​Over the holiday weekend, I ran down the shore for a day just to get some respite. I’m an early riser and made it out to the beach to catch the sunrise. Respite? Oh yeah! You’d better believe it. 
 
It makes me think about life in New Jersey—the pace. The craziness. For most people.  
 
Commute. Work. Commute. Even if the commute is now from your bed to the kitchen table which you’ve converted to your office. Spend day the on and off camera in Zoom meetings or Team conference calls. The whole day! Answering email until late. Sleep (hopefully). Repeat.
 
Weekends: Crazy too—non-stop, over-programmed, sports, drama, dance, music…
And church. Church? Yeah, I know, right? One more thing.
 
It never ends.
 
When was the last time you really unplugged?
Like really unplugged. Turn off the phone. Close the laptop. Radio silence. Go dark. No technology.
Nothing.
 
Solitude.
 
It’s one of the Spiritual Disciplines we read about during Lent. Richard Foster’s book gave us a number of Disciplines to try—things to bring clarity to this crazy jacked-up existence. Prayer, Fasting, Meditation, Study, Simplicity, Submission, Service, Confession, Worship, Guidance, Celebration were all chapter headings and good ideas for capturing the Spirit in and around our daily lives. And Solitude was one, too.
 
Solitude.
 
Sit. Be. Repeat.
 
Imagine several days of that!
Full-on hermetic, monastic, cloistral life.
Even for a few hours.
 
Maybe it sounds boring. 
Maybe it sounds selfish. 
Maybe it sounds divine! 
 
Maybe we can capture a moment here or there. I know a lady who can’t find space to be alone except in the coat closet at home. It’s dark, it’s quiet, it’s perfect.
 
If you can’t carve out a few days, maybe you can carve out a few moments. Combine a little solitude with meditation, with prayer.
 
Here’s one. Try this from Thich Nhat Hanh*—use only as directed. 
 
Breathing in, I calm my body,
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment,
I know this is a wonderful moment!
 
Breath in.
Breath out.
Repeat. 
 
Again. 
 
Again.
 
Again.
 
Again.
 
You’re welcome.
 
Grace & Peace,
Scott
 
Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh, Bantam, 1991.
 
Richard Foster, The Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, HarperOne, 2018.
 

Coming up on Sunday June 5, the Day of the Pentecost, we’re celebrating Youth Sunday, the Baptisms of two of our students, the Lord’s Supper, and the Confirmation of the Class of 2022! It’s a beautiful and joyous day of celebration for our church! Whew! It’s a lot!
 
Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. That’s all you have to say in order to be a member of the Presbyterian Church. That’s all. That’s it!
 
Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. Everything else is commentary. Everything else is the journey. 
 
That’s my hope and joy for this confirmation class. Not that they have learned what to think, but they have learned how to think about it. That they have words for how to express where they are on this journey because it’s always changing and growing us, moving us forward. 
 
I love to write! I love to read. I love to read good writing. 
 
So, I’m going through a stack of stuff this week and I come across something in one of my ham radio publications that is buried in the midst of a technical article on the electronics of a piece of gear. But the author (who is a retired minister from the UK it turns out…) talks about the Greek two-fold understanding of time. 
 
Chronos, or chronology, which is a basic linear sequential understanding of time: one thing happens, and then the next, and the next, and so on as time passes.
 
Kairos, on the other hand, is the opportune nature of time. Think of kairos like good timing for action, or the sense of time we lose track of when we’re caught up in the moments. We’re having a good time, or having a good conversation, or into a book or movies or series we’re binge-watching. We get in the zone. That is when we lose track of time.
 
And when I best love to write or read or especially read good writing, I notice that I feel the Kairos sense of time. I get in the zone. Time flies. I get lost in the moments. I lose track of time.
 
So digging through the pile, I find an old Richard Rohr. This is what I hope and pray is jumping off point for our Confirmation Class. Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior—now this! But look, he’s always amazing! And I saved this one because this is such a good piece of writing—so good! It’s so good that I’m stealing it for you. All of it.
 
Indwelling Spirit
A Constant Grace
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
 
The work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to reveal to us the truth of our being so that the way of our being can match it. —Wm. Paul Young [1]
 
The love in you—which is the Spirit in you—always somehow says yes. (See 2 Corinthians 1:20.) Love is not something you do; love is something you are. It is your True Self. Love is where you came from and love is where you’re going. It’s not something you can buy. It’s not something you can attain. It’s the presence of God within you, called the Holy Spirit or what some theologians name uncreated grace.
 
You can’t manufacture this by any right conduct, dear reader. You can’t make God love you one ounce more than God already loves you right now. You can go to church every day for the rest of your life. God isn’t going to love you any more than God loves you right now.
 
You cannot make God love you any less, either—not an ounce less. Do the most terrible thing and God wouldn’t love you less. You cannot change the Divine mind about you! The flow is constant, total, and 100 percent toward your life. God is for you.
 
We can’t diminish God’s love for us. What we can do, however, is learn how to believe it, receive it, trust it, allow it, and celebrate it, accepting Trinity’s whirling invitation to join in the cosmic dance.
 
St. Bernard of Clairvaux (c. 1090–1153) wrote, “Inasmuch as the soul becomes unlike God, so it becomes unlike itself.” [2] Bernard has, of course, come to the same thing I’m trying to say here: the pattern within the Trinity is the same as the pattern in all creation. And when you return to this same pattern, the flow will be identical.
 
Catherine LaCugna (1952–1997) ended her giant theological tome God for Us with this one simple sentence:
 
The very nature of God, therefore, is to seek out the deepest possible communion and friendship with every last creature on this earth. [3]
 
That’s God’s job description. That’s what it’s all about. And the only thing that can keep you out of this divine dance is fear or self-hatred. What would happen in your life—right now—if you fully accepted what God has created?
 
Suddenly, this is a very safe universe. You have nothing to be afraid of. God is for you. God is leaping toward you! God is on your side, honestly more than you are on your own.
 
I hope you get into Kairos on this. How cool is that? I hope you get in the zone. I hope you get lost in time. 
 
Grace & Peace,
Scott
 
References:
[1] Wm. Paul Young, Trinity: The Soul of Creation, session 7 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2017), MP4 download.
[2] Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 82.5. This translation is from William Harmless, Mystics, (Oxford University Press: 2008), 55.
[3] Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (HarperSanFrancisco: 1993), 411.
Adapted from Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016), 193-194.

Psalm 23 came up in the Revised Common Lectionary cycle for church on Mother’s Day when I was away on study leave and celebrating Mother’s Day with my mom and dad. Psalm 23 is a classic. Maybe the best-known of the Psalms.
 
You may know this trick. Grab any Judeo-Christian Bible. Put your fingers in the middle of the pages in the book and open it. Chances are high, like almost 100%, that you will open the Bible to the Psalms. Right in the middle of the book.
 
It’s a cute little parlor trick, but it’s also nice to know. The Psalms are ancient songs, poems, laments, petitions, praises, amazing prayers—all ways to talk to God. And all ways to listen for God. It’s kind of like a prayer app. Open to the middle and seek God through the Psalms.
 
Psalm 23 is classic. 
 
Sunday School kids for generations have been taught to memorize it and know it by heart. I used to be able to recite the King James Version, but I think my old mind has disconnected from that a little bit over the years. Life, new translations, seminary, and the work have all muddied that water. 
 
I can muddle through it, but not like when I was 10—I had it down.
 
Forgive the patriarchal language—let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.  Here’s the New Revised Standard Version:
​

A Psalm of David.
1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
2     He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters; 
3     he restores my soul. 
He leads me in right paths
    for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley, 
    I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
    your rod and your staff--
    they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    my whole life long.
​

It works better as poetry if it’s centered, doesn’t it?
It definitely works better as prayer.
Centered. 
 
That’s what we do when we pray. Center ourselves in God. 
 
This has been an awful couple weeks for the USA. Two heinous hate crimes of shooting in a Presbyterian Church in southern California just yesterday and at the grocery store in Buffalo on Friday. Racial hate crime. The leak of the Supreme Court opinion that may overturn Roe v. Wade and the Casey case depriving multitudes of women the right to make their own decisions on abortion. 
 
What hurts one of us, hurts us all. Our politics are a mess. Our culture is a mess. Our lives are a mess. 
 
What if our mission, our practice, our culture—yours and mine—were to love God and radically love our neighbors as Jesus teaches us? What if we really did that? What if?
 
Let’s start here. Right here, right now.
I’m gonna ask you to scroll back up and pray Psalm 23 again. 
Just try it, and center yourself here: 
​

What does it look like when
“goodness and mercy follow me”?
​

​I’m just gonna leave that right there in the middle.  
 
Grace & Peace,
Scott

​So, I chuckle as I write that title out because this probably isn’t going in the direction you’re assuming. Not even close. Heaven? Or Hell?
 
Presbyterians. One of the things we don’t do very well, and have never done very well, is talk about our spirituality. We always kinda cache our spirituality in really vague terms. Even when it comes to prayer—the most basic of Christian practices. It’s just not that often you’ll hear someone say, “I need to pray about that.” Or, “I have been praying about…” In practice, it happens for sure. But we don’t hear a lot about it—not that often, anyway.
 
All that said, when it comes to spirituality, I’m actually happy to talk about it. I do talk about it. A lot. It’s kinda my job to talk about it. Promote it. While I’m probably not the gentlest person you know about most things, I do take a gentle approach when it comes to spirituality. 
 
I’m sensitive to “Presbyterian spirituality” which is very chill in most cases. It’s so chill that most Presbyterians can bristle at the first blush. This is one of those things you learn early as a Presbyterian minister. You don’t be shy about it, but you gotta be chill about it. 
 
And personally, I am deliberate, very intentional with my own spirituality, with my practices. By now you know me. I have a daily routine. Never fails. Every day. Time with God. It’s how I start my day. Quiet time. I pray for you. I pray for our church. Every. Day. I read the Daily Lectionary Bible verses. Sometimes Oswald Chambers. Always Phyllis Tickle and J. Phillip Newell. And I read Richard Rohr. 
 
Fr. Richard Rohr is a highly progressive Franciscan priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. If you read any progressive theological articles or books at all, Richard Rohr is often quoted and a highly sought-after conversation partner. Just a few years ago, I learned he does a daily devotional and I LOVE HIM! Turns out, a number of my colleagues across the denominational lines love him, too. 
 
Not too long ago, he did this whole series on Heaven and Hell. I have for at least a decade theologically agreed with him on the entire concept of Heaven and Hell and it’s simply this: 
 
Heaven and Hell aren’t places. They are states. Present current states. Heaven and Hell are here and now. In this life, on this Earth, in our lives. Always in all ways. 
 
Here are a couple broad strokes at it:
 
Heaven is heartfelt and found in and among the peaks of light living life as a follower of Jesus Christ. Loving others unconditionally as Jesus loves us. Building community and taking care of our neighbors as described in the early church by actions of the Holy Spirit (in the book of Acts). 
 
Hell, on the other hand, is also heartfelt and found in and among the valleys of darkness that surround us. Evil. Heinous acts. Tough times. Hard life events. Loss. Depression. All that is Hell, obviously. 
 
Heaven and Hell. Sometimes they are of our making!
 
Okay, that’s plenty enough to make your brain hurt. 
 
Right? 
 
So, Fr. Richard turned me on to the poet David Whyte, from his collection Fire in the Earth (Many Rivers Press: 2002). 
 
Just pause and read this. Like, read it and then sit in the Mystery for a while. 
Just sit and be.
Wow!
​

“The Old Wild Place”
 
After the good earth
where the body knows itself to be real
and the mad flight
where it gives itself to the world,
we give ourselves to the rhythm of love
leaving the breath
to know its way home.
 
And after the first pure fall,
the last letting go, and the calm
breath where we go to rest,
we’ll return again to find it
and feel again the body welcomed,
the body held,
the strong arms of the world,
the water, the waking at dawn
and the thankful, almost forgotten,
curling to sleep with the dark.
 
The old wild place beyond all shame. 
​

​Just sit with that for a while. Right?
 
You’re welcome!
 
Grace & Peace,
Scott