Weeks 45-50: Other actions proceed from this

An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation - Martin Laird
  
 "Letting be what we are entrusted with loosens depression's grip even if it does not go away. Again, the contemplative maxim: we let be whatever is simply because it is. Other actions proceed from this."

   A couple Saturday's ago I had the opportunity to hear Martin Laird, an Augustinian monk and teacher, lecture from his new book, An Ocean of Light. And he said something that really got on my nerves. He encouraged those of us for whom "depression and its friends have claimed squatters' rights" to "get to know the contours of your depression." In his book he frames it this way, "it is important for us to get to know our depression in intimate detail."
   How could we not know our depression? We know it all too well. We've seen it, heard it, smelled it, tasted it, touched it. We've read about it; talked about it; paid good money to understand it and let it go. I don't want to give it any more time and energy than it already has. What is he talking about? 
   I don't know, but over the past two weeks that phrase, "get to know the contours of your depression," has opened up as a window. I've got a little more fresh air. It's cold air, but its fresh.
   In the type of silent prayer he teaches, when we become entangled in a thought or feeling, we gently return to our prayer word or breath, letting that thought or feeling go its merry way. I would have anticipated Laird to advocate a similar approach to living with resistant depression.
   It could be that depression is too close, too intimate and familiar. Too intertwined with daily life to see. Perhaps that is what he's getting at. Perhaps I have on a depression mask, and without a mirror the only part I see is the tip of my mask's nose. If I'm crammed into a box with depression, I can see it, touch it, etc, but it might help to open up the box and give us both a more space and perspective.
   Or perhaps he's questioning the objectification of our experience. Instead of experiencing depression as something happening to me, take time to simply experience myself depressing, or experience myself happening depressively. But don't we do that already? As a friend once said regarding his depression, "my favorite past-time is sitting in my room existing...because it's so hard." I dunno. We'll see. I'm just going to keep going with the silent prayer, thanks be to God for that. "Other actions proceed from this."

The Kingdom Within: The Inner Meaning of Jesus' Sayings - John Sanford
  Not as super cool as I was hoping, but a lot of good stuff. It's a Jungian dream-work approach to Jesus' sayings and parables.

• "In order to lift water up from a well, it is necessary to have a rope long enough to reach the water. The teachings of Jesus are such a rope."
• mysterion - initiated knowledge
• "the kingdom and healing go together"
•  "In our dreams the kind of house we have typically symbolizes our conscious framework."
• "The more we are identified with a mask, the more the unconscious will set up an opposing viewpoint in the form of an inner enemy."
• "we will surely incur inner judgment if we stand in judgment on others"
• "perfect" - brought to fulfillment, complete
• "It's not too much to say that Satan is the archetype of choice."
• "The soul's primary function is relationship" (anima/us, eros)
• "Salvation comes from the Samaritan"
• "We cannot sacrifice what we do not have" (need a strong ego to submit)
• "the kingdom...can only be expressed in symbols"

Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality - Richard Rohr
   Rohr rambles. It can be frustrating. I don't even know why he bothers with a table of contents. But that's part of his charm and generosity. Is there such a thing as a Franciscan literary style. Un-self-consious, open, kinda messy, compassionate. He always finds himself somewhere beautiful.

• "We all need forever what Jesus described as the beginner's mind of a curious child."
• "...one of God's favorite and most effective hiding places - humility"
• "Love is the true goal, but faith is the process of getting there, and hope is the willingness to live without resolution or closure."
• "Jesus offers himself as 'way, truth and life,' and suddenly it has all become the sharing of our person instead of any fighting over ideas."
• "...in a position to read the Scriptures in a humble, needy, inclusive and finally fruitful way..."
• "Why do we not use Peter's power of the keys to unbind the world in this way, and to offer it the full victory of God's love? Why do we prefer binding to unbinding"

The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of our Lord - Phyllis Tickle
   In the beginning I wasn't a fan of the way she frames Jesus' words. For example, "Jesus, upon being told that His mother and siblings were in the crowd and desired His attention, said..." 
  I would have kept "Jesus said" as an inseparable unit. On the other hand, having "Jesus" be the first word in every segment is cool too. It grew on me.
   Her introduction is more memoir than analysis, fyi. I love this as an exercise - copy and group all of Jesus words, or parables, or sayings, or what have you. I started my personal "sayings gospel" back in March, but never finished. It's not too late!


Little Russion Philokalia: Vol 1. St Seraphim - Translated by Hieromonk Seraphim Rose

•  "becoming so immersed in God's word that one learns to 'swim in the law of the Lord'" (Rose)
• "the works of faith are: love, peace, long-suffering, mercy, humility, rest from all works, bearing the Cross, and life in the Spirit.
• "a man who has taken upon himself to travel the path of internal mindfulness must have above all the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom
• "Reverent carefulness is necessary here because this sea - that is, the heart, with its thoughts and desires, which one must cleanse by means of mindfulness - is great and vast, and there are numberless reptiles there
• "Those who have truly decided to serve the Lord God should practice the remembrance of God and uninterrupted prayer to Jesus Christ, mentally saying: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.
• "all saints...have spent their whole lives in weeping...
• "As fire purifies gold, so the sorrow of longing for God purifies a sinful heart.
• despondency, straightness of soul, a foretaste of hell, delirium, anxiety, temptation, etc...for there is one treatment for all this...meekness of heart
• "for where humility issues forth, there the glory of God abounds
• revived by patience
• "most of all one should occupy oneself with reading the New Testament and the Psalter, which one should do standing up
• "though Satan might produce also visions of light, he is entirely unable to produce a blessed effect; which is the well known sign of his works.
• "one should not undertake ascetic labors beyond one's measure, but one should strive to make our friend - the flesh - faithful and capable of performing virtues.
• "perhaps one has eaten too much, or done something similar to this which is natural to human weakness - do not be disturbed at this, and do not add injury to injury; but bestir yourself to correction and at the same time strive to preserve peace of soul
• "In whatsoever I find you, in that will I judge you (Jesus via St Justin)
• "trade with those [virtues] which give you the greatest profit
• "the wisdom of God, which seeks our salvation and embraces everything
• "...This knowledge [which does not puff up], which is full of love for God and for our neighbor, builds up every man for his salvation
• "He who walks around the canal with prayer and 150 Theotokos and Virgin Rejoice, for him this place will be Athos, Jerusalem and Kiev

Weeks 40-44

King Lear
read this to overlap the "Bootleg Shakespeare" version Quill Theater put on last month. Quill turned the absurdity into hilarity! they had us rolling in the aisles.

The Desert Fathers - Helen Waddell
wow can't get enough of the sayings or of Waddell's comments. what else of hers can I find at the library?

Unspoken Prayer in Spiritual Formation: Tool or Trouble - Wayne Lewis
this was Wayne's doctoral dissertation! so cool. i could hear his voice through the whole thing.

Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict - Esther de Waal
read for Ruah, second time through. brother Terry recommended it to me early on in my time at richmond hill. i think "Balance" is my favorite chapter. if you want balance, you need to balance good things, like mercy and justice, work and rest, yin and yang. in my life, I try to "balance out" the bad with good - resentment with mercy, selfishness with justice, greed with generosity, etc...that's not working out too well

Centering Prayer: Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form - Basil Pennington
another Ruah book, another second time around


Hermits: the insights of solitude - Peter France
where did i find this? i think in someone's donation of books to richmond hill. it's too bad Josh and I couldn't stay for dinner with the monks in Chora way back when! France sets the scene for his book in Patmos, and finishes with a interview of fellow Patmos lover Robert Lax. that island leaves an impression.

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time - mark haddon
the armstrong leadership program planned to see the dramatic version of this, and i was going to drive the bus, but then remants of hurricane michael came flying through and canceled all plans. so i read the book instead. loved it


Notes

King Lear

• Let it be so, thy truth then be thy dower!
• yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself
• upon the gad
• the quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself
• This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars...
• Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit/All with me's meet that I can fashion fit
• That which ordinary men are fit for I am qualified in...
• Beat at this gate that let thy folly in
• Blasts and fogs upon thee!
• Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise
• How far you eyes may pierce I cannot tell/ Striving to better, oft we mar what's well
• Some time I shall sleep out, the rest I'll whistle...
• No, rather I adjure all roofs, and choose/ to wage against the enmity o th air
• O reason no the need! Our basest beggars/ Are in the poorest thing superflous./ Allow no nature more than nature needs,/ man's life is as cheap as beast's
• contending with the fretful elements...unbonneted he rus, and bids what will take all
• the art of our necessities is strange, and can make vile things precious
• shake the superflux to them, and show the heavens more just
• how light and portable my pain seems now, when that which makes me bend makes the king bow. He childed as I fathered
• I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw...
• and worse I may be yet. the worst is not/ so long as we can say "this is the worst"
• he has some reason, else he could not beg
• as flies to wanton boys are we to th gods; they kill us for their sport
• that will not see because he does not feel
• bear free and patient thoughts
• the usurer hangs the cozener
• the bounty and benison of heaven to boot, and boot
• and take upon's the mystery of things/ As if we were God's spies
• List a brief tale
• the strings of life began to crack
• I pant for life. Some good I mean to do, despite of mine own nature
• he hates him that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer

Desert Fathers

• Let the rest go bat-fowling for letters and syllables: do you seek for the sense (Evagrius)
• a mighty silence and a great quiet among them
• The root of the quarrel between the humanists and the Desert is not the exact length to which the branding of the flesh may legitimately go. What ailed Rutilius and Gibbon and Lecky is the Roman civic conscience...
• Verily, this is love's road
• the extravagance of their lives is the extravagance of poetry
• I remember crying out until day became one with night
• how amid swords and deserts and wild beasts, chastity never was captive
• the beasts speak Christ and thou dost worship monsters in room of God
• without whom no leaf lights from the tree
• no one in this world ought to be despised
• they are men of letters, cursed with a feeling for prose
• as a fish must return to the sea, so must we to our cell
• so should the monk forever have grief in his heart
• the body of a woman is fire
• the remedy is not so much in man's anxious thought as in God's compassion
• for nothing so dispirits the demon of lust than when his assaults are revealed
• the treasure house of the monk is voluntary poverty
• his soul fell into a weariness and confusion of thought
• ...Why didst thou will to be a monk?...Believe me, I have been in this habit seventy years, and not for one day could I find peace: and thou wouldst have peace in eight?
• perseverance in his cell brings the monk to his calling
• i shall return to the community, for in all places there is need for struggle and for patience and above all for the help of God
• give thy body in pledge to the wall of they cell
• the cell of a monk is the furnace of Babylon...it is also the pillar of cloud
• thou hast not yet found thy ship, nor put thy baggage in her, nor begun to sail, and art thou already in the city whither thou hast planned to come?
• my sins are running behind me and I do not see them, and I am come today to judge the sins of another man
• if thou dost not hold thy tongue wheresoever thou goest, thou shall be no pilrgim. but control thy tongue here, and here thou shall be a pilgrim...unless thou shalt first amend thy life going to and fro amongst others, thou shalt not avail to amend it dwelling alone
• If we dwell upon the harms that have been wrought on us by other men, we amputate from our mind the power of dwelling on God
• all these things did the great old men bring to proof: and they found that is good to eat a little every day, and on certain days a little less: and they have shown us this master road, for it is easy and light
• if there be three in one place, and one of them lives the life of holy quiet, and another is ill and gives thanks, and the third tends them with an honest heart, these three are alike, as if their work was one
• the fragrance of the Holy Ghost
• But then came the generation that now is, and wrote them on papyrus and parchments, and laid them idle in the windows
• is the lamp injured in aught, that thou hast lit the others from it?
• if he be diligent, he can every day and every hour begin the good life anew
• nay, but i shall repent today; tomorrow, may the will of God be done
• but if there is war in thy soul, add, "Help me"
• though fasting be indeed useful and necessary, it is a matter of our own choosing: but love in its fullness the law of God requires at our hands
• but grant me this, Lord, in Thy tender mercy, to have at least the beginnings of right living
• what is contempt?...to be below the creatures that have no reason, and to know that they are not condemned
• that with our neighbor there is life and death
• saw the old man as it were one flame
• verily i know not if i have clutched at the very beginning of repentance
• i sold that same word that ever used to say to me, sell that thou hast and give to the poor
• every labor of the monk, without humility, is vain
• do thou weep and seek the comforting of God, for we are all deceived
• whatsoever things are from God, have their spring in humbleness: but such things as spring from authority and anger and strife, these are of the Enemy
• for it behoves them that serve God to be straitened in themselves
• having this hope that my brother's gain will bring forth fruit
• there is no stronger virtue than to scorn no man
• a contrite and humble heart
• progress in patience and humility by their steadiness at work
• without working with his hands a monk cannot endure to abide in his place
• unless he persist in renouncing them daily
• these to whom religion was not the mask of desire, but the countenance of that eternity which ever doth besiege our life
• of the beauty and the loveliness of her there could be no wearying for a world of men
• i have heard of thy God, that He bowed the heavens and came down to earth, not for good men's sake, but that He might save sinners
• He will loosen the load of my wrongdoing
• it is no new thing to fall in the mire, but it is an evil thing to lie there fallen

Unspoken Prayer in Spiritual Formation: Tool or Trouble

• The primary ingredient of all these tools of Christian spiritual growth is prayer.
• Just how much of Christianity is exclusively Christian?
• Exodus 14:14
• Lamentations chp 3
• The heightened joy at the nearness of a spouse is similar to the experience of the spirit in unspoken prayer.
• Jesus is the evidence that God is ready and desirous for the flame of relationship to burn brightly in all humans.

Seeking God: The Way of St Benedict

• in exploring the Rule we find that this is a description of day-to-day living which revolves around Christ
• the Word of God is directly addressing the reader or listener
• to listen closely, with every fibre of our being, at every moment of the day
• St. Benedict makes obedience his ascetic practice
• the air a staircase/ for silence (RS Thomas)
• a continuing process of holding on against all odds
• our stability is a response to that promise which reassures us that he is faithful and steadfast and that we should 'never lose hope in God's mercy.'
• conversatio morum - obedience and perseverance to the lifelong process of being transformed as he follows Christ
• the younger monks are to be called 'brother' but for the older he has chosen a particularly gentle but pleasing word 'nonnus'
• the real definition of pride is the desire to control
• Grace evokes our acts, supports them and fulfills them
• prayer + study + manual work = all three should command respect and all three should equally become a way to God
• we are essentially rhythmic creatures
• the sense of God's presence can be mediated through daily work and not destroyed by it
• the means of continually reminding myself of God's presence
• work, held in low esteem, has become a common bond amongst his monks
• I cannot become a good host until I am at home in my own house
• my primary relationship is with Christ: it is through him that I forge my link with others
• rid your heart of all deceit
• every human face is an ikon of Christ, discovered by a prayerful person
• we can only be healed through forgiveness, and we can only gain freedom through it
• work to keep my peace of mind and pay attention to my own morale
• 4 principles of common life: solidarity, pluralism, authority, subsidiarity
• It [prayer] is at the same time root and fruit, foundation and fulfillment
• scripture - basis of a continuing dialogue with Christ
• psalms learnt "by heart"
• the work of God in uninterrupted prayer, which is the search for God in all things

Centering Prayer

• ...we teach spiritual things spiritually
• some of the saints have called attention the safe-keeping of the mind; others, the guarding of the heart; yet others, sobriety; yet others, mental silence, and others again by other names. but all these names mean the same thing
• it is most important to realize that prayer is always God given
• not even our own thoughts can be considered our own (during c. prayer)
• how much of our prayer seems to be just so much spaghetti
• in teaching centering prayer, the simpler the presentation the better

Hermits

• how many things there are I do not want!"
• i can see your vanity peeping through the holes in your cloak
• paracharatein to nomisma (altering the currency)
• for the desert fathers, solitude was not merely an escape from distractions; it was a teaching presence
• if he is not edified by my silence, he will not be edified by my words
• the gift of the starets: a gift for revealing thoughts...sees behind the mask
• "the prophet king david says, first depart from evil, then do good. but with modern men the situation is just the opposite
• "it is a great relief when, for a few moments in the day we an retire to our chamber and be completely true to ourselves. it leavens the rest of our hours
• the way of discrimination and the way of devotion
• zaouia - hospitality houses
• "it is a deepening of the present" (solitude)
• "i'm just a writer who writes what is in his mind"
• "take the five books you'd take to a desert island and keep rereading them"
•  

Weeks 31-39 - Reset Button

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith - Henri Nouwen (Michael Christensen and Rebecca Laird)

The Gentle Art of Spiritual Guidance - John Yungblut

Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction - Margaret Guenther

The Rule of St. Benedict


   I don't know how effective this practice is, but now and then, maybe twice a year, I'll call in sick and push my reset button. It's on the bottom of my left heel, slightly off center toward the instep. Since it's invisible and untouchable, more of a theoretical point than a button, I have to whisper an elaborate, nonsensical incantation and twist and turn several times in bed in order to "push" it, like some kind of Rube-Goldberg magic trick.
   As a result I sleep at least until noon, and then sit around a lot, preferably in the sun. No tv, youtube, or news. A little reading and writing and music are ok. Exercise is ok, if I feel like it. No deadlines allowed. As little talking as possible. No answering the phone if I can help it. If I'm sad I'm sad. If I'm happy I'm happy. "Lord Jesus have mercy on me."
   Today is a reset day. Truly a luxury and a privilege.

War and Peace
   Sometimes you read a book that is so tightly knit, so perfectly tied together, that it seems impossible to imagine leaving out any part of the story... or it seems impossible to imagine the story being other than it is. War and Peace had the exact opposite effect on me. Almost nothing seemed necessary or essential; almost everything seemed gratuitous. Gratis, grace, freely given, etc..
   I could imaging cutting every other chapter and still having a brilliant, coherent story. Or I could imagine splicing and expanding the story into a dozen or so equally epic novels. As you wish! And yet the characters, the narrator (with increasingly annoying repetition), and I the reader are constantly caught between the daily weather of free will and the mysterious climate of Destiny. How is it possible that such heavy, ominous subject matter could feel so loose and free? I mean, Pierre, Ellen, Prince Andrey, Dolohov, Natasha, Princess Marie, can you imagine a more lead-weighted cast of characters? Everything is so serious and important! Nonetheless just as often they are as funny and friendly as you like.
   I decided to read it after Granddaddy David told me he'd started earlier this summer. I hoped to have finished by the end of my bike trip, so that we could talk about it when I arrived...but I hadn't even started the book by the time I left Richmond. It's true what they say about it: it's a long book!

Ruah reading for the 1st retreat
   These three lovely books about spiritual direction, plus the Rule of St Benedict, got us started into year one of Ruah XVII (you know the roman numerals add dignity, solemnity, lol).
   Nouwen's book isn't exactly his book - it was put together after his death by two friends of his from various papers, class notes, and selections from other Nouwen writings. Nouwen makes it clear that he felt various calls in his life - Christian, priest, teacher, writer, etc - but in one passage he claims that his call to Daybreak in Toronto was the first time he'd felt called. I really want to hear more about that.
   Yungblut deeply loves Jung and Teilhard, and for some reason I don't love them, so it took me a minute to get over that, but once I did his book was charming. He offers helpful suggestions about how to prepare oneself for being a spiritual guide and the mechanics of meeting with someone (where to meet, how to talk, how to sit, etc). They're only suggestions, though; he is always clear that each guide and each guide-ee will find their own ways, and that they must both always look to the Holy Spirit as the true guide to "self and Self."
   Guenther's Holy Listening felt the most "real" to me, as in - based mostly on her years of experience as a spiritual director. I loved her use of psalms, and the way she incorporated anecdotes and mini-case studies. What else has she written? All three authors strongly advise that the desire and call to be a spiritual director must begin with an experience of God's love. An anchor in God's everlasting love enables the director to listen without judgment, to serve without the need to please or control, and to love without unhealthy attachment.
   How many times have I read the Rule? Not that many. Certainly not so many that the pages have ceased to spark, or chafe, or sing, or drone. I absolutely love the modern commentaries and interpretations (Chittister is amazing!), but their goal is to make the Rule easier to comprehend and practice in daily life, which necessarily softens the shock. It helps to feel the strangeness of the Rule, from time to time, I think. Beyond the shock you might find a the prick of absurdity, the little dash of insanity. Benedict wants nothing to do with the eccentricity of Simeon Stylites, but even amidst his mild manners, sensible judgment, and "nothing harsh, nothing burdensome," you get glimpses of Benedict atop some crumbling ancient column, a free and blessed old fool for God. Also I always appreciate the reminder not to wear a knife to bed.


Notes

Spiritual Direction

• -For Henri, a spiritual director simply was someone who talks to you and prays with you about your life. Wisdom and direction emerge...
• -disciplines of the Heart, the Book, the Church
• -I had raised a question from below and that she had given an answer from above
• -discipline to ask, seek, knock until the door opens
• -Once pain or confusion is framed or articulated by a question, it must be lived rather than answered
• -Without a question, an answer is experienced as manipulation or control. Without a struggle, the help offered is considered interference. And without the desire to learn, direction is easily felt as oppression.
• -One of the main objectives of spiritual direction is to help people discover that they already have something to give
• -the lion in my heart recognized the lion in the marble
• -To listen with obedience to the voice of God requires building up a resistance to all the other voices that compete for our attention
• -We can't always see God's activity by ourselves
• -Self-rejection can show itself in a lack of confidence or a surplus of pride
• -Becoming the Beloved means letting the truth of our Belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say, or do
• -No, no...I just wanted you to know that Jean Vanier sends his greetings
• -my heart started to burn, and I started to recognize the presence of Jesus in a radical new way
• -1cry out to God, 2turn everything into conversation with God, 3meditation and contemplation
• -Anger and hatred, which separate us from God and others, can also become the doorway to greater intimacy with God
• -Prayer is primarily a 'useless' hour to be with God, not because I am so useless to God, because I am not in control
• -This relationship is called Spirit
• -hear the word: 1Living Word, 2Scripture and written word, 3spoken word, 4writing the word
• -a willingness not just to read but to be read
• -the Bible does not speak to us as long as we want to use it
• -Word from silence and back to silence
• -Silence gives strength and fruitfulness to the word
• -Even after many years of writing, I experience real fear when I face the empty page
• -Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals to us what is alive in us
• -Solitude greets solitude and community is formed. It's remarkable that solitude always calls us to community.
• -Community life opened me up to the real spiritual combat: the struggle to keep moving toward the light precisely when the darkness is so real
• -It's so important that we keep forgiving one another - not once in a while but every moment of life
• -Henri, you give good advice. Why don't you read some of your own books?
• -It's an incredible mystery of God's love that the more you know you are loved, the more you will see how deeply your sisters and your brothers in the human family are loved
• -Mutuality in ministry can be characterized by two words: gratitude and compassion
• -Compassion and gratitude in ministry are possible through the twin disciplines of downward mobility and voluntary displacement
• -the Heart, the Book, the Church, and the Body

Gentle Art of S.G.

• the art of discerning "that of God" in another and helping that individual be true to this divine spark
• remaining intensely alert to all the shadow manifestations brought into play by this intolerably heavy persona, one is to commit one's self into God's keeping, knowing that appropriate humility will flow only from sustained consciousness of the love of God, to which the very first intimation of calling was already a response
• the call to serve as a spiritual guide...always begins with the experience of being loved by God
• developmental stages: purgation, illumination, unitive life
• Jung - "autonomous complex" - creates independent orbit of its own within psyche...tends to pull into its orbit other parts of the psyche
• How can there conceivably be any discontinuity? (between prelife and life)
• convergence of Jung's myth of the psyche (individuation) and Teilhard's myth of cosmogenesis (universe evolving toward more and more consciousness)
• Teilhard, "radial" meeting, from center to center, as distinct from tangential meeting
• A "meeting for spiritual guidance" must be an occasion for communion if it is to realize its full potential.
• Doctor, it's turtles all the way down
• a mutual discernment of the way forward
• anyone who would presume to practice this vocation must also have a spiritual guide of one's own
• there is the haunting suspicion that, though long dead, the author somehow knows me, is strangely nearer to the real me than I have been for some time
• Caryll Houselander
• praise, thanksgiving, confession, intercession, petition
• EmD, "identity is a hound that all to readily slips its leash"
• no gift should be allowed to atrophy without the recognition that this puts in jeopardy one's whole psychic health
• Fox, "Go cheerfully over the face of the earth, answering to that of God in everyone"
• If one does not sufficiently identify with the counselee, one cannot help. Neither can one help if one over-identifies
• Retracing the golden thread of continuity...The most significant events are the mystical experiences of the love of God
• ...the rule paradoxically bestows a new freedom for spontaneity
• ongoing, sustained, corporate experience of the love of God

Holy Listening

• Alan Jones, true spiritual direction is about the great unfixables in human life
• host, someone who offers a temporary home as a place of rest and refreshment
• the first task is one of housecleaning, of creating our own inner order
• I always disconnect the telephone and hang a Do Not Disturb sign
• a good host gives the guest the sense that there is all the time in the world
• less is frequently more
• about ten minutes before the time is up, I manage to interject, "We'll have to stop in a few minutes"...the most important material of the session may be introduced...It is tempting to extend the time when these "doorknob manisfestations" occur
• story-telling needs to be unhurried and unharried
• simple, direct questions that cut to the heart of the matter are part of the spiritual tradition
• "I, too, am a sinner"
• amateurs who aspire to reflect Christ's love
• help connect the individual's story to the story
• this story must reach into the future. spiritual direction is about hope, and there is always a next step
• preparing for a "good death"
• thoughtful self-disclosure is one way of remaining grounded and human, although it must be intentional and judicious
• gentle, non-intrusive humor has a way of restoring perspective, or reducing our inflated selves to manageable proportions
• the Holy Spirit is the true director
• a learner and teacher of discernment
• Jesus helps the woman (at the well) to look into herself deeply and discover her thirst for God
• Amma Theodora on the attributes of a teacher
• (don't let desire to be liked keep you from speaking hard truths)
• a good teacher encourages play
• I am constantly struck by the proximity of play and pray
• a merry candor
• the director needs to combine gentleness with candor and expect commitment and hard work
• a good teacher is always hopeful
• a good teacher asks questions, but they must be the right questions - ones that open doors, invite the directee to stretch and grow
• to live the questions is to be willing to persevere in peering into the empty tomb
• a good teacher is willing and able to evaluate progress
• a good teacher is vulnerable
• a good teacher is always a learner
• a good teacher (like a good parent) educates for maturity
• the desire for help in shaping and structuring the daily routine is implicit in almost every case
• hurray for Shiphrah and Puah
• Yet if I were to name my own most profound spiritual or theological experience, without hesitation I would cite the birth of my three children
• a long period of waiting and uncertainty
• the onset of labor...this can be sudden or slow and gradual
• labor itself (director - presence, patience, waiting)
• she intervenes only when necessary and helpful, never for the sake of "doing something"
• she is capable of a loving detachment, but at the same time feels solidarity with the one giving birth
• transition...the birthgiver is gripped by tremendous force and feels that she has somehow lost control
• the second stage begins in the midst of the chaos of transition...the time of active work
• celebration...it is impossible to describe the joy that fills the room at the birth of a child. A midwife friend tells me that the excitement of welcoming new life never grows old.
• it is a time for rejoicing and celebration, even when the midwife knows that this is just the beginning, the first of many births. sooner of later, the whole process must begin again
• Weil, the action that follows are just the automatic effect of this moment of attention. the attention is creative
• there is the danger of becoming a spiritual voyeur, of using and feeding upon the other
• the unquestioning and tenacious love of mothers
• a ministry of compassionate presence
• If we believe with Julian that, in spite of everything, it will be alright, we need not say these words. We will embody them.
• the directee must be taken seriously, even when she seems not to take herself seriously.
• self-contempt is a loveless field that offers prime growing conditions to other sins, among them false humility, envy manipulativeness, and sloth.
• my two favorite questions - "what do you want?" and "where do you hurt?"
• but there is one thing you must do, and I will keep at you about it: value yourself!
• yet at all times the director needs to be credulous. we are still suffering from Freud's failure to believe the real world experiences of upper-middle-class girls in turn-of-the-century Vienna.
• joyously attentive to those small annuciations that don't always seem like good new

Bike Trip to Bama

Ready to roll, thanks to all of Wayne's gear! He really set me up. I would have been in a world of hurt without him. Sweet bike, front and back racks, panniers, cammelback, various lights, tools, bright yellow rain jacket. Basically he gave me everything except my tent, tarp, and underwear.

 Leaving early early July 30th. It was a dark and stormy night, I mean morning. Bad idea! First lesson learned: don't ride in the dark and rain, especially wearing glasses. Lynchburg is a long ride (for me), so I was anxious to leave before dawn and to take the most direct route.

I stayed mostly on 360 and 460. I figured they'd have wide shoulders, and they did, except for this little cut, 307. Lesson number two: highway traffic gets old, even if everyone is nice. And not everyone is nice.

I stayed with good friends of Lindsey's in Lynchburg, Jung and Jason and their super fun son Walden. They were so kind! I was so smelly. Day two meant a shorter ride to Roanoke. Look above at the elevation map - check out the dip about a third of the way from the left. That's 221 crossing the Big Otter River, my first intense hill of the trip, maybe number 3 or 4 on my list of feel the burn climbs. The dip next is the Little Otter River.

I was almost to Roanoke when I stopped for a cup of coffee. Now where did I put my money bag (a ziplock with my credit card, my license, my health insurance card, and my phone)? Yep. I'd left it in Lynchburg. Lesson number three: remember to remember the important things you shouldn't forget.

Once in Roanoke, my first stop was the visitor's center, where they graciously let me use their phone. Thank goodness I remembered Lindsey's phone number! I left a message for Lindsey and headed for the bank. "Well, see, I don't have my bank card, or my wallet, or any kind of i.d., but I swear I'm David Vinson." The teller played 20 questions with me, I did my very best impersonation of myself, and believe it or not they gave me some cash. Maybe they could tell I was too hapless to be a thief. Just as I was about to leave another bank employee came out of a back office and called to me, "Excuse me sir? I think your wife is on the phone." Lindsey's got detective skills! I spent the night with Zach, a friendly, generous host from warmshowers.org, and Jung and Jason found my stuff and mailed it ahead to the trip's halfway point, Jefferson City, TN. 

 

Originally I'd planned to ride to Pulaski on day three and camp at Gatewood park, but I decided to try to make it closer to Wytheville. See the big climb in the elevation map above? Worst hill ever! That's 460 going up into Christiansburg. Later in the ride however, the sun broke through the clouds and I supremely enjoyed pedaling down 626 along the New River past Radford. I didn't quite make it to Wytheville and camped for the night in a pretty little creekside RV park, Pioneer Village. The kind hostess, after checking me in and hearing of my misadventures (she let me use her phone, too), sighed in genuine concern and asked, "what on earth would compel you to do this?" By that point it was raining again and she let me pitch my tent under a picnic shelter.

Rain rain rain. I had quite a bit of rain, mostly light rains and drizzles, during the first four or five days. The weather man said the jet stream was going around its elbow to get to its ear. I got tired of being wet, but it kept me cool, and the mountain clouds were spectacular. One minute dark billows, next curls and swirls, then a teasing splash of blue or sun, finally a plain dusty gray blanket, as if God had pulled his granny's old bed spread across the sky. Sometimes various kinds of clouds danced or piled up in layers. Day four was a beautiful ride, mostly up or down, as you can see above, but nothing absurd. For some reason I thought Marion was right around the corner from Abingdon, my destination. I stopped to buy bananas and cheerily asked the grocer, "what are we, 10 miles from Abingdon?" She saw my bicycle attire. "Sorry, hun, more like 30." Lesson four: look at a map!

In Abingdon I stayed with a fellow Danvillian, my brother John's good buddy Carter. What a great host! And I was inspired to hear about his work for congressional candidate Anthony Flaccavento, whose signs I saw all over southwest VA. "The economy is for the people, plain and simple." Amen!

Day five was the longest ride, Abingdon to Jefferson City, TN, made longer by one of my many missed turns. My worst mistake was leaving Roanoke...I went exactly the wrong way almost immediately, then after getting back on track I got mixed again up near Salem. This time I made it successfully through the most complicated section of google's bike directions, scooting around Bristol, but pedaled past a turn somewhere I think on TN 75 or 93, one of east Tennessee many beautiful byways. I stopped at a church yard sale, asked for directions, and enjoyed listening to three church matrons debate the best route to Jefferson City. The consensus was to keep it simple, get to Morristown and stay on 11E. It's busy but there is a wide shoulder.

Hey check out Morristown's cool double level main street walkways. Lesson five: all those little towns whose interstate exit signs you pass as you drive to Alabama once or twice a year...stop and visit sometime!

In Jeff City my amazing, incomparable hosts Lea Ann and Ross Brummett took me out for dinner. "We've got two rules," Ross told me beforehand, "you eat as much as you possibly can, and we're paying." I didn't protest either rule. After dinner they gave me a tour of town and the beautiful campus of Carson Newman.

 
Lea Ann snapped a picture of me before I left the next morning. Day six was mostly sunny. I had my first flat outside of Knoxville, another city in which I got slightly lost, but I enjoyed its wonderful greenways. Roanoke, Knoxville, and Collegedale were memorable for their beautiful paved walking/biking trails, usually following rivers or creeks. Here's a picture down by the Tenneessee River in Knoxville.

I guess day six was a Saturday, which explains why I had a lot more bicycle friends that day. Once I admitted to myself that I was lost, I met and tagged along with a kind young man riding toward the southwestern edge of the city, where I rejoined US11, sharing the road with what seemed like an inordinate amount of trucks pulling boats. Traffic lightened up outside of Lenoir City. I made it just past Sweetwater and camped at Tenneessee Country Campground in Niota, TN.

Day 7 was my shortest ride, basically a rest day, including a long nap, thanks to more wonderful hosts, Megan and Ryan, from warmshowers in Cleveland, TN.

 At some point that morning I came across this beautiful fox, recently dead in the road. It looked so elegant and perfectly designed for sneaking through the forest, laying there in profile against the pavement. There was only a little bit of blood by its mouth, but I found it was already stiff as a board as I dragged it to the grass. Roadkill was a big part of my landscape. Lesson six: there is a lot on the highway that you can't see, or don't normally see, from the car. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that not a mile went by without at least some roadkill remnant. Squirrels, rabbits, possum, raccoons, snakes, turtles, deer, and crows were most common. Once in Alabama I saw mostly dead armadillos.
 
 Day 8 began with fog and mist but cleared up nicely. My directions took me gently through Chattanooga neighborhoods, up and down some big hills in Tennessee and Georgia, and south around Nickajack Lake on TN 156. Here's a picture of a big cave outside of which I ate lunch and took a quick swim. TN 156 was gorgeous, and is worth a detour if you're ever on I-24 between Chattanooga and South Pittsburg.

Did you know South Pittsburg is home to the National Cornbread Festival? Now you do! That's lesson seven. Below is a picture of this big blue bridge crossing the TN river just outside of South Pittsburg. As long as I can remember, I've wanted to cross this bridge (it runs perpendicular to 72, so you can see it clearly from the highway). Well I finally crossed it.
 

Again on day 8 I changed my camping plans. I made it to my original destination west of Stevenson, AL, but it was still somewhat early afternoon, and the campground was mostly a roadside gravel parkinglot with electrical hookups. I called Mom to ask for camping advice, and she directed me toward the marina in Scottsboro. Here's my little set-up below. 72 from South Pittsburg to Scottsboro is busy, but very flat, with very wide shoulders, so I felt safe, except during an intimidating thunderstorm. At camp I met a fascinating young man who was touring the south east's parks and forests before starting a position at the Tombigbee National Forest in Mississippi.
 

Day 9! Almost home! Usually when I drive to Alabama, I'm going to visit. Home is Virginia. Well this time home was definitely Athens, Alabama! Unfortunately, throughout the day I felt worse and worse, as if I'd eaten something bad. The wonderfully wide shoulders of 72 disappeared, to be replaced by those shallow roadside divots, rumble strips. Lesson 8 - don't ride your bike over those for any length of time or at any significant speed. The last day was certainly the hardest...so close yet so far away...but I arrived, thanks be to God, in the early afternoon. I hugged my grandparents, called Lindsey, took a shower, and went to sleep. Here's a picture of my foot, tanned into stripes thanks to my sandals (Keen sandals! good biking shoes).

 

Weeks 29-30: Plot Summaries

The Practice of the Presence of God - Brother Lawrence

   Last week we had a "Brother Lawrence" retreat at Richmond Hill, so I figured I better read up! Twenty or so friends stayed over for a few days - cleaning, praying, and cleaning some more..."having resolved to make the love of God the end of all [their] actions..."

The Earth is the Lord's; The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe - Abraham Joshua Heschel

   Wow, not what I expected! I supposed it to be a history book, and it does include lots of great cultural history. It is a testament of devotion, a witness to the love of God, through thick and thin. This would be a great book to read aloud in a prayer group.

Christ is the Question - Wayne Meeks

   Meeks starts by placing historical Jesus research in the context of general western intellectual history (subject-object dilemmas, scientific method, historical science-envy). Kinda cool. After that he dives into his main arguement: Jesus' life and identity are social phenomena, just like everyone else's - in time and relationship and language. The historical Jesus narrative that goes something like -- Jesus' original message-identity was x, the apostles understood it as x+1, then all kinds of variations developed x+/-/*/etc, then the church honed in on a particular x+something -- this narrative helps but misses the interpersonal nature of identity. "Who is Jesus" is a constant dialogue or discussion, during Jesus' life and beyond.

How to Become Ridiculously Well-Read in One Evening - ed E.O. Parrott

   A funny book of plot summaries, mostly in verse. They are funniest when you've actually read the book before, so the book doesn't quite live up to its titular purpose! Oh well.

notes

The Practice of the Presence of God
-That there needed fidelity in those drynessess or insensibilities and irksomnesses in prayer by which God tries our love to Him...
-having resolved to make the love of God the end of all his actions...
-referring all we do to Him
-I cannot do this unless Thou enablest me...
-That we ought to act with God in the greatest simplicity
-that we may beg assistance for knowing His will in things doubtful, and for rightly performing those which we plainly see He requires of us
-that we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God
-by rising after my falls, and by frequently renewed acts of faith and love
-without troubling or disquieting myself when my mind had wandered involuntarily
-set Him always before us
-a simple attention, and a general fond regard for God
-holy inactivity
-Hope in Him more than ever
-A little lifting up of the heart suffices. A little remembrance of God
-small but holy exercise
-fund and center of his soul
-Let us make way for grace; let us redeem the lost time, for perhaps we have but little left
-At first one often thinks it lost time, but you must go on
-Lift up you heart to Him...the least little remembrance will always be acceptable to him
-Let us begin then
-Let us live and die with God
-Let us think often that our only business in this life is to please God, and that all besides is but folly and vanity
-Let us begin in earnest
-a holy habit
-He is always near you and with you; leave him not alone
-offer Him your pains incessantly
-Let all our employment be to know God
-faith...one simple act

The Earth is the Lord's
-The stone is broken, but the words are alive...They still knock at our gates as if begging to be engraved "on the Tablets of every heart."
-In this language [Yiddish], you say "beauty" and mean "spirituality"; you say "kindness" and mean "holiness."
-maggidim
-all were partners in the Torah
-Rashi democratized Jewish education, he brought the Bible, the Talmud, and the Midrash to the people.
-shtibl
-Sog mir a shtickl Torah - tell me a little Torah
-knowledge was not a means for achieving power, but a way of clinging to the source of all reality
-feel heaven in a passage of Talmud
-pipul
-The soul is sustained by the regard for that which transcends all immediate purposes.
-Heaven the tangent at the circle of all experience
-one might fulfill his destiny by the way
-the world could not exist without the Torah
-The Divine sings in noble deeds. Man's effort is but the counterpoint to the music of His will.
-all pervading mystery
-I have gone through the whole of the Talmud three times...Yes, but how much of the Talmud has gone through you?
-thirty-six zaddikim
-a Torah within the heart
-somewhat of the Sabbath was infused into every day
-Jews did not build magnificent synagogues; they built bridges leading from the heart to God
-Our energies are too abundant for living indifferently

Christ is the Question
-more study, more questions
-history trying to emulate objectivity of science
-try to use model of personal identity as a social and transactional process
-"When someone says, 'The Bible clearly teaches...' we an usually be sure that an attempt is being made to co-opt the Bible's authority in order to foreclose argument on a topic on which good persons, including good Christians, reasonably disagree."
-modernist-fundamentalist battle "eclipsed" narrative depth
-poetry can make history
-the more broadly we cast our nets, the more interpretive fish we bring up
-the web of narratives; the intersection of narratives
-Jesus' identity discovered and invented
-Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection: "the generative center"
-Harmony, homonoia, as the central value of ancient Greek city life
-The motive that drove Greek and Roman society was philotimia, "ambition," literally "love of honor."
-the plain sense vs the literal sense vs the historical sense
-Thus the same Protestant tradition that gave to this country much of its zeal for education and many of its pioneering educational institutions also contributed to that pervasive anti-intellectualism that infects every part of our national life.
-The Bible as rule book, very much needs Mishnah and Talmuds and Responsa, or some hard-to-imagine Protestant equivalent.
-master narrative
-"indispensable resource" rather than "binding authority"
-Hans Frei: "Let us assume that the notion of a right interpretation of the Bible is itself not meaningless, but it is eschatological."
-surely we have not seen the last surprise in God's plan...

Weeks 26-28: Doorway

Cold Mountain: The Legend of Han Shan and Shih Te, The Original Dharma Bums - Sean Michael Wilson, illustrated by Akiko Shimojima

The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims - Mustafa Akyol

   Here comes the ice cream truck again! As small as our neighborhood is, you'd think we wouldn't get the ice cream truck three times a day. Lots of kids around, though, makes for good business I suppose.
   Jesus the rabbi, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the prophet, Jesus the bodhisattva, Jesus the logos, Jesus the avatar, Jesus the guru. Am I getting out of hand? How can Jesus be the door, gate, way into the love and appreciation of non-Christian religion and practice? Cold Mountain indirectly and Islamic Jesus directly provide examples...

notes
Cold Mountain
-The most glorious warhorse ever sat/ can't match a crippled kitty/ in a race to catch a rat.
-I just clap time for the flowers/as they dance,
-I can remember the taste of that dirt.
-In the summer it's light as winds;/ in the winter it's my quilt./ Winter or summer, of use in both/ year upon year, just this.
-The Tao's a road/ that runs straight through.
-You could try to make it/ to cold moutain
-Sunrise, and the mist would blind a/ hidden dragon
-cloud roads are in empty space

Islamic Jesus
-fearful rumors about secret decision in the West to Christianize and conquer Turkey and other Muslim countries (history of church-politics-military overlap in Christian missions)
 -"the only evidence we possess in the Gospels would suggest that his contemporaries found it impossible to make sense of him..." A.N. Wilson
-"the steep ascent...It is freeing a slave, or feeding on a day of hunger an orphaned relative, or a poor man in the dust. Then to be one of those who have faith, and urge each other to steadfastness and urge each other to compassion" Qur'an
-Qn - believers are "those who have faith and do right actions"
-Jewish Christians and potential influence on early Islam
-parallels between stories in Qur'an and apocryphal Gospels
-Tawrat - Torah, Zabur - Psalms, Injil - Gospel
-are "nasara" the Nazoreans?
-Mary - major character in Qur'an
-rock inscription in Negev, 7th c., "Amen, the Lord of Worlds, the Lord of Moses and Jesus"
-rasul - one who is sent; nabi - news giver
-prophecy of messenger to come - "Ahmad" - person Ahmad, Muhammah, or as adjective "praised"
-Jesus - son of Mary, Word, Spirit, Messiah
-parallels - Kingdom of God/ Caliphate, Halahka/ Sharia, Jesus for Jewish renewal/ Jesus for Islamic renewal

Weeks 22-25 - To Queer

The Fruits of the Spirit - Evelyn Underhill

Jesus and Mary: Finding Our Sacred Center - Henri Nouwen

Alone With God - Dom Jean Leclercq

Queer Theory: A Graphic History - Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele

   So we moved into that house where I spotted Lloyd the groundhog. Turns out he has lots of friends! ...one of which likes to hide under our back porch. I call him Germaine. By the way I don't know male from female woodchucks, so why do I name them as males? 
   We also have plenty of rabbits, squirrels, robins, mocking birds, and starlings. I'm trying to learn the basic backyard bird names. Those house finches must have found a better summer home. Some kind of wren likes to chase insects under the awning, however. I think I saw a woodpecker - a hairy woodpecker? - about the size of a jay, black and white with the little red tuft. A cardinal stopped in the other day, but the robins weren't happy about it. No crows or bigger birds so far. No blue jays like at Richmond Hill.
   About these books...I had no idea "queer" could be a verb! To queer something, according to Barker and Scheele, is to destabilize it, to challenge or test it, to play with it, to send it up, or to tease out its fundamental binaries, so on and so forth, much like "deconstruction" with less French. For real, Jesus did a lot of queering, right? Keep Jesus Weird. Is that a t-shirt already?
   Underhill and Nouwen really know how to keep the reverent tone going, without being too heavy. How do they do that? Rather than take notes I nearly copied word for word these two little books, especially Underhill's. I hope I can read her big book soon.
    Alone with God is a strange book about strange people, hermits. I really enjoyed it. Leclercq summarizes and interprets the writings of Paul Giustiniani, a monk at the hermitage of Camaldoli and founder of a slightly more hermetic association of hermits. Blessed Paul's basic call was to be alone with God in order to "love God in God," which he was convinced would benefit not only himself but the Church, those outside the Church, and all creation. I believe him.



notes - Underhill

• Thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet - and shut the door...Nearly every one pulls it to and leaves it slightly ajar
• coming downstairs
• that constant struggle with distracting thoughts, that humiliating sense of deadness and incapacity, which always accompany spiritual growth and teach us humility...
• Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, not of our gratified emotions.
• Just because of the vastness of the journey and mighty surrounding forces, there is no hurry, no fuss...
• ...you do not know where those born of the spirit have come from and you do not know where they are going. The path on which they are moving to an appointed end, like the wind's path, is unseen by you...
• patience with ourselves is a duty for Christians and the only real humility
• the fruits of the Spirit get less and less showy as we go on
• Do not entertain the notion that you ought to advance in prayer
• Spirit of truth present in all places and filling all things
• that loving and absolute trust in God which is the heart of religion
• "dexterity in casting all thy care on Him" K
• But religion at its full span transcends all these parochial and self-interested ideas, and admits us to a 'world that is unwalled.'
• ...men and women who seem to have no special gift, but the one great gift of the love of God 
• There should always be more waiting than striving in a Christian's prayer - an absolute dependence on the self-giving charity of God. "As dew shall our God descend on us."
• humble, eager, expectant attitude toward God

Nouwen

• School of Mary
• Behold your mother (to us)
• the false adulthood of our age
• Spirit speaks to Spirit
• Jesus the door to the mystical life which is the life in communion with God
• Stabat Mater
• taken, blessed, broken, given
• who is innocent in front of the innocent one?
• "Jesus makes us descend with him in the tomb, in the weakness, in the darkness, in everything that seems dead in our heart, but always to rectify us, to purify us, to liberate us."
• But here before the rolled away stone, a simple center from which hope radiates, all is very simple.
• Before I am sinful, I am innocent...I have to claim that innocence in me...the place where Jesus chose to live...fashioned in secret and molded in the depths of the earth
• I remember Mother Teresa's words to me twelve years ago: "Write simply," she said, "very simply. People need simple words."

Where'd they go?

   We had a couple of these little house finches building a nest inside a U-shaped metal joist for our back porch awning. Actually only the female worked, gathering and arranging twigs and such. The male just sat there and sang! Seems like as soon as they filled in the whole space they disappeared.

Weeks 19-21 - What's so funny about Jesus?

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal - Christopher Moore

   You know that foggy, where-am-I feeling you get after driving on the interstate for way too long, or after cramming all night for an exam? I've felt like that constantly for the past couple months! Very frustrating. At the end of the day, I'm never quite sure what I've done, how I've done it, or how I feel about it. How long have I been driving? Did I miss the exit? Get me to a Waffle House quick. I mean I'm kinda busy but I'm not that busy.

   Lamb is charming and overdone, in that order. The first third, by far the best part, covers Joshua (Jesus) and Biff's childhood escapades. In the second part Josh and Biff travel east to find and learn from the wise men. The final section retells the Gospels - Joshua's public ministry as the Messiah.
   My overall impression was that Moore had the most fun with the first two sections, but he felt obligated to tell the whole story, so he just muscled it out. I wish he'd done like Anne Rice and focused on a short boyhood time frame, one to three years - some kind of Huckleberry Finn adventure, with plenty of foreshadowing. I think that would have better served his comedic gifts. In any case, this is the funniest book about Jesus ever written!

Week 18 - Holy Extended Family

Christ The Lord: Out of Egypt - Anne Rice


It's hard to read or think or write! I'm in a slump.

   My favorite part of this book is the portrait of an "ordinary" 1st century Jewish extended family (when I read "household" in the NT, should I think of this type of family life?). Of course this holy family receives a difficult and mysterious calling, which they all, including Jesus, struggle to understand and respond to.

   The two major plot devices: travel - from Egypt to Judea, then Galilee, then to and from Jerusalem again - and secrets - Jesus' family has kept the full story of his miraculous birth from him and others.

   This book isn't as piercing as The Last Temptation or as potent as Jesus Christ Son of Man, but it is as earnest as those other two. It bears up under the weight of Rice's love.

   All three Jesus novels have highlighted the landscape, or Jesus' interaction with the landscape. How important is the landscape in the Gospels as compared with other ancient biographies?

Week 17 - 2-D or 3-D Jesus?

The Last Temptation of Christ - Nikos Kazantzakis

  I've been in a complaining mood lately, so don't take my whining too seriously. 

  This book and the one I paired it with in my head - Gibran's Jesus The Son of Man - are beautiful, inventive, devotional. For both Gibran and Kazantzakis Jesus is the great Romantic Hero: striving, yearning, strong and sympathetic, a misunderstood poet, working outside institutions, overcoming worldly cares, a lover of nature and beauty, tragic yet triumphant. At the least, Jesus is our best self. Jesus fully integrates heaven and earth, in his existence and/or through his words and deeds. 
   Gibran's Jesus leans more towards the sage and mystic, and Kazantzakis' Jesus more towards the fear and trembling, existentialist kind of hero. I hope they got to read each other's work. Two wonderful writers, spiritually devoted to Jesus, sailing into his life with paper sails and a pen as rudder. 
   So...why are their Jesus's such dead characters? Maybe dead isn't the right word. Forced. We could chalk it up as another instance of the uninteresting-hero-in-an-interesting-cast-or-story problem, which I think is one of the great unsolved problems in the history of the universe. 
   You can tell as you read that Gibran and Kazantzakis both love Jesus very much, so perhaps they were trying too hard to get it right. It's as if they took a beloved icon, in all its two dimensional profundity, and tried to add perspective, make it 3-D, while still keeping the basic style of the icon. Jesus looks like a cartoon character on a live set. Who framed Roger Rabbit? Kazantzakis' Jesus is more human, Gibran's more divine, but they're stuck in a similar contortion - a mix-up of 2-D and 3-D conventions.
   Another complaint - they both pin Paul as a power hungry fanatic. Also their female characters hang on the male characters, not just socially (mother, potential mother, wife, potential wife, servant) but spiritually: women's spirituality is portrayed mostly as sensuality - in relationship to a husband or child. One more gripe: Gibran paints a bleak picture of Jewish religion; Kazantzakis's is more lively, thankfully.
 

Week 16 - Built in Bethlehem 1961

We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness - Alice Walker

   Leaving Richmond Hill this afternoon I spy our latest, most frequent cat visitor crossing the street, honoring the pavement with his royal paws. Confidence is a cat walking away.

   There goes a crow with a forked twig in its mouth. I've heard that if you feed and make friends with crows they will leave gifts on your porch - bottle caps, tinfoil burger wrappers, shiny ribbon.

  Huffle puff puffle huff up and down Libbie Hill steps. Don't mind me Mr Skink! A skink for every crevice, or a crevice for every skink? Here's a big one poking his head out into a sunny spot. 

  The other day when we toured the house with the inspector, I held open the door of the breaker box while he analyzed its contents. Through the back window I saw a well-grown groundhog poking his head through a broken down spot in the back fence. If we get the house I'm gonna call him Lloyd. If we don't get the house I guess I'll call him Lloyd anyway. I'm already calling him Lloyd.

  What do you call the sound your shoes make walking along a gravel path?
  
  Two men, who look to be father and son, silently fish off Chapel Island, sipping 24 ounce Natural Light. The fish are jumping after flies, just not their flies. Contentment is father-son fishing, luke-warm beer, lots of shade, little talking, few fish.

   Farther down the path a tree is full of tiny birds (I don't know a stork from a sparrow), quietly playing musical twigs. They don't seem to be eating or talking. Why do they keep trading places?

   Who is that goose honking at?

   Passenger train on the elevated track. All that shaking but the ducks in the canal aren't worried, dipping their heads after something ducks eat. The trestle "bent" (the load bearing frame between the spans) reads "Built in Bethlehem 1961" (or is it 1967?). According to Billy Joel out in Bethlehem they're killing time, filling out forms, standing in line. 

   Time to go home and clean some bathrooms.

   Check it out! An excited eight legged huntress in the bottom of a trashcan. Don't tell anyone, I'm turning it loose in the hall.

notes

• ...so well hidden has the act of birth become
• until the last moment I could not believe that a baby would be the result of what I was seeing
• only when these other children are safe in the world will your grandchildren be safe
• from the moment I saw that a plum grew out of a brown-colored, dry-looking branch, and a watermelon came from a green stem attached to a plant that was rooted in the dark earth, "heaven" as described by the pastor of our church became irrelevant...
• "relative, shift your teepee, Mother Earth needs sunlight"
• wisdom, however, requests a pause
• "No whirlwind, no reply; no burning/ Just a bare winter bush./ This is God, too.
• It is like/ sitting on/ a sunny pier/ wondering whether/ to swing/ your feet
• during the pause is the ideal time to listen to stories. but only after you have inhabited Silence for long enough to find it comfortable
• The distaste for hesitation. The absolute hatred of spending time in emptiness, what Buddhists refer to as groundlessness.
• it is hard to bear our own human thickness
• To be cared for. I said to my friend: it is possible for everyone on earth to have this.
• At this time in history, we are to take nothing/ personally/ least of all, ourselves
• If I could be happy in a land where torture of my kind was commonplace, then perhaps there was a general happiness to be found
• it is this love that never dies, and that, having once experienced it, we have the confidence always exhibited by well-loved humans, to continue extending this same love
• I cherish the study and practice of Buddhism because it is good medicine for healing us so that we may engage the world of healing our ancestors...they can only be healed inside us
• I see the Christ spirit in all those who cannot be bought away from their love of humanity
• To enumerate the crimes committed against the Mother of Humanity would drive the sanest person mad
• When I read these letters and poems and viewed the drawings, I was connected to those of our ancestors who first experienced the wrenching devastation of the destruction of their families. I felt in my own body the long centuries of slavery
• He was someone who, in a sense, was living, consciously, toward his death...Which is how we black southerners felt. MLK was not the only one who thought he wouldn't survive.
• Love your country/ by loving/ Americans
• Generosity toward those less fortunate is the way of the future, if a future exists
• tell them: I welcome you here
• I firmly believe that the only punishment that works is love
• "The only thing worthy of you is compassion"
• The beings we kill become, somehow, ours for life. Ironically, we become responsible for them in death as we were not in life.