Hard Rest

I asked for direction;

You said, Stay.

I asked for vision;

You said, Watch.

I asked for answers;

You said, Trust.

I asked for help;

You said, Hope.

I asked for guidance;

You said, Abide.

I asked for action;

You said, Be still.

I asked' Why this resting is so hard?

You said, 

Child, I am creating in you.

Let's Begin.

7 Quick Takes: Post Travel Edition Vol 2; Ed 6

1. This week the girls and I traveled to Tennessee to be with my Mom for her birthday.  It was a good trip, and I am so glad I went, even if for a short time. Being at my growing up home is both comfortingly familiar and sometimes a distressing reminder of how much time has gone by and how quickly it continues to go.  Not to mention the fact that life is simply better after a double dose of great dane love.  I love them enough that it almost makes me want to buy a house so I can have a horse disguised as a dog. However my mom has TV and watches news a lot. A few minutes of that is enough to dissuade me from the "investing" in a house desire, ever.

2. Wednesday started Lent.  I am still sorting out what all of that means for me. I am giving something up, but I feel strongly that for me that is not the entire commitment. However since nothing further has been revealed, I am continuing to wait and listen. As of Tuesday night, I had pretty much decided to give up blogging, but God put a hold on that with the phrase he just keeps repeating into my life right now, "Stay the course. Keep doing the work you are doing as you are doing it."   So walking away from this medium isn't what I am called to despite a painful reminder that even the most innocuous of words can come back to haunt me, as though anything I write here is the entire story of me, or anything anyone else in my life.

3. I've been listening to this song a lot lately, "Let's risk the ocean; there's only grace"  Yes.

4.  My technology fast is nearing an end.  I'll be happy to have email back, but I think I am giving up social media entirely.  For me, it's too distracting and too much of a time waster, and points glaringly to my weakness with self-discipline.  I'm actually not too sad about it. I'm working on some other structures to follow so I don't just hop back on and glut myself for sixteen hours of mindless surfing the first day back. I ended up giving up blogging much more than intended to originally at first.  I apparently associate the computer more with time wasting than constructive writing. That's a construct I'd like to change for the better.

5. I returned home to wonderfully working plumbing and a fully functioning septic tank. Grateful is an understatement. Spoiled by first world conveniences would also be a huge understatement. I sometimes wonder if it's healthy for every blessing to come with a dose of conviction, then I realize that that is what is building both passion and compassion within me.  Hearts of stone don't get tenderized into flesh easily, I suppose.

6. I've been reading a great deal of Thomas Merton and Brennan Manning lately.  Oh and Richard Rohr.  I think he's my new addiction.  I do have to be careful, though, to balance thinking with action.  It would be so easy for me to drift away to a hermitage (with the hunky, of course) and disappear into my own head and my garden (my hermitage would so have a garden).  But that's not my calling.  Then there's the whole issue of my unending selfishness.  Being tied to a community and uniting faith with action is certainly the antidote for that issue.

7. I leave you with this image. This is our silly dog who was so stressed about being left behind that he sat in the car for over an hour before leaving and refused to be moved by any form of coaxing or pleading. He is nothing if not determined

The Freedom of Heron

A hedge of heron
have congregated the island this early spring
Daily, I watch them launch and land
from my stationary vantage
on this side of the water.

On occasion they cross the span
to parade upon my sea wall,
a stately stalk.
For fish, perhaps,
or simply to bestow upon us
a gift of ungainly dignity.

Standing nearly tall as I
with wing-span wide as standing,
I had not imagined it likely
to find heron in the trees.
Yet watching across the wavelets,
the very least of what separates soaring avains
from entrenched humanity,
I find heron precariously perched
atop each loblolly pine
defying wind and physics with equal ease.

Is it for bragging rights they linger here?
Or merely a wider point of view?
I cannot know.

But when I stop to wonder that gravity
would allow such an unexpectedly elevated occupation
It awakens in me jealousy
at the freedom of heron to rest and enjoy
such spacious and lofty a perspective.

20 (Pt. 1)

Today my love and I have been together twenty years.  In case you ever wondered why I love him and think he is the hunkiest man in the world, you should simply watch this:



He sings. He plays guitar. And he is an amazing kisser. And that's just the obvious parts.

Blinded

This week we had our first (and probably last) real "cold snap" of winter.  It's been particularly mild this year, with barely even a handful of freezes including the last two nights.  We do live literally in a fish bowl though -a fact for which I give thanks daily because who doesn't need to simply look out over water every day all day long? Walls just impede the view. The last few nights I have pulled all the blinds down  to help trap warmer air inside. It felt a bit constricting and even when it was dark and I knew I couldn't see the lake anyway, I missed the possibility of seeing it when the sun was up.
This morning the cold snap is over - Farewell winter-that-never-got-started! - and the blinds are open once again.  I can enjoy the rolling morning mist, the grazing geese, the receding frost, the jumping fish and the wheeling sea gulls all while sipping my coffee from any room of the house. Life is as it should be.

This week, people began asking me when I was coming back online.  It has caused me to really think about that time, now only two weeks away.  It seemed odd to realize this: I don't really miss it very much.  I miss the practice of filling time with "Activity" - because if you're searching and pinning useful things online, you really are being productive, right? I didn't know Whitney Houston had died until well into yesterday morning.  I do feel sorrow for her family, and for her obviously tortured soul and body. But I don't miss the one thousand eulogies and judgmental statements about her choices. I don't miss a hundred video montages in her honor.  It's all just noise that I don't want or need, or miss.  I absolutely don't miss all the political clap trap filling every form of media, which is equally tiring from each and every political party from the big-wigs to the grass roots.  I don't miss endless bickering over a political system from which no forerunner actively pursues the heart of God over his or her own glory.  I actually prefer not being distracted by the possibility that someone could conform the laws of the land to support my faith-in-a-box and instead prefer to place my hope in the One who transforms the world starting with me.

In this way, I prefer living with the blinds down.

I read this yesterday:
"...being nothing has a glorious tradition. When we are nothing, we are in a fine position to receive everything from God...The desert is where we are voluntarily understimulated. No feedback. No new data. That's why he (Jesus) says to go into the closet.  That's where we stop living out of other people's response to us.  We can then say, I am not who you think I am.  Nor am I who you need me to be. I'm not even who I need myself to be. I must be nothing in order to be open to all reality and new reality"
--Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

Though I didn't go into a technology fast with this thought at all in mind, I can see now, in a way I wouldn't have agreed to or with before, that what he is saying is quite true.  Perhaps the most interesting thing of all is this: when I closed the blinds to my home, I missed the view. I saw less.  But when I close the blinds to my soul, my view is increased a thousand-fold.  In fact I feel very much like the blind man who approached Jesus and begged to receive sight,  If you want you can heal me,  he cried,  If you want you can open my eyes to see.


Jesus response?
I want to. Receive your sight.

7 Quick Takes; Vol 2. Ed. 5

1. I have a confession to make. I spent a ridiculous amount of time this morning bird watching. It started out innocently enough: I was eating my breakfast at the table in front of the giant windows. Geese are grazing in the yard (their names are Juan and Rosalita).  Then the great blue heron came and began stalking the fish that hide in the sea wall shadow. The bald eagles made a brief appearance over the island and headed out to more open water. Then a she-cardinal stopped just outside the window in the holly bush, and I began to notice all the very small, very busy little birds that were literally inches away.  I now know distinctively the difference between a house wren and a carolina wren (and am rather ashamed that I ever mixed the two up to begin with).  I laughed at the acrobatics of a tufted tit-mouse.  She cardinal was joined by he-cardinal and a feast was had from whatever feast foods fall into the crevices of decks. A chickadee scolded them all in turn.   All in all, it was some of the best breakfast entertainment I have had in awhile.

2. I realized today how close we are to Lent and I am looking into some Lenten readings and/ or prayers.   I'm actually pondering buying the entire Divine Hours set by Phyllis Tickle.  I have been using Thomas Merton's Book of Hours all this month. It is written in only a seven day cycle so I repeat the prayer offices each week which has also been a good discipline.  But after this month, I am ready to find a new source.

3. My wonderful Hunky has been spoiling me the last two weeks with a gift every day for the twenty days leading up to the twenty year anniversary of our first date (which was, yes, on Valentines Day).  I felt thoroughly loved and spoiled the entire time and yesterday encouraged him to continue the practice for the rest of the year. I've had meals made, books given, gifts sent to our Compassion children, playlists for my ipod, videos and so many other sweet and thoughtful gifts. Today he is coming home from work and taking the girls out to lunch and wherever else fancy strikes them to go and leaving me alone alone alone, gloriously alone for several hours!!  My introvert is so happy!

4. I started the 100 workout this week.  All my muscles hate me, especially my abs and my ankle.  I didn't know that a joint could actually hold a personal grudge and conspire against you, but my ankle does and is. Fortunately, my ankle is being introduced to my stubborn streak.  It will obey. And in case you were wondering, yes, it does make me want to die while I am doing it.

5.I am washerless again as we have discovered some sort of leak in the pipes in the laundry room wall.  The leak is causing damp carpets and a general musty yuk smell.  A plumber is supposedly coming today, but as we don't know how extensive the problem is, we don't know how long it will take to fix it.  I'm torn between being happy to be renting and not financially responsible for this, and being so disappointed that our wonderful friends who let us live in this magical house are having to pay for it.  So for many reasons I am hoping for a speedy and financially light solution to this problem.

6. Did you know that a group of heron is called a hedge? I did not until this week.  I love that almost as much as I love the hedge of herons  that have begun hanging out near and over my house.

7.  My Hunky just arrived home and so I must depart to spend my glorious time alone...offline and in blissful silence.

Friday Morning

Uncopyrighted photo- not taken by me

I would like to write 

more poetry

But I fear I am neither

very talented,

nor

very sure.

I cannot find words

stark and beautiful enough

to describe the simple splendor

of a pale brown 

she-cardinal

Beak aflame

Hunting for berries

This low-grey winter morning.

Her very unassuming glory

Kindles embers of joy.

Hours

Several weeks ago, while I was in Florida, I read a book that's been messing with my life ever since (actually that has grown into a string of books that are messing with my life...more on that another time.).  I definitely think it's a good thing to have your life picked up, turned over, shaken out, and realigned, but it isn't comfortable, and it can be discouraging at times -- A total aside here, but I did get a little God spanking after the tone of my post yesterday. I am a selfish, selfish girl. Truth. I repented and it's better now. -- God never takes you on a journey without equipping you with the tools you need to make it to the next stop.
I'm sure that's why the month that most appealed to me in Jen Hatmaker's book, was the one in which she spoke of praying the Hours.

I could spend a great deal of time online finding a million links and explanations to help you find your way through this process, but since I am not currently online, you are going to have to read this and then use your trusty google fingers to find other information.

Essentially praying the hours is a liturgical practice where one reads or recites prayers at certain hours of the day: 6am, 9am, noon, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm and midnight (or any early morning hours, really...these prayer times are called "vigils" ).  I've mentioned before that  I am not always the best pray-er. I'm highly distracted and easily overwhelmed at the sheer volume of things which I wish to bathe in prayer.  Not to mention the fact that we are talking about having an audience with God Most High.  It's a little intimidating, at least to me. I purchased a book entitled Seven Sacred Pauses, which not only fed my brain about the historical practice of praying the hours, but provided me with written prayers and an order of prayer to follow hour by hour and day by day.

I set my phone alarm, many times, and I began.

 I should share that I do not successfully keep all the hours every day. I don't know that I have been awake for vigils more than once or twice.  The 6pm hour tends to be difficult with family, dinner, or evening obligations that I am keeping.  I regret not being able to keep this one quite a bit because it is my favorite time of day and the vespers prayers I have kept are beautiful.  I don't beat myself up over missing a time, however, and I am learning to be flexible and occasionally arrange my hours around other things (for instance, when Olivia had an 11:45am doctor appointment, I didn't think it was out of line to pray my mid-day prayer when we got home at 1pm rather than miss it altogether), but for the most part I try to arrange my life to around these appointed times rather than arrange the times around my life. After all, arranging God around my life tends to be where I get in the most trouble in the first place.

I'd love to report that every time of prayer is a soaring success in which I walk away refreshed, enlightened and embraced in my soul, but that also wouldn't be true. Sometimes I am distracted, hurried, not as engaged as I'd like to be, but prayer is a discipline, not a Holy Spirit shooter. It takes time to learn how to sink into it, how to focus, how to center on the Center. I'm no longer always using formatted, pre-written prayers, though I still find a great deal of comfort and depth in liturgy, and at least half of my hours each day follow liturgical format. As I walk the hours each day I realize more and more how necessary this constant redirecting of my thoughts truly is.  I find myself a bit more oriented each day to the True Center, and I realize, with great dismay, how very quickly and how far I drift without hourly reorienting.

I'm a tiny child on the beginning of a life long journey into the vastness of God, but I am on the journey.  Forward is the only direction I choose to go.

Other books that I am reading or have read recently on prayer:

A Book of Hours by Thomas Merton
Contemplative prayer by Thomas Merton
Common Prayer: A liturgy for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne
Everything Belongs: the gift of contemplative prayer by Richard Rohr
Circle Maker by Mark Batterson
Sanctuary of the Soul: A journey into Meditative Prayer by Richard Foster

Return

It's so easy to step away sometimes isn't it?
It isn't something you plan or wish for, but sometimes things just drift...right...out of grasp.
Once they are out there, further away, you ask yourself, "Do I want to make the effort to have this thing back?"
Or maybe you see it, and the thought sparks, but before it even has time to flower into the question, you turn the other way and just let the drift keep happening.

I've been in both places.
I've let things go that maybe I was meant to try a little harder to hang on to.
I've held on too long to things that I was meant to let go.

Sometimes I even get it just right, and I grab the thing that I was never meant to let drift away. I tuck it in tight and secure, and once again it receives the attention and time that it is meant to have.

I think that maybe this week that words and publicity were allowed to drift was a time to grab other things, things that maybe had drifted a bit too far, things that weren't meant to be released.  But now it's time to grab this thing that also isn't meant to be released. Not now, anyway.

**********************************

I had a bit of a disappointment this week.  I asked for something that felt right, seemed right.
Something that burgeoned with possibility, piqued my excitement.

Instead a door was closed.

I'm honestly surprised at the depth of my disappointment, not unhappy, just a bit deflated.

*********************************

My girls have all suffered a bit from a head cold that is going around. They certainly have fared better than most people we know with the same malady.  It's been a week now, and I seem to have somehow escaped from it. I am very, very grateful.

*********************************

The weather here is delightfully fickle.  Several days last week I was allowed to take up my lizard persona and just let the sun warm my bones. I know I'll bemoan the heat when it comes, but in my heart, I truly am a summer girl.
Butter cups are already blooming and a fine yellow powder is sifting down from the pines.  Spring is springing whether or not  the calendar is making time for it.
I'm ready, ready, ready - though I fully expect that winter will make itself known at least one more time.
I also know that no matter how many times I go stick my feet in the water "just to see if it's any warmer," we are not going to be doing any swimming in February.
Too bad.

******************************

Life is flying at super speed since returning from Florida. Sometimes I thrive in that, and sometimes it feels heavy, and I fight the weight of it like quicksand.

Lately it's been the quicksand.

But the sun reminds me that spring is coming.
Rebirth
Renewal

God's Promise.