night prayer

There is a prayer that we use to end Cluster Council Meeting called "night prayer" that is the most theologically and psychologically healthy prayers I've ever prayed.

It starts out in stillness in the presence of God--which is the very nature of the Centering Prayer I do and teach.

It calls us to let go of what 'has been done' and what 'has not been done', which is what we need to do spiritually and psychologically. Just 'let go' and move on.

It is fully Jungian when it talks of letting go of our fears of the darkness within us--embracing the dark, shadow side of who we are.

It asks for peace for all, even those who 'have no peace'.

It calls us to look for 'possibility' in the midst of the brokenness of life.

I've been told it comes from the New Zealand Prayer Book of that Anglican island.

I'm not sure. But I am sure it is one of the most holistic and inclusive prayers I've ever prayed.

So I share it with you here.


NIGHT PRAYER

Lord, it is night.

The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done.
What has not been done has not been done.
Let it be.

The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness of our world and
of our own lives
rest in you.

The night is quiet.
Let t he quietness of your peace enfold us,
all dear to us,
and those who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys, new possibilities.

In your name we pray. Amen.

I invite you to ponder the complexities of 'Night Prayer'. And to pray it....

The days grow short

In many ways, the days draw short--up until the Winter solstice, each day is shorter than the next.

I love how the days change--shorter each day until they are longer each day. I know it's a silly thing to think, but I'm thankful about living in the Northern Hemisphere where Easter comes in the Spring and Christmas in the winter. The symbolism is just right.

But the shortening of days I'm talking about here is that by 10:30 pm, which is what it is in the room where I'm writing, no matter what it says on my blog about when I'm writing (my blog, for reasons I don't understand haven't been able to fix, is on Pacific Standard Time) Mimi and Tim will be married when it's this time Sunday, 4 days from today.

She called tonight to lay our the plan for the day before and the day of the wedding. Bob and Carol, Tim's parents (so sad our names aren't Ted and Alice!) and Bern and I will meet for the first time in Mimi and Tim's apartment at 5 p.m. on Saturday. That could be awkward, meeting your daughter's in laws for the first time only a day before they become your daughter's in laws. And so it shall be. Bob and Carol, from all I know, are much different from Bern and I on the political scale. But we won't talk politics this weekend, I know. And, if they gave birth to and raised Tim, the fact that they are Right Wing Nuts won't bother us any more than the fact that Bern and I are Left Wing Nuts won't bother them because one of the people we each love most of all is getting married to one of the people the other 'we' of us.

Dinner for immediate family--Bob and Carol, Bern and me, Josh and Cathy and their three girls, Tim's brother and girl-friend and Tim and Mimi in an Italian place in Brooklyn.

Then Tim and Mimi go next door to a bar to greet out of town guests.

On Sunday, Bob and I will show up at Tim and Mimi's apartment with Tim and Carol and Bern will go to Mimi's friend's apartment where Mimi is getting dressed. Then we all meet at the 'venue' at 6:30 or so and the wedding will be at 7 and then drinks and dinner.

On Monday, anyone who wants to can join Tim and Mimi for Brunch at yet a third Brooklyn restaurant (I can never spell 'restaurant' without the help of spell-check. It's probably because of my irrational prejudice against everything French). I told Bern tonight that I hate, despise and abhor French accents. I don't know why. Every other accent I find charming. It has something to do with how friging FRENCH the French are. So I have DNA deep resentment toward the French. Go figure....

So, that's the plan. And tomorrow it will be one day closer. And day after tomorrow, it will be one day closer. And the day after that, it begins....

I am so happy about what comes next. Mimi and Tim and all that.

I feel like a kid on December 22 waiting for Christmas.

Cluster Council

Tonight was Cluster Council Meeting...it's almost always the 2nd Tuesday, except when it isn't, like tonight.

I usually hate meetings...any meeting for any purpose.

But I like Cluster Council Meetings. I've been pondering why since I got home.

I think it is the remarkable diversity of the people who represent three remarkably diverse congregations that I serve as interim Missioner. And they are, to a person, gentle, kind, humorous, committed people.

I'm not sure there are four adjectives available in English, which is a language with many adjectives, that I value more than gentle, kind, humorous and committed. Well, there is 'compassionate' and 'loving' and 'dedicated' and 'open-minded' and 'inclusive'...but the folks on the Council are to one degree or another, each of those as well.

I just like them--each and every one for different reasons for each and every one. So, is it little wonder I like our hour or so meetings each month.

And we laugh a lot and eat together--pizza and cookies tonight. Not much left out in the area of 'liking'--good folks, laughter, food, commitment.

Yea, that works just fine.

Fine, indeed.

Sometimes, doing nothing, does something...

I've been a priest for 39 years now, and one of the things I've learned--sometimes the 'hard way'--is that often the best thing to do is nothing.

People always want priests to 'do something' about things in the parish--relationships, opinions, ideas, lots of stuff. And I've learned (often the 'hard way') that sometimes 'doing nothing' does something.

Like today, the Supreme Court chose, quietly and without comment, to refuse to hear a whole group of appeals against lower court orders to overrule several states' bans against same sex marriage.

In 'doing nothing' the Supreme Court mad same sex marriage legal in a bunch of states. In fact, because they did nothing, same sex marriage is now legal in 30 states and the District of Columbia. By doing nothing, the Court made it almost certain that eventually all 50 states will allow marriage between both heterosexual and homosexual couple, as, so far as I'm concerned, is the way it should be.

I was talking to the 20-something clerk in the package store I frequent about the silence of the Court that did so, so much.

She shook her blond head at me and said, "if you don't believe in gay marriage, don't have a gay marriage...who cares?"

We reached the almost in grasp equality of GLBTQ folks so much faster and with so much less drama that the Civil Rights for Blacks movement took hold. In the Civil Rights movement, the Supreme Court had to act or nothing would have happened. In the right for same sex marriage, the Court's doing nothing has worked....

I once had two psychologists, both ordained, on my staff. We had lots of disagreements about what was going on in the parish. They were both, by temperament and training, 'interventionists'. I, on the other hand, was someone who ignored anything until it was brought up to me by someone involved in it.

My theory was, most problems, if you leave them be, will resolve themselves by themselves.

I still believe that. Sometimes, doing nothing, does something....

Part of me wishes the Supreme Court would have heard the cases and upheld the lower courts decisions so this would all be over once and for all.

But another part of me, the part that has guided my ministry and life all along, things 'doing nothing' might have been the best thing to do. The whole marriage equality issue has a momentum of it's own. Just stepping back and letting that momentum continue might be the best way to react.

The non-interventionist strategy has worked almost all the time for me. I might see a problem, but until someone involved in the problem asks me to step in, I don't. And most of the time, it works itself out without me involved.

The Universe, it seems to me, longs to find balance. Intervening in the moment of imbalance might just throw the Universe off kilter.

I never want to be responsible for something so important.

So, I'll 'do nothing' most of the time because 'doing nothing' most of the time 'does something'.

Like let the Universe right itself and get in balance.

Something like that. Not bad stuff....

Since I've been writing about eternity....

My most recent posts have been about eternity in some way or shape. So I thought I'd share my poem about 'finitude' since that's one part of the conversation about eternity. I know I've printed it here before, but just in case some new folks are looking in, here it is again.

The Trouble with Finitude

I try, from time to time,

usually late at night or after one too many glasses of wine,

to consider my mortality.

(I have been led to believe

that such consideration is valuable

in a spiritual way.

God knows where I got that...

Well, of course God knows,

I'm just not sure.)

But try as I might, I'm not adroit at such thoughts.

It seems to me that I have always been alive,

I don't remember not being alive.

I have no personal recollections

of when most of North America was covered by ice

or of the Bronze Age

or the French Revolution

or the Black Sox scandal.

But I do know about all that through things I've read

and musicals I've seen

and the History Channel.

I know intellectually that I've not always been alive,

but I don't know it, as they say,

“in my gut”.

(What a strange phrase that is,

since I am sure my 'gut'

is a totally dark part of my body,

awash with digestive fluids

and whatever remains of the chicken and peas

I had for dinner and strange compounds

moving inexorably—I hope—through my large

and small intestines.)

My problem is this:

I have no emotional connection to finitude.

All I know and feel is tangled up with being alive.

Dwelling on the certainty of my own death

is beyond my ken, outside my imagination,

much like trying to imagine

the vast expanse of Interstellar Space

when I live in Connecticut.

So, whenever someone suggests that

I consider my mortality,

I screw up my face and breathe deeply

pretending I am imagining the world

without me alive in it.

What I'm actually doing is remembering

things I seldom remember--

my father's smell, an old lover's face,

the feel of sand beneath my feet,

the taste of watermelon,

the sound of thunder rolling toward me

from miles away.

Perhaps when I come to die

(perish the thought!)

there will be a moment, an instant,

some flash of knowledge

or a stunning realization:

“Ah,” I will say to myself,

just before oblivion sets in,

'this is finitude....”

jgb

Dick Reid and Eternity (revisited)

The Rev. Dr. Richard Reid has died. (And I was thinking of 'eternity' just the other day!) My mentor, professor and friend has found out what is on the other side of "this" one way or another.

He taught New Testament at Virginia Seminary when I was there. He was so good that I took a couple of classes from him even though I had fulfilled my required NT studies in my two years at Harvard Divinity School.

I didn't take his "Introduction to New Testament' but I heard legends about it. It seemed every year, after Dick's first lecture, one or two students withdrew from Seminary. They were people who read the Bible like a believer. Dick read it like a scholar. The scholarly study of the New Testament is a challenge to people whose beliefs are rather literal about what the New Testament says.

Once in a class on Mark, I think, someone asked Dick this question: "Professor Reid, how many of the words of Jesus in Mark do you have confidence are verbatim, words he actually said."

Dick thought for a few moments. "At least a couple of dozen," he finally replied. I watched the student thinking, 'how can I get out of this class and into a one taught by a believer?'

But Dick WAS a believer. That's the whole point. He 'believed' the gospels would stand up to intense and scientifically based scrutiny. He believed God was big enough to be probed and examined and put under the microscope of scholarly commitment and survive.

Once another student asked him, "Dr. Reid, where do you stand on 'who will be saved'?"

That, to me was an odd question because I avoid 'standing' anywhere on that. I'll leave that to God, thank you very much.

But Dean Reid (he was the Associate Dean of the Seminary as well as a professor) gave one of the best two answers to a theological question I ever heard. He said, "I am a hopeful Universalist.  There is nothing in the sacred writings of the Jews or Christians or Muslims that indicates that all will be saved. But the God I worship wouldn't leave anyone out of the party...."

Pretty wonderful, I thought. I'm not sure the student that asked the question felt the same!

One of my pet peeves about the Episcopal church is that the clergy get superb "theological education" and the laity receive what is called "Christian education". Seminaries of our church are rigorous and devoted to scholarship, with taking the gloves off and going at holy things with bare fists. Most of the stuff that happens in parishes masquerading as 'adult education' is really warmed over Middle School level. Most of us priests wouldn't dare answer a lay persons questions as honestly and probingly as Dick Reid and all my mentors from both Harvard and Virginia (and Manfred Meitzen who taught religion at West Virginia University, where I first caught the God-bug) did.

I honestly don't want to worship a God who doesn't stand up to the best nit-picking examination my mind can do. Really, what kind of God would that be?

I mourn Dick Reid and thank him and thank God for him.

(By the way, the other of the two best answers to a theological question I ever heard came from my friend and one-time Lay Assistant, Bryan.

Bryan was telling some folks at a coffee hour about the three week, silent Buddhist retreat. After about 10 minutes of Bryan telling them how much he got out of it, one of the rather literal minded folks in the group said, "Bryan, tell me, are you a Christian?"

And Bryan answered without a pause, "at least!"

Not bad. Something for all the 'at least Christians' out there to lean into and embrace and ponder.)

eternity

I was part of a 6 way conversation on Tuesday about Eternity. Heaven and Hell and all that.

I wasn't sure what exactly we were discussing so I asked: "are we talking metaphorically here?"

And the answer was clear that we weren't.

My eyes glaze over, my mind goes blank and I lose control of my bladder when people start talking about heaven and hell.

Back where I come from, there's a joke that goes like this: "What's 'eternity'?" "Two people and a ham."

That's about as deep as my thinking goes about eternity and heaven and hell and what happens when we die.

I told my dear friends on Tuesday that from time to time, because I am a priest and people tend to think I know about such things, someone will ask me what I think about what happens when we die?

I tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth: I don't know.

I tell them, if they're still listening after the truth about what I believe, that I do 'believe' something happens after we die, as long as nothing is part of something.

That usually gets me blank looks if not disappointed looks.

But that's the truth: I just don't know and have no idea.

Sometimes people take my response as meaning I don't truly believe in God. But I do. I trust that there is a God. But what happens when we die is something I leave completely up to Him/Her/It. I have no opinion on the matter.

So, why do I think we should be 'good' as we can be if it isn't a way to get to Heaven?

Simply because being as good as we can be is what we ought to do and what the God I find so mysterious wants us to be.

Simply that.

Not a quid pro quo of any kind--not to spend eternity in fulfillment and joy rather than punishment and pain. 'Doing what is right to do' is reason enough to do that. Being honest and good and fair and compassionate and loving and generous is reason in itself. And the God I love and who loves me (though I don't know Him/Her/It very well) wants all that from me. So, it seems to me that's reason enough to strive and lean into all that.

What comes next--I have no idea. I hope there is some way I'll still be 'me' after I die. Or, simply being a part of the cosmos without a clear "Jim Bradley" identity would be fine. Or, nothing would be OK, given that being alive was such a privilege and a joy and a wonder.

I stand by my stand: I leave all that after death stuff to the God I love and who loves me.

Life has been a gift enough. Let God determine the rest and what comes next. I'm OK with that....