Monday, June 30, 2008

To a louse

As usual when preparing for a sermon, I find nuggets of wisdom completely out of context. I found myself face to face with Rabbie Burns this week.

"O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us.
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An foolish notion:"

It became a prayer, really. "Help me see myself, clearly and honestly." So many problems come from a lack of self-knowledge. I've watched many a person cause pain and suffering in those they love, simply because they are clueless about their own feelings, their own strength, their own ego.

Then I googled the first line, and discovered that the title of the poem is 'To a louse.'

A LOUSE!

Ach, Rabbie - wisdom in a louse. Wisdom for me, trying not to cause pain and suffering in those I love. Lice of all things. Maybe the world would be a far better place if we not only knew ourselves, but if we also took time to contemplate with such devotion small and ordinary things.

I'll put it on my to-do list: meditate on a louse.
Holy Spirit, you crack me up!

(Here it is, if you want to read the entire poem for yourself)
http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/To_A_Louse.htm

Friday, June 27, 2008

Losing my temper, finding grace

Maybe it's the weather, or the stress of a long stretch of too much work, but my temper has really been short at home lately. Ask my kids, and they will tell you how crabby I've been. Then I wonder how much damage I'm doing by just losing it. Now we are just loud, all three of us. I have trained them to be loud.

In the midst of it, though, has come strange grace as Maia learned to sew buttons on scrap pieces of fabric and James proudly made basket after basket at basketball camp. They are really smart kids. perhaps that's part of the problem - I don't help them plan enough of their days, and then they go a little nuts and so do I, in a different way.

I prayed. Then today on my bikeride, a family from our church was outside in their drive. Mom and her two preschoolers played in a small plastic pool. Splashing and pouring and throwing water, they were all getting blessedly wet in the hot, humid afternoon. Mom. Playing with them. God shone a light on them, highlighting that particular parenting model so clearly it almost blinded me.

What a concept. Playing with the kids. Interaction. This is not me. I'm always in my own world, following my own agenda, self-centered to the core. Tomorrow (at least until I have to work in the afternoon), we are going to 1. buy fabric squares so Maia can sew 2. Play with bubbles 3. go on a bikeride 4. pack a couple more boxes from Maia's room 5. Get out some sidewalk chalk.

I'll be tired, but I can always sleep at night. Then Monday, I'm giving some thought to vacation planning. I'll have time to myself. But I'll also have times to give myself away.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Picking berries in the summer sun

We have three service berry bushes in our backyard. When a friend who landscapes told us that they were edible, even 'good on your cereal,' the kids and I would pick a few and eat them. They are tender, a little seedy, quite sweet and mild. Last year, we even picked enough to have berries and sweet milk one evening.

This year, James has been fascinated by them. I've caught him a couple of times in the evening, standing outside in his pjs, picking them for a 'bedtime snack.' I challenged him and Maia to pick enough to make berry crisp, and looked up service berries on the internet. Now we know they are also shadberries, juneberries and wild plums. We learned that the original people in this part of the world made pemmican out of them. I figured that must mean we could do something with them that would taste decent. The kids picked 5 cups worth, I adapted a fruit crisp recipe, and slapped those puppies in the oven.

Oh my! Heaven. It tasted very much like cherry crisp, only requiring much less sugar and with a few tiny seeds to crunch on. That didn't bother us. We gobbled it up. Today, we picked even more. Enough for two pies or desserts are in the freezer. We'll pick tomorrow evening as well. I expect to have enough for at least 8 desserts when all is said and done. They are ripening fast and within a week they will be gone. I experienced a deep satisfaction at 'living off the land' as my grandparents and great-grandparents did, making use of what is at hand and putting the harvest by for the winter to come.

There was regret, however. All this time, growing there in our backyard, was this bounty of berries free for the taking! I was thinking as I picked about scarcity and abundance. In these difficult economic times, it's easy to think that there is not enough to go around. Desperation and selfishness, fear and anxiety all follow on the heels of a mindset of scarcity.

We are used to having so much that when anything big or small is threatened or removed, we think there's not enough. But the berries reminded me there is enough to go around, the whole world over. We don't share well. We take more than we need. I'm so guilty of spending money on things that don't matter while others starve or struggle half a world or half a street away. I don't even notice the berries in my own backyard, as I hurry on earning money to somehow make ends meet.

God intended abundance, provided lavishly. Small graces especially abound. What will I do with this abundant life I've been given? Will I share? Hoard? Be greedy for more?

I do know that I will make serviceberry crisp again tomorrow, and I will prayerfully and gratefully relish each and every bite. Maybe it will taste better if I make enough to share.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

My friend and I are always discussing the people who bug us. "Idiots," one of us will observe. After all, everyone should think like us! Usually the idiots think everyone should think like them. We know it doesn't help the world - it just helps us cope with people who challenge our determination to love.

I've found, though, that an hour on my bike in the warm summer sun, and it doesn't matter so much. Something strange comes over me. Not well-being, exactly. It's more like my body is praying while my mind is looking for potholes and shards of glass. By the time I turn the corner toward home, I am free of the worry and the stress. God is in his heaven and I am willing to let him do his job.

No other exercise has done this for me, to this point. What I'll do this winter, I don't know. Perhaps there are snow tires for bicycles?

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Healing Prayer

Writing a sermon on healing prayer challenges me. I am reading Philip Yancey's book "Prayer." He has good and interesting things to say and is, I'd judge, biblically and theologically sound. It's good to hear stories of people who've waited their whole lives for an experience of God, praying faithfully all that time, and only really 'connected' once. Good also to hear stories of people who weren't healed in the way they thought.

I prayed for years to be released from appetite for overeating, and for the polycystic ovarian syndrome that either arose from or caused that appetite (no one knows). Never happened. Still hasn't. But what I've learned is that I play a role, smaller some days than others, in releasing the raging appetite that plagued me for years. Perhaps that's an answer to my prayer for healing. Knowing that sugar sets me up for the desire to binge is helpful. Knowledge alone, though, hasn't proved enough.

What I've learned, I suppose, is that one never stops needing to pray for healing. For me, for the chronic nature of my dis-eases, healing comes with constant contact, with connecting to others who share the struggle, with honesty and with self-denial. It's not a sudden thing, but a constant thing.

The other thing is that, after a while, you get tired of praying for your own healing. It's boring listening to yourself beg over and over again. Pretty soon, I turn to praying for others, those I perceive as worse off (who but God can judge that), those whose faces or names come to mind. Strange, but that brings more relief, more wholeness than anything else I do in prayer.

I am not sure what it changes. Prayer isn't really about problem solving (as much as I wish it were). Prayer doesn't solve anything. It is more like entering a different world, and letting yourself become enculturated to that other place.

Whatever else can be said, James is pretty clear that if we're in need, we pray (and not alone). Jesus tells us 'When you pray' not 'If you pray.' So we keep at it, and try to ask faithfully, and once again fall on the merciful Spirit to translate our prayers into something intelligible to God. We are promised that when we pray, we will receive something good (Luke has Jesus telling us we'll receive the Holy Spirit,r regardless).

Nothing to lose, then, is there? Which doesn't make it easy, but that's another day.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

What if it's all prayer?

Saturday afternoon, I went for a long (for me) bike ride. Hot sun burned my arms, warm wind kept the sweat at bay. I rode between fields of soybeans and corn, under the cooling shade of roadside trees, past farm houses and barns. Killdeers, the little fakers, called my attention to themselves so I wouldn't notice their nests. Passing me carefully, a few cars and pickup trucks went on their hurried way. I enjoyed the scenery.

Toward the end of the trip, as I relished the easy speed coming down from an overpass, I realized that I hadn't thought a single thing for some time. I, who so often lives in my head, had not one thought for at least 10 minutes. I just rode. As that thought crossed my mind, another was on its heels: what if this is prayer? What if this bicycle ride, this joying in the golden sun and the warm wind, is wordless prayer? At that moment, I was absolutely sure that the entire experience connected me to God.

What if it's all prayer? All that we do, all is connected to God? What if the good, the bad, and the ugly are all done in his presence, and it is OUR presence that is missing? Our absence of mind, our absence of attention, our absence of desire - these don't prevent prayer, but rather prevent us from realizing our prayer, God's presence? Prayer is always without ceasing, we just don't know it.

Friday, June 13, 2008

A Beginning Commentary

Oh, the ego of it! That I might have something to say that the whole world has yet to hear is rather funny. Yet I am also reminded that if God doesn't use the broken, there is no one God can use.

Which means, of course, that you who read this might be in just the position to be an angel, a messenger of God, today. Do it! Bless someone, put good into the universe, bring a gift, offer encouragement, live.