The toolbox

Benedict enumerates the tools of the spiritual life:

• Love God
• Love your neighbor
• Keep the 10 commandments
• Do the works of corporal mercy
• Hold your anger
• Hold your tongue
• Be a peacemaker
• Place your hope only in God
• Fear the Lord
• Listen
• Pray  
• Obey
• Request forgiveness when you fail 
• Never lose hope

Micah 6:6-8

⁶“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? ⁷Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” ⁸He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

From the Urban Alley

This is a recent blog entry from a Benedictine group, The Urban Alley, which originates in northern Va.   Here is their mission statement:

"WE ARE A MONASTERY WITHOUT WALLS, A GROUP OF INDIVIDUALS COMMITTED TO A RULE OF LIFE AND A VIBRANT SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY. THE URBAN ABBEY IS LOCATED IN ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA AT ST. GEORGE'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH."

You can follow them at:  http://urbanabbey.blogspot.com/

Tom Hale

Dearly Beloved, 

Grace and Peace to you. 

If you want to become my followers, deny yourselves and take up your cross and follow me.” —Matthew 16.24 

The aunt who annoys you is not your “cross to bear.” 

The cross is not an annoyance, nor something thrust upon you. 
It is your free, willing and unresentful choice to be gentle, 
to be nonviolent for the sake of justice, 
to be vulnerable for the sake of healing, 
to open yourself to other people's suffering, 
to enter into the shame of the world with the enormous grace of God. 

To take up your cross is to enter into God's fierce longing for healing and justice, 
even at your own loss, 
confident that being wrapped in God's love, 
even amidst the suffering of the world, 
is heaven. 

To take up your cross is to trust that God alone is our security and our power, 
that grace is absolute and death is relative, 
that the world can get along without us but not without our love, 
that forgiveness is more powerful than force, 
that love is stronger than fear, 
more lasting than death, 
more real than anything else. 

To take up your cross is not to go alone, 
but to follow the Humble One, the Trusting One, the Gentle One, 
the one who already bears your cross, your sin, your suffering, your death, 
who wants to bear your light, your blessing, your soul, in love. 

To take up your cross is to die with Christ 
and to rise with Christ into a new life that can't be killed, 
in which you can suffer but not be hurt, 
and die but not be dead, 
in which you are truly alive, 
because it is no longer you but God living in you— 
wholly present and infinitely loving, 
and deeply joyful. 

Deep Blessings, 
Pastor Steve 
__________________ 
Steve Garnaas-Holmes 
Unfolding Light

"To all according to their merits"

Our meeting this morning focused on these words.  Sr. Joan writes:  "[Benedict] does not want people in positions simply to get a job done.  He wants people in people in positions who embody why we bother to do the job at all."  So we ask: Why do we get up each day?  Why do we sing in the choir?  Why am I a teacher?  Why do I work a this job?  The answers speak to the heart of our mission and our call.  This week at work a Sister from the Sister's of Mercy gave me this poem: Guerillas of Grace by Ted Loder

I need to Breathe Deeply
Eternal Friend,
grant me ease
to breathe deeply in this moment,
this light,
this miracle of  now.
Beneath the din and fury
of great movements
and harsh news
and urgent crises,
make me attentive still
to good news,
to small occasions,
and the grace of what is possible
for me to be
to do,
to give,
to receive,
that I may miss neither my neighbor's gift
nor my enemy's need.

In these words I breathe in and ask "what is possible."

A second conversation this morning led us into a heated debate about the motives of people who's anger and hate seemed to permeate a meeting, a dialogue, our world.  What do we do?  In the face of disrespect for my humanity or our humanity, what do we do? And how do we change the conversation so that those who hate are not turned into sound bytes?