Is God a means or an End?

Love cannot be a means to any end. Love does not promise success, power, achievement, health, recovery, satisfaction, peace of mind, fulfillment, or any other prizes.  Love is an end in itself, a beginning in itself.

This quote is from The Awakened Heart by Gerald May which I finished reading a few days ago and I have begun reading again.  I do not usually reread a book right away but there are so many things in this work that touched my experience of God and of life that I want to delve into it once more with to see how it speaks to me a second time. 

The above quote resonated with me because it holds a deep truth about our relationship with God.  If we understand God as love, the essence of love, we can see how it applies to the Ground of Being—to use Paul Tillich’s term. 

There is a great danger in wanting to relate to God in terms of what God can do for us; for our loved ones; or even the world.  It is natural to pray to God that God will give us what we desire and believe is right.  Those things may be reasonable from our personal ego driven perspective; we may want healing for ourselves and others.  Indeed my daily prayers and our collective prayers ask for just that.  However, what happens when God does not deliver on God’s part of the implicit contract. We are told we are God’s people and if we are God should give us the things we ask for.

We often end our prayer with the phase, “if it is your will” which is a reminder and declaration that God is supreme in this relationship.  However, behind that can be the belief that if God is just we will get what we ask for and what we deserve; well not necessarily what we deserve but what we should receive as God’s children.  This can be misleading and the darker side of this is the prosperity Gospel which preaches that if you have success in life, as the world defines success i.e. material possessions, a nice home, a good job, and a happy family etc. it is a sign that God is rewarding you because you are a good person. 

This view is summed up in that wonderful song recorded by Janice Joplin, O Lord Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz.  There is a wonderful phrase which captures this approach to God, ‘God the Butler’.  We believe that we can keep God down in the servants’ quarters a la Downton Abbey, and call on God to come upstairs when we need something.

That is what happens when we make God a means rather than an end.  This can happen when we use our spiritual practice for a personal means rather than making space for us to recognize God’s work in our lives.  We can use contemplative prayer, centering prayer, meditation and other spiritual practices to make us feel better and to give us physiological and psychological benefits such as lower blood pressure and feeling at ease with others.  However, when we do that we are placing ourselves above God.  We believe that we know what God should do for us.  We are indeed using God as a means and not an end. 

Gerald May addresses this, “beware if turning it (spiritual practice) into a psychological method… I caution you not to “use it” to cope with stressful situations or to increase you efficiency.”  In my experience this is certainly tempting and I have turned to contemplative prayer to deal with stressful situations.  The trap is that it seems to work at times.  In my experience what seems to be the key is intention.  Do we open ourselves to the love of God or do we substitute our will for God’s and demand my will not Thine be done? 

In the end we are called to make God the end, the goal of our existence and not to means to the existence that we want or believe we deserve.  Thanks be to God. 

Faith of our Fathers and Mothers

Last weekend Lorna and I were in Toronto visiting family.  On Sunday we attended St. Thomas’s Anglican Church to get our fix of High Anglican smells and bells which we seem to need once or twice a year.  Actually it was not as high as usual.  Due to our schedule we attended the 9:30 B.A.S. service of Holy Eucharist rather than the usual B.C.P. service.  However, it was still a lovely service with good music. 

After the service we attended choral concert at the Royal Conservatory in which our granddaughter, who is six years old, participated.  We were glad to discover that there has been an explosion of interest in choral music recently.  Following a very enjoyable concert with many children of various ages, we had lunch and other activities with the family.  We went with some of the family to the ROM as we had lots of time before our train left later that afternoon.  Actually, I sat in the lobby and dozed while the rest of them spent about an hour with the exhibits. 

We then went to Union Station and had some time before our train left so we sat for a while reading our books.  I was approached by a young man who wanted to ask me some questions he had about the Ark of the Covenant.  I was initially surprized to be approached until I remembered I was wearing my clerical shirt and collar.  In any case we had an engaging, if short, conversation about faith and the need for proof in relation to faith. 

One of the things that the young man inquired about was the belief that the Ark contained not only the tablets on which the Ten Commandments are written but also a jar containing manna that fed the Israelites in the wilderness.  I must admit I had forgotten about that aspect of the story.  On checking with the source of all knowledge (the internet) I was reminded that the Ark also is purported to contain not only the jar of manna but also Aaron’s budded rod.  I confess my poor memory about those aspects of the story of the Ark.

In any case the encounter got me thinking more about faith and the need for some people to have proof in order believe as opposed to faith which one source defines as, “strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.”  In this context the idea of the jar of mana being contained in the Ark is very apropos.  The manna which YHWH (God) provided to the Israelites in the wilderness was the daily bread that they needed.  It could not be stored up for more than their need for the day it was harvested. Being human they tried to store up more than their need for the day but it became spoiled overnight. The exception was the supply for the Sabbath which could be collected the day before to uphold the commandment not to do any work on the Sabbath.  They were required know that God would give them each day their daily bread which the biblical account affirms.

Throughout my adult life I have had personal challenges about what to believe and how to understand biblical miracles.  I have gone back and forth and up and down about what I believed and how to understand them.   I have also had quite a few discussions with people who had absolute faith in the literal truth of the biblical accounts—the story of the other Ark, Noah’s, is one that comes up frequently. 

I find that the best approach to the biblical miracles in such discussions is not to explore be literal truth of the accounts.  Rather what I believe is important is to understand the capital “T” truth that is contained in the stories.  What do the stories reveal about the  truth concerning about the relationship between God and the people of God for which they were told?  We will probably never know with absolute certainty or have absolute proof of the literal facts of the biblical account—at least in this life.  However, just as the account of the manna from heaven tells us that we need to live our lives in the understanding that God will give us what we need for our spiritual lives to be fed, we need to do our best to understand what the biblical accounts are saying to us in our lives as we live them and how God is at work in our lives today.

I will close with a quote from Richard Rohr, the Daily Meditation for today—perhaps a bit of synchronicity or the reality that God provides what we need in many different ways:  

Faith is not simply seeing things at their visible, surface level, but recognizing their deepest meaning. To be a person of faith means you see things—people, animals, plants, the earth—as inherently connected to God, connected to you, and therefore, most worthy of love and dignity. That’s what Jesus is praying for: that you could see things in their unity, in their connectedness.

Keep the faith,

Greg

A Different Way of Praying to a Different God

The Saturday edition of the Globe and Mail carried and most interesting article which had the headline “St. Paul’s rises from the ashes with a more conservative approach to prayer”.  The article looked at the “success” St. Paul’s Leaksdale, a Presbyterian church north of Toronto. 

Twenty years ago St. Paul’s was facing a future familiar to many mainline protestant and Anglican churches with a future of slow decline and inevitable closure.  A new minister proposed a new approach to worship which took, “a more conservative approach to Bible.”  The article identified a conservative approach as, “taking a more literal interpretation of scripture and a great openness to the idea that God intervenes in the world”. 

In the 20 years since that transformation St. Paul’s has a weekly attendance at worship of 400 to 500 people.  It has expanded its facility to include a massive gym cater to young families in their 20’s and 30’s.  Worship has done away with all the old trappings; no more organs or vestments.  Rather there are drums and guitars and casual clothes. 

This article made me wonder once more about what the future of religion generally and the Anglican church specifically. Is the future of religion to be one in which provides easy answers in black and white to its flock?  Is it going to be more fundamentalist in line with many other religions and in line with how the world seems to be moving?  In this postmodern world or post-postmodern world people are losing their faith in the traditional institutions as we have seen in the Brexit vote in Britain and the election of Donald Trump.  People seem to want black and white answers to complex questions as the world becomes more complex.   They want to know without a doubt that this is right and that is wrong.  They want to be able to give easy answers to problems and identify the problems as being out there and not within us.  The search for scapegoats is becoming more frenzied every day. 

I believe that there is much that mainline Protestant churches can learn from churches such as St. Paul’s.  Fundamental/Evangelical Christians do put their money and their talents where their collective mouths are.  They know what they believe in and are generally not shy in sharing that with others.  The make a concerted effort to evangelize and spread their understanding of the Gospel.  This is not something that Anglican churches and Anglicans generally do well.  We Anglicans often do not know clearly what we believe in and do not have the language to be able to share that with others.  That it something that we need to be better equipped to do.  It is certainly something that I was reluctant to do for much of my life growing up in the United Church and now being an Anglican for the last thirty years. 

The Anglican and mainline Protestant churches need to become better at evangelism.  However, to do this we need to develop a new understanding evangelism which is right for this time and place.  The article considered St. Paul’s to be a “success”.  I put that in quotes because we need to redefine what it means to be successful.  We need above all to continue to explore what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ as revealed in scripture and in the world.  That does not mean that there are black and white, easy answers to the complex reality of God’s world.  It does not mean that we look for scapegoats to drive into the wilderness carrying all our sins. 

Last Sunday we celebrated the Reign of Christ.  I had the opportunity to preside at my former congregation of St. James Parkhill.  I proclaimed in my sermon that as we start Advent next week we have the perfect opportunity for a “Do Over”.  We have the opportunity to prepare for the again for the coming of the incarnation of God in this world and in each of us.  It is a God given opportunity to learn and to explore and to prepare ourselves to share the love of Jesus Christ and to love one another as Christ loves us.  Thanks be to God.  

An Ode to Leonard

Today I am remembering and mourning the loss of Leonard Cohan.  His songs have spoken to my heart and soul all my adult life.  Below is an Ode to Leonard which is my attempt to say a little of what he meant to me and so many others.  As Leonard he "got us singing even though the news was bad.  Blessings on your journey.

Ode to Leonard

Now, so long, Leonard, and

 It truly is time that we begin

To laugh and cry

and cry and laugh

about it all again

You were my man

You were my muse

In a famous blue raincoat

You slyly revealed

 Glimpses of your wisdom

and the mysteries you

gave your voice to.

The gift of your golden voice

Which we were blessed to hear

So loud and so clear. 

Will now longer ring

The voice of the midnight choir

Will no longer sing.

You have danced to the end

Of Life but not love.

You have danced to the end

Of life but not of your song.

You music will go on

From beyond the grave

From beyond the great beyond

For us here to sing along.

May the Sisters of Mercy

Escort you to a heaven  

Which will not be dead

 On the Saturday nights that lie ahead.

The Gates of Love have opened wide

To dance you to the end of love inside.

You sang that democracy

Was coming to the U.S.A.

It has revealed foremost and first

to be  the home of the best

and the home the worst.

You were the little Jew

Who wrote the bible of songs

Of love and faith.

Of life both right and wrong.

You showed us Jesus there on Calvary’s hill

Who told us all to love, not hate.

He knew that we could still be true

But there was lots left, it is not too late. 

You told us of the Jesus

In the lonely wooden tower

Who was a sailor bold and true

Water walking on that sea of blue.

You sang the song of Isaac brave

Sacrificed to the vision holy.

And Bethlehem who inflamed us there

Like the shy one at an orgy

The crack in everything

That let the light come in

Like the temple veil is now torn

And our hearts are rent in two

That light has returned from whence it came

To leave us bereft and shorn.

That golden voice so pure and true

Has left us here sad and forlorn. 

The Tower of Song where you reigned

Is empty now inside

That other tower is waiting on high

With its gates flung open wide

Waiting arranged in sweet array  

Are Hank and all the lords of song

To sing you on your way

To your new Tower of Song.

You no longer ache in the places

Where you used to play

The voodoo dolls have all been

Safely stored and locked away.

We will not be hearing from you now

That you are so far away. 

 There will be no new songs to sing

No more music to love and play.

So toll the bells that still can ring

The gates of heaven are now opening.

We will not forget that you gave

to each of us a perfect offering.

It is now truly closing time

So let us sing out loud and strong

 One last and glorious Hallelujah

To our patron saint of song. 

May the Sisters bend to comfort you

In your heavenly new home

And sing one more Hallelujah

To the patron saint of song. 

Learning the Language of God

Back at the beginning of the millennium I was trying to discern if I had a call to the ordained priesthood.   I thought that it would be great to have a “Road to Damascus” experience i.e., hearing a voice from heaven perhaps with even a heavenly light show to make sure I was paying attention.  However, I can say that I did not receive a message in any way that was like that.  In the end I decided that the only way to test out a calling was to make a commitment to the journey to ordination.  Talking to fellow students during my years at Huron College, I discovered that no one had that kind of a message either.  Looking back I think that I am grateful not to have gone through what Paul experience on that road including being knocked off my mode of transportation and having scales cover my eyes for three days. 

I did receive affirmation of my decision in many ways but not specifically in a Road to Damascus way.  God does speak to us in many different ways which are not necessarily as dramatic or as clear as what Paul experienced.  One experience I had which I believe affirmed my decision occurred just after I had an interview with the Dean of Theology, John Chapman (now Bishop of Ottawa) as part of the process to enter the M. Div. program.  The interview went well and when it was finished I got into my car to drive home.  The car radio was tuned to CBC as usual and the program involved an interview with three clergy who had been ordained later in life.  This certainly fit my experience as I was in my early fifties at the time. 

This experiences was for me synchronistic—a term coined by Carl Jung.  Synchronicity is, simply put, a significant coincidence.   They can be easily dismissed by skeptics as mere coincidence and of no significance other than pure chance.  However, I understood it as a pointer from the divine that I was on the right course.  By itself it would not be enough to make a serious life-changing decision in life.  However, it was one indication that I should continue on this new path and see other signs God might send me.

I believe and have faith that God is speaking to us in many different ways today as God always has.  However, we have not been taught to recognize them.  Our culture does not generally recognize many of these ways.  We need to relearn as a culture and individuals how God does speak to us and how to interpret what might be called the language of God.  One way which I particularly favour is the language of dreams.  Dreams have been called “God’s forgotten language”—a phrase of John Sanford’s, an Episcopal priest and Jungian Analyst and also a title of his very good introduction to dream work. 

There are many other ways such as Contemplative Prayer, Lectio Divina (Holy Listening), and walking the Labyrinth.  My approach to Spiritual Direction is to help directees to identify how God is speaking to them and to help them more fully experience and understand how God is working in their lives. We are each unique children of God and so we are each more receptive to different way in which God is speaking to us.  For instance, my wife Lorna, whose primary way of receiving information is through the five senses, uses that outer input in her inner world.  She is an ISTJ on the Myers Briggs Type Scale i.e. Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Judging. 

I, on the other hand, am not as in tune with the outer world as many who know me will attest—especially Lorna.  My primary way of receiving information is by intuition, being an INFJ on the Myers Briggs Type Scale i.e. Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging.  This difference means that we are naturally oriented differently to how God is speaking to us.  For instance, Lorna finds walking the Labyrinth to be very meaningful as a form of walking prayer.  The experience of walking the labyrinth does not resonate with me to the same extent.  Rather I find Centering Prayer to be a very meaningful way.

This does not mean that we do not use both forms as a part of our spiritual practices.  I do walk the Labyrinth and Lorna does Centering Prayer.  However, it is not the preferred method in each case.  We both pay attention to our dreams as a way of see if our lives on the course God intends for us.  We both keep dream journals and try to understand the meaning of our dreams or as Lorna says, “don’t you mean the message”? 

The most important thing in all this is to be open to how God is speaking to you and pay attention to the things that you believe God is saying.  This is not always clear and it can be helpful to have someone to help you in that journey such as a clergy person, spiritual director or counsellor.  Blessings,

A Time of Spiritual Renewal in Huron

As reported in the Huron Church News (June 2016), in her address to Synod Bishop Linda Nicholls declared that there are no “quick fixes” for our diocese or the church.  She declared that, “We do need spiritual wisdom and revelation.  My prayer is that God will provide that wisdom as we come to know him as we pay attention to our own spiritual lives”.

To put this in action Bishop Linda encouraged each person in the room and by implication every Anglican in Huron, “to commit to one new way of deepening your knowledge of Christ this year!”  Bishop Linda suggested ways of doing this such as joining a bible study, participating in an Education for Ministry group, and going on retreat.  Bishop Linda also suggested that people find a spiritual director.  It is my experience that many people in Huron are not familiar with spiritual directors and spiritual direction.  I thought it would be helpful to some readers to provide an introduction to the practice of spiritual direction which I hope will encourage people to explore this spiritual practice as a way of enhancing their experience of God.

First I will share with you a bit about my background which is relevant.  I am an Anglican priest in Huron who retired from full-time parish ministry a few years ago.  I am a graduate of the spiritual direction program offered by the Haden Institute through the Mount Carmel Spirituality Centre in Niagara Falls completing the program in 2013.  Through the auspices of the Rev. Canon Todd Townshend, Dean of Theology at Huron University College and working with Rev. Canon Greg Smith, Director of Field Education, Worship, Community & Formation I have been offering spiritual direction to students in the faculty of theology beginning first as part of training and continuing once I completed the program.  I also work with lay and ordained people outside the Huron College context.

With that let me give you some information about spiritual direction and spiritual directors. A spiritual director is somewhat misnamed as a spiritual director doesn’t actually direct. It is the Holy Spirit—the third person in the room who directs the session.  A spiritual director is a companion on your journey as you deepen your relationship with God.  Here are some of the things which a spiritual director/companion may help you with on you journey:

·         Identify and trust your own experiences of God recognizing God’s unending love for you

·                        Acting with continued integrity and participation in your religious tradition

·                         Integrate spirituality into your daily life

·                         Discern and then make difficult choices

·                         Share your hopes,  your struggles and your losses

·                         Develop a sensitivity for justice and the concerns for the poor and compassion for those you               meet in everyday life

Most important thing in your journey is LOVE.  The spiritual companion can help you to understand and appreciate how the love of God in Jesus Christ can be recognized mire fully and shared with others. 

As St. Paul tells us there are many members but one body.  Each of us will have different ways in which we are open to the Holy Spirit. A spiritual companion can help you to identify the ways in which God through the Holy Spirit is active in your life and how you can be open to deepening and expanding your experience of the divine.   Blessings of you journey.  

The HOly Spirit 'Don't Get No respect'

Last Wednesday I returned to Huron University College to do a short introductory presentation on Spiritual Direction to the theology students.  I will again have the wonderful opportunity to provide Spiritual Direction to the students under the auspices of the Theology Faculty.

I attended the Wednesday Eucharist prior to lunch and the community gathering.  The excellent homily was preached by The Rev. Dr. Lizette Larson-Miller, a faculty member.  In the homily Dr. Larson-Miller used a wonderful phrase from the prayer of Confession in the Book of Common Prayer (I am paraphrasing what she said) of the tension between “the devices and desires of our hearts” and the action of the Holy Spirit.  This was a wonderful lead in to my talk on Spiritual Direction.

The goal of Spiritual Direction is, in my view, to help identify the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  Often this seems to be in conflict with the devices and desires of our own hearts.  The Spiritual Director is more accurately a Spiritual Companion on the journey with the Holy Spirit and will help the Directee identify where and how the Holy Spirit is with them.  Indeed I prefer to think of the devices and desires of our heart as the devices and desires of our egos.  The ego wants to be in charge of the show and run things—our lives and our world to ensure that any control it believes it has is not threatened.  The ego believes that God should be serving the ego.  However, the correct relationship is for the ego to be in the service of God.  This for me is the central message of Jesus i.e. to love God and your neighbour as yourself. 

I have said before that the Holy Spirit been held by the church to be the Rodney Dangerfield of the Holy Trinity i.e. it don’t get no respect.  As it says in the Gospel of John, “The wind* blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  As such it is unpredictable and cannot be controlled by hierarchies and doctrine.  The action of the Spirit can be difficult to identify as it can and will be confused by the devices and desires of our hearts and egos.  However, I believe we are entering the age of the Spirit in which the work of the Holy Spirit will be recognized more fully.

In a Spiritual Direction session there are three persons; the Director/Companion, the Directee and the Holy Spirit.  The goal is to allow space for the Holy Spirit to be recognized and affirmed in the life of the Directee and to help the Directee to recognize where the Spirit is moving in his or her life.  That is my wish for everyone.  Blessings,

Greg