Buddhist statue in Kyoto (Lori Erickson photo)
Everything that happens to you is your teacher.
The secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it.
Polly Berends
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A Life in Books
Loome Theological Booksellers in Stillwater, Minnesota, shows what can happen when a book-buying habit gets out of hand. (Lori Erickson photo)
Today’s post is my monthly column for the Episcopal News Service:
Through the years I’ve been part of several church groups in which participants were asked to share their spiritual autobiographies. While people usually told stories of their personal failures, successes, and lessons learned along the way, one evening my friend Jason turned the genre on its head in the most delightful way. He told his autobiography solely through the books he had read through the decades—the authors who had shaped his thinking, the epiphanies that had come to him through study, and the decisions he had made as a result of what he had read and pondered.
I suspect many Episcopalians could follow the lead of Jason, for we are a bookish lot. The Book of Common Prayer is our defining volume, of course, but our love of the written word is evident in many other ways as well. Our church calendars brim with book club meetings and discussion groups, and we seem to have produced far more authors than is statistically likely given the size of our denomination. I suspect the homes of many Episcopalians (myself included) harbor perilously balanced stacks of books on bedside stands and coffee tables.
In my own life, I can think of many books that have played a crucial role in my spiritual development. Kathleen Norris’s Dakota: A Spiritual Geography
inspired me to go deeper in my prayer life. I love Anne Lamott’s mix of reverence and sass and Coleman Barks’ luminous translations of Rumi. If I have the chance, in heaven I intend to personally thank C.S. Lewis, St. Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, and Henry David Thoreau.
For us bookish types, an armchair and reading lamp can provide just as inspiring a worship experience as a Gothic cathedral. Joseph Campbell, the great scholar of myths, described this particular form of devotion the best. When asked what spiritual practice he followed, he said, “I underline books.”
I also am quite certain that God shares this passion for reading, for why else would he use books so frequently to send messages? There’s the Bible, of course, but think of how often the right book seems to fall into our hands just when we need it most. Clearly God must subscribe to a wide variety of book review publications.
Loome Theological Booksellers (Lori Erickson photo)
Then again, perhaps he simply browses the shelves at Loome Theological Booksellers in Stillwater, Minnesota. When I visited there recently, I was enthralled by the tens of thousands of books that line its shelves. Located in a former Swedish Covenant church, the store is the largest secondhand dealer of theological books in the world.
Current owner Christopher Hagen told me that the business was founded in 1981 by Thomas Loome, a theology professor who had caught the book-buying bug while in graduate school. His hobby became a full-fledged business after he started purchasing the libraries of Catholic monasteries and abbeys during an era when many of them were closing.
“He bought this church to store his growing collection of books and he and his wife raised their five children amid the stacks,” Christopher said. “As he bought more books, he just kept adding more shelves.”
Today nearly every square foot of the church’s balcony and main floor is crammed with volumes, creating such a warren of corridors and cubbyholes that patrons often must borrow the store’s flashlights to better decipher the titles. While much of the store’s business is conducted on-line, Christopher says that collectors come from all over the world to visit in person.
“This is what can happen if we let our book-buying habits get out of hand,” I said to my husband as we browsed. “Consider this place a warning.”
But I also know that neither of us is likely to curtail our literary indulgences. After all, one never knows when God is going to leave just the right volume sitting on a bookshelf at eye level, its spine slightly pulled out so we’ll notice it. It’s not as dramatic as a booming voice from the clouds, but it works.
In the Inbox
(Wikimedia Commons image)
A poem by Jose Orez:
From: Coordinator of Volunteer Services
“We have a young man, thirty-six, on hospice
who has a very young child.
They want someone to help him do a life review
and perhaps put some pictures together
for he and his wife
so the child will know him.
Call me if you are willing to do this.”
The next time, friend, your life seems too hard,
check your Inbox.
Posted in Poetry
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Of Gravitas and Grace
The beginning of the month brings another short reflection from Angeles Arrien’s Living in Gratitude. Her chapter for May is a reflection on the idea of grace, which she defines as “an experience in which individuals slip out of ordinary space and time, where there is no separation between themselves and the world around them, and everything seems perfect just as it is.”
She goes on to make an interesting connection between grace, gratitude, and gravitas, which all share the same root word. Gravitas is what happens when people internalize and integrate their experience of grace, she writes. People with gravitas draw us to them because they embody dignity, integrity, wisdom, substance and presence.
I know a few such people–do you? I think in particular of a friend of mine dying from cancer. Each time I see her she seems both deeper and lighter. Deeper in that she is more reflective, more thoughtful, and more astute, and lighter in that the petty concerns of ordinary life no longer seem to cling to her. That word gravitas is just right in describing her, for she seems to have a gravitational force of her own, drawing people into her orbit.
So in honor of my friend, let me leave you with that wonderful song Amazing Grace, as sung by the Soweto Gospel Choir:
Posted in Grace, Gratitude
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God Pours Light
(Wikimedia Commons image)
GOD POURS LIGHT
God
pours light
into every cup,
quenching darkness.
The proudly pious
stuff their cups with parchment
and critique the taste of ink
while God pours light
and the trees lift their limbs
without worry of redemption,
every blossom a chalice.
Hafiz, seduce those withered souls
with words that wet their parched lips
as light
pours like rain
into every empty cup
set adrift on the Infinite Ocean.
~ Hafiz ~
(Interpretive version of Ghazal 11 by Jose Orez)
Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?
(Atlantic Magazine image)
Are you a member of Facebook? If you are, do you sometimes have doubts that social networking is as wonderful as many people seem to think? This article from the Atlantic Magazine raises questions that I’ve long felt at some level but never quite articulated: Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?
I think the most interesting parts of the article have to do with the increasing loneliness of American society:
Despite its deleterious effect on health, loneliness is one of the first things ordinary Americans spend their money achieving. With money, you flee the cramped city to a house in the suburbs or, if you can afford it, a McMansion in the exurbs, inevitably spending more time in your car. Loneliness is at the American core, a by-product of a long-standing national appetite for independence: The Pilgrims who left Europe willingly abandoned the bonds and strictures of a society that could not accept their right to be different. They did not seek out loneliness, but they accepted it as the price of their autonomy. The cowboys who set off to explore a seemingly endless frontier likewise traded away personal ties in favor of pride and self-respect….
JOHN CACIOPPO, THE director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, is the world’s leading expert on loneliness. In his landmark book, Loneliness, released in 2008, he revealed just how profoundly the epidemic of loneliness is affecting the basic functions of human physiology. He found higher levels of epinephrine, the stress hormone, in the morning urine of lonely people. Loneliness burrows deep: “When we drew blood from our older adults and analyzed their white cells,” he writes, “we found that loneliness somehow penetrated the deepest recesses of the cell to alter the way genes were being expressed.” Loneliness affects not only the brain, then, but the basic process of DNA transcription. When you are lonely, your whole body is lonely.
To Cacioppo, Internet communication allows only ersatz intimacy. “Forming connections with pets or online friends or even God is a noble attempt by an obligatorily gregarious creature to satisfy a compelling need,” he writes. “But surrogates can never make up completely for the absence of the real thing.” The “real thing” being actual people, in the flesh. When I speak to Cacioppo, he is refreshingly clear on what he sees as Facebook’s effect on society. Yes, he allows, some research has suggested that the greater the number of Facebook friends a person has, the less lonely she is. But he argues that the impression this creates can be misleading. “For the most part,” he says, “people are bringing their old friends, and feelings of loneliness or connectedness, to Facebook….”
“Facebook can be terrific, if we use it properly,” Cacioppo continues. “It’s like a car. You can drive it to pick up your friends. Or you can drive alone.” But hasn’t the car increased loneliness? If cars created the suburbs, surely they also created isolation. “That’s because of how we use cars,” Cacioppo replies. “How we use these technologies can lead to more integration, rather than more isolation.”
The problem, then, is that we invite loneliness, even though it makes us miserable. The history of our use of technology is a history of isolation desired and achieved. When the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company opened its A&P stores, giving Americans self-service access to groceries, customers stopped having relationships with their grocers. When the telephone arrived, people stopped knocking on their neighbors’ doors. Social media bring this process to a much wider set of relationships.
I realize it’s ironic for me to be criticizing Facebook while writing on a digital platform that shares many similarities with it. I know I’m delighted when people form connections through the comments section of my blog, and I certainly disagree with Cacioppo’s blithe dismissal of religious belief. But I found myself thinking about this article long after I finished it. If you have an opinion on it, I’d love to hear it.
The Prayers Trees (one more time, with apologies)
Yesterday I discovered, to my great distress, that this site had been hacked by an anonymous Russian. Thankfully my web server had an older version of my website, but when it was restored my last post was lost (my monthly column for the Episcopal News Service). So here it is again, with my apologies if you tried to read it yesterday but couldn’t.
Prayer Trees at Trinity Episcopal Church in Iowa City (Lori Erickson photo)
If you walk by my church on a warm spring day, at first glance you might think we’ve been targeted by pranksters: outside our front door, several of the trees bear a rainbow of ribbons, brightly colored strips of cloth that flutter in each passing breeze.
The ribbons aren’t the result of hijinks, for we have actually invited their presence by setting up a small kiosk near the trees that contains a blank notebook and a bag full of fabric ribbons. “Offer your healing prayers here,” says a sign, while inside the kiosk is another note that explains that people around the world have long put ribbons on trees as symbol of their prayers.
When we set up the kiosk we weren’t sure how this addition to our church lawn would be received. Located as we are in the middle of a busy university town, we worried that it might be a target for vandalism or that no one would take advantage of its invitation to pray. Nearly a year later, our trees are adorned with hundreds of ribbons, bearing colorful testimony to those who have stopped for a few moments in front of our church to offer prayers.
Many people have also left petitions in the blank book, prayers that are given voice each Tuesday morning during our weekly healing service. “I pray that I may be strong enough to do what must be done,” says one. “I pray that the Holy Spirit will allow my grandmother to forgive those who have hurt her,” says another. “We pray that our downstairs neighbor will be OK,” offers another.
The brief prayers make me wonder about the lives behind them. What has happened to the grandmother who can’t forgive? Why does that downstairs neighbor need prayers? I’ll never know, but that mystery is part of the beauty of the ribbons.
I also appreciate how the prayer trees are a form of quiet outreach and support to those who walk by our door. “I tied a ribbon on one of your trees for my sister who has cancer,” a friend told me the other day, someone whom I know does not have a faith community. “It makes me feel better to see it as I walk by each day.”
One of my favorite prayers left at the kiosk is this one: “I give a prayer of thanksgiving for this church for providing this awesome opportunity to pray as a community.” Given the fact that the person signed this message with an extravagantly large heart, she was probably young enough to consider “awesome” as a synonym for “great.” I like to think our prayer trees are awesome in the original meaning of the word as well.
As Episcopalians we rightly value the historic liturgies of our church, crafting our services with beautiful words and music. I greatly appreciate those efforts, but I often find myself pausing outside our church on Sunday mornings to look at the ribbons dancing in the breeze. I think that perhaps as beautiful as the service has been, it is these prayers that go most swiftly to God’s ear, for in matters of the heart, simplicity is better than complexity.
I’m reminded too of a line from Lauren Winner’s powerful new memoir, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis
That’s why I think those ribbons have something to teach us about how to pray. Our words don’t have to be elaborate or skillfully crafted. They don’t have to be spoken inside a church or led by a member of the clergy. However they’re formed, the spirit will take the words where they need to go, borne on the wings of each passing spring breeze.
Posted in Prayers
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Untie the Strong Woman
As long-time readers of this blog know, I have a great devotion to the Virgin Mary. Raised as a Lutheran, I didn’t discover her until I was an adult, and even then it felt for a long time like there was something a little illicit in my fondness for her. Theologically speaking, she was from the wrong side of the tracks.
Thankfully I’ve left those prejudices behind, in part because Episcopalians are happy to welcome the Virgin Mary to the party. And thanks to my friend Darcy (whom I hope you know from her many perceptive comments on The Holy Rover), I discovered the most wonderful celebration of All-Things-Mary: Untie the Strong Woman: Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul
One of the things I love about her book is that it dispels the notion that the Virgin Mary is a meek, mealy-mouthed figure who symbolizes the church’s subjugation of women. As its title suggests, Untie the Strong Woman
Some of the most touching stories in the book are set in places of darkness. Estes writes of working with prisoners behind bars, of counseling deeply wounded and rebellious young women, and of trying to help the desperately poor. She turns conventional Mary imagery on its head with sayings like “Guadalupe is a girl gang leader in heaven.” She describes Latino folk practices like putting a shawl on statues of the Virgin Mary on Good Friday to console her on the death of her son. And she intersperses her stories and poems with beautiful collages, photographs and images of Mary in many different guises and forms.
“Her visits are not rare,” writes Estes. “They are common. No mother withholds herself from her children who cry out in need for her. A mother does not only aid ‘perfected’ children. Quite the contrary, she abides with those who stumble, bumble and suffer….This I can assure you from experience: no matter how deep an exile you have been forced to, no matter what the wound, no matter what disheveled condition your soul is in, no matter what you have done or not done–call and she will be there, as you best can comprehend her.”
There’s this lovely passage too: “Her fingerprints are all over me….Her palm prints are on my shoulders from trying to steer me in various proper and difficult directions.”
My favorite part of the book is Estes’ reflections on a prayer that many Roman Catholics know very well, but which was new to me. It’s known as the Memorare, which is Latin for remember, and it goes like this:
Remember, O most compassionate Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your assistance, or sought your intercession, was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, we fly unto you, O Virgin of Virgins, our Mother; to You, we come; before You, we kneel, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not our petitions; but, in Your clemency and mercy, hear and answer them. Amen.
Writes Estes: “Memorare means Remember! Wake up! It is a command from the soul to remember who you are and what powers have been born into you; that you are the son, the daughter of Blessed Mother…You can hear it, if you cry the words of the Memorare aloud, that it is not ‘just a prayer’; it is an incantation, meaning it is literally meant to be sung out. There is a strong musical cadence to the Latin words, to any language the Memorare is translated into, a sound that is far more reminiscent of sandstorms, stirrups nodding, wooden saddles squeaking. It carries a rhythm that is far more reminiscent of the trot and the gallop, the sway of tent curtains, the sound of those fleeing, than of someone walking flatfooted in and out of buildings undisturbed. Thus, Memorare is a prayer for rough times, to one who knows rough times by heart.”
Thank you, Darcy, for introducing me to this book. It’s always good to spend time with Mary.
Posted in Uncategorized
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On the Alert for Ingratitude
I'm grateful for the red tulips in our front yard (Lori Erickson photo)
Today I return again to Angeles Arrien’s book Living in Gratitude
(if you recall, I’m reading a chapter a month throughout this year). In April, Arrien recommends focusing on mercy and atonement.
The latter is one of those loaded theological words that tend to make people break out in hives. But just because atonement makes us uncomfortable doesn’t mean there isn’t a truth lodged within it. Atonement and its twin of repentence are part of the yin-yang of existence, a way of coming back into harmony with oneself and with the world.
In Arrien’s usage, atonement refers to the desire to make amends. That may mean a reparation of some sort or an act of mercy that enables us to forgive someone else (or ourselves). Atonement begins in a recognition of wrong-doing and leads to genuine apology and repentence.
In the chapter for April, I resonated most with what Arrien has to say about ingratitude. The moral code of reciprocity is violated if we aren’t grateful for what we’ve received, she writes, particularly if our ingratitude becomes habitual. It’s one thing to grouse on an occasional basis, it’s another to view our lives through a perpetual prism of indifference, jealousy, pride or resentment. As an exercise for the coming month, she asks us to be conscious of when and how a sense of ingratitude is triggered for us, for this state is profoundly toxic to our souls.
For Christians, Lent is an especially appropriate time to contemplate these matters. But it’s not only Christians who recognize the temptations of lapsing into ingratitude, as this beautiful passage Arrien quotes from the Buddhist Avatamsaka Sutra indicates:
For all the harmful things I’ve done, with my body, speech and mind, from beginningless greed, anger and stupidity, through lifetimes without number, to this very day; I now repent and I vow to change entirely.
Beginningless greed, anger and stupidity….”beginningless” is the right adjective, is it not? For these emotions tiptoe so quietly into our lives that we often don’t realize how much psychic space they have claimed. April, this season of rebirth and new life, is a good time to try to banish them.
On the Via Dolorosa
- On the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem (Lori Erickson photo)
Today I’m posting a sermon I gave on Sunday in my home church–a bit longer than the usual Holy Rover fare, but I hope it might strike some chords for those of you on a Lenten path. (And if you’re interested in seeing the Griefwalker documentary I refer to, you can view it by clicking on the link).
I’ve been fortunate to travel to many interesting places for my work, but in January I had a trip that was one of the most fascinating journeys I’ve ever taken, a 12-day tour of Biblical sites in Israel.
During Lent, I’ve found myself thinking often of a place that didn’t appeal to me that much when I was there. But as time passes, the more significant my visit to the Via Dolorosa seems.
Entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Lori Erickson photo)
The Via Dolorosa, which is Latin for the “Way of Sorrow,” winds through the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem. It follows the journey made by Jesus from the Roman judgment court to his crucifixion. Walking the path is an act of devotion made by nearly every Christian pilgrim to the city. The route begins in the Muslim Quarter and includes fourteen stations, several of which have chapels for meditation and prayer. It ends in the Christian Quarter at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the place where tradition says Jesus was crucified and laid in a tomb.
Historians say that the Via Dolorosa probably does not mark the exact route followed by Jesus on his way to the cross. But as with so much in the Holy Land, exactitude is not the point. Jesus did walk through the city of Jerusalem on his way to be killed, and then, as now, the Old City was a bustling place, full of the heady aroma of spices, the playful antics of children, and the banter of shoppers. The everyday activities of the world did not stop for his tortured journey.
Jordan Smith, a professor of religious studies who visited Trinity a few weeks ago for one of our Lenten courses, made it clear in his presentation that Jesus’ last journey would not have seemed remarkable to most of the citizens of Jerusalem. The Romans crucified thousands of Jews during this period—so many, in fact, that for efficiency’s sake they likely kept the upright portions of crosses set up outside of the city walls. Smith explained that crucifixion had two purposes: to kill the victim and also to send a message to the living. This is what happens to troublemakers, the array of dead bodies would proclaim.
So Jesus’ last walk through the city streets would not have been that unusual. His few remaining followers were in despair, of course, but most of the rest of those who had followed him on Palm Sunday had already abandoned him. This sort of thing happened again and again to charismatic leaders in Jerusalem. Their stars would brightly shine, they’d attract followers, and then the might of Rome would crush them.
On the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem (Lori Erickson photo)
So really, one could argue that the distractions along the Via Dolorosa today are, in their own way, authentic. The Old City does not keep quiet for the pilgrims who follow the pilgrimage route today, just as it did not pause when a beaten man walked its streets 2,000 years ago.
I know that on my own walk along the Via Dolorosa, I found myself distracted and often irritated by the bustle of the crowds and the calls of merchants eager to sell knick knacks. It was a bit like trying to have a spiritual experience in the middle of a shopping mall.
But that’s the problem with Lent, is it not? Our journey through this holy season is also marked by distractions. We want it to be sacred time, but our ordinary lives keep getting in the way. Deadlines loom, bills need to be paid, commitments must be met. We glimpse the Via Dolorosa of Lent only dimly, its power and mystery obscured by the busyness of our ordinary lives.
Here at Trinity, we hang depictions of Jesus’ last hours on the walls of our church during this season. Historians say that this tradition has its origins in Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa. Pilgrims to the Holy Land brought this devotional practice back to Europe, creating Ways of the Cross in countless churches. To this day, most Roman Catholic parishes have this as a permanent installation, often in a garden outside the church.
One could argue that this is a misplaced act of devotion, that it focuses on despair and death rather than the resurrection of Jesus. And perhaps sometimes this does happen, this focusing too much on the darkness of the Jesus’ last days rather than its message of hope. But I would argue that the Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross, is also an essential part of the Christian story, one worth meditating on in this season especially.
Think of the words of Jesus from the Gospel reading this morning: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.” He invites us to be present with him on his Way of Sorrow, to help us learn its lessons.
In accompanying Jesus along this path, it helps us recognize the other forms in which the Via Dolorosa appears. Walk through the hallways of a hospital, especially on the surgical and cancer floors, and you’re likely to see people on their own Via Dolorosa. Or browse through the petitions left by passersby in the prayer kiosk outside our front door. The people walking by each day are often on a Way of Sorrow, weighed down by worries for loved ones and themselves.
The point of the Via Dolorosa, wherever it is, is that we do not walk it alone. We know that God is with us in our brokenness, failure and despair, because Jesus walked this path first. Sometimes Jesus is carrying the cross, and sometimes we carry it.
This Friday, we’ll be showing a powerful documentary, Griefwalker, in the Parish Hall as part of our Lenten programming. The movie is about Stephen Jenkinson, a theologian and social worker who has been at the bedsides of more than 1,000 people as they died. It’s an eloquent meditation on the lessons to be found in grief and dying.
One of the most powerful scenes in the movie is a conversation between Jenkinson and a woman in her last days of life. She and her husband have a blended family with children from previous marriages, and she worries about how the family will stay together once she is gone. With gentleness and compassion, Jenkinson tells her that her family’s capacity to be a family after her death will in large part depend upon how she dies. The table she sets will determine how they will be able to build their lives without her.
And then Jenkinson goes on to say that we cannot truly love something or someone until we also love its end. He reminds her that the beginning of a marriage foreshadows the time when the couple will part. The birth of a child means that one day that life will come to an end. If we love the first part of the journey, he says, we also have an obligation to love its end.
That is why the dying have so much to teach the living, and why it is a mistake to try to hurry through the last stage of life without recognizing its sacredness. Perhaps you have been at the bedside of a dying loved one and have seen for yourself the holiness that can be present. Or maybe you have witnessed a death that seemed like a terrible travesty because of medical interventions that turned a natural process into a long, drawn-out agony.
One could say that our wish to avoid contemplating the Via Dolorosa is another aspect of our fear of death. Our impulse is to not look too closely at the stations of the cross as we hurry by, not realizing how much they have to teach us.
Listen again to what Jesus had to say in our reading from this morning: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
So I urge you to enter into these last two weeks of Lent as deeply as you can, for these days of solemn reflection are passing quickly. I especially hope you can take part in the drama of our Holy Week services, for they are the richest nourishment that the church offers.
On my own journey on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, I eventually made my way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is an ancient sanctuary, lit by flickering candles and full of ornate altars and gilded icons. It is not so much a church as it is a series of shrines, each marking a different point in the last hours of Jesus’ life. And at the center of the building is a long line of pilgrims standing in front of the sepulchre, patiently waiting to enter the tomb itself.
That is where we are now, here in the final weeks of Lent as Holy Week approaches. It’s not a bad place to stand, actually, here outside the tomb, confronting the reality of Jesus’ death and of our own deaths. Let us rest here awhile as we pray that we may receive the wisdom that can come to us on the Way of Sorrow.
In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Lori Erickson photo)
