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dreamprayact

~ Reflections of a preacher, poet, and contemplative activist

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Tag Archives: beloved community

Contemplation: A Long Loving Look at the Real

09 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Contemplative Life

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

beloved community, Contemplation, God's presence, Gospel of John, healing, Inner life, Mystery, prayer, silence, wholeness

img-9914The obstacles to contemplation are graphically summed up in a comic strip – mother inside the house, looking out a window, her little boy sitting in the yard with his back to a tree:

Mother:“Ditto, what are you doing out there?”

Ditto:“Nothing.”

Mother:“You must be doing something! Now tell me!”

Ditto:“I’m not doing anything.”

Mother:“Ditto! You tell me what you’re doing!”

Ditto (to himself): “Good gosh!” (He tosses a stone.)(out loud):“I’m throwing rocks!”

Mother:“I thought it was something like that. Now stop it at once!”

Ditto:“Okay.” (to himself):“Nobody will let you just do nothing any more.”[i]

Thankfully, my Midwestern childhood gave me plenty of space to do nothing much and not feel guilty about it. Sometimes it was a long lazy afternoon of baseball in the side lot. Other times it was canoeing and fishing on the slow-moving Fox River. And when I was feeling especially adept at “nothing doing,” I would lie in the tall summer grass and gaze at the clouds in the sky and dream of what my life might be.

Then as I grew into adolescence and young adulthood I shed my doing of nothing in favor of the rule most Americans live by: “Only useful activity is valuable, meaningful, moral.” I was so eager to become an adult that at the age of 22 I simultaneously got married, started full-time church employment, purchased a brand new Oldsmobile, trained for a marathon, and began my seminary education as a commuter student. Always the over-achiever! It took about three years for my entire world to come crashing in on me (a story for another day)!

The prayer of Jesus in the 17thchapter of the Gospel of John feels remarkably intimate to me – like eavesdropping on a conversation between Jesus and the One he calls “Abba.” Jesus prays, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us”(17:21). “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, as we are one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”(17:23).

This prayer recognizes a unity within community that is possible when we set aside our egos long enough to seek the Presence of Love that is the Word made flesh among us! Thomas Merton once observed, “Hard as it is to convey in human language, there is a very real and very recognizable (but almost entirely undefinable) Presence of God, in which we confront Him in prayer knowing Him by Whom we are known, aware of Him Who is aware of us, loving Him by Whom we know ourselves to be loved.”[ii]

How do we enter this contemplative way of being, this journey inward? How do we create enough space in the soul’s inner landscape to welcome the One who made us, the One who redeems us, the One who will sustain us until we are home?

When one is young one thinks one knows things! This was true for me when I jumped into adulthood with both feet. I knew I was called into pastoral ministry. I knew I was committed to my young wife until death do us part. I knew I was going to set the world afire. Then I became acquainted with Reality, and it was not overly impressed with my newly minted college degree, or my naive sense of call, or my obligatory marital promises. Indeed it called all of these into question!

I walked through valleys of disillusionment and despair in my twenties and early thirties as I experienced what felt like loss after loss. Ministry became drudgery, marriage a source of deep pain, and life a matter of survival. It turns out that all the books in the theological library were inadequate to meet my existential needs, and Reality set about to educate me on my utter dependence on God!

During this period in my life I wondered: How can I be more present to the Divine Presence in ways that will heal and bring wholeness? Am I able to step fully into the embrace of the One by Whom we are known, loved, forgiven, and brought to awareness of the richness of life?

Marjorie Thompson once wrote, “In contemplation we move from communicating with God through speech to communing with God through the gaze of love. Words fall away, and the most palpable reality is being present to the lover of our souls. When we let go of all effort to speak or even to listen, simply becoming quiet before God, the Spirit is free to work its healing mysteries in us: releasing us from bondage, energizing new patterns of life, restoring our soul’s beauty. Here we allow ourselves to be loved by God into wholeness.”[iii]

For years now a description by contemplative Carmelite William McNamara has spoken to me. He describes contemplation as a long loving look at the real.He calls it “a pure intuition of being, born of love. It is experiential awareness of reality and a way of entering into immediate communion with reality.” He explains that while it is possible to study things, “unless you enter into this intuitive communion with them, you can only know about them, you don’t knowthem. To take a long loving lookat something – a child, a glass of wine, a beautiful meal – this is a natural act of contemplation, of loving admiration.”[iv]

Walter Burghardt adds, “reality is living, pulsing people; … reality is the sun setting over the Swiss Alps, a gentle doe streaking through the forest; reality is a ruddy glass of Burgundy, Beethoven’s Mass in D, a child lapping a chocolate ice-cream cone; reality is a striding woman with wind-blown hair; reality is the risen Christ.”[v]“And so I am most myself, most human, most contemplative when my whole person responds to the real.”[vi]

When I was serving a small rural church in the desert, the parsonage was located just around the corner from the church. So I always walked to work, coming home for lunch, and again at the end of the day. My son Ethan was just a few years old at the time, but he knew my daily routine.

At the end of each morning or afternoon, as I crossed the intersection on my way home and set foot on Cedar Avenue, I would catch a glimpse of our rather plain looking white house. And almost without fail, the drapes in the front picture window would be slightly pulled back and a little head would be sticking up, just watching, waiting, knowing that his daddy would soon be home.

Then, when he saw me he ran out the door as fast as he could, across the front yard and into my grateful arms. I knelt down to receive my son, whose exuberant love astonished me. This is prayer– running to the One in whom we are known and loved and held in welcoming arms.

There were days when Ethan ran out that door with tears in his eyes because something had happened to make him sad or angry. But, you see, he still came running. No matter what kind of day he was having, he wanted nothing more than to be held in strong loving arms and to tell his daddy all about it. Are we this hungry for prayer?

What would it mean for us to cultivate silence within the rhythms of each day – sacred pauses, if you will – so that we might take a long loving look at the real? What would it mean to commune with God, receiving and returning the gaze of love, letting words fall silently away and simply being present? Others might equate it with doing nothing, but we would know this contemplation as time spent with the lover of our souls. We would let it all hang out – our hurts, our fears and struggles as well as our joys, our dreams and hopes, and allow ourselves to be loved into wholeness by the One who is Holy Mystery.

[i]Walter J. Burghardt, “Contemplation: A long loving look at the real,” Church, Winter ’89, p. 15.

[ii]Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, p. 44.

[iii]Marjorie Thompson, Soul Feast, p. 48.

[iv]Burkhardt, p. 15.

[v]Burkhardt, p. 15.

[vi]Burkhardt, p. 16.

Words (c) 2019 Mark Lloyd Richardson

Thirty Five Years

26 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in LGBTQ, Reflections

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Advent Christian Church, beloved community, Campus ministry, forgiveness, grace, kin-dom of God, LGBTQI inclusion, Military chaplaincy, ordination, Pastoral ministry, PFLAG, Reconciling Ministry, social justice

cross-simple

Today is the 35thanniversary of the day I was ordained to the pastoral ministry. Thirty-five years ago on this day my friend Kendra and I were ordained in my home church in Aurora, Illinois. The denomination in which we grew up – the Advent Christian Church – was a loose affiliation of churches with a congregational form of governance dating back to the 1860s. Because of the biblical literalism in the DNA of the church from its earliest days when William Miller combed through the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation to determine a date for Christ’s return, there was also a tendency to read scripture through patriarchal lenses. The denomination had ordained some women across its history, but generally women were not viewed as pastoral leadership material. So Kendra and I enjoyed that Sunday afternoon sharing the spotlight and demonstrating for our local church at least that women and men are equal in bringing leadership gifts to the ministry of the church. She was the Minister of Education and I was the Minister of Parish Life. We worked with a Senior Pastor to create the programs and ministries for a 550-member college-affiliated congregation. We had several good years of working side by side before Kendra’s life was cut tragically short by a brain tumor.

As I reflect on this anniversary, I can’t imagine my sentimental journey holding much significance for anyone else. I simply feel an inner need to mark this date as a way of honoring the work I do. It is so amazing to me that I have spent 35 years caring for congregations and communities with love, hope and a passion infused by the Holy Spirit. Although I did not remain in my inherited denomination in spite of the fact that both my grandfather and great grandfather were ordained Advent Christian ministers. I knew that I needed to spread my wings and grow into a larger vision of God’s work in the world. I even talked with my grandfather about my exploration of the United Methodist Church before getting serious about connecting with those who would open that door for me. He gave me his blessing without hesitation, something I have always cherished. If he were still alive today though, I doubt that he would fully understand some of the personal choices I have made or the theological/moral/ethical positions I have taken on social and political issues of our day. However, he would respect and love me still, of that I am confident.

Over these years of ministry I am aware of many personal failures, and in my private reflections I confess these to God. Times of insincerity, timidity, laziness! Times of pride, uncaring, impatience! Whenever I have transitioned from one place of ministry to another I have made sure to incorporate the liturgy for parting from our Book of Worship that allows pastor and people to celebrate the gifts that have been shared freely with one another and to acknowledge mistakes and ask for forgiveness. I have been helped in each ministry setting by being able to admit my sins to the Christ who reconciles all things so that I am free to move on to new adventures by the grace of God.

So today I remember some ministries I have launched over these 35 years in various places. I’ve served in suburban, urban and rural settings. I’ve served in Californian desert and coastal communities, Hawaiian tropics, and the good ole Midwest. I’ve done local church ministry, campus ministry, and military chaplaincy. As I look back, it’s been a fun, meaningful, challenging, rewarding, and fascinating ride! God is a God of amazing surprises, and perhaps foremost among them is being called to ministry myself! If I had ever doubted that God called me into ministry, I would have immediately stopped and found something else to do. I am not naturally gregarious, extroverted, erudite or talkative. I work deliberately and thoughtfully at everything I do. I have to stretch myself and risk a great deal to simply get in the pulpit on Sunday mornings and speak the truth God has placed on my heart. But the Gospel keeps drawing me in and I can do no other than proclaim the grace, mercy and acceptance of the one I call Savior and Lord!

Among the ministries I’ve helped start in various places over the years: Evergreen Outreach (a social and spiritual gathering for elderly homebound), PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter, an ecumenical housing option for houseless persons near Chicago), a young adult ministry at a San Diego church, a one-room Sunday School with more than a dozen children at a small rural church (where my 1-year-old son was the only child when we arrived), Messy Church (for children and families), CROP Hunger Walks (raising tens of thousands to alleviate hunger through Church World Service), People of Faith for Justice (an interfaith group in San Luis Obispo County), an ecumenical centering prayer group, Showers of Blessing (providing showers, toiletries and other supplies for houseless persons), summer outdoor worship at a local state park, and Easter sunrise services for the community at a local nature preserve. I’ve maintained a public witness through speaking, writing, and organizing for the common good, and have especially appreciated the shared community work with persons of other faith traditions and all persons of good will.

In my current pastoral appointment, what brings me the most joy is the process our congregation has gone through to become a Reconciling Congregation, giving testimony to our commitment to welcome all people into the community of faith regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. We’ve participated in the annual Pride Celebrations in Santa Barbara the last several years and have hosted a PFLAG group in our church facility, as well as Fratelli (a Men’s Chorus for gay men and straight allies, providing rehearsal and performance space). Through our hospitality and active engagement we are announcing that God’s unconditional agape love embraces our LGBTQI siblings just as they are!

My heart is full. I feel privileged to have been given the position to be able to offer something of value to the Kin-dom of God! As have so many others in the great cloud of witnesses! It is a blessing, a joy, and an honor to be among the followers of the One who came that all may have life, and have it abundantly!

Thanks be to God who can use even me – to contribute to the common good, the beloved community, the Kin-dom of all creation! I am deeply blessed!

Mark Richardson, June 26, 2018

Before Heading for the Exit

05 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Reflections, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

beloved community, blessing, Body of Christ, christian congregation, church, church membership, differences of opinions, diversity of viewpoints, genuine Christian community, grace, pastoral care, rituals for saying goodbye, shepherding a congregation

Photo credit: Dallis Day Richardson

Photo credit: Dallis Day Richardson

Here’s a topic most pastors don’t want to talk about – what to do when someone leaves your congregation. I don’t mean because they are moving out of the area or being relocated by their employer. We have rituals for saying goodbye to people as they make these life transitions, especially if they have been intimately involved in the life of the church. We acknowledge the pain in farewell and pray God’s blessing upon them. We celebrate the gifts and graces they have brought to our faith community and express our thanks. More often than not there is cake and ice cream! Grief, grace and gratitude mingle in such moments.

I am not referring to these expected partings when people are simply living their lives and for a time we are blessed to be in beloved community with one another and then their life circumstances change. I am referring instead to those occasions when people make a conscious choice to leave a church because they no longer feel in sync with the direction the church is moving.

It’s never easy. Maybe that seems obvious, but I just want to acknowledge the pain. For everyone involved. For those choosing to leave. For those being left. For those charged with spiritual leadership of a congregation. Even for those who are only minimally aware of what has happened. The sudden unexpected loss hurts. There’s no way around it.

You may have guessed by now. This happened recently in the church I currently serve. A couple who had been involved in many dimensions of church life for years informed us one Monday morning that they were withdrawing their membership, effective immediately. It is not an understatement to say that most church members who knew them were left in stunned disbelief when they heard the news. No one, not even close friends, saw it coming.

To their credit, this couple had fulfilled their annual giving, completed various assignments on committees, and tied up loose ends. They did not leave angry or maliciously. Over a period of some time they had simply determined that their spiritual path no longer lined up with the theological emphases they were hearing from their pastors or their denomination. It was not a decision they made lightly, and I have no trouble affirming them as a sister and brother in Christ.

Every pastor who has been at this work of shepherding congregations for more than a year or two has experienced this kind of significant loss. We each have our own ways of walking through the aftermath with those we are called to serve. My own pastoral response involved first going to visit this couple in their home, listening as carefully and lovingly as possible, praying with them, telling them they are loved and will be missed, and asking God to bless and keep them. Then of course, I needed to leave, not wanting to prolong the new reality that I was no longer their pastor.

I was troubled by one thing though, and I heard myself verbalize it in their home that day, saying something like, “One thing I am struggling with is my belief that a community that follows Christ is going to be diverse and have many gifts and viewpoints. There is room for all of us at the table of grace. We don’t have to be in agreement on everything to have community. In fact, an important part of our church’s role is listening and caring for one another in our differences so that the world knows it’s possible.”

My pastoral default position will always be to bless people as they choose other paths. However, that morning in their home I wish I had gone beyond blessing and been bold and alert enough to venture, “I think you may be making a mistake. I think Christ calls us to something more than finding like-minded people to be our community. It would be better if you didn’t leave because of differences of opinion. It would be better if you stayed and continued the hard work of being in community with people who don’t always agree on everything, because honestly, that is what you are going to find wherever you go.” Those are the thoughts that were left unsaid because they were not yet clearly formed in my mind.

Creating genuine Christian community is never going to be easy, but a good place to begin is with the shared commitment to talk things through before heading for the exit in search of greener pastures!

Words (c) 2015 Mark Lloyd Richardson

Inhabiting a Common and Precious Space

31 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Justice, LGBTQ, Reflections

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

beloved community, Bishop Reuben Job, do no harm, grace, healing, LGBTQ inclusion, marriage equality, repentance, social justice, United Methodist Book of Discipline

"Reach" Photo credit: Dallis Day Richardson

“Reach” Photo credit: Dallis Day Richardson

Methodists have a way of envisioning and living out our faith that is expressed in three simple rules:

  1. Do no harm
  2. Do good
  3. Stay in love with God

Bishop Reuben P. Job describes the first rule in such a way that we can see its potential to change the world one relationship at a time. We live in a time of intense culture wars, political battles, religious squabbling, and international tensions. We see the huge scale of harm being done in the world through both careless and deliberate acts, too often by people of faith and religious institutions. So it helps to hear Bishop Job describe the first simple rule as an “act of disarming, laying aside our weapons and our desire to do harm.” Healing the world requires change from within the human heart as well as outward behavioral change.

For years now the United Methodist Church has been doing considerable harm to our LGBTQ neighbors, family members, and friends. We have had language in our guiding document The Book of Discipline that marginalizes a whole community among us. A day will come when the language will be removed and the church will repent of all of the harm it has knowingly or unknowingly done to peoples’ lives. Especially painful is the legacy of young people who have felt rejected by the very church that exists to nurture love for God and one another.

Bishop Job writes that the act of disarming and seeking to do no harm is revealing in other ways: “We discover that we stand on common ground, inhabit a common and precious space, share a common faith, feast at a common table, and have an equal measure of God’s unlimited love. When I am determined to do no harm to you, I lose my fear of you; and I am able to see you and hear you more clearly. Disarmed of the possibility to do harm, we find that good and solid place to stand where together we can seek the way forward in faithfulness to God” (Reuben P. Job, Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living, Nashville: Abingdon Press, © 2007, pages 23-24).

We, the people of the United Methodist Church, need to remove language from our Discipline that continues to harm individual lives as well as the heart of our spiritual community. We need to listen deeply and intently to the stories of our LGBTQ neighbors, family members, and friends, about how the gospel is being misrepresented in our broken institutional life. We need to look deeply and intently into our own hearts for the places we are armed with weapons of fear, mistrust, and judgment, and seek God’s help in laying those weapons down. We need most of all to repent of the harm the church has already done to persons of sacred worth and commit ourselves anew to manifesting the beloved community where God’s justice and righteousness reign!

We inhabit a common and precious space. Let us begin to act like it.

God, in your grace that exceeds our imaginations and confronts our complacency, hear our prayer.

Words © 2014 Mark Lloyd Richardson
Photo © 2014 Dallis Day Richardson

Let Us Claim this Day for Love

26 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Peace with justice, Reflections

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

beloved community, biblical obedience, California Proposition 8, covenant, Defense of Marriage Act, ecclesial disobedience, human rights, marriage, marriage equality, same-sex marriage, social justice, United States Supreme Court

scotus-domaTwo historic and significant rulings came out of the United States Supreme Court today – one striking down key provisions in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and giving legally married gay and lesbian couples a pathway to receive federal rights and benefits already enjoyed by straight couples, and the other one ruling that California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state, could not be defended on appeal. It is a wonderful day for fairness and equality under the law! It is a day to celebrate that human rights must exist equally for all people regardless of sexual orientation! It is a day to acknowledge that marriage is at its core a covenantal relationship of love between two human beings!

Episcopal Bishop Steven Charleston writes of this historic day: “Let us claim this day for love. You and I, all of us who share in the witness of faith, let us stake our claim on the next twenty-four hours as a sacred space. Let it be a time of freedom. A time of peace. A time of healing for all people, without distinction, without restriction, a time set aside for those who need a place of safety in which they can recover, hope and be filled with the strength of dignity. Let us announce to the world: this is our time and these, all of these, are members of our beloved family.”

From a Christian point of view, I affirm the following:

1)    All of us are members of God’s beloved community;

2)    There is no distinction in God’s eyes between us;

3)    Each of us is free and empowered by God’s abundant grace to become the person we are intended to be;

4)    Each of us learns what it means to be fully human through the most trusting and intimate relationships we are able to fashion with another;

5)    Marriage is about love, and we love because God first loved us, not because we are so naturally good at it;

6)    Marriage is a covenantal relationship in which persons seek God’s blessing as they give themselves to one another for a lifetime;

7)    Marriage is about the deepening of love and commitment, not gender;

8)    It is far more important to the success of a marriage to have the qualities of integrity, honesty, compassion, forgiveness, humility, humor, and mutual respect, than it is to have one man and one woman.

There is so much more work to be done for equality and justice for all of God’s children, both in society and in the church. My own church, the United Methodist Church, is trailing behind other mainstream progressive denominations in this regard. I wish I did not have to say that – on the other hand, there are hopeful and courageous signs that we are becoming more inclusive and may eventually get it right. In the meantime though, “ecclesial disobedience” and “biblical obedience” will only increase. It is not possible for us to do otherwise!

More to come.

Words (c) 2013 Mark Lloyd Richardson

images

Showers of Blessing

23 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Reflections

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

beloved community, Blessings, homelessness, ministry

Showers of Blessing signWhen we dream of a better world, we take one small step after another toward creating it. The church I serve partnered with two other congregations last summer to get a ministry off the ground to help our neighbors in need. As is always true of ministry that we do in the name of Christ, it creates a sense of beloved community that transcends categories of those serving and those being served. Everyone involved learns the lessons of our shared humanity!

Here’s an article in this morning’s local newspaper about the “Showers of Blessing” ministry.

Free showers, haircuts for needy.

To Build the Beloved Community

17 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by mark lloyd richardson in Poems, Prayers, Reflections

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Afghanistan, beloved community, courage, Haiti, justice, Martin Luther King, Palestine, peace, sacred mystery, ultimate meaning, vision

mlkpeacehands“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. You may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. You may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate, nor establish love. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Here is a prayer poem that I wrote for the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. a few years ago for an interfaith peace and justice meeting:

Pray to whomever you kneel in awe before.
Pray to Being, to Sacred Mystery, to the Breath of Life.
Pray to Divine Love, to Ultimate Meaning, to the Author of Peace.
Pray so as to open your humanity to the humanity in others.
Pray through tears dripping with the world’s suffering.
Pray without forgetting
that we are bound together
on a path that touches all of our lives,
all of our worlds,
whether we live in Haiti or Iraq or China
or Afghanistan or Yemen or Palestine
or on the central coast of California.
On this day we thank you, Holy One, for Martin Luther King Jr.
We thank you for all who have the vision and the courage
to build the beloved community
where everyone is valued,
power is shared,
privilege is set aside,
and all creation knows your healing Presence and Peace.
In your many names we pray. Amen.

Words (c) 2013 Mark Lloyd Richardson

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