practice resurrection

Pacing the Cage

Bruce Cockburn (prounounced co-burn) is a songwriter out of Canada who over the years has moved me.  The song of his most indelibly burned into my mind is called "Pacing the Cage."  There are some wonderful images in his text:

"ive proven who I am so many times/ the magnetic strips worn thin/ and each time I was someone else/ and everyone was taken in"

But it's the refrain that in these past few years has come to mean a great deal to me--Pacing the Cage.  For a few years now I have lived in Shawnee longer than I've lived in any other location in my life. When that sort of stability emerges in your life there is an internal rythmn disrupted.  We no longer find ourselves moving every few years, typical of the college/grad school/early job phase of life.  For a very long time my life was predominantly about preparing for what was next.  There was always the task of being fully present in the moment, but there was also an escape hatch not too far down the road; the next degree, the next move, the next, the next.  

So there is an internal adjustment you have to make when you finally end up in the place where you are going to end up.  And every so often you find yourself pacing the cage.

I'm reading through Kathleen Norris' book, Acedia & Me, a series of reflections on the condition that the monastic traditon refers to as acedia.  It isn't quite boredom, it isn't quite depression, it isn't quite apathy, but it has an aproximation to all of those things.  She reflects on the 4th Century monk Evagrius Ponticus' description of this elusive state:

"...I had discovered a description of something that had plagued me for years but had never been able to name.  As any reader of fairy tales can tell you, not knowing the name of your enemy, be it a troll, a demon, or an "issue," puts you at great disadvantage, and learning the name can help to set you free.  "He's describing half my life," I thought to myself.  To discover and ancient monk's account of accedia that so closely matched an experience I had at the age of fifteen did seem a fairy-tale moment.  To find my deliverer, not a knight in shining armor, but a gnarled dessert dweller, as stern as they come, only bolstered my conviction that God is a true comedian."

I'm not experiencing such torpor these days, though I have in the past.  My life right now is fomenting with relationships and meaningful work.  But I do find myself in an awkward place of not knowing what my life and work will look like in the next few months.  I'm finishing up my seminary studies with my Episcopal Diocese and approaching ordination.  Where I will be next as a deacon and then a priest is up in the air.  It may to continue right where I am, it may be somewhere else.  It is a strange kind of limbo where I hold the work of a life-well-lived right where you are planted in tension with the unkown of the near future.  It one of those detail-oriented aspects of faith.  I'm pretty good with the big aspects of faith, the cosmic ones, I have more trouble with the day to day stuff.  But God knows such things and continues to abide regardless.  

"ive proven who I am so many times/ the magnetic strips worn thin/ and each time I was someone else/ and everyone was taken in"

I'm not sure if I want to start over.  A recalibration always has its advantages, and I know I can muster up the energy to do it.  God knows I've made enough msitakes in this town that a fresh invention wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen.  But I also know that one of the tenets of monastic commitment is that of stability--obedience, chastity, poverty and stability.  Such things often leave us pacing our cages, but they can also reap a reward that only happens over time, an authenticity to relationships that comes only when you push through the torpor, the boredom, the conflict and the depression.  It is that kind of life that requires us to surrender our imgaginaitons and wills over to the will of God.  And that is the real kind of work that I am called to, God will do the rest.

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it's pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you live too long 
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage

I've proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip's worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And every one was taken in
Powers chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage

I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It's as if the thing were written 
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you'll wind up
Pacing the cage

Sometimes the best map will not guide you 
You can't see what's round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places 
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land 
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage 
Pacing the cage 

 

You Might Could Use This Tuesday

A Fuller Wine.  Abigail Wasburn speaks of the love that is fashioned into loneliness.

Defining God

No one can define God. No one can draw a line around God and say, "Here God is!" It is only one who is willing to let loose of all earthly moorings and drift apparently aimlessly into the mystical sea who can ever hope to see revealed the Reality he will never even then be able to describe or define.

--Fr. John-Julian, Order of Julian of Norwich, Hartland, WI

Bless me Father, for I Have Sinned

Donnie and Marie Osmond had a variety show in which they sang,  “I’m a little bit country, I’m a little bit rock and roll.”  The Episcopal Church tries to be “a little bit Catholic, and a little bit protestant.”  Any given Episcopal Church has traits of both, but leans one way or the other.  Our little parish in Shawnee leans Catholic in its worship.

It’s one of the reasons I wanted to do my Anglican Studies at Nashotah House.  It is an Anglo-Catholic school that operates in a monastic framework.  Spiritual formation at Nashotah “leans” Catholic.  So, last week, I spent a goodly amount of time learning about confession and penance.  In fact, it’s one of the five  “other sacraments,” so designated because they are not necessary for salvation, but rather increase the grace given in the wake of Baptism and Eucharist (it’s not quite that simple, but somewhere in the ballpark).

I’ve never done private confession.  I've been to a counselor, talked with friends, even confessed some pretty difficult things to a spiritual director.  But confession is a little bit different.  It creates an intentional context to hear clearly from a trusted member of the church that God knows my sins, and if I am willing to amend my life, willingly forgives.  My instructors were making the case for reintroducing it to the ebb and flow of parish life; that together with regular Eucharist, corporate prayers, private devotions, fasting and a sundry other disciplines, confession could play an important part of a growing spiritual life.  I might be willing to agree, but with some needed reframing.

There’s a website that’s been around for a while called “PostSecret.com.”  The folks there invite you to write down, on a postcard, a secret that you have been keeping.  You send it to the site and they post it.  Some of the things that people want to “get off their chest” are profound.  And it is an indication to me that many of us, whether members of the Christian community or not, have things in our life we wish we could unburden—in particular the ways we have hurt others (or ourselves).

So what about having a time when you could meet with your minister and confess to him or her those things that you participate in which damage your life?  It raises the following questions for me:

• Do I trust my priest enough with my hardest struggles?
• How can I be sure these confessions don’t negatively affect my relationship with my priest?
• How can I, as a future priest, be sure that I could be able to hear the confession of another, pronounce absolution, and then let it go?

Again, I’m basing this on the assumption that there is value in being able to talk with a trusted person about the things we struggle with.  If that is true (and I think it is), then how do we assure that the confessor is in the right frame of mind (spirit)?  It definitely takes the seriousness of the work I one day presume to do up a notch.  It takes goodly amounts of spiritual sobriety to care for the raw humanity of others, to insist on the good news of God’s forgiveness, and play mid-wife to the healing that the Spirit will bring.  And it isn’t as though people have never trusted me with their sins.  Many have, but not in such a straightforward manner. 

I was told, and it may be important to note here, that most Episcopalians don’t practice private confession.  So I doubt seriously that I will find myself in the habit of hearing them.  But even so, if it were to occur, even a few times in the course of a ministry, I want to be ready.  After all, the custom of Anglican private confession, as it has been handed down, goes something like this: None must, all may, some should.  And some, I imagine, will.

Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.   --James 5

Nashotah House

I've made the trek up to Wisconsin for the second class in my Anglican Studies, part and parcel to my pilgrimage toward priesthood in the Episcopal Church.  This go-around we are learning about the Anglican spiritual tradition, or as it referred to in our class, "Ascetical Theology."  The word "ascetical" means self-denial, and in this setting encompasses the historical tradition of religious discipline--prayer, study, eucharist, confession, fasting, abstinence, almsgiving--the pathway toward maturity and spiritual growth.  The Spirit of God is always the source and means of such growth, but these disciplines put us into a position to encounter that Spirit.

We spent a good part of yesterday considering different kinds of sins, venial and mortal, and the nuance and degree to which things we participate in keep us separated from God.  In the Christian tradition,we eventually get around to using the word "mortification" and I remarked how that idea, of all that I have encountered in my journey down the Canterbury Trail, is the most difficult to overcome.  It dregs up images of self-flaggelation and a depressing rejection of the good gifts of creation--food, sex, laughter.  All told, mortification doesn't sound very fun!  

And yet...

A part of me knows that life is greatly about balance.  Some portion of denial, restraint, and prudence not only keeps us safe and healthy, it accentuates (intensifies) the joy of those times when we enthusiastically indulge in God's good gifts.  And like Jesus told the Adversary in the desert, we must be reminded that human beings do not live on bread alone.  

It's beautiful up here.  The seminary is nestled into Wisconsin farmland, the leaves are changing in these crisp sunny autumn days.  On my morning run, I was startled by a large deer drinking from a pool of water on the roadside.

Psalm 42

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.  --KJV