Easter prayer

Let us join together in prayer that this Easter be a time of light and new birth for each one of us, and for all God's creation.

We pray to see you in your creation
Creator God, we ask that you strengthen our awareness of you. We pray that each of us sees you often in the faces of the people we love, in sunlight on new leaves, laughter of babies, sudden flight of birds, in a perfect moment of movement, in the surprises of your creation, and in the smile of strangers.

We pray to feel you in our lives
Our loving Creator - you made and love each one of us, and everything you have created. Help us to be aware of you in each other, and in our community. Give us the grace to forgive, so that, freed from our own fear and guilt and resentments, we can see others as you see them and through their goodness, be more aware of you.

We pray to be more aware of your movement in our world
You are with us always. You are with us in our intuition and instincts - and in the instincts and intuition of others. You make us aware of your plan in the coincidences of our life and in the moments of joy we feel when we step onto your path. Help us not to take these signs for granted - but to see in them glimpses of your dream.
Your dream is too huge for us to see whole - but we pray that we see our part more clearly, and always act to enhance and enrich - never to diminish or cheapen.

We pray to walk your path with more certainty
We often pray that we do your will, but too often we are just not sure. Help us feel the "rightness" of our response so we become more confident and courageous and certain that our actions contribute to your plan.

We pray for your support and strength in unforeseen events
Our personal plans are very focused on our own desires. 
When we face changes we never predicted, devastation, sudden loss, unexpected fear, the downfall of our securities ... at these times give us the courage, will and strength to turn to you and go forward.
Give us too graces to see new depths in ourselves - and in ourselves, you.

And finally, we pray that each day we take a step, however small, towards our reality as spiritual beings with an umbilical cord rooted in you, our Light and our Creator

Palm Sunday

We go along with the crowd far too easily.

This week we will see a classic example: the same people who were waving palms and crying Hosanna! on Sunday were screaming Crucify him! on Thursday night.

The Bible tells a very human story about Palm Sunday. Jesus told his friends he was not going to Jerusalem for Passover - but either changed his mind and went (or maybe had always intended to go but told them that so they wouldn't fuss about his safety).

He was very well received when he arrived - perhaps seen as the person who was to lead the revolt - or maybe as the new religious leader to stand against the Temple priests. But then he did something that very predictably upset both the Romans and his fellow-Jews in power. He symbolically and very publicly challenged the whole temple sacrifice practice (and the priestly power and income system) by attacking the merchants selling sacrifices and changing Roman money for Jewish money.

Basically he made his death inevitable: neither the priests nor the Roman peace-keepers were going to forgive that.

We are all pulled in the same two directions as the Holy Week crowds.

Most of us accept God in our lives (to a greater or lesser extent). We want to believe that there is something special about us, something that lasts longer than our human lives, something we see hints of in moments of beauty and perfection, or in moments of tenderness for the people we love. We want to believe we have a purpose bigger than our individual careers and families. Something that matters. We want to believe that human beings are not just highly evolved animals.

On the other hand we are constantly bombarded with a message that we have a limited opportunity to buy now! have the best! build the bigger! look the best! The implication is that we have just one chance to reach happiness, so we better gather all the things that the happy people we are shown in the media have: new house, flash car, pretty family, trendy clothes - and always - plenty of money.

We all live with the fear of being ordinary, the fear of random attack or accident, the fear of not surviving. Fear is genetically programmed into us and is almost impossible to ignore.

Jesus faced the people of Jerusalem twice in the week of his death: once when they were aware of the special, the extra-ordinary. And once when they were wrapped in the ordinary.
Once when they glimpsed the vision for humanity; once when they were trapped in their evolutionary mode of self-protection and safety.
Once on a spiritual level; once on an animal survival level.

Because we each function on both levels.

We actually are highly evolved animals with 40 million years of successful survival instincts bound into our genes.

But on Easter Sunday Jesus showed us that at our heart we are also actually spiritual beings - and that although our physical bodies may be really important to us right now, we are also spiritual beings and that our death is not our end. Our death is a rebirth into something more glorious than our current caterpillar!

Sin!

"Sin" has become a word that cuts people off from Christian Churches.

For people today it is so judgemental, so negative, that many people feel that is not me - but all this church's prayers say that it is me. That doesn't feel right - so I will look somewhere else. 

So they look for somewhere more positive. They are unlikely to find that in conventional Christianity. Christianity may dislike the post-modern "it feels right to me" message - but it is real for many (even most) modern people.

Christianity is obsessed with sin. Our traditional prayers and liturgies are full of it (or asking to be forgiven for sin). The current Catholic translation of the Lord's Prayer even has God leading us into temptation (and a plea that he please not do that!) I know - the Church doesn't officially teach that. But for many, that is the message. 

In The Joy of the Gospel Pope Francis tells us that Christianity must not focus on obligations (or sin) - instead we should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet. Before all else, the Gospel invited us to respond to the God of love who saves us, to see God in others, and to seek the good of others. 

Not a lot about sin there!

But our obsession with our imperfections and unworthiness is one of the reasons many people do not feel comfortable in formal religion. It is one of the reasons they drop out of formal religion altogether, and often drop out of deliberate personal spiritual growth (because for many people the two go together), and just decide to live the best life they possibly can.

I understand that. I don't blame them. But my advice (if I were asked) would be to dig deeper and consider again. 

Francis' sense of love and joy, and the insights of our chaplain Father Maurice Carmody changed the way I think about sin. Father Maurice explains that the word comes from the Greek hamartia which means to miss the mark - a metaphor from archery.

I find this a very helpful way to think about my faults: the ways I miss the mark in my life. AND - I have other arrows to shoot. I can shoot at the target again (and again).

Sometimes we do deliberately miss the mark - but mostly we miss because we forget to aim, or are bit lazy and don't account for the wind, or because we are sleepwalking through life, or because we have been caught up in what the world expects and are trying to live without God in our lives.

We miss the mark a lot - we all know we can do better. But somehow "missing" seems much less judgemental, less negative, and less permanent, than sin. I shot the arrow. I caused the miss. But I have a chance to put it right and learn from my error. My life is not defined by my initial poor aim.

Maybe that is what Jesus was thinking when he told the woman: Then neither do I condemn you, go now and do not miss the mark again. John 8:11

Somehow that seems a more Jesus-like way of seeing God in others, and re-viewing our stumbles on the journey.

Forgiveness

If I had to name one thing that keeps us locked into our frantic evolutionary minds, our lack of peace, our high rate of relationship break-down, our quickness to anger, violence and war, I would have to say it is our resistance to forgiveness and forgiving.

We have a brain that evolved over 40 million years - a brain that sees danger and rivals everywhere - a brain that has been so successful for humanity because it suspects everything, sees everyone as a rival, and thrives on countering real and imagined resentments, slights, threats, put-downs and insults.

On our own, we haven't got a chance.

We are lucky enough not to be on our own. We have an excellent plan - a plan just about everyone says they agree with - a plan that, sadly, is mostly ignored. 

The plan is based on the command that we must love one another.

That is not an outpouring of emotion: it is an act of will - so just requires our determination to love an other person.

Sounds easy enough, and maybe it is usually easy enough to love those who love us - but the plan expects one more step: to love our enemies. Again that is nothing to do with emotion: it is an act of will that we love each other person created by our Creator. Just watch the news and you will see that that act of will can be pretty demanding. 

But those distant threats are not the hardest part. Our brain is much more aggressive when it comes to what it sees as a personal threat. Jesus started very close to home: our brother. He went so far as to say that we are not welcome at Church if we have not sorted out our issues with those close to us first.

Our biggest challenges are always with those close to us: family, colleagues, friends, members of our community. The little resentments grown large, the remembered slights and insults embellished with age, the put-downs stored and cherished and watered by our brains. These are the hard ones.

But fortunately forgiveness also is not an emotion: forgiveness also is an act of will.

And the Church wants to make forgiveness so easy it becomes a habit. It has developed a ritual of forgiveness and reconciliation that is particularly relevant in Lent as we remember who we were created to be - and as we prepare for the great feast of Easter when we celebrate who we actually are.

The formula that drives this ritual is very simple:

1. "I am sorry."
2. "Sorry for what? Let's get that part clear."
3. ...
4. "OK. Then you are forgiven." (God loves us, of course we are forgiven if we ask, and we are clear what we need to be forgiven for.)
5. "Now go and put it right - or make up for it."

And that allows us to start again. 

But we must get that act of will going if we are to defeat the evolutionary seeker of insults in our brains. Every person we know was created by God, and is wonderful: full of wonders. We need to deliberately look for the wonderful. That needs to be our habit. Only then will we get good at forgiveness. 

And only then will we be able to see the true glory of God's creation around us.

Stay awake with me

It is so easy to find ourselves sleepwalking through life. We have all had the experience (I hope it is not just me!) of getting somewhere in the morning and suddenly realising that we have no recollection of getting up, breakfast, locking the door, actually seeing the beauty of the day, going through roundabouts - all done on auto-pilot.

I wonder how much of our lives we live without actually being fully aware of the beauty around us, the amazing people we take for granted, the fact that we live in God's creation, and that every moment is a marvel.

The title of this week's post is from the Easter narrative. Jesus had decided to come to Jerusalem, and then had taken the opportunity to stir up both the Jewish Temple authorities and the Roman occupiers. He knew what was coming - so on the night of the Passover he went out to pray.

His normal practice was to pray quietly and alone - but on this occasion he had a very human response: fear of what was inevitably going to happen. So he took a few of his friends with him. He asked them to keep watch with him. But they went to sleep. Several times!

Sleepwalking through life, not seeing the significance of each moment, going through life on auto-pilot, missing our opportunities: all of that is very human. In the end, knowing that, Jesus seems to have shrugged and let them sleep.

But that is not ideal.

If we are to be fully the people God created us to be, we need to be fully awake. Being awake and aware is a habit: but it cannot come when we give in to the rush of events around us, when we buy into the world as a frantic, busy place where we need to accumulate possessions, have the best, look the best, be recognised.

Lent is a time to slow down - to remind ourselves ...

• that our "stuff" is not the secret to happiness (by giving some of it up), 
• that we are part of a global inter-connected organism known to some as the "body of Christ" (by deliberately helping our brothers and sisters out on the edges of our community or world), and 
• that we are, at heart, spiritual beings, created purposefully by our God (and we do this by staying awake, keeping watch and praying).

There is a beautiful Taize chant using a translation of Jesus' words: "Stay with me. Remain here with me. Watch and pray." Many parishes use it as part of the Good Friday liturgy. Listen to it through http://youtu.be/LmAOcHqvS0Q