All Over the Place..

Isaiah 13:6-13

⁶ Howl! for the Day of Adonai is at hand,
destruction coming from Shaddai.
⁷ This is why every arm will hang limp
and everyone’s courage melt away.
⁸ They will be gripped by panic,
seized with pain and agony,
writhing like a woman in labor,
looking aghast at each other, faces aflame.

Hebrews 12:18-29

26 At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” 27 This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. 28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.

John 3:22-30

²⁷ Yochanan answered, “No one can receive anything unless it has been given to him from Heaven.

The above are the Daily Office readings from Sunday, and I only got as far as choosing the parts that stood out for me.

This morning I’m all over the place, from pondering death and illness (a friend’s husband died suddenly, and another friend is facing possible cancer with surgery today) —to wondering if Hope is really a cheat. I’ve been bouncing from wondering whether suffering is something we completely misunderstand —to questioning how news of impending disaster could possibly be called good news; from hearing the most annoying phrase in all Creation —“It’ll be okay,”— and feeling the edges of my back teeth beginning to splinter; to asking myself if all the bad things that have happened are actually great gifts.

In order to play catch-up, I’m going to include yesterday’s with today’s Lectionary reading, and then write about whatever I feel like writing about. Nyah.

Today I heard the complaining in the psalms entirely differently. Just about all of them put praise of God right next to bitter reproach of the same God. All of them wish destruction on enemies and then in the very next verse, brag about how faithful they’ve been in spite of being oppressed, hunted with traps like animals, abandoned and hated, mocked and rejected. I thought, what if the psalmist wasn’t making distinctions! What if she considered the enemy-to-be-destroyed as being identical to the servant-faithfully-complaining? What if the suffering and destruction that fills our days is actually part and parcel of the joy we feel when we are inundated with beauty or stopped in our tracks by wonder? What then? What if all the bad news is exactly the Good News? How would that work?

From today’s readings:

Psalm 44—

^8 (17) Though all this came on us, we did not forget you; we have not been false to your covenant;
^19 (18) Our hearts have not turned back, and our steps did not turn away from your path,
^20 (19) though you pressed us into a lair of jackals and covered us with death-dark gloom.

Isaiah 8:16-9:1—

⁽²⁾ The people living in darkness have seen a great light;
upon those living in the land that lies in the shadow of death, light has dawned.

There is a set of sayings in the Zen tradition called “The Zen Caveats” and while listening to the sermon yesterday, I was reminded of them and I had a notion to see if I could write a Christian version.

For reference, here are the Zen Caveats, followed by my first-draft version of “The Kingdom Caveats”:

Zen: Following the rules and protecting the regulations is binding oneself without rope.

Kingdom: Clinging to dogma and defending tradition is making oneself a prisoner without a cage.

Zen: Moving freely vertically and horizontally without obstruction is the way of outsiders and the nightmare army.

Kingdom: Open-mindedness and non-literal interpretation of Scripture is the way of apostates and the Antichrist.

Zen: To preserve the heart mind and to cleanse it by letting impurities settle to the bottom in quiescence is the perverted Zen of silent illumination.

Kingdom: To guard the soul and to cleanse it by the practice of quiet contemplation is the corrupt heresy of the Desert Hermits.

Zen: Neglecting the written records with unrestrained ideas is falling into a deep pit.

Kingdom: Neglecting Scripture with limitless notions is falling into a deep pit.

Zen: To be awake and not ignorant is to wear chains and shoulder a cangue. (pillory)

Kingdom: To be saved and not oblivious is to wear a straight-jacket and be locked in a padded room.

Zen: Thinking good and thinking evil are the halls of heaven and hell.

Kingdom: Thinking ‘righteous’ and thinking ‘unrighteous’ are the arcades of Heaven and Hell.

Zen: A view of Buddha and a view of Dharma are the two enclosing mountains of iron.

Kingdom: Having an opinion of Jesus and an opinion of the Gospel is to be caught between a Rock and a Hard Place.

Zen: A person who perceives thoughts as they immediately arise is fiddling with spectral consciousness.

Kingdom: A person who prays without ceasing is fooling around with phantom perceptions.

Zen: However, being on a high plateau practicing samadhi is the stratagem of living in the house of ghosts.

Kingdom: However, going on retreat to connect with your spirituality is the subterfuge of living in a fantasy world.

Zen: To advance results in ignoring truth; to retreat results in contradicting the lineage.

Kingdom: To become wise results in discounting reality; to go back to foolishness results in betraying all the saints.

Zen: Neither to advance nor to retreat is being a breathing corpse.

Kingdom: Neither to become wise nor go back to foolishness is being a breathing corpse.

Zen: Just say, how will you walk?

Kingdom: Just say, how will you follow Christ?

Zen: You must work hard to live in the present and, to finish, all the more. I do not advise the unfortunate excess of continual suffering.

Kingdom: You must go and sell all you have and come and follow me; and  what’s more, die with Me.  I do not advise the unhappy wastefulness of constant sinning.

I’m not done with The Kingdom Caveats yet, but I often find more clarity after I put my reflections up on the blog.

Before I go—there’s something about Advent…..

There seems to be a deep, deep well of something-or-other contained in this season of not-Christmas-yet. Nothing’s over ‘til it’s over, and Advent this year has been keeping some cunning secrets; the kind of secrets that seem as though they are best left undiscovered.

It’s the quiet rustlings at dawn and dusk— the little hints telling of simple, commonplace mysteries— that have been filling my days and my nights with unremembered meaning.

I don’t want Advent to be over yet……but it sure does seem these days like Christmas has turned into something that deserves nothing better than to be over-and-done-with!

Nowadays Christmas seems to be something that happens right after Halloween, and lasts for way longer than 12 days.

Christmas is for pushing and shoving in retail aisles, and standing in interminable checkout lines at the craft store.

Christmas is for giant inflatable eyesores to shudder ominously in suburban front yards; wheezing mournfully in their own internal draft until they waste away into flabby plastic puddles in the freezing watches of the night.

I think I’m going to disregard Christmas this year. Instead, I believe I’ll go out on my back porch in the icy winter dark, huddle in a blanket and listen for the faint sound of camel-bells, and try to sniff out the faintest hint of frankincense in the air.

I think I’m just going to ignore all the aggravation of the “Holiday Season” and let Advent gradually and imperceptibly merge into Epiphany— all quiet like.

Yeah, that sounds about right—let my waiting gradually be filled with the Presence like a winter dawn stealing imperceptibly through my bedroom window.