Loving Our Spiritual Leaders
Religious leaders, priests, ministers, rabbis, and imams can be admired and revered but also hated and despised. We expect that our religious leaders will bring us closer to God through their prayers, teaching, and guidance. Therefore, we watch their behavior carefully and listen critically to their words. But precisely because we expect, often without fully realising it, to be superhuman, we are easily disappointed or even feel betrayed when they prove to be just as human as we are. Thus, our unmitigated admiration quickly turns into unrestrained anger.
Let's try to love our religious leaders, forgive them their faults, and see them as brothers and sisters. Then we will enable them, in their brokenness, to lead us closer to the heart of God.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
In the News
Here are a few stories that caught my attention today:
Tourists Die in Peru Plane Crash
Four Prisoners Executed in Japan
In Search of Zawadi
Tourists Die in Peru Plane Crash
Four Prisoners Executed in Japan
In Search of Zawadi
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
It Won't Leave Me Alone
The image just won’t leave me alone.
She was lying facedown, perfectly still, on the edge of the street, in a pool of her own blood. I didn’t stop as I walked by – she was being tended to by three policemen and the paramedics were just arriving. The blood was garish and almost fake, reminding me of a child’s bright red tempera paints.
She wasn’t dirty, ragged, homeless. None of the things you would expect in a woman spotted in a pool of her own blood across the street from a corner commonly referred to as “crack alley”. Her jacket was khaki green, and contrasted with the dark pavement and bright red blood.
I walked by, but the image won’t leave me alone.
I’ve walked by that spot several times since. There’s little to indicate that someone lay there in the midst of an emergency less than a week ago. A dark, off-color stain remains on the pavement, looking more like a spill of oil from passing traffic than a remnant of the brassy blood that she lay in.
The image won’t leave me alone.
She was lying facedown, perfectly still, on the edge of the street, in a pool of her own blood. I didn’t stop as I walked by – she was being tended to by three policemen and the paramedics were just arriving. The blood was garish and almost fake, reminding me of a child’s bright red tempera paints.
She wasn’t dirty, ragged, homeless. None of the things you would expect in a woman spotted in a pool of her own blood across the street from a corner commonly referred to as “crack alley”. Her jacket was khaki green, and contrasted with the dark pavement and bright red blood.
I walked by, but the image won’t leave me alone.
I’ve walked by that spot several times since. There’s little to indicate that someone lay there in the midst of an emergency less than a week ago. A dark, off-color stain remains on the pavement, looking more like a spill of oil from passing traffic than a remnant of the brassy blood that she lay in.
The image won’t leave me alone.
Being Handed Over to Suffering - Henri Nouwen
Another thought from Henri Nouwen
Being Handed Over to Suffering
People who live close together can be sources of great sorrow for one another. When Jesus chose his twelve apostles, Judas was one of them. Judas is called a traitor. A traitor, according to the literal meaning of the Greek word for "betraying," is someone who hands the other over to suffering.
The truth is that we all have something of the traitor in us because each of us hands our fellow human beings over to suffering somehow, somewhere, mostly without intending or even knowing it. Many children, even grown-up children, can experience deep anger toward their parents for having protected them too much or too little. When we are willing to confess that we often hand those we love over to suffering, even against our best intentions, we will be more ready to forgive those who, mostly against their will, are the causes of our pain.
Being Handed Over to Suffering
People who live close together can be sources of great sorrow for one another. When Jesus chose his twelve apostles, Judas was one of them. Judas is called a traitor. A traitor, according to the literal meaning of the Greek word for "betraying," is someone who hands the other over to suffering.
The truth is that we all have something of the traitor in us because each of us hands our fellow human beings over to suffering somehow, somewhere, mostly without intending or even knowing it. Many children, even grown-up children, can experience deep anger toward their parents for having protected them too much or too little. When we are willing to confess that we often hand those we love over to suffering, even against our best intentions, we will be more ready to forgive those who, mostly against their will, are the causes of our pain.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Peace returning...
The following are portions of an email that I sent to a friend this morning. I felt that they rather nicely captured the space I find myself occupying today, and wanted to share them with the rest of you...
It's funny to me how sometimes it's such a struggle and a fight to slip into the presence of the Lord, and how other times, when I'm not even trying, I manage to get there quite inadvertently. This morning was one of those times. As I walked and took the train this morning I was listening to a Jason Upton album. Had to laugh at some of the lyrics… they stung a little (in a good way, I suppose).
I wrote in my journal on the train this morning "For the first time in days I feel some semblance of peace, of rest, of quiet in my heart. There is a faint possibility of hope that has been missing. This morning I believe that He will hold my heart. That He will shield me. That I will get through this season and find myself walking taller, stronger in the face of the waves. Intimacy with Him is less terrifying and more comforting a thought this morning. The pain exists, still, but this morning I believe that healing may be coming, for my heart and for so many others."
I am reminded of that line from Isaiah this morning, the one that says "a bruised reed he will not break" and am finding great comfort in that.
Just before I arrived at the office, a line from a Jason Upton song that I'm quite sure I've never heard before it played on my ipod this morning caught me, and I'm taking comfort in it as well… "In the midst of the presence/there is a stone/that the world rejected/and it kills the giant." Something comforting about that in the midst of a season where it has felt like I've faced an endless stream of "giants".
I'm relatively at peace. My heart feels quiet. It feels as if I've somehow managed surrender again (in a different way this time), and that, by managing it, I've managed to push through whatever it is that I've been swarmed with these last days and step into a clear space, an open space of rest for a little while. The waves are still there, but they're calmer and far less overwhelming at the moment. No more drowning or gasping for air in the fight to survive.
I've got plans to be still for a while later tonight, with that same Jason Upton album, and a candle or two. (stillness hasn't come easily or been very desired lately either.) I need to absorb some of the things that album offers in stillness instead of while I'm moving and commuting. This is a much better space to be occupying.
Bruised but not broken or crushed.
It's funny to me how sometimes it's such a struggle and a fight to slip into the presence of the Lord, and how other times, when I'm not even trying, I manage to get there quite inadvertently. This morning was one of those times. As I walked and took the train this morning I was listening to a Jason Upton album. Had to laugh at some of the lyrics… they stung a little (in a good way, I suppose).
I wrote in my journal on the train this morning "For the first time in days I feel some semblance of peace, of rest, of quiet in my heart. There is a faint possibility of hope that has been missing. This morning I believe that He will hold my heart. That He will shield me. That I will get through this season and find myself walking taller, stronger in the face of the waves. Intimacy with Him is less terrifying and more comforting a thought this morning. The pain exists, still, but this morning I believe that healing may be coming, for my heart and for so many others."
I am reminded of that line from Isaiah this morning, the one that says "a bruised reed he will not break" and am finding great comfort in that.
Just before I arrived at the office, a line from a Jason Upton song that I'm quite sure I've never heard before it played on my ipod this morning caught me, and I'm taking comfort in it as well… "In the midst of the presence/there is a stone/that the world rejected/and it kills the giant." Something comforting about that in the midst of a season where it has felt like I've faced an endless stream of "giants".
I'm relatively at peace. My heart feels quiet. It feels as if I've somehow managed surrender again (in a different way this time), and that, by managing it, I've managed to push through whatever it is that I've been swarmed with these last days and step into a clear space, an open space of rest for a little while. The waves are still there, but they're calmer and far less overwhelming at the moment. No more drowning or gasping for air in the fight to survive.
I've got plans to be still for a while later tonight, with that same Jason Upton album, and a candle or two. (stillness hasn't come easily or been very desired lately either.) I need to absorb some of the things that album offers in stillness instead of while I'm moving and commuting. This is a much better space to be occupying.
Bruised but not broken or crushed.
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