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Tag Archives: suffering
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Posted in Christianity, contemplation, disorientation, faith, Lent, Spiritual Formation, spirituality
Tagged Religion and Spirituality, suffering
Lent 2 The Body of Our Humiliation
For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. It is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. Philippians 3: 19-4-1
One of the most painful experiences a person may encounter is humiliation. We do all we can to escape the possibility, let alone actual experiences of humiliation. You may remember a few occasions of humiliation and shame. These memories stick around. Humiliation may be a moment of embarrassment or deeply soul crushing.
Humiliation assaults our sense of worth and dignity. It signals the limbic part of our brain, which is self-protecting, and tells us to fight, flee, or freeze in the face of our disgrace.
Dignity violations leave deep wounds. The scars of ridicule and scorn may disfigure us. Jesus’s choice to endure such humiliation is remarkable. He chose the most painful path, which appeared to be the total failure of his mission, to show his followers that humiliation is not the last word.
Our culture has become a global forum of blaming and humiliating each other. We are hardwired to retaliate to such indignities. We have little appreciation of the depth and breadth and tender goodness of the human heart. So many times, it has been scorned, mocked, beaten and tossed in an alley.
We seek success, wins, the “Greatest of All Time,” to be the best and the first. We do all we can to keep our failures hidden in filtered selfies and struggle to find our sense of self-worth.
Who do we think we are fooling?
Our egocentric experience is only a small slice of reality. This is why we need each other and to learn from each other. “Alongside the protection reaction of fight or flight, we are also hardwired for primal empathy, an emotional connection that fosters openness to others and is needed to take in each other’s experiences at the core of healthy social development.
Donna Hicks, Dignity – Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict, p 23.
Humiliation both challenges our innate dignity and opens a door to humility. In the painful sacrifice of our egos, we are liberated from our pride and desperate need for esteem, control and fame. Here in the heart of our disgrace – we may discover new freedom to be simply ourselves, our raggedy, messed up, imperfect, beautiful selves. Here,as Paul tells the Philippians, our body of humiliation is conformed to the glory in the body of Christ.
In your midst I will leave a humble and lowly people; those who remain will seek their refuge inYahweh. Zephaniah 3:12
Posted in Community, contemplation, Lent Devotion, transformation
Tagged Bible, Christianity, faith, God, humiliation, humility, Jesus, suffering
Barbie and Disorientation
Perhaps you saw the Barbie movie. I did and enjoyed it. Barbie and Taylor Swift have lifted the hearts and hope of many folks this summer. We take ourselves so seriously, it is a relief to play, to pretend and laugh and wear pink with a crowd of other folks, all worn down and exhausted from constant “Breaking Bad News.” It is delicious to step out of someone else’s fantasy of reality and find the freedom to defy the burdens of our own expectations, as well as the expectations of others. Finding out that who we thought we were, is not who were, and that who we are becoming is still unknown and just winking over the horizon is the beginning of transformation. Learn more about that process of shedding an old self that has become too tight and uncomfortable, and discovering a self just coming into your awareness. The hard part is the waiting and not knowing. We may feel lost and abandoned.
Read Latest Issue of Holy Ground Here
We are celebrating 35 years of publication of this simple quarterly reminder to slow down, rest, an rediscover serenity. Help us celebrate by buying a subscription for yourself or a friend.
Back issues of this little newsletter can be found in every stack of papers in my house – I move them from my desk to the kitchen counter to the pile of mail on the dining room table, until they eventually become dog-eared and fall apart. I just can’t seem to throw an issue of Holy Ground away. Why? Because Loretta Ross an ordained Presbyterian clergy woman and a fine writer, puts equal amounts of inspiration and whimsy into every issue. Even though Holy Ground is a thin little folder – 7 or 8 pages, one essay, really – it’s always refreshing, renewing,; an awakening of sorts.
Review by Susan Jelus in A New Song
Posted in contemplation
Tagged lost, suffering, transformation, waiting disorientation
Ouch!
This issue of Holy Ground guides you to a place
beyond pain and tumult.
You will discover poet, Vassar Miller, who writes …
Without Ceremony –
Except ourselves we have no other prayer;
our needs are sores upon our nakedness.
We do not have to name them; we are here.
And You who can make eyes can see no less….
You also will be invited to your Still Point of the turning world,
a place described by St. John of the Cross and his admirer, poet T.S. Eliot.
where the weary soul finds repose.
Here, also, is where Teshuvah (Hebrew for repent) happens.
Repentance is not so much contrition and guilt, as you may think,
as it is simply a shift of focus. Here we are reconciled to the brokenness
and pain of ourselves and of our beautiful world.
I hope you learn and find peace in this issue, Ouch.
You are worthy. You are deeply and eternally loved.
To see into our sin and dysfunction with love,
as we fumble to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe, is to repent.
To see the hunger, humiliation and pain behind the eyes of the angry,
disillusioned and violent ones is to see with God’s eyes.
A blessed Easter to you and yours! Loretta F Ross
A Goodly Theme
This post is an adaptation of a post first published July 5, 2010.
My heart overflows with a goodly theme
as I sing my ode to the King. Psalms 45:1
The kingdom of God will come when men and women are willing to be penetrated by bliss.
-M.C. Richards – Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person
Her words stopped me in my tracks and resonated like a struck gong. Little seemed blissful in my life at the time. It was 1973. I was living alone in an apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, working at a job I hated, depressed, and hurting deeply. These words of artist M.C. Richards penetrated my defenses, self pity, and sense of worthlessness like a swift shining sword. For the first time in a season of sadness I felt hope.
The notion that the rule of God, the peaceable kingdom, the promise of wholeness for all people is a function, not of ridding the earth of evil, not of righting all injustice, not in overcoming human sin and limitation, but rather our willingness to receive goodness and mercy into our being has animated my life ever sense.
“Put down your sword!” Jesus tells Peter in the garden of Gethsemane. Peter, in a desire to protect his master, had taken a sword to the ear of one of the Roman soldiers who had come to arrest Jesus. However, Jesus’ kingdom was not of this world. It is a Reality already here, present, and accessible to all. Jesus says, it is within you and everywhere like a seed, common and transforming as leaven. The winsome, disarming Jesus manifested that kingdom wherever he went and invited his followers to do the same.
Two disarming black labs, my Elijah and Jean Luc Picard, who arrived with some house guests, have been teaching me about bliss. The dogs met for the first time a week ago with the hearty delight of Adam, when God introduced to him the woman he had made of Adam’s rib.
“Ah, at last a fit companion! Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh,” Adam exults. Though not recorded in the scripture, I figure Adam then wiggled all over just like my dog, Elijah.
The best-friends-forever have been inseparable – wrestling, play fighting, swimming, fetching, and sprawling, here and there, exhausted and snoring. Holding back nothing, these fellows have allowed bliss to penetrate and animate every cell of their bodies. Bliss surrounds, follows them, spills out of their eyes, and rolls off their shoulders. Even the cat has a spring in her step and an amused quality to her feline reserve.
I believe the great challenge of our time and all mortal time is holding our hearts open to the rain of grace – the glorious reign of delight that ceaselessly offers itself to the whole creation.
“But hold on!” you say. What about climate change eating away our coasts and killing off species? What about health care crisis? What about the lives and shores devastated by oil spills? What about your own personal crisis and impasse, your unemployment, your grief, your illness? What about the suffering ones everywhere we turn?
Could you, will you, permit the tiny possibility of joy to penetrate your darkness, to kiss you on the face, to pounce upon you from behind? Maybe, before you know it, it will jump up into your lap and go to sleep in your arms.
To notice, delight in, and allow ourselves to be penetrated by the goodness of God does not mean we ignore the places where that goodness is obscured or sorrow and pain exist.
The amazing opportunity to be a member of the homo sapiens species alive on this earth at this time is an incredible gift. Our willingness to receive, to lay down and roll on our backs in, the sheer bliss of being alive is what allows God to transform that vortex of darkness, greed, and hate through us. What evil and sin target and destroy is joy, because joy is a unfallable sign of the presence and power of God.
The world does not need our disgust, outrage, anger, and rage. It needs the Reign of Christ’s joy with its unfailing hope, faith, and love. The world – sucked into the whirlpool of greed, violence, and suffering – will not enter the Kingdom of God through our anger, retaliation, and swords, but through our bliss, the utter delight and lab-lucious joy of being children of the Father of Goodness and the Mother of Mercy.
Let no one and no circumstance rob you of such a splendid birthright.
Download and read latest issue of Holy Ground – A Quarterly Reflection on the Contemplative Life, “Try a Little Tenderness”
Posted in Christianity, Contemplation, prayer, Kingdom Tide, spirituality
Tagged bliss, evil, joy, kingdom of God, labs, Psalm 51: 1, suffering
Severed
Drawing her arms
through the salt sea
legs straining
giving her body
to the task
she swam among
the floating limbs
reaching after them
before they turned
to sink slowly down
to shocked shipwrecks
astonished clams
coming to rest in a cloud
of silt, the softly yielding
residue of other remains.
She heard no sound
but her breath
and the slip slosh of sea
as she ploughed the
surface of their sorrow.
She thought
she could retrieve them
gather the fragments
siphon up the spilt blood
return to all donors
bring mothers
their sons and daughters
reborn,
wrapped in seaweed
take this leg, uprooted,
to the young man
Here it is yours, she’d say.
I found it in the sea.
So deep, so wide the wound
of flesh and bone
so piercing, urgent the ache
to be re- membered.
__________________________________
for those whose lives have been blown apart
for those who must pick up the pieces
Loretta F. Ross, 2013
Posted in Contemplation, prayer, Prayer, spirituality, The praying life
Tagged Boston marathon bombings, community, Compassion, Grief, Loss, sorrow, suffering, Texas explosion, West
Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #7
And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.
– William Blake
Passion Sunday
They fought on the way to church
this time ugly.
Was it the tone he took,
or her throbbing resentment
that kicked in the door
like a demon repo man
turning up to repossess their souls?
Mud rushed in
a roaring sludge
of sorrows, lashes
rebukes, scorn
bitterness, betrayal
heaping up
burying the light.
The back seat was silent.
In the sanctuary they stood mute
in the crowd of flourished palms
hosannas fluttering like petals
watching their kids in the happy throng
pass by with pain in their eyes.
Across town the detective
poured herself another cup of coffee
scanned reports from last night
homicide, hit and run
three break-ins, some domestics.
Robert rolled over,
knees up to his chin, gripping the covers.
He hurt so bad. He couldn’t get those feelings
for Andy to go away, nor the horror
in the cafeteria when they snickered and laughed.
Lester sat at his kitchen table, thumbing through his Bible.
He got the diagnosis the day before.
The words didn’t make sense.
He looked around.
Everything seemed tilted sideways.
Does cancer cause this? he wondered.
Alice in a back pew waved her palm like a white flag.
During the week she goes into a house full of roaches
and mice to treat the baby of a twelve year old girl.
People so desperate, so much pain. Plse pray,
she texts her friend and waves harder,
counting on this Jesus to make a difference.
Nations thrash and groan. Politicians rage.
The bomb ticks in the parked car.
Seas haul homes and lives
out to watery oblivion.
Some peasant playing a fool on a donkey
rides into town saying he is the King.
He is going to turn things around,
unseat the emperors,
release the grasp of greed,
cure the lust for money,
and heal the virus.
Sure enough the fool gets himself killed.
Everyone is looking for a goat to carry off
that mudslide of shame, regret, and responsibility.
For a while we can pimp up the peasant,
wave some foliage, call him king
as the bullies and the haters
the fear mongers and the betrayers
the self- righteous and the proud hitch
a ride on his back like fleas.
Then we can go home, relax
watch the ball game and root for our team.
But the peasant with pain in his eyes
on the donkey has his own agenda.
I am not your Palm Sunday ornament,
a wonder super hero
your ticket to respectability
a card to play in your political games.
Look again. I am you.
I am you riding high into town.
I am you awash in disgrace and humiliation.
I am you having done the unthinkable
and there is no way you can repair the damage you caused.
I am you, holiness, hawking yourselves day and night
in the holy places you have turned into markets.
I am you, holiness, stuck
right down in the middle of a profane life in a profane world.
I am you, holiness, betrayed by a sneer, or the grab for influence.
I am you, holiness, trampled on and defiled.
Will you duck out now
skip those other services
and only show up year after year
in your new clothes
to see the lilies and hear the music?
Or will you come back
to listen to my commandment
to let me wash your feet
and drink to a new covenant?
Will you stay awake with me
and with yourself one hour in our suffering?
Will you say, not my will, but thine?
Will you face your betrayer, see what you need to see
become truth in the face of authority?
Will you strip off all your disguises, costumes
facelifts, masks, and self-deceit?
Will you hand over your assets for others to toss the dice?
Will you watch at our dying?
Will you thirst?
Will you feel your own pain?
Will you cry out why has God forsaken us?
Will you rest in the tomb
that silent womb of mystery
dead with me?
Will you come early on the third day?
Lily (Photo credit: amitkotwal)
______________________________
Note to readers: This blog is part of a series of Lenten “short takes” on the themes of lent, which follow more or less the lectionary Scripture lessons for this season. Like a note you find tucked under the bark of a tree, a lozenge to let melt in your mouth, an amulet to wear around your neck, I hope these little reflections may hold a small dose of truth or comfort or challenge for your life on the way to Easter.
In the abundance of words which inundate us daily, it is easy for the message of redemption to be buried under the latest disaster, outrage or scandal. Likewise the familiar stories and passages of lent may grow dull and trite to ears and hearts already stuffed with words.
I have noticed in my work as spiritual director that it is hard for many of us to take in the goodness and grace, as well as the challenge of the story of Jesus and God’s redeeming love. Perhaps we need to titrate the gospel. Sometimes a well- timed, tiny dose, carefully administered, may be what the Physician orders for our healing. And so slowly we build up our tolerance for love and more and more joy finds the faith in us through which to invade our being.
Dose titration: adjustment of the dose until the medication
has achieved the desired effect
Related Articles
- Redemption Titration* – A Gentle Dose for the Sin Sick Soul (theprayinglife.com)
- Love – In Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul (theprayinglife.com)
- Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #3 (theprayinglife.com)
- Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #4 (theprayinglife.com)
- Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #5 (theprayinglife.com)
- Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #6 (theprayinglife.com)
Posted in Christianity, Contemplation, prayer, Easter, Lent Devotion
Tagged Christianity, faith, God, Holy Week, Jesus, Palm Sunday, Passion Sunday, Religion and Spirituality, shame, suffering, William Blake
Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #6
And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.
– William Blake
Thin Ice
The interviewer probes,
so do you think the economy will get better?
Fear leaps up from the gut
climbs to her throat
voice shakes, melts into tears.
Fifty two,
back in her bedroom
at mom and dad’s
turning over at night
she sees the puzzles, rock collection,
Girl Scout Handbook
stacked on the shelf beneath the window,
teeters between now and then
on the brink
of circumstances beyond her control.
Better to practice walking on thin ice
before we find ourselves there.
How does one learn to trust
your life will bear your weight?
The grey sheet shrinks from the shore.
Dark water laps milkweed stubble,
slopping over hoof-pocked mud.
Could she step over the translucent border
to opaque surface a few feet further out?
Oh to put her future in a box,
tie it with a pretty bow
and place it next to high school
yearbooks on the shelf.
The fortune tellers circle,
bracelets jangling, bright skirts swinging,
leaning over their tea leaves crying out:
Alzheimer’s, incontinence, poverty, ruin!
After millions heard her cry on public radio,
after her immersion into choking humiliation
possibility awoke.
She saw what they had seen
and loved it now.
Come, she said, as she took her nakedness
into her arms like a lost child,
a beautiful melody.
I will teach you how to walk on thin ice.
Let us go to the spring woods
and learn to pull uncertainty and loss
to our chins like a blanket of oak leaves,
sweet pine needles, mushrooms,
and the milky blooms of May apples.
All the best and most beautiful things
are willing to go under at any moment
and take us with them into the dark
to be carried back again,
laughing sheaves of light.
Child of my heart, listen.
Don’t turn away from my face.
Nothing perishes
when born by the arms of grace.
Don’t ponder ancient history
Look! I am doing a new thing. Isaiah 43: 14-21Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves. Psalm 126: 4-6 NRSV
______________________________
Note to readers: This blog is part of a series of Lenten “short takes” on the themes of lent, which follow more or less the lectionary Scripture lessons for this season. Like a note you find tucked under the bark of a tree, a lozenge to let melt in your mouth, an amulet to wear around your neck, I hope these little reflections may hold a small dose of truth or comfort or challenge for your life on the way to Easter.
In the abundance of words which inundate us daily, it is easy for the message of redemption to be buried under the latest disaster, outrage or scandal. Likewise the familiar stories and passages of lent may grow dull and trite to ears and hearts already stuffed with words.
I have noticed in my work as spiritual director that it is hard for many of us to take in the goodness and grace, as well as the challenge of the story of Jesus and God’s redeeming love. Perhaps we need to titrate the gospel. Sometimes a well- timed, tiny dose, carefully administered, may be what the Physician orders for our healing. And so slowly we build up our tolerance for love and more and more joy finds the faith in us through which to invade our being.
Dose titration: adjustment of the dose until the medication
has achieved the desired effect
Related articles
- Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #5 (theprayinglife.com)
- Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #4 (theprayinglife.com)
- Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #3 (theprayinglife.com)
- Love – In Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul (theprayinglife.com)
- Redemption Titration* – A Gentle Dose for the Sin Sick Soul (theprayinglife.com)
Posted in Christianity, Contemplation, prayer, Lent, Lent Devotion, Spiritual Direction, Spiritual Practices
Tagged Christianity, faith, God, humilation, Isaiah 43, Jesus, Lent, Loss, poetry, Psalm 126, Religion and Spirituality, suffering, William Blake
It Begins with a Howl – Redux
It begins with a howl
a muffled sob at midnight
a “Help me!” filling the dark alley
with terror
a fist banging on the door
a blank stare and a hand clenching
a ball of tissue
a sudden lurch and collapse, face down in the open field.
This is how it begins, what we call Christmas.
Salvation is summoned by its negation.
The raw expression of the creation’s need calls out its savior –
the scream
that rises from the soul shattering collision
of what is with what should be.
Christmas begins when God hears
And God heard the voice of the boy… Genesis 21:17
I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Exodus 3:7
Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Luke 1:13
Christmas begins when God sees
I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt. Exodus 3:7
My tears will flow without ceasing, without respite until the Lord from heaven looks down and sees. Lamentations 3: 49-50
She answered God by name, praying to the God who spoke to her, “You’re the God who sees me!”
“Yes, he saw me; then I saw him!”
That’s how the desert spring got named God-Alive-Sees-Me Spring. Genesis 16: 13-14
Christmas begins when the earth turns,
writhes, and convulses in its lamentation.
When the protest of the human heart joins its sorrow
with the heart of the One acquainted with grief,
Holiness steps out of the forest
into the clearing
“Here,” bending over our
our small shaking bodies
our hopeless cynicism
our little hands grasping at straws
“Here is my answer,” Holiness says,
and places in those hands
a child
wet and wild.
“And the name of the child shall be Love.”
This post is an edited version of a post which was first published
November 29, 1011.
This post is an edited version of a post which was first published
November 29, 1011.
Posted in Advent, Christmas, Contemplation, prayer, The praying life
Tagged Advent, christ, Christmas, faith, God hears, God sees, human need, Jesus, salvation, suffering
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