Prayer, Fasting and Mercy

Today is Ash Wednesday the start of Lent. It is traditionally a time of fasting (or giving something up). Rituals are an important part of our Spirituality but we must remember why we do them and not just do them or they lose their power to transform:

There are three things, my brethren, by which faith stands firm, devotion remains constant, and virtue endures. They are prayer, fasting and mercy. Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives. Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other. Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself. Saint Peter Chrysologus

This year consider adding works of compassion (mercy) during Lent rather than (or in addition to) giving something up. It needn't be something big - just a small gesture of love to someone in need.

The LORD says, "Shout as loud as you can! Tell my people Israel about their sins! They worship me every day, claiming that they are eager to know my ways and obey my laws. They say they want me to give them just laws and that they take pleasure in worshiping me." The people ask, "Why should we fast if the LORD never notices? Why should we go without food if he pays no attention?" The LORD says to them, "The truth is that at the same time you fast, you pursue your own interests and oppress your workers. Your fasting makes you violent, and you quarrel and fight. Do you think this kind of fasting will make me listen to your prayers? When you fast, you make yourselves suffer; you bow your heads low like a blade of grass and spread out sackcloth and ashes to lie on. Is that what you call fasting? Do you think I will be pleased with that? "The kind of fasting I want is this: Remove the chains of oppression and the yoke of injustice, and let the oppressed go free. Share your food with the hungry and open your homes to the homeless poor. Give clothes to those who have nothing to wear, and do not refuse to help your own relatives. "Then my favor will shine on you like the morning sun, and your wounds will be quickly healed. I will always be with you to save you; my presence will protect you on every side. When you pray, I will answer you. When you call to me, I will respond. "If you put an end to oppression, to every gesture of contempt, and to every evil word; if you give food to the hungry and satisfy those who are in need, then the darkness around you will turn to the brightness of noon. And I will always guide you and satisfy you with good things. I will keep you strong and well. You will be like a garden that has plenty of water, like a spring of water that never goes dry. Your people will rebuild what has long been in ruins, building again on the old foundations. You will be known as the people who rebuilt the walls, who restored the ruined houses."
(Isa 58:1-12 TEV)

All I really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten

All I Really need to Know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life-learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup-they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned-the biggest word of all- LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all-the whole world- had cookies and milk abut three o' clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if an governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true-, no matter how old you are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

From: All I really needed to know I learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum.

Religion and Relationship

Humans do not want a God of love, because a lover always makes demands. That is the very nature of love and humanity doesn't want it. We seek to hide from it and destroy it. So people sought to destroy Jesus, brother to creation. The people did not want relationship; they wanted religion.

Should that seem so unreal to us? It is the same for us today. It is the same for the Church for the last two thousand years. Humans do not want love relationships; we want religion and all its trappings because that is much more comfortable.

A love relationship continues to challenge and make demands. It also offers a joy that we cannot tolerate: too near, too lavish, too spacious. What might we do with such freedom?

from The Great Themes of Scripture, p.113