The Journey of an Inch

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 -- Week of Proper 25, Year One

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 990)
Psalms 45 (morning) 47, 48 (evening)
Ezra 5:1-17
Revelation 4:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9

We have two images of the interior life today.

The Revelation of John offers an image of the ideal spiritual landscape. John sees an open door and hears a voice, "Come up here..." He goes inward: "At once I was in the spirit." He comes to the center, to the throne of God. Everything is in perfect harmony around God's throne -- the twenty-four elders, the seven spirits of God, and the four living creatures. Heaven and earth, all creatures -- human and animal -- sing in harmony the eternal songs of praise. It is as it should be.

The Gospel of Matthew offers an image of the common spiritual landscape. Jesus describes a seed sower who has a strange process of agriculture. He broadcasts seeds extravagantly and abundantly across the landscape. The seed falls on different kinds of ground -- a path, rocky ground, among thorns, and on good soil. In the good soil, the seed produces varying fruit, "some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty."

Each of us in the complexity of our lives is that field. There are parts of us that have welcomed and nurtured what God has given us, what the Spirit has taught us. The welcome response produces good fruit. But our response is more ambiguous to other messages from God.

Where are the hard path places in our hearts, where we are defensive toward a new and more faithful way of living? How have we responded quickly to some call to wholeness and reconciliation, but failed to persevere and lost the edge and momentum of the vision? How have we been distracted or fearful or proud or greedy and let those lesser concerns block out the healthy response to God's calling? What have we embraced and made real of God's love?

At the center of our being, we are always one with God. God dwells in and with us at the core of our true self. Whenever we can let go of our attachment to the distractions of life, we naturally come to that place of union, like a rock drifting to the bottom of the sea. The experience of contemplative prayer fosters that union. Something like the images John sees is always present and alive in our deepest being.

Out of defensiveness and hurt, we all have created a false self landscape that blocks the free flow of the Spirit from deep within our lives. We've cut ourselves off, we are easily distracted, we lose our focus and center.

In her wonderful book "Wisdom Distilled from the Daily," Joan Chittister reflects on the Rule of Benedict and on Benedictine Spirituality. (The ethos of the Anglican Church is deeply Benedictine.) She says that "Benedictine spirituality requires all of us to go through life taking back one inch of the planet at a time until the Garden of Eden grows green again."

That reclamation project is both inward and outward. The process of inward transformation is our spiritual journey toward holiness. The process of outward reconciliation is the planetary journey toward justice. It is all energized by divine love.

What part of the garden will we work today? How can I take an inch of my interior landscape, break the hard pan, till and fertilize, loosen and work it until it is fertile again? How can I take the inch of life that will be in front of me today to reclaim and work it on behalf of wholeness and health?

An inch a day. Doesn't seem like much does it? We can do it, an inch at a time.

Almost like an afterthought, a quote from the end of Graham Green's novel "The Power and the Glory" returns to me. It is the sudden realization that the whisky priest has as he awaits the hanging that will end his life. "It seemed to him at that moment that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that there was only one thing that counted -- to be a saint."

A little self-restraint and a little courage, an inch at a time...

Lowell

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About Morning Reflections
Morning Reflections is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117

An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html


The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church
is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance, and love.

Visit our web site at www.stpaulsfay.org

Our Rule of Life

We aspire to...
worship weekly
pray daily
learn constantly
serve joyfully
live generously.

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas