MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, March 31, 2014

Lessons from the coast

It’s only a temporary housing solution for us, but for a season, my wife and I (accompanied by the blessed dogs) are enjoying living about two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. Not a bad interim solution. A great privilege, in fact. As long as this arrangement lasts, I’ve committed to checking out the beach each day I’m in town. Sometimes it’s a long walk. Sometimes it’s a glance, just to make sure it’s still there. It can be an experience with spiritual implications (perhaps an occupational hazard). I’m not becoming one of those spiritual-not-religious folks who replaces church with worship of God in nature. But I can see how that happens, especially when I read about the failures of the church, and from time to time, see those failures in the mirror (NB: material for another Monday message.) Let’s just say that having the beach in the neighborhood for a few months is a gift and it’s teaching me lessons about the life of the spirit.

Lesson One: It’s great.

Annie Lamott recently wrote a book that said prayer can be boiled down to three words: Thanks, help and wow. I confess that on a daily basis there is a wow factor for me as I make my way up the dunes and discover, again, the Atlantic Ocean unfolding before me. It’s so big, so mysterious, so beautiful, and new every morning. On many days, as I catch the first view of that expanse, I find myself by myself audibly saying “Thank you”, an expression which is probably more praise than gratitude (There is a difference). I almost can’t help doing it, which is probably the way praise is meant to happen. On some days, the water is peaceful and calming. On some days, the power of the waves is awesome (in the true sense of the word) and every now and then fearsome. I’m wondering where you find the wow factor as you look around you. Take a moment today for praise. See how it shifts your day.

Lesson Two: It’s always there.

On days that are full, I often walk to the end of the street after I pull into the driveway, to see what I can see of the sea after the sun has set. On nights when the moon doesn’t shine, it can be really dark. Not much to look at. Then it’s a matter of just listening. Interestingly enough, the waves break all night, whether I’m paying attention or not. That movement is constant, as it has been for thousands upon thousands of years. That constancy reveals something to me about the nature of God, always there, whether I acknowledge that holy presence and power or not. The life of the spirit is not contingent on my attentiveness to it. (Thank goodness for that, because I’m spiritually ADD.) Maybe that’s what the trinity is about, the idea that community, that relationship, that love is always there. We are graciously invited into that relationship. Take a moment today to consider the abiding divine presence, there whether you pay attention to it, that wherever you are and whatever you go through, you have not been left alone.

Lesson Three: It’s a mystery.

There is so much about the ocean that has to do with not knowing. (That’s probably what made “Jaws” so scary.) What’s just under the surface? There’s a depth beyond our understanding. One seminary professor taught about the doctrines, the dogmas of the church, the ways we put the mystery of God into words and concepts and images. He said they are like buoys that float on the surface of the water. They are not the reality themselves, but they point us, they mark for us the depths beyond our vision or understanding. As such pointers, they tell us how to move forward. And the affirmation of our faith, perhaps the greatest mystery of all, is that at the heart of the mystery, there is relationship. There is community. There is love. Take a moment today to recognize the holy mystery in which we live, and the ways that love has been revealed, especially in the person of Jesus, the one we follow in this season of Lent, the one who shows us what the mystery looks like in real life.

For what it’s worth, those are lessons I’m learning from where I’m living. As you move through final weeks of Lent, as we move to Holy Week, take a moment today to the lessons the world is teaching you. Praise God for those lessons.

– Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org
www.forwardmovement.org

MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, March 24, 2014

Rear view mirror

As I think about my own spiritual journey, as I’ve had the privilege of talking with others about their spiritual journeys, I’ve come to believe that sometimes the best way to make sense of the present and to move forward into a future is by looking in the spiritual rear-view mirror, seeing where we’ve been, how we’ve been led, how God has acted. The power of that perspective came to mind this past week, prompted by readings suggested for each day in the Book of Common Prayer. That lectionary takes us these days to the book of Genesis, and the story of Joseph, a novella found in chapters 37-50. This is Joseph of amazing technicolor dream coat fame. Indeed his story is so engaging that it provided fodder for an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. If you’ve never done so, take the time to read Joseph’s story. It’s a roller coaster journey for sure.

It’s been said that the Bible is just a story of sibling rivalry. There are many examples of how that is true, beginning earlier in the book of Genesis with the struggle between Cain and Abel. It’s definitely true of Joseph and his brothers. As a boy, Joseph the dreamer annoyingly, cloyingly paraded his favorite-son status in front of his 11 siblings. It made them want to kill him. Instead, they sold him into slavery in Egypt. A low point. Joseph rose as a slave to a position of prominence. Joseph ascendant. But then was falsely accused of a crime and thrown in prison. Joseph on the skids. In prison, his gifts as interpreter of dreams caught the attention of the Pharoah. Joseph back in the game. He was elevated to become C.O.O. of the nation, wisely guiding the country through a time of famine. Then his brothers show up, asking for help because their nation was in the grip of famine. They don’t recognize their brother. Joseph knows who they are, and has it in his power to exact revenge. Instead, he rescues his family from starvation. At the end of the story (sorry if I’m ruining it for you), Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers. They freak. Will he treat them as they treated him? Joseph takes a look back at his own journey, how the twists and turns have brought him to this moment and says to his brothers: “You meant it to me for evil, but God meant it to me for good.” A crazy journey marked by head-spinning highs and lows, which Joseph would not have chosen, which no one could have predicted, but which gave meaning to his life, with all its challenges. It led to new life.

Lent, this season of self-examination, is a time for the retrospective view. It’s an occasion to do what the children of Israel do throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, which is to remember how God acted on their behalf. It’s a season to do what we do every time we gather for eucharist (a word which means thanksgiving), thinking about the grace and goodness we have received because Christ came to live among us and gave himself for us. The retrospection is not nostalgia, harping back to good old days. It’s not resentment, feeling again the slights that have come our way. Instead, it reminds us of who God is and how God acts, when the changes and chances of life sometimes cause us to forget that. In other words, it helps us move forward.

The present moment can seem perplexing. Perhaps that’s how you feel this Monday morning. The future can seem uncertain. We have no idea what will happen in the next five minutes. In order to move forward in the journey with strength and courage, with love in our hearts, we need to be reminded of the ways God has acted with grace and generosity in our lives. Take some time to look in that rear-view mirror, to write your spiritual autobiography. (Bullet points are fine.) Has God been at work in your life, in your choices, in the things others have done to you, for good or ill? How so? Have you been led? What (or who) were the instruments of that guidance? Can you identify even the slightest divine intervention? I’m guessing it’s been there. Give thanks for these moments. Let the experience of those moments provide the energy and the guidance you need to move forward faithfully today.

And check out the story of Joseph. It’s a good read.

– Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org
www.forwardmovement.org

MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, March 17, 2014

What I’m working on

This Lent (and hopefully beyond), my spiritual practice is to focus on three things. Emphasis is on practice because I need to get better at each one of these. The longer I’m on this spiritual journey, the more distance I realize I need to cover, the more work there is to be done, the more learning lies out there, the more room there is to grow.

These three tools help me focus my ADD soul, my monkey mind. I share them selfishly, because if I put them in writing and send them out to a bunch of people, I automatically get some accountability about trying to live them out. And maybe there will be some resonance with the challenges and opportunities of your spiritual journey this Monday morning.

Here they are, slightly alliteratively presented:

1. Say thanks: 

Approach the day noting with gratitude the gifts that surround me. I can all too quickly focus on the reasons why things aren’t the way I may have imagined or hoped, stuck in a loop of regret or resentment (literally “feeling again). So I’ll try each morning to name at least five things for which I am grateful. The intentionality shifts the thinking, and just maybe changes the course of the day. As biblical warrant, hear what the Spirit is saying through scripture:

Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me. (Psalm 50:23a)

2. Savor the day:

Realize that today, March 17, 2014, is the only March 17, 2014 I’ll ever have. How will I use it? How will I make the most of it? The answer does not necessarily connote activity or accomplishment, though it might. It does call for mindfulness of the gift of time, the present that is the present. It might be that the best use of the day would be to sit in silence the whole time I’m awake. That probably ain’t gonna happen (After all, it is St. Patrick’s Day!) but the point is, it’s as much about being as doing. As biblical warrant, hear what the Spirit is saying through scripture:

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24)

3. Serve somebody somehow: 

Ask each morning for the Holy Spirit to lead in a path of service, eyes open to opportunities to think less about how others can be useful to me, and more about how I can be useful, helpful, healing to somebody else. It may be somebody I know. It may be somebody I’m meeting for the first time. It may be some Mother Teresa/Pope Francis noble act of charity, touching the untouchable. It may be a simple act of courtesy, allowing someone to cut in line in traffic, thanking the person at the supermarket checkout, complimenting the barista, being kinder to someone in my family. As biblical warrant, hear what the Spirit is saying through scripture:

Happy are those who consider the poor; the Lord delivers them in the day of trouble. (Psalm 41:1)

That’s what I’m working on this Lent, my practice,  a work in progress, a life-long pilot project. How about you?

– Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org
www.forwardmovement.org

MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, March 10, 2014

Reading other people’s mail

It’s bad form, but you can learn stuff by reading other people’s mail. A while ago, a colleague gave me a copy of a letter written in the 1930’s by Evelyn Underhill to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang. (Is that a cool name for an archbishop or what?) You may or may not know Evelyn Underhill. You might know Archbishop Lang  because he’s the guy who shows up to do weddings at Downton Abbey. For my money, the more interesting of the two is Evelyn Underhill, writer, mystic, pacifist, Christian who thought a lot about spiritual practices. She wrote the Archbishop to express concern about the state of the church in her day. Focus had been lost. The church stood in need of renewal. She longed for a renewal of the “great Christian tradition of the inner life”, a renewal that would take place among both clergy and lay people.

As I read this letter, I imagined the voice of Maggie Smith reading this hard hitting letter to the Archbishop, which begins with the words “May it please your grace”, and perhaps a classic, withering Maggie Smith eye-roll. One line in the letter in particular leapt out at me. She wrote:

God is the interesting thing about religion and people are hungry for God.

She went on to say that the real hunger among the laity is not for halting attempts to reconcile theology and physical science, but for the deep things of the Spirit. It was so simple, so obvious, so bald, so bold. God is the interesting thing about religion. Did it even need to be said? Apparently so. Apparently the Archbishop, presumably an authority on things religious, needed to hear it. Maybe I do too, because the fact is that I spend a lot of life as a functional atheist, forgetting that God is there, that God is love, acting as if I’m in charge. Evelyn, write me a letter.

Welcome to this first Monday in the season of Lent. It’s an opportunity to go deep in the life of the Spirit. Amid all the distractions, how might we return to the basics, to the understated recollection that God is the interesting thing about religion, that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God? What will you do to address that hunger? It’s not too late in the season to adopt a spiritual practice, practice in the sense of committing to practical action, practice in the sense of getting better, going deeper as you do.

Don’t think badly of me, but here’s another impactful letter I read that was not addressed to me. It is St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, a letter that talks about the spiritual journey and how we can go deeper in that journey.  In it, Paul expresses this aspiration: I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

This morning, what would you say is the interesting thing about religion?

– Jay Sidebotham

PS: A reading of Evelyn Underhill’s letter in its entirety is well worth your time. Google “Evelyn Underhill letter to Archbishop” or some such and you should find it pretty easily. Let me know what you think. 

Contact:

Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org
www.forwardmovement.org

MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, March 3, 2014

Do all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are.

These words were spoken by a 11 year old, Nkosi Johnson, when he was invited to be the keynote speaker at the 13th International AIDS Conference, held in South Africa in 2000. The speech was given shortly before Nkosi died. Born with HIV/AIDS, he was an advocate for those suffering from this disease. His speech, given before thousands, ended with this compelling call to compassion: “Care for us and accept us. We are all human beings. We are normal. We have hands. We have feet. We can walk. We can talk. We have needs just like everyone else. We are all the same.”  The journalist Jim Wooten wrote the story of Nkosi in a book entitled We Are All The Same. In twelve years, Nkosi sure seemed to do all he could what he’d been given.

The church calendar made me recall Nkosi’s remarkable stewardship of the brief time he was given. His words, “Do all you can…” are a variation on words spoken by another saint, from another century, John Wesley whose feast day is observed today. Here is what Wesley said:

Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as you ever can.

Wesley lived out that vision of stewardship, putting faith into action in remarkable ways in the 18th century. He formed small groups marked by personal accountability, discipleship and religious instruction. He traveled far and wide sharing the good news of his faith. Under his leadership, Methodists led on social issues of the day, including abolitionism and prison reform. He took a lot of grief from traditional Anglicans of his day, who thought he’d gone off the spiritual deep end. He was a busy guy, apparently traveling more than 250,000 miles on horseback, giving away 30,000 pounds to people in need and delivering more than 40,000 sermons. Wesley seemed to do all he could with what he’d been given.

You and I are given today, March 3, 2014. It is a unique gift. We’ll never get it back once it’s spent. What will we do with this gift? What new thing does God have for us: what new job, what new encounter, what new relationship, what new challenge, what new opportunity for ministry?  It will be different for each one of us. Can this day be marked by a spirit of gratitude? Can we approach it with a spirit of joy? Can we approach it with courage, with heart? Can we use it to be of service to someone in need?

Today, how will you do all you can with what you have in the time you have, in the place you are?

– Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org
www.forwardmovement.org