God knows your heart each day, each morning poem by Peter Menkin
The Benedictine way says look forward to Easter All year round.
Keep in mind the Lord and His victory; we share "with that mother blessed/ Of the sole-begotten One... acceptance find, purer love attaining..." Our devotion said,
Look towards heaven, pray in harmony of love in heart expanding to Easter the year through.
Say the words, as God knows their meaning in your mind, in your heart each day, each morning new.
Easter words, of salvation offered freely to all, "Give now the water of life to those who thirst for you..." This is the day the Lord has made, let us be glad in it.
Poem as read aloud in audio by poet himself:
Photo by Henry Worthy, Benedictine Oblate, London. Henry is an amateur photographer, and as you see, he is a good one. I have enjoyed his photography for some time. He says he will send more pictures, and I look forward to receiving them. Henry is a Facebook friend (I am on Facebook).
Monday, April 19, 2010
Alleluah! He is risen! He is risen indeed!!
by Peter Menkin
At the intersection of Easter
we wait with thoughts of new life,
the life of a baby, the life of the Baptized,
the life of the lamb, and the memory of slaughter,
of the death is fresh, but forgotten for the time
we say, He is risen! He is risen indeed!!
Those bones, those bones, those dry bones
are linked, renewed, given flesh, given life.
More than renewal, like freshness, like birth...
Out of the tomb, white as lightning, transfigured...
we are mystified, believers, quiet in surprise,
wondering at the miracle and hearing how the Apostles
told their friends the tomb is empty.
He is risen! He is risen indeed!!
The mind cannot fathom God's working, the promise,
we go on with the tale, this myth, this story
this reality after vigil, after waiting, knowing the end
does not come, for from generation to generation the day
is celebrated, as from everlasting to everlasting there is Christ.
Shall we say it the third time, Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy,
Lord have mercy. He is risen! He is risen indeed!!
Alleluah!
Freely is the offer made, freely we take the body and blood,
...we bless you in this freeform of sentences, for our creation,
preservation...above all for your immeasurable love in the redemption
of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; we share in his victory over death.
Audio reading of poem written by poet, read by poet:
The painting:
Roz Dimon
Eternal Gaze
Ink on parchment
Date/Size: August 2007
/12 x 12 inches
Art is many things, but foremost it is a visual language.
That said, I want to change the way we look at art today. Where Dada and conceptualism have reigned for over 100 years, there could be nothing more radical than embracing today’s digital palette as the new world order, while restoring the academics of drawing and painting as its foundation.
Visual beauty matters and if we don’t know what that is – we must rediscover it by looking both backward and forward, as great art has a legacy we must uphold. We must also develop a critical benchmark for evaluating the art and artists working in this genre.
Unlike my recent digital creations, here I work with ink and parchment honing my craft, saluting the tools that artists have used in the past. This piece was created by my hand during a session with a live model.
Statement on Church/State about the "frog"
Dimon makes clear her advocacy for separation of church and state in this comic but serious pledge to the frog (a take off on the traditional American ...
Report and commentary on Easter sermon explaining the Cross as given by Archbishop Rowan Williams By Peter Menkin
It is not so usual for someone in California, San Francisco’s Bay Area, New York City, Dallas, or almost any place in the United States to get in trouble for wearing the religious symbol of Christians, the Cross. The central symbol of Easter and the Christian religion, most people in the West know that Christ died on a cross. Most members of the public know that the cross is a terrible way to die, and most know that Christ died a horrible, miserable, painful, ignomious death on the cross. The cross is non-threatening, in its ironic way. Yet in England, wearing the cross is a threat--in its ironic way. It is the symbol of Easter, the cross.
Episcopalians in San Francisco’s Bay Area celebrate Easter, and all after the 40 days of Lent turn to their Church on Easter Sunday and find the cross displayed. What is this cross we have been asking at Easter; Christians must live with it and live it. They do so right here in their lives. They are to do this every day. This is the significant part of who they are in their lives and in the life of society. (Remember, and this writer will repeat the fact, Easter is a Sunday and a season in the Christian faith.)
In this report and commentary on the Easter sermon of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, he tells us about the cross and Easter.
The cross is a universal symbol of martyrdom, the cross represents a way of life, and a faith, a major world religion. There is something unfair, wrong, a matter of persecution, lies and life gone wrong in the story of Easter’s crucifixion of Christ. His trial was a mockery of justice, his trial was a series of false witnesses making accusations that led to His death on a cross. Misery!!
Where we learn of this Easter and its victory is in Church. We find Jesus Christ, the man of sorrows. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan William’s, who is spiritual leader for 77 million Anglicans worldwide in his Easter sermon talks about the cross in a Christian life. Have not all of us sorrows of some kind? Even the Archbishop of Canterbury with all the trouble in the Anglican Communion.
In England the cross is an unfavorable symbol, it is so because it represents a religion that has become controversial. As the newspaper “Telegraph” in Great Britain reports:
…[T]he case of Christian nurse Shirley Chaplin made headlines after she refused to remove a necklace bearing a crucifix, saying it would "violate her faith". She is claiming discrimination against the Royal Devon and Exeter National Health Service Trust Hospital at an employment tribunal.
Rather than the symbol of mercy, succor, and aid, the same Christian symbol worn by Florence Nightingale, the cross is persona non grata. Hear what the Archbishop said at Canterbury Cathedral regarding the way of the cross Christians are asked to live and travel.
…[T]o explain both why you would be right to be afraid of the word of the cross and why you need to hear the Risen Jesus saying, 'Don't be afraid!' The human condition is more serious and more terribly damaged than anyone wants to hear; but the resource of God's self-emptying love is greater than we have words to express. We are to be judged by our relation with the crucified; yet once we have accepted what that means, we are also released and absolved. If that is indeed the promise of the cross, it's well worth being obstinate about the freedom to show it to the world - so long as we ourselves are ready to show it in lives that look for Christ in the outcast, that examine their own failures in truthfulness and that constantly seek to share forgiveness and hope.
In his Easter sermon, Archbishop Rowan Williams diminishes those who in their petty way as bureaucrats tell their employees that it is illegal to wear the cross; yet Christians find that as religious symbol the cross and the Christian life it symbolizes is a way of hope. Critical of the limitations of society in England, and the way of the world in general, the Archbishop’s words speak to a world of despair and trouble, of human suffering, and need for faith. This is a good message for Easter, for the spirit of Easter (He is risen!! He is risen indeed!!) is reflected in Rowan William’s message:
For Christians, making the cross invisible is dangerously close to making both ultimate tragedy and undefeated love invisible. If we fear what these petty bureaucratic assaults mean, it should not be because we fear for ourselves or our faith or our God, who is amply able to look after himself. It should be because we fear for a society that cannot cope with the realities of unspeakable human tragedy and cannot cope either with the hope of ultimate healing and reconciliation; a society that shrinks into its comfort zones when challenged.
Easter is a day in the life of the Christian, it is the most important holiday of the year, and it is a season in the Church year and in the year of the Christian. For the Benedictine, and for many Christians, Easter is a day, an idea, a way of life and hope that is yearned for and looked forward to throughout the year. Easter is a highpoint of Christian faith and religion.
Go forward with your faith, Christian, is the message offered in the Archbishop’s Easter sermon:
I don't imagine for a moment that much, if any, of this is going on in the mind of some hyper-conscientious administrative officer rebuking an employee for wearing a cross to work or even saying a prayer with a colleague. But perhaps we should take the opportunity of saying, 'This is what the cross actually means. If you want it to be invisible because it's too upsetting to people's security, I can well understand that; but let's have it out in the open. Is the God we see in the cross, the God who lives through and beyond terrible dereliction and death and still promises mercy, renewal, life - is that God too much of a menace to be mentioned or shown in the public life and the human interactions of society?'
This is not a petty consideration to be shaken by the cross. Rowan Williams suggests Christians do more than wear a cross. He says be shaken by the cross: “Christians may secretly be happier treating the cross just as a 'religious symbol' than letting ourselves be shaken and unmade and remade by it.”
There is much to think about in this Easter sermon. Let this writer in this report and commentary on the Archbishop’s sermon offer this quotation by Rowan Williams. It is a good thought for the season of Easter.
…[W]e must learn to trust that love and justice are not defeated by our failure; that God has provided from his own strength and resourcefulness a way to freedom, once we have become able to recognize in the face of the suffering Jesus his own divine promise of mercy and life. The resurrection is the manifesting to the world of the triumph of a love that uses no coercion or manipulation but is simply itself – an indestructible love. The challenge of Easter is to believe that God is not defeated by the most extreme rejection imaginable.
Anglicans are an Easter people, as are all Christians an Easter people.
Images: (1) Christ on Cross at sunrise, by Henry Worthy, Obl Cam OSB, London; (2) Woman in morning before Holy Island, by Henry Worthy, Obl Cam OSB, London; Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, courtesy Archbishop's website.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
The courage to Pray--note on Easter prayer
by Peter Menkin
Searching for the words, the courage
to pray enters my life. Like an arrow,
the declaration of thanksgiving comes
and I say aloud, moving my lips:
Like promise, like heart song, like breath
that is in me--speak. My friend the monk
advises: speak. So trying short notes,
with courage of soul, speak I do.
The artist who painted the flowers, what I call tulips, has a name: Jerome Lawrence. Fortunately, this painting is in the Episcopal Church Visual Arts web page archives.Jerome Lawrence
http://www.ecva.org/exhibition/Gifts2009/Lawrence.htm
Jerome Lawrence says: I find beauty in both subject and process. I bargain with artistic elements in varying intensity, variety, placement and proportion then shift within styles as if choosing colors or shapes.
Megachurch New Life preaches 'Speaking in Tongues' during its Supernatural series by Peter Menkin
God is not looking for someone to become a robot or fall into a trance.
Tongues is a sign of growing in God.
--Pastor Brady Boyd
Mark 16 tells us new languages, speaking in tongues, will drive out demons; also, Jesus did not speak in tongues-- according to Pastor Brady of New Life Church during his megachurch’s “Supernatural Week.” He goes on and exhorts his members to help lost people come to Jesus. He exhorts his 12,000 members to speak a language they never learned to help people come to Christ. He explains, for those from America’s State of Kentucky, this Church does not work with snakes. People in New Life do learn a charismatic way, speaking in tongues. He does proclaim thatat the first Church service, “everyone there spoke in tongues when they were Baptized.”
New Life seeks the numinous, the ecstatic, the beautiful. His Sermon given standing before the congregation in jeans, titled, “Tongues and Interpretation of Tongues,” sermon by Brady Boyd (The Supernatural) on video is here.
He starts out this American traditional practice of “speaking in tongues” by telling what tongues is about and isn’t about: Tongues are a normal part of our existence; It is for our charismatic friends; Tongues is speaking in a spiritual language; He asks, Are tongues from the Devil; Tongues are, Praying in an unknown language from your spirit to God.
He tells everyone, We are from Colorado Springs, American. He explains, God is Spirit, We are spirit.
The World Wide Web describes the numinous, which is sought, as:
• evincing the presence of a deity; "a numinous wood"; "the most numinous moment
in the Mass"
• of or relating to or characteristic of a numen
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn • Numinous (from the Classical Latin
numen) is an English adjective describing the power or presence of a divinity.
...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numinous • Related to a numen; indicating the
presence of a divinity; Awe-inspiring; evoking a sense of the transcendent,
mystical or sublime
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/numinous
This writer’s tradition in The Episcopal Church USA seeks and discovers “the beauty of holiness.” At Morning Prayer, many Episcopalians say, “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: Come let us adore him.” So Senior Pastor Brady Boyd implores his flock to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, and has done so in this megachurch since 2007--and though not like the Episcopalian (“The frozen chosen,”) but as charismatics seeking the supernatural.
He says, “I want you to worship with your mind,” but “Tongues help you to personally communicate with God.”
The “Christian Post” article, “New Life Pastor Asks Christians to Speak in Tongues,” is found here, (New Life Church is found on the web here.) The report offers a look at the Supernatural week at New Life Church.
This writer’s experience with the numinous, a kind of ecstasy, was experienced ten or more years ago when commuting to San Francisco by Ferry Boat. At the time the writer was working for the American Television program, “The Judge Mathis Show” as a researcher. During the job, which lasted a few months, the early morning hour and trip across San Francisco Bay was numinous. This from my website:
Here is an excerpt that describes the ferry ride to San Francisco from where I live. How beautiful this ferry ride is to San Francisco from the Larkspur terminal...a joy for many in the early morning before 7:30.
“How I get to San Francisco is a pleasure: I go by ferry, and my trip to the courthouse there is walk, bus, ferry, bus. Here is what the ferry ride is like:The approach into San Francisco is magnificent. One can begin to discern the skyline and buildings in the fog and mist about a mile out from the docking area at the San Francisco pier. The entire skyline is a white against the white fog sky. This makes it appear to come to the eye as if through a magical appearance.
First there is the mist and the fog, and then the eye catches a glimpse of some-thing solid, or large and quite lovely behind and within the cloud. The shapes start to appear, and the patterns on the buildings themselves become apparent. The shades of the structures, their lighter or darker contrasting colors against the light morning mist of fog becomes a transformation of a visible glory that is just a small city, somehow reachable very soon across the water.
God is residing in the morning light of the new day, bringing a hope to man’s edifice by painterly scene and the dawn of the day. I do enjoy this approach by water in the early morning as the ferry brings us all to our civil destination in safety and comfort. It is a thankful trip, and a peaceful one.”
The New Life church experience, as described in the “Christian Post” article by Audrey Barrick , says of Pastor Brady Boyd,
He has many friends who disagree with him on the subject [speaking in
tongues]. But for Boyd, speaking in tongues – known to some as a private prayer
language – is nothing out of the ordinary. Every church he attended while
growing up he saw the demonstration of tongues, he said.
"I thought everybody had that at birth because of the way I grew
up," he told the New Life congregation. He himself couldn't imagine being without it. Pointing out
that pastoring a church is tough, he said he would not survive long-term at New
Life if he didn’t pray in tongues – which gives him "amazing strength."
One comment on the article demonstrates strength of conviction, and mirrors a regard the Pastor’s exhortation requests and offers:
Acts 2: 6-11 explains that the Holy Ghost caused all the different Nationalities that were there to hear in their own languages, the disciples weren’t all speaking different languages, they were speaking as the spirit gave the utterance and God allowed the hearer to understand what was no matter the difference. God as Pastor Boyd said is still God and can do the same today. The Holy Ghost is according to scripture given to as many as obey.
Addendum from, USA Today report:
“Brady Boyd encouraged his Colorado Springs congregation [New Life church] and reminded them of their ‘holy tenacity,’ two days after revelations that a male church volunteer reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard.
“It's the second such claim against the founder of the 14,000-member New Life Church. Haggard resigned as president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals and was fired from the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, in November 2006 amid allegations that he paid a male prostitute for sex and used methamphetamine.”
Images:(1) Senior Pastor Brady Boyd, New Life Church; (2) Senior Pastor Brady Boyd, By Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette via AP
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