January 13 "Me"

Me, Us, and Them, Installment 2

Mark 12: 30-31

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’

                The transformation of SCUCC into an Urban Abbey is going to take us from a place where like-minded people gather on Sunday morning to experience lively worship into a community of people committed to each other and committed to becoming fully human. Full humanity is what we become when we nurture our best selves, and open ourselves to the Divine presence. It means living our lives in search of a balance, and it means doing this every day of our lives. It is Sunday plus plus plus.

                In her book, “Radical Hospitality”, Loni Collins Pratt describes the spiritual rhythm of a monastery as making time for Cloister, Community, and Hospitality. She defines these terms in this way:

“Cloister refers to the time a monk is alone, or you are alone. It is the apartness of solitude and silence. Community refers to your closest relationships, the people with whom you share your life. The monk shares life with his community of brother monks. You have friends, family, maybe a spouse or partner. Hospitality refers to your interactions in all other relationships, especially those outside the security of your comfort zone—relationships with the stranger.

OSB, Fr. Daniel; Loni Collins Pratt (2011-11-01). Radical Hospitality (Kindle Locations 1475-1480). Paraclete Press. Kindle Edition.

                SCUCC’s Urban Abbey is not asking everyone to become a monk or a nun. It will require us to adopt intentionality about melding our daily lives and our spiritual lives. Urban Abbey provides people the support, the means, and an opportunity to live a fully human life. To be fully human integrates the aspects of cloister, community and hospitality. Or, to use language more common to us, “Me, Us, and Them.”

                There are six Sundays until Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. That gives us two Sundays each to explore Me, Us, and Them.

                “Me” is the aspect of our interior lives. It involves the spiritual disciplines of solitude, meditation, and prayer. It asks us to engender hospitality for our own selves.  The love Jesus asks of us (to love God, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves) begins with a love of self that is honest, thorough-going, and unflinchingly grace filled. It means to enter the shadows of our own heart even if we are afraid of the dark. It means to learn to love the ugly parts of our self just as much as the beautiful ones. Knowing ourselves deeply and honestly and meeting God in the depths of our being is the central importance of “Me” time.

                “Us” refers to our common understanding of community. It is nurturing the relationships in which we are supported and support others. It is in the best sense of the word, family. We dream the best for each other in this community and hold each other accountable for those dreams. Community for the monks means taking a vow to live and seek God with those brothers in the order. Our community is just as intentional though much less formal. In this often frightening, painful world we need a community to keep us safe and give us the strength to go on.

                “Them” are the strangers, the others we don’t know yet. Some may be enemies; some may be friends we haven’t met yet. “Them” are the opportunities to practice the hospitality that changes us and the world. They are “them” until we open our hearts to them.

January 13

Theme: Me, Us, and Them (and God)

Anchor: Tetrahedron

Thread: The Phoenix Affirmations

Frame: “Me”

Psalm 63:5-7

My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast,

    and my mouth praises you with joyful lips

when I think of you on my bed,

    and meditate on you in the watches of the night;

 for you have been my help,

    and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.

Hospitality for our own self is the beginning place for the transformative journey. To love and accept our deepest self is to experience the grace of the Spirit who loves and accepts us wholeheartedly. The time we spend in solitude may bring us into that fearsome honesty where we have to confront the parts of ourselves we most despise and try our best to hide, but the hospitality we give even to those parts teaches our hearts to love more and more. The love we give ourselves comes from the same well as the love we extend to our neighbor.

                Two thoughts come to me about the journey into the self. The first is Ursula K. LeGuin’s novel about the wizard Sparrowhawk , “A Wizard of Earthsea.” In that book, everyone has a true name that they guard fiercely because one’s true name has power. Sparrowhawk is a powerful wizard but he is haunted by a terrible shadow who destroys all that Sparrowhawk loves. Sparrowhawk finally chases the shade down into the world of the dead where they come face to face. Knowing that the only way to overcome the shadow is to speak its true name, Sparrowhawk finally realizes the source of the shadow’s name. Sparrowhawk speaks the name, “Ged”, his own true name and embraces the shadow, its reign of terror is over. The shadow was a part of himself, something he had inadvertently created in a moment of pride and ignorance.

                The second thought is a quote from vulnerability researcher Brene Brown. She says that the word courage comes from the Latin word for heart, “cor.” Courage originally meant to tell our own story wholeheartedly.

                The “Me” part requires practice and dedication, much more than an occasional visit in solitude.  This Sunday could be seen as an invitation to enter the realm of solitude.