Axios: Worthy of the Call

I HAVE MOVED TO A NEW BLOG: AXIOS

TO ALL MY READERS. I HAVE MOVED TO A NEW BLOG! PLEASE BOOKMARK MY NEW BLOG ADDRESS:

http://www.robertlord.org/

To Be Reminded

It was C.S.Lewis who said: "We need to be reminded more than instructed." 

Spending a week in the Northwest Corner of North Carolina was a timely and timeless reminder of what is important: simply put, the furious longing of God for each and every one of us.

Until this truth gets into your heart, it remains information only. Once it gets into your heart, it results in transformation.

The Gospel lesson for this Sunday is Luke 15:1-10, where Jesus, in an act of deep self-differentiation, answers the grumbling complaint of the religious leaders: "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them." 

He then shares the three parables of divine mercy, The Gospel within the Gospel that carries the central message of Jesus Christ.

Jesus defines what we so often forget and replace. God's intense, consuming love for his children is a love that knows no limits and no boundaries. A love that will go to any lengths, take any risks, to pursue us, to find us.

Jesus reveals in provocative and poignant stories the radical, no-holds-barred love of our heavenly Father. 

It is on this Good News that my life, my ministry, my very being stands. I first learned it from my own earthly father's ministry and discovered it for my self. 

Every now and then, it is so good to be reminded.

With you on the Journey, 

Rob+

 

A Life Fully Lived

 While on vacation and sabbath in Colorado I came across a rich reflection by + Robert Stockport, the Bishop of Stockport. 

"What is the greatest sin? That’s a question which theologians love to debate. In my thinking the greatest sin is a life not fully lived. And if that is the case, then the pressure is on the older we get. 

I’ve been ordained for over 30 years now, and during that time it’s been my privilege to be with a number of people as they died. Some were frightened not of annihilation, but of absurdity. Death sealed for them the emptiness of a life not fully lived. Death came too soon, before they could make sense of their life, before they could make one last attempt to give it meaning. They became vulnerable to attacks of despair in which their sense of the value of all that had gone before them drained away. 

The sting of death was not the loss of life, but the loss of meaning. I face my mortality in the conviction that death is the gateway to the fulfilment of human life, not its extinction. I believe life is a pilgrimage of which the destination is God. The fears that assail me are more about the process of dying rather than the event itself. It’s not the dying that’s the issue: it’s living until I die. Jesus said that he had come that ‘we might have life, and have it abundantly.’ Abundant living is both his promise and his gift, and I pray for grace to be open to it."

READ HERE

With you on the Journey, 

Rob+

Martha and Mary: Toward an Undivided Life

I am working on my sermon for this coming Sunday on the story of Martha and Mary in Luke 10: 38-42. The polarity between Martha and her active life of serving and Mary's choice of listening to Jesus, describes one of the greatest paradoxes for many in seeking to live a faithful life: The active life and the contemplative life. Sometimes it just feels like a tug of war.

In the 4th century, one of the desert monastics, Abba Silvanus said, "Martha is necessary to Mary, for it was because Martha worked that Mary was able to be praised." That whole notion of the balance and inter-play between action and contemplation, between putting ourselves forward in service and then at times being passive and receptive, available to God's deep emotions within us, is all part of the rhythm of life, is all part of our being fully human.

Parker Palmer has been very helpful to me in both of his books,  The Active Life and A Hidden Wholeness.

Palmer quotes poet Mary Oliver: "This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention." It needs to be rooted, connected, and nourished if it is to thrive. Our revved up and distracting culture throws plenty of obstacles in the way of those who want to give focused attention to their souls."

I believe that Jesus was pointing to the integration of the whole person. He reveals the source of that integration as the choice to be with him, nurturing the inner life. That is our first calling. Stephen Covey calls it the "private victory" that empowers our effectiveness, the "public victory."

I pay a steep price when I live a divided life. And the people around me pay a  price as well. Wholeness does not mean perfection. It means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.

For me, I hear Jesus saying: "Rob, choose the better part - it endures and cannot be taken away from you."  It is the path to living with integrity rather than living a distracted, divided life, untethered from the true person God calls us to be.

What will it take? Courage.

For people whose vocation is serving others, courage is needed to persevere and be “whole-hearted” in the often overwhelming circumstances in which we are trying to make a difference—whether that be in the life of child, patient, congregation or community.

Be not afraid! Be fully alive!

With you on the Journey,

Rob+

Celebrating The Book of Creation

As we head into the heart of the summer season, I'm reminded of the wonder and beauty of God's creation. It's important to get out of our offices and routines, and encounter the renewing power of the natural world.

Across northern Europe, particularly Ireland and Scotland, a religion immersed in the natural world arose at some unknown point in history when the glaciers had left and people found their way once again to these northern reaches of sea and land.

Central to Celtic thought was the close relationship between the "other world", the divine; and the land and the waters - springs, rivers and hills. The sea, ever near, influenced everything.

In the Celtic tradition, God is understood as speaking through two books: The Bible and Creation! Reverencing creation as God's gift to us  is a dimension of loving God and being a faithful steward.

Going to the mountains, the ocean, the forests, and in all places of God's world, we can find renewal and strength from contemplating the handiwork of God the Creator.

I'm looking forward to taking time soon for some needed vacation and rest. I hope you too will take the time and opportunity to celebrate the gift of this Created World.

If you would like to give thanks to God for the Cosmic order, the Earth and all its creatures, turn to Canticle 12 A Song of Creation in our Prayer Book, Page 88.

Let the earth glorify the Lord, praise him and highly exalt him forever!

P.S. The photo was taking at the Brevard Zoo. Its a real treasure and one of the best Ive been to.

I guess you could call me a real "parrot head"!

Rob+

On the Feast Day of Evelyn Underhill

The constant danger for those of us who enter the ranks of the ordained is that we take on a role, a professional religious role, which has the potential to gradually obliterate the life of the soul, if we fail to be grounded in something larger than ourselves: the Living God.

The changes in the church and society in the 20th century to our present day have caused many clergy to lose clarity about their role and function. In this I refer to dedicated, faithful people with considerable strength in vocation, who have become confused and uncertain about how best to be ordained persons in today’s church. There is a related issue of the clergy in whom this confusion has led to an erosion of self-esteem or even faith. No one action seems called for, but the concern is acute.

I have been in ordained pastoral ministry for close to 30 years, long enough to discover that the care and feeding of my own interior life is not auxiliary to a faithful vision of ministry, it is the foundation. But the question remains: Can professional ministry be an expression of the life of prayer and a path of discipleship to Jesus?

Our ordination vows mandate a vital and vibrant personal faith and life of prayer. How do I or any minister in the midst of the varied pressures and activities of our professional lives discern and ground that doing in our being in the presence of God?

Many parishes and Dioceses look for priests and Bishops who are skilled managers and corporate business leaders. Yes, those skills are needed, but the stress needs to shift from skills and function to that of character formation and symbolic identity,  and to the inwardness and spiritual substance of priesthood and the pastoral vocation.

Today is the Feast day of Evelyn Underhill, a prolific teacher, Anglican spiritual writer and guide of the contemplative mystical tradition of prayer in the church. In a letter she wrote to the then Archbishop of Canterbury about the state of  clergy training in England she says:

"The real failures, difficulties and weaknesses of the Church are spiritual and can only be remedied by spiritual effort and sacrifice, and that her deepest need is a renewal, first in the clergy and through them in the laity; of the great Christian tradition of the inner life. The minister's tool for ministry is his or her own being in vital relationship with God. ”

I remember my father, a priest of the church for  47 years, when asked what was the secret of his success in ministry said: "Its not rocket science. Just fulfill your ordination vows! "

The political and theological issues in the church pale in significance to the real crisis in our midst. You can be absolutely right in your biblical views and be inwardly fragmented and powerless. There must be a radical recovery of pastoral identity as the practice of spiritual guidance and direction, which becomes a catalyst for the transformation of congregations. The crisis of the church is first a crisis of identity, of pastoral identity. I write this as an Episcopal Priest in a denomination that is at this time plagued with conflict and confusion.

The priest is, before all things, a Christian soul, given to prayer, that is, the disciplined practice of the presence of God, centered in the Eucharist, and grounded in a daily rule of office and silence. To pray and teach souls to pray, it is all, for given this everything else will follow.

Axios - to be worthy of the calling,

Rob+

P.S. Photo is of Nancy's Hydrangeas in our back yard

Ordinary Time

The weeks between the Feast of Pentecost and the first Sunday in Advent comprise a second cycle in the church year known as "ordinary time."

The church year is divided into two "halves." The first half, beginning in early December with the first Sunday in Advent and stretching till Pentecost in May or June, tells the story of the life of Christ.

The second half from Pentecost until Christ the King Sunday in Late November, is the story of the church and our call to Christlikeness.

The word ordinary is rooted in the word ordinal, to count. The Sundays of Ordinary Time are not uneventful or unimportant, but are actually time that counts, time that matters!

The promise of this season is that God is present in the midst of every daily activity of life. Our "ordinary" life can be a means of grace and growth in our relationship with God. It is fitting, therefore, that the liturgical color of Ordinary time is green, the color of growth.

 

The challenge is to "notice" and to cultivate attentiveness to the sacrament of the present moments of our lives. It's up to me to create the conditions for a more contemplative appreciation of the ordinary. For me, it is remembering that my first call is to be a contemplative. It is about being with God, seeking God.

 

It has nothing to do with introversion or extroversion.  God longs to be found in the ordinary gifts of each day. But we must seekers.

 

To walk worthy of the call.....

 

Rob+

 

P.S Photo by Jenni Palmer

 

A New Blog

Dear Friends: It's time for me to change directions. I want to explore both the life and practice of seeking to grow and mature in Christ-likeness. As a priest this is my passion.

The best thing any of us have to bring to leadership is not our preaching, our education, our strategic thinking or our pastoral skills—as important as those are. The best thing we bring to leadership is our own transforming selves and the inner authority that comes from our own life and practice.  As Jesus says in John 3, “We speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen.” 

The gift I bring to others is my best self, my transformation. As Ruth Haley Barton has said: "the reality of spiritual transformation lived and modeled by it's leaders is what our churches and Christian organizations need first and most.

If you read my blog and follow along, I hope to offer you what I am learning from God. Its really the only thing that has value and treasure in the full world of God's Kingdom. When heaven and earth intersect, we are most fully alive, and can enjoy the wonders of this world and the world to come.

With you on the Journey,

Rob+