More wonderful writing from Fredreick Buechner

From my favorite new meditation book (well, new to me anyhow), here is the entry for January 15, which has stuck with me since:

"After Buechner's father's death, the family moved to Bermuda, rather to Grandma Buechner's disapproval:

'You should stay and face reality,' she wrote, and in terms of what was humanly best, this was perhaps the soundest advice she could have given us: that we should stay and, through sheer Scharmann endurance, will, courage, put our lives back together by becoming as strong as she was herself. But when it comes to putting broken lives back together – when it comes, in religious terms, to the saving of souls - the human best tends to be at odds with the holy best. To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do – to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst – is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still.

The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can survive on your own. You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.

Surely that is why, in Jesus’ sad joke, the rich man has as hard a time getting into Paradise as that camel through the needle’s eye because with his credit card in his pocket, the rich man is so effective at getting for himself everything he needs that he does not see that what he needs more than anything else in the world can be had only as a gift. He does not see that the one thing a clenched fist cannot do is accept, even from le bon Dieu himself, a helping hand."

Daily book

I have stumbled on a new daily meditation book that I really love - by Frederick Buechner. Here is something that was in there the other day:

"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

New Monastics

I read this article in my Sojourners last night about a movement called "New Monastics" and found it quite intriguing! Here is something from San Francisco Chron about it.

Their key tenets (pasting here, since Sojourners requires a log-in to view):


The 12 Marks of a New Monasticism - by Josh Andersen

Moved by God’s Spirit in this time called America to assemble at St. Johns Baptist Church in Durham, N.C., we wish to acknowledge a movement of radical rebirth, grounded in God’s love and drawing on the rich tradition of Christian practices that have long formed disciples in the simple Way of Christ. This contemporary school for conversion which we have called a “new monasticism” is producing a grassroots ecumenism and a prophetic witness within the North American church which is diverse in form but characterized by the following marks:
1) Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.
2) Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.
3) Hospitality to the stranger.
4) Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.
5) Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church.
6) Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community along the lines of the old novitiate.
7) Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.
8) Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.
9) Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.
10) Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies.
11) Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.
12) Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.
May God give us grace by the power of the Holy Spirit to discern rules for living that will help us embody these marks in our local contexts as signs of Christ’s kingdom for the sake of God’s world.

From http://www.newmonasticism.org/.
Josh Andersen, a former Sojourners intern, is a student at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pa.
The 12 Marks of a New Monasticism. by Josh Andersen. Sojourners Magazine, January 2007 (Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 35). Features.

Interesting article on marketing the Nativity

By Becky Garrison, from "Beliefnet". Enjoy!

mercy me

Ok, so now on a more serious note. Serious but not dour.

As I sat in the chapel at St Andrew yesterday morning, listening to the incredible music, being encouraged by the inspiring, forgiving, human, thought-provoking, welcoming words from the Rev, I just felt right to my bones that no one could help but want to be part of this place.

The Rev was talking about Hannah singing a redemption song, about giving it all over to God, including your emotions, your trials. About not keeping a stiff upper lip.

I think of myself as someone who has been hugely redeemed when I was allowed recovery from addiction. But as I listened, I started seeing myself as someone who could be allowed more than one redemption song. I could keep my house clean and share it with someone else. I could get health around money and be a good partner.

bopping along to "Hold to His Hand"

Here is a lovely thing about attending St Andrew - instead of some insipid and mind-numbing pop thing kidnapping my brain, I am hearing the rockin' African-American gospel song "Hold to His Hand" all day. And thanks to i-Tunes, I can refresh my memory when it starts to fade a bit.

new attitude, thoughts about my sister's adoption process

He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant to all." Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."

- Mark 9:35-37