Asides

praying …

One of the things I love about being Anglican is the tradition of prayer. Yes, all Christians pray – or should, at least. And praying the Canonical Hours is not an Anglican only thing. Catholics have the Liturgy of the Hours and the Orthodox have their version. I think what sets Anglicans apart is the tradition of praying together. I like the tradition of daily morning and evening prayer as a community activity. Anglicanism is priest and people gathered around Jesus to pray every morning and evening.

While the ideal of a congregation at prayer is somewhat removed from the modern context, I like praying using a book other people are using. I like the community that uses the same Prayer Book as me. I like that I am united to my priest and clergy at my parish through the Prayer Book. And I like that while I am alone – and, let’s face it, I like being alone when I pray – I am with people around Jesus.

So as I pray today, I pray for you. The people who read this blog and the people in my life who support me. And the people who do not support me but that I pray for anyway. That Jesus’ love may strengthen you in faith, and that your heart may be open to Him.

a small update

I write personal things in very general terms. I am a private person by nature and do not feel comfortable sharing too much about myself. The sessions I have had with the counsellor have been eye-opening – to express some of my inner ideas and thoughts and not be rejected or ridiculed. And to express feelings without being censured or censuring myself. All of that has been extremely liberating!

One of the major thoughts that I struggle with is that I have let everyone down. That I am a disappointment for everyone. I have feelings of never being enough for people, always being just a stop-gap until they find someone better. And my recent history has only made that even more real for me.

So I just wanted to say that the next two days are going to be extremely stressful. Maybe the absolute worst of my life?! I am hoping that my anxiety will not rule my mind and I can get through it all. I have done one thing today that needed to be done. I am counting that as a victory. But tomorrow will be a nightmare. Then another one the day after.

I am listening to some music I like and I am going to pray. I know God is in control and this is working for my good – it is God’s love that is at work in me. I know I am not alone, surrounded not just by a cloud of witnesses but by faithful friends who always point me to Jesus. But from the inside it looks like a nightmare that is sent to punish me.

So, if you are so inclined, could you pray for me?!

Jesus, the individual, and the world

This week’s gospel text is from the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, the bridge between Jesus’ ministry and His Passion in John. I must admit I find the whole of John 17 a little confusing. But I think it does follow the texts the lectionary has given us for the last three weeks. It is a summary of what it means to “abide in Jesus”.

Jesus said:
“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

John 19:6-19

I am always struck by the distinction Jesus makes between the individual believer, who receives Jesus and the One who sent Him, and the world that stands against Jesus and His mission from the Father. In fact Jesus uses pretty tough language, “the world has hated them”.

Paul picks up some of the themes when he write to the people at Ephesus:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

Ephesians 2:19-20

new and old

And Jesus said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

Matthew 13:52

This morning, on the way to church, I was thinking about the above part of Matthew’s gospel. In particular, I was thinking of how the church, as a community of individual believers, is always called to proclaim Jesus in new and fresh ways. But the core is always the same.

The text is also a warning: the old or the new can become idols. It is a call to return to the core of proclamation.

Anyway, I just wanted to share.

irony and paradox

I have been thinking that two concepts I do not really grasp are irony and paradox. So I thought I would share the following quote:

The more common type of irony, he says, is irony in which something that is a jest is said as if it were meant seriously. The rarer type of irony, the type he himself exemplifies, is when an author says something serious but does so in the form of a jest.

C. Stephen Evans. Kierkegaard on Faith and the Self: Collected Essays (Provost) 207-208.

I think the important thing, for me, in the above is that irony is about ideas or speech. And paradox, therefore, is about existence. I think the two can overlap and sometimes something is said to be ironic when in fact it is paradoxical, in the Kierkegaardian way of seeing things. But both confront us with the absurdity of life or of a particular idea.

I think it is all related to communication. And, for me, it is related to the paradox of the incarnation – how I am called to proclaim a Person who is a paradox.

what does it mean to be me?

I am speaking to the youth tonight on what it means to be a human being. That is a rather big topic so I am bringing it down to a simple question, “what does it mean to be me?”. Maybe a simple question but one that is hard to answer. I think I have escaped into other people’s description of me to not face the question of what defines me. And I have often not heard the voice of Jesus that says, “you are so much more!”.

You know I love the Instagram page “The Depression Chronicles”. It often has ideas that I very much identify with and that help me with my balance. I have extremely vivid dreams – not so much recently – and I overthink. But is overthinking bad? Yes, when it runs around in circles. But it also allows me to analyse, organise, see the problem from any different angles, and engage an idea on a much deeper level.

Overthinking is not bad! Overthinking something that I cannot fix or that is outside of my control is not helpful to me or to others. The gifts that come with it are to be celebrated. My job is to see when my overthinking is negative for me versus when I am using it in a positive way.

I have found that people use words to describe me and I simply accept their view of me. Between their description and my defining myself is a choice – do I accept their view of me? Do I accept that what they say is negative is, in fact, negative? Being me is not a “cooking cutter”.

Anyone that is what I am thinking of saying to the youth tonight.

absolute paradox

You may have guessed, I published a few posts that I have been working on behind the scenes this morning. They are thoughts that have been bouncing around my head. I am glad that in the midst of some very stressful events on the horizons, I have not entered the darkness but rather have been reading and thinking. In the past creative periods have often been followed by extreme darkness. With more insight and thanks to my counsellor, I can handle the darkness better and live with it rather than exhaust myself in fight against it.

So I saw this on Instagram:

I cannot agree more! Ok, that sounds a little egotistical and self-validating but I do not mean it that way. And I would say that the comment stands within the Kierkegaardian tradition!

I like the phrasing, “prioritize shared beliefs over shared relationship”. Jesus first then the community. Or community in our shared relationship with Jesus. I know that I will not find another person who agrees with me in theory on Jesus because my experience of Jesus is individual and personal. And that is the mystery of the incarnation.

Anyway, I pray you have a Jesus filled day!

single individual

The paradox of faith then is this, that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual, to recall a now rather rare theological distinction, determines his relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute

Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), 61.

I find this a very interesting part of Fear and Trembling. I think this is what Kierkegaard means by “faith” – the distinction between the single individual and the universal, and the relationship between the single individual and the absolute. And I think people’s misunderstanding of him, and his thought, comes from a misunderstanding of this distinction and relationship.

First to make it clear: I do not think that Kierkegaard is anti-community. Kierkegaard writes for the single individual and not for a theological school or ecclesial tradition. In some ways, his writing is closer to spirituality than theology or philosophy. He is speaking of the relationship between the individual and God, not between two or more individuals. Community is part of God’s good creation but it is not the goal of the individual’s life. The goal is a relationship with the “absolute” – to transcend the here and now. And it is this transcending relationship that must proceed any other relationship.

Belonging to a Christian community is very different to belonging to Jesus. Or, as I once read Kierkegaard saying, “being in the parish register is not the same as being in the Book of Life”. Yes, I need other people! And I have really learned what that means in the last three months. But I need Jesus more. And my relationship with Jesus gives context to my relationship with others, and not vice versa.

Anyway, I like the above quote!