Sunday's Gospel
At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them--do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'" Luke 13:1-9
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About This Week's Prompts for Personal Meditation
Like Advent, today's Gospel puts impending apocalypse and the urgent call to repentance in the way of business as usual. Never before has this Gospel reading been more thoroughly prescient. The human traits of greed, selfishness, pride and ignorance places all of humanity, innocent and guilty, in peril. True change of heart, personal and global, MIGHT save us.
My own meditations this week focused on the gardener's suggestion of digging around the fig tree and putting manure on it. I thought about composting, and about humus - that living, breathing, potent source of energy I scoop up in my hands after leaves and grasses and insects decay upon the ground. Humus is the Latin word for earth. Humanity comes from earth (dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return). Humility is being close to the earth - earthiness, honesty. In my ruminations on the parable I even read the online version of The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins and found it spiritually inspiring. http://weblife.org/humanure/
In Judeo/Christian thought the fig tree symbolizes religious knowledge. We know we have to take care of each other and repair and tend our planet home. We knew before the warnings of present day scientists. We have very little time.
Repentance, acknowledging the problem and preparing a reparation must be our way of life (meditation one) if we are to survive. The habit of humility, coming close to the ground, living in truth instead of illusion (meditation two) must also be our way of living. The urgency (meditation three) is obvious. The Last Word offers a parable about the freedom of repentance and humility.
May the Holy Spirit ground your meditation in sweet earthiness.
-Suzanne
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Meditation One (introit)
Repentance
This life has been given to you for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits.
-Isaac of Syria 7th Century
Repentance - conversion of the heart - does not mean being filled and tormented by guilt. Instead, it means being ready to admit our responsibility for our actions and our need for forgiveness, and having a firm desire to change our life: to turn away from ourselves in prayer and in love. Repentance means, above all, a constant, patient, growing in love. It means our willingness to open ourselves to the work of the Spirit in us and to embrace fully the gift of our salvation.
-Irma Zaleski The Way of Repentance 1999
Repentance is the life of the Spirit within us, a life of truth and of love.
-Irma Zaleski
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| March, Limburg Brothers, Tres Riches Heures, c.1440 |
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| detail, Jesus heals the crippled woman and the Parable of the Fig Tree, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, 1430 |
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Meditation Two (insight)
Humility
The sin of inadvertence, not being alert, not quite awake, is the sin of missing the moment of life. Live with unremitting awareness; whereas the whole of the art of the non-action that is action (wu-wei) is unremitting alertness.
-Joseph Campbell 1904-1987 The Power of Myth (with Bill Moyers)
Humility, that low sweet root,
From which all heavenly virtues shoot
-Thomas More 1477-1535
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| Ax laid to the root of the tree, Unknown Illustrator of Petrus Comestor's Bible Historiale 1372, Detail |
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Meditation Three (integration)
Urgency
We stand now where two roads diverge . . .the one ‘less traveled by' offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of our Earth.
-Rachael Carson Silent Spring 1907-1964
The most important things is to actually think about what you do. To become aware and actually think about the effect of what you do on the environment and on society. That's key, and that underlies everything else.
-Jane Goodall
The greatest danger to our future is apathy.
-Jane Goodall
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The Last Word
A king visited a prison in his kingdom and talked with the prisoners. Each one insisted on his innocence except for one man who confessed to a theft. “Throw this rascal out of the prison!” cried the king, “He will corrupt the innocents!”
-Hasidic Story
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Miscellany
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self
And wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help
and patience, and a certain difficult repentance,
long, difficult repentance, realization of life's mistake, and the freeing oneself
from the endless repetition of the mistake
which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.
-D.H. Lawrence 1885-1930
“Healing” quoted from the Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: A Poetry Anthology, edited by Robert Bly, James Hillman, and Michael Meade, Harper, 1992, p.113
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Miscellany
The darkness is not hidden even from itself; though it sees naught else it sees itself. The works of darkness follow it, and there is no hiding place from it, not even in the darkness. This is "the worm that dieth not"—the memory of the past. Once it gets within, or rather is born within though sin, there it stays and never by any means can be plucked out. It never ceases to gnaw the conscience; feeding on it as on food that never can be consumed it prolongs the life of misery. I shudder as I contemplate this biting worm, this never-dying death. I shudder at the thought of this being the victim of this living death, this dying life.
Bernard of Clairvaux 1090-1153
On Consideration
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