A Friend's Thoughts: June 2013

Saturday, June 15, 2013

June 2, 2013

“The kingdom of heaven is spread over the earth and people do not see it.” Saint Thomas tells us that Jesus said that. How can it be that the kingdom of heaven is before us and we do not see it? I believe that heaven is not a place, either on this earth or after this life. I believe heaven is an experience – the experience that all is well exactly as it is. How do we find that experience, however fleeting? We seek it by grateful reflection, and we find it by love and grace – those powers which, to me, are God.

April 14, 2013

To those of us who believe that God is more than just a construct of homo sapiens, God had to exist before our species existed - and God will exist after our species is gone from this earth. Even if God – other than through ourselves as God's representatives - can be pleased or displeased; even if God notices and cares about how we think about God, whether and how we pray to God, or how we treat each other, our fellow creatures, and this planet; how can we think that God was less pleased before our species existed, and will be less pleased after our species is gone, when the other species just take from the earth and each other what they need?

April 7, 2013

Friday night I went to see Paula Poundstone at The Garde Arts Center. She did a riff on being an atheist. "You don't have to worry about me showing up on your doorstep some Saturday morning saying, 'There is no word again today!' ... I'm not going to be handing you any booklet - with blank pages!" It was wonderful.

If God is only love, the power of love, that is plenty for me.

January 20, 2013

One of my favorite books is The Holy Man.* In that book, the protagonist says, "If you treat everyone you meet as a holy person, you will be happy." That is easy to do when one sees God in every person - and realizes that each person is her or his own preeminent theologian.

* By Susan Trott, Riverhead Books, 1995.

December 9, 2012

Sometimes God seems inaccessible. Perhaps sometimes God’s voice is so soft it is hard to hear over the noises around us. For those times, I believe God has appointed for every person a steward, a guide. God has given each of us a guardian – a “Clarence, the probationary angel”, one might say. That steward is each of us, ourselves. That guardian is the part of us which asks, “What of love can I bring to this moment?” – and which answers that question.

November 18, 2012

Does God withhold?

Does God guard the stores of grace?

I think not.

I do not believe God is constantly deciding whether to withhold or bestow grace based upon our condition, conduct or beliefs.

I believe God is constantly bestowing on us all grace consistent with the gift of Life, including the laws of nature and our capacity to learn, to choose, and to act.

I believe grace is ours – today and always; ours to discover, to appreciate, and to reflect as best we can.

October 21, 2012

I believe that there is that of God in every person. God is always present, patient and accessible. The door to God’s space, so to speak, is always open, no matter how many distractions we allow to keep us away. Whenever we ask, “what of God can I bring to this moment?”, we will always get a useful, loving answer.

October 7, 2012

Today I ask God, "Who are you?" "WHAT are you?"

The answer I get is that God is Life and all its laws and breaths. And each of us has a role in how other people experience God.

January 29, 2012

What of God can I bring to this moment?

That is the most useful question I know.

What of God can I bring to this moment?

Once yesterday, when I asked that question, the answer I got right away was, “Not much!” Today I see that that was just my answer, my judgment.

The answer to that question rarely comes in words, or even images. Often the answer is simply, “Go about your life and keep asking that question.”

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

January 8, 2012

Logic and faith seem sometimes to conflict; to compete for our attention and acceptance. A recent experience brought them together for me, at least briefly. With my daughter Hannah, at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, I saw an Imax movie about the Hubble Space Telescope and its contributions to our understanding of our universe. The telescope's images of space were dazzling. The facts, in the narrative, were mind-boggling. As the telescopic image zoomed out past the edge of our galaxy (oh, a billion stars), and past our cluster of 36 galaxies, there appeared an amazing array of stars -- what you'd see on a crystal clear Vermont summer night. Then it was explained that those were not stars. They were galaxies! Scientists have estimated* that there are ten stars for every grain of sand on this planet!

If there is a God, a Creator, a Power, infusing, and with dominion over, such a vast universe, how could it possibly be that that God, that Creator, that Power, is not in every person?

* See http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/07/22/stars.survey/ See also http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/09/17/161096233/which-is-greater-the-number-of-sand-grains-on-earth-or-stars-in-the-sky
For a skeptical view (roughly the same number - limiting sand comparison to beaches, i.e., excluding ocean floor and deserts), see http://cosmologyscience.com/cosblog/comparing-total-number-of-stars-with-grains-of-beach-sand/

December 25, 2011

It is a wonderful, wonderful thing that Jesus Christ was born. We joyfully celebrate His birth today. However, I imagine He would rather be honored by our doing our best to spread his message of love and of people's capacity to have their own direct relationships with The Creator Of All Things.

November 13, 2011

What do we need to experience the peace of God that passeth all understanding?

Is it for the world to change?

Is it for us to change?

Or is it just the recognition and acceptance of that peace?

October 16, 2011

Christ has died.

Christ has risen.

Christ will come again.

This liturgy concerning the essence of God in human form is spoken often and in many places.

I believe that Jesus Christ has been reborn, has come again - and does so every time a baby is born. I believe that Christ has come again in every one of us. When we hold hands at the end of Meeting, it moves me to feel that I am holding Jesus’s hands.

Christ is in every grocery store clerk, every mechanic, and every person without a job. Christ is in everyone participating in the demonstrations on Wall Street and in every CEO many stories above them. Christ is in every prisoner and in every prison guard.

This belief, truly held, creates much responsibility. But it also provides the love and strength to bear that responsibility.

September 4, 2011

The Bible tells us that Jesus worked many miracles here on Earth. He turned a few loaves and fishes into a meal for thousands. He healed the sick. He made the blind see and the crippled walk. He even brought the dead back to life. But I think the Bible also tells us that Jesus's mission was not to fix the world. If he had spent his days doing that, the Bible would be quite different.

Instead, Jesus talked to people. His mission was to teach people that we can fix the world. Indeed, according to the Bible, He said “Everything I do, each of you can do.” [John 14:12] He told us how to fix the world when He gave us the two most important commandments. He gave us the wisdom and the will in the first, when He said, "Thou shalt love thy God in the first heart, mind and strength." And he gave us the way in the second, "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

June 5, 2011

Gracious God, we thank you for the capacity to experience that everything is all right just the way it is, and that we are contributing to goodness and peace in this world. It is often difficult to discover – and rediscover – and develop the capacity to experience life being all right just the way it is. Anger, grief, loss, fear, greed, and many other things get in the way. But that experience is transcendent. And contributing to others’ discovery of that experience, of that peace, helps us find it, too.

Monday, June 10, 2013

April 17, 2011

Dear God, how can I make the best use of Your gift of life this week?

Today the answer I get to that question is to live fully and passionately, guided always by love. Do not fear temptation, for it reveals my true values. Do not be daunted by discomfort, without which there is little growth. Pay attention to attachments, culling those which get in the way of the full experience of the gift of life.

January 2, 2011

“What of God can I bring to this moment?”

There is always an answer to that question, even if it is simply, “Keep asking that question.” I suppose a longer version of that answer is, “Be yourself. Keep asking that question. And behold what happens.”

December 19, 2010

As I try to "center down", as I try to connect with God, the process could be something out of a movie. It might be a movie where I am digging furiously, desperately, to reach God as if God were a miner trapped by a cave-in. Or maybe it's a movie in which I'm frantically searching for God as if God were a child lost in a forest at night, flashlight beams going every which way. It could be that I'm being chased by wolves and I'm running for my life in search of help. Then I hear a voice, calm and clear and right next to me, say, "I am here."

November 21, 2010

Dear God, we pray, "Lead us not into temptation." Lead us not into temptation of only the physical, economic or behavioral sort. Lead us not into temptation of a spiritual sort inconsistent with Your service or with sound stewardship of Your gift of life. Lead us not into temptation toward self-pity, resentment, self-righteousness, bitterness, envy or extravagant anger.

July 11, 2010

It is often said that we only get one chance to make a first impression.

We also only get one chance to make a last impression. We just do not know when that moment will be.

From this, it could be said that we only get one chance to make a last living impression with God.

Today I ask God's help living in such a way that, whenever that moment comes for me, God and I may be at peace with it.

July 4, 2010

Our yearnings

may be invitations

to imagine

God's yearning for oneness with us.

February 21, 2010

A few weeks ago, as I was driving southbound on Interstate Route 95, a northbound SUV flew over the median barrier toward me, rolled several times, first stern over bow and then side over side, and came to rest on its roof about twenty feet in front of my car.

No one was hurt. To my amazement, the driver of the SUV crawled out the passenger window and walked away.

There is grace and it is a miracle.

Just as miraculous is the fact that every person - each of us - can choose to be an agent of grace in our daily lives.

December 6, 2009

My mother-in-law died last weekend. Wynne Cole lived a wonderful life, radiating love and cheer, and faithfully keeping the glorification and service of Jesus Christ her mission. Hers being the fourth death in my immediate family in the last thirteen months, I have had extraordinary occasion to reflect on death and life. I believe that the loss of a beloved's life is not the loss of a soul, let alone of our memories or of the loved one's blessings or inspiration. Though we mourn, we the living still have the opportunity and, I think, the responsibility to live up to the best in those who have passed away; to increase love, peace, justice and joy in the world; and to be the best possible stewards of Grace itself.

September 27, 2009

Two brothers lived in a farming village. One day, while they were out working in the open fields, there was an earthquake. When the tremors stopped, the brothers ran to the village. They found many buildings had fallen down and many people had been killed, including both their parents and both their wives. After the burial ceremonies, one brother stayed by the graves, weeping day and night. The other brother went back to the village and spent his days and nights helping the injured, helping clear away the damage, helping rebuild the city, and preserving the crops. He wept often, too, but few people saw that because he was working.

After a while, that brother went to the cemetery to visit his brother and the graves. His brother was still there, grieving, bereft and depressed, and said, "It seems to me you didn't love our parents and your wife as much as I loved our parents and my wife."

The other brother was quiet for a long time. Then, in the gentlest of voices, he said, "So it seems. So it seems. I love you, my brother."

June 7, 2009

We call this Meeting for Worship.

I think, however, that God would rather be served than worshiped.

I think God would rather be a parent and counselor than an idol.

I think God would rather we ask for guidance and support rather than simply hope for it.

I think God wishes for God's fullest expression which, on this planet, is not possible without human participation.

January 25, 2009

"Albert Schweitzer once said, 'I don't know what your fate will be, but I do know this: the only ones of you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.' In my new day, dear God, I don't know what my fate will be. But I know that when I ask, 'What of You can I bring to this moment?', I may be completely confident in the guidance I receive."

April 13, 2008

There was an essay in the "This I Believe" series on National Public Radio this morning* concerning pain -- the proper sharing of the pain of citizenship. The gist was that we tend to avoid bearing our full share of that pain and that our nation is much the worse for our doing so.

In the quiet reflection of Meeting for Worship, I find peace and comfort. I find relief from stress and pain.

But much the greater benefit of being in this circle of friends and seekers is the increase in my capacity to bear the proper pain of citizenship.

* http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89558974 (Sharing the Tragedy of War, by Aileen Mory, April 13, 2008)

January 27, 2008

Dear God, I ask your help in finding greater joy and contentment.

The answer You give me today is,

"I have given you much joy and contentment without effort on your part. You call that grace. More important, I have given you the capacity to find joy and contentment when it is not easy to do so. See what you can do with that."

Winter, 2007

Long ago, members of the Religious Society of Friends were called Quakers because some of them – our predecessors – literally quaked to experience the presence of God. No wonder! I’d quake, too, if I experienced God being right here right now!

But I believe God is in every person – in each of us here now – and I’m not quaking. Why not? Is it because, in my imagination or my faith, there’s such a difference between God as a separate presence and God diffused within each of us? Is it because I am so accustomed to being with people that God in you – in even one of you – or in me is not God enough to quake for? Is it because I am far from fully experiencing God in people, even myself?

May 28, 2006

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, a day of most special honor to all veterans of our nation’s armed forces. What are we, as Friends, to do on this martial holiday? I think we are to acknowledge that countless brothers and sisters have worked very hard, suffered very much, and often given their lives in service of this nation and the cause of peace as best they perceived that cause, or at least as they were ordered by our leaders. We are to give thanks for such sacrifices and the immeasurable benefits we’ve received from them. And we are to set self-righteousness aside.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

April 10, 2005

As they prepared for the grueling, four-mile Harvard-Yale Regatta, a young oarsman confided to a veteran, “Sometimes I just don’t think I can make it.”

After a moment of silence, the veteran softly replied, “I know. You just have to have faith in your training.”

Another story. An octogenarian monk was on his deathbed. A younger monk attending him asked, “Brother, do you feel anxious as death approaches? Do you feel sad?”

“Why should I feel anxious or sad?”, asked the elder. “I have been preparing for this moment for sixty years.”

Each moment of our lives can prepare us for the next moment, small or great, common or mysterious. Let us reflect and decide on the kind of person we want to be. Let us use each moment as training to be such a person. And let us have faith in our training.