volume xxv, number 4
A JOURNAL OF THE CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL LIFE
Do Not Be Anxious About Tomorrow
“Trusting in God cancels the anxiety that tomorrow is something to be feared.” see page 16:
Getting to Tomorrow
Pamela C. Hawkins
Karen A. Greenwaldt
managing editor
general secretary gbod
Gina Manskar editorial assistant
Nelson Kane art director
Lynne M. Deming executive director of publishing
Anne Broyles E. Glenn Hinson Rueben P. Job Parker J. Palmer Don E. Saliers Luther E. Smith, Jr.
Sarah Wilke
advisory board
publisher
John S. Mogabgab
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founding editor
Weavings TM (issn 0890-6491) (gst 128363256) (Vol. XXV, No. 4, Aug/Sep/Oct) is published quarterly (Nov, Feb, May, Aug) for $29.95 per year (Canadian/Foreign 37.95, prepaid), or $49.95 for two years, by The Upper Room. On Canadian/Foreign orders, please add $8 for shipping. © 2010 by The Upper Room. Art used by permission of the artists. All rights reserved. Printed in USA. Editorial office: 1908 Grand Avenue, P.O. Box 340004, Nashville, TN 37203-0004. Tel: 615.340.7254. Fax: 615.340.7267. E-mail: Weavings@upperroom.org. Online: www.weavings.org. Periodicals postage paid at Nashville, TN and at additional mailing offices. postmaster: Send address changes and requests to stop receiving promotional materials to Weavings, P.O. Box 340009, Nashville, TN 37203-0009. Weavings, Upper Room, and design logos are trademarks owned by The Upper Room, Nashville, TN. All rights reserved. The Scripture quotations identified in the text are used by permission: nrsv Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved; rsv Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 (2nd edition, 1971) by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved; Scripture quotations marked niv are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved; Scripture quotations designated (net) are from the net Bible® copyright © 1996-2006 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C., www.bible.org. All rights reserved; esv Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (esv ®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved; Scripture noted kjv is from the King James Version; The article on pages 22-27 is from Percy C. Ainsworth, The Threshold of Grace: Meditations in the Psalms (London: Charles H. Kelly, n.d.), 21-27. Slightly edited for contemporary and inclusive language; The excerpt on pages 24–25 is from Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (see Christian Classics Ethereal Library, http://www.ccel.org), chap. XXVII. Public domain; The excerpt on pages 36-37 is from Evelyn Underhill: Essential Writings, selected and intro. by Emilie Griffin (Maryknoll, N.Y., Orbis, 2003), 126-127. Used by permission; The prayer on page 48 is from Michel Bouttier, Prayers for My Village, trans. Lamar Williamson (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1994), 58. Used by permission.
v o l u m e x x v, n u m b e r 4
Do Not Be Anxious About Tomorrow
6
Feathers on the Breath of God debor ah smith dougl as
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Prayer phyllis tickle
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Being Trees in Autumn stephen garna as-holmes
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Getting to Tomorrow luther e. smith, jr .
22
The Habit of Faith percy c. ainsworth
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When the Stars Begin to Fall flor a slosson wuellner
DEPARTMENTS: 2 Introduction 4 Contributors 48 Closing Prayer
34
Daily Acts, External Interests evelyn underhill
36
Lectio Divina A Steadying Way gunill a norris
Visit us on the web for more features, and more ways to participate in the Weavings community: www.weavings.org
41
Enough john van de l a ar
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Commitment Pursuing God’s Reign First david r ensberger
introduction
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o do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matt. 6:34).1 Jesus here expresses a realism that runs throughout the Bible. Human beings are forward-leaning creatures. We live in expectancy, and whether our thoughts about tomorrow are clouded by painful memories or clothed in bright hopes, we cannot avoid the future’s allure. Inhabiting lives for which we are responsible and therefore must care as good stewards, we have been counseled by the author of life to take the measure of things. Those who are wise plan ahead, building their houses on rock rather than sand (Matt. 7:2427). Yet God knows that the arithmetic of anxiety compounds exponentially when we add the cares of the morrow to those of this day. How, then, do we shift our frame of reference from anxious imaginings to sensible anticipation, and further to confident inner peace? “O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps. 34:8). The intensely sensory character of the psalmist’s instruction suggests that we need to know God with the convincing immediacy associated with taste and sight if we would disentangle ourselves from things that provoke anxiety and live more constantly from within the refuge of God’s presence. We are meant to savor God, to taste divine goodness in the sweetness of God’s word (Ezek. 3:3), in the texture and tang of Communion bread and wine. We are encouraged to behold the goodness of the Lord in the intrinsic beauty of God’s holiness embodied in Jesus Christ and reflected in many around us. We are invited to daily watchfulness, searching every hour, every event and encounter, for living parables of the kingdom. “O taste and see that the Lord is good.” To remember who God is through such tasting and seeing reconfigures our outlook, transposing it over time from the mind of Adam to the mind of Christ. Gradually, awaiting the future no longer evokes echoes of Adam’s anxious words: “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Gen. 3:10). Instead, the inner voice of Love frames our future with the fortifying words Jesus received at his baptism: “You are my Son [daughter] the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). In time, as we allow this truth to penetrate the marrow of our being, we may find in facing obstacle or opportunity that we, too, are able to utter the words Jesus spoke to his Father on that most anxious of nights: “Not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). 1
All Scripture references are to the new Revised Standard Version Bible unless otherwise indicated.
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Our issue examines the impact of anxiety on our lives and the spiritual disciplines that help us live with it creatively. Deborah Smith Douglas sets the tone by her honest account of anxiety’s high profile in her life and her attraction to fourteenth-century Hildegard of Bingen’s experience of being a feather on the breath of God. Such availability involves defanging our efforts to turn “time’s courses” to our own purpose (Phyllis Tickle) and seeking the surrender that “strengthens in the soul another song” (Stephen Garnaas-Holmes). Luther Smith shows how inner work of this kind benefits from understanding the shapes anxiety can take and how the energy it consumes can be transferred from worry to hope. The hope that sustains us amid worldly concerns is not fanciful. Rather, as Percy Ainsworth illustrates, it lives from faith, which is “not a last resource, but the first and abiding necessity.” Living by that faith, we can with Flora Wuellner’s guidance find new beginnings in what truly are threatening circumstances. Whether we are tormented by large-scale human threats or fretfulness about our own spiritual life, Evelyn Underhill prescribes a regimen of “steadily, gradually, and quietly” settling our mind on the “deep steadfastness of God.” An ancient way of practicing this settling is lectio divina, which Gunilla Norris both describes and demonstrates. Lectio helps us discover, in company with John van de Laar, that God is “enough.” Giving our full attention to God and the things of God is, as David Rensberger realizes, the key that unlocks anxiety’s grip on us. “We must give Christ our innermost being.”2 Heinrich Arnold, leader of the Bruderhof communities, knew that fully reframing the anxieties that beset us means inviting the Spirit to penetrate deep beneath thought, emotion, desire, muscle, and bone to the level of our physical and spiritual DNA. There, beyond the realm of conscious intention, the Spirit makes possible this daily handing over of self and allows us to say without conceit, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13). J O H N S. M O G A B G A B
Founding Editor
2
J. Heinrich Arnold, Discipleship (Farmington, Penn.: The Plough Publishing House, Inc., 1994), 68.
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contributors
deborah smith douglas has degrees in literature and law, has been trained in spiritual direction, and is a member of the Episcopal Church. A Camaldolese Benedictine oblate, she leads retreats in the United States and Britain. A frequent contributor to Weavings, she is the author of The Praying Life: Seeking God in All Things and, with her husband David Douglas, co-author of Pilgrims in the Kingdom: Travels in Christian Britain. She is an expert in anxiety, and a (grateful) novice in deep-breathing trust. phyllis tickle, founding editor of the Religion Department of Publishers Weekly, is an authority on religion in America. In addition to lectures and numerous essays, articles, and interviews, Tickle is the author of over two dozen books in religion and spirituality, most recently The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why. A lay eucharistic minister and lector in the Episcopal Church, she is the mother of seven children and, with her physician-husband, makes her home on a small farm in Lucy, Tennessee. (www.phyllistickle.com) stephen garnaas-holmes is a poet, songwriter, and ordained pastor in the United Methodist Church, serving in New Hampshire, where he lives with his wife Beth. He previously served in Montana for twenty-two years. He writes a daily contemplative reflection, Unfolding Light, as well as lectionary-based music and worship resources (http://unfoldinglight.net). He is a member of a music and comedy group called the Montana Logging and Ballet Company. luther e. smith, jr. is professor of church and community at the Candler School of Theology of Emory University where he has taught since 1979. His scholarship has focused on Howard Thurman, Christian spirituality, Christian communalism, and social transformation. Throughout the last decade he has led ecumenical and interfaith organizations in their advocacy for children—especially children who are poor, abused, refugees, and involved in the justice system. He is an ordained minister in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. p e r c y c . a i n s w o r t h was a graduate of Didsbury College in Manchester, England, and pastor of Wesley Chapel in Birmingham. His published works include The Pilgrim Church and Other Sermons and The Blessed Life: Short Addresses on the Beatitudes. Ainsworth died of typhoid fever in 1909 at the age of thirty-six. He was remembered by a friend as a preacher who continually placed people before the “mystery of the soul’s life” and invited them to enter its “unexplored depths.”
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flora slosson wuellner is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. After serving parishes in Idaho, Wyoming, and Illinois, she moved into a specialized ministry of Spiritual Renewal. This included twelve years as adjunct faculty member at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, as well as work in spiritual direction, ecumenical retreat leadership, and writing thirteen books. Her latest book is Miracle: When Christ Touches Our Deepest Need. She lives in Fair Oaks, California. evelyn underhill (1875-1941) was an English lay theologian, mystic, and pioneer among twentieth-century women in the church and the spiritual life. She was a worker in the war effort of World War I and a pacifist in World War II. For several years, Underhill received spiritual direction from renowned Roman Catholic theologian, Baron Friedrich von Hügel. She was the author of many articles and books, including Mysticism (1911) and The Spiritual Life (1937). gunilla norris is a psychotherapist in private practice as well as a meditation teacher and workshop leader in areas of spiritual growth. She has published several books on the spirituality of daily life. Still in print are Being Home: Discovering the Spiritual in the Everyday; Becoming Bread: Embracing the Spiritual in the Everyday; Inviting Silence: Universal Principles of Meditation; A Mystic Garden: Working with Soil, Attending the Soul; and Simple Ways: Toward the Sacred. (www.gunillanorris.com) john van de laar is a minister in the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and founder of Sacredise worship consulting (www.sacredise.com), a resourcing and publishing ministry. For over twenty years John has been training congregations, worship leaders, and clergy in the theology and practice of worship. He holds a Masters degree in Theology, is a songwriter, musician, and author of Food for the Road—Life Lessons from the Lord’s Table. John is married to Debbie and they have two sons. david rensberger, a member of the Atlanta Mennonite Fellowship and Oakhurst Baptist Church, has refocused his work from seminary teaching to writing and retreat leading, having to learn non-anxiety in the process. During a retreat, he gained new perspective on Jesus’ teaching on not worrying about tomorrow, when a misattributed quote from a Scottish climber led him to reread the familiar text from the end instead of the beginning, a rereading that informs his article in this issue.
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the Breath of God by debor ah smith dougl as
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he idea of my writing anything useful about “not being anxious” would make many who know me laugh out loud. I am an expert on (I practically have advanced degrees in) white-knuckled, hyper-ventilating, faith-denying fear, not on deep-slow-breathing trust in God. I seem to be hardwired with a hair-trigger alarm response. No matter how deeply I think I know that nothing can separate me from the love of God, that I cannot add a single hour to my life by being anxious, forecasts of trouble can nevertheless hurl me into hurricanes of dread. Most of my life, I have far more closely resembled Chicken Little, panicking that the sky is falling because an acorn has hit my head, than Daniel in the lion’s den, trusting God to deliver him. ANXIETY AND BREATHLESSNESS
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ersonal experience has made me especially aware that anxiety and breathlessness are kin. Some years ago I developed all the symptoms of asthma. The terror of that struggle to breathe—comparable, as they say, to sucking peanut butter through a straw—has remained with me, though (thank God) the asthma attacks have not returned. Recently during a family crisis I kept dizzily realizing—just on the point of fainting—that I had been essentially holding my breath for hours. My daughter wrote “Breathe in, Breathe out” on a slip of paper and taped it firmly inside my billfold so I would remember to exhale whenever I saw it. I wish I could remember to breathe without having to be reminded. I regret how quickly I forget, how instantly I get slammed back into the place of anxiety, the place of held breath. Because I spend so much of my life in the shallow end of my breath, so much time and energy worrying about situations I cannot control, I am also often anxious about being anxious—uneasily aware of all the biblical injunctions against anxiety as a sin against faith. do not be anxious about tomorrow | weavings 7
“Do not be anxious about your life,” Jesus commands. God knows what we need, and will provide it (Matt. 6:25-34).1 When the disciples are terrified of the storm at sea, Jesus orders the wind and waves to be still, and then reproaches the disciples for their lack of faith in his saving presence: “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” (Mark 4:35-40). I know I am often in the same boat with the disciples—so much more aware of the darkness and tumult around me than of the presence of my Savior in the stern. I am so much more inclined toward anxiety than trust. And I know this is contrary to the way Jesus invites us to live. “‘Anxiousness’ belongs among the things the Lord has forbidden . . . unambiguously, irrevocably, adamantly, and trenchantly.”2 This is not a moral prohibition, as though by strenuous exercise of virtue we could conquer our terrors on our own, or as though there is something shameful in being human and thereby inevitably acquainted with fear. Rather the injunction to “be not anxious” is an invitation into courage and hope and radical trust. We are assured by Love Incarnate that we are so eternally companioned by God that there is simply nothing on earth, nothing that can happen to us, which we need fear. BREATHING AND BELIEVING
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accept this promise (theoretically) as saving truth. Why then, at the first waves that beat into the boat, the first stabs of apprehension, do I once more struggle to breathe? “Have I no faith?” I have confessed this anxiety as sin, I have striven mightily to bring my heart in line with my head, but still, God knows, I am anxious. This struggle to reconcile my professed faith with my manifest anxiety—and the discouraging extent to which this is all tangled up in my airways—led me years ago to the venerable disciplines of yoga and meditation, which promise awareness and control of breath as a way to quiet the mind.3 Deep slow breathing (these ancient guides assure me) slows the pulse, calms the nerves, can relieve pain and treat illness.4 Being mindful of our breathing can prevent the scattering of our thoughts, and facilitate the mind’s wholeness. All Scripture references are to the Revised Standard Version Bible unless otherwise indicated. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian and Anxiety, trans. Dennis D. Martin and Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 88. 3 For excellent Christian perspectives, see Thomas Ryan, csp, Prayer of Heart and Body: Meditation and Yoga as Christian Spiritual Practice (New York: Paulist, 1995), and J.–M Déchanet, osb, Christian Yoga (New York: HarperCollins, 2000). 4 See e.g. Robert Fried, Breathe Well, Be Well (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999). 1
2
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Breathing, like believing, is part gift, part discipline. And it is entirely amazing. Every breath we take—and we take more than 20,000 every day of our lives—involves an astoundingly intricate dynamic of call and response, a kind of country dance in which nerves, muscles, bones, and blood cells throughout the body move together and apart in an ancient Breathing, ordered rhythm. like believing, Our heart and lungs work tirelessly is part gift, together in this elegant choreography, circulating part discipline oxygen-laden blood throughout the body, drawing air in and out of the lungs, much like the earth’s oceans respond to the pull of sun and moon to lift the tides in and out on every shore. When we breathe deeply, air flows into the lungs—the only part of the body where the blood-oxygen transfer on which our lives depend occurs. When our breath is shallow, the vital oxygen never reaches the tiny capillaries in our lungs and it cannot embark upon its remarkable journey into the farthest reaches of our bodies. Rapid shallow breathing can make us lightheaded, and may eventually cause us to faint, as the brain is deprived of oxygen. Unless we maintain contact with the depths, we isolate ourselves from the life-giving air we must breathe to live. This is basic physiology and elemental yoga. It is also biblical wisdom and deep mystical theology. Yogic teaching insists on the importance of deep controlled breathing not just for health of body and quietness of mind, but because deep breathing can connect us with the life-energy that fills the universe, that is the breath of God. Becoming attentive to and disciplining our human breath, we become aware of, and can align ourselves with, the dynamic power of life itself. God is, as the fifteenth-century Sufi poet Kabir knew, “the breath within the breath.”5 And that Breath is not so much something we breathe as a mystery that breathes us. “Let the Breath breathe you,” my yoga teacher urges. The breath of God, the book of Genesis tells us, moved over the waters of uncreated chaos at the creation of the world (1:2).6 God breathed life into The Kabir Book: Forty-Four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir, versions by Robert Bly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1977), 33. 6 The Hebrew word ruach can be translated as wind, spirit, or breath — as can the Greek word pneuma and the Latin spiritus. The same resonance occurs in the Sanskrit word prana. 5
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inanimate dust and created Adam (2:7). The Risen Christ breathed on the frightened disciples and transformed them into bold apostles (John 20:22). God’s breath creates us, makes us human, “inspires” us to be followers of Christ. “BREATHING LESSONS”
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od’s own life breathed into us gives us life as surely, and as steadily, as the air we draw into our lungs. And it is possible—contemplatives have known for millennia—to unite our prayer with our breath.7 By the grace of God and the wonderful way we are made, we can join our embodied selves to the breath of God, to the very breath of our Incarnate, Risen Lord.8 The early Christian tradition of the Jesus Prayer specifically linked the continual invocation of the name of Jesus with the breath. “Let the remembrance of Jesus be united to your every breath,” the sixth-century monk St. John Climacus urged.9 Those who would master this kind of unceasing mystical prayer were told to “breathe Jesus” continually. Hildegard of Bingen, a fourteenth-century mystic, wrote that when her spirit flew, it was not because of anything in herself but because God bore her up. She floated effortlessly, totally surrendered in perfect trust—a feather on the breath of God.10 What a contrast to our own anxiety, with its constricting grip on mind and heart, the imprisoning narrowness of shallow breath. What a glorious possibility, to live not in the tight clutch of anxiety, but as feathers on the breath of God. But that is precisely my problem. When anxiety grabs me by the throat I cannot will my lungs to relax. In those times, surrendering is exactly what I cannot do. Thomas Merton wrote, “How I pray is breathe,” in “Day of a Stranger” Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master, The Essential Writings, ed. Lawrence Cunningham (New York: Paulist, 1992), 217. 8 “The Christian’s prãnãyãma links meditation to the process of breathing, uniting the body’s respiration with the final breath, the ‘expiration’ of Jesus on the cross, which was also the ‘breathing out’ of the Holy Spirit upon the world.” Thomas Matus, Yoga and the Jesus Prayer Tradition: An Experiment in Faith (Bangalore, India: Asian Trading Corp., 1999), 154. 9 Kallistos Ware, The Power of the Name: The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality (Oxford, England: SLG Press, 2000), 11. 10 “held…by God…like a feather which…lets itself be carried by the wind,” letter by Hildegard to Guibert of Gembloux, Matthew Fox, Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works (Bear and Co., 1987), 348, cited in Mary Elizabeth O’Brien, Spirituality in Nursing (Sudbury, Mass: Jones & Bartlett, 2003), 32. 7
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However, this very realization allows me to see how I keep getting all this wrong—how, like a drowning person, I struggle so hard to be saved that I impede my own rescue. It is precisely in those moments of inability to surrender my anxiety— in my wild striving to save myself, to get abandonment right, to haul myself bodily into faith—that I am in the same boat as the terrified disciples that night in the storm at sea. I see waves coming in, filling the boat with water, and I fear that I will perish and that God doesn’t care if I do (and then I am anxious about my lack of faith, compounding my turmoil). I am so fixated on the wind and waves (and on my fixation) that I forget that Jesus is present, and that “with him by my side, enough has been given.”11 The faith that I crave would enable me to trust God to carry me safely to shore, no matter what the present danger, no matter how wild the sea and dark the night. But how do I get from here to there? Maybe I must first surrender trying to surrender. Maybe I should just breathe in and out and remember that the peace and trust I long for are not something to be grasped. Trust is, like breath itself, a balance of will and grace, of discipline and gift. It is a kind of dance, combining quiet gratitude for God’s saving presence with the “breathing lessons” of deliberately relinquishing fear and self-will. I was, In the end, it wasn’t the disciples’ own efforts that stilled the storm. Jesus commanded the storm in that moment, to cease. And later, behind the locked doors of an letting the upper room, Jesus breathed on the frightened disBreath ciples and gave them his peace (John:20:22). breathe Living as feathers on the breath of God is not, me ultimately, something any of us—even the greatest saints—in fact achieve. It is not an invitation, but a fact. That is the alarming reality of our situation: we really are (all our frantic illusions to the contrary notwithstanding) that vulnerable, that precarious, that radically not in control. But we are also that safe, that intimately close to the Breath that created, redeems, and sustains the universe in love. 11
From the prayer, Anima Christi, paraphrased by David Fleming, SJ , Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits, ed. by Michael Harter, SJ (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1999), 7.
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AS CLOSE AS BREATH
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ometimes, by grace, I have glimpses of what it might feel like to let God’s “supporting breath drive all my fears away.”12 Once I was alone in a sea kayak off the coast of Maine—so far beyond the breakers that in the trough of every wave I completely lost sight of the land. All I could see, in those rhythmic alternating moments, was ocean and sky. I stopped struggling to make headway toward the shore (knowing at some level that the waves would bear me there eventually). I rested the paddle over the gunwales and let my slender craft be carried by the waves, borne irresistibly up and down, in and out, with the swell of the sea. I felt—viscerally—as though I were on the back of a great living creature, riding the lift and fall of its unimaginably vast breath. I was, in that moment, letting the Breath breathe me. I was completely unafraid. For that small time out of time, I knew without trying that God was near. I was not anxious about anything. In my (still, God help me) recurring times of anxiety, I remember such moments gratefully. These memories help me to trust—even when I am not able to sustain the awareness—that I continually live as a feather on the breath of God, as once I floated in a small boat on an endless sea. I will keep breathing in and out. I will keep praying. Eventually, I hope I can come to trust more steadily that faith is not so much about my perfecting the way I breathe as about remembering that God is with me always, as close as my next breath. And God will bear me up in any storm, at any unfathomable depth, through whatever I must endure, in this life and the next.
12
Isaac Watts, “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need,” in The Hymnal according to the use of
the Episcopal Church (New York: The Church Hymnal Corp., 1982), 664.
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PRAYER
Lord, I was ever greedy of life, my attention always straining toward the parts of it that had not yet come . . . toward what was about to be, or might be, or hopefully would be, and especially toward those things that, by Your mercy, might turn out not to be after all. I panted with longing to suck each segment of life dry of its pleasures. I plotted, with my self but despite myself, about tomorrow . . . about the “later” that was constantly morphing into now. You know how I worked, Lord, recklessly but prayerfully, to set time’s courses and, in Your name, to sculpt them to my intention, to my definition of good. But I am old now, Lord, and my prayers grown old as well. So it is that daily I am drawn, as here, to pray, “Deliver me, My Lord, from this my great sin, and take me, free of doubt and other longings, into Your good plan.”
by phyllis tickle
Being Trees in Autumn These trees in Buddhist saffron robes, renouncing everything, becoming naked without fear, in wind that is a part of them, disclose a beauty in this death, become new shapes, interior. To live they cannot hoard; this losing, too, is growth. New shapes emerge, new vision clears. Surrender strengthens in the soul another song. This emptying is confidence in spring, but more — a faithing in the growth that’s come before,
a counting of the gifts and then releasing one by one, so as to give again, knowing growth is not a season, but is in the root of things. This is no losing, but a becoming. Coveting such openness of limb and heart and hand, such bareness in the singing, I only now discover that I want this wind, blowing where it will, within.
by stephen garna as-holmes
Getting to TOMORROW by luther e. smith, jr .
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o not be anxious about tomorrow” (Matt. 6:34, rsv).1 How could Jesus say this to listeners who had so much about which to be anxious? Daily bread was not assured. Roman occupation of their land meant that their lives could be devastated in a moment by a Roman decree or the whims of a Roman soldier. Deadly disease was a constant threat to a body and to the whole community. Knowing how tenuous their lives were, how could they not be anxious? As I write, a disastrous earthquake that shattered homes, lives, support systems, and dreams for a better tomorrow traumatizes the people of Haiti. My son is serving in the military in an Afghanistan war zone. Friends and family members are waiting for test results that will announce cause for relief or heartache. How is one to avoid anxiety with such realities? In the days of our lives we not only confront possibilities that threaten our well-being, we experience the very presence of death, terror, and the loss of capacities. Worry is not just a reaction to an imagined future. Worry occurs from clear and present dangers. We may doubt our ability to heed this instruction on anxiety or we may doubt Jesus’ sensitivity to the realities that merit worry. Either way, our ability to comply with the admonition to “not be anxious about tomorrow” is suspect.
setsuko yoshida
A re We Exempt?
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s it possible that Jesus’ instruction on anxiety was not intended for all those who profess to follow him? Could it be that he was only addressing those who had devoted their lives to him and the work that would require their absolute commitment? When the sermon that speaks of anxiety began, the Gospel of Matthew says: “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went
1
All Scripture references are to the New Revised Standard Version Bible unless otherwise indicated.
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up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them” (5:1-2). Was the sermon only meant for the disciples and not for the crowd? The teaching to “not be anxious about tomorrow” is also explicit when Jesus sends the twelve disciples to proclaim, heal, raise the dead, and exorcise demons. He tells the disciples: “Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff” (Matt. 10:9-10). They are to move into their tomorrows relying upon the hospitality of others. Is this counsel meant for all followers of Jesus or for only those who are set apart for a more intense life of service? Jesus’ instruction on discipleship often seems to exceed our capacities. Or to be more honest, his instruction often exceeds what we are willing to do. The very thought of being sent on a mission without assurances of accommodations, food, and financial resources seems foolhardy. In addition, we are not to be anxious about such a situation? Perhaps this is a commitment that monks or idealistic youth could make, but this certainly could not be expected of “ordinary Christians” who have significant family, business, and community responsibilities. So the idea of Jesus’ instruction being only for the disciples has appeal. This interpretation exempts us from admonitions that feel too demanding. The Gospel of Matthew, however, was not written as instruction for the small band of disciples but for all who would read and hear its teaching. As the Gospel narrates Jesus speaking to individuals, small groups, and crowds, we are the intended hearers and doers of this Gospel message. And as uncomfortable as we might be with this message to us, the message is to us. The call to discipleship does not offer us “somewhat committed” as an option for a faithful response. Discipleship has numerous forms of expression. No single checklist of disciplines (e.g., simple living, dietary habits, relying on others) Jesus’ instruction suffices in identifying all the forms that faithful discipleship might take. Knowing this may bring a sigh of relief as the on discipleship weight of one discipline after another is lifted. Still, someoften seems to thing even more challenging is required of us and is the exceed our whole point of any such checklist, and this is to trust fully in God. Jesus teaches his followers that trusting completely in capacities God is essential to their salvation (being made whole). No exemptions. Not being anxious about tomorrow is then understood not only as another discipline to enact. It is also a word of assurance that trusting in God cancels the anxiety that tomorrow is something to be feared. 18 w e a v i n g s | x x v : 4
From Anxiety to
Commitment
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any years ago, when I was a seminary student, my theology professor addressed Jesus’ teaching on anxiety. I so clearly remember his commentary because it released me from the seeming contradiction of not being anxious while I am being squeezed by devastating realities. He said: “Jesus is not telling us to reject feelings of anxiety; anxiety is a natural reaction to the human situation. He is warning us to not be anxious about the wrong things. We are often anxious about matters we cannot control and matters that are not of ultimate consequence. What merits our anxiety is whether our lives are fully committed to God and the coming of God’s Realm.” My professor’s interpretation started a process of diminishing the rule of anxiety in my life. It changed my challenge from holding off anxiety to focusing on the sufficiency of my commitment to God. The transference that occurred was not disengagement from immediate matters in order to only be involved in ultimate matters, but it was the transference of emotional energy away from anxiety to an increased focus on commitment. This distinction is important. Jesus was not speaking against taking immediate troubles seriously. Immediate crises and threats demand immediate attention. In saying, “Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matt. 6:34), the significance of trouble is acknowledged as cause for concern and response. Something ultimate can be at stake in an immediate situation where love is withheld or expressed. Returning to the first examples of this article, offering daily bread to the starving, protecting persons from the abuse of policing powers, and providing care to the sick can be responses to immediate matters that reflect commitment to God’s Realm. Current troubles merit one’s ultimate commitment. The transference I experienced was release from being entangled in anxiety about matters current and future. As my professor said, feeling anxious is a natural reaction to situations of insecurity. We do not want to deny an emotion that emerges as a reaction to deprivation, threat, and uncertainty. However, being tied-up in anxiety is a whole other reality that consumes emotional energy and constrains one’s availability to God. Anxiety can be a proper response to the severity of conditions. It is an indication that our hearts are sensitive and aware of factors that threaten us and those we love. Anxiety must have its moment, or day, or perhaps even its week. But when it lingers beyond a time of acknowledging how deeply concerned we are about devastating possibilities, then it imperils our responsiveness to the danger and to God. Anxiety then becomes the d o n o t b e a n x i o u s a b o u t t o m o r r o w | w e a v i n g s 19
coping technique that is sometimes the answer to whatever troubles us, or the cause for choosing unfaithful options to our troubles. Anxiety as “the answer” can begin as a normal feeling of concern. Over time it persists as a declaration of our impotence to change the situations we fear. The day soon arrives when anxiety has been such a constant and familiar feeling that it becomes difficult to imagine facing tomorrow’s realities without anxiety. What started as a normal feeling of anxiety has then turned into being possessed by anxiety. Even being aware of how destructive anxiety is to ourselves does not necessarily free us from being anxious persons—many testify to being anxious about being so anxious all the time. Choosing unfaithful options to our troubles also results from anxiety. This occurs when persons worry about having enough food, and then justify their stealing or hoarding of food. Or when persons who worry about the shortage of healthcare professionals decide to resist efforts to extend access to healthcare to increasing numbers of persons. Or when individuals who worry about their unemployed status then resent and are hostile to immigrants who they perceive as competitors. For individuals and society, anxiety can lead to crafting disastrous solutions that are implemented as remedies for anxiety. Embracing To m o r r o w
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esus’ teaching to “not be anxious about tomorrow” is not an admonition to be indifferent about tomorrow. The future is important to Jesus; it is a time of fulfillment. Jesus even emphasizes the importance of preparation for the future in his parable about the wise bridesmaids who had prepared for an anticipated event and the foolish bridesmaids who were in panic because they were unprepared for it (Matt. 25:1-13). Tomorrow is not the problem. Being unprepared for tomorrow is a crisis for the present and for the time to come. Anxiety is not the same as preparation. Anxiety is the consequence of fear about what can or will occur tomorrow, but it is not active readiness for the future. Fear of known and unknown factors that await us in our future rules our emotions to the extent that it functions as a god who inspires anxiety, obsessive self-preservation, and cowardice. Returning to my professor’s insight, the problem is not with the emotion of fear, but that we have excessive amounts of energy given to fearing the less significant matters of existence. We fear and become anxious about 20 w e a v i n g s | x x v : 4
matters of tomorrow that we cannot change, while we do not fear that our lives, now and in the future, are failing God. Our fear is misplaced to the extent that it has moved God to the periphery of awareness and moved anxiety to the center. Jesus could tell his listeners to not be anxious about The future is tomorrow because his own life was lived trusting God to be present and active in his tomorrows. He taught from his own important to experience of surrender to God. His surrender had enabled Jesus; it is him to prevail through his trials in the wilderness after his a time of baptism—a daunting time of challenge to his body and spirit. He knew that God’s future called for him to be resolute in his fulfillment trust in God even with alternatives that falsely promised to relieve his immediate stress and anxiety (Matt. 4:1-11). The future, about which God is so passionate, is a time where God also abides. Thus, we need not be anxious about tomorrow because God will be there for us. This is not a declaration that our tomorrows will be free of travail and suffering. The people of Haiti who struggle today with the aftermath of an earthquake may continue to have one heartbreaking experience after another. My son may not return alive from his military duty in Afghanistan. Those I love may get medical test results that indicate their last days are near. The matters about which we are anxious may have outcomes that traumatize us to our very core. Still, God is with us in these tomorrows we do not welcome. God does not keep us from suffering, but God does keep us. We can rest in the assurance that as our world and we come unhinged, God remains steadfast in love and in sustaining possibilities for renewing the work of hope in the world and in our hearts. We are not to surrender our tomorrows to anxiety because God will be in all our tomorrows. Our endeavor to labor on behalf of God’s dream for all creation is vital to resisting anxiety, but just as significant, it is vital to our embracing tomorrow. May our praying, caring, attention to daily routines, study, worship, and all that we do be expressions of our commitment to trust God with the current and coming situations of our lives. In due season, our testimony regarding our tomorrows will not just be about rejecting anxiety; it will about embracing hope.
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THE HABIT OF FAITH by per cy c. ainsworth
Trust in him at all times, ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. —Psalm 62:8, kjv
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ere the psalmist strikes the great note of faith as it should be struck. He sets it ringing alike through the hours and the years. Trust in him at all times. Faith is not an act, but an attitude; not an event, but a principle; not a last resource, but the first and abiding necessity. It is the constant factor in life’s spiritual reckonings. It is the ever-applicable and the ever-necessary. It is always in the high and lasting fitness of things. There are words that belong to hours or even moments, words that win their meaning from the newly created situation. It stands for something inclusive and imperial. It is one of the few timeless words in earth’s vocabulary. For the deep roots of it and the wide range of it there is nothing like unto it in the whole sweep of things spiritual. So the “all times” trust is not for one moment to be regarded as some supreme degree of faith unto which one here and there may attain and which the rest can well afford to look upon as a counsel of perfection. This exhortation to trust in God at all times concerns first of all the nature of faith and not the measure of it. All real faith has the note of the eternal in it. It can meet the present because it is not of the present. We have grown familiar with the phrase, “The man of the moment.” But who is this man? Sometimes he is very literally a person of the moment—an opportunist, a gambler with the hours, a follower of the main chance. The moment makes him, and passing away unmakes him. But the true person of the moment is the one to whom the moment is but one throb in the pulse of eternity; the one for whom the moment does not stand out in splendid isolation. It is set in its place between that which hath been and that which shall be. And its true significance is not something abiding in it, but something running through it. So is it in this great matter of faith. Only the faith that can trust at all times can trust at any time. The moment that faith heeds the dictation of circumstances it ceases to be faith and becomes calculation. All faith is transcendent. It is independent of the conditions in which it has to live. It is not snared in the strange web of the tentative and the experimental. Whoever has for one moment felt the power of faith has gone beyond the dominion of time. continued on page 26 d o n o t b e a n x i o u s a b o u t t o m o r r o w | w e a v i n g s 23
calligraphy by georgia angelopoulos
continued from page 23
Trust in him at all times. That is the only real escape from confusion and contradiction in the judgments we are compelled to pass upon life. Time changes so suddenly and inexplicably. The hours seem at strife with one another. We live in the midst of a perpetual conflict with our yesterdays and our todays. There is no simple, obvious sequence in the message of experience. The days will not dovetail into each other. Life is full of much that is impossible of true adjustment at the hands of any time-born philosophy. And in this seeming confusion there lies the necessity for faith. Herein wins its victory. We are to trust God not because we cannot trace Him, but that by trusting we may ever be more able to trace and see that God has a way through all these winding and crossing paths. Faith does more than hold our hand in darkness; it leads us into the light. It is the secret of coherence and harmony. It does not make experience merely bearable; it makes it luminous and instructive. It takes the separate or the tangled strands of human experience and weaves them into one strong cable of help and hope.
Fa i t h d o e s m o r e t h a n h o l d o u r h a n d i n d a r k n e s s ; Trust in him at all times. Then faith at its best is a habit. Indeed, religion at its best is a habit, too! We are sometimes too ready to discount the worth of the habitual in our religious life. We put a premium on self-consciousness. We reduce the life of faith to a series of acts of faith of varying difficulty and import, but each detached from the rest and individually apprehended of the soul. Surely this is all wrong. In our physical life we are least conscious of those functions that are most vital and continuous, and the more perfectly they do their work the less we think about them. The analogy is incomplete and must be drawn with care. But when you have conceded that faith has to be acquired, that it has to be learned, there is still this much in the analogy. If faith is a long and hard lesson, the value of the lesson to us is not the effort with which we learn it, but the ease with which we apply it. The measure of conscious effort in our faith is the measure of our faith’s weakness. When faith has become a spontaneity of our character, when it turns to God instinctively, when it does its work with the involuntariness of habit, then it has become strong.
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Pour out your heart before him. How this singer understood the office and privilege of the “all times” trust! He knew that there is a fullness of heart that is ill to bear. True, in more than one way the full heart can find some slight relief. There is work. There is a brother’s trouble in which we may partly forget our own. There is sympathy. Surely few are so lonely they cannot find anyone ready to offer the gift of a listening ear, anyone willing to share with them all of pain and burden that can be shared. Ah! But what of that which cannot be shared? What of the sorrow that has no language, and the shame and confusion that we would not, and even dare not, trail across a friend’s mind? So often the heart holds more than ever should be poured out into another’s ear. There are in life strained silences that we could not break if we would. And there is a law of reticence that true love and unselfishness will always respect. If my brother hath joy, am I to cloud it with grief? If he hath sorrow, am I to add my sorrow unto his? When our precious earthly fellowship has been put to its last high uses in the hour of sorrow or shame, the heart has still a burden for which this world finds no relief. There is God. There is the ear of Heaven. We may be bound by silence among our fellows, but in looking up the heart finds freedom. In God’s presence the voice of confession can break through the gag of shame and the pent-up tide of trouble can let itself break upon the heart of eternal love.
it leads us into the light. God is a refuge for us. That is the great discovery of faith. That is the merciful word that comes to be written so plainly in the life that has formed the habit of faith. God our refuge. It may be that to some the word “refuge” suggests the occasional rather than the constant need of life. But the refuge some day and the faith every day are linked together. A thing is no use to you if you cannot find it when you want it. And you cannot find it easily if it is not at hand. The peasant built his cottage in the shadow of his lord’s castle walls. In the hour of peril it was but a step to the strong fortress. “Trust in him at all times.” Build your house under the walls of the Eternal Help. Live in the Presence. Find the attitude of faith, and the act of faith will be simple. Trust in God through every hour, and when a tragic hour comes one step shall take you into the innermost safety.
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WHEN THE STARS BEGIN TO FALL by flor a slosson wuellner
There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
—Luke 21: 25–281
david klein
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o not be anxious,” the scriptures tell us (Matt. 6:34, rsv). After the above terrifying scenario? What does God expect of us? We do not need to wait for a cosmic judgment day. It is around us now. We are not safe here. Terrorists attack. Polar ice caps melt. Seas rise. Drought and forest fires increase. A severe economic recession engulfs us. Millions are out of work. A friend tells me the doctors can do no more for her. Two other friends have closed their little business and have filed for bankruptcy. How many of us today are feeling personally endangered in health, relationships, financial security, and national security? We are not safe here. Our anxieties often take strange symbolic form masking deeper fears. I remember an apocalyptic trauma of my own as a child. It was 1939, and our family had just returned from my father’s year of teaching in England. We had barely escaped the outbreak of World War Two. It had been a year of mingled beauty and adventure but also of profound anxiety: blackouts 1
All Scripture references at to the New Revised Standard Version Bible unless otherwise indicated.
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in the cities, air-raid drills, sandbags in the streets, gas-mask fittings, and Hitler’s screaming voice on the radio. My parents remained outwardly calm and shielded us children as much as possible from the engulfing fear around us, but we absorbed much more of the anxiety than we realized consciously. That fall, back in school in America, we were taken to a planetarium sky-show. I had always been fascinated by the majestic rhythm of sun, moon, and stars. Unfortunately, in the last ten minutes of the show we saw in horrifying detail what we would experience if the moon should fall upon the earth. (This is never exhibited in sky-shows now.) As I sat in rigid shock we saw the ominous glare of the on-rushing moon filling the sky accompanied by Wagnerian music and heard the roar of tidal waves and the leaping flames of burning continents on the encircling horizons. The scene ended with an explosive crash as the earth fragmented. In the days following, this potential cosmic horror subconsciously coalesced in my mind with the actual horror of the war now raging in Europe, which we had just escaped—at least outwardly escaped. I became deeply and silently frightened of the sun and moon. They were objects now of threat and fear. I did not feel safe here.2 Many of us have symbolic anxieties masking deeper un-faced, unnamed fears: flying, driving, heights, speed, crowds, germs, elevators, spending money, and so on. For some, there may be no phobic symbol but instead a vague, pervasive, free-floating apprehension. Anxiety can rise not only from actual danger, but also from unhealed anger, grieving, emotional shock, fatigue. It can also rise from depressions due to chemical imbalance. Anxiety is deep in dysfunctional communities: family, workplace, churches, neighborhoods. It is deep among those trapped in rigid belief systems, especially among those fixated on literal “End Times” such as the spreading apprehension about prophecies concerning the “doomed” 2012!
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esus knew all about these personal, communal, political, financial, theological, and apocalyptic anxieties. Rome taxed mercilessly and threatened destruction. Poverty and disease were devastating. Enraged zealots waxed ever fiercer. Religious communities and teachings were polarized. “End-times” warnings were widespread. When Jesus spoke of the shaking foundations, the ominous signs in sun, moon and stars, the roaring of the seas and waves, was he describing actual cosmic cataclysms to come, or were 2
My private apocalypse slowly faded away when the war ended.
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his eyes and heart perceiving the deep terrors of those who constantly cried out for him, clung to him, followed him, or feared him? Were these words poignant metaphors of the terrors engulfing them? Perhaps he realized it was not enough merely to tell them to stop worrying. He needed to go much more profoundly into the feelings of their dark fears and to be far more radical in the power of his comfort and challenge. He needed to tell them that yes, there are times in What does both our individual and communal lives when life shakes and God expect cracks under our feet. There will be times when the lights we have known and walked by will change or vanish. Times will of us? come when we do feel engulfed and “confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves” that we cannot control (Luke 21:25). This is a world of risk. But Jesus did not stop with the warning of risk. He drew them into a new place: “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up, raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28). This is breathtaking! The moment of our greatest fear, that moment when the ground shakes beneath our feet, is the very moment of God’s deepest presence and power within us. It is the moment of our new beginning. This does not mean that our sun and moon will shine for us again in their old way, or that the sea will return to its former shores, or the cracked earth will become that old solid ground we used to walk upon. We will walk in new lights and on new foundations. The God of endings and new beginnings never returns us to the old life after profound change. We are offered a new creation. And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” And he replied, “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.”3
In many ways this beloved old quote has become the story of my life. Like so many others, I do cling to the known and clutch at my old lights of security and certainties. But the times I have been able to step out into the unknown, holding God’s hand, have been for me the times of ecstatic unfolding, the highest adventures, growth undreamed of, and light no longer confined to my former suns and moons. 3
Minnie Louise Haskins, “God Knows,” more popularly known as “The Gate of the Year” in The Desert (1908). Public domain.
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cripture speaks often of God’s hand, that symbol of endless loving strength, guidance, and new creations.4 The “hand” means both challenge and comfort. (Not always the same as comfortable.) When we are born, strong hands draw us out of confinement into the risk and glory of light, breath, and space. When we marry, our joined hands draw each other out of the old securities towards new frontiers. When I was ordained into ministry, the most memorable moment for me was when the surrounding ministers laid their hands of consecration on my head. I remember vividly the weight and warmth of those hands leading me into a new life and new ways of loving. One such way of entering a new life occurred during the final days of my husband’s illness. A few mornings before his death, he who had not moved or spoken for days, suddenly sat up, threw off his covers and said vigorously: “I’ve got to get up and get going!” Then he lay down and slept again. Two nights later he spoke to me in a dream: “This is like being in a swift stream in the water.” In response to this night message, I felt moved to go around the house, taping up pictures of swift, joyful movement: flying birds, flowing rivers, waves cresting, to help both him and me through the awesome change of release into God’s hands. When I am faced with challenge and feel gripped by anxiety, I am slowly learning to respond to Jesus’ challenge: “Stand up, raise your heads . . . when you see these things taking place, you know the kingdom of God is near” (Luke 21:28, 31). I am trying to be very literal about this. When my heart speeds up, when my breathing is tight as I open that letter, wait for that phone call, sit in the doctor’s office waiting for those test results, scan the bank statement, face a difficult personal encounter, experience a loss, admit a serious mistake, I try inwardly to stand up, raise my head, look straight at the possibility of a changed personal world. Then I remind myself that at that very moment when the ground trembles and my old securities pass away, God is with me “with power and great glory.” Where will that hand take me this time? What new life is opening up?
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y mother was born crippled, and she coped with painful health problems all her life. Her first husband died very young, leaving her with two small children. As a realist she looked directly at change and disaster and called them by name. When her youngest child was diagnosed with invasive cancer, she did not deny the grim reality. But she also had the priceless gift of seeing the rich possibilities of growth and 4
Two much-loved examples are Ps. 139:10 and John 10:28-29.
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adventure in each threatening situation and was able to turn my sister’s illness and recovery into a time for our family of reborn courage, laughter, closeness, challenging us to step boldly into the unknown. Long after the war was over, she shared with us some of her thoughts during those last weeks in Europe in 1939, knowing that war was closer each day. Lying awake at night she thought of the refugee families engulfed in disaster, often suddenly separated and lost from This is each other. If she were in that situation what could she say in a world just a few minutes that would sustain and empower us the rest of our lives, no matter what happened? She decided she would of risk tell us in those few minutes that wherever we are, no matter what is happening, even if we never saw each other again, that love, hope, goodness, and new beginnings still exist powerfully in the world, and God has given us the power to find them. At bedtimes she would often play and sing the old spirituals. One that she especially loved comes to mind: My Lord, what a morning! My Lord, what a morning! O my Lord what a morning! When the stars begin to fall. You will hear the trumpet sound, To wake the nations underground. Looking to my God’s right hand, When the stars begin to fall.5
For her, the stars had often fallen. But as they fell, she always heard the trumpet sound to awaken her to God’s glorious, transforming presence. I wish now that I had told her of my fear after the planetarium sky-show. She would not have laughed at me, but would have tried to help me name the underlying terror. Then she would have told me that even in the midst of a world cracking open in devastating war, with everything changing, we could still hear God’s trumpet and look in God’s right hand to find the incredible morning offered there. But I had put on a mask of shame over my fear and pride in my pretend invulnerability, and forgotten the old song. I am remembering it now. 5
“My Lord, What a Morning,” African-American Spiritual in the public domain.
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Daily Acts, External Interests by evelyn underhill
Editor’s note: Evelyn Underhill wrote many letters to individuals for whom she provided spiritual direction. The following excerpt is from one such letter. In it, she counsels moderation and faithful practice as the remedy for anxious concern about spiritual experiences.
February 7, 1923
But you MUST settle down and quiet yourself. Your present state if encouraged will be in the end as bad for you spiritually as physically. I know it is not easy to do. Nevertheless it will in the nature of things come about gradually and I want you to help it all you know. If you allow rapture or vehemence to have its way too much, you risk a violent reaction to dryness, whereas if you act prudently you will keep the deep steady permanent peace, in the long run more precious and more fruitful than the dazzling light. But you won’t do it by direct struggle —did you ever quiet a baby, or your dog, or any other excited bit of life, by direct struggle? You will do it, please, by steadily, gradually, and quietly turning your thoughts and prayers not so much to the overwhelming joy and wonder, as to the deep steadfastness of God, get gently accustomed to it, at home with it, rest in it. Let your night prayers be rather short, very quiet, more or less on a set form, not too “mental” and in the line of feeling of Psalm 23. Let yourself sink down into God’s Love in complete dependence, and even though the light does seem to rush in on you, keep as it were the eyes of your soul shut, intent on falling asleep in Him . . . . During the day, doing your work, etc., it is I know very hard not to be distracted and absorbed. But remember you have no more right to be extravagant over this than over any other pleasure or craving. It is true you can and probably will find a balance in which you will live in a quiet spirit of prayer, able at all leisure moments—and in the middle of your work—to turn simply and gently to God. But this will come only when all vehemence is eliminated.
Consider the sequence of daily acts, and your external interests as part of your service, part of God’s order for you, and as having a proper claim on your undivided attention. Take special pains now to keep up fully or develop some definite non-religious interest, e.g., your music. Work at it, consider it an obligation to do so. It is most necessary to your spiritual health; and you will very soon find that it has a steadying effect. “Good works” won’t do—it must be something you really like for its own sake. (When this prescription was given to me by the wisest of saints, I objected strongly, but lived to bless him for his insistence! Now I hand it on to you.) Otherwise, just for the present, do go as quietly as you can, about your work, etc., I mean. Avoid strain. If you could take a few days off and keep quiet it would be good, but if this is impossible at any rate go along gently, look after your body, don’t saturate yourself the whole time with mystical books. I know you do feel tremendously stimulated all round; but remember the “young presumptuous disciples” in the Cloud [of Unknowing]! Hot milk and a thoroughly foolish novel are better things for you to go to bed on just now than St. Teresa. Remember as a general rule, running right through the spiritual life, that the more any particular aspect or exercise attracts you, the more ordered, regular, moderate should be your use of it. Don’t have any lurking fear that you will lose the light by this kind of discipline—just the opposite, you will steady and tend to retain it. —Letters
LECTIO DIVINA
A S T E A D Y I N G WAY
by gunill a norris
christine waara
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hange is happening so rapidly in every sector of life that we hardly have time to adjust. Many live for hours a day in the virtual reality of computers. Information and communication pours in through the Internet, our cell phones, and iPods at such speed and in so many ways that our attention is expected to jump from one thing to another while our bodies and souls lag behind with no place to rest. We live in a manner that more and more asks us to anticipate the future. We want to predict, to know ahead of time, how to manage what might come, but no one can actually live in the future. To try to do so inevitably leads to anxiety. We can only live in the present where we are, and where we are is always on holy ground with God and with each other. When the norm all around us demands that we hurry into what might be and asks us to be prepared for it, our bodies wear down. Our organs cannot take such a constant demand. It forces us to live on adrenal energy, out of the sympathetic nervous system, which is all about fight, flight, or freeze. Ramped up, many of us then reach for artificial means to somehow balance things out: food, alcohol, sex, gambling, overwork, speculation, computer games. These are means that either let the mind go to sleep or mesmerize it into a high-pitched focus that distracts us from the accumulating pressures for a little while. Age-old rhythms that allowed rest, reflection, and reassurance are often not what we seek. We want a magic solution to stop the stress. When everything around us is happening so fast, it is difficult to slow down unless we are forced, or invited, to do so. The good news is that there are great resources in spiritual traditions that extend such invitations. One is through the ancient practice of lectio divina: a particular way of spiritual reading of Scripture and sacred writings.
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onastic life in the West had three strong pillars on which it was based—work, lectio divina, and contemplative prayer.1 It has always been significant to me that lectio divina finds its place between action and contemplation. It serves as a bridge in the spiritual life between an outward focus and an inward one. We all know how hard it is to go from intense action into stillness. Through lectio divina we are offered a wonderful gift from spiritual seekers who have gone before us, who faced change and challenge, and who experienced anxiety just as we do in our times. We can learn much from this practice of spiritual reading. It is not a magic solution, but it can become a steadying and spiritually nourishing aid in how we live our lives of faith in a rapidly changing world. The reading of Scripture continues to this day as a foundational practice in monastic life, but also takes place in other worship settings, parishes, and faith communities. Passages from the Old and New Testaments, from the Psalms and Gospels, may be spoken or sung throughout the liturgical year, and as we hear and read these texts, we may find that certain words begin to resonate within us. They can become deep sources of support and help in anxious times. I have learned that if I stay with the same reading for several days or weeks, more is yielded through the words and meaning than if I hurry quickly on to the next one. Lectio divina offers a way into this deeper, steadying reflection. Lectio divina is more than mere reading. It is a spiritual practice that invites and requires some discipline and willingness. Here are some steps to follow:
1 . Find a time when, despite everything pressing on your schedule, you will turn your mind and heart to God.
2 . Select a brief passage of Scripture or spiritual writing from the saints or other sources of spiritual literature.
3 . Read the selection slowly, preferably out loud, often reading it twice. 4 . Let the passage sink in and notice what word or simple phrase lingers with you in some way.
5 . Allow the passage to take root, to find a place within you that is deeper than words.
6 . Dwell in that depth for a time and ask God to let the words continue to inform and nourish you in the active parts of your life. 38 w e a v i n g s | x x v : 4
One such spiritual reading that has meant a lot to me is from a prayer card sent to me by a friend. Practicing lectio divina with this prayer has been very sustaining. I offer the prayer here along with some thoughts that came through the process of dwelling with it: May today there be peace within. May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. May you use those gifts that you have received and pass on the love that has been given to you. May you be content knowing you are a child of God. Let this presence settle into your bones and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us. May today there be peace within.2
May today there be peace within : When I spend time with this first line I am reminded to intend for my day to be in peace, to ask that it be so, to remember my longing for peace even when things are pressing or distracting. Speaking this line softly aloud, I begin to find that in times of conflict or challenge it will rise up within me and remind me of my deep longing and intention. I am nudged back to what matters. The phrase is like the pealing of a bell, calling me to peace.
I am nudged back to what matters
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be : Living with the second line has especially helped counter anxiety. Whatever the circumstances, we are where we are, and upon deep reflection, where we are is, in some way, exactly right. So often when things are tough we want to pull away, escape, or flee. Praying these words I am reminded of the exactitude of grace. It is only where we are that God can act in us and through us. I find that in dwelling with these words I begin to look for what is right in my present circumstance. I am led to look for what is possible, even when on the surface there seems to be nothing possible. It asks me to pay closer attention to the gifts that are actually present and to receive them, rather than to look for ones I don’t have and think I want. The Rule of St. Benedict (seventh century) is an example. It instructed monks in a balanced life of worship, study, manual labor, and prayer. See The Rule of St. Benedict, ed. Timothy Fry, osb (New York, Vintage, 1998); Novene Vest, Preferring Christ: A Devotional Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict (Harrisburg, Penn., Morehouse, 1990). 2 Multiple versions can be found on the internet, but the original source could not be verified. 1
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May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. May you use those gifts that you have received and pass on the love that has been given to you : This section has two aspects. One reminds us that faith can move mountains. It has been so for others. So why can it not be so for you and me? The second urges us to receive, or rather to re-receive the gifts that God has given to us—to acknowledge them, to be filled with them again, and to pass them on to others. I am made aware that absolutely everything is given to me and is on loan for this lifetime. In a paradoxical sense we can only keep what we experience and give away.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God. Let this presence settle into your bones and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us: These last lines speak to me of reassurance. To remember that you and I are children of God places us again and again in the right and steadying context when we are pushed against the wall. We are not self-made. We have been given life to live and the world in which to live it. This is so because we are infinitely loved by the One who made us. This knowledge can sink into our marrow, into our very structure. What better grounding can we have than to know we are God’s children, and to feel this in our bodies when anxiety arises? Feeling and trusting our true spiritual parentage is reassuring, and allows us to live in praise, joy, and faithfulness. We regain the inner freedom God means for us to have and use. And this is not exclusive property. It is there for everyone.
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am sure you will know of, or will find, readings that can be made your own in beautiful and soulful ways through the practice of lectio divina. If we allow this tradition to become part of our daily spiritual life, there will be words that can grow in meaning for us, that can find a home in our depths, and become words of truth that sustain and steady us. To become a participant in a long-held spiritual discipline, one that has been used through centuries of change and struggle, can help us in our own times. Through lectio divina, we can learn from and take comfort in the spiritual accompaniment of uncountable others, both past and present. A goodness shared always doubles and so becomes a steadying force in a fast-changing world.
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ENOUGH Worry and stress are not hard for us, God, we do them without thinking. There is always the potential of threat to our security, our comfort, our health, our relationships, our lives, and we foolishly think that we could silence the fear if we just had enough money, enough insurance, enough toys, enough stored away for a rainy day. It’s never enough, though; The voice of our fear will not be dismissed so easily. But in the small, silent places within us is another voice; one that beckons us into the foolishness of faith, that points our gaze to the birds and flowers, that, in unguarded moments, lets our muscles relax, and our hearts lean into loved ones; In unexpected whispers we hear it, calling us to remember your promises, your grace, your faithfulness; And suddenly, we discover that it is enough. Amen. by john van de l a ar
COMMITMENT PURSUING GOD’S REIGN FIRST by david r ensber ger
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o not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. . . . So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own” (Matt. 6:25, 34, nrsv). These are some of Jesus’ most daunting words, and if we assume that he really meant them, then our religion becomes difficult indeed to abide by. Who can live an ordinary life without some concern for the future and for their bodily needs? Yet when I was young and immortal (and single and childless), these words made perfect sense to me. It was the 1960s, and I had dropped about as far out of conventional American society as it was possible to drop. Commune life seemed to be organized around these words from the Sermon on the Mount, and it was not a coincidence. Forget what you’ve seen on TV; the 60s and 70s counterculture was a hotbed of spiritual searching and creativity. It was a hotbed of other things too, and highly problematic in some ways. But there was a real sense that we were trying to live out what we’d heard in our parents’ churches yet seldom actually seen done. So life without a plan or a career path seemed like the way to go. “Living for today” might mean hedonism and recklessness, but it might also mean genuinely focusing on the present moment and a very unhedonistic way of putting the community’s present needs ahead of one’s own anxieties about the future—a future over which we did not profess to have any control. “Take . . . no thought for the morrow” (Matt. 6:34, kjv) were the words of the great Master, and young people looking for a spiritual guide took them seriously. Jesus said it, we believed it, that settled it. But then I started a family and went back to school, and my wife got a job, and I got a job, and we had two kids and a house. And we couldn’t seem to manage without worrying, or at least thinking, about tomorrow— about what we would eat, drink, and wear. I have fretted about this, off and on, quite a bit over the years. What happened to that youthful faithfulness, that lived-out idealism? d o n o t b e a n x i o u s a b o u t t o m o r r o w | w e a v i n g s 43
A NEW PERSPECTIVE PERSPECTIVE
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ow, though, my anxiety about my anxieties has been relieved a bit by gaining a new perspective on this teaching. I was leading a retreat aimed at helping peacemakers and other activists ground their work in a deeper life of prayer. During a discussion period, one of the retreatants offered a quotation that he attributed to the German poet Goethe. I have since learned that, although this attribution is regularly made, the words really belong to William Hutchison Murray, a Scottish mountain climber who took part in an expedition to the Himalayas in the early 1950s.1 In recounting his and his companions’ preparations for the journey, Murray describes how one of them asked him to join the expedition and then a week later asked him to organize it. Though it might seem that nothing had been done in that intervening week, in fact an important step had been taken. It is Murray’s description of this step that has, in part, been so widely quoted and ascribed to Goethe. We had definitely committed ourselves and were half-way out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money — booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. 2
“All sorts of things occur to help one. . . .” Is this a hard-nosed Scotsman echoing the Sermon on the Mount? It certainly sounds like it, and Murray confirms this impression later on: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._Murray#Goethe. For more details on the mistaken attribution to Goethe, see http://www.goethesociety.org/pages/quotescom.html. 2 W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition: With four pages of colour plates and thirtytwo pages of black-and-white half-tones. Eleven maps and diagrams by Robert Anderson (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1951), 6–7. 1
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Let us have what skill we may, and push our plans however strenuously, we remain utterly dependent on Providence for bringing them to their best conclusion — which may not be the end that we ourselves had hoped for them . . . One result of this knowledge is a glorious freedom from anxieties, but without diminution of energy.3
Utter dependence on Providence, a glorious freedom from anxieties! Jesus, hippies, Scottish mountaineers: who knew? Pondering Murray’s words, I came to realize that I had Utter dependence been reading the passage in the Sermon on the Mount on Providence, from the wrong end. I was in the habit (naturally enough) a glorious of interpreting the passage from the beginning, that daunting mandate not to worry about the most basic freedom from necessities of life. But if you start reading near the end, anxieties! things suddenly fall into place. There we find, “But above all pursue his kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt. 6:33, net). Commit yourself to God, in other words, to God’s reign and to God’s ways, and your needs will be met. “The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.” A PERPETUAL COMMITMENT COMMITMENT
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esus does not command us to quit worrying so that we may find God, nor does he say that the necessities of life come automatically to those who avoid thinking about them. He does not command us not to worry, as if a commandment could make us do that. He says that when we focus on God, then we can and will quit worrying. He says life’s needs come to those who have made a commitment to God, who have decided to give the highest priority in their lives to God and to the justice, the righteousness, that God offers and desires. Living without anxiety about life and its needs is not a starting point but a result—a result of commitment to the cause of God. This singularity of focus on the ways of God is a far larger commitment than climbing a mountain, for however many mountains you climb you will always come back down again. The commitment to God is permanent, enduring, everlasting, like God’s commitment to us. A life lived for God will certainly have its lighter moments. But commitment to God is not episodic; it is not a decision to do something and then be done with it, or to do it every now 3
Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, 14.
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and again during one’s lifetime. It is a perpetual commitment, which means that it is infinitely demanding—and therefore, we might think, an infinite drain on our resources. But this is where Jesus’ viewpoint differs from ours. No, he The commitment says, a ceaseless commitment to God is not a perpetual drain to God’s reign on what we have, it is the source of what we have and of what and God’s justice we will need. Make that commitment, Jesus says, and you will is a commitment find that God is also committed to you and will not let you lack to God’s way what you require to carry out your commitment. Step forward without knowing where the resources will come from, without having all your birds of the air in a row, and the resources will find you. “Unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance,” in Murray’s words, will rise up to salute you, will fling themselves into your arms—Oh, you of little faith! Really? Really? Well, however much my own faith may have dwindled in the meantime, I can point to one experience in my life that confirms this conviction. It is odd, and some may find it objectionable. But I now find I cannot understand this teaching without it. AN UNFORESEEN PATH UNFORESEEN
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hen Jesus says, “Pursue God’s reign and God’s justice first and foremost,” we are apt to think of a general, all-encompassing commitment. All-encompassing it is, but it cannot remain general. It must be carried out in specific terms and circumstances, just as W. H. Murray did not merely make a general commitment to be a mountain climber, but committed himself specifically to climbing the Himalayas. Once in my life I made that definite and precise a commitment to God’s ways. In 1971, fresh off the commune with a young wife and year-old child, I went to prison rather than cooperate with the United States Selective Service, which was processing young men to serve in the Vietnam War. All the ins and outs of that decision are too long a story to tell here; it is enough to say that I knew it was God’s will and God’s calling. In prison I worked in the library, and one day there I found a scholarly edition of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls—Hebrew text, technical commentary, and all. Now I ask you, what was that book doing in that library? To this day, it seems to me that it must have been put there for me to find. I was deeply interested in the Bible, and I’d always been interested in languages and history, and . . . well, I had time on my hands. I began trying to learn Hebrew using this book, and then a pastor friend of our family helped me start studying Hebrew by correspondence from the University of Wisconsin. It was the start of a 46 w e a v i n g s | x x v : 4
career in biblical studies that took up the next thirty-five years of my life. I made a commitment to God’s way, in a very specific form. God not only brought me and my family through the resulting experience intact, but gave me a life’s vocation in a manner that must surely be counted an example of “unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance” of the most unexpected, if not downright bizarre, variety. My experience also bears out something else that Murray affirms: “Let us have what skill we may, and push our plans however strenuously, we remain utterly dependent on Providence for bringing them to their best conclusion—which may not be the end that we ourselves had hoped for them”.4 With much less emphasis on planning, Jesus also promises that God will furnish those who make the commitment with what they need; but he does not promise that it will be what they think they need! The commitment to God’s reign and God’s justice is a commitment to God’s way, and a way is a path, a road, a journey. The other thing Jesus does not promise is a map. Genuine commitment to God means commitment to accepting whatever God deems best for the journey, twist and turn through forest and desert as it may.5 A FREEDOM FROM ANXIETY FREEDOM
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y full-time career in biblical scholarship is over. I resigned my teaching position in order to carry out the different work of writing and retreat leading to which I believe God is calling me now. And what was my plan for that move? “Leap, and the net will appear,” as the card one of my daughters sent by way of encouragement says. That too is the way of Jesus. So far I can’t point to dramatically unforeseen assistance raised in my favor; indeed, there have been some quite serious unforeseen obstacles. Yet the obstacles seem to be an occasion for reaffirming the commitment, for remembering the specific task to which I am called, and passing on to others work that they can do better. The more firmly I commit myself to the work of God’s reign in this specific way, the more I can hope for God’s provision. Freedom from anxiety, in Jesus’ terms, starts with commitment to God the Creator and Provider, and to the justice that God offers and desires. Lacking commitment to God, we do not expect God to provide, and so we may fall into unjust ways of providing for ourselves. Making that commitment, we find that God is committed to us too, and has been all along; and we find that provisions, sometimes quite unexpected, do appear. 4 5
Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, 14. My emphasis. David Rensberger, “Itinerant Every Day,” Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, vol. XIII, no. 4 (July/August, 1998), 39-46.
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calligraphy by georgia angelopoulos
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I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? My help comes from the L ORD , who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. —Psalm 121:1-4, nrsv