My Secret Life

There is a wonderful site called Mission of St. Clare; you can click on and read Morning Prayer. Morning Prayer is a habit I try to keep to even though it lapses from time to time. Today, sitting here singing hymns and reading Scripture at the computer, learning the rugged holiness of St. Columba, I thought this is something I would not be doing if not a Christian. There is something about doing something that a non-Christian would consider a complete waste of time that made it especially nice. It's like a secret of some kind.

The open secret wisdom of Ecclesiastes (9:11-18) notes that one poor wise man saved a city but afterwards no one remembered him. The Teacher notes wisdom is better than war, but that one bungler can undo a lot of wisdom (my paraphrase). The Teacher knows his own work will fall into the hands of fools and bunglers, and it has; but his wisdom still endures. These wordsbring hope to the terminal uniqueness of our own centuries.

After reflecting on Eccl that you can accomplish a lot of good if you don't care who gets the credit, I then prayed Psalm 72 for the president, that his reign may prosper and his mercy to the poor come down like rain on the mown field. Then also I prayed for all the terrorists and bad guys. Jesus said to do this, and some things you just have to take on faith.

In Galatians, Paul cries, "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast...!' (Gal 5:1: Tei eleutheria oun hei Christos heimas eileutherowsen, steikete!) "Stick to it." The verb steiko means both stand in the attitude of prayer (Mk 11:25) and stand firm, persevere. Of course, Paul was speaking of Galatians, set free from observing the Mosaic law, backsliding into trying justify themselves by observances.

Rather than freedom from sin, we're looking at freedom from our former ways of trying to overcome sin on our own (and I'm not saying observance of Torah is a way of trying to make oneself righteous; only for the Galatians Paul thinks this is their way of doing so). We have been set free, if I may take Paul's idea one step further, to understand our powerlessness and the grace of having an Advocate with the Father. In fact, Paul whole warning to the Galatians is to stop listening to bad teachers.

I wonder what Paul would write to me if I need to be chid. Probably, if he had read my latest "Musings" blog, Paul would tell me that obsessing about failure is to fall back in thrall to the "bitch-goddess Success" (William James?) Paul would say, Persevere in Prayer and pursue Love. Um, actually he did say that. I'm sure Paul would write me a lot of other things too; like think how you're leavening your lump (Gal 5:9 and Mt 16:11-12). To whom should I be listening?

For one, the Mission of St. Clare. http://www.missionstclare.com/ Good teaching there.