“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, and I know them well.” Psalm 139:14

being still in God's big world
“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, and I know them well.” Psalm 139:14
The irony of this quiet day is not lost on me. Today is Ash Wednesday, and also a quiet day here at VTS. Quiet days are my favorite days of the semester. We started the morning with Eucharist and imposition of ashes followed by an opening meditation by the Rev. Martin Smith. His meditation focused on the need to allow ourselves the vulnerability of getting dirty before we are ready to be washed by Christ. He quoted Thomas Merton who said, “We have what we seek. It is there all the time, and if we give it time it will make itself known to us.” Merton is referring to those things we seek in prayer, and Rev. Smith was using this quote to illustrate that our time of intentional prayer and quiet, when we seek to open ourselves to God, is actually us opening ourselves to the mind of Christ which is already in us. (I Corinthians 2:16)
After talking about this he took a comedic turn and talked about the American obsession with hygiene. As a Brit, he said that it was a culture shock to move to this country and be bombarded with advertisements for tooth whitening, deodorizing, anti-bacterial, etc… products at every turn. Our obsession with cleanliness is quite different than a lot of the rest of the world. Through his meditation he encouraged us to embrace our dirtiness today; to realize the grace inherent in our weakness. He said: “We cannot become priests until we know the sacramentality of our shadow.” This resonated deeply with me. He encouraged us to go off and embrace the dirt we had wiped on our foreheads as a symbol of the dirt in ourselves. He told us to go off and become, “dirty angels.”
The irony comes after that point when I returned to my room to engage in what I had already discerned as my practice for this quiet day. It was to start with a nice, hot bath. I returned to my room and thought about it for a short time. Was I disregarding what I had heard this morning? No, I was not… I was internalizing it. I drew the water into the tub and soaked for a bit as I thought about the inability of that water to clean what was really underneath it all. I do some of my best thinking in the tub and so this was, just as I discerned, a perfect start to my quiet day. I remain amused that Rev. Smith’s opening meditation spoke so directly to my private plans for the day.
The rest of my day has been spent simply resting with God. I read some of my book about the Ignatian Examen prayer. (The Examen is the spiritual practice I am adopting for Lent.) I laid on my bed and simply listened for God. I enjoyed lunch, silently, with my peers in the refectory. And I have breathed. Oh sure, I have taken a break here and there, but all in all I felt called to a very intentional day of Sabbath and I am grateful that VTS sees the importance of such a habitual practice in the school calendar.
Our closing meditation begin in a half hour. I intend to go to that meditation and then return to my room for continued Sabbath, meditation, prayer, and maybe some sermon writing -if the Spirit is feeling so inclined. It is days like these that make this finite journey feel infinite. I can here the beeping of construction trucks off in the grove but aside from that my heart and my head are quiet. It is nice to enjoy a day of solitude with God. For me, this is the perfect entry into the wilderness.
…dorm. There is no place like a dorm. Dorms are a wonderful place. I have a room all to myself, a common room to share a glass of wine and a song, and study rooms to… well, to store the vacuum actually. Living in community is a curious thing. You spend all of your time with these people from various walks of life who have all converged because of a shared calling. We are all called to be ministers of one sort or another. Some lay, some ordained, all crazy in our own little way. Fascinating.
Every Wednesday night at 9 we gather for “Whine on Wednesday.” A lovely little get together where we share a cup and some laughs to gear up for the rest of the week. Tonight I found myself looking around the room feeling proud that I will be sharing in church leadership with these folks.
Jenny and Jonathan wrote a lovely Eucharistic prayer that the former presiding bishop of the Episcopal church prayed as he presided at the table. Lara and Ginny sang some fabulous songs. Murmuring in the background rumbled along about preaching for the first time in homiletics class, the Ethics exam that schooled us this morning, and the Church History paper that will take over the lives our the junior class this coming week. I found myself thinking how lucky I am to be here and that my biggest concern, at this the halfway point in my seminary career, is how I am to spend my summer of formation.
God is good, all the time.
Click here to view this photo book larger
This is part of my final project for the Myanmar course. I have ordered this book that I built to accompany me as I make presentations.
Enjoy!
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