So, for this class I’m taking on youth ministry, I’m supposed to blog about my spiritual practices. No problem. I’ve got the blog. I like to write about spirituality and discipleship. I’m really into sharing the journey of this life in Christ.
So why am I a month into the semester and writing my first blog post? It’s that spiritual practices thing. I know -- and those of you who know me know -- that a disciplined rule of life isn’t really my thing. I’ve always been more of a “controlled chaos” person than an organizational maven. The basis of this assignment is to accustom us to talking about our daily spiritual practices so we can teach them to youth. Makes sense to me, except....
My favorite spiritual practice is walking the dog.
No, that’s not a typo. It would sound a lot better if it were “walking with God.” But honestly, my daily time of contemplation and reflection is when I take Emma the pooch for her morning constitutional. And I’m not reciting Morning Prayer while I do it, either. I’m just wandering along, nodding at the people (and other dogs) we pass, noticing what Emma stops to sniff at, thinking about how it’s getting lighter earlier. Sometimes I do think about religious things... but quite often I just hang out with the dog. God’s welcome, but mostly He just hangs out with the dog, too. If Emma has noticed God along for the walk, she hasn’t said anything.
I often feel guilty about this. As spiritual practices go, walking the dog doesn’t appear in any list I’ve ever seen. I know that that as a spiritual leader, I’m supposed to practice what is preached -- the importance of daily attentive listening to God. But here’s the thing: God and I go way back. He got me into this crazy juggling act of school and church and family. And I’ll say this for him -- he’s stuck with me while I juggled it. He always seems willing to come along for the ride. The times my spiritual life has been most satisfying has been when I’m looking for God where I currently am (usually between point A & B), rather than forcing myself to wait in one place for God to come by.
So I walk the dog. And I do dishes. And I read the newspaper. And I look around and see if God is with me, and mostly, God is. Those are the times when I am most conscious that God is present.
I do need formal worship, too, to feed me spiritually. But I’m an extrovert, a raging loves-people extrovert, so I am fully fed by helping to lead worship two services on Sunday and one on Thursday night. It pours energy and joy for God’s work into me. I’m perfectly happy getting my spiritual sustenance from the church where I am working. For silence, well, I have walking the dog.
I can teach other forms of prayer. I have a pretty good collection of kinetic prayers I use when I feel the need to connect with God in a different way because there are too many distractions getting in the way. I do and have taught drawing prayer, and next week I’ll be teaching rosary making and prayer at Trinity Church, Stoughton. (Come by Thursday night, March 18, 6 p.m. for soup supper and rosaries if you’ve a mind.) I like labyrinths, and am contemplating buying a small one when I have income again. These are forms of prayer I find very useful, particularly when I feel the need to slow down and listen for God’s voice. But it’s not like I can say, “well, on Wednesdays I pray the rosary” or “I do drawing prayer three times a week.” I might... or I might not do it for a month. Just depends on where I am at the moment.
All of which works for me, which, as my spiritual director tells me, is the point. But I don’t think I would suggest anyone else follow my routine -- who knows whether God hangs out with other dogs? Emma just looks inscrutable when I ask her. Telling other people to go out and get a dog to enhance their prayer life seems like a really bad idea. So this will be my last blog post about my daily prayer life, and remember: don’t do what I do, unless, of course, you discover God hanging out with your dog, too.
In the next couple of weeks, maybe I’ll share some of those more traditional prayer practices. Or maybe something in one of these books I’m reading will inspire me. (Already mulling the question of the discerning church and youth...more to come on that, I think.) But if you’re coming here thinking you’ll learn how to get in contact with God through the use of regular spiritual practices of the sort you can talk about in Sunday School without embarrassment, I’m afraid you’ll likely be disappointed.
God and I will be out walking the dog.
Suzanne
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Fear Not!
“After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised.” -- Matthew 28:1-6
I can’t imagine a more absurd thing for the angel to say than “Fear not.” Don’t be afraid? Are you kidding? There was an earthquake and an angel with an appearance like lightning rolling away the stone. It’s scary enough the guards -- those big strong military men -- have fainted dead away. And this angel’s first words are “Do not be afraid!” Yeah, right. Did he think the women would just go, ”Oh, all right, then“?
As this Lenten journey draws to a close, though, I find myself pondering the angel’s words. This is a season of repentance -- a word meaning, “turning away” the the sense of turning away from our sins and back towards God. And as I listen to the news, I wonder if maybe what we most need to turn away from is fear.
I’ve had this thought before. A year ago, when the airwaves were filled with reports of lead paint in toys and toxins in baby bottles, politicians predicting more acts of terrorism (unless you elected them, of course), and school notices carefully explaining what steps would be taken if a gunman walked through the front doors, I was struck by the sheer number of things we seemed to fear. And that was before our retirement accounts and job security vanished in a puff of Wall Street smoke.
What’s wrong with being afraid? We certainly have plenty of reason to be. But then, so did the shepherds and the women at the tomb. And yet... Fear Not!
I am coming to believe that fear may not be only the most visible evidence of our human sinfulness, but possibly also the root of that sinfulness, as well. When Adam and Eve transgress by eating the forbidden fruit, their reaction is to hide from God when he comes to walk in the Garden. Where are you? God asks, and Adam and Even answer, “We were afraid.”
Isn’t it fear that drives us to lay up our treasure in storehouses where the moths and rust will consume it? Isn’t it fear that holds us back from relationships with the most vulnerable among us: the sick, the mentally ill, the poor, the “different”? When I examine my own heart, and repent of my sins, I find fear at the root of so very many of them -- fear that I will be seen as unworthy of my calling, fear that I will not be loved.
Repentance, then, should free us from fear. John Howard Yoder writes that Christian social service agencies can often undertake efforts public service agencies wouldn’t dare to try because “they can afford the risk of failure.” Why? Because the success or failure of those efforts is not where our hope lies.
Our hope is in that tomb with the stone rolled away -- that empty tomb. “Fear not!” the angel tells the women -- the tomb is empty. Your hope is no longer ended with death. The most terrible thing possible has happened -- and it wasn’t the end of everything. “He is not here; he has been raised.”
What would it be like to live without fear? If we really, truly believed that our hope was never in our 401k, or our jobs, or our houses, anyway? What if we could respond to the angel’s call, and fear not?
We never seem able to do it, and maybe that’s because fear really is the original sin that entered the world with the Fall. In this season of repentance, though, we are reminded that it is not our own ability that lifts us out of sin, but the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We are invited to place the cross and the empty tomb as a beacon of hope against our fear, and turn away from fear towards God, trusting in God’s grace to lift us up where we cannot lift ourselves. “Fear not!” says the angel. And even in the midst of war and economic meltdown, we can trust that advice.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Sabbath
It’s official. I’ve finished my first unit of Clinical Pastoral Education. I know it’s official because I have two thick final evaluations, one written by me and one written by my supervisor, signed and in a folder that will soon be carefully placed in a file, removed only to photocopy (probably a hundred times) to turn in with all the paperwork I need for school, for my application for candidacy, and probably for all the other applications I will prepare in the next two years. And then it will stay there, probably never removed again, for years and years and years, because it is too hard-earned to simply throw out.
Really, though, I’ve been done for almost a month. My group gathered for the last time on Feb. 12, and I made my last clinical rounds on Feb. 13. I returned to a life where I was *only* juggling four classes, church, and my family -- and I was right, after three weeks of four classes, family, church, and nearly 30 hours a week of CPE related stuff, it feels like vacation.
Or maybe more precisely, like sabbath. Because I’ve been a little slow to start diving back in, reluctant to take on new tasks. I’ve been keeping my head down, not raising my hand to volunteer to preach, or teach, or even to take the first presentation slot in class. I’ve kind of been hoping that no one will notice I’m home more often. I thought about things I could do at church, but didn’t act on any of them. I considered signing up for the Spring Learning Event in the diocese, about inviting friends for dinner, about going to the YMCA. But in the end, I stayed home. I left whole days filled with nothing on the schedule. When it snowed, I slept in, re-upholstered my dining chairs, sewed Becky a dress for her doll. I skipped church and went skiing. I played Rock Band with my husband, and watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I set up a profile on Facebook.
I hadn’t planned to slow down. There are so many things I need to do! But after the intensity of CPE and the lack of time that accompanied that last six months, I realized that one of those things was to take some time to breath, to play, to just be around people I care about. And that’s the wisdom of sabbath.
The to-do list never gets shorter. There are always more tasks to do than we can get to, more people to care for than we have hours in the day. Somehow, pray, play, breath never find their way into the top spots. Sabbath invites us to reserve some time where they do -- and even God knew that after a busy week of work, it’s important to take time to play.
After my sabbath time, I’m holding things more lightly. There are papers to write, and I’m feeling more eager to engage with them. I’m beginning to organize, to take pleasure in checking things off the to do list. The books on my desk beckon, rather than chastise. The work awaiting me feels inviting, challenging, new.
That’s what sabbath is for. For strength and renewal, for the rest that allows us to gather up the threads of our lives afresh and anew, more fully present than we were before. God commands it because he knows we won’t do it on our own -- but it isn’t a burden, it’s a promise. We can take time to rest and blame it on God. Thank you, God.
Claiming my sabbath time means some task will go unfinished. But some task will go unfinished anyway. They always do. I needed the rest, the time to play. Now it is time to begin the work again. And I’m ready -- until it’s time once again for sabbath rest.
Really, though, I’ve been done for almost a month. My group gathered for the last time on Feb. 12, and I made my last clinical rounds on Feb. 13. I returned to a life where I was *only* juggling four classes, church, and my family -- and I was right, after three weeks of four classes, family, church, and nearly 30 hours a week of CPE related stuff, it feels like vacation.
Or maybe more precisely, like sabbath. Because I’ve been a little slow to start diving back in, reluctant to take on new tasks. I’ve been keeping my head down, not raising my hand to volunteer to preach, or teach, or even to take the first presentation slot in class. I’ve kind of been hoping that no one will notice I’m home more often. I thought about things I could do at church, but didn’t act on any of them. I considered signing up for the Spring Learning Event in the diocese, about inviting friends for dinner, about going to the YMCA. But in the end, I stayed home. I left whole days filled with nothing on the schedule. When it snowed, I slept in, re-upholstered my dining chairs, sewed Becky a dress for her doll. I skipped church and went skiing. I played Rock Band with my husband, and watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I set up a profile on Facebook.
I hadn’t planned to slow down. There are so many things I need to do! But after the intensity of CPE and the lack of time that accompanied that last six months, I realized that one of those things was to take some time to breath, to play, to just be around people I care about. And that’s the wisdom of sabbath.
The to-do list never gets shorter. There are always more tasks to do than we can get to, more people to care for than we have hours in the day. Somehow, pray, play, breath never find their way into the top spots. Sabbath invites us to reserve some time where they do -- and even God knew that after a busy week of work, it’s important to take time to play.
After my sabbath time, I’m holding things more lightly. There are papers to write, and I’m feeling more eager to engage with them. I’m beginning to organize, to take pleasure in checking things off the to do list. The books on my desk beckon, rather than chastise. The work awaiting me feels inviting, challenging, new.
That’s what sabbath is for. For strength and renewal, for the rest that allows us to gather up the threads of our lives afresh and anew, more fully present than we were before. God commands it because he knows we won’t do it on our own -- but it isn’t a burden, it’s a promise. We can take time to rest and blame it on God. Thank you, God.
Claiming my sabbath time means some task will go unfinished. But some task will go unfinished anyway. They always do. I needed the rest, the time to play. Now it is time to begin the work again. And I’m ready -- until it’s time once again for sabbath rest.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Letting Go
I won’t be at the 8 a.m. service this year -- at least not all the time.
Someone else needs to lead the Brownie troop. I have reluctantly concluded the Bible Study Breakfast will need to be hosted by someone else. We will need someone new to take on organizing the St. John’s team at the food pantry. I will not be available to chaperone field trips or plan the new First Friday Christian Education program. There will be far fewer cookouts and dinners and day-long excursions with friends.
I start CPE this week, and combined with two classes, have probably signed up for something rather more than a full-time job. I need to do these things, but I already know that it comes at a cost of doing other things. There are only so many hours in the day, and convincing myself I can do them all will only mean I will not do any of them.
But it’s really hard letting things go. It’s not just a sense of obligation, although that’s certainly a part of it. The people who will take up my left-behind tasks are mostly just as busy as I am. This year, though, they have put themselves forward to manage some things I can’t, and may God bless their efforts. But if it proves too much for them, too, well, the world will not end because my daughter has to wait until next year to participate in a Brownie troop and the Bible Study Breakfast serves donuts picked up on the way to the church instead of pancakes and waffles.
What makes this so hard is that these were things I have been happy to do, that have given me great joy. Some I picked up because if I didn’t, no one would, but I came to love the task. Others tasks I sought out because they are something I am passionate about, and leaving them behind is so hard because how can I know someone else will do it as well, or with as much energy and love?
But they are not the things that are most important. Preparing to tackle the new tasks ahead of me has forced me to examine all the things I currently do and think about what is really important in ways I rarely do. I suppose most of us don’t, most of the time. Instead we let the tasks pile up and pile up until something gives. And then we feel guilty, and pile on more stuff out of guilt. Maybe eventually we pile it on until what gives is something we never would have chosen to surrender if we had thought about it: our marriage, or a friendship, our relationship with our parents or children, our awareness of God’s presence in our lives. Love bears all things, so sometimes maybe we just trust the people we love can always bear just one more thing -- until they don’t. We are not perfect in love, after all. If we were, we wouldn’t let guilt and duty push out the needs of love. We’d know what was most important, and we’d always manage to put it first.
This is, I understand, what people faced with serious illness or other disasters learn -- that an awful lot of what you thought was essential isn’t, really. I am fortunate that my internal inventory is being forced by new opportunities, not tragedy. I am incredibly lucky that I will have the opportunity to pick many of them back up, refreshed and appreciating them all the more for having had to leave them aside. And some of them I will leave in the hands of others for good, as God pries my fingers from them so that others may find joy in that service.
Letting go is hard, but it’s all in God’s hands. All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.
Suzanne
Someone else needs to lead the Brownie troop. I have reluctantly concluded the Bible Study Breakfast will need to be hosted by someone else. We will need someone new to take on organizing the St. John’s team at the food pantry. I will not be available to chaperone field trips or plan the new First Friday Christian Education program. There will be far fewer cookouts and dinners and day-long excursions with friends.
I start CPE this week, and combined with two classes, have probably signed up for something rather more than a full-time job. I need to do these things, but I already know that it comes at a cost of doing other things. There are only so many hours in the day, and convincing myself I can do them all will only mean I will not do any of them.
But it’s really hard letting things go. It’s not just a sense of obligation, although that’s certainly a part of it. The people who will take up my left-behind tasks are mostly just as busy as I am. This year, though, they have put themselves forward to manage some things I can’t, and may God bless their efforts. But if it proves too much for them, too, well, the world will not end because my daughter has to wait until next year to participate in a Brownie troop and the Bible Study Breakfast serves donuts picked up on the way to the church instead of pancakes and waffles.
What makes this so hard is that these were things I have been happy to do, that have given me great joy. Some I picked up because if I didn’t, no one would, but I came to love the task. Others tasks I sought out because they are something I am passionate about, and leaving them behind is so hard because how can I know someone else will do it as well, or with as much energy and love?
But they are not the things that are most important. Preparing to tackle the new tasks ahead of me has forced me to examine all the things I currently do and think about what is really important in ways I rarely do. I suppose most of us don’t, most of the time. Instead we let the tasks pile up and pile up until something gives. And then we feel guilty, and pile on more stuff out of guilt. Maybe eventually we pile it on until what gives is something we never would have chosen to surrender if we had thought about it: our marriage, or a friendship, our relationship with our parents or children, our awareness of God’s presence in our lives. Love bears all things, so sometimes maybe we just trust the people we love can always bear just one more thing -- until they don’t. We are not perfect in love, after all. If we were, we wouldn’t let guilt and duty push out the needs of love. We’d know what was most important, and we’d always manage to put it first.
This is, I understand, what people faced with serious illness or other disasters learn -- that an awful lot of what you thought was essential isn’t, really. I am fortunate that my internal inventory is being forced by new opportunities, not tragedy. I am incredibly lucky that I will have the opportunity to pick many of them back up, refreshed and appreciating them all the more for having had to leave them aside. And some of them I will leave in the hands of others for good, as God pries my fingers from them so that others may find joy in that service.
Letting go is hard, but it’s all in God’s hands. All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.
Suzanne
Monday, April 14, 2008
Praying Without Ceasing
For years, I’ve listened to people tell me how to pray. I’ve attended workshops on centering prayer, I’ve listened to sermons advocating making time for silence, I’ve been counseled by priests to rise early to say the daily office. And I’ve tried, really tried. But I’ve always ended up feeling like a complete failure. Somehow, I could never sustain this type of daily prayer. I would do it for awhile, but eventually it became such a chore that I would give up. The harder I tried to cultivate silence, the drier and emptier my prayer life became.
Then this fall, I began seeing a new spiritual director. I went to our first meeting with trepidation, because I had just started seminary, and that sit-in-silence time had been the first casualty to my daily commute. I expected to be rebuked: gently, of course, but still... an aspiring priest shouldn’t be a prayer failure.
My director, however, didn’t chastise me. When I confessed I wasn’t finding much time for the daily office or sitting in a prayer corner, she just asked if I felt it as a lack of God’s presence. And I admitted that I didn’t, that God seemed very present in my life right then, in my classes, in my family, in worship services, even in the daily commute. God was present in the very hecticness of my life. “Well,” she said. “Maybe that’s where you need to find God right now.”
Feeling less guilty about my “failure” to pray, I stopped worrying about getting my prayer life “right.” I began paying attention to my director’s favorite question, “Where are you finding God now?” One month it was in interaction with friends, another month it was in the Scripture that I was reading in preparation for preaching. Right now, I think it’s in corporate worship, in Evening Prayer, chapel, and Eucharist, in distributing the wine and even, once, the bread.
I began reading books about different types of spirituality, about personality traits and prayer types, about praying through dancing, or drawing, or walking. And I began to understand that my sense of failure came from seeing my prayer life in a single dimension -- contemplation.
The truth is, I’m not by nature a contemplative. Breath prayer -- where you pay attention just to breathing in and out -- makes me tense. Silence and solitude are not restorative for me -- in fact, they can leave me cranky and depressed. In striving after contemplative prayer, I was forcing myself to embrace practices that too often left me irritable, instead of renewed.
Yet God and I are regular conversation partners. I pray for family and friends while I do the dishes, and frequently stop when reading the daily newspaper to offer a prayer for those suffering through various calamities. When I read a thought-provoking book, I spend at least half my time sitting and reflecting, waiting in silence for fresh insight or a spark of meaning. I talk to God out loud when I am in my car or in the shower.
Somewhere along the way I had picked up the idea that active kind of prayer didn’t really count, that the only serious prayer was the sort where you sat alone in your corner, emptied your mind, breathed in and out, and waited for God to speak. When I found this routine impossible to sustain, I considered myself a prayer failure.
What I have learned in the last few months, though, is that God speaks to us in many ways, not just in silence. God answers with flashes of insight, in the laughter of friends, in the pages of Scripture, and in the upturned hands held out to receive the bread. God speaks through friends, teachers, and sometimes total strangers. I am not a prayer failure as long as I am attuned to the ways God is moving in my life right now. I don’t have to go sit in my prayer corner to be in prayer.
But now I can. Freed from the expectation that I do it daily, or do it “right,” I am finally beginning to learn the art of silence. I know now not to turn to this type of prayer when I’m tired and in need of renewal: for me, this silent prayer takes work and energy, and I should enter into it when I am fully rested and energized to devote myself to it. That’s not going to be every day, or sometimes even every month. But knowing I’m not expected to do it all the time, I find I can enter into it much more readily when the opportunity presents itself.
If your prayer life is dry and uninspiring, or if you “never have time to pray,” maybe you should ask yourself whether it’s because you are trying to pray the way someone else says you should. Instead, consider where you are aware of God’s presence in your life. Start there. And don’t be afraid to try unconventional approaches -- dance your prayer, maybe, or draw it. Croon it as a lullaby to a baby. Take a walk around the block, and have a conversation with God. Go to church -- or a different church, just for a change. There is no one way to pray any more than there is one type of person in the world. Finding your way of praying can help open the doors to other ways, as well. You’re only a prayer failure if you give up entirely.
This aspiring priest is no longer ashamed to admit that her “prayer corner” is getting a bit dusty. I’ll point out the rosary in my backpack, and tell you all about the new “drawing prayer” I’m planning to undertake during my May vacation. In fact, I think my struggles with praying will make me a better priest, since I’m not the only person sitting in the pews who has a hard time just sitting and breathing. God loves wondrous variety -- including in the ways we talk to God. It’s about time we celebrated that.
Blessings,
Suzanne
Then this fall, I began seeing a new spiritual director. I went to our first meeting with trepidation, because I had just started seminary, and that sit-in-silence time had been the first casualty to my daily commute. I expected to be rebuked: gently, of course, but still... an aspiring priest shouldn’t be a prayer failure.
My director, however, didn’t chastise me. When I confessed I wasn’t finding much time for the daily office or sitting in a prayer corner, she just asked if I felt it as a lack of God’s presence. And I admitted that I didn’t, that God seemed very present in my life right then, in my classes, in my family, in worship services, even in the daily commute. God was present in the very hecticness of my life. “Well,” she said. “Maybe that’s where you need to find God right now.”
Feeling less guilty about my “failure” to pray, I stopped worrying about getting my prayer life “right.” I began paying attention to my director’s favorite question, “Where are you finding God now?” One month it was in interaction with friends, another month it was in the Scripture that I was reading in preparation for preaching. Right now, I think it’s in corporate worship, in Evening Prayer, chapel, and Eucharist, in distributing the wine and even, once, the bread.
I began reading books about different types of spirituality, about personality traits and prayer types, about praying through dancing, or drawing, or walking. And I began to understand that my sense of failure came from seeing my prayer life in a single dimension -- contemplation.
The truth is, I’m not by nature a contemplative. Breath prayer -- where you pay attention just to breathing in and out -- makes me tense. Silence and solitude are not restorative for me -- in fact, they can leave me cranky and depressed. In striving after contemplative prayer, I was forcing myself to embrace practices that too often left me irritable, instead of renewed.
Yet God and I are regular conversation partners. I pray for family and friends while I do the dishes, and frequently stop when reading the daily newspaper to offer a prayer for those suffering through various calamities. When I read a thought-provoking book, I spend at least half my time sitting and reflecting, waiting in silence for fresh insight or a spark of meaning. I talk to God out loud when I am in my car or in the shower.
Somewhere along the way I had picked up the idea that active kind of prayer didn’t really count, that the only serious prayer was the sort where you sat alone in your corner, emptied your mind, breathed in and out, and waited for God to speak. When I found this routine impossible to sustain, I considered myself a prayer failure.
What I have learned in the last few months, though, is that God speaks to us in many ways, not just in silence. God answers with flashes of insight, in the laughter of friends, in the pages of Scripture, and in the upturned hands held out to receive the bread. God speaks through friends, teachers, and sometimes total strangers. I am not a prayer failure as long as I am attuned to the ways God is moving in my life right now. I don’t have to go sit in my prayer corner to be in prayer.
But now I can. Freed from the expectation that I do it daily, or do it “right,” I am finally beginning to learn the art of silence. I know now not to turn to this type of prayer when I’m tired and in need of renewal: for me, this silent prayer takes work and energy, and I should enter into it when I am fully rested and energized to devote myself to it. That’s not going to be every day, or sometimes even every month. But knowing I’m not expected to do it all the time, I find I can enter into it much more readily when the opportunity presents itself.
If your prayer life is dry and uninspiring, or if you “never have time to pray,” maybe you should ask yourself whether it’s because you are trying to pray the way someone else says you should. Instead, consider where you are aware of God’s presence in your life. Start there. And don’t be afraid to try unconventional approaches -- dance your prayer, maybe, or draw it. Croon it as a lullaby to a baby. Take a walk around the block, and have a conversation with God. Go to church -- or a different church, just for a change. There is no one way to pray any more than there is one type of person in the world. Finding your way of praying can help open the doors to other ways, as well. You’re only a prayer failure if you give up entirely.
This aspiring priest is no longer ashamed to admit that her “prayer corner” is getting a bit dusty. I’ll point out the rosary in my backpack, and tell you all about the new “drawing prayer” I’m planning to undertake during my May vacation. In fact, I think my struggles with praying will make me a better priest, since I’m not the only person sitting in the pews who has a hard time just sitting and breathing. God loves wondrous variety -- including in the ways we talk to God. It’s about time we celebrated that.
Blessings,
Suzanne
Monday, March 10, 2008
Remembering the Elves and Wizards
A friend from seminary passed on the sad news that Gary Gygax, the creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has died. Many have written eloquently on D&D’s importance in the geek world, and credited it with being the genesis of everything from video games to Microsoft. As wonderful as all the techie stuff is, though, I wanted to take a minute to share some reflections on D&D from a less “geekly” perspective.
In high school and college, I ran the only girl's D&D game I think I've ever encountered -- D&D tends to be a masculine world, with most games overwhelmingly male. But when the boys didn’t invite me to play, I rounded up a few girlfriends, bought some books, and started my own game. It was soon infiltrated by boys, but they had to play by our rules -- relationships mattered more than the numbers, role playing was more important than dice rolling, and the DM (that would be me) was god. (Or I suppose, god-dess.)
D&D's rules were flexible enough to let you could create a game like that, as well as a numbers-driven game like the one the computer geeks ran in college. (One or two of my friends played in both -- a comment on their versatility or possibly their weirdness.) It was always the role playing that drew me, though. I loved the chance to be someone else, and to play out the most outrageous scenarios with others. Maybe the computer geeks stuck with formulaic characters, but in my game, for every goody-two-shoes Lawful Good priest there was also a Klingon-type Lawful Good paladin. (Think honorable Klingons in Star Trek: Next Generation: You will give courageous opponents a clean death, not shame them with mercy. Effective and within the rules, but rather shockingly different from the sweetness-and-light version of Good.) In role playing, you got to explore what it meant to be good -- and evil. My favorite character was a neutral-evil assassin, who hid from her enemies by joining a good-aligned party and got co-opted by them. (I wonder what the diocesan psychologists would make of that?)
Over the years, D&D was the beginning of many deep and lasting friendships. Twenty years later, I look around at my closest friends and discover many of them had alter-egos in my D&D world. I think those friendships lasted because we learned as much about each other in those choices between good and evil, between flight or fight, as we did about the rules of fantasy. The first world I shared with my husband was the one populated by Citgo Mobil the Mage and Chester the Paladin; how could we fail at building a life together, when we had already shared divine rulership of an entire world? And when I grew up and moved away, D&D gave me a way to find a new home and community in a far-off land. (Ok, Philadelphia, but to this girl who had never lived outside of the town where she was born, that was far off enough!)
I recently started playing with my children, creating yet another generation of elves and warriors, paladins and assassins. My parent’s generation worried that D&D would corrupt its children: I only hope that it will shape my children in the same way it shaped me.
So I will raise a glass to Gary Gygax tonight, thanking him not just for hours of delightful escapism, but a world that introduced me to leadership, living with ambiguity, and the love of my life. Not a bad legacy.
Peace,
Suzanne
In high school and college, I ran the only girl's D&D game I think I've ever encountered -- D&D tends to be a masculine world, with most games overwhelmingly male. But when the boys didn’t invite me to play, I rounded up a few girlfriends, bought some books, and started my own game. It was soon infiltrated by boys, but they had to play by our rules -- relationships mattered more than the numbers, role playing was more important than dice rolling, and the DM (that would be me) was god. (Or I suppose, god-dess.)
D&D's rules were flexible enough to let you could create a game like that, as well as a numbers-driven game like the one the computer geeks ran in college. (One or two of my friends played in both -- a comment on their versatility or possibly their weirdness.) It was always the role playing that drew me, though. I loved the chance to be someone else, and to play out the most outrageous scenarios with others. Maybe the computer geeks stuck with formulaic characters, but in my game, for every goody-two-shoes Lawful Good priest there was also a Klingon-type Lawful Good paladin. (Think honorable Klingons in Star Trek: Next Generation: You will give courageous opponents a clean death, not shame them with mercy. Effective and within the rules, but rather shockingly different from the sweetness-and-light version of Good.) In role playing, you got to explore what it meant to be good -- and evil. My favorite character was a neutral-evil assassin, who hid from her enemies by joining a good-aligned party and got co-opted by them. (I wonder what the diocesan psychologists would make of that?)
Over the years, D&D was the beginning of many deep and lasting friendships. Twenty years later, I look around at my closest friends and discover many of them had alter-egos in my D&D world. I think those friendships lasted because we learned as much about each other in those choices between good and evil, between flight or fight, as we did about the rules of fantasy. The first world I shared with my husband was the one populated by Citgo Mobil the Mage and Chester the Paladin; how could we fail at building a life together, when we had already shared divine rulership of an entire world? And when I grew up and moved away, D&D gave me a way to find a new home and community in a far-off land. (Ok, Philadelphia, but to this girl who had never lived outside of the town where she was born, that was far off enough!)
I recently started playing with my children, creating yet another generation of elves and warriors, paladins and assassins. My parent’s generation worried that D&D would corrupt its children: I only hope that it will shape my children in the same way it shaped me.
So I will raise a glass to Gary Gygax tonight, thanking him not just for hours of delightful escapism, but a world that introduced me to leadership, living with ambiguity, and the love of my life. Not a bad legacy.
Peace,
Suzanne
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Get Up, And Don't Be Afraid
This is the text of a sermon I gave at St. John’s in Taunton this week. Those of you who have heard me preach know that does not mean this is necessarily what the folks at St. John’s heard me say! I don’t preach directly from the text, so there’s always some variation, and sometimes quite a lot. But this is was at least my starting point, and I wanted to share it. ~ Suzanne
In the ancient world, mountains were where you met God. Moses met God on a mountain: Our Old Testament reading today recounts how Moses encountered God at the top of Mount Sinai. Elijiah encountered God on a mountaintop as well: 1Kings tells us that after Elijiah fled into the wilderness to escape Jezebel, God called Elijiah to Mount Sinai. There was a great wind, the story goes, but God was not in the wind. An earthquake followed, and God was not in the earthquake. A fire roared past, but God was not in the fire. And then God appeared, as a still, small voice.
So when the disciples begin climging a mountain with Jesus, Matthew's readers had an idea what to expect – Caution, God ahead! Sure enough, the disciples witness Jesus transformed before their very eyes, glowing with the Light of God, and in conversation with Moses – whom God entrusted with the Law – and Elijiah – the embodiment of the Prophets. Matthew's audience, good Jews all, would have seen clearly what Matthew was getting at even before God spoke from the cloud, reiterating the words He spoke at Jesus’s baptism.
Peter -- good old Peter -- immediately offers to build them a place to live. He doesn't even get the words out of his mouth before God interrupts him. "This is my son. Listen to Him."
And Jesus response to the disciples, who are now – perfectly understandably! – cowering on the ground, is "Get up, and don't be afraid."
This is a story where every detail carries wonderful significance, so I don't think this is a throwaway line. I think this is God's call to us – get up, and don't be afraid. The most important thing is not staying in the moment of the encounter. It's what comes next. It's walking back down the mountain with Jesus.
It occurs to me that one reason the encounter with God always happens on a mountaintop because you can't actually live at the top of a mountain. There's no water there, no shelter from sun or wind. It's a marvelous experience, standing on top of a mountain, but it's a fleeting one by its very nature. If you've ever climbed a mountain, you know that the only thing to do once you've finished admiring the view is to start back down.
Peter's instinct to want to build a dwelling for the glory of God, to bask in the light of God's presence for as long as possible, is perfectly understandable. We often want to do the same thing – we look for the "peak" experiences, and often think of the spiritual life like that of a mountain climber, scaling one mountain after another. The more peak experiences you have, the more holy you are.
But God doesn't invite the desciples to set up camp on the mountain top. He shows the disciples exactly what it is he is offering them – his beloved son, part of God's care for his people that began with the Law and continued through the prophets, and would shortly reach its most profound expression in Jesus' death and resurrection. That moment of glory and majesty will stay with them their whole lives, offering strength when the days get dark. They will will treasure the memory of God’s light in their hearts, and it will be a lamp to them as they wait, and wait, for the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom.
But the task for the disciples is not to make a dwelling place for God on a mountain – or in a magnicient cathedral, or in a lofty liturgy. The task is to take Jesus's hand and walk back down the mountain. On the way down, Jesus reminds them what that means – he tells them not to tell anyone the vision until "the son of man is raised from the dead." The road ahead is not an easy one. It will lead, in the end, to crucifixion. But God, in Jesus, was descending the mountain with them. They are not alone.
On Wednesday, we will begin Lent with the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday. We will leave the glory of Transfiguration Sunday to be reminded that we are dust, and to dust we must return. We will descend the mountain and walk through the valley of our own mortality. What tasks await us as we descend? Worship will be part of it – we will seek out God's dwelling to give us the light we need while we walk in the valley. But if worship is all of it, we've missed the second part of God's invitation – Get up, and don't be afraid. How will we bring God's light into the world?
The past week, I've been reading the book chosen for Mansfield's town-wide reading program, called Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson. The book recounts the story of an accomplished mountain climber, who on the way back from a failed attempt on the world's second highest mountain, K2, gets lost and is rescued by Pakistani villagers. Moved by their generosity to him, he promises to return and build a school – something they could never afford on their own.
The school takes three years to build -- but in the process, he finds he has discovered his life’s work. He will build dozens of schools in Central Asia, bringing the light of knowledge to villages where hardly anyone is even literate. After 9-11, Mortenson received death threats from people who believed his work was offering comfort to the enemy, but he perseverred, convinced that the only way to counter people who preach hate is to bring the light of knowledge and of hope to vulnerable to such preaching. I think we might even suggest that his work is one way of telling people, "don't be afraid."
Fortunately, most of us don't have to get lost in the Himalayas for God to direct us to the work He has waiting for us. It might be raising money to build schools, or helping to feed the hungry. It might be joining with others in our diocese to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. It might be praying daily for our brothers and sisters around the world who are struggling through their own valleys – in Kenya, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan.
We don't have to climb Mount Everest, or Mount Sinai, or even Mt. Monadnok to encounter God. We can do so right here, climbing no higher than the altar behind me. We will encounter God in the bread and the wine of the Eucharist. And then we are invited to get up, and no longer afraid, go out into the world to do the work God has given us to do.
For information about Greg Mortenson’s book, Three Cups of Tea, and his ongoing efforts to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, visit www.threecupsoftea.com or your local library.
In the ancient world, mountains were where you met God. Moses met God on a mountain: Our Old Testament reading today recounts how Moses encountered God at the top of Mount Sinai. Elijiah encountered God on a mountaintop as well: 1Kings tells us that after Elijiah fled into the wilderness to escape Jezebel, God called Elijiah to Mount Sinai. There was a great wind, the story goes, but God was not in the wind. An earthquake followed, and God was not in the earthquake. A fire roared past, but God was not in the fire. And then God appeared, as a still, small voice.
So when the disciples begin climging a mountain with Jesus, Matthew's readers had an idea what to expect – Caution, God ahead! Sure enough, the disciples witness Jesus transformed before their very eyes, glowing with the Light of God, and in conversation with Moses – whom God entrusted with the Law – and Elijiah – the embodiment of the Prophets. Matthew's audience, good Jews all, would have seen clearly what Matthew was getting at even before God spoke from the cloud, reiterating the words He spoke at Jesus’s baptism.
Peter -- good old Peter -- immediately offers to build them a place to live. He doesn't even get the words out of his mouth before God interrupts him. "This is my son. Listen to Him."
And Jesus response to the disciples, who are now – perfectly understandably! – cowering on the ground, is "Get up, and don't be afraid."
This is a story where every detail carries wonderful significance, so I don't think this is a throwaway line. I think this is God's call to us – get up, and don't be afraid. The most important thing is not staying in the moment of the encounter. It's what comes next. It's walking back down the mountain with Jesus.
It occurs to me that one reason the encounter with God always happens on a mountaintop because you can't actually live at the top of a mountain. There's no water there, no shelter from sun or wind. It's a marvelous experience, standing on top of a mountain, but it's a fleeting one by its very nature. If you've ever climbed a mountain, you know that the only thing to do once you've finished admiring the view is to start back down.
Peter's instinct to want to build a dwelling for the glory of God, to bask in the light of God's presence for as long as possible, is perfectly understandable. We often want to do the same thing – we look for the "peak" experiences, and often think of the spiritual life like that of a mountain climber, scaling one mountain after another. The more peak experiences you have, the more holy you are.
But God doesn't invite the desciples to set up camp on the mountain top. He shows the disciples exactly what it is he is offering them – his beloved son, part of God's care for his people that began with the Law and continued through the prophets, and would shortly reach its most profound expression in Jesus' death and resurrection. That moment of glory and majesty will stay with them their whole lives, offering strength when the days get dark. They will will treasure the memory of God’s light in their hearts, and it will be a lamp to them as they wait, and wait, for the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom.
But the task for the disciples is not to make a dwelling place for God on a mountain – or in a magnicient cathedral, or in a lofty liturgy. The task is to take Jesus's hand and walk back down the mountain. On the way down, Jesus reminds them what that means – he tells them not to tell anyone the vision until "the son of man is raised from the dead." The road ahead is not an easy one. It will lead, in the end, to crucifixion. But God, in Jesus, was descending the mountain with them. They are not alone.
On Wednesday, we will begin Lent with the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday. We will leave the glory of Transfiguration Sunday to be reminded that we are dust, and to dust we must return. We will descend the mountain and walk through the valley of our own mortality. What tasks await us as we descend? Worship will be part of it – we will seek out God's dwelling to give us the light we need while we walk in the valley. But if worship is all of it, we've missed the second part of God's invitation – Get up, and don't be afraid. How will we bring God's light into the world?
The past week, I've been reading the book chosen for Mansfield's town-wide reading program, called Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson. The book recounts the story of an accomplished mountain climber, who on the way back from a failed attempt on the world's second highest mountain, K2, gets lost and is rescued by Pakistani villagers. Moved by their generosity to him, he promises to return and build a school – something they could never afford on their own.
The school takes three years to build -- but in the process, he finds he has discovered his life’s work. He will build dozens of schools in Central Asia, bringing the light of knowledge to villages where hardly anyone is even literate. After 9-11, Mortenson received death threats from people who believed his work was offering comfort to the enemy, but he perseverred, convinced that the only way to counter people who preach hate is to bring the light of knowledge and of hope to vulnerable to such preaching. I think we might even suggest that his work is one way of telling people, "don't be afraid."
Fortunately, most of us don't have to get lost in the Himalayas for God to direct us to the work He has waiting for us. It might be raising money to build schools, or helping to feed the hungry. It might be joining with others in our diocese to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. It might be praying daily for our brothers and sisters around the world who are struggling through their own valleys – in Kenya, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan.
We don't have to climb Mount Everest, or Mount Sinai, or even Mt. Monadnok to encounter God. We can do so right here, climbing no higher than the altar behind me. We will encounter God in the bread and the wine of the Eucharist. And then we are invited to get up, and no longer afraid, go out into the world to do the work God has given us to do.
For information about Greg Mortenson’s book, Three Cups of Tea, and his ongoing efforts to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, visit www.threecupsoftea.com or your local library.
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