Life is a poem. A
journey toward understanding
amidst senseless words.
Prophetic Tradition
Book Review of ‘The Interior Castle’ by St. Teresa of Avila
www.goodreads.com/book/show/162512
This book has been a balm, guide, challenge, and spiritual enrichment over the past month. I highly recommend it as a guide in time of devotion, prayer, and spiritual reflection!
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
“When we turn away from our small selves and toward God, both our understanding and our will become more sublime and more inclined to embrace all that is good. We would do ourselves great disservice if we never endeavored to rise above the mud of our personalized misery….If we are perpetually stuck in our own acre of tribulation, our stream will never flow free from the more of fear and faintheartedness” (47).
“Guard yourselves, my friends, against matters beyond your control” (50).
“Failing to deal with a problem out of fear of yielding to a negative temptation may be in itself yielding to a negative temptation” (52).
“Remember: all you have to do as you begin to cultivate the practice of prayer is to prepare yourself with sincere effort and intent to bring your will into harmony with the will of God” (61).
“Perfection isn’t about consolation, it’s about loving. We are rewarded by doing whatever we do with righteousness and love” (81).
“Remember: if you want to make progress in the path path and ascend to the places you have longed for, the important thing is not to think much but to love much, and so to do whatever best awakens your love” (91).
“I think that His majesty wishes we would do whatever it takes to understand ourselves. We need to quit blaming the soul for problems caused by a weak imagination, human nature, and the spirit of evil” (95).
“On the spiritual path, the Beloved asks only two things of us: that we love him and that we love each other…. if we do these perfectly, we are doing his well and so we will be united with him” (140).
“No matter how spiritual a soul may be, it’s not wise to reject corporeal forms. Meditating on the holiness of humanness is not unholy” (221).
“The more we understand about God‘s communion with creatures, the more we will praise his greatness. We should cultivate reverence for souls in whom our Beloved seems to take such delight. Each of us has a soul, but we forget to value it. We don’t remember that we are creatures made in the image of God. We don’t understand the great secrets hidden inside of us” (259-260).
“Remember: good works are a sign of God‘s blessing” (288).
“Even if our deeds are small, they will be made great through the greatness of our love for God” (295).
The Bible is not a guidebook to manhood or womanhood. It is a guidebook to personhood in Christ: Love God and Love your Neighbor (all people & Creation) as yourself. Anyone trying to package the Bible as a guidebook for gender presentation is on a slippery slope to idolatry.
‘Prophet:’
to claim one’s self in
Christ: to imagine God’s King-
-dom into being.
Be Still…God is Our Refuge
God, you call me to
act for justice and mercy.
But teach me stillness.
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I like to do. I see following God as action. Faith as a verb. That is true. But what does it also mean to also ‘be still’ in God’s presence? To find stillness in God as my refuge (Psalm 46)?
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God,
I am called to act,
to do:
to advocate
to collaborate
to demand justice
to show mercy
to love profusely.
But what does it mean to be still?
To know that you are my refuge?
To find refuge
and strength
in the stillness
of God’s presence and power:
God’s love.
Lord, hear my prayer.
Amen.
Sabbath Rest
God created and
it was good. Freedom from
perfection’s tyranny.
George Floyd
George Floyd.
Say his name.
Honor his memory.
Murdered
by Officer Derek Chauvin.
Murdered
by a white supremacist
militarized police state.
Murdered
for being black
and living.
But now
some semblance of justice
through accountability.
Chauvin found guilty
on all 3 charges.
2nd Degree Murder:
40 years –
but George Floyd is still dead.
3rd Degree Murder:
25 years –
but black people continue to die.
2nd Degree manslaughter:
10 years –
but a murder each day of the trial.
While we await sentencing,
we sigh a collective exhalation of relief
at this brief respite of accountability.
But we cannot replace George Floyd,
God’s beloved child,
and God’s beloved children,
who have been lost –
past and present.
But the future
is present
and we are all called
to the Christ-modeled work
of dismantling white supremacy
and demanding
imagining
transforming
an alternative to
the death dealing
militarized police state.
Say his name.
Honor his name
And let’s get to work.
Rest in power,
George Floyd.
Amen.
A Pigeon and God’s Presence
I scratch and crawl
through fatal attempts
at prayer perfection;
seeking the right words
and phrases to crack
the code of Divine Engagement.
But then, a glance
out the window –
the vibrant blue sky and
the awkwardly fluttering pigeon –
I found God
looking at me
deeply and desirously
with an audible hearty chuckle.
The pigeon landed on a telephone wire
and shit without shame
sure of its belonging and being.
And I laughed,
deeply and uproarously,
prayer punctuating the giggles
as I felt God’s gentle caress
to not take myself
too seriously.
But to rest in the seriousness of
God’s love and desire
for me; in my
most basic needs and desires,
without shame,
as with the bumbling and shitting pigeon,
God is present with me.
What is ‘Basebuilding?’
Basebuilding:
Foundations built on faith, conviction, and justice.
Collaboration with community, church,
ancestors, prophets,
and future generations.
Unique in poetic and prophetic imagination
speaking and doing
an alternative narrative and
story into being.
Renouncing and denouncing
the narrative and
story of domination and supremacy
through a communal vision,
achievable and concrete,
grassroots grown,
in our ecclesial spaces
and beyond
for the queering and decolonizing
and expanding
and including
of Beloved Community.
Basebuilding:
Intentional connections and relationships,
with imagination,
as power
and wholistic transformation
for the well-being
of all people and creation.
Doxology
God of Love:
Working for the flourishing of all people –
toppling white supremacy, patriarchy, and affluence –
dispersing power to all people –
enabling all of creation to live fully.
Centering marginalized and oppressed voices
from prophetic resistance
to Kingdom community
of holistic well-being.
Racism, homophobia, sexism –
all tools of oppression and domination –
cast into the flames of Hell.
Hell:
the chosen rejection of God’s love
and flourishing of God’s creation.
And the God of wholeness
will be uplifted and
reign in Love,
Eternally.
Amen.
Deacon Grant 