lent and the forgotten disciplines 11.February.2008

Just after Easter last year, I committed to seeking deeper intimacy with God.  In the beginning, I chose a different discipline on which to focus every month, hoping to have a renewed passion for Christ by Easter of 2008.  Since November, my disciplines have gone by the wayside.  (November’s challenge of loving Kyle in new, creative ways sounded really fun, but I honestly didn’t feel like the biggest romantic on the block when we had to pack up and move out of our house in a matter of two weeks.  Being houseless for another week didn’t help matters either.  So, I didn’t meet my challenge.  I didn’t get anywhere close.  But I’m not about to leave that one in the dust forever; it’s too much fun.)

It was my (sister’s) friend Jill’s candid post about Lent that compelled me back to my journey to intimacy with God.  Oh, yes… Lent.  Easter will be upon us soon.

Last Easter, I had so little joy.  On the most joyous of celebrations for followers of Christ, I felt so… blah.  And that felt utterly wrong.  That’s why I started my disciplines in the first place.  Though I haven’t had formal disciplines since November, I wanted to be a part of one final period of reflection in the weeks leading up to Easter.

I have never celebrated Lent, but its call to penitence, selflessness, fasting, and prayer draws me.  I think these traditional Lenten practices are something I’d like to, as Wikipedia says, “[take] up with renewed vigour” in the weeks leading up to Easter.  When I was younger, my Catholic friends always “gave up” something for Lent — a favorite snack, often.  So, in my first commemoration of Lent, I’d also like to “give up” something:  my joylessness.  A few years ago, John Piper (in Desiring God) first taught me the command of joy — although I had read the command countless times in the Bible already.  However, I’ve never tried to practice joy as a daily habit until now.

Claiming joy is my final discipline of this year’s journey to intimacy.  If it means that I spend more time sitting with God and meditating on his brilliance rather than updating my blog readers about how I’m not meditating on his brilliance, I hope you won’t mind.  My service is needed elsewhere.

wild heart 5.February.2008

I squeeze a prayer
from my rusted heart
for you to get well.
The sawing of your breathing
makes me angry.
I know God heard,
but still you suffer.
You kick against me
when I hold you close,
and then I’m mad at you, too.
I forget to remind myself –
things are better in the morning.
But for now I cry
angry tears.

When I go back to sleep
I dream
of a child attacked
by panthers — his life
only spared when a bear
scares them away.
And I watch the whole thing–
praying.
There are holes in the child’s face
for his little sister to ask what happened.

And all my praying
and all my crying
and pleading
didn’t stop that.

But things will be
a little
better in the morning.

feeling nibbled 5.February.2008

“It must be, I think tonight, that in a certain sense only the newborn in this world are whole, that as adults we are expected to be, and necessarily, somewhat nibbled.  It’s par for the course.  Physical wholeness is not something we have barring accident; it is itself accidental, an accident of infancy, like a baby’s fontanel or the egg-tooth on a hatchling.” -Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Tonight I soaked in the bathtub, trying to feel whole again.  The muscles in my entire body ache, it seems, though I haven’t done anything particularly strenuous or repetitive.  Some strange insect is nibbling at my nervous system — or one of my systems — making me fear the future, although I likely have no more to fear than any other healthy 25-year-old.

I read Annie Dillard in the bathtub, and in my half hour of healing, I finally learned to love the unwelcome houseguest who has been with me the whole time I’ve read Pilgrim.  This intruder made notes through the entire book, and while notes can be helpful in college textbooks and such (or when the notetaker is profusely intelligent), these were as bad as someone else’s… uh, farts.

Annie Dillard has embraced nature in this book.  She has appreciated praying mantises and copperhead snakes.  She has told of the horror and the intricate beauty of the natural world — sometimes in far more detail than I can appreciate — but nonetheless beautifully.

However, my unwelcome houseguest chose to end chapters with comments like:  “Boring! Boring!” and “How does scientists now how many yrs.”  I couldn’t resist flipping to the back page, to see if Numbskull had finally seen the light.  Instead, he wrote, “Stupid book!”  Well, then go find someone else’s book to write in, rather than spoiling it for the rest of us.

But did I say I loved him tonight?  Oh, yes.  That was before I reminded myself of all his unnecessary tirades.  But there was a moment I loved him — I had compassion on him.

Annie Dillard wrote to her “fellow survivor” of manna — that which Christ spoke of.  My unwelcome houseguest wrote, “*What is manna?”

What is manna?  Oh, to not know manna!  Oh, to not know that piece of edible grace by which God salves our nibbled stomachs.

“[B]ut now, although we hear the buzz in our ears and the crashing of jaws at our heels, we can look around as those who are nibbled but unbroken, from the shimmering vantage of the living” (Dillard).

That part of me which knows manna has not yet been nibbled off.  Mortality comes crashing at my heels.