Contemplative Chapel this Lent

Beginning Wednesday, March 1 (the Wednesday after Ash Wednesday), anyone interested in participating is welcome to join in an online experience of contemplative prayer with Dean Gary Jones, via Zoom.

Each session begins with a very brief welcome and reflection, followed by a time of “Holy Reading” or

CONTEMPLATIVE, page 3 and Quaker mystic Thomas Kelly as well as Ernest Hemingway’s admonition to himself to “Write the truest sentence you know,” led the group to sum up The Robert C. Stuart Lenten Series in this way:

Return to what is genuine and true.

Return to what you know.

Return to Love

“‘Love,’ of course, is often the name given to God,” said Dean Jones. “And when Brother Lawrence humbly taught the eminent clergy and theologians of his day, he encouraged them regularly to keep “returning to Love,” always consult Love throughout your day, let Love become your intimate Friend. And Brother Lawrence’s life showed that what one so intimately befriends is what one gradually becomes in

LENTEN SERIES, page 6

There’s an old Peanuts comic strip in which Linus approaches Charlie Brown and asks, “Charlie Brown, do you want to know what the trouble is with you?”

Charlie Brown looks at Linus and answers simply. “No.”

The two stare at each other … Then Linus says, “The trouble with you, Charlie Brown, is that you don’t want to know what the trouble is with you.”

I guess there’s some truth in that about each of us. Sometimes we’re too full of pride or denial to want to know what the trouble is with us. That’s true some of the time. But my experience is that most of the people who come to talk with me are all too aware of what troubles them, what is wrong in them.

Psalm 51 puts it well: “I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” The bigger problem for many of us is not that we are in denial, but that we are too acutely aware of what is wrong with us. And the result is that we seek out nonjudgmental clergy and therapists to help us, because our lives have become centered on, and defined by, what we believe is wrong. We want to see more.

And unfortunately, in our present cultural moment, many of us are often like Linus — we are all too ready to point out what is wrong with someone else. But when our attention is centered on what is wrong, either in ourselves or in others, this just means that the pearl of great price will go unnoticed, the buried treasure will remain buried, in our own lives and in the lives of others.

Psalm 51 concludes, “The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” My sense is that most of us are troubled

PEARL, page 8