Sunday to Monday

Worship on Sunday praises God for the gifts of God's goodness in our lives. As Christians we most powerfully experience that goodness in three ways, through the life of Christ that dwells in human life, through the intimate presence of the Holy Spirit that enables us to continually be attentive to that life within us, and through our community with one another in that life. Moving from Sunday to Monday, this week, reflect where you attention most frequently rests. Is it on the irrations, time pressure, and obligations? Or, can you bring your attention to the moment, this moment, any moment savoring that Christ is within you, around you, above you and below you.

Journey, Again

Not all journeys are pilgrimages of progressive steps towards the unknown and revealing an inner wisdom. Some journeys are steps, progressive or not, to find what is know and recreate the lost. A serious computer crash that wipes clean documents that were made with our thoughts and hands, that deletes events and appointments that represent anticipated relationships, that cancels contacts that hold a history of our personal and professional interconnectedness, creates a journey to recapture what is known and recreate the lost. It is a journey of grief of what is gone. It is journey of grief for what was planned and it now replaced with efforts to regather. It is a journey of grief for good intentions and commitment to one's work. The promise is that God is present in every journey. What springs forth from our efforts now will carry that blessing and the mark of Christ's life within us. What we recreate will show forth what God intends for us now.

The Journey Matters II

The piligrimage journey to Iona changed all of our lives. For ten days we lived in a closer relationship with one another and with God than any of us experienced before. We reflected on the presence of God in our day, in the moments of beauty, justice, and creation, in the moments of friendship and discovery. Rather than an abrupt awakening or conversion, the change was subtle, gentle, bringing forth the seed God had already planted there. The lyrics of this song we learned at Iona captures this emerging life, "God has chosen me, God has chosen me, and planted a seed, he knows that I need. Its fruit shall be joy."

The Journey Matters

The title of today's post is borrowed from the mission of St. George's School, "Because the journery matters." The time to journey from last February and the last blog to today's post drew upon love, strength, balance, patience, and, the need to be flexible. In the journey of these days, God's presence was felt when everyone at St. John's adjusted schedules to cope with the snow. The presence of God was celebrated in the transitions of life: graduations, weddings, baptisms, retirements. Many drew closer into the presence of God through the pilgrimage to Iona. The journey of each day added another step to this season of a different pace. The words to describe the journey, this time, are not what is most important. What matters is the journey of these days in God's presence and with God's people.

Personal and Public Hospitality

Hospitality recognized the 'stranger' as a child of God lwho is oved and valued in God's eyes as much as we ourselves are loved and valued. Hosptiality is an act of the our heart opening to the heart of another. In this way, hospitality is a personal practice, an act we an offer at any time and at any place.

Hospitaltiy has another dimension as a public act. The sign of this public act is our greeting of someone we do not know. A hand shake, sharing our name, listening for the guest's name in return. However these signs of public greeting are not the same as the public practice of hospitality. The public act of hospitality is to gather with others as a community and place ourselves in relationship to God. One person described it this way to me, "I need time to get on my knees each week with people who are seeking to believe, with people I know and I don't know. Getting on my knees places me in the posture of humanity in relationship to God's divinity."

As a community, we kneel knowing we a loved by God and yet we are not God. Kneeling togehter in our collective humanity is a public act of hospitality, welcoming one another in relationship with God and one another in Jesus Christ.

Practicing Hospitality

While I sit inside my house snowed in, I am practicing hospitality. None of us knows when we will be subject to the mercy and goodness of strangers. Today, I am at the mercy and goodness of 'strangers' who will be plowing the roads, patroling the streets, staffing the ER if I experience a medical emergency, managing the use of public resources to get businesses open and people back to work. Most of these people are unknown to me but the professionalism and goodness with which they do their jobs influence my life significantly. I am practicing hospitality by recognizing the contribution, and sacrifice, these people are making on my behalf.

While we tend to think of strangers as those who we do not know in our congregations, as those who orginiate from a culture different from our own, as people so unfamiliar we need to be wary of them, strangers are actually part of our lives every day. Perhaps a story will illustrate. One Easter dawn several years ago, I was walking from the rectory to the church. No one was awake and moving about except a police officer in his patrol car. I smiled, waved, and kept walking. Later that morning at the packed Easter service was a man, attending alone, who I did not recognize. Then I noticed his uniform.

An unfamiliar face at worship may be someone who has worked extra shifts at the hospital because other medical staff did not make it through the snow. Or, a teacher connecting to this new parish community. Others have received their goodness and mercy. Practicing hospitality welcomes these 'strangers' into the life of the worshipping community that morning.

Much of our current scriptures are translated from Greek. The Greek word for stranger also means guest and host. We can treat one another as strangers, or, we can recognize that interplay between guest host. Sometimes we are the guest, subject to the mercy and goodness of another. And sometimes we are the host, offering that mercy and goodness to the guest. Practicing Hospitality is recognizing the mutality of our relationships with one another.

Christian Practices

Since the early centuries, Christians have been known as followers of The Way. Jesus names himself, The Way, The Truth, and The Life. How each generation faithfully finds The Way requires reflecting, debating, theologizing, and even as today, sometimes arguing.

Practicing Our Faith, A Way of Life for a Searching People offers guidance to contemporary Christians. The editor, Dorothy Bass, engages authors from across the spectrum of current scholarship and practice. As she describes in the opening pages, instead of examing the whole of Christian life, the contributors name the most important activies that comprise the Christian life.

Christian Practices are described as: "addressing fundatmental needs and conditions through concrete human acts," "done together over time," "posses standards of excellence," and, show us "how our daily lives as all tangled up in the things God is doing in the world." (pages 6-8). All the practices are necessary for a balanced and healthy Christian life but focusing on one will open up ways to practice the others.

Christian practices will be the focus of the next several posts. Yesterday highlighted the practice of Sabbath Keeping. Today, I invite you to reflect on the elements, or dimensions, of your spiritual life that show you "how your daily life is all tangled up in the things God is doing." What engages you in the world and brings you into closer relationship with God?