BEN : 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.
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.
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.
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.

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 pray you are right that we may be closing in on the News. I need such a thing to be true.

BEN : I too spent time as a cadet . . .

I too spent time as a cadet in God’s Army, as one might say.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

ROBERT : Come Sunday . . . .

Come Sunday, another sort of building block is upon us, this last day of May in the year of our Lord 2009. It is Whitsunday — The Sunday of Pentecost.
      “I will send you power from above,” said the One Who came to those to whom He first came and to us, and in a couple of days we will mark the day when the Spirit came to them and to us, all of us huddled up with each other with fear and trembling in a room upstairs somewhere, anywhere, even here maybe.

We have observed our Lenten fast as winter moved toward spring. It was the season of confession and repentance, the season when we had our forehead marked with ashes. And as a sign of our humility in the face of the sacrifice He was about to make for us, we gave up saying our Alleluias in our worship. We did so even as we denied Him and clamored for Barabbas. 
      We have kept our Easter vigil and been attendant on the coming of a fair portion of all of the best things in the world that come together at Easter — the exuberance of spring and the greening of the earth, the gentle showers of April and the soft, warm days of May that herald the coming of summer. We proclaimed the triumph of the resurrection and the joy and the mystery and the wonder of the news of it. Hail thee, festival day, we sang as the choir processed through the cathedral aisles, and we got our Alleluias back.
      Easter does not last long but it is better than the mere twelve days we were given to celebrate Christmas if you ask me. Even so the fifty days of Easter seem hardly enough time to take in the Paschal mystery.
      But ready or not, Pentecost comes this Sunday. The name simply means fiftieth, as in the fiftieth day. The day was originally a harvest festival that took place on the fiftieth day after Passover. The notion of “harvest” seems right somehow for the season after Easter. It is a day of great celebration, the celebration of the giving of the Holy Spirit to the disciples, and then to us. And a portion of the harvest will be celebrated in some communities with baptism and confirmation.
      Come Sunday, in the Story that was first told in the pages of the Book and now is told to us by the Church calendar as well, the Spirit is about to be given to us, again. Which begs new versions of the same old question — What is the Holy Spirit up to these days, in our days, yours and mine, these days given to us in our generation? And how are we being called to we help with that work? To what are we being drawn by the Spirit — Lord, have mercy, to what is Robert being drawn by the Spirit — in this next season of the journey home? What new thing is the One Who made us trying to do in us and with us and through us on the other side of Pentecost?
      “Be attendant upon that come Sunday,” I say to myself, “be attendant upon that.”

At the very least, I am drawn to an old prayer for this new season — Grant that we may perceive the ways in which You are calling to us, and then grant us strength and courage to pursue those things and to accomplish them; in the name of the One Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
      For those of you keeping score at home that is the same Spirit whose arrival we celebrate come Sunday.
      “Thanks be to God,’ he said, with a proper fear and trembling. And with a proper hope and joy as well.

BEN : For as children tremble . . . .

“For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness,” writes Lucretius in On the Nature of Things, “so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true.”
      Fear is indeed woven into the fabric of human design. It is perhaps the weakness St. Paul wishes would be taken from him even as it serves as a constant reminder of God’s grace. Or perhaps it is the heart of the humiliation for St. Peter as he denies the One Who is being prepared to die. Fear does not reserve itself for the unholy and does not escape the holy either.
      What I am learning is that fear is an introduction to faith. We cannot trust what is not seen without a healthy amount of fear pushing us toward a direction that is undefined and unexplored. We are all moving in such a direction. Each day we live in anticipation of what is to come and in reflection upon what has been. It is in this uncetainty where the Rule provides a timeless discipline that faciliates our development into the life that was first breathed into us at the very beginning.
      A strange thing is taking place as I etch out my Rule with a fountain pen and moleskin parchment: the fears that are keeping me from moving forward are also the very fears that are becoming my salvation. These fear may well be the beginning of spiritual growth.
      What children do not know and what adults should have learned along the way is that those things that represent fear for us are also the beginnings of great things. Not great in the scale of achievement or prosperity. Rather, great in that they become the building blocks that give us the strength to see fear in its fullness — which is really salvation not yet complete.

ROBERT : Whatever else you fear . . . .

Whatever else you fear on this rainy day here in what is quickly becoming the Seattle of the South, do not fear being the only one who is afraid of being insignificant or destitute. In fact, in my case, you can add in the fears of being irrelevant, unreadable, and unread, just to name a few. Not to mention my fear that the spring rains are never going to end. There are some other things I am afraid of as well but I shall not burden you with the entire list.
      The truth of the matter is that our fear — both rational and irrational, justified and unjustified — is a part of the humanity that was whispered into us when we were whispered into being in the first place. It is as much a part of who we are as is the courage to take our lives apart and examine them. It is as much a part of us as our desire to properly balance our lives around our prayer and work and community and rest, to use Benedict’s Rule as a model. It is a part of our struggle to speak with and hear from the One Who made us, to find and do good work, to love and serve those to whom we have been given, and to live a life of returning and rest, a life in which we may actually be saved from our fears after all.
      To paraphrase the One Who came among us, paraphrasing done with fear and trembling, I might add — ‘Be not afraid. In fact, do not even be afraid to be afraid.’ A life of faith is meant to be lived in the midst of questions and doubts and complexities and fears. We are called to be faithful not correct; to be who we are instead of who we are supposed to be; to be courageous rather than certain.

On his deathbed, Michaelangelo is reported to have said to his assistant who was attending to him, ‘Draw, Antonio, draw. Draw and do not waste time.’
      Make your Rule, do the work, and be not afraid. Remind yourself that one can hardly go wrong choosing between two goods anyway.