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A group recently rented the church for a day long spiritual retreat. Arrangements were made for the event. The day of the gathering a request was made for wifi access. This is not a problem as there is wifi at the church but I found myself contemplating that request.

To me, a spiritual retreat is about connecting with God and with our spiritual selves. It is a time for introspection and inspiration. While there are many resources on the web for spiritual inspiration I would not want to involve technology, and certainly not the web, on a spiritual retreat. For one thing, while the web is a source of much that is good, efficient, and helpful, it is also symbolic of overstimulation, too many choices, and too much information. To me, a retreat is a time to disconnect from those kinds of things to create space to connect with the Spirit. A retreat is a time to unplug.

When we make the space for God to come into our lives, our spirits are fed. In the New Testament we are told again and again of Jesus going off to pray, going off by himself. In solitude and silence he opened himself to being filled with God. That enabled him to serve, forgive, heal, and help. We get accustomed to constant stimulation and connection; the TV is on, the radio is on, we can stream from our phones and computers, we can receive and send messages anytime and anywhere. Can God be in all of this? Of course. Can our connecting be a way to express divine love. Yes. But there is always a place for silence, solitude, reflection, and contemplation – unplugged.

I have spoken with church people who are uncomfortable with silence. They say they don’t know what to do. It is disturbing and uncomfortable. I think there may even be a fear of silence. My spouse had a step grandmother who lived near a grove by a lake in central Florida. When we went to see her years ago, she made it clear in no uncertain terms that no doors were ever to be left open at all. Period. We got a long lecture about what could come in if you were not vigilant. Lizards. Squirrels. Raccoons. Rats. Snakes. Alligators. And that was just getting started! Maybe some people are afraid of quiet and silence because who knows what might creep in if you leave some room! What ideas or dreams or attitudes or visions might sneak in? If you make sure to have something going into your mind all of the time – from radio, TV, internet, entertainment, written material, conversation – then you are choosing what you are exposed to and you think you have the control. It’s harder to control silence which is another reason people may be afraid of quiet.

One way to work on feeling more comfortable with silence is to start small. Give it three minutes or five minutes a day. Over time, work up to ten minutes. This is the way we approach exercise. Begin small and build up. This is one way to become more comfortable connecting with God and with your inner self through quiet.

And if some time in silence simply will not work for you but you do want to feel more connected to God, then try service. Volunteer. Help someone. Give of yourself. And you will feel yourself part of a bigger picture, a larger reality. God will find you.

Prayer: This Lenten season is a time for quiet and contemplation. May we overcome our fears of silence. May we give up our need for control. May we make room for the Spirit in our lives and be open to where the adventure takes us! Amen.

March 31 is Cesar Chavez Day. Chavez was born on March 31, 1927. While Caesar Chavez Day has not yet become a federal holiday, it is observed as a holiday in the states of California, Colorado, and Texas. This is a day to remember one who was a great champion of the labor movement.

Dolores Huerta and Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962; an organization dedicated to advocating for the rights and dignity of farm workers. But it is also a movement committed to honoring the dignity and humanity of the growers and the farm owners as well. This devotion to the dignity of ALL people is conveyed in the NFWA commitment to non-violence. The NFWA does not want to replace one kind of oppression with another.

The birth family of Cesar Chavez owned a ranch and a grocery store in Arizona. This changed during the Great Depression when they lost their land through the dishonest dealings of local Anglos. They were merchants and farmers but were victims of injustice. When they lost their land, they moved to California and began to work as migrant farmworkers. So this was a significant change of circumstance for the Chavez family.

As migrant workers, the Chavez family moved again and again with the work. Cesar attended 37 different schools before completing the 8th grade, his last year of formal schooling. In school, Chavez experienced segregation and discrimination. There were “whites only” signs in some of the schools.

The challenges and oppression that Chavez experienced could have made him a bitter person. His family was swindled out of their land. He attended substandard schools and was treated in a demeaning manner in school. His family faced the abusive conditions imposed upon migrant farm workers. These kinds of experiences can be defeating. They can make people hostile and angry. But Chavez was a Christian. Surely he had learned of forgiveness and reconciliation. He knew that Jesus, too, was a victim of the hostility of others and yet he was committed to non violence. The Christian faith offers another way; a way of creative resistance to injustice and oppression.

In the face of the injustice and oppression that Chavez, his family, and the migrant workers experienced, he did not become hostile or embittered or vengeful. The injustice that he faced only made him more committed to working for justice for everyone. The awful conditions in the fields and the treatment of the workers motivated him to want to change things. The indignities that he experienced fueled his commitment to the dignity of each and every person. And despite his poor experience with formal education, he spent his life reading and learning.

At one point in his adult life, Chavez declared, “The end of all education should surely be service to others.” In his life, we see that his education through experience, through his schooling such as it was, and through his own initiative, did inspire his service to others. The challenges he faced motivated him to work for good.

We all face challenges and hardship in life, though maybe not to the degree of Cesar Chavez. These experiences can make us disillusioned, bitter, and defeated. They can make us hostile or vengeful. Or, as we see in Chavez, they can motivate us and inspire us to work for change and to help others. In the spirit of Chavez, may all that we learn in this life foster our commitment to service to others.

Prayer of the United Farm Workers

Show me the suffering of the most miserable, so I may know my people’s plight.
Free me to pray for others, for you are present in every person.
Help me to take responsibility for my own life, so that I can be free at last.
Grant me courage to serve others, for in service there is true life.
Give me honesty and patience, so that I can work with other workers.
Bring forth song and celebration, so that the Spirit will be alive among us.
Let the Spirit flourish and grow, so that we will never tire of the struggle.
Let us remember those who have died for justice, for they have given us life.
Help us love even those who hate us, so we can change the world.

What do you want to be written on your tombstone? What would you like to be your epitaph? Have you ever written an epitaph or an obituary for yourself? I can remember doing this back in what we used to call Junior High or maybe it was High School. I have no idea what I wrote. If I ever run across the assignment, I hope I at least find it amusing and hopefully not too humiliating!

I recently read what I consider to be an ultimate epitaph. It is poignant and poetic. It embodies the essence of Christianity. It describes a life lived for the common good and not personal gain.

“He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”

This is on the gravestone of the famous scientist, artist, and teacher, George Washington Carver. Carver is known for his work with the peanut. Maybe not as well known is why he pursued his agricultural investigations and inventions. 
The boll weevil was decimating the cotton crop in the south and Carver wanted to promote other crops that would thrive. He wanted to offer help to small farmers in diversifying their crops so that they could survive. He wanted to create a market for a variety of crops so that farmers would have options beyond cotton. So Carver found many uses not only for the peanut, but for sweet potatoes, soybeans, and pecans. His goal was not to make himself famous by coming up with multiple uses for the peanut; his goal was to help farmers prosper and thrive.

In addition to his scientific investigation, Carver was a teacher. For most of his career, he taught at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He helped students to learn the ways of botany and agriculture. But that is not all. Carver felt that in addition to fostering the intellectual development of his students, he was responsible for nurturing their character as well.

Carver had a list of 8 cardinal virtues that he insisted on teaching his students:

Be clean both inside and out.
Neither look up to the rich nor down on the poor.
Lose, if need be, without squealing.
Win without bragging.
Always be considerate of women, children, and older people.
Be too brave to lie.
Be too generous to cheat.
Take your share of the world and let others take theirs.

These virtues were grounded in Carver’s Christian faith. Carver was a dedicated Christian. He taught Bible Study at Tuskegee. He believed that God and science went together and he was an adamant follower of Jesus.

Carver left quite a legacy; one that continues to enrich and instruct us today. In this Lenten season of reflection we might consider asking ourselves what kind of legacy we are leaving for others? What might be put on our gravestone?

Prayer: We are grateful for the many ways that we are given to learn about the world and to learn about ourselves. We honor the legacy of those who have gone before us and all that they have bequeathed to us in terms of wisdom, experience, and knowledge. There are so many who have lived for others and we are benefitting from their faith. May we use each and every day as an opportunity to learn and to give in the spirit of people like George Washington Carver. We pray for the desire and the discipline to follow Jesus. Amen.

Apathy. To be apathetic is to not care. It smacks of laziness. Why bother? So what? My online dictionary tells me that apathy means lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern. To me that is an extremely negative concept. The world needs people who care. We are here to make a difference. As Christians, we look to Jesus who is the exemplar of caring – about specific individuals, about society, about the world. He invested himself in the lives of others. He reached out to others offering healing and hope. He took an interest in people and in the world. He was enthusiastic about showing forth the love of God. He had deep concern for others. The last thing we could say about Jesus is that he was apathetic.

I recently was exposed to the idea of apathy as a spiritual virtue. Apathy? A virtue? How could that be? Then I began to think about what gets us into trouble. How do things go so awry in the world? Why is there so much violence and contention? What is the source of much grief and heartache? What leads our relationships astray? Our passions are at the root of much of the suffering in the world. We are enthusiastic about a system of government and then we want to impose it on others. And there’s trouble. We are excited about our religion and we want to rule the world according to our religious views. And there’s trouble. We become committed to a certain political viewpoint to the condemnation of all other perspectives. And there’s trouble. We have adamant opinions about certain kinds of people. And there’s trouble. In recent years we have seen the rise of many different versions of fundamentalism in politics and religion and this has created a lot of conflict and violence in the world. Certainly anyone who is a fundamentalist is not apathetic. In fact, just the opposite. A fundamentalist is impassioned and committed and concerned. So I have begun to see how being passionate, the opposite of apathetic, can lead to problems.

There is another dimension to this as well. Maybe we can say that we want to be apathetic, for instance, about what race someone is. It shouldn’t concern us if someone is white or black or purple. A human being is a human being. It shouldn’t concern us if a person hired for a job is a man or a woman as long as s/he is qualified and capable. It shouldn’t be of interest to us if someone is rich or poor. A person is a person.

There may be some ways, then, that we can see apathy as a virtue. Caring too much about the wrong things can lead to problems. But I still can’t give up the idea that apathy is negative. Our spiritual journey invites us to be in discernment about what we are called to be concerned, impassioned, and enthusiastic about. Our faith compels us to examine what really matters to us. Is what matters to us the same things that mattered to Jesus? I do want to be engaged, passionate, and deeply caring. But I want that passion to be for love, for justice, for well being of others, and for the good of the world. That’s what I see in Jesus.

Prayer: We pray for hearts filled with divine love. We want our lives to pulse with the passion of love for God, for life, for the world. We want to be caring people who make a difference for good in the world. This requires sorting out of our motivations, our desires, and our self interest. May we be honest in our discernment. May we be willing to grow and change. May we let go of passions that are destructive. May we look at our sisters and brothers without bias or prejudice. God loves the whole world with unabashed passion. May the same be said of us. Amen.