Even in the Dark (draft)

“We never know what might blow through the door like silent prayer, and how many of us entertain angles unaware” (Angles Unaware by Carrie Newcomer)

“The truth is not that it is going to be alright,
The truth is, it already is.” (Fredric Evans 1994)

Mostly when my life goes down hill I turn to my faith. For me, my faith and the worships I often turn to when in need is a very personal, individual kind of faith. I have had a hard time relying on my friends to help me through hard patches and it had never occurred to me to think of relying on others as a form of spirituality. For some reason however with my last bout of troubles I have been indeed turning to friends for guidance and support. Through this I have begun to learn how support from those who are close to you can be it a faith experience.
It is strange; the core of my belief, the most important fact in my faith journey has been the simple promise, and incredible leap that God is love. That, to know God one knows love and where love is that is God, is the very bases for my theology on so many levels. Yet accepting love and the caring that comes out of love, finding that an important and indispensable part of who I am and of my faith has been extremely hard for me. Partly I think this is because I don’t except help or the fact that I might need help easily and because I still find it hard, in this cynical world, to expect people to give help and act in love. So certainly when people do act in love and kindness I find this a blessing, but as incredible as this might sound I never quite made the mental connection that when people act in kindness toward me this is God, and we are experiencing a touching of personal faiths. I have long thought it extremely necessary on my faith journey to show kindness and love for others. However I am beginning to see that for my own theology and faith to bloom, I must also receive kindness and love from others. I can not only experience God through loving others and being kind to others, although this is certainly a powerful and necessary way of experiencing the divine, but I also must experience God be finding those who will also act with love towards me. To know God, then, I must love and be loved, both by people and the divine. I have already taken the leap of accepting and assuming Gods love, now I must take the leap of accepting and assuming the love of my friends, partner, and family. This I believe will bring me closer to God. As I write this, a small rose bush sits next to my compute. It was bought for me for no other reason then I was feeling down and love flowers. Someone was kind, and this is a blessing, this is God.

little thoughts

A friend of mine has posted the first prayer on her facebook. I thought it was beautiful. One of these quotes I got from my sister the others I found.
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"O God! refresh and gladden my spirit. purify my heart. illumine my powers. i lay all my affairs in Thy hand. Thou art my Guide and my Refuge. i will no longer be sorrowful and grieved; i will be a happy and joyful being. O God! i will no longer be full of anxiety, nor will i let trouble harass me. i will not dwell on the unpleasant things of life. O God! Thou art more friend to me than i am to myself. i dedicate myself to Thee, O Lord." ~ Abdul-Baha

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do it. Because what the world needs is people who come alive." -Howard Thurman

Like the deer that pants
for the flowing stream,
so we thirst
for the living Spring
~ Richard J. Foster

I don't read Scripture to learn doctrine.
I don't read it to find answers to every question.
I read it to find God.
~ Carole Spencer

A Short Rant on versions of the Bible

I have always used The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. I prefer this Bible over all others that I’ve read. While the King James Bible is beautifully written the translation is so dated and poor I find it only usefully except within it’s own historical context. While other Bibles like the New Standard Version International Bible that they supply in my meetinghouse just makes me mad and frustrated. There are no footnotes, no notes about how or why the translators translated a word or verse the way they did, no alternatives in Greek or Arabic, so I can see the translating choices that were made. Plus all of the sections in these Bibles have captions before each chapter, things like Jesus Heals a Leper, or On Marriage, or Jesus tells about the end-times captions like these annoy me because they distract me from my reading of the actual Bible. The captions also make me feel as if I’m reading Cliff-Notes version of the Bible, and I feel as if I am being told what exactly I should be getting out of each section of the Bible. As if the translators feel like they have to tell me the punch line to everyone of Jesus’ messages, and it also bothers me because some times what I think is the most important part of a Bible passage is not what is commonly thought to be the important part. I hate having how I should pray and what I should think about God dictated to me in any way, from a minister or other wise, and particularly don’t like it coming from the version of the Bible I read. In summery I like The New Oxford Annotated Bible because it allows me, as a scholar, to make my own decisions about how I will read the Bible and how I will fully and scholarly study each passage and their meanings.

A Living Faith (draft)

Unlike most of the posts I make to this blog, this post is not, I feel, complete. I have been working on it on and off for a while but feel I have a lot more to say on the subject. However as my life as gotten crazy again I don't know when I will be able to work on it. So I'm posting it now in it's draft form. both of the quotes are taken from songs by two of my very favoret artists.
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“The hardest thing I ever tried to do was stay in one place and just try to come through. I love me some, now I want to love you too, and spend some time in the garden.” (Maya by Ferron)

“Centered down and moving outward sometimes almost too sweet to bear. There are endless ways to reach home, just keep walking and I’ll meet you there” (All Saints’ Day by Carrie Newcomer)

Several days ago I began reading my new devotional “A Year with Thomas Merton: daily meditations from his journals”. The first entry I read for March 27th was entitled “a preference for the chant of frogs”, the entry recounts Merton’s decision to remain at his hermitage and not go on a lecturing circuit as he was being pressed to do by other religious leaders and scholars. He writes about how one must know and do what will be most spiritually beneficial to them and what will not distract them from God. This too has been a question I have striven to answer for myself, what is it that I am called to do with my life that is both spiritually beneficial and does not distract from my nearness to God? I have come to realize that for me one of the most important things in my life will be to do what brings me spiritual wholeness and a sense of God’s love. I have also come to realize this may mean giving up things that I might be good at or enjoy. Looking towards my future as I reach the half-way point in my college education, I have begun to ask myself what I can I do that will spiritually center and fulfill me, even if that means turning from paths that I might derive pleasure from or be good at. Not that God’s work should be joyless or I am turning way from things that I enjoy and am talented at simply because I enjoy them or am good at them, but rather it is about redirecting my priorities and not automatically choosing the path of least resistance.

"Out of our brokenness make us a blessing"

“Out of our brokenness make us a blessing. . .”(Judith L. Brutz, 1990)
“Rise radiant in the sacrament of pain” (Thomas Kelly 1939)
I have been thinking and praying on the idea of brokenness lately. When I was at the Young Adult Friends Conference in New Jersey a Friend spoke in meeting, and said that the Religious Society of Friends was broken and it was we who had broken it. Later several Friends encouraged me to view the idea of brokenness not merely as negative, something is broken and we must work to fix it, but as a more positive sensitizing and opening to God. The idea of hearing God and being opened to the Spirit only after one has known great suffering and pain is an idea with very Biblical roots. After much prayer I have come to see brokenness as being broken open to God, having one’s inner walls torn down to experience God’s love and grace, and to be torn from the roots to find freedom in the Lord. As I was praying on brokenness in meeting this Sunday, two things kept coming to me. The first thing was a variation on a line from the prayer I had just written; “let us know suffering so we might find your strength Oh God and ours”. I also continuously kept returning to the image of fire and burning as representing the Holy Spirit. I was reminded of such images as the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire in Acts, the idea of being baptized in fire as representing the Holy Spirit and the line from Thomas “Jesus said ‘I have cast fire upon the world’” (Thomas Saying 10), as well as Paul when he said “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). Also during meeting I was reminded of a story another Friend at the YAF Conference had told about a group of early Friends who gathered one Sunday only to discover that their Meeting House had been burnt to the ground during the night by people hostile towards Quakers. Instead of going home these Friends chose to worship standing on top of the burnt rubble of what had once been their Meeting House. I am drawn once more to the question of what does it mean that the Religious Society of Friends is broken and it is we who have broken it. I now believe that we have broken ourselves open to the power and grace of the Lord. That we have struggled and suffered and cried out for guidance and have been torn open to Her divine will. We have lit ourselves afire with the power of the Spirit and we are made free. I believe that when the smoke clears we will find ourselves standing among the rubble of that burning, made new in the simplicity of what we truly are a group of people bound together by the expectant waiting and witness of the Lord. And we will know our strength. And we will know God’s.

Prayer

today I was moved to sit down and try to write a prayer. It's the first prayer I've ever written, so bare with me.

Let us pray
that we remember God’s grace.
Even on the good days
when the sun shines and life seems good.
That we give praise for all that we have
on the days when we are stricken
by grief, or anger, or frustration
and all things seems against us.

God let us remember
those that love us.
Who will never leave
and forgive even our
greatest faults and most annoying habits.
And Lord let us remember
those who are not loved.
Who live in fear, and
have nowhere to turn.

Lord give us patients
with those who act in anger
and those who turn way from help we try to give
let us see that we all have faults
and we all turn away sometimes.

God gives us strength
to face our days,
and to perform
your work with grace.
Let us know laughter
and bring laughter to those we love.
And let us know grief
so we can find our strength and yours
Oh Lord
when we are lost
bring us home.

In Christ’s name I pray

Simple Things

The last week or so has been hard for me, I’ve been stressed out by work and other commitments seem to have come pilling up on me just now. But this Sunday I took the time to worship with Friends from Earlham School of Religion over on ESR campus. The room we worshiped in Quigg I found very beautiful and settled. I was reminded of the first time I had worship at Earlham when I was a freshman. I had been worshiping with Clear Creek Meeting then, but because there was construction being done on their meetinghouse they had met in Quigg. I had been struck then by the simple beauty and tranquility of the room. I found myself feeling very blessed to being worshiping there again. Every time I lapse in attendence of meeting (something I find all too easy to do while I’m at school and spend my weekends studying and catching up on work) I end up forgetting how much I enjoy and need Quaker worship. This Sunday although I came to meeting stressed and anxious I felt myself relaxing while I sat in the silence. Meeting for me has always been one of the few places I can successfully leave my work at the door and concentrate on other things. A Friend spoke during meeting reading allowed a Psalm that particularly spoke to me that day, and by the time the rise of meeting was called I was happier then I had been in a long time.