Posts Tagged ‘Prayer’
While I Have My Being – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
Back when I was a postulant and first moved into the monastery, I frequently had a daydream about the door leading from the church into our enclosure. We Brothers process through this door multiple times a day, so we have a lot of experience with it. My daydream was that in the space above the door, kind of where the exit sign is now, there would be a scoreboard. I would daydream that as we Brothers left the chapel, we would each get a score about how well we prayed. I imagined grades like 89 or 92 and wondered how we could bump up to the next level.
What I’ve come to learn since being a postulant is that we don’t get graded on our prayers. In my experience, this can be a source of relief and frustration. It’s a source of relief in that we are not being judged by our praise, but it may also be a source of frustration in that it’s nearly impossible to quantify or qualify how it is we praise God. Read More
Labor and Prayer – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. I’ve probably heard this sentence a few thousand times in my life. The truth is I’ve never known if it is good news or bad news. It always feels like both.
One of the best and worst parts of being a human being is labor. We labor with our hands and minds, we labor with God, we labor with one another, and we do the emotional labor of our lives as best we can. The best part of all that is we all have opportunities to do good work in our lives. The worst part is that something always gets in the way. Our labor is always limited by some obstacle, and is never as ideal as we first thought it would be. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
The good news is that Jesus knows our human nature. Jesus knows we have this drive within us for labor. Jesus knows when we look at the woes of the world, we are often filled with compassion and want to do something. We want to labor for a better world. Read More
You do not know what you are asking – Br. Jack Crowley
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You do not know what you are asking. I can’t imagine the feeling of having Jesus Christ himself say that to me. It’s a real conversation stopper. Yet that’s exactly what Jesus said in this morning’s Gospel.
You do not know what you are asking. You have no idea what you are talking about. You do not know what is best for you. You do not understand the bigger picture.
We’ve probably all been in situations where some version of these words is said to us. It’s an awkward place to be in, when what we think we know to be true or ideal, suddenly is full of doubt. When our own side of the story starts to slip away and we feel exposed. These moments are often full of fear and shame.
You do not know what you are asking. Jesus says these words to James and John, the famous sons of thunder. Staying true to their nickname, James and John had boldly approached Jesus with an ask, they wanted to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus in his glory.
Whenever I pray with this passage, I always try to arrive at a place of sympathy for James and John. I always try to get a sense in my own self of when I’ve thought I’ve known was best for me and everyone around me. I remember all the times I’ve gone to God with my bright ideas. Read More
The Centre Cannot Hold – Br. Geoffrey Tristram
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Br. Geoffrey Tristram
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
In the year 1919, the poet W B Yeats wrote a poem called ‘The Second Coming’. There is a famous line in that poem which has resonated through the decades. He wrote, ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.’ The first world war had just ended, and it felt like chaos had descended on the world, with the breakdown of order, of stability, and of the traditional sources of authority. ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.’ For many, those words well describe our world and our nation today: The recent shocking attempt at an assassination, a deeply polarized and divided nation, a world filled with violence in the Ukraine, Gaza, and frightening weather patterns signaling a planet in crisis. ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.’
Yet these same words could also have been used to describe the land where Jesus walked. Not only was their land occupied by Romans, but worse, there as a breakdown of moral guidance and spiritual guidance from those who were meant to be their leaders, their ‘shepherds’. In our first reading today from the Book of Jeremiah, the prophet excoriates the religious leaders of Judah, ‘woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture. You have driven them away and not cared for them.’ But Jeremiah then goes on to give to the people a prophesy of hope. ‘The day is coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up a shepherd who will shepherd my people. I will raise up for David a righteous branch and he shall reign as king and execute righteousness in the land.’ That day finally came, when Jesus was born. Read More
Jesus’ Name; Jesus’ Heart – Br. Curtis Almquist
Br. Curtis Almquist
In my childhood and early adolescence I was fascinated by magic and magic tricks. Which also happens to be when I first heard Jesus’ words, “I will do whatever you ask in my name.” It was like my discovering the ultimate magic trick. I started asking away in Jesus’ name about most everything I fancied. Everything. It did not work. Not often. It was sure not anything to depend on. I remember “dropping” this Bible verse like dropping a fad. I only later discovered the context of Jesus’ invitation. It’s not just about asking Jesus; it’s also about naming Jesus.
There is an enormous power in knowing someone’s name and then using it. To know someone’s name gives you an access to their identity and a claim on your relationship. I imagine we all know when that power is misused, when someone “name drops.” When someone feigns to know another person – who they are, what they believe, how they can be accessed. If someone invokes the name of a person, but without the license to use their name, it will backfire, eventually… because the namedropper will eventually be exposed. People will know: the person whose name was invoked would not say that. It is inconsistent or incongruous… and the pretender will be discredited.
Which is the key in claiming Jesus’ invitation that he will give us whatever we ask in his name. We must know Jesus to invoke his name. We must know the mind of Jesus, the heart of Jesus, the words of Jesus to speak in his name. And the purpose, the goal for invoking Jesus’ name, is for one reason only: for the sake of love. It’s to know Jesus’ love and then to love others on behalf of Jesus, to love others in Jesus’ name. Our asking things of Jesus cannot just be on behalf of our own private self, but on behalf of all whom Jesus claims in relationship.
Our community’s principal founder, Richard Meux Benson, says that all of us are related. Father Benson says, “Your life must be a relative life. The moment you are imprisoned in your own self-consciousness, in your own separate individuality, in the selfishness of your own separate existence, you commit a worse suicide than taking the life of your body.” Father Benson says that we are a relative being, and we have no existence except when we ask and act on behalf of another.[i]
We should take Jesus at his word, to ask away. Jesus assures us, “I will give you whatever you ask in my name….” In my adolescence, the problem was not that I was asking for too much; I was asking for too little. We need to know a great deal about Jesus and the enormity of his love – what Jesus would want for those for whom we pray – and then pray our hearts out. And in our praying, we should presume that Jesus will very likely reciprocate, in asking us, asking you, to be a part of the answer to our prayer.
[i] Quoted from Further Letters of Richard Meux Benson, pp. 36-37; 297.
The Making and Meaning of Life – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
In Psalm 4, which we just sang, there is a wonderful phrase: “You have put gladness in my heart, more than when grain and wine and oil increase.” “Gladness,” in the Hebrew, is often translated as “joy.” Our word “gladness” comes from the Old English meaning “bright, shining, gleaming, joyous.” God has put gladness, joyfulness, into our heart, which is a wonderful elixir when life feels desolating. Gladness, joyfulness, is a gift from God. Which begs the question: How do we cultivate and appropriate the gift of gladness that God has already put into our heart?
For one, you don’t have to wait until everything is peachy. You don’t have to wait until all the bad stuff, all the bad people, all the suffering is over… and then you can get in touch with gladness, with joyfulness. No need to wait. Gladness and joyfulness are “alongsiders.” In the scriptures, so often we read of suffering and joy coexisting, which is a paradox. Often the depth of one’s suffering will forecast the height of one’s forthcoming experience of joy. The psalmist writes, “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning.”[i] Read More
Conversing with God – Br. Jack Crowley
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Br. Jack Crowley
Exodus 32:7-14
Psalm 106:6-7, 19-23
Moses was the star of the show this morning. The hero who stood in the breach defending his people from God’s wrath. I can’t imagine how Moses must have felt, walking down Mount Sinai with two stone tablets in hand, being verbally interrupted by God to find out his people had turned astray.
One of the many things I love about Moses was his verbal relationship with God. I use that word verbal intentionally. Moses and God had a lot of conversations. Starting from being called from the burning bush on Mount Horeb, all the way to Moses’ last moments on Mount Nebo with God lovingly telling Moses how his people would reach the promised land. Moses and God had this beautiful back and forth verbal relationship that blossomed over time.
These conversations were not always easy. Moses had the courage to speak to God truthfully, but Moses also had the stamina to listen to what God had to say – even when God was angry. Moses grew from being a man too afraid to speak to Pharaoh directly, even though God directly told Moses to do so, to being a man who verbally defended his people straight to God’s face. Read More
The Powerful Name of Jesus – Br. David Vryhof
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Br. David Vryhof
Numbers 6:22-27
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke 2:15-21
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Name.[1] It is the eighth day of Christmas, the day on which Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the Temple, offering him to God with the appointed sacrifices. In Judaism, this was the occasion on which the father named the child, and for Jewish boys, this was the day of their circumcision, which set them apart from all others and marked them as belonging to God’s holy people, Israel. “The Word became flesh and lived among us”… as a young Jewish boy.
We recognize, don’t we, that there is power in a name. In ancient Israel, and in other ancient cultures, there was believed to be a close connection between a person’s name and their soul. It was as if their identity, their personality, their temperament, and their character were all bound up in their name. To know someone’s name was to gain insight into them, perhaps even power over them. Recall the story of Jacob wrestling with a mysterious stranger throughout the night beside the river Jabbok, refusing to let go and demanding to know the stranger’s name (Gen. 32:29). Or remember in the gospels how demons tried to exercise power over Jesus by calling out his name and claiming to know who he was (Mark 3:11). There was power in knowing someone’s name.
To do something “in the name of” another person, or to evoke or call upon a person’ name, was an act of utmost weight and power because it made the other person effectively present in the transaction. Someone who was authorized to act “in the name of” another shared that person’s power and authority. Read More
Desire, Distilled – Br. Keith Nelson
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Isaiah 40:1-11
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8
I was blessed in the second year of my novitiate to work with a spiritual director who was a Trappist monk. Once a month, he patiently listened to the many words I would summon as I circled around my inmost experience of prayer. With a verbal precision sifted by silence, and great love, he would wait. And at the right moment, which would always come, he would name the heart of the matter. Suddenly, words would feel small and superfluous, and the way forward obvious, in the presence of a God whose one desire was simply to be with me.
He shared with me an adage I still remember:
Filled with ardent desire
yet not pressing the point
we become a place
where the Lord may rest.
The words capture the essential invitation in swift, clean strokes. We let our thirst for God rise up from within. We refrain from any agenda of our own contriving, any attachment to this or that experience. And we wait. As we wait, it may happen that God rests – and we rest in God, drawn by this harmonious alignment of wills. Read More
Breaking Apart
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It was November 2011 when I began to plan my suicide.
No particular event prompted it. My grandmother had recently died, which was sad, but not unexpected, and she had lived a long life. I had, just a few weeks prior, lost a local election, but I never really expected to win; I was thrilled that I simply hadn’t come in last place, that I’d convinced thousands of real-life people with jobs and lives to vote for me. To be honest, the personal and professional busyness was probably a distraction from the deeper problem.
Eventually, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety (like many of us), and I took pills, and they worked well, and I basically agree with the diagnosis. But leaving it there doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel true to what I lived. I certainly experienced depression and anxiety to a degree that would register on a clinical level, but I do not think that’s the full story. I’m convinced that these were the psychological damages wrought by a deeper, fundamental problem. Read More