Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Retrieve Lament: Annie Crawford (Today you will be with me in Paradise.)

"Once, ritual lament would have been chanted; women would have been paid to beat their breasts and howl for you all night, when all is silent.  
Where can we find such customs now? So many have long since disappeared or been disowned.  
That’s what you had to come for: to retrieve the lament that we omitted." 

             -- Ranier Maria Rilke, from Requiem For A Friend

Each year during Holy Week I ask friends to share a "mourning story" from their own life as a way to help us see Christ in the midst of suffering.  Each story reflects on one phrase of Jesus' dying words.  My friend Annie told this story last year at Christ Church's Good Friday service and graciously agreed to tell it again here with us.  She shares not only a story of deep relational suffering but also a stunning offer of life and hope.  The same suffering-bourne grace offered to the dying, believing thief is strong and good enough to rescue us all.

Little Sister, 1979 - Ronnie Landfield
source



Just after I turned 5, my parents divorced. I remember my mom weeping as she told me. In the blink of an eye, Dad left for Alaska and my older half brother and sister moved away too. Life went on, but the world became lonely, unsafe place, one I seemed to view as through a glass. Innocence and trust had shattered, and consequently, for many years, I struggled to maintain intimate friendships. It is fairly impossible to feel known and close to someone when the core of your heart is cloistered away for safekeeping.

About a year before my dad left, my younger sister was born. She was a cherub of a child with enormous blue eyes. I have always simply adored her. To me, she is delightfully unique: sensitive, whimsical, exceptionally bright, and absolutely hilarious. Growing up, she seemed to understand me more clearly than anyone else. After all, we had the exact same parents, curly hair and skinny ankles. My sister was the only person I dared to love freely again after dad left.

However, the nightmare began when she was about 14. In high school, she began drinking and inaugurated a severe eating disorder. By the time she was 22, her losing battle with bulimia took a cruel turn: she discovered the world of crystal meth and heroin. I have seen a 90 pound sister so strung out on drugs that she couldn’t look me in the eyes and I could barely recognize her. I have seen photos of her in the Oregon hospital, nearly beaten to death by her latest user boyfriend. I have visited her on street corners and in jail and in prison. At least when she was incarcerated, I didn’t worry that the phone call coming in from mom was to tell me that she was missing again or had finally OD or had been killed in drug-related violence.
It’s now been 18 years of constant, nearly unrelenting family crisis. Addiction has not pulled our family closer together.  

Loneliness and grief have been my long-time companions. Sometimes the loneliness has seemed so visceral and so vast that I lost hope of ever feeling any other way. And in the loneliness, I have felt such an open-ended grief. Sometimes, I was ashamed to pray that my sister would just go ahead and die so our hell would be over. It feels as though she has suffered a dozen deaths, and that I am trapped inside the grief cycle, never able to escape because there is no closure, no hope, no end. To think of her utterly strung out, sleeping who knows where, vulnerable to who knows whom; it has felt like a dying breath drawn out for months and sometimes years at a time.

Last November, at 2pm on a Monday while driving down MoPac, I received a text from my mom saying, “There is now an official murder investigation out for your sister with the police. We can’t find her anywhere.” However, a few days later she turned up alive and went to jail. It had been a year since I had communicated with her at all, but upon receiving the news of her incarceration, I sent her a letter. I soon received a response expressing her gratitude that I was still willing to speak to her after yet another year of hellish failure. This was my reply:

Not more than two weeks ago, mom texted me that she thought you were murdered. The flood of grief was terrible, crushing. So when I later received your letter, it was a letter of resurrection to me. So many years and parts of my life are alive again, because you are alive again.

Who else knows the cherry and maple trees we used to climb, my silly goose wallpaper, the pony Christmas parties, my Eugene apartment, and the way I used to eat Nancy's non-fat yogurt? Who else has witnessed both my childhood and my confused college years, both my misguided passions and the revival at Cannon Beach? You see both the messy and the sweet in them all and love me anyway. You know all these parts of my life that no one else can really know, for telling someone about things is not the same as living through them together.

It’s been a long 18 years and my heart feels as if it has been jerked around like a flag inside a tornado. Still I have come to be thankful for this hard journey, for in the great chasm of loneliness I have discovered the God who is always there.

In Luke 23, it is recorded: “One of the criminals who were hanged there [with Jesus] was hurling abuse at Him, saying, “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!” But the other answered, and rebuking him said, “Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he was saying, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” And He said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.”

This next season in prison may initiate a miraculous and permanent sobriety in my sister, but it is also possible that she may never overcome her addiction. Yet she knows who Jesus is, and like the second thief, I have heard her confess the justice of her predicament, even while trapped on the cross of addiction and failure. The thief on the cross never managed to practice walking a sanctified crime-free life before he died, and yet he is among the first to see Christ’s eternal kingdom. It is the glorious offense and power of the crucified Christ, that though my sister may never be freed on this earth, she can cry out to Jesus and hear him say, “Today, dearest, you will be with Me in Paradise!”

This has been my saving hope for my sister through the darkest hours as well as a lifeline for me. Christ’s promise to the thief is also for me.  I have been the first thief who cried, “Are you not the Christ? Than save yourself and my sister!” Instead, the suffering Christ has tamed my heart and shown me that he is the God who suffers with me, with my sister. He has taught me to walk through the cross instead of looking for a way around it. It is through the cross that we enter into the “Today” of eternal life, whether with Christ here or in heaven.

To live is Christ and to die is gain. In the eye of this storm, the nearness of Jesus has become my strength and my song. It is for the joy of his presence that I submit to the fellowship of His sufferings. It is a joy that can come even in the "Today" of dark Friday.



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Annie is a vocalist, homemaker and teacher who lives in Austin with her husband, Tommy, and three beautiful daughters. She enjoys homeschooling her girls and learning with them about our great God, this wondrous world, and Christ's great redeeming love.




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Jesus gave us a litany of last words as a Sufferer; we refer to them as the Seven Last Words of christ. The deathbed words of the Suffering Servant provide a framework for the stories o lament we share here this Holy Week.

I count it a high privilege to know -- at least in small part -- the mourning stories of the dear ones who will share here for seven days.  Their lives walk the path between celebration, yes, but also suffering -- illness, relational disillusionment, anxiety, joblessness, death of loved ones, death of dearly-held dreams.  Their stories have helped form me in my understanding of suffering and I believe they could also encourage you too. 

Monday, March 30, 2015

Retrieve Lament: Brian Murphy (Father, forgive them for they know not what they do)

"Once, ritual lament would have been chanted; women would have been paid to beat their breasts and howl for you all night, when all is silent.  
Where can we find such customs now? So many have long since disappeared or been disowned.  
That’s what you had to come for: to retrieve the lament that we omitted." 

             -- Ranier Maria Rilke, from Requiem For A Friend

Each year during Holy Week I ask friends to share a "mourning story" from their own life as a way to help us see Christ in the midst of suffering.  Each story reflects on one phrase of Jesus' dying words.  My husband Brian tells our first story. For twenty-four years I've been lucky enough to walk with him in his journey to become more like Christ and more like his true self.  I am grateful for the healing work of Christ-ly forgiveness in and through him.

sharing a meal with Senegalese villagers

One of the deepest longings of my life is to be named.

My father left our family when I was six months old. He spent very little time with us kids, and since I was the final of five, he hardly had time to think about me let alone convey God the Father’s name for me. I know that God is a good and strong and kind Father, and that he is for me, but, as a result of earthly rejection, I often find it hard to feel his close presence and his naming voice.

I accepted my first job working on a church staff after being a member and volunteer there for seven years. I took the job with high hopes that I'd be able to help them with some organizational disarray, and that they'd be able to help me find my truest calling. I had received so many good things from this community that, when I was asked to join the staff, I had high hopes that I would be named by the friends, pastors and fellow church-goers that I had come to know and love.

I was good at my job; facilitating board meetings, transitioning staff, and consulting the senior pastor. But I quickly learned that my greatest passion and call were in the areas of pastoral ministry - preaching, teaching, and counseling. I understood that I was hired to do the task at hand, but I also hoped for naming from the community of leaders and friends I worked with each day.

Encouragement was readily given in the early days, especially as the problems I'd been hired to help solve became more and more unsnarled. But naming is different than encouragement. Encouragement praises what you’re good at and what you do well. Naming blesses who you are and affirms who you are meant to be. Encouragement is good. Naming is essential.

As the family of Christ, we are tasked with helping each other heal the wounds from our fathers. Although I can admit that my desire to be named by God through these people may have been too intense at times, I was not wrong to want them to convey a name on behalf of God the Father.

Was I to be a vocational minister for the long haul? Did I have the stuff to preach regularly? Could I lead a church someday? Am I a pastor? What is my name?

This naming in areas of vocation and ministry never came, and, in fact, felt like it was being intentionally withheld in order to keep me in a place where I could bear others' burdens of anxiety and criticism and continue to untangle the mess.

I have often pondered my time at the church, which is now over, and wonder why I was never named. My first instinct is to let everyone off of the hook and simply think that because of their own wounding and rejection they were just not able to speak a name over me. But this is not true. Others were named regularly.

I felt used. I was being used for my skill, but not noticed for my true self.  It hurt… badly. The intense silence, especially from those who were in the place to communicate my heavenly Father’s name for me, felt like rejection and abandonment all over again.

In my last year at the church, I joined a small team of church leaders on a mission trip to Senegal in West Africa. We toured a village to explore the possibility of partnering with local churches to reach the village with much needed infrastructure improvements in order to proclaim the Gospel.

During our days with the people of the village, I learned so much about community.The notion of being well named was an important value embedded in their culture. Names were given as badges of honor, proclamations of current strengths, and prophecy of future hope.

An elder at the local church carefully gave each member of our team a name in the local dialect  so that the villagers would better receive us. At first, it just seemed like a compulsory missionary tactic, but as he stood with his hands on each team member’s shoulders and prayerfully considered each name, we realized something profound was occurring.

I was the last one to receive my name. The elder prayed quietly over me in the native tongue. He then lifted his head, looked into my eyes and said my name in the dialect of the village: Ty-nak Jon. “What does it mean?” I asked. “It means ‘shepherd’, ‘pastor’”,  he said.

I wanted to sob. I felt overwhelmed at the deep honor of being named by my heavenly Father through this wise stranger. I felt disappointed and angry that those closest to me could not convey a name in the same way.

I’m not sure why naming was withheld.

In the years since, as I’ve looked back at my time in that job, I have not minimized the pain of rejection and abandonment, nor pretended that my desire to be named was misplaced. The choice that is left is to routinely say the words “Father forgive them”.

Forgiveness brings healing, and opens our eyes to how the Father gently leads us to the places of life-giving water and green pastures. Forgiving others and releasing them to God brought healing and clarity. Forgiving those who hurt me unblocked my ears to hear my heavenly Father speak my name through others. Forgiving others had also allowed me to see and celebrate the encouragement, formation and growth that I experienced at my former church.

I work at a new church in a new city. As the good Father always does, he has redeemed my wounds and led me to green pastures where his good names for me are spoken freely and often. I have been invited into an official ordination process that will ultimately convey the title of “Priest”, but the names that I have been given go far beyond a title.

Thank you, Father, for giving me a name. Please forgive those who could not name me and help me to become a priestly father who loves and names others well.

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Brian moved from New York to Austin in 2011 to join Christ Church of Austin as Executive Pastor. He is currently studying at Redeemer Seminary in Austin and is a candidate for ordination in the Anglican Church. Brian enjoys every good thing that Austin has to offer with the love of his life, Tamara, and their four children – Andrew, Alex, Kendra and Natalie.



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Jesus gave us a litany of last words as a Sufferer; we refer to them as the Seven Last Words of christ. The deathbed words of the Suffering Servant provide a framework for the stories o lament we share here this Holy Week.

I count it a high privilege to know -- at least in small part -- the mourning stories of the dear ones who will share here for seven days.  Their lives walk the path between celebration, yes, but also suffering -- illness, relational disillusionment, anxiety, joblessness, death of loved ones, death of dearly-held dreams.  Their stories have helped form me in my understanding of suffering and I believe they could also encourage you too. 


Sunday, March 29, 2015

Lent daybook, 40: Who is this King of Glory?

A Lent daybook for these 40 days of prayer. Join me, won't you? (see all Lent daybook 2015 posts here.)

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look


1. The Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, taken earlier in March - Christopher Simon/APP/Getty Images - source
2. 
At Pakarua Presbyterian the youth celebrate Palm Sunday in a traditional dance - source


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read

Psalm 24 / Zechariah 9:9-12: Who is this King of Glory? / righteous and having salvation is He, humble and mounted on a donkey

Almighty and everliving God, in  your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. source

Hosanna, save us now, O Christ!

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listen

Hosanna
 Page CXVI

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Saturday, March 28, 2015

Lent daybook, 39: He was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled

A Lent daybook for these 40 days of prayer. Join me, won't you? (see all Lent daybook 2015 posts here.)

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look


Jesus Wept - Colin Booth
source

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read

John 11:28-44:  he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled 

pray 

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. source

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

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listen

Lawdy
 The Vespers

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What is it about you that God delights in?

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Friday, March 27, 2015

Lent daybook, 38: Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live

A Lent daybook for these 40 days of prayer. Join me, won't you? (see all Lent daybook 2015 posts here.)

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look

Lazarus, 2010 - Paul Martin
source

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read

John 11:1-27:  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. source

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

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listen

I Am the Bread of Life
 John Michael Talbot

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What is the greatest experience of love you've ever had?

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Thursday, March 26, 2015

Lent daybook, 37: I have calmed and quieted my soul

A Lent daybook for these 40 days of prayer. Join me, won't you? (see all Lent daybook 2015 posts here.)

.....
look


A Moment's Rest - Emmanuel Zairis
source

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read

Psalm 131:  I have calmed and quieted my soul

pray 

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. source

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

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listen

Hard Times
Bifrost Arts

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How does love motivate your responses to others today? 

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