Thanksgiving

Porter Taylor Thanksgiving 2024

Here we are: another Thanksgiving: turkey, Macy’s Parade, football. We have been here so many times, the temptation is to go on automatic.  Then there’s the political mess in our country and for those of us in Asheville, NC there’s the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

And yet, we are alive. And yet we have had so many blessings. And yet, God is still in charge. As the poet wrote, “Hope is the hardest love we carry.”

As I thought about Thanksgiving, I remembered some quotes from Henri Nouwen:

          “To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all our lives—the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moment so sorrow, the success as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections—that requires hard spiritual work….Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say “thank you” to all that has brought us to the present moment.”

Yes, I have some regrets, but I also realize that the dead ends of my life as well as the mistakes I made forced me to embrace what matters and let go of what doesn’t. It’s why I am a “grateful” recovering alcoholic.  To get sober I had to remember who I truly am and why I am here. This disease is part of my thanksgiving.

So, today before we eat the turkey and turn on the television, we will give thanks for everything because we are alive to give thanks, and because we have today to see what surprises God has in mind. I keep embracing Julian of Norwich’s words in the middle of a plague: “All will be well and all manner of things will be well.”  The truth is we don’t manage our lives; we live them, by giving thanks for the moments that have brought us to where we are.

It's always best to close with a saint. St. Francis’ prayer of gratitude:

“Wherever we are, in every place, at every hour, at every time, every day and continually, let us truly and humbly believe, hold in our heart, love, honor, adore, serve, praise, bless, glorify, exalt, magnify, and give thanks to the Most High and Supreme Eternal God, Trinity and Unity, Father, Son, and Holy Spriit: to Him who is Creator of all, Savior of all, without beginning or end, unchangeable, invisible, incomprehensible, blessed, praiseworthy, glorious, exalted, sublime, most high, gentle, lovable, delightful, and, above all else, desirable, for ever and ever.”

Relection 9/25/24

Porter Taylor—9/25/24--- “Why Prayer Matters”

I have been thinking about prayer these days because the world is so confusing.  I mean there is so much of what’s happening in this world that doesn’t feel right or even close to God’s will.  My prayer list gets longer and longer and yet I can’t say I see the results I expected. When confused, connect with someone smarter than you (and there are plenty for me to choose from).

          Rowan Willams, the retired Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Communion, wrote, Prayer is “that process by which our thoughts and ideals and hopes are gradually aligned with God’s eternal actions.”    So, to pray is to widen and deepen the way we see the world and our calling in it.  It’s why St. Francis prayed: “Lord make me an instrument of your peace.” It’s not our world. It’s God’s world.  Prayer is where we align ourselves with God and let go of the small ways we have labelled the world and our calling in the world.  That’s why Julian of Norwich in the middle of a plague, heard this prayer in her heart and mind: “All will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”

So, we must get clear that our calling is to align ourselves with the divine desire: “Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done on earth.” It’s why the Episcopal Catechism defines prayer as “responding to God, by thought and by deeds with or without words.” 

For me prayer gets me out of my small way of labelling the world. Prayer reminds me that I am not in charge, but I am required to do my part by being “an instrument of [God’s] peace.” Prayer is to remember God’s grace as well as our calling. I have prayed for certain politicians for years, because  I don’t believe their actions match God’s instructions, but I am also praying to see the face of Christ in them regardless of how deep our divisions are.

I once had a Spiritual Director tell me “The problem with people is that they can’t get enough of what they don’t need.” I don’t need any more labels. I don’t need any more smugness that I am right and those who disagree with me are wrong.  No, I need to recapture God’s vison for me, for all God’s people, and for this world.  I need more of St. Francis because, as G. K. Chesterton wrote, “St. Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man.”   Therefore, as tempting as it is, I am trying not to label our politicians. Despite the fact that I disagree with almost everything some of them say, I intend to remember regardless of our differences and regardless of the consequences of their previsions and if elected future actions, they too are children of God.

So, my prayer is to be reminded of that every day and to pray that whoever sees me in a similar light might do the same.

Sept. 11, 2024 Weekly Reflection

“Trust in God’s goodness all the days of one’s life” (BCP,830)

            Next week I celebrate my 74th year of being alive. The good news is that I have a twin sister, so someone always remembers, but the quite amazing news is that even with all the challenges of getting old, it’s still a day to give thanks.  I cannot say that being an elder is easy.  I have some serious limitations, and there is a nagging uneasiness about feeling as if because of my age, I am on the sidelines.

            Because I am unemployed, these days I often have too much time on my hands and, despite my better self, that brings up regrets about my past.  I try repeating a prayer from the New Zealand prayerbook:

 “I will lie down in peace and take my rest, For it is in God alone that I dwell unafraid. It is night. Let us be still in the presence of God. It is night after a long day. What has been done has been done; What has not been done has not been done; Let it be. “

            Yes, if I could start over, I’d do many things differently, but what I often ignore is if I started over, I’d just make different mistakes. That’s life. So, I try to be honest about my shortcomings and my past mistakes, but I am also seeking to find a deeper and wider definition of who I am rather than grading myself on my past.  It’s not only “What’s done is done and what’s left undone is left undone.”  It’s also any day, any time is when we can start over.  Indeed, St. Francis’ last words were: “Let’s begin again.”

            Every Lent I say my confession to a priest because I want someone to say out loud what I need to hear and believe: “our Lord Jesus Christ…of his great mercy forgive you all your offenses and…absolve you from all your sins….Now there is rejoicing in heaven; for you were lost and are found; you were dead and are now alive in Christ Jesus our Lord. Go in peace. The Lord has put away all your sins.” (BCP, 451).

We cannot live in the past. Indeed: “This is the day the Lord has made, Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

There is nothing I can do about the last seventy-three years, except to be honest about those parts of myself that prevent me from being the person God created me to be.  This is freeing because there are so many things I can’t and do not want to do.   There’s a reason I am a retired bishop. There’s a reason I don’t work seven days a week.  There’s a reason I am sober from alcohol. My hope is to hold on to the practices that make me more of who I was born to be, and to let go of those that do not; to celebrate the events that have connected me to my true source and to let go of those that did not.

But most of all, my hope and intention is to use the years I have wisely.  I don’t have time to be nervous, or envious, or angry, or depressed or even distracted. I don’t have time to let my false self-rule my behavior or thoughts. Most of all, I don’t have time to postpone the very acts of forgiveness and admission of wrong to friends, family and anyone who was and is and will be part of my life.

I keep thinking of St. Teresa of Avila’s words of wisdom:

“Life is short and must be lived by you alone. And there is one glory which is eternal. If you think upon these things, there will be many things about which you care nothing.”

As my birthday comes closer, I am thinking about these things, and I am hoping that that thought will help me care nothing about many things that are a detour from my true self and instead to live into all the acts that finally help me be the person God created me to be.

September 4, 2024 Weekly Reflection

Today in the Episcopal calendar is the feast day for Paul Jones, the bishop of Utah from 1914 to 1918.  He had a short tenure because he spoke publicly and often about his resistance to the USA’s involvement in World War I.

 Bishop Jones was opposed to the German brutality during the First World War. He wrote, “I believe most sincerely that German brutality and aggression must be stopped, and I am willing, if need be, to give my life and what I possess to bring that about.”  However, Bishop Jones did not see war as the means to stop what was going in in Germany. In addition, he was against all wars.

In the old Episcopal hymnal there is a hymn that begins with these words: “Once to every man and nation/Comes the moment to decide” The next stanza says,  “Then it is the brave man choses/While the coward stands aside.”

Bishop Jones received so much opposition to his antiwar stance from the Presiding Bishop and an assigned committee that he resigned as the bishop in April of 1918. He became a chaplain at Antioch College. In 1933 he was restored as a bishop but was not allowed to vote in the bishops’ meetings.

          I think of Paul Jones because sometimes I play it safe.  I certainly give my opinions in conversations, and I am careful about how I vote. Yes, I am conscious of using our money to help worthwhile projects. However, I realize that I talk and preach about the cross, but I wonder if I am willing to follow Jesus when the path leads me there. It’s easy to have convictions so long as there’s no cost. I think about my episcopacy and the times when I could have stood up and did not.

          The time that comes to mind when I did stand up  for the right thing was the General Convention voting on whether Gene Robinson could become the bishop of New Hampshire. I went into the convention ready to support him. I didn’t have doubt about how to vote, but I also didn’t feel at rest. I knew some of the opposition argument of affirming an openly gay bishop would be ugly, and they were. However, as soon as I met Gene Robinson, I felt more certain about the rightness of this move. This wasn’t merely some ethereal issue. This was about a human being, a child of God, a follower of Jesus, a priest who vowed to serve the Church and was equipped to do so as a bishop.

I am by no means an ethics scholar.  However, meeting Gene Robinson pushed me beyond labels and as a result, helped me to realize this wasn’t an abstract issue.  This was about a man who was simply seeking to find the way to being the person God created him to be so he could serve the church he loved and a Church that was called to live out its theology.

Of course, I realize that we can’t know everyone or everything when there’s a decision to make, but for me the first step is to get beyond labels.   When I met Gene Robinson, I knew immediately that he is a child of God and a wonderful gifted ordained person who would become a great bishop.

Therefore, when I think of Paul Jones and his resistance to the war, I wonder if we as a country can get beyond our labels of Democrat and Republican. I wonder if we can find a truce from the name calling and small definitions and instead of removing the people we disagree with, to welcome a different way of seeing what needs to be done. I mean what if we at least said to ourselves if not aloud, “This is what I believe, but I could be wrong,” and then listen to one another?

At the end of the General Convention, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswald ended by quoting a line from the poet Rumi:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

If we could get to the field, then like me with Bishop Robinson, we would just see a person and not the boxes in which we’ve placed one another. Because Paul Jones knew what we must learn over and over again:  it’s time for the war to be over.

August 28, 2024

Porter Taylor---Saints

 I am coming up on my 74 birthday (and imaging you are saying, “he doesn’t look that old”). As I thought about this, I kept thinking of a novel by Graham Green (yes, I can be nerd). He writes,

“On his deathbed the hero of the book has a realization. He felt only immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty handed with nothing done at all. He felt like someone who missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He now knew that at the end there was only one thing that counted: to be a saint.”

The longer I live and the more I read about saints, the more I sense that I have known some saints who do not have ST. in front of their names. Frederick Buechner writes: “A saint is a life-giver, a human being with the same sorts of hang-ups and abysses as the rest of us” and Rowan Williams goes further:

Saints “have the power to break open some of the categories that invite the reader into a new world….They are, “in various ways, beacons of illumination, people who lived lives that open up perspective and horizons for the rest of us that are unpredictable and enriching.” (Twenty Lives that Illuminate the Christian Way).

He goes on to write that saints are important because through them one becomes aware that “you are not trapped in the story you tell about yourself, that vision is a gift worth sharing” (Twenty Lives…10).

The saints in my life have in many ways set me free from the story I told about myself.  I was four pounds when I was born. I was in an incubator for a month.  I grew up fearing the world was turning without me, or that if I didn’t try very hard, I’d be left behind. 

But repeatedly men and women have helped me see beyond this story. Again, Williams writes, “if a saint touches your life, you become alive in a new way.” So, God kept sending people to me that reminded me of who I am as a child of God as well as who I am created to be.  

I think of Charles Dubois at the Divinity School of Sewanee, who eased my anxiety over the Graduation Exams simply by sharing his own experience.

I think of Arthur Evans, one of the professors at Emory and a devote Roman Catholic, who showed me what being graceful and devout looks like as he lost more and more bodily control because of Parkinson’s disease.

I think of my father and his baffling sense of humor and his always surprising ways to have fun. He was a man bigger than life while I was a son who was often not sure of my own capacities.

Saints are not mortals on a higher plane of consciousness. They are not spiritual Super Men or Women. No, they are men and women who are living examples of what it means to live holy and honest lives.  Saints are people who embrace that fact that they are wonderfully made and, therefore, as Julian of Norwich wrote, they are assured that since God is “in all things” and since God promises that God will “never fail to guide all things toward the purpose for which God created them from before time…[Then] how can anything go wrong?”

Saints help us breathe and live the life we are born to live with all its surprises and dead ends and blessings.

I have finally given up trying to be as smart as Thomas Merton or as productive as Teresa of Avila or as creative as Francis of Assisi.

Instead, I want to fully become who I am and invite all of us to accept and believe and rejoice that it’s enough to be fully ourselves.

Reflection 8-21-24

Porter Taylor

                   Finding the Way

          There is a reason the early Church was called “The Way” and not “The Answers.”  When we become God lovers and Jesus followers, then we let go of our egocentric sense of how the world should work and instead listen to the Spirit and, hopefully, take the first step—which is all about embracing your faith.

          It’s the Thomas Merton prayer:

“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 I am following your 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.”

 At the age of almost 74 my sense of the ability to affect the world is quite different from when I was 21.  I certainly do not see the road ahead of me, nor do I falsely think I can control my or anyone’s life.  In addition, the past is the past. Therefore, what I have and all that any of us have is this moment. I am realizing that what is required is a desire not just to hold on to my faith but to deepen it because I realize how much I need God.

When I am actually capable of doing this, I experience a much greater sense of freedom because I am somewhat clearer about what is mine to do, and what is God’s to do.  Then I can act because I feel aligned to the Spirit and I am not trying to control the world but just do my part.

 I can vote, but I can’t make the person I voted for win the election. I can pray for my children, but I can’t make their lives avoid catastrophes. In addition, I can be kind, but I can’t control anyone else.

However, this is the day the Lord has made, and it’s the only day I have. So, my hope and prayer are to give thanks for tis day; to be as fully present as I can be; and to take on what is mine and offer the rest to God.

As Merton wrote, “Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.”

Because if I am connected to God, what can go wrong?

Sermon 6-26-22

+Porter Taylor

Proper 8C-------Grace Asheville 6/26/22

Thanks to your rector Milly for inviting me----

I still remember putting my hands on her head some 9 years ago and saying “It’s a great day for the Church”

            It’s good to be here---I grew up about a mile from Grace Church and went to school at Ira B. Jones (although it was Grace School back then)

Today we hear the word God gives to us:

For freedom Christ has set us free.

Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?

Having just celebrated Juneteenth, hopefully, we are more than aware of the evils of slavery.

But Paul is speaking of a different kind of slavery---it’s the slavery of our habits and our vision.

            It’s the slavery of our confusion about who we are---our forgetfulness of being God’s beloved.

            It’s the slavery of what he calls the “works of the flesh”:

Jealousy, anger, dissensions, factions, enmities, strife

We embody the works of the flesh because we forget who we are.

            The works of the flesh are when our way of seeing the world is too small

As a result we see others through small and inflexible labels of who is right and who is wrong

Which limits our sight  And keep us from being instruments of God’s grace.

The flesh is a self-centered way of living

 and, therefore, it makes us immune to repentance and conversion.

            And we get stuck.

            St Paul names the problem as the “ desires of the flesh”---but what he means is our vision is too small

            The lens through which we see the world and process the world is too narrow—

            As if we know everything there is to know about a person

 by who they voted for---or whether they recycle or whether they are vaccinated

                        Or on and on and on.

Or we think we have mapped the world—we know who is holy and who is not

            Who is right and who is wrong.

That labeling leads to the behavior on Paul’s list---strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions

The world of the flesh---blocks us from remembering that God is in control not us

            It keeps us from walking in the Way of Jesus—

-and instead we are stuck in our nearsighted vision of the world.

And therefore we are not free----Not free to see beyond our labels

            And not free enough to have the courage to cross the divides

So the freedom we are offered comes from a new way of seeing and therefore a new way of being.

Freedom comes when we remember who we are---and why we are here

Freedom comes when we let go of the fears and the false ways of thinking and the unchristian ways of behaving

            And we remember no one gets to heaven by themselves

            And as we learn in revelation—heaven is a celestial city---where we sing in harmony

Republicans and Democrats----Liber and Conservative----All races---All sexual orientation—All

We realize all the law is summed up in “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”

            Because when we love and in turn are loved—we are no longer slaves to our fears

            Love drives away fear and opens us to live the life God has given us to live

            And then we are free to live the life God’s gives---

Let’s be clear---we cannot wait to be free until all the sins and prejudices and divisions are gone

            Freedom comes when we realize that this is the only moment we have to be alive

            And we realize that however confusing the times are---God is still in Charge

                        And God’s promises are still true----regardless of the current state of the world.

I thought about this,  I thought of a poster that  Mother Teresa had on her wall in Calcutta—it reads:

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

This is what freedom looks like—

-we live the life God calls us to live regardless of the world around us

Because this is the only life we have to live.

We find freedom when we put first things first---we are to love God and walk in God’s Way

If those around us become narrow minded and prejudiced---

does it help us to become narrowminded and prejudiced towards them?

Freedom comes from remembering why we are here on earth

            And therefore ,we know what is worth caring about and what is not

Freedom is about remembering our true calling

So that we do not become servants to false ways of living

which is what Paul calls the  fruits of the flesh,

enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions,

            These bind us—these keep us from being free—

they limit us to a half life
Contrast them with the fruits of the spirit

Love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness self-control

These give us true freedom because we are not consumed with ourselves

As a grateful recovering alcoholic---I found freedom when I got sober

            My true calling was not to be entrapped by alcohol.

                        Instead---it was sobriety that set me free---I could go anywhere and be with anyone

It was sobriety that gave me portions of Love joy peace patience kindness goodness

 faithfulness gentleness self control

            Then We then ask ourselves “How shall we spend our lives?

            Are we embracing the fruits of the Spirit and letting go of the desires of the Flesh?

And if so---do we experience the freedom that comes from

knowing all we are called to do is the next act that Jesus gives us to do?

As I thought about this, a sort of outrageous example came to mind---

It’s from a novel titled The Horse’s Mouth by Joyce Cary

It’s the story of a painter---Gully Jimson---who paints huge outrageous paintings on old buildings

            Even as he knows they buildings are destined to be torn down

            Gully knows what matters is that he is true to his gift of painting

                        And then to let the rest go

He gains freedom from focusing on the gift---

            He doesn’t care if his paintings are bought

            He doesn’t care if he becomes famous

            He doesn’t care if he is rich or poor

His calling in life is to paint—to make something beautiful

            And then what happens will happen---because he is free from the results

Remember Mother Teresa’s words?

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway….

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway

The freedom we are invited to embrace is to know our calling in life—

And do the next thing.

Paint the next picture even if you don’t have canvas

            Even if it might get torn down.

Gully Jimson knows he doesn’t have time to feel vicitimized

This is the one life he has to live and this is the one moment he has to offer his gift to this world

            It’s not that he does nothing—it’s that he does the next thing he was born to do.

At the end of the novel, Gully is dying and a nun is caring for him

And she starts to weep for him

Gully says to her----“I have been priviledge to know some of the noblest walls in England….

I have to thank God for the walls. They have been good to me. God and love without the help of anything on earth.”

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

It is not the finished painting that matters—it’s the freedom of painting

            It’s the freedom of being alive in this moment and changing the world by being who you are regardless of the actions around you.

For freedom Christ has set us free---

Let us exercise our freedom for God’s glory and for the sake of our own souls and the sake of this world.

It's Time

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
And how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Bob Dylan
 

It’s time. It’s time for us to remember who we are and why we are here. I am writing on Tuesday afternoon when the nation just heard the guilty verdict in the trial of the police officer who placed his knee on George Floyd’s throat until Floyd died.

I am not interested in re-litigating the trial. 

I am here to say, we cannot live like this. It is not God’s intention. We must move out of melodrama. There are not good people and bad people. There are just sinners who are aware of their need of God to enable them even as flawed people to be instruments of God’s will, and there also are those who are unaware and, therefore, may or may not be helping to bring in God’s reign of peace, justice, and, mercy or instead may be deepening racism.

It’s time to move out of melodrama and take an honest look at who we are as a nation and what we want to be much less who we as Christians are called to be.

It’s time. Time to be honest about our past, our present, and God’s desire for our future.

Remember Jesus’ last words in the Gospel of Matthew?  “Go therefore making disciples of all nations….teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” And what did Jesus teach us? “Love God with all your heart soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”

It's time. It’s not enough to sit in judgment of Derek Chavin or anyone else. We are to “be the change you seek for the world” (Mahatma Ghandi). The question is not simply who is right and who is wrong. The question we face is what are we doing here and now to make a difference?  How are we being instruments of the Good News? Do we love our neighbor as ourself?  

It’s time. We must start where we are.  

First, we must become aware of who we are as a country and who we are as individuals. Take a step in that direction. Become a participant in Sacred Ground; read books that lift the veil of dishonesty about our country’s history.

Second, as we say in AA, “Do a moral inventory”. What’s our history? What is it about our past we don’t want to confront? What about our present ways of avoiding the issue of racism or being complicit?

I grew up in Asheville. We had a maid who left her eleven children to come and cook for us and clean our house. As a child it never dawned on me that something was wrong with this. I never wonder why the five of us lived in a house three times bigger than the one Anna lived in with twelve other people.

Third, we are to be open and intentional about what God is calling us to do and think right now.  It’s so convenient to blame Derek Chavin as if he is the cause of everything racist in Minneapolis. He is the instrument of a long story that has been told since our country’s inception.

As the writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Yes, we must confess our country’s racism and pray and work to rid ourselves and this country of it.

Yes, we must do something about the never ending deaths of black men and women in our streets and begin by thinking this is more than a police problem. It’s a systemic problem that begins with where people live and what kind of money they make, and if they are allowed to vote.

The truth is we sinners in need of God’s redemption must not make Derek Chavin the scapegoat. He is one person who holds up a mirror of what is wrong in every city of this country.  Racism is not over because he is convicted.

Now is the time. The answer is not blowing in the wind. It’s pounding in our hearts and echoing in the voice of our Lord.

 It’s time.

Practice Resurrection

Practice Resurrection
April 8, 2021

+Porter Taylor

Did you put the Easter baskets up? Have you already moved into the next thing?  Has your attention moved to taxes? Remember that Easter is not a day but a season. It’s the Great Fifty Days when the Risen Lord shows up all over the place. He's on the road to Emmaus; he’s on the beach with the disciples; he’s in the Upper Room. Indeed, he is in your daily life today.

There is something about us that can’t quite open all the way up to resurrection, perhaps because it breaks all our notions of a stable universe. Christ being raised from the dead violates all our assumptions. Dead is dead. As a result, there have been countless ways of explaining away the miracle of resurrection. Here are a few:

• Jesus’ followers stole his body out of the tomb.

• Jesus wasn’t completely dead on the cross.

• Jesus was given a drug that made him seem dead.

• Jesus had a twin brother who pops up after the crucifixion and claims to be Jesus. (This one gets a prize for originality.)

• His followers just had visions or simply remembered him.

• In the Upper Room he hypnotized the disciples to believe they saw him after he was dead.

Perhaps the motive for these explanations is that the resurrection turns the world right side up. Resurrection defies all our laws. It is a fundamental reorientation. It’s a different way of seeing not just life after death, but this life in which we live. God is truly God and, therefore, anything is possible. There is another life beyond death. The gifts the Risen Christ gives us are peace, forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit, and those gifts create a new world. Christ is risen; we are risen.

In the Great Fifty Days of Easter, we are invited to rediscover another way of seeing; another way of being; another way of relating. The old laws are transcended and it’s a new world. In Luke’s gospel, one of the Risen Christ’s last deeds is to “open their minds.”

In his poem, The Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, the poet Wendell Berry writes: “So, friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world.…. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.”

Christ is risen. We are risen. In this Eastertide, let us proclaim the Good News by word and deed. We have been given a new way of seeing and a new way of being. The old ways of mapping the world are dissolved. If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.  To practice resurrection is to let go of our labels of others and of ourselves. Like the disciples we are sent out to proclaim this news that we all can start over and see ourselves and others with new eyes. Our old ways of defining and separating and labelling the world have vanished. It’s a new creation.  

What if we let go of our labels and categorization of others and saw them as souls seeking to find their way? What if we reached out to the very persons we least want to be with? What if at the end of every political declaration we add the words, “but I could be wrong”?  Remember that at the cross, Jesus forms a new family. He says to his mother that the disciple John is now her son and to John that Mary is now is mother.  Because at the cross everyone there belongs to the scar clan, and, therefore, has let go of the divisive ways of defining the world. We want to be made new and when we are, the gratitude for God’s grace dissolves our old ways of labeling the world. 

“So, friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. …. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.”

The Birth is in YOU
December 2020

+Porter Taylor

“Like Mary we open to the Word. Like Mary, we gestate and give birth to the Word through the actions of our lives. Like Mary, we are involved in the process of bringing God into the world. Like Mary, we are the finite earthen vessels into which divine life is poured…. This God-bearing is neither negligible nor passive. Rather, we are active recipients, persons whose freedom of choice is never violated. The request that we allow the dynamics to be realized through the medium of our lives is a genuine one. We can refuse. Or we can assent and let the most intimate recesses of our lives be inhabited, transformed, made new by God.” The Vigil. Wendy Wright. pp. 103-104.

Christmas is not an event in the past we celebrate. At the heart of things, we are not historians. No, we are called to be God bearers. Christmas is both an historical one-time event and an ongoing radical shift in the connection of the divine and this world. “The Word has become flesh and dwells among us.”

As Anglicans we have always embraced the middle way between both Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox Church and the Protestant Reformation. However, even in the early days of the Church of England, the emphasis was more on being Protestant than Orthodox. As a result, the focus was more on our being fallen and sinful than God bearers made in the image of the divine. I am not sure, but I wonder if that contributes to our perception that Christmas is mostly limited to an historical event. God came into the world in the form of Jesus. Done.

The incarnation is ongoing. That doesn’t make us pantheist. It makes us Christians. It means that God is part of this world; part of our lives; part of the movement of the divine will to being done on earth as it is in heaven.

So, amid the presents and whatever else ends up in the stockings, remember the gift is not any thing in a box. The gift is in you. This Christmas the divine spark again glows in your heart and calls you to embrace it that so that the light in you might overcome the darkness around us and through you Christ will manifest in this world right where you are.

According to the mystic Meister Eckhart, Jesus said “I became human for you. If you do not become God for me, you do me wrong.” So, this Christmas let us do more than adore Christ. Let us embrace him and take seriously our call to be “involved in the process of bringing God into the world.” Christmas isn’t merely Merry; it’s deeply holy.

Prayer: Dear God, may the Christ child be born and grow and manifest in us.

Practice: Take seriously your call to be Christ bearer.

Embracing the Real

8/27/20

“So, what is being offered to you is not merely a choice among new states of consciousness…but above all else, a larger and intenser life, a career, a total consecration to the interest of the Real.” Evelyn Underhill, Practical Mysticism

“Think of our life in nature,--daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it—rock, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?” Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods

Phyllis Tickle said that every five hundred years the Church needs a gigantic yard sale. Well, here we are. We are in the time of letting go. We may be kicking and screaming, but our stuff is being emptied out whether we like it or not. And, yes there’s a loss. I miss having my grandkids in the same room and physically going to church, and going to the movies and teaching Sunday School and being in person with churches in Virginia since I am now a Visiting Bishop of Virginia.

Yes, yes, yes.
But there’s the flip side as well. Every house is now invited to be a monastery or, like Thoreau, a cabin in the woods of Walden or the forests of Maine. We have a number of choices before us. We can entertain ourselves—or we can focus on what is real. We can divert our attention with our hundreds of channels on cable or we can remember who we are and what we long to do with our lives.

During this time I have realized what I miss and don’t miss about Church. I miss being inspired by being in holy communion with the people sitting next to me. I miss the collective conversation that happens at the key moments of the service—like the congregation admitting our sins, being absolved and together proclaiming the peace that passes all understanding.

I miss the collective astonishment at good preaching (although now I can shout “Preach it” in my kitchen). I miss the ways children bring us into physical reality because they are in their bodies---squirming and squiggling and being fully alive.

I miss the music incarnated—seeing the singers face to face. I miss kneeling with my brothers and sisters for the Bread of Heaven. And I miss humanity. The physicality of all of it.

But what I have come to realize is that the issue isn’t the loss of Sunday as I used to know. The issue is my limited sight. Like Thoreau, I need to leave comfortable Walden and enter into the dense woods of Maine—or maybe I need to admit that we as a people have moved into the dense woods of Maine. And if I can’t get out of it, I’d better get into it because this is the only day I have to be alive.

I need to remember these words every day: “What is being offered to you is not merely a choice among new states of consciousness…but above all else, a larger and intenser life, a career, a total consecration to the interest of the Real.”
Porter Taylor

Lighting Small Fires
July 9, 2020

+Porter Taylor
Some years ago I was lost. Not geographically. I knew where I was; I just didn’t know where I needed to go or how I could get there if I did. I found myself in what the Desert Mothers and Fathers called “the noon day devil.” It’s when you’ve run through all your good ideas and your favorite verbal quotes and your various ways of denial and it’s just you.
The poet Elizabeth Sewell wrote, “It’s not problems we face. Problems have solutions. It’s some utter deep rooted dilemma.” I think we as a country are in dual deep rooted dilemmas: ravaged by a virus that we cannot or will not get under control; and finally forced to face and deal with the embedded racism that has infected our country since its inception.
I know that our country’s plight is not synonymous with my spiritual issue decades ago, but there is a parallel—at least for me. I went to my spiritual director and after my unloading, he looked at me and said, “Just go straight.” I shook my head and said under my breath, “What does that mean?” Yet it turned out to be very helpful.
What I heard in that statement is to let go of your ways of fooling yourself about what you are doing and what you are not doing with your life. Instead, make an honest deep inventory of your behavior and your motives and think and pray about the kind of person you want to be and the kind of life you want to live and the kind of country you want to live in. Then think of one action you can make to move you towards that.
I write this meditation to remind myself. Because what often happens with me is that I throw myself into a cause but in time my passion runs out, and I follow some diversion. What I’ve learned is that in the long run what matters is less my emotional passion and more my habitual actions over time. To lessen the deaths of COVID 19 or to diminish the racism that infects our country demands a cultural shift, which is a long term project.
I would suggest reading Donna Schaper’s work Living Well While Doing Good. She sets forth many suggestions of how to be intentional over a lifetime in order to make change through our own daily behavior. She writes, “The balance comes from lighting simpler fires. It means doing small things well” because what matters is the deep change that can take a lifetime.
Let me be clear. Sometimes we need large public demonstrations. Where would we be without the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge? However, if we are dedicated to being agents of God’s will being done on earth as in heaven, then change becomes a lifetime proposition. Thus, we must ask “What will sustain our intentions once the public fervor quiets down?” As Donna Schaper writes, “We need to light small fires that we can keep burning over a lifetime instead of trying to set the whole forest ablaze.” When my director said just go straight, he meant to live a more intentional life. What actions are worth doing every day and what must I let go of in order for those to become a habit which becomes a disposition which becomes part of one’s character and enables one to be an agent of long term change?
My concern is that the endemic racism of this country is so embedded that in time, I will go back to my daily life and get stuck in what Thoreau called “quiet lives of desperation.” Therefore, I am seeking repeatable actions I can take to maintain my commitment to be an agent of transformation for my sake and the world’s sake and Christ’s sake.

Meditations in the Time of a Pandemic

Anti-Racism
June 25, 2020

+Porter Taylo
 

Anti-Racism is about opening to a wider reality by letting go of our nearsightedness. “Once I was blind but now I see.” We grow up learning our culture’s way of mapping the world. Whom do we see as important and whom can we neglect? It may be surprising, but even Jesus had to learn to see. When he first encountered the Canaanite woman, he didn’t see her (Matthew 15:22-28). He dismisses her and implies she is a dog. But when she enters a conversation with him, it causes him to open his eyes and see her as a woman of great faith. He is freed from his nearsightedness. I think that everything that happens to Jesus happens to us. Therefore, anti-racism is not just a civic duty; it’s about discipleship.

We live in a culture that is not only infected with blindness, but it has systematized the blindness so that all white people grow up being infected. Remember the line from the Broadway play South Pacific (you might have to be close to my age)? “You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late. To hate all the people your parents hate.”

When we talk about dis-mantling racism, we are talking about white people learning to see. And it’s hard. It’s hard not just because white folks are conditioned on how to filter their sight; it’s hard because it means admitting that part of where white men and women are is because they are privileged in a system that awards whiteness. Dismantling racism is not just about seeing other people as having equal value—as Jesus came to see the Canaanite woman--it’s about recognizing the ways the system
we live in perpetuates discrimination or blindness and then admitting that we who are as white persons means we have come to see that system as “normal” or even “right.” Then it’s about change.

There is Good News. Those of us who have been privileged by our skin color can be cured of our blindness and our prejudice. It’s hard work and requires honesty and a willingness to grow. As Christians, our terms for this cure are “repentance and conversion.” We who are white must do the work to free our minds from our old racist perspective, but this is more than head work. It’s heart work. It’s systems work. It’s surrender work. It’s repentance work. And it’s hard—but it’s about salvation.  St. Augustine wrote, “You are the veil that separates you from the Paradise you seek.” Anti-Racism is about changing systems. It’s about making the world right for everyone. But before those of us who are white start working on the world, we must work on ourselves. We must lift our interior veil and learn to see. In his early twenties, Thomas Merton asked his friend Robert Lax how one becomes a saint, and Lax answered “By Wanting to.” Yes, to learn to see is hard work, but it’s the work that has been given to white folks and it begins with their waning to do it for their sake and the world’s sake and Christ’s sake. The first step is learning to see.
Prayer:

God of all beings and all races, cleanse our sight, widen our vision, help us see all of our fellow human beings as your children, and then give us the strength to change systems that perpetuate blindness.
Practice:

Robin DiAnelo, author of White Fragility writes that she's often asked by other white people, "What do I do?" She advises, "Make a list of why you don't know what to do. Maybe you never talk about racism with your white friends. Maybe you never talk about racism with your black, Indigenous, or friends of color. Maybe you don't have any black, Indigenous, or friends of color. Maybe you haven't cared enough to find out before now." Whatever is on your list, let it guide you. Addressing the reasons you've observed won't be quick and easy, but you can start educating yourself today.”

Tree by Tree

June 8, 2020

+Porter Taylor

Sooner or later we lose our way. We run out of what we can do and manage and control, and then we have a choice of whether to depend upon God or to insist that we can make our own lives work. There’s a reason Jesus begins his ministry in the wilderness. The lessons he must learn have nothing to do with his wisdom or holiness or powers. It’s about surrendering to God and trusting God even though we cannot see or understand how the future will unfold, and then to become effective instruments of God’s will. It enables us to get our ego out of the way.

We as a country are at a crossroads. We can try to manage this racial crisis that has infected us since our birth as a country, but that means we will try to make it go away by patching over the wounds that have opened. Or we can do the hard work of letting go of our assumptions and follow not our eyes or our heads but our hearts. However, this requires skills that we do not know how to use: letting go of our defended positions, entering the darkness, waiting for the Holy Spirit to bring newness, and then having the courage to embrace it and act upon it.

I thought of a poem by Randall Jarrell, “What’s the Riddle”:

“What’s the riddle that they ask you
When you are young and you say, “I don’t know,”
But that later on you will know—
The riddle that they ask you
When you’re old and you say, “I don’t know,”
And that’s the answer?
“I don’t know.”

There is so much we don’t know. Like what happens tomorrow or with your next breath. Like what to do about the racism that has been embedded in our society since our beginning. Like what to do to stop black men from being killed in the street---George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner—and those are just well- known ones.

Wendy Wright wrote, “If you want to see the stars, you have to learn to walk in the dark.” There isn’t a simple solution to the racism that infects our country. However, just because we don’t have a clear-cut plan, doesn’t mean we can’t move forward. We can’t do everything at once---fix our schools for all races, correct our economy for everyone, make our prison system just, reform our police, get more responsive government and on and on—but we can and must do the next thing.

My favorite saint, Francis, never had a plan. He knew no answers for any riddle. But he allowed God’s love to come into and rule his heart and he just did the next thing. He didn’t wait for the government to change; he simply changed the way he behaved and the way he saw and the way he loved. One person wrote, “St. Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees.” He just saw this tree and then that tree. He loved the person in front of him as a brother or sister. He did the next charitable thing. He gave thanks for this moment. He changed the world.

When we find ourselves in the dark, it’s tempting to wait for the light or to spend our time trying to make the light come on faster or fixated on who is to blame. But this is the only moment we have to live for God. Don’t wait for the light. Just live for God and love for God, catch God’s vision of the Beloved Community, and do the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. It’s one way the world gets changed.

Prayer: “Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart that barriers which divide us may crumble; suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Book of Common Prayer page, 823)

Practice: Notice the people you confront; become aware of the inequities where you are; ask God for how to respond.
 

The Shared World
May 25, 2020

+Porter Taylor

Okay, if you read the reflection last week, you know I am a Naomi Shihab Nye fan.

She wrote an article in 2007 (“Gate 4-A”) about being stuck in the Albuquerque Airport and hearing this announcement: “Anyone near Gate 4-A who understands Arabic please come to the gate immediately.” Because she spoke Arabic, Naomi went to the gate and found an older Palestinian woman wailing loudly. The woman thought her flight had been cancelled. She needed to be in El Paso for a major medical treatment the next day. Naomi called the woman’s son and got him to quiet his mother down. She told the son she would stay with his mother until the plane took off, and because she was taking the same flight, sit with her.

As they waited for the flight, the woman took out homemade mamool cookies: “little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts.” She passed them around the waiting area and everyone took one. “We were all covered with the same powdered sugar.” Then the airline attendants handed out apple juice.

Nye concludes with, “And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world….This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.”

As human beings much less Christians, we are hardwired for communion. And given that we haven’t had the Holy Eucharist in church together for a while and it doesn’t seem likely that this will change soon, it’s important to remember that the Eucharist is there to equip us to commune with one another and God everywhere. Indeed, there is little you can do solo in Church. You can’t be absolved, nor take communion, nor be blessed, nor have hands laid on you for healing, nor take the peace. “Where two are three are gathered together….”

We yearn for the “shared world,” but let us remember what Naomi Shihab Nye tells us: the shared world is everywhere. It’s not about a building or even a liturgy. No, we can’t do what we are used to---but neither Nye nor the Palestinian woman expected to have a sacred feast in an airport terminal either. The questions are: “Can we be open to the invitation to the shared world and participate in it? When some voice declares that a fellow human being is lost, will we respond? Have we limited God’s presence to designated sanctuaries?”

Of course, we need to be safe in this time, but we also need to listen for the Spirit calling us into communion. The truth is---this is the only life we have to live and this is the only moment we have to experience the holy and be drawn into the “Shared World.”

It’s not likely to be in an airport any time soon and we’re not likely to share food during the Covid 19 time. However, we are wired for communion by God and God’s deepest desire is for us to remember who we are. Therefore, let us look for the “Shared World” everywhere. Let us listen for the voice that is calling us to speak the word that needs to be spoken so that we might feed and be fed.

Meditation for May 18, 2020

Day LXIV: Only Kindness Matters
May 18, 2020

+Porter Taylor
Recently I heard a story on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”It was about Landon Spradlin and his mother Jean—who went to New Orleans to evangelize. Their plan was to go to the Quarter, play music, and then spread the Good News of Jesus. Some weeks before going, Landon had posted a meme that said the reaction to Covid 19 was “mass hysteria” and talked about how the government needs to lift all restrictions. Langdon and his mother evangelized for a few days, but then this mother noticed that Landon was tired all the time. So, they got in the car to drive back home to Virginia.

On the way Landon got more and more sick. He didn’t eat and he slept for hours. At a rest stop his mother had trouble waking him and had to call 911 for an ambulance. Landon died that night from Covid 19.

Here’s the point. After he died---strangers attacked him on Facebook for his conservative posts. One person mocked him for saying, “God can heal any illness.” Another posted his obituary on Facebook and wrote, “I found this story on the Internet and can’t stop laughing.”

Jesus asks: “What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?” (Mark 8:36; The Message). It may be that the disease that is infecting this country is that we are losing our real or true self by worshiping a political perspective--- left or right/ conservative or liberal---that is not only too small but a false way of seeing the world.

In the hospital ICU, there are no Trump supporters or Trump detractors. There is just common humanity. In her poem, “Kindness,” the poet Naomi Shahib Nye writes
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness

How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
     purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

I think about the heated words we throw at one another in our society—especially when there is no face to face contact and when it’s posted on the internet, and I fear where we as a nation are headed I wish the persons that posted on Facebook about Landon Spradlin could have known him; could have experienced a 360-degree sense of him. They had one snapshot of a full life and thought they knew him---thought they knew enough to discount the grief his loved ones experienced. How can there be anything to laugh at when someone this young dies?

Perhaps the disease that is infecting our country is a loss of compassion and a loss of a meaningful perception about others. Of course, it’s not new. We’ve expanded our trigger issues from race and gender and sexual orientation to politics. However, this way of perception is destructive.

If you know someone voted for Donald Trump or intends to vote for Joe Biden, you know as much as finding out they like pimento cheese. Because we are all made in the image of God, when we discount others, we limit our ability to see God. Our world gets smaller and less miraculous. When we look at them, we must realize:

You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Spirituality is about gaining a wider and deeper vision. It’s about letting go of our old screens and categories because if we want to see God in this world, it will probably be in the most unexpected places. We think we have to see Richard Rohr or Cynthia Bourgeault, but that thought keeps us blind. If God is God, then everything is holy; everyone is the face of Jesus. Chances are as we let go of our preconceptions and prejudices, then the moments of recognizing the Holy One in our lives increases.

In the world of Covid 19 we are all losing things--- “What you held in your hand/ what you counted and carefully saved/All this must go…” The question is whether this will harden or soften our hearts. Will we weep for those who suffer and die regardless of their politics? Will we recognize how our precious and short our lives are and not believe that any one moment of a person’s life defines them?

This is our moment as the Church because we follow the one who proclaims love and unity and justice. May we see that in everyone and respond accordingly.
Prayer: Dear God, help us see your face in the persons we least expect to see you.
Practice: Say a blessing for the very people who trigger you.

Reflection for 5-11-20

Meditation 5/11/20

Porter Taylor

Fruits of the Spirit

As we are forced to deal with the Covid 19 Virus longer and longer, it’s time we turned our attention from the “What” to the “How.”  That is, it’s not so much what we face as how we face it.  As Jesus said to his disciples “What good would it do to get everything you want and lose the real you?” (The Message Mark 8:26).  I mean since we are in this for the long haul, perhaps our attention can shift from “How will we survive this” to “What kind of person do we need to be and are called by God to be?”

As I pondered this, I became aware of how much my own anxiety has captured my attention as well as affected the way I interact with my fellow human beings.  This isn’t new.  If you remember, when Mary Magdalene first turns from the tomb, she sees a stranger whom she supposes to be the gardener, and she says to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away” (John 20:15).   So, when we are very afraid and disoriented, everyone looks like a thief.  Our fear so clouds our vision, that we cannot see what lies in front of us. Instead of seeing the Risen Christ, Mary Magdalene sees a potential adversary.  Jesus says, “Mary” and her vision clears.

So, it is with us.  When we are in the grocery store, do we see the person near us as a Covid 19 carrier or a child of God?  Is there a way we can be as wise as a serpent and also as innocent as a dove?  When we get so stuck in our own anxiety that the person near us looks dangerous, can we remember our true name and our true calling?

Of course, we need to be safe. Of course, we need to practice social distancing and wear face masks. But our calling is deeper and wider and more important than that.

We are called to move away from what Paul calls the Fruits of the Flesh: strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy (Galatians 5:20).  Instead we are to cultivate the Fruits of the Spirit: joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

Therefore, maybe the test for this period is not merely survival. Maybe the test is remembering who we are and who we are called to be for our brothers and sisters. Maybe what the world needs is a reminder of what the Blessed Community looks like.  Perhaps the Church’s calling is to be that reminder in the daily lives of the faithful. Instead of strife and quarrels and factions, maybe we are called to show patience and kindness and generosity. Because in everyone’s hearts, no one wants to live in a world of verbal civil war.  We long to come home but we’ve just lost our way.

Because you can’t give away what you don’t have, let us cultivate those virtues. When we are confronted with situations that beckon us to our dark side, let us resist the Fruits of the flesh and ask God to give us the Fruits of the Spirit so that God might use us to make this world new.

Practice:  Which of the Fruits of the Spirit can you embody today?

Prayer:  Dear Gracious God, open our hearts so that we might be instruments of your peace.

The Harvest Comes

Meditation 5/11/20

Porter Taylor

Fruits of the Spirit

As we are forced to deal with the Covid 19 Virus longer and longer, it’s time we turned our attention from the “What” to the “How.”  That is, it’s not so much what we face as how we face it.  As Jesus said to his disciples “What good would it do to get everything you want and lose the real you?” (The Message Mark 8:26).  I mean since we are in this for the long haul, perhaps our attention can shift from “How will we survive this” to “What kind of person do we need to be and are called by God to be?”

As I pondered this, I became aware of how much my own anxiety has captured my attention as well as affected the way I interact with my fellow human beings.  This isn’t new.  If you remember, when Mary Magdalene first turns from the tomb, she sees a stranger whom she supposes to be the gardener, and she says to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away” (John 20:15).   So, when we are very afraid and disoriented, everyone looks like a thief.  Our fear so clouds our vision, that we cannot see what lies in front of us. Instead of seeing the Risen Christ, Mary Magdalene sees a potential adversary.  Jesus says, “Mary” and her vision clears.

So, it is with us.  When we are in the grocery store, do we see the person near us as a Covid 19 carrier or a child of God?  Is there a way we can be as wise as a serpent and also as innocent as a dove?  When we get so stuck in our own anxiety that the person near us looks dangerous, can we remember our true name and our true calling?

Of course, we need to be safe. Of course, we need to practice social distancing and wear face masks. But our calling is deeper and wider and more important than that.

We are called to move away from what Paul calls the Fruits of the Flesh: strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy (Galatians 5:20).  Instead we are to cultivate the Fruits of the Spirit: joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

Therefore, maybe the test for this period is not merely survival. Maybe the test is remembering who we are and who we are called to be for our brothers and sisters. Maybe what the world needs is a reminder of what the Blessed Community looks like.  Perhaps the Church’s calling is to be that reminder in the daily lives of the faithful. Instead of strife and quarrels and factions, maybe we are called to show patience and kindness and generosity. Because in everyone’s hearts, no one wants to live in a world of verbal civil war.  We long to come home but we’ve just lost our way.

Because you can’t give away what you don’t have, let us cultivate those virtues. When we are confronted with situations that beckon us to our dark side, let us resist the Fruits of the flesh and ask God to give us the Fruits of the Spirit so that God might use us to make this world new.

Practice:  Which of the Fruits of the Spirit can you embody today?

Prayer:  Dear Gracious God, open our hearts so that we might be instruments of your peace.

“The Seven of Pentacles”

by Marge Piercy

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

As the poet says, “This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always.”  Our scripture is filled with the people of God living in the meantime—in the in-between time. There’s Moses and the Israelites wandering for forty years; and Holy Saturday and the period between Jesus’ Ascension and Pentecost. However, because we are mortal and because we live in time, this is the only moment we have to live a life for God regardless of what is going on in the world.

The psalmist writes, “Today is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”  In the present moment, we may not see much growth, but it’s because “More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.”  Instead we may feel as if the virus has hijacked our lives.  However, what matters is our faith in what God has done, is doing and has promised to do for us and this world.  Our faithfulness reminds us that this is only day we have to experience God’s love and mercy; this is the only day we have to be instruments of God’s grace; and this is the only day we  have to grow closer to being the person God created us to be so that we might be instruments for God’s reign of grace, mercy, and justice to come on earth as it is in heaven.

Therefore, let us not lose heart. The transformation of the world is still going on even if it’s underground. Who is to say that our acts of connecting with our neighbors or insuring that through masks and maintaining distance we are fighting the virus or praying for God’s will to be done on earth---who is to say that these acts are not the very acts that enable the harvest to come.

Let us live the life that is before us. Let us keep reaching out; keep bringing in. For our faith is that after this long season, God’s harvest will come.

Reflection for 4-27-20

The Harvest Comes

+Porter Taylor

“The Seven of Pentacles”

by Marge Piercy

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

As the poet says, “This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always.”  Our scripture is filled with the people of God living in the meantime—in the in-between time. There’s Moses and the Israelites wandering for forty years; and Holy Saturday and the period between Jesus’ Ascension and Pentecost. However, because we are mortal and because we live in time, this is the only moment we have to live a life for God regardless of what is going on in the world.

The psalmist writes, “Today is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”  In the present moment, we may not see much growth, but it’s because “More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.”  Instead we may feel as if the virus has hijacked our lives.  However, what matters is our faith in what God has done, is doing and has promised to do for us and this world.  Our faithfulness reminds us that this is only day we have to experience God’s love and mercy; this is the only day we have to be instruments of God’s grace; and this is the only day we  have to grow closer to being the person God created us to be so that we might be instruments for God’s reign of grace, mercy, and justice to come on earth as it is in heaven.

Therefore, let us not lose heart. The transformation of the world is still going on even if it’s underground. Who is to say that our acts of connecting with our neighbors or insuring that through masks and maintaining distance we are fighting the virus or praying for God’s will to be done on earth---who is to say that these acts are not the very acts that enable the harvest to come.

Let us live the life that is before us. Let us keep reaching out; keep bringing in. For our faith is that after this long season, God’s harvest will come.

Practice: Notice the small acts you do during your day that give you life or make you more present.  Give thanks for them as tools to bring the harvest in.

Prayer: Dear God, let every act of this day be dedicated to you and your purpose to make the world right.

4/7/20

4/6/20 Tuesday in Holy Week

The theologian Herb Butterfield wrote, “Hold onto Christ and for the rest be entirely uncommitted.”  This week we are walking into Jerusalem, and because we have been here before, we have no illusions about where we are headed.  The Hosannas of Palm Sunday are over. No more waving of branches; no more crowds; no more euphoria that the world is magically going to be changed.

No, Holy Week is a deeper dive into the mystery of God in Christ and that mystery is always the theology of subtraction.  All of us have a way of translating what God wants from us and for us into a formula that suits us and doesn’t require too much from us.  My version is to think that if I read enough books or quote enough writers, somehow I will advance deeper into being truly connected to God.  This week all that must get stripped away.  God isn’t interested in how many books we’ve read, or seminars we’ve attended, or whether our political views are correct, or whether we eat the right food, or know the right people or worship in the right Church.

It’s not about our stuff; it’s about our hearts.  What needs to die in us this week, so God can raise us to new life—abundant life—a life without dead end diversions or paralyzing fear?  What must we let go of in order to be made new?

It’s always love. Why else do Mary and Mary Magdalene and the disciple John stay at the cross? They aren’t thinking about the future; they aren’t thinking about the past. Their love of Jesus has brought them out of their safe box to be connected to Christ regardless of the cross.

Now—don’t mix metaphors here. Wear your mask; stay away from crowds; don’t go into public places; do all the right things to stay alive and to avoid being a carrier of the disease. But. But if we are to find new life, it won’t be by white knuckling our way through this pandemic. It will be by opening our hearts and connecting to Christ and being indifferent to everything that we have to surrender.

Our faith is that resurrection always follows death.  Something new is being born here and now, as we let go of our old ways of being community—we discover something that is deeper.  Holding onto Christ means discovering how fragile life is; how interdependent we are; and how precious this moment is because it’s the only moment we have.

As we get closer to Friday, now is the time to become more and more uncommitted to the many ways we have diverted our attention to the only one who matters: Christ himself.

Prayer: “Jesus, open our hearts wider and wider so that we may hold onto you and for the rest become totally uncommitted.”

Practice:  At the end of each day, recall when you felt connected to God in Christ through the Holy Spirit and give thanks.

+Porter Taylor

3/24/20

The novelist Bernard Malamud writes, “We have two lives: the life we learn with and the life we live after that. Suffering brings us towards happiness.”

In this moment we are in both of those lives because we are learning what it means to live a different life, but we can’t hold our breath until it’s over. We must live this life now because it’s the only life we have. 

            Those of us in affluent peaceful America may be bewildered that suffering brings us towards happiness, but of course the gospel has been teaching that for over 2000 years.  Perhaps this virus is teaching us what the cross means---we are having to let go of any illusion that we can make the world behave. No gadget, no remote control, no button that we can push will take us back to where we were. Like the people following Moses in the wilderness, the only way is forward.

As I have been trying to come to some sense of what’s going on, I think that suffering brings us towards happiness by opening our hearts.  Remember that it’s at the cross that Jesus shows us that to find our way, we must reconstitute relationships: the disciple John becomes the son of Mary and Mary becomes the mother of John.  Suffering shows us what matters and what doesn’t. It reminds us that we are all mortal and that life is fragile and precious and that God in Christ is calling us to a different way of living and being together—a holy communion.

So---maybe there’s a lesson in this time.  Maybe we are in the midst of the life we learn with, but we are invited into the life we live with after that. Our name for that life is resurrection.

Prayer:

Gracious God, open our eyes to witness all that is happening around us: the joy and the pain; the weeping and the laughing. Help us to learn the way of the Cross so that you might open our hearts to be resurrection and be agents of resurrection. In Christ name we pray. Amen

Practice: Allow yourself to feel what you feel and offer it up to God.

+Porter Taylor