we are dust

"As a father shows compassion to his children,
   so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.
For he knows our frame;
   he remembers that we are dust."
Psalm 103:13-14

"...our Sunday liturgy changes as well during this time. We...refrain from saying “hallelujah.” This last practice, sometimes referred to as “burying the hallelujah,” brings a sense of loss and expectancy to our worship, both shifting our focus toward the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ and enhancing our anticipation of His resurrection. It’s absence is palpable, and creates in us a longing that will be fulfilled when again we proclaim this word of heavenly praise together on Easter morning. And this reminds us that Lent is ultimately a way of seeking, through repentance and preparation, that the Lord would restore unto us the joy of His salvation (Psalm 51:12)." Church of the Advent

thoughts on ash wednesday

"Yet even now," declares the LORD,
"return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
and rend your hearts and not your garments."
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster.”
Joel 2:12-13  

Today is Ash Wednesday. In the liturgical tradition it is the beginning of the season of Lent. I was just reminded by a friend on the Christian journey that 

“Lent is an ancient Christian tradition that began as a way for Christians to join with new converts as they prepared to be baptized at Easter. It was a time for new converts / baptismal candidates to reflect on their need for Christ and walk in repentance, and the larger community of Christians would join them in this. To help in this, Christians have historically embraced some sort of fast – as a way of tangibly pulling one’s life (heart, thoughts, habits) into the way of self-denial and repentance. These are not simply initiation rites, but are essential daily practices in a life lived with God.”

I chose not to go to the Ash Wednesday service tonight because I wanted to make sure that I actually took the time to reflect on the meaning of this season and where I should examine my own heart. Why do people think of it as just a time to fast from something? Is that what it’s really about? I don’t think that it’s about fasting but, about seeking to give ourselves over to knowing God in a more intentional way. God is not any more available during this time than He is at any other time of the year. We are the ones that need markers in our lives, on our calendars to remind us that we have a lot more to receive that we’ve been aware of. 

I wonder how I can seek to know God more and see what He is doing around me so that I can join with him. I think that anything that allows me to love others well is important, which means I need to rest more and reflect more. Remembering that I need rest but that healing happens within community. Christ is found in the body of Christ. If I want to know Him more, I need to learn to enter into community as well. I need to “fast” from those things that lead me to fatigue instead of enthusiasm for loving and participating in relationship with others.

I'm happy...

deeply intentional life together

I have had so many things going on in my heart and life right now. Everything from realizing how much I love being part of a community of hospitality, enjoying my parents, sunny days and hammocks, evenings with good music and friends, reflecting on changes in the past 10 years of my life, enjoying worshiping with other Christians, celebrating birthdays with good friends and other simply good things.

I am figuring out and stumbling through 'life together', figuring out how to 'be' here and love people deeply elsewhere. I'm also struggling to embrace my limits, my emotional and physical limits. I have been deeply challenged by the Christian community I'm a part of here. I have been thinking about Mission, Community, Discipleship, and the Gospel. Two of my friends have participated in the meetings where the messages about those ideas were shared recently. I have been listening to the messages and have been talking to them about those ideas.

expecting God?

I've found myself truly meditating on this message in the past couple of days. Especially the question of what is my response when things go wrong.

"... let me ask you: Did you just fly through this past week oblivious to the activity of God in and around you? Did you look for, expect, and see God at work in you, through you, in the lives of others?

Did we live with our eyes open, our hearts and mind attentive for God’s work, or for God’s voice? Did we expect God to be at work in us and through us, for Jesus to be evident and active in and through our lives, or did we just go about our week, in the knowledge that God loves us and is with us?

And let me take it one more step: cause this is often when the reality of our expectation or lack of expectation shows most clearly… When things fall apart, when things go awry (as they often do), what’s our response? Despair or hope? Do we quickly become paralyzed with fear that its all downhill from here?

Or do we find hope in the awareness, the knowledge, the expectation that Jesus is still in charge, that He is still alive and Lord over all, and that as we look to Him, as we seek Him, He will be at work in even this to bring about His purposes – for His glory, for our joy and for the sake of others?" --Scott "expecting God"

the question remains

I think that you all should listen to this podcast of a sermon given by my pastor Scott Anderson on the passage in Acts 12: 1-18.

"One of the things that we’re constantly confronted with, when we read the book of Acts, is that the early Christians lived their lives with a very real sense of expectation - for God to be active, evident and involved in their everyday lives, and in and through their prayers. They expected to see God at work in their lives, and in the lives of others around them. And it always makes me think – Do I? Do we?

We know this is God’s world. That He made everything that is in it. That He is Lord over all of it. And that He has shown Himself to be a God who doesn’t just live off in the heavens, but who shows up in the lives of women and men, who enters into human history, who acts to bring about His kingdom and will in the lives of people just like us, and in the life of nations and empires. Yet, for all of that knowledge, the question still remains – Do we… Do you and I expect to see God at work in our lives? " --Scott

"Still shaking his head, amazed, he went to Mary's house, the Mary who was John Mark's mother.

The house was packed with praying friends. When he knocked on the door to the courtyard, a young woman named Rhoda came to see who it was. But when she recognized his voice—Peter's voice!—she was so excited and eager to tell everyone Peter was there that she forgot to open the door and left him standing in the street.

But they wouldn't believe her, dismissing her, dismissing her report. "You're crazy," they said. She stuck by her story, insisting. They still wouldn't believe her and said, "It must be his angel." All this time poor Peter was standing out in the street, knocking away.

Finally they opened up and saw him—and went wild! Peter put his hands up and calmed them down. He described how the Master had gotten him out of jail, then said, "Tell James and the brothers what's happened." He left them and went off to another place.

At daybreak the jail was in an uproar. "Where is Peter? What's happened to Peter?" --Acts 12

I don't know myself

Señor y Dios mío, no tengo ni idea de adónde voy.
No veo el camino que se abre ante mí.
No puedo saber con certeza dónde terminará.
Tampoco me conozco realmente a mí mismo,
y el hecho de pensar que estoy cumpliendo tu voluntad
no significa que la esté cumpliendo realmente.
Pero creo que el deseo de agradarte, de hecho, te agrada.
Y espero tener ese deseo en todo cuanto hago.
Espero no hacer nunca nada que se aparte de ese deseo.
Y sé que, si lo hago así, Tú me llevarás por el camino recto,
aun cuando puede que yo no lo sepa
Por eso confiaré siempre en Ti,
aunque parezca estar perdido y en las sombras de muerte.
No he de temer, pues Tú estás siempre conmigo
y jamás vas a dejarme solo frente al peligro.

Thoughts in Solitude, p. 83

morning prayers

Life be in my speech
Truth in what I say.
The love Christ Jesus gave
Be filling every heart for me.
The love Christ Jesus gave
Be filling me for everyone.
Amen

broken thoughts on lent

I just found the note paper on which I had written down some thoughts on Sunday:

I've been thinking a bit about the season of lent... I grew up in a Catholic country where lent had a different name and my Church didn't commemorate it very intentionally... for now, I am embracing it as a time of directed refocusing. There is not time that is not open for searching our inner life for unhealthy distractions from what is true, good, and beautiful.

It is already the beginning of the second week of lent and I have already not been able to enter into the reflective discipline that I had intended to. It is not too late to get started so, I will enter the new week with renewed purpose...
...it could be seen as a time of cleansing from distractions or a time to discipline our habits. These may be two sides of the same coin of lent for me this year.

There are always distractions and recently I have decided that I am often distracted by good things from even better things. So, this is a season of discerning no "what is bad" but what is the "better thing". The challenge is choosing between good things...
...sometimes the better thing is solitude, other times the best thing is service, other times the best thing is hospitality, other times the best thing is a phone call, and other times the best thing is doing nothing at all.
...consciously stepping away from what distracts me from the "one thing that is necessary" has to be active...

not just words

Lead me from death to life,
from falsehood to truth.
Lead me from despair to hope,
from fear to trust.
Lead me from hate to love,
from war to peace.
Let peace fill our hearts,
our world, our universe.
Peace, peace, peace.
- Satish Kumar

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought,
and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

- Gilbert Keith Chesterton,English writer (1874-1936)

You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
- T.S. Eliot

decisions, decisions, decisions

I don’t really quite understand how I make decisions sometimes. There is this delicate balance between my mind and my heart. Sometimes, my heart and mind agree on what the best course of action is going to be but, at other times they are not sure if they agree with each other and that is when decisions become difficult.

Sometimes, my mind seems to have two different personalities because it isn’t my mind and my heart that are at odds (because some decisions don’t carry as much emotional weight as others) and yet I still have a hard time making up my mind. There are some decisions that are out of our hands, we just take steps in the direction that we want to go but, we cannot force things to happen (like getting a job in DC or something like that).

It’s interesting when you think about taking a choice because I believe that it is good to let other people give you counsel but, the trick is that at the end of the day the decisions you make are yours and you are the one who gets to live with the benefits or consequences of your choices. It is important, I agree, that you remember that your choices will impact those who are around you, that is important but… there is no getting around the fact that the choice is yours.

I don't know how to pray...

My perspective on life has suddenly been deeply and lovingly challenged this week. I am about to go to bed tonight, I need my sleep because I'm going into the rest of a challenging week but, excited to see what is going to happen.

I just talked to a dear, dear friend in Japan. We are so many thousand miles apart and yet, our hearts and spirits are still asking many of the same questions in our very different contexts. We want to learn how to love others and we do not want to grow indifferent or apathetic in the situations which we find ourselves. How do we respond to the exclusive attitude that many Christians we've been associated with in the past maintain? How do we love them without adopting their stance towards others? I miss her and love having her in my life.

Earlier, I was expressing my concerns about the next step in my journey and I received the wise advice to not worry. To trust that the God who is good will guide my steps in the direction that he knows is best. But, that is not all...

Yesterday, I went to a worship service like I haven't been to since Trinity. Having so many voices all in the same building singing together cannot help but make you smile. All of these young people, singing together and seeking to learn how to trust in and love God with all their heart, mind, and soul is encouraging. I was beautiful. Not so much because of what was said or done but because of the intention of it all. People seeking to know Jesus as the source of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Maybe not at the moment, I am more of a small group kind of a person, but afterward I realized how much I miss my friends from other times and places who would pray with me and read the Bible with me. (I love that here, where I live right now, we read the Bible and pray together every morning before everyone leaves to work and school, it's really cool.) There is that side of me that misses those honest and earnest "living the questions" kind of friendships.

Then, as I got to talk with my newest friend here about some of these things. I realized a couple other things. First of all, that Jesus truly shines through people and it is a gift to be around someone who shines that way. I was reminded that Christians talk about Jesus because He gives hope and joy in the midst of the questions of life, not because there is any obligation to. It made me actually want to sit down and read through the life of Jesus again and pray. I think that prayer often changes our heart more than the circumstances we are in, but that is good.

I should go to bed but, I wanted to say this (and I know that Miriam and Rebecka will understand) I miss the Eucharist. I truly believe (for as much as the Holy Trinity is one of my favorite theological mysteries because of the implications for community) that the Eucharist is the most beautiful mystery of all. I love going to Church for the moment during the service when we come to the Eucharist and we are reminded that it is by Jesus living in and through us that we have life. It's through Jesus we know love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope.

a prayer - by elie wiesel

I no longer ask you for either happiness or paradise; all I ask of You is to listen and let me be aware of Your listening.

I no longer ask You to resolve my questions, only to receive them and make them part of You.

I no longer ask You for either rest or wisdom, I only ask You not to close me to gratitude, be it of the most trivial kind, or to surprise and friendship. Love? Love is not Yours to give.

As for my enemies, I do not ask You to punish them or even to enlighten them; I only ask You not to lend them Your mask and Your powers. If You must relinquish one or the other, give them Your powers. But not Your countenance.

They are modest, my requests, and humble. I ask You what I might ask a stranger met by chance at twilight in a barren land.

I ask you, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to enable me to pronounce these words without betraying the child that transmitted them to me: God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, enable me to forgive You and enable the child I once was to forgive me too.

I no longer ask You for the life of that child, nor even for his faith. I only beg You to listen to him and act in such a way that You and I can listen to him together.