Posts Tagged ‘Memory’
Hoping Against Hope – Br. Curtis Almquist
Br. Curtis Almquist
1 Kings 17:8-16
Psalm 146
Mark 12:38-44
I’ve been thinking about Russian babushkas. This past week I have been visited with the memory of the old women of Russia, the Russian babushkas, lighting candles. Especially during those nearly 70 years of Soviet atheism, those faithful old women, wrinkled, kerchiefed, sometimes stooped and hobbling as they kept candles burning in abandoned churches and in little crèches at home. They were keeping a tiny light aflame amidst the carnage from what was being extinguished by the USSR. Lighting those candles was an agency of their resistance, an affirmation of their faith, and a claim on their hope. It was a profound example of “hoping against hope,” as Saint Paul says, these amazing women holding onto hope in the absence of any justification for hope: “hoping against hope.”[i] Very simple; very profound.
In the two scriptures appointed for our liturgy, it is the widows’ day. I am hearing these two stories from scripture also as expressions of hope. Our lesson from the First Book of Kings is one of those desperate stories about a widow and her son facing imminent starvation, with only the paltry amount of flour and drops of oil for their last supper. And we hear of the widow’s hope. Amidst such destitution and emptiness, she shares this ever-so-meager portion of food with the prophet Elijah with the hope that some provision would also happen for her and her son… a miracle indeed which happens in abundance. And then from the Gospel we have Jesus’ story about the poor widow who makes an offering of the tiniest copper coins, which for her is a treasure. This also is an act of hope for what shall come forth.[ii]
Hope is not a skill. Hope is not something we muster in our own souls. Hope is implanted into our very being at our birth. Hope is of our essence. We have been created in the image of God, who is the beginning and end of all hope. Our God of hope. Saint Paul’s description of hope is that hope “abides” in us; hope makes its home in us.[iii] Hope is there for keeps. In the New Testament, the metaphor used for hope is an anchor, an anchor to the soul, something that is sure and steadfast, even amidst the roiling tempests of life.[iv] The psalms speak repeatedly of hope in this same certain way: “For you are my hope, O LORD God, my confidence since I was young.”[v]
Several weeks ago I listened very compassionately to a young man who was desolate. With tears in his eyes, he spoke of how he had lost his way in life. It’s not that he had acted out in some egregious way; it’s that his life had become meaningless. He said, “I feel hopeless.” I asked him if he could tell me about hope? “No,” he said, “I have lost my hope.” He invited my response, and I replied, “But I don’t believe you.” I said he had not lost “his hope” because hope does not belong to him. Hope belongs to God. It is God’s hope. The source of hope is the God of hope. We will never lose hope. We can lose touch with hope or misplace our experience of hope, but hope is never lost. Hope abides with us, because hope is of God.
And then I told this man, much to his surprise, that he was actually experiencing a revelation of hope. I told him what I would say to you. If you feel hopeless, you have the memory of hope in the past. The memory is a sign that hope is alive in you. You remember hope; you have hope. “Shall we hunt for hope in your life?” I asked this man. He nodded, and so we set off on a search, because hope was already a word in his vocabulary, and already an experience in his life. We looked way backward in his life moving up into the present which, as we discovered, was full of miracles. Mostly tiny events stretching back to his childhood that have made all the difference: a passing comment someone had made to him; an unplanned and unwelcomed detour he had had to make; an addiction that nearly killed him which proved to be a to be a passageway into real life; doorways that were opened for him, and doorways not opened for various things along the way; an enemy who had become a cherished friend… On and on he spoke as he recollected the miracle of his life, which enlivened his sense of hope for the future.
And you? Do that! I suggest you try that yourself. The groundswell of hope for the present is to be found in the experience of your past… how you have maybe-impossibly survived and, I trust, have thrived. The seeds of hope in your life were planted in your soul in your birth, and those seeds want to grow… which requires your attention. Reclaim, retrieve, recover the miracle – the miracles – of your life which will germinate the seed of hope planted into your soul from the very beginning..
For many people, this may be very important to do now. The results of last Tuesday’s election have been desolating for some people. Like the extinguishing of light in their souls. “How can this be?” they may ask; you may ask. What good can come from this? Very, very difficult for some. Not difficult for all. Clearly not for half our population: one half jubilant; one half desolate. And on both sides of the divide there are many professing Christians, as we know.
Momentarily we will be invited to pray the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer Jesus taught to his very fractious, partisan disciples. Jesus’ opening pronoun is all inclusive: “Our father,” he prays. And then Jesus presumes there will be breakdowns amongst us when he prays, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.” Very sobering words; confronting; inviting. If you elect to join in this prayer this morning, call to mind not just yourself, but also the offending other people whom you imprison in your heart. “Forgive us,” Jesus teaches. “Forgive us our sins.” Forgiveness opens the prison door of resentment, and will enliven hope in your heart.
Going back to the opening pronoun of Jesus’ prayer, “Our” – “Our father” – you might need the help of others to be able to reclaim hope. I am finding it inspiring, humbling, helpful, hopeful to be reading the experience of African Americans, going back to accounts written when slavery was legalized, during the Jim Crow era, and up to the present. There was and is so much appalling suffering and injustice, and, in the midst of it, so much of the inspiration of hope in testimonials, in biographies, and in hymnody and spirituals. You also may find a help and a claim to hope in listening to others, others who are “other” than you are, and who are living in hope. They are in the media and online. They are also our neighbors. Pursue opportunities to listen to others in real time. Ask them a simple, inviting question such as, “Where do find hope?” and then listen.
You might find this very challenging time in which we are living – and by “we” I mean many here in the States but all around the world – to re-open your theology. Jesus lived in a culture and at a time which was shot with injustice and discrimination. Look again at Jesus’ work and words through the lens of egregious political and religious injustice and persecution. And the same for Saint Paul, who was repeatedly tried and jailed unjustly, and who died by capital punishment. It was Saint Paul who wrote as he faced his own death: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”[vi] Re-theologize!
And lastly, to return to the witness of the Russian babushkas, what might be that for you? What practice could you incorporate into the rhythm of your day which is a reminder, both to yourself and a witness to others, about hope. Is it lighting candles? Is it helping in some way to lift someone up? Is it praying your heart out for those who suffer, especially those who capture your heart’s attention? Is it practicing unbridled kindness? The words kindness and kinship come from the same etymological root. We belong to one another. We are kin. Kindness goes a long way in bridging and healing the gap that divides.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Reclaim the gift of hope God has given you.
[i] Romans 4:18.
[ii] Mark 12:38-44.
[iii] 1 Corinthians 13:13.
[iv] Hebrews 6:19.
[v] Psalm 71:5.
[vi] Romans 15:13.
Family Photographs – Br. Lain Wilson
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Today’s Gospel lesson isn’t about Jesus.
Rather, it’s not about the Jesus we have come to know, to accompany in his ministry with the disciples. Instead, it’s about another Jesus, one of memory, of presumption, and of misplaced expectation.
In the Rule of our Society, we understand as part of the practice of silence the honoring of “the mystery present in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, strangers and enemies,” a letting go of “curiosity, presumption, and condemnation which pretends to penetrate the mystery of their hearts.”[1]
We can see in our Gospel reading today what this looks like in practice. It is significant, I think, that the only references to Jesus’s “hidden years”—those years of growth and formation between infancy and baptism—in Matthew’s gospel (and Mark’s) is this brief encounter between Jesus and those from his hometown. It’s a relic of a silent period, a family photograph held in the hands of these people, who glance uncomprehendingly between it and the living Jesus standing before them. Read More
Of Kitchens and Christmas – Br. James Koester
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Memories are a powerful force in the human psyche. They have the ability to trap and imprison, but they have also the ability to liberate and free. They have the power to make one weep in despair or grief and to laugh with the delight of a child. They have the power to shape and mold a life and in hindsight to help make sense of all that was and is, and even is to be. As we all know, it doesn’t take much to trigger a memory: a sound, a taste, a smell, an image, even just a word or phrase and suddenly we are back there as if it were happening this very instant.
I have one such memory that crops up in my mind and heart on a regular basis and it happens many days at Morning Prayer. I had no idea at the time, that the event itself was to be a harbinger of things to come. As a memory it continues to delight and console, and even assure me.
I couldn’t have been more than 9 or 10 and my mother and I were alone in the kitchen. I can’t remember what we were doing, but we were doing something together, and we were talking as a 9-year-old boy talks with his mother, or at least as this 9-year-old boy and his mother did. I was puzzled and I wanted to know something. The burning question I had, had something to do with church. (It’s okay of you want to roll your eyes at this point.) We had been to church as some point before this conversation, and it had been a Morning Prayer Sunday (if you have been an Episcopalian for more than 50 or 60 years, you’ll remember those). We had sung the Te Deum, and what I wanted to know, and what had puzzled me, was what exactly did we mean when we sang: When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man: thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb.[1] I knew what all the words in that phrase meant except one, and I wanted to know what was meant by the word abhor. Read More
The Hope of the Resurrection: What We Can Remember – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
On this day of resurrection, we all share something with these faithful women coming to the tomb. We also share something with the disciples and with Jesus. We share woundedness. We are all wounded. Jesus is wounded by the scourgings that preceded his crucifixion, and the horrific piercing wounds hanging on the cross. None of these wounds is yet healed. And Jesus’ heart is also wounded by the betrayal and abandonment of his closest friends, the disciples, who literally left Jesus hanging. The women, who were there when they crucified their Lord, witnessed it all, a horrific experience. They are wounded with trauma, with grief, and with fear. Meanwhile we know that the disciples are hiding – hiding in their own fear, and guilt, and shame. So much trauma.[i] On this day of resurrection, everyone in the Gospel story is wounded, and this is likely true for many, if not all of us here. You are bearing your own wounds in body, mind, or spirit: wounds that have come at you from beyond your control, or wounds self-inflicted. You also may know the wounds of the cross, what it has meant for you “to take up your cross and follow Jesus.”[ii] Here we all are on this day of resurrection: Jesus, the faithful women, the disciples, and we ourselves alive, wounded. All of us. We acknowledge Jesus’ resurrection and, at the same time, acknowledge that everything is not all right in our world and in our own lives. We are wounded. Read More
Lovely Be – Br. Luke Ditewig
Br. Luke Ditewig
Palm Sunday
Luke 22:14-23:56
Here we kneel at the tomb once more, watching, waiting, numb, and grieving. We stare at love embodied and remember love received. Our song is love unknown, our Savior’s love—to you, to me—love to the loveless shown that we might lovely be.[i]
Remember love shown to children. Jesus invited: “Let the little children come to me”[ii] that we might lovely be.
Remember love shown to blind Bartimaeus who cried out for mercy. Jesus listened, invited, and healed that we might lovely be.[iii] Read More
Recollecting Your Life’s Travels – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Acts 16:1-10
Psalm 100
In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we are told in great detail where the Apostle Paul traveled on his missionary journeys, a very detailed itinerary during just one season of his life. Why? The Apostle Paul has been traveling with Silas in Syria and Cilicia. They went on to Derbe, then met up with Timothy in Lystra, then to Phrygia, then Galatia. (Why? Because they could not go to Asia.) Then opposite Mysia, they attempted to enter Bithynia, (but were forbidden) so they went down to Troas… and then, because Paul had a dream, they set off to Macedonia… and on and on it goes. Why? Why are we given this endless travelogue? Three reasons.
The most obvious reason is the very reason we do this. If there’s someone we know and love who has been away from us traveling, we want to know all about it. “Where did you go?” “What did you see?” “Who did you meet?” “What impressed you the most?” We want to get current with people we love who have been away from us.
A second reason is that Saint Paul’s readers were an oppressed and persecuted minority. They needed the encouragement that their faith in Jesus was catching fire. If you are suffering, and there’s no immediate remedy for your suffering, the next best thing is to know you are not alone. So the story, this travelogue, is told for the sake of others’ encouragement. Read More
Faith and Trust are Cousins – Br. Curtis Almquist
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I just finished reading a marvelous book, Dancing with Sherman. Sherman is a donkey. Ostensibly, the book is about donkey-racing with their human partners in the Amish-Mennonite country of Pennsylvania. Sherman is a real winner. In actuality, the book is about trust, the interdependence of trust woven into the whole of creation. The author, Christopher McDougall, writes that “donkeys operate on one frequency – trust. They do nothing on faith, but everything on certainty.”[i] Donkeys operate on trust, not faith. We have the capacity for both, for both trust and faith.
Trust and faith are related. They’re like cousins. Faith operates with the eyes of our heart.[ii] We read in The Letter to the Hebrews, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”[iii] Faith… the conviction of things not seen. Faith in God is a gift from God, though it’s not based on evidence. Faith is a kind of inner knowing. Which is why so many people – even in the face of tremendous fear or overwhelming suffering, even now – have not lost their faith in God. Many people’s faith in God is awakened in suffering, which is such a paradox. In our opening prayer,the Collect for today, we ask God to “open the eyes of our faith” to behold God. The eyes of our faith is a kind of inner seeing, which can even be contrary to the evidence we actually see. Saint Paul says “we walk by faith, not by sight.”[iv]It was Saint Anselm of Canterbury who, in the 11th century, described the preeminence of faith as coming from the heart, not the mind: “faith seeking understanding,” he said.[v] Read More
The Sacred Work of Remembrance – Br. Keith Nelson
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Genesis 6:5-8; 7:1-5,10
Psalm 29
Mark 8: 14-21
All of the world’s major Story traditions contain epic cycles of creation, the flourishing of life, decline, death, and renewal. Myths – stories that resound with the ring of Truth, whether or not they are based on factual events – mirror the processes of nature and the work of time. These stories enlarge what is small but also condense what is vast. This process allows the storyteller and the story-listener to make meaning of the cycle – which would otherwise remain too large to handle. The portion that is visible to us at any one moment – birth, growth, suffering, or death – would overwhelm us with its magnitude. Stories sift, sort, and distill until symbols cohere from the chaos: the waters of a great flood; a boat designed by God; a bit of yeast; a single loaf of bread.
When decline and death become the predominant experience of a culture or group, these stories become vital life-lines to a sacred past. “We have been here before,” the people can confidently say. “Let us remember; let our remembering bear us forward.” Some of the Psalms are almost entirely sustained acts of remembrance. Foundational memories recorded elsewhere in the Torah are set to psalmody not to be redundant, but to place them in the mouths of each praying generation. Including ours.
For the people of Israel, there is a power, a force, a God outside of nature and time. “The LORD sits enthroned abovethe flood,” the Psalmist sings. The Holy One is transcendent.
Family Saints – Br. Luke Ditewig
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2 Corinthians 6:1-10
John 13:12-17
Today we remember the Saints of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, the Brothers who have gone before us. We remember them one by one reading aloud their obituaries at Compline.
They came from various backgrounds with a range of interests. Writers, poets, architects, artists, book-binders, and insect enthusiasts who served in England, Scotland, India, South Africa, Japan, Canada, and across the United States.
They were pastors, preachers, spiritual directors, teachers, retreat leaders and more. Sometimes much at once. I like the story of John Hawkes who during the Great Depression presided at a marriage, baked and iced the wedding cake, and supplied the rings. Read More
Venting the Light – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Matthew 5:14-16
The story is told that Winston Churchill stuttered as a young child. This is the Winston Churchill whose later eloquence was probably the single-most important factor in saving western Europe from tyranny in the 1940s. Churchill stuttered as a self-conscious, frightened little boy. Now there’s a developmental theory that would say his oratorical brilliance as an adult developed as a compensation for his childhood sense of inferiority.[i] This “compensation theory” says that, for example, in our childhood or youth the challenges, say, of birth defects, of illness, of discrimination, of poverty, of family craziness, or of other unfortunate circumstances provide the very stimulus for all later higher achievements. In other words, this compensation theory would say that small, sickly, self-conscious, or sad children are driven by this principle of compensation to develop into towering leaders of activity and strength. Churchill would seem an example of it, and some of us here may identify with that very notion.
But there’s another “take” on why it is we grow into who we are, which is called the “acorn theory.”[ii] Growing up is not about compensation; it’s about recovery. Each of us enters the world, something like an acorn, with the seed of calling, with a sense of identity, with a vision of destiny. And so, of course Churchill stuttered as a child! Given this nascent, daunting sense as a child that his voice, his voice would be the instrument to save the western world, of course he stuttered as a child. Wouldn’t you? We may well have glimpsed our destiny or life’s calling when we were yet a child, but we might have avoided it, or denied it, or run from it. In Jesus’ words, we may have put the light of our calling under a bushel basket. Read More