Saints, Souls and a Sugar Buzz

This week sees a lot of Christian Festivals. On 31st October there is All Hallows Eve. The 1st November sees All Saints Day and then the 2nd is All Souls Day.

All of these days remember and celebrate those who have gone before and are now in light eternal.

31st October is, of course, best known as Halloween. If you break the word apart you get Hallow and E'en. This is a shortening of All Hallow Eve. Hallows are those who are made holy and so 31st October sits as a day of waiting and preparation for All Saints Day.

This might be news to the superheroes and horror characters running around the streets in pursuit of sweet treats. I am not going to decry our modern celebration of Halloween, the traditions behind it are ancient. But we might want to ask ourselves whether things have tipped towards a society which finds depictions of untimely death and violence an amusement, rather than something deeply disturbing.

The roots of Halloween were to remember friends and family and to avoid evil. There were food traditions and costume traditions to ward off spirits or to dress up to avoid them. There was not a revelling in evil, but a fear of it, however foreign some beliefs are to us. What is our response to evil in the world? How can we bring about change to hearts and minds?

All Saints Day is a commemoration of those who have finished their earthly journey with Christ and are now in eternal rest. We often remember those who have, in some way, stood out from the crowd in their lives and actions. These are the upper case or capital letter "S" Saints. The lower case "s" is used much as St. Paul used it in his letters where he addressed "to the saints in...."

At Redeemer we celebrate All Saints in the morning and then, in the evening we have a service of remembrance which is in line with All Souls. All Souls is a much newer feast day, well is it from the 10th Century which in Church calendar terms is pretty recent! Because All Saints and All Souls usually fall during the week we use the Sunday afterwards for our big community celebration.

All Souls gives us the chance to remember those we love but see no longer and to read out the list of names of those who have died during the previous year and of those whom parishioners want to remember (the necrology). We do it this way because putting All Saints and All Souls in the same service is a big change in emotion - it is real, but going from a triumphant procession of celebration to sadness and grief is a big swing. Many people also do not feel that they can cry or get upset at the main service - this is not true, of course, but providing an evening alternative gives a space which many find safer to express themselves.

This year our evening service will be Choral Evensong, which will provide a meditative setting for the remembrances.

Have a blessed All Saintstide. Shine as a light and find light in our world.

What is yoga?

As many of you know we have a yoga program at Redeemer. Why? This post gives you a basic answer.

The word “yog” literally means “yoke” or “discipline”. It comes from ancient traditions in the country which is now India, dating back as far as 5000 BCE. The first documents which were written about yoga are in a language called Sanskrit. Like many ancient languages it is difficult to translate to mean exactly one thing but a good translation of what yoga is might be that it is the stilling of the mind, it is an exploration of being in the present moment.

This might surprise you. If you Google yoga you will probably find a lot of pictures of people in difficult looking poses. The truth is that what most people think of as yoga is a version which is fairly recent and is a mixture of gymnastics and more ancient postures, this version is only about 150 years old and concentrates on the physical side of things.

Traditional yoga is about the whole person. It is about learning to control your body and steady your breath - not as an end in itself, but as a way of beginning to still all those things which churn around inside us all the time and making space to connect with the Divine.

This might surprise you. Some people worry that the quiet and meditative side of yoga practice is un-Christian but, in fact, one of the most popular texts for yogis does not give a name to any deity. Patanjali, who wrote the Yoga Sutra, uses the word “Ishwara” - but that is not the name of a specific god - it is just the word for what we would call god or God.

The Bible talks a lot about prayer and meditation - it does not talk so much about exercise. For that, we have to look to some of the writer’s in our faith tradition. A good example would be St. Benedict, who understood the importance of a balanced life and physical labor. He began a monastic order which is now named after him, the Benedictines. The rule of life which he writes for his monks stipulates prayer, study, meditation and physical work as necessary to healthy living - he was writing 1500 years ago

Yoga is a system for health and spiritual well-being which covers physical, mental and spiritual aspects of our being. IPatanjali saysbthere are 8 parts to yoga. The first two are sets of moral behaviors. Then there is physical movement - the asana or posture, then there is breathing (pranayama). Then we cross into the more spiritually oriented parts. Pratyahara or the withdrawal of the senses - simply put, learning not to be distracted by things around us. Then focused concentration - once we have let go of our busy-ness we can begin to concentrate on God - Dharana. Dhyana is a similar word and, in Christian terms, means the moments when we get really close to God, those moments where we are only aware of God and nothing else. Finally, Samadhi is the final part - the moment of union with God - in our tradition this is the experience of the mystic.

This is a very brief introduction to some very big ideas. This system of living has mostly been used in India and within the Hindu religion. Hinduism itself is very diverse and has many branches but, despite the fact that this is where Yoga has mostly been taught and learned about, Yoga is not tied down tight into a specific religious tradition.

Some might be cautious about cultural appropriation. That is, of course, a danger. But this holistic approach to yoga, even within the Christian tradition, might well be seen to be truer to yoga’s roots than an exercise class with no connection to any sort of Divine Principle. Cultural appropriation happens when we take without understanding, choosing the pieces which work for us and discarding the pieces which do not and then claiming authenticity.

The reason we have yoga at Redeemer is that it is a holistic practice which even extends to diet and lifestyle. Whilst we have classes which teach movement, ideally this would be a step into a wider practice which includes prayer and making space for God in a quiet mind. This making space for God, time spent deep with God, union with God is the center of Christian life. That is our life blood - but it is not an academic, cerebral exercise. Time with God involves everything that we are here and now, including our bodies. Stewardship involves our physical being as well as our spiritual and mental selves.

Yoga is simply a system to live holistically. It is far from the only one, but it is also a highly flexible system, one in which we can find ourselves with compassion.

Going deep and loving more

As some of you know this past weekend we had our Diocesan Convention. As it is the 100th Birthday of the Diocese of Western North Carolina our special guest was the Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry. Some of you who have been around for a while might have known him when we was bishop of our neighboring diocese North Carolina. For others he will be recognizable as the perso who preached at the wedding of Meghan and Harry.

He issued two clear challenges for us. The first was to go deeper and the second was to love. Each of those might sound very basic. But, as with so many things in our Christian faith, what sounds simple is often the hardest thing to do.

We heard about trees which impressed him in Ghana and how the guide who was with him talked about not only the root system sustaining the tree but the tree sustaining the environment. In these days of Global Warming we know that trees are a vital part of our fight against climate change. Alongside, of course, behavior change. As the tree sustains the world around it so we, rooted deeply in God, can offer sustenance to the world around us.

Then, on Sunday, we heard about love. Inclusive love. Most people at Redeemer pride themselves on inclusivity, but we have to be careful what we mean by that. Yes, we should certainly include those who have been traditional excluded from the full life of the Church. But there is something else. That something is continuing conversation with those with whom we totally disagree. Our inclusiveness cannot only stretch to the parts of life and people which we like to include or who are in our comfort zone, it has to go beyond to those we find utterly uncomfortable and we have to be willing to be witnesses to Christ in conversations from which we would rather run away.

I am not quoting Michael Curry above but it is the end point of what he talked about, that is that we must love one another, and that means everyone.

I don't have an immediate take away. I would invite you to go to the Diocesan Website or YouTube Page over the next few days as the videos become available and watch for yourself. Advent is around the corner and we will be taking the oppotunity to journey inwards towards God. But there is also an opportunity to grow outwards.

I have said to you many times from the pulpit that having conversation with those whom you usually regard as "other" , meaning the people who are not usually in your sphere of life because you would rather avoid them, are frightening. They are frightening because they can arouse big emotions and remind us of painful times in our lives. There is another piece as well, conversations with other run the risk of offering perspectives which we find actually cause us to question and change.

That is why we must love. We rely on God alone and, even if we find ourselves on stormy seas, even if we find things out about ourselves or our way of being which are challenging, it is OK, we are leaning on God. Love is not a ticket into all knowledge, it is not a way of holding on to all truth. Love is not mine or yours. Love is bigger than all of that. None of us know everything and learning to love means learning to value our own wisdom, but to accept it as partial, and learning to value the wisdom of others, even in the midst of disagreement.