Category Archives: spirit

Bended Knees – On Which To Chew

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Reading Screwtape Letters* for the first time in perhaps 10 years; how salient it continues to be decades after its release is a testament to the un-changing-ness of human nature, the problems, vices, and struggles that face every person throughout time.

“One of their poets, Coleridge, has recorded that he did not pray ‘with moving lips and bended knees’ but merely ‘composed his spirit to love’ and indulged ‘a sense of supplication’.  That is exactly the sort of prayer we want; and since it bears a superficial resemblance to the prayer of silence as practised by those who are very far advanced in the Enemy’s service, clever and lazy patients can be taken in by it for quite a long time.  At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls.  It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”

*a satire by C.S. Lewis, comprised of letters from one demon, or tempter, to another younger and less-experienced tempter; “the Enemy” in the quotation above then, is God.

Fumble! (too soon, Duke fans?)

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Only about 30% of people even make New Year’s Resolutions anymore.  Of them only 20% manage to make a lasting change, having kept their resolution for 2 years (newrepublic.com).  On this, the third day of the new year, we’re probably already struggling with the resolutions, or intentions, or goals we’ve set for ourselves in this auspicious year of 2014.

What happens in our minds when we fumble?  When we eat  that extra helping of dessert we didn’t really quite mean to eat, or binge-watch shows that make us feel like we’d like to dip our minds in some bleach; what we say to ourselves when we fail?

Most of us (me, for one!) live under a very stressful fallacy that we can perform perfectly.  That we really can not-fail, not-fumble, not-trip-up.  We fail.  To focus on failure and on shortcomings can be debilitating.  What if we brushed the mistake off instead, took a deep breath, and bravely turned around to do something else?  So much energy is wasted in lament and guilt and self-punishment–what if we learned that we would indeed fumble and that when we fumbled, we should simply pick up the ball and try again (I think that football analogy doesn’t quite work…)?

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Changing Seasons; New Year’s Challenge

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As the days of Advent dwindled this year, I saw myself grasping–begging it not to go.  There’s something sweet about the way nights have been dark and quiet with hot tea, a fire in the ‘place, and a craft project in hand.  It almost feels like we’ve been building a ship, lovingly sanding the boards, carefully melding them together, adding sail and rudder and varnish.  Now, though, the dry dock about to be filled and the supports are ready to give way, and it’s time to test all the preparation we’ve made.  We’re going into the fray, the incarnation is coming; just when waiting and preparing got really comfortable, the adventure begins.

I think I sort of forgot about the adventure, the incarnation–I preferred to ponder the waiting.  There’s not much you can do when you’re waiting, you just keep your head down, say your prayers, do your work.  When the water rushes in, you suddenly have to swim, to put to the test all the pondering, learning, and preparing you’d done.

Many autumn days (long before Advent began) felt like this, too.  There was too much that threatened to push in and change things–to make me into a new kind of person; exhausting me out of bad habits and shoving me into good ones.  I resist.  I cling to tv shows and drag my feet to yoga class.  I lie in bed in the early morning, willing myself back to sleep, though my journal, and books, and coffeemaker all lie ready to be used.  Just keep your head down, do your work, say your prayers, don’t look around.

Christmas is here, and even now (especially those of us in clericals), we begin to look forward to Epiphany, which pushes in on us with great, blinding, demanding light.  Epiphany’s a little like New Year’s–it says to us, “Here’s an enormous, dizzying, life-changing gift…  What’re you going to do with it?”  As W.H. Auden said in the poem I read in church last Sunday,

…Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

For a month in 2013, I had no job, no contract to promise a job, no illusion of my independence from God (my husband is a Ph.D. student, no real income there, either).  It was the most peaceful, joyful month of my entire life.  I knew in the deepest way possible that God was truly our only hope and foundation–my paycheck, my functioning as a parish priest, my local support network (largely), had all been asked of me if we were to continue following God’s call.  So we prayed, and we plunged.

We’re called to live in a way that our lives look insane if our triune God does not exist.

Smiling at Difficulties

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Another skill I’ve learned from yoga:

smiling when what you want to do is growl, or frown, or scream.

This week, as the Amsa community continues to live into and unpack the ramifications of dear leaders moving to a new community, I’m noticing even more the ways that starting to practice yoga there has helped me to respond with more generosity to people, events, and  moments in my life.

When I read an email that stung, my knee-jerk response was to smile.  Smiling, which you may know, brings on good feelings, lowers tension, and takes less energy than frowning.

During our “warm” yoga sessions, as we hold ourselves and breathe in chair pose (a wall-less squat) for the third or fourth time, Kim always tells us to smile.  Smiling helps us to release the tension we may be holding our bodies during the challenging position.  In life, smiling helps us to release the tension we may be holding our bodies during a challenging moment (or interacting with a challenging person!).

Despair & Dashing Babies Against the Rocks

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Two of the most infamous psalms in Scripture are 88 and 137, so it seemed like an especially brilliant idea to tackle them both in one go during the 35 minutes alloted for Sunday School (usually it’s more like 45 minutes, but the preacher went long…).  Here are a few notes from our class’ wonderings and wanderings:

Though these two prayers have no particular relation to each other, put together, they have something specific to teach; Psalms 88 & 137 take God seriously in a way that we are often unwilling to consider.  When a child is clearly upset but says, “No, nothing’s wrong!!” she’s distancing herself from you.  She won’t allow herself to be made well or to be changed.  Prayer, real talking to God in despair and in anger requires that you be ready for God to act, to transform you and the situation.  To share your sadness and anger with God, you must admit that you are sad and angry, and to admit that you aren’t in control and aren’t able to help yourself means you are humbling yourself.  It’s significant that in this depression and anger, these composers turn to God; they’re hurt and broken by the world, but they cling to God by continuing to offer prayers.

One woman said, “Whenever I want to pray about something that makes me angry or hurt or sad, I say to myself, ‘well, I should trust more.  I should not let this get me down–then I can pray about it.’  But the truth is that these psalms show us that we should approach God just where we are.”

Psalm 137

1 By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
3 For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’

4 How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
6 Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.

7 Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, ‘Tear it down! Tear it down!
Down to its foundations!’
8 O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay you back
what you have done to us!
9 Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock!

 This shocking ending is both negative (rare in the psalms) and gruesome.  It’s been composed after the fall of Jerusalem, during the Babylonian exile (v.1); the composer is ridiculed by his captors for his hope of restoration.  The first section (vs.1-3) narrates the scene, the second bit (vs. 4-6) pledges loyalty to Jerusalem, and in the last section (vs. 7-9) the psalmist details to God exactly what he thinks is an appropriate payback.  In the ancient world, it was a practical military policy (albeit an especially cruel and not-always-enforced one) to kill the babies and children of a people group in order to wipe out that nation’s existence and legacy.  Pharoah did it to the Hebrew people in Egypt, which is why Moses was hidden as a baby and sent to sail down the Nile.  The writer desires for all of the Babylonian culture, all its legacy and mark on the earth, to be wiped out.

Well, there’s no country called Babylon anymore, so maybe the psalmist got his wish.  I think there’s more to be mined here than that: looking at the psalm again and thinking about it from a perspective of “good guys” and “bad guys” or perhaps even “God’s people” and “the Evil one,” what is the Scripture saying to us?  We live now in the midst of evil, strangers in a strange land; this place is not our home.  We endure violence and struggle against our sin.  But someday, we will struggle no more, and we will endure no more evil; happy shall be the one who roots out the progeny of evil, killing off all hints of evil, burning away all darkness–rooting out its very babies, that it has no future.

Psalm 88

 A Song. A Psalm of the Korahites. To the leader: according to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.

1 O Lord, God of my salvation,
when, at night, I cry out in your presence,
2 let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry.

3 For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;
I am like those who have no help,
5 like those forsaken among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.
6 You have put me in the depths of the Pit,
in the regions dark and deep.
7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all your waves.
Selah

8 You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a thing of horror to them.
I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
9   my eye grows dim through sorrow.
Every day I call on you, O Lord;
I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the shades rise up to praise you?
Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness,
or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness?

13 But I, O Lord, cry out to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 O Lord, why do you cast me off?
Why do you hide your face from me?
15 Wretched and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am desperate.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your dread assaults destroy me.
17 They surround me like a flood all day long;
from all sides they close in on me.
18 You have caused friend and neighbour to shun me;
my companions are in darkness.

A pscyhologist was in the class and she observed, “This sounds like clinical depression.  The words that are used, the way it’s described–it’s practically textbook.”  She is exactly right; the psalmist wants to have hope, but can’t muster it.  There is nothing but darkness.  We have friends and loved ones who suffer depression, some of us have lost people to the illness.  Here in Scripture is preserved one experience of depression, perhaps to let us know that this may be a part of life on earth.  This sort of brokenness may not be solved on this side of Heaven.  We must admit that not all will be made well in advance of the end.  The psalmist reminds us of something very important in verses 10-12: “Do you work wonders for the dead?” he asks; “Is your steadfast love declared in the grave?” he challenges.  In Jesus Christ, and in the salvation God offers us through him, yes–God does work wonders for the dead; indeed, his steadfast love is declared exactly in the grave.  This does not provide a cure for depression, but we are given hope of healing, whether in this life, or the life to come.