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There is life in the desert.  It is hard to face one’s preconceptions of a place or a people or a person or a liturgy or a musical style or a theological construct.  To face these judgements requires great humility. It is hard to see people fast from chocolate cake in Lent and gorge on judgementalism.  Hard and a little amusing. I sometimes need to face my judgments down like a teacher trying to quiet a rowdy class of third-graders after a field trip to a Hershey chocolate factory. (Seriously, they give you huge amounts of candy on those tours, even in Lent!)

I had always dismissed deserts as life-less, barren places in which I was going to find it hard to get good food.  Butter, one of my favorite foods, will inevitably melt there and cream, one of my second favorite foods will curdle there.  Television reception must be bad there.  And then there is ice cream… No.  I had decided that deserts were bad places and that New England farmer’s markets are good places.  But that is juts a thought.  And it is not just any kind of thought.  It is what we call in “Art of Hosting” (the program we are launching on October 11th for three years of training) a “limiting belief.”

A limiting belief is just a negative thought.  It is a thought which, when thought, produces a limiting or negative reaction or feeling. We have them all the time because we have thoughts all the time. We think approximately 60,000 thoughts per day and approximately 40 thoughts per minute or 1.7 billion in a lifetime (assuming an 80 year life).  What amazes me is that we know how thoughts affect us, how they contribute to the health or degeneration of the physical body, how they fire chemicals into our bloodstream, how they inspire response and reaction, how they produce our statements and how they chart our courses, and yet we spend very little time observing, monitoring, managing, evaluating and sorting our thoughts.  Most us of just let ’em rip.

Our thoughts bounce around inside our brains sometimes like Florence Nightingale, tending gently to the dis-eases we see in the world around us; but at other times like a Nazi concentration camp officer glancing at what we see in life as if what we see are little more than prisoners flowing out of recently arrived box-cars; nodding some to the left and some to the right while a smiling German Shepherd quietly druels.

Deserts are not lifeless places of deprivation.  That is just a thought.  And if I want butter and cream, “deserts are lifeless and bad” can be a negative thought.  And we have these negative thoughts all the time based on what we consciously or subconsciously think we want or need – if we can even discern the difference. And what we want most is to be right – which adds gasoline to the brush-fire.  Bring those people, thinking this way – together…and there can be problems.  This is why a church or a family or a couple or a planet needs to learn more about limiting beliefs.

In “The Art of Hosting” program of formation which we will be doing in the cathedral over the next few years, we will be looking hard at “limiting beliefs” as a way to free ourselves from the power of our judgements and the power of other people’s judgements over and around us.  This is about as courageous work as a human can delve into.  It is what Jesus and Pilot were talking about when they were speaking in code with each other about truth. It is what Jesus and the Rich young Ruler were talking about when they were discussing eternity and life’s fears.  It is what Jesus was getting at when he was speaking with Mary and Martha. It is both the life and the spirituality entry level course which most of us missed because we were watching tv and skipping class.

Lent is a great time to look at what we think are deserts and begin to see the abundance of life in them; and the courage of that life.

(For source resources on thoughts go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-davis-phd/healthy-relationships_b_3307916.html)

This statue of an angel holding a shell stands gently atop the vestibule from the Clarkson door beneath the southeast tower on which our bees will soon be installed. If one were to emerge from Dagwell Hall and climb the stairs to the chapter offices, the statue would be there to one’s left perched high above the hallway from which one enters the chapel of Saint Martin.

Because it is a piece of art past which I move many times each day, I enjoy they way it works on me.  Art works on us. The angel stands holding a shell.  The statue tends to be an icon of waiting and openness for me.  It reminds me that we never know what is going to happen next – something wonderful – something terrible – something dull – something interesting.  We wait in gentle welcome of what happens next and we welcome it.  We do not fight with it.  We do not over-analyze it.  We do not greet it with violence simply because we did not expect it or because we do not like it. Its arrival has occurred. It may bring something good and needed even though it may seem hard in the moment of its arrival.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that a butterfly, caught in the cathedral, had made its home in the angel’s shell.  Each day I greet the butterfly along with the angel. Greeting two on the stairway takes longer, so I pause on the fifth step and greet this majestic creature.  She sits with wings up so that in a moment she can pull them down and lift off to safety.  Sometimes she cleans her face.

She reminds me, as I mount the steps to my work, that we land in places and we stay there a time.  I know people struggling with divorce, with failing marriages, with children or parents difficult to like, with illnesses, with limiting capacities where abundant ones would be welcome.  One of the best parts about being a priest is that one is welcomed into the holy space of hearing people tell their story.  The chief role of a good priest is simply to be present to people. My friend Harold taught me that when I was a curate.

When I look at this butterfly, I am reminded of the importance of dealing well with limiting beliefs.  The greatest violence and heartache in the world, in this moment, is not guns or bombs or even starvation.  The greatest harm humans perpetrate this moment, all around the planet, is the temptation to believe what they are thinking simply because they have thought it.

We think thoughts and accept them as if they are true, without examining them at all.  Is that thought true?  Am I absolutely sure it is true? How do I react – what happens-  when I think that thought? Who would I be without that thought?

(… for a worksheet on this work and some videos go to http://thework.com/downloads/worksheets/JudgeYourNeighbor_Worksheet.pdf )

We will be working on limiting beliefs as a community of faith as we enter into the preparations for the Dream Together Conference which the Art of Hosting Meaningful Conversations  Committee will host on October 11th.

What is this butterfly thinking?  “I hate this place!” perhaps. Is that thought true?  Am I absolutely sure it is true? How do I react, what happens,  when I think that thought? Who would I be without that thought?

Without that thought the butterfly would not be caught in a dark cathedral.  Without that thought, the butterfly would simply be resting in the safest place on earth.  And so too might we be.