Lessons From the Garden

This morning, I walked around with my garden shears, deadheading rosebushes.  Some plants easily drop their spent flowers -- these are called "self-cleaning" plants.  Others, however, hold onto their old blossoms and refuse to turn loose of them, until they form a fruit.  In the case of roses, the "fruit" is rose-hips, a fruit that can be harvested for various uses -- but not by me.  I don't know what to do with rose-hips, and that's not why I grow roses. 

If I allow the rosebushes to continue feeding the old flowers until they produce fruit, they will continue to put their energy into the rose-hips instead of into producing new flowers.  Soon, I will have bushes with no roses, only rose-hips.  I think our lives are like that.  If we put our energy into "feeding" the past, going over and over what was wrong, what others did to us, we cannot produce flowers for today.  We have formed in our brains what is called a "loop," a phenomenon that makes every current event connect to and feed into the past.  Soon, our lives are filled with "rose-hips," which cannot be used for today -- unless, of course, we are scientists who know how to extract Vitamin C from them.

I recently read a story about a young woman who had been abused by her grandfather.  When he died, he left her his house, "where they had shared so many memories," as he put it in his will.  Her rage and bitterness were unspeakable.  She hated that house, and she hated him.  One day, she had the idea to donate the house to an organization that sheltered abused women and children.  In one stroke, she rid herself of the hateful house, and somehow, she found a way to make roses bloom from the same bush.

One of the lessons I've learned from working in the garden is that simply weeding a bed will not work unless we plant something in that spot that we want to grow.  The same is true of bitter memories:  we cannot get rid of them by denying them; we must plant something else in their place -- something strong enough to create new growth in our brains to replace the "loop" of past history.

For me, that "strong growth" has been Scripture.  Isaiah 59:19 says, "When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will put him to flight."  Sometimes, the hurts of the past come at us like a flood, threatening to overwhelm our stability and drown us.  But, if we have stored up Scripture in our hearts and minds, the Spirit of the Lord will put a sword in our hands, one that will counteract fear, anxiety, hatred, -- all the emotions that threaten to destroy our souls.

The morning I found out I had lung cancer, on the way to the doctor's office, I had been listening to Charles Stanley teaching about how to handle a crisis.  His text was Psalm 57:1:  I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.  What a great gift that teaching was to me -- even before I knew I needed it, the Holy Spirit had ministered it to my heart like a shield and a sword to defeat the enemy I would face that day.

We cannot keep feeding yesterday's flowers; their blooms are spent.  If we want flowers for today, we must be willing to cut off the parts of our past that drain our energy.  If we don't want to keep staring at weeds in our yard, it is time to begin planting the Word of God instead.

The Freedom of Abraham

Thus Abraham becomes a free man.  He was set free from family and country when he left his native land.  He was set free from fear when he walked into hostile territory.  He was set free from doubt when he let the Lord give him a son.  Now he is set free from his ties to his own children and from worrying about the future because he has put himself entirely in God's hands.

And what does God do?  He gives it all back to him.  Abraham has a family again, he has a country again, he has a son again, he has a future again.  The reward of his faith is freedom, the freedom to fulfill the deepest desire of his heart....faith leads to the greatest human fulfillment (Richard Rohr in The Great Themes of Scripture, p. 97).

What does God want of us?  Everything.  It's that simple.  He cannot give us what we have not surrendered to him, for it is still under our control and management.  But our management is not good enough; it is always limited by our understanding of what is possible.  God's plans go far beyond what we can see or imagine:  "For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" (Jer. 29:11).

People think the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac is ridiculous, that God would not ask such a thing.  But we are all called to surrender our children to the Lord.  They do not "belong" to us; we were given for a time the privilege of serving them, of cherishing them, of loving them.  But, like Mary at the wedding of Cana, we must also at some point surrender them to the plans and purposes of God.

I had a good friend whose 14-year old son was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.  At first, my friend prayed for a healing.  Then she got angry at God.  She had 8 children and she had taken them all to church since they were born.  One day in her den, she shook her fist at God:  "How can You do this after all I've tried to serve you all these years?" she cried out.  And then she proceeded to tell God all she had done "for Him." 

In the midst of her outburst, something powerful came over her and she fell to her knees, apologizing to the Lord.  "I'm sorry;" she said.  "You gave me Your Son, and now I give you mine. He is yours."  And peace came over her with the surrender.

Even though several doctors had said to her, "I'm sorry, Mom; he's a fine boy, but there's nothing we can do," one doctor decided to operate just to relieve the pressure on the boy's brain.  When they opened him up in surgery, there was no tumor to be found!  She surrendered her son to God, and God gave him back to her.  She is long dead now, but that son is still alive and flourishing.

Nothing we surrender to God is lost.  He blesses the situation and returns it to us as a gift.  And then we are free to enjoy it without worry about losing it again.  Once it's in God's hands fully, He knows how to take care of what we have given to Him. 

The Vision of Faith

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on...to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me (Phil. 3: 13 & 12).

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The journey of Exodus, the journey that Israel walked, is an image of the journey that every person makes when he or she sets out to follow the Lord.  Israel is, as it were, humanity personified, and so what happened to Israel is what happens to everyone who sets out on the journey of faith....

[The Israelites'] religious insight was really a product of religious hindsight: they reflected on their experience and they interpreted it in a new way.  Today, on the other hand, we do not usually look back on what has happened and see the hand of God in it.

When that hindsight becomes foresight -- when it becomes a hope and expectation that God will do in the future what He did in the past-- we call that the vision of faith.  It is precisely this vision that is essential for authentic worship.  (Richard Rohr in The Great Themes of Scripture, pp. 19-20).

We all tend to hold onto resentment and bitterness over the past.  Someone once said, "Sooner or later, we must all give up the hope of a better yesterday."  I love that idea, because I think it well expresses the reason we ingrain the past into our brains.  We rehearse what was done to us in the hope that by going over and over the past, we somehow can change it.  But all we do is make it more real; we become the past by making it our only reality.

That is why the Exodus journey, and the journeys of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc. are one of "the great themes" of Scripture.  The only way we can "change" the past is by walking out of it toward the future, toward that for which Christ Jesus has taken hold of us.  Of course, the past does not really change; what does change is the hold it has on us.  We are prisoners of our experience until we are set free by a call to the future, to a new "Promised Land," where the past becomes a distant memory.

In the book Hinds Feet on High Places, Hannah Hunard writes an allegory of "Much Afraid," whose future is determined by her relatives: "Fear," "Anxiety," "Worry," etc.  She is held captive and almost paralyzed by her "people."  But the Shepherd calls her forth from "her father's people" to the hills; he leads her by cords of love to a new land, where he captures her heart and makes her forget her relatives.  Once her heart has been renewed by love and she no longer belongs to her "father's people," but to her Lover, she is sent back to her people--no longer as "Much Afraid," but with a new name.  Her people no longer recognize her; she is not the person who went away after the Shepherd.  Now she returns in freedom and power to call them out of their dismal past also and to show them the glory that lies ahead.

This is the journey we must all take -- the journey to an unknown place, the journey out of our "dismal past."  There is only one Guide for that journey; no one else can go with us on the way.  Only Jesus Christ is the Way.  He is the One Who calls us forth and Who invites us to walk with Him.  Once we agree, we will know His Presence in a way we have never before known it. 

So many people are afraid to go with Him.  We prefer to hold onto what we are familiar with, even if it is painful, rather than let go of the past and walk into an unknown future.  But only "letting go" of Egypt will bring us to the Promised Land.

Watering the Soil/Soul of our Existence

How do we keep the soil/soul of our life tilled and watered, waiting for the seed of eternal life?

All of the Bible and all of spiritual writing begins with "conversion" -- which simply means "turning."  At some point, we all face the moment of turning: turning our faces and our souls from the things of this world to the things of God: no longer seeking admiration, love, attention, ambition, power, control, satisfaction from the people and things around us--but drawing close to God and seeking His attention, seeking the kingdom of God rather than the kingdom of this world.

As long as we are seeking anything from someone else or from something else but God, we will find disappointment.  Nothing else can satisfy us at the deepest level of our existence except God.  Our life's journey may be a series of discoveries of the things that we thought would make us happy, but don't.  So many people are angry and unhappy because someone or some thing has failed to satisfy them, but we are made in such a way that this physical and even intellectual world cannot complete us.  We have a spiritual nature, and only the Spirit of God can fill us to overflowing to the world around us.

Many, many things point the way to God and give us hints of the joy that awaits us, but if we just stop at the signposts of nature's beauty, of the love of family and friends, at reading or study, and never find communion with God through these signs, they will ultimately fail us also.

Our physical bodies need food and exercise and sexual satisfaction, but none of these things are God; we use them, but do not worship them as ends in themselves.  Our souls need intellectual stimulation and affection and emotional balance, but again, if we try to "latch onto" any of these things as the end of our existence, they will also fail to satisfy us ultimately.

It is our spirits that need water on a daily basis, and Jesus said that He was the Source of that Living Water.  No other prophet in the world-- Mohammed, Buddha, Indian gurus, etc. -- have promised or even suggested that if we come to them, they will give us Living Water, springing up to eternal life and flowing out of our bellies (core of our existence).  They can give us spiritual practices which soothe our bodies and souls (minds and emotions) temporarily, but only temporarily, as long as we continue the practice.  But none of them have said, "I will be with you always, even to the end of the world."  The initiative is always on our part, not on theirs.  Only Jesus offers us His initiative, His Spirit, to continue the work in us.

At the time of my life when I was searching the most, I first tried yoga.  It helped as long as I could sit undisturbed in a meditative position and hum.  But three babies did not allow for much sitting and humming; the bits of sleep I could snatch here and there seemed more soothing to mind and body.  Then I tried Transcendental Meditation, Yokefellow, and then Universal Unitarianism -- all of which promised that positive thinking, primal screaming, and holy thoughts would drive out depression and despair.

How does a person live from workshop to workshop, from therapy to therapy session?  Everything depended on my own ability to maintain equilibrium in the practice du jour.  Now, I am glad that I tried all these things; otherwise, I would not know how much they failed to satisfy me at the deepest level of my soul -- at the level of spirit.

When the Holy Spirit entered my life, He brought joy without ceasing, laughter in the place of deep mourning, beauty for ashes, and peace not as the world gives.  Isaiah says this:

Cursed is the one who trusts in man,

who depends on flesh for his strength

and whose heart turns away from the Lord.

He will be like a bush in the wastelands;

he will not see prosperity when it comes.

He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,

in a salt land where no one lives.

But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

whose confidence is in Him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water

that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes;

its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought

and never fails to bear fruit (17:5-8).

No amount of New Age "practice" could have given me the peace that the "world cannot give."  That kind of peace and joy flow directly from the heart of Jesus to the believer, the one who has surrendered his/her life to Him.  It is an active, dynamic, and overcoming peace; it flows continually from Him to the soil of our souls, softening it and making it ready to receive the things of God.  The seed planted in that soul/soil will bear much fruit.

Rich Soil

As you do not know the path of the wind,

or how a body is formed in a mother's womb,

so you cannot understand the work of God,

the Maker of all things.

Sow your seed in the morning,

and at evening let not your hands be idle,

for you do not know which will succeed,

whether this or that,

or whether both will do equally well (Ecc. 11:5-6).

What is it that nourishes our souls?  We all easily recognize the things that nourish our bodies, even though we sometimes choose junk food instead.  As children, we nourish our minds almost by instinct, investigating, wondering, exploring, discovering, reading, asking questions.  As adults, we sometimes think we "know it all," and therefore stop learning in favor of the easier path -- being entertained.

But at the deepest level of our being, beyond the physical, beyond the intellectual, is another part of us that defines who we are -- our spirit.  Proverbs 4:23 says, "Guard well your heart, for out of it flow all the issues of life."  When the Bible speaks of the "heart," it is referring to the spirit, the core of our being.  How many of us "guard well" our spirits?  How many of us give precedence and nourishment to our spirits?

What is it that brings joy and peace and contentment and overflowing love to our lives?  It is not eating to nourish our bodies, nor educating our minds, as wonderful and satisfying as both activities are.  That nourishment is temporary, and fails to satisfy the thirst we feel at our deepest level.  Jesus promised the woman at the well, the one who had had 5 husbands, a fountain springing up to eternal life.  Wow!  Imagine if there were inside us an ever-flowing and renewing fountain of living water!  Would we not go to the fountain daily to drink -- at least as often as we go to our kitchen faucet or the town well to drink?

How do we water the soul, the soil of our hearts?  How do we sow the seeds that spring up 30, 60, or 100-fold?  Whatever we plant in our soul will produce fruit, for good or for evil.  If we want something in our lives to change, it must begin with whatever we are planting in our gardens.  Even before the planting, however, is the condition of the soil in which we plant.

More tomorrow.....

Forming a Community

Whether we like it or not, it seems that a true community is formed by one of two events: (1) some common trauma or disaster that draws people together despite any and all differences among them, or (2) a powerful and common experience of the Spirit of God working among them, melding them together despite all differences.  Nothing else -- family bonds, neighborhood bonds, marriage bonds, etc. - seems to be powerful enough to hold together a community under stress.

I often used to think, when we had weekly prayer meetings in the 70's, that only God's spirit could have drawn together and held together such a diverse group of people who had little or nothing else in common.  But there was such joy flowing out of those prayer meetings, where the Spirit ministered to us individually and as a group, that it overflowed into our daily lives.  When one member of the group had a son or daughter about to be married, all of us came together to prepare the feast.  No one had the money to hire a caterer, so we all worked long hours to have the best spread available.  And the guests all commented about how much fun the community was to be with.  If there was a need, all of us were there to supply the need.  We comforted one another in sorrow and shared in all the joy of each family.  I have never before nor since truly experienced the New Testament church in the same way.

In the aftermath of Katrina, I was in a shelter with 350 people for a week.  Again, we were the most diverse group one could find -- about 100 Mexican laborers with their families, blacks, whites, and everything in between:  old, young, people on meds and slightly out of their minds when their meds ran out; policemen, firemen, those traumatized by the storm, those who had watched loved ones die -- you name it.  That shelter without air, without working toilets, without food or water, without ice, was our common home.  Babies cried from lack of formula and from diaper rash from the heat.  There were no clean diapers, cans of baby powder, or baby wipes.  We all suffered together from the same conditions -- and we all worked together, each one as he was able, to support one another.  There was no "mine" and "yours;" whatever we had, we offered to the others.  We all swept and mopped the floors, picked up the trash, rocked the babies, prayed for help together.  We listened to one another's stories, found something to laugh about, and even "showered" together by standing under the rainspouts the one day we had merciful rain.  That was community at its best; I would not trade that experience for anything.  We were in hell together, but we were together, whether we spoke the same language or not.

When God called the Israelites out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses, they all thought they would die at the shore of the Red Sea, with the E. army close behind them.  Once they had crossed over the Sea safely and escaped certain death, a "survival" bond erased all previous differences of opinion --- God had saved them together; together, they would face the next crisis.  And then the desert: no food, no water, no certainty of the next day.  Again and again, God showed them not as individuals, but as a people, that He was with them.  He provided manna, and water, and direction, relief from the heat by day and the cold by night. They learned to function as a people, not as individuals with their own interests.

And then, when the burden of governing so many people weighed Moses down, God sent His Spirit on 70 leaders to help Moses govern.  Now, God was forming the people into a "people," a nation, an "organization" with structure.  They could never have entered the Promised Land and lived in peace with 12 different tribes without both the desert experience and the Spirit of God hovering over them, governing them through a structure of order. 

There was a condition of order and peace, however:  But select capable men from all the people -- men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain -- and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens (Ex. 18:21).

In America, our forefathers also went through a common experience, a common trauma that united them solidly together.  They fled "Egypt" where they were prisoners of corruption, division, lack of freedom to worship freely, and absolute power.  They crossed the "Red Sea," certain of death at every turn, faced the wilderness of danger, lack of food, and uncertainty --- and then the War with Britain.  When they were finally established in safety, they elected capable men, trustworthy men who hated dishonest gain, men who had the Spirit of God in them, and settled down united both by trauma and the Spirit. 

What has happened today?  We have certainly lost men who seek the Spirit of God as their source of governance; we have lost our common experience of trauma and near-death and coming out of it safely together.  We are no longer a community.  But it seems that we will learn again -- through hurricanes, through drought and food shortages, through fires and floods -- to be a community.  Now, if only the Spirit of God would raise up for us once again men who have been annointed to serve and who do so under God!

Purity of Heart

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen.

Every Catholic child learns that prayer from birth; he hears it in church and at home, if the family prays the rosary together.  The prayer could not be more simple and automatic -- so simple and automatic that we never hear it; we just "say" it.  But this one prayer is the path to purity of heart, if we could only really pray it.

When Mary first began appearing in Medjugore in 1981 (I think it was), the world was waiting for a dramatic message.  With every previous appearance, although her message was very simple, war broke out some years later in the area.  Of course, that was also true in Yugoslavia, with the genocide to follow in the 1980's reign of Sloban Milosovich.  The country was bombed all around Medjugore and finally divided; now Medjurore is part of Bosnia-Herzogovinia.  Yugoslavia no longer exists.  Yet, Mary still appears daily to the visionaries.  One of them, Marjia, often comes to Alabama, and Mary appears to her there.  During her last appearance in Alabama in July, I believe there were over 15,000 people in attendance. 

Mary's messages are always so simple that few people (comparatively) take them seriously.  She is there not to dramatize events, but to teach people to pray.  First, she taught the children visionaries to pray by leading them in prayer daily:  Pray until prayer becomes joy for you, she told them.  Then, others gathered around the children to pray with them.  Some of them led prayer groups for years, and are still doing so.  Others taught their children at home to pray.  There are no 'scary' and dramatic visions taking place -- just simple invitations to prayer and gratitude from the heart of Mary for listening to her call.  There are "secrets" not yet revealed, but they remain secrets to the visionaries.  Mary's mission is to call people to the heart of God, to teach them to trust Him, to teach them to turn to Him in faith and confidence, to prepare them for whatever comes by hiding them under the care of the Most High. 

That is "purity of heart"  -- to desire only that people we know turn to God, know God, love God, trust God.  Moses had to learn purity of heart before he could lead his people out of Egypt.  It took him 40 years on the back side of the desert to give up his fiery temperament and to rely on God's way instead of his ways.  He was extraordinarily well-learned in Egyptian ways; he was in line to inherit the throne of Egypt and to become a 'god' to the Egyptians.  But Yahweh had to teach Moses that nothing would set his people free except reliance on and trust in Him.  Moses had to learn the one thing that could free his people-- total trust in Yahweh, not in himself.  That's a very hard lesson.  In fact, when Yahweh commissioned Moses for the task, Moses had no confidence at all in his own ability to speak to Pharoah or, for that matter, to his own people.  He went with his trust that the Yahweh who revealed Himself to Moses would also be present to work out the details.

When Mary calls us to pray daily, her trust in God is like that of Moses.  She knows that the one who prays daily will begin to desire nothing else but "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit."  We begin to desire not our kingdom come, but His.  Until we are there (or at least on the way), we do not have purity of heart.  If we desire anything else but His kingdom come, we will remain on the back side of the desert, helpless.  Once we desire that God act in His way, in His time, on His terms, we will have gained purity of heart.  Only then will we be fit instruments for His use.

St. Therese of Liseux used to picture herself as the toy of the child Jesus, like a small rubber ball.  If he wanted to pick her up and play with her, it delighted her.  But if he allowed her to remain unnoticed for months and even years, lying unused in a dark corner, that also delighted her.  She wanted nothing else but to allow Him to do whatever He chose with her.  Now that's purity of heart -- not a desire to be strong and powerful, not a desire to change the world or to fix things we don't like, not a desire to be loved or even noticed -- but the desire for God to use us (or not) as He chooses.