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The beautiful poem by Robert Frost is often remembered because of the choice of two roads to followed and the poet choosing the road “less traveled by”. This is the part of the poem we hear often. But, that is not the end of the poem, it ends by saying “and that has made all the difference”. That is the part we must not forget, that the road less often taken can make all of the difference.

I have heard and read this poem often. Most even get the title wrong. The title actually is, “The Road Not Taken By”. Read the poem again and view the poet’s thoughts. Both roads are inviting, neither is a “bad” path to take. He even says that he has in mind to come back and take the other one…..but doubts that he will. The beauty of this poem is that it is about more than choices.

The poem is also about following the path we choose with a sense of wonder and expectation. It is also about making our own choices, not following the choices others make for us. That is important because all too often we follow the path of so many others, mostly because we are afraid to be alone. The poem is about that as well, to take a less traveled road is to have faith, to be able to go alone if necessary.

This is the difference for Christian people. The path that most take is the church’s path. It is not a bad path, it is well worn and there is lots of company. Most of us know this path very well, we have taken it. It is safe and familiear.

The other and less traveled path is the contemplative path, the mystical path. This is the one that stops often and is awed by the love of the Creator of the Universe for each of us personally. This path can get very lonely and is not so easy. You see, on this path you have to let go of preconceived notions, old beliefs, and instead open wide to all that The Creator is and all that you can be.

A lot of people will never try that path and it is okay. But, sadly, they will also never know a wider, warmer world filled with mysticism, awe and Joy. And it does make all the difference.

TMM

I have been on many athletic teams and the goal was always to come together as one unit, to have everyone perform their role at their very best. Those special moments where is comes together are magical and hard to forget. I have had those moments as a runner, “back in the day” which was a bit more than 30 years ago.

There are other examples of “becoming one”, the most poignant being marriage of course. While the words say “to become one flesh” we all know that doesn’t happen. Marriage is about two individuals coming together by agreement. Each retains who they are and yet, their togetherness is one. I have done marital therapy for many years and those times when a man or woman says “he/she completes me” I knew it was not go well. A relationship based on needing the other person is doomed to fail. It means that one feels incomplete and unfulfilled.

The best relationship is one in which who you are is enhanced and complimented by the other. Whether marriage or friendship, this principle is true: the “becoming one” is based on choice and commitment, never on need. This kind of relationship makes each person want to be better and to do things out of a sense of giving and appreciation.

We are now and have always been one with God. This is hard for many religious people to accept because they were taught that salvation is that moment when we find God’s forgiveness and accept the atonement of Jesus on the cross.  But is that really true? Did Jesus have to die for God to love us again? That simply does not make sense if you believe in a loving God.

Here is a different view to consider. Salvation is that moment when we realize that the Creator of the Universe resides inside of us and always has. Our becoming one has always been and salvation is the discovery of that. The rest of the Christian life is the process of growing in the relationship that is always, every day, voluntary on our part. God does not complete us because, again, a relationship of need does not work very well. We are a creation in whom God is “well pleased”. We are, instead, in a relationship that makes us better than we ever thought we could be and we want to do all that we can to make the Other proud of us. When we realize that we choose every day to acknowledge our relationship with God, that is call free will.

Over my 60 plus years, I have come to realize that I value the God who is within me because that Member of the relationship never gives up on me, not ever. Repentance means to turn and go a different direction. We don’t repent from the sins we commit. We repent from choosing to go our own direction. Much that I was taught at church kept me from growing my relationship with God. Scripture teaches that we much each “work out our own salvation”. It is a process not a destination, the goal of which is to become one with the One who loves us most.

TMM

There is this interesting thing with cell phones called “face time” where you can actually see the person you are calling. I am a child of the days of Dick Tracy and the “two way wrist radio”. Who thought that it would ever really be possible. Of course, there is a bit of privacy lost with face time since the caller can see you now. If I call, please have clothes on!

Seriously though, face time does matter. Email and texts are very impersonal and people cannot really express emotion and you cannot see the look on their face when they say it. I often really mess up texts, leave out a punctuation or something and it gives the wrong message. I have learned how to apologize and use that skill often. But, face to face interaction makes a big difference so maybe this whole face time thing is a plus.

This got me to thinking about something I read from Richard Rohr, that Jesus came to earth to show us God’s face, to make it easier to love God. Think about that, Jesus came as our “face time” with God. He said, “if you have seen me, you have seen the Father”. That was always plan A, for us to have a face we could learn to love.

I can hear this now, “hold on, we never got to see Jesus, so what is  your point?” And, honestly, that is just not true. At the Abbey, all visitors at the gate are welcomed in because St. Benedict taught that it is the face of the living Christ you are seeing. Mother Theresa said much the same about her work among the poor and sick of India. You see, every day we get to see the face of the Living God if we will just bother to look.

Why don’t we look? It can be terrifying is why. When we take a close look at others, we see ourselves and that image is rarely the Beloved that we are. It is, instead, that face we know that even God has a hard time loving. It is hard to see ourselves as God sees us, which is as his Beloved child. So, prayer, in any version you or I offer up, that is our face time with the Creator of the Universe.

Today is the day for us to have face time with God. Not just in prayer, but in living in a world where we look at each face as the face of God. I wonder what our world would be like if we actually did this? I am thinking, this old social worker might just be out of a job!

TMM

Now, before you stop at the title here or begin to worry, a cell is neither a room at a prison nor a telephone in your pocket. It is the small  sleeping area a monk has. Usually this sort of cell has a bed, a small desk, a few books and a few memorabilia. It is the only private place that is totally the monk’s world. It is the place where each day begins and ends. In some ways, it is the monk’s grave or coffin.

It is not morbid to realize, as the liturgy says, that each night we have a “perfect death” and each day a rebirth. That is how we are supposed to live, one day at a time, one complete cycle of life and death, each day. But, it takes time and patience to get to the place where we allow life to happen in just this way, one day at a time. Think of the model prayer, “Give us this day…..” The whole prayer is predicated on “this day”.

Let’s return to our cell. In the Rule of St. Benedict, he tells the monks that when questions come, issues arise, they should return to or stay in their cells and learn what the cell has to teach them. In a lovely devotional, I recently read, this was interpreted for us in every day life as, stay in the moment. Learn from this moment, this here and now, all that it has to offer.Stay there!

Learning to live in the moment means we have to slow down, we have to listen with our hearts, we have to stop being distracted from what is going on around us. Celtic spirituality embraces the natural world around us, Gaia (Mother Earth). It is from her, after all, that we are born and to her we return.  This is the world we are part of and that we were created for. What if each moment we were hoping to be surprised by joy, wonder, awe, and curiosity by the world all around us?

I work every day to experience the moment, to let it happen. Am I very good at it? Not really, but I keep at it, keep staying in my cell to learn all I can, to be in the moment. It is easy for me professionally because for some 40 years I have spent countless “moments” with clients as they talked about or experienced their lives. It is different when it is  my own life, much more patience is needed and if you are like me, the last person you will be patient with is yourself.

Today, I am rededicating myself to the moment. To see and feel and hear and experience all that this day, these moments have to offer. If you were to join me, I wonder how much worry and fear and dread would leave from the world around us? Stay in your cell, you are completely safe there, you are in the Living God.

TMM

When I was much younger, I remember adults saying, “he (or she) is the spittin’ image of their father/mother”. Now, I am still not sure what a “spittin’ image” actually is but it doesn’t sound so very nice.  A little search on the internet and you find so many ideas, but the one that strikes me as close to real is the one that says “spittin image” means someone who looks so much like someone else, it is as if they were literally spit out of the other’s mouth.

Ugh, imagery is not always good in an active mind. Put that aside and consider what this means. A person so much like another person, you basically see them as the same person. Identical twins can often look that way but other than that how else can one be a spittin’ image? Well, it just so happens that you and I, all of us are an exact spitting image of the Creator of the Universe.

Before you get agitated over this idea (as happened to me once in a group discussion), go read Genesis. God says “let us make man in our own image”. Sadly, over the years we have forgotten this. Religious traditions have taught us that we are separated from God, we are not in God’s image. We have gotten it so wrong and caused so much misery for ourselves and others.

At the Abbey, hospitality is extended to any who come to the door. The Rule of Benedict teaches that the person at the door must be seen as the face of the living Christ. Mother Theresa said the same when asked how she could minister to the sick and poor every day…..they are the face of the Living God. So, we are in God’s image, exactly. We  have not ever and cannot ever be separated from God, except in our own mind.

You do know it is okay to change your mind and your beliefs, right? You do not have to believe you are separated from God. A lot of gospel tracts show this great chasm between us and God, bridged by the Cross. I used to use and believe these tracts. Not any more. I now understand that I have never been separated from God, not ever. It is not possible because we come into this world as One.

Imagine what our world would be like if we could let ourselves see that we are all part of the One, that we are the One. How would we treat each other? How would we treat ourselves? It is time to put away “childish things” and accept the reality that we are part of God and God is part of us and that is always has and always will be that way. Kinda makes all of the things we allow to separate us from others look petty doesn’t it?

Come with me on a new adventure that I have been working on for awhile now. Let’s just become part of the flow of the love of God, let’s become the true “instruments of peace” and of love. Let’s learn together how to look like God.

TMM

Have you ever met a person that was “well connected”? Sounds sort of like a mafia thing doesn’t it? Sounds like a way to gain an advantage or get something extra. Being well connected often refers to a certain socioeconomic status and with that, a certain level of privilege and entitlement.

Do you realize that we are all well connected? In the creation story God creates us in the very image of God. From the moment of our creation, we are connected. How well connected you might ask? The answer is we are each connected to the creator of all universes and all worlds. We are directly connected to all of creation, a creation that God made and then said, “It is good.”

Why do we feel so distant from the Creator that has always and completely been within us? Most often it is either guilt or what we were taught. I come from a religious tradition that sees each of us as fallen, as broken, and sinful (or for Reformed folks, in utter depravity). I was taught, as many of you were, that we are not now and never will be good enough and that Jesus had to come to earth and save us from ourselves. And, this leads us to guilt and shame.

It has taken me a long time to understand that all that I was taught is not true. I am not broken, I am not evil, I am not now, nor have I ever been, apart from God. I am God’s creation and had “It is good” pronounced over me at the moment of my creation. I do not have to be more than I am at this very moment. I should never feel guilty for being human, it is who I am. And, Jesus was not Plan B, put in to play because all humankind is evil and lost.

Jesus was always plan A. He came to show us that we can live in direct connection with God and what a life like that would look like. I have a friend who said it this way: “We are all called to do God’s will, which is to love God, self, and others. But if we seek the deeper will of God, we can find that will that makes our hearts happy. But, beware, that deeper will of God does not mean bad things will never happen to us.” Profound words from a profound friend.

Shame and guilt are our own creation, not God’s. We have the example of life in concert with God. In the 70’s, there was a saying “God don’t make no junk”. That is still true and has always been true, not one of us is junk. The greatest joy you can know is to come to the moment when you realize that the Creator looks at you and says, “It is good”. That moment, when you know that you and God are now and have always been together……..that is the moment of your salvation. You are then saved from fear, guilt, hopelessness and shame.

TMM

I am part of a community of monks at the Abbey of Gethsemane. As a lay member, I live in the world and try to conduct my life by the Charism of the Cistercian order and the Rule of St. Benedict. I have written before about my “Abbey heart” when I drive onto the Abbey grounds. In some ways though, my heart is always there, drawing peace and strength and returning prayers and support. You could say that my heart “aches” to be there, though I know that is not my calling. But, today my heart aches because one of the monks has cancer. This monk touched my heart and my life at a time when I was on retreat and frightened, about things that I did not even realize at the time.

Heartache can be bitter sweet or it can just be painful. My heart aches at certain times each year as I long to have one more chat with my mother or my brother. It aches when I see families who do not appreciate that they are still alive and able to have the chat that I cannot. My heart aches when I see my college students struggle and work and claw their way to a better life. I cannot and will not interfere in the process, though I would like to make it easier for them. To interfere would be to rob them of the value of their life experience.

My heart aches sometimes for my daughter and her ministry because I know she has a giving spirit and yet, sometimes, she gives too much. My heart aches when I am away from home too long. I ache to hold and be held by my wife, to pet my dogs and cats, to sit on my own porch. My heart aches to be on retreat at the Abbey and my heart aches for those who do not have enough bread, who do not forgive or feel forgiven and for those who want to joyously do God’s will but cannot seem to discern it.

What does your heart ache for? One last visit with a loved one? That place where you watched that beautiful sunset or had that special experience? Those are the bittersweet aches that come from our longing for the past. Be careful! We cannot live in the past. I cannot live at the Abbey and abandon the world I am called to live in. I cannot go back and talk to my mother or brother and I cannot fix my brother monk with cancer.

So what is the point of this note and of heartache? Those things our hearts ache about show us that we are alive, connected to the Sacred and thus to the entire world. Heartache should and must lead us to prayer and to rest in the Sacred Presence. We are created in the very image of God and that “likeness” has been within us from the moment of our creation. Heartache is that part of the Sacred connected to the entire world. We ache because it is how we are made, to be in touch with all of creation.

When you heart aches, let it. Don’t try to ignore the pain, it won’t make it go away. Instead, embrace the heartache. Let it tie you to that place or person or experience. Seek, in the ache, to find the very face of the living Christ, who ached in the very same way you do.

 

TMM

At my college, I wrote and received a grant for “vocational discernment”. That was a tradition, in the  past, where people tried to decide if they were called to religious life, i.e. monk, priest, nun, etc. The Protestant reformation, with it’s notion of the priesthood of the believer, altered the view of discernment to say that we are all called to something. So, I have peer mentors who are working with new students to help them discern. Well, we don’t say it quite that way, what we do say is “what are you going to  be when you grow up?” And then, we add to the process by asking, “what makes your heart happy when you do it?”

A dear friend spoke at my college recently about this very subject and without us speaking about it, she used those very words “do what makes your heart happy and get paid for it”. She and I have been friends for 30 years, when she was training for the Olympic trials in cycling. Her life story is one of ongoing discernment, to find what makes her heart happy. And for her it was and is teaching. It was not her first choice but it is where the path led.

I am right there with my friend Julie Ann. I am a teacher, but I have not always been a teacher. I have practiced social work for 40 years and have had the most varied and glorious experiences. I am very fortunate. But, about those same thirty years ago, field placement students started telling me that I was making good sense to them and that I should teach social work. That changed my path and put me on a very different road to higher education.

As Julie Ann told our students, there is a best path. It does not mean that any path that leads us to love God, neighbor, and self is a bad path, for that is what we are all called to. No, my friend was making the point that if we will set aside what we want, what we think we should do or should be and see where we are being led, we will find that thing that makes our hearts happy. She also made a powerful point we all need to hear…..even when we are on that perfect, best path, totally where God wants us to be, there is no guarantee that bad things won’t happen, that there won’t be storms to weather. The promise is we don’t have to walk the path alone.

For me, that is totally true. I started to teach at a university and crossed paths with a rather vindictive department chair who decided I was not what they wanted in the department (in spite of being voted Teacher of the Year my last year in the department). I just knew I would never teach again and for 12 years, I didn’t teach. Then, the path turned and I came full circle to the place I know I am called to every day, my little historically Black college. This makes my heart happy and I get paid for it.

So, can you see your path? Looking back is the only way to see the winding path and understand all of the events that got you where you are but you cannot always be looking back. The African word “sankofa” carries the meaning I want you to hear, the notion that looking back is a good way to remember our roots and to recall our history. All of those twists and turns tell us something about God’s involvement in our lives. The path ahead is not for us to know. As my brother reminds me from time to time, whatever path you find yourself on, light your candle and follow it.

So, are you on the path to your first, best destiny? Is your heart happy? Can you see those things that led you to where you are now and the hand of God not directing you but supporting you as you discern? That is what it means to be a contemplative.

TMM

About a year ago, I literally found my way home. Now, hold on, that doesn’t mean I was gone for a long time. In this case, I am referring to my childhood home in San Antonio, Texas. That is where I grew up and about a year ago, taking my wife to San Antonio was sort of a pilgrimage to show her the city from my own point of view. We drove by the house and my wife said, “you should stop and talk to those people and take your picture”. Now that is a great wife, to help you do things you probably wouldn’t do yourself but need to.

I had my picture taken on the very front porch where I had my picture taken many times, starting with the one 55 years before. I met the family who lives there and learned that the wife’s parents were the ones who bought the house from my mother 46 years before. So, it turns out you can go home again. The path that led me back home after all of those years is a winding, turning path that is still going forward.

So how do we get home? Well, I think we need a partner in the process. If my wife had not encouraged me to stop, I wouldn’t have and I would have missed out on a wonderful experience, one of completion, of coming full circle. But, before we take a step on the path, we have to ask “what is home?” For Christians, home is not heaven. Does that surprise you? Perhaps it shouldn’t because Jesus lived so we could learn how to live, not wait patiently to die.

I think the saying “home is where the heart is” applies more than we might know. If my heart is not healthy (spiritually I mean) then we wander and search and look for home. We are called to relationship with God. Personal, private, life-giving and abundant. If my heart is (as the old Baptist preacher might say) “right with God” then I am home. And isn’t that all any of us really want? To be home? To be at home with God?

Now, as to how we get home. Thomas Merton, the monk and spiritual writer once noted that we search everywhere only to discover what we were looking for has been right there inside of us all the time. That is what it means to be a mystic and a seeker, to find that place of deep relationship with God, the Creator of All. And, that is where home is……right there inside of me where God has resided since the moment of my birth!

I noted above that my wife helped me find my way home in San Antonio. That is also true for all of us spiritually. We all need a friend to help us find the way, whether a spiritual friend, spiritual director or a faith community. That friend, that help is what helps us find our way home, that friend or faith community is what says to us….You should stop, you are home.

 

TMM

I teach social welfare policy and because of that, I have to keep up with all of the politics in our country. I have taught this subject for over 20 years and have never seen more strife, anger and hurt than in the last year. The current Administration, whether intentionally or not, has given rise to great divides and rifts between the people of this country.

I am not going to go “all  political” and have a rant. I just don’t do that. What I want to address is the failure of people in all of this. I was on a panel in a town hall meeting at my college. At that meeting, I expressed the notion that if we do not like the way our country is right now, it is our fault. Most especially, I hold all of us a followers of Christ most responsible

Why would I say this? It is simple, when did we as a Church decide to buy into free enterprise and  capitalist values? We no longer think we are our brother’s (or sister’s) keeper. We do not show any concern for “the least of his children”. Instead we abdicate our role in all of this by letting government take care of it so that we don’t have to see it or address it. In the model prayer, “give us this day our daily bread” should be followed by” and remind me of those who have no bread”.

The evil, hateful and hurtful things going on in our country these days can do one of two things. It can basically make a shambles of our democracy and our constitution. It can create riots, violence, and great hurt. Or, we can seize this moment in time. We can each decide as Christian and collectively as the Church to use these times as the turning point. The point at which we go back to the values we claim to believe. This moment in time when we take care of each other, forces government to listen to us, and most of all we care for the least of his children again.

TMM