Did I not say gratefully yours in my letter that I said that is a prayer that I said when I spoke to you in Church this evening among my friends, others with whom I'd spoken this same evening that I said gratefully yours, I love you Lord and give thanks for the gifts you've given me. It's taken so long to recognize these gifts of love and friendship. For I am gratefully yours, and sorry I did not realize that I thank you this day for my creation and preservation.
Audio reading by the poet is here:
My website is here:
http://www.petermenkin.com
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Third Commandment: Do not take the name of the Lord in vain
God asks us for reverence and respect. In my Church, we take communion on Sundays and it is a reverent experience. With reverence congregants prepare for communion. With reverence congregants approach the table. With reverence congregants take the body and blood of Christ. This is a holy time set aside for worship and God, as is the Sunday worship experience.
Part of this experience in the Christian faith is remembering Christ, it is a memorial of his death and resurrection. Communion in my Church is a source of entering into and receiving God's love. A difficult experience to communicate, this Sunday communion, these words by Thomas Merton are a help.
Thomas Merton writes of a first Communion experience:
For now I had entered into the everlasting movement of the gravitation which is the very life and spirit of God. God's own gravitation towards the depths of His own infinite nature. His goodness without end. And God, that center Who is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere, finding me, through incorporation with Christ, incorporated into this immense and tremendous gravitational movement which is love, which is the Holy Spirit, loved me.
From The Seven Storey Mountain: An Autobiography of Faith by Thomas Merton, p. 246.
In a film trailer, I noticed a clip of President Bush talking with a citizen. The woman said she had three jobs. President Bush said in so many words, this is American enterprise. I do not think he was thinking of the Sabbath, or commenting on it, so much as remarking on how much Americans work --and the President saying it is good. I don't think it is good to work that hard.
Now that I've gone deeper into the subject than I planned, it is my opinion that people should not work so hard to make ends meet. I think it is important to set aside a time of rest. The Ten Commandments allow us space to decide how we will interpret them, and live by them. The purpose of the Ten Commandments is to bring one closer to God.
Most of us in some ways violate the Ten Commandments. We are all difficult people to someone, and difficult people to God. Praying for each other is helpful in keeping neighbor and friend, difficult people, too. Prayer needs to bring people who are evil towards God, and people who are good.. This quote from Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, July August 2007:
"But praying for difficult people confuses us--do I want this person to be blessed? Did I want my daughter's wayward boyfriend to make money so he could finance her life on the streets? In these cases, we can borrow from the best, using ideas from the saints. For example, Jesus and the Apostle Paul used the following phrases:
"that [Christ] would be in them and they in [Christ] (John 17:23)
"that they may become completely one with others who love God (John 17:21, 23)
"that they be strengthened in their inner being with power through Christ's Spirit (Eph. 3:16)
"that they be rooted and grounded in love (Eph. 3:17)
"that they know (interactively) the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge (Eph. 3:19)
"that they would overflow with God's love and be full of discernment (Phil. 1:9-10)"
From "A Journey of Formation" by Jan Johnson in Weavings.
An ambitious statement about God and our Relationship...
"A condensation of faith and belief. I wonder at 'visit' but accept that you feel this to be true. If I were to admit to faith I would see it as my task to visit the infinite." This note from the original posting of the poem in 2002 by another poet on The Atlantic Monthly Writer's Workshop is worth sharing. Though written in June of that year, I thought that the Epiphany is that we can know God, in many ways. One is through prayer, but mostly it is about seeking God. It seems I have spent most of my adult life, and even my childhood, interested in God. It wasn't until later in my life that I came closer, at least I feel that way.
Of course, it is unlikely, to say the least, that any of us will know the God through Christ in a way that Moses did as he was a friend of God. And a receiver of great, historical things from God for the good of mankind. What I am saying, is that the greatness of the figure in religious history is a greatness that points our way to this God, and it is a sense of the vast immensity of God that helps. Wisdom is knowing the fear of the Lord. So the saying goes, and I believe it.
Here I want to help point the way to God through this poem. Many times a poem says something better than a series of sentences. Hopefully, this is true here. Nonetheless, while I have your attention I want to introduce you to a book by Thomas Merton that helps in the same regard of finding God, but also leads a way to humility. For when we seek God, a way to know we are obtaining a knowledge of him, is through humility. The book, "Thoughts in Solitude" says this about faith:
"First, let us be sure that we know what we are doing. Faith alone can give us the light to see that God's will is to be found in our everyday life. Without this light, we cannot see to make the right decisions. Without this certitude we cannot have supernatural confidence and peace. We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.
"To keep ourselves spiritualy alive we must constantly renew our faith."
Another quote:
"Humility sets us free to do what is really good, by showing us our illusions and withdrawing our will from what was only an apparent good."
