Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, March 2, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
A shaken sieve
When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear.
Praise no one before he speaks, for it is then that people are tested.
Yes, and on any given day my words might not be what I intend. If I’m tired or impatient, I say things I immediately regret. “Editing,” a communication skill I teach, is easily forgotten. Say the second thing that your mind creates, not the first!
It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and sing praise to your name, O Most High.
Proclaim your kindness at dawn
and your faithfulness throughout the night.
At the Transforming Center I remember David Strieff standing before us at 8 am chapel while 75 of us straggled in after a night of silence. David always smiled. He lifted our chapel liturgy and read to us, from Psalm 51:
O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
Just like that, our morning has broken, and we look around at each other, smiling just as David smiled, waiting just as David waited for what God had for us next. We sing, we pray, we share handshakes and hugs. Ready for breakfast and another day of retreat with Ruth Haley Barton.
I learned so much at those retreats, beginning with crafting a workable Rule of Life. More importantly than any answers, I learned to live with my questions and wait for God’s touch instead of hurrying through my own logic or preferences. The “Rule,” so simple itfits on a post-it note: Read-Write-Listen-Pray-Every Day. Lately I realize I need to add “walk and stretch” to my post-it note.
I also re-discovered the joy of paradox, grasping for truth within what seems like a contradiction. Richard Rohr points out many “contradictions” in the beliefs of Christian believers:
Great dogmas of the church are almost always totally paradoxical: Jesus is human and divine, Mary is virgin and mother, God is one and three, Eucharist is bread and Jesus. Because paradox undermines dual thinking at its root, the dualistic mind immediately attacks paradox as weak thinking or confusion, somehow separate from and inferior to hard logic.
Our either-or minds are not made to comprehend mystery. Often we choose one side or another on a question that cannot be answered that way. Rohr continues:
Reality is paradoxical. If we’re honest, everything is a clash of contradictions, and there is nothing on this created earth that is not a mixture at the same time of good and bad, helpful and unhelpful, endearing and maddening, living and dying. St. Augustine called this the “paschal mystery.” Western Christianity has tended to objectify paradoxes in dogmatic statements that demand mental agreement instead of any inner experience of the mystery revealed.
At least we “worship” these paradoxes in the living collision of opposites we call Jesus. But this approach tends not to leave people with the underlying principle that Jesus, the Christ, has come to teach us about life and about ourselves.
When it comes to experiencing “reality,” we are often caught twixt and between. As Clarence Heller wrote recently:
Both/And
My head says I have nothing to complain about,
but my heart wants to cry.
My head tells me I have tremendous privilege,
but my heart longs to be consoled.
My head tries to look on the bright side and to feel happy,
but my heart is sad and tired and afraid.
Can I be present and patient with my hopeful thoughts and fearful emotions? Can I live with both at once? God encourages me. Clarence says the Lord does not leave him in confusion or despair:
I always knew that my God is a God of both/and
though I’ve usually not experienced God and remained discontented
(even when he is) present and absent,
speaking and silent,
loving me as I am and inviting me to more.
Life and death seem to press against each other, but here too a seeming contradiction is quickly resolved by God, says Paul:
When this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility
and that which is mortal clothes itself with immortality,
then the word that is written shall come about:
Death is swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?
Thanks be to God who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
(Sirach 27, Psalm 92, 1 Corinthians 15, Philippians 2, Luke 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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