Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Peace There Is That Knows No Measure

i've been reading jack kornfield's book, a path with heart, and was reminded of a congregation where i worked as a church musician several years ago.  many in the congregation, myself included, had participated in a weekend retreat experience, though not all of us on the same weekend.  in this retreat program, men and women attended separate retreats, and over the course of a couple of years a significant number of the church's members had participated in at least one weekend of retreat.

one of the outcomes was that several participants believed that sunday worship in our own congregation should be like the worship experiences in the retreat program.  this meant a radical departure from our usual form of worship, and many of us were not in favor of making such a change.  we believed that it was not realistic or healthy for the church to try to recreate the unique retreat experience every sunday in worship.  while the retreat was a wonderful program, it was not intended to take the place of our regular style of worship, that what made our participation in the weekend retreats meaningful was that it was a departure from the norm.  it was a "mountain-top experience" that energized our lives, but life is not meant to be a continuous series of exhilarating experiences, else such experiences become normative rather than special.

the push of some to change our church eventually split the church with some insisting on their own worship service created in the image of the retreat worship services, while others continued our usual pattern of worship at a separate service.  in the end, many people left the church.  the retreat and the response of many people to it left the church weakened, rather than strengthening it.  it was not the design of the retreat that was at fault but the response to it, when some failed to realize that the retreat's true purpose was to call us away for an intense period of worship and reflection so that our individual spiritual lives were strengthened to better serve one another when we returned to our day-to-day lives.  trying to maintain a continual retreat was an untenable and unhealthy goal, and our congregation paid for it when some attempted to realize such a goal.

so it is when we take something good and cling to it, grasping after fleeting moments of pleasure and trying to continually recreate them.  may we recognize both pleasure and pain as temporary passing sensations that are not the true meaning of life.  may we accept them as they come to us, enjoying the pleasure and enduring the pain, and letting them go as they pass away.  may we not flee pain any more than we try to prolong pleasure in an unhealthy way, but accept both as part of the stuff of life.  may peacefulness be our goal rather than avoiding pain or grasping after pleasure.  shalom.

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