a different kind of waiting

We are in Advent, the season of waiting and anticipation. In liturgical churches, a 5 candle wreath is being lit, one candle per week, slowly counting down the days to the Incarnation of God in helpless flesh. Many homes have Advent calendars filled with chocolate treats and surprises, again counting down to the birth of God as human. And this holiday has pagan roots as well: we are counting down to the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and the turning point: the point at which each day becomes longer and longer.
It strikes me that both Christians and Jews are waiting for the coming of God, but there is a very distinct difference. Jews are waiting for the coming of Messiah - the first coming. The Day of the Lord. Christians are waiting for the Second Coming of Messiah. In the New Testament, there is an emphasis on moral living, but not a terribly large emphasis on social justice. But in the Old Testament prophets we see a huge emphasis on social justice.
This is the difference I see in our waiting. Our waiting is not simply waiting for God to come and make things right, or for Christ to return and save us from this evil world. Our waiting is an active process - a ceaseless striving to make this world a place where Christ can come back and reign, not come back and destroy. While we wait to celebrate the first coming of Christ, we need to remember to prepare for the second coming. Our waiting is not sitting in a waiting room - it is laboring in the messy world of brokenness. The prophets didn't just predict Christ, they told us what to do before and after the Incarnation.

Thoughts from the Pilgrimage, 4

So I've been slacking off with my prayers lately. Last week was ok, but this week it is catching up to me. I was praying last night and I just fell into it, the way you fall into a recliner after a hard day of work.
I'm not trying to recover a mountain top experience, because I didn't have that. But I do need to stay connected to God. Just like I need to talk to Dale on a regular basis. So today I set appointments to pray - I use a prayer book created by Robert Benson and it has 4 prayers: morning, lunch, evening, night. So I pray the morning when I get up and the night before I go to sleep. So I set appointments for the lunch and evening, which are the ones I routinely forget about. I got the idea from my time at the monastery. At first, I thought I couldn't just drop everything and pray at the same time each day. But you know, that's exactly what the monks do. I remember how at the day time prayers, they would often be wearing regular clothes, jeans, t-shirts, muddy shoes, as if they had just come in from some work (which they likely had). So I've decided to imitate that. I used my iPhone, which has a very distinct reminder alarm, and I set my appointments for prayer.
I know this sounds legalistic, but I know that I need structure in order to meet my goals. I don't have to be legalistic in other relationships (like my parents or Dale), but that's because I live with Dale and my parents reach out to me if I haven't reached out to them lately. But God, being invisible and all, is easier to neglect. And so I hope this structure will allow me to stay connected to the Source of my life and energy. All so that the next time I pray, I won't collapse into God's arms like an exhausted woman into a recliner. Instead I'll crawl into Her lap with a smile.

Rethinking

Last week my church hosted our second annual social justice film series. It was great, although attendance was lower than I hoped. Still, we got some great results.
One great result was building a relationship with a local homeless ministry called Love Wins. Hugh (the moving force behind the ministry) is a great resource for helping us rethink our relationship to homeless and those in need. This morning I had to deal with a rather surprising situation at work, and Hugh was one of the people I contacted for advice. He and I had a long conversation about the situation and I have some new ideas.
This all ties in (naturally), with something that someone else in our church has been talking about: about how we don't need a telescope to find people in need (I borrowed that awesome language from her). Now, our church is pretty good about helping each other out. But you have to be plugged in, and that's a big step. So now my brain is bubbling over with thoughts about how we can extend our loving caring network to people who aren't as "tidy" to help. IE, it's one thing to paint a house for someone who's in foreclosure and trying to sell. It's another thing to help move someone who's been foreclosed on. But those are pretty "neat" situations. How do we deal with "resistant" people. In my counseling training, I was taught that you should never work harder than your client, and if you are, you need to terminate the counseling (or refer). But I don't think that's how the church should operate. We need to find grace-filled, yet wise ways, to help those who are "messy" - alcoholics who won't admit it, teens who have unprotected sex repeatedly, people who steal from the drink cooler, liars who won't stop lying.
The counseling and self-help movement is great, and badly needed for many. But it has a strong focus on people WANTING to get help and wanting to change. This is where the church can differentiate: we can love and offer grace to those who don't want help. The question is, how do we best do this? How can we be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves and do it all with love?

7 quick takes

1. Please don't tailgate me when I'm driving through a school zone. I respect the lives of small children and frankly, you should too.
2. All the trees in my yard suddenly decided they were done with foliage and dropped the rest of their leaves. Even the maple in the backyard, which was fully green on Sunday, is halfway bare and gold and red now.
3. My knee hurts today. Good thing I'm planning on a lot of sitting and cross stitching. That will make the icing process easier.
4. Watched Fringe this morning. Rather disappointing episode, although had some good moments as usual.
5. Christmas shopping is well on its way, how awesome!
6. Even though I haven't been praying on my regular schedule, God's been with me every moment this week.
7. Is it really so tacky to take bags from other grocery stores into another grocery store?

Not in my Strength (Pilgrimage 4)

On Sunday I had a meeting with the ministry team - we are the people who implement the plans and visions of the elders at our church. But this structure is going away next year, and I will be taking on the majority of their responsibilities. As we progressed through the meeting and people realized how much I am taking on, one of them kindly warned me not to get burned out. It reminded me of one of the main messages I got on my pilgrimage.
Don't work in my own strength: work in God's strength.
This is a tough one to work out. Not to brag, but I'm pretty competent. It's easy for me to accomplish a lot of things within my own strength. I don't exactly know how to act in God's strength. Such a mystery! Do I deliberately fail? Do I take on more than I can handle? How to act responsibly but also act in faith? I'm not talking about pushing myself - I'm talking about releasing myself. I guess you could use a tool metaphor: you can lift a car if you're strong enough, or you can use a jack to lift the car. In spiritual terms, I've got to figure out how to use God's strength rather than my own. I'm meditating a lot these days. I hope that will be helpful.

Thoughts from the Pilgrimage, 3

It is 3:45 am and I step out of my warm room to a night sky filled with stars. As I turn on my lantern, I see that some of the stars are falling from the sky, bright spots of cold snow. I pass by the Jesus statue and notice that his arms and face are catching the snow, a contrast of black and white. The cold takes my breath away, or is it the sky full of stars, pulling me back to my childhood when we would stop in the desert and look at the stars on our cross-country road trips. I step forward, keeping my eyes reluctantly on the snowy ground in front of me. I wade through the deep gravel, stopping every few feet to catch my breath and stare upwards, mouth open. I catch snowflakes on my tongue. It is snowing in the desert!
A bell rings out, tolling urgently the hour. I increase my speed, hiking up the last steep hill to the adobe church which sits, backlit by the stars in the gray sky, surrounded by the black bulk of cliffs. I pause one last time to contemplate the stars. All my friends are there: Orion with his belt and sword, Cassiopeia, the Pleiades, and just touching the top of one cliff, the Big Dipper. As I stare I see the stars winking and sparkling, and I see at least one planet, brighter, bigger, and just different. The bell rings again and I enter the church, there to take part in a ritual that is over 1000 years old, chanting psalms and praises to the God who named each and every star.

Patience

I really want to be patient. I really want to be patient and kind and loving and Christ-like when I'm in line at the grocery store. It's just that I have really, really bad luck. I always pick the slowest lane. For example, the lane I picked there was a woman checking out, then a family with maybe 20 items in their cart. Seemed like a good lane. But the woman checking out was buying groceries for about 20 people, seriously. I think it took 10 minutes just for her to check out. Then the people in front of me whipped out coupons, probably 1 coupon for every single item in their cart. And of course, the cashier only had 1 working hand, so that slowed everything down. And of course, one of the coupons wasn't good, so he had to give it back and she had to examine it. That was another 7 - 8 minutes at least. At least 2 other people who got in lines after me were checked out in the time it took me to get to the cash register.
At least once I was there God gave me grace and I was able to smile and be friendly to the cashier, as I bagged my own groceries (note: must always take Dale to grocery store with me to bag!).
But I swear, if you are EVER shopping with me and there are multiple check out lines, just don't ask me to pick one. I will, guaranteed, pick out the slowest line.

Thoughts from the Pilgrimage, 2

The Food.
Dale theorized that all the food would be Southwestern, which is not even close to my favorite kind of food. I was nervous about this possibility, but resolved not to bring any of my own food. I would simply trust that I would be able to find food to eat.
My trust was well founded. The food was of a wide variety, which included some southwestern style food. But there were always plain vegetables and rice and beans and delicious bread and pretty good soup. We ate chicken, tofu, sausage, and I think ground turkey, but no red meat. Oh, and there was also a fish dish, but I could smell the spices coming off of it when I came through the door, so I avoided it. Overall, however, the food was quite good. One day we had cream of celery soup, homemade. This answered the question Dale and I explored in this post.

Thoughts from the Pilgrimage, 1

It's just my first day back, so I'm processing a lot right now. My first thoughts:
Before I went, as I was praying over the pilgrimage, I felt God telling me it would be our honeymoon, a time for just the 2 of us. That was pretty cool. But as the week progressed, I realized that the honeymoon image wasn't quite right. I wasn't having a mountaintop experience (and hey, if a honeymoon isn't a mountaintop experience, you married the wrong person!). Dale and I often go away for little weekend getaways, and that was much more like my pilgrimage experience. I felt this sense of total comfortable intimacy, not excitement, just deep satisfaction. But with one difference. I felt that God was courting me ardently. God kept presenting me with moments of unexpected beauty and joy. Some were funny, some were profound. Each day, in the afternoon once it warmed up, I would wander around and find some secluded private spot, the little rendezvous that God had planned for us.
These are my first day back thoughts.

Home again.

Last week I was in New Mexico, at a Catholic monastery. I got up at 3:30 am to start praying at 4:00, followed by prayers at 5:45, 8:45, 1:00, 3:30, 5:50, 7:30, along with meals, work, and free time.
I'm still processing the experience, but it's good to be home. Also bizarre.
Anyway, look for a series of blog posts about my experiences there!