Wintering Prayer

I’m thresholding, G-d, in another season of Winter in my midlife. 

The solstice has passed and a chill has settled into my bones and the stripped branches

as the depths of my wintering lays bare to the Wolf moon. 

All is quiet now, resting in it's snowy sabbatical.

Longing for your Light and promises of warmth, 

I chase your rays as they travel across shortened days 

before evaporating into elongated nights. 

Where are you in this stillness? 

Beneath? Hidden within? Perhaps hypogean

among the roots holding onto each other, swaddled in soil,

desperate for reassurance we're not alone.

Autumning Prayer

I’m thresholding, G-d, in another season of Autumn in my midlife. 

Grant that I may let go in the way of the Maples & Ginkgos, 

over time, with a whole season to release. 

Let my relinquishing be just as vibrant, in haunting hues of ridiculous reds and golden yellows, 

delighting others needing encouragement to let go.

Encourage me, like the trees, to release, 

secure in the embrace of a community that supports me radically at our foundations, 

reassuring me I won't collapse under the exhaustion of letting go;
May what has been obscured or hidden, either by design or necessity, 

be revealed in the approaching season of sabbatical rest. 

Nothing gold can stay, I know. Even the Burning Bushes flare up like a flame, 

making shadows You can move in.

Summering Prayer

I’m thresholding, G-d, in another season of Summer in my midlife. 

I'm grateful for the produce of Your abundance overflowing in the garden, 

as well as in our relationship,

as I reap a harvest of my earlier attentiveness. 

Now comes the repetitive tasks of maintenance, 

weeding out what competes for Your Light.

This year, the dog-days seem to have returned prematurely with the pollinators,

even as You send solstice showers on both the righteous and unrighteous, 

bringing relief, as well as oppression, borne on mosquitos' fragile wings. 

Dead-head with me, Holy One,

removing spent blossoms to encourage new blooms while this season lasts.

Covenants and Rules (conclusion)

    Much like the guiding principles of the Levitical laws and the precepts of Christ Jesus’ teaching, a rule is meant to offer ethical guidelines for relating in covenantal community. As Benedict explains, these instruments of good works (Chapter 4) shape the desires of our hearts in the form of our covenantal promises with G-d and each other. Within covenantal partnerships, self-selected instruments of good work for cleaved one-ness can define a bespoke relationship rule. Ultimately, a relationship rule can offer all those within the covenantal relationship (and all those in relationship with the covenant partners) to reap the fruits of the Spirt described by Paul in his letter to the Galatian faith community - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5)
    Inspired by the Rule of St. Benedict, some examples that covenant couples may choose for their own relationship rule are forms of humility; silence and solitude together; regular times of prayer and scriptural study with each other; singing songs of praise or making music together; divisions of labor within the household and accountability for those responsibilities; predetermined procedures for forgiveness and reconciliation; financial equality and mutuality in sharing of resources; service to one another and hospitality to the other in each other; and provisions for when covenant partners are apart or away from each other. 

     Other options for a relationship rule may be based upon such avowed communal practices as Spiritual Direction (individually and as a couple); corporate worship together and group prayer opportunities as a couple; mentoring other covenant partners in faith communities; days specifically set aside to retreat, refresh, and renew together within the presence of the Holy One; and welcoming the stranger into their relationship with an ethic of homecoming and radical hospitality. 

     By modeling a relationship rule after the rules of religious communities, covenantal partnerships may benefit from an agreed upon structure for living together into covenant belovedness. As individuals chosen by each other to be cleaved together as one in love, covenant partners may, through a relationship rule, live as a flourishing community with G-d and each other.

    Through a relational rule, covenant partners may be confident that their covenantal promises will hold even when their rule may be compromised. A rule alone does not sustain a covenant relationship, but it does provide a disciplined practice for supporting the covenantal promises that couples make with each other and G-d. By the power of the Holy Spirit cleaving individuals into one, along with the dedicated work of the individuals in the relationship, a covenantal
partnership has the integrity of being whole and complete in relationship with G-d, because G-d is 100% whole and complete, even when we are not.

     Covenantal relationships with the Divine are always 100%. However, individual members aren't always able to bring 100% of themselves to their covenant relationship. Each partner never gives 100% all of the time, nor do the partners equally give 50% all of the time. There are seasons in covenantal relationships when the proportions of individual giving breaks down unevenly within a relationship. This is why the marriage liturgy asks individuals entering into covenant with one another to declare before the witnesses of their faith community that they desire to love, honor, and keep one another in sickness and in health. They covenant with each other and G-d, with the support of the faith community, to stand by each other no matter what, respecting one another as created in the image of the Divine Trinity, and desiring to understand the other’s needs while enjoying the giftedness of love until they are parted by death. This is no small task! There may be days, due to unimaginable circumstances, when neither partner is able to muster giving even 50% of themselves to the covenant relationship. These are the moments when a relationship rule can buttress covenant partners in their efforts to maintain their covenantal promises as the Spirit fulfills the relationship, making up any difference needed. Therefore, a relationship rule must be flexible enough to allow covenant relationships to pivot and adjust daily to the needs of the individual members, but strong enough to maintain the integrity of the covenant when the individuals are not strong enough on their own.
    Considering the theological nature of covenants and contracts, the spiritual gift of love described by Paul to the Corinthians, and the benefit of communal rules (such as the Benedictine Rule) in maintaining covenantal promises, intimate covenant partnerships have the potential of flourishing in relationship with G-d through the disciple of a bespoke relationship rule. Understanding covenantal relationships through a hermeneutical perspective of belovedness, a relationship rule provides the space and energy needed for couples to honor one another and their shared relationship with the Holy Spirit as chosen and cleaved together as one. A relationship rule offers covenantal partnerships perimeters, disciplines, and healthy boundaries which trellis covenantal viriditas, encouraging individual and shared giftedness to grow. Just as the Benedictine Rule is structured “in order that by observing it in our monasteries we may show ourselves to have to some degree, integrity of life…” (Chapter 73), so a covenantal relationship rule can support the fulfillment of couples’ covenant promises, empowering instruments of good works to blossom through the relationship into the fruits of the Spirit for the couple and wider community.

The Rule of Saint Benedict

(Translated into English. A Pax Book, preface by W.K. Lowther Clarke. London: S.P.C.K., 1931)

Covenants and Rules (continued)

    Paul highlights the significance of the Benedictine Rule’s charity (or love) in sustaining mutuality within the Body of Christ through his communications with the budding faith community in Corinth.

    “Love is patient; love is kind. Love isn’t envious, doesn’t boast, brag, or strut about. There’s no arrogance in love; it’s never rude, crude, or indecent—it’s not self-absorbed. Love isn’t easily upset. Love doesn’t tally wrongs or celebrate injustice; but truth—yes, truth—is love’s delight! Love puts up with anything and everything that comes along; it trusts, hopes, and endures no matter what. Love will never become obsolete. (I Corinthians 13:4-8 The Voice)
    In covenant relationships, both with G-d and each other, love is a gift of the Spirit; it is that gifted love which cleaves us together into one. Like adhesive, love marries the many members together into One Body. It is the very spiritual energy that empowers members, although different, to coalesce as One in Christ. Such a self-less commitment in covenantal relationships, as described by Paul to the Corinthians, is beyond the mere willpower of any individual member, though. The
Rule underscores this, “…reckoning that the good that is in them could not be wrought by themselves but by God, [let the Rule] magnify the Lord working in them…” (Prologue) It is only by the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit that distinct members in covenant relationship can continue to cleave as One by the magnetic power of love.

    This is the very point Paul is making. It is the Spirit that intercedes for us in covenant relationships, helping us when we can not help ourselves. (Romans
8:26) Even though we’ve made covenantal commitments, even though the Spirit cleaves us into One, even though we desire to live into our covenantal promises just as Paul describes, we do not always do it. (Romans 7:15-25). Paul and the Benedictine Rule understand this; each offers to covenant relationships an opportunity to fulfill their promises as a trellis for love to flourish with Hildegard’s viriditas. 

    Through a rule, covenant partnerships are re-membered each day. (Ezekiel 37) The freedom of space and energy within a covenant rule allows Benedictine charity to encourage each member of the relationship to prioritize their covenant promise. Cleaved covenant partners, empowered by the Holy Spirit, may then verdantly share faith, hope and love as one. “[T]hese three virtues must characterize our lives. The greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13 The Voice)
    If intimate covenantal partnerships were to establish a relationship rule to help each member fulfill their covenantal promises with each other and G-d, what would it look like? The Benedictine Rule encourages a structure that will “[c]onvince, entreat, rebuke.” (Chapter 2) What healthy boundaries or expectations could serve to convince individual covenant partners to focus each day on their most committed relationship, highlighting for them both the short-term and long-term benefits reaped by such an intentional discipline? What if the praxis of a communal rule of life were applied to covenant partners? Could this be a relationship rule? Would a relationship rule convince couples to choose each day to act on their covenantal promises instead of just the desires of their own hearts? 

    A relationship rule in practice has the potential to entreat partners to be patient and gentle with one another, allowing them to grow individually, as well as together, and to become strong, filled with wisdom, and having the favor of G-d upon them and their relationship. (Luke 2:40) A relationship rule may also serve to rebuke covenant partners when they are negligent of their covenant promises, correcting individual desires that miss the mark of covenantal fulfillment. With an agreed upon relationship rule for how to act out their covenantal promises, partners have a baseline or home base to which they can return together with G-d when promises are broken or ignored.

The Rule of Saint Benedict

(Translated into English. A Pax Book, preface by W.K. Lowther Clarke. London: S.P.C.K., 1931)

Covenants and Rules

    How can a theological understanding of covenant and rule help shape an ontological perspective of intimate covenant relationships, while also providing some kind of praxis for living into such relationships? Is it possible to translate a covenant theology beyond the faith community, even beyond an individual’s relationship with G-d, to committed covenantal partnerships? How can we understand our most committed and enduring relationships through a hermeneutical lens of covenant and communal rule to honor the Divine Lover and the beloved partners?

    A covenant, unlike a contract, is promise based. Each party promises to be and/or do something irregardless of whether the other party fulfills their own covenantal promises, such as “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” (Song of Songs 6:3). There is a sense of mutuality in this kind of agreement. I promise and you promise and we both promise to keep these promises even if the other does not.           Whereas a contract is conditionally based. Each party agrees to fulfill certain expectations based on the fulfillment of prescribed expectations of each party,
such as when Abraham paid Ephron 400 shekels of silver in exchange for property with a cave to bury his wife, Sarah. (Genesis 23) There is not a sense of equity in this kind of agreement, but one of unequal power. If you do this, then I will do this, but if you do not, then I will not either.
    Covenant theology helps to clarify our relationship with G-d, as well as shape our perspective of who G-d is, who we are, and how we are to be in relationship with each other. A covenantal theological perspective emerges from the stories found throughout scripture of G-d’s relationship with the chosen people of Israel.  G-d persistently, with suffering even, keeps the promise to be G-d to a people who struggle to keep their own promises to be G-d’s people. Nevertheless, G-d maintains the covenant, refusing to abandon the promises originally made;
those same promises G-d continues to make with each successive generation of the inherited covenant. As Hosea demonstrates, G-d reiterates again “(to [G-d’s] reclaimed bride) I’m going to marry you, and this time it’ll be forever in righteousness and justice. Our covenant will reflect a loyal love and great mercy; our marriage will be honest and truthful, and you’ll understand who I really am—the Eternal One.” (Hosea 2:19-20 The Voice)
    How do we fulfill such a covenant, though? If generations of the faith have struggled to maintain their own covenantal promises, what makes us any different in our attempts at faithfulness? Is there a means by which we may be reminded on a regular basis of our covenantal promises, a sign or a symbol encouraging us to choose again each day to live into our our promises? What disciplines and healthy boundaries can we establish to live into our covenant partnerships without making them contractual? 

    Perhaps we can use the example of a communal rule to scaffold our most intimate covenant relationships, just as they were intended to scaffold communal relationship between G-d and community members. The Benedictine rule sets out perimeters for the monastic community’s covenant relationship with each other as a way to articulate, through practice, the covenant relationship that the community has with G-d. A rule, then, could be understood as covenant theology in
action - doing covenantal relationship, not just being in covenant relationship. 

    The expressed intention of the Rule of St Benedict is “to establish nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. But if, prompted by the desire to attain to equity, anything be set forth somewhat strictly for the correction of vice and the preservation of charity….” (Prologue) Therefore, these disciplines and healthy boundaries, not meant to be overbearing in application, are meant to provide space and energy for living into mutuality with each other and G-d in our covenantal promises. Through a rule, then, we are assisted in curbing the temptation to put ourselves first, and instead, mindfully preserving love (or charity) as a priority in our covenant relationships.

The Rule of Saint Benedict

(Translated into English. A Pax Book, preface by W.K. Lowther Clarke. London: S.P.C.K., 1931)

Springing Prayer

I’m thresholding, G-d, in another season of Spring in my midlife. 

A perception of possibility buds with the welcome return of Your dogwood blossoms 

and the chorus of birds each morning, 

who in turn welcome the dawning reappearance of Your light.

Your chilly rain soaks my grounding, releasing a familiar scent,

and nurtures my deep hope for sunnier summer days of abundance.

Each day’s deepening of green reminds me 

of the cyclical nature of my own greening 

and this deepening One-ing with You.