A Lack of Consensus in Advent

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

“It is a primary truth of Christianity that God reaches us directly. No person is insulated. As ocean floods the inlets, as sunlight environs the plant, so God enfolds and enwreathes the finite spirit. There is this difference, however, inlet and plant are penetrated whether they will or not. Sea and sunshine crowd themselves in a tergo. Not so with God. He can be received only through appreciation and conscious appropriation. He comes only through doors that are purposefully opened for him. A person may live as near Goad as the bubble is to the ocean and yet not find him. He may be ‘closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet,’ and still be missed.”

Rufus Jones, from “The Double Search” as quoted in “A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants” by Reuben Job & Normal Shawchuck

In our study of “All the Good: A Wesleyan Way of Christmas,” during the first week of Advent, one of the authors of the study, Laceye Warner, shared a personal story of playing hide and seek with children in the middle of a worship service. She was comparing the game of hide and seek to Christ approaching in Advent. In Advent, ready or not, here Christ comes.

This week I was looking through the readings for reflection from “A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Others Servants” when Rufus Jones’s words showed up in a quote from “The Double Search.” Recently I have been spending time in Rufus Jones’ 1916 work “The Inner Life,” so I paid attention to what Jones wrote while wondering how Rufus Jones ended up in the readings for the second week of Advent.

What an interesting tension between these two readings. Rev. Warner wrote about how Jesus is coming into the world whether it is ready or not. Rufus Jones wrote about how God is by nature a God who believes in consent. For Jones, God is as close as a bubble may be to the ocean, but consent is required before God will enter into a life. For Warner, God is right there on the verge of entering into the world whether or not it is ready.

Now the interesting thing about these two from my perspective is the potential clash of theology. Rev. Warner is deeply and steeply within the Methodist tradition. As an elder, I can say that I would not question her theology for one moment if I were on a Board of Ordained Ministry. Her position is solidly supported by Wesleyan research, writings, and traditions. Should she one day google this blog article, I hope she sees that I give her and her theology a thumbs up! Nothing personal here, Rev. Warner.

There is grace in the world for us and that grace is prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying. These graces exist in that particular order. God works within us even before we consciously choose to accept God. Unmerited favor pours down and into a life that comes to a point of acceptance and justification. Students of Methodist theology call that type of loving kindness and mercy prevenient grace.

Quaker theologian Rufus Jones states that God is right in the world around us, but that there must be an acceptance of God’s love before God truly enters into a person. I’m not enough of a Quaker scholar to state whether or not Jones would say that the presence of God in that proximity would qualify as a form of prevenient grace, but I wonder. God is there surrounding a person like the sunshine surrounds a tree or like the water fills an inlet, but Jones states there’s a difference: the sun may fill a plant with light that leads to a reaction with chlorophyll, but the plant has no say in the presence of the light. The water may pour into the inlet, but the inlet has no say in the matter. Tides, gravity, and water levels conspire to fill an inlet whether or not it desires to be wet.

For Rufus Jones, there must be consent before God enters into a life. For people like John Wesley, acceptance definitively matters as a prerequisite before prevenient grace leads a person to a salvific experience with the justifying grace offered by Christ. There’s a similar view on consent for both Jones and Wesley when it comes to salvation. The question I have is whether or not prevenient grace is a consensual grace.

As a minister, I have heard many times from a beloved child of God about the life of a loved one who is in their prayers. Sometimes the loved one is not willing to come to church or to accept the presence of God in their life. There have been prayers for the beloved person who may be angry, hurt, frustrated, or just done with the church. Sometimes the prayer is that the beloved person will find faith, accept an invitation to church, or even walk away from a dangerous situation. The hopes and the prayers they inspire are almost always well-intentioned and loving.

The question Jones inspires is what happens when we would like to see a flood of prevenient grace swell up to bear someone into the arms of God while the person in the water may want nothing to do with that grace or the God who is waiting. We would present the humorous simile of hide and seek with Rev. Warner and many other Methodists (including me) who want to explain the presence of God entering the world, but some people have no desire to play that game. They are not interested. The plant may rest in the sunshine regardless of intention, but if Jones is accurate in his portrayal of how God functions, the people we love may shut that door on God. What’s more, God may even honor their decisions to shut the door.

If prevenient grace must be or should be consensual, then there may be a theological hurdle for many of us as we consider how we relate to the world around us. I was sitting in a district clergy meeting this fall when an elderly fellow stated that things would be okay if we could just sit people down and explain to them where they are wrong and where we are right. I paraphrased that a bit, but I will state that’s what I heard. I hold no ill will for the person sharing that sentiment, but I wonder how well it works to force people to sit down and listen to us as the people who proclaim that we are right and they are ignorant.

In my experience, forced conversation about faith where the person is being forced into the conversation rarely leads anywhere good for either the person sharing or the person receiving that forceful sharing. Moving beyond the fact that bullying someone into faith seems the opposite of what we are called to do as Christians, there’s something deeply flawed here, The very idea that bashing someone over the head with a theological or even educational hammer is a form of grace seems a bit arrogant. The choice to act with theological, spiritual, educational, or even positional power should be rejected when we consider that honest conversation and loving actions can lead to similar conversations and results from a more respectful place of kindness, mercy, and graciousness.

Such conversations, poorly done and with carelessness, can lead to traumatic results. We know that religion having a negative impact can happen and has happened depending on how religion is used to cope with challenging situations. Other conversations, done carefully and with love, can lead to people seeing the extension of faith, hope, and love as being means of prevenient grace. When there is consent and all is well, then salvific results can ensue. When there is a lack of consent, our actions can be considered means of sorrow instead of means of grace.

It is perhaps easy to look at our actions in this light and see the value of consent and love in our approaches to evangelism and even to what Warner referred to as “works of mercy” throughout this season of Advent. Works of mercy, consensually and lovingly done, are glorifying to the name of God. Works of mercy that are not done with consent or even perspective can end as poorly as the incredibly outdated concept of the “Indian Boarding Schools” (which United Methodists are encouraged to be actively repenting of as a part of a whole church that hurt itself: racism is an act that hurts all people (Book of Resolutions, ¶3371: A Charter for Racial Justice in an Interdependent Global Community)).

You may think that I have gone far afield from my original conversation by talking about how we engage in evangelism and acts of mercy. Perhaps you wonder why it matters that won-consensual evangelism and “works of mercy” have caused harm. What does this have to do with prevenient grace and consent? Well, do we think our desire for another person to come to know God is greater than their desire to be left alone? Can we truly see a loving God pushing someone around without a sense of love and care simply because we ask for it? If God truly loves that person and loves us, can we see God working to empower us to share with love instead of forcing grace into their life through the school of hard knocks?

We know it is harmful to force other people into a place where they are deeply harmed by our good intentions. There’s a reason why the first of the three general rules is to do no harm and we even recognize those rules are purposefully in the order we have them. We seek to do no harm even before we seek to do good. As such, perhaps we need to deeply consider whether or not prevenient grace should be consensual. If it is to be, perhaps our time should be spent helping others to find that grace with love and kindness.

Consent is a powerful thing. Consent takes something beautiful and makes it extravagantly wonderful. A lack of consent takes something beautiful and turns it into something horrific. We know this is true of something as common as human sexuality. Can you imagine a world where prevenient grace is extravagantly wonderful? Put another way, can you imagine a world where prevenient grace is celebrated without the eventual need for global acts of repentance? What if we worked for a world where people sought God with joy instead of God having to play hide and seek with the unwilling as a result of our behaviors? What if our Christmas gifts to Christ were acts of consensual mercy?

On Weirdness of Body

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

I have been working most of the day with the exception of a personal errand this evening. I have been battling technology for most of the day and annoyed at least one person by putting the wrong link in an email. It has been a very stressful day and there’s still absolutely no progress on the car. Over seven days after the accident there still isn’t even an appointment for the insurance company to look at the car.

To be entirely honest, I am a bit frazzled tonight as I look over what rests on my docket for tomorrow. Bible study, worship, and leadership are the start of the day. The afternoon and evening are marked with taking care of personal needs and then volunteer service in my recovery program. When the sun has long set tomorrow night, it will be with a whole week of needs obligations ahead of me even without the car dramatics.

It is going to be a week, but I am honestly stuck in the last week. A friend sent me copies of pictures of my children and they appear happy and well fed. Honestly, I am so grateful they appear happy and wellfed. It makes me really happy even as I am struggling with the opposite situation. I was lightly lectured by a doctor this week because I haven’t had enough protein. It is significant enough that it showed up in my bloodwork as a form of malnutrition. Yeah, to a certain extent, my body composition is changing partially because of nutritional deprivation.

The day after I had that conversation with my doctor I was looking in the mirror while I was putting another set of holes into my belt. The muscles looked good, but the skin drooped strangely. The shoulders looked great and my jawline was sharp, but the skin around my belly was loose. Although others don’t often see it, I can see it every single day. I’ve long since left behind the moments of absolute and sheer joy to a slight grimace when I look in the mirror.

Still, what can a person do? Do I argue for less child support and risk my children going without? Do I advocate for myself knowing that the kids may need a father who hasn’t gone without protein for so long that it is having an effect on his health? Do I even speak honestly about it with people like my father or my brother who might see this as one more area where I fall short of the ideal by which I was raised to live? Do I even let my elder children know what’s going on if they knew all those shiny toes under the tree and those brimming pots full of food that they share with their mother are systemically related to my weight loss?

Do I even remain silent because it is embarrassing to the church? I can tell you that they’re more than generous, but when 36% automatically goes to child support and your partner won’t pay her portion of the insurance, things are tight. It isn’t the church’s job to be more generous than that kind of burden. It isn’t the church’s job to bail me out after I married the woman I married. Do I remain silent because it is bad enough their minister wears baggy clothes and won’t go to Thursday breakfast at the falls because the cost is too great? What do I do when they read this which will lead to another round of “Why won’t you go to the food pantry we hold in our church?”

Do I remain silent because I do have a role to play in all of this? I know one person in particular loves to say I don’t own my part in things. Yeah, I exercise a lot. Yeah, I weightlift. Why? I do enjoy the way it makes me look but I also realized a while back that all of that weight loss was coming at the expense of musculature. Yes, I hit a use it or lose it point a few months back and that’s why I am working so hard to build muscle. All of that means I need more calories, but the honest truth is that I buy meat maybe once or twice a month because that’s what I can afford. Yay for tofu and beans… I don’t get extra visits in part because I don’t feel safe in Springville but also because some of the visits come with the choice of paying for gasoline or paying for groceries. Still, I could just let the muscles go, exercise less, and need fewer calories. I could choose to sit home more, read more, and just let my body shrink down to a level I can afford to feed with rice, beans, and whatever greens I manage. I guess I could do that and I guess I’m guilty for not making that choice.

There’s all sorts of stuff I could do and there are reasons to remain silent, but should I stay silent? A lot of harm is often done by good people staying silent. Am I the only person going through difficult times? Do their stories matter less because they do not have the same privileges as me? Is it, in fact, a disservice to remain silent when there are so many people struggling without a voice? My words echo a lot of people’s experiences and I know many of them have no space, place, or voice to say what’s happening in their lives. Some of those people are good people who just cannot share. I would know because I come across those people often in recovery, in ministry, and as a person who actually enjoys and even loves the people at the edges of society. Do I do a disservice to them if I remain silent?

In the scriptures, the stories of God’s provision are told time and time again. There are stories where God shows up in the midst of the wilderness to provide for the families and prophets in need. A widow is given enough to survive by Elijah in the midst of 1 Kings 17. She has enough, but what of the people who live under the rule of a wicked ruler? Were all of those people wicked? Did they all deserve to go without? Probably not, but one of the sad realities of scripture is that the world presented reflects reality instead of the utopia we all desire.

Time and time again, through the scriptures the faithful people and even the innocent bystanders go through life without the very things they need. Do you know those videos of people overseas struggling? Those “for a dollar a day” videos? For generations, even the lands of the faithful looked like those videos when famine and drought came through the land. Sometimes deprivation is simply how life works even within the scriptures. As our society continues to shift, it sadly seems as if the sad reality of struggle told in the scriptures is increasingly apparent in our days as automation cuts the bottom rung of employment out here in the name of profits.

Even as we acknowledge that truth, do we lose hope in the midst of deprivation? We could, but I have always leaned into stories and words of hope from books like Habakkuk. There’s no grain in the field and the barns are empty, but we praise the Lord anyway. Things don’t look great and the choices are both dire and sad, but we praise the Lord anyway. Faith isn’t faith if one knows everything will work out perfectly. It is faith precisely because we do not see the way forward. We have to trust it is there.

So I believe. Lord, help me in my unbelief.

Expectations and Disappointments

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

“Christ always shows a very slender appreciation of any act of religion or of ethics which does not reach beyond the stage of compulsion. What is done because it must be done; because the law requires it, or because society expects it, or because convention prescribes it, or because the doer of it is afraid of consequences if he omits it, may, of course, be rightly done and meritoriously done, but an act on that level is not yet quite in the region where for Christ the highest moral and religious acts have their spring.”

Quaker Theologian Rufus Jones, 1916

What does it mean to have an expectation of other people? Is expecting them to do their best an empty expectation doomed to failure? Is expecting them to live up to their principles and their vows an expectation based upon madness? Is expecting someone else to keep their word the very same as building a house on shifting sands? Do we actually expect it will stand when the rains come?

Sadly, experience tells me that trusting others is perhaps an act of folly. At the same time, while there are times when promises fall flat and it can be insanity to trust other people to do what they say, it is perhaps best to consider the fact that none of us are precisely and perfectly sane all of the time. The religious way of stating this has been that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. If we expect others to be perfect, then we are expecting a perfection that we ourselves know we are incapable of executing. While we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, most people in the faith I truly respect understand that they are going towards perfection and are not actually absolutely perfect at the moment.

So, how do we know whether or not we should trust others? How do we know whether or not we should place our trust in someone after our heart is broken or promises tossed aside as chaff? I think that Rufus Jones had a wise thought that applies here. Jones points out in “The Inner Life” that there are people who legalistically attempt to live up to the rules of religion. In particular, he takes umbrage with those who take the passage about going the second mile too literally. Surely any religious practice that is willing to literally go another mile without going deeply into the meaning behind the request is looking only at the wrapping paper on the present of Jesus’ words.

Is it good to go the extra mile? Probably! Still, Jones points out a grievous reality within that obedience: “But there was no spontaneity in his religion, no free initiative, no enthusiastic passion, no joyous abandon, no gratuitous and uncalculating acts. He did things enough, but he did them because he had to do them, not because some mighty love possessed him and flooded him and inspired him to go not only the expected mile, but to go on without any calculation out beyond milestones altogether.”

Doing things because they’re just enough is valuable at some level, but that’s not the goal. Similarly, keeping one’s word just because one must or because a person is commanded to do so by some sort of authority is not nearly the same thing as doing something because you are motivated by spontaneous love, free choice, and the gracious life that comes from Christ. There’s a distinct difference between doing something right because one must and doing so because one’s being is expressed through those actions.

This perspective is valuable to me as I continue to question my own ability to make commitments after a past of difficulties. For neither love nor money can I convince someone from my past to give me appropriate access to my children despite their best interests. To be entirely honest, the court system seems equally impotent at showing her any sort of accountability to a standard of behavior. It is like the wild-west to be anywhere near the person from that relationship and it is safer to be out in the desert than walking down the street with all those tumbleweeds.

At one level Jones’ words seem inapplicable. There’s what Jones suggests as Christian behavior, what Jones sees as legalistic behavior, and then there’s just that level of behavior we’re dealing with where both Jesus and the Pharisees would likely shake their heads in disgust. “Go and sin no more” seems like a bit of an understatement.

At another level, consider the fact that the person I want to trust in my life has done none of the things my former partner has done. She has acted honorably, charitably, and graciously. She does things like ask me for my consent and lets me admit that I am just broken without treating me like someone from the isle of misfit toys. She’s doing all the right things and she’s doing them because it comes from the heart and not some pharasitical set of rules. At the moment, she’s the whole package: someone who I like, adore, and who would be an awesome blessing to me and someone I want my children to know.

So, how do we learn to trust? I think the only answer is the one I learned in recovery. We choose to trust one day at a time. When things don’t add up, we remember our own past and the mistakes of our past, consider our own part in things, and, whenever possible, try again. We make consensual amends when our character defects harm others and we are willing to let others make consensual amends to us. We choose to care and to try while understanding that the person we meet today or tomorrow may not be the person that we once met in the past, especially if they are literally not the same person who broke our hearts.

Aiming at dissolving

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

“Persons of the blessed life, Christ says, are the saving salt of the earth. They carry their wholesome savor into everything they touch. They do not try to save themselves. They are ready like salt to dissolve and disappear, but, the more they give themselves away, the more antiseptic and preservative they become to the society in which they live. They keep the old world from spoiling and corrupting not by attack and restraint, not by excision and amputation, but by pouring the preservative savor of their lives of goodness into all the channels of the world. This preservative and saving influence on society depends, however, entirely on the continuance of the inner quality of life and it will be certain to cease if ever the salt lose its savor, i.e. if the soul of religion wanes or dies away and only the outer form of it remains.”

Quaker theologian Rufus Jones, “The Inner Life” (1916)

I have an apparently unpopular opinion about the very nature of Christianity. Christianity was never supposed to be a legalistic religion that helps others to “grow” by controlling their actions. The scriptures speak about grafting and pruning branches. John 15 begins by sharing how Jesus is the true vine while we are the branches. There is precedence for grafting and pruning, but the action taken in John 15 is the action of Jesus’ Abba. Authority is not given to the church to make those decisions in John 15.

Are there places where authority is given to the disciples to bind and unbind with authority? Yes, but let’s be clear: that authority is tied intrinsically to remaining in the branches. John 15:7 says in the Common English Bible, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.” Speaking a chapter later, John 16:8-11 says: “When he comes, he will show the world it was wrong about sin, righteousness, and judgment. He will show the world it was wrong about sin because they don’t believe in me. He will show the world it was wrong about righteousness because I’m going to the Father and you won’t see me anymore. He will show the world it was wrong about judgment because this world’s ruler stands condemned.”

Again, please note that the Holy Spirit is given the task of conviction, correction, and revelation. The church may testify to the work of the Spirit and seek to share the wisdom first shared through the word of God, but the work ultimately rests with the Holy Spirit. Even if the church is given authority to bind things in heaven and on earth, the primary work of conviction, correction, and revelation lies first and foremost with the Holy Spirit.

If that work is truly reliant upon the work of the Holy Spirit, why do people act on behalf of the church to set about converting the world through legalistic methods? Is it merely a case of audacious people taking too much power into their hands? Is it a natural result of being raised in a world where we have conflated personal opinion with democratic or representative power?

Way back in 1916, Rufus Jones entered into the ongoing conversation with the quote above. Jones spends the paragraphs prior to this section discussing the difference between the church using organization to spread the faith and spreading the faith by becoming spiritually contagious. To be entirely honest, I find Jones’ description of the church to be both amusing and a source of personal melancholy:

“The way of organization, which is as old as human history, is too familiar to need any description. Our age has almost unlimited faith in it. If we wish to carry a live idea into action, we organize. We select officials. We make ‘motions.’ We pass resolutions. We appoint committees or boards or commissions. We hold endless conferences. We issue propaganda material. We have street processions. We use placards and billboards. We found institutions, and devise machinery. We have collisions between ‘pros’ and ‘antis’ and stir up enthusiasm and passion for our ’cause.’ The Christian Church is probably the most impressive instance of organization in the entire history of man’s undertakings.”

Rufus Jones, 1916

I say it makes me a bit sad because I have seen how the church as an organization often seeks to guide others through legislation. I once served on my Conference’s Social Holiness team and worked with the Peace with Justice program because I had yet to come to my current understanding that legislation does little to nothing to change things. Even now, I only submit resolutions for consideration that are about considering and promoting ideals and conversation. I do not seek specific legalistic changes or purposes but instead, seek opportunities for conversation and growth.

The church is great at organizing in this way and it can be helpful to organize this way when we are in conversation about how we live together in the community, but I don’t see this as an effective strategy when interacting with the world outside of the church community. Partially I hold this viewpoint because I have seen the church organize to exercise shears in pruning the world around it. Partially I hold this viewpoint because I agree with Jones when he talks about how the church was meant to work in a different way.

Rufus Jones uses the simile of comparing the church to salt within a world that needs a preservative. On one level, this isn’t my favorite simile as there are things that need alteration instead of preservation. The church should not, for example, act as a preservative for institutions that are inherently antithetical to the gospel. For example, people aren’t property or disposable assets, so all people must have the same rights if we truly believe that those rights are given to all people by God.

If one parent has a right to see their child and be a part of their life, then, when all things are equal before a God who created both parents, both must have the same rights. If a white defendant is given the right to proper advocacy because they grew up in one community, then a bipoc defendant must have the right to the same advocacy if we are to argue that both matter equally before the throne of God. If a religious person is given the right to exercise their faith freely before everyone because that is their right as discerned by our nation, then as a people we must give the same right to a person without the same beliefs as those freely exercising their faith.

So, the salt analogy is not a perfect analogy, but it is a pretty good one. Sometimes our call is to understand that we may not be able to force our way and definitively should not force our ways upon other people. There are times when our call is to suffer so that others may one day live without the same struggles. There are times when we suffer, our families suffer, and even people with mental illness are supported in their dysfunction by a system that is blind to its own brokenness. It is only through suffering publicly that change can come. Sometimes we need to stand up and get in the way with the understanding that we will likely be crushed before the institutions speeding towards us.

So, how do we live that out? We do not necessarily organize a legalistic campaign, Sometimes our strongest advocacy comes from growing in strength, light, and power without using marketing tools, focus groups, or even laws. We seek to let our goodness fill us and pour into the world around us. It is easy to run over a traffic cone in the lane of life, but it is another matter when that obstacle has a face, has a space, and is an inherently good part of the world around it. Sometimes the way of the martyr only works because we let it happen while living to the best of our ability.

So, is the way that Jones suggests living necessarily easy? No, it certainly is not easy. It is especially difficult when we consider the fact that some of us live in situations that are unjust and that suffering for the sake of the gospel compounds into the suffering we already experience on a regular basis. It might even be worth saying that those who can choose to suffer alongside others perhaps have an imperative to act like salt when it means that those who are already dissolving need not dissolve alone.

“It was 10:30” Haibun

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

It was 10:30 PM, late at night, when the possum ran across the road. The dog was in hot pursuit and its human was a few steps behind. The human called out, but the possum was there, and the dog ran on in pursuit from behind the bush and brush. They tore across the road in an age-old chase repeated throughout time.

It was 10:30 PM, late at night, when the driver of the car listened to Defensive Driving advice from years before. The car went straight and the human and possum were unharmed. The dog in the rear of the car panicked and scrambled as the radiator began to pour fluid, the oil started to pour out, and the gasoline began to drip. The minister behind the wheel cried out and guided the car to the side of the road. He had been driving below the speed limit, but he didn’t see until the possum and dog broke through the brush onto the road. He was shaking as the gasoline fumes tickled his nose.

It was a few minutes after 10:30 PM, late at night, when the officer had a call to go to the site of an accident. He never had to put down a family’s pet before. He found the pastor who had been driving the car holding his dog as the one from the road screamed. He was shaking as he remembered the woman he almost hit and understood that if he had been a moment slower or faster, things would have possibly been far better or terribly worse. Why didn’t he stop for groceries? “All things in God’s time,” the officer told the minister who mumbled about free will half-heartedly. Even then, in the midst of grief, the minister knew this wasn’t the time to take away the officer’s comforting theology. He had practice at saying the right things even with a broken heart.

It was a few minutes after 10:30 PM, late at night, when the girlfriend hopped in her son’s car to come to the rescue. Just a few hours earlier the boyfriend behind the wheel had been helping her find a new car because her timing belt had gone awry in her steady old car. The car would be ready Monday, but it was the blackest of Fridays. It was nearly midnight when the borrowed car brought the two now carless people back to a quiet home with a frazzled dog. She sat with him until he was done shaking and crying about the fact that if things had gone wrong the dog owner could have died. She listened as he thought and sobbed about what would happen if the dog or woman had crashed through the window without setting things right with his son. It took a while.

It will be a little after 10:30, not so early in the morning thirty-six hours later, when the minister rises to share about how we, as a people, remember that Christ will come again in a moment. It will be a moment when he thinks about how the bell almost rang for him, a woman he doesn’t know, and did call home what looked to be a very enthusiastic dog whose family’s love showed he was a good boy. He probably won’t shed a tear, but he will hear the sound of a dog howling in the night.

Oh, when you come down
May that dog run home again 
to her happy tears.

Until you come down
May I never cause again
such awful pained cries.

On Pondering Pelagius and Augustine

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

I have spent time lately thinking about the differences in perspective between Pelagius and Augustine. I have been reading a book on Celtic Christianity which is very opinionated on the matter, which has put me in a place to consider the perspectives of both authors.

I have read various works from Augustine several times over the years, but only recently read through some of the letters of Pelagius. I have to admit to having a certain amount of sympathy in my heart towards Pelagius. History is often written by those with power and it is likely that the commonly understood theology of Orthodoxy is written by the “victorious” in a situation where there perhaps should be different categories than winners and losers.

Pelagius does seem to present a world where everything comes from God and I am sympathetic to this worldview. Pelagius wrote:

“We measure the goodness of human nature in relation to its creator, whom we call God. When he created the world, God declared that everything he had made was good. So if every tree and animal, insect and plant is good, how much better is man himself! God made man in his own image; and so he intends each of us to be like him. God has made many animals stronger and faster than human beings. He has given many animals teeth and jaws that are more powerful and sharper than the finest sword. But he has given man intelligence and freedom. We alone are able to recognize God as our maker, and thence to understand the goodness of his creation. Thus we have the capacity to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong. This capacity means that we do not act out of compulsion; nor need we be swayed by our immediate wants and desires, as animals are. Instead we make choices. Day by day, hour by hour, we have to reach decisions; and in each decision, we can choose good or evil. The freedom to choose makes us like God: if we choose evil, that freedom becomes a curse; if we choose good, it becomes our greatest blessing.”

“The Letters of Pelagius: Celtic Soul Friend” p. 4.

What do we have in this perspective? Free will as a reality when we consider our choices. We have a positive outlook on creation as something created by God with God’s good intent and unassailable power (for who is powerful enough to thwart a God who is omnipotent and desiring to create something good?). There’s a lot of good in there.

At the same time, some people have said the power of Augustine rests, in part, in his view of creation itself and how God relates to that good creation. Depending on your perspective, that’s either a positive or a negative, but views of Augustine are decidedly less clear-cut when you read across a broad spectrum of perspectives. Here’s what he writes about Psalm 145

“Of the things which He hath made, he hath made a step up to Him, not a descent from Him to them. For if thou love these more than Him, thou wilt not have Him. And what profit is it to thee to overflow with the works, if the Worker leave thee? Truly thou shouldest love them; but love Him more, and love them for His sake. For He doth not hold out promises, without holding out threats also: if He held out no promises, there would be no encouragement; if He held out no threats, there would be no correction. They that praise Thee therefore shall “speak” also “of the excellence of Thy terrible deeds;” the excellence of that work of Thy hands which punisheth and administereth discipline, they shall speak of, they shall not be silent: for they shall not proclaim Thine everlasting kingdom, and be silent about Thine everlasting fire. For the praise of God”

Augustine, “Exposition on the Psalms,” Psalm CXLV

It is good to honor creation, but ultimately it is not the Creator. At some level, there’s a very fine distinction here. Both Augustine and Pelagius see that there are choices and that there can be bad choices, but one can read that Augustine has a bit of a harder edge at times.

I love some of what Pelagius writes, but I also understand the need at times for a harder edge like that of Augustine. While some have said Augustine’s theology can be seen as a tool to encourage and empower the connection of Christianity to the more imperialistic aspects of the faith, I can appreciate the need for a firmer hand in theology.

It is great that there are choices, but what do we do when the choices of others cause great harm? Moving beyond the villains of today for a moment, can we sit in comfort while figures in history like clan members, Nazis, colonizers, and other groups leave behind a legacy of pain and sorrow? Isn’t there a place of comfort when there is the promise of paradise and a promise of fire?

Of course, that promise can be frightening. I’m the son of people who some would consider to be an invasive culture in a land that has been stripped of indigenous culture. It is frightening to consider, but sometimes it is good to have a little bit of perspective.

“For everyone born, a place at the table…”

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

I went to bed humming in my heart last night. Just before I drove away from my girlfriend’s house, we posted a picture together for the first time. I had brought a delicious acorn squash pie with gingersnap crust for dessert and spent the day getting to know her family a bit better. I met her mother, sister, nephew, and niece. Her kids were a riot to be around as usual.

She’s in a different space than me in her life with grown kids, but we share a lot of things in common. She knows what it is like to go through a troubled marriage and a divorce. She knows the value of having space at the table. She let me be there with her through all the Thanksgiving stuff that every family has and even let me kindly invite her to simply be in the moment with me and her family.

In other words, I felt like I belonged yesterday. As I wake up on the sixth birthday of my littlest turkey today, I know that I won’t see her for over another month at this point. I had to ask her sibling to have her call me as the phone number I have for my child is never answered when I call. J says the tablet has power issues and barely works. I can’t help but think of the new tablet sitting on a shelf here that I bought for her months ago only to be told that the broken tablet she has is good enough even though I can’t contact my child through it. I asked her while I talked with her if she received the postcards I sent my kids while traveling. I sent six. Their mother let them see one of them. I can’t even write cards to my kids with the expectation they will receive them. Joint custody apparently means I can’t even write them…

My eldest still won’t talk to me and the answer remains: an hour a month for virtual therapy to rebuild a relationship is too much time in his busy schedule even as he applies to a foreign exchange student program. He has time to travel the world but not time for an hour a month with his father.

I’m thankful J still obviously loves their father and takes the time to talk with me on occasion, but it shouldn’t fall on a thirteen-year-old to be the adult in a family of a single mom, a fifteen-year-old, and a six-year-old. It especially shouldn’t be so when there are grandparents and other relatives around who should be able to speak reason to power. It would be wrong of me to ask J to be the conduit for conversation and J shouldn’t have to be put in that position. Unfortunately, when you can’t even write the other kids with the expectation they’ll get their mail, the option seems to be to put your child in an impossible situation or lose a relationship with all of them.

There’s a difference between what I experienced yesterday and my experience even of married life. The feeling of actually being accepted and having my girlfriend’s mother ask about my children was heartbreakingly kind. I mean, there are two Halloween gifts waiting for them on the shelf upstairs from my girlfriend’s mother who decided my kids deserved love before she even met me. They welcomed me so warmly and all I had to do to belong was just be me: someone who cared for someone at the table who also cared for me.

It is such a different experience than getting phone calls about church members being concerned that I was being yelled at in a gas station or hearing complaints about my partner arguing with PPRC members in a local restaurant when they said something she disagreed with. It is sad that it took me years to see they weren’t just complaining about someone they didn’t like: they were scared for me. In hindsight, I get it. I wish I had understood then.

People tell me to keep trying and to not give up, but that’s pretty hard advice to actually follow. Perhaps someone would understand if they were actually in my shoes. I’m exhausted and tired of pretending everything is fine. Heading down south recently on the Civil Rights pilgrimage and seeing the evidence of people who knew what was right and who were willing to get in good trouble… I wish I knew how to advocate for myself and others in the way that they did with such power, presence, and moral authority. I wish I could change things, but that’s a long journey I don’t know how to travel. It is literally easier to walk thousands of miles in a year than to know how to handle things. I can say that one from experience.

In the meantime, yeah. I baked a pie, I shared space, and I allowed my cold heart to open a little more to actually living life. Is the “cold still in my bones?” Yeah, they’re cold and brittle, but there’s also something else: that faintly glowing fire… (Yes, that’s a Five Iron Frenzy reference: “Blizzards and Bygones (All Frost and No Thaw Version)” is a gem that has been my unofficial soundtrack while walking the wintry woods over the past few years).

Original recipe: https://www.thekitchenmagpie.com/acorn-squash-pie/
Adaptations: For the filling, I used fresh ginger and grated nutmeg into slightly larger pieces than the powdered stuff. For the crust, I processed the gingersnaps through a grinder for uniformity and then melted a little more than the specified butter (2 extra TBSP) in the glass pie dish in the oven. I then poured the butter into the crumbs and brown sugar only after swirling the pie plate so that the entirety of the crust had a buttery layer to keep the crust from sticking. That process also made certain each bite had a touch of buttery goodness. I also used a dough blender to uniformly break up any buttery clumps and to make certain the brown sugar spread throughout the crust instead of being in chunks.

On Properly Balanced Regret

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

“Sin with despair is certain death. Let no one therefore say, If already any evil
thing I have done, already I am to be condemned: God pardoneth not such evil things, why
add I not sins to sins? I will enjoy this word in pleasure, in wantonness, in wicked cupidity:
now hope of amendment having been lost, let me have even what I see, if I cannot have what I believe.”

St. Augustine, Commentary on Psalm 51 from “Exposition on the Psalms”

I was doing some preparatory work for the upcoming Advent study by tracing down the quotes used in the book we will be using during the upcoming season when I came across this passage in St. Augustine’s exposition on Psalm 51. The book references Augustine’s work but doesn’t actually share what Augustine wrote, which is a pet peeve of mine as “Text without a context is a pretext for misinterpretation.” When a person does not have the text itself to misinterpret or even a semi-accurate paraphrase, I feel as if the appeal to authority (in this case Augustine’s authority as one of the patristic fathers, which is weird in a book focused on the Methodists centuries later) is weakened.

Literary critique aside, despite the assertion of the author that Augustine wants us to look at God’s grace and work instead of our own sinfulness, Augustine does at certain points explicitly state that there is a definite need to personally identify with and deal with one’s own struggles and even sinful choices. Augustine is quite clear that even those who are pardoned from sin must still bear the weight of their deeds:

“ ‘For, behold, truth Thou hast loved: uncertain and hidden things of Thy wisdom,
Thou hast manifested to me’ (ver. 6). That is, Thou hast not left unpunished even the sins
of those whom Thou dost pardon. ‘Truth Thou hast loved:’ so mercy Thou hast granted
first, as that Thou shouldest also preserve truth. Thou pardonest one confessing,
pardonest, but only if he punisheth himself: so there are preserved mercy and truth: mercy
because man is set free; truth, because sin is punished.”

St. Augustine, Commentary on Psalm 51 from “Exposition on the Psalms”

It is an interesting thing to consider: the relationship between pardon, mercy, and punishment. To a certain extent, Augustine certainly had a point. He points to Nineveh in the Book of Jonah as an example. Pardon is received by the people of that city, but only after they themselves have accepted their need for humility and chastisement. Pardon occurs in the story of Jonah after the acceptance of guilt and after the choice to adopt a position of humility.

As a person in recovery, there is certainly something to be said about the fact that I truly and fully rely on the mercy of a God who forgives and accepts me. I also understand that there’s a weight to the things I have done in the past and have to put in the time to make amends for the things I have done. I understand there is a relationship between pardon, mercy, and punishment.

I don’t think focusing on the grace of God to the complete exclusion of personal responsibility is something we want to do on a regular basis. Did Augustine believe in the power of Christ to bring about change in the lives of individuals? Absolutely, but Augustine did not present the Good News of pardon and mercy at the exclusion of personal responsibility. As Augustine warns us in the quote at the top of this entry, there’s certainly a point at which the weight of sin can dishearten people to the point of giving in to sorrow and grief instead of believing in grace. At the same time, that grace does not draw away from the need to honestly reflect and work on the sin in our lives.

Perhaps all of this is overly complicating what was a point meant to be looked over in passing by an author who is not hinging their thesis on this point, but it does help at times to double-check the sources being quoted and whether or not those sources say what the author in the middle is trying to say.

On Balance with the Fruit

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

In two hours I will be leading worship and sharing a message as the capstone of a series on the Fruit of the Spirit. We have been going individually through each of the Fruit for the past nine weeks. This week we will be looking at the context of the Fruit by considering how they stand in contrast to the works of the flesh.

It is difficult to express just how delicate it can be to balance the hard truth of scripture against the attitudes, personalities, and sub-cultures within the church. I am reminded of Rufus Jones’ words as I prepare this morning. In case you’re wondering, I am reading Rufus Jones to help grow my understanding of Howard Thurman, whose works I continue to adore.

The following passage stood out in Jones’ writings this week.

“Most persons are strangely prone to use the ‘principle of parsimony.’ They appear to have a kind of fascination for the dilemma of either-or alternatives. ‘Faith’ or ‘works’ is one of these great historic alternatives. But this cleavage is too artificial for full-rounded reality. Each of these ‘halves’ cries for its other, and there cannot be any great salvation until we rise from the poverty of either half to the richness of the united whole which includes both ‘ways.’ ”

Rufus Jones, The Inner Life (1916)

Jones goes on to lay out the challenge that he faced in his day, which we continue to face today:

“Over against the mystic who glories in the infinite depths of his own soul, the evangelical, with excessive humility, allows not even a spark of native grandeur to the soul and denies that the inner way leads to anything but will-o’-the-wisps. This is a very inept and unnecessary halving of what should be a whole. It spoils religious life, somewhat as the execution of Solomon’s proposal would have spoiled for both mothers the living child that was to be divided. Twenty-five hundred years ago Heraclitus of Ephesus declared that there is ‘a way up and a way down and both are one.; So, too, there is an outer way and an inner way and both are one. It takes both diverse aspects to express the rich and complete reality, which we mar and mangle when we dichotomize it and glorify our amputated half.”

Rufus Jones, The Inner Life (1916)

There’s something beautiful about the way that Jones effectively humbles both the self-absorbed mystic and the dogmatic evangelical which still stands the test of time. What a great turn of phrase: we ineptly and unnecessarily halve something that should have remained whole. To live with only half of what should be a whole is, by nature, a form of spiritual poverty.

Why does this rest foremost in my thoughts as I prepare today? The Fruit of the Spirit should show themselves with a certain level of evidence in our lives both in mystical and evangelical ways. Paul describes the works of the flesh as being an expression of selfish desire.

A purely mystic Christianity that is only interested in navel-gazing while ignoring the needs of others to both have social necessities and spiritual necessities is dangerously at risk of living out of a place of spiritual bankruptcy. Similarly, an Evangelical Christianity that is so concerned with either converting others or providing for the needs of others without ever considering the spiritual aspects of others and of one’s own need for humility is also at risk. The two halves of a Christianity that embraces both should never have been cleaved in two and to the extent that we pursue the Fruit of the Spirit while holding a meat cleaver, we are dangerously at risk.

Different ways of walking

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

“There is no one exclusive ‘way’ either to the supreme realities or to the loftiest experiences of life. The ‘way’ which we individuals select and proclaim as the only highway of the soul back to its true home turns out to be a revelation of our own private selves fully as much as it is a revelation of a via sacra to the one goal of all human striving. Life is a very rich and complex affair and it forever floods over and inundates any feature which we pick out as essential or as pivotal to its consummation. God so completely overarches all that is and He is so genuinely the fulfillment of all which appears incomplete and potential that we cannot conceivably insist that there shall be only one way of approach from the multiplicity of the life which we know to the infinite Being whom we seek.”

Quaker Scholar Rufus Jones, “The Inner Life” (1916)

I took a day trip with someone very close to me yesterday to the Zoo. I shared my love of trying to eat slippery Chinese food with chopsticks on the way up to Syracuse and we enjoyed a fish fry on the way back. We had lots of time to talk, to ponder life, and to enjoy the animals. It is amazing how much fun it can be to go to the zoo even when you’re not pursuing a small child. We finished the night decorating the Christmas tree I have not put up since 2020.

Towards the end of the evening, we were talking about some of the challenges that come with trying to recover from a divorce. Both of us have had difficult circumstances in our lives and we both have things we did similarly and things we have done differently.

For me, a lot of the journey has revolved around physical ways of pursuing wellness. Recovery from the trauma that led to my divorce included a lot of physical wellness activities as I tried to respond to the stress, fears, and painful sorrows by doing the next right thing in my life. I reinforced my sobriety practices by sticking close to people who had been through difficult times in their programs, worked the twelve steps, and continued to regularly go the therapy and my doctor to make certain everything in the background was running well so I wouldn’t trip over inconsistencies within my own body and mind.

Beyond sobriety, I adopted old spiritual practices that were impractical with kids around to complicate certain activities. I’m pescatarian on Wednesdays and Fridays as a partial fast in the pattern of the Orthodox and in the pattern of early Methodists of fasting on those days. I write out my gratitudes every night and effectively do a version of the Examen blended with a tenth-step inventory. I journal every day.

Also, I walked thousands of miles and began to work my muscles by weightlifting. I dropped over 160 pounds so far! I took my sorrow and I put it in the furnace. I walked through sleet and snow burning through my anger like coal. I did everything I could to take the broken sorrowful parts and to use them as fuel for a self-improving fire to forge a new self instead of turning that anger and sorrow on anyone else, especially avoiding bringing that frustration anywhere near my former partner. There’s a reason there are giant holes in my blog and why I’m not on social media. Heck, I avoid emails in part because it is too easy to let my anger out.

I have done all of these things and I am grateful for all of them. Also, the person I spent time with yesterday did things very differently than me. They handled their sorrow for a longer time and have used their experiences to forge someone I hold dear without some of the tools I have used. Their circumstances were different but similar. As a result of some of those variations, our paths look different and honestly, there are some ways in which the other path looks great. That path looks fantastic when you see what’s beyond the surface of the cheerful things I wrote above.

My shoulders hurt constantly. My body dysmorphia makes it feel like I’m larger than I am and sometimes I reach up to my shoulders and it feels like the bones just beneath my skin shouldn’t be there. It feels like I’m more skeleton than man some days. I sometimes feel incredibly self-conscious and even my muscles aren’t enough to sometimes make me feel safe. Those great phone calls and good friendships in my life are the converse of the grief which threatened to bust down the door if I didn’t get out there and connect with others. It has not been easy.

Sitting with someone who has been through similar things yesterday I heard an invitation to not only be vulnerable but to tell the truth about the fact that my bones ache, my shoulders are sore, and my back is so tight it feels like I have two plates of armor between my shoulder blades and my hips. A lot of things hurt and sometimes it feels as if the pain will never cease.

I have worked so hard to carve my way out of my sorrows and it has been wonderful in so many ways. It also is not the only way forward. I can live a life where my bones hurt less and my shoulders ache less constantly. As a new year dawns, I can set a different goal for something gentler on my body like swimming or rowing. I am not forced to walk this one way. My friend has a different path and their way is worthy of emulating in many ways. Perhaps I need to be slow enough to see where the path diverts and runs slightly askew in the same direction.

Loving that one person

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

“We are being invited to call others by their true name, to view them in their deepest identity, to see and think of them not primarily for their failings, but first and foremost in their original nature, made of God. Each one of us is essentially brother of Light, sister of Light, no matter what we have done, even those in whom there appears to be only falseness and violence. At the heart of our being is the light from which we have come. We can choose to live from this place of deepest identity and, at the same time, confront the darkness that violates the light in ourselves and one another. We can call each other back to live from these true depths, not because we have somehow achieved sacredness in our lives, but because we are made of sacredness, pure grace.”

J. Philip Newell, “Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul”

I was recently leading a meeting where we were discussing making amends for our character defects in the past. I won’t acknowledge the group by name, but those who know probably know. It was a deep conversation and has been running through my mind.

How does one come to a place of forgiveness for the sins of others? How can we make amends to someone who has been a source of violence in the past? How can we even begin to make amends to people who say horrifying things like “It was consensual when I hit him”? How do we come to a place where we can even begin to clean up our side of the street when their toxicity is so great that threats and demands are their only way of communication? How do we do that when it is still a fearful thing to even acknowledge such situations are a part of our lives?

I know that I am not the only person who has these questions about people in their lives. Even if you are not in a recovery program, it is really difficult to think kindly of the people who have done real and significant harm to you and the people in your life. Thank goodness the call of Jesus is to love our neighbor and not to like our neighbor. We can sometimes force the verb of loving even if we never get near the feeling of liking someone.

It is with all this in mind while waiting for my computer to process and encode the video of the service from two weeks ago that I came across the paragraph which I have quoted above. I found it in J. Phillip Newell’s book “Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul.” In the paragraph previous Newell writes about John Scotus Eriugena (ca. 817-817 CE) and his view of Lucifer. Eriugena believed deeply that all things have their essential nature come from God. Lucifer is an Angel of Light who has lost connection with that which was meant to be: As Newell puts it, Satan is “an archetype of the false self, living in shadow and exile from his true center.”

Newell states Eriugena’s belief that Satan will one day come around. Although that is not exactly in the scriptures as I read them, I can see the thought process at work. If all things that come from God come to fruition, then creation itself must eventually come to fruition. It is a very generous outlook on creation and perhaps the kindest treatment I have ever read of the figure of Satan. Again, I don’t necessarily agree with the theology, but I can see where it is coming from and the theological and philosophical intent.

In all honesty, the fate of Lucifer is definitely something I see as a matter well above my pay grade. I know what scripture says, which is effectively that the choice of offering salvation rests in the hands of God. As a Gentile, I have been grafted into a tree of salvation through the grace of God. I neither earned salvation nor did anything that makes me worthy of demanding a place at God’s table. I was offered a gift and it is my choice to decide whether or not to accept that gift. If I don’t even have the authority to make such a demand about my own life, I’m certainly not in a place to say whether or not someone else is worthy of grace.

The understanding that I am not the decider of such things is at the very core of why this quote bothers me. There are people in this world who resemble the violently false people described by Newell. There are people who resemble the remark when Newell writes “Each one of us is essentially brother of light, sister of light, no matter what we have done, even those in whom there appears to be only falseness and violence. At the heart of our being is the light from which we have come.”

The person at the farthest on the right of the categories of “Ready to make an amends to them,” “Not quite ready yet to make an amends,” and “I will never make an amends” is a sister of light in the eyes of Newell. I will note that there are no people in that last category for me and I have an open offer to make my amends if and when it is consensual, but even as I am willing to make those amends it is hard to think of that individual as a sister of light given the violence and falseness of the past.

The situation is complicated further by the fact that I just returned from a pilgrimage where I walked through the places and sat in the spaces where people bled and suffered to stand often non-violently for the rights of people who were and are sisters of light, brothers of light, and beloved people of light. This is echoed in Newell as he writes “We can choose to live from this place of deepest identity and, at the same time, confront the darkness that violates the light in ourselves and one another. We can call each other back to live from these true depths, not because we have somehow achieved sacredness in our lives, but because we are made of sacredness, pure grace.”

There’s the rub of it, right? You can live in a place where you stand for what’s right while recognizing that something is inherently good within someone who has been a source of violence and pain. How do we do that with any level of competency? I won’t claim to be an expert, but I think it begins with a perspective like that shared by Eriugena through Newell.

Curbside Prayer

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

I remember you.
I was once discarded too.
Lets sit on this curb
We are both children of God
May my love show you God’s love.

You sleep under stars
as I go to bed tonight
in my comfy bed.
May my resolved be as firm
as the cement where we sat.

Richard Rolle of Hampole

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

“I marvelled more than I can say when I first felt my heart grow warm and burn, truly, not in imagination but as it were with sensible fire. I was indeed amazed at that flame which burst forth within me; and at this unwonted comfort—because of my inexperience of this abundance—I have often felt my breast to see if perchance this heat was due to some outward cause. But when I knew that this fire of love had blazed forth only from within, and was not of the flesh but a gift of my Maker, I was full of joy and dissolved in a desire for yet greater love; and chiefly because of the inflowing of this most sweet delight and internal sweetness which, with this spiritual burning, bedewed my mind to the core. For I had not thought before that such sweet heat and comfort might come to pass in this exile.”

Richard Rolle of Hampole, from “A Translation of the Legenda in the Office Prepare for the Blessed Hermit Richard” in “The Fire of Love” (2015, Aeterna Press)

Richard Rolle of Hampole was a Christian mystic who died in 1349. I have been reading his work “The Fire of Love” as released by Aeterna Press in 2015. As Evelyn Underhill notes in the foreword to the volume, Richard Rolle presented a vision of God’s presence that was marked by heat, sweetness, and song. She states:

“His love was essentially dynamic; it invaded and transmuted all departments of his nature, and impelled him as well to acts of service as to songs of joy. He was no spiritual egotist, no mere seeker for transcendental satisfaction; but one of those for whom the divine goodness and beauty are coupled together in insoluble union, even as ‘the souls of the lover and the loved.’ “

As a Methodist, I have to admit that my attention immediately caught upon the description of a strangely warmed heart. John Wesley is infamous for expressing an experience of similar automatism when reading Martin Luther’s introduction to the Book of Romans on May 24, 1738. I picked up Richard Rolle’s book to trace a quote from an anthology of Christian mystics on the nature of love. I have been trying to sort out my feelings on the subject of love and relationships, so I wanted to have context for Richard Rolle’s words… Yes, I still remember the motto we were taught while studying scripture and philosophy in college: “A text without a context is a pretext for misinterpretation.”

I have yet to find the elusive quote as I think doing a search for the phrase would be rushing into the text without context. Searching on Kindle is wonderful, but some analog methods of study still have merit. What I have found is this interesting correlation between John Wesley and Richard Rolle who both had similar experiences approximately four centuries apart. Like many a Methodist, I caught on Wesley’s description as it reminded me of my own spiritual experiences while coming to faith and growing throughout the years. 

I felt an immediate spiritual kinship with Richard Rolle that I felt with John Wesley. I have spent most of my spiritual life as an adult both in service to God through the United Methodist Church where I am called as a minister and seeking to understand my own relationship to God and neighbor. I am still unpacking the act of God that literally saved my life as a teenager who was on the edge of committing an act of self-harm that could have been fatal. My life on the night of my fifteenth birthday was blanketed with love and my heart was given that sense of warming peace that I had never known. The direction of my life changed although I would continue to struggle with anxiety, depression, and eventually the hidden disease of alcoholism that would come for me as the son of someone who struggled with Johnny Barleycorn for a good portion of the life I shared with her.

All of this to say I feel drawn to Richard Rolle as I continue my life as a minister, a divorcee, and as a person in long term recovery, I am curious about where and how the experiences of Richard Rolle and John Wesley will mirror each other. 

I am also curious about what I will read and resonate with as I read through Richard Rolle’s work from centuries ago. I am curious whether I will see things in a similar perspective to Evelyn Underhill. She stated that in  “examining the passages in which Rolle speaks of that ‘Heat’ which the ‘Fire of Love’ induced in his purified and heavenward turning heart, we see that this denotes a sensual as well as a spiritual experience.” Will I find a more sensual side to this experience than that normally connected with John Wesley? Only time will tell.

Found Word Quadrille

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

An interesting prompt was put out this week in the poets pub. The prompt was to put together a poem with the first lines of the first poems of each month of 2022. I had a rough 2022, so I was unable to pull that one off, but I did use it as inspiration to take the first 44 words of the last 44 poems I put onto m\y blog. With a little rearranging, here is a quadrille written with the first words of the last 44 poems I wrote. It is a bit clunky, but it was a fun experiment. I also started too many blessing haikus with the word “may.” Those mays were a nightmare to work into the structure while making sense.

Objectively, May The Broken Friend Like What Some May Like? May The Homeless? May We? Like Problematic Broken Innkeeper May Softly Break, We May Perish. May Spring’s Crabapple Poison? May Ramen Treading? I tumbled. I Lace when I may. Oh Jesus may… Shalom may?

“Tumbling Rocks”

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

Some friends recently blessed me with a rock tumbler. Although it seems strange, it was quite thoughtful. I wander around in the wilderness often these days. You do not need a full wallet to enjoy the forest. You do not need a credit card to walk on stone covered beaches. Living in a space with gorges and wilderness means there are plenty of places to search for rocks.

Today the first stage of tumbling came to an end: rocks gathered on New Year’s have spent a week tumbling together through the new possibilities. I have checked on them as they tumbled through the days: rotating over and over, first visible but then swallowed in the slurry of grit and water. In time, even bits of themselves joined in the chaotic tumbling. Washed, dried, and looked over, each rock is the same yet different. With reluctance, they are tumbling again with finer grit. There is a lot of tumbling in their future.

I sympathize with a rock for the first time in my life. I journey in shoes that have walked down long roads. My feet have grown calloused only through painful blisters and my legs have known spasming muscles waking me from the deepest slumber. My heart and soul have wounds to match as the days have not been nearly as beautiful as I once imagined. There are pieces of me that I will never have back and there are edges rounded off of my heart through night after night of tumbling through life’s grit-filled wasteland. Aye, there is beauty, but that beauty has come at a great cost.

Tumbled and jostled
through the dark days and cold nights
as life grinds it all

“The Wild Woods”

/ Robert D / 5 Comments

As January dawns, the year behind has finally ended. There were bleak nights, broken dreams, and tears aplenty. While there was beauty, there was often grief and loss. It hurt to think of all that had been and all that would never come again.

In the woods by an isolated lake, scant days before continuing the uphill climb through my forties, an elderly dog and I meandered through the branches. January snow was unseasonably absent and there were shocks of green moss and patches of red berries everywhere. A fallen trunk shattered open to reveal the mystery born forth into the world from a single seed left behind by oblivious critters in the woods. The space is sacred and thin as I walk in lands where the natural transcends mere words.

For a while, the woods were all there was in this world. Thoughts of loss waited in the car, but in the woods there was beauty to be found, wonder to behold, and even the simple challenge of not letting the canine drag us into another bog while seeking an errant smell. For a brief hour or two, the world shrank down to a world where the brown trunks swayed only gently as the wind found only bare branches to tickle. In the wild woods, a broken heart could be whole for the eternal but brief moment where two souls simply wandered together.

The wild woods reach out:
I almost look for "fair folk"
as my heart finds peace.

My first entry in a long time with the D’verse Poets Pub. The challenge of the week is a haibun about the changing of years or what you are doing during this early part of January.

An Aside about Alcoholism and Zoom Bombing

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

You know, I don’t talk a lot about what happens in my program of recovery. I put in work daily and that’s really all I want to say. If you want to know more, I ordinarily invite people to go to an open meeting of a twelve step recovery program and learn more for themselves.

That being said, I get tired of people thinking they’re funny or cool and Zoom Bombing meetings. A lot of people in the rooms are in a lot of pain. Some have lost everything, others are in grief, and others are just doing their best to fulfill their twelfth step obligation to pass along what they’ve learned to others. There are tons of people in a lot of different vulnerable positions.

It isn’t okay to come into the rooms and tell people to kill themselves. It just isn’t acceptable to do your best to knock down people who are already hurting. It is awful and if you think it is funny, it really isn’t. You could kill someone by putting your hatred into the head of someone who is suffering from a disease which is related to choice but is not wholly a condition of volition.

As an aside to an aside, be nice to people in recovery if you’re a “normie.” You wouldn’t believe the stuff people throw at alcoholics for trying to recover.

Remembering a rough year

/ Robert D / Leave a comment 
What is freedom when life begins again?
How does one measure the ways one lives life
after all you have loved is burned in strife?
Where are the sprouted seeds in the ashes?
Is life renewed when one walks down the path
through sleet, snow, rain, thunder, and burning sun?
Is it renewed when you start to have fun?
If so, perhaps the pain was a herald.
Does the heart revive as one strikes the bag
as thuds echo and skin begins to break
while blood, sweat, and tears fall as shoulders quake?
Was it life throbbing beneath the blisters?
Is it in awe from looking at one's work
and seeing hundreds of moments you cared
writing letters from the good heart you've bared
even as it mended from shattering?
Does life grow as the shutter shares moments
where eyes opened to see good in the world?
Even as the bad news whooshed, howled, and swirled
visions of goodness just kept giving life.
Is it in sermons, poems, or rambles?
Is life found in meetings, coffee, or work?
Is it where I laughed and shared a small smirk?
Is life found in all of these good places?
Okay, it was a hard year, but not bad.
I bent and swayed: my good soul did not break
through all of the storms I stretched out to take
a bit of my soul back from the abyss.
Now a new year is about to break forth
over a good land where I will survive
and at times even slowly start to thrive
as this phoenix rises on hopeful wings

Icy Poem

/ Robert D / Leave a comment 
Treading over these icy paths 
I feel these steps are familiar 
and none strike me as peculiar 
as I balance my weight. 

Life itself requires close watching 
as one connects as through the ice
to ground oneself in world less nice
requires careful balance. 

Still, the path waits for bold and brave:
Neither under the summer sun
nor after Jack Frost's cruel fun
are things ever perfect. 

One foot, one step, one day, move on. 
Keep moving through the winter's cold
and face the heat with a heart bold
as you keep your balance

Dedicated to the two people riding bikes past me. Now that’s dedication and bravery. Also, one of them apparently thought it was just as ludicrous as I did by the panic and joy in her eyes.

Meeting Poetry

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

These haiku/tanka-formatted poems have come out of long meetings with difficult conversations around the church community. I write poetry to express feelings and thoughts that might disrupt or aggravate during meetings. I share them later, without context, for they continue to inspire me to consider what words I use, what notions I carry, and that I, too, might have blind spots.

Problematic words:
dividing with our notions
and cutting our ties
"We" "Ours" "I" "My" "Mine"
There is a space between us
that is shown in words
The apple and tree:
growing in their own spaces
but sharing some roots.
Hubris, pride, self-righteousness:
can't you see the path ahead?

Sad Poetry

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

Christmas has come and gone. I received one text saying merry Christmas and the 28 second phone call where am I child told me all she could do was say Merry Christmas and hang up. There were relatives standing by, I could hear them. They were the same ones who stood by and congratulated me at my wedding. The same ones who said they cared. Not a single message explaining: just the silence of complicity.

There’s a possibility I’ll see them this weekend, but I doubt it. There’s no visitation arranged for January or anytime soon. there is a motion to dismiss my case, because nothing has gone wrong since July. I was guaranteed visits, between six and twelve of them. I saw my two kids once or twice, but haven’t seen my oldest since July.

So I walk in the cold and write poetry, wondering if next year will be any different. I doubt it. In the meantime, the cold reminds me I’m still alive and the pain is lifted like a prayer. At least I have no more bruises than the ones I have on my heart

Twenty eight seconds
and one "Merry Christmas" text:
What did you expect?
Contact was all you wanted 
so that's what she took away.

Will the court help me?
Does the sun rise twice a day?
That seems more likely 
than for a judge to enforce 
when the victim is father