Journey
This is about my spiritual journey and trying to find what God is calling me to next.
Shrove Tuesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 02/09/2016 - 07:12Shrove Tuesday. I am still trying to nail down my Lenten Discipline. Last year, I wrote a poem a day. Should I do the same this year? Should I try to tie each poem to the lessons in the lectionary for the day? How much of my current search for discernment should come into my discipline? How much should it be private and personal, and how much should it be online and part of the community. How much action? How much contemplation? Where do Deleuze and Benedict fit in?
This morning, I read Richard Rohr’s email, Learning How to Love where he talked about St. Francis struggling with similar issues. Richard talks about St. Francis asking “Sister Clare and Brother Sylvester to spend some time in prayer about it and then come back and tell him what they thought he should do”.
I shared this in a group on Facebook talking about St. Francis’ discernment committee.
Later, I read Kate Heichler’s blog post Hunger where she talks about the devil tempting Jesus in the wilderness.
It should not surprise us that the Tempter hasn’t changed his tactics much. He still approaches us in those areas where we feel depleted or deprived, where we’re vulnerable to scarcity-thinking, where we can more easily be convinced that we deserve to be full. After all, isn't God the source of abundance and blessing?
Yes - and that is exactly what we need to remember in those times when we’re tempted to take what has not been given us, or manipulate others to give us what we want. It is God who gives in abundance, and we don't need to look elsewhere.
Where do I feel depleted or deprived? Where am I most vulnerable to scarcity-thinking? I worry about how I will continue to support my family during this time of seeking and wherever I am led next. How does my current journey and my current career fit together? Can I keep working in social media but only part time, while also working as a part time priest? My concern is that I’ll end up working full time in both professions.
Scarcity-thinking. Where will I find the time? Where will I find the time for daily meditations and writing? Where will I find the time to do the almost always overwhelming amount of tasks at work? How can I do all of this to my top performance? “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”
The next blog post I read was Sara Lee Macdonald’s Walk With Me On Our Journey presents : Journaling your Journey beginning now and throughout Lent! Tonight's theme is : Prepare. To what extent will I participate in Sara Lee’s journaling? To what extent will I participate online? Her assignment for today,
Clean out the cobwebs in our spiritual selves and get it ready for Ash Wednesday. This is the annual Carbo Load before we take on tight control of the carbs in our lives.
So, I’ve written this at the end of my devotional time as I move into my morning social media activities, taking a little time form both. Can I continue this sort of schedule without feeling rushed?
I have downloaded a recording of St. Benedict’s Rule of Life which I hope to listen to in the car as I drive to and from work. There are the various books I’m reading for Lent. There are the Discernment Committee meetings.
I am not ready. I don’t feel like I have an abundance of time. Yet, to go back to Kate’s post, this is where I need to rely on God’s abundance.
Benedict and Deleuze
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 02/08/2016 - 03:30The super bowl really didn’t hold my attention, so I headed off to bed early. But now, in the middle of the night, the meatballs and bean dip sit uncomfortably in my gut and I cannot sleep. After tossing and turning for a bit, I get up and try to write.
I don’t have a burning desire to write, like I often do. Instead, I am writing simply because it is what I do. Not only was it Super Bowl Sunday, but it was the last Sunday of Epiphany. We had a Baptism and our Annual Church Meeting.
The priest did a great job of tying the Baptism to the readings about transfiguration and focused on our own individual transformations. The annual meeting was upbeat and we all ate together afterwards as a church family.
I chatted briefly with our Seminarian. She spoke about how different Ash Wednesday was after she had started her discernment process. I commented about how even the Baptism felt very different. I looked at the child being baptized. I wondered what his life would be like, how God would touch him. I thought back to my own baptism, when I was a child. What was it like? For me? For me mother? For the minister? For godparents? What did they think would be come of me?
Phrases like “Changed from glory into glory” and “if anyone is in Christ they are a new creation” come to mind. I think back to my poem about Lent, “You have entered unchartered territory”.
I have not settled on my Lenten discipline for this year. Will I try to write a poem a day? What will I do with my personal devotion time? How do various study groups fit in? I keep stumbling into a few different ideas that seem at odds with one another.
One is the ‘Rule of Life’. It keeps coming up in different Lenten studies. I’m eager to jump into this, but waiting for Lent and for the studies to begin. Concurrent with this is my interest in the unknown, the unknowable, the unexpected, the unchartered territory. I think back to my readings about rhizomes, connected learning, and digital pedagogy.
Where does the Rhizome and the Rule of Life meet? How do I hold Saint Benedict and Gilles Deleuze in my mind together? It stirs a longing in my soul, to bring together these two thoughts in the midst of daily life.
I stumble across Deleuze’s essay Immanence and start reading the introduction. How I long to spend time reading it and finding others to discuss it with, in the context of the Rule of Life. Yet in a few hours, I will need to get on with my daily life.
I spend a little more time, looking at audio files I could download and listen to on my commute, but now I must try to get some sleep.
Lent 2016
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 02/04/2016 - 22:40“You are about to enter unchartered territory”
my internal GPS announced
as I sat in traffic
on I-84
northbound.
I looked at my fellow travelers
stuck in their cars
and wondered,
“How is this commute different
from all other commutes,
this pilgrimage,
in a post modern
wilderness?”
Lent starts soon
and giving up chocolate
isn’t unchartered territory.
“We confess…” I thought to myself.
What sort of Lenten discipline
echoes that?
Giving up our addiction to fossil fuels?
Somehow, that sounds like world peace
not only unchartered,
but probably unattainable.
What is attainable,
with God’s help?
How do we discover
our unknown, undone deeds?
How do we become
more conscious
more loving,
while stuck in traffic?
That would be unchartered,
maybe even life changing,
a worthy Lenten discipline.
The Theology of Michael, Florence, and Evelyn
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 02/03/2016 - 20:53Recently, I was asked,
According to Scripture, how has God chosen to accomplish God's mission in the world? What is the role that the church has been given? How do you define "church" in the context of that role?
These are the sort of questions I’m inclined to struggle with right now, all as part of a bigger question of what sort of role is God calling me to in the church. Yet it is only Wednesday, and I’m exhausted. Perhaps it is in part because I’ve been very busy at work. Perhaps it is part because it is a rainy day and I’m not getting enough vitamin D. Perhaps it is in part because I went to a memorial service on Saturday. So, I think about these questions and don’t feel engaged.
Evelyn had gone to the church I attend for many years, long before I ever started going. She and her best friend had always served coffee hour, that time of breaking pastries and drinking coffee that comes after the time of breaking bread and blessing wine. She lived out her final days at a nursing home I sometimes visit. After the memorial service, I wrote in my journal the idea for a blog post, The Theology of Michael, Florence, and Evelyn.
By Michael, I mean the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Michael Curry. In a message to the church, Presiding Bishop Curry says,
This is the Jesus Movement, and we are The Episcopal Church, the Episcopal branch of Jesus’ movement in this world...Now is our time to go. To go into the world, let the world know that there is a God who loves us, a God who will not let us go, and that that love can set us all free.
This doesn’t sound like some task force report, the answer to some divinity school or ordination exam. This is about being moved by God.
By Florence, I mean Florence Nightingale. Between working in health care and learning about Nightingale’s brilliance as a scientist and statistician which she put to work on the gritty front lines of health care, and her deep religious belief, she also shows what it is to be moved by God.
Of course, by Evelyn, I’m talking about Evelyn whose memorial service I went to on Saturday. I’m talking about a person who loved receiving the Eucharist, how loved sharing food with people around her, who might not have been able to put her faith into words that would sound good on a task force report or as an answer to a theological examination, but who instead embodied what it was like to be moved by God in daily life.
Relevance #Discernment #SavingSweetBriar
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 02/02/2016 - 13:08It‘s Groundhog Day, Candlemas, Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, or day after the Iowa Caucuses, depending on your orientation. I was thinking of writing about these for my blog post today, until I came across this article
Sweet Briar College gets record number of applicants.
Students and faculty say the number of applications – which increased from 751 at this time last year to 1099 this year — is just another sign of a community that has banded together to pull itself back from the brink.
I decided to retweet it, and so I checked to see if the #SavingSweetBriar hash tag was still active. It is, and from there I found an even more interesting article
This article starts
Over the past few years, NPQ has been tracking nonprofits whose stakeholders rose up to save them after their boards voted to close the doors. They are in a larger field of organizations that have felt the sting of stakeholder rebellions when a board has somehow broken faith with the community it serves.
I skimmed over the beginning section and the part about the San Diego Opera. I haven’t been following that story as closely as I’ve been following the Sweet Briar story. The section on Sweet Briar starts off presenting some of the history, and then has this quote:
There was a failure of faith in the mission—probably over about a ten-year period—from what I can tell and have observed since being on the inside. There was a belief at the highest leadership level that women’s colleges weren’t relevant anymore. A lot of that was coming from generations of administrative leaders and board leaders who were from classes of an earlier date, when Sweet Briar was the option because…
This particularly jumped out at me, and I’ve included the quote, leaving out the reason people had gone to Sweet Briar on purpose. You see, this Sunday will be my last day as Clerk of the Vestry of Grace and St. Peter’s Church in Hamden, CT. I have loved serving on the vestry. For those not acquainted with Episcopal Church governance, being Clerk of the Vestry is a kin to be secretary of the board of directors.
It is a difficult time. Like Sweet Briar, we have had dwindling participation and have had to rely on our endowment. As a board, we have explored cost saving measures while trying to stay true to the mission. I’ve brought up what happened at Sweet Briar at Vestry meetings. If we had been a different church with different leadership, our story might be more like Sweet Briar’s. As I read the paragraph, I thought of how it would read if it were talking about various churches:
There was a failure of faith in the mission—probably over the past few decades—from what I can tell and have observed since being on the inside. There was a belief at the highest leadership level that churches weren’t relevant anymore. A lot of that was coming from generations of administrative leaders and board leaders who were from churches of an earlier date, when you went to church because…
I remember singing Hymn by Paul Stukey
I visited Your house again on Christmas or Thanksgiving
And a balded man said You were dead,
But the house would go on living.
He recited poetry and as he saw me stand to leave
He shook his head and said I'd never find You.
I don’t know if there were people at Grace and St. Peter’s who believed this, but it certainly wasn’t the case when I got there. At Grace and St. Peter’s there remains a strong faith in the mission, worshipping God, feeding the hungry, visit the sick, sheltering the homeless.
I don’t know what God has in store for Grace and St. Peter’s. I don’t know what God has in store for me, but I know that the mission still matters, and like Sweet Briar College, it will continue in unexpected ways, even when many people question its relevancy for today.
