one lime, two beers, three friends, six cats

dan phillips asked one his blog, "when do you pray?" the wednesday morning discussion group i'm priviliged to enjoy, usually josh and jeff and bradley and me, have all been on trips of some sort or another the past week or two, so this week we were sipping around the question of how we maintain our spiritual disciplines, such as they are, whilst trippin'. not a new question, granted: "how shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?' do we just hang up our harps?

but sometimes the trips are little, or so they seem. i have been in babylonian captivity this week in a very small but effective way. i'm housesitting for a friend who leads a very cluttered life, with televisions in every room, computer moniters galore, and six cats. so last night, into the midst of this confusion (i'm easily confused), come ryan and josh, to share a cheap mexican beer with an expensive co-op lime and to catch up, while keeping the cats company. josh is allergic to cats, so he skipped the beer.

and we're talking all spiritual stuff, being all spiritual guys, and feeling cool and having a good time, and josh is telling ryan about his past year's discovery of deeper and simpler prayer, and i'm telling ryan how pleased i am to have found a friend like josh who is crazy enough to share psalms every morning and evening, when it strikes me full in the forehead that in the clutter of being amongst the cats at 8:00 to drink our beer, we had left out the psalms.

so. we stopped and prayed the psalms together. simple. psalms 141, 16, 62; a passage from the gospel according to luke (4:16-22); the magnificat; the our father.

behold, no longer were we captives, but pilgrims. this morning i found most of the lime on the cutting board by the sink, a little dry from the time in the desert.

"blessed are the peacemakers"

or, if you prefer, "happy are the peacemakers." jesus said it, and it's true, although probably some of us who want to be peacemakers oten thhink that "tired and frustraed are the peacemakers" is more likely true. On the other hand, if there is no peace, perhaps we are really only -eace-wishers, or war-opposers.

if you're serious about becoming a blessed, happy peacemaker, join us for a conversation to help bring that about. we will use jim forest's the ladder of the beatitudes, as well as sharing our own experiences. (The book will be at Village Books at the front desk).

this conversation about peacemaking starts on the 8th of november, a tuesday, at 7:00, at Beatus: the art of prayer, 215 west holly, G-4 (the bellingham hardware building, corner of holly and bay).

antioch, where they were first called christians, or, holy faith

this week i and my good friend josh parrish are in santa fe, new mexico: the royal city of the holy faith of st. francis of assissi. mostly i am visiting old friends, either people or rivers or places. he is finding new friends and checking out st. john's college. we are also vising communities of faith, one of them holy trinity, a parish of the antiochan orthodox church, one of them the church of antioch at santa fe, a parish of the catholic and apostolic church of antioch. josh says they are like second cousins twice removed.

both of them trace their roots back to the first century church in antioch. how they treat, and what they value most, in the tradition they have received from that time are very different. i look at them in terms of paul's analogy of the body in his first letter to the corinthians. the whole, the one holy catholic and apostolic church, is the body, but it "consists not of one member but of many." (12:14, njb).

unfortunately, these cousins don't always respect each other as they should, i'm afraid. we all know that family quarrels are the worst. it reminds me to wonder why antioch was such an important center in the early church, beyond its importance as a market city at the cross roads of the empire. i suspect that the church at antioch fulfilled jesus' prayer in the 17th chapter of the gospel according to john, which condlues with "i have made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and so that i may be in them." (17:26, njb). may we continue to fulfill this prayer, so that the words of the hymn, they will know that we are christians by our love, may be true.