The voice of Pharaoh

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Following on yesterday’s post (and Tesa’s excellent comment!), I thought I would share another reflection by Amy Carmichael on the same topic: listening–or rather the importance of not listening–to the voice of the Enemy.

Exodus 14.3  Pharaoh will say . . . They are entangled in the land; the wilderness has shut them in.

Sometimes when problems come up and we see no way through, or when souls we love seem entangled, we are tempted to think of what Pharaoh will say.  There can be no entanglement, the wilderness cannot possibly shut in anyone whom God is leading Home.  It has been said, “What we see as problems, God sees as solutions”; and what we have to do through the age-long minute* before we see is to wait in peace and refuse to be hustled.  “Fear not, stand still,” and sooner or later, you shall “see the salvation of the Lord” (v. 13).  There will be no entanglement.

And is it not comforting that the Lord Jesus knows beforehand what Pharaoh will say? So we need not pay the slightest attention to him, even if he does make discouraging remarks.  The last word is never with Pharaoh.  What is he but a “noise” (Jer 46.17)?  So let us trust and not be afraid.

(Edges of His Ways, p. 40)

*Amy is referring here to the “age-long minute” between when the storm on the sea began for the disciples and when Jesus came to them walking on the water and calmed the sea.

What others say about us

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

Have you ever found yourself getting down or discouraged because of what someone else has said or even because of what you yourself are saying inside your own head?  Here’s a little perspective from Amy Carmichael:

Ps 3.2 Many are saying of me, there is no help from God.

Have you ever been discouraged and distressed because of something people said, or the voices inside you said?  Such people and such voices talk most when one is in trouble about something.  “Many are saying of me, there is no help from God.”  That was what the many said who were round about poor King David in a dark hour.  But he turned to his God and told Him just what they were saying, and then he affirmed his faith, “But thou, O Lord, art a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.” (v. 3)

We cannot use these words if we are pleasing ourselves in anything, and doing our own will, not our Lord’s.  In that case what the many say is only too true.  There is no help for us in God while we are walking in any way of our own choice.  But when all is clear between us and our Father, even if like David we are in trouble because of something we have done wrong in the past, then those words are not true.  There is help for us in God.  He is our shield, our glory, and the lifter up of our head, and we need not be afraid of ten thousands of people [v.6]–ten thousands of voices–for the Lord our God is our very present Help.

Twice in Psalms 3 and 4 we find David taking the unkind words of others and putting them into a prayer.  It was the wisest thing he could have done with them.  The alternative would have been either to brood over them, or to talk to others of them; but no, he turns like a child to his father, “Many are saying of me, there is no help for him in God.” “Many say, How can we experience good?” [Ps 4.6]

This last “many say” will come home to some of us, I think.  It was spoken, as the first was, in a difficult time, and it was a hopelessly discouraging word: Who will show us any good?  How can we experience good?  Everything is going wrong.  There is no comfort anywhere.  This is how those voices speak.

But David is not confounded.  He refuses to be cast down, let the many say what they will.  “Lord, lift up the light of Thy countenance upon us” [Ps4.6].  If only we can look up and meet His ungrieved countenance, what does anything matter?  And we shall experience good.  “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” [Ps 27.1]

A walk along the river

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Yesterday I was talking a walk around Gallup Park along the Huron River.  When I turned one corner, I was struck by the brightness of the sun being reflected off a portion of the river.  I started thinking about how that brightness was the result of the sun being reflected of many individual drops of water.  We are like those drops of water.  Many days we can wonder whether our life counts for anything.  We’re just living our ordinary daily lives, trying to love God and love His people.  Who even knows about us?  Yet, we are part of a people, the people of God. And when His light shines on us, we do reflect it.

In order for light to reflect off of something, the object must be pure, and that requires purification –the purification that happens right there in the ordinariness of our lives. This reminds me of a story told by Amy Carmichael.

One day in India, she took her children to see a goldsmith refine gold in the ancient manner of the East.  He was sitting at his little charcoal fire.  Amid the glow of the flames he place a common curved roof tile.  Another tile was used to cover it as a lid, and this became his simple, homemade crucible.  Into the crucible the refiner placed ingredients: salt, tamarind fruit, and burned brick dust.  Embedded within these ingredients was a gold nugget.  The fire worked on the gold nugget, ‘eating it,’ as the refiner put it.  From time to time, he would lift the told out with the tongs, let it cool, then rub it between his fingers.  Then he would return it to the crucible and blow the fire hotter than it was before.  ‘It could not bear it so hot at first, but it can bear it now,’ he explained to the children. ‘What would have destroyed it then helps it now.’  Finally Amy asked, ‘How do you know when the gold is purified?’ The refiner answered, ‘When I can see my face in it, then I know it is pure.'(Robert J. Morgan, The Promise: God Works Everything Together for Your Good, pp. 91-92)

The context of our lives

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I just finished re-reading The Context of Holiness, Psychological and Spiritual Reflections on the Life of St. Thérèse of Lisieux by Marc Foley, OCD.  His main point is that God works within the context of each our lives, within the physical, psychological, social and emotional dimensions of our lives.   Here is an excerpt from the last chapter:

Each of us fights a “war within,” the cost of which no one knows but God alone.  Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart (1 Sam 16.7).  Judged by the standards of this world, our lives look like a “world without event,” but known to God alone “the heroic breast.”  All of us can say with Thérèse “Ah! what a surprise we shall have at the end of the world when we read the story of souls!  There will be those who will be surprised when they see the way through which my soul was guided” (S. 149)!

Our real life is that which is known to God alone and not that which is judged by the standards of this world.  In act IV of King Lear, there appears upon the stage a character who is so insignificant that Shakespeare doesn’t even give him a name; he is simply referred to as the First Servant.  As he witnessed Gloucester being blinded, the First Servant draws his sword to defend his master but is mortally stabbed in the back by Goneral.  His whole part consists of only eight lines, none of which are quote worthy.

No one remembers the First Servant.  But if King Lear were not a play but real life, then his part would have been the best to have played.  For it is not important that we are lauded or remembered by this passing world, for all that the world affords is fleeting. . . .

The only glory that survives the grave is a life well lived.  In a hundred years it will not have made any difference how much money we have in the bank, how many cars we have in the garage, how much power we wielded in our jobs, how many books we have written or how esteemed we were by colleagues and friends.  The only thing that ultimately matters is whether or not we have done the will of God.

In this book, I have tried to show through the life of one woman that the trials and tragedies of life, the fears and conflicts of the human heart are not obstacles to growth in holiness but the stage upon which the drama of holiness unfolds.  The same is true for us.  The gray mundaneness of daily life, our wounded psyches with all their fears and neurotic conflicts, our families, friends, and peers who never live up to our expectations and who often disappoint us, the impersonal and insecure world that we live in, is the context in which we choose to do God’s will.  (pp. 140-41, emphasis added)

“Those Endless Dishes”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

As we move back into Ordinary Time, I thought you might be inspired by this article by Catherine Doherty about doing the mundane things of life:

THOSE ENDLESS DISHES

by Catherine Doherty

Recently my prayer has been spearheaded by a remark of one of our members who said that she wished that she had something “to sink her teeth into.” Upon discussion I found that this was a general feeling in a small group that was chatting together. They felt that Madonna House life, or part of it, had become unchallenging and monotonous.

They spoke of the office and its constant routine: writing endless letters, changing addresses, answering the telephone, doing the bookkeeping, and so forth.

Then they spoke of the sameness of the kitchen: preparing endless meals and getting them to the table, and washing dishes that seem to pile up like an enormous fortress to which there is no entrance.

Then there are the literally tons of clothing to sort. (They didn’t mention the laundry or the work of the men at the farm or other constant repetitive “chores” that need to be done over and over by other members of Madonna House.)

Yes, we are forever surrounded by tasks that appear to be dull, monotonous, routine, unchallenging. I listened to all of this chitchat and to the tremendous desires which seemed to animate the people who were talking.

They were not just idly talking; neither were they at all upset. They were simply “presenting their ideas.” But as they continued to talk, their voices suddenly did not reach me any more. Somehow I was lost in Palestine. I saw a hammer, a chisel, a hand-plane. Somehow I was utterly astounded—as if I had never thought of it before—by a carpenter’s shop.

The challenge it presented was beyond my ability to absorb.

The Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity—someone who could have been a rabbi, a king, an emperor, a philosopher, a man of tremendous renown, someone at whose feet the whole world would come to sit and listen—this awesome Person was right there, bent over a work bench in that shop, chiseling and planing pieces of wood.

He was doing little “unimportant” tasks: building a table for someone, making a cradle for someone else, crafting a chair for another.

I saw his calloused hands (for he did have calloused hands!) and I asked myself: Why did he choose such humble, uninspiring, unchallenging tasks?

Once you knew how to do them, they could never be called things “to sink your teeth into.” On some side street in an unimportant village, he did the work of an ordinary carpenter, just as his foster father did.

And what did his mother do? She washed and scrubbed and took the laundry to the river, and she milled the kernels of wheat manually between two stones. She wove cloth; it is said that she wove the cloak that the Romans threw dice for because it was so beautiful.

I began to hear again the evening discussion about the mounds of dishes, the eternal sorting of donations, the answering of phones, the filing of cards, the dulling rhythm of seemingly unimportant tasks.

It all became filled with a strange glow and I understood the fantastic, incredible, holy words contained in that sentence: the duty of the moment is the duty of God.

I also understood that anything done for him is glamorous, exciting, wondrous if only we can see it for what it truly is!

But we are human. And it takes a long time, my dearly beloved ones, to see reality through God’s eyes. Unless we pray exceedingly hard, it takes a long time to “make straight the ways of the Lord” in our souls.

When we experience this pain in our lives, this pain of making straight the paths of the Lord, it would be a good idea to remind ourselves that this pain is everywhere in every vocation, in every kind of work. It is part of the human condition.

The answer to that pain, in Madonna House or anywhere else, is prayer. Nothing else will do it; nothing else.

But—with prayer—we see an entirely different world around us. Sorting clothes becomes a joy. Washing dishes becomes an exciting challenge. The careful repetitious tasks of creating beauty (as in embroidery, weaving, painting, or carpentry) take on a new meaning.

Yes, I came back from wherever I was, watching Jesus doing carpentry work, and I thanked God that he became a manual laborer to show us the way to the Father. There is much more that I could say, but this will suffice for today.

Adapted from a letter to the staff, Oct. 1976, in Dearly Beloved, Vol. 3, available from MH Publications.

Power made perfect in infirmity

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

What is a more powerful expression of the power of the Holy Spirit than His work in our personal lives, especially in our areas of weakness?  This Sunday’s poem is by Mother Mary Francis about that very thing.

A Scriptural Commentary

“For power is made perfect in infirmity” (2 Corinthians 12.9)

Predictable Your power, God,
Who shake the heavens into thunderous roar
And split the skies with lightning at Your glance.

You gaze at oceans and they leap
To speak response in crash of waves
And then subside in wonder at Your feet.

Only to think on seed need You
To see a thousand forests rise to praise You,
Hear treble of small blossoms find their voice.

Wave of Your raised almighty hand’s
Enough to call the sun to rise or set,
To light the sky-dome with ten million stars.

Never will skies impediment Your power
Nor oceans strain Your energies, nor earth
Challenge Your might, stand stubborn before Your gaze.

I do applaud Your power, God.
How effortless Your cosmic sovereignty!
Your easy might is something to admire.

Power is wondrous for no need
Of labor, power issued without threat.
But shall unthreatened power be best praise

Of You, O God? Could greater be
Praise of Your laboring omnipotence
To bend a stubborn heart, to tame a will?

I weep to see You strain to win
So small a prize, tense to achieve
Your purpose, and with all the odds against You.

O God, dear God, what wondrous might
Is Yours displayed in me!
Your power made perfect in my infirmity!

Envoi:  Take, God, the scope I bring You
For play of power. See!
And my own power found at last
In my infirmity.

The Holy Spirit, the Innkeeper

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

A few more quotes from Come Creator Spirit:

‘a humble and contrite heart’ is the place of rest, a kind of paradise on earth, the place to which God feels most drawn (see Is 66.1-2).  We human beings cannot offer God any sacrifice more pleasing, more acceptable to God than a contrite heart (Ps 51.19).  And what is there to stop us burning with desire to have God fine, every time God visits us, this secret place, this place of rest, that God loves so much.

. . . there is a connection between the Spirit and hope is as close as the connection between the Spirit and love.

Iranaeus says that the Holy Spirit is the “innkeeper” to whom the Good Samaritan, Christ, entrusts wounded humanity, asking the Spirit to take care of it.

The Gift of God

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

If you haven’t read Fr. Cantalamessa’s book, Come, Creator Spirit, I would be so bold as to say you must.  I’ve read it twice and will most certainly read it again at least once.  Some quotes to entice you:

[quoting Thomas Aquinas]”The first gift we give to someone we love is love itself, which makes us long for the good of that person.  Thus it is that love itself is the primary gift, in the strength of which we offer all other gifts that we are able to give.  And so it is that from the moment the Holy Spirit proceeds as love, he proceeds as the primary gift.”  From all of this it follows that the Holy Spirit by pouring the love of God into our hearts, infuses into us not only a virtue, even though it is the greatest of all the virtues, but pours his very own self into us.  The gift of God is the Giver himself.  We love God by means of God himself within us.

Coming to us, the Holy Spirit not only brings us the gift of God, but also God’s self-giving.

[Commenting on the likeness of the Holy Spirit to a “living fountain”] Water is something that always runs down, never up.  It is always trying to find the lowest place.  So it is with the Holy Spirit: the Spirit loves to visit and fill the lowly, the humble, those who know their own emptiness.

More to come . . .

What does this love look like?

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Thinking a little bit more about yesterday’s post and the importance of overcoming the world with God’s love. . .   I think the hardest expression of loving is forgiveness, don’t you?  Charles Williams, reflecting on the phrase from the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us,” has this to say: “No word in English carries a greater possibility of terror than the little word ‘as’ in that clause.” God calls us to a high standard.  A dying man’s words are chosen carefully.  According to Luke, the words most prominent in Jesus’ mind and heart as He was dying were: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”  If you haven’t had a chance to read this article mentioned in a previous post, it’s worth the time.  This priest’s ability to forgive comes only from the Holy Spirit.  And God promises the same Spirit to us, as long as we ask.

Overcoming the world

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

The verse for the Canticle of Zechariah in Morning Prayer this morning is: “The world will persecute you, but have courage, I have overcome the world, alleluia.”  I began to think: “How are we to overcome the world?  How did Christ overcome the world?”  The answer that sprang immediately to my mind–and which I trust came from the Holy Spirit–was “By love.”  He, and we, conquere by love. So often, I think, other plans and ideas for overcoming the world spring to our minds, but we must carefully test from where they come, for if they are not underpinned and motivated by love, their source is probably not God.  Perhaps they come from ourselves or from our Enemy.  A story comes to mind from a book I am currently reading, Evidence Not Seen, A Woman’s Miraculous Faith in the Jungles of World War II.  It is the autobiography of Darlene Deibler Rose, a young American bride, who with her husband went as missionaries to Dutch New Guinea shortly before WWII.  She and her husband were interred in separate Japanese concentration camps.  She suffered under horrific conditions and oppressors.  Her husband died.  Yet her faith remained strong despite her suffering.  The story that came to mind has to do with her relationship with the Japanese commander of her camp who would beat the women savagely for any infraction.  Many days she had to struggle internally to obey Jesus’ command to love our enemies. One day she was called into his office.  She boldly asked if she could have permission to talk with him, which he granted.  She began to witness to him of Christ’s place in her life, ending with: “He died for you, Mr. Yamaji, and He puts love in our hearts–even for those who are our enemies.  That’s why I don’t hate you, Mr. Yamaji.  Maybe God brought me to this place and this time to tell you He loves you.”  She continues in her book, “With tears running down his cheeks, he rose hastily and went into his bedroom, closing the door.  I could hear him blowing his nose and knew he was still crying.”

This all brought to mind an excerpt from a letter written by Caryll Houselander, a contemporary of Darlene, at the beginning of World War II.  She, too, was dealing with the suffering of many.  She wrote:

When the first days of this agony [WWII] are over, it is going to lead on from suffering to suffering in every way, fear, loss, death–one can’t bear to think of it.  Our work is to keep alive, a deep constant awareness of the living love of God, to be, as never before contemplatives of Christ in ourselves and in one another. To keep His passion before us and to keep our faith in His love, never allowing the despair and pessimism which must sweep many hearts.