Lent Day 14-15: Done

I couldn't do it yesterday. I kept thinking, "Later!" And then, I finished my newsletter articles at 10:45 pm, after a wonderful and challenging meeting that was all about our congregation's financial health... and I was done.

Done!

Not even the energy for an episode of my new TV crush, "This Is Us." (I know. I'm three years behind. This is how I do TV. I never catch up.)

... Let alone the energy to bring myself into the presence of scripture with the intention of writing something intelligible (or even... ok).

But it's ok. It really is.

... for you, God, have been my help,
    and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
    your right hand holds me fast.   ~ 63:7-8

In those moments when we are done, we can be done. In those moments when the tank is utterly empty, and is running on what is only the wistful memory of fumes, God our Helper steps in...

[Side note: I know I want this to be more spiritual reflection than bible study, but.... I yam what I yam, as Popeye said... The word for "help," or "helper" in Hebrew is ezer. This is the same word that is used in the second Genesis creation story, the one in which God seeks to make a "helper" for the lonely human. That helper is the woman, and then, for the first time, woman and man are differentiated. But the word "helper" is used in scripture, almost exclusively, for God. God is our first, and, of course, greatest, helper. Womankind, behold the royal nature of what it means to be a "helper." It is a God-infused and noble role. There is no sound biblical argument that it implies otherwise.]

I can find it so hard to rest in the care of my Helper. I don't believe I am alone in that. Last night I hung on, on the computer, because my newsletter stuff was already 6 (gulp!) days late, and that's just wrong. And in a fit of-- well, of knowing that next week looks much the same, I got a start on the Wednesday midweek bulletin.

You know how it goes. We get into a mindset that it all depends on us. (I mean, some stuff does. I'm the only one who can write my newsletter article.)

When does that start? When do we get the message that we are responsible for All of It, and buy into it? Even as a pastor of a church, that is a false understanding of what it means to serve in my role. There are always other companions in this work, and I'm at my healthiest when I realize it.

A couple of years ago I caught "Big Little Lies," the HBO series based on the great Liane Moriarty novel. There's a high-powered, but somewhat frustrated-with-her-life character, Madeline Martha McKenzie, and she has a daughter, a 6 or 7-year-old named Chloe. Chloe is obsessed with music-- all kinds, she's a musical omnivore-- and she's also obsessed with finding the right music for every situation. In particular, she seems to be responsible-- she seems to have assumed responsibility-- for curating her mother's moods.

Darby Camp as Chloe McKenzie in "Big Little Lies." 

I recognized myself in Chloe. I was that daughter to my mother. It's a role that inevitably leads to stress, and then a fissure, and then a rupture, if the child is going to develop in healthy way. At some point, she will need to put her own emotional needs before her mother's.

I was responsible, at a fairly young age, for All of It.

No longer.

I am responsible for myself, and to be God's person in a world where God's love is badly needed. I am responsible in particular and intense ways to my beloveds, from my partner and children to my friends and congregants. But I am also responsible for letting God hold it all with me. I am responsible for remembering that I am not God, and for living and acting accordingly.

This means, for one thing, taking Sabbath.

Which, as it happens, I am about to do, right now.

I am responsible for remembering that God is my helper-- the most powerful, the most loving, the most understanding, the most tender knower of my faults and sins-- and for letting God in.

God's powerful right hand holds me, holds me fast.

Even.... especially.... when I am done.

Lent Day 13: What to Do During the Night Watches

My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast,
    and my mouth praises you with joyful lips
when I think of you on my bed,
    and meditate on you in the watches of the night... Psalm 63:5-6

In this little excerpt from Psalm 63, the composer is talking about how very satisfied they are-- the very same  one who was longing, thirsting, fainting for God in the first verse--by the mere act of thinking about God while in bed. "meditating on [God] in the night watches."

I love this psalm, but it rarely takes me more than five minutes to fall asleep. And no matter how very hard I try to "meditate on God" in bed, I just can't seem to stay awake long enough to do it.

The psalmist could, though. And there's an interesting anthropological reason for that.

Years ago I read a story in the New York Times Magazine about sleep patterns and how they have changed over the centuries. The big change came when use of electric lighting became commonplace. Prior to that, the vast majority of people the world over slept and rose according to the natural light available. Shorter sleep periods in the summer months, when sunlight is available for more hours each day, and a longer night of sleep in the winter, when the sun makes a much briefer appearance.

Here's the thing. When researchers tried to replicate this-- when they had subjects work and be wakeful according to the daylight hours available, and sleep when the daylight had ended, they found that the natural sleep cycle had people in bed for 10-12 hours per night, but not asleep that entire time. People would naturally sleep for four hours or so, then have a period of middle-of-the-night wakefulness. This lasted between two and four hours, after which the subjects would sleep again until morning.

Researchers learned that people adapted to this pattern in various ways. Some people used the wakeful hours of the night to work through problems that worried them during the day. Some people used the time to catch up on reading. Some people found the time to be an excellent opportunity for intimacy with their romantic partners.

But the vast majority of the subjects--nearly all-- reported higher levels of alertness during the day, better concentration, and greater efficiency in accomplishing tasks at home and at work.

Our psalmist used this time during the "watches of the night" for meditating upon God. This gave them immense satisfaction; they compare it to a rich feast (the Hebrew actually reads, "My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness"). The most delicious and most satisfying food is what the psalmist uses to describe the ineffable joy of thinking about God in the middle of the night.

Wishing you a time of good rest, sweet dreams, and the company of the one who keeps watch over you.

Lent Day 12: I Need You

O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you,
as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.  ~ Psalm 63:1

I can feel this.

This opening verse to Psalm 63 never fails to connect with me at an emotional, almost physical level.

It's piercing, but in a good way.

I can feel the longing of the psalmist.

I can feel the deficit they feel: the parched soul, the body ready to collapse.

And I can feel that this is not idle seeking: They are clamoring, they are questing. This is not a passing-the-time-with-religion kind of thing.

Today, I feel the need.

I wonder whether you do?

What do you do when you feel this need? Soul-thirsting, flesh-fainting need...

Do you try to shake it off? Fight it off? Tell yourself, you're ok. You can do this. You can summon the power from somewhere?

Or do you admit your need? Do you allow yourself to rest in that space?

Do you allow yourself to say to God, "I need you?"

I think it's hard for some of us to admit, even of God, that we have need.

Try it today. Try to let yourself tell God: I need you.

Try to rest in your own limited humanity, to know that you are enough, and that God is more than willing, more than eager, to make up any deficit.

Lent Day 11: They Were On a Break

This morning's passage was a strange, sad one from Exodus.

Moses and the people are at Mount Horeb (another name for Mount Sinai), the very place where God gave Moses the law on two tablets. You may remember that, when Moses descended from the mountain with the tablets, he found that the people had melted down every last gold ring and bracelet and pocket-watch to make themselves an idol, a calf. They were having separation anxiety from Moses, it seems, or maybe they were impatient and had lost faith that he'd be coming back down that mountain.  Or maybe the bible gets it exactly right: they were not so enchanted with a God who went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud or a pillar of fire. They wanted a God they could see.

God catches wind of all this, and says to Moses, Oh boy, you will not believe what's going on down there. Go!

The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” ~Exodus 32:9-10

The Israelites appear to have gotten on God's last nerve, and God's ready to get rid of them and make Moses the new patriarch of a new covenant people. Moses will have none of that, though. He begs. He implores God to relent, to turn from God's fierce wrath, to remember those guys God loved! Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-- God's favorites from way back when!

This is the very next thing that happens.

Image by Prawny from Pixabay.

The Lord said to Moses, “Go, leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’  I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.  Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, or I would consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.” ~Exodus 33:1-3

God relents from destroying the people utterly with the divine white-hot wrath. God even says, fine, go. Go into the land I said I'd give you. I'll still give it to you. It's still flowing with milk and honey, and I'll even do you the favor of making sure the last tenants are gone. But I'm out.

This is a wholly unexpected turn of events. Anger, wrath, maybe even fearsome displays of such are to be expected. But this "Let's just go our separate ways" thing is shocking.

When the people heard these harsh words, they mourned, and no one put on ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, and I will decide what to do to you.’” Therefore the Israelites stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.  ~Exodus 33:4-6

The people grieve. (Of course they do.) This is not how the covenant is supposed to play out. It was supposed to be a happy-ever-after thing. Who could have imagined God reaching a breaking point?

Actually, most of scripture assumes God has a breaking point. But in the next chapter, having been persuaded by Moses to change the divine mind, God allows Moses to (partially) see God, passing by while saying,

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, 
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness..." ~Exodus 34:6

And that, it turns out, is really who God is. God, who had really wanted a break from those stiff-necked people, in the end, wanted to be their God more.

I know I can be stiff-necked. (My mother told me, it started reeeeeeal early.) I can go my own way, digging my own grave until I'm up to my eyeballs in dirt, and still insist I'll be in China in just a minute. How inexpressibly grateful I am to know that God's mercy, God's grace, God's steadfast love, and God's faithfulness, are even bigger and more powerful than my recalcitrance. The moment I am ready to let go of my self-will-run-riot, there is God, ready to hold me up through whatever mess I've created and set me (again) on a better path. (And even before I'm ready, God is there, with me, accompanying me, watching my struggles, wishing I'd stop already, checking the divine watch, hoping I'll be back soon...)

People like to make this claim that the Hebrew scriptures are all about Law and the Christian scriptures are all about Grace. I do not buy that. I see grace-- grace upon grace-- all through the messy family stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs, all through the wild ride of the Exodus, and beyond. God is unchanging. If God is gracious now, God was gracious then, and God will be gracious into futures we can't yet see or imagine. But know this: if you imagine a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, you will be right on the money, every time.

Lent Day 10: Broken-Hearted and Praying into the Past

Like you, I am reeling... again... at the devastating violence in what has been known as a haven for peace-seekers, Christchurch, New Zealand. I am grieving, along with the whole world, that a white supremacist entered not one but two mosques and slaughtered people at prayer. The latest death toll I have seen is 49 souls--who, I am sure, were terrified as they were killed; but also, who, I am equally sure, are now at home with God.

That they are at home in God's infinite love and mercy does not make it all better. Not for us, here. We are left to rage, grieve, wonder, despair, hope... whatever trajectory our hearts have been flung into, they will follow.

This morning, once more, I read Psalm 27, and I read it wondering at its tenderness, at its steadfast hope in the face of real fear-- fear for the psalmist's life. And this verse pierced me:

For on the day of trouble the LORD shall shelter me in safety; 
the LORD shall hide me in the secrecy of the holy place
and set me high upon a rock. ~Psalm 27:5

But for those worshipers, that did not happen. Or maybe, it is my misunderstanding of what constitutes "safety." Maybe to die in the midst of prayer is what a devout Muslim-- or Christian, or Jew-- might hope for most fervently. I don't know.

I was in seminary in New York City on 9-11. Among my classmates, many knew or had connections to individuals who perished that day. There was much grieving, great lamentation-- as a seminary community, as a city, as a nation. There were many who sprang to action, going to Ground Zero to offer water, to staff sanctuary spaces nearby so that first responders would have a place to rest when they could tear themselves away from their task.

To the best of my recollection, classes resumed the following Monday. The first class I attended was taught by Ann Ulanov, a class in Pastoral Counseling. Professor Ulanov is a student of Carl Jung, and brings a perspective steeped in archetypes and symbols as well as science.

We did not dive into our curriculum. The professor talked quietly with us, asking us if we wanted to check in, share anything in particular, after the dreadful events of the previous week. One thing she talked about has stayed with me, and, from time to time, has given me comfort.

Professor Ulanov reminded us that God is a God beyond our understanding and imagining, and that all things, all places, all times, all people, distant past, unknowable future, all of it, are present to God simultaneously. So, we can pray into the past, since the past is ever present with God. Since we can do that, we can pray that God's love surround those who suffered and died, and trust that God hears those prayers and acts on them.

Through the years I've wrestled with this idea. Like most humans, I have a pretty linear notion of time. But I agree with my professor's description of the all-knowingness of God, and so I believe that her words on prayer make sense.

I offer it to you today, as we, as a global community, continue to take in the horrors of the week, and try to hold them together with whatever systems of faith we happen to take part in.

I believe that we have a God to whom we can pray, and that
we can pray into the past. In this way, I can find hope that verse 5 might be or become true for the people of the Al Noor and Linwood mosques. I pray that God has, indeed, sheltered his beloveds in safety, and now, has set them high upon the rock in which they might enjoy God's presence forever.

Lent Day 9: One Thing

Another of the songs based on Psalm 27 I've taken into my heart is "This Alone," by Tim Manion (of St. Louis Jesuits fame). Please, if you don't know the piece, listen to it here.

The refrain is based on verse 4 of the psalm:

One thing I asked of the Lord,
    that will I seek after:
to live in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord,
    and to inquire in [God's] temple.  ~Psalm 27:4

I learned this song as a member of the choir at Saint Ignatius of Loyola Church, on the Boston College campus. As I listen to this recording, one particular line jumps out at me, as if the writer were not only setting the psalm, but also placing it in dialogue with his own life:

"For one day within your temple
    heals every day alone."

I know this song called to me. I usually tell the story of my call to ordained ministry by talking about a particular day in the fall of 1988, an experience that was enhanced (probably, enabled) by an Amy Grant song. If I listen to these lyrics, though, I realize I had many "little calls" along the way. In high school I went on a retreat and felt a shock of recognition that there was a way of living I hadn't fully considered, or even understood yet. In college I was invited on the freshman retreat and found more of that alluring promise of abundant life. I set out to take a graduate degree in pursuit of one profession, but the degree itself-- an MA in Pastoral Ministry-- strongly suggested something else entirely.

While I was in that program I was invited to help lead a retreat for undergraduates. I wrote a paraphrase of Psalm 84 for the retreat. For the verse (10b) that reads,

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
    than live in the tents of wickedness...

I wrote,

O let me in;
I would polish the doorknobs.

There was always a longing, insistent, and the container that seemed to hold it was my faith or church or retreat experiences.

I always felt the pang of those words, including Manion's addition one day within God's holy place "heals every day alone." There I was, a person with some friends, loving family, married to my college sweetheart, but I still resonated with an aloneness that came from fearing separation from God, alienation from God's holy places.

Augustine of Hippo wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.” I believe that is the exact loneliness described in the song:  the soul's restlessness until it finds rest in God. I don't believe being a pastor means that a person has necessarily found that particular rest; heaven knows my days are not fully taken up basking blissfully in God's presence. And no matter your occupation, it's possible (sometimes, even easy) to allow the busy-ness to crowd out that rest. (When did you last take a day off?)

That one thing... abundant life in the presence of God... if it's missing, might just be the thing that underlies all our unease, our sense that things are not quite right. The strange thing is: the more we connect with that longing, the more acute it becomes, even if we do find ourselves basking in the joy of God's presence from time to time. The very first question of the Westminster Catechism (in its non-inclusive language) suggests it is the supreme goal for each human life:

Q. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

It's the one thing. I am-- we are-- lonely for God. God welcomes our loneliness, and uses it to draw us closer.

Lent Day 8: Off On the Wrong Foot: A Reboot

I'm looking back on these early days of Lent, and feeling I've gotten off on the wrong foot with this Lenten reading-writing discipline.  I've slipped easily into something that tends to be my default mode with scripture: I'm analyzing, I'm explaining, I'm getting technical, I'm contextualizing. And... it seems to me, that's not what my intention was with this writing. My intention was to use it to spiritual purpose. Don't get me wrong: I think that analysis of scripture can have a spiritual component, but I'm not feeling it here.

So, today, what I'm doing is asking for a reboot. As if it were day 1. From now on, instead of trying to do something like an exegesis paper, I'm going to look for a word or a phrase in which I find God, and I'm going to try to talk about that.

This morning I read three passages, including Psalm 27; the psalm was, by far, the passage that stayed with me most powerfully. (You can find it here.)

Psalms are songs, and I've sung at least four different song-settings of this psalm over the course of my life of faith. The one that has found a home in my heart is the one by David Haas, "The Lord is my Light." You can listen to it here.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
    whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
    of whom shall I be afraid? ~Psalm 27:1

Even now, as I sit here, gazing at these words and listening to the beautiful music, I'm drawn to this idea: "Of whom should I be afraid?" There are so many things to be afraid of in this world. By virtue of my race, class, wealth, education, I am protected from so many of them. That is not true for the vast majority of people in this country or in this world. Last week I watched a viral video of an Arkansas State Senator pushing back against proposed "Stand Your Ground" legislation  Sen. Stephanie Flowers spoke, angrily, with anguish, about her fear for her son's life. She is African American.

I don't face the same fears Sen. Flowers does, but I share her anguish for her son, and for all men of color. My fears are the fears of someone who, essentially, lives in security. I fear loss of love. I fear loneliness. These fears can be explained by psychological factors, by life experience, and, when I'm most centered, most present to myself and God, I can recognize them as just so much wheel-spinning, and let them go. At one time, I feared the loss of my livelihood and calling as a pastor, because I was planning to come out to my congregation. But even that fear was fleeting... my experience turned out to be one of love and grace.

Lent, this time in which Christians pay special attention to their walk with Jesus, this time when we seek a deeper spiritual connection with one another and with God, seems like a good time to confront our fears, and perhaps put them in conversation with this psalm/ song. We all have some fears, some times, whether there are psychological explanations or perfectly reasonable factors leading to those fears. I don't believe in a religious version of "Don't worry, be happy." I do believe that God's presence with us can help to put our fears to rest. I also believe that presence becomes more and more tangible, the more we open our hearts to God in prayer.

That's where the psalms come in. Thousands of years old, prayed by, easily, millions and millions of people over the millennia, they are God-soaked and bring us, I believe, into the presence of what scripture calls "that great cloud of witnesses." The more we allow these prayer-songs of ancient peoples to be part of the landscape of our hearts, the more our fears recede, or, at least, become "right-sized." The more steadily we pray the psalms, the more we can say (or sing), with the psalmist, "Of whom/ what should I be afraid?"