Rooted Resolve

No matter our religious belief, practice etc...we all suffer (I think) from the ebbing and flowing of the spirit. Often within the same day, what seems alive and luminous one moment is far from our vision the next. Especially in our culture of instant gratification and comfort at all costs is this true. I have gone through very long and very dry spells of the spirit. Spells of vain grasping after a feeling that I think I may have felt once and am trying to get back.
Rufus Ellis has some wise words for this condition in his sermon, "The Tides of the Spirit"

"THERE are times and tides of the Spirit. It is given sometimes by measure and sometimes not by measure... Sometimes we are in the Spirit, — not always. Sometimes we can recognize the presence and the help of God,— not always. Sometimes the Spirit witnesses unto our spirits, — not always. And we find that what is true of ourselves is true of others, true of the best; that they also are not always in the Spirit. Sometimes we are left to our native capacities, and to the light and love that are garnered in holy oracles and blessed traditions of the past; and the struggle of life goes on in no nearness to God, and under closed heavens; the Sundays are Whitsundays only in name; the great and deep sea still lies out before us, but there comes no divine breath to send us beyond our soundings and our shallows...And I think that we must accept this as the law of our spiritual life, even in Christendom. God means that it shall be so...

Strengthen the things which are always yours; make the most of what God has already given you, in what you call your higher nature, — in your reason, your conscience, your moral sense, your free-will, your Bible, the example of your Master. God asks us to obey Him, and gives us light and strength for that, — some beams from heaven always, but not necessarily a halo about the head, or fervors of heart and spirit...God asks of us a great deal of routine work. He would learn whether we will keep His commandments or no. That Voice to us is always steady and plain, to-day and to-morrow and the day following; we must not always be listening for other and more exhilarating voices. Our religious life cannot be a continual renewal of the deepest faiths, the most intense feelings, the deliciousness of prayer, the overflowings of joy, the delicacies of piety. It is not safe for us to expect such things, because, as I suppose, it is not safe for us to have them... rather must we give ourselves in all soberness to such plain exercises as self-control in all its forms, the best use of time and talents and wealth, the better ordering of our household, the application of moral truths which are known and acknowledged, — a self-denying charity, a truth-telling sobriety. It is easy to exhaust the soul in the endeavor to stimulate its emotions, but there is a limit to religious sensibility; and we shall do well to regard the duty and conscience of piety rather than the exhilaration we are to find in it...If we do not cease from plain duties for lack of ardent faiths and strong emotions and sensible helps, if we keep on working and asking, the Day of Pentecost will surely come, and our religion shall be as joyous and tender as it has been honest and practical...

The Spirit will come; the Spirit is whispering in our hearts now... learn to trust utterly and always in Him who seems sometimes to hide Himself very strangely; come into a rooted resolve of a larger obedience; commit yourself to a nobler life; let the Bread of God nourish you for a continual service; and let your covenant with the Unseen and Eternal be an everlasting covenant."

Blessings

Our Eversasting Portion

Today is the anniversary of the death of William Henry Furness (1802-1896) Jesus scholar, abolitionist, FOE (Friend of Emerson) and pastor. His book of prayers, Domestic Worship, has long been a favorite of mine. A representative Morning Prayer:

"God of our lives! Maker of heaven and of earth, who dost every morning command the light to shine out of darkness, shine into our hearts now, and give us the light of the knowledge of thy glory. Let an everlasting day dawn within us. As we have risen refreshed by repose, we would go forth this morning with heart and hand ready for every good work. We would return to the active duties of life with a fresh sense of the great value of life, and more deeply impressed than ever by the thought of the momentous consequences involved in all that we do. But without Thee all our strength is naught, and we labour in vain. Grant us thy blessing. God be with us this day to guard and guide!
Feeble are we, O our Father, and life is a scene of constant danger. The foes of our inward peace assail us in the most deceitful forms, and our own hearts are treacherous. Without unsleeping vigilance and earnest prayer, we may go far astray from the path of life, and miss the only true fountains of life, and find all our labour vanity, vexation and anguish of spirit. We would flee to the shadow of thine all protecting wings. Thou art our refuge, and what are we without thine ever present care!
How deep and hearty should be our gratitude ! How should we call upon our souls and all that is within us to rejoice in Thee, almighty to protect and to save, the God of our salvation, whose bounty the multitude of our wants cannot weary, whose mercy all our sins, though they are many and great, cannot exhaust! Be thou ever present, in thy pure glory, to our hearts. Having Thee ever before our eyes, how shall we bear ever again to yield to evil solicitations or do any thing offensive in thy sight! How can we ever disregard thy will so clearly expressed or violate thy perfect law written on our hearts, announced by all thy works, vindicated by the whole course of thy providence, and revealed in a living form in the person of thy Son, our Saviour! Be Thou thus within us a preserving presence. Give us the most exalted conceptions of thy being, a practical conviction of thy nearness. At home and abroad, in our public walks, in our deepest retirement, let the fear of God restrain and the love of God animate us.
Father in heaven, may no corrupting inclinations be fostered in our bosoms this day. May we be pure hearted and single minded, and possess a perfect command over our passions, lest they alienate us from thee and put us at enmity with thy perfect purity, and cut us off from the light and blessedness of thy presence. Let not our imaginations give a false value to the fleeting gratifications of time and sense. Let us not look too fondly at the things which are seen and temporal, and mistake the shadow for the reality, the glare of the world for the eternal light of truth. May our hearts be set upon the attainment of inward, thorough, personal holiness. And until this be secured, may we feel that we have done nothing and gained nothing, however otherwise the labour of our hands may, in thy providence, be prospered. Save us from the tyranny of ungoverned passions, from those evil practices and habits which despoil the soul of all power and peace and cast it into outer darkness!
We sustain numerous and interesting relations to one another and to the world. Help us this day faithfully to discharge every social duty. May we be governed in all the transactions of this day by the strictest principles of honourable dealing. Let no pride or vanity blind us to the sacred rights of others and induce us to take unfair advantage of their ignorance, or to exult in their infirmities. Be that divine charity our governing principle, that charity which is the bond of Christian perfection, the brightest ornament of the Christian life, that charity which hopeth all things and endureth all things, rejoicing not in iniquity but in the truth. In this spirit may we never deny the claim which all men of every name and denomination have upon our sympathy and respect. May we forgive the injurious as we hope to be forgiven of God, and do unto others as we would they should do unto us.
Make this day, Almighty God, a day of steady improvement. Sanctify all its enjoyments. Disarm all its temptations. May every hour be spent in thy service. Should any calamity befall us, should sickness and death enter this dwelling, may we receive them as sent from God upon an errand of mercy. Whatever may be the course of thy providence, let our souls rejoice in thy goodness, and then we shall not fear though the earth be removed out of its place and the mountains be cast into the midst of the sea. Give us this trust in life and in death, and be Thou, O God, our everlasting portion; and unto thee will we ascribe the glory and the praise for ever. Amen."

RIP

Blessed Unrest...

Sin is a word profoundly out of fashion in Unitarian Universalist circles. In fact, I would argue that a personal sense of sin is out of fashion even in evangelical circles where it seems to largely be used to identify the practices of others. There are some good reasons for this circumstance: the word sin can and often has been used as a psychological battering ram and its demise in this context is welcome. And yet the loss of a personal sense of sin has its negative side as well. Here is Rev. Rufus Ellis in his sermon, "To Him it is Sin"

"Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. — James, iv. 17.


IT is sin not to live up to our light. Young and old, wise and simple, we are sinners so long as we fail to live up to our light. It may be twilight, or it may be noontide; the light may be very dim or very bright; the good that we know to do may be little or much ; our moral growth may have just begun, or we may have made much progress in goodness, — but it is true, all the same, that if we are not living up to our light it is sin. The revelation of truth and right is a disclosure of obligation, a call to obedience...

'Therefore to him who knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.' The good may be something unexpected, unusual, not a mere conventional good, — like a paltry dole to the poor, a pittance from your hoard, a crumb from your luxurious table, an hour in your week, a word which costs you nothing. The good may be a nobler style of living, simplicity perhaps amidst surrounding luxuries, a consecration of your leisure to work for which the world pays no wages and will scarce give you thanks. The good may be very hard, because very good and very beautiful and very blessed... Christianity is a revelation of good things to be done on earth, — of human purity, simplicity, justice, brotherhood, service; and to him who knows these things and doeth them not, to him it is sin, and Christianity is preached to him in vain unless he has a consciousness of sin.
The hope of every human soul and of human society is bound up with blessed and fruitful sorrow, — this living sense of sin. Let this fail, and moral progress is at an end. Come to look upon your shortcomings as misfortunes, cease to deplore and strive against them as sins, and you have ceased to live, or at least have fallen asleep; and if there is to be no change you will sleep on forever, and might as well die to-day as any time. Life is not mere continuance,— it is progress; it is the receiving of larger and larger measures of truth and love; it is movement upward and onward. It is not well for us to be content with ourselves so long as we know any good which we are not doing, trying with all our might and with all the help we can get from God to do. It is a blessed unrest which moves us to toil and prayer; we can do without it no more than the sick man can do without the pain, or even agony, which sends him to the physician, and engages him in self-control and the struggle for health and life.
It is one of the crowning excellences of Christianity that it awakens and strengthens and keeps alive this consciousness of sin by its appeals for an exceeding righteousness and its display of a grand example of holy living, while at the same time it directs and tempers the feeling by its revelation of inexhaustible love and help."

A crowning excellence indeed. Blessings

Saints of Everyday Life

Rufus Ellis (1819-1885) was the minister of First Church in Boston from 1853 until his death. Edward Everett Hale said this of Rev. Ellis in his Memorial Address:

"This man held to Jesus Christ as the real leader of life, — as the leader of this modern life of to-day. Christianity was not for him any bit of medieval imagery, any prehistoric fossil. To him true Christianity was to be the real life of the nineteenth century, In his heart, he believed and knew that men might walk in the Way of Jesus Christ, and believe his truth, and live his life. This was his hope and prayer and his expectation"

This from Ellis' sermon, "Everyday Religion"

"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. — Matthew, vi. 10.

I WISH to speak to you of the religion of common life, — every-day religion; of the faith out of which it springs; of the acts in which it is exercised; of the blessedness to which it leads.
1. The faith out of which it springs is a deep religious conviction that there is a divine Will to be done here on earth, a divine Hand waiting here to guide us, a message from heaven for every hour of our lives...there is this sublime confidence in the absolute sacredness of our life; and it is the spring of a most practical religion.

2. For observe, next, that with those who are in this faith every duty, no matter how common, is God's call for instantaneous obedience; literally His voice to them out of the Holy of holies ; unquestionably so, because the duty is so plain...And the point is, that this is just as true of the least things as of the greatest, of the nearest things as of the most remote; that in truth when little and great and near and far are seen in God, these distinctions vanish...The religion of every-day life does not merely record in diaries the alternations of the heart's temperature, or write out vows of self-consecration, or breathe out longings for a more entire self-surrender; it yields up to God the person, the thing, that God asks for, submitting to Him in each moment of struggle, when the child cleaves to this and that, and would walk aside from the path into which the strong and gentle Hand would lead; it worships, it may be, in tears and bitterness of spirit, and yet in that sweet submission which saith, "Not my will but Thine be done!"

3. And now let me say, that all the beatitudes of the Gospel are fulfilled according as this religion of common life is duly observed. In its pure and holy light, as it shines down upon ever-brightening paths, we see that every human life has a meaning and is accomplishing an end which is altogether divine. This meaning we are ever unfolding, this end we are ever fulfilling...But the blessedness of this religion can only be seen when those who profess it follow it...upon the instant, — not to-morrow, which is a moral dislocation, but to-day...

Well do we keep a day of All Saints: all, not only those whose names are in the Calendar, and who can be accepted, some of them, only with certain grains of allowance,—all those also whose names are written only upon the palms of God's hands and upon the hearts of many who in that great Day shall rise up and call them blessed! Tell the stories of this and the other saint to any who care to hear them; but none the less the heart of humanity should keep its sweetest incense and its abundance of most joyful praise for the saints of every-day life, — unknown because they were lost in their work, and in Him who gave it to them to do."

Have a blessed day.

John Updike RIP

John Updike RIP

To be overruled...

Some warm words on the Lord's Prayer from Henry Wilder Foote on a bitter cold New England morning...

" As he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples."

"...the first condition of prayer is, that it shall be really offered to God, — that is, to the highest and purest will of which he who prays has any conception. It must mean desire not to overrule, but to be overruled by Him." A selfish wish, even if thrown out in that form, is still selfishness praying to itself. He who gave us the Lord's Prayer, with its trustful voicing of our great human needs, has shown us the spirit which should underlie all our prayer, when in his own hour of trial he cried, " Nevertheless, Father, not as I will, but as thou wilt! "
" In Christ's sense, Christian prayer addresses primarily not God's omnipotence at all, but his spiritual nature. . . . Prayer is ... the chief method by which the eager and short-sighted and imperfect mind gradually learns to purify itself in the flame of Divine love. People talk and think as if prayer only meant bringing pressure to bear for private purposes on the Power which touches the secret springs of life. But in Christ's teaching it means bringing Divine influences to bear on these private purposes, so as to extinguish or transform them."
The highest view of life is the truest. Only when we regard it as God's gift to us, and its privileges as ways of serving Him, do we know how to use them aright... Our deepest wants are those which touch no other human spirit, — which no outward possession can satisfy. The soul meets problems of duty, and our unaided wisdom is not able to solve them. We need an absolute standard of right to regulate our conduct. How shall we obtain it, unless by turning our thoughts to the Highest ?
We need, too, to pray in order to deepen our thankfulness to God. We go on from day to day, often almost without thought of Him to whom we owe the gift of our happiness and the blessing which He has hidden even in our pain. Prayer gives us time to think, and brings a light above the earth into our thought.
Who would not desire to bring the Divine Life, the Divine Presence, into our daily consciousness, to transfigure the common things about us by that light?"

Have a blessed Sabbath

This Mighty Prayer

Yesterday, I began a series on the Lord's Prayer which continues today. Look for new installments each Sunday (Rev. Foote preached these sermons at King's Chapel)
Sermon 1 "Lord Teach Us To Pray" continued:


"I want to ask you to try with me, in some of our Sunday mornings together, to enter really into the heart of the meaning of this mighty prayer of our Christian faith as we only can do by pondering it deeply, sentence by sentence. I said it was at once the simplest and the most profound form of human words. Yet the fact that all of us have learned to say it, that the youngest child is not thought too young to be taught it, that every word in it is a simple word, may easily hide from us the infinite depth and height that is in it. Each sentence in it is transparently clear as the purest water — even the water of life; and as the clearness of a stream hides its depth, so I think we may easily fancy that we can sound this which is far beyond the reach of any merely earthly plummet. It would be possible for a person to imagine that he had got beyond the use of anything so familiar, so commonplace, as the Lord's Prayer, who never had really learned to say it at all. And the Lord's Prayer is not only infinitely deeper than the shallowness of any merely superficial thoughts about it, it is also far larger than to be only the expression of the gentle, pleading side of the character of Christ, — the breathing of the religious sentiment of Christianity. As a drop of water contains forces which, set loose, are akin to the thunderbolt and the earthquake, so the secrets of uttermost human need, of intensest human passion, and of the powers of Divine omnipotence, are all locked up in this mighty prayer which we have from our Master, Christ, — which we have from him because it was first in his own heart, with all its depths and heights and powers. If only we can be empowered to unlock these divine forces of strength and peace so as to bring them to bear prevailingly on our own spirits, filling them with the spirit of Jesus Christ."

Blessings