Charleston: Heroes

Charleston: Heroes

“In an age that seems to idolize billionaires, equating the ability to amass a vast surplus of personal wealth with vision and competence, I would like to shift the focus slightly to lift up some really successful people. Like the person who makes a marriage work. Or the person who is a loving parent.. The school teacher and the nurse. The single mom and the guy who holds down two jobs... We have so many successful people around us, so many role models to follow, so many heroes to honor: so many people worth more than money can buy.” Bishop Charleston, Daily Email Meditation on Facebook

Eric Liddell at the Paris Olympics, 1924. He won gold and set a world’s record in the 400 meters, then grabbed a bronze in the 200, but his best event was the 100 meter dash. When his preliminary heat was scheduled for a Sunday, he refused to run because he considered it the Sabbath, a principled stand immortalized in the film “Chariots of Fire.” But his return to China and service to fellow prisoners of war are why we celebrate him today; he was held in a POW camp by the Japanese from 1943 and later given a chance at a prisoner exchange with the British, but he gave his place to a pregnant woman instead.

 Josh Thomas, Dailyoffice.wordpress.com,

This is our job as spiritual friends. We are called to keep sighting and observing the heroes in our lives and the lives of friends who come for direction. We are  to give thanks for these heroes, pay close attention to how they operate and how they developed to the place where they are. We observe the love they share hoping that some will rub off, and especially letting these heroes know how much you and others and especially the God of us all loves and appreciates them as well.

 Jungian belief is that when we observe people we admire, we have some of their traits in ourselves but just don’t recognize them. I think this could be the Christ in each other that we are seeing a little better in another person, seeing it better in them than we can see in ourselves. It is there. Today, call or write, or visit and spend time with a hero or someone you admire in your life. If they are not alive, read more about their life and try to decide what you most admire about them. This could be even more instructional than reading about spiritual direction.

Joanna  joannaeibert.com

Rohr, Palmer: Holy Mystery

Rohr, Palmer: The Holy Mystery

Guest Writer: Trent Palmer

"…For fifty years we should all basically stop using the word God. Because . . . we normally don't have a clue what we are talking about!" Down through the centuries Christians have used God to support all kinds of ungodly things – “wars, prejudices, and dominations” of all kinds. Instead, Richard Rohr suggests, we should approach God with humility and simply refer to God as "the Holy Mystery". Perhaps then we might recognize and accept over time that “we understand very little.” (Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance, pg. 89).

Langley Divine Dance

For many of us, the faith we have inherited and been taught is a source of great stability, and supports our understandings of life, God, and ourselves. We draw great comfort from this . . . until we find ourselves unexpectedly challenged and confronted in our beliefs, sometimes even by our scriptures and our own faith community. That can be quite unsettling and threatening.

In a passage from the Gospel of Matthew (22:23-33), some Sadducees angrily approached Jesus, concerning his teachings on the resurrection. The Sadducees held no belief in life after death, and they attempted to show Jesus the flaws in HIS thinking on the subject. The Sadducees did what we often do when our long-held beliefs are challenged . . . they became defensive, argumentative, and tried to justify themselves. This, sadly, sounds very familiar in our current divisive political and social climate.

In those moments when we are challenged in our thinking, we too, like the Sadducees, can struggle to hold onto our little mind thinking - where anyone who challenges my ideas is the enemy, where confusing or paradoxical thoughts must be wrong, and where things that cannot be seen or touched, must not be real. Or . . . we can open our hearts and our minds to the Holy Mystery, who invites us to live humbly with things we don't understand, to chew on ideas that challenge our thinking, and to wait patiently for a new understanding that is deeper than the one we now hold.

Trent Palmer, first published in Morning Reflection, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, December 11, 2017

Lewis: Heaven and Hell

C S Lewis: Great Divorce

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done..”’ C S Lewis, The Great Divorce.

The Great Divorce is Lewis’ classic study of the difference between living in heaven and living in hell. In hell, people become more and more isolated and separated from each other until communication is lost. Before the great distances develop there is a bus stop where groups of people in hell are given the opportunity to go to heaven on a tour bus ride to decide if they might like to live there instead. Spoiler alert! Only one person decides to stay in heaven. The rest return to their life in hell. It is a choice.

With each character, Lewis describes what keeps each of us in hell. My favorite is the bishop whose intellect keeps him in hell as he must go back to hell because he is scheduled to give a lecture that he does not want to miss. Other characters remain in hell because they cannot recognize joy, others see all the difficulty in life as someone’s fault, some stay connected to their material goods that mean the most to them, some find people “beneath them” in heaven, one sees heaven as a trick, and  an artist must return to hell to preserve his reputation.

The Great Divorce  is a great study for a book group especially in Lent for people to share with each other which of the characters they most identify with. Lewis hands us a mirror to see where in our life that we do not recognize that we are still controlling the show and living in a hell, where we have forsaken the gifts of heaven on this earth.

Joanna joannaseibert.com