jeremiah, john donne, and my lenten koan

be careful what you ask for. never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee.

when i started lent with the koan of how i might find the place where i live to be holy ground, i had no idea how much help i would have. and again and again the help says the same thing: "be obedient."

now obedience is one of my vows: poverty, stability, chastity, obedience. poverty, at least by american standards, is pretty easy on social security. i find i have enough money to be mildly generous. stability is also pretty easy, because of my poverty. sometimes i think i would like to move back to the ocean, but i don't think i can afford it. and i find that my lot has fallen in a goodly place. chastity was actually not one of my vows at first, but i have come to understand how important it is, and don't find it so much trouble. but obedience: that's the hard one.

i like to blame my objections to obedience to the general american rebelliousness that started when the trouble-making bostonians dumped tea in the boston harbor and blamed it on the indians. but it is really of course mostly my own pride.

one of the things the rule of st. chad emphasises is obedience as listening. but listen to what? it is so easy to listen to entertainments. even as i type this i am listening to psalm 72 on youtube. and if i listen to the readings of lent (psalm 72 was this morning's prime reading), i am caught short again and again. walking, one can hear. the epistle for the second sunday of lent says, "we beseech you, and exhort you by the lord jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please god, so you abound more and more." it is easy to think of walking as a way of hearing bird-song, and so it is. but is also a way to hear the motorcyclist's motor-screaming as they try desperately to find happiness.

this past sunday, the third in lent, came the epistle that is the motto of the order of st. chad: "walk in love, as christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to god for a sweetsmelling savour." again, walking is more than only enjoyable. (the old testamnt reading that sunday is deuteronomy 6: it's hard to find a stronger encouragement to listen and obey than that.

and now this morning, jeremiah: ". . . if ye throughly amend you ways and your doings; if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt; then i will cause you to swell in this place, in the land that i gave to your fathers, for ever and ever, saith the lord almight."

so: i must listen much more carefully, not just to the wonders of creation but to all the parts of it which, as the anglican collect for ash wednesday reminds us, god does not hate, but which i all so easily "tune out."