Author Archives: mbj

Selected MP3s of Sermons

Transfiguration and a radiant Earth. February 23, 2020 (Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Tucson, AZ)

Rooted and rising: We shall not be moved. February 17, 2019 (St. James Episcopal Church, New London, CT). The sermon is preceded by a brief introduction by the Rev. Ranjit K. Mathews, Rector of St. James.

Saving Planet Earth: “Arise, my love, my fair one.” September 2, 2018 (Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, BC, Canada). The sermon is preceded by a brief introduction and a minute or two of Robert A. Jonas improvising on shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute).

Keep the faith. February 25, 2018 (Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Tucson, AZ)

Rooted and rising: Spiritual resilience. October 29, 2017 (St. Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle, WA)

March for jobs, justice and climate: “Were not our hearts burning within us?” April 30, 2017 (St. Columba’s Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C.)

You have kept the good wine until now. January 20, 2013 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

A heart for healing. November 18, 2012 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

National Preach-In on Global Warming: The ‘oh shit’ moment we all must have. February 12, 2012 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

Angel in the doorway. December 18, 2011 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

Grumbling in the vineyard. Sept. 18, 2011 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

Creation Sunday: Hands on faith. May 1, 2011 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

Creation Sunday: Good shepherd, good earth. April 25, 2010 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

A voice in the wilderness. December 5, 2009 (Grace Church, Amherst, MA)

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, January 20, 2013. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Isaiah 62:1-51 Corinthians 12:1-11
Psalm 36:5-10John 2:1-11

You have kept the good wine until now

“When the steward tasted the water that had become wine… the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “…You have kept the good wine until now.” (John 2:9-10)

A few weeks ago I came across an essay on the editorial pages of the New York Times in which – as I remember it – the author described the personal and professional hardships of turning 40.  He listed all the reasons why the decade of your 40’s is particularly difficult, but it turns out that he wasn’t looking back nostalgically at a happier time in his youth – he had found every decade of his life unsatisfying.  His essay laid out the reasons why being in your 30’s was pretty awful, too; why it was a burden to be in your 20’s; and why it was so tough to be a teenager.  The essay did not go unanswered.  Before long a letter showed up, in which a reader was keen to carry on the line of reasoning and to inventory all the difficulties we face in our 50’s and 60’s.  I am waiting for a letter that comments on the decades after that. 

Now I don’t have a problem with being clear about the challenges of life, but isn’t it true that something in us hungers for more than a life filled with complaints and regret?  Isn’t it true that we want more out of life – and to give more to life – than to find ourselves perpetually hemmed in by frustration and disappointment?  It is so easy to settle for being only half here, to be caught up in anxiety about the future or weighed down by bitterness about the past.  We can look as if we’re alive – we can go through the motions: we can walk, talk, drive to work, deal with the kids and the grandkids, run the errands – but inside we can be irritable, depressed, worried, and only barely present.  Deep down, isn’t it true that we long for so much more?  The truth is that we’d like our days to be brimming with wonder, not with worry.  We want to be able to rise to the challenge of whatever life brings, to find a way to live with zest and creativity, with curiosity and compassion, no matter what the circumstances of our lives may be.  We don’t want to succumb to cynicism or despair.  We want to be fully alive, not partially alive. 

I can’t help but turn to a poem by Mary Oliver that expresses the determination not to settle for anything less than fullness of life.  It’s called “When Death Comes,”1 and the poet writes, at the end:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement. 
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real. 
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument. 

I don’t want to end up simply having visited the world.

Jesus would understand a declaration like that.  Jesus came to show us a path to fullness of life.  “I have come that you may have life,” he tells us in what sounds to me like a mission statement, “and have it to the full” – or, as another translation puts it, “I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).  “I am the bread of life,” he says (John 6:35).  “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6).
And so his first miracle – the first of the seven so-called “signs” in the Gospel of John that disclose Jesus’ true nature and reveal his glory – is to turn water into wine.  You know the story: during a wedding at Cana, while the festivities are in full swing, the wine runs out.  Jesus points out six large stone jars, all of them empty, and has them filled with water; then he turns their contents into the finest, most delicious wine that anyone has ever tasted.  Jesus is an agent of change, a transformer.  By his words, at his touch, in his presence, what is ordinary and lackluster, “same old same old,” becomes vital and sparkling, as delicious and joy-inducing as the very best – well, choose whatever most pleases you – cabernet sauvignon, merlot, champagne… 

What the story suggests is that there is a river of divine creativity at the very center of things, ready to pour into the most ordinary moments of our lives so that we are filled again with reverence and wonder, with a sense of courage and fresh possibility.  Jesus turns water into wine, not only once, at a long ago wedding in a far away place, but whenever we find ourselves caught up in that mysterious transformation of despair into hope, of fear into gratefulness, of sorrow into joy.  I know what it’s like – you know what it’s like – we all know what it’s like – to find ourselves standing motionless like those empty stone jars, stuck in our old habits and fixed ways of thinking, hopelessly repeating our endless stories of worry, argument, and lament – and then along comes Jesus to wake us up and to fill us with his wine.  Carl Jung once suggested that an alcoholic’s addiction to spirits might be a misplaced search for the Holy Spirit, that intoxicating presence that gladdens our hearts and draws us out of ourselves and gathers us up in love. 

Speaking of love, it’s no accident that the story of Jesus turning water into wine takes place in the context of a wedding.  One commentary2 I read on this Gospel passage argues that it’s strictly incidental that the setting of this miracle story is a wedding, but personally I think that the wedding imagery is crucial.  The wedding is an image of erotic love, of passionate commitment and fidelity.  The poet’s words echo again in my ears:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement. 
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

What transforms the water of our lives into wine?  Discovering that we are deeply loved, discovering that there is an unshakable, eternal Something at the heart of reality that is always giving itself to us in love and always inviting our passionate response.  God is looking for us and longing for us with the ardor and tenderness of a bridegroom looking for his bride.  How else are we transformed except by love?  We can’t turn the water of our life into wine by ourselves.  We can’t force ourselves to change.  Brute willpower can never accomplish deep and lasting transformation of our hearts and minds.  What changes us – what transforms the water of our lives into wine – is the experience of being deeply loved.  So if we want our lives to be transformed, and if we, too, like Jesus, want to be healers and transformers, people who are themselves fully alive and who bring life to others, then we can do what Jesus did: we can listen patiently and faithfully to the inner voice of love.  We can make ourselves vulnerable to the divine touch of God.
You could do worse than to sit down this week and to read through today’s first reading very slowly, receiving the words as if they were personally directed to you – not only to Zion, not only to Jerusalem, but also to you.  “You shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give.  You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.  You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land” – that is, the living, natural world around you – “shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married.”  Now here’s the finish: “For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder” – that is, God – “marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62:2b-5).
Can you take this in?  It doesn’t matter how old you are or how young you are.  It doesn’t matter if you’re in your teens, your 30’s, 40’s, or 90’s.  It doesn’t matter if you’re single or divorced, partnered, married, dating or widowed.  None of that matters.  God is longing to take you, and us, and all God’s creation, into God’s heart.  God wants to give you, and us, and all Creation, a new name, a new identity.  We are no longer to be called Forsaken, but rather My Delight Is In You; we are no longer to be called Desolate, but rather Married.  Whenever we glimpse that union between the soul and God, whenever we taste that marriage between heaven and earth, whenever we discover again how precious we are, and how precious the whole of God’s Creation is, what can we do but come to life?  

Now is the perfect moment to come to life, for we’re living at a pivotal moment in human history when our choices really matter.  As philosopher Joanna Macy points out, we live between two competing possibilities: the possibility of life unraveling on this planet and the possibility of creating a life-sustaining society.  We don’t know how the story will end, so it matters whether or not we are awake.  It matters whether or not we are growing in love for ourselves, for our neighbors, and for the earth on which all life depends.  It matters whether or not we are finding some way to become healers and transformers in a troubled world.  Howard Thurman, the spiritual mentor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., used to say, “Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive and go out and do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

We may say to ourselves, “Oh, it’s too late for me and for the world; I’m too set in my ways, and the world is too far gone.  After all, the Arctic is melting, there is a mega-drought in the Amazon, and some scientists say that we’re past the point where the world’s warming can be limited to 2 degrees.”  Yet here comes the steward, reaching out to take a sip of Jesus’ wine, and saying with astonishment, “You have kept the good wine until now!” (John 2:10b).  What if we are on the brink of – and are in fact already caught up in – a process of radical transformation, in which hate is already being turned to love, despair to hope, and water into wine?  Are we willing to become a bride married to amazement, a bridegroom who takes the world into his arms?

I’ll end with some lines by Adrienne Rich from the last section of her poem, “Dreams Before Waking” (1983):

What would it mean to live
in a city whose people were changing
each other’s despair into hope? —
You yourself must change it. —
what would it feel like to know
your country was changing? —
You yourself must change it. —
Though your life felt arduous
new and unmapped and strange
what would it mean to stand on the first
page of the end of despair?

1. Mary Oliver, “When Death Comes,” New and Selected Poems, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

2. Reginald H. Fuller, Preaching the Lectionary, revised edition, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1984, p. 450.

Sermon for the First Sunday of Christmas, December 30, 2012. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Isaiah 61:10-62:3Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
Psalm 147:13-21John 1:1-18

The Word became flesh

To the world at large, Christmas has come and gone.  December 25th is behind us, we have finished with the shopping and the exchange of gifts, so presumably now is the time to be done with the season, to take down the lights, to pack away the crèche, set the tree on the curb, and move on to thinking about something else.  Christmas is behind us – that’s what the world would say.  But for Christians, Christmas has only just begun.  We have only just begun to explore the incarnation and to savor the gift that God is giving us in the birth of Christ.  Here on the first Sunday after Christmas we are right at the center of the Twelve Days of Christmas, with plenty of time to relish the mystery of the Word made flesh and to do what Mary did at the manger: to treasure this birth and to ponder it in our heart (Luke 2:19).  As a priest told me years ago, over these twelve days we should take our time and soak ourselves in the message of God’s love as patiently as tea bags in a cup of tea.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth… No one has ever seen God.  It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:1, 14, 18).  These lines, culled from the first eighteen verses of the Gospel of John, often called the Prologue of John, express the same mysterious truth that the other Gospel writers evoke in the stories of shepherds and angels, of a birth in a stable, of a visit by wise men bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  The hidden God, the mysterious, ungraspable, unseen and unseeable divine Presence who is the ground of all things, and who infuses, embraces, and constitutes all things, has become seen and known in Jesus Christ.  Through an act of creative self-giving, the hidden, unknown God has been born as one of us.  The formless has taken form; the hidden has been revealed; the ungraspable can now be picked up and rocked as a baby in its mother’s arms.  The Word has become flesh and has lived among us. 

What does this mean, and why does it matter?  I grew up thinking that Christ’s birth was something that took place just once, long ago, in a far away place, to a person I would never know.  Jesus of Nazareth was somehow both fully human and fully divine, and the rest of us lowly human beings could only marvel and worship from afar.  But if we imagine that the incarnation is something that happens only once, and only to someone else, then what meaning can it have for us, and what power does it have to change our lives?  How astonished I was when I first heard about the teachings of the so-called Church Fathers – teachers and writers in the early Church, such as Ireneaus and Clement of Alexandria and Athanasius – who spoke about “divinization,” the process by which human beings are so transformed by the grace of God that we share in God’s nature; we participate in God’s very being, and become in a sense divine.  These early Christians were convinced that God became human so that humans might become divine.  Reading them, I began to see that maybe the incarnation was not only for Jesus Christ.  Maybe the incarnation was in fact our human destiny, the very purpose for which we were created.

As I was writing my little book of Advent and Christmas meditations, each one based on a reading from the Daily Office – the services of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer – I was struck by a passage from Second Peter: “Become participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).  There it was again, right there in the Bible – the notion that human beings can evolve to a point, or mature to a point, where we consciously participate in God.  “Become participants of the divine nature.”  That is an amazing invitation! 

So – what if at Christmas we are celebrating not only Jesus’ birth, but our own birth, too, the possibility that we, too, can share in the divine life, that we, too, can become bearers of the eternal Word?  What if it turns out that our own being is filled with the infinite, creative, and mysterious presence that we call “God”?  What if our own deepest self is in God, and in fact is God, since we have been created in God’s image and likeness?  What if, as the Quakers would say, there is that of God in us?

In a world filled with so much unhappiness, with so much ugliness, confusion, agitation, and violence, what would it be like if more and more of us came to understand that our call in life is to become divine, to allow the divine life to flow more and more freely through us, so that less and less of ourselves is getting in the way, less and less of ourselves is blocking and obstructing that flow?  What would it be like, moment by moment, to remember who we are and whose we are, and to speak and act and choose accordingly?  What would it be like to remember how much goodness we human beings carry within us, how much holiness and beauty?

This may sound like an ego trip, but of course it’s not.  As the contemporary spiritual teacher James Finley often says, mystics don’t take pride in their visions or religious experiences; instead, the mystics say: look at what Love has done in my life.  When we practice incarnation – when day by day we try to open ourselves to God and to participate consciously in the divine nature – we allow God’s love to affect us, to change us, to flow into us and through us.  It is a humbling practice.  Day by day we open to love and try to get out of the way. 

I came across a short video on YouTube1 that shows how this works.  The clip was made by a Buddhist teacher in the Shambhala lineage, not by a Christian, and it never mentions God – yet it gives everyone, whatever our beliefs, a way to awaken to the truth of who we are.  The video starts with black and white images of urban life – we see crowds, traffic, the hustle and bustle of people hurrying off to work.  We see an alarm clock go off, and someone turning on the stove to make morning coffee.  We hear a man saying, “What about me?  That’s my first thought every morning.  What happened to me? is the last thought every night.  Has this got me anywhere?  Any more friends?  Any more love?  Any more joy?  It should have, by now!  In fact, by now I should be a bundle of joy!  Because I say this mantra every day: What about me? What about me?  In fact, it’s embarrassing: I say this mantra all day long, like the beating of my heart: What. About. Me?”

We see images of a man driving, shopping for groceries, and going through all the routines of daily life.  And the narrator presses on, saying, “When I take a shower, I think: What about me?  I hope this shower makes me feel happy.  I hope this kiss makes me feel happy.  I hope this lunch makes me feel happy.  I hope these clothes make me feel happy.  I hope this donut, this cup of coffee, this new affair, this new job — What about me? What about me?”

We see a man in dark glasses standing motionless on a city street, looking baffled and lost, staring glumly at nothing, and finally the narrator says, “You know what?  None of it will make you happy unless you do one simple thing: change ‘me’ for ‘you,’ ‘me’ for ‘you.’”  The black and white images suddenly turn to color.  We see a man lying on his back on a field of grass, eyes open, fully awake, and the narrator exclaims, “Let’s wake up in the morning and try something wild.  Let’s break up the monotony and say: May you be happy.  May you be happy.”  What about you?  That question gives so much more love, so much more joy!  And the narrator continues, “When I give you a big fat kiss, when I take a shower, when I make my bed, when I dance, may it make you happy!  When I give you the remote control, may it make you happy!  When I sit on a park bench by myself, when I feel the sun and the breeze, may it make you happy!  When I just look at you…may it make you happy.”  The video concludes, “You know what? When you’re happy, I’m happy.  That’s the formula: first you, then me.  That’s what happiness is.  It’s just the heart being free.”

That’s what happiness is, and that’s the incarnation, too: when we share in the divine life of joyful self-giving.  I’m not talking about co-dependence, about ignoring our own needs, but rather about opening our eyes and minds and hearts to the God-given preciousness of other people and the whole creation.  God is constantly pouring out God’s self into the world and as the world, giving God’s self to us, right here, and now, and now, in this very moment.  “The Word became flesh and lived among us.”  And the Word becomes flesh and lives again and again among us whenever we open to the love that is hidden in each moment, whenever we allow ourselves to be pulled by love out of the enclosure of our self-absorption and to be freed from self-concern. 

Yes, we have only just begun to explore the incarnation and to savor the gift that God is giving us in the birth of Christ.  Day by day, God willing, Christ will be born a little more fully into our thoughts, into our intentions, into the very cells of our bodies, and the light that is enkindled in our hearts will shine forth more fully in our lives.  

1. Mipham – What About Me, by film producer/director Chewyguru: youtu.be/FDSAAlrqAHM.

Sermon for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, December 16, 2012. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Zephaniah 3:14-20Philippians 4:4-7
Canticle 9Luke 3:7-18

Rejoicing even in darkness

We gather this morning with shocked and troubled hearts as we absorb news of the massacre in Connecticut.  Here in this sacred space I invite you to join me in a moment of silence as we lift up before God those who perished in the gunfire and those who awoke in Newtown this morning deeply grieving, traumatized, angry, or afraid.

(Silence)

Ever-living God, Father and Mother of all mercies, we pray to you for those who died in Newtown: grant them your peace, and may light perpetual shine upon them.  Deal graciously, we pray, with those who mourn, that, casting all their care on you, they may know the consolation of your love and the peace which surpasses all understanding; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

I am glad to say that some of Scripture’s most consoling passages are reserved for today, the Third Sunday of Advent.  Words of comfort begin with the prophet Zephaniah, who urges us to sing aloud, to rejoice and exult with all our heart.  Why?  Because God is in our midst, renewing us in love, exulting over us with singing as on a day of festival.  Then comes Canticle 9, the First Song of Isaiah, which begins with that wonderful cry of confidence: “Surely it is God who saves me; I will trust in him and not be afraid.”  Then we hear those unexpectedly jubilant words from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, a letter written from within a Roman prison and yet filled with joy, “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I will say, Rejoice.  Let your gentleness be known to everyone.  The Lord is near” (Philippians 4:4-5).  The first word of this passage – Rejoice – gives the Third Sunday of Advent its traditional name, Gaudete Sunday, the Latin word for “Rejoice.”  

Rejoice Sunday?  It may sound strange, even jarring, to speak today about rejoicing.  Many of us are reeling, not rejoicing.  This week we’ve been experiencing heartbreak and horror, not exultation and joy.  We need to make room in our hearts, room in our prayers, to explore what has been stirred up in us as we feel our way through this tragedy.  There is wisdom in bringing our anguish into this holy space and in opening it up to God, for the One whose coming we await during Advent is the very One who shares our suffering, the One who enters the darkest places of our lives and the darkest places of the human heart, the One who shines God’s light and brings God’s peace. 

That is why, even in the midst of the world’s darkness, even in the midst of anguish and pain, deep within we do rejoice this morning.  We rejoice even in the midst of death, because God is with us.  We rejoice because we so clearly need God’s healing and need God’s light, and because the God we so love and long for is close to us, as close as our tears, as close as our breath.

I led a Quiet Day yesterday in the Parish Hall, and as we prayed and talked about the events in Connecticut, someone said, “What’s that passage in Habakkuk about trust and joy in the midst of trouble?”  And I’m thinking to myself, “Whoa! Who knew that anyone here reads Habbakuk, much less can quote him?”  I couldn’t even begin to identify the passage that they were talking about.  So I hand over my Bible, and someone flips to the right page, and sure enough, there it is, the prophet Habbakuk proclaiming a divine reality that does not depend on things going well, a divine reality that endures and persists and abides no matter what, no matter what.  The prophet writes, “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vine; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will exult in the God of my salvation.  GOD, the Lord, is my strength…” (Habbakuk 3:17-19a). 

God, the Lord, is our strength, too.  It is when we feel most lost and broken-hearted, most defeated and helpless, that we realize how much we depend on God, how much we need God’s help.  And we rejoice, because as we head toward Christmas we’re preparing for a good deal more than Frosty the Snowman or “a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer.”  We’re preparing for the One who binds up the brokenhearted and sets the prisoner free, for the One who brings good news to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind.  

We rejoice as we prepare, but we do not only rejoice.  God’s steadfast love not only comforts and consoles – it also purifies.  So I must say a word about John the Baptist.  His prickly, impatient presence practically roars through the Gospel passage that we’re given this morning.  He starts with insults, accusing the crowds who follow him of being a “brood of vipers,” fleeing like snakes from the oncoming fire of the wrath of God.  “Bear fruits worthy of repentance,” he rails, for “even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:7-8, 9). 

To tell the truth, I cringe when I hear these words.  My mind goes back to a sermon on this text that I heard twenty-five-plus years ago, when I was working as a seminary student at an Episcopal parish north of Boston.  The preacher practically had smoke coming from his nostrils as he leaned over the pulpit and yelled down that we’d better bear fruit or else be cut down by the ax of God.  I remember leaning back and shaking my head: No way.  I’m not interested in a bullying God; I want nothing to do with a Christianity that’s all about laying guilt-trips, about making other people feel wrong and worthless and small.  We make ourselves small when we try to make others feel small.  I dislike the game of “Gotcha,” when people take malicious delight in catching others in the wrong and pointing out their faults.  It’s no wonder that folks flee the Church when Christianity is reduced to nothing more than a moralistic code of laws and rules, to an enterprise based on shame, blame, and fear, and the certainty that we’ll get it wrong.  Given what we’ve been through this week, I’m also not drawn to imagery that makes God out to be brutal and violent. 

So I look at this passage and I wonder: how is it that the voice of John the Baptist heralds the birth of Christ, the advent of love?  How can we hear his words without getting trapped in that deadly paradigm of accuser and accused, of harsh, overbearing judge and cowering, shame-filled penitent?  Somehow I want to purge his words of what sounds like violence and rage and simply to hear in them the energizing, bracing voice of truth that confronts everything in us and in the world around us that leads away from love.  For John the Baptist has an important message: to prepare for God’s coming, we must come clean.  To prepare for God’s coming, we must relinquish behaviors that are unloving and unjust.  Christianity is obviously not just some feel-good religion; it makes ethical demands. 

“What then should we do?” ask the crowds (Luke 3:10), and, as one commentator explains, the answers that John gives each group “address the inequities and injustice of that society: food and clothing are to be shared with those who have none; taxes are not to be based on the insatiable greed of the powerful; and the military must stop victimizing the public by threats, intimidation, and blackmail.”1  The holy love that wants to draw the world to itself will always contradict the forces of injustice, intolerance, and greed.  If we as a society were to ask John the same question, “What should we do?,” I imagine that one of his answers would be to try to stop gun violence.

And you, as an individual – what should you do?  If God’s love is like a deep, clear river that wants to flow through you without impediment, where are you blocking the flow?  Where are you creating logjams and whirlpools?  For the river wants to flow through you!  The poet Rumi puts it like this: “Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”  It takes patient and earnest exploring to discover the barriers we build within ourselves that hold us back from giving and receiving love.  Maybe we hide out in self-doubt and harsh self-criticism, always putting ourselves down.  Maybe we’re caught up in addictive behavior.  Maybe we settle for a second-hand life, just go through the motions and refuse to throw ourselves into the risks and adventure of being fully alive.  Maybe we’re locked up in envy or jealousy or regret.  Maybe we’re so absorbed in worry that we never get curious about the people around us, never make real contact.  Maybe we live inside a bubble of a world, never reaching out to connect with people who are poorer or younger or older or of a different race or ethnicity than we are.  There are a million ways to hold love at bay, a million ways not to let our selves bear fruit.  And there are a million things we can do to open up the logjam and to let the river flow. 

So here comes John Baptist, that irascible, impatient soul, urging us to wake up and repent – and to get going and do it now, for the Lord is near.  Jesus will come not just with the sweetness of a baby, but also with power to break things open and to set things right.  In his baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit, everything less than love will be revealed and burned away.  As John the Baptist declares, the one who comes after him will take “his winnowing fork in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Luke 3:17-18).  A winnowing fork is what a farmer uses to toss a mix of wheat and chaff into the air.  The wind blows the chaff away, and the heavy grain falls to the ground so that it can be gathered into the granary.  That’s what happens in God’s presence: when we stand in the Spirit, in the wind of God’s love, we are stripped clean.  Everything less than love is scattered and blown away.  In the fire of God’s love, everything less than love dissolves – all our lying, selfishness, and deceit – all of that disappears; it is gone; it is burned away.  We come home to ourselves.  We become at last the love that we were made for. 

So we rejoice in the Lord this morning, even if our hearts are heavy.  We rejoice, even if John the Baptist is pushing us to examine ourselves and come clean.  We rejoice because the One who loved us into being is drawing near, to heal a broken world and to bring us peace.

1. Fred B. Craddock et al, Preaching through the Christian Year: Year C, Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994, p. 18.

Sermon for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, November 18, 2012. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts. Daniel 12:1-3       Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25 Psalm 16            Mark 13:1-8

A heart for healing

“I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel; my heart teaches me, night after night.” (Psalm 16:7)

Let’s begin where the Gospel begins: with predictions of breakdown and distress.  As Jesus comes out of the temple, one of his disciples admires how solid the building is, how large it is, how grand.  Surely it will last forever!  But Jesus turns to him and says, “Do you see these great buildings?  Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down” (Mark 13:2).  All will be thrown down.  As if that weren’t enough, Jesus goes on to predict “wars and rumors of wars… Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines” (Mark 13:7a, 8).

Whoa – these are not the consoling words that we want to hear when we come to church!  Jesus’ predictions of war and natural disaster resonate with what may already be on our minds this morning, we who are following the news of the accelerating conflict in the Middle East, with rockets striking the outskirts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and Israeli tanks and troops marching toward the Gaza Strip.  The possibility of all-out war is alarming countries around the world.  Alongside our ardent prayers for peace, we lift up our sorrow for the death of innocents and our hope for a peaceful and just resolution.

Every year, as the cycle of the church years comes to a close and we head into Advent, our Scripture readings always turn our attention to the end times, giving us images of breakdown and violence, and reminding us that everything we suffer is being held in God.  Today is a good day to bring to mind not only the anguish of the Middle East, but all the places in the world and in our own lives that cry out for healing.  As usual, I bring to the conversation my concern about the wounding of the natural world on which we depend.  I heard Bill McKibben speak this week in Boston to almost three thousand people, so I am freshly reminded of the urgent need to tackle climate change and to stop the unraveling of life as we know it on this planet.

So here is Jesus predicting suffering and breakdown, telling us that “all will be thrown down.”  Yet in the very same passage he also tells us: “do not be alarmed” (Mark 13:7).  “Do not be alarmed,” he says. “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” (Mark 13:8).  Birth pangs?  It seems that Jesus is so deeply attuned to the loving purposes of God, so transparent to the creative Spirit and power of God, that even in the midst of suffering and war, even in the midst of violence and death, he sees beyond everything that is passing, everything that is mortal, and into the heart of God.  He knows that in God’s presence, something new and holy is surely being born, and he offers himself as a midwife, a healer, a peacemaker.

So here’s my question: how do we do that?  In the midst of the pain and fragility of life, how do we grow the heart of a healer?  Can we do what Jesus did – can we find the holy strength not to turn away from the world’s pain, but rather to turn toward it, to touch it with love, and to invite something new to be born?  Can we become divine channels that bring wholeness and wellbeing to a broken world?  How do we become the healing presence that intuitively we know we were born to be?  This is no small question, because as never before, the human community needs people with a healed and healing heart.

I’d like to propose a framework for the heart that can show us how to live into this scary time as healers in the midst of a hurting world.  I want to suggest three aspects of a healer’s heart, three places along the path of inner transformation as we grow a heart for healing. 

Here’s the first: healers have an awakened heart.  What is an awakened heart?  An awakened heart is a heart that is more and more deeply, more and more frequently, more and more consciously attuned to divine love.  A person with an awakened heart is someone whose heart is being touched again and again and again by a boundless love that seems to well up from nowhere.  A person with an awakened heart is someone who is learning to see themselves, and others, and all creation, with eyes of love. 

This is the stage of the journey when we perceive the beauty and preciousness of God’s creation.  We experience gratefulness, wonder, amazement, and awe.  Moments of our heart’s awakening may come very quietly, as when we gaze at a sleeping child or at a pond that is filling with rain.  For a moment our heart awakens, and we know that we are part of a sacred mystery that infuses all things and yet transcends them, too.  Somehow that loving, nameless, sacred mystery is giving itself to us in whatever we are gazing at – in the sleeping child, in the grass, the wind, the water – and we are giving ourselves back to that holy presence, saying “I love you, too.”  In moments like these our heart awakens.  We step into the great love affair that is always going on between God and God’s creation. 

Now, we can’t awaken our hearts by ourselves.  We can’t do that any more than we can make the wind blow.  But we can take up spiritual practices that make us available to the divine presence that awakens the heart.  We can keep the windows open, so that the wind of the Spirit can blow in.  Here are a couple of spiritual practices that help to awaken the heart.

One is to learn to be still and to pay attention.  Prayer is essentially paying attention.  You remember the story of Moses and the burning bush.  Moses was surely an attentive man.  It takes patient attentiveness to notice that a bush is ablaze, and yet not consumed by the fire.  Moses’ encounter with the flaming bush is the archetype of mystical experience: only a calm, patient mind can perceive the divine presence that burns in every bush.  So we learn to be quiet and pay attention, to still ourselves and to listen in silence to the inner voice of love that is always sounding in our hearts.

A second way to cultivate an awakened heart is to practice gratitude.  Gratitude unlocks the heart’s constricted places.  Gratitude reveals that all life is gift.  This day is a gift.  This breath is a gift.  Our next breath belongs more to God than it does to us1 – it’s all gift.  As we learn to breathe with gratefulness, we learn to trust the deep-down, God-given goodness of our life as it is given to us, moment by moment. 

So we cultivate an awakened heart, a heart that is grounded in God’s love.  But because divine love never holds itself back from the suffering places of the world – because divine love never closes itself off, never insulates itself in its own safe little bubble or cocoon – because divine love never tries to rise up and float away from the messiness and the brokenness of life, but rather comes down and abides with us, pouring itself out to touch and heal the world’s pain, healers have not only an awakened heart – they also have a broken heart.  A healer’s heart is willing to suffer, to feel pain.  So that is the second aspect of a healer’s heart: it is a wounded heart, a heart that is willingly pierced by grief.  Paradoxically, surrending to grief in the presence of divine love does not diminish us, but opens us to a new kind of empowerment and a completely new experience of hope.

Still, there are many reasons we resist exploring this aspect of a healer’s heart, many reasons that we fear and repress our grief.  Who wants to feel pain?  Nobody.  Plus I know that I don’t want to look morbid; I don’t want to bring anyone down; I don’t want to look weak and emotional.  Yet we do feel pain for the world.  We can’t help it.  No one is exempt from it, for we are part of the world, part of creation, part of the whole web of life.

So can we let ourselves feel our grief?  Can we let ourselves feel the pain of a broken heart?  How do we open to the pain of our precious world without drowning in it, without being overcome?  The place I go in prayer when I am overwhelmed by the pain of the world is to the cross of Christ.  As I experience it, the cross of Christ is planted deep within me, and at the cross I can express my anger, fear, and grief, for I trust that at the cross, everything is being blessed and transformed in the light of limitless, eternal love.  Whatever I need to feel and to express – rage, sorrow, fear, guilt, whatever – all of it is being met with love.  As I see it, crucifixion is the place where God breaks through our numbness and denial.  The cross is where we can finally face and bear all that we know about the pain of the world, and where God in Christ can bear what we cannot bear our selves.  I can’t bear it, but Christ can bear it in me.

Whatever sacred images we use to explore a healer’s broken heart, I think it is good to let our selves feel anger – because anger is an expression of love.  I think it is good to let our selves feel emptiness – because emptiness creates a space for something new to arise. I think it is good to let our selves feel fear – because in itself that is an act of courage.  I think it is good to let our selves feel sorrow – because shedding tears can water the soul and bring new life.

So, what are the losses you need to mourn?  What are the tears you need to shed?  As a spiritual practice for welcoming a broken heart, we can write a prayer of lament or protest.  We can make a confession.  We can spend time in intercession, praying for the hurting places of the world.  As my husband, Robert Jonas recently remarked, tears can be the dark river of hope carrying us to new life.

As healers with a broken heart, we know that the darkness inside us and outside us is real.  But even in the darkest places of our lives, a light is shining.  The light of the divine is tender, enlivening, and pure.  It speaks in silence, saying: I see you.  I know what you are going through.  I love you.  In the radiance of that light — which sees us in our entirety, which sees us whole — we learn to embrace and accept every part of our selves.  Slowly we learn to perceive the world like that, too, to experience its ugliness, peril, and beauty with an open heart.  And then we feel a desire to share this glimpse of God with others.

Now we come to the third part of this spiritual framework for sustaining our selves as healers.  Filled with love, because day by day our heart is being awakened, and open to the pain of life, because day by day our heart is broken and yet whole, we now want the love that is flowing into our life to pour out into the world around us.  We have been cultivating an awakened heart, we are accepting a broken heart, and now we want to express what I’m calling a radiant heart.  We want our lives to bear witness in tangible ways to the love that has set us free from the tyranny of suffering and death. 

This is what Christians call an experience of resurrection: we are filled with a divine spirit, a Holy Spirit, that sends us out as healers, as justice-seekers, as peace-makers.  We want to share in God’s mission of restoring all people and all creation to unity with God and each other in Christ.  We want to bear witness to the Christ who bursts out of the tomb, who proclaims that life, not death, has the last word, and who gives us power to roll away the stone.

I want to be clear that actions that are expressed by a radiant heart spring from freedom, not from compulsion.  I know that I can easily get very busy — all of us can.  But being busy does not necessarily mean that we are manifesting a radiant heart.  

For instance, sometimes I get busy because I have lost touch with my basic preciousness: I think that I must prove my worth, prove my value, earn my own salvation.  Then I have to say to myself, “Margaret, remember that you are cultivating an awakened heart.  Find a way to breathe in the love of God.  Let yourself rest in God’s goodness and let yourself know again how loved you are.” 

Or I get busy because I want to stay one step ahead of my feelings — I don’t want to feel the pain or grief; I would much rather keep moving, keep multitasking.  Then I have to say to myself, “Margaret, remember that you have accepted a broken heart.  Go back to the cross.  Let yourself stop for a while and bring whatever is in you to the crucified Christ, where everything in you is met with love.” 

When we know that we are cherished to the core, and when we discover that our pain and anguish is met again and again by the ever-renewed, ever-merciful, ever-abundant love of God, then our actions are more likely to spring from wisdom than from compulsion or fear, and we can carry them out with a sense of spaciousness and freedom, unattached to results.  Unattached to results.  We manifest a radiant heart. 

I give thanks for the wisdom in this room, for the awakened and broken and radiant hearts that you express.  I thank God for the healing that each of us has already experienced, for the healing that we will experience in the future, for the healing that we have already been graced to accomplish, and for the healing that we will accomplish in God’s good time.   

In a few moments we will have an opportunity to bring forward the pledges that will sustain this community in the coming year.  Thank you for sharing in this journey with me as brothers and sisters in Christ, as together – in the words of our second reading – in the midst of all life’s challenges we “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering” and “consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:23a, 24).    

“I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel; my heart teaches me, night after night” (Psalm 16:7).  

1. This is a point made by Dr. James Finley in his excellent CD series, “Transforming Trauma.”.

Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 7, 2012. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Grace Church, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Genesis 2:18-24Hebrews 1: 1-4, 2:5-12
Psalm 8Mark 10:2-16

The marriage beyond marriage

Today’s readings were evidently chosen to turn our thoughts toward marriage.  The story from Genesis is like one of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories, which are designed to answer questions such as: How did the elephant get its trunk? Or: How did the leopard get its spots?  The story in Genesis is an answer to the question: How do you account for the passionate attraction between a man and a woman who adore each other and are irresistibly drawn to each other, who leave their home of origin to cling to each other (Genesis 2:24), and who feel, when they look at each other, that somehow the other person is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23)?  The Genesis story imagines one possibility: maybe God created the woman from out of the man’s rib. Maybe there is some kind of original, primal unity between men and women, some deep, visceral kinship between them, so that when a man and a woman fall in love and are united in marriage, it is a reunion of sorts, a homecoming with real cause for delight.

It’s a wonderful mythic story, but it’s been troublesome, too, and over the years progressive Christians have felt a need to clarify or correct its interpretation.  For starters, the story could imply that because woman was made from a man’s rib, women by nature are derivative of men, that by nature we are secondary and subordinate.   This interpretation has lost whatever traction it once had, thanks to the women’s movement that took off in the 1960’s and ‘70’s.  I remember grinning back then at the graffiti that we often found secretly scribbled on the walls of women’s bathrooms: Adam was just a rough draft.  Today’s feminist theologians would reject just as decisively any interpretation of the Genesis story that tries to justify women’s unequal status as somehow God-given. 

The story has been troublesome in another way, too: it has been, and too often still is, interpreted as restricting marriage only to a man and a woman.  For decades now, natural scientists, social scientists, and progressive theologians have been struggling to help the dominant culture understand that a woman can feel “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh” attraction for another woman, and a man for another man, and that this visceral, irresistible mutual attraction is just as God-given, just as good, just as built-into-the-nature-of-things, as the passionate love between male and female.  We need to hold the Genesis story not as the exclusive possession of heterosexual men and women, but as a story about how human beings are created for relationship, how we all find our full humanity only in community, and how many of us – whatever our gender orientation – are called to intimate, passionate, faithful connection with another person in the covenant of marriage.

The Genesis story gives a vision of marriage at its best and in its ideal form: the two partners delight in each other and recognize each other as best friend, as soul friend, as “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.”  This is marriage as God envisions it, the kind of marriage that God desires for us, the kind of marriage that married people aspire to and that with grace, patience, and hard work we may be blessed to experience for ourselves.  But marriage has its ordinary moments, too, its periods of struggle and stress.  There’s the garbage to haul outside, the milk to pick up, the leaves to rake, the endless demands of work, children, and email, the pressure of finances, the strain of illness or the in-laws.  Communication can break down; angry words can be spoken; doors can slam shut; and sometimes, despite our prayers and best efforts, a marriage can irrevocably fall apart.

Generations of the faithful have wrestled with the question: What then?  Under what circumstances is divorce legitimate, even desirable?  That’s the question that the Pharisees take up with Jesus in today’s Gospel passage from Mark.  Jesus’ answer tells a paradoxical truth: God’s intention is that marriage be lifelong, and on this point Jesus quotes the passage from Genesis.  Yet Jesus also acknowledges that, going all the way back to Moses, concessions have always been granted, provisions have always been made, so that in certain situations two people who are trapped in a desperately difficult marriage can be allowed to divorce.  Those concessions and those provisions have changed and grown more liberal over the years, and I notice that today’s Gospel reading stops right before Jesus makes what we would consider a very strict statement about the very limited circumstances under which a married couple may divorce.  Still, as one commentary puts it, perhaps the point “is not that the particular concessions made in the New Testament, and these only, are valid for all time, but that the New Testament grants to the Church [community] the authority to make concessions that are pastorally necessary.”1  Whether or not Jesus himself was a married – a topic that recently roared back into the news with divinity professor Karen King’s announcement2 that she is in possession of an ancient fragment of papyrus that purportedly quotes Jesus talking about his wife – whether or not Jesus was married – and there are many reasons to doubt that he was – it is clear that Jesus cherished the covenant of marriage and that he hoped to protect it. 

Marriage is our theme this morning, and I must say a word about the marriage that applies to everyone, whether we happen to be married, partnered, or single, whether we happen to be engaged or separated, widowed or divorced.  I want to speak about the marriage that has nothing to do with our marital status, about the marriage beyond marriage, the marriage within marriage, the marriage that is the origin and ground and fulfillment of all human relationships – and that is the marriage between God and the soul.  That is actually what interests me most: the marriage into which you and I and every person is called.

It may sound strange to imagine our relationship with God as being like a marriage, and of course the marriage metaphor is just one of many that describe the relationship between the soul and its Maker.  But the Bible often uses wedding imagery as a way to express the complete and intimate union of God and God’s people, and of God and the individual soul.

For many years I’ve served as a spiritual director, sitting down with individuals who want to reflect on their relationship with God and to go deeper in their life of prayer, and I often feel as if I’m rather like a marriage counselor when I ask the person about his or her relationship with God.  Do you and God spend quality time together, just the two of you?  Do you share with God the things that really matter to you?  Is your relationship formal, distant, and polite?  Is it catch-as-catch-can, a quick How-do-you-do, gotta go-gotta run?  Or do you feel comfortable taking time to share honestly and openly what is really going on in you and how things really are?  What parts of yourself and your life do you try to hide or hold back from God?  How often do you consciously do things together?  Do you play together?  Do you laugh together?  Do you weep together?  Do you spend quiet time together?  Do you actually listen to God or do you do all the talking?  What needs to happen in your relationship with God so that that relationship becomes as real and precious and intimate as the most intimate and lively union between two human beings?

God is always courting us, always beckoning us into relationship, always luring us to fall in love.  It can happen in so many ways, that moment when our heart quickens and we suddenly see what is going on and what God is up to.  Maybe you go to a concert one day, in which the orchestra will perform a piece that is particularly dear to you – in my case, it might be Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto.  The concert hall falls silent, the French horn plays the haunting opening notes, the strings enter, the pianist sets his fingers to the keyboard.  As the music flows into us, at first we may want to be the piano player.  We want that music to be streaming through our own hands and body, to be singing through our fingertips.  As we listen intently, absorbed in the music, maybe eventually we say, No, I want to be the conductor: I want to stand with open arms, listening with such pure attention that I hear the whole of it, every note and every space between the notes, receiving it all into my body and guiding and responding to it as it takes shape around me.  And then as your listening deepens, you give yourself even more fully to the moment.  You become very silent, very still, as you listen.  You forget yourself, and you become the music.  Moment by moment the music is giving itself to you, and moment by moment you are giving yourself to the music.  You’ve relinquished all sense of who you are, and yet in that self-surrender you’ve never felt more fully yourself or more fully alive.  If someone asked you afterward who you are, you’d have to answer, “I don’t know.  I am Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto.” 

It’s the ecstatic experience that T.S. Eliot speaks of in Four Quartets:3

…music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.

In moments like these, we experience the marriage, the union between God and the soul.  We taste for a moment in our own bodies what it is like to give ourselves fully to the present moment, in all sincerity and with an open heart, and to realize that moment by moment God is giving God’s self to us, in and as each moment.   

Maybe it’s not music that grants you this experience, but wandering outside on one of these glorious autumn days, looking at the leaves.  Here I must quote again from St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day we celebrate this afternoon with a blessing of the animals.  You’ve heard me read this poem before, and I want to read it again:4

Such love does
the sky now pour,
that whenever I stand in a field,

I have to wring out the light
when I get
home.

St. Francis understood the marriage into which we are called, every one of us: that intimate, ongoing, lifelong and longer-than-life, very personal relationship with the One who loved us into being.  The more surely our life is founded on that bedrock union with God, the more open-hearted and patient and generous we will learn to be in all our human relationships, including our spouse, if we have one.  For when we look with love into our loved one’s eyes, we will know that he or she is conveying to us something of God’s infinite love for us, and we can be grateful.  And if our loved one fails or disappoints us – when we run into the inevitable miscommunications and conflicts that are part of married life and part of human life – we can forgive our beloved for not being God.  We can remind ourselves: Oh, right, my beloved partner or spouse is not my ultimate source of love – that source is God, and God alone!  From the deep springs of our love relationship with God, perhaps we will receive the strength to forgive our human partner, to be kind, to quit having to be right, to let the other person be.  And if our loved one dies, as will happen at some point in even the happiest of marriages, we can grieve in the presence of the God who loves us without reserve, who invincibly sustains us, and whose loving arms will embrace us at the last.

I invite you in the silence to speak to God about your own relationship with the lover of your soul.  What is God inviting you to see?  Do you already sense the marriage into which you are being invited?  How will you respond?

1. Reginald H. Fuller, Preaching the Lectionary: The Word of God for the Church Today, rev. ed. (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1984), p. 356.

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/papyrus-fragment-that-refers-to-jesus-wife-stirs-debate.html

3. T. S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages,” Four Quartets (New York and London: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, A Harvest/HBJ Book, 1943, p. 44.

4. St. Francis of Assisi, “Wring Out My Clothes,” in Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, New York, Penguin Compass, 2002, p. 48

Originally published at http://clearstorycollective.org

Let’s say that you take your kayak onto a pond one October morning, and you’re in no hurry to get somewhere else.  You’re simply here, awake and still, welcoming each moment as it comes, floating wherever the breeze may take you.  From your boat in the middle of the pond you watch the dark water, the birch trees leaning overhead, and the golden-green grasses on the shore.  You feel warmth on your face as the sun rises, you see a pair of bluebirds sitting motionless in a tree, you listen to the lapping water, a yellow leaf floats beside the boat, and you need nothing, want nothing, exclude nothing, and welcome everything.  You drift as freely as a feather that is carried on the breath of God, open to all that comes.  Then the birch trees release their leaves and a cascade of tiny yellow leaves is tumbling through the air above you, landing on the field, the pond, your legs, even your face. What can you do but laugh for joy?
October has always been my favorite month, and in these glorious autumn days, I sometimes feel like St. Francis of Assisi, who wrote something that has been rendered like this:1

Such love does
the sky now pour,
that whenever I stand in a field,
I have to wring out the light
when I get
home.

I think that God is always courting us, always beckoning us into relationship, always luring us to fall in love.  It can happen in all sorts of ways, that moment when our heart quickens and we suddenly see what is going on, what God is up to.
Maybe you go to a concert one day, in which the orchestra will perform a piece that is particularly dear to you – in my case, it might be Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto.  The concert hall falls silent, the French horn plays the haunting opening notes, the strings enter, the pianist sets his fingers to the keyboard, and as the music flows into us, at first we may want to be the piano player.  We want that music to be streaming through our own hands and body, to be singing through our fingertips.  And as we listen intently, absorbed in the music, maybe we say, No, I want to be the conductor: I want to stand with open arms, listening with such pure attention that I hear the whole of it, every note and every space between the notes, receiving it all into my body and guiding and responding to it as it takes shape around me.  And then as your listening deepens, you give yourself even more fully to the moment.  You become very silent, very still.  You forget yourself, and you become the music.  Moment by moment the music is giving itself to you, and moment by moment you are giving yourself fully to the music.  You’ve relinquished all sense of who you are, and yet in that self-surrender you’ve never felt more fully yourself or more fully alive.  If someone asked you who you are, you’d have to answer, “What can I say?  I am Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto.” 
It’s the ecstatic experience that T.S. Eliot speaks of in Four Quartets:2

…music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.

I think of moments like these as moments of experiencing the deep-down union between God and the soul.  Half the time I’m not aware of that bedrock love relationship that my soul already enjoys.  But then – maybe when I’m least expecting it – something happens.  I discover that when I give myself fully to the present moment, in all sincerity and with an open heart, I notice that moment by moment God is already giving God’s self to me.

1. St. Francis of Assisi, “Wring Out My Clothes,” in Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, New York, Penguin Compass, 2002, p. 48

2. T. S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages,” Four Quartets (New York and London: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, A Harvest/HBJ Book, 1943, p. 44.

On September 28, 2012, 350.org Action Fund delivered to Mitt Romney’s campaign headquarters in Boston 52,000+ signatures on a climate letter asking Mr. Romney to clarify his policy on climate change. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas and Bill McKibben spoke at the rally.

Originally published at http://clearstorycollective.org

I have been thinking about what it means to live wholeheartedly, to give my full attention to each moment without distraction or holding back. One of my customary ways of dodging the present moment is to get too busy. I remember one evening years ago when I was standing at the stove, making supper, a spatula in one hand and a cell phone in the other. I was reviewing the day’s events with a friend, tossing the vegetable stir-fry, checking on the pressure cooker, pausing to wipe the counter, jotting down hasty notes on my To Do list, hauling forks out of the drawer, and generally reaching an apex of distraction.

In walked my then ten-year-old son, holding up his latest drawing for me to see.

“Wow,” I said briskly, barely looking up.

Crestfallen, Sam put his drawing down. “That wasn’t a real Wow,” he said.

The disappointment that I heard in his voice still rings in my ears more than a decade later. What better gift can we give each other than the gift of our full attention? Standing in the kitchen in that swirl of steam, caught inside the racing whirlwind of my thoughts and tending to too many things at once, I had nothing to give my son except the facsimile of a wow. I was faking it, and he knew it.

I have no beef with trying to be efficient and to accomplish lots of things – heaven knows the world needs people who can get things done. In a bustling household, someone needs to make supper. But the pressures of modern society can send us skittering like motorboats across the surface of our lives, so that we take on too many things at once and become scattered and self-absorbed, unable to give each moment – or each person – our full attention.

Perverse as it may sound, under stress some of us volunteer for even more tasks, yielding to what May Sarton once called ‘the demon of internal pressure.’ We may trick ourselves into imagining that the frantic pace of our lives is coming from outside ourselves – that we have to live this way – but in fact it is often we ourselves who set the frantic pace.

I think of Ovid’s rueful observation: “Love yields to business. If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you’ll be safe, then.”

Much as I enjoy being busy and getting lots of things done, my deeper intention is to love as well and wisely as I can. So I’m trying to do what spiritual teachers have long advised: to give each moment my full attention, and, if possible, to do one thing at a time. If I’m cooking, cook. If I’m looking, look. If I’m listening, listen. If I’m talking, talk. My hope is that what comes out of my mouth is going to be wholehearted and true. As the Good Book says, I want to “let [my] ‘Yes’ be yes and [my] ‘No’ be no” (James 4:12). I want my ‘Wow’ to be the real deal, too.

What behaviors or situations tend to pull you away from love?

What practices help you to become more fully present?