Hiddenness & Poverty

Hiddenness is an essential quality of the spiritual life. Solitude, silence, ordinary tasks, being with people without great agendas, sleeping, eating, working, playing... all of that without being different from others, that is the life that Jesus lived and the life he asks us to live. It is in hiddenness that we, like Jesus, can increase “in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with God and with people” (Luke 2:51). It is in hiddenness that we can find a true intimacy with God and a true love for people.

Even during his active ministry, Jesus continued to return to hidden places to be alone with God. If we don’t have a hidden life with God, our public life for God cannot bear fruit…

One of the reasons that hiddenness is such an important aspect of the spiritual life is that it keeps us focused on God. In hiddenness we do not receive human acclamation, admiration, support, or encouragement. In hiddenness we have to go to God with our sorrows and joys and trust that God will give us what we most need.
In our society we are inclined to avoid hiddenness. We want to be seen and acknowledged. We want to be useful to others and influence the course of events. But as we become visible and popular, we quickly grow dependent on people and their responses and easily lose touch with God, the true source of our being. Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves…

If indeed the spiritual life is essentially a hidden life, how do we protect this hiddenness in the midst of a very public life? The two most important ways to protect our hiddenness are solitude and poverty. Solitude allows us to be alone with God. There we experience that we belong not to people, not even to those who love us and care for us, but to God and God alone. Poverty is where we experience our own and other people's weakness, limitations, and need for support. To be poor is to be without success, without fame, and without power. But there God chooses to show us God's love.

Both solitude and poverty protect the hiddenness of our lives…

When we enter into solitude to be with God alone, we quickly discover how dependent we are.  Without the many distractions of our daily lives, we feel anxious and tense.  When nobody speaks to us, calls on us, or needs our help, we start feeling like nobodies.  Then we begin wondering whether we are useful, valuable, and significant.  Our tendency is to leave this fearful solitude quickly and get busy again to reassure ourselves that we are “somebodies.”  But that is a temptation, because what makes us somebodies is not other people's responses to us but God's eternal love for us. 

To claim the truth of ourselves we have to cling to our God in solitude as to the One who makes us who we are. 

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey, by Henri J.M. Nouwen , © 1997 Harper San Francisco

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I have found that these passages from the Henri Nouwen Meditation & Reflection emails over the past few days explain better than anything I’ve read why I’ve found myself increasing tending to withdraw slightly from public involvement with things, from blogging – at least as regularly as I sometimes have – and even from some bits of church life.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” (Matthew 5.3) When know we have nothing we have not been given, know we are nothing, then God can flood the heart with his mercy, with his Holy Spirit, with Christ to whom the Spirit bears witness (John 14.25), and there is the Kingdom of Heaven in all its now-ness, its kairos. This is why I have sometimes found it, odd though it sounds, hard to cope with good times. God’s presence is so obvious, so close, in times of real hardship and distress that it feels almost as if one may lose him in the days of wine and roses.

God grant me sufficient hiddenness always. As I said once, quite a while ago, I do long to be more like ivy, that flourishes in shadowed places.

Simple obedience...

Tertiaries recognise the power of intercessory prayer for furthering the purposes of God’s kingdom, and therefore seek a deepening fellowship with God in personal devotion, and constantly intercede for the needs of his church and his world. Those of us who have much time at our disposal give prayer a large part in our daily lives. Those of us with less time must not fail to see the importance of prayer and to guard the time we have allotted to it from interruption. Lastly, we are encouraged to avail ourselves of the sacrament of Reconciliation, through which the burden of past sin and failure is lifted and peace and hope restored.

The Principles of the Third Order - The Third Way of Service, Prayer

It's strange how much more clearly this has been coming to speak to me over recent months, and how strongly I've been convicted of my own failure to live by it. Remarkable, too, how easy it is to find excuses for filling that "much time" that I have at my disposal with other things than prayer.

Temptation always sells us so short. God has more to give us than we can possibly ask imagine, and yet we allow ourselves to be led away by the least alternative. Well, I do. And yet I find that even what little obedience I manage to give to God's call to prayer as my chief calling is rewarded so generously that I haven't the tears to acknowledge it.

On this day after St. Clare's Day, I keep remembering these word's from Clare's Testament: "I bless you during my life and after my death, as I am able, out of all the blessings, with which the Father of mercies has blessed and will bless His sons and daughters in heaven and on earth and a spiritual father and mother have blessed and will bless their spiritual sons and daughters. Amen."

God has so blessed me over these last months, with blessings I couldn't have imagined, or dreamt up for myself. He is faithful beyond our understanding, and we know so little of gratitude. And so we have Christ's mercy beneath us as a cupped hand, and our Lady's simple obedience as our light, our Stella Maris: "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word..." How hard that is for us, sinners that we are, and yet how necessary. It's strange, but I sometimes actually find myself these days longing for that simple obedience, as Francis and Clare did...

Pax et bonum!

Contemplative Christian has a thoughtful and important post, A New Kind of Christian Politics, which I do urge you to click over and read. He says:

It’s a very interesting time to be a young Christian in America, for there are many others who find the old divisions and stale arguments largely irrelevant. I think there is a movement toward contemplative spirituality within the developing church. In some ways, this movement is apparent within the Emerging Church, the term given the interesting change within the church in recent years…across denominations. But really, it’s bigger than that. There is a fundamental difference between a spirituality based on relationship with God (grace-based) and spirituality based on rightness before God (shame-based). In grace-based spirituality, we become intimately aware of our own smallness, and the largeness of God’s capacity to love. In shame-based spirituality, we are caught in the cyclical struggle to maintain control of where we stand with God, to maintain our position as keepers of knowledge about God. The former can accept unknowns and gray areas. The latter is often defined by black and white thinking…

I guess what I’m saying is that contemplative Christianity… a spirituality of Christ defined by prayer and mystical union… is an answer to fundamentalism and its shame-cycle. I read an article a while ago about conflict in an Islamic country, where the fundamentalist Muslim majority was seeking to silence and control the Sufi minority. Sufis are the contemplatives, the mystics, of the Islamic worldview, and have historically (in this context at least) been peace-seekers, where the majority has continued to wage war and control. Its interesting to see the same dynamic play out in so many contexts. Mysticism challenges black and white thinking, just as Christ challenged the black and white thinking of the religiously certain of his time. The reaction to Christ was violence. We see the same today.

When your world is built upon tightly controlled rules and systems, then you fight to protect your control. The story of the prodigal son illustrates the dynamic beautifully. The oldest son had his world fairly well under control…he had earned his fathers love and respect with hard work and dedication. When the prodigal son returned home and was received with such joy… the love given away for free… the brother’s response was anger. We cannot control God. Yet, when the worldview of conservative Christians is challenged, even if challenged by undeniable logic (such as proof the earth is older than 5000 years) the response is anger and defensiveness…if you’re not with us, God is not with you…

But you really should read the rest. It’s a very interesting time to be a Christian, period, not just a young one in America. Richard Rohr writes:

I want to share with you this week the spiritual genius of St. Francis and how severely, seriously, and wonderfully he wanted to imitate Jesus. That is why so many commentators have called Francis “a Second Christ,” because he tried in so many ways to be exactly like Jesus. Jesus, and what Jesus loved, was his only love and his only concern.

Both Jesus and Francis, by their lifestyles and by their words, expose and undercut the superficial “honour/shame systems” that define most human cultures. They both refuse to live inside of such a falsely constructed world, where the private ego is the primary reference point for what is called morality.

Almost all of the unwritten rules of behaviour in any honour/shame- based society are meant to protect and enforce social class and social order, and to properly humiliate and exclude those who do not conform. It is much more about love of self-image than love of God. Both Jesus and Francis are about inclusion and not exclusion, about protecting the indwelling divine image more than any superior self-image.

(adapted from Francis: Subverting the Honour/Shame System)

We have, as Franciscans, much to share with the wider church; yet we are, the Third Order at least, all too prone to hide Francis’ and Clare’s—and therefore Christ’s—light under a bushel of Anglican reserve, forgetting that Francis himself was anything but reticent about the Gospel! It has often been said that Franciscans are either evangelical Catholics or Catholic evangelicals. Maybe we need to be a little more open about both sides of that equation, so that we can truly contribute to this increasingly powerful current that God has set in motion, far deeper than any faction or fashion, or rumours of schism and betrayal…

Pax et bonum, peace and all good, is the archetypal Franciscan greeting—we need to say it, firmly, to all the Church!

Confessing our own poverty...

When we are not afraid to confess our own poverty, we will be able to be with other people in theirs. The Christ who lives in our own poverty recognises the Christ who lives in other people's. Just as we are inclined to ignore our own poverty, we are inclined to ignore others'. We prefer not to see people who are destitute, we do not like to look at people who are deformed or disabled, we avoid talking about people's pains and sorrows, we stay away from brokenness, helplessness, and neediness.

By this avoidance we might lose touch with the people through whom God is manifested to us. But when we have discovered God in our own poverty, we will lose our fear of the poor and go to them to meet God...

The poor have a treasure to offer precisely because they cannot return our favours. By not paying us for what we have done for them, they call us to inner freedom, selflessness, generosity, and true care. Jesus says: "When you have a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; then you will be blessed, for they have no means to repay you and so you will be repaid when the upright rise again" (Luke 14:13-14).

The repayment Jesus speaks about is spiritual. It is the joy, peace, and love of God that we so much desire. This is what the poor give us, not only in the afterlife but already here and now.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

I think Nouwen has put his finger on a vital truth here: the confession of our own poverty, our own weakness, opens us to the poverty and weakness of the sisters and brothers we so easily cross the road to avoid.

I keep thinking of the story of St Francis and the leper:

Although Francis still joined at times in the noisy revels of his former comrades, his changed demeanour [following his return to Assisi after his abortive attempts at a military career] plainly showed that his heart was no longer with them; a yearning for the life of the spirit had already possessed it. His companions twitted Francis on his absent-mindedness and asked if he were minded to be married. "Yes", he replied, "I am about to take a wife of surpassing fairness." She was no other than Lady Poverty whom Dante and Giotto have wedded to his name, and whom even now he had begun to love. After a short period of uncertainty he began to seek in prayer and solitude the answer to his call; he had already given up his gay attire and wasteful ways. One day, while crossing the Umbrian plain on horseback, Francis unexpectedly drew near a poor leper. The sudden appearance of this repulsive object filled him with disgust and he instinctively retreated, but presently controlling his natural aversion he dismounted, embraced the unfortunate man, and gave him all the money he had. About the same time Francis made a pilgrimage to Rome. Pained at the miserly offerings he saw at the tomb of St. Peter, he emptied his purse thereon. Then, as if to put his fastidious nature to the test, he exchanged clothes with a tattered mendicant and stood for the rest of the day fasting among the horde of beggars at the door of the basilica.

from the website of the Third Order Society of St Francis

A Gospel Reflection for 2nd August

More than eight centuries ago, in the dark recesses of a dilapidated and forgotten chapel, St. Francis received the call of our Lord Jesus to his life of service and devotion. From those humble beginnings in the tiny Portiunucula chapel, the work of Christ has reached across the globe to touch the lives of millions. Today we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Angels of the Portiunucula and remember the call of Christ on St. Francis.

Today the Portiunucula is no longer forgotten, but situated and restored within the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli where millions of pilgrims visit every year. Despite the grandiose beauty of the surrounding cathedral, the simple chapel remains as a reminder of the humble beginnings of the Order. In the same way, in today's Gospel reading, Jesus reminds His followers not to follow Him because of extravagant signs and wonders. While He obeyed the will of the Father through miracles of power, Jesus knew that people would be left hungry if they followed Him for these miracles alone.

Jesus said to them: "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world." When they still demand this miraculous bread, He tells them: "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst." Not long after He spoke these words, Jesus drank from the cup, giving Himself to all as the Bread of Life, calling His followers to give their lives at the Cross with equal devotion. It is not hard to imagine that many who sought a sign that day, looking for a miracle of power to prove Jesus was on the "winning" side, fled at the price required at the Cross.

John Michael Talbot says of this feast day: "We must live the Gospel radically like they did in that first community... We live this Gospel way of life- radical contemplative prayer, radical charismatic high praise, radical Gospel living." Just as the simple Portiunucula remains amidst the grandeur of the Basilica as a reminder of humility and suffering, so too does the Eucharist stand within the beauty of the liturgy, calling us to embrace the costly sacrifice of the altar in our lives. St. Francis love for Christ out weighed his desire for self-preservation and glory, embodied so beautifully when he kissed the leper. While we give thanks to the Father for the power and beauty of His Church, we never forget the simple, poor Messiah who loved the poor, embraced the leper and went willingly to the suffer and death of the Cross.

Jamie Arpin-Ricci, with thanks to Franciscan Journey

Back to the Cross...

The Cross is the sign of Christ's victory over death. The cross is the sign of life. It is the trellis upon which grows the Mystical Vine whose life is infinite joy and whose branches we are. If we want to share the life of that Vine, we must grow on the same trellis and must suffer the same pruning...

Christian asceticism does not provide a flight from the world, a refuge from stress and the distractions of manifold wickedness. It enables us to enter into the confusion of the world bearing something of the light of Truth in our hearts, and capable of exercising something of the mysterious, transforming power of the Cross, of love and sacrifice.

Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration, pp. 131-132

This Lent, more than any I can remember, I'm constantly being drawn back to the Cross. Things people say, even, random comments, scraps of text online, things I see, like the bars of windows, telephone poles, continually remind me.

The Cross is sign, yes, but more than a sign, just as a sacrament is a sign, but far more than just a sign. "Mysterious, transforming power" is what it is. I keep thinking of St. Francis' words, "We adore you most holy Lord, Jesus Christ... and we bless you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world."

No fear...

Have no fear of being thought insignificant or unbalanced, but preach repentance with courage and simplicity. Have faith in the Lord, who has overcome the world. His Spirit speaks in you and through you, calling men and women to turn to him and observe his precepts. You will encounter some who are faithful, meek, and well disposed; they will joyfully receive you and your words. But there will be more who are sceptical, proud, and blasphemous, and who will insult you and resist your message. Prepare yourselves, therefore, to bear everything with patience and humility.

Saint Francis of Assisi
Legend of the Three Companions - 36
(with thanks to Our Lady's Little Scribe)

I need so much to hear this! It's very easy, especially when one's trying to follow Francis, to fear things like this. And yet Jesus said, over and over again, do not be afraid.

It does seem to be a matter of patience and humility, for if we are truly patient and humble, what is there to fear? For it is the Father's good pleasure to give us the Kingdom! (Matthew 5.3; Luke 12.32)

Being poor in a rich man's world...

Another of Jesus' non-negotiables is justice and generosity toward the poor and the outsider. That's quite clear, quite absolute - page after page of the Gospels. And now Christians think nothing of amassing fortunes and living grandly. Jesus' bias toward the poor was something that rich nations did not want to hear.

Richard Rohr, from the CAC webcast, Nov. 8, 2008: "What is The Emerging Church?"

Rohr is right when he says we don't wish to hear this - and I fear that we may fail to take the opportunity offered us by the current economic troubles. It seems that much of the work of the popular arts (music, cinema) of the Great Depression was devoted to getting rich, rising above the grey dole queues to a glittering invulnerable world perfectly shown by Busby Berkeley.

But poverty without joy is depression itself. It's only when we live out joy within poverty that we can live as Christ called us to live; and it's only the Spirit living within us who can fill us with that joy (Luke 10.21) It's that teaching which Francis brought so clearly to the world of his day, and it's that teaching of which Franciscans must keep reminding the world in which we find ourselves living, today maybe more than ever...

Going to the side and doing it differently...

A core principle of the Center for Action and Contemplation is: The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. Just go ahead and live positively "in God, through God, with God."

In the short run, you will hold the unresolved tension of the cross. In the long run, you will usher in something entirely new and healing.

This was the almost intuitive spiritual genius of Saint Francis. He wasted no time attacking the rich churches and pretentious clergymen; he just went to the side and did it differently.

Richard Rohr, from Hope Against Darkness, p. 15

How different this is from some of the writings of "church-leaving" Christians you find around the innertoobs! It seems to me that it's only in this "going to the side" that we make a way for grace to flow through our own lives, and through the laying-down of our lives.

Free at last!

Jesus legitimated what John was doing, saying it's OK to pour water over people and tell them their sins are forgiven. That's revolutionary. Jews were supposed to follow the Law of Holiness in Leviticus, and suddenly John is making it far too easy to get God to love us, to get God to forgive us. God becomes as available as Jordan River water. And, of course, the irony is that the water is in the desert where water isn't supposed to be.

You can find God everywhere, in other words – outside of institutions, official priesthood or formal observance. One wonders if the churches today even catch John's dangerous corrective.

Richard Rohr, from Jesus' Plan for a New World

Sometimes, as Rohr suggests, the churches just don't get it. Especially among churches that think of themselves as pillars of orthodoxy, it seems to be felt that in order to receive God's grace and mercy in Christ, certain technical hoops need to be jumped through. Whether it's requiring submission to church leadership, signing up for some kind of "recovery" programme, or some specific piece of ceremonial, before we can be "restored to fellowship", it's all bollocks, according to John. God's mercy and forgiveness, in Christ, are as freely available as the waters of a great river, flowing in the arid desert of hypocrisy and jobsworthery and lovelessness.

You think I'm uncharacteristically angry, that maybe I shouldn't use words like "bollocks"? Read Matthew 23! Jesus used some pretty immoderate language on just this subject…

Now, I'm not using this passage from Rohr to argue for withdrawing from all organised church life, slamming the door behind us, and shaking off the dust from our feet. This wasn't Francis' way when dealing with a church at the very least as compromised and corrupt and superstitious and rule-ridden as anything we see today. Christ's call to him was to "repair my house" – not to abandon it. His preaching, and even more, his life, and the lives of the sisters and brothers who followed him, called the church to set its own house in order – and it did, in what must count as one of the greatest revivals in its long history.

It may be necessary to step from one stream of the Church (big 'C') to another, in a way that wasn't open to Francis in his own time, but we need to be clear why we are stepping, and we need to make that clear to the both the church we are joining and the church we are leaving. There is no room for prevarication, uncomfortable though that may be. Or else we may be called to remain where we are, but always to be prepared to speak the truth in love, as it says in our own Third Order Principles, "cheerfully facing any scorn or persecution to which this may lead." ((9) – where it applies to any form of social injustice, but see (7))

I am extraordinarily blessed in the church where I'm serving, and none of what I've just said applies there! But I'm very clearly aware of the facts laid out in Dr Barb Orlowski's original research, to name but one source, and of my own past supporting experience.

The Good News of Advent is that Christ is coming with mercy and judgement, and he will set his people free. Free at last! Praise him, praise him, praise Jesus our Redeemer!

Only the poor are free…

"How blessed are the poor in spirit: the kingdom of Heaven is theirs." (Matthew 5:3)

What an opening line! I always say it's the opener of Jesus' inaugural address. "How happy are the poor in spirit." It's crucial, a key to everything Jesus is teaching.

Poor in spirit means to live without a need for your own righteousness. It's inner emptiness; no outer need for your own reputation. If you're poor in spirit it won't be long before you're poor. In other words, you won't waste the rest of your life trying to get rich because you'll know better.

Richard Rohr, from Jesus' Plan for the New World

I think this openness to poverty is surprisingly crucial to being a Christian in a world concerned, now as in the New Testament era, with getting and spending. As Wordsworth said, in those pursuits we lay waste our time.

St. Francis was right when he took Lady Poverty for his bride. Only in her arms will we find solace for the hunger of the world, and only when we are free from that hunger will we be free to follow Jesus wherever he may be leading us (Matthew 19.16ff). We'll never know (John 1:37-39) until we are free, and are prepared to get up, leave everything, and go with our Lord.

Only the poor are free to know the truth.

Back to the Cross…

When you see a poor man, you must consider the one in whose name he comes, namely, Christ, who took upon himself our poverty and weakness. The poverty and sickness of this man are, therefore, a mirror in which we ought to contemplate lovingly the poverty and weakness which our Lord Jesus Christ suffered in his body to save the human race.

Saint Francis of Assisi, from the Legend of Perugia - 89

Thinking about my last post here, it occurs to me that there is slightly more to this statement of St. Francis' than meets the eye. In our love for the poor, and in all we do to find them justice, we must not neglect the demands that justice itself makes on us, that we treat all human beings as equal in the eyes of God, and so equal in our eyes too.

Francis' love for the poor did not mean that he despised the rich. Indeed, Francis cautioned his friars not to look down on those "wearing soft or gaudy clothes and enjoying luxuries in food or drink" (RegB c.2). All the members of the brotherhood were equal, no matter what their social or economic background; no one was to cling to office within the brotherhood (LP 83).

The OFM JPIC Resource Book Part 2, 1: Option for the Poor, p. 4

Our hands must never be too full to reach out to whoever needs us, female or male, human or animal. We must open wide our arms to them all. There must be nothing to separate us: not education or possessions, nor detachment from them. In a comment on my last post, Barbara said, tellingly, "Voluntary poverty, I guess, can become something one clings to instead of God. Simplicity, on the other hand, leaves room for God. Without justice, it is hollow."

We must "Let the same mind be in [us] that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross." (Philippians 2.5-8)

Somehow it seems to me that all this talk of poverty comes back to the Cross.

Poverty and simplicity…

In an excellent post at St. Edward's Parish Blog today, Fran asks, "How do you define poverty?"

"We are very quick to equate poverty with money. Perhaps we need to reflect more deeply", she says, and goes on to ask, "Ultimately how can we examine the poverty in our own lives and use that to both transform and be transformed?"

Thinking about this, I was reminded of Rowan Clare Williams' words in A Condition of Complete Simplicity, where she writes,

To be poor, sadly, is still to be without a voice and without power… Arguably, 'the poor', wherever they are, are still less than people. The very phrase, 'the poor', lumps together and depersonalizes billions of individuals with different unique stories and voices which are seldom heard, because the rich and powerful shout more loudly.

It can be tempting for those attracted by Franciscan simplicity to rhapsodize about the ennobling properties of poverty. This is dangerously patronizing. It is important to understand that there is an essential difference between poverty as a chosen, life-giving option and the poverty which denies and dehumanizes. Living in un-chosen poverty does not ennoble. Instead of freeing the mind from 'distractions' about food and clothes and other material concerns, they become an obsession. Far from being set free to live abundantly, this kind of poverty concentrates the mind on the mechanics of blind survival. A poor people are not necessarily any freer from materialism than the rich; they merely have less opportunity to indulge their desires. For the sake of clarity, then, it is necessary to draw a distinction between involuntary poverty, and a choice (or vocation) to live in simplicity in defiance of a world which defines us by what we have.

Over at Inward/Outward, there is a quote from Bill Moyers' foreword to Jim Willis' Faith Works: Lessons From the Life of an Activist Preacher:

Charity is commendable; everyone should be charitable. But justice aims to create a social order in which if individuals choose not to be charitable, people will not go hungry, unschooled or sick without care. Charity depends on the vicissitudes of whim and personal wealth; justice depends on commitment instead of circumstance. Faith-based charity provides crumbs from the table; faith-based justice offers a place at the table.

Where does this take us?

Poverty, unsought, crushes the heart and dulls the mind; simplicity, chosen, whether the absolute poverty of St. Francis and his contemporary followers, or the simplicity enjoined on members of the Third Order, to "live simply and to share with others… accept[ing] that we avoid luxury and waste, and regard our possessions as being held in trust for God" (The Principles, 11), sets the heart free and clears the mind.

We who choose simplicity, whether the circumstances of our natural lives have provided us with much, as St. Francis' had, or little, as with many of the early Tertiaries, must put ourselves either personally at the service of of those whose poverty in un-chosen, or at the service of finding for them justice, and a place, by right of simply being human, at the table. As The Principles state (7), "Our Order sets out, in the name of Christ, to break down barriers between people and to seek equality for all. We accept as our second aim the spreading of a spirit of love and harmony among all people. We are pledged to fight against the ignorance, pride, and prejudice that breed injustice or partiality of any kind."

It seems to me that these thoughts may have relevance beyond the Third Order Society of St. Francis in these days of economic insecurity and environmental concern. You don't need to be a Franciscan to choose a life of simplicity and justice - but St. Francis may still have things you can learn from, and his beautiful and Christ-like heart may strengthen and comfort you as you try to work out your calling.

Imperfect...

Imperfection is the organizing principle of the entire human and spiritual enterprise. In the great spiritual traditions imperfection is not to be just tolerated, excused, marginalized, contextualized or even forgiven. It is the very framework inside of which God makes the God-Self known and calls us into union.

You can't talk about union when you are talking about two perfections. It's like trying to put two balloons together. They are both so whole, inflated and entire - they don't need one another.

Richard Rohr, from The Little Way

How long will it take us to realise, as Christians, that perfection just isn't within our grasp. We cannot choose perfection. St. Francis wasn't perfect. St. Teresa of Avila, whom we remembered yesterday, wasn't perfect. You have only to look at their writings, or those (especially in Francis' case) of their contemporaries, to see that they were under no illusions themselves. Abba Moses the Black, one of the holiest of the Desert Fathers, famously recognised this of himself:

When a brother committed a fault and Moses was invited to a meeting to discuss an appropriate penance, Moses refused to attend. When he was again called to the meeting, Moses took a leaking jug, filled with water, and carried it on his shoulder… When he arrived at the meeting place, the others asked why he was carrying the jug. He replied, "My sins run out behind me and I do not see them, but today I am coming to judge the errors of another." On hearing this, the assembled brothers forgave the erring monk.

This passage carries within it the seed of the explanation of that strange passage in Matthew's Gospel, where Jesus says, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 7.48) For this comes directly after his remarks about loving and forgiving people, even our enemies... precisely Moses' point.

Only Jesus, himself true God from true God, can forgive out of perfection. We can only do it out of our own imperfection, our own need of forgiveness.

I want to see…

We must never presume that we see. We must always be ready to see anew. But it's so hard to go back, to be vulnerable, and to say to your soul, "I don't know anything."

Try to say that: "I don't know anything."

Maybe you could think of yourself as an erased blackboard, ready to be written on. For by and large, what blocks spiritual teaching is the assumption that we already know, or that we don't need to know.

We have to pray for the grace of beginner's mind. We need to say with the blind man, "I want to see…"

Spirituality is about seeing. It's not about earning or achieving. It's about relationship rather than results or requirements.

Once you see, the rest follows.

You don't need to push the river, because you are in it. The life is lived within us, and we learn how to say yes to that life.

If we exist on a level where we can see how "everything belongs," we can trust the flow and trust the life, the life so large and deep and spacious that it even includes its opposite, death.

Richard Rohr, from Everything Belongs

I think being on the edge is like this. Everything we truly are we already are, and yet the spiritual life is a life of becoming. The thing is, it's a life of becoming who we actually are, and that's not the way that culture, our Western culture especially, sees it. We are brought up to believe it all comes down to the bottom line, to earning and achieving, results and requirements. If we live out this "life so large and deep and spacious", we become incredibly threatening to the society of earning and achieving, results and requirements, and we will be driven out onto the edge, if we're not there already.

I don't want anyone to feel, though, that I'm saying this with any sense of a chip on my shoulder, or of being hardly done by. It's fine out on the edge, truly. It's only society that represents it to us as nasty out on the edge. Jesus, Francis, Clare and Cuthbert are better company than most bankers and stockbrokers, and a good deal more reliable, too. I like it out on the edge. The air off the sea is clean, and if I'm going to belong anywhere, I belong there.

Watchwords...

Guard against all pride, vanity, envy, avarice, the cares and worry of this world, detraction and complaining. And if you do not have book-learning, do not be eager to acquire it, but pursue instead what you should desire above all else, namely, to have the Spirit of the Lord and his grace working in you, to pray always with purity of heart and to have humility, patience in persecution and in infirmity, and to love those who persecute and rebuke and slander you, because the Lord says, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44). "Blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness: the kingdom of Heaven is theirs" (Matthew 5:10). "Anyone who stands firm to the end will be saved" (Matthew 10:22).

Saint Francis of Assisi
Rule of 1223
Ch. X

How much I need to hear these words, every day! When I look back at these ancient documents of our three Orders, I am sometimes just totally amazed at St. Francis' wisdom and grace, and the love he had for his Brothers, and for St. Clare and the rest of his Sisters in the Second Order. What a man! What else could I want to be than a Franciscan? Why did I ever think anything else?

H'm. Makes me go all silly, sometimes, thinking about it.

St. Francis, seen from Panama…

Padre Mickey in Panama has just about the best essay on St. Francis you're likely to read, even today. Like the Padre would say, all ya gotsta do is click!

St. Francis said these things…

 

I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.

Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

St. Francis said these things…

St. Francis and the larks...

The larks are birds that love the noonday light and shun the darkness of twilight. But on the night that St. Francis went to Christ, they came to the roof of the house, though already the twilight of the night to follow had fallen, and they flew about the house for a long time amid a great clamour, whether to show their joy or their sadness in their own way by their singing, we know not. Tearful rejoicing and joyful sorrow made up their song, either to bemoan the fact that they were orphaned children, or to announce that their father was going to his eternal glory. The city watchmen, who guarded the place with great care, were filled with astonishment and called the others to witness the wonder.

Thomas of Celano, Tractatus de Miraculis - 32

Sophisticated urban Westerners will often lift a weary eyebrow at stories like this, but those of us who have also spent years out in the countryside in all weathers, and at the strangest times of day, may be less inclined to... of which more sometime later, perhaps.

Walking to the edge…

Most simply and yet most difficultly, Francis is saying that we cannot change the world except insofar as we have changed ourselves. We can only give away who we are. We can only offer to others what God has done in us. We have no real head answers. We must be an answer. We only know the other side of journeys that we have made ourselves. Francis walked to the edge and so he could lead others to what he found there.

Richard Rohr, from Hope Against Darkness

The journey to the edge is a different kind of pilgrimage. I think often we have each to live through own time when the Spirit drives us "out into the wilderness" - and like Jesus, whom we follow, we cannot do what we have been called to do until we have obeyed, and faced the darkness head on. How can we help people whose pain we cannot understand, or bring Christ to people whose lives are lived in lands we haven't dreamed of? Francis could have achieved nothing had he remained on his horse: it was only when he dismounted, and embraced the leper in the road's dust, that he was released into God's calling for life.