus. Mine is one that I included in the Palm Sunday service this past weekend. It is one of the MAFA paintings produced in Cameroon in the 1970’s, based on scenes acted out by people from the MAFA villages. Missionaries had paintings made, to allow the villagers to see the stories of Jesus illustrated with familiar images.

I like this one of Jesus welcoming the children.

I am moving the image of Jesus in a straitjacket to the bottom of this post, so it is not the image that comes up first.

Lenten Post for April 3, 2023

These questions are from today’s devotion from Good Courage:

“When you find yourself flying in multiple unhelpful directions, what grounds you?”

“What practices help you stay rooted in God, like the branches nourished by the vine?”

I wish I could find the origin of this illustration I often use when teaching Centering Prayer.

Our mind, when we attempt to enter into silence, can be like a tree full of monkeys, who, when they realize we want quiet, all clamour for attention, as only a tree full of competing monkeys can do.

If we call out, in our mind, “Silence, you monkeys!”, the monkeys are likely to respond to the stimulus not with obedient silence, but with even more yowling.

What to do? Breathe, and smile inwardly, and allow the various monkeys of our own mind to say their piece, until they all seem yowled out.

To argue with the monkeys makes as much sense as, well, arguing with monkeys.

I am convinced that whatever the monkeys wanted to tell me, they will remember, and can tell me later.

P.S. When I searched “tree full of monkeys” to illustrate this post, I found this website, which is worth looking at:

https://daringtolivefully.com/tame-your-monkey-mind

Lenten Post for April 2, 2023

The writer of today’s Good Courage devotion, for Palm Sunday “crossed” a line, at least for me. They wrote:

“Some of the deepest wounds inflicted on Christ are by those who love Him. There are times when, while claiming to love Him, we are simultaneoously hammering at the nails.”

I understand what the writer was getting at- the long held idea that every human participates in some spiritual way in inflicting pain on the earthly Jesus, by our “fallen, sinful ways”. I also think it’s an unfortunate, manipulative, guilt and shame ridden strategy to make us feel bad.

I think most of us feel bad enough, often enough. We don’t need the salt of guilt thrown on the wounds.

I do, however, agree with the next thing they said: “It is very possible to hurt those who love you, even those you love wholeheartedly. In our human weakness, we hurt each other through our differences, indifference, and mistakes.”

When a fevered, crying baby balls its tiny fists and waves them aggressively at the loving parent trying to comfort them, does the parent take it personally, and conclude the child wants to hurt them? I fear that would say far more about the parent, than the intentions of the little one.

Lenten Post for April 1, 2023

I was in a Sunday School class for adults at a church in New Orleans, not long after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. I was the only person in the room who was not African American.

It was definitely a day to listen more than I spoke.

The teacher for that day is a lawyer, and activist in Louisiana. She was involved in founding a charter school for under-privileged children in her parish. She spoke with energy, and passion, and from a deep well of hope.

When one of the class members lamented the recent election could be read as a sign of the end-times, she reminded the class of what Dr. King said:

“We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.“
(Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” Speech given at the National Cathedral, March 31, 1968)

Lenten Post for March 31, 2023

Claudio Carvalhaes, today’s Good Courage writer, shared a dramatic, and emotion-laden story of finding a frail and tiny bird while he was out for a walk. He brought the bird home. First he looked for a place to take it, to hand it off to those who could care for it. Then he Googled to learn what he could do. He fed and tended the bird for hours.

The poor little bird died.

Of course it died. It was out of the nest before it could thrive on its own. It was away from fellow nestlings, and their bird parents. From Claudio’s own description, it was not well developed.

It’s a sad story, that pulls at my heart.

And, I wonder.

After 30 plus years as a pastor, many of them as a volunteer on-call hospital chaplain, and after quite literally, thousands of funerals, I have to wonder.

Claudio’s efforts to save the bird were kind of heroic. But were they for the bird, for Nature as a whole- for God’s Creation that needs and deserves our stewardship and love- or were these efforts, in a way, for Claudio?

I’ve been with family members who were not ready to say yes to death.

I’ve also been with family members who prayed mightily that God would take their loved one, and relieve the suffering.

Often, they are seeking the relief of their own suffering, at seeing their loved one in pain, as well as end to their loved one’s distress.

I can understand those prayers.

I would not suggest that Claudio act any differently. But I wonder if there might have been a different way to approach the care he offered.

What if he’d thought of his work as palliative, rather than “life-saving”?

Would that have better served the deep needs of the little bird, of God’s Creation, and Claudio?

Lenten Devotion for March 30, 2023

Because of your grace, we are.

Because of your love, we act.

Because of your spirit, we pray.

Because of your gospel, we live.

Because of your presence, we worship.

Because of your welcome, we are transformed.

If it had not been for you, Lord,    

We would not be.

So it was, so it is, so it will be,

For now and forever. Amen

This prayer was part of the Good Courage devotion for today. I love its simplicity and its poetry. I take comfort in the impression it offers of God, who is present as the source of all we truly need, to become who we are truly meant to be.

What is less comfortable, and comforting, is the soft-voiced reminder that because of that constant Divine Presence, transformation is not only possible, it is more than likely inevitable, if I am to continue to grow into the something, that until its season, in the words of a favourite hymn is an unrevealed mystery that God alone can see.

As the hymn reminds us, transformation is a matter of life and death. The new life is born out of change and loss.

Lenten Devotion for March 29, 2023

There is a special place in northeast Japan, in Iwate Prefecture, where a man named Sasaki Itaru created something called the “wind phone”. It’s a telephone box, and inside there is an old black telephone, which is not connected to anything.

Thousands of people travel there to use the phone to speak to those they have lost.

The Wind Phone was set up not far from one of the cities in Japan devastated by a terrible tsunami in 2011.

It’s set in a garden, in a remote area. It is not easy to get there. Once you find the location, there are no signs to guide you to the phone box.

“It’s in the very act of wandering—losing yourself in the landscape, uncertain of where you are and when you’ll arrive—that people end up thinking about many things, reformulating their memories of the person they have lost. And it’s in this mood, a sort of meditation, that they encounter the Wind Phone. They get here in a fuller and more aware state. They are ready.”

“You need to get your own feelings in order before you can talk to someone else. You need to emerge from the tragedy, from the shell of pain you’ve been encased in. Those who come to the Wind Phone are already halfway there. They are ready to create a new relationship with the dead.”

I wonder if that’s one way to think about the work of grief- that we are creating a new relationship with the person who has died.

The quoted paragraphs are from this article:

How Japan’s Wind Phone Became a Bridge Between Life and Death

Lenten Devotion for March 28, 2023

The Good Courage devotions for this Lent, particularly the ones written by Amy Panton remind us that life can be hard.

Not all faith communities have learned how to give support, love and acceptance to folks whose lives don’t quite fit within the “norms” of middle-class life.

I’m pretty sure that those “norms”- that we are all heterosexual, gainfully employed, in stable committed relationships with a long term partner, raising kids who will take up careers, then closely duplicate the lives of their parents, perhaps with a little more prosperity- the norms were always part of the big illusion.

The big illusion being that life is do-able, manageable, and “winnable” for almost all of us. Those who can’t seem to make it work, well, they are the exception. For the most of us, life is great, near perfect in fact!

This has too often made it even harder, for folks who struggle, to admit to themselves, and to others, that they needed help.

It just a few years ago that someone close to me shared her difficulties with anxiety and depression with a faith leader in their community, and was told she needed to pray more. Then they “laid hands on”, and tried to pray the problems away!

That’s not something we’d say (hopefully!) if a person had a broken arm. We would see that the person received appropriate medical care- perhaps even take them to the hospital.

Which is what Amy Panton did for her friend, when she needed help.