The Pilgrim Horde

This is a post from another blog I used to write.  I thought I should share it here too.

 When I think about the People of God, I see them as a Horde of Pilgrims.  Some of them forge ahead, like scouts, finding new paths towards God, exploring byways and wildernesses.  Some report back, some do not.  Some lag behind, having found a pleasing place where they feel comfortable.

Some are slow because they are lame or otherwise handicapped, or because they cannot accept help along the way.  Others decide to settle down and make villages and families.  Some race about trying to convince others that their way forward is the most direct and safest path.  Some set up shop as professional horde guides and refuse to recognize that the entire group is actually headed in the same direction. 

Some build dwellings and say among themselves how good it is to dwell here together.  Many of that group practice a hospitality that enables the whole tribe to keep moving forward.  Some particularly fearful ones try to build walls to prevent others from falling off the edge of the world  and being forever lost.  Of course they won’t explore the other side of the wall, so they never realize how much of the tribe has discovered the wall is permeable and can be simply walked through.

They are infinitely diverse, this horde, and infinitely beautiful.  In a way each of them is Christ on His journey.  It is deeply transformative, this journey, and can be experienced as an adventure, as a perilous quest, as a miserable slog, even as a painful torment.  Much depends on whether or not the pilgrim is the center of her own universe, or whether Christ is the center of that pilgrim’s reality. 

As the least and most lame of the pilgrim horde, I am learning to let them be Christ to me, and to allow the Christ in me be what they see when they look at me.  I have fallen in love with the whole, crazy, clanging, loud, wild bunch of them.  I find them a fascinating, endless, wondrous creation, which shows forth the Glory of God.  I find us to be a fitting expression of the One Who loves us.

Amen.

For Love of the One Who Loves Me

Point of OMC Rule:

•Whatsoever little or much thou possessest of anything, whether clothing, or food, or drink, let it be at the command of the senior and at his disposal, for it is not befitting a religious to have any distinction of property with his own free brother. 

Look upon all possessions as loans from God and let them be used for the honor and glory of God and at the service of Charity.

Reflection:

This point of the Rule is lived differently by each of us according to our state in life, as most of us do not live together.  Before I retired, the money I made by working went to support myself, and after that to my ministry.  I never felt a need for more than my share of the world’s goods.  That was not a virtue of mine, it was simply the result of having lost everything so many times that they were just things.  I never feared having nothing, having been there before.  Nor did I ever lack anything essential during my ministry.  I have come to believe that in serving Christ, I am supplied by God with all that I need to do just that.

Now that I live in community, I pay the bills I have to pay, and the rest of what I have is for the community’s needs.  It isn’t a lot, but so far amongst ourselves, we’ve had enough to keep on keeping on. 

I have no illusion that God needs honor and glory.  I have no doubt that Christ needs everything I have to give and more.  And because he is my first, best, and last love, I give it with great joy.

The Need For A 21st Century Testament

If you can find a copy of Corpus Reports (September/October 2013), you will see therein a gem:  John Shelby Spong’s address regarding “A Need to Reform Christianity?  A New Language for God.”   My dear Bishop Joe loaned me his copy to read and I must recommend it to anyone who is seeking to reconcile their experience of God and their experience as a 21^st Century human being.  He avers that Christianity is not dying; the explanations of antiquity are dying. 

We have an Old Testament and a New Testament.  What we need is a Current Testament.  The experience of the Christ is not the same thing as a description of that experience.  The descriptions of that experience which we have are rooted in the times they were written.  This is interesting in light of an ongoing discussion regarding the future of the church. 

As a member of a small Independent Catholic Church (the Celtic Christian Church), I sometimes wonder what will happen to us when the present generation of leaders dies.  The roots of the Celtic Church are not buried in the Old Testament, but in the Old Religion, which considered creation as good, and humanity not as fatally flawed, but glorious.  Our leaders are chosen by our members, not imposed by a hierarchy.  Our relationship with God is about relationships and service.  We love one another in a way that others find attractive and want to share.  It is my prayer that we will not lose these characteristics. 

As time moves on, we Christians are beginning to realize that the Christ experience removes all artificial tribal barriers.  Like Paul, we begin to see that in Christ there is no male or female, slave or free, just and unjust, saved and unsaved.  Rather than justifying exclusion, we find the experience demanding the inclusion of all.  A result of the Christ experience is an urgent need to pour out that experience on all who still experience life as suffering, broken, unforgiven and other in any way.  One who has the experience of Christ cannot sit idly by and not feel the injustices of predatory behavior. 

This is my current understanding, at any rate, of the way in which conscious contact with God has changed my life.  It has brought deep peace in the face of my own mortality.  It has brought deep pain in the oneness demanded between myself and the other, who is not truly separate from me, but is another unique expression of the Ground of Being. 

If you find Spong challenging, good!  Keep reading and thinking and most of all, keep on serving God in the People of God.  If you seek the Christ experience, stay in the Silence with the One.  Stay and be loved.  Stay and be changed.  You will find yourself.  And then you will give yourself away. 

Imitation of Christ

OMC Rule – Point for Today

•Be always naked in imitation of Christ and the Evangelists.

In total humility imitate Christ as you proclaim the Good News of God’s Love which is our salvation from our self-centeredness.

Reflection:

The Imitation of Christ  is one of the best ways I can think of to serve God.  So, what did Jesus do and how do we do that in today’s world?  

Jesus spent time with God.  No matter what else was going on, from the time he ditched his parents to go to the teachers in the temple until his arrest and after, he spoke with His Father pretty much all the time.  How can we live in conscious contact with God?  We are instructed to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.  How can we achieve that renewal?  By means of prayer and meditation. 

It has been said that prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening for the answers.  After over 35 years of practice, I can say that it is not easy, but it is very simple.  Be alone in a quiet place.  Don’t do anything else.  Notice your thoughts, let them pass by, and live in the moment, the only place God can be found.  

Because of Jesus’ close relationship with the Father, he constantly reached out to others.  In AA we say, “You only get to keep what you give away.”  I would add that dwelling in constant, conscious contact with God results in an upwelling of love that has to be passed around.  We must give out of the abundance of our love…which can only increase the more we give.  "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of the sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed and to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord."  (Luke 4:18-19)

Jesus taught his closest friends to love each other deeply and well.   “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."  (John 13:34-35)  If we love one another enough to abandon our agenda in favor of the good of others, we will be on our way to imitating Christ.  If people can look at our lives and conclude that we are humble people of peace who love each other….if we love each other enough to make other people want what we have, we are on our way to being Christlike.

Loving each other is hard.  It can’t be done at the same time we are being self-centered.  Curiously, the more selfless we become, the healthier we are spiritually.  So we plunge into the messy, hard-edged business of community and treat everyone as Christ.  It will, in the end, cost us everything, and that’s fine.  The servant is not better than her master.  Funnily enough, along the way, we get to be happy, joyous and free!