Although I wrote this piece 3 years ago, after the Sandy Hook tragedy, the thoughts are still salient in light of the recent outpouring of violence.
For all my friends with young children – there is no need to overwhelm your children with sadness, but it is important to engage them in some conversation. If you don’t … who will?
To read more visit:
Sometimes in the fall, when the afternoon sunlight is just right you can see the grain of the wood in the body on the large crucifix over the altar at church. I marvel at how the grain matches the pattern of the muscles it fills; concentric shadows and layers repeat the shape. I wonder at how the wood feels about being used for such a precious form; conveying the love of God to those who look upon the image.
My modern mind mocks me for a minute; as if wood had feelings. Then I recall the psalm that reminds me that all creation praises God and shows forth the truth of him. Nature cannot help but convey God, for it has no free-will. It does what it was created to do.
I on the other hand struggle to know what I was created for.
My free-will gets in the way. The very gift of choice has the potential to prevent me from fulfilling all that God has intended me to become. I was created to be an image bearer; bearing his image to a lost and dying world. I want people to see the grain of my wood, the inner marks that are only visible when the surface is scratched, shaped or polished.
Lord, help me be open to your shaping so that when the light hits me just right others might see the concentric layers of what is inside me. Without you I am as shapeless as I am aimless, unbounded, out of control. Give me your shape. Mold me with a firm gentleness, so that I will know and others will see the very thing that gives me shape and animates me – you.
I have often marveled at how both gold and blue can exist in the same sky. Anytime I have attempted to replicate this mystery with watercolors, my blues mix with the gold and annoying green invades the space.
I feel like I need lines to keep the hues apart. No green invading, merely the gold transitioning into blue. I’m not sure how God keeps the colors from mixing in the evening sky, probably there’s a scientific explanation … but could it simply be — he needed no lines, no limits for his work. He can do whatever he likes. He isn’t limited like I am attempting to prevent green when blue touches gold. And I wonder, is his work in my life like this too?
I struggle to replicate (poorly) what he produces with ease. I seek lines and boundaries for influences that would bring an undesired result into my life. He is able to achieve perfection with those undesired influences and it appears, without the struggle. There are no boundaries for him.
Perhaps then I am to watch, and be a part of his perfection and not attempt to copy it. I struggle to control, perhaps I should just reflect. Perhaps the issue is the materials I’m using, perhaps he’s just God and I am not.
“God works in His time” the priest declared, yet I will add to his declaration –
“God works outside of time.”
Our clocks and expectations mean little or nothing to him.
God is not constrained by time or our expectations.
The truth is – our prayers and pleadings are for us.
They whittle at our stubborn hearts, breaking down our obstinate wills into small, dust like particles, so that eventually there is nothing left to desire, but only what God desires. And although his desires are often “best” they are often the most painful things to accept.
Although the assertion “God works in his time” may bring us a measure of comfort, it is a small consolation.
The real comfort comes in embracing the truth – “God works.”
… from the Cloud of Unknowing
God, the Master of time never gives the future.
He only gives the present, moment by moment.
For this is the law of the created order
and God will not contradict himself in His creation.
Time is for man, not man for time.
I remember the childhood strategy to spelling a tricky word: “Why is dessert spelled with two ‘s’s’? Because you always want two servings.”
Well, I’d like to spell desert with two “s’s.”
“I want two servings of desert, please,” I ask with outstretched plate.
I want two servings of quiet.
I want two servings of reflection.
Yes, I want to be cut off from the abundance of modern life, and fully connected to the thin place the desert can offer, to enter into a double offering of closeness to God.
Double offering of stillness.
Double offering of reality.
Double offering of honesty.
How did life become so fast, so frenzied? I yearn for the stillness that the desert brings.
The air is still, the people are still, the hills are still, the vegetation is still, the dirt is still.
Quiet.
Some look at the desert and see death and stagnation.
I look at the desert and see stopping and quiet and reflection and pause and breathing.
There I hear my respiration. I feel my heart beating. In the stillness, my thoughts are free to move outside of me – outside of self. No longer preoccupied, I see creation; birds, bugs, animals. The stuff that is always going on around me without my notice. The peaceful rhythm that nature is.
The world is full of man-crafted devices, of machines – moving, whirring, spinning, moving, going, getting, gaining.
My body is a God-crafted device, made for life in a garden; a place where “green things thrive.” Where I am needed to attend and to notice. To see, and to experience the masterpiece of a flower, of the complexities of a bee, of the delicate intricacies of a butterfly.
So, will I answer the call to retreat? The call of the wilderness? Will I intentionally move into the thin space? Will I approach the veil and allow myself to be still and just breathe? Quietly? Within the beating of my own heart? My heart, a soft and fleshy 7 pounds of blob. A blob that God causes to contract as it pulses and pushes blood through my fleshy frame, my weak, easily damaged frame.
I will answer the call. I will make my bed, put my papers in order, fill my gas-efficient auto with fuel and travel to the mountains – intentionally moving away from the world. I will go further up and further in. Why? Why this counter-cultural move? Because I am called. I have set my heart to listening, osculta, listening with the ear of my heart, and so I hear, and so I must obey.
I have lived ignoring that call; years of simply listening to myself, and to the world. I should have ignored the world. I listened because expectations compelled me. Inside I knew I wasn’t smart enough to know how to lead myself – and now I rest in knowing that I am not.
I have searched and I have found the One I can trust. Rather I have been found by Him. He was calling me in my search. He is the One I can follow, He cannot disappoint, for He knows not how.
So, deep in listening, I have no other option but to follow.
He calls me to the desert.
A place with two “s’s” to my mind.
Two “s’s” because I desire a double helping of the fullness there.
The fullness of the thinness.
The world offers a fullness that is empty.
The desert offers a thinness that is full.
Full of Him – empty of me.
Thick with meaning – devoid of chaos.
Quivering with potential – but only potential, until I answer.
Will I answer?
Will I enter?
Yes
The psalmist is speaking to the “living part” of himself, his soul. The living part of his being is cast down and heavy – disquieted. I understand this.
If this “disquiet” is a part of the Psalmist’s experience, a byproduct of fears and oppression, why does the modern person become concerned when feeling this way? As though we’ve done something wrong; that we haven’t had sufficient “good thoughts” or maintained a positive attitude. Yet heaviness and disquietness are the soul’s natural reaction to life’s difficult situations.
This passage appears to be an internal discussion between the writer and himself. I benefit from the progression of thought expressed.
“Why are thou cast down, O my soul?” He is surprised at his own heaviness.
Then he encourages himself, “Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him.”
As if to say, “Why are you sad, take heart, something will come of this difficulty, something worthy of praise. God has proven himself in the past, He will not absent himself this time, take courage – be still.”
This psalm speaks to me in two ways; first, that to be heavy or disquieted is a natural state of my soul in response to fears and worries. Second, that when life causes me worry and distress, I should encourage myself by remembering that God hasn’t failed me and that when the turmoil has passed I will have something to be thankful for.
Counterintuitive? Yes. But that is the point.
Today’s lectionary reading from the beginning of the Gospel of St. Mark – the Baptism of Christ – has reminded me of a moment I had while visiting the Sienna Prayer Center in Ventura, California. It was a Holy Week retreat and I spent hours in the covenant gardens observing all types of birds and other small wild-life.
Stretched out on a lawn, I had occasion to leisurely watch a beautiful dove. Her efforts were awkward as she began the task of lifting her resting body from atop a nearby tree. She labored successfully under great efforts to a spot which seemed to be right overhead. With nothing to perch upon I wondered why she headed upward.
As she reached her destination there was a brief moment at which she became weightless. Her wings were fully stretched, a magnificently symmetrical wingspan. Her strong tail feathers fanned out wide, she was completely relaxed as she hung effortlessly for a moment in the air. Her gaze shifted to another tree, and with a slight but deliberate movement of her head she let her body hurl and fall freely to someplace hidden deep with another tree.
If Christ had been this bird’s destination – the Holy Spirit descending upon Him as a dove – at His baptism, it would have been quite a dramatic and shocking scene. Not the ethereal, lukewarm images of rays of light and brightness. No, it would have appeared more like a great force of intentional movement from heaven toward a man emerging from under the water.
This vision has awakened in me a curiosity of other word-images in Scripture. Might THIS vision of a dove’s movement tell a different story about my Lord’s baptism? And might this different story produce a more mysterious understanding of the active agent of the Trinity in my life?
As my flight began its final approach into John Wayne Airport, the financial concerns that eluded me while visiting family began to creep back into my thoughts. I was determined not to let anxiety ruin the four short days I had just enjoyed on the Bayou Teche with my godparents. The calm cadence of their lives, the warmth of their southern hospitality and the abundance of their resources had left an impression on my quick paced, hurried heart. They didn’t seem to have much money, but they certainly were rich in a way unfamiliar to me.
They have 20 or so chickens that give them fresh eggs each morning. They tend two large gardens that provide them more than their “5 essential servings of fruits and vegetables per day”. They drove me through fields and fields of healthy hay crops that yield them hundreds of bales every year; and the grand finale, a visit to the “other women” in my godfather’s life, his 30 head of cattle. He checks on them daily to repair fences, fill up water barrels and occasionally moving them to greener pastures – literally.
All through our travels he waved to neighbors and introduced me to long-time friends. Saturday I was treated to a delightful Cajun supper with many of these folk down at the bayou’s edge. We laughed all night, entertained by the stories of his war buddies and dancing a bit to the zydeco music blaring from an old radio with a wire coat-hanger antenna.
Each day my godparents got up early, finishing their chores in the cool of the morning. When I awoke the coffee was waiting for me and so were they, sitting in tandem rocking chairs in the front room. Neither one in hurry, they chatted about a sick neighbor or the new garden around the church grounds. Gentle, kind words shared. Their home is humble, yet sufficient. I was treated to a walking tour of the walls; covered with framed memories of family milestones, veteran reunions, and retirement parties.
I saw the exchange of money only once during my visit, at a roadside café. A special delicacy, something they didn’t have at home; fried alligator. Aside from that lunch, everything we did or ate came from their abundance of resources. I understood they didn’t have a lot of money and I also understood they were very content. Two things that are mutually exclusive in the hurried chaos of southern California where money equals happiness.
Now, I don’t think that the secret to finding happiness is building a chicken coup or growing your own vegetables. No, I think the answer is deeper – inside. My godparents are content not because they are rich in money, but they are rich in perspective. They have what they need, they enjoy and care for those in their life and they know that the key to happiness is tied to something more important than money.
A change in perspective – is it that simple? Perhaps it is.
Light and goodness, direction and guidance, comfort and strength be present, be real. Be a warm babe vulnerable in my arms.
Lord I long to hold you as Mary did, to comfort you, to tighten a blanket around you, protecting your warmth from the cold night air. I long to watch your dreaming eyes flutter, to feel your relaxed, sleeping body safe in my arms. To behold the wonder of you, my saviour, contained in a precious baby.
King supreme, yet you allowed yourself to be totally dependent upon the care and well keeping of a teenage girl. Was she full of uncertainty or a naïve confidence? She alone felt your warmth mingle with hers, smelled your balmy baby-breath, enjoyed the satisfaction of being your only source of nourishment. Yet she was, alone in a strange land, among strange people – no one familiar to comfort her, to encourage her confidence.
You were present, though fully dependent upon her. A paradox that confounds me yet comforts me too. For I am Mary; struggling to be who you need me to be. Amid the chaos and confusion of life I endeavor to provide a witness to the world. I bear your image, but I am weak.
A young girl brought forth the Father’s revelation. Weak, yet in her obedience she became strong. Her “yes” became the foundation for my “yes”.
And so with arms outstretched I ask to hold the Christ Child. Yet I wonder, can I, in my weakness, hold your image with a firm gentleness in my own arms?
Will you trust me? Will you strengthen me? Will you help me be all I need to be in order to bear your image?
A sudden surprise; everything is swept and clear. Expectations were to see the spot as it was; glass and shards of metal strewn around, a flicker indicating the presence of a traffic flare. But as we pass we can see no evidence of the damage done just two days earlier. If one hadn’t heard – one would never know.
Then it is seen, the humble roadside memorial. Against the city codes, it stands “permitted” today; an exception to the rules marks the spot where 3 souls were separated from their bodies.
“Too soon” some would lament … yet not, He always knew what the news would be that day. As though already published He had awareness of the headlines and the report we would hear;
Too soon? Perhaps by our standards, but the number of their days was already known to Him at their birth.
Three spots of flower-filled color, three clear, fresh candles. They pierce the grey tones of the morning and remind us to live as though this day were our last.