"Do whatever most kindles love in you." - St. Teresa of Avila
I met a friend of mine for lunch this past week. I had not seen him
in nearly 15 years. We were friends in college at James Madison
University. In fact, we even co-wrote some songs together, and I was
listed as a co-writer on a few songs appearing on his first cassettes
and CD's.
We had maintained distant contact with one another over the passing
years- Christmas Cards, occasional notes... and we each generally knew
the state that the other one lived in. Or so i thought. My last note
from him revealed that he had recently moved from the southern states,
in which he had lived for the past 20 years, back to his home state of
Northern Virginia. Wow, small world!
Meeting friends not seen in years is always an adventure and a joyful
occasion for me. It is a time to catch-up and reach out over the many
years and miles to touch an old friendship. It is time to see exactly
what has changed, and what has remained the same.
See Sunday's Readings
My friend had always been a talented and gifted musician, but there
was something else that i always liked about him-- his passion --and
unlike most musicians, he was not simply passionate about music, but
he also clearly possessed a passion for people. If he had not been
blessed with musical gifts and talents, i imagine that he might have
entered the clergy at some point.
His career has taken a wandering path over the years, through smoky
night clubs entertaining intoxicated patrons, college venues,
recording studios, open fields, large concert halls, through spots of
oasis and places of wilderness, through times both flush and lean...
and yet, as he has begun to clarify and more closely weave together
his passions over the past few years, he has become even more
successful. And i don't necessarily mean "successful" in the way
that our society has come to define that word, although that is true
of him as well. No, i mean he is truly finding his stride now, and he
is touching and improving people's lives though music.
My friend is doing something that too few people ever do- in so many
ways. He is helping to make the world a better place, one audience
and concert hall at time. And he is having a wonderful time doing it.
Though it has probably been nearly 30 years since i first met him,
singing in a little bar in Harrisonburg, Virginia, he seemed to have
aged very little. He was clearly the same person, his eyes alight
with the same fire that i saw in him way back then. He is living his passion.
The season of Lent (the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter) means different things to different folks. For me, it is generally a time to intentionally take a good look at myself and how i am connected with others, the world, and my faith. In essence, it is when i begin asking myself, once more, all over again, the important questions of life. Last week it was: "Who are you?"
This week: "What is your passion?"
How do we find our passion? How do we find our path? How do we find that thing that we are supposed to be doing? As Parker Palmer, a Quaker, an educator, a teacher, an activist, and an author confessed in today’s second reading... do we set out these lofty ideals for ourself of who we ought to become? Do we tell our life what we want it to be… rather than listening to it tell us what it is?
We don't know that Moses was a particularly spiritual or religious man to begin with. He was a Hebrew raised in the Pharaoh’s court. He became aware that his people were enslaved by the Egyptians, and one day, when he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, he became angry, and struck a blow so hard that he killed the Egyptian. This earned him the wrath of both the Egyptians and the Hebrews. He became an outcast. He fled, he wandered off into the wilderness. He met and married his wife, and he tended the sheep of his father in law, Jethro. Quite possibly, Moses could have been a sheepherder all his life, and perhaps, most contentedly so.
But then, he had an encounter with the Divine, and everything changed for him. Part of his emerging passion is revealed to us in his very question. Moses wanted to know God. Through this, his passion for his own people in bondage was rekindled. It was a long journey for Moses, back to Egypt, leading an unruly and diverse people out of the narrow places that confined them, across rivers and through wilderness, but through it all, Moses followed his passion to know God. He even asked to see God, and when Moses died, ancient Jewish tradition says that he died as God took away his soul… with a kiss on the mouth.
The medieval Jewish rabbi [teacher] Maimonides says that of the 903 different ways to die, this way is best.
What is your passion? Let your life speak.
As Saint Teresa of Avila, a Christian Mystic, said:
Do whatever most kindles love in you.
This is how you begin listening.
Through your loves, your passions, the things that ignite you, that burn within you….
And what is the burning bush within you,
the burning bush that speaks to you by name?
That illuminates your way?
That which burns within you,
but does not consume you with the flame?
What is the thing through which God speaks to you by name?
A child was born in Roman Briton, in about the year 370. He was captured by Irish raiders and taken as a slave. He lived in Ireland for six years, tending sheep for his master, a druid high priest. He learned the Celtic tongue, he learned the ways of the Druid- the people who lived there.
One day an angel came to him in a dream and told him that his ship was ready. He escaped, crossed 200 miles to a port, found a ship, and went back home. He attended school, and became a priest. From time to time he saw visions of the children he knew while in captivity calling to him, saying, “O holy youth, come back, and walk once more among us.” Eventually, he did. He returned to Ireland, spreading the love of God among the people there. He even placed a circle over the cross, a circle representing the sun, as symbology that might be more accessible to the druid people. That type of cross is known as a Celtic cross today, and the priest? Ah… you probably know by now. Saint Patrick. The St Patrick of yesterday’s festivities, and the patron saint of green beer.
What an amazing life!
What a life that speaks to us in amazing ways!
What a burning bush
through which the voice of God speaks,
not only to Patrick, but to us today!
And the lives of Moses and Patrick share much in common. Both of their surroundings and jobs helped to mould them, to make them, to prepare them for what they were to truly do with their lives.
Shepherd—a common and necessary occupation of the time. Hard work! Not lofty, not well paying, definitely not glamorous, and right often, pretty smelly. But a job which also teaches much to the soul of one who wishes to learn. Someone once said that in order to be a leader of people, one must first herd sheep. There is much wisdom in that saying. It’s also quite clear to me that few of our leaders today have ever looked at, or walked behind, the business end of 50 or a hundred sheep.
Also in common, both Moses and Patrick sought to set people free, to liberate them.
And so many people need to be freed from bondage today, not only those bound in chains but those who hold the chains, for both are held captive in a system that is broken. Too often, one in bondage wants to be free of bondage, only to hold the chains of another, because that is all they know. But no one is free until all are free.
There is so much work to be done in this world. Jews has a phrase for it, Tikkun Olam. It means repairing the world.
What is your passion?
Are you letting your life speak?
Are you listening to what it is saying to you?
Are you forcing your life along a path that you believe it ought follow,
or are you letting your life live through you?
Is your work your job,
or is it actually preparing you for something quite different?
Are you living your life from the outside in, or the inside out?
As Parker Palmer puts it, “Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”
“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. I must listen for the truth and values at the heart of my own identity, not for the rules and standards by which I must live – but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.”
As we continue on this Lenten journey toward the inevitable conclusion, take time to stop, turn aside… to examine yourself, to look within yourself, not so much for answers, but perhaps for the simple joy of the question, the excitement of a mystery, the pleasure of wonder… or simply just to enjoy and marvel at the beauty of something wonderful and amazing burning within you.
Listen to what your life says.
I want to close today with a poem....
The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
"What is your passion?"
First Reading Exodus 3 : 1-15
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of GOD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When God saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then God said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” God said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look.
Then God said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” God said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’“ God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘GOD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.
Second Reading ~from Parker Palmer in “Letting Your Life Speak”
“Ask me whether what I have done is my life.” For some, those words will be nonsense, nothing more than a poet’s loose way with language and logic… But for others, and I am one, the poet’s words will be precise, piercing, and disquieting. They remind me of moments when it is clear- if I have eyes to see –that the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me. In those moments, I sometimes catch a glimpse of my true life, a life hidden like a river beneath the ice. And in the spirit of the poet, I wonder: What am I meant to do? Who am I meant to be?
Then I ran across the old Quaker saying, “Let your life speak.” I found those words encouraging, and I thought I understood what they meant: “Let the highest truths and values guide you. Live up to those demanding standards in everything you do.”
So I lined up the loftiest ideals I could find and set out to achieve them. The results were rarely admirable, often laughable, and sometimes grotesque. But always they were unreal, a distortion of my true self- as must be the case when one lives from the outside in, not the inside out. I had simply found a “noble” way to live a life that was not my own, a life spent imitating heroes instead of listening to my heart.
Today, some thirty years later, “Let your life speak” means something else to me, a meaning faithful both to the ambiguity of those words and to the complexity of my own experience: “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen to what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”
Vocation, the way I was seeking it, becomes an act of will, a grim determination that one’s life will go this way or that, whether it wants to or not.
[Yet] insight is hidden in the word vocation itself, which is rooted in Latin for “voice”. Vocation does not mean a goal that I must pursue. It means a calling that I must hear. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must life – but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.
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