COMPASS READINGS seek to encourage, challenge, and equip people on the way of servant leadership, which includes both the inward journey of prayer and study and the outward journey of service and justice-making.
Paul Hanneman, Program Director
September 11, 2009
Today is a day of solemn remembrance. And respect for those who responded heroically in the face of terror and catastrophe. For me, it is also a day of recommitment to faithful service in the midst of whatever happens.
Martin Luther King, Jr. preached that human salvation lies in the handsof the creatively maladjusted. We need to keep alive the stories of those who creatively and positively respond to crises (both immediate and ongoing). Poet Kevin Stuart Brodie tells the story of one such creatively maladjusted servant in the middle of another catastrophe: For 29 days in 1940, Chiune Sugihara signed exit visas for Jews fleeing the Nazis, saving more than 6000 lives.
The Lithuanians in Kaunas
had never seen a Japanese man
before he stepped off the train
that first day.
He was known only as
the new consulate
before his gentle face
and near-perfect Russian
earned him tipped hats in the street
and invitations to dinner.
The morning the Soviets came
the cobblestones cracked
and the sky trembled.
Almost immediately,
the Children of Abraham
lined up outside his door
squeezing the gates
like prison bars.
The cable from Tokyo said not –
there were too many, and it wasn’t
a good time.
He smiled at his wife and sons,
as he tore up the message
and pulled open the door.
The Nazis were coming
from the west, so the
Soviets wanted him out
in three weeks.
That wasn’t much time,
so he worked twenty hours each day,
pausing only for tea
and for Yukiko to massage
his hand, circulate his blood.
He was still signing the morning he left.
An old cabalist stood in front of his car.
He rolled down the window
and signed the visa.
Later in the hotel,
the door banged all night.
He sat as a rented desk,
stamped the passports with a
smile, and a bow.
On the train platform,
more were waiting,
so he used luggage, books
and people’s backs
as hard surfaces.
He was still signing
as the train began to pull away.
He had to hand the last one back
through the moving window.
Like a childhood memory,
Kaunas grew smaller and smaller
in the distance.
Years later,
an American rabbi asked him
why he did it.
He thought for a moment,
then replied,
“I don’t understand the question.”
When faced with tragedy or catastrophe or overwhelming human need, what’s your response? Sugihara didn’t think of himself as heroic or special – what he did came naturally to him from deep within himself - “I don’t understand the question.” The rest of us stand in awe of such servanthood. The good news is that such larger than life folks weren’t born that way; they grew into the people we call saints or heroes. We all have it in us to grow more Christlike. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing – nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable – absolutely NOTHING can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. (Romans 8.38-39, THE MESSAGE).
Getting growing often begins with acknowledging we need more help than we can give ourselves – the innerwork of prayerful confession and supplication. I find the Pilgrim’s Prayer a helpful mantra – Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. If you’re already involved in some form of ministry, take that prayer into your work with others. If you’re not already involved, then get started! Check out the volunteer opportunities here at the Center - they're listed on this website. Call (704-926-0612) or e-mail (
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) me with questions or ideas.
September 4, 2009
From time to time I find myself wanting to experience God directly again. There were a couple of powerful experiences of Presence in my childhood, and one in my college days – enough to make the strong faith of my family real to me; but when I began to take spiritual formation seriously, there was about a year’s worth of incredible spiritual experiences. God was very real and very close, surprising me with all sorts of spiritual fireworks. And then they stopped. I missed them for a long while, but then stopped thinking about it…most of the time. Then I’d come across someone whose direct sense of God’s Presence and Love was so palpable, so joyous, that I’d be jealous and want it for myself again.
But for this week, at least, that’s not what I want. For one thing, it’s quite possible that such an experience could leave me to melt like ice cream in the sun. I ran across a passage from Annie Dillard’s TEACHING A STONE TO TALK that woke me up to the dangers of what I’d desired:
Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely evoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.
“Be careful what you pray for; you might get it”, goes the old Chinese proverb. When Job demanded justice from God, he reaped a whirlwind. I’m not sure my nervous system is up to that kind of experience.
I have been thinking, too, that this experience I so much want has probably already occurred many times among the little events that make up the experience of any given day.
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh. Book vii.
When you begin to look around with soft eyes, you see…fire. This week, I’ve seen it
in a man’s eyes when he got an interview with a company who’s hiring people with his skills and experience,
in a neighbor’s laughter when an moment of angry disrespect got changed into a joke,
in the taste of good cooking in Sandra’s plate lunches at the Soup Kitchen,
in participants’ passionate caring for the needs of the poor in a community forum,
in the jazz piano of a neighbor after lunch,
in driving with the top down under a full moon listening to Les Paul and Chet Atkins love playing together,
in a moment of listening prayer that deepened into the Silence at the center of all…
every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes…
We must be willing to let go of the life we have desired so we can have the life that is right there waiting for us.
August 28, 2009
This story comes from a Sunday school ministry in the part of New York City that in the 1990s had been rated the "most likely place to get killed." The pastor Bill Wilson himself has been stabbed twice, shot at, and a member of his team killed. But he stays there, and not without controversy, ministers to people the rest of the church has largely forgotten. The largest bus ministry in America is not in the suburbs, but in Hell's Kitchen.
Bill writes, “One Puerto Rican lady came to me with an urgent request. She didn't speak a word of English, so she told me through an interpreter, "I want to do something for God, please."
"I don't know what you can do," I answered.
"Please, let me do something," she said in Spanish.
"Okay. I'll put you on a bus. Ride a different bus every week and just love the kids."
So every week she rode a different bus -- we have 50 of them -- and loved the children. She would find the worst- looking kid on the bus, put him on her lap and whisper over and over the only words she had learned in English: "I love you. Jesus loves you."
After several months, she became attached to one little boy in particular. "I don't want to change buses anymore. I want to stay on this one bus," she said.
The boy didn't speak. He came to Sunday school every week with his sister and sat on the woman's lap, but he never made a sound. And each week she would tell him all the way to Sunday school and all the way home, "I love you and God loves you."
One day, to her amazement, the little boy turned around and stammered, "I-I love you, too." Then he put his arms around her and gave her a big hug.
That was 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon. At 6:30 that night, the boy was found dead in a garbage bag under a fire escape. His mother had beaten him to death and thrown his body in the trash.
"I love you and God loves you." Those were some of the last words he heard in his short life - from the lips of a Puerto Rican woman who could barely speak English.
The tragedies of the world are innumerable, the problems of the world larger than we can comprehend, let alone fix. Who among us is qualified to minister? Who among us even knows what to do? Not you; not me. But then, we’re not in the fixing business. We’re in the serving business.
Henri Nouwen writes, Jesus' whole life and mission involve accepting powerlessness and revealing in this powerlessness the limitlessness of God's love. Here we see what compassion means. It is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not a reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there. (Compassion)
The days of religious rhetoric are over. People have to see the reality of the gospel. And we are the only Jesus they will see, folks. You -- one person -- can make a difference.
August 14, 2009
A Franciscan Benediction
May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships
So that you may live deep within your heart.
At easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships
So that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
At injustice, oppression and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness
To believe that you can make a difference in the world,
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
To believe that you can make a difference in the world,
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
Amen.
August 14, 2009
Two stories:
The great spiritual writer Howard Thurman spent part of each New Year’s Day writing down everything he knew about God. Then he’d pull out last year’s work and compare them; if there wasn’t much change, he considered that he’d wasted a year. Thurman believed that if we pay attention, God is continually revealing God’s self to us; therefore, we never stop learning who God is, who we are, and how we are to live.
The two Greek words contained in the word “theology” literally mean “God words” – words about God. In homage to Thurman, I’ve kept a working list of theological truths that I visit fairly regularly to see whether I’ve grown any. Here’s my current list:
1. I know who and Whose I am: God’s Beloved. God loves me… and you…and every one of us. Unconditionally. Forever.
2. God had the first word. God had the second Word. God will have the last word.
3. God speaks to us through a trinity of voices: monologue, dialogue, and silence.
4. The Bible isn't the Word of God; the Bible contains the Word of God. I take the Bible too seriously to take it literally.
5. No matter what happens to us, God can wrench good out of it.
6. Nothing can separate us from the love of God – not our sinning, not our suffering, not our dying.
7. The Christian community exists to bear witness to the center of history: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
8. The purpose of life is to grow in our love for God, for others (all others), and for ourselves.
9. God has a soft spot in Her heart for the poor and marginalized.
10. God has no hands but our hands.
11. We hold all truth in earthen vessels.
12. Worship is the natural result of paying attention to the movement of God in one’s life and in the world. Gratitude and awe are worship’s first fruits.
To date, every time I’ve re-visited the list, it has changed, thankfully!
What would be on your list?
August 7, 2009
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a French writer and aviator, was one of the most interesting figures of 20th century literature. He wrote The Little Prince, a children's book that sold 200,000 copies in the U.S. alone in one year several years ago, and is also well known for his books about aviation adventures, including Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars.
In his North African desert reflections, de Saint-Exupéry wrote of the passionate attentiveness he found among the Moors. Desert life had bred in these sun-scorched bedouins a lean sense of hunger, an awareness that the impassive God of the desert is never given to excess or waste, and an assumption that "want" is the norm. The French pilots, in their idle hours at Cape Juby, would sometimes try to "tame the Moors:' taking them up for rides in their planes, sharing the riches of la vie superieur franraise. But the Africans remained stubbornly contemptuous of European displays of power, even when three of them were taken to Paris and shown the Eiffel Tower, huge locomotives, and steamships on the Seine.
The marvels of technology did not impress the Arabs. They wept, however, at the sight of trees. These Arab bedouins had never seen a waterfall, a river, a rose. The only natural world they had ever known was devastatingly stingy with its gifts. Years of desert attentiveness had trained them to expect only shortfall and subtlety. Back home, where water was precious, they might walk for days on end in search of a tiny spring, maybe a handful of palms. So when they stood in a high alpine meadow beside an enormous waterfall in the French Alps, its water roaring out of the mountain in a huge braided column, they had no way of comprehending such lavishness.
They stood in silence. Mute, solemn ... gazing at the unfolding of a ceremonial mystery. That which came roaring out of the belly of the mountain was life itself, was the life-blood of man. The flow of a single second would have resuscitated whole caravans that, mad with thirst, had pressed on into the eternity of salt lakes and mirages. Here God was manifesting Himself: It would not do to turn one's back on Him.
They refused to leave, adamantly declaring to their French guide that honor required their waiting ... waiting for the end. Knowing the water could not last much longer, they awaited the moment "when God would grow weary of His madness," when this wild extravagance would suddenly and finally exhaust itself. Resolutely they stood their ground. "But, you see," the guide at last proclaimed, realizing how absurdly unintelligible his words must seem to such men, "this water has been running here for a thousand years!"
Having known the depths of desert thirst, these men could scarcely fathom a surging torrent of water, rushing forever from the rock. Nothing had prepared them for it - other than desire itself. Their hearts set aflame by longing, they had learned through the years an indifference to everything less than love. Apatheia had taught them that purity of heart is to will one thing. Hence, they could fiercely say no to locomotives and Gallic conquerors of the sky. But they must stand in silent awe before a raging cataract, beholding in wet-eyed wonder the unwearying madness of their God.
We are all people who are convinced that the most valuable resources are in scarce supply. And when we are confronted with abundance - exuberant, outrageous, divinely mad abundance, we too stand, captured by what we cannot understand but vehemently love. The heart trained in poverty lives perpetually in hope of wonder.
July 31, 2009
All the gospels have the story of the feeding of the 5000, but John’s telling, as usual, is a bit different. In the synoptic version, the disciples come to Jesus with a problem, and the emphasis is on Jesus’ compassion for the crowd. In John (6.1-21), Jesus goes up the mountain and sits down; mountain tops are where divine/human conversations take place, where great lessons are taught, where special visions are revealed. As part of this “teaching moment,” Jesus looks at Philip and asks, "Where are we to buy bread for all these people?” He’s saying, ‘The folks are hungry. So what are we gonna do here?’ Jesus is springing a pop quiz!
The disciples don’t do very well. Philip responds from the usual categories and expectations. He begins to calculate how much money they need to buy supper for all these folks. He begins to work on logistics. "Half a year's paychecks won't do the trick. Our budget just isn't big enough. Our resources are just too few." Andrew does mention the child with the 5 loaves (made of barley, which was poor folks’ flour) and the two fish, but then immediately dismisses the boy’s offering as insignificant.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? The Urban Ministry Center is feeding an average of 300/day (often topping 400), up significantly from a year ago. There are somewhere around 8000 homeless in Charlotte, thousands more working poor - people caught in near-survival mode, one glitch away from losing what stability they’ve struggled so hard to attain. 10 million children without health insurance in the richest country in the world…30 million Americans without enough to eat and 3 million without shelter…continuing violence in Iraq, Darfur, Afghanistan, North Korea – violence breeds violence – we know it, yet fear drives us on…worldwide, 14 million refugees and 25 million displaced human beings living in squalor and starvation, fear and destitution… Jesus says, ‘So what are we gonna do here?’
The disciples were simply being adult, practical, making cautious, conventional supply/demand calculations. We look at all the hungry people, all the war- and oppression-ravaged peoples, all the recession victims, and we’re overwhelmed, if not numbed, paralyzed by the sheer enormity of the tragedies that flood us near-constantly through our media.
And the little boy comes forward with his lunch. Unfortunately, most children eventually learn from adults to live out of the scarcity principle (ie, that there’s not enough to go around). But he hasn’t yet, and Jesus uses his gift to teach the disciples a lesson: they should have been looking for ways to succeed, not for excuses to fail. The boy saw possibility, not puniness, in those 5 loaves and 2 fish. Jesus reveals to us that God's in the abundance business, not the scarcity business, when he gives thanks for the loaves and then offers so much bread to the people that there are twelve large baskets with leftover scraps.
It takes seeing with the eyes of a child to transform us from cautious followers into full-fledged disciples who dare to trust God’s abundance – and act on it. Didn’t Jesus say exactly that? Here’s EugenePeterson’s version of MT 18.2: …unless you return to square one and start over like children, you're not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in.
A few suggestions for returning to square one:
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Rediscover who and Whose you are – wonder and awe will surely follow.
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Give what you have to where you’re drawn. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke often of the paralysis of analysis – gathering so many facts and studies that one ends up overwhelmed and unable to do anything (someone – perhaps MLK – also suggested that this dynamic was intimately intertwined with white middle class/ wealth privilege…). Get over it, roll up your sleeves, and get with it – from that wonder-filled place of knowing who/Whose you are.
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Trust God for the increase. Ken Medema sings that hope is believing/trusting in spite of the evidence…and then watching evidence change.
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In all things, give thanks.
THERE’S a project for the dog days of August!
July 24, 2009
A thought or two about prayer in the midst of summer heat and short tempers among the neighbors (and some staff) at the Urban Ministry Center:
In prayer, even more than in the other ways we deal with our experiences, we must be honest with ourselves. The familiar world around us and the even more familiar world inside us simply must be granted their full reality. We must face the fact that we wish had the money someone else has - and the fact that sometimes we wish the other would lose those riches. We must acknowledge that we feel very frightened about whether we can really do our job…and, in these days, whether we’ll hold onto it even if we can do it! We must admit that we really loved a person(s) who turned against us and not pretend we did not in order to ease the pain of losing him /her. Pleasure, pains, gnawing doubts, secret satisfactions or dissatisfactions about ourselves, difficulties or delights of any kind with ourselves and others must all be admitted. Each of us has some remarkable configuration of inner and outer qualities that no one else has. We learn about ourselves in our interior listening, in our responses to what Ann and Barry Ulanov long ago called “our own primary speech”.
Prayer is also about relinquishing attachments. It helps us to go beyond fear, which is an attachment, and beyond hope, which is another form of attachment. It’s a way of reminding myself about the nature of the world and the nature of life…not on a mental level, but on a deep experiential level. In praying, I stop trying to control life and may recognize that I belong to life. Prayer is a relinquishing of the sole ownership of life.
To pray
is to know
how to stand still
and to dwell upon
a word
Abraham Heschel
Suzanne Zuercher writes of active contemplation, a spiritual stance of mindfulness:
· Awareness of your patterns, without judgment.
· Intention to invite your unknown and disowned parts to come forth.
· Readiness to stay present while doing the things most difficult for you.
July 17, 2009
Let Me Live Grace-fully - Ted Loder
Thank you, Lord,
for this season
of sun and slow motion,
of games and porch sitting,
of picnics and light green fireflies
on heavy purple evenings;
and praise for slight breezes.
It’s good, God,
as the first long days of your creation.
Let this season be for me
a time of gathering together the pieces
into which my busyness has broken me.
O God, enable me now
to grow wise through reflection,
peaceful through the song of the cricket,
recreated through the laughter of play.
Most of all, Lord,
let me live easily and grace-fully for a spell,
so that I may see other souls deeply,
share in a silence unhurried,
listen to the sound of sunlight and shadows,
explore barefoot the land of forgotten
dreams and shy hopes,
and find the right words to tell
another who I am.
July 10, 2009
A powerful reflection on vision and hope by Gordon Cosby:
Each of us lives by some vision - perhaps a depressing vision, or a very limited vision, or a vision that everything is going to pieces. But each of us lives by a vision, conscious or unconscious. Should it be a dark vision moving toward disintegration and chaos, we will be fearful. If it is a larger vision, a universal vision, a vision of the kingdom, and we really believe that it is going to take place, we will be filled with hope.
The biblical vision, the vision of the Shalom, is the vision of the totality. God is the God of a people called to be a blessing to all the nations, all tribes, all combinations of people. No one is going to be excluded. All are moving toward this Shalom. Everybody shares and participates, is a part of it - no one is left out. This vision is one of universal justice and peace….
In reality, we are not separate individuals, as we often feel ourselves to be. We are meshed, we are intertwined, we flow into and out of one another and all others. There is no way to fix the boundaries. The Christ who flows into us is simultaneously flowing into the billions of the world’s people. Where do we end and they begin? Millions of cells in the human body make up the body’s totality. All are working harmoniously on behalf of the whole, unless some of the cells become sick or cancerous. Each of us is part of God’s total people, and we cannot separate ourselves from the totality.
Until awareness of this universal belonging dawns upon us we are a hindrance to the human family. It is a great day when the boundaries drop. We are part of others, and they are a part of us. We are constantly flowing into them. We cannot protect ourselves from their sickness and pain and brokenness. Nor can others protect themselves from ours. All become united. The common life of humanity is not an ideal, not something that would be just wonderful if we could but realize it. The universal quality of life happens to be a reality, and we utterly defeat ourselves when we violate that premise. We can live in the illusion of separateness, but it is an illusion.
The overall vision of God and the kingdom gives assurance that all of humanity is going to be freed from its present bondage and is going to be reconciled with the source of its life - God - and with one another. And each individual or cell in the body will know total, inner reconciliation and total fulfillment of all of its potential…. A basic question, of course, is how often or how deeply do we see this vision as really happening so that we live by it? We say the prayer, ‘Thy kingdom come,’ but when we pray do we see it as happening? Or as we say, ‘Thy kingdom come,’ do we feel that everything is going to pieces? Do we ever feel our prayer moving all of humanity toward the Shalom?
The vision is so fantastic that believing it requires supernatural faith. The nature of our sin is so profound and our alienation is so deep that the vision is seldom taken seriously. I can believe the vision when I am in the midst of my community. But all one has to do to shake that belief is to walk down the streets of Adams Morgan [a section of Washington, DC], down Columbia Road, as I did this morning. I saw at least 10 people - addicted, homeless, hopeless - just as those who work in the neighborhood see them or others like them every hour of the day.
In the midst of all the negative situations and data, there is no easy way to hold that universal vision - the vision that God, using us, is going to usher in the Shalom - that the kingdom is really coming - that one day justice and peace will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Hope is the deep conviction that the vision will come to fruition; the confidence that it will really happen. Let us suppose that we have this conviction, and we want to use the few remaining years of our lives to move the vision forward. What is the power, what kind of leadership, will move it toward its destiny?
Whose vision are you living out of…and into?
July 2, 2009
Once upon a time, the Fourth of July was a national Prayer and Repentance Day -- a solemn occasion for contemplating the tremendous political step taken on that day in 1776, and a serious moment for considering the weight of responsibility we all hold as members of a democratic society. Instead of party time, the Fourth of July and the days surrounding it used to be days for national repentance, humility and heartfelt prayer. The psyche and the soul of America used to take itself much more seriously and considered itself much more humbly.
Humility isn't a trait that has much appeal in our postmodern world. We like to see ourselves as a "can-do" culture -- bursting at the seams with good ideas, good intentions and good results…and we get impatient, as now, when things don’t move toward the better swiftly enough for us. Humility, on the other hand, suggests to us an aroma of helplessness. It is the quality that admits there are things we cannot do, problems we cannot solve, forces we cannot control. This "can-not" admission clashes terribly with our "can-do" arrogance.
Paul's opponents in the Corinthian church had sought to engage the apostle in a good old boasting contest, a battle of one-upsmanship, in order to determine whose words should hold the most authority in the Corinthian church. But Paul doesn't fight fair. He turns the concept of "boasting" upside down, and instead of laying claim to all his great works or listing all his accomplishments, he will boast only of his "weakness." "Whenever I am weak," Paul boasts, "then I am strong" (II COR 12.10).
How can we hope to understand such a peculiar, paradoxical assertion?
-- Why is it that we look back at the leanest, cruelest years of the Great Depression and see in them the time of greatest strength in our communities and families?
-- Why is it that we recall our single greatest naval defeat, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and see exhibited in it the greatest spirit and loyalty of this nation?
-- Why is it that we remember the darkest, most evil years of legalized segregation, discrimination and Jim Crow and see in them the greatest demonstrations of love, commitment, bravery and selflessness among the Civil Rights workers of all colors?
Do we now have a glimmer of understanding, that when we are weak, we are made strong? Only when we keep our true frailty directly in front of our eyes can we keep a clear vision of ourselves and our mission…and an appropriate, responsible perspective on our democratic society.