Happy Easter

I wish everyone a blessed Easter!

A re-post of some wise words from the late Father David Kirk:

"If you want to find God, really find God, go to where people are suffering. There, if you can open your eyes to the needs of others, and let your heart respond to see.....you're in for a great adventure! May this Sunday be a day for beginning to DO the word of God and not simple hear the word of God. Amen."

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all! I hope that your Lenten journey was introspective.

A re-post of some wise words from late Father David Kirk:

"If you want to find God, really find God, go to where people are suffering. There, if you can open your eyes to the needs of others, and let your heart respond to see.....you're in for a great adventure! May this Sunday be a day for beginning to DO the word of God and not simple hear the word of God. Amen."

Social Justice

"On his daily radio and television shows last week, Fox News personality Glenn Beck set out to convince his audience that "social justice," the term many Christian churches use to describe their efforts to address poverty and human rights, is a "code word" for communism and Nazism. Beck urged Christians to discuss the term with their priests and to leave their churches if leaders would not reconsider their emphasis on social justice."I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!'"
Source: Politics Daily

The dude has gone just plain crazy!
Here's a different perspective:

"Fr. David frequently spoke and wrote about the need to recall the social justice tradition of Orthodoxy, a tradition that he observed in the Church Fathers adamant response to the poor – such towering saints as Basil the Great, who founded not just a house of hospitality but a city of hospitality. He saw both in Dorothy Day and St. Maria Skobtsova of Paris as models of sanctity for the church today. In our talks during the last days of his life, he would return again and again to his hope that something similar to the Catholic Worker movement would take roots in the Orthodox Church, perhaps along the lines of Emmaus House."
"Father David Kirk's Legacy of Hope", In Communion

A Note For Lent

by Father David Kirk

A preface about Lent:
People “give up” things during lent:
Pizza, beer, lobster, whatever.
But does it move us closer to God,
Closer to one another, to ourselves?
Maybe what we should work on at Lent
Is CHANGING ATTITUDES.
Leaving behind frustrations, fears,
Cultural attitudes
Which box in others.
TO GIVE UP NEGATIVE, DEFEATIST ATTITUDES
To see temporary setbacks as permanent
To escalate disappointment into catastrophe
To experience problems as insurmountable.
To try to see other possibilities
When things don’t go as we had hoped or planned.
Sometimes I set myself up to feel like a failure
Or to feel badly
About things I cannot control;
And I get out of this only by deciding
That if things can’t be one way,
Well, maybe they can be another.
Its possible, I think, even for me,
To still make inner changes,
To move old emotional garbage out
Permanently
To see the world in a whole new way,
To come closer to God.
So I’m not sure what I’m giving up this Lent
But I think its
HOPELESSNESS.
I think I learned this attitude
At an early age,
As a lonely adolescent,
As a young man whose people die young,
Whose sister died of alcoholism.
But God keeps seeking me, the lost lamb,
And in intervening in my life
Converting all these things into HOPE.
So I put all hopelessness on the altar
As a sacrifice to faith and joy.

As God Lives in me, I determine who I am.
[Mark 9:14-29]

*Reposted from Ash Wednesday 2009

http://fatherdavidkirk.com/

A Christmas Story

Once again, I will lean on the words of a man much wiser than me. Merry Christmas to all!

http://fatherdavidkirk.blogspot.com/2009/12/christmas-god-joins-us-in-our-struggles.html

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all!
Despite a massive rain storm while exiting church, we had a great day. Our 12 and 15 year old humored us with an Easter egg hunt this morning to kickoff a fun day.

I'll wrap up the week with some final words from the late Father David Kirk:

"If you want to find God, really find God, go to where people are suffering. There, if you can open your eyes to the needs of others, and let your heart respond to see.....you're in for a great adventure! May this Sunday be a day for beginning to DO the word of God and not simple hear the word of God. Amen."

Father David Kirk On Just War

Being Holy Week, I'll take a breather from the crazy events in the world and present some writings from Father David Kirk.

"In the first 300 years of Christianity, Christians fought adversaries only with the Sword of the Spirit. When later the Christian communities of the Roman Empire seemed threatened by invading vandals and barbarians, a bishop, Augustine, had to meditate on which way to go: continue the churches teaching to 'love the enemy,' to do violence to no enemy, to not join the army? Or to find a way whereby Christian could take up the sword and fight the vandals?"

"Fear covered the empire like a black cloud. The problem of how to love your enemies and do violence to them led to his theory of a just war. He took as his example how Israel had been defended by armies. If God himself can start a war, it had to be a just one....the Kingdom of the Spirit had once more been reduced to the lowest common denominator. Of course, we do fear. All have fears within us. There are a lot of things which are part of reality, a fear to be lived with - subways, sickness, old age, private betrayals. I'm certainly scared of a lot of things inside me - lust...jealousy...anger, all biding their time in me, perhaps waiting for a weak moment. Scared of the possibility I might not have the stuff within me to follow the direction I have set for myself. How impossible the goals of truth and love sometimes seem to be."
Father David Kirk

For more on Father David Kirk:
http://www.fatherdavidkirk.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_David_Kirk

http://emmaushouse-harlem.org/

Father David Kirk On Fear

Being Holy Week, I'll take a breather from the crazy events in the world and present some writings from Father David Kirk.

DO NOT BE AFRAID

"We live in difficult days. Reagan, Gorbachev. We're told to fear travel. To fear to walk anywhwer. To fear muggers and looters, autos and storms. To fear the Russians, the Communists, the Nicaraguans."

"Fear is a lifestyle; In New York City, we're like a knot of animals, threatened, surrounded. And it its said" only those who fear mightily and react violently will survive. Ethics of the shotgun. To give up all our fears is to give up our humanity. They say: fear guarantees survival. Put before us is the enemy. Bob Dylan: 'Making us think we have something to defeat.' "

"But to all this, through all this the Gospel maintains: 'There is no need to be afraid, my little community, for your Father is to give you the Kingdom.' A promis, nothing more, is the only thing we seem to have. Nothing else. Is that sufficient to help us survive, for us to hang on to, to make us motivated enough to continue?"

"For Abraham, it was. Because of such a promise Abraham left his home and went out and lived in a tent, looking for a city built by God. He never saw that city, he never arrived at it, his whole life was full of complications; even when he had a son, he was asked to sacrifice him to God. But he kept on because of his dream, because of that promise, because of that town, because of something he never fully saw realized in his life."

"Fear clogs. 'To he who is afraid everything rustles.' St. Maximos"

"Faith liberates. Cruelty and fear always walk together."

Father David Kirk (written in the 80's)

For more on Father David Kirk:

http://www.fatherdavidkirk.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_David_Kirk

http://emmaushouse-harlem.org/

Father David Kirk On Hope

Being Holy Week, I'll take a breather from the crazy events in the world and present some writings from Father David Kirk.

"And they look at me and say: 'How can you sit there so peaceful when everything seems so bad?' Because I can see beyond the reality. Yes there are debts, yes we are getting sued, yes we don't know how to get out of this financial mess. But my perception leads me to hope. And when you can have a positive perception it unlocks and releases hidden possibilities and you look for love. And when love comes, it comes through God. When there is a lot of love in this world, there is a lot of God in the world. So choose to believe in the God of love...Get on board the train!"
Father David Kirk (written in the 80's)

For more on Father David Kirk:
http://www.fatherdavidkirk.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_David_Kirk

http://emmaushouse-harlem.org/

Father David Kirk On The Prodigal Son

Being Holy Week, I'll take a breather from the crazy events in the world and present some writings from Father David Kirk.

"This Gospel is about forgiveness, and it is about conversion, which means to change attitude and heart, but also conversion which brings us back to reality. The Gospel also speaks about someone "dead" and "ruined": he lost his possessions, because he squandered his wealth; he lost his worth, a son of a rich man living like a pig now; he lost his power, because no one receives him with honor. And in a negative way, he found his freedom because he lost the things that enslave, all these externals.

Even though he was God, Jesus emptied Himself and became a poor man; some of these things, power, so-called worth, possessions, should be renounced. There is danger to the young man in all the things he was given. St. Paul says: "those things I used to consider gain I now reappraise as loss in the light of Christ."
Father David Kirk

For more on Father David Kirk:
http://www.fatherdavidkirk.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_David_Kirk

http://emmaushouse-harlem.org/

Father David Kirk On The Compass

Being Holy Week, I'll take a breather from the crazy events in the world and present some writings from Father David Kirk.

"The Gospel tells us in a thousand ways that the important thing is not to "win". But to arrive at the discovery of the Other in God and in our brothers and sisters. It is not a choice between living a "ruined" life and an infantile life; it is a matter of, day in and out, maturing through the options that we must choose, and through the love which brings security to others."

"In the context of the Gospel, God does not appear like the father who locks the door so that the children cannot go out at night. Rather, God is like a light on our way, like a compass guiding us in our options, someone who does not abandon us in the risky exercise of freedom, and helps us refashion events that seem headed toward disaster. This, at least, has been my experience of freedom on the road to Emmaus."

For more on Father David Kirk:

http://www.fatherdavidkirk.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_David_Kirk

http://emmaushouse-harlem.org/

A Note For Lent

by Father David Kirk

A preface about Lent:
People “give up” things during lent:
Pizza, beer, lobster, whatever.
But does it move us closer to God,
Closer to one another, to ourselves?
Maybe what we should work on at Lent
Is CHANGING ATTITUDES.
Leaving behind frustrations, fears,
Cultural attitudes
Which box in others.
TO GIVE UP NEGATIVE, DEFEATIST ATTITUDES
To see temporary setbacks as permanent
To escalate disappointment into catastrophe
To experience problems as insurmountable.
To try to see other possibilities
When things don’t go as we had hoped or planned.
Sometimes I set myself up to feel like a failure
Or to feel badly
About things I cannot control;
And I get out of this only by deciding
That if things can’t be one way,
Well, maybe they can be another.
Its possible, I think, even for me,
To still make inner changes,
To move old emotional garbage out
Permanently
To see the world in a whole new way,
To come closer to God.
So I’m not sure what I’m giving up this Lent
But I think its
HOPELESSNESS.
I think I learned this attitude
At an early age,
As a lonely adolescent,
As a young man whose people die young,
Whose sister died of alcoholism.
But God keeps seeking me, the lost lamb,
And in intervening in my life
Converting all these things into HOPE.
So I put all hopelessness on the altar
As a sacrifice to faith and joy.

As God Lives in me, I determine who I am.
[Mark 9:14-29]

*Reposted from Ash Wednesday 2009.

http://fatherdavidkirk.com/

A Christmas Sermon

From a sermon by Father David Kirk (1935-2007) - Founder of Emmaus Harlem

"Christmas is our feast. The time we remember Jesus, born homeless in a shelter in Bethlehem. The time of hope, of the birth of hope...the time we try once again to open our hearts, our lives, and let God be born in us. It's interesting: the Gospels begin with the Christmas story, the birth of Jesus, the power of God in a powerless little child, and ends the story with Emmaus: Jesus, on the road, incognito, a stranger, among his disciples.

What both stories tell us is that God inserted Himself into this tired struggle of humanity, among men and women struggling with the power of evil and despair. It is among us struggling people who form a story which God wants us to become a part of; and into this struggle God inserts Himself in Christ Jesus, becoming a brother, a fellow traveler with us. He walks with us. He joins us in our struggle, our hurts, our disappointments, listens to our stories and helps us realize that we are not walking in circles; we are not suffering without meaning; we are not alone in journey; that the God of love who gives us life is now with us - within us - at all times and in all places; so we never need feel lost, we can always trust that God walks with us.

Jesus listens to our stories and gives us hope; but so many of us...hide part of the story, cling to our aloneness; and when we do that we are not allowing God to touch us when we are lost in pain; we hide from one another those places deepest inside ourselves, where we are most in pain, where we are most confused, guilty, hurt. So Christmas is the time to commit ourselves to open up to one another and to God, and to allow God and divinity and hope and new life to be born in us.

It is night now and, in many ways, in America it is night. It is darkness. It was in the night when the angel told Mary that the Messiah, the Savior, would be born to her, a virgin - an impossible thing - and in the night when she gave birth in the shelter of a cave. How do we get out of this night, out of this darkness?

So tonight is the night to reach out and, in God, let love for each other be born; to think of any person among us we have judged, not accepted, even rejected, and build communion as a brother or sister.

When everything is dark, when we are surrounded by despairing forces, when we do not see exits from our troubles, then we can find peace and salvation in the remembered love of Jesus Christ, which is love made vulnerable through suffering, and teaches us that truth springs from patience, and patience from suffering."

Father David's ministry carries on today at Emmaus in Harlem. For more information or to make a donation:
http://emmaushouse-harlem.org/