Renewal Works

O God, I don't love you. I don't want to love you. But I want to want to love you.

It's a prayer I've offered, though not one I composed. I didn't get it from a skeptical millennial or a burnt out cleric. It didn't come from a newcomer exploring the church, or from one of the frozen chosen (someone who has been at this mainline, organized, institutional religion stuff for a while). Though in some respects it has a contemporary feel, it comes from Teresa of Avila, saint of the 16th century. I was leading a retreat of young people this past weekend. It was a gift to be with them, to learn from them. With a distinctive mix of love and energy, they were trying to figure out what it means to have a life with God. When asked to give a homily at a eucharist around a campfire, I noted that it was the feast day of St. Teresa. As I launched into the homily, I had one of those "What were you thinking?" moments. I wondered if discussion of a saint from so long ago would put these young people to sleep, all the while confirming their conviction that I was a hopeless church geek. But while Teresa's life circumstances were, how shall we say, different than those of these young people, she had something to teach them (and me) about loving God.

Her memory lives on for a number of reasons, including a cut-to-the-chase approach to faith. One of my favorite stories about her: She took her show on the road, going from town to town proclaiming the gospel. One day, she was riding a horse or a cart or something (accounts vary). The horse bucked or a wheel of the cart fell off, and she was thrown to the ground, ending up in a mud puddle by the side of the road. She looked to the heavens and said: "Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few of them." I'm wondering if you've ever joined her in that mud puddle, praying that prayer, maybe even adding expletives. Maybe you're in that mud puddle this Monday morning.

She is credited with the beautiful prayer that says that we are Christ's hands and feet in the world now. The prayer is printed in the column on the left, and provides a wonderful way for us to think about what we're called to do.

But she's on my mind because she helps me wrestle with the question of what it means to grow in love of God, which is the heart of spiritual growth. I confess that sometimes I wonder if the cynic/comic/commentator Bill Maher is right when he says that people who talk about a relationship with God are really talking about an imaginary friend. Sometimes my prayers seem to go no higher than the ceiling, seem to be little more than wishful thinking. It's why the story of Teresa of Avila is so important. At a critical moment in her own spiritual journey, she was visited by an angel, who in a vision pierced her heart with a golden burning spear. In that vision, her heart was set on fire with love for God. Sure, there was pain/challenge/difficulty. But it changed her, and paved the way for an answer to her request; I want to want to love you. I could stand to have my heart set on fire for love of God.

In our liturgy, in confession, we admit that we have not loved God with our whole heart or soul or mind, and oh by the way, we have not loved neighbor as self. (The two things apparently go together, though sometimes I feel like the guy who said: "I love humanity. It's people I can't stand.) Every day I need to focus on that call to deeper love of God and neighbor. I try to start each day with the confession just to establish the point. It reminds me that love of God is the issue, the heart of the matter. Join me this morning in giving thanks for Teresa. Try today to figure a way to open your heart a bit more to the Holy One who created us and from whose love we can never be separated. Never.

MM: Oh, no, this is where the Lord wants me, and this is where I am happy to be. I feel young when I am here. The Lord is so good to me. How privileged I am to serve him.

For those of us who have occasionally lost direction or battled burnout, her witness of persistence is remarkable. Of course, since her death in 1997, we have learned that her long life of service was marked by private passages of doubt, discouragement and despair. That is true of many holy people. But at one point in her ministry, she was asked how she could face the overwhelming poverty, when her daily work seemed to make absolutely no dent, no difference. When asked what kept her going, she responded: God calls me to be faithful, not necessarily successful.

I think about the church, and the challenges facing those who care about the church, serve in the church, hope for the church. In my travels around the church, I meet heroic people who work with minimal resources, with entrenched resistance to change, with dwindling attendance. It can seem as if efforts may not make a difference. How do we focus on faithfulness when success seems elusive?

I think about each one of our lives, the great variety of ways that people are called, as followers of Jesus, to take up the cross, whatever that cross may look like. I think of quiet endurance, in relationships and situations that are burdensome or broken. I marvel at the ways people keep on keeping on, living faithfully, even if in the world's terms they are not successful in healing the situation. What is God asking you to do and be this week, in your household, at work? Is there a situation there that seems to defy success? Think about your place in the church, in the community of faith. Think about your call as a global citizen, in a world marked by challenges. We are not promised success in resolving all the challenges that surface in those places. We are called to faithfulness, which sounds a lot like trusting the concerns of our heart to the one from whose love we can never be separated, the one whose character is faithfulness.

Today, think more about what it means to be faithful and worry less about what it means to be successful.

I grew up going to Madison Square Garden in New York. My dad had season tickets for the Knicks, when one of the best teams ever in the NBA was assembled. Fans were exuberant (and noisy) in those years of Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere, Walt Frazier, Willis Reed and Phil Jackson (who didn't play much but turned out to be an okay coach). We would also go to rowdy, raucous Rangers games at the Garden, where the spectator sport was as much about cheering on fights in the stands as about hip-checks on the ice. I learned a lot about ways to combine expletives, these deleted from this email. As a teenager and college student I went to concerts there, again, marked by high decibels.

I was near the Garden last week. Actually beneath the Garden. The advisory board of RenewalWorks had a meeting in New York, scheduled long before we knew that another religious gathering would be taking place in Manhattan. (For some peculiar reason, the Vatican never consulted us to check on calendar conflicts.) I've never witnessed such extensive security and news coverage, though it was not for our advisory meeting.

I left New York on Friday morning, taking the train to the airport, leaving from Penn Station, located underneath Madison Square Garden. In those early hours, the place looked grim, filled with weary travelers and way too many people with nowhere else to sleep. I found myself thinking about the gathering that would happen later that day, in the arena above the train station. I got home in time to watch the Mass on TV. I noticed how the eucharist transformed that place. It's tough to create a sense of sacred space in a huge sports arena. My associations with the Garden were not particularly spiritual. But the liturgists did well. By God's grace, they transformed the space. It made the common holy.

For me, the most striking moment was near the end of the service when the Pope asked for silence. The camera panned around the Garden, filled to capacity. The place was absolutely still before the presence of the Lord. The presence of the Pope, too, but I sensed it was mostly the presence of the Lord. And then came that stunning moment at the end when the Pope said: Remember to pray for me. The Pope and the liturgy at which he presided changed that place for me, and many, many others.

In the work to which I'm called these days, I'm thinking a lot about change. Listening to learn about how people grow, how people move spiritually. I would ask you to think this morning about what has brought about spiritual deepening, growth, movement, transformation in your own life. We ask this question incessantly in our work. Many Episcopalians from all kinds of places provide the same answer. The eucharist, worship, communion have been catalysts for their own spiritual deepening. Taking common things of life, bread and wine, those elements are transformed into spiritual food. In turn, ordinary, individual lives are transformed into a community meant and sent to serve in the world, to change the world. The body of Christ. Transformation. The noise of busy schedules is redeemed by holy, sacred silence.

God is in all things. Christ is in all persons. Every moment, every space, no matter how common, can be holy. As you start this week, take that thought with you. Savor some silence. Do your part to make this a holy week.

But perhaps intentional attention to mercy is what we need right now in a world where mercy is in short supply. Shakespeare said that the quality of mercy is not strained, but he might want to hear what the Pope had to say on the subject:

Dear brothers and sisters, I have often thought about how the Church might make clear its mission of being a witness to mercy. It is journey that begins with a spiritual conversion. For this reason, I have decided to call an extraordinary Jubilee that is to have the mercy of God at its center. It shall be a Holy Year of Mercy. We want to live this Year in the light of the Lord's words: "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. (cf. Lk 6:36)"