"The Psalms defy our notions of profane and sacred, proving that everything we feel, witness, do unto others, and have done to us is acceptable subject matter for conversing with the Divine. They invite us to bring every part of ourselves into our houses of worship. If we omit expressions of faith lost, of rage, of disdain, and of the desire for revenge, we leave parts of ourselves at the door."
-Kari Jo Verhulst
Monday is my sabbath. Nothing is scheduled for Mondays. If there are emergencies I respond, but there are surprisingly few. My wife joins me in observing the day. We make a lunch, put it in a daypack, take our binoculars and drive anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour away, to a trailhead along a river or into the mountains. Before we begin our hike my wife reads a psalm and prays. After that prayer there is no more talking - we enter into a silence that will continue for the next two or three hours, until we stop for lunch.
We walk leisurely, emptying ourselves, opening ourselves to what is there: fern hsapes, flower fragrance, birdsong, granite outcropping, oaks and sycamores, rain, snow, sleet, wind... When the sunor our stomachs tell us it's lunch time, we break the silence with a prayer of blessing for the sandwiches and fruit, the river and the forest. We are free to talk now, sharing bird sightings, thoughts, observations, ideas - however much or little we are inclined. We return home in the middle or late afternoon, putter, do odd jobs, read. After supper I usually wirte family letters. That's it. No Sinai thunder. No Damascus Road illuminations. No Patmos visions. A day set apart for solitude and silence. Not-doing. Being-there. The santification of time.
-Eugene Peterson (from Cure for the Common Life by Max Lucado)
Community is first and foremost a gift of the Holy Spirit, not built upon mutual compatibility, shared affection, or common interests but upon having received the same divine breath, having been given a heart set aflame by the same divine fire, and having been embraced by the same divine love.
-Henri Nouwen
You still shall tramp and tread on endless round
of thought, to justify your action to yourselves,
weaving a fiction which unravels as you weave,
pacing forever in the hell of make-believe
which never is belief.
T. S. Eliot: Murder in the Cathedral.
