Conversion

Here on Iona, I've discovered both the Iona Community, an ecumenical Christian community, and its founder, the Rev. George MacLeod, now gone on to join the Communion of Saints in Heaven.

I've read about MacLeod's conversion in a biographical note by Ron Ferguson in his collection, Daily Readings with George MacLeod. While returning by train to the Front in France, MacLeod, an Oxford-educated British officer, had a profound experience of God's loving presence.

He realized that he was heading to "to hell in a hurry," according to Ferguson, and knelt and yielded his life to Christ, which changed his course.

Instead of becoming a barrister or solicitor--he had read law at Oxford--MacLeod trained for the ministry in the Church of Scotland after the war and was ordained. During the Depression, he left a large, important congregation in Glasgow and eventually settled on Iona, off the west coast of Scotland; Iona had been the home of St. Columba, the Christian missionary to Scotland and England during the 6th century.

MacLeod and his followers rebuilt the abbey church on Iona, and he founded the Iona Community, which still works for the spread of the Good News of the God of Love through words and deeds, the deeds being work for justice, peace, reconciliation, and more.

MacLeod, who won the Military Cross for bravery during WW I, became a pacifist after the war and maintained his pacifism throughout his life, including during WW II.

George MacLeod's life could have turned out differently. But he gave up his life and plans to God, and God's will was fulfilled in him. He lived the life that God created him to live. He was converted to Christ.

And through his preaching, teaching, writing, and the work of the Iona Community, he devoted himself to doing God's work--the conversion of others through Christ and the transformation of the world through the Gospel.

I am drawn to George MacLeod and people like him, seeing in their stories the power of conversion.

I sometimes wonder where would my life would be were I not converted to Christ. Had I not one cold January night, as a senior in university, prayed and surrendered my life to Christ, feeling the outpouring of God's palpable love upon me.

I don't know for sure what I'd done or where I'd be, but I'd have likely gone to law school, gone into politics, become a person more interested in power than in service to others and for a better world.

But thanks be to God, I was converted. God finally overtook me by His love, and since that first experience of His love, I've wanted to know His love more and more. I've wanted to be one with Him in love.

This moving toward God in desire for Him is what Thomas Merton--whose conversion has also been a source of inspiration to me--calls continuing conversion to Christ, which is the Christian's everyday calling.

Have you knelt in prayer, surrendered your life to Christ, and begun to live the life not that you intend, but the life that God intends for you to live? May your prayer be this line from the 1982 Hymnal, "Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee."

And live your life as God intends.

Those high places

My dear mother-in-law Norma phoned me a few days ago with a query. She said she had been reading First or Second Samuel--I forget which--when she ran across a reference to "high places" and wondered where the high places of today would be.

Norma, we're visiting one today. It's called Iona, a small island off the coast of western Scotland, where St. Columba, in 563 A.D. along with 12 followers of his, created a monastic community. From here, Columba and his monks ventured forth to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to England and Scotland.

Columba's monastery is gone now, along with his bones, which were collected as relics and eventually resettled in Downpatrick in his homeland of Ireland; that's where you'll find them today. But near his monastery on Iona, Benedictine monks built a new monastery and abbey church, tall and grand, made of native stone in the Gothic fashion, which became a house of prayer for the praise of God.

Norsemen plundered and ruined the monastery and murdered the monks, and over time, the buildings became little more than ruins, until the late 1930s when an Oxford-educated Church of Scotland minister named George MacLeod founded a new Christian community at Iona, the eponymous Iona Community, which still exists as a vital force for renewing the Church.

The Benedictine abbey church is fully restored--thanks to MacLeod and a group of volunteers--and the Iona Community continues God's work according to MacLeod's vision of deep prayer, cooperation among Christians, inner communion, and social and political action and pacifism (MacLeod won the British Military Cross for extreme bravery during his service in WW I and thereafter became a committed pacifist, even during WWII.)

Last night, Penny and I joined fellow pilgrims and members of the Iona Community for prayer in the abbey church. The church was full of people of all ages, including many, many young people from all Christian denominations. Young people regularly come to Iona for periods of learning about Christ and Christian community.

The service we attended was a healing service; dozens of people went forward and knelt in circles and received the laying on of hands and prayers for healing of body, mind, spirit. Penny and I went forward and prayed for healing for family members. From experience, I know God really does hear our prayers for healing and answers them in ways that are surprising.

Iona is one of those high places, or "thin spaces" in the language of Celtic Christianity, where heaven and earth merge, where God is present in a remarkable and translucent way.

I know God's presence in the gathering of that multitude of Christian pilgrims from so many denominations, in the prayer-saturated walls of the ancient abbey church, in the stunning beauty of this place, with the crystal blue/green sea that surrounds it, the rocky outcroppings trimmed in green moss, the simple, slow, peaceful pace of the island and its people.

I need high places,these thin spaces--be they here on Iona or in my study as I read the Daily Office and meditate in the mornings or in a church. In such a place, I know I am not alone, not without resources for the challenges of life; God is with me. Always,

The high places make it possible for me to live through the low places.

A psalm a day for spiritual health

Yesterday, I met with our Men's Fellowship at 6.30 am at a local restaurant. We gather on the third Wednesday every month at the same time and place.

We order breakfast, and then I read a short passage from the Holy Scriptures, usually the gospel appointed for the Prayer Book Daily Office, and comment on it, and we pray.

Yesterday, however, I did something different.

Rather that reading from Luke's gospel, I read a portion of Psalm 119. I had read it earlier when I prayed Morning Prayer and found that it spoke to me, especially these verses:

"You are my refuge and shield; my hope is in your word.... Hold me up, and I shall be safe...."

I love the psalms because they spring from the Psalmist's heart. They express where he is on his spiritual journey, along with his faith in the power of God to save, even when besieged by troubles.

The psalms speak to me, help me, and often heal me in my journey with God.

When I'm scared or anxious, the Psalmist understands my feelings and assures me of his confidence in God. When I am beleaguered, the psalmist reminds me that God is my defender. When I'm confused, he tells me I can count on God to direct me.

When I feel God has abandoned me--this is feeling, not fact--the Psalmist cries to God for me, as in Psalm 22 in the words that Jesus Himself prays from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me."

In faith, the Psalmist offers up his experiences in prayer to God, and is strengthened and nourished as a consequence, as I am in reading and praying the psalms every day.

Someone wrote that the psalms were Jesus' Prayer Book, and with good reason: the psalms communicated the deepest needs of Jesus' heart and aided His prayer to His Father in Heaven.

When we pray the psalms daily--be they from the Prayer Book Daily Office or ones of our own choosing--we pray with the Psalmist (or more accurately, with the many people of faith whose prayers were collected over time into our Psalter).

And we're praying with Jesus Himself, which is always good for the soul.

Yesterday, in speaking to the Men's Fellowship about the Psalmist's belief in God as his "refuge and shield," I could tell these men knew the battles of daily living and were encouraged by God's word to us.

With a hearty breakfast and God's word, we were ready for the day, whatever might come, for we knew that God was our strong defender. And always will be.

I remember

I often meet with a group of clergy friends at a local coffeehouse on Wednesday mornings.

Ostensibly, we're there to review the Scripture lessons for the upcoming Sunday and talk about what we hear God the Holy Spirit calling us to preach in a few days.

We spend an hour or so together, talking about books, politics, our lives and ministries and sometimes, our sermons.

Today, one of my friends told of teaching an adult class at his church. The question for discussion was: Who first told you about Jesus?

Most of the class members, he said, were reluctant to speak up. At first, he thought they'd never considered the question, or couldn't remember.

But then after class, many of the class members spoke to him privately, telling him about that person who'd first told them about Jesus--a parent, grandparent, Sunday School teacher.

Perhaps for the first time in 60, 70 or 80 years, these class members were remembering that person and the life-giving difference he or she had made by sharing with them the Good News of God's love in Jesus Christ.

In that moment, Jesus Christ became real and over time, many decades, the reality of God's love for them in Jesus has grown, greatly aided by their membership in their church and in that class.

Who first told you about Jesus?

Whom have you told about God's love in Jesus?

Passion for what we do

My first job after high school was at First National Bank in Louisville.

I started in the mail room and worked my way up and into the computer room as an operator on an IBM mainframe, then into the transit department (the place where checks you write are processed so that your account can be debited), and finally into the branch system, first as a teller and then, after earning my undergraduate degree in history, as a management trainee.

In five years of full and part time work, I learned a lot about banking and business, and I'm grateful for that experience and knowledge. The lessons I learned at the bank helped me in other work I've done, including as a manager at a large public relations agency.

But banking and PR were not my calling, and by calling, I mean something that fires one up with passion (I've known plenty of people for whom business is their calling, which is great. But that wasn't the case for me.).

For me, I needed work in which I felt I could make a difference for the good in people's lives, given my particular gifts, sensibilities, and faith in Christ. I wanted to be one through whom God the Holy Spirit could work for transformation.

I don't mean to sound grandiose, but unless we're working in something that offers us and others that possibility for transformation, then perhaps we should seek other work.

And, God knows, that work might be in banking or PR or at a school or hospital or factory or in the home--but wherever it is, that's where one believes that one is making a contribution to a better world.

This afternoon, I had coffee with a church member who's a wellness coach. This is something that she trained a long time to do. She earned a master's degree in wellness and went through a lengthy certification program to become a licensed coach.

As she spoke with me about her work, she gestured; her voice rose; her eyes brightened; she smiled. She had the enthusiasm of an evangelist who shares with others the Good News of the life-changing love of Jesus Christ.

Chris has found her passion--her Christian vocation--and helping people achieve a greater state of wellness or wholeness, what the Hebrew Bible calls "shalom," is what God intends her to do with her life.

That's what I was missing when I was a banker and PR person, but what I now find in my vocation as a priest: work about which I feel enthusiastic and energetic, work to which I'm devoting my life and which is, at the same time, giving me life, even on those inevitably frustrating days.

Here's to work that fires people up and that transforms lives and the world, even if it's only in some small, even hidden way.

More beauty

I can't get enough beauty.

Yesterday, wife Penny, daughter Clare, and graddaughters June Elizabeth and Christa Marie and I spent a few joyful hours at the Close Memorial Gardens at Nathanael Greene Park here in Springfield. I've written glowlingly about the gardens before. And here I am doing it again.

Visit and be sure to take in the new Butterfly Garden. And of course the English Garden is always a delight.

June Elizabeth and her mama had fun feeding Sun Chips to the ducks. June Elizabeth added to her vocabulary: Quack and Duck are among her newest words, along with No and Bye, Bye. See-ya. She's nearly two, I should tell you.

Take time for beauty. Today.

P.S.

The Friends of the Gardens has a blog of its own, which I commend to you. In fact, here's a post sent to me by the chair of the FOG board.



Rev Chumbley:

Peter Longley shared this with me today.

I just read your descriptive blog posting A Beauty Break. Your writing is a special presentation about a local garden paradise structured by man, using Gods creations and directed by Gods hand.

I am George Deatz, President of Friends of the Garden, the suport group developing the gardens at Close Memorial Gardens & Park. After reading your posting, I would very much like to post your posting to our blog http://friendsofthegarden.org/pblog/index.php

Thank you for your consideration.

Best regards,

George Deatz

Seeking stillness

Many times, I'm rushing and don't even know it. But my shoulder and neck muscles do. They register the pace of my life. My muscles are in knots because I'm too busy. In too much of a mad rush.

But there's hope for me--and for you, if your days are crowded and frantic.

Yesterday in our early morning Pilates class, our instructor Colleen wore a shirt with a labyrinth imprinted on the back. A labyrinth is patterned on a medieval design from Chartres Cathederal in France. It's a kind of maze that one follows to the center.


In following the labyrinth, be it the kind printed on paper that one traces with one's finger, or a labyrinth made of stones that one walks, one is drawn into a deep state of concentration, and one begins to center, ultimately in the presence and stillness of Christ.

When I walked a labyrinth for the first time, this was my experience. (If you want to walk a labyrinth, you can do so, I'm told, at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Roman Catholic Church here in Springfield.)


At the center of the labyrinth on Colleen's shirt were the words, "Seek Stillness."


Busyness always finds us, or we find it and surrender to it, for fear of what we might discover about our lives if we slowed down long enough to pay attention.


In contrast to busyness, stillness won't just happen. It won't suddenly find us. We have to seek it if we are to find it. What did Jesus say in the gospels? Seek and you shall find.


How can we seek stillness and find stillness in Christ? We can walk or trace with our fingers the path of a labyrinth.


Or an even simpler way is one described by a friend the other day. In the midst of his busyness as an investment officer, he occasionally stops working and closes his eyes.

As he breathes in, he prays, "God," and as he breathes out, he prays, "Thank you."

"I'm at peace," he says.


He's found stillness in Christ. May you also find it and Christ this day.