Searching For God

Death:: The Unexpected

2012-02-04T16:50:00.000-08:00

Death is scary. Death is painful. Why does it come? Why does it cause people to go? I do not like death. It seems so ugly. So unfair. Whether it's social or actual, death is grief. Is there any other way?

Dedicated to Nathaniel Pettaway. Rest well.

Personal Prayer

2011-11-13T22:44:00.000-08:00

Lord,

Help me to honor you. Help me to love others with your love. Help me to be a good steward of the opportunities and resources you've given me. Help me to also know your grace, and that I can't do it all. Show me the way. Allow me to learn who you are in a number of different ways, through school, people, friends, family, church, Scripture, exploring, the mundane, and the extraordinary. Lord appease my inclination to worry, to control, to act like I have it all together but rather let me demonstrate who you are by leaning on you and not on my own understanding. Lord, help me in the particulars, from my presentation to my papers. Thanks for opening my heart to you continually.

In Christ's name.
Amen.

The Countdown Begins: 13 Days Remaining

2011-07-16T23:57:00.000-07:00

I feel a little more Ugandan everyday I am here. I have begun to feel adopted into the community here. I was given a clan name about the 3rd week here, Nykianzi and the people's knowledge of this is growing and when I meet someone in my clan, they get very excited and embrace me. I have other nicknames such as Nabidodolo (a wealthy woman) and "Musevini's Auntie" (Musevini is the Ugandan president), Maria, Mary, Nahlongo (a mother of twins), and perhaps some others I have forgotten.

Yesterday, me and Jessica went out into the bush to go digging, but we actually didn't do much digging, but it was absolutely beautiful to be in nature in Africa. It was stunning. We also went with the religious brother, Brother Mapera to a funeral rite of another religious brother's mother. We traveled nearly to Masaka, another major city (we also passed the Equator on the way). We were very late since we had went digging that morning, and even though we were only planning on being at the rite for a very short time to offer condolences, the brother at our parish and other brothers in their order felt it very important to go on the three hour journey. The brother said we go because its your neighbor, and what happens in your neighbor's house today could be in your house tomorrow.

I have come to love this place. I love taking part in long greetings in Luganda (local language)that go something like,
"Gebale, ko"
"Kale, nawe gebale ko"
"Kale"
"Osiibye otiya?"
"Bulungi, osiibye otiya?"
"Bulungi"
"Kale"

Which translates to:

"Thank you for the good work."
"Okay, and to you, thank you for your good work." (essentially, showing appreciation)
"Okay."
"How is your afternoon?"
"Good, how is yours?"
"Good."
"Okay"

There are more extensive greetings that can take up to 5 or 6 minutes. They show respect, appreciation, acknowledgement, closure, love, time. I have been enraptured by this concept of greeting!

I love the music, the afro-beat, the jubilation that people have with music. I can't wait to I-tunes when I get back. "Sawa, Sawa" is a new favorite song among others.

I love the emphasis on community eating. I love eating what's in season and sometimes harvesting (corn, for example). Sharing is also very important here. Everyone shares without thought.

I love being dragged by the students all over the compound just because they like to have us around. They are some of the most fantastic young people...

The people see us as parishionersnow and not as strangers. There are proverbs that say that there are to be no strangers, so that is why the people welcome visitors with genuineness and love.

I know that coming back to the States will be a transition. I am not sure what that will look like, but it will be a factor. Me and Jessica scratch our heads when we acknowledge we're coming back. We feel quite a bit a part of the community here after 8 weeks. We both miss home, so we are very glad to come back, but I also know that I am leaving a little bit of myself here.

On another note, I had dinner with about 30 Duke people including Richard Brodhead, the president of Duke University, other Duke students, and the president's "delegation" last Saturday. It was great to see what other students are doing around the country this summer. I have included a link that a friend so kindly shared with me. I had not realized this was up!
Here is the link, http://divinity.duke.edu/news-media/news/20110715brodheaduganda

See you all soon.
I'll be back in CA August 2nd.
Back in Durham, August 10th.

Maria.

P.S. I will not have many pictures until I get back to Durham. I decided not to buy a digital camera for the trip in order to save, but instead bought a few throwaway cameras. However, Jessica (the other Duke student) is going to share her photos with me once we're both back in Durham.

Uganda Update

2011-06-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone.

Things are going well. I am in my fifth week. Time flies when you're busy. This "busyness" is not a curse, but a gift from God, because he has given me things to be accomplished while here. I was reminded of this by the parish priest here, Fr. Joe Kakooza.

It has been in one word, lovely, since I've been here. Admittedly, I was very homesick my second and third week, but the bouts of homesickness are not as strong now. I do miss home, but I am very content here now. I have started to make friends, and for that I'm grateful.

Many of you have asked about the weather. It is perfect. We are in the rainy season, and we are probably in the 70s every day. I am never too hot or too cold. This beats summer in the States.

Many of you have also asked what it is that I am doing~ I have been teaching primary school children P.E. and religious education to some of the primary classes, and a combo of Bible/English to the secondary students. The teaching has been okay. It has been challenging because the children do not always understand me. It doesn't help that I speak quickly and carry a slight Kansas City accent with me. However, we work through this language challenge and I try to spend a lot of time with the children outside of school. They are breaking many of my introverted bones :) . There are much bigger challenges than the language barrier here---I think of the lack that many of the students deal with. Additionally, a hand full or more of the students (and parents) live with HIV.

Also a part of my experience here is living in a deeply Catholic setting. I live alongside priests and other religious men. There are religious sisters (nuns) on the compound as well. We interact with the sisters during the day when we are at the school. They act as headmistresses and teachers. There are also trained teachers at the schools who are not religious sisters. We interact with them as well. We spend a lot more time with the priests and religious men. We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together. They are a lot of fun and on a consistent basis have conversations surrounding theology, culture and life here in Uganda. They, of course, ask plenty of questions about America.

The Catholic faith here is vibrant and depthful. Many, if not most, of the creeds are in song! This past weekend we celebrated Corpus Christi. We paraded around the village with the elements of the Eucharist (bread and wine--the body and blood of Christ). It was one of the most beautiful masses I've been a part of.

The food here is good. It's nice to eat what is in season rather than what is imported. The land here is very rich and so as long as the people farm, there will be plenty to harvest. During the dry season, they do irrigation farming. The fruit here is amazing and it comes in plenty; pineapple, mangoes, and jackfruit. We eat matoke (made out of a certain form of banana) at every meal, except not always at breakfast. We also eat chupati, irish and sweet potatoes (in several forms), bitter greens, casava, maize, g'nuts (like peanuts), fresh meat (since they slaughter on site, sorry animal lovers). Essentially, we eat! This is also challenging in the midst of school and poverty dynamics, where there are several students who do not eat.

The people here in Uganda are lovely. They are incredibly hospitable and giving. Me and Jessica experience this most poignantly when we go to visit the students at their houses and their entire family hosts us. I feel that I am frequently the recipient of many gifts rather than the giver.

Qualifier: This update is definitely the bare bones--I have not done too much refined reflection at this stage, but I at least wanted to give you all a glimpse of what has been going on.

Will the South be the new black Mecca, in a positive way? I sure hope so

2011-03-25T20:00:00.000-07:00

Wow, scouring the New York Times, I came across an article I did not expect to see, sharing some data I did not expect to read, that has some implications that I hope are generative for a positive new future in this country---or at the least, making some faithful strides in that direction.

The article is "Wave of Blacks Moving South, Census Shows: Reversing Long Trend."

Many blacks have their roots in the South due to the unfortunate reality of slavery. Prior to the Great Migration that took place between 1910 and 1930, the black population in the South was 90 percent. Currently, it is 57 percent, the article says, the highest since 1960.

Many blacks are returning from the North and the Midwest and heading South for new job opportunities as well as cultural bonds. A reverend who moved from Pittsburgh to Atlanta commented, "One of the things that I grew up with was looking forward to the day that there would be a New South. This is it. The New South represents a more inclusive community, what we can become as a country."

This personally makes me happy. I think of the explosion of the arts, thriving cultural contributions, reconciliation, healing, and a sense of at-home-ness. Some have captured this movement as "black flight." The difference is, blacks are returning to a place theoretically they have been before, a place familiar. This is contrary to the urban sprawl and city life to which many blacks moved in various parts of the country, but then not too soon after whites took flight to the suburbs. The South already contains thriving communities, communities that do not have to be hewn out for racialized motives.

"Black flight" has potential to re-enfranchise blacks in the South, but also in America in general. I hope this is the case.

Under this article, was another article containing more Census Data which comments on the rise of the multiracial population of youths which means there are an increasing number of mixed families in which the racial combination of these youth's were most often white and black or white and some other race. To safely navigate our future in race relations, we must cultivate an imagination for such new social dynamics because our past is still our past and it looms to haunt us, therefore we must in this time be creative, thoughtful, and open to the possibilities that lie before us...

These are issues I hope to continue to comment on.

Lenten Prayer

2011-03-20T22:32:00.000-07:00

Lord, make us instruments of your peace and your saving Kingdom where ever we go.

Amen

Conflict in Egypt

2011-03-09T14:25:00.000-08:00

American Christians can't quite relate to other Christians around the world. We live in a democracy. We also live in relative comfort, while our brothers and sisters in Christ across the globe live in relative poverty and need. We have big church buildings, and we take up offerings to build bigger and better buildings, and while vandalism to those buildings would offend some of us churchgoers, it would hardly perturb us in a deeply personal way.

Amidst the tumult and protest that has been taking place in Egypt since January 25th of this year, one of the most recent events that has taken place in this North African country is a clash between Muslims and Christians which has resulted in the death of 13 people, Christian and Muslim, several injured, and an arsoned neighborhood. This is ever more striking in light of the fact that since the protests began, there was an effort at solidarity between the groups which was surely an aid in addressing the wider political injustices that spurred the protests in the first place.

What would cause this solidarity to unravel so quickly, in nearly the blink of an eye? The burning of a Christian church hit a soft spot for the Christians in Cairo. It evoked memories of other unjust incidents, for instance, the unresolved bombing that took place on New Years Eve at a church in Alexandria that killed 23 people. Efforts at solidarity unraveled at these memories and speaks to the deep tensions between Muslims and Christians in Africa, and moreover, across the globe. In other places, like the United States, it has been the other way around. Muslims (and even Arab Christians, which speaks to not only religious prejudice, but ethnic and "racial" as well), have been persecuted in light of deeply painful historical memories, namely 9/11, which was in reaction to memories that preceded that appalling event as well.

These deep memories of having been wronged by other religious or ethnic groups can be recalled nearly by anyone. What do we do in light of such memories? Does the cycle inevitably continue? Where are Christ's words applicable and especially poignant to matters like these, to ethnic and religious hatred? For instance, when does turning the other cheek seem intolerable, and almost reproachable to human dignity? These are tough questions and surface efforts cannot heal these historical and still present realities. Can solidarity for political and justice purposes make strides in healing these wounds? Perhaps, Dr. King showed us how this could be done. Mahatma Gandhi may be another example.

Prayer:

Lord, let your people be peacemakers.
May we seek justice and righteousness in light of your name.
Lord, let us not be blind to justice for the sake of mere piety,
But help us to realize that seeking justice is piety.
In seeking justice, let us not forget to seek you.
Help us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves as we move in your name.
Help us to engage in these matters provocatively and deeply--carrying with us a deep understanding of the matters at hand.
Lead us, guide us, direct us.

In your Son's name,
Amen.

Broken to Be Blessed

2010-03-15T18:16:00.000-07:00

When I first decided to start a blog, I knew that the subject matter would come from a personal place. I knew this would be both a blessing and a challenge, as I would be called to be vulnerable so not only that I might experience growth, but so that you (readers) might potentially benefit in some way. I think reserve and private space is a great thing, but I think vulnerability and self-sacrifice is a wonderful, and rewarding way to live as well.

For example, many of you know that my family’s house caught on fire in mid-October. We were immediately displaced, staying in a hotel for two weeks that so graciously the church family provided us with. We moved to a rental house around the corner from the burned house for a “temporary” time. During this time, there was no personal space. In the hotel we had to share and be in one anothers way. We had to share the tv, figure out how to get laundry done and various other necessities.

As we moved to the rental house, there were four individuals and three bedrooms. I had the luxury of getting the front room---increasingly understanding the concept of lapsed and ill-defined boundaries. What a ride. What a joy. How uncomfortable. But regardless of how uncomfortable it was, I had to take one for the team and for the team, I took a few. And others on the team tried to take hits for the others.

I think God puts us in these positions where he calls us to go out on a limb for another (friend, family, maybe even at times, foe) in hopes of shedding some sort of blessing and/or revelation in our lives. Maybe it is to show that we actually aren’t the center of the universe. In theory, I think we all know this but in practice, sometimes our actions show something different. Perhaps there is some other penetrating insight God is trying to get us to see that is more personal to our own journey. For me, it has been a mix of both. Vulnerability and sacrifice can be a very scary thing. I acknowledge this because sometimes those actions of sacrifice will have us wondering whether our own needs will get met, whether the person you are going out on a limb for even understands the weight and concern by which you are doing the act of concern and love. And when our gifts to others are spurned, it can leave us feeling shipwrecked, worthless and in a state of questioning our value in serious ways.

But Jesus Christ has the capacity to heal all of this. He made the ultimate sacrifice, went out on the ultimate limb, and carried the weight for not just a hand full of individuals, but carried the weight of individuals in a universal way. With this in mind, I can be honest and say that I am not sure whether this makes sacrifice easier or harder to live up to….but it is something to think about and aspire to.

Learning Manners, and Navigating Them

2009-11-18T16:19:00.000-08:00

While I am writing this blog, I am sitting in a coffee shop, which I will leave unnamed. It is very popular in a very home-y type of way, in comparison to the coffee shop across the street that wants to have that home element, but is just too mainstream to pull it off. I will also leave this coffee shop unnamed....though, I will mention its geographical origin (cough* Seattle).

The coffee shop I am in right now has a picture of Bob Marley, yummy pastries, of which I can not partake because I am fasting from sweets this week, and free internet with the purchase minimum of $1.70, the price of a cup of tea.

I love this coffee shop because they choose to set themselves apart. Instead of yelling your name or your latte of choice, they bring it to you....every time. The owner/manager comes in daily, and has this aura about her that makes you feel welcomed. There is a red telephone booth (for some, this is a dead giveaway to which shop I am referring to) outside, which makes me think of the U.K.

However, there are boundaries, a contract, if you will, upon entering into the contract of patron and barista. There are guidelines that are expected. For example, there is a sign when you first enter that has two bullet points

Paid customers only
No outside food or drinks

"We appreciate you business and respect..."

I think that the sign may have been put up after the experience of having too many individuals stopping in with food, or who thought they could free load off of the company's energy and not patronize. Also, when I first started coming to It's a Grind (there, I let it slip), there was no purchase minimum, but there must have been too many encounters where individuals were penny pinching on their purchases in (i.e. only purchasing the coffee refills for $ .50 for an internet code---which is highway robbery for a business owner). Therefore, Heidi has enacted the minimum purchase policy. I was alerted to this when I ordered a kids hot chocolate for a $1.60 and was told that there was a new minimum of $1.70 for the internet code, but that it was okay this time. I smiled graciously and went on my merry way with my internet code in tote. I didn't bother explaining that I was going to purchase fruit, later.... I am sure they've heard that before.

What I like about this place, is that there is always an element of grace and appropriateness in handling these new situations. We are not dealing with a mega-million dollar coffee company here, but rather with real people who, perhaps, very livelihoods depend on good business and considerate patronage.

My time here over the last few months have taught me a few lessons in manners, hospitality, and communicative grace (if that makes sense--essentially, the ways in which grace is communicated).

Lessons include:
*Being considerate---consider the other....more than yourself, even though this can get hard.
*Hospitality is best experienced unconditioned. If us patrons were made to feel guilty for all the times we may have made a few foibles---we might have been too shamed to come back.
*Grace should be firmly communicated, as well as refined by a process of discernment otherwise it might come off as reactive.

Common cup or common sickness?

2009-10-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

Interesting article, your thoughts?

By LAUREN F. WINNER

In many Roman Catholic churches across the country, lay people no longer receive wine at Communion, and some Catholic clergy have advised congregants not to shake hands or hug at the moment of the liturgy known as "the passing of the peace," when parishioners typically greet someone in, and offer embodied signs of, the peace of Christ. In my own Episcopal parish, I was greeted by a neighbor last Sunday with an elbow bump. At a United Church of Christ congregation in the suburbs of Chicago, Communion servers now slice up bread into bite-sized bits before distributing Communion; they no longer offer congregants a loaf from which to tear a hunk of bread. In the interest of keeping fingers away from communion wine, communicants at All Saints' Chapel in Sewanee, Tenn., are now instructed not to dip their Eucharistic bread into the cup but rather to sip the cup directly, since hands are often more infectious than mouths.

At Cornell University, the Episcopal chaplain, Clark West, has reminded worshippers that they will receive the fullness of the Eucharist if they receive only "one kind"—that is, the wafer and not the wine. "We have alcoholics among us for whom this has been the practice for years without any noticeably adverse effects," quips Mr. West. To emphasize this, he has, on occasion, used a longer liturgical formula, which names the host as itself both "the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ." Less reverently, Mr. West has taken to calling the bottle of Purell hand sanitizer, which now sits prominently on the credence table, the post-modern lavabo. (A lavabo is the bowl a priest uses to wash his or her hands in the Eucharist.)

These liturgical modifications are, of course, all being undertaken in response to H1N1—or, perhaps more precisely, in response to fears about H1N1. But if H1N1 is new, American Christians' choice to let fears about hygiene and health shape Eucharistic practice are not. In the late 19th century, new knowledge about germs—and pastors' keen desire to be regarded as, in the words of one New York clergyman, "thoroughly imbued with the scientific spirit"—prompted many clergy, especially in Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches, to set aside the common cup in favor of individual communion cups (think shot glasses).

That change did not come easily or without debate and old-fashioned organizing on the part of both clergy and physicians. In November 1899, the Brooklyn Pathological Society convened a symposium called "The Pathology of the Common Communion Cup." Doctors and ministers gathered to review what they knew of epidemiology and to urge the use of individual cups at communion. The ministers in attendance did not take much convincing: "My own feeling in regard to the common cup is one of positive repugnance," said one.

Those churches that did move from the common cup to individual cups lost something. They lost the imagery of the church's being, to paraphrase Paul, one body because we drink of one cup. Indeed, fin de siècle advocates for reform understood quite well that the changes they were making were not just about the health of people's physical bodies, but also about the ecclesial and social body. They urged adoption of individual cups not only because of new theories about germs but also, explicitly, because they were troubled by white, middle-class Christians becoming symbolically joined to other sorts of Americans.

Speaking at the 1899 Brooklyn meeting, Robert J. Kent, the pastor of Brooklyn's Lewis Avenue Congregational Church, made the leap from physical health and moral and spiritual purity: "I would not have the cup pass from the lips of the unclean to the lips of innocence and purity." An ear specialist present at the same symposium told a story of a (presumably white Protestant) woman who had made her home on the Hawaiian Islands for almost 30 years. This long-suffering woman and her husband were always served communion first at church, and, the physician noted approvingly, "had they not been, with the class of people who partook of the cup there, neither of them would have been willing to touch it in any circumstances."

Similar concerns shadowed conversation in the 1980s, when some clergy briefly considered whether, in light of AIDS, the common cup could be abandoned. In the AIDS debates, of course, the "science" that cloaked the desire to keep the wrong sort of people from the common cup was entirely faulty—the stated concern was usually that healthy people would perhaps contract AIDS from the cup, when, in fact, if anyone was put at risk by the common cup it was people whose immune systems had been compromised by HIV.

So far, similar tropes have not surfaced in today's conversations. Said Mr. West, the chaplain at Cornell—a community that has been hit particularly hard by H1N1—"I have not yet sensed any evidence of similar purity issues regarding keeping 'the wrong sorts of people' from the table." Though who knows what will happen if those folks from Penn or Yale show up.

—Ms. Winner is an assistant professor at Duke University's divinity school.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703746604574460981861432244.html

Hearing God

2009-09-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

I found myself encountering the call to "Hear God" lately as I have come up on some critical transitions in my life. I will go ahead and share some of them. As I have been preparing for graduate school next fall, I have had to reevaluate my call, or vocation, rather. Am I called to be a professor? To write? To ordained ministry? Where do I stand denominationally? And so forth. I was in a position where I had to do quite a bit of praying, and almost an equal amount of listening. And to my surprise, God did speak and his voice was almost imperceptible, yet it was unmistakable.

Here is some advice I would pass along if you are trying to hear God. 1) Listen for God for the sake of listening for God...Crises should not be the only motivating factors, the goal is to regularly hear God and to regularly respond to God.

2) Move! If you have been given a direction, go that direction immediately.

3) Even when you have been given a direction, acknowledge God in each direction taken. Proverbs speaks of this. This becomes especially important when you begin to think about your purpose. If you have been in an "auto" mode, you may find yourself in a position where you are unable to think clearly about your purpose or goals...

Despair and Loneliness

2009-08-30T19:19:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched Synechoche, New York, a movie about a man's journey and attempt to deal with the calamitous and lonesomeness of his life. This movie is about so much more, but this is one major theme of the movie. It is quite a brilliant movie, especially in the way that it calls viewers to be active participants in this story, pulling you into deep emotions that don't have pat answers or simple solutions. If you have a chance to watch it, I'd highly recommend it.

There are two themes from this movie that I would like wrestle with here, and that is despair and loneliness. I happened to watch this movie at a lonely point in my weekend. I had been feeling slightly existential the prior few days anyway, feeling like I've been searching and trying to come to terms with myself, my family, and God. There has been quite a bit of inner wrestling, while at the same time I have been trying to maintain my pace in getting goals accomplished.

Instead of running from this lonesomeness, I entered into it. I indulged it and entertained my despair, questioning and probing these feelings that seemed to emerge from nowhere and somewhere, both at the same time. Despair and loneliness, what do we say of these two feelings? We all have felt the pangs and if you have not yet, you certainly will at some point in your life, even if the feelings are fleeting---perhaps provoking you in that instance to notice someone else's loneliness and begin to feel compassion.

When I felt it this past weekend, it was an incredibly hopeless feeling, a feeling that weighed even my physical body down. I lacked zest and buoyancy. I felt inadequate. I began to ruminate on the lack of options I felt at the moment. It was incredibly subjective.

Like the movie, I do not have any pat answers for these terrible feelings. I just know that I know the feeling and that I can identify with other humans who have had these same terrible feelings, whether they were short-lived or prolonged. I know for some, life can seem incredibly unfair (throughout they movie, I would think of the biblical character Job when observing Caden Cotard's experience in SNY). It goes to the question of human suffering and death and pain....

My only hope in that moment on Saturday evening was that I knew I would be among a community of believers the next morning. I would be around people who are getting to know me---therefore those feelings of "unknownness" will slowly diminish with time, as I get to know these individuals. However, it takes trust and engagement on my part to stay mutually connected. It takes me letting go a little bit of the community I was once a part of in a fundamental way (I'm speaking of being finished with college), and embracing the new communities that are beginning to emerge for me. Therefore, some of this loneliness is natural.

Being a part of a community called together to do God's work gave me a little spark of something to look forward to in that moment.

May the God of peace give you peace.

Trusting God

2009-08-29T11:25:00.000-07:00

I don't have any in-depth thoughts about what it means or looks like to trust God, but I know it requires action on my part. It requires of us to get out there and get moving, going through and exploring doors that God may have opened and being relentless even when they shut, allowing your spirit to not be crushed when they do.

Today, I ran three miles.

2009-08-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

Those reading my title may be thinking, "so? you ran three miles..." I thought this myself as I was formulating thoughts when the idea for today's blog first came to me. However, running three miles was a big thing for me today. I ran three miles on Monday---and then five miles each day throughout the week---and then today, on Friday, I ran three. I thought, "I already shortened my run on Monday, I really don't want to shorten it today."

Here is the thing; I usually run 5-7 miles a day. Running is something I picked up my junior year of college, and I have been running faithfully ever since. Some time here soon, I hope to begin to run in road races (I'll let you know when I do). So the bottom line is, I usually run a lot. This may sound weird, but I felt compelled to only run three miles today, and when I say "compelled," usually there is an implicit "by the Holy Spirit" following the verb "compel". I wanted to keep going. I wanted to control my run, but I was curious as to the lesson that God was trying to teach me. So I submitted.

Running is an achievement meter for me. The more miles I accrue, the more accomplished I feel...I begin to think that I am someone to contend with or I just simply feel in control and that I have some sort of power over my life, my health and well-being. Of course, these are all good things. Confidence is good. Power over your life is good. Discipline is great. But... sometimes it's not. At least when it comes to the People of God, under the reign of God's Spirit. I think, perhaps, as far as I have discerned my encounter with today's morning run, that God was trying to remind me to lean in to him and to see myself as dependent on him. I think with me, I fear that my world will begin to fray like a cheaply woven top if I do not maintain control----so I am quick to make sure I am on top of things. However, God wanted to teach me a dose of grace this morning. For this I am continually thankful.

Maybe there are some of you who do not have to contend with rigorous achievement barometers, kudos to you, for you probably maintain a sane level of life. But for those of us with abnormal amounts of ambition, I guess this blog is for you and for me. This morning I was prompted to avail myself to God's love and grace. I am sure there are several times where my sensibilities were too dull to acknowledge other times when the Lord may have been trying to do this, but it is something that requires attentiveness and follow-through. I hope somehow and in some way today that you would avail yourself also to God's love and grace.

Peace be with you.

The Options Are Endless

2009-08-09T21:33:00.000-07:00

I once asked a friend why she enjoyed studying Literature. She stated that, in her experience, every time she read a great book or piece of literature, reality became more vibrant, more meaningful. Literature was a tool that chiseled away at misconceptions about life and it posited truths from various perspectives. I was struck by the richness of her answer. In reflecting on my friend's perspective, I believe her answer relates, albeit in a roundabout way, to the Christian walk. Let me utilize a passage to illustrate this,

John 3
¹ There was a man named Nicodemus, a Jewish religious leader who was a Pharisee. ²After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.”
³ Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”
⁴ “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?”
⁵ Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. ⁶ Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. ⁷ So don’t be surprised when I say, ‘You must be born again.’ ⁸ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can’t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can’t explain how people are born of the Spirit.”
⁹ “How are these things possible?” Nicodemus asked.
How is it possible that we can see God and the unrelenting vibrancy of God's created world in fresh, new ways? It takes new eyes and the realization, that we have experienced the new birth in Christ, receiving the deposit of God's Spirit---the Spirit, which is like the wind (unpredictable), blowing where it pleases.

When you experience the new birth in Christ, you receive new eyes that allow you to see life differently.

No Substitutions Please

2009-07-31T13:35:00.000-07:00

I don't really like egg substitutions. Neither do I like advertisements that tell you that you can lose ten pounds in ten days or become a millionaire in six months. And then there are the televangelists that tell you that God offers spiritual returns on your financial investments...

These all (except for the egg substitutions, I just find them gross in general) propagate a message that says good results come easy and quick. Or they send the message that if you just shake a few dollars God's way, God will shake some blessings down on you.

However, in my walk, I have found this to not be the case. A disciplined and spiritual life can be hard work. Their is no way around it. It takes dedication, love, and consistent checks against scripture and church tradition. This is true in any number of aspects of spirituality, but what I mainly want to speak on is Prayer. There is no substitution for it. Closeness to God is borne through prayer ("Our Father who art in heaven.." --imagine humans having divine parentage). Our will bends to the Lord's through prayer ("Thy will be done on earth as..."). Temptations get broken on their back through prayer ("and Lord lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.."). Prayer is essential. It shapes and forms us in mysterious ways.

Here are just a few insights I have learned along the way. For starters, the most sustaining prayer has not been "on the go" so to speak, but rather a consistent full fledged getting on my knees two, maybe even three times a day. The second thing I have learned is that prayers need not always be in my own words. This is where the church comes in. Prayers written by the church over centuries past have proved to be immensely helpful. This includes prayers from the Anglican "Book of Common Prayer." There are prayers for things I had not yet (or may be never will have) found the words for. This is what the church is for, to help you pray. And finally, the rhythm of prayer gets easier with time.

I speak as a fellow pilgrim and I have a lot to learn myself about prayer but I pray you discover the riches of God's grace and mercy in your conversations with the Lord.

Chaos and Order, the Difference

2009-07-28T19:29:00.000-07:00

Chaos is what I feel when I have too many agendas going on at once. My to-do list crisscrosses and zigzags and the amount of time required in order for me to accomplish all of my daily tasks requires two Maranthas, not merely one (are you kidding?). It can be quite exhausting. For example, to meet my one month goal of solidifying a job has required numerous bus rides, many painstaking glances over my resume, trips to my alma maters career center, many hours researching and applying for jobs on top of family and friend responsibilities, academic priorities, and not the least of my priorities (but often getting moved to the back burner, so to speak) developing my spiritual life.

A Christian who avails their self to discipleship must at times, simply, sit still. To-do lists must come to a halt. Tasks must be placed on pause. Ambitions must recede to a calm. Perhaps that is why God created the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the pause button built into our week. It reconstructs time and stops us from letting the intense momentum of our days beat us into a fray.

So back to the title of this blog post, what exactly is the difference between order and chaos? The difference is that order allows you to hear God's voice and chaos so often cripples it. And at the heart of order is the Sabbath. So take rest, be filled, and enjoy the Lord.

On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation. -Genesis 2:2-3

Searching For God...

2009-07-20T16:26:00.001-07:00

There are many things worth pursuing in life--education, stability, vocation, friendship, love, but there is something I believe to be the most worthy of pursuits, and that is the pursuit of God. I believe the saying that it is God who seeks us out, that God is actually the great "hound of heaven" (Francis Thompson), but there is also an element in our spiritual life in the Kingdom of Heaven that requires something of us, to get to know God---to search for Him, to seek Him out. Just as we are active in our goals and passions, we are to be active in our communication with God. Please do not get me wrong...this is not advocating private and public bifurcations, but rather this is a realignment, a spiritual tune-up, if you will, re-orienting us to the One who created us. This is about liturgy and prayer and seeking God in the everyday, because He (or She, if you will) exists in the everyday...