Words can’t fully capture what is holy, but they can try.
Over the last few years my pastors and fellow parishioners at CPC have paid conspicuous attention to expanding the church’s contemplative ministry. We have a new labyrinth and gatherings around it. Each month, we have a service devoted to healing and wholeness led by pastor Karen Sapio and Rev. Tina Blair. We have a soulful Jazz Vespers program about every six weeks, and it has been growing in popularity even as it has become an on-line virtual event. We sponsor occasional retreats and our associate pastor Brian Gaeta-Symonds offers opportunity for spiritual direction. And on Friday mornings, we gather for Centering Prayer.
To this mix, I am emboldened to add some bits of writing. To be forthright about this, writing about contemplative religion involves taking some risks. I am not inherently a contemplative person, and so these meditations about meditation will involve your seeing a bit of my imperfect, tentative, sometimes painful grasping for the holy.
Also, writing is, itself, a contemplative practice. It involves taking the imperfect and incomplete symbols we call words and trying to match them to the infinity of the holy spirit. Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest whose powerful writing has influenced seekers and doers for a generation, has written, “All spiritual language is, by necessity, metaphor and symbol.”
My vocabulary isn’t vast enough, and so when I try to write about my experiences, conversations, and arguments with God, it’s all a work in process. Through writing, I want to push myself. Mystery, as Rohr says, is not about something you can’t understand but something that you can “endlessly understand.”
I’ll take the risk of exposing some of my approximations of theology.
These posts will also involve a bit of teaching. I’ve been a teacher for more than four decades, and I’ll share some history, descriptions, and meditative practices that seem interesting, sometimes a bit playful.
Finally, this first post is an invitation. I hope that this spot in the CPC virtual space will feature multiple voices. Please let me know if you would like to wordsmith along.
—Chuck
Join us online on Friday mornings @ 8 for 25 minutes of silent meditation. Register for the online chapel here or send me a message and I’ll see that you are registered.