Take nothing for the journey

Wednesday, September 23, 2020      

Memorial of Saint Pius, Priest of Pietrelcina (The Franciscan, Padre Pio)  (today’s lectionary)

Take nothing for the journey

Your word endures forever and is as firm as the heavens.

It is your law that I love.

I am yearning for stability. Old man me, I look back and pretend that life was more stable then. Politics were more civil, my body was strong. Our kids grew and grew and when everyone was asleep, then Margaret or I would take them one at a time in our arms and sing, “I’ll love you forever, I’ll love you for always. As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.”

I’m watching a squirrel hang upside down by her tail, eating sunflower seeds. I thought they were for the birds, but she doesn’t think so. She does this all the time.

Now she’s had enough, I guess, stuffed enough into her cheeks, and she’s up sitting immodestly up on the pole, chewing as fast as she can. Two chickens catch what she drops.

I think our afternoon squirrel is anxious about getting caught, but that’s probably because I’m anxious myself about getting caught UP in what amount to momentary conflicts – political, relational, theological. My buddy Dan sent Robin Williams to me this morning in his Chiara Light newsletter, giving me space to rest and laugh instead of cry or moan-and-groan. Listen: only two minutes to still your soul.

Take nothing for the journey, Jesus told his friends.

Not a walking stick, not a sack, no food, no money

Wherever you are welcomed, stay there. If you are not welcomed, shake the dust off your feet.

And with Jesus’ simple but urgent guidance Jesus’ disciples set out, proclaiming the good news and healing people everywhere they went.

Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, better known as Padre Pio, began his healing ministry in 1925, and opened “la casa sollievo della sofferenza” in 1956. His “home for the relief of suffering” continues to touch bodies and souls. Learning from his own often unstable life, the padre became famous for his simple (but urgent) guidance for spiritual peace. Each piece has great merit, but if taken together … mamma mia!

1. Confession every week
2. Communion every day
3. Lectio divina (spiritual reading)
4. Meditation (often called centering prayer)
5. Examen (general examination of conscience once or twice a day)

Every word of God is tested

He is a shield to those who take refuge in him.

In the morning, when I rise … in the morning, when I rise, I pray and shower and begin the day. News on my phone breaks in on me. I don’t have to read it, but I often do. This morning Richard Rohr suggested I take in less news for the next few months. I agreed with him, but one minute later a headline was too much for me to resist.

Fr. Richard is right. Fr. Pio is right. There are no options here.

Here is some of Rohr’s “simple but urgent guidance” to get us through:

Stand as a sentry at the door of your senses for these coming months, so “the blood-dimmed tide” cannot make its way into your soul.

If you allow it for too long, it will become who you are, and you will no longer have natural access to the “really deep well” that Etty Hillesum returned to so often and that held so much vitality and freedom for her.

If you will allow, I recommend for your spiritual practice for the next four months that you impose a moratorium on exactly how much news you are subject to—hopefully not more than an hour a day of television, social media, internet news, magazine and newspaper commentary, and/or political discussions. It will only tear you apart and pull you into the dualistic world of opinion and counter-opinion, not Divine Truth, which is always found in a bigger place.

Instead, I suggest that you use this time for some form of public service, volunteerism, mystical reading from the masters, prayer—or, preferably, all of the above.  You have much to gain now and nothing to lose. Nothing at all. And the world—with you as a stable center—has nothing to lose, and everything to gain. 

 

       (Proverbs 30, Psalm 119, Mark 1, Luke 9)

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