Blessing as an act of hope

The Old Testament holds a blessing that I love: The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you, and give you peace. (Numbers 6:26). I’ve prayed this blessing over my children numerous times.

Blessing is an act of hope.

This week, through Kate Bowler’s The Everything Happens Book Club, I learned of a book by Jan Richardson that offers blessings for difficult times. Richardson is a minister, an author, a poet, and an artist. She wrote The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief after the death of her husband. At this link (scroll down to February Book Club) you can listen to a video of Bowler reading one of Richardson’s blessings (so beautiful!) and download some questions for reflection. Listen and you’ll find that such blessing is not limited to those who are suffering the grief of death but is there for those bearing all kinds of small as well as large griefs as well.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a winter scene on a nearby lake]

Fred Rogers and Repairing Creation

A little over a week ago I watched the new documentary about Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Have you seen it? I have fond memories of my sons calmly and happily watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on television when they were little, and while I have always been grateful for Fred Rogers, I was ever more so after watching the documentary.

I’ve been thinking since about how Fred Rogers became who he was and what he has to say to us, even us grown-ups, about who we become. From all that was shared in the documentary, two things, in particular, stand out.

The first is that he was a minister with a degree from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He worked in television before going to seminary and after he graduated from seminary. He knew that being a minister was not limited to standing behind a pulpit, as valuable as that definition of minister is. A man or woman who has prepared to serve God, or intends to serve God whether or not a degree is behind that intention, can do so in a multitude of ways.

The second is what he had to say to all of us, even and especially us grown-ups, about what we do with our lives. In a special television appearance after 9/11, he challenged his listeners to be about something big:

“No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be tikkun olam, repairers of creation. Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy and life and hope and faith and pardon and love to your neighbor and to yourself.”

Read that phrase again: Repairers of creation.

Today with the strong, and sometimes misguided, emphasis on finding one’s unique vocation or “call” and following only that perceived path, this reminder that each of us is to be about the mending of creation by bringing joy, life, hope, faith, pardon, and love to the world around us no matter our job—in any job, in every job—is so needed.

If you haven’t seen the documentary, maybe you can still catch it in a theater. If not, for about the cost of a hamburger or large latte you can watch it on iTunes or another online service. I do hope you will.

~~~

[photo: taken on a recent autumn walk]

Try anyway

This past Sunday in church, our minister said something that I keep circling back to in my thoughts: "It is hard. We will fail. Try anyway." He wasn't talking about making your first million or running a marathon. He was talking about living righteously, following God through all of life, doing what is yours to do. On the surface, with those first beats of hard and fail, the lines strike as pessimistic. But read it again, this time with a clear and calm emphasis on the last line. Try anyway. Say it like a breath. Inhale; exhale. Say it with your eyes closed, then open them and say it again. Try anyway: an intention, an assurance, a hint. Say it with a smile, a wink.

~~~

[photo: taken of new fake dried flowers that look ever so real]

Choosing hope this Lent

Lent begins next Wednesday, February 10. For your own spiritual practice during this season, please find at the end of this post a link to a free Lenten devotional, Come Back to Jesus, in which I have an entry. The devotional was put together by Chris Gehrz, a professor at nearby Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Writers of the devotional were readers of the book that he and co-author Mark Pattie have recently written, The Pietist Option: Hope for the Renewal of Christianity, published by IVP Academic. I'm happy to say that I had the privilege of writing the entry for the 5th Sunday in Lent, March 18.

Several years ago I attended a seminar taught by Gehrz on the topic of Pietism, a religious movement that emerged in the late 1600s. What I learned that weekend helped me fill in pieces of history to better understand the church denomination that I belong to and was raised in. The Covenant church, which grew out of the Lutheran Church of Sweden during the great "spiritual awakening" of the nineteenth century, was particularly influenced by the Pietism movement, which in turn was influenced by Lutheranism, mysticism and late medieval Catholicism, reformed protestantism, and anabaptism. Pietism has an emphasis on devotional practice, particularly the practice of hope. In fact, hope is the central Pietist virtue. (When I learned that I got a shiver given that my current book-in-progress is on hope.)

In The Pietist Option, Pattie writes, "This decision to put one's faith in God and so to allow hope in the fulfillment of God's promises to blossom and bear the fruit of love is at the heart of the Pietist option.... A living faith out of which hope springs up, inspiring love, directing life, and reshaping the world."

May you enjoy this Lenten devotional. Here’s the link. Please feel free to share the file if you'd like; it has a Creative Commons non-commercial license. (For those of you who receive this post through email subscription, I'm not sure if the link will be active in your inbox. You may have to click through to the web version.)

I also encourage you to read Chris and Mark's book!

~~~

[Photo: taken of art at a local coffee shop at which I sometimes write.]

The year of small things done with great intention

About 20 years ago – or was it longer? – I took a class taught by a Protestant minister, the father of a good friend, about the devotional classics. We learned about and read from Thomas Kelly (A Testament of Devotion), Brother Lawrence (The Practice of the Presence of God), Thomas a Kempis (The Imitation of Christ), Saint Augustine (Confessions), John Bunyan (Pilgrim’s Progress), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together), as well as William Law (A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life).

Law was an English cleric and devotional writer from the 18th century. Based on the book’s title, it sounds oh so heavy, but Law lightened it substantially by crafting his book using fictitious stories following characters named Classicus, Octavius, Miranda, and more as they learn the importance of intention. A much younger “me” wrote the book’s key message on its first page: “We aren’t where we want to be because we never intended to be. Commitment of will.” The lesson of intention delivered by this book resonated with me all those years ago and it resonates with me now. I still have things to learn from it.

The book’s lesson came to me again the last couple of weeks as I read The Year of Small Things: Radical Faith for the Rest of Us, written by Sarah Arthur (who I’ve written about here and here) and Erin F. Wasinger, and published by Brazos Press. The Year of Small Things tells the story of how Sarah and Erin and their husbands intentionally became “communal friends” and together committed themselves to adopt, cumulatively over the course of a year, the twelve spiritual disciplines typically associated with new monasticism, with some adaptations for their young families. They began in August with their covenantal friendship, continued into September with hospitality and October with radical finances. Late fall and winter focused on spiritual habits, possession, holy time, and vows. Spring brought the practices of congregational life, teaching children, and sustaining creation. The start of summer brought self-care and justice.

Not all of us will move to the inner city or live with the homeless or protest unjust laws before city councils. Some of us will do just one of those things; a few of us might do several. But many of us are called to try this radical thing right where we are, facing our current battles and barriers, one day at a time. Mother Teresa is often quoted as saying, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” Well, that’s all we’ve got. Small changes, small acts of hospitality, small attempts at solidarity with “the least of these.” This is what our families, with help from some wise friends and our local church, attempted over the course of one year, taking notes as we went. We hope that others, like you, will not only rejoice with us but give it a shot.

Although this gem of a book claims the word “discernment” as its guiding word, I think the stories of these two families could have the word “intention” as the watermark on every page. I was moved by all they intended and how they did what they intended.

Reading the story of the Arthurs and the Wasingers, you may not – or you may – join them in committing to the same spiritual practices, but my guess is at the very least you will close the book, like me, with some response in mind. An idea. An idea that will become an intention that will become an action that might change your life and someone else’s too.

~~~

[Photo: taken of my kitchen window on a very cold morning]

On finding the way

I first read To Resist or To Surrender by Paul Tournier, a Swiss physician, decades ago when I was in my late 20s at the recommendation of a friend. The book came to my mind again this past November, and I wrote the title in my journal. I found it long abandoned in a basement bookcase, a coupon for Centrum vitamins, dated November 1984, as an old bookmark in its very marked-up pages.

The book is about how we decide what to do in a given circumstance, particularly when choices are hard or even difficult to identify. It begins by presenting the dilemma of churches in Nazi Germany deciding whether to oppose the regime or to try to coexist with the hope of influencing it in more subtle ways. Tournier then expanded the discussion to show that the question of “resist or surrender” is basic for all points of conflict, whether in times of war between countries or in times of workplace conflict or in battles between parents and child or a husband and wife. Our natural impulse is to frame our choice as between striving to get our way or giving in, but the book is written for those who want to move beyond this impulse of a dichotomous choice when considering life problems that require something more.

Tournier offered two processes that go beyond the limited power of reason when finding our way. The first is the seeking of divine guidance by Bible reading, prayer, and meditation. Unfortunately, God often is silent in response. “We fail to see,” wrote Tournier, “that by our thus asking God questions, even in the reverence of prayer, we are still attempting to remain in charge of our meditation rather than let God direct us.”

The second is the responsive process of personal transformation. Tournier calls this process “an act of God’s grace.”

“At the very time that we are asking questions of God, questions which remain unanswered, he is ever asking other questions which we fail to heed…. Men throw out questions to God which remain unanswered. But they change and find unexpected solutions when they begin to listen to the questions God asks of them, and to answer him.”

Like all books that stand the test of time, this book written in the early 1960s and hiding in my basement has something to say today. Tournier wrote of Job who in the Old Testament did not receive an intellectual reply to his barrage of “Why’s,” but instead he received "an experience of God" and was changed.

~~~

[Photo: taken of a favorite scarf]

Thoughts of Mary on this Christmas eve

At a Christmas Eve service years ago, the church we were then attending did a series of character scenes: a shepherd, Joseph, Mary, and so on. We were late and came in just before Joseph.  Joseph's monologue had him talking about accepting what Mary had told him about carrying God's son, but he got stuck at the "no room in the inn" part.

If this was God's son, and if this was God's plan they were participating in, and if God was providing the way, marking the path, why wasn't there room for them in an inn? Why was God's gift to the world relegated to a manger? He voiced his frustration to Mary.

She responded, "Allow it."

I suppose the rest of the monologue went on to have Joseph reporting Mary's further explanation and encouragement to let God work out his plan in whatever way he wants and to trust him, but I stopped listening at "Allow it" and lingered there.

"Allow it," of course, calls to mind Mary's famous response to the angel Gabriel, ”Let it be to me as you have said,” with its strong note of agency. An unequivocal statement of active passivity. No bracing, straining, or plotting to change or avoid a thing but a nod of the head in assent. "Allow it" conveys a reciprocal arrangement, with the one allowing and the other asking, or not. While there are times to plan and push and knock down doors, there are also times to allow. To be like Mary is to know which time is which. "Allow it" moves in and out with the breath.

This scene was a fiction, not a reporting of a fact. There's no record in the Gospels of Joseph pushing back at staying in a manger and Mary calming him with a two-word response. But like all good stories it rings of truth.

May you be blessed by the many mysteries of Christmas Eve and all that it brought into play.

~~~

[Photo: taken of our Christmas tree]