Thursday Thoughts
Detour
by Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton on 09/12/24
It typically takes me 5 minutes to drive from my house to the church building and about 24 minutes to walk the same route. This week, however, my drive has doubled in length while Pontiac Ave is under construction. I’ve been in Cranston long enough that I feel justified in complaining about having to drive 10 minutes to get to work. But, I won’t! Instead, I want to reflect for a moment on the new things I saw while driving through the neighborhood on a detour. I did not realize there was an old cemetery on the other side of Pontiac. There is also a cute little free library that matches the house it belongs to! I haven’t stopped to check out the book selection yet, but I will. There are also so many lovely flowers in bloom in the yards I’ve driven past and some patio lights I need to further research.
It is so easy to shut out the world around us when we are on our regular routes. Have you ever had the experience of driving somewhere and realizing part way through the drive that you were on autopilot and not thinking about your location at all? I know I have!
Faith can be like this too. We settle into our “regular routes” of prayer or church and then we realize that we haven’t seen the world around us in a while. I think it is really easy in a faith community to fall into regular routes. I mean, who has the energy for new things all the time? Not me! But then a detour pops up - the pandemic, pastoral transition, deaths, the pipe falling out of the organ (!!!) - and the Spirit puts up a DETOUR sign. We might initially be uncomfortable on a new route we didn’t choose, but then hopefully we can look around and see whatever new sights the Spirit places in front of us.
PMBC has had a few detours these past five years (and certainly many more in the 119 years prior). Each of you has had your own detours in your lives. I’ve been here for some of them. And in each space where life has thrown up the orange cones, I also can attest that the Spirit has shown you new sights.
Ephesians 1 includes a prayer for its readers: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power” (1:17-19).
This year, as we approach the 125th anniversary of our congregation, the year in which we celebrate and join in with God’s Spirit working through us, I pray that we have the kinds of detours that give us opportunity for the eyes of our hearts to be enlightened. And when the detours come, because they always do, that our hope also increases as we live into the workings of God’s power here at PMBC and around the world.
Blessings,
Pastor Amy
Hearing God Speak
by Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton on 08/29/24
Above you see a picture of St. Julian of
Norwich and her cat. I have written about Julian before, but I’m not sure if
I’ve ever mentioned the fact that she had no children but did have a cat. That factoid
isn’t entirely relevant to today’s Thursday’s Thoughts, except to say that
sometimes the people we are told shouldn’t have a voice (childless cat ladies)
often have uniquely illuminating and beautiful things to say. As an anchoress
and the author of the earliest known book written in English by a woman, Julian
had uniquely illuminating and beautiful things to say.
She’s known for her images of God as mother and for her prayerful declaration that all shall be well. I’ve written about both of these before. What I want to spend a minute on today is the prayer she prayed before she had the visions that led to her writing Showings. In that prayer Julian asked God for three things. First, to “have recollection of Christ’s passion.” Second, she wanted a bodily sickness. And third, she wanted three “wounds”: “the wound of contrition, the wound of compassion and the wound of longing with my will for God.”[1] Now, I’m not sure I would ever ask for a bodily illness, but as Julian tells her story it was when she received this sickness and thought she was going to die that she received profound visions from God. Julian then spent the rest of her life contemplating and writing about these visions.
Taken as a whole, her three requests show us a woman who purposefully opened herself to receiving God’s presence. She wanted contrition, compassion, and a longing for God. Contition, compassion, and a longing for God seem like a pretty good way to open our listening ears to hear God speak, don’t they?
Psalm 42 begins with the words, “As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (vv. 1-2). The psalmist goes on to bemoan the struggles of life before turning to God’s profound, abundant, enlivening goodness. “By day,” they write, “the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life” (v. 8).
Sometimes God speaks to us without us asking for it - but Julian shows us that we can also pray for God to make us open to hearing God’s voice! We don’t have to just wait around and wonder if and when God will speak.
What virtues do you need in order to be open to hearing God’s voice? Do you need more compassion like Julian? Do you need more curiosity or imagination? Do you need more love for neighbor so you can hear God speak through others? Pray for those things!
A seminary preaching professor of mine used to say, “Sure, God speaks through our sermons, but isn’t it better to give the Spirit a fair shake by preparing first?” Isn’t it also better to give the Spirit a fair shake by preparing our lives and hearts to hear the Spirit speaking?!
This week I’m praying for patience and hope so that I might be more open to God’s voice. What will you pray for?
Blessings,
Pastor Amy
PS - Last week while camping I reread Claire Gilbert’s I, Julian: The Fictional Autobiography of Julian of Norwich. I highly recommend this book!
[1] Julian of Norwich, Showings, translated by Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Mahwah,
New Jersey: Paulist, 1978), 127.
The Spirit Speaking in Other Voices
by Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton on 08/22/24
As I am resting on the West Coast this week, I leave you Barbara Brown Taylor’s words of encouragement that we might be open to hearing the Spirit speak to us through the voices of others.
Blessings as you listen for the Spirit this week!
Pastor Amy
Excerpt from “Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others”
“‘I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.’ That is something else Jesus says in John’s Gospel. He does not elaborate, but I like imagining the God of many sheep, many folds, many favorites, many mansions. This is how far my holy envy has brought me: from fearing that Jesus will be mad at me for smelling other people’s roses to trusting that Jesus is the Way that embraces all ways. Because there is only one of me, I can only walk one way at a time, but that does not prevent me from believing that other people might be walking their ways with equal devotion and good will.
No one owns God. God alone knows what is good. For reasons that will never be entirely clear, God has a soft spot for religious strangers, both as agents of divine blessing and recipients of divine grace–to the point that God sometimes chooses one of them over people who believe they should by all rights come first. This is a great mystery, but it does nothing to obscure the great commandment. In every circumstance, regardless of outcome, the main thing Jesus has asked me to do is to love God and my neighbor as religiously as I love myself. The minute I have that handled, I will ask for my next assignment. For now my hands are full.”[1]
[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others (New York: Harber
Collins, 2019), 120.
The Wild Child
by Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton on 08/08/24
As I’ve been reflecting on the Spirit this week, I have been reminded again and again that the Spirit is no tame creature! We often picture her as a dove, which feels peaceful, but Scripture also pictures the Spirit as fire! Not only did the Spirit fall as flames of fire at Pentecost, but it also led the Israelites out of slavery as a pillar of fire in the nighttime darkness.
God’s Spirit appeared as fire as a sign that God was present with God’s people. Numbers 9:15-16 recounts the day the tabernacle was set up (the temporary version of the Temple that traveled the wilderness with the Israelites for 40 years), when God’s Spirit came and dwelt in it in the form of fire.
Fires might be peaceful to sit in front of while camping, but fires are also powerful - think of a forest or kitchen fire. When we picture the Spirit as flames of fire we are reminded that God’s Spirit moves with power as it will - often in new and surprising ways and always outside our control. The Holy Spirit is “like the wild child of the Trinity, anywhere and everywhere moving, calling forth, and stirring things up…She is untamable, full of possibilities and creative potential”![1]
What we can remember is that when we can’t see a way forward, when we wonder where God is at work or even if God is at work, the Spirit moves with freedom and power. While we might not think there is any way the Spirit can work, the same Spirit who came as a pillar of fire and led an enslaved people towards unbelievable freedom can also find a new way forward for us. The history of the peoples of God has shown over and over that our imaginations are always smaller than the power of God’s Spirit.
Where are you needing the Spirit to set up camp and remind you that you are loved by the creator of the universe? What mazes or traps are you caught in that you need the Spirit to light herself on fire and show you the way forward? What new movements do we need the Spirit to fall on as flames of fire - giving us courage to step forward into our futures knowing the Spirit lights the way?
Whatever our answers are, the Spirit’s power is deeper, and broader, and wider than our answers!
This week my prayer for you is that you see the Spirit’s light and feel the Spirit’s heat, even when she shows up in surprising and new ways.
Blessings,
Pastor Amy
PS - read these powerful words on the Spirit written by the 12th century German mystic, Hildegaard of Bingen:
“I, the highest and fiery power, have kindled every living spark and I have breathed out nothing that can die…I flame above the beauty of the fields; I shine in the waters; in the sun, the moon and the stars, I burn. And by means of the airy wind, I stir everything into quickness with a certain invisible life which sustains all…I, the fiery power, lie hidden in these things and they blaze from me.”[2]
[1] Loida I. Martell-Otero, Zaida Maldonado Pérez, and Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, Latina Evangélicas: A Theological Survey from the Margins (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2013), 14.
[2] Hildegaard of Bingen, Hildegaard of Bingen: Mystical Writings, trans. Robert Carver, ed. Fiona Bowie and Oliver Davies (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 91-93.
"The Breath of Life"
by Rev. Dr. Amy Chilton on 08/01/24
Last year my tallest sunflower was 9.5 feet
tall. This year’s sunflower has topped that by 3 feet! My garden has struggled
with bugs this year and some of my crops haven’t produced like I want them to
(especially my okra and hot peppers), but my sunflowers and eggplant are
reminding me that this good earth was created for abundance.
Have you come to expect a weekly garden reflection?! Growing up I heard a lot of youth ministers use sports analogies at every turn. I was a competitive swimmer, but team sports that involve throwing, catching, running, or kicking are totally not my thing. Not because I think they are bad in some way - just because I’m no good at them and am not personally interested. But, those youth ministers saw God’s presence in something they loved and they shared it, and that I appreciate.
One of the Psalms attributed to King David opens with these words:
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,
the world and those who live in in it;
For
he has founded it on the seas,
and
established it on the hills. (Psalm 24:1-2)
I am convinced that the Lord is present and at work throughout all of creation - creation that God spoke into being (Genesis 1) and that God’s Spirit continues to breathe into life. The earth is the Lord’s! Thus, we should be able to see evidence in manifold ways: gardens, sports, yarn, books, etc.
In another Psalm attributed to David, we are
reminded that the Spirit’s presence is so expansive that we will never
accidentally walk our way out of it:
Where
can I go from your spirit?
Or
where can I flee from your presence?
If
I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if
I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If
I take the wings of the morning
and
settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
Even
there your hand shall lead me,
and
your right hand shall hold me fast. (Psalm 139:7-10)
One of my favorite theologians, J?rgen Moltmann, reminds us that the Holy Spirit is God’s breath of life throughout the breadth of the created world. If the Spirit is the breath of life in all of creation, then we should expect to find God’s Spirit in many diverse ways in our life experiences: in plants, and sports, and yarn, and sunsets, and friends. And we should expect that the Spirit will show up for others in ways we don’t expect - afterall, even “other people” can’t walk out of Spirit’s presence.
Moltmann defines the experience of meeting the Spirit in creation as “an awareness of God in, with and beneath the experience of life, which gives us an assurance of God’s fellowship, friendship, and love.”[1] We Baptists are certainly a “people of the Book,” who study God’s word to find how God met our ancestors of the faith and spoke truth into their times and spaces. And we let that Scripture reading shape how we understand God at work in the world. And we also meet God where God’s Spirit shows up in our daily lives and the lives of others. If God is creator of all that is, creativity is a sign of God’s Spirit at work in the world. If God is love, then acts of love are signs of God’s Spirit at work in the world.
This week, as you go about your work, pay attention to the signs of God’s presence amongst us. And when you happen upon any signs of God’s presence, take a deep breath, breathing in the Spirit that enlivens this world, and give thanks for all God’s work.
Come Spirit, meet us here!
Blessings,
Pastor Amy
[1] J?rgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, trans. Margaret Kohl
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 17.
