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A Trinity of Holidays

11/26/2014

A Trinity of Holidays

Dear old and new friends,

It’s Thanksgiving, and merchants in a hurry for the beginning of the lucrative holiday season are flooding television and newspapers with advertisements for Christmas gifts. This holiday impatience is contagious. Countless are infected and can’t wait for the Thanksgiving dinner to end so to race off to join crowds of shoppers in city streets and businesses already decked out for Christmastide, while everywhere one hears the music of ancient carols. These all conspire to make it difficult to realize we’re celebrating Thanksgiving.

Paradoxically, I propose adding yet another holiday to Thanksgiving—Valentine’s Day! By blending Thanksgiving’s turkeys with snowy Christmas trees and toy-making elves along with giant red hearts, pink cupids and bouquets of red roses of the Feast of Lovers we can add to our gratitude. That’s ridiculous, you say…it will only distract people! Really? More than competitive TV football games or hectic Christmas shopping now divert us from visiting and enjoying our family on this ancient feast of autumn gratitude?

We Americans already easily forget we are so gifted; don’t let a premature Christmas eclipse or thrilling football games sidetrack us from being truly thankful! Be aware of that Grand Canyon of disparity in wealth between us and the impoverished, unemployed and homeless, and our need to alleviate their suffering by giving thanks in tangible acts.

To the many dishes on Thanksgiving tables that are from treasured old recipes I add:
Recipe for
A Holy Feast of Giving Thanks

1.) Begin by recalling the Haystack reflection of two weeks ago about the African American Father Divine and his conception of tangibilitating…giving in concrete, tangible ways.

2.) Write a short list of those things for which you are most grateful. Keep it short so you are able to express your gratitude not simply in words but in tangible ways.

Remember, we've added Valentine’s Day to our Thanksgiving. Love is divine; a gift you can’t buy, trade, barter for or win. Love is a free gift that is ever-evolving.

3.) Now return to your gratitude list. At the top might be those who taught you how to love by their loving of you—your parents. Next, teachers and mentors whose love helped shape you. Now place with them the person who presently loves you most, and whom is your greatest love. Then on Thanksgiving express your appreciation and gratitude for her or him in a tangible way by giving them a lover’s gift of affectionate gratefulness. It can be simple or elegant. Regardless, it will be a treasure because it is filled with love.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Face of Death

11/19/2014

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The Face of Death

Dear old and new friends,

Creation these late November days presents a living meditation on death, even if we don’t want to think about that dreaded subject. The once green leaves have turned scarlet golden, then brownish-gray and finally drop to join a wind-shifting yellow crowd of other fallen ones at the bottom of trees. October’s autumn is an image of the golden years of old age, while November’s autumn with its bare skeleton tree branches with their few clinging, crinkled brown leaves is a picture of the nearing end of life. Since medieval times November is the month to remember our departed ones and to reflect upon our own death.

Of course, self-blinded by our obsessive anxieties about our daily troubles, we can fail to see or hear what creation is saying. Or mindful of creation’s cycles we know that after a dreary winter wait it will return again to the greenness of abounding life, and so we need not fret about dying. While in these last weeks of November nature wears the bleak bare face of death we can ask, “But is that the really the face of Death?”

Regardless of your age or health, open your eyes to death that is all around you in creation and pause to meditate on that ultimate reality in your life. While personally doing just that I recalled Teilhard de Chardin’s The Divine Milieu, in which he wrote of death. So I re-read his visionary thoughts of it, and so powerful did I find them that I now present them to you to read slowly as this week’s Haystack reflection.

Grant when my hour comes, that I may recognize you
under the species of each alien or hostile force
that seems bent upon destroying or uprooting me.
When the signs of age begin to mark my body
(and still more when they touch my mind);
when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off
strikes from without or is born within me;
when the painful moment comes in which I
suddenly awaken to the fact that I am ill or growing old;
and above all at that last moment
when I feel I am loosing hold of myself
and am absolutely passive within the hands
of the great unknown forces that have formed me;
in all those dark moments, O God, grant that I
may understand that it is you!

Teach me to treat my death as an act of communion.

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The Art of Tangibilitating

11/12/2014

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The Art of Tangibilitating

Dear old and new friends,

Perhaps the most famous of all black preachers was Father Divine who preached the art of tangibilitating in the 1930’s in Harlem. During those difficult years of the Great Depression, Father Divine would thunder at the crowds attending his services, “You got to learn to tangibilitate!” (What a wonderfully melodic word; let it ripple playfully off your tongue, “tan-gi-bi-li-late”). He challenged his faithful to transform their gratitude into substantial expressionism, and that they indeed did as they came forward singing to place their gifts at Father Divine’s feet. This call to give concrete thanks wasn’t limited to just a single offertory collection, as in the ritual in white churches, but a gathering of gifts came numerous times in black worship as it was the central drama in their act of worship.

Let Father Divine inspire us to tangibilitate our gratitude to God daily as our central prayer and worship. Along with or instead of verbal prayers, let us be creative in finding physical gifts or actions to say thanks to the Great Gift Giver. When we give thanks to others (and to God invisible in them) let us strive to “show” our gratitude by tangibilitating it instead of simply speaking it. Some gifts have such deep implications they can call for repeated thanksgivings. In some black churches it was customary after the people had given the ushers their donations that their gifts were immediately counted. If the total collected wasn’t sufficient to meet the present needs of the church, this fact was announced and the ushers took up other collections until the amount needed was achieved. If your parish is having troubles making ends meet, as most are today, consider suggesting to your pastor he introduce in your church the ritual of Black churches with “on-going” collections. Which reminds me of a story.

In a poor Jewish village in Russia lived a tailor’s son named Adam eager to marry the beautiful young Rebecca, but he lacked the money to pay for a wedding. Three village men decided to take of a collection from their fellow villagers so this unfortunate Adam could marry. They went house to house where each family gave what they could, but the amount collected fell short of paying for a wedding. The leader of the three, Samuel, said, “Let us go up to Jacob’s house and ask him to donate to our cause.” The second of the three, Abram, negatively shook his head, “You’re crazy! Jacob is a heartless miser!” Levi, the third villager, said, “What do we have to loose, let us go up to Jacob’s house.”

Now Jacob lived on top of a hill at the edge of the village in a large house. After the three had climbed up the hill, Samuel knocked on Jacob’s door. Finally it very slowly opened a crack as Jacob asked, “Why are you bothering me? What do you want?” Samuel expressed the sad plight of poor Adam the tailor’s son who wanted to marry the beautiful Rebecca but lacked the money for the marriage. When he finish Jacob said, “Everyone has problems but I’ll go and see if I can find anything to contribute.” After a long while the door opened just wide enough for Jacob’s hand to reach out with a single penny, “This is all I could find! That tailor’s son must work harder if he wants to get married.” Samuel replied, “O thank you, Jacob, for your most generous contribution, may the God of Israel bless you.”

“What a waste of time that was,” said Abram as they trudged sadly down the hill. Then they heard Jacob calling loudly, “Please come back. I just found more money for that poor Adam.” So they returned, but once again were given only a single penny. Samuel thanked Jacob profusely and asked God’s blessings on him for his generosity.

Again the three men began descending the hill, and Levi said, “You’re right Abram, he is just an old tightwad penny pincher!” Samuel replied, “Levi, let us not judge Jacob; judgment is reserved only for God!” Not long after that they heard Jacob loudly calling them to come back. “I don’t know about you two men,” said Abram, “but I’m not wasting my time just for another penny.” Samuel however begged them to go back up to Jacob’s house.

As they approach his house Jacob came running to meet them, “Rejoice with me, I remembered where I had hidden a bag of money. I’m giving it all to that young couple, Adam and Rebecca, so they can be wed in the magnificent style of the Tsars!”

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Closeted Monsters

11/5/2014

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Closeted Monsters

Dear old and new friends,

Less than a week ago at your front door monsters appeared; actually small children in scary disguises. This reflection is about the real monsters hidden away in your closet. Everyone has at least one or two closeted fearful monsters. In 1891 electric lights were first installed in the White House and by 1921 President Harding and his wife were still afraid to use the wall light switches lest they be seriously electrically shocked—or worse. Many of their servants felt the same, so one White House domestic servant was chosen to perform that hazardous task. There’s a story that one evening this appointed light switch servant happened to be away, resulting in the White House’s electric lights being left blazing all night.

A paradoxical fear is the reason that in countless children’s bedrooms a light is left on all night because of a fear of the darkness. That dread of the dark and the unknown dangers lurking in it continues into adulthood. Of what are you afraid? Don’t rush to answer…rather stop here and pause to seriously seek the answer to that question. While snakes, public speaking, insects, homegrown Islamic terrorists, flying, brain cancer and even change are possible answers, what do you fear the most?

Whatever is your greatest fear, don’t evade it but face it directly. Picture it clearly with its painful consequences, and how you would deal with them until you are able to manage that fear as something you can live with without being frightened. Jesus, encouraging a life of trusting, frequently admonished, “Do not be afraid.” As a faithful disciple you might say you’re not afraid of anything. That is a pious response but not a good answer since your survival necessitates being afraid of such things as poisonous snakes.

An essential part of a Zen Samurai warrior training is overcoming the fear of death, and connected to that training comes one of my very favorite stories:

Once there was an infamous Japanese warlord and his army who were terrorizing a mountain region of small villages that included a Zen monastery. Upon hearing this notorious warlord and his rampaging soldiers were approaching the monastery all the monks fled into the mountains…except the Abbot. When the warlord arrived at the Zen monastery’s gates they stood wide open, so he boldly stalked alone into the deserted courtyard.

At the far end was the temple and at the top of its steps stood the old abbot with his arms folded as the warlord in full armor and with his hand gripping the handle of his large Samurai sword stomped across the courtyard to him. At the foot of the steps, he stopped, and snarled, “Do you know you are looking at a man who without batting an eye could run you through with his sword?”

The old Zen Abbot bowed slightly and replied smiling, “Do you know that you are looking at a man who could be run through with your sword without batting an eye?” The warlord bowed deeply, and then slowly backed out of the courtyard since he had come face to face with a man who wasn't afraid to die.

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A Trinity of Holidays

A Trinity of Holidays

The Face of Death

The Face of Death

The Art of Tangibilitating

The Art of Tangibilitating

Closeted Monsters

Closeted Monsters

Edward Hays

The Haystack

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