Proper 26 A - Oct 30, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY --- Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC
Proper 26, Year A - Sunday, October 30, 2011

Joshua 3:7-17 --- 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13 --- Matthew 23:1-12

On Humility

This morning's Gospel, among other things, is one of the great “monastic” passages in the Bible.  Jesus' call to humility is a theme that all of the most important monastic writers spent a good deal of time with from the earliest days of our tradition.

Chapter Seven of the Rule of Benedict is totally devoted to the idea of humility.  In it, our father Benedict teaches us that there are twelve steps of humility and begins the chapter with this quote from St. Luke, actually found twice in that Gospel, and also found in today's passage from St. Matthew: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

In both Gospels (Luke and Matthew), Jesus tells different stories to communicate this essential truth.  In all cases, however, he is speaking about various aspects of Jewish culture and society in First century Palestine.  As I was reflecting on this morning's Gospel passage, I found myself pondering how this applied to the Rule of Benedict and to our lives here in the monastery as we live it today.

And it's in the introduction of Chapter Seven, entitled, by the way, “On Humility”, that I found some answers to these questions.  Benedict uses the image of Jacob's Ladder to set up his discussion regarding monastic humility.  He writes about the monk's body and soul as being the sides of the ladder and the divine summons being the various rungs of humility and discipline for the ascent.  The monk descends the ladder by being prideful and ascends the ladder by being humble. The higher you ascend that ladder, the closer to heaven you get.

Picture credit: Albert Houthuesen

Now this was a theme used by many of the Monastic and Church Fathers in the Sixth century and for several centuries before, but I think it might be hard for us to connect with in our own time.  The verse, however, in this section of the Rule that absolutely grabs me, and that has real repercussions in my life is this: “When the heart is humble, God raises it up to heaven.”

Brendan Freeman is the Abbot of New Melleray, a Trappist Abbey in Iowa. Recently he released a book collecting some of his homilies and Chapter Talks and in one section he reflects on this theme of the heart.  Allow me to quote to you a passage:

Formation in the monastic life is formation of the heart.  Once we have found our hearts, we move from the effort of prayer, the work of prayer, from strenuous prayer to self-acting prayer.  The heart has two meanings.  It is the center of our being and the point of meeting between each of us and God.  Two do not exist in this place, but only One.  Our prayer becomes Christ's prayer.

Abbot Brendan's phrase “once we have found our hearts” is so moving to me.  It seems to me that Christian formation – be that monastic or non-monastic – is about finding our hearts.  If we are one with God in that place, in our hearts, then that is where the spiritual journey must, by definition, lead us.  And Benedict teaches us that when the heart is humble, God raises it up to heaven, that is, to Himself.

So, what does it mean to be humble?  To have a humble heart?  Well, in the Carmelite tradition, St. Teresa of Avila teaches us from the 16th century:

I was once pondering why it is that our Beloved is so fond of the virtue of humility.  Without it ever having occurred to me before, this thought suddenly came to me: It's because God is supreme truth.  To be humble is to walk in truth.

Now Benedict and Teresa and virtually every other monastic writer up until the second half of the Twentieth century often wrote about how wretched and awful we all are.  But if being humble is to walk in truth, then we must have a full understanding of who we really are in the context of an eternal life which already began for us at our conception.  And so, yes, we must know, for example, those areas in which we are weak, damaged, sinful, fearful and lacking faith.  But to walk in truth is also to know those areas in which we are good, holy, whole, trusting, loving, and charitable.

If we are truthful with ourselves, we know that many, if not all of those things I just listed are true about ourselves.  God already knows the truth about us.  He knows that truth because he created us in his own image and likeness and longs for us to know him as our Father.  Our journey is to discover that truth so that we can move closer to becoming one with God.  So that two no longer exist in our hearts, but only One.

For us, in the Twenty-First century, “the truth” has become reduced in some circles to simply a psychological understanding of ourselves.  And the psychological understanding of the human mind is a great gift that God has revealed to us over the course of the last hundred years or so.  But it is only part of the the truth - seeking that we are called to do.  In fact, knowing ourselves and reflecting on our own psyches, environment, families, social, political and economic situations can teach us a great deal about ourselves.

But the bottom line is that all of that information is only that: information.  To be a Christian in formation is to be a Christian in prayer.  To be a Christian in prayer means not that we are exalted, but that we have willingly humbled ourselves in truth, so that Christ can unite us with himself as he prays within us.  It is Christ's praying within us that brings us to the heights of exaltation, to heaven, to God our Father.

The Christian never arrives at The Truth. Rather, the Christian journeys within a context of truth, learning more and more about themselves and in the process about God. The Church, representing the entire Christian community makes this same journey of truth on a communal basis. That truth is revealed in prayer. A prayer of  the heart. A prayer of Christ's heart.

The goal of prayer is to help us to arrive at a place of silence. There are certainly many different prayer techniques and different techniques are appropriate for different people. But the goal is all the same: silence.

God leads us, as he led Joshua into the Promised Land. On the banks of the River Jordan, he and all the people ritually prepared themselves so that they could enter the Promised Land thus exalting their people. Our way to the Promised Land is the silent way.  Silence is a way of being that places us in right relationship with God. It is a knowledge that in our silence before God, we are exalted because only then are we able to hear Christ praying within us. Uniting with us in an eternal love that carries us up that ladder to heaven, to God who is our Father.

AMEN.

Votive for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Holy Cross Priory, Toronto, Ontario
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC Superior
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Votive Mass of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

This morning at Matins we remembered the life and witness of Bp. James Hannington and his companions who were martyred for their Christian faith in 1885 in what is now Uganda.

 James Hannington

As is often the case, the situation there was complex.  Colonial powers (English, French, others) were moving into the country and the young kabaka or king, Mwanga, was alarmed.  He feared that the new religion these Christian missionaries were introducing would bring down the wrath of the ancestors.  He feared a rapidly changing social order.  He feared the elimination of his royal powers and privileges.  And so he responded with violence.  He ordered the bishop and his party killed. The next year he had many of his own pages tortured and burned alive for their faith because they would not or could not conform to ancient tribal customs.  Still others were eliminated.  Mwanga, the king, was between 16 and 18 years old when all of this took place. 

Mwanga was in no sense an innocent.  But neither was he a monster.  He was someone caught up in a political and social upheaval whose response, driven by fear, was both immoral and ineffective, but not, unfortunately, surprising.  He did, by the way, go on to lead several insurrections against the British and late in his life converted to the Anglican faith.

As we do on feasts of martyrs, we began this morning’s service with the invitatory, setting the theme for the feast.  It was: "Christ calls the faithful to embrace his cross. Come let us adore him."
I have said these words regularly for over 25 years.  But this morning I was struck by the ambiguity of the invitation.  Exactly whose cross are we being invited to embrace?  Christ’s... or our own?

The answer, of course, is both... always both.  And in saying this we come up against the mystery of suffering.  For in all genuine suffering — whether we recognize it or not — the thin membrane or veil or curtain between Christ’s life and our own is pierced, pulled aside, or, in the words of scripture, torn from top to bottom.  The one cross — Christ’s — is certainly not the same as the other — yours or mine.  But in the wonderful economy of God, they each illuminate the other, concretize and enflesh and give meaning to the other.

This was true for Bp. Hannington and his companions in 1885 when in the midst of the complex marriage of British colonialism and Christian evangelism he saw the image of the cross of Jesus shining through.

The bishop’s last words:  "Go tell  Mwanga that I have purchased a road into Uganda by my blood" are a ringing testament to the Christian hope, that out of death, and paradoxically through death, comes life, new life, larger life. 

This was true for those Ugandan martyrs the following year.  Though they may not have been able to express it as eloquently as did the bishop, but they knew that they had been called to a greater loyalty, to a greater king, one whose claims trump the demands and desires of a frightened young tribal chieftain, indeed of any human monarch or ruler or power

This was true for Archbishop Janani Luwum who in 1975 went to his death in Uganda as a witness to justice and Christian charity in opposition to the mad dictator, Idi Amin.
And it is true for us here today.

Of course we pray that we may be spared.  And like Jesus, we neither desire nor intend nor orchestrate our own sufferings.  To do so would be madness.  But like Jesus and like the martyrs, we embrace the sufferings that are sent us when they cannot be averted.  We freely say: Yes.  We even, dare we say it, embrace them.

"Christ calls the faithful to embrace his cross."

Our own crosses take many shapes, many forms:  physical or emotional suffering, diminishment, betrayal, limitation, failure, and ultimately death.  But the cross of Jesus has power to illumine and suffuse with meaning and hope these dark corners.

It is important to remind ourselves that we don’t have to like our crosses.  But to embrace, to say yes, is to acknowledge and consent to a wholly other order.  It is to confess to ourselves and sometimes to others and occasionally even to the world that yes, even here, God is not absent.  It is to confess that even here — perhaps especially here — God can be found.  Even here, in sharing with Jesus the often painful predicament that is the human condition, we are not abandoned or left alone. 

Our morning worship climaxes with the recitation of the Benedictus, the Canticle of Zachariah.   Its antiphon for the feast of martyrs includes the following words of encouragement:  “These are the ones who have come safely through the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

The cross of Jesus that we celebrate today is the source and symbol of that wondrous cleansing.  It is, in all its scandal, a promise that suffering and death do not have the final word.  The final word for Jesus, for the martyrs and for us is always: Life.  Life into death.  Life through death.  Life beyond death.

At our midday service today we prayed:  “Happy are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb.”   This Eucharistic meal is not yet that supper in its all its fullness... but it is a foretaste.  Let us feast together now, confident that what we share here will strengthen us and lead to embrace, to consent, to say yes, to the cross and to life.

“Christ calls the faithful to embrace his cross.  Come let us adore him.”

Proper 25 A - Oct 23, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY --- Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Proper 25A – Sunday, October 23, 2011

Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18 --- 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 --- Matthew 22:34-46


Matthew situates today's gospel passage at the beginning of Jesus' last week.  Only yesterday, Jesus made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem, seated on a donkey, treading palms and coats thrown on the ground.

In only four days, Jesus will die the infamous death of a crucified.  At this stage, the spring is still being wound up that will burst into tragedy before the Passover even begins.

It is Monday.  Jesus is teaching.  And several religious factions seek to challenge him into dishonor.  He will win every challenge.  And we can imagine that this only heightened his opponents' desire to do away with him.

*****

Last Sunday's Gospel reminded us of the Pharisees' challenge to Jesus about paying taxes to the Empire.  The lection of today alludes to a second challenge; this time, from the Sadducees, and about the resurrection of the dead.

Today's third challenge seems mild in comparison.  Maybe it is even a genuine question, not a trap.  Maybe a Pharisaic opponent was so allured by Jesus' masterful response to the two earlier challenges that he just had to ask a most important question to Jesus.  Maybe.

The Greek text of that question could be rendered into "Teacher, what sort of commandment is of great import?"  This would have been a critical question for a Pharisee.

They were religious practitioners who tried to obey every commandment in the Torah.  That’s no less than 613 commandments (248 positive injunctions and 365 prohibitions, to be exact).  Many would have entered into discussions as to which commandments were the heaviest and which were lighter.

*****

Jesus answers this last challenge succinctly and with authority.  He quotes scripture.  He puts a hierarchy in his answer.

"`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

The first part of Jesus' answer is a quote from Deuteronomy (6:5).  It is said by our Jewish brethren as part of their most cherished prayer, the Shema.

The second part of Jesus' answer is a quote from Leviticus (19:18).  We read that passage this morning.

I shall come back to these commandments, if only too briefly -- for all of our religion should flow from their combination.

*****

The second pericope in today's gospel reading seems puzzling to modern readers.  This part about David and Messiah.  I believe that it is an integral part of Jesus' response to the three challenges that Matthew has described in this chapter of the gospel.

These challenges all attempt to strip Jesus of any authority to teach.  Their sequence shows all the worry that Jesus' opponents feel.  They don't want anyone to get any ideas that this young rabbi might be the Anointed One of God, the Messiah.  He doesn't fit their bill, therefore he can't be genuine in their minds.

But in Jesus' rhetorical question to his challengers, he introduces the idea that a Davidic ancestry is irrelevant in identifying the Messiah.  Once more with scripture at the ready (this time Psalm 100:1 allegedly composed by David himself), Jesus undermines the Messianic expectations of his challengers.

Jesus continues to drive home to them that the Messiah is so much more and so different than the Messiah they have neatly boxed for their political and religious convenience.

So, Jesus crushes verbally three onslaughts from his opponents and, having demonstrated his natural authority, he crushes their preconceptions of the Messiah.

How many of his hearers did have a conversion experience that day and understood Him to be Messiah?  Not enough to stop the dynamic that would put him on a cross by week's end.

*****

Now back to the two commandments that the Messiah teaches us are of greatest import.  In these two commandments, Jesus gives us a summary of his mission and ministry.  The two commandments interpret one another and the two need to stand together.

In a more hebraic rendering from the Greek text, they read:

"`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your being, and with all your intelligence.'
This is the greatest and first of the mitzvoth. And a second is like it:
You shall love your companion as yourself.'
On these two orders hang all of Torah and the inspired ones."

The aim of our life is orient all of our being and all of our existence towards God.  In so doing, we are to love as God loves.

*****

And what does God love?  God loves all of creation, with no exception.  We are to love all that God loves.

Now, all is all.  We are not allowed to exclude anything or anyone, not even our enemies.  As Matthew reports Jesus saying earlier in his gospel: "God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."

We are even to love God's sun and God's rain.  We are to keep no part of creation out of our love and concern.  It all hangs together in the loving hands of the Creator, we are not to consider any of it as disposable or beyond our care.

*****

We are to love as God loves - without discrimination.  We are to love what God loves - everything.  Because God is the source of all Being and God loves all of God's creatures.

By the way, love of self is included in all this but it is not emphasized; rather it is assumed it should be there.  Self-hate is not like God’s Love.  Self-absorption is not like God’s Love.  But I am deeply lovable and loved and so are you.

So, we are to love like God; we are to love everything, everyone and indiscriminately.  This is a big God.  This is a big Love.  We are going to need to keep stretching.  But it is better than to stick around within the box where we'd like to keep a God more to our proportions, one who loves as I love, one who loves what I love.

As W. Paul Young, author of "The Shack" once wrote: " The only reason that God is ever in a box is because God wants to be where you are."

Step out of your box, Love the God who awaits you there and let your Love expand divinely.

Amen.

Proper 23 A - Oct 9, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Adam D. McCoy, OHC

Proper 23 A - Sunday, September 18, 2011


Exodus 32:1-14
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

I suppose we have all been invited to weddings we weren’t sure we wanted to attend. People we don’t know especially well, business and professional connections, distant relatives whose lives have diverged from ours, children of friends we have more or less lost touch with. It isn’t that we don’t wish the happy couple well. We do. We always do. But it’s what surrounds it – the travel, the gift, the strangers we find ourselves placed next to, the loud music at the dinner or party that makes it impossible to talk to the strangers even if we find each other interesting, the Sunday-best clothes we need to wear. The general sense that everything had better go close to perfect or else. So much work for such a short ceremony.

Shortly after I became rector of my first parish, I agreed to preside at a wedding for a colleague who had an emergency. I didn’t know the couple or their families. In fact, I didn’t know a soul involved. It was all planned. I arrived for the practice the night before. The service and celebration were at a lodge – Elks, or perhaps Moose, or maybe Oddfellows – which had a nice hall and a lovely garden, well watered, lush and green. The ceremony was to be in the garden. The theme of the wedding was country and western. The young people were charming, as were their parents. But the arrangements were in the control of a wedding coordinator, a formidable lady who in another era could easily have been a colonel in the ladies’ division of the Waffen SS. She led us through the event with terrifying assurance. The principal challenge was that the garden space was not very deep, and so she let us know that it was vitally important that as the bridal party walked down the aisle, they do so deliberately, stepping slowly, to savor the music and the moment. Everyone practiced walking in to “Oh my love, my darling, I hunger for your kiss”. It must have taken at least 10 minutes to get everyone in, though it seemed much, much longer. I could see the humor in some eyes, and the anxiety in others’, as this lady practiced her craft on us. She had thought of everything. Except the space for the actual wedding.

Late the next afternoon all assembled in their wedding garments. The shoes were what interested me. The men’s cowboy boots had fairly narrow heels, and the women wore white pumps with alarming stiletto heels. The wedding director had sequestered the party behind a door so they could not be seen, nor could they see. The music began. “Oh my love, my darling”. The first bridesmaid and groomsman started slowly up the turf grass aisle, waiting step by step as instructed. The stiletto heels started to sink into the turf. Step by step, each step a little more urgent. As successive couples entered this went on and on, ever more holes being punched in the turf, until there was hardly a solid space for the bride’s heels at all. I learned that day there’s a kind of movement you have to make to get your heels out of turf. Then came the standing in line for the actual promises. Not only stiletto heels sank ever deeper in the turf, but so did the small, sharp heels of cowboy boots. I did what I could to shorten the agony, but there’s only so much you can do to shorten the marriage service, especially when the bride’s little sister is reading St. Paul's 13th Chapter to the Corinthians. Love is patient I thought was especially appropriate. Fortunately, the young people had caught onto the humor of it and they were actually enjoying it, and the bride was the best sport of all. There was lots of goodnatured laughter and the dancing later seemed to take on the special step they’d all just learned. But the wedding director was beside herself. Her fixed smile at the end of the service, if turned toward the west, over the sea, could have frozen the state of Hawaii.

We often think the worst thing that can go wrong with a well-planned wedding is some sort of social faux pas, a gaffe that embarrasses everyone and perhaps jinxes the marriage. Perfection is the goal. And so we think of the unfortunate guest who didn’t have his wedding garment on, and pity him, shocked at the king’s violent response. But of course, weddings are never just about the couple, and they are not just about getting the social niceties correct. They are about the community that comes together around the couple. A wedding is an anticipatory celebration of the future, and the couple being married is the symbol of that future – new life growing out of their love, new possibilities for the community emerging from their union. It is the joining of families, and so parents and relatives surround the couple, creating a new constellation of relationships. The guests are not just witnesses but participants in this renewal of communal hope, so a guest who flaunts the customs puts his or her ego needs before the needs of the community. To be inappropriate is an insult .

This being the case, it is interesting to me in our gospel story today that the young man being married is hardly mentioned, and the bride not at all. The story of this wedding, as is often the story about weddings, is about the parents and the guests. What is important here is the social reality that this wedding represents. This is not a private ceremony at a small lodge in Orange County, California. It is a royal wedding. It is not about the private joy of two families and their anticipation of a new and better future, but represents the future course of a nation, the continuance of the legitimate governing order, prosperity and possibility for everyone. We focus on the guest who came in the wrong clothes. But let’s look at it from the point of view of the king for a moment.

A king would invite the great and the good, as the British would say. The rich and powerful and well connected would all be expected to attend and honor the king by their presence and their gifts. They represent the people, who are present by proxy. But something is seriously wrong in this kingdom. None of the great and the good show up. It’s as though there’s been a revolution and the king somehow didn’t get the memo. It is, of course, an extreme, even preposterous, situation, the kind Jesus loves to use to draw a vivid picture. What if the king gave a party and no-one came? Except this is worse. This wedding is about the continuation of the king’s legitimate rule after he is gone, through his son and his son’s children. These people aren’t just being socially rude. They are rejecting the king’s right to be their king. And so he reacts, with political violence. He eliminates the powerful and invites instead the powerless, the poor, the people of the street, both good and bad. They are all made welcome. The king finds in ordinary people the legitimacy for his rule and its continuation through his son.

I think we can figure out what this parable is referring to without too much difficulty. In remembering and writing down this story of Jesus the early Church is telling itself a story about itself, about why God has rejected his chosen people and replaced them with the riffraff of the rest of the world, Greeks, Romans, barbarians, the good and the bad, none of them part of the original covenant. But here they are, all of them, invited to the feast, dressed up and having the time of their life at the party they never thought they would even see from outside the windows of the hall, let alone as honored guests. What a surprise! What a turnaround! What a joy! To be the king’s invited guests at the wedding symbolizing the new life of the kingdom! Perhaps they are all rehearsing the wedding song of the lamb for that other great celebration yet to come.

All except one. One who doesn’t understand. Or doesn’t care. Or is caught up in his own self-centered world. Who sees no reason to change when she receives the invitation. Who doesn’t realize that he is called to something new and wonderful and different, to something that she needs to respond to, to say yes to, to change himself for. One who came to this event of a lifetime dressed as if she were going to the market to buy a fish for dinner. But this is the transforming event of a lifetime, and he is not responding.

We are told in the commentaries that wedding garments were provided, as ties used to be ready in the old days for negligent customers at restaurants of a certain sort. No one needed to be embarrassed. The host’s generosity covered – literally covered – the shortcomings of the guests. All were made worthy, all were equally prepared for the wedding banquet. This person has evidently refused to show respect for his host, for his king. What a shame for her. What a shame for us all if we misunderstand our invitation.

The truth is, we are the riffraff of the rest of the world. We are the powerless, the poor, the people of the street, the good and the bad. As St. Paul says, How many of us were powerful when we were called? How many of us were rich, or well esteemed in the eyes of the world? God has chosen us for his celebration because others more worthy than we refused to come. What can we do except put on our best clothes, or trust that when we get to the wedding hall, garments will be provided? Then we can all march slowly in, learning to walk gracefully even if our heels start sinking into the turf because we really don’t know anything at all about where we’re going and what it’s like. If we truly welcome the invitation to the kingdom, we’ll smile and laugh and shout for joy together with that wonderful couple and their friends. And maybe there will be a wedding garment for the one who thought she was in control but wasn’t.

It took her a while to get over herself, but in a little while she changed her icy smile for warmth. She realized she wasn’t really dressed right for the wedding. She changed her attitude, put on her wedding garment, and joined the dance.

picture credit: La Vida Creations

Dedication of our church - Oct 4, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Roy Parker, OHC

Feast of the dedication of our monastery church (Saint Augustine) - Tuesday, October 4, 2011

1 Kings 8:22 - 30
1 Peter 2:1 - 5, 9 - 10
Matthew 21:12 - 16


I’ll begin with a parallelism between a passage in Second Samuel and the Gospel text which illuminates Jesus as the fulfillment of the idealized David in the tradition. In Second Samuel 5, this account of Jerusalem made the capitol of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah. “The king and his men marched to Jerusalem against the Jebusites... who said to David, ‘You will not come in here, even the blind and the lame will turn you back, -- thinking, ‘David cannot come in here.’ Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion...  David had said on that day, ‘Whoever would strike down the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft to attack the lame and the blind, those whom David hates.’

Therefore it is said, ‘The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.’ According to Matthew, “Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple... The blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he cured them... the children (were) crying out in the temple, ‘Hosannah to the Son of David.’ ”

Not only do we have this dramatic alteration of David’s history as a man of blood, but an equally dramatic upset of what the tradition esteems as acceptable for a temple offering -- for hear this description from the Book of Malachi: “If I am a master, where is the respect due me?" says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name... When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not wrong?  And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not wrong?”

The blind and the lame came to Jesus in the temple and he cured them, because in another place he says to the clergy, Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice.  Well, we, lame and the blind, as we might be, are totally acceptable to the Son of David who desires to heal us in his mercy and we give thanks for this house in which it occurs to some extent in the hosannahs sung with childlike confidence day by day.

Ever since I sang with a shape-note choir in San Pedro, CA several years, a day when the polyphony seemed to lift us off the ground, I’ve been enamored of Alexander Schmemann’s emphasis of the importance of such music to the liturgy when he says that it’s only truly possible to mention angels and archangels when the music has lifted us from the earth to that extent, which takes some time, such a feast as mends in length.

And this, it seems to me, is why a tent is mysteriously woven into this blessed structure for which we give thanks.  Solomon’s dedicatory prayer is clear that the building itself cannot be the whole story: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth?  Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house...” and when David, Solomon’s father, proposed such a house, the prophet reminded him that the God of Israel was a tent-dweller while John the Evangelist states that the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us while observant Jews will also do something of the sort for Succoth.

The tent is a kind of reminder or balance for the church or temple structure, born out by a photo contest about prayerful gatherings in Jubilee magazine some years ago in which, amidst many an extraordinary church interior, first prize went to a picture of gathered Bedouin in a tent.

In his letter just read to us, Peter urges us to allow ourselves be built like living stones into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.   In the construction of Solomon’s Temple the rock had to be quarried off-site because in the Ancient Near East it was unacceptable karma to use iron tools within the sacred precincts.  However, shaping was possible on-site with softer implements of antler and wood, for example, and if Solomon were building the Arches National Monument in Utah, wind alone with plenty of time would have sufficed.

I imagine that we ourselves are being shaped on-site, as it were, by a host of skillful means basically at the service of ego-disablement, and, like the Arches National Monument, requiring a lifetime.  To allow oneself to be built into a spiritual house resembles the Centering Prayer adage: "To intend to consent to God’s presence and action within."

When I underwent the training to become a presenter of Centering Prayer a few years ago, Bonnie Shimizu, the leader of the workshop, told us about The First Saturday Practice Day which used to be held at the Center in Snowmass, Colorado.  On the first Saturday of every month the public was welcomed to the Center for several hours of Centering Prayer practice in the inviting meditation hall.  Those unfamiliar with the method were taken aside at the beginning for brief basic instruction.

We thought, What a wonderful thing to try at La Casa de Maria in Montecito, CA, and, so, out went the publicity.  Well, First Saturdays have become one of La Casa’s most desirable events, getting on the average of thirty meditants per month, and the remarkable testimony about the day so often given is how the group practice supports and carries the practice of each person.  It would, I imagine, be like this blessed space serving as both quarry and temple.

Our group practices have the power to shape each of us into a living stone and so long as we’re living stones our design cannot be frozen, our blueprint is ever developing.  But along with the ego-disablement implicit in this, we’ll remain mindful of Bernard of Clairvaux’s arresting summation of the process in describing the four stages of love:
1. (least perfect) The love of self for self’s sake;
2. (better) The love of God for self’s sake;
3. (better yet) The love of God for God’s sake; and
4. (most perfect) The love of self for God’s sake -- the very best building material of all.

 Getting ready for a festive Vespers (incense will burn!)

Picture credit: George R. at "George Visits Holy Cross" blog