The Liturgical Year - a book review

The Liturgical Year: the spiraling adventure of the spiritual life by Joan Chittister




It’s Ash Wednesday as I’m reading and pondering this book, and as I prepare for one of the main events of the liturgical year, according to my own theological standpoint as well as that of Sister Joan, I appreciated some of her insights into the Lenten season. She also explains a little about the Christmas season, and that ambiguous piece of the Christian Year called “Ordinary Time”, and shows that it’s anything but ordinary in the common sense of the word.

Since we’re in the season leading up to Easter, I was a little more attentive to the parts pertaining to Ash Wednesday, and Lent. I thought that some of the comments about the fasting, meditation etc that are associated with Lent were especially insightful, especially for those whose tradition or background doesn’t emphasize this part of the church calendar.

And then there were the times when the Mysteries of the faith weren’t clarified at all, and in my non-Catholic mind, were even muddied even further.

I read, went back, and read over, even did some underlining, but had to force myself to finish the book. It’s not that it’s a bad book; just that it never really grabbed my attention. I’ve read other books in the Ancient Practices Series, and was looking for, hoping for something more.

I f this is the first of the Ancient Practices book that you’ve read, please try another one before giving up on the series.

- In accordance with FTC regulations I note that I received this book free from Thomas Nelson for the purpose of review. However, no stipulations were made on the content of said review

 
3/5 stars

When freedom of speech gets ugly

Yesterday, in an overwhelming affirmation of the right to free speech, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 in favor of the small congregation of Westboro Baptist Church and their right to demonstrate at military funerals, even when their demonstration becomes hurtful and ugly.


On one hand I’m grieving for the military families who have to tolerate such obnoxious behavior. As a retired member of the USAF I would pray that every member of the armed forces would be offered a dignified and respectful funeral service, uninterrupted by outside distractions.

And I really wish that Fred Phelps would do like many other churches have done recently and remove the word ‘Baptist’ from the name of his church. I shudder to think of all the Baptist churches that are going to be assumed to be in agreement with the actions of Westboro Baptist, simply because of the common denominator of the name Baptist. (By the way, I haven’t talked to any Baptists locally who want to affiliate with Mr. Phelps.)

If the Phelps family wants to rent a hall or a park, pay for advertizing space, or enter a float in a parade as means to get across their message, they should have that right; and if the sin message that they proclaim at funerals is the topic of every Sunday’s sermon, their right to free speech should be protected, but attacking individuals as a way to get to the system seems flawed, and Justice Alito got to the question behind the question in his dissenting opinion: "Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case,"

I have to wonder if the Westboro Baptist community would be so interested in freedom of speech if demonstrations against individual Baptists got so ugly during a funeral for one of their family members.

But it’s much more complicated than that.

As heartily as I disagree with the method used by Westboro Baptist Church to get their message across, I’m delighted that the Court ruled in favor of a Christian church. Lately it seems that whenever anyone is offended by a Christian message, the ruling goes against the church. Get rid of those crosses along the highway in memory of fallen police officers. Don’t allow protestant chaplains to pray ‘in the name of Jesus’; should we really place all those crosses in cemeteries on Memorial Day? How dare you ask me to pledge allegiance to the flag when it includes the words ‘one nation under God’? Budget shortfalls – no problem- just take away the tax exempt status for some of those big churches. And I keep waiting for people to refuse to accept US currency and demand that the words “in God we trust” be removed. Maybe now Christians will be seen to have some of the same rights as members of other religious groups.

I served in the military as a way of protecting those ‘unalienable rights’ as described in the Declaration of Independence, and to support and defend the Constitution of the United States (including the Amendments),against all enemies foreign and domestic, so seeing the Supreme Court uphold the law of the land does wonders for me. It reminds me of why I was proud to serve, proud to wear a uniform, proud to serve my country.

It’s just difficult to understand how things get so twisted. The Military fights to protect your right to free speech, and that right to free speech allows you to verbally attack individual military members.

So thanks to the valiant efforts of US Military as they support and defend the Constitution, Mr. Phelps and his flock have the constitutional right to disrupt the funeral of members of the US Military -sounds like a classic case of biting the hand that feeds you.

Sometimes It's Hard To Pray

Sometimes it's hard to pray. 

But not for the reasons you might think.

We all have those moments when there’s something going on that distracts us: something that we would rather be doing; something that has to be done before the deadline; something that a spouse or child or parent needs, and no matter how hard we try to explain, it’s something that they need NOW.  

Sometimes it’s nothing going on right now or in the very near future, but the recent past: we’ve messed up big time and just don’t feel acceptable to come into the presence of the Lord. (By the way, that’s probably when we most need to be there.) And as much as God hates it when we sin, he isn’t real happy when we compound the error by telling him that we’re so bad that His grace isn’t big enough to cover us.  

But there are other times when the difficulty isn’t because we’re distracted, or we don’t feel worthy; it’s when the prayers seem counter-intuitive. It’s hard to pray when the prayer doesn’t fit with what we’re feeling.

I have a hard time praying for people that I’m angry with, or that I just don’t like. It doesn’t make sense to me to be praying for people that have hurt me or the people I love. It’s easy enough to pray that people that tend to cause me problems would find someplace else to work/live/shop/play/worship. But I want to stop there; I don’t always want to pray for them to be happy where ever they end up going.

It’s hard to pray for something that I know goes against God's will; sometimes it happens that someone asks me to pray that for them, and I have to dodge the issue.

 But it’s really hard to pray for something that even though I know is for the best is going to cause someone (or me) pain or loss. When I pray for healing I want to see healing in this world, not the healing that comes with a new body in the presence of God.

And sometimes it’s hard to pray because I know that I’ve already decided in my mind what the answer should be, so in my heart that’s what I’m praying for,  rather than turning things over to God and letting Him decide how to answer. Praying involves listening to God, too, but sometimes I forget that.

Yes, sometimes it’s hard for me to pray. 

So I’d like to know, when do you have trouble praying?