Month: March 2020

As a child, I watched a tv show called, “The Beverly Hillbillies”. It was a comedy where the hillbilly family hits oil on their land and moves to Beverly Hills, California. It was fun to watch and Granny looked and acted a good bit like my own mother. The theme song had this line in it, “Take your shoes off, sit a spell”. It was (and is) a wonderful notion, to just slip off your shoes, relax and feel like family.

Even today, here in the South, you might just hear that phrase. It is a sign of welcome and hospitality to the visitor. Now, the origin is probably practical, as in “don’t track the mud in”, and represents that the visitor may come inside and stay longer. Or is it deeper than that? The origin is in the Old Testament where God tells people to take off their shoes, they stand on Holy ground. It is a moment of faith, a moment of deep respect and of trust. You are not likely to feel the need to run away when you are barefooted.

Perhaps, there is even more to it. Let’s think about the phrase to “take your shoes off and sit a spell”. It is a sign to the visitor that they can conduct their business inside the house, not on the porch, outside in the weather. Taking one’s shoes off is an act of great trust on the visitor’s part. It is a symbol of mutual trust and welcome and relationship. It might also be that we don’t track the “mud” of the world into that place of mutual trust and holiness.

You see, dear ones, this is actually about our relationship with God and how we should be in that relationship with God. Every moment should be “Holy Ground” for us. Every moment we are in a trusting relationship with the One who loves us most deeply. But, it means we have to slip our shoes off; that we have to commit to staying awhile; and, that we have to feel at home in the Holy Ground of God’s great and very personal love.

So, today, find a quiet place, slip your shoes off and sit a spell with the One who loves you above all else. You are then on Holy Ground.

TMM

I was reading the Lenten book by Jill Duffield. Today, she was talking about “thirty pieces of silver” and that Judas got paid for his betrayal. How many sermons, movies, Sunday School lessons have been taught about Judas betraying Jesus for those pieces of silver? It seems logical and it fits with our modern society and its materialism.

So, I started with the idea that she is right, we get enticed by things, money, having the most and we betray our spiritual lives. Then I thought more like a therapist. The thirty pieces of silver seemed to be the justification, not the reason. Judas sold Jesus out long before he got the money. Think about it, Judas had followed Jesus, seen the good and purity that was the man Jesus. I cannot believe that the High Priest just dangled a bag of money out there for Judas to give all of that up.

Then, it dawned on me, the betrayal was an attempt on Judas’ part to fill a gap in himself, an emptiness. Isn’t that what we all do once we get beyond the necessities? In our culture, things are not the answer, they are the demonstration that we have filled up all of the gaps in our lives, that we are whole! I am rich, I am fulfilled. I have a Mercedes, I am successful.

Then, I got to Lent. During Lent, we give up something to remind us of Christ’s sacrifice and to participate in the simplicity of such a life sacrificed. To repent from things we ought not to be doing. But, are we missing the point. Do we ever examine the gap that whatever we give up has been filling? If you give up chocolate, repent from it, you have shown restraint and self-control and given up something meaningful to you but have you looked at the gap chocolate fills in your life?

I think we have been missing the point of giving up things for Lent. We choose representative things and give them up but Lent is a time for self-reflection. Repentance means to turn and go another way, to change our mind. So, Lent is taking a new direction for me, to do a personal “gap analysis” and to see that the things I need to give up are performing a function and that as a contemplative, I should be finding ways to close those gaps. Come to think of it, isn’t that the point of a faith community?

TMM

It is a guy joke when someone says they are coming for you, the answer is always, “you better pack a lunch because you are going to be here awhile”. Yeah, corny, macho and definitely what a guy would say. It does remind me though, of earlier times when my mom would pack a lunch for me to go off to school.

My earliest memory of this was way back when I was about 4, living in Utah. My mother would “pack a lunch” for me in one of my father’s old metal lunch boxes and send me out to play in the yard. I would be out there all day (or so it seemed) playing games and being a boy. I have no memory of what was in that lunch box just that she did that for me.

Reading a Lenten book by Jill Duffield, I was suddenly struck by her example of our daily bread when she talked about making those lunches for her kids to take to school. Is that not what Communion is? the Lord’s Supper? Is that not, in his final act for us all, Christ’s way of packing our lunch for us? Think about it, sustenance for the journey of the day. That brings me a very warm and peaceful feeling. The Creator of all has packed me (and you) a lunch that will take us all the way back home.

Then I started thinking even more, what did I do with my lunch when I went to school? Well sometimes, I just didn’t eat it, other times I might have traded it. I know my mother’s hope was that I would share with a kid who didn’t have enough lunch or any lunch at all. Is that not what the Heavenly Mother does for us? God packs us a lunch, sends off for our day and hopes that we will share our lunch with one who is hungry.

Dear ones, that is the point of the Eucharist, Communion, Lord’s Supper, it is not only food for the journey it is a lunch we are to be giving away to those who have no lunch. And, no worries, we know where to go to get another lunch, packed with the Love of the Universe. Share your lunch today!

TMM