The Heavens Were Opened

Matthew 3:16-17

And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:

And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

 “Two prisoners looked through prison bars.  One saw mud, the other saw stars.”

Different people can look upon the same scene and see it differently.  The difference may be one of focus and/or interpretation, but the difference will have real effects on the people when they leave the scene.  The optimistic prisoner see stars and is consoled, while the pessimistic prisoner sees mud and deepens in despondency.  It’s just like the glass of water that can either be declared half-empty or half-full.  Half-empty leaves us feeling lacking, while half-full lends a sense of possession.  Unless, of course, one doesn’t like to drink water and the goal is to empty the glass – then, half-empty is encouraging, while half-full is discouraging.

Sometimes, I think of some of the Bible accounts of Jesus’s life like this.  And I don’t just mean how they are viewed and interpreted now.  In Jesus’s time, in His company, different people could see the same thing differently.  The centurion at the foot of the Cross looked upon Jesus and saw what was happening and declared that He must be the Son of God.  But, there were other people around the Cross who did not share this conclusion.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus calls upon the Father to glorify His name and a voice says from heaven, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.”  The crowd that was there heard the sound but said that it was thunder, while some others in the crowd said that it was an angel speaking to Jesus.

How many things happen in our lives that we believe to be ordinary and insignificant and, yet, can turn out to be of great consequence?  Perhaps today or tomorrow we will literally bump into someone and the only thing will receive in that moment is annoyance.  What if that moment, that brief encounter with a stranger, is actually rich with meaning for our lives, but we are too hurried or too uptight to recognize it?  A loved one will say something in passing to us this week, while we are busy doing something other than listening, and we will murmur a response without really hearing what was said.  What will we miss?  Perhaps a child, confused, will deepen in her confusion; a spouse, misunderstanding, will feel unappreciated; a friend, feeling lonely, will grow in loneliness; and none of them will be helped by us, though their problems could have been rectified by simply hearing what was coming from their heart (the voice from heaven) instead of ignoring the noise of talking (the sound of thunder).

And how many of the trials and tribulations in our lives do we see merely as pain and suffering and not, perhaps, as something more, as pathways, though seemingly perilous, to more wonderful, deep and beautiful experiences?  We cannot afford to be surface creatures.  We often must take the time to delve deeper into our lives, into the events around us, and, perhaps most importantly, into the hearts of the people near us in order to find the great wealth within.  Otherwise, we will merely skip about the surface of things without being submerged into life.  Perhaps, we will even be like some of the people on the banks of the River Jordan who could not recognize Christ… one among us but not known by us.

                                                                                                                         Christina Chase

God Loveth

Psalms 33:4-5

For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth.

He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD.

 

[In true randomness, I’ve received this passage before.  In order to keep with the spirit of this blog, I will keep these verses as my challenge – and try to write something new.]

 

How does God love?  Does God love “freely, as men strive for right… purely, as they turn from praise”?  The poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, writes of this free and pure love as the truest human love, loving “to the depth and breadth and height” that the human soul can reach “when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace.”  Divine love, however… Divine love does not need to reach out, does not feel beyond sight.  There are no ends of being and ideal grace for divine love and all measurements are meaningless.  For, divine love is grace itself and being itself.  Infinite, eternal, and ever present is the love of God, as infinite, eternal, and ever present as is God – for God and God’s love are one.

 

So… how does God love?  By being… and through being.  For God is love.  And who are we?  How do we love?  We are images of God, created by God in divine likeness.  What does that mean?  To be like the divine is to be like love – divine love is in us and through us, as God dwells in us and through us.  Not dwelling in the ubiquitous sense that God is infinite, but, rather, dwelling as in being at home.  God homes in us… and through us.  God exists in intimate relationship with our human hearts, and “our hearts are restless, until they rest”, until they home, in God.  Why do I say this is so?  It is thus, as St. Augustine says, because God made us for Himself.  And, yes, that means that God made us for love, but we must not separate love from God in our human thinking, or in our human feeling and doing.  When we home in God, we are the very expression of love.  And when we truly love, we are doing nothing other than being who we are: God’s image.

 

God made us for Himself, God loves us and knows that we will only know the fullness of being who we are and the fullness of love if we love God – if we desire to give ourselves fully to the other.  The divine other dwells in our hearts, and to Him we selflessly give our hearts as home, we give our minds and our bodies, our very souls.  And, in our human thoughts, words, and actions, we love “to the depth and breadth and height [our souls] can reach” in giving to God.  And with God, in God, we are opened up to infinity.

 

God created us for Himself and God created everything.  “The earth is full of the goodness of the LORD”, the psalmist tells us, and this is because God created the earth to be good.  God gave of Himself freely so that something could exist purely, something that is other than Himself.  This is the great act of divine love, the generous pouring out of being for the sake of the other.  This is how the heavens and the earth are created: by and through God loving.  And though we, in our humanness, are but the dust and ashes of suns and soil, God sanctifies our humanity by becoming one of us.  God condescends, God stoops down in humility, to assume the limits of human nature and to fling them wide open through His love.  Through loving, God speaks to us in a language that we can understand and, so, mindfully and bodily, gives Himself to us.  In the frailty of His human strength, He pours forth the power of His divine love, blood and water, spirit and truth.  And He carves out a home for us in His Sacred Heart so that we, mindfully and bodily, can enter into redemptive love.  No longer do we center our identity in, and believe that we exist for, our limited selves.  Rather, we mindfully and bodily receive divine love, we mindfully and bodily receive God, and, so, what was once lost is restored as we are restored to the truly free and pure image in which we were created.

Hallowed

Exodus 20:8-11

           Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

           Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

            But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

           For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

 

What is work?  How is it working for you?

In the poetic story of Genesis, God creates the heavens and the earth and every living thing on earth in six days.  On the seventh day, God rests and, by this resting, God blesses this day and makes it holy.  I can’t think of any act, however, that is more blessed or holy than God’s act of Creation.  And, so, isn’t it right for us to think of every day of the week as sanctified by God?  It is not as though we must labor for six days in an un-blessed state, seeing our work as a sort of ungodliness.  No, created in the image and likeness of God, we participate with God in the holy work of creation by being good stewards of His Creation.  The work in which we engage throughout the week should be in keeping with good stewardship; should nourish, protect, prune, refresh, guide, heal, strengthen and uplift all that is good, true, and beautiful in the world.  For, God looked upon what He had created and saw that it was good.

And all that is in heaven and earth is inherently good as it is in union with Goodness itself, with God.  However… In God’s selfless generosity, He created us human beings in His divine image, giving us the gift of free will.  Therefore, we can choose and, because we can choose, we can truly love and truly be loved and know the infinite joy of loving – but, we can also choose to absent ourselves from true love by choosing to separate our actions from Goodness itself, from God’s perfect will, and, so, separate ourselves from our divinely created selves and from union with God.  This inferior choice, in the same poetic account of creation in Genesis, is what the first humans preferred.  They did not trust in God’s goodness and wanted to decide for themselves what was right and what was wrong.  The fallen world that resulted is the inferior world where humans rule separated from God’s perfect will, intellects darkened by removal from perfect union with the divine light, wills weakened by support lacking when perfect union with Goodness itself was broken.  God could have chosen to leave us in this inferior state, but, because God is Love Itself and loves us divinely, infinitely and eternally, He chose to rescue us, to give us a way back to union with Him.

So, after all, there is an act that is holier than the act of Creation: the act of Salvation.  The Way back to God is God, God Incarnate, Jesus Christ.  Through the acts of Christ, we are redeemed, we are restored to our true selves, to the superior state of God’s Divinely Intended Creation.  The full reality of this state cannot be realized while we still live and breathe upon this earth – for it is still a fallen world, though we are inexhaustibly forgiven.  God’s saving actions, known as the Paschal mystery, grants continual mercy to all those who seek union with God’s perfect will so that we may be nourished, protected, uplifted, pruned, guided, healed, strengthened and refreshed as we journey in the Way.  The fulfillment of our restoration being eternal life, united, without limits, in the pure presence of God in the world to come.  God’s Saving Work sanctifies us and brings us back to Him, as our own work is meant to sanctify the temporal order and bring our neighbors, as well as all our fellow creatures and Creation itself, with us in the Way to union with Goodness, with God.  Christ Jesus is the Way… The Truth and the Life – it is through Him, with Him, and in Him that we, and all Creation, are blessed and made holy, lifted up to God, restored to union with Goodness itself, which is God’s perfect will.  The culmination of this saving work of God is in the holy act of the Resurrection – and that is why we, as Christians, celebrate Sunday, the Day of the Resurrection, as the holiest day of the week.  God made this day most holy and blessed, not by resting from His work of Creation, but by saving it.  That is a hallowing act indeed.

When we engage in our non-sabbath work, let us be sure that this work is participating in the divine work of creation, in upholding all that is truly good, all that is in union with God’s perfect will.  Let us not keep our sights low and and make our work that of sustaining the lesser state where right and wrong is not determined by true union with Goodness, but rather by the fickle, selfish drives of fallen Man.  We think that we work for ourselves when we do the work that satisfies our prideful power, pleasure, honor and wealth, things that we deem with our limited, finite eyes as good.  But, we actually work against ourselves.  The fulfillment of our beings, our true joy, the reality of becoming who we are created to be, must come through union with actual goodness, with that which is in union with the perfect will of the Author of Life, Goodness Itself, God.  Otherwise we destroy our true identities and our work is of despair.  Most joyfully, we are saved from our own self-destruction by the Saving Act of Redemption in the Way, the Truth and the Life, who is Jesus Christ.  That is much reason to celebrate the Lord’s Day and to keep it as Holy by giving Thanksgiving and praise to God for all that He has done and by resting in His love, so that He may nourish, protect, prune, refresh, guide, heal, strengthen and uplift us in the Way.

Christina Chase

 

Trieth the Hearts and Reins

Psalms 7:9

Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.

 

Whither heads my soul?

Race over sumptuous cliffs;

Graze on tufts of rye.

Exalted

Acts 5:29-32

29.  Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.
30.  The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.
31.  Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.
32.  And we are his witnesses to these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.

 

Every day we are faced with a choice – at least one.  Will we go along with what is expected from the people around us or choose another way?  The higher way.  There are times when I feel this moment upon me and I pause….

I want to just go along, it’s so much easier and, sometimes, well, more seemingly fun.  But, I know… I know that I am being watched by the One who loves me more… I know that I am being called by the One who holds my destiny, the One who is waiting for me… the One who gave up unquestionable power for me, who has given me everything and wants to give me infinitely more… the One who patiently waits, refusing force, deigning not to harm a hair on my head, trusting my ability to love and to choose… waiting, hoping, the One who loves me more is ever true…….  And what will I do?

Like Emily Dickinson’s moment of pause…

“Angels’ breathless ballot

Lingers to record thee;

Imps in eager caucus

Raffle for my soul.”

The way of my love is not easy.  It is as simple as a bud opening to a rose and as complex.  The way is difficult, fraught with trial, hesitancy and pain… And, yet, through the way of my love is beauty and truth.  The most wondrous of wonders, the deepest of joys, the richest of goodness, comes only through humble sacrifice and selfless generosity.  To give, to give up oneself, in order to receive….

To obey men is to skip about the surface of things, frolicking, fleeting, complacency’s compulsion to avoid pain.  But, to obey God… To obey the One who loves me more is to be submerged into the depth of being… awash in intimate knowing… permeated by peace.

… And only the One who knows my secret self will revel with me in my choosing… secret and sacred in the abode of my heart in which we dwell…

Come, Holy Spirit, come… lead me in the way, the truth, the life….

Christina Chase

In Their Own Eyes

Isaiah 5:21

            21.  Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!

 

 

If I look into a mirror too often,

my eyes see my eyes that see my eyes that see my eyes…

And I reflect upon my own reflection reflected back at me

until I see what I want to see.

In a world without mirrors, how would we see ourselves?

With no light from watery or other shining surfaces,

how would we know what we look like?

 

Would I know that I am beautiful because others are attracted to me

as butterflies are drawn to a glistening drop of golden nectar in a rosy bloom?

Would I know that I am ugly because others turn away from me

as noses recoil from piles of animal feces and rotten refuse?

And what if some people come to me with keen and happy interest

while others, at the same time, avoid me, repulsed?

How then am I to judge how I, the woman in the wheelchair, look:

gorgeous or grotesque?

For I have been met by as much bewildered cringing as bright and shining desire

and there has been no difference in me – the difference is out of my hands.

 

And so I have concluded:

I am beautiful when beauty gazes upon me

and ugly when ugliness has me in its sight.

For a loving heart propagates beauty by touching a spirit in need,

while a selfish heart breeds a cloud of stench that smears the soul.

Christina Chase

Crying

Mark 5:5-9
   
            5.  And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying,
                 and cutting himself with stones.

            6.  But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him,

            7.  And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou
                 Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.

             8.  For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.

             9.  And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is
                  Legion: for we are many.

 

 

Mental illness is terrifying. When a person loses control over one of the parts of his body – limbs, eyes, bladder or bowel – he can concern himself about it. Whether in anger, sadness, or fear, he can figure out how to compensate, adjust his physical actions, ask others for assistance, and learn to adapt. But, when a person loses control over his mind… well, he loses control. He is unable to reflect upon himself, to console, correct, or guide himself.  That powerlessness of mental illness – powerless, sometimes, to even recognize illness – must be absolutely terrifying to experience.

 

A person in this state can be seen as possessed by something other than himself, something unhealthy, unclean, something evil.  With our accumulated knowledge these days, we know that every person who suffers from mental illness is not literally “possessed” by an unclean spirit.  But, even though we have more precise diagnoses and more effective treatments in modern medicine, that loss of control, and that sense of being other than oneself, is just as real and terrifying as it ever was.  Terrifying enough to drive the person suffering into isolation, “crying, and cutting himself with stones.”

 

In Christian Scripture, we see Jesus healing people thus afflicted by casting out unclean spirits.  This can be taken symbolically for any mental illness, but it is more than symbolic, for Jesus actually speaks to the spirits and even calls them by their names.  In the passage of Mark 5, one of these unclean spirits says that his name is Legion, “for we are many.”  Here we can see that the particular cause of this particular man’s suffering is used as a symbol to denote that the cause is not unique.  There are many who suffer as this man did.  As is always true with Scripture, we can take away many layers of wisdom from this passage, but the one that I want to spotlight is the compassion with which Mark describes the man’s suffering.

 

“And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.”  This is obviously not good behavior for a human being.  Something’s not right.  He might have scared some of the people living in the area, but he did not harm them.  The harm done was to himself.  He was in a most pitiable state.  And Jesus, unafraid and compassionate, took pity on him and helped him regain control over himself, to again be “in his right mind”.

 

To be a good Christian is not to see every mentally ill person as possessed by an evil spirit.  But, it is most certainly to see every mentally ill person as a poor sufferer in need of our help.  It is unchristian, it is ungodly, to allow someone suffering from mental illness to remain in his own torment without trying to free him as best as we can.  It is most unkind, it is even cruel, to avoid the mentally ill as long as they do no harm to anyone.  In our fear, we are much too willing to let them harm themselves.  It seems that only when their illness turns to a destructive, suicidal rage aimed outward at others do we look, aghast, at the horror that was within the person all along.  We might like to think that the person is simply a vicious criminal looking for convenient thrill and fame, far too perversely insane in his core to ever have been prevented from killing others.  But, there was a time when that killer was alone, isolating himself, while slowly being taken over by his mental illness.  He “kept to himself.”  And we didn’t care because he wasn’t harming anyone.  If we had ever met him, we might’ve been afraid of him, we might not have spent too much time near him – but we didn’t care enough about him to see if we could help him in any way.  How much do we really care about the suffering of other people?  In Mark, after the man was healed, the people in the area seemed to be more concerned about their property than about the restored health and future well-being of the man.

 

Helping the mentally ill is very difficult, tedious in examining and planning and emotionally exhausting in putting into practice.  It is not as simple or easy as calling out the name of Jesus Christ.  Exorcisms, if they are ever effective, are only so in very rare cases.  But it is in no way wrong to help those suffering from mental illness by calling upon the name of Christ.  Christ who is ever compassionate, ever selfless and generous, ever brave and kind, is exactly who we need – is exactly who we need to be.  And so it is good and right to call upon Jesus in prayer and supplication, in faithful hope that we can be formed into instruments of love and healing… of companionship and compassionate action, of support and structure, of light and freedom… of goodness itself.

Christina Chase

Of the Glory

Romans 3:23-24

23. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

24. Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

Who are you?  Why are you here?  What is the point of your existence?  You live and breathe, you take up resources to survive, you experience fleeting thrills and seemingly prolonged suffering -- what is the point?

To be alive -- that is the point.  Why chase your tail asking whether being alive is good or evil.  You are alive.  Take that in and trust it as a good, whether it feels good or not.  Otherwise... otherwise your stressed confusion and whining is like the screeching of a cat in heat on a desert moon.  And I will throw a shoe at you, you dumb, blind animal.

But... what is it to be alive?  Is it merely to survive until death?  Is it merely to experience joy and pain and then nothingness?  No, I would call that survival, but certainly not living.  To be alive -- to be truly and fully alive as a human being -- is to know... is to love... is to serve.... Serve?  Do I mean that you do not exist for yourself alone?  Yes, that's right.  And until you understand and accept that, your being alive is merely survival with, at best, the perpetual licking of clean fur.  To live fully is to live beyond your particular physical confines.  To be truly alive is to give yourself away.

Which brings us back to the first question: who are you?  You are an imperfect creature who will try for truth and goodness and who will fail.  This means that you are a human creature.  What you do with your failures will determine what kind of human creature you are.  Will you dismiss the wonder of your babyhood when you figure out that no one disappears in a game of peekaboo?  Will you abandon the hope of your childhood when the adult you love disappoints you and you experience heartache for the first time?  Will you neglect the ideals of your youth when your first project to help others falls short of your goal and you realize that anything worthwhile takes continuous hard work for even partial success?  Will you destroy love when an intimate relationship loses its thrust, cutting it down before the hard fruit has ripened?  We humans wonder, hope, believe, love... and fall short of that wonder, hope, belief and love for which we strive... but, then... we try again.  If we don't perpetually reach for the glory of that higher goodness, if we let our failures end us, then we do not truly live.  We are not fully human, fully alive, unless we fall -- and rise.

Who are you?  You are the promise of glory.  You are the tiny seed of divine fruit.  You are designed to give yourself over... over to innocent wonder, to trusting hope, to generous ideals, to maturing love that grows richly in all these things.  All of us human beings have fallen short of this.  You and I continually miss the mark and fall into self gratifying narcissism.  As if the point and reason for all of the universe is my momentary thrill.  As if being itself loses value if I experience pain.  Why don't I rise?  I may be weighted down by crippling disease, unable even to lift my head, but I am a human being, I am alive, and I have the grace to rise up in the depth of my being, unafraid, unchained, fed by struggle to be strengthened in the ability to truly and fully live.  Who am I?  I am yours... and I am here because of love...

 

                                                                                                  Christina Chase 

Lay Me Down In Peace

Psalms 4:7-8

7.      Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased.

8.      I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.

When eyes close, and breathing slows,

and relaxation spreads through every limb,

sights disappear and sound silences,

wrapped in sleep, I lay me down.

The world beyond my skin is naught, there is only the air I breathe in and out...

What trust to fall into this nothingness, my hands opened, my tongue still,

I give all of myself over, abandon will, suspend doubt and care.

The light of my mind flickers, dimmed down to the lowest flame,

upon images of colors, shapes and textures that cling like droplets,

lingering reverberations, high and low in residue of day passed through;

My heart alone sees and hears, then burns them away

to the ultimate depth of solitude,

home in the sacred abode of my keeper...

Cocooned in darkness, stillness, quiet deep,

I wait for nothing, hope for nothing, do nothing

but surrender to the greater will

as a sigh

surrenders

to joy.