Category: Kingdom

I Confess

9/3/2014

I Confess

Dear old and new friends,

    I want to go to confession to you my friends/readers of these Haystack reflections about my blog reflection of two weeks ago on seeing the Kingdom—God’s abiding Presence—all around us. If you haven’t read it, you can do so by going back to Holy Hunger on August 20th. In it I wrote that Jesus proclaimed, “Open your eyes. The Kingdom of God—the dynamic loving Presence of the Divine One—is right in front of you, here in your midst.”

    Today I confess that in preparing to write it, and after two weeks of seriously attempting to consciously live it, I failed to see/feel it! So I imagine you also may have tried and failed, so let us ask a question: Was Jesus the Prophet wrong about his momentous and often repeated announcement that God’s Kingdom was here in our midst? Or perhaps was it here only briefly two millenniums ago while he walked the roads of Palestine?

    Or is the problem perhaps our “expectant eye aliment” that causes us to expect the Divine Presence to appear and feel “churchy” instead of secular or ordinary? Regardless, I propose that you join me on the adventure as an explorer of that Sacred Reality proclaimed by Jesus. As an explorer of the cleverly concealed Mystery hidden in the worldly I suggest a couple of spiritual tools or practices that I find helpful. First, with blind belief, strive to reverence all you encounter since that which you’re seeking is imperceptibly right in front of you! Handle everything—pan or pen, the computer or cup—with the same holy reverence as you would the sacred consecrated vessels of the altar.

    Touching commonplace things with a holy reverence awakens our inner-eyes to see God’s Presence in all earthly things. Along with a sense of reverence I also find it a great help to recite silently “Holy, Holy, Holy” when taking my first sip of morning coffee or when turning my car’s ignition key to start the engine. Also useful is silently exclaiming “O my God!” when you encounter creation, be it a wondrous sunset or an insignificant weed. Another spiritual tool is the ancient Oriental practice of making a slight bow of your head to recognize the invisible Divine in those you meet, upon entering a house or as you begin some difficult task. The secret power in all of these is found in the story of a man visiting New York City who asked someone how you get to Carnegie Hall and was told, “Practice, practice, practice!”

    Finally, and most importantly, if you continue to fail or rarely see the Indwelling of the Divine in your world, instead of feeling a failure be exceedingly grateful! Yes, give thanks, for if day in and day out you were always consciously aware of that Divine Mystery you’d never get off your knees in adoration!

Holy Hunger

8/20/2014

Holy Hunger

Dear old and new friends,

    The great German composer Johann Sebastian Bach attended school at Lüneburg. More than once he was known to have walked fifty kilometers (about 31 miles) to Hamburg to listen to the renowned organist J.A. Riencken play at the Katharinen Church there. Returning on his way to Lüneburg penniless and famished he sat down to rest against the back of a roadside inn. Someone inside threw two herring fish heads out on to the rubbish heap next to where he sat. Bach picked up the fish heads to see if he could find any part of them edible, and to his surprise found a coin in each head! With his discovery he had more than enough for a good meal and to make another, more comfortable, pilgrimage to hear again the great master Riencken on the organ.

    This is a true story, although it sounds like a fairy tale, about the power of hunger to find a hidden treasure. More than for food, we have a craving that must be embedded in our DNA to also concretely experience the Divine Mystery of Mysteries. It is this aching, ancient appetite that is the reason we go to church or the synagogue where their sacred environments, the religious music and age old worship services, satisfy our yearning hunger. Upon departing these holy sites, however, that hauntingly holy hunger returns. Since no other establishments in our society claim to feed that unique hunger, many just cease going to them. They then seek to quench that appetite elsewhere amidst the community of cheering crowds in giant sports stadiums, attending the theater or by the arts. While these actually provide sustenance they cannot completely satisfy this deep longing.

    Do not despair! Only open our eyes! That itinerant Galilean Teacher did not initiate the Kingdom of God! He rather proclaimed, “Open your eyes for the Kingdom of God—the enduring Presence of the Divine One—is right here in your midst.” Obviously for him this enduring earthly Godly Presence had been existent since the moment of the Love-saturated Big Bang. He sought by his parables to flip upside down people’s thinking and perception of reality so they could see that the invisible God in their lives and the Divine’s Dwelling wasn’t restricted to Jerusalem’s Temple, but was vividly alive in their daily lives.

    Our eyes are no longer opened by Jesus’ parables. We are now required to perform that task ourselves by prayerfully prying wide our eyes to see with faith our Divine Beloved within everything we encounter. Then like Johann Sebastian Bach we can find surprise divine gifts even in the garbage. Since the Kingdom—God’s Abiding Presence—is here wherever we are, whatever we judge as secular is actually only the unseen sacred. So to all that seems contrary to what is sacred, open your eyes to find the All Hidden Divine One…and then feast upon it to your heart-soul’s content.

    Perpetually pray, “Open my eyes, Lord!” Then seek to satisfy your holy hungry in the good, the unpleasant, the beautiful, and the ugly…even in the garbage.

Westward Ho?

3/26/2014

Westward Ho?

Dear old and new friends,

    Covered wagon trains of pioneers rolling across the barren prairies are classic images in American history that can be a new Lenten symbol in our revolution of heart. Those early pioneers were not tourists but homesteaders seeking a better life than the one they left behind back home. Their covered wagon trains were led by men they trusted because they had some knowledge of the territory and a vision of the new land of promise.

    In the second century a letter was sent to Jewish Christians that today is entitled The Letter to the Hebrews and in which those early disciples of the Risen One were urged to be faithful to him as leader of their salvation (2:10). In the letter’s original Greek, “archegos” is translated as leader or pioneer. Archegos gives us a powerful new image of Christ as the Trailblazer who continues to lead us migrant-immigrants to a new land and a new way of living.

   Trailblazer Christ calls out “Follow me—westward ho” as he blazes a new trail in loving by leading us across the frontiers of love beyond family, clan or church assembly. We are to love the alien, enemy and stranger, and his greatest challenge is to love him and others as he loved us. In this New Frontier he called “the Kingdom” (translation: “God’s Land”) as pioneers we are to become a new and strange kind of people who live in peaceful coexistence instead of armed to the teeth in defensive belligerence. We generously share out bread and wealth with one another and with the poor. We lay aside prejudice to love and live comfortably with those who are sexually or racially different than us. In his New Frontier workers receive not of a minimum wage, but a living wage adequate to support a family with dignity instead the shame of welfare. Now as in the Old West some who began the journey grew weary and disenchanted by what they encountered and departed from the other migrants.

    It was at this point the Archegos Christ saw some of the covered wagons of his caravan pull out and circled back to them. Arriving where they had camped he found them angrily distressed by the bizarre strangeness of life on his New Frontier. They complained that the poor given assistance had been caught cheating! The Trailblazer briefly listened and then said, “True, some given welfare did cheat. Theirs however is only minor defrauding compared to gorilla graft of giant corporations who receive billions of dollars in government contracts. Cheating is wrong, all who cheat, poor or rich, need correction.”

    Lent is our annual check-up to see if today you and I are homebound, comfortable with the conditions of justice and equality in our society. Or are we faithful migrant pioneers striving to honestly follow the Holy Trailblazer across outlandishly odd, yet holy frontiers?

Homogenized Spirituality

10/16/2013

Homogenized Spirituality

Dear old and new friends,

    You don’t have to go to Washington, D.C., to see them. They are in your city, every small town and standing starkly alone in the countryside. I am referring to foreign embassies called churches or synagogues. Officially, an embassy is the residence of another country’s ambassador and is a place of refuge for that country’s citizens. These embassies can be as grand as miniature gothic cathedrals or as simple as oblong, metal buildings identified by steeples atop their roofs.

    Every steeple rising above the rooftops of the stores, businesses and homes of our secular world points skyward to that world or higher power the embassy represents. International law grants to embassies the “right of asylum” to those seeking protection from local authorities. Churches once also did the same by granting “sanctuary,” place of refuge inside them for anyone threatened by public injustice or private vengeance. In medieval times hanging from the outside walls of some churches were large iron rings that granted “sanctuary” to those who grabbed hold of them when unable to get physically inside the church. Churches today grant refuge from a troubled world where some come weekly and others only on festive holidays. These otherworldly yet common structures also symbolized the Wall of Separation between the secular and the sacred worlds.

    The Teacher of Galilee announced Great News: There is no wall between the worldly and the holy—they are simultaneously one. He continuously taught: “The Kingdom, the Age, the Presence of God is now here in your midst.” For his first followers this incredible Good News was easier to embrace than it is for us today who identify ourselves as Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics or Baptists, instead of as his followers.

    For two millenniums the Kingdom has been “churchified,” so for anything today to be holy it must be totally other than what is worldly. Yet the Teacher said, “Friends, the world is homogenized! God’s Presence is no longer restricted to within the Temple, it’s everywhere and in everyone! No longer are religious rituals required to transform the profane into the holy for every human act is holy.” His early followers strove to live a homogenized spirituality finding their work, meals, loving and bodily pleasures to be holy. So let the next church you see ask you, “Are you a fan, devotee, believer…or a follower of the Teacher of Galilee?”

    Believers worship the Teacher. Followers try to live in that homogenized world he announced. Test repeatedly who you are by asking yourself on a bustlingly noisy street corner if you feel God’s presence? Do your senses distinguish the world around you to be so saturated with the Divine Mystery that it feels the same as being in church? If you do, rejoice because you are one of his homogeneous followers.

I Confess

I Confess

Holy Hunger

Holy Hunger

Westward Ho?

Westward Ho?

Homogenized Spirituality

Homogenized Spirituality

Edward Hays

The Haystack

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