tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65614042060990548972024-03-12T18:07:24.578-05:00the long pewNever resign yourself to the scandal of the separation of Christians.
Be consumed with zeal for the unity of the Body of Christ.
— The Rule of Taize´—robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-26589625078144148732010-09-08T11:21:00.007-05:002010-09-08T11:27:34.515-05:00ROBERT : I have been listening to . . . .<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I have been listening to the </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Propers</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> these days.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Propers</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> are the prayers, the </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Collects</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, appointed for each of the Sundays during the season after Pentecost, the season that many of us call Ordinary Time. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In the liturgical tradition, the </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Collect for the Day </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">is the second collect said by the officiant at worship on Sunday. It is then said at Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer and also at the Daily Eucharist each day during the week that follows. In the tradition, one keeps saying this particular prayer for seven days, over and over. Sometimes I think that perhaps we say it over and over in the hopes that the prayer will finally rise as incense to our Holy Maker, or that it will finally sink as wisdom into the heart of the not-so-holy offerer. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Either result seems a fine one to me. Either of them is more than I deserve.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This past Lord’s Day, we prayed Proper 18. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Proper 18 is not the most stirring of names for a prayer, I admit, but even so.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength . . . . </span></span></i></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I was not able to listen any farther to anything else this Sunday past. I was not able to listen to the Scripture as it was read, to the Word as it was proclaimed, not to the prayers of the people or even the words of the prayer I love the most, the prayer of the Eucharist.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Four minutes into a 68 minute service, in the course of listening to a prayer that is often ignored, I was held up into the Light and saw something about myself, something with which I am now struggling through the darkness of. In the space of that 240 seconds, I caught a glimpse of something that cripples the life I am trying to live, a life in search of communion with the Light of the world. In the saying of less than thirty words in a service that would release thousands of them into the air, I came face to face with something I had not admitted before, something unacknowledged in all of the decades I have spent in search of such communion. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I am now a few days past the moment when that Collect burst in on me and my pride, but I have yet to recover from the hearing of it. My pulse has begun to slow now, and I can breathe more deeply and I am sleeping better but I am not over it. I do not yet know what to do with what I saw about myself in the light of Proper 18.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">But I do know this — </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The season when we say such Propers may be called Ordinary. But the prayer is not ordinary at all.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Lord, have mercy. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Hoefler Text"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Christ have mercy.</span></span></i></span></p>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-34142122755188118532010-07-01T11:42:00.003-05:002010-07-01T11:46:47.891-05:00BEN : It still strikes me as odd . . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">It still strikes me as odd that Ordinary is the title of the sacred time during the calendar by which we mark the intermediate period between the Ascension and the Advent. After so many months of monumental celebrations and observances, Ordinary seems so void of anything spectacular, anything that might closely resemble The One who will come again in all glory.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> Ordinary, for me at least, is much less sacred than you make it sound. It is a constant tug-of-war between action and contemplation. Ordinary life comes with demands and expectations from all different directions. It’s a crazy labyrinth to navigate: being a parent, husband, son, brother, friend, Christ-follower, and professional.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> What if I don’t like Ordinary at all?<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> I’m liking less and less the need to get on a plane and miss yet another pillow fight with my three year old who just loves it when I gently knock him down with a sofa cushion, only to spend a few minutes on the floor laughing and then finding the endless energy to get up and challenge me all over again.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> It’s strange that the mass adoption of technology like Skype and FaceTime is supposed to make me feel better about not being physically present with those I love. And yet I rely on all these tools in the name of love. Is that Ordinary or my ordinary?<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> I’m less and less impressed with the rapid accumulation of rewards points I have with airlines, and hotels. I fear these people may know more about me than some members of my extended family. And what about my online florist? Often, companies like that become the ones who deliver sentiments of love in my absence.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> I struggle to maintain my habit of daily prayers and wonder if this is the Ordinary you describe or just my ordinary. What would St. Benedict write today if he were still writing his Rule?<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Ordinary, in its larger sense, is blah. It’s boring. Some might even say it’s not worth noting. Perhaps those who crafted this calendar ran out of ideas and Ordinary is nothing more than an ancient “miscellaneous” category. Life is supposed to be about sensation and the thrill of the hunt, right?<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> I certainly don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but I just don’t “get” Ordinary.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /></div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-91291120715879841002010-06-15T08:14:00.003-05:002010-06-15T08:25:27.166-05:00ROBERT : According to one Divine Metronome . . . .According to one Divine Metronome — the one known as the Calendar of the Church — the Ascension of Our Lord has now been observed and so we await our Brother’s return some day to judge the living and the dead. The Day of Pentecost has been celebrated and the Spirit has been given to us. And now we have entered the season of unbounding festivity known by the heart-stirring name <i>Ordinary Time</i>. Oh, ring the bells of joy, I say.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> Ordinary Time is the name settled upon to refer to the twenty four to twenty nine weeks of the year for which the Church could not come up with any great celebrations for you and I to participate in.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> The word <i>ordinary</i> and its derivatives occupy fourteen columns in the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i>, a space larger than all of the words for all the other seasons of the Church year combined. ‘Let this be a sign unto you,’ I think to myself. Words like<i> common, usual, unremarkable, settled, regular, simplest</i> appear often in the fourteen columns. Ordinary Time, to use the words of one of the definitions in the OED, is ‘our customary fare.’<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> Of the 365 days given to us each year, the church has designated on average 55.6% of them as something less than festive, and not even suitable for something uplifting like putting ashes on our foreheads and remembering that we are but dust. Add together all of the days of the great seasonal celebrations of the church year, and there are still more ordinary days than festive ones.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> ‘Give us this day our daily bread — our customary fare,’ if you will. If we are to celebrate anything during Ordinary Time, we are largely on our own. The Church is happy to lead the celebratory charge from December until the end of April or so, and sometimes go as far as the end of May. ( Dependent, oddly enough, on the phases of the moon. ) After Pentecost, it is up to us.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> The Church leads the parade for Christmas and the manifestation of Christ among us and spring and Easter and the coming of the Holy Spirit and we are assigned the dog days of summer, the back to school sales, and Labor Day. This year we also get an oil spill, floods that keep killing people, new rounds of ethnic cleansing on two continents, the noise of midterm elections, unemployment that is heartbreaking and the truth that not a single one of us has grown younger since this time last year.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> According to the metronome of the calendar, our search for the balance between the borders and the margins of our lives, between the struggles with the bustle and the meaning of our daily rounds, between a way of marking time that will lead us to the Divine amid the clamor of the marching orders that would lead us somewhere else — all of that work is now up to us.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> <div>I never miss the festal parade at Easter, and I shall be beside you as always in the dark with my candles come Advent.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> But just now, whether or not the deep rhythms of the Story are alive and ticking in me in late June is the real question, I am afraid. And I must answer it myself.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> Lord, have mercy. <i>Christ have mercy. </i>Lord, have mercy.</div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-62213048740771925672010-05-20T17:20:00.003-05:002010-05-20T17:24:17.087-05:00BEN : Stealing my words . . . .Stealing my words is much less an offense than my being haunted by the words you wrote — returning, rest, salvation, sabbath, letting go. I am terrified I will never be able to receive the gift hidden within the practice of such things.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> Margin is not simply the difference between retail price and product cost these days. Margin is what’s missing in my life. At each corner, the complexity of responsibility and scheduling seem to push against any hope I might have of finding some sense of margin beyond that of a break-even or profit analysis spreadsheet.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> My attempt to find margin has become an empty promise to myself and seems accompanied by a blatant disregard for the limited capacity of my human self itself. I push myself to the what seem to be my limits and dance on the edge of what seems to be an insanity. This is the life I have chosen and yet I worry it may consume me.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> I have a burning need to find the News somewhere between our words and my attempts to find a kind of Divine metronome to help me pace myself at the speed of God, rather than keep dancing to a drumbeat of expectation.<br /><br /><i>O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and light riseth up in darkness for the godly: Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what thou wouldest have us to do, that the Spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices, and that in thy light we may see light, and in thy straight path may not stumble; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</i><br /><br />I pray you are right that we may be closing in on the News. I need such a thing to be true.robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-41015355109952984972010-05-10T16:46:00.002-05:002010-05-10T16:55:58.438-05:00ROBERT : I am stealing your words . . . .I am stealing your words, fine ones that they are — <div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> <i> There is enough tension between the confidence of life and the chaos of dying and the misery of returning to dust and the mystery of rising again to keep us clinging to our prayer . . .</i> .<br /><br /><i>Confidence, chaos, misery, mystery — clinging.</i><br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> These may not be all the words that I am willing use to describe my journey of faith, but I will take them as a start, and a fine one at that. ( In fact, the race is on, dear friend; if you do not manage to publish these words that I am stealing from you before I do, then the fault is yours. They are well-written ones, and certainly worthy of theft. )<br /><br />The only words I would add to your list of <i>confidence, chaos, misery, mystery — clinging —</i> might be these :<i> returning, rest, salvation, sabbath — letting go. </i>And I should not have noticed my own poor ones without your fine ones.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> I am thinking these days that somewhere in the midst of your words and mine may well lie the News.<br /><br /><i>Almighty God ; You have taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, that in quiet and confidence shall be our strength : By the might of your Spirit lift us to your presence, we pray, that we may be still and know that you are God . . . . . Amen.</i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> </i>Thanks, pal.</div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-9313923631881347942010-04-13T15:58:00.005-05:002010-04-14T22:15:09.039-05:00BEN :Easter Sunday, a feast day more accurately entitled . . . .Easter Sunday, a feast day more accurately entitled, <i>The Sunday of the Resurrection</i>, has marked the beginning of our <i>Great 50 Days</i> — the days between the empty tomb and the almost indescribable experience of Pentecost and of the institution of the Church itself.<br /><br /> <div>The Great 50 Days sounds more like an invitation-only golf tournament to me. A game where only a select number of the greatest men and women who have ever held a metal stick in hopes of swinging it at just the right angle to hit a ridiculously small, pitted ball sitting atop an overgrown toothpick toward an impossibly small hole far away, a hole in the ground that offers nothing more than a chance to advance to the next hole only to do it all over again. ( Perhaps one day I will understand the depth and breadth of this activity some call a sport. We who run miles every day, for no apparent reason have something to say on such matters. )<br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br /></span></div><div>Nevertheless, the Great 50 Days is one of the things I love most about the Easter season. While American Evangelical Protestant Christianity seals this season into a one day segment, easy for storage until the following year, those who have cared for and participated in the path of the ancients know that the Easter we have just observed is only the beginning of some seven weeks of reflection on the life and death and life of Jesus — a reflection that can now be seen through the lens of the resurrected Christ.<br /><br /></div><div>Whatever happened during Lent seems inconsequential next to the what was given to us when the empty tomb became the center of Christianity and Jesus became the Christ. This miracle of all miracles sets the tone for a life that does not end, in the same way that the rising and setting of the sun sets the frame for a life into which we have been given.<br /><br /></div><div>Life becomes death, only to become life again.<br /><br />There is enough tension between the confidence of life and the chaos of dying and the misery of returning to dust and the mystery of rising again to keep us clinging to our prayer, clinging in the hope that we might make our way through this life even as we wait for our own resurrection, the miracle that will take us to the life that does not end.<br /><br />Alleluia — Christ is Risen.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><i> </i></span><i> The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia.</i></div></div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-75201584912279647202010-03-30T14:23:00.005-05:002010-03-30T14:29:18.859-05:00ROBERT I think the only fair answer is, um . . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br />I think the only fair answer is, um, Yes and, um, No. An answer you will like and another you will like even better.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The long term answer is No, you cannot start Lent over again, or at least not this year. Whatever promises you could not keep or time you did not make sacred with your attentiveness, whatever offerings you did not give or oblations you could not make — the time has come and gone for those special Lenten devotions, as the Church calls such things. At least for this Lent.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> ‘There is only now,’ Thomas Merton writes.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The good news is that the Story will be told again, and you and I and all the rest of the communion of saints — those who have become saints already and those of us who are merely saints in the making, like the two of us and everyone still here in the kingdom that has already come — all of us will have a chance, God willing, to make a Lenten journey again next year.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> Be not afraid of your failures in this season just past. Make your confession, go to sleep, and ‘rise again in the morning to serve the Lord,’ is what the old prayerbooks advise.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Remember, the life we live is not a contest to see if we can qualify to be with God some fine day, it is a gift we are given so that we might come to know God on this day we have been given.<br /><br />The short term answer, — the Yes — is that the most significant starting over moment in the history of the universe, for all time past and all time to come, will be celebrated at Easter. God willing, you and I will be among the celebrants.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>If it helps you to call it a reset, feel free to do so.<br />I prefer to think of it as time, long past time really, as Merton writes, to set aside our ‘awful solemnity and join in the general dance.’ </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Thanks be to God, either way — Thanks be to God.</span></span><br /></div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-18667758071194526412010-03-04T10:40:00.005-06:002010-03-04T10:47:13.300-06:00BEN : Is it possible to hit the rewind button . . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Is it possible to hit the rewind button and start Lent again?</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>It sounds like a strange question, I know. But in a day and time when everything seems to be on-demand, being forced into an ancient rhythm that doesn’t allow for play, stop, pause, or rewind is strangely unfamiliar.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I should know better and be more disciplined. I feel very scattered and stretched as I attempt the daily feat of meeting the pace of the life that I’ve been given. While I long to find spans of silence, I eagerly await moments of intense awareness of a Creator and a dimension that exists beyond my own world.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> The difficult balance of being made in the image of God is not allowing ourselves to believe we are “little gods” and, thus, the center of all existence. The Lenten experience refreshes our practice in the reality we are not god at all. In fact, there isn’t a time when that difference is more present than during this season.<br /><br />So how do I interpret an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present God in an on-demand world? I certainly can’t escape God. That’s that story of Jonah. He ran as far and as fast from God as he thought possible but ended up running right into Him. Perhaps in my attempt to press play, stop, pause, or rewind throughout this season, I, too, will find God waiting for me.<br /><br /><i>Most merciful God,<br />we confess that we have sinned against you<br />in thought, word, and deed,<br />by what we have done,<br />and by what we have left undone.<br />We have not loved you with our whole heart;<br />we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.<br />We are truly sorry and we humbly repent,<br />for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,<br />have mercy on us and forgive us;<br />that we may delight in your will,<br />and walk in your ways,<br />to the glory of your Name. Amen.</i></span></span></div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-1958044807790760992010-02-10T17:17:00.005-06:002010-02-10T17:28:13.996-06:00ROBERT : An epiphany on the road to Lent . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">An epiphany on the road to Lent, the Epiphany Highway, I believe it is called. </span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>It came when I read something a friend of mine wrote about how dense the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Why-Could-They-Not-Sees must have been to have had three or four twenty minute conversations with the Word made Flesh over three years and not have caught on that Jesus was the Messiah. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>It brought to mind how many years I self-righteously wondered how the Pharisees could be so lame as to not get it in the beginning. Now that I think of it, the disciples were not exactly the brightest bulbs in the packet themselves. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>On further reflection, I began to come face to face with the fact that after two thousand years of telling the Story to each other, studying the Bible until we are blue in the face, spending our Sabbaths in places where people argue whether Latin or tongues or praise choruses or the 1928 prayer book are the most proper vehicles for worshipping the One Who made us and the One Who came among us, staking out positions theological and political that cover everything from slavery to witch-burning to the Inquisition to the Crusades to celibacy for some and not for others — after two thousand years of such carrying on in the name of righteousness, we are likely to be just as confused, just as afraid, just as uncertain, just as mystified by the Presence of the Christ as were those devout Jewish folks so long ago.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I for one, to quote a character from a parable actually, <i>am not worthy even to lift my hands to heaven</i>. A parable, of course, being a story the One Who came made up to tell folks something about their real selves since they could not bear to hear straight talk about their real selves. I think I may well be, along with some other folks, in a new category of modern religious, the folks known as the Do-Not-Want-To-Sees. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br />At the very least, it means that I for one am not worthy to pat myself on the back as though I understand this Mystery when another could not. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> I am not even worthy to lift my hands toward heaven.</span></span><br /></div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-16815334819592901382010-01-27T11:48:00.003-06:002010-01-27T11:53:30.605-06:00BEN : It is a good thing . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It is a good thing when our life is so full that we must tell others, even when we don’t fully understand it. Much like when we announce that we are getting married, become parents, taking a new job, or starting retirement. Our perspective going into these major life events is grounded mostly speculation.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I suspect that it was much the same for Jesus. He had to know that each person who would talk, see, or walk for the first time as a result of their interaction with him would naturally become evangelists on His behalf. It was only a matter of time before the secret would become known. </span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The secret was no longer that Jesus was the Son of God or that God had come to live among us. We uncovered this one weeks ago. The secret yet to be uncovered is that there was no room for Jesus to continue His ministry uninhibited by those who would be threatened by His miracles and would conspire to end this nuisance forever. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Perhaps Jesus wanted to spend time with his friends and family and lead a normal life as long as possible. Once the secret was out, his life would be anything but normal. It was only a matter of time before the echo of the ONE he called Father would would pierce through the chaos in the last sentence uttered by the god-man this side of the Great Story: It is finished.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>For now, normal is good. And the innocence of speculation shelters the pain yet to come.</span></span><br /></div></div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-14012768921798922542010-01-19T16:10:00.004-06:002010-01-19T16:14:50.159-06:00ROBERT : It does not take many . . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It does not take many Epiphany days in the lectionary scriptures to get to the first of the stories in which Jesus appears to someone, heals them and then admonishes them : Do not make me known to anyone. Odd suggestion from the One Who came to seek and to save all of that which was lost, methinks.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>A fair amount of the stories of Epiphany are full of ordinary things : Jesus staying overnight out in the country; Jesus walking through a grain field; Jesus having his supper interrupted yet again by yet another crowd of people asking questions; people begging Jesus to leave their neighborhood; Jesus being rejected in his hometown; Jesus and his friends with nothing to eat at the end of a long day; Jesus taking another boat ride; Jesus on a visit to a synagogue; Jesus refereeing an argument over when to wash your hands and an argument about divorce and then another one about who gets to go first; Jesus taking more than a few long, dusty walks to Jericho and Bethlehem and Bethany and other really exciting travel destinations. And there is more than one story of Jesus telling yet another crowd of folks not to tell what they saw and who, of course, went and did just the opposite. These are the stories of the first Epiphany, Epiphany Past shall we say, the stories Jesus did not want told, oddly enough.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>We followers of the One Who came have turned out a glorious Church indeed, a church without spot or wrinkle as someone once said — someone who had not been to church in a while perhaps.<br />But it is plain to me that the Church does have some difficulty doing what Jesus told us to do from time to time. And one of those times comes when those who have seen the Messiah in action cannot seem to keep quiet about it. And I say, thanks be to God.<br /><br />Here is an assignment for Epiphany Present :<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Go on out there, just go on out there in the world and try not see the One Who came among us.<br /> And when you see Him, and you will, unless you have your head in the sand, then try and keep quiet about it.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>You cannot do either one — you cannot miss Him or keep your mouth shut about it either.<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Thanks be to God for that as well.</span></span>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-81013451874026203822010-01-11T05:22:00.004-06:002010-01-11T05:29:16.537-06:00BEN : It is early morning. . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It is early morning of the Epiphany of our Lord. Christmas, as you suggest, has past for another year and all time once again. In Tennessee, the strange part is that the cold and snow often come closer to Epiphany than Christmas. Which doesn’t match any Rockwellian ideas of the season, but sure does make it easier for those of us who have young children to make multiple trips to and from the car to unload all those wonderful toys they get from their grandparents, toys that seem to come in a thousand pieces first to be assembled and then lost, stepped on, and broken in the coming days.<br /><br />If it was as cold that Holy Night as it is this morning, I can’t imagine much about it was holy. Perhaps gathering together to view the new Messiah was as practical as it was divine. Surely it was warmer in the barn than in the field. And Joseph probably built a fire for his new family so they might keep warm. If we are to suggest to ourselves that we have a chance to find the divine hidden with the fabric of our ordinary days, then it must have been so from the very beginning.<br /><br />It is on this day that we celebrate those who came to see the One Who created the world, talked to Moses on the mountain, and inspired prophets. These were the first people — outside of His parents — to greet the Word of God after so many years of not hearing a word from God. So <i>Silent Night</i> may be more historically accurate than intended. If God had not spoken in hundreds of year and then decides to appear and you realize you are one of the first people to see this with your own eyes, I would not have had much to say either.<br /><br />I wonder what was on the shepherds’ minds. And what did the Magi think about as they intuitively knew the location was just around the corner? Did their steps slow wondering what they would say? Did their minds wonder what they were about to experience? Did a sense of fear grip them as it often does right before we decide to do something that we know will change our lives forever?<br /><br />I think the shepherds and the Magi were probably more like you, my still-in-Advent friend — moving forward while wanting to wait. Called to follow but leaving room to observe. The Good News was that the Messiah was there when they arrived. The same will be true for you, too.<br /><br />This is my prayer as this season of Epiphany begins: <i>O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.</i><br /><br /></span></span>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-67224978648199853742010-01-04T10:06:00.003-06:002010-01-04T10:12:27.446-06:00ROBERT : Evidently, I still am in Advent. . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Evidently, I still am in Advent.<br /><br />At my house, I am known as the one who needs some time to process things before I know what I think about something.<br /> If we are having an issue at my house, as the Oprah puts it, the <i>modus</i> <i>operandi</i> is this : You state your case, give Robert an hour or two, or a day or two, or a week or two to think it over — the time varies according to the intensity or depth or importance of the matter. He will get back to you as soon as he knows what he thinks. Even if the issue has been, shall we say, energetically discussed several times before, he will need some time to consider his position in this new case.<br /> If you try and get him to go faster, you will only get frustrated. He came equipped with the bare minimum two forward gears — S is for <i>Stroll</i>, Z is for <i>Zen</i>. The R on the gearbox, not surprisingly, stands for <i>Reflective</i>.<br /> Which is a major part of the reason I find myself frozen here this frozen morning in early January. Apt weather, I suppose.<br /> It is the day before Twelfth Night, the night that will make this season a Christmas Past for all time, and usher in the coming season of the annual Epiphany of our Lord, if we can, in fact, learn to see Him in his various and sundry guises any better than we did last year.<br /> I am still stuck, as one might expect, in the early Advent readings from Isaiah — <i>Behold, I am about to do something new, can you not yet perceive it?</i><br /> I am stuck here partly because I am always slow to know what I perceive, no matter how new or old the thing in front of me happens to be. Five or six weeks of consideration does not seem untoward in the face of such a question, if you ask me.<br /> The other reason I am frozen here is that I am still trying to come to grips with the new things The One Who made us had in store for me last year about this time, the things I could not perceive then and still do not completely understand. I believe the One Who made us can be trusted but, as my best friend says, you are wise not to turn your back.<br /> You guys go on ahead. I will try to catch up by Ash Wednesday. I love a celebration.<br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-90714772575134817762009-12-17T09:40:00.001-06:002009-12-21T09:45:35.314-06:00BEN : I need the Advent. . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I need the Advent.<br /><br />And the timing couldn't have been better! The anticipation of what was happening and what to expect that came as a direct result of our "pause" in conversation placed us in a very familiar position this Advent season, the time in which we must patiently wait and carefully search for the coming Messiah yet again.<br /><br />One of my favorite parts of this time of year is the hymn "O come, O come, Emmanuel." The words drip with tragedy and expectation, defeat and hope. I wait all year to have permission to experience these haunting words again.<br /><br /></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">O come, O come, Emmanuel<br />And ransom captive Israel<br />That mourns in lonely exile here<br />Until the Son of God appear<br />Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel<br />Shall come to thee, O Israel.</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br />How appropriate to think of myself as captive? If I was not a salve to something, then the coming Messiah is somehow less than what I suspect it was received that first Christmas. <i>"Captivity"..."exile"..."shall come."</i> These are the ingredients with which God uses to create a bridge to something that if we are not careful, we will miss completely.<br /><br /><i>O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free<br />Thine own from Satan's tyranny<br />From depths of Hell Thy people save<br />And give them victory o'er the grave<br />Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel<br />Shall come to thee, O Israel.</i><br /><br /><i>"Victory."</i> Beyond the Christmas story lies the life of Christ, his passion, death, and resurrection. As I wait with all the hope and expectation a homeless person might for shelter or a hungry child for food, I am reminded that bitterness is only part of the story. The other part is much better but can only be experienced in balance with the other.<br /><br /><i>O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer<br />Our spirits by Thine advent here<br />Disperse the gloomy clouds of night<br />And death's dark shadows put to flight.<br />Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel<br />Shall come to thee, O Israel.<br /></i><br />The two most vulnerable times in our lives are when we are born and when we die. There is little we can do to intervene on both outside the grace of the One Who gives and takes away life. Death comes to us, too, when we forget to breath in rhythm with the One Who first breathed into us. Anticipation causes us to pay attention, awake from our slumber, and participate in making what will be forever, a present reality today.<br /><br /><i>O come, Thou Key of David, come,<br />And open wide our heavenly home;<br />Make safe the way that leads on high,<br />And close the path to misery.<br />Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel<br />Shall come to thee, O Israel.</i><br /><br />Rejoice. We've sung it every stanza now, but it seems to jump off the page as we talk about our <i>"heavenly home" </i>and <i>"the way that leads on high."</i> We have much to experience in the world to come. Yet we have glimpses of what is to come now. It's in the innocence of a child's love, the faithfulness of a spouses support, and the compassion of receiving God's gift in the form of a human child. Yes, rejoicing is an appropriate response.<br /><br /><i>O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,<br />Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height,<br />In ancient times did'st give the Law,<br />In cloud, and majesty and awe.<br />Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel<br />Shall come to thee, O Israel. </i><br /><br />The are two dimensions to the Advent: reliving the coming Messiah as a baby and the knowledge that one day he will come again but in a much different way. The challenge is not to find the "signs of the times" in current events but to carefully observe the face of God among his creation and to open our eyes to his presence already abundantly clear.<br /><br />For me,<i> "O come, O come, Emmanuel"</i> is a renewed invitation from my soul to the presence of the One Who waits patiently for me to ask Him to come and dwell within me. It is in the waiting that I find the Messiah and will rejoice.<br /><br />This is why I need the Advent. </span></span>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-13363691602798755092009-12-10T09:18:00.005-06:002009-12-10T09:35:28.979-06:00ROBERT : I have been away some . . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I have been away some, but I have been listening even so, to you and to others. I was away on the road for a bit, and then away because I have not been as well as I would like. Then away for a rest in the sun.<br /></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So I was away when your note came, the one you sent to me at the beginning of this Advent that is upon us. It was the note that reminded me that it was time once again to begin our annual wait for the coming of the Messiah. I was away when the note came, but I heard you.<br /></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I began to hear something else as well, in the listening, in the time away. So I wrote it down. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We wait in the dark and the silence of this season<br /><br />We wait because </span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">it is what those who came before us taught us to do<br />It is what those who stand beside us do<br />and we do not want to be left alone or left out<br /><br />We wait because were taught this Story </span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">by those who loved us well<br />Our love for them requires that we wait alongside them </span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">even those we love yet no longer see<br />And we wait because of those who are now given to us to love<br />The love we were given and are now to give </span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">calls us to keep this vigil<br /><br />We wait because we believe the Promise will be kept again<br />That is the part of us that is the most childlike and the most real<br />We wait in the hope that the Love that we seek may yet be found<br /><br />We wait because sometimes waiting is all one can do<br />in the midst of the noise and the clamor of our lives<br />In the silence and the darkness that is bound to come to us all<br />even if it is unbidden or unnamed or unacknowledged<br /><br />God is with us as we watch </span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">for the One Who is to come among us</span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">God is with us in the silence </span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">as we listen for the Hosannas to ring out<br />God is with us in the dark </span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">while we hope for the Light of the world<br />God is with us always in our waiting<br /><br />So we wait in the dark and the silence of this season<br />The wait will be over soon</span></i><br /></div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-81217515379063031802009-10-03T08:58:00.007-05:002009-10-03T09:53:55.923-05:00ROBERT : This running conversation . . . .<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">This running conversation has been going through my head lately. ( Relax, I told my doctor about it. )</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I have some friends in my neighborhood who do not have any health insurance. I have a lot of friends who do not have health insurance. They are educated people with jobs, people who work very hard and live very frugally, people who pay their tithes and pay their taxes, pay their rent and pay their mortgage, people who are active in their churches and spend more than their fair share of time and resources with and for the poor.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>They just cannot afford to get sick or to go to the doctor to keep from getting sick. Neither can their children. They are an accident or illness away from losing everything.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">So in my head I have been </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">listening</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">to</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">talking</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">with</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> various and sundry of my friends up and down the pew about the predicament my friends are in, about how </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">we the people,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> especially the portion of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">we the people</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> that claim to be </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">the Body of Christ</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">, might bring some of our collective resources to bear on such circumstances. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Some of my friends on the pew say that they do not want the government to help provide health care for these people because it seems socialist, and socialist is code for communist and communist is code for godless, and helping folks with their health care is a slippery slope we do not want to go down. They seem to suggest the word socialist only applies to the notion of a public option for health care these days. They are reasonably certain that the word does not apply to their Medicare benefits or their veterans' benefits or the health care provided for government employees. It does not seem to apply to schools, road construction, or Pell Grants, for that matter.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Some other of my friends along the pew say that they do no want any of their tax dollars to help pay for health care for people who currently have no health care, no matter how the circumstance came about. They do not know who pays when such folks have to go to the emergency room or stay in a public hospital for an extended period. They seem to think it is some other poor soul whose insurance premiums are increasing and whose taxes are eaten up when such things happen. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Some other friends say </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">we the people</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"> cannot afford to do such a thing, the deficits will be too high and our children will have to pay. They do believe in deficits for wars, deficits for road construction, deficits for bank bailouts, aid to Israel but not Africa, and deficits for college tuition assistance, as well as for some other stuff.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">In my running conversation I have been going back to my insurance-less friends and telling them it will all be okay. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I tell them that all these people up and down the pew are listening to the same Gospel we are — the one where the second commandment is to love your neighbor, like you love your own soul. The Gospel they may even hear some day, and then do something about. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I also remind them to be careful crossing the street, to wash their hands often, and whatever they do, do not go for a checkup.</span></div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-6471508204372843282009-09-21T16:26:00.003-05:002009-09-21T16:32:02.775-05:00BEN : Gratitude is something . . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Gratitude is something I am only beginning to learn. When I was young, I was told so often that my life was my own that I believed what they told me and told myself the same thing. “Everything is within your power. Success is in your hands. Failure is your responsibility.” Such a mantra left little room for grace.<br /><br />I, too, have reflected on the words we have shared when we are together, the words we have pounded out on this blog, the words we have sent to each other on those portable computers we carry in our pockets. I am still thrilled that anyone might be encouraged or, even better, find themselves in the words we have shared. It reminds me that this is not so much a skill we are mastering as it is a gift we are receiving, this ability to occasionally transcend time and space and connect with each other in the midst of our humanity.<br /><br />I began to learn to be grateful when things began to happen in my life that were so fragile that if it had been up to me, I'm sure I would have messed it up. Things like the birth of our baby boy (now 3 years-old), the gift of marriage to the possible reincarnation of Mother Teresa (if you lived with me you'd understand why she must be one of God's special saints), the discovery of an ability to write words and sentences and paragraphs that people want to read, and the moments here and there when people tell me that something I have done or said or written has inspired them in some way.<br /><br />Looking back from the lofty perspective of the ripe old age of 29, I can already see the “slender threads” Robert A. Johnson talked about. Even when I was convinced that my destiny or fate or future — whatever your word — was completely in my own hands, the One Who called me into existence was actually shaping me for something else, something so strikingly ordinary I might have overlooked it were it not for a few people, a few special ones who taught me that it is in the ordinary in this world that one most often finds the Holy.<br /><br />And there is no other appropriate response in the presence of such Holy things than gratitude. Everything I am and everything I am becoming is a gift from above. My calling is to keep saying “yes.”<br /><br />Since we seem to be ending with prayers lately, here is one from Thomas Merton. It is becoming my own prayer these days.<br /><br /></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always. Amen.</span></span></i>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-83313951803296531202009-09-09T18:25:00.004-05:002009-09-09T18:38:47.072-05:00ROBERT : I have been listening to us . . . .I have been listening to us talk for some time now. Reading us, I suppose, is a better way to say it, though I <i>read</i> what we write you and I — Robert & Ben — and have no ink on my hands and wonder if I wrote or read anything at all. ( A conversation for another day, to be sure. )<br /><br />I want to raise my hand in mid-conversation for just a moment.<br /><br />I have been listening not just to you and I, good friend, but the folks who are kind and gracious enough to follow us and to read us, and then are thoughtful and generous enough to send us notes and comments about the things that we are writing here, about the conversation that we are having, about the conversation we hope to be participating in, about the conversation that is taking place all over Christendom these days. — the Conversation that the Spirit of the Holy One began long ago, and has now drawn us to continue.<br /><br />We are headed to Kingdomtide, you and I, and so are all our friends, whether they keep the same calendar or not. And it seems right to me on this fine and sunny not-too-far-from-fall afternoon to raise my hand and say the words of the ancient prayer, words that encompass and encircle and encourage not only you and I, but David and Christi, and Joanne and Jim and Elaine, and Dave and Gail and Fran and John, and all the rest of us up and down this great long pew . . . .<br /><br /><i>You have made us one with Your saints, in heaven and in earth : Grant that in our earthly pilgrimage, we may always be surrounded by this fellowship of love and prayer, and know ourselves to be surrounded by their witness to Your power and mercy. Accept the prayer of Your people, we pray, and in Your great mercy, look with compassion on all who turn to You for help. Grant that we may find You and be found by You; that our divisions may cease; that we may be united in Your truth; and that we may walk together in love to bear witness to Your glory in the world.</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>We ask these things in the Name of the One Who made us, in the name of the One Who redeems us, and in the name of the One Who will sustain us until we are home, at home with You and with all Your saints. <b>Amen</b>.</i><br /><br />It is a prayer of thanksgiving and of hope. Pray it and send it and believe it for and to and on behalf of someone you love, and those who have loved you. And be grateful for them all, as I am for you, good friend, and for all who take the time to listen to us, those who are named above, and those who are known only in the secrets of our hearts.</div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-58951464437828760402009-09-01T10:06:00.003-05:002009-09-01T10:13:34.379-05:00BEN : I too spent time as a cadet . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I too spent time as a cadet in God’s Army, as one might say. </span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I remember one particular event where we strategically captured one intersection in suburban Houston. We were armed with cold Coca-Colas and tracts on a brutally hot afternoon. The pitch was this: “Coke says that they are the real thing, but I want you to know that Jesus is the real thing.” We were so proud that we had distributed hundreds of ice-cold beverages to unsuspecting people who were in need of the Gospel. Mission accomplished.<br /><br />Perhaps there were one or two people who peeled off and then read the tract that was pasted to the side of the can by way of the intense condensation. My guess is that most used it like a napkin to keep their hands dry while they consumed a cold beverage in the heat of a Houston summer.<br /><br />Looking back, I was that obnoxious evangelical who always wanted to lock horns in a verbal debate and prove someone else wrong. The goal was to get the other person to see the flaw in their logic, give up, concede, and then admit that I was right. The sad reality is that there is probably some person I went to middle or high school with that will forever hold me as a reason why they do not want to be called a Christian.<br /><br />So much has changed in my life that I’m not sure I even recognize the guy I was back then. And more and more, I feel less inclined to tell others that I am a Christian for fear that they might think of me as the obnoxious guy I once was.<br /><br />The practice of my teenage years left me quick to speak but empty inside. So much so that when the structure of the weekly “sales” meetings ended after I left for college, I felt let down and lost. It was not be until I sat in silence and saw the light in the flicker of a candle lit by one of the holiest men I know did I realize that the path to God is one that should begin and end with silence, for the “real thing” often reveals that which should never be spoken of or written.<br /><br />My greatest failure was this: the practice of my faith centered around the flaws of others rather than myself. The story of the woman brought before Jesus after having been caught in the act of adultery resulted in the condemnation of the elders who set her up, not the naked woman standing before him. Is there a more compelling reason to believe in the promise of the Gospel?<br /><br />I am a Christian not because I was able to find proof that I was better than someone else but because God saw me naked and yet did not condemn me either.<br /><br />Salvation comes not in the saying of magical Sinner’s Prayer but in the seeing of ourselves naked and realizing we no longer feel condemnation. </span></span><br /></div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-4420468522507999102009-08-19T08:37:00.006-05:002009-08-19T08:49:11.074-05:00ROBERT : I am always nervous . . . .<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I am always nervous when the conversation turns to evangelism in some way. Perhaps I am unnerved by my sense of not being worthy enough to have even heard the Good News much less be responsible for telling someone else about it. Perhaps it is just shyness, I do not know for certain. </span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Three moments from my back pages always come to mind.</span></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> One is the memory I have of being fifteen and standing on a street corner in some wild and unevangelized city like Memphis or Louisville with my hands full of </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Four Spiritual Laws</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> booklets. They were given to me and my fellow members of our youth group in Nashville to hand out to folks in such pagan cities in order to save the city and its residents from eternal damnation. Why we were not so concerned about our own city, I do not know. Perhaps the kids from Louisville had gone to Nashville to cover our backs. I am not sure I did much good.<br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The second moment has to do with the title of a book I edited back in the nineties, a title that has always stuck with me — </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A Life That Becomes the Gospel</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">. Which sounds to me like a pretty fair witness to having heard the Gospel, the sort of witness I would like to make some day. I was struck by the double entendre for the word becomes in the title and still am. Does it mean to reflect well on the Gospel or to turn into the Gospel? I thought then and still think now that it means both. And I think I am being called to live that out in some way that affects others, maybe even draws them nearer to the kingdom.<br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The third is the simplest and most powerful expression of the Good News I ever heard. My friend Russell once said to me that he thought three things were true. The first is that God is love. The second is that that Love got loose here on earth somehow in the person of Jesus Christ. The third is that if you believe the first two, then everything about your life is different — the way you talk, the way you act, the way you work and think and love.<br /><br />I believe that somewhere in between and around and through and up under and next to ‘becoming the Gospel’ and ‘everything about your life is different’ is the kind of bearing witness and preaching of the Gospel to which we are called.</span></span><br /></div></div></div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-17644552524452664192009-08-10T15:22:00.011-05:002009-08-12T06:21:52.611-05:00BEN : To tell or not to tell. . . .<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To tell or not to tell. Perhaps that is another question that Hamlet might have found himself reasoning had things not ended up as they did.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I come from the part of the pew where ‘telling’ is a large part of what we are supposed to do. It is our job to learn the pitch and become corporate spokespersons for the Kingdom. We are the chosen sales reps, and we are the polished business development folks responsible for fulfilling [sic] the Great Commission. We go forth armed with our elevator speeches to tell folks the Truth. Those who are the best at this, receive the highest honors.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There is stark contrast between the posture of the One Who Came and those who come from my part of the pew when it comes to seeking and saving the lost. I am amazed at how many times the Messiah acts in miraculous ways and then asks the subject of that particular miracle to keep silent and tell no one. This is so confusing that theologians have decided they don’t know either, so they relegate their explanation to an elusive phrase – “Messianic Secret” – whatever that means.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It is an odd thing to carry within you a guilt, deeply seeded from a childhood of Sunday School and Vacation Bible School where one is told time and time again that those who do not tell out the Good News are those who have not really been changed by The Red Letters. That is a lot to process, especially when you believe there is eternal significance attached to the act.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The redemption, if you want to call it that, is that the majority of the people who occupy this part of the pew hear the message from the person in the pulpit and disregard it as a pollyianic cry for new recruits from God’s publication relations department. This part of the pew publishes research [sic] that uncovers the fact that most people who claim to be “evangelical Christians” will never tell [sic] a non-believer [again, sic] about their faith.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I am wrestling very hard these days with the notion that the part of the pew that seems to tout this position also seems to be the part of the pew that is shrinking. In fact, people are scooting across The Great Divide by the millions. And in the middle of a disastrous evacuation, the company messengers just keep getting louder and more obnoxious.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Silence and prayer preserved the Way of Christ after it was in danger of the normalization of Christianity in Rome and beyond. It was those who fled to outlying areas and agreed to preserve the words and practice of the One Who Came through community, study, and practice who are responsible for my hearing of the Red Letters. Were it not for these brave men and women, the Gospel would have been entirely lost. And yet nowhere in The Rule they left for us are the words “Go and tell.”</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Perhaps the way to tell the world and fulfill The Great Commission, if such an editorial comment from one telling of the Gospel story is appropriate in the first place, is to read and struggle through the call to love, forgive, and sacrifice in the midst of our tendencies to hate, begrudge, and protect what is ours for the taking.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A wise friend once said, “The Good News is this: After centuries of attempts to erase, diminish, and subvert that message of the One Who Came, it survives today.” The great irony is that the message of faith, hope, and love has largely been spread since the beginning, no matter what words have been said.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Perhaps the One Who Came requested silence because he knew that, in our speaking, our faith would be held captive by the vocabulary most readily available to us rather than set free through our transcendent behaviors — a smile, a glance, or a tear that speaks clearly to all humanity, even those at the very ends of the earth.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">These days, my mouth is shut. My heart is open. My prayer is constant. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Garamond"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Perhaps my silence will tell no one, perhaps my silence will tell anyone who will listen — with their soul, the only part we were given by the One Who created us that is blind and deaf to anything less than eternal — perhaps my silence will give voice to the Good News.</span></span></p>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-594899577200193592009-07-30T19:12:00.005-05:002009-07-30T19:44:31.146-05:00ROBERT : I cannot let go . . . .I cannot let go of the red letters these days. <div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Every day — no, four and five and six times a day — something happens, someone says something to me, I see myself doing some dumb thing that does not exactly match up to living a life that becomes the Gospel, I read a bit from the news, I stumble on one of of us doing some thing unbelievably terrible to another of us — and I find myself wanting to say or shout or proclaim or whisper or scribble in the dust some line from the Gospel according to the One Who came.</div><div><br /></div><div>A few minutes ago, I came across yet another sermon from yet another preacher who gave us yet another set of reasons why the admonition to sell what we have and give everything to the poor was a big deal and yet did not actually apply to his flock.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>After some 50 years or so in the Church, I am still waiting to hear the sermon where a minister — a priest, brother, evangelist, prophet, messenger, so on and so forth — stands and says, 'This day, I have sold everything and given it to the poor.'</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I am still waiting to see forgiveness being given seventy times seven, still waiting for the other cheek to be turned, still waiting for the self-proclaimed first among us to be willing to go without a parking pass, much less to go last.</div><div><br /></div><div>I mention this not because I am holier than anyone. I am very certain that I am holier than no one. If you know me at all, you know that this one thing about me is at least the one true thing about me that I have seen and said. </div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>What I am, these days, is a man who is trying to listen deeply, struggle mightily, and pray constantly with fear and trembling as I read the red letters.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>No wonder people ignore the red letters of the Gospel and press on to the letters of those who after the One Who came, the One Who wrote no letters, as I recall.</div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-7355288795227966022009-07-16T06:40:00.000-05:002009-07-20T06:42:52.178-05:00BEN : I recently read . . . .I recently read an article where the presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church in America was asked about her beliefs as to the personal salvation of individuals. The answer Bishop Scholori gave struck me as very consistent with what I’m reading in the Gospels these days. (Though, I’m sure it enraged many on my end of the pew.) She said that it was not for her to decide who is saved and who is not; that’s God’s business. Her job is to live a life consistent with what Jesus talked about and taught and to invite others to do the same.<br /><br />Salvation has always been the central focus of the corporate gatherings on my end of the pew. In fact, every worship service ends with a call to come forward to receive salvation as if we were all still meeting in some pitched tent in the heat and humidity of summer and the guy preaching was wiping the sweat from his brow and the local gospel group was singing one more stanza of “Just As I Am.”<br /><br />Now that we have effectively learned how to “close the deal” with folks on Sunday morning, we spend little time helping them find their way to the red letters of the Savior they now profess and even less time unpacking what he said and taught and did. And then we wonder why so few people find any depth to their living; we are perplexed that complete integration of faith and doubt, the Holy and the ordinary rarely takes place.<br /><br />I must admit that Jesus continues to raise the stakes. Every time I turn to the Gospel reading in my Daily Office Book, I take a deep breath. I know I will be asked to change my priorities, give up something, revaluate what I hold to be worth much and rethink what I regard as of little value. I know I will be asked to pay attention to the people on the margins rather than in the middle or on the stage, and to find power in my praying rather than my ability to bring about change through militant reformation.<br /><br />What makes Jesus a revolutionary figure, as one or two have said since his resurrection and ascension, is that he changed all the rules. He told the rich young ruler to sell everything. He approached lepers and told them they were clean. He rescued women from angry mobs and restored life to the children of devastated parents. He even called a friend back from the dead. In turn, it is my job to look within and leave behind the security of my wealth, seek out the unlovable and rejected, bring life and hope to those who struggle to find it, and to ignite a fullness to life for those to whom I have been given to ensure the death of their passion does not last forever.<br /><br />All of what Jesus talks about and teaches deals with the here and now, not the world to come.<br /><br />I have yet to read about Jesus asking anyone, “If you were to die tonight, do you know where you would spend eternity?” or “Has there ever been a point in your life when you’ve asked Jesus to be your personal [sic] Lord and Savior?” or even praying what some call “The Sinner’s Prayer.”<br /><br />I think Bishop Scholori was right. I have enough on my plate trying to work through and live out what we have been given in the red letters to spend much time worrying about how the process begins, if there is such a thing as a beginning in the first place.robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-47370175447021777912009-07-09T06:14:00.001-05:002009-07-10T06:17:52.636-05:00ROBERT : I have long thought . . . .I have long thought that we Christians were pretty good folks. At least for the most part. <br /><br />We do our fair share of helping people in need and teaching our children the faith and offering up our prayers. Though whether we do that more often than or better than or with more fervor than people who are Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist is open to discussion, I suppose. <br /><br />I have long believed that we were pretty good folks and might even be better folks if we actually believed the Good News that Jesus came to tell us. Which begins with actually listening to it. <br /> <br />We spend most of our time wrestling with the Gospel stories rather than listening to what was said by the One Who came, the One Who came to announce the Good News in the first place. It is hard to blame us — it is way more fun to argue over the historical accuracy of the accounts we have received from the Evangelists, or wander our way through a discussion of the social mores of the time in which He lived, or have these theological quilting bees where we connect the old scriptures to the new. Who wants to listen to Someone Who says we should give everything to the poor, love our enemies, live in the kingdom that has already come, love all of our neighbors, and otherwise completely change the way we live and move and have our being in the world? Let there be flannelgraphs, I say, I liked studying the Gospels that way.<br /> <br />We who claim to be the Body of Christ would do well to spend more of our time listening to the Christ than we do talking about the Christ.<br /><br />I wonder sometimes what might happen to us and among us and within us if we spent a year only reading the red letters. <br /> Perhaps we would grow up to be pretty good folks. Or maybe something even better.robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6561404206099054897.post-76444954926527006102009-07-02T06:26:00.007-05:002009-07-02T06:37:23.982-05:00BEN : The words of Christ . . . .The words of Christ are strangely absent from the practice of our faith. Growing up on my end of the pew, so many were willing to talk about Paul that Jesus seemed largely ignored. It’s as if we determined that knowing Jesus by proxy was just as good as knowing Jesus himself.<div> The beginning of this new liturgical season brought a new challenge to mind. Instead of reading the Old Testament and Epistle readings associated with each Daily Office schedule, I have chosen to only read and meditate on the Gospel reading. I have spent the Year so far following the events of our savior’s life, following him from promise to Pentecost, yet it occurred to me that I had heard him speak very little during that time.</div><div> If I am to possess any level of sincerity in my claim to be a follower of Christ, I ought wrestle with the Jesus of the Gospels, the One who is strangely silent in my Sunday School education.</div><div> Nearly every Sunday, I hear about his death and resurrection. Every Sunday I hear the message captured in John 3:16 in one fashion or another. Not that there is anything wrong with those moments and thoughts. Christ’s death and resurrection was the fulfillment of God’s plan of redemption. But if this is the only part of his life we are going to recount, does that mean the balance of his life after birth and until death was inconsequential? Was it time wasted just being human?</div><div> And if these final moments are so important, why do the Gospels and Jesus himself spend so little time on his death and resurrection?<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"> Now, t</span>here are some questions worth wrestling with, I think.</div></div>robert benson and ben strouphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08701852293697722853noreply@blogger.com2