Domestic Mysticism

I must give credit to Grace for the title of this posting. Grace and her sister came to our church once recently and stayed for lunch and the inquirer's class afterward. We were talking about calling, and Grace said that she is called to domestic mysticism, among other things, you know: where you meditate as you sweep. Someone else that day was a proponent of mindfulness while doing dishes.

Poet Ann Weems poses the question of how we might do this in her poem, The Holy in the Ordinary, from her book, Kneeling in Jerusalem, a recommended resource for Lent and Easter. The last part captures the question:

Spiritual contemplation is all right
for those who have the time,
but most of us have to make a living.

Most of us have to live in the real world
where profanity splashes and blots out
anything holy.

Where, O Holy One, can we find You in this unholy mess?

How, O God, can we find the holy in the ordinary?

The Buddhist version of domestic mysticism is found in the saying, "chop wood, carry water." How do we practice mindfulness in everyday life? How do we gain the understanding that our everyday tasks are worthy and holy?

Molly Wolf has a book worth reading, or skimming and re-reading, if you've already read it, about this: White China: Finding the Divine in the Everyday. Mostly, I think this is about paying attention, about knowing that God really is present everywhere, and about understanding that being made in the image of God allows the possibility that we are and can be whole and holy, and Wolf emphasizes, while not letting our language about "God-stuff" get in our way.

Personally, cleaning is something I prefer in small doses. Unfortunately, like much of the rest of New England, I spent a lot of time the past two weekends cleaning out my waterlogged basement. After bailing out buckets and buckets of water to keep my basement from overflowing while it rained, mopping up, and picking up and taking out sixteen bags of soggy tiles and trash, I think that I may not want more opportunities to be a domestic mystic for a while.

As Passover coincides with Easter this year, though, I am reminded that a critical part of the ritual preparation for Passover is the attention paid to cleaning the house—mindfully and thoroughly. As we are planning to have both a Passover Seder and an Easter dinner, I just realized that I'm going to need to find the time to give the house a good cleaning. I think I may need to ask for help.

But you know, I don't find the phrase "clean house" in the Bible. So perhaps I will turn to this song that is often used during Lent instead:
Give me a clean heart, so I may serve you, a paraphrase of Psalm 51: 10:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

May our hearts be swept by and with the Spirit, and perhaps then cleaning our houses can be an ordinary, yet mindful and holy practice of our spirit filled hearts.

What We Worship

The Gods we worship write their names on our faces, be sure of that. And a person will worship, have no doubt of that either. One may think that tribute is paid in secret, in the dark recesses of his or her heart, but it is not. That which dominates imagination and thoughts will determine life and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we are worshiping, for what we are worshiping we are becoming.

From the Gates of Heaven alternative services, quoted on the CD, Life's A Lesson, by Ben Sidran.

I picked up this CD at the public library and brought it home mostly because of this quote. Ben Sidran is a Jewish jazz musician who was trying to find a spiritual home for himself and his young family in Wisconsin when he wandered into an alternative service led by Hannah Rosenthal at the third oldest free-standing synagogue in the United States, Gates of Heaven. His story about the making of the CD is wonderful background, but it is this quote that really caught my attention.

What am I becoming? What is written on my face? What do I worship? Worship comes from the Old English root of "worth," so what do I find worthy of my love and attention?

I have been working on developing my habits in this new year of accessible and fun physical exercise. The key for me has been to make the exercise either playful or with some twist and/or short enough that I can either do it mindlessly or mindfully, and the time slots must fit in my life. I have spent five minutes bouncing a foam practice tennis ball or throwing a small stuffed bear repeatedly up into the air, ten minutes dancing to Ziggy Marley's Walk Tall while hitting a punching balloon in each hand, or taking a 53 rock walk (that is, using decorative stones as counters for the laps as I walk around my house). I call these "Spark" exercises after the book by Dr. Glenn Gaesser, that is, bursts of relatively high intensity exercise that spark your fat burning and ignite your energy levels.

I've also done more mundane weight lifting using the Strong Women Stay Young book by Dr. Miriam Nelson, breaking the sets up into something that I can do in 10-15 minutes, but using the goal setting and tracking psychology to add weight each time, and have also used a walk at home DVD by Leslie Sansone, because she's fun, but not manic about form: just walk.

Doing exercise requires a mindfulness all by itself so that it doesn't become too much of a focus in and of itself. Certainly that's the reason the quote about what we worship caught my attention. I don't want exercise to become an idol that I worship. But neither do I want avoiding exercise to be something I worship.

These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and God will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing God will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. Therefore, my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols. 1 Corinthians 10.11-14

idolatry

1. Worship of idols.

2. Blind or excessive devotion to something.

I also think that Christianity's Hellenic heritage has created a very dualistic view of mind/body, with the body getting the bad rap. The idea that our body is wonderful and holy has been twisted by some of our forebears into the idea our bodies should be contained and kept pure. Where is the joy of glorifying God in your body?

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.
1 Corinthians 6: 19-20

Yes, you worship in your body and your body will reflect what you worship.

I realized on Thursday that I had done a fairly good job of paying attention to my body this past week, but my mind and soul also need to be fed. That wheel-spinning sense of ennui or boredom that still provokes my unmindful eating and frankly my general distress at the state of the world, the state elections, and the health and well-being of my community of friends needed something as counter-balance. As serendipity would have it, my new issue (January 26, 2010) of Christian Century magazine had just arrived in the mail, and I began flipping through.Paula Huston's article on "A midlife spiritual challenge," Wake-up Call documents her "third" conversion: a call to pay attention to doing the Spirit's work in the world.

Benedictine Michael Casey captures what's going on during experiences like these. "Conversion means being liberated by God's grace so that we can at last follow the intimate spiritual aspirations that have long been unheeded, neglected, or frustrated."

Oh, yeah, I remember now: Call—that was the reason I went to seminary. Now I have to ask again what am I doing about my intimate spiritual aspirations? That's right: what am I worshiping?

If how you spend your time is a true reflection of what you worship, then I am worshiping my secular job, and it is not a place where I often remember call or grace. This week there certainly was frustration. So I took today off. In an attempt to be restorative, yet spontaneous, I let my morning music on the iPod go to shuffle—a random selection. As my UCC friends would say, "God is still speaking," and the first piece of music was Crux Fidelis from Women in Chant: Recordare. My early morning translation only got as far as "faithful cross," and I meditated on that while listening to the Latin chant. What is my cross? How am I faithful in spite of or because of the cross? Again, what do I worship?

The next song was Shiviti HaShem, from the album Each of Us by Ya Elah, and I know that that HaShem is a name for God, so I knew that God was in front of me when this song came up, although I didn't know what shiviti meant. My Hebrew was better than I knew, as I found out that this is the Hebrew phrase from Psalm 16: 8, "I have set the Lord always before me," "shiviti Hashem lenegdi tamid."

Am I keeping God in mind? Well, you get the message—or at least I started to get the message. By the way, these are not songs that I regularly listen to, and in fact I suspect it's been more than a year since I had listened to either song.

Today as I did my 56 rock walk, I stayed in the moment: the way my foot needed to step to make the corner as I did my turns around my house; the way one beam of sunlight could catch and illuminate the color of whatever rock I was holding in my hand as I came past the living room windows; the beauty and mystery of veined rocks and stones; the feel of rough and tumbled stones; the twinge in my hip. God is present in all of this.

God creates us whole and holy and in order to worship truly we must bring our whole and holy selves to the presence of the Creator. My prayer is that we each remember to set the Other, whole and holy, in front of us, and worship and become more whole and holy.

Purpose? Attention!

My friend Bob sends a morning scripture reflection to his congregation and has included me on the list. Last week, his scriptures were about purpose.

He wrote:

The word I keyed in for biblical search this week is purpose. It didn't occur to me that I would find "purposely." Do you ever do things "accidentally on purpose"? I love that saying, although I can't recall anything I have done lately that has been done accidentally on purpose. I should try to incorporate more of such into my life.

The scripture he shared was:

And when she rose up to glean, Boaz commanded his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. Also let grain from the bundles fall purposely for her; leave it that she may glean, and do not rebuke her.” (Ruth 2:15-16)

And later in the week, of course, he included this famous passage about purpose:

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant and a time to pluck what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to gain, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

He sent this passage the next day and wrote:

But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. (2 Corinthians 9:6-7)

I am not sure my fascination is with words as much as it is in finding rare ones. I never thought to use the word "purposes" until now. In fact, the little American Heritage Dictionary I keep on my desk does not list it, at least not purposely. Even so there is power in the word, for how better to explain a sincere desire to give of ourselves than to reference the intention of our heart, our soul, to overcome the practicality and reasonability of the mind.

He ended the week: "Who better to know purpose than a man willing to be crucified?" And the quote was this:

Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” (John 12:27-28)

This week, like Bob, I have been keying in on purpose. I am in a time of transition, and I've been feeling somewhat at loose ends. I've finished my summer pulpit supply. It's too hot and humid to garden or to do almost anything that is not in air conditioning. This week I have been training someone to take over some of my job responsibilities—so that means I have to figure out what I will be doing when she assumes those parts of my job. This week I also sent off my ordination paper to the local association committee who will review it prior to any ordination council being called. There is no news on the church search front. What is my purpose in life right now?

When I did a search on purpose in the Bible, this is the scripture that caught my attention:

God will fulfill God's purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands. Psalm 138:8

Maybe I am being called to pay attention to my purpose, or since I have been reading the chapter in An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor called "The Practice of Paying Attention," maybe I just need to be paying attention.

Taylor makes the connection between reverence and paying attention. In early August we visited the Clark Art Institute's exhibit of some of the early work of Georgia O'Keeffe, "Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence," and I bought a few O'Keeffe postcards and cards that are sitting near where I do my morning prayers, so this quotation in particular resonated with me.

(p. 24) Small wonder we are short on reverence. The artist Georgia O'Keeffe, who became famous for her sensuous paintings of flowers, explained her success by saying, "In a way, nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small, we haven't time—and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time." [quote from Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses, New York, Random House, 1990, p. 270]
The practice of paying attention really does take time. Most of us move so quickly that our surroundings become no more than the blurred scenery we fly past on our way to somewhere else.

As the summer ends, I'm seeing a lot more of my friends. We're making time finally, because we said all summer that we'd get together and do something. The lesson here is that I have time now for attention, attention to small natural things, and attention to friends. Taylor suggests that reverence should not be reserved for an hour on Sunday, but in fact one of the reasons that people are not satisfied with church is that they want More; for her "More" is another way to name God:

(p. 7) No matter how hard I try to say something true about God, the reality of God will eclipse my best words. The only reality I can describe with any accuracy is my own limited experience of what I think may be God: the More, the Really Real, the Luminous Web That Hold Everything in Place.

Taylor wrote the chapters of this book as a series of responses to the question posed in an invitation to speak, "Come tell us what is saving your life now." (p. xv)

Perhaps that is what we each need to pay attention to: what is saving our life just now. What is the delight that sustains and lifts us up, or calls us to attend, or distracts and lulls us?

It might be the smell of the freshly crushed mint leaf, or the pungency of a bunch of basil.

It might be the drop of sweat dripping down neck or face.

It might be the sweetness of late season berries for breakfast.

It might be the susurration of fans.

It might be the pink roses opening in full bloom.

It might be the sight of my daughter's focused concentration as she completed her seven and a half foot Hogwarts style scarf in a week and a morning!

For now, I guess, my purpose is to pay attention, to see and hear and feel and taste and smell and be, knowing that in love, God will not neglect or forsake God's own work—me, you: each of us and all of creation.