B Lent 4 2018 OL BFC
Mark 8:6; 14:3-9, 23
March 11, 2018
It
is the 90 year-old Benedictine monastic, Brother David Steindl-Rast who is
considered the world’s expert on gratefulness.
Along with several books, Steindl-Rast has a 15-minute TED talk that has
been seen over 6 million times. In that
TED talk, he shares that it is gratefulness which makes us happy.[1] But in a culture that is predicated on
violence and consumerism, gratefulness, gratitude, is something we must intentionally
practice, turn our attention toward.
As
Christ teaches, non-violence is intrinsic to the nature of God. And so, contrary to the popular culture, God
does not shout or scream or pound or try to knock down the door. But though God does not offer violently, God
does offer love and life consistently, dependably, and persistently. He says,
Every moment is a new gift, over and
over again, and if you miss the opportunity of this moment, another moment is given to us, and
another moment. We can avail ourselves of this opportunity, or we can miss it, and if we avail ourselves of the
opportunity, it is the key to happiness.
Behold the master key to our happiness in our own hands. Moment by moment, we can be grateful for this gift.[2]
If
this is the nature of God, we will not be attune to the gifts of God, given
opportunity over and over again, unless we focus our attention and practice
listening and seeing in a way that sees each moment, each particular beautiful
piece of creation, as a gift. We do
these practices consistently, dependably, like water dripping on concrete. Who would guess that water can carve rock so
profoundly, and yet, we know that the persistent drip can mold and shape, the Elk
or Yellowstone River carves out a path in the Wyoming and Montana landscape. I have heard many people refer to me in that
way, “Yes, that pastor guy, he is a persistent drip!”
Seriously, this is the will and work
of God. In contrast to what cultural
Christianity tells us, God does not come in fire, hurricane, or lightning
bolt. Rather, God is like the persistent
drip which, over time, changes not only our interior, gets into our blood
stream, but then through who we become as the persistent drip, transforms the world. Joining with others, we become a river that
molds and shapes our world.
Steindl-Rast talks about the process
of gratitude in which we fill to an overflowing and as we are filled, the heart
fills, like the bowl of a fountain, there is this quiet and calm, but when it
overflows it begins to sing and sparkle and ripple down and out. Joy becomes articulate. It comes to itself. In our imperial, consumeristic culture,
however, we are always taught that we need a new and improved bowl, a bigger
bowl, a never-satisfied-with-what-we-have bowl, and so we never have a bowl
that fills to overflowing. Joy never
comes to itself. Gratitude never becomes
us because it is something else or something bigger we want.[3] It is a reminder that the monastic practice
of simplicity which helps us release what hinders us from entering into prayer.[4] We become available to joy.
Lent is often a call to look for God
within ourselves and within our daily experience. One of my favorite lines from the old
television sitcom, “Taxi”, was when Rev. Jim asked Alex, “Hey, Alex, guess how
many gumballs I can hold in my mouth at one time?”
“I
don’t know. How many, Jim?”
Rev.
Jim shakes his head. “Well, I guess I’ll
have to ask someone else.”
Sometimes we look too long outside of
ourselves for answers when we should most appropriately look inside ourselves or
to our own power and resources for the answers.
The prayer form of examen is an ancient spiritual form
begun by St. Ignatius of Loyola and continued
by the Jesuit community. It is the
persistent drip, expecting to find the presence and activity of God in our
lives. It is like rummaging through a
drawer. We rummage through a drawer
expecting to find something. We rummage
through the drawer of our daily lives, expecting to find the presence and
activity of God. “’Rummaging for God’ is an expression that suggests
going through a drawer full of stuff, feeling around, looking for something
that you are sure must be in there somewhere.”[5]
Examen
contemplates the words from Psalm 95, “If today you would hear our
Liberator’s voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the place of
quarreling and trial.”[6] It is to remember that the person with the
proverbially hardened heart, the one full of violence, was Pharaoh, and so
Psalm 95 is a prayer that if we hear God’s voice, our hearts would be softened,
molded, and sculpted into a kindness and tenderness for one another. Do not let your consciousness become like
Pharaoh, full of violence, for one another.
Spiritual
writers have long noted that the word for “conscience” in English is a much
broader term in French and Spanish that means something more like the term for
when we are fully awake and alive, a consciousness, a recognition and
realization of the way God is truly present and moving in the world. Therefore, in examen, we pray backward, sure that as we rummage through our day,
God has been present and moving.
We
give thanks for God’s presence and moving.
We notice and take charge of our feelings so that we respond in freedom
rather than letting our feelings taking charge of us. We confess our complicit nature in brokenness
without making that brokenness and sin the focus of our lives. Finally, we look forward to the day coming
forward or the next day, fully expecting God to be present and moving as we
think about the day ahead.
In
my last pastorate, I actively taught the confirmands how to use the spiritual
practice of examen, and I was
completely taken by surprise when several of them told me they were using it
and enjoying it on an every day basis.
As I reflect back on that, I realize how powerful that practice must
have been for them. In a youth culture
that must enculturate them even more strongly to understand that they are not
enough or to want more, examen helps
them to behold their world and the goodness found in it. They stop to take stock of the light of
goodness in their world, express gratitude for that goodness, and then follow
that bliss into the future.
I
want us to practice examen today,
this ancient pre-literate practice of gratitude that I think has resonance for
our post-literate world. If you have a
pen or pencil handy to write with on your bulletin, you might want to use
that. And maybe it is something you can
take with you throughout the week.
Perhaps begin or continue in a journal of your own. Ignatius counseled the Jesuits to practice it
at noon and at the end of their day.
Maybe we could all begin with just once a day, recognizing the very full
days we have, and, if it gives you life, maybe extend it to twice a day.
Let
us begin. Center yourself. Become aware of that good and gracious God
encircling you, seeking to sit deep within your being and find a home with
you. Tenderly open to that Spirit and
ask with deep gratitude for the Spirit’s leading in your life, just a simple
prayer like, “God, life sucks right now.
I could use some help,” or “Creator, help me understand this blooming,
buzzing confusion.” Now in the second
movement of examen, review the day,
the last 24 hours, with a sense of gratitude—the gift of a new day, work to do,
relationships, food, challenges, maybe even the dreams you had upon
awakening. Move from place to place
throughout this time, moment to moment, person to person, and write down those
opportunities for gratitude, your cup or your bowl being filled to
overflowing. As you practice this, your
attention is tuned, your gratitude becomes longer and deeper.
The
third movement of examen is to, as
you scan your day, recognize all the feelings that surface, the whole
range. They tell you what is going on in
our lives, and our call in examen is
not to mute them but to pay attention to what they are telling us. This leads to the fourth movement. Choose the feeling which caught your
attention and pray from it. Express
spontaneously a short prayer that might be a cry for help or healing, maybe a
demand that God show up for an injustice in your life or in the world, a prayer
of praise or petition, maybe even a confession of where you feel like you did
not show up. The final movement of examen is to move forward. You may even want to use your calendar for
tomorrow to look at your day and see what it holds. What does that scheduled day bring up in
you? Anticipation? Delight?
Dread? Pray a short prayer for
whatever comes spontaneously to you and then give thanks to God for this
opportunity.[7]
That
is examen. It is a spiritual practice used by
Christians since the 16th Century.
As you can hear, it is not a spiritual practice meant to tell us what
despicable people we are and how evil the world is. On the contrary, examen is a practice that provides for our attention liberation
away from the violence and consumerism threaded through our wider culture to a
God who is regularly extending goodness and kindness to us like an underground
stream. I have printed extra copies of
the sermon so that, if you wish to continue using this practice, you might use
the sermon as a guide. I do that with a
little trepidation and fear, knowing that my sermons are my humble attempt at
figuring out what we are doing here.
I
would like to end with the beautiful writing of Jennifer J. Willhoit, sharing
poetic words of gratefulness and gratitude, perhaps shaping and crafting the examen we might all consider in this
coming week.
Gratefulness lives in our bodies.
And in the corpus of Earth.
And in the corpus of Earth.
It resides there, next to the aorta or in the gray matter in our
skulls.
It moves and rushes and sizzles like lightning all over this planet, in all her beings.
It moves and rushes and sizzles like lightning all over this planet, in all her beings.
We feel a rush of gratitude in our fiery bellies or in the
tingle up our arms.
We bear witness to gratitude painted in the growing pink of sunrise or in the moonlit jewels doing pliés on night-black water.
We bear witness to gratitude painted in the growing pink of sunrise or in the moonlit jewels doing pliés on night-black water.
Sometimes we feel it in the lump that forms in our
throats—gratitude moving up from the heart, so substantial that it all but
stifles us, choking us up. But we are freed from the constriction as soon as we
part our lips to let the gratitude pass through us—out into the ever-needy
world—in the form of words, a song, or a kiss.
And though it is as tangible as the bodies of growing,
vitally-alive coyotes, or green herons, I am absolutely convinced that
gratitude is contagious. Because yesterday when a once-mentor-now-dear-friend
literally sobbed out his praiseful appreciation to me, I caught his
gratitude—palpably felt it rising into my own mouth—and my arms lifted outward
in a broad reach that became an embrace.
Shared gratitude. Contagion. Inheritance.
It’s a germ or a gene. It’s shared, and shareable.
It’s a germ or a gene. It’s shared, and shareable.
It does not live out there—in the world of circumstances,
events, facts, or fiction.
Gratefulness lives right here (notice my hand placed gently over
the left side of my chest).
And here (see my palms [turned upward toward the coming of the
spring sun and finally, finally feeling its warmth]).
In order to feel it, to cultivate it, to find it within—we must
simply attend in presence to what is. Right now. Right here. Abiding in this
breath. If you are reading this, if you have breath in your body and another
inhalation within you, then there is—indeed—a shining golden nugget of
gratefulness just waiting there to be discovered, again.
And if that breath within you guides you to pause in a natural
and wild place out of doors, with hands on tree bark, flower, rabbit fur; with
eyes on shiny bird feather, crispy leaves, or tracing the dew on a fencepost;
with the welcome pungency of humus in your nose or the songbirds’ serenade in
your ears … then you will have rediscovered gratitude’s true home.[8]
May these words be a
gift to you. May you see every moment as
gift and opportunity. And may you be
grateful. And, as a result, may you be
happy. Amen.
[1] David Steindl-Rast, “Want
to be happy? Be grateful,” TEDGlobal 2013, June 2013, https://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be_grateful/transcript.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Interview with David
Steindl-Rast: Anatomy of Gratitude,” OnBeing with Krista Tippett, January 21,
2016, https://onbeing.org/programs/david-steindl-rast-anatomy-of-gratitude/.
[5] Dennis Hamm, S.J.,
“Rummaging for God: Praying Backwards
through Your Day,” America, May 14,
1994. A more extended and detailed
version can be found here: https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/top/church21/pdf/C-%5Cfakepath%5CThe%20Ignatian%20Examen_Scala.pdf.
[6] Psalm 95:7b-8, Meribah and Massah, literally mean quarreling (contention) and trial.
[8] Jennifer J. Willhoit,
Ph.D., “Where Gratefulness Resides,” Gratefulness,
March 1, 2018, https://gratefulness.org/explore/blog_news_more/
No comments:
Post a Comment