Journey
This is about my spiritual journey and trying to find what God is calling me to next.
Standing Against the Pandemic of Dissension
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 02/27/2016 - 09:59On Thursday night, the discernment committee met and we discussed calling. What is our calling? What happened when we felt called by God? How is each one of us called by God? A large part of the discussion was around my calling, which to a certain extent makes sense since the discernment committee was convened to help me with this task, but part of helping me discern my calling is to hear the stories of others, and there were some other deeply moving stories told, and I would have loved to hear more about others callings.
We started off by reading the stories of the calling of Moses, Samuel, and Isaiah. Afterwards, I thought about writing the story of my calling in the style of the stories in the Old Testament. I’ve hesitated about posting it, lest it seem like boasting or blasphemy, but a dream I had last night caused me to rethink this. So, here is the story of the calling I experienced in May 2105 written in an Old Testament style.
During a guided meditation at a poetry conference at Yale Divinity School, the Lord came to me and said, "Aldon, I love you more than you can imagine or understand".
And I said to the Lord, "Lord, I am not worthy"
And the Lord said to me, "Aldon, I know all your faults, yet I have made you worthy through the blood of Christ"
And the Lord said to me, "Aldon, you have been made to show forth My Love to those around you. You have done this through your work, and your writing, and your politics. From now on this is to be your primary goal"
And I said to the Lord, "Here I am"
A month later, I was reading the Old Testament lesson about the calling of Isaiah in church on Trinity Sunday, and I said aloud, reading the lesson, and praying at the same time, "Here I am. Lord, send me."
And the Lord said to me, "The time has come for you to become an ordained priest." Over the following months, I struggled with these words. I thought about the process of becoming a priest, and the Lord said, "All will be accomplished according to my plan".
So, I began the process, seeking to better discern God’s will and learn God’s plan. As I spoke with the homeless man on the street, I asked the Lord, is this whom I should serve?", and the Lord answered, "yes". I spoke with the infirm man in the nursing home and I asked the Lord, "Is this whom I should serve?" and the Lord answered, "yes". I sat in church groups, praying for each member and I asked the Lord, "Are these whom I should serve?" and the Lord answered "yes."
I heard stories of politicians saying hateful things, things that I believed were contrary to God’s message, and I asked the Lord, “Should I love even these people?”
And the Lord said, “Yes.”
And I heard stories of religious leaders shunning other religious leaders and refusing aid from certain countries because of disagreements over doctrine, and I asked the Lord, “Should I love even these people?”
And the Lord said, “Yes.”
Last night, I dreamt that I was at some sort of religious camp or retreat. The organizer was saying various things that felt very narrow and would exclude people from hearing the message of God’s Love. I spoke the truth, in Love and he changed his ways.
I don’t expect to see such a change in the U.S. political discourse, or in the discourse of the Anglican Communion because of my words, but I pray that they might be at least a small ripple of hope, a ripple of love in a climate where dissension seems to have become pandemic.
How Should We Then Live?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 02/21/2016 - 16:41I attend a “mainline Protestant” church, an Episcopal Church, to be precise, and I’m currently exploring what God might be calling me to within the church. It is a fairly diverse church, but many of my friends at church are fairly liberal. When I was younger, I attended a wide array of different churches including some fairly conservative fundamentalist evangelical churches.
So, some of the recent discussions about what is happening with various different churches catch my attention. Recently, I stumbled across Peter Thurley’s On Leaving Evangelicalism (The Short Version). It references Rachel Held Evans, Liberal Christianity, Conservative Christianity, and the Caught-In-Between from a few years ago.
It seems like a lot of people are talking about being caught in the middle between conservative fundamentalist evangelicalism and liberal mainline Protestantism. There is a dualism that doesn’t see a middle ground, or, perhaps, something completely different. Thurley illustrates this with a reference to David Gushee’s Conservative and progressive US evangelicals head for divorce. Gushee draws the battle lines between “conservative evangelicals [who] mainly lean toward a Calvinist/Lutheran Gospel centered on Christ’s work on the Cross for the saving of souls, on biblical inerrancy and pure doctrine, and on conservative social values” and progressive evangelicals who “tend toward a Radical Reformation type Gospel centered on the justice-advancing ministry and teachings of Jesus, and on his message of the kingdom of God as holistic salvation and social transformation”.
Somehow, this sounds like a false dichotomy to me.
I thought about this today in church when our seminarian spoke about Jesus not coming to establish a new earthly Jewish political kingdom, and how we need to keep this in mind as we listen to current political candidates quoting scripture. To me, it sometimes sounds like the favorite verse of many of the political leaders is from last week’s Gospel lesson, the middle of Luke 4:6 “I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me.” Context matters. In this case, it is the Devil tempting Jesus in the wilderness.
Part of the Old Testament lesson from Ash Wednesday seems to fit more closely with my liberal mainline Protestantism. Isaiah 58:6-7
“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Another article that caught my attention this past week was Kate Bowler’s Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me, where she writes about finding she has stage 4 cancer after years of studying the American prosperity gospel. As I read this, I thought of Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss.
With all these things in my mind, the title of the noted evangelical, Francis Schaeffer’s book, “How Should We Live Then?” comes to mind. Where is the common ground for conservative fundamentalist evangelicalism, liberal mainline Protestantism, and maybe even some followers of the American prosperity gospel?
For me, some of the answer comes through a weird amalgamation of fundamentalist evangelicalism, Franciscanism, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Part of my Lenten studies includes reading emails from the Franciscan Friar Richard Rohr.
"A true inner experience changes us, and human beings do not like to change." The Gospel is about our transformation into God (theosis), and not about mere intellectual assurance or "small-self" coziness. It is more a revolution in consciousness than a business model for the buying and selling of God as a product.
The word ‘theosis’ caught my attention. Wikipedia has
In Eastern Orthodoxy deification (theosis) is a transformative process whose goal is likeness to or union with God. As a process of transformation, theosis is brought about by the effects of katharsis (purification of mind and body) and theoria ('illumination' with the 'vision' of God)…
According to Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, the primacy of theosis in Orthodox theology is directly related to the fact that Orthodox theology (as historically conceived by its principal exponents) is based to a greater extent than Western Catholic Latin theology on the direct spiritual insights of the saints or mystics of the church rather than the apparently more rational thought tradition of the West. Eastern Orthodox consider that "no one who does not follow the path of union with God can be a theologian".
As I read all of this, my memories come back of my evangelical friends in college. “Have you found Jesus? Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Savior? Have you made Christ the center of your life?”
Last year, I had a deep religious experience where I was overwhelmed by an awareness of God’s love which is beyond comprehension, in spite of my own failings. This love wasn’t just some bible tract phrase or some grand concept. It was deeply personal and came with a call, to show that love to others.
I don’t see this as bringing prosperity, health, or any sort of power. I do believe that this love is something that needs to be brought into the political discourse, showing love to all candidates, no matter how challenging it might be. I believe it includes a call to love the sinner, no matter how offensive we think the sinner might be acting and recognizing that we are all sinners. I see it as including feeding the hungry, to provide shelter to the homeless, and clothes to the poor.
This is something I suspect I will frequently fail at, that we will all frequently fail at, but that we must all seek to do more. Two of the questions from the Episcopal order of Holy Baptism comes to mind.
“Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?” and “Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?”
As I think of my own discernment process and the process of others, the idea of putting our whole trust in God seems crucial. This is something that is done in communion with God, and not just our own doing.
Perhaps this is where Eastern Orthodox theosis, Franciscan transformation, and the fundamentalist idea of a personal Savior all come together. Perhaps this is what we need to be seeking during Lent and throughout the year as we seek to understand how we really should, then live.
Finish Later
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/19/2016 - 00:12This evening, I went to hear Jonatha Brooke at The Kate in Old Saybrook. It is very late, too late for me to try and write anything very coherent, but I want to get down some of my thoughts, even if I’ll need to finish them later.
One of the songs she sang was parts of some of Woody Guthrie’s writing, including one with the words, “Finish Later” at the bottom. When I heard that, I knew that would be, at least part of my quick evening post.
It seems like more and more of my writing is falling into the finish later category, ideas for blog posts, parts of poems.
It made me think of a poem by Billy Collins about unfinished poems by Paul Valery, January in Paris. These partial memories make me think of another poem by Billy Collins, Forgetfulness.
But this is a digression. Another song Jonatha Brooke sang was about her mother as the Alzheimer’s took hold. “Are you getting this down?” her mother would ask her. I’m trying to get some of my reactions to this evening’s music down.
One of the things she spoke about between songs was about that doubt that wracks all writers. I touched on this doubt in a recent blog post talking about Lent and The Accuser. It relates to my daughter’s book, Don’t Make Art, Just Make Something. I’m sure there is material here for me to explore in my discernment process. Where does art, being a creator created in the image of The Creator, yet tormented by doubt about being good enough, a good enough writer, among other things, fit in?
One other song she sang was about when her mother went into hospice and she wasn’t ready. She sang about The Last Call, and Red Molly’s song “The Last Call” came to mind. Poetry, music, art, woven together with doubt, uncertainty, reconnecting art to daily life, reconnecting spirituality to art and to daily life.
There is so much more that needs to be written about all of this, when I’m not over tired, when I have more time. So this, too, will end with
Finish Later.
The Common Journey
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 02/17/2016 - 20:59Here we choose to seek God
in step with others,
even though not always in common with others –
each of us on an apparently separate path
and yet all of us in veritable community
with one another on the way –
as lifelines,
as mentors,
as guides,
as models,
as brothers and sisters in whose loving company
we choose to make our common journey to God.
Our Lenten study group is reading The Monastery of The Heart by Joan Chittister and that passage from our reading yesterday really jumped out at me. I am spending a lot of time thinking about my journey, try to discern, with the help of others where my path is leading.
Early on in the present leg of my spiritual journey, a friend spoke with me about the Camino de Santiago, the great pilgrimage in northern Spain that seekers have travelled for centuries. The stories I read of the pilgrimage frequently spoke of being a common community, while not always travelling together.
I’ve been thinking about the online component of my journey: this blog, various other blogs, mailing lists, Facebook Groups; a spiritual rhizome, to build off the idea of a group of digital higher education pedagogues I hang out with online.
Somewhere in this crowd, are the poets, the mystics, the post-structuralists, all making a common journey, no matter how much they recognize the commonality and no matter how different the languages are.
Somewhere in all of this, is the rule of life, from St. Benedict, echoed by Joan Chittister, and providing a framework for the journey. Somewhere in all of this is the writing of Wilfred Bion looking at how groups work together, and the ideas growing out of this around primary tasks, roles, boundaries, authority, and to return to St. Benedict, humility.
Somewhere in all of this is the homeless man, who’s had a rough life, knows he should deal with his drinking problem, and is struggling with God. Somewhere in all of this is the victim of domestic violence, who lost her son to cancer, and is struggling with Allah.
This Lent, I am seeking to spend more time studying, praying, and listening. There doesn’t seem to be enough time, so a bracket in Lent Madness slips by unattended. A blog post gets scrimped on. Hours of sleep are cut short.
And still, I make my journey.
Evening Reflections
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 02/16/2016 - 22:39It was after nine when I got home, so I’m pretty tired, too tired to write in detail about the things I’ve been thinking about recently. So, I’ll mention them briefly and perhaps expound on some of them in more detail later.
Last night and this morning, my commutes were lengthened by icy weather. It is much warmer now.
I’ve been returning to the idea of being in the world, but not off the world, being a participant observer. of contemplation and action. I think of Christ as fully human and fully divine, our great bi-vocational high priest and wonder about being fully in my spiritual journey, while at the same time being fully in my daily life and work.
Part of my Lenten study is reading The Monastery of the Heart by Joan Chittister. It is the book we are reading at church. In preparation, I listened to The Rule of St. Benedict (off of Librivox) as part of my commute. We had a good discussion, and I look forward to how all of these come together.
But, it is time for bed.
