6th Sunday of Easter

Our readings for the 6th Sunday of Easter are:

1. Acts 15: 1-2, 22-29
2. Psalm 67: 2-3, 5, 6, 8
3. Revelations 21: 10-14, 22-23
4. John 14: 23-29

1. The buck stops here
• Each ecclesial decision that we make as the Body of Christ not only needs to be done out of love, but be an expression of that love.
• What are some of the decisions that you have had to make, however small, that had a pastoral dimension to them, that somehow impacted someone else's care?
• How can we be more spirit-filled in those decisions?
• How can we hold our leaders to be more accountable for being pastoral?
2. Joining in with all the nations
• What are some of the blessings in your life that you are most grateful for?
• What sort of categories would you put those blessings into?  Examples might be success in your endeavors, propserity, spiritual gifts, insights, ...
• Do you think that God has those sorts of blessings in hand for everyone?
• What do you think is preventing those blessings from being manifest for everyone?
3. Glory
• Not to get into a rut, but another favorite Gerard Manley Hopkins poem is Pied Beauty.
• We are accustomed to seeing the glory of God in creation, unspoiled, resplendant, but where else is the glory of God shining forth in your life?
• When was the last time that you told anyone that they were glorious in some sense or another?
4. To love me is to know me
• One definition of true love is that the lover wishes the best for the beloved, even if it hurts the lover.
• But how are we to know and understand what is the best thing for those that we love?
• Is that love based on a sure knowledge of what is best for them?
• Where/how do we get such deep knowledge of those that we love?
• How do we know when we finally "get" another person, really understand them from the inside out, or is it hopelessly naive to think that we will ever truly know and understand another?
• What does that say about our marriages?

Preparation for Reconciliation:

1. Are my words life-giving, even if they are not what someone wants to hear?
2. What am I doing to see to it that God's blessings extend to all of His children?
3. How have I reflected the glory of God this week?
4. How am I getting more attuned to the word of God in my life, my heart?

Peace at any Price

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for peace.
The peace of knowing that the work I do,
Will yield sustenance for me and my family,
The peace of knowing that my loved ones
Are safe no matter the hour of the day.

Probe me, ask me again what peace I crave,
Perhaps I would tell you that I long for
Assurance that others will be grateful for my presence,
That I will have been able to do something meaningful
That, in the end, it all mattered.

But, but even deeper is a peace not even I understand.
Peace knowing that I'm as close to Jesus as I can be,
Peace knowing that, no matter how it all turns out
It will be all right, because all is right with the world
In a world that is all with Jesus.

Confusion and doubt, but never despair
Privation and want, but never true isolation
All that I can really count on is Presence
And even that it not too easy to spot sometimes,
But it's all that we're really sure of.

Shalom!

5th Sunday of Easter

Our readings for the 4th Sunday of Easter are:

1. Acts 14: 21-27
2. Psalm 145: 8-9, 12-11, 12-13
3. Revelations 21: 1-5a
4. John 13: 31-33a, 34-35

1. The perseverance of the every day
• What is the most challenging part of being a disciple?
• What could the rest of us do to make that better for you?
• If you knew to the second when you were going to die, why not take it easy, indulge, enjoy, and then do a deathbed conversion just in time?
2. Joining in with all creation
• If all of creation praises God's name, what can we learn about relating to God from the rest of creation?
• Take a look at As Kingfishers Catch Fire, a poem by Gerard Manly Hopkins (a Jesuit in good standing by the way) about being what we're created to be.
• Why is it that we find it so hard to step into our own destiny as God's children?
3. Tabernacling
• Reading Genesis, the intimacy between our first parents and God is so poignant, and God has been working to bring that about anew ever since.
• How can we companion Jesus in our lives this day, this week, this month?
• How can we better stand with Jesus as He lives and moves among us today?
• Where is Jesus suffering, lonely, despairing among us now?
4. When I said Ecumenical outreach I was thinking the Jesuits!
• Some of you may remember Andy Anderson.  He received much of his early training in the Franciscan community.  That's where he first heard about ecumenism.
• Is there anyone in your life whom you love, who feels very differently about something of importance?
• How do the two of you keep the relationship healthy in spite of that?
• Do you think that your differences stand in the way of a deeper relationship?
• Why are the two of you still together?

Preparation for Reconciliation:

1. How is my life spreading good news today?
2. What can I learn from creation about worshiping God?
3. Do I have time to waste with God?
4. How am I loving the difficult people in my life?

All Rocks Go to Heaven

God is about renewal, not replacement.
Making all things new again,
Not just making all new things.

The trees of the forest sigh in the breeze,
The hills sing of God's glory,
Brooks pray loudly in the spring of the year.

Each of them showing us, leading onward
How to truly find harmony with who we are
And what we are here for.

Only we can choose else from our destiny
Only we can turn our backs on who we are,
Only we can forget what Eden was like.

Creation is far from over.
God's visitation here still unfolding.
And he's looking for partners, companions, lovers

To build the Kingdom right here, and now
That when we go out to greet Him in the end,
We bring everyone, everything, all creation with us.

Shalom!

4th Sunday of Easter

Our readings for the 4th Sunday of Easter are:

1. Acts 13: 14, 43-52
2. Psalm 100: 1-2, 3, 5
3. Revelations 7: 9, 14b-17
4. John 10: 27-30

1. Where did my comfort zone go?
• How has God opened you up to bigger, more different possibilities in your life over the past few years?
• What made it difficult for you to step into those broader horizons, those opportunities?
• Do you think that you're getting any better at that process?
2. Legacy
• There is so much that we want to leave to our children - our faith, morals, values, and that heirloom china cabinet of Aunt Mabel's that no one seems to be able to find a place for.
• How do you tell what's important for that next generation, the things that are immutable, transcendant, versus just something that was meaningful to your generation, and should just stay there?
• How do you tell what's important for the future you, the person that will wake up in your skin tomorrow morning, next year, in a decade?  How do you tell what to hold on to and what has served its purpose and is ready to be shed, like old snakeskin?
• Do you think Jesus ever struggled with such questions?
3. Stress and distress
• The apocalyptic vision of Revelation warns of prolonged and intense struggle at the end of the age.  How can we be better prepared for that?
• What place do you think fellowship with fellow believers will have in giving us the strength to weather those days?
• What can we start doing today to strengthen those ties, make our communities stronger?
• Is it worth it?
4. To know and to be known
• How well are you known?  If your funeral were held today and you were able to attend (anonymously of course, no need to frighten the guests), what might you hear said about you?
• Do you feel comfortable with that level of understanding of others for you, or would you like others to understand you better, really appreciate the "real you"?
• What do you think is stopping you from sharing that innermost self with others?
• What is slowing you down from sharing that person with Jesus?

Preparation for Reconciliation:

1. Am I willing/able to embrace all those whom God sends my way?
2. How have I been tending the sheep of God's pasture lately?
3. How am I preparing the communities that I'm a part of for the tough times ahead?
4. How am I learning the sound of God's voice better in my life?

Shepherd me oh God

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
Just how high on Mazlow's pyramid does your average sheep go?
Is this about contentment with the basics like food and safety?
Or is the Good Shepherd about fulfilling deeper desires?

The crying need for the transcendent,
That still small voice beyond and other than ourselves,
Can be frightening at times, asking that we leave the security
Of the merely good enough, and strike out on a pilgrimage.

The voice of our smaller selves, the scared child within,
Wants to know when good enough is truly good enough,
When this growing, stretching, seeking, will finally rest.
But the real me, my best self, hears a call within the call.

And I must find the courage to rummage through my pack
And ask what I will leave behind this time, and what is needed still.
Knowing that the way provides most of what's needed
Once I set foot upon the next step.

Shalom!

3rd Sunday of Easter

Our readings for the 3rd Sunday of Easter are:

1. Acts 5: 27-32
2. Psalm 30: 2, 4, 5-6, 11-12, 13
3. Revelations 5: 11-14
4. John 21: 1-19

1. Who/what are you?
• In the first reading Peter boldly proclaims that they are "witnesses of these things" in a way that suggests that they defined themselves in those terms.  Their very lives were defined by that role.
• If someone were to ask you "who are you", how would you answer?
• Is that in terms of what you do, or who you really are?
• Is it possible for us to truly multi-task?
• How do we ensure that our priorities are straight, that each of the roles that we play add up to being powerful witnesses for Christ?
2. Enemy mine
• The word "enemy" is hardly ever used in polite conversation.  That's perhaps too bad.
• Who/what are some of your enemies?
• Do all of them come from outside of you?
• Do you think that God is interested in rescuing you from all of them?
• What role do we have in escaping the clutches of these enemies?
3. Excuse me, you're standing on my cloud
• I tend to regard unanimity with a certain suspicion.  I always wonder what the cost was in achieving that unity of purpose, thought, direction.  But we keep pryaing for unity among God's faithful.
• What is the foundation for such unity?
• Do you think that we can achieve even a measure of such unity here in this life?
• What sort of a witness would/could we be if we were more unified?
4. Divine mercy
• What are some times when you have been rehabilitated in some manner or another?
• How long did that take?
• How did you know that you were done, that you had been restored?
• How did you act differently afterwasrds?

Preparation for Reconciliation:

1. What are the things clamoring for my attention in life?  Are they correctly ordered?
2. What do I need to be rescued from this week?
3. What am I doing that might convince someone that I'm happy to be Christian?
4. How am I revealing Christ to others?

Who's getting grilled here, me or the fish?

I will never forget the look on His face that night when I denied Him the third time.
I looked for sadness, anger, disappointment.  I found those, but I was surprised to find
Find another emotion there as well: loneliness.  He was all alone with the hatred and fear.

I knew there was nothing that I could do for him going in.  I'm just a fisherman.
But I wanted to be near, have some sort of comfort that I could give at the end.
But I couldn't get very close, always on the fringes, just near enough to be challenged.

All my bluster, all my bravado, all that false courage crumpled like a rag doll,
Leaving me, a hollowed out man with no guts, standing there where He could see
That I had even less courage than He had given me credit for.

Humility and shame are so often confused in people's minds,
To the point that no one wants humility, they fear the long-term consequences of shame,
But quite the opposite happens, for the truly humble person never has anything to be ashamed of.

Instead, they know where their weaknesses are, where their strengths lie untapped
And they are able to hear the call to use all of those talents for the kingdom.
Humility tears away the veil of self away from our eyes and we see Christ clearly.

No longer through a haze of our own needs
But seeing with the light of sacrifice and suffering.
Jesus, show me the way that I may feed your sheep generously.

Shalom!

Divine Mercy Sunday

Our readings for Divine Mercy Sunday:

1. Acts 5: 12-16
2. Psalm 118: 2-4, 13-15, 22-24
3. Revelations 1: 9-11a, 12-13, 17-19
4. John 20: 19-31

1. Keeping the faith
• We make fun of the question "what would Jesus do?" but I have to believe that very thought ran through the minds of those first generation Christians a great deal.
• Does that question always have an answer?
• Is the answer to that question going to be the same through time, or does that answer evolve through the generations?
• How do we know what Jesus would really do in a set of circumstances?
2. Being the mercy of Christ
• If God has made this day, what did He make it for?
• One of my favorite Poets is David Whyte.  He has a poem called Everything is Waiting for You that he reads at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq2NfrNt9EU.
• How can we better step into this day, this moment, and not only make it ours, but give ourselves utterly and ineffably over to this very day?
3. Forever is a long time
• John was exiled to Patmos to remove him from the mainstream, cut him off from civilization, yet he felt a unity with the believers under persecution.
• How is such oneness possible, even without Facebook?
• What does that sort of oneness cost us as individuals?
• Is it worth it?
4. Peace give I to thee
• What is peace?
• When was the last time that you felt at peace?
• Do you think that it's totally random, or is there a way to achieve a deep peace?
• Do you think that peace is the absence of disturbance in our lives, or something deeper?
• What is peace worth to you?

Preparation for Reconciliation:

1. What about my life would ever draw another to God?
2. How have I been the mercy of God to another this week?
3. Where am I finding myself these days, and where have I been looking?
4. What am I hiding from of late?

Why am I Still Here?

is a question for the living when they lose a dear loved one.
When an emotional amputation, unheralded, unsought for
Rips away a part of your soul from you, the best part perhaps,
And leaves you there, disfigured and dying, looking just the same.

I've never found a satisfactory answer to that question,
But I've learned to let it teach me things along the way.
I've apprenticed myself to it to see what I could learn
From profound emptiness, silence, and stillness.

I've learned that life is precious, privileged and precarious.
Precious in that this moment will never occur again for all time.
Privileged because it will never be better than this, only different.
Precarious precisely because it's so easy to live on the surface.

I've wondered, if I had the ability to stop time, just once,
Which moment would I hang onto, immortalize which second?
And I gradually came to realize that each moment grows
From the ashes of the ones before it, so that the future may flourish.

To clutch at a given season, drag the present with me into tomorrow
Is to take a swan from water, send it waddling awkwardly ashore
When it instinctively knows that its element is the water that bears it.
Each moment finds its fulfillment in dissolving into the next.

Absence has challenged me to savor presence, to be present
To listen, to ponder, and to share with others.
Not to try to recreate what has come and gone,
But to learn from it, to grow, to meet today head on.

Knowing full well from whence I came, and in that knowing
Be able to listen for the emerging mission, the new horizons
Opening before me as I speak them into being.
Maranatha!

Shalom!

Easter Sunday

Our readings for Easter Sunday:

1. Acts 10: 34a, 37-43
2. Psalm 118: 1-2, 16-17, 22-23
3. 1 Corinthians 5: 6b-8
4. John 20: 1-9

1. Shades of oppression
• How do you define healing?
• Is it purely physical?
• Is healing meant to make something just go away?
• How do you define oppression?
• Do you think that oppression can be carried out unintentionally?
• Do you think that an institution, a culture, a society can be oppressive?
• How can we be healing for those who have been oppressed?
2. Being the mercy of Christ
• One of the spiritual works of mercy is forgiving others.  Is there anyone in your life that you're having trouble forgiving?
• Sometimes, forgiveness isn't about a single solitary person, but an institution, a culture, a value system.  Can we, should we forgive such amorphous entities?
• What good does it do for us to forgive?
• How does forgiving others change us?
3. Being made new
• What in your life needs to be renewed, besides those old magazine subscriptions?
• Renewal often involves refounding: a deliberate process of finding the ultimate point of origin for a given movement and re examining what has happened since that founding in light of the renewed understanding of the foundations.
• What about your life needs to be renewed/refounded?
• Do you feel that those institutions that you have joined were perfectly aligned with their stated purpose?
• What to do about that?
4. Mercy above all else
• Have you ever had God lead you from one place to another in a process, rather than a sudden jump?
• Why do you think that God does that?  Wouldn't it be less error-prone if He just got these sorts of transitions over with sooner?
• Thinking about the raising of Lazarus, that was pretty dramatic.  But Jesus raised the expectations, and the faith of his disciples, Martha & Mary bit by bit.  How can we show that sort of mercy to others?
• Who has the time?

Preparation for Reconciliation:

1. If I am a witness for Jesus, what is it that my life is giving witness to?
2. Can I open myself up to all of God's possibilities for me and those that I love today?
3. What do I need to be made free of, that I might rejoice more fully during this season of Easter?
4. What is holding me back from hoping for the miracles in my life that Jesus has for me?

Tomb for rent, lightly used, inquire within

The thing about the Passion narrative that struck me this year is that Jesus gets so few lines.
After all, it was His words and His actions that got him crosswise with His world to begin with.
You would think that he would be bold, do bold, speak bold and show them who He really was.

Instead, He invited those around Him to ponder his life, relive what had happened, meditate,
And so come to understand what He had been saying in ways that mere words could never convey.
As if, by the time He was apprehended, everything needful had happened, and it was up to us.

Even though it often feels as though there must be some pieces missing,
Like trying to rebuild an old carburetor and coming up with parts left over.
Something that happened, something said, that never got recorded, leaving us lacking.

Maybe the missing piece is attentiveness, and time.
Attentiveness to the voices of the moments that we drive through.
Giving them their time to speak to us lovingly of the Father of Love.

Maybe the Gospel stories speak better when read slowly,
Letting them unfold in their own time, their own way.
Maybe the time to take time is now, always now, especially -

Especially in this time of rejoicing.

Shalom!

Passion Sunday

Our readings for Passion Sunday of Lent Cycle A are:

1. Ezekiel 37: 12-14
2. Psalm 130: 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8
3. Romans 8: 8-11
4. Luke 22: 14-23:56

1. What are you ashamed of?
• Do you think that each of us is called to speak up in the face of wrong-doing?
• Do you think that there is any room for a "so so" or mediocre prophet, or does one have to rate at least 4 stars as a prophet before God is interested in calling on them?
• What do you think it might do to you if you do have something that needs to be said, cries to be said, and you remain silent?
• Do words really have power?
• Why?
2. Exciting reverence
• If you were put in charge of God's advertising, what might you change about His apparent approach?
• At least on the surface, what about your life would be a good endorsement for God?
• What are the sorts of folks who would be good spokespersons for a "come home to Jesus campaign?"
• Why not you?
3. Killer obedience
• Have you ever done something, thinking, hoping that it was in obedience to God's will, only to find out otherwise?
• How did you make that discernment?
• Are you getting better at finding God's will in your life?
• Are you getting more courageous about acting on that will?
4. Lived and died a Jew
• Notice that Joseph of Arimathea does well to show respect for the broken body of Jesus upon his death.
• What are some things, relationships, circumstances, places, experiences that have died in your life because you were called to move on?
• Have you ever properly buried them?
• Do they still have a hold on you in any way?  Perhaps some grief that you've never taken the time to process, anger over what could have been and didn't have a chance, or just a numb feeling of unreality about the whole thing?
• If Jesus were here today, right in front of you, what might He say about those dead, broken elements within?

Preparation for Reconciliation:

1. Am I courageous enough to hope?
2. If someone were to ask me why I'm Christian, what would I tell them?
3. What can I empty myself of this week?
4. What in me needs to be given a decent burial?

Jesus has left the building

The Roman soldiers are the only ones who seem to know what to do at the foot of the cross.
I clearly came over dressed, and the hors d'oeuvres that I brought are getting scant attention.

I can't reach Jesus to mop His brow.  I left my ibuprofen at home, and He's shivering in the breeze.
For my part, there are a million things to do to get ready for tomorrow's Sabbath.

Yet there is a ragged sort of peace that peeks out at me from behind the grief.
Beckoning me into prayer, for myself, for humanity, for Jesus.

I realize that I don't have to make a statement, I don't have to fix anything, or help anyone.
Just being here is enough for now, just giving my full, conscious and active participation.

Pondering these moments, each one subtly different from the last,
All of them steps on a pilgrimage to a yet emerging destination.

Shedding my burdens in the face of the burden of my weakness and fear,
Gazing on the face of my own failures etching themselves there on the cross.

And I realize that the pain that I'm enduring at this moment, in this my offering of myself
Is a blessing that will sustain me all of the rest of my life.

Shalom!