Welcome
Posted by marjoriegeorge in Uncategorized on January 6, 2011
Welcome to ReflectionsOnline, the spiritual formation pages of The Episcopal Diocese of West Texas.
Our pages are designed to offer you tools and resources for your spiritual journey. To view all the articles that have been posted on this site, see the Articles and Topics list on the right. To view all posts, see the Categories entry on the right.
For more tools and resources, click on the tabs above.
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We welcome your comments.
Marjorie George, Editor, ReflectionsOnline marjorie.george@dwtx.org.
Riding the Bus
Posted by marjoriegeorge in Holy Spirit, The Spiritual Life on May 23, 2012
by Marjorie George
“Let’s get on the 550 and pray for the city,” said my friend. The 550 VIA bus route circles the city of San Antonio continuously on the inner loop. 
“Great idea,” I said, whipping out my iPhone calendar. “Ok, we could gather everyone who is interested and meet on the third. Three pm? And I will start talking to some diocesan committees and see who will sponsor us. You know, this might be news worthy – should I call the Express News?”
My friend, because she is my friend, looked at me with no acknowledgment whatsoever of my babbling. “I was thinking this Sunday,” she said. “You got a bus schedule?”
It wasn’t until later in the day that I realized what had happened. I had witnessed someone responding to the prompting of the Holy Spirit with a simple, “Sure.”
Forget committee meetings, no need for an imprimatur – the Spirit speaks, my friend listens and acts. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth,” Christ had told his disciples (Acts 1:8).
This coming Sunday, when we celebrate again the day of Pentecost, we affirm as a church that we don’t go it alone. “I will be with you always,” Christ had said. “You will be clothed with power from on high,” he had said (Luke 24:49). He was not speaking only of the institutional church – which did not exist at the time – but of us individuals. Listen to the story: “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (Acts 2:3-4). Did you get that? “As the Spirit gave them ability.”
My friend’s ministry, my ministry, and your ministry, were validated at our baptisms: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit.” By water and the Holy Spirit we are raised to new life, given inquiring and discerning hearts, courage to will and persevere, a spirit to know and love God, and the gifts of joy and wonder in all his works (Book of Common Prayer pg 308).
We are the inheritors of Pentecost. As God’s people, we are empowered to “prophesy, see visions, dream dreams” said the prophet Joel, and the newly-commissioned Peter repeats that – to the crowd assembled in Jerusalem on that ecstatic day and to us (see Acts chapter 2).
So release the red balloons, sing praises up and down the church aisles, and go forth from this Sunday clutching that full portion of the Holy Spirit that is given to each of us. In boldness and with the sure and certain knowledge of your holy calling, get on the bus – or wherever the Spirit’s prompting is leading you. “For the promise is for you, for your children, for all who are far away, and for everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”
Marjorie George is editor of Reflections magazine and ReflectionsOnline. Reach her at marjorie.george@dwtx.org or leave a comment below.
Repacking
Posted by marjoriegeorge in Uncategorized on May 16, 2012
By Marjorie George
When I was a girl, we played a game called “Grandma’s Trunk.” It went like this: we all sat in a circle and the first girl said, “I packed my grandmother’s trunk and into it I put an apple.” The second girl said, “I packed my grandmother’s trunk and into it I put an apple and a ball.” The third girl said, “I packed my grandmother’s trunk and into it I put an apple, a ball, and a cat.” You see the alphabetical progression here.
The game ended when someone couldn’t remember everything that had been packed into the trunk before it got to her. It was a sweet game in a time of innocence; must have been at Girl Scouts we were playing.
So now I am all grown up and the journey is no longer Grandmother’s — it is mine. Instead of a trunk, I find that I have loaded up a backpack. Only it’s not filled with sweetness and innocence – it’s filled with a load of rocks with names like anger, bitterness, criticism (given and received), and despair.
I am aware that Jesus is with me on this journey, and every once in a while he leans over and says to me, “You don’t have to carry that, you know.” And I say, “Yeah, I know.” But I keep on carrying it.
“You can put that down, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
But I don’t put it down.
Oh, how we love our burdens. How quick we are to take offense at the other and shove a little woundedness into our backpack. How easily does a conversation turn from discussion to heated argument, leaving us with a handful of anger. Add it to the backpack. How little it takes to turn a few missteps into despair of ever making forward progress. Shove that into the backpack, too. Stones, rocks, boulders – it just keeps getting heavier.
Sometimes we dwell on that part of our theology that calls us to be burden-bearers. A popular term has arisen for it in recent years: wounded healers. How proudly we wear our scars, tell our stories of misery, and call it “sharing.” And it is true that often the way to Christ is through dark and lonely and painful places. But sometimes we secretly hold a slight contempt for those who have not suffered sufficiently to be part of the redeemed.
The burden, however, is not that I have suffered but that I refuse to move beyond the suffering that exists no longer in reality but only in my mind. I want to need the medicine long after I am healed. Some insidious voice tells me that I don’t get to put down the backpack until I have carried it long enough to have permanent curvature of the spine so I will never forget how much it hurt once.
There is no such thing as “cheap grace” we say. Really? ‘Cause I thought grace was free. Perhaps the most honest prayer we can pray is from the Ash Wednesday liturgy: “Forgive us for our failure to commend the faith that is in us” (Book of Common Prayer pg 268).
So I pick up the backpack and trudge on down the road of my spiritual journey, forgetting that when Christ raised Lazarus, the first thing he told him to do was to take off the grave cloths (Jn 11:44). 
I need to repack. If I must carry a backpack, let me carry one that overflows with grace, with the sure and certain knowledge that I really don’t need to suffer long enough in order to be good enough. Let me recognize, with writer Henri Nouwen, that I can “Gently push aside and silence the many voices that question my goodness and trust that I will hear the voice of blessing,“ (from Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World). Let me know that I am beloved of God, and that what God wishes for me is a journey full of joy, overflowing with expectation, guided by hope, and empty of bogus backpacks.
Marjorie George is editor of Reflections magazine and ReflectionsOnline. Reach her at marjorie.george@dwtx.org.
I’d like to teach the world to sing
Posted by marjoriegeorge in Uncategorized on May 9, 2012
This article is from the Spring/Summer issue of Reflections magazine, the printed counterpart to this blogsite. Read the entire issue online by clicking here. Read more about prayer by clicking here. Current subscribers should receive their printed magazine by May 11. If you are not receiving the printed magazine and would like to (there is no charge), send your request to barbara.duffield@dwtx.org.
By Marjorie George
Do you remember the Coca Cola tv commercial from the early 70’s that pictured several dozen wholesome young people from around the world — young people from all nationalities and all colors and all ethnic groups – standing on a hilltop and singing together “I’d like to teach the world to sing”? It was an ad that just made you feel good, made you smile, made you want to be nice to your neighbor – better even than Christmas. All over the world, implied the ad, people were being brought together by Coke, their voices joined, their harmony lifting to the heavens.
Now take the Coke bottle out of the kids’ hands, put rosaries in some, Bibles in others, prayer books over there, kids in yarmulkes just here. That’s my image of what happens every day when around the world the faithful are at prayer. As the sun moves across the earth, someone is always approaching his prayer bench and someone is always ending his prayers. The voice of God’s people is ever before him, ever imploring his mercy, ever praising him. Like a river that circles the world, we dip into this stream as we open our prayer books and as we close them. I never need fear that my prayers are not heard; for someone, somewhere, is always at prayer, and my meager stammerings join a throng that is never silenced.
Monastics, monks and nuns around the world, are ever at prayer. In Western culture, we are prone to undervalue this, seeing them as alone at prayer in their cells, producing nothing tangible.
But “the monk departs far from the world not because he hates it, but because he loves it,” explains the website Monachos.net, a site dedicated to monastic and liturgical study. “In this way he will, through his prayer, help the world more in those matters that are, being humanly impossible, only possible by God’s intervention.” For the sake of the world, monastics separate themselves from the rest of the world in order to pray unceasingly for the world.
Imagine those satellite photos of the earth turning, the light — that we behold as sunrise and sunset – moving with the rotation. Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer roll over the earth without ceasing: prayers for mercy, prayers for healing, prayers for God’s intervention in his world, prayers for you and prayers for me.
Apart from this kinship, we can never “pray without ceasing,” as St. Paul admonishes (1 Thessalonians 5.17). As part of it, we are never not in the presence of The Almighty. The song continues, and our voices join in.
Bonus for reading this far: See the Coke ad on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib-Qiyklq-Q Read the story of how the ad came to be at http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_hilltop.html.
Marjorie George is the editor of ReflectionsOnline and Reflections the magazine. Reach her at marjorie.george@dwtx.org.
Teach us to Pray
Posted by marjoriegeorge in prayer on May 4, 2012
The Spring/Summer 2012 issue of Reflections magazine – on the topic of prayer - is now online. Our favorite writers offer us articles about their perspectives on prayer and talk about their own prayer lives. Click here to get to the entire issue and to our special online presentation.
This article by Bishop Reed is from that issue (under the title of (Still) Practicing Prayer.)
by the Rt. Rev. David Reed
I worry about my prayer life. It’s rarely where I think it ought to be: not as rich, deep, or steady as I’d like it to be. But I don’t worry about it nearly as much as I did before I realized that the disciples’ request to Jesus (on behalf of the group), “Lord, teach us to pray,” is, in itself, a prayer (Luke 11:1). It comes halfway through Luke’s Gospel, so the disciples have been following Jesus for quite a while — observing, learning, questioning, practicing.
They would certainly have been praying with him all along the way. And they more than likely grew up praying the prayers of family and synagogue. They would have prayed the Shema from Deuteronomy daily, like their ancestors had for many generations: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (6:4-5).
So the request — “Teach us to pray”— is a prayer arising out of a prayerful life. It expresses a restlessness and a desire for what so many of us desire: a richer, deeper, and steadier habit of prayer.
“Lord, teach us to pray” is a beautiful and honest prayer which Jesus answers by giving them (and us) the Lord’s Prayer. Like the desperate father’s cry to Jesus for the healing of his tormented boy, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief,” it isn’t a movement from nothing to something, but from something to something even more (Mark 9:24).
The desire to “pray better” — unless it is mere wishful thinking or pious posturing — is itself a heartfelt prayer of faith. It expresses not simply honest longing, but trust that God actually wants us to have deeper conversation with him and that he will answer the prayer, in time and in a way that draws us nearer to him (though it may not be at the time or in the way we would like).
As with anyone we love with whom we desire to be in real and meaningful communication, we need to be paying attention — to the other person, and to the time and place. My wife rarely has a good conversation with me about important things when I am rushing to get ready in the morning, preoccupied with the day ahead; I rarely have a good conversation with her at the end of a long day when she just wants to go to sleep.
Finding time to converse with God is not so much about having “enough” time, but about prioritizing and claiming the “right” time when I can be attentive and less distracted. (Of course, God can and does speak through distractions, too, but that’s another story.)
My personal prayer life is grounded in and shaped by the prayers of our Church. I am able to pray just about anywhere, but if I had not learned (and continue to learn) prayer within a worshipping community, I’m not sure that my prayers would be much more than talking to myself.
But as one of our Anglican forefathers observed, “Until we find God in one place, we will find him in no place. But when we have found him in one place, then we will find him in all places.” So the places and times of real prayer, of conversation with God, are as limitless as God. I am still learning this, still practicing, still praying, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
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The Rt. Rev. David Reed is bishop suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas. Respond to this article by leaving a comment below.
The Never-ending Jesus
Posted by marjoriegeorge in Easter 2012 on April 25, 2012
by Marjorie George
Richard Lacayo, observer of the arts and writer for Time magazine, asserts that it was the artist Rembrandt who changed our image of Christ from celestial concept to man on the street. In the 17th century, says Lacayo, the Dutch painter effectively invented Christ as we tend to picture him now – “not as a remote divinity but as the ideal human being, a profoundly complex and gentle man” (“The Halo Effect,” Time, Aug. 15, 2011).
Throughout Rembrandt’s lifetime of painting, his presentation of Christ changed from an otherworldly, remote and divine figure to a consoling Christ, “quieter, more meditative, somebody who would listen,” says Lacayo. He wonders if this shift in perspective is a result of Rembrandt living life – experiencing the death of his beloved wife when she was but 30 years old, the death of three of their four children in infancy, his mounting money problems, his descent into debt. The result, says Lacayo, is that “In Rembrandt’s late, great reckoning with Christ, the natural and the supernatural are one and the same.”
It is exactly this “living life” that the disciples and first followers of Christ are now experiencing in the gospel narratives between the resurrection of Easter Sunday and the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The life they had been living with Jesus is different from the one he calls them to now. Once they had been the followers; now they are in charge. Once the mission had been ethereal, noble, righteous, a cause worth dying for. Now their feet would be sore, their backs would hurt, people would slam doors in their faces, and dying for the cause would no longer be just a theory. 
Do we not find it ironic that the intangible, ghostlike Christ who floats in and out of the disciples’ lives during these 40 days becomes the Christ of their present and future reality? Perhaps we can learn something from scrutinizing those 40 days.
Of the four gospels, only John devotes more than one chapter to the 40 days; he gives it two. (See Matt 28:1-20, Mark 16:2-19, Luke 24:1-53, John 20:1-21:24.) Acts presents the continuation of the saga in 1:1-26. In the stories we do have, we find Christ coming among the disciples most often in their ordinary lives – as they fish, as they walk along the road, as they share a meal, as they pray, as they gather together for comfort and support.
But in these commonplace incidents, we hear the words that become the stuff of church banners and bumper stickers:
“Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them about me.”
“I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
“You are my witnesses.”
“Follow me.”
“I will send the Holy Spirit to help you.”
“Don’t be afraid.”
Easter, we are beginning to find out, was just the beginning. For the disciples – as for us — the rest of the story unfolds in the living-out of our commonplace, sometimes dull, often difficult, lives. As a professor of mine once said, “After the ecstasy, the laundry. “
E. Stanley Jones, the American Methodist writer and missionary to India, says that the disciples “went out not remembering Christ, but experiencing him. He was not a mere fair and beautiful story to remember with gratitude – he was a living, redemptive, actual presence then and there . . . The Jesus of history had become the Christ of experience” (“The Christ of Experience,” in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter, Orbis, 2003).
The lure of Christ calls us; the hope of Christ sustains us; the Spirit of Christ enables us. But the experience of Christ, ah, that is what changes us.
Marjorie George is editor of Reflections magazine and ReflectionsOnline. Reach her at marjorie.george@dwtx.org.
Opportunities 4.11.2012
Posted by marjoriegeorge in Uncategorized on April 11, 2012
For your spiritual journey
Fr. Richard Rohr and The Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC), will host the webcast Franciscan Mysticism: Why is it Unique? on April 21. The webcast will consider the questions “What are the specific characteristics of a Franciscan spirituality? How would Francis and his followers have met God in a way any different than anyone else?” The webcast can be viewed individually or in groups.
For details on the live webcast and its availability for 90 days after the webcast, click here http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/programs/2012webcasts
CAC, founded by Richard Rohr, will host four webcasts in 2012. CAC is a center for education and the promotion of peaceful change in the world, based on the gospels, through contemplation and action. For more on CAC, click here http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/
Transformation and Regeneration highlights the artwork of Patsy and Edwin Sasek. Show hangs through April at Church of Reconciliation, 8900 Starcrest, San Antonio TX 78217. Hours Sundays 8:30 am to 12:30 pm and by appointment 655-2731.
Abbey of the Arts Online retreats http://abbeyofthearts.com/
•Earth as Soul Care Matrix: The Wild Heart of Ministry (ONLINE with Christine Valters Paintner), April 16-May 27, 2012
•Live it to Give it: Essential Practices of Soul Nourishment & Self Care (ONLINE with Kayce S. Hughlett), April 16-May 27, 2012
•The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (ONLINE with Christine Valters Paintner), April 22 – May 19, 2012
Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio TX celebrates Earth Day with “Lessons from Scripture and Earth,” 9:30 am to 3:30 pm. Leaders will be Sr. Sarah Sharkey, O.P. and Sr. Linda Gibler, O. P. Fee is $40. For info and to register: http://www.ost.edu/OblateSite/ContinuingEd/continuingEd.htm
Dark Nights and Doubt: a Failure of Faith or a Failure of Imagination? will be offered at the SOL Center, University Presbyterian Church, San Antonio, April 23, 7-9 pm. Speaker is the Rev. Ronald Rolheiser, President of Oblate School of Theology TUITION: $10, TO REGISTER: 210-732-9927 or upcsa@upcsa.org.
