“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4And you know the way to the place where I am going."
You know, one of the things rural folks seem to do more than city folks is "attend funerals and wakes." I probably was taken to my first visitation at the funeral home when I was three or four years old. In rural America, it seems to be just part of "being neighborly." Often times you only knew the deceased as a co-worker, "relative of a friend," or just someone you saw often because you did business with them. So the first part of John 14, the "Consolatory Discourse", becomes one of those chunks of Bible verses that you sort of learn to ignore, like the 23rd Psalm, when you have been to a bunch of funerals.
If I were to sit down and create in my mind the stereotypical "rural Missouri funeral home funeral conducted by evangelical Christians," this set of verses would be in it, as would some older lady singing "In the Garden" in a screechy, shrill voice. I can see the Conway Twitty-haired preacher with the sweaty forehead going, "In my Father's house are many mansions..." (because, after all, they would be doing it in the KJV, which we know is the only "real" Bible. Sigh.)
So let's just say I have a real knack for ignoring this paragraph of Scripture.
As I work my way through the book of John, though, I find that I see "old things with new eyes." This morning, verse 4 jumped out at me and went, "BOO!"
"And you know the way to the place where I am going."
Whoa! I know already? REALLY? You SURE?
Now, I have to tell you something about myself. For some reason which isn't entirely explained by my past, my "default wound" is abandonment. It wasn't like I was locked in the closet or anything as a child, or was physically abandoned or anything like that. Maybe it is just a piling up of all the things I had in my life where it felt I was constantly "fending for myself." Or that I was surrounded with so many people who did not deal with their issues in a healthy fashion that I just knew they could not be depended upon. Or the fact that sometimes, even as a child, surrounded by chronological adults, that I felt like I was "the only adult in the room." Or all of the above. Or maybe none of the above.
But the "abandonment switch" can certainly be turned on inside of me at a moment's notice, and can get flipped on accidentally, just like how I can bump my dome light control in the truck with my knee and not realize I accidentally turned it on. It can make weird things happen. It can turn my normal "abnormal need for solitude" into "Nobody gives a damn about me. I wish I were really truly loved." That shift is never gradual; it's almost immediate, like flipping a switch, but the resolution of that switch having been flipped often takes days for me to work through, and sometimes is not without an episode or two of misplaced anger. Or, as my late grandmother used to say when I was younger, "When you get your bowels in an uproar, it's almost like you have to pick a fight with someone to get over it." It's truly a pattern that, over the years, I have had to struggle with to make any progress at all.
I am starting to realize that this pattern is a form of unhealthy self-punishment. Something happens that makes me feel unloved or unworthy. So I feed that feeling by getting into it with someone close to me, who gets fed up with me, and will withdraw because they don't want to deal with me, and then I say, "SEE! You abandoned me, asshole!"
Well, as I read this paragraph in John, that I so often ignore, I realize that Jesus is trying to tell the disciples that no matter what happens, no matter what it might feel like at the time, he is not abandoning them. He's saying in verse 3, "I'm coming to get you. I really am. Honest, I will. But you have to believe it, even when it feels like I've left you behind."
But then He tells them "But you have to realize I left you a trail of breadcrumbs anyway. Really, you know how to get there yourself, you don't even have to wait for me if you don't want to."
I thought about something that sort of came up in a phone conversation I was having several months back with our dear Elizabeth. I was talking to her about something on a semi-pastoral level, and as we discussed it, she said, "You know, if you listen to yourself long enough, you're your own best spiritual director. You actually know how to think through it. It's the letting go of it that is the hard part." She was right. It's my job to "diagnose." I'm pretty accurate at "diagnosis." But implementing the plan is the hard part.
As I read this set of verses this morning. I realized what part of it is. Many of the things I have to resolve in my life's problems often include the realization that I must "abandon my own will" and listen to the will of God, and actually obey it when I do manage to hear it. But if the message does not hit me with that "ton of bricks" feeling, I generally am not ready to abandon my own will. Since I sooooo dislike "abandonment", I will resist it in myself, even when it is for a good cause!
(Hmmm. Consequently, the Holy Spirit seems to take great delight in hitting me with that ton of bricks, or whapping me upside the head with a holy 2x4. Grrrr.)
But in reading these verses that I so often ignore, I have come to a recognition that I am never abandoned, and if I get a little impatient that "God isn't showing up fast enough to suit me," the thing to do is sit still and quietly scan for breadcrumbs in my "field of prayer vision." Then my job is simply to find it, go to it, eat it, taste it, and sit still and scan for the next one. I'm guessing these breadcrumbs are a lot like morel mushrooms. You have to sit still long enough to see them emerge from their natural camouflage. Well, hey. I enjoy hunting morel mushrooms, so I think I can do this!
I get a daily e-mail with a portion of the Rule of St. Benedict in my inbox. I like how the translation I get, on the even numbered chapters, it's in the female gender, and on the odd numbered chapters, it's in the male gender. Feels very "fair" that way, you know?
But the one I got for July 28 gave me pause:
March 28, July 28, November 27
Chapter 48: On the Daily Manual Labor
Idleness is the enemy of the soul.
Therefore the sisters should be occupied
at certain times in manual labor,
and again at fixed hours in sacred reading.
To that end
we think that the times for each may be prescribed as follows.
From Easter until the Calends of October,
when they come out from Prime in the morning
let them labor at whatever is necessary
until about the fourth hour,
and from the fourth hour until about the sixth
let them apply themselves to reading.
After the sixth hour,
having left the table,
let them rest on their beds in perfect silence;
or if anyone may perhaps want to read,
let her read to herself
in such a way as not to disturb anyone else.
Let None be said rather early,
at the middle of the eighth hour,
and let them again do what work has to be done until Vespers.
And if the circumstances of the place or their poverty
should require that they themselves
do the work of gathering the harvest,
let them not be discontented;
for then are they truly monastics
when they live by the labor of their hands,
as did our Fathers and the Apostles.
Let all things be done with moderation, however,
for the sake of the faint-hearted.
Hmmm. Did I hear that right? After the sixth hour, having left the table, let them rest on their beds in perfect silence; or if anyone may perhaps want to read, let her read to herself in such a way as not to disturb anyone else. "Rest on their beds?" Like a nap?
I tend to think of monastic communities to be centered around two things: Prayer and work. That "nap" thing seems a little out of place. But let's explore that further.
One of the things that set St. Benedict apart from the more ascetic brands of monasticism was his emphasis on moderation and balance. Although he thought of the monastery as being the best place for his teachings, he fully expected many of his followers to be "out in the world." His rule promoted a balance that could be followed by the lay people, despite living in a cluttered, active world.
So in that context, "napping" does not seem counterproductive. It is part of balance.
Or, if one in the monastery doesn't feel like napping when others are napping, it isn't like kindergarten where you were forced to lie still on your mat during "nap time", you can get up and read, as long as you are being quiet.
Fifteen hundred years ago, Benedict understood a certain aspect of human nature, and a certain aspect of human nature to go against itself.
I was thinking about this in terms of my kindergarten "nap time" of so long ago. When we are five, we are told we MUST nap. But the very next year, in first grade, when we are six, we are told we must NOT nap. Somehow, going from five to six, we magically did not need naps? Hardly!
Now, most of my friends like to think that I never sleep. Several have remarked how they got an e-mail from me at 1:30 a.m. and one at 6 a.m. with the same date. There is no doubt that I am more active than most. I am pretty sure I am one of those people the neurologists call a "natural short sleeper." My grandmother was very similar to me, when I think about it. If I go to bed at a "normal" time, it's a pretty good clue I'm situationally depressed, and I almost always will wake up somewhere between 3 and 4 a.m. as a result of it.
Yet as middle age approaches, I occasionally DO take naps. Often it is after a physical activity, or right after a meal. They tend to be fairly refreshing, but sometimes I sleep just deep enough to be confused for a brief time upon awakening.
More often, I "nap with my eyes open." Perhaps it's just sitting in the yard being contemplative. Maybe it's lying in bed awake with my brain disengaged and exploring whatever thought pops in. Maybe it's reading a couple lines of Scripture and just pondering it in a rough "lectio divina" style. But in those moments, I have taught myself to do exactly what St. Benedict has instructed his monks.
Five years ago, I would never have allowed myself to do these things; I would have chided myself for being "non-productive." I would have filled every idle hour I could with "something", and felt empty and alone if I had not--I would have "failed."
The other thing I have noticed is that married friends of single people tend to want to see that you fill those hours. They become concerned that "you're just sitting home alone, brooding." They don't always believe you when you say you are NOT "brooding."
I was asked a very interesting spiritual question by one of my friends the other day. It kind of seemed from the standpoint of asking how to get something she felt she didn't have from someone who she thought "had it." I spent about two and a half days thinking that one over off and on. I found myself thinking about it when "taking those naps with my eyes open." I mostly had to admit that I didn't "have it" as much as she might have thought, but that when I felt like I DID, it came out in these times of "napping with my eyes open."
Perhaps that is the sacramental nature of the nap, whether it is a truly sleeping nap, or one with eyes open. In these quiet moments alone, the possibility of serving God in community comes up, and we figure out how to do it despite all our foibles and quirks. Thanks be to God!
I am on John 13 now in my "sometimes painful journey through John." I have thought a lot about verses 1-9; read them over and over in more or less a "lectio divina" fashion. I've paid some attention to the rest of the chapter but this one keeps grabbing me...
Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper 3Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. 6He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” 9Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”
I have mentioned many times in this blog that one of the two characters in the Gospels I most identify with is good ol' Simon Peter. I sometimes wonder if we share some extra DNA--he's this great mix of impulsive and unflinchingly loyal. His foibles are so common to mine. Like me, he has his "Oh, shit, now what have I done?" moments. I soooo identify with him when he does the "deny Christ thrice" thing because I, too, have found myself caving into fear and having that really square off against that notion of myself as a "brave" person.
In this case, I would joke that this passage is "Peter n' me have issues about Maundy Thursday." I sooooo hide from "foot washing." Mostly because I have funny looking feet--huge high arches, narrow heel, fat forefoot, skinny small toes. But when Jesus sticks it to him that if he doesn't submit, Peter will "have no share with him," Peter's loyalty to Jesus wins out, and he basically goes, "Hey, then, okay, wash me all over!" I can almost imagine Peter (or me) just stripping down to the undies and doing the exhibitionist dance.
That is pretty much a parable of my ability to resist. One of my friends of three decades once told me that one of my best (and worst) qualities is that I am so "all or nothin'." (Cue the soundtrack from Oklahoma.) I can resist with a level of resistance that is astounding. But when I finally give up my resistance, it literally is "peel off my clothes and dive right in."
I imagine both Peter and I have a tendency to yell "Cannonball!" when we dive in also, and forget that when we do the cannonball, we get everyone else wet, and get them mad we messed up their hair and stuff. That is a problem. Then we are doing the "Oops, oh shit, I didn't mean to do that," thing again. We both probably irritate others b/c we do get a little self-absorbed in our own exuberance.
Nevertheless, I need to still strive for that exuberant feeling of "Okay, then, wash all of me!"
Many of you know things get posted here at some really weird times. There is no doubt that I am what is known as a "chronic short sleeper"--someone who routinely gets 4-6 hours of sleep per evening but seems to not have any ill effects from it. It creates the illusion among my friends that I don't sleep.
But even chronic short sleepers get insomnia.
I tend to have little runs of it, where I wake up two hours later. They are almost always during times I am stressed. I've had runs of it while I have been making all those Very Big Decisions at work.
A couple of nights ago, I woke up at 3 a.m. and wrote this prayer in rough form. I have sinced fleshed it out. I think it may speak to more universal aspects of insomnia although it really is more or less "about me."
A Prayer for Insomnia
O Lord, Your son said, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." Yet, at times, I cannot put down my burdens and use the same arms that carry these burdens to embrace You, and to embrace the refreshing sleep I need.
Sometimes, the "yoke of expectations" overpowers me. I yearn to be loved fully and completely, yet I also realize that within me resides this core of solitude that cannot be denied. Sometimes I let that core be absorbed by what I believe the expectations of others are, and in my quest to be loved, I fear I will disappoint.
Sometimes, the powerful gift of "awareness" you have cultivated within me can work against me. I am grateful I can feel and see easily what others cannot. But sometimes I take on too much of it as my own, and fear that putting down what is not really mine will cause someone to be "let down."
Sometimes, the delight of the uniqueness you created in me, becomes a burden itself. Sometimes, I long to have the life everyone else seems to have. Yet I know in my deepest heart, it is not the life that best satisfies me, or best serves You. The chafing of this realization also prevents me from accepting the gift of the nighttime rest I need.
Teach me, merciful God, to not pick up what I don't need to carry.
Remind me, O God of miracles, that my yearnings, even my unfulfilled ones, are also a gift--my humanity presented to myself, put there to remind me just how alive I really am.
Train my ears, O God, to the sounds of your presence within both the noises and the stillness of the night--to feel your presence as real as I feel my own skin envelop me, to hear the rhythmic breathing of your Holy Spirit parallel my own inhalations and exhalations.
But most of all, gracious Lord, teach me to embrace sleep as a lover, and not resist it as a foe; and in that giving of myself to it, I may feel the power of the true love You have for me, as well as the manifestations of Your love that abide in the hearts of those closest to me. Amen.
Ok, Lisa's challenge is to show off "our worship space." Even though a lot of people make fun of "Kirksville winter," I wanted to put a winter pic of Trinity out there so the trees did not obscure the view of the church.
Trinity Episcopal Church was established in 1871 as a remote outpost mission church in the Diocese of Missouri, and still enjoys "mission status" for a variety of reasons related to size, geography, and serving the Truman State University community. The early vicars literally covered a circuit almost to the Iowa line. I spent some time in the diocesan archives in St. Louis a couple of years ago, and really enjoyed some of the journals of the early vicars. One described walking eight miles after hitching a ride on the train, carrying his vestments and prayer books, and very tersely noted, "Froze north ear." (I like to tease our vicar that I have had similar experiences shoveling the church walk.)
The original building was a "board and batten" church located 180 degrees from the orientation of the present building, which was built in 1917. Architect Irwin Dunbar, who was also a parishioner, designed the buiding in a blend of Tudor and Craftsman styles. It was the sentiment of the diocese at the time to build churches that looked like "English churches." The roof is red tile. It sits on the corner of Harrison and Mulanix streets in Kirksville.
Dunbar also designed the home parish of my childhood, Zion Lutheran Church, of Macon, MO. I have to admit the first time I walked into Trinity, I had an eerie sense of "being home." I found out later on the two buildings had the same architect!
I wish I had a better, more well lit picture for you, but my puny digital camera can only do so much. The interior is dark walnut and the ceiling has the "upside down boat" look that a lot of older churches have. The pews are original, and I refinished the pews in the summer of 2007 as a "summer project." Another parishioner and I refinished the chancel floor in fall 2007. (Ever try to get up 90 years of wax buildup from thousands of candles? It's a real thrill.) The altar, rail, pulpit, and lectern were replaced in the 1980's.
I don't have a picture of the organ, but it is tucked away just right of the chancel. It's a small pipe organ that originally was at KMOX radio station in St. Louis, purchased in the 1950's. We do like to claim that we have "The best little church organ in Kirksville." It's not huge worship space; but it works for us since we're not a big congregation.
Our worship style is best described as "Fairly contemplative Anglo-Catholic", and music is a HUGE part of the congregational style. Probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the parishioners on a given Sunday are in the choir. Little church, big music. This is in large part due to our very energetic choir director. Roughly 75% of the congregation either attends or works at Truman State University. I shudder to think of the total years of education in one Sunday service!
If you visited, I think the first thing you would notice is that it's pretty quiet prior to services. Our vicar's style is very contemplative and he builds a lot of "pregnant pauses" in the liturgy. Expect a longer than usual pause after the homily, and a few short pauses "between gears" and in the Eucharistic prayer. I'll be honest, I "grew into" these pauses. I originally found them a little unnerving, but as time went on, I have come to appreciate them greatly, and really miss them when I attend other Episcopal churches now. I really like the combination of Big Music/Big Quiet.
Staying for coffee hour is an integral part of the experience. We may appear at first glance to be the "frozen chosen" upstairs, but downstairs, we're fairly noisy! Although we start at 10 a.m. on Sundays, and are usually out by 11:10, coffee hour frequently lasts till well past noon.
Feel free to visit our church web page here.
Soooo...Lisa has me beat on pictures, but at least I accepted her challenge!
I realized that no summer would ever be like the one when I was nine years old.
You have to realize, I was a space junkie from the time I was old enough to recognize toys. One of my favorite childhood toys was a little rocket that you put water in and pumped it up with what looked like a bicycle pump that hooked to the nozzle of the rocket, adding air pressure to the water. Then you flipped the guard back, and the rocket took off and the water spewed out all over you as it went about 20 or so feet in the air.
I would have played with it thousands of times, but my dog Peetee kept running off with the rocket. I probably went through have a dozen replacement rockets, between the seals cracking on the nozzle at the bottom, and the dog tooth marks in the rocket.
In June 1969, we visited my great-uncle in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Of course we had to go visit the Kennedy Space Center en route. I still have a picture of me, dwarfed by the "creeper" that carried the Apollo rockets to the launch pad. In those pre-Homeland Security days, you were allowed a lot closer to Big Government Things. Although we couldn't go "right up to it", we could get closer to Apollo 11 on the launch pad than people would be allowed to be at the time of launch.
I remember being filled with a sense of wonder that "this thing was going all the way to the moon." The other vivid memory for me was seeing the computer room that would help guide it there. It seemed the entire knowledge of the universe was in that room, with its whirring tape spools, the blinking lights, the analog (yes, analog) number counters all over it, and what looked like adding machine tape spewing out from it. That computer seemed as mighty as God. (Now I laugh about the fact my cell phone probably has more memory!)
Another great wonder they had in the room full of "everyday astronaut stuff" was this magical stuff called...Velcro. I remember hoping that all the rest of us could have Velcro someday! I have to remind myself that now, when I grumble about picking the lint off of Velcro on garments and travel bags. I DID yearn for the stuff!
I HAD to have "space stuff." I drank Tang, knowing "that's what the astronauts drink." I ate some God-awful weird little peanut butter flavored things that looked like Slim Jims that Pillsbury had on the market called "Space Food Sticks." (Definitely a fad food.) On our trip to the space center, I would not have left without two souvenirs--a scale model of Apollo 11, and one of those ink pens that "writes upside down in space." There probably weren't many occasions one needed to write upside down in Macon, MO, but I was definitely going to be ready.
Walter Cronkite and I were buddies--at least it seemed so. He and I sure did a lot of space launches together--I remember watching every detail of the Gemini missions together--including the funerals of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee during an exercise in the ill-fated never launched Apollo 1.
But July 20 became a benchmark day in my life. I have so many childhood summer memories, but they, over the years, have become a blurred line in my brain, only fleeting thoughts--mere blips of time. But pretty much the whole day of July 20, 1969 stands alone in that blurred line.
I remember it was roughly around suppertime when the Lunar Module landed. I had been "antsy" all day waiting for it. I was over at my grandparents' house all day waiting. "Space stuff" was something best shared by my grandparents and me, for some reason. We had the TV on much of the day in case a bulletin interrupted the normal programming. You have to remember leaving the TV on, unattended, was a no-no in those days. It was "a waste of electricity." It "wore out the tubes." It might even catch on fire! At least those were the common admonishments of the day.
Then, of all things, they were announcing this landing at SUPPERTIME! I (successfully) begged to get to eat in front of the TV. We ALL ate in front of the TV this time. I imagine I was the handy excuse. Then they announced it would be "a few hours" before the first lunar excursion. Sheer torture for someone whose bedtime was 8:30 p.m.!
I knew that I was not going to last. As I fell asleep on the couch, I once again begged to be awakened when it started. My grandparents were true to their word. I remember watching Neil Armstrong, at first half-awake, then waking up all the way quickly. The shadowy black and white images seemed so mysterious. It was the MOON, after all!
My grandmother, always a bit of a scoffer, liked remarking, "Just you wait till all those moon creatures jump out and eat them. Everyone thinks they're nothing on the moon, but you wait. Not little green men, either. Monsters." The truth was, the more she scoffed, the more you realized she was interested. After all, this was the woman who pressed her nose right up to the glass at the zoo and looked at the snakes and went, "Yuck." This was the woman who later, in 1999, would remark, "I want to live at least to 2000. I want to see if all the computers screw up and the world goes to Hell in a handbasket or not. That will be interesting."
I had been talking a mile a minute all day, and I think I was so silent during that broadcast, I shocked my grandparents. I like to think now that even then, as loquacious a child as I was, I innately knew when to shut up in the presence of God's awe.
I remember really needing to go outside and look at the moon when it was all over, as late as it was, and as tired as I was. My grandparents went out with me for a while, and we chatted a little, in that understated "How 'bout that" sort of way Midwesterners do, and then they went back into the house to leave me alone with it. I remember just looking at the moon and thinking, "Wow. Right now there are people on the moon. They're eating and drinking and walking around, and even peeing!" I spent a lot of time out there, saying nothing, alone. I wanted to go there. I wanted to know every secret there was to be known in space. When I think about it now, I wonder if that wasn't the first time I learned to just simply sit silent in the presence of things bigger than me.
Tonight, I went outside and looked at the moon, even though tonight it was just a teeny-tiny sliver, thinking about those footprints, and the space detritus still there. How much has it aged, how much has it deteriorated, compared to me? Less? More? There I was, gray and white in my hair now, a few wrinkles on my face...but the awe is still as young as that nine-year-old forty years ago. My, what places it has taken me, thanks be to God.
