Thursday, April 16, 2020
RELOCATION
Dear All of Us,
By the sixth grade
I had attended
six schools.
While a bit free spirited,
I was not even close
to incorrigible - honest!
Neither were my parents
skipping town before the sheriff
closed in for unpaid rent.
Dad 's career careened us
across the country.
I got to see lots of places
and meet all sorts of people.
Actually, I rather liked it and
adjusted to the relocations easily.
It was a good bit different
when I entered the seminary.
That relocation involved
a lot more change and adjustment:
- a highly regimented life, schedule and ethos
- You did what you were told and did so
in prescribed circumstances and manner
- forty guys to a dorm, too many of whom
snored up a storm
- protracted periods of silence
throughout the day
- meals miles from Mom's good cooking
- assigned and mandatory
chores, study halls and chapel
- no TV or leaving the property
- cold showers (young males, no girls)
It was a bit of an ecclesial boot camp.
I did adjust to the relocation,
but it took some doing.
Sixty five years later here you and I are,
abruptly and roughly relocated
to a really different space
by this world wide Pan Problem.
And it's hard as hell to adjust
to this kind of a relocation.
Everyone wants to know
how we're going to get through this
and when will things get back to normal?
It's like being dislocated in place.
It's also like being relocated
captive in a foreign land.
What we're going through right now
is our version and experience
of what the ancient Israelites
endured when forcibly relocated
to a foreign land.
Jerusalem had been leveled,
and they were swept away.
It was their Babylonian Captivity.
Like them,
we have gotten ourselves into
our own forced relocation.
We've become so lopsided in our living
that we're falling over and apart.
It's not that God is punishing us.
It's the chickens of our behavior
coming home to roost.
So much has gotten
so unreal for
so long in
so many ways
in our culture and way of living
that we really could not handle
a natural disaster for all our
money, expertise, science and resources.
We are so split and spoiled
that we couldn't be together
and pull together to head off
this destruction of what we had,
this terrible relocation,
this captivity of our culture.
One germ disables our bodies.
Another disables our societal soul.
Together they have relocated us
in a bad place.
In their bad place,
in their Babylonian Captivity,
the Israelites suffered
that painful dislocation
for seventy years.
In that time and pain
they came to their senses.
Great good developed.
Those seventy years
became for them a
Reality Retreat.
It readied them for
renewal and relocation
to
Reality
A New Now and Way.
When will we return
from our current captivity,
return to normal?
Well, my money says
we need to invest heavily
In our own
Reality Retreat
before we'll be readied
to return to anything
close to a healthy normal.
And when we do return,
it better not be
getting back to normal
as it was before.
That "normal" caused
this terrible dislocation.
We will only get
to a good place
when we have grown into
A Renewed
and
Real Normal.
As mentioned here
in an earlier posting
Richard Rohr offers us
a lot of help in this.
He outlines for us a
Reality Retreat
entitled
"REALITY INITIATING US"
It is very hard
It is tremendously promising.
It guides us through
this dislocation and
opens a way to
a fresh relocation.
Please see below for
A RETREAT FORWARD.
Tough times in a bad place,
faced and embraced,
grew the Israelites free
to a healthy
RELOCATION
May it be so for us and our world.
With Love,
in a pained place
and hopeful yet,
John Frank
*****
This week we were blessed by folks
from the country of Lesotho
joining in with us for the first time.
Welcome to them
and
all our new associates here at
"frankly speaking"
spirituality for the street
-posted each Thursday evening,
east coast USA time
johnfrankshares.blogspot.com
-available each Friday
by automatic email delivery
sign up above
-past postings are available at
BLOG ARCHIVE
right column here
******
A RETREAT FORWARD
Welcome to paradox.
We retreat to forward.
We step away from "A Fix".
We retreat to where we are.
We don't get ahead of pain.
We feel it.
We see the seeds of destruction.
We face our planting of them.
We lament the harvest of unrealness.
We let The Spirit sweep a cleanness.
We accept and plant Spirit given
Seeds of Real.
This retreat is offered for
prayer and pondering
as long as it takes to take.
It calls for slow, deep looks at
self and society as
was,
is,
can be.
It calls for going through
a defining and demanding
Initiation.
Approached on our own,
this retreat will only
make things worse.
Coming soul naked,
accepting enfoldment in
LOVE's EMBRACE
is the only approach to
A Retreat Forward.
*****
Wise worlds initiate the young.
Otherwise, the young bolt to destruction.
We are not a wise world.
We do not initiate our young.
We are young no matter our years.
We are not initiated.
We have bolted to destruction.
We need to be initiated.
We need to accept
Reality Initiating Us
Fair Warning: It's hard.
All world religions initiate along the same lines.
The goal is to put the young in their place,
not the one they claim if uninitiated.
The latter places them in danger
and they place the rest of us in danger.
Right now the world is endangered,
lethally so,
by a global society uninitiated by reality.
Our goal here is to let reality put us right,
put us in our real place
in the composition of creation,
woven into a firm social unity,
not singular threads pulling apart,
unraveling the fabric of that social unity.
To say it otherwise, we're in big time trouble
for all the loose cannons careening
across the deck of the not so good ship,
Shared Life .
Such initiation challenges our bolting ahead
unchecked and destructive.
What we are going through right now
is the result of just that -
the destructive bolting ahead
by legions of those uninitiated by/to reality.
They are not mostly young of years.
They are neighbors, co-workers,
friends and family of all ages.
They are central to government, politics,
business, entertainment and sports,
religion, education and finance.
They are we.
Checked and put in our rightful place
we are then in sync with reality.
Reality with a capital "R"
is another name for God.
It is of a piece with
other ways of saying God:
Truth, Goodness, Being, Existence,
Actuality, Unity, Cosmic Energy, Love.
Great to be in sync, placed with such.
We are blessed to have retreat guidance
from Richard Rohr. His series is
" Reality Initiating Us "
It would be good to take more than a day
with each day of it.
Sink into it.
Let it sink into us.
Consider:
- What's being shared here.
- Where am I with it?
- Where are we as a people with it?
- What needs to change
- What does that mean for me, for us?
- What is the reality, The Reality here?
- What is the promise, the harmony,
the goodness of being righted to Reality?
Richard's Series is online at:
Richard Rohr - Daily Meditation Archive - Center for Action and Contemplation
March 29, 2020 to April 12, 2020
*****
An Angry Prayer
Psalm 137
A Lament over the
destruction of Jerusalem
By the rivers of Babylon -
there we sat down and there
we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for
mirth, saying
"Sing us one of the songs of
Zion!"
How could we sing the Lord's
song
in a foreign land?
If I forget you. O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof
of my mouth,
If I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.
Remember, O Lord, against the
E'domi-ites
the day of Jerusalem's fall,
how they said, "Tear it down!
Tear it down!
Down to its foundations!"
O daughter Babylon, you
devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay
you back
what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take
your little ones
and dash them against the
rock!
******
OUCH!!
No soft pedaling here!
Those rough, raw ancients
were angry at the destruction of
their location and their relocation
as captives in a foreign
place and way.
While we play at being
much more polite and gentile,
we're every bit as furious
at our parallel fate.
So let's take those folks
in their time and place.
They put our
"Smack'em upside the head"
more crudely and more honestly.
The Israelites had to get around
to seeing that
their sinful, sick ways
set them up for down.
So do we.
How long and how much
do we need to hurt,
to suffer, before we see
that it is the result
of our sinful, sick ways -
- selfish, surface satisfactions,
- few having more
than they can count or use
(failed CEO of Boeing fired yet
leaving with $62,000,000 in benefits)
- most not having enough
to count on for decent,
humane living
(refugees at our borders,
the homeless in Syria
to name two of too many millions),
- so sadly called "Reality" shows
that fundamentally give lie to healthy living
( your pick of too many),
- principle sacrificed on
the altars of politics, power and profit
( sad same pick )
- intimacies that aren't
- not only the lie of "alternate facts",
but blatant misinformation -
precludes any sure footing
for decision and action
- churches more market share driven
than Spirit driven
- enough military to destroy earth
and civilization multiple manys.
Of course there are and have been
good people, movements
and institutions aplenty.
As a whole. though, we as a people
have gotten sloppy and sodden,
following trends and leaders on a path
to tip, trip and down.
The ancient Israelites
saw it, changed,
readied for remedy and relocation.
Will we?
******
It hardly matters what day it is anymore,
since the future is so unclear. I sit quietly,
and I open my heart and mind
for the unexpected. My prayers of the heart are
"humility, through mystery," and
"peace, through acceptance." - C. Thorman
******
NORMAL ??
"Normality is a paved road:
It's comfortable to walk,
but no flowers grow on it."
Vincent van Gogh
******
Thursday, April 9, 2020
EASTER: Q&A
Dear All of Us,
It's amazing how hot wired
we all are for Q and A.
We seek respondents and answers
to endless sorts of questions:
religious, political,
social justice and environmental,
financial, governmental,
athletic, artistic and literary...
A lot of the Q and A, though,
is all about ourselves:
Should we have baked chicken
or fried rice and beans for supper?
Do I have enough money
under the mattress?
How popular am I?
Would a new car be smart...
It gets really ramped up from there on,
such as:
Will this friendship/marriage/
career/democracy
hold up, and if so, like what?
The Granddaddy of them all,
the one front and center for sure
these frightening days is,
Am I going to live or die?
The "A" to that "Q" is
You sure are!"
The experience of the answer
is often in reverse order to the question.
We do all kinds of dying to live.
The baby dies to the womb
to live in the world.
The couple marrying
and having children
die to bushel baskets
of singular space and ways
to live together
and give life as family.
We die to sin to live in grace.
We die to one level of consciousness
to come alive in a fuller one.
Daily we die to self absorption
to come alive generous and social.
Across the spectrum of experience
we die to what is for what can be.
Death clears space new life.
Good Friday and Easter Sunday
talk that to our souls.
Good Friday and Easter Sunday
tell of Jesus and of us in Jesus,
going through death to life.
"Do you not know that all of us
who have been baptized
into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death?
Therefore we have been buried
with him by baptism into death,
so that, just as Christ
was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father,
so too we might walk
in newness of life."
Romans 6: 3-4
NEWNESS OF LIFE
How great is that!
This Easter freshness means that
"So if anyone is in Christ,
there is a new creation;
everything old has passed away;
see, everything has become new."
II Corinthians 5: 17
A NEW CREATION
How great is that!
Q and A:
- Q: "Am I going to live or die?"
- A: "You sure are!!"
In Christ Jesus we daily die
to the limit of sin and "as is"
so as to come alive
in newness and fullness of life
as it can be, a
New Creation.
"Resurrexit sicut dixit"
In him we do as well.
Easter Hope!
John Frank
*************************************************************
Thursday, April 2, 2020
FORCED
Dear All of Us,
We rail and rebel at the mere suggestion
of being forced in any way.
Right now, and for a lot of "nows to come,
We are being forced.
We are being forced like never before.
We are being forced individually and collectively.
We are being forced to go without.
We are being subjected to a
FORCED FAST.
Strange that it happens in Lent.
Because of the global Pan Problem,
we are denied,
we have taken from us,
all sorts of preferred/accustomed
conveniences, consumables,
and a wide span of things we
"feed on" - essential to peripheral:
food, freedoms, activities, products, leisures,
finances, medical care, travel, entertainment,
social gatherings, clarity and assurance of
a safe, secure future, indeed of survival.
In solidarity with the vast numbers of people
world wide who live like this all the time,
we can't have what we want, even need.
We have to go without.
Our shared asceticism this Lent,
this global forced fast,
is not of our choosing or control.
That makes it all the harder for sure,
but there it is -a forced fast.
We can rail and rebel all the way
to desperation and chaos.
Or, we can snap to,
"man up" - "woman up"
and deal with the deal,
get real about it.
Yep, tough talk for tough times.
Richard Rohr talks tough,
the tough truth of what's going on.
Starting on Sunday, March 29, 2020
and for the following two weeks
Richard talks us straight -
"Reality Initiating Us"
In all honesty, it is too tough for some.
For those who can handle it,
it is a Godsend.
Online,
Center for Action and Contemplation,
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations
No matter how we frame it,
we are suffering and
likely to suffer more and longer.
It may be how are we going
to get groceries all the way to
am I going to die?
I am dealing with both.
The groceries are getting here for now.
I'll be eighty years old
at the end of the month.
If I get the virus that quite likely
will mean death.
Put another way,
I could be dead in a week.
That's tougher than talk.
So where do I go?
What do I do?
And not just me.
All of us.
At this point it's back to the basics.
Something beyond comprehension
is going on - has been for as long
as we can imagine and more.
We can comprehend neither
the full beauty of it nor the painful terror of it.
We experience both.
A baby is conceived.
It's painful to birth.
That underlying phenomenon crisscrosses
all time, people and places ,
every form of life and being
as creation works itself out.
Right now we are travelling
a rough stretch of that reality.
We go deep or we go crazy.
Our aliveness, as Paul so often put it. is
"En Chtisto"
So in Jesus the Christ, the Suffering Servant
we find ourselves.
One in him, we see how he dealt
with the chaos and pain, the forced fasting of his Passion
back when and is doing so right now in and with us.
The time and place are different.
The experience is a timeless right now oneness.
Much was denied him.
Much was taken from him.
He was misunderstood, maligned, opposed,
betrayed, abandond, tortured, stripped naked,
mocked and murdered.
Jesus sure didn't just give up candy for Lent!!
He gave up more and more to fully all - to life itself.
It was a progressive and ultimately total fast.
Jesus not only accepted it.
He dealt with it in a divinely redemptive way.
That was transformative and salvific.
In him our dealing with the terror of
our forced fast can be as well.
In him we live the energy of Love Itself.
So, just how are we dealing with
our right now, right here forced fast,
personally and as a people?
How are we dealing with being
deprived and denied our list of
needs, preferences and way more
this forced fast, this Lent 2020,
a Lent like none before for us???
Paradoxically our forced fast provides
a plentitude of food for thought:
why, who, how, what, when, now, future...?
We dare not stop there, though.
The deepest of prayer and meditation alone
will open us to the embrace, support and strength
of The Holy Spirit.
In tandem with this, it is essential
that we reach to others,
seeing and hearing how they are
and how they are experiencing all this.
The Spirit will give lead to such care,
one to others.
Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us
("...right now we are travelling a rough stretch of that reality…"),
looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,
who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross...
Please spend a lot of deep quiet with Hebrews 12 and 13.
Pray it, ponder it. It is tough talk for tough times.
It says pain and it says promise.
en Christo
John Frank
*****
Thursday, March 26, 2020
PRAYER
Dear All of Us,
Yesterday I saw presence, pure presence.
It happened on the Red Line of the Metro
right here in Washington, DC.
A young father and his little boy were sitting together.
And what a together.
There was a peace and calm about them,
a relaxed intimacy,
a subtle, gentle joy.
Amid all the riders, ear budded or cell phoned into elsewhere isolation,
was this little boy feet up on the seat,
snuggled into his dad,
the two of them absorbed into each other
and in together reading a book.
It was pure presence.
It was divine.
It was what prayer is.
Prayer is presence
Prayer is presence - now, here, absorbed in God.
Prayer is presence so absorbed in God that it is intimate.
Prayer is presence so intimate that it is love.
Prayer is presence of such love that it is unitive.
Prayer is presence so unitive that the two are distinctly One.
Prayer is presence
God is present everywhere and in everything.
Prayer is being present to the Presence
Prayer Presence is like that little boy and his dad on the Metro -
snuggling up and being absorbed into a unity.
That oneness can happen wherever and however we are.
God is already there.
All we need to do is show up,
open up to the Presence of God.
In prayer we do just that.
Prayer is living in the Presence of God,
anywhere, everywhere, always:
- eating - sleeping - working - playing - suffering
- achieving - creating - correcting - helping
- healing - loving - forgiving - learning - teaching
- touching - listening - speaking - dressing -
- reading a book together on the Metro
anywhere, everywhere, always.
Let's all take a break here adding to the list more and personal
where's and when's of God Presence in our daily lives.
Then slowly sense how we can be present to the Presence -
anywhere, everywhere, always
By the way, to be present really isn't hard work.
It really isn't.
In all truth it's exactly the opposite.
Again, the little boy and his dad.
Like them we just need to ease into where we are and God already is.
We don't have to make anything happen.
We just need to let it happen,
and let ourselves be one with it.
God is Being Itself.
All that "be's" is in God's Being.
All energy in every form is God Energy.
That God Energy presences in matter and spirit.
So wherever we go, whatever we experience is God Present
in one form, fashion or another.
It's not hard, but it does take time to relax enough
to accept God's presence and offer ours in everything from
- taking a shower to going to work
- having supper to getting the car serviced
- dealing with conflict to having a party
- bailing hay to attending a concert
- striving for social justice to taking a vacation
- meditating to paying bills
- going to church to reading a great novel
- just being quiet to savoring scripture.
We go to our room, close the door and be present to
the Presence that is our Father -
just as the little boy and his dad did on the Metro.
Next time you're in DC be sure to travel the Metro Red Line.
It's really a place of prayer,
a place of presence.
God Loves You And So Do I,
John Frank
*****
Welcome to all new here.
Your presence is a blessing.
"frankly speaking"
spirituality for the street
- is posted Thursday evening
east coast USA time
johnfrankshares.blogspot.com
- is available by automatic email
each Friday - sign up above,
online version
- past postings are at
Blog Archive,
online version.
All sorts of things effect how we are
Prayer is conditioned by all of life,
our age and maturity
our upbringing and experience
our time and place in creation
.