Kirkepiscatoid

That it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand; to
comfort and help the weak-hearted; to raise up those who
fall; and finally to beat down Satan under our feet,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.

Well, as an expatriate Lutheran, the one part of this I already know how to do is "beat down Satan under our feet" with a lot of enthusiasm and vigor. It's been said that I can sing "A Mighty Fortress is our God" in a way that sounds like I'm planning to singlehandedly whoop the Devil's ass.

But here is the paradox with the rest of this stanza. I am pretty ok at comforting the weak-hearted and raising and strengthening OTHERS who fall; but I am very very lousy at doing these things in myself. I am the first one in line to kick my own ass, sometimes shoving the other ass-kickers out of the way to be the head of the line.

I have been mostly AWOL from the internet and the cell phone this week, mostly by design. At some point I will reveal more about that design but right now I just need this to evolve. There have been things evolving in my life over the last year and a half that have taken me by surprise to a fair degree, and one of them has been a marked increase in my desiring "alone time." I have spent decades "not listening to God's still voice" (Hell, not even listening to my own still voice!) and beating down the empty spaces rather than exploring them. What I learned last year working through all the Psalms was that I am curious as to "what's down there in the bottom of the dark craters of my heart."

I have historically had a tendency to overfill every waking moment of my day, to control every detail and dynamic of my world. Now, on the job, many of these things have to be done--I'm the boss, for cryin' out loud. But my return to a life of liturgical worship awakened a sleeping giant. I am still not sure what the name of this giant is. I have been struck by how the three most powerful and noisy things in my spiritual world are found in a realm of silence: The fact that, other than getting the sacraments on Sunday, I prefer the Wed. AM prayer service to Sundays; the fact that God seems to speak loudest to me when I'm working alone on fixit projects at church, and the fact that God seems closer than I've ever experienced when I'm out "fire sitting" or just kicking back in my reclining lawn chair, staring up through the hole of the "sacred space in my yard."

Let's just say, "This is not the church experience I expected."

The historical part of me says this is non-productive; "time-wasting"; "lazy," and weak. What I am learning, though, is it is forcing me to a new challenge. All my life there have always seemed to be "missing parts" in my psyche. I won't go into the details (I'm not even sure at this point I can explain them, because they come up in weird ways) but certain psychological attributes that most people have, I just don't seem to have them. It's almost, in a sense, "localized autism." I think over the years I have conditioned myself to respond at least semi-appropriately in settings where at least the appearance of them is needed, but at the deepest levels, they are not there.

Yet, as human beings bound by our Baptismal Covenant, we are constantly charged to love more fully. I am realizing that I have to figure out how to love more fully, despite seeming to have "missing parts" when it comes to some of this stuff, or at the very least, "have the parts but they do not seem to be hooked together all the time; there's shoddy wiring between one and the other." I have a very strong sense, though, that this is not something to be "fixed" in the sense I will ever acquire these parts. I just have to learn how to love more fully with the parts I have, and this appears, at least at the moment, to include a lot of reflective/contemplative stuff. Yet I am the kid who, in kindergarten, could not lie on the mat and be still. Hmmm.

I am not afraid to go to the dark places. In fact, I kind of want to go there. Now I have to learn how to hear what needs to be told to me there. I am not particularly patient with myself there. I need to learn to give myself the patience to stay there and the fortitude to decide "weak" is okay in this instance. What a paradox!