Tag Archives: Soul Care

Rich Man Poor Man

20 Monday Apr 2009

Posted by in In the Garden, Soul Care

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“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)

 

These mystical words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a visionary French Jesuit priest and scientist, feel true to my experience.  Yet they beg the question – to what end?  Why would a human experience be essential to our development as spiritual beings?

 

The answer comes out of the death  of a loved one and out of every important relationship we treasure.  If my mother’s life and death taught me anything, it’s that our human existence is about love, from beginning to end–how to grow it, how to share it and how to gracefully receive it.  Only love is eternal.  Only love is essential.  Only love survives the grave.  Didn’t the Beatles say the same thing –“love is the only thing” – in their song, “All You Need is Love?”  

 

Love grows out of humility, like a garden grows out of the rich dirt of humus.  Neither just happens.  Both take a whole lot of work.  In the gardening realm, especially here in Oklahoma where red clay lays just under the earth’s surface, dirt must be amended in order to create the proper environment for growth.  When preparing the soil of my new backyard garden last fall, I dug up a small dump truck of red clay and stones and replaced it with cotton burr compost and spagham peat moss, mixing both together with the remaining soil.  Digging up the red clay was back breaking work.  But, in comparison to the amending spiritual practice of humility, it was easy.

 

Humility requires us to empty ourselves of pride and the desire for honor and riches, which have no currency in the spiritual realm.  Like Jesus, we are called to travel the road of life lightly, without a lot of baggage, so that honor, possessions and pride do not insulate us from others and ourselves.   Cultivating a humble spirit in which to grow love takes more than a truck load of apologies, forgiveness, and putting others before our own needs.   And over the course of our human experience, we keep from strangling on humility by taking many, many deep swallows of pride.  As hard as all of this sounds, it’s actually harder in practice.  

 

With age, I’ve come to believe environmental influences like family & friends have less to do with who we are and who we become than the unique and personal blueprint given us on the day of our creation.  All of us have God’s eternal love buried deep within us to grow and share in a way that we alone can express it.  Our life’s work is to make visible this divine love –this image of God created and hidden within us.  We do this through our daily actions and life choices, punctuated by time-outs for reassessment of life purpose and direction. 

 

So what does this divine spiritual image of God look like in you?  Click here to go to The Upper Room, where you can begin to answer this question by taking a short test to learn more about your own spirituality type. 

Knocking On Truth

16 Thursday Apr 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care

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“… truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.”
                       — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

As a young mother, I often listened to stories of injustice told by my children, knowing I was hearing some version of the truth.  Once they were done spilling their guts, I asked about the other side of the story, the one the other mother would hear.  “The truth lies somewhere in the middle,” I’d say, knowing my point was falling on deaf ears.    

 

Speaking truth is important to me.  But at best, I am clumsy in speaking it.  I get tongue-tied.  And while much better at writing than speaking truth, even here, what I birth into the world is maimed rather than whole.  I am at cross purposes right now with a beloved child—I tried to express truth that I could not–and between the speaking and the listening, we could not grasp the truth waiting to be claimed in the middle.  My child gave up in frustration, and for now, the door is closed.  I must take time before knocking again.  And meanwhile, become like a Jehovah’s Witness on the doorstep, as I patiently wait for the door to crack open.       

 

In still thinking about last week’s retreat, I realize Jesus understood better than I this matter of closed doors and the failure to convey difficult-to-grasp truths.  Jesus was always in the uncomfortable middle–as truth always is–while the parties on either side of Jesus changed with the situation.  Sometimes it was his disciples against the needy.  Sometimes it was the Pharisees against the needy.  And on the night of his arrest, Jesus found himself in the middle between the Jewish and Roman authorities and neither seemed as interested in truth as in preserving their way of life.   

 

Jesus went against the grain when he was arrested, by not inviting his disciples to follow him.  Not even the three who had witnessed his transfiguration high and Gethsemane low were invited, though two followed anyway.  Jesus surrendered, asking the soldiers to let his disciples go free.  Keeping the disciples away from the fray would not only protect them but would protect the way of truth that defined Jesus’ life.   And Jesus knew just how hard speaking truth would be as lives hung in jeopardy, as Peter discovered firsthand, when he lied three times about knowing Jesus. 

 

Jesus made it easy for his executioners.   Speaking a few words of truth, he gave the Jewish authorities exactly what they needed to press charges against him.  And when it came to cross-examination by the Roman governor Pilate, Jesus offered little in the way of self-defense.  At least, no truth Pilate could grasp.   

 

“What is truth?” Pilate asked Jesus.  Much to the Jews revulsion, Pilate ends up writing the answer to his question on a wooden sign in three languages–“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”–which was hung high on the cross above a crucified Jesus.  “What I have written, I have written,”, Pilate says in dismissal as he slams the door on ‘the Jews’ complaints.  Perhaps Pilate found truth a little easier to communicate in writing as well. 

 

Jesus died on the cross in the middle, spilling his blood in the gospel truth.  And three days later, the resurrected Jesus began his wait as the middle person of the Trinity.  Forever at cross purposes, Jesus stands on the doorstep.  He knocks.  He waits.  And if the door opens, truth waits to be seen, to come out of the middle, to be embraced and claimed for all time.  

 

And why not?  There’s no need to knock on wood if you can knock on truth.

End of the Road

09 Thursday Apr 2009

Posted by in Far Away Places, Mesta Park, Prayer, Soul Care

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Yesterday I slipped away from everyday life to retreat at St. Francis of the Woods, just a few neighborhood streets and a forty mile stretch of ever narrowing roads. The six lane divided highway soon slimmed to four, which later reduced to two lanes to succumb to a narrow gravel road as I arrived at my destination.  By the time I had parked my car, I had run out of road.   

 

St. Francis of the Woods was formed by a Greek Orthodox priest and his wife, who like me, was raised Baptist and joined a Methodist Church in her college years.  My grandfather was raised Greek Orthodox, though he attended church sparingly, usually once a year on Easter, whether or not he needed it.  As I got out of my car, I felt an immediate kinship with this place, in large part due to our common mix of religious heritages, but then later, from learning that my host had grown up in Mesta Park before it was called that, just down the street from the house I now call home.        

 

Just as my host Tim was turning to leave, I remembered a jar of jam I had in my car for Chris, the center’s director.  Before leaving home, my eye had fallen on some jars of blackberry jam I’d canned last July and without analyzing why, I grabbed a jar to give to Chris.  When I asked Tim if he would give it to Chris for me, he looked a little puzzled.  Then, as if clearing up a mystery, he said, “Oh, you must know how much Chris loves blackberries.”  No.  I hadn’t known this—and then I explained the happenstance way my blackberry jam came to be in his hand.  Still coming to terms with the gift, Tim told me how Chris had just purchased two blackberry bushes that week and how pleased he was going to be to receive this gift.  Thanking me over and again, he hurried away with jam in hand, and I suspect his next stop was wherever Chris was working, so they could ponder and enjoy this perfect and mysterious gift of blackberry jam together.

 

He left me to ponder mysterious and perfect gifts as well, though mine was not as easy as a jar of blackberry jam.  I had come to reflect on the stories surrounding Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion.  I spent six hours at St. Francis – the same amount of time it took Jesus to die on the cross – and I’m not sure what gifts I carried home with me.  I’m still coming to terms with this – and it may take a lot more sorting out.  But I know I was chilled to the bone as I prayed these Scriptures.  And I know that the crucifixion of Jesus was not understood as some mysterious and perfect gift at the time it happened.  But similar to my own road that morning, the road for Jesus grew narrower and less civilized the closer he came to his final destination.  And when, he reached the cross, he had run out of road.