Sermon – St. Michael and All Angels
Michaelmas
September 30, 2012

Happy birthday, St. Michael and All Angels! Today you are 62. I have been thinking about what 62 looks like. It is an age of beauty and wisdom. At 62, we know something of who we are and what our growing edges are. We also know something about who we are not. It is the perfect age to acknowledge the ways God is at work in our midst. A birthday is a good time to pause and see God all around us. Where do you see God at St. Michael’s? I started a list, but it’s just a start because I could never name all the ways God is moving among us.

•    The stories from J2A and Navajoland mission teams in recent weeks.
•    The Eucharistic visitors who take communion to those who can’t be here on Sundays.
•    Emma and Sasha who are baptized into our community this morning.
•    In the stories we hear as we share our lives over coffee, in adult formation, or other gatherings.
•    In the music and liturgical art that stir us each week.
•    In a new building for youth to grow as a community.
•    In a lively seniors ministry.
•    In each of you.

So on this birthday, I invite you to join with me in reflecting on where God is in this place. In the first reading today, Jacob says, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” (Genesis 28:16) It is good for us to see where God is moving among us and give thanks. Do this, not in secret, but tell someone else over coffee after worship today where you experience God at St. Michael’s. It is our birthday, after all. Do not waste an opportunity to name your gratitude out loud.

It is especially powerful that Jacob has the encounter with the angel. He is not the model of good behavior. Jacob has stolen his brother Esau’s blessing and conned him out of his birthright. He is fleeing for his life when he meets God in the wilderness. He discovers that there is nowhere he can go to escape God.

Our feast day scriptures today give us battles and angels. While it is tempting to avoid this great battle in heaven, it has given me pause to reflect on the battles going on in and around us. We are battling life-threatening illnesses, relationships that are hurtful, old wounds that continue to suck the life out of us, financial stress, uncertainty about our future, destruction to our planet, systems that oppress the most vulnerable in our society…the list is never ending.

We make our way through this battleground of life and witness the road rage from someone who has no patience for those who drive too slowly, the bored cashier in the store who has no interest in customers, the ones who spout off a long litany of complaints to anyone who will listen…it seems easy to find people who are unhappy and negative. Who wants to be surrounded by such negative energy? I find myself worked up by a negative encounter and holding tightly to my own negative reactions when I remember the words of Philo of Alexandria “Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”

These words call us to see people differently. We can look more honestly at our own battles and remember to show compassion to others. Last weekend, we had a gathering for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered friends of St. Michael’s. Twenty-eight of us sat in a circle and introduced ourselves by naming what brought us to this gathering. In that circle were many stories of the pain of trying to reconcile our sexuality with our faith. It is never a given that all the parts of our lives will flow easily together. It is hard work to reconcile all of who we are and it is tempting to separate parts of ourselves into boxes rather than acknowledge the fullness of who we are. Many of my days include conversations with people who are seeking to be whole, but we have too long discarded parts of ourselves or ignored them. It takes courage and compassion to embrace all of who we are and to heal the broken parts.

Jacob is a scoundrel. He is no hero. He has done terrible things and betrayed his family. He is selfish and greedy and now he is running because he is terrified to face the consequences of his actions. He flees into the wilderness, but you and I know that the wilderness isn’t where we go for refuge. It is where the wild things live. It is where we lose our way. We may find ourselves face to face with the reality that we could die here.

It is curious to me that Jacob’s encounter in the wilderness wasn’t with a wild beast, but with an angel. My friend Jan Richardson asks, “How will we see the angels if we don’t go into the wilderness? How will we recognize the help that God sends if we don’t seek out the places beyond what is comfortable to us, if we don’t press into terrain that challenges our habitual perspective? How will we find the delights that God provides even—and especially—in the desert places?”

(http://paintedprayerbook.com/2012/02/23/first-sunday-of-lent-and-the-angels-waited/#.UGXdB0KhDzI)

When I am talking with people, I am stunned at the courage they summon to face the angels in the wilderness. I am humbled by their commitment to wholeness and the vulnerability that is required for us to fully enter the struggle. This struggle will lead to embracing the parts of us that we’d rather ignore. No one said it would be easy, but does it have to be this hard?

Yet in spite of the difficulty there is grace and hope. Here is what God said to Jacob, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring…all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.” (Genesis 28: 13-15)

Jacob who has betrayed and cheated is given a promise that he and his offspring will be a blessing to all people! It takes my breath away to encounter a God so full of grace who will not leave us and who always keeps promises. Jacob wakes from sleep and recognizes that God is right there in the wilderness. It is astonishing that God shows up in our struggles and vulnerability and promises to be with us.

On our birthday as a congregation, the angels show up to speak the truth, to show us our task in the world and to remind us that God will not leave us. Like Jacob, may we wake from sleep and recognize the presence of God here. May we understand that we are to bless all of God’s people. May we see the beautiful buildings we inhabit at St. Michael’s as places where God dwells. May we understand that we who have received so much from God, are to be carriers of God’s grace and compassion to all.

Sept. 23, 2012
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

As some of you are aware, St. Michael’s has been a bit like a Trauma Center over the last few months. 5 deaths; several potentially deadly diagnoses and grueling treatments; and a motorcycle accident that has left a parishioner paralyzed from the waist down. All of these people have been central in our community.

So for many of us, it has been a sobering season of mortality. We are highly aware of how fragile this precious life can be, and how, in an instant, everything can change forever. All we’ve got is this present moment. Obviously this is always true for every one of us. The only difference between us and those directly affected by these recent crises is that they know it for certain. The rest of us pretend it isn’t so.

When trauma or loss comes, or when they accumulate around us as they have recently, it weighs heavily. Death and danger, like a threatening black storm, lurk over us. And our minds dart restlessly around, unable to land on anything, unable to comprehend: Why her? Why now? What is the point of everything I have worked so hard for, if cruel, random disaster can slip in so quickly, so easily? How can I possibly make sense of death, the end of all that I know?

And then we come here, and hear words of faith and transcendence. They tell us that we can look beyond the trials of this present day, and place our trust in something more - whether that something is our hope for the afterlife or an inner strength that cannot be destroyed by whatever life might bring. That trust is, I think, what Jesus must have had. How else could he have spoken so calmly to his friends, as we heard today, about his own immanent betrayal and death?

Along these lines, I’m struck particularly by the assigned Collect of the Day. Let’s read it together. You can find it either on the handout with today’s readings that you may have picked up as you came in, or in The Book of Common Prayer on p. 234, at the top of the page. On your handout, it’s the second one, the contemporary version. Let’s pray together:

Grant to us, O Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever, Amen.

Now, how do we put together this collect with our disturbing experience of life’s fragility, especially in this season of mortality?

What I have witnessed first-hand over these months is that the answer is simply love. Love is what helps us with our natural anxiety about earthly things. Love is that heavenly thing to which we can hold fast. Love is the only thing that shall endure.  

Whether your spouse or child is at the side of your hospital bed, parishioners are at your door delivering meals, or you’re remembering a shared lifetime during a funeral, it is love that carries everyone through. When everything else is stripped away - and it will be for each of us one day - love remains. That is what St. Paul said in that very familiar passage from Corinthians, the one we hear at almost every wedding: Love never ends; prophecies, tongues, knowledge, they all end. But love abides forever.

But love does more than just endure, or live beyond us after we die. It expands us in the here and now. It makes us more than just a limited, isolated individual. Throughout a lifetime of connecting with others - as we bring honesty, humor, concern, forgiveness, as we play and struggle together - we extend our very self into the people that surround us. And then, when hardship comes, you are bigger than just “you.” You are “us.”

There is an African term that has been introduced throughout the Anglican Communion in recent years: Ubuntu. It translates as “I am who I am because we are who we are.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: “Ubuntu is the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't be human all by yourself. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected, and what you do affects the whole world.”

Jesus knew this, and it is what made it possible for him to face his own impending betrayal and death. He was bigger than just himself. He was a part of everyone who surrounded him. He referred to his friends and disciples as his family. At the end of his life in prayer, he acknowledged that he was one with them and with God. In the Spirit of Jesus, Paul spoke of us all as being physical members of the same body. You are who you are because we are who we are. You are bigger than yourself.

But Jesus knew that love - enduring love, saving love - is more than love of people. He loved God. We often hear the greatest commandment - to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves - and we skip right over the first part: to love God. What does this mean? How do we love an invisible, silent, often unfelt mystery? And how does that help when life strips us down?

For you, loving God might mean resting in the divine presence with an open and vulnerable heart, in prayer. Loving God might mean waking up with a sense of gratitude for the gift of another day, and offering your intention to be true, to be kind. Loving God might mean seeing this whole glorious world as God’s own body, and taking delight in it. Loving God might mean being determined to fulfill the potential that you were born with, in order to be the particular image of God which you were made to reflect.

However you love God, over time, this love makes you than just yourself. When you pray, you are lifted out of your present circumstances, into eternal time. When you feel gratitude for this day, for creation, you are a part of the energy of life’s flowing stream. When you strive to grow, to become more the person God created you to be, you stretch beyond the confines of your current self, into a new being in God. These are all ways of loving God, and they all expand us beyond ourselves.

Over the past few months, many have told me that this, too, along with love of people that surround them, is what sustains them. They haven’t had some dramatic feeling, no voices in the night, but they have told me “God is more real to me now than ever. I couldn’t do this without God’s love.”  

Being human, we will always experience anxiety, doubt, uncertainty, and grief. We can’t - and shouldn’t try to - transcend our humanity. But when we love others and when we love God, we can be on two levels at once: humanly affected, yes, but also knowing that we are not alone, that we are part of the tapestry of all humanity, all time, all creation. We know therefore that ultimately, nothing can harm or move us. And we become much more than just our present hardship.

When we hear a gospel like the one we heard today, it is tempting to think that Jesus was so different than the rest of us that only he could talk with such confidence about being betrayed, killed, and rising again. But to assume this is to deny his humanity. He was fully human, subject to the same anxieties, uncertainties, and grief that we are.

He only got to the point where he could speak as he did in today’s gospel because he had, all his life, cultivated two things that made him larger than his many problems: love of others and love of God. He loved friends, family, and companions on the journey. And he had marinated himself in the divine presence all his life. So even at Calvary when most of his friends fled, he was not alone. He was still larger than Jesus of Nazareth. He was part of everyone and everything that is.

As we love others, we are extended into others. And as we love God, we are extended into God. Both loves make us much more than an individual unit coping with our current problems. This is , I think, what it means to say that even now, as we are placed among things that are passing away, we can love things heavenly, and we can hold fast to those things that shall endure.

El Grito—A Call to Ears Awakened:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

Years ago, I worked with a woman who, when she wasn’t teaching, painted.  Her house was covered—literally covered—with her paintings.  But the ones I remember most, the ones that just pulled me into the scene were her little triptychs.  When I stood before those panels, I found myself enveloped in the world they portrayed.  All week long, I’ve felt like I’ve been standing before a triptych.

In the center panel is a man dressed as a priest.  A older man, his face lined with the sorrow he has witnessed the sorrows he himself has experienced.  There’s a steel to him—you might call it the look of fierce determination.  You can almost feel the strength in his uplifted arm.  He’s looking out at the crowd of campesinos gathered in front of his church.  Men and women and little children massed together.  Faces blurring.  Bodies merging.  Almost one body.  One body dragged down by years of oppression.  A people occupied.  A people abused.  The fruits of their labors taken from them by their oppressors.  The priest stands poised to speak. His ears wakened by the cries of his people.  Father Miguel Hidalgo crying out for them, “El Grito de Dolores.”

Step back a bit and you notice the two side panels.  On the left the prophet Isaiah clad in the robes of a Bedouin.  He’s seated on a little rise beside a river in Babylon.  He’s facing away from the river  looking out over a valley filled with people who appear somewhat at odds with their environment.  A valley of exiles.  Ezekiel’s dry bones.  Isaiah is taking in the scene.  His ears wakened to the cries of the exiles.  His ears attuned to their suffering and their sorrow.

The panel on the right is a painting of Jesus on the road to Jerusalem.  Ahead of him the cross.  Behind him the crowd—the crowd of hungry, poor, sick, landless people that pressed in on him day after day.  Their cries driving him forward to the cross for his ears are wakened to the cries of the poor.

You and I, we stand before the triptych, drawn in by the questions it raises.  We, like the prophet Isaiah, like Jesus and like Father Miguel Hidalgo, are surrounded by the cries of the poor.  You and I, we live in the poorest state of the country.  A state where our brothers and sisters are forced daily to make hard choices between paying for food when they’re hungry and paying for medicine when they need it or heat when it’s cold or transportation to take them to work or things for their kids.  You and I, we live in a country where many of our fellow citizens are one disaster away from homelessness.  You and I live in a world where every day children die because they don’t have enough to eat.

The prophet Isaiah speaks to the people of the exile, the weary ones.  Isaiah assures them that morning by morning God wakens his ear.  God wakens his ears to hear the cry of those who suffer and God wakens his ears to hear the word of God.  The word of God calling for justice to flow like water and for righteousness to flow like an ever-flowing stream.  The word of God asking us to do justice and to love mercy.  The word of God promising release for the captives.  

Jesus says to his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.”  A cross.  It’s a symbol of resistance.  It’s a mark of solidarity.  A symbol of resistance to powers that oppress the lowly.  A mark of solidarity with the poor.  

Today, on Mexican Independence Day, we hear the banner cry, “El Grito de Dolores”—the call of the oppressed.  There are other calls as well:  “El Grito los Pobres”—the call of the poor; and “El Grito de Hambres”—the call of the hungry.  El Grito de Dolores.  The call from the town Dolores.  A call issued from the steps of the church.

Today, with the prophet Isaiah, we listen to God who wakens our ears to the cries of the weary, to the cries of the hungry, to the cries of the poor.  El Grito de San Miguel.  What shall be our call?

Sermon – St. Michael and All Angels
Mark 7:24-37
September 9, 2012


Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches had bellies with stars. 

The Plain-Belly Sneetches had none upon thars.

Those stars weren’t so big. They were really so small. 

You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.


But, because they had stars, all the Star-Belly Sneetches

Would brag, “We’re the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches.”

With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort

“We’ll have nothing to do with the Plain-Belly sort!”

And, whenever they met some, when they were out walking,

They’d hike right on past them without even talking.


When the Star-Belly children went out to play ball,

Could a Plain Belly get in the game? Not at all.

You only could play if your bellies had stars

And the Plain-Belly children had none upon thars.


When the Star Belly Sneetches had frankfurter roasts

Or picnics or parties or marshmallow toasts,

They never invited the Plain-Belly Sneetches

They left them out cold, in the dark of the beaches.

They kept them away. Never let them come near.

And that’s how they treated them year after year.

    (The Sneetches and Other Stories pp. 3-7, by Dr. Seuss)

How can we not love Dr. Seuss? He tells it like it is and makes us laugh at our ridiculous ways. Stars on their bellies? No stars? That is just silly! Of course, we would NEVER draw lines like that! Would we? How many lines do we draw every day – skin color, income level, education, political party, gender, sexual orientation…there are more than we can name in one sermon, but we do it all the time in obvious ways and in ways that are very subtle. What is it about human nature that wants to create distinctions and judge some to be better than others?

We know that God loves us and doesn’t rank us by education, skin color, notoriety, or some other measure like that. That makes the gospel reading this morning VERY confusing. What has happened to Jesus? Is it compassion fatigue? Is he tired of being stalked by people who want something from him? Does he really believe that he isn’t called to serve the Gentiles? Did he just call this woman a dog? This is not the Jesus we talk about – the one who was loving and compassionate and who consistently reached out to those who had been cast off by society. At that time, it was believed that if you had any kind of affliction, it was the result of sin. It wasn’t enough to be blind or deaf, it meant being cast out of the community. This social shunning was terrible because it completely isolated people with no hope of reconciliation.  When Jesus healed people, it also had the effect of restoring them to the community, which added a powerful dimension to their healing.

We don’t know why Jesus called the woman a dog and refused to respond to her plea. But we do know this: the wall he built wasn’t the last word. The woman was persistent because her daughter needed help and she knew that Jesus was the only one who could heal her. It’s funny that this woman from outside Jesus’ community believed in him more than people within his community. She wasn’t giving up. She points out that even crumbs are more than she has now.

Something happens in that moment. Perhaps Jesus in his fatigue is just saying, “Forget it. Your daughter is healed.” Or maybe, just maybe, he is saying, “I see you. Before I wrote you off as one of those people, but now I see you and you are a beloved child of God.” Here is the rest of it as I imagine it, “I blew it. I am sorry.” So, here we have this man that we worship – fully human and fully divine – does that mean perfect? Here we see him changing his mind. He loses an argument with grace. That may not be on our list of top ten reasons we follow Jesus, but you might want to reconsider your list.

After I finished seminary, I did a 34-week Bible study called Disciple with Jim Fowler facilitating. Some of you know Jim as the great theologian who came up with Stages of Faith, a developmental model of faith based on the work of Piaget and Kohlberg. Disciple covers 80% of the Bible. Throughout the Old Testament, there are many less than flattering stories and images of God. At some point, our group questioned this God portrayed in the Old Testament. Jim replied that God was learning to be God. That gave us all some peace. After all, this human being thing was new and it didn’t always go as God planned. There were many plan b, c, d, and e’s.

That came to me as I thought about Jesus at the table with this bold woman. She didn’t give up and he had to re-think what he said and perhaps what he believed. That makes sense to me. Jesus was learning how to be Jesus too and he’s had many instances that haven’t gone as planned either. Mark tells us that he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. We all know the frustration of having our plans interrupted and the tendency to dismiss the interruption rather than engage it. As Loye Bradley Ashton said, “Mark is showing us that the incarnation is not a cakewalk.” (Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, p. 48)

I love this woman’s dogged determination. She wrestled and would not turn loose until Jesus blessed her. It is a powerful reminder that faith is lively, vigorous, and does not give up easily. Jesus may have put the woman in her place, but she won’t stay there. It brings to mind the civil rights movement, any civil rights movement for that matter, where people know that they were not created to be oppressed, put down, or less than anyone else. Maya Angelou’s poem says, “still I rise.”
        “You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.”
    (from And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou)

The human spirit is resilient and strong. We see this over and over again in people. I saw it in Ellen Novak. I had been in to see her some weeks ago when she was on the ventilator. I walked into her room a few days later to find her sitting up in her chair eating breakfast and smiling. I was blown away by the change in her. I asked her what she wanted me to tell people. She said, “Tell them I’m a scrapper.” Ellen was scrappy and she inspired us with her spirit. Let me tell you something else I know about Ellen. She was created in the image of God, as are you and I. We too, have been given a spirit to struggle when needed, to ask hard questions, and to persevere. It is there as a gift and when we step into the fullness of that, we will be amazed at the courage and beauty inside us.

Another person who has this spirit is Bishop Gene Robinson. I went to Santa Fe last night to see Love Free or Die – a movie about his experience as a gay bishop. He was there and talked with us afterward about his experience. Two things strike me every time I hear him speak. One is his determination to stay in the conversation and claim his place at the table. He said he has always known that he is God’s beloved son and no one can take that away. Another way his spirit shows is in his gracious response to those who have excluded and hurt him. He continues to pour love on all people.

This same spirit is given to us to face whatever obstacles come our way – physical illness or limitations, loss of employment, the tragic death of someone we love, being excluded from a table that is intended for all – anything that leaves us desperate for a life raft. But here is something else about the spirit we are given – it is not given for us alone. Notice that the woman asks for healing for her daughter not herself. In the story that follows, friends of a deaf man bring him to Jesus for healing. We are in this together. Our faith is not for us alone. It is for the building up of the community. It is why we are launching “Who is My Neighbor?” We have a beautiful community of faith at St. Michael’s. I am so grateful to be part of this place. But the love and compassion we experience are not intended for us alone. They call us beyond ourselves to the place where there is hurt and need and isolation. Even Jesus had to be reminded that he existed for those outside his circle. His encounter with this woman opens him to a ministry of compassion for anyone.

Our call is to see God in each person we meet. And when we fail to do so, to look again until we do see the person in front of us through the lens of God’s love rather than our own distinctions.

I’m quite happy to say.
That the Sneetches got really quite smart on that day.
The day they decided that Sneetches are Sneetches.
And no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches.
That day, all the Sneetches forgot about stars
and whether they had one, or not, upon thars.
        (The Sneetches and Other Stories p. 24, by Dr. Seuss)

In the gospel lesson this morning, Jesus invites us to live fully into God’s welcome and when we don’t, to begin again. This is a journey we are on and we continue to take it one step at a time. We mess up and begin again, but always out in front of us, is Love beckoning us onward.

Sept. 2, 2012
A heart of flesh
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time in hospitals, visiting parishioners. Everywhere you look now, there are antibacterial gel dispensers, and people are using them: before going into patients’ rooms so that they won’t transmit anything infectious; before pushing buttons on the elevator; and on the way out the exit. I’ve known patients who, at the hospital, have picked up staph infections and other nasty things that are much worse than whatever they went in with. So even though I use the dispensers, I have been known to push open doors with my elbows.

So then I hear the gospel for today, and think, what’s Jesus’ problem? It seems to me that the ancient Jews had it figured out pretty well. The Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders, and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.

Again, what’s the problem? Why does Jesus bristle when the Pharisees question the disciples for eating with defiled - that is, dirty - hands?

Well, as we know, Jesus wasn’t reacting like some annoyed 8-year-old whose parent nags him to wash his hands before dinner. He knew what was in these Pharisees’ minds. They assumed that if they observed all of God’s rules, they’d automatically be right with God. And even worse, if they could spot others who didn’t observe the rules, they’d have the delicious pleasure of knowing - and pointing out to them - that they were automatically not right with God.

1st century Pharisees aren’t the only ones who have made this mistake, of course. Some Roman Catholics believe that the only thing you to need worry about is obeying the rules: no birth control, no divorce and remarriage, Mass every Sunday, fish on Fridays during Lent - all lined up like a neat little guidebook to salvation. Or consider the kind of evangelical who says that all you have to do is accept the right ideas about Jesus and sin and the cross, and say the right prayer that follows. Abracadabra! The doors of heaven open.  

Both offer easy, external means for measuring who is and who is not right with God. This is the sort of nonsense that Jesus was annoyed with.

For Jesus knew that what matters is not right behavior or belief, but the condition of one’s heart. As he said, There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come, and they defile a person.

Neither religious observance nor orthodoxy are a shortcut to goodness. Instead, when our heart becomes truly attuned to God, good will naturally flow. So it’s not that behavior doesn’t matter. It’s that behavior, whether good or evil, reflects the true condition of the heart. You will know the tree by the kind of fruit it produces.
There are plenty of Roman Catholics and evangelicals who have always understood this, of course. And Jesus was not by any means the first to get it. In today’s gospel he quoted Isaiah to the Pharisees, written 800 years before: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. So in effect, today Jesus was saying to the Jewish leaders, You should know better! Look at what our faith tradition really teaches.

People sometimes talk to me about how they want to deepen their faith, to change their consciousness, in fact. As we talk about what that means for them, the conversation can go in a variety of directions. Some feel a lot of stress and want peace of mind. Some recall times when they felt connected to God, and want to expand on that. Others know that they aren’t at their best; they’re out of sorts, perpetuating behavior that is unhealthy, being unkind to others - they’re not who they want to be.

What to do? A book that will point the way, perhaps. A retreat, or an earnest commitment to God that they might muster up. In our conversation, we slowly circle the real issue, the heart - like a dog turning around its bed several times before lying down. When they settle down, they might see that they’re being asked to do something much more mysterious than reading a book or making resolves. And that is to let God in.

And so I ask, “Do you pray?” After all, if you want to know God, just like wanting to know another person, direct and regular communication might be a good idea. So they might begin to set aside a daily time to reflect on a reading, to meditate, to gaze at the sky, sometimes speaking, sometimes listening, and at all times, holding in the heart an intention to connect.

But it’s not all up to us. We don’t make the connection happen all by ourselves, any more than we do with another person. Prayer is a two-way relationship. Yes, God’s part in this relationship is different from ours - subtle, unknowable, hidden. But this much is clear from everything our faith tradition teaches: God has an intention, too, to connect with us.

When the two intentions meet, something happens. We are no longer over here, wanting a relationship with God over there. We are together, intertwined, moving in the same direction, helping each other.  

Relationships take time and patience. Cultivating the habit of desire for God, we open our hearts and wait. Knowing we can’t make it happen by ourselves alone, we are humble, powerless. Whether our prayer is silent or verbal, whether we do it sitting down or in the midst of activity, there is a waiting in humility for the response of grace.

Letting God in also takes persistence and effort, and the courage to look at the ways we set up roadblocks to God. Many of us tend towards laziness, if we’re not under pressure.
We easily give away time to things that seem more urgent, but, in fact, are less important.
Or we may be ambivalent: on the one hand, we like our distractions and habitual way of going through the day on automatic pilot; but on the other hand, we feel drawn towards a more awakened life. What about holding on to resentment that things aren’t as we wish?

Our roadblocks won’t go away unless we pay some attention to them, and there are consequences to either paying attention or not doing so. As the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas says, What you bring forth from within you will save you. But what you do not bring forth from within you will destroy you. The roadblocks won’t go away unless we pay some attention to them, and there are consequences to either paying attention or not doing so. As the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas says, What you bring forth from within you will save you. But what you do not bring forth from within you will destroy you.

The monk Thomas Merton wrote that the spiritual life consists not of a secret and infallible method for attaining to esoteric experiences, but in [learning] how to recognize God’s grace and will, how to be humble and patient, how to develop insight into our own difficulties, and how to remove the main obstacles keeping us from becoming [people] of prayer...in the spiritual life there are no tricks or shortcuts.

Over time, with intention, effort, self-examination, and above all, the working of God’s grace, our heart changes in this relationship. As God said through the prophet Ezekiel, A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

And then, out of God’s own heart of flesh within us, we are transformed from the inside out.
It becomes more natural to be awake and alive in this wondrous world, and to to live not only for ourselves, but for the love of all. This is, more than anything, what Jesus wished for the Pharisees, and what God wishes for every one of us.