"NEVER WILL I FORGET" SAYS THE LORD

In a week when a majority of the House of Representatives of the United States

• voted to cut $40 million from the food stamp program, that provides meals for men, women, children, and elderly who go hungry in this country every day;
• and in this same week when they voted in favor of de-funding “Obamacare” which will provide medical insurance for 44 million in this country (16% of the population) who currently have no medical coverage and for an additional 38 million who are under-insured –

the words of the Jewish writer Amos carry the same prophetic power and warning today as they did when first written nearly 3,000 years ago. In a time when Israel emphasized military security and economic affluence for the few, the prophet proclaims “This is what the Lord God says”:

“Hear this, you who trample the needy

and destroy the poor of the land . . .

You who will buy the lowly for silver

and the poor for a pair of sandals;

“The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob,

'Never will I forget a thing they have done.

'They shall fall, never to rise again.'”¹

"Finding Jesus in the poor"
(Source: http://livingthelectionary.blogspot.com
/2013/09/pentecost-18-c-amos-84-7.html)

The Jewish and Christian scriptures express over and over again that God has a particular and special interest and care for the poor. Repeatedly we see how God defends and stands up for those who have the least status in our world – the poor, victims, foreigners, the powerless, the marginalized.

And in a deep sense, who I am called to be and who I believe we are all called to be are a people who stand with our sisters and brothers, especially those who are so often left to stand alone.

Is it really too much to ask – that all be fed, that all be housed, that all have the healthcare they need? That perhaps those who have so much now may have less, so that all (not only in the United States but everywhere in the world) might enjoy the a reasonable life with dignity?  The secret is that PEOPLE, not money and power, need to be our priority and focus.

Journey Inward. Journey Outward. May our inner life inform our daily actions. May our deeply held values and priorities – even if they run counter-current to much in our world – proclaim in deeds the hope and possibility of a different kind of world.²

SHALOM!

1  Chapter 8 of Amos, the lectionary reading for today the 25^th Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Christian liturgical calendar.
2   For a wonderful little prayer based on Amos 8:4-7, see http://re-worship.blogspot.com/2013/08/prayer-amos-8-4-7.html

BOOKENDS

Bookends. Bookends may be library hardware simply propping up books, without any particular meaning other than their utility. On the other hand, some may be chosen and placed with an intention to reflect, lightly in some cases, but nevertheless to symbolize the contents of the volumes being supported. Ceramic vegetables or fruit supporting a shelf of cookbooks. Or, an example from my college days, a paired set of chimpanzees posed as “The Thinker” holding up volumes on evolutionary biology. Or, more seriously perhaps, Lady Justice seen on the barrister bookcase of an attorney's office.

Two messages came to me this week that served as reminders again of the direction and purpose of this blog, and the image that came to mind was "bookends". Bookends for living. Not simply in the sense of propping up, nor as marking only the beginning and the end of life, but symbols between which the project of living is balanced and takes place, day-by-day; the rhythm of the Ebb and the Flow, the Yin and the Yang, the Warp and the Woof, of the Journey Outward and the Journey Inward.

One of the verbal bookends received was from the author Jon Kabat-Zinn. In a chapter highlighting the value of rising early to spend time in meditation (the book's subtitle is “Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life”) Kabat-Zinn suggests: “Just waking up early to practice non-doing is itself a tempering process. It generates enough heat to rearrange our atoms, gives us a new and stronger crystal lattice of mind and body, a lattice that keeps us honest and reminds us that there is far more to life than getting things done.”¹

“Far more to life than getting things done”: A tough challenge in the world in which so many of us live. Today, where living seems to demand constant busy-ness and distraction, there is a need, a value (as in fact there has been for human beings down through millenia) to creating a rhythm in which there are regular places and times when we stop. A time to turn off the TV and the cell phone, to remove ourselves – even if only momentarily - from the kinetic pace of our lives and to enter a place of silence, to become aware, to listen to the Voice(s) within, to open ourselves to the Universe, to Mystery. Sometimes our houses of worship can be such places – perhaps at the weekly service, or at a time when we can be alone in personal prayer. Liturgical Christian worship, done well, can be such a place for me. “Practice,” as Kabat-Zinn calls meditation, is also a place where I am at times able to enter this sacred space.

The other bookend came to me from a young woman whose family attended the church I pastored on the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska, in the 80s and 90s. “Cokey,” as we used to call her, was a young girl at the time. Now, graduated and a counselor and instructor at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, she posted the following powerful quote this week to her Facebook page:

"Don't speak to me about your religion; first show it to me in how you treat other people. Don't tell me how much you love your God; show me in how much you love all God's children. Don't preach to me your passion for your faith; teach me through your compassion for your neighbors. In the end, I'm not as interested in what you have to tell or sell as I am in how you choose to live and give.”²

Cokey's one-word comment on this quote: “Action!”

Balancing the vital call to awareness and reflection is the equally critical call to action. And, as I hope has become clear in the pages of this blog, in my view the action that we are called to is that which places us clearly on the side of justice and in solidarity with individuals and communities at the margins of society. We cannot isolate ourselves or withdraw permanently to the comfort and seeming safety of the inward journey, in whatever form. As Cory's words challenge so powerfully, hiding behind pious speech is empty, meaningless religion. In the parlance of the Christian scriptures: “If I speak with human and angelic tongues, but do not have love [i.e., do not put my values into action], I am a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”³ Living is incomplete without both the Journey Inward and the Journey Outward.

The vision and challenge I propose for myself in these pages is that life, to have meaning, to be fully lived, must take place within this stretch and balance. And it is my hope that these thoughts-put-to-word may be fodder for your own grappling with living as well. Not all activity or action. Not all withdrawal or reflection. But a moving between, spending time in each plane. Journeying deeply into both, and engaging the journey from one to the other as well. That awareness may inform and lead to wise action, and that focused, intentional activity may in turn inform and lead to deeper, connected meditation.

1  Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (New York: Hyperon, 1994), 180-181.

2  Attributed to Cory Booker - Mayor of Newark, NJ and currently Democratic Candidate for Senate from the State of New Jersey.

3  I Corinthians 13:1

BAREFOOT THROUGH THE AMAZON

Following up on my most recent post and continuing the theme of place and the sacred, this time I share a passage from another writer. I was introduced recently, by a friend studying the songs and language of monkeys in the jungles of Bolivia¹, to the book Barefoot Through the Amazon: On the Path of Evolution. The author, Marc Van Roosmalen, is a field biologist studying the habits of the red-faced black spider monkeys in the interior of Suriname. Spending weeks at a time alone at his remote and densely jungled study site, in the following passage he describes the view and his reflection in the late afternoons, perched 200 meters above the forest floor atop a butte called the Voltzberg dome. As an acute scientific observer of the habitat and wildlife, I am drawn to his detailed description of the place and its inhabitants. But in relationship to my blog, what also intrigues me is his meditative reflection. Although a man more of science than of religion, he shares openly a sense of the spiritual that arises within him in connection with this place.

“At the start of each session,” he writes, “I used to climb the Voltzberg dome in the late afternoon. It was a hike of about forty minutes from my camp situated at the edge of the granite flat. It was an excellent, easy and above all pleasant way to find out the latest news on the whereabouts of my study objects, the spider monkeys . . .. I was surrounded by pristine upland rainforest stretching out to far beyond the horizon where no human soul was to be found.

“These were sacred moments. Closing my eyes, I can still recall them in full detail. The stunningly beautiful sunset sky. Pairs of macaws heading for a distant lodge tree while keeping loud and animated conversations. Melancholic songs of tinamous and quails sitting somewhere on the bottom of the rainforest. Choirs of all kinds of frogs, flocks of parakeets and parrots having a last quick feed flying from one fruiting tree to another, squabbling squirrel monkeys invisible inside the tangles of liana forest down there or climbing up the south side of the Voltzberg to find a safe sleeping site close to where I was sitting. The roars and grunts of jaguars on the hunt, red howler monkeys howling alternately from almost all directions and at all distances, fat black granite lizards foraging for insects at the steep edges of the abysses around me, beset with wild pine-apple bromeliads and globose, blue- and purple-flowering cacti (genus Cleistocactus).

“The ideal temperature and the cool breeze, the divine perfumes of flowering terrestrial orchids, bromeliads and other plants, the late-afternoon nectar feeding bouts of all kinds of hummingbirds. The other 'inselbergs' visible in the far distance . . .. The spider-monkey long calls carrying miles away across the canopy emitted as they were from the tip of up to sixty meters tall emergent trees. This was true paradise for the well-behaved human.

“Sitting there, I could not help starting to contemplate, to meditate, to retrospect my life and that of others, to philosophize about nature, evolution, and, in particular, the ascent of man. What makes us think to be superior over the other creatures or even to be supernatural? What purpose or meaning life may have? What significance does it have or could it have? What difference is there between me, sitting there overlooking the world and the creatures around me – as we are all subdued to the same laws of nature that apply also to me? What would value me, a human being, more than for instance a monkey for I would have to face death in the same way as a monkey would after breaking a leg or so? I questions if there is room for any supernatural being if not Nature itself. Humbled by Nature, I came close to a profound religious experience, teaching me the lesson never to forget how precious life is, a unique one-time event that can instantly be broken off by mere bad luck when being at the wrong place at the wrong moment. The ethics and principles that guide me through life are strongly rooted in those days' profound and intimate contact with a pristine, ancient, millions of years of evolution breathing natural environment. It would be a perfect therapy for people all over the world – in particular those living in crowded concrete mega-cities totally out of touch with Nature – to come to this place and experience the work of Nature or God without any hint to or a 'helping hand' from our own species, Homo sapiens.” (Barefoot Through the Amazon, Kindle edition location 460 - 497)

1 A friend from Chicago days, Patrice Adret is currently a researcher at  Museo de Historia Natural Noel Kempff Mercado. You can learn more about Patrice and his work, and view his videos by friending him at https://www.facebook.com/patrice.adret?fref=ts.