Cowley Magazine – SSJE: Recent Episodes
Cowley Magazine – SSJE
We hope that in reflecting on the growth that can come from chaos, you will find it meaningful to share in discussion of these questions with others.
What are the focal concerns of your life: those things that matter most and give meaning and value to all else?
What pulls you from lethargy and calls you to engage Life? Where do you draw close to the restorative power of God’s creation?
When and how have you discovered the goodness in waiting and slowness?
When have you hit the red line of your own limits – and how did you respond?
What limits have given life to you, which you did not choose? Have you made peace with them?
Do you have struggles that you hide from God? What keeps you quiet? What would it take to share them?
What examples of conflict and conflict resolution did you have growing up? How did they shape the way you deal with conflict now?
Faced with threat, are you more prone to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn? Why is that?
When have you met Jesus on the hard road? How did you know it was him?
How are you being “pressured from within to become more”?
Q: Take us back to the beginning: when did you first start to have a sense of a monastic vocation, and what was it that was drawing you?
I first started going to an Episcopal church in college. I was very eager to learn more and go deeper, so I met with the priest there regularly, usually at least once a month, to ask him a bunch of questions (and leave with a bunch of books). Eventually, I approached him and said that I was interested in talking about – well, I didn’t call it this, but – vocational discernment. He was the one who suggested a monastic vocation to me, based on some of the things he’d been hearing from me and seeing in me over the previous months. And while it didn’t immediately click, something about it planted its roots in my brain.
I was thinking about it every day. Finally, after a few months, I sent that priest an email and said, “I think I need to meet with you again, because – to my surprise – this idea is just not leaving. I think about this every day now.”
I will also say that I remember even being a kid and not having much of a religious context, yet being fascinated by monks or monk-like figures that I encountered in pop culture. I loved the Jedi in Star Wars. I loved the book series, Redwall, about woodland creatures living in Redwall Abbey, a monastic setting in a forest in England. I remember I really loved watching the Disney film, the animated Robin Hood and seeing Friar Tuck. So as a child, I had these Jedi warrior monks and these monastic woodland creatures whom I just loved. I found them so fascinating, even though I had no broader context for it. But, it’s interesting that even though this vocation certainly started explicitly when I was in college, there was also just something attractive about it for me, in the ways I encountered it, from an early age.
Q: Was there any resistance or reluctance, or was your sense of being called to this more an experience of eagerness?
Oh, there was fear. I visited a few different communities, and there was definitely some fear and trembling each time. When I came on visits here, to SSJE, I very purposefully asked each Brother I met with, “How did you get here?” I was trying to wrap my head around how a real person ends up in this situation. Trying to see the people here as real people was a major part of being able to see myself here.
I came to the Monastery when I was twenty-four, which was pretty young. I was asking, “Am I too young? Maybe this could be right in the future, but maybe not now?” I was raised with the expectation that you’re not going to stay in the same career all your life. You’re not going to live in the same place all of your life. And so there was some real fear for me around the awareness that I could be starting a path that ends up with me moving here and doing this for the rest of my life. That was scary. Yet as I considered my options, I did a lot of thinking about whether I was attracted to those options as they were, in themselves, or whether I was attracted to the idea of having options. And ultimately it was the latter. I realized that question of “options” was more of an impediment to me choosing something I wanted, rather than the actual freedom it seemed like. I realized that what I really wanted was this.
Q: Once you arrived, was it different than you’d anticipated?
I think everyone goes through some disillusionment when they first come here. That sounds bad, but the removal of illusion is a good thing (it’s just a painful thing). It might be disillusionment about the community; it could be disillusionment about specific individuals; it could be disillusionment about yourself. I certainly had all three.
Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has written several books about the spirituality of Benedictine monasticism. In one of the introductory chapters of The Benedictine Way he talks about how monastic asceticism is directed to an end: to teach people to rely on God. Being troubled or disillusioned is kind of a necessary part of that. And that includes being disillusioned with yourself.
You know, I didn’t magically become an expert at the contemplative life or something. Some days I still struggle with very basic things that I think I should have moved on from by now. But that’s also led to changes in me; there’s real growth. Those very challenges that push against the romantic image you might have in your head are directed, in the end, to growth in love of God and love of neighbor. It’s pretty basic stuff – not just for the monk, but for the Christian – but it’s what’s most important.
Q: What advice would you give to someone at the beginning stages of discerning a possible vocation to monastic life?
Ask God! Involve God in your decision-making. Don’t just try and guess at God’s will, but actually pray about it.
Discernment also involves talking with people who know you – whether that’s on a personal level, with your friends and family, or in a pastoral way, as when I talked with my priest. One of the most important conversations I had when I was inquiring into this life took place with a friend of mine who was raised as a Muslim and who was basically non-religious in his day-to-day life. I had no deep spiritual common ground with him, and he had no context for this way of life, but when I told him, “I’m thinking of becoming a monk,” he said, “Yeah, I can see that.” He knew me. Listening to the input of others, both the people around you and of course, God, can be a very good way of testing what you feel might be a call.
Q: How has life changed on the other side of life vows?
In monastic life, there are these very tangible stages, where you know that in a few months or in a few years, there’s a new decision to make. But after life vows, there isn’t a next stage. That feels a little weird initially, because it’s sort of like, “Okay, now what? Now what do I look forward to?” But quickly, that feeling was replaced with sense of a lot of freedom to act. I’ve chosen a solid foundation, and I can act from that foundation now. I feel a lot of freedom to do that because it’s now secure in a way it wasn’t before.
After life vows, you’re on a lifelong timespan, and there’s a lot more freedom in the imagining of what could be real in your life here. I’ve come more and more to realize that my desire to have other options actually can be an impediment to me freely making the choices I want to make. And so I have found – in actually making that choice and locking it down – a real sense of freedom. I have the rest of my life to figure out the structure or structures that make my prayer happen, and facilitate my relationship with God, and facilitate my ability to love others – all of those things I feel so deeply called to do. Now I have the time and space, the community and the place, in which to do that life’s work. “Now what?” I ask myself. And, you know, that’s, that’s an exciting question for me, because there are lots of possibilities, and I have the rest of my life to find my different answers.
The brothers of SSJE pray regularly for the cessation of war, the safe return of captives, and just and lasting peace for the Holy Land. We spoke with Christian Calawa, a regular worshiper at the monastery, about a recent experience of prayer and fasting for peace in Gaza that he helped organize.
Can you describe for us the basic outline of the fast?
The week was a 5-day fast with a core group of people down in DC. Some people had to come and go, but there were five of us who went without food for five days. There were a lot of people who joined remotely, largely in New England and some outside of New England and the East Coast, who joined in prayer twice a day, on a Zoom meeting that was structured. It was all very interfaith. We went from spiritual breathing exercises in the Ayurvedic tradition, to Compline, to other forms of prayers. But a lot of this was born out of a feeling of helplessness, a feeling that this world is very big and a lot larger than we’re able to engage with meaningfully in the way that we want to, that feeling being one of paralysis, and acceptance, and trust and belief that prayer is meaningful action, that prayer is not a passive thing to a God who is absent, that our prayer and intercessions are real and worthy of time. This is way we can participate as members of the faith community. It largely ended up being Christian.
We had a couple different themes. We were down in DC, and we spent one day each in front of big DC institutions: the White House, the Capitol building, the Israeli embassy, the Holocaust Museum, the Washington National Cathedral. Each day, the prayer was pointed toward the institution we were sitting outside of. There was prayer for wisdom, prayer for peace, prayer not to be bound by the normal political order that would often be slow or ineffective or managerial, prayer for meaningful action. That included all different forms; we weren’t very prescriptive on what prayer meant or what we wanted it to mean. I think allowing space for people to pray for deliverance, for justice, for aid, things both practical and impractical, that ultimately the God who is sovereign over all of this would be in control, that good may come out of the seemingly endless darkness was surrounding a lot of this.
How did this effort come about?
It was actually inspired by a good friend of mine, who was very frustrated with the Church, and the Church’s tendency toward apathy, and a lack of recognition of the world that we live in, the things dominating our newsfeeds, and the weight that that bears on parishioners and other people in the world. The Church was very silent, both in not taking a stand or engaging politically, but also in a stance of purely not mentioning it at all, or very passingly. It felt, and still does feel, like a culture that has a lot of fear around saying the wrong thing and losing people. And so a friend of mine was very fed up with that, and wanted to put her money where her mouth was, and say that Christians should be engaged with the world, as much as they should be engaged in prayer. That these things are not opposed to each other, that holiness and purity are not set apart from the messiness of the world, and ultimately that all of our prayer and all of our action, although imperfect, if done in trust of the Lord can be sanctified.
Would you describe this as political?
Yes, and it has to be, both in the sense that everything is political, and also that politics is also revolving around this a lot right now. It’s very political, and in some ways charged against a Church that wants to be very political in maintaining its purity, in order not to upset members, or constituent members, or partners that churches have. We met with the bishop of DC, and we heard from her as well as other parish churches, that they partner with more Zionist-leaning groups that take a much harder stance of “pro-Israel” rather than “pro-Palestinian,” and to make a statement or to come out strongly in favor of a people group that was being oppressed and killed, and still is being oppressed and killed, was dangerous. It would’ve ruffled a lot of feathers, it would’ve caused a lot of drama, it may have caused funding issues. There’s a perceived weakness in the Church, with dwindling attendance and numbers and finances, “well at least we have to maintain what is here, and we want to engage the world but we want to make sure that we’re doing that well, in a way that’s not alienating members of the community, to be very attentive to that.” And I think this movement, was political in the sense, not only, “Why don’t you take a political stance in favor of the safety and the dignity of the human lives that are being killed or removed from their homes?” but also to say that the Church is not dead when it doesn’t have any members in it, but that the Church is dead when it refuses to speak to any truth, regardless of whatever that truth is, whether it’s a full declaration in favor of immediate ceasefire, or it’s saying that we want to continuously pray and be a presence that is continuously engaging with the world, and praying for peace, and praying for justice, and praying that wisdom and leadership in conversation with the complexity that is on both sides, and the pain that is on both sides of this conflict, like every conflict. Simply, it is to engage.
One reason people might be less inclined to engage with this sort of thing is that this most recent violence was precipitated by killings and hostage-taking on the part of Hamas.
Yes. Absolutely legitimate. October 7th was horrific. I have no problem saying that.
What would you say to churches and church leaders who are worried about alienating people by speaking out on this subject?
A lot of this organization drew from Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement, who were very staunch pacifists during the Spanish Civil War and World War II. She has a line in The Long Loneliness, her autobiography, where she says something like “everyone knew that we were pacifists, and that meant not engaging with the weapons of war, and now that we were making calls to enact that as the war effort was ramping up, I’m shocked that people are now all of a sudden outraged that we’re calling people to leave their jobs, because of course that’s what we were doing, that’s what we were always doing.” I think the more radical side of me says that you have to act in truth and according to your conscience and according to what you believe the Lord is speaking and doing, and being open to the possibilities of what that could actually mean, and that might mean losing funding and losing members, but I think that ultimately comes back to where we put our trust. I think a trust in God is unwavering and very sacrificial and costs a lot.
Maybe it’s easier for me to say that because I’m young and I don’t have a lot to lose. I don’t know the weight of shepherding an entire community of believers. But I do think speaking in a way that is honest and forthright about, not only issues that the person in charge of a community sees as valuable, but also clearly the world is seeing as valuable, that there’s clearly a lot of attention and a lot of weight on, is respecting members to respond in autonomy to a perceived truth, and to respond in grace as opposed to not letting them respond at all by keeping things very quiet. I think it’s actually very dignifying to the other person to confront in a way that is loving and kind and not at all attempting to alienate, but is attempting to love and serve as best we know how those who are poor, those who are oppressed, those who are sick, that the actual engagement of that question is far more honoring to people even if they decide to leave the Church. If that is their response, that is the response that they have chosen. At least they chose that response.
I’m struck by your use of the word “radical.” We often equate “radical” with “reckless,” but this effort doesn’t seem reckless. It was highly organized, and any group fast of that length requires discipline.
It was certainly not aggressive in any way. I don’t think it was disruptive at all. I think “radical” also feels very personal to me and my attitude toward engagement with the world, issues that I have strong beliefs on but quick to dismiss and fade into the background of everyday life. I was very surprised by myself agreeing to go down to DC, and even agreeing to fast for five days, I’ve never fasted for nearly that long, so it all felt very radical, and somewhat uncomfortable. There’s a real desire to go back to brunch, and to focus on myself in ways I need to be doing anyway, as we all need to be doing. “Radical” in this sense feels more akin to not hiding, not being avoidant of truth, and to take those convictions to a level of action that feels appropriate once you allow that fear to wash over you. I’ve constantly been very challenged by the verse “Perfect love casts out fear.” That is the thing that casts out fear, the call of love, the call of Jesus and of faith is one that, if obediently followed, can cast out fear, and call you into greater love, and it’s only when that is ignored that that fear all of a sudden becomes held a lot more firmly.
Why fasting? Why did that feel like the appropriate response?
Fasting met this intersection of traditional political action and religious devotion that a lot of us found very intriguing, and brought with it some potential downfalls as well. Inspired by Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, these social movements that are very much praised that were rooted in a personal decision of piety that was then public facing, mixed with the devotional call to fasting found in religious life that is the emptying of oneself and relying solely on manna that is from heaven and not from earth. The intersection of those things felt very true to this cause and spoke to a lot of the powerlessness that we feel and what would politically sharpen our resolve in this tradition of political nonviolence, combined with the spiritual devotion in the immediacy of need for God found in just being hungry, and all of the things that happen to the body that correspond to that, all the strange desires that come about from being hungry, that really hones your sense of needing to rely on Christ in way that does not depend on your own will or your own strength. There’s a recognition of weakness that I think is really important when coupled with political engagement, the humility that does not come from the strength you mentioned of being more “radical,” not being somewhat reckless or somewhat prideful, not serving the self. I’m not against serving the self entirely. It felt good to go and protest, and I’m glad it did. But the orientation of that always has to be, in oneself, if honestly taken account of, toward the God we love and serve.
I asked earlier if you felt this effort was political. Would you describe yourself as political?
Historically no. In the sense that we all use, some who is political really enjoy about politics, caring a lot about voting, being an activist in any sort of way, historically no. I’ve certainly engaged with the topics more personally, never much communally. I think I’m political in that I do take seriously the realization that to not engage is also a choice that is political, that is casting a vote towards normalcy of whatever system is in play. So no, in the traditional sense of how we use it, but yes, of course.
A major part of this was that there was a community of people, in-person and following along at home, participating. How did that effect your experience?
There was the core group of people down in DC. Communally what that meant was a real reliance on one another, and an ability to speak our own frustrations, to pray together communally. “Wherever two or more are present, God is there.” That made it feel much more real than praying alone in one’s bed, and a level of accountability, more prayer and more action happened than would have otherwise.
Immediately surrounding was the remote group who were fasting according to however much they wanted to participate and praying alongside. That felt very encouraging of a broader social group of people, a lack of loneliness, a sense that all hope is not loss, that people are engaging and want to be here and want to be participating in any way they can, and there’s a hunger for this.
I think even more broadly than that, I was posting on social media. I was in DC for a week, so I was telling all of my friends, or other people not involved in this, or people in my church community, that I was going down to DC, and they would ask why, and I wouldn’t lie or hide any of the truth of the matter. So there’s a real feeling of identifying with this decision I had made, that individually it’s much easier to not make that a part of your identity to take on that view of the other looking at you, making this decision that maybe they don’t agree with. There’s nowhere to hide when you’re telling everyone you’re going to fast for Palestine for a week. You get a variety of responses, a variety of engagement, and it has led to a lot of conversations that I would have never had otherwise with people. I’m very grateful for all the unexpected things that community brought out of this, as community always does.
Can you speak about the difference between political and religious engagement?
A lot of the time spent down in DC, we were sitting in front of the White House, or the Capitol building, or the Israeli embassy, these are very secular political institutions, and our prayers for that were very steadfast. But I think the area that a lot of us feel like there’s a lot more room for engagement and immediate action we can take part in was at the church level. Our day at the National Cathedral in DC, and meeting with the Bishop of DC, to talk about the resolutions happening at the National Convention in June, that engagement with the church community is a real precedent that we all want to set, and we do not want a church that is disembodied, that is catering to people, but that is inviting people into something that is much larger, a vision of resurrection that is not based on individual piety, but is based on a communal understanding that we all depend upon each other’s toil, that my salvation is bound up in the other. That ended up being a lot of our focus, especially toward the latter half of our fast, the realization that this was our world, if we speak to anywhere, not even more effectively, but more truthfully. This is the language we speak, we know the language of church, the language of God. An engaged church community can be a real force against hopelessness and despair, both here and abroad. One of the people who was fasting remotely contacted us, and they had contacted family members that they had in Gaza, and they reached out to them and told them about the fast that was going on, and the remote faster told us that the person in Gaza just told everybody, and they all prayed for our movement, and were overjoyed that there was real attention and care being brought out. It was a surprisingly emotional moment, where I think a lot of the orientation had been, “What can we do for Gaza? What can we do about our church’s complicity in sending money and weapons?” But that script also being reversed, not only can we bless the people in Gaza, but they can bless us back, and give us real strength for the rest of that day. That was the fourth day, when we were all very hungry and counting down the hours until we could eat again. That that mutual exchange was so life-giving and affirming of a love that speaks far beyond any of our immediate actions.
People might feel reservation about churches becoming primarily political or social activist clubs, without a substantial theology. How do churches engage with these struggles without losing sight of the primary call to pray, and to strive after God?
It’s a good question. A lot of the conversations I have around the Boston area in the Episcopal Church, there seems to be the more high liturgy Anglo-Catholic tradition, churches that are very reverential and proud of their reverence from their heritage and want to keep all of the focus on God, and then there are these more evangelical Episcopal churches that tend to be more social activist leaning, that tend to be more engaged with the world, that a lot of people from the Anglo-Catholic side look down on, and then a lot of people from the evangelical side look at the Anglo-Catholics as being too separated from the world in their ivory tower. I do think this is a false dichotomy, and one that doesn’t serve either side of this generalized observation. What I would want is a church that is rooted in the liturgy and the preaching of God’s word, with the constant acknowledgement that that word is bound in a very practical and physical reality, in the body we live in. Maybe I’m young and naïve, but I think you can have it both ways.
And I’ve seen it done, where the orientation is unapologetically reverent, and oriented solely toward the worship and glorification of God, and a recognition of all of that glorification and worship takes place communally, and that the calls to care for the poor the widow and orphan are very serious calls, and things that need to be engaged with, both in the hearts and the minds. I grew up in a very evangelical culture, where the idea of a Christian being in the world but not of the world was praised, as not being too tainted or too worldly, but I think a recognition that everything God has made can be sanctified and is good as he called it good, has to be the foundation of a theology that is able to rightly honor and worship God, and take care of the world that he has given to us to take care of.
I want it both ways. And I want us to keep struggling to find it both ways. I think for me, and what I want for the Church more broadly, is the ability and grace to take imperfect action, and to trust in a God who is able to sanctify imperfect action, because all of this action we’re taking already is imperfect, and we’re trusting in his grace now. We should continue to do so.
⇓ Download, print and share: On the Hard RoadWe never thought life would be like this, never considered we could lose so much. Death keeps shattering our plans and expectations with loss. Everything is upended. The world feels doomed, and things don’t make sense anymore. What will happen next?
It’s hard to believe he’s gone. We’ve been together so long.
The doctors said there’s not much they can do.
If I lose this job, I don’t know how to keep supporting them.
We can’t go back. We have to find a way here.
Our words of disbelief and grief today could echo back, nearly unchanged, those spoken two thousand years ago, when two grieving companions talked together on the road to Emmaus. They shared their grief at losing Jesus, their friend, whom they expected would save them, but who was betrayed, killed, and buried. They talked of the body missing, and people supposedly seeing angels.
As these two walk to Emmaus, Jesus comes walking alongside them. They don’t recognize the one they love. The man asks about their conversation, sees and hears their sadness, and then shares about his own suffering, speaking through the language of scripture.
Our words of disbelief and grief today could echo back, nearly unchanged, those spoken two thousand years ago, when two grieving companions talked together on the road to Emmaus.
Hard as it is to believe, this is resurrection: feeling loss and disorientation, long talks of grief, and receiving a stranger’s compassionate presence. Easter does not come with quick fixes or easy answers. There are times when we do not even see that Jesus is here, alive, with us: Jesus came to Mary as she visited the tomb, and she supposed him to be a gardener; he came to a frightened community gathered behind locked doors; to a group out fishing for whom he provided breakfast; and to these two friends, on the way and linked in sad talk.
This is still true: Jesus comes where we are now, amid difficult emotions, perplexing questions, as we walk and eat. Frederick Buechner wrote: “Jesus is apt to come into the very midst of life at its most real and inescapable moments. … He never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.”
One way to see Jesus is to stop and look back. Ignatius of Loyola taught that reflecting and then giving thanks is a key way to pray. I see Jesus more easily by looking back. In the past day or more, for what are you most thankful? Perhaps a kind word or gesture, a fear unmanifested, a beauty glimpsed, a memory recalled. “How did you receive love? When were you most fully alive?” Sometimes it’s only after an experience that we can see what it truly held and meant for us. When the two disciples finally recognized Jesus in Emmaus, they were then able to remember their “hearts burning within” while Jesus spoke to them on the road. Recognition comes later. We have to stop and look back to not miss it.
Hard as it is to believe, this is resurrection: feeling loss and disorientation, long talks of grief, and receiving a stranger’s compassionate presence. Easter does not come with quick fixes or easy answers.
To see Jesus, we often have to seek company. If you feel blind and weighed down in grief, you are not alone. Many of us feel the same. Like the two companions on the road, speak your grief to compassionate friends and strangers. Pray even when God feels absent. Jesus is present alongside us including when we do not see him.
Pray your pain. If you’re wanting help with words, about half of the psalms are honest examples. Start with Psalm 13 and Psalm 102. Lament is a cry of pain and a cry of trust. It is stark and boldly real about pain and suffering, and it assumes being heard.
Lament is not just for Lent or Holy Week but for life. Even God grieves! In Genesis 6, God “grieved in the heart” at how people behaved. Jesus wept over Jerusalem and at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. From the cross, Jesus cried out with words from Psalm 22, trust and question in tender, wrenching symmetry: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Lament is our ancient prayer and part of being human.
Consider this: How do you know when children are upset? They flail, cry, hit, stomp, and resist. How do children look when at ease, trusting? They slump, lean into us and objects, hug back, and rest.
As a child of God, I find that one way I am praying is like a child: with my body. I hit the air with my fists, then slowly push and pull as with a heavy object. Tensing arms and clenching fists, I curl or twist and stay in that tension offering my constricted self. This is a way of praying, expressing the pain.
Then I let go and relax, leaning against a wall or lying on the floor, letting my whole weight be supported. Taking deep breaths, I trust God holds me fully. I also stand with my arms outstretched and tilted back imagining I am floating in the ocean, or alternately tilted forward as if floating on a cloud. These are ways of expressing and feeling trust.
Music beckons the body to move, to dance, to express sighs too deep for words. Pray with music that prompts such tensing and hitting pain or such floating trust – or find music that invites both. Children of God, pray your confusion and pain, what is hard to bear. Ask for grace to trust and move in such a way that you can feel free to express and receive what is true for you.
Children of God, pray your confusion and pain, what is hard to bear.
Psychiatrist Curt Thompson encourages us to not deny our losses or diminish them by trying to compare our experience with someone else. Your grief is real, and it is yours. Thompson suggests writing down each day at least one thing you have lost or are losing. Then also name a couple things for which you are thankful. In this way, pray both grief and gratitude.
A tree with a large broken limb hanging down inspires both these moods of prayer in me. I let one arm bend, droop, twist, and hang, feeling the weight of what is broken and hurts. I then raise the other arm upward like healthy limbs in gratitude. Like the tree, I experience both realities at the same time and thus pray weight and wonder, grief and gratitude.
Jesus persistently comes to us, with us, alongside us – including when we do not see him. Not in dazzling power, but in the glimmering presence of shared stories, Jesus walks and eats with us. Pray your story wherever you are in its unfolding, perhaps with movements, shaking pain or floating trust. Jesus is with us, grieving with us, listening with love, and gently fanning our soul’s faint embers into flame.
Jesus is with us, grieving with us, listening with love, and gently fanning our soul’s faint embers into flame.
Questions for Reflection
– When have you met Jesus on the hard road? How did you know it was him?
– How does your body ask to pray? Do you pray with walking, or dancing, or other forms of movement? Will you try a new way of moving your prayer?
– Pray both grief and gratitude. Which one feels more present to you right now?
Is it possible this this is easter: the pain, the grief, the confusion, and the loss we know only too well? On the hard road of life, Br. Luke Ditewig promises us, we do and will encounter Jesus, who comes alongside us even when we do not see him. This is resurrection.
⇓ Download, print and share: The Brakes – learning conflict resolution“Oh, That I Had Wings Like a Dove”
I didn’t experience healthy examples of conflict resolution growing up. My parents were not happy in their marriage, and while there was no physical violence, wars of words were an everyday occurrence. Bullying was prevalent all through my primary and secondary education, with antagonism coming from both peers and teachers. Apparently if you wanted to motivate someone to behave and perform the way you wanted them to, there was no method more powerful than invoking fear and shame. You’re lazy. We’re just trying to learn how to live with you. You need to grow up. Why can’t you get your act together? These phrases I’ve heard and experienced my whole life.
Maybe this is why I have always had difficulty with conflict resolution. Throughout my life, I’ve wondered why there appear to be so many others who engage in conflict and emerge unscathed.
What about you? If you are like me, you may know the experience of having been bullied as a child and/or adult. You may have been singled out for ridicule based on your looks, your clothes, your interests, or your intellect. Perhaps you have been at the receiving end of verbal abuse from a teacher, mentor, employer, or someone whom you held in high esteem. Maybe you have felt dismissed by a friend, family member, or spouse, and have felt unworthy of love, respect, or dignity.
According to an article published online by Psychology Today, verbal aggression not only damages a child’s self-esteem, but also has been found to alter the development of a child’s brain. Studies show that emotional pain affects the same part of the brain as physical pain, and that verbal aggression can be internally absorbed by the body. Author Peg Streep summarized the science this way: “Words are powerful—they can lift us up and beat us down, soothe us or wound us.”
To be honest, my tendency when I feel threatened is to exit the scene as quickly as possible. Among the rotation of Psalms that we Brothers pray during Morning Prayer at the Monastery is Psalm 55. Its subject is conflict, and I feel similar to the Psalmist when we chant their words: “And I said, ‘Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee to a far-off place and make my lodging in the wilderness. I would hasten to escape from the stormy wind and tempest.’”
My tendency when I feel threatened is to exit the scene as quickly as possible.
This passage often takes me back to a memory from early high school. It was customary at band camp to dress the freshmen up in silly outfits one evening at dinner and then to rehearsal directly after. I remember being made to wear a tutu, wig, tiara, and make-up. I felt nothing but shame and humiliation. My fight, flight, or freeze response kicked in, and I chose to run as fast as I could. After a brief search, I was eventually found in my room by an upperclassman who calmed me down and talked me into participating in the initiation with my peers. But I’ll never forget that my initial reaction was that I was in danger, and rather than confronting it, I ran.
This insight to “flee” has carried over into my adulthood. I can attest to many instances throughout the years when, in a state of distress over some internal conflict in our community, I’ve fantasized about “switching communities” – which would be a life-sized version of the “flight” response. In truth, most of us belong to more than one community at a time, and it can be tempting in the face of conflict to simply imagine leaving. We might be prone to wonder: what would it be like if our immediate community (where we may be experiencing conflict more acutely) and our “outer” communities (where relationships may feel easier or less dangerous) switched places? Would being surrounded by different people assuage the intensity of conflict that we experience within our current inner circle?
Since becoming a monk, I’ve learned that this fantasy is inspired by a principle called acedia, which the desert monastics nicknamed “the noonday demon.” Acedia is the idea that the grass is greener in other pastures and that, by remaining in our current situation, we are missing out on all that would heal and complete us. While periods of discernment about a change in circumstances might sometime be warranted, usually, the process of healing and completion can often be found – through God’s grace – exactly at the place that is the current source of our pain. Leaving would rob us of that chance.
And yet, if we are going to stay, we need to learn strategies for how to engage in conflict well. In an increasingly fast-paced and volatile world, where everyone is talking and no one is listening, learning strategies for self-awareness and the strengthening of the “brakes” of our minds is crucial.
If we are going to stay, we need to learn strategies for how to engage in conflict well.
I want to share some strategies that have proved helpful for me, and which we all—especially those of us who profess Jesus Christ (the prince of peace) as Lord—can employ to strengthen our brakes and foster an atmosphere of safety within us and around us. I hope that these strategies will allow us to experience grace-filled resolutions at the source of conflict. Maybe even to be among the peace-makers in our own orbit.
First, it is crucial that we practice a healthy awareness of our bodies, which helps to facilitate how we experience the world around us, especially when we are in a place of uncertainty. Regardless of brain-type, everyone is equipped with the reptilian brain response of fight, flight, or freeze. Unless you have well-honed self-awareness skills, limbic responses can exacerbate conflict through misunderstanding and miscommunication. When teaching neurodiverse children and adults about their ADHD brains, Psychiatrists Edward Hallowell and John Ratey use the metaphor of having a Ferrari engine for a brain that is ill-equipped with bicycle brakes. The key for those folks—and the rest of us—is to learn strategies that strengthen the brakes.
The process of healing and completion can often be found exactly at the place that is the current source of our pain.
When I recognize a limbic response in my body resulting from a situation of disagreement with another person, especially someone in my inner-circle, I try to reorient my response to one of curiosity rather than aggression. Curiosity helps me to investigate my feelings by asking a standard set of questions: “What do you mean when you say…..?” “Could you tell me more about that?” By asking the person questions from a place of curiosity, I am better able to determine why I am experiencing anxiety. Is what I thought I heard accurate, or did I misunderstand? Are the feelings I am experiencing in the present situation authentic, or are they tied to either a past situation or preconceived anxieties about the future? Limbic signals received during a disagreement or conflict with someone close to us can feel like—and therefore remind us of—past trauma. But that does not mean that trauma is occurring in this present moment. This truth recalls a slogan used in the room of 12-step recovery: “Feelings are not facts.” I have learned that it is more accurate to approach feelings as theories, which—just as in a scientific laboratory—need to be tested quantitatively. Once we determine their accuracy, then we can respond with the intention of preserving the dignity of both us and our perceived adversary.
A second call to awareness stems from the covenant that we enter into at our Baptism, and which that we reaffirm liturgically throughout our lives as Christians: “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” We answer: “I will, with God’s help.” Communities of belonging require, in a sense, that we share a particular vulnerability with each other. To be vulnerable is to let down our guards; to expose our hearts with the assurance that they will be handled with reverence and care. This does not mean that accidents will never happen and that our hearts won’t be injured or even broken. What it does mean, hopefully, is that our hearts will be handled with the intention of care and respect. Taking part in an intentional community presupposes that we will do the same with the hearts of those who form that community with us. I am always struck by the passage in the third chapter of the epistle of James: “For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.”
We’re all made in the image of God and, through our Baptisms, we have been joined one to another as children of God; we are called to let that identity guide us, in moments of conflict, towards words that uphold the dignity of one another. I recall a time when I was in a particular state of anxiety about a disagreement with someone and was having trouble viewing that person compassionately. I was worried about an upcoming difficult conversation, and didn’t have high hopes for it ending amicably. My spiritual director said something that was a great help and has served me well many times since. They said: “When you sit down together, begin with a prayer and know that Jesus is in the room with you both. As you proceed with the conversation, be aware of God’s presence and then ask yourselves, ‘What does Jesus want for the both of you at the outcome?’”
We’re all made in the image of God and, through our Baptisms, we have been joined one to another as children of God; we are called to let that identity guide us, in moments of conflict, towards words that uphold the dignity of one another.
Forgiveness and reconciliation do not necessarily require resolution, but they do require empathy, compassion, respect, and dignity, which should help to forge a path forward. Disagreement doesn’t have to lead to estrangement—which is too easy to forget when we are experiencing intense feelings and emotions. The key is to recognize each other’s willingness to be vulnerable and to work out the source of tension together in a safe atmosphere.
Sometimes, to create a safe atmosphere, it may be helpful to have a facilitator join you. If it’s agreeable, ask someone else to listen and guide your conversation with the goal of helping you both reach a dignified solution. We need to foster a safe environment in which we can see each other’s wounds and then mutually salve them for healing.
Third, recognize that it’s okay to be angry. The visceral experience of anger is not an enjoyable one, but it is necessary, especially in the face of injustice (whether our own or that of another). Being angry is not itself a sin, but how we deal with and entertain that anger is what can potentially lead to sin. If our anger leads us to a place of vengeance and retribution, then it is probable that we’re in murky waters. But is it also possible that our anger could lead us toward a grace-filled resolution and healing?
In this book Self Discipline, an early member of our community, Fr. Arthur Hall SSJE, points out that Jesus experienced the full array of emotions in his humanity that we do—and this includes anger. Yet, Jesus shows us the proper handling of anger through his example. Take this scene in the gospel of Mark:
Again, he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to good or to do harm on the sabbath; to save a life or to kill?” But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
In Jesus’ example, we see that his anger led to healing and wholeness, rather than to fear, shame, or retribution. First, we acknowledge that we are angry, and then we need to think how that anger can be used constructively for the betterment of all involved, rather than for destruction. If we can practice this locally, in our one-on-one relationships, it is possible that we could begin to learn to do this more fully on a societal level as well.
I have to admit that I am far from perfect in employing the strategies mentioned above. Sometimes, my brakes fail and I have to approach my colleague, friend, Brother and say, “I’m sorry. I ask for your forgiveness. Could we press the reset button and begin again?” The cure to my instinct to flee the scene is instead to stay put: to approach the other with humility, to acknowledge lessons learned, and to ask to begin afresh.
The ancient monastic teaching around stability advises that, as long as a safe environment has been fostered, we must stay grounded at the source of our pain, to work through our differences, so that any breech may be healed. We have to remember that Jesus is God Emmanuel – which means “God with us.” What does Jesus want for those who are engaged in conflict? Healing and wholeness. He teaches us to stay. And we can know that he stays with us.
Questions for Reflection
– What examples of conflict and conflict resolution did you have growing up? How did they shape the way you deal with conflict now?
– Faced with threat, are you more prone to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn? Why is that?
– What helps you strengthen your own “breaks“?
Even a monastery is not free from conflict, and in this searching, honest reflection, Br. Jim Woodrum confronts his own tendency to want to flee when things get tough. Find here practical suggestions for dealing with own personal fear responses, as well as practical suggestions for strengthening the internal “breaks” that allow us to deal with conflict more healthily.
⇓ Download, print and share: Anxiety – opening up to GodThe first time I had a panic attack it felt like I was having the worst case of heartburn imaginable while simultaneously trying to breathe through a tiny straw. I was sitting at my desk in my dorm room during my junior year of college. I remember it was a beautiful fall day, and I had the window open. I was struggling to finish a paper when suddenly it all hit me.
My memory of that first panic attack is blurry, but I remember coming out of it laying on my bed looking out the window. I just kept begging myself to breathe deeper and deeper. My hand was on my chest, feeling my heart pounding away.
I have had a long, winding journey with anxiety. I’m in a much more stable place in my life now, but I still need to work on my anxiety on a daily basis. It is something I normally do not like to talk about, but in my last five years as a monk, I’ve been overwhelmed by the number of people I’ve talked to who have experiences with anxiety. I do believe we are in the midst of a mental health epidemic, and it does not help us to stay silent about our experiences. I do hope what I say can be of benefit to someone.
I do believe we are in the midst of a mental health epidemic, and it does not help us to stay silent about our experiences.
When I tell my friends and loved ones that I deal with anxiety on a daily basis, they are often surprised. I know on the surface I appear to be a calm, collected monk. One thing I have learned in my experiences with anxiety is you never really know how anxious someone is. Sometimes the most anxious person in the room is the last person you would suspect.
Because our appearances never tell the whole story about ourselves, it is important we open up to those closest to us about how we are feeling and doing. This is especially important when we are not doing well. I find even a brief conversation with a friend about something I’m anxious about can alleviate my anxiety tremendously.
One of the worst parts about anxiety is that it can fester. Anxiety can grow and grow inside of ourselves ad nauseum. We can have a tendency to tell ourselves to buckle down and think our way through what’s concerning us. We can also tell ourselves that we don’t need to talk to anyone else about what’s on our minds or that we don’t want to bother them. We may also fear that if we really open up to those around us about how we feel deep down, they may think of us differently.
Sometimes the most anxious person in the room is the last person you would suspect.
Consider how you felt the last time someone close to you opened up to you about what was bothering them. If your experiences have been anything like mine, it was probably an intimate experience. You really got to know the person even better, and your relationship grew as a result. Next time you are hesitating to open up to a loved one, consider what benefit it can be to be the other person and your relationship with them.
The same goes with your relationship with God. Try talking to God about your anxiety. I do it all the time. Frequently throughout the day, I will say, “God, I am really anxious about ____, please help me out with it”. I will often repeat some version of this prayer many times until I feel like it has soaked through my anxiety, and I can think and breathe clearer.
Try talking to God about your anxiety. I do it all the time.
I often find that anxiety can cut off my relationship with God. In times of great stress or anxiety, I will forget to ask God for help, thinking that I need to solve everything myself. This is a dangerous pitfall of self-reliance.
I also find it helpful to reflect on how Jesus dealt with anxiety. It’s too easy to forget that Jesus was fully human, which means that he dealt with everything that goes with being a human being, including anxiety.
Think of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. I always have this uncomfortable yet intimate feeling whenever I reflect on Jesus’ mood at Gethsemane. I imagine Jesus being anxious over what was about to happen, yet simultaneously trying to communicate with his Father. We frequently have this image of Jesus being permanently calm, cool, and collected, yet it’s clear at Gethsemane that he was going through turmoil.
When Jesus asks his Father to “let this cup pass” from him, it is an incredible moment of vulnerability and anxiety from Jesus. On the one hand, Jesus is so anxious that he is trying to get out of the situation that he is in. On the other hand, he goes on to accept his Father’s will for him, and is faithful to the trust that it will be for the greater good.
We are often in similar situations in our lives, times when we say to ourselves, “Oh God, I’d rather be doing anything else or be anywhere else than right here and now.” It’s incredibly difficult to then accept our situation and ask God for help in making our way through it.
Yet we will keep coming back to these moments again and again in our lives. One thing I have learned in monastic living is that there is no escape from anxiety. Yet there is a way of faithful living through anxiety. Anxiety is a part of our lives, and we have no choice but to learn how to pray with it.
Questions for Reflection
– Do you have struggles that you hide from God? What keeps you quiet? What would it take to share them?
– How do you respond when others speak to you of their hidden struggles? Is it easy for you to share your own challenges with others?
– What helps you to navigate through anxiety – or the other mental health challenges you might face?
On the surface, Br. Jack Crowley seems like an affable, ease-going monk. In this heartfelt piece, he shares the truth of this own struggles with anxiety. A surprising help in this journey? Entrusting the truth of this experience to others and to God.
⇓ Download, print and share: Know LimitsHeat radiated off the pavement as I cycled past tree-dotted lawns. The temperature had already reached ninety degrees, and it was still climbing. My breathing was labored, tunnel vision had set in, and my thoughts were focused on just getting around one more bend in the road. One hundred more feet. One more rotation of the pedals.
This was just outside of Belmont, in northeast Mississippi, during a heat wave in August 2021. I was three days into a bike trip south on the Natchez Trace Parkway when I hit my limit.
I mean this in a very literal way. I could not make myself move forward. You may not have had a physical experience like this, but I imagine that you will have experienced something similar in another part of your life. Commitments piling up with not enough hours in the day to address them, no matter how hard you work. The red numbers staring at you on your budget sheet, with no possible way to close the financial gap. Demands on your time and attention from family or friends that you emotionally cannot meet. Your story is your own, but I would bet that something like this is, or has been, a part of it.
For myself, I’m not sure that I had felt something like this before. I had run races and rowed competitively for years, and I had always felt that I was putting myself out there fully, emptying the tank in the final stretch. I had always thought that I had nothing more to give, nothing more to offer. That day in Belmont showed how wrong I was. That day stripped away the false pride of accomplishment and self-sufficiency. It uncovered my underlying fear of failure, of weakness, of admitting defeat. Who was I, if I had to ask for help, if I knocked on the door for a glass of water, if I called for a ride to our rest stop? Who was I, if I couldn’t do what I set out to do?
We all face and experience limitations in different ways. They can be temporary walls to be overcome or fixed boundaries, narrowing and constraining the possible. They can be imposed upon us unwillingly or chosen by us as part of our discipline or vocation. In each case, though, our limitations challenge us to discover and to explore the world that they define. Although they may cloud our vision of the boundless horizon, our limitations open new opportunities for setting our sights before us. They invite us, in the words of poet Waldo Williams, to inhabit “a broad hall found between narrow walls.”
Our limitations challenge us to discover and to explore the world that they define.
Two of my favorite stories about what opportunities limits afford come from the Hebrew Bible, back-to-back in the book of Exodus (Exodus 17:8-13 and 18:13-27). First we read how Moses has led the Israelites out of Egypt. They have crossed through the Red Sea, into the lands of a neighboring tribe called Amalek, which has attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Exodus tells us that when Moses holds up the staff of God in his hand during the battle, the Israelites prevail; when his arms lower, Amalek prevails. During the fighting, Moses’ arms grow tired. Hitting his limit, he requires the help of others, Aaron and Hur, who hold his hands steady through the rest of the day.
Yet even with this support – and this victory – Moses’ struggles are far from over. The Israelites don’t just encounter hostility from outside but quarrel among themselves as well. Immediately following the victory at Rephidim, Moses’ father-in-law Jethro visits the camp and sees Moses’s unceasing labors as judge over his people. “Why do you sit alone,” Jethro asks, “while all the people stand around you from morning until evening? . . . What you are doing is not good. You will surely wear yourself out. . . . For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone.”
In each of these stories, we witness Moses coming up against his own limits – physical for sure, and probably also emotional and rational. He has always had God with him – speaking and working through him. But in the face of his own frail humanity – the weight of his arms, the feeling of responsibility, the need for rest – he must learn to trust in the strength of others, on the small, quarrelsome people for whom he has risked his life.
This lesson is a constant struggle for me. Being upheld and supported by others can feel, in an incredibly irrational way, like cheating. I can tend to feel that I’ve gotten to where I am through my own efforts, by the sweat of my brow, and that what I am given to do is mine to do. I am responsible for this task, and I’ll do it. In the name of responsibility, I perpetuate the sins of pride and self-sufficiency – but this self-sufficiency ends up meaning that I’ve isolated myself. When I imagine the two stories with Moses, I wonder whether I would’ve accepted help, or if my own sense of pride would have led my arms to fall and my army to be defeated. I wonder whether I would’ve run myself ragged trying to mediate disputes, sure that this was my job to do.
I’m sure you have a version of this that is your own, that accounts for your own values and personality and circumstances. Maybe pride isn’t your problem, but fear, despair, anger, resentment, helplessness, overwhelm . . . the list goes on. Just as each of us faces a story of limitations that is uniquely ours, so too is our response.
What emotions do you notice when you reflect on your own limitations? How do you find yourself responding?
What emotions do you notice when you reflect on your own limitations? How do you find yourself responding?
Being made aware of our limitations can invite an awareness of the darker sides of our nature. My pride and fear urge me to avoid or to paper over my limitations. But once I realize these limitations will always be with me – and that, like Moses, my failure to acknowledge them doesn’t just affect me, but also those around me – I can begin to understand my limited life in a new way.
Take the vows that constrain the monastic way of life. Choosing – even embracing – limitation in the form of vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience is, for me, about reckoning with those darker urges that press me to hide away my weakness and vulnerability. The vows challenge me to bring all this into the light and, in doing so, reflect that light back onto other areas of my life. They dare me to embrace the freedom of a limited life.
Religious vows are one radical way of embracing this freedom. You may have a different way, but each path is about living our lives intentionally with the committed belief that what limits us can become a source of hope and joy. That we are able to live more deeply, more richly, more mindfully when we shut down some of the infinite array of options and choose to live a more limited life; when we live in a “broad hall found between narrow walls.”
Not all of us, of course, get to choose our limitations. Not all of us get to establish our own boundaries. Many of us face clouded horizons and narrowed pathways due to forces beyond our control: race, class, poverty, ability. It can be difficult, even insulting, to be told to embrace that limitation. I get it. But is it possible, even there, to find freedom?
Is it possible, even there, to find freedom?
I trust it is, because, ultimately, God is with us there. We can recognize and name and own up to our limits, but it is God who meets us there and who abides with us in our vulnerabilities. When Moses asks who he is to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, this is God’s answer: “I will be with you” (Exodus 3:12). This same God comes to us in Jesus, who not only aligned himself with the low, the outcast, the marginal, but was these things: he “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:7, 8). And even now, in our own marginalized and disempowered state, Jesus promises to remain with us: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). And all this, not despite our limitations, but because of them: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). It may not make our limitations more bearable, but the truth is that God meets us there because God embraced those same limitations. In Christ, these very limitations become the instrument of our transformation.
This is the reality I am trying to live into, here and now, in the Monastery: an embrace of my limitations, both those I was born with and those I have chosen. But even more than that, this life means recognizing that I have been invited, all along, to know and name and embrace all the ways in which both my abilities and my limits have made me uniquely me.
I have been invited to embrace all the ways in which both my abilities and limits have made me uniquely me.
I felt failure and frustration and shame and bruised pride when I couldn’t go around one more bend in the road that sweltering day in Belmont, when I couldn’t go one hundred more feet, when I couldn’t complete one more rotation of the pedals. I felt my limitation in a new, gut-wrenching way. And in doing so, I came to know something new, and something true, about myself: a unique, finite person, loved unconditionally and free to live richly, deeply, and mindfully in my own broad hall between narrow walls.
Questions for Reflection
– When have you hit the red line of your own limits – and how did you respond?
– What limits have given life to you, which you did not choose? Have you made peace with them?
– What emotions do you notice when you reflect on your own limitations? How do you find yourself responding?
Encountering limitations can shock, frustrate, and sober us. But what if our limitations are actually an invitation: something we are invited to know and embrace as part of what makes us uniquely who we are. Br. Lain Wilson takes us from a blistering stretch of pavement on the back to a bicycle to the wisdom of the cloister in this relatable and important meditation on the power and benefit of knowing our limits.
⇓ Download, print and share: Patience and the Crucible of LifeThe Oxford English Dictionary defines “patience” as “the calm abiding, a quiet and self-possessed waiting for something”; however the etymology hints at the normal context, which is often very difficult. “Patience” comes from the Latin patientia, which is a “quality of suffering” – suffering with calmness and endurance, what the scriptures call “long-suffering.” And suffering you often are when you are forced to relinquish your desires, or when you are left to wait without recourse. Patience is oftentimes not pretty and may feel vapid; sometimes there is a storm before the calm. It is one thing to wait in eagerness for something delightful we anticipate will unfold. It is another thing when we must be a patient patient because we are not in control over suffering – our own suffering or that of someone else whom we carry in our heart.
Here is a disclaimer. Sometimes we should not be patient. Some things we encounter in life are urgent, and we must act now.
But in the normal gestation of life, we must often wait. Without our learning patience, we will miss being present to a great deal of life. Life entails so much waiting. When the answer is not forthcoming, when something is not being resolved, when the door is not being opened, when someone is not acquiescing, when we have lost any sense of controlling some circumstance, we may experience a certain anguish or anger. To experience the fullness of our life, we must learn to wait well. Saint Francis de Sales advises, “What we need is a cup of understanding, a barrel of love, and an ocean of patience.” Patience is a quality of waiting.
Patience does not come easily to most of us, for several reasons. Our ego, how many of us grandstand our own importance on the stage of life, can be a great impediment to patience. What I want, and when seems right, when I am entitled. It took me many years to distinguish the adoring love I experienced amongst my own family-of-origin from my true place in the world. For some of us, the context of learning about patience has very little to do with us, personally, and everything to do with others. They have their place, their needs, their hopes and desires. I must wait my turn. Sometimes there are many people in line ahead of me. The Jesuit priest, Anthony de Mello, describes the necessary shearing of the ego that can happen as we grow older: “Before I was twenty, I never worried about what other people thought of me. But after I was twenty I worried endlessly about all the impressions I made and how people were evaluating me. Only sometime after turning fifty did I realize that they hardly ever thought about me at all.” The stage on which many of us learn about patience is discovering we are seldom THE STAR and more often the extra. We have an important and unique part in life, but so does everyone else. We must learn, listen, and become patient in the waiting.
Having to wait may prove to be a crucible to your soul, burning away what does not belong. You will not always get what you think you want in life. Jesus describes himself as “the gate” and “the door,” and sometimes he bars the way (John 10:1-9). As I reflect back on my own life, I teem with relief and gratitude for so many things I thought I wanted but was denied. (In my younger years I was nicknamed “Curtis Armtwist.”) I realize now that had this-and-that or such-and-such have happened, I would have ended up in a very different place.
Sometimes, by God’s grace, we are denied our dearest hopes. T. S. Eliot writes of how we often want what proves to be the wrong things, and how “the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: so the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing” (T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) in Four Quartets: East Coker, III, 11. 23-8). Patience can even mean learning to be grateful for the doors that did not open before you, and, therefore, the new direction in which you turned which has brought you to where you are.
Finding the goodness in waiting, in slowness, is quite countercultural; however our having to wait may turn out to be a great kindness of God towards us.
Finding the goodness in waiting, in slowness, is quite countercultural; however our having to wait may turn out to be a great kindness of God towards us. The scriptures consistently refer to us as “children of God” (not “adults of God”). Children are not developmentally ready to know everything at once. There is a progression in our capacity to know, which God knows. The apostle Peter awakened to this realization. He writes, “Beloved, while you are waiting, be at peace… and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation” (2 Peter 3:9, 15). Our experience of having to wait may, in actuality, be God’s experience of waiting on us until we are ready for more. Take heart. Simone Weil, the great French spiritual writer and political activist of the 1940s, writes how “waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.”
Here’s one more benefit. Adding the phrase “patient waiting” to your soul’s vocabulary may be a helpful intervention to the onset of anxiety. There is a freedom that can be gleaned in your being powerless to know the future. God knows. God knows what you do not know, and God knows that you do not know. In the beginning of creation, God creates an interchange of light and darkness to fill each of our days. It is as true for the sky as it is for the soul. We can only bear so much light. Light can be as blinding as darkness. The eyes of your heart will be enlightened with as much light as you can bear (“The eyes of your heart,” an evocative phrase of Saint Paul in Ephesians 1:18). When you are in the dark, God is not in the dark. The psalmist writes of God: “Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike” (Psalm 139:11. See also 1 John 1:5). If you are in the dark about something, your waiting invites patience for the dawning. The dawn will come in the fullness of time.
When you are in the dark, God is not in the dark.
Waiting patiently is not a limp submission. Waiting patiently is an active presumption that God is at work in our life in ways beyond what we could ask or imagine (See Ephesians 3:20-21). When you have no choice but to wait, open your eyes and open your heart to what you otherwise might have missed. You do not have what you are waiting for – what is next – but you do have what is now. Don’t cut in line. Be present to what is now, even if it is full of struggle. You will find the companionship of God’s real presence in the waiting, which is the fruit of patience.
I waited patiently upon the LORD;
he stooped to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the desolate pit,
out of the mire and clay;
he set my feet upon a high cliff
and made my footing sure.
– Psalm 40:1-2
Questions for Reflection
– Do you struggle with waiting? What is it about the experience that is hard for you?
– When and how have you, conversely, discovered the goodness in waiting and slowness?
– What practices help you to stay present and grounded in times of waiting?
Patience does not come easily to many of us, for many reasons. Yet in this moving reflection, Br. Curtis Almquist suggests a few of the many reasons that being forced to wait can actually be a gift. We are all invited to discover the countercultural (and surprising) goodness of waiting.
⇓ Download, print and share: AWAKE: Focal Practice as a PathAwake, awake to love and work!The lark is in the sky;The fields are wet with diamond dew;The worlds awake to cryTheir blessings on the Lord of life,As He goes meekly by.
Singing these verses in our monastic service of morning prayer – in an indoor chapel, from a printed page – evokes memory, imagination, and desire (“Not Here for High and Holy Things,” words by George Anketel Studdert-Kennedy). I remember the many early morning walks I have taken; I imagine the worlds around me on every side full of crawling, flying, burrowing creatures, continually drawn into being by the breath of their Maker; I yearn for yet further, deeper relationship with God’s world as its beings sing their million-throated witness to Life in its fullness.
But when the hem of my habit is drenched with the same diamond dew; when I have responded to the relentless song of the first robin by rousing myself out into the enfolding half-light of dawn; when my own ears have heard the blessings cawed and warbled into the clinging mist before the work of human worship has even begun; it is then that I know, by the Creator’s grace, the heart of the hymn of creation. My boots flecked with grass, my beard slick with the fine spring rain, singing a hymn becomes more than an aid to memory, imagination, or desire. My mouth is full of praise that has become my own because it has also become the world’s praise resounding through my voice, returning to its Source.
Praying morning prayer daily; singing a familiar hymn with devotion; getting out of bed because that first enthusiastic robin is singing her heart out; lingering to witness the primeval moment the sun breaks the tree line and the world is, once more, gifted with light…
Even if our own list would differ substantially, we know intuitively that these activities share an underlying kinship.
Though small in themselves, they orient us toward the focal concerns of our lives: the things that matter most and give meaning and value to all else. Giving ourselves to their patterned observance, we give ourselves to God: the generous source and grateful recipient of our prayers, praise, attention, and wonder. They are, in the phrase of Albert Borgmann, focal practices.
A focal practice is an engagement, a habit, an activity that we take up frequently – daily or at least weekly. It requires attention, effort, and skill honed over time. This combination of qualities means it may at times feel burdensome, a task that demands more of us than we can summon when our schedules demand convenience or our hungers urge us to instant gratification. But when, with patient fidelity and love, we take up the arduous task, it yields a deep satisfaction and fulfillment of purpose that is often hard to describe. Traditional spiritual disciplines such as scripture study, contemplative prayer, and liturgical worship clearly form a time-tested repertoire of focal practices. But many other activities fulfill the same purpose and can easily become prayer with the right inward orientation: playing an instrument; tending a fire; baking bread; learning the birds in our ecosystem by sight and sound. Indeed, these were the daily practices of premodern humanity, among whom the classic spiritual disciplines first blossomed. To live on this earth with a purpose that rendered the struggle and pain worthwhile meant ordering one’s life around focal things. Focal practices safeguarded the centrality of those things.
Borgmann is a philosopher of technology and a Christian. His notion of focal practices is set within a larger project: advancing a vision of responsible engagement with technology in ways more closely aligned with matters of ultimate concern.
I have found the notion of focal practices helpful on many levels. The term accurately describes most of the activities embedded in the rhythms of monastic life. These include the Daily Office and Eucharist; monastic customs and spirituality around the labor of our hands; our practices of eating and table fellowship; our traditions of hospitality; our disciplines of learning and study; our cultivation of skills for ministry such as preaching and spiritual direction; and the vast treasury of practices that enrich our personal prayer. We have focal practices for almost every aspect of life!
But we – like everyone in contemporary North American society – are just as susceptible to what our Rule calls “the din of noise and the whirl of preoccupation” that come with a technology-saturated culture.
During a stretch of bleak, gray weather in February when the sun hasn’t appeared for days; when I respond to the chapel bell with dogged obedience rather than light-footed joy; when the preaching of God’s word tastes uninspired and flavorless in my mouth; when I feel lonely or unloved, threadbare or tested by the vows I professed with such ardor; then it is easy to find me checking my email for the fifteenth time in a single day; watching a third or fourth or eighth consecutive YouTube video about the absolute best method to free-range chickens; wondering with needless anxiety why a friend hasn’t texted me; or slogging away at a spreadsheet on the Sabbath. Irritable, listless, estranged from my body, the moment of awareness creeps upon me: This is not Life.
It is then that the creator Spirit – through my focal practices – drives me out into the wilderness, or just the nearest city park or stretch of riverbank, to rediscover my human creaturehood in a world of things. I stare down my own inertia and acedia; I muster patient fidelity and love. I ask for help. I take up the arduous but Life-bestowing task. By the Spirit’s grace I engage again with Life. It’s not a magic recipe. I don’t always respond as swiftly or wholeheartedly as I ought. No matter – the God who gives Life far more than I desire it always stands at the ready with another opportunity to return.
Though I’m a monk, I am learning (like all of us) that if I am to be critically engaged with technology, I must hold its use in proportion alongside the focal practices by which God brings me back to Life.
Irritable, listless, estranged from my body, the moment of awareness creeps upon me: This is not Life.
What I have found most enriching about Borgmann’s work is the idea that critical engagement with technology, as Christians, compels us to take up counterpractices. These weave us back into right and balanced relationships with material things in their irreducible goodness. Devices are not the enemy. They are simply so powerful, and their means of operating upon us so advanced, that we require a highly intentional context of counterpractices to flourish if we are to pursue the good life, and the godly life, in their midst.
While all focal practices engage us intimately with a world of things, I want to share just one that has been particularly instrumental in my own life of loving relationship and reciprocity with creation. If creation is the “material expression of God’s love,” this has been a counterpractice safeguarding my love for creation as an ultimate concern, in a world that routinely reduces creation to inert matter or expendable resources.
There is a stream that meanders its way through our western woods on the land surrounding Emery House. In one place not far from its union with the Merrimack, the water reliably tumbles over a series of rocks. For a season I made it my discipline to visit this place daily, and its presence drew from me a focal practice that blossomed into an astonishing, intimate relationship. I visited shortly after sunrise. I let the sound of the stream enter me, tumble over the rocks of my thoughts, saturate my intentions. It took time and patience, but I came to feel that the stream herself was teaching me what to do, how to be, in a relationship of mutual presence. When I felt the stream within me, I gently began to shake a rattle. For me this established a connection in the language of sound with the gurgling of the water, the song of the birds, and the rays of morning sunlight. The stream began to sing, or rather I began to hear her song, and this hearing gave me a song to sing in return. Through the harmony of these songs, my song and hers, it was as though I began to hear the eternal Song – the Word – sounding forth from that sacred niche of God’s creation (John 1:1-4). The song of the Creator sings with the voice of every creature. That song is always unfolding – it was long before me, and will be long after me – the song by which the cosmos is sustained. In farewell, I would cross the stream, dip my hands in her waters, and cross myself, as I would with water from a baptismal font.
While going about my day at Emery House, I would often think of the stream, continually flowing out there in the western woods, no matter what I was up to. The stream flowing in the darkness while I slept and dreamt or lay awake sleepless. The stream flowing in the morning and at sunset while I chanted in chapel. The stream praying without ceasing, inspiring me to make my own attempt to do the same. It is a sacrament of the God who is “living water, gushing up to eternal life” and the “river of life” flowing out from the heart of God (John 4:14; Revelation 22:1-2). All this may sound like the work of a wistful, overactive imagination, or perhaps a metaphor run riot, overflowing the banks of reason. But I promise you it is real – at least as real as the words on this printed page or screen. I have come to believe that a stream, this stream, can desire my admiration, my song of love in response to its own sounding song. This reciprocity completes something in me. It is a part of how I am being saved, how I am being made whole. I believe this reciprocity completes something in the work of co-creation, to which Christ calls us to participate. Just as it is part of how I am being made whole, I believe it also is a small part of how creation is being made whole, gathered into the heart of God’s mysterious purposes.
Our ancestors in Christ spontaneously and intuitively cultivated relationships of mutual presence with wild creatures. Countless stories of the saints show us a pattern. It unfolds in the places they called home: the deserts and caves of ancient Syria-Palestine; along the harsh, seaside cliffs of Ireland; and deep in the forests of Russia. In the tales left by their disciples, we encounter servants of Christ befriending lions and jackals, blackbirds and hares, bears and birch trees. Many were monastics, souls worn smooth as river rocks by the ebb and flow of what I would call their focal practices. But this pattern is also intrinsic to the worldview of the Biblical authors. The psalmist cries, “Let the sea make a noise and all that is in it, the lands and those who dwell therein” and “Let the rivers clap their hands and let the hills ring out with joy before the Lord, when he comes to judge the earth” (Psalm 98: 8-9). Jesus urges us: Consider the birds of the air. Consider the flowers of the field. Listen, he urges the Pharisees: if my human followers were silent, the stones themselves would shout (Luke 12:24; Luke 12:27; Luke 19:40). This kind of consideration, this kind of listening, is the fruit of attention and devotion lovingly offered – moment by moment, day after day. Lifetime after lifetime, these have been the habits of the saints. In generous hands, they hold them out to us, their heirs in Christ’s Body.
In other words: this stuff isn’t just for monks wandering around in the woods, or for nuns in caves. It’s for all of us. However distant or disconnected our lives may feel from the restorative power of God’s creation, Life is as near to us as the closest patch of clover and its diamond dew under our bare feet. Life is as near to us as the flour, water, and yeast that yields its supple heft to the pressure of our palms, longing to become bread. Life is as near to us as the sweat that spills from pores and the breath that heaves in lungs as we push through that final turn in the trail toward home.
When we commit to God as our ultimate concern, a deep satisfaction and fulfillment of purpose awaits us. A world of things becomes a cast of collaborators in God’s breathtaking design. It takes practice. But through it, we come to know a foretaste of life that is Life indeed.
Questions for Reflection
– What are the focal concerns of your life: those things that matter most and give meaning and value to all else?
– What pulls you from lethargy and calls you to engage Life? Where do you draw close to the restorative power of God’s creation?
Practices to Try
– Spend at least 15 minutes outdoors, sitting still and simply observing your surroundings. Notice how this time shifts things in you. How does the environment speak to you, and how do you respond?
– Listen to the sounds of nature. How might you respond with your own “song” of appreciation?
Feeling the draining lure of technology, Br. Keith Nelson advocates for the benefit of those focal practices that keep us grounded, embodied, and most full (gratefully) alive.
We hope that in reflecting on chaos as an invitation from God, you will find it meaningful to share in discussion of these questions with others.
How does your inner life and experience impact your view of God?
Think of the most significant instances of prayer, or awareness of God, in your life. What were you feeling or thinking in those moments, or in the time leading up to them?
In our Rule, the Brothers speak repeatedly about how our daily worship will not always be a deep and meaningful experience on a personal level, and that we must rely on our Brothers to bear us along. How do you cultivate and express faith in your life, independent of emotional or intellectual highs and lows?
Think about your own communities. How have they formed you? What have they revealed about you?
The Church is not merely an individual or local experience, but is concerned with a broad scope across Creation, including human societies. How does your personal, day-to-day life feed into that broader whole of the Church’s mission and witness?
How are your neighbors — the real, tangible people in your midst — and the love you show them tied to the greater whole?
When it comes to major issues around things like race and imprisonment, how can you express the witness of God’s love?
In this issue, Brothers share some concrete steps that they have taken to educate themselves and make a difference in issues that have touched their hearts. What issue is calling out to you?
What concrete step, however small, can you take toward helping create meaningful change in that domain?
Fr. Charles Neale Field, SSJE
Chaos: a state of things in which chance is supreme, especially: the confused unorganized state of primordial matter before the creation of distinct forms. This scientific definition of chaos might hearken us back to the very beginning of the creation account from Genesis: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” The Hebrew word for “the deep” is tehor, which scholars think might be related to a Babylonian divinity associated with oceanic chaos. We gather from ancient writings, including our own Judeo-Christian background, that to the ancients, (especially those who lived in desert habitats), the sea was “chaos” and therefore something to be feared.
With the help of science, we have a better understanding of watery chaos in our modern times and have systems in place to navigate it. Still, we can be caught off guard when we are blindsided by natural and human-made catastrophes. In 1889, such a catastrophe occurred when a defective dam in the Conemaugh Valley of Pennsylvania burst without warning and destroyed the city of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in an instant. Records of the tragedy indicate that 2,209 people died in the flood that ensued – 99 entire families – 396 of which were children. Bodies from the flood were found as far as Cincinnati, Ohio, as late as 1911.
At that time, there were Brothers from our Society ministering at St. Clement’s Church in Philadelphia including Fr. Charles Neale Field. Fr. Field volunteered to go and help in the relief efforts being organized by the American Red Cross. Joined by three men of the Guild of the Iron Cross (created by Fr. Field for working men and boys at St. Clement’s), they set off towards Johnstown. In a small book published by the Guild of the Iron Cross entitled After the Flood, Fr. Field recounted the story of the devastation and the heroic efforts of many who came to Johnstown’s aid. In this memoir, we hear him marvel at the devastation. He writes:
It is true that reflections are generally unsatisfactory, dreamy and transient. But reflections in a railway car, not of oneself but of the events of the first week after the flood are exceptional. Had I been dreaming? I felt more than half dead, as Dante might have felt coming out from writing of purgatory. I had seen Johnstown shortly before a flourishing city; where was it now? A name, a shell of a city. Where were the waters that had ruined it? Gone thousands of miles. Where were the people that had made it? Heaps of them dead, and those living, half dead, wounded in body and soul. Why had it happened to Johnstown?
Here we see a man of God clearly affected by the magnitude of human suffering he encountered. The question Fr. Field prayerfully asked was “Why?” How many of us ask this same question of God in prayer amidst the chaos we experience in our lives? Yet, Fr. Field was a man who knew that sacramentally he had entered into the waters of chaos in his Baptism and had risen from its depths into the promise of resurrection as a child of God. He knew that in spite of all the chaos he might encounter in his life, his Baptism gave assurance that God has brought and will bring order out of chaos. And so too for us, as we navigate all the uncertainties of our earthly life. He closes his initial reflections by writing that there were many good people in Johnstown:
Why God allowed men to build, and the State not to condemn the weak dam is a mystery contained in the deeper question how God can allow evil. The end of our reflection is that in spite of the carelessness and sin of men, God can and will bring good out of all this evil, and most good to those who have suffered most.
Br. Keith Nelson and Miles, Saint Michael’s Church
An Interview with Br. Keith Nelson:
You went to Navajoland this summer; how and why did this come about?
This opportunity came about as a direct invitation from our diocesan bishops in Massachusetts, for me to participate in a new component of formation for ordinands that will take effect in 2024, a period of cross-cultural ministry. Though I was ordained a transitional deacon in June of this year, they asked that I also participate. It’s aimed at building deep relationships and facilitating essential hard conversations about race. It asks white ordinands in particular to immerse themselves in the experience of church communities who are majority Black, brown, or indigenous within the Episcopal Church.
I spent some real time in prayer about it, and the prompting that emerged from the Spirit was a strong desire to spend time learning from and collaborating with Native Christians. I returned to our bishops, and we began a conversation from that request.
I have been moved and troubled by the histories of indigenous peoples, Christian missionaries, and the Doctrine of Discovery since first learning about it as a teenager. Those feelings and thoughts have been reignited in the past several years. A passionate spiritual need to enter true intimacy and synergy with the entire creation has been forming my sense of priestly calling. That has found intersection with deepening care and concern about those who have, historically, centered their whole way of life upon that intimacy and synergy: the indigenous peoples of this continent. Finally, within the last year I read the book Unsettling Truths, co-authored by Mark Charles, who is Diné (Navajo) and a Christian Reformed pastor. I wept and sometimes screamed in outrage and, by the end of the book, was convinced I needed to seriously ask: What is the invitation in the midst of this anger and sadness? Then this opportunity came along.
This was your first major work after being ordained to the diaconate. Do you see these as related?
It was sort of a holy coincidence that this lined up with my being recently ordained as a deacon. But incidentally, the history of the diaconate in the Episcopal Church in the U.S. includes a number of Indigenous deacons, and deacons have played a key role in the church in Navajoland. So it was a remarkable place to learn the ropes as a brand new deacon.
You mentioned an interest in Native Christians. How did you come to the Navajo specifically?
Bishop Carol Gallagher, our assisting bishop, is an enrolled member of the Cherokee nation. She’s well known among Native Episcopalians and other Christian communities, including the Episcopal Church in Navajoland (ECN). She had recently invited the Rev. Canon Cornelia Eaton of Navajoland to come east and speak at an Indigenous Peoples’ Day event in Massachusetts.
Bishop Gallagher urged me to connect with Rev. Eaton, with whom I developed an easy rapport, trust, and deep respect, and who became my supervisor for this placement. The ECN has channeled significant resources into raising up Navajo clergy, and there are five active at-present. Learning from each of them has been invaluable.
Tell us a bit about the ECN.
By way of background, the Navajo nation is one of the most missionized tribal nations in the United States. There’s a significant presence of many different Christian denominations, and what I learned from both the institutional and individual experience of many Navajo is that not all have been sensitive or beneficial to Navajo people, and some have done or contributed toward deep, systemic harm.
Navajo people have a history, like many tribal groups, of having been forcibly removed from their traditional lands. The U.S. military ordered Kit Carson to undertake a “scorched earth” campaign to reduce Navajo resistance. In 1863, more than ten thousand were forcibly marched hundreds of miles by the US military to Bosque Redondo, Texas. Intended as a “reservation,” it was in reality an internment prison with armed guards, in a region totally unsuited for farming. They were there until 1866. The trauma of this “Long Walk” has impacted generations of Navajo.
The Episcopal Church established medical missions, in Fort Defiance, Arizona, in 1894, followed by Farmington, New Mexico, in 1922 and then southeastern Utah in a small town called Bluff, in 1942. Those three are now organizational centers of the three regions of the ECN, which was founded in 1978 as what is called an Area Mission. So it’s not at present its own diocese, and there are some significant differences in terms of the specific role of the bishop and the bishops oversight in terms of overall financial/administrative self-sustainability of it.
I spent time assigned to different church communities in all three of these very different regions. There’s a lot of driving, what elder native clergy called “circuit riding.” In some ways, my experience of liturgical worship there was similar to many Episcopal parishes I’ve experienced; most use the BCP a lot more, in fact. But there are many distinctly Navajo elements, a Navajo hymnal, preaching that uses both languages, sacred paintings, handwoven rugs, cedar incense.
The last thing I’ll add is there was a recent resolution at General Convention 2022 called D080, which came out of Navajoland, and is specifically aimed at the election of a next bishop for the ECN by Navajo Episcopalians. As an Area Mission, their bishop at present is appointed directly by the Presiding Bishop.
What did you do there? Who did you meet? What did you learn, What surprised you? What was meaningful?
I was surprised and encouraged by the relative sensitivity of Episcopal mission on the Navajo nation in contrast to some other Christian denominations. A vivid example of that is the first church I spent time with, Saint Michael’s Church, in a place called Upper Fruitlands, New Mexico, which is within the reservation, but on the border, near Farmington.
In this church, the sanctuary is shaped like an octagon, which is meant to replicate a hooghan, a traditional Navajo ceremonial structure. The hooghan is meant in a way to represent the sacred cosmos: the roof of the hooghan is shaped like a dome, and that dome represents both the dome of the sky and the womb of a woman’s body. The door into the church is placed to the East, so that it lets in the first light of the dawn. Dawn is an especially sacred time in Navajo culture. Traditional Navajo place the dried umbilical cord of a new baby in a place that the parents hope will guide who the child becomes. My supervisor, Cornelia, is the child of a deacon and a lay pastor, so her umbilical cord was placed under the door threshold of Saint Michael’s Church! There are Navajo wall paintings throughout the sanctuary: twelve cornstalks behind the altar, corn topped by bluebirds, the bluebird who carries messages to heaven. All have significance both to Navajo traditional spirituality and to Navajo Christian faith. The movements around the altar always happen clockwise, in the same direction that people would traditionally move around the fire or the stove inside a hooghan. Those were some initial experiences that were moving and surprising.
I was really surprised by the deep resilience of these communities. The extent of intergenerational trauma in these communities goes back to the collective trauma of that period of forced removal, the Long Walk, and even farther back to the first waves of contact with the Spanish, followed by Anglo settlers and the U.S. military. This history manifests in a whole variety of ways: in alcoholism, in depression, in domestic abuse and elder abuse, in a fragmented experience of identity within the larger United States. In the midst of all these painful experiences there is deep faith, especially tended by Navajo elders, and then especially elder women. The grandmothers are crucial community figures, as they are in many Native communities. Many of the lay pastors who are now in their 70s and 80s in the Navajo community are grandmothers or great grandmothers in these communities.
How do you think this experience will have expression in your vocation (both monastic and ordained) going forward?
The first thing I can say about vocation is very personal and concrete: one of the most humbling gifts of this experience has been being put directly in touch, in radical new ways, with the inner dynamic of our vow of poverty. There were days and circumstances when I felt, “I’m not sure I have what it takes to be of benefit here, or to this person.” So many realities require direct confrontation: the weight of such historic oppression, the ways the white Church has caused or colluded with it, so much suffering. In a place of such woundedness and so many ghosts, I confronted the question: What can I possibly do to help?
A real part of the answer was simply looking into the face of the Navajo Jesus, who was all around me, and listening from a place of crucified helplessness. My ministry there was primarily listening, continuing to listen and stay put at the foot of the cross wherever I found it in people and circumstances, and not to turn away. And to be shown by Navajo Christians how this could be, and is, the place of Resurrection. The primary posture that many white male missionaries have brought to that place in the past has not been that posture. It’s been triumphalist: “I will come in and do, I will come in and build, I will come in and save, organize, plan, et cetera,” which is the essential posture of colonization.
I am eager to begin a deep listening process about how our ministry as a community, perhaps specifically at Emery House, might engage with the history of Native presence on the land entrusted to our care, and in the New England area more broadly, here in this very different part of the country. I’ve learned from indigenous Christians who truly live in right relationship with earth, as a natural and instinctive dimension of their faith. It’s deeply felt and ancestral, and it’s a ritually strengthened connection. Navajo stories and spirituality really inform their interpretation of Christian scripture. It’s a living tradition that reminds me in many ways of ancient traditions in the West, reading the Book of Nature alongside the Book of Scripture. This relationship with the land, old stories, and the ancestors that gives expression to Christian faith in fresh (but very old) ways – I am eager to explore all that in our context on the other side of this journey.
One major piece of this time was time and prayer in a significantly different land, ecology, and environment than New England. Tell us about that experience.
My experience of prayer, my ongoing relationships with Navajo people, and my experience of the land itself are quite braided together. I went on a long car trip with a Navajo friend and her two kids, one of whom is in his early thirties and one of whom is a teenager, and we talked the whole way about our lives, culture, sense of belonging, experience of family. We were en route to a weekly flea market in a town called Kayenta, where you can get anything from a new car windshield to sacred cedar beads to bootleg DVDs! They said to me, actually tearfully at one point, “We don’t have the experience of being listened to and treated with dignity by white people.” What I will remember most is experiences like that, traveling across a rocky, beautiful, sunbeaten landscape, listening to stories large and small unfolding across the miles, and realizing in my pilgrim body how the telling and the listening can shape new, healing realities.
Another experience was sitting down and listening to the cousin of one of the Navajo Episcopal clergy. This cousin is trained as a medicine person, a haatali. I was curious to learn more about the Navajo relationship with wind. Wind, niłch’i, is natural element with a central role in tradition, the role of the wind in the natural order and relationship to human and other-than-human creatures. So I asked her if she could talk about her experience of wind, and she said, “Wind is the pollinator. Without wind, none of the infinite myriad of communications that are constantly unfolding between all the creatures in the world that we share would happen.” And in the Navajo Bible, “the Holy Spirit” is translated as Niłch’I Diyinii, “the Holy Wind.” To think of the Holy Spirit as the Pollinator! For me, that’s a very exciting and rich way of understanding a traditional dimension of faith.
There was also the experience of a radically different landscape than New England, particularly the rocks and the plants, the presence of ravens and lizard and coyote, the presence of the wind and what the wind is up to. Learning more deeply the aliveness of rocks and wind, these living presences that teach a certain kind of patience and attention, for example, before a (rare) rainstorm.
Any final thoughts?
On my last Sunday I had the honor of preaching a sermon on Matthew 13, where Jesus gives us five evocative images for what the kingdom of heaven is like. And I wanted so much to reflect back to those present the treasures I had received from them. My prayer was, “To what would a Navajo Jesus compare the kingdom?” And so I offered a spin on the scriptural text: The kingdom of heaven is like a man who offered sacred corn pollen to Creator every day at dawn until the Wind filled the four directions with his prayer, and his whole life was hózhǫ́ (beauty). The kingdom of heaven is like wool that a grandmother sheared, spun, dyed, and wove into a beautiful rug; when she gave that rug to her granddaughter, her granddaughter gave up all her machine-made rugs and put her grandmother’s rug in the center of her home. The kingdom is like a bilagáana (white man) who went to the Kayenta flea market in search of fine cedar beads. The kingdom of heaven is like a church frybread taco sale! I wanted to say, “I’ve been listening, and I have heard you, and I am so grateful.” Afterward, a matriarch of the community said, “Wow, you really have absorbed how we see things! God bless you, and hágoónee’, shitsili (see you later, my little brother). I was told that in Navajo there are no goodbyes, only trust in the encounters we will surely have further down the road we share.
Navigating the Strife of a Racialized World
Ubuntu: I am because you are.– Southern African Proverb
Imagine a world where one sees another and identifies that there is a sacred interconnection albeit mysterious with that person based solely on being equally created in the image of God. I long for such a world. Conversely and sadly, we live in a racialized world, one that does not emulate the dream of God. The need for racial reconciliation and healing is a journey and what I call our “lifetime work.” Julian of Norwich’s popular optimism (“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”) will start to come true as members of the human family lean into ubuntu, which is translated as “I am because you are.”
Navigating the strife of a racialized world comes naturally for me, a Black Episcopal priest who is a native Mississippian serving as the rector of a large, predominately White parish in Memphis, Tennessee. Indeed, I bear myriad stories, experiences, and observations about the sin of racism. Fortunately, I am not polarized by them as I choose daily to see the image of God in all people. This navigation path was imparted to me by my parents, grandparents, and an array of wise mentors who could talk about race, hope, and the dream of God for hours.
The realities of hatred, bigotry, exclusionary behaviors, micro-aggressions, inequity, injustice, and beliefs by some of White supremacy are revealed in diverse ways across all spaces. In some circumstances, the confluence of these forces has resulted in violence and death that are horrific parts of our past and present. I believe such unrest will be in our future if the Church fails to act proactively concerning the last two vows of the Baptismal Covenant:”Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” We energetically respond, “I will, with God’s help.” We also unknowingly or knowingly either minimize or disregard what comes with racism despite the hurt and harm it causes the human family.
Thanks to an omnipresent God, community, an unwavering faith and prayer life, and a discipleship grounded in my affiliation with SSJE, I manage “chaos better” as I follow Jesus, the way of Love. The wisdom of SSJE blesses my pilgrimage with practices to better navigate the questions and challenges of strife, particularly matters of race, which I believe are the “elephant in the room” almost everywhere.
My hope concerning race matters remains constant, and I am encouraged when I share in and see commitments to the courageous work of racial reconciliation and healing. This I see closely in the parish I serve, where increasing numbers of parishioners are participating in “Sacred Ground.” A program of “Becoming Beloved Community” – the Episcopal Church’s promise to racial healing, reconciliation, and justice in our personal lives, ministries, and society – Sacred Ground reflects on chapters of America’s racial history, while weaving in threads of family story, context, class, politics, and more that are parts of the tapestry of one’s own life. It is one example of the transformation that comes with intentionality.
Followers of Jesus are called to walk by faith and not by sight, which I know makes navigating the strife of a racialized world possible and hope-filled. With God’s help, dedication to the concept of ubuntu, and prayerful action, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
The Rev. Ollie V. Rencher is Rector of Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Memphis, Tennessee, and a member of the Fellowship of Saint John.
I first encountered the work of Richard Mammana back when I was researching the Society of Saint John the Evangelist — a community of monks that had captured my attention and of which I eventually became a member. His website, “Project Canterbury” (anglicanhistory.org), contained an incredible amount of archival material not only about SSJE, but also about other out-of-print Anglican books, pamphlets, documents, and historical records. Richard is an author, archivist, and book reviewer, as well as a member of Saint Clement’s Church in Philadelphia — a church of the Anglo-Catholic tradition that was once under the care of SSJE in the late 1800s. His essay, “The Black Christ of Stamford, CT,” recently captured my attention as it highlighted the work of SSJE in Boston’s Beacon Hill, as well as our relationship with artist Allan Crite. The following is an excerpt from that piece. You can read the full essay here. – Br. Jim Woodrum, SSJE
Richard Mammana
In my early twenties, just after college, I happened upon a small urban Anglo-Catholic church in New England where I worshiped for a necklace of Sundays over two years that were happier than I ever knew. A handful of dedicated Poles and WASPs were nearly invisible in a congregation of people of deep faith and strong hearts from the West Indies, and I was invited onto the vestry to break the tie among grandmothers from Jamaica, Barbados, St. Kitts, British Honduras, and the Virgin Islands. With my Bahamian American wife, I knelt week after week with tears in my eyes after communion because we were already worshiping in the heavenly Jerusalem.
Although I live in a theological world, I am not a theologian. I am a bibliographer and a worshiper and an historian, and so it is through books and kneeling that I have sought over two decades to know more about the Anglo-Catholicism of people of African descent. I wanted to know how their Anglo-Catholicism in the Boston-Washington corridor came to be in the many referential poles of Anglicanism, so I set about listening and reading.
One pole that emerged quickly is the work of the Cowley Fathers — the Society of Mission Priests of S John the Evangelist or SSJE— long the most doctrinally severe, the most abstemiously poor, the most abjectly Prayer Book-loyal marines of Anglican monasticism. They memorized the Coverdale Psalter, fought malaria, and went virtually anywhere they were called to teach that the Incarnation of the Son of God had obliterated race as a category of human division.
The Cowley Fathers are misunderstood as a conservative order in the diverse constellation of Anglican communities. They have always instead been both profoundly traditional and bafflingly radical. Some sign of this is one of my favorite photographs of Anglo-Catholic life, taken in Boston in the late 1890s, when Richard Meux Benson was about to lose his sight. He is seated, surrounded by African Americans ready to play ball, a rood screen and two of his Cowley brethren in the background. Everyone in the photograph is his own best self: Fr. Benson glowing with prayer and presence, the boys about to begin their lives in a precarious century in which their very rights to personhood would be challenged at every step. They are unsullied by a world that cannot break any of them.
It was in this milieu of Bostonian Anglo-Catholicism that Allan Rohan Crite was born, and where he showed generations of waning Brahmins a Black Christ surrounded by seraphim and apostles of the same color. Crite’s series of Black Madonnas at local mass transit stations and retellings of stories from first century Palestine in urban African American settings are among the most exciting things to come out of English-speaking religious art in the twentieth century.
Episcopalians did not know what to do with Crite, but the Cowley Fathers did. The Protestant Episcopal Church instituted its own sacramental drinking fountain segregation through the propagation of intinction rather than a shared cup with increasing frequency as parishes were racially integrated after the Second World War. It looked and felt like congregational inclusion, but actually sipping from the same drinking vessel was a bridge too far, and so polite people opted for a dip rather than a sip. It was more hygienic; it had been approved during the Spanish Flu; there are all sorts of germs out there, people said.
Against such a background, the SSJE put Crite’s work everywhere they could: in missals, prayer cards, postcards, service leaflets, tracts, books, posters, birthday cards, Christmas cards, ordination cards, woodblock prints. They forced the white eye to see the Black Christ from about the 1940s to the 1970s with a kind of intensity one does not expect for the places and the periods. But they themselves were in awe of Crite’s Christ because he had caught the same vision they guarded with holy jealousy.
If a history of Anglo-Catholicism can be written, it must claim again these peculiar and powerful expressions from Boston’s South End and from the Afro-Caribbean. It must know about them at all to begin with. It must wrestle with the truth that the books are not in footnotes, that the art is out of circulation, that the history right now is still largely oral and notional, and that the transatlantic dimensions of it have not begun to be explored.
Some of this work is archival, and I am committed to that in little ways. In archives as elsewhere, the dismantling axe for racism — of omission or commission — comes from the forest itself. Some greater part of it is I suspect relational, and that is the fun of it: sitting next to women of a certain age in hats at coffee hour (and it is almost always women) and just listening.
⇓ Download, print and share: A Painful Legacy to Be ConfrontedIn late November 2022, Br. Curtis Almquist and I undertook a nine-day pilgrimage to the South to visit sites related to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States during the 1950s and ‘60s and beyond. Among the places we visited were the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, which trace the legacy of slavery in this country from the early 1600s to the present day by examining four eras: (1) the Era of Slavery in America, (2) the Era of Racial Terror, (3) the Era of “Segregation Forever,” and (4) the Era of Mass Incarceration. In what follows, I would like to record some of what I learned, share some powerful imagery of what we saw, and name some of my reactions to the experience.
The Era of Slavery in America
We are standing before a large screen in the first room of the Legacy Museum, watching the terrifying waves of the Atlantic Ocean rise and crash before us. The scene prompts us to imagine the terrors of an ocean crossing in a wooden boat, a journey made by millions of African people who were kidnapped, enslaved, and shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas in cramped vessels under horrific conditions. It also calls to mind the nearly two million people who died at sea during the agonizing journey.
I had, of course, read about and studied America’s history of slavery over the course of my life. But I was still shocked and stunned by what I encountered at the Legacy Museum. I realized that I had not thought deeply about the daily life experience of enslaved Africans in this country or come close to comprehending the full extent of their misery. “Slavery is the next thing to hell,” wrote Harriet Tubman, and the museum helped open my eyes to its appalling realities. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be kidnapped and taken away from one’s homeland, from all that was familiar and loved, to face the terrifying passage across the seas, to be treated as property to be bought and sold at will without any regard to one’s needs or wishes or basic human rights. I learned about the vulnerability of enslaved peoples who could be subjected to abuse, physical torture, and violence at any time with absolutely no recourse. Any protest or cry for justice was futile and was bound to go unheeded by agents of law enforcement or criminal justice. There was no hope of a fair decision in a court of law, and enslaved people soon learned that they would always be faulted for whatever befell them. An enslaved person could be raped by a slave owner at will or lent out to his friends for their pleasure; burned or whipped for any perceived offence, no matter how slight; deliberately separated from children or spouse or family at any time; subjected to the cruelest working conditions – always working under the threat of violence – from dawn to nightfall; and never receive a single paycheck, the chance to get an education, enjoy a family, or purchase land, a home, or a business. I could only try to imagine the despair of living with conditions like these as one’s daily reality.
I admit I had never given thought to how much the institution of slavery contributed to the wealth and prosperity of this country (for an analysis of how slavery contributed to America’s prosperity, read The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, by Edward E. Baptist). Imagine the countless hours of labor without compensation that undergirded the economy of this country. It is no wonder that those who profited most from this system fought so rigorously to defend it, even to the point of civil war. But the wealth and prosperity that slavery brought were not the only reasons why it took root in our land. To justify laws and customs that deprived the enslaved of all legal rights and autonomy, supporters of slavery created a narrative of racial inferiority that defined Black people as less human than white people. Legal, political, religious and scientific institutions defended Black people’s lifelong and inescapable enslavement as permissible and necessary. This false narrative of racial inferiority continues to plague us to this day.
But the most shocking thing for me was the revelation of how racism continued to shape lives even after slavery supposedly came to an end with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865. At every juncture when there was a moment of hope, some new form of racial oppression emerged to replace the previous forms. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment in 1868 gave African Americans full citizenship and equal rights and led to a brief period in which newly freed Black Americans began to hope for real political and economic opportunity. But this hope was crushed in 1877 when federal soldiers were prematurely withdrawn from the South and control of Southern state governments was returned to former Confederates. The result was that the narrative of racial inferiority was restored to justify the continued dehumanization of Black people. As W.E.B. DuBois put it, “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”
The Era of Racial Terror
The truth is that slavery did not end. It evolved.
What followed the Emancipation Proclamation and the brief period of Reconstruction were a series of practices that kept African Americans in a state of subjection. The rights of Black people were widely violated, and the laws that protected them were rarely enforced. They were denied land ownership and economic advancement, and forced into sharecropping, where they worked on White-owned land and were dependent for food and shelter, with tools and seed advanced by the landowners, all of which trapped them in cycles of debt and poverty that lasted generations. Denied the right to vote through law and violence, the formerly enslaved were governed by all-White legislatures that passed “Black Codes” and authorized “convict leasing.” African Americans were criminalized, imprisoned, or fined, and then sold to private citizens or companies to work off their “debts” for state profit. Thousands of prisoners were re-enslaved in mines, on farms, and on plantations, where conditions were horrific, where they once again lived without rights, unable to protest the injustices committed against them. Many lived and died in these appalling conditions.
How had I, growing up in America, learned so little about the oppressive practices of sharecropping and convict leasing? How had I failed to see that these practices perpetuated the unjust conditions established in the era of slavery and were simply new expressions of racial exploitation and oppression? I realized how much I had yet to learn.
Racial violence aimed at re-establishing White supremacy was widespread throughout the former Confederate states following Emancipation. In the eight decades between the end of the Civil War and the end of World War II, White people publicly tortured and killed thousands of African Americans in “racial terror lynchings” designed to terrorize and intimidate the Black community.
Black communities forced to witness brutal killings of friends or relatives by bold, undisguised White mobs were warned that the same fate awaited them if they protested, sought justice, or even openly discussed lynchings. It was an era characterized by fear and silence, and the trauma of it endured for generations.
In 2015, the Equal Justice Initiative released a report which documented more than 4,000 victims of racial terror lynching killed in 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950. It later supplemented that research with more than 300 additional racial terror lynchings committed in states outside the Deep South during the same period. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery details the violence and terror of this period.
It is eerie to walk among the more than 800 six-foot steel monuments suspended from the ceiling on poles, each representing a county in the United States where one or more racial terror lynchings took place. The names of the lynching victims and the dates when these lynchings occurred in each county are engraved on the monuments. As you walk along the corridor the floor begins to slope downward until the monuments, once at eye level, are now suspended above you, evoking memories of bodies swaying from ropes. On the walls are stories of more than 90 Black men, women and children who were lynched, many for mere social transgressions: “Henry Patterson was lynched in Labelle, Florida, in 1926 for asking a white woman for a drink of water.” “Jesse Thornton was lynched in Luverne, Alabama, in 1940 for addressing a white police officer without the title ‘mister.'” “Malcolm Wright was lynched in Chickasaw County, Missouri, in 1949 for yielding too little of the roadway to white men as he passed in his wagon.” “Elbert Williams was lynched in Brownsville, Tennessee, in 1940 for working to register Black voters as part of the local NAACP.” On and on the list goes. Because African Americans were presumed to be guilty and dangerous (a presumption that continues to the present day) accusations lodged against them were rarely scrutinized. Nearly all of these victims were lynched without an investigation, much less a trial. Efforts to pass federal anti-lynching legislation repeatedly failed because of opposition by Southern elected officials. Only 1 percent of lynchings committed after 1900 led to a criminal conviction. What became clear to me was that lynchings in America were not isolated hate crimes committed by rogue vigilantes. Lynchings were targeted racial violence perpetrated to uphold an unjust social order. Lynchings were terrorism.
Why this monument? Why remind ourselves of the brutalities of the past? In their literature, the Equal Justice Initiative explains, “The National Memorial is a beginning – an opportunity for communities across the country to confront the past with courage and begin a hopeful future in which truth leads to repair, restoration, and reconciliation.” Without facing our past with honesty and openness, we will never overcome it. Healing and reconciliation come only when offenses are named and acknowledged. We saw this in the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” in South Africa at the end of apartheid; the same principle applies here.
Added to the fear and intimidation that resulted from racial terror lynchings were the daily humiliations of living under “Jim Crow” laws that enforced a strict separation between ‘black’ and ‘white’ citizens. The humiliating and rigid racial caste system that Jim Crow laws imposed cemented African Americans’ status as second-class citizens by sharply restricting their rights, movement and opportunity. Black people could not travel from place to place without the fear of intimidation. They were denied food service, hotel accommodations, and access to public buildings and events. The oft-touted principle of “separate but equal” was only half carried out, as Black citizens suffered prejudice and discrimination in every area: housing, education, jobs, justice under the law, and more.
With no protection from the constant threat of violence and death, nearly six million of African Americans fled the South between 1910 and 1940, forever altering the demographic landscape of America.
The Era of “Segregation Forever”
The Legacy Museum recounts the bravery of many Black (and White) people who fought for the civil rights of African Americans in this country in the 1950s and ‘60s. It tells the stories of “freedom riders” and lunch-counter protesters, of organized resistance in boycotts and demonstrations, of speeches and actions that had international impact.
After the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education outlawed racial segregation in public school, the backlash was immediate: many school districts closed rather than accept Black children; local White Citizens’ Councils and the Ku Klux Klan used economic intimidation, threats and violence to target Black parents and children who tried to enroll in white schools; and politicians vowed to resist the ruling at any cost.
As civil rights victories mounted, violent opposition became more frequent and deadly. In 1963, four young Black girls were killed when a bomb exploded in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. In the same year, Medgar Evers, a military veteran and NAACP field organizer, was shot and killed in his own Jackson, Mississippi, driveway. The criminal justice system emerged as an effective tool for suppressing efforts to gain civil rights as activists regularly faced arrest and prosecution. Between his emergence as a leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and his assassination in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested more than a dozen times for leading nonviolent civil rights demonstrations, repeatedly threatened with violence and hanged in effigy, and covertly targeted by FBI officials who labeled him “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.”
Against overwhelming odds, the Civil Rights Movement successfully disrupted the legal structures that had sustained Jim Crow, but the narrative of White supremacy that fueled segregation and White opposition to racial equality persisted.
It is easy to romanticize the Civil Rights Movement and sentimentalize figures like Dr. King and Rosa Parks, but the reality is that the challenges they faced persist to this day. No doubt they would have disturbing things to say to us today, and it is questionable whether we would heed their voices any more readily than their contemporaries did.
The Era of Mass Incarceration
Slavery’s “legacy” continues to plague us to the present day. Its latest manifestation is in the mass incarceration of African Americans and other people of color.
The era of racial terror fostered the racialization of criminality. Whites claimed that lynchings were necessary to protect their property, lives and lifestyles from Black “criminals.” At the close of the civil rights era (and continuing to the present day), politicians seized on “law and order” as a winning campaign platform and used thinly veiled racial appeals to win elections. Since the start of President Nixon’s racially biased war on drugs in 1971, the American prison population has increased from 300,000 to more than 2.3 million. The overwhelming majority of prisoners are people of color. (President Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Erlichman, later admitted, “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”)
The impact of race on the death penalty is well documented. The Equal Justice Initiative, which began representing poor defendants on Alabama’s death row in 1989, reports that it has “witnessed the connections between Southern racial history and the modern injustice of mass incarceration as well as the palpable links between lynching and the death penalty.” People of color are dramatically more likely to be killed by law enforcement officers while unarmed and to be unjustly convicted of crimes. Children of color suffer higher rates of suspension, expulsion, and arrest at school and disproportionate contact with the juvenile justice system. These disparities are rooted in America’s history of racial injustice.
Even after serving their prison sentences, thousands of American citizens face significant collateral consequences that bar them from voting and serving on juries; restrict their access to public housing, food stamps, and other social services; subject them to discrimination in the search for employment; and impact nearly every facet of daily life.
It’s not easy to confront the legacy of slavery woven into our country’s history and narrative. I often felt overwhelmed by the horror and misery we witnessed in display after display at the museum. Each day on our pilgrimage, we stumbled away, asking ourselves: How could such horrific treatment of human beings have happened and how and why has it persisted to the present day? How could these atrocities have gone unchallenged by so many, including people of integrity working in legal, political, and religious institutions? What dulled their consciences? How did they come to believe the narrative that said this was how things were supposed to be? Why did they settle for the status quo? How did Christians specifically learn to turn away from the appalling injustices that were so blatantly apparent for all to see, to participate in and benefit from the system?
Then, there was the realization that this legacy continues to the present day. I had not recognized this strong connection before, and it came as a shock to me. It raised more difficult questions, such as “What are we to do about ongoing racial injustice?” We like to think that if we had lived during the era of slavery, we would have been staunch abolitionists. We like to think that had we lived in the era of racial terror, we would have spoken up and tried to stop the lynchings. We like to think that, had it been possible for us, we would have joined in the civil rights demonstrations of the 1950s and ‘60s and fought against the ensuing racist backlash that continued to deny Black Americans equality under the law. But the truth, I suspect, is that most of us would have remained silent. Most of us would have seen the problem as too big, too complicated, too multifaceted to even begin to address, and would have settled into the status quo, particularly if we were its beneficiaries rather than its victims.
Visiting the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice leads to a necessary soul-searching. How have I been complacent in the face of injustice? How have I benefited from racially biased systems? How have I lived with the knowledge that racial injustice continues in our day? What have I done, what could I do, what must I do, in response to the awareness I have been given? What will I say about the mass incarceration of people of color? What will I do about the fact that African Americans lag behind White Americans in every measurable area: education, housing, employment, annual income, personal wealth, and more? Whom can I influence, what can I do, that will lead to a better future?
I try to take some small steps. I now correspond regularly with a prisoner, a small thing that hopefully impacts at least one life. I support the work of the Equal Justice Initiative and other justice-oriented efforts. I write and preach about injustice, hoping to awaken and stir the consciences of others, as mine has been stirred. I pay attention to the racism that I recognize within me and around me, and work to change it. Visiting these museums was for me a first step, an opportunity to learn from the lived experience of generations of Black folk in this country. But it is only a first step. There is much more to learn and so much more to do.
Jesus taught us to pray and to work that God’s kingdom might come “on earth as it is in heaven.” For Christians, this is a gospel summons that has clear implications for us living still in an era of racial inequality.
For Further Reflection
– How have you been complacent in the face of injustice? How have you benefited from racially biased systems?
– What have you done, what could you do, what must you do, in response to the awareness you have been given?
– What are we going to do about racial injustice?
How You Can Take Action
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Provide Support: Help others stand up for racial justice. Pitch in, lend a hand, stand by a friend, or cheer them on!
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Raise Your Voice: Bring visibility to problems of racial injustice. Make a sign, amplify your voices, attend a rally!
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Change the System: Change unjust rules and policies at school or in your community. Start a petition, talk to leaders, or promote the VOTE!
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Share Your Vision: Work with others to create a community that’s just for all. Create a vision board. Enlist others. Start small and keep going!
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Share the Truth: Use words, art, music, and dance to share the truth about injustice.
For resources on how to be a changemaker, visit:
www.emmitttillexhibit.org
Recommended Resources
Books:
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010, 2012).
Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story (New York: The New York Times Company, 2021). [This profound collection of essays won the Pulitzer Prize.]
Lee Sentell, The Official United States Civil Rights Trail: What Happened Here Changed the World (Birmingham: The Alabama Media Group, 2021).
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014).
Websites:
The Equal Justice Initiative (Montgomery, AL)
www.eji.org
The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration (Montgomery, AL), and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Montgomery, AL)
www.museumandmemorial.eji.org
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, AL)
www.bcri.org
Video:
Bryan Stevenson TED Talk: “We Need to Talk About an Injustice”
https://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice
⇓ Download, print and share: Breaking ApartIt was November 2011 when I began to plan my suicide.
No particular event prompted it. My grandmother had recently died, which was sad, but not unexpected, and she had lived a long life. I had, just a few weeks prior, lost a local election, but I never really expected to win; I was thrilled that I simply hadn’t come in last place, that I’d convinced thousands of real-life people with jobs and lives to vote for me. To be honest, the personal and professional busyness was probably a distraction from the deeper problem.
Eventually, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety (like many of us), and I took pills, and they worked well, and I basically agree with the diagnosis. But leaving it there doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel true to what I lived. I certainly experienced depression and anxiety to a degree that would register on a clinical level, but I do not think that’s the full story. I’m convinced that these were the psychological damages wrought by a deeper, fundamental problem.
I felt awash, adrift, and alone, isolated from people, from the world around me, from any sort of meaning or purpose. Everything was consumed by an unshakable nihilism, a beholding of the world and seeing a bunch of stuff happening, much of it awful, all of it chaotic, and none of it seeming to point to any coherent meaning. And this nihilism sprung from a particular philosophy, involving but not limited to a disdain for religion, wrapped up in a heavy, heavy individualism. This perspective was somehow the apotheosis of the free human being: no gods, no masters, no bonds unbroken, no fetters to impede the possibility of it all. There was a cold, heady rush to it, which was deeply alluring to a young man with an active mind and an attraction to argumentation.
And yet, rather than making me feel free, this viewpoint left me so isolated that I wanted to die – not to hurt myself or to stick it to others; simply, to slip the bonds of an existence I found so devoid of meaning. This was not resolved until I was brought so low, so desperate, that I began to question my fundamental philosophy, including its disdain for religion. Striving after and encountering God – a God simultaneously with relational personhood and identified with the principle of existence itself (“I am that I am,” explains Yahweh to Moses); a God simultaneously transcendent Alpha and Omega and immanent Christ in-the-flesh – was for me the necessary antidote to that corrosive nihilism.
Finding this God, and this faith, solved the problem. But, of course, it didn’t solve the problems. This is not some story about how everything was made better and perfect and lovely because I found religion. I was – I am – still prone to experience the strife of any living person, strife both internal and external. This strife can lead to places of extreme pain and loss, even to the point of death. My encounter with God, and my cultivating of that relationship, was vital to my surviving that strife. But the clamor did not cease. God did not just give me perfect clarity, calm, and contentment to serenely abide in the midst of trouble, blissfully unaware of the chaos around or within me. Of course, the Father did not give the Son this, either, and if we are to walk that Way of Christ, we will need to pick up and face the strife again. The path we are called to walk is not away from strife, but through it. We must take up our cross, put on the mind of Christ, and keep stepping forward.
If we wish to talk about the strife of our communities, cultures, and societies, I believe we need, at some point, to talk about the strife people endure internally.
Inward Strife
If we wish to talk about the strife of our communities, cultures, and societies, I believe we need, at some point, to talk about the strife people endure internally. Ideas of social sin have become justifiably more popular in some Church circles, but without a connection to something inward, it risks becoming a simple political agenda. The Letter of James describes this well: “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it, so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it, so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”
I think a corollary idea here is that the heart of sin is fear, and specifically, the fear that a desire will go unmet. God is regularly described as a God of provision, in whom we can trust. When we begin not to trust in that provision, we seek to seize things for ourselves. This inappropriate seizure is a reasonable way to describe most individual acts we call sin, whether it’s around food, money, sex, power, acclaim, or anything else. The twin maladies of vainglory and despair are mirror images of each other, and like many paired ideas, are only a brief distance apart. Vainglory places us at the pinnacle where we ourselves are the provider in whom we trust. But a pinnacle is a precarious place to stand, and when we inevitably tumble down, despair denies any ability to attain what we want or need.
Trust, then, is necessary. How do we attain it? I think it’s crucial that we look within ourselves starkly and honestly, again and again, to discern what our desires are, why we may have them, and how they’re related to God and the likeness of God that we have been called to grow into. In the gospels, we see Jesus proclaiming things such as “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” We see him lamenting in Gethsemane in one gospel account, while spurning the idea of desiring a different outcome in another. So with Paul, we see a consistent description of conflicting desires, doing what he does not want, failing to do what he does want, desiring God to remove the thorn in his side and not receiving it, so finding a way to boast in that weakness.
We may see these examples simply as the struggle to submit one outcome to the other, the flesh to the spirit. That’s a valid way to interpret it. But I believe this risks starting with the conclusion. We know the answers we’re supposed to have, so we can tend to jump to them without genuinely struggling and striving. We’re left confused that things haven’t shifted, that prayer feels dry, or that we’re not making the progress we thought we should. Instead of embracing the full logic of the Incarnation – this idea that divinity and humanity, spirit and flesh, do belong together and are reconcilable through the weakness, death, and triumph of the cross – we jump straight to the ending, expecting triumph.
The path we are called to walk isnot away from strife, but through it.
I am reminded of our founder, Richard Meux Benson, and his words to monks about the “lifelong novitiate.” The stage of struggling, striving, taking steps forward, and being formed never really stops until the very end. We “graduate” to the next stage only at the end of this life, not before. This approach – which both expects and embraces the lifelong work and struggle of being formed in the image of Christ, of listening to that voice that speaks with the full harmony of divinity and humanity – is the cross to take up daily.
This idea also appears in our Christian understanding of discernment. Fundamental to the idea of discernment is that we discern between goods. Put another way, if Option A is holy and Option B is sinful, no discernment is needed; pick Option A. Discernment only comes into play if Options A and B are both good, and both can speak with different but holy voices. This might seem daunting – and it can be. But the ability to encounter multiple experiences within ourselves and our encounters with God – to embrace them all and trust that they are reconcilable, even if we can’t yet see how – is an exercise of the fundamentals of the Christian faith and of the Christ in whom all things hold together. All things – even you.
Becoming Whole
I have noticed something about my own prayer. When I don’t pray, I feel easily distracted, caught up in one thing or another, fixated on things in ways that are not always helpful. The thoughts can become picky, nagging, or consuming. They distract from God. But when I do pray, and tend to that prayer wholeheartedly, I begin to see new treasures of God in everything – even the struggles. No longer nagging inconsistencies, they become the distinct little pieces of glass making up the stained-glass window, the little broken pottery tiles that make up the mosaic. They have their own shapes and textures, but they build a broader whole. They do not do this by sacrificing their individuality, but the skillful artist – in the case of prayer, God – orients them in such a way that their distinctiveness builds on one another, until a vision more glorious appears, and the many voices of the choirs of heaven, though dim, might be heard.
Questions for Reflection
– How does your inner life and experience impact your view of God?
– Think of the most significant instances of prayer, or awareness of God, in your life. What were you feeling or thinking in those moments, or in the time leading up to them?
– How do you cultivate and express faith in your life, independent of emotional or intellectual highs and lows?
Embark on a profound journey from despair to faith as this article explores Br. Lucas’s battle with internal strife, nihilism, and the transformative power of encountering God. Delve into the heart of Christian discernment and the art of prayer, discovering a narrative that weaves together personal struggles into a beautiful mosaic of spiritual awakening.
⇓ Download, print and share: Conflict: Jesus in our MidstIt was about 5:15 in the morning, and I was in the shower. There was shampoo in my hair, and my eyes were closed. I was busy imagining an argument with a Brother, which probably wouldn’t even happen.
The argument was over dried fruit. You see, I had been getting the impression that a particular Brother of mine didn’t think I was replacing the dried fruit often enough. (This all happened back when I was a postulant, and my job was to be the pantry monitor. One task of being the pantry monitor was making sure our supply of dried fruit in the pantry never ran out.)
Now, this particular Brother, in my experience, was the biggest consumer of dried fruit in the whole Monastery. One day, that Brother walked over to a piece of paper we kept clipped to a cupboard in the pantry. That piece of paper had a list of tasks the pantry monitor was supposed to do. I noticed my Brother giving the list a long look, then looking at me, then looking back at the list. Finally, he walked over to me and said that refilling the dried fruit was on the list of tasks for the pantry monitor. Then he walked away. It was a simple enough exchange.
And yet, there I was the next morning in the shower, unable to stop thinking about what I should have said to him or what I would say if he mentioned something about the dried fruit again. I can’t remember how long this went on or how it resolved, but here I am, about five years later, and I still remember that moment.
There is no denying the fact that life in a community can be tough. Back when I was an inquirer, it seemed like every single Brother warned me about the difficulties of life in community. Of course, I believed them, but there’s a massive difference between hearing about something and actually experiencing it firsthand. Try to imagine thirteen men of all different ages and backgrounds living together in one large house. They all share their meals together, run a church collectively, operate a non-profit business as a team, and sleep in bedrooms the size of walk-in closets. Most of these men have committed to doing this for the rest of their lives. This may sound like heaven, hell, or purgatory to you. I would say it’s a little bit of all three!
Life in a community can be challenging, but it is also incredibly rewarding. Living at SSJE with my Brothers has been one of the most profound experiences of my life. In particular, life in community has taught me the value of conflict and how it is an unavoidable yet potentially meaningful and transformative aspect of life.
In all our various roles and time together, inevitably we will grate against one another. We are spending so much time together and making so many decisions, that conflict is bound to happen. This is not an occasional occurrence, it is a day-to-day reality.
The chapter in our Rule of Life entitled “The Challenges of Life in Community” states that, in community life, “tensions and friction are inevitably woven into the fabric of everyday life.” This is one of my favorite lines from the Rule, and I find myself repeating it like a mantra on some days. I’m always struck by the choice of the word “everyday.” Personally, I might have preferred “weekly” or “monthly,” but such terms might not accurately reflect the reality.
Consider your own day-to-day life. Have you ever experienced a day without any tension or friction? Think about all the roles you may be playing in your life: as a family member, as a coworker, as a citizen, as a partner, or as a Christian. When have you ever gone a whole day without experiencing some conflict in at least one of those roles? (Now, if you want to know what it’s like to be a monk, imagine experiencing all of those roles simultaneously with the same small group of people).
What if God really is using the tension in your life as a means for your own conversion?
Whether you’re a monk or not, tension is inevitable in relationships. That same chapter from our Rule of Life goes on to say, “tensions and friction are not to be regarded as signs of failure. Christ uses them for our conversion.” For me, this is a very powerful and important statement. It argues that conflict can be transformative.
When you experience conflict in a relationship, do you consider it to be a sign of failure? Do you think that the presence of tension means that a mistake has been made? Do you treat it as something to be remedied or overcome? Try to imagine what it would feel like in your own life if your answer to all of those questions was “No.” Imagine what it would look like if you experienced conflict as an opportunity. What if God really is using the tension in your life as a means for your own conversion?
Consider how Jesus responded to conflict within his own community during his earthly ministry. One of my favorite anecdotes from the Gospels comes from the ninth chapter of Mark, where the disciples are engaged in an argument about who among them is the greatest. I find it both comforting and humorous that the disciples, despite being in the presence of God incarnate, are preoccupied with themselves and constantly comparing their status with one another. You would think that being so close to the only-begotten Son of God would result in permanent bliss and solve all human problems, but the disciples prove that wrong! We, like they, remain human.
One of the many reasons I love this passage is that Jesus immediately addresses the conflict. I imagine that he can feel the tension in the air and knows it needs rectifying. Jesus asks his disciples, “What were you arguing about on the way?” Notice how Jesus doesn’t ignore the conflict, nor does he start addressing it by pointing fingers. He simply asks a question to initiate a dialogue between himself and his disciples. His question is an invitation to transformation, an invitation to address the conflict and make something out of it.
So, the next time you find yourself reeling from an argument, try to imagine what it would be like if Jesus asked you a similar question as he asked his disciples. What would you say if Jesus walked in and asked you what you were arguing about? Try to envision what he would respond to you as well.
I firmly believe that Jesus is right there in the midst of our most serious conflicts. In fact, I also believe that Jesus is present in the midst of our most petty arguments as well. During times of conflict and arguments, it is easy to push Jesus aside or think that we will simply have to wait to reconnect with him after the problem is over. However, when we do this, we miss the chance to discover Jesus right in the midst of our struggles and to allow him to help us grow through them.
Think back and consider how God has used previous conflicts in your life for your own conversion. In my time living in community, I have seen this happen many times. I have seen my community get closer together after going through conflicts. I have seen many Brothers disagree over something but have their relationship improve from navigating through that disagreement.
I firmly believe that Jesus is right there in the midst of our most serious conflicts.
After all, conflict can force us to communicate. This may not always be pleasant, but it is usually helpful. I have been a participant in many difficult conversations during my time as a monk in this community. These discussions can be excruciating and draining, but from my experience, they are worth it. Some of the best changes I have witnessed in our community have arisen from such dialogues. The challenging conversations that may emerge from conflicts aid us in gaining a deeper understanding of ourselves and the state of our relationships.
I find that one of the best feelings in the world is being able to look back upon difficult times of conflict in the community and have a laugh, knowing that the storm has passed, and things are better now. The Brother whom I thought was admonishing me about the dried fruit has been resting in heaven for about three years. When I look at the dried fruit now and remember the brief time we shared together, I both laugh and cry, reflecting on the full range of experiences we went through as Brothers in community. I can’t help but think that in heaven, when we are reunited with our loved ones, we will be able to do the same together again.
Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, did not lead a life free of conflict. He freely and fully entered the maelstrom that is humanity at large. He did so with grace and tact beyond measure. We are called to follow his example every day of our lives. We cannot evade conflict; instead, we must embrace it. When we do so, we also welcome the transformation it brings.
Questions for Reflection
– Think back: How has God used the conflicts in your life for your own conversion?
– Think about your own communities. How have they formed you? What have they revealed about you?
– How does your personal, day-to-day life feed into that broader whole of the Church’s mission and witness?
In this utterly relatable reflection, Br. Jack Crowley takes us from an imagined argument – had entirely in his own mind while in the shower – through the complex realities of the tension that marks all forms of community. What if Jesus really was there, in the midst of those conflicts, big and small, that make community so hard? And if that very tension was a force for our transformation?
⇓ Download, print, and share: Visiting Jesus in PrisonThe keepers are uniformed, professional, and follow an exacting protocol. Every visit I am greeted with pages of instructions: what I may not do, may not wear, may not bring. I submit paperwork and my ID. I am physically inspected head to toe and under my tongue, then scanned. A massive steel door slides open. I am stamped with ultraviolet ink, to be verified on my exit. I await another steel door to slide open. I walk 100 yards to a family meeting room where I await yet another steel door to be opened. Guards oversee. I am instructed where I may sit, in a chair whose location is framed by a painted square on the floor. The prisoner whom I meet is escorted in through another door. I stand. We greet briefly. We smile. We sit, he, too, in a designated square. After some welcoming conversation, I suggest we share silence and stillness for some moments, and then either the prisoner or I will pray aloud. And then I listen. I mostly listen. The time is precious, and we talk earnestly about important things. We often share some gentle laughter and slow tears. We stand to say goodbye very briefly, and then he sits to await his escort. And then I depart, a repeat process.
Jesus shares an arresting allegory about meeting him, oftentimes quite disguised:
“Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” – Matthew 25:37-39
We may hear Jesus’ words in two complementary ways:
- Descriptively, insofar as we experience a face and form of Jesus among the poor and imprisoned, a Jesus whom we will miss if we seek and meet Jesus only among those whose lives are privileged.
- Prescriptively, insofar as we are called to bring an intervention of love to those who are otherwise among the least, and the last, and the lost, to whom Jesus is passionately and preferentially inclined.
My own heart has been particularly broken open to those who are imprisoned. Listening to prisoners’ stories, I am so aware that many of them did not have much of a chance for good. By what was present or by what was absent, they were deeply wounded, maybe even before they were born.
Not I. I was raised in a family full of love, provided with good education and opportunities to study music, play sports, and travel. My health has been good. I do not recall being afraid while I was growing up. I am a white male, so aware of my unearned, privileged life. More poignantly than ever before, I hear Jesus’ words directed to me personally: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required” (Luke 12:48). To paraphrase Saint Paul, I am working out my salvation (Philippians 2:12).
My own heart has been particularly broken open to those who are imprisoned.
Some years ago I shared a number of conversations with a young man who was awaiting sentencing. He told me that his greatest fear about his impending imprisonment was that he would be forgotten. For prisoners, their most meaningful, yet most complicated relationships may be with those to whom they have belonged – their family members, friends, and colleagues. These loved ones (or former loved ones) may create distance from their imprisoned relative, friend, or colleague as a way to redress their own grief, anger, revenge, complicity, or shame. Not always, but often. So many who live behind bars do feel forgotten. Likewise, prisoners may themselves forget or try to forget their former life as they deal with their own grief, anger, revenge, depression, or shame in their imprisonment. They are also liable to forget meaningful things about themselves – what had made their life distinctive, enjoyable, and helpful; how freely they formerly could exercise their own will to make decisions; where they would choose to be, and with whom. So much of this can be lost on a prisoner. Many prisoners also feel lost in the trauma of the judicial system while they face trial, await sentencing, and endure their incarceration. Many prisoners feel lost from whom and what had given their life meaning, and lost from hope for the future. And this loss surely becomes a second form of imprisonment.
Visiting prisoners does not redress the injustice that may have conspired in their incarceration, nor does it address all their personal needs. Far, far from it. But visiting a prisoner out of love, not out of duty, may give them a rare experience of being greeted, even rescued, as a child of God whom God loves.
Prisoners especially need an intervention of love.
When Jesus begins his public ministry, he says he has come “to proclaim release to the captives” (Luke 4:16-21). Some prisoners were physically set free; however for far more prisoners, the internal corollary is their own release from self-sentencing, finding freedom from living in self-damnation with the belief they are beyond hope, or help, or love.
Love, and love alone, heals. Love is what makes us most fully human, and yet the penal system colludes in squelching this most core need. Every prisoner will be assigned an identification number which designates their penal institution identity, classifies their daily regimen, and connects with the reasons and restrictions for their incarceration. For many years I corresponded with a prisoner. For the return address on his envelopes, he always included the title, “Mr. _______,” as did I in my responses to him. “Mr.” was a toehold into his fuller identity. He knew himself to be more than an inmate, more than an ID number, and he was clinging to that.
Bryan Stevenson, the charismatic attorney and ambassador for the imprisoned, writes that “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. If someone tells a lie, that person is not just a liar. If you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you are not just a thief. Even if you kill someone, you’re not just a killer” (Bryan Stevenson in Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption [2015], 289-290).
And yet, a prisoner left alone may be powerless to claim their fuller, higher identity. Their soul is starving. That a prisoner is a child of God – still a child of God – is a truth that may elude them. Prisoners especially need an intervention of love.
For us who profess to be followers of Jesus, this great need among prisoners is a great invitation for those of us not incarcerated. We don’t enter the prison to adjudicate or arbitrate; we are not family systems counselors or psychotherapists. We enter prison to bequeath personhood to prisoners by our presence, by the light teeming from our face, by our being interested friends and loving listeners. We can fix almost nothing, yet we can convey such a bounty of love, dignity, kindness, simply through our respectful interest in this all-too-forgotten prisoner, who is a child of God.
Saint Teresa of Avila, the 16th-century Spanish nun, said “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the world. Yours are the feet with which Christ is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which Christ is to bless all people now.” In Christ’s love, your coming into the presence of someone who is imprisoned may help liberate them, from the inside out, from their own hell, and help them claim Jesus’ gift of healing and hope, even amidst their incarceration.
In such an encounter, we will also be taught. We are missing Jesus if we are not meeting poor Jesus. We experience a powerful and necessary revelation of Jesus’ presence and power among the poor and imprisoned. Not only do we serve Jesus there among the poor and imprisoned, but we also see Jesus there among them. An old insight about prayer is that you cannot pray if you are too full – bloated by too much food or drink, or bloated by too much privilege. We in the West can become glutted by our own privilege, and the truths of the Gospel can become dulled or pale in our plenty. Again and again in the psalms we read of a thirsting after, hungering for, longing toward God. Through work serving among those who are less privileged, we may get in touch again with this longing and hunger. In my experience, the poor – including among them the imprisoned – can give witness to a need for and openness to God that is oftentimes so transparent. God’s presence to them is powerful. I have certainly discovered this in the witness of prisoners, so many of whom are otherwise powerless. Prisoners often cling to Jesus’ promise of his presence and power because they have no other options. I find prisoners’ testimony uniquely credible. In meeting with them, my own faith has been reawakened and made more real.
We are missing Jesus if we are not meeting poor Jesus.
The need for this kind of ministry among the imprisoned is significant, especially in America. The United States today has the highest incarceration rate in the world: 629 people imprisoned per 100,000 (World Prison Brief [October 2021]). The United States comprises 5% of the world’s population, and we imprison 25% of the world’s prisoners. In the United States, our prison population in l970 was 300,000; in 2020 our prison population was 2.3 million. I highly recommend the book Waiting For An Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration, by Christine Montrose, M.D. Prisoners are largely hidden and easily feel forgotten, because they often are. Here is a huge need for us to bear the beams of Jesus’ light, and life, and love to those who often live in the valley of the shadow of death: both prisoners and their families. And there is also an equally-huge opportunity to listen and learn from prisoners who understand, from the inside out, what Jesus meant when he claimed his mission “to bind up the broken hearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (Luke 4:16-21).
When I return to the Monastery, Brothers often ask about my visit to the prison. Brothers know I will not speak of any details whatsoever of my prison conversations; however they are kindly, caringly asking about me and my time away. My recurring line is that I am so grateful for this opportunity. I am deeply grateful. What I do not often name are my tears about how appallingly bad this is. Heartbreaking. Prisons can be hell. Hell for prisoners, hell for their families and friends, hell for those who have been hurt along the way. Prison can also be hell for the prison staff, who suffer high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and a suicide rate twice as high as police officers. Life expectancy for corrections officers is 62.4 years compared to 74.2 years for the general population. Everyone is suffering in prison (National Institute of Corrections).
I encourage you to inquire locally about opportunities to know prisoners, parolees, their families, or corrections’ staff. Where could you visit, how could you help, with whom could you correspond, how can you pray? You will be blessed in this, and you will be a blessing. If you are afraid to go into a prison, I don’t think you need be afraid. Everyone but you is imprisoned; everyone else is under guard. You will be safe; and who knows but that you may bring salvation with you.
You may find helpful information and inspiration from the Equal Justice Initiative’s Re-Entry Program. If being involved with the imprisoned seems daunting or overwhelming, just remember how Jesus was so attentive to individuals. He showed us how meaningful it is to do small things with great love.
Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909), an historian and Unitarian minister in Boston, facing overwhelming needs in his own day, said:
I am only one, but still, I am one.
I cannot do everything,
but still I can do something;
and because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
– When have you experienced meeting Jesus among the less fortunate?
– Br. Curtis shares how his own heart has been broken open around incarceration. What issue is calling out to you?
– How can you bear the beams of God’s love toward those in your life who may need that intervention of love?
Join Br. Curtis Almquist on his personal journey into the heart of America’s prisons, and into the heartbreak that waits inside. “Prisons can be hell,” he admits, and yet entering into them brings nothing short of blessing for both prisoner and visitor. How might Jesus be calling you to bear his light into this very dark corner of our world?
⇓ Download, print and share: Violence and the promise of God
When I first wrote this piece, in March of 2023, I had no idea of how much the historic scenes of division and violence it remembers would become once again, by the time of its publication, breaking and heartbreaking current events, only in a different content: no longer in Northern Ireland, but now in the Holy Land. With the outbreak of such wrenching violence in the Middle East, the questions that echo through this piece have never been more resonant: How we can hold together our belief in a merciful and loving God when we continue to see such suffering, cropping up in fresh horrors in every news cycle? And what on earth can we, as people of faith, do about it? I hope that the experiences I share here might inspire other to believe in the power of even a few bold, inspired individuals to make significant change in a tragedy that seems, right now, irredeemable. Join with me, please, in praying for the peacemakers. Please consider checking out the additional information and resources available through The Episcopal Church.
It was over fifty years ago. I was a child, but I still remember the weekwhen it all started. Sitting in front of the television I watched the scenes of mangled buildings, ambulance sirens, dead bodies. The armed conflict, the “Troubles,” had begun in Northern Ireland. I didn’t quite understand what was going on, but I knew there were two sides, Republicans and Loyalists, sometimes called Catholics and Protestants, and they seemed to hate each other. And for the whole of the rest of my life in England, virtually every news program, every day, featured the Troubles. Every Sunday in church, for decades, we would “pray for peace in Northern Ireland. We pray for peace.”
The Troubles were for me a daily reminder of a world in chaos. Why did God allow such suffering, such bloodshed? What was the point of praying for peace? As I write these words in April 2023, Joe Biden is in Ireland, as part of the twenty-fifth anniversary commemorations of the Good Friday Agreement, which was signed on April 10, 1998, and which heralded the end of the Troubles. After so many long years of violence, and despite the sporadic signs of continued conflict, there is now much hope for a lasting peace and reconciliation. It perhaps makes one nod in agreement with those famous words, memorably quoted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Yet there are countless men, women, and children whose lives have been forever shattered by those years of conflict, and who live with the dreadful consequences of loss and bereavement. How can we as Christians hold together a belief in a just and loving God, when throughout the world today we continue to see such suffering, cropping up in fresh conflicts every year?
Shortly after I was ordained, I started to struggle with this very question. How could I, with integrity, preach about a God of love and justice when every night I watched heartbreaking pictures of death and destruction on the news? And it was not just Northern Ireland. It seemed that the chaos of war and brokenness extended right across the globe. In the Book of Genesis, God too seemed to notice this, for “he saw that the earth had become corrupt, and was filled with violence” (Genesis 6:11). In my prayers I said rather angrily to God: “Well you made the earth God, so what are you going to do about it?” By way of reply, God, who rather scarily likes to answer our prayers, led me into the very heart of the violence! My bishop wrote to me and asked me to join a group of youth leaders who were organizing summer camps for both Catholic and Protestant young people from inner-city Belfast. So we flew to Belfast, and our first task was recruitment: we went into Catholic and Protestant schools, we met students, and we invited them to share a holiday with other students whom they would normally never have met, and whom they often either feared or despised. Some of them were suspicious, and said, “No!” And I soon found out why. I had never seen such a divided and polarized society! There was an invisible line right through the city; cross that road, and you were in Republican territory; cross that street, and the ubiquitous graffiti told you that you had entered a Loyalist street. The children either went to a state high school if they were Protestants, or, if Catholics, to a separate, parochial school. Separate schools, separate sports centers, separate shops, separate lives. Young people, growing up, never met young people on the other side. Ever. Ignorance of the other led to fear, and then to hatred. Gangs would roam the streets stopping strangers and asking if they were Catholic or Protestant, and God help them if they gave the wrong answer. (The people of Belfast did, though, have a great sense of humor and were incredibly kind. They would relate the humorous, yet telling anecdote of the Indian who was stopped on the street and asked, “Are you Catholic or Protestant?” He answered, “I am a Hindu.” To which they replied, “Yes, but are you a Catholic Hindu or a Protestant Hindu?”)
How can we as Christians hold together a belief in a just and loving God, when throughout the world today we continue to see such suffering, cropping up in fresh conflicts every year?
To bring these young people from such a divided society out into the countryside to attempt to spend two weeks together was a risky experience. For most of them, it was the first time they had ever spoken to someone from “the other side.” At first, kids from the two schools would stare at each other with a mixture of hostility and curiosity. But then, slowly, they began to talk and share with each other, to have fun together at the swimming pool, to discuss their experiences and learn from each other, to organize birthday parties, to pray together, to fall in love with each other. Their lives were changed, and so was mine. I believe that, by the grace of God, our summer camps made a difference, however small, to the conflict, and helped mend some of the brokenness.
The experience of those camps made an enormous difference to me. Before I went to Northern Ireland, I was angry with God and demanded to know how God was going to mend the chaos and violence of the world that God had created. I suppose I wanted God to come down in power and glory and suddenly make everything alright – a kind of deus ex machina! But during those years in Northern Ireland, I realized that that is not how God works. God prefers to use us, to work with us, to bring healing and reconciliation into our broken world. In a small way, God used those summer holidays, which we organized with immense care and with lots of faith, and then worked with us through them to change lives. This was the most important lesson I learned from Northern Ireland, which I believe is of fundamental importance for each of us who seek to follow Jesus and who long to help mend God’s broken world. It is a truth expressed so memorably by Saint Augustine in words which are very close to my heart: “Without God we cannot. Without us God will not.”
I encountered during my sojourn in Northern Ireland so many men and women who were doing heroic work of reconciliation. They often took huge risks, putting themselves in personal danger, crossing lines to try to mend what was broken. In particular, I have huge admiration for two seemingly ordinary women, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who together started a peace movement, “The Peace People,” which inspired men and women from both sides of the conflict to demonstrate against violence and terrorism. After six months, the violence had declined by 70%. Williams and Maguire won the Nobel Peace Prize for this remarkable achievement. All these years later, as I watch the ceremonies to mark the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, I think of such courageous men and women with great thanksgiving. God was working with them and through them. Just one person filled with courage, faith, and valor can not just make a difference, but can turn the world upside down. And that person could easily be us! Each one of us can make a difference. Each one of us can light a candle to help lighten the darkness. Even small things (like a simple, two-week summer camp) can make a huge difference.
God is not absent from the chaos, but is right in the middle of it.
My three years working amidst the Troubles helped me to preach again with integrity. I learned that God is not absent from the chaos, but is right in the middle of it. God was there, without any doubt, fully present and working with and through men and women of good will, to bring healing and hope. God is not a deus ex machina, who enters the scene with an explosion of power to make everything better. That is not how God works. In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola describes God rather as a deus operarius, which means a God who is “working” or “laboring.” David Fleming SJ writes, “God is an active God. He is ever ‘at work’ (operarius) in people’s lives, inviting, directing, guiding, proposing, suggesting.” I saw this time and again. I witnessed Christ’s presence inspiring and guiding and strengthening those who gave their all. I saw it in their eyes and in their hearts. The way that God can work with us and through us is a great mystery, but for me it is beautifully expressed in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”: “for Christ plays in ten thousand places / lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his.”
Newly ordained and faced with a world of chaos and violence, I spoke angrily to God: “You made the world, God. What are you going to do about it?” In truth I still feel anger and incomprehension at times. The ongoing sight of such pervasive human suffering still leaves me bewildered and silent. When I watch the news now and see the terrible suffering of the people of the Ukraine, when I hear the heartbreaking tally of victims of gun violence, when I see and feel all around me the consequences of our voracious abuse of the environment, it still leaves me feeling bewildered and silent. But that I can still preach about a God of love and justice is largely thanks to my time in Northern Ireland. I learned many things there, perhaps most fundamentally that I was asking God the wrong question: not, “What are you going to do about it?” but rather, “What are we going to do about it?”
Lord make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
Questions for Reflection
– What worldly realities threaten your belief in a just, loving, and merciful God?
– What concrete step, however small, can you take toward meaningful change in that domain?
– When in your life have you met God right in the middle of the chaos?
How can we believe in a God of love and justice when every night we confront such heartbreaking pictures of death and destruction on the news? Join Br. Geoffrey Tristram on this inspiring journey from despair to hope, as he learns how even small shifts can pave the way to meaningful change in this broken, aching world of ours, and in our own broken, aching hearts.
Cowley Magazine - The Lord's PrayerOnline MagazineMobile-Friendly PDFDownload PDF
The prayer that Jesus taught is a simple, supremely effective tool to slice away anything in us that is not humble or sincere. It is the best, most straightforward antidote to all our articulate spiritual nonsense. Over time, it makes us real.
This special issue of Cowley Magazine dives deep into one of the treasures of the Christian tradition: the Lord’s Prayer. With a mix of reflections written by Brothers and meditation prompts for you to answer, this is a resource to deepen your own prayer life or to share in a group.We hope you’ll join us in reflecting on the prayer that Jesus taught, and experience firsthand its power to make us real.
Interactive Lord's PrayerWe invite you to deepen your experience of the Lord's Prayer, verse by verse, with these prompts for further reflection, journalling, discussion, or prayer.
What does the pronoun “our” invite in you and for you?
Jesus teaches us, “your Father already knows what you need before you ask him.” So why is Jesus praying? Why are you?
Where do you see signs of God’s Kingdom here on earth?
How are you being called by God to be an answer to Jesus’ prayer that God’s “kingdom come...will be done, on earth as in heaven”?
Think about your daily routine. Where in your day do you feel a sense of contentment, fulfillment, or satiation? What are you doing? Who are you with? Describe the experience.
Imagine your day without this experience. How do you feel? What does your body need? Bring this to God in prayer.
Where do you need to seek forgiveness today?
Whom and what do you need to forgive to unburden yourself – and them?
Did you learn this line of the prayer as “Save us from the time of trial” or “Lead us not into temptation”? Which petition resonates more with you now, and why?
What trials or temptations are you wrestling with? Pray to Jesus, your Savior, about them.
The Lord’s Prayer invites us to pray not just for ourselves, but for others. With whom do you bind yourself in prayer? Pray for their deliverance.
Where does the evil in our world confront your heart? Give it to God in prayer.
Where are you in touch with God’s power and God’s glory?
How can you channel them in your life?
As humans made in God’s image, we co-create with God , building up the Kingdom, using God’s power, and reflecting God’s glory. How might you offer yourself more fully to God in this?
Offer to God a promise or a prayer about right “now.”
Offer a promise or prayer about the future, God’s “forever.”
Selected ArticlesA Prayer RenewedBy Br. Todd Blackham“If your primary experience with this prayer is in corporate worship, perhaps you will find it helpful in these pages to take some time to reconnect with it, line by line, word by word. This Cowley invites us to slow down. As we move through the prayer, we invite you to take in each word and phrase, to lovingly abide with it, and allow it to once more shine light on your path.”
Being an Answer to Jesus’ PrayerBy Br. Curtis Almquist“Jesus here regards his disciples not as his servants, but as his friends. They are his peers. They share the same prayer. He doesn’t say, “My Father,” or “Your Father.” He says, “Our Father.””
Our Daily BreadBy Br. Lain Wilson“We all have needs. We all have hungers. And I think that by identifying them, and in recognizing how these needs affect us physically, we can begin to recapture something of the immediacy and materiality of praying for our daily bread.”
God Loves HumansBy Br. David Vryhof“If forgiveness is one of the most powerful forces for redemption in the Christian faith, unforgiveness is one of the most powerful forces for destruction. Unforgiveness hardens the heart. It magnifies a perceived offense to the point where we can no longer appreciate a person’s value because all we see is how they have grieved us. No wonder the petition about forgiveness – “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” – sits at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer.”
Prayer with SubstanceBy Br. Keith Nelson“It is quite easy to heap up empty phrases. In such moments, what hope do we have? For me, it is the Lord’s Prayer.”
Lead Us Not into TemptationBy Br. Jim Woodrum“In the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer each day, I am reminded that if I turn to God in my moments of temptation, then I, like Jesus, will be able to dismiss temptation’s toxicity, and be fortified and empowered to live into the divine life which God has enabled in me.”
Unravel the FamiliarBy Br. Sean Glenn“The kingdom, God’s final setting-right of the world, defied the familiar expectations of the disciples. What sort of familiar expectations do you have about God’s kingdom?”
Lord, Teach Us to PrayBy Br. James Koester“The Lord’s Prayer unites us, makes us and shapes us into a communion, a community, a commonwealth, where none are left out, left behind, or left alone. In an age of self-interest, taking responsibility for the well-being of another, especially if they are not like us, is a radical act.”
Several years ago, I found myself in a small, subterranean chapel within sight of the Old City of Jerusalem. It had once been a cave. At some point, a modern church was built over it. The floor was littered with scraps of paper. On them people had written prayers, and then dropped them through a grille in the floor of the upper church, onto the floor of this cave chapel, where I stood with Sr. Elspeth. Elspeth was an American. She had begun her religious life as a sister of the Order of Saint Anne, here in Arlington, Massachusetts. The deeper she entered the mystery of her vocation, the more she realized it was to the contemplative life she was called. So, there she was, a Carmelite nun of the Pater Noster Carmel, showing me the cave where, tradition says, Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer.
Like many of the holy sites in Jerusalem, it is impossible to know if this is the place where Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer. Nonetheless, this place has been hallowed by the memory of that occasion, as well as by the prayers of countless believers. Like our Monastery Chapel, the walls of that cave are soaked in prayer. You feel it the moment you enter.
Of all the prayers we pray, none is so universal, so loved as the Lord’s Prayer. Wherever we go as Christians, we find others who love and pray this prayer. We may be divided by language, culture, race, gender, economics, education, ecclesiology, or theology, but we are united by this prayer and by praying it.
For all its familiarity, the Lord’s Prayer is one of the most radical acts a Christian can do. It is radical, because from the first two words, we say something profound about ourselves and about God.
The prayer begins not with Almighty and Everlasting God, or Holy God. It does not begin with Merciful God, or Blessed Lord. It begins quite simply: Our Father. With those two words, we enter a relationship with all the people throughout time and space, who have ever said them, and we enter a relationship with the One whom we call Father.
At its heart, the Lord’s Prayer is about belonging. That is what we proclaim whenever we say: Our Father. In those words, we proclaim that we belong to God.
And in praying this prayer, we proclaim that we belong to one another. It is through our relationship as the beloved daughters and sons of God that we are sisters and brothers to one another. Thus, we have the audacity to say “Our,” in union with those near and far, those like us and those different from us. In this prayer of belonging, we affirm our common identity as God’s children, and we place ourselves in relationship, with God and one another. In this age of individualism, being in relationship – especially with people who are not like us – is a radical act.
And we do more.
As we proclaim our belongingness to God and to one another, we affirm our common need and responsibility for one another. As the prayer progresses, we pray: give us, forgive us, save us, deliver us. Nowhere do we say me or I. Instead, we pray, us, us, us, us.
In this prayer, we come to God not as individuals, demanding our share, but as members of a community, who know our common need for sustenance, forgiveness, salvation, and liberation. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from the evil one. In those words, we pray for all in need, and we take responsibility, not just for our own well-being, but for the well-being of others.
The Lord’s Prayer unites us, makes us and shapes us into a communion, a community, a commonwealth, where none are left out, left behind, or left alone. In an age of self-interest, taking responsibility for the well-being of another, especially if they are not like us, is a radical act.
That is what I felt standing in that cave chapel. What was important was the union I felt with thousands, if not billions of Christians who have said those same words, no matter the language, the place, or the time.
No matter how different, they are my sisters and brothers, related not by blood, but by the waters of Baptism, and we all have the same Father.
In that prayer, they prayed for, cared for, and were concerned for me, just as I prayed for, cared for, and was concerned for them.
What I heard as Elspeth and I prayed together, was not just the familiar words, but also the echo of other voices, in other places, and other times, which joined our voices, making Elspeth’s and my two rather feeble voices into the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying out: Our Father in heaven!
It’s easy to pray the Lord’s Prayer. It trips lightly off our tongues.
In fact, we should pray it with fear and trembling, not as individuals cataloging our personal needs, but as part of a great chorus of believers, stretching across time and space, united as sisters and brothers of one Father, who are asking, not for our own needs, but for the needs of those we love and those we don’t, those we know and those whom we may never know.
Praying the Lord’s Prayer is perhaps the most radical thing a Christian can do. It reminds us who we are, and to whom we belong. It reminds us that we are not a collection of individuals, but the community of the redeemed who, in the words of SSJE’s founder, Father Benson, “live like the saints not as separate individuals…but…as members of one living body.”
We belong. And with this prayer, we remember that we live, not for ourselves, but for all those to whom we belong – God, our neighbor, and everyone who has ever said those words: Our Father in heaven…
If your experience is anything like my own, you will have found that the praying life is often littered with shifting seasons, fresh insights, old wounds (which continue to sting), and ever expanding and contracting horizons of the heart.
Perhaps, too, you will have found that even the most familiar phenomena can take on new valences and, to your surprise, unveil themselves in a beautiful complexity to which you had previously been blind. The Sermon on the Mount has often been, for me, one such site of this very unraveling of the familiar – a place where the real limitations of my spiritual vision meet the scandalous, expansive, sometimes terrifying truth at the heart of all things.
More than any others, perhaps, the words of the Lord’s Prayer contain such inestimable, unquantifiable freight. These words – so dear, so familiar, so second-nature – stir the gaze of our hearts toward the One whom Jesus invites us to name “Our Father,” and they articulate, in six remarkably short petitions, some of the deepest content of the “hope that is in us” (1 Peter 3:15).
And yet, as with anything we hold in close proximity, the very familiarity of these words can sometimes obscure this prayer’s true power to transform us, and can dull the radical challenge by which it seeks to summon us beyond our illusory sense of self-dependence.
More than familiar words of comfort, this prayer challenges our easy temptation to imagine that we ourselves are the authors of our own salvation and the world’s. The trials of our age may tempt us down such a well-intentioned road, but the reality of the Christian experience is something much more complex. Jesus urges us, “Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:7).
The same One who spoke to Elijah’s fearful need – not in the din of created noise, not in earthquake, wind, or fire (1 Kings 19:11—13), but in the silence from which all sound emerges (created and uncreated) – is also the One who knows, better than we ourselves ever could, all that we need. As Matthew’s Jesus declares, “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things” (Matthew 6:11).
And this is perhaps one of the greatest perplexities of petitionary prayer: God knows, yet still bids us ask in our praying. Yes, we may say, God knows what we need; why, then, do we even bother with the exercise at all? The next clause of the prayer answers our curiosity: our need for forgiveness – which only God can grant. In this way, Jesus teaches us that in our asking, we are somehow cooperating with God in the process of our redemption. In this way, we cast ourselves anew into God’s hands: “Save us… deliver us…” The prayer closes with the ultimate recognition that God alone is God, whom we worship and on whom we depend for all: “For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever.” It is this cataract in our condition into which Jesus speaks when he teaches us to pray this way. As one who shed all power, privilege, and the riches of his divinity to enter into our humanity, Jesus invites us to pray to become uniquely aware of our own poverty – of our inability to save ourselves – by asking God to meet our needs one day at a time: Give us this day our daily bread. As we are apt to mistake our wants for our needs, “heaping up” many-worded petitions for the fulfillment of a reality according to our own, limited vision, this can be a difficult revelation to stomach. God knows what we need.
We should not be surprised to find, as Jesus’ followers did, that the kingdom being unveiled to us in and through our prayer will not meet our expectations. But do not despair; it will surely surpass them. Clouds and darkness may indeed hide God from our knowing, but righteousness and justice are the foundations of the divine (albeit cruciform) throne.
The tension between our human vision of peace and justice (what we want the world to look like), and the socially indecent charity of God’s ways (how God’s world actually is), has been with us from the beginning. Just as the people of first-century Judea were surprised by the content of Jesus’ revelation, so too should we be surprised. The kingdom, God’s final setting-right of the world, defied the familiar expectations of the disciples. “‘Do you also wish to go away?’ he said to them. ‘Lord,’ Peter replied, ‘to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life’” (John 6:67—68).
What sort of familiar expectations do you have about God’s kingdom? What needs to be recognized as the cultural baggage it is? What needs to be recognized as the subtle allure of the Accuser?
Lord, teach us to unravel the familiar.
Of all the petitions offered in the Lord’s Prayer, the one that most provokes my curiosity is “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
The early desert monastics (beginning in the fourth century) acknowledged the sobering reality of temptation in their lives. Yet for them, temptation was not something to be avoided, since the refining of our spiritual lives required an engagement with temptation. My study of that period of monasticism has helped me to appreciate that temptation reveals areas of my spiritual armor that need to be fortified in order for me to become more fully the person God created me to be.
Even Jesus, in his humanity, was tempted after his baptism by John in the Jordan River. You’ll recall that he withdraws into the desert for forty days, where he faces a series of temptations. In each temptation delivered upon him by the devil, Jesus withstands by recalling scripture that he had learned and memorized growing up in his faith. The desert monk, Evagrius Ponticus, adapted this method of engaging temptation in his book Antirrhêtikos, which means “Talking Back,” by using scripture to confront the wiles of the devil, empowering the individual to avoid acting upon temptation.
The crucial insight we can take from the desert monastics is seeing that temptation itself is not a sin. They deemed that only entertaining temptation in such a way as led to acting upon it was sinful.
Like the teachings of the desert monastics, our own Rule of Life acknowledges the reality of temptation in our life of faith: “For the hours of the day to be permeated by mindfulness of the divine life we must be engaged in constant struggle, depending on God’s grace. Powerful forces are bent on separating us from God, our own souls, and one another through the din of noise and the whirl of preoccupation.” For me, this preoccupation usually occurs when I’m not feeling my best. When Jesus was tempted by the devil in the desert, he was in the midst of a forty-day fast from food and water. In my own life, when I am facing temptation, I recall a slogan from the rooms of 12-step recovery: H.A.L.T., which is an acronym for “Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.” Whenever you feel tempted to do or say something that is not conducive to the life to which God has called you, you might find it helpful to notice if you are feeling hungry, angry, lonely, or tired and then tend to some self-care. Seek nourishment, counsel for your anger, the company of a trusted friend, or take some time for respite. You might want to recall the words of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel: “Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Temptation is inevitable; and we have at our disposal many tools we can use to help us withstand it.
In our Monastery, we use a modern adaptation of the Lord’s Prayer in contemporary language which renders this line, “Save us from the time of trial.” For me, this prayer means asking for God’s grace in resisting the trap of entertaining temptation, which I can do by remembering Jesus’ example and recalling God’s desire for wholeness and abundance of life for me.
In the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer each day, I am reminded that if I turn to God in my moments of temptation, then I, like Jesus, will be able to dismiss temptation’s toxicity, and be fortified and empowered to live into the divine life which God has enabled in me.
Monks pray often. But as we learn, many times over, quantity or frequency in prayer doesn’t equal quality or depth. Neither, as Jesus points out, does length or verbal sophistication equal substance. Even when the phrases of our prayer are full of meaning – such as those drawn directly from Scripture – it is possible to come to them with absence of mind or heart, or to miss their meaning because something in us is missing.
The Church, throughout its history, has sometimes wrestled to strike a balance between praying beautifully and praying simply, directly, and with purpose. Individual believers can struggle with the same temptation. When we “heap up empty phrases,” we ultimately miss the mark on both accounts.
You may be the type of person who crafts words because you love them. You may be that way by temperament, by communication style, by education, by vocational calling, by type of employment, by personal talent, by gift of the Holy Spirit, or any combination of the above. Maybe fine phrases follow you, are attached to your name, or the things you have produced. Maybe they flow from your mouth or pen: phrases with power to express, to articulate, to persuade, and to impress. I have had the privilege to meet, work alongside, and pray with many such people. Sometimes, I am told, I am one of them. A venerable company of monks, past and present, have been just such people.
If you are that type of person, you have probably experienced the occupational hazard – or the temperamental, communicational, stylistic, educational, vocational, or personal hazard – of heaping up an empty phrase or two. Maybe you’ve experienced that moment when the words sound smooth but ring hollow. Or when the undergrowth of verbiage obscures the path onward or homeward. Perhaps your words were beautiful, but lacked the gracious editing of the Author of Life.
It is quite easy to heap up empty phrases. In such moments, what hope do we have?
For me, it is the Lord’s Prayer. The prayer that Jesus taught is a simple, supremely effective tool to slice away anything in us that is not humble or sincere. It is the best, most straightforward antidote to all our articulate spiritual nonsense. Over time, it makes us real: real servants of a Savior with substance, which a world full of words desperately needs.
If forgiveness is one of the most powerful forces for redemption in the Christian faith, unforgiveness is one of the most powerful forces for destruction. Unforgiveness hardens the heart. It magnifies a perceived offense to the point where we can no longer appreciate a person’s value because all we see is how they have grieved us. No wonder the petition about forgiveness – “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us” – sits at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer.
In the gospels, Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” (Matthew 18:21). In this question, Peter thinks he is being generous. The rabbis of Jesus’ day taught that a person was obliged to forgive three times; Peter raises it to seven. “No,” Jesus answers, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”
The astounding generosity of such forgiveness can only come in response to the extravagant mercy and compassion of God.
Here’s the Good News: Jesus came for sinners. He was born, lived and died, and was raised again for people like you and me. When he lived among us, he preferred the company of sinful humans to that of those righteous souls who believed they were pure and above reproach. He befriended tax collectors and prostitutes. He made it clear that he had come not for the righteous, but for sinners. He insisted that his purpose was not to condemn, but to save. Even now, he unveils our hypocrisies not to shame us, but to help us to see how much we need him, how much we need his divine life flowing through us, transforming and changing us so that our actions may become true expressions of who we really are, so that we can live authentically as God’s children in the world.
If we consider our sinfulness; if we are aware of our countless transgressions against God and against our neighbors in thought, word and deed; if we realize our need for forgiveness and mercy; then we will begin to appreciate what has been done for us.
Forgiven people should not be unforgiving towards others. “Be kind to one another,” Saint Paul urges the Christians at Ephesus, “tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). Those who have been forgiven much ought to love much, and that love should include forgiving others with the same generosity with which we have been forgiven.
Living in a fallen world means that it is inevitable that we will be sinned against. Christian faith does not diminish the pain or damage that someone’s sin against us has inflicted. We need God’s help to work through our anger and bitterness to arrive at the place where forgiveness is possible. But we need to do this work – it is not an option – because without it, we will be imprisoned by our own unforgiveness.
Sometimes forgiveness can only come over time. Be patient with yourself but be equally determined to stay on the path towards forgiveness, even if it is an uphill climb. Our hearts harden when we harbor unforgiveness. Forgive, then, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
One of the great gifts of living at the Monastery is the view from my cell window. It’s not just the beauty of the Charles River; it’s the activity that takes place on it that captivates me, which resonates with my own deep-seated need.
I rowed crew off and on for fifteen years before entering the Monastery last winter. Watching the stream of crew boats cutting across my window now, I remember the feeling of being in a boat and I can imagine myself in one again. But more than anything, I feel the beauty of it all. I feel it in my body as tension unknotting in my stomach, as a weight lifting from my shoulders. In this physical response, I become aware of how important this encounter with beauty is for me – not only in watching the river, but in countless small and unexpected ways each day. I realize how much this beauty nourishes me, giving shape and color and texture to my day – to my life. And I recognize, deep down, how my senses, my memory, and my imagination – all those faculties that allow me to find, experience, and appreciate this beauty – are total gifts from God.
You may be surprised that this image of a crew boat on the Charles River emerges in the context of the familiar line from the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us today our daily bread.” I know I was. You may be surprised that beauty, not bread, is the need I name. I know I was. It can be difficult, for those of us who don’t lack food or experience the sharp pangs of hunger, to know how to pray this petition. It can feel abstract, disembodied. Are you, like me, lucky enough to feel far removed from the precariousness and scarcity that we hear about in the Israelites’ journey through the desert, or that we read about in stories of famine, or that we see around us in those who sleep on the streets? Are you blessed enough to know you will have bread today?
You might not know the urgent cry for bread that haunts others. But we all have needs. We all have hungers. And I think that by identifying them, and in recognizing how these needs affect us physically, we can begin to recapture something of the immediacy and materiality of praying for our daily bread.
In praying to God to meet those needs, to nourish us, we are invited to move beyond ourselves to trust in and rely on God’s limitless provision. And, perhaps most importantly, when we name our needs and realize how often their satisfaction lies beyond our control, we can grow in compassion for those whose lives are more precarious and whose needs are more urgent than our own. In recognizing our commonality as needful people, we can stand alongside our brothers and sisters, placing our trust in the God who gives us our daily bread, in all its many forms.
The Son of God existed prior to Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. What we witness in the human form of Jesus is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation… All things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:15-17). The Son of God had already lived forever, eternally, prior to taking on human life as Jesus.
The best sense the Church has been able to make of this comes from experience. There is One God, the Creator of everything, who, while remaining God, takes on human form: God the Son. This is Jesus, who grows up, ministers, prays, dies, is resurrected, and returns to the life of God, who has no beginning or ending. Jesus departs from earth. He ascends. He leaves us, not abandoned, but with another manifestation of the One God, whom Jesus calls “the Spirit,” another Person of the One God (John 14:26; 15:26). It took the Church several centuries to find the language to try to describe this mysterious yet undeniable experience: that there is One God in Three Persons.
God took on human form in Jesus. How did God make this decision? (I’m speaking here very anthropomorphically.) How did God decide to become human? What was the “cost” to God to become human? The great Welsh poet and Anglican priest, R. S. Thomas, in his poem “The Coming,” pictures God’s decision in a primordial conversation between God the Father and God the Son. The picture is of a desolated, hopeless, helpless earth:
And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many People
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
God comes to us as a child of Bethlehem. We know him as Jesus, who grows up, like we grow up, and after many, many years, he finds his voice and claims his power.
He also prays. Jesus prays, enough so as to catch people’s attention. This is God the Son in a very human way praying to God the Father. Very mysterious, and yet, clearly, this is what was happening… frequently. Jesus prays.
Eventually, Jesus’ disciples ask him to teach them how to pray. Jesus responds with what we call “the Lord’s Prayer” (Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4). Most revealing in the Lord’s Prayer is the opening word, the plural pronoun: “Our Father in heaven.” The Greek word translated “our” literally means “of us,” i.e., “Father of us.”
Consider the context: Jesus is speaking to his disciples, and Jesus’ prayer envelopes his disciples as if he and they are all one: the first person, plural possessive pronoun, “our.” How to pray? Jesus says we begin like this: Our Father… Jesus and we are one with the Father (John 10:30; 17:20-23).
Jesus here regards his disciples not as his servants, but as his friends. They are his peers. They share the same prayer. He doesn’t say, “My Father,” or “Your Father.” He says, “Our Father.”
The name Jesus uses for “Father” shows a very tender, childlike, trusting intimacy. A better, sweeter translation of the Greek word would be “Papa” rather than “Father.” “Our Papa in heaven.”
Jesus speaks as a human being, as human as you and I are, and as full of as many wonders and needs as the rest of us. His prayer is not just “heavenly”; his prayer includes our need for food – our “daily bread” – and this is not metaphorical. This is about sustenance.
Just prior to this – the verse preceding this prayer – Jesus has said, “Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8). So Jesus is teaching us to pray, but this is not about the dissemination of information to God. God already knows our needs because God is God. This prayer is about our trusted and tender relationship to God.
The Lord’s Prayer is so familiar, perhaps too familiar to some of us for us to be mindful of its profundity, revealed even just in these opening words. Jesus’ words completely embrace us, as if we, with Jesus, all belong to the same Father, the same Papa. I invite you to ponder and pray on the Lord’s Prayer as if you are hearing it again for the first time.
You might use it to reflect on God’s “deciding” to become human, and its “cost” to God to be both truly human and truly divine: the humility of God. Take R. S. Thomas’ haunting last line in his poem, “Let me go there.” Why? Why did Jesus come to us? Why does Jesus come to you? How might this prayer, which he taught us, help you to draw near, with him, to “Our Papa in heaven?”
The treasure of the Lord’s Prayer is so vast that Christians have been plumbing its depths since the very first days. It is a pearl of great price, and yet, in its ubiquity, perhaps it has lost some of its luster.
For as long as I can remember, this prayer has formed the backdrop of my spiritual life. I don’t remember sitting down and learning it systematically. It was just in the atmosphere of the family and church community I inhabited.
And so, it usually takes some conscious effort for me to return to the words, the layers of meaning and desire expressed, to revivify otherwise dulled, ambient noise. In the pages of this issue of Cowley, devoted to the Lord’s Prayer, we hope to do just that: to return to the words of this prayer, to strip away what dulls us to it, and to return anew to its transformative power.
Over the years and in different contexts, I can recall encountering slightly different versions of this prayer; sometimes we ask forgiveness for trespasses, for debts, or for sins. Sometimes saying the correct, or at least familiar word seemed really important, and at other times, I was just happy to be saying the words with others. And on some occasions, I found that hearing the prayer spoken in various languages – unknown to me but coming from the hearts of people from all over the world – seemed to rise like a beautifully rich fragrance to God. One prayer; many different experiences.
I wonder, how do you experience this prayer? Does it wash over you? Does your mind begin to wander as soon as the familiar words begin? Matthew’s version (Matthew 6:9-13) is the more robust form of the prayer, which exists in most of our liturgical settings. Luke’s (Luke 11:2-4) is a more sparse, bare-bones version. It rouses me a bit to notice what’s not there.
I hope that this exploration of the Lord’s Prayer will rouse us from the stupor of familiarity, as we strive to awaken and return to the Lord. If there is ever a time to refresh and renew our prayer it is now.
From the time of the early Christians, this prayer was handed on to new believers as one of the treasures of our tradition. The Lord’s Prayer and the Nicene Creed were given to catechumens as they were preparing for baptism. New believers were invited to savor and cherish the precious gift of these words, so central to our faith they were often simply referred to as “The Prayer.”
On the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the Convent of the Pater Noster stands on the site of the fourth-century ruins of a church associated with the spot where Jesus first taught the disciples this prayer. The walls inside and out are bedecked with dozens and dozens of ten-foot-high tile plaques, painted with the prayer in at least one hundred languages.
Those plaques are not uniform. Like our own lives of prayer, they have a variety of states. Some have become dusty and dulled. Some are protected from sun and rain in cloister walks. Others are exposed to the elements, where dust, pollen, and bird droppings accumulate. Little bits of moss and mildew cling to some; others have been adorned with bits of graffiti. In time, they all need careful cleaning and repair.
What is the state of this prayer in your heart today? Could it use some sprucing up?
If your primary experience with this prayer is in corporate worship, perhaps you will find it helpful in these pages to take some time to reconnect with it, line by line, word by word. This Cowley invites us to slow down. As we move through the prayer, we invite you to take in each word and phrase, to lovingly abide with it, and allow it to once more shine light on your path.
We might first begin by asking for grace, “God, help me to set aside everything I think I know about this prayer, that I might have an open mind and a new experience of you.”
We pray that the cleansing work of the Spirit will clear away contention and controversy for the purpose of attuning our hearts to God’s beating heart of love.
As you pray this prayer across these pages, let its expansive themes unfold: relationship with God, the holy name, the Kingdom, God’s will, daily bread, forgiveness, and freedom from temptation. Allow your soul to adore God as the words are burnished and restored to a brilliant luster. We pray that, being thus renewed and refreshed, we can bring this prayer to worship as a lamp on a stand, an offering of incense, fragrant and pleasant, as our prayers rise before God.
Jesus’ invitation is for you: Pray then, in this way…
“We hope that in reflecting further on the topic of belonging, you will find it meaningful to share in discussing these questions with others.”
“As a follower of Jesus with my own diverse and at times complicated identity, where and how do I belong in this equally diverse and complicated realm of Christianity and the Church? And what does such “belonging” entail?”
“Through faith we can come to know again the original blessing of belonging to God and recover that divine contentment which is God’s desire for us.”
“Life in community teaches us about the love and grace of God as it helps us to grow into the fullness of our place in the Body of Christ: accepting our limitations, giving freely of ourselves when we see a need, and recognizing that we belong to one another through our Baptism.”
“When we stand in the mess of life with others, acting in love for the sake of Christ, we can get a taste of the divine life now.”
“Community is more than a simple affinity group; it offers a way of becoming more fully who God has created us to be.”
“The notion of being knit together in communion and fellowship has begun to take on new meaning in the light of my spiritual quest during this pandemic time.”
Cowley Magazine - Advent 2022 What does it mean to belong? This issue of Cowley investigates how we claim and form our identity in community with others. The Brothers of SSJE ask what it means to be Christian, how community can transform us, and how the Sacraments of the Church hone who we are becoming…
“It is humbling to know and feel that we belong: that the threads of our being are woven into a fabric so much bigger than we can comprehend, and all for the fulfillment of God’s purpose.”
How does God engage with us? This issue of Cowley magazine discovers God’s engagement in places we might not think to look: a childhood stutter; the calling of sickness; the heartbreaking challenge of climate grief. The SSJE Brothers invite us to explore the many ways God that engages us, even – perhaps especially – in the challenges we face.