thesoulpurposedotorg

St Thomas, Apostle

In the deepest night the star of morning
has heralded the Child’s birth.
The coming of the Child is for us
the dawn of God’s salvation here on earth.

Trust what you see, believe the vision,
lay bare your hearts to God’s own Word,
do not refuse the Savior’s mission,
accept the message you have heard.

God has no other sign,
no other Light in our darkened world to give
than this Jesus to be our Savior,
a God with whom we all can live.

God has revealed to every nation
love of humankind in Jesus our Lord.
In Jesus all persons may see salvation,
and earth made new in God’s own Word.

The promised One of Israel’s story,
a bridegroom clad with fire and light,
the morning sun in all its glory,
dispelling darkness and the night
has come to live with us for ever,
uniting us in peace and joy,
and in Christ’s Body we need never,
be parted from our God above.
– Author Unknown

A century or two ago, this season called Advent was a time of repentance with fasting and prayers of confession; not exactly the things we associate with joy. Christmas was a feast day but things like Santa Clause and Christmas trees and stockings hung on the mantel with care were considered to be pagan rituals and not becoming for Christians. My mother even recalls her pastor in the 1940’s pounding the pulpit and loudly proclaiming that anyone with a Christmas tree in thier home was surely destined for perdition. In those higher churches that honored Advent as a time of spiritual preparation for the coming Christ Child, this was a time of emptying oneself, an inner housecleaning of sorts, to make room in one’s heart for Jesus. This dismal self-flagellation became too depressing in the midst of winter so the third Sunday of Advent became a day of Joy, designated so by the pink candle in the Advent wreath.
Joy is actually much harder to come by than simply lighting a pink candle, isn’t it? It is much deeper than happiness. It has nothing to do with circumstances that we regard as blessings. And circumstances we regard as awful cannot take away the joy of God’s presence.
I have been surprised by joy. The fullness of the joy of life in Christ has mostly come to me in times of loss and grief. I look back on a time in which I had lost everything – my house, my profession, my children’s emotional closeness, my health, my friends, my church – and I wonder why I wasn’t more depressed than I was. I actually remember that time as a time of deep peace and the joy of being, a reprieve from “doer.” Sometimes I think the more we have to occupy ourselves the less we have room to be occupied by the source of all joy.

We missed church today. We were expecting a “snow day” here in the Southern Tier. It was mostly sleet followed by gentle snow falling all day. My mother-in-law is here for two weeks – I’m not sure if she loves us or our house more. She is so excited to be in this space with us. This is a place of peace. We live in a house built into the side of a hill overlooking a stream and a forest. With the snow, it feels like a winter wonderland. Regardless of the time of year, this home exudes a sense of peace.
It wasn’t always that way in this space. The woman who built this home was hit by a drunk driver, living her last years in a coma in a far away institution less than two years later. The family who bought her home left signs of growing much marijuana (for medicinal purposes I am sure). The broken and dented doors we inherited leaves us believing there were anger management issues at the least. This room that is now my office showed signs of the “dark arts” that fascinated their son. The young couple who followed them to this place loved this house as a party house but the birth of their child made a house built into a hill with a spiral staircase in the middle a little less than practical. And so here we are.
We have made it a place of healing, prayer and retreat. People feel it when they walk in the door and look out huge sliding glass doors onto pine trees and a trickling creek. But it isn’t the house itself that makes this space healing and peaceful. It’s what we do in this space that changes a once sad and violent space into a place of peace.
I think that is usually the case. The holy and sacred places in this world became that because of what was done or not done in them. This earth itself looks like a beautiful blue ball brimming with joy and designed for peace when we see it from space. But what we do on this earth and to this earth makes this space in the universe either a place of peace or a place of destruction. Peace on Earth the angels sang. Indeed.

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity, and despair. But it doesn not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not. Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.

– Thomas Merton
New Seeds of Contemplation

I am writing a day late because we spent most of yesterday in airports – cancelled flights, mechanical failures, changing flights – we got to our home sweet home close to 3 am. I barely overheard the news about the most recent shootings in Colorado in the place people are meant to feel at peace. It’s not the first time there have been shootings in a church but it is no less horrifying and no less a violent contradiction to the Peace of Christ.
At that same time that was happening, I was witnessing peace at work. My husband and I were visiting the First Baptist Church in Granville Ohio. It is an annual visit coordinated with his company Christmas party. We love visiting this church because it is a Welcoming and Affirming Church with a long history of Peace and Justice. It is so refreshing to worship in a place where anything can be discussed and all are truly welcome. At the end of the service, I turned around and was astounded to see the man who preached at my installation service in 1989. Bill and Mary Jane Salyers happened to be visiting this church as a part of a visioning process for their own church. We hadn’t see each other in more than a decade. And then I remembered what I had written on this blog about my prejudice against the state of Ohio…..Bill had read the blog and said it didn’t sound like me at all….and there I was in the midst of Ohio among people whom I admire….my eyes were beginning to open.
About 12 hours later, we arrived at the tiny airport in Elmira NY. By chance, two of our fellow flyers had no way of getting home (not a lot of taxis or rental cars at 1 am in the Elmira airport). We had the delightful opportunity to give them a ride and found ourselves getting to know two wonderful men who clearly live their lives in a way that let’s God shine through.
What does this have to do with peace? I belive that the goodness of human beings and the image of God that is present in each of of us is a light that no darkness will ever overcome. We probably won’t see peace on earth unless we are peace to one another.

Forget the past, for it is gone from your domain! Forget the future, for it is beyond your reach! Control the present! Live supremely well now! It will whitewash the dark past, and compel the future to be bright! This is the way of the wise. – Paramahansa Yogananda

Many churches in this area of Ohio where I am today, as well as the area of NY state where I live, have the phrase “Jesus Saves” written bright red letters somewhere on their edifice. This always annoys me, not because I disagree or want to hide from this truth but because the words are code language understood only from the inside – inside that particular church as well as inside of the experience of Jesus Christ as savior. It’s a language from another era that doesn’t quite compute. It begs the question – what exactly is Jesus saving? In a capitalist society, the society at large might wonder if its in a bank or in stocks and bonds!

Indeed, we do need a savior. The quote I’m meditating on above speaks of controlling the present as the way to whitewash the dark past. I can’t do that without a savior. By “savior” I don’t mean one who rescues me from past descisions or changes my circumstances with a magic wand. That view of Christ as Savior is the unique distortion of North American christianity. No, the Savior we need is: the Christ that dissolvesthe delusions, Christ Jesus who cleans the temple of our heart from the lies and self-loathing as he swept the temple in Jerusalem, the child Jesus who frees us to ask questions and to be wise, the infant Jesus who trusts enough to be a vulnerable one of us. But if we look for a rescuer from up on high somewhere outside of this human experience, then we will waste our time on this earth and miss the point of it all.

“When we can see the image of God where we don’t want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own.”

-Richard Rohr

We’ve been traveling today – two short trips on regional jets held together with duct tape. We are in Ohio. I have a prejudice against people in Ohio – I’m know this is irrational and most likely sinful but it is the truth. I’ve driven I-90 several times a year for over 10 years and the people who work in the rest stops have always left me with a bad taste in my mouth…not to mention smelly bathrooms. I know this is not a fair assesment of a state nor the people with in but I have a hard time shaking this pre-judgement. Our trip down here for business reasons did nothing to change this. So today I am asking God to see with eyes that are not my own. It is easy to see God in those who are in need – it pumps my ego to help them which is why it is easier to give than receive. It is easy to see God in people who are beautiful inside and out. It is easy to see God in heroes and saints. But to see God where we are pre-set by our own limitations to see stupidity or rudeness or filth….now that takes the eyes of God. May I see through God’s eyes more than I see through my own. When God looks through my eyes, I hope he lets me have a peek.

The first Sunday of Advent is traditionally Hope Sunday. The first candle on the Advent Wreath is lit and readings and prayers encourage us to hope for the return of Christ. I was raised a dispensationalist Christian in a loving but rigid Bible church. I had a Schofield Bible with notes to explain this point of view in plain King James English. When other translations began to be published they were feared and loudly proclaimed to be the work of the devil. It seems the dispensational reading of end times didn’t work quite so well in the the more accurate translations of older texts so recently discovered in the Dead Sea scrolls or the Nag Hamadi fragments. I have read dozens of books on the end of time and commentaries on the book of Revelation. All of which caused me to become quite cynical about waiting for the second coming of Jesus, thoughts I kept completely to myself for decades. I remember a recent Goshen College graduate who attended a Bible study I was leading back in 1979 asking me, “Who else but Jesus is allowed to be 2000 years late for dinner?” I was shocked and mortified by his question but it certainly stuck with me. I had all the fancy words learned in seminary, the concept of “already but not yet” view of the Kingdom of God. Intellectually, this has never worked and taking it all on faith began to seem a little silly.

When I dared to research the origins of the end of times theologies (there are many) I began to see that this concept of waiting for the Savior to take us away from all of this and to punish all the bad guys to be quite dangerous and not much cause for hope. Even the first century Christians were not at all sure that was what Jesus meant. So what is the basis of hope for the coming of Christ Jesus in these times? He clearly said that heaven and earth would pass away but his word would not. (Matthew 5:18, 24:35, Mark 13:31, Luke 21:33)

I believe that one day we will understand but in the meantime, the only way we should concern ourselves with the second coming of Christ is to allow Christ to be fulfilled in our lives here and now. Many of the earliest Christians understood the meaning of the second coming in this way – The Second Coming of Christ is within our own lives as we become one with Christ in the same way Christ is one with God. In other words, we are to BE Christ in the lives we live here and now. That is so much harder than waiting for a savior to rescue us from the pain of this life.
Today I have tried to be hope to the people I encountered. The young cashier with bright blue highlights in her hair and piercings in her brow that didn’t want to look me in the eye; the lonely woman with so many disabilities; the man in the truck who almost ran me off the road; the person who pumped gas for me (yes, we actually have two gas stations here that do that!)…all these people are Christ coming to me for me to reflect hope back to them. There is a sanskrit word for this way of thinking: namaste – “the Divine in me greets the Divine in you.” This is for me the hope of the coming of Christ, Emmanuel, God with us.