When adversity comes...

A couple of decades ago, during a time of challenge, I wrote this thought in my journal:

God offers not protection from adversity, but a place to stand when the earth shakes, a glimpse of light when darkness falls, a voice of harmony when the orchestrated world plays out of tune. The key to finding that solid ground, seeing that guiding light, and hearing that redemptive melody lies in faith.

Behind that stands an understanding of faith as trust that all will be well, confidence that a way forward will appear, and conviction that strength from others and beyond will uplift us and allow us to travel the grace-filled path God provides. Sometimes composing such a thought proves easier than living it. Here are a few reflections on living our faith during times of adversity.

When adversity comes, remember that it is not always necessary or wise to travel as quickly as the world and others sometimes want us to travel. When the world seems too much with us and demands rapid decisions, we can identify those decisions that can wait and make them wait. When wading through rapid waters, short and slow steps work best. Similarly, some wounds take time to heal. Just as we can't run a marathon with a broken leg (although we might be able to participate walking with crutches or in a wheelchair), we need to consider carefully what to ask of a broken or burdened heart. Finally, some questions yield their fruit only after lengthy and often painful reflection. When we look back, what we experienced as barren time often seems mysteriously fertile.

When adversity comes, we can identify someone who needs us and find a way to serve them. When practiced with reasonable limits and expectations, sharing the burdens of another usually reduces the load we are carrying. The Christ in us meets the Christ in others and we discover the truth behind the promise, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." God's mysteries do not always make sense, but they bless nonetheless.

When adversity comes, we can recall the second half of the Great Commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself (emphasis mine). Times of challenge often bring self-doubt and loss of esteem. When hardship attacks our sense of self, we can fight back by doing something good for ourselves. Time spent doing something we enjoy or a small act of self-indulgence can make us more at peace with ourselves. That regularly allows us to believe in and reach for wholeness.

When adversity comes, we can deepen or renew our commitment to prayer. Prayer takes varied forms, but all of us have experienced God's presence or can learn to seek it. Better still in adversity, we can read a psalm and wait for God to speak, gaze at nature and wait for God to appear, listen to music until God whispers within it, or turn our palms up, form a cup, and name the blessings poured into them in the midst of the challenges we face.

Many of the paths we travel as we live our faith are rocky and uphill. Many pass through valleys of shadow. Yet, even in those places goodness and mercy seek us. Spread a welcome mat for them. Set out bread and wine for them. Allow knowing that goodness and mercy will find us to suffice until they appear. They will not eliminate all our troubles, but they will provide a place to stand, a glimpse of light, and a whisper of harmony that will sustain us until the path grows more broad and smooth.

Glad to share ministry with you, MWPC saints,

LP

Take time...for silence

The topic of silence appears regularly in these lines. It emerges again this week because of two poignant encounters with the blessing of wordless time. On one occasion, friends gathered for prayer shared solemn and deeply personal concerns. After that time of sharing, the one assigned the responsibility of leading prayer noted that his words would not suffice. We embraced a period of silent prayer and closed it with the Lord's Prayer. Several folks in that circle experienced God in the silence. The eternal did not need words to enter those moments with presence and peace. On the other occasion, a group had wrestled with a difficult decision for nearly two hours. Then they took some moments for reflection, meditation, and relative silence. That period of silence made their decision no less difficult, but God spoke in the stillness and the group came to consensus shortly after resuming speech. Discerning the guidance of God involves words, but transcends words.

Words abound and often surround us. Sometimes they bind us to what we can control and understand. Silence has the graciously mysterious capacity to liberate us and to connect us with deeper truth and nearness. Here are a few places and situations in which to seek the embrace of silence.

Before worship, especially before Holy Communion, sit quietly, offer God no words, and focus on sensing the divine presence. Cup your hands and hold them out to receive blessings God may pour into those moments. There is nothing wrong and much right with pouring out our hearts to God; but God often refreshes us when we focus not on what's on our minds but on what God gives in the moment. God's gifts, unlike our words, always prove sufficient.

Following a particularly inspiring piece of music, embrace the silence that follows the final note. Let God and the musicians know that the music spoke in ways beyond auditory response. I do not forbid applause, but on many occasions I ache for gathered saints not to break the stillness with their need to make gratitude heard. God hears sighs and reflections too deep for words.

In the presence of something splendidly beautiful or spectacularly true, be still and enter the embrace offered. Our descriptions of and praise for transcendent moments express sincere gratitude, but they rarely add to the beauty or deepen the truth.

Before a difficult decision, amidst the swirling of information and accountability, step aside, breathe deeply, set conscious thoughts aside, and listen. Listen for rhythms beyond our control. Listen to the whispers between breaths. Listen not for a word or particular words but for whatever sound seeks us. Even if the decision becomes no easier, the making of it can offer greater peace.

When life comes so quickly that it seems impossible to manage, disengage with the immediate and sit or walk quietly in anticipation of encountering the eternal. Sometimes the house is on fire, but most of the time no harm will come if we take time to wait for a presence beyond time. To the contrary, however, much harm flows from words that have yet to pass through sacred stillness.

Revelation is not my favorite book of the Bible, but one scene always catches my attention. Following seven chapters of pronouncements, seal opening, singing, and frightening words, the narrator declares: "When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour" (Revelation 8:1). The seventh seal symbolizes completion. The message is that even God embraces silence before completing recreation. Does God need silence? Perhaps that goes too far, but God, the Word that needs not words, speaks in silence as powerfully as in speech. Amidst a people so inundated by words, perhaps we hear God speak most clearly apart from all speech. Seek and accept the embrace of silence, friends. It will transform life.

Glad to share ministry with you, MWPC saints,

LP

Discerning where God offers calls

Pastors often talk about their call to ministry. Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, articulates my understanding of call in these words from Markings, his journal: "I don't know who - or what - put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone - or Something - and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in surrender, had a goal." A call entails more mystery than clarity, but that makes surrendering a Yes no less certain. 

I had no childhood dream of becoming a pastor or Teaching Elder. During my twenties, I experienced a tugging, an uneasiness, a longing that did not abate until I quit my full time job and returned to school to prepare for seminary and ordained ministry. Nancy, my bride, had a similar experience. After serving for years as a church musician, she took some seminary classes to learn more about worship and theology. She had no intention of preaching or presiding at Eucharist. Along the way God began to draw and call her and she began a journey toward priesthood that took over a decade. Where and how she would serve remained largely a mystery, but she offered her Yes and followed where it led.

In his Commencement Address in the Princeton University Chapel in May 2003, Thomas Gillespie observed: "When you have a calling, you do not have a career and therefore do not need a plan. You simply answer God's call and let it lead you where it will." Neither Nancy nor I planned the paths of ministry we have traveled. We tried to discern where God offered particular calls that allowed us to answer our general call to ministry.

Clergy are not interchangeable parts. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and above all we have a call. Presbyterians and Anglicans require affirmation of a personal call by a congregation and the denomination. More than once I have felt inadequate for the tasks before me. My call, that initial Yes, and those affirmations of it provided the faith and foolishness to continue.

Nancy's and my sense of call was shaken early this year when the priests serving at Christ Church Cathedral were told unexpectedly that all of them must leave their positions before the arrival of a new dean. Associate pastors often leave after a new head of staff arrives, but neither the priests nor the congregation of Christ Church anticipated their departures before that took place. Nancy did not yet feel released from her call to the congregation, but her call to the priesthood remained strong; so she began to listen. No positions open in this diocese seemed a good fit for her talents and abilities and none stirred her initial Yes; so she began speaking about possibilities for interim ministry with deployment officers in surrounding dioceses and dioceses where we have grandchildren. Several conversations with congregations proved stimulating, but only one felt like a call. When the leadership of the congregation called her, Nancy agreed to serve as Interim Rector of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in Guntersville, Alabama, a relatively short drive from our two grandsons. We expect this interim to last twelve to eighteen months.

Nancy and I are as deeply in love as ever, perhaps more. Our marriage covenant has never been stronger. We did not plan to live in separate states for a while, but that is where our calls have led us. My sense of call to this congregation has not diminished. Congregational leaders or presbyterial colleagues have not suggested that I need to move on. Unless that changes, I still plan to be here for a good while yet.

Several years ago a noted Presbyterian pastor quipped, "Nothing is sadder in the eyes of God than a minister who started out with a calling and ended up with a career." My bride has a call. She is a priest. She thinks, acts, and feels like a priest. A call to the Episcopal priesthood seems to be in her DNA. I am a Teaching Elder. I sometimes fight against it, but that's who I am. For a while Nancy and I will answer our calls in different locations, but the same God who calls us to these positions also calls us to life in covenant. When this interim ministry has ended, our covenants with God and each other will be stronger and every hour we spend together will be even sweeter. We do not have a plan for what will follow that, but we have a call and confidence that our initial Yes will guide us still.

Glad to share ministry with you, MWPC saints,

LP