If You Give a Monk a Fishing Net

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Tom Bolton

A cool post by Irvin J. Boudreaux !!

Christopher Adamson's avatarThe Golden Echo (Archive)

Monastic Monday Br. Monday is now wondering why the abbot made him a fishing net…

Three old men, of whom one had a bad reputation, came one day to Abba Achilles.

The first asked him, “Father, make me a fishing-net.”

“I will not make you one,” he replied.

Then the second said, “Of your charity make one, so that we may have a souvenir of you in the monastery.”

But he said, “I do not have time.”

Then the third one, who had a bad reputation, said, “Make me a fishing-net, so that I may have something from your hands, Father.”

Abba Achilles answered him at once, “For you, I will make one.”

Then the two other old men asked him privately, “Why did you not want to do what we asked you, but you promised to do what he asked?”

The old man gave them this answer, “I told you I would not make one, and you…

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Freedom

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Tom Bolton

I’m recalling this poem from February 2013. The poem was percolating in my mind for over a week, but the parts about the song in my youth just didn’t translate well in 2013. Sometimes, repentance is hardest when we are too focused on the sin and not on restoration.

Jesus

Free Me From Shame

Can it be that there is no glory without the cross
and no growth without suffering?
Shall we conform to the image of the suffering servant?
How can we bear the image of his glory
after first bearing the image of our own shame?
Not the image of the suffering servant,
we do bear the image and memory of evil.
Today my memory drifts back to a song of my youth,
recalling words about Jesus and Joseph,
not a praise song, not a hymn,
but blasphemy of my prideful youth.
Today I seek to share his suffering, to
learn from the master,
to attain resurrection from the dead.
How did I get here,
I, a sinner so sad?
I remember pride and remarks, and cool,
and the shame engulfs me now.
Let me now be a disciple of the master,
learning now as a servant.
I seek now next things.
Draw me from my own selfishness.
Draw me to a holy enclave where I may
be free with boldness in faith.
Let me enter the garden to be close by my
Savior.

(c) Tom Bolton, 19 February 2013, Milwaukee

English: Sunrise at North Point Park, Milwauke...

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A List for Maundy Thursday

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Tom Bolton

Again

Maundy Thursday Table

Maundy Thursday Table

Maundy Thursday Playlist

http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/04/05/maundy-thursday-last-supper-and-gethsemane (This is a link to a page from Sojourners.)

This is a page from Sojourners in 2012. It includes a playlist of songs inspired by or that speak in some way to the Holy Week journey that brings us to Maundy Thursday and the great mandate from which the day takes its name: “If I, the Master and Teacher, have washed your feet, you must now wash each other’s feet.”

John 13-1-17

As we walk with Jesus ever closer to Good Friday, we recognize today as Maundy Thursday, commemorating the day that Jesus celebrated his last Passover meal — the Last Supper — with his disciples and washed their feet. Later that night, he would go with them to the Garden of Gethsemane, to wrestled with his humanity and the mission God the Father had called him to — to suffer and die on the cross at Golgatha the next day. Jesus asks his disciples to stay awake with him, to keep him company and join him in prayer. But they fall asleep, leaving Jesus alone in his dark night of the soul.

This is my body … broken for you.

We’ve compiled a playlist of songs inspired by or that speak in some way to the Holy Week journey that brings us to Maundy Thursday and the great mandate from which the day takes its name: “If I, the Master and Teacher, have washed your feet, you must now wash each other’s feet.”

Check out the music list near the bottom.

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Scourged to Heal

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Tom Bolton

Reading Isaiah 53:5

          Scourged To Heal

Near lictors, nauseated and sweating,
we seek to know our ailing, to confess our place,
and there to seek wellness.
The scourge, so devious, so malevolent,
made most evil by man, is
laid upon His tender body, and we feel each lashing in
ways barely known.
We see Him new each time.
Wet and lacerated, in red risen welts,
there is pain and healing found.
Bound, the way to freedom, and beaten fiercely,
He suffers before me,
before my soul, my weeping presence,
and I will be healed.
In fairness, torn apart, and purity
set aside in bloody flesh,
we are there, and aware,
barely alone in absolute agony,
in community, yet alone.
And the love grows inside,
healing the body, the spirit, the me.
He heals; scourged, He loves.
We are healed each day.
The sharpest scourge breaks the heart,
and in that broken place, there is fresh healing.

–Tom Bolton, 31 March 2015, Bay View

 

cross

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Thomas

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Tom Bolton

On Thomas in 2014
On John 14:2

cross

Room Enough

Like Thomas, I have searched the way,
and I love this community,
love this master.
But these days, I am reminded:
There is a place with many rooms,
there is a place prepared,
there is a place I can scarce imagine.
A place just for me?
A place personally prepared?
And as I ponder this, I know:
Our relationship is personal;
it is not just academic.
Our conversation is personal.
Our manhood is real, and okay, loved.
The walls are a color I don’t yet know–
Not the colors I forget here, but new colors.
The scents are new and rich,
pleasant and mouth-watering.
The sounds are clear and fresh, not clamored.
The work is uplifting, joyous, unknown here-to-for.
The place is new, and worth pondering as
I live the life in this way in this place.
In this way,
I approach my room.
It is room enough, made just for me.

(c) Tom Bolton, downtown Milwaukee, 7 April 2014

John 14:2

The Message (MSG)

The Road

“Don’t let this throw you. You trust God, don’t you? Trust me. There is plenty of room for you in my Father’s home. If that weren’t so, would I have told you that I’m on my way to get a room ready for you? And if I’m on my way to get your room ready, I’ll come back and get you so you can live where I live. And you already know the road I’m taking.”

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Approaching the Cross

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Tom Bolton

I am repeating some posts from 2013 this week:

At the Cross

In the deep dark early this morning,
skies so black and veiled, we saw little clearly,
and felt the dark fall on each of us.
I was there at the cross,
overcome with grief and guilt and heart aching.
I touched the cross,
thinking I might be slapped down,
and felt the slivers and rough wood, and
felt then moist blood.
My heart ached in a new way.
Suddenly, I am lifted away.

(c) Tom Bolton, 5 March 2013, Milwaukee

Stations of the cross

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A Neighbor

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Tom Bolton

In March 2014, I was writing more regularly than I have this Spring, and it has been a different experience to return there as a visitor.

                                In Serving

In the neighbor, new and newly embraced,
He comes to me.
Found in ways newly dreamed,
He embraces me and him,
and we walk together, and
He is apace with us.
God’s goodness is there with us,
each step of the way.
We seek to be like Him,
fearing what we may be,
and desirous of walking the path.
Blessed, we meet the Christ.
It is in that walk, skipping and stumbling
with the child, that we embrace and are embraced.
We are here blessed.

(c) Tom Bolton, approaching a place, 11 March 2014

200px-Circuit_rider_illustration_Eggleston

On Mark 9:37
36-37 He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me.”

The Message (MSG)

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