Sit down. Be quiet. Stay Away...

Simplify. How does one do it these days?

This week I am reading from two sources, one Paula Huston and another Wendell Berry.  I find a strange dance underway between what I assume to be two strangers to each other.  Each, however, calling us away from the economies that now so dominate our lives.  

i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

-- Wendell Berry

I become increasingly convinced that we must choose to create space in our lives. It too rarely will choose for us. But we are feeding on something unhealthy by staying in the panic-ed pace of our lives. Doing more is not being more. In fact, it is probably 'being' less. Look for the things that compel us towards hyper-activity; even at the so-called spiritual things that do so. What is really driving that?

Take time...and create some space.  Simplify.

The Dance Toward God

I was raised to believe that the quality of a man’s life would greatly increase, not with the gain of status or success, not by his heart’s knowing romance or by prosperity in industry or academia, but by his nearness to God. It confuses me that Christian living is not more simple. The gospel, the very good news, is simple, but this is a gate; the trailhead. Ironing out faithless creases is toilsom labor. God bestows three blessings on man: to feed him like the birds, dress him like the flowers, and befriend him as a confidant. Too many take the first two and neglect the last. Most believers on the path have found that life is constructed specifically and brilliantly to squeeze a man into association with the owner heaven. It is a struggle, with labor pains and thorny landscape, bloody hands and sweaty brow, head in hands, moments of severe loneliness and questioning, moments of ache and desire. All this leads to God. God is not merely the reason behind existence, nor the curer of ills and confusion. Matter and thought are a canvas on which God paints; a painting with tragedy and delivery, with sin and redemption. Life is a dance toward God. And the dance is not so graceful as we might think. For a while we glide and swing our practiced sway, God crowds our feet, bumps our toes, and scuffs our shoes. He lowers His head, whispers soft and confident, “You will dance to the beat of ‘Amazing Grace’ or you will not dance at all.” So we learn to dance with the One who made us. And it is a taxing dance to learn.

But once learned, don’t we glide. And don’t we sway. And don’t we bury our head in His chest. And don’t we love to dance.

-- Donald Miller


 This passage was an excerpt from Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance, which was later reissued as Through Painted Deserts.

These Inward Trials

I asked the Lord, that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek more earnestly His face.

I hoped that in some favored hour
At once He’d answer my request,
and by His love’s constraining power
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.
Instead of this, He made me feel
the hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry powers of hell
Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe;
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

‘Lord, why is this?’ I trembling cried,
`Wilt thou pursue Thy worm to death?’
`This in this way,’ the Lord replied,
`I answer prayer for grace and faith.

These inward trials I employ
From self and pride to set thee free;
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou mayst seek thy all in Me.’

-- John Newton

Thank you Milt, for offering your faith to your son.
Thank you Joe, for recognizing this path in your faith.
Thank you Julie, for walking it with us together.

Thank you, Mr. Newton for putting it into words...for when we forget this is what is really going on.

Awakenings

There is nearly nothing as satisfying as a morning run through the woods.  On a crisp morning like today's, the sun just slants is shine through the briared-tangle of all things woody.  Every leaf and twig are glanced across the diamond-laced frosted-side that yawns itself into the advancing rays.  And the morning seems exuberant as it calmly calls everything awake one more time.

When I think that this happens each day whether I am there to admire it or not, something deep within me awakens as well.

Seductive Tyranny

OK, so I am reading this book for Lent called simplifying THE SOUL and I am almost afraid to continue.  It is a powerfully desirable series of blow after blow to the order of my life.  An order that, often, even I despise.  I was magnetized even by the title, in part, because of the range and depth of complexity I feel so often in my life.  'Simplify' has become an unspoken search of mine for some time now (I must be getting older).

The other problem is that nearly every page I read offers me something that nearly jumps off it, leaving me feeling a bit like a robber by keeping it only to myself.  ....which means that there is risk in me re-typing very significant portions of the book, should I continue reading it.  Maybe I'll stop.

Maybe I won't...after all, it is Saturday Morning.  So, here goes another one....

Pray that you might taste the sweetness of being liberated from the seductive tyranny of beautiful possessions.

-- Paula Huston, simplifying THE SOUL

What are the 'complexifying' things in my life so beautiful to me that I don't even recognize their seductive control over me?

Confession's Path to Humility

An Elder was once asked when the soul acquires humility. He answered, "When it thinks about its own vices."

For years, two patient priests have listened to long, funny stories, fielded earnest theoretical questions, and been subjected to cartloads of charm, but heard very few genuine confessions from me. Confession still makes me uneasy: it is all about exposing the most hidden, shameful aspects of myself to another human beaning. And the only time I am willing to go through it is when keeping those secrets is more painful than the embarrassment of revealing what I've so diligently pushed out of sight and out of mind.

But none of this is easy. Psalm 19 recognizes our difficulties in dealing with concealed sin, which we can easily ignore for so long we lose aware of its presence.

-- Paula Huston, simplifying THE SOUL

26

Working at something together is better than working on each other.

It took more than a few years for us to discover this, but after 26 of them (as of yesterday), we are enjoying the benefits of this wisdom.

Happy Anniversary, Tami.

Marked by Ashes

Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the Day…
  This day-a gift from you.
This day-like none other you have ever given,
  or we have ever received.

This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the task of the day,
for we are already halfway home
  halfway back to committees and memos,
  halfway back to calls and appointments,
  halfway on to next Sunday,
  halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
  half turned toward you, half rather not.

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
  but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes-

We begin this day with the taste of ash in our mouth:
  of failed hope and broken promises,
  of forgotten children and frightened women,
  of more war casualties, more violence, more cynicism.
We ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
We can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.

We are able to ponder our ashness with some confidence,
only because our every Wednesday of ashes
anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.

On this Wednesday we submit our ashen way to you-
you Easter parade of newness.
  Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
  Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom.
  Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.

Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
mercy and justice and peace and generosity.

We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.

-- Walter Brueggeman

Lent's Recalibration

I'm surprised each time anew by the knowledge that I'm once again undergoing a spiritual 'recalibration'.

I am released from the bondage of complexity...by practicing simplicity...I have no idea how far I have once again strayed off the path.  Instead of humbly following Jesus, I've let myself get sidetracked by a myriad of temptations; overly ambitious creative projects, delusions about my own importance, worrisome relationships, secret small addictions, stubborn resentments, and a hundred forms of self-indulgence.  Simplicity clears my vision enough to see how far I've wandered.  This is a humbling experience.

For centuries, humility was seen as a key component of a healthy spiritual life.  In more recent times, humility has lost a good deal of status.  Instead, we prefer to focus on the development of self-esteem, on achievement, and on self-fulfillment; our temptation is to dismiss humility as a relic of the unsophisticated past, a time when people supposedly knew next to nothing about psychology or good mental health.  We also tend to link the promotion of humility with authoritarian efforts to keep people passively disinclined to rock the boat. 

Growth in humility, however, doesn't come naturally.  As human beings, we are woefully tempted toward self-elevation (vainglory), and stony withdrawal from God and our fellow creatures (pride), along with a myriad of other sins no less destructive (gluttony, lust, greed, envy, self-pitying depression over what we want and can't have, simmering resentment, anger).  Not dealt with, such sins fill us with hopelessness and confusion, and drastically complicate our relationships.  They keep us focused on our selves, block our ability to love, and isolate us from God.

As a wise friend of mine says, "Sin is complicated." The obverse of this little rule is that humility, the ground of goodness, is simply and open.

The beauty of the Lenten season is that is encourages the development of a humble heart.  In Lent, we are invited to look deeply inside, identify what is impeding our ability to follow Christ along the path of humility, and begin applying antidotes.  Early church tradition is rich in the wisdom of soul simplification and offers a multitude of spiritual disciplines to counteract the temptations that muddle our lives.  The season of Lent gives us the opportunity to devote significant time to this endeavor.

-- Paula Huston, simplifying THE SOUL

...to spiritually recalibrate.

I wonder how humility, especially the lack of it, affects our sense of reality and our ability to keep ourselves free from the bondages of this life (so aptly described above).  At times, we are shoved into humility.  At times we are shoved out of it.  Is it my lack of humility that causes my soil to grow the weeds that so entangle me?  When I am reversed from this growth, am I not becoming un-proud again...that is, humble.

Perhaps this is part of the value of choosing things, like Lent, that reveal our need for humility.  And, perhaps it is only through humility that we can truly accept resurrection.

Slant

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
Success in Circuit lies

-- Emily Dickinson

Knowledge & Wisdom

Amassing knowledge and gaining wisdom are two different things.

So, what hinges the difference between knowledge and wisdom?  Among other things that distinguish the two, knowledge isn't enough at times.  It has been said that knowledge is power.  And, that appears to be the case, especially when knowledge is commoditized.  But wisdom steps away from commoditization, from self-importance.  Wisdom is willing to wait for its power.  Because it knows that life's architecture is on its side...it is patient.  It rarely uses force because truth can be heavy enough, when it needs to be.  It is not proud.  It is content.

And, wisdom seems to be something you pray for.  ...especially when you know you need it.

But godliness with contentment is great gain.

-- 1 Timothy 6:6

I Have Learned...the Secret

...for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.
...I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation....

-- Philippians 4:11-12

...so what is the 'secret'? And, does it have to be 'learned'?  Why?  How?

Does the secret involve the relationship between learning and contentment?  I wonder if we have to learn to be content because, naturally, we aren't.  We don't come into the world (more like kicking and screaming for disrupting our comfort zone).  And, from then on, it's a striving to get something...which is almost the opposite of being content with what we have, with what we are.  In our striving, we (desperately at times) seek to understand what is going on, why things are happening the way they are, what we need to do to overcome them...striving to understand (joy).

The language of the fall is discontentment.

-- Ann Voskamp

The reality is that it takes 'the peace of God' to transcend our desire to understand.  And, it is this peace that will guard and protect us...or, teach us to be content.

But, we have to learn this...this secret.  In other words, we have to learn by practice, to be accustomed to it, to even become intimately acquainted with, to develop a new habit in the way we think and operate.  And, in order to do this, it would stand to reason, that this is not something we simply read about one evening in a book...it is something that we acquire (learn) over a lifetime.  And, in case we are wondering, apparently even Paul had do learn it.


The fear of the LORD leads to life; then one rests content, untouched by trouble.

-- Proverbs 19:23

Keep Your Lives Free

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have...because....

-- Hebrews 13:5

It is interesting if you stopped after the 4th word above...you would have to ask a question like, How?  How do we keep our lives free?  This seems to indicate that freedom is related to the need for more, and recognizing something that we don't need after all because of something else that we know is true, that we live by (contentment).  With that in mind, we don't need the bondage of money to trade for things that we don't really need.  Several quotes below on money and riches....

Be free.

Riches Without Law

Our dangerous class is not at the bottom; it is near the top of society. Riches without law are more dangerous than is poverty without law.

-- Henry Ward Beecher

Being Rich

To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.

-- Logan Pearsall Smith

Am I Noticed?

As we think through growing up and becoming a woman with our daughter, the deeper questions about our existence as men and women lay right below the surface.  Beneath the way women are often encouraged to present themselves in our culture seems to be a question along the following lines:  "Will I be noticed?"  Or, put more threateningly, "What if I'm not noticed?"

To satisfy this, many women seem to do the obvious with what the culture says it takes to be noticed...using their physical appearance.  But, getting 'noticed' physically is not really the noticing that is more deeply desired.  What happens to the question when a woman is not able to be physically noticed, due to things like genetics, age, etc.?  ...it remains doesn't it?

It's no wonder why many women in our age seek this route to get their question answered...our culture is throbbing with the extremes of what it takes to get the attention of being noticed.  But, the very effort of this route, actually creates a deepening need for more and more of it because it creates dullness at the very same time...with the only solution being to being even more extreme about it.  A friend of mine put it this way, "Immodesty is a terrified attempt to be 'seen'...".

Men ask the same question, but the form of it seems to be more along the lines of 'do I have what it takes to make it in this world?'  And, their effort to satisfy this is just as endless.

The problem is that both men and women are using external sources to satisfy the answer they seek.  The more hidden truth is that outside sources, by definition, will actually perpetuate the question, not answer it.  The answer comes from who I am, not who people say I am...by the way they notice me.  In other words, it comes from something inside us, not outside us.  It comes from our deepest nature, not the one we have become used to (enculturated by).  I am somebody first, because of who I have been created to be, not because of what I get those around me to say about me.

In the short-term, this is a hard-sell, especially against the onslaught of our culture regarding such issues.  Fortunately, though often still painfully, we have a life-time to work through all of this.  And, the truth is still the truth, regardless of how much it gets kicked around.

The Same Goal...Joy

Without exception...all try their hardest to reach the same goal, that is, joy.

-- St. Augustine

I never really connected this thought before, it is joy that we seek above all else and it is joy that the angels announced to mankind.  Thus, the great hymn, Joy To The World.

Perhaps this helps explain why disappointment is so often present in our lives.

Prayer for Kids

I pray for my kids...for their well-being.  For their hearts...to be bent towards God.

I pray for wisdom on how to reflect the heart of God towards them.  ...to avoid adding unnecessarily to their resistance to Him; a resistance they share with all of us.

I pray for a patience...that will allow me wait on and trust in God to use life to drawn them personally and deeply to Himself...knowing that this will be painful both for them and for me.  But, it will work in the end...as it did for me.  ...there is no other way for God to become personal to them.

Grandeur and Splatters of Disappointment

Isn't it here? The wonder? Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it? Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur? The very same surging magnificence that cascades over our every day here. Who has the time or eyes to notice?

All my eyes can seem to fixate on are the splatters of disappointment across here and me.

-- Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

From a wonderful read on finding the gratitudes that need to be found in the mundanes of daily living. Thanks, Veisa, for sharing this book with me.

Absolute Indifferent Magnificence

I’m dogging her discreetly, wondering:
What don’t they get? Everything, probably.
What it’s like to be lugging her particular load,
wanted or not, into the uncertain future

...

all of us putting one
semi-discouraged foot in front of the other
while above us the absolute indifferent magnificence
abounds, abides;
from a certain perspective even our ignorance is dazzling.

-- Alison Luterman

...for the rest of the poem, click here. It is good to know that we have a sense of the larger goings-on of things. However, we must acknowledge that we are most certainly card-holding members of the dazzlingly ignorant.

After Silence

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

-- Aldous Huxley

Inconsistencies

It seems to be appealing to hold people's inconsistencies against them.

Why do you suppose that is?

...could it be that we tend to defend our view of ourselves via our own consistency? And, when that is threatened, we look for 'more inconsistency' in others? ...either way, it doesn't seems like such things are really about 'consistency'. It seems more like we're desperately trying to justify, defend, or protect something about ourselves.

Opportunities

Opportunities are seldom labeled.

-- John A. Shedd


 ...shared by a friend, David Baker.

Without Forgiveness...Nothing Survives

In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it,
no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive.

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Vulnerability vs Competence

It is our vulnerability, not our competence, that makes us accessible to the world.

...another unexpected gift from suffering or struggle in our lives.

Many people would disagree with this, mostly the competent.  I disagreed with this notion for the longest time myself.  But, the competent seem to largely only gather those like them around themselves.  They form a nearly undetectable alliance that keeps them together, the rest mostly just feel distanced by them...separated, if you will.  The myth is that people will like me or will want to be like me, IF I'm competent.  The reality seems to be that they just keep their distance.

I tend to be competent or, at least, viewed that way.  My wife and I were more than surprised by the people who reached out to us (who felt they could do so) when we went we've gone through periods when we don't appear to have it all together...job loss, etc.  I suspect it was, in part, because we seemed more like others during those times...vulnerable.

Mother Teresa didn't act primarily out of her 'competence', did she (even if she was good at it)?  Jesus didn't relate out of his 'competence'...or out of something else?

The Grey

Among other things that speak deeply to me about this movie, the main character's assessment of his dad was that he was very hard, looking for weakness everywhere. He went on, however, to also note his father's love for poetry, which he observed was 'perhaps his way of asking forgiveness'.

Do not fear, only believe.

-- Mark 5:36

Fear

We must learn to not fear our fear.

More often than not, fear is used to manipulate us from without...and from within.  But, while not all fear is illegitimate, some of it is.    So the question becomes what will we do with our fears.  What will we turn to in it?  I think this is something we must learn...over a lifetime.

For example, learning yesterday of my wife's melanoma, created fears within her (and within me).  What naturally arose within us as we were reminded of our mortality?  Within me, strong inclinations to anticipate what might happen leaped forward.  ...as did desires to find ways to avoid the possibly overwhelming nature of all of the unknowns.   But, we are leaning to look past these inclinations and temptations.  Rather than turn to things to help us manage, we learn through such things to turn to Someone.

Eyes

What news will tomorrow bring? Good? Bad? The future is full...of uncertainty.

We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.

-- Oswald Chambers

Our circumstances bring us to a fork in the road, with one road leading only towards the circumstances themselves and the other towards what the circumstances can point us towards.

Idealist & Pragmatist

I am an idealist.  I am also a pragmatist.

I am usually an idealist as long as pragmatically possible.