The disciplines of faith

I recently came across a quotation from Louis Pasteur: "Chance favors the prepared mind." He was able to make his world-changing discoveries about the role of microbes in illness not just because he was in the the right place at the right time, but because he had spent years studying and observing and crafting experiments. His mind was ready to see what the world had to show him.

God's grace appears in our lives unexpectedly, arriving at its own place and time. We can't predict or control it, but we can prepare for it, making ourselves ready to discover God's presence in our lives. Every time we say a prayer, or read Scripture or other spiritual writings, or show up for worship, or talk with someone about our faith, we open up more space in our minds for God to come in.

Everyday sacraments

A friend of mine in seminary used to say that we should add an eighth sacrament: the teddy bear. What better "outward and visible sign" could there be for the "inward and spiritual grace" of God's unconditional love?

On these gray days of early Spring I find myself wanting to nominate the cup of tea as a ninth sacrament. I could spend the day railing against the wet yuck, annoyed that I can't get outside for a walk. Or I could brew some tea and let it warm me up as I stand at the window and watch the rain. Like this whole season of Lent, something as simple as a cup of tea can be an invitation to slow down, do less, and dwell for a moment in the quiet presence of God.

You get what you get

Our daughter made several similar paintings. She brought one to me, and a different one to her dad. As she handed them to us, she looked at us very sternly and said, "This one is for you. You get what you get and you don't get upset."

How much time have I wasted comparing roughly equal things and worrying that I didn't get the best one? We do it with little things like lanes on the highway and registers at the supermarket, and bigger things like our homes and our jobs. There's a freedom in the preschool approach to these things: If everyone gets what they need, then you can let go of whether or not you got the purple marker this time.

Our Ash Wednesday litany of penitence asks us to confess "our anger at our own frustration and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves." Then we confess "our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty." I think the two tendencies are deeply related. The more we worry about whether we came out on top, the less we notice who ended up on the bottom.

Mirrors of love

As part of my training for the priesthood, I completed a summer course as a hospital chaplain. Every day in the hospital, I met new people and got swept up in the intense emotions of their encounters with illness and healing. At the end of the summer, a friend made this little image of me praying as part of a farewell gift. Where I felt overwhelmed and inexperienced, she saw me as centered and peaceful, able to nurture the patients and my fellow chaplains. Her gift helped me see myself and my work in a new way.

Sometimes God sends people into our lives to be mirrors, reflecting back to us the amazing possibilities of our souls. Today I thank God for all my companions on the journey, and I pray for the grace to be a true mirror of God's love, showing my brothers and sisters how beautiful they are in God's sight.

Help us to ask

Almighty God, to whom our needs are known before we ask: Help us to ask only what accords with your will; and those good things which we dare not, or in our blindness cannot ask, grant us for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Lately, I'm finding a lot of comfort in these words from our prayerbook, which I use to conclude the Prayers of the People.

We human beings seem to have a lot of trouble with asking for help. Many of us would rather compel or manipulate others into giving us what we need, or wear ourselves out doing it all ourselves, or just give up and go without.

God knows what we need and offers all blessings to us, whether we can figure out how to ask for them or not. We need to learn how to ask for the right things not for God's sake, but for our own, so that we can be at peace with our own desires.

This prayer calls on God to train our hearts, so that all we want is God's presence in our lives and in our communities. It offers up our voices to God, so that in God's grace we can discover our true voices and use them to speak out for God's love and God's justice.

The lost

Our daughter lost her first tooth, so we got to play tooth fairy last night. There is something so reassuring to children about the idea that someone cares for every part of them, even their lost teeth.

Holding that tiny tooth in my hand, I started thinking about all the little parts of ourselves that get lost along the road through life. The dreams that don't come true, the roads we don't take, the enthusiasms we set aside, the idols that fall off their pedestals, the friendships and first loves that slip away. As we grow and change, it can feel like we have left so much behind.

But in God, nothing is truly lost. Through God's grace, everything we experience teaches us and shapes us and makes us into the people we are called to be. It all becomes part of us. Even the painful parts are surrounded and transformed by God's love, so that they too are part of the beautiful, healed, whole self that God is creating inside us.

Thank you, God, for watching over us, and gathering up every passing moment of our lives into your eternal heart.

I found this image of an angel on a roadtrip through New Mexico. It's by Lydia Garcia, a folk artist from Taos. It's always spoken to me of God's care for the smallest ones.

Finding our strength

We so often feel fearful of new challenges because we don't know if we will have what it takes to get through them. And then we try anyway, and we discover we have more strength than we ever knew. How many times will I have to make this same discovery before I start trusting that God will give me everything I need?

I have a visual prayer that helps me when I don't feel up to a task. I stop and breathe and then I imagine roots growing from me down into the earth. The roots tap into the deep groundwater of God's mighty power. They bring up to me all the energy, all the confidence, all the determination I need.

As Paul says in his letter to the church in Philippi, "I can do all things through him who strengthens me."

Kiss it better

Sometimes it feels like I spend half my day kissing pinched fingers and banged elbows. Our children both throw themselves into their games with total abandon, so they constantly careen into various objects or each other. Then they hold out the part that hurts to me or to their father and say, "Kiss?"

A kiss obviously doesn't undo any of the damage. The skin stays scraped, the bruise stays purple. But usually that tiny gesture of parental care is all they need. They just want to know that I see the hurt, that they're not alone with the pain and they don't need to be afraid.

Jesus invites us to become like children in our faith. Perhaps part of what he means is that we can show God our hurts. We can handle almost anything the world sends our way as long as we know we are not alone. God is with us, freeing us from fear and loving the pain away.

Unplugging

Two posts today, because I'm spending Saturday at the diocese's camp, chaperoning a pre-confirmation retreat. The directions specifically tell us to unplug for the retreat time. No cellphones or music players or tiny web browsers to keep us connected to the world outside the camp. The young people often groan when they hear about this rule. Me too - I've gotten used to doing my daily blog! Time to set the computer aside and pay attention to just one thing, the spiritual experience offered to me in this retreat.

We so rarely do just one thing. When I took a prayer class with Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, she challenged us to do one task, like making the bed, without thinking about anything else. Don't make plans in your head, don't talk on the phone, just make the bed. The Buddhist author Thich Nat Hanh offers a similar exercise of eating a tangerine. Don't read the paper, don't reach for slices while you're typing or driving a car, just sit there and taste the tangerine. This kind of mindfulness is challenging for me. As a mom, I do very few things without also filling milk cups and wiping noses. As a priest, any free time easily becomes a chance to outline the next week's sermon. But whenever I try, I find God's blessings all around me, just waiting for me to slow down long enough to notice them.

Out of Alignment

One time I hit a curb as I went around a corner. The car jolted, and I thought, "Oh no. There goes a tire." I listened carefully to the wheels going around, wondering if every hum or thump from the uneven road was the sound of the tire going flat. Once I could stop, I got out and looked at my wheel. Everything was fine. Relieved, I continued on my way as if nothing had ever happened.

Then the next time I took the car in for service, the mechanic said, "You know, this wheel is really out of alignment. Did you hit something?"

Sometimes we mess up. We cut a corner, we let something slide, we tell a half-truth, we take the easy way out. We don't mean any harm, but we know we didn't quite do the right thing. And we wait, watching and listening to the people around us. Did anyone notice? Will there be any consequences?

The discipline of confession reminds us that nothing is hidden from God. Even when we think we get away with our small misdeeds, they still affect us, pulling us out of alignment with our own moral code. We come back to God to have our hearts set true in the pathways of the Lord.

Quiet witnessing

The preparations for Holy Week have begun in earnest. Yesterday our music director, Bianca De Maria, sang to me some of the pieces she'll be using for Good Friday, all of them hushed and still and achingly beautiful. Today I am preparing for Palm Sunday by working and praying with the woodcuts from Barry Moser's illustrated Bible. Moser's images are stark, formed from simple black and white lines, but they are still warm and alive, with real human faces looking out of every scene.

The Passion is full of drama, with trials and betrayals and terrible violence. If we're not careful with a story like this, it can send us into our worst cycles of behavior: blind anger, numb avoidance, self-damaging guilt.

Bianca's songs and Moser's images are inviting me into a very different place, an open space of great stillness. I'm discovering again why I need these forty days of prayer and reflection. It takes me a long time to become quiet enough inside to witness pain and respond with nothing but love.

Filling the rainbow

When I was a small girl, a family friend offered to paint a mural on my bedroom wall. I wanted a rainbow with a pot of gold. She drew the design on the pale yellow wall, and then one thing or another came up, and she never painted it in. Until we repainted a few years later, I could see the faded pencil lines of that empty rainbow whenever I lay down in my bed.

People often tell me their sorrows, their anxieties, their regrets. I say I will pray for them, and I do, but it feels like so little. I want to offer them the fullness of God's healing, the bright promise that God painted over the sky after the flood. What I have to offer feels as incomplete as those faint lines on the wall.

Lord, I only know the barest outline of your plan for this world. Let me trust that in your loving time, you will bring us all the colors of joy. Amen.

When Jesus shows up

I talk a lot about the presence of Christ. I say it by habit: "Lord Jesus, be present here..." at the beginning of most sermons. I say it almost as a joke when things go wrong in worship: "We can mess up half the service, and Jesus still shows up!" I'm a priest, so making people aware of Christ's presence in their lives is my whole job description. But even I am surprised when Jesus comes right up close.

One Sunday morning I was preparing for the 8 am service. I wanted to be sure that everyone was in the chapel and settled before we began our worship, because I had some tough news to share about a death in our parish family. At a minute or two past eight, I went out the front door of the church and down the steps, feeling a little silly with my white robe flapping around in the cool morning breeze. I stood on the sidewalk, looking up and down the street for any stragglers on their way to church. I thought, "Is anyone else out here?" And I knew, as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud, that Jesus said to me, "I'm here." "Thanks, Jesus," I answered, and went back inside to do the hard work of the morning.

(This little image of Jesus is a detail from a painting by Marc Chagall.)

Making the list

Monday is my day off, the day I spend at home with our two kids. I wake up and immediately think of everything that needs to be done today to keep our family organized for the week. Being absentminded by nature, I lose track of important tasks if I don't write them down. So Monday morning always starts with a list. I counted, and today's had eighteen things to do on it. Some of the jobs are quick, so it's a manageable agenda for a day. But still, eighteen tasks doesn't leave a lot of room for surprise adventures. Have I scheduled the Spirit right out of my day?

A friend who is a stay-at-home Mom has a sign on the fridge that says something like, "To achieve today: 1) Love my kids." There is no number 2 on the list. As a pastoral counselor, I've helped people make their own lists for the day, with "Relax" or "Remember that I am loved" right at the top. My thought for this Monday: I want to put God back at the top (and middle, and end) of my to-do lists.

Sweeping up the dirt

Do you ever feel like you lose track of yourself? Like anyone else, I have days when I'm cranky for no apparent reason. There's a line from Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" that often comes to me in those moments: "I was bruised and battered - I couldn't tell what I felt - I was unrecognizable to myself." Over the years, I've found that the best cure for that mixed-up mood is a basic chore like sweeping the floor. It needs to be something that engages my body but doesn't require too much thought. By the time the bits of dust and trash are gathered into the dustpan, I'm usually able to see clearly whatever has been bothering me. Sometimes I'm even able to imagine a good solution for it. Just like counting out prayers on the beads of a rosary, the simple repetition of moving the broom creates a space for God to speak to my heart.

Waiting for Spring

At last, a sign of Spring: a little green shoot has poked its head out in our daffodil patch.

When I was rereading C. S. Lewis earlier this week, I came across a passage about our "first fervor" for God. Many of us can remember moments when God felt very near and we were excited to be Christians. Perhaps we recall a childhood full of wonder, the passion of our conversion as adults, God's presence with us in a difficult time, a golden age in the life of our community. Lewis encourages us to treasure those memories, but not to hold onto them too tightly or wear ourselves out trying to recreate them. Like the bulbs that wait out the winter underground, our faith naturally dies back for a time. It will grow again in new and surprising ways, but we can not force it along. Don't start digging up the bulbs in your impatience, Lewis says. Wait, and the flower will come.

Yes, Lord!

Do you ever feel like a song is following you around? When I served as a chaplain at our diocese's summer camp, I learned Darrell Evans' song "Trading My Sorrows." It starts out:

"I'm trading my sorrow, I'm trading my shame, I'm laying it down for the joy of the Lord.
I'm trading my sickness, I'm trading my pain, I'm laying it down for the joy of the Lord."

And then comes the chorus, which like any good camp song is shouted out with hand motions:
"We say yes Lord yes Lord yes yes Lord, Yes Lord yes Lord yes yes Lord, Yes Lord yes Lord yes yes Lord Amen."

To celebrate my coming to Calvary Church, a parishioner gave me this Yes Lord! plaque for my office. Nearly every time I stop to look at it, I get that incessant chorus stuck in my head again. It would be annoying, but the truth is that Evans' song always builds up my energy and paints a smile across my face. Sometimes what I need most is to stop making excuses and stalling and standing around, and say: Yes, Lord! God is always there, waiting to take the sorrow and shame, the sickness and pain, and transform it all into joy. Why not just say yes?

Good Pretending

C. S. Lewis offers very practical advice for the times when we don't really feel like praying or doing good works. In his Mere Christianity, he says to try pretending that you really do want to do what is right. "There are two kinds of pretending," he writes. "There is the bad kind, where the pretense is there instead of the real thing; as when a man pretends he is going to help you instead of really helping you. But there is also a good kind, where the pretense leads up to the real thing. When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will really be feeling friendlier than you were." This good pretending opens the door for God to turn our hearts. When you pretend that you want to be with God and sit down to pray anyway, Christ "is actually at your side and is already at that moment beginning to turn your pretense into reality."

Clearing the Waters

Steffi Shapiro, who is a very wise teacher of mine, told me this story. She was walking in the woods one day and came upon a stagnant pool in a stream. The water was full of dirt and dead leaves and algae. At one edge of the pool, the water spilled over some jagged rocks and continued flowing down the hill. On the other side of the rocks, the water was sweet and clear. Its journey up over the rocks had made it clean.

I don't believe that God puts obstacles in our way on purpose. As Lamentations tells us, the Lord does not willingly afflict anyone. It is our own human choices that make us run into each other or into the unbending forces of nature.

But when we do face obstacles, we have a choice. We can allow the experience to teach us, to change us, to make us a clear and flowing stream.

A sacrifice of joy

We often have a negative view of sacrifice, especially of the ancient practice of animal sacrifice described in the Bible. On the surface it seems like senseless killing. Why would God be pleased by the death of any creature? And what good reason could there be for wasting the food of impoverished people? It occurred to me recently that we should give the ancients a little more credit. Nothing was ever wasted. After the official ritual, when the smoke went up as an offering to God, the meat was eaten. It fed the priests, freeing them from the daily tasks of securing food so that they could tend to the spiritual welfare of the people. And very often it was made available to anyone who needed it, so that the poor could receive a good meal.

What is our sacrifice to God? When we say something is our cross to bear, we usually mean it is a heavy, miserable burden that we can't escape. Maybe we should look instead for the places where our offerings feed other people's bodies and spirits. Our true cross creates more life and joy in this world.

Living with Constraint

In this recession, we're learning to do without a lot of things we once took for granted.

Some of the toughest things to lose are our options. With shrinking investments and fewer jobs available, many people are realizing they will just have to make do with the situation they are in.

Living with fewer options is a spiritual skill. To keep from feeling resentful and trapped, we have to work at developing patience with the life we have.

Easier said than done, I know. When I need a pep talk for living with my own constraints, I often remember this advice from Ralph H. Blum:

"Mend, restore, redress: When fishermen can't go to sea, they repair nets. Let the constraints of the time serve you in righting your relationship to yourself...Consider the uses of adversity [and] take it on with good humor."

That's not my problem

When I was in college, I attended a master class in Butoh, a Japanese dance form. Butoh is highly eccentric - Wikipedia sums it up as "playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and .... slow hyper-controlled motion." None of us were quite sure what we were in for. The instructor asked us to lie down on the floor. Then, in the most serene voice I've ever heard, she said, "I will begin a Butoh exercise. You can try it, or you can not try it. You can like it, or not like it. That's not my problem."

I've always remembered that class, not for any of the movements we did, but because of the unique way the Butoh teacher invited us into the dance. She didn't try to convince us of anything. She simply gave us what she had to offer and let us be responsible for taking whatever we wanted from the experience.

I think sometimes we fear offering our ourselves because we're not sure how we will be received. Will our love be returned? Will our gifts be enjoyed? Will people feel burdened by our invitations?

Lord, teach me to offer what I have with open hands, and leave the rest up to you. Amen.

Memory and Imagination

At bedtime in my house, we read a lot of the Magic Tree House books by Mary Pope Osborne. In Christmas in Camelot, an evil wizard has robbed Camelot of its joy. To lift the pall of sadness, our heroes, 8-year-old Jack and his seven-year-old sister Annie, are sent to a mysterious world to recover the Water of Memory and Imagination. When they drink the water, they break free of the fear and sadness of the present. They remember all the good things in life and the lessons they have learned, and then they imagine a path to a better future.

We are always hearing that we should focus on the present moment. The past and the future are discounted: "Don't dwell on the past," "Don't worry so much about the future." So I was struck by this idea of memory and imagination as the source of joy. The past does not have to drag us down, but can be the source of our wisdom. We don't need to be afraid of the future, but can fill it with our vision of a better life.

Perhaps Lent is a good time to make peace with the past and future, to see them as gifts instead of as burdens. Together they make it possible for us to find joy in the present.

God's laughter

What does it feel like when we know God is present with us? Sometimes I'll be going about my business, and for no apparent reason it suddenly feels like God is right there. Some people describe God's presence as energy, power, love, or peace. For me it very often feels like humor, like sitting with a friend who bursts into laughter. You may have no idea what the joke is, but you can't help laughing along.

The Hindus have the idea that the whole world is "lila" or the play of God. We Christians tend to assume that God is always deadly serious, busy judging and controlling the world, or at least hard at work on fixing its broken places. When we say, "God must have a sense of humor," we usually say it with a taste of bitter irony, as if God is playing an unpleasant trick on us. I think God's humor is gentler, more a loving bemusement at the way this world bumbles along and a delight at surprising us with a blessing.

Lord, show me your playful love, and help me laugh more at the ups and downs of this life. Amen.

a peaceful death and a perfect end

I visited North Shore Hospice today. Rona Tyndall, a chaplain there, told me that the way we care for our soul can change the way we die. She sees that people who connect to a pastor or a chaplain early in the journey towards death die more peacefully. And she doesn't just mean that they work through their unfinished emotional business. The contact with a spiritual guide actually changes their physical experience, so that they are less likely to experience agitation, acute pain, or delirium in the final stages of death. It seems our bodies need for us to understand that they will come to an end, so that they can do the work of dying in peace.

I left my time with Rona wondering what I need to surrender now, while I am still very much alive. What am I holding onto so tightly that it agitates my body and my soul? What peace could be waiting for me now, if I could just find a way to let go?

Snowy Footprints

This morning Jake shoveled the front walk. While the kids played in the snowdrifts, I followed after him with the broom, sweeping away the last flakes that the shovel missed. The snow was light, so most of the powder easily moved off of the walkway. But after each pass, I was left with a few stuck-on white patches in the shape of Jake's boots. As he walked down the path, each footstep pressed some of the snow down so that it stuck onto the paving stones. They wouldn't sweep away, so I had to scrape them loose instead.

Every week, I make a few mistakes and misjudgments that I bring to the Lord when we say our confession. My sins are usually nothing so big that I worry about them, but I know if I didn't repent them, I would carry them around with me. Over time, they would get ground in to my soul, forming unhealthy habits or lasting regrets. They are so much easier to lift up and let go now, when they are still fresh in my mind. I can let the mercy of God sweep them all away.