I feel disconnected today. Yesterday I gave the sermon at church. In summary, my message was that in celebrating Christmas we learn to love Jesus before we learn that Jesus loves us. As we get older the two become intertwined.
Wouldn’t you think I would be feeling peaceful and faithful after that? Well, I’m not. All morning I’ve felt empty and purposeless. I know that’s the way it goes with faith, but I don’t like it. I want all the certainty and childlike ease that the nativity scene offers. But Jesus grows up quickly and then comes Lent before Easter. No one ever said Christianity was easy.

I’m going to Florence in January, flying out the afternoon of the 10th after church, returning home Saturday the 23rd. That way I’ll only miss one Sunday.
     I cherish day after day living with solitude silence and simplicity; I cherish day after day ‘walking around with God’. I usually don’t tell people that that’s what I’m doing, but I notice that I’m beginning to blurt it out more and more. If they don’t get it or think it strange, they don’t say anything. But I’m thinking that most people do understand. They may not frame it in Christian or religious terms, but they do have a longing for something ineffable, something way beyond human understanding, something deep in their soul where there is peace.
     Many would love a week or two alone in Florence with God.

A poem sent to me by dear friends in England. Friends I first met on Iona.

I Have Seen the Lord
Where the mist rises from the sea
Where the waves creep upon the shore
Where the wrack lifts upon the strand,
            I have seen the Lord.

Where the sun awakens the day
Where the road winds on its way
Where the fields are sweet with hay
           I have seen the Lord.

Where the stars shine in the sky
Where the streets so peaceful lie
Where the darkness is so nigh
          I have seen the Lord.

The Lord is here
The Lord is there
The Lord is everywhere
The lord is high
The lord is low
The Lord is on the path I go.

I’m offering the sermon at church on December 27, which needless to say is where I have been directing my writing energy—not on this blog. My sermon theme is God’s love. During advent and throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas we focus on loving Jesus, and then for the rest of the church year everything shifts to Jesus loving us. Of course God loved us first, from the beginning of creation, but as far as our human life is concerned one of the ways we learn of God’s love is by loving the baby Jesus. Maybe that’s why we love Christmas—who could not love an innocent baby in a manger? 

I’ve just discovered Fr. Thomas Hopko’s 55 Maxims for Christian Living through a post on “The Prayer of the Heart Monastery: St. Symeon the New Theologian,” one of membership sites of “Monasteries of the Heart: An online movement sharing Benediction spirituality with contemporary seekers.” This led me to Fr. Stephen Freeman’s blog, “Glory to God in All Things,’ and thus to the Maxims. http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2015/11/30/simply-living/www.ancientfaith.com:
 
I’m amazed at how easy I, a cradle Protestant, can accept these maxims with only a slight modification here and there. Eastern Orthodox faith, balances UCC emphasis on works.
At the moment I’m intrigued with #6, #10, #16, #26, and #29. What about you? As you read down the list, which ones attract you?
 
1. Be always with Christ.
2. Pray as you can, not as you want.
3. Have a keepable rule of prayer that you do by discipline.
4. Say the Lord’s Prayer several times a day.
5. Have a short prayer that you constantly repeat when your mind is not occupied with other things.
6. Make some prostrations when you pray.
7. Eat good foods in moderation.
8. Keep the Church’s fasting rules.
9. Spend some time in silence every day.
10. Do acts of mercy in secret.
11. Go to liturgical services regularly
12. Go to confession and communion regularly.
13. Do not engage intrusive thoughts and feelings. Cut them off at the start.
14. Reveal all your thoughts and feelings regularly to a trusted person.
15. Read the scriptures regularly.
16. Read good books a little at a time.
17. Cultivate communion with the saints.
18. Be an ordinary person.
19. Be polite with everyone.
20. Maintain cleanliness and order in your home.
21. Have a healthy, wholesome hobby.
22. Exercise regularly.
23. Live a day, and a part of a day, at a time.
24. Be totally honest, first of all, with yourself.
25. Be faithful in little things.
26. Do your work, and then forget it.
27. Do the most difficult and painful things first.
28. Face reality.
29. Be grateful in all things.
30. Be cheerful.
31. Be simple, hidden, quiet and small.
32. Never bring attention to yourself.
33. Listen when people talk to you.
34. Be awake and be attentive.
35. Think and talk about things no more than necessary.
36. When we speak, speak simply, clearly, firmly and directly.
37. Flee imagination, analysis, figuring things out.
38. Flee carnal, sexual things at their first appearance.
39. Don’t complain, mumble, murmur or whine.
40. Don’t compare yourself with anyone.
41. Don’t seek or expect praise or pity from anyone.
42. We don’t judge anyone for anything.
43. Don’t try to convince anyone of anything.
44. Don’t defend or justify yourself.
45. Be defined and bound by God alone.
46. Accept criticism gratefully but test it critically.
47. Give advice to others only when asked or obligated to do so.
48. Do nothing for anyone that they can and should do for themselves.
49. Have a daily schedule of activities, avoiding whim and caprice.
50. Be merciful with yourself and with others.
51. Have no expectations except to be fiercely tempted to your last breath.
52. Focus exclusively on God and light, not on sin and darkness.
53. Endure the trial of yourself and your own faults and sins peacefully, serenely, because you know that God’s mercy is greater than your wretchedness.
54. When we fall, get up immediately and start over.
55. Get help when you need it, without fear and without shame.

(I've posted these under

In order to offer balance to my last post, today I report that I am not out of sorts, and it’s not because my coffee was just right this morning. It’s my attitude, but more specifically my openness to God. How easy it is to forget God when the little or the big situations in life take front stage, when I try to take the lead role, when I try to give God a bit part, or worse than that, when I kick God off the stage. No God on my Playbill.
     I am trying to lead all of my life with voluntary simplicity, a term elaborated on by Duane Elgin’s in his books “Voluntary Simplicity” and “Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity’s Future.” “Simplicity is not about a life of poverty, but about a life of purpose,” he tells us. Voluntary simplicity is not only about simplifying our possessions and circumstances, but about leading a life of meaning, which by its very nature is spiritual.
     This idea trusts me back, once again, to God’s call to me to pray for people, a call that all too often languishes as one of many acts in the play that I am leading. It’s an isolated scene in the midst of others, leaving me out of sorts. When I think of prayer as my vocation, however, all the scenes and acts come together as one play about God working in my life. God, as playwright, director and lead actor, but definitely needing me in a supporting role.
     I have more to say about this, but I don’t know what. It’s a process, and I need to be with it, pray with it. I guess I’d say I need more rehearsal time.

     I’m out of sorts this morning; impatient with all the little things that usually don’t bother me—such as the temperature of my coffee--and, impatient with the big things that bother me in a more than usual, visceral way. Things like guns and shootings and killings. I’m impatient that it would be easier for me to purchase an assault rifle before 8 AM at a gun store, than a bottle of wine at my supermarket. Blah, blah, blah. You get my point.
     What to do about this impatience that has left me out of sorts? It was even a challenge to start this blog entry, but God gave me the wherewithal to meditate, and now enough energy to begin writing.
     Last night at The Well, a meditation group at my church, we talked about the ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ in Paul’s letter to the Galatians:
     Now the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
     Great list but how do I obtain the fruit? Hum, fruit of the spirit. My hope of attaining any comes, not from my own effort, but from the Spirit. Get out of my head and pray for, meditate on, breathe in God’s Spirit. It helps, but I have to keep at it all the time, pray without ceasing as Paul suggests in 1 Thessalonians. This demands a different way of living, living my life for God, not for me. I don’t know if I want to do that all the time.
     As I write, I’m ashamed at how I fuss about my petty feelings of impatience. Innocent people were killed in San Bernardino last night, families have been shattered, hopes lost, and here I am, annoyed that my coffee is cold. It’s more than pathetic that I, in my privileged state, find something so petty to be impatient about.
     My best hope is to pray that the Spirit fill my heart so I can pray for others and do something out there in the world to make a difference. Faith and works walk together. We can’t have one without the other.