| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | Today we continue with a section of "Let the Bones Dance" that is called "Disposition of Compassion: Embodying Tragedy" - Marcia W. Mount Shoop. Compassion "feels with," and it keenly tunes in to tragedy, not to blame and judgment. Tragedy feels the pain of loss as well as the strength of survival. Compassion embodies indignant suffering. It disposes this indignant suffering by pouring presence and indignation into suffering. Compassion is not afraid of grief; it inhabits shared, mournful moments of discomfort. Its consolation is in its very presence, not in its capacity to perfect. This presence is not passive; it resists destruction and despair with its indignation. Somehow suffering will not have the last word. When suffering has been endured there does seem to be the presence of compassion. Someone - somewhere, knows and sees pain and anguish and despair and they are present. Very often it is with a simple touch within that grasp of tragedy that can tear our hearts out. That touch - that presence, can be enough to pull us through the worst of situations. That presence is a statement that is made to those who are experiencing tragedy. I also must agree that such presence "resists destruction and despair" with the understanding that tragedy will not prevail - ever - so don't even try! As compassionate people we are to exhibit the kind of bravery that will stay put even when illness and death and brutality try to push us away. It is not always easy and it can be painful to those who act compassionately on behalf of others - because we are drawn into the other persons tragedy. Tragedy is never easy to view or visit or enter. And yet, as we hear so often in Scripture, suffering will not prevail and as we hear in today's piece: "suffering will not have the last word." Connection: Thanks to those who stay with us in times of trial. We may all say that our lives are full of things to do and thing through which we must 'just make it.' And yet, so many folks then make the time to be present with those in need. What a blessing we can be to others. Gather us as one, O God, that we will sustain those whose life is flickering and close to being extinguished. Encourage us to open up our lives to those who long for the simple presence of another person who may simply and silently stand with them. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | Today is a move into a section of "Let the Bones Dance" that is called "Disposition of Compassion: Embodying Tragedy" - Marcia W. Mount Shoop. We all suffer. Christianity has not tried to deny that. In fact, it has attended closely to how tangled up suffering and belief can be. Suffering is part of the wages of sin; and suffering can be the price you pay for following Jesus. These and other explanations for suffering swirl around in loosely thematic ways in Christian communities. The origins and cause of suffering are not my concern here. The fact that we suffer is. In these few beginning notes in this part of the book we jump into the very heart of the importance for the Body of Christ to be embodied - real - alongside. We suffer. Suffering comes in so many shapes and forms and sizes we cannot simply say people suffer and that's just it. We gather and we come to understand the many ways people suffer and the many ways people experience joy. Remember, the two are not exclusive. Someone who has suffered knows what joy is. That person may not know joy as I do. Therefore, we are each invited to listen and to hear about suffering on the part of the other so that we can also hear what it is that brings joy to them. In some ways, when we sing "joy to the world" aren't we singing about joy that comes into all the various ways we suffer. And yet, we call the embodiment of God in Jesus - joy to the world. There is Jesus - the one who takes the road into the very depths of our suffering so that in our suffering - no matter how deep - there is someone with us - someone who can feel the pain and still is beside us without ever stepping away. Connection: We can learn this life. We can - in the middle of our suffering and our joy - come to understand the importance of staying alongside others in and through their suffering and joy. Gather us as one, O God, that your joy will lighten our load when we are overburdened and about to break. Be our companion - again. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | More on disposition and the Christian community -"Let the Bones Dance" by Marcia W. Mount Shoop.
Feeling is the conduit of God's redemptive power breathed into our bodies. God works through feeling. It is our bodies' capacity for transformation. It is the mechanism of God's redemptive power as it integrates what is hoped for into what has been and what is. Feeling gives us insight into how we can dispose ourselves and cooperate in our own redemption. How we attend to bodies informs how we are able to enflesh the Body of Christ. The tragic, relational, and ambiguous attributes of our embodied existence urge us to nurture these three dispositions in particular: compassion, interdependence, and adventure. When we are awake to the tragic, the relational, and the ambiguous dimensions of embodied experience, then we can intentionally nurture practices that expand our vision of who we are and who we hope to become in God's embrace. This almost sounds like the way we can move together into a 'beloved community.' We feel our way into it. We feel our way into the shape of the room and those who are there. I think of feeling here as the reaching out and touching. In the movie Robin Hood, the old father in Nottingham wants 'Robin' to come closer so that he can see him. Coming closer means - come within my reach. To moves his fingers over Robin's face - every bit of his face is touched. He shakes his head as though he now knows what he looks like. He then tells Robin to take a bath, "you stink." We cannot know the feel of the flesh of the Body of Christ unless we get close enough to touch and close enough to be touched. No, I don't think we need to 'feel each other up' - rather we need to be vulnerable enough to enter into relationships that allow us to see and feel and know the Christ who is alive in each of us. I think that involves what is noted here - "compassion, interdependence, and adventure." Sure it will be adventure - it demands that we get a feel of things around us and that can always be surprising because of what we find 'out there' and what we find 'right inside' here. Connection: Some folks talk about getting a 'feel' for a room or a group of people or an individual. There is no touching. There is willingness to be available and sense the life that is in the room or the people. There is that vulnerability that allows others to get a sense of us. Gather us as one, O God, that we will feel life that you have waiting for us as we enter into the Body of Christ. Inspire us to be bold, gentle, and compassionate. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | More on disposition and the Christian community -"Let the Bones Dance" by Marcia W. Mount Shoop.
As we live into our redemption, we need intentional practices that explore how we have resisted our own embodied redemption. Confession of sin and
repentance, for instance, can be more than words read on a printed page and a few seconds of silence during worship. "Because Christ shows us his wounds, we can begin to show him ours." This vulnerability and trust transform us from those who bury our pain to those who embody it in our communal life together. This transformative orientation to Christ and to one another needs more open spaces than many mainline church communities have been willing to clear for it. What if we let our embodied truths find expression, healing, and promise in church? What if we began to feel our way and not just think and do our way into Christ-living? Our collective journey of faith can find its integrity in the truth about who we are. During the rite of healing on the second Sunday of each month, after people have come to the Lord's Supper, we allow space for them to then go to one of the praying/healing stations. I have always thought that it allows for what I think is this kind of embodying of communal life. After reading this piece I wondered if I need to once again remind folks that they do not have to be 'sick' to come to one of the stations. Rather, we come to be made whole. We are all broken - in many ways. This 'healing' time can be open to be one in which those who are burdened with their own brokenness can come an hear the Word of forgiveness and the reminder of God's eternal peace and presence. Sometimes when I have the opportunity to e one of the lead praying people at a station, I see that there is more going on than a simple blessing. I rest my hands on the person's head and the assisting person lays hands on the person's upper back/shoulders. By then end of the prayer there may be signs of deep emotional involvement in the public/private/corporate space and time dedicated to healing. It is not unusual for tears to be present - or big bright smiles. The body experiences the wonder of an individual's body coming to rest and healing. Connection: When you have the time and willingness, allow yourself to have someone pray with you - lay on hands and pray. Nothing has to be 'wrong' - in fact you simply need to be open to hear a word of peace and wholeness and life. Gather us as one, O God and heal us again in the midst of the community. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | More on disposition and the Christian community -"Let the Bones Dance" by Marcia W. Mount Shoop.
Dispositions mark our particularity, our inheritance, and our hopes for who we are and for who we can be. Our habits and our decisions partner with our dispositions to condition and characterize us. Our practices are the friends of our dispositions - companionable and challenging. Christian communities and believers are the Body of Christ in the world. We flesh out God's love for the world, the hope that defeats all despair, the healing that outlasts all suffering, and the mystery of "God with us." WE flesh out this state of redemption as it already exists and as it is yet to be. Redemption helps to in-form our dispositions in this new embodied situation of grace and to work to be better than who we are. But it can be profoundly difficult to really know ourselves and our distortions, especially when they become a way of life. Fear, polarizing stances on social issues, unapologetic individualism and materialism, comfortable homogeneity, valorized guilt, stasis, rigidity, and quest for someone to blame for our problems are just some of the distortions that find a home to the disembodied ethos that characterizes much of mainline Protestantism. "Redemption helps to inform our dispositions" - it is literally the power that can make the day into something quite different from how we would go about the things we must do. On first reading of this piece it reminded me of 'having my eyes lifted up' to see things again. That is a vitally important way to think of redemption. It is already the power of life that takes us on a ride that we would not necessarily take on our own. There are so many things that attempt to rob us of this truth about our God who takes our lives and breathes into them a life that is contrary to the prevailing power and winds of the day. When we do not embody this breath, we become less than we can be as the community of the followers of Jesus. Too many forces and themes of the day can win us over and direct us in ways that are not informed by the power of life that is our redemption. Connection: It would be a good exercise to try to name or at least describe the forces and powers that have the power to move us away having redemption help to shape our dispositions in life. I'm sure we each could come up with few. Add onto that, the ones that others can help us see. At least then, we might be able to see the difference between being shaped by the culture and being shaped by the grace of our God. Gather us as one, O God. Help us to know the power of life that is leading us and help us to return to you alone when we find it so easy to follow other powers of the day. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | Today in a section called "the body and disposition" Mount Shoop fills in some of the reason she uses the word disposition in her writing on embodying redemption. I use the word "disposition" because it communicates body language. A disposition is a characteristic; it is an inclination that includes outlook, attitude and tendencies toward certain behaviors. Dispositions have blurred distinctions among mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual characteristics of the body. They integrate all layers of embodied experience. They are not only ethical, but also existential and deeply embedded beyond the reach of conscious decision. Bodies feel and fashion inclinations, behaviors, outlooks, and character out of the constellations of feeling's flow. Dispositions also embody that which enjoys prevalence and consistency. Over the long haul, dispositions are indications of the kind of people we are. Some say they are our "natural" inclinations; but they also embody our intentions. We are in-formed and con-formed by our dispositions. We also in-form them and con-form them in turn. We are not passive, but powerful players in how dispositions take hold in us. When we dispose of something, for example, we make a decision as to how something should be placed or arranged. We give it direction. We regulate it. We dispense it.... Dispositions are creative and wise to the texture of reality. Dispositions function ethically, but they are more than that. Dispositions are both the mothers and the children of our moral decisions and actions. What we come to be as ones who are beloved of God are people who are offered a gift for life that begins to make up who we are - how we lean into the future and how we interact in the moment at hand. Our disposition - that which is often very visible to the world around us takes shape as this love of God becomes a part of our flesh and blood. We not only learn about our God who loves us, this love makes its way into the fiber of our being. We are not only pulled into God's presence, we - on our part - lean with our lives. Therefore, our lives - how the Word become embodied - shows it hand to the world. Is this disposition what can be called a witness - a witness to the power that brings us to life? Connection: Growing up I remember hearing that people sometimes 'got up on the wrong side of the bed.' Their disposition was usually nasty - or simply out of sorts. Maybe 'getting out of bed on the right side' is like having our day shaped by God's love right from the moment we turn over to roll out of the bed. The word of God's love remind us of life that is ours. It is a gift and it is way Gather us as one, O God. Hold us that we will take the form of your beloved body as this day unfolds. As we become that body - again - let it shine. Amen. |
| | | | Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions | | | | | | As she continues with this 'body' from "Let the Bones Dance" - Marcia W. Mount Shoop - there are a few image I will address. Living into these embodied gifts of God takes practice. Like a creek bed slowly changing course, practice is the trickling current that creates transformation in time. Practice is the wind, the push in the current. Practice nourishes our embodied competency for redemption. The body can become more and more available for redemption by nurturing itself in what I a calling "dispositions of redemption." Because of God's unique power and our divine spark, dispositions of redemption are both gifts of grace and fruits of spiritual practices. When nourished and nurtured, our imago Dei revives as the fuel of who we are, instead of just surviving as a flicker of who we were supposed to be. We can function as partners in the transformational promise of Jesus Christ in our lives. I was liking what I was reading and then she threw in a 'trigger' term - divine spark. Historically, that language had to do with some of the great heresies of the past. The way it goes is that there is this 'divine spark' that enters humanity - but never really becomes a part of it all - that earthiness - that physical reality - that mortality. If this is where she was going, I was going to dump the reflections. If she was going there, all the "word made flesh" stuff from John's gospel could be thrown out - and that is not going to happen. Then I realized she is very committed to embodiment - very drawn to the body of Christ as real and present. This 'spark' now sounds more like the 'word' that settles us and abides with us and becomes us. That - is something that makes sure that we never let our adventure with Jesus become a whirlwind without substance - everyday stuff - all of it. Connection: We are called to settle in and live as people fully human and fully available to the world - all of it - no buffers - no limits - Fully Human. That is where our story begins this day and this is right where it will end - as one of God's beloved living as though that is the truth. Gather us as one, O God. Direct us and nurture us along the way of your Son. Let you Spirit of life take us and move us and hand us the day as one full of your presence. Amen. |
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