About prayer

[these Kansas evenings]

The soul needs ritual and practice in order to grow and deepen. I'm learning this. Slowly, as common prayer becomes habit, the reflexes of my being are turning toward God like the muscles of my hands can now tamp espresso without conscious thought.

A few mornings ago was one that I thought might be a bad dream. Nothing horrific, just everything Not Working, one on top of the other. Frustration rising, suddenly part of the usual morning prayer (which I hadn't prayed that morning because oversleeping and hurrying) came to me:

O Lord, let my soul rise up to meet you
as the day rises to meet the sun.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.
Amen. 

And suddenly I was patient and restful. And could be present with customers. I hadn't consciously thought, "I should pray." It was just there. Part of the fabric, woven into other days before this one. And I don't know about you, but my prayers (if I think of praying) when I'm frustrated consist mostly of my talking about how frustrated I am, rather than bringing myself to God in praise. I need the well-worn prayer paths of saints before me sometimes. A lot of the time, actually.

I've always yearned for a more constant abiding in God, and we've discovered the strength of the practices, ancient creeds, daily rhythms, and prayers of the early church. I know, it sounds goofy to those of us, most of the American church, who grew up thinking those are just Catholic things. But did you know the church calendar was formed, prayers written, and creeds recited hundreds of years before Scripture was canonized? I didn't. And now, discovering that my soul is indeed formed by orienting, in actual practice, my day around the reality of the presence of God, I wonder how we've lost this rich heritage.

And hey, "Common Prayer" (compiled in part by Shane Claiborne), even has an app.

And now I'll go to bed with these beautiful words in my mind:

Now as we come to the setting of the sun,
and our eyes behold the evening light,
we sing your praises, O God:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices,
O Son of God, O Giver of life,
your glory fills the whole world.

Newlywed DIY

A succinct post about two projects I finished this week is an awful follow-up to an everlasting silence in which Ryan and I married each other and all sorts of wonderful things and a shocking thing happened. But here we are, on a Saturday, lazing luxuriously about our new home (after this husband of mine woke me to a breakfast worthy of chef status... you think I exaggerate, you stop on by and ask him for proof). We've been home for six days, and I'm not feeling particularly ambitious in the writing department. More so than the past while, but progress grows in increments.

So, in the name of rebuilding writing muscles, here is a synopsis of the shocking end to our honeymoon:

Let's just say a deer went all kamikaze on our car on our trek back to Kansas. Neither car nor deer survived, but we and all our other possessions are entirely unhurt. We could have easily foregone this part of our honeymoon, but at this point we're too grateful to leave room for much else.

And now to the projects. Making our house a home is the most fun I've ever had in decor. Ryan has great aesthetic sensibilities, which adds to the fun. 

This trunk was a $10 thrift store find years ago, and I've always meant to redo the poor thing.

So I spray-painted the top and the hardware gold leaf, let them dry, taped them, and spray-painted the rest of it white. The top had a good deal of sticky residue left from the hideous laminate I peeled off (and if you listened closely, you could hear the trunk sigh with relief), and because I was too lazy to scrub it off, I painted over it with gold, spread it with Mod Podge, cut pieces of lace vinyl tablecloth ($2 at walmart) to fit, and pressed it on. I like the subtle patterned top.

Instead of buying a matched bedroom suite, repurposing is much more our style. So the trunk became a nightstand with lots of storage.

Our puppies and I went exploring in the pasture and lugged back this fallen tree branch. They tried to help by leaping up and testing it with their teeth. In the yard, I took a dry rag and scrubbed off the loose bark while Alex chased the rag and Aliyah sat on my legs and begged to have her stomach scratched. It was far more hilarious than working alone. 

I attached the branch to the ceiling with hooks and twine and hung a gauzy certain a friend gave to me on one end to give it the feel of a canopy. I'd known I wanted to hang some of the glass terrariums and air plants we used as reception decor in our room, and they seemed like they belonged in the scheme of things. And this picture is the result of not waiting for optimal light. I like it better in person. Also, I love feeling like we're falling asleep under a tree. And I feel satisfied that I used found and already owned objects for the entire thing. 

This blogging thing. I might have to start it again. 

Poverty, Privilege, and Such

(Editor's note: Please bear with the parts where I'm a bit reactionary in this post. I'm really passionate about this, so I may seem judgmental and soapbox-standing. I don't intend that, so I apologize in advance for the places where I suffer in translation. I don't apologize for the content, though. This topic disturbs me.)

"My dad always told me, 'Don't waste your money on people who are poor. They're poor because they chose to be.'"

I shot a covert glance at the speaker, horrified at her blatant lack of empathy. She sipped her coffee, young and designer, the brands of her clothes and the logo of one of the most expensive schools in the country on her bag all screaming "I didn't earn this myself", and I wanted to ask her if she understands what privilege is. 

Poverty. Those who don't know it do not understand it. And we do ourselves a huge favor if we just admit that aloud. More than needing to not appear offensive, we truly need redemption and softening... to be humble and loving. 

The kind of money that enables a person to live without any concern toward it is extremely rarely built up in one generation. And if a person doesn't have a role model to follow, making and saving money is a complex and constant problem. Or, if a person has health or emotional difficulties, they may appear able-bodied and still not be able to deal with the daily demands of a job. And that's just the beginning of the problems caused by a lack of the social and family structures so many of us take completely for granted. 

Let me quote an excellent Times article: 

"Successful people tend to see in themselves a simple narrative: You study hard, work long hours, obey the law and create your own good fortune. Well, yes. That often works fine in middle-class families.

But if you’re conceived by a teenage mom who drinks during pregnancy so that you’re born with fetal alcohol effects, the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you from before birth. You’ll perhaps never get traction.

Likewise, if you’re born in a high-poverty neighborhood to a stressed-out single mom who doesn’t read to you and slaps you more than hugs you, you’ll face a huge handicap. One University of Minnesota study found that the kind of parenting a child receives in the first 3.5 years is a better predictor of high school graduation than I.Q.

All this helps explain why one of the strongest determinants of ending up poor is being born poor. As Warren Buffett puts it, our life outcomes often depend on the “ovarian lottery.” Sure, some people transcend their circumstances, but it’s callous for those born on second or third base to denounce the poor for failing to hit home runs."

It's poor taste, at the very best,  for those of us with a roof over our heads to lack empathy for those sleeping on concrete in the cold tonight, but it makes me cringe especially small when I hear such things from the church. I often think of people with names and faces whose stories are much harder than mine and haven't received all the help I have and wonder if the church would still be saying disparaging things if we knew faces and stories and names instead of statistics and dollar signs. We need to remember that we haven't earned much of what places us where we are on the socioeconomic hierarchy, and that our lack of desperate need does not mean we automatically have the answers for those we deem beneath us.

While I agree with some of the criticism often aimed at social welfare programs, saying they're sometimes mismanaged and in some cases ineffective in breaking the cycle of poverty, I wholeheartedly disagree with the often-selfish sentiment behind much of that criticism. Ending the cycle of poverty is as complex as the issues of its causation. Handing a large sum of money to someone whose drug abuse has rendered them homeless might not help them at all, and offering healing and community to that person is a long and sacrificial journey, but surely we can do better than (either to their faces or safely online) saying they should just get a job.

You may have ideas, good ones, about how to make good life changes. But may I ask you a favor? Unless you know what it's like to be completely alone in the world and trying to stay warm and fed, please respond with kindness instead of distaste and judgment. Surely we can do better than that.

Surely, especially because the Jesus we're celebrating this month was born, in today's lingo, on the street. As an adult, he was homeless. He depended on other people for meals. He knew need. By his life and words, He teaches us that God comes to us in the form of the needy, and how we treat them is how we treat Him.

Another excerpt from the Times piece:

"Low-income Americans, who actually encounter the needy in daily life, understand this complexity and respond with empathy. Researchers say that’s why the poorest 20 percent of Americans donate more to charity, as a fraction of their incomes, than the richest 20 percent. Meet those who need help, especially children, and you become less judgmental and more compassionate.

And compassion isn’t a sign of weakness, but a mark of civilization."

As we receive grace from God for our sins, we know what need is. We understand that we are totally dependent upon what we don't deserve, and we know that compassion should not be merely a mark of civilization. Compassion is a mark of following Jesus.

Hope is for the Foolish Ones

I lit the Advent candle by the lights of Joshua Tree. (I always name my tree Joshua. For Yeshua, our undying hope, and because of a certain favorite music album by a certain favorite band.) I read the day's prayer of longing and hope, and sat in the half dark, bringing to God the dark things waiting for His light to dawn. 

Waiting is hard and hope a reckless necessity when a bride is dying of cancer. I begged God to shine on my friends Josh and Jean, and still the updates of her battle were filled with anguish and little hope. 

That was last year.

Hope isn't for the blithe. Darkness and longing must be faced in order to know how to watch at the window for the first streaks of dawn. Only those whose eyes are trained to peer through the night will catch the moment it begins to pale.

Hope isn't for the times we feel we can control the ending of the page or the chapter, or even know the end of the book. We're allowed to seal our hearts against it, if we want. God lets us choose numbness and despair, in cowardice and pride refusing to open ourselves to the possibility that we do not know and do not rule. 

Because hope is an admission that we are not in control.

It's foolishness to sit in darkness, asking God to rise like the sun, when you have said the same words over and over for endless weeks while the waiting grinds on and you have no proof God hears. Only a fool will stand in defiance against suffocating despair and proclaim, "Even if God isn't listening and these are only words, I WILL SAY THEM." 

And this is how hope redeems us of our pride.

Because hope is only for the foolish who gamble everything on God... The reckless ones who are brave enough to admit we can't see the end. And can't begin to control it. 

Hope is for the foolish ones who trust the One who knows what it is to be blood and bones and walk in dirt and cry over dying ones He loves... and wait long and hard until He shows up... whether in this age or in the next. 

(Thank you, God. Thank you that Josh still has Jean this year.)

Processings

The good thing, the terrifying thing, about grief... It reduces me to "I don't know". 

How are you? What is going to happen? Are you okay? What do you need? 

I don't know. 

I guess I was a bit addicted to answers. To figuring things out. To working out the redemption and seeing the good and the end. It's an empty feeling, being devoid of any knowing of the way to walk through uncertainty and pain of this magnitude. 

I think maybe my answer-seeking cripples me sometimes. 

Yesterday, I sat cross-legged in the center of my favorite giant tree stump and tried to feel where God is in this whole thing. I followed the light filtering through the trees and all the shifting hues of color and all the other ways God usually finds me and my crashing dissonance starts to harmonize and I start to work out a sense of good in the world and balance it with the reasons my head aches from crying. I couldn't get anywhere.

I know the theology. I firmly believe that God is complete Love and Beauty and Life Abundant. I can see that all this suffering and chaos is not of His causing. It's clear to me that the enemy is stealing, killing, and destroying, using people and events to mar whatever good he can reach. I know and have seen that God has always been working overtime to restore and redeem, but none of this patched anything for me this time. I couldn't arrive at any conclusion I could rest in, knowing that THIS time, again, God can make something good. How can He do that when the last bits of good in an already-broken story are the bits being ground to dust? 

I don't know. 

And it scares me. 

I was looking at the light again, absently wondering why I felt so estranged from it and unable to reach it with my being, when I remembered telling Ryan all the things that had me tense and worried. How he repeated over and over until I relaxed and let it be my greater reality: I love you. 

And the color-tinted trees, the lines of the branches reaching their fingers to the bottomless blue, the evening light-beams reaching down to the green underneath, alive with whole communities of chipmunks, birds, and bugs... In ALL of it, I felt God say the same thing in a voice too deep for the ears.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

And that is my greatest reality. 

something wonderful

Sometimes, 

in the face of all that is twisted, broken, painful, and wrong,

the bravest act of worship is

celebration

of all that is right and good and wonderful and whole.

Something wonderful will happen today.

Look for it.

Smile in recognition.

Celebrate it with abandon.

Thank God

A year ago, I marched right past this guy.

Stiffly ignored him, when he was standing inside the door of the otherwise-empty-except-for-my-cousin-and-I auditorium. Obviously wanting to meet me. Also obviously, I could go outside in the dark alone to investigate when a human prowler is spotted, but when hit with a tsunami realization that THIS GUY could very possibly topple my self-protective, self-sufficient little life... I was capable of no other response than clipping past him in my grey heels. Pretending I didn't see him at all.

Yeah. That happened. The first time we met in person.

Thank God he had the courage to chase me down, otherwise I know I would have barred any further interaction.

Disclaimer: I'm not a huge fan of the dramatic approach to guy/girl interactions. For instance, a girl purposely acts opposite of how she feels to gauge a guy's interest by his response. It may suit some people, but it's not really the way I operate. And I wasn't intending to. When I saw him waiting, I fully intended to meet him calmly and normally. But, when the shoes met the carpet, I was terrified. Apparently I'm rude when I'm terrified.

My dear Bekah was standing on the other side of the door. Safety! Until he addressed my turned back with a "Becca", silencing my frantic non-talk with Bekah.

I turned, shook his hand, and couldn't think of a word to say.

So horribly frozen and strange, with this person I had connected with so well for the previous months! First by discovering and commenting on his blog because who would have guessed that another person would think and feel so many things I do? Then messaging about art, music, theology, books, and all the endless conversations I easily have with people I know well. Because I felt I did. Which was a bit strange, seeing as I didn't. But we have a lot of mutual friends and circulated in a few of the same Mennonite circles (or squares, as they've also been called). So, it didn't feel strange until I was faced with actually meeting him. And the niggling realization that I really could like this guy, which I'd conveniently discounted because I was still standing on my soapbox entitled "It's Impossible to Really Know Someone You Don't Know in Person", had mushroomed upon sight. Which, silly, doesn't actually happen to real people.

We made the smallest edition of small talk I've ever experienced. It didn't even occur to me to introduce Bekah, who was still standing in the very immediate vicinity. He left. I escaped to fresh air, maddened almost to tears with myself. And how is a person supposed to process happenings and emotions for which you simply don't have categories in which to put them? Categories are helpful for processing. And I just didn't have any.

After a week, sufficient equilibrium had returned for me to end the atypical silence with an apology for my awkwardness. And a thanks for taking the trouble to meet me.

Thank God I did, because (I discovered when we made fill-in-the-gap confessions after we started dating) he was prepared to let our friendship, which had felt so effortless and enjoyable, quietly fade. Because, obviously, it was more than a little strange to interact so easily with typed words... and then be so nearly incapable of conversation in person.

Thank God that was a year ago.
And we laugh at the memory.