A Litany of Thanksgiving

I've been thinking a lot about thanksgiving this past week, both for a class I recently taught (see post bel0w) and for a Thanksgiving Eve celebration we're planning for tomorrow night at LO. As I've been looking around, I discovered this Litany of Thanksgiving in the Book of Common Worship. I think it's a wonderful prayer....

Give thanks to the Lord who is good.

God's love is everlasting.

Come, let us praise God joyfully.

Let us come to God with thanksgiving.

For the good world;
for things great and small, beautiful and awesome;
for seen and unseen splendors;

Thank you, God.

For human life;
for talking and moving and thinking together;
for common hopes and hardships shared from birth until our dying;

Thank you, God.

For work to do and strength to work;
for the comradeship of labor;
for exchanges of good humor and encouragement;

Thank you, God.


For marriage;
for the mystery and joy of flesh made one;
for mutual forgiveness and burdens shared;
for secrets kept in love;

Thank you, God.

For family;
for living together and eating together;
for family amusements and family pleasures;

Thank you, God.


For children;
for their energy and curiosity;
for their brave play and startling frankness;
for their sudden sympathies;

Thank you, God.

For the young;
for their high hopes;
for their irreverence toward worn-out values;
for their search for freedom;
for their solemn vows;

Thank you, God.

For growing up and growing old;
for wisdom deepened by experience;
for rest in leisure;
and for time made precious by its passing;

Thank you, God.

For your help in times of doubt and sorrow;
for healing our diseases;
for preserving us in temptation and danger;

Thank you, God.

For the church into which we have been called;
for the good news we receive by Word and Sacrament;
for our life together in the Lord;

We praise you, God.


For your Holy Spirit;
who guides our steps and brings us gifts f faith and love;
who prays in us and prompts our grateful worship;

We praise you, God.

Above all, O God, for your Son Jesus Christ,
who lived and died and lives again for our salvation;
for our hope in him; and for the joy of serving him;

We thank and praise you, Eternal God,
for all your goodness to us.

Give thanks to the Lord, who is good.

God's love is everlasting.

Prayers of Thanksgiving in a Cynical, Critical World

[This is the final installment of my follow-up emails I've sent to parents of the 3rd to 6th graders in my Wednesday night class. We just finished a 6-week module on prayer.]

Vocatus atque non vocatus, dues aderit.

“Bidden or unbidden, God is present” – Erasmus

“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21b

Friends,

I am once again a few days late in composing and sending this email, but I think that it’s alright, since this entire week should flow well into last week’s lesson. On Wednesday, we concluded our six-week prayer module by discussing prayers of thanksgiving. (We’ll start a new module a week from Wednesday.) What a timely way to end our consideration of some of the different ways to imagine and practice prayer.

When things are at there best in my life, when I am the most spiritually nourished and the most in tune with myself, others, and God, I am practicing the spiritual disciplines, following a ‘rule of life’ that guides my training as an apprentice of Jesus and opens my life to the Spirit’s transformative presence. As a part of that rule, I try to intentionally cultivate the spirit of gratitude and thanksgiving in my life by: taking at least two minutes a day to pause to offer thanksgiving to God for blessings great and small, mundane and extraordinary; providing spiritual encouragement for another person each week; and providing a word of encouragement to someone daily.

I will be the first to admit that this is not an easy quality to cultivate. In fact, it’s time for confession. I have been struggling with a mini-depression over the past few months because the thanksgiving and encouragement have slipped out of my regular habit of disciplines! As I’ve been reflecting on my life and my spiritual health over the past week, I’ve realized that part of my current struggles are due to my inability to recognize God’s presence at all times, my inability to cultivate thankfulness and gratitude in all things.

Let’s be honest. It seems that most everything in our society conspires against that practice: television shows, commercials, billboards, water-cooler conversations at work, and dinner conversations at church small groups. It is difficult to navigate this labyrinth of ingratitude and find ourselves centered in thankfulness. A loss of thankfulness and gratitude plagues our lives and our families, and it has taken a destructive toll our churches, not to mention society at large. I can easily imagine reinterpreting Jesus’ parable about the soils in Mark 4 so that it speaks to the struggle of growing and sustaining seeds of thankfulness in our world today:

“The sower is the Spirit of God, tossing the seeds of thankfulness onto the hearts of God’s children. The seed that falls on the path are trampled underfoot by ingratitude and eaten by the birds of the comparison and critique. The seed that falls on the rocky ground struggles to find nourishing Living Water. The soil is shallow with no depth, and so are its roots. It sprouts quickly and looks promising, but then the sun of sarcasm and cynicism rises from the east. Its scorching heat bears down on the struggling sprout, and it quickly withers away to nothing. Other seed falls among the thorns of consumerism. For a short time sprout and the thorny weeds grow together and coexist. But in short time the thorns of discontent grew up, overtaking the seedlings of thankfulness, as the thorns of the cares of the world, the lure of wealth, the feelings of entitlement, and the insatiable desire for the latest and greatest toys and televisions, gadgets and golf clubs, cars and computers choke all life out of thankfulness. (There’s a good reason that the Friday after Thanksgiving Thursday has been affectionately dubbed “Black Friday”!) The good, fertile soil is constantly tended and watered and nurtured and weeded to protect the delicate seed, to curb critical tendencies, to treasure and value people as gifts, and to receive every experience and every thing as a gift rather an entitlement, a blessing rather than a right. The seeds of thankfulness take root there and grow into a living and active presence of God in all moments, experiences, and things. They blossom into a beautiful harvest in the midst of a bleak and barren world.”

The thankful heart requires constant nurture and cultivation, yet it carries with it an incredibly transformative potential. The potential is because gratitude helps us to realize and recognize that God is present. Thankfulness is rooted in the reality that “bidden or unbidden, God is present.” Adele Calhoun was correct when she wrote that “thankfulness is a thread that can bind together all the patchwork squares of our lives. Difficult times, happy days seasons of sickness, hours of bliss—all can be sewn together into something lovely with the thread of thankfulness.” If there is anything that our children, and all of us for that matter, need to remember, it’s that thanksgiving is possible because God is present, not because everything goes perfectly or the way that we would like or envision or imagine.

Take some time today to reflect on your own life. Where do you need to grow in thankfulness? Spend time reflecting on these questions from Calhoun’s Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us:

• How are you addicted to criticism, analysis and negativity? How might thankfulness be an antidote to a critical spirit?
• When have you found that in retrospect you could have been thankful for something that you were not grateful for at the time it was happening? How can this perspective inform your life now?
• How has a grateful person affected your own vision of what matters in life? How has someone who lives out of bitterness affected your life?
• How does your disposition influence your attitude toward gratitude?

Prayers of gratitude and thankfulness have the power and potential to bring healing to our churches, to bring hope to shattered relationships, to resurrect struggling marriages, and to bring new creation to our own dead and lifeless souls. It is a cure for cynicism, salve for sarcasm, a balm for our discouragement. It has the power to liberate us from the suspicion that holds us captive and to bring us to the Promised Land of joyful life in the Spirit of God. (Can’t you just imagine the incredible ways that thankfulness can help cultivate the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives!)

This week, in the midst of feasting on turkey and pumpkin pie, watching football, succumbing to the powers of tryptophan and serotonin, take some time to practice the discipline of thankfulness. Give some thanks on Thanksgiving! Try to practice one or more of the following spiritual exercises alone or together with your family this “turkey day.” (These have been modified and adapted from Calhoun.)

• Develop a family thanksgiving journal. Spend time together listing and recording the incredible gifts of God that have come to you this past year in the form of people, experiences, blessings, struggles, challenges, successes, and failures. (Or create a scrapbook with photos and pictures. Write short prayers of thanksgiving next to each one.) Spend some time thinking and talking about how these things have changed you and what it means that God has been present in all of them.
• Read Psalm 136 together as a family. Choose one person to read the first half of each verse and then have everyone respond together: “His steadfast love endures for ever!” Continue with your own litany of praise, inviting everyone in the family to call out something for which they are thankful. After each one, everyone in the group should respond, “His steadfast love endures forever!”
• Write a letter of thanks to someone who has touched your life in the past year, the past month, and the past. If you do this together as a family, take time to prayer for each person, thanking God for each person by name and thanking God for being present in your lives through each of those people.
• What sorts of things tend to encourage you in thankfulness? Praise songs? Worship? Prayer? Time spent with friends? Time alone in solitude and reflection? Giving and receiving presents? Helping the poor or disenfranchised? What tends to discourage you or make thankfulness more difficult? When do you sense comparison, sarcasm, cynicism, and discontentment taking root in your soul? Plan ways to incorporate the things that encourage thankfulness into your life on a regular basis. Try to find ways to remove the things that are an impediment to having thankful heart.
• Hold a thank-you party. Invite the people you want to honor with a thank you. Create and send out personalized invitations and spend the time celebrating and honoring them. (It might be a little uncomfortable for them at the time, but I think that they’ll leave being incredibly blessed and encouraged!)
• Notice your tendency to make comparisons that result in feelings of dissatisfaction or entitlement. Practice abstaining from comparative statements about what you don’t have. Instead give thanks for what you do have.

Whatever else you may do this week, take advantage of the chance to give thanks! Help cultivate a spirit of thanksgiving in your children. May God help us all as we grow in thankfulness.

Long time...

Well, it's been a while since I've posted here. My world has been pretty hectic of late. I don't say that pridefully, for I know firsthand the results and impact of the sin of busyness and "overcommittedness."

Though I am missing my girls TERRIBLY!, this has been a good weekend, on the whole. I've gotten a lot of work done, though it seems there's always more to do. I've been on a television fast since Friday morning, which has been incredibly trying (strange for a guy who didn't even watch television several years ago). I've been able to go and "be"with people from LOCC, feeling fully present in a way that I often don't. I spent yesterday morning at a funeral of the father of a dear woman in our church. I was able to grab her seven-year-old son, give him a hug (at least as close to a hug as you can give a 7yo!), and validate all of the strange things that are going on inside of him. I spent about seven hours with friends from LO at a cookout. We ate, laughed, shared stories and life, played volleyball and horseshoes, and fellowshipped in the Spirit of God. It was a gift to be able to receive others fully yesterday, and by doing so to receive the presence of God in them. I got a lot of work done toward my sermon for today. (I don't think I've ever "finished" a sermon; I continue to edit and modify until the moment I am in the pulpit. Then the editing is done on the fly!) It was prep work for sermon that was not to be, at least not or today. The wonderful afternoon of fun gave me a nice flare up of seasonal allergies that attacked me all night long. In order to spare my class and the congregation having to watch my nose leak and listen to me cough all the way through the sermon, I called in the replacements. (Thank goodness for people who will bail you out at the last minute!)

I've also been able to do a good bit of reading this weekend. I read some from O'Day's brilliant commentary on the Gospel of John in the New Interpreter's Bible. Wonderful stuff! I also read Darryl Tippens' new book, Pilgrim Heart: The Way of Jesus in Everyday Life. I highly recommend this read to you. It's a wonderful and very accessible look at the Christian journey as the cultivation of a "worldly spirituality." It is a helpful book that I am hoping to start reading with my elders soon. I think that it does a good job making the spiritual life accessible, especially to our tribe, when other volumes on the spiritual life might seem a little too difficult to use in our everyday lives. Tippens is deeply grounded in the Scriptures and the Christian spiritual tradition.

He wants us to hear Jesus invitation to "Follow me." He writes, Jesus' invitation reflects how the Christian life is rather simply, at one level. It is a matter of rejecting the allure of the sedentary life in order to get out on the road and seek God. The saints through the ages can be recognized by their searching spirits. They live as strangers and foreigners on the earth. "[T]hey desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them" (Hebrews 11:14-16). A faithful heart is always a passionate pilgrim heart, ever on the road, ever moving forward--searching for understanding, seeking the face of God (198).

I also loved this quote, especially in light of my work with college students and young adults and couples who are struggling with the hard questions of life and faith which are too often not welcome questions in "the church": Through the years I have been blessed by faithful friends who have not merely tolerated, but welcomed, my questions. In their hospitable company something quite unexpected happened. The doubts grew less fierce in the warm glow of their welcome. When I saw that my toughest questions did not rattle or unsettle them, I became more settled and less doubtful. Airing the doubts, I have found does not enlarge them--just the reverse....Wondering and wandering may be necessary to spiritual discovery whereas making doubts taboo only ensures that they grow stronger (196). (I like the "wondering and wandering! I should have gotten that trademarked! ;-) )

He goes on to say something that I may pass out to several godly and wonderful parents at LOCC: When we desperately want others, especially those most dear to us, to believe, it is often hard to grant them the space to question and to work things through. We want to see them arrive at the shining destination by the shortest route. Yet one of the finest gifts we can give strugglers is the freedom to take the long way 'round. Jesus promises us that if we ask, we will receive; if we search, we will find; if we knock, the door will be opened (Matthew 7:7-11) A good question to ask ourselves is this: Do we trust Jesus on this point? (191)

Here are three quotes that Tippens mines out of the writers of the spiritual tradition that captured my attention today:

From Soren Kierkegaard (in Tippens' chapter on discernment): What I really need it to be clear about what I must do, not what I must know....What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I should do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die....[O]f what use would it be to me to be able to formulate the meaning of Christianity...if it had no deeper meaning for me and for my life?

From Flannery O'Conner (in Tippens' chapter on suffering): I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened....What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you can't believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God.

From Thomas Merton (in Tippens' chapter on seeking): My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following you will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Well, after writing this I still miss my girls. I get to seem them around noon tomorrow. Tomorrow come quickly!

The Apophatic Way

Recently I've been rediscovering the apophatic way. I don't have much time to describe it now, but suuffice it to say that apophaticism is an acknowledgement that God is mystery, beyond our full comprehension, beyond the captivity of our limited language. I have been taking this journeying with some old friends: St. John of the Cross, Bernard of Clairvaux, Julian of Norwich, Thomas Merton. I've also been journeying with a new friend, Belden Lane. Lane wrote a wonderful book the subject entitled, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality. I hope to write some reflections on this book more in the future, but that will have to wait for another time. Today, I want to sahre with you a prayer from Merton that caught my rekindled apophatic attention....

"Teach me to go to the country beyond words and beyond names. Teach me to pray on this side of the frontier, here where these woods are.

I need to be led by you. I need my heart to be moved by you. I need my soul to be made clean by your prayer. I need my will to be made strong by you. I need the world to be saved and changed by you. I need you for all those who suffer, who are in prison, in danger, in sorrow. I need you for all the crazy people. I need your healing hand to work always in my life. I need you to make me, as you made your Son, a healer, a comforter, a savior. I need you to name the dead. I need you to help the dying cross their particular rivers. I need you for myself whether I live or die. I need to be your monk and your son. It is necessary. Amen."

Thomas Merton. A Search for Solitude. Journals, volume 4. Lawrence S. Cunningham, editor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996: 46-47

Wisdom for the season from Nouwen

I celebrated my 32 birthday on Saturday. When I was in Tulsa for the Workshop, my aunt, uncle, and 4 full-of-life cousins gave me Henri Nouwen's In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership as a birthday gift. I love Nouwen's work. He is one of the few authors I reread, as I find his words both a continual challenge to my inner-struggles and a source of strength and empowerment for the journey of faith. This book is definitely an example of that dichotomy.

Today, is Tuesday in Holy Week. I find myself at the height of Lenten introspection and reflection, which leads to the Spirit's revelation of personal struggle and sin. Just now, in the wake of writing a confessional email to my parents about some of my own inner compulsions and struggles in my vocational calling, God spoke to me through the little introduction to this short book. I want to leave you with a few of the lines that have challenged me today....

I asked myself, "What decisions have you been making lately and how are they a reflection of the way you sense the future?" Somehow I have to trust that God is at work in me and that the way I am being moved to new inner and outer places is part of a larger movement of which I am only a very small part. (p. 19)

After twenty-five years of priesthood, I found myself praying poorly, living somewhat isolated from other people, and very much preoccupied with burning issues. Everyone way saying that I was doing really well, but something inside was telling me that my success was putting my own soul in danger. I began to ask myself whether my lack of contemplative prayer, my loneliness, and my constantly changing involvement in what seemed most urgent were signs that the Spirit was gradually being suppressed. It was very hard for me to see clearly, and though I never spoke about hell or only jokingly so, I woke up one day with the realization that I was living in a very dark place and that the term "burnout" was a convenient psychological translation for a spiritual death.

Nouwen spends the rest of this little volume discussing the movement from three temptations to three new disciplines: 1) from relevance to prayer; 2) from popularity to ministry; and 3) from leading to being led. (In that way, this will likely be similar to his The Way of the Heart) I look forward to finishing these challenging and insightful words from one of my author-mentors in the faith.

Transfiguration and the Lenten Season

Today is Transfiguration Sunday. The texts for today are majestic in their story, movement, and sweep: Exodus 24:29-35, Psalm 99, Luke 9:28-36, and 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2. These texts are brilliant because they do more than remind us of the power of the transformative brilliance of God on the lives of those who encounter God. They serve as a doorway into the Lenten season, a season of repentance, of cleansing, of metamorphosis. Today we are given the glorious hope that we have a place in our story, that, like the narratives of Moses and Jesus, we too are "being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another." Of course, with that insight comes the reminder and realization that we have not arrived, we are not complete on this journey. Opportunities and, better, demands for growth abound. Repentance is not optional, but necessary. This life of faith, this personal and inner-transfiguration in the lives of believers demands a renewed conviction, a recommitment to following the way of Jesus up to the cross. So, this week we once again make the yearly turn from Transfiguration Sunday to Ash Wednesday to begin the journey with Jesus from glory ("It's good for us to be here.") to cross ("It is complete.").

As I think about the Lenten season, I am reminded of my own lack of commitment to prayer. I struggle with prayer, because I have little use for most of the "Christian" prayer that I hear. More often than not it seems to be an attempt to cajole God to provide a laundry list of things that we want, much like a birthday list. I know that there is a place for such lists, but I worry that the way we have been taught to pray these lists have deeper roots in our consumer culture than in the Christian worldview. (I admit that it's my cynicism talking here.)

The type of prayer that resonates with me is prayer that is forged in silence and simplicity. It is painful prayer, for it forces me to face my own inadequacy, my own weakness, my own failing in the face, especially when I find myself coming before the presence of the Holy Wholly Other. But in my busy world (a business that simply protects my own need to feel relevant and shields me from time for this kind of prayer) I have little space to cultivate this kind of prayer life.

So, one of my commitments this Lenten season is to rediscover prayer. I am going to start with a good old friend, the Jesus Prayer. It is a simple prayer, widely practiced in the EO tradition, that can be prayed rhythmically with your breathing. The repetitive and rhythmic nature of the prayer draws you into deeper contemplation. (In that way, it is very similar to the meditative, prayerful flow of a Taize' hymn.)

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me."

To round out the Trinitarian focus of my prayer life, I plan to add two similar prayers I discovered in N.T. Wright's Simply Christian.

"Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, set up your kingdom in our midst."

and

"Holy Spirit, breath of the living God, renew me and all the world."