Csquared Thoughts

Robber's Cave

I don't write much about my Oklahoma City years, which spanned 1978 to 1985, but this time of year makes me think of Robber's Cave.

I was a member of the Unitarian Church in Oklahoma City, a community I really loved. For a number of years about this time in October we would have a weekend retreat at Robber's Cave State Park in Southeast Oklahoma. It was a bit of a drive from Oklahoma City, but the experience was well worth it.

There was an optional dinner in Krebs, a town just outside McAlester, known for a cluster of Italian restaurants that served family style food. We would reserve a private room and enjoy great food and conversation before resuming our journey. After leaving there you drove along the freeway before making a turnoff on to a two-lane county road. It was very rural, and each farm had a security light in front of the farmhouse. You prayed that you didn't have car trouble because you had the feeling that those Southeast Oklahoma farmers, known rightly or wrongly for illegal as well as legal crops, were the type to shoot first and ask questions later.

The park itself was beautiful, in amongst the trees with its cabins and main lodge with kitchen and meeting rooms. We ate well (everyone taking a turn at kitchen duty), had workshops but plenty of free time, sang, talked, and, yes, drank some. Sunday morning we would have a worship service in the amphitheater overlooking the lake on a sparkling October day.

I still think of Robber's Cave in October and look back with the best of memories.

Mutual Gentleness, Mercy, & Forgiveness for All

I was reminded of this quote when I received an Epiphany card from my former priest at All Saints' Palo Alto, now retired in Wisconsin.

It was read by Dean Alan Jones of Grace Cathedral, at the end of his Forum conversation with Anne Lamott. I included it in my Advent letter sent to a number of friends, but failed to incorporate into my blog. I want to correct that omission.

Aidan Kavanaugh was a Catholic liturgist and Benedictine who died in 2006. His sense of Benedictine hospitality gives us a clear vision and sets a high bar regarding what the church should be all about.

 

The Church is always inviting all people home, where soup still simmers on the back of the stove in from the cold of impersonal process to the simple warmth of dinner among friends both human and Divine. Here there are no bottom lines only laughter and good red wine, mutual gentleness and mercy and forgiveness for all.

more on community

I wanted to let my quote from Sister Joan Chittister on community in Tuesday's blog stand on its own. She deserves to be heard in her own voice, and anyway, she intimidates me. :-)

But my response to her comments on community is mixed.

Ultimately, I know she is right. I know our worship must be communal. But there's still part of me that wants to hole up by myself, have my own private conversation with God, and not have to deal with the rest of the world. A blogger I used to read signed his posts "pax et curmudgeon." I can identify.

Yet while our private life of prayer and devotion is an important part of our balance, life in the community is equally important.

Sometimes I just have to kick myself in the rear and boot myself out of the house to make myself remember that.

community

Today's Voice of the Day in Jim Wallis' God's Politics blog:

It is in community that we come to see God in the other. It is in community that we see our own emptiness filled up. It is community that calls me beyond the pinched horizons of my own life, my own country, my own race, and gives me the gifts I do not have within me. - Joan Chittister

If you're not familiar with Joan Chittister, check out the interview with her on the public radio program Speaking of Faith. As the introduction to the program says, "Sister Joan Chittister has emerged as a powerful and uncomfortable voice in Roman Catholicism and in global politics."

Well worth listening to.