Free of Stones - A Lenten Meditation

The stone I brought with me on the Camino de Santiago during my first pilgrimage in 2014.

The Cruz de Ferro stands as one of the most meaningful sites for me on the Camino de Santiago, along the Camino Frances route. It's about 150 miles from Santiago de Compostela, just after the mountain top town of Foncebadon.  In some ways, it may be the most Lenten pilgrim stop along the Camino Frances (French Route).

Perigrinos (pilgrims) typically carry a stone or pebble from home on their journey. Upon arriving at the Cruz de Ferro (Iron Cross), they see a mound of pebbles, rocks, photos, letters, and seemingly random items with a large thin monument topped by a cross.

The mound is made of all the pebbles and items left behind by the thousands of travelers from all over the world through the ages. You can climb onto the mound and many travelers find the sight an important milestone indicating that they are within days of the Compostela de Santiago.

The stones represent something quite powerful. Prior to a pilgrimage trip, peregrino travelers are instructed to reduce, Reduce, REDUCE the weight of their pack to make this arduous, long journey more tolerable. And yet, they carry with them a rock along most of the route. Why on earth would you carry unneeded weight on such a journey?

To me and to the pilgrim, the stone represents all the physical, mental, and even spiritual that weighs you down in life. And whether you realize it, acknowledge it, or deny it, that stone follows you on your journey. It follows you every day of your life. It's in your bags, in your head, in your heart.

Try as you might do otherwise, you go through life with unnecessary baggage. Emotional or spiritual, granite or mental, that baggage will slow you down. They might be your vices. They might be your habits. They could be your imagined self or your Facebook persona. They could even be the ones you love. All things of this earth can act like stones, at least some times.

It's humbling to know of the stones in your life; it's bewildering and frustrating to not know the stones in your life. Lent is an opportunity for us to unearth the stones in our life, to find them in the dust, and to leave them at the cross. It's in God's unimaginable love for us that we can discover that we don't need to carry the stones. We are meant to leave them behind.

The Roman Catholic Franciscan friar, Father Richard Rohr, describes this process as letting go.

“All great spirituality teaches about letting go of what you don’t need and who you are not. Then, when you can get little enough and naked enough and poor enough, you’ll find that the little place where you really are is ironically more than enough and is all that you need. At that place, you will have nothing to prove to anybody and nothing to protect.
That place is called freedom. It’s the freedom of the children of God. Such people can connect with everybody. They don’t feel the need to eliminate anybody . . .”
― Richard Rohr, Healing Our Violence through the Journey of Centering Prayer

When I saw the cross and laid down my stone, I cried. No. No, I sobbed. Sobbed because after enduring a couple falls on my first pilgrimage, I knew that I was carrying a stone that I did not need. I laid that stone at the foot of the cross, knowing that I could and would still stumble, but that the process of letting go, the search for freedom shown in resurrection, the journey towards God would be easier by laying it down.

Like the thousands of pilgrims who walked before me, I asked our Lord to carry my burdens for me.

May your Lenten prayers free you to walk with a lighter load.





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Upside Down and Inside Out

A new video from OK GO just got released and it's racing through social media like a viral monster. The effects are gorgeous as the quartet performs, seemingly in one take, the video in weightlessness. No wires. Just a plane with zero gravity.

I watched it a couple of times marveling at the special effects and the joyful playfulness of it all. But I paused it the third time when I started to really pay attention to the lyrics. (The bold lettering is by me).

Upside down and inside out
and you can feel it.
Upside down and inside out
and you can feel it, feel it.
Don't know where your eyes are
but they're not doin' what you said.
Don't know where your mind is baby
but you're better off without it.

Inside down and upside out
and you can feel it.
Don't stop.
Can't stop.
It's like an airplane goin' down.
I wish I had said the things you thought that I had said.
Gravity's just a habit that you're really sure you can't break.

So when you met the new you,
Were you scared?
Were you cold?
Were you kind?
Yeah when you met the new you,
did someone die inside?

Don't stop.
Can't stop.
It's like a freight train.
Don't stop.
Can't stop.
It's like an airplane goin' down.
Don't know where your eyes are
but they're not doin' what you said.
Don't know where your mind is baby
but you're better off without it.

Looks like it's time to decide.
Are you here?
Are you now?
Is this it?
All of those selves that you tried;
wasn't one of 'em good enough?

'cause you're upside down and inside out
and you can feel it.
Inside down and upside out
and you can feel it, feel it.

Don't stop.
Can't stop.
It's like a freight train.
Don't stop.
Can't stop
until you feel it goin' down.
I wish I had said the things you thought that I had said.
Gravity's just a habit that you're really sure you can't break.

Upside down and inside out
And you can feel it
Don't stop
Can't stop
Until you feel it goin' down
Upside down and inside out
And you can feel it
Don't stop
Can't stop
Until you feel it goin' down

I don't usually pause for pop music any more. Showtunes, yes, quite extensively so. But pop music hasn't touched me in years. Perhaps because we're just starting Lent, I'm sensitized. Rev. Susan Russell at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena described during her Ash Wednesday homily that we must not give up epiphanies for Lent. 

Do not give up epiphanies for Lent!
Do not become so inwardly focused that we forget to notice – to give thanks for – to respond to – those encounters we can and will have with the holy in the next 40 days. Do not become so focused on our own “journey with Jesus” that we forget that as long as there are still strangers at the gate, walking humbly with our God is not enough. Not even close to enough.

You can read the full text at ASCIdea,org . I needed to hear that sermon yesterday. So much of Lent is self-focused. When I started serving (taking on) during Lent rather than just giving up, I found myself discovering, "epiphing", so much more that just through introspection. And I needed the reminder because discernment has turned me to reflect on myself far more than normal.

Back to this song. After the awe of the visuals abated, and I listened to the words, I was struck at how important it was to be open to insights and epiphanies. This came at a wonderful time, at the start of Lent, during my discernment process. And I saw it because someone important to me for my discernment shared it online.

With Lent and with discernment, we are in a state of discovery and heightened awareness. Sometimes that process can shock or disturb. Sometimes you feel joy, and other times you need to dive ever deeper into assessing your motives and perceptions. Take the lyrics in this verse:

So when you met the new you,
Were you scared?
Were you cold?
Were you kind?
Yeah when you met the new you,
did someone die inside?

Have I met the new me? YES. This blog wouldn't exist if I didn't feel for the past several years that there's an authentic me yearning to be known, trying to be outward and overt. I pushed it away for years, especially the younger me during the times I was handling issues of sexual orientation. I pushed it away because I felt as though I was meeting a new me.

Was I scared? Yes.

Was I cold? Yes.

Was I kind? Increasingly to others, and yet not to myself.

And, when I met the new me, I was watching someone die inside.

All this is heightened during the contemplative Lenten season.  I see the world in need and I see myself more awake, more humble, more present. I'm no longer speeding through on the freeway of life, but pausing to take a picture and to ponder. But when this persisted outside of Lent, I was facing a changing understanding of me.

I don't think I'm different. I just think I'm recognizing what I'm really all about. Perhaps others have known this. I imagine that this might be why people have tolerated me even when I'm not the kindest, nicest person on the outside. Everyone has a bad day. I feel like I had a bad couple of decades. Lenten reflection and discernment draws me to better see my authentic self. 

It's not technically a new me. 

It's a revealed me.

Looks like it's time to decide.Are you here?Are you now?Is this it?All of those selves that you tried;wasn't one of 'em good enough?

And then this verse drives it home. Like the masks I referred to Ash Wednesday morning ("The Masks Come Off", they come off and we see our mortality, our humanity, our real selves.

WIth Lent or discernment, it's time to explore, but at some point it's time to decide. What do you to do with what you're discovering? Do you move towards a living out what you're discovering?

Do you go and help those who are sick, homeless, in pain?

Do you go and bring justice to those who have been put down?

Do you bring the message of Christ's healing love to those who have long grown cynical and alone.

Or... Do you sit and fall back into your dream state?

I don't intend to fall back asleep. I pray that those walking on a Lenten journey with me or who accompany me on my discernment will help me stay the course. But it's not easy.

Gravity's just a habit that you're really sure you can't break.

Let's look for ways that we together can soar through the heavens, lovingly, playfully, tossing water balloons and breaking pinatas in the sky, and see that our past selves have held us down unnecessarily.

Gravity's just a habit. We can serve others and have fun looking beyond it. Let's go out together this Lent and break our habit.





http://letallwhoarethirstycome.com/2016/02/upside-down-and-inside-out.html

We will return to dust... Meanwhile

Placing the ashes on the foreheads of friends in the congregation had me thinking about our mutual journey.

On Ash Wednesday, we tear the veil that keeps us sane. We acknowledge that we all must die eventually and return to the dust, the stardust, the heavens of which we are made. Will this grand unmasking leave us in an existential void?

Or, can we use this great reminder for something else? Can we, must we take this humbling reality and use it as a salve to heal those around us, as they journey through life? Our voyage will one day land on inevitable shores, but it's in caring for those who walk with us and after us, like those who walked before us, that we pry open the heart to share the grace that is there for us to accept.

The life we must one day surrender is not a life without ramification. We are in a symbiotic relationship with every creature on this earth. We are in a symbiotic relationship with the earth itself. A life without that interdependency is a life not lived.

And, like all relationships where one feeds the other and vice versa, the removal of one of those lives not only does great harm but can endanger or imperil the other. We mutually rely on each other. It's in our successful, healthy living that we can flourish. Together.

So yes, we will return to dust... And yet, meanwhile....

The Christ we follow asks us to be in relationship with each other, in families and in communities. When it was time for him to die, he instructed John to take care of Mary. That's our charge as well. We're to take care of each other as though we are taking care of the mother of Christ, for Christ.

And throughout the Gospels, almost every parable and story talks about His care for the needy and the sick. That's not a coincidence. There would be no miracles if Christ left the sick to fend for themselves. Miracles arise out of caring for the life of the other.

So yes, we face a mortality on Ash Wednesday that weighs on us heavily throughout Lent. We see and acknowledge that our loved ones as well as we ourselves will no longer be able to share an intimate laugh or tear some day. But we must be the healing love that binds our past joys and pains to our future joys and pains. With a little care and perhaps some stitches, the wound of death can still connect the living, breathing tissues left behind.

May we all on this day of dust also remember to be the grace and healing for the our families, for the human family, for the earth.

http://letallwhoarethirstycome.com/2016/02/we-will-return-to-dust-meanwhile.html

The Masks Come Off - An Ash Wednesday Reflection

Lent came early this year. The festivities from Christmas ended abruptly at Candelmas, February 2, and just one week later, we wrap up with Mardi Gras.

Sunset, Mardi Gras, 2016 while walking in Altadena

And now, a few hours after the feasting, the meat, the pancakes, the beads, the booze, the masks, the merriment all are put away. We wrap it up and we look squarely at the 40 day season of penitence called Lent. 

And the masks come off.

Because all that play and fun and food are temporary pleasures. We roam this earth and enjoy these delights, but in the end we all return to the earth. Like Adam. Like every person since, including Jesus. Pauper and prince must one day lie forever more. Like the moon that waxes into fullness, we all eventually must yield and wane.

But like the moon, we don't disappear. We may not be visible, but our presence is felt. Our gravity remains. We can still block out the light of the sun. All without being seen.

Like every year, some of my friends say goodbye to loved ones, friends, parents, and it's never easy. We don't want to let go and we hope that they stay with us forever. But it's impossible to do this. We're of the earth and we must return. It rips me apart saying goodbye or watching others do so. But it's our fate as human beings

As you enter this Lenten season, let me help you take off your mask, as I take off mine. The word "sincere" comes from the Greek and means "without mask". Let's take off these masks and look at each other in true sincerity.

Let's appreciate and love our respective humanity, both of each other and all our brothers and sisters who roam this mysterious world. Let the Spirit that animates us shine forth in our eyes, like the stars that shine around an unseen moon, moving us and guiding us towards that precious dance we know as life.

http://letallwhoarethirstycome.com/2016/02/the-masks-come-off-ash-wednesday.html