Joyful in hope…

Joy is what makes life worth living, but for many joy seems hard to find. They complain that their lives are sorrowful and depressing. What then brings the joy we so much desire? Are some people just lucky, while others have run out of luck? Strange as it may sound, we can choose joy. Two people can be part of the same event, but one may choose to live it quite differently than the other. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other may choose despair and be destroyed by it.

What makes us human is precisely this freedom of choice.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8.28 NIV)

I think sometimes that enduring joy is simply accepting in our own lives that Paul’s remark in Romans 8.28 is literally true. It may seem odd to us, but if we let him, if we choose to trust, God will lead us into that truth.

I say this in all trepidation, since there are things in some people’s lives (there have been some in mine) that truly cannot by any human standards be said to be good, and I am not saying for a minute that we should by some spiritual sleight of hand attempt to say that they are. But God will, in the end, work in all things to bring that promise to pass.

It is a weak and sentimental Christianity that plants roses at the foot of the Cross; yet in the worst that evil could do, in the final triumph of all that is cruel and perverse and heartless, Christ was able to put to death death itself. “…he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53.5 NIV)

This is hope. “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” (Romans 12.12 NIV)

There is a crack in everything…

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen, Anthem

We are fallen things in a fallen world. This place is broken. It was broken a very long time ago, and it has been falling to bits ever since. We cannot stand aside from this brokenness. Schadenfreude is prohibited. We are in this, all of us, up to our necks. You can read the first few chapters of Genesis how you like – it makes no difference to me whether you take it as literal, metaphorical or merely allegorical – it comes to the same thing in the end. Jesus knew this very well. He spoke of it often, most tellingly perhaps in the parable of the weeds (Matthew 13.24-30):

He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” He answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’

He knew that it was painful and despair-inducing to live like this, and he knew we would always try to find ways to mend things, to pull up weeds. He knew too that it would be impossible to get it right – trying to pull up the bad stuff we’d injure and destroy the good. We can see this principle at work every day in Afghanistan, in Syria, Somalia… We can’t help it, perhaps, we have to try and fix it; we can’t bear to watch and do nothing. Paul saw this too:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Romans 8.18-25

We can’t know how to pray. But, Paul goes on to remind us (vv.26-27):

…the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

We need to learn to stay still, to wait on the Harvester at the end of things. Till then, all I can do is pray as I have been shown, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner…”

A journey through the dark...

The news from around the world is strange and disturbing again: the stock markets appear to be in panic, tyrants threatened with displacement seem to be getting a second wind, and the freedom of the Press (through its own excesses, to be sure) could well be under threat even in our own country. If ever there was a time for a call to prayer, it’s now.

Very often we understand these words “call to prayer” in a very direct intercessory sense. We think of “claiming”, “rebuking”, “pronouncing the judgements of God”; and if like me we are called to a very different way of prayer, we conclude that it can’t be addressed to us.

Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov lived through the years of the Russian Revolution, World War II, and the Cold War. A Russian, he prayed in community at Mount Athos, and later at The Monastery of St. John the Baptist at Tolleshunt Knights, Essex, England, and like most Orthodox religious, he was a contemplative. Sophrony wrote, and taught, on the practice of the Jesus Prayer, and it was to this practice that his life was given.

I feel that we all sometimes – and I am one of the worst – have far too narrow a sense of what prayer is. Paul wrote, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8.26-27)

We cannot, humanly, know how to pray in the direct, petitionary sense under these – or many – circumstances. Coming before God with our list of demands, and our advice on how best to fulfil them, simply won’t do, given the extraordinary complexity of world events, and the limited nature of the human mind. Sophrony understood this. He wrote, “Sometimes prayer seems to flag, and we cry, ‘Make haste unto me, O God’ (Ps. 70.5). But if we do not let go of the hem of his garment, help will come. It is vital to dwell in prayer in order to counteract the persistently destructive influence of the outside world.” (His Life Is Mine p.64)

Later in the same book Sophrony addressed directly the issue of prayer in a world such as ours:

The Jesus Prayer will incline us to find each human being unique, the one for whom Christ was crucified. Where there is great love the heart necessarily suffers and feels pity for every creature, in particular for man; but our inner peace remains secure, even when all is in confusion in the world outside...

It has fallen to our lot to be born into the world in an appallingly disturbed period. We are not only passive spectators but to a certain extent participants in the mighty conflict between belief and unbelief, between hope and despair, between the dream of developing mankind into a single universal whole and the blind tendency towards dissolution into thousands of irreconcilable national, racial, class or political ideologies. Christ manifested to us the divine majesty of man, son of God, and we withal are stifled by the spectacle of the dignity of man being sadistically mocked and trampled underfoot. Our most effective contribution to the victory of good is to pray for our enemies, for the whole world. We do not only believe in - we know the power of true prayer...

ibid, pp. 127-128

I wrote 18 months ago about this, and what I wrote seems so relevant to this question of prayer in the midst of a broken and despairing world that I thought I should repost it in its entirety here:

Only in silence and solitude, in the quiet of worship, the reverent peace of prayer, the adoration in which the entire ego-self silences and abases itself in the presence of the Invisible God to receive His one Word of Love; only in these “activities” which are “non-actions” does the spirit truly wake from the dream of multifarious, confused, and agitated existence.

Thomas Merton, Love & Living, Naomi Burton Stone and Br. Patrick Heart, Eds., Harcourt, 1979. p. 20-21

I wish I could express somehow how these words awaken my heart’s longing. They come like some rumour from a distant shore, like the scent of green places across a salt and barren sea at the end of a long voyage.

These are not words of escape, though. Peace yes, but no escape, no final rest until “creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (Romans 8.21) Until then, our silence and our solitude are the risk of radical openness, the love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13.7)

Prayer cannot finally rest in itself as long as there are tears shed, blood spilt, among even the least in God’s creation—for “we know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8.22-23)

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner…

The goodness of earth and sky and sea…

The way you perceive the world affects the way you live within it. Many people see the world as a dangerous, bad, even evil place. They live with fear and carry hostility and suspicion with them wherever they go.

If you see the world as a dangerous place, a dangerous place it will be. Life will be a struggle, and from the moment you rise each day you’ll find yourself pitched into a battle. The struggle might energize you. You might find pleasure in the competition, the fight, the need to win, to be right or better or wealthier than others. There’s no question that such a view of the world motivates. But there’s also plenty of evidence that viewing the world as dangerous, bad, or evil takes a toll on you—on your relationships, your body, your spirit. Such a view feeds the wars, economic woes, and the environmental troubles we’re facing on this planet.

(reposted unedited from Chris Erdman’s blog)