Freedom for Love

Freedom for Love   

Mystical moments may be described as a kind of emancipation. If it isn’t an experience of new found freedom, I don’t think it is an authentic God experience. God is always bigger than you imagined or expected or even hoped for. When you see people going to church and becoming smaller instead of larger, you have every reason to question whether the practices or sermons or sacraments or liturgies are opening them to an authentic God experience.

On a practical level such experiences will feel like a new freedom to love, and you wonder where it comes from. Why do I have this new desire, this new capacity to love new people, to love the old people better, maybe to enter into some kind of new love for the world? I will find that even my thoughts are more immediately loving, patient, and compassionate.

Clearly, you are participating in a Love that’s being given to you. You are not creating this. You are not generating this. It is being generated through you and in you and for you. You are participating in something larger than yourself, and you are just allowing it and trusting it for the pure gift that it is.

Adapted from Following the Mystics Through the Narrow Gate
. . . Seeing God in All Things, by Fr. Richard Rohr

Note: I am a big fan of Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk and Roman Catholic priest, and I've been promising for some time to share some of his ideas with Garrett. I decided the best way to do it is to publish some of Fr. Rohr's daily meditations on our blog for everyone. We might even want to discuss them at our meetings!

This Week: Rain

But I'm not talking about the weather. At least not our weather here in Monroe!     

At tomorrow's Canterbury@ULM meeting, we'll screen "Rain" by Rob Bell, and consider the question, Where was God in that?

Tuesday, 5 p.m.

Student Center 163

Don't forget that we changed our meeting to 5 p.m.!

Look for our ad in this week's Hawkeye. Bring a friend. Canterbury@ULM is open to all. 

See you there.

Tomorrow!

The spring edition of Canterbury@ULM begins tomorrow!        

Tuesday, 5:30 p.m.

Student Center 163

   

Our agenda:

Pizza!

Officers!

(Our president will not return to ULM this spring. We need a new president. Are you called?!)

Members!

(We should have a few new faces.)

Upcoming! 

(What we're going to do this semester.)

See you there. 

Canterbury for Spring

We will resume Canterbury@ULM meetings next week, Tuesday, January 22 at 5:30 p.m. I plan to ask for Student Center 163 again. If that doesn't work, I'll let you know.

Rosine, don't forget to forward this to Desmond so he can subscribe!

All of you are welcome to invite a friend. See you soon.

Incarnation: "The Word"

As school rapidly--too rapidly--approaches, I thought we might stave it off with one last look over our shoulders at Christmas. Here's an excerpt and link to the sermon I preached Christmas Day at St. Alban's Episcopal:  
                        

From a blogsite of Loyola School of Theology, Manilla

So there we were, just a few hours ago, kneeling at the manger, falling in love all over again with Baby Jesus. Babies grab our hearts. The least maternal among us cannot resist offering a finger for a tiny hand to grasp.

Then along comes the Gospel according to St. John. Every Christmas Day, we read this poetic and compelling yet mysterious prologue to John’s account of Jesus the Christ. It refers to “light,” which we associate with Christmas, but we’re less sure about ”the Word” and its connection to anything.

Where, we might be tempted to ask, is the babe? Where is Mary, the blessed

mother, Joseph, the faithful father? The shepherds? Why can’t we just stay at the manger and play with the baby for awhile?!

Here’s a Gospel trivia question for you: Where and how does Jesus the human first appear in the Gospel according to John?   more...

Thoughts from Bishop Jake

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Happy New Year!

Some of us have made resolutions for the coming year, many of which aim at self-improvement. We intend to eat less and to exercise more. Replace watching TV with reading. Learn a foreign language or be more patient.

We all need to make life-adjustments from time to time, and resolutions can play a worthy role in that process. But I find that resolutions often focus merely on the periphery of our lives. They rarely dig into the deep core of our values.

Before we get too far along in this year, let's take a little time to reflect on what we make the center of our universe. Think about these questions, or something like them:

What am I really about in this life? On what do I depend for my sense of significance? Where do I seek security?

Now, let's remember what Jesus taught us:

"'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"   (Matthew 22:37-39)

Jesus urges us to nurture our relationships. Our relationship with God is our starting point, and that relationship expresses itself in our relationships with other people.

But it would be a mistake to consider the Summary of the Law as a goal to achieve, something that we can accomplish. Too many religious people fall into this error of thinking. They figure that being good enough and being spiritual enough will make God love them. And so they miss the point entirely.

God already loves us. He forsook all his infinite glory to be born for us in a manger and to die for us on a cross. He did this for us precisely because we cannot fulfill the Summary of the Law on our own.   As Anne Lamott put it, "If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little." (from Help, Thanks, Wow)

The life devoted to and inscribed by love is the life that God gives us through Christ, not the achievement that God will grade in the end as if life were a great exam. It is the destination to which Jesus will lead us if we follow him, even if we often follow by shuffling or dragging our feet or stumbling headlong in a daze.

Blessings to you all in this New Year! It is so exciting to imagine what Jesus has in store for us!

In Christ's Love,

+Jake
 

The Rt. Rev. Jacob W. Owensby, Ph.D.

The Diocese of Western Louisiana