getting words on the white blank page

It's been a long time since I sat at the keyboard in front of a blank white page, hoping to fill it with words that mean something to me.  And maybe to you, too.

It's been a hard six months.  And that was following a hard two and a half years.  And it's not that I didn't have moments of crashing during this time.  I had plenty.  Sometimes I shared some of them here.  Sometimes I didn't.


In the last couple of weeks I think I faced some of the hardest moments yet in this season of hoping, dying to hoping, and hoping again.  And I ran out of words to say.  

Probably no coincidence that before I ran out of words, I ran out of time for quiet, prayer, contemplation and rest.  Some of that was my own fear of sitting with myself, alone.  A lot of it was not my fault at all, but a surrender to the demands of this abundant season of family need.  We have said yes to adventure and we have said yes to risk and we have said okay to vulnerability and unknown variables and exposed nerves.


Somehow, in a turn of events that I think has surprised each one of us in this family, I was given grace and stamina to rise to the almost-overwhelming need in our home and family with energy, faith, grace and an uncanny ability to put dinner on the table almost every night.  I was given that energy for the first six months of our time here.  And then, almost over night, the energy was gone.  On several different occasions the past few weeks I've felt the old near-crippling panic that has not visited me for probably more than a decade.  The temptation to run to the nearest exit to escape this old discomfort has taken up way more of my thinking than I want to admit to anyone.  And I know that it's true that resisting that temptation is a noble fight, but somehow the tangible benefits of groceries in the pantry and clean, folded underwear in the dresser drawer feels better, you know?

Mixed among these moments of almost-debilitating stress, I've experienced the grace and feasting of community, love and care from my husband, gentleness from my children and intercession of the saints.  We've entered more deeply into the story of our new community in Austin while remaining open to sharing the stories of our distant community in New York.  I've begun to offer my own shoulder to the weight of need surrounding us in the people we've come to love fiercely in almost no time here at Christ Church.  And I know again the astonishing paradox of Christ's strength in my weakness.  

Still I thrash against the reality of my weakness.  And it 'most nearly wears me out.

I have not been faithful to Jesus walking with Him through this season of Epiphany.  Not in the way I'd like to see myself, anyway.  One of the faithful standing beside him as he heals the leper, carrying the baskets of bread and fish to the hungry crowd,  skimming the surface of the water, flat-foot, eyes fixed on His face.  Instead I've been the leper, the famished and the drowning one.  Perhaps, this is epiphany still?  In the revelation of myself as the weak, I am forced to see Him as the strong or faint dead away.

In a last minute hail-mary pass to actually see Jesus again, I tried the innovative approach of opening my prayerbook this morning.  Started walking with Him in the Gospels again.  Today I witnessed the miraculous healing of the woman crawling on the ground in pain and shame from twelve years of bleeding.  I read the words of her suffering, especially the ones about the doctors who'd attempted to help her but had only made things worse, and the words about all her money spent. I recognized in her the desperation that took the form of fingers clutching on Jesus' hem, the shame that caused her to hide in the crowd rather than ask for help to his face.  This was epiphany, the revelation of desperation that leads us to Jesus in the weakest of all possible attempts for help.


I sit in that posture this Epiphany.  And I hear the words of Jesus to the bereaved Jairus: 

Don't be afraid. Just have faith.

I believe and am saved once again.


epilogue:  Would you believe me if I told you that this song came on my Pandora station within minutes of reading the passage of the healed woman in Mark 5:24-34?  It's true and I receive it as a gift of small wonders from my good Father this morning.

spending time with these two fun people instead of blogging

My parents came to Austin!

post script: on greased watermelons again

A follow up note on an old topic:

   1.  Several times in the early years of this blog, I shared my jumbled-up imaginings of God as a greased watermelon (in that He sometimes hides from us, but only in the sense of delightful pursuit rather than the cruel and detached way).  

        p.s.  I'm reading Sabbath,  Dan Allendar's contribution to The Ancient Practices Series.  In his chapter "Play Day" he tells us his readers that God the Creator did not Sabbath due to "lack, loneliness, or necessity", rather he chose a day of Sabbath for reasons "free and groundless -- that is, without reason, other than delight."  Imagine my delight when Allendar, later in the chapter, uses the metaphor of God's playing a form of divine hide & seek with us as an act of holy play?  

An excerpt: 

Belden Lane offers a terrifying and thrilling proposition: perhaps God is truly playful. When we experience God's absence, perhaps God is "like a mother playfully hiding from her child or a lover playing hard to get, God hides from those God loves, occasionally playing rough for love's sake. The purpose of God's apparent absence of God's hiding, is to deepen in the lover a longing for the one loved, to enhance the joy experienced when fear dissolves and the separated are rejoined."

It is disturbing enough to cast God out of the garden. It conjures our deepest fear, as C.S. Lewis spoke about, being the toy in a divine game that is cruel and vile. Yet what do we do with the book of Job? Satan strolls into God's presence with a gamble that God takes as a worthy contest. Even as a literary convention, it is radically disturbing to our sensibilities. No wonder we don't like play, especially when it has to do with faith. Instead, we want the tried-and-true, the established and fundamentally solid. It is just too much freedom and risk to play with God.
Lane argues that our play with God requires us to be wakeful and simultaneously disengaged. It is the mystery of all deep play. To enter the realm of play, we must give ourselves to something or someone and turn away from all else. It is both a pledge and a betrayal.

We hide and desperately hope to be found. Our good mother knows when to return quickly when our fear is beyond our capacity to endure the anxiety of her absence. She also knows when her departure is necessary to sustain even when our fear rises beyond the heavens. God knows our frailty and our courage and never confuses one for the other and knows how to comfort and call forth when we would prefer God to simply answer us as we desire. More than any other purpose, God plays for the victory of union. We seek and hope to be reunited.

(chapter 5, "Play Day",  Sabbath: The Ancient Practices by Dan Allendar)

Monday Mixtape: cleaning that shines

Welcome to Monday Mix Tape, in which I pretend I'm Ira Glass.  You know, I choose a theme and share with you several variations on the theme from the worlds of art, faith and culture.  To keep up the fun little facade of making a weekly mix tape, I label each of these finds as "track 1",  "track 2", and so on (and just like the stack of mixtapes you've got hidden in a box in your attic, you never know when you might see some love song from Journey or Lionel Richie show up here).

 We're in the midst of the weeks of Epiphany, the weeks we remember some of the key moments of Jesus' life starting with the visit of the magi to the Child-King, the baptism of Jesus, and the water turned to wine at the Cana wedding.    The word epiphany from ancient Greek speaks to a striking appearance, a manifestation. I barely know how to picture the word:  manifestation.  "To make manifest" does not help me at all, but synonyms shed more light:  clear, distinct, unmistakable, open, palpable, visible, conspicuous.  Oh, yes, this makes delightful sense to me now.



You've heard the pithy expression attributed to the theologian William Barclay, "There are two great days in a person's life -- the day we are born and the day we discover why."  These vigorous words help me frame the liturgical seasons of Christmas and Epiphany and could be restated:  In these two great seasons in the life of Jesus we celebrate the day the Messiah was born and the events Father, Son and Spirit reveal why.


Early on, only a few recognize the God in the boy body.  Only a few had eyes trained well enough to follow the natural and supernatural signs pointing toward ancient prophesy fulfilled through the virgin in Bethlehem.  Only a few were able to see by the light of stars only, everyone else needed the spiritual light bulbs of a divine epiphany.  The triune God wastes no revelation, he does not randomly scatter revelation as if pouring magic fairy dust over a sleeping kingdom.  With the accounts in the early chapters of the Gospels, God reveals not just the pragmatic truth of making invisible divinity visible in the body of Jesus; rather, He continues to reveal His very heart, His nature revealed carefully through the natural and supernatural moments of Jesus' life.  In other words, we do well to pay attention to the who, what, where and how of these accounts.  When we do, the eyes of our hearts will behold the face of God.


For the next few weeks, we gather round these flaming-bush moments in Jesus' life hoping for our sleeping hearts to be stricken with sight.  This week I'm thinking about the heart of God lived out in a Christ who wandered the earth healing, forgiving and cleansing those who'd walked in darkness for a very, very long time.

track 1: visual art

Cosas que sería mejor que estuvieran limpias  / Things that would be better if they were clean
installation, Madrid

Artist statement:  The crisis has left important buildings in the city unused and in an appalling state of neglect, one of them was owned by Telefonica, the largest telephone company in Spain and it is located in the Plaza de España.This building was purchased with state money when Telefonica was a state owned company and sold when Telefonica was privatized in order to build a business park on the outskirts of the city. It is currently in a state of absolute disrepair and abandoned, waiting to be auctioned off following the bankruptcy of its current owners.

Passing in front of it, gives one a sensation of filth and sadness, especially at night, which could be lessened by a good cleaning.

Trying to call attention to its state, so that they proceed with cleaning it, we carried out the installation Things that would be better if they were clean, in which 100 pristine, white cloths, were placed on the entrance to this building, now darkened by filth and urine.

The photos, as always, are by Gustavo Sanabria.

Time of installation: 2 hours.
Damages: none.
Exhibition time: 12 hours.

track 2: music

A collection of some of my favorite hymns and anthems celebrating the way Jesus changes our broken, shameful, sorry pieces into whole, clean and joyous marks of redemption and grace.

track 3: a collect 

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christs’s glory,that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (via All Saints Church)

track 4: dance

This might be a tiny stretch and a touch sentimental, but  I decided it was close enough to this week's theme to include in the mixtape. (and definitely one of my favorite moments on season 7 of SYTYCD)

track 5: a poem

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

Mary Oliver, from her poem "Sometimes"

Happy Monday!
Won't you join me this week in keeping watch for every common bush afire with God....

a house blessing for Epiphany

For several months, since moving into our rental home in August, we'd planned to ask some prayer-warrior type people walk through our house, praying blessing and renouncing curse in the space.  This would not be the first time we'd welcomed this sort of prayer.  As sure as God created and then incarnated physical space, we believe praying over space is no superstitious act.

Our intention took on more shape as we began to enter official ministry roles at Christ Church.  And as the adrenaline of the move began to wear off leaving behind a slithery trail of ennui in it's departing wake, we began to notice patterns of emotional, spiritual, and physical flare ups surrounding important ministry dates.  Or around times of planned rest and renewal.  We called time and again on our community of pray-ers, asking them to raise up a canopy of intercession over our tired and fearful selves.   

At the peak of an especially intense weekend, one which as I think back to describe it all I can imagine is 24 hours x 3 or 4 days of tears and door slamming, we knew the presence of a lower-case other in our midst.  Really just harassing us, lying to us, accusing us to ourselves and to each other.  We slammed doors as exclamation points on unspoken sentences of worthlessness, despair, fatigue, longing for something -- anything -- to feel just a tiny bit familiar to our adventure-weary souls.  Brian sat down yet again to type out needy words to those committed to our care, in the very same moments a piece of artwork in our sons' room seemingly jumped off the wall.  It's possible all those days of door slamming had shaken it loose, but it felt like it might have been the work of that lower-case other overplaying his hand.  

The print was a piece of artwork we'd purchased last Christmas for our son, entitled "A Clash That Speaks True".  Yeah, we didn't think that was a coincidence either.

Still, the weeks of Advent went by and Christmas shone in.  We rested, lived with the delights of comfort and joy for a few weeks.  On January 2, Brian was packing his suitcase to leave for ten days.  We were preparing for an important ministry meeting the day after he returned. I was reading up on the historical practices of Epiphany. I remembered reading about this tradition in Bobby Gross' devotional guide Living the Christian Year:

One Epiphany tradition, the blessing of the homes using holy water and incense, has been practiced since the end of the Middle Ages. The letters C, M and B are usually traced on the doors as a reference to the names of the Magi, although Adolf Adam reports an alternative interpretation: the initials stand for Christus mansionem benedicat, or "May Christ bless the dwelling." Frederica Mathewes-Green describes the use of newly blessed water in her church on Epiphany: "The holy water represents baptism, and during the period between Theophany and Lent each year, every Orthodox home is to be visited by the priest and sprinkled with the water, carrying our baptism home."

I am thankful for our Rector, Father Clifton Warner (known by most of us, most of the time, as Cliff) who generously met us late on a Wednesday evening.  He showed up with a small branch of evergreen, a small jar of clear water, another of anointing oil and a sheaf of papers printed with Anglican house blessing prayers.  We clustered around him -- uncertain, a bit awkward.  He asked if we owned a cross to carry from room to room.  Can you believe the best we could offer was a wooden cross on a loop of leather my son received for his birthday? 

One of us carried the cross, one the oil, one the water and we followed Cliff from room to room in this homely liturgy.  Praying against any evil plan ever made for each space in our home, against every intention opposed to the good will of our Father, every mis-invited spirit not from the Giver of every good gift.  We prayed for blessing, peace, purposes lined up with the Christ who is with us, before us, underneath and above us.  We prayed written prayers, words selected with wisdom and experience.  We prayed our own made-up words -- sometimes tears without words, sometimes with giggles (someday, have your teenage children stand at the foot of their parents' bed and see if you all can make it through without an escaped guffaw or two...).

Protect us, Lord, when we are awake, watch over us as we sleep; that awake we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in his peace. In the name of Jesus Christ, we claim this bedroom as a haven of rest and command any evil spirits to leave this place and never return. We ask you, Lord, to bless this room and this bed, and to send your holy angels to guard it and protect those who sleep here from every attack of Satan or his emissaries. Holy Spirit, we ask you to fill this place, and minister to the hearts of those who abide here, bringing comfort, peace and rest as they sleep.
Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

We agreed together with each word, each smudge of oil thumbed over doorways, each flick of water with evergreen stem.  We loved each other with prayer and fought for each other and said words of sorry, please, and help.  Perhaps, most powerful, though, were the thank-you words, the remembering together of the abundant generosity of our Father.  

(Click here for a pdf of An Anglican House Blessing)

7 quick takes! a photo diary

For some reason that I haven't determined, writing new posts on this blog has been slow and difficult the past couple weeks.  Not sure why other than my brain is plain old tired out.  And my life is full.  

Here's seven photos from our full life this past week....

--- 1 ---

This is a photo of tonight's dinner sponsored and prepared by our 20-year-old son, Andrew.  Yes, that's a ribeye (the best steak I've eaten in a very long time).  Also, a mozzarella/orzo/tomato salad and a sweet potato/carrot/turnip/almond/parmesan cheese veggie mixture.  Total delciousness!

Every time you hear me complain about Andrew eating up all my favorite breakfast granola, would you please remind me of this photo? K, thanks.

--- 2 ---

Yes, he managed to purchase a steak dinner for a family of six the same week he bought his first car.  It's good to be young and gainfully employed.  Of course, the car almost caught fire this morning so that's where the good part ends and the "welcome to the responsibilities of adulthood" begin.  We take great comfort in the fact that we've met more lawyers than we can count since moving to Austin and plan to remind the car salesman of this fact in case he tries anything tricky on us.  In the meantime, we're trying to find out if Texas has "lemon laws"?

--- 3 ---

We made some changes to the dining room when we put away our Christmas decorations.  It's amazing how much Scrabble playing happens around here by just setting out the board and letters on the dining room table.  By the way, this particular game was being played right in the middle of a weekday.  Just some photographic proof of this strangely wonderful "bonus season" I've been given.

--- 4 ---

Slowly, but surely, the kids' social calendars are beginning to fill up. They might be several years younger, but Alex had the best time hanging out with these guys all Sunday afternoon. Here they are commemorating his first bite of a P.Terry's all-natural burger.  

--- 5 ---

Brian preached his first sermon at Christ Church.  I was given a special sneak preview on Saturday afternoon.  You can see that Duchess is quite convicted (yes, she insisted at sitting by Brian's feet while he ran through the whole sermon).

If you'd like to hear for yourself, the sermon is posted online here.

--- 6 ---

This is Brian putting the finishing touches on his sermon.  I may get in serious trouble for sharing this photo.  As Brian's new favorite saying goes:  It's good to be Anglican.

--- 7 ---

It's also good to be Texan. At least in January.  Like the afternoon the girls and I walked around the Lady Bird Johnson Wildlife Center without needing coats or boots or scarves or gloves.  

We definitely could get used to this....

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Monday Mixtape: Epiphany!

Welcome to Monday Mix Tape, in which I pretend I'm Ira Glass.  You know, I choose a theme and share with you several variations on the theme from the worlds of art, faith and culture.  To keep up the fun little facade of making a weekly mix tape, I label each of these finds as "track 1",  "track 2", and so on (and just like the stack of mixtapes you've got hidden in a box in your attic, you never know when you might see some love song from Journey or Lionel Richie show up here).

 We're in the midst of the weeks of Epiphany, the weeks we remember some of the key moments of Jesus' life starting with the visit of the magi to the Child-King, the baptism of Jesus, and the water turned to wine at the Cana wedding.    The word epiphany from ancient Greek speaks to a striking appearance, a manifestation. I barely know how to picture the word:  manifestation.  "To make manifest" does not help me at all, but synonyms shed more light:  clear, distinct, unmistakable, open, palpable, visible, conspicuous.  Oh, yes, this makes delightful sense to me now.


You've heard the pithy expression attributed to the theologian William Barclay, "There are two great days in a person's life -- the day we are born and the day we discover why."  These vigorous words help me frame the liturgical seasons of Christmas and Epiphany and could be restated:  In these two great seasons in the life of Jesus we celebrate the day the Messiah was born and the events Father, Son and Spirit reveal why.


For the next few weeks, we gather round these flaming-bush moments in Jesus' life hoping for our sleeping hearts to be stricken with sight.  

track 1:  photography

photo credit:  An Orthodox priest conducts a service at an ice hole in a pond as part of Epiphany celebrations in Kiev, Ukraine, Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011. AP / Sergei Chuzavkov

I think the Eastern church has a good idea here.  Imagine the congregation in your last Sunday service taking turns jumping into ice-covered water?  Can you imagine a liturgy more striking to our sleeping selves?

track 2:  music

This may look like a Christmas album, this collection of songs arranged, prepared in 2009 by worship director Bruce Benedict for corporate worship at Christ the King Presbyterian in Raleigh, NC.  Spend some time listening and you with the lyrics weaving the wonder not only of the day Christ was born but the revealing of God's why.  It is in our understanding of the why, we come to know the very heart of God.  Look for the heart of God revealed in songwriter's poetry.

A sampling to start your listening journey (click on the link or the album title to visit the bandcamp page that includes a lyrics option):  

• "Savior of the nations, come..." (track 1, verse 1)
• "...That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet." (track 3, verse 4)
• "...Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor." (track 5, verse 5)

track 3:  poetry

Epiphany

BY JOANIE MACKOWSKI

A momentary rupture to the vision:

the wavering limbs of a birch fashion

the fluttering hem of the deity’s garment,

the cooling cup of coffee the ocean the deity

waltzes across. This is enough—but sometimes

the deity’s heady ta-da coaxes the cherries

in our mental slot machine to line up, and

our brains summon flickering silver like

salmon spawning a river; the jury decides

in our favor, and we’re free to see, for now.

A flaw swells from the facets of a day, increasing

the day’s value; a freakish postage stamp mails

our envelope outside time; hairy, claw-like

magnolia buds bloom from bare branches;

and the deity pops up again like a girl from

a giant cake. O deity: you transfixing transgressor,

translating back and forth on the border

without a passport. Fleeing revolutions

of same-old simultaneous boredom and

boredom, we hoard epiphanies under the bed,

stuff them in jars and bury them in the backyard;

we cram our closet with sunrise; prop up our feet

and drink gallons of wow!; we visit the doctor

because all this is raising the blood’s levels of

c₆H₃(OH)₂CHOHCH₂NHCH₃, the heart caught

in the deity’s hem and haw, the oh unfurling

from our chest like a bee from our cup of coffee,

an autochthonous greeting: there. Who saw it?

Source: Poetry (November 2011).

track 4:  video

When we listen to the clues of God's true heart in the scriptural accounts of epiphany, we also gain insight into our own true selves.  God does not waste revelation -- as we recognize Him, He names us. (from The Work of the People)

track 5:  web links

• Songs for Epiphany: Bruce Benedict's blog, Cardiphonia, is an excellent resource of tunes and chord charts for those responsible for leading congregations in worship, but also those who hunger for lyrically-rich hymnody to mark the liturgical seasons.  
• Epiphany at Cana:  I enjoyed Malcolm Guite's sonnets all during Advent.  He continues writing good words in the season of Epiphany as well.  This link takes you to the latest, but track back through his blog the previous posts for more.
• Clean House, Hold Steady:  Good Letters contributer Allison Backous shares her   epiphany on the difference between living life as a victim and life as needing Christ's strength in her weakness.
• The Kingdom of God is near you...and far away:  I shared this post from my musings in January 2010 at an Epiphany night celebration with new and dear friends here in Austin.
• Epiphany 2011: To see more profound photographs of the Eastern church celebrating Epiphany, view this article at The Sacramento Bee.  Totally fascinating.....

bonus track:  another icy baptism photo

photo credit:  A man enters the water of Komsomolskoe lake through a cutout made in the ice, in downtown Minsk during the Orthodox Epiphany holiday service late on January 18, 2011. People take part in a baptism ceremony during the traditional celebration of Epiphany, one the biggest events in the Christian Orthodox calender. AFP/ Getty Images / Viktor Drachev

Happy Monday!
Won't you join me this week in keeping watch for every common bush afire with God....