Tag: Kierkegaard

A Christian Prayer of Love for the YMCA

The Y.M.C.A. was founded in love, it has survived and thrived because of love. George Williams, a young Christian man, and eleven of his beloved friends formed a prayer-full association on June 6, 1844 in London, England – a work of love that miraculously has taken root around the world and blooms still today, almost eighteen decades later: love endures, it never fails. May this prayer of love by Soren Kierkegaard inspire Christians in the YMCA to persevere in the love of God, for all.

Love is at the heart of the YMCA.

Love is why we strive at the Y to be “for all” and is the core of “Christian principles” and what we ultimately mean by a “healthy spirit, mind and body.”

To “love, serve and care for all as the hands and heart of Jesus” is becoming a kind of call to action by many YMCA leaders and branches that want to lift up the “C” in their Y and community.

Saint Paul reminds us that without love we are a clanging gong, we gain nothing and are nothing.

Whoa.

The Y.M.C.A. was founded in love, it has survived and thrived because of love.

George Williams, a young Christian man, and eleven of his beloved friends formed a prayer-full association on June 6, 1844 in London, England – a work of love that miraculously has taken root around the world and blooms still today, almost eighteen decades later: love endures, it never fails.

What does this kind of love look like in a YMCA? When do you see love at work through the Y?

When the Y is patient and kind.

When Y leaders are NOT envious or boastful.

When the Y honors others, when it is NOT self-seeking.

When Y members are slow to anger and keep no record of wrong.

When Y leaders rejoice with the truth and take no delight in evil.

When the YMCA protects, trusts, hopes.

Someday the Y.M.C.A. will close its doors for the last time, and what will have mattered most to the very end was our Faith, our Hope, and our Love; but the greatest of all is Love.

For Christians in the Y, for George Williams when he started the YMCA, love is not a attitude or posture, love is not a noun or verb, love is not words or works, love is personal, it is Reality, it is a Person, it has a Heart and is the Ground of Being – love has a name: Jesus – in whose face we can see and know God, who is Love.

If you are a Christian in the YMCA, and are being inspired by the Spirit of God to love one another, to love your neighbor, to love the stranger, to love your enemy with all your spirit, mind and body (as God has loved you), then you may appreciate this prayer by Soren Kierkegaard, written as a kind of foundation for his ground-breaking 1847 publication “Works of Love”.

I have taken it and adapted it as a Christian Prayer for the YMCA, an organization founded a few years earlier by George Williams because of the love of Christ, by the will of God, as part of the answer to Jesus’ prayer for God’s Kingdom to come and that “they all may be one.”

How could love be rightly discussed if You were forgotten, O God of Love, source of all love in heaven and earth, You who spared nothing but gave all in love, You who are love, so that one who loves is what he is only by being in You!

How could love properly be discussed if You were forgotten, You who made manifest what love is, You, our Saviour and Redeemer, who gave Yourself to save all!

How could love be rightly discussed if You were forgotten, O Spirit of Love, You who take nothing for Your own but remind us of that sacrifice of love, remind the believer to love as he is loved, and his neighbor as himself!

O Eternal Love, You who are everywhere present and never without witness wherever You are called upon, be not without witness in what is said here about love or about the works of love.

There are only a few acts which human language specifically and narrowly calls works of love, but heaven is such that no act can be pleasing there unless it is an act of love – sincere in self-renunciation, impelled by love itself, and for this very reason claiming no compensation.

Prayer by Soren Kierkegaard, in Works of Love, published 09/29/1847

May we who are Christians in the Y never cease to pray in Eternal Love for our branches, associations, and regional alliances; for our staff and volunteers; for our members and the communities in which they live.

But more than pray in love, may we be a practical blessing for all through our works of love as “little Christs” – an answer to prayer for those whose backs are against the wall, for those who are giving up on faith, hope and love: this is who the Y was started for in 1844 this is why the Y was started, and this is how the Y will endure beyond 2044, for God is love, and Jesus has instructed and shown us how to love, and we have the Spirit of Love within us – Their Eternal Love which never fails.

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A Prayer for YMCA Leaders : when we feel lost, in error and without life

In those moments, when as a YMCA leader you feel overwhelmed, adrift, lost in your spirit, alone in your anxiety, yearning to have the lifelessness of your Y transformed into vibrant energy – this prayer of Kierkegaard is for you.

“Father in heaven, let your voice come to me, be heard by me, even though it overtake me where I live secluded and alone.

You, my Lord Jesus Christ, you who came into the world to save those who were lost, look for me even in my errors where I hide myself from you and from others; let me hear your voice, let me know and follow it.

You, O Holy Spirit, breathe for me in inexpressible sighs, bring life to me though I am a barren tree.

You who bears again to life those who are already dead, you who gives youth to the aged, create in me a new heart.

You who with motherly care protects everything in which there is a spark of life, send forth the growth that you would have for me.”

based on/adapted from “The Prayers of Kierkegaard,” no 47 by Ole Anthony

Using our YMCA Core Values to stir up our spirit and mind, to rattle us and convict us, to encourage and guide us, authenticity is more about responsible honesty than unencumbered identity-declarations, about caring for ourself and others in a mutually respectful way.

Our authenticity ought to stimulate not just boundaries on who we think we are, but humility about who we really are, which includes the darkness alongside the light, the good and evil intertwined within us, the beautiful and ugly that is us.

In the YMCA our leadership is often defined by our character, our programs are successful when stories emerge of how the character-building emphasis worked; as my friend Dave at the Parkview Family YMCA quips: “transformed people transform people.”

Spiritual authenticity is more than just declaring what you believe about spirituality and expecting respect for it, it’s actually being honest and responsible for your own spirit, it’s health, and how it is doing in reality, in real life.

It’s about taking responsibility for the health of your spirit and doing the work so that it grows in its capacity to care for all in a mutually respectful way.

Authentic spirituality which doesn’t expand in its capacity to love is just a clanging gong or clashing symbols out of tune with reality.

At the YMCA, when we are authentic about our origins, about our motivations for why we got started, about the foundation we build on, about the roots which nourish our growth, it also requires honesty about the failures and hurts that have come through the YMCA. not just institutionally, but personally – the Y is all about people and building a healthy spirit, mind and body for all using Christian principles in practical ways. And for all the times we get it right, someone can point to ways we didn’t.

In those moments, when as a YMCA leader you feel authentically overwhelmed, adrift, lost in your spirit, alone in your anxiety, yearning to have the lifelessness of your Y transformed into vibrant energy – this prayer of Kierkegaard is for you.

He was writing in Denmark around the time George Williams was launching the Y.M.C.A. in England, and though his writings weren’t that popular when the Paris Basis was being crafted, Kierkegaard was “discovered” after the horrific tumult of the Great War, which was a shining moment for the Y, but also a dying of the world’s hope for peace in the world.

The Holocaust, the Atomic Bomb, the Cold War, global terrorism, genocides – this reality of YMCA members around the world ought to still way heavy on all Y members – in solidarity – and in accord with the prayer of Jesus in John 17:21 “that they all may be one.”

This means not just in our salvation and reconciliation but also in our empathy and practical actions of love.

And in that suffering is when we too often (if we quit avoiding this stark and disturbing reality) feel lost, in error, and without life. This is why the writings of Kierkegaard and his prayers continue to be sought out, for he seeks to get at the real, our actual lived existence, us, me, I – known and loved by God.

Maybe everything is fine for you in your life and family, your YMCA branch members and staff; but if we were going to be authentic, it’s not all we hope and pray for…yet; in the meantime keep honestly praying to the Lord, in humility and openness, like this prayer of Kierkegaard:

“Father in heaven, let your voice come to me, be heard by me, even though it overtake me where I live secluded and alone.

You, my Lord Jesus Christ, you who came into the world to save those who were lost, look for me even in my errors where I hide myself from you and from others; let me hear your voice, let me know and follow it.

You, O Holy Spirit, breathe for me in inexpressible sighs, bring life to me though I am a barren tree.

You who bears again to life those who are already dead, you who gives youth to the aged, create in me a new heart.

You who with motherly care protects everything in which there is a spark of life, send forth the growth that you would have for me.”

based on/adapted from “The Prayers of Kierkegaard,” no 47 by Ole Anthony

May the Grace and Peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Love Abides: Matt’s Death Day 20 Years Later…

“As you grieve and mourn the deaths in your life, may you learn to abide in love. We may not get to choose our death day, but we do get to choose to abide in love all the days we have left. That’s what I’m choosing to learn to do on Matt’s day.”

[I originally wrote this post in 2014, and have republished it here with some slight adaptions. It’s all still true for me…and may you be encouraged by it, to abide in love – for what marvelous strength it has to reconcile and heal!]

December 30th is Matt’s Day in our home.

He died on this day at age 23 in 2001.

He was killed by a drunk driver speeding down the wrong way on I69 between I469 and the Dupont South exit in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Matt was home on leave from the Army base Fort Bliss in El Paso Texas where he served as a cook.

Matt at Quartermaster graduation at Fort Lee, Virginia (2001)

We think of him almost every time we drive past that spot. Which is often.

Over the many years we’ve done a variety of things on this day to remember him.

Today I wore his old Montreal Canadiens NHL jersey. And listened to Rusted Root, Weezer, Wallflowers, and DMB in his honor.

I also make a point to sit and reflect about life and death, love and forgiveness, meaning and hope.

I’ve not always handled well the tragic death of my little brother Matt. Or Ben, who died in 1994; or my Dad who succumbed to brain cancer in 2012.

Matt and our little brother Ben (1993)

Thoughts of his death can easily fuel morose musings of the meaninglessness of life, even for me as a life-long Christian and pastor.

The writings of Kierkegaard have been an essential friend and guide in the many years since the deaths of Ben and Matt, my Dad, my Uncle Lynn, my cousin Lon, my father in law Jim, and now my brother in law Jamil.

You’d think that death ends the love brothers have for each other.

But St. Paul writes that “love abides.”

What does that mean for those that protest death and grieve the dead?

Kierkegaard writes words that kindle hope for a love that abides, in this life and the next:

The one who truly loves never falls away from love.

He can never reach the breaking point.

Yet, is it always possible to prevent a break in a relationship between two persons, especially when the other has given up?

One would certainly not think so. Is not one of the two enough to break the relationship?

In a certain sense it is so.

But if the lover is determined to not fall away from love, he can prevent the break, he can perform this miracle; for if he perseveres, a total break can never really come to be.

By abiding, the one who loves transcends the power of the past.

He transforms the break into a possible new relationship, a future possibility.

The lover who abides belongs to the future, to the eternal.

From the angle of the future, the break is not really a break, but rather a possibility.

But the powers of the eternal are needed for this.

The lover must abide in love, otherwise the heartache of the past still has the power to keep alive the break.

from Works Of Love, by Kierkegaard

It is too easy to let hate and bitterness rule my heart in response to the senseless death of my brother.

It’s been hard work to make sense of his tragedy and let love reign over it.

There were regrets I had about our relationship.

I wanted to be a better big brother.

I should have been there for him more. More present and interested in him.

I was busy launching my own life, getting married, finishing up school, starting a church.

I was there for some of his big moments. But not for any of the little ones.

It’s been difficult to figure out what kind of future I can have with my dead brother when the years preceding his death were seeds for regret after his funeral.

Again, Kierkegaard helpfully writes:

The whole thing depends upon how the relationship is regarded, and the lover – he abides.

Can anyone determine how long a silence must be in order to say, now there is no more conversation?

Put the past out of the way; drown it in the forgiveness of the eternal by abiding in love.

Then the end is the beginning and there is no break!

But the one who loves abides. “I will abide,” he says. “Therefore we are still on the path of life together.”

And is this not so? What marvelous strength love has!

The most powerful word that has ever been said, God’s creative word, is: “Be.”

But the most powerful word any human being has ever said is, “I abide.”

Reconciled to himself and to his conscience, the one who loves goes without defense into the most dangerous battle.

He only says: “I abide.” But he will conquer, conquer by his abiding.

There is no misunderstanding that cannot be conquered by his abiding, no hate that can ultimately hold up to his abiding – in eternity if not sooner.

If time cannot, at least the eternal shall wrench away the other’s hate.

Yes, the eternal will open his eyes for love.

In this way love never fails – it abides.

from Works Of Love, by Kierkegaard

May these Christ-centered words of Kierkegaard impart a fresh perspective on the breaches of love in your life.

As you grieve and mourn the deaths in your life, may you learn to abide in love, in imitation of Jesus.

Death will come for us all.

We may not get to choose our death day, but we do get to choose to abide in love all the days we have left.

That’s what I’m choosing to learn to do on Matt’s day.

Love abides.

Matt, 2000

[I originally wrote this post in 2014, and have republished it here with some slight adaptions. It’s all still true for me…and may you be encouraged to abide in love – for what marvelous strength it has to reconcile and heal!]