The Uncertainty of this Week

 

A world that is fully known, in which everything has been planned and mastered, would be a dead world.  Hartmut Rosa

 

As we embark on the pilgrimage of our Holiest Week, a path we have traveled before and yet every year surprises us with the uncontrollable Sacred, re-read the above quote.  This week is not a tourist trip or stroll down memory lane or going through the motions to get to belting out “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” whilst the Easter lilies aggravate our allergies (or maybe that is just me?).  A pilgrimage is a posture of the heart.  Unlike a vacation or retreat, a pilgrimage asks for our full engagement.  Pilgrimages don’t have travel agents to set up all your excursions or adventures.  In a pilgrimage, you walk the road step-by-step.  Pilgrimages hold surprises.  Pilgrimages cause blisters on our feet and frustrations when we are delayed and remind us of the uncontrollability of life.

 

We are pretty good at convincing ourselves that we are in charge.  We are marketed to every day, seeking to sell us items to help us thrive, flourish, and live our best life now!!  When our bodies are exhausted and our minds overwhelmed, we turn to vitamins and diets and whatever supplement we can get our hands on. 

 

This is a week of uncontrollability, which is also to say vulnerability, which is also to say our stomachs start doing somersaults and our minds start reaching for rational explanations.  Hartmut Rosa says, “As late modern human beings, (our) aim is to make the world controllable at every level – individual, cultural, institutional, and structural – we invariable encounter the world as just a series of objects that we have to know, attain, conquer, master, or exploit.”  

 

This week won’t let you control.  This week will test our certainties and confidence.  Because we don’t like to feel uncertain, we’ve turned the cross into a transaction (God had to pay a debt, so God sacrificed Jesus…and just typing those words sets my teeth on edge and causes my heart to hurt).  The cross is about transformation.  When you’ve reached the end of your rope, when you can no longer read another book or listen to another podcast or try harder…it is then that God interrupts us.  God says this week isn’t about understanding, but rather standing under.  Under a palm that shades us and holds our “Hosannas” (which recall from yesterday means “Save us!!” ~ because we can’t save ourselves).  This week we are invited to sit under a love that washes feet and offers bread to the very ones who betray, deny, desert, and run away.  We will stand under a cross with the unanswerable question, “Why”…which is really what uncontrollability is all about.  We will sit silently on Saturday, because life is a series of Holy Saturdays when nothing is resolved or revealed, and Easter isn’t even a possibility.  Saturday is when all our plotting and planning fall quiet.  Let the aliveness of this Holy Week meet you, hold you, and heal you, even when we don’t have it all figured out.  May this mystery move our souls every day this week.  Amen.  

Desire for Us

 

Today, we dive and dwell with three quotes by Henri Nouwen.  As is often the case, the point of the quotes is not for you to memorize to regurgitate back on some quiz.  The point of a quote is to open your thinking, to notice your response, and to see how the words land in your body.  Quotes are not conclusive evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt, but they invite us into a conversation.  Read each quote below twice.  First, to get a sense of what Nouwen is trying to express.  And then the second time, pay close attention to the questions, insights, and confusion that may arise in your mind or soul.  Or maybe the quote is meh to you, not good or bad, but like bread without salt.  Not every word ever spilled on a page about prayer is for everyone.  Perhaps you are still meditating on a previous post this week.  Perhaps you are still arguing with something I said earlier.  Perhaps the conversation of prayer is still unresolved in you.  Notice where you are at, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  The prayer “Here I am” is powerful because it names the geography of our bodies, hearts, and souls.  Where are you?  What does here look like, sound like, taste, and feel like right now?  Once you have paid attention to where you are and that God is there with you in this moment, ponder these quotes from Nouwen:

 

I am deeply convinced that the necessity of prayer, and to pray unceasingly, is not as much based on our desire for God as on God’s desire for us. It is God’s passionate pursuit of us that calls us to prayer.

 

Pause ~ Re-read ~ Respond ~ Breathe

 

The only way to pray is to pray, and the way to pray well is to pray much.

 

Pause ~ Re-read ~ Respond ~ Breathe

 

Prayer without action grows into powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation.

 

Pause ~ Re-read ~ Respond ~ Breathe

 

What are you noticing?  Did something shift or stir in you, either good or not great?  Has your soul, heart, or mind moved since we first checked a few moments ago?  Is there one word or one image you would like to carry with you today from this morning mediation and meeting with God?  I pray that whatever word, thought, image, feeling, taste, smell, or voice of your shy soul is for you, this will be a conduit to the Creator to stay awake and aware that God goes before, beside, behind, and beneath you every moment ~ that you are staying alert is the wayless way of prayer.  Amen.  

Lent Week Five ~ Injoining God

 

Dallas Willard once said that “prayer is both the enjoying and in-joining of what God is doing in the world right now.”  Notice the two words: enjoying and in-joining, which means that prayer doesn’t need to be serious and somber and stoic; prayer can be playful.  Laughter is prayer.  Prayer can be quiet.  Holding hands with a family member or friend is a prayer posture.  Where you find joy, you find God.  This can be counterintuitive and even counter-cultural.  Prayer has more shapes, sizes, and shades than our human imaginations can dream. 

 

Wait, you may think, God wants me to enjoy prayer?  At its heart, prayer is an encounter with the Eternal.  It is us awakening and aligning ourselves with God.  One way we experience God is through goodness.  God isn’t some Grumpy Gus with a permanent scowl.  God delights.  God dances.  God dreams of new ways to let loose the holy to hum and hover in your life ~ remember Lazarus on Sunday being unbound?  We know people who practice the art of pessimism ~ wrapped in negativity.  Sometimes this is because life has hurt and harmed the person so much that the scars are a shield.  I have had a time in my life when I was always worried that the other shoe would drop, and I was suspicious of joy because I thought it wasn’t dependable.  Joy seemed flighty or fragile.  So, instead, I committed myself to the fine art of always looking for the negative as a way to protect myself from being too vulnerable.  Make no mistake about it, cynicism is easy ~ there is plenty of external evidence for why the world is crashing and crumbling.  And, joy still insists and inserts herself in our lives. 

 

What would it look like for you and God to enjoy each other? 

 

The second word, “in-joining,” is important here too.  Prayer has legs and hands and words.  Prayer has a body, that is yours.  God’s prayer finds expression in you.  Too often, I can rush and run in a direction I am convinced God called me to go, only to find myself lost.  To join with God means I first listen for/to God.  (Note that the words “listen” and “silent” share the same letters.)  God may not show up with a neon sign.  In Scripture, God shows up in dreams, a still small voice, in the wilderness (which can be loneliness), at meals, at prayer circles, in burning bushes, whales that swallow prophets, and countless other ways.  One question to ask is, where has God shown up so far this week?  Where have you felt energized and enlivened?  St. Irenaeus said that, “The glory of God is a (being) fully alive.”  Alive as in your spirit leaping, heart soaring, smile crossing, and body tingling.  Alive as in goodness or God-ness that is woven into this world.  Hold those twin words: enjoy and in-join, as invitations as we approach our holiest week of the year.  Amen.

Lent Week Five ~ Prayer is Ongoing

 

Recently, I heard this quote, “Prayer is not performative”.  God isn’t grading my prayer.  Nor is my prayer about achievement or my personal enjoyment (like a Netflix show).  Prayer isn’t about me rating/ranking how spectacularly the Sacred showed up. 

 

Add this other insight, “Prayer isn’t starting a conversation, but entering one that is ongoing.” 

 

God has been with you every moment of your life, from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same.  As the mystics say, “There is nowhere God is not.”  Which means you don’t need to give God the inside scoop about what has been happening.  God, our constant companion and Creator, is continually at work authoring in our lives.  So much of our lives is about performing and projecting.  We really see ourselves, as Shakespeare said, as actors on the stage of the world.  But God isn’t in the audience writing a review of our words; God is part-taking alongside us in the unfolding drama/comedy/tragedy/ordinariness of each day.  Because we take on roles, we present a pretense/shape shifters, given the situation we find ourselves in each day. 

 

One other great quote to ponder with prayer, “Expectations can be resentments waiting to happen.”  When I expect or even demand God/others/myself to show up in a certain way with defined words on the script I’ve written, I reduce the humanness of myself and the other.  Or sometimes I don’t listen to what the other person is saying, because I assume I already “know” what they believe, regardless of whether that is what is falling from their lips.

 

Take the three quotes from today: “Prayer is not performative” ~ it is showing up in honest, even raw and uncensored, ways.  “Prayer isn’t the beginning but the continuation of a conversation” ~ what threads and themes are woven into your ongoing and unfolding dialogue with the Divine so far this month?  And are there “expectations that have turned to resentment” recently in your life?  Let these questions stir and sing and sink into your life.  I pray these insights will feed and fuel your ongoing conversation with our Creator.  Amen.  

Lent Week Five ~ Short Spacious Prayers

 

Despite my own very human tendency for long-winded prayers, what we offer to God is not judged on word count or waxing eloquent.  Sometimes shorter sentences offer a doorway to our shy souls.  A few honest, heartfelt words can open/offer space for our souls to speak.  Below are four short prayer sentences by Justin McRoberts.  Read each slowly, savoring the flavor of words, engaging the thoughts, noticing your emotions and response.  Pause after each sentence to recognize where the words are landing in your body. 

 

May I cease to be annoyed that others are not as I wish they were, since I am not as I wish I was.

 

Pause to breathe and let the words settle.

 

Before I see someone as a problem, may I see him/her/them as a human.

 

Pause to breathe and let the words settle.

 

May the depth and energy of my criticism be at least equaled by the depth of my commitment to help.

 

Pause to breathe and let the words settle.

 

Help me, O God, spit out the taste of rage and regret rather than keep swallowing it.

 

Pause to breathe and let the words settle.

 

Which of the above did your shy soul say, “Amen”?  Which one of the above four sentences stretched or challenged you?  Which one did you shout, “Objection!” as your response?  Which one do you question if you could really live this way? 

 

Go back and re-read the sentences, this time noticing and naming where and with whom you might be able to live these words.  Remember, God is not asking for perfection, but for you to be wholly and beautifully you ~ with all your fabulous foibles.  The hopes and heartbreaks, the divine dust that you are.  May these prayer sentences find a space and place in your life in these Lenten days.  Amen.

Lent Week Four

 

Please pray this beautiful prayer/blessing from Kate Bowler with me:

 

a blessing when you can’t fake it (or make it?)

I have been propped up on my toes, peering over fences but mostly staring at the peeling paint.  Hoping has become longing.  Wanting has become needing. I can see love everywhere but here. There is a naturalness to the way other people experience their joys popping up like tender, spring grasses. The earth, it seems, is always warm and autumn seedlings break open and bring life, life, everywhere. And I chew on my lip as neighbors roll their eyes at relationships, children, plans—gifts I would tear open like a Christmas present. What riches. Scatter my heart like a dandelion, drifting high over these walls and setting down, gently, where good things grow. Contentment and wonder, surprise and new adventure, comfort in the hands of those who know love’s value and love’s cost. Envy will be blown away by another breeze and I rest here waiting, waiting for the blooms.

Lent Week Four ~ Delores Williams

 

Women’s History Month is a call to open our ears and hear voices that come from diverse perspectives.  Delores Williams is a Womanist Theologian.  She was an African American who wrote the brilliant book, “Sisters in the Wilderness”.  She built on the voices, like Sojourner Truths famous quote, “Ain’t I a Woman?” and helped to expand our understandings of faith with her insights.  Slowly read the following two quotes from Williams:

Faith has taught me to see the miraculous in everyday life: the miracle of ordinary black women resisting and rising about evil forces in society, where forces work to destroy and subvert the creative power and energy my mother and grandmother taught me God gave black women.”

 There is nothing divine in the blood of the cross ... As Christians, Black women cannot forget the cross, but neither can they glorify it. To do so is to glorify suffering and to render their exploitation sacred. To do so is to glorify the sin of defilement ...

 

What is your response to these two quotes?  What thoughts are evoked and provoked?  Do they stretch you?  Where are you seeing the miracle of the everyday, especially in the courage and conviction of our siblings on the margin?  How does Williams’ beautifully unique voice send you in a new direction?  I pray you will expand your list of female voices this month.  Read the voice of a new author, especially one who does NOT share your background.  Listen to the podcast of a female who comes from a different perspective.  Women’s History Month should invite us into a conversation with a multitude of beloved daughters of God who are still speaking and singing in the spirit of Sophia, or wisdom in the book of Proverbs.  Sophia, who sings to us, calling us back to God’s way in a time when so many voices want to pull us to consume and lash out at each other.  Stretch yourself today and listen to the voice of someone unfamiliar as a way for God to get a word in edgewise.  Amen.