Keeping Watch - Philip Berrigan

When this guy mentioned in the first paragraph that "Georgia winters are damp and cold," I knew we were going to get along.  For the most part cold is relative, but when you are out in it for hours on end, it becomes less so.  Cold is cold.  Throw in a heavy dose of "damp" and you've described our Appalachian Trail hike to a T.  After trekking down the mountain to Hiawassee in the rain, I could relate quite well to Berrigan's image of the grueling night of keeping watch, ever waiting for it to end.

The distinction between watching and waiting is the lesson I need to learn, however.  Waiting feels like my full time job - I'm always hoping to do it with more grace, always reminding myself that it's worth it (I even blogged about it for Advent).  But watching is a more active command, and a more cerebral one.  What can be learned from the world around me while I stand here and wait?  What warmth can I discover (or create) in this night to make it less bitingly cold?  Many of the things on Berrigan's list of things to watch made me smile - watch nuclearism, watch war, watch refugees, watch corporations - "become a student of systemic evil."  Check!  Anyone who follows my Facebook knows that I love to rant about all kinds of systemic evil.  Perhaps it is one of my spiritual gifts.  It's the other kind of watching I need to work on though:

Watch the words of others, since God often speaks to us through sisters and brothers.  Watch for conformity between words and deeds, and when the two are the same, watch only their deeds.  Watch for heroic women and men who give their lives tending victims - the bombed, starved, raped, tortured - and to exposing the victimizers from within prison and without.  Watch the hope that they give you by the speech of their lives, and then dare to extend hope to others. (73)

I need to reopen my eyes to hope.  Once upon a time, I was an optimist.  I need to look hard for the heroes, and the success stories, and the beautiful moments.  And yes, I mean look hard, because these are not the front page stories.  They're not always as fun to share as a quality Facebook rant, either.  But I do know they are more fun to hear, and I know it is these things around which I want to shape my life, not their negative counterparts.  My task for this Lent is to keep my eyes peeled for evidence of Christ in the world - evidence that we are not alone and that this story has a happy ending.  The Master may return at any moment, and when he comes, I don't want to be too caught up in my criticisms of coal-fired power plants and Republican budget bills that I don't notice the Healer has already arrived.

A Look Inside - Edna Hong

The purpose of Lent is to arouse. (p. 24)

Ha!  How often do you hear that phrase in a sermon?!?  Not only did it catch my attention to read the word "arouse" in a Christian devotional, but this understanding of Lent hit home for me as well.  There's just something uninviting about thinking about death and denial for forty days...something that drives you to crave indulgence even more than you might during the rest of the year (like the guy from Iowa who gave up sobriety for Lent).  But arousal - that seems like something Christ would want from us.  Arousal of the Life Abundant.  For me, it has never been the knowledge of sin that has driven me to Christ, but the reverse.  The desire for something more - for something good and perfect and whole and in control - is what points me to the divine, and then this God of Love and Truth and Justice reminds me that I have oh-so-far to go to measure up - both to Him/Herself and to the person I was created to be.

I think I have also struggled with the traditional concept of Lenten sacrifice because it doesn't do much to shake the foundations of my biggest sins - the sins of omission and non-action.  I am lazy, and I have more of a tendency to under-do the good rather than overdo the bad.  As the Robert Herrick poem in this chapter points out, "Tis a fast to dole thy sheaf of wheat and meat with the hungry soul."  Rather than starving myself, how can I keep others from going hungry?  I mean this in both a literal and a spiritual sense...how can I awaken myself and others to the knowledge of God's limitless grace this Lent?  I am convinced that if sin is about "missing the mark"(its literal meaning in Greek), then Lent should be about finding that bulls-eye once again.  And as with any task set before us by God, this one is not ours to tackle alone.  We must arouse ourselves - open our eyes, raise our bow, focus our attention - but the Lord will be with us throughout our attempt, standing behind us, guiding our stance and telling us exactly when to release the arrow.

Let's hope I do better this time than I did in archery at the Wii Resort!

Resurrecting this Blog

(Pun intended.)

We're back for a second attempt in 2011!  The calendar has been updated, and hopefully this year we can make it all the way to Easter!  I think the best tactic (or at least the one I'm going to use) is to read the chapter number that corresponds to the day of Lent, whether that means skipping chapters or not.  Last year the feeling of having to play catch-up every time I missed a day was what killed all motivation in the end.  And we all know Lenten disciplines are hard enough without the extra burden of snowballing over time!  We can always go back and read chapters we've missed after reading about how wonderful they are from our friends' posts on this blog, too.

For anyone who's looking for other Lenten disciplines to try, there is a nice list that I recommend on Restoring Eden's website called 11 Ideas for Lent '11.

Thank you for joining us, and remember to contact me (Devon) if you would like to be added to our list of bloggers!

The Royal Road - Thomas a Kempis

I have been thinking a lot about suffering lately.  I have been telling the story of Kitty's illness and all that she and her family are going through to many of my friends and coworkers, and it has prompted some spiritual questions.  On two different occasions, the CEO of our organization asked me how I could believe in a God who would allow such pain, injustice - some might say evil - to occur.  I didn't have a well thought out response to the "theodicy question" handy at my finger tips...I ended up blabbing about how pain and injustice only make redemption possible, and how I don't think God wills us to get cancer at age 25, but he wills us to depend on him as we struggle through it.  I was definitely too chicken to talk about sin or Satan, and even more importantly, I somehow forgot to mention Jesus.

Having a religion where the deity chooses a path of suffering and death is pretty darn unique, and I can't believe I failed to point this out to my boss.  There is no pain we can experience, no hardship we can endure, that our God himself has not experienced.  And as a Kempis points out, these trials are basically the whole point of our faith - the vehicle of sanctification: "There is no escaping the cross" (39).  As the quote at the beginning of the chapter states, "If we do not bear the cross of the Master, we will have to bear the cross of the world" (36).  It's going to be hard either way!  But if we choose to go with Jesus - if we choose the "narrow" way and drink his cup of suffering - we also get to share in his redemption, in the glory to come.

I admit I was slightly put off by the statement that "he wishes you to learn to bear trial without consolation" (39)...it sort of sounds like God abandons us to the evils of the world for the sake of character-building.  But in contrast to my boss' view that God wants or passively allows evil, I think all of the suffering we experience can be traced back to a combination of consequences for sin and the preservation of free will.  God wants us to freely choose, and a lot of the time, we freely choose to ignore or deny him.  If he was constantly meddling in the world, fixing everything we'd messed up, we would lose the power of agency, and our choices for good would lose much of their meaning.  All this junk in our lives just teaches us dependence, and points us back to grace:

"We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us." (Romans 5:3-5)

So back to Kitty...I don't think I'm at the point yet of rejoicing in this suffering.  I've cried, and I've yelled, and I've thrown things, and I've had plenty of migraines.  But I haven't blamed God, and I haven't given up on him.  Somehow - and I guess this is the Holy Spirit - I know that we are carrying this cross together, that he is drinking this cup with me.  I have an unexplained hope.  It's not a happy hope, but the sort of hope a Kempis is referring to when he says that "as your love for God increases, so will the pain of your exile" (40).  The more we know of heaven, the more we long for it, and the paler everything else becomes in comparison.  But somehow just knowing that hope is there makes all that we endure along the "royal road" a bit more bearable.

The Relinquished Life - Oswald Chambers

We must relinquish all pretense of being anything, all claim of being worthy of God's consideration (31).

What a challenge!! Mr. Chambers is definitely living up to his reputation.  This statement matches up with things C.S. Lewis writes about in Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce...the most dangerous sins are the sins of pride.  But there is such a fine line between righteousness in a good sense and righteousness in a bad sense!  I can definitely sympathize with the Pharisees.  They tried so hard, only to find that "the first shall be last" and "blessed are the poor in spirit."  It's downright aggravating.

And I think of my friends who have not yet submitted - or admitted - to Christ.  Chambers says, "The higher up you get in the scale of natural virtues, the more intense is the opposition to Jesus Christ" (34-35).  Does this mean that folks who are smoking pot, having unsafe sex and cussing out their coworkers are closer to Jesus than those who are striving for social justice, stewarding Creation with love, and being faithful to their partners?  That's really hard to swallow.  What can be done to humble the pretentious, including me?

One comforting thought comes from Chambers' interpretation of Galatians 2:20: "Have I entered into the glorious privilege of being crucified with Christ until all that is left is the life of Christ in my flesh and blood?" (33, emphasis added)  I love this image, because it implies that Christ was there, in our flesh and blood, all along.  We do not have to do the work of bringing Christ in, of "asking him into our hearts."  We just have to wash away the pretense - the thought that everything good in ourselves comes from ourselves.  When we do this, the good remains; it is simply given its proper name, Christ.

Surrender is Everything - Jean Pierre de Caussade

This chapter reminded me of the ultimate "surrender song" that I learned at Urbana 03: Jesus, All For Jesus.

Jesus, all for Jesus,
All I am and have and ever hope to be.

All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into Your hands.

For it's only in Your will that I am free. 

Good stuff.  And I definitely believe it.  But I do have a rub with some of the stuff Monsieur de Caussade writes: "I no longer have anything to be concerned about, anything to do.  I have no hand in the arrangement of one single moment of my life" (28) and "Mine is to be satisfied with your work and not to demand the choice of action or condition, but to leave everything to your good pleasure" (29).  Does surrender mean the sacrifice of free will?  Is there such a thing as too much complacency, even in God's will?  Can't we be dissatisfied, seeing as we still live in a broken, fallen world?

Recently a friend of mine questioned the tendency of Christians to see unfortunate circumstances as "God's will" and simply accept them, rather than acting to improve them.  I can't help but agree...I think God expects us to ACT and CHOOSE and DO according to his desires (justice, love, beauty, peace), but to surrender our own "ambitions, hopes and plans" along the way.  It's definitely a paradox - essentially fighting and surrendering at the same time - but I have to believe it's possible.  Anyone have any good analogies/images for this?

In Mirrors - Walter Wangerin

This mirror [Christ's crucifixion] is not passive only, showing what is; it is active, creating new things to be [...] resurrection is another me. (p.13-14)

I love this thought.  Lent is not about wallowing, about feeling sorry for our pathetic selves.  It begins with ashes, but it ends with palm fronds and Easter lilies.  When we look at Christ crucified, we see our truest selves, "naked and poor," exposed.  We see our sin, but in the same instant it is recognized, it's absolved.  The "tremendous truth," as Wangerin says, is that the moment we truly see the dirt, we are cleansed of it.  Talk about amazing grace!  It's like a funhouse mirror...Christ shows you the old self and the new self all wrapped into one.  If either one were missing, though, the story would be incomplete.