The Chaplain Chatters

“Proper love in community involves deep sympathy with the real needs of others (7.5-6), and we must not be nervous of the ‘natural tenderness’ stirred by this, so long as it does not become the kind of sentimental partisanship that destroys corporate life. This is why it is important not to sympathize with self-pity or self-justification. Teresa’s chapters on detachment and humility lay a good deal of emphasis on bearing unfair accusations patiently, and she insists that it is no sign of friendship to encourage the self-righteous resentment of someone who (rightly or wrongly) believes herself to be suffering unjustly. Our greatest practical service to each other in community is, for Teresa, the mutual destruction of that sense of ‘honour’ which the very existence of the reformed Carmel is meant to challenge; and so the refusal of sympathy over slights and even slanders is of considerable importance. We are to be consistently helped to find our honour in the friendship of God.”

Apart from any question of merit, God gives grace – compunction and repentance, but also the new and unexpected touches of intimacy that Teresa is now receiving; and when such gifts are given, it is false humility to deny or ignore them. We must acknowledge that, for all our natural poverty, we are enriched by God and are given favours in order to share them ) and she concludes, ‘how can anyone benefit and share his gifts lavishly if he doesn’t understand that he is rich?

From Kevin O’Brien’s  wonderful adaptation of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola I found this delightful thought:

As WE’VE SEEN, IGNATIUS OF Loyola as a young man left his family home in Spain to embark on an adventure that would transform countless lives, beginning with his own. Traveling across Europe and the Mediterranean, he would learn that the greatest adventures in life were not always geographic.The adventure that God had in store for Ignatius was about traveling the distance between the head and the heart and about inspiring in Ignatius bold, holy desires for God’s greater glory and the service of others.

Last night The Episcopal Church at Cornell hosted our first weekly Thursday night Choral Compline and Cookies. It was a truly ecumenical effort, with help from our Roman Catholic and Lutheran friends among others, and the Anabel Taylor Chapel choir’s anthem last night, Edward Elgar’s “How Calmly the Evening” was simply glorious. Here is the brief reflection that introduced what we might think of as a somewhat ‘monastic’ form of evangelism:

‘I was asleep, but my heart waked: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me… my love.. for my head is filled with dew, my locks with the drops of the night.’ (Song of Songs 5:2)

Compline is an ancient liturgy, sung and celebrated by people of faith for over sixteen hundred years. Monastic in origin, it has become, in our time, a liturgy of deep resonance to both lay and ordained, young and old, to the seeker and to the devout. Coming at the end of the day, just before we turn in, it reminds us of our essential need for honest reflection, attentive listening, and life-sustaining rest. After days filled with great joy, we sing, Lord protect us. On evenings of heart-breaking sorrow, we pray our troubled spirits into God’s redeeming hands. When the day’s distractions keep us on the surface of life, the steady rhythms of psalm, hymnody and prayer draw us down into the heartbeat of holy love. When politics and worldly ambition threaten to unmoor us, we call on God to return us to sanity: guide us waking O Lord, and guard us sleeping. When our own troubles and nagging obsessions blind us to those in deeper need than ourselves, we thank God for the privilege of keeping vigil with those who work or watch or weep this night. When we have had the blessing of a good day: when we have loved wondrously, worked diligently, and laughed extravagantly, we join our brothers and sisters in confession and praise, and we willingly take our rest. Compline reminds us and our nation that freedom is only God’s to give, and that it always leads to peace. Amen.

Last week was the feast day of Bernard of Clairvaux. His is a decidedly mixed legacy for the church (whose legacy is not?), but his devotion to the power of love is one of his greatest contributions to Christian theology, especially his sermons on the Song of Songs. Here’s a snippet from a letter he wrote to the pope, a former monk of his, commending to him the power of love to overtake even the one who sits on the throne of St. Peter. 

“Love knows no master. It recognizes a son, even though he wears the tiara…Ascend to the heavens, descend to the depths (in abyssos), you will not get away from me; I will follow you wherever you go… I may seem more insane, but only to one who does not love, to one who does not feel the power of love.”

Bernard knew all too well that for those of us who find ourselves in high places, in positions of great responsibility and leadership, where our reputation, honor and dignity so often hold us aloft, love is a challenging teacher, inviting us to take off the tiara, step down from the professor’s podium or the CEO’s seat, and enter into the leveling world of love. 

From his new book, Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer

One of the great tragedies and errors of the way people have understood the Bible has been the assumption that what people did in the Old Testament must have been right ‘because it’s in the Bible’. It has justified violence, enslavement, abuse and suppression of women, murderous prejudice against gay people; it has justified all manner of things we now cannot but as Christians regard as evil. But they are not there in the Bible because God is telling us, ‘That’s good.’ They are there because God is telling us, ‘You need to know that that is how some people responded. You need to know that when I speak to human beings things can go very wrong as well as very wonderfully.’ God tells us, ‘You need to know that when I speak, it isn’t always simple to hear, because of what human beings are like.’ We need, in other words, to guard against the temptation to take just a bit of the whole story and treat it as somehow a model for our own behaviour. Christians have often been down that road and it has not been a pretty sight. We need rather to approach the Bible as if it were a parable of Jesus. The whole thing is a gift, a challenge and an invitation into a new world, seeing yourself afresh and more truthfully.

“See this empty jar. If someone were to fill it with serpents, lizards, and scorpions and then leave the lid sealed and abandon it, all these reptiles-aren’t they going to die there? And if you open the jar, won’t all the creatures get out and sting people? And so, it’s the same for a man: if he watches his tongue and shuts his mouth, all the creatures die inside. But if he works his tongue and speaks, the venomous creatures will come out and sting his brother…”