Proper 13 (Year B 2021): Litany for Getting Full

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Hi friends. I’m in a particularly rough summer, dealing with some of the worst anxiety of my life and struggling to find the creative spark. It’s coming later in the week these days. I’m grateful for this weekly practice of Lectio Divina with the week’s Lectionary, and tapping into goodness that I always seem to find here, even if I’d rather post these to you on Tuesday rather than Thursday. Thanks for being here with me.

I’m noting this week’s Lectionary passages from 2 Samuel 11, Exodus 16, and John 6 most particularly today.

King David had an entire kingdom available to him, all the women and sexual pleasure he could imagine, and yet he couldn’t be satisfied; he had to steal more for himself, raping Bathsheba and murdering her husband to gain ownership of her.

The Hebrews in the Desert (Exodus 12) couldn’t get full on plain old heavenly manna. They needed more to be satisfied. More miracles were necessary to fill their bellies up.

In John 6, Jesus has just finished feeding a crowd of people a miraculous meal at which they could eat to fullness, and a little while later they are still chasing him around hoping for satisfaction. He tells them “I am the bread of life…” (John 6:35).

As my own interpretation of the sayings of Jesus has evolved, I’ve come to recognize the invitation inside of all his statements. When Jesus says, “I am the bread of life,” I interpret that to mean that I too can come to understand myself as being the bread of life; that I too can come to find satisfaction, full-bellied and abundant, with the resources innately available to me. The “true bread from heaven” is within me as well, waiting to be acknowledged and accessed.

In my own life I struggle with finding contentment, with being satisfied. Unmanaged, I tend to focus on what I regret, on the choice I didn’t make. I recognize this tendency in myself, and it’s part of why gratitude practice is so profoundly necessary for me. Appreciation for *what is* must be part of my grounding practice. It helps me remember that I *am full* and that the bread of heaven is within me.

Here is a prayer for us as we work on these skills of remembering and accessing the bread of life, as modeled by the Christ, that is already within us. Hopefully it will be good medicine for our longing. 

God, most of us go our whole lives thinking we are empty
And can only be filled by something outside of us.
We search outside of ourselves, inattentive to the Divine within,
Looking to meet our needs by inferior means;
Only to find ourselves thirsty again,
Hungry for the next junk meal.

Litany for Giving Back

Hi! Most of my litanies appear on my Patreon as part of my 2019 #yearofwritingsustainably, but every now and again I’m posting one for everyone. This is my gift that I hope you, dear reader, will use and enjoy and share widely.

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If you are unaware of the history of the Thanksgiving holiday, now is a great time to educate yourself. This prayer is borne out of the hope that we can resist colonization's forces in our minds, dinner tables, and conversations; making way for a new level of gratitude that resists entitlement, white supremacy, and earth-exploitation.

God, we acknowledge that everything we think we possess,
Was always yours to begin with;
That the land we dwell in was inhabited by Native Peoples before us,
Who minded its welfare and appreciated it;
That the water we use daily has passed through plant, animal, and human,
Before it ever reached our bodies;
That the food on our tables is a gift of the earth,
Dependent, as we are, upon the earth’s bounty and health.

We didn’t do anything to deserve what we have been given,
And yet we strive to own and consume ever more and more.
Our consumption
Is consuming us.
Our destruction
Is destroying us.  

We waste our blessings,
And toss away our gifts,
Then complain that we don’t have enough,
And pretend we can’t share. 

Awaken gratitude in our hearts, Oh God,
That we may become mindful people;
Mindful of the least privileged among us,
Mindful of future generations,
Mindful of history’s lessons,
Mindful of the earth.

All the resources of earth are yours, God.
And all the people, plants, and creatures.
Every good and perfect thing
Sprang from your imagination.
So we open our hands
And give them all back to you,
In hopes that we might come to know wisdom
Once we are empty.

Amen

Litany for Appreciation

Happy Thanksgiving Week! Everyone is talking about my favorite things this week: Gratitude. But I actually want to talk about the thing I consider the precursor to gratitude: Appreciation.

I have heard and read a lot of spiritual teachers from many different backgrounds say something to this effect: if you can get your mind/attitude/energy into a mode of appreciation, you can change your life because then you start to change how you perceive your life. Teachers from all walks of life say: appreciation is a precursor to gratitude, and gratitude is a precursor to love.

A patron recently called my attention to this passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which we see this rare attitude of appreciation illuminated:

11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus[a] was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten lepers[b] approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14 When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’[c] feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

Ten are healed. One expresses appreciation. And I get the sense that when Jesus says “your faith has made you well” he means more than just physical wellness. I have a hunch that Jesus is acknowledging this attitude of gratitude to be a deeper inroad to wholeness; and that, somehow, appreciation is a bold exercise of faith. But here’s a thing I notice: to appreciate something, we first have to be paying attention to it. And attention is a costly thing - it takes intention and practice and deep looking. It takes what many spiritual teachers call Mindfulness.

In her book _Grateful_, Diana Butler Bass says, “Gratitude is not only an emotion; it is something we do. It is like tending a garden. It takes planting and watering and weeding. It takes time and attention. It takes learning. It takes routine. But, eventually, the ground yields, shoots come forth, and thanksgiving blooms.”

I wonder if all ten of those ex-lepers felt gratitude, but only one had any experience with doing gratitude? And if the teachers are right and the roadmap looks like this: (Attention → Appreciation → Gratitude → Love), then what does that mean for how we go about cultivating love and loving action in our lives? It’s a pretty good question, I think. Here’s a prayer for the roadmap:

God, as we seek to live lives of intentional love,
We acknowledge the importance of paying attention
To the deep self,
To the external lesson,
To the need and the want,
To the fulfillment and the calling,
To the disease and the healing,
To the existence and the blessing.

We are learning how to cultivate and grow love and loving action:
Starting with attention and observation,
Moving into appreciation and thankfulness,
Letting gratitude shift us into love.

We know that love is the foundation of the universe -
That the deepest particle,
The inmost kernel,
The alpha and the omega, is love.

But sometimes, in the midst of everything happening to us,
Love is kind of hard to get to.
So we are learning to start somewhere even simpler:
By paying attention,
By offering appreciation,
By letting appreciation lead to gratitude.

And we know that if we can get in gratitude’s groove and vicinity
It can show us the way to love,
Even in murky waters,
Even in complicated situations.

So, boldly, resisting the voices that tell us to duck and run,
We do our first act of faith,
Which is to appreciate even the meagerest of blessings,
And offer praise and thanksgiving. Amen