logs & specs (& yoga)

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Two weeks ago, I bought new glasses (!).  After a five-year hiatus from the world of fashion specs, I was eager to try something funky–wearing contacts on a daily basis means that your glasses can be a little wild.  Enjoying my new eye wear extensively, I wore them to a yoga class last week.

Yoga is not particularly conducive to glasses-wearing–the upside down, bending, hanging the head, lying down–it’s not dangerous for spectacles, but it’s surely not as friendly as, say, reading.  I quickly realized: looking at the details of the world around you (which is, one might argue, the point of glasses) is NOT the point of yoga.

So, I took my glasses off.

What a change in perspective–no longer being able to see the little specks in other peoples’ eyes, I had to face the logs in my own “eyes.”  Without having others’ twisty bodies to judge (their form, their wobbliness, their breathing), I had to pay attention to my own.  My classmates dimmed in my view and I was forced to notice anew the stretched, achy, wobbly parts of myself–physically and spiritually.

My new yoga studio has opened up the world of yoga practice to me in a way I’d never understood it before: thinking of yoga (paying attention to your breathing and your body) as a sort of abstract (academically-speaking) or microcosm of your entire life.  “Are you rushing from pose to pose?” my yogi asks; “Are you trying to ignore the transitions in your own life?”  Is it very very hard to calm your mind or to still your breath today at yoga class?  Are you, perhaps, running yourself ragged at work or home, or ignoring the need your body has for a bit of rest?  Some days in class, your body is strong and balanced and you can take on more difficult postures for longer periods of time–and some days, you are just struggling to stay vertical (or horizontal!) for a few breaths.  Yoga practice allows you the chance to be gentle and patient and compassionate to your own body and your own mind, that hopefully, out in your life, you can start to take steps toward compassion and gentleness toward yourself and others.

Yesterday in yoga class, I had my contacts back in, and I remember who was able to do all the advanced positions and who wasn’t–but I was one of the latter, and I wonder if perhaps wearing my glasses to yoga more often might be a way of removing the log so often lodged in my eye.

holy week

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this week brings ordination to the priesthood for two of my dearest friends, a ZTA soul-sister, and my husband.  Last night, Kara Slade was ordained in Oxford, NC. The sermon from the service can be found here: so, so good.  (like many parts of the evening, it made me cry)

Lord willing, on Saturday, Jordan Hylden will be ordained in Fargo, ND…

Psalm 102

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“a prayer of one afflicted, when faint and pleading before the Lord.” (prescript NRSV)

Psalms offer words for us to pray when we have none. They offer language for us to use when we’re not quite sure what to say, and are perhaps feeling empty or exhausted (or jubilant! or overflowing!). Psalm 102 offers a narrative: the first half describes in painful, vivid detail the condition of the supplicant, “my bones burn” (v. 3), “I lie awake. I am like a lonely bird on the housetop” (v.7), “I… mingle tears with my drink” (v.9). The last few verses move toward hope–recognizing that God remains no matter what circumstances may prevail in the life of the author (or pray-er) and their environment. Not only does God remain no matter what, but he promises rescue, redemption, resurrection, and blessing.

Jerusalem and Zion loom large in this psalm (“You will rise up and have compassion on Zion” v. 13; “For the LORD will build up Zion” v.16; v. 21); how do they reveal what God promises and what he’s doing? Jerusalem and Zion are the Promised Land–even when God’s people are in exile and diaspora, these places are held up as the site to which we will one day return. They are sort of like Heaven–they’re the place at the end of time where all things will be put in order again. So this psalm has a very long view–waiting for God to bring restoration to His people; they wait for peace and for the rebuilding of their true home.

There are sometimes geographical places, and chronological moments in time in our lives that give us a little taste or feeling of what this kind of togetherness and homeyness might be like. For me, that place is Durham, North Carolina.

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I went there this past week to witness a friend’s ordination (see yesterday’s post), and while I was there, I drove around in circles to visit all my dear old familiar places. I drove around to see and be in the midst of everyday places–not even “dear old” ones, but that one stoplight that takes 2 minutes to turn (I’ve timed it with eager soccer & ballet class attendees in my backseat), and that stretch of road I’ve driven thousands of times to get downtown or to get to the mall. I remember thinking to myself, “man, these lucky trees! they LIVE here their whole lives!” (how silly I get, driving down the highway…)

One of the verses of Psalm 102 spoke deeply to me on my visit. In the NRSV, it goes, “for your servants hold (Zion’)s stones dear, and have pity on its dust.” (v.14) The 1979 Book of Common Prayer renders it, “for your servants love her very rubble.” The BCP version alludes to the destructed state of the Promised Land, but both get at the feeling that even the dirt and the bricks and the trees of a place might bring one to awe and silence at their precious place in your life.

What places or experiences have felt to you like a “thin spot” or a glimpse or fleeting feeling of Heaven and Home?

The Lower Diocese

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As of tomorrow, my husband and I will have lived in Columbia for a whole month (!). We’re part of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina, and as you dear readers might know (or might not! or might not care one hoot!! which is just fine), there is an Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, which comprises the lower part of this great state, and has been the subject and site of much upheaval in our denomination of late.

There are myriad articles and essays and sermons which deal with the facts of this unfolding situation; I cannot attempt to describe or summarize them in any authoritative or competitively-excellent way. Here I share, instead, a bit of my lament.

DSC_0044I don’t recall the first time I went to Charleston, but I know it was spring (very brilliant of me) and I know I was taken with St. Philip’s Church. Its steeple is brown and stony and majestic, its shadow is cool, its graveyard is full of wisdom. On my second or third visit, I discovered St. Michael’s Church, just a few blocks away from St. Philip’s, and stood breathless under its white outline. Old churches have always had a hold on me, and these two beautiful sacred spaces were no less gripping. Can you imagine the number of faithful people who have spent their lives praying in those pews, shuffling down those aisles, marking their births, marriages, friendships, and deaths by those walls and windows? Imagining the hundreds of years of prayers soaked into the stones and hanging in the air brings a reverent smile to my face. I close my eyes in the glow of God’s presence in these places, and how parishioners have learned of and experienced God in these spaces.

Two weeks ago, I went to Charleston again, for the first time in a year. It was a big year to have not-been in Charleston (the rupture I allude to above puts the future of these buildings in jeopardy). I teared up when my husband and I pulled into a parking spot near St. Michael’s. My hands caressed the white columns, mournful of the *(figurative–not literal, yet) brokenness in which this beautiful building sits. We walked to St. Philip’s Church, and I remembered my first visit–my enamored attitude with the building despite my ignorance of my call at the time.

God is bigger and more full and more perfect and more sovereign than could be overcome by the loss of these buildings–of course; I know that they are just things, just symbols to us of heaven and of God’s glory, meant to aid us in our worship. However, they’ve been important symbols for centuries–they were spared General Sherman’s fire!–and now they might fall. Their stark beauty, their noble shape–these sacred spaces stand as a challenge to the passing squabbles and divisive disagreements of our day; they survived the Civil War, for heaven’s sake! The brokenness in the Episcopal Church these days is not just a passing squabble or a disagreement, we’re struggling with what it means to love and what it means for Scripture to be authoritative. For at least two thousand years, we’ve been struggling with these things, as Christians, and there has been lots of collateral damage–plenty of lives, which are more important than any building.

But I really hope that these buildings can continue to stand as a witness to us little people of God’s glory, his power, his far-reaching love, and his desire that all may be made one body with him.

God Keeps His Promises (full stop).

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A homily on Genesis 16:1-16

Sarai’s getting old.  She’s getting worried.  God has just made a promise to Abram, but there’s got to be some kind of work-around.  In chapter 15 of Genesis, God makes a covenant, promising that Abram’s descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky.  As chapter 16 opens, Sarai seems to realize that there’s no way that she herself is going to be able to produce an heir, and she’s trying to help God save face.  She wants to save God the embarrassment if it turns out he can’t make good on his promise due to obvious biological restrictions.

I often try to hedge my bets with God.  I pray safe, small, could-just-be-coincidence prayers.  I dutifully go about my day at “medium”–not stepping out too far in faith, lest I get embarrassed because I wasn’t listening to God, or lest God get embarrassed because I’m trusting him too much.

The Bible is full of examples of people–the history of the church is full of examples!–who want to help God along, to provide needed assistance in his great plan, or to let him out of his promises altogether.

Indeed, God does call us to action, to trust, and faith, and personal relationship.  But we aren’t to make God out to be a child–he isn’t in need of our help to figure out how to make his plans real or help clean up messes.  We are the children.  We are the ones who can never quite understand the whole picture.  God does not need us to excuse him from his promises, he desires our trust that his promises are the only thing upon which we can depend.

God desires our obedience.  We don’t have to worry about how to get somewhere or how to make God’s dream come true.  God is big enough to keep the promises he makes, and we only need to learn how to listen quietly, and to believe that God keeps his promises to us.  There is no easy way to learn to listen and to be quiet–no short cut of prayers to engage or practices to enact.  As God offers his promises to us, we are invited to respond with the hard, disciplined work of faithfulness.

Let us seek after God–not interested in sinning boldly, but in living faithfully–knowing, as we’re shown in Scripture, that when we fail, the almighty God will weave our missteps and doubts back toward his purposes.