A Psalm for Holy Week

I recently attended a workshop – on Zoom of course – with the well-known composer of hymns and worship leader, John Bell.  The workshop was through the auspices of the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine in Toronto.   This workshop was not about hymns, not directly in any case―it was on the psalms.  Even though I would have enjoyed an exploration of some of John Bell’s many hymns, it was in no way a disappointment.  The journey of exploration of the psalm on which John took us was wonderful and gave me an appreciation of the psalm I hadn’t known previously.

As an aside, John started the workshop by apologizing for his somewhat shaggy appearance and noted that he was overdue for a haircut due to COVID restrictions in his home in Scotland.  This rather small point seemed to truly bring home to me how daily life has been disrupted by the pandemic in many countries in small ways as well as the very large ways which we know first hand.

One of the explorations of the psalms which particularly engaged me was on what is probably the best-known psalm – the 23^rd – you know, the one that begins, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”  John noted that this psalm is a favourite for weddings and funerals.  I can attest that it is certainly a go-to psalm for funerals from my experience presiding at many funerals.  However, what I didn’t know was that this psalm was often used during Holy Week which Christians are marking this week.  Holy Week is the time between Palm Sunday when Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the waving of palm branches and shouts of ‘hosannah’, and the events that are celebrated on Easter with the crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday and the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

John noted that Holy Week is the fulfillment of the 23^rd psalm.  Here it is in full from the King James Version:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

We have Jesus who proclaimed himself as the Good Shepherd in one of the ‘I am’ statements in the Gospel of John.  The passage gives a pastoral image of green pastures and still water that care of the sheep by the Good Shepherd who searches for the lost sheep in the parable of Jesus.  Jesus walked through the valley of death in the Garden of Gethsemane and did not fear the evil of the cross. 

The preparation of the table reminds us of the Last Supper which he shared with his disciples in the presence of Judas who betrayed him.  The anointing of his head with oil was fulfilled by the unnamed woman who anointed his head with costly nard to the objection of Judas who believed that this was an extravagant waste and the ointment should have been sold and the money spent of the poor. 

Goodness and mercy did follow him throughout his life through his care and healing of others.  On the cross Jesus assures the robber crucified with him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”   

For those of you who are on the journey with Jesus this Holy Week may you have the blessing of the 23^rd psalm as your companion. 

Alone or Lonely

 Last week, a friend sent me a link to an article about Rosalind Cartwright, one of the modern explorers of the psychology of dreaming and the link between REM sleep and dreams.  She may be best known for her testifying as an expert for the defense in a trial of someone who murdered his wife in what he claimed happened while he was in a dream state.  The article was engaging for a number of reasons but I was particularly taken with the details of the first sleep lab which Cartwright established.  She converted an existing room into a sleep lab making it completely sound proof and found that subjects who lived in an urban setting were unable to achieve REM sleep because of the lack of the ambient noise they were used to.  Cartwright addressed this by piping in street noise. 

This, I believe, points out the increasing level of background noise which is pervasive in our culture.  There is often noise or, if I am more generous, sound which fills our waking and at least part of our sleeping hours.  I remember when Lorna and I moved to the small town where we now reside and were shocked by the sound of silence – to borrow from Simon and Garfunkel – as we had previously lived in an urban setting close to railroad tracks and a fire station and a busy street.  We grew accustomed to the sound of silence fairly quickly and certainly enjoy the general quiet of our little town.

 If the surroundings we find ourselves in does not provide a comforting level of ambient noise, people will often fill that empty space with noise to fill the sound of silence which makes us uncomfortable.  We cover up the state of loneliness with background noise of the TV or music.  That way we will not have to acknowledge or even recognize that we are lonely.  Mother Mary Clare SLG, addressed this in her book, Encountering the Depths:

Never before in history has there been a time when people have found it so difficult to be alone and so easy to be lonely.  Yet being alone does not constitute being lonely.  To be lonely is to be deprived of a sense of belonging and of being wanted…When people are lonely, they often try to drown their fear and sense of separation by making or listening to a lot of noise.

Joan Chittister in her book, The Rule of Benedict, also notes the need for people to fill the silence in our lives:

We live with noise pollution now and find silence a great burden, a frightening possibility.  Muzak fills our elevators and earbuds wire us to MP3 files and TV blare from every room in the house morning till night…Yet until we are able to have a least a little silence every day, both outside and in, both inside and out, we have no hope of coming to know either God or ourselves very well.

 

Chittister tells us that silence has an important place in our lives:

Silence has two functions.  The first effect of extreme silence is to develop a sense of interior peace.  The second value of silence is that it provides the stillness that enables the ear of the heart to hear the God who is, “not in the whirlwind.” 

I noted last week that Centering Prayer is a way which allows room for God’s presence to come to the fore.  However, it is a challenge to empty our minds and make room for the awareness of God’s presence in our lives.  In one way it is the simplest way of praying – just empty your mind of everything.  But in another it is the most difficult as the “monkey brain” want desperately to fill that challenging emptiness with unsought thoughts.   However, it is one way in which we can enable the ear of the heart to hear God. 

I will close with another statement from Mother Mary Clare which, I believe sums up why Christians and all people should have intentional silence in their lives:

Christians are people engaged on a search, not only a search for God, thought it is always that, but a quest which brings us to a place where we are exposed to a deep heart-searching, a listening awareness of the needs of the people around us.  In aloneness we learn to share in the emptiness and lostness of modern society.

 May you be blessed with aloneness on your journey.

Be Still and Know That I Am God

March 11^th was the anniversary of the COVID 19 pandemic.  The World Health Organization made official what many people already knew, COID 19 was a world-wide pandemic.  I hesitate to call it the first anniversary as I sincerely hope and fervently pray that next year at this time, we will be back to something approaching a pre-pandemic world.  However, I am sure that there will be significant changes which are part of what will be considered normal. 

The Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, Archbishop Linda Nicholls offered a prayer to mark the day:

God of infinite compassion and mercy, our hearts are overflowing with a flood of emotions from the past year, Fear and sorrow and grief — endurance, relief, and hope;

For the families of all who have died, who have been unable yet to mourn, we ask your comfort;

For health care workers persevering in the battle with the disease we ask your strength and courage;

For government and public health leaders we ask your wisdom;

For all facing the relentless uncertainties that continue we ask your endurance and peace.

We give thanks for the resilience discovered within us;

We give thanks for all who continue to work to protect and care for us;

We give thanks for your unending love and compassion in our midst at all times.

As we face the year ahead fill our hearts with that same love and compassion for our world and its needs;

For in you we find all that is needed — for whatever lies ahead. Amen. 

Lorna and I marked the occasion with three minutes of silence as suggested by Anglican House of Bishops.  The use of silence for occasions such as this is probably best known in the two minutes of silence on November 11^th to mark Remembrance Day in honour of those who made the supreme sacrifice during the world conflicts in the last century.  I have often said that the two minutes of silence during Remembrance Day services can seem, if not like an eternity, at least a lot longer that two minutes in duration.  Surprizingly, the three minutes silence on March 11^th did not seem long at all. 

When we observe moments of silence we generally do not do so with ease.  Our conscious ego-centered brains do not accept silence gracefully.  The silence needs to be filled and thoughts enter unsought.  This is the challenge that anyone practicing Centering Prayer for the recommended twenty minutes discovered.  The activity of our so-called “monkey brains” does not accept silence and wants to fill the vacuum.  However, there is a long tradition of emptying our minds of extraneous thoughts to allow room for God’s presence to come to the fore.  This is grounded in scripture with the passage from psalm 46:10, Be still and know that I am God.

Despite the imposed inactivity of the pandemic, we are still in need of opportunities to still the bombardment of information and activities and distractions which can fill the minutes and hours of our days.  This will allow us to be open to the things which truly matter and the presence of God in our lives.

Blessings on your journey and my you occasionally be still and know that God is always with you.

The Unknown Faces of God

Last week I wrote about the unknown unknowns and encouraged all of us to open up the boxes which we have constructed for our ideas of God and how they are constrained by the walls of those boxes.  Over the weekend, Lorna and I attended a workshop with John Bell, the well-known hymn writer, on the psalms.  This was offered by the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine in Toronto.  John did a wonderful job of mining the treasure that is contained in the psalms which, in my experience, has been unexplored to a great extent in our churches. 

This week I want to share a small part of that treasure revealed by John and continue on my exploration of the unknown, or at least lesser-known, images of God contained in the psalms.  The session of the workshop I want to share with you was entitled appropriately ‘The Faces of God in the Psalms’.  John introduced this by telling a story - he is a wonderful storyteller - which illustrated the idea that the sign that we know someone well is that we have many pictures of them.  He initially illustrated this point by drawing on a biblical source outside the psalms – the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin.  These appear as companion parables in the Gospel of Luke chapter 15.  The figure of the Good Shepherd who leaves the flock and searches for the lost sheep is male and can easily be seen as the masculine face of God.  This is juxtaposed with the woman who searches for her lost coin is the female homemaker and therefore presents a female aspect of God who cares for any of the lost children.  It concludes, “I tell you, there is joy in the presence of angels of God over one sinner who repents.” 

Turning to psalms, John explored some of the other images of God which are there if you have eyes to see.  Here are some of the ones we explored:

Psalm 2 v 04 “The one who sits enthroned in heaven laughs, the Lord derides those who conspire against him, then angrily he rebukes them.”   God is pictured as a judge – not something surprizing to us.

Psalm 17 v 08 “Guard me like the apple of your eye; shield me in the shadow of your wings.”   God is pictured as a bird – less familiar to us.

Psalm 22 v 09 “You are the one who brought me from my mother's womb, who laid me on my mother's breast. To your care I was entrusted at birth; from my mother's womb you have been my God.”  God as the midwife – which is always a woman’s role in the bible bringing new life to birth in God’s people.

Psalm 31 v 11 “You have turned my laments into dancing; you have stripped off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.”    God is the one who turns our sorrow into joy.

Psalm 38 v 2-3 “Your arrows have rained down on me, and your hand on me has been heavy. Your indignation has left no part of my body unscathed; because of my sin there is no health in my whole frame.”  God is the disciplinarian. 

Psalm 41 v 2-3 “The Lord never leaves those who care for the helpless to the will of their enemies. On their sick-beds, the Lord nurses them, transforming every illness to health.”  God is the disciplinarian. 

Psalm 23 v 01 “The Lord is my shepherd; I lack for nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me to water where I may rest.”  The last example which ends where I started with the best-known psalm and the well-known image of God as the Shepherd. 

I will close with a quote John gave us from Allan Boesak, the great anti-apartheid crusader, “God is sometimes a lion, sometimes a lamb, but never a chameleon.”   May you be blessed to encounter many faces of God on your journey.   

The Unknown Unknowns

 Recently, a friend brought to my attention the following quote from Henry Thoreau and suggested I might consider reflecting on it in this venue:

 

Henry Thoreau in Walden: “We are sound asleep nearly half our time.” 

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience.”

 Thoreau is famous for removing himself form his society and living the ‘idyllic’ simple life in a cabin in the woods by Walden Pond.   It has been a long time since I read anything by or of Thoreau so I come to this quote with a limited context. 

 The thoughts which come to me this morning are from a perspective that I wasn’t anticipating.   I anticipated that I would explore the quiet life and perhaps the opportunities that Thoreau must have had a contemplative life or how we can commune with God by our experience of nature.  However, what came t my mind unsought was the idea of the unknown unknowns.  Some years ago, an official in the 2nd Bush president - not sure who now – spoke of their being three categories of knowledge, the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns.  In effect we know what we know, we know what we don’t know but there is the third category of not knowing the things we don’t know we don’t know.  Now I hesitate in principle to give credit to anyone in George W Bush’s administration, however, it seems to me there is some wisdom in this realization.  The realization that there a not knowing in life puts us in a position which is uncomfortable for most of us.  If we don’t know what we don’t know how can we ever keep our sense of being in control of our lives?  This, of course, is an illusion but it is one which we try in many ways to maintain to live our daily lives in some comfort until our world gives us a taste of the unknowns, we try our utmost to not consider.

You might well ask how this relates to that quote from Thoreau.  Well, to be honest I am not completely sure.  Perhaps Thoreau was attempting to explore the known unknowns so that he could live the full life as he imagined it – to discover what he had not lived.  But, in my imagination, Thoreau must have discovered some of the unknown unknowns which he could not have expected form the experience. 

 I don’t know Thoreau’s belief in a divine being.  However, he was a Transcendentalist and according to Wikipedia Transcendentalism has:

A core belief is in the inherent goodness of people and nature,[1] and while society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. Transcendentalists saw divine experience inherent in the every day, rather than believing in a distant heaven. Transcendentalists saw physical and spiritual phenomena as part of dynamic processes rather than discrete entities.

In my view those of us who believe in a Divine source in this world approach it generally with the first two ways of knowing i.e., the known knowns and the known unknowns.  We want to put God into a box which is manageable and comfortable.  The known known approach is to take holy scripture as the literal inerrant word of God putting God into a contained box with well-defined dimensions which we can strive to live up to or not.  The known unknown approach to God is to expand the parameters of that box to a lesser or greater extent but we still have a firm idea of who and what God is and is not.  However, to approach God with true humility is to realize that God is far beyond any concept we might have of God.  That box we want to put God into has gaps and holes in it and can no longer contain what or who God is.  I don’t know if it is possible to apprehend God fully in this way and not retain at least some of the box in our concept of God.  Perhaps those who are blessed to have a mystical experience are apprehending just that.   However, if we approach God in honest humility, we will perhaps we surprized by joy, to use C.S. Lewis’ phrase.

Perhaps Thoreau and the Transcendentalists were hoping to achieve just this in their approach to the mystery of life – to be surprized by the joy and wonder of creation.  Perhaps we can as well.  For me that is not easy as the unknown unknowns can be rather a scary prospect at least at times. 

I hope that on your journey you are blessed in being are able to leave the door open a crack to get a glimpse of those things we don’t know we don’t know on your journey.