FAITH HOUSE Manhattan

A Sabbath Poem (Bly)

        THE NIGHT ABRAHAM CALLED TO THE STARS
        ~ by Richard Bly

        Do you remember the night Abraham first saw
        The stars?  He cried to Saturn:  "You are my Lord!"
        How happy he was!  When he saw the Dawn Star,

        He cried, ""You are my Lord!"  How destroyed he was
        When he watched them set.  Friends, he is like us:
        We take as our Lord the stars that go down.

        We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.
        We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel
        The dirt flying out from behind our back claws.

        And no one can convince us that mud is not
        Beautiful.  It is our badger soul that thinks so.
        We are ready to spend the rest of our life

        Walking with muddy shoes in the wet fields.
        We resemble exiles in the kingdom of the serpent.
        We stand in the onion fields looking up at the night.

        My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping
        Abandoned woman by night.  Friend, tell me what to do,
        Since I am a man in love with the setting stars.

(first appeared in Poetry Magazine) 

This poem based loosely on the Islamic ghazal form in which a major portion of Sufi poetry was written.  Almost all work of Hafiz was in ghazal form. In its classic form, each stanza stands alone–has its own landscape, so to speak–and the theme of the poem is never stated.  The reader has much more to do than he would be used to in the contemporary English poem.

Peacemakers

~ by Samir Selmanovic

All war is our war.

Last week my wife Vesna and I saw Masked , an explosive Israeli play about three Palestinian brothers at the heart of the Middle East conflict. Although our rage and grief burst into tears (and I never cry watching movies!) what we learned from the play was just a beginning.

The play was followed by a post-show discussion with Yonatan Shapira, a pilot who flew hundreds of missions for Israeli Defense.  Along with 26 other pilots, he signed an open letter of refusal to fly over Palestinian territory.  After being discharged, the pilots connected with their Palestinian counterparts and founded an organization called Combatants for Peace . 

What was most intruiging to us was Yonatan's assertion that we are all part of this violent conflict.  I never thought I was.  He argued that one of the major obstacles to peace is the influx of American weapons and money to the Middle East.  Used by all sides in the conflict, boosting our economy, and paid with our tax dollars, it is our weapons that are flooding their world. Yonatan told me, "It is Christians in this country who are best positioned to help end this violence."   Sobering words.

Two days later, I was a part of the post-show discussion as one of the interfaith panelists on the topic "Dialogue Despite Difference."  For sure, I am not an authority on the Middle East conflict.  It is the idea of FAITH HOUSE congregation that has inspired the organizer to invite me.  So many people want it to be possible!

I hope you can see the play if you pass through New York or look out for it if it ever comes to a town near you.  If you pursue "peace on earth," welcome to the company of Jesus and the prophets.  If you are a peacemaker, here is a poem of Rumi, a Muslim mystic poet, that can help you feel like you are not out of your mind.

        “Start a huge, foolish project
        Like Noah.
        It makes absolutely no
        Difference what people
        Think of you.”
                                ~ Rumi

Shalom, Salaam, and Peace of Christ to you from New York!

A Sabbath Poem (Apllinaire)

      COME TO THE EDGE
      ~ by Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), French Poet and Philosopher

      “Come to the edge.”
      “We can’t.  We’re afraid.”
      “Come to the edge.”
      And they came.
      And he pushed them.
      And they flew. 

Colorless World No More

~ Lena Lasarzewski grew up in Sweden and have lived all over the United States for the last 15 years. She currently resides in Bedminster, NJ where she works as a Sales and Marketing Manager for a Swedish company called Pharmadule

My name is Lena and I’m an ex-believer in a black-and-white world.

Like most people, I continuously go through spiritual transitions.  All my life I was both “losing my religion,” (to quote a famous R.E.M song) and regaining it by discarding inadequate answers and learning to ask better questions.  My major transition has been away from a pre-determined worldview handed down to me, to a worldview that I have discovered, created, and now own.  Here is my journey.

The religious subculture into which I was born is the opposite of the culture in which I grew up. Sweden is a “non-believing country” with only 3 % of its 9 million people going to church or believing in God.  The subculture of my church was a very small part of this already small number of believers.

In Bible study from a toddler to an adult, I heard a clear and consistent message:  life is black and white, there is good and evil and nothing in between, and as long as you walk through life with this in mind and believe these truths, you will be fine.  Only later in life did I realize that this black-and-white way of thinking had not prepared me for life.  I realized that being a black-and-white person had turned me into a judgmental person.  I constantly had to make decisions about what is black and what is white and to fit the complexity of life into these two categories, which in turn made it impossible to enjoy life or consider people, religions, and cultures on their own terms.  It was always “us” against “them.”

As a child I accepted the thoughts and beliefs of my parents and the church where I grew up.  I was neither equipped nor encouraged to question the beliefs or practices that I grew up with.  Instead of being invited to not only understand the beliefs of my community but also to contribute by questioning, re-defining, changing and continually growing them, I was asked to merely defend them.  Instead of moving me forward, the beliefs often held me back in a state of constant worry.

After high school I transitioned into the American culture.  On arrival, I connected with the subculture of my denomination in the States and realized how different it was from the church where I grew up.  Our church subcultures are reflections of or reactions to the cultures in which we find ourselves.  Being away from home and responsible for my own life, I started questioning my background and the things I had been taught.  My religious up-bringing had so molded my life that I soon became confused and felt guilty for not thinking, believing and living as I had before.  Eventually, I became so exhausted I took a break not only from organized religion, but from personal spirituality as well.  I began challenging the “do”s and “don’t’s I learned as a child and tried to rid myself of the feelings of guilt for changing my worldview.  It became a healthy cleansing experience.

I have been tired and exhausted. The road has been difficult.  I’m at the end of my latest spiritual transition. I’m seeking the courage to start over with a clean slate, to explore the basics of my religion again asking, as though for the first time, “What is Christianity?”  I refuse to live in a colorless world anymore!  Instead of being a mere watcher of a black-and-white movie, I now embrace all life. I’m excited to be discovering and helping create a community that can offer some new answers for my generation.   

Yes, I’ve learned that you can “loose” your religion, but that might be one of the best ways to find it.  Whether or not it looks the same as before matters less than whether or not you and your community own it.  If you find yourself at peace after the transitions, and if you continue to see ever more color and depth in the world around you, you’ll know your journey is going well.   

A Sabbath Poem (St. John of the Cross)

WHAT IS GRACE?
~ by St. John of the Cross (1542-1591)


"What is grace?" I asked God.

And He said,

"All that happens."

Then He added, when I looked perplexed,

"Could not lovers
say that every moment in their Beloved's arms
was grace?

Existence is my arms,
though I well understand how one can turn
away from
me

until the heart has
wisdom."

(from the Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices
from the East and West, translation Daniel Ladinsky
- Penguin Compass, 2002, on this website)

About God (part 2): The Prayer Flower

~ by Nathan Brown, author, Editor (Signs of the Times, Australia / New Zealand)

Prayer is a lot like radio broadcasting. We sit alone—perhaps in a small room—and talk to the wall in the hope that someone, somewhere, is listening. Through a process and technology we barely understand we try to reach out to the unseen listener. Although we can prepare beforehand for the communication, as often as not it might be just as well to make it up as we go along. Perhaps sometimes the best arises from spontaneity. But on other occasions the progress is awkward, and we cannot even begin to imagine what might lie beyond the blank walls enclosing us.

Then, every so often, we receive a response, faint though it might be. A voice comes back--a message of encouragement or even criticism. The important thing is that it briefly reassures us that someone is out there. But that someone—or Someone—is all-important.

It is perhaps most difficult to reach beyond our tiny bare-walled rooms, to hope for anything or Anyone beyond them, during times of suffering and anguish. Then, even our prayers—our attempts to communicate with the “outside”—can add to our pain. Reflecting on his own experience of sorrow, C. S. Lewis comments: “And one prays; but mainly such prayers as are themselves a form of anguish” (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer). When our prayers just seem to bounce back to us from the surrounding walls, the room feels smaller still and the ricocheting pleas wound us further.

While in some ways suffering is easier for people of faith—having a hope and strength beyond themselves—in other ways belief makes it more complicated and difficult. The problem of pain is also a problem of faith—but only for those who already believe. “The ‘hiddenness’ of God perhaps presses most painfully on those who are in another way nearest to God” (ibid.). For those of us who live in the expectancy of His presence and goodness, God’s apparent absence and silence compound our pain and fear.

And there come moments when we are simply unable to believe, when a primitive nothingness seems our only visible option. Even then, by sheer force of will or habit we still cry out, in the style of Job, David’s anguished psalms, and Jeremiah’s lamentations, and in some incredible way our cry of hopelessness is still a prayer.

Robert McCrum was a successful London publishing executive who suffered a severe stroke at just 40 years of age. Despite his avowed atheism, he found himself reaching out to something in his periods of greatest desperation. “I pray to a God I don’t believe in. But I had an absurd thought the other day, that the thing about God is that even if you don’t believe in him, he listens to you” (McCrum, My Year Off).

It’s a huge thought. Even during the moments when we are so hurt, grief-stricken, or frightened that we cannot see any way to reach out to God, He still hears those cries—and somehow, in His humility and graciousness, they can count as prayers. Maybe that’s part of God’s promise that “I will answer them before they even call to me” (Isa. 65:24). Before we are able to summon the willpower, the focus, the right words, or whatever we think we might need to pray “properly,” God is already answering. In prayer, it seems, His readiness to listen is infinitely more important than our readiness to pray.

In his novel Lilith George MacDonald has one of his characters discover a tiny flower he is unable to identify. The character asks his traveling companion about the mysterious bloom. The raven tells him it is a unique prayer-flower: “Not one prayer-flower is ever quite like another.” Its beauty, form, color, and scent overwhelm the story character. “I did see that the flower was different from any flower I had ever seen before,” he reflects. “Therefore I knew I must be seeing a shadow of the prayer in it; and a great awe came over me to think of the heart listening to the flower.”

That heart is the heart of God. The heartbeat that sustains the universe pauses to hear our stumbling, desperate, and even doubting cries.

(adapted from 7 Reasons Life Is Better with God by Nathan Brown, 2007)

A Sabbath Poem (Rumi - 2)

        DERVISH AT THE DOOR
        ~ by Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273)

        A dervish* knocked at a house
        to ask for a piece of dry bread,
        or moist, it didn't matter.
        "This is not a bakery," said the owner.
        "Might you have a piece of gristle then?"
        "Does this look like butchershop?"
        "A little flour?"
        "Do you hear a grinding stone?"
        "Some water?"
        "This is not a well."
        Whatever the dervish asked for,
        the man made some tired joke
        and refused to give him anything.
        Finally the dervish ran into the house,
        lifted his robe, and squatted
        as though to relieve himself.

        "Hey, hey!"
        "Quiet, you sad man. A deserted place
        is a fine spot to relieve oneself,
        and since there's no living thing here,
        or means of living, it needs fertilizing."
        The dervish began his own list
        of questions and answers.
        "What kind of bird are you? Not a falcon,
        trained for a royal hand. Not a peacock,
        painted with everyone's eyes. Not a parrot,
        that talks for sugar cubes. Not a nightingale,
        that sings like someone in love.
        Not a hoopoe bringing messages to Solomon,
        or a stork that builds on a cliffside.
        What exactly do you do?
        You are no known species.
        You haggle and make jokes
        to keep what you own for yourself.
        You have forgotten the One
        who doesn't care about ownership,
        who doesn't try to turn a profit
        from every human exchange."

        *Dervishes were Sufi poets, whirling dancers, mystics of Islam 

(from Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, HarperOne, 1997)

Who Is My Neighbor?

~ by Ryan Bell, the Senior Pastor of the Hollywood Seventh-day Adventist Church, currently completing his Doctor of Ministry in Missional Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary. To read more from Ryan go to his blog Intersections.

One of the most familiar and enduring stories from the Christian scripture is known as The Good Samaritan. This story has achieved popular status in the form of “Good Samaritan laws,” which in the United States and Canada, protect from prosecution bystanders who help a person in need. In some countries you can actually be held responsible if you don’t at least call for help. But in spite of the popular recognition of this story, its basic message still eludes us.

The story is found in New Testament of the Christian Bible, Luke 10:25-37. Jesus tells a story of a Jewish man who was traveling the dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers and left for dead. Two religious men came along and saw him lying in a pool of his own blood and then passed by on the other side of the road, each for their own religious reason.

As in all good stories, the third man to walk by is the central character in the story – a Samaritan. In a shocking twist, the Samaritan does what the Jewish religious elite was unwilling to do. He stops, bends down, bandages the man’s wounds, and takes him to a house where he can get rest and care, promising to return and pay all the bills.

There are so many ways this story speaks into our human situation, but over the years I have missed one central observation. At first, Jesus is asked a question about how a person could obtain eternal life. When he puts the question back to the clever lawyer who asked it, he answers correctly, “love God and love your neighbor.”  But because the lawyer lives in a divided world, he inquires of Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” And it is this word “neighbor” that becomes a central teaching point of Jesus.

For the listeners of the time, using a Samaritan as the protagonist of the story and a hero was not merely radical. It was repulsive. Centuries old hatred between Jews and Samaritans resulted in a belief that God cannot possibly be engaged with Samaritans. They were the worst kind of apostates – using half-truths to twist the truth into a lie. Samaritans were not only wrong.  They were enemies of God and therefore worthy of all contempt.

It’s an ancient blood feud that finds its way into our living rooms in the form of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of today. Both Jews and Samaritans claimed to be the true descendents of Abraham and Moses, and therefore the rightful inheritors of the land. Sound familiar?  This ancient hostility is also similar to the way that Protestants and Catholics have vilified each other through the centuries. Protestant churches often refer to the Catholic Church as “the beast” of Revelation. On the other hand, the Pope recently issued a statement saying that non-Catholic “churches”, while not being totally rejected by God, are still not, in the proper sense, “churches,” because they have left the mother church.  While Protestants and Catholics may have many legitimate disagreements, excluding one another from belonging to God has a history of massive bloodshed.

So, when Jesus finishes telling the story and asks this religious lawyer which of these men was neighbor to the man in need, he cannot even utter the word “Samaritan” and so he says, “The one who had mercy on him.”

In the story, Jesus brilliantly strips this elite man of his power and prestige by making him a victim of a roadside mugging, and then makes him the recipient of mercy and hospitality at the hands of someone he despises. Then Jesus, in a moment of rhetorical brilliance, presses home the central question: Can this Jew experience the grace of God through a Samaritan?

What was so shocking for the listeners was not that Samaritan was merely a good person.  It was the fact that Jesus used a Samaritan to teach them a lesson about God!  Jesus taught about the commandments of God by embodying his teaching through the actions of a “wrong person.” 

It’s easy to love our neighbors when we get to decide who our neighbor is.

The real test of our love comes when we stand face to face with “the other” – the one who is different from us in every way. It is only as we are stripped of our power, prestige, and arrogance about being right all the time (like the lawyer) that will we be able to rightly discern God coming to us from “those people” whoever “those people” might be for us.

Are neighbors only those who live in my neighborhood? My literal neighborhood, my socio-economic neighborhood, my ideological neighborhood, my religious neighborhood.  Can we be the recipients of God’s blessing at the hands of someone we do not consider to be our neighbor at all?  That was the surprise Jesus had for the lawyer that day.  That is the surprise lesson for our world.  And the lesson I need to learn and re-learn all of my life.

A Sabbath Poem (Holmes)

             

           PEACE BE UNTO THEE, STRANGER
           ~by Ernest Holmes (1887-1960)

           Peace be unto thee, stranger, enter and be not afraid.
           I have left the gate open and thou art welcome to my home.
           There is room in my house for all.
           I have swept the hearth and lighted the fire.
           The room is warm and cheerful and you will find comfort and rest within.
           The table is laid and the fruits of Life are spread before thee.
           The wine is here also, it sparkles in the light.
           I have set a chair for you where the sunbeams dance through the shade.
           Sit and rest and refresh your soul.
           Eat of the fruit and drink the wine.
           All, all is yours, and you are welcome.

(source:  I found this poem on the table of the
Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity in New York)