a cry

down here, together but alone,

we're a wandering, restless, uncertain people,

selfish, stubborn, hurting and deceived.

intent on little things

we strive, stubbornly, to hold on to control,

manipulating minutia for the moment:  blind.

greedy, wasting time on trifles

grasping ugly clutter to hide from our thoughts,

from our God,

from our sin that keeps us from love.

aching, O God!

we are achingly desperate for the Savior we scoff at

and turn from, choosing wretched placebos

in place of redemption.

forgive us, O God,

our smallness, our blindness,

our sad, dumb attention to staleness and filth.

fill us, we cry,

with a longing, persistent,

insistent on You.

we're done with the darkness, God,

done with the smallness,

done with the clutter,

done hiding from you.

save us, O God,

from our selfishness, stubbornness.

save us, O God, from our hurting,

ourselves.

free us from darkness, God,

free us to see You; show us each other

and teach us to love.

open our eyes, God,

to see you, to hear you,

to feel

all Your love pouring down over us.

tip up our chins, God,

to look in your face

and know we are loved,

and know we're forgiven.

your bigness, O God, is an infinite mercy,

your goodness so good

that the overflow covers our lack 

and restores us to you.

de-throning the Protestant work ethic

The past few days should have been restful ones.  Outside of basic homemaking (cooking, laundry, overseeing chores and schoolwork) and a very small handful of "special projects", I have had a good bit of free time.  And, feeling I needed a rest (July was one scheduling crisis after another for this homebody), I spent most of that free time divided between my laptop and my Lazy Boy recliner.

When I occasionally surfaced from my books and my blog, I felt guilty.  I should be spring deep cleaning.  I should be weeding flowerbeds.  I should be taking my children on fun, educational day trips.  I should be freezing corn.  I should be canning peaches.  I should .....

I've been undermining my free time by underestimating its value.

Work is good.  If you never work, you can't truly enjoy leisure.  But leisure is good, too.  If you never rest, you can never truly enjoy your work.

I want to be able to enjoy both, so now that I'm fully rested (after a mind-clearing evening at the pottery studio last night, where I figured all this out), I think I'll go find some work to do.  Seems to me I saw some cobwebs somewhere recently ....

(and when I've finished with that, Frederick Beuchner's sermons beckon....)

coward?

According to wikipedia (sorry, Webster) a coward is someone who "is perceived to fail to demonstrate sufficient robustness and courage in the face of a challenge."  Hmmm..... I find life to be vastly challenging, and some days I'd love to be rescued from it all.  

I think I might be a coward. 

Parenting, for starters, feels like driving in a high-speed race – the smallest actions fraught with peril & significance; one false move and you total the car. Marriage, and friendships in general, are likewise complex and easily injured.  Thanks to psychology, even cleaning and eating and simple pleasures are redolent of internal neuroses.  

If I have a finite task in front of me – change this diaper, say, or clean out this closet, or navigate with love this one conversation about mother-daughter relationships or welfare or faith vs. works – difficult or messy though it may be, a single task feels doable. The challenge in life's difficulties is not knowing their boundaries, how long they'll last.

I just read something recently on the subject of difficulty, and escape.  I've been worrying it in my mind, trying to find out the truth of it:

"The Christian walk is not a quiet escape to a garden where we can walk and talk uninterruptedly with our Lord ... The Christian life is going to God. In going to God Christians travel the same ground that everyone else walks on, breathe the same air, drink the same water, ... pay the same prices for groceries and gasoline, fear the same dangers, are subject to the same pressures, get the same distresses, are buried in the same ground.

"The difference is that each step we walk, each breath we breathe, we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God, we know we are ruled by God; and therefore no matter what doubts we endure or what accidents we experience, the Lord will preserve us from evil, he will keep our life." [from A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson]

I guess I've thought that "the Christian walk" could (or should) be a "quiet escape to the garden" ... in fact, that's what I'd like some days - deliverance from difficulty, not merely help as I walk through it.  (You could say that I appear to lack sufficient robustness and courage in the face of life's challenges.)  But, lacking a viable escape, I bluster on.

I wonder if this lack of robustness could stem from inaccurate expectations.  

Elsewhere in his book, Peterson says, 

"The world, in fact, is not as it has been represented to us.  Things are not all right as they are, and they are not getting any better.

"We have been told the lie ever since we can remember:  that human beings are basically nice and good. ... The world is a pleasant, harmless place.  ... If we are in chains now, it is someone's fault, and we can correct it with just a little more intelligence or effort or time.

"How we can keep on believing this after so many centuries of evidence to the contrary is difficult to comprehend, but nothing we do or nothing anyone else does to us seems to disenchant us from the spell of the lie.  We keep expecting things to get better, somehow. ... Convinced by the lie that what we are experiencing is unnatural, an exception, we devise ways to escape"

There's the rub.  If "life's good", if I alone in all the world am suffering, then the injustice, the loneliness of it burns more sharply than the suffering itself.  If all the world is wounded, though, then those around me are fellows in my grief, understanding sojourners helping and being helped in turn.

The optimist in me (despite it all) does not want to believe in a wounded world.  I want to see the blessings, choose to look at life with wonder and gratitude.  So is life good?  Or is it "but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage"?  [Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5]

Where to turn?  How to reconcile these two conflicting views?

The Master Potter, He who wields the clay to fit his will, reminds me of a verse I read this morning (the answer's always there):  

"let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith ....  Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.  Let us not give up meeting together, ... but let us encourage one another ..."  [Hebrews 10:22, 24-25]

The world is wounded, but life - together - nevertheless is good.  We have God's grace, equipping us to love in the face of libel, do good despite our weariness and lack of trust.  We have God, and we have each other.

Courage! then, my fellow cowards - onward and upward!  Let us link arms and spur each other on, and be "robustness" for each other, filling in the gaps.

borrowed words, Part Three

Words are such a gift.  I am currently watching my small son learn the potential of words.  "Chocolate", I say, and his face lights up.  "No-no", and his brow furrows in disapproval of his own.  He hears "Daddy" and turns to listen for the opening of the door.  We don't even say "outside" unless we mean to take him there.  Words make things happen, he is finding, and bring order and meaning to his world.  I can't wait for his first joke.

It is with a consciousness of the gift that words are, that I appreciate especially the first two quotes here, and, down further, the one from Aristotle.  The ability to say what you mean is at the same time one of the most practical of all skills, and one which brings to life the most peace and beauty.

Loud talking is a sign of a consciousness that one's reasoning is feeble. ~Dr. Frank Crane

Profanity comes from a limited vocabulary. ~Dr. Frank Crane

The strongest being conceivable is God. And He is so modest, quiet, and hidden that many people refuse to believe there is a God. He never blusters. Hence, many humbugs cannot understand how He exists. ~Dr. Frank Crane

I come into the fields and spacious palaces of my memory, where are treasures of countless images of things in every manner. ~St. Augustine

Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity. ~Aristotle

When I say “I”, I mean a thing absolutely unique, not to be confused with any other. ~Ugo Betti

Every step forward that we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind. ~John Lancaster Spalding

It is only when mind and body quit and rest that the soul comes out for an airing. ~Dr. Frank Crane

Sweeter shall the roses blow

In those far years, those happier years;

And children weep when we lie low

Far fewer tears, far softer tears.

         ~Dr. Frank Crane

a brief defense of chivalry

I realize this is a minefield.  Just humor me.

Recently, in a public setting, I came very close to falling down some stairs while holding precious cargo:  my 14-month-old son, Lil' Snip.  Two men, seated nearby, leapt instantly to their feet, hands automatically outstretched to catch us or break our fall.  Shaken, I regained my balance (and my composure) sufficiently to thank them, and moved on, baby intact.

Could that have been embarrassing?  To be caught by two men, mid-fall, in public?  Absolutely.

Did I wish they had left me to save myself by dint of my woman-power?  Absolutely not.

This is not the first time that men of limited moral proximity to me (thank you, Isabel Dalhousie) have instinctively risen to rescue or protect me.  Once, at the pottery studio, eight months pregnant, I was applying glaze with a small brush to bisqued pots, being very careful to avoid getting the potentially toxic-to-my-baby mixture on my skin.  Two resident potters entered the studio in conversation, saw me glovelessly glazing, and rushed in tandem to alert me to the danger.

Knowing that there are men out there who are programmed in their very DNA to protect women and children (despite jeopardy to their political correctness) makes the world seem, to me, a safer and a friendlier place.  I wanted to go on record as being in favor of this.