Tag Archives: sacred

turning tables / space making

by Eric Leroy Wilson

Holy Monday is fast approaching.  I am faced with a time of reflection about Jesus turning over tables and benches as He cleanses the Court of the Gentiles.  While several moments in Jesus’ life are not included in all four gospels this moment certainly is.  John places this event early in the earthly ministry of Jesus while Matthew, Mark and Luke tie this event to the Pharisees justification for his unjust arrest, imprisonment, torture and eventual execution.   This rhythm is still very much in play today.  As we suffer from our current psychosis of nationalism we look for clear cut justification for heavy handed policing, quick convictions, and the expansion of the prison industrial complex.  But Jesus turns over tables.Jesus turns over tables and benches in our lives to jar us into seeing our world in vastly different ways.  Circumstances present themselves on a monthly, weekly, and even daily basis to invite us to disenthrall ourselves of our surety, romance with certainty, and our clinging to status quo.  These table turning moments, chance encounters, acts of beauty and of banality, awe inspiring connections with creation, can serve to usher us toward an embrace of Christ counsiousness. In the following poem I attempt to capture this moment of table turning.  The attempt is to explore the moment in the temple frozen in time and space where Jesus takes radical action to shake the world out of it’s lust for isolationism and avarice.  May it serve to speed us towards a day where there is space made for all. 

Turning Tables/Space Making
By Eric Leroy Wilson 

The gasped word “wait“ hangs full bodied in thick air. 

Tables fly and the jangle of shekels, silver coined clashing ring like the sound you’d image the song sun beans make.  

Tables and benches in slowed rotation in space before gravity gets it way. 

Wait…. Hold on…

 

Muscles of a Rabbi exhale as wood gives way to force, 

Hands that would soon hold nails find release as objects once supine now fly.

The gasp of a moneychanger far too familiar with his own greed,

The flutter of birds questioning why are they now freed,

The strain of a vein on the furrowed visage of a gluttonous High Priest,

The subtle pop of boiling blood from the heated hearts of Pharisees hardened for far too long,

Wait… hold on… My hand half raised. 

 

As the guttural rumble of oxen grow to the beginning of their baying,

As the sheep build up pressure behind pallets for their bleating,

As Peter reaches for the prophet for restraining,

As the corner of my eye clinches to protect for projectiles and stray pinions,

Far away in some far corner of creation a host of six winged angels fall back defensive.

As God and the Holy Spirit shout acclamation,

Empire is critiqued, with no need for explanation.

What was alluded to as implicit now made full physical and explicit.

Sweat from a Saviors brow now dripping.

Wait… wait… hold on, I stutter with one hand raised.

 

The crack of leather cuts the fleshy back of open temple atmosphere.

A gall force wind whips with a backhand slash.

I’m pushed forward by the blast.

If only to stand, adjusting tendon, sinew and calf.

Heart being pushed from its lodging by a battle cry I never knew I knew.

A yell held silent for thousands of years I find myself now screaming:

Wait!

Wait!

Wait!

 

His rage so well placed; 

Not on merchant, 

Buyer, 

Banker, 

Or priest.

But on this nationalism so ensnaring there is no place for the other to be. 

An anger made beautiful by its sublimity.

Wait!

Hold on Jesus!

You would do all of this for me?

To make space for the likes of us to pray?

And find our way,

In the presence of loving

Trinity.

 


Eric Wilson serves as the Associate Chaplain at Pepperdine University in Malibu California.  Wilson is a certified Spiritual Director, Executive Coach and is a religion blogger for the HuffPost.  He is an award winning playwright and theatrical director.  His work has been published and performed around the country including the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.  Eric’s work attempts to leverage contemplative practice, the arts, and soul care for the purpose of fostering social justice in the world. Wilson’s book, Faith the First Seven Lessons was released Fall of 2016.

*header photo credit: Tomasz Sroka

the shout of sacred consent

by Eric Leroy Wilson

The memories of the older women I observed as a child at Riverview Church are etched indelibly in my mind. This church, built by the sweat and labor of my grandmother and grandfather, was the seedbed of my contemplative life. That church was sacred ground defended and held by these warrior women of faith. Their work-creased hands, sculpted by caring and cotton picking, offered bits of peppermint candy out of the corners of secondhand purses. Their backs were made strong by stooping and picking up the pieces of broken men shattered by a world antagonistic to their very being. These women were fierce. While denied access to adequate education, these women held depth. Their very presence functioned as midwifery to my faith. As they held vigil over their own sorrows during worship they would coax and wheedle the sacred, which was buried within me, to the surface. And these women moaned as the Holy Spirit moaned and as the earth moaned. They sang from a place as deep as the bowels of slave ships and yet from such a thin space you could swear you saw a glimpse of heaven and earth becoming one. And as the preacher preached and as holy words were proclaimed they would say, “Yeeeeeesssssss! This was different than a typical exclamation of, “Amen!” This was not just some throw away, “Hallelujah!” This was a profoundly felt and richly stated, “Yeeeeeesssssss!” And their “Yeeeeeesssssss!” may be the solution to many, if not all of the problems our world faces today, because their “Yeeeeeesssssss!” is so vastly different from the dangerous “yes” of our day. 

So often our “yes” is the reactionary “yes” to obligations we never really bought into. Sometimes we say yes and agree to do things we don’t have time to do only to gain approval from people we don’t even like. The dangerous “yes” of our day is a “yes” to exploitation of the other due to the false vow we make in our heart that we live in a world of lack, want, and scarcityThe “yes” we say from a place of assumed deficiency affirms our willingness to horde resources, turn a blind eye to systemic disparity, and find comfort in our apathy for the other. Yet all the while Jesus invites us to see a world that can feed a multitude with a few loaves and fish. Jesus bursts on the scene turning our eyes from scarcity to living life, and living it to the full. 

Sure there are the benign “yeses” of our day. The “yes” we say to meals with loved ones, the “yes” to walks with four-legged friends, the “yes” to coffee breaks and “yes” to social media likes of smiling babies and silly memes. All of these “yeses” are good and are the stuff of life lived. But so many of the “yeses” we use as common currency purchase for us all hardships when they are spent on agreeing to exploitation, estrangement, and indifference.

But if we look into the depths of our being there is the “Yeeeeeesssssss” within us all. In the recesses of our heart where our spirit and the Spirit of the Divine keep company with one another is our “Yeeeeeesssssss” of sacred consent. This is the place where your heart says “yes” to eternity. There is in the deepest place of your heart a space where you offer consent to all of God’s invitation. This is the place where we say “yes” to God’s invitation to intimacy. This sacred place within is where we say “yes” to God’s invitation to be transformed in the likeness of Christ. This is a likeness characterized by grace, joy, forgiveness, and vast pools of compassion — all of which is willing to be spread thick and wide and indiscriminately over all. In times of silence, stillness, meditation and keeping company with God, God is faithful to reveal this glorious area of our sacred consent. Our job is to familiarize ourselves with this place of sacred consent. And once we are familiar with this space, we must stand up with in this interior place and practice living from our sacred consent.

I’m convinced this is what these women were attesting to so many years ago in that shack of a church building. As the rough-hewn pews creaked under the weight of the lives they carried, these women offered shouts from the place of their sacred consent. While they knew the pain of loving too hard and working fingers to the bone, they also knew there was a place inside themselves where they and their God met. And anytime a passage was read or a song sung or a thought offered that happened to brush up against that place in their heart, they had no choice but to offer to us all a resounding, “Yeeeeeesssssss!” And I’ve spent the better part of my life now trying to find mine. When I do, I pray my “Yeeeeeesssssss!” brings as much light in this world as their “Yeeeeeesssssss!” did mine.


Eric Wilson serves as the Associate Chaplain at Pepperdine University in Malibu California.  Wilson is a certified Spiritual Director, Executive Coach and is a religion blogger for the HuffPost.  He is an award winning playwright and theatrical director.  His work has been published and performed around the country including the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.  Eric’s work attempts to leverage contemplative practice, the arts, and soul care for the purpose of fostering social justice in the world. Wilson’s book, Faith the First Seven Lessons was released Fall of 2016.   

This post originally appeared on HuffPost in February 2016.  
*header photo credit: Kathy Hillacre