Silence - an epilogue [disciplines of the inner life]

EPILOGUE: a poem from my semi-silent retreat with my husband (semi- because the goal was not to spend time in fervent Bible-study and prayer, but to just be together and away from daily distractions (read: noisy, demanding, intrusive offspring); semi- also because the fire alarm in the Inn went off, not once, but twice during the night and I have never been so terrified by a noise in my entire life!)

monastery

Thank you also for the silence of the place --
the snow-covered,
untracked, frozen lake.
The lights on the dock. The
light reflected on the white
tile in the bathroom and
streaming across the crisp
white sheets in the bedroom.

Thank You for the empty
comfort of the Inn. The
richness of polished wood
at the front desk and up the
banister, around each door and
window and over the massive
fireplace in the silent lobby.
Up the stairs, another layer of
sound is stripped away like an
overcoat.

Thank You for the silent
sweetness of champagne
and fleshy, breathy kisses
from my husband. Thank
You for the beautiful
sound of water coursing
through rumbly pipes from the belly
of the aged building, plunking
now in driplets from the curved
elegance of the spout onto
the quiet feminity of polished
toes, lapping across my thawing skin, and bubbling
out again from eager jets into winter-knotted
muscles.

Thank You for the secrative fire of candles
like smoky polka-dots scented in
orange blossom and vanilla. The silent,
sacred eighteen-year old dance dressed
in sheeted whispers from my
lover.

Silence drips and pools through my senses,
my mind, my veins.
Coursing through this aged body and lapping
up against my life-knotted thoughts--soothing
separating
tenderizing
undressing each snarl of fear
anger
distrust
and anxiety. Spreading me plain
and soft in the clean light again.

Silence - part three [disciplines for the inner life]

1. Silence, the fear of: here
2. Silence, suffering in: here

3. Silence, the beauty of:

Into Great Silence (Die Große Stille) is a documentary film directed by Philip Gröning that was first released in 2005. It is an intimate portrayal of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, high in a remote corner of the French Alps (Chartreuse Mountains). The film was made 16 years after the director first requested permission to make it. He lived at the monastery for six months, and filmed all alone; behind the walls no "outsider" had ever before been allowed to enter. [from the film's Wikipedia page]

After reading Jeffrey Overstreet's warm review of the film I thought I was appropriately prepared for the experience of viewing it. I am not ashamed to say that I fell asleep during the middle; it was a truly peaceful nap. The sleep did not come because I was bored but because I had truly entered the great silence of the place and people represented. Plus it's almost three hours long so I still had plenty of time to absorb the overwhelming beauty of the film's artistry.

Of the three layers I discovered during meditation on this theme, this film depicts most accurately my first response to the word silence. I mean -- really -- what could be more monastic and mysterious than the lives of the Carthusian monks? And what could be more impossible for me to imitate? So, I guess I'm off the hook?

How convenient. [she says wryly]

God forbid I walk away from this meditation and miss the deeper truth of the monastic life. The truth learned well by the man featured in this clip. Go ahead and watch it; I'll wait here for you. (and I mean no disrespect but don't you think Jim Henson would have loved his face?!?)

When is the last time you believed someone who speaks of God's loving character with this kind of believability? Do we believe him just because he's old and adorable? Maybe. Do we believe him because he lives in the alps and wears a white robe? It depends on your view of the monastic life. Certainly, anyone who has given themselves so whole-heartedly to an ascetic life deserves, at the very least, our respect. We who can not make it to 9:02 without a super-size mug of caffeine. We who can not drive the .62 miles to the caffeine shop without searching 1, 2 or 3 radio stations. We who can not stand in a grocery line without the scrolling kaleidoscope of the 24/7 news channel. So, yes, a man who has willingly stripped his life of our contemporary cacophonous accouterments deserves a little bit of our attention. And trust.

But, for me, it comes down to this. Am I willing to live this entire three-score and ten years -- give or take a decade -- without experiencing at least a taste of this gentleman's simple assurance in God's good character? I want to believe the same things, experience the same peace, but without the same lifestyle. So I pile on more Christian radio, more book studies, more worship songs, more entertainment, more food, more chatting -- more noise -- in search of the the moment where I can truly believe God is good and God loves me. This is not a peaceful existence. You know it, too, don't you?

From the half of the film that I was awake for, here are a few ways I can model the monastic life.

1. Fear God when taking a vow.

Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God...When you make a vow to God, do not be late in paying it for He takes no delight in fools. Pay what you vow! -- Ecclesiastes 5: 4-5

Under my father's counsel, Brian and I chose to include this Scripture reading in our marriage ceremony 18 years ago. And, honestly, there have been more than a few moments when the fear this passage induces was the only thread keeping me from snapping the line of commitment to this man, my husband.

But the Ecclesiastes passage speaks from a holistic perspective. My covenant relationship with the one true God is the foundation for every relationship I form.

2. Assume a posture of humility.

I don't need to stoop under the wight of a white robe or, even, a "I'm not perfect, just forgiven" T-shirt, to signal the rest of the world that I'm appropriately aware of my own smallness. It turns out that the perfect garment for humility is silence. Ecclesiastes 5 again:

Watch your step when you enter God's house. Enter to learn. That's far better than mindlessly offering a sacrifice, doing more harm than good.

Don't shoot off your mouth or speak before you think. Don't be too quick to tell God what you think he wants to hear.

God's in charge not you -- the less you speak, the better.

Imagine if our Sunday worship services took this passage seriously. Imagine if we let go of our pep-rally-as-a-means-to-God mentality. Maybe the Church suffers from the same malady that showed up in me when I tried to pray my way into silence . I do not conjure up the Presence of God with my chatter - no matter how doctrinally sound the words may be. If I pay total attention to the lessons of Scripture, which is the more demonic-friendly -- being quiet before God and trusting His Spirit to fill the space or filling the space with my own ritual of right-spoken chatter, Christianese chanting and clapping-on-command worship-jigs?

But, really, if I'm not practicing the discipline of silence in my daily worship why would I expect anything different from corporate worship?

I lay bare myself, my world, before you in the quietness. Brood over my spirit with your great tenderness and understanding and judgment...

--Howard Thurman in The Growing Edge

3. Receive the Word as my daily bread.

I would not pretend that I could say this better than Bonhoeffer. I only add my voice by bolding a few of the phrases. And, yes, I realize this quote breaks all the rules of brief blogging, but if ever there was a gentleman who has earned the right to be heard...

As there are definite hours in the Christian's day for the Word, particularly the time of common worship and prayer, so the day also needs definite times of silence, silence under the Word and silence that comes out of the Word. These will be especially the times before and after hearing the Word. The Word comes not to the chatterer but to him that holds his tongue. The stillness of the temple is the sign of the holy presence of God in His Word.

There is an indifferent, or even negative, attitude toward silence which sees in it a disparagement of God's revelation in the Word. This is to miss the essential relationship of silence to the Word. Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God. We are silent before hearing the Word because our thoughts are already directed to the Word, as a child is quiet when he enters his father's room. We are silent after hearing the Word because the Word is still speaking and dwelling within us. We are silent at the beginning of the day because God should have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep because the last word also belongs to God. We keep silence solely for the sake of the Word, and therefore not in order to show disregard for the Word but rather to honor and receive it.

Silence is nothing else but waiting for God's Word and coming from God's Word with a blessing. But everybody knows that this is something that needs to be practiced and learned, in these days when talkativeness prevails. Real silence, real stillness, really holding one's tongue comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual stillness.

-- From Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

4. Practice silence in the sanctuary, in community and in the ordinary tasks of life.

While the scenes of the monks' prayers and song in corporate gatherings was almost unbearably beautiful, some of my very favorite scenes followed the holy men through their ordinary, daily tasks. Making a meal, tending a garden, cutting a brother's hair -- all tasks that are familiar to me here in my home, with my family. I'm old enough to know that, while it would be easy to romanticize the image of monks at work, it is just not so. Heat and illness and hunger and callouses and jealousy and depression feel the same on a French mountain peak as they do here in upstate New York.

In other words, silence is a spiritual perspective. By spiritual I do not mean that it ignores the physical -- certainly time spent in a monastery, retreat center, or a walk on a country road may be an important part of practicing silence. But, you know as well as I, that if I do not exercise my will under the guidance of the Holy Spirit that pesky inner noise does not care about my outer environment. Practicing silence takes work.

If we can pass through these initial fears and remain silent, we may experience a gradual waning of inner chaos. Silence becomes like a creative space in which we regain perspective on the whole.

--From Pathways of Spiritual Living by Susan Annette Muto

Practicing silence also brings unspeakable reward. Oh, that I could echo the calm assurance of a bushy-eyebrowed monk: God is infinitely good, almighty, and He helps us.

In my week-long meditation (well, three weeks now if you count all the time it has taken me to write this post) no thought brought me more joy than these from another trust-worthy gentleman, the prophet Isaiah: In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength. And no words brought me more fear than the prophet's condemnation of God's people at the end of that verse: but you would have none of it.

May I obey the God of Isaiah, Bonhoeffer, and a Carthusain monk - the God who will lead me into the strength and rest of silence.

Silence - part two [disciplines for the inner life]

1. Silence, the fear of: here

2. Silence, suffering in:

OK, so this is not a movie...yet. But it will be soon. And I haven't even read the novel...yet. But I will soon.
The author Shusaku Endo, in his book, A Life of Jesus, states that Japanese culture "identifies with one who 'suffers with us' and who 'allows for our weakness.' With this fact always in mind, I tried not so much to depict God in the father-image that tends to characterize Christianity, but rather to depict the kind-hearted maternal aspect of God revealed to us in the personality of Jesus. Silence, written mostly in the form of a letter by its central character, depicts the theme of a silent God who accompanies a believer in adversity."
Oh, and Endo's masterpiece inspired Scottish classical composer and conductor James MacMillan to create Symphony No. 3, Silence which is right now inspiring me as I write this post.

Consider Job, Moses in the desert with the sheep, Sarah waiting for the child, Hannah pleading for a child, Hosea chasing after his whore-wife, Israel waiting for a Messiah, Joseph thinking he might have a whore-wife, Mary and Martha standing by their brother's grave. Listen to the darkness before Jesus words: My God, My God. Listen to the shivering disciples in the upper room on Saturday. Silent Saturday.

The passage I was instructed to meditate during the week was none of these, but it was as familiar: I Kings 19. The characters in the Old Testament narrative are an evil queen, a wussy king, 450 massacred prophets of Baal, and one bone-weary prophet of Yahweh.

I imagine you also are familiar with this OT heroic tale. Elijah meets the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel with nothing but his gift of hearing God. He calls down fire from heaven that burns the entire ox carcass, stone altar, even the dirt and water surrounding the altar. The people respond by worshipping the one true God and killing off the frenzied, gesticulating, self-maiming prophets of Baal. God responds by sending rain after three years drought. It's a happy ending, right?

Wrong. Evil queen does not care about rain or the feelings of the people. She vows to kill Elijah anyway. Understandably, Elijah runs for dear life. The man who hears God can't take it any more.

God, like a knowing mama, sends a Samwise Gamgee sort of angel with a knapsack of food to chase Elijah across the desert to make sure he gets food, water and sleep. It must have been some kind of good food, too, since Elijah eats it and then walks for forty days and nights to a cave deep inside of Mt. Horeb. Maybe it's the silence of that walk, maybe its the nourishment of the food that brings clarity, but once God finally speaks again to Elijah the prophet has changed his tune from bleary despair (I can't do this anymore; I just want to curl up in a ball and die!) to a crystal-clear grievance with the King of the Universe.

God: Elijah, what are you doing here? (I sort of picture God sitting behind a mammoth desk, looking over a pair of spectacles at this man who opens the door of His office without knocking.)

Elijah: I've been working my heart out for You, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies. The people of Israel have abandoned your covenant, destroyed the places of worship, and murdered your prophets. I'm the only one left, and now they're trying to kill me. (Here Elijah, after delivering his legitimate appeal for help, drops down into the wing-back chair across from the desk, places a hand on each knee and watches God's face for an answer that makes sense. Instead God motions to his aide standing at the doorway and goes back to signing papers on His desk.)

God's Secretary: Go, stand on the mountain at attention before God. God will pass by. (The secretary opens the giant panelled oak door as he speaks and waves Elijah out of the room. Elijah looks at the aide, back at God who is bent over His desk seeming to have already forgotten Elijah's presence in the room, and back at the aide again. He slaps the arms of the chair, lets out an exasperated sigh, stands and walks out of the room, out of the building and onto a mountain ledge.)

A hurricane wind ripped through the mountains and shattered the rocks before God, but God wasn't to be found in the wind; after the wind an earthquake, but God wasn't in the earthquake; and after the earthquake fire, but God wasn't in the fire; and after the fire a gentle and quiet whisper.

When Elijah heard the quiet voice, he muffled his face with his great cloak, went to the mouth of the cave, and stood there.

God: So Elijah, now tell me, what are you doing here? (He says this in that quiet voice.)

Elijah: I've been working my heart out for God, the God-of-the-Angel-Armies, because the people of Israel have abandoned your covenant, destroyed your places of worship, and murdered your prophets. I'm the only one left, and now they're trying to kill me. (I picture him taking a deep breath before he speaks. Not out of exasperation but out of determination. The text says "Elijah said it again..."; his grievance has not changed at all. No amount of hunger, exhaustion, travel, knee-knocking wind or quake, blistery heat of flame or God-forsaken silence has changed his original complaint. This is one determined man.)

God: Go back the way you came through the desert to Damascus. When you get there anoint Hazael; make him king over Aram. Then anoint Jehu son of Nimshi; make him king over Israel. Finally, anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. Anyone who escapes death by Hazael will be killed by Jehu; and anyone who escapes death by Jehu will be killed by Elisha. Meanwhile, I'm preserving for myself seven thousand souls: the knees that haven't bowed to the god Baal, the mouths that haven't kissed his image.

God breaks His silence. And He does it in a small, quiet voice.

It will probably take a life-time of learning the truth found in this story. God's silence sometimes has to do with a kind of testing of my determination, focus, desire. If I'm telling God I have a desire I think He sometimes wants to know if I'm going to change my mind about it before lunch.

I have plenty of those short-attention-span kind of desires, believe me. When I look back in my old journals they are the ones I've written in scribbly all-caps across an entire page. The very ink on the page quivers with excitement and shortened breath. And often they are never mentioned again. I read them now and think: Really? I was that fired up about opening a bed and breakfast, having 10 children, earning a six-figure income, [fill in the blank with a desire of the month].

The thing is when I read back through those journals I also find other desires. Ones that are still at the front of my mind; that still keep me up at night. The verbiage may have changed as time brings clarity and helps me hone in on the core of the request. But that is exactly the point. As I walk through my own journey of exhaustion, sleep, hunger, food, thirst and water the determination to hear God's voice on the matter is sharpened, increased, developed. That determination - as it matures - become able to discern the true voice of God. To withstand all the whirlwind and storm and fires around and within me in order to wait for the powerful and tender voice of the Almighty.

Am I able to reconcile the truth that God is sometimes testing me with His silence? Am I willing to bear up under the hardship, and even suffering, that accompanies this testing? Or will I be side-tracked by my own irritability?

When I first read -- and I mean really read -- this account with Elijah I misunderstood his focused determination as petulance with the King of the Universe. I thought: How dare he be so bold to not cower and self-deprecate before the presence of God? Why doesn't he add some qualifiers to that complaint?

Something like this instead: God, I'm sure You've got this all worked out and I'm just not hearing it, but [cough, clear throat] is there any chance I could get some more help around here?

The truly hard part of the test is staying focused on the true character of God. He is not cruel. He is not capricious. He is not too busy to care. He is not like a little boy holding a magnifying glass over a tiny bug just to watch it squirm. He is clear enough about His good motives to risk me misunderstanding His silence.

It only makes sense that He would desire that same kind of clarity from me. And, in most cases, there hardly seems a better method than to let me sit with my request for awhile. And not just sit, but walk, sleep, drink, eat, suffer, struggle and lug around the desire waiting for the opportunity to hand it off to God. What a shame to allow all the inner noise of anger, peevishness, bitterness, busyness to drown out any chance of hearing the small, quiet voice of the Almighty. Even worse would be to not carry the burden at all. To look for cheap and quick ways to trade it off, say for a pot of stew or a plate of fries or something. Yes, this is a sure-fire way to dull the suffering of silence. Also the joy of desire.

A ... positive, meaning of silence is that it protects the inner fire. Silence guards the inner heat of religious emotions. This inner heat is the life of the Holy Spirit within us. Thus, silence is the discipline by which the inner fire of God is tended and kept alive.
Diadochus of Photiki offers us a very concrete image: When the door of the steam bath is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good. Thereafter the intellect, though lacking appropriate ideas, pours out a welter of confused thoughts to anyone it meets, as it no longer has the Holy Spirit to keep its understanding free from fantasy. Ideas of value always shun verbosity, being foreign to confusion and fantasy. Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.
--From The Way of the Heart by Henri J. Nouwen

Oh mighty truth. When I follow God's silence, I too will develop the strength of silence.

Silence - part one [disciplines for the inner life]

But the Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him. --Habakkuk 2:20

What is it that you think of this when you think of this word? Silence. I'll bet you already had a thought flicker through your brain when you saw the title to this post. Silence.

Silence.

The three words I think when I hear the word are mysterious, monastic and impossible. During this week's theme I realized I actually have several layers of understanding and preconception on the meaning of silence. (I can't get the Simon & Garfunkle tune out of my head now, This is the soouuunnd of silence.)

Following are three layers unearthed during my meditation and study. I've framed them in context of three movies bearing the word Silence in the title. I did this because I thought it would be fun. Plus it allowed me to procrastinate for two weeks on this post while searching Google image for cool movie posters.

1. Silence, the fear of:

Shiver, shiver, shiver. I didn't have to watch this movie in order to get goose bumps every time I see the poster. The Academy Award winning film (times five!) features two of my favorite actors, Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, but I am a scary-movie chicken. The word Silence in the title insinuates the film's theme of death and depravity. The title, in its entirety, is the summary of traumatic childhood secrets.

One of the first days I meditated on this discipline a rush of child-like trust came over me and I penned this prayer:

Brood over me, Father Spirit.
Brood over micro-me with Your
macro-Self. Deep call to my
deep. Stir, Spirit of the living
God - the true Father of Jesus,
Spirit of the Creator.
Mother me.
[please]

Before I could move to my next thought -- like three seconds later -- that goose-bumpy feeling showed up, uninvited and cruel. What did you just do? What kind of prayer is that? Does such an open-ended invitation to a Spirit invite darkness rather than Light?

The truth is that there have been dark, silent spaces in my memory and invisible walls in my soul that have been marked up by wounds, lies, violations, and sin. If those markings could speak up, they would tell heartbreaking stories. But I think the trumped-up alliance between the act of silence and the invitation of horror occurs precisely because I don't exercise the discipline on any regular occasion.

In other words, if the only time I submit to silence is when I cave into old memory then I have no other understanding of silence. It is a misrepresentation of the gift of quiet confidence and comfort that can be found there.

In an upcoming post I'll share some thoughts about the discipline of confession that I'm currently studying. (Remember the two weeks procrastinating at Google image? Yeah, my blog post queue is stacking up.) Confession plays the super-hero to the villainous disguise of silence. More on that later....

For inner silence depends on a continual seeking, a continual crying in the night, a repeated bending over the abyss. If we cling to a silence we think we have found forever, we stop seeking God and the silence goes dead within us. For He is found when He is sought and when He is no longer sought He escapes us. He is heard only when we hope to hear Him, and if, thinking our hope to be fulfilled we cease to listen, He ceases to speak, His silence ceases to be valid and becomes dead, even though we recharge it with the echo of our own emotional noise.
--From Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton

There is substantial truth to this veiled abyss in each of us. We add to the invisible veil with busyness, emotional noise, episodic television, and in my case, french fries. To tear the veil in two and peer over the edge of the abyss, we must enter and rest in silence. Yes, we stand there, toes hanging over the edge, afraid. But the trouble is in the abyss and not in the act of looking there. And silent does not equal alone. He is in the silence and He is in the abyss and He split the veil that separates us from God.

Later in that same day of meditation, I realized my own complicity in the goose-bumpy clamminess. The part of me that allowed representatives of evil to think they had found a cooperative is this:

...in relation to my own fears in prayer this morning -- that silence and quiet connection with the Spirit somehow leaves me vulnerable to danger and demonic influence. As if my safety and spiritual connection to God is dependent solely on my ability to think and speak right doctrine. That it is my thinking and speaking rightly that brings on the Presence of God. Hmmm...

Teach me Your wisdom, Spirit.

monday mix tape

i made you a mix tape of all my favorites this week!

from the "I-can't-believe-I'm-blogging-about-this" file:
I mentioned last Monday that I've begun a self-improvement project called Hunting for the hidden Tamara underneath all that stuff. (In other words, eating healthy, watching calories, exercising, and, basically, giving a damn.) So, I thought to myself, why not let my weekly mix post include a litle bit of an update? Want to play along? Since the title I've given the self-improvement project seems to be working-overly-hard-to-avoid-cliche as well as being, well, just plain stupid, I'll mail a bag of soy nuts to anyone who can come up with something better.

So at Week Three I've stuck to my eating plan with only three somewhat-intentionally-scheduled food splurges. I've lost six pounds and stayed faithful to three to four workouts a week. I say stayed -- as in the past tense --because this past week I hit my first major discouragement. I developed what we're guessing to be a stress fracture at the tippy-top of my right foot. Just below the second toe. It hurt like the devil and I had to keep it elevated and iced for a whole day and then hobbled around the rest of the week.

My friend Earl, unwittingly crashed my self-pity party, by describing a stress fracture as a sort of panic attack for the bones. This totally helped me get it. Also it totally ticked me off. This means that my feet are so used to freeloading that when they figured out I was serious about this whole thing they staged a revolt. I threw a good old-fashioned tantrum including greeting my husband the moment he got home from work with the simultanous one-two punch of sobby tears and a plea for Outback takeout.

I read this post from The Pile I'm Standing In today and it describes me perfectly. That's good truth right there.

Another link I loved this week was from Lindsay at A is for Arrow. I absolutely adore this post -- especially her illustration -- and am seriously considering a haiku in honor of my slipper socks.

In the meantime I'm pretty excited about a couple of books that came in the mail this week, but you'll have to wait until next Monday to hear more. I need to get to sleep so I can drag these sulking feet back to the gym tomorrow morning.

One of Lindsay's self-illustrated New Year Resolutions.

monday mix tape

i made you a mix tape of all my favorites this week!

After pushing through some pretty heavy stuff with family issues, health issues and plain old run-of-the-mill sort of issues last week I didn't really indulge in a lot of reading or new films or music. In fact I'm not sure what I did last week at all!

Oh, yeah, I'm working on finding the original shape of Tamara hidden in here somewhere which means a whole bunch of energy spent embracing stuff I've ignored far too long: finding healthy menus, re-learning the food pyramid, discovering how good it feels to engage in strength training and cardio activity. So far there's not much to write about, but I'm pressing on and will keep you posted

A couple of links I loved last week:

these are a few of my favorite things - My Front Porch

I admit it. This is my sister and I'm slightly biased to several items on her list. OK, you got me again. I'm pretty much biased to everything on her list. But I think you'll enjoy her list, too. At the very least, you'll enjoy her simple, creative post concept. (Don't you just LOVE those beautiful boys?!?)

'Twelve Head' by James Jean - The Wanderings of a Theological Vagabond
I just like to look at this. I thought you would too

Our 1 Year Anniversary Today - Diary of an Arts Pastor
Happy Anniversary to a couple I deeply admire. I can't wait to see what God is going to do for you in Year 2!! The wedding pictures are oh so fun. Not only that, but how could I pass up a post that begins with a Garrison Keillor quote about sex?

One Music recommendation:
Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes

I take my time picking up new music, films, and books because I like to listen to what different people think and say before I decide if it's worth my time and/or money. Whenever a work pops up consistently across the spectrum of media outlets I read I figure it's time to throw my own nickel in the juke box.

And this album is totally worth the 200 nickels I fed into the iTunes machine. I mean with cover art from a sixteenth-century artist you got half my admiration right there. But when the music is lyrically and melodically imaginative and the harmonies are rich and unpredictable well that's when I'm all in.

I was following the pack

All swallowed in their coats

With scarves of red tied 'round their throats

To keep their little heads from fallin' in the snow

-from White Winter Hymnal, Fleet Foxes

Making Moments (disciplines for the inner life)

This is my Father's world, / Oh, let me ne'er forget 

That though the wrong seems oft so strong, / God is the Ruler yet

On a recent Sunday I was walking out of church and noticed a small huddle of friends standing in the middle of the atrium we call Main Street. I wanted to hurry by and get on with our afternoon, but I noticed that one friend was distraught. Her face was crumpled with tears. I tried to leave, but I couldn't. I turned back around and inserted myself -- silently -- into the small huddle.

She was talking about deep disappointment in relationship. She expressed a despair that nothing would ever change; that she would not ever be able to have what she desired. I understood. I had spent half of the previous week in bed fighting depression (Well, that and a nasty sinus infection). I had spent the last two and a half years mourning the foolishness of several relationships that had gone sour.

Pretty much the only thing I had learned -- other than the fact that I tend toward relational idolatry -- was that the bent I had toward the Grandiose Scheme was one that would, more likely than not, lead me astray. Good learning, yes, but quite incomplete. At some point there has to be a positive behavior to replace the old.

As I listened to my friend's agony and remembered my own these thoughts continued to ram into each other in my head like a couple of determined sumo wrestlers.I could not speak much. The others spoke some. We did a lot of looking straight into each other's eyes, not avoiding her grief-filled gaze. We did some nodding of our heads and a couple of times we refuted statements that were clearly misguided. But, mostly we listened.

In my past I would have shot straight toward the Grand Plan to Cheer Up this Friend. I just happen to be out of grand plans when it comes to relationships. So I stood and gazed and nodded. We prayed together. And, like a small thought, a small idea, during the final sentence of prayer it occurred to me. "We're going to Subway. Do you want to join us?"
"Yes."
"OK, then. Let me tell the family. Hey, after that we're going sledding. You can join us if you want." And she did.

We haven't really talked since, but for one sunny, sub-zero Sunday afternoon we ate subs, laughed together, dressed up in ridiculous-looking layers of clothing and sledded in lopsided chains of plastic sleds and snow-tubes, grabbing mittened-hand after mittened-hand all the way to the bottom of the hill. We drank hot chocolate out of paper cups and shouted cheers at the slip-slidy antics of the other sledders.

Then we said good-bye, hugged and left.

Don't mishear me. I am not mentioning that scenario as a recipe for deep relationship. I am just saying that it was a Moment. A fun, solid, memory-making kind of moment in our friendship. I don't know what will come next. I don't know if anything will come next. We did not talk about books we were reading or sins we needed to confess. We just took advantage of some ordinary activities on an ordinary Sunday to experience some ordinary moments - together.

It was this experience that lay like a warm blanket over my memory as I read one of the first meditations of last week's theme, making moments.

Some people appear to think that the "spiritual life" is a peculiar condition mainly supported by cream ices and corrected by powders. But the solid norm of the spiritual life should be like that of the natural life: a matter of porridge, bread and butter.... It is not the best housekeeper who has the most ferocious spring-clean, or gets things from the confectioner when she is expecting guests. "If any man open the door, I will come in to him"; share his ordinary meal, and irradiate his ordinary life. The demand for temperance of soul, for acknowledgment of the sacred character of the normal, is based on that fact -- the central Christian fact -- of the humble entrance of God into our common human life. (from The House of the Soul and Concerning the Inner Life, Evelyn Underhill)

For the same two years that I've been killing the addiction to the Grand Scheme I've been trying to understand how my relationship with God works in just the ordinary stuff of life. I have been trying to understand how to live from this place of contentment that David describes:

God, I'm not trying to rule the roost, I don't want to be king of the mountain. I haven't meddled where I have no business or fantasized grandiose plans. I've kept my feet on the ground, I've cultivated a quiet heart. Like a baby content in its mother's arms, my soul is a baby content. Wait, Israel, for God. Wait with hope. Hope now; hope always! (Psalm 131: 1-3, MSG)

There have been Grand Moments in my life. More than any one person deserves. Moments when it seemed that all heaven and earth synced for just a glimpse of glory. Like Jesus taking his three best friends to the mountain to share in the wonder of such a transfigured Moment. There's much I'm sure I have to learn from this classic biblical story, but one learning that has been pasted to the inside of my eyelids is that Peter could not get out of his head long enough to savor the moment. He missed or nearly missed -- I'm not sure from the telling -- the extreme grandiosity of God in this moment. He wanted to strategize, capitalize, theorize and theologize the Moment into something manageable and marketable. Something he could control.

I've lost track of the number of times my response has matched Peter's. Something in me is unable to rest, to savor, to soak in the Moment. My mind rushes on to ways that I can trap all the good feelings, pin the legs of the thing down and preserve it under glass. To build some kind of shrine to the Moment so that it will be available to me any time I rub the glass three times. And with all of that scheming I miss the voice of God: This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of my delight. Listen to him.

In these two years I've learned that my desire for the Presence of God on my terms and in my ideals blinds me to the Present God. The same God who shows up in a cow barn in the middle of the night and on a hike to Emmaus with old friends. When I am consumed with whipping up a plan to build some sort of shrine to the Moment I do not hear the knock on the door, Jesus standing at the door, hoping to be invited in for a meal. (I wonder how he feels about Subway?)

What is the fear of surrendering fully to a Grand Moment? I know the answer. It's the coming down from the mountain part. That's the rub. It's Frodo trying to live in the Shire again. It's Mary's first case of morning sickness after Gabriel left the room. It's Cinderella, shoeless, back to sweeping soot. It's two million people trying to get on the Metro after the inauguration this Tuesday.

The Reverend Joseph Lowery referred to this hard task in the inaugural benediction:

And as we leave this mountain top, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek your will.

Without commenting on his theology, he got this unavoidable dilemma right. This temptation to despair we feel when it is time to leave the mountain, walk away from the burning bush, clean out the Upper Room, swallow the last morsel of Olive Garden's white chocolate raspberry cheesecake; pick your place and time -- nobody wants to leave the experience of a Grand Moment.

During this week's meditation I am reminded that I want to stop treating the rare Grand Moment like some kind of marketing research or science project. I want to sponge up the Moment so that I can walk away with it shining out of my eyes, and fingertips and the ends of my hair. (I shall tape a poster to my mirror, Tamara lassoes the moon.)

I want to develop my senses to recognize the Jesus of the ordinary; to notice sooner than the Emmaus travelers: Didn't we feel on fire as he conversed with us on the road? To live in the abundant presence of Christ that surrounds and infuses the ordinary joys and pains of every day rather than just plucking the blackberries of the few-and-far between Grand Moments.

This is hard because it involves death. Christ followed each moment from day to day and his journey took him through suffering and death. I don't like this Christ. As Eugene Kennedy comments on the Matthew account of the Mount of Transfiguration in The Choice to be Human: This is a mystery blinding in its intensity. We still do not like to look at the separations and deaths to ourselves that are inevitable in lives fully and lovingly lived. Better, with Peter in his boisterous enthusiasm, to stay at this high point of affirmation than to follow with Jesus as he accepts his own departure to Jerusalem and the final acts of his mission. The passage, ringing with glory, turns our gaze down the slopes toward the often shadowed valley in which most people lead their lives. There we find the setting for the kind of religious experience of which Jesus has been speaking. It has little to do with the minute observation of detailed rules. It concerns rather those things which cannot be measured at all: loving someone throughout a lifetime, making sacrifices in our lives for the benefit of those who follow after us, raising a child, keeping our word, forgiving each other for our failures, standing together in the bad weather of life. Our Exodus leads us not through strange and exotic places but through the very middle of our quite ordinary lives. (The Choice to be Human, Eugene Kennedy)

If I am paying attention I will hear all the voices of other children of the burning heart through the centuries who find salvation and glory and sublime in the ordinary, draining, painful, exciting, mundane, sticky, dusty, hungry and thirsty, sweaty, peanut-butter-and-jelly, pot-scrubbing moments of each day. This must be what it means to live fully and lovingly. In other words, to worship at the shrines of Past Grand Moments is to live only halfly and meanly.

This is one of the greatest realizations I took from reading Kathleen Norris' Acedia & Me. Acedia is a stinginess of the soul that becomes disinterested in the time and place I find myself in right now -- this lower-case m moment.

In the fourth century, Evagrius marked acedia as one of the spiritual afflictions, far more deadly than the more physical temptations such as gluttony or lust, or the melancholy arising from deprivation or anger. Acedia, he insisted, is something more, a weariness of soul that ‘instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself, [and] a hatred for manual labor...(Norris is quoting Benedictine Mary Margaret Funk, whose name makes me giggle)

This, then, becomes a serious issue. Hatred of place and time is hatred of good gifts from my Father. It's ultimately a self-aggrandizement that says I could do it better if I were just given the chance. I might as well say what I'm really thinking: These piddly little moments are meaningless to me unless I get my own way. This is a dangerous place to live and, I'm becoming convinced, thwarts the hand of my good, giving Father in my daily life.

My reading from other saints last week introduced me to a warning from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts…How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things? He wrote this from an illegal seminary in Nazi Germany. Enough said.

Where does this leave me, then? It leaves me humbled in the presence of the Present Christ. The Christ who leaned down to fear-stricken Peter, James and John on the mount and said Do not be afraid.

It leaves me making the choice to be awake. To choose to notice and pay attention and be grateful. To quit day-dreaming of all the Grand Moments-yet-to-be and to enjoy the ordinary companionship of that Christ and of his children. It leaves me waiting in a cold Subway, hungry for lunch, working through the awkward tension of making conversation with a new friend. It leaves me noticing the beauty of wind-chapped cheeks and brightly colored scarves and mittens on a snowy hilltop. It leaves me in a wide-open stance, ready to receive all of Christ's gifts on earth and in heaven. It leaves me praying the unwitting prayer of Sylvia Plath (oh, how sweet for her to have found the present Christ):

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect miracle
Or an accident.
To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.
Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Leap incandescent
Out of the kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent
By bestowing largesse, honour,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical,
Yet politic; ignorant
Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant
A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content
Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.

(Black Rook in Rainy Weather by Sylvia Plath)

*picture above: Taken while rafting on a frigid Delaware River with a mess of courageous family members this past August.

monday mix tape

i made you a mix tape of all my favorites this week

Links:

• First things first. I saw this photo of a work by Katie Herzog linked on my Design for Mankind feed and haven't been able to stop looking at it all week. The fact that it's made from yarn and is a 6ft by 8ft installation just makes it that much more fun!

Phonebooks, Katie Herzog

• NY Times Op-Ed Guest Columnist, Bono, ruminating on the Chairman, the art of music and Irish pubs... (I'm getting pretty excited about the new album due in March!)

• What's your favorite song-in-movie sequence? This post had some pretty great selections (we just introduced our sons to the 80's classic Back to the Future a couple of weeks ago!), many I'd never heard of, and a few I wouldn't bother with. Alas, my all-time favorite song sequence in a movie was not even listed.
  
  
  
• I love the library, I love reading lists and I loved this article. (Thanks to Andy Crouch at Culture Making for pointing it out!)

Speaking of reading suggestions...

Books: Cyndere's Midnight, Jeffrey Overstreet

Maybe you remember my thoughts on Overstreet's first novel, Auralia's Colors and maybe you don't. Maybe you remember my comments of admiration for this disciple artist in my picks for Favorite Creators and Cultivators in 2008 and maybe you don't. But I hope you'll remember to check out this series the next time you visit your favorite bookstore. It's worth the looking and worth the reading.

This weekend I am still trying to get over this mid-winter illness and found it the perfect time to finish reading this second in a series of four titles in Auralia's Thread. I found that Overstreet's confidence in storytelling had only grown since the first title. I was more drawn into this other-world, the Expanse and more entranced by the small beauties found in a few brave souls trying to make a difference in the midst of adversity and ugliness.

If the mark of a good read is that one is removed from reality for a time but more hopeful than ever about the reality they face after turning the last page, than this, indeed, was a good read.

They found the cave where Lesyl was singing. Children were gathered in a crowd about her. Merya, once a Gatherer and now in charge of planning meals, stood cradling her newborn at the edge of the room, listening. Many of the soldiers, the Gatherers, and the Housefolk were assembling as well.

Cal-raven tried to quell the emotions that seized him as he took in this sight. Peace. Relief.

Lesyl sang quietly about a magnificent violet tree that had fallen in a storm. One bird tried to lift it, but her wings were much too feeble. Another came to offer help, but they were not enough. But when their whole flock descended, each bird grasping a branch, they could fly together and lift the tree, planting it back in the scar of its uprooting. As she sang the chorus again, the children of Abascar raised their tired voices to join her. (Cyndere's Midnight, pp. 310, 11)

Solitude (disciplines for the inner life)

"Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment."

- Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline

I wish I could remember the name of the record album -- or even the song. I remember the faux-brick linoleum pressed to the floor of the drafty room and that it bubbled up in a few warpy spots. I remember the floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall handmade wooden bookshelves overflowing with books. I remember the over sized metal desk with the mid-century rounded corners that had belonged to my mother's father and took up the largest space in the room. And I remember the record player sitting on top the cherry wood cube that housed my parents record collection and held the mishmash of dogeared liner notes and plastic cases storing new record needles.

The only part of the recording I can remember is a man's voice quoting Psalm 91:1:

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

He kept going through the Psalm, but I don't remember the in-between words because I would always get stuck trying to picture God's shadow. Would it be big? Bulky? And since my mom and grandmother often quoted, I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, my mind would get busy trying to figure out what in the world an india-rubber ball would look like. My feeble imagintation could only picture as one of those red, pimply inflated spheres that made the most satisfying sound when my sneaker connected with it solidly during my ups in a P.E. class kickball contest.

Eventually, though, with all these wandering thoughts my attention would once again be arrested by the warm male voice still narrating Psalm 91 in between the hisses and whirs of the vinyl rotating round the small metal prong poking up through the center of the dizzying spins of the coffee-black, grooved platter:

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust...

And with that my poor, Baptist-school stunted imagination would begin to combust. God has feathers?!?

1 He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.
3 Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
4 He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

Last week's theme of Solitude involved reading Psalm 91 every day. The kids were back to school from Christmas break, my husband was headed back to work from his vacation. On his last day home, he and I sat together over gyros and meatloaf at the Greek diner around the corner from our house. The mood between us was light, two friends comparing notes on the upcoming week. He asked, "So what does this week hold for you?"

I held the silvery-foil wrapped meat half-way to my mouth and paused to answer the question. Breath to form words moved through my teeth and then, like it had seen an unwanted surprise, scuttled right back into my mouth. What does this week hold for me? What does this week hold for me? No more job to hurry to a couple mornings a week. No more Christmas musical deadlines to fret. No more Christmas anything, for that matter. Think of something...quick!

Taking a bite of gyro, I chewed a moment, sipped my water, and answered with bright assurance, "Well, I asked Stacey if I could stay over at her house Thursday night to spend all day Friday in solitude and prayer for the upcoming ministry season." Whew...that was good. Big. Grand. Spiritual.

Later that day I read Psalm 91, recalled the peaceful moments alone listening to record albums in my father's home-study, and journaled: Psalm 91 is beautiful. Beautiful.

Then night came on that first day of the new week. My next journal entry:

A very bad day. I think there may be some kind of attack going on here because... I went to bed so content and happy and eager and in the night I felt like 'something' came over me. I had a nightmare which woke me up enough to let Brian know, but I don't remember it. Then I had the kind of exhausting dream that puts me in a situation where I am completely failing a simple task and tons of people [often all mixed up from different seasons of my life] are watching and becoming increasingly angry with me. In addition I woke up about 4am coughing and blowing my nose and I couldn't get back to sleep until I propped myself up on a mound of pillows. I'm stressed about life starting back up again after Christmas; about keeping up with housework and relationships, etc. I can't stand being 'me' any longer. I absolutely want to no longer exist. I realize it's selfish and self-absorbed and slothful and sensual. I've got to break out of this. Help me, God. Please, please, please help me.

Toward evening, a sense of peace became solid with this perspective:

The only way I can think out of this is that, yes there is attack, and, yes, there is immaturity and sin. But I'm making it through the day. It's 4:45 pm and I've made it this far without blowing it, without leaving town, without doing any irreversible damage. And Psalm 91 says...

Once again this psalm full of metaphor and angelic assurance arrested my imagination and calmed my numerous fears. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High /Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
During the week I was reminded of something Kathleen Norris said in Acedia & Me:

“Psalm 91, from which the early monks coined the term ‘noonday demon’:You will not fear the terror of the night
Nor the arrow that flies by day,
Nor the plague that prowls in the darkness
Nor the scourge that lays waste at noon.
While we are all too familiar with nighttime terrors, we might well ask: What scourge that lays waste at noon?
Andrew Solomon explains that he chose "The Noonday Demon" as the title for his book because he found the phrase ‘describes so exactly what one experiences in depression…Most demons – most forms of anguish – rely on the cover of night; to see them clearly is to defeat them. Depression stands in the full glare of the sun, unchallenged by recognition. You can know all the why and the wherefore and suffer just as much as if you were shrouded by ignorance. There is almost no other mental state of which the same can be said.’”

For, perhaps the first time in my life, I began to understand that God's rescue at noon and at night might possibly look like me laying in my bathrobe, propped up on pillows, kept company by a box of tissues and my journal. It was not pretty like an extreme close-up of a pink, tear-stained face at the end of a movie, but I'm quite certain that if I could have seen into the spiritual realm that afternoon I might have been able to see a ten thousand demons fallen by my side and a thousand at my right hand. I had made it through the day.

5 Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
6 Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
7 A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.
8 Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

About midweek the entire family was fighting one aspect or another of the flu. Any meaningful activity I had managed to schedule into this mundane week I had to cancel -- a trip to Syracuse for the funeral of dear friends' mother and grandmother, lunch with my sister-in-law, a first appointment at a new gym, and the solitude retreat. All week I had read accounts of Jesus getting away to pray. To ask for direction, comfort, correction and sustaining from His Father in hidden-away desert places. I got to my living room chair. So I didn't get to keep my well-intended plan of going away from the normal distractions of home and family to pray and listen for the voice of God. But I chose to hunker down anyway with Bible, notebook, pen, hot tea and a decent dose of optimism. And nothing happened.

I couldn't focus. I couldn't figure out what to say first. I couldn't hear God. I felt like an idiot. I needed back-up. Moral support. Like Jesus asking Peter, James and John to keep watch with him that horrible night of solitude in the Garden, I called out (via email) to close friends. In essence I asked them the same question: Would you keep watch with me?

Soon, words began to formulate in my mind and bubble up into prayer formation. All of them came to the same conclusion; I was deeply afraid. In a matter of minutes I was able to scribble a notebook page full of the fears keeping me mute. In the quiet buzzing and whirring of the house while steam evaporated from the mouth of my tea mug, words came back to me. Psalm 91 words again:

9 Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;
10 There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
11 For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
12 They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
13 Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.
14 Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.
15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.
16 With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.

Photograph #1: Photo titled Psalm 91 by "LauraZ" on eyefetch.com Photograph #2: Photo taken in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina
Photograph #3: Jesus Prays in Gethsemane station, Good Friday experience at Union Center