Saturday, September 19, 2020
The Rev. Anne Williamson
Grow
‘Keep growing good’ - those words of encouragement have been offered regularly to me, and to my sister and my cousins, by my Aunt Kate. Aunt Kate is my mother’s older sister and my godmother. I know she has held me in her thoughts and in her prayers my entire life. When I was much younger, ‘growing good’ seemed to be about ‘being’ good, somewhat static. I now think of ‘growing good’ as a practice, and for me part of the practice is thinking about what gives shape and support in my life, to help me flourish or ‘grow good’. Creating a ‘Rule of Life’ and reviewing that Rule of Life regularly is an important part of the practice of ‘growing good’ for me.
When I lived in England, my prayer partner Margaret and I used to go on a day retreat each year, usually in Advent or Lent, and review our Rule of Life together. Creating a Rule of Life may sound a bit daunting, something only for those living a monastic life or ‘saints’, but really it is an opportunity for anyone to take time to evaluate their life and prayerfully consider how to shape their life so that they might grow and flourish.
In Lent 2016, a group from St. John’s joined the Brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in their offering: Growing a rule of life. Over the course of six weeks, we were invited to Be Open, Be Creative, Be Gentle, Be Realistic, Be Patient and Be Flexible*, to grow into a deeper relationship with God, one another, ourselves and Creation. In the words of Br Geoffrey Tristram, “Those rhythms, those disciplines which we have grown and established, will uphold us and support us and strengthen us when we feel that life is very, very difficult.” How do we position ourselves to grow and flourish?
On Thursday we received our weekly produce from local farms, including some lovely gala apples! This reminded me of an exchange between the monk Thomas Merton and one of his students, noted in ‘The Way of Discernment’ by Stephen V. Doughty. Merton posed the question, ‘How does an apple ripen’ and quickly answered it himself ‘It just sits in the sun’. The student, James Finley, pondered this image and many years later wrote ‘A small green apple cannot ripen in one night by tightening all its muscles, squinting its eyes and tightening its jaws in order to find itself the next morning miraculously large, red, ripe and juicy. The apple just sits in the sun. It is naturally positioned to receive the daily nourishment it needs to ripen. This is similar to how we mature in the fullness of God’s life, except we are not naturally positioned like the apple. We must place ourselves where we can receive the light of God, and this is the purpose of spiritual disciplines. Through them we position ourselves to receive the sunlight of God’s grace.’
The apple is already well placed to receive what it needs to flourish…sometimes we have to ‘reposition’ to find what we need to flourish. When we think about ‘growing good’ and flourishing with the aid of a Rule of Life, we are thinking of spiritual disciplines, but in the widest possible definition – those practices which position us and others to receive God’s grace. In her book, ‘An Altar on the World’, Barbara Brown Taylor captures practices which may not seem at first glance to be spiritual or holy, but are ways for the light of God’s grace to shine through, the grace we need to grow and flourish:
To make bread, or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger – these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.
In this strange time, when many of our usual practices are upended or unavailable, I invite you to join me in reimagining former practices or trying new practices that might help place us in the light of God’s grace, that we might grow and flourish, and draw others into the light that they might grow and flourish.
* Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape