Kirkepiscatoid

(Icon of St. James of Jerusalem courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

(This post originally appeared on the Speaking to the Soul blog, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2011)

Readings for the feast day of James of Jerusalem:
Psalm 1
Acts 15:12-22a
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Matthew 13:54-58

Acts 15:12-22a:

The whole assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, “My brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first looked favorably on the Gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name. This agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written, ‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord— even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called. Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things known from long ago.’ Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood. For in every city, for generations past, Moses has had those who proclaim him, for he has been read aloud every sabbath in the synagogues.”

Then the apostles and the elders, with the consent of the whole church, decided to choose men from among their members and to send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leaders among the brothers, (NRSV)

The topic in the reading from Acts is whether or not Gentile converts to Christianity should be circumcised.  James' statement that we ought not to "trouble" them is quite an understatement, all things considered!  But the story brings up those "seven little words" we too often hear in church communities--"But that's how we've always done it"--and its sibling, "We've never done it like that before."

Now, this mindset is not the sole province of churches.  Twenty years of teaching medical students and having gone through "the training years" myself have taught me those seven little words are uttered a lot in medicine, too.  I learned many things a certain way for no good reason other than "That's how the people who trained me learned it."  Yet, if we look at this literally, we would still be having students draw intricate line drawings of cells with colored pencils in their Histology class, we'd have students procure their own teaching material for Gross Anatomy via the "Resurrection men" and late night trips to the cemetery, and interns would be on call every other night--a situation we now know is dangerous to patients.

I remember when the school I worked for first considered using prosected (already professionally dissected) material rather than have students dissect "their" cadaver from stem to stern.  The hue and cry was palpable.  People gave all sorts of reasons why this was something all medical students "must" do for themselves--but as I heard all the reasons, I wasn't hearing very much "them" I was hearing "I"--"I, an anatomy professor, won't get to work with them in a certain way."  "I, a surgeon, had to do that, and even though I don't really believe working on a formalin fixed body is the same as a live one, this was a rite of passage for me."  The actual educational basis for the change (the students could be learning something else essential to their learning to become physicians, rather than be doing "grunt" work in the anatomy lab for hours at a time every day) became overshadowed by all these "I's."

At some point in a church's life cycle, change occurs that creates anxiety in a parish.  Sometimes it is internal to the local parish (a new priest, the death of a beloved parishioner, or financial trouble, for instance) and sometimes it is external (The consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop, and, prior to that, the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, and prior to that, the ordination of women.)  The tendency is to take three steps back, and say some version of "the seven little words," and make the hurt about us.  The problem is that anxious people in anxious parishes tend to react in a way to relieve their own anxiety, rather than act for the good of the parish.  Times of change in the shared life of a parish are precisely the times we should be giving up control and allowing God's process to take control rather than reacting through individual control to relieve anxiety.

It is for this reason, I believe, that our BCP has many prayers specific for the life of the parish.  It's obvious that "parish anxiety" has been with us in our Christian history since the first days of the early church, from this passage.  I'm sure the decision that the Gentiles need not be circumcised was met with great anxiety among part of the church (and great relief among another part of the church!)  We historically call St. James "James the Just," but it might, in this day and age, be more valuable to think of him as "James the Non-Anxious Presence."

How often in the day-to-day life of the parish--in vestry meetings, before worship, together as committee members--do you actually sit down and pray about your shared life in the parish, as opposed to reacting to it?  How frequently do you use the tools already available to you in our beloved BCP?

And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day
The heavens and the earth were finished, the whole host of them
And on the seventh day G_d completed his work that he had done
and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done
And G_d blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it
because in it he had rested from all his work that G_d had created to do.

--From the Jewish Kiddush prayer for the eve of Shabbat 


It started with my Facebook status yesterday:


(I) had one of those "2x4 to the head" realizations today. I realized I use Tuesday (my scheduled "day off") to do errands, and Sunday I am often doing "church stuff." On Saturdays, whenever possible, I don't like to do a frickin' thing. Oh, I'll go eat a meal and take a walk with someone, or help a friend, but the best Saturdays are like today--be with myself, read, do essentially nothing. Heh. I think they call that "Sabbath."


When I was a kid, I had totally no concept of why the adults in my world didn't want to "do stuff" on the weekend.  I thought that business of lounging on porches and people coming over to the house and sitting and talking about nothing was really stupid.


Now, truthfully, this used to be more of a Sunday thing than a Saturday one.  In Missouri, we had something called the Blue Laws that saw to it, when I was growing up.  I always wondered why they were called the Blue Laws.  I was told growing up it was because they were originally printed in New England on blue paper or in blue-backed bound books, but I've since learned that's not the case.  They were called the Blue Laws because they simply made people feel blue, having laws on Sunday to restrict other activities so that people would be encouraged to attend church.


When I was growing up, it wasn't until I was a pre-teen that one could buy groceries or liquor on Sunday at all.  Then it opened up to where one could only buy groceries, but no liquor or non-food items.  (There is a hilarious story in my family where my mom bullied a teenage grocery store clerk on a Sunday over a box of um..."female products."  Short version:  She walked out of the store with them, saying, "I promise I will come back tomorrow and pay for them.  If you want to call the cops on me, be my guest, son.")  Nowadays, there are still vestiges of the old Blue Laws in Missouri.  One can't buy liquor in Missouri until 9 a.m. on Sunday, and it's still illegal to buy, sell, or trade a car on Sunday.


But even this experience makes me part of a shrinking set of generations--the generations where we at least experienced doing little or nothing on an appointed day.


I look back and realize I was bored to tears as a kid, but now am actually glad I was bored as a kid, because now that I am middle aged, I realize at the top of my "to do" list in life is, make more time to do apparently nothing.

These days, more than ever before, "doing nothing" has become more anathema than ever.  For starters, so many people are economically depressed to the point that they are working weekends to make ends meet.  For working people, weekends seem to be the only days that things like errands and housework even have a chance of getting done.

But look at what we've been doing to ourselves in America since the old Blue Laws were lifted.  Our consumption of goods has skyrocketed--there's the very real possibility that we are working to pay for stuff we think we "need," but...do we?  We live in houses (and try to take care of them ourselves with no domestic help) that are of a size that 100 years ago, would have almost certainly required a maid, a cook, and a gardener.  Our standard of "cleanliness" in our personal hygiene has moved from a world where there was the "Saturday night bath" and numerous days of washing with a rag in front of the sink, to at least one shower a day, so that the average American uses far more water per household than most places in the developed world.  Our children are in more and more structured activities that demand more and more of our weekends.  Although I found a wide variety of numbers on this topic, best I can tell, the average American monthly home mortgage payment runs between $1050 and $1300.

The easy availability of credit cards in this country have created a situation that few families can come out from under the looming shadow of debt.  The average American has 2.7 credit cards and 80% of Americans have a debit card.  Only about 30% of credit card holders pay their balance off every month.  Here's the scariest stat of all:  Americans with credit cards have an average credit card debt of $15,799.  


Now, remember, that's at somethingteen to 20something percent interest.


In short, we don't give ourselves any room to back up and slow down.


In many of our churches, this is stewardship month.  The problem is, talking about stewardship is hard.  Our tendency is to look at everyone else, take their financial inventory, but not our own.  I am betting right now, if I say how my sacrificial giving and my lifelong quest to have more time instead of money have created greater peace within myself, your first thought will be, "Well, yeah, you can afford it.  You have no kids.  You have a better paying job.  You have, you have, you have, and I don't have that.  I have this and this and this to pay for."


The truth is none of us know a blessed thing about what anyone else has to pay for in their life, and we are so self-absorbed about our own we can't hear it.  If we react from the mindset of scarcity, that is all we see.  Everyone else has abundance, and we have scarcity.


I can only say one thing--changing one's attitude from the mindset of scarcity to the mindset of abundance changes lives.  It changed mine.


I jokingly refer to Saturday in my life as "sacred space Saturday."  Now, I don't get that every Saturday, I admit.  But I get a lot of them, and the most I end up doing on most of them is the Liturgy of the Laundry.  When I look back on my life, every move I've made from age 39 onward is to create more time for myself.  When I moved to Kirksville from Columbia, it was for slightly less money and more time.  I have made other choices that were "time over money." Each time, it seemed very scary and counter-culture, but as it played out, it has created more happiness and contentment in me.  Striving for more Sabbath time in my life opened up room for me to begin sacrificial giving of my money as a way of life.  It opened up room for forgiveness of others.  It changed what I viewed as a "necessity of life."  It helped me understand better what giving to help "extreme poverty" really was.


It sounds corny, but it's true.  It's brought me closer to God.  I can't explain it any other way.


This notion, at first, sounds radical, dangerous, and foolhardy.  It feels like we are not "living up to what's expected of us."  It seems lazy and non-productive to say things like, "I am going to do nothing but read this book, or write in my blog."  It requires breaking our codependent bonds to a society that drains us dry and kills our soul as thoroughly as an abusive parent or spouse.  Frankly, I think the American way of life is the equivalent of an abusive parent or spouse.  It creates impossible expectations that constantly change.  The problem is, I don't think most of us are even brave enough to break those bonds until middle age, when we see life truly is a finite proposition, and that each of us has squandered that a bit.  Sometimes I fear our present economy will do that for us, but then I wonder if that's not as bad a thing as it looks, in the long run, if we looked at it as an invitation to slow down and consume less.


All I can say is that giving yourself an opportunity to work towards Real Sabbath in your life is worth it.  I can't tell you how to do it.  That's your path in life, and I can't even begin to propose a road map.  All I can say is that the more I do it, the happier I am.

"The largest thing I've learned is the enormous grip that this game has on people, the extent to which it really is very important. It goes way down deep. It really does bind together. It's a cliche and sounds sentimental, but I have now seen it from the inside."

--A. Bartlett Giamatti, former Commissioner of Baseball

Baseball is the closest thing I understand to "immortality." 


It's also the vehicle by which I most connect to understanding the meaning of the word "faith."


I grew up a diehard St. Louis Cardinals fan.  Now, granted, I had no choice.  My grandmother willed it.  She was born in 1917.  She was nine years old when they won their first World Series in 1926.  She was in high school during the era of the Gas House Gang, and a junior in high school when they won in 1934.  During the season, the Cards were always on--if not on TV, on the radio.  I can remember sultry summer nights out in the yard with the game on, and falling asleep with the radio on in my bedroom during the "West Coast Swing"--when they were playing the Dodgers, Giants, and later the Padres--and the two hour time difference was just too much.


I learned no matter how bad things are, there will always be another game.  Even when the season was over.  There would be that day in late winter that opened it up all over again with the magic words, "Pitchers and catchers report."


It was as much a part of my heritage as my family tree.  I grew up knowing all about Enos Slaughter's mad dash in the '46 Series, about Paul Dean pitching a no-hitter in the second game of a doubleheader which called his brother Dizzy to remark, "If I'd a known Paul was gonna pitch a no-hitter, I'd a pitched me one too."  (Diz "only" pitched a shutout in the previous game.)


In my lifetime, I had just missed Musial in my own memory banks, but there was Gibson and Brock, Cepeda and Maris, Flood and Shannon.  In later years there was Forsch and Ozzie, Tudor and Sutter, Jack Clark, Mark McGwire, Jose Oquendo.


Only the names changed; the drama did not.


There were those awful seasons, too.  The early 70's, some pretty lean years in the 90's.


But for all the tension in my family, I knew I could always talk baseball with my grandmother, no matter what.  One of the most wonderful days of my life was the day in 1992 when she and I traveled to Dyersburg, IA, to the actual "Field of Dreams."  We actually played catch on the field, among other pilgrims there from all over the country.


But my life with my grandmother and baseball taught me more about faith than anything I ever learned in church.  Faith that the rain would let up, faith that the the latest trade or change in the lineup would somehow work out, faith that you could go from a goat to a hero in the blink of an eye.  Faith that there was always another game tomorrow.  Faith that a day of rest or travel could change things.  Faith that once in a while, you really could be on the top of the world.

If only our church could consistently send those messages of faith, think of where we might be!


One of the questions we are often asked in our theological reflections in my EfM class is "What is is like in the world of the (fill in the blank?)"  The more I study the Bible, the more I ask myself that question.  Baseball makes me ponder Heaven sometimes.  In the world of my life with baseball, I see a world where the sun is shining or even in the darkness, there is light enough to do what needs to be done.  I see a world where no one is counted out of the game even when it's the bottom of the 9th with two out.  I see a world where the main objective is to find "home."  I think the Bible also points us to a world like that.


In the movie Field of Dreams, the question "Is this Heaven?" posed, and the answer is, "No, this is Iowa."  Granted, the native northeast Missourian in me could never quite stomach that, but I can certainly buy that baseball is, for some of us, a window to the Heavenly Feast of the Kingdom of God.

(Photo of screaming human newborn courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)  

"A church with a crying baby is a church that's alive, with a promise of tomorrow."  --Greg Kandra

My Roman Catholic friend Fran always posts some really thought provoking pieces on her blog and her Facebook wall, and I have to admit I read this one a little shamefacededly.

You see, I used to be one of the biggest complainers about screaming babies and unruly toddlers and precocious but somewhat obnoxious small children in church.  I used to sound a lot like the woman in the story Fran posted.


I've since changed my mind.

Now, I will put one caveat in there.  People, in general, should be considerate of their neighbors when a child is inconsolable, and it's probably not going to endear adults to other adults in a parish when your child runs around doing things that are distracting.  But I've decided those are best handled as teaching moments.  I simply decided about two years ago that I no longer had a desire to be the parish equivalent of the person who stands on the porch and yells, "You kids get off my damn yard!"


You see, first of all, I realized it wasn't my yard.


I've thought about all the various ways churches traumatize kids.  I've thought about the ways churches traumatized me and others around me, that couldn't help but be a factor in my two decades of un-church-ed-ness.  The two pieces I've linked are both about the Roman Catholic church, but that's just coincidence.  I've seen it happen in plenty of Protestant churches, too, right down to having been sitting in the pews as a guest with a friend at a church where someone stopped the service and informed the congregation that "Satan is making that child cry, so you can't hear the Word of God that I'm trying to tell you.  Get thee behind me, Satan!"  I looked over at that mother, and I swear, there was fear in her eyes.


What's more relevant to the Eucharist than a live demonstration of how we all feel at times to the broken-ness of the world?


The longer I rediscover myself as a person of faith, the more I am into inclusiveness.  The more I get to know our parishioners with small children, the more I think about how harried and unpredictable their lives are.  I'm sure even Mary had to deal with a fussy baby Jesus--I don't think it was like all the Renaissance paintings all the time (probably almost never, in fact.)  That family probably needs my prayers, not my irritation.


I've also come to realize if those things knock me off my feed at church, it doesn't say much about the solidity of my faith.  If my faith and worship experience is so fragile I can't stay connected through a little noise or activity, that doesn't speak much to how strong I feel in my faith.


Also, if we come after the noisy kids, who's next?  The people whose tattoos peek out from behind their neck?  The people in flip-flops?  The people who smell a little ripe?  The people who can't carry a tune in a five gallon bucket but sing louder than a foghorn?


No doubt, when I'm acolyte, I dearly love for things to work liturgically perfectly.  But I have also come to love those moments of imperfection.  I have come to discover how they are opportunities for prayers I did not plan to think or speak.  I neither can control the Eucharist nor break it.  I can only play my role in it and trust to God for the rest.


But ultimately, what did it for me one day, that changed my heart forever about screaming babies was I was at church one day with one, on a day my own heart was feeling quite friable.  I was slumped over in my pew with that "I am not looking at any of you, I am looking at the floor, don't bother me," look.


I looked at that baby, and thought to myself, "I wish I could cry like that in church right like that, this very minute...because I'm feeling pretty miserable at the moment."


Oh, I've cried in church before.  But we are talking "squawling at the top of your lungs, so loud and long you end up gagging on your own spit" kind of crying here.


I thought back to the snippy remarks I'd said over the years about people controlling their own kids (in that superior way only someone with no kids can do) and realized I was a total putz of the highest order (yeah, I know putz is Yiddish for the male member but it literally means "decoration" and the implication is "useless decoration" in old German.)


It was not a good day.  I was heartsick from my wounds, I was shamed over my piety being a useless decoration, not the deep and real thing I wished it was, and I was jealous that this baby could cry in a way I only wished I could.  There was only one thing to do--change my crappy attitude about it.


So I mugged at the baby.  Made some quiet goofy noises and faces right there in church in the middle of the sermon.  I silently prayed for the baby and the mom and the church family we have that I love so much, and suddenly felt...well...grateful.


What'dya know...that baby cocked her head and started slowing down her crying!  More faces.  More improvement.  Pretty soon she was sucking on her pacifier and no longer was so upset.


In the years that followed that moment, I've found new places for acceptance and forgiveness.  Oh, don't get me wrong.  I am no saint.  I still have a volcanic temper at times.  But I have found that the more things I remove from the list as "no longer all that important," the volcano mostly sleeps.

I've come to believe in the live playing out of our own vulnerabilities as humans to be sanctified things in themselves.  Crying with intent is a sign of life.  It's a sign the Good News of the Gospel will be heard and carried forward.  Those are just new voices trying it on!

(This piece originally appeared in Daily Episcopalian, October 16, 2011)

"I believe in the sun even if it isn't shining.  I believe in love even when I am alone.  I believe in God even when He is silent."

--Author unknown, allegedly found on a cellar wall in Cologne, Germany which was a hiding place during the Holocaust.

Just north of my driveway, in a little rectangular tongue of my pasture, is an incredibly large and stately cottonwood tree--about 70-80 feet tall.   Once upon a time there must have been other trees near it--it is not entirely straight but cants about 20 degrees to the east--but it presently stands alone in its magnificently imperfect beauty.  One of the greatest joys in my remote country "home in the hayfield" is hearing the distinct flapping of my granddaddy cottonwood tree.  I have a couple of smaller ones in other parts of my pasture, but they are not particularly close to the house.  In the years I have lived here, it's served occasionally as both a home to Baltimore Orioles, and a singles bar for un-mated male mockingbirds who carried on well past midnight.  But its primary function in life has been simply to make the wonderful heavenly applause that only a cottonwood tree can make.


The waning days of fall always bring an auditory sadness to my day-to-day life.  Each spring begins a cycle of sound to my world.  The first cottony dusting of the seeds on my truck reminds me the leaves will be sprouting soon, and I start to train my ears to hear them.  The first day the leaves have developed enough to be heard is always a joyful day in my life, no matter what tasks I have before me.  Summer brings the constant companionship of its leafy song--so constant (the wind ALWAYS blows in Northeast Missouri) that I almost forget it's there.  But it's fall--as the leaves begin to thin out and drop--that reminds me the most of the sound it makes.


Cottonwoods don't drop their leaves all at once.  My tree undergoes a roughly five week process of leafy alopecia, getting thinner and thinner, green first mixed with yellow and then brown, my driveway turning browner and browner from the leaves.  As it wanes, it seems the remaining leaves get louder and louder as they vigorously flap more openly without their neighbors--or is it my hearing that has become more and more keen?--until the day comes I step outside and hear nothing.  Absolutely nothing.


Every year, that silence grips my heart.  What if for some reason it dies over the winter?  What if we have one of those late season tornadoes we are known for and it crashes to the ground, or into my garage, or even my house?  I simply cannot do without the noise of my cottonwood tree.

I have come to changing the conversation of this silence in the last couple of years to take away my fear.  When that fearful moment begins to tighten around my rib cage, I have started to loosen that grip with a single thought:  Advent is coming.  


One of the things I appreciate about the wisdom of our liturgical calendar is that it contains two seasons of planned silence--Advent and Lent.  Both seasons remind me of a very important piece of the Biblical cycle of Creation-->Sin-->Repentance-->Restoration/Resurrection--that for things to be reborn, they must often die to themselves.  That we don't get to choose the nature of the restoration.  That we will be given enough to make it through this time of silence.  That what springs forth in the new season will most likely be better than we could have imagined or chosen for ourselves.  That it is precisely when things seem the deadest is when the most diligent work of restoration is taking place.  My cottonwood tree is not uncomfortable with its silence.  I am.


The waning of Time after Pentecost is the perfect time for us to, like the slow five week thinning process of my cottonwood tree, ease into the silence of Advent with anticipation despite the dread.  If we only focus on the dread, we deafen ourselves to the tiny stirrings of life inside the womb of Advent.  I remind myself that when my cottonwood tree is silent, much is taking place in its outermost limbs, beneath the scaly plates of the little brown buds at their tips, and before long, those buds will swell to bursting and re-open.  Even when I imagine my worst case scenario--what if my tree meets its demise?--I hear a voice asking me, "When you can no longer hear the rustle of the cottonwood leaves, what tree will you hear, that you've never heard before?"

What might God tell each of us in the silence, that we've never heard before, because the noise of the familiar was too comforting?

(You can also see this video on YouTube here)

(This post originally appeared on Speaking to the Soul, Sunday, October 16, 2011) 

Readings for October 16:
Psalms 148, 149, 150 (morning)
Psalms 114, 115 (evening)
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14
Acts 16:6-15
Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

Our readings today, particularly the ones from Acts and the Gospel of Luke, remind us of the unpredictability of "welcome."  Paul and Timothy find an avid listener and true hospitality in the presence of Lydia and her family-but our reading from Luke depicts Jesus instructing the disciples in the possibility that they will be poorly received at times, and to not take it personally or to linger any longer than necessary, should that be the case.

 It's a long-standing joke that Episcopalians are uncomfortable with the "E-word"--Evangelism.  Many of us are survivors of "traumatic evangelism" in other denominations that made it very clear we were unwelcome.  So it should come as no surprise that many Episcopalians, by and large, are evangelism-squeamish to the point that even issuing someone an invitation to church feels edgy.  We find ourselves at a bit of a quandary at times.  For many of us, this church and its progressive, inclusive, incarnational theology has changed our life.  We have found within the walls of our sanctuaries a certain degree of acceptance that perhaps we did not find in other denominations or in the secular world--yet we fear rejection or disapproval if our invitations are rebuffed.  In our hearts we wish for a moment like Paul and Timothy found with Lydia.  In our mind's eye, we see ourselves being scorned or ignored.

How, then, do we honor our Baptismal Covenant and "proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ" when "evangelism" in the traditional sense gives us the heebie-jeebies?  how do we move from, in the words of church consultant Andrew D. Weeks, from "friendly fellowship" to "risky hospitality?"

Our Gospel reading provides a bit of insight here.  I'm sure those seventy disciples, after hearing Jesus more or less tell them, "You can't control how people will react to you, and sometimes the reaction is that you'll be made unwelcome," didn't feel really great about their prospects.  Yet we are told later that they were incredibly joyful upon their return.  We don't control the joy in this proposition, either.  Jesus speaks of the disciples' authority in his name in this passage, but it's important to remember that the authority of Christ came from a Jesus who went out of his way to reach out to the skeptical, the quizzical, the misaligned, and the scorned.

If you could create a joyful new ministry in your own parish, what would it be?

Have you ever shared that pipe dream at coffee hour?

(Teresa of Avila, by Peter Paul Reubens, courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Let nothing trouble you,
let nothing frighten you.
All things are passing;
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
He who possesses God lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.

--Teresa of Avila


You might recognize this prayer as a Taizé song, Nada te Turbe (in fact, it's one of my favorite Taizé songs...)





The version I know goes like this:


Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten,
Those who seek God shall never go wanting.
Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten,
God alone fills us.

For those who appreciate contemplative prayer, Teresa of Avila was a person who had "figured it out" as early as when she was eleven years old.  What she called "mental prayer" was one of the roots of what we would now call contemplative prayer.

Reams and reams have been written on what it is.  I get to laughing because many high-credentialed folks get into great detail about what it is, how to do it, how long to do it, etc., and the thought that keeps running through my mind is, "Excuuuuse me, I think it's important to remember that this was first practiced by an eleven year old child--I really truly doubt it's all that detailed."


I think the only legitimate definition is Teresa's own definition:


“Mental Prayer is nothing else than an intimate friendship, a frequent heart-to-heart with Him by whom we know ourselves to be loved.”


If I were to describe it in one line, it's this:  Mental prayer is a silent conversation with God.


It's simply a matter of reflecting and actively listing to what comes up in our minds and heart in the presence of full trust--that no thought in the matter is a stray thought, or a bad thought.  After all, don't we let our guard down in the presence of trusted friends and vent, break down, or reveal innermost things?  It's the idea that no thought is "too much" for God.


What I find interesting about many of the mystics, and Teresa in particular, is that they become known for their mysticism and asceticism but their actions and deeds following these inner revelations doesn't get as much press.  Teresa ended up founding a whole new order of Carmelites.  That took action, leg work, and elbow grease.


I truly believe that the rhythm of contemplation is an inward/outward one, like the waves of the ocean.  Yet our tendency is to only "see" the inward movement.  Think for a minute, if you will about ocean waves on a beach.  We tend to, in our mind's eye, see the waves crashing IN--but we tend not to focus on the part where the wave recedes and goes back out into the sea.


I spent a long time learning to even be halfway contemplative, and what I discovered is I was only taught about the "in" part.  I was not taught much at all about the "out" part.  Yet I kept wondering why I kept feeling so stuffed full of things to the point I felt I was going to explode.  Then one day, I realized I had to breathe out with the Holy Spirit, as well as in.


I discovered when one sits in the nothingness too long, it will be filled with something, and in that time we will be shown what to do with it, and where to take it.  Another way to think about it is we have to be emptied in order to be filled.


Remember, the prayer below was also a prayer of Terese's...


Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.


When we allow ourselves to be filled, we truly find union with God, and that union can take us out into the world as Christ's emissary.  We are free to pour it all out on the world, because in our contemplative spaces we will always be fed.  There is no need to hoard what we receive in this union.  We are called to give it all away.  There will always be more.  We will never go wanting.