HELLO!

Overwhelmed and awed by his mountaintop experience (Matthew 17:1-9), Peter did what most of us do in a transformation moment: Capture the moment! (Hands up, how many of us would be reaching for our phone to take a picture?) Let's preserve it for all posterity. C'mon, get the stuff we need to make a dwelling--boards, hammers, nails. James, John, don't just stand there with your mouths hanging open! Get busy! Do something! It's built into the very fabric of our culture, even our religion--the Protestant work ethic. And yet, it's the source of the most common lament I hear from parishioners and colleagues alike. We're tired, having bought into the myth of identity based on certainty and accomplishment.

Peter's insistence on doing something is natural; but God's voice from heaven interrupts his babbling to say, "Hush! This is my son, the beloved! Listen to him!" Quit talking, simply pay attention. Listen! Sure, Christ's call to discipleship issues forth in all sorts of doing, but only as our response and not as condition for our identity as God's precious children. This identity comes only as gift, pure grace, free and undeserved. Yet we've all but forgotten, or heaven forbid, never even known, simply how to "be." We/I often fail, like Peter, to be contemplative, spiritual, grounded and centered in the essential reality of God's presence in our lives, simply to stand before and in awe of the mystery of God so that our doing can be meaningful, purposeful, and sustainable.

A book I once used in my discovery of spiritual renewal is Henri Nouwen’s Out of Solitude. Nouwen writes: In solitude we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness. We can learn much from the old tree in the Tao story about a carpenter and his apprentice: A carpenter and his apprentice were walking together through a large forest. And when they came across a tall, huge, gnarled, old, beautiful oak tree, the carpenter asked his apprentice: "Do you know why this tree is so tall, so huge, so gnarled, so old and beautiful?" The apprentice looked at his mentor and said: "No…why?" "Well," the carpenter said, "because it has no use. If it had been useful, it would have been cut long ago and made into tables and chairs, but because no use could be discerned it could grow so tall and so beautiful that you can sit in its shade and relax."

Lent, which begins this coming Wednesday, calls us to rediscover our spirituality, to be, to quit our frantic babbling, and to pay attention, to consider who we are, God's precious children, forgiven, loved, held, and only from that identity, gifted and called and sent to do God's work in the world. If we don't get the "being" part, then the doing will only be chaotic, frustrated attempts at self-justification or else grounded in fear and devoid of any joy. If all your doing seems madness and pointless, learn again to behold the mystery, to enter a quiet place of awe. There will be more than ample opportunity and compulsion for living out our call to discipleship, to taking up the cross. But in order to be able to do that, at least for now, don't just do something! Listen. Peace, Kevin