Edward Hays ~ Author, Artist & Storyteller
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The Ocean Can Wait

2/27/2013

 

The Ocean Can Wait

Dear old and new friends,

    This April the first direct high-speed train will begin service between the cities of Madrid, Barcelona and Paris, cutting the running time of that route from 15 to 9 hours! This speeding bullet train, racing at high velocity through the stunning beauty of French and Spanish countryside, is a symbol of us!

We conscientiously strive to avoid contracting dangerous germs yet seem oblivious to a perilous virus: Hurrying! Our passion for speeding ever faster and faster is not restricted simply to travel or Web connections. The deadly virus of rushing infects every aspect of our lives—we hurry off to work or play, we eat in a hurry, we speed read, we speak rapidly and we depart with hasty half-goodbyes. Symptoms of this life-crippling disease are aggravated irritability in a traffic stoppage, angry hostility at our sluggish computer or tech gadgets and the sensation of being suffocated when ensnared in sluggish gatherings and extended time-consuming telephone calls.  

Hurry is a notorious thief. It secretly robs us our enjoyment of life, the sensual pleasures of eating, the camaraderie of friendships and life’s beauties when in the midst of them we only watch our watch. It doesn’t have to be that way, as Helen Keller reported about how Samuel Clements (Mark Twain) lived his life. Blind and deaf since she was 18 months old, Helen by sheer determination and with the help of her teacher Annie Sullivan learned to know what people were saying by placing her fingers on their lips or throat. She greatly admired Mark Twain, and in 1909 she and Annie were dinner guests at his home in Stormfield, Connecticut.

During their visit, the 58-year-old Twain never once talked down to Helen or treated her other than as a fully capable, educated woman. In his typical flamboyant style he entertained the two women leisurely at a delightful dinner. Helen wanted to leave when it was over so as not to impose any longer on him, but Twain, eager for the evening to continue, ushered the two women into his book-lined, tobacco-fragranced study to continue their visiting around his fireplace. Helen recalled that evening and her “sensed impression” of Mark Twain: “He seemed to have absorbed all America into himself. The great Mississippi River seemed forever flowing through his speech…. His voice seemed to say, like the river, ‘Why hurry? Eternity is long; the ocean can wait.’”     

 “Times have changed,” you will say, “that was over a hundred years ago when life was unhurried!” Indeed times do change, but the enjoyment of the richness of life that makes us fully human does not! So when twitching from the addiction to hurry, remember Mark Twain and how he lived out the ageless wisdom of the leisurely flowing Mississippi River, “Why hurry? Eternity is long; the ocean can wait.”

No Fig Leaf

2/20/2013

 

No Fig Leaf

Picture
Photo-Collage Icon by E. M. Hays
Dear old and new friends,

    Possibly the most frequent request of those desiring to deepen their spiritual life is to be taught how to pray. This is a lifelong need since our humble efforts to pray always seem inadequate and insufficient. Books written on prayer could surely circle the global, and one of them is James Michener’s book, Hawaii.

    I recall from my antique cluttered memory of Michener’s tale an occasion where early Christian missionaries to the islands were trying to convert the pagan Hawaiians. A missionary was instructing some Hawaiians on how to pray by using the Lord’s Prayer. He had only said the first four words, “Our Father, who art…” when one Hawaiian jumped to his feet shouting, “No! No! You never speak to the gods with your clothes on!” Instantly he stripped himself naked, piously folded his hands and looked heavenward.

    Michener has gifted with us a Hawaiian Lenten parable. The function of parables is to challenge our thinking. So restrain your religious prejudice about being naked, and using the tweezers of the Spirit, tease out of this charming story some personal implications. Begin by asking yourself at what times and in what places are you naked? Cannot these be times for you to praise or petition God? Is the buried treasure in this parable the possibility that your best prayer shrine is your shower or bathtub?

    So seriously consider being naked whenever you pray—even if you’re fully clothed. Feeling inadequate about our own prayers, we use the words of others. If you use the Church’s official daily prayer or lyrical compositions by poetic authors, then perform a striptease of them! Pray naked. Pray in the naked simplicity of Adam BETA (before eating the apple) who in his daily dialogs with God simply visited about the events and the needs of his day

    Naked, unprotected, exposed, vulnerable prayer is pleasing to God because it is like a small child’s prayer—and a sign of conviction. Ancient Celtic warriors went into battle against Roman legionaries stark naked. Their vulnerable nudity yelled loudly their belief that they were superior to the might of Imperial Rome.

    Revisit with new eyes your bathroom. Unashamedly look upon your naked body as did Celtic warriors, or Adam (BETA), or those early Christians who after being plunged in the baptismal waters came out naked, yet gloriously clothed in Christ.

Ashen Grim-faced Christians

2/13/2013

 

Ashen Grim-faced Christians

Dear old and new friends,

    Today, Ash Wednesday, in past centuries repentant sinners guilty of serious public sins and scandal were marked with the sign of an ashen cross as they began their forty harsh days of public penance. If you don’t fall into that category, Lent can be a season of spiritual renewal of prayer and works of charity. Another choice is forty days of preparation for Easter. Regardless which you choose, across it likely will fall the dark shadow of the cross of ascetic, self-inflicted denials of bygone gloomy Lenten days. This old negative spirit still influences how Christians spend Lent, even those who no longer attend church.

If you choose a Lent of spiritual rejuvenation of your prayer and acts of charity, then engage in them daily with renewed vigor and enthusiasm. If your choice is forty days of Easter training, then daily deepen your belief in the resurrection by practicing joyfulness and cheerful playfulness—especially dealing with evil.

The following is a true story, a Lenten parable for confronting evil. Leo Alard became the first Hispanic Episcopal bishop in the United States. In the 1960’s he was a young priest and pastor of a racially integrated parish in Chattahoochee, Florida. The local Ku Klux Klan detested this racially mixed church and one night the white-hooded Klan’s men erected a fiery cross on the church lawn. Inside the church, its youth group was meeting with Father Alard whose reaction to the racist burning cross was not with prayer—but play. In prophetic playfulness he led his youth group outside to roast marshmallows at the flaming cross!

Lent leads to Easter Sunday, the joyous festival of Jesus being raised from the dead, and also that same triumph for us, his disciples. Yet life after death for many, if not most, is only a wish, a hesitating hope, instead of a core religious belief. Easter fuses with joyfulness for those convinced death cannot rob them of life and so say, “I am, I shall be and I shall continue to be!” Those who profess this as their core Easter belief live joyous lives of impulsive cheerfulness and undefeatable delight.

If heaven sent a drone flying over the world to send back pictures of true believing Christians, it would relay back few images! Become a Credo Christian, a Believer Christian, and by smiling cheerfulness and optimism in a personal Easter have your daily life transformed into an enduring “Merry Easter.”

Do Not Worship the Ashes

2/6/2013

 

Do Not Worship the Ashes

Picture

Dear old and new friends,

    A week from today is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent—a springtime retreat of the spirit. Instead of going up in the attic to drag out and dust off some old antique exercises of penance of the past for this year’s spring retreat, consider doing something freshly new. To stimulate your imagination reflect on what Saintly Pope John XXIII said at the start of the Second Vatican Council, “We are not on earth to guard a museum, but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life.”

However, the Vatican elite, along with Pope John Paul II, had not the least desire to be gardeners. They preferred continuing to dress in colorful medieval attire as the guards of the Church as a Holy Museum of Yesteryear. They have continued to resuscitate old dogmas, age-worn rituals and old devotions—all in the name of tradition.

Yet, “Tradition,” said the master composer Gustav Mahler, “is tending the flame; it’s not worshiping the ashes.” While Lent does begin with “Ash” Wednesday, don’t spend the remaining 39 days engaged in worshiping the dead ashes of bygone mortification practices. “Tend the flame,” as Mahler said, by taking some time to create new and different ways to spend these Lenten days of grace…and perhaps find your example in the Shinto monks of Iso, Japan.   

Every twenty years since the year 772 these Shinto monks have painstakingly dismantled their large central shrine and then meticulously rebirth it from the ground up. To us practical westerners this effort seems a waste of both time and energy, but for the monks it contains copious lessons. The young monks, by this ritual of destruction and reconstruction, acquire the ancient building techniques, and all the monks relearn the lesson that life like their temple shrine is fleetingly temporary! Sit on this tradition of the Shinto monks like a patient mother hen on her egg so it can motivate you to hatch something fresh and new for your Lent.  

If by Ash Wednesday your egg hasn’t hatched, you haven’t failed—your church has! Imagination has an indispensable role in the life of a “living” religion, yet it is absent in 99%—if not all—of them. “When imagination fails (is lacking),” says scripture scholar Amos Wilder, “then doctrine ossifies, preaching is wooden, litanies are empty….”   

Let’s say every twenty years you tore down your church or religious tradition and rather than rebuilding it as it had been, you remake it in a wholly new way! In that holy work, what things would you keep and what would you throw away?


Lenten Allies

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I would like to offer some assistance to you for your Lenten Journey beginning on Ash Wednesday, February 13. You will find here daily Lenten reflection-meditation books…and now art images to ponder (remember a picture is worth a thousand words) for Lent, Easter, Pentecost, as well as for Saint Patrick, Saint Joseph and Irish feast days—all with accompanying verses.

New also are recorded Conferences for Lent and Holy Week that can be listened to online.

All are available for your personal use. If you desire to use any of these, we can become companions on this spring journey of your Easter evolution.


    Edward Hays


    Picture
    Haysian haphazard thoughts on the
    invisible and visible mysteries of life.

    Picture

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