Beginnings: Ash Wednesday

“One cannot begin to face the real difficulties of the life of prayer and meditation unless one is first perfectly content to be a beginner and really experience himself as one who know little or nothing and has a desperate need to learn the bare rudiments.”

Beginning Lent as a beginner takes a conscious effort.  I was raised on a steady diet of the Passion and resurrection, so I took little time to meditate in it deeply because I knew it so well.  Or so I thought.

Today as I contemplate my dusty beginning and my coming ashy end, I’m hoping to start this Lenten season with green belief.   I’m asking what it means to really pray and meditate through Lent, which means I’m asking what it means to really pray and meditate at all.

Consider starting this season at square 1?  Consider the readings as if they are fresh-baked?  Consider the Passion and resurrection with unreached ears?

Welcome to Ash Wednesday, 2012.  It’s a good day to start from the dust.

“We do not want to be beginners.  But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners.”

*All quotes taken from Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer.

Marriage Letters: My Job, Your Job

Every Monday, Amber and I, along with Joy and Scott Bennett, and others, write Marriage Letters.  It is an effort to encourage others to fight the good fight, to do the hard work. Did you write one this week? Visit Amber’s blog to link it. This week’s topic–My Job, Your Job.

***

Dear Amber,

Yesterday, Isaac propped a trellis against the side of a tree and climbed 12 feet into its boughs.  Jude stood beneath, throwing old hickory nuts into the tree while Isaac wobbled back and forth, dodging precariously.  It was their  new game.

Sensing the onset of a trip to the emergency room, my face filled hot red and I bellowed from around the corner, “BOYS!”  Isaac scurried down the trellis; Jude about-faced, drew up all the innocence he could muster and said “what, Daddy?”  Realizing I had made my point, I turned and caught Ian filling his backpack up with leaves and sticks, treasures he intended to keep under his bed.  He beamed, “look, Daddy!”

That’s when I took a deep breath and mustered a side-ways smile.

This mothering thing is difficult, I know.  You’ve given me four boys in seven years and they build kingdoms and stage perpetual wars.  They draw scenes from the Hobbit, litter the house with paper airplanes, and create  daggers from tinker toys.  They’d rather read My Side of the Mountain than Charlotte’s Web.  You’ve never complained about the lack of little dresses, the absence of Easy Bake Oven smells, or the missing baby dolls.  You’ve embraced your role as the mother of boys, the arbiter of the last great war.

I know it takes a good prayer for peace and a few minutes of shelter every day to survive this Rock House.  I know that you listen to Jordan, Josh, and Dave from time to time; you try to create little refuges like that.  And most days, when I have a coffee break, I pray that you find rest in those little refuges.  Weathering  daily onslaught of Orcs, bandits, and linebackers is hard work, after all.  You always weather, though.  And you manage to bring order to it.

Our occupations are different, there is no doubt.  But while I work in the kingdom of men, you toil in different fields, shaping the souls of four little boys. You are teaching them to be good men, teaching them to be sensitive to Spirit things.  You allow them room to play rough–that’s what boys do–but you rein them in for moments of quiet.  You teach them to rest, but also allow their imagination to explode across the great plains of our carpeted living room.

You are living a high calling, Amber.  You wear it pretty well.

Here’s to Narnia, and plane crashes, and swords, and stuff,

Seth

The Pastoralist

He laughs because he remembers the black-maned lion, flat bread fried against a hot rock, and the midnight stars. There are always stars. Especially in the desert.

His name means “big mouth” and he intends to live it up, has for just past sixty years. He laughs when I ask to snap his photograph, says he can’t figure why everyone always wants to capture his toothy smile. I capture him in that moment and he is pleased with the result.

But his face changes when he’s asked about the resettlement camps, the coming wave of irrigation that’s stealing camel land. He sees the new sugar cane. A sweet-toothed government, he laments. He’s moving to the new construction next month, but only if they make him, only if they slaughter his camels and steal his weapons first.

The pastoralist understands more about the American Indians than I could ever hope. He’s never met them, never heard their history. But he’s living it–the people dispossessed–and I wish Rich were around to sing “The Howling” over this desert.

On Heroes (Hebrews Narratives)

“By faith… others experienced mockings and scourgings…”

I once met a man who was hog-tied and hung from a tree.  His elders dipped him in the river and beat him with a cane.  They demanded that he recant, and if he didn’t they’d tie a millstone to his feet, baptize him once and for all.  He held to his confession so the accusers left him for dead, left him as easy pickings for the hyenas.  If you ask him his story, he’ll tell you of faithfulness.  Faith is a river, he’ll say.

“…yes, also chains and imprisonment…”

He was a long-haired hippy, a child of the earth with a clear understanding of redemption theology.  He smuggled bibles into the eastern block back before the wall came tumbling down.  He was arrested, threatened under a heat lamp, burned with cigarette butts.  His wife, a twenty year old  peace-child, believed herself to be widowed on more than one occasion.  If you ask them their story, they’ll tell you of white-hot faithfulness.

“…They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword…”

By now, we’ve all seen the video footage.  Bearded man.  Boot knife or scimitar. Kneeling believer commanded to recant.  Heads roll.  You know that story.  Faith runs red, like spilled blood.

There is a quieter type of belief, one not splashed across the pages of books or websites.  It’s accused, beaten, jailed, and ultimately put to the sword.  There are workers in these fields who can’t blog, tweet, or update statuses for security reasons, but they hang in the war zones, living out lives of relative obscurity.

They are my heroes.

**All quotes taken from Hebrews 11:32-39

A Love Game (It’s Valentine’s Day After All)

A Valentine’s Day love game.  One of these scenarios is not like the other.  Can you tell which one?

Love is patient…

Continue reading over at Deeper Story.

Marriage Letters: Patience

Every Monday, Amber and I join Joy and Scott Bennett in writing Marriage Letters.  It is an effort to encourage other married couples to fight the good fight, to do the hard work. Did you write one this week? Visit Amber’s blog to link it. This week’s topic–Patience.

***

“Love is patient…”
~1 Cor. 13:4

Dear Amber,

“Love is patient.”  That’s  what the scripture says.  And before marriage, perhaps we had some vague notion of what that meant.  It was a conceptual notion, though, with no roots in life-narrative.

We’ve had our dark days, and I won’t recount those here.  But through the struggle, I learned the look of patient love.  It digs deep roots, stands firm like a Louisiana live oak.  It’s slow and long, provides shade for sinners and grace for community.  Patient love understands that brokenness is all-afflicting, recognizes the sickness in self.  I think patient love is humble.

I’ve learned all of this from you.  But we’ve also seen the truth in the narrative of our friends.  The couple who lost their child a few years back.  They clung tight during the dark days.  The woman with a stranglehold on hope while her husband exercised his wanderlust.  The old-timer who suffered joyfully through the cancer bout with his wife.  These are our saints.

These days, marriages are falling like Bruce Lee victims.  We’re watching them bleed out, watching them succumb to divorce, affairs, apathy.   They tell us that we don’t understand, that they’re not happy, they’re not in love, or that there are trust issues.  We watch them broken-hearted and beg them to be patient, to seek wise counsel, to hang in there.  Some do.  Some don’t.  It’s the way of our world, I suppose.

I wish we could convince them that patient love  is sanctifying, that it has the power to save a soul.  I wish I could convince them that patience is more than a virtue; it is vital.  And maybe there’s no guaranty that patience cures all, but at least it’s worth a try.

Thank you for bearing with me.  I suppose it takes a special woman for that task.  If I knew I was marrying a saint all of those years ago, I might have been a bit more grateful along the way.  But even in that, you’ve been pretty patient. And for that I say…

You are still my best,

Seth

Burning Soap Boxes (Still Waiting)

“I waited patiently for the Lord, he inclined and heard my cry…”
~Psalm 40

I am having significant difficulty starting this post.  Primarily, I think that it’s because I have many opinions that I would like to share on the topic of suffering: the role men play in creating it; the role men play in exacerbating it; the role the church plays in alleviating it.  I reckon others have dealt with this topic more gracefully, thoughtfully, and with a higher degree of skill.

There are people who get paid to do this stuff, you know.

I’d like to write about the internet, how it’s clogged with causes, all worthy, all accompanied by weepy-eyed photographs.  I’d like to ask why those posts, written with all the passion in the world, leave a community of people unmobilized.  Perhaps I could opine on compassion fatigue. Perhaps I could opine on my own apathy.

Lord knows I’m tired.

But the truth is, as much as I’d love to share a call to action, as much as I’d love to ask you to liquidate your bank accounts, that won’t solve anything. Tough pill to swallow… I know.

Soap boxes are easy things to construct.  I know because I’ve built them.  And they are built for all the right reasons, for all the best ones.  But my latest trip to East Africa has redirected me a bit.  Yes, there are significant issues of “justice and mercy” playing out in the highlands and the rift valleys. Yes, I could share stories that would make your head swim with ideas, with killer internet water well fund-raising events.  But many of those stories are private, or personal, or potentially manipulative, and so, on that account, I’ll keep a bit more quiet.

There are facts to be considered, still.  There is a drought in East Africa.  It is a different kind of drought, one not being covered by the BBC.  There is a collection of people groups comprising a population of 14 million (give or take).  There are less than 2,500 known believers in those groups.  There is persecution.  There is victory.  There is singing. There is joy. But Christ have mercy, it’s dry.

I’m waiting patiently this time because I don’t know what else to do. I’m praying this time because it seems right. I’m not asking you to cease striving for justice or mercy, or anything like that. But if you’d like to wait it out with me, I’d love the company.

And if you’d like to know what you’re praying for, drop me a quick comment. I’ll send you an email.