Monthly Archives: March 2023
The Teeter-Totter between Stability and Change
Sometimes the Church universal is its own worst enemy. United we progress, divided we often fail miserably. We claim to understand aspects of the Gospel and lock onto those at the cost of other parts of the Gospel. This is a very human trait, one that I share. My experiences of God’s love in Jesus focused me on Jesus as not only my Lord, but even more as my best friend. Though I worshipped God as creator, and power beyond my understanding, I focused on the human Jesus as the fleshing out of a tender, caring, understanding Love.
The Catholic Church finally began to experience the Reformation with Vatican II. The biggest shift in focus was on the unconditional love of a God who knows the worst that goes on in our minds and hearts, but loves us just as we are, even though always calling us to grow more like Jesus. This was a huge shift away from the focus on guilt and the idea that we had to earn the love of God and were cut off from it when sinning. The person of Jesus became real for us in a relationship as a source of understanding and love even when we were attempting stupidly and futilely to dull our human pain with sinful distractions.
After my conversion and return to the Catholic Church, an elderly priest who had been a Scripture consultant for Vatican II was assigned to our small rural parish. He began to make drastic changes such as changing the golden tabernacle that held what we had always considered the presence of God in the consecrated host to a humble wooden one and moving it from the center of the altar to an obscure corner. This appealed to me, because I thought of it as a home for the humble spirit of Jesus, who was my best friend. I often had to walk by it and I would kind of pat the top of it like I was patting Jesus in friendship and affection. It wasn’t meant to be disrespectful, in fact it always gave me a vivid sense of the presence of Jesus.
But in the decades following Vatican II the theology and understanding of the changes was not communicated effectively, so it wasn’t accepted even by many of the clergy. So, the Bishops would rotate the priests in parishes every seven years, changing them from old fashioned conservative priests to liberal Vatican II enthusiasts and then back again, etc. So, the next priest then put the golden tabernacle back onto the center altar. And seven years after that, when the new liberal priest came, I happened to be in charge of recruiting, training and making assignments of two lay readers for each of the three masses every week. I typed them and put them in pigeon holes for them to pick up. Well, the new priest hadn’t yet changed the tabernacle again, but decided to start changing the focus by telling the readers to NOT genuflect in front of the tabernacle when crossing to the lectern to read. Unknown to me, he added this order to the bottom of each of my assignment sheets, but didn’t sign it. The old fashioned Catholics who still clung to their awe at the sense of the presence of God on the altar were furious with me! So, I was irritated with the priest whom I had known well as a friend about thirty years before. Being the Irish rebel that I am, when I next was the reader and had to pass in front of the tabernacle, I not only genuflected, I went down on both knees and bowed my head. It was not for any religious or spiritual reason.
But when I did this, I was suddenly totally overwhelmed by an awareness of the glory and power and awesomeness of God. I had to fight the urge to prostrate myself and to slowly struggle to stand and continue walking.
Friends, God can be wherever God wants to be in any way at any time and for anyone. We do not control God by our own personal or by any human authority’s understanding or decision. The Vatican II idea was to emphasize the presence of God in the people of God gathering in His name, rather than a static presence in the Tabernacle. But at that point, no one had effectively explained the theology behind the changes.
I have taken all sorts of courses on Scripture and Theology. I have a mind that questions and is open to new understanding and the changes in Vatican II matched my experience of the Love of God fleshed out in Jesus, so I happily embraced the changes of Vatican II. But as I also kept studying psychology and learned about the many differences between how each of our minds relate to the world, so I began to recognize the root of the estrangements that keep the Body of Christ divided. My husband, Julian, and I were total opposites in every aspect of personality and ended up giving talks on Marriage preparation weekends about there being differences even in how we express and receive love. I also explored and gave presentations on how these differences affect how we learn, how we teach, our type of spirituality, how we relate as managers to employees and the huge differences in what type of reward motivates different personalities.
Frankly, when I was Director of Religious Education for the Catholics for the Chaplain’s Division at Fort Campbell, my heart broke over the pain the changes in the Catholic church were causing many of the people. For the military families, the Church was the only stable aspect of their lives. Many, possibly most, people grow up trusting what they were taught and depending on that for a sense of safety. They are focused on the concrete world around them and gifted in repairing and using it. They trust the reality they can see and touch and the ideas they grew up with. Change is not their cup of tea. Theories and new vocabularies are not either.
But increases in our understanding of our physical bodies, world, universe, even spirituality are equally important for our survival, so the theory and innovative people are crucial to exploring possibilities for making our health, our lives, our world, our universe, and our spirituality better.
The challenge is to realize that the balance between what is and what now needs to change for our descendants is a constant teeter-totter between stability and change. And half the battle is recognizing the need for the balance and the other half is developing a mutual sensitivity to each way of being in the world and finding a vocabulary that makes it possible to communicate across our differences effectively.
Jesus Came for Sinners
Some challenging words from Jesus.
“Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemy. Love one another as I have loved you.
All fall short of the glory of God. Judge not lest you be judged. I came for sinners.”
Richard Rohr writes about Anne Lamott:
Writer Anne Lamott chronicles her surprising conversion to Christianity while addicted to drugs and alcohol:
When I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the songs…. The last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling—and it washed over me.
I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and … walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, “[Forget] it: I quit.” I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right. You can come in.”
So this was my beautiful moment of conversion.
And here in dust and dirt, O here
The lilies of his love appear. [1]
Lamott reflects on praying from the place of desperation and surrender:
Prayer … begins with stopping in our tracks, or with our backs against the wall, or when we are going under the waves, or when we are just so sick and tired of being physically sick and tired that we surrender, or at least we finally stop running away and at long last walk or lurch or crawl toward something. Or maybe, miraculously, we just release our grip slightly.
Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up. The opposite may be true: We may not be able to get it together until after we show up in such miserable shape….
My belief is that when you’re telling the truth, you’re close to God. If you say to God, “I am exhausted and depressed beyond words, and I don’t like You at all right now, and I recoil from most people who believe in You,” that might be the most honest thing you’ve ever said. If you told me you had said to God, “It is all hopeless, and I don’t have a clue if You exist, but I could use a hand,” it would almost bring tears to my eyes, tears of pride in you, for the courage it takes to get real—really real. It would make me want to sit next to you at the dinner table.
So prayer is our sometimes real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with Truth, with the Light.
When we respond to violence with violence, we are perpetuating it forever. We become the enemy ourselves.
Reborn, Renewed, Healed, Sustained, Empowered Over and Over by the Love of God Fleshed Out in Jesus Christ
Oh yes! This really speaks to my condition!
“I deeply know that I have a home in Jesus, just as Jesus has a home in God. I know, too, that when I abide in Jesus I abide with him in God. “Those who love me,” Jesus says, “will be loved by my Father” (John 14:21). My true spiritual work is to let myself be loved, fully and completely, and to trust that in that love I will come to the fulfillment of my vocation. I keep trying to bring my wandering, restless, anxious self-home, so that I can rest there in the embrace of love.” – Henri Nouwen
Henri Nouwen expresses the cries of our hungry hearts so well.
And Richard Rohr captures the concepts and spirit of our seeking minds.
These two men technically belong to the Roman Catholic Church, but their hearts, minds, and spirits were never limited by it. They belong to the universal catholic church and speak to ALL of us and call us to the freedom of belonging first to Jesus Christ as the Love of God fleshed out for us.
And to me as a woman, Anne Lamott, technically a Presbyterian, fleshes out a woman’s journey with Jesus Christ so honestly that it frees us from the stress of pretending we’ve got it all together. And that helps us keep on getting back up when we’ve fallen and opening our hearts to the freeing, life changing Love of God expressed in Jesus.
Understanding is the Key to Loving
Today…as a “born again” Christian, liberal Democrat with four generations of gays and one grandchild who is trans and one who struggles with Autism in my family, I struggle to find the words to challenge everyone on either side of the” great divide” to work to understand each other. Understanding the other doesn’t make you change your beliefs, but it does take away the fear and the judgment of others that fuel hate and prejudice and, most importantly, being blind to their consequences. I don’t have simple answers to the most divisive issues, but I know that hate and the inability to have empathy for those different from us does not solve anything. At almost 86 I’ve just begun to experience a breakthrough on my prejudice and prejudgment of prejudiced people by actually beginning to understand others and to recognize my own blind side. When I was seventeen in the mid 1950’s, a bomb was set off in the entry to our apartment in Houston because my newspaper editor father had written an editorial supporting a black woman for the school board as representation for the black schools. This wasn’t even an integration of schools issue, just about some fair representation. That bomb took away my privileged white sense of safety and opened my eyes to the fear that black children live with all their lives. I have just begun to understand that people are born with different personalities and to realize that none of us got a vote on whether we would grow up needing the security of tradition and fearing change or with minds that questioned the status quo and embraced change. We are all ignorant in thousands of ways. Ignorance is not stupidity unless we cling to it. I was brought up to not be prejudiced against other races, but against ignorance. Finally, in my eighties I began to recognize my own ignorance of why people think differently than I do and the prejudice and pre-judging that results from that. Judging others was the sin Jesus talked most about, cautioning all of us to get free of the “log” in our own eye. I guess finally beginning to understand others even in my eighties is at least a small sign of hope for us all. Understanding frees us to love those we disagree with. We don’t have to agree, but understanding and empathy are the foundation of a Jesus kind of love.
Here are two poems written in different decades of my earlier life.
Spring I hunger to be born again/to take my hurts and failures/and mulch them into new beginnings/to turn them into fertile fields/of understanding and compassion/to experience again the greening out/of the frozen landscapes in my life/and gain a rich new Spring perspective/that builds on leaves and logs of yesteryears/to bring forth the ripe good fruit of love.
The Broken Body of Christ Reflecting on the Body/you-the hand, I-the foot/ Christ the head and heart/someone else the hidden part/ I let the Scriptures/flood my mind with images/with suddenly one image/ a moving picture/so harshly real, I gasp aloud./A person staggers/stumbles toward me/arms flailing, head jerking/back and forth in spasms/body parts all pulling different ways./This then-reality/Christ’s earthly body now./ Forgive us.
Second Sermon from the Molehill March 26, 2023
Welcome everyone! The short and the tall, the young and the old. I’m pretty sure that at almost 86, I’m one of the oldest here. While that does not make me the wisest, I’ve had enough experiences of the Holy Spirit to keep these dry old bones dancing and praising the Lord. And today’s Old Testament reading happens to be about dry bones. I can’t get that song out of my head, but I’ll spare you my off-key singing. Whether we take this particular Scripture literally or not, it challenges us to recognize and accept the power of the Spirit of God to renew us, to give us new life, and empower us to share that life. Is that happening in our lives? Is it happening in our church? I know from personal experience that it can. And I believe it is right now, right here. We have already begun to recognize the power of prayer. We have become a praying church. We are also a caring church. We tend to be an intellectual church, seeking through knowledge to understand. And that’s a good thing. But it can only take us so far, because the power of the Spirit of God cannot be understood by our human minds. Though we don’t realize it, we do limit the Holy Spirit within us. I think it’s because we are afraid of our emotions. We all like order and control. But while I dance with joy when I witness the Glory of God in nature, science, and human love and even used to tease Pastor Bill that I was going to dance during worship, I have managed to restrain myself from doing that. While the Holy Spirit can transform and stretch us with amazing power and sheer mind-blowing joy, it does not violate who we are. Don’t fear opening both your hearts and your minds to the Spirit of God both within and around you. Notice coincidences. They are not random. God is in the timing. Listen to the Spirit in your lives. Let the Spirit of God within you free you to rejoice and empower you in ways far beyond your understanding. I can personally testify that the Spirit can stop us in our tracks when our emotions tempt us to sin. I think we all sin most often by not listening to what God is calling us to do. The Spirit can give us wisdom and courage and the capacity for loving even those different from us. The Spirit can heal us physically, mentally, and spiritually. I’ve both witnessed and experienced all of those. But the Spirit of God is NOT for personal gain or fame. And believe me, God has many ways of keeping us humble. Right now the Spirit of God is trying to renew the whole Body of Christ, not just the Presbyterian part of it, because God is calling the Body of Christ to renew the earth. And we can only do that through the power of the Holy Spirit within us.
My Sermon from the Molehill
Reflections on David, God’s favorite, the ancestor of Jesus, and seemingly the most unlikely choice to fight a giant.
David reminds me of my Irish ancestors: he’s a fighter, a poet, a musician, a dancer, and a charismatic leader, who both loves and lusts. Love and lust are opposites. Love puts the other first. Lust uses the other. David actually loves Saul. To me the most amazing thing about David is that though Saul repeatedly tries to kill David out of jealousy, David continues trying to reconcile. Why? Because when David was just a youth, he often sat with this powerful man playing calming music when Saul was conflicted and overwhelmed by depression. David understood Saul. He knew his inner struggles that caused him to overreact. David finally had to turn against Saul, but he did not hate him. He was able to love someone who was violently and illogically against him because he understood him. And after decades of obeying God, when David sinned greatly and tragically, God taught him through consequences. But God still loved David tenderly and totally. Because God understands our humanity. The most fundamental and difficult challenge Christians face is to understand our enemies. We may be called to vote against them, but we are not called to hate or belittle them. We are called to love them and the only way we can do that is to understand them. And while that takes both caring and effort, what it mostly takes is humility. Jesus not only showed us it can be done, but he calls us to do it. We start by loving our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. In Jesus day, our neighbor was the person most like us. But Jesus also calls us to love the stranger, to even become vulnerable by inviting them into our safe place, our home. To top that, Jesus also began to call us to love others more than ourselves. That’s a whole other level of love. It’s the kind of love we reserve for our family. Finally, on his cross Jesus not only forgave his enemies, but he asked God to forgive them. Because he understood that they did not realize that what they were doing was evil.
Our Prayer: God, our Father, we are small, like David. We also have both strengths and weaknesses. Give us the grace we need to fight the enemy within us. Give us understanding of those we perceive as enemies outside us. Help all your children find a way to work together to bring about your kingdom, not ours, on earth as it is in Heaven. God, you are the source of our lives and the grace that sustains us. We praise you and give you thanks. We lift our hearts and minds to focus on you, so that we may see your glory and know your love with both heart and mind. We offer our lives to you in thanksgiving.
Witnessing a Miraculous Healing
Long ago in my thirties, I was in a Catholic Charismatic (Pentecostal) prayer group that was led by several of the Sisters of Mercy at their convent. I, along with another woman member, Pat, were registered to attend the annual Charismatic Renewal Conference at Notre Dame University. At the prayer meeting two days before the conference, a young woman in her early twenties asked if she could go with us. We had spoken about a priest that led a small group of sisters and nurses in a healing ministry and Dorothy had curvature of the spine with one leg shorter than the other. This caused her to have to wear an ugly built-up shoe, it also sometimes caused her pain, and she feared that when she married and became pregnant it would cause more problems. It was too late to register her and probably too late to get her a room in the dorms, but we told her to bring a sleeping bag and stay in our room.
So, Dorothy set off with us. We were running a little late and I was worried that we would miss the first large session in the gymnasium, which was the presentation on healing. A couple of weird time changes later we arrived just as it was beginning but had to sit almost at the very top of the gymnasium. We were supposed to wait until it cleared afterward to find Pat’s sister, who was coming from Pittsburg. As the gym emptied, I prayed nervously about whether to take Dorothy down to the group with the healing ministry. I finally said, “God, if you want them to pray for Dorothy, please bring them up our aisle, and I’ll ask them to pray for her.” The gym was almost empty, but we had not spotted Pat’s sister, so we were still sitting almost at the top on an aisle. Just then, the priest and the others with the healing ministry started up our exact aisle on their way out. As they came near us, I spoke hesitantly, “Father, would you pray for Dorothy here. She has one leg shorter than the other.” He stopped his group and said, “Of course. Let Dorothy sit in your chair here on the aisle.” So, Dorothy moved into my seat and the several prayer team members and Pat and I put our hands on her shoulders and held her hands, while the priest led us in a gentle quiet prayer asking God for healing in Jesus’ name. No frills, no dramatics. Then he stopped abruptly and asked Dorothy, “Did you feel that? I think your leg jumped.” Dorothy with tears flowing, agreed that it had. He then led us in prayers of thanksgiving, smiled, and went on up the stairs. As we sat stunned into silence, Pat’s sister appeared next to us. Following her out of the gym, we excitedly recounted our experience with a mixture of laughter and tears of joy. Dorothy suddenly stopped and said in amazement, “I’m limping. My built-up shoe is making me lopsided.” So, she took off her shoes and continued on literally ‘leaping and dancing and praising God.’
When we got to our dorm room, my inner Twin to Thomas kicked in. It ‘just so happened’ that Pat was a physical therapist. For the next hour, I kept making Pat measure Dorothy’s legs over and over. Pat kept reassuring me that they truly matched. No doubt about it. But there was still some visible curvature of her spine. When, in the wee hours of the morning, we began to tire, Pat went to the communal dorm bathroom to brush her teeth. There she met an older woman and told her of our experience, ending with the curious fact that Dorothy’s spine was still curved. The woman reassured her by telling her that her own husband’s leg, which had been a whole inch shorter than his other one, had been healed the year before at this conference. She said that the leg grew immediately, but it took six months for the atrophied muscles to develop fully back to normal. We finally all went to sleep exhausted, wonderous, thankful, and at peace.
Over the next several months I, of little faith, looked each time our prayer group met to assure myself that Dorothy was indeed happily wearing sandals, flip flops, or tennis shoes.
And almost ten years later, now married and the mother of two children, Dorothy came to our parish to tell her story to our women’s group. Yes, she was still happily and painlessly wearing sandals.
Addendum
Father Francis in his books and when speaking before leading prayer for healing always told this story, which to me shows the huge difference between him and the TV “Healers.” He was speaking in a city where an old friend lived. The friend invited him to dinner with his family. While there, one of their children had an asthma attack. He had a scary history of serious attacks, so Fr. Francis offered to pray over him. They agreed and he did. A year or so later he was back in the city and again visited his friend. He asked how the boy was. They smiled and said he was doing very well, but that after Fr. Francis had left that night, the child got so much worse, they had to rush him to the ER. At the ER a doctor told them of a new medicine that was helping someone in his family with asthma. They went to their doctor and asked him to prescribe it and it was working beautifully for their child.
An Episcopal woman who had a healing ministry also shared that it was really humbling to do healing prayer ministry when you had allergies and kept sneezing and sniffling the whole time you were speaking and praying for people. God does the healing…..God just uses people and keeps them aware of who is in charge. A chapter on healing that I’ve written recalls praying in a prayer group for a young father on a roller coaster battle with cancer. I, and several others in the group, simultaneously “heard” in our thoughts to trust God and to let him go. So, we prayed a prayer putting him in God’s loving hands trusting in God’s love. Later, we heard he died at that time. Both death and suffering are a reality in this life. This is not heaven, but it is only a blink in comparison to eternity. Early in my spiritual journey, I experienced several healings, but over the years have had to hang onto faith through serious pain and crippling health issues that put me in a wheelchair for several years. And my mother’s dying by inches for fourteen years with Alzheimer’s. It’s a mystery. But it has helped me to know that Jesus has walked this path before me and is with me now as I follow him. And that with grace I can actually grow closer to him and more like him most through the hard times.
Jesus Revolution
I saw the movie, Jesus Revolution, yesterday. I realized that the Jesus revolution in the Catholic Church was the Charismatic Movement in the same times. It too stressed accepting Jesus as your personal Savior and Lord, but also prayer for receiving the gifts of the Spirit.
The gifts of the spirit are the Word of Wisdom, the Word of Knowledge, the gift of Faith, the gift of Healing, the working of Miracles, Prophecy, Discernment of spirits, diverse kinds of Tongues, the Interpretation of Tongues. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (Some translations of the fruits are different)
But you can see that the gifts are for the building up of the church and the fruit would be the spiritual growth from experiencing the gifts and grace. And then there are ministries within the church such as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. It’s logical that these would work together for the good of not only the church, but the world.
My experience has shown me the reality of all of these. But sadly, also that our human tendency to let the temptations that Jesus resisted get the upper hand, often leads us to misuse them for our own profit and ego.
After my search and my conversion to Jesus rather than a religion, I went back to the Catholic Church. Then a Presbyterian in my ecumenical prayer group put me in contact with a Catholic Charismatic prayer group at the Sisters of Mercy’s convent. There they were experiencing what I was. Interesting to me was that the liberal and more intellectual branch of the Presbyterian church, and the Episcopal and Catholic churches with their formal worship services and very structured hierarchies, seemed to be where the Spirit was exploding. I learned that the most important fruits for leaders in this kind of renewal are faith, humility, and openness to the Spirit. In my sixty years in Catholicism, I did every ministry that women were allowed to do. I was, at best, mediocre at all of them except being Director of Religious Education for the Catholics for the Chaplains Division at Fort Campbell. There I was good at doubling the number of students, recruiting and encouraging teachers, and finding two awesome volunteers to be my right and left hands, who put in forty hours a week working as volunteers. My job was a civil service position, so I was getting paid. I am a good talent scout, recruiter, and cheerleader. I am not a leader or a teacher. I am a cheerleader. And though in the Catholic church, most of the preaching ends up as teaching. They are not the same. Preaching is inspiring others to be open not only to God, but to their gifts and ministries in the church. Everyone can experience the gifts when needed for the benefit of the church, but different personalities are better suited for different ministries.
I began attending the Presbyterian USA denomination after being in a Catholic Diocesan Ministry Training course that went two years for women. If men wanted to be Deacons….which allowed them to Baptize, officiate at Marriages, and Preach, they went a third year. I was certified to train Catechists. I was on a Diocesan Education Committee with a Priest who was a Scripture Scholar for Vatican ll, a theologian who taught at a Catholic College, A Catholic Psychiatrist, and the Diocesan Director of Religious Education. So when the men needed to have someone with credentials to write a recommendation for them to become a Deacon, they came to me for it. Most admitted to me they didn’t really “get” the Scriptures and didn’t want to preach. It was kind of the last straw for me as a woman.
I found my niche at First Presbyterian doing what I call my “Sermon from the Molehill.” I get to open our worship service and give a three to five minute “pep” talk at least once a month. It’s within my skill set and praying, reading that week’s Sunday scriptures, reflecting to see connections in my own life, writing several drafts, then timing it and editing takes me from twenty to thirty hours spread out over several days. I take any Scriptures on my Sunday as letters from God to me personally. So it’s wonderful spiritual food for me and time listening to God. And sometimes I get feedback that what I’ve said has made a difference for someone.
I miss the Charismatic Conferences at Notre Dame and I miss the music group on Saturday nights in my years in the Catholic Church, and the wonderful friends I had there, but those experiences and the amazing things I have witnessed continue to keep me tuned into God even when I am sick or dealing with worry for someone I love.
Thanks to my Methodist mother who, when I came home from Catholic school and told her she wasn’t going to heaven because she wasn’t Catholic, replied with great conviction: “Honey, you and your dad are going to get into heaven on my Methodist prayers, That was my first clue that nobody has a monopoly on God. When searching in my late twenties, I attended introductory classes in other Christian denominations and realized that each focused on parts of the Scriptures and ignored others. After my conversion to Jesus as my Savior and Lord, the Scriptures came alive and relevant to my daily life. I begam to give witness talks to Sunday School classes or was on weekend renewal teams for Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal denominations. I found there were people in all of them who had found what I had found in Jesus, but others who had inherited their parents religions, but had missed the main point. God is alive and well in our world in spite of us! Jesus lived and died to flesh out the unconditional love of God and to show us the way to grow spiritually to learn to love as God loves us. The Spirit is within us. But sometimes we have to let go of preconceived ideas and listen to God’s voice in the Scriptures, in the ‘coincidences’ in our life, and find quiet moments to hear the voice of the Spirit within us.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 