Daily Reading for July 1

I can illustrate an important part of what I have learned from Simon Peter in a story about something that happened to a friend of mine. His young son had eagerly begun kindergarten and, in October of his first year of school, the teacher said to his class, “Would you like to make something with your own hands to give to your folks for Christmas? They will get lots of store-bought gifts, but might prefer something you made yourselves. What do you think of that idea?” My friend’s son held up his hand, and said, “My father smokes a pipe, and I’d like to make him an ash tray.” So the teacher said that she would help him do that. She gave him some clay, and they shaped it in the form of an ashtray. She asked him his father’s favorite color, and he said, “blue,” so they colored it blue. . . . At every stage of this process, the five-year-old boy’s hopes and expectations for Christmas Day increased. He could just imagine his father unwrapping a tie, or some socks, and then opening his present, made by his son’s own hands, and being overwhelmed with pride and joy.

The traditional Christmas pageant was performed on the last day before school was dismissed. . . . The little boy went to his classroom to get the carefully wrapped package for his father. He headed back to his parents but in his haste . . . he suddenly tripped. His precious package flew up in the air and came crashing down on the floor, with the terrible sound of breaking. . . . He began to cry as if his heart had broken.

My friend . . . walked over to his child and said in a brusque manner, “Don’t worry, son, don’t worry. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t make any difference at all.” However, his wife brushed him aside, and said, “Yes, it does make a difference that something this precious has gotten broken,” and he watched as she did two wonderful things. She swept the child up in her arms, and wept with him the tears that are always appropriate when we break the things that are precious. Then, she reached into her purse, took out a handkerchief, and gently wiped the tears from their little boy’s eyes, and then from her own eyes. Her husband listened with wonder as he heard her say, “Come on, son, come on. Let’s pick up the pieces, take them home, and see what we can make of what is left.”

In that touching story you have an image of the alternatives we have in response to those times when the things that are most precious to us have been broken. You can cry as the little boy did, as if one mistake is irreparable and leaves nothing but loss and despair; or you can deny the significance of what has happened, as my friend did, and drain any meaning out of the experience. However, I think that God would want us to respond like that wise mother, descend into the crucible of pain, and weep the tears that are always appropriate when we have broken the blessed things of God. To do less would minimize the impact of any occasion of loss or sin, but then, you can pick up the pieces, take them home, and see what can be made of what is left. Jesus helped Simon Peter pick up the broken pieces of his life and create something worthwhile out of what was left. Therein lies the basis for hope for the future, in spite of the past.

From “Simon Peter: A Man of Extremes” in The First to Follow: The Apostles of Jesus by John R. Claypool, edited by Ann Wilkinson Claypool. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for July 2

To discuss the religion of the founding fathers means to discuss religion in the United States of their time. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were born and baptized in what Virginians of the time called “the Church,” “the Church of England,” “the Established Church,” or “the Church of Virginia.” The independence of the thirteen colonies from the mother country prompted the American members of the Church of England to discard the word “England.” In its place they adopted the term “Episcopal” (essentially meaning “we have bishops”) and renamed their denomination “The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.” . . .

State churches represented the norm in European Christianity beginning in the fourth century. Of the thirteen colonies, nine—almost 70 percent—had established churches. Congregationalism (or the faith of the Puritans) was established in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Anglicanism was established in the lower counties of New York, as well as in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. It was strong, however, only in Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. . . .

The Anglican faith of Virginia differed from the New England Puritanism out of which Adams and Franklin emerged. Both Adams and Franklin changed their religious views and embraced a form of Deism. So, too, did Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. But all of these men, except Franklin, continued to worship at least occasionally in the church of their ancestors—and their wives and daughters were usually devout supporters of it. The Virginia founding fathers married under the church’s auspices, consigned their children to its care, and were buried by its clergy. The impress of their religious background remained strong, even though their questioning of certain of their church’s fundamental doctrines led them to Deism.

From “The Anglican Tradition and the Virginia Founding Fathers” in The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for July 3

[Benjamin] Franklin was also among those Deists who remained open to the possibility of divine intervention or special providence in human affairs. . . . Unlike radical, or anti-Christian Deists, Franklin perceived that organized religion could benefit society by encouraging public virtue as well as by promoting social order. He believed in a benevolent Creator, whom humans should worship through virtuous behavior. Thus Franklin urged his daughter Sarah to “go constantly to church.” He himself was an infrequent churchgoer. But because he developed a certain fondness for ceremony and ritual, the church he most frequently attended was Christ Church, one of Philadelphia’s three Episcopal churches. . . .

Insatiably curious, ambivalent about religion, prudent in his declarations about it, offended by dogmatism and intolerance, opposed to the highly emotional conversion experiences of the Great Awakening, Franklin made morality primary in his interpretation of religion. Like other Deists, he believed that humans served God best when they performed good works on behalf of humanity and society. “I think vital religion has always suffered,” Franklin wrote to his parents shortly after his thirtieth birthday, “when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtues.”

From “The Religious Views of Benjamin Franklin” in The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for July 4 • Independence Day

The 4th of July has been celebrated in Philadelphia in the manner I expected. The military men . . . ran away with all the glory of the day. Scarcely a word was said of the solicitude and labors and fears and sorrows and sleepless nights of the men who projected, proposed, defended, and subscribed the Declaration of Independence. Do you recollect your memorable speech upon the day on which the vote was taken? Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants?. . . .

I visited the late Reverence Mr. Marshall of this city in his last illness. A few days before his death he thanked me affectionately for my services to him and his family, and afterwards said some kind of flattering things to me upon the pursuits and labors of my life. I replied to the letter by saying that I had aimed to do all the good I could to my fellow citizens, but that I had been so much thwarted and opposed that I did not know that any of my labors had ever been attended with success. “Well, well,” said this dying saint, “remember your Saviour at the day of judgment will not say, ‘Well done, thou successful, but well done thou faithful servant.’ You have been ‘faithful,’ Doctor, and that is enough.”

From a letter from Dr. Benjamin Rush to John Adams, July 20, 1811. Quoted in Letters of a Nation: A Collection of Extraordinary American Letters, edited by Andrew Carroll (Kodansha International, 1997).

Daily Reading for July 5

Thomas Jefferson epitomized what it meant in America to be a man of the Enlightenment. At his estate of Monticello, he displayed busts of Bacon, Locke, and Newton. Incredibly broad in interests and abilities, Jefferson was sufficiently interested in religious matters that one scholar has described him as “the most self-consciously theological of all America’s presidents.” Religion, the writer declares, “mesmerized him, enraged him, tantalized him, alarmed him, and sometimes inspired him.” . . .

Jefferson came to believe that the combined effect of power-hungry monarchs and corrupt “priests” had despoiled the original, pristine teachings of Jesus: “To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed, but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which I believe Jesus wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other.” . . .

In his last years, Jefferson clearly moved toward a more traditional interpretation of Christianity. He valued Jesus as a person ever more highly. Unlike some Deists, he came to believe in prayer and in a life after death. But belief in an afterlife and in a God who hears prayer were standard Unitarian beliefs of the time. . . . Jefferson’s religion was monotheistic, restorationistic, reason-centered, anti-medieval, anti-Calvinist, anti-clerical, and combative toward mystery. A reformer in religion as well as in politics, . . . an American who believed he had separated the gold from the dross in government and religion, Jefferson wanted to tear down what he considered false to allow what he considered true to shine through.

From “The Religious Views of Thomas Jefferson” in The Faiths of the Founding Fathers by David L. Holmes (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for July 6 • The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

This morning’s reading contains one of the great consolation passages of all time. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden,” Jesus says, “and I will give you rest.” It is a passage you can find etched on tombstones or worked into stained glass windows or maybe even stitched in needlepoint and hung in the church parlor. . . .

Human beings have a perverse way of turning Jesus’ easy yoke into a hard one again, by driving ourselves to do, do, do more and whipping ourselves to be, be, be, be more when all God has ever asked is that we belong to him. That comes first; everything else follows that, but we so often get the order reversed. We think there are all kinds of requirements to be met first, all kinds of rules to follow, all kinds of burdens to bear, so that we are not yet free to belong to God. We are still loaded down, not only by our jobs and our families and all our other responsibilities but by something deeper down in us, something that keeps telling us we must do more, be better, try harder, prove ourselves more worthy that other human beings or we will never earn God’s love. It is the most tiring work in the world, and it is never done.

One September a couple of years ago, I had more to do than any one person could do, and it was my own fault. I was not very good at saying, “No.” I liked being needed and I liked being liked and carrying a heavy load seemed like the best way to get to be both of those. Carrying it alone worked even better, because I did not have to share the rewards of my labor with anyone else. While I would not have admitted it at the time and I do not like admitting it now, I somehow had the idea that God expected more of me than of other people and that I could not let God down.

So I worked a couple of sixty hour weeks in a row and told myself that I could rest as soon as I got it all done. I did not sleep well and my back began to hurt but I pressed on, until one morning an unexpected thing happened: I could not get out of bed. The muscles in my back had gone on strike, and I could not move. . . . I lay for the next week, my list of things to do gathering dust on the bureau, my appointment book lying neglected on the bed. At first it drove me crazy to look at them but slowly, as the week wore on, they lost their power over me. . . .

It was an easy time that I remember now quite fondly. It was an easy yoke, but not one I would voluntarily have chosen. I thought that the way to find rest for my soul was to finish my list of things to do and present it to God like a full book of savings stamps, but as it turned out that was not the ticket at all. The way to find rest for our souls is simply to stop, to lay down our list of things to do and be, the heavy yokes we have designed for ourselves, and to accept the lighter ones God has made for us instead.

From “The Open Yoke” in The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons from the Episcopal Series of the Protestant Radio Hour by Barbara Brown Taylor (Forward Movement Publications, 1990).

Daily Reading for July 7

If you have traveled around the world or even if you have read National Geographic from time to time, you know that there are two basic kinds of yokes that can be used to bear burdens: single ones and shared ones. The single ones are very efficient. By placing a yoke across the shoulders and fitting buckets hung from poles on each side, human beings can carry almost as much as donkeys. They will tire easily and have to sit down to rest, and their shoulders will ache all the time—their backs may even give out—but still it is possible to move great loads from one place to another using a single creature under a single yoke.

A shared yoke works quite differently. It requires twice as many creatures, for one thing, but if they are a well-matched pair they can work all day, because under a shared yoke one can rest a little while the other pulls. They can take turns bearing the brunt of the load; they can cover for each other without ever laying their burden down because their yoke is a shared one. They have company all day long and when the day is done both may be tired but neither is exhausted, because they are a team.

Plenty of us labor under the illusion that our yokes are single ones, that we have got to go it alone, that the only way to please God is to load ourselves down with heavy requirements—good deeds, pure thoughts, blameless lives, perfect obedience—all those rules we make and break and make and break, while all the time Jesus is standing right there in front of us, half of a shared yoke across his own shoulders, the other half wide open and waiting for us, a yoke that requires no more than that we step into it and become part of a team.

From “The Open Yoke” in The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons from the Episcopal Series of the Protestant Radio Hour by Barbara Brown Taylor (Forward Movement Publications, 1990).

Daily Reading for July 8

My Dear Child,

Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. Something about the prospect of battle moves me to write you a letter. I’m sitting here in the tent. The flaps are rolled up on the sides, and I can see out across the desert to where the sun is sliding down into the sand. . . . I suppose war has a way of helping a person see what is really important in life. . . . It makes me think of you. . . .

I have my Bible here. As I have grown older it has become more precious to me. There is one passage in particular that I ask you always to remember. I guess I don’t really ask you to remember it as much as to live by it. I have found it true for my life. Jesus is teaching the crowds, and he invites them to come to him and learn from him. The words are, as Matthew recalls them, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” This is Jesus’ promise to nurture all those who come to him. You will need that promise. Put it into your backpack with the other treasures you carry.

Of course, Jesus isn’t only offering rest. Immature faith looks to God just for relief from burdens. I pray that you will move beyond that stage into the maturity of faith that will make you a productive worker in God’s work force. There is no discipleship without a task. Don’t settle for welfare and let someone else do your work for you. Don’t be a Christian consumer, like the world teaches us to be. You have more in you than that, and you will miss the greatest joy of your faith. . . .

Besides that, Jesus said you have to take his yoke to have his rest. Here is the hard part that may make you stumble. The yoke is something that you work with. It helps you bear burdens. Jesus puts it on his followers, if they come to him and ask for it. But that is really no different from the desires of our lives, because they put yokes on us and work us in their service. The difference is that Jesus said his yoke fits and is light, and strangely enough, this yoke and this work don’t tire a person out; they refresh. . . .

But enough of this. You can’t learn about rest and joy from me and my journey of faith, only from this mysterious one who says, “Come and learn of me.” It’s your call, but I trust you will find in him what I also have found. That is why I don’t have to give you much advice about your life.

Well, the sun has long since set. You know I love you and want the best for you. You are a joy to me. Forever. Choose your teachers well. I will see you when the sun rises.

From “Letter to a Child” by Stuart G. Collier, quoted in Best Sermons 6, edited by James W. Cox (Harper & Row, 1993).

Daily Reading for July 9

Hospitality is a particular Benedictine virtue, “Let all who come be received as Christ” is perhaps one of the most familiar aphorisms of the Rule. And yet the final paragraph is quite clear: “No one is to speak or associate with guests unless he is bidden; however, if a brother meets or sees a guest he is to greet him humbly as we have said. He asks for a blessing and continues on his way explaining that he is not allowed to speak with a guest” (53.23, 24).

Again, there is a line to be drawn. There is a limit to the amount of giving to another. There can be no doubt at all about the respect for the guest, the welcome given, the love shown. Yet there is also respect for one’s self and for one’s own way of life. The peace and silence of the monastery must be protected.

There is a nice balance here of togetherness and apartness, of intimacy and distance. If the life of the community does not go on, there is nothing to give the passing stranger, nothing for him to share or gain from. Its value for him lies precisely in its inner strength, in its certainty that its own way of life has an integrity that must be maintained. No one can be a good host who is not at home in his own house. Nor can I be a good host until I am rooted in my own centre. Then, and only then, have I something to give to others. . . .

Those who live closely together know that too much sharing, too much togetherness is destructive not only of the individual but of the community. . . . Any community must be poised between these two poles of solitude and togetherness, for they are essential to each other. David Steindl-Rast puts this bluntly: “Togetherness without solitude is not truly togetherness, but side-by-sideness. To live merely side by side is alienation. We need time and space to be alone, to find ourselves in solitude before we can give ourselves to another in true togetherness. One needs strong roots in togetherness to be solitary rather than lonely when one is alone. . . . Solitude is aloneness supported by togetherness.”

From Living With Contradiction: Reflections on the Rule of St. Benedict by Esther de Waal (Harper and Row, 1989).

Daily Reading for July 10

The ancient monastic practice of rising sometime between midnight and two in the morning to pray sanctifies the night hours. To me the idea of nuns and monks rising from their beds in the middle of the night and shuffling down a darkened hall in pairs by candlelight, half asleep, to sing and pray in a cold chapel is both appalling and comforting.

The practice appalls me because I cannot imagine myself rising voluntarily in the night. . . . As a mother, I have no memory at all of my second child's first year when he could not sleep through the night while the oldest, an active toddler, stayed awake by day. . . . Beyond these memories of sleep deprivation, however, the image of nuns and monks singing in the cold chapel in the middle of the night is comforting. I know a practiced spirit stands as a sentry on the boundary of the soul, watching the horizon for danger or delight. . . .

A friend of mine who is a hermit calls Vigils “the prayer office for pious insomniacs.” On a more serious note, though, many religious people are wakened by the Spirit in the middle of the night in order to pray for someone in need. It is a common experience among Christians to discover that at the exact hour when someone needing to be commended to God was ministered to, a friend was raised from sleep on the other side of the globe. A nun once told me about the uncanny intuitiveness of people in parts of Africa, where she served for many years. “People knew of things even before the drumming began,” she said. “This knowing is not such a miracle. It is simply that here in the west, we have forgotten how to be connected.”. . .

So I commend myself to God in prayer before I sleep. Something of our soul will remained linked to that warm darkness beyond its boundary, even in sleep. This dark love, more intimate than a mother’s womb, nourishes, encourages, and guides us, enveloping us in its loving, wordless darkness. When we pay attention, and respond with wordless, loving prayer in the darkness of our souls, we know we are connected to divine life. When we commend our souls to God at night, we take this connection for granted. Awake or asleep, we live in the Lord.

From Praying the Hours by Suzanne Guthrie (Cowley Publications, 2000).

Daily Reading for July 11 • St. Benedict of Nursia, c 540

Benedictine harmony and balance and awareness call us all to life drunk deeply. And, interestingly enough, there has probably never been a better moment in history to do that. We have information that has never been known before. We have a vision of the world and all of its people and all of their needs that has never been known to humankind before this time. We have scientific insights that are far beyond the understandings of our ancestors. We have a level of technology that frees us to be humans, not beasts of burden, that frees us to be thinkers on the planet rather than mere survivors of its rigors. We have a mechanized life, a computerized life, and a connected life that frees us and bonds us as at no other time in human history.

All we lack, now that life has become so speeded up, is the will to slow it down so that we can live a little while life goes by. We need to want to be human as well as efficient; to be loving as well as informed; to be caring as well as knowledgeable; to be happy as well as respected.

It’s not easy. But the Rule of Benedict says:

Take care of everything,
revere one another,
eat and drink moderately,
pray where you work,
think deeply about life every day,
read,
sleep well,
don’t demand the best of everything,
pray daily,
live as community. (RB 4)

Be sure that one part of your life is not warring against the other.

From Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today by Joan Chittister, OSB (HarperCollins, 1990).

Daily Reading for July 12

We are frequently told that we live in an age that doubts the wisdom, perhaps even the possibility, of commitment. At the same time, we can see a profound yearning for the values of community in the society of our times: the stability and sense of identity, the rootedness, that is so often lacking for those who live in the modern city. As Simone Weil puts it, ‘To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.’ Lacking a trust in the essential commitments we would like to believe in, but finding no other path to follow, can be a dispiriting descent into a nihilistic wilderness. Paradoxical as it may seem, only when we are rooted have we really begun to take risks.

As the experience of spending time in a monastic choir makes immediately apparent, monks are one of the clearest signs in the contemporary church of the reality of commitment. The vowed life, the patterned, regular way of living—in a world in which every involvement becomes provisional, in which the individual is all too often only the sum of her economic parts, these are signs of something we say that we want.

Nevertheless, we fear this commitment. It is no accident that people of our time prefer to keep their options open. The ‘deadly theatre’ that we see all around us—the relationships we know to be sham, the ruts we see ourselves and others slipping into, the numbing routine in dead-end situations—all these realities frighten us, as well they might. Commitment is a response, not an initiative. Unless there is something that evokes from us a desire to be committed we will never be able to make that leap. Underpinning all commitments by men and women is the belief that God is committed to us. We can see all too clearly that in the absence of the rising sun of salvation, we do not have the confidence to leap on our own.

From Crossing: Reclaiming the Landscape of Our Lives by Mark Barrett. Second edition. Copyright © 2002, 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for July 13 • The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

I remember seeing this parable [of the sower] acted out in the stage production of “Godspell,” a good-humored play based on the gospel according to Matthew. . . . Watching all of that, I had the same response I always do to this parable: I started worrying about what kind of ground I was on with God. I started worrying about how many birds were in my field, how many rocks, how many thorns. I started worrying about how I could clean them all up, how I could turn myself into a well-tilled, well-weeded, well-fertilized field for the sowing of God’s word. I started worrying about how the odds were three to one against me—those are the odds in the parable, after all—and I began thinking about how I could beat the odds, or at least improve on them, by cleaning up my act.

That is my usual response to this parable. I hear it as a challenge to be different, as a call to improve my life, so that if the same parable were ever told about me it would have a happier ending, with all the seed falling on rich, fertile soil. But there is something wrong with that reading of the parable, because if that is what it is about then it should be called the parable of the different kinds of ground.

Instead, it has been known for centuries as the parable of the sower, which means there is a chance, just a chance, that we have got it all backwards. We hear the story and think it is a story about us, but what if we are wrong? What if it is not about us at all but about the sower? What if it is not about our own successes and failures and birds and rocks and thorns but about the extravagance of a sower who does not seem to be fazed by such concerns, who flings seed everywhere, wastes it with holy abandon, who feeds the birds, whistles at the rocks, picks his way through the thorns, shouts hallelujah at the good soil and just keeps on sowing, confident that there is enough seed to go around, that there is plenty, and that when the harvest comes at last it will fill every barn in the neighborhood to the rafters?

From “The Extravagant Sower” in The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons from the Episcopal Series of the Protestant Radio Hour by Barbara Brown Taylor (Forward Movement Publications, 1990).

Daily Reading for July 14

Once upon a time a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came along and devoured them. So he put his seed pouch down and spent the next hour or so stringing aluminum foil all around his field. He put up a fake owl he ordered from a garden catalog and, as an afterthought, he hung a couple of traps for the Japanese beetles.

Then he returned to his sowing, but he noticed some of the seeds were falling on rocky ground, so he put his seed pouch down again and went to fetch his wheelbarrow and shovel. A couple of hours later he had dug up the rocks and was trying to think of something useful he could do with them when he remembered his sowing and got back to it, but as soon as he did he ran right into a briar patch that was sure to strangle his little seedlings. So he put his pouch down again and looked everywhere for the weed poison but finally decided just to pull the thorns up by hand, which meant he had to go back inside and look everywhere for his gloves.

Now by the time he had the briars cleared it was getting dark, so the sower picked up his pouch and his tools and decided to call it a day. That night he fell asleep in his chair reading a seed catalog, and when he woke the next morning he walked out into his field and found a big crow sitting on his fake owl. He found rocks he had not found the day before and he found new little leaves on the roots of the briars that had broken off in his hands. The sower considered all of this, pushing his cap back on his head, and then he did a strange thing: he began to laugh, just a chuckle at first and then a full-fledged guffaw that turned into a wheeze at the end when the wind ran out.

Still laughing and wheezing he went after his seed pouch and began flinging seeds everywhere: into the roots of trees, onto the roof of his house, across all his fences and into his neighbors’ fields. He shook seeds at his crows and offered a handful to the dog; he even tossed a fistful into the creek, thinking they might take root downstream somewhere. The more he sowed, the more he seemed to have. None of it made any sense to him but for once that did not seem to matter and he had to admit that he had never been happier in all his life.

From “The Extravagant Sower” in The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons from the Episcopal Series of the Protestant Radio Hour by Barbara Brown Taylor (Forward Movement Publications, 1990).

Daily Reading for July 15

In his explanation of this parable [of the sower], Jesus says that riches smother. They smother because they choke our hearts by the constant thoughts that they arouse. When they prevent good desires from entering our hearts, it is as if they are cutting off the intake of the breath we need to live.

We must notice the two things Jesus links to riches: anxieties and pleasures. Riches overwhelm our hearts with care, and cause them to be dissipated by surfeit. Contrary to our expectations, they make those who possess them both wretched and insecure. Pleasure cannot coexist with wretchedness. At one time riches make us wretched, because we are concerned with protecting them, and at another time they weaken us by providing a surfeit of pleasures.

Good ground brings forth fruit by patience. . . . The more we progress, the more we find things in this world which are hard to bear. As our love for this present age declines, the adversity caused by this age increases. This is the reason we see so many people doing good and yet laboring under a heavy burden of distress. They are fleeing from their earthly desires, and yet heavy afflictions are wearing them out. But according to the word of the Lord they are bringing forth fruit in patience.

From Be Friends of God: Spiritual Reading from Gregory the Great in an English version by John Leinenweber (Cowley Publications, 1990).

Daily Reading for July 16

Prayer for the Lambeth Conference, for the ACC, for the Primates, for the Congress, is increasingly needed, that in our talking together we are at the same time listening to God. I have been convinced, however, more so in recent months, that it is not enough. In particular, it was the passage we had for the epistle that has shaped my thinking. . . . “Consider others better than yourselves, look out for one another’s interests, not just your own.” That’s one translation. Another is—“in humble mindedness each counting the other better than himself, each looking not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others.” . . . Now, let us put those injunctions in the context of the tensions and divisions we face in the Communion.

I can illustrate the sharpness of the challenge from my own personal history. For some 25 years I strongly supported the cause of women’s ordination in writing, in planning with others. In the opposition ranks were men and women whose attitudes on this matter I disliked, whose arguments I regarded as fault-ridden, though I did not doubt their sincerity. But I have asked myself—“Did I meet this test of St. Paul?” “Did I count the others as better than myself?” “Did I look to their interests as well as my own?” If these verses from Philippians 2 are about unity in the Church, then, at the heart of the matter is the creation of this humble-minded attitude, this spirit, mutually shared by Christian people. . . .

I recently read an article by one of our most respected newscasters on British TV. Trevor McDonald . . . is the main newscaster on Independent TV. Some years ago he had been to interview Nelson Mandela. . . . McDonald turned to political considerations and suggested there was really no possibility of a meeting of minds between the ANC and the National Party about South Africa’s future. McDonald says, “Mr Mandela’s response was unforgettable.” He said, “when two parties begin serious negotiations you must be prepared to compromise on fundamental principles.” McDonald thought he could not have heard right and Mandela could not have meant that, but Nelson Mandela said it again and again.

To Anglicans, to Christians locked in disagreement over divisive issues—does Mandela’s line sound like heresy? “Being prepared to compromise on fundamental principles.” Apply it to any divisive issue we face! I do not suggest, of course, we have to accept ideas that seem quite wrong—to us dishonest! But I do suggest that if we can recognize that even in the convictions we feel most sure about, regarding contemporary divisive issues in our Communion, we may not possess the whole truth—we are getting to that humility which is essential to true harmony and unity.

From the sermon by the Rev. Canon Colin Craston at the closing Eucharist of the 10th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, October 1996, quoted in Being Anglican in the Third Millennium, edited by James Rosenthal and Nicola Currie. Copyright © 1997. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for July 17 • William White, Bishop of Pennsylvania, 1836

In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, many believed that the Church of England was doomed to become extinct in the New World. . . . William White, rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, was one of the few who believed that the pattern of Christian life established in the Book of Common Prayer could have a place in the new nation. In 1787, he went to England and was consecrated a Bishop for Pennsylvania by English bishops. He set to work with Bishop Seabury of Connecticut and others to establish an Anglican Church in the United States. That a united Episcopal Church did indeed emerge out of the conflict is due in no small part to White’s judicious wisdom and perseverance.

White was not by temperament an evangelist. He protested against the notion that a bishop should spend time to travel on the grounds that it was “inconsistent with the expectation of a learned episcopate” and “oppressive on a bishop advanced in years.” Furthermore he noted, “a bishop will generally have a family, to whom a reasonable portion of his time will be as much due, as are any of his services to the church.”

But perhaps such a cool and dispassionate approach was exactly what the Episcopal Church needed in those early days. If the Connecticut clergy thought laity should be excluded from the government of the church while Virginians were inclined to place church government in the hands of the laity, White could reason with both and find a way to settle the differences.

From the introduction to William White in A Year With American Saints by G. Scott Cady and Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2006. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for July 18

Many years ago, when our children were very little, one of the girls turned to me and asked, “Will it be all right?” I wasn’t sure what the “it” referred to, but her question held a kind of cosmic significance. “Will it be all right?” I said yes, with my fingers crossed behind my back. That desire and wonder—will everything be all right? Are you all right? Will it be all right? Truth has something to do with our wanting things to turn out right. One word for this “rightness” is God’s glory. The place of glory is where everything turns out right.

To come round where we ought to be is to be in a place just right: this is what it is to be righteous. Things will come out right when we discern that life is a gift from God. It is all gift. The truly moral life begins on the other side of our accepting God’s first gift to us of our own fragile selves. Life as a moral adventure begins on the other side of forgiveness. Only then does truth-telling become an adventure. We begin to see ourselves as actors in a love story. “Every single one of us has a good work to do in life,” writes Elizabeth O’Connor. “This good work not only accomplishes something needed in the world, but completes something in us. When it is finished, a new work emerges that will help make green a desert place as well as scale another mountain inside ourselves.”

O’Connor is telling us what it means to be righteous. No wonder that the Bible tells us that we have no righteousness of our own. We are in enough trouble as it is without adding inflammatory self-righteousness to the fires of human suffering. . . .

What a joy to come down in a place just right, in the valley of love and delight. There is a “rightness” to things and it is hard won. After much pain and a deep vision of the Crucified Christ, the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich could say, “And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” Things do come round right.

From Living the Truth by Alan Jones (Cowley Publications, 2000).

Daily Reading for July 19 • Macrina, Monastic and Teacher, 379

The best-known of the self-consecrated virgins was Macrina, sister of the two great Capadoccian fathers, Basil and Gregory of Nyssa. Gregory wrote an account of her life and a philosophical dialogue purporting to record her reflections during her last days. Macrina’s desire to remain a virgin received the sympathetic support of her mother, Emilia. But their combined pleas made no impression on her father, who was determined that she would be suitably married. Like so many of her contemporaries, Macrina ultimately bowed to his will and accepted betrothal to a young man who unexpectedly died before the marriage could be completed. This extraordinary circumstance enabled the sharp-witted young woman to argue that, since betrothal was legally held to be as binding as marriage, she was not a maiden but a widow, bound to remain faithful to a husband who was only transported to another world. Popular Christian feeling of the day tended to look with disfavor upon second marriages, as did pagan sentiment. In any case, this argument seems to have borne more weight with her father than had her initial pleas. As a virgin, Macrina lived with her parents and, after her father’s death, she and her mother made their home into an ascetic community. Gregory credited her with drawing him and his brother into the ascetic movement. . . .

Most consecrated women . . . had a least one chaperone, if not a house full of them. Macrina persuaded her mother to join her in establishing a household retreat. Gregory of Nyssa gives the superficial impression that his mother and sister lived a life of complete poverty and seclusion. But then he notes the testimony of a visitor to their establishment that they entertained him and his wife (and their retinue) generously, if temperately, installing them in separate quarters according to sex. The couple were delighted enough with the uplifting atmosphere of the household that they exchanged notes through the servants agreeing to lengthen their stay.

In short, where fortune allowed it, the consecrated woman of the fourth century, virgin or widow, who lived in her own home was usually accompanied by relatives and a fairly large number of servants. In addition, she might add one or more ascetic companions to her familia, which may well have provided a much-needed refuge for religious women without the fortune to support independent establishments.

From “Muffled Voices: The Lives of Consecrated Women in the Fourth Century” by Jo Ann McNamara, in Distant Echoes: Medieval Religious Women, Volume 1, edited by John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Cistercian Publications, 1984).

Daily Reading for July 20 • The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew may have been clear that there are only two kinds of people in the world—the wheat and the weeds—but it is a clarity that escapes most of us, we who have encountered both kinds in ourselves, and in our neighbors, and in the world. Most of our fields are full of mixed plantings, or worse. Sometimes I think that if I examined mine closely I would not find wheat or weeds anymore. They have grown together for so long that a hybrid would be more likely, a mongrel seed that is neither one nor the other. So the business about gathering and burning the weeds tends to make me a little nervous, and the burning question is: which am I? Wheat or weed? Blessed or cursed? . . .

Sometimes it is might hard to tell the difference between a good plant and a bad one, especially when it can act both ways. I suppose we have all had the experience of uprooting the raspberries by mistake or protecting something interesting that turns out to be a thistle. I don’t know what makes us think we are any smarter about ourselves or about the other people in our lives. We are so quick to judge, as if we were sure we knew the difference between wheat and weeds, good seed and bad, but that is seldom the case. Turn us loose with our machetes and there is no telling what we will chop down and what we will spare. Meaning to be good servants, we go out to do battle with the weeds and end up standing in a pile of wheat.

Or else we do not, because we have the good sense to listen to the sower, whose orders sound foolhardy if not downright dangerous. Leave the weeds and the wheat alone; let them both grow together, he says, letting us know that he does not share our appetite for a pure crop, a neat field, an efficient operation; letting us know that growth interests him more than perfection and that he is willing to risk fat weeds for fat wheat.

From “Learning to Live with Weeds” in The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons from the Episcopal Series of the Protestant Radio Hour by Barbara Brown Taylor (Forward Movement Publications, 1990).

Daily Reading for July 21

Building and nurturing community—relationships with common purpose and common support—is very much like planting and nurturing a garden. Just a few weeds, if not attended to, can kill what you are trying to grow. Like the weeds in a real garden, if considered alone, they are just healthy plants; in the context of the garden they are killers.

One of these hearty perennials is accidental bomb throwing. Though done by a person of perfectly good will with the best of intentions—that is often the problem—bombing a positive conversation with an emotionally charged issue inevitably brings the potential creativity of the conversation to a screeching halt. . . .

More depressing still is the release of negativity that all too clearly gives speakers a sense of power—and a free ride. If challenged about raining on other people’s parades, they can reply that they were just expressing their feelings and ideas. How often has “just telling the truth” or “what I’m feeling” done irreparable harm?

Anyone is able to report the data or express their feelings. Community builders, however, know the wisdom of the New Testament injunction to speak the truth in love. Love here is not the emotional attachment that makes people tell their beloved that yes, their new hairstyle does look good. Love in this context is the carefully examined concern for how things will turn out for the health of the community as a whole—and, on that basis, some reasonable determination of how much truth to tell at any given time. . . .

As we speak strongly held opinions or feelings, then, it is important to look at the garden in which one speaks. Am I planting a rose or a weed in this community? For the health of the community, one’s motives are not nearly so important as results.

The larger challenge to any community is to take a stand about weeds. If we don’t stand up to dandelions, the lawn will be gone. Often people in communities or organizations that center on doing good have difficulty saying no to the weeds that clog their progress lest someone’s feelings be hurt. Perhaps the next time someone sidetracks progress in our group, we might think of our lawns and politely but firmly say no.

From “The Importance of Pulling Weeds” in Messages in the Mall: Looking at Life in 600 Words or Less by Paul V. Marshall. Copyright © 2008. Seabury Books, an imprint of Church Publishing. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

Daily Reading for July 22 • St. Mary Magdalene

The tradition that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute is among the most extraordinary and implausible inventions ever woven out of gospel texts. The reasoning behind the tradition followed this far-fetched course: the woman who anointed Jesus in Luke (7:36-50) was ‘a sinner’; the scandal of Jesus allowing himself to be touched by a sinner (Luke 7:39) may imply that she was a prostitute (this despite the fact that Luke uses a different word for prostitute elsewhere: 15:30); the woman who anoints Jesus in John’s gospel is Mary of Bethany (John 12:1-8); therefore Mary of Bethany was a prostitute; Luke’s anointing story is immediately followed by information that Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’ followers, and that seven devils had been driven out of her; therefore Mary Magdalene was a terrible sinner (this despite the fact that this exorcism is given as an example of healing from infirmity, 8:2, and that exorcism usually refers to illness rather than sin); therefore Mary Magdalene may have been the sinner referred to a moment before (this despite the fact that no link is made with the previous mention, but remember that it has been decided that the ‘sinner’ was called Mary); therefore Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. Strangely the idea has remained that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute even after her supposed identification with Mary of Bethany—on which it depends—has been largely forgotten. . . .

The tradition of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute has become almost immovable in our received tradition, largely because of the rich artistic work it has inspired. Mary Magdalene is portrayed as an emotional, even hysterical woman with long, loose red hair and a brilliant scarlet dress, weeping at the cross or seeing the risen Jesus in the garden. Though this character has its own appeal, the drawback is that it has also reinforced the identification of women with sexual temptation, for the two classic ways in which a woman can follow Jesus are summed up in the archetypes of Mary the blue-robed mother of Jesus, who has never known sex, and the red-robed Mary Magdalene who has repented of knowing sex.

It is also to be deplored that the prostitute tradition has robbed Mary Magdalene of her dignified stance as leading woman disciple and first witness to the resurrection: from being an example of women’s leadership and ministry she has been sidetracked into being an example of women’s weakness, changeability and need for repentance. Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendell comments: ‘Anyone who loves the biblical Mary Magdalene, and compares her with the “Christian” Mary Magdalene, must get very angry. . . . The great sinner, of whom Luke speaks (Luke 7), and Mary Magdalene, whom all four gospels report, have as little to do with each other as Peter and Judas’ (The Women Around Jesus, p. 64).

From “Mary of Magdala” in Six New Gospels: New Testament Women Tell Their Stories by Margaret Hebblethwaite (Cowley Publications, 1994).

Daily Reading for July 23

The current state of the Anglican Communion is tenuous. Of all the issues confronted in the church’s two millennia—persecution, war and famine, the rise and fall of nations, of economies, of political systems, of churches—why should this great expression of the Christian faith be shaken to its core over issues of sexuality? Why should the ordination of homosexuals, particularly to the episcopate, be so cataclysmic for Anglicans today? . . .

At our best we are, like most healthy families, composed of individuals very different from one another, occasionally disapproving of these differences, but respectful of them, and in any case committed to preserving the family—not because of some ill-conceived chauvinism or vague notion of inclusivity, but because we love one another. That is the essence of Anglicanism. If at present we are not at our best, perhaps it is less because some people are right and some are wrong than because in our eagerness to be right, we have forgotten to love.

To identify the issue as love may seem to over-simplify it, but there is nothing easy about loving across battle lines. For women and gays to love those who appear to want to deprive them of full membership in their church and of equality as human beings is not easy. For those who believe the church is abandoning its core beliefs, loving those they see as attacking those beliefs is not easy. So much seems to be at stake: in the first instance, full humanity for particular children of God; in the second, the integrity of the church. . . .

So why not simply go our separate ways? Because to do so would break faith with the very heart of Anglicanism—the legacy of Cranmer and the Elizabethan Settlement. To divorce because we don’t agree on matters of belief would be to give up on what has been the noblest impulse of the Anglican dream: that all our understandings of God and God’s will are limited, that love trumps dogmatic belief, and that it is possible to build a Christian communion embracing people who can’t agree on what a Christian communion is.

From “Why the Anglican Communion Matters” by Frank C. Strasburger (Forward Movement Publications, 2008).

Daily Reading for July 24 • Thomas à Kempis, Priest, 1471

Take up your cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and you will inherit everlasting life. Behold, in the cross is everything, and upon your dying on the cross everything depends. There is no other way to life and to true inward peace than the way and discipline of the cross. Go where you will, seek what you want, you will not find a higher way, nor a less exalted but safer way, than the way of the cross. Arrange and order everything to suit your desires and you will still have to bear some kind of suffering, willingly or unwillingly.

There is no escaping the cross. Either you will experience physical hardship or tribulation of spirit in your soul. At times you will be forsaken by God, at times troubled by those about you and, what is worse, you will often grow weary of yourself. You cannot escape, you cannot be relieved by any remedy or comfort but must bear with it as long as God wills. . . .

If you willingly carry the cross, it will carry you. It will take you to where suffering comes to an end, a place other than here. If you carry it unwillingly, you create a burden for yourself and increase the load, though still you have to bear it. . . . When you willingly carry your cross, every pang of tribulation is changed into hope of solace from God. Besides, with every affliction the spirit is strengthened by grace. For it is the grace of Christ, and not our own virtue, that gives us the power to overcome the flesh and the world. . . . When you get to the point where for Christ’s sake suffering becomes sweet, consider yourself fortunate, for you have found paradise on earth. But as long as adversity irks you, as long as you try to avoid suffering, you will be discontent and ill at ease.

From “The Royal Road” by Thomas à Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ, quoted in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Plough Publishing House, 2003).

Daily Reading for July 25 • St. James the Apostle

The sidelong glance of envy distorts our ability to see ourselves realistically, because there will always be people in every category who are better or worse than we are. James may not have gotten much individual attention, but he must have developed a healthy self-acceptance that enabled him to be a valuable part of the group. It seems clear that he was transformed by the power of Jesus from a “son of thunder” to a “team player,” who did not push to get attention merely for himself. That is a remarkable change for one who had boldly said to Jesus, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you” and wanted to be sure he and his brother would be sitting right by Jesus when he came into his glory.

Instead of that glorious end, James became a martyr for his faith. Herod Agrippa, the nephew and successor of Herod Antipas, who put Jesus on trial, “laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword” (Acts 12:1-2). . . .There is an inspiring legend about the way James responded when Herod abused him as Caiaphas and the Roman authorities abused Jesus. There had been a time when James had wanted to call down fire on the Samaritans who had refused him hospitality. Now he did not call out for revenge in the face of being treated like an animal but was compassionate and dignified instead. He did not become a beast in reaction to the beast, but—as did Stephen when he was being stoned, and Jesus when he was crucified—looked up to heaven and asked God’s forgiveness for the people who were putting him to death. This was the great witness of the martyrs when, in the worst of times, they did the best of things.

From “James and James, the Greater and Lesser,” in The First to Follow: The Apostles of Jesus by John R. Claypool, edited by Ann Wilkinson Claypool. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for July 26 • Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Suddenly, an angel of the Lord stood in front of her, saying, “Anna, Anna, the Lord God has heard your prayer. You will conceive and give birth and your child will be spoken of everywhere people live.” And Anna said, “As the Lord God lives, whether I give birth to either a male or a female child, I will bring it as an offering to the Lord my God and it will be a servant to him all the days of its life.”

Next, two angels came, saying to her, “Look your husband Joachim is coming with his flocks.” For an angel of the Lord had gone down to Joachim, saying, “Joachim, Joachim, the Lord God has heard your prayer. Go down from here. Look, your wife Anna has conceived in her womb.” Immediately, Joachim went down and called the shepherds, telling them, “Bring ten lambs without spot or blemish here to me; the ten lambs will be for the Lord God. Bring twelve tender calves; the twelve calves will be for the priests and the elders. And bring one hundred male goats; the one hundred male goats will be for all the people.” Then, Joachim came with his flocks. Anna was standing at the gate. When she saw Joachim coming with his flocks, Anna ran and wrapped herself around his neck, saying, “Now I know that the Lord God has blessed me greatly. See, the widow is no longer a widow and the childless woman has conceived in her womb.” And Joachim rested for the first day he was home. . . .

And his wife’s pregnancy came to term. After nine months, Anna gave birth and she said to the midwife, “What is it?” The midwife said, “A girl.” Anna said, “My soul exalts this day.” And she put her baby to bed . . . and gave her the name Mary. . . .When the child’s first birthday came, Joachim held a great celebration. He invited the high priests and the priests and the Sanhedrin and the whole nation of Israel. And Joachim brought the child to the priests and they blessed her, saying, “God of our ancestors, bless this child and give her name eternal fame among all generations.” And all the people said, “Let it happen, amen.” And he brought the child to the high priests and they blessed her, saying, “Exalted God, look upon this child and give her a final blessing which will not be succeeded.” . . .

When the child turned three, Joachim said, “Let’s call the pure women of the Hebrews. Let them take up lamps and light them so that the child will not turn back and her heart will never be led away from the temple of the Lord.” And they did these things until they went up to the temple of the Lord. And the priest welcomed her. Kissing her, he blessed her and said, “The Lord God has magnified your name for all generations; through you the Lord will reveal deliverance to the children of Israel in the last days.” And he set her down on the third step of the altar and the Lord God poured grace upon her. She danced triumphantly with her drinks and every house in Israel loved her. And her parents went down, marveling at and praising and glorifying the Lord God because the child had not turned back to look at them. While Mary was in the temple of the Lord, she was fed like a dove and received food from the hand of an angel.

From The Infancy Gospel of James, in a translation based on the Greek text printed in Ronald F. Hock’s The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas. http://www.gospels.net/translations/infancyjamestranslation.html

Daily Reading for July 27 • The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

After the farmer discovered the buried treasure and the merchant found the unique pearl, their lives became genuinely different. All that they had was seen in a new light, and there was a joyful rearrangement of things. Suddenly, there was a willingness to let go of what one did have in order to acquire something that was obviously better. In other words, when the summon bonum comes along and is recognized, it changes the way we evaluate everything and can lead to the radical reordering of our lives. It seems clear that in these parables Jesus was addressing the whole issue of change and how it can occur in positive and creative ways.

If you stop and think about it, every experience of change has two very different aspects. On the one hand, we get something that we did not have, and on the other hand, we give up something that we did have: we gain something at the same time that we lose something. At the most basic level, this is what change is and does. In these first two parables, Jesus is saying that healthy change occurs when we discern that the thing that is being offered is greater and better than the thing that is being taken away. This is why he tells us that the man who found the treasure went and sold everything he owned to buy the field, and he did it with great joy.

Creative changes occur in our lives when we discern that what is being given is really of a greater value than what is being asked of us. The same experience, however, becomes destructive when the gain dimension is not obvious, and when all we can think about is the loss dimension. From this perspective, change is by no means a life-enhancing and life-enriching process, but rather a diminishment and a lessening of the good. . . .

The experience of change gives us something as well as takes something away. If we can learn to focus on what we are given, then our attitude toward change can become genuinely different. Instead of digging in our heels and saying, “Come weal, come woe, my status is quo,” we can begin to search through the new and different landscape which change necessarily brings for the gift that we are being given.

From Stories Jesus Still Tells by John Claypool, revised second edition (Cowley Publications, 2000).

Daily Reading for July 28

What kind of kingdom will this be? It will be a kingdom where, in accordance with Jesus’ prayer, God’s name is truly hallowed, his will is done on earth, human beings will have everything in abundance, all sin will be forgiven and all evil overcome.

It will be a kingdom where, in accordance with Jesus’ promises, the poor, the hungry, those who weep and those who are downtrodden will finally come into their own; where pain, suffering, and death will have an end.

It will be a kingdom that cannot be described, but only made known in metaphors: as the new covenant, the seed springing up, the ripe harvest, the great banquet, the royal feast.

It will therefore be a kingdom—wholly as the prophets foretold—of absolute righteousness, of unsurpassable freedom, of dauntless love, of universal reconciliation, of everlasting peace. In this sense therefore it will be the time of salvation, of fulfillment, of consummation, of God’s presence: the absolute future.

From Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, translated by Edward Quinn (William Collins, 1977).

Daily Reading for July 29 • Mary and Martha of Bethany

From struggling through Paradise Lost in freshman English, we “know” that the worst sin is overweening pride. . . . The time I have spent listening to women’s stories, however, has convinced me that there are distinctly feminine patterns of sinfulness, and pride is not their besetting sin, even though many readily accuse themselves of it. . . . Far from being pride, women’s distinctive sin is self-contempt. . . .

Women’s self-contempt manifests itself as an unwillingness to grow and take the risks that growth demands. It is often difficult for women to see that their reluctance to accept maturity is a tacit refusal of adult responsibility. “How can this be?” they ask, as they feel themselves burdened, indeed overwhelmed, by their responsibilities as wives, mothers, employees, and professionals. Yet by over-zealousness in their obligations toward others, especially husbands and children, and a corresponding neglect of themselves, women manage to avoid inner growth. There is no quality of careless abandon to this spiritual irresponsibility; on the contrary, it is grim and confining.

Women’s tentativeness is another manifestation of self-contempt, as is an apparent absorption in triviality. Both are a noisy kind of silence, a screen erected—perhaps unconsciously—against clarity. By hesitating to take firm stands or express herself in decisive language, she sends a strong message that she does not deserve to be heard. By letting herself become immersed in trivialities, she sends a message that she does not deserve to be seen, at least not as an aware adult. Furthermore, absorption in trivialities deadens pain, for the woman is too preoccupied to face herself, her human relationships, and—of course—God.

From “Women and Spiritual Direction” in Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction by Margaret Guenther (Cowley Publications, 1992).

Daily Reading for July 30 • William Wilberforce, 1833

Let him, then, who would be indeed a Christian, watch over his ways and over his heart with unceasing circumspection. Let him endeavour to learn, both from men and books, particularly from the lives of eminent Christians, what methods have been actually found most effectual for the conquest of every particular vice, and for improvement in every branch of holiness. Thus whilst he studies his own character, and observes the most secret workings of his own mind, and of our common nature; the knowledge of which he will acquire of the human heart in general, and especially of his own, will be of the highest utility, in enabling him to avoid or to guard against the occasions of evil: and it will also tend, above all things to the growth of humility, and to the maintenance of that sobriety of spirit and tenderness of conscience, which are eminently characteristic of the true Christian. It is by this unceasing diligence, as the Apostle declares, that the servants of Christ must make their calling sure; and it is by this only that their labour will ultimately succeed; for ‘so an entrance shall be ministered unto them abundantly, into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.’

From A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System, or Professed Christianity in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country contrasting with Real Christianity (1797) by William Wilberforce, quoted in Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness, compiled by Geoffrey Rowell, Kenneth Stevenson, and Rowan Williams (Oxford, 2001).

Daily Reading for July 31 • Ignatius of Loyola, 1556

Making the General Examination of Conscience

The First Point is to give thanks to God our Lord for the benefits I have received from Him.

The second is to ask grace to know my sins and rid myself of them.

The third is to ask an account of my soul from the hour of rising to the present examen, hour by hour or period by period; first as to thoughts, then words, then deeds. . . .

The fourth is to ask pardon of God our Lord for my faults.

The fifth is to resolve, with His Grace, to amend them.

Close with an Our Father.

From “A Method for Making the General Examination of Conscience” by Ignatius of Loyola, quoted in Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, edited by John R. Tyson (Oxford University Press, 1999).