Lay Down

Early this week I sorted through a file box, trying to organize various pieces of paperwork that I don't yet trust to digital. In the file box is one slim folder that holds a few memories - "Personal Mementos" is scrawled on the curling tab of the manila folder.  Inside this folder is a print out of an email sent to me in 2000 by a woman who I had worked with on a  summer missions project. That this scrap of paper has survived three cross-country moves is a testament to why it is in a battered "memento" folder.

The email begins with an epigraph.

"But the God that sometimes can't be found will wrap Himself around you. So lay down, sister, lay down." - B. Norman

The internet tells me that these words are from the song "Rita" by Bebo Norman - It's a sad song, about the death of a friend. I don't think I ever knew that before this week.   I just knew that this week, as they did 14 years ago, those words filled my soul in some way that made me take a deep, cleansing, breath.

Those words have resonated through my head countless times in the past 14 years. If not the words themselves,  then the simple truth of them has been there even when I couldn't remember them exactly or where I heard them first.

This is the beauty of poetry to me - that words become life - take on shape and have meaning. It is not just a sentence - it is imbued with something more. The poet (or songwriter) has chosen words carefully, caring about more than syntax. .

In the many years since those words first appeared on a computer screen and prompted me to hit print - one constant thing about God in my life is that even when he can't be found (or, frankly, when I didn't want to find him) - that somehow he was wrapped around me. There was a thread tangled and wrapped somewhere around my wrist, or an ankle, or a tiny corner of my soul, sometimes tugging with force, sometimes barely perceptible, but always there. I can remember describing the feeling as "God won't let go" in the midst of feeling like God could not be found. It is a paradox - but what in this faith is not?

For my Lenten practice - I have been journaling lament and this little phrase fits well into this experience. Lament is about sorrow and pain and loss - - things that if you spend enough time focusing on, your only recourse is to lay down, lay down. And the truth of these words written into my soul 14 years ago prove true again - that I find God wrapped around me. I'm pretty new to observing anything liturgical like Lent. I've never done an Ash Wednesday service - never had the cross smudged onto my forehead - but this year I am seeing anew that God who wraps himself around me, giving beauty for ashes I didn't even know I still carried around. Strengthening areas that are too-often governed by fear.  Putting firm foundation under the my feet and lighting a path. It is not what I expected from my Lenten journey of lament. I think I expected more sadness. But I am finding that when I mourn and dare to question God about the pain and brokenness in this world, in my life, that I find the God who wraps himself around me.

I Put my TV in my Closet and Started Living Intentionally

About a month ago I purchased a roku.  It does what it says it does - it streams Internet based video to your television without needing to hook your computer up to your tv. My laptop is old and doesn't play video well and we don't have cable - so the idea of being able to watch hulu or netflix in my room was appealing!

And, that's exactly what I did. I watched hulu in my room. Come to find out, having access to thousands of tv show to watch whenever you want - - not necessarily a good thing! ;-)   I'd turn on something for background noise while I did other more productive things -- but soon found myself sucked into the time-waster that is television.  I finished watching the few shows that I keep in my hulu queue - and went on a search for something else to entertain me - - other prime time TV shows that I had never paid attention to in the past. I suddenly needed to watch all the episodes from season one forward.

Needless to say, my time was getting wasted. And, prime time TV is often anything but "true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, or worthy of praise." (Phil 4:8)  If time-wasting wasn't enough -surrounding myself with the glorification of envy, vengeance, lust, and greed was certainly not a beneficial activity.

So, I told my self that I should cut back. That I should not turn on the roku box after I got off work at 11 p.m. and instead, go to sleep. That I should make sure I got other things done first.  And all that talking to myself didn't really do much good.

Then a couple weeks ago the sermon at church was on Matthew 5:27-32. That passage includes these verses
 

²⁹ If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. ³⁰ And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

The pastor talked about warning signs in our Christian faith. As if you're driving down a narrow winding mountain road and signs warn you to take the curve carefully - - you can heed the warning signs and make it safely down - - or you can rest confident in your own understanding and speed down the road before flying off the side of the mountain.


The combination of the couple of weeks of me fighting with what I knew I should do (less TV) and what I wanted to do (relax and be entertained), the realization that it was often a harmful activity rather than just simply being a pointless activity, and the sermon that focused on verses instructing us to cut off that which causes me to sin meant that I came home from church and unplugged my TV.  I then put my hulu and netflix accounts on hold - making it a little more complicated than just sticking in a plug in order to watch TV.

And all of this dovetailed with another common thread of my thoughts and prayers lately - living intentionally. Using the 24 hours I get each day with purpose. Not productivity - - but purpose.  So I started a list - things I wanted to do, things I needed to implement into my life, etc. The next day that I had off work I started the morning by wrapping the TV up in bubble wrap and  sticking it in the closet. I rearranged my room and got the sewing machine set up so that it would be easy to use. I put my stationary in arms reach of my desk. I de-cluttered my life a bit - getting rid of things I no longer needed or wanted. 

It's been a good week. I've created things, visited with people, been purposeful about encouraging others, filled my ears with praise, and have gotten more (and better) rest.  I hope to share some more of this on my blog - especially some of my sewing/craft projects and thoughts on the non-visual aspects of intentional living I am trying to implement.

Liturgy and seasons

My Advent Candles

A few years ago I started to become very interested in the idea of observing the season of Advent. As a child we had advent calendars - but that was mostly about counting the days to Christmas (and the gifts that would be there).  Occasionally my church would have advent candles and we would discuss the meaning of each candle - but for the most part, advent was not a part of my life - not on a liturgical level anyway.

I also had a rather dismissive view of liturgy and religious tradition  - finding it repetitious and empty to pray prayers that others had written or to follow some cycle year after after year. I had the faulty view that things that were not new were not fresh. I thought that for it to be authentic it must be spontaneous. I believed that to be sincere it should come only from me.

In so thinking I missed the beauty of joining with other believers in honoring Jesus and His Bride.

I didn't have any great moment of realization -but over the past few years I've been attracted to the beauty of the tradition, of the pondered, of the season of the Christian year - the liturgical year.   Advent is when I am most aware of it - but I would love to be more disciplined to observe the rest of the liturgical year.My current church does not observe the liturgical year either - I don't thinks it's very common in Evangelical churches - I find that sad. I did enjoy visiting a liturgical church last year and so loved being able to remember the season along with other believers.

People who live in places without seasons don't typically list their climate as perfect. Almost all of them will tell you  they miss the changes, the seasons. Since moving to Chicago, a place with far more definition of the seasons than my hometown of Atlanta, I have come to understand the waiting for seasons - whether it to be for them to come or go.  Near the end of winter - I get positively giddy thinking about the possibility of temperatures above freezing, of not having lug around a coat, of seeing something green growing from the ground. As spring lingers on I can't wait to be able to sit on the sand next to the lake and soak in the sun as I look out on Lake Michigan. In the scorching days of summer, when the humidity saps my strength as soon as I walk outside, I wish for and remember the chilly nights of autumn - the beautiful leaves and the smell of chimney smoke in the air. And, unexpectedly, I find myself ready for what I was so ready to be done with months ago - a crisp, white, clean blanket of snow. The magical silence it brings to the world - the freshness.  All seasons have their purpose. in some seasons I take more time to sit and ponder - literally. In other seasons I'm out and moving and trying to accomplish a million things. Seasons and cycles have a purpose - they guide us through life.

 

All of that rambling to say, I really enjoy observing Advent. I find it beneficial to remember the time of waiting and longing for the coming of the Lord in the history of the Church. To remember how even now people wait and long for the coming of the Lord. I downloaded an Advent guide a few years ago and I still use it. I love that the prayers give me words - give me things to ponder - force my mind and heart to think on things that may have not sprung "fresh" and "spontaneous" from my own mind.


For this, the first Sunday of Advent I pray,

"Let us pray in Advent time with longing and waiting for the coming of the Lord. Father in heaven our hearts desire the warmth of your love and our minds are searching for the light of your Word. Increase our longing for Christ our Savior and give us the strength to grow in love, that the dawn of his coming may find us rejoicing in his presence and welcoming the light of his truth. Only you can see into my heart and know that under all the busy-ness of my life, there is a deep longing to make this Advent one that welcomes you more deeply into my own life."

11 Years and Peace is still Amazing

I'm a day late on this - but I guess you'll just have to deal with that. :)

Eleven years ago I became a Christian. It was at one of those big youth camps. There were a few hundred teenagers in a chapel on a college campus. It was the first night of camp and I certainly wasn't expecting it. I do remember so vividly the feeling of peace that literally just filled my mind after I finally admitted that despite being a church-goer and involved in all the things of the church for years - I never really trusted that Jesus alone was my salvation.

I am happy to report that eleven years later I wasn't just another youth-camp "high" - - that while the eleven years between 16 and 27 have been filled with life and all it's up and downs and there have been moments and days and years where I was walking in the Spirit and times just as long when I have not - - that today - eleven years(and one day) later - my Prince of Peace is still a vital part of my life.

Just yesterday I asked a friend to remind me should I ever again start living like I forget - that peace is worth fighting for. What I mean by that is that the struggle against self (no matter how good-intentioned those self-serving acts are) is always worth the fight if the prize in the end is a step closer to being one with the Spirit.

Tessarae

In a creative wirting course in college I was assigned reading from a collection of short stories by Denise Levertov entitled Tessarae. With apologies to Ms. Levertov I do not recall any of the stories – but I do recall the title. Tessarae is the plural form of tessara which is a small piece of tile used to create a mosaic. The analogous jump to moments of our lives being tessarae is not a hard one and it is one that has stuck with me all these years. I coupled this word together with a quote I kept inside my Bible from D.l. Moody – “God can do great things with broken pieces, provided he gets all the pieces.”

In my life – those broken pieces came about in much the same way they do for many people – dreams and hopes that go unfulfilled because of lies, betrayals, and our own mistakes. For a number of years all I could see was the tessarae. The broken pieces with their sharp edges scattered about in a fashion that just looked they were trash. Pieces that reminded me of what they were before they were broken. Pieces that reminded me of how they were broken. My head knew the truth of the Moody quote. My eyes had seen the beauty of mosaics. I didn’t want a mosaic though – I just wanted the original – before it was broken.

Over the past year or so though I’ve started to see the mosaic take place. It’s not just the career change. It’s not just the new location. It started long before that. I’m beginning to see how the pieces are being re-shaped into something new. How brokenness becomes beauty. And, there are still pieces that I don’t want to surrender to the Artist. Still pieces that I wish I could see in their original form despite how much I know that original form was flawed and cracked from the beginning. Some days I’m good at letting him have the pieces. Some days I am futilely trying to put them all back together myself. The recent move actually seems to make me do more of the latter – if I had my guess into my inner psyche I’d say I’m trying to hold on to something familiar. Even if familiar isn’t what is best. The Spirit in me tells me this is all part of equipping me to offer authentic mashena and that gives me joy because now I know the intricate mosaic is so much more beautiful than any of the original pieces.

(and just as an end disclaimer – I always feel like these types of entries make me sound sad. I’m not sad. Just thoughtful. No worries!)