Sleeping 8 Hours Unnatural?

Good news for those of you contemplating watch keeping this summer - or for those of you with small children (ah, how I remember those days). It turns out that sleeping straight through for 8 hours maybe unnatural. I came across the following BBC News article (below) this past week that examines some of the new research into sleep patterns. By looking at historical writings (including devotional manuals), art work and songs, some sleep experts are suggesting that for most of the human experience, humans had a first sleep of about four hours, woke up for about two hours, and then had another sleep (the second sleep) of about four hours. If you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, turns out it is quite natural. Might give you a different perspective on the change of watch, checking on the anchor, or what not, eh?

Blessed Be

Joel

Here is the link to the article: "The Myth of the Eight-Hour Sleep" by Stephanie Hegarty

Encounters with the Undomesticated God: Lent 1, 2012

The first Sunday of Lent starts with readings of Jesus heading out into the wilderness for forty days after his baptism. The connection between these forty days of Jesus and the forty days of Lent (not counting Sundays which are always little Easters) are not lost to preachers (myself included). So, this past week when my colleague Marcia mentioned maps, wilderness and the Undomesticated God, my ears perked up. Of course, the Divine is undomesticateable (is that a word?). But, we humans also enjoy our routines and ordered lives. And yet ... isn't this in part what draws us out to far off places in our boats? Don't we, too, wish to have encounters with this Undomesticated Divine Presence that blows where and when s/he will? Don't the longings for such encounters keep us going?
May your Lent be filled with experiences in the Wilderness.

Blessed Be
Joel

Here's the quote Marcia was talking about in full: Barbara Brown Taylor. Leaving Church: a Memoir of Faith. HarperOne, 2006. p. 170-2.

By the time I resigned from Grace-Calvary [to teach at the college], I had arrived at an understanding of faith that had far more to do with trust than with certainty. I trusted God to be God even if I could not say who God was for sure. I trusted God to sustain the world although I could not say for sure how that happened. I trusted God to hold me and those I loved, in life and in death, without giving me one shred of conclusive evidence that it was so. While this understanding had the welcome effect of changing faith from a noun to a verb for me, it was an understanding that told me how far I had strayed from the center of my old spiritual map.

Like any other map, mine had both a center and an edge. At the center stood the Church, where good women baked communion bread, ironed alter linens, and polished silver that had been in the church family for generations. Parents presented their children for baptism, and those children grew up with dozens of church aunts and uncles who knew them by name. The Christian education committee recruited Sunday school teachers, the youth group leaders planned pizza parties at the bowling alley, and the choir rehearsed from 6:30 to 8:00 in the parish house on Thursday nights. At the center, some people never picked up a prayer book on Sunday morning because they knew the communion service by heart, and even those who had to look said the Nicene Creed all the way through without leaving any parts of it out. These people at the center kept the map from blowing away.

As it turned out, the edge of the map was not all that far from the center. It was not as if I or anyone else had to take a mule train for three weeks to find ourselves in the wilderness. All we had to do was step outside the Church and walk to where the lights from the sanctuary did not pierce the darkness anymore. All we had to do was lay down the books we could not longer read and listen to the howling that our favorite hymns so often covered up. There were no slate roofs or signs to the restroom out there, no printed programs or friendly ushers. There was just the unscripted encounter with the undomesticated God whose name was unpronounceable - that, and a bunch of flimsy tents lit up by lanterns inside, pitched by those who were either seeking such an encounter or huddling in their sleeping bags while they recovered from one. These people at the edge kept the map from becoming redundant.

According to the Bible, both the center and the edge are essential to the spiritual landscape, although they are as different from one another as they can be. The wilderness of Sinai provided the people of Israel with an experience of God that was distinct from their experience in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Judean desert showed Jesus a side of God's Holy Spirit that was not apparent while magi knelt before his manger in Bethlehem. There is life in both places because the same God is in both places, but they are so different from one another that it is often difficult for people to be one place without wanting to be the other place or to agree that both places really belong on the same map. Much that is certain at the center is up for grabs in the wilderness, while much that is real in the wilderness turns out to be far too feral for the center.

Ash Wednesday 2012

Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Ash Wednesday (and Lent for that matter) always mean a time to be honest about who we are and what we are made of. A time to remember our interconnects with the planet and galaxy upon which we dwell. A time to remember that we are beloved of the Divine Presence which permeates everything.
Made from Earth we are,
Made from Water we are,
Made from Air and Fire we are,
Enlivened and Beloved by the Spirit we are.

As we move through Lent, may we find time to remember our connections, to slow down a bit and savor the awe that we too are God's Beloved.

Blessed Be

Joel

Ash Wednesday Service 2012

The following is an Ash Wednesday Service that I often use. This comes right out of the United Methodist Book of Worship and the United Methodist Hymnal. 

May you have a good and humble Ash Wednesday where ever you are.

Blessed Be

Joel

GREETING:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
And also with you.
Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins.
God’s mercy endures forever.

OPENING PRAYER   (from the United Methodist Hymnal #353)

O God,

maker of every thing and judge of all that you have made,

from the dust of the earth you have formed us 

and from the dust of death you would raise us up.

By the redemptive power of the cross, 

create in us clean hearts

and put within us a new spirit,

that we may repent of our sins

and lead lives worthy of your calling;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

SCRIPTURE:
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Psalm 51 #785
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

INVITATION TO THE OBSERVANCE OF LENTEN DISCIPLINE
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

the early Christians observed with great devotion 

the day of our Lord's passion and resurrection, 

and it became the custom of the Church that before the Easter celebration 

there should be a forty-day season of spiritual preparation.

During this season converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism.

It was also a time when persons who had committed serious sins 

and had separated themselves from the community of faith 

were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, 

and restored to participation in the life of the Church.

In this way the whole congregation was reminded 

of the mercy and forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ 

and the need we all have to renew our faith.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, 

to observe a holy Lent: 

by self-examination and repentance; 

by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; 

and by reading and meditation on God's Holy  Word.

To make a right beginning of repentance, 

and as a mark of our mortal nature, 

let us now kneel (or bow) before our Creator and Redeemer.

(a brief silence is kept)

THANKSGIVING OVER THE ASHES
Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth. 

Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence,

so that we may remember that only by your gracious gift

are we given everlasting life;

through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

IMPOSITIONS OF THE ASHES
(as people come forward, a leader dips a thumb in the ashes and makes 

a cross on the forehead of each person saying:
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

THE LORD’S PRAYER

DISMISSAL WITH A BLESSING

Lentan Resources 2012

Ash Wednesday starts Lent, of course, and I thought I might post some resources for you.

My thanks for the resources to

 Tanya Barnett

Creation-Care Project Coodinator

PNW Office of Connectional Ministries 

If you would like to recieve "Creation-Care 365" email her at the above address, she'd love to enclude your email to the list.

Blessed Be

Joel

Creation-Care Resources for Lent

• Earth Ministry's rich collection of Lenten Devotions & Resources 
• Earth Ministry/WA Interfaith Power and Light's new Lenten Prayer and Action Series: "designed for small groups within a congregation, the curriculum focuses on taking action in three areas of our life with a large impact on carbon emissions: diet, transportation, and energy efficiency."  Download for free by clicking on the link above. 
• "God, Earth, and Us: Lenten Meditations on Our Relationship with Creation": produced by Rev. Jenny Phillips (of the PNW Annual Conference) for the 2009 Lenten season, this devotional series continues to offer weekly insights on living in greater communion with God's creation
• "Living Earth: A Lenten Journey": produced by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, this is a "reflection series on our relationship with God's creation" -- with reflections for each day during Lent
• "Powering Down: ...Suggestions for Caring for Creation during the Season of Lent": from TN and OR Interfaith Power and Light, this resource contains a lesson plan for youth, sample sermons, tips for saving energy, and more
• "Stations of the Cross with All Creation": produced by the Intercommunity Peace & Justice Center ($2) -- "The 15 Stations consider the suffering of Jesus, our planet, and its people and envision resurrection and new life."

Book Review: Robert Wicks' Crossing the Desert

Believe it or not, but this Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent for the Western church. I'll have some more resources to reflect upon on Wednesday, but for now wanted to review Robert Wicks' book, Crossing the Desert: Learning to let go, see clearly, and live simply. As the first Sunday in lent is a reading of Jesus' heading into the desert for forty days, I thought this an appropriate time for this review.


Blessed Be
Joel

Robert J. Wicks. Crossing the Desert: Learning to let go see clearly and live simply. Norte Dame: Sorin Books, 2007. 186 pages.

Quotes on the dedication page:

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors ~ African Proverb

Where are the great and wise [persons] who do not merely talk about the meaning of life and the world but really possess it? ~ Carl Jung

“Only after the desert has done its work in us can an angel come to strengthen us. Crossing the Desert tells us why we need the desert in our lives and what kid of angels only the desert can bring. This is Robert Wicks at his best: wonderfully sane, balanced, accessible, witty, and challenging. Mysticism for those who are frightened of that term.” says Ronald Rolheiser (the author of The Holy Longing) on the back cover. For those of you familiar with The Holy Longing that should be a review enough. But I’ll continue.

Wicks has divided his book into three sections: an introductory chapter on the desert; a subsection (Part One) on embracing the freedom of humility; and a subsection (Part Two) on letting go. He remains personal and anticdotical throughout the book referring to his own experiences on his own spiritual journey, as well as his years as a therapist. I wished he would have included more stories from the desert fathers (abbas) and mothers (ammas), but one can find these in other sources. Wick’s purpose, it seems to me, it rather to encourage others to embark upon their own journeys of faith.

During the fourth century CE there were a group of folks who left the trappings of the Roman Empire and its civilization for the desert, in order to more fully seek God and become themselves. I appreciate how Wicks points out that the abbas and ammas were after ordinariness – the ordinary – rather than trying to become or chase after extraordinariness or becoming someone special. There is a sense in which these individuals found the “trappings of civilization” to be just that, trappings. Money, fame, success, possessions, etc. do not define who an individual is. These people of the desert stove to strip away their false selves and become more their ordinary selves. Wicks stresses that these people have something to teach us about becoming more ourselves, and letting go of our own falsehoods. It is of note that the stories coming out of the desert are highly practical in nature, rather than treatises on how to pray. At the same time, the stories are very often full of humility and compassion, as the following illustrates:

A few of the brothers came to see Abba Poemen.

They said to him, “Tell us what to do when we see brothers dozing during prayer. Should we pinch them to help them stay awake?”

            The elder said to them, “Actually what I would do if I saw a brother sleeping is to put his head on my knees and let him rest” (27).

At the same time, I appreciate how Wicks stresses that we do not need to leave our lives and head into the desert ourselves, even though the this “is about the journey that all of us are called to take – especially when we feel lost, under great stress, or during times of desolation” (15).

Part One: To Embrace the Freedom that Humility Offers (Chapters 2 – 5)

In this section Wicks reflects upon seeking those things that are essential, how humility and entitlement are opposites of one another, how our friends can give us insights into ourselves (especially prophets, cheerleaders, teaser/harassers, and wise companions/soul friends), and the importance of becoming grateful. The following is a sampling:

“The difference between true passionate intent that leads to action and mere fantasy that results in inaction is a distinction that all major religions make when addressing the topics of letting go or the freedom and peace that true spiritual practice can bring” (40).

In speaking of the three psycho-spiritual gates: passion, knowledge and humility, Wicks has this to say about passion. “It [passion] is not dimmed by failure because passion is not based on success. Instead it is fired by a spiritual sense of awe for what life can be when it is touched by courage, openness, and gratitude for all we have been given” (43-44). And when speaking about knowledge: “To keep a healthy perspective in life we need to have both the psychological and spiritual wisdom that the different world religions offer us. Such wisdom helps one to differentiate between unnecessary suffering on the one hand, and the kind of pain that must be faced rather than defended against or avoided on the other. Good knowledge, like healthy food, is necessary for living. Consequently living by the principles of self-care and maintaining a healthy perspective are two things we can naturally seek each day. We need this knowledge” (45). And about humility: Humility “is the ability to fully appreciate our innate gifts and our current ‘growing edges’ in ways that enable us to learn, act, and flow with our lives as never before” (45). “With humility, knowledge is transformed into wisdom” (46). “Humility is an essential ingredient in life because it provides a kenosis, an emptying of the self – the very desert spirit of letting go about which this book is written” (47-8).

Obstacles to humility:

“And, certainly among the obstacles to living humbly and simply that they [our wise companions] guide us through, there is no greater one than a conscious sense of entitlement or the unconscious parallel danger of ‘repressed gratefulness’” (63).

“Humility and a sense of entitlement are bad bedfellows. If it is true that the meek shall inherit the earth, the entitled shall certainly contest their inheritance!

            “How did life become this way for so many of us? What happened to gratefulness, appreciation of the simple things in life, and a clear recognition that in the end all is gift? When did artificial needs become so powerfully consuming? Suggest to someone today that they can be happy with less and they think you are being absurd. …

            “Ever sense the so called self-actualization movement of the 1960’s, people have been taught that what they really must do to be truly happy is to step forward and get what is rightfully theirs. They must be willing to take the necessary risks to get what they deserve out of life. I think this is the wrong risk for most people to take much of the time. To do so means that we spend most of our waking time constantly chasing and claiming rather than enjoying the life set before us. I believe that a more appropriate and powerful question that we should ask ourselves today is, ‘Am I taking enough risks to fully enjoy what I already have?’

            “Of course, the question is countercultural. It is tied more to a spirit of humility than a sense of entitlement. The consumer society we live in tries to keep us off balance. It urges us to be continuously in search of those things and people that are rightfully ours, and to believe that they will in the end, make us whole” (65ff).

           

What a question! “Am I taking enough risks to fully enjoy what I already have?”

And of course I can’t help but wonder that this spirit of entitlement is why the USA and the world are in the economic recession/depression that we are in.

Part Two: Letting Go (Chapters 6 – 9)

These section is about learning to become a desert apprentice by asking four desert questions (1. What am I filled with now? 2. What prevents me from letting go? 3. How do I empty myself? 4. What will satisfy me, but leave me open for more? Or to put it another way, What do I do once the room is swept clean? or In essence, what paradoxically will satisfy me but still leave me spiritually open, empty and free?);* learning to feed your soul, what to look for in a mentor, and taking the steps to inner freedom.  Again, I’ll leave you with a sampling of what caught my fancy:

As Wicks explores his topics, he also quotes from others.

When asking the question of “What am I filled with now?”, Wicks relates the following story as told by Alan Jones. Soul Making: The Desert Way of Spirituality. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985. 146:

It is said that during an uprising in India late in the last century when British service families had to be evacuated, the road was strewn with such things as stuffed owls and Victorian bric-a-brac. I have no idea what the late twentieth century equivalent of a stuffed owl is, but no doubt our path will be just as littered with “necessities.” We will have to learn to travel light (84).

When speaking about the tradition of the desert ammas and abbas, but also about the spiritual practice of seeing clearly – and the need for mentors and others on the way – Wicks quotes from Columba Stewart:

It is obvious that the sayings of the desert fathers touch modern people in ways that other ancient Christian writings do not. This is not because they are pithy, humorous, or bizarre, although they are sometimes all of these things. What sets the apophthegmata apart from so much of patristic literature is that they speak from and to experience rather than text or theory; they are practical rather than intellectual. The sayings and the stories on which they are set do not try to pursue a topic as far as may be done, to run a concept to ground and examine it, or to construct an argument. The sayings open up rather than exhaust, suggest rather than describe. Like parables, they are explosive, and where the bits land after the explosion is different each time the stories are told or read. The significance of this quality runs deeper than matters of literary genre: it was not a studied preference for gnomic statements rather than treatises which gave rise to these sayings. The very form of the apophthegmata arose from and leads back into the heart of the desert quest. These monks staked everything on the effort to destroy illusion and deception. Their various disciplines were intended to help them cut through the noise of lives hooked on the deceptions, materialism, and games that have characterized human beings since the Fall. The desert itself gave them a landscape which mirrored what they sought for their own hearts: an uncluttered view through clean air” (125-126).**

And one last quote from a reference he uses of  Parker Palmer. Let Your Life Speak. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000, 2, 3.

When it is clear – if I have eyes to see – that the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me … I [start] to understand that it is indeed possible to live a life other than one’s own. … I had simply found a “noble” way to live a life that was not my own, a life spent imitating heroes instead of listening to my heart.

“In the desert, this point was made more simply: If you want to find rest here and hereafter say on every occasion, “Who am I?” and don’t judge anyone else. In this complex world with so many demands and insecurities, only those who have a sense of simplicity, single-heartedness, and knowledge of who they are will have a spontaneous, transparent heart which will allow them to flow with life rather than drift with it” (163–4).

 _________

* Chapter Six: pp. 84, 90, 101, and105.

** Wicks quotes Columba Stewart. “Radical Honesty about the Self: The Practice of the Desert Fathers,” Sobermost 12 (1990): 25.

Attunement through Breathing

And the Breath of God swept across the face of the waters

~ Genesis 1:2

The 10th day out I suddenly noticed that my breathing was in tune with slow breathing swells of the ocean, writes Pat(ricia) Henry in By the Grace of the Sea: a Woman's Solo Odyssey Around the World. It appears that Pat was suddenly surprised by this, yet expecting it, too. She only mentions this while crossing the Atlantic, but then mentions that as it was day 10, she was finally in sequence with the ocean and a trade wind passage, something she had experienced on two other long passages.

Have you ever had times in which you have suddenly found yourself in sequence with the environment around you? Have you had an experience of being at oneness with the Divine? Did you long for them to continue? How did these come about? How did you keep this attunement going? How did you lose it? How can you get it back?

Blessed Be

Joel

On Money - John Wesley's Take

Gain all you can,
Save all you can,
Give all you can
~ John Wesley

I've had some interesting conversations this past week about voluntary simplicity, money, finances, the economy, and giving of ourselves to the larger world. As sometimes happens, this week I also ran across an article I had bookmarked a long time ago about Wesley's view on money. Charles Edward White published an article for Leadership magazine for the Winter 1987 edition. An adaption of that article can be found here: http://www.missionfrontiers.org/oldsite/1994/0910/so949.htm

While the article talks about Wesley's understanding of money, and his teachings upon money, it doesn't mention much about Wesley's greater work in alleviating dangerous working conditions, and the systemic problems that were keeping people poor. In this, the article is lacking in some of its context. None-the-less, I find this article to be inspiring and challenging, especially considering these views came from Wesley, one of the richest English preachers of his day.

Here is a brief synopsis of Wesley's teachings:
Wesley grew up poor, he even watched his father hauled off to debtors prison. But as a professor/lecturer at Cambridge, he found himself making 30 pounds a year. Yet, he found himself unable to give any money to the poor. This started a life of earning money, and giving most of it away. During his lifetime, he kept his living expenses as close to 28 pounds as possible, giving the surplus away. Consequently, when the time came that he made 192 pounds, he used 28 upon himself, and gave 92 away. Or the year that he made close to 1400 pounds, he lived on 30 and gave the rest away. When he died, he left his books, and change in his pockets and drawers.

Here are his views:
Gain all the money you can - but not at the expense of yourself (health - both spiritual, physical and environmental) or at the expense of others (dangerous working conditions, etc.).
Save all you can by living simply, for this allows you to ...
Give all you can. Wesley's understanding is that all money is God's to start with, we are merely the trustees.

He then instructed the Methodists to follow these four scriptural principles, which Wesley interpreted as follows:

1. Provide things needful for yourself and your family (I Tim. 5:8). The believer should make sure the family has "a sufficiency of plain, wholesome food to eat, and clean raiment to put on" as well as a place to live and enough to live on if something were to happen to the breadwinner.
2. "Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content" (I Tim. 6:8) . "Whoever has sufficient food to eat, and raiment to put on, with a place to lay his head, and something over, is rich," he said.
3. "Provide things honest in the sight of all men" (Rom. 12:17) and "Owe no man anything" (Rom. 13:8). Wesley said the next claim on a Christian's money is the creditors'. He adds that those who are in business for themselves need to have adequate tools, stock, or capital for the carrying on of that business.
4. "As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith" (Gal. 6:10). After the Christian has provided for the family, the creditors, and the business, the next obligation is to use any money that is left to meet the needs of others.*

But what about those things that don't quite fit in the above "rules," what then? Wesley provided a series of questions:

1. In spending this money, am I acting like I own it, or am I acting like the Lord's trustee?
2. What Scripture requires me to spend this money this way?
3. Can I offer up this purchase as a sacrifice to the Lord?
4. Will God reward me for this expenditure at the resurrection of the just?*

_____
*from the adapted article at: http://www.missionfrontiers.org/oldsite/1994/0910/so949.htm